Fifteen minutes later, they're sitting at a square table in Guglielmo's, the café Walter mentioned earlier. Mulder and Scully are next to each other facing the Van De Kamps, four cups of steaming Italian coffee in front of them. It smells delicious, but none of the four people present seem to care or even notice.
"Mr. and Mrs. Van De Kamp," Mulder starts.
"Please, call us Walter and Helen," Mrs. Van De Kamp says and bites a huge piece off an Italian almond cake called Torta di Mandorle. She's a little embarrassed and shrugs. "I'm always hungry when I'm nervous."
Scully manages a weak smile. She, for her part, feels like throwing up any minute. A situation she has always feared is unfolding itself with her being the main protagonist right in the middle of it.
She was the one who made the decision to give William away.
She was the one who signed the adoption papers.
She was the one who deprived Mulder of his son.
And she was the one who turned the couple sitting in front of her into parents.
Scully feels Helen's eyes on her from the moment they met in the high school gym, and she believes she knows what kind of question there is on the tip of the woman's tongue ready to jump out any second, probably ever since the adoption agency handed over William. Scully has been asked that question many times by all kinds of people. It has cut deep into her heart every single time. Even her mother hadn't spared her, neither had Reyes or Doggett. And of course her brother Bill and his wife Tara had asked her, who themselves were parents of two lovely children.
Only Mulder hasn't. The person with the most right to know has never asked her why. Perhaps his profiler mind knew the answer and therefore never questioned her motives. With him, Scully has never felt obliged to justify her decision, and for that alone she loves him.
"My name is Fox Mulder and this is Dana Scully," Mulder introduces them like he did so many times back in the days of their early partnership as Special Agents of the FBI.
"Oh, that's where William got his middle name from!" Helen shrieks. "We asked ourselves why he was given such an extraordinary name."
Mulder stares at Scully. "You named him Fox? Were you out of your mind?"
The Van De Kamps exchange a puzzled look.
"I wanted him to have something from his father. You didn't leave me a golden watch for him before you left, so what else could I give him but your name?"
"But that quirky name? Honestly, how could you do that to him, Scully?"
"Actually," Walter says, "William likes it. He never writes down his middle initial, always the complete name. He thinks it's quite unique."
"Unique? Yep, that it is," Mulder mumbles with the coffee cup on his lips.
Walter throws his wife a questioning glance. They appear to be wondering why these people are so peculiar with their names. They must have noticed that Mulder and Scully call each other by their last names, and the way Mulder got worked up over Scully naming William after him certainly added to their astonishment.
An awkward silence occurs. Helen puts another piece of almond cake into her mouth, she's obviously very tensed up. She flushes it down with a sip of coffee, then she takes a deep breath and breaks the silence. "Dana, may I ask you something?"
Scully prepares herself for the inevitable question and stiffens. Her hands clutch the coffee cup in front of her. It's still heated up from its steaming content. Her palms are burning, but this is nothing compared to the pain she's preparing herself for.
"How are you, Dana?"
Scully looks up, frowning and staring speechlessly at Helen. That question was unexpected.
"I'd like to know what you feel, Dana. You seem so composed and aloof, but I can imagine this must be very hard for you." The woman reaches out for Scully's hands, disentangling them from the cup and gently taking them in hers.
Scully stares at Helen's hands. They're strong and weather-beaten, marked by years of manual labor at a farm, but they spread warmth and true compassion.
Why isn't Helen asking her how she could ever give her son away? How she could live with the guilt? Why isn't she reproaching her and charging her with lacking enough motherly love? To that Scully would've known what to reply. Over the years, she has acquired a host of answers for this purpose. She's able to always pick the right one to satisfy the enquirer without displaying her inner self. That she's now being asked about her personal well-being instead catches her completely off guard.
"Uh, I'm fine." Also one of her stock responses, one which makes Mulder moan.
"Don't believe her," he says. Turning to Scully and placing his hand on her upper arm, he continues. "This is not going to work if we're not open and honest. Why don't I start?" He looks around and gets a nod from Helen and Walter. "Scully?"
Scully stares at Mulder, tears forming in her eyes. She's unable to utter a single word. Eventually she closes her eyes and nods.
"Alright." Mulder sits up straight. He coughs, takes Scully's hand, which has been unleashed by Helen in the meantime, in both of his and starts to talk.
He tells Walter and Helen about how they worked together for the FBI. That they were thrown together as partners without being asked but grew into a well-functioning team shortly thereafter. He explains why it took them such a long time until they acknowledged their feelings for each other, and tells them a bit of what their work consisted of, how they travelled around the country to solve the most complicated cases and how they defied powerful institutions along the road. He does not mention anything about the X-Files, governmental conspiracies, alien abduction or extraterrestrial colonization. He also keeps their frequent hospital bedside visits, Scully's cancer as well as the list of family members they both have lost to himself.
When Helen and Walter hear about how dangerous and all-mighty their opponents were, that Scully's pregnancy was threatened all the way and that she had to give birth in a secret hideout without the help of a doctor or even a trained midwife, they stare at them with wide eyes. Helen puts one hand in front of her mouth to keep a gasp from slipping out. She's especially compassionate with Scully and looks at her with warm eyes.
"You were alone when William was born?"
"No, I was not alone." During Mulder's narration, Scully has been able to calm herself. Her voice is back, so is her composure. "A female agent was with me. She protected me and helped me deliver William. She took care of us until Mulder arrived to get us to a hospital."
"You weren't there when your son was born, Fox?" Helen's eyes are full of sympathy when she looks at Mulder.
Mulder swallows hard and only shakes his head, clenching his teeth. Helen doesn't know how hard she hit his sore spot. The guilt of having left Scully alone giving birth has been burning within his heart up to this very day. There are so many things he feels guilty for when it comes to what Scully had to go through ever since she made his aquaintance, but he will never forgive himself that he wasn't at her side when their baby was born. It should have been him supporting and protecting her, not Agent Reyes. That he deprived himself of the exceptional experience to witness his son come to life, sharing the life-altering moment with the woman he loved, is something he still can't come to terms with.
"Not exactly a family-friendly environment you were in," Walter says. "We were wondering what could possibly make parents give their child up for adoption. We were afraid that the reason might be a serious illness or a birth defect, but then we were told that William had been given up by a single mother. We thought of an abandoned woman, of course. Someone who was unable to provide for the child alone. Circumstances like you just mentioned, Fox, didn't even remotely come to our mind. I can hardly believe what I just heard. It's unimaginable!"
"Scully," Mulder looks at Scully, inviting her to tell her part of the story now.
Scully takes a long, deep breath and exhales very slowly. Mulder asked her to be open and honest, but exposing her inner world isn't easy for her. She feels her heart banging against her ribcage and a lump forming in her throat. On the one hand, she wants to make these people understand the predicament she found herself in, on the other, she dreads going back to the worst time of her life.
"I wanted this child so badly," she starts, whispering more to herself than to the Van De Kamps. "I was told I couldn't have any children, so when I became pregnant, I was overwhelmed. Surprised, unable to believe it at first, but also overjoyed. I didn't know Mulder's wherebouts at the time, he was working underground and didn't know that he was going to be a father. When he finally returned, I was seven months along."
It doesn't make any sense to mention that Mulder was believed to be dead, that she stood at his grave mourning for him with her hands on her developing baby bump. They also don't need to know how much he hurt her when he had problems coping with her pregnancy after his recovery. She isn't even sure whether he knows. It wasn't until Mulder touched her belly in the hospital after her partial placental abruption that she felt reconnected to him. She needed Mulder for emotional support, so when she felt his hand on her belly and the baby kicking inside, it gave her back her confidence that everything would be fine.
"For heaven's sake, Dana, that's horrible! What happened to you guys that you were apart so often? A pregnancy is supposed to be something for a couple to enjoy together. I'm so sorry." Helen squeezes Scully's hand again.
"Yeah, well, it wasn't meant to be for us."
"But then, eventually, you were together, right? After William was born? It's said to be the most precious time for young parents with their baby. That's something we always missed having." Helen strokes her husband's hand. From her face Scully can read that they've been suffering as well.
"We had a few happy weeks together, yes." Different images are popping up randomly in Scully's head: William latched on her breast, William nestled against Mulder's chest, William in his crib showing them a toothless smile. Like millions of other couples, they were enjoying those first few weeks bonding as a family. Their kiss with William in the middle felt like a promise to stay together forever.
"What do you mean 'a few weeks'? Only a few weeks? William was almost one when he came to us!"
Poor people, Scully thinks. They must believe they're listening to some fictional crime story. How can she make them relate to the situation they found themselves in? Probably not at all. For outsiders, it's impossible to understand what their life was like since they had been working on the X-Files. All she wants them to understand are her motives for having given William up for adoption. Not so much for her own sake, but for William's. He has to know he wasn't gotten rid of like trash but given away in his own interest. Only in his own interest.
"Mulder had to leave again and this time we didn't know whether it would be for good, whether he would ever be able to come back. His life was at stake."
"Because of the same people who threatened you while you were pregnant?" Walter asks.
"They were still after us. And after William. They needed him."
"Oh my God," Helen moans. She stares into the void, putting the last piece of almond cake into her mouth.
"What would they need an innocent child for?" Walter keeps asking.
Scully throws Mulder a questioning look. He takes over again, weighing his words cautiously. The Van De Kamps wouldn't understand a word he was saying and probably think he was crazy if he told them anything about William being a pivotal figure in the yearslong combat between the highest governmental institutions and ruthless alien colonists. He needs to keep the story simple and digestable for people who are completely in the dark about what the government is capable of concealing from its citizens.
"They knew they could keep us at check if they threatened William. He was their leverage over us. As long as we were busy protecting him, we weren't able to fight against them. And, of course, they knew that as soon as they got hold of him, we'd do anything they wanted to rescue him."
That's all Mulder tells them. Nothing about William's supernatural powers Scully reported after they'd reunited, and most certainly nothing about the number of times his life had already been in peril during his short life.
The Van De Kamps are attentive, unprejudiced listeners. They seem to understand. "So giving him up for adoption was like some kind of witness protection program for him then," Helen says.
"You can call it that, yes. I had managed to protect him, had saved him from a few hairy situations." 'Hairy' is, of course, the understatement of the year, but Scully is afraid William's adoptive parents would freak out if they understood the high risk their baby boy had faced before he came to them. "But the thought that one short moment of distraction, a second of weakness or delayed reaction would suffice for them to get him, wouldn't let me sleep anymore."
Scully remembers the countless nights she spent at William's crib simply watching him, wishing Mulder was there to help look after him. Reyes and Doggett had offered to help, and even AD Skinner had volunteered to babysit, but nobody knew their enemies better than Mulder and herself. And that had put her on a 24/7 service to protect William. At a certain point, the fact that she and she alone was responsible for her son's safety and welfare, led her to break down and curse Mulder for not being at her side. It was a short moment of weakness she recovered from quickly.
What scared her more, though, was the question of what all this would do to the child. Being pulled out of the crib and driven somewhere in the middle of the night because of a sudden threat, lacking a daily routine with regular sleeping and nursing times, plus having a mother around who was constantly anxious and unsettled, couldn't be good for a baby. More than once, Scully was amazed that William still smiled at her when she took him out of his little bed. When he was beaming at her during feeding time or squeaking with pleasure when she cuddled him, she felt his unconditional trust in her. The boy showed her such a high level of confidence, it sometimes took her breath away. She held his life in her hands, he was completely dependent on her.
"There was a day I realized I had no right to make William live like that. I wished for him to have a normal life, like every other baby in the world," Scully whispers.
"A normal life? What's that supposed to be?" Walter asks.
"Well, obviously not the one Mulder and I were living. We had made choices, and we were paying the price." Scully looks at Mulder, thinking back to the day they first met. She wasn't lying, she was looking forward to working with him. And when they were in that motel the first night of their escape, she wasn't lying either, she would have done it all over again. "If William had stayed with us, he would've been on the run from someone or something his whole life. But he was an innocent, helpless infant who hadn't asked to be born into a world like that. I wanted him to grow up carefree and fearless, I wanted him to live in a world full of sunshine and joy, not in one where he'd find darkness and threat. Since he couldn't decide what his life would be like, I knew I had to. And I did."
Scully's voice breaks at the end. Her motives sound so logical and comprehensible even to herself, but the moment she realized that she wouldn't keep William struck her like lightning and divided her life into two parts. Before, there had been darkness and pain, fear and threat, but also hope. Hope for a different life, a life without monsters. After that, there was only despair.
Scully feels Mulder's arm around her trembling shoulders. She lets him pulls her toward him and kiss her hair, a gesture which has soothed her a thousand times. Until now, she has been able to cope with the flashbacks. It was as if she narrated just some story rather than her own life. But now that she's reached the point where she said goodbye to her son, she feels weak and defenseless. If she doesn't want to fall apart in front of these people, she has to stop this. Instantly.
"You had to make that decision alone, Dana? Without Fox's support?" Once again Helen proves to be a very sensitive woman. She's not judging, only empathizing. "That's awful!"
Scully takes another deep breath and swallows down her pain. So much for stopping this right now. She remembers exactly how forsaken and desperate she felt. The man she loved was lost and the baby she had wanted and fought for so fiercely was going to be lost too. She had never felt more alone in her life, and never again thereafter. William left an emptiness behind that has never been filled. Had they not found Mulder and had they not reunited, there wouldn't have been anything or anyone able to console her. Without Mulder, her life wouldn't have been worth living anymore.
Running away with him had never been disputed. She would've followed him to the end of the world, if need be. They had each other, that was the only thing that made the loss bearable. There had been days she was happy, days when being on the run was even fun. They were totally dependent on each other, needing the other like they needed the air to breathe. For the first time ever, they were able to live up to their feelings for another, and there was a lot to catch up on.
When Mulder was finally pardoned and rehabilitated, Scully was looking forward to leading a normal life. A man and a woman living in a house, both pursuing their professions, having breakfast and dinner together, making love at night. Unfortunately, it was like this only for a short time. Mulder retreated into his office, one almost as dark and secluded as the one at the basement of the J. Edgar Hoover Building. He started to write a book he never finished, pretended to be occupied with research, but instead he let himself go and fall into a state of desperation and self-pity even Scully couldn't rescue him from. The curious, dedicated and impressive man she had fallen in love with had turned into a moody and introverted shadow of his former self.
One day, Scully didn't have any power left to witness his decline. All she had the power to do was pack her bag and leave. Although they can't live together as a couple anymore, or maybe just not now, they still love and care for each other. A life without Mulder is unimaginable for Scully, and she knows for him it's just the same.
"Maybe you can understand now why we came to see William today," Mulder comes back to what their get together in an Italian café called Guglielmo's is all about. "All these years, we've been wondering how he was doing, whether it was the right thing to let him go. All we wanted was to have a look at him. Talking to him, or to you, was never in the plan."
"Are you alright with what you saw?" Walter wants to know.
"Yes, we are," Scully answers for the both of them. "We could see that he's thriving. He's got everything I wished for him to have, a happy life and good parents. Parents that love him."
"Oh, we do love him!" Helen assures vigorously. "He's been the apple of our eyes from the day he came to us. I guess now it's our turn to tell you something. Walter?"
Walter kneads his fingers. A few drops of sweat appear on his forehead and he wipes them away with his sleeve. "Helen and I tried to have a baby for a long time. We even tried IVF, but it didn't work." He throws his wife a tender look. "There we were, in this big house with lots of rooms, a dog and a few cats, a huge garden with plenty of space to play around, the perfect tree for a treehouse, and it was only the two of us. One day, we decided to apply for an adoption, but it was a very bureaucratic and long process. Dana, you decided from one day to the other to give William up, we waited more than three years for him. It was a difficult time." Overwhelmed by his emotions, his voice breaks.
Helen takes over. "Because of our age they told us we weren't very likely to get a baby, rather a four or five-year-old. We were thrilled when the adoption agency called us one day and said we could have a ten month old boy in two days time. We couldn't believe it at first, but then we got in the car, drove into the village and bought the essentials. Diapers, formula, some clothes."
"I fetched Helen's old baby bed from the barn, the one she slept in when she was a baby. I remember William's first night with us as if it was yesterday." Walter takes a sip of coffee. "I put a crib mobile up for him. He looked at it, smiled, and went to sleep. He was so good."
Thank God they didn't see him spin that mobile with the power of his mind, Scully thinks.
Then the Van De Kamps tell Mulder and Scully everything about William's childhood. How he grew up in the rural area they are still living in today. Who he played with, what his favorite waste of time was, what TV shows he liked, and his favorite dish. They tell them that he broke his arm once at the age of six, that he had the chickenpox, and that his childhood sweetheart was named Sandra.
"He's doing well in school," Helen proudly reports. "He's interested in science and wants to become a medical doctor."
Scully inhales sharply through her nose. "Scully is a medical doctor," Mulder explains her reaction.
"And he's a good athlete. Maybe that's what he got from you, Fox, not only your height. You seem to be in good shape," Walter says with a smile and pats his own rounded tummy. "You saw him play basketball today, but he's also a very talented baseball player."
"What's his favorite team?" Mulder asks.
"San Francisco Giants." Mulder closes his eyes and a tormented 'argh' escapes his throat. "Not your favorite team?"
"No, not exactly."
Scully tries to suppress a smile but fails. "Come on, Mulder, it could be worse."
"Sure, he could be a fan of the Red Sox!" As every other Yankees fan, Mulder loathes the Red Sox.
"The Giants are very popular where we live, so don't blame him." Walter tries to calm the waves. "He likes the Yankees, does that help?"
Mulder pouts. "A little."
Scully is grateful for the mood to have lightened up a bit with that short banter about baseball enthusiasm, but she can't pull her mind away from the things that are more important to her than what sports teams William likes.
"Did he-" She falls silent before completing the sentence.
The ultimate question, a burning-a-hole-into-her-heart kind of question, isn't willing to leave her mouth. It's a demasking question, one which leaves the asker vulnerable. The answer could be either uplifting or devastating; in any way, surging strong emotions.
"Did he-" She can't say it.
Helen obviously senses Scully's predicament and she's kind enough to help her out of it. "Did he ever ask about his birth mother? Is that what you want to know, Dana?" Her voice is smooth as silk and so full of sympathy that the tears instantly jump out of Scully's eyes and run down her cheeks. She nods.
"Oh, Honey, of course, he did!"
Scully is hanging on Helen's every word now. It's like opening Pandora's box. She's not sure whether what she's about to hear will give her final peace or make her feel guiltier than ever. She's grateful for Mulder's arm around her shoulder.
"We told him that he was an adopted child from early on. Not that it wasn't obvious enough he wasn't our biological child. I mean look at us, no resemblance at all. He had just turned three when a friend of his was going to get a sibling, and he asked whether my tummy had been as big as the one of his friend's mother. I told him that he hadn't been in my tummy but in another woman's. At the time, he didn't need any more information, he was only three, but it was important to us to never lie to him about his descent. A few years later, he was five or six, we watched a children's movie with an adopted child in it. Not on purpose, it just happened. He asked why the woman with the tummy he had been in didn't keep him, whether there was something wrong with him."
Scully winces at being called 'the woman with the tummy he had been in'. She's always felt like a mother, his mother, although he has never called her 'mommy' or 'mom'. She had two children, Emily and William, and neither has ever addressed her as 'mom'. Only in her dreams.
Helen continues. "I told him that absolutely nothing was wrong with him, but that there are sometimes situations where mothers can't care for their babies, and that if they love their babies enough they give them to someone else to care for them. I said I didn't know exactly what his birth mother's reasons had been but that I was convinced she gave him away because she didn't have any other choice."
Mulder inhales deeply. Although this is mainly about Scully, he's hit by what he's hearing. Especially the idea that William thought he might have been unwanted is as painful for him as it is for her.
"The older he got, the more often he asked if we knew anything of his biological parents, but there was nothing in the papers and the adoption agency told us all information was strictly confidential."
"Only to protect William," Mulder explains. What he doesn't explain is that the adoption being closed also served as a safety mechanism for themselves. Should they ever feel the urge to track William down, the agency wouldn't give them any information about the boy's whereabouts. It was naïve to believe, of course, that they would never use the FBI sources, if they really wanted to. And Mulder did really want to. He wanted to take that black veil off Scully's soul. Seeing her suffer from so much heartache when it comes to her son, because of not knowing anything about him, broke Mulder's last resistance to comply to their long-existing agreement to never try to contact him.
"Is he still at risk?" Helen's voice is trembling.
Scully instinctively touches her neck and feels the little scar under her fingertips where the chip that saved her life had been implanted. "We don't know," she breathes.
"He would love to meet you." Walter says. "He's been telling us for years he wants to meet his birth parents. It's become almost an obsession, I must say. He contacted the adoption agency, insisting on his right to know his biological roots. Unsuccessfully, of course." He presses his lips together.
"As much as we want him to," Scully takes a deep breath to calm her voice. She wants to be very clear about this, both to the Van De Kamps and to Mulder and herself, "he can't."
Scully reaches out for Mulder's hand. He grabs it eagerly, needing comfort just like she does. Of course, he knows what her fears are. What if the chip in Scully's neck didn't only cure her but has also been used as a monitoring device? What if it sends out Scully's GPS data? Their enemies most certainly have the technology to use the chip for means they can't even think of.
Scully's rigorous 'No!' at William's desire to meet them leaves the Van De Kamps speechless for a moment, but then Walter gets a bit worked up. "Don't you think the boy deserves it? You brought him into this world, and he has a right to know who you are! You're afraid he might accuse you, that's all!"
"Walter!" Helen shouts at him. "Shut up, you insensitive airhead! Can't you see how these two people are suffering? How they've been suffering ever since they gave William up? We've been benefitting from their hopeless situation! And what they're doing right now, that they are still backing away from him, has only to do with selflessness and love for the child and nothing with self-defense as you were implying. Shame on you!"
Walter stares at his wife. He knows her as a rather composed and even-tempered person, a blowup like this is very unusual.
"It's alright, Helen. I understand Walter's motives. He only wants the best for William," Scully comes to Walter's defense. But so do we, she'd like to add, but doesn't. She's not ready to unfold her medical history in front of the Van De Kamps.
"No, Dana, Helen is right. I apologize. I guess my emotions were getting the better of me. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that. Sorry, Fox."
"It's okay, Walter," Mulder replies. "I guess we're all a little edgy."
"I was just thinking what would be best for William."
"I know."
The two men nod at each other and the tension slowly subsides. Even Scully is able to take a sip of coffee now without fear of throwing it up right away. Of course, the coffee is cold by now and tastes terrible.
For a moment nobody says a word. Everything seems to have been said already. The quiet feels peaceful, all four of them lean back in their seats. Then the door to the little café flings open.
"Ah, here you are!" a familiar voice shouts through the room. "I've been looking for you! What are you guys doing here?"
The Van De Kamps as well as Mulder and Scully instantly recognize the voice and freeze.
Scully leans forward and begs in a whisper, "Don't tell him who we are, please!"
William approaches the table where they are sitting and looks at Walter and Helen. "Why didn't you tell me you were going to grab something to eat? I'm hungry as a wolf." With this he pulls out a chair from another table and joins them without asking. He lowers himself down and only now recognizes the two other people sitting together with his parents. "Oh, it's you again! What a coincidence!"
Was that a bit of irony in his voice? Scully can literally feel him thinking, trying to figure out what's been going on. Mulder tries to give him an explanation. "Your father read one of my articles and recognized me at the gym. We got into a conversation."
"Oh, really?"
Caught on quickly, Mulder, Scully thinks, but he doesn't believe a word you're saying. William seems to be the same skeptic as she.
"You want to eat something, Billy?" Helen asks her son.
"Sure. Pizza with mushrooms and pepperoni, and lots of cheese."
Walter orders the pizza and a Coke for William and another round of Italian coffee. When the pizza arrives, William savages it as if he hasn't eaten for days.
Helen notices Scully's stare at her son inhaling the food. "Puberty. Makes them eat as if they were miners." She smiles caringly at him and ruffles his hair.
"Mom!" William pushes her hand aside, being both embarrassed and annoyed. Scully is tickled by the situation and chuckles. Her eyes meet William's and there it is again: his intense stare at her she already felt at the gym. As if he looked right into her soul.
"Bill!" Walter reprimands his son, using a less belittleing nickname than his wife. With the many Williams in their families already called Bill, Mulder and Scully might have chosen to call him Will rather than Bill.
"Sorry, Mom, but I just washed my hair." Helen only smiles.
"This is Mr. Mulder and Dr. Scully, William. They came all the way from Virginia to watch today's game. Can you imagine?"
"Uh huh."
"I said doctor, Billy! Dana is a medical doctor!"
Being preoccupied with food, William hasn't been paying attention to the introduction. Now that his interest is piqued, he says, "wow, that's cool! Which field? Do you work at a hospital?"
"Yes, as a matter of fact I do. I am working as a surgeon at a hospital, but my original field is pathology."
"Eek! Isn't it a bit morbid to work on corpses all day? For me medicine is about healing people."
"Well, I'm a forensic pathologist with the FBI, and-"
"You're an FBI agent? That definitely is cool!"
Scully sees real admiration in her son's eyes. She enjoys having this little conversation with him.
"So is Mulder. We work together."
"Really? Are you also a pathologist, Mr. Mulder?"
"Oh, no! Scully is the scientist, I'm more the...uhm, theorizer," Mulder tries to describe their partnership.
William turns back to Scully. "What do you do as a forensic pathologist with the FBI?"
"I investigate the cause of death. Corpses give us a lot of information and they hold important hints we need to solve the cases and convict the murderers."
"Wow!" William is so impressed, he even forgets to eat. He holds a piece of pizza in his hand, but doesn't bring it to his mouth.
"Mulder develops the theories and I try to substantiate them with science."
"Or debunk them!" Mulder says with a grin that makes Scully smile also.
"What was the article you wrote and my father read about, Mr. Mulder?" William now turns to interrogate Mulder. Scully can't help thinking that they may have hatched the next generation of a fabulous FBI agent.
Mulder only needs a second to come up with something. "It was about the possibilty of extraterrestrial life forms on earth." Home turf.
"You're dealing with space and aliens and the paranormal?"
"Sort of."
"Awesome!"
There's no verbal communication necessary between the two of them for Scully to notice that Mulder is thrilled to have gotten this reaction from his son. In her mind's eye she sees them both looking through a telescope into the starry night, hoping to catch a space ship flying by, or watching a documentary about UFO's on tv.
"Do you really believe in aliens, F-...for God's sake?" Walter asks, biting his tongue because he almost accidentally blurted out Mulder's first name. Given the kid's swift wit and the rarity of Fox as a first name, William would've figured out who Mulder is right away.
"What makes you believe we're the only ones in the vastness of the universe? Why are we so vain to believe that we're the smartest life form and that only because we haven't managed to travel far enough in space to find other inhabited planets no other species would be able to do it? I don't believe in aliens, Walter, but I believe in the possibility. And as long I don't find any evidence against it, I'm looking for evidence to prove it."
Scully sighs subtly, but Helen notices and shows her a slight smile as if she wants to say, 'Men! Why don't they ever grow up?'
"Dad, you have to show me the article, I have to read it!"
Darn! Not good. Not good at all.
Scully curses the topic for having come up. Their work on the X-Files is confidential, of course, but if William googled Mulder, and she's sure it will be the first thing he'll do when he gets home, he'll find more than what would be good for him. Mulder has written quite a few essays and has been on some public panels, the boy would get more information about him, and probably also about her, than they ever wanted him to have. William most certainly is very computer-literate like all kids of his generation, he knows how to search the internet. He might even get down to information that isn't so easy to get hold of. She has to bring this to a close. Now. Otherwise it would work against everything they tried to accomplish with having given him up for adoption.
"Mulder, I think we have to get going. It's a long ride home and I'm scheduled for a complicated surgery tomorrow morning."
She doesn't even need to look at him to make him understand. Mulder gets the hint, probably realizing himself that the ice they're walking on with William gets thinner every minute. "Yeah, right. Besides, I promised you a fancy dinner. We really should be hitting the road. Traffic might be a bit rough on our way home." He orders the check, waving to the waiter.
Walter and Helen are caught off-guard by the sudden, unexpected rush, but don't intervene.
"It was nice meeting you two," Walter says and shakes Mulder's and Scully's hands. "If we wanted to get in touch with you, how could we do that?"
They can't keep in touch. Scully knows it, and Mulder knows it, too. He proposes a little cryptically, "Why don't we leave it to chance where and when we meet again?" That's not what the Van De Kamps wanted to hear obviously, but they get the point and don't insist any further.
Helen is more emotional about saying goodbye than her husband, or she's simply showing it more. She pulls Mulder into a hug and whispers into his ear to prevent William overhear the piece of advice she intends to give him. "Take good care of each other. It's easier to cope with what life demands from you as a pair. All the best, Fox!"
Then she turns to Scully. She pulls her aside, away from William. She takes her hands and squeezes them gently. "Dana, I don't know what to say. Your story has touched me deeply, but I'm so glad we met. You gave us the most precious gift, and although I know that you would've rather kept him for yourself, I want to thank you. Be assured that we will make William understand that he was loved and cherished by Fox and you, and that giving him away was an act of unselfishness on your behalf I don't think I'd be capable of performing. William has been blessed with you as his mother."
"Thank you, Helen," Scully whispers. Tears are forming in her eyes, she works hard to keep them from falling.
"And I want to assure you one more thing. We will carry on raising him as if he was our own. We will go on loving him and caring for him and protecting him. And should the day come, that Fox and you decide it was no longer dangerous for him to meet you, I'm sure you'll be able to find us."
There are so many things Scully would like to say to Helen. Like how relieved she is that William has grown up in such a warm and caring family such as theirs. Like how much she appreciates the way Helen has treated Mulder and her throughout the entire conversation. And last but not least, that had she been given the chance to choose an adoptive mother for William, it would've been someone like her. But the lump in her throat is too big, she can only glance at Helen through bleary eyes.
"It's alright, Honey, you don't have to say anything. I know. Take good care of Fox, he needs you more than you think." She embraces Scully tightly. After pulling apart she smiles gently at her and says goodbye.
"Come on, Van De Kamps, let's go!" Walter has insisted on paying the check and is shoving his family toward the door now.
William shortly nods in Mulder's direction, he's obviously not very keen on performing the usual farewell rituals of adults. "Bye, Mr. Mulder. I would've liked to talk a bit more about the extraterrestrial with you. Maybe some other time."
"Maybe some other time, William. Go on having fun playing basketball, it's a great sport!"
"I will, Sir."
Then the boy walks over to Scully, who's still standing in the little corner Helen dragged her into before. "Dr. Scully."
"Goodbye, William. Have a safe trip back."
"You really made me think about pathology being an interesting field of medicine. When I'm at the point of deciding which way to go with my medical studies, I will consider it for sure."
Scully smiles. "Whatever you choose, it will be a good decision. Of that I am sure, William."
William squints one eye. "Why do I have the feeling that you know me better than I know you?"
"It's called women's intuition. Plus I developed a good insight into human nature throughout my job. That's all. Nothing to worry about."
"Oh, I'm not worried. I'm not worried at all." He holds out his right hand. "Bye, Dr. Scully."
What else could she do but take it, establishing the first physical contact with her son after so many years of yearning for it. His hand isn't anything like the chubby little baby hand she loved to cuddle and kiss anymore. It's bigger than hers and his handshake is strong, but touching him gives her the same sensation like all those years ago: a sense of connection and togetherness. Only very reluctantly does she let go for the fear she will never again get the chance to touch him.
"Goodbye, William," she says, her voice stronger than she actually feels.
He's almost already out of the door when he stops dead and turns around. "I don't know what this was, but of one thing I'm certain: it was not a deja vu and you're not a doppelganger of someone I know."
Scully holds his gaze without replying. She hasn't got another convincing scientific explanation to offer anyway.
William shows her a telling smile. It's the last thing she sees from her son before he eventually pulls the door shut behind him.
Author's note: William is a common name it a lot of languages. It's of ancient Germanic origin and is Wilhelm in today's German, Willem in Dutch, Guillaume in French, Guillermo in Spanish, Guilherme in Portuguese, and - you might have guessed - Guglielmo in Italian.
