"Mama, I'm Coming Home" by Ozzy Osbourne, from No More Tears

Mulder's eyes miss Samantha's as he enters the hospital room, instead focusing on an older woman whose hair had gone white too early, too swiftly.

"Mom."

The word is a sigh of resignation, and Scully can almost hear the cracks in the walls that Mulder constructed around himself. Teena Mulder's lips become thinner as she looks at her son, and Scully tries to blend into the walls, wishing for no spectator's role in this production.

"You didn't call me, Fox."

The first accusation sets the wheels in motion, and Scully tries to tune their words out but they're too sharp and too bitter, and she doesn't succeed.

"I wanted..." Mulder's voice grates like sandpaper. "I wanted to see how bad..." he doesn't finish the thought. "I would have called you later."

His mother bows her head. "My life had always felt like before and after, Fox. Before my child disappeared. And after, when every day lasted a year. I couldn't be forced to live another year or two without her. Not when I've survived centuries."

Scully forces her gaze away from her partner's sheet-white face. There would be time for comfort later, if he accepted it.

"Mom, I've missed her too," he answers, sad but defiant. "Nine thousand, one hundred, and sixty-seven days of my life."

An image of Mulder as a prisoner in a dark cell, slicing the walls with a piece of chalk, is too vivid to be erased, and Scully shudders. Her hands wrap around her torso, and she fights the impulse to wrap them around him and make everything better, for she knows she can't.

Being powerless is equivalent to incapacitation in her mind.

Her shifting eyes focus on the thin shadow of the rightful occupant of this room. She sits cross-legged on the bed with a lunch plate in her lap, and the fork makes periodic, infrequent trips to her mouth. Chicken salad, Scully notes automatically.

"I know you mean well, Fox," Mrs. Mulder's hand reaches out to her son, and he steps back, too wound up to acknowledge the gesture. "But you can't protect me from everything. Especially not from my own daughter."

Scully watches as Samantha pushes the little pieces of meat onto the border of her plate, carefully and methodically. They remain untouched, while the rest of food disappears, slowly but surely.

"I never wanted it to be like this," Mulder's whisper is monotone, as if he doesn't have any emotion left to spare for it. "This is a nightmare."

Wide eyes, the color of which escapes Scully, meet her own blue orbs and hold. And then the gaunt woman on the bed smiles tentatively, and the pale face changes, lighting up for a perfect instant. Thin fingers keep pushing the meat away automatically.

And Scully thinks that the other two people in the room treat this woman just like a piece of meat, pushing her out of their minds.

"Mulder," she speaks quickly, before compassion for him can take over again. "You forgot to meet your sister." With that, she leaves the room, no longer able to watch the drama.

His face is a picture of remorse as he finally turns to the subject of the dispute. Samantha's fork falls on the floor with a perfectly cut cube of chicken meat caught in its teeth.

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