Date: Fri, 29 Aug 1997 02:16:49 -0400 (EDT)
From: AgentRLM@aol.com
Subject: EP> The Herald (1/2)

The Herald (1/2)
Jamie Taylor/Sara Ford
Aiua@juno.com/GrrrlUWant@aol.com
PG

Spoiler: Third season

Keywords :Mulder/Scully married

Summary: Another Mulder and Scully married story (I can't get enough of
these!). 

Disclaimer: Fox Mulder and Dana Scully belong to CC, 1013, and Fox
Broadcasting
blahblahblahblahdoesanyoneactuallyreadthese?

T H E   X - F I L E S 
The Herald 


Fox Mulder pulled into the driveway of his home in a peaceful suburban
neighborhood. It
was nothing he ever imagined himself living in   his bachelor years, but
it was his home.
He parked the navy blue Ford Taurus, and picked up the stack of files
from the
passenger's seat and headed for the door.
  When he entered the house he yelled the classic "Honey, I'm home" thing
and smiled to
himself. His wife peered around the corner of the top of the staircase at
him. She gave him
an exhausted smile.
   "Dana." he said. She slowly walked down the stairs. She placed her
hand on her 
8-month- pregnant stomach. Fox smiled at her and welcomed her to him with
open arms.
   They stepped into an embrace and held each other for a long time. They
had been
married for five years and aware of their shared feelings for three
years, but they still
couldn't stand being apart for long periods of time. Without touching. Or
merely sharing a
gaze.
   "How's Will?" he asked. 
   "Sleeping. He's been a handful all day. I'm so tired." she sighed.
   Fox led them upstairs. "We could get a nanny if you'd like. You're so
tired lately and you
probably miss your work."
   "I'd miss Will more, Fox. He tires me out, but I love him. Just like
you do" she added
with a smile.
   "I tire you out?" he asked. He smiled mischievously. By now, the had
reached Will's
nursery, which had been converted into a bedroom for the soon-to-be big
brother.            
    They peered over the railing of the big boy bed at their
four-year-old son. He was an exact
replica of his father. He had chocolate brown hair and warm hazel eyes.
When they had 
first laid eyes on him , it had taken their breath away. He had the same
pouty lips and slightly oversized nose. He would grow into it, Dana said.
Yeah....just like I did, Fox had
 remarked.
	But he was beautiful.
   Fox reached over and stroked his cheek. Will gingerly opened his eyes
and smiled at his
parents. They smiled back. He loved his parents, but they never left him
alone. He just
wanted some peace and quiet. But they were always saying how he looked
like his daddy.
Even when they weren't saying it, he knew they were thinking it. He just
knew it.
    His mom gazed down at him with luminous blue eyes. He was a little
jealous he didn't
get her color of eyes. He wasn't insulting his daddy's color, but his
mommy's was
prettier. 

	He tried to stick to his decision to call his parents Mom and
Dad. All the older kids called their parents that. His brain was still
pretty fuzzy from waking from a much-needed nap, though, so when his Dad
picked him up, he didn't object. Within minutes, both were asleep on the
couch.    
					***
     Dana watched from the doorway as her two "children" slumbered on.
She felt guilty
staying at home while Fox handled the X-Files alone. He was turning all
the cases that
consisted of traveling because he wouldn't leave her by herself with her
pregnancy. She
insisted she was fully capable of working, but he was still worrying
about her. Since her
cancer had been treated, she assumed he would loosen up, but then she
became pregnant
with Will. Then he was crazy. Worrying about her day and night. He was
ecstatic at the
hospital  when William Xavier Mulder was born. Dana had argued with him
about that
name, but to no avail. Mulder felt that he owed something to Deep Throat
and X, so their
son had the middle initial of X. Poor kid. In the deal, however, Dana had
been given the final say on what any of their other children would be
named. In the hospital,  he had 
buzzed about her like a bee, making her nervous. 
     Fox felt someone watching him and he easily opened his eyes. Dana
smiled, realizing
where Will got it from. He smiled too. Dana walked over to Fox and gazed
down at them.
She reached down with her hand to smooth the strands of hair poking out
from her son's 
head but was doubled over by a pain in her abdomen.

	She looked up at Mulder from her position on the floor, the
anguish clearly evident in her azure eyes. She managed to  choke out,
"Call the hospital, something's..
something's wrong, Mulder..contraction too violent.. too early--" she was
cut off by the next contraction. 

	Mulder flew into action, calling the doctor first, then Scully's
mother. He then packed Scully and Will into the Taurus and tore off for
Holy Cross Memorial Hospital.

	The emergency room was expecting them and they were rushed
through the normal paperwork. A crying Dana was rushed to Maternity and a
worried Mulder sat down by a nurse in a waiting lounge. Since they didn't
know what was happening, the doctors didn't want Mulder or little Will,
as confused as he was, in the way.

	And so they sat in a terrible silence until Maggie Scully showed
up in half an hour. She immediately went to her son-in-law and hugged
him. 

	"Fox, have you heard anything?"

	"No...nothing."

	"Try to get your mind off of it right now, Fox, watch the
television, read a magazine, something, anything."

	Mulder just zoned out, staring at the TV, willing the world to
make a disappearance. When he looked up, Will was gone.

				***

	Doctor O'Killian watched closely as the fetal monitor was hooked
up. They had to see if the baby was in distress. As he observed the
cotangent function heart rate that appeared on the screen, he corrected
himself and swore to look at the sonograms again. Then he felt panic rise
in his throat as he look even more carefully. He fairly shouted to the
nurses and interns, along with the anesthesiologist,"Babies are in
distress!" the once-strong heart rates were already diminishing into
nothingness. Since one was already in the birth canal, a Caesarean wasn't
in the picture. Maybe he could save one, but to sacrifice the
other...//First do no harm...// did he have a choice?

	As he wrestled to make a decision, a tiny boy slipped into the
room unnoticed. Will approached his mother, who was obviously in pain.
Tears cascaded down his cheeks, making them shine in the harsh hospital
lights. Compassion seeped into his warm hazel eyes and he grasped her
adult hand in his own small one.

	Scully didn't know if it was the drugs, or the lights, or if she
had gone nuts, but she said nothing when she noticed her son. Then there
was the light around him, a diffuse glow of golden, not the florescent
white of the fixtures above.  She felt his hand on hers, his whispering,
pleading voice,"Mom..." and then him kneeling on the floor, hands clasped
together as if in prayer, then again his hand in hers, and the pain was
gone...

	Dr. O'Killian looked at the monitor again as if in shock. The
heart rates were gaining strength and the first baby was unstuck. The
lighting in the room changed again and the new Boy Mulder made his
entrance, but with a deafening quiet. His brother came nine seconds
later, his caterwauling a dramatic change from the thunderous silence of
before. Boy Two was handed of to the nurses, and the doctors set to work
on Boy One. His throat and mouth were cleared and he was given infant
CPR. He gave a feeble cry within twenty seconds. The staffers smiled, but
they were haunted smiles, knowing that something could be terribly wrong.
How long was the tiny infant deprived of the life-sustaining oxygen? He
was wheeled off to Intensive Care and an incubator.

	Boy Two was cleaned off and handed to his weeping mother. The
doctor spoke,"Dr. Mulder, there were obviously two babies, and you have
two more sons. However..."

	She stopped by placing her hand on his,"I know. I know." 

	Meanwhile, Will had made his exit.

				***

	A frantic Mulder and Mrs. Scully found him back in his waiting
room chair, happily watching TV. 

	Mulder was angry and thrilled at the same time,"William Mulder,
where have you been?"

	The boy shrugged,"Exploring," he deemed it of his best interests
not to expose what had occurred in the maternity ward. At least the light
thing. Frankly, he himself had no idea what had happened, except that
Somebody had helped out a whole lot.

	Mulder sighed with exasperation and hugged his son. A doctor,
Scully's ob/gyn, walked into the waiting room, the harbinger of news,
albeit good or bad.

	He took a deep breath before speaking,"Mr. Mulder, you have two
new sons."

	FBI Inspector Fox William Mulder was in a stunned, happy silence,
with a big stupid grin on his face. 

	"However..."

	The grin disappeared.

	"There was some trouble, and the older boy was deprived of oxygen
for a long time. We're not sure how long and he wasn't breathing when he
was born. He is in intensive care now, in an incubator breathing pure
oxygen."

	"What, what does this mean?"

	"Mr. Mulder, let me be frank with you. It could be nothing. But,
the bay could be brain damaged and that could result in mental
retardation, epilepsy, physical impairments...or, as I said, nothing. He
could be as perfect as his brother. Would you like to see them?"

	Mulder nodded as did Mrs. Scully.

		                  ***END PART ONE***



T H E   X - F I L E S 
The Herald 
Part Two

Two days later, Dana was up and about, and she and Mulder stood outside
the baby room in maternity, gazing at their two new sons. The doctor had
figured out that they were fraternal, not identical. The healthy one, who
was crying lustily in his cradle, had the coppery red colored hair of his
mother and vivid green eyes. Scully looked at him, and the little placard
proclaiming, MULDER, Joseph Michael. That had been her maternal
grandfather's name. The other placard on the incubator on the right side
of the room read: MULDER, John Patrick, Scully's paternal grandfather's
name. John had inherited Mulder's chocolate brown hair but had his
mother's striking blue eyes.

	The doctors still didn't know if anything was wrong with John,
but the results would be in in a few days. Little Joseph was going home
today. 


	Maggie walked up behind her daughter and son-in-law. There was a
newspaper in her hands, open to the birth announcements. Scully read
them, her feelings bittersweet.

		MULDER, twin sons, John Patrick and 
                                                   Joseph Michael, to Fox
and
                                                   Dana Mulder of
Georgetown.

	A nurse brought Joseph out of the nursery swathed in a
stereotypical blue blanket. "Are you ready to take him home, Mrs.
Mulder?"

	She nodded in reply and took her youngest son in her arms, still
amazed at his tiny size. Then her gaze wandered over to John, so
different, alone in his incubator, wailing at the enforced isolation that
kept him alive. Suddenly, Scully wanted to leave, no longer willing to
face that fact that one of her sons could be damaged, that her son could
be mentally...she couldn't face it. Not that her love for him would
diminish, he was, after all *her* son, but she didn't know what to do,
Will was so intelligent, and Joseph would be too, considering his
parents. She looked over at Mulder,"Let's take him home. We can come back
later."

	Will and her mother were waiting in their house for their return.
The nursery had been hastily finished since the boys had been early. Very
early. At any rate, Will was eager to assume the role of Big Brother, and
wanted to hold Joseph. "Not 'til you're older," Dana replied. She trusted
her son, but his four-year-old muscles just weren't ready for the
responsibility. When the baby was asleep, she collapsed onto the couch
and immediately fell into an exhausted slumber. Will silently watched
her.

	Then he found his dad in the kitchen. "Dad,"he said,"What's wrong
with John?" he asked as innocent sounding as a small boy could. Will
didn't know what had gone wrong, he had tried, he had *tried*, but...

	"The doctors don't know, Will. They just don't..." and Mulder
stopped talking, he fell silent. Will could see the shine of tears in his
eyes and the boy's world suffered a dramatic inner quaking. His father,
the protector, was weeping, over something Will could have stopped...he
thought this, over and over //I tried, I tried, I tried...//

				*

	The doctors gave up by the end of the week, and the now quiet
John was to be brought home. Except, when Scully went to pick up the
dark-haired infant, she noticed that he was trembling. She called a
nurse,"He's cold, no...he's covered in blankets...Oh, my God, he's having
a seizure, a doctor, get a doctor!" the specialists had moved in fast and
figured out how to stop the seizure, but the cause was a complete
mystery.  So he was sent home with well wishes, medication, puzzled faces
and shrugs. The infant was mute and his eyes were unseeing, most of the
time. This caused no end to the anguish in his parents. A psychiatrist
told them that John would be autistic. His intelligence was on par with
his brothers', but he was emotionally withdrawn. Idiot-savant, to use the
French term.

	Will spent time with him, attempting to get him out of his shell.
He was successful at times, provoking eye contact or one momentous time,
a smile. But that was it. John was silent next to his babbling brother.
Joseph was walking and talking at ten months. John was walking. Will
spent more time with John, determined to change his brother, to no avail.

	Will stared at the ceiling, not sleeping like he was supposed to
be, trying to figure out what had happened the day his brothers were
born. What had he done?
He wanted to do it again, to fix his brother, to relieve his parents'
agony every time Joseph said a sentence and John was quiet. Oh, so very
quiet he was. No one could know what he was thinking. Ever. This rankled
on Will. He strived to fix the wrong.

	Dana Scully Mulder did the same as her son, as Mulder slept
beside her. What had happened when the twins were born? Slowly, the haze
lifted and she remembered...Will. A warm, diffused golden glow and Will.
Little Will. She got up quickly and made her way into her son's bedroom. 
He was up.

	"What happened?"

	"I don't know," he whispered back, and began to cry. She held him
as he agonized,"I want to do  it again. I can't, I can't, when I see the
pain I want to fix it. I can..I can do it for others but I can't for my
own family...I see that he wants to be heard, he's desperate, but he
can't...*I* can't..I don't know..."and he fell into a fitful sleep. Dana
left him after thirty minutes. He was awake within the hour and in John's
room, beside his crib. Will reached though the slats and grasped the
baby's hand, whispering,"I'm sorry, I don't know, John, why can't you
cry, why can't you smile, why can't I fix this?"subconsciously, Will
prayed and it happened again. The light, the warmness and then it was
gone. Will watched John and the baby let out a wail, his first since his
feeble cry at birth. His brother shed joyous tears as he made his way
back to his bed, the same tears his parents shed when they realized it
was *John* crying, *John* babbling when they appeared to comfort him,
*John* clamoring for attention in the morning, smiling, laughing,
playing, *living*. 

	Finally, he was asleep the next night and Scully sat on the sofa
in Mulder's arms, talking with him quietly.

	"Scully, what do you suppose happened?"

	"I don't know, Mulder, maybe some synapse in his brain finally
grew and connected what needed to be connected."

	"Probably, Scully."

	"No, Mulder, it wasn't that," she said as she remembered Will,
wanting to heal the pain that he so acutely felt emanating from
others,"Will. I think he's...I'll be right back," and she want to have
another talk with her son.

	His face was aglow,"It worked, Mom," was all he said. With that,
Dana Mulder regained her faith. There was an angel in her house,a real
one. Her son was an angel, a messenger, carrying God's work and message
to Earth. She just knew. She simply believed.

	Mulder, however, was in disbelief. "You mean my four-year-old son
in a reincarnated *saint*?"

	"No, Mulder, I'm saying he's...well, maybe a saint in his own
right. Whatever happened to John was a miracle. Hell, Mulder, his being
born at all was a miracle. Didn't I tell you what happened that night?"

	"No, Scully," his face was set and his tone had taken that
stubborn timbre.

	So she proceeded to tell him about that night, the night of two
miracles. When she finished, he stomped off upstairs without a word.

	She could tell he was afraid. Mulder had always been wary of the
Church. It was she that believed the miracle in Kevin Kryder, not Mulder.
He must feel that he'll lose his son. He would rather live in ignorance
than face that loss. Scully sighed and headed upstairs, needing sleep
before the boys woke up. 

	She found Mulder.

	He was sitting in the corner of Will's room, his knees pulled up
to his chest and he was sobbing. She saw his shoulders shudder and heard
his ragged breathing. She walked to him and held him, much as she had
held Will, until Mulder felt he was ready to talk.

	"It was the starlight, Scully. Just as I came in, a shaft of
light lit up Will's sleeping form."

	"That's happened before, Mulder."

	He looked her in the eye,"No, Scully, look outside."

	She did and found why Mulder had been so moved. It was cloudy.
Not a star of the moon could be seen. The rain even pattered down
lightly. She turned back to face Mulder.

	"I believe, Scully," was all he said.


			END