Just a little "fix it" written shortly after the episode in which my boy died. Let's see, I think I was listening to Sarah McLachlan's "Possession" and Delerium's "Silence" at the time. Betaed by Gwyn and jen, and can I blame any remaining mistakes on Skinner? Bastard.

On William's first birthday, FBI Assistant Director Walter Skinner was shot and killed in the parking garage of the J. Edgar Hoover building. As far as anyone could tell, it was a simple mugging gone wrong, but Mulder had to wonder about the placement of the three bullets. Paranoia was a habit he'd never quite lost.

On William's second birthday, a package arrived in the mail postmarked from Russia. Inside was a newspaper clipping, a fire-scorched, blood-blackened knife, and the charred haft of a shovel. Mulder couldn't read the newspaper, but he could guess what it said from the photographs. The ruined remains of the facility in Tunguska. The still-smoldering wreck of the surrounding forest where one-armed men had banded together as refugees and become their own brand of monster while fighting the invader in their midst.

Mulder took the whole package with him when he applied to have Krycek's grave exhumed.

Unsurprisingly, digging up Krycek was as complicated as burying him in the first place. Despite the fact that no relatives had been tracked down to claim the body nor had any shown up in the past two years, Mulder still had to wait while the system once more made an attempt at proving Krycek existed beyond several stacks of falsified documents and several trails of dead bodies which had theoretically ended when the man himself joined the ranks. Mulder should have known it wouldn't be that easy. Hadn't he been dead himself a few times?

On William's third birthday, clearance came through to exhume the grave. Mulder received the phonecall while watching the national news. An extremist militia in South Dakota had suddenly become a lot less underground when its cache of highly illegal explosives unexpectedly detonated, decimating its headquarters. The message was clear. The puzzle and problem that was Alex Krycek had blown up in his face any number of times in any number of ways. He came prepared for it once more.

It was almost anti-climactic, really. No alien mummy, no half-starved zombie. Just one rather battered prosthetic arm and one set of bloody handprints around the coffin's hinges. A complete set, one right hand, and one left.

Mulder stared long and hard at that, and it took him a moment to recognize the old feeling of anticipation and terror intermingled. Then, with a fatal sense of déjà vu, he called his wife and told her he was going to be late getting home. Dana didn't even ask what he'd found in the coffin.

As he drove to the J. Edgar Hoover building, Mulder had to wonder what Krycek had planned for William's fourth birthday. The fourth anniversary of Krycek's own deceptive demise. And remembering why Skinner had gunned Krycek down, he had to wonder if he would live to see William's fifth birthday.

Ironically, the thought left him smiling. He never felt so alive as when he knew people wanted to kill him. And maybe he'd finally give Krycek a surprise worthy of the man.

After all, hadn't he come back himself a few times?

~END~