Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Dana Scully hadn’t gotten a proper night’s rest in nearly a year. Her mind was plagued with the marred face of a girl whose fate she’d had a huge hand in. She regretted what she’d done. She regretted who she’d done it for .

She used to cry at night, imagine the little girl and who she might’ve become had Scully not been a complete and utter idiot five months ago. And then the tears dried up and she spent her evenings dawdling about the manor instead. She couldn’t sleep. Her feet would patter against the carpeted stairs, down to the kitchen, where she’d try to eat something of substance and, instead, wind up eating junk food snacks that didn’t belong to her: graham crackers, miniature cookies, popcorn. She would linger in the living room and probably fall asleep there, unless she heard him—his feet on the welcome mat, his distinct three raps on the oak front door. She raced, she always raced, up to the bedroom that was three doors down from hers, the bedroom where a 5-year old was always sleeping soundly, unless his head was buried in a book of some kind that she would pretend not to see before she promptly turned around and confined herself to her bedroom. There, she paced and sulked and sulked and paced. At some point or another, she’d collapse in a heap on the floor and somehow wake in time the next morning—or later that morning—to avoid her son discovering her in such a pitiful position.

Tonight was very much the same. Her eyelids drooping, Scully munched on cereal that tasted more like spherical doses of pure sugar. It was revolting, and she mentally cursed herself for allowing TJ to poison himself with it every morning before school. Not that she was outraged enough to throw out the box itself. The stuff was keeping her awake, and, quite frankly, it was the only reason that she could stomach the sap that was The Notebook . It was the best thing on television at such a late hour, which wasn’t surprising because her other options consisted of the news and advertising channels. She was halfway unconscious, and blissfully so, with the minimal noises of the iconic street scene acting as her lullaby when it happened. The knocking at the door rattled her upright, and her eyes flung open; they were wide, wide like a balloon in the sense that they’d pop if she stressed them anymore.

It didn’t sound like him. She panicked and leapt up anyhow. Cereal and milk splattered onto the sofa, and she instinctively scurried to the staircase.

They’ll stop soon . They stop . It stops .

Except this time it didn’t. She froze at the foot of the steps, cradling herself in her cardigan as the sounds of a fist against her front door and feet scampering across the lone hall of the second floor pounded in her head. For the first time in a long time, she found herself wishing that the tears would come back. She felt trapped. Her breathing became labored, her vision pixelated. And then, simultaneously, she heard:

“Dana Scully.” A gruff, male voice that certainly wasn’t his, and “Mama?” The only voice that she wanted to hear.

She breathed a sigh of relief and clutched her stomach, trying to calm herself down and tune out whoever it was she’d crafted in her mind.

“Hm?” was all she could muster.

“Mama, who’s that?”

Her head snapped up, and she furrowed her brows. The dark-skinned boy was cradling his stuffed puppy with one hand and rubbing the sleep-haze from his eye with the other. His hair was curly and fluffy and big, just the way he liked it. The sight almost sobered her. Almost. “You hear it, too, honey?” This would be a first. He was a light sleeper; that was how she knew when she was just having an episode—seeing him rest, unperturbed.

But he'd heard it, too. He nodded.

“Stay right there, T.” She gave him a supportive half-smile and then ran off to silence the incessant shouting of her name, doing her best not to care about the fact that she was less than presentable, in her worn, torn pajamas. She was hoping that there was no reason to care.

There was. Sort of.

A man was standing outside of the door, one she’d never seen before. Even so, she knew who he was. She knew what he’d come for. He didn’t even have to introduce himself, yet he did, anyways.

“Travers Lane, U.S. Marshal. I’m here to—.”

Scully turned away from him and hollered in the other direction, “TJ, honey, go and grab your suitcase.” She faced the Marshal again. The ghost of surprise was evident in his features for perhaps a split second. It vanished as quickly as she’d noticed it.

“Would that be Thaddeus?”

“Thaddeus Jamie O’Malley.” She recited, the last bit coming out in a tone that deserved an eye roll. It had nothing to do with Travers Lane, and he was well aware. Quietly, he watched her gather a small tote bag from beside the couch. “He’s adopted.”

Lane nodded dutifully and checked his wrist for the time. He did it a second time. Five minutes hadn’t expired when TJ came barrelling down the stairs, a look of determination and a loud, mini suitcase in tow. It was fashioned in the style of a cartoon character that was difficult to identify in the dark. Scully watched her son sadly, smiling all the same. TJ gladly took the hand she offered him.

Scully hurried TJ over to Lane, who introduced himself again. His features seemed to have softened, but Scully was convinced that she’d only imagined it. As of late, she’d been imagining a lot of things.

Lane wasted no time escorting Scully and TJ to his government-issued van. Surprisingly, TJ didn’t complain about not getting shotgun. Something told Scully that she would’ve gladly given it to him if he had. Sitting beside a stoic and quiet Travers Lane was not the most comforting way to be shuttled away from her house. House, because it wasn’t a home. She didn’t even spare it a glance as they sped off from the driveway.

No. She watched her son, through the overhead mirror.

TJ was timidly glancing about the spick-and-span vehicle, his fingers digging into his stuffed animal deep enough that he would likely leave marks. He’d been a good sport about this, better than she could’ve ever hoped for, even after months of preparation for this very moment. There was a time when she thought they’d never come like they’d told her they would. She’d been anticipating their arrival for five months. She hadn’t slept in five months.

She thought they would ease her mind. She thought she’d be able to sleep.

She couldn’t see it happening now, not in her situation.

Not when she saw plainly what she was doing to her son, what he’d never tell her.

At 5 years old, how could he even register his own emotions? He was smart, she knew, but not that smart.

She saw his worry. She saw his fear, his fear of not seeing his father ever again, as well as his fear of seeing his father within the next five minutes. She saw his anxious curiosity that questioned what his life was about to become and whether or not his Mommy was telling the truth about what was going to happen to them. She saw his pain, acute and yet so expertly hidden, as if he didn’t even know it was there (and, honestly, he probably didn’t).

She saw him. She noticed him in ways that he couldn’t. She spotted things that went over his head, literally and figuratively, and she hated what she found, hated what she’d done to put it there.

Numbly, she leaned back in the leather seat and said nothing as Lane took them into the night, watching her son, like she always did.

She saw the erosion of his innocence.

On the opposite coast, some weeks afterwards, a rejuvenated Fox Mulder was having his enthusiasm tapered by none other than his boss, Walter Skinner. Mulder had recently been informed of a possible X-File, one that was different from those taking up space in his basement because they were dormant and this one, if it turned out to be an X-File, was active.

He had been prepared to leave immediately upon learning of the case, gathering all of his essentials and heading out to his car. Ultimately, it was there that he realized he hadn’t been given the location of any potential witnesses. It was with a moderately downtrodden spirit that he’d made a beeline for his boss’ office. And that was how he’d wound up getting a lecture, whilst he tried very hard not to move around too much in Skinner’s new swivel chair.

Most of the disclaimers went over Mulder’s head. To be fair, they were meant to remind him of the slim chance that this was going to turn out to be what he wanted it to be. He had no preferences, really. He just wanted a reward of some kind for believing all this time. What was better than bearing witness to a live alien or monster or whatever it was? The file was vague, for security purposes, so he had no idea what to expect.

Maybe it was better that way.

“Remember, I’m going to need you to be on your best behavior. No almost getting a barrel poked in your back in the woods because you’re looking for an alien mutant patient.”

Mulder groaned. “The guy was hiding something. I figured it out, whether you want to believe it or not.”

“Yeah, well, you don’t bring in any results and evidence from a case soon, and you’re getting shut down.”

Mulder clasped his hand over his heart. “Why do you love to go there? I’m joking.”

Skinner narrowed his eyes. “Go.”

“Touchy.” Mulder held up his hands in mock surrender. He rose and gathered the sheet of paper with an address written on it from Skinner’s desk. This time, his hand wasn’t promptly slapped away.

He made a clean break. And then he popped his head into the office again, to see an exasperated Skinner. “Hi.” He grinned, sheepishly. “You wouldn’t happen to know their names, would you?”

“Laura and Richard Petrie,” Skinner supplied, as he massaged his temples.

“Right. Don’t worry, boss. It’s just a kid who thinks he saw an alien. What kind of threat does that pose to our peace of mind?”

A very viable one, he hoped.

Chapter Text

For the past month and a quarter, all she’d heard was knocking.

“Good afternoon/morning/evening, ma’am. I’m a

Marshal

Lawyer

Agent

and I would like to speak to you about the criminal behavior of your ex-fiancé, Tad O’Malley.”

This far in the game, they were lucky if she let them finish the generic introduction.

She knew she shouldn’t be so angry, so brash, in her predicament. By every formal definition of the word, she was, technically speaking, a criminal, and yet she was living a comfortable, albeit sheltered, life in a secure suburban neighborhood owned by the government. She should be grateful, and, if not that, then at the very least, cooperative.

But it was so natural to her, the indignation; and she’d be lying if she said it didn’t feel good to feel , even if she was doing it in the most negative way viable. And they seemed to understand, truthfully. Perhaps they didn’t care about her temperament. All they wanted was to know what she knew, and they seldom failed to make her feel like a criminal when they drilled her for information.

She was safe, in the physical sense. Nonetheless, she was emotionally drained, and she was feeling less and less like a person everyday. TJ wasn’t doing so well, either, and she hated herself for not knowing how to fix that, how to give him a normalcy that didn’t consist of staying boarded up in those four walls and watching his mother fade away, slowly, surely, and the rest of that jazz.

If there was an upside to any of this at all, it was that three raps on the front door didn’t instinctively mean her ex was there anymore.

She didn’t love her new life. But she was adjusting, which wasn’t as difficult as it sounded when she was given moments like these.

 TJ was racing about the halls, his lightsaber in hand, shouting silly orders to his mother every time he tore through the kitchen. Whenever he was feeling especially comfortable in his movement, he would quickly tug on her shirt—she’d started wearing actual clothes the day they’d been moved in—and whirl his way into the next room. He was hyper. She suspected it was because he’d been in the freezer this morning, eating ice cream that he wasn’t allowed to have at such an early hour, and on an empty stomach, no less. Scully couldn’t bring herself to chide him over it. His glee was the only thing that brought a smile to her normally blank countenance lately.

She was cooking her first dish in almost a year. She hadn’t ever been a cook, per se, but it was calming, and TJ found it particularly pleasing because he claimed to love his mother’s food more than anyone’s. The specialty tonight was spaghetti and organic meatballs, not that she was disclosing the adjective in the latter. She had just retrieved a box of thin noodles from the pantry when there was yet another knock at the door.

Heaving a sigh, she set the box on the counter and hurried into the entranceway. TJ nearly toppled her to the floor in the process.

Which reminded her. “Go to your room, sweetheart.”

She kept her visitors away from TJ. It was a power thing, although she’d never admit it—something that assured her that she still had some control, however miniscule.

He sighed a dejected little sigh and scurried up the stairs. She waited until she heard him open his bedroom door to even look into the peephole. Sure enough, there stood a suited man, who looked every bit like the others; she surmised that he was younger, yet that was where the differences stopped. 

Tentatively, she swung the door open.

By the time she did, the man was holding up his badge. She resisted the urge to roll her eyes, instead settling a hand on her hip in subtle disapproval. That move didn’t impress Scully anymore. It barely even intimidated her. Everyone had credentials of some kind, and people with credentials were collectively the same assumptive bastard, or so she’d been taught, indirectly, over the past weeks.

The man gave her a once-over. “Fox Mulder, FBI.” He pocketed his badge. “I’m here to ask you a few questions.”

“What else is new?” She murmured, bitterly. She stepped aside to let him in.

Scully led him to the living room because that’s where she did these things. She didn’t offer him refreshments; she never did. That would be a waste of groceries, considering how rapidly they tended to bolt.

She took her preferred seat on the chair in the corner of the room, and Mulder sat in the center of the couch adjacent to her. He was wringing his hands from the moment his butt touched the cushion. It occurred to her that he had nothing practical to do with them, unlike his colleagues, who were always equipped with a file of some kind.

“Mrs. Petrie,” he started, after a while.

“It’s Scully.” She corrected him. “Behind closed doors, it’s Scully.”

Taken aback, Mulder merely nodded, saving his lecture on her accepting her new name. “Scully, then. I’m sure you know what this is about.”

She winced for him. He was anxious. He didn’t seem like the anxious type. “My entire life is about Tad O’Malley now. Of course I know what you’re here about. Which part do you want to hear?”

Without missing a beat, or thinking, Mulder responded, “All of it.”

Scully quirked an inquisitive brow. Nobody had ever wanted to hear it all. They asked for snippets, of days and times and the like, but not the big picture. They couldn’t care less about the big picture.

She didn’t question him. She had nothing to hide.

“It’s a long story,” she warned, half-heartedly. Somehow, she was convinced that not even that would stop him from wanting to know everything there was to know.

“With all due respect, Scully, this is my job, and I’m on the clock.” He flashed her a kind smile, and she cast him a questioning look before she shrugged.

“Alright.” She launched into it easily. She told him things that she was positive no one needed to hear because, well, no one asked had asked about them, effectively elongating her retelling. It was selfish of her, to take up so much of the man’s time, but indulging Mulder in the gritty details was a cathartic experience. “This wasn’t his first time breaking into a government facility, you know. It was just the first time things went wrong.

“He didn’t want me to be there that night. He’d stopped wanting me around once I started questioning what he was doing, him and his group of cronies. It wasn’t exactly my dream, skipping out on a paying job and a normal life to worry over Tad. As disgusting of me as it sounds, I was happy that he didn’t need me anymore.

“I lived blissfully for a time, never having to see him, planning my wedding with a better version of him in my brain, taking care of our son. I was your average working mother of one. I swore to myself that I wouldn't get swept up into his quest for uncovering the supernatural by illegal means ever again. That’s crazy, isn’t it? A grown man risking his livelihood for little green men?

“Tad was crazy. He was a raging lunatic, and I stayed away from him, fiancé or not. That was, until he started putting our son into his little schemes. I know you’re thinking that I’m terrible for allowing that to fly, and I am. But he threatened me. He threatened our son. And I was scared.

“The best I could do was tag along whenever he decided to use him. That’s what I was doing there that night. I was watching out for our son: he thought he was standing guard, but he was really just a diversion in case the authorities showed up. Tad and the others were inside. And I was in the passenger seat of the would-be getaway car with the driver.”

She went on to explain, in extensive detail, the moment when the authorities did, indeed, show up, and the driver, named Alex Krycek, abandoned her in the car to go and help Tad. Afterwards, she reacted on instinct and drove through the barbed fence separating her from the building, effectively killing a young runaway who’d been lying before it, something she wouldn’t learn of until Tad taunted her about it. She’d skirted to the entrance where her son stood, all but throwing him into the passenger seat. Then, she’d driven away, as far as she could. She went all night.

The gas eventually emptied out, and Scully and her child wound up at a dusty motel, where they hid until she grew restless and ordered a cab back home. There, she did not find Tad.

He hadn’t turned up there since that night, not when Scully and TJ were around, at least. He had gotten the message, loud and clear: I don’t want to deal with you, Tad; I’m over you, Tad. It was nothing he hadn’t heard before, according to the last of the threatening emails he’d sent to Scully under multiple aliases.

He’d accused her of disloyalty, of alerting the feds, of keeping him away from his son. He’d promised to harm her and her family, and it had successfully driven her to the brink, where she, finally, mustered the courage to turn him in, and herself, by association. The threats became harsher, more believable. Scully was led to think that he was having someone stalk her, or perhaps he was doing it himself. That was when Witness Protection had contacted her, and she’d waited for them for five agonizing months.

Her breathing was abnormal by the time she finished. Her heart had started uncomfortably drumming in her chest. She felt alive. That was the best part, the reminder that she did have a pulse, that Tad hadn’t killed Scully, that she wasn’t the one-dimensional Laura Petrie and never would be.

“Is that all?”

Scully made a face. She had just told him everything and he still wanted more. The redhead was two seconds from telling him off when TJ burst into the room, with a mischievous glint in his eye.

She narrowed her eyes. “ Upstairs , TJ.”

Mulder was intrigued, rather than bothered, by the strange interruption. He studied TJ like he was some kind of specimen. “Richard?”

“That’s my new name,” TJ answered, blatantly ignoring his mother’s command.

“Are you the boy who saw the alien?”

“Yes!”

Scully groaned in exasperation and stood to swat TJ out of the living room. “Upstairs.” This time, he obeyed, giggling as he pranced off in the other direction.

“I’m sorry,” she murmured, her hand covering her reddened face.

“Don’t be. I don’t bite, Scully. He didn’t have to leave.”

“Yes, he did.” She frowned. “I can’t have him involved in this.”

“He’s already involved. Isn’t he?” At that, Scully’s expression transformed into a patent scowl. “I mean, he’s living here, with you, away from the real world. He’s growing into the whole Richard getup. You really should start calling him Richard, Scully. It’ll make things easier for him.”

“Excuse me, but are you a parent, Mulder?” she inquired, hotly. Her face was flushed again, this time in fury. He flinched. She softened, somewhat. “Sorry. What I mean is… I don’t want that for him. I don’t want… After the trial is over, I want him to be TJ again.”

There was an underlying message there, one that he evidently picked up on because he didn’t push the issue further. She was going to give TJ up, once she was given the all-clear.

“I understand. I respect your wishes, Scully. I just need to speak with him.”

“About?”

“What he thinks he saw that night. I swear, I won’t ask him about Tad or Krycek or anything. Just the alien.”

Scully crossed her arms, ogling the man in disbelief, skepticism, everything. The alien? The alien that couldn’t possibly exist? That was what he wanted to know about. It was odd, and that was an understatement in itself.

“Go ahead. Five minutes.”

“That’s all I need.”

TJ hadn’t gone upstairs.

He was, instead, hiding out in the toy room beside the kitchen. There weren’t many, but there were more toys than Mulder had anticipated, considering how quickly Scully and TJ had probably had to get themselves packed and the fact that Scully’s bank account was frozen until further notice.

TJ barely spared Mulder a glimpse as the man neared him. Mulder plopped down in front of the lego building TJ was constructing and cleared his throat. TJ looked up. He wasn’t annoyed, like Scully would most likely be if Mulder had invaded her personal space. That was when the man noted that TJ was sporting a NY Knicks jersey.

“You know, that’s my favorite team. The Knicks.” As cringeworthy as it was, it happened to be one of Mulder’s best lead-ins.

That got TJ to beam up at him. He was missing two bottom teeth. Mulder couldn’t tell if they fallen out or if they merely hadn’t grown yet. “Mine too.”

It took a full minute of silence for Mulder to realize that he’d gone about it the wrong way.

“Listen, Ri—TJ. I heard that you saw an alien.”

If TJ was surprised that Mulder knew about it, he didn’t make it obvious. “Yeah, I guess.”

“You guess?”

“I don’t know for sure if it was an alien.”

“Can you tell me about it?”

Out of the blue, TJ handed Mulder a fistful of legos. Mulder took the hint and started adding to the blue wall TJ was crafting. He glanced up at the clock regularly.

“It could change shapes. I saw it was a table for a minute. I think it made a mistake because it changed into a police car right after.”

“What was it before it was a table, TJ? How’d it look?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. It was my dad.”

“It turned into your dad?”

TJ met Mulder’s stare and held it. “No, it was my dad.”

Mulder’s tongue dried up. He didn’t know what to say with a million things racing through his brain. Tad O’Malley, an alien. It would explain more than it would unjustly complicate. Mulder suddenly had a larger arsenal of questions.

It was an arsenal that he couldn’t tap into. Scully entered the room, having gone upstairs to find that TJ wasn’t where he was meant to be, and gave Mulder a telling look. Mulder nodded grimly and rose. He ruffled TJ’s soft ringlets of hair for good measure and whispered, “Go Knicks.” Ultimately, the boy kept on playing as if he’d never been interrupted.

Scully was eager to see him to the door.

He went without contest.

“You’ll be seeing my face again, Mrs. Petrie.” He said it cheekily as he stepped outside of the house, taking advantage of the fact that they were no longer behind closed doors.

“I hope not, Mulder.”

In spite of herself, she watched his car pull out of the driveway.

Chapter Text

Indeed, Mulder had dropped in on the Petries at least every other weekday since their first meeting. Against her better judgement, Scully had allowed him to become properly acquainted with her and her son, the latter after many trials of motherly protection and reluctance.

Nothing either TJ or Mulder did came across as amiss to her. It was only right, considering that the boys had sworn one another to secrecy in the matter of Tad O'Malley, Shape-Shifting Alien and Convict—TJ to preserve his mother's sanity, and Mulder for another, less noble purpose that he hadn't found it appropriate to divulge, instead disguising his newfound reason for frequenting the Petrie home as an order of sorts from his higher-ups for their safety throughout the upcoming trial.

Ignorance and bliss and all things considered, Mulder was getting along with his new subjects just fine. He'd been certain of TJ's acceptance of him since the lego incident; as for Dana, things hadn't become clear to Mulder until today.

For the first time, she had granted him permission to take TJ away from the house without her supervision. What might be a small and virtually meaningless step for others, when Mulder's government clearance and the like were taken into account, was an entirely different ordeal for Dana Scully. She hadn't been away from TJ since Travers Lane had showed up on their doorstep. Mulder didn't blame her for the suffocation—she would more than likely be giving up her son very soon, possibly forever, and she wanted to be there for him while she could. Mulder would do the same thing for his children, if he had any. He was certain of it.

From the moment Scully had reprimanded him for promising to take TJ to "the Rec Center down the street" (which was in their housing complex), Mulder had known to tread lightly in any matters involving TJ. He hadn't planned on doing so much as thinking of taking TJ anywhere. In fact, the only reason why the topic had even cropped up in conversation that morning was because, when Mulder had arrived, Scully was a complete and utter mess.

Earlier, that morning

The front door of the Petrie home swung open before Mulder had even properly parked in the driveway. He exited his vehicle and strode up to the door. There, so low that Mulder had to look down to see him, was TJ O'Malley, struggling to keep his grip on the door handle on tiptoe. His tongue tucked between his teeth, he shot a strained and yet vibrant smile Mulder's way, one that Mulder returned with more amusement than excitement.

"Hi, Mulder!"

"Hey there, T." Mulder stepped inside the home and helped TJ shut the door behind him. "Where's your Mom?" She was usually the one to answer the door. If she was asleep, Mulder had no doubts that she would be livid to wake up and find that TJ had taken the liberty of greeting someone who could have very well been a stranger. Not that Mulder would dare jeopardize the kid.

"Mommy's upstairs." TJ rubbed his eyes and pointed in that direction as the words tumbled from his lips more quickly than he could pronounce them all correctly. "She's all sick. She says I gotta get a position."

Realization dawned upon Mulder, and he turned to face TJ with a sad smile tainting his features. "Deposition, buddy." He bent over until he was TJ's height and rested his palms on his thighs. "Listen, you go in the toy room and finish up our skyscraper. I'll go and check on your Mommy."

TJ nodded fervently and dashed off in the other direction.

OOO

There were three bedrooms upstairs.

The vacant bedroom was evidently the vacant bedroom because of its…well, vacancy; and TJ's bedroom was evidently TJ's bedroom because of the crayon and construction paper drawings of just about everything known to kidkind taped to the door.

Still, Scully's bedroom was the easiest to find because of the muffled crying behind the door. As he stood before it, Mulder hesitated. What if he was intruding? He really didn't want to upset her anymore than she already was. Then again, he thought, glancing down at his wristwatch, logic told him that she couldn't stay holed up in there all day. In fact, she could barely afford to stay in there for another hour. Besides, what if she was in trouble and he ignored her for the sake of something as flimsy as privacy?

Resolved, Mulder twisted the doorknob and let himself into her largely unfurnished bedroom.

Scully didn't react right away. She was sitting atop her bland bed and its bland sheets, sobbing into a bland pillow that was lacking its complementary bland pillowcase. Her back was bent against the headboard, and her knees were drawn up to her chest. She only glanced Mulder's way when he took a few cautious steps nearer to her.

Her eyes went wide, and she scrambled to sit upright and swipe the tears from her cheeks and eyes. "Mulder!" She still managed to sound surprised, even with all of her sniffling. "I didn't even—?" She ran her hand down her face. "I didn't even hear you knock." When she looked at him now, her eyes were red-rimmed, but, other than that, there was no indication that she'd been crying her heart out.

Mulder felt terrible. She seemed so vulnerable, so meek and small and everything that he knew she wasn't.

He didn't point that out to her, of course. "I didn't knock."

Scully groaned in apparent frustration. "Don't tell me TJ was running amok outside. I specifically told him to wait for me downstairs until his…until…" She stilled. "Mulder, what time is it?"

"It was 9 A.M. when I barged in here," he informed her, half-joking, half-concerned.

"Crap!" Scully clambered her way up from the bed and started rushing about the room. It was then that Mulder noted that she was wearing pajamas. "I mean, I asked TJ to give me time checks on every fifteen minute mark, but that's a bit ridiculous, isn't it? It's downright stupid." She dug into dressers and took out blouses and skirts and earrings as she spoke, mostly to herself.

"Scully," Mulder stated, calmly, as he watched her with growing worry, his brows kneaded.

"He can't even subtract two-digit numbers, and I'm asking him to tell me the time." She continued to chide herself.

"Scully," Mulder said again, this time a bit more forcefully.

"Isn't that just ridiculous? It was so irresponsible of me."

"Scully." He almost hollered it this time. That shook her out of her daze. She paused and shot him a curious look, blouses and pants tucked into her arms. In addition to complete and utter, she was now a literal mess. It was a pitiful sight to see.

"What is it, Mulder?"

Cautiously, Mulder stepped forward. He moved closer to her. And closer. And closer. She didn't offer much reaction, save for a slight flinch when he came within the bounds of her personal space. Mulder slowly extracted the clothing items from her arms. She clutched onto them, at first, but let go when she realized what he was doing. Unceremoniously, he tossed them onto the bed. When he looked back at her, she had averted her gaze to her socks.

Sheepish didn't suit her.

Gently, Mulder placed his hands on her shoulders, imploring her to meet his eyes. "Scully," he said, in a soft tone that didn't suit him very well, either.

Scully looked up at him. The bags marring the areas around her eyes caught his attention first. Then, her drooping eyelids. Then, her quivering lower lip.

She was tired, and not just in the literal sense.

It was with no forethought that Mulder blurted, "Let me take him." He almost regretted it. Almost. But she didn't get standoffish, like she usually did when he mentioned anything even remotely related to TJ leaving her.

She humored him, and that alone was enough to tell Mulder that this particular argument was going to, more likely than not, tip in his favor.

"Mulder, I couldn't—."

"Whatever it is, you're not," he interjected, reassuredly. "I offered, and you're in no state to take him down to the court reporter. The proceedings will just drive you even crazier, Scully."

She stood there for a while, considering everything. Mulder didn't even bother reminding her of their time restraints. Finally, she nodded her agreement.

With a sigh of relief, Mulder murmured, "Thank you." He stepped back to give her space.

She didn't say another thing to him, not until his feet were over the threshold. "Mulder?" She called out, tentatively.

He turned around to face her, his hand on the side of the door, prepared to push it closed as he left. "Yes?"

"Thank you." She offered him a mild upturn of her lips. It was the best she could do, under the circumstances; he understood, wholeheartedly.

He returned it, except his was livelier, more encouraging. "You're welcome, Scully." He made to leave once more. She called for him again.

"Mulder?"

"Yes, Scully?"

"Have him home by dinnertime." She placed her hands on her hips. A glimmer of amusement sparkled in her eyes, but it fizzled out just as soon as Mulder had spotted it.

Mulder grinned back at her, all the same. "Of course, Mrs. Petrie." He added the last bit in half-hearted jest. Then, he spun around on his heel and shut the door on his way out.

TJ was positive that he hadn't sat down for so long in his entire life—and he'd been around for a whole five years. When he interrupted the court reporter's and lawyers' questions, repeatedly, to ask Mulder just how much time had lapsed, he swore that time wasn't moving at all.

"55 minutes, TJ."

"An hour and five minutes, TJ."

"An hour and ten minutes, TJ."

That had been almost four hours ago now. Maybe an hour after that, they'd taken a break for lunch. Mulder had bought himself and TJ each two slices of pizza and juice boxes ("Because your Mommy will be very angry if I give you that soda you want so badly," he'd reasoned, although TJ suspected a more sinister and frankly less believable story behind it.).

TJ couldn't recall the time exactly. All he knew was that his stomach was grumbling again.

"Thaddeus, are you certain that you saw your father's close companion, Alex—?" It was the defense attorney talking to him. TJ didn't like her very much.

"Mulder," he mumbled, swiveling away from the woman to whisper discreetly, or so he thought, "How long have we been here?"

"Four hours, exactly." Mulder shot a scowl in the direction of the woman who had been drilling TJ for the past half an hour. He turned to the other adults and started going on about "Rule 30" and a "non-party." At this, the attorneys seated across from them at the table sighed in vexation.

TJ didn't pay any of them any mind. Exasperatedly, the boy flailed his arms and swiveled his chair around in a circle. "Four hours!" He exclaimed, in pure disbelief.

For their parts, the adults ignored him right back. Mulder and the court reporter, a nice woman who was pretty but too old, in his eyes, to be as pretty as his mother, were the only two who weren't doing as such out of malice.

"Tell me, are you his lawyer now, Agent Mulder?" The prosecuting attorney bit out.

Mulder rolled his eyes and glared at the other man. "No, but I know his rights. And I know that it's ridiculous to sit here with a 5-year old for four hours and ask him the same question over and over and over again, trying to catch him in a lie."

"We should've known, Harper," the defense attorney joked to her counterpart. "You get Spooky Mulder on the case and he's going to insist that there's aliens, somewhere." The attorneys shared a mocking laugh on Mulder's behalf.

Having caught a whiff of the conversation, TJ opened his mouth to protest, but was silenced by Mulder's firm hand on his arm. "Are we free to leave, then?"

"Rule 30 considered, yes, Mulder," was the prosecuting attorney's answer.

"Thank you." Mulder thanked the court reporter, more genuinely. He all but dragged TJ out of the office after that.

TJ waited until they were in the elevator, heading down to the lobby, to tug on Mulder's jacket sleeve. Mulder glanced down at him, an exhausted yet mostly frustrated look about him. The latter dissipated a bit when he regarded TJ, however.

"I did see aliens, you know," TJ confirmed, boldly, his chest puffed out. His hands on his sides were reminiscent to his mother's own.

"I know," Mulder said, ruffling the boy's hair.

And he did.

Mulder didn't even think about going inside of the Petrie house when he dropped TJ off, let alone staying for dinner.

No, he remained perched before the front door the entire time while Scully opened the door, collected her son, and exchanged "Thank you's" and "Anytime's" with him. He didn't ask about how she was feeling, but, if it was worth anything, he noticed that she looked a whole lot better. Besides, her feelings were none of his business. That morning had been an oddity. It wasn't his job to make sure that she wasn't emotionally stunted. Frankly, he'd forgotten what the boundaries of his job were.

He needed to go home and recalibrate for the weekend. His past month had been spent between the Hoover building and the Petrie house, more so the former than the latter, surprisingly, and he needed time to be alone, to be normal, to think. About Tad O'Malley, Shape-Shifting Alien and Convict, to be exact.

And maybe, for once, he need not think at all at some point during this short "break," if one were to classify it as that.

Clear-headed.

That was the only way he'd be able to help TJ and Scully—Richard and Laura, he reprimanded himself.

He drove off that evening with a promise to himself to not return until the next week began.

"How'd it go, sweetheart?" Scully found herself asking her son, as soon as she'd locked the door.

TJ only nodded. She figured he was sick of talking, after what he'd been through that day.

"There's pasta waiting for you in the living room," she told him, slowly, her face lighting up as his did. He tackled her in a bear hug and then scurried into the living room, shedding his sweater as it went. Rolling her eyes affectionately, Scully picked it up and put it away before she followed behind him.

As they were eating ice cream for dessert, Scully tried again. This time, she chose a different angle. "Did things go well with Mulder?" It wasn't a pointless question in itself. She realized now that, under the influence of emotional turmoil, she'd let her son go off without her. It was doubtful that it would happen again, so she wasn't asking for future reference; it was simply her duty to know how her son had been treated.

"We got pizza for lunch," divulged TJ, in his dairy haze. Normally, he wouldn't confess to his bad deeds so openly.

"Is that so?" Scully beamed down at him. His head was in her lap as he was on his back, his half-eaten bowl of dessert clutched tightly in his lap.

"Mhm. The 'torneys asking me about the aliens. Mulder was getting upset. He told me they were making fun of me."

Scully frowned, as she plucked the bowl from his hands and set it on the table beside her. She pulled up a blanket over both of them.

"Did Mulder do anything about it?"

"He tried. They said they'd kick him out, so he stopped." His eyes drooping, the boy yawned. "He got me out after 4 hours. It made the 'torneys mad. But he did it."

A knowing smile painted Scully's lips, then. "I'm glad."

TJ wouldn't say much more. They chatted aimlessly then, until he fell asleep.

Scully followed soon after.