Title: The Children's Teeth: Litany
Author: Erin McCole Cupp CathyLex@aol.com

All six fics in this series can be found here: http://mulderscreek.com/fics/childrensteeth.html

"Litany - a prayer with responses, in public worship." Webster's New Dictionary and Thesaurus


January 23, 2024

Meg had lost so much weight recently that Kevin was starting to worry about her. Really worry, even more than usual. Meg had always been slender to begin with, but lately she'd become downright skinny.

When they were still just kids, his mom had always told her, "You just need to grow into those legs of yours, Megabyte."

"Coltish," Gram Scully had always said. Legs too long for the rest of her body.

Then when they were taking on New York City together, he used to think to himself that she had finally grown into her legs. She was still tall and thin -- "gawky" as she liked to call herself -- but to his eyes it was a willowy kind of thin. Her muscles had been smooth beneath both the business suits she wore to her internship at the French Consulate and the t-shirts and jeans she wore on the subway over to his apartment for nights of old movies and bad Indian takeout.

Within the first weeks of the invasion, willowy had become wiry. She'd been doing too much work on not enough food, carrying so much in her frame pack sometimes he was genuinely afraid she'd tip over backwards from the weight. As they packed for each trip, he would try to convince her not to take so much of the vaccine with her and to pack more food instead.

"S'matter, Kev?" She smirked, "you afraid a girl can carry more than you?"

Now he hefted his own heavy pack higher onto his shoulders and heard the vials of serum rattle within. Meg was fiddling with the compass. Absently, she pushed the sweat- and rain-damp sleeve caps of her t-shirt up onto her shoulders, revealing her upper arms knotted with muscle from climbing mountains, lifting overstuffed backpacks, digging graves for strangers and carrying away the empty shells of digested bodies.

That part he would never get used to. They'd been traveling for well over a year now to so many places, and their efforts just seemed like such a drop in the proverbial bucket. But they kept fighting their little fight, making pinprick dents wherever they could.

Someday, this would be over. This would be over and they would laugh about it. If they lived.

"Are we lost yet?" Cho, their pilot -- now hiking companion -- asked as he pulled the black pleather baseball cap off of his head and wiped the sweat from his forehead.

Meg held up a finger to silence him. Looking from the compass to the sun peeking through the forest canopy, and back to the compass again, she shook her head. "I know where we're going."

The skin of Meg's biceps, once Irish-pale, now turned red with continued exposure.

"Meg," Kevin reminded her, "sunscreen."

She turned her turquoise eyes on him with a faintly irritated grimace. "Jeez, Kev. Who died and made you nag-meister?"

He couldn't help but smile a little.

She slipped the compass back onto her belt and pointed. "That way."

He had to ask. "Are you sure?"

Meg gave an indignant huff. "How many times have I been wrong about these things?"

"That one time in Romania," Cho piped in.

Meg shrugged. "Okay, that one time."

"Australian Outback," Kevin said, "and that's all I'm going to say."

"Fine. Twice."

Cho said, "What about that time when--"

"Okay, okay, I get it!" Meg rolled her eyes and slapped her compass irritably. "I miss those old GPS thingers. They made this navigation business so much easier."

"I miss satelites," Cho grumbled.

"I miss air conditioning," added Meg, "and I miss temperate climates."

"And I miss lower altitudes and easy breathing," Cho said with a slight wheeze.

"Oh, great," Kevin muttered, "here we go again with The Litany."

"The Litany" was what Kevin had named this game of theirs -- a game to pass the time, their call and response of what each of them missed. They trudged through jungle and desert and deciduous forest, or flew Cho's plane from tiny airfield to tiny airfield, and when things got boring or too melancholy, someone would begin The Litany with the wry words, "I miss..."

"Your turn, Kev," Meg said to Kevin as she turned her back and began hiking through the rainforest, wielding her machete to clear a new path.

Kevin fell into step behind his best friend and sighed, trying to think of his own contribution to The Litany. "I miss... pizza."

Meg laughed. "Kevin Declan, you *always* miss pizza."

"I'm sorry," he answered, pushing at the branch that had just thwacked him in the face, "I guess I'm just not as creative as you two."

They marched to the beat of Meg's swinging machete, Meg and Cho trading calls in The Litany.

"I miss soaking in hot bubble baths."

"I miss just plain old showers."

"I miss nail polish."

"I miss deodorant."

"I miss you *wearing* deodorant, Cho. Phew!"

They bickered back and forth like that, like brother and sister, for minutes, and Kevin waxed jealous. Again. It used to be Kevin who held such verbal exchanges with Meg: on the playground in the earliest days, or in front of the computer games they shared back and forth, or when she helped him with his Spanish homework or he helped her with calculus... the good old days.

Unbelieveable. He was reminiscing over the good old days at the ripe old age of twenty-four.

Those days were gone now. His childhood playmate had become a warrior. What was that old TV show? Somebodyorother, Warrior Princess. In his mind, he made the substitution: Meg Mulder, Warrior Princess. He began to smile to himself. Then, he began to sweat even more profusely as thoughts of Meg in leather sprung to mind.

Inappropriate thoughts. Unacceptable thoughts. Unavoidable thoughts as his best friend battered their way through the rainforest ahead of him, her well-defined calf muscles flexing with each step.

Battle on, Meg.

"What're you laughing at, Kevin?" Meg called over her shoulder.

Kevin straightened his face. "I wasn't laughing."

She actually stopped and turned to see his face, flicking one of her lopsided smiles his way. "Were too laughing. Or at least grinning like you just won Publisher's Clearinghouse."

Damn. How did she *do* that? Know he was smiling without even seeing him? Hoping her pseudo-psychic powers did not let her see the thoughts he'd just been entertaining, he shrugged innocently. Meg didn't quite look like she was buying it. He tried to think of something distracting to say, but lucky for him the weather obligingly provided diversion enough.

"Here we go with the rain again," he told Meg, inwardly reflecting on how incredibly *stupid* he sounded.

"We just *had* to go to Ecuador during the rainy season," Cho whined behind them. "Figures."

"It's always the rainy season in Ecuador," Meg yelled over the *thwack! thwack! thwack!* of her machete and the increasing pounding of the monster-sized raindrops.

"At least it's chasing the bugs away," Kevin offered.

"Yeah, thanks for the optimism, Kev," Meg said.

"Well, the bugs around here *are* huge," Kevin defended.

"Stupid rain. I can't see a thing." Meg halted their progress. "Kev, reach into the top outside pouch of my pack's rain cover and get my hat out."

"Your adventure hat?"

She nodded, turning slightly. "Now I know you're laughing."

Kevin reached and unzipped the pocket. "Only on the inside."

"What do you have against my adventure hat?"

Kevin handed the khaki-colored //chapeau// to his friend. "I have nothing against your adventure hat. It just looks more suited to fishing for sea bass than to our current line of work."

"You're just jealous," she snickered back, reaching up to rub her palm against his dark scalp, "'cause ever since you lost your hat somewhere in California you've had to keep your head shaved so we don't see you with nappy- hair."

He closed his eyes briefly at the sensation of Meg's hand against his stubbly hair. "That's not why I keep my hair this short, Meg."

"Is too!"

Now they *were* fighting like brother and sister again, but this wasn't quite what he'd been hoping for. He wasn't quite sure what he *did* want, but this certainly wasn't it.

"It's just more convenient this way," Kevin finally answered.

Meg jammed her "adventure hat" onto her head and turned to walk forward again.

And then she was gone.

Before panic could even register in his brain, before he could even call her name over the deepening rainstorm, the ground gave way beneath Kevin's feet, and he was on his face, hurtling down the side of the mountain behind Meg. A high-pitched scream from behind revealed that Gerald Cho had fallen victim to a similar fate.

Mud and rocks smacked his face, and he could neither breathe nor see. Fortunately or unfortunately, a well-placed rock hit him in the side with enough force to flip him over onto his frame pack. An involuntary holler escaped him, but a wash of mud plugged his mouth shut. He choked.

And then, the ride was over just as quickly as it had begun, throwing Kevin -- backpack and all -- against Meg, who had come to an abrupt halt in a huge puddle. He was hit again, this time by Cho. The three of them, sputtering and gasping, collected in the overflowing puddle like three pool balls sunk in a pocket.

Kevin dragged his arm across the bottom of his nose, clearing it of the sludge that had found its way up there. He coughed up several mouthfuls of slick black mud. His memory, in return, coughed up images of when he himself had been infected with the alien oil... the memory of raw consciousness dawning with wrenching pain as the stuff left him in violent gurgles. A cold, dark chill settled over him at the thought, and he sat in the puddle, frozen.

He'd heard of people who had memory blockages. He wished he could have been so lucky as to forget that moment of his life.

A sharp, falsetto yelp cracked him out of his trance. It was Meg's yelp. He looked over and saw her pushing her mud-soaked hair out of her face with one hand, wiping her eyes with the other.

"Hoo-boy!" She was laughing. "This is turnin' out to be one *hell* of a mornin'!"

"Wow," Cho said in wonder, pulling his hat down more tightly around his head. "That was like something out of a movie!"

Kevin glared at their pilot, who was exhibiting his characteristic lack of grounding in reality.

"Too bad it's not a movie, Pleather Boy," Meg said to Cho, struggling to get up. "In movies, none of the characters lose their hats."

Kevin briefly forgot his previous dread when he saw that Meg's adventure hat had fallen off in the mudslide.

Meg caught him laughing at her openly this time, and she shook her head. She pointed to the sky. "*This* is why I don't wear sunscreen."

The three of them helped each other up, checked each other for injuries, and, finding only scrapes and bruises and soreness, they resumed their trek. The rain did not let up until just before nightfall, just before they reached the makeshift village of their destination.


"Ahhh. There's my beauty," Cho breathed as they came into visual range of the airfield and his new mini-cargo plane. He waved at the silhouette standing by the plane, waving back at them through the darkness.

"Who?" Meg snickered, "the plane or the //mamita// standing beside it?"

"My Lady Mulder," Cho said with sincerest gravity, "no other than you could so verily steal away my heart. Veronica is nothing, a mere carnation, compared to--"

"Cho, how many times do I have to tell you to cut the 'My Lady' crap?"

Cho bowed to Meg as a servant might bow to the Queen of Hearts, his backpack nearly tipping him forward. He caught himself just before he fell flat on his face, and a slight blush tinted his cheeks. Meg shook her mud-crusted curls and began leading their descent to the airfield. Kevin followed them down to the plane.

"//Hola, Veronica!//" Meg called.

"//Margarita, como esta?//"

The two of them rattled conversation to and fro //en Espan

ol//, and Kevin tuned them out. He'd barely passed the three mandatory years of high school Spanish. As he and Cho tossed their packs into the plane, the only sense he could make out of their words included something about a bath.

Vernoica snickered at their state of cleanliness -- or lack thereof. "//Tienen que ban

arse.//"

Meg snorted and nodded.

"Can we wash up here?" Kevin asked Meg.

Grinning, she nodded back at him, just as Veronica began chattering in Spanish once more, handing Meg a piece of off-white paper and talking to her in a tense voice. Spanish or not, Kevin could understand that Veronica's words were not translating to good.

Meg frowned and took the paper out of their Ecuadorian cohort's hand. "German," Meg reported aloud in English. So that meant it was a message from her mother, Doc Scully.

Meg's brow furrowed more deeply, and then she gave a small gasp. "Ohmygod..."

Kevin's heart contracted at the sound. "Meg? What's wrong?"

"What is it, my lady?"

Instead of arching her eyebrow at him in irritation, Meg reached out to Cho and gave him a soft, tentative hug. Kissing him lightly on the cheek, Meg whispered in Cho's ear. "Something's happened. We have to get home."

Kevin felt the familiar yet irrational flare of jealousy stab at him once again, until Meg translated the message into English out loud for their benefit.

Thoughts of a bath and fresh clothes fled his mind as Kevin followed Meg into Cho's retrofitted twenty four-passenger plane. Forget the other deliveries they were supposed to make over the next three weeks. They needed to return to home base.

If they weren't already too late.


"We'll be touching down near Havana to refuel, since I was expecting to go to Quito next, and not all the way back north," Cho told them. Meg Mulder nodded and briefly thanked God for Gerald Cho, their pilot and the youngest of the Lone Gunmen. The kid might have been a bit of a flake, but he was a damn fine pilot, caring for both plane and passengers alike.

Even if Kevin could be a bit cold to him sometimes.

Meg turned and looked at her best friend, smiling at him in reassurance.

"How ya doin', Prince Charm-less?" She asked him, trying to get him to laugh, even just a little.

He smiled for her benefit, but the smile did not reach his eyes.

Meg knew Kevin did not like to fly. She knew what he did like: roller coasters, rappelling down cliffs, and as a boy he'd loved climbing trees and dizzyingly-high jungle gyms. But he did not like airplanes.

*My Kevin is a complex man,* her brain reflected, just in time for another side of her brain to ask, *Since when did you start thinking of him as 'your Kevin'?*

*Probably some time in college,* the other part of her brain retorted. She was used to these thoughts by now. She schooled herself to ignore them. Sometimes it even worked.

They descended to another "safe" runway -- one they'd used in the past whenever they were en route to South America. Whenever, that is, they were en route to South America ever since colonization had gotten seriously underway. Cuban Communists didn't seem such a threat to Americans now that there were bigger fish to fry. Metaphorically speaking.

Meg tried pulling her fingers through her hair, but without much success. Her curls were still caked with the results of the rainforest mudslide. She indulged herself in a brief stab of embarrassment at looking like such a mud bug in public. Embarrassment was ultimately easier to deal with than the raw sorrow that kept threatening to overtake her ever since she had read the message from her mother, the message that had told them...

No. //Non.// //Nyet.// If she could translate it into another of her languages, she wouldn't have to feel the sharpness of the loss right now. She needed to stop thinking about it. There wasn't anything she could do about it until they got back home anyway. And even then, there wouldn't be much more to do than grieve.

She unbuckled her seatbelt and followed Cho, a. k. a. "Pleather Boy," out to the refueling area. She needed to translate Ivan the airfield guy's Spanish for him. No. She just needed to get out and walk a bit, to clear her head.

The door reopened behind her, and she heard Kevin step out to follow her like a protective shadow. She channeled her emotions into irritation at Kevin's hovering -- the same old irritation as always.

*You would think by now that Kevin would have realized that I'm twenty-two, not the third grader who needed him to stop her from picking fights with the fifth grade boys.*

But even as she thought that, Meg realized that the fifth grade boys weren't in fifth grade anymore, and she was still picking fights with them. She was picking fights with Them.

With a heavy sigh, she stepped more forcefully behind Cho and greeted old Ivan, the refueling guy, with a falsely cheerful "Hola!"


Kevin followed Meg. She didn't look well. Truthfully, none of them looked well, himself included, but Meg almost looked as bad as Cho. This loss was hitting them all hard, but especially Meg and Cho. They'd both been pretty close to him, and by now he was probably gone...

But in the here and now, right before his eyes, something caught and demanded Kevin's immediate attention. He wasn't quite sure what it was about the old man who suddenly appeared from behind another plane, but something about the stranger set Kevin at instant unease. Maybe it was the way his steps seemed to be unbearably calculated, like a dancer's or a cat's. Maybe it was the way his old looking but well-kept leather jacket hung on his frame, suggesting a vicious, unnatural youthfulness.

Or maybe it was the simple fact that he seemed to be approaching Meg for no good reason at all.

Forget "seemed." He *was* approaching Meg, and he was doing so with a concentrated purpose shooting from deep within his dark eyes.

Cho was talking to Ivan, shouting at him in English to gas up the plane.

"Pleather Boy," Meg told him, exasperated, "he can't understand you any better if you're-"

She stopped mid-sentence. The old man Kevin had been watching had reached her. She hadn't seen him until he was standing directly next to her, looking her up and down in a way that Kevin didn't like. No, he didn't like that at all. Kevin suddenly found himself wishing he had a gun of his own, wishing desperately that he'd taken Meg up on her offer to teach him to shoot like she could. His own aim was not the best it could have been. If only he'd swallowed his pride and asked her for help...

Meg said something to the man in Spanish, but she said it so softly Kevin had no hope of understanding it. He could tell it was a question, though, by the way she tilted her head at him -- arrogantly, with one eyebrow cocked as if at an errant child. She'd bestowed that look on Kevin enough times that he could recognize it immediately.

The man reached out with his right hand, insolently caressing Meg'scheek with his index finger, drawing a line down around her jawbone, and stopping to hold her chin gently between his thumb and finger.

Oh, did Kevin want that gun.

The man said something to her in return, but Kevin could not understand that either. Cho had since turned to watch the exchange, just in time to stare as the old man stalked away from Meg, the deepening night embracing him in shadows.

Beneath the traces of mud, Kevin saw that Meg's face had paled and lost all markings of its former arrogance. Again watching the retreating stranger, Kevin rushed to Meg's side. Tentatively, he reached out and rested a hand on her arm. She jumped involuntarily at his touch. He pulled away on instinct.

Wide-eyed, Cho leaned over to Meg. "What did that German guy say to you?"

Frowning, she answered him. "It wasn't German. It was Russian."

Kevin could sense her uneasiness. "What did it mean?"

"I'm not sure," she whispered, stiffening her back, "but it sounded like--"

She stopped to swallow, hard. It was all Kevin could do to keep from reaching out and wrapping his arms around her, to hell with what she thought or how she felt about her "Pleather Boy."

Taking a deep breath, she began again. "It sounded like 'Daddy's little girl.'"

Kevin's mouth had long since gone dry. "What?"

Then, Meg shook her head. "I don't know. I could be getting the idioms wrong or something."

"Meg," Kevin said, his own unease growing by the second, were that possible. "You never get the idioms wrong."

"Which is precisely why this disturbs me so much," she shot back.

Kevin looked up to see where the man had gone, but the lights around the airfield only revealed so much. Cold dread crept up on him and settled in for a good long stay.

"Weird," he murmured.

"Creepy," agreed Cho, shuddering visibly.

Meg, deathly still but looking after Russian- speaker with anxious eyes, spoke as if to herself. "Downright spooky."


"I think it's getting to the point where I can be myself again. It's getting to the point where we have almost made amends I think it's the getting to the point that is the hardest part." --BNL, "Call and Answer"

Gethsemani Monastery Trappist, Kentucky January 24, 2024

Dawn was well on its way by the time they landed in Kentucky. A light January frost tickled the rolling fields, and the crisp grasses crunched under their feet as they began walking from the plane over to the monastery, or "home base" as Meg and Kevin had dubbed it.

Through the morning light, someone was coming to meet them.

"Mom..." Meg's tired voice called across the field.

She quickened her steps as much as she could, but she was far too tired to break into a run, especially since she was still toting a frame pack on her shoulders. When they met at last, Meg reached down and awkwardly hugged her mother, and Dana Scully wrapped her arms around her daughter and her daughter's backpack in return.

"Meggie," her mother whispered into Meg's cheek. "You got my message."

Meg pulled back and looked into her mother's face. She could tell the older woman had been crying, though her eyes were clear and dry now.

Meg asked, "Is he...?"

Her mother nodded, obviously negotiating her speech around the lump in her throat. "Last night, around seven."

All of them turned to watch Cho's reaction, the one who had been the closest to him. Cho straightened his back, removed his black pleather hat almost prayerfully and whispered, "A brother falls."

In a move of unexpected sympathy, Kevin patted Cho kindly on the back.

A lump formed in Meg's throat. She swallowed it and pressed her fingers to her eyelids. "Byers and Langly?"

"They went to bed not too long ago," her mother answered. "Finally."

"Where's Daddy?"

"He was right behind me just a--"

"Good golly, Miss Molly!" Her father's voice interrupted, still from a few yards away.

Meg crossed the field, meeting her father halfway. Smirking softly, she greeted him. "Hey, Mulder."

"Hey, Mulder," he murmured back to her. When the elder Mulder reached and tightened his arms around Meg, she hissed sharply, as if something hurt. He held her at arms length and asked, "What's the matter?"

Still wincing, she answered, "I'm fine, Daddy."

"Don't give me that 'I'm fine' crap. I get enough of it from your mother."

"I heard that," Scully retorted just as she released Kevin Declan from his own welcome-home hug.

Meg just barely laughed. "Seriously, Dad. It's nothing. Just a little misadventure we had down an Ecuadorian hillside."

"How little a misadventure?" Mulder directed the question to Kevin, who, in response, grew wide- eyed like a deer in headlights. Kevin liked Meg's dad enough, but he hated answering to Mr. Mulder -- especially in regards to Meg's safety. It made him incredibly nervous.

"What?" Meg demanded of her father. "You don't trust me to tell you the truth?"

Smiling, he ruffled her muddy hair. "Not the whole truth."

"Gee, I wonder where I learned *that* bad habit, then," Meg grumbled, her voice suddenly bitter.

Her father stopped and frowned at her. "What's that supposed to mean?"

Meg shrugged at him, her own face just as blank as her father's was. Mulder could have sworn he heard her mumble something along the lines of "if the shoe fits," but he didn't get a chance to ask Meg to clarify further. She had already turned her back on him and resumed her walk back to the monastery.

"Come on, guys," Meg called over her shoulder, her voice heavy with sorrow, "let's go."

Placing a chivalrous kiss on Scully's hand and bowing respectfully to Mulder, Cho departed to catch up with Meg, leaving Mulder, Scully, and Kevin Declan behind in their wake.

Kevin looked at each of his friend's parents in turn. Finally, he shrugged sheepishly. "I'm sorry about the loss of your friend... and I'm sorry about Meg. You know... how she gets... sometimes."

As Kevin began running after Meg, Scully took her partner's arm with a quiet sigh. "Yes," she said out loud, "yes, I know exactly how she gets..."

Then, they both followed their daughter and friends back to the monastery. Somewhere along the way, Meg slowed down enough that first Pleather Boy, then Kevin, then her parents caught up with her. She didn't say why she seemed to be waiting for them. She just did.

When all five of them reached the monastery entrance hall, the place was eerily silent. The three young people looked around suspiciously.

"The sisters are at meditation," Scully explained to them in a whisper, so as not to disturb their hosts, "and the monks are doing their chores."

The kids nodded and began removing their packs.

"Hey. We'll put these away for you," Mulder told them, keeping his own voice down. "Why don't you go wash up? Looks like you could use it."

Too tired to say or even think of any sarcastic responses, Meg, Kevin and Cho trudged off into the winding halls of the monastery's main house, looking for showers and soap and towels.

Scully took Mulder's hand and began leading him to the kitchen, but he stopped her.

"What?" she asked sofly.

In a fluid motion, he pulled her into his arms and held her tightly, wordlessly.

"Mulder," she mumbled into his shirt, "the kids have got to be hungry. Who knows when they ate last?"

"I know," he whispered into the top of her head. "It's just..."

His voice trailed off. More than thirty years as partners, and they still weren't good with words for each other.

At least now they tried.

"It was just his time, Mulder," Scully said as much to him as to herself. "We both know that. And vaccination and Kevlar and paranoia couldn't protect him from everything..."

Mulder cut her off gently. "You miss him, too."

"Of course I miss him." She allowed herself a small, bittersweet smile. "He was a good friend."

With his thumb, he brushed away the small tear that had trickled down her cheek. "Then keeping busy isn't going to make you miss him any less."

"Mulder, when did you become so calm and rational?"

"It must have been while you weren't looking."

They stood there like that, holding each other and grieving in silence, for a good five solid minutes. Then Scully let go, ground the tears from her eyes with her fingertips, and tugged on her partner's arm once more.

"Let's go, Mulder. Let's see if we can't put some breakfast together for the kids."


"Thanks, Doctor S.," Kevin said as he sat down to a plateful of fried potatoes.

"Yum. Potatoes. How very Irish. Getting me in touch with my heritage, Mom?" Meg asked as she picked up her fork.

"More like we're getting you in touch with the only food available right now," was her father's answer.

"If we were getting you fully in touch with your heritage I would have had your dad make these into latkes," her mother smirked as she put a plate down in front of Gerald Cho.

Cho looked at it listlessly but made no move to eat.

Meg got up and made for the pantry. "Do we have any peanut butter?"

"Peanut butter? On potatoes?" Kevin laughed. "Meg, you are one sick and twisted girl."

"It's a gift, Kev," she answered, "a gift."

Everyone but Cho was laughing as well.

"Her grandmother and I used to joke," Scully said, "that when the day came we'd always be able to tell if Meg was pregnant because she'd finally start to eat like a normal person."

Meg came out of the pantry carrying a jar of peanut butter in her right hand and an expression of bitterness on her face. "Yeah, well, too bad Gram won't be around to see that day, huh?"

Scully turned hurt eyes on her daughter, who refused to even glance at her mother. Scully blinked twice and went back to frying potatoes. Mulder coughed uncomfortably.

"Meg," Kevin admonished in a whisper.

Meg didn't even look up at him. She simply sat down, opened the peanut butter jar and began applying the contents liberally to her potatoes.

An uncomfortable silence grew among the five of them like a bunch of weeds. After minutes of staring at his plate but not touching it, Cho looked up with tears in his eyes.

"How did it happen?"

Meg and Kevin both stopped eating. Mulder put his coffee cup down and released a ragged sigh. Scully turned off the heat underneath the frying pan and took a seat at the table next to her partner.

Reaching out to take Cho's hand, she said, "He had a heart attack three days ago. He was helping Scott and Keyte move out crates of the hybrids' serum..."

As Scully continued to relate the story of how she'd been able to artificially resuscitate him at first, Meg noted how even her mother's voice sounded despite how tired she must have been.

"He was in a coma until last night," Mulder added when Scully's voice became too dry to go on.

Scully took a sip from her water glass and continued. "We did all we could, but--"

Her voice dropped off again, and Cho's grip on her hand tightened.

Raising his head, he asked, "You gave him artificial resuscitation?"

Scully nodded at him, her own eyes glistening with unshed tears.

"Then he received his greatest wish before he died," Cho said, his voice cracking with unchecked emotion, "a kiss from the fair Agent Scully, with whom he was deeply enamored."

Kevin turned aside so Meg wouldn't catch him wiping his eyes.

"Jesus, Cho," Meg breathed on a sob, "break my heart."

At that, Cho dissolved into gut-wrenching sobs of his own and dropped his head onto the table. In an instant, both Meg and her mother had seated themselves on either side of him, wrapping their arms around him.

"He was the closest thing I've ever had to a father," Cho cried, and Kevin turned his face forward again to listen. "I mean, I don't remember my parents. I never told that to any of you, did I? I don't remember them. I was raised in foster homes. And then I found their magazine when I was thirteen, and all I wanted to do was become one of them. Gerald Cho, Lone Gunman. And when they finally answered all my emails and told me they could use a pilot..."

His words were becoming unintelligible. Meg was stunned. She'd always called Frohike "The Janitor," because that's what he reminded her of. He'd always called her "Sweetheart" at worst, or "The Kid" at best, because there was only room for one "Mulder" in this their world of last-name- only forms of address. She'd never before thought of him as anybody's father figure. Cho's confession made the loss even more heartbreaking.

When Cho's crying softened some, Scully patted him on the back and suggested that he get some sleep. Almost obediently, Cho nodded and got up from the table.

"I'll go with you," Kevin said, pushing away from the table as well. Both Kevin's and Cho's bedrooms were in the same wing of the huge house.

Meg looked up and smiled at Kevin, inwardly amazed at how compassionate he could be when needed.

"Meggie, honey, you should get some sleep, too," Scully told her daughter.

Watching Kevin and Cho leave, Meg nodded. "Yeah, I should, but I have a question first."

"What's wrong?" Mulder asked.

Meg stared directly at her father.

//Lookie here,// had been Frohike's words when he'd first seen Meg, //that's a Scully allright.//

Blinking away the tears, Meg gathered the courage she needed to ask the question that had been bothering her ever since Havana.

"You wouldn't happen to know any Russian speakers, would you?"

Meg waited patiently for an answer as her parents exchanged worried looks.


"Will these evildoers never learn, They who eat up my people Just as they eat bread?" --Psalm 14: 4

Meg's patience, however, was not as strong as was her parents' reluctance to speak.

Her father stood up and took her gently by the hand. "Why don't you go get some sleep, Miss Molly, and we'll talk about it later?"

Meg stood up too but forcefully wrenched her hand out of her father's grasp. "Damnit, Dad. How much longer do you plan on keeping me in the dark like this?"

Hurt, Mulder pulled his hand back. "I tried explaining it to you as much as I could. That letter I left you--"

"Oh, that letter?" Meg's eyes narrowed with pent-up anger. "The letter that I wasn't meant to get until after you were *really* dead? Yeah, some explanation that was!"

"It was the best thing I could think of," Mulder yelled back. "You were just a girl. We only wanted to protect you!"

"Protect me?" Meg asked incredulously. "How was that protecting me? How was letting me think you were dead for two years protecting me? Making me bury my grandmother *alone* when I wasn't even nineteen -- how was that protecting me?"

This last question Meg directed at her mother, but her mother's only immediate response was a very, very pained look.

"You could have found some other way to let me know what was out there," Meg continued, "something better than a -- than a posthumous letter. I mean, you had eighteen years with me before this noble cause of yours *called* you both out of my life without even so much as a warning shot. *Eighteen* years, Dad! That's ten more than *your* father had with Samantha!"

Even as she was saying the words, Meg knew she had crossed an unspoken line. She clamped her hand over her own mouth to prevent any more damage from escaping.

Her father looked at her in icy shock, a defeat in his eyes of which Meg never before had seen the like.

It was too late. She had gone too far.

"Oh God, Daddy," Meg whispered through her fingers. "I shouldn't have-- I didn't mean-- I was just--"

But nothing could change what she had said.

Frohike's death, Cho's sadness, the words and the touch of that Russian stranger, the unrelenting stress of this unworldly struggle... all of it held a magnifying glass to the feelings of betrayal Meg had been burying ever since she'd found her parents again after their supposed death. Tears bit at her eyelids.

"I'm sorry," Meg said as she looked down at her mother. "I'm -- I'm just not going to talk anymore."

"Meg," her father called in a voice aching with distance.

"I'm going to bed." Meg stood in the doorway and shook her head without meeting either of her parents' eyes. "We'll talk about it later."

And with that, she turned and left for the bedroom she used when staying at the monastery; the bedroom the sisters in the monastery called "Sister Michael Joan's room." Sister Michael Joan's room was given to Meg because Sister Michael Joan was dead -- another casualty in this quiet war. And the woman the sisters called "Michael Joan" Meg knew better as Emily Camille Wexford. Emily clone C, the only sister Margaret Grace Mulder had ever known.

Meg Mulder did not permit herself the luxury of tears until she was curled up in her dead sister's bed, clutching the wire bound notebook Emily C. Wexford had left behind for Meg, her little sister. That Emily had left her story for Meg... but it was only part of the story. Meg's parents were holding on to some more of that story, but they hadn't seen fit to pass it on to her yet. Their own daughter, the one who should have known most of all.

And then, at last, Meg cried for all she had lost. Her trust in her parents she lamented most of all.

~*~

Kevin could hear Meg yelling downstairs. He could hear her father yelling back at her. Their fight was disrupting the usual spell of peace within the monastery's walls.

But there was no peace within Kevin either. He was sick with thought and grief -- but not just over the death of Frohike. Sure, he'd liked the guy enough, had laughed at his jokes and just thought of him as an all-around nice old guy, if amusingly perverted... but he'd never associated him with any sort of father-figure type, the way Cho had.

Cho had lost his surrogate father. Meg was fighting with her dad right downstairs. Kevin, however, didn't even know what had become of his own father. He hadn't seen him in nearly ten years -- since he was fourteen.

One year after his last visit with his dad, Kevin Declan had slit his own wrists in a moment of adolescent despair. His father had never even come to visit him in the hospital. At the time, he'd figured it had been just as well that way, but now...

But now, what had happened since Christmas 2023, that holiday weekend when strange things had happened and changed the world over forever? On that greenhouse-effect-warm December weekend, what had become of Kevin LeRoi Declan, Jr.?

Slumped in a monastery bed, Kevin L. Declan III did not know. He didn't have the first clue. And that gaping void refused to let him sleep now, no matter how tired he was. He tossed and turned for an hour or more, dry eyed, but with his insides churning.

At last, Kevin sat up in bed and stared at the pale scars marking his wrists. He knew where to begin looking for his father, and if he waited any longer, the computers most likely would be in use by the surviving Lone Gunmen.

Kevin got out of bed and began to dress.

~*~ An Unknown Location January 24, 2024

Their usual meeting place hadn't changed much over the years. The faces had changed, but the overall mood of darkness and the haunting odor of cigarettes had remained -- even though he who smoked them had passed on not too many years earlier. He was gone, but he had left his scars behind to mark his place.

The faces had changed indeed. The current population of the room would have, in the '90's, been described as more "diverse" than it had been twenty years previous. No longer did the presence of old white men dominate the room. After all, self-absorption does not discriminate, nor does self-preservation.

The wheelchair wheels hissed over the rich, dark carpeting. "So you saw them?"

"Yes," answered the man Meg Mulder would have recognized from the airfield in Havana. "When do I take them?"

The man in the wheelchair looked over at one of the women, indicating with his eyes that she was to answer the question.

The woman leveled her dark eyes at Meg's Russian-speaker in response. "You're sure they've been vaxed?"

"We know for certain both Declan and Cho were vaccinated. Two of the clones witnessed it."

"And the Mulder girl was vaccinated as well?"

He nodded to the man in the wheelchair. "It's more than safe to assume so. She's been exposed to the virus enough, and I saw no apparent effects on her or her companions. They all appear to be in excellent health."

The dark-eyed woman addressed the room as a whole in a smooth, strong voice. "They want to begin testing the new strain as soon as They have appropriate test subjects on hand. A control group of non-vaccinated humans has already been gathered. They have promised us quarantine if we cooperate and provide Them with a small number of test subjects who have already received the earlier vaccine."

"When do I take them?" He repeated the question directly to the woman who had just spoken.

"As soon as possible," was her answer.

He nodded and stood to depart.

Nodding as well, the man in the wheelchair spoke. "Krycek."

He stopped with his hand on the doorknob.

"Get them out of our way."

Krycek acknowledged the command and stalked out of the room.

"Killing two birds with one stone," one of the oldest men in the room observed, "efficient."

"Three," one of the women said, her voice eerily soft. "Three birds, really."

"More than that," snickered the man in the wheelchair. "Diana, let Them know we'll have Their test subjects soon enough."

With that, the dark-eyed woman stood up and left as well.

~*~

Gethsemani Monastery January 24, 2024

Meg woke to the warmth of sun straining against the dark brown curtains of the tiny bedroom. She was surprised she had slept at all. Her cheek hurt. Brushing her fingertips against it, she felt the depressions that had resulted from falling asleep on top of Emily Wexford's notebook.

She stood and walked over to the small mirror hung on the wall and inspected the marks, small and purple-red, but not bruise-worthy. She rubbed her cheek hard to even out the redness. Her eyes were red too, oddly setting off the green flecks that swam in the predominantly blue iris she had inherited from the Scully side.

//Complimentary colors, red and green. One makes the other stand out.//

Confused by her own groggy thoughts, Meg rubbed her eyes. "I need sleep," she said out loud.

She returned to bed and made a halfhearted attempt to actually sleep again, but after fifteen minutes she gave up and put her shoes back on her feet. Peering in the mirror once more, she noted that her hair was half-damp from showering earlier, but half-frizzing from being slept on while still wet. A quick search of the tiny room yielded one of her ponytail holders, which Meg made use of in short order.

She still didn't want to run into her parents, but she emerged from her room nevertheless. If they wouldn't answer her questions, someone else could. She padded softly down the hall, on her way to the office of the remaining Lone Gunmen.

She didn't bump into her parents along the way, but she did nod greetings at Sister Helen Gabriel and Sister Cecilia Bernadette. Sweet old women, glad to see her home and safe again.

Meg traipsed down the steps to the Gunmen's makeshift base of operations, and she found Kevin slumped against a wall in the dimly lit hallway.

"I thought you'd be asleep," she called to him.

Kevin gave a start and looked up. Stretching and rolling his neck around uncomfortably, he answered her, "I was."

"Sorry."

"I thought *you'd* be asleep," Kevin yawned, standing up.

"Couldn't," Meg admitted, jiggling the doorknob.

"Me neither. By the way, it's locked."

"Of course it is," Meg sighed. "Why wouldn't it be? What the hell were *we* thinking?"

Kevin laughed a little. "I didn't have the heart to wake one of them and ask for the key."

Meg leaned against the opposite wall. "What're you doing down here anyway?"

"Oh." Kevin shrugged, looking almost guilty. "I just wanted look up some stuff."

"What kind of stuff?"

"Just stuff."

Meg glowered at him.

"What?" Kevin tried to make his face blank, but with very little success.

"Kevin," Meg said wearily, "I have my parents hiding *stuff* from me. I don't know if I can handle it from you, too."

She wasn't looking directly at him, but he could see the storm continuing to brew under her lowered lashes.

"I'm sorry," he answered quietly. When that answer obviously did not satisfy her, he added, "I just wanted to see if I could find my dad."

Meg's eyes shot back to his face. Her jaw dropped so slightly that only Kevin would have noticed. "Your dad?"

Kevin shrugged. "Stupid, huh?"

Meg stood away from the wall and stepped closer to him. "No. I don't think it's stupid at all..."

Kevin looked at her sideways when her voice trailed off. He urged her to finish: "But...?"

"But..." She bit her lip and searched for the right words. "There's a... it's painfully likely that..."

"I know." She couldn't finish the sentence, and he didn't need her to anyway.

Suddenly, her hand was warm in his, and she gave his fingers a reassuring squeeze. "But if you don't at least try..."

Kevin didn't need her to finish that sentence either. Meg understood. She usually did.

The sound of someone else descending the stairs gave them both cause to look away from each other's eyes. Shoes slapped against the centuries- old flagstones with a hesitant thud-thud... thud- thud. Keys tinkled against one another.

In the spirit of the Cheshire Cat, a pair of thick, dark-rimmed glasses were the first things obviously visible on the face that had just reached the bottom of the stairs.

"Hey, Glasses Man," Meg called out trying to keep things light.

Langly acknowledged their presence with a grunted, "Declan. Kid."

"Kid," Kevin heard Meg snicker under her breath.

Both Meg and Kevin watched Langly carefully for any sign of grief. He wasn't acting any differently than either of them would have expected, but he did look even more peaked than usual, and the forward slump of his shoulders was even more pronounced than it had been when they'd seen him just a week and a half before.

"I'm sorry," Meg said just above a whisper. Kevin nodded his condolences as well.

Langly nodded back. Again, no change in his outward demeanor, but they could tell he was affected by the way his pallor suddenly increased -- if such a thing were possible. "What do you want?"

Under the circumstances, had that question come from anyone else, Meg would have been offended to the point of irritation. But this was Langly, the most socially inept of the overall socially inept Lone Gunmen. This was his equivalent of inviting them in for tea and cookies and a friendly chat.

Meg stepped aside and pulled Kevin with her so Langly could get to the door more easily. She asked, "Can we get some info from you?"

Langly shrugged. "Help yourself. Computer's free."

This Langly said as if Frohike had just gone out for a cheesesteak and would be back any minute. Meg's heart contracted. Everyone grieved differently, but this was borderline scary. Then again, virtually everything about Langly was borderline scary.

When Langly opened the door, the room was glowing with computer screens not shut down, casting strange, ghostly light and shadows. Kevin's hand slid along the wall and he turned on the lights.

"Mister Bigglesworth! Schrodie!" Meg called out, and one of her two cats came out to greet her. She reached down and scooped Schrodinger into her arms, and the younger cat melted into a purring ball of gray fuzz.

"Where's Mr. B?" Kevin asked, looking around.

But the fat brown tabby was already winding himself around Meg's ankles.

Meg put Schrodinger down and stopped to pet Mr. Bigglesworth. "He must be really happy to see me if he's being that affectionate."

Kevin and Langly began talking computer mumbo-jumbo, but Meg tuned them out. That was one language she did not understand well. She paced around the room, looking from place to place, her cats taking turns trying to trip her up. What she was looking for even she could not determine. Maybe, she realized, on some subconscious level she was looking for Frohike. She hugged her arms around herself.

"Hey, Kid," Langly interrupted her reverie. "What are you looking for?"

She blinked at him stupidly a few times before she figured out he wanted to know what *information* she'd come seeking.

Kevin glanced up to see her frown at Langly's question. Kevin waved his hand at Byers' unoccupied computer, indicating her to commandeer it for the moment, but she shook her head at him.

If she didn't need a computer, why had she come here?

"I was looking for some answers, actually," she replied, taking a seat out from under a desk and gathering Mr. Bigglesworth onto her lap.

Langly sat behind his favorite computer. His glasses flickered at her with reflections from the monitor. "That's what we're best at."

Meg nodded, but her frown deepened. "Jeez. I finally find someone who might be able to answer my questions and I don't even know where to start."

Langly's thin lips pressed together. "Start at the beginning."

Meg raised her eyebrows and snorted. "The beginning. The beginning of what?"

Irritated with his owner's snort, Mr. Bigglesworth leapt off of Meg's lap and began searching for a new and exciting place to take a nap.

Langly waited, but soon returned his attention to his computer when it seemed that Meg was wasting his time by asking only rhetorical questions. Slightly irritated, both with Langly's quirks and with her own helplessness, Meg reached back with both hands and pulled tightly on her ponytail to keep it from loosening more.

She had to ask something. Anything.

"How did my parents get involved with this?"

Langly looked up at her again. "They were working on the X-files--"

"No," Meg interrupted, "I *know* that. I want to know *how* they got involved with all this. *Really* *how*? What happened? How did they find out about the virus and plans for colonization? About all the hybrids? All the mind-control business? The tracking chips and the mass abduction stuff? About Their whole conspiracy? How did they get married and have me and still stay partners? And all the rest, the stuff I still don't even know about yet? How?"

When Meg had finally finished her litany of questions, Langly just stared at her. And stared at her. And stared some more. Meg did not even blink under his blank, glinting glare.

At length, Langly just averted his eyes and went back to tapping away on his keyboard.

"Go ask your parents," he finally said.

Meg's jaw dropped. This was obviously not the answer she'd been hoping for. "I already did," she growled.

Thwarted again, Meg stomped out of the room -- a dignified stomp, but a stomp nevertheless. She hesitated in the doorway and informed Kevin, "I'm going for a run."

Kevin froze. "Alone?"

"Yes, alone," Meg rolled her eyes. "It's midday, Kev. Don't worry. There are nuns and priests all over the place to watch out for me. I'll be back before you know it."

Reluctantly, Kevin did not stop her.

She had almost gone, but she suddenly stopped herself, turned on her heel, and gave two last words to her best friend:

"Good luck."

Then she was off and running up the steps, but Meg's words and her small smile stayed with him as he began working with the broken connections of the post-colonization internet -- the colossal ruins of what was once the information superhighway.


Running. Meg didn't have to think when her feet carried her over the fields and through the vineyards of the monastery's acreage. She didn't have to remember betrayals or viruses or millions of faces she still hadn't reached with the vaccine, the millions of lives she might never save... She didn't have to think about any of those things.

So of course that was all she could think about.

When the cool air made her lungs ache, she stopped and leaned against a barren grapevine to catch her breath. Hot with exertion but cold with the wind on her sweat, she resumed movement with a light jog in hopes of returning her rate of respiration to something normal.

Under the serenity of the winter-abandoned vineyard, a sound pulsed softly. Meg looked around but could not determine the source of the noise, which was growing louder by the second.

It was coming from the sky.

Meg muttered some instinctive expletive as her heart rate skyrocketed once more. She was somewhat hidden by the twisting vineyard, but such camouflage could only do so much if this was a genuine threat. She emerged from the vineyard cautiously, following the sound and shielding her eyes against the harsh winter sun.

It was a helicopter, black and military. After another minute, Meg recognized the passenger, and she breathed a huge sigh of relief. She broke into another run and rushed to meet them as they landed in the monastery's makeshift airfield.

So word had gotten out to Skinner.


"Truly the evil man shall not go unpunished, But those who are just shall escape." --Proverbs 11:21

Mulder spoke out of the blue after a couple of hours of tense, silent work preparing more supplies for transport.

"I should go talk to her."

It didn't take much for Scully to figure exactly who "her" was.

"Mulder, she's probably asleep."

"Then I'll wake her up," he grunted, lifting another crate onto the cart.

Scully gave him one of her looks through the dim light of the storage room. "Right. That will go a long way towards restoring her faith in you."

He let his arms fall to his sides. "Then what am I supposed to do?"

Scully sighed and leaned her hands heavily on the handle of the cart. "Maybe I should be the one to talk to her."

"Scully--"

"The responsibility is *ours*, Mulder, *ours*. I'm just as guilty as you are."

"Fine. Then we should talk to her together."

Scully pursed her lips briefly. "That might not be the best idea right now."

"Why not? What's wrong with it?"

"Mulder--" She halted, choosing her words carefully. "There's a lot of you in Meg. The two of you have the same sense of humor, the same impetuousness... and the same tendency to act out with rash anger when really you're just... *hurting*."

Mulder had actually stopped to listen.

"And I'm afraid," she continued, "that if the two of you talk right now, while your hurt is still so raw, you'll only end up hurting each other more."

"What are you saying, that I can't even talk to my own daughter?"

"See?" Scully gave him one of her bittersweet, upside-down smiles. "That's exactly what I mean."

Mulder opened his mouth as if to say something else, but thought better of it and released a quick sigh instead.

"Look, Mulder," she said, putting her hand on his arm, "Let me talk to her. And give her some time to think about things. That might be all she needs."

"Time?" Mulder looked doubtful.

Just as Scully was about to answer, they both looked towards the open doorway, hearing voices coming down the hall.

Scully frowned in mild disbelief. "That sounds like--"

Meg appeared in the doorway, carrying some boxes. She saw her parents staring back at her and her face instantly paled. All she could say was a weak, timid, "Oh--"

Then, Skinner appeared in the doorway, along with a young woman a bit older than Meg. Both of them carried more boxes.

Meg quickly placed her burden on a nearby shelf. "I'll go get Kevin to help move more stuff out of the helicopter."

She left without even another glance at her parents.

"What was that about?" Skinner asked, watching after Meg.

Mulder looked like he was about to run after his daughter, but Scully's hand tightened on his arm.

Mulder stopped himself -- or, let Scully stop him. "Come for the funeral, old man?" Mulder asked, reaching out to shake Skinner's hand.

Skinner nodded to both of his former subordinates, reaching out to take Scully's hand as well. "It's quite a loss."

No more words needed to be said on that matter, so Skinner offered none. He gestured to the young woman at his side.

"Scully, Mulder, have you met Captain DeMaram, the helicopter pilot?"

"Captain Rachel Jo DeMaram," the woman -- who at first glance seemed barely more than a girl -- answered, reaching out to shake both agents' -- former agents' -- hands. "I don't believe we've met. My condolences."

Her voice was heavy with a southern accent, and her brown hair had been cut militarily short. Youthful freckles dusted her cheeks, but upon closer inspection something in her quiet brown eyes suggested a commanding maturity. Perhaps she was around 26 or 27? Scully mused.

"Rachel Jo?" Mulder asked, shaking her hand. "Is that short for something?"

Her mouth twitched in an almost-laugh. "Well, sir, I'm one of those devil pups, so I have friends call me DP."

"So you're a Marine brat," Scully observed with a mixture of sympathy and good-natured rivalry.

"Fourth generation, ma'am," DeMaram confirmed. "Both my parents were Marines, my grandfather served in Vietnam with Mr. Skinner here, and my great-grandfather was one of Carlson's Raiders. I'm just carryin' on the family tradition."

She was clearly proud of her family history, but the more DeMaram spoke, the more it seemed she was fighting a loosing battle to modify her southern drawl. She humbly stuck out her jaw.

"If you'll excuse me," DeMaram said then, giving them all a businesslike nod before leaving the storeroom to finish unloading the helicopter.

"We figured we'd better bring some more supplies if we were coming out here anyway," Skinner explained, "so I had the Devil Pup fly us out here."

Scully nodded her agreement. "It's safer than driving."

Mulder snorted. "Not much."

"So when did it happen?" Skinner asked in the same voice he had used in ages past to demand their narratives regarding various investigations.

For the second time that day, Scully told the story of Frohike's death.

Mulder only half-listened. He was trying to think of a way to bridge the ever-widening gap between himself and his daughter. His baby girl.

His baby girl, who would have killed him if she'd heard him call her a baby out loud.

No. Not a baby anymore. It was time he realized that. Time he started acting that way, too. But how?

~*~

Meg had dragged Kevin out from behind Byers' computer, and he resisted so little she almost thought he was glad for an excuse to put his search aside for a moment.

"Things not going well?" Meg asked him.

He scratched at his stubble and winced. "Not going at all, actually."

"Sucks," Meg sympathized.

Kevin shrugged, but Meg could tell he wasn't telling her how much this was upsetting him. He changed the subject. "Any word on when the funeral will be?"

"Not yet. Well, I haven't asked yet." Meg shook her head. Then, an idea struck her. "Kev, you should sing for the service."

Kevin snickered just under his breath. "I haven't sung in a long, long time. Well, not in front of people, anyway."

"You used to sing for your church all the time," Meg offered, walking backwards over the field so she could watch him. "You'd do great."

Kevin looked at her doubtfully. "I don't know any Catholic hymns."

"Frohike wasn't Catholic, I don't think."

"Well, he obviously wasn't African Methodist Episcopal either."

"How do you know? He could have been AME."

She was trying to get him to laugh, to take his mind off of things... by talking about a funeral. How weird had their lives become?

Regardless, he knew exactly how to turn the tables on her. "Well, if I should sing for the funeral, you should play."

Meg rolled her eyes, recognizing his tactic for what it was. "I haven't touched a piano in years, at *all*, even *not* in front of people."

Kevin walked more quickly to catch up with her. "Yeah, but if we practiced some--"

"'We'?" Meg asked, surprised. "You mean... we should do something... together?"

She hadn't been thinking of a team effort. Why should she? He had assumed -- oh, how embarrassing. Kevin forced himself not to flinch, thanking God above that she wouldn't be able to tell if he were blushing or not.

He answered her as casually as he could, "It seems the obvious answer."

Meg chewed on the inside of her cheek and shrugged. "Ohh-kay, then what?"

Kevin took a moment to think. "Every funeral I ever sang at, I sang 'Amazing Grace.'"

Both stopped and looked at each other doubtfully.

After a second, Meg confirmed both their thoughts aloud. "Somehow, 'Amazing Grace' just doesn't seem all that appropriate for The Janitor."

"I was just about to say the same thing," Kevin agreed, "Except for the part about 'The Janitor.'"

"Kevin, what *churchy* song could we possibly pick for an old paranoiac like Frohike?"

As they finally reached the helicopter and climbed inside, Kevin pondered what other songs he knew off the top of his head. "Do you know 'His Eye is on the Sparrow'?"

Meg lifted the lid of one of the crates and peeked inside. "Oooh! More syringes. Goodie."

"Meg?"

She glanced back at him to answer his question. "Know it? It was one of my Grandma's favorites. I learned it for her for her Christmas present when I was nine."

Kevin caught himself sighing in disappointment. "That was a long time ago. You've probably forgotten how to play it."

Meg gave him a look, as if to say, "how could you forget my trademark memory?" He laughed a little under his breath.

She grinned back at him with a humble arrogance. "I think we can manage. Besides, it's probably as good as we're gonna get from a religious song. Just think of the words."

Kevin ran through the words in his mind and then began to laugh a little more. "Yeah. I have to agree."

~*~

The funeral was the next day.

The priests and brothers gathered on the right side of the chapel, and the sisters on the left. The front left rows were reserved for the pallbearers: Meg's father, Skinner, Kevin, and of course Byers, Langly and Gerald Cho, whose black pleather costume seemed, for once, wholly appropriate.

Though the ceremony was not overtly Catholic, the helpful influence of the number of priests at the monastery could be felt throughout, even when Gerald Cho, Lone Gunman, took to the pulpit to speak on behalf of the surviving members of his organization.

Cho stepped into the chapel sanctuary holding a wrinkled piece of paper, his hands clearly shaking. He stepped behind the lectern, took a deep breath, and stopped.

He looked up at those congregated. Both Langly and Byers were dry-eyed, but their drooping shoulders spoke volumes.

Meg saw Pleather-Boy scanning the audience, so she caught his eye and gave him a thumbs-up. Cho almost smiled.

Kevin bit his lip and tried to relax his breathing.

Cho cleared his throat and began his eulogy.

"I have been asked to say something today about the life of Melvin Frohike, but I also feel that no words of mine could ever presume to pay proper homage to such an esteemed colleague, friend, and--"

Cho's voice suddenly stopped.

"--and mentor," Cho finished, his voice tight. He looked like he was about to burst into uncontrollable tears again, but after another moment, he regained his composure. If Byers and Langly were showing no emotion, Cho was doing triple time for all of them.

"Father Timothy offered to help me compose my thoughts for this eulogy," he continued, "and when I told him how inadequate I believed my words would be, he suggested I read something appropriate instead. He then suggested I look at Psalm 64, and so I did, and the words were far better than I could have written myself. I believe Frohike would have felt deeply edified by the words of this particular psalm, and so I would like to share it with you today."

He cleared his throat once more and began reading in a loud voice that almost filled the chapel.

"Hear, O God, my voice in my lament; From the dread enemy preserve my life. Shelter me against the council of malefactors, Against the tumult of evildoers, Who sharpen their tongues like swords, Who aim like arrows their bitter words, Shooting from ambush at the innocent man, Suddenly shooting at him without fear. They resolve on their wicked plan; They conspire to set snares, Saying, 'Who will see us?' They devise a wicked scheme, And conceal the scheme they have devised; Deep are the thoughts of each heart.

"But God shoots his arrows at them; Suddenly they are struck. He brings them down by their own tongues; All who see them nod their heads, And all men fear and proclaim the work of God, And ponder what he has done. The just man is glad in the Lord And takes refuge in him; In him glory the upright of heart."

When he finished reading, Cho carefully refolded the paper in his hands and furtively wiped his eyes. He mumbled something in the direction of the homemade casket, but his voice was too soft for either Meg or Kevin to hear.

Wiping her own eyes, Meg leaned over to Kevin and whispered, "Well, that wasn't any 'The Lord is my Shepherd,' that's for sure."

Kevin almost snickered at her comment. "At least now I don't feel stupid for not singing 'Amazing Grace.'"

Cho had just resumed his seat in the chapel, and Father Timothy was nodding at Meg and Kevin to take their places.

Meg ground at her eyes once again just before cracking her knuckles with much ceremony. She whispered just under her breath, "Here goes nothing."

They both stood and walked up the center aisle of the chapel, clutching scavenged sheets of music yellowed with age.

Meg chanced a glance at her parents, who were both looking at her expectantly. She still hadn't spoken more than three words to them since, but one look at both of their tear-stained faces further deepened her regret at her outburst from the previous day.

But she frowned. Why was she feeling guilty? They were the ones keeping secrets from her. She steeled her spine and let the anger fester. Anger was good. Anger was better than nervousness or grief.

When they reached the top of the aisle, Meg bowed to the altar as her upbringing dictated, and she advanced to the piano. It wasn't until Kevin took his place beside her that the thought occurred to her that they had just walked down the aisle together.

That's when the nerves hit. She bit down on her lips -- hard -- and set her fingers to the keys with overstated precision.

She gave Kevin the introductory measures they had prepared all yesterday afternoon into the evening, and he nodded at her that he was ready to begin.

Kevin dropped his chin -- a singer's trick, Meg knew -- and the song floated from him in his trademark thick, rich, soulful tenor. Meg had not heard this sound in ages. A sound she realized she had missed very much.

"Why should I feel discouraged? Why should the shadows come? Why should my heart be lonely, And long for heaven and home..."

The gooseflesh ran up Meg's left arm and over to her right at the sound of his voice. Her fingers were behaving themselves, despite the fact that she was having trouble with where her mind had decided to visit. During Frohike's funeral, no less.

How adolescent. Things were getting bad, but it wasn't anything that couldn't be controlled. She concentrated on her job: to accompany Kevin, whose voice was like angels come to earth.

~*~

"...My constant friend is He: His eye is on the sparrow, And I know He watches me; His eye is on the sparrow, And I know He watches me."

"You think I only think about you When we're both in the same room." --BNL, "Call and Answer"

Kevin tapped his fingers impatiently on the veneer of Frohike's old desk and listened with equal impatience to the dull hum emanating from the other end of the telephone. He'd been lucky enough to get through in the first place. Now he had to see if he'd be lucky enough to actually talk to her.

"Hello?"

"Momma," Kevin said, gripping the phone with both hands.

"Kevin! Baby! How are you?" Her voice was tinged slightly with the static characteristic of a bad connection, but it was a connection, and Kevin wasn't one to look a gift horse in the mouth.

"I'm okay, Momma. How are you?"

His mother laughed with good-natured resignation. "Things could be worse, baby. Much, much worse. We've got just over two hundred at this camp now as of today's head count."

"Man," Kevin breathed. "That's a lot of people."

"But three more of them are nurses," his mother continued, "so they're able to help me out some."

"*That's* good news."

"Yeah," she replied, sounding pleased but tired nevertheless. "You know how tough it was when I was the only RN around, but things are getting better. Did Walter and Rachel Jo get out there okay?"

Leave it to his mother to call everyone by their first names. "Yeah, they did. Thanks for helping them get all those supplies together, too. The funeral was today. Everybody else is eating dinner right now."

He could hear his mother making "tsk tsk" noises. "And why aren't you eating with them?"

"I wasn't hungry."

"Don't you lie to your momma like that," she scolded her twenty-four year old son.

"I'll eat when I get off the phone, Momma, I promise."

"Hmmnh," she grunted a bit in disbelief. "When are you coming back to DC next?"

He could tell she missed him. He smiled a little but balked at what he had to ask her next. "That's what I wanted to talk to you about."

"I thought you and Megabyte would be getting back to your delivery run through South America once the funeral was over." She sounded confused.

"Ah," he stammered. "I might be changing plans."

"Why, baby?" The concern in her voice suddenly deepened. "What's the matter?"

"Momma," he sighed, scratching the back of his head thoughtfully, "when was the last time you heard from my father?"

The dull hum returned. Kevin's heart pounded. He hadn't asked her this question or any like it since he was nine.

"I'm trying to look for him," Kevin explained, mostly to fill the silence, "but all I've found so far are dead ends."

"Kevin, baby," she answered, pained, "it's been a long, long time--"

He wouldn't be put off. "How long?"

He could hear his mother sigh. "Since right before you graduated from college."

Now it was Kevin's turn to be silent.

"I tried calling him to get an address because I wanted to send him an invitation."

Kevin closed his eyes. "Did you?"

His mother was silent for a moment. Her reluctance to answer him was clear, even over the static on the line, but answer him she did. "Yes."

Kevin tried to grasp all the implications of that single "yes." Yes, she had talked to Kevin's father. Yes, she had sent him an invitation to his son's graduation. And, yes, he had chosen to stay away. From his own son's college graduation. By choice. Just like he had chosen to leave his family fifteen years ago.

Kevin held his head up with his right hand. "Where did you send the invitation?"

Static again. She was thinking.

"Don't try to talk me out of this, Momma," he warned her. "I'm going to try to find him with or without your help."

"Kevin," she said with her characteristic quiet strength, "even after all he's done--"

"Momma," he tried to interrupt.

"Let me finish," she broke in. "Even after all he's done to both of us, I never wished him any harm. I just wanted you to know that."

Kevin opened his eyes and stared at the blank wall ahead of him, stunned by his mother's incredible courage, even after all she'd been through.

"Just tell me one thing, son."

Kevin winced. He knew what she was going to ask him. He wasn't sure how he wanted to answer her. He wasn't sure what the true answer was at any rate.

"Why do you want to find him, Kevin? Why?"

Why? His motivation, the reason for this sense of urgency was buried so deeply within him that he couldn't even grasp at it properly enough to express it. He couldn't think of an answer.

"Momma--"

"Do you still feel responsible for him?" He let her interrupt him. "Kevin, baby, you can't save him now any more than you could have saved him when you were just a little boy. Just like I couldn't save him. Nobody can save him. He has to want to be saved."

He heard in his mother's voice that hard-fought-and- won acceptance of life's hardships known only by the truly victorious. Kevin, however, was not like his mother. Kevin couldn't just give up like that -- on himself, yes; on someone else, no. Not now. Not under these circumstances.

He couldn't turn his back on his father. To do so would have put Kevin on the same level.

"He can't vaccinate himself, Momma," Kevin argued, sounding stronger than he felt. "I don't want him in our lives any more than you do, but that doesn't mean I want him dead."

His mother gave no response. She was letting him finish. But what more could he say to explain himself? How had Meg understood so easily? What had she said to him in the hallway?

"And," he told his mother, "if I don't at least try..."

*... that makes me just like him.* He couldn't say it out loud. It hurt too much.

After another moment, his mother answered him with a question. "Do you have pen and paper?"

The lump in his throat was manageable. "Thank you, Momma."


The sisters had done their best to cook a post- funeral meal with what few supplies were on hand. Skinner and DeMaram had brought with them, among other things, such luxuries as a case of macaroni and cheese and a few smoked hams that were apparently meant to be Christmas gifts at one time, by the look of their wrappings.

But for some people, Christmas hadn't come last year. Meg didn't have the heart to ask DeMaram, seated across from her, where she had found the hams. She simply ate with appreciation for the fact that her plate held real meat neither from a can nor followed by the word "jerky."

Kevin was not to be found. He'd probably gone to make his weekly phone call to the refugee camp outside of DC where his mother lived and worked. Either that or he was back on the computer, looking for his father.

All the other dinner guests were beginning to disperse as well. Cho, Byers and Langly had left without any parting words, but that was no surprise. DeMaram excused herself to the supply room in hopes of packing some more vaccine to take back with her to the DC camp.

Skinner and her parents were sitting at the huge kitchen table, drinking real coffee and talking. Meg wanted the coffee but did not want to be the only one of "the kids" left behind, and she certainly wasn't ready to sit and talk with her parents over coffee. She still needed more time.

"Do you need any help, Captain?" Meg asked DeMaram as she began walking for the stairwell.

DeMaram shrugged. "Can use all the help I can get."

"It's okay if I meet you down there, then?" Meg glanced back at the coffee pot still hot on the stove. "I wanted to get some of that coffee before it's all gone."

DeMaram's brown eyes smiled. "Nectar of the gods. Believe me, I sympathize. Go ahead, Miss Mulder."

"Please," Meg snorted, "Meg."

"Fair 'nough," she nodded, "then you'll call me DP." It wasn't an offer; it was a command.

Meg grinned back at her. Nothing against Kevin or Cho, but it was nice not to be the only girl around for the time being.

Meg hurried over to the stove and pulled a coffee mug out of one of the cabinets. Still trying to get out of the kitchen area as quickly as possible, she dumped the coffee into the mug so fast that the lid on the pot popped off, sending most of the contents onto her left hand.

"Shhhi...," she muttered under her breath, squeezing her eyes and lips shut so as not to let on to anyone else what had happened.

She sneaked a look over her shoulder. They were still deep in conversation. None of them had noticed her clumsiness. Banging cabinets open and shut to cover her wincing noises, she was able to locate a dishtowel and made quick use of it. She wrung the towel out underneath the running spigot and took advantage of that activity, letting the cold water run over her hand. A fierce red blotch was forming on the side of her index finger and thumb, running midway down the back of her hand.

She wrapped the cool, wet towel around her hand. Picking up the half-filled cup of coffee in her right hand, Meg left the kitchen without saying anything either to Skinner, her mother or her father. She walked slowly and stopped to inspect the burn a few times whenever she was in a spot with relatively good lighting on her way down to help DeMaram. It was a nasty shade of crimson, but no blisters were forming. She counted herself lucky and continued on her way, hoping DeMaram hadn't assumed Meg had gone back on her offer to help.

When she arrived in the basement, Meg heard whispering coming from the end of the hall, near the entrance to the storage room. The silhouettes peeking through the shadows seemed to be leaning very closely towards one another, as if their conversation were very open and intense. Meg strained her ears and was able to discern Kevin's voice.

"Yeah," he was saying, "I'd like to go with you."

"Be more than happy to have you along, Kevin."

Meg didn't recognize the other voice right away, but another sentence of that gentle southern accent revealed the speaker's identity. It was DeMaram.

"We plan on leaving tomorrow morning, later rather than sooner."

*Leaving?* Meg's heart began to hammer in her ears.

She could see the shadows make way as Kevin nodded to DeMaram. "I'll be ready."

Now the humming in her ears was too loud; she couldn't hear DeMaram's reply. All she could hear besides her own heart palpitations was that tiny incredulous voice inside of herself:

*Leaving? Kevin is //leaving//? With another girl?*

Not a girl. DeMaram had to be at least five years older than Meg. She clutched the towel and the coffee cup more tightly to keep from dropping either. She was feeling... angry? Panicked? Jealous?

All three and more?

She stopped herself. This reaction was completely irrational. She needed to get out of this monastery and re-teach herself how to think straight.

Meg turned around and walked back up the steps, downing the rest of the coffee as she did so, satisfied with the way it seemed to scrape her throat with its stinging heat. Once upstairs again, she put the mug down on a table, found her winter coat, and walked outside.


"You think I'm only here to witness The remains of love exhumed." --BNL, "Call and Answer"

The wind stirred in the chysanthemums Meg had planted in the cemetery all those months ago. Chysanthemums, the flower for the month of November.

Emily C. Wexford's birthday was in November.

There was no gravestone here, not even a body. Wexford had disintegrated. Disappeared without a trace. These winter-dry flowers shook in the wind, a silent testimony to the one they memorialized.

Frohike's fresh grave was close by.

The cold knifed its way through the towel around her burnt hand. The cold felt good. The cold felt right. Meg had come out here alone in the dark. The past few years convinced her that she grieved better alone.

Once, when she'd first found out that her parents were missing and most likely dead, she'd caught a glimpse of herself in her dorm mirror and had made this observation: Meg Mulder was not a pretty crier. Her cheeks would get all puffy and red, her eyes would go completely bloodshot, and her nose would run in the most unattractive fashion.

Tonight, however, the tears were not flowing freely, but instead trickling down her cheeks one by one. So much loss pressed in on her, and to top it all off, Kevin was talking with another woman. No, not just talking. They seemed to be having a very intense conversation.

They'd only met yesterday. How intense could a conversation with a stranger get? Intense enough for her to talk him into leaving the monastery with her?

Even though they'd known each other for almost twenty years, anything would be more serious than his usual conversations with Meg. She could never bring herself to talk seriously much with Kevin. There was too much history. The switch from talking about who had the better foul shot to talking about how much she was turned on by the little divet that formed between his eyebrows when he really concentrated, by the feel of his stubble against her bare shoulder that one night they'd pitched their tent in the Outback...

Impossible.

The switch from the mundane, silly talk to the serious stuff -- well, it would just be flat-out impossible. Serious talk would be dangerous. Serious talk might mean having to tell him... things. Things Kevin would never have thought about before, because Kevin did not think of her ... in that way.

Alone, she indulged in the tears. Within the past two years, she'd been preparing herself for the day that would come: that inevitable day when Kevin would meet someone else, fall in love, and get married. Meg had handled his past girlfriends with nothing but amiability, but the older the two of them got, the more the possibility solidified that Kevin one day soon would meet "the one"... and that "one" would not be Meg.

Hell, she'd lost everything else: her parents, her Gram, Frohike, and once colonization had begun she'd lost friends too numerous to mention. Why not Kevin, too?

Well, she'd never exactly lose him. He'd just grow out of her reach.

Meg tried to picture the future so that when it happened it might not hurt so much. She would become "Aunt Meg" -- hopefully "Cool Aunt Meg," the kids' favorite adult. She'd go over Kevin's house and cook Thanksgiving dinner with his wife, and she'd smile at her, playing her "best buddy" part so well, so seamlessly, that Mrs. Kevin Declan III would never guess her husband's childhood friend was jealous as all hell. She'd never guess that her husband's childhood friend spent nights dreaming of kissing her husband...

How ridiculous. Irrational.

//Let go of him,// she told herself. //Get over it.//

But letting go and getting over it seemed to be the only thing she'd been doing for three years. Betrayal and loss and death seemed to be following her, and there was simply nowhere to hide. She couldn't even go to her mother -- her other best friend. That connection had been shaken to the foundations as well.

Now the tears were flowing freely. She let herself cry loudly. There was no one to hear.

"Do you remember the carousel at the mall when you were little?"

The soft voice at her side startled her. Meg turned and saw her mother standing quietly beside her, a few yards away.

Meg quickly wiped her face with the back of her right hand. Her mother came closer and held something out to her. A tissue. Meg stared at it for a moment, then resigned herself to taking it.

After wiping her eyes and blowing her nose, Meg hiccuped, "I don't remember." The words felt strange in her mouth.

"You were three." Her mother turned her eyes to the chrysanthemums. Her voice softened with remembrance. "You didn't want to sit in your stroller that day, so I told you you could walk if you promised not to let go of my hand."

Meg smiled a little. "So of course I did."

Meg's small smile was returned. "Yes. Yes, you did let go, and I looked down and all of the sudden you weren't there. You couldn't have been out of my sight for more than a minute, but still, I had lost you."

Meg could see her mother's fear still lived at the memory. "How did you find me?"

Her mother laughed softly. "I heard your little voice calling, 'Look, Mommy, look!' You had found the carousel, and you wanted to ride it..."

Meg looked at her mother, suddenly shocked. "That's why?"

Her mother turned her face back to Meg. "'That's why' what?"

"That's why," Meg guessed, "we never went to the mall until I was ten. Even during Christmas. We always shopped mail order. I thought it was because you and Dad were so busy but..."

Meg's mother almost cringed. "I just couldn't bear the thought... I just couldn't bear the thought of loosing you that way. So I didn't take you back to the mall for a long, long time."

It made sense. Meg tried to read her mother's face, but could not. For the first time, she became aware that her mother had more than just facts to tell her. She'd had feelings of her own. Meg wasn't the only one being followed by betrayal, loss and death.

In a voice colored with awe, Meg asked, "Why are you telling me this?"

Another bittersweet smile graced her mother's face. "Maybe I should have taken you back to the mall after that, but the danger to you seemed too great. I know it was nothing more than a perceived danger, but I had to make a choice. You missed out, undoubtedly, but it wasn't anything you couldn't learn on your own when you were old enough. We only had your best interests at heart."

Meg looked back at the chrysanthemums, heavily pondering her mother's words. She wasn't just talking about the mall.

"Meg," her mother sighed with a solidity, an uneasy resignation, "we're not asking for your forgiveness. That might be asking too much. That might be more than you can give. All we can hope for is your understanding."

Meg turned her mother's story over and over in her mind.

Understanding.

She took a moment to try to guess at her mother's feelings. Meg knew so little of what her mother been through in her life. She felt ill equipped for such imaginings.

Regardless, she had to venture a guess. "You must have been really scared when you couldn't find me."

Her mother's eyebrows shot up then evened out once more. "Terrified, actually."

"But Mommy," she asked, her voice muted with old hurt, her heart overflowing with confusion, "how can I understand something I don't even know about? I've read Wexford's journal, and I've read Daddy's letter, but it's not enough."

She stopped talking, giving time for her words to soak in and giving herself time to choose her words rather than blurt them. Her mother remained silent, her blue eyes glistening in the starlight.

"I need to be told," Meg sighed at last, her eyes pleading with her mother. "I need *you* to tell me."

Her mother blinked several times and reached for her daughter's arm. "Let's go inside, Meggie."

Meg stiffened with anger. "Mom, you're putting me off again."

Her mother's eyebrow shot up in response. "You want to hear the whole story out here? In the cold? At night?"

It took a moment before Meg fully understood what her mother had just said. She gaped in surprise. "You're going to tell me?"

Her mother nodded briefly. "Let's go inside. I'll make you a cup of tea. We'll talk."

Somewhere between uncertainty and relief, Meg searched for a way to answer this new turn of events. The light approach suddenly seemed right. It was the one she knew best.

"Okay, but no honey. I'd rather have it plain if we don't have any real sugar."

Her mother smirked at her daughter's endearing quirkiness. "I think we can manage."


"Perfect love casts out fear." --1 John 4:18

He was lying on the floor. The bathroom floor. The tiles pressed cold through his shirt into his back.

"Dad?"

He was choking on something. His lungs were bubbling up into his windpipe. He couldn't breathe.

"Dad?"

Meg hovered above him. Her eyes were wide. Fear? Glassy, almost as if... almost feverish.

She was about to cry. His brave little girl was about to cry. She cradled his head in her hands.

He tried to speak to her, but the words stuck. He tasted blood in the back of his mouth. Then the blood pumped over his tongue, pushing against his teeth, trickling warm over his bottom lip.

"Dad!"

He couldn't breathe. He couldn't swallow. He couldn't move.

"Forgive me..."

He spoke to his daughter, and it was his father's voice.

And then he woke up.


He hadn't had such a disturbing nightmare in so long that he was genuinely surprised to jolt awake with his long-lost friend Cold Sweat rolling off of him in a thousand rivulets. He clutched fruitlessly at the homemade quilt with one hand, at his pounding heart with the other.

"Jesus," he muttered, trying to catch his breath. His chest hurt so much he was concerned momentarily that the dream had woken him up to a heart attack.

He breathed for another minute and the pain lessened. It was a panic attack of some kind, not a life threatening pulmonary event. Funny how growing older and watching a friend die of natural causes forced one to think seriously about one's own mortality.

"Scully." He reached beneath the covers to hold her, his lifeline, his love, one of two good dreams that had ever come true and stayed that way.

She wasn't there.

He blinked into the darkness, letting his hand linger over the spot in the bed that belonged to Scully. It was long cold. She hadn't come to bed at all yet.

He reached over to the nightstand and took the old clock in his shaking hands, lifting it to his face so he could read it in such low light. 12:26 am. Where was she?

After he stumbled over to the wall and switched on the lamp, he bumbled about their bedroom, dressing himself enough that he could wander the monastery looking for his partner.

She'd ditched him. He half-snorted at the irony, turned off the light and shut the door behind him.

It didn't take him long to find her. A soft orange glow was emanating from the largest sitting room on the first floor, and the warmth of the glow was matched by the warmth of Scully's voice, speaking softly. She was saying words that matched images and memories he shared with her. More accurately, she was telling a story. She was telling *their* story.

He stepped quietly around the floorboards that were sure to creak beneath his feet. Soundlessly, he peered around the entrance way to the sitting room, and the sight that greeted his eyes made his heart overflow with tenderness, where mere moments before it had been bursting with nightmare.

Scully turned her head slightly. She said nothing to indicate that she saw Mulder standing there, but he knew by her eyes that she was aware of his presence. She was sitting on the end of one of the sofas, wrapped in a blanket, facing the crackling fire. On her left, also wrapped in a blanket, her face turned to the fire, was their daughter. Meg had propped a pillow under her head and was leaning against her mother's lap, stretching her legs out across the rest of the sofa. The flickering shadows accentuated how much her cheekbones and chin were a mirror image of Scully's.

The two most beautiful women in the world. Hands down. No contest.

*There's a lot of you in Meg.* Scully's earlier words came back to him, and he took a moment to thank God or Whom- or Whatever that Meg had inherited so much from her mother as well.

Mulder pondered his daughter. He couldn't see her entire face, but he could see the way the firelight caught and held the red tones in her sandy hair. Her eyes were shaped just like her mother's but fringed with a thicker, curling set of lashes -- lashes reminiscent of two aunts Meg would never know. Those lashes lowered and lifted as she stared intently into the fire.

"So when Daddy found you in the hospital," she was asking in that voice of hers so very much like her mother's, "and you woke up and got better and stuff, is *that* when you two..."

Her voice trailed off. Mulder tried to read Meg's face, but the angle at which she faced the fire did not allow him a clear view of her expressive eyes.

"When we what, baby?"

He almost laughed. Scully hadn't called Meg "baby" in more years than he could count. He braced himself for a complaint from his daughter, but none was forthcoming. Instead, Meg was fidgeting with her cuticles, holding them up to the light and picking at them with her fingernails.

"You know," Meg sighed uncomfortably, curling her hands into fists before tucking them into her armpits. "When you two... got together?"

Scully's eyes subtly caught his again and they shared a wistful smile.

"No," Scully replied, but Mulder wasn't sure whom she was telling. "It was a few more years yet before anything like that happened."

"*Years*?" Meg asked in disbelief.

It was all Mulder could do to keep from laughing out loud. Meg couldn't imagine her parents without each other. Funny. Nearly twenty eight years ago, he wouldn't have been able to imagine them together. Fantasize, yes. Imagine a too-good-to-be-true reality, no.

Just like imagining a child who was completely Scully's and completely his own had once been impossible, and now here she was, twenty-two years old, staring into a fireplace and asking about the past from which she had been born.

Scully brushed Meg's wayward curls away from her cheek. "Years," she replied, smiling sideways at her eavesdropping husband.

Years of distance and misunderstanding. Years spent each trusting the other with life and limb, with bizarre theories and demands for proof, but years before either was willing to let that trust cover heart and soul as well.

Years Meg would not have been able to imagine.

But they had defied the odds, as always. They had learned to play the game just as well as their adversaries, had found unlikely allies, and by some miracle... the two of them had pulled it off, had become partners in the truest sense of the word, in a sense so true it transcended the meaning of the word.

And then, as if in complete defiance of everything expected, even as expected by those accustomed to expecting the unexpected, their daughter was born. Meg was normal. Meg was healthy. Meg had red blood. Their pain had become a pearl neither had dared hope to hold. She was his and she was hers, and naming her Margaret seemed right, because "Margaret" means "pearl."

She was beautiful. She was everything they had ever lost returned to them, everthing They had ever taken from them, and so much more than either her mother or father ever could have imagined.

She was also temperamental, sometimes gassy, a bit accident-prone, at first had an "I'm- hungry" cry to pierce eardrums, and eventually she grew to be independent to a fault, but she was completely his and completely hers. She had the wide Scully eyes, a modified version of the Mulder nose, and, thanks to a double dose of recessive genes, forest-thick eyelashes and a defiant mass of sand-colored curls.

Like a movie in rewind, he closed his eyes and watched their daughter in his memory. First, she was hauling boxes of books into her Georgetown dorm. Then she was walking up to the principal in her cap and gown, receiving her high school diploma. She was laughing at her father, pulling him off of his chair, teaching him how to waltz to Billy Joel at that father-daughter dance. She was sticking her mouth-guard against her braces and picking up her field hockey stick for the semi-final match. She was in the kitchen, making Christmas cookies with her Gram, precipitating a flour fight with her mother.

She was thirteen, in the hospital waiting room, and he was handing her a tissue, and she was sobbing, saying it was all her fault that Kevin had slit his wrists.

She was five, sitting in her mother's arms, her childishly long legs dangling as she whispered, "Hi, Daddy," and he looked up at her from his own hospital bed, calling her "Good golly, Miss Molly" and almost making her smile.

And she was three, prancing around the living room in the new blue velvet and white eyelet dress her grandmother in Rhode Island had sent for her birthday. She was giggling when he called her "devil with the blue dress on," and Scully was laughing at both of them when he discovered that "Good Golly, Miss Molly" was the perfect nickname for her.

And she was not even an hour old, and she was at Scully's breast, and he kissed them both on the forehead before letting fall silent tears of relief and thanksgiving and... a kind of victory he hadn't known existed.

And suddenly he was pulling Scully up off of the floor in the autopsy bay, holding her against him, smoothing her hair, panicked that she was sick for the fourth morning in a row, terrified because she never threw up like this during an autopsy, never in all the years of their partnership. And he looked down just in time to catch her wiping her hand against the bottom of her nose. And there was no blood there, only a glove that hadn't even touched the dead body yet.

And it took them a month and a half more before they figured out the problem, because the possibility was too extreme, even for them, the ramifications too much for an innocent child to bear. And just as before they hadn't allowed themselves the hope for a life together...

"How come it took you guys so long?"

*Because we thought we'd never have you,* he almost said aloud, but quickly remembered that Meg didn't even know he was there.

He wanted to keep it that way. Scully was right about waiting to talk to Meg. After all, no one knew Mulders better than Scully.

Besides, Meg wasn't asking about her own birth. She was asking about her parents. Meg didn't sound confused, amused, or even awe-struck. Instead, she sounded... cautious? Like she wasn't sure she wanted to hear the answer.

"How come it took us so long?" Scully reached over to the coffee table in front of them and picked up a mug. She sipped from it thoughtfully before answering. "You have to understand there were... rules against that sort of thing."

"I know that," Meg answered quietly, "but how did you work your way around the rules? And when did you know you *wanted* to work your way around them?"

Scully was looking down at Meg's hair again, brushing tendrils of it out of her face with her ring-clad left hand. "There wasn't any one time I could pinpoint when I knew."

"You just... sort of... *knew*?" There was that caution in Meg's voice again, and Mulder wondered at it.

"Oh, I denied it," Scully admitted, "or tried to for a long time. I made excuses to hide it, but eventually it came down to a matter of being honest with myself, no matter how your father felt in return."

Meg looked up at her mother. "Even if it meant rejection?"

Scully smiled a little. "I was never very good at letting myself get so close to people that they would see me at my weakest. It wasn't so much a matter of rejection as much it was about vulnerability."

Even now Scully blushed at this and refused to catch Mulder's eye.

"You were afraid it wouldn't work out," Meg observed, her voice fresh with a confidence that had not been there moments ago.

"Of course," her mother agreed, "that was only natural."

"But it did work out."

Scully finally chanced a glance his way once more. "It still is."

"Well," Meg said, her voice verging on whining impatience, "how did you decide to risk it?"

For a second, Scully stopped breathing in order to devote all of her energies to deciding how to answer this latest question of Meg's. "That," she said on a gusty sigh, "is a long story."

Mulder waited for Meg to snap back with a trademark smart remark of some kind, but she surprised him. She merely waited in expectant silence.

Scully shut her eyes and reopened them to the fire. As she continued absently stroking Meg's hair, the ring on her finger sparkled in the low light, making Mulder think of the first time he'd set his own eyes on that ring, and of all the trouble involved in placing a ring on that particular finger...


"You said, 'It is not good for the man to be alone. Let us make him a partner like himself.'" -- from The Book of Tobit 8: 6

July 3, 2000

"Lone Gunmen."

"Frohike," Mulder said from the other side of the phone, "I need you to do something for me."

Frohike clamped the phone between his ear and his shoulder and wheeled the rickety old office chair over to his terminal. "Whaddayaneed, buddy?"

"I'm on my way there right now," he answered, "I need you to come somewhere with me."

Frohike, interest clearly piqued, asked, "Where are we going?"

"Uhm," Mulder stammered, sounding not quite like himself, "you're a smart guy. You'll be able to figure it out when we get there."

"I don't like the sound of this," Frohike answered. "You're not planning on coming up here with a fake cast and then luring me to a deserted park?"

"Don't tempt me. Besides, you're not pretty enough."

"So... where we're going," Frohike leered in such a tone that Mulder knew how the question would end, "will Agent Scully be joining us at this... mystery location?"

Mulder gripped the cell phone more tightly in his increasingly sweaty palm. "That's the plan."

He jabbed the "END" button with his thumb and turned down the road to the Gunmen's humble abode. The sun was starting to set. He flicked a glance at his watch. Just over one hour left. Would that be enough time to get there?

What was he worrying about? Why was he nervous? She'd wait. Even if they were late, she knew it wouldn't be out of hesitation. Besides, she'd waited this long, hadn't she?

All the more reason not to keep her waiting any longer. And this was the one instance he'd vowed he wouldn't ditch her. The tires squeaked in protest as he rounded the next corner a bit too quickly.

Thankfully, Frohike was already waiting outside, thus saving Mulder the trouble of waiting for the Gunmen to unlock all seven deadbolts before letting him in. When Mulder pulled the car up, Frohike jumped in with an alacrity that could only have been caused by the prospect of seeing Agent Scully at the end of the journey. Mulder coughed out a nervous laugh and tugged at his tie, loosening it even more.

At the first stoplight, Mulder drummed his thumbs anxiously against the steering wheel, puffing his cheeks as he exhaled a long breath.

"Nervous," Frohike observed. "Why's that?"

Mulder couldn't answer; he was afraid his voice would crack just like it had on the day that Maureen Bryant had asked him to take her to the Freshman Formal. He already felt like a freshman in high school again, giddy, like he was sneaking out the back door of his mom's house at midnight to go necking with Maureen under a tree in her backyard.

No. Weak comparison. This was like nothing he'd ever experienced before. Not even remotely like the last time he'd made a similar drive to a similar place.

Similar, but not the same. There were fundamental differences this time. This time it was real. No wonder he was so uncharacteristically edgy. But it was an undeniably good kind of edgy. Beyond good. The best kind.

He could practically hear old Frohike's brain churning away, trying to guess at their destination. It was safe to bet the poor guy had no idea.

And Frohike looked suitably confused when Mulder pulled the car into the parking lot of one St. John's Church in Alexandria. There were only two other cars in the parking lot; one Mulder recognized, the other he didn't, but he knew who the owner had to be.

They walked towards the main entrance to the church, and Mulder asked Frohike, "Figured it out yet?"

"No," Frohike answered slowly and cautiously, "can't say that I have. Is this for a case you're working on?"

Mulder only gave him a cryptic half-smile as he pushed open the door, ushering Frohike inside.

They needed a few moments to allow their eyes to adjust to the low, stained-glass inspired lighting. The sun was nearly down now, and at the top of the aisle in the sanctuary, a white-haired priest was busy lighting a few candles for illumination.

The candles sparked to life and shone on the two other figures waiting for them in the sanctuary.

Mulder wasn't quite running down the aisle, but Frohike's shorter legs had to do double time just to keep up.

Mrs. Scully smiled at him when he reached the end of his near run. "Fox," she said, pursing the corners of her lips like it was obviously all she could do to keep a big, stupid grin from taking over her face, "good of you to show up."

He was about to answer her something along the lines of, "Wouldn't miss it for the world." However, there was someone standing quietly beside Mrs. Scully, and he couldn't help but immediately devote all of his attention to her.

"Nice dress," Mulder nodded at his partner, reaching out and taking her fingers in his, letting his thumb graze the ring she already wore.

"Well..." Scully took a fold of the ivory crepe in her hand and cast her eyes downward with a funny sort of shyness he'd rarely seen in her. It was obviously all she could do to keep a big, stupid grin from taking over her face. "It's nowhere near traditional, but it is *something* different from the kind of thing I usually wear."

He gazed at her knowingly. "Your mom insisted on it?"

"Among other things." She gestured to the air about her, indicating their surroundings of old stone-and- mortar, stained glass and candles, statues and crucifixes.

"For all your mom's help on this, we could have had this thing on ice if she wanted."

When she gave him her trademark arched eyebrow, he felt his nerves abate. Still, he knew it was obviously all he could do to keep a big, stupid grin from taking over his face.

"Now that," she replied with her beautiful Scully-smirk, "I would pay to see."

She leaned slightly to look around Mulder, and she smirked at Frohike in greeting. Mulder had forgotten he was there. When he turned to look at Frohike, the old guy's reaction was more reward than Mulder had thought it would be. Frohike was pale. Frohike was open-mouthed in shock.

He looked up at Mulder and said, "You sneaky son of a bitch."

"Please," Mulder mock-complained, "not in front of Scully's mom."

"Or in church," Mrs. Scully chided softly with a smirk of her own. So that's where Scully got it from.

Their words had no effect on Frohike. He repeated, either for emphasis or because his brain couldn't come up with anything better to say, "You sneaky son of a bitch."

The priest walked over to the four of them, carrying a large, thick book. He cleared his throat and startled poor uninformed Frohike.

"Fox? Dana? Are we ready to begin?"

Their eyes met for the shortest of moments, and in that moment, there was no one else in the church. There was no one else in the world, no one else in the universe. They were already bound together beyond words. This was just a declaration of that bond.

"I'll be goddamned," Frohike muttered over that moment.

The priest laughed a little. "I certainly hope not, Mr. Frohike."

Before Frohike could protest further or ask the priest how he knew his name, Father was straightening his back and declaring in a voice to fill the large church, "Then let us begin this as we begin all good things, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit..."

~*~

Gethsemani Monastery Trappist, Kentucky January 25, 2024 Dawn

"Mr. Mulder?"

The whispered voice startled him out of the memory.

"Mr. Mulder, sir?"

Only one person in this entire monastery called him that. He turned, bleary-eyed, and saw a sleepy Kevin standing in the sunrise-lit hallway.

"Sorry to bother you," Kevin whispered apologetically.

"No, son," he replied, himself whispering and steering Kevin away from the doorway so not to disturb Scully's ever-continuing storytelling to Meg. "It's all right. What's the matter?"

"Uhm," he said, shuffling his feet, "do you know if Meg's up yet?"

Just then, they heard a burst of laughter. Meg's trademark laughter. Kevin's face perked up.

Meg was giggling. "Daddy said *that*?"

Mulder got an odd feeling in the pit of his stomach, and Kevin stepped towards the sitting room entry, a guilty look of eavesdropping on his face.

They didn't hear what Scully answered, but she must have at least nodded, because Meg continued her incredulous giggles.

"To *you*?"

Again, no verbal answer from Scully.

"And you *fell* for it?"

"Well," they heard Scully say at last, "not exactly. He was sort of... tied up... at the time."

By then, Kevin had decided to interrupt the conversation. He peeked his head into the other room.

"Meg?" He asked. Mulder watched him hook his thumbs in his pockets. "Sorry for interrupting, Doc Scully. Meg, can I talk to you for a second?"

Mulder didn't hear his daughter's answer, but a moment later she had made her way to the sitting room entryway, still wrapped in her blanket.

Before she said a word to Kevin, however, Meg looked a bit further down the hallway and saw her father. For a second, Mulder was worried she might snap at him again, or, worse, give him another dose of the cold shoulder.

Apparently Meg was feeling a bit better towards him. She smiled at her father and rolled her eyes in sheer amusement.

"'My one in five billion'" she muttered with her mother's smirk. "Puh-leeze."

And then, shaking her head and mumbling something about "the corniest thing I've ever heard," Meg turned and pushed Kevin down the hallway, presumably to find a place where they could talk more privately.

Mulder watched them go for a minute before walking into the sitting room. The fire was still crackling in the fireplace, and Scully was still sitting on the far end of the sofa.

He sat down next to her. "You just *had* to tell her about that, didn't you?"

She lowered her eyelids at him with false innocence. "She wanted the whole story."

Giving in to impulse over embarrassment, he took his wife's face in his hands and kissed her with quick affection.

When he pulled away and saw that blue spark of smugness in her eyes, he had to ask, "What?"

Snuggling closer to Mulder, Scully answered, "I just hope that one day she has someone say something half as corny to her."

Scully was looking out to the hallway again, but neither of them could hear what Meg and Kevin were saying to each other.


"You think we're here to play a game of who loves more than whom." --BNL, "Call and Answer"

"I'm leaving," he said.

Meg did not let him know she knew this already. She merely looked at him in silence, waiting for him to explain before she jumped to any more conclusions. If she had learned anything from her mother in the past several hours, it was to listen without making assumptions about what the other was saying.

Kevin's brown eyes darted away from hers. He leaned against the wall and scratched at the corner of his eye with his index finger. "I had no luck looking for my dad on the web. The connections are all broken. Too many servers down."

Meg slowly released the breath she'd been clutching in her lungs. The conversation she'd heard last night was starting to make sense now that she had some better context for it.

This wasn't about Kevin and Captain DeMaram. Rachel Jo. DP. Whatever. This was something much deeper. Much more risky.

"You're leaving to find him," she sighed.

He looked back at her, trepidation crinkling the corners of his eyes. He could tell she was going to try to stop him. Hell. He'd tried to do the same thing for her not two years ago, and that was in an outwardly safer world, before the invasion began.

"My mom gave me an address," he explained evenly. "The last one she has for him. It's near Wilmington, just a couple hours from DC. I'm going back with DP and Mr. Skinner later on this morning."

Meg was stunned. To hold her balance, she stepped backward and pressed her back against the wall opposite Kevin. She took a few deep breaths, trying valiantly not to blurt anything she might regret.

There was so much she wanted to say to him, but she couldn't think of a way of saying it that wouldn't sound...

Corny. Incredibly corny.

After letting Meg study his shoes for another minute, Kevin asked, "Well? What are you thinking?"

Meg frowned. She pursed her lips thoughtfully. Then she asked him, "What are you going to do... when you find him?"

She heard Kevin sigh with something akin to relief. Was it because she'd chosen to say "when you find him" and not "if?"

He nervously scratched at the corner of his eye again. "I'll make sure he's been vaxed."

Meg nodded. "And after that?"

Kevin froze. He looked down and studied the fringe of Meg's blanket as it swept the monastery's stone floor. "I... I don't know. I hadn't planned that far yet."

Finally, Meg drove her startling turquoise eyes into his with a fierceness that frightened even Kevin. "You do know how dangerous this is?"

Determined, he returned her gaze measure for measure. "No more or less than going back to South America with you."

She pursed her lips again. "And you do know I wouldn't go off like this if--"

She broke off, trying to find the right word in the midst of her old hatred for Kevin's father.

"If... *that man* were my father?"

"Wouldn't you?" Kevin countered, his eyes issuing a cool challenge. "Or, should I say, didn't you?"

Meaning the jaunt that ended up with her getting shot in the back just before she found her parents. He had her cornered, and they both knew it. The question was, would she let him go? Or would she make herself a hypocrite for having told him to back off when she'd gone looking for her own missing parents?

But this was different. Wasn't it? Meg frowned, her usual expressiveness eluding her.

Then, Kevin was no longer leaning against the wall but standing right in front of her. "Meg," he said, his voice soft, "you know... I'll go... with you. Instead. If you need me."

She blinked at him, either unsure or afraid of what he was telling her.

//Need?// The word rolled around inside Meg's head, but she was having trouble grasping its meaning in the moment.

Kevin misread her confusion. "I'll go back to South America with you," he explained, "and Cho. Just say the word."

Meg's mouth went dry. She blinked rapidly.

//Need.//

Did she *need* him? What was this thing, "need"?

She'd lost so much so often: family, home, friends, the comforts of innocence and unconditional trust. She was learning how to live without those things, those luxuries she'd once thought she'd needed to survive.

Need was not about feelings. Need was tangible. Need was about survival. She needed to breathe. She needed to sleep. These were things she could not live without. She could not live without food or shelter or clothing. That was need. Essential. Required. Obligatory.

Were other people vital to survival? Could she go on, could she live on without Kevin?

One day, would she have to?

A sob caught in her throat. She frowned deeply, sheer will driving away the impulse to cry.

She wanted him to stay.

But...

But he needed to find his father. She understood that drive.

He needed her not to be a hypocrite. He needed her to not be selfish. He needed her to be independent and strong, and those were two things she knew she could be. Especially for Kevin.

"Need?" She whispered, blinking back the tears she refused to let him see. "Kevin, no. No. I'll be fine."

Kevin blinked at that. Meg stood away from the wall and looked directly into his eyes so he would know she was telling him the truth.

So she would know she was telling him the truth.

"Really, Kev. Go," she said, laughing lightly to let him know she meant it and to loosen the insistent lump in her throat. "You need to find your father. I know..."

She had to stop, to regain her resolve, to explain her feelings as best she could, even though it would mean letting him go.

"You know I don't harbor any love for... for *that* man, but I do know what that's like, to have that piece missing from your life.

"I know how it feels," she finished. "I understand that -- that *need* to know what happened, even if you've been hurt by things he's done. He may be a--"

She stopped herself from saying "selfish prick," and mitigated her words out of respect for Kevin's feelings. "*I* may not be that man's biggest fan... but he *is* your father."

//I can't begrudge you this, Kevin// she thought. //I can't deny you the chance to know. I won't.//

She thought those words, but could not find the courage to say them.

"Go," she repeated instead. "You have to at least try, right?"

"Right..." Kevin answered, but his voice was miles away.

Why was he so distant? Was he worried about her?

She reassured him, "I'll be fine Kev. Really."

Kevin's lips pulled together and he nodded. "Of course you will."

His face became cold, unreadable, even to Meg who had been reading this face of his ever since she had been three years old. That scared her.

But a thought occurred to her, a spark of childish hope which she did not brush away for once. Did it have to be this way at all?

Maybe not. She asked, "Do you want me to go with you?"

Kevin looked back at her, his face still blank. She could sense he was retreating from her still, even though he did not move, barely even blinked. She tried to read him again, but could not.

"Kev?"

"No," he replied emphatically, shaking his head. "We both know Cho can't make those deliveries on his own."

His mouth was smiling, but his eyes refused to join in. "He needs you, Meg."

She couldn't agree with that, but she couldn't debate it, either. Two people might be able to make all those deliveries without a third person, but one couldn't do it alone.

They were both doing what needed to be done. What more could be done? What more could be said? Meg exhaled slowly.

"DP wants to leave around eleven," Kevin informed her, absently rubbing the back of his neck, "and I still have to do some packing."

"Wait a minute," Meg said, something from the first part of their conversation clicking in her mind. "You said that address is in Wilmington, Delaware?"

Kevin nodded.

"That's less than an hour away from Philadelphia," Meg continued. "My mom's cousin has a school up there -- that school for the deaf--"

"Where you used to work summers?"

Meg nodded. "Mom said Aunt Bridge turned it into a safecamp when the invasion began. Lenhart and Keyte deliver their vaccine and stuff."

Lenhart and Keyte; two of their clone allies responsible for distribution of the vaccine in North America. Kevin nodded for Meg to keep going.

"While you're packing, I'll call my Aunt Bridge. Maybe she can help you find your dad."

"We have to stop in DC first," he countered.

"I know," Meg said, "but maybe DP can take you up to Philly once she's done in DC. It'll be faster. It'll be less ground travel."

She meant that it would be less risk of encountering hungry, cold, cranky, razor-fingered alien larvae, but Kevin didn't need her to say that out loud.

"And when Cho and I are done," she continued, "we'll meet you up there. In one week."

Kevin shook his head, "Three weeks. That's at least how long it will take you to hit all those little villages."

"One," Meg insisted. "If you're not back to my Aunt Bridget's school one week from today, I'll know something's wrong and we can look for you. Send out a search party, the works."

Kevin opened his mouth to argue with her, but she cut him off. "And don't fight me on this one. If you do I'll have to kick your ass."

Again the corners of his lips turned upward, but his eyes remained light years away.

"With one hand tied behind my back," she added for good measure.

"Yeah," Kevin said, his voice as cool as his eyes.

Meg watched him go, her heart quivering within her. With each step Kevin took away from her, she grew more and more frightened.

//I did the right thing.// She reassured herself.

Then why did letting him go, watching him walk away like this hurt so damned much?

Words from Wexford's journal came back to her: //Hope demands sacrifice.//

Indeed. She only hoped the sacrifice would not be Kevin's life.


"If the one falls, the other will lift up his companion. Woe to the solitary man! For if he should fall, he has no one to lift him up."--Ecclesiastes 4: 10

Meg long since had lost count of how many times she had dialed her Aunt Bridget's phone number. Likewise, she had lost count of how many times she got either static-spiked silence or the annoying: "We're sorry. All circuits are busy at this time. Please try again..."

She slammed the receiver down with gusto.

She stopped and rubbed her eyes vigorously. When she reopened them, she looked at the clock and realized she only had half an hour before the helicopter would be leaving.

"Damn," she whispered to herself, picking up the receiver again.

"Hundred and third time's the charm?"

Meg looked up into the doorway of the Gunmen's office and saw her father smiling down at her sheepishly. "I passed by a couple times," he explained, "you were on the phone every time."

Meg looked on her dad with a little more grace than she had the day before. She joked, "Remind you of when I was in high school?"

"Those were the days." He laughed a little. "No luck yet, huh?"

"Not yet," Meg sighed, leaning back in her chair.

Father and daughter looked alternately at each other, at the ceiling, at the floor, and then back at each other for a few tense moments.

"Meg--"

"Dad, I'm really--"

They both stopped, eyes pinching at the corners with shared discomfort and a showdown of classic Mulder guilt, family style.

Mulder gestured lightly to his daughter. "You first."

Meg pursed her lips. "No. I think you should go first this time."

The elder Mulder sighed for a moment then sat down on the far corner of the desk Meg was using. Meg watched him take the time to choose his words before he spoke.

"Meggie," he finally began, "I don't even know what I can say. Your mom and I -- we did what we thought was best--"

"I know that," Meg interrupted softly. "I know that now. Sometimes, there's no right answer, no wrong answer. Just the best possible answer under really crappy circumstances."

He looked at his daughter sideways and caught her smiling at him in return.

"And I'm sorry, too," she continued, "for yelling at you about... well, you know."

Did he ever. "No. You were right to call me on that. I deserved it."

"No you didn't." Meg looked over at her father, her eyes full of self-reproach. "That was a very childish thing for me to say to you, and I'm really sorry. Can you ever forgive me?"

There she was, calling herself childish like she always did, when she behaved more like a grown-up than her old man did most of the time. He held his arms out to her. She hugged him back, hard.

"I am so proud of you," he reminded her.

He felt her hiccup, like she was holding back tears. "I know, Daddy."

He released her from the hug and held her at arm's length so he could get a good look at her. "You and your mother are the only things in my life I could ever call 'miracles.'"

She smiled, even as her eyes brightened with unshed tears. She wouldn't even cry in front of her dad now.

"What," he asked her, trying to get her to laugh again, "is that the second corniest thing you've ever heard?"

His baby girl rewarded him with a genuine giggle, and his heart warmed even more.

But then Meg's eyes darkened. She frowned, and her smile straightened. "Miracles," she whispered under her breath.

"What?" Mulder asked.

Meg's hand flew to her forehead. "Of course!" She exclaimed in relief. "Why didn't I think of that before?"

"Think of what before?"

Meg's hand traveled from her forehead down to her throat, and then she winced. "Oh, shoot. I knew I shouldn't have stopped wearing it. Now I have to go find it."

"Meg," Mulder asked, worried, "find what? What are you talking about?"

Meg hugged her father one more time before dashing for the exit. "If I can't get through to Aunt Bridge one way, I'll just have to get through to her another."

She left her father staring after her, but seconds later she was back, poking her face around the doorframe.

"And Dad," she asked, "Krycek -- that one-armed man you wrote me about -- did he speak Russian?"

Mulder nodded at his daughter mutely.

Meg nodded back, her face reading defensive, cocky annoyance. "That's what I thought."

And she was gone again, leaving her father with one cold thought:

Who would protect his daughter now?

~*~

Kevin hadn't lied when he'd told Meg he still needed to do some packing. In fact, before he had talked to her, he hadn't even started the process of fishing out clothes, food, gas mask, and a compass of his own.

Because he had gone to her hoping she wouldn't let him go.

No, it was more than that. He wanted her to ask him to go to South America, but not because it was safer. It wasn't. They both knew that.

He wanted her to ask him to stay because... because... because he didn't want to leave her, and he wanted her to feel the same way about him. He was just too much of a coward to come out and say it.

He wanted her to want him to stay.

And not because there would be less disappointment involved if he didn't leave her to go looking for his father.

But neither did he want her to ask him to stay simply because he was comfortable, a reminder of better times, like an old pair of jeans, or like the teddy bear she'd slept with until she was eighteen.

//Kevin, no. I'll be fine.//

And not because he thought she couldn't take care herself. He wanted her to need him to stay the same way he needed her. Not necessarily "need," but something just as strong which Kevin could not translate into any other word.

But who was he kidding? Certainly not himself, not after this morning. Meg Mulder didn't need anyone. Much less did she need *him*.

And he needed to pack.


She was on her hands and knees, looking underneath her bed with a flashlight, when the light's beam caught a bit of silver spiraled against the dsuty hardwood floor.

"Thank GOD!" Meg shouted when she finally found it.

She slid her hand under the bed and patted around in the area her flashlight had just illuminated. Her fingers brushed against the chain. She grabbed it and pulled it out from beneath into the morning sunlight. The silver chain and oval charm were dust-crusted, obscuring the image of the Virgin Mary surrounded by stars, but the metal still sparkled against her palm.

Her Miraculous Medal. She'd stopped wearing it about a year ago, after she had lost it on a hike through somewhere in Canada, only finding it again on the return hike by sheer luck. It was an heirloom, passed down from her Great-grandmother Dougherty, Grandma Scully's mother, to Meg's Aunt Bridget. Aunt Bridget had become a nun, so she'd passed the medal down to Meg's mother, who in turn passed it on to Meg. And if Meg ever lost it for good, she'd have at least three generations of Irish women mad at her, two of whom had the capacity to haunt her.

So she'd left it at the monastery for safe keeping ever since, but now she couldn't get in contact with Aunt Bridge, and if Kevin showed up in Philadelphia with no warning, the guards at Aunt Bridget's school might not let him in.

But they might, with this kind of calling card.

Meg looked at her watch. Ten minutes to eleven. She ran for the airfield. ~*~

A small farewell party had gathered to see them off. Even Cho had come out of hiding to say goodbye. His still-potent grief even seemed to abate for a few minutes while DP gave him a quick orientation to the chopper. She even promised to come back and teach him how to fly one, as soon as she got the chance.

"KEV!"

Kevin looked over the fields and saw Meg running towards him, waving her arms frantically.

"Hold on," he interrupted Skinner's conversation with Mr. Mulder and Doc Scully. "I'll be right back."

Skinner nodded, and Kevin ran to meet Meg halfway.

By the time he reached her, she was out of breath. Wordlessly panting, she stretched her hand out to him. Something dangled from her fingers. He took it and inspected it.

"Your necklace?" He was confused. "What for?"

Meg gulped air. "I couldn't get through to Aunt Bridge--"

"Fine," Kevin said while Meg continued chasing her breath. "Then we'll just drive up from DC."

"Nonononono," Meg blabbered, grasping his hand holding the necklace in both her hands.

Kevin shook his head at Meg. "What do you mean 'no'? I've only met your aunt once, and that was when I was ten. It would be a wasted trip. If I show up on her doorstep she's not gonna remember me."

Meg's blue eyes blazed at him. "But she will remember *this.*"

Kevin pulled his hand from Meg's and glared dubiously at the necklace Meg always called her "Miraculous."

"You sure?"

Meg nodded breathlessly. "Besides," she added, sticking her hands on her hips, "under the circumstances, I think you could use all the miracles you can get."

Kevin shrugged, curled the silver chain around the Medal, and was about to slip it into his pocket when Meg's voice cracked against his ears.

"NO!"

He nearly jumped out of his skin. She was really starting to piss him off. "What now?"

Meg angrily yanked the necklace out of his hand. "Don't put it in your pocket! If you lose it, my mom will kill me!"

"No she won't."

"I'd rather not find out, if it's all the same to you. Here," she said, shaking the chain out so the Miraculous Medal weighted it down in the center. Then she ordered him to, "Duck."

She said it as if she were throwing a frisbee over his head, trying to aim for the target they had set up in his backyard nearly fifteen years ago.

Obediently, he lowered his head so she could clasp her necklace about his neck. He could not hear the snap fastening in place over the noisy rotation of the helicopter blades, so when she was finished, Meg rubbed her hand against Kevin's stubbly hair.

Something in Kevin's blood warmed at her touch. He winced slightly, because he could not imagine her blood would be similarly warm at a touch from him.

He looked up, but not directly at Meg. Instead he directed his gaze to the helicopter and saw Skinner taking his seat inside.

"Gotta go," Kevin mumbled to Meg.

"Yeah," she mumbled back.

He saw in Meg's face that she was expecting a farewell hug, but he knew if he wrapped his arms around her now, he either would not be able to let go or else he would end up doing something to her mouth that he certainly would regret once he finally did leave.

Instead, he took her hand in his, gave it a light squeeze, and ran ducking to the helicopter. Over all the commotion, he thought he heard her yell to him, "One week!"

He turned around and nodded to her one last time, then jumped into the chopper. He belted himself in and dug his fingernails into the sturdy webbing of the seatbelt. He hated flight. Hated it, and for no good reason. He'd never had a bad aiprlane experience, unless he counted the one time he and his parents had flown down to Disney World when he was seven, and the pressure inside his ears made him cry like a baby the whole plane ride.

He took his earplugs from his front shirt pocket, to help ease the upcoming pressure changes, but he still was far from enjoying himself.

For a second he entertained thoughts of looking through the window to see if he could recognize Meg standing down on the ground. However, even when he raised his eyes from his seatbelt, his stomach lurched, his hands became slick with icy sweat, and the seatbelt slipped from his deathgrip.

Looking down would not be an option right now.

He thought Cho's plane was noisy. That was nothing compared to this. He could barely hear DP and Skinner shouting to each other, much less make out what they were shouting about. He didn't need to know.

Just like he hadn't needed to know how Meg felt about him. Or didn't feel about him. The term "unrequited love" came to mind, but Kevin quickly brushed it aside and relatched onto his seatbelt with pale knuckles.


Meg stood between her parents and Pleather Boy as all four of them watched the helicopter lift up into the sky.

"So, the warrior rides off into battle with a favor from his lady fair."

Startled, Meg turned on Cho and gasped at him, "What?"

He only smiled back at her mysteriously, tapping knowingly at his own throat where a charm would have hung were he wearing one.

He must have seen what Meg had given to Kevin.

Meg glared at him sideways. She changed the subject. "So, how soon can we hit the air?"


"So if you call, I will answer, And if you fall, I'll pick you up, And if you court this disaster, I'll point you home. I'll point you home." --BNL, Call and Answer

Gethsemani Monastery Lab January 26, 2024 6:24pm

Scully was having flashbacks. Not the drug-induced kind of course, but the kind that made her feel like she was trying to work with a camera-wielding Mulder in the autopsy bay... or more like she was trying to cook in a kitchen with a toddler underfoot... only now that toddler was five feet, ten inches tall.

Irritation didn't overshadow amusement, however, until Meg actually broke something -- a rack of glass vials filled with vaccine, equivalent to at least a week's worth of work. At the shatter of the glass, all the nuns working in the lab gasped as if gunfire had erupted against the deep, clear peace of their labors.

"Sorry," Meg blurted, kneeling to the mess on the floor. "I'm so sorry. God, I'm such a clod."

"That's all right, dear, " the Mother Prioress soothed, patting Meg fondly on the head as Meg rose again with a blush coloring her cheeks.

"Where's a mop? A dustpan and broom? Mom?" Again apparent in Meg's voice was edginess that had been there ever since Kevin had left the monastery. Meg's eyes flitted about the lab in search of the necessary clean up equipment.

"No, that's all right, Margaret Grace," the Mother Prioress interrupted gently. "We'll clean up. Perhaps you'd do well to finish packing for tomorrow morning's departure."

Scully watched her daughter bite her lip and wring her hands at being called by her full name-- a stunt only the quietly authoritative Mother Prioress could have gotten away with.

"No," Meg insisted quietly, bending to pick up some shards of glass, her hands tense. "I'm already packed."

"You have food," inquired Sister Frances, "and maps?"

"Plenty of socks?" Sister Helen Gabriel added.

Sister Mary Therese piped up, "And a gas mask?"

"Everything," Meg nodded as she walked over to a trash can.

"Hmmm," the Mother Prioress smiled knowingly, "sounds like you're very excited to be leaving us."

"It's not that," Meg sighed, taking a dust pan and brush from Sister Anne. Bending to the mess on the floor, she clarified, "The sooner we leave, the sooner -- ow!"

Scully's irritation was gone the instant she saw her daughter's blood drip from her cut finger down to puddle with the vaccine and broken glass. She dropped her work and walked quickly across the makeshift lab.

"S'okay, Mom," Meg said, squinting her eyes as she stood again. "I'm f--"

"Let me see," Scully cut off Meg's denial of the pain to look more closely at the wound.

"Just a little piece of glass in there," Meg informed her mother. "Have any tweezers handy?"

Scully took her daughter's arm and led her into the room next door to the lab: the sewing room, where tiny-pointed needles could be found in abundance. Meg, meanwhile, wrapped the corner of her baggy sweatshirt around the cut to keep her blood from dripping across the halls.

After finding a needle and sterilizing it, Scully held Meg's hand in her own and poised the needle over the cut.

"Motherrrrr," Meg whined, "I can do it myself."

"But not as fast as I can. And don't give me that look. I invented that look. Now hold still."

Scully smiled to herself as she waited for Meg's hand. "I can do it myself" had been Meg's first full sentence, spoken on her first birthday in a foreshadowing of verbal ability to come.

Rolling her eyes but nevertheless obedient, Meg held still while her mother whisked the sliver of glass out of the cut.

"There," Scully said, "go get a bandage out of the first aid supplies and meet me in the kitchen for dinner."

"Thanks." Meg rewrapped her finger with her sweatshirt as they walked back into the lab together. "What do you want me to make?"

"For dinner? Whatever's available."

"As long as it's not potatoes. That means macaroni and cheese without butter, or rice and beans. Pick one."

Scully shrugged. "Food is food. You decide."

"Dad's eating with us?"

Scully nodded.

Meg arched her eyebrow at her mother. "I'll skip the beans, in that case. Still, don't you want me to finish cleaning up in here first?"

"No, sweetie, that's okay," Scully answered, and she felt the nuns' collective relief at the knowledge that Meg, as much as they loved her, would not be bumbling around their work area any more. "I'll be up in a few minutes to help."

"Okey-dokey, artichoke-y."

Scully smiled at her daughter as she left the lab, then she bent slowly to the floor to help the sisters clean up Meg's mess. Her knees creaked only slightly this time. Ah, the joys of aging gracefully.

And age would have explained what she saw next, because only eyes aged as hers had could have made such a fanciful mistake. Because as she reached down with a rag to wipe her daughter's blood off of the floor, she could have sworn the drops of blood tried to move out of her reach.

"Doctor? Are you all right?" Sister Mary Therese asked after Scully had been staring stupidly at the droplets of blood standing out against the dull tiling of the floor.

Scully blinked a few times and tried refocusing her eyes. It was just blood -- entirely inanimate blood, the same blood she'd dabbed off of Meg's scraped knees countless times.

"Yes, I'm fine," she replied as she wiped the rag against the floor until it was clean again. Then she got up to retrieve the disinfectant.


DeSales Academy for the Hearing Impaired Northeast Philadelphia, PA January 26, 2024 7:03 PM

DP landed the helicopter in the football field, and Kevin was not surprised to see four people come running towards them toting guns and flashlights and wearing gas masks as protection. It was easy to tell they were on patrol here. Things were similar at the DC camp he, with his mother's tears and blessings, had just left behind an hour ago.

When Kevin stepped with shaking legs from the chopper onto the frost-crisp field, he was very tempted to kneel down and kiss the ground in gratitude. However, the four patrol people had their hands on him and DP before either of them could make any other move.

"Blood sample," one demanded through the muffling of her mask. She moved her hands as she spoke, and Kevin remembered this place had once been a boarding school for the deaf.

Both Kevin and DP knew the drill. Kevin removed his fleece gloves and held out his hands, and DP did the same. One of the other patrolmen, a few years younger than Kevin, took his left hand to lance a random spot. The lance stung a little, but it was negligible. He looked over to DP and saw first her bored expression, then the bit of red welling up in her palm.

"One-hundreds. They pass," the woman said, in English and in Sign, meaning they were both one- hundred percent human. She removed her mask, and her companions followed suit, but she still did not extend much welcome to the two unannounced visitors. "What's your business here?"

Kevin cleared his throat against the night cold. "I'm here to see Sister Bridget Corcoran. My name is Kevin Declan, and I'm a friend of her family's."

The woman eyed him suspiciously. "Sister Bridge never said she was expecting visitors tonight."

"We've tried calling," DP interjected, pressing down on her palm to stop the blood, "but the phone lines have been screwed up for days."

"And who are you?"

DP introduced herself, "Captain Rachel Jo DeMaram, USMC. I volunteered to fly Declan up here from DC. Keyte and Lenhart, they deliver your vaccine. Are they here? They know me."

"The good clones?" The woman shook her head. "They just left yesterday."

"I have this," Kevin said, almost forgetting Meg's Medal. He took it off and held it out to the interrogating patrolwoman. "It belonged to Sister Bridget, and she gave it to her cousin, Doctor Dana Scully."

The woman's suspicion began to wane at the mention of Meg's mom's name. "Did Doctor Scully give you this?"

Kevin nodded. "Her daughter did, to help Sister Bridget recognize me."

The woman looked at the Miraculous Medal, then back at Kevin and DP in turn. "What's your name again?"

"Kevin Declan," he answered, and then added, "ma'am," for good measure.

The woman took Meg's "Miraculous" from Kevin and wrapped the chain around her right hand. After another minute of consideration, the woman spoke and signed to them. "You two stay here until I come back for you. Jessica, Pat, you stay and guard them. John, you're with me."

Kevin watched their retreating backs, then he took a look at the two guards who had been left behind. They were barely more than teenagers. The boy, Pat, gave Kevin an appraising look, pointing his flashlight directly into Kevin's eyes.

"Hey, man," Kevin said, raising his hand to block the harsh light, "we're on your side!"

The girl, Jessica, merely signed something to Pat, and he lowered the flashlight again.

"I wish Meg were here," Kevin said to DP. "She could tell us what they're saying."

DP's eyes widened. "She speaks ASL, too? How many languages does that girl speak?"

Kevin smiled. "I've lost count. ASL, Spanish, French, German, a Chinese dialect but I forget which one, Japanese, Russian..."

Kevin's voice trailed off as he remembered that Russian guy in the Havana airfield. He swallowed, hoping silently that Meg would be okay, and that Cho would do what he could to protect her.

And he wondered if Meg missed him like he missed her. Looking for distraction, he pressed down on the cut still bleeding on his hand.

"She must be handy to have around, with all the traveling you have to do," DP said.

"Yeah," Kevin nodded, looking up at the sky clear with cold, "especially since I only know how to say, 'el ban

o, por favor.' Still, she can't navigate to save her soul."

DP laughed. "Well, we're all born with different gifts. That's what my grandfather used to say anyway, rest *his* soul."

Kevin noted the sad, far away look in DP's usually determined brown eyes. She'd probably lost her grandfather soon after the invasion began, he figured. If he hadn't been vaccinated beforehand, as most people hadn't been, he would not have lived much more past 48 hours after initial onset, considering the heat. Vaccination had become something of a Darwinian matter. That made people like himself and DP "the fittest" for survival.

Suddenly, Kevin looked at DP with his own suspicion. If her grandfather, whom she so obviously loved, hadn't survived the beginnings of the invasion, how had she? As soon as Kevin knew the vaccine existed, he had made certain that his mother would be given a dose. With the Gunmen's help, he'd been able to get a small quarry of the serum to his mother, who had then gone and administered it to her side of the family. If Kevin had been so driven to protect his family, why not DP?

But perhaps he was jumping to conclusions. Carefully he asked, "Where did your grandfather live?"

DP bit her lip. "We lived between Parris Island and Savannah after he retired. That's where he got the virus, and that's where he died."

She didn't seem to be trying to hide anything. Kevin frowned. "And what about you? When the invasion began, were you stationed away?"

She looked up at Kevin with haunted eyes, and he was startled. "No. I was there when it happened. I was home for the holidays."

He recognized what was haunting her eyes. It was guilt.

Had she not shared her vaccine with him? Or was the source of her guilt something more sinister? He took a step away from her, casually, so as not to set off her own suspicions. He tried to think of another question to ask her, but he was interrupted.

"Kevin Declan?" A voice called in the darkness. "Is that you?"

Kevin squinted in the direction of the call. Coming towards them was a woman in her mid-sixties, leaning heavily on the cane she held in her right hand.

Her steps quickened and her smile broadened as she spoke in both English and ASL. "Good God, son, I haven't seen you in the flesh since you were this high!"

She held her left hand up somewhere in the vicinity of her shoulder-height.

"Sister Bridget?" Kevin asked tentatively.

"'Tis herself," the nun smiled at him warmly. "Come here and give me a hug."

Kevin couldn't help but smile. He'd only met Meg's "Aunt Bridge" once, but he had always remembered her as someone he liked very much. He wasn't one known for hugging people, but he felt completely at ease when Sister Bridget put her free arm around him.

"Good to see you, son," she said as she released him from her embrace.

He scratched at his head shyly. "Good to see you, too."

Sister Bridget looked over at DP questioningly, then back at Kevin.

"Oh," Kevin said absently, "this is Captain DeMaram. She's the one who flew me up here."

"A pleasure, ma'am," DP said, shaking the nun's hand.

"Oh, please," Sister Bridget said, returning DP's handshake, "call me Bridge. You too, Kevin. None of this 'ma'am' or 'Sister' stuff from you. You're practically family. Now, come inside, both of you, and we can talk over a drink or two. Or three."

DP and Kevin shrugged at each other as Sister Bridget turned around and began leading them and the two guards towards her school.


Deep waters cannot quench love, nor floods sweep it away. Were one to offer all he owns to purchase love, he would be roundly mocked. --Songs 8: 7

St. Jane DeChantal Convent Northeast Philadelphia, PA January 26, 2024 7:46 PM

DP picked a small frame off of Sister Bridget's mantle and inspected it. Kevin recognized the picture in the frame.

"That was Meg's senior prom," Kevin told DP.

"That's my favorite of you two," Bridget said to Kevin, lighting another candle in the dimly lit living room of her convent. "That's the first picture Meggie sent me where you both looked like such grown-ups."

"Uhm, yeah. Thanks," was Kevin's lame reply.

DP nodded thoughtfully, peering closer at the picture in the growing light. "You two have been an item for that long? Since high school?"

Kevin thought he was going to either laugh hysterically or shrivel up and blow away. Thankfully, Sister Bridget said nothing, but merely eyed him in anticipation of his answer.

"Meg and I," Kevin sighed at last, "are not an item. Never have been."

Sister Bridget again said nothing out loud, but Kevin swore he could have heard her mutter something under her breath like, "yeah, right." He looked at the gray-haired nun as she limped over to light another candle. He was sure she was keeping her back to him just so he could not read the expression on her gently aging face.

DP looked up from the picture, clearly surprised. "Oh," she replied, putting the picture frame back on the mantle. "I'm sorry. I just thought... well, I guess I thought wrong."

"Uhm, yeah," Kevin said again.

Sister Bridget blew out the last match and limped over into the kitchen. "Kevin, son, can you reach up into this cabinet here and take out three glasses for us? I think we should celebrate your safe arrival with a little nip, don't you?"

Kevin smiled at the thought of getting drunk with a nun, especially Meg's Aunt Bridge. With the exception of the monks' sweet wine on rare occasions, Kevin wasn't much of a drinker, on account of his father's history. He tried to leave the drinking to Meg. Tonight, however, he found himself in the mood for "a little nip."

"Jameson's," Sister Bridget said, taking a bottle from one of the other kitchen cupboards, "but no ice. The power's been all funky around here lately, so we need to conserve what little ice we have, just in case. I hope you don't mind."

"That's all right with me," Kevin said, taking out three glass tumblers and setting them on the kitchen table.

Sister Bridget unscrewed the cap off of the whiskey bottle. "I promise not to give you two too much to drink. If you have to drive the roads into and around Wilmington tomorrow, the last thing you need is any kind of hangover. I95 South was bad enough *before* the invasion began."

"Don't drink and drive," DP said as she walked into the kitchen. "That's why I fly."

Sister Bridget laughed at that as she distributed the half-full cups between her guests and herself.

"//Sla'inte,//" Sister Bridget said, raising her glass.

"Cheers," Kevin and DP answered as all three glasses clinked together.

Kevin was very careful just to take a small sip, but still his eyes moistened at the whiskey's sting. No ice, and no chaser either. As if to add insult to injury, neither DP nor Sister Bridget seemed to mind the lack. Bravely, Kevin downed another sip.

DP had walked over to the kitchen window and looked out across the campus. Through the window, Kevin could see the bobbing flashlights of people on patrol along the stone walls of the rolling campus. The combination of high stone walls for protection, open fields for landing small aircraft, and dormitories for emergency housing made this school an ideal refugee camp nowadays, Kevin thought.

DP must have been thinking along the same lines. "Bridge, how did you turn this place into such an efficient safecamp so quickly? They're still struggling down in DC, and the infection set in faster than it did up here. You'd think that would have given us more lead time."

"Come, sit." Bridget motioned for Kevin and DP to follow her back into the living room. As she leaned heavily on her cane, she lowered herself into a chair, and Kevin and DP took opposite sides of one of the comfortably worn couches.

"How did we get so efficient so quickly?" Sister asked as she settled herself and put her cane aside. "We had a bit of an advantage. You see, I had a good idea of what the future would look like long before, and now that the future is here... well, I've been fighting this fight probably since around the time you were born. How old are you, honey?"

Kevin almost laughed at the way DP started when Sister Bridget called her 'honey.' When Sister Bridget gave him a questioning look, he had to admit, "Sorry. I just never expected anyone to call a Marine captain 'honey.'"

DP shook her head, smiling. "It's all right, though. And I'm 26."

Sister then defended herself as she raised her glass to her lips one more time. "And I'm a celibate, gray-haired, sixty-something nun with a limp. I can get away with calling just about anyone just about anything these days. Why just two days ago I called the Archbishop an 'old fart.' He just looked at me funny and went back to eating his oatmeal."

Kevin and DP both laughed softly, but Sister Bridget continued answering DP's question. "An incident happened here at this school a long time ago, at which time I had no choice but to become involved. Seven of my students reported seeing apparitions of 'a beautiful lady' in the school chapel. I was on the investigation team, and I asked my cousin, Dr. Scully, to give us some help. Then, Agent Mulder invited himself along for the ride..."

That she said with a merrily wry smirk.

"...and, long story short, through my cousin and her partner I learned some things about which I otherwise would have remained quite ignorant for about twenty years or so."

"So were you involved with the X-files, too?" DP asked.

"Oh, no!" Bridget laughed. "That wasn't my thing at all. No, I was too busy keeping a boarding school full of adolescents in line to go chasing after grown-up conspiracies. No, my early involvement was much more... personal. Much more suited to my... vocational knowledge, as it were."

Kevin wondered while Sister Bridget took another swig of whiskey. His own glass wasn't even one- quarter empty, and he was already "feeling it," as Meg would have said. He was also feeling quite nosy as a result. "What kind of 'involvement'?"

The years had not dulled the sparkle in Sister Bridget's blue eyes, which Kevin suddenly realized looked much like Meg's and Doc Scully's.

"Haven't you ever wondered," she asked, leaning forward, smiling conspiratorially, "why so much of our resistance activities are based at monasteries, cloisters, Catholic hospitals and schools like this one? Hmm?"

"Yeah," Kevin nodded just before taking another sip. "Yeah, I have wondered that. I just felt stupid asking."

"Separation of Church and State," DP replied thoughtfully. "If the enemy is hiding in the twists and turns of our government, what better platform for a rebellion than an agency that must by law be separate from the government."

Sister Bridget nodded at DP, impressed. "Not bad, honey. Not bad at all. You're certainly a sharp one."

As DP tipped her head in recognition of the compliment, Bridget said to Kevin, "I pulled some strings, called in some favors, found some others who had already hidden themselves inside the Church from the powers that be. I found them and put my cousin and her partner in touch with them, and I kept in touch with them myself. I was just a small part of the building of a new kind of network -- of people who had already vowed their lives in service to the Truth."

"An anti-conspiracy?" Kevin asked, his voice already starting to sound sluggish in his ears.

"You're not so dull yourself there, Kevin" Bridget winked at him. "There were -- no, there still *are* people with extraordinary power. And I use the term 'people' in a very broad sense -- meaning human and... otherwise. But might does not make right. We just simply appealed to a power higher than Theirs, and that was they key to finding our future freedom -- the freedom to fight for our lives against insurmountable obstacles."

Kevin snorted softly. "Not too hard to find a power higher than the government."

Sister Bridget looked down into the swirling of her whiskey, then out the window, her eyes soft with remembering. "No, Kevin. Not too hard at all."

~*~

February 3, 2000 Dana Scully's Apartment

"Bridget, you know you could be laicized for this."

"Could be *what*?"

"Laicized, Agent Mulder," Bridget sighed at him in exasperation. "Sort of... excommunicated from my order, if you will. And Deeda, the chances of that happening are so small I'm not even thinking about it, and neither should you. We have too much support. There are too many other people watching out for us."

Dana Scully and Bridget Corcoran gave each other looks. Scully's was a mixture of doubt and hope and trepidation. The nun's was a mixture of recklessness and encouragement.

Bridget looked from her cousin to Agent Mulder, then back again. "There are too many other people watching out for *you.*"

She noticed that Agent Mulder was glaring at her doubtfully. "These people I've found, Agent Mulder, some of them have been working out the Truth for longer than you have."

He leaned back in the easy chair. "I find that hard to believe."

"Of course you do," Bridget said, annoyed, shifting her papers and books into more order directly in front of her on the coffee table. "But you're never going to get much further on your own without a little faith that there are *some* 'good guys' out there. Especially with what you two are trying to do now."

This she also directed to her cousin, who met Bridget's eyes with her own level, thoughtful gaze. Bridget knew how important this was to her Deeda.

Dana's eyes went to her partner's, who gave her a look of surrender. At that, Bridget couldn't help but smile.

"So," Mulder said, shifting forward and addressing his partner's cousin, "what's your part in all this?"

Bridget opened up one of the books she had brought along with her. "What we're doing now is called Pre-Cana. That's your first step in getting married in the Church. In fact, there's not a whole lot I do other than just answer any questions you have. Most of it you just talk out together on your own."

"And the next step?" Dana asked, looking at her cousin's books and papers.

Bridget explained, "It's called a 'formal interview.' You'll meet with the priest -- well, the bishop in this case--"

Scully's eyes visibly widened. "The *bishop*?"

"Remember Bishop Joe Murray from the apparition team?"

Both Scully and Mulder nodded.

"Well," Bridget said, "he's willing to break that one rule for you *if*, and I stress the word *if,* both of you follow the rest of the rules to the letter. The pre-marital education and counseling with me, the formal interview with Joe, and with each other..."

Bridget stopped herself, trying to select her next words carefully so there would be no confusion.

"And with each other?" Dana prompted.

"Waiting until you're married," Bridget finished, folding her arms decisively in front of her.

"Waiting for what?" Mulder asked.

Bridget shook her head at him. "Please tell me that's a joke."

Scully looked painfully amused, while Mulder looked either like he was going to laugh or walk out of the room. "What happens if we don't 'wait' like the good bishop asks?"

Bridget leaned forward and placed her hands on top of her books. "Agent Mulder, you two are trusting us to help you make a permanent statement about your commitment to each other. Circumstances being what they are, you don't want to have any government agencies holding a record of this commitment. I understand that and so does Bishop Joe. We're willing to work with you on this. We're willing to show ourselves worthy of your trust. All I can hope is that you two would do the same in return. Fair enough?"

Scully looked at her cousin, the tiniest of smiles tugging at her. "Fair enough," she answered.

She and her partner looked at each other for a moment, while Bridget prayed silently that this would all turn out okay.

Whatever "okay" meant.

She opened her eyes, not having realized she had closed them, when Agent Mulder gestured at the pile of books and papers on the coffee table.

"So, what's our first question?"

Bridget smiled at him, then at her cousin in shared relief. She had a feeling her prayers were just starting to be answered.


"You think it's only fair to do what's best for you and you alone. You think it's only fair to do the same to me when you're not home."--"Call and Answer," BNL

I95 South Pennsylvania/Delaware Border January 27, 2024

A fourth song commandeered the car's stereo system.

"Are you sure this music doesn't bother you?" DP asked, just before taking the final bite of her bizarre breakfast: peanut butter and Cheez Wiz on rye crackers.

"Not a problem," Kevin said, trying to ignore the stomach-churning inspired by his passenger's cuisine. He couldn't help but think that Meg would have liked DP's weird taste in food.

DP just seemed so unabashedly happy to listen to "The CD" as she called it. Kevin couldn't bear to ask if he could change the music.

"Who is this, anyway?"

"Queen," she replied, drumming her fingers twice on the dashboard then tapping her foot once. Drum-drum, tap. Drum-drum, tap. Drum-drum, tap. Drum-drum, tap.

"Sounds familiar," Kevin admitted.

DP smiled. "This whole CD is a mix my mom made before she died. My grandfather said it was her 'driving music,' so I try to play it whenever I'm on a road trip. It makes me feel like she's still with me in a way."

Drum-drum, tap. Drum-drum, tap. Drum-drum, tap. Drum-drum, tap.

Kevin looked at DP quickly then returned his eyes to the empty, pothole-ridden road stretching ahead of them. "I'm sorry. I didn't know your mom had passed away too."

"Thanks," she said, turning her head to her right so she could look out her window. "It was a long time ago, though. I was only three when it happened, so I don't really remember enough to miss her. I wasn't much older when my dad died, either."

She had lost both parents? This came as a bit of a shock to Kevin. "Wow. I'm really sorry."

"Thanks," DP said, "s'okay."

Her fingers and feet continued to drum-drum, tap, drum-drum, tap. Kevin barely even noticed he'd joined in, drum-drumming his fingers against the steering wheel, then tapping his left foot against the car floor along with the music.

"What did they die of?" Kevin asked casually, seeing that talking of her parents' deaths did not seem to upset her as mention of her grandfather did.

DP sighed and looked out the passenger-side window again. "Cancer," she replied. "Inoperable tumors. Both of them."

After steering carefully around another pothole, Kevin glanced over at DP once more. She looked sad, but she kept on drumming her fingers and tapping her foot. Drum-drum, tap. Drum-drum, tap. Under her breath, she sang along with the music. Kevin tried to listen to the words.

//You got blood on yo' face, you big disgrace Wavin' your banner all over the place.//

So when the car stopped as if of its own accord, and suddenly the sun seemed to become unbearably bright, Kevin Declan was just starting to sing along with Queen.

Some part of his mind would continue to sing during the nightmare to come.

~*~ Near Quito, Ecuador January 27, 2024

"My Lady Mulder, I don't believe we're going to make it," Cho whined, looking up at the darkening sky as he parked the plane in Veronica's airfield.

"Yes, we are," Meg insisted, already unbuckled and reaching for her pack. "Get your flashlight out."

"You want us to hike in the rainforest in the dark?"

"Cho, we're already a week behind schedule."

"Not a whole week," Cho argued sadly.

Meg stopped and sighed, looking back at her pilot. "Not a whole week. I know. But we did lose some time. I'm not saying we should have done anything differently, but now that we're back down here, I think it would be best if we do what we can to get back on schedule."

Cho stuck out his jaw. "Especially now that we're gonna take a few extra days to fly up to Philadelphia?"

Meg bit her lip guiltily. "Exactly. Now let's get going."

With her pack on her back, Meg slithered out of the plane and shut the door behind her. She looked up and saw Veronica already coming towards them, smiling and waving.

"Veronica!" Meg called, summoning a smile of greeting. "//Como esta?//"

What Veronica said next made Meg curse in at least three languages.

"What, My Lady?" Cho asked, panicked. "What's wrong?"

Meg turned to him frowning. "She said they saw a bunch of lights hovering over that village we were supposed to visit three days ago."

"Ohhhh," Cho said, quickly succumbing to guilt as well. That could mean only one thing. "Oh, no. Do you think--?"

But Meg cut him off. "Come on, Cho. Move that little butt! Maybe we can get there in time to save *somebody.*"

Before even giving him a chance to protest, Meg grabbed Cho's arm and dragged him away, calling over her shoulder to Veronica, "//Gracias!//"

Cho looked over his shoulder and waved farewell to Veronica, who waved back at him and ducked quickly back inside.


She watched the Mulder girl drag her pilot over the hill and off into the forest. It wasn't until she had lost sight of them totally that she let her muscles relax, and a part of herself even she didn't fully understand lost its tension. She'd had to work so hard to put on that face and to learn those words and speech patterns. Usually her communication didn't require such unsophisticated methods as words and bumbling human languages, but this was what They needed her to do. Thus, she was obedient, above and beyond the call of her higher abilities -- the abilities They expressly had given her.

Wexford would have been sent on this assignment, had time not proven her a traitor.

"Good job, Emily."

She turned to face Krycek, finding little more than bland approval on the old man's face.

"Merchant," she corrected him. When would these people ever remember to call her by her last name -- her only true identifier? So maybe there were only two of the Emilys left, but she still hated to be confused with Emily Abbott, that stupid clone whose only gift seemed to be keeping things obsessively organized.

"That's Merchant," she repeated, turning away from him.

On her way out of the tiny shack, she kicked aside the outflung arm of a dead Veronica Vega, former airfield coordinator, whose face and voice Merchant had just finished borrowing.


"A king is not saved by a mighty army, nor is a warrior delivered by great strength." --Psalms 33:16

//Merde.//" Meg muttered as her flashlight scanned village, its beam weak against the pervasive darkness.

Cho was shaking, terrified, and Meg wasn't feeling much more courageous herself. The silence was eerie, punctuated only by the night noises of the surrounding forest. There seemed to be no life in the ramshackle houses of the village -- not even the quiet hum of sleep.

"Maybe they're all in bed?" Cho asked, his voice quiet and pitched high with fear.

Meg shook her head. "There'd be *somebody* on watch. //Merde,//" she cursed again.

She began marching towards the village.

"Wait, My Lady," Cho called after her in a loud whisper. "We should just head out to the next village. It's too late for us to do anything here."

Meg turned to him and accidentally shone her flashlight directly in his eyes for a second. "It's only been twenty-four hours," she argued without apology.

"Or more," Cho reminded her. "We are not certain what time the infection set in."

"If there's an infection here at all," Meg aruged back. "And if there is, we might be in time to save a few and get them out of here."

"But My Lady, it's so warm in this region, and the heat speeds up the process!"

"Then we're wasting time arguing when we should be trying to save lives! And for the love of God would ya cut the 'My Lady' crap?"

Cho quieted at Meg's angry, anxious voice. Still frightened, he nevertheless resumed following Meg down into the village.

Meg called out in Spanish when they darkened the doorway of the first house -- a tumbledown shack with a roof including but not limited to huge dried leaves and patches of corrugated tin. Cho waited anxiously behind Meg, turning around to see if any threat approached from the rear.

All was quiet -- disturbingly silent for a rainforest full of nocturnal creatures.

"I have a bad feeling about this," Cho whispered to himself.

"Shut up!" Meg hissed over her shoulder. "One more //Star Wars// quote out of you and so help me..."

She pushed the door open, then stopped.

"What is it?" Cho asked, bumping into her when she did not take a next step.

Without speaking, Meg holstered her flashlight, opting instead to pull out her gun. She held it barrel down and proceeded further inside.

Cho took his flashlight and scanned the one room of the dwelling. Piles of clothing. A table with a half-eaten meal scattered across it. Neatly scrubbed walls. A curtained window. A well-swept dirt floor. A pair of shoes on the floor.

Feet in the shoes.

The beam of Cho's flashlight proceeded up the legs of the shoes' owner, seated in a splintery wood chair, then came to rest on the abdomen.

The abdomen quivered with translucence.

The flashlight began to quiver in Cho's hands, and he made a whimpering sound. Meg took a deep breath and stepped closer, her hands tightening around her gun.

"Meg -- don't!" Cho cried, his voice quaking.

"Closer," Meg ordered him. "Shine your light on it. I want to see how far along it is."

Cho hesitated for a minute but eventually did as Meg told. She held the gun out before her, aiming carefully at the victim's stomach. Inside, a fully-formed alien larva twitched violently.

A guilty frown twisted Meg's face. "We're too late."

Then she saw the larva reach for the light. Meg's eyes widened.

"Oh, boy," Cho whimpered. "Oh, boy. That's not good."

"Cho?"

"Yeah?" The beam of light shook.

"Run!"

Meg turned in a flash and pushed at Cho's backpack to get him to move faster. It worked, but not well enough. Meg heard a ripping, a tearing, a screeching noise behind her over the thudding of her hiking boots. Damn. It was out. Could she shoot it in the dark?

She gave herself no choice. She turned around and aimed her gun. If the thing bled on her, it didn't matter; she was vaxed. If it tried to eat her, however, that was a different story. She fired into the night, but without the benefit of Cho's flashlight she was already disadvantaged.

And in an instant, she could tell it was close to her. Too close.

She fired again, directly in front of her, but only heard the muffled sound of the bullet hitting harmless dirt.

That was when she felt its nails. She couldn't help but scream as the thing overtook her, slicing its knife-fingers into the soft skin and muscle of her right calf. Impossibly, the pain left her with enough wits to still fire at the thing...

... which skittered away just as quickly as it had attacked her. And it was screaming. Not the screech of being born, but a scream of pain.

But her two shots had missed.

"What the--" she heard Cho stammer behind her. "My Lady?"

"Cho!" Meg called, almost ready to pass out. "Shine your light at it!"

He did. She saw it, squatting just a few yards away from her, and something on its skin was bubbling -- like acid was burning through its razor-nailed hands.

And Meg couldn't care less. She fired at it one last time through her pain. Her aim was good. It gave one last great scream and fell to its side.

Shaking, Meg dropped her gun and Cho was at her side.

Cho's response: "Oh, fuck!"

"Didn't even think you knew that word," Meg choked.

She looked down at her leg, illuminated by Cho's flashlight, and understood both why it hurt so damned much and why Cho was spouting such colorful language. A lot of blood was pouring from the thick gashes on her calf, disappearing into the rich, absorbent rainforest soil.

"Gauze," Meg demanded, suddenly feeling very, very cold.

Cho quickly shed his pack and pulled out a black t-shirt. "Next best thing," he explained, pressing it to the lacerations on her leg.

"I got it," Meg winced. "Now get me something to wrap it with before I pass out."

A minute later, Cho had found the first aid kit and wrapped real gauze tightly around his lady's leg. With that done, she tried to get up, but found she couldn't. She struggled against her pack, thinking losing it might make it easier for her to stand on her own.

"Let me get that--"

"No!" Meg snapped. "I'm fine."

"At least let me help--"

"I can do it myself!" Her eyes were watering, but not from tears she told herself. She freed herself from the pack, wiggling forward a few inches so she could lean on the pack to help her stand up fully.

"There," she said, turning her face from Cho so he would not see her grimace at the pain. She hopped over to the dead alien, even though each hop sent a fresh jolt of agony to every nerve ending on her body.

"What are you looking at that for?" Cho asked, pointing his flashlight along her path.

"I thought I saw something," she explained, even as the blackness of a faint threatened her vision once more. "Something weird. Come here."

Cho hesitated again, but again did his lady's bidding and gave her some light.

What they saw was, indeed, something weird. Where Meg's blood had rested on the creature's hands there were now lesions boring deep into the tissue.

"Looks like burns," Cho said in confusion.

"What the--?" Meg snatched the flashlight from Cho and peered at the dead thing more closely. Closer inspection only clarified her thoughts.

"How did that happen?"

Meg tried to answer him. "I don't--"

Suddenly, Cho's flashlight was no longer the only illumination. Both Meg and Cho looked up to find the source but were blinded by the light's intensity.

The last thing Meg would remember later was hearing Cho drop the f-bomb a second time.

~*~ "I think it's time to make this something that is more than only fair." -- "Call and Answer," BNL

Somewhere, she heard Kevin yell as if he'd just been punched in the stomach.

*leave'imalone!* *getawayfrom'im!*

She tried to speak but could not. She could not feel. She found herself paralyzed, even down to her tightly shut eyelids. And she was terrified.

So she had to fight -- needed to. But fight whom?

She heard voices, but they did not make any sense. They spoke a language that hovered just beyond her comprehension.

Then, she felt something, like she was being jostled. Pushed around.

And then she felt cold. She felt cold flood every vein, every artery, felt it rush through every capillary and attack every cell of her body.

She was being...

... being...

... invaded...

Connections fired in her brain in a valiant effort to explain what was happening to her.

It felt like that one afternoon of sledding at the park...


"Leave'imalone! Getawayfrom'im!"

Meg swung at them with her skinny arms, but they were pushing her so fast and so hard that her fists couldn't make contact with their laughing faces or their scummy orthodontia.

"Meg!" Kevin hollered, "Shut up!"

The fifth grade boys laughed at her and threw her into the fray as well. She collided with Kevin, and they both fell to the snowy ground. Kevin had his hands over his stomach and he was wincing from having just been punched there.

The boys laughed even harder. She scrambled to her feet and put her mittened hands on her hips. "You imbeciles are just jealous because we won that sled-race. I think you all have unresolved insecurity issues, and I suggest professional psychological help."

She thought using big words would confuse them and make them leave her and Kevin alone. She thought wrong. They only laughed harder. Two of them rushed her and picked her up by her arms.

"Look!" One of them laughed, "the Toothpick knows a whole *bunch* of big words!"

"Yeah! She's sooooo smart!"

"Not smart enough to get rid of her nigger boyfriend here!"

"He's *not* my boyfriend!" Disgust and embarrassment gave her the extra strength needed to kick at them even harder. Her feet made contact with a very tender part of the anatomy of the boy holding her right arm. He howled and dropped her arm suddenly -- so suddenly that the boy on her other arm had no choice but to follow suit. Again she landed in the snow with a thud.

She scrambled to her feet. "And he's not a nigger, either, you idiot! What century are *you* from?"

The boy she had just kicked in the you-know-where was writhing in the snow, and the other boys were wincing in rare sympathy.

She looked over at Kevin, who had just gotten to his feet again. He jerked his head towards the park exit -- his way of saying, "let's get out of here!"

But Meg wasn't finished with them yet. She dug her feet in and fixed her eyes on the biggest of the boys, then ran for him, fists flailing...

And he stopped her with one hand on her forehead. She swung so hard that one of her mittens flew off of her hand, but still she missed.

"Hey!" Her captor shouted to all the other fifth-grade boys gathered there. "Ya think this Toothpick knows how to swim?"

His voice was dark and heavy with threat. The other boys came closer.

"Yeah! Dump 'er in the creek!"

"Creek her!"

"Yeah!"

"NO!" The boy holding her was pushed from behind and fell hard on top of her. The breath *oomphed* out of both of them. Meg looked over the boy's head and saw Kevin standing above them, his breath coming out in smoky gasps, his hands still outstretched from pushing the other fifth grade boy.

"Hah!" Meg called triumphantly -- but that triumph was short-lived. She tried to get up on her own, but two of the boys already had their hands on her arms again.

"Get the nigger, too, man!"

"LEAVE'IMALONE!!!!"

"MEG!"

"GETAWAYFROM'IM!!!!!!"

"MEG!!!!"

"KEEEEVINNNNNNNN!!!!"

She was thrown, and she landed on the ice. For a thin moment, the ice held her slight weight but then gave way beneath her. Her eyes, her mouth, her nose, her ears all filled with liquid, cold and dark as death must be.

Cold and dark filled her. She fought against it. She tried to breathe it out of her...

... but something was different...

... something inside of her was boiling away the cold...

... cooking death...

...her blood was the fuel...

... she was on fire... there could be no other explanation for the flames inside of her gut, rolling through every vein and artery, through every capillary, weaving their way between every cell in her body...

... and the cold, dark death was leaving her, wrenching itself from her ears, her nose, her eyes, her mouth...

... pouring out of her and dragging her intestines along with it, ripping out her lungs, her heart...

... and , Oh God, it hurt so badly...

... so badly...

... oh God...

... such a desolate pain...

"KEVINNNNNNN!"

She could hear her voice, coming to her as if from under water, gurgling and thick.

She coughed spasmodically. Her lips were cold and covered with liquid. She opened her eyes.

She was lying on a table. She could not move because she was tied down.

People surrounded her in biohazard suits.

She saw one of Their faces. A dark-eyed woman who could only stare at her in fascination, her crows feet still visible through the visor of her mask.

"What happened?" The woman asked, not taking her eyes off of Meg. "What went wrong here?"


"He who shuts his ear to the cry of the poor will himself also call and not be answered." --Prov. 21: 13

"It happened with both women."

This Diana said with a mixture of confusion and cautious triumph.

"*Both* of them?" The one doctor's voice was quietly shocked. "Both the Mulder girl *and* DeMaram?"

He saw Diana nod, her face glazed with confidence, at the doctor across the room.

Stunned silence thickened the air. The people gathered were accustomed to having strategized the game at least twenty-five steps ahead. To be blindsided so suddenly was unheard of. They were out of practice. Wisdom had made them lazy, he thought ironically, far more subtly than power ever had.

He closed his fingers around the armrests of his wheelchair. "Any idea why that could be?"

Diana shook her head and refused to look at him. Instead, she looked across the room to another member of Their gathering, prompting her to speak.

Her voice was soft with age and detached caution, both increased by her decades of involvement with this organization. She looked up from a file in her hands. "DeMaram is the daughter of a Mary Elizabeth Johns."

Krycek looked bored. "Should that name mean something?"

She only lowered her eyelids back at him, appearing equally bored. "Only if you've looked for it. She is in the old records of test subjects starting from December 1995."

A murmur rippled through the room.

"She was a chip-bearer, then?"

She nodded at the man in the wheelchair.

The awe contained within the shocked silence that followed pulsated inside the close walls of the room.

A newer member, one of the scientists, spoke up. "And she also was able to conceive a natural human child. That means my theory was right."

"We don't know that," another shot back coolly.

"It would explain the spontaneous rejection of the mutated alien life form," Diana observed with an equal chill to her voice.

Another newer member voiced her agreement. "Their male counterparts were infected with no problem. There has to be some sort of pre-existing resistance to Purity II in their genetic makeup."

Another doctor: "What kind of resistance? What could possibly cause it?"

Still another argued: "And you're overlooking the obvious. Could the fact that both subjects are women have anything to do with this?"

"But none of the other previously vaccinated women infected yesterday rejected the organism at all, much less with such an immediate--"

"Enough."

At the one softly spoken word from the man in the wheelchair, the argument ceased.

"Let's stop wasting time. I think one thing we can agree on is that this information will not go outside this room."

The awful silence commandeered the room once more.

He nodded. "Then it's agreed. This could be our way out. We should start testing immediately."

The scientists and doctors gathered among them nodded and quickly left to begin wondering about their work.

"Our way out," Krycek repeated, regarding the man in the wheelchair with a certain calculated amusement. "Great."

The other man flinched so slightly at Krycek's last word.

"Great," Krycek repeated strangely, relishing the forced non-reaction of the man in the chair.

He straightened up in his wheelchair and stared back at Krycek.

Keeping his face turned to Krycek but with his eyes ranging about the room, he asked no one in particular, "Is the Mulder girl still conscious?"

"In and out," Diana answered him, "but for the most part, yes."

He moved his eyes to Fowley's. "I want to see her."

"She has to be fed before the tests can begin," a soft voice reminded them all.

He nodded to the silvered-blond woman hovering like a ghost in the corner.

"Fine, then," he replied, "after she's been fed. Before we begin drawing the blood."

He wheeled himself over to the desk. As the rest of his entourage left the room, he opened one of the drawers and took out a personnel file someone had pulled from the French Consulate in New York about a year ago. He reread the file in uneasy silence, refreshing his memory on the details of the young life of Margaret Grace Mulder.

~*~

No one had spoken to Meg since they had left her in this elevated hospital-style bed in this nondescript room furnished with what was most likely a one-way mirror. Whoever was watching her from the other side of that glass most likely had been the ones who left her here after that first... test? Experiment gone wrong? What?

Left her for dead? She did not know. She could not tell. She felt closer to death and weaker than she'd ever felt before in all her memory. She couldn't even remember when or how she'd been fastened into the restraints now binding her arms. Even being shot in the back hadn't been this bad. She felt burned, body and soul, from the inside out.

*Purifying fire.*

She shuddered at that thought and let her head fall back once more. Strangely, the gashes on her right leg had disappeared without a trace.

Her goal was to muster enough energy to work at the restraints, get up, and then try the door. She was sure it would be locked, but she had to at least try.

*... if you don't at least try...*

Words she'd said to Kevin.

*Jus' come rescue my little white ass, will you, Prince Charm-less?*

Her head swam with more words.

But she didn't need him to rescue her. She had no one to rely on but herself. Again. As always. That thought made her want to cry, but her weakened body refused her the luxury of tears.

Besides, Kevin wasn't here to be needed anyway.

Or was he?

The sound of his gut-wrenching scream rang in her imagination -- or was it her memory? Meg tried to relax her breathing. She wouldn't be able to think straight if she kept panicking like this. She had to get out of here. But where was here?

And how would she do it, weak and alone?

Alone.

Cold and alone and being watched.

The door clicked and opened and she was no longer alone.

Meg raised her head and nearly passed out again when she saw the intruder's familiar face. Her lips trembled an endless moment before she could form the haunting thought into a word.

"Wexford?"

But as soon as she asked reality asserted itself among her addled imaginings. Wexford was dead and gone. This was another half-sister, carrying a tray of food, placing the tray on a bedside table and proudly inspecting Meg's now-healed leg.

Another of Meg's half-sisters who had killed Emily C. Wexford, one of their own.

One of Their own.

Meg summoned her strength and coiled her hands into defiant fists. Wiped out or not, whatever They wanted from her, They sure as hell wouldn't get it without a fight.

~*~ Her reflection in the glass was not a shock, but it was a painful reminder of the woman she had become. She had been so beautiful once, before all this. Centuries, millennia, eons ago. At what point had she stopped expecting beauty of herself?

Fowley stood next to her, her own face changed since the first time the two had met, decades ago, the first of two women to stick it out in this "good old boys" club.

Now, instead of softening their faces, age had somehow contrived to make the planes of their cheeks and foreheads harder, even less yielding. As she caught the wraith-like image of her own face next to Fowley's in the reflection afforded by their side of the one-way mirror, she couldn't help but remember the time, after all her tests, when she had seen her own face in another mirror -- one more cruelly honest in its clarity.

Her beauty had been drained away in that reflection, too, but by forces more drastic than slowly advancing years.

Both she and Fowley looked in on the scene playing out on the other side of the one-way mirror.

"It's amazing," Diana said, "how much she looks like him."

The other woman turned subtly to look at Fowley's face, wondering what she could be thinking, seeing Mulder's daughter by another woman, herself grown to womanhood, being prepared in this way.

"That nose." A ghost of a smile lifted the corners of Fowley's age-thinned mouth. "Poor girl."

Poor girl indeed. Margaret Mulder's hair was still thick and flowing. Her eyes still sparkled with defiance, despite her obvious fatigue. She was still a beautiful creature, no matter Diana's disparaging remarks. But soon enough, she knew, that nose would be the least of Margaret Mulder's beauty problems, if all would go according to a previously theorized plan.

Emily Abbott had been sent in with a tray of food, but the subject had not yet accepted the offering.

Meg Mulder smirked weakly at the Emily. "If you're wondering where my parents are, they're up my butt. Wanna tickle their feet?"

Diana laughed softly through her nose. "Even more like him," she murmured.

The woman standing next to Diana nodded silently and tucked a strand of her silver-blond hair back behind her ear.

On the other side of the glass, Abbott gave no reaction. Instead she ordered her half-sister, "Eat."

The young Mulder raised her eyes to the challenge. "Why?"

"Because if you don't you'll find yourself with a feeding tube in your stomach," was Abbott's less than tactful answer.

"We should have sent Merchant instead," she murmured to Fowley.

Fowley nodded. "She would be getting us somewhere."

The girl seated in the other room kept her arms stiff and glared at Abbott. "Why are you so intent on feeding me?"

She watched Abbot's jaw stick out a little, much like her half-sister's was doing at the same time.

"Eat," was Abbot's economical answer, "or else."

Then the hybrid turned on her heel and left the room, locking the door faithfully behind herself.

Looking into her own life-weary eyes as reflected in the ghostly glass, she let her thoughts wander. Emotions stirred within her -- things long forgotten in her struggle to survive.

After all, it was all about survival. It always had been. And survival was a noble thing.

She forced herself to speak. "Once she's eaten something, I'll let Spender know."

Fowley nodded. "I'll go check on DeMaram. They should be starting now, if they haven't already."

She watched as Fowley took one last appraising glance at the Mulder girl, stepped out, and pulled the door shut behind herself.

She then watched the Mulder girl, made awkward by the restraints, as she picked at the food and pushed the water away. Then, the girl leveled her gaze at the mirror. For an eerie moment, Marita Covarrubias looked through her own reflection and stared into the girl's fierce, undefeated, condemning eyes...

... as if both Mulder and Scully were staring at her through their daughter.

A minute later, the door on her side of the mirror opened again, breaking the spell. She raised her eyes, irritated, expecting to see Fowley.

Her expectations were not met. It was Krycek.

She blinked at him twice then returned to watching the girl. The girl who had screamed the name "Kevin," as Purity II churned out of her in writhing waves.

And she couldn't help but wonder aloud...

"When that happened to you," she heard herself ask, "did you call my name?"

The minute the words slipped out of her mouth, she regretted them. And then a minute of his silence later she did not regret them. She was getting too old for regrets.

He answered smoothly, with a question. "Did I ever know your name to call it?"

She tried to decipher his meaning by looking at him, but just as soon as she let her eyes meet his, she knew it would only prove to be a waste of her time and energy.

She left the room without even touching him.


"On the lips of the intelligent is found wisdom, but the mouth of the wicked conceals violence." --Proverbs 10:13

Meg's efforts to free herself from the restraints were not working. All she had succeeded in doing was bruising her forearms and making herself progressively weaker. If only she had someone to help her...

... but she didn't, she reminded herself quickly. She tugged on her arms again, but they ached so much. A single frustrated tear dripped from the corner of her right eye. She glared at the one-way mirror, angry that They could see her like this -- crying like a weak idiot, and she cried because at Their hands she was tired and hurting and trapped and cold and vulnerable and alone.

Alone as always, with no one to save her.

And she had to be strong, she had to hide her tears.

And again a door opened, and Meg crunched the tears back with her eyelids, but this time several sets of footsteps approached. She opened her eyes again.

Four people in white biohazard-style suits entered, followed by a man in an old manually operated wheelchair, vulnerably dressed in an understated dark suit. The man pulled his wheelchair up just a few yards from Meg's bed and she stared at him, trying to see if she could recognize his face. She could not.

He reached to his side and pulled out a file. This file she recognized, oddly enough. It looked like one of the personnel files she'd helped Mme Veillat maintain during her internship at the //Consulate Francais.//

She glanced quickly at the four people working around her. One was a woman. One of them cleared her untouched meal off of the tray table and began wiping the table's synthetic veneer. The harsh smell of hospital disinfectant bit at Meg's nostrils.

She looked back at the man in the wheelchair, who was regarding her with a mixture of curiosity and... either compassion or pity, she could not tell.

"Name," he said, reading from the file, "Mulder. Margaret Grace."

He waited, and she did not speak. She looked over at him from the bed as it was lowered and the white-clad people gathered around her, setting gauze and tubes on the disinfected tray table. Then she saw a thin flash of silver.

No, surgical steel. A needle.

Immediately, she remembered the cold, black death, and she remembered the fire inside of her burning it away.

With a harsh cry, Meg forced all her energy to the surface and she fought. She pushed. She pulled. She kicked with her free legs and caught one of the people in the stomach. The person, the woman, went reeling into a wall.

"Ah!" Meg then cried as a needle sank into the flesh on her left arm. Whatever They had injected into her had a pitifully immediate effect. Her eyelids felt heavy, and her limbs surrendered against her will. Colors asserted themselves strangely in the stark white room, making her vision cloudy and unreal. She shut her eyes and forced them open again. When she did, her head had lolled to the side and she was staring at the man in the wheelchair again.

A voice floated above her: "You alright?"

The response: "Yes." She remembered that voice from before. The dark eyed woman who had asked what went wrong after the cold and the burning had run their courses through Meg.

Meg tried to turn her head to see their faces, but she couldn't. Her neck refused to move. She exhaled the breath she'd been holding.

Likewise on a sigh, the man in the wheelchair continued reading, "Date of birth: July thirteenth, 2001. Graduate of Macauley Mercy Academy High School for Girls, June 2017, distinguished honors. Graduate of Georgetown University 2020, BA in foreign languages, BS in international studies, *summa cum laude*. Graduated first in class. Had been ranked third before... parents' sudden death."

Again he paused. Meg didn't even try to talk. Instead, she fixed her eyes icily on his, daring him to look away.

He did, back down at the file. "Last known employment: internship, French Consulate, New York, New York, under advisement of Mme Andree Veillat. Last known address: 2607 Welsh Street, apartment 251 I, New York, New York. Listed on apartment lease: two domestic shorthair cats, vaccinations properly updated."

On the word "vaccinations," Meg squinted through her darkening eyes at the speaker. She expected him to look blatantly evil, maybe with curly, unnaturally arched eyebrows or a goatee. But he didn't. He didn't look evil at all. He looked like somebody's dad who'd ended up in a wheelchair as the result of a home improvement accident or an unexpected illness. Parkinsons maybe. Or maybe he'd fallen off of a ladder and snapped his spine. He didn't even look fifty yet, or did the light somehow contrive to hide his age? Meg could not tell. She kept her face blank and her ears trained dully on his continuing words as the man in the wheelchair closed the file and placed it on his lap.

"Your parents bought you a puppy when you were five."

Meg felt her eyes start to widen, but she stopped them. She would not let this stranger know he had taken her by surprise. Weakened or not, she refused to give him the satisfaction.

"She hasn't eaten," a voice said in her peripheral hearing.

"IV," the woman ordered, "Dextrose. We have to keep her hydrated."

Another needle pricked at her hand, and she was unable even to attempt a struggle against it.

The man in the wheelchair watched the doctors -- or whatever they were -- start the IV. Then he continued, "You asked for a baby brother, but under the circumstances a German shepherd would do." His fingers smoothed over the folder in his lap. "They got her at an animal shelter. She came with the name 'Lydia.' You called her 'Lids.' She was put to sleep when you were fifteen. Hip dysplasia. You couldn't bear to have her cremated and thrown in a dumpster, so you bought a plot for her in a pet cemetery with your babysitting money. The inscription on the stone reads 'Lydia: Trusted Friend.'"

How did he know these things? More, why would he, or anyone at all for that matter, care about her dog? Meg swallowed, but refused to let the man's scrutiny shake her. At least not outwardly. Luckily, her muscles grew more and more slack with each passing moment, so she didn't even have to try too hard to keep her face blank.

"And when you were a junior in high school," he continued, "you tore the ligaments in your left ankle after your foot caught a pit in the trail at a cross country meet. It did not heal as quickly as you had hoped. You ended up doing your Christmas shopping on crutches.

"You went to your senior prom with one Kevin Declan, but you only asked him to go with you because nobody else asked you first. Or, so you told your friends."

Meg did blink at that, and she felt her face tense so slightly at the mention of Kevin's name.

//Is Kevin here?// She wondered to herself. She drilled her gaze into the man's eyes, silently demanding an answer to her unasked question. He looked away again.

That was when she knew -- she did not know how she knew, but she knew: Kevin was here. And in danger.

The man continued speaking.

"You hate to be called by your full name, so you have friends call you 'Meg.' Family calls you 'Meggie,' and close family calls you 'Miracle Meg' whether you like it or not. Your father calls you 'Miss Molly,' and you call him 'Mulder.'"

The man wrapped his fingers around the wheels to his chair and he drew closer to Meg. She looked down and watched the wheels press against the stark gray- flecked white floor tiles.

"You don't say much," he observed, examining her face closely. "That's not what I expected. Your father wouldn't have kept so quiet. I don't expect your mother would have either. She would have at least asked where I got all that information."

Meg spoke up. "Yeah, well, I'm not my parents." To her surprise, she was able to speak. Her voice was sluggish, but it was her own. A small victory. A battle won.

The man did not flinch, nor did he smile, but the muscles at the bases of his eyelids twitched, and it made Meg feel strange, seeing such a detail on such an ordinary face -- such an ordinary face seeming to hold such power over her.

He spoke in a voice that could have belonged to one of her teachers from high school. "That's what we like to tell ourselves, isn't it?"

He tilted his face at her, and it reminded her of when she'd first brought her cat Schrodinger home from the SPCA and he had quirked his head at the little jingle-ball she'd given him to play with. He'd tilted his head like that, the essence of innocent curiosity, just before pouncing on the ball and breaking it apart with his little kitten jaws.

But Schrodie had just been playing.

"You and I have a lot in common, Meg," he told her, tilting his head to the other side now. "More in common that you could imagine."

He looked away. He looked... tired, Meg thought. Irritated. Just this side of defeated.

That made her feel even stranger.

"You missed your parents growing up. They were away from you a lot. And then they disappeared, for good it seemed. You barely had the heart to look for them. And then when you found them... no. The *way* you found them was unbelieveable. It had to be seen to be believed. And when you did see it, it turned your world upside down.

"So you thought you could be a part of that world. It almost seemed your destiny to be a part of it, to make your father proud of you. In the process, maybe you could make a difference, save a few lives. Save your own life, save the lives of the people who meant the most to you. You knew your world would never be 'normal' again, but what is 'normal'? Have we ever seen it? Have you or I ever been 'normal'?"

Meg was trying to make sense of his words without taking her eyes off of his. She felt a small spark of victory when he looked away yet again, his face darkening with shadows.

"But then all that you didn't know caught up to you. It caught up to you so quietly that you didn't even know it until it was too late. You didn't even know it had been with you all the time. From the instant you were conceived up until this present moment, coursing through your veins. Nobody knew it was in your blood from the very beginning, that they couldn't take it out of you. *Nobody* knew, not even the colonists, the invaders. Not even the rebels, or our own planet's feeble resistance. Not even your parents, who should have been able to tell you everything. Everything. And you learned that there's not much you can do to save anyone at all. It's all you can do just to save yourself."

His speech was spiraling into vagueness, and fresh anger bubbled in Meg's blood, fighting the sluggishness of the drug that mellowed her nerves.

"There's an ancient saying I read once," he said, raising his eyes to hers once more. "'The fathers ate unripe grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge.' Do you think you can translate that into modern English for me, Meg?"

Meg sucked in her cheeks, trying to think of an answer -- trying to think if she *wanted* to answer. Her tongue was heavy in her mouth, but she found she wanted to answer his question.

"It means that the sins of the fathers--"

"No," he interrupted. "It's more than that. Think about it."

Meg thought. She looked at the man cooly, rebelliously.

He looked back at her intently, prompting, "'The fathers ate unripe grapes--"

"It means one generation makes the mistakes--"

"--and the children's teeth--"

"--and the future generations--"

"--are set on edge.'"

"--have to answer for them."

Still keeping the ice in her eyes, Meg asked him, "What do you want from me?"

"I don't want anything from you that I don't already have myself," he informed her amiably.

"And what is that?" Meg asked, keeping her voice even, her expression arrogant, even as she felt a deep sleep reaching out for her with dusky, bony fingers.

"A history, Meg," he informed her, "a history that goes back to my mother's generation, a history that insures my survival. And yours, incidentally."

Meg's eyes narrowed at him. "Who are you?"

"In the future, we may be the only ones left alive, so we may as well be on a first name basis. Meg, you can call me Jeff."

Meg exhaled a long breath, and the man in the wheelchair watched confusion muddle through Meg's memory. She did not recognize the name.

She tried another approach. "How about a last name, sir? I was taught to respect my elders."

Her voice was slowing down even more. She could barely hear herself speak.

He nodded at her, frowning, almost sympathetic. "But there's so much more you never learned, isn't there?"

"And you want to be the one to enlighten me." Her lazy tongue tripped over the word "enlighten."

"Unfortunately, there's no more time for education." He inclined his head toward the people around her, who apparently had been waiting for his indication that they could go ahead.

With her last ounce of strength, Meg turned her head so she was looking up. Her eyelids scraped down over her eyes and then up again.

One of the men working on her spoke. "Into the subclavian vein."

//subclavian...//

Meg wracked her brain, searching for the meaning of that word, but the sedative she'd been given was starting to affect her thoughts as well.

And he was looking at her chest.

The woman with dark eyes lowered the top of Meg's flimsy gown several inches, and another man aimed a large needle high towards the center of her chest.

"No..."

Meg tried to shake her head, tried to shift out of the range of the needle, but she was helpless...

//no...//

...powerless.

Now she could no longer speak at all. She opened her lips to scream as the needle pierced her skin and reached deep inside of her chest, as if it were drinking from her every artery and sucking out her heart.

//oh, God, help me...//

But she could not scream. She could not whimper. All she could do was surrender to the merciful blackness as unconsciousness consumed her and offered her refuge.


"Set me as a seal on your heart, as a seal on your arm; For stern as death is love, relentless as the netherworld is its devotion; its flames are a blazing fire." --Song of Songs 8: 6

"They have that pill now..." --Joann Fletcher, Dreamland

Gethsemani Monastery Trappist, Kentucky January 29, 2024 1:24 AM

Scully tried to ignore the gnawing feeling of dread that pressed her into wakefulness. She instead tried to appreciate the ever-present enveloping warmth of Mulder's arms as she spooned against him. She even tried to smile a little as Mulder buried his sleeping face in her neck.

She tried, but the dream that had frightened her awake simply would not leave her. She couldn't even remember the dream clearly now that she was awake. All she could remember were a few vague images of walking through their old house in Alexandria, wandering through each room, calling out her daughter's name. Silence had answered her calls. The rest of the dream she couldn't remember at all.

Scully couldn't help worrying like this whenever their daughter left them on her various missions. Frequently Scully would find herself unable to sleep and would get out of bed to make herself a cup of the sisters' homemade herbal tea. She would fret alone in front of the cold first floor fireplace for a short while until Mulder noticed her missing from their bed. Then, he would find her, kiss the troubled frown from her face and commiserate with her a while before drawing her back to their bed.

"Empty nest" was the cause of the dream, or so she diagnosed herself, but the feeling evoked by the dream she could not shake, no matter what logic she unleashed on herself: the pervasive feeling that something was terribly wrong. She shifted a little, trying to get comfortable enough to drift back into sleep in the shelter of Mulder's arms.

Mulder stirred behind her again and dropped a kiss onto the short expanse of shoulder bared by her twisted pajamas. "Meggie?" He murmured into her ear.

Scully nodded. "Sorry. I didn't mean to wake you."

"S'okay," he said, pulling her closer. "Was it a dream?"

Scully paused for a moment, then admitted, "Yes."

"Bad?"

Scully closed her eyes. The dread swirled in her stomach again, but for no good reason. She shook her head, listening to the close sound of her hair brushing back and forth against his face, catching in places on his stubble. "Not terrible."

Mulder was quiet for a moment. She knew he could tell she wasn't being entirely honest. He reached up to caress her hair away from her ear. "You could call Veronica," he suggested quietly, "see when they checked in last."

Scully snickered. "Could you imagine what Meg would do if she found out I was checking up on her?"

She felt Mulder shrug behind her. "She'll get over it."

Scully turned to face him and wrapped herself around him, tucking her head under his chin and pressing her cheek to his chest. In the darkness, Mulder held his hand under her jaw and lifted her face to his.

"You're going to try calling Ecuador in the morning," he asked, his eyes knowing, "aren't you?"

Scully blinked at him innocently. "Are you suggesting I offend my grown daughter's firmly held sense of independence?"

"Aren't you?" He asked back relentlessly.

The left corner of his mouth turned upwards in the most tempting way. Just before giving in to that temptation she acquiesced, but with one small amendment. "In the afternoon. To account for the time difference."

When she pulled away from his lips after that initial kiss, Mulder smiled down at her. "Good. Because if you didn't, I was going to."

"We're pathetic, aren't we?"

"Hopeless," he agreed, twining his fingers in her silvering copper hair and tilting her head back so his lips could play on her throat.

As things progressed, Scully couldn't help but form a mental image of herself and her partner, scarred and battered, gray and wrinkled, age- knotting limbs entwined, groping at each other like newlyweds beneath the cloister-made quilt -- and she found herself laughing.

Mulder's eyes twinkled back at her. "Viagra, shmi-agra."

"Mmmmmmmmm," she hummed wryly, "something like that."

She let him swallow her laughter when he raised his mouth to hers again, and for a very brief time worry waited patiently for her in a corner of her mind.

A very brief time.

A knock sounded against their door.

"Mulder? Scully?"

Husband and wife started guiltily, and Scully grasped at the quilt, automatically scrambling to cover herself.

"Byers," Mulder growled, exasperated, "this better be damned important."

"Can I come in?"

"No!" They snapped in unison as Scully hastily re-buttoned her pajama top.

"It's urgent," Byers called with a detectable measure of impatience.

"How urgent?" Scully demanded, her fingers freezing on the third button down.

"Declan and DeMaram haven't checked in," Byers answered. "Sister Bridget just called. She says Lenhart and Keyte found their car abandoned just over the Delaware border."

In one swift movement, Scully fastened the last button and leapt to the door. She yanked it open and practically grabbed Byers by the shirt. "Have you gotten in touch with Rayelle Declan?"

Byers blushed, presumably at Scully's obvious dishevelment. "I-I just found out."

Muttering something beginning with the "sh" sound, Scully stomped back into the bedroom to find a robe and her slippers. "Is Bridge still on the phone?"

"No, but she's going to try to call back when Lenhart and Keyte return with the second search party."

Scully nodded and pushed Byers out of her way as she ran down to the phone in the Gunmen's office.

Byers watched her go, then turned back to Mulder. "You coming?"

Mulder bit his lip, too worried himself to waste time on the obvious reply to that question.

~*~

"Abbott."

Emily Ann Abbott sat up in her bed to find Covarrubias standing in her bedroom doorway.

"I have a job for you. Get dressed."

The door closed, leaving Abbott alone in her dark room. Obediently, she got up, washed and dressed, and met the other woman just outside the bedroom.

When she followed Covarrubias outside, she found herself led to one of the refrigerated transport trucks.

"What is this for?" Abbott asked.

Covarrubias unlocked the passenger door to the cab. "We have two test subjects to transport. I need you to move them out of quarantine."

Automatically Abbot asked, "Who authorized this?"

Covarrubias glared at the hybrid with eyes icy enough to power the truck's refrigeration system. "I did."

That was answer enough for Abbott. As long as everything was in order, she would do as asked. So she had been trained, and so she had to live.


"I think relaxing into parenthood is the toughest thing. Overcoming fear [about] keeping the child safe and living with the constant anxiety. 'Is the baby OK? Is it eating pennies? Is it going to fall in the swimming pool?' So it seems like you need 24-hour vigilance, and that's obviously not the case." --A relatively well-known actor, on impending parenthood

January 29, 2024 2:51 AM

"Dana?" Rayelle Smith-Declan's voice was crackled with the connection's static and the natural fear of a mother receiving a telephone call before two o'clock in the morning. "What is it?"

"Raye," Scully said into the phone as Mulder perched uneasily on the corner of Frohike's old desk, "when did your son leave for Philadelphia?"

Rayelle answered warily. "Two days ago. Well, not counting the hours. Why?"

"And you haven't seen him since?"

Raye's silence was answer enough.

Scully sighed anxiously. "Raye, sit down."

"I just did."

"Kevin and DeMaram didn't check in at Bridget's school last night."

"Oh God..."

"They'd taken Bridge's car into Delaware. Lenhart and Keyte found it a few hours ago, abandoned."

"Does Meggie know?"

Another chill swept down Scully's spine. She had to swallow hard before she could answer. "She and Cho left for South America two days ago. We haven't been in touch with her since."

Both mothers fell silent.

"I had a feeling," Raye said softly after what seemed like a full minute, "I just had a feeling that something was going to happen. But I couldn't very well tell Kevin. He just would've thought I was trying to stop him. Besides, I always get bad feelings like that whenever the kids go off. Don't you?"

Scully could not bring herself to answer. The defenses had swung automatically into place, and Scully switched into business-mode. "Raye, I need to keep this line free in case somebody from Bridget's is trying to get through."

Some friends were good enough to understand Scully's defense mechanisms. Rayelle Declan was one of those friends. "Of course," she answered quickly. "As soon as you hear anything--"

"I'll call you right away," Scully finished.

Rayelle sighed shakily, "Okay. And in case I hear anything, I'll call you..."

"Thank you, Raye." But Scully could tell by the other mother's voice that she was frighteningly certain she wouldn't be hearing anything anytime soon.

Scully cradled the receiver, looked back up at Mulder and shook her head.

"They're not in DC?" Langly asked.

Scully turned in her chair to face him. "No. Not yet."

"So what do we do now?" Byers asked wearily as Schrodinger jumped uninvited onto his lap.

Scully watched Meg's cat headbutt Byers' hand, demanding immediate attention. She looked back at Langly, then at Mulder, then back at the phone.

"We wait," she answered, knowing her frustration was shared.

"What can we do?" Langly insisted, sitting down in front of his favorite keyboard.

"Keep the phone lines free," Mulder shot back forcefully. "Go back to sleep if you want, just stay off the phone lines. It's hard enough for them to get through to begin with. We don't need to give anybody busy signals and make things worse."

So the four of them waited. And waited. Mulder waited by the phone while Scully went up to the kitchen and made a round of tea. Scully waited by the phone while Mulder ran to the bathroom. Langly and Byers waited, watching the two former agents take turns reaching for the phone and then stopping themselves. After the first hour and twenty two minutes of silence over sips of herbal tea had passed, Langly finally spoke up.

"You two up for some 'low-tech' entertainment to pass the time?"

Scully eyed him with apprehension, and even Mulder coughed uncomfortably.

Byers blushed for the second time that night. "Not that kind of low-tech, Mulder. Since the recent unpredictability of the electrical power situation, we've rediscovered some old friends."

"Yeah," Langly said, reaching under a table and pulling out a box, "Milton and Bradley."

"Langly," Scully asked softly, "is that actually *Jenga*?"

"The *game*?" Mulder asked incredulously.

Langly stopped and looked almost embarrassed. "Like I said," he defended, "it passes the time."

Scully shook her head hopelessly and Mulder laughed to himself.

"Would you like to play?" Byers asked hopefully.

"No," Scully declined, "but thanks for the generous offer."

"That's a little too wild for our tastes," Mulder added.

Langly shrugged. "Suit yourselves."

Byers lost the first round. Langly didn't stop gloating until he lost the second. Schrodinger lost the fourth round, much to everyone's amusement.

"Stupid cat," Langly muttered, "we had it up to twenty-seven layers, too."

Finally, Scully got sick of staring at the phone. When the clock hit 3:45am she dragged herself and her partner over to the Jenga table.

Scully lost the game at 4:17am when the phone rang again.

"Dana?"

"Raye?" She looked over at Mulder, who immediately took his perch by her on the desk again.

Static danced over the line, making Rayelle Declan's news inaudible.

"Raye? I couldn't hear you. Can you say that again?"

Instinctively, Scully reached out for her partner's hand. His fingers were cool in hers, and his eyes were deep with concern.

"Raye?" Scully shouted into the receiver.

The static abated just enough, but the heavy tremor in Rayelle's voice had only grown more audible.

"Dana? Can you hear me now?"

"Yes! What is it?"

"What's wrong?" Mulder mouthed silently, and Scully shook her head at him.

"They found--"

Rayelle's voice froze, and Scully's heart tightened at the ensuing static. Scully dropped Mulder's hand and clutched at the receiver tightly with both hands. "Raye?"

Rayelle sobbed into the phone. "They found Kevin. And Gerald. Dana--"

Scully pressed the phone even closer to her ear, as if trying to convince herself she'd heard wrong. "Gerald Cho? But he's--"

*He's with my daughter...* As the realization hit, her hands began to shake.

"No. They're here, Dana, and there's more."

"What more?"

"What's wrong?" Mulder mouthed again, but all Scully could do was keep her eyes on him and her hands on the phone.

"They're infected."

"Infected?" Scully watched Mulder's eyes widen. "Infected with what? They were two of the first people vaxed."

"It's a new strain." Scully could hear the impotent anger rising in Rayelle's voice. "They took my boy and used him to test their new virus--"

"Rayelle, calm down," Scully ordered, trying to make herself follow her own instructions. "How do you know this?"

"Because," Rayelle was almost shouting, "the woman who brought them here is one of Them. And she brought two pints of blood with her--"

"What woman?" Scully demanded.

"--and one of them is Meggie's."

She felt the tears, hot and fast and unexpected, roll down her cheeks. "How do you know?"

The static hissed in her ear again.

"Raye! How do you know it's Meggie's?" She was not aware that she had stood up from her chair.

"Dana, can you--"

Static.

"Raye! How do you know?"

Static. "Da -- how soon -- get here? We need your --"

Scully slammed the phone down. She pushed the chair away and began stomping for the door. "Langly, get me every single map you can find that covers every square inch from here to DC. Byers, go put gas in the pickup and make sure there's at least two spare gas cans in the back. Mulder, see if you can call Veronica and find out when Meg checked in last."

"Scully, what did--"

"Just do it! I'm packing up as much of the lab as I can, and I'll meet you at the truck in ten minutes. I'll explain on the way to DC."

She turned and began running out the door, but Mulder caught and held her arm. "Scully, I need you to tell me what the hell is going on!"

"Cho's not with Meg anymore. He and Kevin have been infected with something and they were brought to DC, along with a pint of our daughter's blood! We're going to DC, and we're going to find out where the hell our daughter is and why her blood isn't with her! So get your hand off my arm and meet me at the truck in ten minutes!"

She twisted her arm out of his grip and ran down the hall to the lab.


Cold and dark.

Perception warped, except for the understanding of utter cold and complete darkness.

Surprisingly she was not afraid. Meg felt like something was missing simply because she was not afraid. She'd expected the cold and dark to inspire in her absolute terror, but it did not.

She was not at peace, but she was not afraid.

And she was not alone.

"Yep. Lookie here. That's a Scully allright."

Incredulity pumped through Meg's heart and trickled over her consciousness.

*Frohike?*

"Who else would it be, Kid? You know anybody else who's kicked the bucket recently?"


"What is now, has already been; what is to be, already is; and God restores what would otherwise be displaced." --Ecclesiastes 3: 15

I-79 North January 29, 2024 7:19 AM

The sun was starting to peek over this rolling stretch of the Appalachian Mountains, painting in hazy blues and grays the landscape of the lifeless, abandoned buildings littering the valley once called Charleston, West Virginia.

"How are we doing on gas?" Scully asked, peering over her partner's shoulder, gritting her teeth against the ruts in the road.

"We'd better fill up soon," he confirmed. "Let me know when you see a gas station up ahead, will ya?"

Scully acknowledged his bad joke. "I'll let you know when I see one, but I don't think there will be anybody there to wash our windows."

Mulder didn't laugh. There was no laughter in either of them.

Out of the corner of his eye Mulder watched Scully's hands drift to the gun she kept at her side. He let his eyes depart from the pock-marked road for a milisecond and scanned the cityscape sprawled out before them. No lights were on in any of the buildings, houses or stores as far as he could tell, and the only vehicles on the roads besides their sturdy old pickup truck were long abandoned. Mulder glanced upwards, and the sky was a safe, empty blue.

He looked around again. Still no larvae in sight, either. Nevertheless, he was glad Scully kept fingering her gun.

He couldn't remember the last time they'd been out of the monastery, but he knew it had to have been before the Invasion began. Now all that was left of so many once-lively cities were so many hulking concrete shells. He was surprised to see that the buildings had experienced little or no damage in the past several weeks. Charleston, West Virginia was just one of countless cities, towns and villages they hadn't reached in time with enough vaccine to make a difference.

Mulder lifted his left hand and rubbed his temples. So many lives had once lived in this ghost town. Now, not even the larvae had stayed...

Not even the larvae had stayed.

Mulder frowned. "Scully?"

"Hmn?"

He steered around another pothole. "Did you notice that all the buildings we've seen so far are completely intact?"

Mulder watched her duck a little to survey the cityscape through the dusty windshield. "Yes. Yes, they are, Mulder."

He could tell by the sound of her voice: she was still distracted -- thinking of Meggie's blood. And so was he -- thinking of why anyone would want Meggie's blood in the first place.

He bit his lip then thought out loud, "If this is supposed to be a colonization, why haven't They started doing something to the buildings? The landscapes? Anything?"

She looked back at Mulder, surprise momentarily displacing her simmering terror. She was thinking, too. "You mean plowing them down? Making way for Their new condominiums?"

"I mean," he explained, "this is the first time we've seen it, really, since it all began. Is this what you were expecting to see?"

Scully waved her hand at the scene around them thoughtfully. "I don't know," she answered truthfully. "We were so intent on preventing this for so long that I never tried to picture what it would be like. I don't think anybody knew what to expect -- other than what we'd already seen and... experienced."

Seen and experienced. Mulder felt the revulsion washing over him as he remembered Antarctica more than twenty-five years in the past.

He was startled when something brushed his leg. Scully had reached out with her free hand and rested it against his thigh. He kept his left hand on the wheel and took Scully's hand in his right. They kept on driving in ominous silence.


Meg was seeing, but not seeing. She could hear Frohike's voice, but not as if it were being caused by the conductive vibrations of air molecules resonating the tiny bones in her ears against her eardrums, sending the resulting information to her brain by way of her auditory nerves.

*Frohike, what are you doing here?*

"I might ask you the same thing, sweetheart. Aren't you a little young to be hanging out with dead guys? Not that *I'm* old..."

*Okay,* she then asked, but not with her voice, *then what am //I// doing here? And where is //here//?*

"Where do you think you are?"

Meg tried to piece together what she was experiencing.

*Am I dead?*

"Not yet."

*So this isn't heaven.*

"Not yet."

Meg felt herself almost laughing, and she would have arched her eyebrow if she'd had one to arch at that particular moment. *I thought answers were supposed to be what you're best at.*

"Of course." She could feel Frohike's smugness.

*Then what is this place?* Meg demanded.

"Ooh, a feisty one! I can't exactly tell you where we are--"

*Can you give me a hint?*

"I can tell you that I'm here... doing my time before I can move on."

This wasn't making sense. A flood of cold washed over her again. *I don't know,* a part of her mind gasped.

"Oh, come on," the Frohike-ghost said, "you went to Catholic school."

The cold was fading -- for the moment. Meg almost couldn't believe it. *Purgatory? You have got to be kidding me.*

Frohike bristled. "It's not so bad as you make it sound."

Meg wasn't sure what to say to that. She was still in some sort of incorporeal shock. The cold was back and increasing.

"That's okay, Kid. You don't have to know what to say. I was just sent here to show you a few things."

*Show me what? Answers?*

"Answers to questions you don't know how to ask. Answers to questions you never thought to ask."

*Like what?*

"You'll see."

Impatience. *When?*

"When you're supposed to."

Just then, she began to dream something of memories she did not have for herself. Afternoon sunlight slanting. Dust motes dancing. One voice angry, shouting. One quieter but even less yielding than the shouting.

Meg looked carefully at the two faces being revealed to her just then.

*My God.* Her heart swam when she recognized them at last. *They look so young...*

She kept watching and listening, wondering what she was meant to see in this scene from her parents' past.

They were standing in a hallway.


"For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind." -- 2 Timothy 1:7

Near Washington, D. C. January 29, 2024 4:22 PM

They arrived. They had to switch into four-wheel drive to get there because the roads around DC still were clogged with abandoned cars, but even going off- road did not alleviate the stench of rotting human remains in some areas. Mulder and Scully took their turns gagging from the odor.

"We have to get cleanup crews out here somehow," Scully said, shielding her nose with the back of her hand. "This is going to destroy the water supply, if it hasn't already."

When they finally reached their destination, they were met by two guards: two tired-looking kids, not possibly more than seventeen years old. They boy of the pair introduced himself as Gregory and his counterpart as Tricia. Both stared in awe at them -- the fabled Agents Scully and Mulder, responsible for the survival of the remaining human race thus far.

"I thought she'd be much taller," Tricia tried whispering subtly to Gregory.

"Yeah, so did I," Mulder turned and answered the girl, who blushed furiously in response.

Apologetically, Gregory held up the metal lancet for the requisite test of humanity. "Sorry, but this is just policy."

Scully held out her hand to the boy and Mulder did the same. She blinked at the red blood welling on her finger.

//She brought two pints of blood with her...//

Scully closed her eyes, slowly reopening them to see Gregory offering plastic bandages to her and Mulder.

"Sorry," Gregory repeated as she took her bandage. "We knew you wouldn't be, but--"

"It's alright," Scully interrupted the nervous kid and gave him a small reassuring smile.

"Uh, Mr. Skinner asked us to bring you this way," Tricia pointed the way and began to escort them around the perimeter of the main building of the since-converted Holy Family Medical Center. Here Rayelle Smith Declan, R. N., M. S. N., had once served as head respiratory nurse. Now she was basically head of everything. Times like these pushed people of integrity, resolve and advance knowledge into key positions. Raye was no exception.

They were led to the back of the building, to the hospital's delivery bay.

"This one," Tricia said, pointing to one of the trucks, but her direction was redundant, because Skinner was coming out of the bay to meet them.

Skinner informed them by way of greeting, "Declan and Cho were brought here early this morning in this unmarked refrigerated truck, clearly infected with the virus. Raye Declan had them each given another dose of the vaccine, but there's been no change. She ordered them kept in the refrigerated truck just in case the cold keeps this virus from progressing."

"Does that seem to be working?" Mulder asked him.

Sknniner's glace shot back to the truck. "How can we know? We've never dealt with anything like this, not since we've had our own vaccine."

"Have you been able to tell if it seems to be slowing the rate of cellular degradation?" Scully demanded, "What has Raye said?"

"She said she wanted to wait for you to get here before making any assumptions," was Skinner's answer.

Scully nodded.

They had reached the truck by then, and a single biohazard suit was draped over the passenger seat in the cab.

Skinner explained, "We only had two of these left. Raye is in there right now with the other."

Both former boss and partner looked expectantly to Scully, who nodded and pulled the suit out of the cab.

"I can help you with that, Doctor," Tricia piped up shyly.

"Thank you," Scully answered.

Then, Skinner held out his hand to Mulder. Resting on his open palm was a silver cylinder with a small switch on the side. "We found this in the truck."

Mulder reached out and took the sheathed alien weapon out of Skinner's grip. Scully froze and stared at it as well.

"Who brought them here?" Mulder asked. "Anyone we know?"

Skinner glared silently then jerked his head in the direction of the closest doors into the hospital.

Mulder looked back to Scully.

"Go," she told him.

He nodded and turned to follow Skinner.


The irony was not lost on Mulder as Skinner led him up the steps and through the halls into the psych unit.

Skinner explained. "The only ward with doors that just lock from the outside."

Mulder nodded. "The blood she brought with her?"

"Being kept in the refrigerated truck with Declan and Cho. Two pints, freshly taken, labeled separately with what looks like social security numbers. I looked up Rachel Jo DeMaram's, and it's a match."

Mulder nodded again.

Skinner directed him to the end of the hall, where another pair of under-aged guards waited by a door.

Without a single word, Skinner unlocked and opened the door.

The dim light from the hallway leaked through the opening in the door, over the heads of those standing in the doorway. The figure that had been seated on the bed stood and the light fell on her all too familiar face.

"You," Mulder said.

Marita Covarrubias lowered her head, more in seeming exhaustion than in surrender, before raising it again.

"Agent Mulder." Her voice had roughened with the years.

Skinner stood back and folded his arms.

"What do you want?" Mulder asked, barely moving his jaw.

She blinked at him, then at Skinner. "The same thing you want. Survival. For your daughter."

"Then why did you bring us her blood but forget the rest of her?" Mulder shot back.

"They're not going to kill her," Marita replied.

"That's wonderfully reassuring, coming from you."

Marita blinked at the light several times then resumed her seat on the edge of the bed. "She is too valuable to Them."

"Why?" Mulder asked immediately.

"You know about the new mutation?" She scanned his face. "I see that you do. For some reason your daughter and Captain DeMaram are immune to it."

With deadly calm, he said, "You infected her, too."

"And she rejected the virus spontaneously," was her swift, cool reply. "She's still very much alive, and will be for some time. As long as They need her."

Mulder fought every impulse raging within him to pick her up and throttle the truth out of her. "Why did you bring their blood here?"

She tilted her head at him, brushed back a wayward strand of silvered hair. "They're going to use your daughter's blood. DeMaram's too. Run tests on it, to find out how they're immune."

"To try to find a new vaccine," Mulder stated -- not as a question.

"A better one," she qualified. "They'll keep her, and DeMaram, as long as the tests need to last."

She looked down at the floor, but Mulder would not relent. "You didn't answer my question."

Marita paused, suddenly disconcerted. She looked up at Mulder, then at Skinner, and then back at Mulder, her jaw open and trembling. "I thought..." she began shakily, "I thought that if I brought the blood, you could use it... to beat Them to it."

"To making this new vaccine?" Mulder asked.

Marita nodded imperceptibly, then looked back down at the dull tile floor. "Their track record of taking good care of test subjects..."

Her voice dried up, and her mouth worked open then shut. Her eyes closed, and she raised a shaking hand to brush at her hair again.

"... leaves much to be desired," she finished, raising her eyes to Mulder's once more.

He tried to make his face impassive. By the shimmer that glazed its way across her eyes, Mulder knew instantly that he had failed.

"And who helped you transport Kevin and Cho here?" Skinner finally asked.

Her eyes flicked meaningfully to the silver weapon still clutched in Mulder's hand. "No one knows I'm here."

"What about my daughter?" Mulder demanded, shouting hoarsely, "Where is she?"

Composure once again intact, Marita raised her eyes to Mulder's with a cool challenge. "Win this race against Them, Agent Mulder. Or else you can consider your daughter safer in Their hands than yours."

A guttural sound of anguish escaped his throat, and Mulder could not stop himself from taking a threatening step towards her.

Skinner grabbed Mulder's arm and in a low voice warned, "Easy."

Mulder's fists knotted with futility, then he forced them to unclench. His eyes still blazing, he looked back at Marita and tightened his jaw even more. "What is that supposed to mean?"

"They can protect her in ways you can't." She raised her voice slightly. "Isn't that what you've always wanted above all things, to keep her safe? Isn't that what a father wants for his daughter?"

Frozen, he stared at her.

//That's ten more years than *your* father had...//

His throat closed up on him. He turned to leave, pausing in the doorway. He faced Marita Covarrubias once more. "My daughter *will* be safe," he choked, "without being exploited."

"If you have the vaccine before They do," she spoke, and Mulder stopped in the doorway again to listen. Marita swallowed harshly and resumed. "If you have the vaccine before They do, the odds will be evened. Only that will assure your daughter's safety at your own hands. Only that and nothing more."

He brushed past Skinner and began walking back to the truck, to Scully.

~*~

On initial examination of Kevin Declan and Gerald Cho, the artificial cold did seem to be keeping the more devastating effects of the virus at bay, thankfully. That hope alone kept Scully from vomiting inside of her suit at the chill's reminder -- the cold, the confinement, the virus...

Rayelle Declan sat by her son's side, holding his slack hand in hers through the glove of her own protective gear. Her face was a mask of detached shock.

In her own biohazard suit, Scully carefully lowered herself to sit between the two still-living victims. She looked over at Raye, whose eyes were fixed on her son's blank, oil-clouded ones.

Scully looked over at the small metal table placed between the two stretchers. Two bags of blood had been placed there. She examined the labels on each bag, and recognized the number on one as Meg's social security number. She reached out and picked it up, holding it closely to her visor. She watched it for any sign of movement. It rippled with the motion of being lifted, but nothing more than that. She frowned at herself and returned it to the table.

"We called up to Sister Bridget," Rayelle said, still not taking her eyes off her son's, "to see if she could send Lenhart and Keyte to help us. Maybe they can't kill the virus, but they could at least remove it."

"And?" Scully asked hopefully.

Raye shook her head, despondent. "They can't get here for another day at best."

"What about the other one? Scott?"

"He'll be out of contact for another two days at least. Somewhere in Canada."

Scully nodded, feeling Raye's pain in concert with her own. "How long since initial infection?" She asked, raising her voice so she could be heard clearly through their suits' barriers.

Raye lifted her head. "From what that woman said, two and a half days ago at this point. I think."

Scully looked at Cho, then Kevin. "With the cold, that gives us thirty-six hours."

"At best," Raye said again.

Scully nodded.

"Twenty years," Raye said so softly Scully could hardly hear her.

"Raye?"

"No. More than twenty, right?" Raye raised her voice and her eyes. "It took more than that to come up with our own vaccine the last time." She shook her head, smiling bitterly. "I don't know as many of the details as you. I didn't come along 'til the fourth quarter."

Scully frowned, but then tried to reassure Raye. "All those years of work on the last vaccine give us a head start on making a new one."

Raye looked back at her son. Her voice shook with unshed tears. "Enough to turn twenty years into thirty-six hours or less? And this time around we have fewer supplies, a less reliable power supply, and only the two of us working on it... and hardly any time..."

Raye lowered her head, shaking inside of her suit.

Scully reached out for Kevin's other hand. He did not move or blink. Undoubtedly, this was worse than finding him on his bathroom floor with thirteen year-old Meg improvising tourniquets with bath towels as Kevin's blood pumped out of the clumsy cuts on his fifteen year-old wrists...

Scully steeled her spine and blinked away that memory, too. "We'll find a way," she insisted.

Raye did not look up.

Her own breath trembling, Scully turned back to the small table with her daughter's blood. Her daughter's and DeMaram's, both still missing. She pushed aside her own anxiety with a well-practiced mental shove. There had to be a connection somewhere. Between the return of these two young men, the freshly- drawn blood of two young women, and this new virus. She released Kevin's hand and again examined her daughter's blood.

"A-" had been printed on the label next to Meg's social security number. Scully's eyes narrowed thoughtfully. She looked at the label on the other pint. "B+."

Different types. So the two girls -- women -- did not have that in common. Then what did they have in common that would make anyone want their blood? Automatically, Scully's investigative techniques took over. "Raye, what do you know about Captain DeMaram?"

Raye lifted her head again, shaking it slightly, trying to refocus her thoughts. "Only what she told me. Lenhart and Keyte found her shortly after the invasion began."

"Did they remove the virus from her?"

Raye shook her head. "I don't think so. She'd been attacked but not infected. They healed her, cleaned her up and brought her here to help."

Scully stopped to think. "But Skinner knew her from before?"

Raye shook her head slightly. "It was only a coincidence that Walter had known her grandfather all those years ago, as far as I know. Why?"

Scully's eyes slid thoughtfully back to the two separate bags of blood. "Do you remember anything else about her? Anything at all. Maybe about her family?"

"From what she told me, her grandfather was her family. Her parents died when she was really young. Real shame. Cancer, both of them."

At the word "cancer," Scully's head snapped away from the blood and back to Rayelle. She suddenly stood up. "Did she ever mention the names of her parents?"

Still in shock but increasingly confused, Raye shook her head again. "I don't think so, but Walter might remember."

Scully stopped herself, to think this through and make sure the possible logic of it was relatively sound before running off and quite possibly wasting time on such a weak possibility.

"Dana?" Raye asked tentatively.

The logic of it was not the strongest, she admitted to herself, but she couldn't think of another starting point. "I need to call Gethsemani. Is there a phone around here more reliable than any other?"

Raye blinked at her through her shock. "They're pretty much all bad, but I tend to use the one at the ER desk the most--"

Scully didn't hear the rest of Raye's sentence, because she was already well on her way.


The best relationships, the ones that last, are frequently the ones that are rooted in friendship." -Scully, "Rain King"

Meg felt a headache of her own, as if she'd been the one just shot close to the left temporal lobe.

She ignored the pain. *Well, Janitor, that was lovely. All full of romantic tension. Much like to a bowl of oatmeal on the 'mush' scale.*

"Hey, I don't pick 'em, Kid. I'm just here for narrative effect."

Meg felt her stomach lurch for no good reason. *Well, I'm glad you didn't have to show them... dancing the funky chicken.*

Meg could tell The Janitor was entertained by her discomfort in regards to this topic, and apparently he was deciding to have fun with it. "You had to come from somewhere, you know. Think about it: if your dad's birthday is October thirteenth, and yours is July thirteenth, then that's exactly--"

*Nine months, yes, yes, thank you very much,* she cut him off, faintly disgusted, *I've already done the math. Ugh. Ick.*

Frohike was clearly amused. "Ick, eh?"

*There are some things a girl just doesn't want to ponder, and one of those is her parents... oh, never mind. Just... ick.*

Frohike did not respond to that at first. Meg waited. She felt colder. She felt an unrelated sense of alarm, briefly forgotten, begin to resurface.

"Well?" Frohike asked after what seemed like an eternity.

*Well, what?* Her alarm faded -- for the moment.

She could sense the poor dead man's frustration with her. "You were supposed to learn something from that."

*What? That my dad's a cornball and--* she paused to think the right phrase *--and that my mom's not good at being vulnerable? I knew that before I came here. What's to learn?*

Frohike insisted, "Not about your parents."

Meg's sense of alarm began to redirect itself and coalesce into a very distinct apprehension. *About whom, then?*

She could tell that if he'd had a body right then, he would have shaken his head. "Great. Now I gotta show you something else."

And through the eyes of this new dream, the first thing she saw was a pizza. A very familiar pizza: one half extra cheese, the other half mushrooms, olives, anchovies, pineapple chunks and slices of jalapeno.

The next thing she saw was Kevin removing a jalapeno that had strayed to his side of the pizza.

"Keep your peppers to yourself, girl," he said, his voice entirely real and un-dreamlike. "I don't need any more ulcers."

She stared at this vision of him, and Kevin stared right back. It took her a minute before she realized he was waiting for her comeback.

She opened her mouth, and by some miracle, the words from her memory flowed. "C'mon, Kev," she heard herself telling him, "they're good for you. They'll put hair on your chest. Wanna see?"

The memory of her voice sounded slightly high and shaky. She examined the Memory-Kevin. He was wearing the small moustache he tried to grow during spring of her sophomore year of college, his junior. She looked down. The pizza pan sat on a tabletop of beige veneer. A neon sign blared in the window next to them. Backwards, the sign read "SAVAS PIZZA."

So at least she knew the physical setting for this memory. But exactly *when* were they? She examined the memory of herself, sitting up unnaturally straight and fiddling nervously with the hem of her shorts. Shorts. So it was late spring. Probably May. And they were eating at Savas, that Greek pizza place by Kevin's dorm at CUA...

May of sophomore year. Meg's heart tightened when she realized what she would have to watch here.

*Oh, Frohike.* The sound of her own heartbeat had insinuated its way into her awareness. *Why are you showing me this?*

The only answer she received was Kevin's slight glare of irritation as he reopened his textbook and began sketching out calcuations on a yellow legal pad.

"What?" Meg heard herself ask innocently, in her voice from the past.

Kevin shook his head, half-smiled.

Strangely, she felt her heart beating faster. She thought, *I remember this. I know what's going to happen. Come on, Frohike, why do I have to live through this night again?*

Again, nothing from The Janitor.

*I thought you were supposed to give me answers!*

Again, nothing.

"Don't you have work to do?"

Said her Memory-Kevin. She changed her focus. Kevin was looking at her expectantly from the other side of the tabletop, again waiting for her.

She felt her shoulders shrug, her eyelashes fluttering anxiously. "Nothing I need to do."

Her voice was high and shaky again, so Kevin looked at her with curiosity. She looked away from his intense gaze and helped herself to another slice from her side of the pizza. She could not taste the peppers in her dream -- her mouth felt like a desert.

She watched Kevin scratch out the rest of the equation in his notebook, consult his quantum mechanics textbook, then plug a few numbers into his calculator. Meg kept chewing on her dream of sand-pizza, and Kevin kept scribbling at his equation, occasionally glancing back up at Meg. Meg looked down at her side, and her bag full of books sat on the seat to her right, unopened.

Kevin tapped his pencil thoughtfully against his lower lip. "I thought we were here to work."

"Yeah," Meg heard herself say in vague self-defense. "So?"

Kevin squinted his one eye oh-so-slightly at her. "Is there something wrong, Meg?"

Meg felt her heart beginning to beat faster again. Nerves from years ago, still shaking at the memory, even though she knew she would never get the chance to say what she wanted to say or to ask what she wanted to ask.

"No," she answered predictably. "I'm fine. Why?"

"You're acting weirder than usual." Then his expression changed. He sat back and folded his arms, his voice taking on its understanding tone. "Is it something about Sean?"

Sean? Sean who? For a second, Meg in the present couldn't remember who Sean was.

Despite that fact, she heard herself saying, "No. That was a clean break. He's graduating, I'm not. Besides, he and I were never very serious to begin with. No, that's not it. Well, not really."

Kevin reluctantly unfolded his arms. "Not really?"

This was the window she'd been waiting for -- to finally have this talk she'd wanted to have at least since her senior prom, if not earlier. Meg felt herself gulp in anticipation, but her throat felt so very, very dry. In her memory, she reached for her root beer and took a swig, but she could not feel its benefit.

She put the root beer down and felt herself beginning to laugh casually. "You're not going to believe this. It's so funny," she began, forcing herself to keep laughing as she spoke. "When Sean and I did decide not to see each other anymore, he said the *funniest* thing..."

Meg felt herself continuing to procrastinate with laughter, and she remembered that Kevin would, as a result, seem a little irritated.

Irritated he was. "What did he say?"

"He said... he said... oh, this is so funny," she giggled, "he said that he thought that you and I might consider..."

She started to laugh harder, and strangely Kevin's annoyance with her seemed to change. "Might consider... what?"

As Kevin's face changed to reflect the now cautious tone of his voice, Meg's fake laughter faded-- slowly-- and turned into a nervous stammer. "... that we might consider... now, this is something we don't need to think about, obviously. We're doing just fine as things are between us now, right?"

Kevin stared at her for a second. And another. And another. He obviously wasn't going to help her out on this. She would have to do this alone.

To fill up the silence, Meg added, "And we always have been, right?"

"I guess..." was Kevin's guarded reply.

She stopped and forced herself to look right into his eyes. Her heart jumped again, and the adrenaline tickled her figertips. She took a deep breath and let her voice sound serious for once. "Kevin, you know, you're already my 'best' and all, but--"

"But what?" He looked at her and gave her his sad eyes. She felt tears prickle her eyelids. Kevin said, slightly exasperated, "Meg, just spit it out. What can be so bad you can't tell me?"

And Meg heard her own frantic thoughts from that night in May of sophomore year of college:

What am I thinking things don't need to change please God do something so things don't need to change between Kevin and me Please God help me change the subject ...

And in Meg's memory, a cell phone rang. She and Kevin both stopped and reached for theirs.

*It's mine.* In the present Meg remembered, knowing sadly what had to come next.

And, "Mine," she heard herself say in her memory. She was smiling with sheepish relief at Kevin and answered the call by saying, "Taj Mahal men's bathroom. Indira speaking."

There was silence at first.

Meg waited. Still silence. She prompted, "Hello?"

A quavering breath. "Meg, honey?"

Meg's voice was innocently cheery. "Hey, Grandma!"

"Honey, something terrible has happened." Gram's voice was shaking horribly. "I need you to come home right now."

Uncomfortable, Meg laughed a little. "Why? What's wrong?"

"I--" Gram was trying to control herself, Meg could tell, but was not succeeding. "Meggie, baby, I can't tell you on the phone. I just can't. Please, just come home."

Dreading the answer, Meg asked anyway, "Is it Mom and Dad?"

"Yes," was Gram's answer. "Just come home. And be careful. Get someone to drive you."

"Are they gonna be okay? What happened? Should I meet you at a hospital? Tell me which one. I'll meet you there."

"Meg, no. Not a hospital. There was-- there was an explosion, and--"

The voice on the other end was silenced by the quietest weeping Meg had ever heard.

"What's wrong?" Kevin mouthed to her across the table.

She merely stared at him. The panic was consuming her quickly. "Gram? It'll be okay, right? It'll be okay?"

Meg waited for the answer she'd come to expect.

She did not receive it.

*It'll never be okay again.* Meg's thoughts echoed inside of her mind. She could feel the lump lodging itself in her throat.

"I'm on my way," her voice said aloud.

"I love you, Meggie."

"I love you, too, Gram. I'll be home soon."

She shut off her phone. She breathed deeply, but her heartbeat was racing out of control. White light flashed before her eyes, and then was not.

Kevin's voice reached her through the harsh brilliance of the uncertainty and loss, gone long ago, but still present in all Meg ever did in her life from that point forward.

"I'll take you home," Kevin told her.

The light brightened, obliterated Kevin's face for the slightest moment, then faded so she saw only him.

"I'll take you home, Meg. I'll take you home."

And the whiteness fluttered and flashed once more, and Meg opened her eyes.

~*~

Something was changing. A change Kevin knew. A change Kevin could never forget.

*Oh, God, no...*

The first pinprick on his skin was a distant sensation coming to him from another planet, another universe.

Until the retreat began.

*... Not again...*

He thought. But something was different this time. He was burning. Being burned alive.

The fire began slowly: an irritating burn deep in his gut. But the burn intensified quickly. Its black flames snaked through his intestines, held his kidneys in their fists, wringing them scorched and dry.

The conflagration roared in his ears. The dark heat flowed over his tongue. His eyes pumped with nothing but black coals of flame.

*This time...*

He thought.

*This time I'm going to die...*

His lungs were being cremated. He coughed, and his lips blistered with the expulsion of heat.

Dimly through the roar, he could hear the sound of his own screams.

The same screams at the last time.

But the last time, Meg was there at the end. The desolate pain had vanished as Meg fell into his arms, and he had clutched at her -- waking to a reality that banished all nightmare.

But that was last time. Now, his screams grew louder. He called Meg's name, pleading with her to be there, be here, when this nighmare was over, so she could soothe him, soothe this burning anguish, so he could hold her cool, strong body against his...

He called her name, and she answered, but her voice had changed, was muffled strangely, was saying strange things.

"...Hold him on his side..."

"MEG?" He choked. "HELP ME!"

His plea was garbled, gurgled in the liquid fire flowing out of him. Her changed voice continued.

"... or he's going to aspirate..."

"It's almost over, baby..."

His mother's voice?

"... almost over..."

His mother's voice.

"Almost over, Kevin."

And not Meg's voice. Similar, but not the same.

He'd been incinerated. The black-charred expanses of what had once been clean white stretcher sheets rose to meet him as he collapsed, conscious, but barely.

He blinked. He no longer saw a void full of blackness, but what he did see was blurry, and he did not even have the strength to raise his hands and rub his eyes to clear the blur.

That's when he realized...

"Kevin?" His mother asked him, her face twisting with relief and terror all at once. "Kevin, baby, can you hear me?"

He wanted to blink to clear his vision, but he knew that wouldn't work. "Glasses," his voice rasped.

"Glasses?" Doc Scully asked, her voice strained.

He tried to speak but was too weak. Even his eyelids moved too slowly.

His mother choked a brief, ironic laugh.

"What's wrong?" Doc Scully asked, her voice a reminder of Meg's.

"When the virus left," his mother explained, "he must have lost his contacts."


"So if you call, I will answer, And if you fall, I'll pick you up, And if you court this disaster, I'll point you home. I'll point you home." --BNL, "Call and Answer"

Sunlight, weak but real, broke over Kevin and heated his face. People spoke around him. He still could not see their expressions, but their voices had a certain joyous caution.

"It worked. I can't believe it. The Metanase worked."

"Among other things."

"Unbelievable."

"Did somebody go tell Mulder yet?"

"I will." He immediately -- and correctly -- recognized the voice of Doc Scully. "But let's get him to a fresh room first, alright?"

Even though she was using her order-issuing voice, he could tell she was relieved. Relieved, but still worried. Why worried?

"Meg?" He tried to ask, but his voice had gone AWOL again.

"On my count," his own mother ordered. "One. Two. Three--"

The dull metal ceiling above him shifted. His back left the stretcher. He floated in the air for a second, and then he was back down again. The people around him jostled his new bed some more, and then he was directly in the glaring sunlight, harsh against his skin.

"Careful, guys," a voice cautioned, belonging neither to Doc Scully or Kevin's mother.

"Keyte?" Kevin wondered aloud, tentatively identifying that voice as belonging to one of the good clones.

No one answered him; his voice could not be heard over the movement of this his new bed. The mere effort of speaking made Kevin's head swim, and his eyes shut on him. Not that they were any good to begin with, not without the aid of any sort of corrective lenses.

Involuntarily, he felt his lips form Meg's name, but again his voice was too quiet for anyone's notice.

He remembered weakness from the last time, but that was nothing compared to this: this absolute powerlessness, as if all his muscles had been scraped off of their bones with a burger-flipping spatula. And on top of that, he felt even groggier than he remembered from before -- almost as if this time around he'd been drugged. His mouth was completely dry. He tried to wet his lips, and the attempt was draining.

"Hey, Declan," someone else demanded of him, "You better yet?"

He knew the voice. "Lenhart?"

"Yup."

Kevin opened his eyes and squinted. The clouds in the blue sky above him rolled slowly past. It was then he realized he was the one being rolled. The sky above him turned into a doorway, then a ceiling. He was surrounded by people, but without his contacts or at least his glasses he could barely tell who was who. His mother, he recognized, was to his right, just as he recognized Meg's mom on his left.

He squinted up at Doc Scully. Summoning the last of his strength, he whispered his question to her:

"Where's Meg?"

Doc Scully looked down at him, and he could tell she opened her mouth to answer him, but she was interrupted by another voice he knew but had not expected to hear.

Langly, Meg's Glasses Man, walked briskly along with Kevin's stretcher. "It worked, then?"

Kevin's mother practically shouted with joy. "Langly, honey, I can't thank you enough. You two -- finding that stuff saved his life."

His glasses so large and obnoxious even Kevin could see them, Langly responded humbly "Let's hear it for experimental enzymes."

"And old contacts in medical research," Byers added from somewhere out of Kevin's range of vision.

None of this was making sense to Kevin, and he didn't really care either. He just wanted to find Meg. He looked back up to her mom, demanding, "Where is she?"

This time, Meg's mother chose to be silent. At least for the time being. Kevin closed his eyes and mentally prepared himself for the worst as they continued to wheel him to his new destination.

He must have passed out briefly, because when he opened his eyes again, he looked across from him, and Gerald Cho was in a hospital bed on the other side of the room, looking almost-- but not quite -- as bad as Kevin felt. Cho reached over to the table that sat between them, picked up a plastic cup and sipped from it.

Kevin looked to his right and saw his mother sitting in the chair by the open window. A soft breeze drifted in and fluttered the antiseptic white curtains.

Kevin's mother dipped a washcloth into a bowl of water and wiped his forehead and cheeks, like he were just a tiny kid with a fever. She asked, "How you feeling, baby?"

He just nodded a little in response. No need to worry her.

She put the cloth down and picked something up from the bedside table. Gently, his mother unfolded a pair of glasses and placed them on his face. The world came into focus again, especially the exultant relief on his mother's face.

"Where did you get these?" He asked her.

Smiling smugly, she answered, "I'm your mother."

Briefly, he smiled at that. Something else wasn't right though, despite the fact that he could at least see. His voice was a whisper, but an audible one, when he asked, "Where's Meg?"

His mom's relief quickly faded. He didn't need to be wearing glasses to tell that something was wrong. "Kevin," she began, her voice so soft he knew she only had bad news for him, "we're working on finding her right now."

He let his head fall to the side. "I shouldn't have let her go," he whispered.

His mother leaned closer and insisted through her own fear, "Listen, baby. The woman who brought you and Gerald back to us-- she has information we can use to find her. The Gunmen brought someone with them from the Gethsemani monastery who right now is--"

Kevin wasn't listening. He just kept shaking his head over and over, even though with every movement his head ached and his stomach lurched. "I shouldn't have--"

"--right now he's up there questioning her."

"I shouldn't have gone off on my own--"

"He's the one who helped us figure out for certain how to save you, and--"

"God, Momma, it's my fault. I shouldn't have--"

"Kevin," his mother scolded gently, taking his hand in hers, "hush now. That kind of talk isn't going to get anybody anywhere. We'll find them. Don't worry."

"Find them," he repeated. "Meg and D. P.? They're both missing." It wasn't a question. He remembered listening to Queen, then the light...

"Kevin," Cho interrupted, sitting up a little in his bed, "didn't you know? Nobody told you?"

Kevin looked back over at Cho. "Told me what?"

"Your lady fair... she saved you again. Just like Captain DeMaram saved me--"

Kevin squinted at Cho and felt his grogginess give way to sudden fury. "What do you mean? Meg's not even here... and you were with her last, Cho! Didn't you watch out for her? For Godsake, where is she?"

Kevin struggled to stand up, to go over to that flake and let his rage alone do the work for him.

"Kevin! No!" His mother ordered sternly, putting her small hands on her son's broad shoulders. Kevin glared at Cho, then at his mother, but another wave of weakness suddenly washed over him. Too weak to do anything but surrender, Kevin let his head fall back against the scratchy pillowcase.

"Baby, our Megabyte isn't the only one missing," she said more gently. "Rachel Jo DeMaram is, too."

Kevin felt his jaw drop. He shook his head and shut his eyes with guilt. "I remember now. We were on 95 South. We were listening to this old CD that used to belong to DP's mom... and then..."

He closed his eyes and shook his head.

"When you were taken," his mother told him, "you and Gerald, Meg and Rachel Jo were all infected with a new version of the virus. Since your bodies didn't recognize it, you and Gerald got infected. But both Meg and DP have something that made them immune," his mother explained.

Kevin forced himself to look back at his mother and listen.

"How on earth do I explain all this?" She frowned a little, then began with a short sigh. "There have been women abducted for certain kinds of... experiments."

"Meg told me," Kevin said. "Her mom was one of them."

His mom smiled so slightly. "How could I forget? Meg tells you everything, doesn't she?"

Kevin automatically opened his mouth to apologize again, but she beat him to the punch by asking him a question.

"What else has she told you?"

Kevin took a second to gather his thoughts, then told her, "They did these -- these experiments on her mom. And, uh, that's where Wexford came from, right?"

His mother nodded. "I'm pretty sure that's right."

"And Meg's mom wasn't supposed to be able to have kids," Kevin added, "but somehow they had Meg..."

He stopped and thought for a minute, trying to make sense of this new information -- Meg's immunity to this new virus -- with very limited understanding and a pounding headache. He knew the clones -- clones like Wexford -- were immune to the old virus because they had so much in common with the virus's DNA. So, did that mean...?

Kevin squinted thoughtfully, confused. "Is that what made Meg immune? Is she like Wexford?"

His mother hesitated, then answered, "Yes and no."

Kevin shook his head. "I don't get it. I've seen Meg bleed thousands of times. So have you. Her blood's red, just like ours. I saw DP bleed, too. She was tested when we landed in Philadelphia--"

"I said yes *and* no," she sighed again. "This is very complicated, so I'm not sure I'll be able to explain this right. All those women, like Meg's mom, who were test subjects? They had... they had their ova harvested and used in some kind of human cloning project. *That's* where Wexford came from."

"And Lenhart," Kevin added to make sure he was following, "and Keyte and Scott, and all the rest, right?"

His mom nodded. "But apparently the human ova had to be treated somehow in order to be fertilized with the engineered DNA. Are you following me so far?"

Kevin nodded back. "I think so."

"So," she continued, "we found out that the ova were treated *before* they were harvested from all those poor women. *Most* of the treated ova were harvested, but a woman's got a lot of eggs in there, so I guess it's pretty easy to leave a few of them behind."

She stopped, either to regain her place in the explanation process or to let her words sink in with her son.

"So if a few were left behind," Kevin guessed, "and one of them got fertilized--"

He felt his face heating up at talking about this with his mom, especially about Meg's parents.

"--the old fashioned way," she finished for him, apparently amused at his discomfort.

He stopped to find the proper scientific term for the result of such a union. Almost smirking at the bizarreness of it, he asked, "Is 'mutated' the right word?"

His mom looked at him hesitantly, but then she nodded. "It's probably as close as we're going to get. So any human conceived from one of these ova would, theoretically, have DNA similar enough to the virus that the resulting human being could possibly be immune to it. So, our Megabyte's like that."

"And DP," Kevin said thoughtfully. "She's the same?"

"Apparently," she said. "There was some group or something called MUFON, of people who thought they'd been abducted by aliens. The Lone Gunmen found the names of both of Rachel Jo's parents in some old MUFON information they had with them in Kentucky. They brought that stuff out here with them.

"So, according to what we've been told, the four of you -- Gerald, you, Rachel Jo and Meggie -- were test subjects for a newly engineered version of the virus, and when the four of you were exposed--"

"That's how They found out," Kevin realized aloud, "about Meg's immunity, and DP's."

"And we're going to get them back," she answered him with firm resolve.

"So Meg never needed to be vaxed in the first place. But if we got some 'new' virus, how did we get cured? And how did you get us back but not Meg?" Kevin demanded. His anger was starting to resurface.

His mother looked like she was sharing a degree of his anger. "Someone on -- well, 'the other side' for lack of a better term, brought you and Gerald back here to us. She also brought some blood with her: Meg's blood and Rachel Jo's blood."

Kevin stared back at her in revulsion. "Why did she have their blood?"

"This woman said," his mother explained, "that They were going to use their blood to make a new vaccine."

Kevin felt himself wince. "So somehow you made a vaccine out of their blood?"

His mother shook her head in wonder. "The vaccine *is* their blood."

"See what I mean?" Cho piped up again. "You have the lifeblood of your lady fair coursing through your veins. That's how she saved you."

Kevin stared first at Cho, then back at his mother. "I -- I don't understand."

She answered his confusion, "Luckily, both Rachel Jo and Gerald are type B+. With some information we got out of the woman who brought you here, Meg's mom took a bit of a gamble, and it worked. We gave Gerald a transfusion of Rachel Jo's blood, and that got rid of the infection."

Kevin was openmouthed in awe. "How?"

His mom shook her head. "We don't know exactly. All we know is it worked."

Kevin tried to sit up a little more. He felt his strength returning in miniscule amounts. "And for me? Do Meg and I have the same blood type?"

Pained, she answered him, "No. With the help of some old contacts in medical research, The Gunmen were able to find a supply of an experimental enzyme called Metananse that breaks down the type-specific proteins around the blood cells. We treated Meg's blood with the Metanase first, so that it would be just like we were giving you a transfusion of O-negative. And now," she smiled in relief, squeezing his hand again, "here you are."

Kevin tried sitting up some more. "Here I am," he echoed. "Now how do we get Meg back?"

Cho called over from his bed. "My fellow remaining Gunmen brought someone from the monastery to help us find Captain DeMaram and your lady fair."

"Who did they bring?"

Smugly, Meg's Pleather Boy answered, "Brother Jacob. So that means we'll find them in no time."

Kevin looked at Cho doubtfully. "If what they say about him is true."

"Oh, don't worry," Cho answered, "it's true."

"How do you know, man?" Kevin asked irritably, "Have you ever even seen the guy? He lives out in that brick shack in the middle of the woods. *Nobody's* seen the guy in years, not even you."

"That 'brick shack' is called a 'hermitage,'" Cho corrected, "and he lives there so he isn't disturbed by the cacophony of all the thoughts of others."

"Anyway," Kevin's mom interrupted, "Brother Jacob is upstairs right now, helping to interrogate the woman who brought you here. He's getting the information she wouldn't give us until she knew we had a vaccine against this new virus. For some reason, she kept saying that our girls were safer in Their hands than ours if we didn't have the new vaccine."

His mother's words sunk in to his head, and Kevin found himself in need of action. He fought the lethargy of his body and swung his legs over the side of his hospital bed. He saw that he'd been dressed in fresh scrubs. His feet met the cold tiled floor and sent a shock up through his nerve endings.

"Kevin, baby, what are you--?"

He ignored all discomfort and stood on shaky legs. "Let's show this woman that we have the new vaccine. Let's get Meg back."

~*~

"Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied." --Matthew 5: 6

Night had fallen, and the electric was on the blink again. Thus, their strategy had to be planned around a candlelit table in one of the hospital's conference rooms.

A bespectacled and brown-robed man, mid-thirties, with close-cropped hair and a weary expression, looked slightly uncomfortable in his place at the head of the conference table. Scully sat to his left with Mulder beside her. On the monk's right sat Skinner. The rest of the chairs around the table were occupied by Lenhart, Keyte and Scott. Langly and Byers took the two folding chairs along the wall opposite the door.

Scott was busy diagramming, according the information secured by the bespectacled Brother Jacob, an outline of the layout of the facility to be infiltrated. Keyte and Lenhart were committing to memory numerous access codes. A map of New York City was spread across the table in front of Skinner, marked in red pencil in strategic places.

"Does that look right -- Brother Jacob?" The hesitation in Skinner's voice at using the monk's title was missed only by the younger people at the table.

Brother Jacob did not close his eyes or even blink. He merely studied the map with a blank face. The lines and colors of the map reflected in his glasses. "I think so," he answered. "I could only get images from her, not specific directions, and I haven't been to New York since I was really young."

Silence followed that remark. Brother Jacob suddenly looked up at Mulder. His voice was heavy with self- defense. "I'm a mind reader, you know, not a full- color guide book."

At that, Mulder shifted uncomfortably and sat further back in his seat.

"So what are we supposed to do," Scott demanded, finally looking up from his scribblings, "just keep snooping around until we find the place for sure?"

Keyte brushed her long bangs out of her eyes with a gesture of impatience. "What else can we do? Sketchy information is better than none at all."

"And who knows how much more time we can afford to lose?" Lenhart grumbled, his thick black brows jumping to emphasize his point.

Scott rubbed his eyes and nodded in surrender. "I just wish we could be more certain."

"We all do, Scott," Skinner replied, "but--"

He was interrupted; someone knocked on the door. Mulder rose to answer it.

The two guards on the other side of the door were holding someone back from entering the conference room.

"Mr. Mulder, sir," Kevin said before either of the guards had a chance to speak a word.

"Kevin, son," he replied, surprised to see Kevin out of bed so soon after hearing the news that the virus had left hiim. "How you feeling?"

Kevin ignored the question. He took a labored breath. "Let me see this woman who brought me and Cho here. Show her we have the cure."

"Kevin?" Scully stood and strode quickly to the door, admonishing her daughter's best friend, "You should be in bed."

"I tried to stop him," Rayelle called from the hall, catching up, breathless, a few steps behind her son.

Kevin was ignoring them both, however. He kept his eyes fixed on Meg's father. "My mom said--" he stopped to catch his breath -- "that that woman will give us more information if she has--" more breath catching -- "proof that we beat Them to the new vaccine, right?"

The way he said "Them" was clearly upper case.

"I'm the proof," Kevin said then, spreading his hands out as the guards took slight steps away from him, either in fear or awe. Mulder noticed that Kevin's hands were shaking, and he watched as Kevin took advantage of the additional space left by the guards to lean his hand against the doorway for support.

"I'm the proof," Kevin repeated, his voice starting to falter more and more with each moment. "You don't understand... I gotta..."

He stopped, closed his eyes, swallowed with obvious pain.

"Kevin--" Rayelle gasped, reaching for her son as he started to sway on his feet.

"Bring him a chair," Scully demanded. Scott quickly stood and brought over his own chair.

Mulder watched, his face immobile, as Scully and Raye Declan tried to force Kevin to sit.

"No," Kevin protested, "You don't understand... I gotta... if Meg is... I hafta..."

"Easy," Skinner reprimanded Kevin, coming to the aid of Scully and Rayelle.

Mulder felt himself flinch at hearing Skinner use the same warning on Kevin as had been used so often on himself -- especially in reference to Scully.

Scully squatted beside the chair as Skinner forcibly sat Kevin in it.

Scully looked up at the young man carefully, reporting just loudly enough to be heard, "He's becoming disoriented again. We need to get him back to bed."

"No," Kevin insisted quietly. "We have to show her. Now."

"Wait."

Everyone but Kevin turned to look at Brother Jacob.

"There's something..." The monk broke off, studying the face of the young man slumped weakly in the chair. Brother Jacob's eyes flicked over to the map, then to Scott's sketches, then back to Kevin. "He knows where they're being kept. He knows the place."

Everyone in the room, with the exception of Kevin, stared openmouthed at Brother Jacob.

With even more certainty in his voice, Brother Jacob confirmed, "He has some of the same images in his memory as she does; of the outside of the building at least. And some of the images of the inside are the same, but he's only seen parts of it."

Skinner shook his head doubtfully. "What do you mean?"

"Are you seeing his memories from when he was held there?" Mulder asked.

Brother Jacob studied Kevin again, then shook his head. "No. He doesn't remember anything from his captivity there. He remembers it from when he worked there."

"*Worked* there?" Keyte gasped, incredulous.

Kevin found the energy to glare at Brother Jacob in response.

"His first job after college," Brother Jacob said, nodding thoughtfully.

Everyone looked to Raye Declan for some kind of coherent confirmation, and they all saw her eyes widen.

"WRW Industries," she told them, "in New York City. His last job. He worked in the design department, working out bugs in communication hardware systems."

Brother Jacob nodded once. "That's the place where the two women are right now. It's the same building."

Kevin summoned enough energy to say with disgust, "You mean I *worked* for *Them*?"

"How can that be?" His mother asked of no one in particular.

Everyone looked back to Brother Jacob for another answer, to which he responded, "Like I said, I'm a mind reader. I only know what's in your heads, not how it got there."

"Megabyte got a job offer in New York at the same time," Rayelle remembered aloud. "One of a few offers. She told me she wasn't sure which one to take, until Kevin was offered the position at WRW. Do you think--?"

"Maybe," Byers wondered out loud, "somebody wanted Meg in New York--"

"--and They made it easier to take the bait by throwing her best friend into the deal," Langly finished for him.

The way Langly said "They" was clearly upper case.

"And you were saying," Brother Jacob said to Scott, "that you wanted more certainty. He knows the building, and he knows how to get there."

Slowly, Kevin looked up again, pushing his glasses back up on his nose. "That means you need me to save Meg?"

"No," Rayelle interrupted. "Kevin, baby, you are in no shape for this."

"I'm afraid I have to agree with your mom, Kevin," Scully said softly to him. "You're not even close to fully recovered yet--"

"But I know where she is," Kevin insisted. "He... he said so. And Cho's already recovering. If he flew us up there, we'd get there faster. We'd get Meg back faster."

Meg's mother could not respond to that, but she did blink fiercely a few times. Kevin opened his mouth to apologize to her, to Meg's dad, too, for having let their daughter out of his sight, for being so selfish, for not protecting her with every moment of his own life... but different words came out of his mouth. Meg's words.

"And if I don't at least try..." Kevin whispered, then he dropped his head in hated exhaustion.

Everyone considered Kevin's words in silence for a moment.

Then, Skinner was the first to speak. "If this is true, Kevin's knowledge would give us a heavy practical advantage."

"From someone we know we can trust," Keyte added.

"And I'd sure as hell rather fly than drive," Lenhart said.

With an almost superhuman effort, Kevin straightened his back in the chair. First he looked at Scully, then Mulder. Finding the strength of his voice once more, he told them, "Count me in."

~*~

Someone got Cho from downstairs and brought him into the meeting as well. Both Cho and Kevin stayed admirably alert until the plan was formulated. They would be leaving tomorrow, under cover of darkness.

There would be no air traffic control towers to give them in-air aid. Meg's Pleather Boy seemed quite nervous as he told everyone he'd have to instrument-fly.

As far as Langly and Byers knew, Gerald Cho's old plane was still at a small airfield just a few miles away; that would be their transportation for most of the way. Lenhart, Scott and Keyte would be working through the night to secure safe transport the rest of the way into the city.

The meeting broke up with both Cho and Kevin sent away under strict orders from two different mothers to drink plenty of fluids and get as much rest as they could.

Slowly, all the members of the rescue party quit the room. Besides Brother Jacob, Scully was the last to the door. As she went to wish Brother Jacob goodnight, he shook his head at her.

"It's okay," he said, explaining. "I don't mind if you call me... by that name, instead. That is how you still think of me."

In response, Scully couldn't help but smile. Apparently nothing during his decades of self-imposed isolation had changed his straightforward nature.

Then he told her, "I guess you're right. Some things never change."

Reaching out to take the monk's hand gently in gratitude, she whispered, "Thank you, Gibson."

~*~

"But I'm warning you don't ever do those crazy messed-up things that you do. If you ever do I promise you I'll be the first to crucify you." --BNL, "Call and Answer"

Meg was finding this whole experience a study in levels of awareness.

Sometimes she could feel every molecule of air bumping against her skin, could feel the vast desert occupying every square millimeter of her mouth. Her head ached with a blinding fury. Then, she would reach full sensitivity just as her stomach contracted, she would turn her head to the side, and then another nameless, biohazard-masked, nondescript drone would have to enter the room and wipe off the bile dribbling down her cheek. The drone would then have to suction her mouth, rinse it with water, then suction again.

Indignity was Meg's second closest companion now, second only to Isolation.

They would replace her dextrose with precise regularity. Once, as her dextrose was being changed she was even coherent enough to ask, "Can I get fries with that?"

Nobody got the joke. At least not that she could tell through Their glass-glared masks.

She could feel the needle in her chest jiggle just enough to be maddening as They changed the bag collecting her blood. Then the new bag would begin to fill once more. Drip by drip.

By drip.

By drip.

And she was beyond starting to feel its loss: clammy with sweat, spinning even though her bed was immobile, raging headaches... The combination of restraints and tubing made any attempt at comfort impossible.

Most of the time, They left her alone. Those times, she found she just needed to talk out loud, to let her own voice fill the silence, because there was no one else around to do it for her. Strangely, she thought that maybe her voice and breath might warm the room. She started to think of all the different ways she knew how to say "cold."

"//Froid.// //Fri'o.// //Kalt.// //Zolod...//"

But that wasn't doing her any good, either. She just ended up feeling colder instead of forgetting about the chill. Desperate to think of something else, Meg started to sing softly to herself in her admittedly off-key voice. But who cared? There was no one around to tell her to shut up or sing "Far, Far Away" instead. She whispered the first song she'd learned in another language:

//T'e'te, 'epaules, genoux, pieds, genoux, pieds. T'e'te, 'epaules, genoux, pieds, genoux, pieds. Les yeux, les oreilles, la bouche et le nez. T'e'te, 'epaules, genoux, pieds, genoux, pieds!//

She couldn't move her hands to go along with the song, but just the thought of movement seemed to warm her. Even still, it wasn't enough to chase away the chills for good.

Most of the time, however, she dreamed. Had more nightmares. Hallucinated. Talked to the dead.

One time, a pale blond face hovered wordlessly over her. //Hang on, little sister, hang on,// she could almost hear her say...

"Wexford," she said to hallucination, "did you ever get to remember? You know, remember your visits to The Clinic? I remember reading about them. Was it anything like this? Will I forget this? What will I remember? What will I forget?"

Time passed, and the face changed, aged, became more familiar, much older, more beloved. The face belonged to Grandma Scully. Meg could see Gram's face, could almost feel Grandma's hand holding hers, and for a few moments, she almost didn't feel quite so alone.

"Gram?" Meg would have cried, but she didn't feel like there was any water left in her body to provide the tears. "Gram, I miss you. Why did you have to leave, too? Everyone I-- Everyone I've ever loved leaves me..."

At that, impossibly, her body obliged and let her weep a little, but it was too much. Her tears ran dry, and Meg convulsed with stark, silent sobs. Trembling with more fever-chills, Meg had to shut her eyes.

After another indefinite span, she opened her eyes and she was seeing things again. The ghosts had stopped coming to comfort her. Now all she saw was a manifestation of her own neediness. And this vision was so painfully real...

"Meggie," her mother said, relieved. Crying again, like she had at Meg's bedside at that first reunion, after that Emily had shot her in the back, and Wexford had brought Meg back to their mother...

But Meg laughed, knowing it was only another hallucination, despite its seeming solidity. "Mom," Meg asked out loud of this latest vision. Her voice shook, "will They need to wipe my mind too, Mom? What do you think?"

Meg felt tears wet her cheeks, though she wasn't aware that she'd started to cry again.

"Sssh, sweetie," her mother told her, "it's okay... I'm here..."

But Meg kept mumbling, "Maybe it'll just be so bad that I won't want to remember-- so bad I won't even need Their help... is that what it was like for you?"

"Meggie," the illusion told her, "don't worry about that. We're getting you out of here."

But then, the vision moved away. Meg couldn't see her any more. All she saw was the bland gray-white drop-tiles and the insistent lights of the ceiling above her.

"Mommy?" Meg called, not caring if They heard her speaking in delirium, "You have to leave me again?"

Her mother's voice returned: "I'm right here, Meggie."

Meg almost laughed again, at the sheer impossibility, but the pinch in her chest was too real, too undeniably real. Her awareness waxed once more: she could sense confused movement outside of this room, coming to her from the opened doorway. With all of her will, Meg wanted to lift her head and look around, to see if this hallucination of her mother coming to her rescue would disappear as soon as Meg moved. She strained her neck but met with no success.

A shadow warmed her from the opened doorway.

"Oh, Jesus." She heard the shadow's voice-- a voice she knew even better than her own. "Doc Scully, what are They doing to her?"

The shadow rushed over to her and became recognizable. Impossibly recognizable, and he was wearing his glasses for the first time in years. Meg's mind formed the question, but her lips were too weak to ask it.

Her mother's voice: "Kevin, undo those restraints."

The command was redundant. He was already there, in Meg's sight, his face pained, his arms clearly busy with the business of freeing Meg. "All these bruises... God, she's so cold... is this what you said? That hypo-"

"Hypovolemic anemia."

"Will she be okay?"

"I have to get these needles out of her."

"Oh, God, we gotta get her outta here."

They were talking almost to themselves, it seemed.

Meg heard this dream of Kevin choke with something like sympathetic disgust, just as she felt another sharp pinching above her heart. Meg gasped in response at the renewed pain.

Then it was over. Gone. She could tell; she could feel the difference. Meg felt free, but she also felt dizzy and slack-framed -- like her spine had been ripped out of hher.

That was when she became completely aware that this was not a hallucination anymore.

Meg's pride attempted to regain control of her behavior. "Kev," she slurred, trying to hide how much everything hurt, "How'd you get here? 'N what's with the glasses?"

He put his warm hand on her icy cheek. "Yeah, good to see you, too."

She closed her eyes and let herself lean her cheek further into his palm, drinking in Kevin's heat. His hand left her face, and she opened her eyes again to find him removing his sweater and draping it over her flimsy hospital gown.

Kevin lifted Meg's head, and she could see her mother flick her eyes anxiously towards the door to the room.

Meg lifted her finger and pointed at the one-way mirror, offering what little information she could. "They watch me from there."

Gently, Kevin ordered her, "Here."

He meant to put his sweater on her. Embarrassed even through her disorientation, Meg shook her head. She tried to grab at the sweater with hands that felt like unresponsive heads of cauliflower. Still, she automatically insisted, "I can do it myself."

"Meg," her mother admonished, "now is not the time."

But Kevin simply ignored her. He pulled the sweater down over her head and then laced her arms through the sleeves one at a time. It was soft, dark blue wool. It smelled like Kevin -- soap and that morning's shaving cream. It felt like a warm bath. It felt like heaven.

Kevin turned to Meg's mom. "Don't you have to get D. P., too? I can get Meg out of here. We'll meet up at the plane."

Meg felt Kevin's arms go around her, one around her back, one underneath her legs. He tried to lift her. Meg struggled.

"No, Kev. I can walk."

Meg's mother spoke to her in her soft, anxious voice. "Meggie, you are not in any sort of stable condition. If you don't--"

"Mom, I can do it myself."

"--if you don't let anyone help you," her mother continued, "you could even go into heart failure."

"Motherrr!" Meg's head lolled on her neck. "I'm fine! Kev, tell her I can walk!"

She looked up at him. She could feel the pout pull on her lower lip, the stubborn frown commandeering her eyebrows. And she could tell, even with Kevin's eyes hidden behind his glasses: he didn't want to let her walk.

"Kev," she insisted, more softly this time, "I can do it myself."

Kevin did not look away, but neither did he give in. "You can," he said locking his eyes on hers, "but you don't need to."

That was all he said, but she could tell by his face that he was trying to tell her more. Why had he chosen deliberately to use the word "need?" Meg squinted at him, asking Kevin the question with her eyes.

"You have a choice," he told her evenly with a forced nonchalance. "You can walk, or you can let somebody carry you. What do you want to do?"

He leaned so slightly, so imperceptibly on the word "want." She tried to sort out his words inside her head, but even that hurt. All she could think was if she let Kevin carry her, he could drop her...

As if reading her thoughts, he assured her, almost laughing, "You're not even heavy, Meg. You've lost a lot of weight lately--"

He stopped talking and closed his eyes very briefly.

Still trembling, but less so now, Meg let out a shuddering sigh. Reluctant at first, but after a moment's indecision, Meg allowed her head to rest in the hollow of Kevin's shoulder. She closed her eyes. Already she felt even warmer.

Kevin's arms tightened around her. "I got her," he said.

There was more commotion around her, but Meg kept her eyes closed. She opened them briefly only as she felt her mother take her hand.

"It'll be okay, Meggie," her mom told her.

Meg's lids lowered on her once more. She nodded back, whispering the confirmation, the old magic words from childhood: "It'll be okay."

Kevin pulled her even more tightly to him. His voice reverberated in Meg's ear through his chest as he firmly repeated to her mother, "I got her."

~*~ "For God does speak, perhaps once, or even twice, though one perceive it not."-Job 33: 14

Holy Family Medical Center February 4, 2024 3:14pm

From his perch on the edge of Meg's bed, Kevin watched as the afternoon sun glittered impossibly against Meg's pillow. Kevin removed his glasses, wiped them clean on the corner of the t-shirt he wore beneath his sweater, then put them back on his face. Now he was able to see clearly: the gold glitter on Meg's pillow was definitely strands of her hair, freshly fallen out against the snow-white hospital linens. Meg's mom had finished warning them just a few minutes before of what symptoms to expect from prolonged hypovolemic anemia. Kevin glanced down quickly at Meg's arms and winced at the black-and- blue marks discoloring her chalky skin.

He chanced a look at Meg's face. Her eyes were almost half-shut, but they were fixed dully on her father as he continued, along with Meg's mom, this tag-team explanation of all the information gathered from, and since, their raid on the WRW building.

"And with almost seventy-five years of global warming engineered to make the whole planet into an incubator," Mr. Mulder was saying, "it explains a lot. In fact that seems to be the reason why no buildings have been cleared away for Them. They were never intent on colonization-- only in using us up as a resource."

"So you're saying," D. P. struggled to say from her listless place in her own hospital bed, "that these aliens are just some kind of... intergalactic grasshoppers?"

"They come, They eat, They leave," Gerald Cho confirmed for her. "Like that old Disney Pixar movie."

Kevin glared at Cho. "More like intergalactic wasps. They come, They *reproduce,* They leave. I don't think Disney had that in mind."

He looked at Meg to see if he'd made her laugh.

Her face remained impassive and downcast. She merely whispered, "So that makes me part-wasp."

Kevin frowned. Trying to reestablish some kind of contact with Meg (maybe not the contact he thought they'd had when he'd carried her out of WRW and to the safety of DC), he leaned back slightly until he could feel her leg against his through the pale yellow blanket. Subtly, insignificantly, she shifted her leg away from his.

Kevin did not move any more.

"But in essence, yes," Doc Scully said. Kevin could sense an uneasiness in her voice at this admission. "All the evidence we've found points to these beings as using the earth as some kind of reproductive engine."

"So," Meg sighed at last, leaning further back against her pillows, "Matthew was right."

Meg's dad looked at her oddly. "Matthew?"

"Your cousin?" Her mom asked, apparently confused.

"Yeah." Meg's voice was still a little dry. "Matt was right. I am a mutant. We'll have to get in touch with him somehow, let him know."

Apparently, Kevin was not the only one in the room who didn't feel like laughing at that.

"Yeah," Lenhart quipped from the doorway, "welcome to *our* world."

"Shut up, Lenhart," Keyte hissed at him quietly from her place next to Scott by D. P.'s bed.

"So," Kevin said, trying to change the subject, "have we figured out *how* Meg's & D. P.'s blood was able to act as a vaccine against the new strain?"

Meg's mom frowned a little. "From what I've been able to gather by looking at the blood samples you gave me, Kevin, it seems that there's something in their blood that exhibits virus-like behavior. It seems part of Meg's DNA must have replicated in some of your white blood cells."

"If my DNA is replicating in Kev," Meg asked, "then why doesn't he have bad dishwater-blond hair and a big, honking Mulder-nose?"

Kevin smiled at Meg, relieved she sounded like her usual self-deprecating self. To Kevin's surprise, though, Meg glanced at him briefly then looked away, her face more troubled than he'd seen it in a long time.

"And why isn't Cho five-six with freckles?" D. P. asked as well, though a little less harshly than Meg did.

Pleather Boy reached up and touched his cheeks, checking to see if the freckles were growing.

Doc Scully looked to Mr. Mulder, then back at the two recuperating young women. "The fact is, we don't know. We may have just gotten far more information than we ever thought we'd have, but it's only shown us how much more there is that we still need to learn."

"And we're only just beginning," added Meg's dad, "to find out which questions to ask."

Meg's eyes opened fully. Her voice tired, she asked, "And the answers are in us?" She pointed to D. P. and then to herself.

Doctor Scully looked down, with something Kevin could have sworn was sadness, then she looked back up at Meg. "Some of them, possibly."

Kevin cleared his throat. "And maybe some of those answers would be in me and Cho, too, right?"

"Possibly," Meg's mom repeated.

"When can you start testing us?" Kevin demanded.

"Testing?" Cho broke in before Doc Scully could answer? "With needles?"

"Cho, get a grip," Kevin grumbled.

"Kevin," Doc Scully said, "that's very generous of you," -- she did not mention Cho's being volunteered -- "and when we need your help, we'll let you know."

Kevin nodded. He hoped she'd need his help soon. Maybe that would mean Meg would have to go through fewer tests. She'd already gone through enough.

He turned to look at her again just as she closed her eyes. Her long lashes curled softly against the dark circles that had taken residence under her eyes. She opened her mouth for a small yawn.

"Well, I think it's time we let you both get some rest," Meg's mom said very gently, looking first to the recuperees, then to the rest of their audience.

Cho took Meg's hand in his and bowed over it. She gave him a halfhearted smile before he made his way over to D. P.'s bed for the same.

Scott jabbed Keyte in the side with his elbow, and her eyes widened at him. "What, man?"

"Aren't you forgetting some things?" He asked.

Keyte's mouth hung open in humility. "Oh, yeah. Almost forgot. D. P., we figured you'd want this back."

She reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out a silver disc.

"The CD!" D. P. cried softly, despite the exhaustion still in her voice. "You saved it! Hey, thanks!"

"You want us to play it?" Scott asked her, reaching down and pulling up a small portable sound system.

D. P. looked over at Meg. "You mind, roommate?"

Meg shrugged listlessly. "Doesn't matter."

Kevin studied her face safely, since she'd kept her eyes closed. He wanted to ask, but her dad beat him to the punch.

"You allright, Miss Molly?"

She opened her eyes and smiled for his benefit, but Kevin saw that her eyes did not crinkle with the smile. "Just tired, Dad."

Mr. Mulder nodded at that, then gave everyone else in the room a look that Kevin clearly interpreted as, "let my little girl get her sleep." Not wanting to leave, but certainly not wanting to incur the wrath of Meg's dad, Kevin reached out and brushed two fingers against Meg's right hand. "Later."

Her lids fluttered, but she still didn't look at him. "Yeah."

Kevin initially was hurt at Meg's seeming indifference, but he told himself she'd just been through something just this side of hell. She had every right to want him to leave her alone.

He went to the door, then paused to look back at Meg. He caught Doc Scully looking at him, smiling like she knew something. His face warmed, but he smiled sheepishly back at her. Then he shuffled the rest of the way out to the hall with Cho, Keyte, Scott and Lenhart.

A few yards away from Meg and D. P.'s room, Keyte called out in a hoarse whisper, "Hey, Kevin!"

He stopped and turned to look at her. She was digging around in the pocket opposite to the one she'd been using to store //THE CD,// as D. P. called it. Finally, Keyte pulled out her hand and held it out to Kevin in a fist.

"Sister Bridge asked me to make sure you got this back," she told him.

He held out his hand, and something silver landed surely in his palm. Meg's Miraculous.

"Oh," Kevin told her, "this is Meg's. You should give it to her when she wakes up."

Keyte shrugged back at him. "Bridge said I was supposed to give it to you instead. She said it was some kind of family tradition."

Without giving Kevin any time to respond, Keyte just shrugged again and stalked off down the hall. Kevin stared stupidly at the necklace coiled around the silver charm. He bit his lip and went to slip it into the pocket of his jeans...

He stopped himself. Carefully opening the clasp, he fastened it around his own neck, for the time being. He slid the Medal under his sweater, then thought even better of that and tucked it safely beneath his white cotton undershirt. It was cold against his skin but warmed quickly.

He felt someone watching him. He turned back toward Meg's doorway, and saw her mother step back inside, quickly enough to make Kevin wonder if she was smiling at him again.

~*~

"When I was a child I used to talk like a child, think like a child, reason like a child. When I became an adult I put my childish ways aside." --1 Corinthians 13: 11

Holy Family Medical Center Chapel February 7, 2024 2:24am

Sitting on the far edge of the front pew, Meg glowered at the statues and stained glass. The last place she wanted to be now was "in God's house," as Gram would have called it. However, Meg was drained enough as it was, just making it from the room she shared with D. P. down the stretching hallway to the elevators. Each day Meg felt physically better, bit by bit, but she was still maddeningly weak.

Her Dad had told her, "Like your mom said, Miss Molly, it'll take time. There's no rush. We'll get you better."

But letting someone else get her better meant letting other people take care of her, and Meg had been taking care of herself full time since she was eighteen.

And he'd said, "We'll get you better." Never once did anyone tell her, "You'll be back to normal." Because, Meg knew, she was not normal any more. In fact, never had been.

Now, unable to sleep, Meg just wanted to sit alone in silence. As for the alone part, D. P. might have been asleep, but the girl snored, so that ruled out the silence. So Meg had left their room, and her body forced her to accepted the first place along her path offering both peace and solitude simultaneously, even if it was the chapel.

Fifteen years of Catholic school, counting kindergarten and college. Fifteen years of religion class: first "Jesus Loves Me" pipe cleaner crafts, then theology tests, then twenty- page papers for three credits of Christian Morality to fulfill Georetown's Theology requirement. Never once did anyone mention the possibility that the world God so loved really had been made so that some alien race could be fruitful and multiply.

And what made things worse was that Meg's blood was so much like Theirs that Their life-force couldn't even distinguish that she was any different from Them. No. What made things worse even than that was that her less-than-human DNA was busy doing God-only-knew-what to Kevin. Sure, that had saved his life, and so he was able to save hers... But at what cost to him? And everyone else? What had her mother said? "It's only shown us how much more there is that we still need to learn."

Shuddering with helpless disgust, Meg leaned her head against the side of her pew and closed her eyes, silent but for her own jagged breathing. Her thoughts swam in her head, manic with an energy her body still lacked.

"For one person just sitting and thinking you make a lot of noise."

Startled, but still too weak to snap around and find the source of this statement, Meg weakly raised her head and looked up to see a man dressed in the familiar habit of the monks at Gethsemani. His face, however, she did not recognize right away.

"That's because you've never met me in person," he said, answering her unspoken question. The candles in the sanctuary reflected off of his glasses. "You've heard about me, though."

Meg blinked at him a few times. Doubtful, she asked, "Are you Brother Jacob?"

He didn't nod or answer in any other way. He just looked at her. "You don't mind if I sit with you?"

Meg couldn't help but be cautiously, skeptically amused. "Is that a question or a statement?"

He almost smiled. "You don't mind if I sit with you."

Meg started to make room for him in the pew, but he shook his head at her, explaining, "You're still weak. You need the side so you have something to lean on. These pews aren't very comfortable. I know. I come here a lot. It's the only place I can find peace and quiet around here most days and most nights."

He sat in the pew behind hers. He pulled out the kneeler and knelt down upon it so she could still see him out of the corner of her eye.

"It's okay," he informed her. "You don't have to believe me. Most people don't at first."

"Believe what?" Meg asked. "That you're psychic?"

"I'm not psychic," he corrected without changing his matter-of-fact tone, "I'm just sensitive."

Surprised at his admission, Meg turned and stared at the monk.

He stared back, then looked down with a humility that seemed unfamiliar to him. "I guess you're right. Maybe I am just trying to admit my own weakness so you'll trust me."

Meg laughed softly. "So we both think sensitivity is a weakness, huh?"

Brother Jacob stared straight ahead of him at the tabernacle on the chapel altar. "It's part of human evolution. Survival by strength. You might think you're... 'part-wasp,' you call it?"

He looked at Meg, his eyebrows wrinkled in something like sympathetic amusement, like they were the only two in on some joke.

He went on. "You might think you're part-wasp, but all humans are part-wasp. You knew that before you found out."

He didn't need to say what she'd found out. Still, Meg started to laugh a little.

Brother Jacob shook his head at her. "Not that kind of WASP."

Meg kept laughing. "So the whole human race isn't part white, Anglo-Saxon and protestant?"

Brother Jacob looked at her critically once more. "You can try to joke, but you have to face your doubts some time."

Meg started to deny it, but then she frowned, frustrated that every time she tried to hide behind her shield of flippant remarks with this guy, he could see right through. She took a deep breath. "And what doubts are those?"

"You're afraid to trust the people who care about you," he stated plainly.

Meg did not answer that.

"You think," Brother Jacob continued, "that's because everyone has had to leave you on your own at some time in your life."

"And I did fine by myself," Meg defended, shifting in her pew, "when I had to."

"'I can do it myself,'" he quoted, not looking at her.

Meg shrugged.

"You know you're fine on your own. You've had to do it before. But now you're afraid to trust the people who care about you because you're afraid to trust yourself."

She turned and gaped at him. She opened her mouth to give some sort of protest, but nothing came out; she was too shocked at this revelation. She felt her lower lip tremble in betrayal. At last, she whispered, "Shouldn't I be? I'm part-wasp."

Merciless, Brother Jacob continued as if she hadn't asked the question. "You think that someone else made you something you never thought you could be, and that scares you, that anyone else has that kind of power over you."

Meg turned away and looked down at her hands folded in her lap. "All my life, I was just another kid -- a smart kid, maybe, but that was it. Then I found out I'm not really Meg, I'm Mulder and Scully's kid. And now... I'm -- I'm -- I don't even know what I am. I don't think I know much of anything anymore."

She frowned and dropped her head back against the side of the pew.

Brother Jacob allowed her to think in silence. Meg could sense him looking thoughtfully into the chapel sanctuary. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the glint of candlelight shining in the metal frames of his glasses.

At last, he broke the silence. "Your sister -- Emily Wexford -- she was more like Them than you are."

Meg couldn't help but be stunned at this turn in the subject. "What?" she whispered.

"You read her journal," he continued candidly. "You know she thought she was half-monster."

Meg automatically found herself defending Wexford. "But she wasn't. Wexford died so Kevin could be saved. So I could be saved. Monsters don't do things like that."

Meg looked at the monk, daring him to find any thoughts against Wexford.

But Brother Jacob simply nodded. "No. Monsters don't do things like that."

Prepared to jump to her half-sister's defense again, Meg waited for the monk to say more, but he did not. He merely looked like he was waiting for her.

Waiting for her to understand. She squinted at him for a second -- uncertain, but beginning to be aware of what she needed to grasp in this conversation about the dead.

Brother Jacob sat back further in his pew and, with an air of finality, put his kneeler back in its place. He stood and stepped out in the chapel aisle. Without genuflecting or blessing himself, he said to Meg:

"You know we are all part-wasp. But we are only part."

Without another word, he left her alone.

Meg watched him leave, uncertain. Suddenly she found words from Wexford's journal rolling through her mind: "You have a choice." Somehow, those words and Brother Jacob's last utterance haunted her together, the connection between them tenuous and just beyond her reach. Again she rested her head on the side of the pew.

She breathed in and out, in and out. The flicker of the sanctuary candles echoed her breathing pattern -- gently uneven. She was still far from fully recovered, and so she was easy prey for sleep. Sleep snuck up on her and caught her easily, without Meg even knowing it. And since she was not better yet, REM sleep claimed her quickly.

~*~ Saturday afternoon light slanting through a small, blue-curtained window. Throw rugs hanging from the shower curtain rod.

"Git 'way, Meg," Kevin murmured to her from his spot on the bathroom floor. "Go home."

"Kev, what did you--?"

Chills. Shaking. Shock. Red, red blood all over the floor tiles.

"Kevin, you *rat bastard!* What did you do?"

Her voice sounded high and strained, hysterical.

Kevin was shirtless, sitting on the bathtub rim, slick with his own blood. A bare razor gleamed, silver and red, on the toilet seat beside him.

"I wanted my mom to be able to give my clothes 'way," he mumbled, "but these're stained. Tell 'er I'm sorry--"

Slow motion. Kevin slumped over, slid down. Meg reached out to catch him, but not fast enough. Kevin hit his head on the toilet. His eyes were shut.

The cuts on his wrists were diagonal, not vertical. It could have been worse. On instinct, Meg reached for the towel rack. Ripped into a blue towel, holding one corner of it with her teeth. Babysitting class had taught basic first aid. She'd paid careful attention. She'd seen her parents in hospitals enough to know she had to pay attention. Bad things happen all the time.

Direct pressure. Tourniquets started. Call 911. Call home. Mommy is home. Mommy is a medical doctor. Mommy can make it all better.

"Kevin? Kevin, wake up!"

She felt sick. The bathroom changed, became smaller. A loud buzzing filled Meg's ears.

Kevin changed. Became older. The blood was now black and glistening slick against his skin.

The black oil. Cho's plane.

"Meg?"

She crawled to him.

"You saved me..."

She fell into his arms.

"Meg. You saved me."

The dream faded.


"Meg?"

In the darkness of dissipating sleep, Meg could feel it -- she was almost ready to make the connection between Brother Jacob's words and Wexford's choice -- but the connection snapped just out of her mind's reach for the time being. She opened her eyes and saw nothing but a blur of polished wood.

"Hey, Meggie?"

Meg looked up, awake now. Her father was looking down at her.

"Good golly, Miss Molly," he smiled at her, "what are you doing sleeping in the chapel?"

She blinked at him and took a moment to reorient herself. She sat up and rubbed her eyes. Her arms protested at the effort, and she let them fall limp at her sides.

When she didn't answer right away, her dad explained, "We were worried about you when you weren't in your room. Why didn't you tell anyone where you were going?"

Automatically, Meg yawned and tried unsuccessfully to uncramp her muscles. "Sorry. What time is it?"

"It's allright," he told her, looking at his watch. "It's 6:24. You okay to walk back, or do you want me to get you a wheelchair?"

Meg thought for a second. There was something she was supposed to remember... but couldn't. She asked, "Is Mom awake?"

Her Dad looked at her for a second. "Yeah. She's looking for you too."

Meg nodded and bit her lip, still grappling with the memory-dream.

"You okay, Miss Molly?"

"Daddy," she asked, feeling her voice shake, "can I talk to you guys about some stuff?"

~*~ "You know, one day you look at the person and you see something more than you did the night before, like a switch has been flipped somewhere. And the person who was just a friend is suddenly the only person you can ever imagine yourself with." --Scully, "Rain King"

Holy Family Medical Center Room 314 February 7, 2024 7:03 AM

//"We are the champions - my friend And we'll keep on fighting till the end We are the champions We are the champions No time for losers 'Cause we are the champions of the--"//

D. P. looked up, reached over and stopped "The CD." "Hey roomie," she greeted Meg, then to Meg's parents, "I guess you found her, huh?"

"Looks like it," Meg's mom reported, folding back the covers on her daughter's bed.

Meg shuffled over to her bed, obviously tired, leaning heavily on her father's arm. Both of her parents helped her settle herself, and then her mother pulled up the covers.

"Well, I'm gonna head out," D. P. said, reaching for the red sweatshirt folded neatly at the foot of her bed.

Meg sat up a little further. "No need to leave on our account," she managed.

"That's all right," D. P. drawled, stopping to tie one loose sneaker lace. "I told Cho I'd take a walk with him this morning, first to the storeroom, then maybe down to the vax lab if I'm up to it. I'm supposed to meet him downstairs in ten minutes."

"The vax lab?" Meg's Mom gave D. P. one of her concerned looks, telling her, "We were going to wait a few more days before asking either of you if--"

D. P. interrupted with a good-natured shrug. "It's been a few days since I was stabbed with needles. I'm starting to miss them. Besides, ever since Cho told me yesterday that they got some pistachio pudding mix and dill pickles on a looting raid, I've had a craving. I gotta go see what I can find."

Meg grinned an upside-down smile reminiscent of her mother's. "That," Meg said sheepishly, "sounds really good."

The elder Mulder shook his head to one side. "Hmm... pickles and pudding. Dem's good eatin'," he quipped.

"Better than us having cravings for human flesh, right?" Meg tried to joke, but she found herself wincing at her own comment. She looked up and saw her mother frowning back at her.

D. P. nodded wryly and snickered under her breath. "Yeah, it could be much, much worse, I guess. Still, if I find the pudding and the pickles, I'll save some for you, Meg."

Meg smiled again. "Thanks."

D. P. smiled back, dipped her head at them in farewell, then shuffled slowly out of the room.

Meg looked back down at her hands, pale and dry against the bed linens. She turned over her left hand and examined her fingers. The cuticle on her thumb was loose. She picked at it absently.

"Meg, honey," her mom asked, pulling up a chair, "Dad said you wanted to talk to us about something?"

She looked up. Her dad was grabbing a chair from D. P.'s side of the room and pulling it closer to Meg's bed. "What's wrong, Miss Molly?" he asked as he sat down.

Meg looked at each of her parents in turn, then let her eyes fall back to her loose thumb cuticle. "I--" she started on a shaky breath. She raised her eyes again and watched her parents exchanged worried, confused looks. She had so much to ask them she didn't know where to start. And she'd been feeling so sorry for herself the past few days that she'd totally forgotten about her parents -- all they had gone through in *their* lives...

And how they'd survived it all together.

Meg closed her eyes again briefly, then looked to her parents once more. At last, she said, "While I was-- while They were taking my blood, I had these... dreams. Kind of."

She watched for their reactions. Her father nodded, the serious nod he always used those rare times when he was trying to get Meg to talk seriously. Her mother reached out, and took Meg's cool hand in hers.

"And I've been thinking," Meg continued, "about a lot of things. I mean," she laughed bitterly, "I just found out that... that *I'm* an X-file, and--"

"You are *not* an x-file, Meg," her father broke in with an angry, hoarse voice.

"Mulder," her mother admonished under her breath.

"Let me finish," Meg insisted quietly, staring her father down.

He shut his mouth, but he looked none too happy about it.

Meg shut her eyes. "What I mean is, everything I ever thought I was is being peeled away, piece by piece. First I lost my parents. Then I lost my grandmother. Then I found my parents but lost my trust in them. Then-- no, *now* I feel like I've lost my identity."

Her mother's hand cooled in hers, but her fingers tightened.

Meg changed tracks but kept her eyes closed. "But I was just thinking-- I've been so hung up on what I've lost, like I'm the only person in the whole universe who's ever lost anything, like I'm the only one whose whole world's been turned upside-down."

Meg opened her eyes and dared another look at her father. His face had softened. Meg felt her throat tighten as she told him, "You've spent your whole life trying to get back what had been taken from you when you were just a kid. And you still haven't gotten it back."

He flinched at her words.

"And you," Meg said to her mother, "you've had your entire world view upended and destroyed more times than *I* can count, and I'm sure I still don't know even half of the whole story."

Shaking her head to herself, Meg took turns looking at both of them. "What I guess I need to know-- for myself -- is... you lost so much, but still you both risked so much. I know this. I've memorized the schedules for visiting hours and meal distribution of at least five hospitals in the metropolitan DC area. What I don't know is what made it all worth the risk?"

They were quiet, pondering, exchanging looks for a minute. To Meg's surprise, her father spoke first.

He studied her blanket, forming his words slowly. "Meg, for a long time, I put all my focus on what I'd lost. Sometimes, I was so focused about getting it back--" He stole a furtive glance at her mother. "--that more than half the time I doubted what was right in front of me. I doubted exactly when I should have trusted. I was so scared to lose again, that I was afraid to really look at what I'd been given.

"And I found out," he added, now fixing his eyes on her mother's with a certainty Meg had never really looked to see before, "that there's more than one way to lose someone."

Before, whenever her parents would show their love for each other in front her, Meg would make some sort of gagging noise or teasing comment. But for the first time, really seeing the way her parents were looking at each other with such unutterable devotion, Meg found herself in awe. For all her world had been flipped inside-out, she realized then, nothing could change the fact that her parents loved each other -- and her -- to the point of death and beyond.

//My universe has been turned upside-down,// she found herself thinking, //but at least I have strong roots in it.//

Meg looked at her mother and noticed her blinking back tears. Meg squeezed her hand, feeling the lump forming in her own throat.

Her mother closed her eyes, and the tears seemed to disappear, replaced by a smile so small it was almost beyond detection. Looking first at Meg's father, then back at Meg, she began to speak. "I've always dressed myself in the armor of logic. I had always set a goal for myself to rely on pure science. Logic never disappoints, and science never deceives. And I took pride in that for years. I convinced myself that I was too strong to be disappointed, that I was above being deceived. And as a result, for a long time, a whole section of my being did not exist for me."

She stopped and glanced back at her partner. "But that all started to change when I met your father. He challenged my science. He pushed at my boundaries until they cracked. He demanded of me that I think beyond what was right in front of me. He taught me to have the courage of my convictions. He showed me that the things that really matter the most, those things that are worth any risk, don't always have boundaries."

Meg felt her eyebrows tighten in a frown. She bit down hard on both her lips. "I believe," she whispered to her mother, "that I've put up a lot of boundaries in my life. And I don't think I want them there any more, but I don't know how to take them down."

She felt two tears roll down her right cheek, warm and quick. They splashed on the top edge of her blanket. Her mother leaned over and pulled Meg into her arms, and Meg allowed herself the luxury of crying on her mother's shoulder. Her mom smoothed Meg's hair back away from her face and kissed her on the forehead.

Her dad moved to sit on the edge of her bed. His voice ached for her, and that made her cry harder, realizing what she meant to him. "Meggie, baby, I don't want my child to live her life out of loss. That's not really living. That's not really a life."

"Then what do I do, Daddy?" she sobbed, "What do I do instead?"

"Meggie," her mother soothed, "you can't base your whole life on where you've come from. Living isn't about where we've come from but where we choose to go."

"No miracle was never meant to be," her father insisted then, dropping his head so he could see Meg's face cradled against her mother's shoulder, "and I never want you to think of yourself as some x-file. You are everything your mom and I ever wanted but never hoped to ask for. Take that knowledge and go with it."

"Yeah," she cried, "but where do I go?"

Her mother raised Meg's face to hers and smiled gently. "It's your life. You have to decide that for yourself. They're your gifts."

Meg coughed a soft, mirthless laugh. "Yeah, and my barriers."

Her dad assured her, "Those barriers will come down for you, too."

"Will they?" Meg asked doubtfully. "How? And when?"

"It'll happen," her mom said, "when the time is right."

Meg straightened up and regarded her parents through her tears, her lungs shaking with the effort. "And how will I know the time is right?"

Her parents exchanged looks again, but instead of making Meg feel left out, now she felt somehow included.

They were both smiling at her, but her mother was the one who answered her:

"You'll never know if the time is right if you don't at least try."

~*~

"Now it's time to prove that you've come back here to rebuild... rebuild... rebuild... rebuild..." --"Call and Answer," BNL

Intersection of Mitchell Avenue and Galia Drive Alexandria, VA February 22, 2024 11:30 AM

Enough time had passed that Meg was ready for her first trip outside of the medical center, and she couldn't have hoped for better timing. The air was greenhouse effect-warm, damp with yet another unnaturally early spring. Again, no real snow this year -- not even a decent ice storm. Then again, there was still March, possibly even April, depending on how bizarre the DC weather decided to be this year.

Meg mused on the familiarity of her current activity: riding bikes with Kevin through their old neighborhood. Meg was warm from the exertion of propelling this old, borrowed mountain bike. She pushed up each sleeve of her likewise borrowed, and thus immensely oversized, "GEORGETOWN DAD" sweatshirt-- first the left sleeve, then the right. Bruises now fading to yellow-gray sill marked her arms. Her legs ached, pushed to their limits now for the first time in weeks, and those limits being extremely lowered due to anemic under-use.

Meg's heart was palpitating again... but she knew full well that had nothing to do with overexertion or any of the other ever-receding symptoms of hypovolemic anemia. Her mother had said, "It'll happen-- when the time is right." Now, every time Meg was alone with Kevin, she just kept asking herself: //Is now the right time?// Well, apparently it hadn't been, she guessed, because she hadn't found herself ready to "at least try." At least, not yet.

But right now, away from all the prying eyes at the hospital... this was the most alone Meg and Kevin had been in the weeks since her rescue. Her palms twinged with anxiety, and she gripped the handlebars in an attempt to refocus her energies. Letting herself coast for a few seconds so she could catch her breath, Meg could hear her ponytail whipping hard against the empty nylon daypack she carried on her back.

She looked to her left and saw Kevin riding by her side, his blue sweater strained against his shoulders, but loose enough at the waist to ripple a little in the breeze. He was wearing a brand-new-- looted -- Balimore Orioles ball cap on his just-sshaved head, and the sun shone in sparkles on the silver frames of his glasses. He caught Meg looking at him and gave her one of his concerned looks, his eyebrows knotted slightly off-center. He asked, "You okay?"

"I'm fine, Kev," Meg said, looking straight ahead again, pumping the pedals faster.

"You sure?" Kevin asked, likewise pedaling in time with Meg to catch up with her. "You seem a little winded."

Meg pushed herself some more and passed him. "S'matter, Kev?" She kept her voice light. "You afraid a girl'll beat you to your house?"

She could hear him chuckling ruefully behind her as he caught up again. "When your father finds out I let you talk me into this," he sighed, "I'm a dead man."

Meg steered around yet another car abandoned to the middle of the street, then she turned into the Declan's old driveway. She called to Kevin over her shoulder, "How's he gonna find out if we don't tell him?"

Kevin rolled into the driveway beside her, hopped off of his bike and propped it up with the kickstand. "Don't you think your mom's birthday gift will give it away?"

"Aaaah-- by then he'll be too late to stop us," Meg unstraddled her bike, pushed down her kickstand, and walked up the steps to the Declan's front door. "And why are you so scared of my dad, anyway? He's harmless."

"Are we talking about the same guy?" Kevin jingled his keyring in search of the house keys he hadn't used in years. "He's known me since I was five, but when I came to pick you up for your prom he still made sure I knew he was wearing two guns. Yeah, man, like I didn't already know."

Meg rolled her eyes and leaned her head against a post on the Declan's front porch. "Oh, don't be ridiculous. He was just being goofy."

Kevin looked doubtfully at Meg as she rested like that. "You're sure you're feeling okay?"

She straightened up and stood on her own. "Yep."

Kevin narrowed his eyes at her, but then must have given her the benefit of the doubt; he opened the door and waved her through.

Meg entered and looked around. The air in here was close but unheated; still, it held the indelibly comforting atmosphere of Kevin's house, so she felt a certain sense of warmth and safety sink into her. Nearly everything was just as she'd seen it last. Kevin's senior portrait hung on the wall in the hallway leading to the kitchen, and next to that was the official picture from Meg's senior prom. To the right off of the foyer was the living room, and against the wall opposite the bay window sat Meg's old piano, left there for storage ever since her house had been sold.

Meg wandered into the doorway of the living room, feeling the miniscule ripples of the foyer wallpaper brush under her fingertips. She walked a few more steps and reached out, running her fingers over the closed piano cover.

She glanced back over her shoulder, snapped out of this trance by a creaking on the steps behind her. Kevin was on his way upstairs. Waiting for her, one hand on the rail, he asked, "You coming?"

Meg nodded absently, turned fully, and hurried to follow him.

At the top of the steps was the bathroom, its blue paint and tile long replaced with a neat beige, the product of a remodeling project Kevin had imposed upon himself after he'd come home from the hospital those years ago. On their right was Mrs. Declan's bedroom, on the left the guest room where Meg had stayed for holidays after Gram had died. At the end of the hall on the left was Kevin's bedroom, and across from that his old computer room, its ancient //Episode Three -- The Game// poster still taped to the ouutside of the door, hanging on stubbornly.

Before they reached the end of the hall, though, Kevin stopped and reached up to a hatch in the ceiling. "You remember where you put it?" He asked her as he pulled on the cord, releasing the attic steps.

"I think so," Meg breathed, "as long as your mom didn't move my stuff."

"She said she didn't," he replied. With a small grunt, Kevin extended the steps down to the second floor rug. He walked up a few of the ladder-stairs, then automatically pulled down on a chain dangling from the attic ceiling still above.

No electricity at the moment. The light bulb attached to the chain refused to illuminate.

Meg snickered at Kevin and pulled a small flashlight out of the pocket of her jeans. "Here, try this."

She held it out to him, and he took it, shining its small beam into the dust-waltzing air of the attic. He looked back at her for direction. "Where we going?"

Meg pointed up and over at the corner farthest from the stair-ladder. "Over there."

They both ascended the rest of the way into the attic, Kevin wiping the spider webs out of his face as they went, both of them ducking beneath the pink foam insulated arches of the low-pitched roof. Besides the flashlight's beam, weak sunlight shone through two meager windows at both ends of the attic's length.

"It's colder in here than it is outside," Kevin muttered to himself.

Meg closed her eyes for a second, searching her memory. "It should be in box labeled 'pictures.' Brown cardboard box. Red and white screening on it. Says 'Washington Apples' on the sides."

Kevin ducked into the corner and pointed with the flashlight. "That one?"

Meg followed the beam with her eyes and nodded. "That one."

They picked around all the clutter in their way. Stacks of board games. Boxes of outdated VCR tapes and quaintly oversized DVD's. Draped across the console of Mrs. Declan's old treadmill, a green apron silkscreened with the cheerful motto: "Welcome to Mt. Foodmore, where shopping is MONUMENTAL!" Stuck to the apron, a pin: "Hi! My name is KEVIN. How can I help you today?" A pair of beaten-up crew shoes from Kevin's rowing days dangled from a nail in the ceiling.

When Meg's foot caught under Kevin's Fisher Price toybox, she almost toppled, but Kevin reached back and steadied her. Meg's nerves jumped at his touch, but she willed herself not to show it. She noticed that the flashlight's beam wavered in Kevin's hand, but Meg refused to let herself wonder at that.

"Thanks," she mumbled.

"Yeah," Kevin mumbled back.

They reached the corner, Kevin first. He lifted one box, labeled "Meg's clothes," from Meg's stash and handed it to her.

Curious, Meg placed that box on top of the previously offending toybox, unfolded the lid flaps, and undid the twist-tie fastening the protective trash bag inside. From the box, Meg shook out a maroon and gray plaid kilt.

"Never thought I'd see that again," Kevin snickered, looking over his shoulder before lifting another box aside.

"Ah, yes," she smirked around the nerves in her voice, "the lovely Macauley Mercy uniform, God bless it." Meg re-folded it with mock reverence. "Never thought I'd miss wearing *that.*"

In the weak light given by the closest window, Meg saw something twinkle deeper in the box she held, and she almost gasped. She draped her uniform skirt over the side of the box and reached down further. Her hands first found a pair of maroon warmup pants her legs had outgrown her freshman year of high school -- on one leg, yellow letters spelled out "MACAULEY MERCY," on the other, "HORNET TRACK." She pulled out the pants and placed them on top of her skirt. She did likewise with the matching long-sleeved t-shirt, also in her way.

Then her hands found the source of the sought-after twinkle: fabric uniformly coarse with rich metallic threads. A flash in her mind, and she remembered: her senior prom gown. Slinky and clingy, with a slit up one leg. Spaghetti straps that had forced her to go braless for the evening, thanking God for once that she was so flat. She rooted around in the box some more, hoping against hope to find the matching shoes. She was unsuccessful.

She looked furtively at the dress again. The first time Kevin had seen her in that dress was the one and only time she'd ever thought that maybe, just maybe, he could possibly think of her as something other than his surrogate younger sister. His eyes had skimmed her with such blatant... amazement that her father cleared his throat at him in mild protest.

"Wow, Meg," Kevin had said then, awkwardly holding out at her a bunch of white roses and German stattice. "Wow. Just... wow. You look--"

"--like a girl for once?" She'd quipped because his admiring scrutiny was making her feel equally awkward, like a freak in a circus show...

"Here ya go," Kevin grunted in the present, and Meg snapped out of the memory. Embarrassed, Meg dropped the dress she'd been clutching. She reached out to take the box Kevin offered.

She found another stack of boxes and placed the 'pictures' box on top of it. She tossed the lid carelessly aside, and a cloud of dust drifted away to reveal several photo albums with leatherette covers of various standard colors -- blue, brown, dark green.

Meg smiled, forgetting her own memories for a moment. "Mom's gonna do backflips when she sees these."

Kevin made a soft, incredulous "pft" noise. "Your mom wouldn't do backflips if you paid her."

"For pictures she hasn't seen in, like, three or four years," Meg assured him, opening the cover of one of the albums, "she'd do backflips."

She flipped casually through the first few pages of black paper with tiny tabs of decorative metal holding in place black-and-white snapshots. Wedding pictures, yellowed with age. A dark-haired girl smiled on the arm of a quirkily handsome young man in a Navy uniform from decades past.

"Backflips," Meg repeated. She closed the album, removed the pack from her back and started to fill it.

"Hey," Kevin called to her, standing by the window. He cleared his throat. His voice sounded oddly shaky. "Check this."

Meg looked up and saw him pointing out the window in the direction of her old house. "What is it?"

"Your Gram's garden," he said, beckoning for her to come over and see for herself. "I can see it from here. I think it's blooming."

Meg frowned skeptically. "In February? You sure you don't need to clean those glasses of yours?"

Kevin smiled and dutifully removed his glasses, wiping them clean on the shirttail that stuck out beneath his sweater. He put them back on his face, looked again, and shrugged. "That's global warming for ya, I guess."

Meg crossed over to the window to see for herself, and sure enough, over the two other yards between the Declan's house and her old home, Meg swore she could see knots of white, yellow and red pushing through the green twining of Gram's rose trellises.

"I thought the new owners would've taken out the garden," she murmured.

Kevin shook his head. "They would've been nuts to do that. Best part of the whole property."

Surprised at his remark, Meg turned her attention to Kevin, but his face remained impassively fixed on Gram Scully's garden. They both looked out at the rosebuds waving their fists in the air.

"I bet," Kevin said slowly, "that your mom would love some of those roses for her birthday."

Meg felt her eyebrows raise in surprise. "Hadn't thought of that," she admitted.

Looking almost shy, Meg could've sworn, Kevin turned to look at her. "Well? What do you think?"

Meg's mouth hung open stupidly for a second, then she blurted, "Yeah. What the hell? Might as well, while we're here."

Kevin nodded then started climbing back towards the steps. "You need helping carrying any of those pictures?"

"Nah, s'okay," she automatically told him, "I got it."

"Ohhh-kay..." Kevin answered, then continued on his way back to the stairs.

Meg grabbed the last album out of the box and put it into her bag. "Ready?" she asked.

Kevin nodded. She caught up with him, and they both traipsed back downstairs. On their way out of the house, Kevin stopped at the door for one more look around.

"Wonder when I'll be back here next," Kevin said quietly, his eyes lingering over everything in sight.

Meg felt a certain shared pang for things lost. She couldn't help but reach out and place her hand reassuringly on his arm. He turned his eyes to hers and gave her a hesitant smile. She smiled back.

Her heart jumped. Again she wondered, //Is this the right time?//

Apparently it wasn't. She found she had to turn away. She swallowed hard and studied Kevin's house one last time.

"C'mon," Kevin sighed at last, "let's go get your mom's birthday flowers."


"Nothing gives me greater joy than to hear my children are walking in the truth." --3 John 4

Meg followed Kevin out of the house, noticing that he relocked the door behind him, even though there wasn't really anyone around anymore to break in -- or, if there were, not anyone who might be deterred by a deadbolt.

They got back on their bikes and rode three doors down the street to what had once been Meg's house. The basketball net in the driveway was long gone, and the exterior paint had changed color, but the landscaping had remained much the same. They left their bikes in the front yard and walked between the side garden patch and the cherry trees that marked the east edge of the property.

They rounded the back corner of the house and saw Gram's garden. Crocuses were long since unfurled, and the daffodils were just starting to come into their full glory. Iris petals were starting to curl out of their buds, but none of that was as much of a surprise as the rosebuds -- the colors of what they would be soon enough were clearly visible through the the tight points of their green jackets.

"Funny," Meg mused out loud after at least a full five minutes of staring at the garden, "if it weren't for the invaders, we wouldn't have any of this now."

Kevin considered her words. "You mean, without all the changes in temperature, we wouldn't have roses in February?"

Meg bit her lip thoughtfully and nodded.

Kevin nodded back. "Never thought of it that way before."

Meg turned to Kevin. She chose her words carefully. "And without you, I don't think I would have looked to see it."

She gestured to the budding roses, hoping he could see her gratitude in the motion, and Kevin nodded again. She could tell: he understood. He usually did.

But he suddenly looked down, rubbing his right hand across the back of his neck. His fingers stopped and pulled something silver out from under his t-shirt.

"I, ah," he stammered, "I... keep forgetting to give you... something."

With both hands, he fidgeted with something at the back of his neck. Meg's breath caught unexpectedly in her throat when she realized what he'd been forgetting to give her.

"Your, ah--" he kept stammering, "your Aunt Bridge says that I'm supposed to be the one who gives this back to you. Some, uh, family tradition or something, she says."

Meg looked up and saw Kevin holding her Miraculous Medal out to her by both ends of its chain.

It was like they were having a staring contest: both of them honor-bound not to look away, but maintaining this contact without reaching some sort of breaking point was becoming unbearable -- at least for Meg. Something had to happen, or she was going to explode.

With shaking hands, she reached for the necklace, just as Kevin came unexpectedly closer to her. Somehow, in the simultaneous movement, their hands collided. They studied each other for another tense moment.

"Oh--" Meg found herself stammering, "you were going to--"

"Uhm," Kevin stammered back at the same time, "I forgot. You can do it yourself, right? You don't need me."

Kevin pulled his hands back, took a step backwards, and looked down at his feet. His mouth tightened as he extended just his right hand to her with a sudden cool detachment, her necklace dangling between them again. Meg realized what had just happened: Kevin had tried reaching out to her, but he thought she was pushing him away.

Of course he did. That was one of the barriers she'd wrapped around herself.

And that was one barrier Meg wanted to see crumble.

"Kev," she breathed uneasily, looking down at her hiking boots.

Kevin's sneakers shuffled at the ground, too. "Well, ya gonna take it or not?" His voice was gently teasing, in an attempt to cover up their mutual discomfort.

Meg looked up at him. She could not guess how he might react now... but she knew with every fiber of her being that, no matter what she said, no matter how he felt, Kevin Declan could be trusted never to humiliate her intentionally.

And that knowledge made now the right time to at least try.

Meg reached out, held her palm under the Medal, then raised her hand until the Medal landed in it. She lifted her hand some more until the silver chain coiled in her palm.

Her hand reached Kevin's. When his eyes met hers in surprise, she let her fingers curl around his. She waited -- waited for him to pull his hand out of hers.

He didn't.

"Kev," she began on a shuddering breath, but then she stopped. She had to think of the right way to explain her behavior of late -- of the past several years. "One day, when I was in kindergarten, my-- Gram came and picked me up, took me out of school early. She took me to the hospital. My dad had been shot."

He remembered that. Kevin lowered their hands. A moment's panic passed over Meg, that he would want to break that contact just as she was starting to open up to him.

But Kevin just stepped closer to her and lowered their hands to a position more comfortable for both of them. He nodded at her to go on.

Relieved, Meg took another deep breath so she could continue. "I knew what guns were, and I knew people could die from them... but I didn't really understand until then what *death* really was, the permanence of it, and how death might just show up in my life suddenly one day and take everybody away -- take away the people I loved most. So I think, even when I was five, a big part of me decided to act like I really didn't need anyone, no matter how much I loved them, because someday those people might leave me, and I really would have to do everything by myself."

She glanced back up at Kevin. He was listening intently, she could tell by the knot of concentration and concern between his eyebrows.

Meg moistened her dry lips and swallowed before she went on, admitting, "Another part of me hoped that wasn't true, but... that part gave up hope when I -- when I was thirteen, and I walked into your bathroom and I--"

She heard Kevin suck in his breath, felt his hand tighten in hers. He looked away. "Meg," he practically coughed, "Meg, I'm sorry. I am so sorry. I know I could never apologize enough for--"

"--I always thought," she interrupted, knowing that if she stopped, she might never finish this, "that even if my parents died, even if Gram died, y'know, at least Kevin would be there for me, right? But I realized that even that wasn't the reality--"

"Meg," he choked, "I'm so, so sorry, I--"

"--that I'd have to get ready to live completely on my own, because some day I'd just have to. I wouldn't have anyone but myself, so I couldn't really trust anyone to care for me. Is this making any sense?"

Kevin nodded solemnly, his fingers tightening around hers even more. His voice was taut as he whispered, "It is."

Meg looked away again, struggling to explain further. "So when my parents -- when that building exploded, and then Gram died so soon afterwards, I knew that was it. It was for real now. The worst possible scenario had become my life. And I didn't want it ever to get worse. I was afraid to lose anyone like that again."

"I understand," Kevin told her, and she could tell he wasn't just saying that. "You went through hell, and that's how you survived."

Meg nodded, felt her hand starting to shake a little in Kevin's. "You know better than anyone else what I was like after I thought my parents were dead, how I kept pushing everybody away. I pushed you the hardest, I think, and for that I'm sorry. I guess on some deep-down level I'd always thought that I needed my parents, and once they were gone, I tried so hard to convince myself that I didn't need anyone, that I really was completely independent."

"You've always been independent, Meg," Kevin said, a tiny smile tugging at the corners of his eyes and lips. "It's who you are."

Meg shook her head. "But just because I might lose someone someday," she sighed shakily, "doesn't mean I should push him away. And just because part of me is afraid I might hurt somebody somehow just by virtue of being my own messed-up self, that doesn't mean I can't ever trust myself to do some good for the people I want in my life."

Kevin's face was blanking over like it always did whenever he was trying to hide something from her. At first, Meg was disappointed.

She quickly shook off that feeling. Fine. He could hide whatever he needed to hide, but Meg could feel her barriers crumbling as she spoke, and she didn't want to stop their destruction.

"And I've been considering," she said, her voice sounding stronger than she had expected it to, "what you said when you found me in New York."

Her words startled Kevin enough to show a sudden break in his armor. Incredulous, he asked, "You remember that? I thought you were out of it..."

"You told me," she remembered aloud, "that I could choose to let somebody carry me. And I've been thinking about that a lot lately. A lot."

Kevin was regaining his composure, but not completely, and he still held her hand in his. "And what have you thought about that?"

Meg steeled her spine and looked him directly in the eyes. "Kevin, before you left to find your dad, you asked me if I needed you, and I pretty much told you I didn't. But I didn't tell you the whole truth. I don't need you, Kevin. I want you."

There. She'd said it. She waited for his reaction.

Kevin stared at her, uncomprehending, his mouth hanging slightly open.

Meg's nerve started to wane. She panicked, tried to pull those barriers of hers at least somewhat back into place. She automatically found herself starting to babble. "I want you in my life, Kev. And when you're not around I miss you... even more than you miss pizza--"

Kevin blinked several times in rapid succession. "Meg?"

But her mouth kept going, even though her mind was telling her to zip it. "--and it doesn't matter how you feel about me. How you feel doesn't change how I feel. I know this now. And even if we just stay friends--"

"Meg," Kevin repeated quietly, stepping closer to her.

"--after this. Well, I hope we always stay friends, no matter what--"

He tugged almost imperceptibly on her arm. "Hey, Meg?"

"--well, as long as both of us are still alive and all, and I know I can't get any guarantees on *that,* at least not in this world, but--"

"Meg," he said, his voice strangely even, "if you don't shut up for once, I'll never be able to kiss you."

Stunned.

Meg was stunned into silence. She blinked up at Kevin. Her mouth formed the first sound of the one word question, "What?"

She had no chance to ask it.

In a singular motion, Kevin removed his baseball cap, dropped it, pulled Meg to him, and pressed his lips to hers.

Stunned. She could almost hear the final crush of the last mortar in this one defense of hers.

The stubble leading from his chin to his mouth grazed her bottom lip. His free hand, the one not holding hers, went to her cheek, his thumb tracing her cheekbone, his fingers curling against her ear. His hand moved, drifted to the back of her neck and pulled her even closer.

Stunned and shaking all over, Meg pulled away in shock. She looked up into Kevin's eyes, which suddenly took on their concerned look again. Even hidden behind his glasses, Kevin's eyes told Meg that he was afraid he'd done something wrong.

Meg tried to form coherent words to reassure him that this was nothing but right by her, but all she could manage was, "Wow."

"Wow?" The worried knot between Kevin's eyebrows tensed even more. "Good wow or bad wow?"

At first, Meg started to speak, but the desire to kiss him again overwhelmed her.

He pulled back, the shocked one this time.

"Good wow," she told him.

Kevin nodded. "Very good wow."

So this was the right time, Meg realized, as Kevin finally finished putting her Miraculous back around her neck.

Meg's fingers flew to the Medal at her throat, and for no good reason, she dipped her head and started to giggle.

"What?" Kevin asked, though all traces of self-consciousness were gone from his voice. He was laughing with her even though he had to ask, "What's so funny?"

"Did you know," Meg reported to Kevin through her giggles, "that my parents only had to wait six years before they even got *near* this point?"

Kevin smirked and put his arms around her. His arms tightened, and she let herself relax against his embrace. "Six years?" He murmured into her ear. "Bah-- mere amateurs. What's it been for us? Eighteen?"

"Nineteen," she corrected, grinning so hard that her cheeks hurt. "Nineteen years."

"Oh, yeah," Kevin said with mock-smugness as he let his hands slide back down to Meg's, "we got them beat."

Meg nodded. "We win."

They laughed into each other as their lips met once more.

END


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