The characters and show belong to the same folks they have always belonged
to, Fox, Chris Carter, 1013, etc.  I'm not making any money off of them. 
No copyright infringement is intended.  This is pure fun.

 This story is rated PG.  It has a few cuss words and Scully's pregnancy
is discussed.

 I don't care who posts it where as long as my name stays on it.  I am
always pleased when folks ask though.

 Summary:  I was always a bit intrigued when, at the end, Mulder suddenly
decides to take responsibility for protecting the baby since he had seemed
quite distant and not entirely pleased with her condition when he returned
from the dead.  This story attempts to explain why he might have had a
sudden change of heart.

 Note:  A doula is a woman who assists a pregnant woman through
childbirth.  She might act as a labor coach or simply provide moral
support during labor.  Afterwards, she will go to the home for as many
hours as she is contracted for and help with the baby, sibling care, light
housekeeping, meal preparation, etc.  It is a fairly new concept and a real
blessing in this society that seems to have so few extended families.

 Thanks to my beta readers Ghill and Ten.  I hope I got all the edits you
sent.

 "Conversations in the Car"

by macspooky@erols.com

 When Maggie saw Fox Mulder pull up to the curb through her picture
window, she didn't even wait for him to get out of the car.  She knew
something was wrong, grabbed her purse and was already locking the door by
the time he got out and started up her walk.  Earlier, she had decided to
spend the day running some errands and cleaning up her own home.  Dana had
seemed fine.  Lizzie was coming.  Everything was supposed to be okay.  She
knew by the look on his face that she had made a very wrong assumption.  A
million thoughts raced through her mind, from Dana going into labor early
to other things that she didn't care to think about at all.

"What happened?" she asked quickly as he held the car door open for her.

 "Dana asked me to come and get you," he said quietly.  He moved around to
the driver's side.  Mulder got back into the vehicle and started the engine
immediately.  "She seems to be fine, but Agent Doggett took her to the
hospital to get checked out.  Lizzie Gill was switching some of her
prescription medicine.  Dana caught her.  We don't know how long she has
been doing it and what your daughter has been taking."

 "Oh, my God," Maggie burst out.  "I brought that woman into her home. 
She came so highly recommended and she seemed so nice.  Oh, my God, what
have I done?"  Mrs. Flynn up the street had recommended Lizzie.  Her
youngest daughter had hired Lizzie through a service that provided doulas
and Lizzie had been wonderful.

"I'd say you acted like any other good mother would, tried to make certain
that your daughter had the best of everything," he said with a sigh.  "Only
in our world, nothing seems to work that way.  Nothing seems to work
right.  Nothing is normal."

 Sensing that he had little more information for her, Maggie lapsed into
silence.  All too typically of the Washington DC area, they were soon
stuck in a major traffic jam on 50 West which ran from Annapolis into
Washington DC.  They had already passed the exit for Route 450, a slower
alternate route, but traffic was as bad going back.  They had no choice
but to sit and wait it out.  Fox started to curse, realized whom he was
with and lapsed into silence.  They sat silently in the traffic for a long
time.

 "Your daughter won't talk to me," he finally said quietly.  "She won't
tell me the sex of the baby.  She won't tell me what names she has picked
out.  Hell, Mrs. Scully, she won't even tell me whether or not she thinks
I'm the kid's father.  It's like she's forgotten, or she thinks I've
forgotten what we....what I...."  He stopped realizing that perhaps it
wasn't the best thing to talk about with her mother.

 "It's like she's forgotten that you ever made love," said Maggie quietly
staring out the window.  "I don't know what to say, Fox.  I've been torn
to pieces wondering whether or not I was such a poor judge of character
because you'd walked out on your responsibility or whether the problem was
my daughter who has a history of backing away from relationships around
about the time they require a commitment."

 "I'm sorry," he said softly.  "I know you must be frantic with worry
about her right now."

 "And you aren't?" With that, Maggie turned to face him and smiled
slightly.  The traffic moved a little and Fox got about 20 feet ahead.  

 There was another long silence.

 "Fox," said Maggie quietly, "I don't think I'm such a bad judge of
character.  I don't think you would ever walk away from your
responsibility.  I think you are just not sure what those responsibilities
are right now."  She reached over and patted his hand gently as it rested
on the steering wheel.

 "She won't talk to me," he said again sounding angrier this time.

 "My daughter went through hell when you were gone," said Maggie
quietly.  "I have to be frank, if it wasn't for the baby, I'm not even
sure she would have lived.  She literally pined away for you.  She had a
lot of the same fears you have, about the baby I mean.  One day she even
burst out that she was afraid it might be an alien."

 "That must have shocked you," he said dryly.

 "Not really, Fox.  Not anymore.  Sometimes I think nothing does."  The
woman sighed.  She continued, "Then she went with John Byers up to Canada
for some tests and when she came back I could see she felt better,
relieved somehow.  She didn't discuss it with me, but I could tell."

 He nodded thoughtfully.  That was probably when she had switched from Dr.
Parenti.  Mulder moved once again in the traffic this time cutting into the
other lane.  A horn honked behind him and someone raised a middle finger in
his direction.

 "Are you absolutely certain that when you came back you didn't push her
away, Fox?" asked Maggie gently.  "You'd been through a lot.  I've seen
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.  My best friend lost her husband to it. 
Viet Nam.  He came back and was never the same man.  It was as though his
brain shut down and never worked right again until finally she couldn't
live with it any longer.  He had become a danger to himself and his
children."

 "Am I a danger Mrs. Scully?" he asked moving another 20 feet and managing
to change lanes again.

 "I don't think so, Fox," she said, "although I'm not certain the man in
the car behind you would agree.  I'd say you seem to be recovering
nicely.  If you weren't, we wouldn't be sitting here now watching people
give you the finger."  

 He smiled slightly and promised himself he wouldn't cut off any more
cars.  He didn't say anything for a long time.  He was thinking about the
day Dana brought him home from the hospital, about how she had tried to
tell him what it had been like for her while he had been gone.  He had
pushed her away.  Yes, it was true.  He had shut her out completely. 
Slowly but surely he'd been finding his footing again, but things had
never been the same between them.  She had respected his need for space
and in doing so, they were losing each other for sure.

 "If I know my daughter, she stepped away.  It's her way.  She isn't going
to tread where she isn't wanted.  If she isn't talking to you about the
baby it's because she wants you to come to the realization that you want
it on your own and not because you are forced.  She loves you so much,
Fox.  Don't ever lose sight of that.  Besides, she won't tell me the sex
either."

 "I've been so jealous," he said.  "Jealous of John Doggett.  I don't
know.  It just seemed as though everyone had moved on with their lives
while I was being...."  Again he stopped.  He didn't really want to go
into it.

 "Being tortured," she replied.  "It might have seemed that way, but
believe me, it wasn't.  Agent Doggett was very good to Dana from what I
could see.  He watched out for her.  He watched out for her baby.  He is a
very decent man.  He didn't have to do that."

 "I know that now, but the knowledge came slowly," he said a little
bitterly.  "If only...."

 "If only she'd talked to you and made you listen," chuckled Margaret. 
"You are both to blame here, Fox, equally, at least in my humble
opinion.  I guess it remains to be seen how the two of you will work it
out."

 "Yeah," he said.  "I guess it does.  I don't like myself much for
thinking the kid might be Doggett's, Mrs. Scully.  I really don't."

 Maggie chuckled.  "No way, Fox.  You're the only man for her.  Tell me
though, if my poor grief stricken daughter had turned to someone else for
comfort briefly, if she had done something really stupid like spend a
night with Agent Doggett, do you think she'd like herself much afterwards
and would it really make her that horrible of a human being?"

 Fox made no response to her question.  She hadn't really expected him to
answer.  She was trying to provide food for thought.  As a Catholic woman,
she would have to say it was sinful, but Maggie understood grief all too
well.  She didn't know if she might not have done the same thing if
someone had been there after Bill died.  Would it have made Dana a
horrible human being?  Somehow, Maggie didn't think so.

 "Now, tell me again what happened with Lizzie.  I want to know everything
you know," Maggie demanded.  

 "I don't know everything yet," he said quietly.  He'd been thinking about
Maggie's questions, thinking about a day in California years before.  While
Scully had been missing and was being tortured undoubtedly by the same
beings who had abducted him, he had been, in all his grief, in the arms of
one Kristen Kilar, a suspect in a murder case.  He had been desperate,
frantic for a brief respite from the emotions that tore him apart. He had
felt guilty and hated himself for it afterwards.  If he had felt so deeply
aggrieved then, even before he and Scully had ever made love, how must Dana
have felt so many years later after they had been through so much together
and had become lovers?

 The car in front of him started to move.  Suddenly the traffic jam broke
and he was finally able to speed up.  "Dana called me from her cel
phone.  She sounded almost hysterical.  She was holding Lizzie at gunpoint
saying something about her having switched the pills in the medicine
chest.  Lizzie is being held for questioning right now.  I'd have gone
right down there to question her myself, but as you know, I've been fired
and Dana asked me to get you."

 "They shouldn't have fired you, Fox," Maggie said quietly.  "I stood at
the funeral with that bastard...excuse the language....Alvin Kersh and
thought to myself that this man is not grieving for anyone.  There was
nothing in his eyes, Fox.  Nothing.  That scares me.  It scares me a lot."

 Mulder nodded and drove.

 "One more philosophical question for you, Fox," she smiled gently as they
pulled into the hospital parking lot.  "And this one is strictly
rhetorical.  If your worst fears and Dana's worst nightmare came true, and
somehow this baby was an alien...."

 He started to interrupt but she stopped him with a gesture.  "I'm not a
fool, Fox.  Dana doesn't tell me much, but I deduce things, okay.  Give me
credit for that.  Just if....the baby was some sort of an alien, then
wouldn't that baby still be a child of, a creation of God, and wouldn't it
need to be loved and nurtured just the same?"

 With that, Margaret Scully got out of the car and walked quickly to the
hospital entrance.  They went to the room where Dana was getting
dressed.  She put her arms around her daughter and held her.

 Fox watched silently for a moment feeling in some ways as though a burden
had been lifted.  He realized that there was a reason for him to live, a
reason for him to be here.  Suddenly a lot of his anger and bitterness was
gone.  He didn't have a lot of time to think about it though.  Walter
Skinner came and got him.  They wanted him to sit in on further
questioning of Lizzie Gill.

 
The End