Chapter Seven - Birthdays and Proposals 
 
"Happy Birthday to you! 
Happy Birthday to you! 
Happy Birthday, dear William! 
Happy Birthday to you!" 
 
Walter Skinner, John Doggett, Bill Scully Jr., and all three of the Lone 
Gunmen led the chorus with joyful, manly voices as Dana Scully slowly 
brought forth the vanilla cake slathered with chocolate frosting. The 
object of their rousing song looked astonished as he sat on his father's 
knee. Leyla Harrison grinned absurdly and Monica Reyes blew a 
noisemaker 
just inches from his nose. Will broke into laughter, then his attention 
was taken by the candle's flame glowing enticingly in front of him. 
 
Fox Mulder leaned his boy closer. He had been working with the child on 
this for weeks beforehand. Sure enough, little Will's lips puckered up on 
 cue, and blew out his very own birthday candle, all by himself.  
 
Cheers erupted from the assembled group. There seemed to be almost too 
much gaiety for just a child's birthday. However, these particular 
friends knew how much sadness had passed before, and how much the 
parents 
needed the jubilation this normal event called for. 
 
Scully cut a generous slice of the sticky confection for everyone 
present. "Sir? Would you like mint chocolate or Neapolitan ice cream?"  
 
Her hand poised over the carton with a scooper. Around the table she 
went, serving everyone until her attention was caught by her little boy 
gleefully grabbing handfuls of cake, and stuffing them into his greedy 
mouth. Alternating, of course, with spreading it into his hair, up his 
nose, and dropping bits down his shirt front to fall mysteriously into 
his diaper. Mulder was clearly delighted with the sloppy hobgoblin in his 
lap, for he made no move to stop the tiny culprit. 
 
"Good, good!" he crowed, pausing a moment to look adoringly at his 
mother. Scully's heart tightened as she returned that loving look, then 
exchanged a similar one with Mulder. 
 
"I better get some damp towels to clean him up," he announced. He 
carefully handed William off to Leyla, who held him gingerly pointed in 
Doggett's general direction, since it was John who had the videocam. 
Returning a moment later from his errand, Mulder experienced a curious 
doubling of his vision. His ears filled with a loud roaring sound and as 
he stumbled and fell hard, the roar was diminished until he could make 
out words. The former FBI agent was immediately awash in....memories? 
 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~flashback two 
 
He lay on a hard table, cold and covered in bright light. Dimly he made 
out two men standing over him. He was so tired, so tired that it didn't 
even matter that one of the men was smoking a cigarette as he looked 
dispassionately at the man on the operating table. His greatest enemy, 
whose throat he should leap up and rip out, spoke with another man. 
 
"It's a chance none of us ever expected... let alone hoped for.  After 
all these years trying to develop a compatible alien-human hybrid and to 
have one ready-made." 
 
"All these years... all the questioning why... why keep Mulder alive?   
When it was so simple to remove the threat that he posed?"  
 
"There was no way you could have predicted this."   
 
"The fact remains, he's become our savior.  He's immune to the coming  
viral apocalypse.  He's the hero here."  
 
"He may not survive the procedure."  
 
"Then he suffers a hero's fate." 
 
Mulder felt a stab of fear through his lethargy. Was he going to die? 
Where was Diana? Where was his normal life, the one he'd always longed 
for? He suddenly found himself back in the beautiful home. Mulder 
turned, 
and saw her standing there in a wedding gown. Relief flooded him. He 
turned again, and saw his children, which he greeted with joy.  
 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 
 
 
There was no thought of Scully in this dream, or whatever it was, the man 
thought groggily as he slowly became aware of pain in his scalp. At that 
particular time in his life, he had believed that such simple joys were 
not meant for him and his partner. It was reserved for his wildest 
fantasies. Then again, he had also believed that Scully regarded him as a 
best friend and nothing more. 
 
The soreness of his head turned out to be his son's hands gripping his 
hair and tugging with all his might. "Daddy! Daddy!" screeched loudly in 
his ear. 
 
"I'm all right, bun," he reassured Will, struggling to sit up. Bill Jr. 
scooped Will into his arms so Mulder could rise.  
 
"Unca! Unca!" Will protested loudly, struggling to get back to his 
father.  
 
"It's OK, Will," Mulder told him again. "You go with Uncle Bill now." 
 
Scully all but shoved her brother and child towards her mother so the boy 
could be cleaned up. She herself had a death grip on Mulder's arm and a 
determined set to her jaw that told him he was in for it. Unceremoniously 
she dragged him to the kitchen to confront him about this latest 
"collapse." 
 
Skinner, Doggett, Reyes and Harrison and the Gunmen were left alone in 
the living room. They glanced uncomfortably at each other before 
deciding 
that there was nothing else for them to do but help clean up. All of them 
thought, though none of them said it, that the incident was a bad omen 
for a child's first birthday. 
 
------------------- 
 
Once the kitchen door swung shut behind them, she let go of his arm only 
to grab a handful of his hair. 
 
"Ow! Scully!"  
 
"I think you should go to the hospital Mulder," Scully stated. She 
examined his head for injuries so efficiently that Mulder's eyes watered. 
 
"Dana..." 
 
"You might be having a relapse Mulder! You *do* remember the 
neurological 
condition you've suffered from....*twice* before?" 
 
He slowly shook his head. "This is different Dana." She made an impatient 
sound and he held up his hands to placate her. 
 
"This is more like the flashbacks I was having when I called you from 
that hotel in Rhode Island. You know, when the Cassandra's died." Mulder 
closes his eyes briefly at the flash of remembered pain in her eyes. 
 
"Except that these memories aren't nearly as violent or painful to recall 
as the others. Nor are they Ketamine induced." Now he was trying to 
lighten her up by obliquely referencing his stupidity in trusting a 
quack. 
 
Scully didn't smile, but she did let go of him. "So what are these 
visions, these memories, of this time?" she asked quietly. 
 
Now Mulder hesitated. The visions of being married to Diana during his 
unscheduled brain surgery of a few years back were something he hadn't 
shared much of with his partner. He had told her that he had brief dreams 
of being married and having children, of going through an entire life 
cycle. She did know that it was her young, unspoiled self who confronted 
him at the end of his "life." It was she that had saved him. 
 
"I...I was remembering when CGB was standing over me while I was 
being 
prepped for surgery. He talked about me....like I was already dead, like 
I was a specimen." 
 
Scully turned swiftly back to him and embraced him. Mulder knew that 
experience had been terrifying for her. She was already worried about 
him, but kept busy chasing down leads that might offer a cure for him, 
and then had to deal with a discovery which rocked every concept she held 
about life. Then she returned and found him missing; she nearly lost him 
before an enemy gave her the key to saving him, and on top of that was 
unsure of his recovery. 
 
"There was something about this particular memory that made me think 
about something," he said to the top of her head as they embraced. 
"Something about family." 
 
She turned her head to peer up at him. He was suddenly nervous. Was this 
the right time to do this? Maybe it should be more romantic. 
"Scully...Dana...I want to get married." 
 
She drew back to look at him. "Oh? And who did you have in mind to 
marry?" 
 
He looked at her incredulously, then chuffed out a laugh when he saw her 
teasing smile. He was still too keyed up to see the tension in her face, 
or the worry and fear in her eyes. 
 
"You, Scully. I mean, I feel like I've always been married to you, ever 
since...ever since Penny Northern died and you came back to work with 
me 
on the X-Files." 
 
"Well, it's certainly a nice idea Mulder." She forced her voice to sound 
light. "Let me think about it OK? We'll talk about it sometime, but right 
now we have guests to take care of." 
 
Mulder frowned slightly. Sure, his Scully was not a demonstrative woman, 
but he'd expected, he'd *hoped* for a more enthusiastic response. Was it 
because he didn't buy her flowers, go down on one knee and make a pretty 
speech? Surely Dana knew he wasn't like that. He showed her the depth of 
his feelings every day, he didn't need to speak much about it. Did he? 
 
Scully preceded Mulder out of the kitchen, trying to control her pounding 
heart. She pinched her cheeks to force some color back into their pasty 
whiteness. Mulder had hinted around before that he wanted such a formal 
commitment to her. But he had never asked her so seriously before now. It 
wasn't that she didn't want to marry him. Hell no, she loved him and felt 
just as married to him as he apparently felt to her.  
 
What troubled her was a memory of their former lives together. Yes, the 
unshakable tie between them had, in many ways, transcended ordinary 
things. However, she remembered vividly that for all the times they 
needed no words to communicate, there were as many times when talking 
would have cured many ills in their partnership. Scully recalled what 
John Doggett had once said to Mulder, as she gave birth to William in 
terrifying circumstances.  
 
"Do you ever stop to ask yourself? When the hell does it all end?" 
Doggett had asked her love.  
 
"I don't know. Maybe it doesn't," Mulder had replied. That terrified her. 
She wanted to wait, wanted to see if they really had a happy ending. 
Wanted to see if any more monsters in the night would threaten them 
before she allowed herself to be secure. 
 
Stiffly, she greeted her mother. By the look in *that* woman's eyes, Dana 
had some explaining to do about Mulder's health and fitness.