The Return

by jugglequeen

A long-lost family member has come back for Maggie's funeral.

He looks out the window and sees her sitting outside on the porch alone, deep in thought, her eyes fixated on something in the distance. She looks so lost and despite the still existing chasm between them, he feels the strong urge to console her. She said goodbye to her mother today, scattered her ashes to be reunited with her father's just as the last will stated, and he's utterly surprised about how deep the impact of all of this is on his own soul.

Charles Scully has been distant from his family for he doesn't know how long. Very long. The last time he had personal contact was when they were mourning another family member, his sister Melissa. She had been shot by a cold-blooded killer and the news had toppled the house of cards he'd been constructing so conscientiously around his family history and his reasons for cutting the ties. He had booked the next available flight out to become one of the mourners. Everyone, including him, was too shocked by how a young woman's flame of life had expired so very suddenly and randomly that nobody, including him, questioned his being there. And now he's in this house once again because of a funeral.

He'd spoken to his mother on the phone seconds before she drew her terminal breath. Bill had called him, informed him that she was in the hospital suffering from a heart attack and that she had asked for him before she had slipped into a coma. He had given him the number to Dana's cell phone and more or less commanded him to give her a call as if Charlie was one of his plebes from the Academy. It was a short, awkward, and one-sided conversation, reminding Charlie of the ones he used to have with his father before he turned his back to his family.

Being on the phone with Dana was different. She sounded so relieved when she realized it was him. Charlie could hear in her voice how desperate she was, how she was overwhelmed by the fear for her mother. She begged him to talk to her, didn't order him like Bill. When her voice broke in the end, it touched a heartstring he already believed to be numb.

He can't remember what he said to his mother, something about why all of a sudden he was willing to reconnect probably, but he remembers the fuzz he overheard when his voice had obviously really caused her to open her eyes. He heard Dana's sharp intake of breath, he heard a man's voice asking his mother if she knew her name and where she was, he heard his mother say something but couldn't make anything of it. Then he heard Dana calling out to her in panic, the faint sound of the heart monitor indicating a flatline followed by his sister's heartbreaking sobs. Eventually, someone picked up the phone and talked to him. The words he heard only confirmed what he'd already suspected, feared even.

"Hello, Charles, this is Fox Mulder. We haven't met, I'm, uh…I'm a friend of Dana's."
"I know who you are, Mr. Mulder."
"Oh, okay, well…I'm very sorry but I have to tell you that your mother just passed away. My deepest condolences."

Charlie didn't reply, he just killed the call without even saying goodbye, and when Dana called a few days later to inform him about the funeral arrangements, he didn't want to attend at first. He talked himself into believing that he had paid his dues as a son by fulfilling his mother's last wish and that this was it for him, that he was through with his family for good now that both his parents were dead. Three sleepless nights and an earnest conversation with his better half later, he booked a flight to Washington.

And now he's here, in his mother's house, shaking hands with people he's been alienated from for a long time. The only person he feels slightly connected to is his sister who hugged him fiercely instead of clumsily holding out a hand like his brother. She thanked him for having talked to their mother, for having brought her back if even only for a split-second.

Dana's forlornness and grief don't leave Charlie cold, and so he opens the back door and joins her on the bench outside. He gets her attention by leaning to the side and nudging her shoulder. "You and Mulder are back together?" he asks to start the conversation.

"What makes you think we are?" Dana tosses over her shoulder without looking at him.

"He was at the hospital with you when mom died and today he's here, observing your every move like a bodyguard. He looks like he wants to wrap you in cotton wool. I'm surprised, that's all. The last thing I heard was that you'd left him."

His sister turns her head now and looks at him. "Heard from whom? I was under the impression you didn't care to know anything about us."

"And yet, people have been telling me things."

"People?"

"Old high school friends. Navy acquaintances. Aunt Roberta calls once in while. You remember her? She's our father's half-sister's out-of-wedlock daughter. We met her once at a Scully family reunion out in Portland when we were kids. She was never really accepted as a member of the Scully clan but she has her sources when it comes to what happens in this family."

"Yes, I think I remember her. And she's telling you things about us? What things?"

"For example that Dana and her FBI agent with the funny name broke up."

"I have an FBI agent with a funny name?"

"At least Aunt Roberta thought so." Charlie chuckles when he thinks back to the more than peculiar conversation. He tries to imitate her Southern accent and her slight sigmatism which had amused them already when they were kids. "Charles, honey, have you heard about Dana and this FBI agent of hers? The one with that funny name I can't remember. It was some native flurry four-footed species with a bushy tail and pointed ears." His assumed voice makes Dana laugh and the unexpected joy he managed to bring to her urges him to continue. "She went through the whole list: lynx, coyote, raccoon…jackalope."

On the last one, her head turns slowly toward him and his ever-suspicious sister only needs to cock an eyebrow to make Charlie understand that she is questioning his story.

"Okay, I'm kidding on the jackalope, but I swear she mentioned the other three!"

"I wouldn't have thought, I bet if I browsed through the cabinet long enough I'd find an X-File involving someone named Jackalope," she retorts and her deadpan expression makes Charlie chuckle now.

The amusing twist their conversation has taken helps Charlie cover what he doesn't want to tell his sister about his telephone call with Aunt Roberta. For example, how troubled he was by the news of her failed marriage, partnership, romance, or whatever it was. The family had been discussing the state of her relationship to this man for years. Aunt Roberta once reported a 'friend of a friend' who was with the IRS had seen them file their income tax as a married couple. Those rumors coming from a questionable source were never confirmed and it didn't matter anyway if they were married or not, when a relationship fails it hurts, that much Charlie knew from experience. So when Aunt Roberta told him Dana and her FBI agent had separated, he felt an instant pit in his stomach. He later identified this as a mix of compassion and sympathy. He was sorry for his sister that she suffered from another setback in her life. He also doesn't want to tell Dana how conflicted he was when Aunt Roberta offered her new address, also obtained through rather murky means. He had declined and regretted it later on, because at that moment he had felt that one day, maybe, he would want to reach out for her.

Charlie doesn't fail to see that Dana isn't particularly generous with information about her relationship to Mulder, a trait which isn't new to him. When they were kids, she already hated being interrogated by her family about her teen romances, especially by her mistrustful father and concerned mother, but also by her siblings who, of course, teased her more than they really wanted to know what was going on in her heart.

Charlie wants to assert her now that they don't have to talk about Mulder if she doesn't want to, but then she picks up his initial question on her own accord and clarifies, "we didn't break up, at least not with finality. I moved out of our house about a year ago, but it was meant to be only a temporary separation. Mulder needed space to….ugh, well, it's too complicated to explain. We're both back at the FBI and have gotten closer again working alongside each other. Besides, he's still my best friend. I don't know how I would be able to survive all this without him."

"You call him by his last name too."

"I do."

He's heard the man his entire family has been gossiping about for years call his sister 'Scully' today a few times and at first, it bothered him a bit. Calling someone by their last name usually was a put-down, a means to create a distance. But the way he says it doesn't sound rude by any means, rather gentle, more like a term of endearment. And now he's just heard Dana call this man 'Mulder' for the first time as she hasn't spoken much during the service, and it also sounds so affectionate.

"A very special relationship you have there."

"Yeah," Dana huffs, "as if you knew anything about it."

"For someone to follow a convicted murderer underground, I'd say the relationship has to be very special. He's your son's father, I assume."

Her pinched mouth clearly indicates he's reached the limit now of what she's willing to share of her love life, and she doesn't hesitate to verbalize it either. "I don't want to talk about it. Besides, it's none of your business."

"Sure. Sorry. I didn't mean to intrude. It's just good to know that you have someone who looks after you."

Dana's head whirls around to look at him so fast, he fears it might give her a whiplash. Her steel blue eyes pierce through him and an ice-cold draft wafts off of her. It gives Charlie an idea that what she's going to say won't be very pleasant for him to hear and the sharp undertone she spits the words out with strengthens the impression.

"Is it, Charlie? You worry about me all of a sudden? I haven't heard from you or seen you in ages. You didn't care if someone looked after me after my abduction, when I had barely survived a gunshot wound to the abdomen, when I buried Mulder, or when I had my baby, your nephew. You didn't even care when I was dying of cancer."

There's going to be no warming up, he realizes with a start. No getting reacquainted first after so many years of separation, no holding back, no fence time. She throws the accusations right at him and every word feels like a slap across his face.

"I cared," he replies flatly, a bit shocked by the list of terrible things that happened to her. He's heard about all of them. Sometimes only years later, but he knows that she's been at death's door too many times in the line of duty, he knows he once had a nephew called William, and he's heard a lot about one Fox Mulder playing a decisive role in almost everything. He also was in the loop when she was ill with terminal brain cancer. His mother had told him, had left a message on his answering machine pleading with him to visit his sister at the hospital. It was the time she still tried to bring the lost sheep back to the herd. It was only after the umpteenth message he'd left unanswered that she gave up and left him alone. Probably to save herself from more hurting. Even a mother can only take so much rejection.

"Why didn't you come to the hospital? I was waiting for you, Charlie! Day after day after day, I told myself that tomorrow you'd show up with a good explanation why you hadn't been able to make it earlier, until one day I realized you deliberately stayed away. I can't say it didn't make me sad."

"It would've been a sorrowful cause for a family reunion."

It's the only explanation he can think of this quickly, fully aware that it's a lame excuse. It's a pretext he tries to hide the real motives behind. It's not going to help him out of the confrontation lurking right in front of him, he figures. He sees the determination in his sister's eyes to get to the bottom of the matter and the bundle of questions she's been waiting so many years to ask him.

"I was dying, Charlie. It was your last chance to ever see me alive. Didn't this have any effect on you?"

"You didn't die."

Another useless remark. The fact that she didn't die doesn't lessen his wrongdoing in the slightest.

"No, I didn't, but nobody was able to foresee that at the time. My body was weeks away from shutting down, maybe only days."

He has nothing to say to this. Not even some senseless, placatory words. He's getting more and more uncomfortable. His pulse rate must have risen significantly, the lump in his throat is growing, and the air around him feels sticky. Beads of sweat start forming on his forehead, although the temperature is moderate and a light breeze is blowing in his face.

"Don't you have anything to say? Any explanation, any excuse?"

"There is no excuse," he admits meekly to his sister and actually the first time to himself, he realizes. Deep down at the bottom of his heart, he knew he was making a terrible, irrevocable mistake, but he never had the guts to concede this fact to himself.

"You're damn right there isn't! I don't get it, Charlie, your surviving sister being at death's door wouldn't bring you to put aside the family dispute for just once? Huh? Didn't it matter just a tiny little bit that I was diagnosed with a terminal illness?"

He sees the hurt in her eyes, the wound he caused that has never healed completely and still oozes.

How is he to make her understand that both Ahab's and Melissa's sudden deaths had paralyzed him? He felt strong and invincible having dissociated himself officially from his family, a family whose paternal structures of command and obey had suffocated him. But when his father had died unexpectedly from a heart attack, he felt deprived of the possibility to ever set things right. The family he had left was never going to be the same with its head being gone, the person Charlie had rubbed against the most. There seemed to be no way back to where he once had been. There had been no doubt that Bill would take over, moving upwards in the chain of command from being someone receiving orders to giving them. The friction that had existed between his older brother and himself would increase tenfold with their father gone, of that Charlie had been sure. And things got even more complicated for him when with Melissa another pillar of the family structure was eliminated without a warning. His place in the remaining mesh of relations was evermore undefined and Charles Nevin Scully, youngest branch of the pedigree, departed more and more from his family, even from the ones he never had a reason to be at odds with other than that they belonged to that particular family: his mother and living sister.

Charlie's sinister flashbacks leave him silent which leads Dana to voice her very own interpretation. Misinterpretation, that is. What else?

"You were of the same opinion as our older brother, weren't you? That it was all my fault. That only I was to blame for everything that happened to me because it had been my choice to join the FBI. A choice which killed our sister."

"Bill said that to you?"

"Yes."

"When you were in the hospital?"

"Yes."

"What an asshole!"

Dana narrows her eyes and furrows her brows. "That wasn't what you thought of me?" she asks, surprise evident in her voice.

"No. Never."

"Then I understand even less why you completely ignored my being ill. If a hospital bedside visit was too much to ask for, why didn't you call or at least write a few lines? Something. Anything. I was longing for a sign that you cared about me, Charlie."

He would like to tell her that he cared. He cared so much that he called the hospital every day to ask how she was doing. He had been able to convince a nurse that he was a family member authorized to get next of kin information. Her name was Estelle, and she reported to him every up and down of the course of his sister's illness. How she battled her way through the aggressive treatment, how the hopes everyone had pinned on chemo and radiation were disappointed, how she became a little less every day. He knew of the mysterious chip Dana's FBI partner had come up with even before his mother and brother heard about it. The last time he spoke with Estelle was when she called him the day the cancer had gone into remission to tell him about his sister's miracle cure. He cried when he put the receiver back into the cradle. A few days later, Dana was discharged and Estelle received a huge bouquet of flowers.

Why he can't tell his sister this, Charlie doesn't know. Instead, he gives her some other reason, one that is equally true though. "What good would it have done to rekindle, Dana? Tell me. Why get close to someone you're going to lose again?"

Her eyes wide and gasping for breath like a fish out of water, her indignant reply isn't long in coming. "Pardon, I'm not sure I got this right. Are you saying it wasn't any use? That it wasn't worth the effort because I would be gone soon after anyhow?"

Tears flood her incredulous eyes and Charlie hates how he is making things worse instead of better.

"No, that's not exactly what I meant."

"Then what did you mean, Charlie? I don't understand a word you're saying. I never really understood why we were estranged in the first place."

"We," he fidgets with his hand between them, "were never estranged, Danes."

"No? Then how come you didn't get on a plane and pay me a sick visit as long as you still could?"

Maybe it's time to finally be honest, his mind supplies, to finally explain his state of mind at the time. If it only wasn't so damn difficult to pour his heart out to someone he had taught himself to cut out of his life. But she is his sister, and back in the days as kids, they were like two peas in a pod. The two youngest Scullys were inseparable and always attached to one another. He owes her an explanation, she deserves to understand why his behavior as an adult differed so much from when he was a child.

He musters all his courage and clears his throat, then starts to explain, his powerless voice revealing how hard it is for him to speak the words. "I had already lost one sister, I wasn't ready to lose another. It had been hard for me not to be able to say goodbye to Melissa, but to watch you die, Dana, simply seemed impossible for me to handle. I thought that if I pretended that the family drama didn't have anything to do with me, it would be easier for me to cope with the inevitable, which would be the…the, uhm…"

"My death," Dana supplies unmoved.

"The loss of my second sister."

It doesn't take her long to understand the essence of his profession. "So you're saying you ignored my medical condition to protect you from the pain my passing would eventually inflict on you."

"I know that was selfish of me."

"It was. Very selfish. Incredibly selfish." She hesitates a moment until she goes on, probably because it takes her a moment to grasp the whole concept, something that took him years to accept, and he sees it coming, she won't spare him his shortcoming. "All you saw was your loss and how you would have to deal with it. The situation I had to fight with at that very moment didn't even exist in your imagination. Do you want to know what I had to deal with, Charlie?" She doesn't wait for him to answer. "There was no hope for a cure but I underwent treatment anyway just to buy myself a bit of time. Chemotherapy made me vomit my insides out, radiation gave me gum sores and made it difficult for me to swallow. I suffered from constant fatigue and lost so much weight they gave me nutritional IVs so I wouldn't die from malnutrition. I was terrified, Charlie, I didn't want to die. I was too young to die, and I didn't deserve to die. I was so scared. I could've used you to help me through this, little brother."

Scanning his face, her eyes tell him how hard her struggle was, how it had taken every bit of strength she had within her tiny body. Charlie feels the same horror as all those years back when Estelle gave him the minutae medical reports of her ordeal, and he's employing the same whitewashing technique to justify his failure as a brother, only it was much easier back then to convince himself that he wasn't doing anything wrong than it is today.

"You had people taking care of you much better than I would've been able to. You had mom and Bill. Your partner."

He had heard from Estelle that there was an FBI agent who moved heaven and hell to be allowed to sit at his sister's bedside outside visiting hours, that he spent the nights either holding Dana's hand or in her bed spooning against her. Estelle had never witnessed so much compassion from a patient's work colleague before. Charlie didn't have to be a psychic to be able to conclude that this man had to be the infamous Fox Mulder, of whom his mother had spoken so dearly during Dana's abduction, but his brother had called a joke figure unworthy of being in law enforcement.

"Mom's sad face only reminded me of how much fear and worry I had caused her since the day I joined the FBI. She tried to hide her tears from me, but there were days her eyes were so red and puffy, I knew she'd been crying until she stepped into my room. I was grateful to her for her love and care but sometimes the way she clung to me made it difficult. Mulder also tried to put on a show for me and acted as if there was nothing to worry about, but I knew him too well not to see the underlying fear. I noticed how he tried to keep a calm face as long as he was in my room but deep inside struggled with the idea of going on without me. I wanted a pledge from him that he would continue our work but he refused to even talk about it. He tried to keep from me that he was searching for a cure, breaking every FBI rule there was, but I looked right through him. He reminded me of a duck that floated serenely on the water but paddled frantically underneath. There were days I worried more about him than about myself. And Bill, well…you know him, he's not really good at displaying his soft, compassionate side, although he has one. When he said he wanted to come to terms with me, he just did not go so far as to add 'as long as you're still here'. He's never forgiven me my decision to join the Bureau. He's been more unforgiving in this than dad ever was. Mom told me that Ahab had eventually accepted my choice before he died."

Charlie isn't so sure about it. Their father could be very stubborn and unrelenting. He himself had been at the receiving end of the paternal pressure, they all had. Their mother had always been the balancing force and of course, she wanted Dana to believe that her beloved father had finally made his peace with her career choice. That Bill had taken over Ahab's role as her stern critic also fit into the mold of how he pictured the family dynamics from the distance he had been keeping so eagerly.

"I don't understand it, Charlie, we'd always been so close. I loved how you lived for the moment, how you looked at your life so differently from how I did. You were always so carefree and confident. I could've used your optimistic attitude to cheer me up, your inappropriate jokes to lift my spirits, your positive thinking to assure me that everything was going to be fine. I badly needed someone to distract me, to take me away from all these people with their worried faces and sinister forebodings."

He doubts he could've been this someone for her, given the worry and sinister forebodings he was hatching inside himself at the time, but he would never admit it. He's already told her so much more than he ever thought he would. There was something else though he needs her to understand.

"Danes, I may have been a selfish bastard…correction, I was a selfish bastard…but there's one thing you have to believe. There never was a time I did not care about you. You've always been my favorite sibling. I mean, Bill and I never had a lot in common. Being so much older than me, he always thought he could boss me around when dad was away. Melissa was fun and easy-going but too occupied with herself to pay a lot of attention to her baby brother. You, Dana, you were the only one who looked after me. Do you remember how you once intimidated some boys who bullied me in school?"

Dana shakes her head in disbelief as if his well-meant words don't make any sense to her, probably because they contradict his behavior during these past years, but he needs her to understand that he's always loved her dearly. The distance he put between them has only been physical, never emotional. The happy childhood they had shared wouldn't let him dissociate completely from his sister, even if he had tried.

"They were taller than me, and a lot taller than you, but you put your hands on your hips and told them to leave me alone if they didn't want you to give them a lesson of a girl's secret combat strategies. Your flaming red curls and fiery eyes put them to rout alright. You were my heroine then, today, and always."

"Your heroine?"

"Yes, my heroine. Geez, you never avoided a confrontation, never abandoned your beliefs. You were the only one of us who dared to argue with dad, and I adored you for that. Not even our older brother would've had the guts to do what you have done: choose a career against our father's explicit will. I asked myself if the Navy really was Bill's first choice or only dad's. You were the tiniest of us four but also the strongest and most courageous."

"Overpraise."

"Oh no, not at all. I couldn't have wished for a better big sister."

Charlie watches her with silent scrutiny and when his eyes find hers, a little smile sneaks from the edge of Dana's lips. Her voice becomes softer with every sentence of the childhood memory that leaves her lips.

"I was so happy when mom and dad told us we would have another brother or sister. I'd always wanted to be a big sister like Melissa. Mom told me years later that she had two miscarriages after me and didn't dare to try for a fourth child for quite a while. That's why the gap between you and me is somewhat larger than between us other three. When you were born and dad took us to the hospital to visit you and mom, I was allowed to hold you although I was the youngest. I remember that dad said it was Bill's right as the firstborn but mom insisted I should hold you, and of course, Bill didn't mind. He had his hands in his pockets the whole time to keep anyone from placing the fidgeting baby in his arms. Melissa was too occupied with the current book she was reading to bestow as much as a glance on you, so I held you the entire time. You looked at me with wide eyes, then fell asleep in my arms. Mom said that you'd been crying all day, that she'd thought you were never going to stop, and that from now on she would call me to help her soothe you whenever you were upset. I almost burst out of pride. I had fallen in love with my baby brother at that very moment and I felt that nothing and no one would ever come between me and him…until I was lying in a hospital bed, sick and scared, yearning for my brother to hold me for a change. And he didn't show up."

The way her voice breaks at the end is stealing Charlie's breath. "God, Dana," he groans. His stomach churns and he feels like he is being stabbed in the heart. It's not easy to be told so plainly how wrong he had been.

"I'm sorry, Charlie. I shouldn't have said that."

"No, it's alright. I deserve every word of it."

"Maybe, maybe not. I mean, I guess you had your reasons to distance yourself from the family. Seriously, how many fights did you have with dad about scholastic merits, majors, and fields of study? About the so-called serious sides of life?"

"He wanted me to become a second Bill Jr., one more son he could push into the Navy to follow his footsteps. Why did he never argue with Melissa like that? She wasn't exactly an industrious, determined student either, was she? When she told him she was going to move into this esoteric commune to learn how to free her spirit from the shackles of the performance society he only shook his head, shrugged and continued reading the paper. I didn't get it. If it had been me, he would've given me an hour-long lecture."

Dana has to chuckle now. "She was a girl, Charlie. Dad probably thought she'd get married one day and left it to the future husband to put up with those silly ideas of hers."

"And he had you, of course. Bright, ambitious, A-student Dana at the onset of a career in either science or medicine. You raised the bar to unreachable heights for us ordinary mortals."

"That was never my intention. I just loved to study and I found joy in being the best possible in everything I did. I still do actually. Mulder can tell you a thing or two about it."

"I knew you didn't become daddy's pet on purpose, but you were, and at a certain point there just was no valid place for me to settle myself in. Bill was his golden Navy boy, you were the brainiac, Melissa had already taken the role of the black sheep, so what was I going to be?"

"Is that why you went away?"

"I couldn't do anything right by him, he was always on the lookout for mistakes he could blame me for. Mom always tried to make up for it but let's face it, dad wore the pants in that marriage. One day I realized I was happy and satisfied as long as he was away. The nearer his homecoming, the more uncomfortable I got. The family was thrilled about his return, whereas I dreaded it, and when you cried when he left us again, I had to feign being sad. At a certain point, it had become so obvious for me that I was an outsider in this family that I decided I would move out as soon as possible."

"And so you did," Dana states.

So he did. On the morning of his 18th birthday, he let his mother and siblings know over the birthday breakfast they had set up for him that he was going to move in with a friend. His father was at sea, luckily. Charlie wouldn't have had the guts to go through with it probably if Ahab had been sitting at the table with them. His mother was utterly aghast, his brother ridiculed him, the older of his two sisters babbled something about how one must pursue the path being offered, the younger cried, pleading with him to stay.

"Please believe me when I tell you that it wasn't you personally I needed to get away from, it was this family dynamic I couldn't cope with any longer."

"A dynamic I was a part of."

"Yeah," he sighs, "you were. It wasn't easy for me, especially in the beginning, but I needed a complete cut. It wouldn't have worked any other way for me."

"I hear you using 'I' and 'me' a lot, Charlie. Have you ever wasted a single thought about what your leaving did to us? Mom especially?"

He had. He thought a lot about his mother and it felt terrible to turn her down in her persistent attempts to reestablish contact. He can't explain what made him react to this last effort of hers. Maybe he'd realized that even if it was too late for him to reconcile with his mother, he didn't want to lose a third family member without even saying goodbye. Fate had been so courteous to him as to give him a second chance with Dana, it didn't offer him a second one with his mother, but at least he got to show her he still cared about her before she died.

"I did think of her, more than I would want, but, well…it's just that you can't make an omelet without breaking the eggs."

Dana cocks an eyebrow, a gesture Charlie is familiar with since early childhood. "Weird analogy here," she snorts. "It means you accepted you hurt her, I guess. "

"I'm afraid I have to say yes."

Dana presses her lips into a sharp line and nods slightly, processing his painfully honest words. "Well, thank you for taking the time to ease her heart at her last moments on earth." If she tried to prevent sounding sarcastic, she's not succeeding.

"Even at the risk of you not believing this, I'm glad I did. She was my mother, I owed it to her. I, uh…I did love her."

He's rendered his sister speechless for a moment with these last words. A tear escapes her eye when she finally says, "I believe you, I only wished she would've had more time with you."

Charlie swallows hard. His voice is small when he replies, "I'm sorry, Dana, I know I should've come back earlier. I should've been there for you, and for mom, when you needed me."

"You're here today, Charlie, and that's all that matters now."

They turn toward each other and after a moment of hesitance they hug, long and tight.

"Mmmm," Dana hums and the sound vibrates comfortably in Charlie's ear, "I'm so glad to have you back, little brother."

"It's good to be back, sis."

"You won't hide anymore?"

"No. I promise."

After a moment of significant silence they spend with Dana clutching Charlie as if her life depended on it, he breaks the embrace. To his dismay, the moment he lets go of her, his sister collapses. Her shoulders start trembling and when her chin falls to her chest, he hears the first sob escape her throat. He looks at her, not knowing exactly what she is crying about. She has so many reasons to cry. There were so many losses in her life she had to deal with, starting with a brother who vanished from her life without leaving a trace. Guilt crawls up his spine for having left her in the lurch for so long. He places himself right next to her, their thighs touching, and puts an arm around her shoulder. She instantly falls into him and the dam breaks. Her body is shaking from heavy sobs and soon Charlie feels his shirt getting wet from her tears. It's as if she's bottled up her sadness for too long that it now gushes out of her unchecked.

It takes Dana several minutes to recompose herself, minutes in which she's being rocked and comforted by her long-lost brother until the sobbing subsides eventually. She disentangles herself from him, pulls a tissue out of her pocket and blows her nose. Looking at him with red and blurry eyes, she manages a weak smile when she says, "seems you've returned the favor now."

"What favor?"

"To hold me until I stopped crying like I did when you were a newborn."

Charlie can't keep the sour chuckle down which is climbing up his throat. "Superb, it only took me 46 years. Well done, dude!"

Now Dana chuckles too, but hers is full of relief, not reproach. "Better late than never."

The sudden realization strikes him hard. How he wishes now that he'd been her rock also back then. Hell, how often had she stood up for him when their father had told him off, justifiably or not? How often had she covered for him, both in school and at home? She'd helped him out of more than one predicament, and he had only taken, taken, taken. He'd taken his unselfish, giving sister for granted and he'd never given her anything in return but his outright admiration and brotherly affection. As a kid, it had probably been all that could've expected from him, but as an adult in his mid-twenties, he should've had the decency and morality to swallow his personal sensitivities and shove his pitiful ass all the way from Fresno to her bedside in Washington to hold her hand.

"I'm so glad you got cured, Dana. I would've never been able to forgive myself."

In his state of harsh self-flagellation, Charlie fails to recognize that Dana's mood has already shifted from reproach to reconciliation. If he wasn't so self-centered once again, he would be able to read it in her face, in her open look and appeasing smile. She lays her hand on his forearm and squeezes it gently.

"Let's not talk about it anymore, Charlie. The cancer is gone, I'm fine. I've been cancer-free for years. We have all the time in the world to make up for the past years."

"What? That simple? You're forgiving me just like that as if I'm belatedly returning a book I borrowed from you? I failed you in the moment of your worst distress and you're saying 'let's forget it'?"

"If I learned anything during my illness, it has to be that it's no use trying to redo what's past. The past can't be changed, only the present and future. When I was still in the belief that my remaining days were numbered, I struggled with what I had missed doing in my past and it was hard to accept that there were some things I would never be able to catch up with. Then a miracle happened and I got cured. I was given a second chance and I swore to myself I wouldn't waste it with regretting the mistakes I'd made in the past."

"You got cured thanks to a…erm, somewhat alternative approach, so I heard."

Dana's hand goes to her neck, her fingertips reaching for the spot where an implant had first been taken out and later on another one put in. He heard the whole story.

"Mulder's chip, well…it certainly led to some discussion with mom and Bill. They thought I was being crazy to even try it, but I had nothing to lose. And I trusted Mulder."

"Are you still carrying it?"

"Yes, I am. It seems to have kept me in remission ever since."

"That's wonderful, Danes. How did Mulder know it would work?"

"He didn't, but he is a believer. And he taught me to believe."

"What a great partnership. How long have you been together now?"

"More than 20 years."

"Wow."

"Yeah, it's quite a time span. What kind of life are you living, Charlie? Do you have a significant other? Are you married?"

"Divorced. Twice."

"Children? Any nephews or nieces I don't know of?"

"No children, no. At least no biological ones. Carrie, my second wife, has two boys, and we get along pretty well. Once in a while, I take them to a football game or out for burgers. They're cool kids, but it seems I'm not made to be a family man. I'm not good at playing house. I definitely won't marry again. I'm living with someone though. Haley. She's 32, a free spirit, artist. She reminds me of Melissa at times. She's very open when it comes to addressing my flaws," he adds with a grin. "She's good for me."

"Sounds wonderful. It's good not to be alone."

"What about Mulder and you?"

"We're not living together at the moment."

"You already said that, but will you again? One day?"

"Maybe," she says, and with a little more emphasis, "probably."

"He seems like a good person. Quite different from what I've been told by Bill."

"How come Bill talked to you about Mulder?"

"Well, you're not going to like it, but uhm…he wanted me to help bring you to your senses. Back in the day. I think by now, he's given up on the endeavor to eliminate him from your life."

"Bill and Mulder have never really connected. Bill blamed him for dragging me into this dark world of his, into his quest of finding the truth. He completely neglected the fact that I was a grown woman who made her own choice when I decided to follow him. One day, his quest had become mine."

"And you had fallen in love," Charlie points out.

"It's a very long and very complicated story but yes, somewhere along the road we fell in love with each other. I think neither of us can pinpoint the exact moment when it happened, one day we simply found ourselves being in love. When you've found your perfect other, you don't let them walk out of your life just like that, even though not everything is always perfect."

"I like him."

"You do?"

"Yes, he seems kind and decent, and absolutely devoted to you. He guards you like a mother bear."

"He's always been very protective of me, unlike what Bill thinks."

"He was in the hospital with you. When mom died."

"He was. I received Bill's call at a crime scene and Mulder sent me to go see mom right away, saying he'd cover for me. He came to the hospital later. He knew I needed him. Apart from that, he liked mom and was worried about her. She liked him too. She liked him a lot. Her last words were to him. I guess she said them to both of us, but she was reaching out for Mulder and looked him in the eye when she said what she said."

"That she also had a son named William."

"Her last thoughts were of the two people that were lost to her - William and you. She loved you, Charlie, despite everything, and she needed to know you were alright before she was ready to go. As a mother, she never gave up on her child."

He's surprised about the warm feeling spreading inside. Maybe as a son, he also never gave up on his mother. Maybe even if the umbilical cord is cut there's an invisible bond between a mother and her child that never ceases to exist. He thought he had burnt all bridges behind him but that obviously wasn't true. He's glad he made that last phone call and talked to his mother. It not only gave her peace but also him. He missed the chance to make full amends with her, but maybe she'd known what their last-minute reconciliation would do for him. A mother always knows what's best for her child.

"But why did she tell you she also had a son named William? She should've known you were aware you had a brother with that name. It seems a little peculiar to me."

"I don't think that was what she was trying to remind us of."

"Of what then?"

"That we, Mulder and I, have a son named William too."

"Huh? She thought you forgot that?"

"No. She knew we missed him every day of our lives. She wanted to tell us to never give up hope, to keep believing that we will reunite with him one day, just like she had reunited with you after so many years of separation."

"Well, reunited is probably too big a word. I spoke two sentences to her. She didn't even answer."

"She felt the connection re-established, Charlie. Your two sentences pulled her out of the coma. The fact that her prayer for you had been answered, that you had come, even if only through the speaker phone, gave her peace, and she wanted the same peace for us."

"Awesome. I never would've thought."

"It took me a while to figure it out myself. At first, I was confused and even a bit angry at her. I asked myself why she had to remind us of the child we had lost. What was the use of hurting us? Only days later I understood what she was trying to tell us."

"To look for him?"

"To always feel responsible for him. We are his parents, even though he's not living with us. Mulder and I created this life, and for as long as we live, our obligation is to assure he's safe and happy. If it means we have to stay away from him, so be it, that's what we have done the past 15 years, but maybe the day will come when we can dare to contact him. She told us to never stop hoping for this to finally happen."

"With saying she also had a son name William she put herself in your shoes."

"She acknowledged my motherhood, something I've had difficulties with since I gave him up. She always saw the mother in me, never the woman who gave her son away. I can't tell you what this means to me. Especially because she disapproved of my decision to give him up for adoption, and very strongly so. She loved William and didn't want to lose her grandson. I've been told many times by people who didn't know better that I would understand a certain situation better if only I was a mother. Working at the children's ward does that to you, it puts you in a situation where you have to talk to parents making tough choices for their sons and daughters. The choices I made for my children-"

Dana stops mid-sentence, takes a deep breath and bites her lower lip for a moment, then turns toward her brother. "Do you know that I had a daughter? A beautiful girl. Emily. Begotten with my ova, carried and given birth to by another woman."

Charlie nods. He has never fully understood the whole story of that girl's existence, but his mother, God bless her, had written him a letter back then giving him the news of how her first grandchild had entered her life so miraculously and then left it again within the blink of an eye. The letter even contained a picture of a little girl that looked so much like his sister it had taken his breath away, but he had been in a phase where a lot of things were going on in his own life, so he had never really allowed this story to get at him.

Dana's eyes become unfocused and she looks beyond her brother to an image only she can see. Charlie is aware that she hides the full depth of her pain. To her questioning look as how he'd come to the knowledge of that other child of hers, he only answers taciturnly "mom". A fleeting smile crosses Dana's face at the mentioning of her mother, then she takes on from where she left a moment ago. "I didn't know Emily existed until she was three years old. She was so terribly sick when I found her. There was no hope for a cure, and I decided to accompany her on her way of death instead of prolonging her suffering just to have her with me a little while longer." The last sentences come out in a staccato without drawing a single breath in between them as if this was the only way for her to be able to do it.

"Jesus, Dana, there's been so much suffering in your life, so much pain and loss."

His sister heaves a bitter chuckle. "Yeah, it seems that my adult life has been one long master class in death beginning with my choice to go into forensic pathology. Fate would've had it that I not only studied death but gathered a lot of personal experience to add to the scientific approach. God, there are so many deaths, one after another, it's almost difficult to put them in a chronological order." She squints her eyes for a second, then starts the morbid list. "Dad, Mulder's father, Melissa, Emily, Mulder's mother, Samantha, Mulder, the Gunmen, and almost myself now and then. Now I have to add mom to the list."

Some names don't make sense to Charlie, like Samantha and the Gunmen, and he asks himself how Mulder made it onto the list, but he won't dwell on it. There's no use in deepening the cuts in her heart. His sister is a textbook definition of a strong person but where is her breaking point? When would all this death be too much for her to take?

"Well, anyway," she shakes her head as if to push the thoughts about death out of her mind, "what I wanted to say was that the choices I made for my children left me at a point where I wasn't seeing myself as a mother anymore. All I felt I was, was being the biological origin of two human beings who lived, or had lived, their lives far away from me with other women raising them. Mom never saw it that way. Every Mother's Day she sent me two white lilies and a card, thanking me for the two grandchildren I gave her. In her eyes, I never ceased being a mother, and I'm so grateful she reminded me of it before she left us."

As a man, not even a father, Charlie can only try to imagine what it was like for his sister to lose two children, and, to make matters worse, under such unfortunate circumstances beyond her control. From the way she so fondly speaks of her emotions connected to her motherhood, he feels safe enough to ask her a question that has been on his mind for a while.

"How was he? My nephew?"

Dana's self-containment is gone for a moment. She sucks in her breath deeply through her nose while her eyes slide closed. Charlie already fears he's gone too far, but then a slight smile tugs at the corners of her mouth. When she opens her eyes, they are filled with tears, but they don't seem to be sad, rather dreamy.

"How was he? Let's see. Hmmm, he was such an easy baby. He didn't cry a lot, he was happy and satisfied most of the time. As difficult as the pregnancy and childbirth were, it didn't have any negative influence on him. He smiled mostly, ate and slept well. He would look at you with his big, curious eyes and melt your heart. He was a godsend for a first-time mother."

"Did he look a lot like you? Like a Scully? Bill's kids all looked so much like him when they were babies, I almost pitied them," Charlie deadpans.

"It's what nature intends. Fathers don't share a mother's certainty that a baby is theirs, so newborns resemble their fathers early on to assure men they invest their resources in their own offspring."

"So he resembled Mulder more than you?"

He can't stop himself from asking the trick question. So far, she has spoken of her partner's fatherhood only in casual half-sentences and Charlie wonders why. At this point, he's certain that no one else can be her son's father but Fox Mulder.

"Well, he had blue eyes like most babies have and only peach hair when he was born, but whenever I looked at his face I saw Mulder, especially after he had to leave us. William was all I had at a time I didn't even know if Mulder still lived." Leading her yet again to a sad chapter of her life story hadn't been his intention but she seems unfazed and Charlie doesn't even have to voice another question for her to continue and eventually answer his question. "When I picture him now, I see a mixture of the both of us: a lanky teenage boy with Mulder's brown unruly hair and my blue eyes. I hope he's been spared the red hair, I remember how Bill and you wrestled with the color of your hair as kids. And you're dying it now, I see." She rakes her fingers through her brother's hair with an amused smile on her face.

"I've tried more or less every single color, I can tell you as much. It was green for quite a while," he quips.

The information makes her laugh. It's a wholehearted laughter, taking a bit off the edges of their sad conversation. "Well, you were far away enough from home to be allowed to experiment. Imagine Bill with green hair. Dad would've been mad as hell."

Charlie joins in her laughter and they both can't hold it, they laugh until the tears stream down their cheeks. It's a good laughter which puts an end to the heavy talk and lets them both cherish their togetherness. This is how it used to be between them when they were kids, light and easy.

Dana and Charlie are both so absorbed that they startle when the back door opens with a creak and Mulder pops his head out.

"Sorry to interrupt but there's an Aunt Roberta on the phone who wants to pass on her condolences to you, Scully. She says she's a distant relative, the second daughter of your father's cousin or something like that. She asked me if I was the FBI agent with the funny name. What am I supposed to make of that?" Dana and Charlie look at each other and burst into hysterical laughter, much to Mulder's bewilderment. "Well, I'm glad to see you're having fun," he growls with a hint of annoyance in his voice.

"Sorry for that, Foxxx," Charlie says, stretching his name for emphasis and gritting his teeth at the same time in order to keep himself from laughing. He gets up and puts a hand on the taller man's shoulder. "I'll talk to her."

After Charlie has vanished into the house, Mulder takes the now empty spot next to his partner and mumbles under his breath, "agent with the funny name…moi?"

She also tries to suppress a grin but is only half successful. "There's obviously been some talking about us within my family and Aunt Roberta has been adding her own anecdotal details to the stories."

"Anecdotal details, I see. Well, as long as she calls me funny and not spooky, I shouldn't complain."

"I never thought you were spooky, Mulder."

"Not even when we first met and I showed you the slides to our first case?"

"No."

"I can't quite believe that, Scully. Everybody thought I was spooky."

"First of all, I'm not everybody…." Mulder smiles consentingly, "second, I thought you were nuts when we first met."

"Ouch." Mulder's face contorts in feigned hurt for a second before he shoots back, "and I thought you'd last a week maximum. I guess we've both changed our minds."

"Who said I have?" she deadpans.

"Funny. Very funny, Scully." Mulder's face is empty now, whereas Dana's lightens up upon their banter.

Inside the house, Charlie isn't listening very closely to what Aunt Roberta is saying. He tries to follow the interaction outside on the porch and strains his ears to get at least some of the conversation. Casually, he tells her now, "stop calling him that, Aunt Roberta. His name is Fox, and forget what you've been told about him, he's a good person." It only takes his aunt, who's probably a second or third cousin or actually not a real relative at all, a brief moment to process this new information before she showers Charlie with more questions he chooses to ignore. His attention is again directed outside when he hears Dana and Mulder resume their conversation after a few moments of silence. He takes the receiver away from his ear to be able to follow what's being said outside.

"Did you two have a good conversation?" Mulder asks

"Hmm, yes, we did. A long overdue conversation, but a good one. I lost my mother, but I got my brother back."

Charlie's heart swells.

"That's good, Scully. I'm happy for you. He seems like a nice guy."

"He said the same about you."

"Seriously? Should there really exist a male Scully on this planet who doesn't hate me?"

Instead of commenting, Dana places a gentle kiss on Mulder's cheek. It elicits a delighted smile from the man who in Charlie's head had been an ego-driven, reckless, unhinged sorry son of a bitch destroying his sister's career in his stubborn pursuit to find little green men until he was able to form a view of his own on the infamous Fox Mulder meeting him personally today for the first time.

"What was that for?" Mulder asks, obviously surprised by Dana's gesture of affection.

"For helping me through this, Mulder. For being my friend."

"Anytime, Scully."

"Yes, I know. That's what I mean."

Charlie watches his sister lean into her partner, and he can see that he is so much more than just an FBI partner - with or without a funny name. She puts her head on his shoulder and he pulls her closer with one of his long arms. What a cute couple, Charlie thinks. This is how she's been able to survive all this, with Mulder at her side. That she'd been taken care of by this man while he had been absent from her life makes it a little easier for Charlie to come to terms with what he'd done wrong. He smiles and puts his ear back to the receiver, his eyes still locked on the display of human compassion and love outside.

"Pardon, Aunt Roberta? The connection is a little wonky. What did you just say?"

He listens to her babbling some more and doesn't deem it worthy to interrupt her flood of words, but then she asks him something meaningful and he's happy to give her an honest answer.

"Yes, it definitely was the right decision to come back."