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From: mustangsally78@juno.com (MustangSally Seventy-Eight)
Date: Sat, 5 Sep 1998 23:54:15 -0400
Subject: Iolokus IV: Res Judicata 13/18


Iolokus IV: Res Judicata
13/18

white pepper ice cream
it's like a line drawing
it snipped my heart
white pepper ice cream
in my mouth
it stings my lips
it's like an eclipse
as if i'm in the crossword puzzle
but i can't fill in the blank
	Cibo Matto

Give him his due, Maxwell didn't waste any time before going for the good
stuff.  He quickly reviewed all the times 
Scully covered for me, disrupted Bureau protocol against her better
judgement, defied Skinner, or otherwise participated 
in the effective investigation of X Files. 

He asked her about events in Bethel, Arizona, and she averred that she
hadn't been allowed past the front gate of 
Roush's facility there because she didn't have a search warrant.  She
claimed that the lab had been destroyed while 
she was there in order to hide evidence of human experimentation that she
would have discovered had she been 
successful in her attempt.  Though this was the kind of naked assertion
that usually got me in trouble, here there was a 
public record of the dirty work Roush had been doing in Texas and Maxwell
didn't press her very hard. I assumed that 
he was merely waiting for the tape to prove her a liar.

Scully had very little trouble with the professional part of the story. 
But when it turned personal, she was running on 
fumes.

"Did you have sexual relations with Edward Jerse, the man you'd met only
that afternoon and who the next morning 
tried to kill you?"

"No, I did not." How I hoped she was telling the truth. She hadn't let
the folks at the hospital do a full exam; evidence of 
intercourse, if any, had disappeared with her next shower.

"Is it usual for you to stay overnight with a man you've just met, a man
who was a suspect in a murder case?"

"First, there was a blizzard outside, and second, Edward Jerse was not at
that time a suspect, his behavior was not 
overtly psychotic."

"So you just stumbled into this murder case? Bad luck seems to follow you
around."

"I would think your presence is empirical evidence of that proposition,"
she muttered and someone in the press corps 
emitted a bleat of laughter.

Maxwell then got her to restate every trauma she'd experienced in the
past six years, Duane Barry, Leonard Betts, Luis 
Cardinal, Donny Pfaster, Gerry Shnauz, Jack Willis, Mighty Morphin Bounty
Hunters (okay, so that's not alphabetical, 
but I wasn't really sure where they fit anyway), et cetera. The little
bastard referred to each one by case number.

Finally he spiraled in to Miranda, the eye of the storm. "Instead of
abandoning your child entirely, why didn't you simply 
reach out and get some assistance? Your mother, Mr. Mulder, Mr. Mulder's
brother, they were all willing to help you. 
But instead you chose to give up entirely."

Scully swallowed and straightened infinitesimally. "Even with their
assistance, I was overwhelmed. I'd lost Emily not 
long before, and I was still devastated. I...couldn't acknowledge my
experiences, couldn't make myself open up to 
others."

"But you can now?"

"Yes," she enunciated clearly, and I winced as she realized the problem.
It didn't make me feel any better that I'd been 
suckered the day before, though.

"Well, then, let me ask you some questions about your reactions to the
troubles you encountered. Now, you testified 
that after the death of your daughter Emily and the discovery of Miranda
and the rape, you suffered understandably 
lingering trauma. You've been taking antidepressant and anti-anxiety
medications, correct?"

"I have been," she said carefully. I tried not to squirm in my seat.
Being a lawyer, Maxwell was highly sensitive to the 
nuances of speech and he paused.

"Are you doing so now?"

"No."

"Why not?"

She took a slow, careful breath like a dolphin preparing to dive under
water and hide. "The medications were very 
helpful, but now that I can do without them I prefer to do so."

Not in the least untrue, yet incomplete; a letter-perfect Scully answer.
But there was blood in the water, despite the fact 
that she showed no signs of injury, and Maxwell tilted his head slightly.
"Isn't the usual minimum prescription for six 
months?"

"Yes."  Laura's hands twitched on her legal pad and relaxed when Scully
didn't volunteer further. 

"And did you discontinue taking the medications before that time on the
advice of your physician?"

"No."

"So you decided that you were recovered from your depression based on
your own evaluation, is that right?"

"Yes."  Watching Scully choke back explanations was incredibly difficult,
even knowing that Laura would allow her to 
say more under redirect if the cross went badly.  I could understand how
people tripped themselves up this way.  The 
temptation to justify, expound, and elucidate was enormous.

"Independence is very important to you, isn't it," he said softly,
sympathetically.  "Your strength is your strongest 
asset."

Her eyes grayed with puzzlement. 

"When you had active cancer, you continued working against medical advice
up to the point at which you collapsed 
during an important meeting, isn't that correct?"

"I fainted," she conceded.

"And when you discovered Miranda you took care of her all by yourself for
three months, despite what had just 
happened to you and despite Mr. Mulder's availability.  You only stopped
when your maternity leave ended and you had 
to return to work."

"I..."

He put his hands on the wooden barrier separating the witness box from
the courtroom floor.  "It was a relief to go back 
to work, wasn't it?  To be confronted with a choice between a job that
demands twenty-four hour commitment and a 
baby with the same requirements -- no one could fault you for choosing
only one, could they?"

"I don't know what you mean," she whispered, eyes flickering like the
whirring of a countdown timer on a bomb.

"You want to be in control of your life so much that you take action even
though it's physically or emotionally too taxing 
for you, isn't that true?  With the cancer, with your daughters, with
your medication."

She shook her head, but he didn't pause to tell her to speak up for the
court reporter.

"If the court decides that you're just not healed enough for custody, if
someone other than you makes that decision, 
won't that be a relief?  You've done your duty to your daughter and to
Mr. Mulder, you've fought the good fight, but 
wouldn't it be just a little bit reassuring to have someone else take up
the burden of caring for Miranda while you get 
yourself back together?"

Now, finally, the first tear track shone, like a freshly cut scar, on her
face.  "No," she denied, finally bowing her head to 
preserve whatever dignity she could imagine she had left.  When she
straightened, she had her voice under control, but 
the price was that her tears were flowing more freely.  "You may be right
that I can't be as strong for myself as I want to 
be.  However, what you don't understand is how strong I am for them.  How
strong I am with him."  She turned to the 
judge, her raised face beseeching despite itself.  "Don't make a decision
to protect me.  You can judge me or punish 
me, but if you decide against me out of some twisted version of
solicitude you will have done a terrible disservice to 
everyone involved."  She swiveled her head back to glare at Maxwell.  "So
don't attack me for what I've done and tell me 
that defending myself is simply proof that I don't know what's good for
me."

She took a breath to say more but seemed to realize that she'd already
broken the cardinal rule of cross-examination 
and subsided into her chair with an interrupted gasp.

Maxwell shook his head, almost indulgently.  "One more thing, Dr.
Scully."

She looked at him warily; as if he were brandishing a gun at her and she
had to hold him off for a few minutes so her 
backup could take him out.

"You've testified that your relationship with Mr. Mulder has been
tempestuous at times.  Are there any lingering 
difficulties caused by the fact that when you wake up in the morning you
see the face of the man who raped you?"

I stood up at precisely the moment that Laura shouted out an objection. 
She grabbed onto my sleeve and hung on 
despite the fact that she had to tilt halfway out of her chair to do so. 
Maxwell gave me a look that suggested that 
physical violence was exactly what he expected from me, and I tumbled
back into my seat as the judge spanked his 
gavel on the bench.

With one last snide look at me, Maxwell turned to the judge.  "Goes to
the stability of the marriage, which is important 
to the family environment."

"I'll allow it, Mr. Maxwell, but I understand why a gentleman might
object to having such a question put to his wife.  
Answer the question, please," he told Scully in a tone nearly as severe
as the one he used on the lawyer.

Scully glanced at the judge.  I may be the master of puppy-dog looks, but
her 'I'm disappointed that you failed me but 
not terribly surprised' face should have pride of place between us. 

Maxwell put his hand on the half-wall between him and Scully and leaned
forward so that he was invading her personal 
space.  "I can repeat the question if you'd like."

The shellac of long-suffering motherhood had worn off under Maxwell's
previous assaults, and Scully gave him a look 
that should have disassembled him into his component atoms.  "No, it does
not cause any 'lingering difficulties.'"

He let that unlikely statement have a moment to plummet to the ground. 
"And what about the more recent attempts on 
your life by yet another of your husband's criminally inclined brothers?"

"No 'lingering difficulties' there either.  Evil isn't a matter of blood,
it's a matter of volition," her left eyebrow explained 
exactly what she thought of his manners, intelligence, sexual prowess,
and personal hygiene, "Like most career 
choices."

"Of course, of course."  He waved his hand; she was talking in
trivialities and platitudes while he wanted to have a 
serious discussion.  "But if none of that bothers you, how can you expect
this court to imagine that you have the 
sensitivity necessary to raise a child?"

This is the point at which, if we were animated figures, little clouds of
steam would shoot out of Scully's ears.  Her 
patience was somewhere in Canada by now.  "Make up your mind," she
snapped.  "You want to portray me as a 
broken-down victim and a heartless witch at the same time."

Maxwell pulled away from her with a satisfied nod.  "All right, which is
it?  Withdrawn," he said before anyone else 
could react.  "We'll continue cross-examination tomorrow.  At that time
we intend to present videotaped evidence that 
Dr. Scully has been somewhat less than truthful about her activities in
Arizona."

"Sidebar, your honor!"  The judge beckoned and Scully got off the stand. 
We stewed for a long time as the legal 
beagles argued back and forth and the cameras targeted us, looking for
reaction shots.  Miranda was trying to eat 
Laura's abandoned pen and Scully was offering numerous other objects for
her edification; each was satisfactory for 
about a minute, and then Miranda wanted the felt-tip pen again.

When Laura returned, her face was so expressionless that I knew the news
was bad.  Over at the other side, Bill and 
the others began arranging their things to leave, jauntily confident.

"They've found someone they say can verify the tape," Laura whispered in
a voice of dry autumn leaves.  "Some 
security guard who escaped the fire and then worked in Vegas for the past
year.  They just tracked him down and he's 
flying out tonight."

"What does that mean?"

"It means very little if Dana's testimony was accurate."

I let her stew, refusing to feed her the next line.

"And if it was not, if the tape does show her after she testified that
she never made it beyond the outer perimeter of the 
compound--it will go badly."

***
 
Dinner was ugly.  Ugly in the extreme.  Ingveld had made Warwick an early
dinner and run off to take care of some 
consulting work she was doing for the feds or some other mysterious
project.  This meant that Mulder and I ate alone, 
Miranda having collapsed into a sack of potatoes not long after we
returned home.  The trial was wearing on her usually 
good nerves. She was getting whiny and clingy by turns, clearly sensing
the stress and tension that her adoring public 
was undergoing on her behalf.  Whatever damage the psychologists thought
my alleged abandonment of her had done 
was compounded by their presence and the custody battle.

We'd given up any pretense of domesticity and reverted to our old
bachelor ways, a pizza on the floor of the study with 
the television muttering CNN in the background and cans of soda sitting
on the top of the open pizza box.  For some 
reason, the tomato sauce tasted strange to me and I had to scrape it off
with my fingertips and then replace the cheese 
like a bad toupee.  The green peppers were inedible and I had to pile
them on a napkin.  Catzilla had stolen a chunk of 
green pepper that he was playing paw-hockey with underneath the desk and
I was so tired and depressed that I had no 
energy to try to stop him.

Rumpled and tired, Mulder leaned his back up against the sofa and wiggled
his toes dangerously close to the pizza 
box.  It was unhygienic and he knew that it drove me crazy.  He looked
entirely too calm, too accepting and I was 
wondering what was going on in that pretty head of his, assuming that it
wouldn't be good and not sure if I wanted to 
know.

"Are you going to eat that pizza or just dissect it?" he asked in a sharp
voice.

"Pardon the hell out of me.  I'm pregnant and my taste buds are doing
strange things."

"You asked me to order green peppers and now you won't eat them.  Didn't
you know you didn't want them?"

"They taste wrong.  Do you want me to throw up?"

"That's your excuse for everything now, isn't it?"

"Fuck you," I snapped and climbed to my feet. "If you want a dartboard
you can get your ass out to the sporting goods 
store and buy one.  You didn't marry one."

I made for the door.  After a day spent being filleted by Bill's lawyer I
would be damned if I was going to undergo Mulder 
maceration.

****

"Do not walk out of this room."

Goddamn, it wasn't even my voice that snapped out of the hole in my face.

This, at least, gave her enough reason to pause like a cat who isn't sure
if the shine on the kitchen floor is wax or water, 
one paw raised for disappointment.

When the lies get too hard to keep straight, one must resort to telling
the truth.

"Don't leave me," I croaked, "I've lived without you and I don't like it.
 You've proved to me that you can live without me, 
but I can't do the same."

She blinked, which was not quite the reaction I had been looking for.  I
was hoping for something more positive since I 
was spewing my heart's pumping blood out all over the hardwood floor. 
The door was only a few steps away from where 
I sat and the area stretched for miles of tundra while I slogged to cross
it.  Her body was vibrating at a higher pitch than 
usual and I could hear her breath catching in her throat.

"The tape," she muttered.

"Fuck the tape.  Fuck it all, Scully, just think for a moment.  Were you
happy?  Are you happy?  Can you even 
entertain the thought that I'm something other than an annoying but
necessary plaything."

The blinking continued and I considered the possibility that she'd gone
into mental vapor lock.  I reached out and 
touched her forearm where the downy hairs had jumped erect as though
there was entirely too much random static 
electricity in the room.
 
"You can't make this work," she said, "Even if the tape doesn't show what
we both know it does, you heard them, the 
psychologists.  I'm not cut out to be anyone's mother."

"So?  I've been through it with the Mooselet and if I can be a parent,
anyone can." I tried a smile and got yet another 
blink in response.

I slid my hand up her arm, working my way from fabric to flesh, and
cupped the searing heat of her cheek in my hand.

"You know I lay awake at night wishing that everything that has happened
to you because of me hadn't happened. I'm 
sorry.  I'm sorry for it all.  I'm sorry I love you. I'm sorry that
causes you pain.  But that's one thing that I don't want to go 
away."

Breath warm against the underside of my wrist, Scully shut her eyes,
which made everything easier for a moment.  My 
knees were trembling like the skin on a saucepan of hot milk.  She gave
no comment or argument (mark your 
calendars) when I led-shuffled her over to the sofa and pulled her onto
my lap.  Her head curled between my shoulder 
and jawbone and she went soft as Catzilla in midmorning snooze. We had
trained each other really badly, no wonder I 
felt free to hurt her if she'd forgive me so easily. Or was that vice
versa?

"You need a haircut," she muttered into the scarred terrain of my neck.

"Yeah, and -- " I prodded.

"And what?" Her cool fingers played over my stubble as if she were
sanding her fingerprints away.

"And I've just gotten emotionally naked and you could at least point and
laugh," the palm of her hand smelled like pizza 
but I kissed it anyway.

"I'm sorry, was I supposed to confess undying love or something?" 

"If it's not too much of a problem."

Sitting upright, she looked into my eyes with an expression as warm as
Mont Blanc.

"Oh Fox, I have loved you since the beginning.  My life is incomplete
without you. Oh you big beautiful stud, you," she 
recited in a flat, level tone, "you had me at hello."

My outraged squawk was muffled by her lips.  

Then she moved back to get the space to pull my shirt off. She looked at
me quizzically before she obscured my face. 
"You understand that it is now officially my turn. You will not begin
another fight until I have done so."

I could live with that.  

But there was something that still bothered me. I pushed back from her
bathwater-warm mouth as I realized what it 
was.

"I *never* said hello!"

"M -- Fox, what did I just tell you?"
 
"All right, but can we make up again like this?"
 
"Maybe," she said and threw my shirt over into the corner. 

Then she knotted her fingers in my hair and pressed my head into the sofa
back while her tongue darted into my mouth 
with teenage frenzy.  Her back was smoothly warm under my hands and I
pulled her closer until she was straddling the 
growing bulge in my sweatpants, her breasts hot and soft against my
chest.  It had only been a  matter of days since 
we'd had sex and it felt like months.  She nuzzled along my jaw and stuck
her tongue in my ear which seemed to be 
attached to my dick by a thin strand of enraged nerve.  I was hard as
quantum physics in the warmth of her thighs even 
before I squeezed the deliciously soft curves of her ass.  Breathing on
the banding of scars around my neck, she 
reached down between our bodies and squeezed me with her hot little hand.
 I grunted greedily into her hair and she 
chuckled softly into my shoulder.

"When all else fails," she teased.

"Hasn't failed yet."

"Pride goeth--" she said and slid her hand up and down with consummate
skill.

I growled and ground my teeth.

"Now," she demanded.

Well, that was a hardship.  I wiggled out of my sweats and shorts and
they joined the rapidly growing pile in the corner.  
Finally she was gloriously naked, and smiled back at my appreciative
gape.  She undulated over to me and climbed into 
my lap, her finely shaped legs twining around mine.  I groaned in
gratitude when the smooth bulk of her ass warmed my 
upstanding cock.  I squeezed the pale skin of her breasts, watching her
tight peach nipples compress between my 
fingers. I looked up and into the lasciviously glowing depths of her eyes
and finally saw through the wall of control and 
distance she'd always erected there.  And what did I see?  Bemused
indulgence, some need, and a hell of a lot of lust. 
This was better than any cupid and rose-bedecked declaration of love.

On the other hand, it wouldn't hurt for Scully to go Hallmark on me just
once.

"What?" she asked and gave me a shy smile.

"Tell me you love me."

The color rose from where my hands darkened her breasts to her hairline.

"It doesn't count if you're naked," I prodded.

"I think this couch has certain aphrodisiac properties."

She smiled and flicked her hair back away from her face with one hand in
a heart-stoppingly wanton gesture before 
leaning over and beginning to cover my face with sloppy, sultry kisses.

"I wouldn't be surprised if I had gotten pregnant from sitting on the
sofa.  For all we know your spermatozoa can live 
through an autoclave," she murmured into the shell of my ear and sent a
thrill down my left side that made me jump and 
shudder.
 
"Do you?" I asked again.

"I refuse to answer that question on the grounds that it will incriminate
me," she said and chuckled, and the chuckle 
followed the murmur down my neural network.

I pressed her down into the tired leather, her skin white chalk on the
blackboard underneath.  I reached up and killed the 
table lamp which was trying to strike me blind, and she glowed in the
yellow light from under the door.  Wantonness 
gone, she shivered underneath me suddenly shy, and her skin was cool,
smooth milk glass under my fingers.  I traced 
her face, the proud line of her nose, her stubborn chin, and her closed
eyes like butterflies.  The lush line of her mouth, 
the swoop of her eyebrows, like swords - beautiful in repose with clean
line and delicate tracery that were deadly in 
use.  Her breath stuttered in her throat and her legs scissored on the
dark water of the couch.  Her fingers stroked my 
back, running down my shoulder blades and spine like silken tails.  I
kissed her throat, her shoulders, her breasts, 
every scent and texture sweet and familiar.  The soft skin of her wrapped
around me and underneath me, I drowned in 
her vanilla peach rich and wild smell.  Ivory on onyx with amber inlay
she stretched out below me and I polished her with 
my hands, my mouth, proving my worship.  When she finally parted the slim
columns of her thighs and invited me 
inside she was hot honey and wine.  Smooth, delicate, barely moving I
slid back and forth within her.  Opening her 
mouth underneath mine, she suckled on my lips, darted her tongue inside
my mouth, mirroring what my cock was 
doing inside her, sleek thrust for sleek thrust.  Dazed and drunk on her,
by her, through her, with her, I looked down into 
her endless eyes and saw what I had been begging her to say.

I could feel her climaxes, delicate tremors around and through me, in a
narcotic haze.  I was swimming through her 
skin, through her blood, and curving through and around her heart used
for so much more than mere circulation.  Filled 
with the warm wet wine that I drank from her mouth, I coursed into her
with a dreamy gold fire from somewhere in my 
marrow and sank half onto her like a man in an opium dream. 
Smooth-handed, she polished me, my back and 
shoulders and as much as her small hands could reach.  I wanted to cry at
the enormity of it all, rail against anything 
that would deprive me of *this*.  It wasn't going to happen.  Things
simply could not be that cruel.

I shifted on the sofa, pulling her around and over me like an undersized
blanket.  Her hair streamed over my face and 
she sighed in my chest, sounding for all the world like a happy housecat.
 I smoothed her fur and listened to her purr.

She followed me home.

I just had to keep her.



Iolokus IV: Res Judicata
14a/18

Cherry on the top
Like a nuclear warhead
Nuclear bomb
Gonna lift the trigger
I had a
Dog Fly Religion
Neutron
On a chocolate sundae
	King Missile

Mulder came back from his morning run while I was re-experiencing
breakfast in our bathroom.  Although he was being 
nicely unhelpful, the smell of his sweat (which I have to admit I usually
enjoy) made my stomach heave harder. With his 
tail between his legs, he went to see if Miranda was available to play
with.  After I managed to get my stomach under 
control I wandered downstairs and found Ingveld in the kitchen, sitting
at the table grazing her way through a bowl of 
granola and a peach.  I grabbed some coffee (I was planning on having a
high caffeine baby, thank you.) and plopped 
down across from her.

She looked up at me with the most serious expression her fresh young face
would handle.

"I haff three older sisters," she said.

The smell of the coffee only made me feel sick again.

"My sister Marta had a baby when she was sixteen.  She was not married."

I put the cup down because my hand was shaking so badly that I couldn't
trust myself to spill it all over the floor.

"What are you saying?" I asked.

"I think it will be good for Miri to have someone to play with.  Too much
loneliness makes you go inside your brain, yes?

Okay, so she'd figured out the covert pregnancy, but no one said that
Ingveld was stupid, even though she was a 
natural blonde.

"Ingveld, I don't know if you understand, but there's a good chance that
Mulder might not only lose Miranda, but I'll end 
up in jail."

"You worry too much," she shrugged a graceful shrug as though we were
discussing nail polish colors, "So you know 
what you are going to wear today?"

Sackcloth and ashes would have been a good choice, but I had a couple
suits left that still fit and I let Ingveld help me 
choose the black one with the slim pants and a pale pink blouse which
kept me from looking like one of the living dead.  
I drove to the courthouse that day, while Mulder tied his tie in the
mirror on the sun visor and Miranda screamed in the 
back seat.  He decanted the baby and we walked the gauntlet of cameras
into the courthouse.  Laura met us in one of 
the small conference rooms and managed to give us a stern look, which
didn't rest easily on her young features.

"I take it that you have solved your issues here on the proposal with
Bill?" she asked.

"Yeah," Mulder said.

"I'd appreciate it if you wouldn't throw me curve balls in the courtroom.
 It doesn't help your credibility at all.  It goes to 
Bill's argument that you two are unstable."

I sighed and got up, the morning nausea returning with a vengeance. 
"Excuse me, I need to use the ladies room."

After I had thrown up breakfast, I was washing my hands at the sink and
chewing a handful of breath mints when Laura 
came through the door.  I thanked God or Fate or Whatever that she hadn't
walked in on my vomiting.  She smiled and 
started running a brush through her hair.

"Miranda is a cute baby.  She was trying to eat Fox's tie," she
commented. "She seems to have a lot of personality for 
such a small person."

I knew what she meant.

 "She's been an education."  I agreed.

Looking in the mirror, our glances met.

"Can I ask you a question?" she said in a tentative tone.

"It's not like we have any privacy anymore."

Blushing, she looked down.  "I was just wondering, when you and Fox were
working together, and you were involved, 
how did you manage to keep your personal and professional lives
separate?"

"Is this going to haunt me on the stand?"

"My own curiosity only.  This doesn't pertain to the case in the least."

"Well, there was never any formal agreement, but when we were working
there wasn't any mention of the personal 
aspect.  It isn't Hoover High where you can go cow-eyed and make out in
the hall.  We worked when we worked and 
that was all.  On the other hand, it wasn't as though we couldn't discuss
elements of a case outside of work."

Actually, I could remember a couple of times when the fog had cleared on
certain cases immediately after some truly 
astounding sex and on several occasions I'd done autopsies with toilet
paper wadded between my legs to catch any 
stray drips from the morning encounter.  The sex had been for tension
release more than anything else, just as Mulder 
had gone on his runs and I'd taken to the bathtub.  There hadn't been
much overlap between work and play.  We were 
either fucking, working, or sleeping, and to think back on it the
hollowness of it all made my teeth hurt.  Empty calories, 
with no nutritional value.

"The one thing that Bill's psychologists said about me that I heartily
agree with is that I have always been able to keep 
my emotional life under strict control."

It was a sideways look that she gave me, full of questions.

"Well," I amended "in all honesty, I was able to keep it under control. 
The rules are a little different now."

There were no rules, that was the problem.

****

A shadow fell over the table in front of me and I looked up. "I didn't
expect to see you here," I told my sister, "aren't you 
still hiding out?"

"I heard things were going badly, no big shock, and I wanted to see my
niece again before she gets legally severed from 
the family," Sam said and bent to the stroller where Miranda made a grab
for one shiny silver earring. Sam hissed, lips 
peeling back from teeth, and she the Mooselet growled back.  They stared
at one another, mongoose and cobra well-
matched.

Scully came up behind Sam and I could tell that she had rarely regretted
her inability to carry a gun during this trial 
more. "Come to examine your handiwork?"

"I did good, don't you think?" Sam pivoted on one rapier heel and looked
down at Scully, who stiffened and seemed to 
expand like a cat with its fur on end.

"What do you want? We're somewhat busy at the moment," Scully pointed
out, and Sam shrugged and turned to kneel 
in front of the stroller.

"You're my sole survivor," she said to the baby, almost wistfully, and
then stood up, straightening her charcoal-gray 
fitted jacket where it had rucked up. "I can't stay. I'll call you when I
have information for you."

I was obsessing about the videotape and Sam's revelations were not at the
forefront of my mind. "Sure, whatever."

As Sam receded like Kaiser Soze into the distance, Scully came and sat
next to me, frowning. Around us, people were 
settling in for the day, the clerk and the bailiff splitting a donut as
Bill huddled with his entourage. "This isn't right," she 
said, discomfort working through her face like worms under the skin.

I tried to read the Post as if there were absolutely no doubt in my mind
about the contents of the videotape, which in 
fact there were not though not in the way I'd like. My hands were
sweating so badly that the sports pages smeared 
dusty black onto my palms.

"M--Fox, the people at BioQuest think she's cut a deal to work against
them, if she thinks we're going to lose and 
Miranda will be turned over to them --"

I looked up as Scully jumped to her feet, drawing the attention of
everyone in the room. I followed her eyes down to the 
floor, by the stroller.

Where Sam's calfskin briefcase, so appropriate to her professional image,
still sat.

I rose as if ejected from a crashing jet. We didn't have to look at each
other to know the score: my legs were longer, I 
could push past crowds better, I had to take Miranda. Scully was already
striding to the center of the room, her hand 
grazing her hip to flash her missing badge, as I reached over the
briefcase, careful not to dislodge it, and ripped Miranda 
from the stroller. She began to howl at precisely the moment Scully began
to yell to everyone that they had to 
evacuate, now. I caught Bill's incredulous look and the judge's somewhat
disapproving curious face as I spun and began 
to run.

Out the narrow corridor between the dark wooden seats for spectators,
through the double doors and into the hallway 
where witnesses and lawyers and security guards lounged. "We need a bomb
squad," I yelled as I dodged past 
clusters of people rooted like trees in the hallway. People who'd been
sitting on the hard benches lining the walls began 
to rise as the lights flickered and an alarm began to blatt. Scully had
apparently convinced someone that she was 
serious. The hallway darkened as if my vision were going in a faint, and
then the emergency lights began to spin, 
flashing red and white.

I was still moving fast away from the courtroom -- I didn't know how much
destruction could be packed into one 
briefcase, especially if Sam did have friends 'high up' like the doctor
from BioQuest said. On the other hand she'd 
delivered it personally so it probably wasn't more than one city block's
worth of destructiveness. The slippery marble 
floor was obscured as litigants and court personnel poured out of other
courtrooms; ahead of me a jury room door 
opened and twelve more wild-eyed citizens added themselves to the crush.
Underneath the harsh quacking of the 
alarm, the babble of confused voices was like putting your ear to the
world's largest conch shell.

Police officers were everywhere, some escorting handcuffed felons and
defendants, others just with their hands on their 
guns, trying to figure out the problem. One saw me and evidently thought
I'd taken the crisis as a chance to kidnap a 
bundle of joy; he pulled out his gun and started after me.

I felt Miranda's body shaking with outraged sobs but I couldn't hear her
over the rest of the noise. Now we were in the 
main atrium, and the crush of reporters refusing to leave the building
saw me. More strobes exploded in my face and I 
couldn't raise my arm to shield myself without loosening my grip on
Miranda, so I spun and looked for another way out. 
The cop was yelling at me to halt, but he wouldn't fire at the baby and I
was safe for the moment.

People were running everywhere, like a box of ball bearings spilled on
the floor. No, ball bearings would at least be 
controlled by the rules of physics. I was buffeted by glancing blows as
people hurried past me, trying to find a free door, 
spun around and around in the middle of the elegant circular room like a
billiard ball with very poor English as I 
screamed for Scully. She should be out here by now, directing traffic,
getting things under control. Pressed up against 
my chest, Miranda's wet face soaked into my shirt.

There was a whump like a grocery bag bursting as it hit the ground, and
the hallway we'd come from exploded into fire. I 
saw a hall bench come free of its moorings and sail into the air, arcing
over the jetting flames and landing right on the 
main information desk, which collapsed into a thousand expensive
splinters. I turned to keep Miranda away from the fire 
and felt a hot fist of heat against my back, pushing me away. Then a body
hit me right behind the knees and I 
collapsed, barely able to stick out an arm in time to avoid crushing
Miranda beneath me. In my peripheral vision I saw 
that I'd been assaulted by a semiconscious police officer, maybe even the
one who wanted to arrest me.

While I was down and squirming away from the groaning body half on top of
my legs, more debris thudded against my 
back and I almost lost hold of Miranda twice before I could struggle to
my feet. Screams filleted the air through the now 
absurdly slow and repetitive sound of the alarm.

The fire was already dying as I staggered upright, sprinklers pissing
lukewarm water onto the scorched and unscorched 
alike. As more people managed to escape the building, I searched for
Scully among the refugees. It would have been 
impossible to hear me, but I yelled her name anyway, howled like Brando
demanding entree to Stella's bed, as more 
and more people swept past me towards the blinding summer light of open
ground and safety. A kaleidoscope of 
humanity, flashes of shoulders and waists and eyes, swept past me, and
all I could do was sift the fragments and 
ignore all that was not Scully.

It was when the first firefighters pushed upstream and passed me, running
down the blackened hallway to see if anyone 
still lived in that part of the building, that I began to panic. The
smell of chemical smoke was heavy in the air and I 
couldn't keep Miranda here, her infant lungs were in danger.

Scully's name died into an undifferentiated howl in my throat.

The hot damp baby in my arms swung furious fists against my chest that
seemed to thud directly against my heart as I 
loped towards the door. I'd just find somewhere safe to put her --

Where was that? Sam had to be nearby, waiting to see if she'd succeeded. 

The roaring in my ears had nothing to do with the explosion or the people
panicking around me. I should have made 
Scully take Miranda, she's short but she's determined, she would have
gone through the crowds like Michael Jordan 
through a double-team defense, I should have been the one alerting the
others to the danger and clearing the courtroom. 
Hell, we should have let them all die, let God sort them out and save
ourselves a lot of trouble.

The sunlight smacked me across the face and I stumbled out the door where
spectators were clotting. I looked back 
into the building and Scully was still not there.

I shuffled gracelessly down the granite steps, mumbling reassurance to
Miranda. She had to be all right, Scully's 
always fine, she doesn't die. I can't let her. 

More firetrucks, more ambulances, the police were already setting up
barriers. I felt the chill of incipient shock as the 
hot morning sun melted my skin and I wasn't sure I'd be able to hold on
to Miranda.

When Zippy materialized and caught her from my Gumby arms, propping his
crutches under his armpits to free his 
hands, it didn't surprise me in the least.

"What did you do this time?" he joked and then blanched when he got a
look on my face.

"You armed?" I managed to croak.

He nodded. 

"Shoot anyone who approaches you. Keep her safe."

I fled into the darkness as I began, finally, to hear Miranda's cries.

Inside, stretchers yawned hungry mouths. Many were already being fed by
victims who'd been too slow to escape the 
hallway. No one challenged my presence. I was ambulatory, barely, and the
rescue workers had better things to do.

In front of our courtroom the marble floor was black as Sam's hair. The
impressive wooden doors had disappeared, 
blown into the next century. The room was nothing but a gutted shell,
charred lumps where chairs and tables might 
have been stuck to the floor like rotted teeth. Nothing in that room
during the explosion could have survived.

Breathing the fouled air, I entered Hell's antechamber. The floor was
still smoldering in places, and my shoes felt like 
they were red-hot iron. The image of the room as it had been fifteen
minutes before, whole and unmarred, flickered in 
my vision, layered over the new reality like a hologram. This was the
sign that the profiler part of my brain was trying to 
send the idiot part a message. 

There, behind the bench. Where the judge always emerged from in the
mornings and after lunch, where the lawyers had 
their private conferences. There had been a door, once.

Now it was a wall, solid metal distorted in its frame by the force of the
explosion but not blown apart. Its strength 
puzzled me until I figured that it had to be part of the enhanced
security many courts were investing in, in these days of 
Freemen and McVeigh. And Samantha Mulder, apparently.

I pounded on the door and screamed Scully's name once more.

Silence. Dead silence.

The wail of denial piped through my head at about a hundred and twenty
decibels. She was there, she had to be there, 
surely she was on the other side pressing her hands against the
blast-rippled door directly parallel to mine.

I was pounding with both fists now, I could feel new bruises and cuts
explode as my knees began to give out and I 
started to slide toward the floor, unable to breathe. I looked away and
realized that some of the things I'd thought were 
just burnt chairs had merged with bodies.

Blackened tears dripped from my nose as I lay against the hot door.

Vibration, not of my own makings, under my helpless hands and I pressed
my ear to the door.

The sound was muffled, but I knew it was my name.

I wept as I pulled myself up like Pinocchio under Gepetto's control and
went for the firefighters.

****

I can yell pretty loudly when I have to, and I could feel my throat going
raw when I called for a bomb squad and an 
immediate evacuation. The press is fairly sensitive about the danger
after so many terrorist incidents in past years: 
naturally, they want to report on tragedy happening to others, but they
decidedly don't want to *be* the news. My yells 
produced a Niagara-sized rush through a Rock Creek-sized outlet.

Looking at the crush of people (reporters, anyway) stopping up the main
doors like a cork in a bottle, I decided that the 
judge would never make it. I ran back to him and grabbed his shoulder.
His face tightened and reddened with outrage. 
"I'm sorry, your Honor," I said as I half-dragged him back to the door to
his chambers, "but it's not safe for us to stay in 
this room." Whatever he said to me over the confused foaming of the
others in the room involved the phrase "young 
lady," but that's all I know.

I noted that Tara and Matthew made it to the real exit, but Bill must
have suspected a trick of some sort and followed 
me. Our loyal counsel, somewhat like dogs, stayed by our sides -- or
maybe they just figured that, starting from the far 
end of the room, their chances of making it out the main doors were slim
indeed. 

My stomach shrunk into a black hole when I realized that there was no
through exit. We could be trapped like a 
microwave dinner when the bomb went off. I bolted the door and the
lawyers backed away from me as if I were the 
potentially explosive element. "We should get behind the desk, it may
protect us from the blast."

"These doors are supposed to be bomb-proof," the judge said sharply, as
if I were letting the American justice system 
down by not trusting their strength. 

"Yes, your Honor," I agreed as I urged him to the back of the room behind
his desk. 

We all hunkered down behind the judge's enormous mahogany desk, the judge
in the middle and the lawyers flanking 
him to provide maximum possible distance between me and Bill. Just as we
got uncomfortable, the blast door groaned 
like a lion roaring on the veldt.

The judge's bronze statue of Justice weighing empty air leapt off the
desk in her own need to escape and smacked into 
my left hand, drawing blood which I hardly felt as I stared open-mouthed
at the Legal Eagles crouched next to me. 
Laura and Maxwell were arguing about whether the judge should end the
hearing and recuse himself as sirens wheeped 
and water began pouring from the ceiling. More books and soft-backed
supplements fell off the shelves as the building 
shuddered. Laura took a hit, continued yammering, and only paused when
she and Maxwell both leapt to protect 
Hizzoner from assault with a deadly casebook. They collided, the judge
got slightly bonked anyway, and I almost 
laughed. It was worse than watching the Gunmen at play.

Maxwell gave Laura a hand back up and looked like he wanted to object
when I checked the judge's pupils and made 
the older man track my index finger, but my nemesis undoubtedly realized
that looking as if he didn't care if the judge 
was concussed was even worse than letting me earn brownie points by
playing doctor. The judge was well enough to 
snap at me for asking him to do silly tricks, in any event.

When I'd pronounced the judge fit for work, Maxwell and Laura began to
argue about the legal import of recent events. 
All three of them ignored the sirens and the smoke in favor of legal
argument, while I tried to determine whether there 
were any operative exits. I was beginning to think that lawyer jokes
substantially understated the differences between 
the profession and the rest of the human race. Bill sat with his hands
over his knees, disgusted with life, while I peeked 
at the judge's smoldering books on the far wall and guessed that we'd
been spared the brunt of the blast. The frailer 
doors on the other side of the courtroom must have exploded and channeled
the explosion outwards.

Mulder ruined my new suit when he grabbed me after the firefighters
finally knocked the door in. I couldn't actually work 
up any annoyance, though, not when he was still crying (from the smoke,
of course) and his chest shook against mine 
like a car that had lost its shocks. I rubbed his soot-streaked face with
the heel of my hand and accepted life without 
breathing while he attempted to squeeze me back down a dress size.

Zippy was waiting outside for us. His badge was flipped open and hung at
his waist so that everyone could see it. He 
was leaning against a local squad car with his crutches propped up beside
him, one arm around Miranda and the other 
ever-so-casually training his gun towards the ground in case someone
tried to dispute his right to babysit.

As we approached, Miranda waved at us, looking from Mulder to me and
back, awed by the incredible amount of dirt 
and debris Mulder had accumulated. She was reporting on her impressions
of the whole incident in triple time, but when 
I took her from Zippy she grabbed a hank of my now-stringy hair and said,
in exactly Mulder's tone when I'm not playing 
along with his latest joke, "*Scuh*-lee."

Ever the gentleman, Mulder took Miranda from me just before I vomited,
narrowly missing both Zippy's cast and  the 
hood of the squad car.

Miranda applauded. MSNBC and CourTV both showed me getting sick, damn
them, but the broadcasters didn't. I guess 
puke is against Standards and Practices.

"Baahhhhm!" Miranda yodeled happily. 

She made it into prime time.



Iolokus IV: Res Judicata 14b/18

Well I never get to do the things they wanted to do to you,
I have to do them to myself, or go find someone else,
Well if you were so good, I wouldn't be so bothered by you,
I like to drink your nose, and suck your little toes,
Strawberry sundae is mine, 
Only funday, it's the one day I can lie and dream about you.
	BMX Bandits

Still life with old magazines, me leaning against the wall in the triage
unit at the local emergency room. This was the 
same emergency room we'd gone to after George had taken himself out of
the line of succession courtesy of the FBI 
SWAT team.  The way things were going we would be rating our own curtain.
Scully was sitting in one of the waiting 
room chairs with a makeshift bandage around her injured hand. The
Mooselet was clinging to her like a limpet and 
cooing at her in soothing tones of Moose-Speak.  With her eyes shut and
the black smudges from the soot marking her 
haggard face, Scully looked like one of the victims of the Oklahoma City
bombing who had managed to get her child out 
of the wreckage.  I wished that the fucking TV cameras had been around to
get a shot of that, it certainly was a blow to 
the balls to the argument she wasn't attached to the Mooselet.

How could she not be when the Mooselet had inherited the old Mulder
charm, right?

We waited while the badly injured went in and were whisked to ICU or
wherever.  Scully had already diagnosed the 
possibility of a green break to the small bones in her hand and she
definitely was going to need stitches, even I could 
tell that. I'm sure she would have been just as happy to suture herself
in the privacy of our kitchen, but the EMT's had 
gotten hold of her before she could escape.  Which was pretty much the
way I had - before she could escape.

The judge, bruised on the head from where a flying law book had beaned
him on the noggin, was sitting across from us 
in the waiting area, with his gown folded neatly in his lap.  I bit back
the urge to walk over and plead my side of the case 
without the benefit of legal counsel, because I had the sinking suspicion
that a pissed-off Laura could give Scully a 
challenge for the crown of Queen of Bitchiness.  Instead, I put my hand
on Scully's messy hair and tried my best 
reassuring smile on her.

She opened her eyes and frowned.

"What?" she asked in a nasty tone.

"How're you feeling?" I asked.

"Very nauseous.  Go away," she said and shut her eyes again.
 
"You want a soda or something?  Flat Coke always helps me." 

"And how often have you had morning sickness?" she asked in the same
precisely vicious tone, but did not open her 
eyes. "I just want you to promise me no x-rays.  X-rays would not be a
good thing."

Of course she was right, no point in asking for trouble with her
incipient Mulder-mutant by having the fetus irradiated on 
top of any already present mutations - like my sense of humor, for
instance.  I tried the smile again and the Mooselet 
smiled back at me and started pulling at Scully's hair.

"BAAAAAAAAAAMMMMMM!" 

"Mulder, we really have to teach her some more words," Scully sighed and
smoothed down a stray lock of the baby's 
hair. 

"No time like the present."

I crouched down next to them and went eye to eye with the Mooselet's baby
jades.

"Say 'ice cream'."

The Mooselet tracked from my face to Scully's, checking to see if it was
all right.  Scully nodded almost imperceptibly.

"Yiiiii Cweeeeeeeem."

"Close enough for government work," I agreed.

I held the Mooselet while Scully got her stitches. The Mooselet craned
her head around to watch the blood and the 
gore, while I watched her watch.

"If you're a good girl there's some Chunky Monkey in it for you." I
offered.

The resident pursed her lips.

"You shouldn't feed babies sweets."

"I was talking to my wife."

"Skuh-lee," the Mooselet explained.

Scully smirked when she gathered up her rings and held them out to me in
her right hand.  I think I must have been 
wearing one of my more stricken expressions.

"Help me put them on the other hand.  My fingers are numb."

For the second time that month, I slid the rings over her knuckles and
into place. Although they were on the wrong 
hand, I was just glad she was willing to wear them.

We were a sad little crew that piled out of the Ranger that evening,
Scully bandaged and sooty, me sooty, and the 
Mooselet both sooty and drooling asleep against my shoulder.  Warwick and
Ingveld had made it home and had dinner 
on the table and I was so grateful that I could have kissed them both,
but I only kissed Ingveld and thumped Warwick on 
his good shoulder.

"That was pretty fucking spectacular," he said, "I can't see how they
would deny you custody after you saved 
everyone's lives."

Scully was balancing the Mooselet on the counter and trying to wipe the
worst of the soot off her red puckered face, the 
Mooselet wailed and flailed, nearly sending both of them into the
dishpan.

"You are going to bed, young Miss.  You are too tired and cranky to be
with humans." Scully told her and scooped her 
up against her chest.

"You can't trust lawyers.  Maxwell will probably make out that we set the
bomb for just that reason," I went to the 
refrigerator and got a beer, "Rat bastard."

"What do you call a boatload of lawyers at the bottom of the ocean?"
Ingveld asked.

I looked at her.

"A start," she said.

I realized that it was a joke and smiled at her.  Warwick looked over at
his ladylove and rolled his eyes.

"She's been looking at lawyer jokes on websites," he explained.

"I would think that you would need funniness now." 

"Yeah, that's about right." 

"Come on," Warwick tugged at Ingveld's arm.

"Was it not funny?" I heard her ask as they went downstairs.

I sighed and drank the beer. God, it tasted good.  Nothing like a cold
beer after a hot day of trauma and a major 
explosion.  It almost made me regret ever leaving the X-Files. 

Catzilla rubbed against my shins in greeting and jumped up onto the
counter so I could rub him from ears to tail.  While 
the rest of us had suffered over the past few weeks the now-neutered cat
was getting fatter, sleeker and silkier by the 
minute. (Scully took him - I didn't have the heart.  I had the suspicion
I was next in line to get fixed.)  I know I felt guilty 
for not giving him enough attention and made up for it in cat snacks, and
I suspected that he also hoovered up 
everything that the Mooselet threw to the floor.

"What's that cat doing on the counter?"

Guilty, Catzilla and I both started when Scully came back in.
 
"Down." She ordered and he leapt gracefully from the counter and glared
greenly at her before he went after Warwick 
and Ingveld, his tail held high with offense.

Too tired to talk, we ate the pasta salad in silence, and she went
upstairs afterwards while I fed the dishwasher and 
closed up the house.

Up in our bedroom, I shucked off my shoes, jacket, and socks and went
into the bathroom. The room was dark save for 
candlelight flickering from a votive candle resting on the side of the
sink.  Scully was submerged with a froth of bubbles 
up to her chin and her bandaged hand resting on the side of the tub.  I
could see the ruby tips of her toenails through 
the bubbles as well as a couple of more strategic places, such as the
auburn shadow of her pubic hair and the salmon 
tips of her breasts.  Her eyes were shut and she had a folded washcloth
draped over her forehead.  The room smelled of 
strange floral perfumes and the water had a decided lavender cast to it. 
I sat on the closed lid of the toilet and picked 
up the bottle that sat on the tub rim next to the spigot.

"Quiet moments - for relaxation." I read.

"I should buy it by the gallon," she murmured, her voice dreamy in the
steamy room.

"I should drink it," I put the bottle down and looked at the tub,
measuring it for size, "Room enough for two."

One eye opened and considered me.  I was in dangerous territory, knowing
that Jason had raped her in the shower of 
his family estate.  But that was miles and months away.  She shrugged and
half sat-up to make room, the suds running 
intriguingly down her breasts and back into the tub.  I stripped down to
my scar collection and eased into the water with 
her.  The water in the tub was hot enough to burn my balls but I manfully
lowered myself into the boiling depths.  By 
careful angling, we were able to fit face to face with our legs
overlapping.  I leaned back and felt the faucet nudge the 
back of my head before I wiggled around to avoid it.  Water splashed out
of the tub and onto the bath mat.

Scully, unexpectedly, graced me with one of her zillion watt smiles and
leaned back into a wreath of bubbles.

"If anyone had told me in 1993 that I was going to end up in a bathtub
with you, let alone married to and pregnant by 
you I would have told them that they were delusional."

"So you weren't immediately captivated by my charm?"

"I thought you were an arrogant bastard."

"And your opinion has changed?"

"No."

"So you lied to the shrinks?"

"Every word of it," she said and blinded me with the smile again. 

I snorted and realized that her good hand was walking up my thigh in a
manner that was anything but relaxing.

"We'll drown," I pointed out.

"Spoilsport," she said and gave my cock a friendly squeeze before
withdrawing her hand.

We lolled in the water until it grew cold and emerged, water-wrinkled and
thoroughly boneless with the effects of 
Scully's magic bath oils. Damp and naked, we tumbled into bed.  Scully
had her injured hand pillowed on my chest and 
her head on my shoulder, our legs wrapped like ropes around each other's.
 I listened while her breathing smoothed out 
and she grew limp and heavy against me, pulled down into sleep's waters
like a swimmer with no plans to survive.  The 
old demon of insomnia came and sat on my left shoulder, reminding me that
the worst was yet to come, I'd once again 
been betrayed, and there was no assurance that Scully would stay a minute
longer than was necessary.  There was no 
assurance that she could even if she wanted to, now that the specter of
that bad old astrological sign of infinitely 
proliferating cells had returned. Exhausted in both body and mind, I lay
there and listened to the demon whisper poison 
into my ear until the morning sun changed the colors in the room.

****

The telephone rattled me out of my cozy post-trauma snooze, I slid out
from under Mulder's arm and flailed at the 
nightstand until I grabbed the telephone and dragged it to my head.
 
"S'kly?" I groaned.

"Dana, " she corrected me "the trial has been adjourned until Monday
pending investigation of the explosion." Laura, 
sounding entirely too chipper for what had to be the middle of the night
burbled into my ear.

"Wh' time izzit?" I asked as Mulder's arm re-velcroed itself to my middle

"After nine.  The judge called me at six if you can believe that.  The
old fart must not sleep at all.  But I talked to 
Maxwell already and he's begun making noises about how the judge can't
possibly have an unbiased opinion after what 
happened yesterday - which might give them cause to call a mistrial."
 
"Fuck," I groaned.
 
Mulder, who must have thought it was a command, slid his hand between my
legs and homed in on his intended target 
while I concentrated on what Laura was saying.  He nuzzled the back of my
neck and began nipping at the semi-
ticklish scar from my chip implantation.

"I don't know if we can go through all this again." I admitted, and
squirmed under the dual assault on my nervous 
system.  I batted ineffectually at his hand but Mulder only made a low
gopher noise and started wedging my legs open 
like the jaws of life opening a crashed car.

"Unless you have some incredible piece of information that you want to
share with the class, I can't see how we can 
avoid it - unless he's so sure of himself with that tape that he won't
use the bombing against the case."

It was getting hard to think while Mulder's entirely too-talented tongue
started working its way down along my ribcage 
and towards my stomach, the soft fur of his hair dragging along in the
wet trail from his mouth like a paintbrush.  I tried 
to arch away from him but he was insistent.

"It all comes down to that damn tape."
 
Teeth grazed the inside of my thigh and I bit my lower lip to choke back
a moan.

"Do you know what's on the tape?" she asked.

"No."  I lied and received a reward for my falsehood in the form of a hot
mouth sliding onto my already aching center.

"There's only so much I can do - your brother's squeaky clean other than
his finances."

Squeak.  There was a squeak building up inside my throat while Mulder's
teeth and tongue worked merrily away on my 
clitoris.  My body was shaking like a car going over rough terrain and
Laura's voice was filling with a static that had 
nothing to do with the cordless phone.  My heels drummed helplessly
against his shoulders as he bent me nearly in 
two.

"I know who set the bomb," I offered as the bomber's brother set my body
on fire.

"Who?"

"Samantha Mann.  Samantha Mulder, Mul --- Fox," the name came out in a
muffled choke more related to what he was 
doing than the name itself, "sister.  A woman with a black bob, black
suit, left a briefcase near Miranda's stroller.  
That's where the bomb was.  Someone blew up our car right before the -"

I had to stop and catch a shaky breath.

"-psychologists came. - "

Bad word choice.

"There's a police report with the DC Police.  You can ---"

God damn him anyway!  I was shaking like one of James Bond's vodka
martinis.

" - just check it out Laura."

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah. . .  " my back was at least six inches away from the mattress and
I swore that my toes were curling upwards 
with the strain of keeping my voice under control, "I gotta go -
something's come up."

With a vengeance.

Just as I hit the disconnect button, Mulder slid into me with the
efficiency of a bullet entering a gun chamber.  That was 
enough to send me over the edge.  I grabbed at his shoulders and dragged
him in as deep as he would go as I clutched 
down and around his cock which felt as though it were filling me to the
brain stem.  He slammed hard inside me, 
breathing as though he had done the four-minute mile.  I shuddered,
grabbing his hips and squirming until each and 
every thrust grazed my clitoris and I came in a blinding burst of snow
and ice that ripped me down to the bone.  I was 
moaning his name - I don't know which one -- as the shock waves coursed
through me for what felt like a decade.  I 
was dazed and limp as he continued to thrust in and out of me, his narrow
hips so thinly covered with skin that I could 
see the layers of muscle, the bunching of the muscles in his arms and
shoulders, corded forearms, and the emerald 
insanity lighting his eyes that pinned me into the rumpled sheets.  And I
came again with a sudden violence that made 
me wail like a cat with a trodden-upon tail.  He growled his gopher
growl, lip turning up, and shot hot and hard and 
heavy into me while I went up like the courtroom in a glorious burst of
flame and destruction.

Manners forgotten, he collapsed on top of me like a pile of hardback
novels falling from the top shelf.

I wanted to kill him for pulling that stunt, but instead, I slid my legs
around his and kissed his sweaty hair.  Grunting, he 
adjusted his weight so I could breathe again and burrowed between my
breasts.  
 
"Scully, Scully, Scully . . ." he muttered.

"You forgot to call me Dana in the courtroom, when the bomb went off."  I
chided him, "goes against our pose as a 
quote normal unquote couple."
 
"There's nothing normal about us."

"True."

He looked up at me with a half-smile twisting his eminently fuckable
lips.

"Sweetheart.  Darling.  Pumpkin.  Honey-Bunny.  Precious.  Babycakes," he
taunted.

"Don't push your luck, Gopher-Boy."

"Poopsie."

The good thing about Mulder's nose is that it makes a good target, and he
squawks if you pinch it hard enough.

I slid off into a woozy sleep with his head on my chest.  I didn't feel
him leave, but rather when he came back and 
flopped onto the mattress hard enough to make me bounce.  Groaning I
pushed my hair out of my face and rolled over 
on my stomach so I could watch him wiggle snakelike out of his
sweatpants.  Underneath he was smoothly naked, long 
and lean with his narrow hips and lean muscles.  The Gopher stirred
inside me.

"The baby?" I asked.

"Is being tutored in C++ downstairs. Warwick and Ingveld decided that we
needed the day off," he pulled off the sweats 
the rest of the way and bundled under the sheets with me, his legs
knotting around mine.

"How do you feel?" he asked in a voice that had nothing to do with the
stitches in my hand.

"Worried.  Exhilarated."

"Nauseous?"

"Maybe later.  I'm worried about the tape on two counts. The first is
should the tape show what I believe it does, which 
is Marita and I setting fire to the fetuses in Bethel. There is no way in
hell that anyone would let you retain custody 
since you willingly suppressed evidence that a crime had been committed. 
That crime could be construed as either 
murder or illegal abortion and destruction of property at the very least.
 The other possibility is that the tape is only of 
you and me stealing the Power Point presentation from Jason's office and
this all has been much ado about nothing.  
This means that you and I are still married, I'm still pregnant, and I
still have to do something about the things from my 
apartment in the garage."

"Yard sale?" he asked.

I wrinkled my nose.

"I think I'd rather go to prison."

"Okay, this is the plan, you have the baby and I'll run the yard sale."

"Be serious."

"I am."
 
He reached over and twined his fingers in my frightening morning hair.

"We just keep going.  Cross the bridges when we find them and burn them
behind us.  C'mon, Scully surely family life 
is less frightening than liver-eating mutants or six foot intestinal
worms," his tone was light but his eyes were dark with 
emotion, "how bad can it be?"

I couldn't answer that.  I didn't know.  I wanted to plan but so much
depended on a shiny black videotape and an older 
man in a black dress and I was left feeling small and helpless again. 
Struggling on in the face of adversity and against 
the tide of common sense was Mulder's realm of being, not mine.  I liked
answers, endings, closures, even if it wasn't 
the hero and heroine walking off hand in hand into the sunset.  I just
wanted to know that it was over.  I wanted to know 
who the key grip was. The only problem was that the minute I wet my feet
in Mulder's dark pool of reality the chance of 
having a satisfactory conclusion to anything was virtually nil. And now I
was in it up to my neck.  A neck that he was 
nuzzling and making seductive gopher-noises into.  

I sighed and relaxed.  At least the water in Mulder's pond was warm and
comfortable, and the local wildlife was *very* 
friendly.

"You know, we really do belong together."
 
He stopped nuzzling and went as still as a taxidermied fox over the
jukebox at Kelly's.

"Excuse me. I thought you just said that we belonged together," he looked
up at me with the usual mischief. "Who are 
you and what have you done to Scully?"

"At this stage of the game, after the mutants, the rain of frogs, the
black oil, the toilets full of dead rats, sentient 
viruses, the Conundrum, and your brothers, who else would have either of
us?"

He blinked and the fringe of his eyelashes brushed my face.

"Can you imagine getting involved with someone else and trying to explain
all that?"

"For richer, for poorer, for flukeworms, mutants, and parasitic twins,
until aliens do us part?" 

Or something like that.

It was a good day, all in all.

By the afternoon, we'd managed to make it out of doors and the sunshine
was making my eyes hurt in the back yard.  
Miranda and I were lolling on a blanket while Mulder was trying to put
together a mini-playhouse for Miranda.  I suppose 
he figured that he would be able to move into the four-foot square pink
plastic palace if things got too rough for him in 
the big house.  The Mulder equivalent of the doghouse.  If he ever got
the damn thing together.  Despite all of his stellar 
qualities, stated at the psychologist's interview and unstated at the
same interview, skill with tools is not one of them.  I 
let him struggle for another half-hour until he became sweaty,
frustrated, and commenced using language unsuitable for 
Miranda's tender years.  

I finally had pity on him, exchanged Miranda for hammer, and worked on
the playhouse myself.  He lolled on the grass 
and watched me with a slightly outraged expression while it took me a
half an hour to get the thing together.  However, I 
cheated - I read the directions.

When the pink cube with the bright yellow roof and door was finally
complete, I crouched next to it and pointed, Miranda 
watched me with her usual bright, curious gaze.  She was standing
upright, holding onto Mulder's shoulder and blinking 
at the bright pinkness of it all.

"This is your house.  Just for you.  This is Miranda's playhouse."

She let go of Mulder's shoulder and carefully walked across the lawn to
me.  She didn't wobble or toddle, but took the 
measured steps of a woman in high heels on an uneven surface.  When she
finally crossed the ten feet between Mulder 
and me, she put her arms out and caught me around the neck rather than
going to the house.  On the blanket, Mulder 
was trying very hard not to look like he was sniveling.  At least I could
bury my face in Miranda's sweet-smelling neck 
and hide my own watering eyes that way.



Iolokus IV: Res Judicata
15/18

They're Justified, and they're Ancient,
And they drive an ice cream van.
They're Justified and they're Ancient,
With still no master plan.
	KLF

The Giant Mutant Gopher Kings Sing Songs of Love woke me up Sunday
morning.  Mulder was burrowing his snout 
into the tunnel between my legs and growling happily to himself.  I was
growling in return as he continued to nibble 
at me, making the transition from sleep to wakefulness more than
bearable. I groaned as he worked away, setting 
fire to my pelvis like a dry hillside and the flames swept along my
nerves and into my brain.  My legs were shaking 
as I shut my eyes and let the morning light fill me.  The soft  wash of
his hair against my legs, silky as Catzilla's 
underbelly, his stubble scraping for contrast, the hardness of teeth
against the softness of his lips and the insistent, 
flexible tongue.  It was enough to make me sing an aria in praise of the
man's mouth.  Since there was nothing but 
time, he teased me to the point of climax twice, until I was shuddering,
sweating and mewling with need like an 
angry kitten deprived of a toy.

"Will you still want me when I turn into a blimp?" I muttered into his
ear as he pushed his way into me. (In the 
morning I generally let him do all the work; it's much easier that way.)

He chuffed like a startled horse and failed to begin his usual rhythm.
Instead he cupped my face in his hands and 
stared into my eyes, which unnerved me. "I wanted you when the X Files
were shut down and you turned into a little 
porker." I must have snarled at him because he laughed at me. He began to
thrust irregularly, like an engine missing 
strokes, and I squirmed under him. "Also," he said, breath teasing my
lips, "your breasts are going to get bigger, 
too."

Wait one cotton-pickin' second, what was wrong with the breasts I had? I
pushed against him, annoyed, and he just 
smirked at me. Which was less aggravating up close than from across the
room, but still... I closed my eyes and 
grabbed his narrow hips, rubbing up against him like a cat with a
particularly inviting scratching post.

He yipped as my claws found him and he came.

****

The soap bubble of happiness lasted almost throughout the weekend. 

The e-mail I received Sunday morning looked at first like one of the
average cashew-and-macadamia sort -- the kind 
that show up in my mailbox on a regular basis, like utility bills. It
came from an anonymous remailer, a standard sign 
that the person trying to contact me was a few peanuts short of a full
Planter's cocktail mix, though the title "Deal?" 
lacked a certain paranoid panache.

"Mr. Mulder," it said. 

"You've shown your ability to make things difficult for us, and we for
you. A compromise might serve our separate 
interests equally well.  We will de-fund the legal battle against you. In
return, you will provide samples of Miranda 
Scully's blood on a regular basis, no more than three times a year. We
will take no further action against you or any 
member of your family as long as you continue to comply with our
requirements.

"Call 312 555 1013 by 9 am Monday morning to confirm your agreement.

"JB"

That had to be Justine Barnabas/Judith Barnaby, the woman I'd so briefly
met in Chicago.  The woman with the 
dangerously sensual mouth.

Did she mean it? 

Of course I wouldn't trust her, per se, but we'd only just missed being
blown up; there were dead people who'd been 
alive yesterday morning because of me and even if I didn't know them I
was part of the reason they died. That sort of 
thing would only continue as long as we were playing this game with the
Conspiracy.

It's blood, I thought. It's not as if they're asking for *her*. Not like
giving up a whole daughter. 

Blood has many uses. Clones. Antibodies. Vaccines, mutagens, DNA
extraction, thousands of Scullywords that 
boiled down to one: complicity.  Just what I liked over the Sunday Post -
a moral dilemma.  Scully was still 
stretched out on the bed like a Parrish painting and I stood and stared
at her for a few moments, knowing full well 
that the minute I mentioned the e-mail she was going to go off like a
M-80.  The fragile peace of the weekend was 
going to end with a sickening thud.

At least Scully was still asleep on her face. Maybe sex could stave off
morning sickness; every morning we'd started 
the day off right, she had foreborne the vomit comet act. It would be fun
to try out the theory, anyway.

"Hey," I poked her shoulder with a tentative finger.

She grumbled and grabbed onto the pillow as if I were trying to pry her
away from it.

"We need to talk."

Reluctantly, she turned her head and blinked like a thoughtlessly
awakened cat. "Yeah?" Sad to say, this was the 
nicest morning greeting I'd ever received without presenting both coffee
and a pastry.

"C'mon and read the mail I just got."

Grumbling like a poorly tuned engine, she staggered out of bed and pulled
on my Knicks shirt. Pouting and rubbing her 
hand through her morning hair, with the shirt nearly to her knees, she
looked cute enough to get her own ABC sitcom - 
Dana Mc Scully.  If she started to do the Macarena with the Mooselet I
would be waving goodbye as she headed out to 
Los Angeles.

As if she could read my mind, she turned and bared her teeth at me, but
the intimidation factor was lessened when she 
yawned.

The e-mail woke her up faster than an amphetamine injection to the heart.

"This is from the person you met at BioQuest?"

"At least we're supposed to think so."

"Jesus wept, M -- Fox," the stutter was beginning to get slightly
annoying, as I was having no reciprocal problem getting 
*her* first name right. One might be tempted to think that she had a
problem with intimacy. On the other hand it was 
cute as hell.

There is something terribly cute about Scully, once you peel away the
layers and layers of professional detachment and 
the designer suits - she's as cute as a bug's ear.  Her cuteness is
directly linked to her size and her big blue eyes, and 
if I ever opened my mouth to remark upon it I would be de-balled in a
blink of said big blue eyes.  In any event, when 
she was being so cute with her hair mussed and rumpled, wearing the big
shirt, and when I knew that I'd well and 
thoroughly fucked her silly before sunup, it was impossible for me to
keep my hands off her.

I reached out and touched her shoulder. Through the cotton she was as hot
as sunburn. "What do you think?"

She brushed her flyaway hair away from her face with an aggravated
grimace. "Have we ever met anyone who's made a 
successful deal with these people, one that doesn't end with a dead body
in an alley and missing evidence?"

"I don't think we ever found any traces of the *successful* deals, we
only got leads when something went bad," I replied.

"So we're just supposed to drain her blood periodically and trust that
the deal will stay put? And that's if we don't care 
what happens to her genetic material. What am I going to tell her when I
draw the blood every quarter, 'don't worry, this 
is just mommy and daddy's version of an IRA'?"

"I'll get some coffee," I suggested, and fled.

In the kitchen, Ingveld was fighting with Warwick. Who knows, maybe
Scully and I were giving off pheromones. "I 
*know* the algorithm is not sensitive enough, this is why I give the
problem to you!" she said. "It is no different than one 
of your QuickTime movies!" I backed away slowly, shutting the door so
that they wouldn't know they'd been seen. Much 
more can be forgiven in private than what's memorialized in public.

I jogged out to the 7-11 for coffee instead, which gave me a bit more
time to think. I didn't mind getting bent, folded, 
spindled, or mutilated, and I guess Scully was able to make her own
choices, most of the time, but Miranda had never 
chosen to be in danger.

When I returned to the house I entered the bedroom with the coffee and
the maple frosted donut held out in front of me 
like bait. Scully snatched them away with a look that told me she knew
exactly what I was attempting and was not 
impressed, but she ate the donut anyway.

I sipped my own coffee tentatively. I didn't want to have this
conversation. "There's a question we haven't really asked."

"Enlighten me." Her voice was as sharp as if I'd told her that the
solution to an X File loomed in one of my famous slide 
shows.

"We have to consider the possibility that the people behind Roush and
BioQuest are acting on what they believe to be 
legitimate motives. Though their methods are unconscionable, everyone
involved seems to believe that there is a 
distinct possibility of hostile alien intervention into human affairs. If
they are trying to defeat colonization, is it wrong to 
oppose that objective?"

"You want to say yes."

"I think we should consider it."

"Like father, like son."

That was low.

"Dammit, Dana, you think I don't *know* that?"

She chewed on her donut and glared at me, which was somewhat diluted by
the fact that she was sitting on the bed 
wearing only my shirt, which had ridden up to her waist.  I think I might
have lost even more fights in the past if 
Scully had argued with me in the nude.

She sighed and looked away as I sat down beside her, as tentatively as a
kid with a fake ID trying to sneak into his first 
bar. She still smelled like sex; it was distracting. "You know, I never
used to worry about what was happening to my 
stray genetic material. I brushed my hair, I scratched when it itched, I
flushed. Now I wonder when the next clone is 
going to turn up."

I gulped hot coffee, wanting it to hurt.
 
"It's obvious that we can't just agree to their terms. We need to know
more. I propose that we call them and suggest 
further negotiations. If you're going to stick a needle in Miranda's arm
on a regular basis I think you'll earn the right to 
know what purpose the research serves."

Her hand burned through my sweat-sodden shirt and into the knobs of my
spine. "I wish I had a better plan," she 
admitted. "Make the call. The risk is that after they play the tape our
negotiating position may change, but we can't 
make a decision right now."

Relieved, I trotted downstairs to get more food for Scully. At some
point, I was going to have to suggest to her that, 
though she was eating for two, the other person was the size of a lima
bean, not Alfred Hitchcock. For the moment, 
though, being able to do nice things for her made me feel too good to
tease. Ingveld and Warwick had made up -- what 
was that about pheromones? -- and she was just finishing the punchline of
yet another lame joke: "-- and the bartender 
says, I don't care what you do with the fish but the lawyer has to go!"

"Let me guess," I said over Warwick's tortured groan, "comedy was a new
thing with the fall of the Communist empire."

Ingveld frowned prettily. "I live almost half my life under capitalist
government."

"Never mind," I said and got some orange juice out of the fridge. It
would be better for Scully than coffee, though I wasn't 
sure that being the bearer of healthy beverages was going to be good for
me personally. "How's tricks?"

Ingveld twitched (prettily, too, I might add) and gave Warwick a
Significant Look. I looked them over as if they were the 
kind of food I found in my refrigerator after long hospital stays.

"Everything's good, Mulder," Warwick informed me, patting Ingveld's rump
reassuringly. "We're all just a little wound up, 
looking forward to ending this whole court case."

I nodded, unwilling to find out what forms of lesser illegality my young
friends were basing out of my home. Instead, I 
picked up my morning offering of juice, cereal, and eyeball-sized vitamin
and turned to go back to the bedroom.

"It's just a *phrase*," he was saying to her as I left.

"Breakfast in bed?  You should get untenable offers more frequently," she
sniped as I slid the tray over her lap.

I squinted down at her and tried to read the Magic 8 Ball of her face
while she dug into the Cheerios. No good, the Ball 
wasn't talking.  Answer Unclear; Try Again Later.

****

Scully's efficiency, and I think feminine wiles, made a truck filled to
bursting with over-muscled workmen and rolls of 
grass sod appear.  Under Ingveld's watchful eye the men set to work and
eyed her back. Meanwhile we escaped to the 
local kid emporium.  While I trundled along with the Mooselet in her
stroller, Scully went through the store picking out 
the swingset and kiddie pool we would acquire should the court decide our
way.  The Mooselet went moon-eyed at the 
vast array of toys and *things* all child-sized and brightly colored. 
Scully selected a few items that the Mooselet had 
to have, including a Cat in the Hat stuffed toy almost as big as the
Mooselet was.  We ate lunch at Mc Donald's and I 
enjoyed watching Scully put french fries on the tray of the high chair;
the Mooselet picked them delicately up one by 
one before jamming them in her mouth.  Then it was over to the mall and I
had my first real taste of married life as I tried 
to keep the Mooselet entertained outside the women's fitting room at
Petite Sophisticate while Scully tried on clothes.  
Nothing she liked fit and everything she didn't like did fit.  While I
had been secretly pleased with the voluptuousness 
pregnancy was bringing out in her small body, she wasn't.  Finally, she
found a couple of suits that she could tolerate 
and had room to grow into.  By that time I was so stressed out that the
baby and I decamped to look at ties.  I had to 
buy a somewhat less than satisfactory yellow and green golf-ball printed
tie since the saleswoman spotted the 
Mooselet shoving the pure silk monstrosity into her mouth.  No child of
mine is going to suck on artificial fibers.
 
Scully took Miranda to GAP KIDS and I went looking for some new CD's.  I
met up with Scully again in front of a jewelry 
store where she was eating an ice cream cone and looking through the
glass with chocolate on her chin and a wistful 
expression above the chocolate.  The Mooselet was even more coated with
chocolate and so was the new pug dog 
beanie baby in her fists.

"What you got there?"  I asked crouching down next to the stroller since
it was easier to deal with an infant female of 
the species than the fully-grown variety in front of a jewelry store.

"Yiiiii Cweeeeeeeem."

What can I say?  She was brilliant.

"Mulder, I miss my crucifix," Scully admitted.

That's right.  She hadn't had it since Bethel.  

"Do you want another one?" I asked. Wouldn't that aggravate my mother? I
liked the idea already.

"I don't know.  I have the feeling that God and I have entered into a
non-aggression pact."

"Something else?  A charm in the shape of an ice cream cone?"

"Solid gold UFO with diamonds for lights?"

"One of those charming charms in the shape of a stick figure with
Miranda's birthstone in it?"

"Baaaaahhhhmmmm," Miranda suggested.

"Dr. Scully, Mr. Mulder."

We turned, Scully moving behind the baby and me in front as we went for
our weapons. The portly man who'd 
addressed us waved soft hands and chided, "Please, be calm. I'm here in
response to your message of this 
morning."

"Now, that's service," I said. Scully inched closer to the baby. I
couldn't place the man in the rosters of conspirators 
I'd met. I might have heard his voice over my cellphone once, but I
couldn't be sure. His face was ringed with oval 
rolls of fat and he had just the right avuncular twinkling eyes to make a
decent Santa Claus.

"Your concern for the uses of your child's unique genetic material is
perfectly appropriate," he continued, gesturing 
expansively at Miranda, "and we would be delighted to show you the vital
work we're doing for humanity, to convince 
you of our good intentions."

"You'll have to work pretty hard to do that after trying to blow M--my
husband up," Scully bitched and stared at him 
as if wondering what his pancreas would look like under her microscope.

"Please, Dr. Scully, we didn't know you were willing to be rational about
this, and also we believed that Miranda 
would be safer with us than out in the world with so many dangerous
enemies against her. But if you help us, we 
can help you."

"What are you offering?" That's my little forensic pathologist, straight
to the gelid heart of the matter.

"I would be pleased to show you our laboratories, the work we're doing to
fight the black cancer and the other threats 
from...foreign outposts. Dr. Scully, I believe your expertise would be
most appropriate. If you'd come with me while 
Mr. Mulder watches the child? It won't be more than a few hours."

She slashed her eyes at me and I could tell that I was about to
experience that most rare of creatures, the Ditch in 
Partner's Physical Presence, no cellphones in sight. I bowed to the
inevitable by taking her shopping bags, like 
Dagwood helping Blondie, and lugged the purchases and the baby back to
the car so I could go home and brood 
while the contractors fixed the lawn.



Iolokus IV: Res Judicata
16/18

Fingertip sun at sideshow stalls, they throw the balls
At coconut fur that hides behind
Coloured shades that blind your eyes
Every child's mother holds an ice-cream cone, they circle round
Perceived unknown by an eye that peers from a hole in the tent where no
one goes
	David  Bowie

They rolled out the VCR first thing next morning. Holding hands in the
conventional manner wasn't good enough for 
Laura; we actually had both hands wrapped around each other's fingers
like Romeo and Juliet about to be separated by 
fate. Alternatively, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth before the shit hit the
fan.  This made it difficult to face forward but we 
twisted ourselves around so that we could watch the disaster unfold. 

Langly was waiting in a blue Ford Taurus outside, press pass around his
scraggly neck. If the tape was sufficiently bad 
we'd be in Havana with Miranda in twenty hours. I still hadn't told
Scully because she'd have wanted to pack shoes, and 
that might have alerted someone. She could always buy more, Imelda did.

Laura argued with Maxwell and the judge, but she knew she was beat and
the tape went into the machine like prison 
doors closing out the light of day.

The tape lacked the scratchy look of most security tapes that have been
recorded over every week; Roush must have 
been willing to invest in replacements. Or maybe the tape was actually a
fake. However, wouldn't they have made it look 
more realistic then? I pondered the question as Maxwell fast-forwarded
through about an hour of shots of tanks, 
corridors, lab rooms, bathrooms, and the like.

He started playing the tape at regular speed before anything out of the
ordinary occurred, to give himself time to talk. 
"When Dr. Scully and her accomplice entered the secure area of the
facility, the security guard switched the camera in 
that area to go full-time." Sure enough, the black-and-white door on the
screen opened and let through two women and 
the camera focused in on them instead of switching away after five
seconds.

At least, I think they were women. 

They might have been aliens, though, except for being too tall. Hell,
even Scully was Wilt Chamberlain compared to the 
little gray men. But the figures were as blurry as Leonard Betts' aura.
If I'd seen the tape in any other context, I would 
have speculated that it showed a Sasquatch or other humanoid; though I'd
mainly be doing it to annoy Scully, it was 
true that it would have been hasty to identify the figures as human
beings.

Maxwell blanched and stopped the tape, ejected it, and reinserted it.
When he began playing it again, the clarity was 
still the same.

Now, when I needed it most, my famously uncommunicative visage threatened
to dissolve into an unashamed gape. 
This was most definitely *not* the tape that Jason had shown me in Texas,
the tape that clearly showed Scully setting 
fire to a bunch of kids stuck in their green baths like bananas in
Jell-O. Yes, the two figures -- one Scully-size, the other 
Marita-size -- were poking around, and then the little one got an ax and
began to break the tanks that were visible as 
the camera swerved to follow them. But what came from the tanks when they
were broken was unidentifiable. It might 
as well have been bundles of dirty laundry waiting for the dryer.

Laura had risen to her feet as Maxwell played hopelessly with the color
and tint functions of the TV, as if that would 
help.

"That person could be *anyone*!" Laura gestured around the room, taking
in the spectators and the judge with the 
sweep of her hand. "This tape entirely fails to identify anyone of any
import to this action. Nor does it show these 
supposed 'infants' in the tanks; they look more like aquatic plants of
some sort."

On screen, the little one was pouring gas.

"Your honor," Maxwell said with a thin edge of desperation, "this tape
has obviously been tampered with."

"Obviously?" Laura's voice was rich with contempt. "During our last
session counsel was most forthcoming about the 
careful chain of custody in which this tape has been kept."

Maxwell tried again. "We have copies that clearly show --"

Unnoticed the laboratory exploded into fire, and then into static.

"This was admitted into evidence as the original. If other copies look
different, can we have any confidence that they 
have not been tampered with?"

"Counsel," the judge's voice boomed and they looked up at him, seemingly
having forgotten that he was going to decide 
and that the issue was not going to be settled by personal combat between
them. "It's obvious that this tape does not 
show exactly what was claimed. If you," he pointed at Maxwell, "adduce
evidence of tampering with the original, I'll look 
at it. In the absence of such evidence, I must agree that the tape,
verified or not, contains nothing that bears upon this 
case."

"May we have a brief recess?" Maxwell asked in a defeated voice.

"Fifteen minutes," the judge waved his hand, it was purely charity. And
we all decanted into the hall where reporters 
rushed towards us, shouting questions.

Maxwell's hand reached out and snagged Laura's arm. "I'm going to have
you disbarred for this," he warned.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Laura replied calmly, pulling
free and continuing to walk towards the exit. Her 
face was transparently innocent, and I was once again glad we hadn't let
her in on everything. She didn't have the 
necessary guile.

"You and your clients tampered with that tape, and I'm going to find out
how!"

Laura stopped walking and turned to face Maxwell directly. "Don't blame
me because *your* client jumped to 
conclusions based on a blurry tape and some innuendo against his sister.
Gosh, Andy, you should never believe the 
client -- next time, try some independent investigation."

Maxwell's face went studiously blank for a second as he shifted gears and
his charming smile came back into play. 
"You know this isn't over."

"I'm looking forward to continuing it."

****

The sign on the door read "Janitor" but the disinfectant-stinking utility
room was unoccupied save for the alien shapes of 
the mops hanging in the corner, I finally released Mulder's arm when the
door closed behind us.

"What the hell was that all about?  What did you do to the tape?" I
hissed.

He shrugged, wide-eyed, and ran a hand through his hair.

"I didn't do anything to the tape."

"Frohike?"

"He never said -- Holy fuck," he said with something like awe although he
was clearly not having a religious epiphany. 

I waited.

"Ingveld. Her mysterious project --"

Suddenly it all made sense -- her skulking (inasmuch as a giant blonde
goddess can skulk), the strange errands she 
had run, her questions, her intimate knowledge of the courthouse
security, and her odd assurances that all would work 
out well.  I had thought she was merely being nave and guile-less.  Here
La Femme was living up to her television twin's 
sneaky skills. I didn't care so much as Mulder's mouth descended on me
with the subtlety of a backhoe.

I managed to pry my mouth away with only as much difficulty as resetting
a dislocated joint. "This isn't why I dragged 
you in here," I explained as my body melted like ice cream in the sun.

"It's why I came," he smirked and tugged up my skirt. 

"You haven't yet."

There was a stack of sweeping compound canisters piled against the far
wall, big 25 gallon containers which you can't 
use for buckets at home as toddlers tend to fall in and drown like
chipmunks in a swimming pool, but they were the 
right height for our purposes.  With my ass on the top line of canisters,
the height difference was rectified and he 
clawed my hose and panties down past my knees.  

I had forgotten the thrill of the forbidden. Dimly, I hoped that we
wouldn't feel the need for even riskier sex to 
compensate for the newfound legality of intercourse itself. But mostly I
just moaned as he squeezed my breasts 
through my shirt, holding me up with his hands and his cock. My legs
wrapped around his thighs and my hose acted 
like bondage gear, making it difficult for me to move independently as
the nylon hissed against his summer-weight 
trousers. My pumps slipped to my toes and then clunked to the ground by
his feet. I trembled against his thrusts and 
clutched his scratchy wool shoulders.

I wasn't going to come like this, and I was running ahead of his orgasm
count by an order of magnitude, so I attacked 
the fragile cartilage of Mulder's ear, running my tongue along the curve
of flesh and down to the scarred-over earring 
holes. When I bit the lobe he groaned and gave in, pumping into me his
relief.

He staggered away from me and sat down on the floor, his pants still
around his thighs. He panted as I patted my hair, 
hoping against hope that it was still in place. He watched proprietarily
as I stripped off the overstretched hose -- it was 
summer in Washington, surely no one would make too much of it -- and
stole a roll of toilet paper from the state of 
Virginia to use to contain any untoward leakage. I handed him the roll
and then put my shoes back on.

"I'll go first," I commanded and cracked the door. No one was visible so
I stepped out as confidently as Dr. Who from 
the TARDIS. I headed back to where we'd left Laura et al. She was looking
around frantically. "Where's Fox? We've got 
about thirty seconds -- And did you have anything to do with the way that
tape looked?"

"He's coming, and no I didn't."  I said.

Well to be completely correct, he came and I didn't but what was
quibbling at this point?

I examined Ingveld, who was studiously readjusting the lace on Miranda's
collar, which was a brave thing to do 
considering that the spit and half-chewed food there were probably an
excellent medium for new and unusual microbes.

Mulder returned and distracted Laura -- part of me hoped that she could
smell me on him -- so I leaned over and took 
Miranda from Ingveld. "That was you, wasn't it?" I whispered.

She blinked. "I have lived many places," she told me as we headed back to
the courtroom, "done many things. You 
think I am so young but inside --" Her voice dropped to a nearly
inaudible thread among the bustling of newshounds. "It 
is not the worst I have seen or the worst I have done. You saved our
lives," and now didn't seem like the time to point 
out that she and Warwick wouldn't have needed saving absent us, "and you
should have Miri."

Miranda smiled at her, in total agreement.

"BAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHMMMMMMMMMM!" my infant terrorist enthused.

"That was not needed." Ingveld said with a small frown.

****



Iolokus IV: Res Judicata

17/18

Maxwell paced even though there was no jury for him to impress, head down
as if he were actually gathering his 
thoughts. Did anything ever happen in public, in the halls of government,
that was unscripted? Certainly nothing I'd 
seen.

After a minute he raised his head, shaking back an impatient lock of
hair, and began.
 
"It is probably correct to think of Fox Mulder and Dana Scully as
heroes," he said mildly and I looked at him in surprise. 
Scully frowned at him and then smoothed her face like spilt milk when
Laura tapped her on the hand. "Certainly their 
investigations have saved lives and brought criminals to justice. All
this despite suffering torments that the Devil might 
personally have dreamed up.

"They are heroes; they are larger than life.

"The problem is that children, babies, need real people, not giants.
Giants can sometimes fail to see the little things in 
their way. They crush smaller people. These heroes' flag of victory is
planted on a mountain of dead bodies.

"We've heard extensive testimony from both sides about Fox Mulder's
incredible sensitivity to others' suffering, his 
passion for truth at any cost to himself. Both of them are willing to do
anything in their power so that evil might not 
prosper, wherever it may hide.

"Where is Miranda in that calculation? What happens to her the next time
a tantalizing lead comes along? We know 
what Dana Scully will do -- what she has done before. And Fox Mulder
admits that, since he took custody of Miranda, 
he has deliberately avoided learning any more about the conspiracy he
fears lurks behind every doorway. How long will 
that willful blindness last? Until Miranda is old enough for day care?
Until a new informer shows up on his doorstep?

"We have also heard testimony from both sides about the various traumas
to which these two people have been 
subjected. The important point to remember is not whether they 'deserved'
any of it, or how sorry we should feel for 
them. It's a sad thing that fighting darkness can cripple a person
inside, so that he or she can no longer function 
entirely in the light. But the sadness should not deter us from putting
Miranda Scully's best interests first, and those 
interests lie with adults who can devote themselves to her without having
to fight their own deeply wounded souls.

"Dana Scully has a computer chip of unknown origins in the back of her
neck. She and Mr. Mulder think that it cured 
her cancer. What experiments will they subject their daughter to in the
name of open-mindedness?"

That one made me flinch a little. But if he had known about the smallpox
vaccination, he would have asked us about it 
on the stand.

My nose twitched like a rabbit's and I suddenly needed an excuse to
leave, right then, before anyone else noticed that I 
was bleeding. 

Beside me, Miranda wailed as if she'd been switched on.

I had no time to wonder about the fortuity of the event; I grabbed her
and pressed her to my face, closing off my leaking 
nostril. I hoped that being used as a human Kleenex would not unduly
traumatize her in the years to come. She 
screeched like Courtney Love as we hustled out the courtroom doors. As
soon as they shut, she stopped sobbing and I 
ran into the ladies' room.

With one hand pinching my nose, I used the other to clean Miranda off.
The door opened and I flinched back against the 
wall.

It was only Ingveld, sticking her head in to confirm our presence. "You
are alone?" I nodded. "I vatch at door until you 
are fine."

That might take a few years, my friend, I thought as the door swung shut
on her shapely behind. Thirty seconds later, I 
heard her voice raised outside. "I am sorry, but in here is sewage. You
must use the bathroom in the next hall."

I loved her, then.

It's too bad that Maxwell was wrong about the chip, since I was no longer
confident that it could do anything but set off 
airport metal detectors. My blood thickened quickly enough that I made it
back to the courtroom in time for Maxwell's 
big finish. He frowned at me for my inattention and continued.

"In closing, I must remind the court of our new surroundings,
necessitated by recent events that no one denies were 
targeted on Fox Mulder and Dana Scully. Their love, however sincerely
felt, is no shield against bombs. Whether it's 
cancer or explosives, Death is stalking these two. They chose to live in
danger, but Miranda Scully has not, and we 
should ensure that she remains safe even if the two of them do not."

****

Here we were again facing judgment. This time not merely to determine the
survival of the X Files in a dark paneled  
room on a high floor of the Hoover Building, but to be judged as human
beings under the all-consuming gaze of the 
American public.

I didn't concede the right of any court to judge me for what I'd done.
Maybe it was different when George Washington, 
that wily old Mason, was running the government, but truth and justice
were decidedly not the American way at present. 
When I wanted to be judged, I was my own best critic; I knew when I'd
failed myself and failed to find the truth. No one -
- not even Scully -- could evaluate me better than that.

I was still coming up short in the Finding Truth department. I knew now
that my leaving the X Files didn't keep Miranda 
safe. Moreover, Scully had no plans to abandon the quest, and therefore I
was bound to continue as well, even if it was 
while I was pushing a stroller.

The quest was going to have to proceed differently, though. The public
Roush hearings had made less of a splash than 
speculation on what the presidential genitalia looked like. I no longer
desired to expose the truth behind the secret 
government to the public; that undifferentiated mass was more interested
in Scully's haircut and lurid details of my porn 
habit than anything substantive I might say to them about trust and
self-rule. The truth that I sought, like the judgment, 
would have to be private. Yes, I wanted to foil evil plots, but I now
understood that fighting Them required more than just 
accurate information and some interested reporters; it required
counterattack. I would begin the real battle as soon as 
this latest skirmish ended.

Even though I didn't concede the court jurisdiction over my soul, the
prospect of being publicly weighed and measured 
for fitness was occasion for some self-evaluation. 

There are many things I wish I'd done differently. I wish that my last
memory of my innocent baby sister wasn't of me 
harassing her. I wish I'd treated Phoebe like she was camp instead of
high drama. I wish I'd figured out that Duane Barry 
was going to go for the chip and that Krycek was a traitor. I wish I
hadn't listened to John Lee Roche for more than a 
minute. But most of all, I think, I wish I hadn't kissed Scully that
night she drove me home from getting my brain reamed 
by Dr. Goldstein.

Understand that I would not change loving her, or being sexually
attracted to her, nor could I. But it was not a 
constructive way of dealing with her impending death. Even then, we could
have worked through it and found an 
equilibrium, I like to think, were it not for Emily's subsequent
appearance and equally rapid disappearance. So instead 
we used sex as another of our finely honed weapons against one another.

If we had waited -- maybe Miranda could have brought us together in some
way less terrifying to Scully. If we had only 
waited, then when Jason Lindsay came into her room that night and
impersonated me she would have shot him. Or she 
would at least have investigated, and unlike Brad and Janet from Rocky
Horror, Scully wouldn't have ignored a mistaken 
identity for a good orgasm. 

My mistakes weren't that important when they only hurt me. But I seemed
incapable of confining them to that level. It 
was only the confidence that Miranda was infinitely safer with me than
anywhere else that gave me the balls to fight -- 
I'd promised myself that things would be different with her, and I've
always been able to believe in my own passions.

The judge cleared his throat and looked at the papers in front of him as
though he was looking at something about as 
important as a grocery list. Next to me, Scully was breathing like
Catzilla did when he chased rabbits in his sleep. My 
mother, returned just in time to catch the last act of this farce, was
resplendent in Nancy Reagan red on my other side.

"I'm an old man, and because I'm an old man who grew up in a far
different world than we have today, I don't understand 
anythin' about babies bein' made in laboratories, host mothers,
dectuplets, and e-mail.  I can barely figure out how to 
set the clock on my VCR.  I get my son to do that," he looked up over his
half-moon glasses at the motley assemblage 
in the courtroom.

In my lap, the Mooselet stood up and started waiving at Ingveld and
Warwick in the back of the room. 

"So when I look at this case, I try to put all that behind me and look at
things that I understand.  I'll tell you what I see.  
I see a young woman who has gone through hell a couple of times over, and
she's been hurt by all this.  Hurt to the 
point where she knew that she couldn't take proper care of a baby so she
abandoned it - in a very good home.  Let's 
not confuse the issue and make it look like she left the baby in a basket
on their doorstep," he looked over at Maxwell 
who had gone the color of tofu. 

"Then the young man takes the baby to Virginia and proceeds to set up a
home and support system for the child down 
to rearranging his work priorities to the child's convenience.  The young
woman returns and they begin trying to 
negotiate a family after they get married.  On the other hand, I see some
strange things in both their pasts, which might 
indicate that they are something other than perfect parents.  I'm sure
that most of the married couples in this room 
wouldn't pass that kind of scrutiny with flying colors."

Bill now matched Maxwell in skin tone.  

I wasn't sure how I felt about the judge characterizing Scully and I as
'young'.  I felt an eon old sitting in that chair.  
Scully's fingernails were piercing the bones in my hands.

"I see assertions that this child is endangered by her connection to her
parents. And if you believe all this fancy 
conspiracy talk maybe she is. But anyone, enemy or friend, could take one
look at this couple and see that vestin' legal 
custody elsewhere would not make them a whit less vulnerable to threats
against their daughter. If the girl's in danger, 
there's no one better suited to protectin' her than her parents. And,
despite the inflated claims of counsel, I see nothing 
in this case relating to a blurry videotape with unidentifiable people
doing mischief to unknown objects.  Other than a 
waste of the court's time.  I see nothing that indicates to me that Bill
and Tara Scully would be any better parents than 
Dana Scully and Fox Mulder.  Therefore, custody of Miranda Julia Scully
resides with Fox Mulder and his lawful wife. 
Bill Scully will pay the associated court costs relating what I feel is
little more than a nuisance suit rather than genuine 
concern for the child.  Court is dismissed."

I was going to need to get my heart jump-started.

****

The reporters fell back -- I couldn't tell why they'd ever let us get
away, and then it became obvious as my mother 
emerged from the forest of taller people and their video cameras. Of
course they'd let her through, it would make a 
better story.

I turned away, but she hurried over to me and pulled at my arm. "Dana,"
she said.

I refused to look at her. At that moment I believed all the terrible
things they'd said about my cold-heartedness. I 
*wanted* to feel something, and on an intellectual level I could identify
all the symptoms of pain, but that's not the same 
as really feeling it. It was like watching a person with whom you
couldn't empathize suffer. Only that person was me.

"Look at me!" she commanded, her voice harder now. From force of habit, I
swiveled my head. Mulder stopped walking, 
prepared to swoop in between us. Tina perforce halted as well, hanging on
to his gentlemanly arm. I felt the cameras 
move in closer, to catch every nuance of this moment on tape for the
world to see. 

The lines around her mouth were deeper now than they'd been weeks before,
like mine. Her eyes bled sorrow; she truly 
believed that she'd been trying to do the right thing for all her
children. She truly believed that injustice had been done in 
that courtroom. "I'm still your mother," she said softly -- though not so
softly that it wouldn't play on CourTV.

"I don't have a mother." I turned back to Mulder and his mother and took
Tina's free arm. Tina glanced at me, her face 
blank but nonetheless I got a distinct feeling that she was hiding a
small smug smile. 

What the hell, we were more alike than me and my biological mother. But
if she thought I was going to call her "Mom," 
the brain damage from her years of tranquilizer use hadn't been fully
repaired.

The encounter with my mother dampened the euphoria, but only for a short
while. When we were all ensconced in the 
Outback I felt as lightheaded as if I'd spent the day on a rollercoaster,
looping the loop.

There were still things I needed to settle. I would return to the
oncologist and find out if our carelessness in bed was 
going to kill me yet. (And it was possible that pregnancy hadn't
mattered, that someone had broadcast a deadly 
message to the metal in my neck. I could imagine both of us deciding to
believe that rather than conceding that one 
unlucky fuck destroyed us when a planetary conspiracy couldn't. If I had
to die I was going to uncover the truth about 
that chip first.) I would integrate my stuff with Mulder's and make the
best approximation of a household I could. I would 
take Miranda to Emily's grave so that she could visit her sister. 

I would thank Skinner for his support.

I would disrupt the conspiracy and make them beg for mercy. Which would
not be forthcoming. I would kick ET ass if 
necessary.

I would have a yard sale.

The emotion I felt was more alien than Mulder's little gray men. Maybe I
didn't get it right, because I was awfully out of 
practice. But I think it was hope.  

****



Iolokus IV: Res Judicata

18/18
Close your eyes and let's pretend
We're little children once again
Sticky fingers, dirty minds
When I touch you, girl I come alive
Let's fall in love
It's exciting
I'm gonna make your mouth
A sunny sundae smile
	My Bloody Valentine

I have spent entirely too many hours of my adult life in health care
facilities.  The waiting room at Scully's oncologist's 
office had good magazines but I was in no condition to read any of them. 
Scully had the Mooselet in her lap and they 
were going through The Cat In the Hat with the thoroughness that Scully
usually reserved for reading other people's 
autopsy reports.  I was just as happy to see the Mooselet pointing at the
cat and the hat and the fish in the dish while 
Scully asked her the names of the items.  In a way, I was glad that Sam
had engineered Miranda to be intelligent, as 
the Mooselet was certainly giving Scully a run for her money.  I was also
glad that Scully had decided to stay with us 
since this meant that I could actually get a break from MooseDuty from
time to time.

Julie Graff was expecting me back to work the following Monday so I had
to get all the loose ends tied up.  First there 
were the doctor visits - I booked Scully oncologist and gynecologist
appointments practically back to back.  I think she 
called someone to get an estimate on having a contract on me after that. 
Through bitching and judicious badge-waving, 
I got past the office manager and the doctor returned my call himself. 
When I explained that Scully was pregnant and 
we couldn't wait, we got an appointment for the next morning and the
promise that any test results would be expedited.  
He also seemed to think that there wasn't much to worry about.  But then
he hadn't expected her to go into remission 
either.

While I listened with a mouth open in dumb shock, she told him about the
nosebleeds, and I kicked myself for not 
noticing.  The doctor nodded and listened to her shopping list of
symptoms couched in medical terms that I didn't 
understand.  He took blood and made friends with the Mooselet during
Scully's MRI as though it were only a routine 
visit.  Scully watched him seal off and label the vial of blood.

"I know it's not terribly professional of me to say this, but I was less
than happy with the testimony that I had to give for 
your brother's case.  I would have lived a happier life without having to
aid his cause against you."

The Mooselet squirmed around in my arms so she could watch the nice bald
man talk to her mom.

"There's no adequate medical reason for you to go into remission in the
first place, by the same token, there's no 
adequate reason for you not to remain in remission for five years until
you are pronounced cured."

"There's more at stake now.  I have to worry about people other than
myself.  I have responsibilities."  Scully said and 
her eyes looked suspiciously sparkling under the lights.

As for me, there felt like there was a brick lodged in my throat.

"Dana I've seen people die who had only a mild form of cancer, and I've
seen people live who shouldn't.  All I know is 
that there are some things that defy medicine.  Call it faith, call it
will to survive or call it a miracle."  

Docile, she nodded her head. 

"I'll have the lab rush the results."
 
In the Ranger, Scully's eyes were red but she didn't say anything as we
drove the half-dozen miles to the next 
appointment.

****

With the verdict from the oncologist pending the blood work-up the last
thing that I wanted was to go to the 
gynecologist, but Mulder dragged me with the same kind of amused
stubbornness that he used when Miranda refused 
to eat her vegetables.  I think he was disappointed that I left him in
the waiting room during the exam, but regardless of 
his predilection for oral sex, I didn't feel comfortable with him getting
an up close and personal view of my cervix.  Call 
me old fashioned, but a girl likes to retain some kind of mystery in
sexual matters, and I was willing for him to forgo 
seeing his favorite bodily orifice cranked open with a speculum like a
car with the air filter open.

After the demise of Dr. Shimada, I was looking for a sturdier
gynecologist and ended up with a former Navy doctor with 
the unlikely name of Blaire Wellington.  She was cool and efficient and
had the upper arm muscles of a woman who 
worked out with weights - she was serious.  I didn't feel that I was
endangering her all that much. George was dead, 
after all, and Dr. Wellington looked as though she would be able to
bounce any unquiet ghosts out on his ear.

"Well Dana," she said as she peered below the sheet covering my stomach
and the cold air from the air conditioning 
unit made my thighs break out in gooseflesh, "From the home test and the
change in color and texture of your cervix, 
you are definitely pregnant."

"I'm not sure how it happened."  I muttered.

"You need me to go over the birds and the bees for you?" she said with a
wry little smirk.

"No, in regard to the fact that I was considered sterile a year ago."

She shrugged, "The test may have been incorrect.  It's possible that your
chemotherapy caused you to go into a 
premature and temporary form of menopause.  Now that time has passed and
your body has been able to re-regulate 
the hormones, you may very well have begun ovulating again.  I notice
that you didn't actually have a laproscopic 
examination of the ovaries so the physician may have been drawing
conclusions from incomplete data."

"Can you tell me when I got pregnant?"

"Not exactly.  We establish a due date by the date of your last period
and subtract three months from that date which 
is the due date the following calendar cycle."

When had been my last period?

Before George came which had been in the beginning of spring and now it
was nearly summer and ---.

Wait a minute.

Condoms don't have a 100% success rate, which is what any high school
health teacher will tell you.  With the various 
manipulations that the Mulder gene pool had gone through at the hands of
the scientists who created them, it might 
have been possible that his sperm might, in fact, have somehow penetrated
the latex?  Wasn't that also part of the plan 
of the cold war mad scientists?  Be fruitful and multiply, breed the New
World order and spread hybridized genes hither 
and yon?  Was it possible that every time that we'd interrupted the
natural course of sex for condoms it was habit rather 
than help?

Imagine the paternity suits.
 
Oh God.  That meant that I could have gotten pregnant at any time since
we had gotten back together.  Which also 
meant that the George fantasy might not have been the seminal (ha!)
event.  The worm of hope buried a little harder into 
my heart, and I wasn't sure if I wanted to kill it.

"What about the nosebleeds?" I asked. 

"When I had my first, my nose was like a spigot.  I'd be performing an
exam and gush all over the floor.  And it was like 
'excuse me, I'm bleeding on you." And I'd run for the tissues.  The
morning sickness should pass after the first 
trimester, but with the weight that you've put on and the fact that you
haven't lost your appetite--" God no, I could now 
out-eat Mulder at any meal -- "It's an inconvenience more than a danger. 
I'm going to give you some literature and you'll 
need to set up a schedule of appointments with Allie up front, but other
than that, there's not much to do but let your 
body do its job."

Like grow cancer cells, like consume an entire freezer worth of Chubby
Hubby, like throw up for the next three months, 
and like die before Miranda or this baby was old enough to vote.

Let my body do the job.  Great.  My body was one of the things that I
didn't trust anymore.

"You don't even want to do an amniocentesis?" I asked.

"No.  I don't think it's necessary."

I wanted a warranty on the fetus that promised that it would be replaced
if it was defective in the least.  A five-year 
warranty, an extended service agreement, and product insurance.  Dr.
Wellington wasn't even going to try to make me 
feel better.  Still she did, ostensibly, know her job and had given birth
herself so I should believe that she was making 
the right decision.

I was still fairly dissatisfied by the whole appointment.

Feeling bruised, I let Mulder drive home, even though he did seem to take
the slowest route possible and let every car 
possible out in front of him.  Maybe he thought we needed the good karma.
 While he took Miranda to her room for her 
afternoon nap, I roamed around for awhile, before going to ground in the
bedroom.  I shucked off my clothes and put on 
the rattiest pair of sweats and ugliest oversized t-shirt in my
collection of 'go to hell' clothes, and collapsed on the bed.  
The final verdict from the judge and the gynecologist had been given and
now I was waiting to see if the oncologist was 
going to come back with death or life imprisonment.  Well, I guess that
wasn't entirely accurate.  I was getting used to 
the idea of being legally joined to Mulder.  Not much had really changed
since we'd gotten married other than the fact 
that we were habitually getting out of the same bed in the morning and
could show affection for one another in public.  
He was still stubborn, narrow-focused, and annoying, but I didn't think
that marriage was supposed to change an 
essential personality anyway.  Actually, from what I had heard from
listening to my married friends over the years, he 
made a pretty decent husband.  He was domestic, supportive, didn't appear
to have an interest in other women, and 
was more than willing to change dirty diapers.  And the best thing was
that he wasn't expecting me to turn into Donna 
Reed.

I rolled over onto my stomach and sighed.

"You're sulking," he observed as he pulled off his ironed henley-neck
shirt and traded it for a worn gray t-shirt spotted 
with baby stains.

"I am not sulking," I sulked.

He crept across the bed with his eyes flickering green in the warm
sunlight melting in between the blinds until her was 
straddling my hips and  began working at the aching muscles in my
shoulders and upper back.  "The doctor didn't 
seem too concerned about your cancer coming back and the gynecologist
gave you enough stuff to read that you won't 
have time to worry for the next nine months.  And once the baby gets here
you'll be too busy to worry."

"What if I die?" 

"We're all going to die eventually.  I don't know when I'm going to die,
why should you know?  Don't you think that's an 
unfair advantage?" he purred into my ear.
   
Damn him, the sulk was slowing to a crawl like Washington traffic to be
replaced with a drowsy contentment and a lazy 
kind of pleasure.  I stretched under him and decided I would explore the
contentment for awhile.

"I'll bet you twenty dollars that your blood test won't show any abnormal
cells. And I should know.  I'm composed 
entirely of abnormal cells."
 
"Especially your brain," I muttered into the bedspread.

"It's good to see that pregnancy hasn't spoiled your sense of humor," he
said in a sour tone and flopped onto the 
mattress next to me, "Let's celebrate."

"What?"

"Well, we've been married for almost a month and we haven't killed each
other.  We've been co-habitating for two 
months at least and we haven't killed each other.  We get to keep the
Mooselet, and we haven't killed each other.  Also, 
you're pregnant and we haven't killed each other."

"Modified rapture."

"You are planning on staying, aren't you?"

"You promised you'd take care of the baby to be named later.  I'm only
slightly unfit and I wouldn't want to abandon 
another helpless infant."

"The infamous nurturing Scully." He ran his hand over my back and I
sighed, my obstreperousness was partially 
feigned, the rest of it was post-trauma crankiness.  Mulder knew that and
knew me well enough to indulge me while I 
was being grumpy.  His caress gained a little intensity and I could feel
my nerve endings perk up a bit.

"Is that the only thing you ever think about?" I asked.

"Sometimes I think about food," he admitted and I could tell from his
voice that he was grinning.

I rolled over and looked across the bedspread at his crooked, goofy smile
and wondered exactly how we had gone from 
frustrated, secret, and angry sex to this domestic idyll.  The answer was
painfully simple.  Once we had finally gotten 
past the posing, the posturing, and the delusion that we should not be
together in the traditional male/female way and 
realized that we were - in some perverse design of fate, really -- the
only proper mate for one another, we had finally 
succumbed to the inevitable.  Not that this made me happy, but it
certainly made me less miserable than I was when I 
was alone.  
And he could make me drip like melted chocolate down the side of a sugar
cone.  I buried my face in the skin of his 
neck and smelled his Muldersmell, and I could feel the wrinkles smooth
out of my mind.  He needed my control, I 
needed his passion, and we fed off of one another's strength.  Maxwell
had  been right, we were dangerous together but 
it was a controlled danger.  Apart we were as dangerous and unpredictable
as a tropical storm gaining strength and 
building into a hurricane.
 
When I pushed him over onto his back, he whuffed deep in his throat and
his eyes glowed green gold under lashes fit for 
a girl.  I licked his neck, teasing his tendons with my tongue and his
fingers dug into my ass.  He breathed wet and 
crackled into my ear, making me shudder and my nipples turn into bullets.
 I growled gopher-speak at him and he 
growled back in the same, grabbing at my swaying breasts through my
t-shirt and sucking on my mouth until my lips 
almost hurt.  I straddled him and ground my pelvis against him, feeling
the hard rod of his cock prod up at my rapidly 
soaking crotch as I dry-humped him like a teenager in the back of a car.

"You really have to stop it with this sexy wardrobe," he growled into my
ear.

I pushed his head to my breasts, luxuriating in the softness of his
gopher fur, and felt his teeth nip at me through my 
shirt.  The heel of his hand ground against my pubic bone through the
layers of sweatpants and panties and I could feel 
the spring start to wind tight inside my stomach.  He could make me wet
with one glance over a dead body, practically 
make me come when his fingers brushed the back of my hand, and make my
knees turn to pasta with a filthy thought 
telegraphed across a polished conference table.  

I grabbed the hem of my shirt and hauled the whole thing over my head,
and he grabbed my breasts, his hands hot and 
dry the moment they sprang free of the fabric.

"Come on gopher-girl.  Do your worst," he teased and gave my left nipple
a meaningful, painful pinch.

"Oh yeah?"

"I triple-dog dare you."

He shouldn't have said that, really.

I bounced off him and pulled his sweats down to his knees with a brusque
jerk.  He yelped at the rough treatment but 
started to laugh when I dug my fingers into the ticklish part of his
stomach between his hipbone and the thin line of hair 
running to his cock.  I danced my fingers over the delicate skin of his
stomach and he whooped with outrage, his cock 
doing the Macarena as he moved.  

"That's-not-fair!" he choked.

"Of course not."

I traced the vein on the underside of his cock with my fingernail and
enjoyed watching him shudder.  Mulder has a body 
like a tightly stretched drum and I can coax different sounds out of him
depending on where I touch.  I tongued him a 
few times, enjoying the feral taste contrasting with the baby skin of the
one eyed trouser snake.  He moaned and his 
hips jerked a few times, encouraging me to take all of him in my mouth,
which I did in short order.  I worked him hard, 
making him wince from time to time with my lips and sucking until my
cheeks went concave, while I pumped at his 
base with a tight ring of my fingers.  With shaking fingers he pushed my
hair away from my face and our glances met 
with incendiary effect.  I could feel that I was soaking my way through
the fabric of my sweats.  I pressed my mound 
against the bed and felt a pre-orgasm shudder run through me like razors
on my bones.  He groaned and bucked 
underneath me.  Twice, when it seemed that he was on the verge of coming,
I clamped my fingers tight around his base 
and he slackened for a moment.

"Oh Jesus, Scully," he whispered, "you're killing me."

In the end I took pity on him, since his cock was beginning to look a
little sore, and I shimmied out of my drenched 
pants and climbed on top of him.  He cried out when I eased him in as far
as he could go.  It felt so good to have him 
filling me to the utmost degree, pressing on my spine, impaling me as far
and as deep as possible.  I leaned forward so 
when I moved, the shaft of his cock scraped deliciously on the burning
center of my clitoris.  I pressed down on him, 
slid up, pressed down, and so on until the sweat was dripping out of my
hair and onto his face.  Mulder's hands on my 
breasts were the only thing keeping me upright.  This kind of fucking was
harder than digging ditches.  Finally, the 
spring wound tighter and tighter inside me snapped with a ping that made
me screech with agonizing pleasure and I 
clenched down and around him as I started to shudder and sway with my
climax.  Dimly, I heard his own gopher cry of 
delight as he surged up and into me with his latex-defying semen.

Like the Energizer Bunny given Duracells by mistake, I fell onto him,
sticking to him with a variety of bodily secretions 
and we lay there in a cooling puddle in a state of blissful brain-death.

"Love you," he muttered in my hair.

"What you said." I grunted.

I drifted off then and must have stayed that way for the rest of the
night.  I was vaguely aware of Mulder moving around 
later after the baby monitor started to snivel, but I rolled over and
went back to sleep while he dealt with it.  That was a 
good thing.  When the other baby came, I was likely to push on its nose
thinking it was a snooze button.  When the 
warm lump I idenified as Mulder came back I curled up against it and went
back to sleep.

Light.  Banging.  Grumbling.  Me blinking and making out movement
somewhere.

"Well I knocked-" was Warwick's voice, sounding aggravated.

Well, it was re-run season after all.

"What?"

I foused on Mulder whose hair was doing truly amazing things while he
glowered at the younger man.

"The doctor - the oncologist is on the phone."

"Oh God."  I said and pulled the comforter over my head.  

I couldn't handle it, didn't want to know that I was going to die, not
with the morning bubble of nausea starting to fill my 
throat.

"Talk to him," I groaned to Mulder.

"Right."

Warwick shut the door behind him, and Mulder picked up the line on hold.

"Mulder.  Yeah.  She's asleep.  You can talk to me.  No, really."

Like a Charlie Brown cartoon all I could hear was disjointed honking
noises coming from the other side of the 
conversation.

"Okay.  Fine.  I'll tell her."

I heard him put down the phone.

I held my breath.

A hard finger prodded me in the ass.

"No abnormal cells.  Go back to sleep."

I wasn't sure which sentence gave me more pleasure.

****
  
After the right and proper order of things has been restored, it is
traditional in the plays of Shakespeare for there to be 
some kind of celebration to mark the re-unification of the community. 
All the characters gather together for food, drink, 
and song while the audience plots the quickest way out of the theater and
the way to avoid the rush at the parking lot. 

We had our post-drama celebration catered.  The weather had tapered off
to a manageable level of heat and humidity 
and the tent the caterers had erected on Scully's emerald-green sod
looked prettily festive in the dying daylight.  The 
gold twinkle lights in the bushes flashed like horny fireflies and were
reflected off the incredibly ugly swan ice sculpture 
sitting on the main table.  Scully had gone apoplectic when she'd seen
the frozen monstrosity and was threatening not 
to pay the catering company since she'd specifically asked *not* to have
a swan ice sculpture.  She also hadn't liked it 
when I pointed out that the nice Korean family catering the 'do' had
probably just misunderstood her.  This led to a 
prolonged bout of sulking in the bathroom but I was finally able to lure
her out with the promise of ice cream cake.  
Marriage and pregnancy were making Scully weird, but not unmanageably so.
 At least not so far.  Eight months into 
the fight for the future and weirdness might be too mild of a term.

In any event, I'd extended an olive branch and invited Bill, Tara, the
rotund Matthew, and Mrs. Scully which provoked 
another bout of bathroom incarceration. But once I'd removed the
doorknob, Scully had seen reason.  I'd also promised 
that the ice swan was going home with Bill which perked Scully up
immeasurably.  The Gunmen were there in their 
motley finery; Byers surprised one and all by bringing a woman with him,
a small woman with a wealth of curly hair who 
I recognized as being the savior from the deli department of the
supermarket.  

A rental car brought Charlie and his wife and their tribe, but Emerson,
Alieen and Samuel were too busy in Montana to come.  With the 
three babies (the Mooselet, Matthew, and whatever Charlie's youngest was
named)  in pretty much the same 
age bracket, we plunked them all down in the playpen while Warwick kept
an eye out to make sure no one killed the 
others.

Zippy brought a woman I had never seen before (and I suspect, was *not*
the home health care therapist) and 
immediately delivered her into Frohike's clutches so that he could hit on
Laura.  I soon saw our lawyer giving him her 
number.  Skinner came alone, Julie Graff brought a smoothly pretty
African American woman of the same vintage as 
herself, and although nothing was said other than the woman's name (Anna
Franklin) and the fact that she worked at 
the Smithsonian as a curator.  I had the distinct feeling that the two
were a couple.  No wonder she never said anything 
about my unusual  domestic arrangements.  After darkness fell and
everyone was feeling somewhat the better for 
alcohol, Maxwell showed up.  To my great surprise and Scully's sudden
look of total comprehension, he immediately 
stalked up to Zippy and Laura and puffed his chest out; if he were a
Daschund, he'd have been yipping and peeing in 
circles around her.  My man Zip is not exactly easily intimidated,
particularly not by bantamweight blondes who pay 
more attention to their suits than their biceps, but then Zippy wasn't
really the target of his odd behavior.  It was Laura.

I knew the mating dances, having fluffed my feathers on more than one
occasion. Then I met Scully, and she clipped 
my wings but good.  Maxwell was doing the dance of the jealous male with
his attention focused on Laura who returned 
his with the smile of a Renaissance femme fatale. She looked really
pretty with her hair down too.  Interesting.

"What," I said to Scully as she fluttered by with a champagne flute of
what had damn well better have been ginger ale, 
"the hell is going on with the lawyers?"

"It's what Jackson Browne calls lawyers in love."

"God." I said and shook my head.

"No worse than Gophers, Gopher-Boy." She said and laid one of her zillion
watt smiles on me.

Hanging around her neck was the gift I'd presented her with that morning
in bed - a gold gopher charm with blue topaz 
eyes.  Yeah, I'm a romantic slob who's willing to get jewelry custom
made.  

Bill watched all this and glowered at his former attorney from the other
side of the ice sculpture.  Matthew unwisely 
made a grab at the Mooselet's onion ring at that moment and got bitten
for his trouble.  Tara tried to separate the 
youngsters who both began to scream blue murder.  I grabbed the Mooselet
and Tara and I stared at one another over 
our screaming progeny.

"All this could have been yours," I pointed out.

She smiled over Matthew's wails.

"You realize of course, it was mostly Bill's idea."

I believed her.

"Dana's lucky," Tara remarked, "I don't think that Bill has ever touched
a dirty diaper."

"Hey everybody.  Just a minute here!"  Frohike announced and climbed up
on top of a chair.

Zippy's dish du jour looked embarrassed.

"I just want to say that Justice has finally been served, and both Mulder
and Scully have gotten the punishment they 
deserve - each other."

Which was another reason no one asks Frohike to be their best man.  There
were some scattered applause and the 
Mooselet, riding on my hip joined in.  

"Any words Spooky?" Zip yelled "anything you want to share with your near
and dear ones?"

"You're an asshole," I shot back and Scully stepped on my foot.

After hopping around for a moment or two, I picked up my own champagne
glass and watched the fairy lights strung on 
the trees dance through the bubbles.  

"I can't imagine a worse punishment than this.  I always thought that I
would have a wonderful house, a beautiful wife, 
and a brilliant child.  Of course this is what I get stuck with."

Laugher all around.

I didn't tell them that the only reason we were here and not in hiding
was that we'd given in. Scully would supervise anything done with
Miranda's blood to ensure that it really was antiviral research and not
more cloning and breeding; it would give her something to do with her
maternity leave. We were in and we wouldn't get out alive; no one does.
But maybe we could tell the truth and shame the devil, once we knew the
truth. Then again, it wasn't our way to live a life without extreme
complications.

"And just in case anyone was wondering, yes it was a shotgun wedding and
Scully is not just getting fat."

Bill looked like I'd spit in his champagne and Scully (I shit you not)
blushed like a Victorian virgin.

"Warwick has the sign-up sheet for babysitting, and if you can't give
your time, we do take checks."

This time I got laughter and applause.  The Mooselet, who may or may not
have understood most of it, clapped and 
giggled in my arm.  Scully shook her head as if both the baby and I had
gone mad, but only smiled - and there was no 
edge to it.  The barbed wire she'd wound around my heart pulled tighter,
but it was a good hurt.

"Laugh while you can Gopher Boy.  I know where you sleep."

In front of the world, I kissed her and tasted the sting of ginger ale on
her lips.  If an asteroid had hit Arlington at that 
moment and reduced it to a smoking crater, I would have died the happiest
man in the world.

Then I smelled it - the fragrant aroma of dirty diaper.  I sighed and
headed off to the house to deal with reality. Mom had cornered Scully
near the desserts and they were hissing at one another, two cats in the
same territory.

"I should have known better than to think you were sensible," Mom said,
looking my wife over as if she were Jerry Springer trailer trash.

"I worked with Fo--, with Mulder for five years," Scully pointed out, and
only then I realized that she no longer had to fake the unthinking use of
my first name. Which would return a weapon to our arsenal, and so I
smiled graciously at Mom. She stared at Scully as if large boils had
begun to swell on her face. Who knows, maybe that was a normal symptom of
being pregnant with a Mulder. 

"If it's a boy there will have to be a bris."

"Is that like a Jewish christening?"  Scully asked, widening her eyes
innocently.

Mom made a strangled noise and stalked away, shaking her head. 

"That wasn't very nice," I said  over Scully's shoulder, I couldn't help
smiling. "I think you're going to have to eat an extra serving of dessert
to make up for that."
 
"I'm fully prepared to be the daughter-in-law from hell." Scully
reassured me.

The next time I saw Mom, she was hitting on Skinner, which fit her MO
perfectly.

In the dirty diaper, Miranda started to whine and I hastened into the
house.

In passing, I heard the tag end of the joke that a very drunk Ingveld was
telling Maxwell.

" . . .  and the frog zaid it started as a pimple on my ass and it haf
turned into a lawyer."






*****
  
Rivka says: Res ipsa loquitor.
Sally says: Omni mutantur, nos et mutsamur in illis.

*Well almost. . . *
 
At nineteen weeks it is customary for the expectant mother to undergo a
sonogram.  The theory is to check fetal size 
and development, but more often than not it fulfills no other function
than to sex the fetus and allow yuppie parents to 
start picking names.

"You have got to be fucking kidding!" was all that I could manage.

"No," the ultrasound technician said, continuing to rub the wand over the
freezing cold goo on my now-protruding 
stomach, "women of your age have a marked tendency to ovulate more than
one ova at a time and the occurrence of 
fraternal twins is not uncommon after age thirty-five."

I swallowed and looked at her earnest young face, trying to block out the
horrified hyperventilating that was coming from 
my right.  I swear that if Mulder squeezed my hand any tighter bones were
going to break. 

"Well," my OB-GYN added from where she was lurking in the doorway, "you
can't really blame your husband either 
since he's an identical twin and that indicated one ova rather than two. 
I hope you're prepared for a high-risk pregnancy.  
With your age and health history, I'm going to watch you like a hawk so
we can get these babies to term in the best 
health possible."

"Thanks," I muttered.

"Looks like we have one of each." The technician sounded delighted, good,
she could take over the rest of the 
pregnancy.

He gloved finger indicated the image on the screen - two bulbous headed
forms, looking like bad fake alien photographs 
from Mulder's collection.  One of the little creatures was proudly
sporting a penis and the other was not. I caught my 
breath and looked up.  Dear God, *two*?  I hope you're having a good
laugh over this.  The acoustic tiles on the ceiling 
began square dancing and I had the feeling that I was in a rapidly
descending elevator, descending rapidly because the 
steel cables had been severed.

"Scully?"

"I'm fine, Mulder."

"Good."

And the sound was that of paper and fabric rustling followed by a thump
as he hit the floor.


************************************************************************
************************************************************************
************************************************************************

From: mustangsally78@juno.com (MustangSally Seventy-Eight)
Date: Sun, 6 Sep 1998 00:07:03 -0400
Subject: Iolokus IV: Res Judicata - authors' farewells


The "Dream Team" Comes Clean



Sally:  You know, I thought I was going to cry the day that someone named
us as being a "Dream Team" of 
fan-fic.  All I could think about was the '94 Summer Olympics and Team
USA beating the shit out of the 
other countries.  Can I be Charles Barkley?  I liked the way that he
smacked some poor guy from an 
underdeveloped nation because it was "a street thing."  Good old Charles,
he's always good for a sound 
bite.  You can be Michael Jordan if you want.  AIR RIVKA.

Rivka: Gee, I always thought when they said "Dream Team" they meant we
were wreaking roughly the same 
sort of outrage on the fan-fic world that OJ's lawyers worked on America
at large.

Sally: That was the Nightmare Team.  I guess we owe the world at large
some kind of apology for having 
inflicted this on them.  But I'm not sorry.  Well, I'm a little sorry
that it's over, but I really can't see where we 
go on from here.  I don't really feel comfortable going on through
teething with the Mulder family and 
"Miranda Gets her Driver's license", "Scully Goes Through Menopause",
"Mulder gets Prostate Problems", 
ad infinitum.

Rivka: The horror!  Not to mention the adolescent mutant chrysalis phase
for the kids.  Designer genes, 
y'know. At this point, I've wracked my brain to finish this story for so
long that it feels like the egg in the 
McMuffin, round, puffy, well-cooked, and ready for its charming cheese
hat.  It would be fitting as I lived in 
Wisconsin for six years. . . . I'd also like to point out at this time
that I would *never* have dared a metaphor 
like that until I started working with Sally. I didn't even know such
things were possible. In some states 
they're not legal. The upshot of all this is that Io is my fond auf
wiedersehen to fan-fic, unless an idea bites 
me on the leg.

Sally: What?! You're quitting?  After all the havoc you've wreaked on the
world?  One night, when you 
actually have time, you'll be bored, the cat will be asleep, and you're
going to be sitting at your computer 
and the compulsion will start and the voice of the Rivka will be heard
throughout the land.  Well, I want to 
believe, anyway.  Maybe you should tell everybody how this all started.

Rivka: My records suggest that it started on Dec. 17, 1997, not long
after the aggravating Emily episodes 
aired. 

Sally: "Records"?  Baby, you are waaaay too organized for me.

Rivka: I was thrilled to be invited to assist with a post-Emily adventure
that would give Scully a chance to 
do more than mourn blankly and waft through sand dunes.  The early
working title was something like "As 
Sure as Eggs Is Eggs," which quickly mutated into "Fried Eggs," "Bad
Eggs," and the like.  Originally, we 
stuck to the Medea plot with emendations as whimsy suggested (that's why
Marita got to play tiki torch).  
Thus the referentially named Jason was born.  Well, then we needed to
figure out where he came from, and 
that led to Agnates.  At the end of Ag, George was still wandering
around, and we had Miranda to deal with.  
And the most famous Miranda is the Macguffin in Shakespeare's Tempest. 
With George as Caliban and 
Scully as estranged family member, the stage was set (heh, heh).  I've
always considered Caliban and 
Prospero to be parallel monsters, so the twin relationship fit well. 

Sally: Then I think we felt obligated to send Mulder and Scully off in
style, so to speak.  I think my favorite 
part of writing Iolokus 4 was doing the ice cream research.  My mouth
liked it but I'm not so happy at the 
side effect it's had on my ass.  I need a zip code for my rump.

Rivka: Yeah, yeah.  Tell it to the judge.

Sally: Yeah, but my sworn testimony indicates that I actually enjoyed
writing this.  In closing, I quote the 
Grateful Dead: "Oh, what a long, strange trip it's been."

It's over, go home.