From here on in the R rating comes into play.

4.

He hated lying to Scully. It created tension and mistrust, and he couldn't afford to lose Scully's trust. He'd been aware of her irritation at the train yards. The tension in her body when she looked at him that told him clearly things weren't right between them.

Trying to glance unobtrusively at Scully, Mulder rolled up his packet of seeds and pushed it back into the glove box – antagonising Scully had not caused her to snap and argue with him as he'd been hoping. In arguments with Scully things had a tendency to slip out, and he'd half hoped she'd get the information about Parenti Medical Group out of him by arguing.

How was he supposed to react when she said she was happy she chose Parenti and not Zeus Genetics, because Zeus was involved with Transgen Pharmaceuticals? How was he supposed to tell her that Parenti might also be involved? That Parenti was probably the one creating the children, while Zeus Genetics were simply dealing with the foetuses which didn't come to term? That Parenti had probably been the one to create Emily and the others, but had been unable to give her a normal, healthy baby.

Mulder bit back a sigh, gazing out of the window. The sun was starting to set already, turning the snow orange and yellow as it sank behind the horizon.

"Sorry for wasting your time," he said softly.

She glanced at him sharply, before looking back at the winding road. "It's not like I had anything better to do," she said.

Silence settled between them. It was thick and slightly uncomfortable, but Mulder felt more relaxed and comfortable than he had before.

"Scully, can I ask you something?"

She pursed her lips together after flicking him another glance, turning the head lights on at the same time. "Okay," she said hesitantly.

"Do you regret it?"

"Regret what, Mulder?" she asked.

"Trying for a baby."

"No," she said simply. "I regret not having a baby, and I regret that it was my last chance, but I don't regret trying, Mulder. Not ever."

They settled into silence again, until she broke it. "What made you ask that?"

He sighed. "I don't know. We never spoke about it, and then Emily… I just wanted to know."

"Mulder, I don't regret asking you," she murmured, her voice almost lost beneath the hum of the tires on the road. "Do you regret agreeing?"

"It came between us, Scully," he said finally. "Not in a big way, but it was there despite our attempts to not let it come between us."

"If it had worked," Scully started, "would it have come between us?"

Mulder shrugged. "I don't know. I guess we didn't really talk about what would happen if it did work."

She chuckled ruefully. "We don't talk about a lot of stuff, do we Mulder?"

"No," he agreed. "We don't."

It was there, bubbling under the surface, the little voice nudging him to tell her about Parenti. But he squashed it, unwilling to be the one to tear the fragile threads of communication they were starting to weave. Unwilling to be the one to open up a whole new set of hurts and revelations for Scully.


She'd invited him in for coffee, but he'd refused, wise enough to realise that they'd had enough personal revelation and conversation for one day. Better to put some distance between them and let them get comfortable with the discussion about the IVF.

And, Mulder thought, because each time he looked at her he felt the guilt of lying to her stab at him until he was sure she could read it in his eyes that. Every sentence had been second guessed, and every remark she made had caused him to wonder if she suspected him yet.

No, distance between them was purely for selfish reasons, he thought with resignation as he pushed his key into his lock and stepped into his apartment. He reached for his gun automatically when he saw someone move, forgetting he didn't have it, before he realised who it was.

"Jesus, Langly!" he exploded, his heart hammering in his chest. "What the hell are you doing here?"

"Where the hell have you been, Mulder!" Frohike demanded as he stepped into view. "We've been trying to call you all day!"

Mulder found his phone in his pocket as he answered. "Virginia."

"Why weren't you answering your phone?" Frohike snapped. "Never mind. We found something."

"What?" Mulder demanded, glancing in disgust at the battery dead phone before tossing it onto the small stand next to his door.

"You'd better see this for yourself, G-man," Frohike muttered. "We called Scully – she's already on her way over here."

"Frohike, what the hell is going on?" Mulder demanded, following Frohike through his apartment.

"I'm showing you what we found, Mulder, and can I just say that we're very disappointed you've been holding out on us."

Mulder frowned. "I don't understand, Frohike."

He was surprised to see Byers sitting awkwardly on his bed, clutching an armful of material. "Byers?"

"Mulder! We were getting worried!" Byers said, moving to his feet.

Mulder stared at the bundle in Byers' arms. "What's this?" he demanded.

"Not what," Frohike corrected pertly, "who."

"Who?"

"Yes, who," Frohike said. "Like I said, I'm disappointed you held out on us."

Mulder looked around in confusion. "I've said it before and I'll say it again. What the hell is going on here?"

"This is your son," Byers said simply, thrusting the bundle toward Mulder.

"My what?"

"Your son," Byers said impatiently. "Do you want to take him or not? I've been holding him for what feels like hours because he won't stop crying if we put him down."

"This is what we found," Frohike said triumphantly.

Mulder stared dumbly at the baby in the blanket. His son? They'd found his son? He had a son?

"I don't understand," Mulder said slowly. "I don't have a son."

"You do," Byers smiled for the first time, his eyes softening as he looked down at the baby still in his arms. "I don't know what's happening between you and Scully because your relationship isn't my business, but this baby is yours and Scully's. Your sperm, her ova. On record. Frohike is getting the PCRs done as we speak – but we're all positive this is your son."

As if on cue, the baby opened his eyes and wriggled in the blanket, dusty blue irises staring up sleepily at Mulder. Mulder watched in silent fascination as he seemed to consider his new surroundings. In slow motion the little face turned red, eyes got lost between wrinkles of skin and a little mouth opened, a gusty wail erupting from somewhere deep inside.

"Dinner time," Byers said dryly. "You can do this now, Mulder, seeing as he's your kid."

Mulder stood frozen when Byers pressed the baby into his arms. "What? Byers?" he said helplessly, staring at the crying infant.

"There's formula and nappies and everything else Langly decided a baby needs in that bag," Byers said, pointing.

"I don't know how to feed a baby!" Mulder protested.

"And you think we do?" Frohike retorted. "This is your kid, Mulder, and we've been babysitting long enough."

"Give him a bottle before he explodes, Mulder. Trust me, when he does, it's very smelly," Byers advised.

Mulder jiggled the squalling infant awkwardly in his arms, looking helplessly at the two gunmen watching him expectantly. Byers sighed, clucking his tongue. "You have to hold him properly, Mulder," he said. "Frohike, get one of the bottles from the bag please."

"What am I, your maid servant?" Frohike grumbled, glaring at Byers but retrieving the bottle as asked.

The sound of voices carried through to them, and as Frohike turned to give the bottle to Byers Scully and Langly burst through the bedroom door. Scully's mouth dropped open and she stared, at Mulder awkwardly clutched the screaming child in his arms.

"We might just take a walk," Frohike said, jamming the bottle in his pocket and disappearing out the door. The other two gunmen almost tripped over each other to get out the door behind him, leaving Mulder grasping the baby and Scully still staring from the spot she seemed frozen to.


Mulder felt inadequate and incompetent watching Scully. She'd taken exactly three seconds to recover her equilibrium before marching to the bag Frohike had left lying on the bed and rummaging around in it to find another bottle. After warming the milk she squirted some on her wrist and 'mmmm-d' in satisfaction. She'd whisked the baby from his large, clumsy hands and had him cuddled up on her lap with the bottle in his mouth, quiet within two seconds of discovering that food came from the little rubber teat.

"Mulder," she said, staring at the child in her arms greedily suckling at the bottle, "would you like to explain where this baby came from, who it is, and what we're supposed to do with it?"

His mouth went dry.

"Mulder?" she asked again, her eyes lifting from the baby and meeting his with and intensity that scared her.

"Frohike said they found him," he said lamely, unable to form the words.

"I'm going to need more than that, Mulder," she said pointedly.

He opened his mouth, trying to tell her. "He… He…"

"What's his name?"

Mulder stared at the child. "I don't know. They didn't say."

"Mulder," Scully said, impatience tinging her words.

"I… God, Scully," he whispered, scratching the back of his neck with one hand and backing away from her.

"Mulder, what aren't you telling me?" she demanded.

"Byers said he's mine," he managed, staring at Scully in confusion. She looked at him, her eyebrows arched and surprise flickering in her eyes before she looked down at the child again. "And yours," Mulder added hastily.

"What?" Her eyes flew up to meet his again.

"He's ours," Mulder said. "Our baby, Scully."

She looked at him doubtfully. "Our baby?" she echoed. "Mulder-"

"Byers said they have records. Your ova and my sperm. Our baby."

The words kept spinning around in his head, and he couldn't say them enough, he thought distantly. Our baby. Our baby. His and Scully's.

She stared, her mouth opening and closing but no sound came out of it.

"Frohike is getting PCRs done to confirm it, Scully," Mulder said, desperate to say something. "You can do them to at Quantico to check for yourself," he added.

"How?" she croaked, swallowing. "I don't understand how."

He frowned. "How old do you think this baby is?"

"Three, four months?" Scully guessed. "How old?"

"I don't know," Mulder said. "But if the IVF had worked, Scully, and you had a baby, how old would it have been?"

"Four months," Scully said, her voice rasping in her throat. "Oh, God, Mulder, that's not possible."

"How else could this child be mine, Scully?" he asked roughly. "You were never implanted with the embryo. Someone else was. Someone else gave birth to your baby."

"You don't know that, Mulder!" she snapped angrily.

"I do, Scully, I do," he whispered gently, walking toward her. His steps were broken, jarring, as though he was a marionette and a child was pulling his strings. "This baby is ours, Scully," he whispered as he fell to his knees beside the couch. "I don't know why they stole him from us, I don't know what their plans are, but I do know that we can stop them. We will stop them. This is our son, Scully."

Her fingers fluttered over the child's face, shaking. When she looked at him, there were tears in her eyes and slipping down her cheeks.

"Oh God, Mulder," she whispered, her breath catching in her throat. "Oh, God."

He wrapped his arms around her, pulling her close and cradling the baby between them. Her body shook as she sobbed against him, her tears burning his neck and wetting his shirt.


The subdued knock on the door alerted them to the fact that the Gunmen had returned from their timely sojourn. Mulder got up to let them in, Scully not moving from her position on the couch with the baby in her arms.

"He's sleeping," Mulder said quietly when he opened the door, stepping back to let them traipse in.

As anxious and buzzed as they had been when Mulder had first arrived, eager to show him what they'd found and agitated to understand what had happened, they were now quiet and sombre, their faces serious and concerned as they filed into his apartment.

"You've got some explaining to do," Frohike said.

"So do you," Mulder replied, shutting the door behind them. "You can start."

"Langly found him," Byers began to explain, settling himself against the wall where he could watch Scully as she held the baby. "We were running the cross matches between Parenti, Transgen and Zeus Genetics like you asked us to, Mulder."

"You said Scully had been one of Parenti's patients, so I typed her name up and bingo, we hit the jackpot," Langly continued, nodding toward the baby. "Had Scully and you listed as undergoing IVF, and that it failed. But there were other files labelled with your names, and we followed them through."

Mulder glanced across at Scully who was still silent, only her fingers moving as they stroked the sleeping baby's head. "How did you get him?"

"Byers played hero," Frohike announced. "We broke in and Byers pulled him out."

"How do you know you got the right baby?" Scully asked. "How do you know for sure that this our child?"

Frohike's gaze was scornful. "We aren't stupid, Agent Scully," he said disdainfully. "I get the PCRs tomorrow to confirm it, but if we're wrong then I'll… I'll… I don't know what I'll do, but I'm not wrong, Scully. This is your baby."

Mulder shifted uncomfortably on his feet, licking his lips nervously.

"So when were you planning on telling us?" Frohike asked.

"Telling you what?" Mulder asked dumbly.

"That you two were together."

"We're not," Mulder chorused with Scully, glancing down at her and then looking defiantly back at Frohike. "It's not like that," he defended.

"Sure," Frohike said, raising his eyebrow. "You're not together you but you try to have mini-Mulders and Scullys. How does that work?"

Scully didn't answer, and Mulder didn't know what to say. The silence was uncomfortable, and Mulder was ashamed to find himself staring at his feet like a school boy who didn't know what to say to the Principle.

"Mulder," Byers said, "I'm not sure if we did the right thing in taking this child."

Scully's eyes flashed. "No, Byers," she said firmly. "You did the right thing. What was wrong was them taking this child from us in the first place."

"Ethically, yes," Byers agreed. "But what are we going to do with him?"

The question hung in the air between them, and Mulder gazed curiously at Scully. What were they going to do with an unexpected and unplanned for child that just appeared out of nowhere?

Scully stared at them each in turn as though they were stupid. "What do you mean what are we going to do with him?" she asked, incredulous. "Do you know how much I wanted.." her voice broke off as she struggled for her composure.

"What are you going to call him?" Langly asked curiously.

"I don't know," Scully frowned. "Mulder?"

He shrugged helplessly.

"Have you considered the fact that maybe these people will try to get him back?" Byers said. "They obviously took him for a reason, maybe they'll want him back."

Mulder sighed, rubbing at his forehead with fingers. "Maybe they don't," he responded. "Maybe they gave you those files, Scully, so that we would find him."

"Why?"

"How would having a kid change your life?" Langly said. "Obviously you wouldn't be dropping everything to chase after X Files anymore."

Mulder stared at Langly. No, it couldn't be. Could it?

"What if it is that easy?" Scully said, causing Mulder to look at her. "What if that's the ulterior motive for providing those files."

"But why?" Byers asked. "Why go to the trouble when letting Scully just have the baby would have accomplished the same thing?"

"Maybe we should just wait until the PCRs come through, before we keep speculating," Langly suggested. "It could all be academic anyway."

Mulder didn't say anything, but he watched Scully's fingers clench the blanket wrapped around the baby, and felt his insides twist.

What if this baby wasn't hers? Or what if it was?

He wasn't sure which choice would be the lesser evil, and he wasn't sure which one he wanted it to be.


It had still been relatively early when the Gunmen left, but neither Mulder nor Scully had even suggested leaving the confines of his apartment. Instead, they'd watched the baby sleep, and when he'd woken several hours later, Mulder had stood back and watched as Scully deftly changed him, played with him, and then offered him another bottle when the soft cries started up again.

"How do you know all that?" Mulder asked, watching her as she sat on the bed, the baby cradled in her arms with a bottle in his mouth.

"What?" she asked.

"How to look after a baby," Mulder clarified.

"I have a nephew, Mulder," she said softly, her gaze focused on the little fist clenching the fabric of her blouse. "And all girls are chronically maternal when someone has a baby. I babysat as often as I could," she admitted. "And then at medical school I learnt some of the finer details."

"Oh," Mulder said, "I thought that somehow you were just born with the knowledge and I missed out."

She chuckled, a warm, soft sound that brought a smile to his lips. "If you get me a clean cloth from his bag I'll show you how to burp him," she offered generously.

Not entirely certain that he wanted to learn how to burp a baby, Mulder complied with her request. In the baby bag were several large white cloths, but Mulder had a suspicion they were diapers and not burping cloths. Shrugging, he picked one up turned back to Scully.

He opened his mouth to speak, and stopped, staring. The expression on Scully's face was a mixture of regret and wonder as she stared down at the baby, a longing on her face he felt he was voyeuristic to see. It took him a few seconds to realise what was happening, and when he realised, his breath hitched in his throat and he stepped unsteadily backward.

The movement caught her attention, and she looked up at him, wide-eyed and ashamed.

Ashamed.

She looked down at the baby in her arms, and moved him away from her breast. There was a damp patch where he had attempted to suckle, and Mulder found himself staring at it.

Ashamed.

Scully shouldn't have to be ashamed.

He walked to her, studying her. Her cheeks were red with humiliation, and her eyes remained focused on the baby now greedily sucking on her fingers. She flinched when Mulder reached for her, but she didn't move or say anything.

Mulder's fingers shook, and he fumbled with the buttons on her blouse, refusing to meet her gaze as she looked up at him. She didn't push him away or stop him when he had her blouse unbuttoned. There was a front clasp on her bra, and he reached for it with slow, hesitant fingers.

The material fell away gracefully, her throat moving as she swallowed roughly when he didn't move away, staring shamelessly at her. She was beautiful, he thought dully, the soft glow of her skin almost luminescent and contrasted by the darker nipples, already peaked under his gaze.

"Do it again," he whispered, his voice hoarse in his throat. He lifted his eyes to meet hers for the first time, staring at her for long seconds until she nodded almost imperceptibly. He watched as she guided the baby's head back toward her nipple, his little mouth searching her skin until he found it.

She cradled the baby close to her, her fingers brushing his cheek.

Mulder watched the baby for a long time, watching as his lids grew heavier and his suckling slowed.

"Mulder, would you give me the cloth please?" Scully asked, not looking up.

Cloth? It took him several seconds to remember the cloth he had retrieved what felt like hours ago. He spied it lying on the ground at the foot of the bed, so he picked it up and offered to her. She pushed her nipple from the baby's mouth easily; it shone slick and wet in the lamplight. There was no embarrassment or shyness when she stood up and draped the cloth over his shoulder with one hand, her breasts swinging freely as she moved.

She positioned the baby in his arms, and showed him how to rub his back, chuckling slightly as the baby burped loudly. "Scully," he said, licking his lips. "I'm going to ask you to button your shirt now."

Her cheeks flushed a delicate shade of pink, and she turned her back while she buttoned up her shirt.

"You," he said to the baby, loud enough for Scully to hear, "are a very lucky little boy."


The morning sun offered a weak attempt to fight off the night, its pale rays creeping in through the windows and turning the shadows yellow gold. Mulder sat in a corner on a chair, watching Scully and their son sleep. The boy – his son, Mulder thought cautiously – was nothing more than a dark bundle curled against Scully, her arm resting over him protectively.

He let his gaze rest on Scully, shamelessly examining the way her jeans hugged her figure and the soft sweater clung in all the right places. She'd lost a lot of weight recently, he decided, possibly too much. And while he was thankful that the dark circles under her eyes seemed to have disappeared, her skin was still far too pale and her lips too strained. She was beautiful though, her hair liquid copper in the waking sunlight, and her features casting artistic shadows across her ivory skin.

This changed everything, he thought, his gaze flicking back to their son. This was what she had wanted. What she fought for, and lost with the IVF. What she had fought for again and lost with Emily. What she was fighting to expose.

Would she still want to fight, now that she had what she wanted?

The question taunted him, and he sighed at the unease it brought into his thoughts. Was it too much of a coincidence, this baby turning up now? Was this baby just another strategic play in a game engineered by men who were too cowardly to even show their faces and make known their names?

It disturbed him, the distrust he felt toward the infant.

But it was too easy. It had been too easy from the start, he thought tiredly. They'd disregarded protocol and orders with a frightening ease, avoiding redundancy more easily than he would have thought possible. They'd come so far, and had so much given to them in the way of information, for nothing.

What price were they paying for this?

Mulder stared at the child's form, hidden by lightening shadows.

Was he the price they'd have to pay to keep going? Would Scully be prepared to pay that price?

Or was this child simply an innocent and unplanned discovery by the Gunmen, something that no one had foreseen and had no dark implications tied to it? A coincidence?

Somehow, Mulder could not bring himself to accept the simplest solution.