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   RivkaT's e-mail address has changed to: rivkat@gmail.com
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From: mustangsally78@juno.com (MustangSally Seventy-Eight)
Date: Sun, 6 Sep 1998 00:00:34 -0400
Subject: Iolokus IV: Res Judicata 7a/18


Iolokus IV: Res Judicata
7a/18

All there is left is a photograph
You smile and the ice cream`s meltin` down your pants
And I keep living on, you`re in the past, it`s been so long
Since the Ice Cream Summer, it`s forgotten now it`s gone
	Hanoi Rocks

The morning after we realized Scully was pregnant was interesting in the
extreme.  I was sitting in the kitchen drinking 
my post-run, post-shower coffee and reading the Post while the Mooselet
crawled around on the floor with her stuffed 
Po. Catzilla was sitting on the table, washing his back toes -- which
would have reduced Scully to vermilion-faced rage 
since she doesn't realize that Catzilla is cleaner than most people.  All
was all right with the world. Of course I had 
butterflies in my stomach the size of Pterodactyls and my hands were
shaking around the coffee mug, but that was 
pretty much what it was like to be me.  The Mooselet was winding my
sneaker laces around a cartoonish pink horse 
and I almost killed myself getting up to answer the doorbell.  There had
been a few flower arrangements and a couple of 
gifts as I have been congenitally unable to keep my mouth shut about
anything that didn't have a life or death 
consequence.  I'd e-mailed Emerson and Darien, and out of some perverse
sense of revenge e-mailed both Phoebe and 
Diana through their work accounts.  I'd actually used stamps and mailed a
couple notes to the vague friends I had left 
over from Oxford and my tutor, who had retired to Greece.  I figured that
Dr. Arenson would get the letter by the time 
Miranda was twelve.  I also dropped a note to Mrs. Schwartz who had lived
next door to me at Hegal place and had 
brought me soup when I was sick and had saved my life by dialing 911 on
more than one occasion.  I thought that 
some of these peripheral people in my life would be amused to know that I
was having the ball and chain welded around 
my ankle with good grace.

I sloped out to the front room with Miranda under my arm and answered the
door, expecting another bored teenager with 
a mouthful of gum and a flower arrangement, or an efficient Fed Ex guy
with a Pepsodent smile.  Instead, I found myself 
looking at the face that I had dreamed about for years, first in the
agony of loss and then in the agony of shame.
 
"Sam?"

She looked like hell; one side of her face was bloody and raw, her black
feather hair sticking into dried blood, her eye 
swollen shut and her lip dripping fresh blood down along her chin. 
Hanging onto the doorjamb she looked like a glare 
would send her shattered to the floor.

"Hey big brother, sorry to crash the festivities," she said with a bitter
smirk and collapsed into the foyer. 

The Mooselet started to wail.  I put Miranda in her playpen and carried
Sam, who only weighed slightly more than 
Miranda, over to the recovered sofa where she bled onto the new
upholstery, while the Mooselet stood up in the playpen 
and appealed to a higher power.

"Lee!  Lee!"

Great, my own kid was ratting me out.  I growled to myself and scampered
off to the kitchen for the emergency first aid 
kit which, thanks to Scully, was as well stocked as a small ER.  My
blushing bride was waiting for me in the living 
room, looking down at my battered sister with the look of caustic
loathing.

"Oh shit," she muttered.

Samantha's eyes flickered open and she looked back up at Scully with a
mirrored expression.

"Congratulations," she hissed.

"What are you doing here?" Scully demanded and pulled up a footstool
alongside the sofa.  I handed her the First Aid 
kit and stepped back out of the fray.

"Where the hell else was I going to go?  They're trying to kill me."

"Who?" I asked over Scully's head.

"I don't know their names, you dick.   *Them*, the men that Dad worked
with.  Men without names.  I was going to visit 
Mom in New England, she told me that you two were married and about the
custody battle.  I was in the airport and 
they grabbed me in the parking lot.  Beat the shit out of me and told me
that even if you *got* custody of the baby, 
they'd take her from you."

"And we're supposed to believe that?" Scully snapped, ripping open a
packet of alcohol wipes which she then used to 
scrub at Sam's bleeding face.

Sam winced and flinched away from her.  This is one of the reasons Scully
only works with the dead - her in-bed 
manner is exceptional, but her bedside manner lacks certain warmth.  
When I broke my thumb on a case in Iowa she 
cracked it back into alignment without disturbing a hair of her own
shining coif.  I, on the other hand, turned sea green 
with pain and slid to the floor like a colloid.  I was on the verge of
doing the sea-green colloid routine again, but didn't 
want to lose face in front of my impressionable progeny in the playpen. 
I didn't want her growing up thinking that her 
Daddy was a *complete* wimp. 

"Why should we protect you?" a voice that sounded more like one of my
brothers' emerged from my mouth.

"Because you're my brother," she snarled.

Like that was foremost in her mind the night she tried to seduce me while
Jason was raping Scully. 

"Blood runs pretty thin around here, Sam, George's only stained the
carpet.  You have to give me - give us -- a *very* 
good reason not to sling your skinny ass out into the street."

Her eyes slid away from mine and she was staring at Scully, which was not
the place to look for sympathy no matter 
how cozy Scully looked in her butter-yellow toweling bathrobe.  

"The former Roush scientists still have some of your ova, not all were
destroyed during your clumsy mass abortion."

"I don't believe you," Scully said, and I could just about see her ears
flattening back against her head.
 
"Haven't you ever heard the story about the boy who cried wolf?"

"Tell that to your *children*," she snapped.

"Sorry.  Not good enough.  If you can't drive, I will call you a cab," I
offered, "but you really don't fit into our lifestyle right 
now."

For a second, I saw hurt in her eyes, and it brought back all the bad
memories of how I had taunted and tormented her 
before she had been taken away.  Taken away and I hadn't been able to
save her - not from the aliens as much as what 
the humans had done to change her into this polished stranger.

She narrowed her reptilian eyes at me. 

"You know I'm the only one who knows exactly what has been hardwired into
that baby's--" she glanced over at the 
Mooselet -- "genetic code. And if you won't help me I'm going to have to
cut my own deal with whoever will."

"I think you better leave." Scully said.

When Sam had finally been whisked away in a taxi I felt safe enough to
scoop up the Mooselet in my arms as if that 
was going to shield her from the evil spores that Samantha had left in
her wake.  Scully merely gathered up the detritus 
from the first aid kit and threw it all out in the kitchen garbage as
though she could clear away the memory of Sam with 
her bloodstains.

"Coffee?" Scully asked.

The Mooselet pulled on my ear with her wet fingers.

"Coffee, Mulder?" Scully prodded.

"No thanks.  I'm experiencing an adrenaline rush right now-."

Snorting, she dumped the half-pot down the drain and watched it swirl
into the black hole of the pipe.

"You know," she said in a carefully cool tone, "from my experience, all
of your sister's injuries were consistent with 
damage that had been self-inflicted."

"I am, " I said to the Mooselet, "going to buy you a set of Russian dolls
to show you how lies work."

"Doesn't it seem awfully suspect that your sister shows up today in light
of the information we received yesterday?"

It took me a moment to realize that Scully was referring to her
pregnancy, but subtlety and sneakiness have never been 
my strong points. It was funny how Sam managed to show up right after
we'd gotten an ETA on the stork's next run.  
Funny as a condom with a hole in it.

"Of course it's suspect, it's another plot complication just in case the
custody issue wasn't enough to sustain interest." 

Scully paled and I thought my paranoid hypothesis had made her suffer an
epiphany, but when she bolted for the 
bathroom and I heard the sound of retching I realized it was just nausea.

***

Monday morning came early. Far too early. I usually hung on to sleep with
the tenacity of a rock climber whose safety 
harness had snapped, but for the past few days I'd been awake with the
gray blush of predawn. Maybe there was a 
physiological explanation, the hormones of pregnancy were pretty potent. 
Add the rage and frustration brought by 
Samantha into the mix and I was ready to go up like fuel oil and
fertilizer.

Ingveld was soldering the case of a computer back together when I
stumbled downstairs to check on Warwick.  He was 
sleeping through the noise of Ingveld's construction with the ease of the
young. Unlike the rest of us, she couldn't afford 
to take time off of work every time a monster invaded her life. She was
under deadline for a federal agency whose 
identity she couldn't reveal to us. She didn't have American citizenship
but she had a security clearance; there was 
something wrong with that but Uncle Sam had adopted the philosophy that
if you can't catch 'em, hire 'em. 

"Vill you mind if I attend the trial?" she asked as I collected a few of
Miranda's toys that had migrated to their level of 
the house. "I do not know much about the American justice system, it is
much discussed in Europe but not well 
understood. It seems quite complicated."

I shrugged agreement; Ingveld was mostly harmless and maybe the judge
would like her.  Ingveld was hard not to like.

"Americans are so violent and yet you have so much law, is it not
strange?"

Never one to let a simple rhetorical question go, I reverted to standard
lecture mode. "It's two sides of the same coin, 
we want our own way in everything and so some citizens make the laws for
their own aggrandizement while others 
break them to satisfy their contrary wills. America has a strong
individualist tradition that isn't quite as healthy as many 
people like to believe."

"Perhaps," she conceded. "You have so little trust in one another. I
write the security protocols for one of your 
courthouses, even the guards do not know the right codes to open doors at
night. They must patrol locked in so they do 
not betray their employers. That is the job that brought us here, vhy
Varvick became Miri's nanny," she looked so sad, 
she hadn't even been the one who'd shot Warwick but she felt guilty
because her job had indirectly led him to this 
household of insanity. 

"Ingveld," I said, trying not to sound condescending with my fifty
thousand light years' more experience, "you can't 
blame yourself. You couldn't have known, you couldn't have done anything
but what you did, and Warwick is just happy 
that you're with him. I'm sure he feels that he put you in danger by
being here, but the truth is that no one is to blame 
but the vicious criminal who assaulted you both."

She nodded slowly. "I try to think that. Is that how you feel?"

Well, no one ever said the girl lacked brains. "I try," I admitted.
"Often I ask what I might have done differently. But we 
make our decisions with imperfect knowledge and it's unfair to judge
ourselves entirely by the outcomes of those 
decisions. You and Warwick were caught at the edge of a whirlwind, not of
your own volition, and you should take pride 
in your survival."

Ingveld sighed and looked back at the slumbering man on the bed. "I try
also," she said and I nodded goodbye.

I wondered if Mulder envied the easy unity between them. I certainly did.

While Mulder dressed Miranda in one of the dresses his mother had given
her, which was not unlike stuffing all the 
arms of a large and unhappy octopus into a mesh bag, I grabbed a quick
shower and got dressed for the next set of 
unwelcome guests.  I had styled my hair and was dabbing foundation on the
circles under my eyes when the wave of 
nausea hit me like a tsunami wiping out a small city in Papua New Guinea.
 I leaned over the open toilet and became 
re-acquainted with my breakfast.  Mulder must have heard my un-ladylike
gagging because he burst through the door of 
the bathroom with the subtlety of a SWAT team making a target.

"You okay?"

"I'm fine, Mulder." I spat and choked on bile.

He hovered, an Armani-clad mosquito, buzzing and annoying me. 

"You should have crackers."

"I don't want crackers," I said and flushed the toilet with undue force.

"I'll get you some saltines."

"I don't WANT ANY SALTINES!"

Buzz buzz buzz, he darted around, unsure if he should land and finally
settled on the edge of the bathtub and looked up 
at me with eyes like healing bruises. I ignored him and brushed my teeth
to get the sour taste out of my mouth.
 
"I just want to help," he whined.

"You can go away," I snapped and spit out toothpaste. 

With an injured sniff he left in a cloud of Hugo Boss, which made my
stomach heave again and the entire process was 
repeated sans well-dressed interruptions.  It's a shame that the genetic
experiments of the Project hadn't made it 
possible for the Mulder line to actually bear any of the spawn that they
sired. I certainly would have appreciated it.

We spent the day with Bill's hired dog and pony show, answering loaded
questions (and not with our loaded guns, 
which would have been my preference). Sometimes the ludicrous questions
were the same and sometimes different. 
How did I *feel* about having shot Mulder?  What would we look for in
playmates for Miranda? Did I think that doing 
autopsies made it harder for me to relate to the living? (If it had been
an FBI event I would have said, "Only some of 
them," with a significant look, but I was trying to hide my acid under a
bushel and so I smiled demurely. I think. I don't 
have a terribly good idea what demure looks like, but I think it's a lot
like Mom.)

When they'd gone, we collapsed onto the couch. I felt like I'd been
strapped to an examining table as the doctor brought 
round after round of medical students to examine my exposed innards.
Miranda had come up from Warwick and 
Ingveld's lair and began pulling the candles off the coffee table and
seeing what they tasted like.  I was to tired to stop 
her and I watched thirty dollars worth of natural beeswax alpine flower
pillar candles from Crabtree and Evelyn become 
decorated with dental impressions.

Mulder had a bit more energy than I did and he scooped her up and cuddled
her on his lap. She cooed and batted her 
eyelashes at him.  He couldn't help but smile.  He's such an optimist,
and I mean that in the nicest possible of ways. 
"Can you hold down the fort here for awhile?  I need to run a couple of
errands."
 
"Real errands or Mulder errands, the kind that end up with a trip to the
emergency room?"

He smiled a bigger, genuine smile rather than the smug one that the rest
of the world usually gets.

"Real errands. Suit at the cleaners, diapers, and there's Ben and Jerry's
in it for you if you're a good girl while I'm out."

"Dilbert's Totally Nuts -- the official ice cream of this family."

"The baby is going to think that ice cream is the only food on the
planet."

"At least we'll know where she got the taste for it."

Mulder made no reply but I watched as the tiny capillaries hiding just
under his skin dilated and filled with blood. 

"Why, Fox Mulder," I crowed, "I do believe you're blushing."

Five minutes after he left, Tina called. "Fox isn't here," I said, but
she didn't take the hint.

"I wanted to speak with you, Dana -- I may call you Dana now?"

"Why not, everyone else seems to."

"Meet me at the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia at eight o'clock tomorrow
morning."

"I can't, we have a home visit in the afternoon --"

"There will be plenty of time for that." She hung up. Now I knew where
Mulder got his phone manners.

****

Scully woke me with early morning vomiting, which was apparently being
integrated into SOP, right before brushing her 
teeth and styling her hair.  For a moment, I thought that Catzilla was
coughing up a hairball, but when I realized what 
was going on I stayed put.  Scully was unlikely to ruin the carpet. 
After a few tries at being comforting, I was keeping 
my remaining extremities as far away from her viciousness as possible.
"If you don't want me worrying, you could at 
least close the bathroom door," I suggested from the safety of the bed. 

All I got was a muted snarl. After a few minutes, she did stagger to the
door and shut it with no further comment, a 
disturbing sign in itself. She couldn't keep on like this -- I'd flipped
through enough books to know that we should at 
least consult an OB-GYN if the nausea continued unabated.  There was a
real danger of dehydration.   Not to mention, 
there was still the question of what the lingering residue of her
abduction would do when combined with the multiple 
physiological changes of pregnancy. If Sam had offered to share her
knowledge about *that*, I would have been much 
more tempted to let her slither into our garden.

The clock by the bed asserted that it was nearly five in the morning,
which used to be bedtime but now reminded me 
more of barking my shins on half-hidden objects as I stumbled to feed
Miranda, who would slobber half-asleep in my 
arms. I was not looking forward to replaying those months.

Wait, what was Scully of the snooze alarm doing up at this hour?

"What's going on?" I called, rising and grabbing a pair of shorts from
the floor. "Dana?" I rapped on the door.

She opened the door in my face, her high-gloss finish almost dry, and I
felt so scruffy in comparison that I had to 
suppress the urge to scratch my balls. "I have to go to Philadelphia.
Your mother's got some mysterious information 
she wants to share."

"You could have mentioned this yesterday."

"I'm mentioning it now, telling you yesterday would just have upset you.
Go back to bed."

"The psychologists --"

"I *know*. I'll be back in time. Your mother's not exactly flexible, you
know."

"You're a fine one to talk."

"'I know you are, but what am I?' Go to sleep, M -- Fox, not even the
insult sector of your brain is working."

Befuddled, I ran a hand through my hair. As she dodged past me, I grabbed
her by the elbow and spun her back. Our 
faces almost collided with the momentum of my pull as I opened my mouth
to swap my morning breath for her 
toothpaste. The hint of digestive acid under mint was no worse than it
had been during some of her chemo days.

When I let her go, she reached up a hand to brush my wet lips. The pads
of her fingertips came away stained with pink. 
"How very like you," she said. Her voice was being broadcast from
somewhere beyond the moon.

"Hunh?"

"Fox, sometimes I think you want me to come to you perfect so that you
can see when you've made your mark." She 
found a tissue in her purse and wiped her fingers clean, then handed it
to me. "Save me some lunch, all right?"

***

I was at the museum by 7:50. If I could leave by noon, there was a good
chance I'd make the home visit on time. Tina, 
however, waited until eight exactly to show. The museum wasn't yet open
to the public, but she had a key for a side 
door. She wouldn't answer any of my questions as we walked in.

The Mutter museum is full of medical oddities and the remains of various
deformed creatures, some of them human. I 
thought she had excellent taste to schedule our meeting there.

She led me down a hall, past the woman whose adipose material had
transmuted into something approaching soap, 
past the conjoined fetuses in jars with their faces fused into one
another. Up until a few decades ago, people believed 
that a pregnant woman who saw such things might through her fears
transmit the deformity to the baby budding inside 
her, and I felt a stab of that atavistic superstition. Hell, I couldn't
remember the Mulder boys' birthdays and I had no idea 
how many other Mulderbabies had been cooked up to date -- for all I knew
this one inside me was the seventh son of a 
seventh son and his coming would announce the Apocalypse. Or maybe I was
mixing myths. Nevertheless the fact that 
the museum's current installation featured Siamese/Conjoined twins was
ominous; I felt the dead eyes watching me, 
doubled and doubled again in the ghost reflections against the protective
glass cases.

And then there was the wall of skulls, theoretically showing the
structural differences between nations and ethnic 
groups watching me as a bare bone jury.

Tina led me down a hall, into a small office that smelled of old coffee,
and sat behind the desk, gesturing me to take a 
seat on the other chair that took up almost all of the remaining floor
space.

"In the past few months, I reviewed the files Fox left with me." Her
hands ruffled the surface of the desk, disturbing a few 
papers.

"Five stone killers, a child molester, a prostitute and three who only
hurt themselves. You must be proud of the success 
stories."

"Don't be snide, Dana. In any event you and Fox have killed more people
than any of Fox's brothers."

"Was there a point to this harassment?" I was ready to leave right then,
I could make it back in plenty of time for lunch.

"I've also been reviewing the records of the Project after I left it.
An...old friend let me have them."

I could have said something nasty about the nature of that friendship,
but speculating about your mother-in-law's sex life 
isn't my idea of bonding. "And what have your investigations uncovered?" 

"I believe that, after I left the Project, research went in many
unproductive directions. The original aim was to create 
more robust versions of humanity who could survive whatever plagues and
disasters the Grays could inflict upon us, or 
we could visit upon ourselves. There was some thought that the new breed
should be able to live in irradiated 
environments without significant mutation as well as having heightened
healing powers and resistance to disease.

"But the aim changed over time, to creating new life that would have
capacities known only to legend and fantasy."

"So-called psychic powers." 

Tina nodded shortly. "The theory being, I suspect, that if we could
imagine such powers, there must be a way to bring 
them into existence. The Grays seem to have mental powers that we do not
share, and so the thought was that 
increased hybridization combined with selection of donors who seemed
'sensitive' would create the desired subjects. 
Unfortunately, hybridization is tricky, and human DNA can't take too much
of it. So the results were mainly nonviable or 
short-lived."

Emily, I thought.

"The problem is, there is still a grave threat that the Grays will
attempt to colonize this planet, and we've spent the past 
few decades trying for perfection when we simply needed a viable arsenal.
From what I've deciphered of Samantha's 
notes, her test set down in Austin was an attempt to return to the early
days of the Project and create normal children 
with advanced immune and healing responses in an attempt to counter the
perceived threat of viral or other biological 
attack."

"And you think whoever's left from the organization that was Roush wants
to continue that by gaining access to 
Miranda?"

She nodded again. "I wanted you to come here so that you could look at
something."

Tina swiveled her chair to reach a dusty cabinet and pulled the middle
drawer open. At her behest, I stood and edged 
into the sliver of space between the desk and the opened cabinet, in
which a number of vials rested. "What is this?"

"Smallpox vaccine. I want you to take a dose and give it to Miranda. Just
to be safe."

"How could this -- the CDC should -- " I let myself sputter out. No one
vaccinated for smallpox anymore because it was 
a dead disease. But I knew it had some connection with the Project
because of the smallpox scar markers that Agent 
No-First-Name Pendrell and I had identified, and Mulder had made cryptic
comments in the past that suggested he 
knew more. "I don't understand. If the genetic engineering is designed to
enhance viral resistance, why the need for 
vaccination?"

"The modifications merely enhance the subjects' ability to fight off
infection. Naturally, they don't develop antibodies until 
they're exposed to a disease. And some of the viruses being stockpiled
now are deadly to anyone with no prior 
exposure. Fortunately, I believe that this vaccine resembles the first
cowpox vaccine in that exposure to it will protect 
against the more virulent forms, including the genetically enhanced
supersmallpox." 

As little as I wanted to believe that any group, however power-hungry,
would want to unleash a supervirus on the world, I 
couldn't make Miranda hostage to my skepticism. With trembling fingers, I
reached into the drawer and withdrew two 
vials. Tina gave me a Ginzu-knife look.

"You know, the cancer you suffered from was caused by the manipulation of
your reproductive systems. I don't think 
anyone has the slightest idea what the consequences of a subsequent
pregnancy would be for your remission; the 
Project never tracked such things. I hope you're not going to let Fox get
you pregnant."

I gave her the most unblinking stare in my repertoire. "I can assure you
that the chance of that happening is zero." It 
was true; she *had* put the statement in the future tense.

Tina also gave me a number of Samantha's records. From what I could glean
on a quick readthrough, Sam had been 
following in her mother's obstetric stirrups, abandoning the goal of
creating the half-and-half beings that had led to the 
monstrosities I'd seen in Arizona. Sam's theory seemed to be that alien
DNA should be scattered on top of a human 
genome like chocolate sprinkles on a sundae. This seemed to work with far
less incidence of deformity and nonviability 
than full hybridization -- though the other babies down in Texas had been
stillborn, the autopsies I had performed had 
suggested that they would have lived if their mothers hadn't been
slaughtered.

Sam was trying for a a hardiness that would allow the new beings to
survive under extreme conditions. She wanted it 
all: enhanced general intelligence, survival in baking heat and
Frigidaire cold, resistance to radiation poisoning, 
extended functioning without water and food, and so on. The kids were
supposed to see into the infrared without benefit 
of night vision goggles. If Miranda were actually so equipped, we'd need
to insulate the bedroom a little better.

"I'll need copies of these," I told Tina as I checked my watch. I had
about fifteen minutes to get back on the interstate.

"I can't make any promises. But now you know what you're protecting, and
why."

True, except that nothing she'd shown me had given me that knowledge.

We exited the small room and went back towards the main exhibit hall. The
lower floor, where we were, was dimly lit 
and crowded with funhouse exhibits, while the J. Everett Koop Family
Health Center, beyond the brass and cherry wood 
display of the nineteenth century, was white and shiny as an
orthodontist's favorite smile with high-tech displays about 
modern medicine. It seemed fitting to be down in the atavistic depths of
the museum where conspiracies and 
messiness lived along with the two headed baby skeletons and the plaster
death cast of the torsos of Chang and Eng.

The first shot exploded a display case over Tina's right shoulder,
filling the hallway with the stench of preservatives and 
corruption. Slick gray fluid gushed over my calves as I dropped to the
floor and struggled to find cover. The shot came 
from upstairs -- I'd been wrong about the moral division between above
and below.

Kneeling in a shooting stance, I stuck my face and my gun around the
corner of the wooden case I was using for cover. 
The whine of a bullet drove me back. One shooter, it sounded like, but
there could be others.

Where was Tina? Shit, if I got her killed it would be Mulder's father all
over again.

"Mrs. Mulder?"

A nervous ladylike laugh came from about ten feet down the hall past the
display case that was protecting me. "Call me 
Tina." With a crash the glass in my case disintegrated, dumping shards
all over the floor. Jars of deformed human 
organs scattered like gumballs. The one that bumped my knee held an ear
attached to a vestigal third eye, milky with 
death. Agitated, its fine fringe of lashes bobbed as if it were winking
at me.

This was an untenable position; all the gunman had to do was walk along
the gallery upstairs until he had the right 
angle, like shooting abductees in a barrel. I bolted towards the corner
of the room, hearing glass shatter as I dodged 
past the case that held a small intestine the size of a baby elephant. I
slammed into the far wall because I had too 
much forward momentum to make the turn on my own and clung to the side of
the case filled with preserved animal and 
human brains to prevent myself from sliding to the floor.

After a moment spent regaining my balance, I spun and scanned for the
shooter. I couldn't see anyone on the upper 
level from my vantage point. If he were still in his old position, we
were now at a ninety degree angle from one another. I 
wished very much for an M-16, which would allow me to get under him and
make the floor into a cheese grater; 
unfortunately even with my extra clip I doubted I had enough ammo for the
job.

Now what? Continuing forward was the natural move, but he could shoot me
as easily as I could shoot him once we 
saw each other again. I had few hopes that the cavalry would arrive; they
so rarely did. "Dana," Tina's panicky voice 
shrilled out, "he's coming for me!"

Decision made. I sprinted back to the misnamed small intestine, pushing
over the velvet-roped barriers that prevented 
people from getting too close in an attempt to create some distracting
movement. I caught a flash of a slim dark figure 
with a rifle on the upper level before I dropped to my knees behind the
center display case featuring  the skeletons of a 
giant man and a dwarfed woman along with the crushed-skull skeleton of
the baby she had died trying to deliver.  If I 
hadn't been so concentrated on Tina and the shooter, the resemblance to
the "family" unit in the case would have 
brought my morning sickness back with a vengeance.

"Dana!" Her voice was a wail now. 

I took a deep breath and ran out into the open, firing up at the upper
level almost at random. The shooter spun and 
dropped back behind a glowing model of a diseased lung and I jumped in
front of Tina, shielding her with my body which 
was only possible because she was huddled into a fetal crouch. 

Our nemesis popped back up like a Whack-a-Mole, swinging the rifle back
to face us. Then, inexplicably, he tilted it up, 
away from me, and from fifty feet away I could see his mouth forming
curses.

I took aim and prepared to take advantage of his sudden hesitation when a
hot fingernail scratched my shoulder and the 
gunman crumpled and hit the banister. His rifle went over first as his
grip on it relaxed, and then he tumbled over, 
slamming into the marble floor with redundantly killing force.

I turned around.

Tina Mulder, looking not at all like a woman who'd just been screeching
helplessly, put her tiny Smith & Wesson back 
into her purse and blinked up at me. "Help me up," she requested, "My
joints aren't what they used to be."

I held out my hand and we rose together. I think she liked me more when I
didn't comment on her aim. She'd sliced a 
nice tear in my jacket with the bullet, but the skin underneath was only
burned to a gardening-in-the-sun level.

The dead man's face, when I examined it, was as surprised as mine. I
don't really need to explain that he wasn't 
carrying ID, do I?

"I need to go," I said, "the authorities will be here soon and I can't be
cooped up answering questions from the locals 
while psychologists judge my fitness in abstentia."

"I'll take care of it. I have . . . friends here."

"So you've said, but it seems that your friends may be carrying some
concealed grudges."

"I doubt my friends are behind this -- you noticed that he wasn't
supposed to shoot *you*. With you dead, Fox would be 
a very sympathetic widower in court."

How reassuring to think that my enemies would guard my physical safety
because I was more useful to them alive to 
be vilified. 

Tina smiled at me knowingly. "Go on, get to your appointment. I'll be in
touch."

I left her as she produced a cellphone from her surprisingly well-stocked
purse and began dialing.

Fighting my way out of the city, I pondered Tina's cautionary advice
about pregnancy. My thoughts kept circling around 
the worst of cliches, which were Mulderishly suggestive in this context
-- horses, barn doors, and all that. It wasn't as if 
visiting my friendly neighborhood Planned Parenthood would eliminate the
risk. Some studies have suggested a 
connection between abortion and breast cancer, the theory being that
pregnancy causes breast cells to begin 
differentiation and the interruption of pregnancy prevents natural
shutoff signals from being properly processed, so the 
cells proliferate without regulation, which is the definition of cancer.
If my nasopharyngeal tumor was the result of 
reproductive invasions, then the same process might operate for it. So,
while Tina might be right that pregnancy was a 
special health hazard for me, a return to eating for one might be even
more dangerous.

Not to mention the fact that I had no idea what Marita had done to me to
restore my fertility. Either she'd somehow 
managed to generate germ cells from other cells with a full chromosome
complement, or she'd taken the pattern of a 
few straggler eggs that had missed the earlier vacuuming and replicated
them. It was possible that one or two had been 
left behind, perhaps because they were malformed and stuck to the walls
of my ovaries. God, this child had more 
strikes against it than the Phillies.

If Tina mentioned any of this to Mulder, he'd throw a tantrum that would
cause Miranda to give up the habit in defeat. 
Maybe we could keep his mother away from us for another year and just
pretend the stork brought the next one, or that 
we found it in some other kidnapped woman's womb.
 
Oddly enough, as I drove back, I thought about the cabinet in the lower
level of the Mutter Museum, the one that held, in 
low, flat drawers, all the objects that a nose and throat specialist had
removed from his patients' stomachs and nasal 
cavities through the years of his practice.  Everything was in that
cabinet, from apple seeds to tiny toy zebras.  I 
wondered if he had unwittingly removed an implant or two and caused a
female patient to die from the engineered 
cancer.



Iolokus IV: Res Judicata
8/18

Did she break you did she 
Break your heart 
And break your bones 
And tear your life apart?
Forget the ice cream, it was really just a whim 
Fumble as I try to back out the same way I came in
	The Charms

While Scully was having her covert meeting with my mother in
Philadelphia, I had arranged a covert meeting of my own.

With the Mooselet in her stroller, I couldn't very well expect the Park
Ranger at the FDR Memorial to believe that I was 
on duty and to forestall any problems with the fact that I had my sidearm
shoved in the waist of my jeans, I showed him 
my ID which he examined briefly but seemed more interested in the
Mooselet.  He crouched until they were face to face 
and she grabbed the brim of his Smokey the Bear hat.

"An' what's your name?" he asked in deep Southern.

She smiled and batted her eyes at him, the little flirt.

"Miranda."  I explained.

"That makes you Prospero, huh?"

"Something like that."

"You gonna' be an FBI Agent when you grow up?" he asked her.

God, I hoped not.

She giggled and flirted away from him and gave him a sideways look that
would get her into shitloads of trouble when 
she got older.  

"You're gonna' be beatin' 'em off with a stick when she's a teenager."

"I'm looking into convents now."

"Y'all have a good day."

Bill was standing near the statue of the first dog with Matthew in his
stroller.  Showdown with babies.  Ten paces and 
the one with the dirtiest diaper wins.

"Bill."

"Fox."
 
Now, I had never given him permission to use my first name and this
started the unplanned and rapid decent into 
terrain.

"I shouldn't be talking to you without my attorney present," he began,
"this is probably illegal."
 
"I just wanted to ask you why you suddenly took such an interest in
Miranda after almost ten months."

Matthew looked at me with a dull expression.  The Mooselet looked up at
my face as if to say; "I'm related to that?  
You've got to be joking."

"I saw the tape.  I know what my sister did.  She's dangerous and it's
all because of you."

I sucked in a breath.  Bill was like any of the worst fanatics I had ever
come across, fixated on a single concept and 
unwilling to even consider alternatives.  Not unlike Scully in that
respect, but at least she had the intellectual/academic 
interest to listen to a well-structured argument, even if the chance of
changing her mind was nil.  Even in a polo shirt 
and chinos, Bill still looked like he was in uniform and had the posture
of a man with a yardstick well and truly rammed 
up his ass.

"How did you get the tape, Bill?  Was it in the Barney videotape jacket?"

He sniffed and looked over to where the Ranger was politely chasing
children out of the pool at the bottom of the 
waterfall.

"It was forwarded to me with a note suggesting that my niece was in
danger.  I am concerned about her welfare, Fox, 
although you don't want to believe it."

"Be concerned with your sister's welfare as well.  This suit is not
exactly causing a stress-free environment.  She was 
happy until this all started.  It would be unreasonable of me to suggest
that she's finding total fulfillment in motherhood - 
Dana's too complicated a person for a simple answer - but she is content
and we're building a home for both Miranda 
and Dana."

"I don't care what your rental shrinks say.  You have caused my sister
nothing but trouble and pain since she  started 
working with you and no rose-covered cottage is going to change the fact
that *you* have ruined her life.  I care about 
my sister, I care about her and my niece enough to want both of them away
from you and your crazy theories and the 
stupid, dangerous things that you do.  Dana won't listen to reason and
Miranda isn't old enough to make up her own 
mind.  The baby is the only one that I can protect."

"You can't protect Miranda!  Jesus, Bill you're at sea half the year! 
How is Tara going to cope if something happens?!" 
My voice and blood pressure were shooting into the stratosphere. "You
have no idea what you're talking about.  Men 
with guns, men who blow up cars and murder children and adults.  Is Tara
going to be able to protect Miranda and 
Matthew when a dozen men with machine guns show up at the door?  She
can't!  They'll kill her and they'll kill 
Matthew."

"You're crazy."

"If I thought for a minute that you could keep Miranda safer than I can,
I'd let you have her.  But you can't protect her."

"From enemies in your imagination.  You're a danger to your daughter and
my sister."

Attracted by the shouting, the Park Ranger drifted closer.  He knew I had
a gun, and was no doubt concerned that I was 
going to pull it on my dickhead brother-in-law. Not that I wasn't
tempted.  By that time was I shaking and stuttering with 
anger and any information I had imagined that I was going to get from
Bill was shot to hell by our mutual animosity club.  

"This is bullshit.  I'll see you in court," I snarled and turned the
stroller around on two wheels.

The Mooselet squealed with joy as we fled to the far end of the Memorial
and the Park Ranger trailed us at a discreet 
distance.  I knew what he was thinking -- DISTRAUGHT FBI AGENT SHOOTS
DAUGHTER, SELF IN FDR MEMORIAL, 
imagining his fifteen minutes.  I let him down, however, when I wheeled
the stroller out of the Memorial and onto the 
grass of the Mall.  There were a variety of picnickers and other family
groups lounging on the grass in cozy little knots.  
I imagined that someday Scully and I, the Mooselet, and the Baby to Be
Named Later, would be one of those groups, 
flying kites, eating cold fried chicken, and spreading sunscreen on each
other in America's front yard.

Bill was right, I had only managed to screw up Scully's life from the
moment that I had met her, but this was the chance 
that I had to make things right.  The only three good things in my life
were Scully, the Mooselet, and whoever was 
growing inside Scully even as the flags around the base of the Washington
Monument fluttered, and I was not going to 
let Bill, Roush, or Samantha take any of that away from me.

****

Even though I failed to respect the speed limits in any of the
jurisdictions I traversed -- it was such a relief to be 
Mirandaless and able to hit the gas -- I arrived back at the house after
the psychologists. This set was supposed to be 
friendly; we were paying them, anyway. But I suspected that showing up
late was still a bad idea. They were sitting 
inside, watching as Mulder and Miranda played out on the porch.

Unnoticed, I ran upstairs and got into my Mommy drag. Jeans, pink T-shirt
with smiling teddy bears on it, pink socks 
and white canvas sneakers.  I shoved my hair into an untidy clump at the
back of my head, secured it with a flowered 
scrunchie and reflected that it was only for a good cause that I was
wearing clothes from Wal-Mart.  The jeans were 
huge with the hope that I'd be able to wear them for more than a week or
two.  Now that I was aware of my impregnated 
situation, I found myself monitoring my waistline on an almost hourly
basis.  With my height and build, it was going to 
be impossible to keep this under cover very long.  I gave my hair one
last tug for that mommified (mummified?) look and 
groaned at my reflection. Exit Special Agent Dana Scully and enter Yuppie
Mom.
 
Jesus, the things I do . . .

I hurried downstairs and onstage.

Mulder had gotten out one of Miranda's wooden pull toys, a Crayola-red
dragon with yellow and green spikes and a 
lolling mouth that opened and shut as it moved. Miranda was dragging it
back and forth on the floor by tugging on its 
string and then pushing it away so it headed behind Mulder's body. When
it went out of Miranda's range of vision, she 
squealed with mingled pleasure and anxiety. Then she'd bring it back and
gabble with glee as if she'd never seen it 
before. Back and forth, as monotonously as that strange British
television show she watched where the puppets did 
everything twice. I shook my head, convinced more than ever that children
were the real space aliens.

"Having fun?" I knelt nearby to join them, but made no move to edge close
enough to force him to move. I didn't want to 
get into an argument while the psychologists were watching.

Mulder never looked up, apparently fascinated by Miranda's game. I
shouldn't be surprised -- this was a man who 
enjoyed watching baseball, a game with slightly less variation than
Miranda's diversion. "Sure -- this is your basic 
fort/da game, Freud wrote about it and then Lacan really took the ball
and ran with it. The object represents the 
mother's body -- psychoanalysis isn't big on gender neutrality -- and the
idea is that it's the child's attempt to work 
through the anxiety of separation from the mother by exercising control
over the representative object. It's a first step 
into the symbolic sphere, the first story she ever tells herself."

I scrutinized him. He seemed completely serious. "Couldn't we just play
pattycake or something?"

"Just be grateful we don't live in New York. There, the waiting list for
the better preschools starts at conception. We'd 
have to do flashcards, make sure she knew her multiplication tables
before she finished toilet training."

As if she'd understood us, Miranda stopped the game, gave us both
assessing looks, and then her face pinked like a 
blooming rose. The resultant smell was anything but rosy.

We looked at each other. "Your turn," we said simultaneously and I had to
smile. 

I did take her upstairs in the end, followed by the quartet at a discreet
distance.  Miranda didn't help matters by waving 
at them.  She'd started waving a day or two earlier and practiced her new
skill on everyone and everything.  Catzilla 
made a kamikaze run at my legs as I reached the baby gate at the top of
the stairs and I had to make a grab for the 
banister and nearly dropped the baby in the process. Jarred, she let out
a screech and grabbed at my hair with more 
strength than an adult.

"Shhh," I said, trying to sound soothing rather than the one that needed
to be soothed, but she started wailing, the 
combination of strangers, dirty diaper, and my own fear making her
unsettled.

Somehow I made it into the nursery and plunked her down on the changing
table.  I unsnapped the crotch of her overalls 
and pulled the denim back.  She promptly grabbed the flapping fabric and
began to examine the snaps.  The diaper 
shredded in my hands and I almost gagged.  The sweet little bundle of joy
was caked with fecal matter from her navel 
down to her knees.  I surmised that she must have moved her bowels before
the smell escaped and had managed to 
squirm around enough to get herself coated.  This was well beyond the
ability of mere baby wipes to handle.  I needed a 
biohazard team, preferably with a helmet and breathing mask for myself.  

Miranda started to wail again, louder than the chorus in Aida, her face
going brilliant red with effort.

I pitched the dirty diaper into the pail and carried her, at arm's
length, into the bathroom; the psychologists scattered 
like frightened birds. Let them run: I am a pathologist, I've dissected
people from throat to anus. I've autopsied an 
elephant from inside. Miranda smelled bad, and she didn't look too fresh
either, but if I could just keep her *happy* there 
was nothing to fear except a bad report card.

In the bathroom, I filled the sink with body-temperature water and
stripped off her clothes, managing to get her mess all 
over my first sweatshirt of the day.  I scraped off the majority of the
mess with toilet paper and threw it in the toilet.  
Then I sat her in the sink and washed her with the hypoallergenic soap
that Mulder bought for her.  I was worried about 
e.coli infections so I made sure that I carefully washed every nook and
cranny of her pink little folds and fat wrinkles.  
With my luck, the psychologists would think that I was being unduly
sexual with her and I could feel my face burn at 
the public display of my ineptness.  Miranda kept screaming at full
volume.

I felt like I was flunking a lab practical in baby hygiene.

I towel-dried her and plopped her naked and pink onto a bath towel and
scrubbed the sink out with bleach-fortified 
cleanser.  I had to stop twice to keep her from playing with the toilet
brush.  I gave her a rubber duck from her stock of 
bath toys and that seemed to satisfy her.  Once the bathroom was cleaned
up, I scooped Miranda up and trucked her 
back into the nursery where I re-dressed her in a green and patchwork
onesie and brushed her hair.  In the past few 
weeks, her hair was getting thicker and darker, and was even starting to
hang over her forehead like Mulder's. This 
annoyed me to no end so I dabbed a little of Mulder's mousse on her
forelock and combed it back into a curl before 
anchoring it with a green plastic barrette the shape of a seahorse too
big for her to swallow.  The barrette was a little off-
center, but at least I could see her eyes.

She looked at me with utter amazement.  No matter what magic Mulder could
do with the dragon, I could make her hair 
disappear!  She looked down at her legs, registering that they were
covered with different fabric, even patting one 
chubby thigh to make certain, and looked back up at me.  Holding up her
arms to be picked up, Miranda blew Laura's 
carefully constructed guise of normalcy.

"Lee! " she demanded, "Lee!  Lee Lee Lee Lee Lee!"

Not mama, not ma, not mom, but 'Lee', which was as close to her nine
month old mouth could get to 'Scully'.  I picked 
her up and took her downstairs.  She might have been wide-awake and ready
for another round of developmental theory 
play with Mulder, but I was ready for a nap.

****

"What was that shit?" Laura was pissed, seriously pissed, and her voice
was high and whiny.

"What are you talking about?"

"That Freud bullshit. Look, I don't care how inferior you make the
average person feel in casual conversation, but these 
people are going to be reporting to the court. You want them on your
side, not resentful and vindictive because you 
made them look dumb. These fellows were ours and we don't have to use
them if they don't make you look good, but I 
want you to *behave* and act like a normal father, to the extent that you
can."

"Ah, there's just one thing."

"What?" she snarled, sounding almost as pissy as Scully could get. Maybe,
I thought, it's me.

"I don't exactly know what a normal father is like."

"Go watch some reruns of the Cosby Show," she ordered and pivoted on her
heel to leave.

Stung, I locked the front door behind her and set the alarms before
starting my nightly rounds.  Downstairs, Warwick 
had become one with his PC and was doing the Java jam with his headset
on.  Through the quiet of the rest of the 
house, I heard the dentist drill whine of Kraftwerk.  On the sofa,
Ingveld was curled up in a ball with her hands, marked 
with festive menhdi, folded under her cheek.  Out of reflex, I pulled the
afghan off the back of the sofa and settled it over 
her body.  Warwick didn't move his gaze from the monitor.  Catzilla
caught up with me in the living room and began 
rubbing amorously around my calves, his tail wrapping around my leg in
the feline equivalent of a hug.  I picked him up 
and he draped himself over my shoulder with his paws brushing my back. 
Thus loaded, I trudged upstairs.  

The Mooselet was sleeping on her face like a shrimp again, in the pool of
light from the nightlight on her dresser.  I 
didn't want to wake her up, but I turned her on her back anyway to
decrease the risk of SIDS. She didn't even twitch.  
The additional people hanging around the house had kept her in
performance mode all day and she had fallen asleep in 
her high chair between mouthfuls of spaghetti.  I knew exactly how she
felt.  It had been just about all I could handle to 
shovel the dishes into the dishwasher and close the kitchen for the
night.

I found Scully lying on her stomach crossways on the bed, her feet still
sheathed in her much-hated sneakers hanging 
off the edge.  I think she could have dealt with the whole makeover in
good grace if it hadn't been for the sacrifice of her 
lethal shoes. I put Catzilla down on the pillow and he promptly went over
and sniffed her hair, which was his way of 
taking her emotional temperature.  Apparently it wasn't good, as he
raised himself up on his toes and arched his back 
like a Halloween decoration and skittered across the bed to the
nightstand, where he began checking to see if my 
glasses had play value.

"I made a complete fool out of myself today. The psychologists now know
exactly what an inept parent I am," she 
muttered into the comforter.

"Many have fallen before the horror of a diaper."

"Yes but I should have handled it better." She was looking at her hands
again, twisting the rings as if they were pimples 
she couldn't bring herself to pop.

I understood about needing to be the best at the job, whatever it was.
But taking care of a child quickly disabuses you 
of the idea that you *can* be the best. If Scully still thought that she
needed to do it perfectly or not at all, there was a 
good chance she'd be hitting the road within days.

I reached out to flick her shoes off and began to rub her left foot
through the sock. When I dug my thumb into her arch 
she shuddered and flexed her hands against the comforter.

"My shirt is ruined," she commented distantly as I sat down facing away
from her and tugged to get both her feet in my 
lap. "The stain won't budge."

I responded with a general sound to indicate I was paying attention
without expressing an opinion. I guessed from prior 
experience that the shirt could be saved, Zoula at the dry cleaners was
Romanian and I'm pretty sure that witchcraft 
was part of the service.

The HEPA filter in the corner gave out a whoosh of fresh air guaranteed
to blanket the room with a layer of white noise 
(courtesy of an upgrade from Frohike) to befuddle any prying ears and we
could talk in private.

"What did you find out?" I asked.

"Roush wants Miranda back as the only living survivor of the newest
generation of alien-influenced humans. Actually 
she's retro, she's like you and Samantha -- fewer genetic modifications,
no green pustules, no toxic blood. They're 
trying to go back to basics because it was a success."

"If you call George, Jason, and the rest of the freak show a success."

"Genetically it was a success.  What fell apart was the nurturing of the
infants as they grew, Darien's all right, 
Emerson's overcome his environment and you're all right."

"That's debatable." In a way Emerson was the worst news of all: It's not
so bad to have eight loser brothers if that 
makes you the best one, but Emerson had survived worse than me and he had
turned out better. Not only was he 
sweet and kind but he had also made ten million dollars churning out
software before I darkened Bill Patterson's 
doorstep. Some might find that intimidating, but I've lived with low self
esteem for a while.

Scully's tiny feet twitched under my hands. "I have some of Samantha's
records, I haven't read through them yet, and I 
also have two vials of what is allegedly smallpox vaccine suitable to
protect Miranda from genetically engineered 
viruses. I think I should vaccinate her."

"You trust my mother?" Let's face it, standard in-law jokes weren't
really sufficient to cover the situation.

"No, but I think she's telling the truth about the vaccine. Her story
about your enhanced resistance to disease jibes with 
what we already know about your swift healing and may also help explain
why you didn't die in Russia like so many of 
your co-test subjects."

"If you think it's a good idea," I moved up to her calves and she
groaned, whether at the massage or at my submission 
to her recommendation I'm not sure.

She twisted away from me and sat up, bringing her knees to her chest as
she scrunched up against the headboard.  I 
caught her ankles in my hands and slid her back down the bedspread, and
she looked at me as though I'd pulled her 
tail.  A little more roughly than I should have, I plunked her feet back
into my lap and started working on her instep 
again.  Noticing that when I touched her instep her toes spread out from
the hard ball of her foot like Miranda's did 
something that made it hard for me to swallow.

"I talked to the Gunmen and they've managed to track down some of the
scientists that used to work for Roush," I told 
her and peeled off her socks and found her toenails cherry cough drops. 
"I thought I would go and see if they had any 
connections with Bill or were continuing any of the human genetic
projects."

"*You're* going to find them?  Leaving me here with Miranda and the
press?  I'm now a weak and helpless woman 
because I'm *gestating*?  As if that lowers my IQ or efficiency rating?"
her voice began to get harder and staccato, 
which is the Scully version of getting shrill.

Sometimes I wished she'd get shrill just for variety.

Catzilla picked up on her tone and fled underneath the bed.

"Hey, hey, " I warned, walking my hands up her hips to where I could grab
the belt loops of her jeans, "you're still 
suspended for shooting George.  We can't both go - Warwick can't *lift*
the Mooselet yet and Ingveld works all day.  
You stay here and run interference with the lawyers and the evaluators. 
I'll take Zippy and it will be fine."

"You are *ditching* me."

She got a stranglehold on the unbuttoned Henley neck of my shirt, which
hurt my still-healing neck and reminded me of 
the many circles of hell that the genetic manipulators had put us
through. I didn't like the look in her eye, it reminded 
me of Texas, Arizona and when things had been as bleak as a desert
landscape.  

"I'm telling you what I'm doing.  That does not constitute a ditch." I
put a hand on her breast. Obviously, massage was 
not doing the trick.

She turned her head away from my questing mouth. "Let's not do this," she
mumbled.

"Do what?" I was now up on one knee above her and if sexual activity
didn't commence shortly I was in severe danger of 
falling over.

"Is this how you want Miranda to settle *her* disagreements?"

I released her instantly and rolled to sit alongside her. "You're good."

"Thanks." She almost smiled.

"If I get delayed it's not so bad, but you've *got* to show up for all
these appointments. I promise I'll be good, Velcro my 
cellphone to my jacket, duck when I see the punch coming, all the things
I never do."

The corners of her lush little mouth drew further together. "Could I talk
you into an electronic monitoring device?"

"Matching leashes for me and Miranda?"

She arched a rusty parenthetical eyebrow. As far as I knew she was taking
the proposition under advisement.

"I want a phone call every three hours or I'm coming out there."

I grinned raffishly at her. "So, now can we have sex?"

She snorted. "I'm not sure that's such a good idea, I think I'm going to
start a diet."

"Dana, food products are so *yesterday*. Why can't you live in the
*now*?"

The first actual smile I'd seen in days graced her lips. "Actually I have
a present for you." She scooted to the edge of 
the bed and jumped off, shedding her sweatshirt as she went.

A large flat object covered by a sheet was propped against the wall. I'd
vaguely noticed it when I'd entered, but Scully's 
emotional state had been at Defcon One and I hadn't devoted any
brainpower to it.

"I ordered a full length mirror for the closet," she said, tugging at the
sheet so that it pooled onto the floor, "but I thought 
we might try it out before it gets permanently installed." Lengthwise
against the wall, the mirror was longer than she 
was tall and about two and a half feet wide.

It took me a few seconds to figure out her intent, and then I thought I'd
been abducted and the aliens were feeding me 
fantasies to get my seed. She looked at my gape and shrugged. "If you're
not interested . . ."

"No!" I squawked. "I mean, yes! Yes!" Way to go, Molly Bloom, I thought
to myself but we were married now and 
theoretically I no longer needed to impress her with my cool.

Standing on the fallen sheet, she tugged at her scrunchie, which pushed
her breasts out and made my dick throb as if 
she were pulling pasties off of her nipples. Through a smog of lust, I
watched as she undressed and followed her lead.

She laid down on the sheet (clever Scully, no rugburn, I thought) and
turned on her side to peruse her naked body in the 
mirror. "Well?" she asked and ran her hand over her breast, as if to see
what it looked like.

I could have told her: it looked good. I shed my clothes as if ejecting
from a doomed fighter plane and joined her so that 
I could see us both in the mirror. 

Not without regret, I decided to skip going down on her, which wouldn't
provide much extra visual stimulation.

Slipping down behind her, I reached a hand around and watched as the
devilishly handsome man in front of me 
squeezed his partner's breast. She pushed her head against his marred
chest and the soundtrack added a soft sigh. I 
could feel her humid skin along my body as I watched her breasts flush
and swell under my hand.

I pried her up so that I could get one hand underneath and around to
pinch the nipple closest to the floor. My other hand 
dove between her legs and I watched her legs part. While I wouldn't
recommend red on pink as a fashion statement 
ordinarily, on Scully it drew me like an insect to a full-bloomed flower.
The mirror showed a man's fingers disappearing 
inside his lover, then slowly returning, slippery and glistening. I
repeated the motion because it looked so good. And 
again, so slowly that she tried to push against the bunched-up sheet to
urge me on faster.

Her legs scissored closed around my hand, trapping me in her hot
butterscotch depths. It felt good, like my hand was 
being melted down to blackened bone, but it obscured the view and so I
tugged my hand out, trailing heat and wet down 
her thighs.

I could see her reflection looking up at mine as I stared at her
mirror-face. My doppelganger was busy coveting the real 
Scully as she watched me. This cat's cradle of gazes was somehow less
raw, less painful, than directly watching one 
another.

Time for action. With both of my hands, I tugged at her shoulders to get
her up on her hands and knees. The reflection 
prevented her from hiding the momentary hesitation that swept over her
features like a flash fire, but she gamely braced 
herself against the slip-sliding sheet and allowed me to observe her.

I pulled her elbows back a little so that they didn't obscure my sight
line for her breasts. Stretched by gravity, tight little 
nipples stabbing downwards, they were unutterably gorgeous, and my hands
trembled with the memory of touching 
them.

With a clumsy paw I scraped the hair from her neck, directing it all to
the side so that in the mirror her face was framed 
by a gleaming magician's curtain. In profile her face was as perfect as a
Greek statue's. She was Galatea in reverse: 
my love for her had made her stone.

But she wasn't stone now. Not when she was surging back against me with a
hungry growl as I stared. Her breasts 
swung with the motion and I grabbed at this newly legitimate fruit,
keeping one hand on the ground so that I wouldn't 
crush her.

The mirror-Scully's eyes were wide and pleading. It couldn't be real, the
real woman would never willingly make herself 
so vulnerable, but the movie playing behind the silvered glass was
convincing and I lowered my head to her neck, still 
watching the show. The man in the mirror was draped over her body like a
rowdy fur coat. He reached in between his 
partner's legs to rub the head of his cock against her. 

"Please- " the doppelganger woman in the mirror moaned.

And she was hot-wet but the films are always cool and dry. The film was
still playing and I was watching it and acting it 
out, following the lead of the man in the mirror, thrusting slowly,
watching her vertebrae shake and the red brand on her 
back shimmer as she sucked in air.

 "Please  -  harder -  faster - more - " the woman begged on broken gasps
between the hungry thrusting of the man.

The line of her body was still catlike but the pride had fled in the
desperate overriding want to be fucked.  Her head was 
raised, her hair flaming and her ass was raised high in the air like she
was in heat.  The man, he was watching my 
Scully with such consumptive passion that I thought he might break the
wall between us and seize her.

No. He couldn't have her, nobody could have her but me. No image, no
brother, no enemy or friend would take her 
away. I think I was saying all this but I can't be sure because I was
convulsing deep inside the wet tight depths of her 
like an electrocuted fish, hanging on to the soft chamois covered bone of
Scully's hips to keep myself on the planet.

When I collapsed on her, she lost stability and sank to the ground
underneath me. I had enough higher brain function 
remaining to push my hand towards the general area of her clitoris and
let her grind against me until she came as well 
with a wail that sounded more like pain than pleasure, her body
stretching out as the shocks raced through her, her 
throat white as a line of frost through the wave of her hair. As a
result, she didn't push me off, despite the fact that I 
must have felt like 10 G's on her back. When sanity returned, I rolled
off to the side so that I wouldn't kill her. 

"Dana?" I panted, spooning up against her back so that I could see her
body stretched out like the naked Maja as her 
sweat cooled on my skin.

She tilted her head up. In the mirror, I could see the feather fall of
her hair as it hit the sheet beside her ear. "Mmm?"

"Order another mirror, leave this one here."

She chortled and then yawned. Evidently I'd worn her out. Well, a short
hospital stay for convalescence purposes 
wouldn't be out of place on my end, either.

"Dana?"

"Unh?"

"Did I mention I bought a video camera?"

I know she was tired because she gave a bark of laughter and then rolled
over, obscuring her silver-backed competition. 
"We should get in bed or you'll be too stiff to sit in your seat
tomorrow." She rose, wobbling only slightly, and gave me a 
hand up.

We'd made up too well, now I didn't want to leave her side. Or her legs,
or her breasts, or the mirror. I clutched her to 
me like an insecurity blanket and slept.



Iolokus IV: Res Judicata
9/18

Stretch your eyes a little closer
I'm not between you and your ambition.
I am a poster girl with no poster
I am thirty two flavors and then some.
	Ani DiFranco

It was a tough call to make, figuring out what I was going to wear to the
Hoover Building while toting a baby.  A suit was 
out, as Miranda had a tendency to really pump out the fluids and food
crumbs with vigor on anything with a Dry Clean 
Only tag.  I was also technically suspended for shooting George Naxos,
and ostensibly going in to update HR on my 
recent change of marital status.  Or was that martial? I settled for a
white cotton oxford-style shirt and a pair of chinos.  
All I needed was a tie and I would have looked like I was waiting tables
at Friday's.  The buttons on the shirt were just 
on the right side of stretching over my swelling breasts. I had to blouse
out the shirt over my straining waistband and 
reflected that I had a week or two before I had to start replacing my
wardrobe in earnest.  My leftover 'fat' wardrobe was 
starting to run out.

Miranda took up her car screaming the minute I pulled out of the driveway
and I popped my old Abba Gold tape in the 
cassette player. That seemed to placate her enough for me to drive
without killing both of us.  I parked in the garage 
under the building and hoisted Miranda on my hip and her diaper bag over
my shoulder.  Thank God, Mulder's idea of a 
diaper bag was a worn computer satchel rather than something covered with
frolicking bunnies.  I didn't think that I 
could have handled that at all.  The trip to Human Resources was fairly
painless, since I hardly knew any of the clerks; 
they accepted the fact that I was toting a baby as commonplace.  

Miranda was passed through the clerks, male and female alike, letting
them cuddle her and coo at her while she smiled 
and cooed back with the feigned sincerity of a politician.  Of course,
I'd rather she walk the streets as a career rather 
than seek public office.  I was touched to notice that each time she was
passed over to another person, she looked to 
me for reassurance.  I'd been reading Mulder's child development texts
behind his back and now knew that she was 
exhibiting the classic insecure bonding behaviors which was common for
children with working parents. Had she not 
been bonded at all, she would have been more anxious and begun to fuss or
whine since she would have believed that 
she was in danger of being left with strangers.  On the other hand, she
was far better bonded to both Mulder and 
Warwick than she was to me, which was understandable since I'd only been
with her full-time for about a month after 
six away and she didn't trust me 100% yet.  She wouldn't be the only one.

No one was surprised that I wasn't changing my last name.  I had the
suspicion that the official policy was that one 
Mulder on the payroll was more than enough.  Let me amend that, one
Mulder pushing the boundaries of the health 
care plan was more than enough.  My now-husband probably had his own
commemorative file drawer between the 
commendations and chastisements that he had accumulated through his
tenure.

After the paperwork was done, I took Miranda up to the executive level
and gathered myself to face the lion in his den.  
Kimberly greeted me with open-mouthed shock, which she quickly covered
with an embarrassed smile.  

"The e-mail just came through from Human Resources," she said and turned
a darker shade of rose, "I guess I should 
say congratulations."

Her happiness was feigned, I knew.  The water cooler rumor for years had
been that she had a thing for Mulder.  
Frankly, I was pretty sure he had encouraged her office crush as a means
to get better access to Skinner.  This 
willingness to use his good looks and charm to get what he wanted was not
one of Mulder's more attractive character 
traits.  We were going to have to talk about this.  One of the things we
had not discussed was how much of the 
marriage was going to be a legal fiction and how much was not.  Maybe I
was being sensitive since I was looking at 
being the size of South America come fall.

"Thanks.  Is the AD in?"

She hit the intercom and I was admitted to the Inner Sanctum in short
order.

I don't think that Skinner expected me to bring Miranda with me since he
looked at her as though I was carrying an 
armful of biological waste rather than a small human being. 
Unaccountably, this irritated me.  Skinner stood and shook 
my hand, eyeing me with an expression of distrust as though either
Miranda or myself were going to make a mess on 
his nice beige carpet.  Hell, I'd been toilet-trained for years and I'd
gotten quite good at throwing up into trash cans when 
the morning sickness hit.  I sat in the visitor chair and Miranda stood
up on my legs to tug at my hair and stare at the 
shiny-headed man behind the big desk.

"You'll have to forgive me for bringing Miranda, Warwick isn't quite up
to full nanny duties.  His physical therapist doesn't 
want him lifting heavy objects until his shoulder is rehabilitated."

"She's getting quite large."

"She's crawling now and starting to cruise from pieces of furniture on
her own.  I estimate that she will be walking before 
the end of the month."

"I understand that you've been to Human Resources."

He wanted me to say it.  He couldn't just accept the facts of the matter
as though I had simply changed my withholding 
tax so I would owe more money to my employer in April.  I had to admit
what I had done - what Mulder and I had done 
- as though it was yet another one of our classic field fuck-ups like
losing a body, a gun, or annoying local law 
enforcement.

"Yes.  Because of the custody issues with my brother, Mulder and I were
married last week.  It was a *very* small 
affair with only sympathetic family in attendance."

"Congratulations," he said in a voice that indicated he was deeply
regretting yet another mistake that I had made in a 
chain of many.

"Bill raising Miranda rather than Mulder is a non-option.  I would marry
Newt Gingich to prevent that.  Mulder and I no 
longer work for the same division and have virtually no contact at the
workplace so there should be no conflict of 
interest."

"That would be the least of my concerns."

I swallowed and Miranda squirmed around in my lap like a wet cat,
stretching out a drooly hand to reach for the brass 
bulldog on Skinner's desk, knocking over his nameplate, coffee cup, desk
lamp, and pen holder in the process.  
Mortified, I bent over and started picking things up from the floor while
Miranda complained at her inability to capture the 
shiny bulldog.

"Na na na LEE!  NA!  CAT!  LEEEEEE!!!!!!!!" she bitched, in pretty much
the same tone Mulder adopted when I'd told 
him that he couldn't do something.

Sometimes, I swore that if I hadn't run the test myself, I would have
thought that Miranda had been an X-chromosome 
clone of Mulder.

"Just leave it, Agent Scully."

Defeated, I sat back and bounced Miranda until she giggled and clapped.

"Sir, our lawyer is going to be in contact with you to testify at the
custody hearing.  Please keep in mind that Miranda 
was created in one of Roush's labs as one of their experiments.  Mulder
and I believe that some distaff branch of Roush 
is using Bill as a vehicle to gain access to Miranda, which will not be
healthy for her in the least.  Understand that 
whatever you may think of either of our abilities as parents, her
alternative really isn't Bill, but Roush."

"You have proof of this?"

I almost laughed, when did we ever have proof of anything?

"We're researching it now.  You don't even have to assign a case number,
as it still falls under Miranda's original case 
file."

"And Agent Zipprelli is working on it as well?"

Translation: is there anyone sane involved in this?"

"Yes."

"Have your lawyer contact me with the schedule for testimony."

I didn't want to push my luck, but I was painfully aware of how little
Skinner likes surprises.

"One other thing, sir."

The frown told me that I was tap-dancing in a puddle of nitroglycerin.

"I'll be taking some leave in January.  Agent Zipprelli will be up to
speed on all open case files at that time.  From 
November on I will be available for consultation, but not field
assignments."

I watched him do the math.  It only took a moment for him to count
backwards nine months.

"Once again, congratulations."

In the elevator, headed for the parking garage, I wondered how long it
had taken Skinner to reach for the Scotch he 
probably had hidden in the credenza.  Miranda looked at the floor numbers
flashing by over her head and broke into 
delighted peals of laughter.  I inhaled her sweet baby smell and realized
that it was better than any aromatherapy 
candle in the world.

****

Twenty scientists at the top of their respective genetic sub-fields
disappear into the ether and no one notices. Money 
answers a lot of questions, closes numerous eyes, and shuts mouths.

But, what if five of those scientists had spouses and/or children? And
what if, by coincidence, all five of those familial 
units moved to the greater Chicago area four months after the initial
disappearances?

It just goes to show that family values and conspiracies really don't
mix.

BioQuest was too new and small to have its own building. Instead they
leased a floor of a nondescript downtown office 
building. I got into the offices on the floor below by judicious use of
my badge and then waited for closing time, at which 
point I headed one floor up. Security was less than it might have been
and I ended up in a gray-toned hallway dotted 
with abstract art, the kind that scientific types generally preferred.

Even minions of darkness need to know where each others' offices are, and
I found the workplace of one Justine 
Barnabas, whose name was close enough to that of Dr. Judith Barnaby, last
seen in Roush's Texas research enclave, 
to make me confident that I'd found the right place. On Roush's
organizational chart, Judith had worked directly under 
Samantha Mann, my erstwhile sister and the mad scientist who'd merged
sperm and egg to create Miranda (among 
others).

Judith had left her lights on; I closed the door and turned everything
off but one lamp on the desk. The large banks of 
filing cabinets lining one wall of her office were mostly empty, as
befitted a young corporation. She had company 
prospectuses, her employment contract, and a stack of incomprehensible
technical reports that ostensibly dealt with 
lab mice. I just wasn't sure that lab mice wasn't a euphemism for cute
little babies.

I heard motion in the hallway, two women's voices. Judith returning?
Well, I was no Holofernes and I wasn't afraid. I 
settled into the comfy chair behind her desk, waiting for her to come in.
With the lights down and shadows on my face, 
my non-surgically enhanced nose wouldn't be as noticeable and I tried to
recall Jason Lindsay's smooth whiskey voice.

The door opened and a woman stepped in; I recognized her as Judith from a
picture on her desk, Judith with a young 
girl. Straight black shoulder-length hair, a little plump but succulent,
with a wide wry mouth that promised both 
wisecracks and great head. (God, was the wedding ring on my finger
responsible for these recent hints of sexual 
awareness of other women? Maybe it contained another microchip
broadcasting evil thoughts.) She closed the door 
behind her and then turned, her face blanking with shock as she took in
my darkened form lounging proprietarily in her 
chair.

"You look like you've seen a ghost," I drawled in Jason's voice.

"Oh my God, Jason--?" From the look on her face, I could tell they'd been
lovers. The man certainly got around.

Her hand flailed against the wall until it found the light switch and we
both blinked, inundated by the fluorescent glare.

She drew in a shaky breath. "You're not -- you're not Jason."

Regaining some equilibrium, she advanced further into the office, so that
she was standing on the opposite side of the 
desk from me. "Which one are you?"

"I'll give you nine guesses and the first eight don't count."

"Fox Mulder," she said, leaning forward to examine me. "You've got that
facial mole, we've never been able to figure out 
the minor variations in pigmentation."

"Yes, I'm sure that's very interesting, but I'm here to find out what you
nice people want with my daughter."

She blinked. "In light of recent events, I'd be a fool to answer that
question, wouldn't I? I think you ought to leave before I 
call security."

"Don't bullshit me, I can have a team of agents here in fifteen minutes
if I wanted to disrupt your operations. I'm offering 
you a chance to do this quietly."

"I will not talk to you.  You are wasting my time."

The sensual mouth tightened down harder than Scully's and made dangerous
wishes undulate underneath the surface 
of my mind.  I pushed the chair back from the desk and carefully placed
my sidearm on the blotter, next to the mouse 
pad.

"Dr. Barnabas, you must know enough about me to know that I tend to be a
little excitable.  Tendency of the breed, I 
suppose.  Now right now I am a micro-millimeter away from losing my
daughter and that makes me very anxious.  You 
don't want me to be anxious."

"All right," she said, "I'll tell you what you want to know, because we
have nothing to do with your concerns. We are 
interested in your line's enhanced resistance to other alien organisms, I
have to admit we've had endless difficulties 
making it breed true. In some ways the destruction of the Texas facility
was a godsend, we had to try a number of more 
aggressive strategies and we believe that some of them have paid off. We
don't need your daughter, as you call her."

"Then what's BioQuest's new law firm doing in the custody suit?" I was
definitely not going to think about the phrase 
'other alien organisms,' no siree bob.

She shrugged. "Do I look like a lawyer? We've got enough to deal with
trying to rebuild without buying trouble from you 
and your friends in government. If you want someone to blame, I suggest
you look to my former boss -- Samantha 
Mann. Her departure nearly got us all killed, but I wouldn't be surprised
to find out that she was still manipulating 
events. She apparently made her own...side agreements, I guess...with
those 'higher up.'" She jerked a thumb at the 
ceiling to indicate the possibility of alien involvement. "If Sam wants
to restart a breeding program on her own initiative, 
even if she's got backing, she needs the raw material."

"And you don't?"

"Please, Mr. Mulder. Your line's sperm has gone more places than Bill
Clinton's. I could populate a small Asian nation 
with your relatives, if I wanted to.  We've played that hand out," she
smiled, the reference to Jason and Ian's more-than-
brotherly relationship making my stomach lurch.

I felt as perceptive as office furniture. None of this made sense. Even
if they'd had huge stockpiles of genetic material, 
so much was destroyed in Texas that I couldn't believe that Miranda held
no interest for them. Could Judith be imputing 
her organization's own motivations to Sam? Other informants had made
similarly misleading statements to me before.

"I don't suppose you've got a phone number for Sam."

She flipped a hand toward her nearly empty Rolodex. "I'm afraid not, but
we're always happy to cooperate with law 
enforcement."

I'll bet. She was watching me now as if I were a martini after a bad
workday. I suspected that if I asked she'd enact one 
of my videos' more common boss/secretary scenarios. But she'd probably
been present when Miranda and all the other 
created children were inserted into the wombs of kidnapped women. She was
a manufacturer of merchandise, a 
purveyor of flesh, and that was as effective to dampen my libido as
saltpeter.

"Leave my family alone," I said, unhappy to hear the words come out with
more pleading than piss and vinegar. "You 
stay on your side of the line and I'll stay on mine."

"Threats, Mr. Mulder, should only come from a man in a position to make
good on them."

"If you take away Miranda I've got nothing to lose. You and your handlers
should think about that for a while," I stood 
and my gun was steady in my hand, I used it to gesture to the photograph
of herself and her dark-haired daughter on 
her desk, "You have a daughter as well, I suggest you imagine our
situations reversed."
 
Reaching in my pocket, I handed her one of my cards with the Batphone
number on it.

"In case you change your mind, or remember anything, I'd appreciate a
call."

I pointed at the picture on her desk.

"You're lucky she didn't inherit the nose."

When I left she was already reaching for her phone to call security. 

***

That afternoon the moving van came and unloaded all the contents from my
Annapolis apartment, which filled up the 
garage to the bursting point.  I embarrassed myself by dithering over
what box went where in a stereotypical female 
fashion, but the moving men only smiled and toted the boxes and furniture
in with indulgent smiles and deliciously Diet 
Coke commercial brawny bodies.  I paid them and tried not to notice the
effect all the excess testosterone was having 
on my already hormone-swamped body.  They were probably used to dealing
with flushed and stammering women 
anyway - an occupational hazard.
 
After they had gone, I stood amongst the boxes and the furniture with
Miranda glued to my hip, and suffered a few 
anxieties.  With the Annapolis apartment now a thing of the past, my
escape route had been cut off.  I had nowhere to 
go should things not work out.  On the other hand, should things work out
I was faced with an even more appealing 
possibility - I was going to have to organize a yard sale.

Still in pro-active mode, I took Miranda upstairs and wandered through
the bedrooms, trying to settle in my mind what 
was to be done with the incipient child.  Having grown up in base housing
and having to share a room with Missy, there 
was no way that I was going to inflict this on Miranda and the Baby To Be
Named Later.  That was another issue that 
made me sink to the floor in shock.  We hadn't talked about names, hadn't
really planned, hadn't intended this child at 
all.  
 
I'd been so wrapped up in the trial and stunned by the sheer facts of the
marriage and the pregnancy that I hadn't 
bothered to think that far ahead.  I had, in the past, set a plan to my
life.  I was supposed to become head of Forensic 
Pathology at Quantico by the age of forty-five, I was supposed to marry a
surgeon and drive a Volvo station wagon with 
one darling child and one darling Golden Retriever in the back.  I was
supposed to alternate holidays between my family 
and my husband's family, and my father would tell my child the same
stories he had told me at the same age.

Then I met Mulder and that shot that plan to hell.

I now had a legal sham of a marriage, no father, no sister, a mother who
had sold me up the river in the nicest way 
possible, a cat, a daughter conceived in a dark laboratory somewhere as
part of a foul plan, and a second child that 
might or might not be killing me as it grew in my body. 

I suddenly missed Mulder with a pang so physical that I nearly vomited in
the hallway.

Miranda, sensing my mood, crawled over and pulled herself up on my body
until we were nose to nose.

"Lee Dah?" she asked.

And when I started to cry, she did too, as misery hates to be alone.

Then we went downstairs and had ice cream.
  
I couldn't believe how empty the house was without Mulder.  I had thought
that I would use this time to soak up 
whatever kind of privacy I had without having him hanging around my neck
like the fallen angel he had been so often in 
the past.  But to tell you the truth, I was starting to feel as though he
had a better grip on the realities of life than I did.  
His nonchalance in dealing with Miranda, the exasperation with the
lawyers, the irrefutable logic of our bizarre wedding, 
and the casual way that he had accepted the fact that I was pregnant was
nothing short of a miracle.  His acceptance 
was a miracle; the benefit of the pregnancy was still under
consideration.  Actually his acceptance was also 
questionable.  After all this time, after all we'd been through the one
thing I knew for sure was how little I actually knew 
about him.

Happiness is not a warm gun, it is cold ice cream and I needed a lot of
happiness that night.

****

Despite the implicit promise I'd made to Dr. Barnaby, I had the Chicago
Bureau sweep in an hour after I left and shut the 
place down. Regrettably for Roush, not only had they engaged in illicit
and deadly human experimentation, they'd *also* 
run afoul of the federal forfeiture laws. This meant that Roush's assets
became the property of the government; a 
corollary was that any attempt to hide such assets behind a new corporate
identity was itself illegal. While normally the 
government's much-expanded power to define and adjudge crimes made me
nervous, it was a definite asset in this 
situation. When Dr. Barnaby as much as told me she still had access to
Roush's resources, she provided probable 
cause to shut BioQuest down.

Naturally, a few of the Roush refugees slipped through the Bureau's
greedy fingers, including the lovely doctor herself, 
but we had an office full of data and a lab full of things the field
agents couldn't even describe. Not bad for a day's work. 

This was beyond my level of scientific competence. Okay, so light bulbs
are beyond my level of scientific competence, 
I'm not ashamed of it. The upshot was that Scully's assistance was
required, so I called her and told her to get to the 
airport. She could bring whatever looked interesting back to Quantico so
that she'd be able to analyze it and still jump 
through hoops for the childcare experts. She greeted the news with the
expected enthusiasm.

We did the great baby trade off in National, which might have amused
anyone who noticed.  Scully met me in the main 
section of the airport, lines of exhaustion around her mouth and her
carry-on bag and laptop hanging over her shoulder, 
Miranda clinging to her neck.  I had my own laptop and carry-on bag. She
handed me the baby; I handed her a travel 
mug full of coffee.  Remembering that the rings glittering on her finger
meant that we were now allowed to acknowledge 
our relationship in public, I leaned down and kissed her.  She returned
the kiss with more relief than passion and her 
mouth tasted like cookies.  She kissed Miranda's hot little head and
jogged off to catch her flight, a slim little figure in 
black, exiting stage left like one of Shakespeare's girl-boys off to save
the day.  The entire process took less than five 
minutes.  The Mooselet greeted me with a squeal of delight and patted the
side of my stubbly face to reassure herself 
that I was really there.  I rummaged around in my pocket for a minute and
pulled out the little Chicago Bulls baseball 
cap I had gotten her at O'Hare.  The hat fit and she looked out from
under the brim at me with a sarcastic confusion as 
if to remind me that a Teletubby hat would have been more welcome.

I just wanted whatever good luck we could get from affiliation with a
winning team.

"Da da da Lee Da," she reminded me.

"She'll be back tomorrow.  Were you a good little gremlin while I was
gone?"

Her toothy grin indicated otherwise.

We could do this, it could work.

****

I caught up with Zippy at O'Hare.  His expression indicated exactly how
far Mulder and I had pushed him with the latest 
of our stupid schemes.  Pride had forbidden him to get the services of
the go-cart for the officially disabled, and with his 
crutches and the blue binding of the cast extending to his foot poking
out from under his suit trousers he looked like a 
professional athlete sidelined at the championship game.  Poor guy, he
was being traded off between Mulder and 
myself in very much the same way Miranda was, only she was young enough
not to realize that this was not the way 
that things were supposed to work.  Zippy knew it was crazy and he was
jangling with annoyance as he hobbled up to 
me.

"This has got to be the most fucked-up piece of shit plan that has ever
lurched out of Mulder's sick head."

"Hi Zippy, how's the leg?"

"Bite me Dana," he grunted and began hopping alongside me.

"Excuse me for a minute.  Bio-break." I said and ducked into the ladies'
room.

Morning sickness is a misnomer in the extreme.  Morning, noon, and night
sickness was more appropriate.  The only 
good thing about it is that unlike vomiting from excess of alcohol or a
viral infection, I genuinely felt better after I'd thrown 
up.  I wanted to tell Zippy simply because I was afraid that he would
start some diatribe about eating disorders if I didn't.  
I also couldn't tell him that I'd given up the Zoloft for fear of fetal
damage.  Since baby #3 was starting off au natural, it 
seemed best to keep it that way.

"What's the deal?" he asked as he slid into the passenger seat of the
Bucar he had purloined from the Chicago Field 
Office.

I pulled the seat forward.

"Mulder wants me to take a look at whatever BioQuest was growing in the
lab."

"You know, Mrs. Zipprelli's little boy has got to tell you a couple
things," he said as we headed down the brilliant 
morning rush hour toward the city.  "What the fuck is wrong with you and
Spooky? Are you fuckin' nuts or what?"

"That's what my brother Bill seems to think."

"Hey, I've been your goddamn audience through this fucking circus. I
remember when you took the baby and left us in 
Texas, he drank himself stupid in my guestroom for two months for missing
both of you.  What happened next?  You 
left the baby with his brother and he threw the computer at you, then you
called him several zillion times and didn't 
leave messages, then the postcards, then you're face to face again and
I'm thinking that I'm going to have to call in a 
squad in riot gear.  Now, now not only are you living at his house after
almost being killed by his brother and you're 
married and making like happy ever after?  I don't get it."

"You forgot the custody battle." I reminded him.
 
"Yeah, don't call me for a witness.  I think you're both fucking nuts -
and I mean that with the deepest affection. I also 
hate perjuring myself.  It makes me sweat.  Sweating messes up my hair. "

"Thanks Mike, you're a prince."

"You should have married me when I asked you."

"Probably."

"Do you love him?"

The Sears Tower poked up over the other buildings in the bright distance.

"Give me an empirical definition of love and I'll tell you.  I trust him,
I value his opinion, most of the time I enjoy his 
company, and I know that I was unhappy when we were not together."

"That's a cold analysis."

I shrugged and looked down the street at the stoplight.

"Down here?"

"Three blocks."

"Zippy?"

"Yeah?"

"One more thing --  I'm pregnant."

Half a dozen expressions chased each other over his face before the final
one settled over his features and one again I 
found myself bathed in the blinding light of a full-force Zippy smile.

"Cool," he said.

I didn't know humans had that many teeth.


****

The batphone rang at midnight and I snatched it off the bedside table
before it rang a second time.

"Have you ever thrown up in an airplane bathroom?" Scully asked.

"As a matter of fact, I have.  Don't give me shit about there not being
enough room to puke because I'm taller than you 
are."

"I hadn't noticed," she said and I heard the unmistakable rustling of
bedclothes.

"Anything good?" I asked.
 
"Little pitchers have big ears," which was her way of reminding me that
the lines could be tapped, I made a note to have 
the Gunmen check it out in the morning.

"The Mooselet misses you.  I'd let you talk to her, but she's down for
the count."
 
"You probably shouldn't call her that, she might end up confessing it an
eating disorder group when she's a teenager."

If that was the extent of the Mooselet's psychological problems, we were
ahead of the game.

"What have you found out?"

She sighed into my ear, which made the short hairs rise on the back of my
neck.

"We did find some embryos - but they weren't human.  They were porcine. 
Fetal pigs that were being grown in that 
green medium that we've seen before.  My theory is that they have been
trying to replicate the gene or genes that gives 
the viral immunity and the acceleration of cell regeneration. If they
could manufacture it through the pigs the way insulin 
is manufactured and inject it into already living people they would have
a lot more flexibility in shaping the new regime. 
Not to mention the fact that it would be very hard for even sturdy hybrid
babies to survive if all their caretakers died of 
plague."

"Pigs --  that's not kosher."

"After the viral epidemic, Jews, Muslims, vegetarians, and other non-pork
or non-meat eaters by theology, choice, 
politics, or cuisine, will be wiped from the face of the planet.  "

"Which reminds me, did you eat a real dinner or are you living on coffee
ice cream again?"

"Moo Shu pork, actually.  Securing my place in the New World order. 
Zippy says hi, by the way."

"The bed's too big without you."

"I was thinking the same thing," she said and yawned.

"Go to sleep.  You have to be bright and cheery for court tomorrow."

"Bite me."

"As soon as you get home."

She laughed softy into the phone and cut the connection.

It wasn't easy falling asleep alone.  I wondered if Scully was thinking
the same thing in the hotel room in Chicago, or if 
she even noticed the lack of a snoring lump next to her.  Catzilla hopped
up on the bed next to me and began to knead 
my shoulder with his paws, looking seriously at me with his sulfurous
eyes and purring as though making me as soft as 
pizza dough was the most important thing in the world.  Other parts of me
were far from soft and I briefly entertained the 
thought of indulging in my favorite one-player sport but decided I would
let the pressure build until I got Scully alone 
again.  Planning what I was going to do to her on her return was worth
the dull ache of want in my cock.  With Catzilla 
snoring in a surprisingly Scully-like fashion into the pillow next to me
I finally fell asleep.

Alone in my big bed I dreamed a classic Lewis Carroll dream.  Scully had
the baby, and was quite pleased.  Proud 
even, with the little creature's head enclosed in a white lace cap.  I
took the baby from her arms and was stunned when 
I realized that it had the bristle-eyelashes and angry red eyes of a
piglet.  No one else noticed.  I stood there with the 
pig-baby in my arms and began to sweat with horror.  I was trying to
explain to the judge that it was the wrong baby.  
Scully eyed me with contempt and began to breast-feed the beast in the
courtroom while the bailiffs dragged me away 
in horizontally striped prison garb with an enormous ball and chain
weighing my leg down.

No, I wasn't having any anxieties.



Iolokus IV: Res Judicata
10/18

The sky coloured perfect
As the man slipped away
Waving with a last vanilla smile
...
One more ice cream river body
Flowed underneath the bridge
Underneath the bridge 
	The Cure

If it's in the newspaper, it must be true, after all they wouldn't lie to
a credulous American public, would they?

After the first one paragraph story in the Metro section, I knew we
didn't have enough luck to keep the story from going 
national.

FBI Agents in Custody Battle over Miracle Baby.

Just in time for the first day back in court, when the experts would
vomit their carefully acquired knowledge of our 
parenting skills in front of the world.

Fuck.

Somewhere they had dug up an old picture of both Scully and myself in
that black year when she was eaten by cancer.  
>From her haircut  and the gauntness of her face I placed it at the time
she'd gone into the hospital to die.  She was 
white and haggard in her cool black suit and I was hovering next to her
looking like I had something pinching my balls.  
It wasn't a picture to inspire any kind of image of nurturing. By
contrast, the photo with the inside story was of the two of 
us leaving the courthouse with the Mooselet a few days earlier and at
least we looked human there, even though the 
line of scabs was clearly visible on my throat.  Give the Post credit,
the story was pretty much factual as much as the 
facts were public knowledge, but some uncomfortable questions were raised
to the effect that our "privileged position as 
government employees might unduly influence the verdict". Which was kind
of bizarre considering the fact that Bill 
Scully was a government employee as well as being a highly respected Navy
officer.  The fact that Bill was respected 
by anything of higher intelligence than a chickpea was bizarre in and of
itself.

The Miracle Baby decided that she really wanted to chew on the side of
the newspaper and I had to pry it out of her fat 
hands before she ingested any ink, which I suspected would not mix well
with the Cheerios and banana she had 
already eaten.

There we were in the renamed Ronald Reagan National airport, and the
Mooselet was drooling, not unlike the former 
president.  There was a certain pathos there, former leader of the free
world in the kaleidoscope of Alzheimer's spending 
the golden years of his life on a park bench like Forrest Gump.  I just
hoped that Miranda would be kind to me when I 
was too old and feeble to take care of myself.  I hoped the Mooselet
would understand that should I find out that I was 
incapable of taking care of myself I'd floss with Smith and Wesson.

"Voon?" the Mooselet asked, pulling on my tie.

"Voon." I agreed.

I folded up the paper and shoved it in the diaper bag before stretching
my legs out in the uncomfortable chair in the 
airport lounge.  Scully's flight was ten minutes late but there was still
enough time to make it into court even if there 
was a tremendous back-up on the Beltway.  I bounced Miranda on my thighs
while she clung onto my fingers.  The 
morning e-mail from Danny hadn't been promising; enough of the BioQuest
crew had decamped before the net had been 
dropped which made me consider that there was a very large leak in the
Chicago field office.  

"Who's coming home?" I asked the Mooselet.

"Lee!"

"Say 'ma-ma'" I encouraged.

"Lee!" she corrected me and frowned at me as though I were suggesting
that Scully's name was now 'Beaufort' or 'the 
Artist formerly known as Prince'.

It wasn't unheard of for children to call parents by their first names,
but even in my experience, calling a parent by their 
last was a bit odd.  Of course, in many traditional households where the
parents had the same last name this could 
have caused some confusion.  Additionally confusing was the fact that the
Mooselet was Miranda Scully since Miranda 
Mulder sounded ridiculous.  What was  the new baby going to go by? 
Frankenbaby Mulder?  What name went with 
Mulder anyway?  Not a lot.

This was another one of the questions that we were going to have to
discuss when this farce with Bill was finally over 
and done with.  There were also some serious closet space issues that had
to be handled before I replaced enough 
suits to feel well-dressed again.  

The light board at the airline registered that Scully's flight from
O'Hare had come in and I gathered up baby and diaper 
bag and schlepped over to the gate.  About halfway through the string of
crisp government types and some bovine 
tourists was my own crisp government type with her hair shining like a
new copper penny.

"Hi." I said and the Mooselet reached out both hands.

"Lee! Lee!" she greeted Scully and patted her face with both hands.

We did an awkward yuppie shuffle where I kissed her on the cheek and took
her overnight bag while she received an 
armful of baby in return.
 
While Miranda sucked most of Scully's make-up off with baby kisses, we
made our burdened way out to short term 
parking.  Was I imagining things or did she really seem glad to see the
Mooselet and me?  I had finessed a used 
Ranger out of Lariat on an extended rental that could turn into a
purchase if we liked it.  I figured after one good 
Mooselet mess we'd be too embarrassed to return it.  It was in excellent
condition and had more than enough room in 
the back seat to accommodate another baby seat.  Besides, it was only
logical for us to get a vehicle big enough to 
accommodate the growing tribe.  I even had a fantasy of driving north to
the summer house in August and the Outback 
had claustrophobia-inducing tendencies for a drive of that length. I
opened the back hatch and popped her bag, 
briefcase and laptop inside.  The Mooselet, kicking and squirming, went
into the baby seat in the back.

"Mulder, it's *enormous*," she gasped.

I batted my eyelashes at her.

"Why thank you."

She turned as pink as the Mooselet's onesie.

"How *Yuppie*," she stuttered.

"Laugh all you want, you're driving it."
 
"Driving it?  I won't be able to reach the pedals."

"Drive, Scully, drive."

It took her five minutes to get the seat and mirrors adjusted but she
managed and we set off, with her smirking a little 
over the grandiosity of the vehicle. True, it did look like a normal SUV
swollen from steroid abuse but wasn't that part of 
the fun?  Once we were out on the highway, she slipped through the
morning traffic with the skill and ease of someone 
who had commuted from Annapolis to DC for six years.  I had the feeling
that Scully would be able to handle the M25 - 
right-handed driving and all.  Maybe, before she got too uncomfortable in
her pregnancy, we could go to England, I could 
show her Oxford, we could look at crop circles, take the Mooselet to
Stonehenge (she would probably want to put one 
of the standing stones in her mouth) and climb Glastonbury Tor.  God, I
was such a sappy romantic.

"Find anything interesting?" I asked.

"Pigs in jars, pigs in tanks, pigs in pieces, little bits of pig on
slides.  If they're performing human experiments it isn't at 
the BioQuest location.  I also went through their files to see if there
were any references to off-site locations and I found 
something."

"What?"

"There were some locked down files in a subdirectory called 'segue'.  I
copied it onto a DAT tape and overnighted it to 
Danny.  For all I know it's their accounting files, but I thought it was
worth a shot."

"Sounds promising.  Now, forget about that for a couple of hours.  I
talked to Laura last night and she said that Bill and 
Maxwell have lined up some pretty heavy hitters for this morning.  The
child psychologists and some more specialists.  
All we have lined up is Skinner."

She took a deep breath and the big SUV wobbled for a moment.  The
Mooselet chortled with glee.

"He knows," she said.

"You *told* him."

"I *implied*.  I needed to indicate the seriousness of the situation,
also that it was connected to Miranda and the Roush 
file."

I rubbed my neck.  The only problem with Skinner is that he changes teams
more often than a farm-league outfielder.

"Keep doing that and the scarring will be unmanageable," Scully
instructed sharply. As far as I could tell, she'd never 
looked away from the road.

When we pulled into the lot, I had to shield Miranda from the camera
flashes with her own diaper bag. Scully fended for 
herself, sailing through the reporters shouting their intimate questions
as stiffly and proudly as the carved lady on a 
ship's prow.

It was rough sailing inside, too. Bill's experts had completed their
evaluations and they were Not Amused.

Watching psychologists testify was enough to make me highly grateful that
I'd never gone into private practice. At least 
when you're a profiler there's a certain mystique, a "how did he do
that?" glamour that allows you to make what seem to 
the hoi polloi like highly specific and un-evidenced predictions even
though they follow naturally from the facts of the 
case. By contrast, most average citizens believe that they can tell the
difference between a fit and an unfit parent, so 
psychological expertise doesn't go all that far.

Bill's experts thought that we were mad, bad, and dangerous to know.
(Okay, so they were right on two out of three, but 
I still thought they didn't have a clue.) I was a big clumsy puppy, full
of goodwill but lacking real knowledge or stability. 
There was something about my attention span, I think, but my mind drifted
. . . Scully, by contrast, was cool and 
competent: too cool and competent, a robot nurse instead of a warm, fuzzy
nurturer. She was distantly inaccessible; I 
was over-involved and hyper-vigilant. Together we were guaranteed to
produce a child with more neuroses than the 
DSM-IV listed. A kid of ours would probably be a lesbian and an
intellectual (it's not clear which is worse in Virginia). 
And that was only if said child didn't blow her brains out first with one
of the many guns in the household.

These folks weren't thrilled with working women, particularly women in
law enforcement. I think they probably suspected 
Scully was gay even though she was married, she wore skirts and lipstick,
and her hair was nearly shoulder-length -- 
lesbians can be tricky that way. Several of these jokers suggested that,
lacking the experience of sustaining life inside 
her for nine months, Scully could never form a true maternal bond with
Miranda. I  wondered how Tara would do if that 
were true, and what these people thought a father's bond should be, and
to give our lawyer credit she was quite effective 
on cross examination on those points. Unfortunately, the judge, who
reminded me disturbingly of Archie Bunker, 
seemed to take all this quite seriously, and nodded sagely when the
experts talked about the importance of female 
figures fulfilling the traditional nurturant roles so as not to confuse
the developing child's sense of self. Laura also made 
fun of some of the more dramatic predictions, but the damage would be
done as soon as they brought up the choicer 
moments from my past with the X Files. 

Tara testified that she loved Bill, loved little butterball Matthew,
adored Miranda, and would be thrilled to raise another 
child while waiting to have more of her own. I was sure there was a real
person under there somewhere, like the bit of 
grit at the center of a pearl, but I didn't have the luxury of smashing
her open to see.

Bill was more interesting. He wasn't allowed to testify about seeing the
tape of Scully in Arizona. However, he did 
explain that he'd watched the two of us suspiciously for years, and
though as the head of the family after his father's 
passing he was naturally concerned for Scully he hadn't felt justified in
intervening until Miranda appeared.

Laura walked up to him with the intensity of Catzilla stalking a squirrel
from behind the screen door. I hoped she didn't 
bounce off like he did.

"Could you tell me what this is?" She handed him a piece of paper.

He blinked down at it. "Looks like a credit report."

"Whose?"

Her tone made him frown. I bet the men under him didn't talk to him that
way. Or the women either, as few as they 
were. "It's my credit report. Mine and Tara's."

"And is the statement of your outstanding debts accurate to the best of
your knowledge?"

He scrutinized it as if translating it from the Russian. "Yes, I think
so."

"So, you pay over $600 a month servicing your credit card debt?"

Good God, what were they doing, eating caviar and truffles every meal?
Maybe he went to Hooters and tipped really well 
every time he was on land.  Maybe he had a mistress who wasn't happy
wearing K-mart markdowns like his wife.  Sex 
lines?  Lap Dancing?  The possibilities were endless, but one thing was
for sure -- he wasn't spending the money on his 
wardrobe.

"Yes," he admitted.

"And are you aware that Miranda Scully's legal guardian will be
responsible for her trust fund?"

"Yes."

"About how much is that per year?"

Bill looked over at his lawyer, then at the judge, who looked down
expectantly. "About twenty, twenty five thousand a 
year, I guess."

"You guess? Money like that will fund a lot of expensive new toys, won't
it, Lt. Scully?"

"We'd use that money to make Miranda's life better!"

"And your life would be her life, correct?"

"I don't see what this has to do with anything," he complained. "This
isn't about me, it's about Dana and that fruitcake 
destroying the life of my niece."

"So your motives are perfectly altruistic here? Tell me, Lt. Commander
Scully, the day after the judge made his first 
rulings in this case, did you go to the Ford dealership in Annapolis and
arrange to purchase a Ford Explorer?"

"We need that car," Bill whined.

I thought about the Ranger in the parking lot and tried not to cringe. 
Well, that was a little different, Scully's car had 
been blown up, and we were fixin' to put another youngin' in the back.

"Yes, of course. And before the court-ordered evaluation with Miranda,
how many times had you met her?"

Bill was now as stiff as week-old bread in his seat, looking past Laura
towards the back doors of the courtroom as if he 
would really rather be elsewhere. "At her christening, and then again
when Dana brought her over to my mother's a few 
weeks ago."

"So, that's about forty minutes, total?"

He sneered. "It was more than that."

"Fifty, then? What makes you so confident that you should rip Miranda
away from the only parents she's ever known?"

He stared lightning bolts at me and Scully. "Because I know these
parents, and I wouldn't leave a pet rabbit with them." 
Beside me Scully twitched as if he'd sawed through a long-healed scar.

"Well, that's another interesting question. Since your sister joined the
FBI, about how much time have you spent with 
her and Fox Mulder?"

"I'm in the Navy, Miss, I don't get as much time as I'd like to visit my
extended family around the country."

"So, you were with your sister a week last Christmas, a week when Dr.
Scully was in the hospital, maybe a few 
weekends more in six years -- and you're confident that you know her and
her husband well enough to judge her unfit?"

Bill clenched his hands on the wooden witness protection barrier and
leaned forward. "I'm a military officer, trained to 
observe a situation and make a quick judgement. That's the only way to
save lives in a conflict and it's just as relevant 
here, with Miranda. I know as much as I need to."

"I have nothing further," Laura told the judge in a way that indicated
she thought it was a waste of time talking to this 
moron.

She had to tread a little more softly with Maggie, who expressed great
concern for "Dana's mental health after all the 
troubles of the past few years" and thought that "she hasn't taken the
time to be a real mother." I think Mommy Scully 
was pissed that Scully didn't turn Miranda over to her tender mercies
when Scully decided to take a vacation from 
parenting.

I used to like Margaret Scully. From the outside, she seemed like the
mother I would have wanted for myself. Scully 
found her overinvolved at times, but since my mother was about as
involved with me as Saturn is with the Earth's moon I 
thought it was charming.

What Maggie's testimony made apparent was that there was a serious
control freak under that matronly, warm exterior, 
which shouldn't have been surprising to someone who knew Scully. When
Scully decided not to move in with Mommy 
Scully, who would babysit while Scully switched to a real job at which
she could meet some nice Catholic (breathing) 
men, Mom decided that Scully was a bad girl in need of correction. (I had
a fantasy that went that way, but it really had 
very little to do with Miranda.)

Laura did her best, suggesting that Maggie was infected with just a
smidgen of religious prejudice and that she was 
retaliating against Scully because her daughter cut the apron strings,
but it's not that easy to attack the morals of a 
smiling grandmother. And there was no way we were going to counter
Maggie's testimony with my mother's; the judge 
would have stopped right there and awarded Bill custody.

Bill's final witness was Scully's oncologist. I hadn't even considered
it, but the fact was that from the perspective of 
everyday science there was no reason she'd gone into remission, and the
oncologist was very clear that the cancer 
could reappear at any time to claim her. So, Maxwell's assertion was, it
was better never to let Miranda get attached in 
the first place.

Laura wasn't great on cross-examination. There were no good numbers on
survival rates after remission because 
nobody but Scully, apparently, had ever gone into remission from a
nasopharyngeal tumor after the cancer 
metastasized into the blood. And Laura didn't want to dwell on the
microchip in Scully's neck as a source of protection. 
As alternative medicine went, it was hardly acupuncture.

I don't remember that night. I think we might have all slept in the SUV,
because I have absolutely no idea what 
happened between the time that we fled the cameras at the courthouse and
the time we pushed through them the next 
morning.  Hell, it wasn't my first experience with missing time and I
would have welcomed a free trip to Alpha Centauri 
at that point.  But no, Scully, we're still in Virginia.

As promised, things moved rather swiftly, family court not being subject
to the kind of delays that made the Simpson 
trial into a long-running soap opera. Our experts took the stand and
swore up and down that we were as stable and 
loving as the average suburban family. Their main contention, though, was
that a "good enough" parent with a bond to a 
child was better than any wonderfully doting stranger. This is why Emily
never really warmed to Scully despite Scully's 
best efforts; she was always waiting for Roberta Sim to return. Though
Scully had been absent for six months -- indeed, 
maybe because of that -- Miranda needed the stability of caretakers she
knew rather than more disruption.

It sounded good to me. Maxwell sneered and pranced and asked whether the
fact that children usually love and bond 
with their abusive parents means those parents should be left alone to
destroy young lives. I wanted to smack him but 
decided it wouldn't look good in front of the judge.  Miranda was too
young to know what was best for her, that was the 
point of the trial. We were paying our folks well enough to hold their
ground, though, and they did, asserting that 
Miranda was not showing the definite signs of suffering associated with
abuse. She was developing well despite the fact 
that she'd been the main event in a three ring circus for the past month.
If we had lingering parenting problems, they 
claimed, we should be ordered to take parenting classes instead of losing
custody. I had no enthusiasm for sitting 
through lectures by underpaid social workers along with parents who hit
their kids with broomsticks, but I'd happily do it 
just to piss Bill off.

I don't know exactly what voodoo Scully pulled to get Skinner to testify,
but it was clearly the high point of the trial. 

God bless his shining head.  He sat up on the stand looking like
authority incarnate, like Mr. Clean testifying against 
the forces of Dirt.  If I could have pulled another ace out of my sleeve,
it would be a Skinner clone.  My former boss 
would stop just short of perjury to paint my portrait as a dependable
agent and to give the court a different picture of 
Scully -- strong, compassionate, full of sympathy for victims of crime. 
I knew this was only because he wanted the 
whole sordid mess tidied up as quickly as possible to prevent any other
bad press for the Bureau.  He was a company 
man, after all.  The fact that he was a former Marine and Bill was Navy
must have had something to do with it as well. 
Service rivalries were ingrained more deeply than school rivalries, it
seemed.

"Agents Mulder and Scully are the most creative and tenacious
investigators I have seen. I would hesitate to call any 
case unsolvable without first invoking their expertise."

"So you consider the two of them valuable and reliable members of the
Bureau?" Laura asked.
 
"Yes. Though I have supervised them through a very difficult period, I
have always relied on their commitment to one 
another and to their jobs."

This was really skirting lying under oath, but through the years I have
learned that Skinner is capable of telling the truth 
with the appropriate spin for the situation.

Maxwell, when he got his turn, brought a file folder an inch thick over
to the stand. "Do you recognize these?" he asked.

Skinner flipped through the papers quickly and frowned down at the lawyer
like the Lion King telling off a bad hyena.  I 
really had to widen my video viewing.

"They're discipline reports for Agent Mulder. I signed them."

"And these?" Another file folder, thicker than the first. 

Skinner didn't even bother to look. "I assume that those are the rest of
the official reprimands."

"And you still think this man is stable and reliable? How many other
agents have discipline records like this?"

"I am not aware of any," Skinner conceded, "and I am not aware of any
others with the resolution rate or the --"

"And how many other agents have killed as often as Agents Mulder and
Scully?"

"I wouldn't have those statistics at hand." Skinner didn't like being
interrupted, but I hoped he'd stay copacetic and keep 
the judge sympathetic to his masculine authority.

"And how many agents have been allowed to stay with the Bureau after at
least four psychotic breaks, one of which 
resulted in an attack on you?"

Skinner leaned forward and stared into Maxwell's eyes. "I would draw your
attention to the fact that the FBI has officially 
classified that incident as an assault on Agent Mulder through the use of
covertly administered psychoactive drugs in 
order to thwart his investigative activities. I believe that the other
incidents to which you refer are similarly being 
distorted."

I wanted to stand up and applaud.

The Mooselet applauded for all of us.

Then only Scully and I were left to tell our side of the story.



Iolokus IV: Res Judicata
11/18

Let be be finale of seem
The only emperor is the emperor of ice cream.
	Wallace Stevens

The next morning, I was standing in the kitchen, trying to choke down a
prenatal vitamin the size of a robin's egg (I'd 
chided but Mulder insisted that he'd paid cash which was enough to keep
Them off the trail if it was at all possible to do 
so) when it happened. Not a post-abduction gusher like the girl on our
very first case. Just a regular drippy nosebleed. 
No sweat.

No sweat, just blood. Pregnancy increases blood flow to the mucous
membranes, and bleeding from the gums and 
nosebleeds are perfectly common consequences. I'd just gotten a clean
bill of health and the cancer couldn't possibly 
have resurfaced so quickly. After all, even though the remission happened
almost instantaneously, that doesn't mean 
that it would end with the same speed...

And I'll respect you in the morning, and nuclear weapons are only for
deterrence, and Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy 
are making tea for the Easter Bunny right around the corner.

As soon as the bleeding stopped I cleaned up the few drops that had
fallen on the kitchen table. The sweatshirt I 
soaked in cold water; I'd have to throw it out unless the residue was
unrecognizable before Mulder did the laundry. I 
planned to get out the Vaseline and use it at night, when my nose got a
little less tender, to prevent the delicate tissue 
inside from drying out. Pregnancy-based nosebleeds are most likely when
the air is dry and cold. And, hey, even 
though we were sitting on a filled-in swamp with humidity running 90%
every day, it was perfectly possible that the air 
conditioning was causing the problem. 

Everyone needs a few foundational delusions. Mine are very concrete and
limited, compared to Mulder's.

I booted up the laptop and fixed my will so that Zippy got my guns and
Mulder got everything else. 

Mulder returned from his stress-reducing run (he must have jogged to
Asbury Park and back) and grabbed coffee, 
kissing my head in passing, not  knowing what was going on underneath my
morning fright-fest hair.

The psychologists had been right on one count, Mulder was a big clumsy
puppy, full of goodwill, with a short attention 
span when he wanted.  When he needed to be, he was as canny and cunning
as a stray in any city of the world where 
poached pooch appears on the menu.  He stopped in the middle of the
kitchen, his eyes flicking over towards the 
laundry room for a moment before he looked back at me, irises more brown
than green with canine awareness.

"Something wrong?" he asked.

"Same old morning sickness," I lied.

He wasn't satisfied and he sniffed the air suspiciously before trotting
off upstairs.
 
Court time came, and with it the revelation that an appeals court had
ordered the courtroom open to the press. 
Apparently Miranda was too young to be negatively affected by the trial
publicity, and Bill's case raised important 
questions of open, democratic government by challenging the FBI's
willingness to tolerate our shenanigans and 
exposing our misbehavior. The First Amendment uber alles, never mind that
the media presence added a new ring to 
the already world-class circus in progress.

It couldn't have come at a worse time as far as I was concerned, when
only Mulder and I were left to testify. We'd 
achieved the dubious distinction of having CourTV actually schedule a
daily show about us, thus guaranteeing us a 
place in the OJ Simpson/Louise Woodward pantheon.

I'd forever be haunted by my pale morning sickness face on video.  It
would be a depressing addition to Miranda's baby 
book.

Laura couldn't help but give last-minute advice as we pushed past the
cameras and the shouted questions. "They'll try 
to bait you and make you lose your cool.  Remember that the entire gist
of their argument is that you are mentally 
unbalanced." 

"That Scull-- er -- *Dana's* mental stability is under question never
fails to amaze me," Mulder muttered.

"And do not be fooled by how Maxwell looks or acts, he's an absolute
piranha who has cultivated the outward 
appearance of a goldfish."

Her bitterness was the most emotion I'd seen from her yet. I looked at
her curiously as she straightened her skirt and 
sat down at our table, but she was staring straight ahead with a brave
and confident demeanor that was probably worth 
fully half of what we were paying her, just for the image.

Mulder looked good on the stand. He looked slightly nervous and there was
a suspicious wet spot on his tie, which 
could have been coffee, but I suspected that it was baby drool.  There
were lines of tiredness under his murky eyes and 
his shirt and tie really couldn't hide the raw healing skin on his neck. 
If Laura was hoping to prey on the judge's 
sympathy, Mulder was playing the part to perfection.

Laura and Mulder went over the story just as they'd rehearsed it. Oh, no,
I wasn't supposed to say 'rehearsed.' They'd 
discussed his testimony, that's all. His background, his education, his
career with the FBI. His medical history. Some 
of the worst incidents from his employment files, to get them out in the
open before Maxwell could introduce them and 
make us look like we were hiding something.

"This quest for your sister and the machinations of the men behind her
disappearance seems to have consumed your 
life, Fox," Laura said as she got to the end of the story. It was nearing
lunchtime and she was obviously planning to 
break soon. "Why did you give it up?"

Mulder's eyes collapsed into isosceles triangles of pain. No matter how
many times he heard the question, he couldn't 
prevent the wince.

"I discovered that some things are more important. I was pursuing the
past, a past that never truly existed, 
and...suddenly I was confronted with the possibility of a future. I want
to make sure that Miranda never feels alone, or 
uncertain or afraid. I want to keep her away from the kind of people who
created her by force and fraud. I want...I want to 
do one small thing right..." Laura let him ruminate, the pauses
increasing the impression of deep thought. It would have 
impressed me too had I not seen it in the bedroom the previous night.
"Raising a child is such a small thing in a world 
of five billion people. But I've discovered that it is also the largest
thing in my existence. I know that I've made mistakes 
in the past. In many ways I've been reckless because I did not know what
I had to live for. But since I've had Miranda, 
everything seems clearer--more in perspective."

I could not prevent the small stab of jealousy that pinned me just above
my heart. Such a small thing in a world of five 
billion people, really.

After lunch we had cross-examination. I'd seen the like before, it was
the way the average Bureau inquiry went on a 
contested X File, but it was still difficult for me to watch without
trying to intervene to save Mulder from himself.

Maxwell began where we'd all expected him to, at Spooky Central. "Before
the so-called 'X Files' were opened in 1991, 
you were a profiler for the FBI's Violent Crimes Unit."

"That's what my file says." I winced inside at Mulder's obstructionism,
but maintained the standard composed face I 
always kept on while Mulder was being questioned.

"Now, Mr. Mulder, I've seen 'The Silence of the Lambs' but other than
that I don't really know much about profiling. From 
what I understand, your objective is to understand serial killers, to
think like them?"

Mulder leaned forward, placing the tips of his fingers on the wooden
half-wall in front of him, in full lecture mode. "Not to 
think like them, but to know how they think so that their behaviors can
be predicted. It's the Bureau's long-term goal to 
know enough about the kind of people who are capable of such repeated
vicious acts so that we can engage in 
comprehensive prevention strategies." He sounded like a TV commentator,
pleasant and simplifying things just a little 
bit for the listeners.

"But you, you were one of the best at really getting into their heads, in
a way that was much more than theoretical. Tell 
me, is it true that you can find murder sites as you drive along the road
just by looking for the kind of place a murderer 
would put a body?"

Mulder winced. "Okay, that story has been stretched *far* out of
proportion to what really happened." 

Really? That's not what I'd heard when I was at Quantico. 

He shifted in the hard wooden seat and adjusted his tie away from his
neck. "It was an accident, I was answering the 
call of nature when I stumbled on a crime scene, and then my boss decided
to scare all the trainees by telling them 
that I'd done it on purpose. And then the other times after that we
already had reason to suspect the presence of 
remains in an area."

Hmm . . . Having met Bill Patterson, I found it plausible that the man
would exaggerate his golden boy's achievements 
just to make the other agents work even harder to please the master.
Nonetheless, I wasn't entirely convinced -- Mulder 
was wisely downplaying his spookitude for the court, but get him out on a
deserted highway and he'd find a body faster 
than Michael Jordan finds the net. Mulder was also conveniently
forgetting about Addy Sparks -- the missing victim in 
the Roche case -- but since he wasn't in ISU anymore by then I suppose he
thought it didn't count.

"But profiling does demand that you immerse yourself in the lives of
serial rapists and murderers. Do you think that has 
had an effect on you?"

Once again, Mulder rolled out the prepackaged answer. "Of course, it's
impossible to be unaffected by the sheer horror 
of the crimes we investigate. I'd have to be a monster myself to be
oblivious. One of the reasons the X Files appealed to 
me initially is that they were a change from ISU, where sometimes it felt
like catching one killer only opened up a slot 
for two more. I think what I've taken away from the experience is how
precious and fragile life is."

We'd visited cattle mutilation sites with less bullshit around, but the
judge was listening carefully. Maxwell favored 
Mulder with a tight smile that suggested that the lawyer hadn't expected
Mulder to be such a good actor. "And yet you 
maintain that immersing yourself in the twisted thinking of these
criminals for years on end has not warped your view of 
the world in any way?"

Mulder sighed. "Doctors don't have to be sick to diagnose disease. That's
essentially what I *did*" -- I thought the subtle 
emphasis was a good trick -- "in ISU."

"I'm going to show you a list of magazines now," the lawyer passed a
sheet to Mulder, whose hand twitched as if he 
wanted to crumple it and use it for a three-pointer. "Do you recognize
these names?"

"They're names of pornographic magazines."

"Did you subscribe to these magazines for the purpose of 'diagnosis'?"
Maxwell casually handed a copy up to the 
judge, who frowned over the tops of his glasses at Mulder. For his part,
Mulder blanched and visibly swallowed, trying to 
formulate an answer.

"I, uh, before Dana and I were together I occasionally used some of these
magazines for, uh, for myself," he 
euphemized. "They're fantasies, not reality. And they have nothing to do
with how I raise my -- my child." That stutter at 
the end, by the way, was Mulder almost broadcasting the news about Baby X
to the world -- he wasn't doing well.

"You subscribed to 'Tit Torture'?"

I looked down at the table so that I wouldn't have to watch. Though I
never voted for Hilary Clinton or her husband, I felt a 
sudden surge of sympathy for her public humiliation. If I could have, I
would have stuffed cotton in my ears as Maxwell 
made Mulder say "yes" to a revoltingly long list of disgustingly named
periodicals. The upside, I suppose, was that 
none of the titles even hinted at pedophilia.

Eventually the list was done. Mulder was gasping like a landed fish and
like a good angler the lawyer changed tactics. 
"So you and Dr. Scully were partners for over six years?" Maxwell asked
in a voice that sounded like old Southern 
money.

"About six and a half."

"During which time you carried on a clandestine affair.  How long did
that go on before Miranda entered the picture?"

"Objection, cumulative," Laura chimed out and the judge nodded.

"I'll rephrase," Maxwell said smoothly. "How long had you and Dr. Scully
been having sexual relations before you 
discovered Miranda's existence?"

"About a year, give or take a few weeks."

"And did your superiors know about this relationship?"

"*Someone* did, given the camera that was covertly installed in my
apartment."

"Just answer the questions, Mr. Mulder."

Up on the stand, Mulder reddened a bit and went silent again, his hands
knotted tightly together in his lap.

"Given that Section Chief Blevins was implicated in the series of events
surrounding that unlawful surveillance, I think it's 
fair to say that he knew."

"Yes, the unlawful surveillance. That's when you shot a man in the face
and left him to be identified as you?"

"Yes."

"And Dr. Scully lied to your superiors, confirming the misidentification
so that you could break into a Pentagon facility 
with the dead man's credentials?"

Mulder swallowed. "Yes."

"Is that standard FBI practice?"

I was glad to see that he'd remembered Laura's instructions: breathe
before answering, every time. "Dana was dying 
and I had reason to believe that a cure for her could be found in that
research facility. I was right."

Maxwell looked down on his pad. "So, the object you stole from the
Pentagon was the chip in the back of her neck, the 
one of unknown origin that you and Dr. Scully ordered her physicians to
implant because it might have some relation to 
the cancer?"

Laura didn't object and Mulder said, almost inaudibly, "Yes."

"Please speak clearly so that the reporter can get your responses. Does
anyone other than yourself and Dr. Scully 
endorse the claim that this stolen chip can cure cancer?"

"I was told that the chip would work by a man who has been involved in
secret government projects of this sort for 
decades."

"What sort is that? No, never mind. Who is this man?"

"I don't know his name."

"Well, can we find him and ask?"

"No, he was shot soon after he told me about the cure. His body has never
been found."

Maxwell paused and looked around the courtroom so that we could all
understand exactly how implausible Mulder 
sounded.  This piqued Mulder enough that, against advice of counsel, he
added to his reply voluntarily. "Exit wounds 
are a perennial problem in our line of work." The cameras loved it, which
did little to discourage him from being snide no 
matter how the judge frowned.

It went on like that for a while, from Arecibo to Wisconsin and back.
Even I almost laughed when Maxwell asked Mulder 
to list every time he'd been arrested or custodially detained by some
other government agency and Mulder had to ask 
whether he should include state or just federal.

I was confused by the finale, though.

"Let's go back to your early employment records now. During your tenure
in ISU, you managed to accrue a substantial 
number of commendations for difficult cases and your reviews from your
superiors are downright fawning. Then you 
reopened the 'X Files.' It was to this division that Dr. Scully was
assigned shortly thereafter."

I looked over at Laura, but she was concentrating on whatever she was
writing on her legal pad and seemed to be only 
paying slight attention to what was going on at the front of the
courtroom.

"With the reassignment and the addition of Dr. Scully as your partner, I
notice that you have more reprimands than 
anything else in your files.  To what do you attribute that sea change?"

Mulder's face tightened. I knew he was trying to figure out what he could
say that would deflect Maxwell from whatever 
course he was taking, and he wasn't much enjoying being put on the
defensive.

"My charming personality."

Someone in the back, possibly one of the clerks, snickered.

"Really?  Answer the question please."

"The nature of the cases require a more extreme approach than a normal
case would warrant.  Unorthodox methods 
need to be used and such methods do not generally meet with the approval
of the higher-ups."

"You initially regarded Dr. Scully as a 'spy' sent to discredit your
work, did you not?"

"Yes, but she quickly proved that she was interested in the truth --"

"So interested that you were able to take risks you hadn't before, with
her to back you up when you got in trouble?"

Mulder saw the trap close, but he was already inside. "It's not like that
--"

"Isn't it? I submit to you that your once-harmless conspiracy theories
became dangerous to yourself and others once 
Dr. Scully came on the scene. I submit to you that she pushed you to
further and further extremes, whether simply to 
impress her or to convert her to your beliefs it's not clear."

Laura was on her feet now, objecting, but Maxwell continued to talk.

"I submit to you that no matter how intelligent and brave the two of you
are individually, the combination of your energies 
is explosive and deadly."

The judge banged his gavel. "That's enough, Mr. Maxwell!"

More than enough. "I have nothing further, your honor," he said and sat,
concealing a smirk behind a serious facade; he 
knew he'd made his point.

Mulder staggered off of the stand like he'd been shot again.

Their strategy was clear now: divide and conquer. If they could
successfully argue that Mulder and I together were like 
hydrogen introduced to chloride, then we'd be condemned for our loyalty
to one another rather than rewarded for it.

My own testimony loomed before me. Tomorrow. I didn't think I could face
that kind of questioning when I couldn't make 
myself entirely believe our side of the story. 

I couldn't let Mulder lose Miranda because of his connection with me. We
still didn't know whether the judge would 
admit the videotape of me in Arizona or what it would show; Mulder had
been distressingly silent when I asked him what 
he'd seen when Jason showed him a copy those many months ago. And this
morning's ill-timed nosebleed suggested 
that I might be as bad a bet as a Powerball ticket, even without the
custody battle.

I looked across the table, where Mulder was greeting Miranda -- he'd been
away from her for so long and Miranda 
demanded to be reacquainted with his nose -- and hurried over to my
brother and his entourage. I felt Laura following, 
trying to control the interaction.

"Bill," I caught his arm as he began to walk out of the courtroom with
Tara. Maxwell looked at me speculatively. "I have 
something to say to you. An offer."

Laura made a warning noise behind me, but I ignored her.

"What kind of offer?" He loomed over me, still believing that his height
somehow made a difference to me. How could I 
blame Bill for being the same kind of person I was -- afraid of the
unknown, determined to make the world conform to his 
sense of reality?

There were conference rooms scattered throughout the courthouse for just
this kind of activity. We found an empty one 
and sat down, Laura at my side in roughly the same way as my gun.

"I think it's obvious to everyone that the main problem you're having
here is with me," I said as soon as his ass hit the 
chair, "You don't want me around Miranda. You don't really care about
Mulder. And you're not going to find anyone to 
say he's a bad father. You're flailing around with things he did five
years ago, and you know the court's not going to 
think that's enough.  So this is my proposal. You drop the lawsuit and
I'll agree to leave them alone. I will stay away; I 
won't play any role in her upbringing. Mulder will have sole custody."

Maxwell immediately opened his mouth, but Bill put his hand up. Tara
looked at him worriedly. I was starting to get sick 
of her Tammy Wynette routine. "Will you wait out in the hall while we
discuss this?"

I nodded and Laura and I left. As soon as she shut the door she started
in on me: "Dana, this is a problem."

"You're the one who told me that I was hurting Mulder's chances of
retaining custody." I realized that I wasn't bothering 
with the first-name thing anymore; it didn't seem as if it would be
necessary.

"If you want to do this, you really need to get separate counsel. Your
interests and Fox's are diverging here, and I'm not 
sure I can represent you both."

"Our interests are exactly the same -- what's best for Miranda. And
that's being with Mulder, not *them*," I waved my 
hand contemptuously at the closed door. "Now you know I don't have the
money to pay someone else to sit in there 
with me. I want you to make this happen. I want you to make sure that
they can't ever challenge Mulder's custody. And 
I'll do whatever it takes."

She shook her head and nibbled at her lower lip, thinking. 

"I knew I should have been a criminal defense attorney," she said as the
door opened.
 


Iolokus IV: Res Judicata
12/18

But she's giving him an ice cream headache
And I don't know why he's gonna take it
Anymore, anyhow, anywhy, and he tried to take it back
But it was much too much too late for that
Well, they're headed down a rocky road
And she's got a chocolate chip on her shoulder
She's giving him an ice cream headache
She said, "I always fake it"
And that might have been the last strawberry
	Ilios

Testifying wasn't nearly as bad as I'd thought it would be. Maxwell
almost had me a few times, and the allegation that 
Scully and I were dangerous together but not apart was a little
worrisome. But I had admitted my mistakes when Laura 
asked me about them; I was a changed man these days. At least as far as
the court was concerned. I felt that I'd 
explained myself tolerably well, especially with all the evidence Laura
had introduced about the conspiracy against us 
on direct examination. She'd gotten me to discuss Blevins, and the
missing evidence over the years, and the revelations 
from Roush, and the look on the judge's face when he realized that Bill's
side could not disprove any of it was priceless. 

When Scully had peeled off with Laura to discuss her upcoming testimony,
I'd been a little hurt that she didn't want to 
do it at home. But then I realized that she needed the familiarity with
the courthouse. She gets nervous in courtrooms, 
she'd never admit it but I can see her twitch and I know that her skin
isn't always quite so pale. And that's just when 
she's testifying as a federal agent, upholding the law. It must have been
even worse for her to be in court as a citizen, 
as a defendant.

Feeling reassured, I spent the afternoon filling out personnel
evaluations and working on a proposal to put ISU personnel 
in the major field offices. Crime was being federalized faster than
crimes were being committed; what with the Violence 
Against Women Act, every serial rapist and murderer in the country was
suddenly our responsibility whether or not he 
crossed state lines. Getting agents in field offices would be a good way
to improve our responsiveness, maybe catch 
some patterns we wouldn't have seen otherwise. I was very excited about
the proposal, and it occupied my time 
painlessly until Scully returned.

She still had Laura in tow. I was a little surprised but there was room
at the dinner table, so what the hell?

"Mulder," she said. Her voice had the sooty flavor of disaster in it.

"*Dana*," I said, just to remind her, but she shook her head. 

"I talked to Bill. He's willing to make a deal --"

"Goddammit, Scully, no! I'm not sharing custody with that rat b--"

"No shared custody. All yours." 

I blinked in confusion. That wasn't a deal, that was surrender. "How?"

She gestured towards Laura. "Laura will explain. I'm going to -- I'm
going to take a look at Miranda."

I sat heavily on the couch. "What's going on?"

Laura perched on the edge of a chair and leaned forward, her hands braced
on the seat. "Dana offered a trade. You get 
full custody, uncontested, and she signs an agreement giving up all
rights to Miranda and agreeing not to see her or 
communicate with her in any way until Miranda is sixteen."

"*What*?"

She continued as if I hadn't spoken. "I think the communication provision
is gratuitous cruelty, but she agreed to it in 
order to get you full control over visitation, if any, with any other
member of the Scully family. To enforce the agreement, 
you and Dana not allowed to live in the same area and are not to spend
the night under the same roof, even on a visit. 
You may talk to Dana but not carry messages between her and Miranda.
Break the agreement and Bill and Tara get 
custody, though that's not completely enforceable. Dana also agrees to
submit to psychiatric evaluation at a facility to 
be named later, and to comply with any inpatient or outpatient treatment
regime recommended." She paused and we 
were silent for half a minute. "He hates her, Fox. I don't know what to
tell you."

"Bill suggested this?" 

Laura folded her hands in her lap and wouldn't look at me. "No, it was
Dana who made the initial approach. We worked 
out the details over the last few hours."

I felt like someone had taken an ice cream scoop and applied it
diligently to my chest. She was abandoning us. Again. 
Didn't think us worth fighting for. Didn't want to be Miranda's mother.
All my delusions -- the hopes that this crisis would 
bring us together, the satisfaction of knowing that she cared enough to
oppose Bill -- were crushed and broken by her 
indifference, screaming and bleeding in my mind. I should have put them
out of their misery a long time ago, but I was 
never good at mercy killings.

"So that's what she wants." My voice came out as flat as ever. I suppose
I should be grateful that no emotion came 
through.

Laura slammed a fist down on her knee. "No! Dammit, I knew this was going
to happen. No, it's obviously not what she 
wants, you don't have to look very hard to see that. But she thinks that
the judge will see her as an unfit mother and 
give Bill and Tara custody, at least joint custody, unless she agrees to
this."

I looked towards the stairs. Was she saying good-bye already? Was she
packing? How long would it take before she 
forgot Miranda's face, her bright clear eyes, her perfect fragile skin?

"What do you think I should do?"

She sighed. "Look, if that tape shows what they say it shows, a judge is
going to have a hard time with a custody 
arrangement that involves Dana. He'd probably refer her to the
authorities for prosecution. And if you're endorsing her, 
supporting her after she did something like that -- it will be hard for
him to believe that you've really stabilized and 
become an upright citizen after all."

"So you're saying that our chances aren't good."

"Let's put it this way -- imagine that this case was about someone else.
Would you want a child to be raised by people 
with your backgrounds, people who are struggling with these incredible
burdens? We've got a fair shot of proving that 
you're an excellent father -- at least for the past half a year. But
that's only a little over one percent of your lifetime. And, 
honestly, you look good because you responded well when Dana did the
thing that looks so bad -- she left Miranda 
halfway across the country, in good hands of course but it's hard to get
around the fact that she abandoned her 
daughter. Who's to say that she won't take off again when she recovers
from her latest problems?" 

When I didn't say anything, she prodded. "As your lawyer, I can only tell
you about your options. I don't know what the 
right thing for you to do is. Maybe you'd be better off if Dana had never
proposed this deal. But here it is, and you need 
to decide. We're supposed to go in front of the judge tomorrow to get his
approval. Because the best interests of a child 
are at stake, the judge has to approve our agreement. And your consent is
required, too. So you'd better know what 
you're going to say when he asks whether you've agreed to this."

After about five minutes of strained silence, she got up and made her
goodbyes. I was paralyzed more effectively than if 
I'd been staring at the Medusa and I didn't even bother with the alarm
behind her.

The sun slowly dissolved into the earth as I sat, trying to comprehend.
The sunset was spectacular, clouds at the 
horizon glowing pink as the water running down an ax murderer's drain.
The new-summer sky darkened into hot night as 
I sat.

I went to the study, my knees protesting at the sudden motion after hours
of disuse. She was there, curled up on my 
couch.

"So when are you going to leave?" I heard my voice come out before my
brain had completely engaged.

She looked up from where she was reading the Post and the light flared
off the lenses of her glasses.

"Excuse me?" she asked in a lemon sorbet voice.

"Well, you're going to fuck my brains out tonight and then vanish before
sunup aren't you?  Did you call the airline yet?  
Or is this going to be a local escape?" I marched over to my desk and
dropped down like a thrown rock, swiveling the 
chair so I could face her.

Her eyes were round as the Mooselet's.

"Alaska is nice this time of year, except for the mosquitoes, and you can
get a one-way ticket to Juneau with no 
problem.  You could even rationalize a trip up there for an X-File.  I
think there have been pipeline workers missing 
again.  I never bothered to check it out because I froze my ass off once
up there," the ichor in my voice surprised me.

"Mulder--"

"That's what you do, isn't it?  When the going gets tough, Scully bails. 
You take off so fast that you scorch the flight 
deck."

"Does the word 'ditch' mean anything to *you*, Mulder?"

"I had to stop doing that when you took the Champion's Cup for taking
off," I had my fingers so tight on the arms of the 
chair that I was probably leaving fingerprints in the hard foam of the
armrests.

I tapped an imaginary button on the chair arm.  Prepare deflector
shields, Mr. Chekov, incoming photon torpedoes.

"I'm sorry if my family is disturbing your quiet little island of
domesticity here.  I didn't ask for this to happen."

"I'm getting really tired of that song, Scully.  Really tired.  You
didn't ask to be abducted, you didn't ask to have your ova 
taken, and you didn't ask for the cancer.  You didn't choose to have
Miranda, and when she inconvenienced your life 
you dumped her with Emerson and Aileen.  You didn't provoke George into
stalking you and you certainly didn't *aid* 
him when he tried to strangle you," I continued, trying to keep my voice
under control even though it was crackling like 
a cheap stereo speaker. "When things don't go your way, you cave like a
house of cards."

"I don't!"

I snorted.

"This is bullshit, Mulder. I'm trying to do what's best for Miranda. You
were *there* today, you heard yourself rationalize 
and it's not going to get any better tomorrow when that lawyer crucifies
me alongside you. I'm offering you a way out 
and as usual you just resent my attempts to help."

"Hey, I was dealt a bad hand here too, Scully, and I'm just trying to
bluff my way through it.  I used to think that you 
were one of the strongest people that I know, and in the past year I've
realized that it wasn't strength that I was seeing. 
You're self-centered, emotionally straightjacketed, and utterly
inflexible to change."

"Sounds to me as though you've taken the psych findings to heart -- or
ego as the case may be.  You're believing your 
own press.  You are *not* Saint Mulder and you are *not* the poster boy
for emotional stability. Aren't you paying 
attention? There's a good chance we're going to *lose* this case, and
then what will you do?" 

Okay, so she had a point.  It wouldn't be the first time. Fortunately I
still had ammunition.

"And what are you going to do about the fact that you're pregnant? You
think no one's going to notice? Maybe you 
could go away and visit an aunt like girls in the fifties used to."

Her spine stiffened -- she seemed to grow an inch -- and when she began
to speak again she had the precise tone of 
her case reports. "RU 486 is available in Virginia. Chemical abortion
works in the home and I will be able to verify that 
this child will not be anyone's experimental subject."

She stalked forward a few paces, until her hand was resting on the
doorknob. "For the record," she said and turned 
back so that I could see the bone-white cheeks below her bruise-bright
eyes, "going upstairs does not constitute a 
ditch."

I sulked in the study for awhile until my natural curiosity got the
better of me.  Catzilla, who understood these things, 
shadowed me as I crept up the dark stairway and stopped.

Scully's voice was soft and I had to strain to hear it. What made her
good with children was that she treated them like 
real people, albeit with different interests and talents than adults had.
The mewling newborn Miranda hadn't been 
amenable to such attentions, but she was old enough now to respond to
Scully. She was silent for the moment as 
Scully spoke to her.

"Neither side of your family is any good at forgiveness or understanding,
so I'm not going to ask you for that. I know 
you'll be angry when you figure out what happened. I'm angry too, but --
I had to make sure you were safe. And you 
could never be safer than with Mulder. Whatever you think of me, you
should know that Mulder loves you more than a 
thousand mothers and fathers. He --" her voice caught, and then Miranda
whimpered. Scully was probably holding her 
too tight. "You've got the best Daddy in the whole wide world, you know
that? He'll make sure you grow up big and 
strong and nothing bad will ever happen to you --" 

I could hear her heaving breaths as she was unable to keep the tears from
coming. I heard her walk across the floor, 
then a rustle of plastic diapers as Miranda was lowered into the crib.

She'd taken a few steps away when Miranda began to cry. "Lee," she
wailed. "Lee!" 

More rustling, then, and her voice faded in and out as she began to
circle the room. Each word was thick, forced 
through salt and bone. "It's okay, baby. I'll just stay until you fall
asleep --" But Miranda wouldn't shut up. She was 
picking up on Scully's distress and responding the only way she knew how,
by fussing. After a few minutes, Scully 
spoke again.

No, not spoke. She was singing, her voice flat and stumbling over every
other word.

"Take me out to the ball game, 
Take me out to the show.
Buy me some peanuts and Crack-er Jack
I don't care if I never --"

I broke and ran, my brain pounding against my skull, desperate for
escape. There are some things that no human being 
should have to face.

Just for a little variety, *I* went into the hallway bathroom and threw
up. Of course morning sickness was soon going to 
be a thing of Scully's past. Why would she want a child when the one she
had now had brought nothing but pain?  It 
was Emily all over again, but worse.  Scully had actually bonded with the
Mooselet in a way she hadn't with Emily.  
Well, the Mooselet was better looking, had more personality, and was
smarter than Emily, which was probably due to 
the infusion of Mulder genes.  (The only one of my brothers who hadn't
been vain about his appearance was Ian, and 
he'd been insane.)  

I couldn't let her go.  It was that simple.  No matter what the judge
ended up with as a verdict, no matter what white 
rabbits Maxwell was able to pull out of his tailored pocket, no matter if
I had to keep Scully in a locked room and force-
feed her prenatal vitamins for nine months in whatever place I managed to
find without an extradition treaty to the US, I 
was going to keep this strange little family unit intact.  Period.  Full
stop.  She could go along willingly or not.

****
 
I was surprised to find Mulder in bed when I came out of the bathroom.  I
would have thought that he'd gone to ground 
on his sofa in the study.  But there he was, lying on his side of the bed
on his side, with the covers pulled up to his 
hairline as though I hadn't promised to leave both him and Miranda and
abort the embryo I was carrying like a concealed 
weapon. I hovered in the bathroom doorway for a moment. He had to be up
to something but I wasn't quite sure what.  
I'd played this scene out in dozens of hotels through the past two years:
the argument was going to be worked out on a 
purely physical level once again.  I had a fairly good idea what loomed
in the next hour or so.

The tickling in my nose warned me just in time. I put my hand up to my
face as if I were trying to cover my mouth, 
blocking my nostrils incidentally, and spun to return to the bathroom.
Running the water to cover up the sound of me 
not puking, tilting my head forward so that I wouldn't choke, I knew I
was doing the right thing. I couldn't let Mulder run 
the risk of losing Miranda because he dreamt of reconstituting a family
from my freeze-dried life. The last time I was 
dying I'd launched us into this terrible cycle, and I could get him out
this time. Whatever he was about to do to me, I 
could take, with pleasure. 

I knew that I was enjoying the role of martyr, of beautiful dying
sacrificial Camille and all the other tubercular operatic 
heroines. But what is there to embrace about dying but the martyrdom? I
had hopes that Mulder would one day look 
back on my choice and see that it had been about love and not weakness. I
couldn't wish him permanently damaged, 
though, because about one thing he was entirely correct: Miranda had a
chance to escape her legacies, and Mulder 
could make it happen through the power of his convictions.

Clean and bloodless, I emerged to face him.

The mattress creaked underneath my weight as I settled into my side (the
'passenger' side, mind you) of the bed.  I 
could tell that he wasn't asleep by his breathing.  I reached out to
touch the warm skin on his back.  He flinched away 
from me as though my fingers gouged his flesh.  Stung, I inched to the
edge of the mattress and clung there like a burr.

"I'm only saying this once - don't do it.  Don't leave Miranda and me
again."

Damn the hormones, I started to cry.  And damn Mulder, after barely five
minutes of listening to me sob into the extra-
firm pillow, he got up and left.

**** 
  
I slept on my old couch in the study. When I heard the shower going, I
snuck into the master bedroom to grab my outfit 
for the day, then used Warwick and Ingveld's bathroom to prepare. I gave
a garbled explanation of what was going on 
while I tried to make my hair behave without mousse.

"The videotape, the lawyer thinks it will hurt you so that you will both
lose if the judge sees it?" Ingveld asked again.

"That's what she says."

"And this is why Dana has made this deal?" she asked and handed me a tube
of hair gel which would do in a pinch.

"That's what she says."

In the mirror I saw Ingveld's face contort, trying to puzzle out the ways
of adults. I looked like the Hanged Man of the 
Tarot, the tie choking my scabs no matter how loosely I knotted it. I
gave up and loosened the tie.  It wasn't as though I 
had a single fucking secret with these people anymore anyway.

Warwick watched me impassively from the bed where he lay with his
keyboard cuddled against his side like a favored 
stuffed animal.

"So this is all going to be settled and everything will go back to
normal, right?"

"Oh, yeah, sure, it'll be normalicious."  I gave one last swipe at my
hair and plodded out to the car where I waited like 
Fred Flintstone for the rest of the family to arrive.

Scully came out with Miranda and I realized, too late, that I had
probably added insult to injury by making her bring the 
baby out.  The steering wheel wavered in my untrustworthy eyesight as she
opened the back door and put Miranda in 
the kiddie seat.  Then Miranda began to scream, demanding motion, while
Scully tried to decide whether it would be 
worse to sit next to her or next to me.

I won, I guess, and she got in the front seat. 

I won another round when she had to speak first.

"Last night..."

I remained as impassive as a crashed computer screen.

"...You never said you would accept the agreement."

I darted left, in between two Tauruses.  Fucking Tauruses.

"Well, are you?"

I couldn't very well leave her in suspense until the moment arrived; it
would look too bad to the judge.  More's the pity.

"No."

It took her four exits to recover from that.

"Mulder, you're . . . not making a decision based on all the relevant
information."

"What, it's really Zippy who knocked you up?"

Her hand twisted on the door handle as if jumping out at forty miles an
hour would be safer than staying with me.

"You want to take this risk so that we can stay together, and I
appreciate that.  But . . . I believe that . . . it may be the 
case that . . .."

If I hadn't needed both hands to swing in and out of traffic, I would
have strangled her.  "Spit it out, Scully, you're getting 
so good at that."

She took a lungful of air-conditioned baby-scented air.  "There is a not
inconsiderable possibility that I am out of 
remission."

First I didn't process it because I was trying to avoid plowing into the
asshole attempting to cut me off, and then my 
operating system suffered fatal errors.

"So you see," she said, emboldened by my obvious inability to respond,
"it would be highly unwise to risk losing your 
custody when it may not guarantee my presence even if you succeed."

I caught a look at myself in the mirror.  Red, ugly eyes stared at me
from a low circle of Hell.  And then there was the 
courthouse parking lot, and we pulled into our spot.

"Nice try, Dana," I said lightly as I unlocked the automatic doors.  "But
you're going in there and you're going to testify 
that you want to be an adoring wife and mother.  It's too damn easy for
you to sacrifice yourself for us and I'm not going 
to let it happen."

Laura trotted up as I liberated Miranda.  "I was expecting a call last
night," she chided.

"No deal," I informed her, and she went over to Scully's side, comforting
her with a low feminine murmur as Scully 
pulled away to hide her confusion and hurt.

Scully's oncologist had just testified the other day to Scully's recovery
and I refused to believe that this much misfortune 
could befall us.  Scully would call it a statistical improbability; me, I
just determined to keep her in good health by sheer 
force of will.  If I had to go hunt down an ET and kick its ass into
submission just to make the damn microchip in her 
neck work properly, I'd do it. Maybe they had a tech support line I could
call -- "excuse me, but this microchip is still 
under warranty, can you send someone to replace it?"

Laura gave Scully the hurried rundown of tips on testimony that I'd heard
too many times before.  Then she shuffled over 
to the Dark Side to explain that there would be no deal and there were a
few self-righteous noises on that side.

I tried very hard not to listen to Scully and Laura's very public
conversation about our life and times.  I was too busy 
projecting whatever psychic powers I had into the destruction of any
cancerous or precancerous cells that might be 
lurking in the vicinity.  Even if that benefited Bill accidentally. I
could still hear my voice echoing in my ears from the 
time Scully first discovered the spate of cancer among the Allentown
abductees. But you're all right, aren't you Scully?

Aren't you, Scully?