Chapter 20: The Moment of Truth.

Mulder sat on the sofa, the TV playing out the baseball highlights as he waited for Scully. Their take out consisted of Chinese food from one of their favorite little venders near the hospital and a bottle of dry white wine that seemed like a necessity to calm both of their nerves. Scully had slipped away to ditch her business attire for grubby house clothing and to wash the makeup off her face. It had been a long time since she had worried what Mulder thought about her appearance. He didn't care anymore; he had seen more of her than any other living being and had become so comfortable with her that he preferred her makeup free. Scully smiled to herself as she looked at her clean complexion in the bathroom mirror, the lines of age had started to appear there but there was knowledge and wisdom in those lines. She was proud of where she had been and how far she had come. There was a strangely satisfying feeling that came over her as she looked at herself. All of the doubts of her past, the wants and desires that she had long ago felt were gone. She had found happiness, acceptance, and companionship in the least likely place, but now her life had settled into a place she had always hoped it would get to. Mulder made her happy, he had always made her happy, and she did her best to make him feel the same way. They had left much of the darkness behind them, knowing that it would never totally be gone, but that they would face it together, bringing their own light into it and casting it away.

When she finally joined Mulder, she cuddled into him, nuzzled his neck sleepily and accepted the glass of wine that he handed to her.

"You're plan is to get me drunk enough that I forget how tired I am, isn't it?" she asked playfully as she sipped the wine.

"No, I just want to loosen you up a bit," he stated. "As much as I want you, I know you're not going anywhere."

"You're so right," she smiled and accepted the carton of Chinese noodles she had ordered. "What are we watching?" she asked as the baseball highlight ended.

"Shark week," Mulder stated as he pulled her in close to him and enjoyed their dinner and a short interlude provided by the discovery channel.

The manila envelope sat sealed on the coffee table waiting for dinner to be over and half the bottle of wine to be drunk before Mulder and Scully both felt loose enough to endeavor another shock to their system. The evening had wore on, the darkness had completely fallen and as the small mantle clock chimed the lateness of the hour they both sat up and looked at the envelope that stared at them.

"Are you ready for this?" Scully asked as she reached out and picked up the envelope.

"Are you?"

"Not really, but I want to know so badly," she answered.

"And if you are disappointed?"

"I'll cry."

"And if you're not?"

"I'll probably cry then too," she laughed.

Mulder nodded his acceptance of the situation and Scully opened the envelope. She pulled out the computer print outs, and began slowly laying each sheet on the coffee table before them, the story starting to lay itself out in lines and dotes, all in black and white, right before their eyes.

Once all of the papers were out before them and a long silence had come between them, Mulder reached out and took Scully's hand. He had noticed the shock, the fear; her sadness, the hope and every other emotion come into Scully's eyes.

"Explain it to me, Dana," he whispered into her ear as he wrapped his arms around her.

"You are his father," she whispered back and pointed at the matching bars in the print outs.

Scully felt him tense beside her. He wanted to believe so badly and yet was he questioning the validity of her tests. Did he not want this? Or had he been so sure it was a lie? She was caught up in the emotions as she continued to scan the results that were laid out before her.

"You are his mother then, right?" Mulder whispered.

"Yes I am," Scully answered as tears rolled down her cheeks. "He's been robbed of twenty something years of his life, Mulder, what is to become of him?"

"The better question is, what is he that he has been so important that his time in this world has been so short?" Mulder asked as he leaned back into the couch.

"The wheels in your head are spinning," Scully said drying her tears and looking deep into his eyes she leaned into him again.

"We've always known we were deeper into this than we should have been. What has been done to us, what experiments that have caused us to have a child that is so very important to the survival of the human race?" he asked.

"We've been subjected to hundreds of thousands of things, who knows which are the important ones," Scully stated.

Mulder fell silently into his thoughts. He had been searching for this kind of proof all his life and when it had been presented to him he wanted to be a skeptic, but the boy really was his son, a son who was now impossibly old for the reality of their situation, and yet Mulder had always believed in abduction, believed in lost time and disappearances without ever loosing hope that someday the person would be found. He had seen people come out of comas, loose their way and find them without knowing how and even been replaced without memory so why did it seem so impossible for it to happen to his son?

"You aren't going to do anything crazy are you Mulder?" Scully asked.

"Define crazy," he stated playfully.

"Mulder, I'm serious, what are you planning? I have seen this look in you too many times before to know that you can't not be planning something."

"I have more question then I have answers, Scully, I need to find some of these answers and I think the only way to do so will be to talk to the boy," Mulder stated lazily. "Don't worry; I'm not going anywhere tonight. I'm staying right here."

"You had better, cause I just don't have the stamina today to chase after you." Scully yawned.

"So, how are you feeling about this, momma?" Mulder asked as he watched a content, and yet, sleepy Scully cuddle into him. He had expected her to be more emotional, to want to react to the news in some way or another but she was calm, like knowing that it had changed something.

"I knew he wasn't lying," she stated, "he has too much of a resemblance to you and to my father. And he looked like my youngest brother when he was that age. It's uncanny and kind of creepy actually, but something told me that he was telling the truth."

"Your motherly instinct I presume," Mulder laughed.

"It must have been," she smiled and they remained together as the evening progressed.