TITLE: 5/20/06 AUTHOR: Rae Lynn (xraelynn@gmail.com) CLASSIFICATION: V, A TIMELINE/SPOILERS: Takes place when the title says it does. Preserves canon of the whole series (a resounding first for this author). DISCLAIMER: All the characters contained within are the property of Chris Carter and Ten Thirteen Productions. No profit will result from this story and no copyright infringement is intended. SUMMARY: A conversation on William's fifth birthday. NOTE: This story was inspired by reading many of the fics written for the Nursery Files' "William's Fifth Birthday" challenge, but it was NOT written for that challenge. * * * He finds her sitting on a bench facing the lake. If it weren't for the sun slipping low over the water as it casts severe angles over her face, he thinks, they could almost be at the reflecting pool ten years in the past. Almost; but there have been too many missed opportunities, too many brushes with death, for him to dwell on what is so long in the past. He checks his watch impatiently, stepping deliberately on a twig so that the crack echoes against the shore. "Scully?" he says cautiously as her eyes hold vigil over the water. He knows she has heard his approach, but she is choosing, for whatever reason, to ignore him. He swallows a sigh and scrubs his hands over his face. "Scully," he repeats again, his voice fringed with irritation as he moves closer. "What are you doing out here? We need to be on the road before dawn and I thought we agreed -- " "It's William's birthday," she interrupts softly, but her voice slices into his like a razor to his flesh. Shit. He drops heavily onto the bench beside her, tipping his head back to let his eyes meet the approaching darkness. In the morning they will be leaving this remote location for another, trading the lake for a desert while their fugitive lives remain essentially the same. He has spent this day like he spends every other: in flight, strategizing for the apocalypse he believes is imminent. Today, he realizes numbly, William is five years old -- five years of dusty highway, of infiltration and defeat. These past five years, he thinks of time as a countdown, each day a step closer to their ultimate fate. But for Scully, he knows, time has become a tether, one that stretches further and further away from motherhood and from their son. "I saw a toy car in the drugstore this morning," she continues without looking at him, her voice full of something hard and unfamiliar. "And I realized that I don't know anything about him. What he'd want for his birthday. What his favorite foods are." She blinks once. "What kind of mother does that make me?" He exhales deeply and leans forward, pressing his elbows into his splayed knees. "The bravest kind," he says, believing it fervently even as he knows his esteem is meaningless. "The kind who would sacrifice everything to protect her child." Finally she glances at him, her eyes shimmering. "I wasn't a teenager who made a mistake or ran out of options, Mulder. I made a choice." "You made the right choice," he argues quietly as the water laps against the shore. "Just like you made the right choice to believe in what we're doing." "Saving the world," she says faintly, as if she still doesn't believe him. She bows her head and he finds himself mesmerized by the tiny scar on the back of her neck, its edges puckered in the twilight. Before he can stop himself he is reaching out to touch it, to trace her skin lightly with one finger, and she shivers despite the warmth of his flesh. Her eyes slip shut as he rubs her neck, catching the scar between his thumb and forefinger. "I used to tell him about you," she murmurs. "How you loved baseball and old horror films." Her breath hitches. "I couldn't bear the thought of him...not knowing..." She trails off and looks up at him, agonized. "I wish I had gotten the chance to know him," he says, hating the emptiness in this desire, hating the choices he has made, hating himself. He hesitates, something cold pouring through him. "Scully," he begins to say, before realizing that there is nothing he can offer her that will change what cannot be undone -- no reset button, no escape hatch that will restore their son to them. Instead he reaches for her hand, grasping it tightly, and Scully's gaze breaks away from his even as she squeezes his hand in acknowledgment. Then she disentangles her fingers from his, reaching into her pocket to pull out a small photograph in a plastic bag. William is laughing, his chubby arm outstretched toward the photographer. His mother, Mulder thinks. My Scully. "I've kept this," she says, her voice trembling, "because I wanted to remember what he looked like. But this isn't..." She swallows. "He's not a baby anymore, Mulder." "But you're still his mother," he says firmly, grasping her by the shoulders and pivoting her so that she is facing him. "You can't lose sight of that, or else all of this" -- he gestures at the rapidly darkening lake around them -- "is for nothing." She pauses. "Saving the world," she says again, as if resigned to it, still clutching the photograph of William like a shield. "Saving the world," he agrees. Their eyes hold each other for a long moment, and he drinks in the sight of her as the last of the sun slips below the horizon. When this is over, he promises himself, it will have been worth the sacrifice. It is 5/20/06, and they have six years left to make things right. William will be eleven by then, a young man, nearly the same age as Mulder when a flash of white light altered irrevocably everything in his life he had once known to be true. He is protecting his son from the same fate, Mulder thinks, and he knows he must bring himself to believe this; knows that thinking it is a way to make it true. "We should go back inside," he says finally, pulling away from her reluctantly as he stands. "It's getting cold." She looks up, absently stroking the glossy surface of William's face before tucking the picture carefully back into her pocket. "We're going to need to stop for gas in the morning," she warns absently, and he nods. "I want to make a stop in Chicago," he says. "I believe there's a woman there who might be sympathetic to our cause." He pauses, waiting for Scully's expectant look. "Oprah," he announces after a beat, and she gives a watery laugh, the thin joke having its desired effect, but her smile fades as she gets to her feet. Mulder steps back into the shadows around the trees, pausing as he watches Scully look wistfully out over the lake. "Happy birthday," she murmurs, so quietly he thinks he might have imagined it. Then she steps toward him, her eyes shining in the dusk even as the night sky engulfs them. * END. * * * Well, if the responses to the birthday challenge were largely happy endings, then this is the bleakest possible outlook on William's fifth birthday short of dismemberment and death for our duo. This was rather maudlin, even for me, but I'd love to know what you thought: xraelynn@gmail.com.