The bit I forgot - Not mine, never mine, belong to CC, ten-thriteen and FOX mores the pity or XF3 would be in production by now. NO MONEY made and you can't get blood out of a stone, unless its an X-File in which case this coda is moot anyway.

'Mulder,' Scully demanded as she entered their room. Silhouetted against the late afternoon light cascading through the open door, hands on hips, a slight vibration ran the length of her body. She appeared like an angel, the sun's burnished rays capturing the red highlights in her hair, giving her a halo.

She'd been gone almost three hours and he'd started to worry. They no longer carried cell phones, too easy to track, or any form of identification, unless changing locations. Before the Gunmen had been lost to them, Scully organised several new identities taken from missing children cases without close or living relatives. The identities would stand up to even a rigorous FBI examination, giving them time to escape into anonymity once again. So far they hadn't needed to use any in the backwater towns they'd chosen to inhabit.

Looking up from the laptop computer John Dogget and Monica Reyes supplied, storing electronic copies of all the X-files, Mulder's senses hit high alert. 'Hey,' he greeted, a tentative smile gracing his slightly pouty lips. Realising something major had changed by Scully's body language, he moved with lightning speed, prepared to abandon their current location.

'Mulder,' Scully walked towards him, placing a hand on his arm, 'we need to stay. I've been to confession and may have found a reason to continue, for both of us. You were right to insist we stayed in the sparsely populated mountain states. It might provide our salvation.'

He didn't ask, he didn't need too, Scully's eyes conveyed her conviction. Whatever had occurred in the last few hours, whatever she'd discovered left her emotionally distraught and fatigued. Guiding her to the bed, they lay down together. Mulder's trust in her complete, he gathered Dana's frame against his. Soothing her into a restless sleep, he watched the expression on her face become softer, younger and more peaceful as her body finally slipped into a deep, serene slumber.

'Why are we here, Scully?' Mulder asked in whining tone as they approached the steepled structure the next day. He'd never been one for formal religion and wondered why she'd insisted they visit the little church together after her revelations of the day before. Realising it connected Dana's confession to her new sense of hope, he continued to follow Scully anticipating answers to the questions he'd never ask.

Dana glanced at her significant other. Shielding bright blue eyes filled with hope from the midday sun, her raised eyebrow and slight tightening of their intertwined fingers her only answer. Leading Mulder towards the small, yet surprisingly affluent church, Scully scrutinised her surroundings. The flower beds had been carefully laid out, the lawn mowed, the edging neat without a weed in the small, carefully tended yard. The other constructions on the main street in this village had seen better days. Foreclosure notices and boarded up storefronts bespoke of better times for the ailing community.

Once, neither Scully nor Mulder would have thought twice about driving the short distance. Without a vehicle, they'd been forced to walk the three miles from the run down establishment they currently called home. After escaping the explosion in the desert, they abandoned the Government Issue SUV. Twelve miles across the desert they found an interstate and a truck driver willing to give them a lift. Three rides later they reached Roswell and the start of their life on the run.

The silence between them a little more strained than normal, Scully guided Mulder inside the building. She chose the pew closest to the door, ushering her partner in before her. For the last six weeks, Mulder and Scully had been "persona non grata", watching each other's backs paramount to their continued safety. From this position, Mulder could see every entry point into the church. He continued his surveillance as Scully observed her religious rituals by signing the cross. Dropping to her knees, she took the position of supplication and began to pray.

'I pray to Almighty God,' she started barely above a whisper, capturing Mulder's attention. Swallowing hard, he knew Scully meant for him to hear every word. This, her way of revealing the secrets she'd kept overnight, 'that I didn't misunderstand Father Michael's words yesterday or misinterpret them in the hope of gaining back that which fate forced me to give up.'

'Scully,' Mulder, ever quick to understand, took in a strangled breath.

'In order to keep my son safe,' she continued, 'I felt the need to use unsanctioned methods, leaving no trail in the hope those who worked to harm him might not be able to track is whereabouts. The only source able to shed any light, lost to us. Until yesterday I had no hope of ever locating my son. I pray to god that I might regain my faith and salvage my family.'

Pulling herself weakly onto the bench, Scully reached out a hand. Lacing her fingers with Mulders, she turned to him with tears in her eyes. The expression begging forgiveness and asking if she'd made the right decision based on such limited information with no proof whatsoever.

'I want to believe that those lost to us will be returned,' Mulder stated, his eyes boring into Scully's. 'I've never known you to place your trust without a valid reason. Dare to believe Scully. What do we have to loose.'

They sat in silence, agitated at the situation yet at peace with each other. The clock on Mulder wrist counted the pasting minutes. At a quarter after twelve the door burst open once again. A short, slight woman entered carrying a toddler. Investigative training allowed the former agents to take in the scene with a single glance.

Unable to remember his son, Mulder's photographic memory compared the photo of six month old William in Scully's wallet to the child. The dim lighting made hair and eye colour impossible to tell. He appeared heavier, taller but ultimately the facial features matched those indelibly etched into Mulder's memory. Looking over to his partner, the expression on Scully's face conveyed her tightly reigned emotions with just a hint of delight.

The child squirmed in the woman's arms, demanding to be placed on the floor. His finger pointed towards the couple seated six feet from him and the distinct word "down" issued from his lips. Looking pale, sickly and exhausted Scully's medically trained eye diagnosed a terminal illness but not the cause. The woman resembled a walking cadaver. Dana hurried to her side as she stumbled, catching a rail in her effort not to drop her charge.

'Please, let me help you,' Scully insisted, grabbing the child and allowing him to slip to the floor.

Mulder, only a step behind his partner, supported the woman with an arm around her waist. Guiding her to the pew they'd recently vacated, he forced her down onto the hard wood. Sitting either side, Scully's glaze caught Mulder's. He saw the worry and her eyes flick to the infant. Hazel orbs softening, he turned his attention to the little man happily crawling up the aisle.

'Hey buddy,' Mulder smiled, directing the comment toward the child.

Unperturbed by the near miss, he crawled under the pew three row up. Avoiding all obstacles in his way, the infant babbled happily making a bee line for the adult paying him attention. Using Mulder's pant leg, he pulled himself up. Both women continued to watch the byplay, only Scully's eyes recognising the similarity between father and son.

'Thank you,' the woman looked around, searching for someone, 'are you also waiting for Father Michael?' Nodding, Scully noted the shallow breathing, the lack of fat and muscle tone as she change her hold to take the woman's pulse. Watching Dana somewhat suspiciously, she asked, 'are you a doctor?'

'Yes,' Scully answered, her most enigmatic smile covering her features. 'When did you last see your general physician?'

'I'm dying,' the woman looked Scully in the eye and asked, 'what is your speciality?'

'Forensic pathology,' she'd hesitated only a second to long.

'Ursula Van de Kemp,' the woman offered her hand, 'and I'd say I have little use for your area of expertise.' Watching the confusion enter Scully's gaze, Ursula explained, 'I have stage four breast cancer with metastatic involvement in the lungs, spine, liver and lymph nodes. My oncologist believes I should be dead.'

'I believe him,' Scully allowed her façade to drop and her smile turned melancholy.

'Only I can't die yet,' Ursula continued. Her eye's had glassed over. 'That's why I'm here to see Father Michael. I had hoped….'

'To find a home for your son?' Scully asked very cautiously.

'Your husband is very good with children,' Ursula observed, her eyes drawn to the interaction between man and child. 'My husband never had the chance to be a father to Johannes. We married young expecting a child to come when we felt the time to be right. First we needed to set our finances in order, get the farm turning a profit. We were young and idealistic, believing our entire lives were ours to mould. We started trying and nothing happened for years. By the time we exhausted medical intervention for my infertility, we realised adoption, legal adoption for a couple over forty is problematic.'

Sighing heavily, her words coming in phrases with her laboured breath, Ursula continued her story. 'So we turned to a friend who knew someone who could procure child for us. We were ecstatic.'

Eyes misting once again as she recalled the past, Ursula and Scully both realised the importance of this meeting, set up by Father Michael. 'A week after Johannes came to live with us, my husband Hans had a call from Amsterdam. His father suffered a major heart attack. We'd had terrible storms this year. The Cheyenne airport had been closed for several days so he drove to Denver. They closed the mountain pass as he drove through.'

Mulder and Scully's eyes met for the briefest moment. They lived with black ice and understood the implications.

'When I started to feel fatigued, I blamed the stress of an infant and dealing with Hans's death. I couldn't stay on the farm after he'd gone, too many memories,' Ursula smile sadly, 'not that it would have mattered. By the time they diagnosed cancer it had already spread beyond any treatment options.' Stoping, she looked, wild-eyed at the couple surrounding her, as though truly seeing the interaction between them for the first time. Blatantly staring Scully in the eye, she asked, 'do you have children, Doctor?'

'We had a child,' Scully swallowed hard, not daring to reach out a hand to her son comfortably playing in Mulder's arms. 'Circumstance took him from me three months ago. My,' hesitating over the word, Dana knew she said it only to comfort a dying woman, 'husband took a long term assignment and didn't have the opportunity to watch our son grow.'

Her sorrowful brown orbs forced their way past Scully's defences, 'your son died?'

'No,' Dana tried to find the words, 'his safety and ours had been compromised by men beyond reach and amendment. I gave him up, to protect him.'

'I've been told his birth name is William,' Ursula confessed, her attention now completely captivated by the man and child displaying such synchrony. 'He looks enough like you to be your son.'

Taking his matching hazel eyes from the child, Mulder spoke softly, 'because he is. This is our son, William.'

'Dadadadada,' the child happily cooed, forcing his father's attention back to him.

Nodding sagely, Ursula took the time to finally see the genetic similarity. 'Then God has fulfilled my prayers as perhaps I have fulfilled yours. This meeting is no accident but destiny. I have kept your son safe and my faith is restored. I've a reason for the events of the last three months and can go to my grave in the knowledge that my actions have been guided by the hand of God.'

Lurching to her feet, Ursula struggled to stand. Staggering past Scully towards the door at the rear of the church, Dana understood the woman's intentions. Ursula didn't reach the door to Father Michael's inner sanctum before she collapsed.

Please review and tell me what you think. I've finished the story, it only has two more chapters. Be warned serious angst ahead.