#and more pain
At twelve weeks, she miscarries, and frankly neither one of them are surprised.
She lazily regards the brownish tint as it swirls down the toilet and wonders what the hell is wrong with her… then she downs four ibuprofen because the cramps are out of this world.
They spend the day heavy with sighs, strewn in grey sweats across his couch, old socks hanging dismally off their feet. He doesn’t mention the wadded pair of panties in his bathroom trash, and she doesn’t mention him taking a pull off a bottle of Jameson for the first time in thirteen months.
They’ve been swirling in dirty, decomposing silence for a month now. The rot of their lost son litters his desk.
A baby would never have fixed this. Maybe fifteen years ago it would have helped.
Tonight, their latest attempt to self-soothe is hanging out in a pipe right past their toilet wall.
He often wonders, how can anyone come back.
“He was yours.”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” he mumbles, but it’s the first time she’s brought William up and his heart is only half in it.
She sighs and settles. And it is just like every other God damn night.
William was his. Until he wasn’t. They didn’t treat him like trash. Until they did. And he’s never been a father. Until he wasn’t, amymore.
He shifts his hips from under her head and treks upstairs. Bones heavy. Arthritic, practically, on those endless steps.
Fox Mulder, he decides, has never deserved children. And he never will. And so, when he curls up in bed, and feels that sharp tug, that pull, on the edge of his mind…
‘Mulder… c'mon Mulder. I need you…’
His son in sharp relief…
Mulder rolls over and covers his head with the pillow.
‘Stop lying, William, I was never your dad. I never will be.’
Radio silence. Finally. It only took 30 years. But finally, someone has taken Fox Mulder at his word.
