January 29, 2024
Near Washington, D. C.
4:22 PM


They arrived.  They had to switch into four-wheel
drive to get there because the roads around DC still
were clogged with abandoned cars, but even going off-
road did not alleviate the stench of rotting human
remains in some areas.  Mulder and Scully took their
turns gagging from the odor.

"We have to get cleanup crews out here somehow,"
Scully said, shielding her nose with the back of
her hand.  "This is going to destroy the water
supply, if it hasn't already."

When they finally reached their destination,
they were met by two guards: two tired-looking kids,
not possibly more than seventeen years old.
They boy of the pair introduced himself as Gregory
and his counterpart as Tricia.  Both stared in awe
at them -- the fabled Agents Scully and Mulder,
responsible for the survival of the remaining human
race thus far.

"I thought she'd be much taller," Tricia tried
whispering subtly to Gregory.

"Yeah, so did I," Mulder turned and answered the
girl, who blushed furiously in response.

Apologetically, Gregory held up the metal lancet
for the requisite test of humanity.  "Sorry, but
this is just policy."

Scully held out her hand to the boy and Mulder
did the same.  She blinked at the red blood
welling on her finger.

//She brought two pints of blood with her...//

Scully closed her eyes, slowly reopening them
to see Gregory offering plastic bandages to
her and Mulder.

"Sorry," Gregory repeated as she took her bandage.
"We knew you wouldn't be, but--"

"It's alright," Scully interrupted the nervous
kid and gave him a small reassuring smile.

"Uh, Mr. Skinner asked us to bring you this way,"
Tricia pointed the way and began to escort them
around the perimiter of the main building of the
since-converted Holy Family Medical Center.  Here
Rayelle Smith Declan, R. N., M. S. N., had once
served as head respiratory nurse.  Now she was
basically head of everything.  Times like these pushed
people of integrity, resolve and advance knowledge
into key positions.  Raye was no exception.

They were led to the back of the building, to
the hospital's delivery bay.

"This one," Tricia said, pointing to one of
the trucks, but her direction was redundant,
because Skinner was coming out of the bay to
meet them.

Skinner informed them by way of greeting,
"Declan and Cho were brought here early this
morning in this unmarked refrigerated truck,
clearly infected with the virus.  Raye Declan had
them each given another dose of the vaccine, but
there's been no change.  She ordered them kept in
the refrigerated truck just in case the cold keeps
this virus from progressing."

"Does that seem to be working?" Mulder asked him.

Sknniner's glace shot back to the truck.  "How
can we know?  We've never dealt with anything like
this, not since we've had our own vaccine."

"Have you been able to tell if it seems to be
slowing the rate of cellular degredation?"  Scully
demanded, "What has Raye said?"

"She said she wanted to wait for you to get here
before making any assumptions," was Skinner's answer.

Scully nodded.

They had reached the the truck by then, and
a single biohazard suit was draped over the
passenger seat in the cab.

Skinner explained, "We only had two of these left.
Raye is in there right now with the other."

Both former boss and partner looked expectantly to
Scully, who nodded and pulled the suit out of the
cab.

"I can help you with that, Doctor," Tricia
piped up shyly.

"Thank you," Scully answered.

Then, Skinner held out his hand to Mulder.  Resting
on his open palm was a silver cylinder with a small
switch on the side.  "We found this in the truck."

Mulder reached out and took the the sheathed alien
weapon out of Skinner's grip.  Scully froze and
stared at it as well.

"Who brought them here?" Mulder asked.  "Anyone we
know?"

Skinner glared silently then jerked his head in the
direction of the closest doors into the hospital.

Mulder looked back to Scully.

"Go," she told him.

He nodded and turned to follow Skinner.



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~



The irony was not lost on Mulder as Skinner led
him up the steps and through the halls into the
psych unit.

Skinner explained.  "The only ward with doors that
just lock from the outside."

Mulder nodded.  "The blood she brought with her?"

"Being kept in the refrigerated truck with Declan and
Cho.  Two pints, freshly taken, labeled separately
with what looks like social security numbers.  I
looked up Rachel Jo DeMaram's, and it's a match."

Mulder nodded again.

Skinner directed him to the end of the hall,
where another pair of underaged guards waited by a
door.

Without a single word, Skinner unlocked and opened
the door.

The dim light from the hallway leaked through the
opening in the door, over the heads of those
standing in the doorway.  The figure that had been
seated on the bed stood and the light fell on her
all too familiar face.

"You," Mulder said.

Marita Covarrubias lowered her head, more in
seeming exhaustion than in surrender, before
raising it again.

"Agent Mulder."  Her voice had roughened with the
years.

Skinner stood back and folded his arms.

"What do you want?" Mulder asked, barely moving
his jaw.

She blinked at him, then at Skinner.  "The same
thing you want.  Survival.  For your daughter."

"Then why did you bring us her blood but forget
the rest of her?"  Mulder shot back.

"They're not going to kill her," Marita replied.

"That's wonderfully reassuring, coming from you."

Marita blinked at the light several times then
resumed her seat on the edge of the bed.  "She
is too valuable to Them."

"Why?" Mulder asked immediately.

"You know about the new mutation?"  She scanned
his face. "I see that you do.  For some reason
your daughter and Captain DeMaram are immunne to it."

With deadly calm, he said, "You infected her, too."

"And she rejected the virus spontaneously," was her
swift, cool reply.  "She's still very much alive,
and will be for some time.  As long as They need
her."

Mulder fought every impulse raging within him to
pick her up and throttle the truth out of her.
"Why did you bring their blood here?"

She tilted her head at him, brushed back a wayward
strand of silvered hair.  "They're going to use your
daughter's blood.  DeMaram's too.  Run tests on it,
to find out how they're immune."

"To try to find a new vaccine," Mulder stated --
not as a question.

"A better one," she qualified.  "They'll keep her, and
DeMaram, as long as the tests need to last."

She looked down at the floor, but Mulder would not
relent.  "You didn't answer my question."

Marita paused, suddenly disconcerted.  She looked up at
Mulder, then at Skinner, and then back at Mulder, her
jaw open and trembling.  "I thought..." she began
shakily, "I thought that if I brought the blood, you
could use it... to beat Them to it."

"To making this new vaccine?" Mulder asked.

Marita nodded imperceptibly, then looked back down
at the dull tile floor.  "Their track record of
taking good care of test subjects..."

Her voice dried up, and her mouth worked open then
shut.  Her eyes closed, and she raised a shaking
hand to brush at her hair again.

"... leaves much to be desired," she finished,
raising her eyes to Mulder's once more.

He tried to make his face impassive.  By the
shimmer that glazed its way across her eyes,
Mulder knew instantly that he had failed.

"And who helped you transport Kevin and Cho here?"
Skinner finally asked.

Her eyes flicked meaningfully to the silver weapon
still clutched in Mulder's hand.   "No one knows I'm
here."

"What about my daughter?"  Mulder demanded, shouting
hoarsely, "Where is she?"

Composure once again intact, Marita raised her eyes
to Mulder's with a cool challenge.  "Win this race
against Them, Agent Mulder.  Or else you can consider
your daughter safer in Their hands than yours."

A guttural sound of anguish escaped his throat, and
Mulder could not stop himself from taking a
threatening step towards her.

Skinner grabbed Mulder's arm and in a low voice
warned, "Easy."

Mulder's fists knotted with futility, then he forced
them to unclench.  His eyes still blazing, he looked
back at Marita and tightened his jaw even more.  "What
is that supposed to mean?"

"They can protect her in ways you can't."  She
raised her voice slightly.  "Isn't that what
you've always wanted above all things, to keep
her safe?  Isn't that what a father wants for
his daughter?"

Frozen, he stared at her.

//That's ten more years than *your* father had...//

His throat closed up on him.  He turned to leave,
pausing in the doorway.  He faced Marita Covarrubias
once more.  "My daughter *will*  be safe," he choked,
"without being exploited."

"If you have the vaccine before They do," she spoke,
and Mulder stopped in the doorway again to listen.
Marita swallowed harshly and resumed.  "If you have
the vaccine before They do, the odds will be evened.
Only that will assure your daughter's safety at your
own hands.  Only that and nothing more."

He brushed past Skinner and began walking back to
the truck, to Scully.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


On initial examination of Kevin Declan and Gerald
Cho, the artificial cold did seem to be keeping the
more devastating effects of the virus at bay,
thankfully.  That hope alone kept Scully from
vomiting inside of her suit at the chill's reminder --
the cold, the confinement, the virus...

Rayelle Declan sat by her son's side, holding his
slack hand in hers through the glove of her own
protective gear.  Her face was a mask of detached
shock.

In her own biohazard suit, Scully carefully
lowered herself to sit between the two still-living
victims.  She looked over at Raye, whose eyes were
fixed on her son's blank, oil-clouded ones.

Scully looked over at the small metal table
placed between the two stretchers.  Two bags of
blood had been placed there.  She examined the labels
on each bag, and recognized the number on one as
Meg's social security number.  She reached out and
picked it up, holding it closely to her visor.  She
watched it for any sign of movement.  It rippled
with the motion of being lifted, but nothing more than
that.  She frowned at herself and returned it to the
table.

"We called up to Sister Bridget," Rayelle said, still
not taking her eyes off her son's, "to see if she
could send Lenhart and Keyte to help us.  Maybe they
can't kill the virus, but they could at least remove
it."

"And?"  Scully asked hopefully.

Raye shook her head, despondent.  "They can't get
here for another day at best."

"What about the other one?  Scott?"

"He'll be out of contact for another two days at
least.  Somewhere in Canada."

Scully nodded, feeling Raye's pain in concert with
her own.  "How long since initial infection?"  She
asked, raising her voice so she could be heard clearly
through their suits' barriers.

Raye lifted her head.  "From what that woman said,
two and a half days ago at this point.  I think."

Scully looked at Cho, then Kevin.  "With the cold, that
gives us thirty-six hours."

"At best," Raye said again.

Scully nodded.

"Twenty years," Raye said so softly Scully could
hardly hear her.

"Raye?"

"No.  More than twenty, right?"  Raye raised her voice
and her eyes.  "It took more than that to come up with
our own vaccine the last time."  She shook her head,
smiling bitterly.  "I don't know as many of the details
as you.  I didn't come along 'til the fourth quarter."

Scully frowned, but then tried to reassure Raye.  "All
those years of work on the last vaccine give us a head
start on making a new one."

Raye looked back at her son.  Her voice shook with
unshed tears.  "Enough to turn twenty years into
thirty-six hours or less?  And this time around we
have fewer supplies, a less reliable power supply,
and only the two of us working on it... and hardly
any time..."

Raye lowered her head, shaking inside of her suit.

Scully reached out for Kevin's other hand.  He did
not move or blink.  Undoubtedly, this was worse than
finding him on his bathroom floor with thirteen
year-old Meg improvising tourniquets with bath towels
as Kevin's blood pumped out of the clumsy cuts on his
fifteen year-old wrists...

Scully steeled her spine and blinked away that memory,
too.  "We'll find a way," she insisted.

Raye did not look up.

Her own breath trembling, Scully turned back to
the small table with her daughter's blood.  Her
daughter's and DeMaram's, both still missing.  She
pushed aside her own anxiety with a well-practiced
mental shove.  There had to be a connection somewhere.
Between the return of these two young men, the freshly-
drawn blood of two young women, and this new virus.
She released Kevin's hand and again examined her
daughter's blood.

"A-" had been printed on the label next to Meg's social
security number.  Scully's eyes narrowed thoughtfully.
She looked at the label on the other pint.  "B+."

Different types.  So the two girls -- women -- did
not have that in common.  Then what did they have in
common that would make anyone want their blood?
Automatically, Scully's investigative techniques took
over.  "Raye, what do you know about Captain DeMaram?"

Raye lifted her head again, shaking it slightly,
trying to refocus her thoughts.  "Only what
she told me.  Lenhart and Keyte found her shortly
after the invasion began."

"Did they remove the virus from her?"

Raye shook her head.  "I don't think so.  She'd been
attacked but not infected.  They healed her, cleaned
her up and brought her here to help."

Scully stopped to think.  "But Skinner knew her from
before?"

Raye shook her head slightly.  "It was only a
coincidence that Walter had known her grandfather all
those years ago, as far as I know.  Why?"

Scully's eyes slid thoughtfully back to the two
separate bags of blood.  "Do you remember anything
else about her?  Anything at all.  Maybe about her
family?"

"From what she told me, her grandfather was her family.
Her parents died when she was really young.  Real shame.
Cancer, both of them."

At the word "cancer," Scully's head snapped away from
the blood and back to Rayelle.  She suddenly stood up.
"Did she ever mention the names of her parents?"

Still in shock but increasingly confused, Raye shook
her head again.  "I don't think so, but Walter might
remember."

Scully stopped herself, to think this through and make
sure the possible logic of it was relatively sound before
running off and quite possibly wasting time on such a
weak possibility.

"Dana?"  Raye asked tentatively.

The logic of it was not the strongest, she admitted to
herself, but she couldn't think of another starting
point.  "I need to call Gethsemani.  Is there a phone
around here more reliable than any other?"

Raye blinked at her through her shock.  "They're pretty
much all bad, but I tend to use the one at the ER desk
the most--"

Scully didn't hear the rest of Raye's sentence, because
she was already well on her way.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"The best relationships, the ones that last,
are frequently the ones that are rooted in
friendship."

-Scully, "Rain King"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Meg felt a headache of her own, as if she'd been
the one just shot close to the left temporal lobe.

She ignored the pain.  *Well, Janitor, that was
lovely.  All full of romantic tension.  Much like
to a bowl of oatmeal on the 'mush' scale.*

"Hey, I don't pick 'em, Kid.  I'm just here for
narrative effect."

Meg felt her stomach lurch for no good reason.
*Well, I'm glad you didn't have to show them...
dancing the funky chicken.*

Meg could tell The Janitor was entertained by her
discomfort in regards to this topic, and apparently
he was deciding to have fun with it.  "You had to
come from somewhere, you know.  Think about it:  if
your dad's birthday is October thirteenth, and yours
is July thirteenth, then that's exactly--"

*Nine months, yes, yes, thank you very much,* she cut
him off, faintly disgusted, *I've already done the
math.  Ugh.  Ick.*

Frohike was clearly amused.  "Ick, eh?"

*There are some things a girl just doesn't want to
ponder, and one of those is her parents... oh, never
mind.  Just... ick.*

Frohike did not respond to that at first.  Meg
waited.  She felt colder.  She felt an unrelated
sense of alarm, briefly forgotten, begin to
resurface.

"Well?" Frohike asked after what seemed like an
eternity.

*Well, what?*  Her alarm faded -- for the moment.

She could sense the poor dead man's frustration with
her.  "You were supposed to learn something from
that."

*What?  That my dad's a cornball and--* she paused
to think the right phrase *--and that my mom's
not good at being vulnerable?  I knew that before
I came here.  What's to learn?*

Frohike insisted, "Not about your parents."

Meg's sense of alarm began to redirect itself and
coalesce into a very distinct apprehension.  *About
whom, then?*

She could tell that if he'd had a body right then,
he would have shaken his head.  "Great.  Now I
gotta show you something else."

And through the eyes of this new dream, the first
thing she saw was a pizza.  A very familiar pizza:
one half extra cheese, the other half mushrooms,
olives, anchovies, pineapple chunks and slices of
jalapeno.

The next thing she saw was Kevin removing a jalapeno
that had strayed to his side of the pizza.

"Keep your peppers to yourself, girl," he said, his
voice entirely real and un-dreamlike.  "I don't need
any more ulcers."

She stared at this vision of him, and Kevin stared
right back.  It took her a minute before she realized
he was waiting for her comeback.

She opened her mouth, and by some miracle, the words
from her memory flowed.  "C'mon, Kev," she heard
herself telling him, "they're good for you.  They'll
put hair on your chest.  Wanna see?"

The memory of her voice sounded slightly high and
shaky.  She examined the Memory-Kevin.  He was wearing
the small moustache he tried to grow during spring of
her sophomore year of college, his junior.  She looked
down. The pizza pan sat on a tabletop of beige veneer.
A neon sign blared in the window next to them.
Backwards, the sign read "SAVAS PIZZA."

So at least she knew the physical setting for this
memory.  But exactly *when* were they?  She examined
the memory of herself, sitting up unnaturally straight
and fiddling nervously with the hem of her shorts.
Shorts.  So it was late spring.  Probably May.  And
they were eating at Savas, that Greek pizza place by
Kevin's dorm at CUA...

May of sophomore year.  Meg's heart tightened when
she realized what she would have to watch here.

*Oh, Frohike.*  The sound of her own heartbeat had
insinuated its way into her awareness.  *Why are
you showing me this?*

The only answer she received was Kevin's slight
glare of irritation as he reopened his textbook
and began sketching out calcuations on a yellow
legal pad.

"What?"  Meg heard herself ask innocently, in her
voice from the past.

Kevin shook his head, half-smiled.

Strangely, she felt her heart beating faster. She
thought, *I remember this.  I know what's going to
happen.  Come on, Frohike, why do I have to live
through this night again?*

Again, nothing from The Janitor.

*I thought you were supposed to give me answers!*

Again, nothing.

"Don't you have work to do?"

Said her Memory-Kevin.  She changed her focus.  Kevin
was looking at her expectantly from the other side of
the tabletop, again waiting for her.

She felt her shoulders shrug, her eyelashes
fluttering anxiously.  "Nothing I need to do."

Her voice was high and shaky again, so Kevin looked
at her with curiosity.  She looked away from his
intense gaze and helped herself to another slice from
her side of the pizza.  She could not taste the
peppers in her dream -- her mouth felt like a desert.

She watched Kevin scratch out the rest of the equation
in his notebook, consult his quantum mechanics textbook,
then plug a few numbers into his calculator.  Meg kept
chewing on her dream of sand-pizza, and Kevin kept
scribbling at his equation, occasionally glancing back
up at Meg.  Meg looked down at her side, and her bag
full of books sat on the seat to her right, unopened.

Kevin tapped his pencil thoughtfully against his lower
lip.  "I thought we were here to work."

"Yeah," Meg heard herself say in vague self-defense.
"So?"

Kevin squinted his one eye oh-so-slightly at her.  "Is
there something wrong, Meg?"

Meg felt her heart beginning to beat faster again.
Nerves from years ago, still shaking at the memory,
even though she knew she would never get the chance
to say what she wanted to say or to ask what she
wanted to ask.

"No," she answered predictably.  "I'm fine.  Why?"

"You're acting weirder than usual."  Then his
expression changed.  He sat back and folded his arms,
his voice taking on its understanding tone.  "Is it
something about Sean?"

Sean?  Sean who?  For a second, Meg in the present
couldn't remember who Sean was.

Despite that fact, she heard herself saying, "No.
That was a clean break.  He's graduating, I'm not.
Besides, he and I were never very serious to begin
with.  No, that's not it.  Well, not really."

Kevin reluctantly unfolded his arms.  "Not really?"

This was the window she'd been waiting for -- to
finally have this talk she'd wanted to have at least
since her senior prom, if not earlier.  Meg felt herself
gulp in anticipation, but her throat felt so very, very
dry.  In her memory, she reached for her root beer and
took a swig, but she could not feel its benefit.

She put the root beer down and felt herself beginning
to laugh casually.  "You're not going to believe this.
It's so funny," she began, forcing herself to keep
laughing as she spoke.   "When Sean and I did decide
not to see each other anymore, he said the *funniest*
thing..."

Meg felt herself continuing to procrastinate with
laughter, and she remembered that Kevin would, as a
result, seem a little irritated.

Irritated he was.  "What did he say?"

"He said... he said... oh, this is so funny," she
giggled, "he said that he thought that you and I
might consider..."

She started to laugh harder, and strangely Kevin's
annoyance with her seemed to change.  "Might
consider... what?"

As Kevin's face changed to reflect the now cautious
tone of his voice, Meg's fake laughter faded-- slowly--
and turned into a nervous stammer.  "... that we might
consider... now, this is something we don't need to
think about, obviously.  We're doing just fine as
things are between us now, right?"

Kevin stared at her for a second.  And another.  And
another.  He obviously wasn't going to help her out on
this.  She would have to do this alone.

To fill up the silence, Meg added, "And we always have
been, right?"

"I guess..." was Kevin's guarded reply.

She stopped and forced herself to look right into his
eyes.  Her heart jumped again, and the adrenaline
tickled her figertips.  She took a deep breath and let
her voice sound serious for once.  "Kevin, you know,
you're already my 'best' and all, but--"

"But what?"  He looked at her and gave her his sad eyes.
She felt tears prickle her eyelids.  Kevin said,
slightly exasperated, "Meg, just spit it out.  What
can be so bad you can't tell me?"

And Meg heard her own frantic thoughts from that night
in May of sophomore year of college:

What am I thinking things don't need to change please
God do something so things don't need to change between
Kevin and me Please God help me change the subject ...

And in Meg's memory, a cell phone rang.  She and Kevin
both stopped and reached for theirs.

*It's mine.* In the present Meg remembered, knowing
sadly what had to come next.

And, "Mine," she heard herself say in her memory.
She was smiling with sheepish relief at Kevin and
answered the call by saying, "Taj Mahal men's
bathroom.  Indira speaking."

There was silence at first.

Meg waited.  Still silence.  She prompted, "Hello?"

A quavering breath.  "Meg, honey?"

Meg's voice was innocently cheery.  "Hey, Grandma!"

"Honey, something terrible has happened."  Gram's
voice was shaking horribly.  "I need you to come
home right now."

Uncomfortable, Meg laughed a little.  "Why?  What's
wrong?"

"I--"  Gram was trying to control herself, Meg
could tell, but was not succeeding.  "Meggie, baby,
I can't tell you on the phone.  I just can't.
Please, just come home."

Dreading the answer, Meg asked anyway, "Is it Mom
and Dad?"

"Yes," was Gram's answer.  "Just come home.  And be
careful.  Get someone to drive you."

"Are they gonna be okay?  What happened?  Should I
meet you at a hospital?  Tell me which one.  I'll
meet you there."

"Meg, no.  Not a hospital.  There was-- there was
an explosion, and--"

The voice on the other end was silenced by the
quietest weeping Meg had ever heard.

"What's wrong?" Kevin mouthed to her across the
table.

She merely stared at him.  The panic was consuming
her quickly.  "Gram?  It'll be okay, right?  It'll
be okay?"

Meg waited for the answer she'd come to expect.

She did not receive it.

*It'll never be okay again.*  Meg's thoughts echoed
inside of her mind.  She could feel the lump lodging
itself in her throat.

"I'm on my way," her voice said aloud.

"I love you, Meggie."

"I love you, too, Gram.  I'll be home soon."

She shut off her phone.  She breathed deeply, but
her heartbeat was racing out of control.  White
light flashed before her eyes, and then was not.

Kevin's voice reached her through the harsh
brilliance of the uncertainty and loss, gone long
ago, but still present in all Meg ever did in her
life from that point forward.

"I'll take you home," Kevin told her.

The light brightened, obliterated Kevin's face for
the slightest moment, then faded so she saw only him.

"I'll take you home, Meg.  I'll take you home."

And the whiteness fluttered and flashed once more,
and Meg opened her eyes.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Something was changing.  A change Kevin knew.  A
change Kevin could never forget.

*Oh, God, no...*

The first pinprick on his skin was a distant
sensation coming to him from another planet,
another universe.

Until the retreat began.

*...  Not again...*

He thought.  But something was different this time.
He was burning.  Being burned alive.

The fire began slowly: an irritating burn deep in
his gut.  But the burn intensified quickly.  Its
black flames snaked through his intestines, held his
kidneys in their fists, wringing them scorched and
dry.

The conflagration roared in his ears.  The dark
heat flowed over his tongue.  His eyes pumped with
nothing but black coals of flame.

*This time...*

He thought.

*This time I'm going to die...*

His lungs were being cremated.  He coughed,
and his lips blistered with the expulsion of
heat.

Dimly through the roar, he could hear the sound
of his own screams.

The same screams at the last time.

But the last time, Meg was there at the end.  The
desolate pain had vanished as Meg fell into his arms,
and he had clutched at her -- waking to a reality
that banished all nightmare.

But that was last time.  Now, his screams grew
louder.  He called Meg's name, pleading with her
to be there, be here, when this nighmare was over,
so she could soothe him, soothe this burning
anguish, so he could hold her cool, strong body
against his...

He called her name, and she answered, but her voice
had changed, was muffled strangely, was saying
strange things.

"...Hold him on his side..."

"MEG?" He choked.  "HELP ME!"

His plea was garbled, gurgled in the liquid fire
flowing out of him.  Her changed voice continued.

"... or he's going to aspirate..."

"It's almost over, baby..."

His mother's voice?

"... almost over..."

His mother's voice.

"Almost over, Kevin."

And not Meg's voice.  Similar, but not the same.

He'd been incinerated.  The black-charred expanses of
what had once been clean white stretcher sheets rose
to meet him as he collapsed, conscious, but barely.

He blinked.  He no longer saw a void full of blackness,
but what he did see was blurry, and he did not even
have the strength to raise his hands and rub his eyes
to clear the blur.

That's when he realized...

"Kevin?"  His mother asked him, her face twisting with
relief and terror all at once.  "Kevin, baby, can you
hear me?"

He wanted to blink to clear his vision, but he knew
that wouldn't work.  "Glasses," his voice rasped.

"Glasses?" Doc Scully asked, her voice strained.

He tried to speak but was too weak.  Even his
eyelids moved too slowly.

His mother choked a brief, ironic laugh.

"What's wrong?"  Doc Scully asked, her voice a
reminder of Meg's.

"When the virus left," his mother explained, "he must
have lost his contacts."



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"So if you call, I will answer,
And if you fall, I'll pick you up,
And if you court this disaster,
I'll point you home.
I'll point you home."

--BNL, "Call and Answer"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Sunlight, weak but real, broke over Kevin and heated
his face.  People spoke around him.  He still could not
see their expressions, but their voices had a certain
joyous caution.

"It worked.  I can't believe it.  The Metanase
worked."

"Among other things."

"Unbelieveable."

"Did somebody go tell Mulder yet?"

"I will."  He immediately -- and correctly -- recognized
the voice of Doc Scully.  "But let's get him to a fresh
room first, alright?"

Even though she was using her order-issuing voice,
he could tell she was relieved.  Relieved, but
still worried.  Why worried?

"Meg?" He tried to ask, but his voice had gone
AWOL again.

"On my count," his own mother ordered.  "One.
Two.  Three--"

The dull metal ceiling above him shifted.  His back
left the stretcher.  He floated in the air for a
second, and then he was back down again.  The people
around him jostled his new bed some more, and then
he was directly in the glaring sunlight, harsh against
his skin.

"Careful, guys," a voice cautioned, belonging neither
to Doc Scully or Kevin's mother.

"Keyte?"  Kevin wondered aloud, tentatively identifying
that voice as belonging to one of the good clones.

No one answered him; his voice could not be heard over
the movement of this his new bed.  The mere effort of
speaking made Kevin's head swim, and his eyes shut on
him.  Not that they were any good to begin with, not
without the aid of any sort of corrective lenses.

Involuntarily, he felt his lips form Meg's name, but
again his voice was too quiet for anyone's notice.

He remembered weakness from the last time, but that
was nothing compared to this: this absolute
powerlessness, as if all his muscles had been
scraped off of their bones with a burger-flipping spatula.
And on top of that, he felt even groggier than he
remembered from before -- almost as if this time
around he'd been drugged.  His mouth was completely
dry.  He tried to wet his lips, and the attempt was
draining.

"Hey, Declan," someone else demanded of him, "You
better yet?"

He knew the voice.  "Lenhart?"

"Yup."

Kevin opened his eyes and squinted.  The clouds in
the blue sky above him rolled slowly past.  It was
then he realized he was the one being rolled.  The
sky above him turned into a doorway, then a ceiling.
He was surrounded by people, but without his contacts
or at least his glasses he could barely tell who was
who.  His mother,  he recognized, was to his right,
just as he recognized Meg's mom on his left.

He squinted up at Doc Scully.  Summoning the last of
his strength, he whispered his question to her:

"Where's Meg?"

Doc Scully looked down at him, and he could tell she
opened her mouth to answer him, but she was interrupted
by another voice he knew but had not expected to hear.

Langly, Meg's Glasses Man, walked briskly along with
Kevin's stretcher.  "It worked, then?"

Kevin's mother practically shouted with joy. "Langly,
honey, I can't thank you enough.  You two -- finding
that stuff saved his life."

His glasses so large and obnoxious even Kevin could see
them, Langly responded humbly "Let's hear it for
experimental enzymes."

"And old contacts in medical research," Byers added
from somewhere out of Kevin's range of vision.

None of this was making sense to Kevin, and he
didn't really care either.  He just wanted to find
Meg.  He looked back up to her mom, demanding,
"Where is she?"

This time, Meg's mother chose to be silent.  At least
for the time being.  Kevin closed his eyes and
mentally prepared himself for the worst as they
continued to wheel him to his new destination.

He must have passed out briefly, because when he
opened his eyes again, he looked across from him,
and Gerald Cho was in a hospital bed on the other
side of the room, looking almost-- but not quite --
as bad as Kevin felt.  Cho reached over to the
table that sat between them, picked up a plastic cup
and sipped from it.

Kevin looked to his right and saw his mother sitting
in the chair by the open window.  A soft breeze drifted
in and fluttered the antiseptic white curtains.

Kevin's mother dipped a washcloth into a bowl of water
and wiped his forehead and cheeks, like he were just a
tiny kid with a fever.  She asked, "How you feeling,
baby?"

He just nodded a little in response.  No need to worry
her.

She put the cloth down and picked something up from
the bedside table.  Gently, his mother unfolded a
pair of glasses and placed them on his face.  The
world came into focus again, especially the exultant
relief on his mother's face.

"Where did you get these?" He asked her.

Smiling smugly, she answered, "I'm your mother."

Briefly, he smiled at that.  Something else wasn't
right though, despite the fact that he could at least
see.  His voice was a whisper, but an audible one,
when he asked, "Where's Meg?"

His mom's relief quickly faded.  He didn't need to be
wearing glasses to tell that something was wrong.
"Kevin," she began, her voice so soft he knew she
only had bad news for him, "we're working on finding
her right now."

He let his head fall to the side.  "I shouldn't have
let her go," he whispered.

His mother leaned closer and insisted through her own
fear, "Listen, baby.  The woman who brought you and
Gerald back to us-- she has information we can use to
find her.  The Gunmen brought someone with them from
the Gethsemani monastery who right now is--"

Kevin wasn't listening.  He just kept shaking his head
over and over, even though with every movement his head
ached and his stomach lurched.  "I shouldn't have--"

"--right now he's up there questioning her."

"I shouldn't have gone off on my own--"

"He's the one who helped us figure out for certain how
to save you, and--"

"God, Momma, it's my fault.  I shouldn't have--"

"Kevin," his mother scolded gently, taking his hand in
hers, "hush now.  That kind of talk isn't going to get
anybody anywhere.  We'll find them.  Don't worry."

"Find them," he repeated.  "Meg and D. P.?  They're
both missing."  It wasn't a question.  He remembered
listening to Queen, then the light...

"Kevin," Cho interrupted, sitting up a little in his
bed, "didn't you know?  Nobody told you?"

Kevin looked back over at Cho.  "Told me what?"

"Your lady fair... she saved you again.  Just like
Captain DeMaram saved me--"

Kevin squinted at Cho and felt his grogginess give way
to sudden fury.  "What do you mean?  Meg's not even
here... and you were with her last, Cho!  Didn't you
watch out for her?  For Godsake, where is she?"

Kevin struggled to stand up, to go over to that flake
and let his rage alone do the work for him.

"Kevin!  No!"  His mother ordered sternly, putting her
small hands on her son's broad shoulders.  Kevin glared
at Cho, then at his mother, but another wave of weakness
suddenly washed over him.  Too weak to do anything but
surrender, Kevin let his head fall back against the
scratchy pillowcase.

"Baby, our Megabyte isn't the only one missing," she
said more gently.  "Rachel Jo DeMaram is, too."

Kevin felt his jaw drop.  He shook his head and shut his
eyes with guilt.  "I remember now.  We were on 95 South.
We were listening to this old CD that used to belong to
DP's mom... and then..."

He closed his eyes and shook his head.

"When you were taken," his mother told him, "you and
Gerald, Meg and Rachel Jo were all infected with a new
version of the virus.  Since your bodies didn't
recognize it, you and Gerald got infected.  But both
Meg and DP have something that made them immune," his
mother explained.

Kevin forced himself to look back at his mother and
listen.

"How on earth do I explain all this?"  She frowned a
little, then began with a short sigh.  "There have
been women abducted for certain kinds of...
experiments."

"Meg told me," Kevin said.  "Her mom was one of them."

His mom smiled so slightly.  "How could I forget?
Meg tells you everything, doesn't she?"

Kevin automatically opened his mouth to apologize
again, but she beat him to the punch by asking him a
question.

"What else has she told you?"

Kevin took a second to gather his thoughts, then told
her, "They did these -- these experiments on her mom.
And, uh, that's where Wexford came from, right?"

His mother nodded.  "I'm pretty sure that's right."

"And Meg's mom wasn't supposed to be able to have
kids," Kevin added, "but somehow they had Meg..."

He stopped and thought for a minute, trying to make
sense of this new information -- Meg's immunity to
this new virus -- with very limited understanding
and a pounding headache.  He knew the clones -- clones
like Wexford -- were immune to the old virus because
they had so much in common with the virus's DNA.
So, did that mean...?

Kevin squinted thoughtfully, confused.  "Is that
what made Meg immune?  Is she like Wexford?"

His mother hesitated, then answered, "Yes and no."

Kevin shook his head.  "I don't get it.  I've seen Meg
bleed thousands of times.  So have you.  Her blood's
red, just like ours.  I saw DP bleed, too.  She was
tested when we landed in Philadelphia--"

"I said yes *and* no," she sighed again.  "This is very
complicated, so I'm not sure I'll be able to explain this
right.  All those women, like Meg's mom, who were
test subjects?  They had... they had their ova harvested
and used in some kind of human cloning project.  *That's*
where Wexford came from."

"And Lenhart," Kevin added to make sure he was following,
"and Keyte and Scott, and all the rest, right?"

His mom nodded.  "But apparently the human ova had to be
treated somehow in order to be fertilized with the
engineered DNA.  Are you following me so far?"

Kevin nodded back.  "I think so."

"So," she continued, "we found out that the ova were
treated *before* they were harvested from all those
poor women.  *Most* of the treated ova were harvested,
but a woman's got a lot of eggs in there, so I guess
it's pretty easy to leave a few of them behind."

She stopped, either to regain her place in the
explanation process or to let her words sink in
with her son.

"So if a few were left behind," Kevin guessed,
"and one of them got fertilized--"

He felt his face heating up at talking about this
with his mom, especially about Meg's parents.

"--the old fashioned way," she finished for him,
apparently amused at his discomfort.

He stopped to find the proper scientific term for
the result of such a union.  Almost smirking at the
bizarreness of it, he asked, "Is 'mutated' the right
word?"

His mom looked at him hesitantly, but then she
nodded.  "It's probably as close as we're going to
get.  So any human conceived from one of these ova
would, theoretically, have DNA similar enough to the
virus that the resulting human being could possibly
be immune to it.  So, our Megabyte's like that."

"And DP," Kevin said thoughtfully.  "She's the same?"

"Apparently," she said.  "There was some group or
something called MUFON, of people who thought
they'd been abducted by aliens.  The Lone Gunmen
found the names of both of Rachel Jo's parents in
some old MUFON information they had with them
in Kentucky.  They brought that stuff out here
with them.

"So, according to what we've been told, the four of
you -- Gerald, you, Rachel Jo and Meggie -- were
test subjects for a newly engineered version of
the virus, and when the four of you were exposed--"

"That's how They found out," Kevin realized aloud,
"about Meg's immunity, and DP's."

"And we're going to get them back," she answered him
with firm resolve.

"So Meg never needed to be vaxed in the first place.
But if we got some 'new' virus, how did we get cured?
And how did you get us back but not Meg?" Kevin
demanded.  His anger was starting to resurface.

His mother looked like she was sharing a degree of
his anger.  "Someone on -- well, 'the other side' for
lack of a better term, brought you and Gerald back
here to us.  She also brought some blood with her:
Meg's blood and Rachel Jo's blood."

Kevin stared back at her in revulsion.  "Why did
she have their blood?"

"This woman said," his mother explained, "that They
were going to use their blood to make a new
vaccine."

Kevin felt himself wince.  "So somehow you made
a vaccine out of their blood?"

His mother shook her head in wonder.  "The vaccine
*is* their blood."

"See what I mean?" Cho piped up again.  "You have
the lifeblood of your lady fair coursing through
your veins.  That's how she saved you."

Kevin stared first at Cho, then back at his mother.
"I -- I don't understand."

She answered his confusion, "Luckily, both Rachel
Jo and Gerald are type B+.  With some information we
got out of the woman who brought you here, Meg's
mom took a bit of a gamble, and it worked.  We
gave Gerald a transfusion of Rachel Jo's blood,
and that got rid of the infection."

Kevin was openmouthed in awe.  "How?"

His mom shook her head.  "We don't know exactly.
All we know is it worked."

Kevin tried to sit up a little more.  He felt his
strength returning in miniscule amounts.  "And
for me?  Do Meg and I have the same blood type?"

Pained, she answered him, "No.  With the help of
some old contacts in medical research, The Gunmen
were able to find a supply of an experimental enzyme
called Metananse that breaks down the type-specific
proteins around the blood cells.  We treated
Meg's blood with the Metanase first, so that it
would be just like we were giving you a transfusion
of O-negaitve.  And now," she smiled in relief,
squeezing his hand again, "here you are."

Kevin tried sitting up some more.  "Here I am,"
he echoed. "Now how do we get Meg back?"

Cho called over from his bed.  "My fellow remaining
Gunmen brought someone from the monastery to help us
find Captain DeMaram and your lady fair."

"Who did they bring?"

Smugly, Meg's Pleather Boy answered, "Brother
Jacob.  So that means we'll find them in no
time."

Kevin looked at Cho doubtfully.  "If what they
say about him is true."

"Oh, don't worry," Cho answered, "it's true."

"How do you know, man?" Kevin asked irritably,
"Have you ever even seen the guy?  He lives out
in that brick shack in the middle of the woods.
*Nobody's* seen the guy in years, not even you."

"That 'brick shack' is called a 'hermitage,'" Cho
corrected, "and he lives there so he isn't disturbed
by the cacophony of all the thoughts of others."

"Anyway," Kevin's mom interrupted, "Brother Jacob
is upstairs right now, helping to interrogate the
woman who brought you here.   He's getting the
information she wouldn't give us until she knew we
had a vaccine against this new virus.  For some
reason, she kept saying that our girls were safer
in Their hands than ours if we didn't have the
new vaccine."

His mother's words sunk in to his head, and
Kevin found himself in need of action.  He fought
the lethargy of his body and swung his legs over
the side of his hospital bed.  He saw that he'd
been dressed in fresh scrubs.  His feet met
the cold tiled floor and sent a shock up through
his nerve endings.

"Kevin, baby, what are you--?"

He ignored all discomfort and stood on shaky
legs.  "Let's show this woman that we have
the new vaccine.  Let's get Meg back."


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Blessed are those
who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
for they shall be satisfied."

--Matthew 5: 6
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Night had fallen, and the electric was on the blink
again.  Thus, their strategy had to be planned
around a candlelit table in one of the hospital's
conference rooms.

A bespectacled and brown-robed man, mid-thirties, with
close-cropped hair and a weary expression, looked
slightly uncomfortable in his place at the head of the
conference table.  Scully sat to his left with Mulder
beside her.  On the monk's right sat Skinner.  The rest
of the chairs around the table were occupied by Lenhart,
Keyte and Scott.  Langly and Byers took the two folding
chairs along the wall opposite the door.

Scott was busy diagramming, according the information
secured by the bespectacled Brother Jacob, an outline
of the layout of the facility to be infiltrated.  Keyte
and Lenhart were committing to memory numerous access
codes.  A map of New York City was spread across the
table in front of Skinner, marked in red pencil in
strategic places.

"Does that look right -- Brother Jacob?"  The hesitation
in Skinner's voice at using the monk's title was missed
only by the younger people at the table.

Brother Jacob did not close his eyes or even blink.  He
merely studied the map with a blank face.  The lines
and colors of the map refleced in his glasses.  "I
think so," he answered.  "I could only get images from
her, not specific directions, and I haven't been to
New York since I was really young."

Silence followed that remark.  Brother Jacob suddenly
looked up at Mulder.  His voice was heavy with self-
defense.  "I'm a mind reader, you know, not a full-
color guide book."

At that, Mulder shifted uncomfortably and sat further
back in his seat.

"So what are we supposed to do," Scott demanded,
finally looking up from his scribblings, "just keep
snooping around until we find the place for sure?"

Keyte brushed her long bangs out of her eyes with a
gesture of impatience.  "What else can we do?
Sketchy information is better than none at all."

"And who knows how much more time we can afford to
lose?"  Lenhart grumbled, his thick black brows
jumping to emphasize his point.

Scott rubbed his eyes and nodded in surrender.
"I just wish we could be more certain."

"We all do, Scott," Skinner replied, "but--"

He was interrupted; someone knocked on the door.
Mulder rose to answer it.

The two guards on the other side of the door were
holding someone back from entering the conference
room.

"Mr. Mulder, sir," Kevin said before either of the
guards had a chance to speak a word.

"Kevin, son," he replied, surprised to see Kevin out
of bed so soon after hearing the news that the virus
had left hiim.  "How you feeling?"

Kevin ignored the question.  He took a labored
breath.  "Let me see this woman who brought me and
Cho here.  Show her we have the cure."

"Kevin?"  Scully stood and strode quickly to the door,
admonishing her daughter's best friend, "You should
be in bed."

"I tried to stop him," Rayelle called from the hall,
catching up, breathless, a few steps behind her son.

Kevin was igorning them both, however.  He kept his
eyes fixed on Meg's father.  "My mom said--"  he
stopped to catch his breath -- "that that woman will
give us more information if she has--"  more breath
catching -- "proof that we beat Them to the new
vaccine, right?"

The way he said "Them" was clearly upper case.

"I'm the proof," Kevin said then, spreading his
hands out as the guards took slight steps away from
him, either in fear or awe.  Mulder noticed that
Kevin's hands were shaking, and he watched as Kevin
took advantage of the additional space left by the
guards to lean his hand against the doorway for
support.

"I'm the proof," Kevin repeated, his voice starting
to falter more and more with each moment.  "You don't
understand... I gotta..."

He stopped, closed his eyes, swallowed with obvious
pain.

"Kevin--" Rayelle gasped, reaching for her son as
he started to sway on his feet.

"Bring him a chair," Scully demanded.  Scott quickly
stood and brought over his own chair.

Mulder watched, his face immobile, as Scully and
Raye Declan tried to force Kevin to sit.

"No," Kevin protested, "You don't understand...
I gotta... if Meg is... I hafta..."

"Easy," Skinner reprimanded Kevin, coming to the aid
of Scully and Rayelle.

Mulder felt himself flinch at hearing Skinner use
the same warning on Kevin as had been used so often
on himself -- especially in reference to Scully.

Scully squatted beside the chair as Skinner forcibly
sat Kevin in it.

Scully looked up at the young man carefully,
reporting just loudly enough to be heard, "He's
becoming disoriented again.  We need to get him
back to bed."

"No," Kevin insisted quietly.  "We have to show her.
Now."

"Wait."

Everyone but Kevin turned to look at Brother Jacob.

"There's something..."  The monk broke off, studying
the face of the young man slumped weakly in the chair.
Brother Jacob's eyes flicked over to the map, then to
Scott's sketches, then back to Kevin.  "He knows
where they're being kept.  He knows the place."

Everyone in the room, with the exception of Kevin,
stared openmouthed at Brother Jacob.

With even more certainty in his voice, Brother Jacob
confirmed, "He has some of the same images in his
memory as she does; of the outside of the building
at least.  And some of the images of the inside are
the same, but he's only seen parts of it."

Skinner shook his head doubtfully.  "What do you
mean?"

"Are you seeing his memories from when he was
held there?"  Mulder asked.

Brother Jacob studied Kevin again, then shook his
head.  "No.  He doesn't remember anything from his
captivity there.  He remembers it from when he
worked there."

"*Worked* there?"  Keyte gasped, incredulous.

Kevin found the energy to glare at Brother Jacob
in response.

"His first job after college," Brother Jacob said,
nodding thoughtfully.

Everyone looked to Raye Declan for some kind of
coherent confirmation, and they all saw her eyes
widen.

"WRW Industries," she told them, "in New York
City.  His last job.  He worked in the design
department, working out bugs in communication
hardware systems."

Brother Jacob nodded once.  "That's the place
where the two women are right now.  It's the
same building."

Kevin summoned enough energy to say with disgust,
"You mean I *worked* for *Them*?"

"How can that be?" His mother asked of no one in
particular.

Everyone looked back to Brother Jacob for another
answer, to which he responded, "Like I said, I'm a
mind reader.  I only know what's in your heads, not
how it got there."

"Megabyte got a job offer in New York at the same
time," Rayelle remembered aloud.  "One of a few
offers.  She told me she wasn't sure which one to
take, until Kevin was offered the position at WRW.
Do you think--?"

"Maybe," Byers wondered out loud, "somebody wanted
Meg in New York--"

"--and They made it easier to take the bait by
throwing her best friend into the deal,"
Langly finished for him.

The way Langly said "They" was clearly upper case.

"And you were saying," Brother Jacob said to Scott,
"that you wanted more certainty.  He knows the
building, and he knows how to get there."

Slowly, Kevin looked up again, pushing his glasses back
up on his nose.  "That means you need me to save Meg?"

"No," Rayelle interrupted.  "Kevin, baby, you are in
no shape for this."

"I'm afraid I have to agree with your mom, Kevin,"
Scully said softly to him.  "You're not even close to
fully recovered yet--"

"But I know where she is," Kevin insisted.  "He...
he said so.  And Cho's already recovering.  If he
flew us up there, we'd get there faster.  We'd get
Meg back faster."

Meg's mother could not respond to that, but she did
blink fiercely a few times.  Kevin opened his mouth
to apologize to her, to Meg's dad, too, for having
let their daughter out of his sight, for being so
selfish, for not protecting her with every moment of
his own life... but different words came out of his
mouth.  Meg's words.

"And if I don't at least try..." Kevin whispered,
then he dropped his head in hated exhaustion.

Everyone considered Kevin's words in silence for
a moment.

Then, Skinner was the first to speak.  "If this
is true, Kevin's knowledge would give us a heavy
practical advantage."

"From someone we know we can trust," Keyte added.

"And I'd sure as hell rather fly than drive,"
Lenhart said.

With an almost superhuman effort, Kevin straightened
his back in the chair.  First he looked at Scully,
then Mulder.  Finding the strength of his voice
once more, he told them, "Count me in."


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Someone got Cho from downstairs and brought him into
the meeting as well.  Both Cho and Kevin stayed admirably
alert until the plan was formulated.  They would be
leaving tomorrow, under cover of darkness.

There would be no air traffic control towers to give
them in-air aid.  Meg's Pleather Boy seemed quite nervous
as he told everyone he'd have to instrument-fly.

As far as Langly and Byers knew, Gerald Cho's old plane
was still at a small airfield just a few miles away; that
would be their transportation for most of the way.
Lenhart, Scott and Keyte would be working through the
night to secure safe transport the rest of the way into
the city.

The meeting broke up with both Cho and Kevin sent
away under strict orders from two different mothers
to drink plenty of fluids and get as much rest as
they could.

Slowly, all the members of the rescue party quit the
room.  Besides Brother Jacob, Scully was the last to
the door.  As she went to wish Brother Jacob goodnight,
he shook his head at her.

"It's okay," he said, explaining.  "I don't mind if you
call me... by that name, instead.  That is how you still
think of me."

In response, Scully couldn't help but smile.  Apparently
nothing duirng his decades of self-imposed isolation
had changed his straightforward nature.

Then he told her, "I guess you're right.  Some things
never change."

Reaching out to take the monk's hand gently in
gratitude, she whispered, "Thank you, Gibson."


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"But I'm warning you
don't ever do
those crazy messed-up
things that you do.
If you ever do
I promise you
I'll be the first
to crucify you."

--BNL, "Call and Answer"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Meg was finding this whole experience a study in
levels of awareness.

Sometimes she could feel every molecule of air
bumping against her skin, could feel the vast desert
occupying every square millimeter of her mouth.  Her
head ached with a blinding fury.  Then, she would
reach full sensitivity just as her stomach contracted,
she would turn her head to the side, and then another
nameless, biohazard-masked, nondescript drone would
have to enter the room and wipe off the bile dribbling
down her cheek.  The drone would then have to suction
her mouth, rinse it with water, then suction again.

Indignity was Meg's second closest companion now,
second only to Isolation.

They would replace her dextrose with precise
regularity.  Once, as her dextrose was being changed
she was even coherent enough to ask, "Can I get fries
with that?"

Nobody got the joke.  At least not that she could
tell through Their glass-glared masks.

She could feel the needle in her chest jiggle just
enough to be maddening as They changed the bag
collecting her blood.  Then the new bag would begin
to fill once more.  Drip by drip.

By drip.

By drip.

And she was beyond starting to feel its loss:
clammy with sweat, spinning even though her bed was
immobile, raging headaches...  The combination of
restraints and tubing made any attempt at comfort
impossible.

Most of the time, They left her alone.  Those times,
she found she just needed to talk out loud, to let
her own voice fill the silence, because there was no
one else around to do it for her.  Strangely, she
thought that maybe her voice and breath might warm
the room.  She started to think of all the different
ways she knew how to say "cold."

"//Froid.//  //Fri'o.//  //Kalt.//  //Zolod...//"

But that wasn't doing her any good, either.  She just
ended up feeling colder instead of forgetting about
the chill.  Desperate to think of something else, Meg
started to sing softly to herself in her admittedly
off-key voice.  But who cared?  There was no one
around to tell her to shut up or sing "Far, Far
Away" instead.  She whispered the first song she'd
learned in another language:

//T'e'te, 'epaules, genoux, pieds, genoux, pieds.
T'e'te, 'epaules, genoux, pieds, genoux, pieds.
Les yeux, les oreilles, la bouche et le nez.
T'e'te, 'epaules, genoux, pieds, genoux, pieds!//

She couldn't move her hands to go along with the song,
but just the thought of movement seemed to warm her.
Even still, it wasn't enough to chase away the chills
for good.

Most of the time, however, she dreamed.  Had more
nightmares.  Hallucinated.  Talked to the dead.

One time, a pale blond face hovered wordlessly over
her.  //Hang on, little sister, hang on,// she could
almost hear her say...

"Wexford," she said to hallucination,  "did you
ever get to remember?  You know, remember your visits
to The Clinic?  I remember reading about them.  Was
it anything like this?  Will I forget this?  What
will I remember?  What will I forget?"

Time passed, and the face changed, aged, became more
familiar, much older, more beloved.  The face belonged
to Grandma Scully.  Meg could see Gram's face, could
almost feel Grandma's hand holding hers, and for a
few moments, she almost didn't feel quite so alone.

"Gram?"  Meg would have cried, but she didn't feel
like there was any water left in her body to provide
the tears.  "Gram, I miss you.  Why did you have to
leave, too?  Everyone I-- Everyone I've ever loved
leaves me..."

At that, impossibly, her body obliged and let her
weep a little, but it was too much.  Her tears ran
dry, and Meg convulsed with stark, silent sobs.
Trembling with more fever-chills, Meg had to shut her
eyes.

After another indefinite span, she opened her eyes
and she was seeing things again.  The ghosts had
stopped coming to comfort her.  Now all she saw was
a manifestation of her own neediness.  And this
vision was so painfully real...

"Meggie," her mother said, relieved.  Crying again,
like she had at Meg's bedside at that first reunion,
after that Emily had shot her in the back, and Wexford
had brought Meg back to their mother...

But Meg laughed, knowing it was only another
hallucination, despite its seeming solidity.  "Mom,"
Meg asked out loud of this latest vision.  Her voice
shook, "will They need to wipe my mind too, Mom?
What do you think?"

Meg felt tears wet her cheeks, though she wasn't aware
that she'd started to cry again.

"Sssh, sweetie," her mother told her, "it's okay...
I'm here..."

But Meg kept mumbling, "Maybe it'll just be so bad that
I won't want to remember-- so bad I won't even need
Their help... is that what it was like for you?"

"Meggie," the illusion told her, "don't worry about
that.  We're getting you out of here."

But then, the vision moved away.  Meg couldn't see
her any more.  All she saw was the bland gray-white
drop-tiles and the insistent lights of the ceiling
above her.

"Mommy?"  Meg called, not caring if They heard her
speaking in delirium, "You have to leave me again?"

Her mother's voice returned: "I'm right here,
Meggie."

Meg almost laughed again, at the sheer impossibility,
but the pinch in her chest was too real, too undeniably
real.  Her awareness waxed once more: she could sense
confused movement outside of this room, coming to her
from the opened doorway.  With all of her will, Meg
wanted to lift her head and look around, to see if
this hallucination of her mother coming to her
rescue would disappear as soon as Meg moved.  She
strained her neck but met with no success.

A shadow warmed her from the opened doorway.

"Oh, Jesus."  She heard the shadow's voice-- a voice
she knew even better than her own.  "Doc Scully, what
are They doing to her?"

The shadow rushed over to her and became recognizeable.
Impossibly recognizeable, and he was wearing his glasses
for the first time in years.  Meg's mind formed the
question, but her lips were too weak to ask it.

Her mother's voice: "Kevin, undo those restraints."

The command was redundant.  He was already there,
in Meg's sight, his face pained, his arms clearly
busy with the business of freeing Meg.  "All these
bruises... God, she's so cold... is this what you said?
That hypo-"

"Hypovolemic anemia."

"Will she be okay?"

"I have to get these needles out of her."

"Oh, God, we gotta get her outta here."

They were talking almost to themselves, it seemed.

Meg heard this dream of Kevin choke with something
like sympathetic disgust, just as she felt another
sharp pinching above her heart.  Meg gasped in
response at the renewed pain.

Then it was over.  Gone.  She could tell; she could
feel the difference.  Meg felt free, but she also
felt dizzy and slack-framed -- like her spine had
been ripped out of her.

That was when she became completely aware that this
was not a hallucination anymore.

Meg's pride attempted to regain control of her behavior.
"Kev," she slurred, trying to hide how much everything
hurt, "How'd you get here?  'N what's with the glasses?"

He put his warm hand on her icy cheek.  "Yeah,
good to see you, too."

She closed her eyes and let herself lean her cheek
further into his palm, drinking in Kevin's heat.
His hand left her face, and she opened her eyes
again to find him removing his sweater and draping
it over her flimsy hospital gown.

Kevin lifted Meg's head, and she could see her
mother flick her eyes anxiously towards the door to
the room.

Meg lifted her finger and pointed at the one-way
mirror, offering what little information she could.
"They watch me from there."

Gently, Kevin ordered her, "Here."

He meant to put his sweater on her.  Embarrassed
even through her disorientation, Meg shook her
head.  She tried to grab at the sweater with
hands that felt like unresponsive heads of cauliflower.
Still, she automatically insisted, "I can do it
myself."

"Meg," her mother admonished, "now is not the
time."

But Kevin simply ignored her.  He pulled the sweater
down over her head and then laced her arms through
the sleeves one at a time.  It was soft, dark blue
wool.  It smelled like Kevin -- soap and that morning's
shaving cream.  It felt like a warm bath.  It felt
like heaven.

Kevin turned to Meg's mom.  "Don't you have to get
D. P., too?  I can get Meg out of here.  We'll meet
up at the plane."

Meg felt Kevin's arms go around her, one around her
back, one underneath her legs.  He tried to lift
her.  Meg struggled.

"No, Kev.  I can walk."

Meg's mother spoke to her in her soft, anxious
voice.  "Meggie, you are not in any sort of stable
condition.  If you don't--"

"Mom, I can do it myself."

"--if you don't let anyone help you," her mother
continued, "you could even go into heart failure."

"Motherrr!"  Meg's head lolled on her neck.  "I'm
fine!  Kev, tell her I can walk!"

She looked up at him.  She could feel the pout
pull on her lower lip, the stubborn frown
commandeering her eyebrows.  And she could tell,
even with Kevin's eyes hidden behind his glasses:
he didn't want to let her walk.

"Kev," she insisted, more softly this time, "I
can do it myself."

Kevin did not look away, but neither did he give
in.  "You can," he said locking his eyes on hers,
"but you don't need to."

That was all he said, but she could tell by his
face that he was trying to tell her more.  Why had
he chosen deliberately to use the word "need?"  Meg
squinted at him, asking Kevin the question with her
eyes.

"You have a choice," he told her evenly with a
forced nonchalance.  "You can walk, or you can let
somebody carry you.  What do you want to do?"

He leaned so slightly, so imperceptibly on the word
"want." She tried to sort out his words inside her
head, but even that hurt.  All she could think was
if she let Kevin carry her, he could drop her...

As if reading her thoughs, he assured her, almost
laughing, "You're not even heavy, Meg.  You've lost a
lot of weight lately--"

He stopped talking and closed his eyes very briefly.

Still trembling, but less so now, Meg let out a
shuddering sigh.  Reluctant at first, but after a
moment's indecision, Meg allowed her head to rest
in the hollow of Kevin's shoulder.  She closed her
eyes.  Already she felt even warmer.

Kevin's arms tightened around her.  "I got her,"
he said.

There was more commotion around her, but Meg
kept her eyes closed.  She opened them briefly
only as she felt her mother take her hand.

"It'll be okay, Meggie," her mom told her.

Meg's lids lowered on her once more.  She nodded
back, whispering the confirmation, the old magic
words from childhood: "It'll be okay."

Kevin pulled her even more tightly to him.  His
voice reverberated in Meg's ear through his chest
as he firmly repeated to her mother, "I got her."


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"For God does speak, perhaps once,
or even twice, though one perceive it not."

--Job 33: 14
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Holy Family Medical Center
February 4, 2024
3:14pm


From his perch on the edge of Meg's bed, Kevin
watched as the afternoon sun glittered impossibly
against Meg's pillow.  Kevin removed his glasses,
wiped them clean on the corner of the t-shirt he wore
beneath his sweater, then put them back on his face.
Now he was able to see clearly: the gold glitter on
Meg's pillow was definitely strands of her hair,
freshly fallen out against the snow-white hospital
linens.  Meg's mom had finished warning them just a
few minutes before of what symptoms to expect from
prolonged hypovolemic anemia.  Kevin glanced down
quickly at Meg's arms and winced at the black-and-
blue marks discoloring her chalky skin.

He chanced a look at Meg's face.  Her eyes were almost
half-shut, but they were fixed dully on her father
as he continued, along with Meg's mom, this tag-team
explanation of all the information gathered from, and
since, their raid on the WRW building.

"And with almost seventy-five years of global warming
engineered to make the whole planet into an incubator,"
Mr. Mulder was saying, "it explains a lot.  In fact that
seems to be the reason why no buildings have been cleared
away for Them.  They were never intent on colonization--
only in using us up as a resource."

"So you're saying," D. P. struggled to say from her
listless place in her own hospital bed, "that these
aliens are just some kind of... intergalactic
grasshoppers?"

"They come, They eat, They leave," Gerald Cho
confirmed for her.  "Like that old Disney Pixar
movie."

Kevin glared at Cho.  "More like intergalactic wasps.
They come, They *reproduce,* They leave.  I don't
think Disney had that in mind."

He looked at Meg to see if he'd made her laugh.

Her face remanined impassive and downcast.  She
merely whispered, "So that makes me part-wasp."

Kevin frowned. Trying to reestablish some kind of
contact with Meg (maybe not the contact he thought
they'd had when he'd carried her out of WRW and to
the safety of DC), he leaned back slightly until he
could feel her leg against his through the pale
yellow blanket.  Subtly, insignificantly, she
shifted her leg away from his.

Kevin did not move any more.

"But in essence, yes," Doc Scully said.  Kevin
could sense an uneasiness in her voice at this
admission.  "All the evidence we've found points to
these beings as using the earth as some kind of
reproductive engine."

"So," Meg sighed at last, leaning further back
against her pillows, "Matthew was right."

Meg's dad looked at her oddly.  "Matthew?"

"Your cousin?" Her mom asked, apparently confused.

"Yeah."  Meg's voice was still a little dry.  "Matt
was right.  I am a mutant. We'll have to get in
touch with him somehow, let him know."

Apparently, Kevin was not the only one in the
room who didn't feel like laughing at that.

"Yeah," Lenhart quipped from the doorway, "welcome
to *our* world."

"Shut up, Lenhart," Keyte hissed at him quietly from
her place next to Scott by D. P.'s bed.

"So," Kevin said, trying to change the subject, "have
we figured out *how* Meg's & D. P.'s blood was able to
act as a vaccine against the new strain?"

Meg's mom frowned a little.  "From what I've been
able to gather by looking at the blood samples you
gave me, Kevin, it seems that there's something in
their blood that exhibits virus-like behavior.
It seems part of Meg's DNA must have replicated
in some of your white blood cells."

"If my DNA is replicating in Kev," Meg asked, "then
why doesn't he have bad dishwater-blond hair and a
big, honking Mulder-nose?"

Kevin smiled at Meg, relieved she sounded like her
usual self-deprecating self.  To Kevin's surprise,
though, Meg glanced at him briefly then looked away,
her face more troubled than he'd seen it in a long
time.

"And why isn't Cho five-six with freckles?"
D. P. asked as well, though a little less harshly
than Meg did.

Pleather Boy reached up and touched his cheeks, checking
to see if the freckles were growing.

Doc Scully looked to Mr. Mulder, then back at the
two recuperating young women.  "The fact is, we
don't know. We may have just gotten far more information
than we ever thought we'd have, but it's only shown
us how much more there is that we still need to learn."

"And we're only just beginning," added Meg's dad,
"to find out which questions to ask."

Meg's eyes opened fully.  Her voice tired, she asked,
"And the answers are in us?"  She pointed to D. P. and
then to herself.

Doctor Scully looked down, with something Kevin could
have sworn was sadness, then she looked back up at
Meg.  "Some of them, possibly."

Kevin cleared his throat.  "And maybe some of those
answers would be in me and Cho, too, right?"

"Possibly," Meg's mom repeated.

"When can you start testing us?"  Kevin demanded.

"Testing?"  Cho broke in before Doc Scully could
answer?  "With needles?"

"Cho, get a grip," Kevin grumbled.

"Kevin," Doc Scully said, "that's very generous of
you," -- she did not mention Cho's being
volunteered -- "and when we need your help, we'll
let you know."

Kevin nodded.  He hoped she'd need his help soon.
Maybe that would mean Meg would have to go through
fewer tests.  She'd already gone through enough.

He turned to look at her again just as she
closed her eyes.  Her long lashes curled softly
against the dark circles that had taken residence
under her eyes.  She opened her mouth for a small
yawn.

"Well, I think it's time we let you both get some
rest," Meg's mom said very gently, looking first to
the recuperees, then to the rest of their audience.

Cho took Meg's hand in his and bowed over it.  She
gave him a halfhearted smile before he made his way
over to D. P.'s bed for the same.

Scott jabbed Keyte in the side with his elbow, and
her eyes widened at him.  "What, man?"

"Aren't you forgetting some things?" He asked.

Keyte's mouth hung open in humility.  "Oh, yeah.
Almost forgot.  D. P., we figured you'd want this
back."

She reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out
a silver disc.

"The CD!" D. P. cried softly, despite the exhaustion
still in her voice.  "You saved it!  Hey, thanks!"

"You want us to play it?" Scott asked her, reaching
down and pulling up a small portable sound system.

D. P. looked over at Meg.  "You mind, roommate?"

Meg shrugged listlessly.  "Doesn't matter."

Kevin studied her face safely, since she'd kept her
eyes closed.  He wanted to ask, but her dad beat him
to the punch.

"You allright, Miss Molly?"

She opened her eyes and smiled for his benefit, but
Kevin saw that her eyes did not crinkle with the
smile.  "Just tired, Dad."

Mr. Mulder nodded at that, then gave everyone else
in the room a look that Kevin clearly interpreted as,
"let my little girl get her sleep."  Not wanting to
leave, but certainly not wanting to incur the wrath
of Meg's dad, Kevin reached out and brushed two
fingers against Meg's right hand.  "Later."

Her lids fluttered, but she still didn't look at him.
"Yeah."

Kevin initially was hurt at Meg's seeming indifference,
but he told himself she'd just been through something
just this side of hell.  She had every right to want
him to leave her alone.

He went to the door, then paused to look back at Meg.
He caught Doc Scully looking at him, smiling like she
knew something.  His face warmed, but he smiled
sheepishly back at her.  Then he shuffled the rest of
the way out to the hall with Cho, Keyte, Scott and
Lenhart.

A few yards away from Meg and D. P.'s room, Keyte
called out in a hoarse whisper, "Hey, Kevin!"

He stopped and turned to look at her.  She was
digging around in the pocket opposite to the one
she'd been using to store //THE CD,// as D. P. called
it.  Finally, Keyte pulled out her hand and held it
out to Kevin in a fist.

"Sister Bridge asked me to make sure you got this
back," she told him.

He held out his hand, and something silver landed
surely in his palm.  Meg's Miraculous.

"Oh," Kevin told her, "this is Meg's.  You should
give it to her when she wakes up."

Keyte shrugged back at him.  "Bridge said I was
supposed to give it to you instead.  She said it
was some kind of family traditon."

Without giving Kevin any time to respond, Keyte
just shrugged again and stalked off down the hall.
Kevin stared stupidly at the necklace coiled around
the silver charm.  He bit his lip and went to slip it
into the pocket of his jeans...

He stopped himself.  Carefully opening the clasp, he
fastened it around his own neck, for the time being.
He slid the Medal under his sweater, then thought
even better of that and tucked it safely beneath his
white cotton undershirt.  It was cold against his
skin but warmed quickly.

He felt someone watching him.  He turned back toward
Meg's doorway, and saw her mother step back inside,
quickly enough to make Kevin wonder if she was smiling
at him again.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"When I was a child
I used to talk like a child,
think like a child,
reason like a child.
When I became an adult
I put my childish ways aside."

1 Corinthians 13: 11
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Holy Family Medical Center Chapel
February 7, 2024
2:24am



Sitting on the far edge of the front pew, Meg
glowered at the statues and stained glass.  The last
place she wanted to be now was "in God's house," as
Gram would have called it.  However, Meg was drained
enough as it was, just making it from the room she
shared with D. P. down the stretching hallway to the
elevators.  Each day Meg felt physically better, bit
by bit, but she was still maddeningly weak.

Her Dad had told her, "Like your mom said, Miss Molly,
it'll take time.  There's no rush.  We'll get you
better."

But letting someone else get her better meant letting
other people take care of her, and Meg had been taking
care of herself full time since she was eighteen.

And he'd said, "We'll get you better."  Never once did
anyone tell her, "You'll be back to normal."  Because,
Meg knew, she was not normal any more.  In fact, never
had been.

Now, unable to sleep, Meg just wanted to sit alone
in silence.  As for the alone part, D. P. might have
been asleep, but the girl snored, so that ruled out
the silence.  So Meg had left their room, and her
body forced her to accepted the first place along her
path offering both peace and solitude simultaneously,
even if it was the chapel.

Fifteen years of Catholic school, counting
kindergarten and college.  Fifteen years of
religion class: first "Jesus Loves Me" pipe
cleaner crafts, then theology tests, then twenty-
page papers for three credits of Christian Morality
to fulfill Georetown's Theology requirement. Never
once did anyone mention the possibility that the
world God so loved really had been made so that
some alien race could be fruitful and multiply.

And what made things worse was that Meg's blood was
so much like Theirs that Their life-force couldn't
even distinguish that she was any different from
Them.  No.  What made things worse even than that
was that her less-than-human DNA was busy doing
God-only-knew-what to Kevin.  Sure, that had saved
his life, and so he was able to save hers...
But at what cost to him?  And everyone else?  What
had her mother said?  "It's only shown us how much
more there is that we still need to learn."

Shuddering with helpless disgust, Meg leaned her
head against the side of her pew and closed her
eyes, silent but for her own jagged breathing.
Her thoughts swam in her head, manic with an energy
her body still lacked.

"For one person just sitting and thinking you make a
lot of noise."

Startled, but still too weak to snap around and find
the source of this statement, Meg weakly raised her
head and looked up to see a man dressed in the
familiar habit of the monks at Gethsemani.  His face,
however, she did not recognize right away.

"That's because you've never met me in person," he
said, answering her unspoken question.  The candles
in the sanctuary reflected off of his glasses.
"You've heard about me, though."

Meg blinked at him a few times.  Doubtful, she asked,
"Are you Brother Jacob?"

He didn't nod or answer in any other way.  He just
looked at her.  "You don't mind if I sit with you?"

Meg couldn't help but be cautiously, skeptically
amused.  "Is that a question or a statement?"

He almost smiled.  "You don't mind if I sit with you."

Meg started to make room for him in the pew, but he
shook his head at her, explaining, "You're still
weak.  You need the side so you have something to
lean on.  These pews aren't very comfortable.  I
know.  I come here a lot.  It's the only place
I can find peace and quiet around here most days
and most nights."

He sat in the pew behind hers.  He pulled out the
kneeler and knelt down upon it so she could still
see him out of the corner of her eye.

"It's okay," he informed her.  "You don't have to
believe me.  Most people don't at first."

"Believe what?"  Meg asked.  "That you're psychic?"

"I'm not psychic," he corrected without changing
his matter-of-fact tone, "I'm just sensitive."

Surprised at his admission, Meg turned and stared
at the monk.

He stared back, then looked down with a humility that
seemed unfamiliar to him.  "I guess you're right.
Maybe I am just trying to admit my own weakness so
you'll trust me."

Meg laughed softly.  "So we both think sensitivity is
a weakness, huh?"

Brother Jacob stared straight ahead of him at the
tabernacle on the chapel altar.  "It's part of human
evolution.  Survival by strength.  You might think
you're... 'part-wasp,' you call it?"

He looked at Meg, his eyebrows wrinkled in something
like sympathetic amusement, like they were the only
two in on some joke.

He went on.  "You might think you're part-wasp, but
all humans are part-wasp.  You knew that before you
found out."

He didn't need to say what she'd found out.  Still,
Meg started to laugh a little.

Brother Jacob shook his head at her.  "Not that kind
of WASP."

Meg kept laughing.  "So the whole human race isn't
part white, Anglo-Saxon and protestant?"

Brother Jacob looked at her critically once more.
"You can try to joke, but you have to face your
doubts some time."

Meg started to deny it, but then she frowned, frustrated
that every time she tried to hide behind her shield of
flippant remarks with this guy, he could see right
through.  She took a deep breath.  "And what doubts
are those?"

"You're afraid to trust the people who care about
you," he stated plainly.

Meg did not answer that.

"You think," Brother Jacob continued, "that's because
everyone has had to leave you on your own at some time
in your life."

"And I did fine by myself," Meg defended, shifting in
her pew, "when I had to."

"'I can do it myself,'" he quoted, not looking at her.

Meg shrugged.

"You know you're fine on your own.  You've had to
do it before.  But now you're afraid to trust the people
who care about you because you're afraid to trust
yourself."

She turned and gaped at him.  She opened her mouth to
give some sort of protest, but nothing came out; she
was too shocked at this revealation.  She felt her
lower lip tremble in betrayal.  At last, she whispered,
"Shouldn't I be?  I'm part-wasp."

Merciless, Brother Jacob continued as if she hadn't
asked the question.  "You think that someone else made
you something you never thought you could be, and that
scares you, that anyone else has that kind of power
over you."

Meg turned away and looked down at her hands folded
in her lap.  "All my life, I was just another kid --
a smart kid, maybe, but that was it.  Then I found out
I'm not really Meg, I'm Mulder and Scully's kid. And
now... I'm -- I'm -- I don't even know what I am.  I
don't think I know much of anything anymore."

She frowned and dropped her head back against the side
of the pew.

Brother Jacob allowed her to think in silence.  Meg
could sense him looking thoughtfully into the chapel
sanctuary.  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the
glint of candlelight shining in the metal frames of
his glasses.

At last, he broke the silence.  "Your sister --
Emily Wexford -- she was more like Them than you
are."

Meg couldn't help but be stunned at this turn in the
subject.  "What?" she whispered.

"You read her journal," he continued candidly.  "You
know she thought she was half-monster."

Meg automatically found herself defending Wexford.
"But she wasn't.  Wexford died so Kevin could be saved.
So I could be saved.  Monsters don't do things like
that."

Meg looked at the monk, daring him to find any thoughts
against Wexford.

But Brother Jacob simply nodded.  "No.  Monsters don't
do things like that."

Prepared to jump to her half-sister's defense again,
Meg waited for the monk to say more, but he did not.
He merely looked like he was waiting for her.

Waiting for her to understand.  She squinted at him for a
second -- uncertain, but beginning to be aware of what
she needed to grasp in this conversation about the dead.

Brother Jacob sat back further in his pew and, with an
air of finality, put his kneeler back in its place.
He stood and stepped out in the chapel aisle.  Without
genuflecting or blessing himself, he said to Meg:

"You know we are all part-wasp.  But we are only part."

Without another word, he left her alone.

Meg watched him leave, uncertain.  Suddenly she found
words from Wexford's journal rolling through her mind:
"You have a choice."  Somehow, those words and Brother
Jacob's last utterance haunted her together, the
connection between them tenuous and just beyond her
reach.  Again she rested her head on the side of the
pew.

She breathed in and out, in and out.  The flicker of
the sanctuary candles echoed her breathing pattern --
gently uneven.  She was still far from fully recovered,
and so she was easy prey for sleep.  Sleep snuck up on
her and caught her easily, without Meg even knowing
it.  And since she was not better yet, REM sleep
claimed her quickly.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Saturday afternoon light slanting through a small,
blue-curtained window.  Throw rugs hanging from the
shower curtain rod.

"Git 'way, Meg," Kevin murmured to her from his spot
on the bathroom floor.  "Go home."

"Kev, what did you--?"

Chills.  Shaking.  Shock.  Red, red blood all over
the floor tiles.

"Kevin, you *rat bastard!*  What did you do?"

Her voice sounded high and strained, hysterical.

Kevin was shirtless, sitting on the bathtub rim, slick
with his own blood.  A bare razor gleamed, silver and red,
on the toilet seat beside him.

"I wanted my mom to be able to give my clothes 'way," he
mumbled, "but these're stained.  Tell 'er I'm sorry--"

Slow motion.  Kevin slumped over, slid down.  Meg
reached out to catch him, but not fast enough.
Kevin hit his head on the toilet.  His eyes were shut.

The cuts on his wrists were diagonal, not vertical.
It could have been worse.  On instinct, Meg
reached for the towel rack.  Ripped into a blue
towel, holding one corner of it with her teeth.
Babysitting class had taught basic first aid.
She'd paid careful attention.  She'd seen her parents
in hospitals enough to know she had to pay attention.
Bad things happen all the time.

Direct pressure.  Tourniquets started.  Call 911.
Call home.  Mommy is home.  Mommy is a medical
doctor.  Mommy can make it all better.

"Kevin?  Kevin, wake up!"

She felt sick.  The bathroom changed, became smaller.
A loud buzzing filled Meg's ears.

Kevin changed.  Became older.  The blood was now
black and glistening slick against his skin.

The black oil.  Cho's plane.

"Meg?"

She crawled to him.

"You saved me..."

She fell into his arms.

"Meg.  You saved me."

The dream faded.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Meg?"

In the darkness of dissipating sleep, Meg could feel
it -- she was almost ready to make the connection
between Brother Jacob's words and Wexford's choice --
but the connection snapped just out of her mind's
reach for the time being.  She opened her eyes and saw
nothing but a blur of polished wood.

"Hey, Meggie?"

Meg looked up, awake now.  Her father was looking
down at her.

"Good golly, Miss Molly," he smiled at her, "what
are you doing sleeping in the chapel?"

She blinked at him and took a moment to reorient
herself.  She sat up and rubbed her eyes.  Her
arms protested at the effort, and she let them
fall limp at her sides.

When she didn't answer right away, her dad explained,
"We were worried about you when you weren't in your
room.  Why didn't you tell anyone where you were
going?"

Automatically, Meg yawned and tried unsuccessfully
to uncramp her muscles.  "Sorry.  What time is it?"

"It's allright," he told her, looking at his watch.
"It's 6:24.  You okay to walk back, or do you want me
to get you a wheelchair?"

Meg thought for a second.  There was something she
was supposed to remember... but couldn't.  She
asked, "Is Mom awake?"

Her Dad looked at her for a second.  "Yeah.  She's
looking for you too."

Meg nodded and bit her lip, still grappling with
the memory-dream.

"You okay, Miss Molly?"

"Daddy," she asked, feeling her voice shake, "can
I talk to you guys about some stuff?"



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"You know, one day you look at the person and
you see something more than you did the night
before, like a switch has been flipped somewhere.
And the person who was just a friend is suddenly
the only person you can ever imagine yourself
with."

--Scully, "Rain King"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Holy Family Medical Center
Room 314
February 7, 2024
7:03 AM


//"We are the champions - my friend
And we'll keep on fighting till the end
We are the champions
We are the champions
No time for losers
'Cause we are the champions of the--"//

D. P. looked up, reached over and stopped "The CD."
"Hey roomie," she greeted Meg, then to Meg's
parents, "I guess you found her, huh?"

"Looks like it," Meg's mom reported, folding
back the covers on her daughter's bed.

Meg shuffled over to her bed, obviously tired,
leaning heavily on her father's arm.  Both of her
parents helped her settle herself, and then her
mother pulled up the covers.

"Well, I'm gonna head out," D. P. said, reaching for
the red sweatshirt folded neatly at the foot of her
bed.

Meg sat up a little further.  "No need to leave on
our account," she managed.

"That's all right," D. P. drawled, stopping to tie
one loose sneaker lace.  "I told Cho I'd take a
walk with him this morning, first to the storeroom,
then maybe down to the vax lab if I'm up to it.  I'm
supposed to meet him downstairs in ten minutes."

"The vax lab?"  Meg's Mom gave D. P. one of her
concerned looks, telling her, "We were going to wait
a few more days before asking either of you if--"

D. P. interrupted with a good-natured shrug.  "It's
been a few days since I was stabbed with needles.
I'm starting to miss them.  Besides, ever since Cho
told me yesterday that they got some pistachio
pudding mix and dill pickles on a looting raid, I've
had a craving.  I gotta go see what I can find."

Meg grinned an upside-down smile reminiscent of her
mother's.  "That," Meg said sheepishly, "sounds
really good."

The elder Mulder shook his head to one side.
"Hmm... pickles and pudding.  Dem's good eatin'," he
quipped.

"Better than us having cravings for human flesh,
right?" Meg tried to joke, but she found herself
wincing at her own comment.  She looked up and
saw her mother frowning back at her.

D. P. nodded wryly and snickered under her breath.
"Yeah, it could be much, much worse, I guess.
Still, if I find the pudding and the pickles, I'll
save some for you, Meg."

Meg smiled again.  "Thanks."

D. P. smiled back, dipped her head at them in
farewell, then shuffled slowly out of the room.

Meg looked back down at her hands, pale and dry
against the bed linens.  She turned over her left
hand and examined her fingers.  The cuticle on her
thumb was loose.  She picked at it absently.

"Meg, honey," her mom asked, pulling up a chair,
"Dad said you wanted to talk to us about something?"

She looked up.  Her dad was grabbing a chair from
D. P.'s side of the room and pulling it closer to
Meg's bed.  "What's wrong, Miss Molly?" he asked as
he sat down.

Meg looked at each of her parents in turn, then let
her eyes fall back to her loose thumb cuticle.  "I--"
she started on a shaky breath.  She raised her eyes
again and watched her parents exchanged worried,
confused looks.  She had so much to ask them she
didn't know where to start.  And she'd been feeling
so sorry for herself the past few days that she'd
totally forgotten about her parents -- all they had
gone through in *their* lives...

And how they'd survived it all together.

Meg closed her eyes again briefly, then looked to
her parents once more.  At last, she said, "While I
was-- while They were taking my blood, I had
these... dreams.  Kind of."

She watched for their reactions.  Her father nodded,
the serious nod he always used those rare times when
he was trying to get Meg to talk seriously.  Her
mother reached out, and took Meg's cool hand in hers.

"And I've been thinking," Meg continued, "about a lot
of things.  I mean," she laughed bitterly, "I just
found out that... that *I'm* an X-file, and--"

"You are *not* an x-file, Meg," her father broke in
with an angry, hoarse voice.

"Mulder," her mother admonished under her breath.

"Let me finish," Meg insisted quietly, staring her
father down.

He shut his mouth, but he looked none too happy
about it.

Meg shut her eyes.  "What I mean is, everything I
ever thought I was is being peeled away, piece by
piece.  First I lost my parents.  Then I lost my
grandmother.  Then I found my parents but lost my
trust in them.  Then-- no, *now* I feel like I've
lost my identity."

Her mother's hand cooled in hers, but her fingers
tightened.

Meg changed tracks but kept her eyes closed.  "But I
was just thinking-- I've been so hung up on what
I've lost, like I'm the only person in the whole
universe who's ever lost anything, like I'm the only
one whose whole world's been turned upside-down."

Meg opened her eyes and dared another look at her
father.  His face had softened.  Meg felt her
throat tighten as she told him, "You've spent your
whole life trying to get back what had been taken
from you when you were just a kid.  And you still
haven't gotten it back."

He flinched at her words.

"And you," Meg said to her mother, "you've had
your entire world view upended and destroyed more
times than *I* can count, and I'm sure I still don't
know even half of the whole story."

Shaking her head to herself, Meg took turns looking
at both of them.  "What I guess I need to know--
for myself -- is... you lost so much, but still you
both risked so much.  I know this.  I've memorized
the schedules for visiting hours and meal
distribution of at least five hospitals in the
metropolitan DC area.  What I don't know is what
made it all worth the risk?"

They were quiet, pondering, exchanging looks for a
minute.  To Meg's surprise, her father spoke first.

He studied her blanket, forming his words
slowly.  "Meg, for a long time, I put all my focus
on what I'd lost.  Sometimes, I was so focused
about getting it back--" He stole a furtive glance
at her mother.  "--that more than half the time I
doubted what was right in front of me.  I doubted
exactly when I should have trusted.  I was so scared
to lose again, that I was afraid to really look at
what I'd been given.

"And I found out," he added, now fixing his eyes on
her mother's with a certainty Meg had never really
looked to see before, "that there's more than one
way to lose someone."

Before, whenever her parents would show their love
for each other in front her, Meg would make some
sort of gagging noise or teasing comment.  But for
the first time, really seeing the way her parents
were looking at each other with such unutterable
devotion, Meg found herself in awe.  For all her
world had been flipped inside-out, she realized
then, nothing could change the fact that her parents
loved each other -- and her -- to the point of death
and beyond.

//My universe has been turned upside-down,// she
found herself thinking, //but at least I have
strong roots in it.//

Meg looked at her mother and noticed her
blinking back tears.  Meg squeezed her hand,
feeling the lump forming in her own throat.

Her mother closed her eyes, and the tears seemed
to disappear, replaced by a smile so small it was
almost beyond detection.  Looking first at Meg's
father, then back at Meg, she began to speak.  "I've
always dressed myself in the armor of logic.  I had
always set a goal for myself to rely on pure science.
Logic never disappoints, and science never deceives.
And I took pride in that for years.  I convinced
myself that I was too strong to be disappointed, that
I was above being deceived.  And as a result, for a
long time, a whole section of my being did not exist
for me."

She stopped and glanced back at her partner.  "But
that all started to change when I met your father.
He challenged my science.  He pushed at my boundaries
until they cracked.  He demanded of me that I think
beyond what was right in front of me.  He taught me
to have the courage of my convictions.  He showed me
that the things that really matter the most, those
things that are worth any risk, don't always have
boundaries."

Meg felt her eyebrows tighten in a frown.  She
bit down hard on both her lips.  "I believe,"
she whispered to her mother, "that I've put up a
lot of boundaries in my life.  And I don't think
I want them there any more, but I don't know how
to take them down."

She felt two tears roll down her right cheek, warm
and quick.  They splashed on the top edge of her
blanket.  Her mother leaned over and pulled Meg
into her arms, and Meg allowed herself the luxury
of crying on her mother's shoulder.  Her mom smoothed
Meg's hair back away from her face and kissed her on
the forehead.

Her dad moved to sit on the edge of her bed.  His
voice ached for her, and that made her cry harder,
realizing what she meant to him.  "Meggie, baby, I
don't want my child to live her life out of loss.
That's not really living.  That's not really a life."

"Then what do I do, Daddy?" she sobbed, "What do I
do instead?"

"Meggie," her mother soothed, "you can't base your
whole life on where you've come from.  Living isn't
about where we've come from but where we choose to
go."

"No miracle was never meant to be," her father
insisted then, dropping his head so he could see
Meg's face cradled against her mother's shoulder,
"and I never want you to think of yourself as
some x-file.  You are everything your mom and I
ever wanted but never hoped to ask for.  Take
that knowlege and go with it."

"Yeah," she cried, "but where do I go?"

Her mother raised Meg's face to hers and smiled
gently.  "It's your life.  You have to decide that
for yourself.  They're your gifts."

Meg coughed a soft, mirthless laugh.  "Yeah, and my
barriers."

Her dad assured her, "Those barriers will come down
for you, too."

"Will they?" Meg asked doubtfully.  "How?  And when?"

"It'll happen," her mom said, "when the time is
right."

Meg straightened up and regarded her parents
through her tears, her lungs shaking with the
effort.  "And how will I know the time is right?"

Her parents exchanged looks again, but instead of
making Meg feel left out, now she felt somehow
included.

They were both smiling at her, but her mother
was the one who answered her:

"You'll never know if the time is right if you don't
at least try."


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Now it's time to prove
that you've come back here
to rebuild...
rebuild...
rebuild...
rebuild..."

--"Call and Answer," BNL
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Intersection of Mitchell Avenue and Galia Drive
Alexandria, VA
February 22, 2024
11:30 AM


Enough time had passed that Meg was ready for her
first trip outside of the medical center, and she
couldn't have hoped for better timing.  The air was
greenhouse effect-warm, damp with yet another
unnaturally early spring.  Again, no real snow this
year -- not even a decent ice storm.  Then again,
there was still March, possibly even April, depending
on how bizarre the DC weather decided to be this
year.

Meg mused on the familiarity of her current
activity: riding bikes with Kevin through their
old neighborhood.  Meg was warm from the exertion of
propelling this old, borrowed mountain bike.  She
pushed up each sleeve of her likewise borrowed, and
thus immensely oversized, "GEORGETOWN DAD"
sweatshirt-- first the left sleeve, then the right.
Bruises now fading to yellow-gray sill marked her
arms.  Her legs ached, pushed to their limits now for
the first time in weeks, and those limits being
extremely lowered due to anemic underuse.

Meg's heart was palpitating again... but she knew
full well that had nothing to do with overexertion
or any of the other ever-receeding symptoms of
hypovolemic anemia.  Her mother had said, "It'll
happen-- when the time is right."  Now, every time
Meg was alone with Kevin, she just kept asking
herself: //Is now the right time?//  Well, apparently
it hadn't been, she guessed, because she hadn't found
herself ready to "at least try."  At least, not yet.

But right now, away from all the prying eyes at the
hospital... this was the most alone Meg and Kevin
had been in the weeks since her rescue.  Her palms
twinged with anxiety, and she gripped the handlebars
in an attempt to refocus her energies.  Letting
herself coast for a few seconds so she could catch
her breath, Meg could hear her ponytail whipping hard
against the empty nylon daypack she carried on her
back.

She looked to her left and saw Kevin riding by her
side, his blue sweater strained against his
shoulders, but loose enough at the waist to ripple a
little in the breeze.  He was wearing a brand-new--
looted -- Balimore Orioles ball cap on his just-shaved
head, and the sun shone in sparkles on the silver
frames of his glasses.  He caught Meg looking at him
and gave her one of his concerned looks, his eyebrows
knotted slightly off-center.  He asked, "You okay?"

"I'm fine, Kev," Meg said, looking straight ahead
again, pumping the pedals faster.

"You sure?" Kevin asked, likewise pedaling in time
with Meg to catch up with her.  "You seem a little
winded."

Meg pushed herself some more and passed him.
"S'matter, Kev?"  She kept her voice light.  "You
afraid a girl'll beat you to your house?"

She could hear him chuckling ruefully behind her as
he caught up again.  "When your father finds out I
let you talk me into this," he sighed, "I'm a dead
man."

Meg steered around yet another car abandoned to the
middle of the street, then she turned into the
Declan's old driveway.  She called to Kevin over her
shoulder, "How's he gonna find out if we don't tell
him?"

Kevin rolled into the driveway beside her, hopped
off of his bike and propped it up with the kickstand.
"Don't you think your mom's birthday gift will give
it away?"

"Aaaah-- by then he'll be too late to stop us," Meg
unstraddled her bike, pushed down her kickstand, and
walked up the steps to the Declan's front door.  "And
why are you so scared of my dad, anyway?  He's
harmless."

"Are we talking about the same guy?"  Kevin jingled
his keyring in search of the house keys he hadn't
used in years.  "He's known me since I was five, but
when I came to pick you up for your prom he still
made sure I knew he was wearing two guns.  Yeah, man,
like I didn't already know."

Meg rolled her eyes and leaned her head against a
post on the Declan's front porch.  "Oh, don't be
ridiculous.  He was just being goofy."

Kevin looked doubtfully at Meg as she rested like
that.  "You're sure you're feeling okay?"

She straightened up and stood on her own.  "Yep."

Kevin narrowed his eyes at her, but then must have
given her the benefit of the doubt; he opened the
door and waved her through.

Meg entered and looked around.  The air in here was
close but unheated; still, it held the indelibly
comforting atmosphere of Kevin's house, so she felt
a certain sense of warmth and safety sink into her.
Nearly everything was just as she'd seen it last.
Kevin's senior portrait hung on the wall in the
hallway leading to the kitchen, and next to that was
the official picture from Meg's senior prom.  To the
right off of the foyer was the living room, and
against the wall opposite the bay window sat Meg's
old piano, left there for storage ever since her
house had been sold.

Meg wandered into the doorway of the living room,
feeling the miniscule ripples of the foyer wallpaper
brush under her fingertips.  She walked a few more
steps and reached out, running her fingers over the
closed piano cover.

She glanced back over her shoulder, snapped out of
this trance by a creaking on the steps behind her.
Kevin was on his way upstairs.  Waiting for her, one
hand on the rail, he asked, "You coming?"

Meg nodded absently, turned fully, and hurried to
follow him.

At the top of the steps was the bathroom, its
blue paint and tile long replaced with a neat beige,
the product of a remodeling project Kevin had imposed
upon himself after he'd come home from the hospital
those years ago.  On their right was Mrs. Declan's
bedroom, on the left the guest room where Meg had
stayed for holidays after Gram had died.  At the end
of the hall on the left was Kevin's bedroom, and
across from that his old computer room, its ancient
//Episode Three -- The Game// poster still taped to
the outside of the door, hanging on stubbornly.

Before they reached the end of the hall, though,
Kevin stopped and reached up to a hatch in the
ceiling.  "You remember where you put it?" He
asked her as he pulled on the cord, releasing the
attic steps.

"I think so," Meg breathed, "as long as your mom
didn't move my stuff."

"She said she didn't," he replied.  With a small
grunt, Kevin extended the steps down to the second
floor rug.  He walked up a few of the ladder-stairs,
then automatically pulled down on a chain dangling
from the attic ceiling still above.

No electricity at the moment.  The light bulb
attached to the chain refused to illuminate.

Meg snickered at Kevin and pulled a small flashlight
out of the pocket of her jeans.  "Here, try this."

She held it out to him, and he took it, shining
its small beam into the dust-waltzing air of the
attic.  He looked back at her for direction.  "Where
we going?"

Meg pointed up and over at the corner farthest from
the stair-ladder.  "Over there."

They both ascended the rest of the way into the
attic, Kevin wiping the spider webs out of his face
as they went, both of them ducking beneath the pink
foam insulated arches of the low-pitched roof.
Besides the flashlight's beam, weak sunlight shone
through two meager windows at both ends of the
attic's length.

"It's colder in here than it is outside," Kevin
muttered to himself.

Meg closed her eyes for a second, searching her
memory.  "It should be in box labeled 'pictures.'
Brown cardboard box.  Red and white screening on
it.  Says 'Washington Apples' on the sides."

Kevin ducked into the corner and pointed with the
flashlight.  "That one?"

Meg followed the beam with her eyes and nodded.
"That one."

They picked around all the clutter in their way.
Stacks of board games.  Boxes of outdated VCR tapes
and quaintly oversized DVD's.  Draped across the
console of Mrs. Declan's old treadmill, a green apron
silkscreened with the cheerful motto:  "Welcome to Mt.
Foodmore, where shopping is MONUMENTAL!"  Stuck to
the apron, a pin: "Hi!  My name is KEVIN.  How can I
help you today?"  A pair of beaten-up crew shoes
from Kevin's rowing days dangled from a nail in the
ceiling.

When Meg's foot caught under Kevin's Fisher Price
toybox, she almost toppled, but Kevin reached back
and steadied her.  Meg's nerves jumped at his touch,
but she willed herself not to show it.  She noticed
that the flashlight's beam wavered in Kevin's
hand, but Meg refused to let herself wonder at that.

"Thanks," she mumbled.

"Yeah," Kevin mumbled back.

They reached the corner, Kevin first.  He lifted one
box, labeled "Meg's clothes," from Meg's stash and
handed it to her.

Curious, Meg placed that box on top of the previously
offending toybox, unfolded the lid flaps, and undid
the twist-tie fastening the protective trash bag
inside.  From the box, Meg shook out a maroon and gray
plaid kilt.

"Never thought I'd see that again," Kevin snickered,
looking over his shoulder before lifting another box
aside.

"Ah, yes," she smirked around the nerves in her voice,
"the lovely Macauley Mercy uniform, God bless
it." Meg re-folded it with mock reverence.  "Never
thought I'd miss wearing *that.*"

In the weak light given by the closest window, Meg saw
something twinkle deeper in the box she held, and she
almost gasped.  She draped her uniform skirt over the
side of the box and reached down further.  Her hands
first found a pair of maroon warmup pants her legs
had outgrown her freshman year of high school --
on one leg, yellow letters spelled out "MACAULEY
MERCY," on the other, "HORNET TRACK."  She pulled out
the pants and placed them on top of her skirt.  She
did likewise with the matching long-sleeved t-shirt,
also in her way.

Then her hands found the source of the sought-after
twinkle: fabric uniformly coarse with rich metallic
threads.  A flash in her mind, and she remembered:
her senior prom gown.  Slinky and clingy,
with a slit up one leg.  Spaghetti straps that
had forced her to go braless for the evening,
thanking God for once that she was so flat.
She rooted around in the box some more, hoping
against hope to find the matching shoes.  She was
unsuccessful.

She looked furtively at the dress again.  The first
time Kevin had seen her in that dress was the one
and only time she'd ever thought that maybe, just
maybe, he could possibly think of her as something
other than his surrogate younger sister.  His
eyes had skimmed her with such blatant...
amazement that her father cleared his throat
at him in mild protest.

"Wow, Meg," Kevin had said then, awkwardly holding
out at her a bunch of white roses and German
stattice.  "Wow.  Just... wow.  You look--"

"--like a girl for once?"  She'd quipped because his
admiring scrutiny was making her feel equally awkward,
like a freak in a circus show...

"Here ya go," Kevin grunted in the present, and Meg
snapped out of the memory.  Embarrassed, Meg dropped
the dress she'd been clutching.  She reached out to
take the box Kevin offered.

She found another stack of boxes and placed the
'pictures' box on top of it.  She tossed the lid
carelessly aside, and a cloud of dust drifted away
to reveal several photo albums with leatherette
covers of various standard colors -- blue, brown,
dark green.

Meg smiled, forgetting her own memories for a moment.
"Mom's gonna do backflips when she sees these."

Kevin made a soft, incredulous "pft" noise.  "Your
mom wouldn't do backflips if you paid her."

"For pictures she hasn't seen in, like, three or
four years," Meg assured him, opening the cover
of one of the albums, "she'd do backflips."

She flipped casually through the first few pages
of black paper with tiny tabs of decorative metal
holding in place black-and-white snapshots.  Wedding
pictures, yellowed with age.  A dark-haired girl
smiled on the arm of a quirkily handsome young man
in a Navy uniform from decades past.

"Backflips," Meg repeated.  She closed the album,
removed the pack from her back and started to fill
it.

"Hey," Kevin called to her, standing by the window.
He cleared his throat.  His voice sounded oddly
shaky.  "Check this."

Meg looked up and saw him pointing out the window
in the direction of her old house.  "What is it?"

"Your Gram's garden," he said, beckoning for her
to come over and see for herself.  "I can see it
from here.  I think it's blooming."

Meg frowned skeptically.  "In February?  You sure
you don't need to clean those glasses of yours?"

Kevin smiled and dutifully removed his glasses,
wiping them clean on the shirttail that stuck out
beneath his sweater.  He put them back on his face,
looked again, and shrugged.  "That's global warming
for ya, I guess."

Meg crossed over to the window to see for herself,
and sure enough, over the two other yards between
the Declan's house and her old home, Meg swore she
could see knots of white, yellow and red pushing
through the green twining of Gram's rose
trellises.

"I thought the new owners would've taken out the
garden," she murmured.

Kevin shook his head.  "They would've been nuts
to do that.  Best part of the whole property."

Surprised at his remark, Meg turned her attention to
Kevin, but his face remained impassively fixed on
Gram Scully's garden.  They both looked out at the
rosebuds waving their fists in the air.

"I bet," Kevin said slowly, "that your mom would
love some of those roses for her birthday."

Meg felt her eyebrows raise in surprise.  "Hadn't
thought of that," she admitted.

Looking almost shy, Meg could've sworn, Kevin
turned to look at her.  "Well?  What do you think?"

Meg's mouth hung open stupidly for a second, then
she blurted, "Yeah.  What the hell?  Might as well,
while we're here."

Kevin nodded then started climbing back towards the
steps.  "You need helping carrying any of those
pictures?"

"Nah, s'okay," she automatically told him, "I got it."

"Ohhh-kay..." Kevin answered, then continued on his
way back to the stairs.

Meg grabbed the last album out of the box and put it
into her bag.  "Ready?" she asked.

Kevin nodded.  She caught up with him, and they both
traipsed back downstairs.  On their way out of the
house, Kevin stopped at the door for one more look
around.

"Wonder when I'll be back here next," Kevin said
quietly, his eyes lingering over everything in sight.

Meg felt a certain shared pang for things lost.
She couldn't help but reach out and place her hand
reassuringly on his arm.  He turned his eyes to hers
and gave her a hesitant smile.  She smiled back.

Her heart jumped.  Again she wondered, //Is this the
right time?//

Apparently it wasn't.  She found she had to turn
away.  She swallowed hard and studied Kevin's house
one last time.

"C'mon," Kevin sighed at last, "let's go get your
mom's birthday flowers."


END 30/31The Children's Teeth: Litany 30/31
by Erin McCole Cupp (CathyLex@aol.com)

Disclaimers, etc. in "The Children's Teeth: Prescript."

This part's for Scott "The Night Was Sultry" Cupp,
my Skeptical Partner. --EMC

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Now it's time to prove
that you've come back here
to rebuild...
rebuild...
rebuild...
rebuild..."

--"Call and Answer," BNL
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Intersection of Mitchell Avenue and Galia Drive
Alexandria, VA
February 22, 2024
11:30 AM


Enough time had passed that Meg was ready for her
first trip outside of the medical center, and she
couldn't have hoped for better timing.  The air was
greenhouse effect-warm, damp with yet another
unnaturally early spring.  Again, no real snow this
year -- not even a decent ice storm.  Then again,
there was still March, possibly even April, depending
on how bizarre the DC weather decided to be this
year.

Meg mused on the familiarity of her current
activity: riding bikes with Kevin through their
old neighborhood.  Meg was warm from the exertion of
propelling this old, borrowed mountain bike.  She
pushed up each sleeve of her likewise borrowed, and
thus immensely oversized, "GEORGETOWN DAD"
sweatshirt-- first the left sleeve, then the right.
Bruises now fading to yellow-gray sill marked her
arms.  Her legs ached, pushed to their limits now for
the first time in weeks, and those limits being
extremely lowered due to anemic underuse.

Meg's heart was palpitating again... but she knew
full well that had nothing to do with overexertion
or any of the other ever-receeding symptoms of
hypovolemic anemia.  Her mother had said, "It'll
happen-- when the time is right."  Now, every time
Meg was alone with Kevin, she just kept asking
herself: //Is now the right time?//  Well, apparently
it hadn't been, she guessed, because she hadn't found
herself ready to "at least try."  At least, not yet.

But right now, away from all the prying eyes at the
hospital... this was the most alone Meg and Kevin
had been in the weeks since her rescue.  Her palms
twinged with anxiety, and she gripped the handlebars
in an attempt to refocus her energies.  Letting
herself coast for a few seconds so she could catch
her breath, Meg could hear her ponytail whipping hard
against the empty nylon daypack she carried on her
back.

She looked to her left and saw Kevin riding by her
side, his blue sweater strained against his
shoulders, but loose enough at the waist to ripple a
little in the breeze.  He was wearing a brand-new--
looted -- Balimore Orioles ball cap on his just-shaved
head, and the sun shone in sparkles on the silver
frames of his glasses.  He caught Meg looking at him
and gave her one of his concerned looks, his eyebrows
knotted slightly off-center.  He asked, "You okay?"

"I'm fine, Kev," Meg said, looking straight ahead
again, pumping the pedals faster.

"You sure?" Kevin asked, likewise pedaling in time
with Meg to catch up with her.  "You seem a little
winded."

Meg pushed herself some more and passed him.
"S'matter, Kev?"  She kept her voice light.  "You
afraid a girl'll beat you to your house?"

She could hear him chuckling ruefully behind her as
he caught up again.  "When your father finds out I
let you talk me into this," he sighed, "I'm a dead
man."

Meg steered around yet another car abandoned to the
middle of the street, then she turned into the
Declan's old driveway.  She called to Kevin over her
shoulder, "How's he gonna find out if we don't tell
him?"

Kevin rolled into the driveway beside her, hopped
off of his bike and propped it up with the kickstand.
"Don't you think your mom's birthday gift will give
it away?"

"Aaaah-- by then he'll be too late to stop us," Meg
unstraddled her bike, pushed down her kickstand, and
walked up the steps to the Declan's front door.  "And
why are you so scared of my dad, anyway?  He's
harmless."

"Are we talking about the same guy?"  Kevin jingled
his keyring in search of the house keys he hadn't
used in years.  "He's known me since I was five, but
when I came to pick you up for your prom he still
made sure I knew he was wearing two guns.  Yeah, man,
like I didn't already know."

Meg rolled her eyes and leaned her head against a
post on the Declan's front porch.  "Oh, don't be
ridiculous.  He was just being goofy."

Kevin looked doubtfully at Meg as she rested like
that.  "You're sure you're feeling okay?"

She straightened up and stood on her own.  "Yep."

Kevin narrowed his eyes at her, but then must have
given her the benefit of the doubt; he opened the
door and waved her through.

Meg entered and looked around.  The air in here was
close but unheated; still, it held the indelibly
comforting atmosphere of Kevin's house, so she felt
a certain sense of warmth and safety sink into her.
Nearly everything was just as she'd seen it last.
Kevin's senior portrait hung on the wall in the
hallway leading to the kitchen, and next to that was
the official picture from Meg's senior prom.  To the
right off of the foyer was the living room, and
against the wall opposite the bay window sat Meg's
old piano, left there for storage ever since her
house had been sold.

Meg wandered into the doorway of the living room,
feeling the miniscule ripples of the foyer wallpaper
brush under her fingertips.  She walked a few more
steps and reached out, running her fingers over the
closed piano cover.

She glanced back over her shoulder, snapped out of
this trance by a creaking on the steps behind her.
Kevin was on his way upstairs.  Waiting for her, one
hand on the rail, he asked, "You coming?"

Meg nodded absently, turned fully, and hurried to
follow him.

At the top of the steps was the bathroom, its
blue paint and tile long replaced with a neat beige,
the product of a remodeling project Kevin had imposed
upon himself after he'd come home from the hospital
those years ago.  On their right was Mrs. Declan's
bedroom, on the left the guest room where Meg had
stayed for holidays after Gram had died.  At the end
of the hall on the left was Kevin's bedroom, and
across from that his old computer room, its ancient
//Episode Three -- The Game// poster still taped to
the outside of the door, hanging on stubbornly.

Before they reached the end of the hall, though,
Kevin stopped and reached up to a hatch in the
ceiling.  "You remember where you put it?" He
asked her as he pulled on the cord, releasing the
attic steps.

"I think so," Meg breathed, "as long as your mom
didn't move my stuff."

"She said she didn't," he replied.  With a small
grunt, Kevin extended the steps down to the second
floor rug.  He walked up a few of the ladder-stairs,
then automatically pulled down on a chain dangling
from the attic ceiling still above.

No electricity at the moment.  The light bulb
attached to the chain refused to illuminate.

Meg snickered at Kevin and pulled a small flashlight
out of the pocket of her jeans.  "Here, try this."

She held it out to him, and he took it, shining
its small beam into the dust-waltzing air of the
attic.  He looked back at her for direction.  "Where
we going?"

Meg pointed up and over at the corner farthest from
the stair-ladder.  "Over there."

They both ascended the rest of the way into the
attic, Kevin wiping the spider webs out of his face
as they went, both of them ducking beneath the pink
foam insulated arches of the low-pitched roof.
Besides the flashlight's beam, weak sunlight shone
through two meager windows at both ends of the
attic's length.

"It's colder in here than it is outside," Kevin
muttered to himself.

Meg closed her eyes for a second, searching her
memory.  "It should be in box labeled 'pictures.'
Brown cardboard box.  Red and white screening on
it.  Says 'Washington Apples' on the sides."

Kevin ducked into the corner and pointed with the
flashlight.  "That one?"

Meg followed the beam with her eyes and nodded.
"That one."

They picked around all the clutter in their way.
Stacks of board games.  Boxes of outdated VCR tapes
and quaintly oversized DVD's.  Draped across the
console of Mrs. Declan's old treadmill, a green apron
silkscreened with the cheerful motto:  "Welcome to Mt.
Foodmore, where shopping is MONUMENTAL!"  Stuck to
the apron, a pin: "Hi!  My name is KEVIN.  How can I
help you today?"  A pair of beaten-up crew shoes
from Kevin's rowing days dangled from a nail in the
ceiling.

When Meg's foot caught under Kevin's Fisher Price
toybox, she almost toppled, but Kevin reached back
and steadied her.  Meg's nerves jumped at his touch,
but she willed herself not to show it.  She noticed
that the flashlight's beam wavered in Kevin's
hand, but Meg refused to let herself wonder at that.

"Thanks," she mumbled.

"Yeah," Kevin mumbled back.

They reached the corner, Kevin first.  He lifted one
box, labeled "Meg's clothes," from Meg's stash and
handed it to her.

Curious, Meg placed that box on top of the previously
offending toybox, unfolded the lid flaps, and undid
the twist-tie fastening the protective trash bag
inside.  From the box, Meg shook out a maroon and gray
plaid kilt.

"Never thought I'd see that again," Kevin snickered,
looking over his shoulder before lifting another box
aside.

"Ah, yes," she smirked around the nerves in her voice,
"the lovely Macauley Mercy uniform, God bless
it." Meg re-folded it with mock reverence.  "Never
thought I'd miss wearing *that.*"

In the weak light given by the closest window, Meg saw
something twinkle deeper in the box she held, and she
almost gasped.  She draped her uniform skirt over the
side of the box and reached down further.  Her hands
first found a pair of maroon warmup pants her legs
had outgrown her freshman year of high school --
on one leg, yellow letters spelled out "MACAULEY
MERCY," on the other, "HORNET TRACK."  She pulled out
the pants and placed them on top of her skirt.  She
did likewise with the matching long-sleeved t-shirt,
also in her way.

Then her hands found the source of the sought-after
twinkle: fabric uniformly coarse with rich metallic
threads.  A flash in her mind, and she remembered:
her senior prom gown.  Slinky and clingy,
with a slit up one leg.  Spaghetti straps that
had forced her to go braless for the evening,
thanking God for once that she was so flat.
She rooted around in the box some more, hoping
against hope to find the matching shoes.  She was
unsuccessful.

She looked furtively at the dress again.  The first
time Kevin had seen her in that dress was the one
and only time she'd ever thought that maybe, just
maybe, he could possibly think of her as something
other than his surrogate younger sister.  His
eyes had skimmed her with such blatant...
amazement that her father cleared his throat
at him in mild protest.

"Wow, Meg," Kevin had said then, awkwardly holding
out at her a bunch of white roses and German
stattice.  "Wow.  Just... wow.  You look--"

"--like a girl for once?"  She'd quipped because his
admiring scrutiny was making her feel equally awkward,
like a freak in a circus show...

"Here ya go," Kevin grunted in the present, and Meg
snapped out of the memory.  Embarrassed, Meg dropped
the dress she'd been clutching.  She reached out to
take the box Kevin offered.

She found another stack of boxes and placed the
'pictures' box on top of it.  She tossed the lid
carelessly aside, and a cloud of dust drifted away
to reveal several photo albums with leatherette
covers of various standard colors -- blue, brown,
dark green.

Meg smiled, forgetting her own memories for a moment.
"Mom's gonna do backflips when she sees these."

Kevin made a soft, incredulous "pft" noise.  "Your
mom wouldn't do backflips if you paid her."

"For pictures she hasn't seen in, like, three or
four years," Meg assured him, opening the cover
of one of the albums, "she'd do backflips."

She flipped casually through the first few pages
of black paper with tiny tabs of decorative metal
holding in place black-and-white snapshots.  Wedding
pictures, yellowed with age.  A dark-haired girl
smiled on the arm of a quirkily handsome young man
in a Navy uniform from decades past.

"Backflips," Meg repeated.  She closed the album,
removed the pack from her back and started to fill
it.

"Hey," Kevin called to her, standing by the window.
He cleared his throat.  His voice sounded oddly
shaky.  "Check this."

Meg looked up and saw him pointing out the window
in the direction of her old house.  "What is it?"

"Your Gram's garden," he said, beckoning for her
to come over and see for herself.  "I can see it
from here.  I think it's blooming."

Meg frowned skeptically.  "In February?  You sure
you don't need to clean those glasses of yours?"

Kevin smiled and dutifully removed his glasses,
wiping them clean on the shirttail that stuck out
beneath his sweater.  He put them back on his face,
looked again, and shrugged.  "That's global warming
for ya, I guess."

Meg crossed over to the window to see for herself,
and sure enough, over the two other yards between
the Declan's house and her old home, Meg swore she
could see knots of white, yellow and red pushing
through the green twining of Gram's rose
trellises.

"I thought the new owners would've taken out the
garden," she murmured.

Kevin shook his head.  "They would've been nuts
to do that.  Best part of the whole property."

Surprised at his remark, Meg turned her attention to
Kevin, but his face remained impassively fixed on
Gram Scully's garden.  They both looked out at the
rosebuds waving their fists in the air.

"I bet," Kevin said slowly, "that your mom would
love some of those roses for her birthday."

Meg felt her eyebrows raise in surprise.  "Hadn't
thought of that," she admitted.

Looking almost shy, Meg could've sworn, Kevin
turned to look at her.  "Well?  What do you think?"

Meg's mouth hung open stupidly for a second, then
she blurted, "Yeah.  What the hell?  Might as well,
while we're here."

Kevin nodded then started climbing back towards the
steps.  "You need helping carrying any of those
pictures?"

"Nah, s'okay," she automatically told him, "I got it."

"Ohhh-kay..." Kevin answered, then continued on his
way back to the stairs.

Meg grabbed the last album out of the box and put it
into her bag.  "Ready?" she asked.

Kevin nodded.  She caught up with him, and they both
traipsed back downstairs.  On their way out of the
house, Kevin stopped at the door for one more look
around.

"Wonder when I'll be back here next," Kevin said
quietly, his eyes lingering over everything in sight.

Meg felt a certain shared pang for things lost.
She couldn't help but reach out and place her hand
reassuringly on his arm.  He turned his eyes to hers
and gave her a hesitant smile.  She smiled back.

Her heart jumped.  Again she wondered, //Is this the
right time?//

Apparently it wasn't.  She found she had to turn
away.  She swallowed hard and studied Kevin's house
one last time.

"C'mon," Kevin sighed at last, "let's go get your
mom's birthday flowers."


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Nothing gives me greater joy
than to hear my children
are walking in the truth."

--3 John 4
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Meg followed Kevin out of the house, noticing that
he relocked the door behind him, even though there
wasn't really anyone around anymore to break in --
or, if there were, not anyone who might be deterred
by a deadbolt.

They got back on their bikes and rode three doors
down the street to what had once been Meg's house.
The basketball net in the driveway was long gone,
and the exterior paint had changed color, but the
landscaping had remained much the same.  They left
their bikes in the front yard and walked between the
side garden patch and the cherry trees that marked
the east edge of the property.

They rounded the back corner of the house and saw
Gram's garden.  Crocuses were long since unfurled,
and the daffodils were just starting to come into
their full glory.  Iris petals were starting to
curl out of their buds, but none of that was as
much of a surprise as the rosebuds -- the colors
of what they would be soon enough were clearly
visible through the the tight points of their green
jackets.

"Funny," Meg mused out loud after at least a full
five minutes of staring at the garden, "if it
weren't for the invaders, we wouldn't have any of
this now."

Kevin considered her words.  "You mean, without
all the changes in temperature, we wouldn't have
roses in February?"

Meg bit her lip thoughtfully and nodded.

Kevin nodded back.  "Never thought of it that way
before."

Meg turned to Kevin.  She chose her words carefully.
"And without you, I don't think I would have looked
to see it."

She gestured to the budding roses, hoping he could
see her gratitude in the motion, and Kevin nodded
again.  She could tell:  he understood.  He usually
did.

But he suddenly looked down, rubbing his right
hand across the back of his neck.  His fingers
stopped and pulled something silver out from under
his t-shirt.

"I, ah," he stammered, "I... keep forgetting to give
you... something."

With both hands, he fidgeted with something at
the back of his neck.  Meg's breath caught
unexpectedly in her throat when she realized what
he'd been forgetting to give her.

"Your, ah--" he kept stammering, "your Aunt Bridge
says that I'm supposed to be the one who gives
this back to you.  Some, uh, family tradition or
something, she says."

Meg looked up and saw Kevin holding her Miraculous
Medal out to her by both ends of its chain.

It was like they were having a staring contest:
both of them honor-bound not to look away, but
maintaining this contact without reaching some sort
of breaking point was becoming unbearable -- at
least for Meg.  Something had to happen, or she was
going to explode.

With shaking hands, she reached for the necklace,
just as Kevin came unexpectedly closer to her.
Somehow, in the simulatenous movement, their hands
collided.  They studied each other for another
tense moment.

"Oh--" Meg found herself stammering, "you were going
to--"

"Uhm," Kevim stammered back at the same time, "I
forgot.  You can do it yourself, right?  You don't
need me."

Kevin pulled his hands back, took a step backwards,
and looked down at his feet.  His mouth tightened as
he extended just his right hand to her with a sudden
cool detachment, her necklace dangling between them
again.  Meg realized what had just happened:  Kevin
had tried reaching out to her, but he thought she was
pushing him away.

Of course he did.  That was one of the barriers she'd
wrapped around herself.

And that was one barrier Meg wanted to see crumble.

"Kev," she breathed uneasily, looking down at her
hiking boots.

Kevin's sneakers shuffled at the ground, too.
"Well, ya gonna take it or not?"  His voice was
gently teasing, in an attempt to cover up their
mutual discomfort.

Meg looked up at him.  She could not guess how
he might react now... but she knew with every fiber
of her being that, no matter what she said, no
matter how he felt, Kevin Declan could be trusted
never to humiliate her intentionally.

And that knowledge made now the right time to at
least try.

Meg reached out, held her palm under the Medal, then
raised her hand until the Medal landed in it.  She
lifted her hand some more until the silver chain
coiled in her palm.

Her hand reached Kevin's.  When his eyes met hers in
surprise, she let her fingers curl around his.  She
waited -- waited for him to pull his hand out of
hers.

He didn't.

"Kev," she began on a shuddering breath, but then she
stopped.  She had to think of the right way to
explain her behavior of late -- of the past several
years.  "One day, when I was in kindergarten, my--
Gram came and picked me up, took me out of school
early.  She took me to the hospital.  My dad had
been shot."

He remembered that.  Kevin lowered their hands.  A
moment's panic passed over Meg, that he would want to
break that contact just as she was starting to open up
to him.

But Kevin just stepped closer to her and lowered
their hands to a position more comfortable for both
of them.  He nodded at her to go on.

Relieved, Meg took another deep breath so she could
continue.  "I knew what guns were, and I knew people
could die from them... but I didn't really understand
until then what *death* really was, the permanence of
it, and how death might just show up in my life
suddenly one day and take everybody away -- take away
the people I loved most.  So I think, even when I was
five, a big part of me decided to act like I really
didn't need anyone, no matter how much I loved them,
because someday those people might leave me, and I
really would have to do everything by myself."

She glanced back up at Kevin.  He was listening
intently, she could tell by the knot of concentration
and concern between his eyebrows.

Meg moistened her dry lips and swallowed before she
went on, admitting, "Another part of me hoped that
wasn't true, but... that part gave up hope when I --
when I was thirteen, and I walked into your bathroom
and I--"

She heard Kevin suck in his breath, felt his hand
tighten in hers.  He looked away.  "Meg," he
practically coughed, "Meg, I'm sorry.  I am so sorry.
I know I could never apologize enough for--"

"--I always thought," she interrupted, knowing that if
she stopped, she might never finish this, "that even
if my parents died, even if Gram died, y'know, at least
Kevin would be there for me, right?  But I realized
that even that wasn't the reality--"

"Meg," he choked, "I'm so, so sorry, I--"

"--that I'd have to get ready to live completely on my
own, because some day I'd just have to.  I wouldn't
have anyone but myself, so I couldn't really trust
anyone to care for me.  Is this making any sense?"

Kevin nodded solemnly, his fingers tightening around
hers even more.  His voice was taut as he whispered,
"It is."

Meg looked away again, struggling to explain further.
"So when my parents -- when that building exploded,
and then Gram died so soon afterwards, I knew that
was it.  It was for real now.  The worst possible
scenario had become my life.  And I didn't want it
ever to get worse.  I was afraid to lose anyone like
that again."

"I understand," Kevin told her, and she could tell he
wasn't just saying that.  "You went through hell, and
that's how you survived."

Meg nodded, felt her hand starting to shake a little
in Kevin's.  "You know better than anyone else what I
was like after I thought my parents were dead, how I
kept pushing everybody away.  I pushed you the hardest,
I think, and for that I'm sorry.  I guess on some
deep-down level I'd always thought that I needed my
parents, and once they were gone, I tried so hard to
convince myself that I didn't need anyone, that I
really was completely independent."

"You've always been independent, Meg," Kevin said, a
tiny smile tugging at the corners of his eyes and
lips.  "It's who you are."

Meg shook her head.  "But just because I might lose
someone someday," she sighed shakily, "doesn't mean
I should push him away.  And just because part of me
is afraid I might hurt somebody somehow just by
virtue of being my own messed-up self, that doesn't
mean I can't ever trust myself to do some good for
the people I want in my life."

Kevin's face was blanking over like it always did
whenever he was trying to hide something from her.
At first, Meg was disappointed.

She quickly shook off that feeling.  Fine.  He
could hide whatever he needed to hide, but Meg could
feel her barriers crumbling as she spoke, and she
didn't want to stop their destruction.

"And I've been considering," she said, her voice
sounding stronger than she had expected it to, "what
you said when you found me in New York."

Her words startled Kevin enough to show a sudden
break in his armor.  Incredulous, he asked, "You
remember that?  I thought you were out of it..."

"You told me," she remembered aloud, "that I could
choose to let somebody carry me.  And I've been
thinking about that a lot lately.  A lot."

Kevin was regaining his composure, but not
completely, and he still held her hand in his.  "And
what have you thought about that?"

Meg steeled her spine and looked him directly in the
eyes.  "Kevin, before you left to find your dad, you
asked me if I needed you, and I pretty much told you I
didn't.  But I didn't tell you the whole truth.  I
don't need you, Kevin.  I want you."

There.  She'd said it.  She waited for his reaction.

Kevin stared at her, uncomprehending, his mouth
hanging slightly open.

Meg's nerve started to wane.  She panicked, tried
to pull those barriers of hers at least somewhat back
into place.  She automatically found herself starting
to babble.  "I want you in my life, Kev.  And when
you're not around I miss you... even more than you
miss pizza--"

Kevin blinked several times in rapid suceession.
"Meg?"

But her mouth kept going, even though her mind was
telling her to zip it.  "--and it doesn't matter how
you feel about me.  How you feel doesn't change
how I feel.  I know this now.  And even if we just
stay friends--"

"Meg," Kevin repeated quietly, stepping closer to her.

"--after this.  Well, I hope we always stay friends,
no matter what--"

He tugged almost imperceptibly on her arm.  "Hey,
Meg?"

"--well, as long as both of us are still alive and
all, and I know I can't get any guarantees on *that,*
at least not in this world, but--"

"Meg," he said, his voice strangely even, "if you
don't shut up for once, I'll never be able to kiss
you."

Stunned.

Meg was stunned into silence.  She blinked up at
Kevin.  Her mouth formed the first sound of the one
word question, "What?"

She had no chance to ask it.

In a singular motion, Kevin removed his baseball cap,
dropped it, pulled Meg to him, and pressed his lips
to hers.

Stunned.  She could almost hear the final crush of the
last mortar in this one defense of hers.

The stubble leading from his chin to his mouth grazed
her bottom lip.  His free hand, the one not holding
hers, went to her cheek, his thumb tracing her
cheekbone, his fingers curling against her ear.
His hand moved, drifted to the back of her neck
and pulled her even closer.

Stunned and shaking all over, Meg pulled away in
shock.  She looked up into Kevin's eyes, which
suddenly took on their concerned look again.  Even
hidden behind his glasses, Kevin's eyes told Meg
that he was afraid he'd done something wrong.

Meg tried to form coherent words to reassure him
that this was nothing but right by her, but all she
could manage was, "Wow."

"Wow?"  The worried knot between Kevin's eyebrows
tensed even more.  "Good wow or bad wow?"

At first, Meg started to speak, but the desire to
kiss him again overwhelmed her.

He pulled back, the shocked one this time.

"Good wow," she told him.

Kevin nodded.  "Very good wow."

So this was the right time, Meg realized, as
Kevin finally finished putting her Miraculous
back around her neck.

Meg's fingers flew to the Medal at her throat, and
for no good reason, she dipped her head and started to
giggle.

"What?"  Kevin asked, though all traces of
self-consciousness were gone from his voice.  He
was laughing with her even though he had to ask,
"What's so funny?"

"Did you know," Meg reported to Kevin through her
giggles, "that my parents only had to wait six years
before they even got *near* this point?"

Kevin smirked and put his arms around her.  His arms
tightened, and she let herself relax against his
embrace.  "Six years?" He murmured into her ear.
"Bah-- mere amateurs.  What's it been for us?
Eighteen?"

"Nineteen," she corrected, grinning so hard that her
cheeks hurt.  "Nineteen years."

"Oh, yeah," Kevin said with mock-smugness as he let
his hands slide back down to Meg's, "we got them
beat."

Meg nodded.  "We win."

They laughed into each other as their lips met once
more.


END 


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.