Title: Overweighted
Chapter Five
By RocketMan

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Dedication: I can't believe how many e-mails I got telling me to
continue! It's so awesome that there are people out there reading, and
knowing it yourself. This is for the following:
Kim, Starbuck, Harriet, Polly, Angie, Scott, Natasha, Shannon, Lucy,
Angela, OrangefuzE, Jaime, Jackie, Snoopy8040, and Lauren.

=====
"And like the mute man I will mouth my pain so that only I can hear it."
--Vanessa Len, Clock Eulogy
=====

He just paces.

Back and forth across the room. With one glance now and then to me,
which I know simply because he is staring so hard I can feel it. He
stops once in a while to touch my cheek, thinking I don't know where he
is.

I am curled on his couch, waiting for something to happen, for Dana to
come back with whatever it is she left looking for. She's not as excited
as Daddy is. She keeps thinking of the other little girl she lost and
how it could happen all over again. But Daddy's joy is a wonderful wave
of pure thrill that bounces around in him.

Tonight, the air is still, the smells are far away and Daddy is waiting,
so I wait here too.

I know that Dana is my Mommy, but she's too scared to think like that,
so I try not to upset her. She's afraid I'll have to leave.

I want to stay here with Daddy.

~~~~~

He wasn't sure what he was supposed to do now.

There she was -- his daughter -- and he didn't know what he was
supposed to do with her. What could they do? She couldn't see him
or hear him!

After a huge mess with the Californian institution, Mulder and Scully
had managed to prove that they should be awarded temporary custody,
since her captors had not been caught and no clear motive had been
established.

Although, they both knew why she'd been taken.

She was theirs, and someone didn't want that known.

Or maybe it had all been orchestrated so they would find out.

Helen moved slightly and her small body twisted to place her head in his
lap. He sat awkwardly for a minute, then hesistantly ran his fingers
through her hair.

It was blonde and soft and smelled like his summers in Martha's Vineyard
when things were good in his family. He smiled and she stretched her
little frame out along the couch.

"Don't need my bad habits . . ." he murmured, before remembering that
she could not hear.

He and Scully had been commanded by the state to take comprehensive
lessons on basic American Sign Language, but the slightly moderated
version for those that had to touch to speak and hear.

It was easy for him, but Scully struggled through it, forgetting just
how to hold her hands and fingers to mean a thousand different things.
She was growing frustrated because she couldn't communicate with Helen,
even though she was really trying.

They had two more weeks of it, every night, before they were through.

And after that, Mulder had no idea what would happen.

There was no way they'd get custody when their availability was weighed
against Helen's special needs. They worked too much, and it wasn't
conceivable that they could change that.

He wanted to change, just as Scully had promised with Emily, but he had
a feeling that the state wouldn't see it like that.

Helen's fingers went to his hands and he waited, but she made no attempt
to "speak" and he let her little palms play in his. She made the letter
"H" over and over as if it was a new toy, then strung together a
complicated fragment of half thoughts and ramblings, almost as if she
were thinking out loud to him.

It was crushing his heart to think he wouldn't be able to have her.

He was already in love with his little girl.

Helen's head jerked up and her face tensed: the door opened and Scully
came in, a stormy look of anger and fear in her face.

Mulder watched her move into his apartment with a fluid grace that he
saw in Helen when she manuevered around the room. She was alternating
between biting her lip and crossing her arms.

"I got the review back, Mulder . . ." she said and her mouth was moving
even after she stopped speaking.

Helen curled tightly in his arms and he tensed for bad news.

"They don't think . . . they don't think we're responsible enough . . ."

He watched in stunned silence as her eyes seemed to tremble, then grow
watery from the tears she held back.

"What does that mean?" he said softly. "We can't have her?"

Scully couldn't sit down; she paced in front of his couch and glanced
agonizingly at him and Helen for a few seconds before returning her eyes
to the sheet in front of her.

"Scully! She's ours! What the hell do they mean? They can't just say
no."

"They can and they are."

"No. No, I won't let them do that. What would have happened if we'd had
her normally, huh? They wouldn't come and take her away from us. They
couldn't. They can't just . . . they can't . . ."

But she was shaking her head and refusing to look at him squarely.

He wanted to shake her and make her stop pacing like a caged panther,
her muscles bunching and smoothing and tensing beneath her legs and jaw.

"Scully, please, I'll quit the X-Files, hand everything over to you and
go teach somewhere or live in Alaska where no one has ever heard of
government conspiracies . . ."

He placed a hand unconsciously to Helen's head, burying his fingers in
her hair and biting his lip. Her dark and sightless eyes came to stare
at him and he wished that for once, she could see how much love for her
was in him.

"Please, Scully. Tell me what I have to do. Tell me how to keep her."

His anguished eyes rose to meet an equally tortured soul.

She shook her head and collapsed next to them on the couch, reaching
out a tentative hand to stroke Helen's cheek. Their little girl was
strangely still, as if she knew and could sense the horror taking place
around her.

"She needs a family, Mulder. She needs a family."

His eyes cut into hers desperately, his hand reaching out to clutch
hers.

"We can be her family, Scully. We can."

"I know we can Mulder. But they won't . . . they won't see our
arrangement as beneficial to Helen. Besides, they're probably
right. Getting shipped from your place to mine and back and
everything . . ."

He shook his head violently, his eyes cast in the same light that told
her he had a crazy theory.

"No, we can do this together. I swear Scully . . . We can make her a
family, just us. I want us to be a family."

Her lips parted in surprise and she stared at him.

"Us? Are you . . . do you mean . . .?"

"I mean, us. A family in the same place, under the same roof, stronger
together than apart. We're best friends, Scully, how hard is it to take
that further?"

She stood suddenly, backing away from him. "Mulder . . ."

"Please, Scully. For Helen. I want to be able to see my little girl
every day of my life. I want to watch her grow up and be able to protect
her. If . . . I have this chance to make things right for her, for you,
then I don't want to miss it. I love her, Scully. I never thought of
having kids, but I like the idea."

She stopped moving away from him. "So we just live together, is that
what you're saying?"

He nodded. "That's it." <For now.>

She looked at Helen, at the way the light on her face hid her more
angular jaw and dark eyes and presented an Emily look-alike to her
grief again.

"I don't want to lose Helen, too," she said softly.

She came and sat back down.

"I want us to be a family." As she spoke, her eyes slid up to Mulder's
and he saw a thousand wodnerful things in them that told him this would
work.

Helen's hands shot up between them and signed on the side of each of
their cheeks, I love you.

Scully and Mulder each took a hand and kissed her palm.

They signed back: We love you.

Scully looked up at him.

"So, I get the X-Files, huh?"

~~~~~
adios
end chapter
RM