Chapter Text
(pre-episode)
One night. They get one night at home together before it all goes to hell.
It's not the most restful night, either. The baby is up every two hours to eat, and both Mulder and Scully have nightmares in between. Even so, months later, he will look back on this night of broken sleep with a longing so fierce it feels he might combust from it.
He finally decides after William's 5 AM feeding that he might as well get some water boiling (coffee for him, tea for Scully), and even bleary-eyed and fuzzy-headed, it is hard to remember a time he's been happier. This is the dream he never really allowed himself to want, a domestic sort of bliss he never truly believed himself worthy of, messy and imperfect but also somehow exactly right.
He almost drops the kettle into the sink when someone knocks on the door.
Instinctively, he reaches toward the holster he’s not wearing, frowns, and pads on near-silent bare feet to the door anyway. A wary glance through the peephole does nothing to set his mind at ease.
“What do you want?” he says quietly through the closed door.
“We need to talk,” is the muffled reply.
“I have nothing to say to you.”
“Maybe not. But you’re going to want to hear what I have to say to you .”
Clenching his jaw, Mulder unlocks the deadbolt but leaves the security chain in place, then opens the door just the small amount that the chain allows.
“And why should I believe anything that comes out of your mouth?”
“Believe me or don’t,” Kersh says. “But I didn’t have to come here. And if I walk away right now, the only person whose ass that saves is me.”
***
Mulder closes the door, and for a moment, Kersh thinks he might not reopen it. But he hears the slide and clatter of the chain being undone, and then the door opens once more. Mulder is standing there with the same defiant scowl on his face that he’s worn so many times before in Kersh’s office, only this time, the flannel pajama pants and bare feet make him look even more like a petulant teenager. It might be funny, if the situation weren’t so dire.
The temptation is certainly there, Kersh has to admit, to simply walk away. To let whatever Mulder has coming for him just take its course and have that be the end of it, once and for all. Under different circumstances, he might indeed have done just that.
But what’s coming for Mulder won’t stop with him; Agent Scully and this brand new, innocent baby will be caught in the crossfire, and that is more blood on his hands than he can stomach. Kersh may have no love lost for Mulder, but he is not a complete monster.
At length, Mulder moves to one side so Kersh can actually enter the apartment instead of standing out in the hallway like a jackass.
“Whatever you have to say, keep your voice down,” Mulder murmurs as he closes the door. “The baby’s sleeping.”
Kersh gestures toward the couch. “Mind if we sit down?”
“No, I think we’re fine right here,” Mulder says, crossing his arms over his chest. “You won’t be staying long.”
Arrogant sonofabitch.
“All right, then. I’ll cut to the chase. Your life is in danger. You’ve got about 24 hours to get out of town before a chain of events is set in motion that no one will be able to stop.”
“I’m sorry, is that supposed to scare me? Maybe you haven’t noticed, but that’s not exactly new territory for me.”
“Oh, no? Then tell me, what does Agent Scully think about this cavalier attitude of yours, in light of the… new addition.”
At this, Mulder drops his arms and steps forward, getting his face right up into Kersh’s. “Don’t you threaten my son,” he practically hisses.
“That’s not a threat, you damned hothead, it’s a warning. A warning that you’ve got your head so far up your own ass that you fail to recognize the danger you’re bringing on them both by staying here.”
“Oh, and I’m supposed to believe that leaving them unprotected is a better plan? Thanks, but given how well that worked out the last time, I’m not making that mistake again.”
“They’re still alive, aren’t they?”
Mulder’s jaw muscle bulges, but whatever he’s about to say is derailed by the sound of another door opening in the apartment.
Kersh turns to see Agent Scully standing in the doorway to the bedroom, then quickly looks away; she’s wearing a robe over her pajamas, but even so, he is still her boss, and seeing her like this seems intimate in a way that feels deeply inappropriate.
“Sir? What are you doing here?”
“The Deputy Director was just leaving,” Mulder says before Kersh can answer.
Kersh levels a glare at him. “Actually, I think Agent Scully ought to hear what I’ve told you. Perhaps she will have the sense to listen.”
“No, I think we’re both done listening to your lies.”
He should have known it would be pointless to come here. Mulder was never going to listen to reason, especially not after learning about Kersh’s association with the very people he’s now trying to protect them from.
The same people who will not hesitate to separate his head from his body if they find out he’s been here.
It’s this last point that keeps him from throwing up his hands and walking out; if he leaves without doing what he came here to do, the risk will have been entirely for nothing, and Alvin Kersh is not someone who puts himself in harm’s way for no reason.
“If I were trying to mislead you, don’t you think I would have contrived to do so by some means that you would find more credible?”
“You’ve never shown even the slightest interest in helping us before,” Mulder counters. “Why start now?”
It takes every ounce of restraint not to roll his eyes.
“What I have refused to do, and will never do, is validate your ridiculous claims about aliens. You are so quick to blame everything on little green men that you ignore, to your great detriment, the very real and very human threats facing you. Especially now.”
Mulder scoffs. “There is nothing human about the men you were meeting in your office a few nights ago.”
“On the contrary. What you mischaracterize as alien is in fact the product of human science more advanced and more dangerous than you could possibly comprehend.”
This shuts Mulder up for a full two seconds. Then he shakes his head. “You actually believe that, don’t you? You really have no idea what you’re dealing with.”
“Mulder, can I speak with you for a moment?” Agent Scully says quietly from behind Kersh. “Alone?”
Mulder’s expression immediately changes, his eyes narrowing in concern. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong, just… Would you excuse us a moment please, sir?”
“By all means,” Kersh says, without turning around.
With one more distrustful glare, Mulder stalks past him, and the two of them go into the bedroom and shut the door. Kersh, meanwhile, takes this opportunity to walk over to the chair in the living room and sit down. For several minutes, the only sound is a clock ticking somewhere nearby.
Kersh waits.
***
“I just think it's worth hearing what he has to say,” Scully whispers. “It's the only way we can hope to even guess as to what his true motivations might be.”
“We know that he wants me out of the picture, Scully. I don't think the 'why’ matters. I'm not going anywhere.”
“I know you're not.” She takes his hand and squeezes. His face softens, and he squeezes her fingers back. “But I still want to try and find out as much as possible about what we're up against.” She looks over at the bassinet. “If not for our sake then for William's.”
“Dana…”
“I need to know they aren't going to keep coming after him. That when they all walked away in Georgia, that was the end of it. Because if it wasn't…”
“I'm not going to let anything happen to him. Not to him, not to you, not to any of us.”
“Mulder…” She sighs. “We both know what they're capable of. We both know that's something you can't promise. Which is why it's all the more important to know whatever we can about what they want and what they're planning. That is the only way we will have any hope of fighting them. And while Kersh may believe the lie about their origins, that doesn't mean that the rest of what he might know about them is also untrue.”
“Unless by listening to him, we're playing right into their hands.” He shakes his head. “I don't trust anything that comes out of his mouth, regardless of whether or not he believes he's telling the truth.”
“I don't trust him either. But I still think that we should hear him out first, and then decide what to do with whatever information he might give us.”
Mulder drops her hand and rubs his face. “I don’t like it,” he murmurs from behind his hands. “This isn’t how it’s supposed to go.”
Nothing has gone “how it was supposed to” since the moment she found out she was pregnant. Mulder disappearing for months and coming back “dead,” all of the questions and the worry, the doctors she should have been able to trust but couldn’t, and all of it culminating in a birth that bore not even the faintest resemblance to any of what she had hoped and planned for. She fell through the proverbial looking glass the day Mulder left for Oregon, and she can count on one hand the moments since then when her life has felt like anything approaching normal.
And that’s even relative to the departure from “normal” that has characterized her life since the first time she walked into that basement office, nearly a decade ago.
She looks over again at William. If all of this turmoil is the price she has to pay for him, for his very existence, for the fact that however miraculous the circumstances surrounding his conception might have been, he is the product of a perfectly ordinary human union, then she will pay it without hesitation.
“Come on. We’d better get back out there.”
Without giving Mulder a chance to argue again, she opens the door. Kersh meets her eyes only momentarily before looking away uncomfortably. She’s not sure what he expected, dropping in on a new mother at 5:30 in the morning; no way in hell is she putting on a pantsuit right now. There is nothing immodest about her current state of dress, and if he has a problem with it, that’s on him.
Besides, maybe it’s a good thing if he’s thrown off balance a bit.
She walks to the couch and sits. “All right. I’m listening.”