From: Annie Sewell-Jennings <auralissa@aol.com>
Date: 21 Aug 2000 05:38:12 GMT
Subject: NEW: "Glass Landscape (5/8)" By: Annie Sewell-Jennings

GLASS LANDSCAPE (5/8)
BY: Annie Sewell-Jennings (auralissa@aol.com)

DISCLAIMER IN PART ONE

*****

Dust flew out from under the wheels of the rusted Ford pickup 
truck as it ground over the dried out gravel of the dirt road 
heading into Dora. Gritting her teeth, Scully shifted the old 
truck into fifth gear, cranking the engine and forcing it to make 
it to Dora before running out of gas and stranding her on the 
side of the road.
	
She was a week past her due date and not surprised. How could she 
blame any child for not wanting to enter into a world like this? 
But her child's reluctance was only increasing Scully's misery, 
and she was running low on food and water, not to mention 
gasoline for the Ford. An old cassette tape was left in the radio 
of the truck, and Scully pressed play, listening to Billie 
Holiday sing in her strong, proud jazz voice. "God bless the 
child that's got his own..."
	
"Amen," Scully muttered from behind her dark sunglasses, a white 
cowboy hat covering her head and keeping the sun from shining 
down on her skin. The air conditioning on the truck was blissful 
as it blew on her body, and Scully thought that she had honestly 
died and gone to heaven. Sweat fell from her body in droplets of 
moisture, spilling on the torn interior.
	
The country road was scattered and torn with tumbleweed, and 
Scully crunched over it with her tires. The jazz music changed at 
the end of the cassette to old rock and roll by Dylan, and Scully 
thought that appropriate for a post-apocalyptic America.
	
Dora had once been a quiet town, a farming village that had been 
populated by quiet folk and grain stores, a couple of bookstores 
and one decrepit drive-in movie theatre for the kids. Christ, 
there was even a soda shop, which had made Scully laughed. 
Everything was a relic for a world whose time has passed, and a 
little farmer's town like Dora, Oklahoma, was a relic as well.
	
In the final days of Dora, the people had gone inside to die. 
There were no bodies on the streets, no plague-riddled children 
to weep for on the side of the road. She had discovered this when 
first passing through Dora, when she had decided not to continue 
on to California with the other survivors. She had been eight 
months pregnant and tired of travelling, tired of running and 
hiding, and had found a place to raise her daughter in relative 
safety. So she had looted what she could, and found that the 
citizens of Dora had all swallowed their way into death, and had 
died by their own hands.
	
Perhaps the radio had foretold the coming plague of bees. Perhaps 
they had heard it from survivors passing through before she had. 
It didn't matter - they had known death awaited them and decided 
to control how they went. If not for the child inside of her, 
Scully would have done the same thing.
	
And there were days when she considered it anyway.
	
With a slam, she shut the door to the Ford and stepped out, the 
hot wind embracing her and scampering under her skin, and she 
flinched, hating how the heat crept under the fabric of her 
maternity dress and crawled over and under her. The blessed air 
conditioning was as wonderful as it was miserable, in that it was 
just a temporary indulgence, one that never lasted.
	
The wind whispered around her, blowing against her thin silk 
dress, and Scully winced, glancing off into the distance of the 
forgotten town of Dora, and suddenly, horribly, she was 
transported by memory to the day that she left home. She 
remembered it all, wandering through the street carrying a gallon 
of pilfered milk that was beginning to warm and perspire in the 
brutal sunlight, wearing a pair of denim maternity shorts and a 
white button-down linen tank top that was also cut specifically 
for pregnant women. She had been tired, weary, and depressed, and 
when the bus had stopped for her a block away from her apartment, 
Scully had fetched a suitcase filled with clothing and climbed 
aboard with tears in her eyes and regrets in her heart.
	
It had not been the first opportunity for escape. Two other 
busses filled with survivors and refugees of Georgetown, many FBI 
agents and other government officials among them, had already 
asked her to go with them. She had hesitated because of Mulder. 
If she left town, if she left this place, then he would never 
know where to find her. He was life, love, everything. How could 
she leave? But she had accepted it a while past. The war had 
broken out. The world had ended.
	
Mulder was dead.
	
So she had left all chance of ever finding him behind. He would 
not return. Scully took her suitcase and abandoned the city, and 
now she was here, in Dora.
	
And now she was here alone.

*****
	
Slowly, softly, she drew the brush through her hair, meticulously 
combing through the luxurious vermilion curls that spiraled 
gently down her back like coiling snakes of crimson. Shorter 
threads of curling carmine hung in her slender face, shaped like 
a perfect oval, her sharp chin jutting out proudly as she admired 
her reflection in the mirror. A whisper of cardinal red was 
tucked absently underneath the thin straps of her blush-colored 
silk camisole top, tucked immaculately into the waistband of her 
khaki dungarees. She had abandoned her suede boots for a pair of 
red snakeskin ones, and they were much-loved and shockingly 
colored.
	
"You keep brushing your hair so fervently and it'll fall out," 
Scully teased as her daughter brushed, and her obstinate child 
stuck her tongue out in the mirror, a gesture meant for her 
meddling mother.
	
"I thought that all those ridiculous old wives' tales died with 
the rest of the world," she shot, and Scully shook her head, 
stretching her arms over her head as she sat on her daughter's 
bed.
	
"I am intent on carrying some of those sayings into the new 
world," she said.
	
Faint tendrils of red fell onto the floor, and Scully watched as 
they whispered across the carpet as the wind blew in through the 
curtains. "Your aim is superior," Scully commented, and the young 
woman arched a coppery eyebrow in the mirror, tilting her head 
with the pride that only a true Scully woman could possess.
	
"Is my aim the most important thing about me to you?" she asked, 
and Scully felt heartbroken by her daughter's pointed question. 
Raising her daughter as a warrior of sorts, raising her to bring 
the colonists to their knees and to take the world by storm had 
sacrificed her daughter's youth and mirth. And she knew that the 
beautiful young woman sometimes thought that Scully regarded her 
as nothing more than a soldier.
	
Slowly, Scully rose from the bed, moving up behind her tall and 
imperious daughter, brushing her unruly and ruthless mass of ruby 
hair away from her slender shoulders, baring the slightly 
freckled and coppery skin and kissing her daughter's cheek. "No," 
she murmured. "I'm fascinated and exhilarated of every part of 
you. Your creativity, your ingenuity, your laughter and your 
tears... Everything that you do is wonderful. You are important 
to me, as a whole, and I love you."
	
The reflection of her daughter's smile was enough to bring the 
burning sun down.

*****

The Jaguar screamed across the highway, its bright green body 
cutting down the road and spitting out a stream of dust in its 
wake as it crossed the border into Oklahoma. Rock music blared 
out of its CD player as the slender body of the vehicle roared 
down the highway, the top down and music filling the spacious 
emptiness of the desert's expanse.
	
"It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine..."
	
Wendy's voice screamed out an expression of unadulterated joy and 
bliss as she lifted her hands into the wind, and Mulder turned 
his head away from the road briefly to look at his companion, her 
mouth turned up into a smile and her eyes blankly happy.
	
He was worried about Wendy.
	
Joy. Bliss. Rapture. These were things that he should not have to 
be concerned with, elements that shouldn't worry a man in the 
least. Yet her happiness had come with an insanity that concerned 
him, a blank sort of ecstasy that bubbled over like dull 
champagne. She was reckless, thoughtless, wanting to drive with 
the top down on the Jaguar that she had picked out in Vegas, 
forgetful of the sunlight and the deadly potential of riding in a 
convertible on these treacherous roadways. Wendy had turned from 
responsible into frivolous, reverting from her cool, nurturing 
maternity into a state of perpetual childhood. A harsh word could 
send her into tears, like a spoiled little girl who wanted 
dessert before dinner.
	
Mulder was worried that Wendy was going insane, and the Valium 
she was taking wasn't helping a damn bit.
	
Slowly, teasingly, the brunette beside him opened up the glove 
compartment, revealing a flask of scotch. "Want some?" she 
offered, and Mulder shook his head, pushing his sunglasses 
further up on his nose.
	
"No, thank you," he said quietly and politely, as not to upset 
her. "And maybe you should think twice about having some too. You 
just took a pill a half an hour ago, and alcohol dehydrates 
easily."
	
Wendy pouted, pursing her mouth and furrowing her eyebrows 
together in the childlike fashion that she had so suddenly 
developed. "No fun," she said, and Mulder sighed, rolling his 
eyes and allowing her the liquor. It wouldn't hurt her; they had 
water in the back. Decadently, Wendy tipped back the flask and 
shrieked as the fiery alcohol burned its way down her throat. "I 
love this car!"
	
Gritting his teeth, Mulder took a sip from his bottle of icy 
Evian water, and then switched the song from jubilant R.E.M. to a 
quieter Neil Young, something that seemed to upset Wendy. "I 
liked that!" she protested, crossing her arms over her chest and 
looking at him with eyes that were wide with hurt. "I saw them in 
concert when I was a baby."
	
Shortly, Mulder laughed. "You weren't a baby, Wendy," he said. 
She seemed to be losing track of time, forgetting days and months 
in the spill of constantly moving but never changing scenery. 
"Will you look at the map for me and tell me where we are? We 
need to loot a gas station the next chance we get."
	
Giving Wendy the job of navigator for their journey had been a 
smart idea, as she needed the distraction from herself and from 
the shocking revelations that they had found in Las Vegas along 
with the other survivors. Thoughtfully, she unfolded the map and 
quizzically looked at it, frowning and tracing the lines of 
highways and intersections as the paper flapped in the wind.
	
Delia, Dorothy, Day... He couldn't stop thinking of names. They 
spilled forth from his mind as he endlessly repeated the 
alphabet, sometimes copying old names, sometimes remembering new 
ones. It was important to think of names, to conjure up titles 
and addresses, no matter how insignificant this task might be. 
Every day he saw Wendy's sanity waning, disappearing as the 
Jaguar jolted across America, and in her fading coherence, he saw 
the possibility of losing his own mind.
	
And he was beginning to accept the possibility that Scully might 
be insane as well.
	
"We're nearing Tulsa," she said, and Mulder nodded, pleased. They 
could stop at a gas station, pick up some more gasoline for the 
Jag, and then perhaps spend a night there before proceeding 
onward tomorrow to a place that he didn't understand. All that he 
knew was that he felt like he was heading in the right direction, 
and every morning, he felt more certain of that fact. Oklahoma 
was an open prospect for him.
	
The Jaguar sped across the road, and he had to admit that the car 
Wendy had selected was delicious to drive. The wind blew through 
his hair, and through the tinted lenses of his sunglasses, he saw 
nothing but open road ahead of him. They avoided the main 
highways where there would probably be disabled vehicles and 
stuck to the more winding roads, and this thought had so far 
brought them good fortune. It was as though their map had been 
drawn out by some higher entity, and if God hadn't died years 
ago, then maybe He'd had something to do with their good luck.
	
Mulder downshifted the Jaguar into fourth briefly as they slowed 
to pass an overturned Honda, and then he sped up afterwards, 
choking back a grin as he shifted the car back into fifth gear 
and enjoyed the contented purr of the superior engine beneath 
him. Oh, if only Scully could see him now. She would laugh it 
off, claiming that he was letting his dick navigate the journey 
in her classy voice, only she would never use a word as blunt as 
"dick". No, no... That wasn't Scully at all. The woman that he 
knew would smile demurely for a mile and then demand that he pull 
over so that *she* could drive.
	
Scully had always loved to drive.
	
The Jaguar eventually slowed as they passed a small Texaco 
station outside of Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Mulder pulled the green 
car up to the mini-mart in front. "Can I come in with you?" Wendy 
asked, swinging her legs impatiently in the car. "I'm hungry."
	
"Sure," Mulder replied, trying not to be irritable or unkind to 
her in her delicate state of mind. Ever the polite gentleman, he 
opened up the car door for her, and Wendy exited the car, her 
dark hair a troubled storm of brown behind her in the dusty wind.
	
The mini-mart had not been looted, and Mulder jammed an elbow 
through the door, protected by the worn leather coat that he'd 
found in Vegas. The glass shattered underneath his arm, and he 
entered the gas station slowly, apprehensively. Something felt 
off here, eerily so, and Mulder didn't like the heavy atmosphere 
inside of the station, made erratic by Wendy's jittery mind. 
"Stay close to me," Mulder warned, but Wendy had already moved 
toward the candy aisle and left him alone. He pulled out the gun 
from his pocket, and felt the weight of the pistol in his palm as 
a reassurance.
	
The gasoline was near the back of the store, along with motor oil 
that he thought he might end up needing, and Mulder carefully 
picked up nine gallons of gas and three quarts of oil, barely 
able to balance all of it in his arms. "Wendy," he called, and 
Wendy walked to him, tipping her head back to drink a Coke. 
"Wendy, I need your help."
	
"Okay," she said, taking half of the supplies in her own thin 
arms, and then giggling when she dropped her marshmallows on the 
floor. "Oops."
	
Suddenly, another noise sounded from the back of the store, and 
Mulder tilted his head to the side, ears perking as he tried to 
get a mental reading on the other inhabitant. The shadows 
revealed nothing physical as he walked toward the door, and Wendy 
followed behind him, mindlessly laughing to herself.
	
"Ssh," Mulder whispered, trying to pick up something by means of 
his own mind. "Ssh..."
	
//ssh mulder ssh, but your wendy is a wasteland and the world is 
as well this is our world now and not your own and your scully oh 
yes your scully will die and so will the pieces you left behind 
so ssh mulder and surrender to us now//
	
"Oh, Christ..."
	
Wendy's laughter turned to screams as the alien burst forth from 
the back area of the store, its black and oily skin snarling and 
screeching as it came toward Mulder, fingernails turned to talons 
and its body fresh from birth. "DOWN!" Mulder yelled, Wendy fell 
to the floor, rocking back and forth and covering her head as the 
alien ran for them both. The alien screamed at him, and Mulder 
cocked the safety on his gun, eyes widening as the alien 
approached him, and then the creature ceased.
	
//I know you can hear me,// Mulder thought, his eyes glaring 
coldly at the creature. //Let us go.//
	
//let you go how can I let you go you are inferior you are 
nothing and your wendy is a madwoman she has lost her mind fox 
mulder what will you do with her in a world where you are no 
longer the hunter as you used to be//
	
//You claim to know everything. You know *nothing* about this 
world!//
	
The creature seemed to laugh. //we know enough to know that this 
world is worthless//
	
At this, Mulder smiled, and his smile was confidant, cool, and 
self-possessed. "No," he said. "It isn't."
	
And with that, he fired the gun four times, straight through the 
alien's screaming and disgusting features, as black blood 
splashed over his clothing and over Wendy Wilson's screaming and 
huddled body. The alien screamed as it died, and Mulder stood 
over it, disgusted by its existence and greatly disturbed by its 
thoughts. Scully and the pieces that he had left behind... He 
didn't understand. He didn't understand at all, but he knew this: 
he would find her. He would get to her no matter what.
	
The wrenching sobs that Wendy emitted were still loud and shrill, 
and Mulder picked her up, grabbing a cardboard box filled with 
Jolly Ranchers and dumping the hard candies onto the floor, 
piling the box up with gasoline and oil. "Come on!" he yelled, 
and the woman just remained hunched over on the floor, crying 
madly and rocking back and forth. The memories that she emitted 
were mad flashes of daughters dying and husbands screaming, of 
cities crumbling and oil flooding the streets...
	
Roughly, Mulder picked her up by her arm and dragged her out the 
door and into the Jaguar, as Wendy screamed relentlessly.

*****

The cicadas were singing, and Mulder hated their constant droning 
falsetto wails. They were the accompanying violins of madness, 
screeching and railing on to no end as Wendy had only recently 
ceased doing. A valium and half of the scotch had calmed her 
jangled nerves, and she lay on top of her sleeping bag, her eyes 
heavy with alcohol, but startlingly, vividly clear. She was sane, 
if only briefly, and the scotch had brought out some semblance of 
consciousness inside of her.
	
Dolores, Darlene...
	
"Tell me about your partner."
	
Dana.
	
But no, she had never been Dana. She had always been Scully to 
him, a beautiful portrait of strength encased in creamy skin and 
topped by vivid red hair that she always tried to mute and tame 
but still flamed brilliantly. She could never mute herself, could 
never silence herself, not when she was such a vividly colored 
woman in the first place. She was perfection poured into the 
shape of a woman, and her quick and rapid mind could come up with 
a thousand different ways to ensnare him in her fingertips.
	
Softly, Mulder looked at the mild fire that he had started, the 
flames climbing absently toward the sky, ascending to the stars 
as Scully had once unwillingly done years ago and as he had done 
eight months ago. "One time Scully and I were on a stakeout 
together," he murmured softly. "I was staking out something that 
I thought was inhuman, and it wasn't exactly a routine stakeout, 
nor was it exactly authorized. But I broke the rules all the 
time, and Scully thought that I was crazy back then. But she came 
to sit with me, and told me something that I never forgot. I 
think that this was when I started to fall in love with her - 
'Mulder, I wouldn't put myself on the line for anybody but you.'"
	
Wendy smiled, her mouth curling into a weary sigh. "What did you 
say back?"
	
His heart hurt at the memory of his own smart-ass, defensive 
remark, terrified that someone would start to care about him and 
afraid that she would suspect how deeply her soft confession had 
stirred him. "I told her that if there was an iced tea in her 
bag, it could be love," Mulder muttered. "And she said, 'Must be 
fate, Mulder. Root beer.'" It was all fate, just a bad twist of 
fate, that she had poured her heart out in a car while staking 
out Eugene Tooms, or that she had even joined him in the first 
place. And this world, this world that he lived in, with cicadas 
and desperation, was just another case of him receiving the wrong 
fate.
	
Sighing, Wendy rolled over in her sleeping back, her eyes 
searching the stars and her hands absently twirling two threads 
of brown together around her fingertips. "We're all doomed, 
Mulder," she murmured. "I don't think that there's much of a 

chance left for any of us. I saw that creature in the gas 
station, and we can't..." She softly sighed. "It's all over for 
us."
	
Worried, Mulder walked over to the slender woman and put his hand 
on her shoulder, frowning and looking into her eyes. "Don't say 
that," he pleaded. "It was one gas station out of ten that we've 
visited. One renegade alien. Nothing to be worried about; we'll 
make it to..."
	
Her bitter laugh interrupted him. "To where, Mulder? To Scully? 
You're as mad as I am if you think she's alive..." Her voice 
whispered. "We're all dead..." When he tried to speak again, 
tried to protest, she shook her head. "Go away, Mulder. Get some 
sleep... There's a whole world out there." Her smile was soft. 
"You'll find her, Mulder."
	
But as he lay his head on his pillow that night, he just didn't 
know.

*****

The world was moving, slowly, not violently, spinning around 
underneath his feet and tossing him to and fro as he battled for 
a steady place to stand. The sands shook underneath him as though 
he was standing in an hourglass, ready to be poured through the 
funnel of time, and he groaned as he was pitched back and forth.
	
Slowly, the red-haired girl lowered her eyes, wrapping her 
slender arms around her fine, muscled body as her red hair blew 
in a tempest of deep ruby in the wind. "We're not dead," she 
whispered. "We can't be. I haven't..."
	
And then she was gone.

*****

With a gasp, Mulder awoke, only to feel the first heat of dawn on 
his face and the stars disappearing into the sky like sand being 
poured into ink. "Dora," he whispered. "Dora. That's the name." 
But it wasn't the name of a face, it was the name of a *place*. 
The name of his destination.
	
Scully.
	
Desperately, Mulder shook himself from the constraints of his 
sleeping bag, padding across the sands in his bare feet to where 
Wendy slumbered. "Wendy!" he called, shaking her thin, cool 
shoulder excited...
	
Cool.
	
Tightly, Mulder's eyes closed, knowing what he would see before 
he turned her body over. Nothing but a corpse, with eyelashes 
closed tightly over soft, haunted and empty orbs of green, a 
mouth cooling with the absence of breath, and hair the color of 
burning chestnuts falling in her eyes softly. "Oh, Wendy," Mulder 
whispered, turning her so that he could see her face, and he held 
the woman's body close to his, smelling the alcohol on her 
clothing, and knowing that it had been valium to kill her.
	
This was the world that he lived in. A world not worth living for 
so many, a world where one threat morphed into another in the 
blink of an eye, where men and women were driven mad by confusion 
and sorrow and turned into shells of life. The mother and wife 
that he had met in Los Angeles had fallen apart, unraveled by the 
brutality of the world, and Wendy Wilson had been unable to take 
the harsh realm that she had been pitted against.
	
And as he held her body, smelling the scotch in her hair and the 
smell of cacti in her skin, Mulder wondered if there was anywhere 
to go but here.

*****

(end part five)

*****

Author's Note: The music quoted in the story is from R.E.M.'s 
wonderful rock song, "It's The End of the World As We Know It 
(And I Feel Fine)", and can be found on both their _Document_ and 
_Eponymous_ CDs.

*****

GLASS LANDSCAPE (6/8)
BY: Annie Sewell-Jennings (Auralissa@aol.com)

*****
	
He buried her body underneath the sands of the Oklahoma desert, 
and placed no marker for her body. There was no reason for her 
body to be marked, no reason for an epitaph or a reminder of 
where she had died, as the whole world was a cemetery anyway and 
nobody had a particular burial plot. But Mulder knew where she 
rested, layered underneath tons of sand and crystal, the body of 
Wendy Wilson. Her soul had already gone, perhaps to rejoin her 
daughter and her husband, perhaps regaining sanity after candy 
and scotch had swallowed her whole. She was another victim of 
this world, a victim of her own self-destruction, and Mulder 
ached with the knowledge that suicide wasn't such a reprehensible 
act anymore.
	
Suicide had once been considered an act of anger, an act of 
selfishness, and a cruel way to take one's self out of the world. 
Now Mulder understood that anger, that rage at a world that could 
never give anyone a future or hope. He understood the 
selfishness, in that there was no other way to have control over 
one's fate than to control one's death. And as for cruelty... 
There were harsher ways to die.
	
Yet Wendy had survived, one of the cursed and blessed abductees, 
holding blurred memories of torture and the key to survival, 
forced to live while those she knew and loved died around her. 
She had lived though, immune to the virus, and yet she had still 
died in the end. The world was a horrible place, a place of 
danger and of fear, and the death of it all was enough to drive 
her to drown her life in valium and scotch so that it would all 
end. She may have been blessed with immunity, but the blessing 
was a curse.
	
Solemnly, Mulder stood over her grave, the scorching wind of the 
daylight tugging fervently at his untucked denim shirt and 
mussing his hair into a disarrayed fray of brown spikes. Softly, 
somberly, his hands folded over his belt, and he wondered if 
there was a prayer or a kaddish that could be said for her. He 
wished briefly for religion, for the knowledge to give her God's 
blessing, and then his heart ached with the understanding that 
Wendy would not be the only victim of this world to die without 
ceremony or forgiveness from her God. Scully would have known 
what to say, but...
	
But Scully might be dead.
	
Ever since the ship had crashed off of the shores of California, 
washing him to the beach and the deserted boardwalk, Mulder had 
possessed the certainty of Scully's being alive and thus the 
determination to find her. Learning that the abductees were 
immune had only fueled his desperate search to find her, crossing 
the states to Oklahoma in the hopes that she would be here. But 
he had learned something important from Wendy Wilson, and that 
lesson was that immunity to an alien virus would never protect 
everyone from the harsh realities of the world around them.
	
With a sigh, Mulder sat down on the sands beside where Wendy 
Wilson lay, and thought of Scully. The slender, suggestive arch 
of her copper eyebrow, the perfect slope of her sharp Roman nose, 
and the knowing tilt of her proud chin... She seemed so strong, 
so stalwart, with her stoic scientific infallibility and her 
courage. How had she taken this? How had she accepted his 
abduction and then later colonization, when she had never even 
believed in aliens in the first place? The confusion and the 
chaos of the world around her could have shattered her stability 
and unending confidence.
	
And then to see everyone she knew and loved dying around her... 
Skinner was dead, as was her mother, and her brothers and their 
families. Scully would survive the plague, her abduction 
prolonging her life, but how would she take the destruction of 
the world? A vision of her standing at her window, the bees 
clouding the city and blackening the skies, ran through his head, 
her hair a torrent of copper and red behind her as despairing 
tears rolled down her face, and then sobbing as she picked up the 
knife and slit...
	
Miserably, Mulder fell to the sand, his hands running through his 
hair as he felt tears spring to his eyes. Scully couldn't be 
dead; she was all that he had to live for. The empathy and 
telepathy that his alien captors had unleashed inside of him made 
existence miserable, migraines sometimes paralyzing him aboard 
and whispered thoughts and memories of sorrow and death always 
churning whenever people were present. The curse of such honed 
telepathy was the constant barrage of emotion, of sorrow and of 
grief, and there was only a murmur of joy left in the world 
today.
	
What was the use of living in this world? He would never live 
alone, always accompanied by the constant cacophony of fears and 
demons, of tumultuous anguish and memories of the past, and he 
knew that he would eventually lose his mind as poor Wendy had. 
Perhaps killing himself now was better than later, while he still 
had dignity and while he still knew who and what he was.
	
A memory came to him in his grief, and it was a beautiful one, 
one of his own, for no other human beings lived in this vast 
desert and he recognized it immediately. It was a memory set in 
the rain, in Oregon from nearly eight years ago, laughing with 
Scully as water poured from the sky and drowned the earth with 
fresh rain. Her young, proudly innocent face was lifted back in 
laughter, eyes bright and merry and water sluicing down her 
beautiful face, resting on the plush silk of a mouth that he had 
wanted to taste. He had wanted to drink her then, wanted to 
swallow her whole, because she was everything in the world that 
he suddenly wanted.
	
And then the memory faded, and Mulder was left in the dry, 
cracked desert, the sun burning through his shirt and scorching 
his skin, and the rain-soaked Scully was probably dead.
	
Sorrowfully, Mulder looked down at Wendy Wilson's grave, and 
kissed his fingertips softly, pressing his skin to the sand in a 
final worship of who she had been. "Goodbye, Wendy," he murmured, 
and then he stood up, moving to the Jaguar. 

Pensively, he sat on the green hood, remembering how serious 
Wendy had been upon its selection, before she had erupted into 
laughter. "My husband always wanted a car like this," she had 
said, a wicked smile curving the corner of her mouth. "He said 
that Jaguars were wonderful little vehicles, and that one day, he 
was going to own one. A green one, convertible, with a manual 
transmission, because you can only use manual with such a great 
car." She patted the hood. "Now I'm going to own one for him."

And now she was dead.

Quietly, Mulder looked out into the endless sky, and watched the 
world that had fallen so darkly. The sun burned his skin, and he 
cared not, and eventually he fell into a turbulent sleep.

*****

Carved into the old deserts, there had been canyons and caverns, 
some glistening with untold treasures such as gold or diamonds, 
and others nothing more than a beautiful abyss sculpted from 
ginger-colored clay and sand. These were the deserts in 
California and Nevada, the beautiful deserts that had been 
created by time rather than by man, and in Oklahoma, the deserts 
were nothing more than endless landscapes of sand and dust.
	
The new desert's only treasure, a redhead wearing a cowboy hat 
and a pair of bright red snakeskin boots, sat somewhat tranquilly 
amidst the sands. "I'm sorry about Wendy," she said, and Mulder 
sat across from her, his lanky legs crossed in the same fashion 
as hers. She had pulled her pack of cigarettes from her back 
pocket and was smoking already.
	
"It's not your fault," he said, and the girl smiled sadly, her 
full mouth twisting softly into a half-smile. 

She turned her head to the side, her eyes looking down at the 
sands, fingers absently drawing designs in the sands which were 
erased by the constant winds. "The same thing won't happen to me. 
I know that you wonder about it, wonder if I won't be able to 
survive in this world either, but I don't have any memories of 
the Old World. I just know this desert, and I know it well."
	
A circle of deep vermilion twisted and writhed in the sand, and 
the girl reached her hands into the sand, gently picking up the 
snake and allowing it to curl seductively around her fragile-
looking wrists. Tilting her head, she watched as it writhed 
across her copper skin, and then she spoke, her voice soft and 
hushed. "I know how difficult it is for you," she murmured. 
"Deciding whether or not the journey is worth it... It's a 
difficult task for one man to do alone."
	
The designs that she painted with her fingers were nothing more 
than lines, branches and curving veins, always fading into the 
wind and so she drew and redrew them. Gravely, Mulder watched the 
patterns, his photographic mind capturing them. "And you're here 
to help me decide?" he asked, and the girl smiled wryly, the 
corner of her mouth tugging upward in a fashion that reminded him 
of Scully's cynical grin.
	
"You're overestimating me now," she said, bitterness tinting her 
words. "Some decisions are personal; you can choose whether or 
not you want to continue." Her voice softened slightly, nothing 
more than a whisper caught on sandpaper. "But I wish you would." 

Lightly, her fingers continued to whisper through the sand, the 
snake coiling around her arm like a painted tattoo. She drew the 
same pattern, over and over again, and Mulder eventually looked 
up to the young woman's face. Her mouth was slightly parted, ripe 
and rosy, and her slightly awkward nose was endearing in her 
long, slender face. Generous eyelashes hid her wonderful hazel 
eyes from his view, and the shade of her white cowboy hat kept 
her features veiled in shadow.

"It's easier for you," he murmured softly. "I remember the Old 
World. I remember everything that this place once was. Farmlands 
used to be here and now they're all dead, and I can't help but 
wonder if she is dead as well."

Softly, sweetly, the girl's hand landed on his shoulder, the 
snake coiling through her fingers. But the snake didn't scare 
Mulder; she had tamed it. She knew it. It loved her. "She will 
not look for you," she said, her mouth a little bow of sadness. 
"She gave up hope when the world fell that you would ever return 
or that you would ever find her. I don't blame her for that. But 
she remembers you, the adventures that you had, and she still 
longs for the love that you gave her. She's alone now, you see, 
and dreadfully desperate for a voice other than her own."

His mouth trembled. "Then she's alive?"

The girl's perfectly straight teeth gleamed in the moonlight. 
"Yes," she confirmed. "She lives, and breathes, and waits. She 
doesn't sleep at night because she fears her dreams, and she 
tries to erase her past but is unsuccessful. No one can escape 
his or her past, you see. History is essential."

Wondrously, Mulder shook his head. "How do you know this?"

Lovingly, she tipped his nose with her fingertip. "She tells me 
when I'm sleeping," she said, "and when I wake, I'll forget. But 
now, I dream, and you see me here when you sleep."

"When I wake, will I remember this?"
	
The wind blew, and her designs and patterns all whispered away. 
The hand with the snake curled, and the snake slithered off into 
the sands again, peaceful and content after temporarily being a 
piece of her. "Maybe," she murmured, not really certain. 
"Sometimes she does, and sometimes you will. I don't know."

She stood then, abandoning her drawings and her sketches in the 
sand, and Mulder stood with her, tucking an errant thread of 
crimson behind her ear. "I'll find her," he promised, and she 
smiled, kissing his cheek before turning her back and walking 
into the desert. She stopped briefly, turning around and flashing 
him a smile, her hair blowing around her face in a great 
maelstrom of carmine and copper, twisting and turning over her 
shoulder like a mass of beautiful snakes.

"I'll wait."

*****

When she had been a girl, while her father was away at sea, her 
mother had gardened. They had a small plot in the backyard of 
their utilitarian Navy home on the base, and her mother did her 
best to make it blossom. Every spring that her father spent at 
sea, her mother spent in the garden, her dark hair swept back and 
kept underneath a bandanna, sleeves rolled up and gloves coated 
in black soil, and a smile on her face. Melissa would help, 
planting delicate flora such as lilacs or pink roses, and Dana 
would plant colorful tiger lilies and bright, vivid irises. Her 
flowers always turned out beautifully under her calm, scientific 
attention to detail, and her mother always praised their height 
and bloom.
	
Yet her mother's garden was the only garden that Scully ever 
knew, for she had never had time for gardening in Washington and 
no flowers would blossom in the desert.
	
Gardening had once staved off boredom for her, and she had time 
in abundance. Every nook and cranny of her small stolen house had 
been thoroughly inspected, and Scully had discovered something 
that must have been a garden out back near the water pump upon 
first moving in. Now she crouched by the sands, her hand cradling 
her stomach and her back aching from the weight of her pregnant 
stomach. A crate of filled water bottles rested beside her, and 
Scully had paused here to look at the sands longingly. The earth 
wouldn't sprout, and no flowers would bloom there.
	
It had been months since she'd had fresh food and her odd 
pregnant cravings always seemed to call for items that she 
couldn't have. Watermelon dripping juice and cold as ice... 
Tomatoes ripe and red... Asparagus as slender as pencils and 
crisply sweet like candy... These fresh fruits and vegetables 
danced in her dreams, and she woke up tasting them on her tongue 
and aching to have something different than canned food and 
instant meals. Ramen noodles and Rice-A-Roni didn't make for very 
appetizing meals. She knew, however, that dried foods would 
probably be the cuisine of the world for the rest of existence.
	
And that was just a little sad.
	
The sun was beginning to scorch her, no matter that she had 
become nearly immune to the desert sun's rays. Sighing, Scully 
wiped sweat from her brow and ran a hand absently through her 
short hair, feeling tendrils of perspiration clinging to her 
makeshift bangs. She groaned as she stood up, and carried the 
heavy crate of bottled water on one hip. Scully was thirsty, her 
throat parched, and she walked into the small house, wiping sweat 
from her brow.
	
She missed wine. The house only had one single bottle of white 
wine, and it sat aging gracefully in the cellar, waiting for the 
day when Scully was able to drink again without the possibility 
of damaging the baby. She ached for the day when she could uncork 
the bottle, pouring the sparkling liquid into the glass and 
drowning her sorrows of the world that she had once belonged to.
	
Dana Scully was nothing more than a shadow now, a whisper of 
words that had made sense in one world and became meaningless in 
this one. She would always carry the memories of the Old World 
inside of her, always remembering nights spent in cheap motels 
that had been more blissful than she had ever thought, and days 
spent fighting enemies that defied science and reason. She had 
wasted so much of her life, not in their battle, but in her lack 
of appreciation for it. If she had only known how it all would 
have turned out, every word would have been cherished like a 
keepsake.
	
And now she could only remember and fight weeping.
	
The water cascaded down her parched throat in a river of cool 
liquid, and Scully slowed herself down as she drank, knowing that 
if she drank too much she would get nauseous and throw up the 
meager meal that she'd eaten that day. Canned goods were 
beginning to run scarce in Dora; she needed to ration better, but 
she had to keep her strength up for the baby's sake. The 
miserable heat crawled over her skin, and Scully felt both 
restless and weary all at the same time. Irritated with the fact 
that she would find no reprieve from the heat indoors, she sighed 
and resigned herself to the front porch.
	
Dust rolled across the desert as she settled herself on the front 
steps, and she watched as the sun began to descend beneath the 
sand. She sighed and pushed her hair back with one hand while 
tilting the water bottle to her lips with the other, swallowing 
cold gulps and trying once again to pace herself. God, of all the 
things that she had missed today, she thought she might miss air 
conditioning the most. The blissful feeling of walking in from a 
hot summer's day into a cool environment... All gone now.
	
A bitter wince touched her face, and she remembered that there 
was someone she missed more than any other luxury. Mulder. He was 
her necessity; he was a piece of her that had been amputated and 
now the gaping wound always ached with phantom pains. She yearned 
for his conversation and his arguments, for his stubborn faith 
and his constant intellect. Mulder was a memory as well, and a 
memory that would always and forever haunt her.
	
Scully was just a whisper after all.
	
Despair crept under her skin as she watched the sun fall, 
withering underneath the heat. Nothing was ever the same. Nothing 
ever would be. She should accept it, and yet she found herself 
completely incapable of letting everything go. Of letting the 
past go, of letting the world that she had loved and belonged to 
go, and now she just sat here on the front steps and felt like 
crying.
	
Despondently, Scully stood up and prepared to turn back around to 
go back into the house, abandoning the world that didn't accept 
her. Then suddenly, a motor sounded in the distance, the roar of 
an engine growing louder as it approached. Startled, she turned 
around, her shorter hair flying in her face in a starburst of 
red. Clouds of dust rose from the horizon, speeding toward her 
small house in a fury of sand and storm. Carefully, she ran her 
hand across her hip, checking for the handle of her weapon tucked 
safely and securely into the waistband of her panties. She wasn't 
going to risk anymore visitors, not when her last visitor's kiss 
was still buried in her mouth.
	
Coldly, she watched as the clouds grew larger, and then the car 
sped toward the house, concealed by the dust and sand that it had 
kicked up in its wake while traveling the abandoned dirt road. 
Puzzled, she tilted her head to the side, always prepared to draw 
the gun and shoot whoever it was, and leaned cautiously against 
the railing, giving the appearance of casual detachment.
	
Then the car slowed, the dust still clouding over it, before it 
came to a noisy halt in front of the house. Narrowing her eyes, 
she placed a hand over her brow to shield her vision from the 
sunlight. The tension felt electric, and Scully winced as she 
looked toward the car, hearing the door slam and...
	
Oh, God.
	
Mulder.
	
The dust and sand settled around him in a shower of clay and 
dried dirt, and Mulder felt weak in the knees at the sight of 
her. He registered nothing, only the slender line of her back, 
her face startled under a cropped mass of short vermilion shards 
of hair. Eyes wide as seafoam, beautifully clear and yet 
despairingly haunted, and skin turned an unusually golden sheen 
from the sunlight. "Oh, God," he whispered, stumbling slightly as 
he walked away from the Jaguar, and then she turned around to see 
him...
	
Holy shit.

Her body was slender from the back, he wouldn't have known with 
her body position, but when she turned to the side and then 
around to the front, the large rise of her stomach stunned him 
and left him choking for breath. The ripened roundness of her 
body, the curves of her swollen breasts and stomach, and the 
unnaturally beautiful sheen of her skin were not unusual at all ^" 
not when she was pregnant.
	
He staggered to see her, the thin sea-colored dress billowing 
around her beautiful body, small and precise hands cupping her 
swollen belly protectively, one hand on her hip. She was reaching 
for her gun, and Mulder knew then and there that no matter what 
had happened, no matter who she was or what had happened to her, 
she was always her.
	
She was Scully.
	
Scully's hand slowly fell from her hip as she saw him, his body 
sunburned and hair a disarray of ruffled brown, dust and dirt 
clinging to him as he walked away from what could only be a 
gorgeous green Jaguar. It couldn't be him, no, not when he had 
*died*, and yet there was no other possibility. She knew his body 
better than she knew her own, knew the sprawling architecture of 
his lanky limbs and body, and she knew the graceful elegance of 
that face. It was Mulder, only Mulder, somehow.
	
The man that she had assumed was dead swayed slightly when he 
drank in her rounded body, and she felt herself on the verge of 
tears as he ran up to her, her hands shaking and her heart 
swiftly beating as he stood before her.
	
They both drank each other in hungrily, as though they were 
starved, and they were. They were starved for familiarity, for 
comfort and solace, and for the simplicity of each other. Neither 
spoke, neither moved, they just faced each other. She consumed 
the uniquely beautiful sculpture of his face, the tender 
perfection of his rich and generous mouth, and the eyes that 
glowed like fire behind amber glass. Mulder took in the slender 
angles of her face, only slightly rounded by her impending 
motherhood, her slim arms and her enormously pregnant belly. 
Wonder sparked behind his telltale eyes as he looked at her, and 
she finally smiled, taking his hand tenuously, her heated fingers 
cupping his tapering ones, and placed his palm on her swollen 
stomach.
	
The act of touching his child through his lover's skin undid him, 
and seeing him unravel tore through her calm as well.
	
Mulder collapsed to his knees on the front porch, tightly wrapped 
his arms around her great waist and rested his cheek on her 
stomach, his body shaking with the tears that came from the joy 
of finding her and the exhaustion of the journey. The memories of 
the abandoned boardwalk, of the alien in the gas station, and 
most of all of tragic Wendy's suicide, filled his mind as he held 
her, sobbing for the relief of finding her alive. Alive and 
pregnant... It was all so much.
	
"Ssh," she whispered, her voice shaken by her own tears, 
trembling fingers moving through his short brown hair softly and 
gently, the other hand steadily stroking the exposed back of his 
apple-red neck. "Ssh, Mulder..." Her voice stumbled over his 
name, and she began to cry earnestly now, overwhelmed by the 
return of a lover that she thought was lost forever to her. 
"Ssh..."
	
And they wept together, underneath the darkening desert sky.

*****

(end part six)

*****

GLASS LANDSCAPE (7/8)
BY: Annie Sewell-Jennings (auralissa@aol.com)

*****

For the first time in the month that she had lived out here, 
there was sound in the desert.
	
Perhaps this sound was nothing more than the high-pitched singing 
of cicadas and crickets, their voices rising and falling with the 
wind, but it was still sound. It was the noise of nature, of life 
continuing on, and of possibility in the odd melange of music 
that the insects created. She could see fireflies flickering as 
she sat on the front porch with a glass of iced tea, and felt 
content for the first time since he had left.
	
After all, now he was here.
	
Quietly, she leaned in the doorway, watching him briefly while 
holding two bottles of ice water in her hand like they were 
flutes of champagne. His eyes were lifted up toward the moon that 
crowned the sky, a new moon, nothing but a sliver the shape of a 
child's tender fingernail. Brown threads of hair fell over his 
brow, and she looked at them, stroked softly in moonlight. God, 
she could hardly believe that it was him after all these months. 
She wanted to touch him, every inch of him, to know everything, 
and yet there had been a moment of awkwardness after their 
initial breakdown and embrace.
	
And she was worried about the baby.
	
Children were a forbidden subject between them. She had been hurt 
over her inability to conceive, and angry with him for hiding 
that knowledge from her because of her cancer, and he was 
terrified to hurt her again. They never discussed her infertility 
except for when he had reached for a condom during their first 
session of lovemaking and she had reminded him that it was 
unnecessary. A moment of discomfort and infinite sadness had 
passed between them, and then she had drowned her sorrows in 
feasting on his skin.
	
Yet now she was pregnant and overdue for birth, and he was going 
to be a father.
	
The plastic bottle slipped from her hand, slicked from moisture, 
and it tumbled to the porch. Startled, Mulder turned around and 
she smiled a little self-deprecatingly. "Sorry," she mumbled, and 
she winced, placing her hand on her back as she started to crouch 
down to get the bottle. Instantly, Mulder scrambled to his feet 
to get it for her, and she smiled briefly at the gentlemanly 
action. As he stood, his hand skimmed softly across her belly, 
moving through the silk as though it were water.
	
"How..." he whispered breathlessly, and she couldn't see his 
face, momentarily wondering if he was afraid or joyful. Yet when 
he stood at full height, and she looked up from her familiar 
angle beneath him, she saw nothing but exhilaration in his eyes. 
He was ecstatic, thrilled, and most of all she knew then and 
there that he loved her and the baby all at once.
	
Delicately, she touched his mouth with one fingertip, and was 
shocked at how callused her fingers had become. She almost feared 
that her roughened skin would catch and tear the finery of his 
delectable mouth, and yet the sensation of such luxury was 
wonderful to experience. "I don't know," she said in a hushed 
voice. "The doctors never knew either. But they also say that 
it's not the first time someone who was supposedly infertile has 
become pregnant, and that it won't be the last either. A woman 
carries thousands of ova."
	
Her burdened back pained her, and she winced, clutching at it 
slightly and rubbing the sore point. Keenly, Mulder's hands 
wrapped around her waist, and he pressed himself to her slightly, 
the heat of his body almost comparable to the unending heat of 
the dying day, and she sighed as his hands worked mildly on the 
small of her back. This was the reason that she had never been 
able to remedy the ruthless pains of pregnancy: Mulder was gone 
and so were his divine fingers.
	
While he massaged her back, his tapering fingers sending soothing 
ripples of relief throughout her body, she spoke, leaning her 
cheek on his shoulder and smelling the scent of sand and leather 
on his shirt. "After the initial surprise and the joy of being 
pregnant passed, I had genetic testing performed," she murmured, 
and he understood instantly. Their lives didn't allow for 
uncertainties or unusual occurrences, no matter how mundane they 
may be for anyone else.
	
Slowly, her eyes lifted to his, and she moved one of his hands 
from the small of her back, curving it around and guiding it to 
her ample belly. The warmth and tautness of her stomach was 
wonderful to feel, and as her eyes burned like blazing gasoline, 
she spoke. "I ended up having nothing to worry about," she said, 
utmost seriousness weighing heavily in her low, silken voice.
	
Mulder said nothing; he suddenly found that words had abandoned 
him. All that he could do was lower himself to his knees as he 
had done earlier, press the side of his face to her swollen 
stomach, and listen to the silence of his sleeping child resting 
snugly and securely beneath a layer of fabric and her golden 
skin. She said nothing, just loosely held his head at the nape of 
his neck, and stroked his hair with the other.
	
Suddenly, a strong, sturdy punch fell against his cheek, and 
Scully laughed at the same time that Mulder pulled away, startled 
and thrilled with the feeling of his child's energetic movement. 
"She's a fighter," Scully said, and Mulder looked up, eyes 
widening. She nodded her head at him slightly. "I decided to find 
out the gender beforehand. It made more sense to know and be able 
to prepare beforehand." That was Scully, always sensible. "She's 
going to be beautiful, Mulder."
	
Languidly, he brought himself to his feet, lavishing attention on 
her ripe belly as he pulled her mouth into his. Kissing her with 
her rounder body was new, everything was new, and yet it was all 
the same. She was still Scully, in spite of this desert life and 
in spite of her new condition. It gave him profound and boundless 
levels of hope that he may one day become the same man that he 
had once been as well. She could revitalize him with nothing more 
than a whisper of a kiss and the knowledge that she loved him.
	
Even though she had been cruelly abandoned by him.
	
The kiss broke gently, and he leaned into her, taking her into 
his arms and whispering into her ear. "I'm so sorry, Scully," he 
whispered, and she felt the first glimmering of fear, that he was 
apologizing and that he didn't want this for his life. "I'm sorry 
that I wasn't here."
	
The joy that he felt when he looked upon her pregnant body was 
only tempered by the sorrow that he had not been here to 
experience it with her. Pregnancy was not a walk in the park; it 
was a difficult process and an intense biological and mental 
change. She had not only had to deal with being a sudden mother, 
but she had also had to accept that the father was gone and that 
the world had ended around her. The knowledge that he had been 
somewhere else, that he had not been there to help her when the 
city fell or just when her back hurt brought enormous amounts of 
guilt down on his shoulders. It was his fault, all of it, and he 
took it all.
	
And not to be there to experience this with her... He would never 
feel the pride of an expectant father, never watch with amazement 
and awe as his lover's body changed and as his child's body grew. 
He wouldn't be able to shop for clothing with her, decorate a 
nursery, and go to Lamaze classes with her. Sonograms and 
shopping malls were memories and relics of a dead world, and he 
would never enjoy the experience of pregnancy in the modern world 
with her again.
	
Ashamed, Mulder turned his eyes away from her, looking at the 
rotting boards of the front porch and the illimitable leagues of 
sand rolling across the desert that had once been Oklahoma. "You 
must have been so angry with me," he mumbled, and she shook her 
head.
	
"I won't lie to you, Mulder," she said, her voice cool and calm. 
"Honesty was always direly important between us, and that hasn't 
changed or will ever change. There were times when I was 
absolutely furious that you weren't there." She then pulled away, 
placing her hands on his chest, and separating their bodies 
slightly so that he would understand the full weight of her 
words. "But I wasn't ever angry at you. I was angry with the 
elements of the world around me. I was angry at our government 
for selling us all out so brutally, because I thought that you 
would never be able to survive after colonization. I was angry at 
the FBI for refusing to continue the searches. I was angry at 
fate, at God, at the world for taking you away from me." Her 
voice lowered. "But never at you."
	
Sourly, Mulder laughed, turning away from her. As he paced the 
front porch, the boards creaking underneath his boots, he turned 
his face over his shoulder to look at her, challenging her to 
hate him. "Did Skinner tell you about the abduction, Scully?" he 
said, his voice bitter. "I remember it. I was fully aware of what 
was going on around me. I didn't struggle. I didn't fight. They 
never even touched me. I just walked through that energy field 
and felt something take me over, and all of a sudden, I forgot 
everything. My name, my life, everything except for that I had to 
get on that ship."
	
"You were mesmerized," she murmured, digesting all that he told 
her, and he nodded his head, pausing his constant motion to look 
at the fragile light of the slender new moon. There was very 
little light, actually, and only the citronella candles that 
Scully had lit to keep away flies or mosquitoes lent them with 
any illumination. However, Mulder remembered a night in the moist 
woodlands of Oregon when the light had been deep and bountiful, 
and an incredibly impossible shade of gorgeous azure. It was as 
though the moon had been placed in an aquarium, and the earth had 
been bathed in water. The instant that he had seen that light, 
felt the energy around his hand and then all around his body, he 
remembered nothing. Everything had been forgotten.
	
All in a moment of perfect light.
	
Slender fingers slipped over his shoulders, and he felt the 
weight of her full stomach and ripened, heavy breasts against his 
back. The curve of a straight, Roman nose pressed against the 
back of his collar, and he felt the heat of her breath against 
the nape of his neck. "You're not the only one who left, 
remember?" she whispered. "I left the city and you were out 
there, and in order for me to rid myself of the guilt..." Her 
voice softened to nothing more than a sigh. "I told myself that 
you were dead. Mentally, spiritually, I buried you and then I 
left, and moved out here where no one could ever possibly find 
me."
	
A strangled breath caught in his throat like a consumed 
butterfly, and he turned around, tucking her into him as best as 
he could. "Leaving Washington was the only thing you could have 
done," he whispered.
	
The backs of her knuckles softly brushed his cheekbone, and 
fingers ran over his mouth mildly. "And I don't blame you for 
something that you couldn't have possibly controlled," she 
replied.
	
The wind whistled low in the background, bringing with it the 
cool fingers of night, chilling the heated sands as well as their 
heated skins. The desert nights always surprised him, and she 
kissed the corner of his mouth before picking up his hand and 
taking him inside. "Come on," she murmured. "I'm tired, and we 
have a lot to talk about."
	
Delicate-looking but intensely strong and capable gold hands 
threaded through his reddened and peeling palms, and he looked at 
the new shade of her skin and wondered if this doleful remnant of 
a world gone by would ever be happy again. Perhaps happiness had 
died with the rest of the population, carrying it into heaven and 
thieving and hoarding it for the rest of all time. 

Perhaps they deserved it.

*****

Bright, dancing fire sparked to life on the wick of the candle, 
burning tall and slender and smelling of lemons and ocean. It 
twisted and turned for a moment, struggling to get its bearings, 
and then it stood still and proud, dignified and beautiful on the 
tip of the canary-colored candle.
	
Gently, Scully moved her hand away from the lit candle and 
dropped the burnt-out match in the trashcan. The pleasant aroma 
of citrus and smoke blended together as it wafted throughout the 
simple bedroom, and she inhaled it deeply. The smell and the 
light mixed with the two other candles that had been lit, and she 
looked around their makeshift sanctuary with a look of quiet 
satisfaction. The meager setting had been transformed into a calm 
serenity, all with fresh-smelling candlelight and Mulder's 
mahogany hair.
	
His lanky body was draped across the pristine white sheets of the 
bed, and his eyes were closed as he caught precious minutes of 
sleep. His bronzed skin was turned into brocaded copper by the 
rich light of the candles, and she wondered if he was as warm as 
he appeared. The sheet moved slightly against the curve of his 
strong, firm leg, and she watched as the cerise and copper light 
fell over his face, kissing his mouth and brushing flame over his 
perfectly flawed face.
	
She then realized that she was happy for the first time since the 
end of the world.
	
Twin slivers of fine silk fell from her browned shoulders as she 
slipped off her dress, revealing fine, delicate bones and 
rounded, full curves. The mirror reflected a woman embroidered in 
candlelight and skin browned the color of deep mocha, with a 
fringe of oddly cut but marvelous red hair flying away from her 
face in straight shards of rubies. Fingers dipped into the 
waistband of her plain white panties that hugged underneath the 
curve of her belly, and she stepped out of those too. No jewelry 
adorned her, and she turned around slowly, walking to the bed 
that she had slept in alone for the past month and now shared 
with her returned lover.
	
The sheets were radiantly cool, and sinking into the bed with him 
was like entering a fall of summer rain. His skin wrapped around 
hers, one hand instantly gravitating to the globe of her enlarged 
and taut stomach. She chuckled briefly at that, at how quickly 
Mulder had fallen in love with their child and how protective he 
was of the baby within her belly. She relished the sensation, the 
magnificent feeling of having his hands on their slumbering 
daughter, and his palm tightened slightly when the baby kicked 
furiously from within. "You had to wake her up," Scully said, her 
voice a dry scold. In a combination of apology and general 
naughtiness, he ducked his head underneath the cover and blessed 
her belly with a kiss.
	
"Sorry," he said to the baby, and Scully grinned. Her fingers 
whispered over the base of his skull, coaxing him back above the 
sheets, and the wind tugged at the curtains through the open 
window. Never had she been so content, relief and bliss at her 
lover's resurrection momentarily swallowing the vast amounts of 
grief pouring through her system.
	
"When are you due, Scully?" Mulder asked, surfacing from the sea 
of clean white cotton and still scanning the circumference of her 
belly as though he could navigate the child's world. The night 
tasted good against her lips, as though the stars had flavor and 
spice instead of their constant bland dryness.
	
"Two weeks ago," she confessed, and she sighed, her fingers 
tiptoeing across the span of his slender, swimmer's hips. They 
carved out the architecture of Mulder, the bones and the flesh, 
and she wondered what sort of combination of their builds this 
baby would have. "I can't blame her for being late." Her voice 
turned bitter briefly. "Would you want to enter this world?"
	
It pained him, this brief reminder that the world was not the 
same as it had once been. Her words told him what he didn't want 
to contemplate or think of; the landscape was not the only 
difference. Society had changed to a mass of people mad with 
grief, and the world was a barren wasteland where life had once 
thrived. "No," he murmured. "I'd want to save it."
	
Smiling, Scully moved her fingers up his arm to the familiar scar 
that she had given him on his shoulder when she had shot him many 
years ago. In the brief months of lovemaking before his 
disappearance, he used to tease her about that scar, claiming 
that other animals marked their territory just by peeing on them. 
His twisted sense of humor was one of her favorite things about 
him, no matter how she refused to laugh at his jokes. The smile 
that she wore faded into a frown when she noticed a newer scar 
beneath the bullet wound, a shiny and fine sliver the shape of 
the moon that hung above them. "What happened?" she asked, and 
Mulder turned away, troubled.
	
"The experiments," he whispered, his voice slightly strangled and 
trapped in his throat. "I don't remember much... Foggy, hazy 
things, like inserting implants or performing lobotomies... They 
usually remove the scars, but they didn't have time." His eyes 
were distant, gazing out the window toward the stars displayed in 
full by the clear night. "They tested all of us. Some were kept 
isolated, and others were allowed to mingle, depending on the 
testing that they required. I was isolated. It was okay most of 
the time; I was so drugged up that I was never aware of what was 
happening around or to me. Anesthesia wasn't a mercy with them; 
it was just easier to deal with us if we couldn't struggle. And I 
couldn't move. I could think, but I couldn't feel. I was aware of 
what happened during the surgeries, but afterwards..." He shook 
his head. Nothing.
	
"They focused on me a lot. The various operations that had been 
performed, the other experiments that have happened over the 
years, in addition to the brain activity, which was higher than 
the others, made them curious. And so they performed a lobotomy, 
operating until I could hear thoughts again." She was startled by 
this, and Mulder shook his head. "It's not as maddening as it 
was. They controlled it; honed it somehow. And that was 
manageable - it doesn't pain me to hear them. Not physically..." 
He shook his head. "But coming back, after the ship was attacked 
and crashed, and listening to the grief of the world around me 
was hell."
	
Her mouth interrupted the flow of his words, and she swallowed 
the painful account of his abduction with a kiss. "You don't have 
to talk about it," she murmured, and he shook his head, his 
fingers still traveling protectively across her belly.
	
"It's okay."
	
They lay there together for a few more minutes, skin clinging to 
skin, cooling from the withering heat of the day underneath the 
crisp and clean cotton. She lifted one of his finely made hands, 
the fingers long and precise, like a pianist's should be, and 
held it in the candlelight, thinking of how her body had missed 
these hands when the bones had ached or her heart had been 
strained. In that instant, examining the structure of Mulder's 
hands, she desperately wished for her daughter to have these 
hands, if only because they were such giving ones.
	
As Scully devoured the shape and fabrication of Mulder's hand, he 
lifted his other one to her face, and began smoothing over her 
eyebrow, painting the arch of copper that crowned her clear china 
eyes. During his months locked in solitude, he often imagined her 
standing in front of him, dressed to the nines as she often was 
and looking at him with an inquisitive and doubtful expression, a 
smile playing on her full mouth as she doubted him so artfully. 
She was the only person on the face of the Earth who could 
express that she thought he was crazy and do it so beautifully 
that he would instantly fall in love. It was the first arch of 
her eyebrow that had made his heart flutter, and seeing her 
glance his way now, one vermilion eyebrow elegantly arched in his 
direction made him feel like life was still somewhat sane.
	
"She'll be a beautiful girl," Mulder said, and Scully smiled, 
running her fingers across the reddened back of his hand before 
laying it back over the cotton-covered curve of her pregnant 
stomach.
	
"You know, I still have no idea what to name her," Scully 
confessed, a little guiltily. "You would think that I would have 
had time in abundance to think of something to name her, and I've 
read baby books looted from town, but I still can't find anything 
to fit her. Nothing makes sense."
	
A memory of a girl flashed through his mind, sitting Indian-style 
in the desert, a golden lighter in her hand and a mass of 
vermilion hair drifting around her slender, oval-shaped face. 
Before he could make sense of the memory, it disappeared as 
quickly as the ash from her cigarette, and he shook his head. 
"We'll think of something suitable," he quietly said, thinking to 
himself of the sudden importance of thinking of girls' names 
lately.
	
Her mouth moved slowly, painted in the darkness of the night that 
was both fragile and beautiful. "You've answered a lot of the 
questions that I had, Mulder, except for one," she murmured. "How 
did you find me?"
	
She had asked him this question before, and he was transported 
back to that time that was nearly three years ago, when he had 
infiltrated the snowy continent of Antarctica and a ship filled 
with impending death to save her. He had crossed the world for 
her, and she had asked him how. He gave her the same answer now 
that he had given her then.
	
"I love you," Mulder murmured, and he was stunned to find Scully 
cry as she had not done three years ago. She crumpled into tears, 
and brought the callused and sunburned palm of his hand to her 
mouth, kissing the myriad of lines etched onto the skin as though 
it was her map. He then, for the first time, felt Scully's grief, 
and felt it as he had not felt anything in his life before. It 
was the mourning of a woman who had thought that she would never 
hear those words again. The mourning of a woman who had lost 
everything and gained that which she loved the most, and he was 
almost in tears at the knowledge that of everything in the world, 
she loved him best.
	
"Don't worry, Scully," he whispered. "I'm not leaving you again. 
I'm here, and I would have found you no matter where you were."
	
She laughed then, and kissed him, her mouth craving contact and 
his joyous at the sensation of his heavy kiss and touch. "Would 
you have found me in that car though?" she teased, and he grinned 
softly, thinking of Wendy's joy at selecting the emerald Jaguar 
and laughing as he struggled with the gearshift. "Where on earth 
did you find that thing?"
	
Still smiling lightly, Mulder told her about Wendy, with her calm 
kindness and good-hearted nature, her motherly actions and 
protectiveness that had later dissipated as the world consumed 
her strength and sanity. He told her of how she had taken care of 
him after the ship had crashed, of how she had also been an 
abductee, and of her final moments of clarity before the world 
had finally swallowed her whole and she had committed suicide. In 
the end, he was nearly in tears over the memory of the good 
nature of one lost woman, and Scully stroked his skin softly.
	
"The car is yours, Scully," he said. "She would have wanted you 
to have it, and I know how much you love driving it." He smiled 
wistfully. "Yeah, Wendy would have wanted it that way." He then 
moved her fingers to the hollow of his throat, and she was met 
with cool metal. "And this is my gift to you."
	
Surprised, Scully picked up the small object resting in Mulder's 
throat, and she was startled to find her cross hanging around his 
neck. She had given it to him just before he had left for Oregon, 
worried for him and worried for herself, still unaware of all 
that would unfold for them. "Oh, Mulder," she murmured, thinking 
of how she had given him this necklace and then kissed him for 
the last time before his disappearance and their reunion after 
colonization. "Thank you."
	
She was about to say more before a pain split through her 
abdomen, and she felt liquid flush from between her legs in a 
gush of warm wetness. Gasping, Scully jolted upward, and Mulder 
joined her, alarmed. "Scully?" he asked, concern and fear cutting 
into his voice as his hands supported her back. Slowly, she 
peeled back the cotton sheet to reveal a puddle of pooling 
liquid, and he sucked in his breath, shocked. "Oh, God..."
	
The pain faded from her body, and she turned her head, eyes wide 
and her hands clutching her stomach. "It's okay, Mulder," she 
said, a little breathless. "It's just..." And her smile was a 
little apologetic. "My water broke."
	
His eyes widened beyond belief, the green-flecked amber 
swallowing his black pupils. "You're..."
	
Scully nodded, linking one hand through his and covering her 
great stomach with it. "No," she said. "*We're* having a baby. 
Now."

*****

(end part seven)

*****

GLASS LANDSCAPE (8/8)
BY: Annie Sewell-Jennings (Auralissa@aol.com)

*****

It was the fourth match before he could properly light the large 
kerosene lamp at the end of the bed; his fingers were shaking so 
badly from nervousness and anticipation. She watched him with 
some amusement as he tried to add more illumination to the room, 
propped up in their bed with a seafoam-colored pajama top on and 
a cool washcloth across her brow. Sweat beaded on his brow as a 
trembling hand placed the lamp on the nightstand, clearing away a 
book of Walt Whitman and her pair of familiar oval-shaped reading 
glasses. "Okay," Mulder said, his breath a little stilted and 
uncertain. "Now what do I do? What do you need?"
	
Her voice was cool and calm as she spoke, and she clinically laid 
out the materials that she would need. "I've prepared a small kit 
in the basement for this," Scully said, always the cool scientist 
and physician even when she was about to give birth in the middle 

of an abandoned country. "You'll need to take one of the lamps 
and go down for it. You'll find a washtub that has been 
sterilized, so all that you need to do is fill it with water to 
bathe the baby with after the birth. There will also be a pair of 
scissors to cut the cord with, and some forceps in case of an 
emergency. There are stacks of old rags and cloths, and a 
thermometer."
	
Wildly, Mulder memorized the list of items that Scully had listed 
for him. "Do I need to boil water?" he asked, and Scully laughed 
a little, shaking her head.
	
"No, the instruments have been sterilized and you probably won't 
use them much," she said. "But do add a few bottles of water and 
a bucket of ice to the washtub." Her mouth quirked into a dry 
smile. "This isn't going to be an exactly pleasant experience for 
either one of us-" A contraction hit her, and Scully flinched, 
pain squeezing her lower body so badly that it felt numbing. 
"Especially for me... Ouch..."
	
Instantly, Mulder was at her side, a shaking hand pressing the 
washcloth worriedly to her brow, and she winced, gratefully 
placing her hand on his before patting it away. "Go," she said, 
and he stumbled a little, nerves overtaking his coordination as 
he stumbled down into the basement to retrieve the childbirth kit 
and the water.
	
The pain slowed in her abdomen, and Scully felt the constant 
shifting as her daughter slowly stirred inside of her. Two weeks 
late, her daughter, and now the contractions were coming in 
quicker intervals, speeding up toward delivery in an amazingly 
short length of time. All of this in an intensity that was 
remarkable, and all on the same night that Fox Mulder drove up to 
her door in a green Jaguar after she had thought him to be dead.
	
It was almost enough to make her believe in extreme 
possibilities.
	
Sweat beaded across her brow, the salty perspiration mingling 
with the clear liquid of the washcloth that Mulder had given her. 
She had been so prepared for this, having gathered everything 
that she would need to deliver her own baby without any 
assistance, thinking that she would be alone in the desert 
without a doctor, and certainly without Mulder. It was odd, how 
prepared she had been to raise their daughter alone in the 
remnants of Oklahoma, and how she was almost frightened now that 
she would have to share their girl with the child's father. Her 
world had been a terrible one, a miserable one, and yet now that 
it had been turned on its axis, she had no idea what to do.
	
Another contraction seized her, and Scully bit down on a cry, her 
skin whitening and sweat dripping down her face in rivulets of 
liquid. She was alone briefly, just for a moment, contemplating 
how good of an idea it was to allow this child to be born at all. 
What a world they had set up for her - existence in a lonely 
house surrounded by nothing but sand and populated only by two 
shadows of a world that didn't exist anymore. They had no 
guarantee of safety, no promise of life eternal, and the human 
race were considered to be an endangered species that was on the 
brink of extinction. And yet they found themselves about ready to 
bring another life into the world with all the arrogance of the 
dying race.
	
Yet Scully loved her daughter more than she loved anything else 
in the world. She loved this baby for sustaining her, for keeping 
her alive when the rest of the world was committing suicide to 
avoid death by alien plague. This child gave her a reason to 
exist when Mulder had disappeared and when her loved ones died 
around her, and when the sunlight had initially scorched her 
skin, she had known her child and loved her.
	
Tapering fingers squeezed the washcloth resting on her brow 
slightly, and Scully opened her eyes to feel water droplets 
catching on the thick fringe of her eyelashes and to see Mulder 
hovering worriedly above her. The awkward nose that she had 
always loved lavishing with kisses was burned and starting to 
peel, and his vivid amber and emerald eyes were wide with 
nervousness over the birth of their daughter. "I filled up the 
washtub with water and I got you some water. The towels look good 
and I got you a bucket of ice. Now what?" he asked, and Scully 
smiled, pushing her finger over the lush raspberry of his mouth 
to shush him.
	
"Ssh," she murmured. "Just be quiet. Just for a moment." Her 
smile wavered a little. "If you don't calm down, you might miss 
the birth of your child."
	
Instantly, his breathing slowed, and his eyelashes lowered to 
lend his eyes an almost slumbering look of tranquility, and she 
watched with a contented expression as he closed his eyes 
briefly, inhaling the night like a scented perfume. He smiled 
softly at her, wiping moist threads of hair away from her eyes. 
"Oh, Scully," he whispered, and she patted the side of the bed, 
inviting him to join her.
	
"Come on, Mulder," she murmured. "Just... Lie down with me."

None of it mattered in this moment, not the war or the slow death 
of all mankind, not the months where he had been missing or the 
months spent on her own watching apocalypse exploding around her. 
All that mattered was the fact that life went on, that existence 
continued, and that another human being would enter the world 
even after billions had died so brutally.
	
Life went on... It was a miraculous sensation.
	
A rapturous mouth captured her own in a kiss that seemed to seal 
the fate of the universe, even if it could only speak for the 
love between just two people and the life that was about to begin 
between them. His lower lip ravished hers, brushing over the 
plush and moist skin with a soft, soothing affirmation that this 
was all okay with him. "God, Scully," he whispered. "It's all 
going to be alright."
	
A slightly tearful gaze returned his own, and she gripped his 
hand in hers, holding it tightly within her own small, delicate 
fingers before lifting it to her mouth and kissing the back of 
his hand. "Yes," she whispered, "it is." Then the moment was 
broken as another contraction seized her, and she cried out, 
whipping her head back. God, it felt as if something had suddenly 
*dropped* inside of her. "Oh, Jesus, Mulder, it's happening..."
	
Swallowing, Mulder looked down at the woman that he had known for 
eight years and loved for all that time. This was the woman that 
he had crossed time and space for, the woman that he'd lay his 
life down for, about to go through the miracle that had 
supposedly been taken from her. This was his child, her child, 
*their* child about to be born, and he calmly walked to the end 
of the bed and lifted the sheet from her waist, folding it back 
above her legs. Slowly, he looked up at her. "Do you trust me, 
Scully?" he asked, and she nodded, her face contorted with pain 
and heat.
	
"Yes," she whispered through gritted teeth. "I trust you."
	
With that, he spread apart her legs and looked down at the 
swollen, dilated area between her legs and felt nervous again. 
This wasn't like anything else that he had ever done. This was 
helping life into the world, and not only that, it was *Scully*. 
The woman that he loved more than anything else. Childbirth was a 
dangerous procedure, and her life was literally in his hands.
	
And so was his daughter's.
	
Damp strands of hair clung to her face as Scully screamed, her 
fingers clenching around the cotton sheets and her knees bracing 
as she experienced yet another contraction, and after that was 
over, she gasped out instructions. "You... You need to look and 
see if you see..." She threw her head back as another contraction 
ripped through her, and Mulder suddenly gasped, seeing the head 
of the baby.
	
This was all happening so quickly. She had been counting on the 
average fourteen hours of labor and delivery, not this sudden 
urge to push that weakened her muscles and took over every 
sensation. She knew that her child was coming, knew it only in 
the way that a mother could, and that her baby would be born 
within minutes instead of hours. Gritting her teeth, she pushed, 
and Mulder gasped again. "Come on, Scully, I see the head," he 
said breathlessly, looking in between his lover's legs and 
watching his daughter's surfacing. "Push, Scully, you can do 
it..."
	
A scream ripped from her throat as she pushed, and he counted for 
her, trying to do everything that he could remember or anything 
that could help. Oddly, the counting helped, and the baby slid 
further, her shoulders breaching her dilated cervix and entering 
the open air. Instantly, as soon as her face was in the open, she 
began to scream with an awareness and alertness that was stunning 
and shocking. Shaking, Mulder placed his hands around his 
daughter and Scully pushed one more time...
	
And she was alive.
	
She was born with a fury and a vengeance, delivered by her father 
as her mother pushed fervently in spite of the short labor 
period. Her body was covered in blood and matter, and Mulder 
quickly cleared mucous from her tiny nostrils, gazing down at the 
raging face as her minute fists clenched hatefully with wonder 
and awe. His fingers trembled slightly as he cut the umbilical 
cord and he would later swear to Scully that their daughter 
glared at him for disconnecting her from her mother. The enraged 
screaming of their healthy baby girl filled a house that had been 
dead and empty, and the first life to enter the new world since 
its fall was passionate and strong.
	
Exhaustion and joy filled her all at once, and she sighed, 
relaxing briefly into the pillows, her eyes closing and tears 
spilling onto her cheeks. She was flooded with bliss, spilling 
over the rapture of giving birth and the wonder of this new life. 
Laughter spilled from her mouth, and suddenly, the screaming of 
her strong daughter grew louder as Mulder placed her in Scully's 
waiting arms.
	
The rosebud of her mouth wailed insistently, and Scully laughed, 
unbuttoning the seafoam-colored silk pajama top and allowing her 
daughter to nurse, feeling her tiny arms and legs flail and kick 
furiously as she nursed heartily. The afterbirth still had to 
come, but not for a few minutes. Not until their daughter fed, 
latched onto one swollen nipple, and Scully felt the dull pain 
leading into the blissful pleasure of her daughter's hungry 
feeding.
	
"She's beautiful," Mulder whispered breathlessly, his hand 
covering the top of her head protectively. "Look at that 
mouth..." It was as ripe and as full as Scully's own mouth, 
suckling greedily on her mother's breast as one tiny, strong fist 
clenched and unclenched in synchrony with her ravenous feeding. 
He winked at her. "But I worry that the baby's born bald. I 
always suspected Skinner of having something for you."
	
Chuckling, Scully slid a finger down her daughter's nose, her 
skin turned ripe and rosy in the candlelight. "I wouldn't worry, 
Mulder, because that's your nose," Scully said with a grin, and 
Mulder groaned.
	
"Poor kid."
	
As the baby nursed, it inspired the need to birth the placenta, 
and removing the afterbirth was a piece of cake compared to the 
birth of their screaming baby. After the placenta was taken care 
of, Mulder lay in the bed beside his lover and his daughter, 
stroking the fine peach fuzz of his daughter's nonexistent hair, 
exhausted from the amazing evening that he had just experienced. 
Dana Scully had just given birth to his baby, and the newborn 
remained curled in an Aztec blanket embroidered with deer and 
arrows. 

The satisfied baby rested in the arms of her mother, and her 
adoring parents gazed down with amazement at their daughter. She 
was a wonder of nature, a gift from a fate that had been cruel 
beyond belief to the rest of the world, and that had been mostly 
cruel to them as well. She remembered the anguish of losing loved 
ones throughout the years, feeling their breath in the strong, 
silent breaths of her daughter. Every tiny motion, every 
heartbeat, was a reminder of the world that had died, of its 
marvel and its majesty, and Scully realized then that she and 
Mulder were not shadows of that world, they were houses of 
memory. And their daughter was compiled of that history; it was 
evident in her clear and wise little blue eyes, incited with the 
passion of living, even if that life had lasted for only minutes.

"I think that I know why she was so late," Scully murmured, 
smoothing her daughter's hairless head with the palm of her hand. 
"I think that she was waiting for you."
	
Smiling, Mulder looked down at his newborn daughter and was 
suddenly given an image again of the composed and passionate 
redheaded cowgirl sitting out in the desert, telling him that she 
was nameless. That spitfire of a girl made him smile again, and 
he felt as though he was naming the both of them when he spoke. 
"I think I thought of a name for her," Mulder said, and Scully 
arched her eyebrow as she had always done, cradling their 
daughter in her arms. "Bess. It means God's earth."

And that was what their daughter was - she was the world, past 
and present, composed of both memory and mystery. The history of 
the earth rested inside of her wise little eyes, and the promise 
of its future was inside the strength of her tiny, fierce fists. 
She was a warrior, this little baby, and she was the best of all 
of it. The best of mankind, when it was complicated and yet 
delightfully simple and beautiful lived inside of their daughter. 
She was the earth, God's earth, whole and strong.

"Bess," Scully said. "I like it." Then her eyes flashed at him 
mischievously. "Figures you'd name her Bessie. You always had a 
thing for cow mutilations."

Mulder let out a loud roar of laughter, and this woke the newly-
named Bessie Mulder from her sleep, inciting a wail of fury at 
her father's laughter, her wide and proud china eyes blazing as 
the sky lightened and dawn began.

*****

The baying of the dogs filled the night with their long, rolling 
keening as they howled at the moon. It was full and swollen in 
the night sky, spilling bountiful amounts of silver onto the 
desert sands, painting everything with a fine and fragile light 
that combined with that of the citronella candles. Lemon and 
lime, smells of citrus fruits that didn't grow anymore, wafted 
through the arid surroundings, and created a clean, marvelous 
aroma.
	
She had never smelled an orange before; she had never bitten into 
a tangerine and felt juice dribble down her chin in a long 
cascade of fresh fruit liquid. Pineapples, watermelons, apples 
and lemons were fairy tales to her, grown up on canned food and 
bottled water. She read of these sensory experiences in books and 
novels, and sometimes she dreamed of what a papaya might taste 
like.
	
But she knew what cigarettes were, and they were a comfort.
	
The gold Zippo lighter flicked, the flame jumping up high and 
twisting violently in the winds of the cool desert night. 
Carefully, she cupped the flame in her fingers and briefly 
remembered a time when her father had told her that she had 
survived well in the desert, though she couldn't remember when he 
had ever said such a thing to her. Shrugging off the odd 
nostalgia, she bent her head to the flame and lit the Marlboro 
between her lips, deeply inhaling the fine tobaccos and allowing 
herself to burn with the cigarette.
	
"I wish you wouldn't smoke," her mother said from behind her, and 
Bessie turned her head, removing her cowboy hat and allowing her 
unruly mass of curly vermilion to twist as the flame had only 
moments earlier. Her mother sat on a white wicker rocking chair 
that her father had thieved from the ruins of Dora for her, 
dressed simply in a pair of khaki dungarees and a white V-necked 
three-quarter sleeve sweater. Her hair hung around her face, 
hugging her jaw, and Bessie secretly envied how elegant her 
mother always appeared. "It's not good for you."
	
Shrugging, Bessie took a drag from the Marlboro and then pulled 
the cigarette away from her full mouth, exhaling slate-colored 
smoke into the vivid night. "I know," she said simply. "But I get 
bored." She got lonely in the desert, restless somehow, even when 
her parents trained her or she read the history and geography of 
both her parents' world and the world that she lived in now.
	
The screen door creaked as her father walked out on the front 
porch, barefoot and wearing a pair of blue jeans and a gray tee 
shirt. His hair was a mussed tumble of spikes colored in dark 
brown and silver, all moving in different directions, and she 
figured that she had inherited her hair's absolute impossibility 
from him and the color from her mother. "Boredom's not a good 
excuse for anything, Moo," he said, and she rolled her eyes at 
the old nickname.
	
"Dad, you gave me this ridiculous name," Bessie said, taking 
another hit from her cigarette. "You would think that you could 
actually use it every once in a while." Moo was the pet name that 
her father had invented in her babyhood and refused to stop using 
even though she was now eighteen years old.
	
Fondly, her father ruffled her hair, sitting down on the front 
steps beside her as she finished her cigarette. Tilting her head 
to the side, she looked at her father's features, from the pout 
of his lower lip to the awkward nose that she had so 
unfortunately inherited. Smoke masked her own features, a mesh of 
both Fox Mulder and Dana Scully, from her clear hazel eyes to her 
father's too-large nose. Yet she lacked what they held in their 
eyes, and she sometimes envied them their experiences.
	
Both of them were shadowed by the old world, as though it had 
tattooed them both with permanent inking. They told her of the 
Old World, even though it pained them both, raising her with the 
knowledge that the human race was dying and that there were men 
who were selling lives that they did not own. These were men who 
must be destroyed, and the world had to be saved, and Bessie had 
never argued with the fate that had been laid out for her.
	
She was the earth, and she had to save herself.
	
But the desert was despairingly lonely, no matter how beautiful 
or wild it might be. She knew only her tormented parents and the 
baying dogs, the cicadas who sang haunting melodies and the wind 
who always whispered. She wore a cross given to her by her mother 
that symbolized a faith that she did not share or understand, as 
the only God that Bessie believed in was the power of the earth 
around her, but she wore it to symbolize faith itself. Her father 
had worn this when he had been taken and when her mother had been 
taken, in the faith that he would be reunited with her. And her 
mother had worn it in the belief that there was good in the world 
and that there was a chance at salvation.
	
They were both right.
	
Sparks fell from her cigarette onto the boards of the front 
porch, and Bessie flicked the cherry from her cigarette, standing 
up and stretching her tall, fine body in the moonlight. "You both 
gave me so much," she murmured softly. "I couldn't be happier." 
She turned her head to look back at them, her aging but still 
beautiful mother and father. "You know that, right? That you did 
right by me?"
	
Slowly, her mother nodded, and her father nodded as well. 
"Always, Moo," he said, and her mother just smiled enigmatically, 
cocking an eyebrow at the daughter that she had raised so well.
	
Smiling, Bessie turned back around, leaning against the railing 
of the porch and looking out at the massive expanse of the desert 
sands, scrolling across the plains and scattering underneath the 
moon. Everything glimmered and glowed with such awe-inspiring 
beauty, and Bessie closed her eyes, listening in the way that her 
father had taught her to the world around her. She felt the 
strength of the earth inside of her veins, and knew that the time 
would soon come to leave this desert and fight.
	
Flashes of violence whipped through her mind, of bullets flying 
and blood spilling and painting the sands with a vermilion that 
would rival the color of Bessie's own crimson hair. She knew the 
time would come for war soon, and she knew that she might die in 
that war. But not humanity - that was a force that would never 
die. It was life, life eternal, and it would always survive. 
Everything changed, but that one remaining fact would always stay 
the same.
	
Life goes on.
	
And Bessie smiled, and waited.

*****

(end)

*****
	
Feedback would be delightful, delicious, and delovely. Send me a 
pack of Marlboros (though I smoke mine with menthol) if you liked 
it. ?

*****

-------------------
"And I'm supposed to do this just out of the evilness of my heart?"
 --Spike, "Buffy the Vampire Slayer"
-------------------
Fanfiction Archive: http://members.aol.com/auralissa/index.html
-------------------