From: Revely <revelyc@aol.comnospam>
Date: 21 Apr 2001 01:39:32 GMT
Subject: NEW: The Unfinished Universe 1/4 by Revely
Source: atxc

Title: The Unfinished Universe
Author: Revely
Date: 4.20.01
Classification: S/MSR/ This story wasn't AU when I started it,
but now it is. <g>
Spoilers: Through Badlaa
Feedback: revely_c@yahoo.com, or Revely@my-deja.com   
A Note about the Timeline: This story contains spoilers for the
first ten episodes of Season 8, but assumes that those episodes
took place over the course of Scully's pregnancy (instead of just
two or three months.) It also assumes that 'Requiem' took place
in September, not May. Since this does not include spoilers for
"Per Manum," it *really* doesn't include spoilers. Meaning, in 
this universe, the flashbacks from PM never happened.


For: Betsy Dodd, Queen of Generosity. And for my dear Meredith, 
who wanted VealFic for her birthday. 



----------
Oregon
----------

They have a private evening ritual - nose to nose on the bed they
practice telepathic communication. 

Scully disappears into the motel bathroom for their soft-shelled
display of male bonding, shutting the door behind her with
aggravating finality - boys' side, girl's side. Mulder
immediately stops casting out brain waves and begins to wonder
what she's doing in there. She's awfully quiet. The baby just
dozes and tries to nurse Mulder's nose until he manages to work
one of his fists into his mouth. 

They are in a motel flanked by a strip of video rental
businesses and fast food joints. She'd driven thirty miles out of
their way today to avoid staying anywhere near a pine treed
forest and he'd pretended not to notice, dozing with his arm
slung over his eyes and his seat laid back to take advantage of
the mini sun blinds that protected the kid from glare. The car
was silent - the boy apparently used to long hours in the car -
or maybe he was just solitary like Scully. Mulder pinches one of
the kid's toes and listens to the hyper-quiet of the room,
waiting for whatever comes next. No water running, no clothes
being shed, no sound of breathing. He'd love to know what she's
doing in there and pictures her leaning against the door with her
head thrown back, thinking. She's always been a big one for
thinking. 

The baby heaves a sigh with his mouth hanging open and
Mulder reaches behind him to switch off the light. Outside the
night is crisp but she's drawn the curtains and made the stuffy
room a retreat, a private place, silent as a stone. He would like
to tell her it will all be okay, take away that eager, terrified
look in her eye, crack a joke about this being a happy time, but
he's tired to his bones and apparently, now, a father. Mulder
sums the kid up in the half-dark. Definitely his mother's sharp
nose, her chin and forehead. The boy opens his eyes suddenly and
turns to stare at him, blinking his red-gold eyelashes. 

I hope you can't really read minds, kid, Mulder thinks, because
that is going to piss her off. 

----------

Her mother had been devastated with the way she carted the baby
around. 

"You can't take a four-month old on these long exhausting
searches, Honey," she'd pleaded from her porch. 

Scully had strapped him into his car seat, mindful of the soft
spots of his head and the limp-noodle neck. They'd taken off for
points unknown, chasing John Does, like she'd done since going on
leave. She told him stories in the car and on airplanes,
bowdlerizing out the demons and missing children, of course, and
the bad guys always smoked, but she left in the genies, praying
with Navajo holy men, and mysterious appearing waterbeds. He owed
a lot to that last one, especially. She let him gum her Apollo 11
key chain and gave him lectures on Super Heroes and on the
necessity of maintaining some small bits of hope, even as all of
the nameless strangers in distant hospitals slowly leeched her
optimism.  

Having a baby was supposed to make her more careful, but it
hadn't. She drove faster, thumbed her nose at the Proper Channels
and didn't try to hide the bulge of her gun. Something fierce
rose to the surface and there was not even a slight chance that
anything bad was going to happen to them again. With a fatalistic
decree she has decided this and not one thing in heaven and earth
will stop her. 

She finishes her one-hundredth sit-up in the bathroom as she's
thinking this, picturing herself calmly shooting any person who
dared take a menacing step toward Mulder or the baby. Whatever
part of her that flinched when she'd discharged her gun, the part
that carried a seed of remorse for killing Donnie Pfaster, has
experienced a religious conversion. She's a card-carrying member
of the lioness club now, and she feels ready to prove it. Mulder
is neurasthenic and shaky, useless in case of an emergency, but she
doesn't mind. She'll carry them both if she has to. 

She is double-daring heaven to test her when a bright sweep of
lights cuts across the floor from under the door. Her chin
almost to her knees she thinks, No. She thinks, God Help Me. She
thinks, I Cannot Live Without Him Again. 

"Truck," Mulder calls from the room, softly. "Just a truck." 

She leans her head on her knees and clasps her hands behind her
head fallout-shelter style and begins apologizing to the
Almighty. 

----------

She's missed him in diners.

Over the week since he returned, she's tried to think of all the
places she's missed him. In bed, of course, and at work. But
she'd also missed him in gas stations, when she'd pump and he'd pay,
or vice-versa. She missed him in airport lounges and rental cars
and tacky motel rooms. She missed him in line at the Craddock
Marine Bank, though she'd only ever been there with him once, and
she missed him every time she walked the third step of her porch,
where he'd once stopped to tie his shoe and balanced himself by
wrapping a hand around her ankle. She hadn't realized that she'd
missed him in diners. She loved the way he chewed.

Mulder keeps the case files over dinner, his face bent low over
the folders, absently twirling a paper clip in his left hand and
rustling pages with his right. He's unable to look at her as he
studies the pictures of her bloody back, the gouged flesh and
torn edges of her martyr wound shortly after her emergency
slugectomy. He flips the folder shut when their waitress returns
to top his glass of iced tea. Scully lays her palm over her cup. 

"You two ready for dessert?" 

Scully hasn't even finished half of her club sandwich, but the
waitress is looking at Mulder's empty plate. He doesn't register
the question, and she nods at the woman and orders two pieces
of pie, both of which she'll give to Mulder. Neither his leather
jacket nor the clean sweatshirt she'd packed for him can hide his
terrible thinness. Refugee Chic, he calls it. Even his shoes are
falling off him. She watches the muscles in his arms twitch as he
reopens the folder, shielding it from the waitress' eyes, and studies
her picture in the file. The hairs on his arms raise. The waitress
slaps down a few packets of creamer and waggles her fingers at the
baby before leaving. Mulder doesn't even look up, and she can see
the tension in his jaw and forehead, the expression he gets every
time he sees her blood.  

"We've seen something like this before," he says, trying to
capture his straw in his open mouth without looking. 

"I know." She reaches across her plate and steadies his straw
until he finds it, holding it while he drinks, letting his lips
press against the edge of her fingers. He rests against her hand
for a second and she closes her eyes. She'd blue flagged the file
months ago and left it for him to see. Mulder turns the page -
"1X0793 - Icy Cape, Alaska".  

----------

He wishes he had a copy of the Icy Cape file with him. There's a
picture of Scully in there that he'd like to see again. It feels
like years since he's seen it, and he doesn't need it to remember
what she looked like, but he'd like to see her looking normal,
especially after that last picture. In the Icy Cape photo, she's
leaning against the side of the plane that will take them to
Seattle from Nome. Her hair is slipping down from the ponytail
she used to wear, and the fur on the collar of her mammoth coat
makes her look as if she's been swallowed by Sasquatch. She's got
one hand on her hip, very swank and self-righteous, and he likes
the look of irritation in her eyes. She does not like to have her
picture taken. He's glad he's got such a good memory.

Usually.

With the files he's trying to cobble together a coherent picture
of the past twelve months. He sincerely hopes they get a
little more interesting and a lot less bloody. He could have
lived without the mental image of some relative stranger slicing 
deep into her back, precariously close to her chip. The report said
she'd been tied face down to the bed. It said she'd screamed for help
but no one had heard her. Mulder breathes and focuses on the spit of
rain against the window to get past the queasiness. He'd like to
throw something - do something - but it's much too late. This is
what he gets for asking for the tough cases first, he thinks.
She'd been wary, but had given in. Agent Doggett had hand-
delivered the files to his hospital room, then stood staring at him
in a curiously anesthetized manner, like nothing could possibly 
surprise him. After a year with Scully, maybe that was true.  

Outside the diner window, the world looks the same as it did when
he left - the trees just beginning to scatter death with only a thin
thread of blood in the veins of leaves. It's raining and a man is 
trying to help his wife across the muddy parking lot. The sky seems
to make a mess of earth, he thinks. 

The waitress returns and slides two pieces of pie, apple and
pumpkin, across the table. Scully pushes her plate toward Mulder
without looking at him and clambers out of the booth. She's too
short to do it gracefully, and she shimmies to the edge of the
seat and adjusts her skirt. She's wearing a business suit, like
she just happened to pick Mulder up on her way home, instead of
having spent the past eight days waiting for him to gather enough
strength to leave the hospital. She's even wearing heels. He
wonders if she's doing it to make herself feel normal or for his
sake. She wobbles a bit on her feet, but her voice is pure
doctor. 

"Eat both of those," she instructs as she heads toward the ladies
room. "And finish my sandwich while you're at it." 

Mulder waits until the door of the bathroom sucks shut before
nudging the baby-carrier on her seat with his toe. The motion
jerks the baby out of his daze, and he blinks solemnly.  

"So what's your story?" Mulder asks. "Or can't you remember
either?" 

---------- 

She sings Yankee Doodle as she washes her hands, just like they
taught her in med school. Most people don't wash long enough
to do any real good, they'd told her, they just waste their time.
She makes herself slow down, going through the chorus twice,
lathering up to her elbows and not neglecting her nails. If she
let herself she'd be in and out in under a minute. Her first
instinct is to take as little time as possible leaving them
alone. Anything could happen when she's gone, and she's not sure
they'd make it with just each other. 

Mulder has no idea how to hold the baby. He looks at him as
though he'll break into a thousand pieces. She's not sure she can
handle his reaction, though it's sudden for him, she knows.
Instant fatherhood. No prep time. She'd introduced him to his son
eight days before, in a bright hospital room with the Gunmen
waiting outside the door bearing gifts like the three wise men
and trying to keep the boy entertained. Mulder hadn't believed
her at first. He had, in fact, looked at her like it was possible
she had lost her mind. Not that she blamed him. She herself
hadn't thought it was real until the day she'd delivered in a
Georgetown hospital, without the benefit of drugs or Mulder for
comfort. She'd refused the epidural, not wanting to let her guard
down, and also because it seemed fitting that their child be
brought forth in blood and pain and water - life agonizing
forward.  

She twists off the tap and thinks about water in gas tanks and
how her eyes always tear in the desert. She'd had grit in every
crevice of her face for weeks after she'd returned from Utah,
healing under the potent gazes of A.D. Skinner, the Gunmen and
her mother. It wasn't that she hadn't appreciated their concern,
it was just that she'd harbored resentment so hot it left scorch
marks on her sheets at night. She was not supposed to be alone in
this - she was part of a team.  

She'd had dreams that he was being tortured, and they'd left her
crumpled like used paper on the floor of whatever room she had
crawled through trying to reach him. She'd begun locking herself
in her bedroom at night in the last months of her pregnancy,
scared she'd trip over something and harm the baby. God knows
she'd tried to deny it, and she'd carried on, but she felt
malleable, soft and vulnerable in the most obvious way,
incubating the Mulder sprog with his strong kicks and bantling
wisdom. Occasionally she'd play a tape, full of the answering
machine messages that Mulder had left in the days before he
disappeared, and the baby would squirm at the sound of his
voice. 

Out of breath, Mulder had spoken into the phone, "There's nobody
on earth, Scully. Everybody's gone. You're gone," then a few
profane mutters. "I'm going to get her to fix this right now.
Hang on." As though she were sitting impatiently in some
netherworld waiting room with six billion other people, thumbing
through cosmic magazines and waiting to be called back to earth. 

And next, "Scully, it's me, pick up." There was the gurgle of the
fish tank in the background. He must have been sitting on the
couch. "I've got the beer and the movie, what I don't have is my
partner. Where are you?" He stopped talking at the sound of a
swift triple knock and then the door creaking. "Never mind,
you're here." His voice went warm on the last line, and she had
to be sitting down to listen to that one.  

"I'm on my way to Milford, Scully," he said in the next message,
"your cell isn't on. Call me and give me directions to the camp."

And finally, "Tarantism, Scully. Dancing sickness. I've got three
X-Files, 1953, 1976, and this one. All from the same Ohio town.
Tell me that's a coincidence." 

That was dated the morning they went to Oregon. Nearly every day
after she'd wondered what would have happened if she'd called him
and said, "Skinner can handle the budget review while we check it
out." They wouldn't have gotten Billy Miles' phone call.
No Bellefleur, with its misleading name and over-rated salmon, no
Bounty Hunter eager to capture Mulder's terebrant body, no uneasy
alliance with the enemy. She wanted so much to set the clocks
back that she was half-convinced it was possible. People claimed
they found rifts in space and time, didn't they? Why couldn't
she? She'd take them back to that morning and she'd grab his hand
and head toward Ohio. Or she'd hold herself over him on his bed
for much longer, drown him in their tidal coupling, make him
forget the plane he had to catch with Skinner.  

She could have done it.  

But time moved on. It didn't march so much as dance. Everyone
seemed to have known instinctively what needed to be done. Skinner and
the Gunmen had cobbled together a mutually uneasy but necessary
partnership, comparing hacked satellite films and radio telescope
finds. At work, Doggett had declared confidently that he would be
the hero. Her mother had pleaded on behalf of her unborn grandchild.
Scully ate toast. She'd forced a glass of orange juice with her
pre-natal horse pill every morning and reflected that the seasons
were caused by a 23.5 degree tilt in the earth's axis. Her heart
entered nuclear winter just as spring arrived on her middle
plain. 

----------

Her field report on the Utah case is one page long and full of
fragmented sentences.

"Organism affected free-will. Biochem. of hypnotized/manipulatable
mind still relatively unexplored. Traveled spinal column toward 
brain. Possibly generated or caused to be generated neurochems
that altered brain chemistry leaving subject open to suggestion.
Some parasites alter host behavior to ensure own survival -
similar? Agent Doggett performed emergency procedure with army
knife. Slug sent to Q for analysis." 

But she'd never bothered to put the test results in the folder.
It looked more like one of his field reports, one that she'd take
and pad and make some sense of, than anything she'd ever written.
He checked the date stamp. Nine days after Bellefleur. 

At the bottom of the page, Agent Doggett had tried to fill in the
gaps of her story. Arrows pointed up to her paragraph. "Agent
Scully was forced to stay in town after locals trapped her by
pouring water into her gas tank," and "she then apparently gave
Hank Gulatarski her gun and left the building." Gave him her gun?
Mulder flashed on Kristin Kilar suddenly, his empty mind, his
vacated heart, and he pictured Scully handing some maniac cultist
her weapon.    

She wasn't free and easy with her gun on an ordinary basis. She
wore it when she answered the door, even if she was certain it
was him. She'd held it on him on occasion, and she wasn't afraid
to use it. She'd shot him once for his own good.  He realized
that as a mother she probably wasn't going to be opposed to the
occasional spanking.  

The diner begins to fill up with evening patrons. Rain slides
down the window next to the booth and Mulder feels himself
drowsing in a haze, lulled by the clink of cutlery against
porcelain and the steam rising from his cup of coffee to print
the glass.   

On their way home from Icy Cape she'd kept her head tilted back
against the seat cushion, pretending to sleep. They'd made the
leg from Nome to Seattle with Drs. DaSilva and Hodge, who seemed
to feel that their thirty-six hours and following quarantine 
together made them, if not friends, at least colleagues. 
Scully had left him to field questions, doubtless aware that he'd
give answers they wouldn't want to hear. Her hair was still in a
ponytail and her hands and face were chapped from the wind.
She'd sat with her head against the plane window and let it fog
up around her cheek like a nimbus. He could tell she was thinking
of the precise words she'd use in her field report, and about why
a parasite would attach itself to the hypothalamus. He knew
she hadn't believed a word about it being of extraterrestrial origin,
but he'd felt relatively sure she wouldn't put that in her report. 

He'd liked her at the time for her absolute separateness from
himself, her inability to be sequacious and accommodating. He'd
been on the job for years when she was still giddily slicing into
her first med school cadaver and yet she hadn't hesitated to tell
him he was nuts.

They'd still been sitting straight in their chairs back then,
careful not to let their elbows touch on the armrest, but he'd
stroked the back of her neck in a supply closet, and they'd begun
branding one another in quiet ways.

---End 1/4

2/4

----------
Idaho
----------

Their map is an index card that she's secured to the dashboard
with a wad of gum. Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming, South Dakota, Iowa,
Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, West Virginia, Virginia. 

They're not following any itinerary, just trawling along through
badlands and Indian reservations, stopping at whatever rest area
looks like it has a decent playground. They don't even own a map.
He's too tired to drive more than a few hours a day without
feeling bruised and claustrophobic, so they waste time at parks
and restaurants in the afternoon until they can check into a
motel. Mulder practices being nonchalant with the baby while
Scully swings. He doesn't like having his feet off the ground as
much any more, he says.  

"That's what you get for zipping around in space." 

She's been trying to add a little levity to their trip in the
past three hundred miles. It's about the only thing that keeps
her from crying when she watches his awkward handling of their
son and sees his gaunt cheeks that make him look like a last-minute
rescue from Auschwitz. A warm breeze is strafing down the
Bitterroot mountains and across a distant lake and Scully takes a
moment to appreciate the crags, the way the earth has thrust its
middle fingers up out of the soil, flipping off outer space. 

She's been in this state before - she had her first UFO sighting
here, staring up into the altar of the sky. There were a lot of
firsts in Idaho. He'd ditched her for the first time and been
taken for the first time. She should have known back then that it
would come to this - holding your gun on a Federal officer to
rescue a brand-new partner spoke of a nascent devotion
she could only appreciate in hindsight. It wasn't like those kinds
of relationships mellowed and got easier.

Scully slows the swing and watches him from the corner of her
eyes, careful not to look like she's focused on him or trying to
sum up his fathering ability.  

Mulder stands flat-footed against the wind for a moment, eyes
closed, sunning himself like a winter-weary horse on the first
warm day of spring. The wind is fierce, though, and before long
he finds clemency under the slide, kicking up mulch as he settles
against one of the railroad tie legs. He reaches out with a boot
to kick the silver slide arching above him. 

"Think this blocks brain waves like aluminum foil hats?" 

"So that's the secret?" she answers, snappily, trying to count
up all the people who've messed with his head over the years. His
dura matter is the holy grail for aliens, pseudo father figures
and ex-girlfriends. If she ever sees any one of their heads again
she's going to do some brain excavating of her own. 

She shimmies off the swing and crawls down beside him, pressing
her shoulder to his. The baby is conked out on his chest, two
slimy fingers jammed into his mouth, and Mulder reads the tabloid
belly of the slide out loud.  

My Lord, what a morning, when the stars begin to fall; This is an
EX-parrot; El oro y amores eran malos de encubrir; I miss my mom,
I want to go home now; Eat at Ed and Fred's, 10 miles; J&B 4
Ever; Salmon River rafting rocks!  

"You have a pen?" Mulder asks. 

She rummages around in the pocket of her jacket and shakes her
head. He picks up a sharp pebble and tries to scratch something
into the metal before giving up and letting it drop to the
ground. She wonders what Orphic message he was going to write,
what key to the world. 

As they climb out into the daylight she picks up the dropped rock
and slips it into her pocket. 
----------

He wants to talk about bats. 

He is very interested in bats in general, he says, and man-bats
in particular. This file seems to intrigue him more than the slug
case, and he reads it from front to back several times before
questioning her as they shoot down the highway passing
18-wheelers and school buses. She's got her eyes trained on exit
signs looking for hotels and a place to eat. Beside her Mulder
has started to get fidgety and hyper, sure signs that she needs
to get out of the car before he drives her nuts. He'll jog around
the parking lot of their hotel and then collapse in a heap on his
bed and sleep away fourteen hours, but right now he's jouncing
the file on his lap, as excited as an eight-year old. He appears
offended by her lack of interest in his speculation. 

"So why did this guy prey on these people? And why didn't Ernie
Stefaniuk just hop a plane instead of holing up on an island? How
close is the town of Burley, Scully? I'd like to see it." 

The car she's rented for the cross-country drive has automatic
seats and a CB radio that Mulder finds too much fun. He likes to
keep it on - even on channels where no one is talking. The
hypnotic drone of static eats up the silence in the car and puts
the baby on permanent sleep-cycle. She considers taking the
microphone from its case and projecting her promise loud and
clear to the road warriors in Eastern Idaho. "I refuse to chase
man-bats ever again," she considers saying, "If I never see
another bat it will be forty-four years too soon." 

He doesn't stop talking. "The bat appears every forty-four years.
Don't tell me that doesn't remind you of anything?"

The question irritates her. There is a tired edge in her voice
when she answers. 

"There are some things I don't forget, Mulder," she says. Like
what you'll look like when you're old and dying, the anniversary
of the day we met, what it feels like to hold your mother's cold
heart in my hands, the way you smell when you're asleep,
liver-eating mutants. Just to name a few. She says none of this
aloud, of course. She's gotten used to keeping secrets. 

"Check it out," he says, holding up the file near the rearview
mirror so she can see, like she hasn't looked at it before. "They
had this thing in prison, Scully. Exactly who makes the decision
to put these things in high-security? Man-bats, Flukeman,
Liver-eaters..." 

He recites his litany of favorite freaks and she can't help being
amused. Only Mulder would be jealous of her encounter with
a giant bat. Frankly, it was another of the things she could have
lived without. 

----------

The night had turned blue and sweet as they'd left the riverside.

Other couples had anniversaries and special songs. They had a
bench. It was rickety, and covered in graffiti and gum and God
knows what else, but they both felt a sort of ridiculous fondness
for it nonetheless. Years later, after yet another meeting on it,
he would remark that they ought to consider dedicating it with a
plaque. "F. Mulder - D. Scully. In memory of many years spent
uncovering The Truth" but the joke had fallen flat when they'd
realized "in memory" meant that they'd no longer be around.

Still, on that night, their first meeting at the spot, it was
just beginning to be significant. He never appeared to wonder how
she'd found him sitting there all by himself, and she'd never
considered volunteering the information. 

In truth, she'd been following him - mentally at least. She'd
been aware of his movements all day, tracking him like a
satellite revolving at the apogee of their universe: He was in
D.C. doing a wiretap, he was in New Jersey in the sewer, he was
getting a flukeworm lecture at Quantico. She'd felt a pang of
nostalgia as they traded speculation and sass though they'd only
been working together for a few months. They had a shared history
from the first moment. 

His hair was particularly hideous and she wasn't exactly
looking her best, but he had a face with a view and when they
looked at one another something like eternity gaped in their
peripheral vision. 

He walked her back to her car the long way, around the tidal
basin and past the Jefferson Memorial. At the top, a group of
Asian tourists snapped pictures and two teenagers with
skateboards were careening down the marble steps as a security
guard chased them. They skidded by close enough to ruffle the
collar of Scully's trench coat, and Mulder smoothed it down for
her, letting his knuckles brush the tips of her hair. An edge of
step crumbled away as the kids passed, and Mulder bent to pick it
up. They stood close to one another for a moment until he pointed
toward the street and they began walking. He tossed the pebble
into the air and was going to let it drop, but she stuck out a
hand to catch it. 

"Not too shabby for a girl." He nudged her shoulder
companionably. She nudged him back and stuck it in her coat
pocket. 

She thinks about stones and secrets as she pulls off the highway.
At last count she had almost one hundred. She keeps them in a
suitcase under her bed, for the most part. There is one in her
change purse though (an arrow shaped sliver she'd dumped out of
her shoe after a night spent singing oldies in the Appalachicola
National Forest), and two in her desk drawer: (Mystic, Montana,
where they spent a cold night huddled over a lone cup of coffee
in the front seat of a car while Mulder pointed out the
constellations. He got Orion and The Big Dipper mixed up. And the
shattered edge of a piece of breccia that had once housed the
infectious black oil.) They don't adhere to any particular mood
or frame of mind. She picked up one on the afternoon she first
felt the baby kick, but she also has one from the street in front
of the Gunmen's lair that she'd stooped to pick up when she was
so angry with Mulder and his "you're making this personal" remark
that she had considered the benefits of stoning him.  

----------  
Wyoming
----------

She keeps the crib tucked against the back wall, as far away from
the window and door as possible and reachable only by coming
over both beds. She sleeps in the one nearest the window and
he imagines nothing can come through her, the same way he
believes that had she been in Oregon, she would have saved him.
Together they are a force to be reckoned with. Bad things happen
when they are apart. 

They'd talked about that once, in a moment of candor that owed a
lot to being pressed naked and damp against one another. She'd
hypothesized that they were the incarnation of Newton's Third Law
- forces always occurring in pairs. He misses those post-coital
conversations when Scully was particularly tender and
chatty. They didn't last long but he appreciates them for the
moments of magic that they were. By his estimation they haven't
had one of those talks in one year and eleven days, and though 
he doesn't remember the time that has passed, something in 
him is fiercely lonely for her company. It's possible his heart
has a better memory than his head. 

She doesn't sleep much, as far as he can tell, or perhaps she's
just always tuned in to the baby channel. When the boy begins
making his grinchy noises early in the morning she rises without
grumbling to demonstrate her new found plenary woman skills,
unbuttoning her pajama top enough to wriggle the baby in toward a
breast. Mulder watches, sloe eyed, from his bed. She's completely
unaware that she is under scrutiny, and he hardly moves for fear
he'll startle her. 

In the daytime, she covers the baby's body completely with a
black jacket slung over her from the shoulders, leaving a small
gap for air, but at night she walks the room with him, uncovered,
apparently certain that Mulder is deeply asleep. The boy toys
with his ear and makes desperate sooming noises, like she's the
only oasis in the desert of his life. This is startlingly true,
he realizes. He feels the same way. 

----------

The files are sprawled over the mini-table next to the motel
window, and Scully curls up in one of the chairs with the baby
and shuffles through them, refreshing her memory. Agent Doggett
had a peculiar habit of naming the files as though they were
chapters in a novel, something she never got used to. He referred
to them by case number or his own made-up name, cementing her
conviction that he was as different from Mulder as one could be.
Mulder would have referred to them by mutant. 

Each file is a rebus for her memory. She remembers vague details
about these cases, but retains an absolute grasp on everything
that was going on in the background. The X-Files remained her day
job, not out of a sense of duty, but because she knew that in
them lay the path to Mulder. In the years she'd spent with him,
countless seemingly unrelated cases had taken them on a
pilgrimage toward some larger truth, and if she had to
investigate cultists and killer exterminators in order to find
him then so be it. But her real work started after work hours. It
is this search that the files remind her of.   

Scully's hand lands on the missing child file and she leafs
through it, alternately looking at it and focusing on
her own child, who is stretching his chubby legs and amusing
himself by staring at his hands in the fall of moonlight through
the curtains. She turns her attention back to the file, wondering
what Mulder sees when he reads it, certain that he has no idea
yet what she was doing in the gaping weeks between cases. There's
so much he doesn't know. 

He doesn't know that the new guys are all young and clean-cut.
Non-smokers. They're all married and live out in Maryland and
don't bother to vote since their power doesn't depend on which
party is in office. She wonders how they are recruited and
from where, and she wonders what she'd expected to learn from
them.  

She'd met with them under a bridge one night when she was
supposed to be working. Agent Doggett had said he had a child
who'd turned up mysteriously un-aged after an eight year absence
and her mind immediately turned to clones, to abduction, to
questions that had to be asked. She put them all aside for a
rendezvous under a bridge with the New Power, and had known they
couldn't help her before she set a foot out of her car. If they'd
known anything, she'd realized, they would be coming out of the
woodwork. They weren't afraid of the light of day. All the
subterfuge spoke of a group looking for answers as much as
she. No, she'd have to do this herself. She drove off before
she'd even spoken to them, aware that the only answers she and
Mulder had ever gotten had come from asking the most ridiculous
questions. 

"I Am The Walrus" was playing on the radio as she'd left. The
Walrus was dead, she'd thought, and the Walrus was the old
Scully. Time to try his shoes on for size. She'd fingered the
tape of the psychic and taken her first leap in Mulder's size
thirteens.   

----------

He's spent a lot of time over the years lying in bed with his
eyes closed, thinking about change. 

In the early years, after his sister disappeared, he thought
about the quiet in the house, how the lack of a little girl's
breathing could create a vacuum of confusion and mistrust. Over
time, he shifted to thinking about changes in career, and
ideology, and then one night, with the taste of his partner in
his mouth and her warm leg thrown over his in sleep, he thought
about the benefits of a change in direction.

He is trying to talk himself into this now. 

Scully is still padding softly around the room, doing things with
sweet-smelling powder and whispering quiet, un-Scully words to
the boy. Mulder listens, enthralled and wary, until she slides
into her bed and, with a sigh, falls asleep. When he woke feeling
bruised and achy in an Oregon hospital, Scully predictably next
to his bed, he had taken for granted that everything would be the
same. In those first seconds of surfacing from unconsciousness
he'd been able to remember his time away - something he can't
quite catch now, like a dream remembers a mood, but not
the scene. News of the baby, the new partner and a year missing
in action came later, and that newborn sense of peace and
familiarity was taken away. 

He thinks that's the worst - the vandalizing of his touchstones.
The sky is supposed to be up, the earth under your feet. In
space, the earth was a marble that could be anywhere, and the sky
had disappeared. Free from the confines of gravity there was no
"up" or "down." 

And now, the landscape of his personal life has shifted. There
are mountains where once there were none, and heaths of hope and
expectation. He is still in the center, but there are a thousand
directions to go from here, and he's a stranger to the language.
He feels left behind, as though their tenses have changed. She is
in the present, and he in the past, and it is a long way to catch
up from here. 

The room is bathed in quiet, just the soft sound of the boy's
breathing, as clear as water over creekstone.  Mulder shifts
toward the crib and slides a hand through the bars, resting it on
the baby's small back. He dozes, wondering how he can become
fluent in this new language, and finally puts himself to sleep by
reciting the compass points: Tramontana, Greco, Levante, Sirroco,
Ostro, Libeccio, Ponente, Maestro.   

----------
South Dakota - Badlands
----------

Six miles north of Vermillion on Highway 19 they detour at a
historical marker and go looking for the Spirit Mound. Scully
looks tired and melancholy, but insists on carting the baby to
the top of the hill anyway. The mound, which Mulder has been
meaning to visit for ages, is located on private property
that is partly occupied by a cattle feed lot, but the tenant says
they're welcome to leave the car and they head out in the late
afternoon sun. The prairie grass is so deep it brushes Scully's
waist, and Mulder remembers other fields they've been in
together: corn fields, ice fields, killing fields. Theirs is a
bloody and complex history. All afternoon in the private universe
of the car they'd silently pointed out the name of places they
passed: Wounded Knee, Custer, Pine Ridge. It was entirely likely
that a hundred years in the future there would be new historical
markers pointing the way to places where the battle had started.
He was a veteran of the battle of Bellefleur, he thought. 
Probably you didn't get a medal for that. 

Scully has a brochure tucked in her back pocket. She's big on
brochures. She never voluntarily goes into a situation without
knowing what she's looking at or looking for, and this familiar
fact leaves Mulder suddenly smitten with awe and admiration and
he feels like grinning for the first time in ages, so he does. 

"What?" she asks, when she turns to see his face. They've made it
to the top of the mound now and she's a little breathless and
sweaty. She's every inch a redhead in this light. Even the fine
hairs on her face are lit up. He feels his smile soften at her,
and with care he reaches out to run his hand through her hair,
brushing it away from her face. She closes her eyes and composes
her mouth like she's trying not to cry, so he pulls his hand
away. He'd like never to see her cry again; it reminds him of all
that's lost. He looks out over the prairie instead. 

"I was just thinking about devils," he says. 

She clears her throat and stares at him. "And that made you
smile?" 

"Yeah," he admits, "kind of. In 1804, Lewis and Clark sent a
detachment from the Corps of Discovery out here to investigate
the sighting of little devils. The Native American nations in the
area told stories about them - these big-headed creatures that
supposedly occupied the place." 

Her expression changes like a shift in the wind, from mild
interest to mild horror. He sees a thousand things flash across
her eyes in the moment it took him to speak. Anasazi, Navajo,
They Were Here First. 

"Big headed creatures? What are you saying?" 

"No! No," he says, shaking his head. She's clutching the baby a
bit tighter than before. He wishes he'd thought of a better way
to phrase that. "They were only 18-inches tall, Scully. Just...
local stories."  She nods, not taking her eyes off his. "The
badlands were also the home of three-toed horses, giant pigs and
titanothres," he says, by way of explanation. "Not that you
should assume I know what titanothres are." 

She loosens her grip on the kid and gives into a yawn. He's
wearing her out, he thinks. She is whittled down with fear and
exhaustion. They stand in silence for a minute while Mulder
fishes around in his head for the rest of the story. 

"The detachment didn't find any sign of devils, just herds of
buffalo and elk. It was mostly treeless then, and all prairie,
not this corn and soybean business." He waves a hand toward the
horizon. The sun is setting over his shoulder and dusk is
falling. Caddis flies and mosquitoes are careening in the cooling
air. Overhead, a few bats are spazzing, bouncing off sound,
getting ready for their night hunts. Standing here they are on
the 100th meridian, he thinks. Dead center. Bull's eye targets.  

The horizon melts from orange to pink. He watches as Scully
turns and begins picking her way down the hill toward the coming
night. In ancient days, cartographers marked East with a cross on
the maps, because East was where paradise lay. She'd told him
once, daughter of a seafaring man that she was.

"They hunted the buffalo nearly to extinction," he says, though
he knows she's too far away to hear him. He stands there until
the planet lists and hides the sun. Scully has the car running
and the heater on, and with his eyes on the light he makes a
pilgrimage toward her.  

----------

When she met Mulder she'd stepped wholly out of herself. Like a
snake shedding its skin, or a girl sliding out of an unzipped
dress. She'd gone from being the prim little workaholic to a
lunatic's liaison, and she did it with deliberation and joy. He
was every bit as odd as the rumors had insisted. He had one foot
in the bitterest reality and one in fairy tales and he made her
believe in magic. He also made her think. 

It is nine a.m. on a September morning and she is explaining to
him about curveballs. 

"You're making it too mystical, Mulder. It's physics. The Magnus
Effect. The stitches on the ball cause more pressure to be exerted
on one side and the ball moves faster and curves. The pitcher simply
throws it so the axis of rotation is not perpendicular to the
ground as it would be in a fastball." 

This is the kind of conversation she can deal with. When they
crossed the last time zone he started bringing up odd pieces of
conversation, like does she have pictures of herself pregnant and
does Agent Doggett like sports? 

"I can't believe I missed the Super Bowl. Did you watch it,
Scully?" As though she's ever watched the Super Bowl, except for
last year in a sports bar in Atlanta, where they huddled together
in a booth and ate corn dogs and chili cheese-fries and won the
sport's trivia game during halftime when she'd knew the name of the
first female sports broadcaster on national TV (Donna DeVarona,
1965). 

She felt spunky - fresh from a close-encounter with timber
rattlers and Bible thumpers, and the testosterone in the air 
reminded her of parties she'd attended in college, back when
she'd had a bit of a life and thought true rebellion was dating a
Protestant. She rolled up her sleeves and challenged Mulder to a
game of paper football, and almost took him up on his offer to
retrieve the triangle when his shot sailed suspiciously clear of
her finger goal post and into the V of her shirt. They left the
bar after the game bumping into one another companionably, though
they were dead sober.  

They nighttripped toward the hotel as people began emerging 
from restaurants to bleed various shades of blue into the veins of the
streets. Someone handed Mulder a giant sponge finger that he
brandished around and used to point out things of interest - the
man in the Chevy pickup who was mooning some Rams fans, the
puddle of vomit she might want to avoid. She could tell he really
just liked using it. 

Mulder was wearing his leather jacket and jeans and looked
like he had secrets, like he knew things that he might be willing
to teach her. He'd gotten looks from the women that they'd passed
and she felt a little cocky, knowing they didn't stand a chance. She
stopped him on a street corner and pulled her lipstick from her
coat pocket, wanting to color in his lines a little bit and bring
his attention down to her level. Under the mercury moon and
lights of the nearby bars she steadied him with a hand on his
waist and drew an ' X' on his right cheek. She'd been preparing to
draw an 'F' on his left when she changed her mind, branding him
with her own slinky 'S' instead. 

He gripped her shoulders and shut his eyes like he was
concentrating on the letters as she took her own sweet time. 
His eyelids were thin and translucent; she could almost see  
the nebulium of his eyes right through them, like he was staring at
her with his eyes closed. When she finished it did not feel
immediately necessary to take her fingers out of his belt loop,
so she didn't. They reached the door of their hotel with a wave
of half-drunk fans, and washed into the lobby. Inside it was
bright and loud. Overstimulated kids bounced on couches and slid 
in puddles from leaking coolers. There was a serpentine line at
the check-in desk, and they congratulated themselves on checking
in earlier. She took her finger out of his belt loop, smoothed
her hair and said goodnight to him formally as they boarded the
elevator. 

"Great game," some other passenger said to Mulder as they got
out. It took him a minute to realize he was being addressed but
he nodded and starting frisking himself, looking for his key
card. Scully had considered fishing it out of his back jean pocket
for him, but managed to abstain.  

"Yeah," he'd answered, distracted, "I love baseball." 

Scully slid her card into her lock and shut the door behind her 
before letting herself smile, pitching the contents of her 
pockets onto the nightstand. She paused the next morning before
putting her lipstick on and stared at the fine scratches his stubble
had made across the surface before tracing it across her lips.  

--End 2/4

3a/4

---------
Iowa
---------

She's wondering what they'll do when they get home. 

Despite hours spent going over her options, no scenario
she has come up with seems anything less than
ridiculous. She can't imagine dropping Mulder off at his old
place and saying, "See you tomorrow" any more than she can
imagine taking him to her apartment. Scully is used to upheaval
and change, for the most part, but this is more than that - this
is the earth under her feet taking a mini vacation, forcing her
to think of things like Day Care and Child Safety in a way she
never imagined she would, and definitely not under these
circumstances. Worrying about this gives her a headache. 

When she was a kid she used to try understand 'infinity.'
She'd lead her mind along a timeline into the future a few
thousand, billion years and when she thought she had a grasp on
it she'd realize she had an infinite number of journeys like
that to go. She feels that same sense of smallness and
uncertainty now. 

After pulling into a rest area and putting the brake on, she swivels
the rearview mirror down so she can see the car seat. The baby
is waving his arms around madly in the back, like a drowning man
signaling help. He loves it when she stops the car - it means
they can get out. 

"I'll be back," she whispers to him. She briefly considers saying
"keep an eye on your Dad," but worries that Mulder might be awake
- she's never called him that out loud before. The baby whumps
his arms down next to himself, resigned to prolonged
incarceration. Scully feels a sense of pride as she walks
into the rest room, leaving them both in the car with the
motor running and all. She gets sidetracked in the lobby on her way
out and grabs a few dog-eared tourist leaflets from the
information center: one for reservation gambling and one for the
Passomini Poetry Walk. They have a few hours before they can
check into their motel.  

The car is empty when she returns. She has a brief froggy
moment of panic and scans the late-afternoon sky before
realizing that Mulder has probably gone for a walk to
the playground. His boots have jarred a furrow through the soft
earth near the sidewalk and she follows it around behind the
rest area. A man pushes two kids on the swings and an elderly
woman is walking a Pekinese, and then she sees the back of his
jacket and the blue feet of the baby jumping like a marionette in
his arms. They are heading into a path through the woods. A sign
next to the entrance says "Poetry Walk."  She makes herself walk
steadily toward them. She'd look silly running. 

Under the tabernacle of trees, small flat stones have been 
embedded into the earth, each one with a word or two carved deep
into its side. She stands with a foot on 'INTRODUCTION' and one
on 'WAKE' for a moment and watches Mulder jiggling the baby
further down the path, mumbling things that she can't hear.
Pulling the pamphlet from her back pocket, she gauges the
distance. The walk rambles over nearly a mile of forest and
farmland - Mulder will be exhausted after this. On the other
hand, she is in no hurry to get back on the road. Her arms hurt
from over a week of driving, and medically speaking it might be
good for them all to be out in the sunshine for a bit. Besides,
every mile in the car leads them toward their front doors and a
lifetime of hard decisions. 

She looks around for a word she thinks might be appropriate for
her poem, and, finding 'NOMAD', she trails them into the woods.  

----------

Mulder stops under a colonnade of maples and waits for her to
catch up. A thin light falls through the canopy above, casting
shadows as parallel as oars across the missal of stones. She
takes her time moving from word to word, pausing to pick up
things of interest (an acorn top, which she throws into a puddle,
and something he can't see that she holds up to the light).
Mulder balances on 'CEDAR' and tries to remember the tune of the
ABC song, enjoying the droning babble of the boy, who as yet
knows no words, and the poised and serious way Scully moves
between patches of light, as full of grace as any holy word he's
ever heard. He'd like to strip her down to the bare essentials,
past body to the soul, until he can hold the spark of her in his
hand. He'd like to swallow her, plant her inside until she grafts
to him and they grow together outward, inseparable.    

"What are you doing?" she asks, stepping closer. She scans the
rocks around her, looking for something. Gracefully, she steps
from 'BYZANTINE' to 'OSCULATE' and stops. 

He reaches out a hand to steady her as she wobbles on her rock,
but she holds up her palm in an "I'm fine" gesture and blows her 
hair out of her eyes. 

"What? Why are you looking at me like that?"  

"I used to think 'LMNOP' was one letter," he says, aware as he
speaks that it makes no sense, but unable to find a way of saying
what he was really thinking. Something about words unspoken and
the subtle language of skin and bones. 

She narrows her eyes speculatively, as though wondering if she
should make a grab for the baby before he starts having a
seizure. 

"Mulder, I have no idea what you just said." 

"The alphabet song," he explains. "I thought LMNOP was one
letter. Everyone laughed at me. It was humiliating." 

"Okay," Scully says, still sounding concerned for his mental
health. 

"So remind me to tell him that LMNOP is definitely not one
letter when he has to learn the song." 

Her face lifts for one moment, and she smiles at him. "He's
four months old, Mulder, I think it'll be a while before you
have to worry about that kind of thing." 

A silent council of clouds begins converging overhead, and the
light thins out, but she glows with something like elation and
turns away. When she moves, the baby's eyes follow her, and
Mulder is stunned by their likeness in profile, by what it means.
They are grafted together already, he thinks, they have grown a
budding branch. The thought makes him smile, and he lowers his
chin to the top of the boy's head, rubbing across his fuzzy hair.

"It's never too early to learn, Scully," he says, wanting her to
turn around again, to talk to him.  

Scully looks over her shoulder and tamps her expression down
into an every day look. She does nonchalant so well. 

"Is that what you were doing back here? Teaching him the
alphabet?" 

Mulder shrugs, trying not to feel self-conscious. He knows this
is a huge deal. He knows it means everything to her. No pressure
or anything, just the possibility of lifelong devastation.   

"More or less," he says, "We were learning how to spell his
name." Mulder gestures toward a rock not far from his foot that
says 'WILL.' They stare at it in silence as a group of
teenagers pass, hooting at one another and looking for lewd
words. She chews on her lip and speaks, finally. 

"That's what he was named after." 

Mulder is momentarily confused. William was the logical choice -
her father's name, and his middle name. She strikes him as being
traditional in that way. 

"It's not William?"  

She shakes her bright head and reaches out to touch the rock with
the toe of her shoe. "No, just Will." 

He concentrates on not speaking yet, knowing that if he gives her
time she might say more. Sure enough, she speaks. 

"I will find him," she whispers. "I will." 

Mulder twists his hand in the back of her shirt and pulls,
leaning up against a tree to support them as her head falls back
against his heart. She feels warm and soft and like everything
good he remembers in life. They stand motionless, listening
to the rustle of the leaves overhead and the words that go
unspoken. Yes, he thinks, please, more of this. When she touches
him he can feel his own shape and boundaries, knows he is real,
but she is the first to move and he follows close behind her as
she begins tracing the rocks again, leading them out of the
forest.  

Mulder scans the ground, picking up the conversation
he'd been having earlier with the baby, using his best
child-soothing tone, which sounds a lot like his Scully-soothing
tone. Will chuckles and gnaws on his fist, thrilled with the
fresh air. He kicks his feet against Mulder's stomach, issuing
his warning that they should be on the move.   

"A is for Alien," Mulder says, pitching his voice loud enough for
Scully to hear. She stops abruptly in front of him, but doesn't
turn around. "B is for Black Oil. C is for Cancer and Clone and
Chip," he continues, lightly, wondering what she's thinking.  

"D is for duty," she pipes up. "E is for Extraterrestrial
Biological Entity. F is for Frohike and FBI." 

Mulder laughs. She turns around and smiles sadly at him. "G is
for Gunmen," she says, her smile fading at the corners. "What the
hell kind of parents are we going to make, Mulder? Knowing things
like that?" 

He can hardly believe she asked that out loud. She looks
like she can hardly believe it either. Mulder looks at her, wants
to take that fear and longing out of her eyes, remove the weight
from her thin shoulders. He shakes his head. 

"On the other hand," he says, "I'll be a real commodity around
Indian Guide Campfires, with those stories." 

Her lips quirk slightly, and he continues. 

"'So then Will's mom and dad shot each other and crawled through
puddles of their own blood in a hallucinatory suicide pact. Soon
after, Will's mom was shot in the stomach for real, but didn't
die because an immortal photographer took her place. The End!" 

"Yeah," she says dryly, "you'll wow them at the PTA, Mulder." 

He turns the baby around and lifts him up until they are eye
to eye. 

"I want to apologize to you in advance," he says. Will stares at 
him fiercely and blows a raspberry. 

They near the end of the walk. Ahead, a thin cat is stalking a
squirrel and he can see the playground and rest area. Scully is
flushed after her one mile hop-scotch, and quiet, in the brimming
silence that is their local dialect.  

She hauls the baby out of his arms and walked backward toward
the car, keeping an eye on him. She's wrong, he thinks as he
follows her, D is not for duty, it's for devotion. Devotion turns
duty to ash.     

----------
Illinois
----------

They are boxed in by corn. The hotel parking lot is surrounded on
three sides by corn tall enough to swallow a basketball team.  
Sprinklers are at work somewhere in the dusk, or maybe that's
the sound of mosquitoes. Scully rinses out her t-shirt in the
bathroom from his tragic spaghetti incident. He can see her through the
cracked door. It's the most skin he's seen in ages 

He lies on the bed next to the baby. They watch the White Sox 
fold in the bottom of the ninth. He has Will propped up on a
couple pillows so he can see the action, but he's apparently
about as much of a sports fan as him mother, because he's
dozing. He only perks up during the commercials, particularly
ones about beer or cereal.   

"My father did not approve of me," Mulder says softly, without
taking his eyes off the television. "Not for years, if ever. Even
when I was making the right decision. Even if I had no choice." 

He pauses, gets caught up in a commercial advertising a 1-900
number, and belatedly wonders if he should have put his hand over
the kid's eyes. 

"They were going to hurt Scully and I couldn't let that happen. I
made the trade, which, frankly, you owe me for. Dad knew it
wasn't Samantha, but he let me carry that guilt around." 

He flips over on his side to see that Will has managed to capture
the remote control in his pinchy grasp. Soberly, with the same
scientific stare of concentration that his mother wears, he is
cramming it into his mouth. Mulder reaches out and flicks his
chest lightly. 

"Hey, listen to your old man, here." The baby's scowl is so
familiar Mulder can't hold in a chuckle. How clever of him to
channel his mother that way. "This is important."  

"I'm sure you've noticed by now that Scully's ... a miracle. And
I know I'm new on your scene, but for what it's worth, I already
approve of you."

Will blinks at him, seemingly hypnotized by the sound of
his voice. After a moment he goes back to his exploration of the
remote and Mulder realizes the water in the bathroom has stopped
running. He thinks he hears a tiny sniff. 

"Hey, Scully, you're not crying in there, are you?" he calls,
exchanging the remote for a set of plastic baby keys. 

"No," she says, haughtily. 

Mulder winks at the baby. "Girls are suckers for that kind of
thing," he stage whispers. 

"They definitely probed your brain." She toes the door shut. 

He waits until he hears the shower start to run before leaning
over and nuzzling his face into the side of the boy's warm, peachy
head. Will chuckles and continues to gnaw on his keys as Mulder
plants a kiss on the tiny bridge of his son's nose.  

---------

She is sure of one thing - they are past having a normal
relationship. It was never going to be defined the way others'
define things, as either good or bad. Instead, they were forced
together by both circumstance and preference, and they moved
toward one another in a slow tumble, like captured asteroids
toward a black hole. 

She had always imagined that she'd fall in love with someone
easy, someone reasonable. She'd imagined a life where she shared
laundry and cooking duties with a like-minded man, a doctor
probably, and where the most compromising she'd do would be over
whose family they'd spend Christmas with. How predictably Celtic 
of her to fall for a man like Mulder - a poet warrior - Fianna.
Nowhere in her imagining was there ever a guilt-mottled idealist
who theorized about moth men, ammonia-based life forms, invisible
elephants and other impracticalities. Nowhere. Mulder's thoughts
were like strange fruits dropped from foreign trees. He was a
constant surprise to her, though she could predict his every
action, and it was the biggest surprise of her life to discover
that she was simply not wholly herself without him. 

She spent last January waiting for signs. She waited for the baby
to show, and for lights in the sky, and for the results of her
mother's unexpected mammogram. It was unusually cold and she used
the bad weather as an excuse to hole up in her apartment and
retreat to her interior. Skinner called, and her mother called,
and her brothers called, all with homiletic warnings. She'd
spoken civilly with them all, assuring them of things she could
not possibly assure, things like "I'll be fine."  

One afternoon she curled on the couch until dark, and when she
could not take the raging silence of her apartment anymore, she
bundled up and went for a walk. In the snow she trudged the
streets of her neighborhood, a ghost-town in the twilight,
smothered in deep, white peace. She picked her way carefully
around the blocks, avoiding the light that fell on the sidewalk
from lit apartments and the occasional street lamp. Invisible
clouds overhead heaved fists of snow that mashed out the scenery.
The cars on the curb were smothered hulks and without their
rumble the night was as silent as a stone, the only sound her
boots in the snow and the dirge of hoar frost snapping
tree limbs. The whole world felt lonely. She thought about
crying, but was too weary. Instead, she stopped in the middle of
the road and watched her breath as it wafted skyward and
disappeared - another thing lost to the heavens. 

Movement at the street corner startled her and she allowed
herself to imagine for a moment that it was him, returned some
simple way, coming to find her. She indulged herself sometimes,
allowing a moment of willful misinterpretation. The first time
she'd allowed it was on the roof of a police station,
investigating SCUD bullets and men with X-Ray vision. It had been
the way Doggett's shadow stretched long and watchful from behind
her. She'd discovered that if you squinted and wished you could
make it true for one half of a heartbeat.

The chill fingers of cold and desperate hope held her motionless
in the road. She waited until the figure came into view - a
bearded man walking a collie - before closing her eyes and
pulling her coat more tightly around her. 

Blindly, she turned toward home. 

----------
Indiana
----------

On the wall in her apartment, between the fridge and her
cupboard, is the calendar she's kept since he disappeared. It's a
school-year calendar, something she gets free when she orders
insane amounts of chocolate bars from her nephew's Little League
team. It runs from September to September, and is full of bold
black 'X's. Over the past year, she passed it on her way to the 
shower every morning, stopping only long enough to slash a black
line diagonally through the box, chalking off another night spent
without him. The other line came in the evening, minutes before
bed, as she counted off another day. 

The calendar on the check-in desk of the Holiday Inn in Muncie
reminds her of this ritual, and she stands very still, breathing
evenly, overwhelmed with relief. Today they are pretending that
they are fine. There is a lot to be said for pretending. Earlier,
she showed him the spot where the Metal-Man (as he called him)
had done a Ginsu job on a sedan, and he'd stood in awe over
footsteps still imprinted in the pavement. She'd hefted Will and
herself onto the hood of the car and studied Mulder's face, the
silent line of his lips, the barely suppressed joy that showed up
in the creases near his eyes when he thought of the unexplained.
How he's managed to keep that look despite his run-ins with death
and destruction she'll never know. 

He'd studied the file, rolling up on his toes and dodging cars
until he was satisfied he had an idea of what had gone on,
then had come to stand next to her. The sun was disco balling
overhead, punching down through cloud shadows, and it had made
everything look suddenly changeable - possible. She'd felt choked
with the things she wanted to tell him, but never had. She
wanted to tell him that she'd stood on this street with another
man one day and had known what it felt like to be that car,
sliced right down the center, and that man, bleeding shrapnel,
but she'd remained silent.

She keeps her lips buttoned over the things in her heart for fear
of what it will mean about her. From the very beginning she's
been aware that her devotion to him is all-encompassing,
obsessive. If she says these things out loud she will sound mad.
But now, watching him through the lobby window where he's having
a serious conversation with their son, the kind he seems to have
only when she is out of the room, she knows that she has to ask it
somehow. She turns over the receipt from their room and scribbles
on the back. She writes, "I do not want to be buried without you.
Who will hold my hand?"  

----------

In the bone light of late evening, he paces the parking lot and
watches Scully soothing his screaming son through the guillotine
window. 

Earlier, while shucking his shoes on the motel carpet, he'd plopped
the boy down on a chair and had turned just in time to see him
tumble to the side, whacking his tender head on the wooden arms.
There was instant pandemonium, as always when a child screams. He
was fine, Scully said to them both, soothingly, not even a bump.
Mulder had edged toward the door and retreated into the night
air.

He stands still, shivering with cold and nervous fear. He
has bare feet, but the cold asphalt is choked with weeds and he 
stands on a tuft of grass and watches a spider weave in the
lintel of the doorframe. He hates himself for fleeing. It doesn't
take a genius to see that she is terrified, certain that his run
for the door indicates a tendency to leave her, or worse still,
to stay out of sense of duty alone. That's not exactly his
problem. It's complicated. One crack on the head to a baby and he
is suddenly aware that he and Scully are their child's only
defense. He can't even defend himself, as evidenced by the number
of times he's ended up on a death-bed, and that's not counting
the times he's been unable to protect her. She's been abducted
and shot and beaten and thrown and cut and twisted and been made
to eat the fruit of the trees of grief and sorrow and loss, and
now there's a baby. If anything happens to that child she'll never
forgive him and he'll never get over it. 

The door opens, breaking the tracery the spider has managed to
spin. She walks onto the cement step and looks around the dark
parking lot. 

"Come inside, Mulder, it's freezing out here," she says. Her face
is fragile and pale, but she smiles. He has the sense that the
world is widening around him, pushed back by the bigness of her
soul. He'd like to stand here a while longer, but he's at her mercy
when she calls, like the tide to moonlight. 

He walks toward the door, keeping his eyes on her, hoping he 
can make her understand. She doesn't move, and he brushes by her,
pausing long enough to put an arm around her waist and touch his
cold bare feet to the tops of hers. She shivers and hustles him
inside, shutting the door on the dark. 

----End 3a/4

3b/4

----------
Ohio
----------

He is having a nightmare. The ironic thing is, he knows he's
dreaming, but the sheer force of hate in Scully's eyes is enough
to rip him into pieces, and he wakes up and lurches toward the
bathroom where he dry-heaves over the sink. 

Scully is only two steps behind him. She was probably up before his
feet hit the floor, he thinks. She does about three things
at once before he can calm down and catch his breath. Her
efficiency has always been admirable. She manages to rub his back
soothingly and at the same time put a cool washcloth on the back
of his neck. He hears her murmuring something without words,
something that might be "I'm here," or "you're here," he can't
tell. 

The light is out, and he can't see himself in the mirror, which
is probably just as well. He feels sweaty and chilled and the
muscles in his stomach are jerking, so he leans against the
sink and presses his eyes with a hand until yellow quasars
explode. 

"Are you okay?" she asks. If they had the light on she'd be
looking deep into his eyes, he thinks, she'd be running a hand
over his head and stroking the other along his stomach, as if she
could stop the pain. She usually can. But in the dark it is
just her voice reaching him, and the slight shape of her moving
in the shadows. 

He considers her question. Five minutes ago she was screaming
her hatred for him. Five minutes ago he was telling her
that giving the baby up was for his own good, for the good of
mankind. Five minutes ago she sounded a lot like his mother. Now,
in comparison, is heavenly. 

"Yeah," he answers, "but remind me to steer clear of Italian food
before bed from now on." 

She knows enough to ignore him. 

"Are you remembering?" 

"No, just an old nightmare." The oldest. The one he'd had long
before accessing his memories of Samantha - the one where he
turned out like his father. He bends over to rinse his mouth out,
though with his new wolfish metabolism nothing had come up. The
water tastes like Scotch and he spits it out. A chill flashes
down his back and the shiver nearly knocks her hand off his neck.

"I'm going to shower," he says, "I'll be okay. Get some sleep."
He leans by her to flick on the overhead light and suddenly they
are both there in the mirror, her hair wild from her pillows and
her t-shirt wrinkled and bunched into the elastic of her pants on
one side. She blinks at him as if waking up and moves backward
out of the bathroom as he begins shedding clothes onto the tile. 

He stands under the stream of water, not thinking, feeling the
bones in his head under his fingers and trying to keep hold of
the miniature bar of soap, until the room is thick with steam. He
dries with a hand towel and swipes at his hair until it stands up.
Scully must have come back in at some point, because there are
clean clothes lying on the sink. Mulder holds on to the wall to
keep his balance as he pulls on the boxers and sweatpants. She
forgot to leave a shirt. 

There's a blue light from the bedroom that is comforting and
familiar, and he realizes that she must not be asleep, but
watching television. Of course she won't sleep until she's
made sure he's okay - how stupid of him. He flips off the
bathroom light and walks toward his bed. She is sitting up
against her headboard pretending to eat a leftover piece of
pizza, pretending to be absorbed. She has on huge cotton socks
that swallow half her legs, and she looks rumpled and girly and
about half asleep. He smiles. 

"I love this movie," she says, pointing a toe toward the screen.
Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant are doing an upright spooning
walk out of a crowded room. 

"'Bringing up Baby?'" 

"Mmm," she agrees. 

Mulder begins to crawl up on his bed and sees that his pillow is
missing in action. Scully's wedged it as a shield through the
bars on the baby's crib, to block the light from the TV. 

"You can have my spare," she says, but doesn't hand it to him. He
slings his legs over the edge of his bed and watches her faked
focus on the movie. Her spare pillow is sitting up against the
headboard like the one she's using, and she has switched sides of
the bed, moving over toward the window. All she needs to
complete the invitation is a chocolate on the pillow. They never
could do this normally, he thinks. They've always gone about this
backward. Still, he's not about to complain. 

"Is that the last piece of pizza?" he asks, diverting her as he
slides into her bed. His weight makes the mattress dip and she
doesn't stop herself from tipping toward him a little. 

"Yes," she says, handing it to him. "Take it. I'm not hungry."
She's picked off all the green peppers and black olives, leaving
the pepperoni and cheese, his favorite part. He slides down in
the bed and takes a bite, to get rid of the taste of fear and
imaginary scotch. The covers move as she slips down beside him,
setting the remote on his chest. 

"You can change channels," she says, shedding her socks and
aiming them toward her suitcase. Like he's paying attention to
the TV. She turns on her side to face him and sighs, getting
ready for sleep, doing her best to make this seem simple.
Mulder makes himself watch the screen through two commercial
breaks, until they can both pretend she's asleep. She waits
a good while before moving toward him, her sharp nose butting
into his shoulder, her hand barely touching his side. It's the
first thing that has felt remotely normal since he returned,
which is odd, since this was just beginning to be normal when he
left. Still, he feels the residue of his bad dream slipping away
down the sides of their bed, pushed by the steady rhythm of her
breath against his arm. Mulder jabs the power on the television
remote and plunges the room into darkness and silence before
letting himself matriculate toward her.    

----------

She wants to tell him to mind his health. He is a long row to
hoe, Mulder, and he has an irritating tendency to drill holes in
his head and take skiffs out into the Bermuda Triangle and
otherwise show little regard for his life and her peace of mind.
Just now, while he lies hunched on the other side of her bed,
surfing channels and nursing leftover pizza, she is conscious
that her first instinct is to wrap him in a soft blanket and tell
him he needs to get some sleep, or ask him about his nightmare,
but that's not what they do, so she keeps quiet. She would like
to keep him very well in a pumpkin shell or knock some sense into
his stubborn head. Instead, she keeps her eyes shut against the
glare of the television and attempts to remain casually unaffected
as he slides his warm body in under the covers. She lies there,
pretending to doze, pretending that they are equals and that her
whole life does not depend on making sure he is safe and whole. 

It feels both new and old to be lying next to him again. She
knows she has maidenish impulses and is thankful they are often
overwhelmed by the weight of her need for him. For months when he
was gone she made room for him as she walked. She turned corners
sideways so they could go through doors together and allowed him enough
space in the elevator. All of this without conscious thought. It
only occurred to her later, when she stopped making room, and  
started knocking things off shelves. "Pregnancy makes a lot of
women klutzy," her mother said, but she didn't buy that.
She'd thought of psychic manifestations or thought forms, not
allowing herself to consider them seriously enough to feel silly.
Still, any way you looked at it, she was carrying him around with
her. In the office one afternoon she'd stepped into his space as
she moved to let Agent Doggett by and, without touching anything,
pushed a pile of books and pencils off his desk. The force of her
longing - or his - was taking up six feet of air immediately
behind her. 

----------

Every night for the past year, Scully has seen the clock strike
three a.m. It remains a bittersweet hour for her, a time of
regrets, when she is most likely to be held down under the water
weight of tears unshed. Tonight, in the lion quiet of this hotel
room, she strums the silky leg of her baby and watches a
vesper mist feather the lawn beyond the window. In a slice of
light, she can see Mulder's reflection. He is watching her, 
and that is why she cannot turn around. 

The line of buttons on her pajama top are open, and she is
suddenly beset by a wave of fear so strong it freezes her in
place. He has not seen her do this before. In the window, his
eyes look dark and miles away. She cannot read their expression
and does not think she wants to. 

From the beginning she appreciated the way he looked at her. He
was impressed with her from the first. After all, she could identify
organic compounds and mutated worms. His respect is a powerful
drug, and she'd rather do anything than turn around to see a new
look in his eyes. 

She considers being brusque, buttoning her shirt and calmly
putting the boy back to bed, turning to give Mulder her
inscrutable look, but three a.m. leaves her thin-skinned and
emotional, and she doesn't think she can. The problem is she
doesn't feel brusque. Will's delicate hand is scratching at the
space between her breasts and he heaves an occasional sigh that
makes her hold him closer. So in the curious line of fire between
two worlds she opts not to turn around. 

The night is silent - she can hear the call of night birds
outside and the rise and fall of small empires in distant
galaxies. It shouldn't come as a surprise to her how much rawness
can live in the small moments - the here and now. This time
last month she was in her apartment, alone, praying that she
would have another chance with Mulder, and here he is, the answer
to every prayer she's ever had, and she has her back to him. Fear
is a luxury she can no longer afford, she thinks. She is showing
little faith in him, but he once told her that he'd never seen
her as a mother before. She doesn't know if she can keep the
hope and need off of her face long enough to let him determine if
he can see her that way now. 

Their relationship is full of change, but then it always has
been. Every time she gets her feet under her, gravity betrays
her, and yet here they are, still. That fact alone should be
enough to give her courage, she's sure. Theirs is an unfinished
universe. There are times she's sure they could not achieve any
greater level of trust, and then, without warning, they do. Two
years ago she would have defended their lack of a physical
relationship. They were friends and partners, she'd told herself,
it was perfect - and it was. And then later it became more
perfect. Now she is at a crossroads again, but this time with
another small heart to protect. 

She feels the evening waiting around her, offers up a silent
prayer, then turns toward the bed, keeping her gaze on his feet.
He doesn't move, and she walks toward her rumpled bedclothes,
seating herself and letting her head lean back on the headboard.
She tells herself it is not cheating to keep her eyes closed.
Will begins to fall asleep, and she flicks the soft pads of his
feet to wake him up, and to have something to do with her hands. 

The soft creak of the bed is the only indication that Mulder is
even awake, but she can feel him watching. He is sitting up now,
she thinks, he's getting ready to do something. Long seconds pass
until he slides across the space between them, settling himself
beside her, his long leg touching hers, his shoulder brushing her arm
 - their familiar silent lines of communication. Then, his
ear against her chest, his face close to the baby's. His whisper
is like alms to her soul. She can almost not hear him, there is
nothing but air and the voiceless timber of his understanding
behind it. 

"I hear your heartbeat," he says. She brings a hand up to press
against her eyes, but it is no use, a tear traces its way down
her neck between her breasts. Mulder traces its path, his hand
stilling against her skin, and all is quiet.

----End 3b/4

4/4

----------
West Virginia
----------

They drive straight through West Virginia, over the blue ridges
and bluffs of Appalachia. The world outside is so stunning it's
almost painful, he thinks, a harlot dressed wild and rouged for 
her lover. One final fling before death. Mulder drives for the 
first time on their trip, holding out his hands for the keys as
they leave their motel in the morning, and she spends the day 
curled up in the passenger seat, asleep. Two weeks on the road
and she looks like she could use a vacation. He navigates the 
roads carefully and tries to keep from watching the way the light
settles on her skin, the way her soul hovers right behind her
closed eyelids. In the back, Will keeps losing his favorite
pacifier, the one with "a realistic nipple", which Mulder
searches for purely out of empathy with the kid. Once you've had
Scully, imitation doesn't work any more. The boy sends a warning
screech, giving Mulder enough time to reach into the back, locate
it, and plug it in, all without taking his eyes off the road. 

It's a slow-moving trip, since he and the baby have to get out
and get their circulation moving every hour or so. Halfway
through the state, in some gas station up on a mountain's
shoulder in the heavens, Scully gets out too, taking the baby, and
Mulder finds a note. He'd been rummaging for vending machine cash
in her jacket pocket, and instead, he finds a receipt. 

What she has written makes his throat ache. Before getting out of
the car he puts the paper back in the pocket and lays the jacket
across the back of her seat like folding a vestment in a
sacristy. The car is parked close to the edge, and two feet over
there's a straight shot down this mountain to a hard floor.
Little clouds spin in the trees below him like miniature galaxies
and he thinks about celestial mechanics and her warm body near
his while he awaits her return. 

She moves into his line of sight, holding the baby facing
outward, a black bag full of diapers under her arm. Strangely,
she doesn't look at all out of the ordinary. She moves like
Scully, those straight shoulders, that long stride. He
reaches over and opens the back door of the car, watching her
slide in to settle the baby in his seat. She straightens and
taps the back door shut with her foot, nearly running into 
him as she turns around. 

"Mulder?" 

He's moved into her, leaning back against the car to even out the
great distance between their heads, and his hands are on her
face. That's it, he thinks, here we are. She is absolutely still as
he kisses her. Just a gentle press of lips, the bumping of
noses, the breathing in of one another. She presses in closer,
her hands slipping around him, kneading his back like a kitten.
He traces her fine cheek bones with his lips, moving back toward
her ear. He wishes he could say it without speaking, without
embarrassing her, but he has to say it. 

"I'll hold your hand, Scully," he says. "I won't let you be
alone."

"Oh," is all she says, pressing her face into his neck, her voice
low. "Yes."  

----------

In April, she gave in to demands and left work. She needed time,
everyone told her, time to prepare for the baby and to relax. She
suspected that they also meant she needed time away from the
covert stares and gossip of her co-workers, but those didn't
bother her. She'd long since gotten used to the idea that
she and Mulder were objects of speculation and interest, and the
truth was most of the talk at the bureau didn't seem malicious as
much as genuinely curious. She let it go - there was more than
enough to worry about. 

So much of her pregnancy was about laying siege to her privacy, a
battle she'd fought since her early years. Her mother had to be
forcibly stopped from turning her apartment into a toy store, and
Skinner and the Gunmen from trying to hover. It was the pressure
of constant vigilance and maintaining a sense of gravity
that had led Scully to a small house on Rhode Island.

She'd been having the same dream every night for weeks. In it,
Mulder was showing her around his old summer house, poking
around in drawers, his voice echoing off of the paneled walls.
Bits of plaster and dust had settled over every surface causing
Mulder to tsk in disappointment. They wandered the house all day,
standing in rooms together, soaking up a sense of now, until he
found a flashlight and led her out the back door. She stood
barefoot on the clapboard porch as he pointed out the stars, and
when she looked back at the yard he was gone, disappeared behind
a bed of wild asters. When she woke, she knew she could either
see the house in Quonochontaug, or she could stay where she was
and suffer a nervous breakdown. She'd always been practical,
so she packed a bag and left that afternoon. 

She'd slept on the plastic covered twin bed in the loft, the one
he'd slept on as a child. There was a trundle bed underneath, the
sheets folded neatly on top, as though still awaiting its young
occupant's return. Scully lived undisturbed for a week, not going
through drawers, or visiting the room he'd nearly shot her in,
just sitting in the yard, bearing the weight of his absence. It
was spring, and the lawn was overgrown with plants whose names
she'd never known or couldn't remember. Weeds choked out the
flower beds. There were things being born, pushing their way up
through the corpses of their fallen ancestors toward the sun. She
thought about extinction and annihilation. They had statistics on
that kind of thing - the number of species wiped from existence
while human beings went mindlessly on, and the only things
creeping up on land from water these days were unholy. She
watched the sky. She knelt in the way she'd been taught - on her
knees, hands folded, face to the stars, but her prayer was
different. She prayed that wherever he was he could feel the
sun, prayed that he knew she was here, on her knees, searching
the firmament for his return. 

----------
Virginia
----------

They are a few hours from home, eating comfort food in a diner,
waiting out a freak hail storm, and he wants to know if he still
has an apartment. 

She looks up from her plate to find him watching her, the way he
has been all along: seriously, waiting to see if he's saying the
right thing. He has the baby on his lap, and they both stare at
her curiously as she gathers her thoughts.  

"Yes," she says, "you do." 

He nods and begins eating again, flipping one-handed through the
last file from the stack she'd given him and letting the baby
gum his other thumb. So close to home, she thinks. She feels an 
urge to be back, but not an urge to hurry. For the moment
this is perfect. Of all the things she's thankful for, and they are a
legion, she appreciates this time with him the most. She's made
herself wake early the past two weeks, so she can roll up on an
elbow and study him in the morning light that filters into their
rooms like syrup that hardens, bottling them in the moment. It's
possible she has enough memories stored up to be able to survive 
one night without him near her again, though she can't be sure.  

Outside, the hail has stopped. Shards of ice blanket the street
like bursts of fallen stars, and people are making tentative 
forays out of doorways up and down the block, shaking their heads in
wonder, surveying the damage. Strangers are talking to one
another on the sidewalk, gesturing around them. It's funny how
much bonding is done in catastrophe, she thinks. Across the
table, Mulder suddenly drops his fork onto his plate and mutters,
"Oh my God, Scully." 

She smiles out the window. She's been wondering when he would get
around to that file. He's chuckling, and she watches him in the
reflection of the window as the story of a vengeful Indian holy man
jolts his cognition meter into the red astonishment zone. He
opens his mouth to launch a series of questions at her but she
stands up, lays a tip on the table and lifts the baby from his 
lap. 

"Ready, Mulder? Let's go home." 

He shakes his head, dumbfounded, and doesn't tear his eyes from
the file. She grabs the end of it and uses it as a carrot to lead
him from the booth before handing it to him again. He follows her
toward the door, muttering to himself. "Wait a minute, how did
this guy get around on a cart? Wouldn't that make him easy to
escape?" 

"Mulder," she says, "you forgot your jacket." 

His eyes still on the paper, he detours back toward the booth as
she steps outside. The diner owner has swept the hail from the
steps and cleared the sidewalks, and despite the icy shower
earlier, it's a warm night. She stands on the sidewalk and
watches Mulder inside, still muttering to himself, as he grabs
his jacket from the coat rack. Above her, the sky is a memorial of
everything she's lost to it. Underneath, the earth is beaten and
bruised with feet and ice and full of corpses. But here, she is
squinting at her partner through a beveled glass door and waiting
for him to join her. She plants a kiss on the soft top of their 
son's head. It is a moment of grace. 

During Mulder's absence she came to understand that the shape of her
need was his shape, infinite yet bounded. She vowed to get
through her days without mentioning him out loud, though in her
mind a constant litany of "Mulder would..." or, "Mulder said..."
exerted its invisible gravity. She felt stricken with the need to
be him, to make herself over in his image so he wouldn't be lost
or forgotten, but she couldn't. She heard him in her head, every
wise-ass comment, every crazy theory. She shot a child at point-
blank range, a kid with baby teeth and bitten nails, to prove she
could be his equal. But the shot jolted her back into herself and
she'd cried under the blank space of sky, feeling him slip away
further into the ether by her inability to take on his mantle. 

He comes to stand on the diner steps, putting the file down, a
toothpick hanging from his lips. She continues to squint at him,
blurring his edges.  

"What are you doing?"  

"Shhh," she whispers, "I'm pretending it's you."

There have been times they have retreated from each other faster
than the two ends of the universe. She's spent years with him
when he would never have guessed what he meant to her. She has
spent years when she didn't know herself. He moves down the steps
and walks toward her until their toes are touching.  

"It is me," he whispers back. 

She opens her eyes and nods, letting him take the car seat from
her to snap into the back seat. He hands her the file and reaches
for the baby as she goes around to the passenger door, sucking in
a few more breaths of this calm night air. He's talking to her
from inside, over the din of Will, who is not at all happy to be
back in the car.  

"So you performed the autopsy, and you concluded that this guy
actually _crawled_ into these people?" 

She leans against her door, resting her chin on the hood of the
car, and closes her eyes. He is about to make her a very happy
woman. She has to prop herself up to keep from falling down in
anticipation.

"Mmmhmmm," she says, noncomitally. 

"Gives new meaning to the term 'anal retentive', doesn't it?" he
asks, straightening up. 

Scully throws back her head and laughs, something she hasn't done
in so long that it actually hurts. She can't stop the tears that
burn her vision, and she doesn't try, she just lets herself laugh
and cry while Mulder levels his gaze at her. 

"What?" 

She shakes her head and smiles at him under the watching face of
the moon. 

"Oh God, Mulder," she says, wiping her eyes, "I can't tell you
how long I've been waiting to hear you make that joke."    

----------
  
It has been a long two weeks, a long year, a long life, in some
ways. Still, what he remembers of their journey is the speed of
travel. The purple mountained majesty of his homeland is blurred
in his mind. His adult life is a collection of motels so boring
they seem to encourage amnesia. How is it, then, that he remembers
her in such minute detail? After all these years he should be taking
her presence for granted, he thinks. 

He probably shouldn't remember one steamy night two summers ago,
when they'd borrowed towels from their motel bathroom for a picnic
blanket and set off to watch Shakespeare in the park. She'd been
wearing sandals and had her toenails painted a deep red. They'd
eaten snow cones in the dark and she hadn't batted an eyelash
when the production turned out to be a nude interpretation of
A Midsummer Night's Dream. Around them, some members of the
audience had partaken of the casual atmosphere and stripped under the
stars. She'd taken off her shoes, leaned back on her towel, 
and silently mouthed every one of Titania's lines. Her lips had
been dyed green from her snow cone, and around them the more daring
viewers were as naked as newts. He reflects on this now and mourns
the fact that he missed sandal season this year.   

"Where are we slumber partying, Scully? Your place or mine?" 

They are nearing the city and he is distracted by her hand, which
rests near his thigh, and some sound that she's making that
sounds a little like humming. He turns to meet her gaze. She's
staring at him like he's just asked something incredibly
important, and in the smatter of lights flashing past the car her
eyes are a deep blue. She is all I'll ever know of heaven, he
thinks. 

She speaks carefully. "We can go to your place. It might be nice
for you to be home again." 

She is apparently unaware that she is home to him. His apartment
is just a couch and boxes of porn and old records, as far
as he's concerned. Everything important about the place has
something to do with what she's done there - where she stood,
sat, laid, or threatened to leave. He still avoids the hall tile
he'd laid her on the night the bee had stung her, and there's a heart-
blood stain wrought by a fictional killer on his hardwood floor.
He is sentimentally attached to his kitchen countertop purely
because she likes to sit on it. It's possible he's taking things
a bit far. 

He fell for her years ago, quietly, before he'd even realized it
was happening. He fell toward her like an autumn leaf pulled
gently to the ground. And now, after all these years, he thinks
he should be past the swamping giddiness of it, but he isn't. She
is like letting go on a roller-coaster.

They drive for an hour through late-evening traffic until they
are cruising onto his street. In the back seat, Will has
screeched himself into exhaustion, and he lolls against his 
cushioned headrest, snuffling his accusation and betrayal, his
little eyes drooping. Mulder scans the neighborhood for changes,
but can't find many. The curbs have had a new coat of yellow
paint, the climbing vines around the door of his building need
trimming, but that's about it. Still, he feels different. He's
never carried a baby up his steps before. He's never come home as
part of a family. A few curtains move in the windows of
apartments, and he imagines people inside, peering out at him,
speculating.    

Scully has been silent since they pulled into the city,
thoughtful, as though anticipating some huge decision or
discussion on his part, which he's too wound up to decipher.
Still, she stands close to him as she unlocks the front door with
her key and they spill into the lobby with a newborn sense of
wonder and disbelief. He can hardly believe how odd this feels,
poised and miraculous, like an egg that will stand on end on the
equinox. Cocooned in the elevator, they lean against one another,
and he breathes in her hothouse flower smell, grounding himself.
Her head always has fit perfectly against his chest.

The bell dings fourth floor and he steps out with some degree of 
trepidation. Disquiet aside, he can't quite concentrate. Behind
them they have highways and weekdays and years of normal behavior
and now she is exchanging him his keys for their dozing son. She
has her hand on his wrist, her hair brushes his arm. He is
trembling and can't fit the key into the lock, so she opens the
door for them and they step into familiar country. 

He expects desolation or dust, not the inhabited kingdom of this
place, with its tiny sock wedged in the cushion of the couch,
pair of earrings by the fish tank, blankets strewn wildly on the
floor in the bedroom. Scully soothes the baby back to sleep in
the dark, and he shucks his shoes and makes his rounds, 
discovering that she was here when she got the call that he'd
returned. There's a towel on the floor of the bathroom, a small
plastic baby bathtub, and her hairdryer abandoned on the floor,
still plugged in. It's a dead giveaway.  

One of his bureau drawers is open and he sees his slate colored
t-shirts folded neatly next to a stack of bright baby clothes.
Something about the shattering dailiness of that hits him right
in the center of his chest. A few weeks ago he was floating 
around in space, being sliced and sorted, and she was here
in this room, solemnly folding baby clothes. It strikes him as 
hard and sad, that she hadn't even cleared out a whole drawer for
herself and their son. She'd just moved his things aside slightly, 
living on what little he'd left behind, not willing to ask more 
than that of him. She should have asked more of him, he thinks. 
She should have moved everything in, her medical journals, soap,
gaudy plastic baby toys, everything.  
 
He slides the drawer shut and begins an inventory of the room.
His shirts still hang in the closet, shoes on the closet floor,
sweaters thrown on a shelf. It occurs to him that there's no 
reason for him to have an apartment anymore. He's been gone for 
a year. The fact that his toothbrush still hangs in its place
in the bathroom says something fierce about them. He is too 
tired to dwell on it. He knows it already, anyway. This level 
of devotion is not new. 

The apartment is as quiet as a sanctuary. In the other room 
he can hear her moving around, hear the water running in the 
kitchen, hears her calling her mother to tell her they've arrived
safely. The weight of this homecoming has worn him out, and he
ambles back into the bedroom and lowers himself to the side of 
the bed. Over on his bookshelf by the door is an hourglass
that he picked up somewhere in Illinois years  ago. He'd spotted
it in the window of an antique shop one afternoon, on a day when
she'd had three nosebleeds, the third of which started on the 
sidewalk outside the police station. She'd gone into the antique
store next door to wash up, and he'd bought the hourglass. He 
looks at it now, differently. The sand inside hasn't run out 
like he'd expected. He'd dreamed about building sand castles
with a dark-haired little boy, once, and about Scully telling him
to get up and fight the fight. Everything that he'd once assumed 
was impossible unexpectedly isn't. 

He's tired, bone weary, really, but the memory of her face
in that old dream pulls him to his feet. He'd like to sleep,
but he won't lie down without her beside him anymore. There's 
been enough time wasted. 

He's on his way to find her when they meet at the door. She 
leans against the jamb, surveying him for possible emotional 
damage, for cracks in his psyche. He knows that look - it makes
him smile. She smiles back at him. There are a few new lines 
around her mouth, he thinks, but something softer in her eyes.
She blinks quickly and looks past him into the dark room she's
spent so much time in alone the past year. He marvels at her
ability to tread so easily between his world and hers, one 
mapless journey at a time. He doesn't exactly make things easy. 

She ambles past him toward the bed, sitting demurely on the side.
There's next to no light in the room, but what there is she seems to
catch and throw back toward him, like a prism. She sits with her
knees together and her hands folded in her lap, all Good Catholic
and Good Girl and Good Partner. She begins unbuttoning her 
jacket.   

He watches her toe off her shoes, pull the tails of her shirt
out of her pants, crawl wearily up the bed toward the pillows.
She's adopted his side, next to the table and alarm clock. She
watches him watching her. It's a long moment before he can move.
     
The bed is soft under him as he slides in next to her, moving
up under the covers until they are face to face. They lie there
not touching for long minutes, breathing one another in, her toes 
touching his shins, her eyes fluttering drowsily shut under his 
gaze. All is quiet, and after a while, as if by happy accident, 
they steal kisses in the hush. Her mouth blooms like a flower in
the dark, her hands on his back, sliding up under his shirt. 
 
They shed bits of clothing to the floor, which lay like trail 
markers leading safely home. He learns her landscape again,
the way he can taste her soul in the white hollow of her throat,
the glorious beat of her heart under his hands. Her skin is feverish
under him. She burns cool like mint, or moonlight. Quietly, they
map one another in the dark with hands and mouths and whispered
directions. Inside, they sprawl across their new world.

Outside, the universe stretches to infinity in every direction.   


    
----------
END
----------



Author's Notes: 

JET read this aloud after my birthday dinner, and it got me
thinking: From D.H. Lawrence's Preface of the American Edition of
New Poems...
 
"Life, the ever-present, knows no finality,
no finished crystallization. The perfect
rose is only a running flame, emerging
and flowering off, and is never in any sense
at rest, static, finished. Herein lies its
transcendent liveliness. The whole tide of
all life and all time suddenly heaves, and 
appears before us as an apparition, a revelation." 

I think somewhere in there I found inspiration. For what, I 
don't know. <g>

Eternal thanks and devotion to my Beta Pit Crew, who swabbed me
off, watched me cry and kick the tires, and then sent me back in
there. JET gets the rest-area playgrounds and creamy mashed
potatoes, Meredith gets the Badlands, Fi gets the Veal, and
Barbara D. gets all of the Southernisms and a leopard named 
Baby (assuming she can keep her fingers *out* of the animal's
nostrils. <eg>) Betsy gets 'Will,' because she insisted. ;-) 
  
Thanks also to Meg and Shari, who approved the test version.