******************
Shadows of Winter
Part 7
By Jaime Lyn 
******************

* Welcome to NC-17 land.  Whee! If you're under 18 or squeamish,
you're good till about halfway down.  Then I promise you can skip and
not miss anything important.  Seriously.  ;-)


------


Mulder sat at the computer, straight-backed, eyes glazed, irises
stung, bloodshot. Columns and numbers and stacks of data crisscrossed
the screen in a tic-tac-toe board of non-solution. The streaks of
information were bars, rusted, scratched, cold steel bars closing in
on him, imprisoning him, imprisoning Scully.

There were places around the globe that once served as MUFON
headquarters for former abductees - far off places, where victims
could hide and pray that nobody would find them, all the while being
fed lies about the child whose existence could destroy the world.  Who
knew what cult members still lived in wait, biding their time for the
exact right moment.  On one side of the screen: Australia, Belgium,
Ireland, Greece, Italy - places of mobilization.   In the middle of
the screen, names: Theresa Hose, Malcolm Bracket, Jules Dapner, Angela
Carridy, Carl Dawson - abductees who disappeared following the raid on
Absalom's compound.  It was unclear, still, what had happened to these
people, where they had gone, and who - if anyone - was leading them.
Any one of those former abductees could be waiting outside the door,
conspiring with the last known supersoldiers.  Revenge, redemption,
reconstitution of the project - William's death could be motivated by
any of those ideals, but would pinpointing the exact reason behind it
truly do him any good?

There were sites upon sites within the FBI mainframe that listed the
chemical properties of iron, its electrical and magnetic advantages,
its known chemical-molecular properties and uses.  If Mulder was going
to beat this thing, he had to first understand how the beast worked,
and studying the compound that killed it was his best opportunity. The
problem, however, was that The X-Files were no longer a resource at
his disposal, and there were no known official sites within any
mainframe that instructed visitors on how to kill an alien. After
twenty minutes of fruitless searching, Mulder could now properly align
fragments of iron in order to magnify them, but that was about all he
could do.  He still had no idea how to destroy a supersoldier.

So on the far left side of the screen, another list of names:  John
Doggett, Walter Skinner, Alvin Kersh, Monica Reyes.  People who could
dissect the vaccine Marita Covarrubias had given them, and tell him
exactly what it could do.  Research the first list and risk exposure. 
Research the second list and risk wasting valuable time.  Contact
anyone on the third list and risk alerting the entire law enforcement
community of his and Scully's whereabouts.

Each list, every choice, was a set of prison bars.   

If Mulder tried to stare past the screen he'd see nothing but a
conglomeration of circuits, bunched wires, carefully welded splatters
of metal.   Technology could save you or it could kill you, he
realized.  It could create a complex contraption capable of breathing
for a person unable to breathe for himself. It could connect you to
another person halfway around the world, hang you onto the invisible
web of the internet by a modem no bigger than your thumb.  It could
create life; it could create a human being so advanced that the
biology bordered on human, bordered on alien, bordered on medical
abomination.  Technology could grab you by the throat and squeeze
until every single bone and vertebrae in your neck fractured. 
Technology was man's creation, but in the end, man could so easily
succumb to his own intelligence.

"Mulder?"

Startled, Mulder turned in his chair.  

Dana Scully braced herself on the doorframe, her arms folded beneath
her breasts, clutched tightly, as if she was cold. Mulder knew she
wasn't.  Her dark suit had been traded for a nightshirt - his
nightshirt, to be specific.  The Knicks logo bunched beneath her arms
and crumpled in garnet and blue and gray wrinkles.  Her legs were
bare, slender, smooth - careful studies in personified sweet cream.  A
flashlight lay on the floor at her feet.  Her amber-kissed hair had
been brushed back, pulled into a clip; unruly wisps broke free of
bondage, swirled around her pale, freckled cheeks.  Her makeup was
scrubbed clean, her lips unpainted; she was naked before him.  Baring
herself in this way was an unspoken gesture of truce.

"I thought I'd let you know William's asleep," she said.  "I put some
couch pillows on the floor and laid him down in the bedroom.  He
should be alright for at least an hour.  He's in the center of the
room and I moved... moved everything he might be able to grab."

Mulder nodded.  

"I, um - "  Scully paused.  "I was doing some thinking, about the
things Marita Covarrubias said, about William's DNA, about the iron
magnetite. I had some ideas."  She cleared her throat.  "Iron is a
principal component of a meteorite class known as siderites, and it's
a minor constituent of two other meteorite classes. Current scientific
data doesn't make clear how many other classes contain iron as a
significant chemical compound."

"Did you rehearse that, Scully?"

Her jaw clenched.  "No."  

"Huh."   Mulder leaned back in his chair, lounging.  "So, iron meteors
with altered molecular properties."

 "Something like that, yeah."

"So then, are you suggesting that the substance is derived from outer
space?"  Mulder couldn't help but grin.  "Very cool coming from you,
Scully."

"That's not what I'm suggesting."  Scully took a breath.  "What I am
suggesting, however, is that we know the black oil virus existed deep
underground for millions of years, perhaps since the conception of the
planet. And the core of the earth is thought to be largely composed of
iron and about ten percent occluded hydrogen.  If a meteor were to
have crashed here, perhaps hundreds of millions of years ago - a
meteor that contained an unknown iron with an unknown makeup of
isotopes - the result could have been intense radioactive output.  Or
something very similar Over generations, mutated DNA could have
sprouted in the numerous alien sects we've come into contact with. 
Perhaps - perhaps even mutation of the original molecular structure of
iron itself."

"Interesting approach," said Mulder.  "So you think... That what we
classify as iron isn't really iron at all, but rather a kind of
molecular mutation?"

She nodded.   

"Okay.  Then that would mean a purer form of iron exists, somewhere." 
He frowned.  "Or it could exist, theoretically.  But let's just say it
does.  Could that mean William somehow has an un-tampered, un-mutated
iron isotope floating around in his system?"

She nodded again.

"But according to Marita Covarrubias, it's acting as a sort of - " He
cupped his hands together, "A sort of radioactive poison.  How would
that work, exactly?"

Scully's head dropped back against the doorframe, her eyes squinted in
thought.  "Iron exists in all of us, in hemoglobin - it assists in the
oxidation process."    She cracked her neck.  "But alien hemoglobin is
considerably more acidic, and we know it's not carbon based, which
means it must oxidize differently than human blood. When I was
abducted, a branched strand of DNA was found in my body, and it nearly
killed me.  The doctors couldn't pinpoint the exact cause.  If the
technology Marita spoke of is accurate, then it's possible a lethal,
purer form of iron was poisoning my blood, preventing the normal
oxidation process.  Almost like a suffocating type of anemia."

Mulder scratched his chin, following closely.  "So why doesn't it kill
William? If what you're saying is true?"

"I don't know," Scully admitted.  "It could be exactly what it seems -
a step up on the evolutionary ladder.  A biology capable of sustaining
a different type of chemical makeup.  And if William's body is, in
fact, oxidizing a form of iron purer than any other known form, then
his respiration could possibly be releasing the compound into the
air."

"In the form of a toxin."

Scully nodded.  "Possibly."  She cleared her throat, shrugged. 
"Anyway... it's a theory."

"Killing them softly," Mulder mused, thoughtful.  "That would make
William's blood the purest form of human blood in existence."

Her jaw trembled, but her gaze was steady.  "It would mean the truth
is in our son."

"I think you might be right," agreed Mulder.  

His gaze drifted southward, rested on the flat of her abdomen.  He'd
missed so much of the first pregnancy that the thought left unhealed
scrapes on his memories; Scully's pain, her complications, her brushes
with the unknown, her fears and hopes.  He'd not been there, and if he
were any other man with any other set of priorities, he would have
been.  He should have been. Perhaps Paul Selden would have known; Paul
Selden was the normal guy, after all. But Fox Mulder couldn't be
anything less than Fox Mulder, and he didn't know how to be more than
that, either.

"Is that what you came in here to tell me?" he asked.  

"Mostly," she said.  

"Mostly?"

While there wasn't much Mulder remembered from the abduction, at least
not much beyond jagged flashes of memories that faded into burns on
his retinas, he recalled her absence - the empty spot inside him she
would have filled.  Something had been torn away.  He caught glimpses
of metal tables, spikes, foul-smelling drills, needles of pain
thrusting him into unconsciousness.  Her face was what he remembered
most vividly.  Her fingers on his scalp, her laugh, her frown, the
gritty, raw edge of her voice when she declared herself to a suspect. 
She'd kept him alive; perhaps he hadn't been there with her, but she'd
been there with him.

"I think... that I owe you an apology," she finally said, her head
tilted towards her chest, neck bowed - the lily whose stem had finally
snapped from lack of sunlight.  When she looked up once more, the pain
was raw and open in her expression.  "I let my emotions cloud my
judgment and that was a mistake.  I know we risk detection, but we
need to contact Skinner.  We need help."  She took a deep breath.
"We're ill-equipped here and there's too much at stake now for us to
be selfish.  If you want to stay, we can, but we need to... If we
can't protect William on our own, or if this unborn child puts us in
danger - "

Mulder rose from the chair.  He felt tethered to his wife like gravity
tethered all things to the earth. He'd missed the morning sickness and
the mood swings, and he wanted that chance back. He had been forced to
endure separation from her - months of wondering, and months of
darkness, and then months of never-knowing.  She was a mystery when he
returned from the dead, her new body a Rubik's Cube of unanswered
questions.  He'd been afraid, and angry, and so utterly confused.  He
could never have known the how or the why, because he wasn't yet ready
to understand the logistics.  He hadn't been there to process the
possibilities of love, of miracles, of Scully's God, of considering
more than one option even if he'd never before been able to believe.

But he was here now.  

He knew when it had happened, too, could pinpoint the exact moment of
conception.  A late fall blizzard, a shadowed living room.  He'd
whispered his devotion into her trembling lips, and pressed her to the
carpet, and cradled her when she shuddered, and held her when she
slept, and cried with her when she cried, and beyond the pain of their
shattered existence and the darkness of what was to come, someplace
far inside her body, a part of him and a part of her had fused, united
in a biological explosion that made science more like magic.  Right
there in front of a warm fire, where it was safe.

"If this baby is like William," Scully continued.  "If it is happening
all over again, I'll have to...."  She paused, gritting her teeth. 
"I'll have to do what's right.  For us.  For William.  I'm a doctor.
There are ways, methods.  They're not pretty, but they'll work.  And
then Skinner could advise us where William would be safest."  She
refused to meet his eyes, and her tears were eerily silent.  "Until
all of this is over."

Mulder stopped a foot short of the doorway, unsure of what to say or
do.  There was so much anger that snuck up on them, that trickled down
their backs like melting ice cubes.  He wanted to touch her, to
apologize, to say he understood - even if he didn't truly understand -
but he was frustrated and stubborn, and she even moreso.  He wanted to
tell her that neither of them needed to apologize, that any remorse
was instead owed to them by men who would never give them the
satisfaction.

But he found he couldn't speak.  

"It's snowing heavily out there," Scully said.  "I was downstairs, and
then in the bedroom.  I sat there for awhile, just watching..."

She cleared her throat. 

"Anyway, ah, I don't know how long it'll be before we lose power, but
I left a flashlight by the door of each room, just in case.  When
you're done in here, there should be some bottled water by the
refrigerator, and there are some batteries in the um - "

Mulder bent to his knees, and Scully's breathing slowed in ragged
puffs.  Her voice cracked. "Batteries in the drawer by my computer. 
And some matches, old newspaper, if we want to start a fire.  I don't
- "

His hands crept to her hips, where he curled his fingers around her
and tugged. Every nerve ending hummed, crackled with heat.  He wanted
to know, wanted to feel for himself.  He pressed his ear to her
abdomen, his head nestled beneath her folded arms.  Part of him was
inside of her, and he needed to feel it. He needed to know, to make it
real, to understand.

Scully's voice was a creak of unsteadiness.   "I don't - don't know
where the butane lighter is - I, ah..."  Her hands dropped to his
shoulders, her chest rising and falling with strong, steady rhythm. 
She closed her eyes, and just breathed with him.

"Can I hear its heartbeat?" Mulder whispered, encircling her hips so
that he pulled her tight to him.  "If I listened, if I was really
quiet - "  He gazed up at her, and willed himself not to cry.  "Do you
think I could hear it?"

A wistful smile tugged at Scully's lips, and when her eyes opened,
they were the color of moon-kissed snow.  Her hands drifted into his
hair, sifting, searching.  "No, you won't be able to hear it," she
said.  "But sometimes you can feel it."  She bent so that his head
rested in the darkened furrow left by her forward-tipped spine.  Her
cheek pressed atop his head, her arms found his neck - she smelled
like warm coconut.  Her lips drifted in wet trails over the crown of
his skull.  She was curled over him, molded to him like warm
chocolate.

"If you're really quiet," she whispered, sinking slowly to her knees. 
"If you're really quiet you can feel it."  And then her breasts were
eyelevel, and her shirt rode up between them, and her neck came into
view, and finally, her eyes, her wide, deep blue eyes found his, and
she was on the floor with him, sitting on her knees.

"You can feel it," she repeated, sucking in hard lungfuls of air. 
"Right here." She took his hand and lowered it to her stomach, where
the skin was soft and slightly round beneath her shirt.  "If you're
looking for it, if you want to feel it, it's there.   Oh, God, Mulder,
what if - "

"Shh," he mumbled into her, pressing his lips to hers, kissing away
her tears.  "I hear it, Scully.  Just listen.  It's there.  I hear
it."

--


The lights flickered in blinding abandon, spectral black to radiant
yellow; luminescence danced in abrupt flecks on Scully's cool skin. 
Mulder kissed a wet line down her jaw, down her neck, his mouth
wandering in the lightning insanity between now and tomorrow and
utter, pitch darkness.

He was desperate for her, feverish.  He was positive that if he didn't
have her now, he would never have her again. Time would steal her from
him; the well of tomorrows slipped from them, minutes running out. 
How long before the men following Marita Covarrubias found them, too? 
Tried to destroy them?  The intensity was so dark, so sly and quiet,
slinking up the base of his spine. He thought the walls would close in
and destroy them both.

In the span of a final, sharpened flicker, the air turned opaque.  The
computer whistled itself to sleep, the air vents hushed into the
backdrop of darkness.  A thud and a rattle, a click, and a second beam
flooded the room - white, pure, halogen.  The light ballooned on the
ceiling, rolled forward and back, tented them in gold: a spotlight.
Electricity was dead, and the sounds of nature pounded against the
house, scratched at the window, begging entrance.  What else was out
there, begging entrance, waiting to claim them?

Scully braced her elbows on the floor and arched her back, her neck
bared towards the ceiling, her dark lips parted, reticent.  Her chest
bobbed with breath.  A black clip dangled from her hair like a
blistered leaf from a winter branch, and ruddy waves threatened to
break free, spill across her back.  Mulder trailed his nose along her
cheek, her chin tilted toward him, asking for more, asking him
silently.  Dana Scully was nothing if not resolute; she always knew
what she wanted.

Answering as silently as she'd asked, his mouth found hers, his lower
lip tickling, edging her open.  Her tongue dipped past his teeth, did
a thorough sweep, a long, complicated waltz, her head slanted into his
hands.  When she parted from him, she left him dizzy, disoriented,
swollen; her cheek pressed to his in exhaustion, hot, moist, lost in
the aftermath of mouths making love.

Her body trembled, but remained firm beneath him.  If other women
melted to boiling puddles of Jell-o in the arms of their lovers,
Scully remained firm, bull-headed as ever.  She was all resilience and
familiarity and gentle curves mixed in a simple haiku.  She had the
intelligence of a trained pathologist, the hard determination of a
mercenary, and she was put together in a musical type of asymmetry.

Mulder nudged apart her legs with his knees, fitted wisps of golden
hair behind her ears.  "Mine," he whispered into her mouth, running
his hands over her exposed neck. He kissed her again, losing himself
in the taste of her, and nearly bent her back to the floor in zealous
abandon. Minutes ticking, pounding, running out - or no, that was his
pulse, his heartbeat.  He would die without this, without her; it
wasn't the sex, but the completion he would die without.

Their noses brushed, reverent, tender, caressing patterns over
glistening skin.  Her mouth found his ear, her tongue smooth and wet. 
"Got it wrong," she breathed, licking at his earlobe until he couldn't
remember his name.  "Backwards...Got it... You - mine."

As language floated back to him, Mulder chuckled.  "I - yours.  Me
Tarzan, you Jane."  His finger trickled down, flicked at the underside
of her breast.  "Jane sexy.  Tarzan hard.  Tarzan fuck Jane - "

Scully snorted into his ear.  "Why do you get to be Tarzan?"  she
muttered.  "Because you're the big, macho - "

His palms pressed down on either side of her, caging her beneath him,
and his tongue slid down, down her chin, marking her neck in circles
that left her without words.  She gasped.

Turning onto his side for leverage, Mulder edged up the cotton shirt,
bunching the hem beneath her breasts.   Her underwear was
straight-edged and dark beneath flashlight shadows, caressed at each
corner with a swath of lace.  Mulder pressed down over the silk,
circled with two fingers above a triangle of damp fabric, tested her
curves for pliancy.  Scully moaned something unintelligible, her head
dipping, falling back, dragging to her shoulder until the clip fell
free from her hair.  Tendrils clung to her shoulderblades, trapped in
sweat.

"Oh," she whispered, the word almost an exhale.  "Mulder..."  

The Universe disappeared in an undulation of shadow over Dana Scully's
lips, and the arch of her back.  His pulse beat a thready harmony in
his neck.  He wanted to see, wanted to watch, wanted to drink her in
until he drowned in her.  Now was soon, but now wasn't nearly soon
enough.  She needed to be more naked than she was, she needed to be
bare, entirely, completely.

Mulder paused, his fingertips perched atop the wet silk in an
upsidedown V.  Pacing himself, he sauntered his fingers in careful
measure back over the material and underneath the hem. Warm there. 
Much warmer. Incredibly soft. Wet.  Ready.

"You," he murmured into her ear.  "Everything."

Scully was whispering something back, her lips moving without sound. 
He wanted to kiss her again, steal the air right out of her mouth.

Mulder's breathing slowed, bottomed out.  Desire built a rough pit of
fire in his belly, pressing down on his cock in a rush of blood
between his thighs.  He was thick, hard, drowsy with need.  He would
have Scully, and he would have her now. This moment in lethargic
darkness was all that existed.  Only here.  Only now.  Nobody could
take this from them.

His hand pressed down against the warm, wet folds of Scully's skin -
swollen, waiting for him.  Wetter, she kept getting wetter.  Her legs
shifted, trembled; she refused to sit still.  In went one finger, and
then two - slick, tight, hot.   Scully mewled and pressed a fist into
the carpet, trying to pull up fibers.  He could barely breathe.

Her hips rocked towards him, and the erection he'd been ignoring
became painful and obvious.  He needed more, needed to feel her around
him, needed it soon; he was sure he'd black out otherwise.  His mouth
on her neck, he pushed down with his lips until finally, one elbow
gave out on her, and she tilted awkwardly to the floor.  One bare leg
dropped to the carpet, the other stable, bent at the knee.

Steady on one side, she grasped his shirt, tugged at it, pulled with
shaky fingers.  She was ready, waiting, dangling - she wanted to fall
with him.

"Mulder," she whispered, and the arm that had betrayed her flopped to
the floor above her head, palm up.  Her skin beaded with sweat.  She
breathed: in through her nose, out through her mouth.  "Take... off -
"

He circled inside of her with his fingers, pulling out, pressing back
in, sliding until he found her clitoris and she contracted with him.
Her pupils darted, rolled up and back into their sockets. Her lids
fluttered shut.  "Oh Jesus..."  She pulled again at the shirt.  "Shirt
off... Pants... Off... Mulder - "  He slid his index finger up and
out, crooking it slightly, and Scully arched back at an impossible
angle.  "Fuck," she muttered, making quick mess of his shirt with
groping hands until Mulder was positive she'd rip the material into
shreds.

Sitting back to comply, Mulder's fingers edged out of her and Scully
hissed at the absence.  She was on her back now, one hand pressed over
her nude stomach, the other draped above her head, palm to ceiling. 
Her eyes were smoky, the color of flint.  She watched him with
totality, hunger steeling her expression, asking him without speech -
want this, need this - just you, right now.  Mulder smiled; it was
rare that they both wanted the same thing.

Mulder crossed his arms at the hem of his shirt, pulled it up over his
head in one quick motion.  The shirt sailed over his desk chair,
skipped off the edge and hit the floor. He sat on his knees before
her, fumbling with the zipper on his jeans, both of them utterly out
of breath.  If he didn't free himself soon he was sure he would end up
with some sort of permanent dysfunction.

Silent, Scully pulled herself to a seated position, scooting closer to
him on her knees, bracing one arm on the floor and the other on his
hip.  She leaned forward and brushed his nose with hers; her tongue
darted out, licked his lips, tasted him, her fingertips tickling at
the edge of his zipper.

Into his mouth, she growled, "Stand up," her hands clutching the
material on either side of his hips. At this point, she could have
asked him to jump off the roof wearing only a sheet as a cape, and he
would have complied.  Without question, Mulder stood as Scully held
tight and pulled; the jeans dripped to his ankles like liquid.

Stepping out, Mulder pulled off his underwear, and then his socks,
never breaking gaze with her.  He sank to his knees like a man starved
for prayer, waiting at the temple doors for her to open them and let
him in.   Her mouth pursed in suspended whistle, chest expanding,
contracting - her temple bell was about to chime the hour.

Scully gazed at him, her dark blue eyes an aroused black, pupils
dilated.  With trembling fingers, she reached down and pulled off her
nightshirt, dropping the article behind her with a crooked index
finger.  Her breasts rose and fell with each breath, and Mulder
pressed his palm to the underside of her flesh, rubbing his thumb
alongside her nipple. She was so soft.  God, she was so, so soft.

"You," she whispered, her fingers on his lips.  "Your lips soft...
also."

Mulder swallowed; had he said that out loud? 

She watched him as if circling, marking with her eyes what belonged to
nobody else.  Nine and a half years together and they'd cornered the
market on singular passion - when passion was directed at the work,
intensity drowned out ordinary concerns like heat melted pure January.
 And when passion was directed at each other, the result was a
coupling so absolute that the Earth stopped and dropped them out by
the edge of the Universe.  They played their passion in stark black
and white - no gray, never gray.

Mulder touched a hand to her neck, felt her pulse thudding beneath a
warm mane of dark, orange ochre.

"Is this okay?" he asked, a thumb on her cheek.  He wanted her, wanted
her so badly that his head hurt from lack of blood flow.  But he
remembered the baby, and how sick she'd gotten earlier, and how dizzy
she got the night before.

"Huh?"  

Her hand pressed to his chest, palm drawing light circles below his
breastbone.  Her expression was almost comical in its total
non-comprehension.

"Is this - " Mulder nodded towards her abdomen.  "Is this going to
hurt anything? Anyone? I'm not..."  He frowned, trying to find the
words behind a haze of powerful want.  "I'm not going to injure you? 
Or - or injure hard-head junior?"

"Hard-head junior?"  

She was smiling now, and advancing on him like a cat stalking a can of
tuna.

Jesus - he was the tuna.  

Insanely aroused at the sight of his wife on all fours, and yet
slightly terrified that sex might fracture their child, Mulder backed
away on his hands and knees until his bare buttocks hit the desk and
there was nowhere else to go. He would surely die from an unsatisfied
erection, but at least Scully wouldn't get dizzy and pass out on him
from overexertion.  And there would be no scarring of his unborn
child, which was a plus.  He could just imagine Scully explaining this
situation to the paramedics.

Pausing about a half-foot short of Mulder's worried crouch by the
desk, Scully raised an eyebrow and tilted her head.  Mulder forced a
nervous smile.  Obviously mistaking concern for a challenge, Scully
bent at the knees and pulled herself up until she towered above him; a
renaissance statue of stubborn, beautiful imperfection.

With a quirk of her lips, Scully hooked her thumbs in the waistband of
her panties.  Her face was a detailed mix of amusement.  Ever so
slowly, she pushed down at the silk garment until Mulder was forced to
endure it slinking all the way down her legs like falling mercury
inside a thermometer.  When the shiny material finally hit the floor,
she kicked it away with the toe of her left foot, standing above him
like a self-satisfied Buddah.

"Some macho, jungle hero you are," she muttered, smiling, and then she
lowered herself to her knees, spreading his legs and positioning
herself between them.  "I say... Me Tarzan."

The glint in her dark eyes screamed for rebuttal, for him to kiss her,
just kiss her good and hard, and the flashlight beam caressed her
breasts in shadow until he could have sworn every part of her was
laughing at him.  If she kept this up, Mulder was positive he would
either drag her down to the floor, fucking her until her eyes flitted
back in her sockets, or else his heart would flat line. There would be
needles and electric paddles involved.  And not the kinky kind,
either.

"Wait.  Scully -  Are you sure I won't -  " He truly, honestly, really
needed to know, but his head was foggy and the English language had
evaded him.  "I mean, I can't... I don't  want to - " He searched his
mental vocabulary.  "Impale anyone. That is, the kid's in there - "

And this time she did laugh at him, a deep, throaty laugh, hooded with
the smoky volume of desire.  Her neck bent, and her head fell forward
onto his chest, her hair blanketing the skin above his ribs.  She
pressed a palm to his shoulder and her back arched with cracked
giggles, so much laughter Mulder seriously thought about strangling
her before ravishing her stupid.  Still painfully hard and now a good
deal embarrassed, Mulder blew a frustrated stream of air out through
his lips.

"I'm so glad I amuse you, Scully."

Scully raised her head and grinned at him, blue-black eyes sparkling
like stained glass beneath a pinprick of sunlight. She pressed closer
to him, wriggled her thighs downward until he was poised at the
opening between her legs, not inside, but close, too close, so close
he could have bit his tongue off. She was good at this game - she was
too good at it.  Her hands rested on either shoulder, tickling, head
tilted to one side, mischievous.

"Jane act like big baby," she muttered, brushing her nose over his
cheek, tickling him in warm, slow patterns.  She kissed his chin,
still smiling, and a giggle escaped.  "Jane not injure anything." Her
lips tugged at his.  "Tarzan promises  - Tarzan doctor, knows these
things."

Finally, Scully reached between his body and hers and grasped the head
of his cock, and Mulder jerked as if burned, positive there was an
explosion of stars and tiny birds floating in packs around his skull. 
She squeezed and ran her fingers up around the shaft, pressing,
circling, doing something skilled with her fingertips that should have
been illegal in forty-eight states.  She was killing him.  Slowly
killing him.

Mulder grasped her face with both hands, gazed into her eyes; she was
fading in and out of focus.

"Keep...keep your eyes open," he managed through his teeth.  "Don't
close... your eyes."

Her thumb running the swollen rim of him, she pressed her hips closer,
pressed until he was right there, almost inside her.  And suddenly,
Mulder was floating, edging out of his body until he was dizzy and
surrounded by the scent of his aroused wife.  The head of his cock
peeked at her edge, ventured in once, twice.  Scully groaned, her skin
thick with perspiration.  She panted in short, tight puffs, nodding at
him, guiding him into her, lowering herself until they were joined
completely and she sat on his lap, her eyes level with his.  Their
noses brushed, tip to tip, their foreheads pressed together; he was a
part of her, a part of her, his body so intimately infused with her
that nothing could take her from him.  She ran through his veins.

"Like this?" she whispered.  

His tongue darted out, wet her lips, his eyes wide open.  "Like this,"
he agreed.

With a low grunt, Scully began to move, her hips bucking up and down,
slowly - she slid up and out, and then back down, and then up, and
then faster, and then slower, and then faster again. When she couldn't
seem to make up her mind, Mulder reached down between them and flicked
at her wet skin, pressing down with his thumb where they joined
together, and her body bucked upwards once more.

She kept her promise - eyes open, wide open.  

Mulder stared into her until he saw past the flecks of sapphire around
her irises, until he saw himself again, until he saw what she saw when
she looked at him, and he couldn't remember how to breathe properly.

Harder she went, harder and harder, faster, deeper, and the pressure
in Mulder's stomach built, intensified; there was too much heat,
boiling, bubbling.  He would explode from the volume, burn to death,
melt.  She was so wet, and slick, and tight, and soft, and her arms
wound around his neck, slick with sweat, clutching him, begging him
without words to keep her bound to him, secured to the earth, keep her
from falling off the edge, because then she would float, and he would
float, and then they'd float forever, and they'd never find their way
back, but maybe floating wasn't so bad when she was there, and she was
always there, she was everywhere, and he was falling into her, falling
until he couldn't fall any farther, falling until he ended up inside
of her eyes, and he was drowning in a sea of them together:

Scully handing him his jacket, her fingers brushing his knuckles,
murmuring, "maybe you should ask yourself if your heart's in it, too,"
 her voice on his cell phone, "Mulder, it's me," her shampoo soaking
the couch from where she'd showered and fallen asleep, her arms folded
over her chest in the basement office, "four-hundred-and-forty-six
million dollars, I'm in this as deep as you are, and I'm not the one
who overreacted," her lips curled around words like "musculature," and
"animaceous," and "allosteric proteins," her arms around him,
clutching, tears on his collar, "I won't let you go alone," his lips
on her ear, watching her sleep, the hospital bed so much bigger than
she, he didn't dare say it, but he thought it, "I love you, Scully, I
love you, I love you," her stomach rounded with child, she was just
joking, not really involved with the pizza man, look at the way she
laughs, just like the sun rising -

And he was back in his body again, shuddering, his head buried in the
crook of her neck, his eyes tightly shut; he was swirling down the
drain.  Her hips held him tight inside of her, her arms around his
neck.  She wasn't there yet, but she was close, damn close; she moved
erratically, her breaths echoing in short, hard gasps, her mouth
working at the skin at his neck.  Up and down, up and down, faster,
harder, and gasps became grunts.

His head raised, and he watched her.  Her neck tilted back, her eyes
opening and closing, teeth gritted, nostrils flared, her fingernails
raked tracks in his upper back.  She was a study in beauty, in what
drove men to insanity.  She was everything.

And then she suddenly pitched forward into his chest, her muscles
contracting around him, jerking him upwards.  The spasm was powerful
and hard, and Mulder grasped her arms, steeled her to him, biting his
lip as wave after wave of contraction rocked them both, forcing him
out until he pressed back in.  She moaned, and breathed, and sighed,
and he watched her, just watched her.

 "Oh God, it's okay.  It's okay.  It's okay," she whispered, her face
buried in his neck.  "I love you, too."

Too?  Had he said it first?  He couldn't even remember.  There'd been
a roaring tide of sensation, a blinding crash of light in her eyes and
then -

His shoulder was wet, dripping, and it took him a minute to realize
the moisture wasn't from saliva or sweat.  "I love you," she murmured
again. "I love you. We'll be okay, Mulder -  don't let go.  We'll just
sit here and not let go."  Her back heaved in heavy sobs, the wake of
her orgasm leaving her exposed, raw, vulnerable.  She was more naked
now than she'd been in months.  "We'll strike a bargain.  I won't let
you go, so you, you won't, either.  Nobody can take us here.  We're
safe.  We're safe right here, aren't we?"

Mulder held her tight, and he remained inside of her, joined with her,
sobbing with her, breathing with her.  "We're safe here," he promised,
rocking her gently, back and forth.  "I'm not letting go."

***********
Shadows of Winter
Part 8
by Jaime Lyn 
***********


* Rated PG again.  Darn it.  Doncha just hate that?

---


Sated, Mulder laid on his back, hands cupping the back of his head. 
The beam from the flashlight was steady, a dusty beacon bubbled on a
darkened ceiling.  Scully lay on her back beside him, Knick's t-shirt
draping her breasts and bunched around her thighs. She was quiet,
goose-bumped, tranquil.  One arm rested behind her head, the other on
her stomach.

Once they'd finally disengaged from one another, both had been
exhausted, drained, and had simply flopped back onto the carpet. 
Scully had shivered, and pulled her shirt back over her head.  Mulder
closed his eyes and reveled in a pattern of sounds and textures - the
fabric of Berber versus the occasional burst of color behind his eyes:
blue, red, green, yellow, rough, soft, rough, soft.

Scully's tears had dried in tracks against her cheeks, but her eyes
remained open, unfocused, the pink around her irises evaporating into
eggshell-white as seconds stretched into minutes.

The house was silent, replete.  Only the whistling of winter
discontent flitted through the walls: branches tapping stucco, wind
hissing at trees, snowflakes dueling.  Time was ticking, warning them,
prodding them.  But even if they wanted to leave - wanted to leave
right now - there was no way out.  The roads would be blocked off, the
lawn covered in thick, white hills.  Cold was closing in, contracting
around the heart of November, and soon they would have to go get
William and move the party downstairs, where a fireplace could promise
warm flickers of heat.

"Scully, do you remember why you wrote your senior thesis?" 

Scully turned to him, leaned over on her right side, braced herself on
an elbow.  Her thick red hair fell over her shoulder like an
un-tethered drape.  "My undergraduate paper?" she asked, her chin
pressed into her hand. "The one you flung at me like a false
credential when we first met?"

"Hey now."  Mulder raised an eyebrow.  "There was no flinging
involved."

Scully smiled.  "Perhaps it was your distaste for me that gave the
appearance of flinging."   Her free hand secreted towards him, drew
swirls over his knuckles, her lids heavy.  "Why do you ask?"

"I don't know," said Mulder.  "Einstein's Twin Paradox - it was the
first thing I wondered about you, after we worked on that first case
together.  Why would such a staunch scientist choose one of Einsteins
most outlandish theories as part of her graduation requirements?"

"Did you even bother to read it?" she asked, amused.   

Her suspicious tone was so familiar that Mulder felt momentarily
transported.  A quiet basement office, once a copying room, and then a
storage closet, and finally a joke to anyone who passed and saw his
nameplate on the door.  Slides and files hanging off the desk, photos
littering the floor, unfilled expense reports sticking out the corners
of drawers.  Piles here, piles there.  The scent of fast food
hamburgers, hot coffee, and ketchup.  An unwelcome, red-headed urchin,
so green from inexperience it was frightening, daring him to
contradict her, arguing with him that nothing existed beyond the realm
of science: the answers are there, she insisted.   You just have to
know where to look.

It took her a week to re-file the office, him another week to re-file
it back, and her a third week to clean it once last time: she left him
post-it notes in strategic places and threatened death if he dared
rearrange anything in a way that would create more work for her. The
loopy swirls of her handwriting coupled with the no-nonsense
practicality of her messages made him smile; he'd kept every single
one of those post-its.  He still had them, somewhere.

"I did read it," he insisted, opening his palm to her. Her fingertips
traced the lines in his skin.

When her eyebrow refused to back down, Mulder gave in and bit his lip,
sheepish.  "Okay, I tried to read it.  And I kind of got it.  But I
had no idea why x equaled v and t equaled x - "

"Actually, I think I wrote that 'x' was a position in time, assuming
that time moved relative to any object in motion with a constant
velocity of 'u' - " She waved a hand as if lecturing - " 'U' being the
constant velocity of earth, for example - and that this was in fact
equal to the constant x times u, plus the constant of a second body,
we'll say anything at motion on earth - "

Mulder tapped her arm, jolting her.  "Hey - braggart, you just lost
me."

Scully frowned, seemingly confused as to why anyone would have
problems understanding the variables of physics.  "Which part?" she
asked.

"Everything after 'Actually,' " he answered.  Scully smacked him on
the arm.

"Well, seriously, then.  What didn't you understand about it?"   

Mulder turned on his side to face her, mirrored her posture.  "I think
I just need a refresher course, Agent Scully.  Explain to me how the
theory works in your expert opinion," he said.  "Without forcing me to
dig out my Scully-to-laymens dictionary."

Scully tilted her head to one side, a few red hairs skirting into her
face.  She swatted them over her shoulder, brushing her cheek with her
knuckles.  The brows above her blue eyes converged, and she looked
wholly unconvinced of his seriousness.

Mulder grinned.  "Okay.  So one person leaves the sphere of gravity
and makes a trip to Pluto, and then returns fourteen years later,
except he's younger... or can he actually return older? It's all about
traveling at the speed of light, right?  Is that... am I close?"

Scully took a breath.  "We'll start with general relativity," she
said.

Mulder groaned into his arm, flopping back to the carpet.  

Scully chucked, sideswiped him with the back of her calf.  "You're the
one who asked me."  Her toes tickled up and down the inside of his
leg, and she smiled a very naughty smile, adding, "Big baby."

Mulder peeked his head out from his arm, pressed a kiss to the outside
of her elbow.  "Oh, I'm sorry, I thought it was recess." He waggled
his eyebrows.  "Preach on, Sister Spooky."  Another kiss at the arch
of her elbow.

At the very least, science lessons with Dr. Scully were much more
productive than science lessons in high school, especially since, in
this class, fucking the professor into bowlegged contentment was an
acceptable excuse for forgetting to do your homework.

Scully took a moment; her lips quirked, and Mulder couldn't be sure
whether she was trying not to laugh.

At last, she began, "Without getting too deeply into uniform
gravitational fields - "  She paused a moment, as if waiting for more
grumbling from the class.  When Mulder proved he could actually keep
his mouth shut, she continued, "Say you have two identically
constructed clocks. You synchronize them -date and time - and send one
off in a spaceship, traveling at the speed of light, while you keep
the other here on Earth.  Theoretically, since both Earth and the
spaceship travel at a constant speed, and since time is a universal
invariant, the same amount of time will pass for both Earth and the
spaceship, but the clock on the spaceship will register that less time
has passed, even though time has actually been a constant variable.
It's rate that fluctuates, since the speed of light is faster than the
speed of Earth's revolutions."

Mulder tugged on Scully's foot with his, his toes skirting her ankle. 
She was hot when she was scientific.  "Okay, I think... Yes, I get
what you're saying. But let's say I were to blast off in a ship to
Pluto traveling at - oh, ninety-nine percent the speed of light -
would I notice the passing of time as years or minutes?  I mean...
would my body recognize the change, or force biological growth at a
faster rate?"

"In scientific theory or psychological theory?"  

Mulder shrugged.  "In your theory," he said.  "It was your thesis."  

"Okay..."  Scully exhaled a chuckle.  "Special relativity generally
debunks the idea that I would be younger than you, since I was
traveling on Earth at the slower speed, and I couldn't feel the
momentum - and since you obviously had thrusters on your spaceship. 
As far as your other question goes, biology shouldn't change just
because velocity does."  Her toes ran the length of his leg, and the
smile she sported dimpled her cheeks.

"But the argument in your thesis had more to do with the bigger
picture," Mulder said.  "What an effect like that could mean in a more
metaphysical sense.  If I'm remembering correctly - you said something
about... parallel universes?"

The arch of Scully's foot played along the inside of Mulder's knee,
her fingers dancing, intertwined with his, along his palm. If Mulder
didn't know any better, he'd argue that she was flirting with him,
dirty-talking him with her science, arousing him in her own,
intellectual, deranged strategy.  He certainly wouldn't put it past
her.  She hummed to herself, sing-songing, "Close, but not close
enough, P.I."

Mulder grinned, certain his jaw would break from stretching;  Good
God, she was flirting with him.

"I argued that proper time would belong to you - you being the
passenger in the spaceship traveling at the speed of light, me being
the one left behind on Earth.  My interpretation of time would be
merely as an observer, and in that case, I was perhaps traveling in
the wrong gravitational loop."  Her cheeks reddened slightly, and she
held their intertwined hands at eyelevel as she spoke.  "In other
words, you would cease to exist in my gravitational frame of reference
because we'd be traveling in different loops.  If the speed of light
was the law by which we judged actual time, then all other life forms
existing at a point less than that speed would be on other planes,
measured by other frames of reference."

"Parallel Universes," translated Mulder, satisfied with this
conclusion.

Scully snorted.  "You make it sound like something out of Heinlein."  

"Nah." Mulder grinned.  "Not Heinlein.  Maybe Ray Bradbury, though. 
You must have been one groovy nerd to hang out with in college,
Scully."

Scully shook her head.  "God, I was so young."  She smiled, wistful. 
"Idealistic, naive..."

Mulder brushed his finger across her cheek, understanding the
sentiment. Nine and a half years, three abductions, a pot of
paranormal hodge-podge, five gunshot wounds, a dozen alien encounters,
a cancer, a baby, an adoption, a death, a murder trial and a break
from the law later, and she was not the person she'd once been.  And
neither was he.  But he rather liked this person that she was now,
just as he'd liked any incarnation of her throughout the years.

"Mulder," she said.  "Seriously.  Why do you ask?"  

"I re-read your thesis a few years ago," he said, tucking a long red
curl behind her ear.  "When you were pregnant with William.  I sat at
my computer and leafed through it, looking for something - I don't
even know what.  I think I missed a lot of the technical stuff, but I
got the general idea, and I kept it out - you know, where I could
reach it easily."

Scully cocked her head to one side.  She whispered, "Why?"

"Oh, I don't know.  Just because," he said, and now he was the one who
blushed.  His thumb dropped to her shoulder, and then to her wrists. 
"I think I was at a point in my life where I was trying to figure us
out.  A lot was going on professionally and I - I wondered whether it
was fate or coincidence that I'd found you, and you found me - that we
were partnered together.  If I could have known in the beginning that
it would end this way."

She nodded, her eyes unreadable.  "And what did you come up with?"

"I thought - " He sighed.  "I thought that maybe I had done something
to you, robbed you of something important.  And that the reason you
believed in me was not because you wanted to, but because you had been
forced to by circumstance."

Scully inhaled sharply, her fingers squeezing his.  "Mulder - "

He held up a hand.  "It's okay," he whispered.  "Just wait until you
hear the whole thing."

She nodded, silent.  

"So I was sitting there, out of work, out of distractions, and reading
your thesis because I found it in my desk, and I was bored, and I
thought - "  He smiled, covered her fingers with his.  "It wasn't a
matter of me dragging you out into the thick of ludicrousness - you'd
always wanted to be there.  You liked the ludicrousness.  You wanted
to believe - or at least, I think you did, but you didn't want me to
think you did. You know?  When I first met you, the curiosity was
there.  And the drive was there.  And in the end - "  He raised a hand
and cupped her face with his thumb and index finger.  "There could
never have been anyone else, or any other way for me.  You were
just...someone I would have fallen in love with in any universe."

"Nice," said Scully.

"You like?"  Mulder grinned, self-satisfied.  

"All this from my senior thesis, Mulder?"

"Yeah, that."  Mulder cocked an eyebrow.  "Plus, you've got an amazing
ass.  Cosmic, really."

A smile tugged at her lips, and she leaned closer, bridging the gap
between them with a sliver of shadow.  Her eyes swam out of focus, her
fingers splayed wide over his cheek, tickling the cartilage of his
ear.  Her mouth found his and tugged, searched, angled. Her tongue
entered, and there was a sudden merging, a crashing flash of desire.
She was soft, and warm, and breathing life into his lungs.  Her red
hair ran like smooth, gold spun silk beneath his fingertips.  She
tasted like nine and a half years of familiarity, and at least six
lifetimes of tears, sweat, and loyalty.

When she pulled away, his eyes were still closed.  "Impressive," she
murmured.  She brushed his cheek with the back of her hand, and he
opened his eyes. "I think that was even better than your 'one in five
billion' speech, and that's really saying something, Mulder."

Mulder grinned, unabashedly giddy.  "Yeah, well, I aim to please."  

"Really?" Scully's eyebrow shot up.   "If I recall correctly, I was
your 'one in five billion' because you wanted me to do an autopsy I
didn't plan on performing.  And before that, when 'I completed you,'
it was because you wanted me to stop that pesky global conspiracy
thing."  She clucked her tongue, rising to her feet.   "Always
something with you, Mulder."  Her lips were swollen, hair wild and
tousled.  She looked ravished.  "So what do you want from me this
time?"

Mulder tapped her ankle, marveled at the stripes of darkness that
flitted over her.  With a tilt of his chin, he said, "Woman, go make
me a fire."

Scully rolled her eyes.  "I'll be downstairs," she muttered.  "You can
lay here like a lump if you want, but I don't feel like listening to
you complain all night about your ass contracting frost bite. So give
me a few minutes. Then I suggest you grab the Tater-Tot and meet me in
the living room."

"Or what?"

Scully folded her arms.  "There are plenty of theories concerning time
dilation.  I'll start with Galileo, move on to Newton - "

Mulder groaned, tossed an arm over his eyes.  

Scully chuckled.  "Get dressed," she ordered, and turned on her heels.

Mulder pulled himself to sitting, grasped her wrist before she could
go any further.  His heart cracked out a wild, erratic drumbeat; he
couldn't explain the tension.  That encroaching feeling took over,
that powerful, almost hallucinogenic thought that the walls were
closing in on them.  Scully frowned, questioned him with squinted
eyes.

"I love you," he whispered suddenly, looking her square in the eyes so
there could be no debate.  "I mean it, Scully.  I love you."

Scully nodded slowly.  She hooked her fingers into his, squeezed, and
then let him go. "I know you do," she said.

And then she turned and walked into darkness, disappearing down the
inky hallway.

******************
Shadows of Winter
Part 9
by Jaime Lyn
******************

* R rating for this chapter. la la la...

---

Mulder groaned and pulled himself to his feet, bending from side to
side.  The bones in his back realigned with a satisfying crunch, and
his muscles screamed in exhaustion.  He felt old, suddenly.  Worn out.
 His neck was stiff and sore, arms chilled; the house whistled its
disagreement with the weather, and the air was edged with the silent
creeping of frost.  If this late fall storm was as bad as the
weathermen had predicted it would be, chances were good nobody would
be getting out to repair the electricity anytime soon.  Which meant no
light, and cold house, and no more sex, and annoyed, annoyed Mulder.

Another stretch, and Mulder pulled on his jeans, buttoning them,
pausing when something sharp jabbed him in the hip.  He hissed and
reached carefully into the furrowed bulge of his pocket, pulling out
the hypodermic needle Marita had given him in the cafeteria. Shards of
light bounced off the metal, glinting the tip with white-gold.  His
other hand dug into the other pocket, and he removed the amber vial of
liquid, holding both up to his face for close inspection.

"This is for Agent Scully," Marita had instructed, "If the time ever
comes for her to need it again."  The words had been cryptic and
foreign, but made a modicum of sense in retrospect.  William's
injection.  Scully's pregnancy.  Marita hadn't known about the new
baby - hell, not even Mulder had known about it - but if she had
considered the option as an eventuality, or at the very least, as a
possibility, perhaps the vaccine was meant to prevent a similar
iron-mutation in another child.  A last resort in the fight against
unlucky chromosomes.

But then there were other concerns:  

"Marita Covarrubias is in love with you, Mulder." 

Mulder's mind replayed a slideshow of blurred images; the way Marita
had gazed at him, spoken to him, giggled with him in the middle of New
Mexico, underneath a blanket of desert frigidness.  The sand cold
beneath them, an arch of sunburned clouds scorching the sky.  The way
she'd whispered her secrets like kisses, begged him to feed her child
as she ran a warm sponge over her soiled arms.  Her voice low, broken:
"My father was never buried - they shot him, but they never found the
body..."

Marita had not specified the vaccine was necessarily meant for a
second child. She said only that the vaccine was meant for Scully. 
Specifically, for Scully.  Why would the vaccine be meant for Scully? 
Mulder shivered.  At the hospital, Marita had spoken in totality to
his wife, her cold, blue eyes like daggers.  The heat of her glare,
her voice cracked with bitter repose, like a woman with nothing left
to lose.  She hissed, "It was never about you, Agent Scully," and she
hissed it like a snake rattling a warning.   Marita wouldn't
deliberately try to harm Scully, would she?

Mulder sighed and played with the cap of the vial, twisting it and
untwisting it.  Chances, coincidences, fate, life, blizzards...

Scully was convinced that history was repeating itself, that the child
she carried was no different than William had been before Jeffrey
Spender offered hope in the form of a mysterious liquid.  If she were
correct in this assumption, it would mean their unborn child was also
a weapon, a commodity, a means to keep alien life alive.  While
William's altered biology would now kill anything with alien DNA, a
second child could, theoretically, bring supersoldiers back from the
dead.  The insanity of the situation was genetically stunning.  The
answer lay in his gene-pool - his and Scully's - a crapshoot of
recessive chromosomes merging in a single embryo.  Somehow, this
revelation came as no surprise.

One final, errant twist, and the vial opened, the cap spiraling out of
his hands into darkness.  Mulder jumped back in surprise, muttered a
curse.  Feet frozen in place, he bent and searched along the floor
with one hand. All he needed was to spill the liquid all over the
carpet, murder whatever chances he and Scully had of beating this
thing.  Or at least, figuring out what it thrived on, what its
weaknesses were.

On a stumble backwards, the flashlight grazed Mulder's foot and
toppled; the room bubbled with slashes of light, cuts of blinding
yellow beams.  Shards of yellow-gold bounced over the walls and
rolled, skittered, settling with flickers into a far corner.  The
carpet was left in darkness, and Mulder couldn't even make out his
feet beneath him.

"Shit," he muttered.  "Fucking wonderful."  

Opened vial in one hand, needle in the other, Mulder worked his jaw as
he tried to figure out what the hell to do now.  If the vaccine needed
to be sealed in order to retain its potency, Mulder was staring
directly into the mouth of trouble. Even if he objected to Scully
administering the vaccine right away - or at all - she would certainly
kill him if he let anything happen to disrupt the actual compound
itself. Anything Marita had given them was evidence, and if evidence
helped them destroy the enemy, every single little bit helped.

Leave it, dispense it, leave it, dispense it...

Shaking his head at what would probably end up being the wrong
decision, Mulder stuck the tip of the needle into the vial and pulled
up the stopper, sucking golden liquid up until there was no room left
in the plastic tube.  Sufficiently filled, he dropped the vial to the
desk behind him -

And missed by about half a foot.  The tiny glass bottle pitched into
shadows, and Mulder gazed in horror as whatever was left disappeared
to its death.

"Batting a thousand tonight," he muttered to himself.  

There was no way he'd hunt around for that thing in the dark. 
Tomorrow was plausible.  At the very least, morning would bring
sunlight into the room and, if there was indeed a God, electricity
with it.

Mulder bent to his knees and followed the trail of light on the
ground, hypodermic needle clutched in one hand.  He pulled up when his
opposite hand closed around the flashlight, and the pastel shaft moved
again, a flash on the ceiling.  He gritted out a shiver.  Mulder was
starting to actually miss the suffocating air of August, the red-mud
of dirtied benches at southwestern rest stops.  And Scully - she was a
mirage of wild beauty in her white tank tops, damp red hair curling
into sunburned shoulders.

Mulder's flashlight alit a trail of white-gold weaves over Berber
carpet, and he gazed in wide-eyed fascination, padding
tight-rope-single-file down the hallway.  The carpet was deep beige,
speckled with brown.  Each knot was tiny - too tiny.  He'd never
before noticed how big his toes were in comparison.  They were
actually freakishly large.

A creak on the stairs, and he could hear Scully coming up behind him.

"Hey Scully," he said, bouncing the beam along the carpet at his feet.
 "How big would you say my toes are?"

The slow click of a cocked gun echoed like an explosion in Mulder's
ears.  Mulder froze, flashlight squeezed in one hand, a halo of light
trained on the door to the bedroom. He didn't dare move the light, and
the walls around him receded, inky, dark. The door wasn't more than
two feet away, and William was behind that door.

His son.  

Oh lord, his son.  

There were no weapons in sight, no room for quick getaways.  Mulder
strained to see past the fog of darkness, his heart pulsing like the
deep rattle of a snake. Three black silhouettes loomed in front of
him, two figures back-to-front, and one to the left, blocking the
stairs.  Someone floated behind Mulder, training a gun on his head.
Scully - she'd gone downstairs to start a fire in the fireplace.  Oh
Jesus, where was Scully?

Another click, and a harsh, three hundred watt glow ignited black into
white. Blinded Mulder to his knees. His hand came up, and he shielded
his eyes with the fisted needle.  For a moment, he could see only
blue-white specks, painful swirls on his burned corneas.  His head
tilted to one side, and he backed against the wall.

"Isn't it nice when the family comes to visit?" asked a stunted voice.

Mulder turned, following the sound.  

There in the crackling of shadows was a waxy face, nose collapsed in
on itself from acidic tear, mouth twisted as if the skin had been made
of Play-doh and then pressed with wide thumbs. Luminescence danced,
made a freak-show of what science had already deemed monstrous,
unnatural.  The man's eyes were blank, expressionless.  His arms
seemed to float in a soup of nothing, black sleeves against black
emptiness.  His stance was wide - bureau procedure wide - gun trained
on the side of Mulder's face.  Mulder had no doubts that the man would
shoot if provoked.  Or even just because Mulder's splattered brains
would be a nice end to a cold day.

"Jeffrey Spender," said Mulder, his voice carefully neutral.  "Don't
tell me you stopped by for some coffee and crumb cake."

"We're wasting time," said another voice.  

Mulder turned a second time.

And nearly choked.  

Billy Miles stood at the base of the stairs, one arm wrapped around a
slender, gray t-shirted abdomen, the other pressed against a pale
neck, the gleam of his sharp knife cutting at the hollow of her
throat.  Scully's legs were still bare, ivory-kissed, and the Knicks
t-shirt bunched around her thighs, strangled in Billy's grip. Her
expression was hooded, blanketed in leftover flashlight flickers.  Her
chin jutted, her eyes straight ahead; she seemed to radiate pure
strength.  She watched Mulder, trained her sights on his face.  Only
the rapid rise and fall of her chest gave away what grotesque thoughts
might be flitting through her head.

"Scully," he whispered, for lack of better things to say.  

Flanking Billy Miles was a woman, tall, thin, red hair - her hands
shook on her flashlight like an almost-mercenary tricked into robbing
a bank.  Lizzy Gill, Scully's former baby nurse, and an admitted
scientist for the project. Lizzy said nothing, merely darted her
wide-eyed terror from Spender, to Mulder, to Billy Miles clutching
Scully, and then back to Mulder.  Her coat was long, brown, torn at
the sleeves.  She was haggard, unkempt, a wild creature with an
agenda.  She shivered, and the light fluttered in arching swoops
across Mulder, and then across Spender.

"What do you want from us?" Mulder asked.  

Truthfully, the question was both a ploy and a fish for explanation;
Billy Miles had found them.  He had come in place of Knowle Rhorer.
Which meant Marita had been wrong - not all of them were dead.  And
chances were even greater now that more would soon follow.

Billy Miles' face remained expressionless, sallow in the burn of
crackled orange.  Mulder's flashlight and Lizzy's flashlight
criss-crossed in midair, pressing an X down above them and burying
everything in deathly shades of canary and scorched sunset.

"I'm here to give you a choice, Agent Mulder."  Billy Miles nodded
towards the closed bedroom door.  "What I want for what you want.  I
could kill Agent Scully, but her death is fairly inconsequential at
this stage of the game."

Billy's fist closed hard over Scully's neck - as if for emphasis, and
Scully's eyes widened, oxygen ebbing from her throat. Her hands
flitted to Billy's elbows, pulling, clutching - a gasp escaped.  She
couldn't breathe.  Oh dear God, she couldn't breathe. She couldn't
breathe!

Mulder fought back the urge to leap the foot-wide divide between them,
teeth bared like a leopard protecting the cave.  Mulder's fist
clenched around the barrel of his only weapon: Marita's hypodermic
needle - and his fingers trembled with rage.  His wife, his partner. 
They'd traveled the world together and always emerged victorious,
beaten, but glued tight in places that mattered.  A study in the art
of putting Humpty Dumpty back together again.  Defeat was palpable,
but foreign.  They couldn't have gotten this far only to have the vine
chopped off behind them.

"You want my son," said Mulder, his voice a growl.  He tilted his chin
at Scully, who gulped deep breaths as Billy's grip loosened and
allowed oxygen flow.  "You'll kill her no matter what I do.  And then
you'll kill me.  So why not just kill all of us right now?  You don't
care whether we live or die.  Your kind never has."

It was a risky tactic, being that forward, but he needed to understand
before this went any further.  Why hadn't Billy Miles just killed
Scully downstairs?  Why go to all the trouble of bringing her up here?
 It didn't make any sense.

Billy tucked the blade closer to Scully's neck, said, "You have
something I need."

Scully's eyes darted, searching for something, anything - God himself,
to provide a distraction, a means of escape. Billy's voice was low,
deadly. "Knowle Rhorer was careless, and he let the situation
deteriorate into the fiasco it has become."

Mulder swallowed, watching Scully carefully.  "What are you talking
about?"

"They're all dead, Agent Mulder."  Billy's brown eyes glinted. 
"Knowle Rhorer was a prototype.  His job was to maintain security of
the project, and he failed.  He was eliminated because of his failure.
 And now I am the last.  My only goal is survival. The woman I brought
knows how to properly dispose of the toxin that has destroyed plans
for colonization.  I would have killed your brother, had he not made
himself useful in finding you out.  Agent Scully is, from what I
understand, an emergency room doctor. And she calls herself Lily
Selden.  Am I right?"

Scully paled, and her eyes widened at Mulder, her mouth half-opened. 
Mulder tried to think back to the realtor who had sold them the house,
the phones he'd installed himself, the electronics he'd checked and
re-checked again.   Privacy was an undefined, unidentifiable frame of
mind, incapable of providing comfort.  his conversation with Scully in
the kitchen, about the pregnancy - Jeffrey Spender had been tracking
them all this time, perhaps even listening in. Anything was possible. 
How much did Billy Miles know?  Could he have found out about Scully's
pregnancy? Fear was awash in the quiver of Scully's lips; they were
both thinking the same thing.

"Frankly, I don't care what happens to you, Agent Mulder.   There is
no project left, no great cause for you to fight.  I'll give you what
you want - " He turned his head so that his breath tickled Scully's
cheek.  Scully closed her eyes, her jaw tight.  "If you'll give me
what I want.  It's a very simple transaction."

Mulder gazed helplessly at his wife. There was no right way out of
this.  None at all.

"You're a liar," he said, hoarse.  "I won't let you kill my son or my
wife.  I won't make that choice."

Jeffrey Spender pressed closer, and the cold metal of the barrel
caressed Mulder's ear.  "You're walking a fine line, dear brother. 
Choose your next words carefully."

Mulder turned his head; the gun traced the line of his earlobe, his
jaw, and then pressed directly into his nose. Jeffrey's eyes were deep
black hollows of un-remorse.  His blank gaze rested on Mulder's hand,
and on the vaccine clutched to his chest.  There was a moment of
crackled tension.  An un-spoken message passed between them, a sort of
bizarre communication.  Mulder's nostrils flared as he fought for
understanding, desperation tugging at the corners of his mind.  The
back-sounds of wind and thunder echoed in his ears - a winter storm
cracking away at the house, at the foundation -

Realization flooded him. 

"You want this vaccine," said Mulder. He felt cold all over,
frostbitten. When he turned again, Spender's gun ran the planes of his
face, and then trained on the back of his head.   The tip of the
revolver trembled, and Mulder knew he'd been right.

"Keep quiet," Spender ordered.  

Mulder pressed his thumb to the stopper of the needle, pulse racing,
and he turned the metal towards his right arm, poising to administer a
shot.  "You went after Marita because she stole this from one of the
labs.  The same lab my brother got William's vaccine from.  You needed
to be sure whether any one of us had injected ourselves with it. You
need this thing before you can kill William. That's why you haven't
killed Scully yet."

"Time is running out for you," Billy Miles warned, holding fast to
Scully.  "I haven't killed her yet, but I will if you force my hand. 
And then I'll kill your son."

Mulder felt bile collect at the base of his throat.  "You lying son of
a - "

"Your son doesn't have to die," Lizzy Gill blurted.  She bobbed the
flashlight, her voice broken, nervous. Her opposite hand outstretched
towards Mulder, her pale, sallow face tense under the X of flashlight
threads.  "We can take care of him, study him.  We can co-exist
together with these life forms, learn how to make ourselves better,
stronger. But we - we need the vaccine, Agent Mulder.  If we have the
compound, William doesn't have to die." Her eyes darted to Scully, who
stood silent beneath Billy Miles' strong grip.  "Ms. Covarrubias died
because she betrayed the project and gave the compound to you.  Do you
- Do you want to see your wife die?"

Scully released a strangled breath.  "Mulder, don't give - "  

But Billy Miles pressed the knife roughly into the jugular of her
neck, and her mouth closed, eyes screaming with frustration.

Mulder held the vaccine close to his bare arm, needle pressed just
above his bicep.  He fought to keep his shaky fingers from pressing
down on the stopper.

So Marita was dead.  Strangled or shot or broken, left to decay
somewhere behind a snowdrift or a slush-eroded building or maybe just
in a dumpster, blue and frozen, awash in rats and putrid leftovers
from a life that pressed on without her.  The thought turned Mulder's
stomach inside out like a ragged shirt.  Marita had given him back his
son. She'd had ulterior motives for every move, every ace she'd ever
offered him, but she'd not been evil. She'd been human.  Too human. 
Another person dead for this project, for this science that should
never have been.

Mulder's feet were lead; he was rooted.  There were no weapons this
time.  No means of escape.  He had no idea what molecules swam in this
solution he held, whether or not the compound would kill him or turn
him into a slab of iron or make him into a supersoldier, but
threatening to inject himself with it was the only way out. Billy
Miles needed this vaccine, and he needed it badly enough to enlist the
help of corrupt, 'mere mortal' scientists.  He needed it badly enough
to use Jeffrey Spender in order to find he and Scully.  He needed it
badly enough to kill Marita, but to keep Scully and William alive so
long as Mulder threatened to waste the mysterious liquid on himself.

"Give Lizzy Gill the vaccine," Spender ordered, jabbing the gun closer
to Mulder's scalp.  "I'll kill you - "

"You'll kill me anyway."  Mulder's words were hard, and his gaze
rested again on Scully.  Her lower lip quivered against chattering
teeth, her eyes focused wholly on the needle at his arm.  Terror was
bold in her expression, and she seemed to will the needle into
becoming a way out, forcing God's hand by sheer concentration.

To Spender, Mulder afforded the truth: "He's going to kill you right
after he kills me."  And then, with a jut of his chin towards Lizzy:
"And he'll kill you, too."

"No." Lizzy's flashlight jabbed towards Mulder in hard stabs, erratic
patterns darting on the walls and ceiling.  "You don't understand. 
It's okay, Agent Mulder.  There's more going on here than you - "

"He'll kill you," Mulder repeated, his eyes unapologetic.  "Just like
he killed Knowle Rhorer and Marita Covarrubias.  Just like he killed
your colleague, Duffy Haskel.  Just like he'll kill Scully and my son.
 He's only used you to get to me."

"You think you're some kind of God," Spender hissed, the barrel
shaking erratically at Mulder's scalp.  "You think you can save the
world by not handing that needle over?  By giving us all your
goddamned expert opinion? You think you've won this round, just
because you have your son back?  Why don't you ask Marita Covarrubias
what happens to people who think they can play God?"

Scully seemed to notice the slight wavering of the gun, and her eyes
flitted in Spender's direction.  Her mouth opened slightly, only
slightly, and her left leg crossed back over her right.  The stairway
behind her was dark, bottomless. The toes of her left foot came up
against her calf, and her eyes sought Mulder's.  Her meaning was loud
and clear: distract him.

"You're losing focus," Billy Miles snapped, turning the knife so that
the blade faced into Scully's chin and not into her neck.  It wasn't
much, but it might be enough to allow Scully to tuck and roll away.

"Just grab the baby," said Lizzy Gill, her voice a squeak.  "Why do we
have to kill anyone?"

"We can't take the baby until we have the vaccine," said Billy Miles. 
"Agent Mulder needs to stop playing games he can't win."

Mulder kept the vaccine pressed hard to his arm.  Scully's eyes locked
on him, her left foot edging slowly up the back of her right leg. 
Closer, closer. Almost -

"You're afraid," said Mulder, his finger pressed to the stopper.  He
fought for understanding, and sputtered out the first idea that came
to mind.  "That's it, isn't it?  You won't come near me because you're
afraid of what this compound can do. You think you know what it is,
but you're not sure.  Not after what happened to my son. It could do
anything.  It could poison you - or perhaps it could make an ordinary
man powerful.  Powerful enough to stop you."

Billy Miles' knife wavered a fraction of a centimeter, and Mulder
noted that he'd hit a nerve.

"You'll be dead," said the supersoldier. "Before all the liquid even
circulates through your system."

"If I'd be dead then why haven't you just killed me and taken it?"  

"Agent Mulder - "  Lizzy's expression was pleading.  "Please.  Give it
to me."

"Give me one good reason why I should hand this over," said Mulder,
vaccine trained on his bicep, pressing down like a sharp pencil. He
felt sick, dizzy.

"I'll put a bullet in your head," Spender growled.  The gun wavered in
hummingbird quickness, and Scully's eyes darted quickly from the gun,
to Mulder, and then to the gun, and then to Mulder once again.  So
close now. So close.  Just had to wait for the right moment...

Mulder swallowed, took a breath.  "One of you is going to kill me
anyway, so you might as well get it over with." Mulder tore his gaze
from Scully and faced his brother once more.  The gun was hard, and
cold, and terrifying against the raw stubble on Mulder's cheek. 
"You've been jealous ever since the minute you met me." Mulder jutted
his chin in challenge.  "You hate me so much that you're willing to
align yourself with this man - admittedly a result of the work our
father perpetuated. You're willing to give up your decency, your
courage - the few things that seperated you from him.  Now nothing
separates you from him.  You're a coward."

"Shut up!" Spender shouted.  The skin hanging from his nose flapped. 
Lizzy's flashlight jutted at the shout, and light splashed off the
silver metal of Spender's gun.  Mulder's breath caught in his throat. 
He prayed that Scully was ready to make her move.  Otherwise they were
both good and dead.

"So why don't you just shoot me, Jeffrey?"  Mulder steeled his
expression.  "You've been wanting to.  All these years you've been
wanting to - "

"I'll give you ten seconds," Billy Miles interrupted.  

Mulder turned in time to see the shadowed supersoldier press the knife
to Scully's cheekbone.  Time slowed to an aching crawl.  Scully was
right; time was relative, objective, a variable that shifted in the
eyes of the beholder. Mulder swallowed back a curse.  Scully's eyes
trained to the left, where the sharp blade hovered just below her
lash-line.

"I would hate to slash your wife's pretty face."

 The tip of the knife pressed into the skin below Scully's auburn
lashes, and Scully gasped out involuntarily.  A drop of blood, round
and perfect and tear-like, skipped the side of Scully's face.  She
looked like she was crying paint.

Mulder's mouth went dry; he was running out of time.  Billy meant it. 
He truly meant it.  Ten seconds and Mulder's wife would be dead. 
Scully's ankle trembled, and she seemed to be fighting for composure. 
Or else she was going into shock.  Fear rose like tendrils of icicles
in Mulder's throat.  Distracted as she was, she'd never be able to
execute a self-defense strike like this.  Billy would cut her throat
so fast she'd be dead before she hit the floor.

Mulder took a breath.  He felt melted, like Jell-o before the gelatin
hardened.  "Try anything and I'll inject this whole fucking compound
into my veins.  I don't care what it is."

Billy Miles grinned, and the action didn't agree with him. "You
wouldn't."

"Try me."  

Scully's face was dark, painted, a line like war-paint down her cheek.
 "Mulder - just go.  You have what they want.  Fight them.  Take the
baby and - "

Billy squeezed her abdomen to choke her off, knife trailing down the
side of her face.

"No!"  Mulder pressed the needle harder into his arm, so hard he
nearly punctured skin.  "You kill her and I'll die putting you down."

"Agent Mulder - "  Lizzy Gill again, desperation edging each word like
a warning.  "Just give it to me.  I'm begging you."

"Eight seconds."  

Mulder's fingers squeezed the stopper.  "There won't be a single
fucking drop left. If you hurt her - "

Another drip of scarlet trickled the apple of Scully's cheek, and her
mouth opened and closed; she looked as if she was either praying or
losing her mind.

"Seven seconds."  

A creaking outside the house - slow at first, and then harder, faster.
 A snapping of sorts.  Tethers loosening, splintering, wood crunching
together and then splitting apart completely.  All movement in the
hallway seemed to stop, freeze frame like a VCR on pause.  Wind howled
in delight, slapped at the windows - the slow tear of glass stretching
to its breaking point.

"Mulder - "

A mind-numbing crash rocked the floor beneath them, buckled the
carpet, rippled them nearly off their feet.  Mulder gasped and hit the
wall, Spender landing hard behind him, palms out, defensive. 
Ricochets of light prisms fluttered off the walls and ceiling, and
then burnt out.  The air went black with loud, hideous whistles of
blizzard.  The world was gone.  Mulder was blind.

"Scully, run - "

"I'll kill you myself," hissed Spender, and Mulder was pulled forward
- pulled with invisible hands.  He struck out with the heel of his
palm, turned his face away.  Spender's skin flaked, and Mulder
grimaced as the man's nose crumpled like an accordion - Spender howled
and Mulder twisted them both back with his legs, crashed them into the
wall.  He had to get the gun away.  He needed leverage, needed -

A grunt and a shriek from the other side of the room: what might have
been the toppling of a body down a hard, wooden pit.  Other bodies
rushing forward, hitting the carpet, hitting the wall.  Glass and snow
flushed into the hallway, wind bellowing, thunderous.

Spender's arm came up behind Mulder, knocked him to the ground.  The
hypodermic needle dropped from his hand, spiraled out into the
darkness.

"Criminal!"  

A scuffle here, a scuffle there - a woman's gasp - Mulder couldn't
tell whose.

 "Here," came Scully's breathless reply, and then another thud - a
body crashing against the wall.   She grunted, and there was a third
thud.  A wheeze of air.  A blast of low, rolling thunder drowned out
anything more.

"Stay away," screeched a woman's voice - not Scully's.  "Stay the hell
away from me - "

"Back!"  Scully's voice this time, dark, familiar.  "You don't want to
get hurt then you stay the hell out of my way."

Air froze, condensed; It was snowing inside the house.  The storm had
banged for entrance, and now the worst had finally gotten in.

With a groan of purpose, Mulder slammed back into Spender, knocking
them both to the ground.  The gun skittered away into a clank of
crushed metal or glass or something that sounded like a pile of
shards.  Mulder searched the darkness for a big enough shard, or the
syringe, or Scully, or anything - a fist came up into his chest and
air whooshed out of him.  Mulder's back hit the ground hard, and deep
edges of invisible shrapnel dug into his spine.  Mulder hissed, his
heart beating  - his pulse drummed a frenetic map of survival: grab
the sharp thing, grab the sharp thing, grab the sharp thing... 
Mulder's fist closed around a cold slab of glass.

Swinging wildly, praying he would hit something, Mulder finally
connected with bone: there was a crack, and a slice of glass through
skin, and Spender went down.  For how long, Mulder couldn't be sure. 
The syringe.  Mulder had to get the syringe.

"Scully!" he yelled.  "I need you to get - "  

Behind the door to the bedroom, a child's wails exploded. Shrieks
fought for dominance over the roar of winter wind. William. The gun,
the baby, the gun, the baby.  But where was Billy Miles?  If he was at
the bottom of the stairs, experience told Mulder that he wouldn't be
down for long.

On his hands and knees, Mulder swept along the floor - the gun, the
needle, the gun, the needle. And the baby.  Fucking hell.  He couldn't
see a goddamned thing.

"I have it!" came Scully's voice.  "Mulder - "

Light flooded back into the room - it was Lizzy Gill, crouched on the
floor by the far wall. Her eyes wild, she swept the hallway with a
silver flashlight in her shaking hands.  Wind whipped through her
hair, and the shaft of light illuminated walls, and shattered glass,
and drunken swirls of snowflakes swimming like dust.  Finally, the
light rested on Scully, crouched like a cat, her fist closed around
the base of a hypodermic needle.  Her back to the stairs, her elbows
shook.  Her bottom eyelid dripped blood, but she didn't seem to
notice.  Her blue eyes glazed: the prowl of a wild den mother.

Behind Scully, Billy Miles loomed up the stairs, his face blank, arms
at his sides.  His shirt was ripped, arm gashed. He didn't care.   He
shouldn't; the blood wasn't real.

Pain erupting from the punch to his abdomen, Mulder crawled towards
her, reached out an arm.  "Scully!  Behind you!"

Scully turned on her knees, and Billy Miles paused at the top of the
stairs.  Mulder reached back an arm to steady himself and connected
with a solid, fleshy object.  His hand slithered in a pool of warm,
wet liquid.  He didn't need to turn to know what it was.  Spender.  He
wouldn't look - he couldn't.  He still didn't have the gun.  Nobody,
it seemed, had the gun.  Where was the motherfucking gun?

William's screams grew louder, more desperate, and Mulder's eyes
darted from the door to the bedroom, to Scully, to Lizzy Gill cowering
in a corner, and then back to Scully.  Billy Miles pressed off to the
left and Scully turned on her hands and knees, following Billy's
movements, never breaking eye contact.  She was a cornered lioness, a
trapped dragon.  She pressed the needle in towards her bicep, her
fingers caked with blood. She was a grain of salt away from breaking. 
Her knees - it was her knees that bled.  Mulder breathed raggedly, and
each exhale puffed like smoke into the air.

Scully's teeth barred, her eyes glittered.  She hissed, "You take one
step towards my husband or my son, and so help me God, you'll wish you
hadn't."

Billy Miles remained expressionless, slinking along the wall towards
the bedroom.  "And what will you do, Agent Scully?"

Air smoked out from her lips, snowflakes collecting in her hair.  Snow
blew sideways in jagged lines, the swirls and upsweeps of wind almost
deafening.  Scully was the wilder storm.  "You know exactly what I'll
do."

Billy crept closer to the bedroom, unconvinced.  Mulder jutted his
chin towards the man.  "Now you've done it," he said.  "Now you've
really pissed her off."

Scully's thumb teetered over the depressor of the needle. Her eyes
darted and she gasped.  "Mulder - " She jutted her chin.  "Mulder,
behind you - "

Mulder turned in time to see Jeffrey Spender, deformed and bleeding,
skaking and rising to his knees.  A dark spot spread over his
shoulder, and he grasped the gun in one black-gloved hand and lowered
it to Mulder's temple, index finger a hair away from pressing the
trigger.  Mulder squinted through the upsweeps of snow and skirted
away, down on his spine, pulling himself backwards with his hands.  He
slid his feet across the floor to take out Spender's knees.  Spender
came down and a shot fired, deflected wide.  Mulder ducked, and behind
him, there was a shriek from Scully.

Time disappeared on the howls of wind. 

For a terrifying second, Mulder was sure she'd been hit. His heart
erupted into his throat.

William screamed, and Mulder could make out terrified squeals of ...
it sounded like... "Mama."  Again and again, like a demented joke.
First words, first steps, first brushes with death - "Mama, Mama - "

Scully cried out.  

Mulder couldn't see her.  He had to turn.  Billy Miles would kill her
- would kill her.  A cry ripped from Mulder's throat -

"Scully!"

Spender grunted, and struggled for control of the gun.  Mulder felt
along the floor and grasped a long shard of glass with one hand, the
other clutched at Jeffrey Spender's elbow.   Underneath the man's
ribs, Mulder thrust the shard of glass, twisted, tugged.  Warm liquid
burst over Mulder's fist and he thought he might vomit altogether. 
His brother.  Jesus.  This was his only brother.

 The gun clicked to the floor, and Mulder kicked it away; the barrel
sputtered and hit the bedroom door.

"Mama!"  William's wails jabbed like pins in Mulder's ears.  "Mama! 
Mama!"
Mulder turned and the Universe screeched to a halt.  The syringe was
completely empty, buried in Scully's arm at an impossible angle.  Heat
flared in her eyes, and Billy Miles sprung toward her.  Scully sat,
daring him with her jutted chin, unafraid.

Pulse racing, terror running like frozen blood in his veins, Mulder
leapt up and tripped over Spender's slick fluids, entagling his legs
and dropping back to the floor.  The nerve-endings in his ankle
shrieked.  Glass crunched in hot needles of pain beneath his fingers. 
More blood.  His blood. Hurt.  So cold.  Scully.  He had to get to
Scully.  Had to get to her before -

Billy Miles grabbed her, yanked her to her feet by her hair.  The
needle dropped from her fingers, useless now, forgotten.  "Was the
truth worth it, Agent Scully?"

Fear flickered in Scully's eyes for only a moment, and her gaze froze
in tandem with Mulder's.  Glinted. She was a hundred Scullys at once. 
She was Lily Selden and Laura Petrie and Dana Scully, and she was the
truth and the light and every answer he'd ever sought.  Air
constricted, ebbed, and the room was a vaccum of singular moments. 
She was looking forward to working with him, she had a wedding that
weekend but would see him on Monday, she didn't think vampires killed
the cows because vampires didn't exist, and he was nuts, bringing up
genies and mummies, and she tasted like chocolate when she ate
Hershey's Kisses with her beer... Mulder's ears hummed. He silently
willed to her: Scully, run.  Go.

The blade came up quickly, before Mulder could blink, and time
abruptly ran out.  Billy dug into Scully's neck with an arc of
graceful dexterity.  Across her neck the glint of the knife ripped,
trailing a thin smile of blood behind it, dark, almost black.  A
nauseating whoosh of metal sliced through skin.  And just like that,
her throat was severed. The hourglass shattered over his head,
blinding him, and what was done was done.

"No!"  

He couldn't tell who was screaming.  

"No!  No, no - Scully!"    

"Mama!"  William cried, muffled now, receeding to background noise.
"Mama..."

Scully's eyes went wide in shock, her expression like that of a kitten
who had just been birthed.  Her mouth opened, struggled for air where
the was none. Her blood bled deep, brick red over Billy Miles' arms. 
He released her with a disgusted shove, and Scully fell forward.
Mulder pitched towards her like lightning and caught her before she
hit the floor.  He couldn't even feel her.  He couldn't feel anything.
 They sank together.

A sob tore from his throat. Mulder cradled her, sticky and wet with
his blood, with Spender's blood, and now with his wife's blood.  She
was so pale and red was so stark, so bold - it didn't belong on her. 
He felt like howling, like covering himself over with leaves and grass
and dirt.  If she died, he would die here with her.

Scully's eyes closed, opened once more in a desperate, losing battle. 
Her hands shook and she brought her fingers up, gazed at them. 
Disoriented.  Reaching.  Blood.  So much blood.  She was everywhere,
spilled over the rug, trickled over his hands.  Her eyes glazed, and
she focused on him one last time. Her lids heavy, her mouth moved
without sound.

"Don't go," he choked.  

And her eyes closed a final time.  Her neck dropped.  The lily had
been broken.

*****************
Shadows of Winter
Part 10
by Jaime Lyn 
*****************

* PG rated, for your pleasure.  :-)

---


The brain was a funny and yet hideous thing.  Neurological synapses
flowed and connected one lobe to another.  Human psychology was a
direct result of these synapses, of a complex biology of chemicals
reacting with one another.  To this day, scientists couldn't pinpoint
why the mind flashed certain emotional responses to certain stimuli. 
Why some abused children became axe murderers while others became
lawyers.  Why a man fell in love with one woman, while research
insisted he was more emotionally and physically compatible with about
a hundred others.  Why a certain series of images or memories were
triggered by a series of events, and other memories were discarded
under the same set of circumstances.  The mind had many mental
defenses and bizarre strategies meant to battle complete and utter
shut-down.

As Mulder held his wife in his blood-coated arms, rocking her back and
forth, he drifted back to a cold night seven years ago.  A hard-backed
plastic chair, his shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows.  Melissa
Scully sat on one side, Margaret Scully on the other.  Dana Scully was
in a coma.  Her body was weak, on the verge.  She was dying.

"She doesn't want to live like this," the doctor said, his clipboard
raised as a shield.  "She stated her terms clearly in her living
will."

Mulder had signed Scully's living will the year before.  As her
partner, she had asked him because statistics proved that chances were
high she could die in the line of duty.  It was Mulder's professional
job to know her, her habits and nuances, inside and out, so in the
eventuality of danger, he could pull her out. So he could save her or
know when to gracefully let her go.  Mulder understood what they were
up against; Scully insisted he was as good a friend as anyone, and
he'd know when she was ready to die.  A strange compliment, to say the
least.  But Mulder had signed, making a joke about her willing him her
Eagles Greatest Hits collection.  The pen skirted across paper, his
signature appeared, and then he was done.  Onto another mutant,
another vampire, another slideshow.

Mulder never imagined she might actually die.  Immortality was easy to
believe when one consistently emerged from the clutches of danger. 
Death was an impossibility, and signing her living will was merely a
formality, like signing the check at the end of a long, satisfying
dinner.  Scully was invincible.  She was Batman or Superman, swooping
down to save him from all the dark places.  She was his superhero. She
wasn't supposed to die.

Margaret Scully and Melissa Scully were there, supported by two
doctors and a nurse. Dana Scully lay on the bed, face pale, red hair
draped about her shoulders in tattered strings.  She had freckles -
Mulder had never noticed those before.   The freckles matched her
hair.

Mulder opted not to enter the room, a silent protest from an outsider,
but he watched for a moment by the doorway. He discovered that
'pulling the plug' was more a figure of speech than a literal
interpretation.  Pulling the plug meant flicking switches, turning
monitors off, and releasing a patient from a breathing tube.  In
reality, there was no wire, and no outlet for such a wire to fit. 
Pulling the plug meant counting down the hours, minutes, and seconds
until death.  Pulling the plug wasn't instantaneous; if the patient
still breathed, pulling the plug was like offering a glimmer of hope
in the form of a brutal slap.

Mulder had never before felt so drawn to another human being, and when
the doctors released Scully from her electronic binds, Mulder felt
mortality as if someone had kicked him in the ribs with it. Margaret
Scully buried her face in the shoulder of her eldest daughter and
sobbed. And Mulder's life shrank down to a harsh, black and white
sketch of causation, of before and after: Before Scully and After
Scully.  'After Scully' wasn't ever supposed to happen, not that
suddenly.  'After Scully' was unthinkable.

When Mulder opened his eyes, cold air rushed him like a linebacker.  

Billy Miles would kill him, now.  Mulder was positive of it.  There
was no longer a good reason for Mulder to live, and he was much too
numb to move or care.  Funny how he could misjudge himself so
completely, when life came down to brutal, primate instinctive ness. 
He'd always imagined revenge for injustice as a part of his
psychological makeup. That if someone murdered Scully, he would get
right back up and fight for her.  Just as he'd fought for Samantha,
for his father, for his mother.  He would drive a bullet through the
bastard's skull, or else he would die trying.  But silent musings and
the occasional nightmare did nothing to prepare a person for the
actual choking hold of grief.  And Scully was not his sister, or his
father, or his mother; Scully was so much more.  And now she was gone.
  Phantom eventuality was not reality.  The harsh light of death was
paralyzing, and Mulder was trapped within its grip.

He held her, pressed his face into her hair; she still smelled like
Scully.  Coconut creme and baby powder.  She was smooth and warm.
Beautiful. Death was supposed to be cold.  But she was soft, and
radiating heat, filling him.  She would always fill him.

"Scully," he whispered, his lips on her ear.  "Remember what I said to
you?  In the jail cell?  When the guard told Skinner that everyone had
to leave and I pulled you back?  Do you remember what I said?"

There was, of course, no answer.  Streaks of snow and blasts of wind
knocked out all sound, and Mulder couldn't even hear himself breathe -
a tear landed on Scully's nose, but he couldn't remember if he'd
actually begun to sob. No, this wasn't right.  This wasn't how it was
supposed to happen.  Scully didn't die - she couldn't die.  Death was
a common, mortal concept, meant for ordinary people.  Scully was so
much more than ordinary.  She was... was...

Human. Scully was only human, and her living will stated that she
didn't want to live like this.

Where was he?  Was this the hospital?  

Scully had been abducted, ripped from him.  He'd searched for her and
now she'd been found.  Her eyes were closed - she had freckles.  Since
when did Scully have freckles?  She was so lovely, just in a coma, not
dead yet. The doctors had brought her in and Margaret Scully was
offering coffee, Melissa, she was saying how you could feel Scully's
spirit in the place between life and death and drifting.  They took
her off life support but Scully was going to live.  She had to live.

There were tears but no sound.  Sound had disappeared.  And Mulder
registered that he was shivering.

Where was he? 

The hallway was a tundra, a meteorological condition.  Somewhere, in
the back of his mind, it occurred to Mulder that he hadn't been killed
yet.  Or perhaps he had.  Scully was right; there was a hell, and
Mulder's hell was to exist in this moment, with Scully's blood
painting his hands, in a circular loop of science fiction splendor. 
This was the tunnel at the end of the light, a well that stretched
until night bottomed out and nothing was left.

In the corner of perception, Mulder heard wails, loud, unending
shrieks.  At first he thought it was his imagination, but the wails
got louder, more pronounced.  Vaguely, he remembered a child. Seven
years of backtracking and second guessing and investigating, and then
a warm night on his couch when Scully came back in search of her
wallet.  Drills, metal tables, terrible pain - his return, like
falling into a hot-water bottle.  Scully's swollen stomach.  "What are
you going to call him?" he'd asked, gazing into a tiny, pale face. 
"William," she'd answered.  "After your father."

Mulder's head shot up.  The baby.  Determination flooded into him,
Scully's strength and her fortitude.  Oh God, the baby was in danger. 
Billy Miles was going to -

Billy Miles was shaking.  But not just shaking - seizing.  His black
eyes bugged wide, baffled - he gazed at his hands, at the blood that
soaked him down to his forearms.  Scully's blood.  Bubbling.  Oozing. 
Scully's blood was burning his skin right down to the bone.

Mulder gasped, pulled Scully's body tighter to him.  "What the hell -
"

Faster and faster Billy's body shook, so fast Mulder thought the man
would explode.  Tugging Scully with him, as if she could still see or
feel, Mulder pulled them back towards the wall, back until there was
nowhere else to go.  The snow was loud and thick; it was hard to make
anything out clearly.  Mulder shielded his hands over his eyes.  Billy
Miles' face went gray, and then black, and beyond the laughter of
winter wind, Mulder could hear crackling, bones imploding in on one
another, fracturing, degenerating.

Billy Miles was biodegrading.  

First his arms shrunk, twisted in gnarled facsimiles of hands, and
then further down, into black knobs.  Then his shoulders sunk into his
chest, and his head went the color of night.  His eyes were gone,
mouth gone.  Down he went, melting - actually melting, and Mulder had
a bizarre flashback to the Wizard of Oz, when Dorothy had thrown water
at the witch.   Scully - Scully was Dorothy.  And Verona's frigid
November snowstorm was over the rainbow.

Jesus, Mulder was cracking up.  Losing it. This wasn't happening.  No
way this was happening.

Mulder pressed his face to Scully's pale cheek, his shoulders and neck
soaked in her blood. The twang of salt and iron danced in his nose,
made his head swim with promises left broken. The baby still cried,
called out for his Mama.  How could Mulder tell his son that Mama
wasn't coming to pick him up?  Not ever.  How could he tell himself?

"Tell me this isn't happening," he whispered into her ear.  "Wake up,
Criminal.  Tell me this isn't happening."

A hand touched his shoulder, and Mulder nearly leapt out of his own
skin.  He turned his head and clutched Scully closer, held her like a
blanket, his teeth gritted, head cloudy with instinct. Someone had
come to take his wife from him. Someone wanted his child. Christ, she
was already dead.  They'd already hurt her once.  No.  Never again.

"Get away from us," Mulder growled.  He rubbed his thumb over Scully's
cheek until the blood disappeared from her skin.  He would do that; he
would wipe the blood away, and then she would be alive.  She would
wake up and tell him -

"Let me help her, Agent Mulder."  

Mulder froze - a male voice, and an unfamiliar one.  Not his.  Someone
else was there, standing behind him.  It wasn't Spender. Someone else
was in the house.

The mysterious, floating voice crouched next to Mulder, and Mulder
fought the animalistic urge to turn and sink his teeth into whoever
had come to threaten his family.  Nobody would touch Scully again but
him.  He just needed a minute. He needed to wipe the blood away. This
wasn't real.  All the blood was a dream, a construct of his overactive
imagination.  If Scully could speak, she'd tell him that this entire
evening was the result of hallucinogenic drugs.  Perhaps everything
since the onset of her first pregnancy was the result of
hallucinogenic drugs.  He wasn't in his right mind and she would tell
him that. Any minute now.

"I can help her," the voice said again.  "I've helped her before.  Let
me do what needs to be done."

Mulder turned.  

And speech escaped him.  

There, in Lizzy Gill's tattered brown coat and dark blue slacks, was
Jeremiah Smith, his gray hair awash in swirls of drunken snowflakes. 
He nodded at Mulder for approval, and Mulder had forgotten what it was
he was supposed to say.  Fluid clogged his ears.  He felt drunk. 
Scully was either dead or Scully wasn't dead.  William was in the next
room. Something bizarre had happened here.  He just didn't know what. 
He couldn't understand.

Mulder's grip loosened on Scully's torso, and he fell back, confused,
hypnotized.  He wanted to wake up.  He seriously wanted to wake up. It
was cold in here, and dark, and strange, and he missed watching the
tendrils of flames kiss the edges of his wife's fireplace.  He should
be downstairs, arguing with Scully about the Bog serpent, reading a
book to William, listening to Scully's stomach.  She was supposed to
have a baby.

"We could have co-existed," said Jeremiah Smith, and he lowered his
hands to Scully's neck, pressing.  "But now is not the time.  Perhaps
in another few thousand years, things will be different.  I don't
believe in the sixth extinction, Agent Mulder.  I told your wife as
much when we prayed together.  I don't think she remembers.  She
thought I was someone else."

Mulder's head spun.  "Thought you were someone else?"

"The truth is whatever we believe it to be, Agent Mulder."  

Mulder gazed in fascination as the blood ebbed from Scully's skin, the
gash that had severed cords in her neck closed, pinched, collapsed in
on itself, and soon it was gone altogether.  Scully's chest bobbed
with new breath, and Mulder jumped as if scorched. Scully was alive. 
She was alive? Oh sweet Jesus, Scully was alive.  But, but -

Mulder turned to Jeremiah Smith, wishing to impart gratitude, but
unable to find the words.  Gratitude was a small concept - trite and
human, and better left in the silence between life and death.
Gratitude was insufficient, just as love seemed to be.   Gratitude
didn't encompass the roiling emotions crisscrossing Mulder's veins,
the years of sights and smells, textures, and the sound of her voice,
memories, but not the last memories of her he'd file away. She was
still Mulder's superhero. She would forever be.

Jeremiah's hands began to shake, and his face took on a gray pallor.
His cheeks trembled, rippling as if to music.  Mulder pulled back,
taking Scully with him, dragging her.

Jeremiah was dying - just as Billy Miles had died. Somehow, Scully's
blood was killing him.  Whatever was in that vial, it had been lethal
- but not to humans. Which meant Scully was quite literally
kryptonite. She was poison for all the inhuman supermen of the world. 
Marita had been wrong. Even Scully had been wrong.  It wasn't about
Mulder at all, and perhaps it was never meant to be.  He couldn't do
it alone; he wasn't the savior of the world.  It was Scully and the
child both of them had created together who would prevent extinction.

"Congrat - grat- u- lations... on your... your new - new - child,"
said Jeremiah Smith, his hands gray, and then black, convulsing.  "I
pre - pre- pre - dict great things.  Many more..."

And then he was gone, liquefied.  A black puddle left on the carpet in
his place, coating the shards of glass and ovals of blood that soaked
up into knots of Berber.

Mulder blinked, tried to inject normality into himself.  The baby was
still crying.  The last living alien life forms had just died before
him.  Scully had also died, but now she was alive again.  There was a
storm raging outside that had knocked out the heat, and, somehow, had
shattered the pane of his office window.  And now with all the blood
and glass and black oil all over the place, they'd never get their
security deposit back.

Scully shifted in Mulder's embrace. She pressed a palm to her forehead
and stretched, kitten-like. Her lashes fluttered open and shut, and a
moan trickled from her lips.  "Mulder?" she said.

The sound of her voice was like oxygen in a vacuum, and Mulder
gravitated towards his wife, drawn, pulled, as he had always been, to
her side.  He pressed his lips to her temple, closed his eyes. She was
soft, and warm, and alive, and his.

"Mulder?" she repeated.  

"Hm?"

Her lashes fluttered, and aquamarine eyes darted about the hallway as
if she'd never before seen it.  "It's snowing in the hallway," she
stated.

He nodded.  "Yes, it is."

"Why?"

"Because... it's raining in the living room?" 

"Oh."  Scully yawned, seeming to accept this. She turned and snuggled
closer, clutching him.  If she had any memory of dying on him, she
didn't share.  "Mm...It's cold in here. You're going to freeze."

"Mm hmm." He breathed her in once more, reveling.  

"Go build a snowman with the baby, Mulder.  I'm going to take a nap
for just...mm... just a minute.  Next time it snows in the house, wear
a coat, okay?"

Mulder chuckled against her forehead, breathing in the fresh, familiar
scent of her.  And for the first time in ages, he felt that everything
would finally be alright - or, at the very least, the kind of bizarre
that actually passed for normal in his and Scully's zipcode.

--

If the upstairs hallway was a twisted mess of glass and melted snow
and pungent, black and maroon stains, Mulder's office rivaled the
hallway on a sliding scale of disaster wreckage.

The door to the office he'd been forced to close - the entire second
story would need to be snow-plowed if he didn't  - and he bordered up
the doorway with the computer box and what was left of the computer. 
The monitor had somehow escaped dentless and intact, although the
actual screen had not been so lucky, and the keyboard was plucked of
its keys in a way that would have done a dentist proud. Two thousand
dollars out the window - literally.

Brown, leafless fingers had groped through what was left of the
window, shattered the glass panes and wood dividers, and had beaten
the crap out of anything within reach.  The crates and shelf that had
once been pieces of Mulder's desk were tossed about the room like
sheets of paper.  His metal folding chair dangled like an earring off
one of the gnarled branches.  Dirt, slush, and street gravel coated
the floor, embedded in parts of the wall.

Scully's favored Maple had been the cause of their indoor winter
wonderland, a fact both ironic and poetic in a divine right of
circumstance. The theme of the week seemed to be 'wouldn't it be wild
if...' and now a tree had taken a roll at the dice. Already bent
towards the house at a forty degree angle, roots pulled up from the
earth, the trunk had finally succumbed to old age and disease and
twenty-five-mile-an hour winds. If not for the maple's weathered bark
and sickened branches, the right moment during the right storm, with
winds blowing in the right direction, Mulder would likely have been
shot to death. Scully would never have injected herself with the
compound that killed Billy Miles, and William would be dead.

Of course, on the other hand, had not the tree's complex root
structure remained intact, none of the above would have mattered. 
Their tiny cottage would have been pushed right off its foundation,
cracked down the middle by a hundred-year-old tree trunk, and
destroyed; they'd all be buried in cigar boxes.

If God indeed played the crapshoot, he certainly enjoyed rolling odd
combinations.

After tying an old shirt around his knees to quell the bleeding,
Mulder went in to quiet his screaming son.  William could never have
known the difference, nor would he have cared, but his confinement had
actually saved his life. Not that being alive made fear any less
fearful for the sleepy toddler, but at the very least, he was still
screaming, which meant he was still breathing, and when all was said
and done, Mulder couldn't have asked for more.

His lips at the baby's temple, his arms secure around his back and
bottom, Mulder kept repeating the same phrase, over and over,
delirious with relief:

"Daddy's here," he whispered, rocking the child back and forth, as
much for William's sake as for his own. "Daddy's here."

To survey the damage, Mulder stood back with his hands on his hips
like a man keeping watch over the side of a mountain.

Jeffrey Spender's pulse had been snuffed out.  The man was certifiably
dead.  Mulder's only brother, and the last in a long line of men and
women who had sought to destroy him, and other men and women who had
sought similar truths.  Mulder's father, his mother and sister, Chief
Blevins, the cigarette smoking man, Alex Krycek, Marita Covarrubias,
Melissa Scully, the lone gunmen - it seemed as though everyone he'd
ever known had drowned at the threshold of his quest.  Everyone, that
is, except for he and Scully, their unborn child and their son.

And Assistant Director Walter Skinner of the FBI.  

Deciding that maintaining his cover had all at once become a
non-issue, Mulder finally contacted his former superior by cell-phone.
 In a second bit of irony, Mulder discovered that his former colleague
was already stranded in a Lake Ontario airport just outside of
Kingston. One of Paul Selden's 'help wanted' fliers had apparently
found its way to Skinner's desk by first-class delivery, and the
words, Verona, Lake Ontario, had been scratched on the envelope. On
the back of the flier was another message: "And baby makes three."

Skinner didn't specify whether there had been a return address, and
Mulder wouldn't have needed one to pinpoint the sender anyhow.

She was nothing more than a memory now, alive as long as someone
remembered her.

But more amazing than any mysterious delivery or alien entity was
life's ability to bounce back after a kick to the head. That same
afternoon, Agents Doggett and Reyes of the X-Files division relayed
staggering news to Walter Skinner that had come to their office via
telephone: the charges against Fox Mulder and Dana Scully were
officially being dropped.  The men who had originally perpetuated such
charges had disappeared off the face of the Earth, and in the space
between yesterday and this afternoon, all searches for the missing
agents and operatives had been called off.  No reason was given. The
military tribunal Mulder had faced became little more than an un-event
in the relative passage of time.  The federal government, of course,
had no record of any such tribunal taking place within the justice
department.  Knowle Rhorer, the man Mulder had been accused of
murdering, was not dead, because he did not exist.  Nor would such a
record of his existence ever surface.

Just as quickly as one regime fell, another regime rose from the
ashes.  Alvin Kersh, former Deputy Director of the Violent Crimes
division, had been promoted to director of the bureau's main branch
office in Washington, D.C.   No warning, no preamble. In an
interoffice memo to Assistant Director Walter Skinner, he had ordered
that the X Files division be mainstreamed as a quiet offshoot of the
Violent Crimes division.  He'd requested Mulder personally, although
Skinner insinuated that the man's exact words were, "If the jackass is
still alive, find him."

Mulder's cell-phone died just as William called out to him from the
bedroom.  The baby's exact words were, "Dadda," and "shit."

At the end of the day, there was no way Mulder could win them all.

After deciding to leave the mess upstairs for Skinner to handle,
Mulder dragged his wife down to the living room amidst groans and
protests.  To say she was disoriented was to vastly underscore the
situation; she'd twice begged Mulder to please turn off the
slide-projector so she could finish her expense reports for the Jersey
Devil case.  Near death was not a pretty color on her, and the
after-effects were similar to detoxification.  Had the circumstances
been any different, Mulder probably would have been amused by Scully's
unending mumblings about a pigeon that kept laughing at her from a
bench by the Hoover Building's reflecting pond.

The problem was that Mulder had been sliced in a dozen places, and his
ankle had been twisted. Hauling William down the stairs was a
necessary act; one years olds weighed very little, and they simply
didn't climb stairs by themselves. Hauling his barely conscious wife,
however, while she shooed away invisible birds, was another
aggravation entirely.

Caught in the liquid confusion between consciousness and sleep, Scully
slowly clawed her way back to herself while Mulder entertained the
Tater-Tot.

She muttered about a headache and asked for something to drink.  It
seemed that being murdered and brought back from the dead had left her
with a scratchy, dry throat.   Mulder offered her the mildest asprin
he could find and a mug of hot tea. Blinking awake, Scully accepted
the pills and the tea, and dumped half the sugar bowl into her cup.
Mulder had never known Scully to be big on the sugar, at least - not
in her tea, but she'd shoveled in piles of the stuff until Mulder was
positive his own teeth would crack just from watching her.

"Hard-head junior has a sweet tooth," she muttered, and drank
wide-eyed, like a teenager unused to the taste of whiskey.

Half a mug later, and Mulder sat back against the base of the couch,
legs spread, lips buried in the crook between Scully's neck and
shoulder.  Scully sat in the gap between his legs, leaning into his
chest, quiet, solemn. William curled against her, plucking fur off of
blue-blunny, gurgling a fascinating story in his native,
one-and-a-half year old tongue.  Scully's fingers played in the baby's
fuzzy hair and down his back, and she massaged him until his eyelids
fluttered in protest of sleep.

The fire glowed bright in the fireplace, rocking, dancing, smiling at
them and hooking up into the black soot of the chimney.  If the power
never returned, thought Mulder, this would be enough for him.  He
didn't need light or heat or sound.  He needed this moment, with his
wife, his son, and his unborn child.
 


 --

"I think I'll take Tater-Tot out to see the Kelpie," Mulder said,
thoughtful.  "But first I want to get one of those cameras with the
zoom lens - "

Scully groaned, as she always did, at the mention of Cameron Bog's
infamous sea monster.  "Again with this bog monster fantasy?  You
really will believe anything, won't you?"

Mulder grinned.  "Only the good stuff," he said, brushing his palm
over the crown of his son's head, the sides of his arms resting
against Scully's.

Silence, and the fire crackled its approval into wisps of smoke. 
Scully's fingers brushed over his, and their hands merged against
William's flushed cheek.

"Mulder?"

Eyes half closed, Mulder managed a drowsy, "Hm?"

"What happens now?"  

Scully's red hair curled around Mulder's cheeks, untamed and wild from
melted snow.  She still smelled like coconut creme and warm, feminine
skin.
"Well."  Mulder blinked his way back.  "We're going to have to explain
the mess to Wright Realty, and to State Farm, and I don't think
'eliminated threat of alien colonization' is going to fly on an
insurance claim, so we'll have to come up with something more
plausible.  Good thing I keep you around, Criminal.  You see what
happens when you try and save the world?  God throws a tree through
your window."

Scully hummed.  "Do you really think it was God, Mulder?"  

"What, the tree?"

"Yes."  She paused.  "Well, no.  Yes and no.  Not just the tree. 
Everything."

"I don't know what to think," Mulder answered honestly.  "I just know
that, for the first time in a long time, it's quiet.  Do you feel it,
Scully? The quiet?"

The room flickered in shadow, wind swirling, protective, blanketing. 
Only their breathing cut the darkness, pressing in with the evened
sounds of survival.  They made it this far; they'd broken free.  Any
adventure from this point forward would be something new, unfamiliar,
a journey down an untrodden path.

"Do you really think they're gone, Mulder?"

Mulder took a breath, his hands running her biceps.  "I don't know.  I
really don't.  Skinner told me that a lot of CIA officials, defense
department personnel, and FBI agents just disappeared last week- some
right from their offices - and that the searches for them were called
off yesterday.  Nobody knows why.  Before he died, Billy Miles
insinuated that he was the last of his kind.  Maybe he is or maybe he
isn't.  Or maybe I'm just sick of running, or maybe I'd rather turn
into the wind and fight, but I really want to believe that it's true."

She sighed.  "But is that naive of us?  Wanting to believe that this
is the end?"

Mulder paused a moment, thoughtful.  "We both know it's not," he said.
 "There are still uncertainties and risks.  And now comes the work
antacid pills are made of. Lab runs, tests, analysis, research.  All
that fascinating shit."

Scully shifted.  Her legs stretched the outline of his calf. "Breaking
down the science of the unknown," she murmured.  "That'll take some
time."

"It will."

"And our cover's essentially blown."

"Essentially," Mulder agreed.  He craned his neck until the back of
his head hit the couch.  The ceiling flashed above him in flickers of
gray and white popcorn paint.

"But does it ever end?" She asked.  "Is that even possible?"

The room smelled of pine, real wood and the stuff that came in a can. 
Over the course of four months, he'd grown accustomed to the odor.

"Logically, dear Watson, I'd have to say no."  He elbowed her, and she
elbowed him back.  He couldn't tell whether or not she smiled.  He
imagined she did.

His mouth found her earlobe, and he tasted her.  "There's always going
to be something out there, Scully.  And I don't want to stop
searching. It's not in me to give up and it's not in you, either. 
We've just beaten the tough round, you know?  Like when you beat the
oompas and the turtle-ducks and the fire-breathing-flower-pots, and
then you get the bonus mushroom that gives you an extra life, and you
go on and kill Bowser?"

At Scully's silence, Mulder gave in, "After I got fired, I played a
lot of Nintendo."

"Ah, I see."  Scully exhaled loudly.  "Are you sure you didn't hit
your head, Mulder?"

Mulder chuckled, rubbed his hands down her goose-bumped arms.  "I
think I'm just grateful.  All supersoldiers and trees through the
house aside - " He kissed the corner of her neck, "That my son is
here, and this new baby - it sounds so bizarre to say that it finally
feels like my life, because it is my life, it's always been my life,
but I don't know, Scully.  I keep thinking back to this dream I had a
few years ago... I was living a different life.  I was given another
choice, another fate.  I was given all the comforts any man could ever
want and in the end, it wasn't... wasn't what it should have been.  It
wasn't the right time and you - you weren't there.  And when you
finally came, you kicked me in the ass.  You told me that it wasn't
supposed to end this way. I had to fight, get up."

"I remember," Scully said.  "You were telling me that everything was
upside down. That I was the only one who told you the truth."

"You saved me," he emphasized.  

Scully curled closer.  "You keep saying that," she murmured. 

"Well, you keep doing it," he answered.  He paused, and pressed his
mouth over her ear, turned his head so that his nose poked through her
thick red hair.  "You said I belonged to my quest, to my truth.  And
maybe to an extent, you're right.  But you're wrong if you think
you're not a part of that.  You're - "  He paused, cleared his throat.
 "You're my wife.  I belong to you, Criminal."

Her head turned, and her lips pressed against his chin.  "I know," she
said.

"So what do you want to do next?" he asked.  "Skinner's stuck in an
airport in Kingston because of the storm.  I spoke to him... He knows
about William, Scully.  I'm guessing Marita tipped him off."

"Why?" Scully's tone was neutral, soft.  "A last ditch effort at
trying to protect you?"

"Maybe," Mulder agreed, shivering at the thought of Marita, of her
sacrifice.  "At any rate, Skinner should be here tomorrow, whenever
the roads clear. We'll have some explaining to do, but thats the
norm.  It was insinuated that Kersh wants us back in D.C.  Can you
believe that?"

"No."  She kissed his neck, and he shivered. Her lashes fluttered
against his skin, hot and wet with moisture.

"So what do you want to do?" he repeated, closing his eyes.  

"I think I just want to call my mother."  Scully swallowed, and a tear
pressed between them.  "I really miss my mother."

When she said nothing further, Mulder nudged her with a poke to her
hip.  "What are you really thinking?"

"I don't know.  Nothing. Everything."  She shook her head. "It's
funny, the things you come up with when it's so quiet.  I'd put so
much of myself into this battle. All the fighting and running against
the grain, and standing still was strange.  It is strange.  I was so
tired, Mulder.  I needed something solid, a sign that I'd finally made
the right decision, because it seemed as though there was this - this
endless line of wrong.  And I stood there, looking back on it,
wondering why."

He took a deep breath.  "Sick of feeling helpless?"

"In a way," she whispered.  

"Is that why you did it?" he asked.  

"Is that why I did what?"  

"Injected yourself with that vaccine." 

Scully paused.  She seemed to consider him, and her body tensed. 
"Maybe," she admitted.  "Or maybe it was something else.  Something
speaking through me, making things right."

Mulder nodded. "Do you think it was God?" he asked. 

She was heavy against him, hot.  If life did indeed boil down to the
smaller moments - Scully pressing a dinosaur sticker over his mouth to
shut him up, William clapping at an old, rest-stop photo, the three of
them gazing into a warm fire - then all the larger moments were simply
preludes, stepping stones.  The bigger truths were unreachable, and
saving Earth from extinction only held meaning when there was
something precious to save; the smaller truths were the things worth
rescuing.

"I think it's plausible," she said, "That perhaps God works through
science, and science is what gave us this miracle."

Mulder laughed.  "The baby, or the means to stop colonization?"

 "Both, I guess."  She shrugged. 

Mulder frowned, somehow expecting more from her.  He wasn't sure what
he was expecting, actually, but the truth had to be more than that. 
The truth was the light they followed.  It was the cloud hanging over
them, teasing them with its white tufts, cottony edges so close he
could almost touch them.  But when he got too close, the creamy white
billows evaporated into mist, evading him.

Or maybe he'd just been shaking his fist at himself all these years,
and not at the sky.  Jeremiah Smith had said the truth was whatever
Mulder believed it to be.  Perhaps he'd been right. The truth wasn't
the sun, blinding him into misdirection.  It was the flashlight that
he'd kept by his side for all the years he searched.
 
 "Isn't that some sort of oxymoron cop-out?" Mulder finally asked.  

Scully tilted her chin to meet his eyes, and when he brushed her
cheek, a dazzling smile stretched the corners of her lips.   The truth
was beautiful when it smiled at him like that.

"Maybe," said Scully, her nose grazing the underside of his chin. 
"But I've dealt with much stranger."

---

And weve reached the end.  Whew.  This was one of those stories that
took me a good long while to write, and research (especially since I
had to go back and re-watch the season 9 episodes I wasnt a big fan
of,)and then rewrite, and rewrite, and rewrite. . . and beta (just ask
poor Mish and Sybs. Theyre the best sports.  They really are.) But
youve made it this far, and for that, I thank you.

* Extra, EXTRA thanks to Sybil for the best literary interpretations
known to fic: "The truth sure gets around.  I have decided that the
truth is a whore."  And extra thanks to Mish for some yummy pics of
David Duchovny that inspired much smut.

I figured there would be some questions at the end(and I did get some
of these questions by email) and so I wanted to let you guys crawl
into my head for a bit (watch out for dust and things that bite.)

Anything you ever wanted (or didnt want to know) about SOW:

1 " Why in the world would Mulder want to give his child back, when
Scully was the one who gave William up?  Just what is the deal with
Mulder in this story?

I wanted to write a fic that remained true to the show (much as I may
have disliked " and even hated - some of the directions the show had
taken) because canon was what I was basing this story on.  And in the
show, Mulder told Scully he felt she had made the right decision when
she gave William away.  I thought it would be a cop-out (and much too
easy) to write a piece where Mulder and Scully went back on their
principals and ran to get their kid.  Im sure there are lots of other
stories like that out there, and as wonderful as they may be, this is
not one of those stories.  I wanted William back, but I wanted to do
it in a different way.  Road less traveled and all. I think it makes
better drama, anyway.  I could be wrong.

2 " Marita Covarrubias had a thing for Mulder, eh?  So who is Moiras
father?

Thats the stuff sequels (or prequels) are made of.  You can take your
pick here of all the X-men, but rest assured that its not Mulder. 
(The timeline within the show doesnt fit, for one.) That doesnt
mean, of course, that she hadnt wanted it to be Mulder... Right. 
Prequel-land.

3 " William is almost 2 years old, but he cant walk or talk? Are you
kidding me?   What is that all about?

William was given up for adoption when he was about 8 months old
(pre-speech and bipedal walking,) but was taken by Maritas operatives
the day after the adoption.  He was on the road ever since then,
driving cross-country with some admittedly questionable types.  Nobody
played with him.  Nobody talked to him.  Nobody cared for him or loved
him.  He might have even been abused " we have no way of knowing. All
these things can affect a child, psychologically.  Remember, after he
was discovered by Mulder and Scully, William did start picking things
up rather quickly: he could stand up, and he could talk. My feelings
on this were that William would be emotionally stunted because of his
experiences (its not unheard of, psychologically) and I thought I
would leave that door open in case I ever decided to write a sequel.

4 " Scullys senior thesis? Is there a website that actually contains
the transcript or did you pull that out of your ass?

The physics part concerning Einsteins Twin Paradox is all factual, to
the best of my knowledge. I swear. (I went through some websites, and
nearly got seasick trying to figure out how to interpret all the
scientific gobbledygook.  God bless all you scientists.)  Scullys
metaphysical take on it, however, I did pull out of my ass, because I
have no idea what her "new interpretation" actually was.  Creative
license and all " Scully tells me shes actually pleased with her
uncharacteristic openness to the idea of parallel universes, but that,
in the next fic I write, she wants to be drunk.

(As far as I know, there is no known site where you can access her
senior thesis.)

5 " So all the stuff with the iron and William? And meteorites? 
Balderdash or fact?

All the stuff about DNA and the actual properties of iron, and how it
assists in the oxidation process are true.  And the stuff about iron
in meteorites?  Also true.  How these items relate to the X-files
mythology, of course, are what I took a few liberties with to fit
within the context of the story.  (Since there are no aliens in our
Universe, I had to twist a few facts to explain why iron might kill an
alien.  I mean, I probably could have just as easily dropped an alien
vaporizer into Mulders hand, but my masochistic side said that would
be way too easy.  Plus, Scully had problems with the vaporizer.)

6 " Are Mulder and Scully heading home?  They cant really believe
there arent any more aliens out there, can they?

As far as Mulder and Scully know, the truth is still out there "
aliens, no aliens, pizza with extra cheese, mutant pineapples -
Theres no way for them to know for sure. As far as Im concerned, the
aliens are all dead because that would make the supersoldier plot dead
and buried (which was partly the purpose of this story)and would much
please this fanfic author.  But yes, I assume Mulder and Scully might
want to head home.  After all, their cover has been blown.  They left
the U.S. because the government was after them, and not because aliens
were after them.  Remember, these aliens and unknown types have always
been after Mulder and Scully, and that never stopped them from going
about their lives in Washington D.C. before. I have always felt that,
post finale, the reason Mulder and Scully were forced to run was
because Mulder had been sentenced to death, and not because aliens
wanted to kill them. But now the charges have been dropped. So Scully
can just click her heels together, if she so desires.  (Or Mulder can
" depending on who you think wears the ruby slippers in that family.)

7 " What about those dropped charges?  That was fast.

Yes, it was.  I think the question should actually be, "who or what
did Marita know, and how did she get the vaccine?" Think of it this
way: it wouldnt be The X-files if I told you everything, now would
it?  (At this, Mulder groans in the background.  He says he wants to
be drunk in the next fic, too.)

8 " Did Mulder ever tell Scully that her blood is what killed the
aliens?  And what the hell was up with that, anyway?

Mulder might have told her, and he might not have.  He seems to enjoy
keeping things from Scully whenever he feels the secret-keeping will
benefit her.  Again, thats the stuff sequels are made of.  <g>

9 " Did Scully ever plan on telling Mulder she was pregnant?

Before William showed up, or before her water broke?  Heh.  Scully
says she of course meant to tell Mulder.  Guess well never know what
she meant to say before the car crashed into the tree out front.  Darn
those crazy hormones.

10 " So that sequel you were talking about?  

Maybe Ill write a sequel, but not for a long, long time.  Mulder and
Scully are already breaking out the tequila and the shot glasses. 
Theyre exhausted from the angst.  Mulder wants to know why I cant
write a fic where he sits around and watches the Redskins game. 
Scully says not to worry about writing such a fic, because she thinks
the Redskins suck.  If youll excuse me, I have to go break up a
fight.

Special thanks to the following resources:   

Usenet relativity FAQ - Micheal Weiss  
The University of South Wales Physics homepage
Usenet Periodic Elements FAQ - (Iron)
www.loch-ness.org
The Biology Project Homepage,
The University of Arizona

And lots and lots of love to Mishy and Sybs, who are brilliant betas. 
Both of you get lots of cyber chocolates.

Shadows of Winter: 
http://members.tripod.com/~LeiaSC/SOW.htm