From: ddwake1@attcanada.ca
Date: Sat, 8 Jul 2000 23:56:20 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: The Sixth Extinction -- Redux (1/1)
Source: direct

Title: The Sixth Extinction -- Redux
Author: Spooky
Email: ddwake1@netcom.ca or dwake@utpress.utoronto.ca
Rating: PG
Spoilers: to Requiem
Keywords: Angst, post-episode
Archive: Sure. Just let me know so I can brag!
Disclaimer: I'll put them away when I'm done, Ma. Honest!

Summary: Scully returns to Africa and finds more than she was looking for.


The Sixth Extinction -- Redux

Scully was hot, irritable, and her back was reminding her that driving
along the Ivory Coast's unkempt roads while seven months pregnant wasn't,
perhaps, the brightest thing she'd ever done. She stretched in relief, her
bladder reminding her she'd better find an outhouse -- and soon. 

But one look to the beach and she was transported back a year ago,
desperate to uncover the secrets of the mysterious ship so she could
somehow save her partner. She remembered the days of heady intellectual
excitement, spiritual crisis and frantic anxiet y for her partner. The
sense she was racing against time and losing. But the ship had raised only
more mysteries -- "Some truths are not meant for you," the old warrior had
said. Hallucination or delusion? Vision? Warning? She had wondered, on
that long fli ght home, if the ship had been meant for Mulder after all. 

Mulder. Who had finally met his truth face to face. And was now lost to
her. His words as she had lain on the forest floor, dizzy and shaken,
still haunted her. "The abductees are being systematically taken. They're
not coming back." Lost to her so soon a fter they had finally found each
other -- finally found the courage to take that final, irrevocable step. 

She could not, would not, believe she would never see him again. 

Her hands wound protectively over her swollen abdomen and the fragile life
within. She had a piece of him, at least. Something that eased the pain of
his absence. Oh, how she wished she could share this with him. She had
known, seeing him with Emily, that
 he would be a wonderful father. And she had seen the sadness and
understanding in his eyes as she had held Theresa Hoese's baby. She could
not help but believe he would be pleased. 

"Are you okay?" 

The low voice startled her out of her reveries. She had forgotten he was
there. There in the place her partner, her lover, should have occupied.
Her self-appointed guardian. He felt he had failed her, failed them both.
He had been entrusted with her partn er's life -- a trust he had failed.
Had not kept him safe. And the magnitude of his failure only grew when he
learned he had lost not only her partner, her best friend -- but her
lover. The father of her child. 

How the hell did one apologize for that? 

She understood guilt all too well: Mulder had lived, breathed it. So she
tolerated his intrusion into her life, his need for expiation. She had
become amazingly tolerant since...since she had been given this gift. 

She nodded to him. "I'm fine. I just need to find a bush." Skinner
blushed, remembering that she had taken the aisle seat, over his need for
stretching out his long legs, for her frequent trips to the facilities.

No facilities here; she remembered the makeshift amenities of her last
visit. But she did not expect to endure long -- her condition would not
allow it even had she been so inclined. She simply wanted to see the ship
again before it inevitably disappeared
 -- to try to wrest more answers from it. Why was it here? Did it really
mean, as Mulder had theorized, that the genesis of life on this world was,
in reality, of alien origin? The religious and mythological passages on
its surface -- had these come from the aliens as well? Or had they indeed
come from God, as had the apocalyptic warnings of her last visit?
Amazingly, her own faith hadn't been shaken by the implications. She had
thought, surely, that her belief in God would have been rocked, her faith
split asunder. She was relieved to find it hadn't been so. If, on some off
chance, aliens *had* been responsible for beginning life here, they must
have been guided by a higher power. She found comf ort in that.

Regardless, the ship had disappeared last year as if it had never existed
-- even erasing all traces of its excavation. All she had been left with
were her notes and photographs -- and more questions. She still didn't
know what the ship had had to do with
 Mulder's illness, didn't know why there was a map of the human genome on
its surface. Didn't know why it had appeared, or why it had gone. 

But the scene before her was eerily the same. Workers scurried to unearth
a mystery from the oceanic sands. The sea and the heat were the same too,
she mused, pushing back strands of windblown copper hair. 

Her gaze fell, finally, on the ship itself, and she heard a gasp of wonder
from her companion. Sadness gripped her. Like last time, the one who
should have been here -- the one for whom this was meant -- was absent.
She placed a protective hand over her p rotruding belly; foolish to come
here perhaps (Skinner certainly thought so) but when the late Dr.
Merkmallen's assistant, Amina Ngebe, had called to say the ship had
returned, she could not refrain. An impulse, or compulsion, had lured her
back to Africa. Incon-trovertible proof of everything they -- he -- had
believe d for so long. She wondered how long she could hang on to the
evidence this time. 

But she was here, finally, and Skinner was beside her to bear witness.
Skinner, who had had his own epiphany, seeing a vessel he could not
explain, in a dark Oregon sky. 

"Dr. Scully!" A shout resounded from the shoreline, resolving into the
figure of Amina Ngebe hurrying toward them, eyes widening as she took in
Scully's pregnancy. "It is good to see you again. Especially looking
so...well." A grin split her face. 

An answering smile found its way onto Scully's. "It's good to see you
again, Amina." She gestured to her companion. "This is Walter Skinner.
He's a...friend." She left out his title. Neither of them had any
jurisdiction here, even if they weren't here unofficially. 

The three turned to walk down the beach. "When is the happy event?" Amina
asked, casting a speculative glance at Skinner. 

"In seven and a half weeks," Scully beamed. 

Skinner shifted uneasily beside her. He was still uncomfortable with the
idea of a pregnant Scully, considering her ability to have children was
supposed to have been taken from her. It made him fear for this child. Who
knew what else had been done to her
 on top of her exposure to an alien virus? Antarctica. And Mulder was in
no better shape. 

And perhaps worst of all, how might the Consortium use this child of their
two most ardent opponents? Knowing his friends would be devastated were
their child to vanish one night. It seemed clear the Consortium would use
the child to ensure Mulder and Scu lly dropped their investigation. And he
couldn't find it in his heart to condemn them if they did. 

After all, if anyone deserved condemnation, it was surely him. He had
straddled the fence, trying to preserve his job and his life and what
remained of his self-respect while giving only the limited assistance he
was able. Believing, rightly or wrongly, t hat he could not help at all if
he was dead or fired. It hadn't helped him sleep at night. 

And just what had all his deals and bargains and fence-sitting
accomplished? His life in Krycek's hands, Mulder catatonic and subjected
to brain surgery because of a case he had assigned to him, and now
Mulder's disappearance. If only he had told Krycek t o go to hell. And
again when Krycek insisted Mulder find the ship in Oregon. Skinner might
be dead now, but it would be Mulder here with Scully. 

Mulder. His failure to keep his agent safe still galled. He hadn't
believed they would actually find anything, Krycek's assurances aside.
Perhaps if he had taken the search more seriously.... Facing Scully had
been the single most difficult thing he had e ver had to do. Made
unbelievably more difficult when he had learned the true extent of her
loss. He had a new appreciation for Mulder's single-minded pursuit of his
sister. A failure of this magnitude required expiation. He had done what
little he could -- what little she would permit. Taking a role he imagined
Mulder would have a sked of him. 

When Scully could not be dissuaded from this trip, he had invited himself
along. No way was she going to make this trip alone, he had vowed. He
would *not* lose Scully as he had lost Mulder. And though the implant in
her neck had seemingly been quiescent,
 he could not forget Ruskin Dam. Could not forget it might happen again. 

So she put up with his over protectiveness. She had been far more rbearant
than he had expected. He guessed that, as pleased as she was with this
pregnancy, it also frightened her. But she never spoke of it, nor did he.
That this child would be normal, wi th a normal life, seemed too much for
which to hope. 

And he was here in part, he readily admitted, to see the ship. To see up
close what he had only glimpsed from afar in the night. Affirmation
perhaps. The ship that had converted the sceptic. Mulder's abduction had
done for him what this ship had done for Scully. Turned the sceptic into a
believer. 

"Have there been any -- incidents -- like last time?" Scully inquired.
Incidents. Signs of the apocalypse enacted on this very shore. "Some
truths are not meant for you." 

"No," Amina answered. "Not like that." Scully doubted Amina would have
been able to find workers if otherwise. The tribes were superstitious
after all. 

"But there is something very curious -- you'll see it on the rocks on the
other side of the ship," the academic added. Scully turned a sharp gaze at
her. There was something in Amina's voice.... Well, she would know soon
enough. 

"See what?" Skinner asked, not content to wait. Feeling quite unprepared
to be facing the breaking of the seven seals, despite the events Scully
had told him had transpired here. 

"A man," Amina answered. 

Scully started. An indefinable quiver was working its way down her spine. 

"Not the old warrior," the other woman assured her. "He appeared about the
same time as the ship. No one saw him arrive -- he was just there." She
shrugged. "He does not move, he does not speak. Touching him is...odd."
Her brow furrowed in consternation. "He could be dead for all I know. The
men say he must be a holy man from the ship and they will not come near
him." 

"And you left him there?" Scully demanded, automatically cataloguing the
toll the African sun would exact. 

Amina ducked her head, embarrassed. "Well...I am not certain he is real at
all," she admitted. "Like the old man." 

"But he hasn't disappeared?" Scully prompted. 

"No, but he does not move, he does not speak, he does not sleep or burn or
seem to suffer beneath the sun. He seems a statue." 

They were close enough now that Scully could squint past the ship, down to
the rocks, her hand shading her eyes from the strong tropical sun. There
was something about the stance, the set of the shoulders.... Suddenly she
knew -- just knew. "Mulder," she whispered, her excitement rising.
"Mulder!" 

Scully bolted down the beach, moving as quickly as her gravid condition
allowed. She did not concern herself with the picture she must be
presenting to her friends, waddling more than running over the sand. But
even as hope leaped in her breast, fear rose
 with it, inextricably entwined. "He does not move, he does not speak....
He seems a statue." God let him be okay. Let him be real and whole. She
could deal with anything else. 

Skinner had moved to follow, then stopped. He, too, recognized the figure
on the headland and resolved to allow them this privacy, despite his
better judgement. Despite the terror Amina's words had engendered. What if
this wasn't Mulder at all, but a crue l trick? Or a Mulder irretrievably
damaged by his ordeal? And if by some miracle it was Mulder, where the
hell had he been? Had he, indeed, come from the ship? Why was he still and
unmoving on the rocks? And more worrisome -- if a rubbing from the ship ha
d caused his earlier illness, what was such close proximity doing to him
now? 

The memory of Mulder, at the mercy of his enemies, in that padded cell,
pacing like a caged animal was all too fresh. Fresh, too, the later image
of him still and unmoving in the hospital bed. Whatever had turned his
brain on overload had been simultaneou sly killing him. And only an
unconventional surgery at the hands of his enemy had saved him. One had to
wonder about that. Despite what he knew of the relationship between Mulder
and his mother, he could not believe he hadn't had his best interests at
heart. Perhaps Teena Mulder had thought she had no choice if she was to
 see her son live. But it seemed the smoking man hadn't gotten quite what
he had wanted out of the deal. Skinner couldn't find it in his heart to
mourn the son-of-a-bitch.

Scully had come to a halt on the rocks, panting from her unaccustomed
exertion. She stood behind Mulder, but he was oblivious to her presence.
He was dressed as he had been in Oregon, but he did not appear to be
sweating beneath the jacket. "Mulder," she whispered, placing a tentative
hand on his shoulder. 

Amina had said touching him was odd -- and Scully could only find it an
apt description. As her hand drew close to him, the air seemed thick and
turgid, as if she were pushing against some ethereal barrier. For a
moment, as her hand made contact with his shoulder, it seemed it had
closed on air, although her eyes could clearly see her hand resting on his
jacket. Then there was a pop! as if of air rushing in to fill a vacuum.
The pungent odour of ozone permeated the air. She was relieved when the
form beneath her hand became solid. She had half-feared he would be a
mirage, conjured by a mind that longed for him still. 

"Mulder," she said his name again, savouring the word on her tongue. For
too long it had brought only bittersweet longing and sorrow. 

He turned toward her, blinking owlishly, confusion evident on his
features. She could see his effort to refocus on the world, to return from
whatever realms had held him captive. She could see regret and longing and
pain in those eyes and knew they mirror ed her own. She had needed to see
them, she realized. Needed them like she needed air to breathe. Needed
him. It was as if a weight she hadn't known she was carrying had lifted,
vanished to smoke beneath his gaze. 

"Scully," he answered hesitantly, his voice gravelly, as if from disuse. 

The dam burst and she flung herself into his bewildered arms. Tears, joy,
hysteria -- all her wishes had been made manifest with the presence of
this man. All the longing, all the yearning.... All the months glancing up
to share a joke, an insight, a juic y bit of gossip, only to have the pain
hit anew. Now he was here before her, in the flesh, whole and intact. 

But it wasn't right. Mulder stood stiffly in her arms, not returning the
embrace. Startled, she stepped back; it had never occurred to her that
Mulder might not be as pleased to see her as she was him. Puzzled, she
looked into his eyes for an explanation,
 only to be greeted with unfocused hazel orbs, cloudy with distance.
Uneasy now, she wondered if this was indeed Mulder, rather than some cruel
trick. Clone, shapeshifter.... She squelched a sudden desire to rake her
nails across his face, to ensure his blood was indeed red. 

She ran her hands up and down his arms, reassuring herself of his
solidity. Miraculously, his skin was untouched by the brutal African sun. 

He's in shock, she reasoned uneasily. He'll be okay. He just needs time.
Mulder is always okay. 

"Mulder?" she queried again. "Are you all right?" 

No answer. But *something* indefinable sparked in his distant eyes as he
ran his gaze over her. It stopped meaningfully at her swollen midsection.
She took his hand in hers and placed it on her belly. "I found out the day
you were...taken," she answered h is unspoken question. "Feel that," she
prompted, as the baby kicked. Indulging herself, she imagined her unborn
child knew its father had returned and was turning somersaults for joy.
Please Mulder, please come back to me. 

Mulder blinked again; silent except for his earlier strangled rendition of
her name. He retrieved his hand, his face curiously empty. She wanted to
scream with frustration. This is your child, Mulder! A cold knot formed in
her gut and would not let go. Wh at if this was all there was? What if
Mulder was so damaged he did not want her, want their child? No, she told
herself firmly. No. It was unfair to expect so much from him now, after
the ordeal he had no doubt endured. But it had been a long seven months
for her, as well, and all she wanted was an acknowledgement he was
 glad to see her. 

She was about to speak again, when she abruptly shut her mouth. His eyes.
Oh God, his eyes. They were bleak, with dark secrets swimming behind them.
The memory of pain. 

Patience, she reminded herself. Patience. He'll come back to you in time.
He always does. Rising on tiptoes, she placed a quick kiss on his lips.
"Welcome home, Mulder," she breathed, feeling her heart lighten as some of
the distance left his features, a slightly bemused look coming to the
fore. It was a start. 

"C'mon. You'll never guess who else is here." She took his hand in her own
and led him up the beach. 

For Mulder everything seemed somehow muffled, as if the world, or just
himself, was wrapped in cotton. Sights were just barely visible, sounds
just barely audible; and it was all just beyond his touch. Could not touch
or feel Scully as she embraced him. A s if he were some apparition, barely
solid. Was it just shock, this disconnection he felt from his
surroundings? What had been done to him, taken from him? He was home, he
was reunited with Scully, he was going to be a father.... A father. Him.
Now there was an X-File. Spooky Fox Mulder was going to be a father. He
should
 have felt elated; he should have felt terrified. And he should have felt
horrified that he felt none of these things. But the cotton around him was
tight, infecting him with a strange lethargy. 

He felt that he had left something behind, wherever he had been -- some
essential core of himself. That all that had survived his ordeal was a
husk, as empty as the sunflower shells he had spit onto the ground with
abandon. He may have been solid to Scull y, but he felt as insubstantial
as a ghost to himself. He should have felt sorrow that Scully had had to
deal with this alone; outrage that he had been cheated of seeing her
pregnancy bloom. He *wanted* to feel these things, but the emotions proved
too el usive. 

But images flitted in the corners of his mind: endless vistas of frigid
white interrupted only by episodes of incredible pain. White that lived
and breathed, that burned and seeped its way into his soul, bleaching
colour from his world. He had known white
 before:  the silent Arctic, as he lay slowly freezing on the ice; the
more bitter cold of the Antarctic as it pierced his unprotected flesh; the
antiseptic white of myriad hospital rooms. But none of them had prepared
him for this all-encompassing bleakness. It tu rned him inside out. It
emptied him and filled him with itself.

Voices, barely remembered now, echoed in the corridors of his mind. Or
rather, voices *in* his mind -- there had been no sound save for his own
screams. Pain, it seemed, had colour. It was all that had beat back the
white at all. 

He wanted to rid his mind of the memories, shut them away. For once he had
no desire for the truth. He wanted only to resume his interrupted life. To
think that he had walked into that whiteness with a light heart, awed,
even knowing what he had known. Wh at was to come. When his mind lingered
on the shattered faces of abductees, he could only see his own staring
back at him. He had a new found respect for the fortitude with which
Scully had managed to cope in the aftermath of her own abduction. 

Scully had registered the shudder that had run through him, but said
nothing. She would give him time, patience and her presence. As he had
done for her time and again. And he would heal. As she had. He would be
all right. They would be all right. 

Mulder roused from his reveries to recognize one of the figures standing
on the beach. Again, Scully answered his unspoken question.

"Skinner said he always wanted to see a UFO up close." 

He stared at her, uncomprehending. She gestured to the water. "The ship is
back. The same one I saw while you were sick. We came to check it out --
and well, you were here too." She glanced sideways at him, but if she
expected her partner to comment on ho w he had come from the Oregon woods
to an African beach, she was disappointed. 

Mulder's gaze was riveted to the ship. He became aware that his body was
vibrating subtly, a curious thrumming in his veins of which he had been
unaware. While the world about him remained vague, he was now hyperaware
of his own body, a live wire charged with energy that had nowhere to go.
Only the ship could defuse it before it burst into flame. He swallowed
heavily. He could feel the ship's presence, like a strobe in his mind. It
wanted to imbue him with its own purpose, a purpose he wanted no part of,
a fate he wanted to defy. Somehow, he knew it would ask more than he was
willing to give. 

A sudden sense of being caught in a moment of time assaulted him --
trapped in Chronos' web, and an endless wait for freedom. Impotent. Mired
like a fly caught in amber. He beat the images away. But the cotton around
the world just got thicker. 

Hand in hand, they eventually reached the couple on the beach and Mulder
could only nod blankly at Skinner's greeting and were there tears in the
AD's eyes? 

"Agent Mulder." The voice was the same regardless, even if it quivered in
a way he had never quite heard before. 

It required a response, but he had no words. But for his strangled
"Scully" on the headland, words, it seemed, had been stripped from him.
Fox Mulder had never been rendered speechless before, but now he could not
find the impulse to make a single sound. The cotton around him was an
impenetrable barrier. 

Skinner had watched the reunion on the rocks, until he had had to turn
away, feeling like a voyeur. He had told Amina something of the
circumstances of Mulder's disappearance. "So this is the friend she was
trying to help when she was here last," she had said astutely. Skinner had
simply nodded. 

In all the years he had supervised the X-Files, he had put little credence
in Mulder's belief in aliens and UFOs. That there was a conspiracy he had
certainly come to believe -- he'd been its victim often enough, its
reluctant agent. But until he had seen
 that ship in Oregon, he had been as sceptical as Scully. So he had paid
little attention to the cases Mulder brought in regarding abductees.
Fabrication, hallucination or delusion, or equal parts of all three. It
hadn't mattered until one night in the Oregon woods. 

He had needed to know, then, to what fate his negligence had consigned
Mulder -- his guilt demanded no less. So he had ventured into the basement
office and perused Mulder's files. The stench of terror, pain and
violation had permeated the neatly typed pa ges and it wasn't long before
he had exhausted his capacity for this particular form of masochism.
Reflected on the seemingly demented rantings of Duane Barry. The chill
that had run through his bones had not dissipated in seven long months. 

But Mulder was standing in front of him, whole and in the flesh and he
thought that chill just might melt beneath the tropical sun. Something
about the eyes, though. He'd seen similar eyes among fellow soldiers. The
look that said they had been in-country
 for too long. Survivor eyes. Somehow Skinner knew that only part of
Mulder had returned, that some part of him was still lost in the
nightmare. Secrets and pain blazed behind those eyes and Skinner could
only hope they didn't all get burned by it. Knew now that t he X-Files
hadn't conveyed the full extent of the horror. 

Scully didn't seem to see this change in her partner. Or was willing to
let it lie for now, in the light of her own experiences. Didn't seem to
notice how Mulder disengaged their hands and stepped a few paces away from
her. There was a diffidence, an aloo fness, in Mulder's manner that had
never been there before -- at least never in the presence of his partner.
Time, Skinner thought uneasily. He just needs time. He could think of
nothing that would hurt Scully more certainly than to have her partner so
ir revocably changed by his experience that their previous closeness was
impossible. As much as having Mulder returned, she wanted to share this
miracle with him -- a recompense for all the pain and sacrifice they had
endured. 

And Skinner was afraid that Mulder, this Mulder who had returned to a
foreign shore, might himself be too foreign, incapable of giving her that,
as much as he might wish to. 

Voices, and the shadows of memories were playing tag in Mulder's head.
Snatches of thoughts, images, half-forgotten crashed like breakers against
his mind. Unbidden, his gaze returned again to the ship, becoming
oblivious to his companions. A siren song beat against his skull. Dread
and desire warred within hi m and he almost missed Scully's gentle urging,
"Come see the ship." 

No and no and no, he wanted to scream, unwilling to face whatever the ship
might demand of him. In the cotton world around him, only the ship seemed
clear and sharp in detail. And uncomfortably familiar. Feet moved, one
before the other of their accord. S cully left by the waterline, he
continued his journey alone. 

So intent were Skinner and Scully on the solitary figure of their friend,
they weren't aware of what was happening until Amina gasped in awe. A
murmur of disquiet rose from the workers now gathered on the beach, many
of them dropping to their knees and cr ossing themselves. Others prayed to
other gods, older ones than the One the missionaries had brought to their
land. Regardless, they knew that power was being exercised here, whatever
its source. 

The water was retreating. With every step Mulder took away from the
shoreline, the water ran away before him, leaving his footprints cast in
moist sand. Scully clutched her cross, the Our Father falling silently
from her lips. 

For his part, Mulder noticed none of this. 

Crescendoes of purpose were thundering through his mind, the same purpose
that had found him walking, unwitting, into a bright circle of light. The
ideograms carved on the ship's surface seemed somehow as familiar to him
as his name and he ran his fingers
 lightly over them. 

To pull back abruptly in shock. Images and impressions had streamed across
his consciousness and he desperately tried to catch them, to hold on to
them. The ship recognized him. More, the ship *wanted* him. 

"No," he breathed his denial, dumbfounded. He had just been returned from
a seven-month absence and now he was expected to leave again? Leave
Scully, leave his son? He had not questioned his certainty that the unborn
child Scully was carrying was his son; 
 somehow he had known as soon as she had placed his hand on her abdomen.
She had been alone with her burden, he could not leave her again. Damn it,
he *deserved* to see his son born, see the man he would become. He had
already missed so much: the glow on Scully's face when she got the news,
watching her belly swell day after day, the pleasure of catering to and
laughing at her cravings, the joy of rubbing her swollen feet.... No, he
would give this up. 

"No," he said aloud. Resolute. 

The ship insisted. It sung to him of destiny, of battles to be fought.
Seductive music poured into his mind, making his body vibrate in sympathy.
He could feel it happening, a merging of minds, of purposes. "No," he said
again, pulling his mind away from the allure. 

The ship reminded him of his vision, while he had been undergoing
Cancerman's surgery. Of the consequences wrought by leaving the fight.
Succumbing to the distraction of family. Of normality. He wavered only
briefly, remembering how an enraged Scully had entreated him to rejoin the
battle. No, he thought. Not
 this. He would find another way. 

The tempo changed from seduction to assault. Jarring discords sent waves
of agony through his skull. But it seemed he had learned *something*
during his absence -- he was able to gather the tattered shreds of his
sanity and construct a wall between his mi nd and the ship. The ship
increased its assault, but Mulder was determined. He would not lose. The
child changed everything. 

Just as suddenly, he could feel the pressure on his mind ease. He could
feel the ship gather energy, reaching out. Toward Scully. Toward the baby. 

"No!" Mulder shouted and pain exploded in his head. He threw his own mind
in the way of that impulse, that gathering of energy. No matter that he
could not read the ship's intent. He would not allow harm to come to them.
His family. *His family*. The only
 family left to him. 

The intensity of the struggle burned away all the cotton muffling the
world and for the first time he could hear Scully clearly, rather than as
if she were speaking underwater. She was calling his name urgently, her
panic obvious. He spared a moment to se nd her a silent apology before
centering again on his task. He focused everything he had on that spar of
energy, knowing his death would be a small price to pay. And when darkness
finally overwhelmed him he knew that he had won this fight -- that he had
f inally succeeded in protecting those dearest to him. He did not know if
the dark that came for him was death or merely unconsciousness, but he
embraced it willingly, content. 


He woke to a world of white. Unpleasant memories of another world where
white was wielded as a weapon, a physical force, threatened to send him
into a panic. But the white here was just white, interrupted by a veil of
cinnamon tresses. 

"Hey," Scully smiled radiantly. "You gave us a scare. How are you
feeling?"

"Fine," he rasped. 

If possible, her smile became even broader when he finally spoke.
Unbidden, she passed him a glass of water. He drank half, then passed it
back to her. 

For a moment, he could almost wish the cotton back, with its diffuse veil.
Something to protect him from the overly sharp clarity that cut into him
now. Every sound, every colour, every shape had an edge now, razor sharp.
He wondered how long he would be able to survive in this world before it
cut him to shreds. 

"The ship is gone," she said quietly, watching him intently. Remembering
her panic as he seemed to buckle with pain, the retreating sea returning
to its accustomed rhythm as if suddenly released from its bonds. As if he
had rejected its offer -- or been rejected. The ship itself shimmering,
then vanishing abruptly, as if it had been merely a heat mirage, leaving
only pristine sand. Once again, there had been no trace of its presence. 

He closed his eyes. No second chances. The ship would not return. 

Pierced by this new found clarity, his eyes sought Scully's swollen
abdomen. He placed his hand on it, feeling the fragile life within. Tears
leaked from his eyes as she cooed reassuringly. Let her think they were
tears of joy. The cotton had gone, but wh at replaced it was worse. An
image, caught from the ship, flashing by so fleetingly. Consequences. A
sorrow. What had he done? He could only wonder now, if his selfishness had
undone them. If he had betrayed their future. If he had betrayed all their
futures. 

Finis