Scully eventually finds her husband, who is supervising their youngest children as they tidy up the playroom. William is cheerful enough as he puts back the cars he'd played with, but Zoe and Brianna are all scowls while being cajoled into storing dolls and stuffed animals in bins. Their mother enters the room just in time to hear Mulder's "what's the problem, here?" be answered by Zoe.

"Daddy, the cubby's dark. They don't like that," she explains, surprising Scully, who had honestly assumed they were just being resistant because they don't particularly like the new demands their parents have placed on them lately, not just letting them continue to let everyone else do things for them, in effort to keep the tiny girls from becoming spoiled.

"Maybe they like the dark," Mulder suggests, a hopeful note to his voice. "Your bunnies do, right?" he adds, thinking of busting them while playing in the middle of the night.

Predictably, Zoe shakes her head. "Bunnies do, but they don't."

He looks to Brianna, probably in hopes of convincing her to see it his way, but she shakes her head too. "They don't."

Kids, even his, make no sense sometimes. There's no rational reason the girls would believe some of their toys are afraid of the dark and others aren't, especially since they themselves aren't overly afraid of the dark, but they're little and logic isn't a preschooler's strong suit. Giving Scully a helpless look, he says, "Maybe a night lig-"

"No." She shakes her head just as insistently as her daughters. There's no reason for nightlight in a room the kids aren't supposed to be in after lights out. Putting one in for the comfort of toys would be the sort of coddling of the babies of the family that they're trying to avoid.

She sits on the floor and pulls the twin girls on to her lap. "I know that you care a lot about your dolls and stuffed animals, but their eyes aren't real like ours." She would like to convince them that their toys don't really have any feelings, but three and a half is still too young for that lesson. "They don't know that the cubbies are dark, so it can't bother them."

Brianna's expression is suspicious. "They can't see dark?"

"That's right," Scully agrees.

The twins look like they're on the verge of succumbing to Scully's logic… At least until William dropped the toys he was holding, resulting in a tremendous crash that echoes in the room. Everyone looks at him, startled.

"It's not true!" His face is almost as red as his hair. "You don't need real eyes to see stuff."

"Will-" Scully starts to say, unsure where to go with his odd declaration.

"What do you mean?" Mulder asks, staring at their youngest son like William had just announced he's an alien.

"Nothing," Williams says stubbornly. Rather than explain, he quickly picks up the things he dropped and put them away. Then, without saying anything else, he walks away.

For a moment Scully wonders if one of them should go after him, but she decides not to. Walking away from a conflict to cool off rather than continuing to exacerbate it is something kids need to learn, so forcing him to stay might not be the wisest thing they can do. Mulder gives her a wan smile, signaling that he doesn't plan to run after him, either.

"Well," she says to the wide-eyed little girls. "William might have a point, but he didn't mean these guys." She uses a hand to indicate their toys.

"He didn't?" Zoe sounds uncertain.

"Nope," Mulder declares. "He would've said."

"Oh."

This seems to satisfy the girls, making Scully glad that she didn't bring up things like plantain jellyfish, which probably just would've confuse them, even if they can see to an extent without any eyes.

"I'll tell you what," Mulder apparently decides out loud. "Tonight we'll put everyone in the cubbies, and I'll check on them later on. I'll let you know if they're not okay. But I've seen the sort of adventures they've had with you, and they all seem pretty brave to me."

"They are!" Zoe declares, nodding.

"No scaredy cats?" he goads them gently.

"Nope!" Brianna says decisively, and her twin agrees.

"Well then-" He bends down and sweeps them off Scully's lap and into his arms. They giggle until he hugs them and puts them on their feet. "We can't keep these brave ladies and gentlemen from having adventures in the dark, can we?"

"No!" they chorus. He begins to casually place a few of the toys in a cubby, then steps back when they follow suit.

After a couple of minutes all the toys are stowed away. "Good night, Toys," he says solemnly.

The girls say good night as well but use the names they're given the toys at the moment. "Good job," Mulder tells them. "Have Sammy help you find your robes in the laundry room, please. It's almost bath time."

"Okay!" With that they scamper out of the room.

As soon as they're alone, Mulder smirks and bows.

"Masterful," Scully says, giving a golf clap.

"I didn't sleep through all my child psych classes," he explains.

"It shows."

His smile fades. "I just wish I knew what William's problem was."

Inside she squirms a little, not sure she wants to open a new can of worms. "I've heard him talking to nothing, a couple of times," she admits. "At least nothing there that I could see, anyway."

"Oh." He nods thoughtfully. "The ghosts have been pretty quiet lately, but I guess they've picked a new playmate."

It's all she can do not to sigh herself. After a decade of co-existing with their non-corporal roommates, it's no longer in her to deny their existence, but she's still not comfortable when they do something that forces herself to think about them. "Or he's pretending to see them," she says, but her heart's not really in it.

"If it comes up again, I'll talk to him," Mulder promises. "I know you're still not a big fan of the ghosts." He gives her a sidelong glance. "Even though they saved our lives that one time."

"I thanked them for that," she retorts before saying "oops" and covering her mouth.

He looks delighted. "You didn't!"

Now she does sigh. "The next night."

"After you and Bill declared war on Alex?"

"Later that night," she agrees, thinking briefly of Alex's first Scully family gathering. If anyone had asked her then if Missy would have actually made it to the altar with her former double agent before one of her siblings offed him, she would have laughed in the asker's face. It still amazes her a little that his fierceness in the field translates so well into being a good husband and protective father. And uncle, she remembers with a tiny smile. At least Alan has seemed to forgive him.

Completely unaware of her line of thinking, Mulder drags her back to the topic of ghosts. Grinning, he asks, "And as you secretly thanked them during the dead of night, did they say you're welcome?"

"Mulder, you know they don't speak," she complains.

"Did you see them, though?" It's clear that he expects her to say no.

But she did.

She'd felt stupid trying to find them that night, especially when she'd checked all the kids' rooms. She'd nearly given up, deciding it was dumb to have even tried considering how infrequently Mulder and Page had claimed to have seen them, but something had convinced her to go back downstairs.

The ghosts that had come to their rescue (she'd only realize there were more years later when one let Albert Holstein into the house) had been gathered around the Christmas tree, apparently enthralled by the lights that she and an equally exhausted Mulder had forgotten to shut off.

At first she was reluctant to disturb them, but she thought that she'd better because lights on the tree while everyone was in bed could present a fire hazard.

"Sorry," she'd whispered, leaning past one small ghost to unplug the lights, taking care not to touch the ghost as she did. They looked disappointed, so she promised to turn them back on the next day. While they nodded in apparent comprehension, she found herself thinking that maybe a timer for the lights could be purchased in the morning: an hour of lights on while everyone was in bed probably would be okay. And she'd check the fire alarm too.

"Hey," she'd said then. They looked at her even as she could see through them. "Thanks for your help tonight. We really needed it." Her hand had gone to her belly then, even though it was much too soon to really feel the baby they'd one day name Christopher.

Their response was to rush to her, which she'd only had a moment to be alarmed by before they gave her the briefest of hugs. Their wispy arms around her had felt like a light breeze, then the winked out like they usually did when they'd had enough attention from the living. She'd stood these, dumbfounded for a moment, before heading up to bed. She would have told Mulder then, but he'd been sound asleep. By the morning it had seemed too surreal to explain.

"Yes, Mulder, I did," she admitted. "They accepted the thanks."

'"Wow..." Mulder drawls. "I can't believe you've kept that from me all these years."

"Well, Mulder, a girl's got to keep a few secrets, or the romance might keel over and die."

"Oh, that's why we're still in love," he says with a goofy grin. "Good thinking."

"One of us had to plan for the long haul," she teases.

"Speaking of secrets, what was the secret girls-only powwow about? If you don't mind me asking."

"Of course I don't mind. And they were asking me about puberty."

"Puberty?" he asks skeptically. It's clear that he sees his eldest daughters as still very much his little girls.

"Or lack thereof," she clarifies.

"What brought that on?" he wants to know.

"Your sister is taking Alyssa shopping for a training bra tomorrow."

"Oh." He winces. "I can see how that might have brought the subject up."

"I explained that everyone develops at their own pace and they seemed to get it. I told them that they could come to either of us with their questions, but I think they'll probably ask me more often when they're biological questions." But then Scully does imagine that April could ask him a specific question... If ever her curiosity about breast development and sports collide. "Promise me you won't remind April of the Amazons if she ever complains about breasts affecting her pitching," she blurts her thoughts out.

Mulder gives her an odd look, but says, "Duly noted."

"Um... Thanks. I suppose you'll have your work cut out for you too when the boys begin to come to you with questions."

He surprises her by saying, "Sammy already has, actually."

"You're kidding!" Sammy will still be ten for another five months, so she can't imagine what might already be on his mind. Especially considering he still believes girls are icky. "What did he ask you?"

"Remember how the school had them do a project with seventh graders last month?" he asks. When she indicates that she does, he goes on. "At one point they had to write on the board, and Sammy thought it was odd that one of the older boys brought his book up to the board with him," he stopped with a suggestive look.

"Held in front of him about here?" Scully asks, miming what she means.

"Exactly like that," Mulder agrees.

"Poor kid."

"When Sammy got home he asked me why I thought the kid was acting so strange. So I explained."

"How'd he take it?"

"Probably as well as the girls did if you told them Scullys tend to be late bloomers." He gives her a knowing look; after too much wine one night Missy had entertained him and Alex by sharing the details of their training bra discussion.

She shakes her head. "Why did we foolishly think it would get easier once everyone was out of diapers?" They'd happily trashed the family's last potty back in July.

Mulder slings an arm around her. "I don't think this is necessarily harder. Just new and completely different. Besides, this is the most rewarding adventure you and I have ever gone on."

He looks surprised when she throws her arms around him, engulfing him in a huge hug. "You're right. This has been a pretty grand adventure so far."

"Dear diary," Mulder intones. "It's finally happened. Dana has become a sappy as I am. I don't know what we'll tell the neighbors."

He only stops laughing when she punches him in the shoulder. But not the one she shot him in, so he doesn't have a ready-made comeback when she says "Jerk."

"Come on. You know you love it."

"Even if it's true, picking on the crazy is a terrible thing to do."

"You're crazy? I seem to recall admitting that I'm crazy on our first anniversary," he says in a musing tone.

Scully just shrugs. "And now you've infected me."

"Oh really?" He wags his eyebrows at her. "Just wait until the kids are in bed. I'll infect you with something else."

"Promise?" she asks, standing on her tippy toes to reach up to kiss him.

Mulder pulls her back against him, earning a pleased chuckle from her. "Count on it."

"I will be counting the hours," she promises, verging on a giggle.

"See? I told you things would get better when we no longer had any infants in the house to get up for."

Once that might've hurt, even if he didn't mean for it to, but after more than three years she's okay with being reminded that their family has stopped growing. At least until their kids grow up and add to the family themselves. "What can I say? You were right."

"Oh," he says. "That's one for my diary too."

"Mulder," she sighs, but it turns into a laugh soon enough.


The FBI Basement Office
Monday
10:03 a.m.

"It's up to six now," Amy Penda Harrison says without preamble as she walks in, putting a stuffed folder on the X-Files' head's desk.

"Good morning to you, too," Doggett drawls, looking down at her dubious gift.

The dark complected young woman pulls the corners of her mouth up into a brief, professional smile, and promptly drops it. Doggett still can't get over how this woman and Agent Harrison are related - and that's almost entirely due to their personalities, rather than looks, as surprising is that might be - at least until he thinks of Dana and Melissa Scully and their differences of attitude and careers. Those two might look a lot more alike than the Harrison siblings do, but their mindsets are even more divergent.

Amy gives him a long-suffering look. "Agent Doggett, I've spent four hours this morning trying to talk a hysterical man down from the ledge so to speak, two hours trying to convince the firm that the prisoner in question was and still is actually guilty, and the last hour and a half in traffic. It hasn't been a good morning in a long time."

Doggett sighs. "I see," he says, and he does. "Agents Reyes and Harrison are out talking with Randy Johnson, the car thief. I was about to talk with his family. Wanna come with?"

She shakes her head. "No, thank you. I just wanted to let you all know that Nestor Garcia, Inmate 400076014 at the Virginia County Correctional Facility, saw an old woman in his dream and woke up." She sighs. "Who then woke up everyone around him asking for a lawyer, and when his court-appointed lawyer showed up, Garcia nearly tore his head off. Billie Joe Charles is a decent defense lawyer, but a rookie, and he was practically in tears, threatening to kill himself this morning because of Garcia." She looks both disgusted and fatigued by her younger colleague, and Doggett wonders if he ever has that expression around the prosecutor's younger sister. If he has, he feels a little bad about that now.

Then her lips purse in a manner reminiscent of her younger sister's (or perhaps they both are mirroring someone else?), and she says, "I just wanted to make sure Leyla was all right. Reopening closed cases is a nightmare, especially ones where prisoners insist on their so-called 'innocence', and my sister's more likely than others to be susceptible to alternative ways of thinking."

A corner of Doggett's mouth turns up. "You don't say," he half-grins. "Well, thanks for the heads' up, Ms. Harrison. And you're right, reopening closed cases are a nightmare, both for the cops and lawyers." He stands up, buttoning his jacket, and holds a hand out. "Thanks for stopping by."

Amy Harrison gives his hand a good, firm shake. "I really hope you come up with some answers," she says, sincerely. "Because if this doesn't stop, I've got a bad feeling the domino effect would wreak havoc on the firm."

And, by extension, her job, Doggett continues her line of thought. He doesn't answer her, but merely nods, and they leave the office in different directions. When the elevator doors close, he calls his partner. "Mon," he says, "we got another one."

"Crap," Reyes sighs on the other end. "Well, Johnson was a wash. He's definitely guilty, but also definitely confused about how he got imprisoned. Dreamed there was a scolding old lady and woke up in jail. Same story as the others. Who's the new one?"

"Nestor Garcia," Doggett says, glancing through the folder, "locked up in VCCF, looking at 25-life for armed robbery and multiple homicides. Kinda hard to prove his innocence, what with the security cameras clearly catching everything on tape, multiple witnesses, his fingerprints on the murder weapon, and more than a few spent casings found on his clothes. Guy was stupid and sloppy to pull off something like that, especially at a national chain bank."

Reyes groans, and Doggett echoes the sentiment. "I'd rather take him than the child molester," she says, and Doggett makes a face. He was about to offer the opposite, but mumbles agreement. He just hoped he would have a better hold on his temper than his wife, which was probably what she was counting on, but just barely when it came to scum like that. "Thanks, John," she says warmly, and he really can't argue with her there.

"Sure thing," he says. "How's Leyla holdin' up?"

"She's fine." Reyes probably smiles. And Doggett can almost see the blonde woman smile back at his girlfriend - that's the kind of woman Monica's like. "Don't worry about us, you're going to need all your strength to tackle Johnson's family. Oh, if any of them spit, I think it's normal."

"Oh, God," Doggett groans. "Don't stereotype."

"You, too, dear," Reyes says, but he can hear her smirking. Dammit.