TITLE: Team Building (part 1 of 7)
AUTHOR: JL (formerly JaimeLyn)
RATED: PG
CATEGORIES: MSR
ARCHIVE: Yes, but please ask permission. 
SPOILERS: everything - The Truth. Sequel (of sorts) to 
previous post-Truth fic, Shadows of Winter. If you haven't 
read that one it shouldn't affect your understanding of 
this story, although you might wonder when Mulder and 
Scully got around to re-populating the Earth.
DISCLAIMER: I still don't own them, although I do let them 
run around inside my brain sometimes. Please don't sue for 
that. 
SUMMARY: On Christmas Eve, Mulder takes his family on a 
little detour, X-Files style. 

AUTHOR'S NOTE: This is, ultimately, the result of my having 
been hopelessly inspired by the XF2 Photo Heard Round The 
World -- at the very least, enough to dust off P.I, 
Criminal, and the Tater -- despite my having moved 
comfortably into the X-Files Fanfic Author's Retirement 
Community And Senior Retreat (located in sunny South 
Florida - great shuffleboard!) In any case, let's just say 
I was inspired further by Chris Carter's suggestion that a 
new audience should fall in love with Mulder and Scully.  I 
hope you all enjoy the ride!

Feedback accepted at: jaimerockifies@yahoo.com

Thanks to Alyssa for helping keep it in character.  

-----

TEAM BUILDING
by JL

-----

'Cause this is real and this is good.
It warms the inside just like it should.
But most of all, but most of all, it's built to last.'
-- Built to Last, Melee


------


PART ONE: TEAM SCULLY



-----

"He's an Oxford-educated psychologist who wrote a monograph 
on serial killers and the occult, which helped catch Monty 
Props in 1988. Generally thought of as the best analytical 
mind in the Bureau. He had a nickname at the Academy: 
'Spooky' Mulder."
- Dana Scully: September, 1992


"What if there was only one choice? And all the other ones 
were wrong? And there were signs along the way to pay 
attention to?"
- Dana Scully: April, 2000

------

1.




Christmas Eve

* * *



"Mulder, where are we?"

Special Agent Dana Scully sat in the passenger's seat of 
the Prius, her hands busy with a half-wrapped Christmas 
present. The radio crooned a low, comforting hum -- Bing 
Crosby's familiar baritone warbling about having yourself a 
merry little Christmas. 

Outside the windshield, an unfamiliar house loomed atop a 
hill. Its long driveway wound up and up, its second-story 
windows like eyes, its dark, boarded up porch surrounding 
the first floor like a grin, the way the whole of it seemed 
to wink at them in the darkness. Scully glanced warily over 
at Mulder. Her brain already hurt and he hadn't even opened 
his mouth yet. 

"Where are we?" piped a voice from the backseat. Scully 
turned and glanced at their daughter, Emma, her small hands 
perched beneath her head, her unruly red hair stuck up in 
various directions. Emma stared out the window, looking 
tired and rather bored.

"Now this is Christmas," exclaimed their son. William 
pressed his hands against the window, his breath fogging 
against the glass. He brought two fingers to his glasses 
and pushed them up the bridge of his nose, and then banged 
his hand enthusiastically against the window. "Dad, you are 
awesome!"

Scully's eyebrow shot up and she turned to Mulder. She 
dropped the present she'd been wrapping to the floor at her 
feet and reached over to flick off the radio. Mulder leaned 
back against the steering wheel, his hands folded 
innocently in his lap. His upper lip twitched. All in all, 
he looked fairly pleased with himself. Scully leaned back 
against the passenger's side window and wondered how he'd 
look when she eventually yanked him from the car and 
slammed him up against a tree. 

"Tell me, Mulder," she said, carefully choosing each word, 
"Why are we parked in the driveway of some strange house on 
Christmas Eve when we should still be on the highway headed 
towards Harrisburg?"

"Because... I am awesome?" suggested Mulder, nodding his 
chin in the direction of the backseat.

Scully pursed her lips. "That's debatable."

"Let us out!" insisted William, pulling on the door handle, 
"I wanna see!"

"Daddy, this is not grandma's house," said Emma. She 
stretched and yawned and glanced at her brother, who kept 
yanking on the door handle. She made a disgusted face and 
leaned away from him. "He likes it," she said. "If he likes 
it I know I'm not gonna like it."

Scully's eyes narrowed. "Well, P.I?" She tilted her head. 
"An explanation would be advisable."

Mulder opened his mouth -- 

"Picture it, Mom," said William, who suddenly poked his 
head up from the backseat, "This wacko creepy house was 
built in the 1940s, and this one family lived in it for, 
like, ever, right? Then, their kid dies. Nobody knows why. 
Then, one day, the whole family ups and leaves. They leave 
all their stuff behind. For years after that, they try to 
sell the house and can't. So it's all really, really weird 
and creepy, and everyone says it's haunted by the ghost of 
the kid who died. So now, nobody will buy the house, right? 
AND..." William waved a hand at the house with a flourish. 
"The walls are supposed to cry!" His eyes gleamed. "They're 
supposed to cry, Mom!"

Scully blinked. She tried to recall a reason why she'd 
thought reproducing with Mulder might be a wise decision. 

Scully looked from her son to her partner, and then back 
again. Mulder grinned and struck out a hand to William, who 
high-fived him and jumped back into the backseat.

"The two of you planned this," said Scully. 

Not a question. 

Mulder's brows furrowed. "You make it sound so cheap when 
you put it that way."

From the backseat, Emma let out a disgusted snort. "We're 
going to miss cookies," she said. "And Grandma's Christmas 
cake. And presents." She sighed. "Daddy, can we please go 
ghost-hunting next weekend instead?"

William shot his sister a look. "Don't ruin this for me," 
he ordered. 

"Shut up, Flukeman," snapped Emma.

"E-NOUGH," said Scully, which silenced them all 
immediately. 

She turned back to Mulder and considered tossing him from 
the car. 

So this is what he had really been doing the other night, 
when he'd said he and William were going out to the gym to 
work on William's game. William's game, indeed. Mulder must 
have canvassed this place. Or else William had insisted on 
riding here alone on his bike, and Mulder had followed in 
the car -- she couldn't seem to keep track, these days, as 
to which of them was a worse influence on the other. She 
shook her head. "Mulder, in case you hadn't noticed, it's 
Christmas Eve."

"I noticed."

"And we're due at my mother's in approximately --" She 
looked at her watch, "Two hours." 

"I noticed that, too."

She nodded up at the house. "And what in the world have you 
been telling him?" She chucked her thumb at William. 

"And the cookies!" added Emma. "Don't forget that we're 
missing the cookies!"

"And we're missing the cookies," Scully added, her body 
feeling achy and stiff and like one giant raised eyebrow.

"I know. I'm sorry, Home-Skillet," said Mulder, glancing 
into the backseat. "But we won't be long --I promise." 

Emma yawned, shrugged, and stared up at the house with wide 
green eyes. "If you say so, Home-Fry."

Mulder turned to Scully. "Look," he said, "I may have, uh, 
accidentally told William a story on the way to school last 
week, and I may have accidentally promised him that part of 
his Christmas present would be going to check it out -- "

"Accidentally," said Scully. 

"It may have slipped out," said Mulder.

Scully shook her head. "No." 

Behind Scully, William tugged on the door. Emma rolled her 
eyes at him. "Mom!" William insisted, still struggling with 
the child-locked door. Suddenly, he paused, frowned, and 
changed tactics, leaning up against the front seat to be 
close to his mother. He hugged her tightly from behind, and 
begged, "Please?" 

Scully's eyebrow shot heavenward.

"Come on, Mom!" William shook Scully by the shoulders. He 
sucked in a deep breath, and --

"It'll just be a nice little side-trip and besides Dad had 
said last week that it was an X-File and that we could 
check it out and that I could totally be an honorary FBI 
agent but only when we had the time and right now we 
totally have the time and you have to let us Mom Please!" 

William took a deep-sea-sized breath, shut his mouth like 
the carriage of a typewriter that had reached the end of a 
line, and stared expectantly at Scully. 

"An X-File." Scully's arms folded across her chest. "Is 
that what he said?" She turned to face Mulder, who looked 
sheepish. William's hands still clutched at her shoulders. 

"I may have said something of the sort," said Mulder.

Scully shook her head. 

"Is there a bathroom in there?" asked Emma. "Cause I have 
to go. Really." She wriggled out of her seatbelt to join 
William up front. She gave Scully a pointed look. Scully 
looked back at Mulder. Mulder shrugged.

"Great," Scully mumbled, removing each piece of badly 
mangled tape from her fingers. "If the three of you are 
determined to triple-team me--" 

"Yes! I knew it! You're the best Mom ever!" William shook 
Scully roughly by the shoulders one last time.

"I'll be sure to keep that in mind," mumbled Scully. She 
took a deep breath, trying to figure out just how in the 
world these things managed to happen to them every year 
when they made the trip to her mother's house for 
Christmas. 

Just last year, Mulder had volunteered to do the driving so 
Scully could get some much-needed sleep, and as they'd 
slept, he drove them up through Canada, five hours out of 
their way, because he'd said that this time of year, the 
Sea Kelpie came back to surf for food underneath the ice. 
Scully had gotten William a digital camera and recorder 
that Christmas, and together, the four of them had tramped 
through the snow, snapping pictures of the frozen lake and 
discussing sea monsters. They'd gotten to her mother's 
house an entire day late, that year. 

The year before that, William had been obsessed with 
Earthquakes, and had insisted that weird seismic activity 
in California was indicative of something trying to rise up 
out of the Earth -- and Mulder being Mulder, had agreed to 
take William back to the office so they could take some of 
their old X-Files with them to Scully's mother's place. 
Discussing those X-files over breakfast a day later, 
however, had ended in a four-alarm fight between William 
and his cousin Matthew, which had ended in a four-alarm 
fight between Scully, Mulder, and Scully's older brother 
Bill, which had ended with Emma calling Bill a "douchebag," 
which had ended with Scully demanding to know where Emma 
had learned the word "douchebag." Needless to say, the four 
of them had eventually defaulted to the Denny's across the 
street, where William snapped pictures of the sky to try 
and catch Santa, and Emma had insisted Mulder tell her one 
of his "silly stories." 

The year before that, when Emma was only five, they'd spent 
Christmas Eve chasing after Emma's cat, Mr. Spooky, whom 
Emma had let out of the house when William had convinced 
her that the cat was possessed by ancient African war 
demons. When prodded by his angry, exhausted mother for an 
explanation, William claimed to have gotten the idea from 
one of Mulder's stories, which Mulder had denied ever 
telling. Scully had given Mulder the benefit of the doubt, 
although later on, she had come across one of their files 
lying on the bottom of William's suitcase. Both William and 
Mulder had feigned ignorance, and in Scully's zeal to get 
to the bottom of it, she'd neglected to keep an eye on 
Emma, who had hidden in Maggie Scully's closet with a 
flashlight and a Halloween mask. Emma had jumped out at 
William and screamed "Bogeyman!" just as William had turned 
on his nightlight. This had pleased nobody in Scully's 
mother's household, including Scully's mother, who had just 
walked William into the room, and had screamed louder than 
William and promptly fallen backwards out the door.

"Look, Criminal -- " Mulder touched a thumb and forefinger 
to her cheek. "I think the bottom-line is we'd all rather 
be doing something else tonight. None of us can stand to be 
bored. And your mother's Christmas Eve dinner is so boring 
as to fall below the boundaries of consciousness." Scully 
dipped her chin to hide an inappropriate smirk, and Mulder 
lowered his head. "You know I'm right," he said, searching 
her eyes. "You know you'd rather be here with us, doing 
this."

Scully opened her mouth to protest but found that she could 
not. 

"Hey, look at it this way." Mulder gazed at her, and then 
at the kids, and then at her again. "It's not like we won't 
end up at your Mom's place eventually, right? And we're all 
here together, and we DO technically have a bit of time -- 
which is rare." He shrugged. "So, why not? It's not like 
your brother won't have plenty of time to belittle me in 
the morning." He gave her a tiny smirk. 

"Can we please be late, Mom?" asked William. "Church is 
boring and Matthew's a jerk anyway." 

"William," said Scully. "Matthew's your cousin."

"He's a jerk," clarified Emma. 

"It's still not a nice thing to say," said Scully with a 
sigh. 

The car fell silent. 

Both Emma and William gazed at Scully with impatience in 
their expressions. Mulder leaned back against the window, 
only the quirk of his lips and the glint of his eyes 
visible in the dim light. Scully sighed and tried not to 
picture her mother's wrath, which would undoubtedly be 
swift and spectacular. Instead, she pictured setting Mulder 
on the front porch of her mother's house and leaving him to 
deal with her brother alone. 

"All right," she said, checking her jacket pocket for the 
mini flashlight she carried with her. "All right, all 
right." 

She looked up at the house again. In the darkness, it was 
little more than a navy sketch: the cartoonish idea of a 
house. Swirling around it, a weird fog gathered low beneath 
the porch, hugging the underbrush. Scully forced back the 
urge to roll her eyes. Why the hell did there always have 
to be a weird goddamned fog lurking in the underbrush? 

"So how do we get in?" she asked.

Mulder grinned and held up a pair of keys, dangling them 
low in front of her. 

"Where did you get those?" Scully asked. 

Mulder shrugged. "Magic," he said, lilting the word a bit 
at the end. He turned back to the kids. "Flashlights!" he 
ordered, a delighted tone in his voice. 

"I get the purple one!" Emma declared, and Mulder handed it 
back to her. 

"I brought my own," said William, pulling his flashlight 
out of his coat pocket. He quickly checked his cell phone, 
which was decorated with Star Wars stickers. 

Scully shook her head. "This is not normal," she muttered, 
although she was having a hell of a time trying to hide her 
smile.


--


2.




The living room was vast and empty and dark, except for 
what appeared to be piles of lumber and a single table 
covered with a sheet.  Dark wooden moldings extended all 
along the walls.  Dark wooden beams crossed the ceiling, 
which ran high above them into darkness.  Into one wall, an 
ornate wooden mantel had been carved into the fireplace.  
Against the opposite wall, a set of heavy green drapes hung 
awkwardly off a ladder.  The whole place smelled of dust 
and soggy cardboard and damp oak.  The air was cold and 
strange, but not particularly uninviting.  Just what was 
Mulder up to here, bringing them out on a trespassing 
detour through Haunted House Land?  And on Christmas Eve, 
of all goddamned days?

"I thought you said they left all the furniture," Scully 
murmured to William.  Emma clasped tight to Scully's hand 
and shone her purple flashlight up along the open doorway, 
where around the corner, a staircase traveled up and up 
into the shadows.

"That was a long time ago, Mom," William said, as if this 
should have been obvious.   He circled the room, his 
flashlight beam bright and yellow and filled with dust. He 
bounced it against the walls and ceiling.  Mulder hung back 
against the fireplace, his flashlight trained on William.  

"What do you think happened to the furniture?" Mulder asked 
William.  

"Maybe it's a trick," said William, the beam of his 
flashlight jaunting merrily along the floor, and then the 
ceiling.  "Maybe we can't see the furniture because the 
ghosts don't want us to.  Or maybe other people took the 
furniture.  I bet you that's it.  I bet you other ghost 
hunters have been here and they took stuff with them to 
analyze.  I bet you they came during the day, though, 
because they were afraid.  Because everyone knows that 
ghosts can't mat -- mat --"

"Materialize," provided Scully.

"Yes," said William.  "They can't materialize in the light 
-- the light melts them.  That's what you said -- right, 
Dad?"

"Right," said Mulder. 

Scully eyed Mulder with a look of amusement. 

"That's why Dad gave me that defensive lamp to sleep with.  
Cause they don't like the light."

"It's a night light," said Emma, snickering.

"Shut up, Sea Monster," snapped William.  

"William," warned Mulder.  He tilted his flashlight 
directly into his son's face. 

William held his palm in front of his eyes, wincing.  
"Okay," he muttered.  "I won't rag on the kid."

"Maybe the people who lived here took it all back," said 
Emma, and she tugged on Scully's hand, crossing her legs 
and bouncing with purpose.

"That's a good catch," said Mulder, shining his flashlight 
on Emma.

"Thanks, Home-Fry," said Emma, tugging still on Scully's 
hand.  

Scully glanced at Mulder. Her flashlight beam wandered over 
the hardwood floor, across the fireplace, across his torso, 
and up to his face.   "Let's find a bathroom, shall we?" 
she said, jerking her flashlight beam in the direction of 
the hallway. 

"Mommy!" said Emma, yanking hard on Scully's hand and then 
pulling out of her grip.  Scully lowered the flashlight so 
the light hit the floor, bouncing back and striking across 
Emma's face.  Her jaw was set, her gaze steady, her arms 
folded across her chest.  Her own flashlight, stuck inside 
her armpit, cast a beam that shot straight up to the 
ceiling. Under the dim light, her eyes glinted with 
purpose, and reminded Scully of Mulder.   "Why does 
everyone have to come to the bathroom with me?" Emma 
demanded.  "Why can't I just go by myself?"

Scully pursed her lips. She flashed, briefly, to the last 
time Mulder had dragged her out to go ghost-busting on 
Christmas Eve.  It might have been many years ago, long 
before they'd ever been married, but she still recalled 
that night like a nightmare she could just as easily have 
had yesterday.  It had ended with the two of them getting 
accidentally separated, experiencing some sort of insane 
shared hallucination, and nearly shooting each other in the 
face.  Merry Christmas, indeed.

"I'd rather we stay together," said Scully. She shot a wary 
glance at Mulder, who seemed far too amused for her liking.

"Are you afraid, Criminal?"  His lips quirked.  

Scully's eyes narrowed.   

Fox Mulder was dangerous enough when he was simply 
perceptive, but he was even moreso when allowed to roam the 
landscape of his natural habitat -- An X-File.

"Why don't we split into teams?" Mulder suggested.  He 
grinned.  "Team Mulder and Team Scully."

"Mulder," said Scully, un-amused.  She folded her arms 
across her chest, and then glanced down at her daughter, 
who stared between both she and Mulder with a similar, un-
amused expression.  Scully closed her eyes.  She rubbed her 
fingers against the bridge of her nose, and continued, "Do 
you not recall what happened the last time we got separated 
in a similar situation?"

Her son's flashlight beam sailed excitedly into her face, 
forcing her to shield her eyes, and then it sailed 
excitedly into Mulder's, forcing him to shield his.  "Ooh," 
said William.  "What happened?"

"Nothing," said Mulder and Scully, together.  

Mulder glanced first at William, and then at Emma, his gaze 
protective and serious.  "This isn't like that," he added, 
in a tone that indicated to Scully that it really, really 
wasn't.  Scully tilted her head at him -- only the 
slightest of degrees.  Mulder tilted his head in the 
opposite direction, at an equal angle.   

Scully rolled her tongue in her cheek.  Why, she wondered, 
could Mulder not just... buy them normal Christmas presents?

"Oh, come on!" said William, stomping his foot.  "Why do 
you always have to do that weird silent talking thing when 
I ask you questions?"  He turned to Mulder and the 
flashlight smacked Mulder clear in the face again.  "Why do 
you try to pretend that nothing happened like I'm a baby 
and can't handle it?"  He turned back to Scully, and she 
was blinded again.  "You know I'm just going to find out 
anyway.  You might as well tell me."

"Hey, Tater -- " Scully jutted her chin at William.  "Watch 
where you're pointing that thing."  

William lowered his arm, looking sullen.  "Mom, I really, 
really want to know."

Scully nodded, considering him.  "Well, I think it's a 
really, really inappropriate topic for anyone in this room 
under five feet tall."  She tilted her head, held up a 
hand, and added, "Shut up, Mulder."

She glanced up and saw an open-mouthed Mulder, gazing at 
her as if he'd been wounded.  A mischievous glint in her 
eye, she turned again to her son and finished, "And since 
I'm bigger than you, I win."  She shrugged.  "Tough luck, 
Tater."

William grimaced.  "Mom, I'm ten years old now.  Please 
don't call me -- "

"And you," continued Scully, looking down at her daughter, 
"Have the choice of Team Mulder or Team Scully.  You're not 
going to the bathroom by yourself, though, that's for sure.   
And you're not going to run off, either.  So, let's have 
it."

Emma nodded as if finally she'd gotten to the end of a 
really exhausting conversation.  She turned back and forth 
in place, her flashlight swishing like a spotlight between 
both parents.  Her thick auburn brows furrowed. Her legs 
were still crossed and she bounced like a top.  Several 
moments passed as Emma seemed to think and think.  

"Team Mulder," she finally decided, crossing the room 
towards her father.

A grin broke out over Mulder's face and he opened his arms 
to scoop her up, resting her gangly, eight year old form on 
his hip.  "Hey, good choice, Home-Skillet."  He planted a 
messy kiss on her cheek, to which Emma laughed, 
delightedly. 

"Sorry, Mommy," said Emma to Scully.  "But Daddy tells 
really good silly stories when we ghost-hunt."

"Oh, so now we're full-on ghost-hunting," said Scully, 
setting her hands on her hips.  "I thought we were just 
checking things out while we looked for the bathroom."

"Oh, Mom.  Really." Emma snuggled at Mulder's neck.  "Don't 
you know Daddy at all?"

"Sometimes, I really wonder," muttered Scully.  

"Hey," said Mulder, frowning at Emma.  "What makes you 
think my stories are silly?"

Emma shook her head.  She touched her palms to Mulder's 
cheeks and smiled indulgently.  "Home-Fry," she said, as if 
he'd just suggested something ridiculous.  "I really think 
I'm getting too old for you."

Scully stifled a laugh.  Mulder frowned.  

"If Emma is going with Agent Mulder, I will protect Agent 
Scully," declared William, who stood up as straight and 
tall as he could, which even at his tallest height, was 
still well below Scully's shoulder.  He held his flashlight 
steady in front of him.  The dusty yellow beam shot up to 
the ceiling, like a light saber.  

Mulder lowered Emma to the ground.  "All right, Spud," he 
said, nodding his head at William, "You go protect Special 
Agent Mom."  William rolled his eyes at the term, and 
Mulder added, "No running off."

William's mouth dropped open. "When do I ever -- "

"No running off," echoed Scully, nudging William in the 
direction of the staircase.  "And if you behave yourself, I 
might just let you live until Christmas."

William shot her a look, but continued on ahead of her as 
Mulder and Emma waved goodbye and wandered off in a 
different direction.  

----

CONTINUED...


-----

TEAM BUILDING
by JL

-----

'Cause this is real and this is good.
It warms the inside just like it should.
But most of all, but most of all, it's built to last.'
-- Built to Last, Melee


------


PART ONE: TEAM SCULLY



-----



--

3.



The doorway of the living room opened into a foggy, shadowy 
hallway.  A staircase loomed before them, its banister long 
and dark and smooth, the whole of it disappearing up into 
an inky black nothing.  Scully and William's twin 
flashlight beams led the way, pausing briefly on patches of 
wood, molding, wall, ceiling, floor, and stairs. William 
shrunk back slightly against his mother and grasped onto 
her hand. 

At the age of ten, William was growing fast.  He smelled of 
soap and chocolate chips and apple juice and all the things 
normal little boys smelled like, and for this, Scully was 
eternally grateful.  

Occasionally, she would find herself flashing back to the 
night of his birth -- to the ancient storefront where he'd 
been born, to the metal bed that had creaked, to the 
blinding, almost unbearable pain of childbirth.  She'd 
flash to the absence of Mulder, the endless prayers she'd 
recited, the way bizarre images had blended and flashed in 
and out of her brain, a well of sensation, of discomfort, 
of visions; Scully bending in the sand, finding only a 
golden cross like her own; Mulder on a beach building 
something with a little boy --

She could still picture the faceless intruders, the 
makeshift human cage they'd formed around her, the 
flickering of candle flames dancing madly across each blank 
face.  But most of all, she recalled the fear -- the 
pounding of her heart, like a snare drum in her ears, the 
instinct to protect, protect, protect any cost...  

In times like this, when it was just she and William alone, 
Scully would recall the long months she and Mulder spent 
afterwards as fugitives, the two of them speeding up and 
down dirt roads, their alienation from the rest of the 
world finally complete.  She'd recall the days and nights 
spent sleeping in dingy motel rooms, the photo of baby 
William she'd kept hidden away from Mulder at the bottom of 
a suitcase.  She'd recall their pseudo-married life in 
Canada, the icy tundra of her existence, the unremarkable 
house with the tree out front; in her mind, she could still 
see that wrecked car, the way crooked, bare limbs had 
cradled it, her screaming child somehow alive in the 
backseat, smoke erupting from the hood like steam from a 
kettle.

Scully held tight to William's hand, let him swing their 
arms back and forth.

Despite his early trauma, William had remained her sweet, 
sensitive little Tater Tot.   He was still a normal little 
boy. He was only a normal little boy -- just as Emma was 
only a normal little girl. The idea of normality existing 
within the unusual framework of Scully's universe remained 
an endless comfort. Whatever else could happen, her 
children were normal, and whole, and real, and they were 
hers.    

"So, tell me some more about this ghost," said Scully, 
holding onto her son's hand and swinging their arms back 
and forth like a pendulum.  "Why do you believe your Dad's 
story?"

William turned to her.  "Why do you not believe?" 

Scully smiled to herself.  

"Because I don't believe in ghosts, Tater."  

They made their way towards the dark, dark stairs together.  
Their beams of light crisscrossed in the shadows, forming a 
long, thin "X."

"But... why not?" asked William.

Scully frowned.  "Well..." She paused. Answering William 
correctly these days was tricky.  He had become far too 
smart and nosy for his own good. "Because the world is made 
up of a lot of energy," she explained.  "And we're part of 
that.  We're all part of the same energy. And... while I 
think it's possible that sometimes energy gets displaced, 
and sometimes it manifests itself in unexpected ways, I 
know that there's a difference between what we see in the 
movies and what is actually real in the world."

Scully grasped the dark cherry banister in one hand, 
William in the other, and led them up the stairs.

"Okay..." said William, slowly.  "But aren't you ever 
scared anyway? Like, for no reason?  Or for a really stupid 
reason?  Like...because of the dark, maybe?"  He clutched 
tightly to her hand, and Scully squeezed back.  

"Well, the dark can be very scary, I definitely agree.  And 
there are still... lots of things in this world that scare 
me," she admitted, "But the things that scare me change all 
the time.  And when I was your age, I was probably more 
scared of things that don't scare me anymore."  

"Yeah?  Like what kinds of things?"  William stopped 
walking to look up at her.  "Are you scared right now, 
Mommy?"

Scully turned to face her son.  He was getting older now, 
and was growing slightly less transparent with each passing 
year.  Scully searched his face for the right answer, the 
correct message to send, and she felt that rarest of words, 
'Mommy,' repeating again and again in her brain.  William's 
blue eyes searched hers, all wide and inquisitive beneath 
his glasses.

"How could I possibly be scared?" Scully finally said. She 
tugged on his hand.  "I've got you here protecting me, 
right?"

William nodded, mutely.  He shuffled his feet and looked 
suddenly embarrassed.

"Hey," said Scully.  She tugged on William's hand again and 
he looked up at her.  "I know that sometimes, my work with 
your Dad seems really huge and maybe a little scary.  But 
what did we talk about, in regards to that work and science 
and the world?"

William looked at her with serious blue eyes.  "Nothing 
happens outside of science," he recited, and then he turned 
away, flashing his beam of light in lazy figure-eights up 
the staircase.  

"Exactly," said Scully. "And where are the answers to the 
questions your Dad asks?"  She and William continued along, 
holding hands and swinging their arms, companionably.

"Inside science, somewhere," said William.  "Even if we 
can't explain them yet."

"Right," said Scully, pleased with this lovely, rare moment 
-- despite the haunted house and the reluctant ghost-
busting and the inevitable Dana-you-cannot-keep-doing-this-
to-Mom-on-Christmas-Eve third-degree she'd get later, from 
Bill.  Scully let her flashlight beam roam up the stairs, 
to the landing, which was empty and quiet.  For what felt 
like the thousandth time since they'd arrived, she wondered 
what Mulder was up to, bringing them here. 

"Any other questions?" asked Scully.  

"Yeah," said William.   The beam of his flashlight bounced 
up and down along the walls.  "What about that one case 
with the lady whose dead son possessed his twin brother?  
Dad was showing me that one when he took me into the office 
on Friday.  It had something to do with... ancient 
religious beliefs, right? He said you couldn't find an 
explanation for that because it had nothing to do with 
science."

Scully opened her mouth, but found that nothing came out.  

"And what about that lady who was possessed by the spirit 
of her dead grandfather and tried to kill all these people 
because she was re-living the crime?" William continued.  
"You saw that happen for real, right? OH --  and what about 
that one case where that girl was being haunted by the 
spirit of her dead boss who was actually trying to save her 
life?  You were there when all those things went like, 
flying around the room and stuff, right?   Dad said some 
scary things happened there that you couldn't explain. OH -
- "  William tugged hard on her arm.  "Oh, Oh -- what about 
that one case you investigated with the zombies?  Zombies 
are like ghosts  -- they're just undead, right, Mom?  Dad 
says you saw one -- an actual zombie! They could probably 
live in a house like this one, couldn't they?  I mean, if 
they were looking for brains to eat, they'd probably hide 
in some old house and wait for some unsuspecting people to 
come along..."

Scully paused.  Her mouth set in a thin line, and she 
touched an index finger affectionately to William's nose.  
"I am going to kill your father," she said.


---

4.



"Uh, which door?" asked William.  He shone his flashlight 
beam up and down the long, dark hallway.   Three closed 
doors stood in front of them.  Scully shone her flashlight 
in the opposite direction, where the hallway forked off 
into shadow.

"I don't know, buddy," she said, as they switched positions 
and their flashlight beams crossed in midair.  "This is 
your Christmas present and your X-File.  So which is it 
gonna be?"  She pointed, "Door number one, number two, or 
number three?"

William shone his flashlight on each door, considering.  
"Uh," he said, his foot tapping a nervous little dance, 
"Door number two?"  

Scully nodded.  "Okay," she said, taking a step forward, 
"Door number two it is."

"No, Mom -- wait!" said William.  He held a hand in front 
of his mother.  "Stay behind me," he finished, executing 
his best imitation of Mulder.  He looked left and right, 
and shone his flashlight quickly in both directions.  

Scully bit her lip, forcing back a smile.  She recalled a 
time, long ago, when William had been watching her feed an 
eleven-month old Emma.  A teakettle had been bubbling on 
the stove, and it whistled loudly, interrupting Emma's 
quiet dinner.  Emma had begun to cry, and as Scully moved 
towards the stove with the baby, and had reached out for 
the handle with her left hand, William had screamed for her 
to stop.  "Wrong hand, Mommy!" he'd shrieked, holding his 
fingers in his ears against the noise.  "It's too hot!  
Careful please! Wrong hand!"  

"Hey," said William, motioning towards Scully.  

Scully blinked away the image.  "What is it?"

"Something on the wall," said William. He shone his 
flashlight over what appeared to be an envelope taped to 
the plaster.  "Huh.  That's weird."  He ran his hand over 
the envelope. "Tape looks new, too."

Scully's eyes narrowed.  "It does, doesn't it?" She rolled 
her tongue in her cheek and held her wrist underneath the 
beam of her flashlight, finding it almost comically hard to 
read the time.  She squinted: 8:23pm.  

With a resigned sigh, Scully came up behind William and 
gazed over his shoulder.  "Well, you gonna open it?" 

William turned his head.  "Should I?" he asked.

"Well, I would."  Scully cleared her throat and pointed.  
"Standard procedure would normally dictate gloves -- "

"So as not to contaminate the crime scene," William 
finished proudly.  Scully patted his shoulder, and he 
pointed with his flashlight at the envelope.  "But it's 
okay anyway?"

Scully nodded. "It's evidence, after all."

William looked thoughtful.  He held his flashlight up to 
the ceiling like a floor-lamp.  "Evidence of what?"

Scully shrugged.  "I guess you won't know until you open 
it, huh?"

William seemed to consider this.  Finally, he pulled the 
envelope down from the wall and turned it over and over in 
his hands.  "Okay," he said, with a deep breath.  "Okay..."  
He dug his fingers beneath the flap and pried the envelope 
open, pulling out a folded piece of paper with three words 
written on it.  "A.M. lived here."  William's brows 
furrowed and he glanced at Scully.  "That's a weird thing 
for a ghost to say, right?  What ghost would write that?"

Scully took William's hand in hers, and together, they 
headed down the hallway towards door number two.

"I don't know," said Scully, dryly.  "But I have a theory."

"Do you think it has to do with the people who used to live 
here?" asked William, tugging on her arm.  By the time 
they'd stopped in front of door number two, his nervous 
wriggles had turned into pent-up, excited bouncing.  "You 
think it's a message from the ghost?  You think maybe A.M. 
is trying to tell us how he died?"

Scully felt her back pocket vibrate and pulled out her 
phone. She had a text message from Mulder.  'Backyard with 
Emma,' it said.  'Treehouse.'

"I definitely think someone's spinning something," Scully 
muttered, and she returned her phone to her back pocket.  

"Okay," said William.  He reached out with a shaky hand for 
the door handle.  "You ready to go for it, Agent Mom?"

Scully extended an arm.  "After you, Agent William."

--

CONTINUED...

-----

TEAM BUILDING
by JL

-----

'Cause this is real and this is good.
It warms the inside just like it should.
But most of all, but most of all, it's built to last.'
-- Built to Last, Melee


------


--



TEAM MULDER


---


"Why?  So you can write it down in your little report?  I 
don't think you're ready for what I think."
- Fox Mulder: September, 1992


"...that would then mean that all of our choices have lead 
to this very moment.  One wrong turn and we wouldn't be 
sitting here together.  Well, that... says a lot.  It says 
a lot, a lot, a lot..."
- Fox Mulder: April, 2000

----

5.




As the story went, Mulder and Scully's youngest child Emma 
had been born in a morgue, in the middle of a case, inside 
of a broken elevator, and nobody delighted in hearing it 
told over and over again more than Emma. 

"Daddy," said Emma, "You promised if I let you check out 
the treehouse, you'd tell me the story."  She peered out 
the screen-door, across the backyard, towards a small 
wooden tree-house set high into an oak.   It had been a 
long time since Mulder had been inside that tree-house -- 
not since he and Marckus had been around William's 
age. 

The hilly grass beyond the porch was overgrown and stiff 
with snow, and it stretched for yards and yards into 
darkness.  A light fog rolled over the hill, like phantom 
Reddi Whip, and Emma had refused to go out any further than 
the porch; for one, she'd said, she was heavily concerned 
that the lawn was "unsanitary" (A new Scully word) -- all 
wild and uncut and half buried in snow as it was.  And for 
another, she just didn't trust clouds that sat on the 
ground.  When Mulder had asked her why, though, Emma had 
merely shrugged and said, "Because clouds live in the sky, 
Daddy."

"Haven't you heard this story enough?" asked Mulder.   "I 
think we've used it as a bedtime story twice this week.  
You're gonna wear me out, Home Skillet."  He tugged on 
Emma's hand and led them inside, then fished a set of keys 
out of his pocket and re-locked the back door behind them.  

Emma swished her flashlight straight at Mulder.  "Nope," 
she said.  "Not tired of it."  She pulled out of Mulder's 
grasp and wandered over to the cabinets, where she began 
opening doors and peering into them, searching carefully 
and then moving on to the next.

"What're you looking for?" asked Mulder.  He leaned against 
the backdoor to watch her. One of his favorite hobbies 
these days, right behind proving Scully wrong and reading 
case-files aloud with William, was simply observing Emma.  
Everything that she did, from sleeping to searching 
cabinets with flashlights, was endlessly fascinating to 
Mulder.

"Animals can sometimes make sounds like ghosts," said Emma, 
closing one cabinet after another, until she'd exhausted 
all the cabinets she could reach, which were limited to all 
cabinets two inches above the floor.  "So we should look 
for mouses and raccoons and squirrels first."

"What makes you so sure?" asked Mulder.  

"Cause it makes sense," said Emma.  She poked her head 
around the corner of the kitchen island and shone her 
flashlight underneath, where there was a gap between the 
legs and the sideboard.  

Mulder grinned. Emma liked it best when everything made 
perfect sense, and somehow, Emma always found a way to make 
perfect sense of everything.  The knowledge of Emma as his 
and Scully's bizarre, most unexpected creation, was both 
humbling and, eight years later, ultimately still hard to 
believe.

"Tell me the story," Emma prodded, never one to forget a 
subject once it had been planted firmly in her brain.  She 
crept towards Mulder and took his hand, tugging him in the 
direction of the dining room.  "It's a good Looking For 
Stuff Story," she said.  "You and Mommy always tell scary 
stories when you look for stuff."

"Well," said Mulder, "You as a brand new human being is a 
scary story."

Emma snorted.  She glanced at him and rolled her eyes.  
"That was lame, Home-Fry."

"Thanks," said Mulder, dryly.  "My lifelong goal."

"Tell it!" insisted Emma.  She tugged his hand.

"Okay, okay." Mulder took a deep breath and let Emma lead 
him down the hall.  Their flashlights bounced happily.  

"Once upon a time, when I still had goldfish and your Uncle 
Skinner still didn't have any hair, and the Yankees still 
had a better record than the Red Sox, your Mommy was 
really, really pregnant, and really, really stubborn, and 
she wouldn't listen to the advice of the doctors -- imagine 
that -- when she was told she needed to stay in bed so that 
you could be born and not look like a mutant."  Mulder 
puffed out his cheeks and crossed his eyes.  Emma giggled, 
and he knelt so she could pop his cheeks with the palms of 
her hands.   

"So your Mommy was still very pretty, but kind of hormonal 
and indignant, and her tummy looked like a big bowling 
ball, it was like this --"  Mulder let go of Emma and 
pushed his hands out in front of him as if holding onto a 
giant beer belly.  He patted the invisible belly and Emma 
patted it too.  "So both Mommy and I wanted you to get here 
all safe and sound, and when I left the house, I told your 
Mommy to stay right there -- "

"Cause you had a case," said Emma, shining her flashlight 
against what appeared to be an old china cabinet underneath 
a sheet.   "A case with dead people.  And Mommy wanted to 
help because Mommy saves living people by looking at dead 
people."

"Right," said Mulder.  He shot Emma a glance to make sure 
she wasn't looking, and taped an envelope to the wall using 
the tape from Scully's Christmas wrapping.   He cleared his 
throat.  "So, uh, I went to work to try and help Uncle 
Skinner with this really big case, and I thought Mommy was 
at home, because that is where she said she would be.  But 
your Mommy, she sometimes has these completely kooky ideas 
-- "

"And Mommy went to the morgue!" Emma said, clapping her 
hands together.  This was Emma's favorite part of the story 
-- the part that had once gotten her kicked out of 
kindergarten for inappropriate sharing in the sharing 
circle.

"Yes, Mommy went to the morgue," Mulder said, wandering 
over to Emma and taking her hands.  He knelt down and 
grinned at her, extending his arms, fingers flexed.  "And 
Mommy was right in the middle of cutting up a disgusting 
dead body -- which is gross, right?  And she was holding -- 
"

"A liver!" squealed Emma, as Mulder reached forward and 
tickled her.  Emma's delighted laughter rang like a 
symphony all along the dark corridors, and in Mulder's 
mind, the sound was enough to light the entire house.

"Yes!" said Mulder, releasing her with a wink.  He leaned 
close and nuzzled her nose, and then pulled back to motion 
a door opening.  "And that is when I came in.  And I 
interrupted your Mommy's work.  So Mommy had to put the 
liver down."  Mulder mimed hefting a liver onto a table.  
Emma giggled. 

"We had a big fight right then and there, right over the 
gross dead guy, and finally, I won -- although your Mommy 
tells that part a little differently."  Mulder touched an 
index finger lightly to Emma's nose.  "So, after Mommy ran 
some labs, she agreed to come back with me to the 
apartment.  And we had just gotten into the elevator to go 
upstairs when -- "

"All the lights went out!"  Emma flicked off her 
flashlight, and then flicked it on, and then flicked it 
off.  

Mulder nodded. "That's right," he said.  

An image came to him, unbidden; the flickering lights of 
the morgue's elevator -- the way Scully had looked at him 
as she'd walked away into a different elevator, during a 
different time, when she had been nine months pregnant with 
William.  He'd flashed to a light in the sky, to evil men 
and supersoldiers tracking them like animals, to Scully's 
pale, unconscious face when he'd gotten to her, the blood 
pooled beneath her legs, William screaming in a makeshift 
bassinet next to the bed.  He recalled the feeling of 
spinning, of falling, of falling with no hope of ever 
hitting bottom.

Not Scully, he'd said to himself, over and over again, 
when, years later, the elevator in the morgue had rumbled, 
twittered, and shuttered between floors. Not his child.  
Not his Scully. Not again. Not ever again.  

"The elevator was broken," said Emma.  "And the emergency 
men said -- "

"That it would be a few hours at least," said Mulder.  "And 
your Mom said --"

"My water bottle is broken!"

Mulder grinned.  "Something like that, yeah."  

"And then Mommy screamed a lot.  And then I was borned!" 
finished Emma.  

"Born," corrected Mulder.  

"Yes," said Emma.  "And I looked like an alien."

Mulder searched Emma's wide, trusting eyes; they were green 
and huge and framed by long, red lashes.  There was no fear 
behind those eyes.  

Mulder pressed a kiss to Emma's cheek, which Emma promptly 
wiped off, whining, "Daaad."  

Mulder shrugged at her and grinned. She was the child he 
had literally brought into the world.  He had been the 
first to hold her, the first to see her, the first to wipe 
a lot of weird gook off her tiny little alien-like body. 

Mulder recalled that hot afternoon; the way the elevator 
lights had flickered a strange morse code; he recalled the 
sweat that had dripped down his neck at the exact moment he 
realized he'd have to deliver his own child.  

It had been just the two of them stuck in that elevator, 
just he and Scully -- the corridor above bustling with 
mechanics, agents, and rescue workers; something had 
snapped in one of the cables, a rare, one in a million 
chance.  As a result, the car had gotten stuck between 
floors; it had hovered, like a shoebox, practically in 
limbo, for hours.  The lights had never stopped flickering, 
not the entire time: a sort of weird flashdance. Scully's 
face, frozen in some awful, unimaginable twist of pain, had 
beaded over with sweat.  Her red hair stuck to her 
forehead.  And as she'd barked out orders at him, the look 
of concentration on her face exhaustive, the idea of 
pulling out a baby from his wife perhaps more than he was 
equipped to handle, Mulder had said the only thing he could 
think of to say, which was, "Scully, you realize this 
officially ruins sex forever." 

Which was when Scully had wordlessly yanked him forward by 
his collar and slammed him hard against the wall of the 
elevator. 

After that came screaming.  Scully screaming in pain, 
Mulder screaming like a girl, rescue workers screaming down 
to them to hold on, and then, eventually, finally, their 
baby girl, screaming and screaming and screaming.  

"Hi Emma," Scully had said, before collapsing like a rag 
against Mulder's shoulder.  

And that had been that.  

"Daddy," said Emma, "Do you think I still look like an 
alien?"

Mulder rose to his feet, took her hand, and led them out of 
the dining room and into the hall.  "Yes," he said, "Of 
course I do.  In fact, I'm thinking of putting you on my 
bulletin board at work."

Emma shook her head.  "You're silly," she said.


--

6.



Mulder's cell phone rang just as he and Emma had wandered 
into the hallway between the dining room and the kitchen.  
Mulder fished his cell phone out of his back pocket and 
read the display: Tater.  He clicked it on.  

"Hey, Spud," he said.  "You and your Mom find anything 
interesting up there?"

"Yeah," said William, excitedly.  "That's what I wanted to 
tell you.  There's a yearbook up here.  Mom says it's from 
the 1930s.    And there's someone in it who might be 
related to us, Dad!  He has the same last name -- Mulder!  
And there are all these people who signed the yearbook, 
too!"

"Yeah?" said Mulder.  "I hope they wrote juicy stuff."  He 
smiled to himself, recalling the box of keepsakes he'd 
found in the attic.  He leaned against the wall and 
switched the phone to his opposite ear.  "So, what do you 
think it means?"

"Well," William continued, excitement bubbling in his 
voice, "We also found a note on the wall upstairs -- it 
said 'A.M. Lived Here' -- that's a cryptic thing for a 
ghost to say in a note, right?"

"It is strange," agreed Mulder, seriously.  "But you think 
the two are connected?"

"Yes," said William.  "All the little notes in the yearbook 
are made out to Abe.  That's how Mom found Abraham -- there 
was an Abraham Mulder!  Daddy, I think it has to be true -- 
we're related to a real live ghost!  He must have been the 
one who died mysteriously and then when his family left all 
his stuff behind, he..." William paused.  Mulder bit the 
inside of his cheek; he could see the wheels turning in his 
son's head.  

The silence stretched for another second.

"Dad," said William.  "You knew about all of this already, 
didn't you?"  

Mulder took a deep breath.  Both of their children had too 
much of Scully in them to be fooled for very long.  "You 
say that like I've committed some crime," he said.  "How do 
you and your Mom always manage to make it sound so 
sinister?"

"Dad!" whined William.

"Look," said Mulder.  "I promise you, there's more to it.  
I wouldn't disappoint you on Christmas Eve, would I?"

"This so way figures," said William, with an aghast, 
Scully-like sigh.  "You totally set me up."

Mulder's mouth dropped open.  "I didn't -- that's --" He 
sighed.  "Have you been talking to your Mom?  Would I 
really do that to you?"

William paused.  "You don't want me to answer that."

"Yeah, probably not."

The line went silent for a moment.

"Is the story real, Dad?" 

 "Yes," insisted Mulder.  "Well, mostly -- but I promise 
you, it's good."  He thought of the three bedrooms tucked 
upstairs -- how the one at the very end of the hall 
overlooked the old tree-house.  "I told you, Spud.  There's 
really a story."

"But you're not gonna tell me what it is."

Mulder flashed to an image; five-year-old William toddling 
around The X-Files office with a plastic UFO that Agent 
Reyes had given him for his fifth birthday.  Scully had 
been at her desk, doing an analysis of some unknown 
compound that Mulder could not pronounce.  "Mulder," Scully 
had said, absently.  "Please keep the spud away from the  
fetal pigs.  He's going to hurt himself."  

Mulder had turned to face William, whose head was upturned 
and whose blue eyes were wide as plates. He'd stood next to 
Mulder's chair and stared up at a shelf filled with books, 
microscopes, molecular models, and several fetal pigs in 
formaldehyde jars.  He had neither moved forward nor back 
on his small legs; he neither reached out nor swiped.  He'd 
simply stared, head tilted to one side, as if thinking very 
hard.

"He won't knock them over," Mulder had said, returning to 
his case file.  He secreted a proud, fascinated glance at 
his only son, and added, "Trust me."

"You are always getting ahead of yourself, Spud," said 
Mulder, blinking away the memory.  "You have to be patient.   
Any truth that's worth it is going to be really hard to 
find.  There's a reason your Mom makes me look so carefully 
at all the evidence."

William made a frustrated noise.  "You. Are.  So. Lame. 
Dad," he said, drawing out the word 'Dad' like an 
accusation.  

Mulder ignored William's tone.  "How are you going to see 
the whole picture if I don't at least let you try and find 
it?" he asked.  

William sighed.  

In the background, Mulder could hear Scully's shuffling 
feet, and then her voice, swirling with that familiar, 
frustrated tone: "Is he yammering on about the truth and 
seeing the whole picture again?"

Mulder made a face.  If there had ever existed a reason to 
believe in the existence of psychic phenomenon, it was this 
really annoying sixth sense Scully had picked up after 
choosing to further the human species with him.

"Yeah," said William to Scully.   

"Give me the phone," said Scully to William.

Crap, thought Mulder, sagging against the wall.

"Mulder," said Scully, her tone clipped.  "It's almost nine 
o'clock, now."

"I'm aware," said Mulder.   

Scully took a breath.  "You know how I feel about the 
truth, Mulder -- that I'm real big on it, normally.  But 
can you please do us a favor and speed up your path to the 
truth so that my mother doesn't accuse me of planning 
holiday dissention for the fourth year in a row?"

"I promise you, I'm getting there," insisted Mulder.  "In 
fact, Emma and I were just about to -- "

Mulder turned his head as he realized Emma had been quiet 
for a long time -- far too long.  He shone his flashlight 
up and down the hallway, across the hall's lone window, and 
back down the floor.  Something jump-started in his chest, 
and he shone his flashlight straight in front of him like 
the headlights of a car.  "Emma?" He called.  

No answer.  

Panic rose slowly in Mulder's chest.  

"Emma?"

Vaguely, he could hear Scully's voice on the other end of 
the phone -- "Mulder, what is it?"

Mulder doubled back into the kitchen, his flashlight beam 
frantic over the walls, the kitchen island, across the 
counters, over the fronts of cabinets.  He swiped the light 
across the room, his head spinning so fast it was hard to 
think.  He bent to his knees and opened all the cabinets, 
slamming them back violently against their hinges.  The air 
around him began to constrict and then the air disappeared 
altogether; it was as if there had been a sudden loss of 
cabin pressure; he couldn't think, couldn't breathe, 
couldn't move.  

Emma.  Where was Emma?  

"Mulder," Scully repeated, the sound of her voice urgent -- 
but far away, as if in a tunnel. 

"Emma!" Mulder yelled.  

In his mind, there was a brilliant shock of light; his 
sister's voice rang out as the room was plunged into 
darkness, the sound of The Magician a low, indiscernible 
lull in the background.  "Fox!" Samantha shrieked. But Fox 
couldn't move.  Fox was stuck to the carpet, struck dead 
with fear; game pieces from their Stratego battle rattled 
across the board beneath his hands; he didn't know what to 
do, didn't know what to do, didn't know what to -- 

"Mulder, hold on, we're coming down -- "

But Mulder had already hung up.  


---
CONTINUED...

-----

TEAM BUILDING
by JL

-----

'Cause this is real and this is good.
It warms the inside just like it should.
But most of all, but most of all, it's built to last.'
-- Built to Last, Melee


------



--



TEAM MULDER


---


7.



Mulder had barely dialed Emma's number when Scully 
appeared, as if out of nowhere, one hand on his upper arm, 
the other holding tight to William.  Mulder pressed his own 
hand over one ear, his cell phone stuck between his other 
ear and shoulder.  The house remained dark and silent, 
although the noise in his head had grown painfully loud, 
and despite his trying to squeeze all of it out of his 
skull through his ear, it still remained, like a thunderous 
roar.  "Come on," he said, listening to Emma's phone ring 
and ring and ring.  "Come on."

"Mulder."    

Mulder turned, and his eyes searched Scully's -- what could 
he possibly say?  

"What. Happened?" said Scully, her voice carefully 
controlled.  Her hand clasped to Mulder's bicep as she let 
go of William and ran her flashlight over the room, her 
beam swinging madly back and forth.   "Emma!" She called.  
"Emma, I don't think this is very funny.  Answer me right 
now!"

"What's wrong?" asked William.  "Did something get Emma?"  

Scully glanced down at William.  She shook her head and 
ruffled his hair absently.  William glanced cautiously 
between Scully and Mulder with wide eyes.  He squeezed a 
hand around Scully's arm and Scully squeezed a hand around 
Mulder's arm.  Mulder turned to both of them, the cell 
phone still pressed to his ear as if he'd glued it there.

"Come on, Emma," he said.  "Come on, answer..."

"Mulder."  Scully squeezed his arm more forcefully.  "Where 
did you last see her?"

Mulder had a strange and sudden flash to a parent-teacher 
conference he and Scully had attended earlier in the year. 
They'd both been seated at tiny, elementary school desks, 
and Mulder's long legs had hung out like gangly, awkward 
pick-up sticks. He'd tried to adjust into a more 
comfortable position, but had succeeded only in tipping the 
desk at such an extreme angle that he was nearly dumped 
onto the floor.  Scully had been seated beside him, silent, 
her hands folded neatly in front of her.  Mulder, 
meanwhile, had felt, ridiculously, as if he'd been issued a 
detention slip.  

"Do you know why I've called the two of you in?" the 
teacher had asked them.

Scully had glanced at Mulder a moment before answering,  
"We were told that Emma has been... insubordinate."  Her 
face was unreadable.  "Is that accurate?"

Emma's teacher had sighed, as if the word "insubordinate" 
didn't even begin to cover it.  "Emma scared some children 
on the playground yesterday," said the teacher, and then 
took a breath, adding,  "Again." 

Mulder and Scully had exchanged wordless glances. 

"Some of the older girls came in to find me.  They were 
very upset.  They said Emma had disappeared from the 
playground for awhile, and that when she came back, she 
said that she had seen some sort of..." Emma's teacher 
paused, looking pained.  "Some sort of... Moth-Man... that, 
um... traps people underground and... sucks the life out of 
them?" Scully's weary gaze hit Mulder square in the side of 
the head just as Emma's teacher had continued, "As you can 
imagine, we find this behavior, uh, somewhat... alarming.  
To say the least.  We'd appreciate it if you would speak 
with Emma...before the other parents start complaining." 
Emma's teacher sighed.  "Again."

Scully had stiffly answered,  "Yes, we'll have a talk with 
her," just as Mulder had leaned forward to simultaneously 
ask, "What did Emma say the mothman looked like?" 

Mulder flipped off his cell phone with a frustrated curse 
and turned to Scully, his head throbbing as if in a vice.  
"Emma was standing RIGHT THERE," he insisted, as if that 
would change anything.  "When William called, she was 
standing right next to me.  And that was -- " He shone his 
flashlight on his watch.  " -- Five minutes ago. I was just 
about to tell you that we were headed upstairs and when I 
turned around, she was just... gone."

"Gone," Scully echoed, arms folded across her chest.  "She 
was just...gone."

"Is that not what I said?" Mulder glared at her.  "Why do 
you always have to repeat everything I say back at me like 
you're the goddamned computer on the Starship Enterprise?"

Scully's eyes narrowed and she jabbed him in the chest with 
her flashlight.  "Don't you dare make jokes," she said, 
jabbing him a second time.  "You're the one who dragged us 
out here in the first place, remember?  And just what were 
you doing down here anyway that had you so distracted -- 
were you hanging up more infuriating clues?  Inexplicably 
acting younger than our ten year old son?"  Scully advanced 
on him.   "Why weren't you watching Emma?"

Mulder spread wide his hands, resisting the urge to shake 
her.  He ran quickly through his mental file cabinet marked 
Emma: Tendency To Run Off.  "You're right," he bit out at 
Scully, his brain stuffed to the brim with too much bad 
information, "I wasn't watching Emma. In fact, this is all 
deliberate.  It's all part of my secret master plan to 
discover the truth about alien life by creating the perfect 
invisible eight year old child to spy on the government."

Scully's arms folded across her chest, brows raised, chin 
jutted.  She stood dangerously close to Mulder, her 
shoulders squared, her pale blue eyes glittering with 
challenge.  The space between them roared loudly.  
Everything inside of Mulder felt exposed, too close to the 
surface. No one else on Earth made Mulder feel this way  -- 
so unbearably close to humanity.  The problem with 
humanity, though, was that it seemed to come with equally 
raw amounts of everything. And at this point, Mulder didn't 
even know where to direct what he felt -- an anxiety as 
palpable as any concrete object, left to bubble inside his 
stomach; a dark, anxious, roiling mess.  

A few feet away, William curved his flashlight towards the 
kitchen, and then into the dining room. He wandered a few 
more steps down the hall and his flashlight flickered 
towards the hall closet. "Hey," he said.  Why don't I -- "

"No!" snapped Mulder and Scully, turning simultaneously.  
"Stay where you are!"

William jumped backwards.  His cheeks turned slowly pink.  
He grumbled something unintelligible and shone his 
flashlight at the opposite wall, muttering, "Fine.  Keep 
arguing.  I'm sure that'll find her faster."

Mulder blinked.  Scully shook her head and sighed. Finally, 
they turned to one another, deflated, as if William had 
somehow released a blister in the space between the two of 
them.  Scully clasped onto Mulder's upper arm and dragged 
him into a corner, her fingernails digging into him perhaps 
a little too hard.
  
"I need you to tell me everything you know about this 
house," she said, in a low whisper.  "Every last possible 
hiding place."

"So you can do what?" demanded Mulder, leaning close enough 
to feel the heat of her skin.  "Lock the two of us in the 
car to go haring off after Emma by yourself?"

"Goddamn it, Mulder, why the hell would I -- "

"Hey!  Mom, Dad!" yelled William.  

Mulder and Scully turned.  

William stood in front of the hall closet, his flashlight 
beam pointing like a glowing yellow finger.  He pushed his 
glasses back up his nose and took a step forward, his eyes 
filled with both dread and excitement as he motioned to his 
parents.

"What is it?" asked Scully, her voice tight.

Mulder glanced at her and imagined the horror-show 
unfolding in her brain; a lonely Christmas Eve over twelve 
years ago; a coffin hidden below the floorboards and filled 
with doppelganger skeletons; a selection of dangerous 
tricks with ghosts and doors and guns and brick walls; the 
sound of Bing Crosby, a record turning over with a sharp 
scratch, each of them slithering down the stairs, seemingly 
covered with blood --

Mulder squeezed Scully's upper arm and he felt her stiff 
muscles tense even further.  Slowly, his hand wandered down 
the soft fabric of her coat, past her forearm, past the 
crook of her elbow, until he reached the place at which her 
palm joined her wrist.  He nudged her slightly, felt her 
fingers flutter across the tips of his own  -- a silent 
apology. 

"What is it, Tater?" asked Mulder, fighting to keep the 
anxiousness from his voice.  "Did you hear something?  Is 
it Emma?"

Scully wove her fingers tightly through Mulder's and pulled 
him towards William.

William shook his head and pointed at the back wall of the 
closet where his flashlight beam had struck.  Scully peeked 
her head inside as Mulder came up from behind and peeked 
over her shoulder.  A small, two-foot high door swung open 
into the darkness from the back wall.  

Scully frowned.  "What the -- "

"I think," said William.  "That Emma must have found a 
magic door."



--

CONTINUED...

-----

TEAM BUILDING
by JL

-----

'Cause this is real and this is good.
It warms the inside just like it should.
But most of all, but most of all, it's built to last.'
-- Built to Last, Melee


------


-----


DOUBLE TEAMED


-----


"...But those reports were signed by a different medical 
examiner than the latest victim."
"That's pretty good, Scully."
"Better than you expected or better than you hoped?"
"Well, I'll let you know when we get past the easy part."
- Mulder and Scully: September, 1992



"Sometimes, nothing happens for a reason, Mulder."
"Oh? What's that supposed to mean?"
"Nothing.  Come on -- I'll make you some tea..."
- Mulder and Scully: April, 2000


---

8.



Once they'd descended through the crooked doorway into 
darkness, hand in hand in hand, Scully realized that Mulder 
had been silent for far too long.  

"Mulder," she finally said, her nerves stretched painfully 
thin, "Something a little more valuable and substantial 
than 'oh crap' would be helpful right about now." 

She shone her flashlight up and down the endless, black 
corridor to nowhere, the length of which she, Mulder and 
William had begun to walk, hands clasped, like a human 
chain. 

"Preferably," she added, "Before Emma calls us from 
Narnia."

"Don't worry," Mulder answered, his voice a floating echo 
in the pitch black.  "Narnia's only to the left  -- we're 
headed to the right."

"Oh yeah?  And where does that one get out?  The 
Conservatory?"

"Close," retorted Mulder.  "The Lounge." 

Wherever Mulder had lead them  -- through a sewer, a secret 
passageway, the looking glass from Alice in Wonderland -- 
it was even darker and quieter than the house itself.  
Scully's hand disappeared in front of her quickly; even 
Mulder, safely beside her, his hand clasped tightly in 
hers, was reduced to the mere wisp of an outline.  Were it 
not for him holding fast to her, he'd be little more than 
an idea, a memory.

Scully cast the beam of her flashlight back and forth as if 
trying to paint the light into being; she revealed an inch 
here, an inch there; concrete, cement, dust, mud, and even 
the occasional mouse carcass, but no Emma.  The air was 
damp and cold, and the walls smelled of mold and rock and 
years of untouched surfaces.  Nothing moved nor made a 
sound.  Time seemed to stand alarmingly still. 

"Mulder," said Scully, unable to keep the anxiety from her 
voice.  "Why didn't you -- "

"I didn't realize there was another entrance," clarified 
Mulder.  He let out a breath.  "When I was a kid, that 
closet was always filled to the ceiling with boxes.  And 
there was only one entrance from the house that I knew of  
-- in the garage."

Scully nodded, although the roar of her own thoughts, a 
blur of noise and sensation, had begun to cloud the sound 
of his voice.  In the absence of light and any movement 
beyond her own, Scully's mind filled with visions of --

-- Emma rushing in from school with a drawing she'd done of 
Big Foot, which Mulder had taped to the door of The X-Files 
office; Emma nodding off on the couch after insisting that 
she stay awake in order to debunk the theory of the tooth 
fairy; Emma, all awkward and star-shaped inside a down 
parka, being lifted up by William so that she could see the 
way icicles dripped; Emma and Mulder asleep inside the 
"UFO" Mulder had built with Scully's expensive sheets; 
Emma, whose tendency to wander off was nearly as legendary 
as her older brother's; Emma, the familiar echo of Mulder's 
originally frustrating precedent.

"Dad," said William, cutting through the silence.  "If we 
just keep talking and talking, do you think maybe Emma will 
hear us?"

"Maybe," said Mulder.  "If she's not too far ahead.  It's 
certainly not a bad idea."

"Okay," said William.  "Then, uh... maybe now would be a 
good time to tell us..."  William paused.  "Who Abraham 
Mulder is?"  Another pause.  "Unless you maybe want me to 
take, like, a longer path to the truth.  Like, uh, the 
yellow brick road or something."

Scully stifled a laugh, grateful suddenly, that her son had 
inherited his father's inappropriate sense of humor.   

Mulder let out a low whistle.  "Wow," he said. "Double-
teaming me -- that's harsh, Spud. You haven't by any chance 
been taking a Comedy for Skeptics class with your Mom, have 
you?"

"Oh no -- you're not getting away with this," Scully 
muttered, training her flashlight carefully left and right, 
"This twister is of your own making, Dorothy."

Mulder sighed.  "Okay," he said, "Now you're just implying 
something else entirely."  

A minute of silence stretched.  The sound of their 
footfalls, scuffling and scraping in tandem, seemed too 
loud against the black canvas of the tunnel.  Scully 
squeezed Mulder's hand, and Mulder returned the squeeze; he 
let his thumb trace anxious, clockwise circles over the 
backs of her knuckles. 

"The Abraham Mulder in that yearbook was actually my Uncle 
Abe," began Mulder.  "He lived in this house a long, long 
time ago -- back when I was a little boy.  He'd built it 
from the ground up after marrying my Aunt Jennie."

Scully frowned.  "Mulder -- " Her brows furrowed. "You've 
never told me about either of these people."

"I know," said Mulder, "I'll get to that."  

He cleared his throat.  

"Anyway.  So my Uncle Abe and my Aunt Jennie met during the 
war  -- she was with US National Security and he was in the 
military.  They fell in love somewhere over Germany, I 
think, towards the end of World War II, when the US was 
liberating all the internment camps.  Uncle Abe used to 
joke that Aunt Jennie had refused to marry him until the 
war was over, and their work was done, and peace on Earth 
had been miraculously enacted.  As it turned out, Peace on 
Earth was an unlikely scenario.  However, the second the 
news of allied victory hit the airwaves, Uncle Abe walked 
right up to Aunt Jennie and proposed.  Literally -- he got 
down on one knee right in the middle of the national 
anthem.  But Aunt Jennie was stubborn, and she initially 
said no.  She made Uncle Abe work for it.  Really, really 
work for it.  She apparently turned him down flat the 
second time, too -- she said they still had a lot of work 
to do and that he wasn't thinking clearly, which is silly, 
seeing as how all Mulder men are clear-headed rational 
thinkers who never jump headfirst into anything stupid."

Scully rolled her eyes.

"I think," Mulder continued, "That the third time he asked 
-- well, it was either the third or the fourth -- was when 
she'd finally said yes.  According to Uncle Abe, he'd taken 
her up to the deck of some US Naval warship, I forget the 
name off the top of my head, but it was where they'd first 
met -- and asked her one last time, looking out over the 
sea in the middle of the night.  And that's when she'd said 
yes."  Mulder took a long breath.  "I just remember, as a 
kid... I thought that it was a cool story -- the way my 
Uncle Abe told it."

"Mmm," Scully murmured, flashing back to an old, dingy 
motel room somewhere in the Southwest; some nameless place 
where the air conditioner had broken, where the television 
had been bolted into the table, where even the bible, 
usually secreted inside a drawer, had been stolen by the 
previous tenant. She remembered the sweat dripping between 
her nude shoulder blades as Mulder had whispered in her 
ear, his lips close to her earlobe: "They walked down to 
the basement, the two of them together, their hands tightly 
clasped..."

"What happened then?" said William.

Scully blinked away the memory as Mulder continued, "They 
ended up coming back to the States to settle down close to 
the capital, and Uncle Abe kept working for Department of 
Defense, officially -- although Aunt Jennie retired."

"Retired?" asked Scully.  "I thought she said she had a lot 
of work to do."

"She did," answered Mulder.  "But then I think she got 
pregnant -- although she must have lost that baby, because 
my cousin Marckus was an only child.  She apparently wrote 
a lot of it down in this old diary of hers -- Mark and I 
found it when we were screwing around in the attic as kids.  
We think she wrote some parts of it specifically to my 
uncle, although I don't think he ever read it.  We found it 
locked in a trunk, beneath some old clothes."

"When did Uncle Abe and Aunt Jennie move in here?" asked 
William. "Was it after they lost the baby?"

"I'm not sure," said Mulder.  "But I think so.  I just know 
it was before Mark was born.  My uncle liked to brag that 
he'd had the house built from the ground up, and that Aunt 
Jennie had driven him crazy with plans for the nursery.  
Granted, Uncle Abe had become something of a useless drunk, 
and I doubt he was on the roof hanging siding or anything, 
but he'd worked on the design.  And he apparently had all 
of these tunnels built underneath. In secret, I think -- I 
don't think my Aunt Jennie ever knew this part of the house 
existed."

"But why tunnels?  And why all the secrets?" asked William.  

"An underground bomb shelter," murmured Scully. "And safe 
passage to the outside.  So these corridors  -- "

"Lead into the safe room, and then out to the backyard and 
the garage, yeah," finished Mulder.  "Although... keep in 
mind, my Uncle Abe did a lot of work with my father after 
the war ended..." Mulder paused, and Scully could feel his 
thumb increase pressure over the planes of her knuckles.  

"Grandpa Mulder?" asked William. 

"Yeah," said Mulder, " And so I also think..." Mulder 
paused a second time.  Scully felt him stiffen almost 
imperceptibly.  "I think at one point, there was another 
reason for these tunnels  -- a reason that had nothing to 
do with the Cold War and everything to do with the work 
Grandpa Mulder did.  But by the time I was around your age, 
Spud, nobody ever came down here.  Uncle Abe was usually 
passed out or close to it by five, and my Aunt 
Jennie...well, she didn't like to talk about Uncle Abe's 
work.  And she didn't like us asking about it, either.  

Mulder took a deep breath, his voice far away, as if he 
were suspended in time. "But my cousin Mark and I, we were 
like you and Emma, Spud -- we liked to have adventures.  
And one summer afternoon, we found the blueprints in the 
attic.  It took us some time to actually -- to scope out 
where the entrances were, and where it all went, but... it 
was really kind of exciting. And then I guess it just 
became a kind of..." Mulder paused.  "A kind of safe 
place."

"A safe place?" asked William, a note of shock in his 
voice, "Down here?  Are you crazy, Daddy?" His flashlight 
bounced off the concrete walls and floor. "This place is 
like a tomb."

Scully shivered involuntarily.  Panic seemed to be lurking 
very closely behind her, and she held tightly to Mulder in 
the hopes that she could stave it off.

"Well," said Mulder, as he lead them further down into 
darkness.  "It was Mark, actually, who kept bringing us 
back down here.  At that point, my Uncle Abe and Aunt 
Jennie were starting to fight a lot  -- mainly about Mark.  
By then, Mark had gotten really, really sick, and he 
couldn't really... go anywhere else."  Mulder sighed.  "So 
we'd bring our flashlights and food and all kinds of things 
down here and pretend we were someplace else until we had 
to go back upstairs for dinner."

For a moment, nobody said anything.  Then --

"Dad?" 

"Yeah?"

"How come you've never told me about Cousin Mark?"

Scully glanced in Mulder's direction, curious as well.  

Mulder took a long breath.  

"Because your cousin Mark died a long time ago," answered 
Mulder.   Scully felt him raise their hands so that they 
were palm to palm; he intertwined their fingers, let their 
thumbs kiss.  "Cancer," he finished.  "Not long after... 
not long after your Aunt Samantha went missing."

Dumbfounded, Scully stopped them in their tracks and turned 
to face him.  

In all their years together, why had he never told her 
this?

Mulder sighed.   "I know," he said, his voice soft and 
tired and filled with misplaced guilt.  "Uncle Abe and Aunt 
Jennie sort of checked out on us when I was a kid, and I 
guess... I guess I never thought to mention it.  Uncle Abe 
died of heart failure when I was in high school, and my 
Aunt Jennie disappeared not long after that."  He shook his 
head.  "I'm sorry, Scully."  

Scully couldn't see Mulder well at all, but even in the 
darkness, she felt him as clearly as ever -- the inner 
workings of his intricate mind and heart, both having been 
through an awful lot of suffering.  She brought Mulder's 
hand to her lips and kissed his knuckles, her eyes closed, 
her anxiety and guilt co-mingled with his, as they 
wordlessly began to walk again.

"I'm so sorry, Daddy," said William.  

Scully felt Mulder lean away from her and bend towards 
William.  "So am I," he said, sadly.

"So, um..." William paused.  "Is Mark a ghost now?"

"I don't know," said Mulder.  "I can't ask him.  I wish I 
could."

"But you're not scared?  Of him maybe being here?"  
William's voice was shaky.  His flashlight crept up, 
tentatively, along the walls.  "It's really dark... "

Scully remained silent, waited for Mulder's answer.

"You know, Spud," said Mulder, after a long moment.  "I 
wouldn't say I'm not scared."  Mulder paused.  "The truth 
is, it's okay to be scared.  Scary things will always be 
out there somewhere.  But that's why it's more...what you 
choose do with the fear, that's more important." 

Scully's thumb traced approving circles over Mulder's 
knuckles -- the same pattern he traced on her, but 
counterclockwise.  A myriad of images spiraled through her-

-- rows upon rows of metal drawers that stretched on for 
what felt like miles; Mulder's hand on her back, urging her 
ahead as they ran through the darkness, their flashlights 
swinging frantically along the cement walls; Krycek's hand 
on her arm as he led her, confused and angry and terrified 
and nine months pregnant, into an elevator; she waking in 
the dead of night, drenched in sweat and fear, gasping, 
sobbing, Mulder's arms warm and familiar around her, "We're 
safe, we're safe here, Scully, shh, the babies are safe-" 

"Are we ready to try again?" asked Mulder.  

Scully startled slightly.  

"Ready," said William. 

Scully took a deep breath.  "Countdown."  

Mulder counted: "Three, two, one -- " 

"EMMA!" they yelled, all together.  And then again: "EMMA!"

There was no response.  

Scully's heart beat wildly; her gaze darted about, as if 
she could possibly see anything outside the glowing stripe 
of her flashlight, and she wondered, again, why Emma wasn't 
answering them.  Could something have happened to her?  
Could she have hurt herself?  Scully took a deep breath 
that hurt as much going in as it did coming out. 

"Shh," murmured Mulder, his mouth warm and moist and sudden 
against the skin of her earlobe.  "We'll find her.  She's 
down here -- I know these tunnels. We'll just keep walking 
and talking and I bet you she hears us first."

Scully bit her lip. She felt Mulder press a feather-light 
kiss to the back of her ear.  God, how she wanted to 
believe.

Without anything to ground her vision further, Scully's 
mind wandered again: an uncontrollable mental defense.  

When Emma was six, she'd gone through a strange phase of 
wanting to name all of her stuffed animals after kitchen 
appliances and accessories.  One afternoon, Scully had come 
home early from work, a stack of papers and folders and 
books piled high in her arms, and found Mulder and Emma in 
the kitchen, sitting on the tile floor, with every stuffed 
animal lined up from the dining room to the living room.

"Did I somehow miss the Thanksgiving Day Parade?" Scully 
had asked, setting down her folders and books on the couch.  
She'd gazed at Mulder, eyebrow arched, and continued,  "In 
the middle of May, no less?"

 "Actually, you missed the naming ceremony," Mulder had 
answered, as Emma hopped up like a spring.  

Emma had gone running into the living room, starting at the 
very end, with William's beloved Blue Bunny, and smacked 
each doll on the head, like a game of Duck-Duck-Goose, as 
she ran down the line: "Toaster, spoon, fork, spatula, 
oven, fridge, knife, whisk, blender, scraper, can-opener, 
plate, cup, pan, pot, boiler, pitcher, microwave, corkscrew 
--" she patted a hand to her chest, adding, "Skillet," and 
then patted Mulder on the head, finishing, "Fryer."

"Really," Scully had said, as she'd tried to hide her 
laughter.  

Emma high-fived Mulder then, and Mulder had nodded, as if 
this all made perfect sense to him.  He'd pulled Emma onto 
his lap, declaring, "Well-done, Home Girl."

"Home SKILLET," Emma had corrected, just as Scully sat down 
beside them, a hair away from stealing a long, slow kiss 
from Mulder --  

William had come running in to the kitchen and skidded to a 
halt above them; he shook his head as if a crime had been 
committed right under his nose.  "Old people are so 
disgusting," he'd declared, a basketball under one arm, 
before walking away with a glass of water.

"Mom?" said William, breaking Scully free of the memory, 
"Why do you think Emma would run down here by herself?  I 
mean, I get why Dad isn't too scared, but..." He didn't 
finish the thought.

Scully took a long, deep breath.  She wished she knew how 
to answer that question, although the truth was she didn't 
feel as if she had any answers at all.  

"Your sister, sometimes... I think she's a little too 
fearless."  Scully shook her head.  "But I don't know why 
she ran off.  I don't know why either of you run off."  

"Hey!"  William swung his flashlight towards his mother, a 
note of agitation in his voice. "I didn't do anything, 
remember? I was being totally good this time.  Why do you 
always have to bring me into it?  It wasn't me!"

Scully sighed.  "That's not what I meant, Tater."

"And please quit calling me Tater," muttered William.  "I 
told you before, Mom.  I'm ten years old now."

Scully bit the inside of her mouth so hard she nearly drew 
blood. "Yes, I know," she said, feeling suddenly exhausted.  
"You keep reminding me."

Mulder's hand untangled from hers and traveled up her arm, 
where he massaged, a careful, familiar pressure, lingering 
for a full minute on her bicep before creeping down to re-
clasp her hand.  

Without warning, a memory jumped to the forefront of 
Scully's mind: a park, trees, flowers, Bill, her parents, 
peanut butter and jelly sandwiches -- when was this from?  
Scully squinted, trying to remember.  She was sure she had 
been only a little girl, maybe six or seven, and -- yes, it 
was clearer now -- her parents had taken the whole family 
for a picnic at the apex of one of the shorter mountains 
overlooking the valley in California. They'd eaten peanut 
butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch and stayed to enjoy 
the view.  As the afternoon had worn on, her brothers had 
gotten to playing Frisbee --

"You know," said Scully, her mind filled with the image, 
"When I was a little girl, I used to run off from time to 
time, too."

"Oh, Mom, you SO did not," scoffed William, as if Scully 
had suggested she'd once been a salamander.  

"Hey," said Scully, "Contrary to popular belief, I wasn't 
miraculously born your forty-one year old -- "

 "Forty-two, actually -- ow! Son of a --"  

Scully let go of Mulder's index finger from where she'd 
bent it backwards, and continued, "I was your age once, 
too."

"So?" said William, the agitation still lingering in his 
voice.  

"So," said Scully,  "There's this one time I'm remembering-  
I was a little younger than your sister is now, and your 
grandparents had taken all of us on a trip -- we'd gone to 
California."  She shook her head, closed her eyes a moment, 
and then continued, "We'd had to drive around a long road 
that wound all the way up to where the picnic area was.   I 
remember we could see the valley far below us from the car. 
Anyway, uh, after we had finished eating, I had wanted to 
play Frisbee with your Uncle Bill, but he'd told me to get 
lost --"

Scully felt herself falling back into the memory -- Bill 
had pushed her and she'd twisted her ankle and fell forward 
into the dirt.  Her ankle had seized up and made her cry 
out; she'd skinned her hands and gotten mud caked on her 
knees, and she'd had to literally shake bugs out of her 
disheveled red braids.  But instead of shrieking and crying 
and telling her parents, she'd clawed up a handful of dirt 
and chucked it violently at her brother, and then rushed 
off into the woods, angry and sore.

"So Bill was always a douchebag?" asked Mulder, as if 
asking Scully a casual question about the weather.

"Mulder. Language -- how many times do I have to tell you?"

"That means yes," added William, who began snickering.  

Mulder and William snickered together, and Scully let out a 
loud sigh.  "ANYWAY," she said, yanking Mulder forward, 
hard, "I ended up at the edge of the woods, and I remember, 
there was this... this wild rabbit, just sitting on the 
other side of the hill.  And so I..."  Scully frowned, 
recalling the trees, the way the leaves had felt pushing 
against her skin, the adrenaline prickling at her heart as 
she'd run, her only thought on following what looked 
exactly like one of her stuffed toys --

"I chased it," Scully continued, "It ran down this trail, 
and then along the side of the mountain, and then I chased 
after it down an actual rock face.  I mean, I just, I 
wasn't thinking about anything but --"

"Catching that elusive white rabbit," finished Mulder, who 
pulled them up short.  Inside the beam of Scully's 
flashlight lay a fork in the road -- to the right was 
darkness, and to the left was equal darkness.  "Well, 
Alice?" he said, as Scully shone her flashlight on first 
the left corridor, and then the right. "Which rabbit hole 
would you prefer?"

"Um, Mom?" piped up William, his flashlight trained on the 
floor.  "Can you, uh, choose fast?" The beam from his 
flashlight darted back and forth, where the floor made tiny 
squeaking noises. "I think there are mice in here."

Scully stopped moving completely.  

Her mouth dropped open.  

A shiver of realization ran up and down her spine like a 
chill, and as Mulder turned to look at her, Scully directed 
her flashlight into his eyes.  "Mice," she said to him.  
"Oh, my God -- mice!"

Mulder frowned and shielded his face.  "What?  You thinking 
of screaming like a girl, too?"

"Mulder, Emma, she -- "  Scully squeezed Mulder's hand, her 
brain turning much faster than her mouth could move.  In 
her mind's eye she saw the rabbit again rushing down the 
face of the mountain ledge, getting further and further 
away no matter how fast she  --  

"-- chased a mouse," said Mulder, finishing Scully's 
thought.  "There must have been a crack between the door 
and the wall, and when the mouse ran under the door  -- "

"Oh!" gasped William, "And that's why she wasn't afraid, 
isn't it?  She followed the mouse with her flashlight!"

"Yes," said Scully, "That's -- "

"Exactly what I'm thinking, too," finished Mulder.  

"Quick -- " Scully's flashlight ran in desperate circles 
over the concrete floor at William's feet, the small yellow 
beam searching as William's flashlight soon followed -- a 
veritable spotlight dance, like the searchlights of a 
prison helicopter. 

"Which way?" asked Scully.  "Where are they headed?"  Her 
eyes darted a million places at once.  She just needed to 
see --

"Aw, man," said William.  "I think they already ran away.  
I'm not seeing them anymore, Mommy!" 

"To the right," decided Mulder, tugging hard on Scully's 
arm.  

Scully set in with her heels.  "No -- wait -- how do you-"

"The fallout room," answered Mulder, tugging harder.  
"There's food. I was down here this afternoon.  If the mice 
are going anywhere, they're probably -- "

"Following the food," finished William and Scully.  

"It's as good a guess as any," agreed Mulder.

The three of them, all nearly out of breath, each stared 
from one to the other.  

"Okay then, to the right," ordered Scully, her heart 
starting to pound.  "We're picking up the pace of this 
train.  Everyone hold on tight, you got me?"  



-----
CONTINUED...

-----

TEAM BUILDING
by JL

-----

'Cause this is real and this is good.
It warms the inside just like it should.
But most of all, but most of all, it's built to last.'
-- Built to Last, Melee


------


-----


DOUBLE TEAMED


-----


-----

9.




Mulder held fast to Scully as the three of them, hand in 
hand in hand, rushed down the dark corridor, flashlights 
boomeranging off the walls, Scully close beside him, the 
sound of her quick breaths urging him on, his heart 
pounding, the boy in his mind rooted to the floor, the man 
just as afraid as the boy but running, running, running, 
running -- 

-- words jammed in his throat, the words he sometimes 
whispered to himself, that it wouldn't be like Samantha, 
that it wouldn't happen with Scully here, that nothing 
could destroy what he'd created with Scully, nothing  --

-- Scully tugged on him and he tugged on William and 
suddenly at the end of the corridor, which stretched on and 
on forever (he couldn't remember -- had it always been so 
long?) there was a sound, some sort of record playing, a 
piano, his heart beating faster, his pulse too loud, it was 
hard to hear with his hammering pulse, that piano and 
singing, the record player, it had to be that old record 
player, Emma was playing it, who else would be playing it, 
only Emma --
 

---

10.



-- although in the back of Scully's mind there always 
existed a hundred other possible outcomes, a thousand 
complicated scenarios in which the truth was tragedy 
itself, in which the truth was she and Mulder always 
entwined but alone in the end, existing only in a space big 
enough for the two of them, everything else gone, 
everything else sacrificed, their lives, their safety, 
their children, all of it gone -- 

"Mom, Dad!" exclaimed William, and he tugged them forward, 
pointing.  The music got louder and louder: a series of 
echoes.  "Look!"  He broke free and ran ahead of them.  "I 
can see something!"  He gestured wildly, and a dull, 
flashing glow illuminated him in green and blue and red.  
"I see a light!"

"Emma," managed Scully.

"Follow it," ordered Mulder, and he tugged on Scully's 
hand, her flashlight flickering wild in all directions -- 

--

11.



When the three of them finally burst through the heavy 
metal door to the safe room, under which a splay of 
blinking, multicolored Christmas lights flashed, Mulder 
tripped over Scully and Scully tripped over Mulder, and 
William tripped over them both, and all three knocked each 
other through the open door, to the ground, in a heap. 

In the messy scramble to get upright, Mulder was first, 
nearly stepping on Scully, who grasped awkwardly to a 
fistful of Mulder's coat, as behind her, William pushed 
himself up along the wall using the back of Scully's knee 
for leverage.  

As Mulder's eyes quickly surveyed the safe room, with its 
cinder block walls, the mini Christmas tree, the wooden 
table, the shelves filled with old books and toys and 
Tupperware containers, the record player on the floor, and 
the lamp standing tall in the corner, he finally spotted 
his daughter, her lanky body curled, like a cat's, atop a 
pile of couch cushions.  Her eyes were closed, her hand 
wrapped tight around her purple flashlight.

"Oh, my God," Scully whispered, as the two of them rushed 
forward, hand in hand, dropping to their knees before the 
couch.  Scully's eyes were huge and wild, and out of a 
doctor's default, she touched two fingers to Emma's wrist.  
"Mulder, is she -- "

Mulder ran his hands over Emma's shoulders, her neck, her 
messy red curls, and her forehead, which was warm and 
reassuring and slightly damp with sweat beneath his touch.  
He lowered his head to search her tiny, heart-shaped face 
when -- 

"Daddy?"  Emma's eyelids fluttered open and she yawned, 
confused, gazing from Mulder to Scully to William, and then 
back to Mulder again. Her brows pinched as she blinked, 
rubbed at her eyes, and frowned, looking for all the world 
like Scully after a particularly frustrating autopsy.  
"Daddy, what are you doing?" 

Scully reached a shaky hand to caress the top of Emma's 
head and sagged against Mulder's shoulder.  "Oh, thank 
God," she whispered.  "I'm too goddamned old for this..."

Mulder drank Emma in, memorizing the perfect symmetry of 
her features. "I'm checking to see if you're still 
breathing, Home Skillet," he said.

Emma made a face at Mulder as if he'd just suggested he 
could walk backwards on his hands.  "Why wouldn't I be 
breathing?" she asked, and then she smiled sleepily and 
patted him on his cheeks.  "I learned when I was a baby.  
Sometimes, you are really silly, Home Fry." 

Mulder grinned at her, leaned forward, and pressed a kiss 
to her cheek.  "Yeah, I guess I am," he agreed, settling 
down next to her on the couch, feeling about a hundred 
years old. 

"Oh, and guess what?" added Emma.  She bounced happily in 
place and clapped her hands.  "I founded and trapped a 
mouse!"  She pointed towards the far corner, where a tiny 
gray mouse nibbled at a Christmas cookie from beneath an 
overturned plastic fishbowl.  "I named him Sasquatch," she 
added.  "Sasquatch Marckus Mouse."

William's nose scrunched.  He tapped at the fishbowl with 
the toe of his shoe.  The mouse startled, and then scooped 
up a cookie crumb and scrambled to the other side. "I can't 
believe you actually caught it," he said.  "That's pretty 
cool, Em."

"It's only cause he let me," said Emma, yawning with both 
hands stretched over her head.  "He's a really, really nice 
mouse."

Mulder frowned, gazed at the mouse, and then at Emma.  
"Emma," he said, "How did you know to name it Marckus?"

"Ah, here we go," mumbled Scully.  

Mulder ignored her.  

Emma shrugged and squirmed, worm-like, onto Mulder's lap. 
Mulder caressed the back of her head, breathing in her mild 
shampoo, and he pictured her, just one week old and alien-
like, lying against his chest, fast asleep.

"Emma -- " Mulder turned her in his lap so that they faced 
one another.  Hazel-green eyes met hazel-green eyes and the 
two of them blinked together.  "Did you hear an actual 
voice when you were down here?  Or maybe something that 
sounded like it could have been a voice?  Did you see 
anything?  Maybe... a light, or -- "

"MULDER."  Scully's eyes closed wearily.  She combed her 
fingers through her long, tangled red hair.  "Please tell 
me you're not suggesting that our eight year old daughter 
was deliberately lead into the safe room by your deceased 
cousin in the form of a small, grey rodent."

Emma giggled and shook her head. "Silly," she declared.

"Awesome," whispered William.  "Good catch, Mom."  He 
crouched down on all floors next to the fishbowl and peered 
at the mouse, who looked terrified.  "Can we do an exorcism 
on it, Dad?"

"No, don't you touch him, Garbage Monster," said Emma.  She 
frowned and jabbed a finger in the direction of her older 
brother.  "Mommy, make him stay away from Sasquatch."

Scully rubbed her palm over her face.  "Okay, you know 
what?" she said, "No ancient religious rituals are to be 
performed on any animal in this room, possessed or 
otherwise.  And no name calling, either.  In fact, you -- " 
She gestured with her thumb towards William, then nodded in 
the direction of the bookshelf on the other side of the 
room.  "-- over there, and you --" She turned to Mulder, "-
help me out here, would you please?"

Mulder searched Scully's face -- her blue eyes, full of 
knowledge and framed by pale red lashes, her pale red brows 
softly arched; in their nearly twenty years together, the 
spark in Dana Scully's eyes had not been extinguished.  
Flickering inside of that spark, he saw another version of 
her; Dana Scully the spy, all of twenty-five years old and 
mildly annoying with her scientific rationalizations and 
her common sense and her inability to leave him alone to 
his own self-destructive devices. 

"Oh, come on," groaned William.  He stalked over to the 
opposite corner and folded his arms across his chest.  
"Just one exorcism?  Please?"

Mulder held up his palm to his son in warning, shot him a 
look.  He touched a finger to Scully's knuckles.

William sulked but shut his mouth.  

"Thank you," said Scully. 

"Sometimes," said Mulder to William, "There are some truths 
better left-- " He glanced at the mouse in the fishbowl, 
"un-tortured."

William rolled his eyes.  "So dramatic," he grumbled.  He 
turned to the bookshelf and began picking through the items 
stacked there.  When he got to a box of board games that 
had been tucked into a lower cabinet, he yanked the box 
down, rifling through it with rapt interest. 

"And as for you, Home Skillet," said Mulder to Emma, 
touching his index finger to the tip of her nose, "You are 
completely, absolutely, totally grounded."

Emma's mouth dropped open.  "But -- " She gazed imploringly 
at Scully.  "But, Mommy -- "

 "What he said," Scully managed.  She sat back against the 
couch, eyes closed, breathing in slowly and deeply.  She 
let out one last, deep breath, and added, "You might want 
to prepare Sasquatch over there for a long, long winter, my 
child."
--

CONTINUED...

-----

TEAM BUILDING
by JL

-----

'Cause this is real and this is good.
It warms the inside just like it should.
But most of all, but most of all, it's built to last.'
-- Built to Last, Melee


------


-----


DOUBLE TEAMED


-----
---

12.



In the end, the four of them gathered, cross-legged on the 
floor, around an old game of Stratego.  The floor lamp in 
the corner lit the room with a soft yellow glow, and the 
record player filled the space with a piano-only version of 
Old King Wenceslas.  The tiny Christmas tree Mulder had set 
atop the room's only table blinked on and off in red, 
green, blue, yellow, and pink; bold splashes of color 
against the white cinderblock.  

After moving Sasquatch Marckus the Mouse a safe distance 
from their Christmas Eve pow-wow, Scully had broken out 
Mulder's Tupperware containers filled with cookies and 
pretzels and crackers, using the couch as a buffet.  Four 
juice-boxes had been set beside the containers on a tray 
fashioned out of one of the larger lids.

"Dad," said William, "I'm way confused.  Which of these 
pieces are the ones that can go anywhere?"

"Those," said Mulder, pointing towards eight of the blue 
game pieces.  "Those are scouts, and scouts can move across 
any of the squares backwards or forwards or sideways.  
They're also the only pieces that can launch an attack from 
far away."

William nodded.  He pushed his glasses back up the bridge 
of his nose, and studied the game-board.  "And I'm trying 
to capture Mom's flag, right?"

"Right," said Mulder, who sat with Scully's back leaning 
against his front, her head resting tiredly against his 
shoulder.  The weight of her was warm and reassuring, and 
Mulder leaned down to kiss the back of her neck, simply 
because she was Scully, and she was his wife, and he 
really, really liked the structure of his universe in that 
regard. 

As Scully leaned back against him, Mulder recalled the 
Scully whom he had returned to eleven years ago.

Only months before William's birth, Mulder had risen, 
perennial-like from the dead, after having been abducted by 
forces unknown -- only to be reunited with a woman whom 
he'd loved but hadn't recognized; a down-trodden, sadder, 
more paranoid version of his once resilient Scully. The 
further bits he'd pieced together of what he'd called "dead 
time" included things he hadn't been able to reconcile with 
himself; another agent sitting in HIS chair at HIS desk in 
HIS basement office, another agent carrying out HIS work, 
another agent, some guy named Doggett, ushering HIS 
partner, the woman pregnant with HIS child, through 
entryways and from car doors and over grassy fields, a hand 
on her back -- a hand that Mulder had immediately wanted to 
break off, crush, and use as a fine powder for caulking 
around his toilet.  

Meanwhile, Mulder himself had spent three months missing, 
and then more three months dead, and then at least one 
month alive but not really.  During that time had come the 
dreams -- violent, frightening dreams; dreams of soundless 
gray landscapes; dreams of his brain being used for 
telepathic sledge-hammering; dreams of being starved and 
deprived of water and oxygen; dreams of being strapped to a 
chair and prodded with drills, screws, and needles; dreams 
of being slit apart and ripped open like a ham; dreams so 
powerful and so terrifying that only one thing had ever 
remained in their wake:

Scully.  

A thousand different versions of Scully, a million 
different versions of Scully, every version of Scully 
imaginable, any version of Scully possible; she had always 
been his reason for remaining in the world, his reason for 
coming back from the dead -- he had just assumed, prior to 
his actually coming back from the dead, that such a 
statement would remain more of a clever, romantic notion. 

And yet, there he'd suddenly found himself, an undead freak 
of nature-- a man who had been violently thrown from the 
moving vehicle of his own life.  And if that hadn't been 
depressing enough, Scully had also been really, really 
pregnant, which meant that Scully would also inevitably be 
having an actual, half-Mulder, half-Scully, real-life child 
of the corn. And somehow, the more he'd kept thinking of 
that child as his, and the more he'd kept telling himself 
how happy he was for her to be raising it, the more 
miserable he'd actually felt for himself.

So of course, that spring had been their first Lamaze 
class.  Their first really, really awkward Lamaze class. 

Mulder, playing the ever-dutiful whatever-he-was, had of 
course agreed to go with Scully, and that first time, had 
seated himself ungracefully behind her, her back to his 
front, his legs cupping her hugely pregnant body in an 
almost obscenely comical "V."

As the instructor had rambled on, something about... 
visualizing some crap and imagining something pretty and -- 
Christ, he couldn't even remember anymore -- Mulder had 
felt his lips getting closer and closer to the soft shell 
of Scully's ear.  When finally his nose had grazed her 
scalp, breathing in the familiarity of her, the warmth of 
her, the sweet scent of her skin, it had been like turning 
over the batteries in the remote control and realizing that 
they worked much better when facing the correct direction. 
Suddenly, Mulder had found himself dumbfounded by the 
proximity of her. 

Meanwhile, the instructor had continued on, her voice an 
indistinct, soporific hum. Time had begun to inexplicably 
slow and slow until Mulder was sure it had stopped 
altogether, until he'd had a sudden vision of a young Dana 
Scully standing above him, hot-headed and flabbergasted and 
soaking wet from rain, yelling, "What do you mean, time 
just disappeared?  Time can't just disappear!  It's a 
universal invariant!"

"Mulder," Scully had whispered.  "There's a reason pregnant 
women have coaches.  I need you to pay attention."

"I am," he had insisted, his lips on her earlobe, his 
tongue darting out against her skin, the effect on her 
sharp and almost as immediate as if he had kissed her 
instead.  "She's talking about breathing, right?  Isn't 
that what really matters here? The breathing part?"  His 
lips had brushed her ear again, and then a third time, and 
then a fourth time -- just soft and close enough so it 
could have easily been disguised as close whispering. "I'm 
telling you, Scully, Oprah has this market cornered. We 
could be learning all of this over a pizza in my apartment 
right now." 

Scully's own breathing had shuttered, her body tense and 
still as she managed, "What...are you talking about?"

The truth was, he hadn't really known himself.  

"Uh," he'd said, for lack of anything better.  His nose had 
begun to trace a pattern -- up along the rim of her ear, up 
into her hair, and then back along her earlobe, hovering, 
circling, as if he were about to graze an electric fence.  

"I think, actually, that I'm allergic to this new shampoo 
of yours," he'd babbled, feeling stupid, feeling her body 
tensing beneath him, hearing her breathing grow shallower 
and harsher.  "I'll just be honest and say... it's not my 
favorite."  He breathed her in to try and make his point 
but instead felt the world tilt on its axis.  "It's an 
uncomfortable smell. I don't know that my olfactory senses 
are interested in supporting it."  

Scully had turned towards him, her blue eyes glittering in 
frustration, her lips parted as if to fire off some 
smartass retort.  The pull between them had felt 
unstoppable, almost gravitational.  

Then she leaned in closer, close enough that he'd felt her 
breathe into his lips; she'd been a hair away, a world 
away, for what seemed like an entire lifetime.  

"Quit talking to me in riddles," she'd managed, her cheeks 
burning as his nose angled without permission across the 
soft landscape of her skin. "If you have something you want 
to say to me, Mulder, then you... you should... Oh..."  

Their palms, bracing flat against the floormat on either 
side, had begun to brush, his thumb tracing a line up and 
down her wrist until her breathing had grown so shallow he 
worried she might actually be in some sort of pain.  

"Just forget it and keep breathing," Mulder had urged her, 
trying desperately to make sense of this thing that had 
always managed to stop time between them. "In and out, 
breathe, Scully -- "

"I AM breathing," she'd whispered haughtily, her nose 
tracing a line alongside his.  "I've been breathing, I'm 
STILL breathing.  When are YOU going to breathe, Mulder? I 
don't want..."  Her nose against his, her lips so close, 
the air around them building into a low-pressure front -- 
it would have been like igniting the fuse of a bottle-
rocket in the middle of a lightning storm and watching it 
explode, fiery and white-hot, up and up into the electric 
sky --

Which of course was when the instructor had loudly cleared 
her throat and Scully had pulled away, the movement like a 
Bandaid ripped off bare skin.  

"Wait," he'd whispered.

"MULDER," Scully had replied, with unusual force.

Mulder turned.

Apparently, in the space where time had not-exactly stopped 
at all, they'd put on quite the floorshow.

"Uh," Mulder had said, feeling strange and light-headed and 
too many eyes upon him. The Lamaze instructor, wearing a 
less than forgiving expression, glared at him with arms 
folded across her chest.  

"You know, this is all much more interesting than I'd 
originally anticipated," he'd said--

--and immediately felt Scully sink into herself, like a 
snail. 

"Mainly," he'd rambled, a tightrope walker without a net, 
"I think it's the breathing part. Not that I, you know, not 
that I myself am pregnant, clearly I'm not, but I do have a 
pregnant person with me, and the, um, the closing your eyes 
and breathing irregularly into the same space as your 
partner is very, ah, I'm sorry -- what... what is this 
called again?"

The instructor had stared at him blankly. "Lamaze?" 

"Yes," Mulder had replied, and then snapped his fingers 
appreciatively.  "Thank you."  Then he'd turned to Scully, 
who by this point had buried her head in her hands. He 
leaned forward and whispered boldly into her ear, "So this 
thing we've been doing for eight years? It is apparently 
called Lamaze."

The image faded as Mulder, his legs bent in a well-
practiced, comfortable "V" on either side of Scully, 
reached beneath her arms, his other hand resting on her 
knee, to point out the little blue game pieces to William: 
"Marshal, General, Colonel, Major, Captain, Lieutenant, 
Sergeant, Minor, and Spy.  They're all ranked differently."  

"Too complicated, Daddy," said Emma, who had curled up next 
to Scully's knee.  She tried to stifle a yawn.

"Yes, well, Daddy does like complicating things," murmured 
Scully.  She ran her fingernails lightly in circles on 
Emma's back, and gazed at Mulder out of the corner of her 
eye, finishing,  "Isn't that right, oh He of Foolish 
Ghostbusting Who Will be Forced to Explain This in the 
Morning?"

"You know," said Mulder, "I really wouldn't talk, Madame 
Fool Who Follows The Fool."  He examined his playing area 
carefully and ran over in his head which pieces he wanted 
to move.  "But that's all fine, really, because William and 
I are going to crush you."

Scully snorted.  "You men and your talk of crushing 
things," she said, picking up one of the red game pieces 
and examining it as if for prints.  She shook her head.  
"Humorous indeed."  From the way she angled against him, 
Mulder could still feel her steady, even breathing. 

"Like bugs under a shoe," Mulder repeated, his lips on her 
neck indicative of something else entirely.


--

13.



Within minutes, Emma had fallen asleep again and had curled 
tightly against Scully.  Her body heat pressed through the 
thin layer of Scully's jeans, and Scully again felt relief, 
as acute as any adrenaline shot in the arm:  Emma was okay.  
Emma was fine.  They were all fine.  

Scully leaned back into Mulder's chest, which made a fine 
pillow, and examined the game board; it had been set with a 
hodge podge of blue and red plastic pieces.   She would, of 
course, never admit this to Mulder, but secretly, she was 
quite terrible at Stratego.  

Scully let her hand rest protectively on Emma's back. "I 
think we have a man down," she murmured.  

"I noticed that," said Mulder, his lips tracing the outer 
rim of her ear, over and over and over again, a familiar 
and dizzying pattern.   "Looks like you've been officially 
ditched, Team Scully."  His breathing was loud as thunder 
in her eardrums.  "All the better for Team Mulder to sink 
your battleship."  

Scully's eyelids fluttered shut, a shiver playing through 
her stomach.  Her mind was a confusion of floating energy, 
a million versions of Mulder --

-- Mulder flipping through slides at his desk, the glare of 
a slide-monitor hitting his glasses as he cockily dismissed 
her; Mulder bursting through the door of her apartment, his 
gun steady in hand, as Eugene Tooms reached for her; Mulder 
returning her necklace as she lay in a hospital bed, his 
eyes filled with relief; Mulder standing with her under the 
cover of umbrellas as toads fell from the sky; Mulder 
holding her in a hospital hallway as she sobbed, determined 
to live with Cancer; Mulder in the hallway outside of his 
old apartment, begging her not to leave --

"Hey, Scully?" he whispered.  "What are you thinking?"

-- Mulder in the basement office the day after they'd first 
had sex, how awkwardness had filled the room like too much 
water in an upside-down teakettle; Scully had said she 
wasn't so sure it would work out, this strange, turbulent 
thing between them... and shock had registered in Mulder's 
face, a thunderstorm of emotion in his voice; "I went to 
Antarctica for you, damn it!" 

-- Mulder storming out and slamming the door behind him, 
and then seconds later, Mulder storming back in; Mulder 
wordlessly pushing her up against the wall like a man with 
a purpose; Mulder tangling his hands in her hair and 
kissing her as she'd never been kissed, and with as much 
passion as he had ever put into his work, the force of it 
so great she'd nearly forgotten her own name; Mulder 
growling at her a second time, "Antarctica," his lips 
swollen and wet, as he stormed back out again --

-- only to barge back in a moment later, adding, "And it 
WAS a spaceship!," slamming the door so viciously that 
she'd had to shield her head from pencils raining on her 
from the ceiling -- 

"I'm thinking," mumbled Scully, her eyes still closed, her 
head slightly fuzzy, "About whether you're going to tell me 
the real reason you brought us here, or whether I'm going 
to have to beat it out of you."

"Hmm," said Mulder, his nose tracing the angle of her 
cheek, "That could be fun, too, Criminal."

"You'd think so," whispered Scully, dizzy and caught in his 
orbit.  "But not the way I'd do it."  

When Mulder let out a chuckle, Scully pulled away to look 
at him, and then at William, who was too busy engrossed in 
his Stratego rulebook to make faces and ridicule his 
parents' unwieldy intimacy.   

Scully gazed at Mulder, her brows raised, waiting.  

"This house was willed to my parents," explained Mulder. 
"It's been empty for years because my mother never sold it.  
She didn't like worrying herself with Dad's affairs, and 
the nicest thing she ever said about my uncle was that at 
least he could sew his hair on straight.  I think she 
wanted to just pretend the house didn't exist, like...so 
many other things she didn't want to deal with."  Mulder 
took a long, sad breath.  "After she died, the house got 
passed to me, and I just never did anything with it."  He 
shrugged.  "So it's kind of a sad, lonely little house.  A 
bit like the Charlie Brown Christmas tree of houses, if you 
will."

Scully searched Mulder's face for clues. He shrugged and 
looked away from her, and then -- wait, was he blushing? 
Why was he--

Suddenly, it hit her.   

"This was your twisted version of taking me to an open 
house, wasn't it?"  She shook her head.  "Mulder, have you 
ever thought of just... taking me to an open-house?"

Mulder's expression was carefully blank.  "I don't know 
what you're talking about," he said.  "However, I might 
point out that there are four bedrooms, two bathrooms, a 
spacious living room, a nice backyard, a possible 
poltergeist, a few underground secret passageways, and a 
kind of insidious history.  Oh -- and a mouse named 
Sasquatch who may or may not be possessed by the soul of 
one of my relatives."  Mulder shrugged.  "What else could 
you possibly ask for in a piece of prime, East Coast real 
estate?"

Scully touched a hand to his cheek, smiled softly, and 
replied, "Child-proof locks." She traced her thumbs over 
his lips.  "Many, many, many child-proof locks."

Mulder grinned and nodded.  "Do me a favor-- Say 'child-
proof-locks' again."  Scully chuckled and he added,  "No, 
wait, say something better.  How about... pre-coital 
hypersensitive stimulatory reaction?  I'll make it worth 
your while..." 

"Oh, Mulder."  Scully's palm cupped the side of his face.  
"That line would have been much more effective if you 
didn't already strongly prefer the sound of your own 
voice." 

This time, Mulder's eyebrow did the arching.  He shook his 
head.  "Not true."  He tilted her chin with his index 
finger.  "Your voice looks way better naked."

And with that, Scully leaned forward to kiss him -- 

"Daddy?" 

Both Mulder and Scully turned and sighed.  Emma's eyes were 
half-closed as she flipped over, cuddled closer to Scully, 
and brought her tiny thumb up to her mouth to bite at her 
fingernail. 

"What's up, Home Skillet?" said Mulder.  

"Tired, Daddy."  Emma sighed.  "Story, please."

Mulder massaged Scully's shoulders, asking,  "What kind of 
story?" 

"A Scary Tale," mumbled Emma, sleepily.  "Like that one you 
told last night? Snow White and the Seven Liver Eating 
Mutants?"  

Scully's eyebrow bent so steeply it nearly broke in half. 

Mulder cleared his throat.  "First Edition Brothers Grimm," 
he said, quickly, "Not many people have heard of it."

Scully opened her mouth --

"So, okay, I have one," said Mulder, glancing carefully 
from Scully to Emma.  He twisted again to fully face 
Scully, and bopped her on the nose as if she were Emma. "I 
think you'll like this one, little girl," he whispered to 
her, as if they were in a movie theater.  "It's way scarier 
than anything I've ever told before."

Both of Scully's eyebrows shot up this time.  

"So, once upon a time," started Mulder, looking from Scully 
to William and then to Emma, "This kind of weird prince 
named Mulder, who was quite handsome and rugged and in 
incredibly good shape, and who looked good in everything he 
ever wore -- but was equally good at getting himself into 
all kinds of awesome trouble -- he re-opened, um... a long-
lost kingdom called, ah, The X-Files.  And... a lot of 
angry villagers...they wanted to storm Mulder's castle for 
re-opening this particular, forbidden treasure chest of 
crazy.  So, to try and stop Prince Mulder, they sent over a 
very strange, very short-legged scientist to spy on him in 
the kingdom of X-Files.  And as it turned out, she was kind 
of hot, and her name was Princess Scully."

Scully bit the inside of her mouth and nodded mutely at 
Mulder, as their daughter, curled up close to her knee, 
listened with interest. 

"So of course, all the angry villagers had thought that 
Prince Mulder's Weird Basement Kingdom would be easily 
destroyed by Princess Scully from the kingdom of Annoying 
Scientific Rationalizations."  Mulder shot a sideways 
glance at Scully, who simply shook her head.  She leaned 
back into his chest, which vibrated as he spoke.  

"But ironically, Princess Scully, despite how stubborn and 
rigid and disbelieving and aggravating, and at times, 
either blind, comatose, or perhaps missing eyeballs 
entirely -- "

Scully elbowed him.  

" -- managed, in a very short time, to somehow make Prince 
Mulder's Kingdom of X-Files more meaningful and much easier 
to navigate."

The smallest lilt of a smile curled Scully's lips. Mulder 
tapped her on the shoulder and she turned to face him, 
letting her gaze travel slowly to his mouth. 

"Years went by," continued Mulder, gazing squarely at 
Scully, "And they worked together happily, and they shared 
the kingdom equally. And there were flukemen and sea 
monsters and mutants and aliens and even a genie who 
actually made everyone on the entire planet disappear-"

"Oh no, hold on," interrupted Scully.  "Everyone on the 
entire planet did NOT disappear."  

She then turned quickly to a sleepy, enraptured Emma, said, 
"I'm sorry, honey, give Mommy a minute here," and returned 
to Mulder, continuing, "We've argued this -- I don't know 
how many times, Mulder. Besides the physical impossibility, 
the fact that we're all still here, and that nobody else 
appears to have any memory of any such event, makes me 
wonder if maybe you only saw what you wanted to see."

Mulder shot her a pained look.  "Scully, you cannot 
honestly believe that you would remember having ceased to 
exist for an hour."

"Well, I don't know."  Scully's lips quirked.  "Did your 
wish include some sort of mind-wipe clause for the 700 
billion people besides myself who were supposedly blinked 
out of existence that afternoon, or is Mass Memory Altering 
just some special added perk -- like a pair of headphones 
with your wireless contract?"

Mulder spread his arms wide on either side of her, palms to 
the ceiling.  "You autopsied an invisible body!" 

"No -- " Scully held up a finger.  "Anson Stokes was 
visible when we found him again.  Remember?  Clearly, I 
must have miscalculated the first time."

Mulder rolled his eyes.  "Scully, can you even see Earth 
from where you live?"
 
Scully's palm somehow wandered to his chest, the air 
between them having electrified.  Scully's heart pounded, 
the challenge of proving him wrong like a drug, the way he 
looked at her when he argued, like he wanted to devour her, 
the way his lips moved when he tried to convince her of his 
brilliant outlandishness, he was -- 

"STOP," groaned William, snapping his fingers in their 
faces and startling them both.  "It's really disgusting!"  
He shook his head and pushed his glasses back.  "How many 
times do I have to tell you that nobody wants to see the 
two of you kissing?"  His nose scrunched as if the word 
"kissing" had actually tried to kiss him.  "Moving on. 
Aliens, mutants, invisible people -- " He waved the 
rulebook at Mulder.  "Go."

"Yes," said Emma.  "More story please."

Scully covered her mouth with her knuckles to keep from 
laughing, and Mulder cleared his throat, seemingly for the 
same reason.

"Anyway," he said, "So... where was I?"

"Princess Scully!" exclaimed Emma, still sounding sleepy.  
"She went to work at the kingdom, remember, Daddy?"

Mulder nodded, first at Scully, and then at Emma. "Yes, 
that's right."  He cleared his throat again.  "So.  
Princess Scully had become something of a badass over the 
years, and she managed to incur the wrath of all the angry 
villagers -- much to the endless delight of Prince Mulder. 
But then one day, something very terrible happened: 
Princess Scully went missing. Nobody knew what had happened 
to her or who had taken her, and Prince Mulder went crazy 
trying to look for her.  He traveled all over the kingdom 
on his trusty steed, uh, Honda Accord, just trying to find 
her."  

Scully's fingers wandered the outline of Mulder's jaw; she 
felt heavy, sleepy, her body lulled into a thick calm.  

"Finally, when Princess Scully was returned to the kingdom, 
it was clear that something terrible had happened to her. 
Someone or something had lulled her into a deep, deep 
sleep.  Nobody knew why. All the villagers gossiped about 
the reason, thinking maybe it was a poisoned apple, but 
Prince Mulder knew better.  He knew that it was no apple."

"Ooh, I know," said William. "I bet you it was aliens."

Scully chuckled.  

Mulder quirked his head at his son.  "It was, actually," he 
murmured, as if flummoxed.  Then he shook his head as if to 
clear it, and continued,  "So, Prince Mulder was very angry 
about all of this -- VERY angry -- especially with, um, 
this ugly old Cigarette Smoking Witch whom he was certain 
had put the spell on Princess Scully and thrown her to the 
aliens."  Mulder made claw-like hands, miming a witch, and 
Emma giggled.  William looked at his father with wide, 
unblinking eyes.  Scully smiled.  

"And Prince Mulder was determined to get vengeance on the 
witch for hurting Princess Scully.  But after a long time 
went by and Princess Scully still would not wake up, Prince 
Mulder became very afraid.  And then he found that he 
didn't have a lot of energy to be both angry AND afraid. 
And then Princess Scully seemed to be getting worse and 
worse, so while he still really, really wanted to take out 
his gun and just start firing entire cartridges at that 
inhuman Cigarette Smoking Doucheb -- "

Scully elbowed him.

"-- witch," he finished, with a roll of his eyes, "who had 
hurt Princess Scully, he decided not to after all, and do 
you know why?"

"No, why?" echoed Emma, her eyes wide, her thumb in her 
mouth. 

"Glad you asked," said Mulder, grinning.  He leaned forward 
towards Emma and William, who leaned forward towards him. 

"It was because Prince Mulder suddenly realized he knew 
what the cure to wake Princess Scully was.  And so he raced 
off to her bedside to cure her."   
 
Mulder eyes shifted to meet Scully's. As a scientist, 
Scully knew that the eyes never changed; their shape, their 
size -- from the day a person was born, those eyes would 
always remain fixed and constant.  But as a woman of faith 
as much as of science, Scully liked to think of the eyes as 
another sort of constant -- a beautiful, unwavering truth. 

"So what was the cure?" asked William.  

Mulder brushed his fingers over the top of William's head, 
and answered, "The truth," before pausing, mouth opened, 
for dramatic effect. 

Scully, eager to hear the rest of this story despite 
herself, leaned back against Mulder's shoulder so she could 
see him better, and asked, "So what is the truth?" 

"Yeah," said Emma. "Tell us."

Mulder brushed his hand across Scully's jaw. "The simpler 
answer," he said, as his fingers traced the line of her 
lips.  "Mulder told Scully he loved her." 

Scully tilted her head at Mulder in pleasant surprise, a 
smile breaking slowly across her features.

Emma frowned.  "Huh?" she asked, brows furrowed.  "But 
that's not medicine, Daddy."

"Wait. Hold up."  William held up his palms like a stop 
sign.  "LOVE is the cure that woke Princess Scully?  LOVE?! 
That's it?  That's GROSS!" William groaned and returned to 
his Stratego education like someone who had just been 
cleverly hustled out of millions of dollars.  He shook his 
head.  "You guys are SO abnormal," he muttered, flipping 
through his rulebook.

"Yeah," mumbled Emma.  "The most."

"Hmm," said Mulder, "You hear that, Scully?  We're 
abnormal.  The MOST abnormal.  You wanna hold the 
statuette?"

"No, thank you," said Scully, nodding her head first at 
William, and then at Emma.  "Although it's an honor just to 
be nominated."

"Ooh, nice," said Mulder, and he struck out a palm which 
Scully high-fived.

"Ugh.  ABNORMAL," William muttered, shaking his head.  "SO 
abnormal."

Scully grinned. Her head had gone all light and dizzy and 
her face had grown impossibly hot. The whole room seemed to 
blur around her until it shrank down to the size of the 
moment -- only the record player made sound.  

Scully laced her fingers with Mulder's, the two of them 
suddenly alone in this space that existed between spaces.  
And as she leaned forward to kiss him, and time seemed to 
slow and stop, she whispered gently into his mouth the only 
thing he'd left unsaid: 

"And they lived very scarily ever after."

-----

END... 

OR IS IT??? 

(No, really, it is.) 

Thank you for reading, and extra special thanks to everyone 
who supported the stories that came before this one.  I 
hope you had as much fun reading this as I did writing it.  
Seriously -- this has been the most fun I've ever had as a 
fic author.

The keys to my inspiration:
In trying to play catch-up with Mulder and Scully (who I 
had basically been out of touch with for 7 years) I decided 
to consult my good old friend, youtube (and my other good 
old friend -- pop music) for some helpful "MSR Fanfiction 
Instructional Video Footage."  Here are my favorites of the 
bunch that were specifically helpful when I was writing 
this.  (AKA - go watch them right now and leave the 
talented editors some feedback!) 

Open Your Eyes by justjenn21
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6YvSsw_6lQ&feature=related 
The most perfect X-Files video anyone ever made.   
Seriously.  This is what the show WAS.  Go watch it right 
now.

Honorable mentions:
Ever the Same by FreedomWProductions
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cLmTzRPjIQ&feature=related

The Reason by boushh2187
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9fJ-9iM7vY

Built to Last by rachfreeman
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fB99C0Gimig&feature=related

Also thanks to the following episodes for letting me study 
you:  The Pilot, Beyond The Sea, One Breath, Memento Mori, 
Wetiwired, Amor Fati, Emily, Requiem, and most importantly, 
Pusher.