One thing that Scully had never grown to tolerate very well was waiting for a flight to depart. She really hated the seating around the departure gates, always seemed to be equally uncomfortable at every airport she ever entered. Usually Mulder kept up a lively banter that helped her take her mind off of things, but at the moment Mulder was staring off into space and it began to bother her a little. "Hey." Mulder turned to look at her without any particular interest. "What are you thinking about?" Scully asked.

Mulder didn't seem to notice that the loosely held child sitting on his lap was frowning in confusion because Mulder was ignoring him too, not just her.

For a moment Mulder just frowned at her, unconsciously mirroring his son. "How old do you think he is?" Mulder finally asked her.

She thought back to her Peds rotation during her residency and the more recent chronicle of Matthew Scully's first year of life. "Can I hold him?" she asked, and he nodded. He seemed a bit reluctant to let her, though, which struck her as odd considering she had already held the little boy.

The baby didn't immediately cry when she picked him up, which she thought that it was probably a good omen about their flight and his behavior during it. He weighed somewhat less than Grace did when she and Tommy had come to live with her, and he wasn't as tall either. But he wasn't a lot smaller than that.

Looking over her shoulder at Mulder, she said, "I'd say he's about eight months old. Possibly nine."

"That old?"

"I suppose he could be younger and big for his age," she said doubtfully.

Mulder sighed. "It bothers me whenever I think about how poorly I understood the passage of time while I was…gone."

She nodded, realizing that he'd been thinking about how he'd only been back for a bit over four months. How frightening it must be to know that your memories of entire months were jumbled and gaped. It reminded her uncomfortably of how little she could recall of what had happened to her when Duane Barry had given her to his "aliens."

Scully didn't really like to think much about whether or not she too had been the victim of aliens like Mulder had been, or, as she suspected, the Consortium. For a long while she had obsessed over wanting to know what had really happened, but eventually the realization that knowing the details wouldn't make a damn bit of difference about the outcome had finally put a damper on her frantic enthusiasm.

Of course, it had led to things like impulsively getting a tattoo before that point.

When she realized that Mulder was still frowning, she patted him on the thigh. "Once we get home I'll give you the phone number for Tommy and Grace's pediatrician. I'm sure that she will give the baby a clean bill of health."

"Okay," Mulder sighed.

Scully would have liked to continue the conversation and try to determine what was bothering him, but their group was called to board. Any thoughts she had on the matter dissolved as they wrangled their bags and headed for the gate.

XxX

Somehow she and Mulder had ended up boarding the plane close to last. That was okay, because it definitely wasn't a particularly crowded flight, and it seemed unlikely that they would have to bump into other passengers in order to get to two seats together. She had never enjoyed Southwest's first come first served seating, but she didn't mind it so much on this flight.

Scully looked around the airplane, and noted that there were several empty seats. Looking at Mulder she asked, "I don't think anyone else is going to sit in this row. Would you rather have him sit between us?" She was already glancing around, looking for a flight attendant to ask if that would be okay.

Mulder shook his head. "No," he said, looking tense.

Scully shrugged. She couldn't imagine spending an entire flight with a baby on her lap, but perhaps Mulder was just afraid to put him down. She could remember feeling the same way about Grace and Tommy when she first got them. It had been hard to even leave them in their cribs at night, or toddler bed Tommy's case, to sleep.

If Mulder wanted to hold onto the baby, because he was actually, or maybe figuratively, worried that somebody would snatch him away, she really couldn't fault for that. Not after everything Mulder had been through and everything he had done to try to gain custody of the boy again. Or, she mentally corrected herself, for the first time, actually.

"Oh, okay." For a moment she made faces at the baby, enjoying his smile, and cast about for a safe topic to discuss with Mulder. "Have you given any thought to a name?"

"No, not yet," he said, sounding somewhat agitated.

Apparently not a safe topic, she told herself. Instead of continuing the conversation, she just nodded, and reached into the pocket on the back of the seat in front of her for the in-flight magazine. If he didn't want to talk, that was okay. It had been a very long, very emotional day, and even getting to their flight on time had been stressful because returning their rental car had taken forty-five minutes longer than anticipated... so she couldn't blame him for wanting to be left with his thoughts for a while.

Somehow their completely uneventful flight managed to remind her of the first time she had flown with him and they had hit turbulence. At that point they had barely known each other, but he had helped her calm down at a point when she was about ready to jump out of her skin.

At the moment he seemed about ready to flee from his own skin too. And things got even more awkward once their plane arrived and their baggage was gathered.

Scully glanced over at Mulder, who held his son on one arm and was pulling his suitcase with his free hand. "Do you want to come back to my place?" she asked, imaging him introducing the baby to Tommy and Grace; she imagined that Tommy would be quietly accepting of the situation, as usual, and maybe Grace would be very excited ... or jealous. The little girl still wasn't aware that Mulder's real relationship to her was paternal, but that wouldn't make her any more inclined to want to share him.

Mulder paused and let go of the suitcase's handle, and then wiped a hand across his brow. "I'm sorry, no," he said, surprising her. "Just not up to it."

"Oh, okay." He must be tired, she decided. Who wouldn't be? Not only was travel physically tiring, the emotional toll had to be enormous too. "I'll drop you off at your place, then."

"Thanks," he replied quietly.

Once they got to her car Scully took the baby from him and put him in Grace's car seat, but it was immediately obvious that it was too big for him. "You'll have to get a seat his size," she told. "But I guess this will have to do for tonight."

"Yeah."

Thinking about this, she realized that he'd need just about everything for the baby, and she had to fight the impulse to offer to bring him shopping to buy absolutely everything- it wouldn't be fair to drag them from store to store, not when Mulder was clearly exhausted. Besides, he might want to figure it all out on his own.

So she just asked, "Do you want to stop a 7-11 for diapers or anything?" Billy had probably put a few in the diaper bag, but babies went through so many.

For a moment he seemed like he'd say no, but he eventually nodded. "That's probably a good idea."

Half an hour later, Scully decided that not going on a shopping spree had been for the best: Mulder shuffled through the tiny convince store at a pace that rivaled the zombies they'd spent a New Year's Eve with. The clerk noticed and spoke to Scully. "Teething?"

"I'm sorry?" Scully asked, puzzled.

"Just wondering if the baby's keeping him up with teething."

She had no idea if the baby was teething yet. He didn't have teeth yet that she noticed, but probably should have checked when Mulder asked her opinion about his age. She shrugged.

"Single dad, right?" the clerk asked. "I've seen more than a few dead on their feet like this."

Scully stared at him, trying not to let her dismay show. The fact that the baby boy looked nothing like her didn't bother her too much because she'd never held much hope that he'd prove to be hers too, if he was real, but the word "single" did sting. Was it unclear that she was with Mulder? Was she too standoffish with him, was she expecting him to shoulder his burdens too independently?

Her expression must have given away too much of her thoughts because the clerk just muttered, "I guess it's none of my business, huh?"

It was her impulse to apologize, but she found that she just didn't have the energy to either.

Instead, she waited for Mulder to complete his selections and bring them to the front of the store. On impulse she bought a candy bar for herself, thinking that after the day she had had she deserved it.

The ride was quiet, and the heat pouring through the vents and gentle motion of Scully's car served to lull Mulder into a doze. Eventually the car's motion ceased, though.

"We're here," Scully said in a tentative way that suggested that she was unsure if he was awake.

He was awake. At least somewhat. Mulder opened his eyes, which both felt like someone had rubbed a handful of sand into them, and wondered blearily how he'd managed to come so close to falling asleep. It took him almost ten seconds to wonder why the baby was so quiet, and whip his head around to look at him.

The infant was sound asleep, a bubble of spit on his pink lips.

"You okay?" Scully asked quietly.

For no good reason her compassionate tone left him bristling, and he had to fight down irritation. "Thanks for the ride," he said, pleased that his voice wasn't surly, and fully aware that it wasn't a response to her question.

"You're welcome."

His joints felt oddly stiff as he opened the passenger side door and got out. He'd never really learned to relax during flights, even if he'd long since mastered looking like flying was completely blasé, and this always led to him feeling like he'd been misfolded once he was finally off a plane.

After Mulder got out of Scully's car, he hesitated for just a moment, but he ignored the impulse to say something meaningful to Scully, and got the baby out of the car instead. And then went around to grab his bag too.

"Thanks again," he told her, shutting the rear door before she had a chance to reply.

She looked at him for a moment, seeming to expect something, and then drove off.

The walk up to the apartment jostled the baby boy enough that he was wide awake and squirming by the time Mulder had reached his own door. "You'll get along fabulously with Dempsey," Mulder muttered as he tried to aim the key at the lock despite all the movement within his arms. "He hates being carried too."

Using his knee, Mulder managed to nudge his wheeled suitcase through the finally open door, and managed not to drop the baby, grateful that Dempsey had not chosen that moment to make a break for freedom through the too widely opened door. It was only as he walked in and used his foot to push the door closed did he realize that he could smell something unfamiliar and faintly offensive. It wasn't the litter box.

"You need to be changed, huh?" Mulder asked. The baby merely stared back at him.

It only took him a moment to realize that not only could he not open the new package of diapers while holding the baby, it would be to his peril if he left the package alone on the floor for even a minute given Dempsey's glee when it came to shredding all rolls of paper towels and toilet paper foolishly left at his eye level.

He put the baby on the floor, saying, "I'll be back in a minute," and stepped into his kitchenette. It was only a few feet away from the living room, but the counter would block his view and it made him nervous - so nervous that his fingers felt stiff and clumsy as he tried to open the package of diapers without tearing the whole thing open. Or maybe the stiffness was from the flight still. After an eternity that was only several seconds long, he was able to extract a diaper without sending a cascade of the other diapers to the floor.

The hard-won diaper fell from his fingers as soon as he returned to the living room. Ignoring him, the baby was up on his hands and knees. He wasn't entirely steady, but it was fairly clear that this was not a first attempt. After a few more seconds the baby crawled forward with relative ease.

"Oh," Mulder whispered. He sat in his chair without even thinking about picking the diaper up from where it had landed. "You shouldn't be able to do this. I know you shouldn't."

All of the facts he had once learned in a childhood development course began to tumble through his mind. Almost no five and a half-month-old baby was capable of crawling up on their hands and knees rather than just scooting on their bellies like an army commando at best. And when he'd been left alone at Skinner's he'd spent hours comparing his scar to that of photos of surgical scars...he hadn't been healed up enough for it to have been four months since his surgery at the time of his return, no matter how old Scully had guestimated the boy's age.

Lifting his head at the sound of Mulder's voice, at first the baby smiled at him, as if to ask 'aren't you proud of me?' but Mulder's lack of encouraging return expression had him frowning in puzzlement almost immediately.

This made Mulder's heart catch in his throat with guilt, and he forced himself to smile down at the little guy.

Dempsey walking into the room provided Mulder a needed distraction, buy when he noticed his cat's body language, he became wary. The stripped tom skirted around the baby, his movements stiff except for a lashing tail. "Hey, Buddy," Mulder called, holding out his hand.

The cat cautiously walked to him, but he gave him a reproachful look. "Don't look like that. This is-" Mulder paused, not sure how to explain the nameless baby to a cat. "Our new mini human."

He didn't look very impressed. Leaping up onto the back of the chair, Dempsey peered down at the baby over his shoulder, making Mulder feel like a pirate, and reminding him of a long-ago conversation with Scully about peg legs. It didn't feel funny now.

Meanwhile...

It didn't surprise Scully to hear the TV on in her apartment as she stood outside the door and juggled her purse and overnight bag in her hands, looking for her key. The thought that her mother could open the door for her if she knocked passed through her mind, but it was after both kids' bedtimes, so she didn't want to risk waking them. Not when she had so much to talk to her mother about.

After another few seconds she managed to find the key and insert it in the lock, and there was a soft click as the lock disengaged. It hadn't been very loud, and the door opened even quieter than that, but Maggie was staring expectantly at her from the couch so it had been loud enough. Cringing, Scully looked around, more than half expecting one or both kids to run into the room too.

As if reading her mind, Maggie said, "They're both asleep" and patted the couch cushion next to her.

Scully offered her mother a wan smile and sat in the arm chair instead, so she could look her mother in the eye as they spoke. "Thanks, Mom."

"You're welcome. I'm glad that your flight came in on time-" she held up a hand, warding off comments. "Not that I would've minded staying longer, it's just that you've had a long day as it is."

"You have no idea," Scully said tiredly.

Maggie Scully instantly looked concerned. "Did things not work out?"

"Oh no, they did."

"Well, that's good."

Scully studied her mother's face for a moment before deciding to plunge into the deep end. "Mom, there's something I need to tell you."

"What?" Maggie asked, looking more alert all of the sudden.

Just tell her, Scully demanded of herself the second anxiety threatened to overwhelm her resolve. "I think you have the right to know what Mulder's been looking for."

"Answers, I thought," Maggie offered, looking slightly puzzled that her daughter would think that she needed to know. "About what happened to him."

"Yes and no," Scully said with a sigh. "Mulder has a scar along his side. I didn't really wonder too hard about it, at least not until I accidentally brushed against it and caused him to freak out so badly he immediately left and didn't talk to me for days," she explained, deciding that glossing over the fact that she and Mulder had been having sex when she'd touched the scar was for the best.

"That's…" Maggie trailed off, apparently at a loss about how to say something polite about his odd behavior.

"Eventually he came over to apologize, and explained that there was something he hadn't told anyone about that was tearing him apart inside." Scully crossed her leg, which she was aware was an unconscious diversionary tactic, and forced herself to go on. "The very last thing on Earth I expected him to tell me was that he thought he'd had a child while he was missing."

To her credit, Maggie only looked stunned for a moment, and quickly recovered herself. "I see."

"No," Scully sighed. "You probably don't. He thought that the scar was from the baby being removed from his body."

"He thought he was the one to carry the child?" Maggie asked, this time less able to hide her astonishment.

Apparently she'd immediately thought that he'd had a voluntary relationship with another abductee. It was hard for Scully to blame her for jumping to that conclusion because in absence of other evidence, that's where 99.98% of people's thoughts would turn. The other .02% of people were more like Mulder's late friend Max or hers, Penny, and even they probably wouldn't have been the first to bring up the possibility of a man carrying a child.

"Yes, he did. And when we had some scans run, there were some abnormalities that, while they didn't suggest that he really had, they didn't entirely rule it out, either. He'd definitely had abdominal surgery while he was missing, for example," Scully said, thinking about whether or not to mention the scaring on Mulder's liver too. She decided it was too graphic for that hour, and skipped it to avoid giving her mother vivid nightmares. "After what they'd done to me, I'd be a fool to discount out of hand the possibility of them having other technology to tamper with human reproduction."

"So you believe that this child exists too?" Maggie asked carefully.

"I struggled at first, but eventually I came to," Scully explained. "And I agreed to help him in any way I could… to recover the baby if possible. Even if the baby turned out not to be as human as Emily had been."

Her mother shuddered, and Scully hoped that it was because she was thinking about a small gray-hued baby, and not out of distaste over being reminded of Tommy and Grace's late older sister. "Oh."

"And we did," Scully added quietly. "We found it."

Maggie's eyes flew to her face. "You did!"

"Yes. And thankfully, he looks like a human infant. Until we saw him, and I realized that he didn't look any different than Emily, I hadn't realized how scared I was that this baby would turn out to be monstrous."

"It's a boy?" Maggie asked, still sounding dazed.

"Yes." Scully thought about how the baby had been sleeping in Mulder's arms the last she'd seen of either of them that night.

"Then Grace has a little brother. Half-brother," Maggie quickly added.

"I guess she does," Scully replied, considering the idea for the first time. Only then did it really sink in that sooner than later she'd have to have a child appropriate version of this same conversation with her children. Not to say that she'd tell them about the familial entanglements between Grace, Mulder, and the baby, but she'd need to explain that Mulder had a baby, that she'd been gone to help him get it, and hope they weren't yet savvy enough to ask too many questions about the baby's origins. Her earlier imaginings of introducing the baby to the kids hadn't taken nearly enough into account.

"What does he look like?" Maggie eventually asked. From her tone it was clear Maggie was really hoping that the little boy looked normal. This was not a request that she reconfirm that he did not look like a gray, Scully realized, but a concern there were plenty of genetic disorders that made 100% human children look unusual, so did he, with such a questionable alphabet soup of DNA, look typical as well as human.

Scully didn't blame her – as soon as she came to the reluctant conclusion that he might really exist, it was one of her biggest hopes for him. Perhaps she should have worried more about his health or his IQ but really, most of all she'd hoped that he wouldn't get teased on the playground for being too odd looking.

"Oh," Scully murmured, reaching for her digital camera. "I took some pictures." She opened the slideshow and passed the phone to her mother.

Maggie studied the images intently before looking up at her. "I bet Fox looked a lot like this as a baby himself."

"Do you think so? Billy Miles thought he was chip off the old block too."

"I do. It's nice."

"It is?"

Maggie smiled at her. "Grace looks just like you. It's nice for him to have a mini-him too, don't you think?"

"I suppose," Scully answered. The trite insistences that children are one's immortality that filled literature had never really resonated with her, so perhaps she was atypically underwhelmed that Grace was her in miniature. Tommy was too, of course, probably bearing a closer resemblance to his maternal uncles than he did his unknown father.

"It will be strange for you, to go back to interacting with an infant," Maggie commented, reminding Scully how close in age she and all her siblings were. Maggie had a three-year-old and an infant at the same time, but she'd also had an eighteen-month-old at the time too.

"A lot of this is pretty strange, Mom," she muttered.

"I'll bet," Maggie said, and swooped in with a hug. "But I want you to remember one thing for me."

"What's that?" Scully asked into her mother's shoulder.

"Back when it was your turn, he'd flown all the way to California to support you, even though your brother hated him, and even though you weren't anything more than friends."

The first time, Scully found herself thinking. The second time he'd been gone and she'd been left to deal with her two children alone. It wasn't his fault, but still...

"I know, and I love him for it," Scully settled on saying. It was true, even if the statement left a lot out.

"Good. Make sure that whatever happens now, you make him love you for your part in it too."

It had been on the tip of her tongue to promise that she would, but she paused and gave her mother a look. "You say that like you don't think the hard part is over now," she remarked, wondering if she was reading her mother wrong.

"It's not," Maggie said quietly. "Planned for or not, you know that children have a way of completely upending your life. You know that."

For half a second old resentment bubbled up to the surface, reminding her that she'd been robbed of the chance to know what it was like to have a child you planned for, but she did see her mother's point. "I'm sure he's up for it."

"Are you?" Maggie asked mildly.

The question made Scully wonder just how much she'd told her mother about Mulder's PTSD. That wouldn't keep him from being a good parent. She hoped.