Title:  A Winter's Tale 

Author:  Anjou (Anjou@rocketmail.com)

Posting Date: December 2007/January 2008

Rating:  R for language and sexuality; M for Mature readers 

Classification:  Mulder/Scully, UST/MSR, AU

Archive: Archival with permission only, please. Text will be available 
at Gossamer, my website No Other … (http://the-cave-
online.com/anjou/index.html) maintained by the generous dtg, and my fic 
journal (http://anjoufic.livejournal.com/)

Spoilers: Through Two Fathers/One Son (S6), then AU. In other words, no 
Arcadia and beyond. Mytharc-y.

Disclaimer: All X-Files personnel belong to 1013 and Fox. All other 
elements are mine. 

Author's Note: This was the first idea for an X-Files story that I ever 
had, and one that I believed had been lost forever. Years ago, the 
laptop where I had written the outline and some scenes was destroyed. 
However, early last summer I found a printed copy of what I'd written, 
misfiled with another story. The idea of the story began to work on my 
imagination, until I finally committed the time to writing it out. And 
so, here we are.

A Winter's Tale was originally posted as a serialized story over 25 
days, beginning on December 22, 2007 and ending on January 15, 2008. 
Minor edits to the text have been throughout the body of the story; 
this is the final version. 

As always, thanks to my sister and editrix, Suzanne, for her support.

Summary: It is late winter, dark and cold, the landscape obscured and 
transformed by snow and ice. One must step carefully, for the very 
ground can be treacherous. This is a lesson Mulder and Scully have 
already learned when the pristine snow in Antartica yielded a long-
buried secret. But the winter can hold many secrets, and could tell 
many tales, if it so chose. 

This is but one.  

~*~

March 1999

  It all started with a ditch. 

  Of course, that wasn't the whole story. 

  It had really started in the aftermath of that horrible day at the 
Gunmen's. She'd been so sure that she was right about Diana Fowley, and 
been angry for so long about the blind spot that Mulder seemed to have 
about that untrustworthy woman. 

  Privately, she could grudgingly admit that she'd been jealous and 
hurt for weeks and that was why she'd asked the Gunmen to investigate 
for her. But even if she regretted how she'd gone about it, in the 
quiet days after when conversation between them had dwindled to the 
bare minimum, she couldn't regret that she had done it. Diana Fowley 
was up to her neck in this conspiracy, was a friend and a colleague to 
those people who had killed Melissa, and robbed Scully of both choice 
and autonomy. She might not have had the proof that she had always 
demanded of Mulder, but in this one case, Dana Scully knew with 
absolute and sure certainty that Diana Fowley had collaborated with the 
doctors who had experimented on her. 

  Truthfully, she believed that Diana had ordered her mutilation, an 
intuition that she could never explain, much less prove, to Mulder. It 
was a truly feminine thing, how one woman knew when another woman hated 
her. Diana had tried to dismiss her, to diminish Special Agent Dana 
Scully, M.D., at every possible opportunity. Diana treated her like she 
didn't matter at all, like she was a gnat buzzing around, a disturbance 
in the air. That dismissiveness, the cool dispassion that Diana 
maintained at all costs around her, told Dana more than Diana had ever 
intended. Diana Fowley hated her, and she wanted Dana to feel more than 
discomfited, she wanted her to feel displaced, the way Diana must have 
felt when she came back to the X-Files, intending to step right back 
into the shoes that Dana now wore. Diana Fowley had been foolish enough 
to think that Dana Scully could be ignored into disappearing, that 
losing her job with the X-Files would mean the end of her partnership 
with Fox Mulder. But six years of the X-Files had taught her what it 
meant to be ridiculed and scorned by peers, superiors, the world at 
large, and even, on occasion, her own family. She would not be so 
easily moved aside. 

   Besides, Diana Fowley's big feet wouldn't fit into her shoes, even 
if she were inclined to step out of them, which she most certainly was 
not.  

   Even now, after Diana Fowley had disappeared, leaving a trail of 
mysteries behind her -- the charred bodies at the El Rico Air Force 
Base; a deserted apartment at the Watergate; and the pool of Jeffrey 
Spender's blood that she and Mulder had discovered when they'd 
reclaimed their basement office –- she cast a dark shadow over their 
funereally quiet office. The puzzling lack of Jeffrey Spender's body, 
in concert with his astonishing declarations in Kersh's office, 
compounded the macabre tone. It was as if the air between their two 
desks was filled with the haunting presence of its  previous 
inhabitants, both mysteriously vanished without a trace. It made what 
already felt like less than a triumphal return seem downright ominous, 
a dark reminder of the price of failure. 
  
  Still, she couldn't attribute the heavy quiet that reigned in their 
office to anything other than that day at the Gunmen's lair. They were 
supposed to be putting the Files back in order, meticulously going over 
all that had been done, or not done, in the months that Spender and 
Fowley had spent in their places. The work was frustrating and slow. 
Call logs didn't translate into case files, or even preliminary 
investigations. E-mail correspondence showed huge gaps, and IT was 
taking its sweet time in turning over the missing pieces. Realistically 
speaking, she knew that the X-Files had a lower priority than FOIA 
requests from outside the agency, but it was possible that the life of 
an Agent was at stake — although it was hard to imagine that Agent 
Spender had survived the injuries that had caused his massive blood 
loss. 

  As for the missing Agent Fowley, Mulder had been unusually reticent 
about whatever he had discussed with his ex-partner in the hectic hours 
before the El Rico massacre, giving Skinner the bare minimum of answers 
to his questions. In light of their last discussion about that woman, 
she hadn't brought the subject up, but it lay between them all day, 
every day, as they worked at their desks in near silence. 

  More times than she'd care to admit she'd caught Mulder staring at 
her. His focus was penetrating, but it was as if he wasn't seeing her. 
He was profiling her, and she hated it, hated how it made her feel like 
she was the body on the examining table, the victim at the crime scene. 
It made her want to scream at him, to stand up and shake him, to ask 
him how he dared to look at her that way, but they were barely 
speaking, and she couldn't risk total alienation from him. 

  As it was, the fact that her phone never rang at night, that whole 
weekends of silence would go by without a plea for her to join him on a 
wild goose chase or to come into the office on a Saturday made her feel 
vaguely lightheaded and nauseated. This latest Monday, Mulder had been 
late to the office. When he'd arrived, he didn't offer an explanation 
as to where he'd been until almost ten o'clock in the morning, or why 
his knuckles were bruised and abraded. He'd just handed her a cup of 
coffee from her favorite little café, with a "Sorry I'm late, Scully." 
Before she could even formulate a question, he'd proposed an outrageous 
hypothesis about one of the more puzzling gaps in the Files. She'd let 
him divert her, relief flooding her at what seemed to be a return to 
something like status quo.

  But the silence, and Mulder's periods of observation of her, 
continued.

 Sometimes, she would notice the quiet and look up to see Mulder 
staring fixedly into space, his posture totally still, his eyes just 
slightly narrowed in concentration. To anyone else, he'd appear to be 
daydreaming, but she wasn't fooled into believing such a thing. Once, 
when she worked the courage up to ask him what he was thinking about, 
he'd tapped the File that lay open on his desk. Just recently, he'd 
answered her with the assertion that he was trying to fill the gaps in 
'of Agents Spender and Fowley's shoddy work' and her surprise at 
hearing him use Diana's name in that context was sharp and relieving, 
dissipating some of the tension that filled their too-quiet office.

 Still, her phone never rang at night. She'd sleep tensely, in the dark 
days of winter and cold, her body taut and waiting for the summons that 
she'd begun to doubt would ever come. 

~*~

  After four days of intermittent silence, interspersed with minor shop 
talk and void of jokes, innuendo and any sort of personal remark, 
Mulder had startled her by making moves to leave immediately after 5:00 
pm.  

  "Leaving so soon?" she'd asked sarcastically, before she had a chance 
to check herself. She practically bit her tongue to keep from asking if 
he had a date.

  "I've got an early game," Mulder said, rolling down his second sleeve 
and refastening the cuff. "Oh, and I won't be in tomorrow," he added, 
almost as if it were an afterthought. "I'm taking a personal day." He 
drew his suitcoat on with a shrug and grabbed his overcoat. "Have a 
good weekend, Scully."  And then he was gone, the tail of his scarf 
hanging in the space he'd occupied next to the door just a second after 
the rest of him disappeared, and before the door banged closed. 

  By the time she'd started from her chair to go after him, she'd 
already heard the slam of the stairwell door down the hall. He hadn't 
even waited to take the elevator in his all-out desire to get as far 
away from her as possible. 

  She was shocked and angry, but mostly wounded to have her paranoid 
feelings validated. He didn't trust her anymore, and he was leaving her 
behind while he figured out … something. The holes in the Files weren't 
big enough to anchor a man as restless as Mulder to his desk, but 
something had kept him here for the past four weeks. Once that 
unwelcome thought had crossed her mind, it was hard to shake the idea 
that perhaps he'd gone back to his first, trusted partner for whatever 
case he was hiding from her. The very idea had made her rigid with 
indignation, but it firmed her spine. If it were true, then Fox Mulder 
was not the man that she'd believed him to be all these years. If it 
were true, Diana Fowley could fucking have him, and welcome to him. 

  First things first, however. Mulder wasn't the only investigator in 
this partnership. Scully called her mechanic, knowing that Thursday was 
his night to be open late, and dropped her car off for a long overdue 
tune-up, arranging for one of his fleet of loaner cars to be hers for 
the interim period. When Mulder left his game at the Y, she followed 
him back to Hegal Place in a nondescript Volvo, her bright hair hidden 
under a rolled brim knit navy cap. She'd settled in with a book and a 
thermos of coffee, but he'd come out of his building just after 11:00, 
dressed in clothes that reminded her of a hallway outside her hospital 
room in Allentown. Traffic was lighter at this hour, so she had to 
exert more caution in following him, especially when he drove to a 
sparsely traveled former industrial area down by the river that had 
been more recently populated by sketchy after-hours clubs. Clusters of 
clubgoers stood outside in their fetishwear, smoking in the foggy 
darkness. She'd had to ditch the car and follow him on foot, but he'd 
outfoxed her and she'd lost him in the crowds. 

  She'd woken early after an uneasy night's sleep and found herself 
utterly incapable of focusing during the long, dull, interminable 
Friday. When he hadn't called in by 3:00 in the afternoon, she'd taken 
a chance and called both his cell and home phones, but the calls went 
unanswered before rolling into voicemail. She hadn't left a message, 
but left the office early in a foul mood, determined to shake off the 
abysmal week and enjoy her weekend. She tried to nap, but her dreams 
were dark and full of phantoms, and nothing at the movies appealed. 
After doing grocery shopping, picking at her dinner and washing, drying 
and folding three scintillating loads of laundry, she'd broken down and 
driven over to the Gunmen's, despite the late hour and lack of 
invitation to find out what, exactly, he was up to, even though such a 
journey guaranteed that she'd have to admit that she didn't know where 
he was.

  It wasn't until her question was met with Frohike's awkward silence, 
while Byers and Langly shifted around uncomfortably that she had felt 
the first cold thrill of true fear.  The truth was that none of them 
had spoken to Mulder since the day after that awful day when they'd 
confronted him about Diana Fowley. 

  According to Byers and Frohike, Mulder had come back and taken their 
findings, and then left 'after some heated discussion'. That had been 
the last time that they'd seen or heard from him. 

  She must have looked particularly stricken when this fact was 
revealed, because Langly had almost stumbled over his feet in an effort 
to get to the computer and start checking possibilities for where 
Mulder might have gone when Frohike had announced that they would track 
him. Byers had gently assured her that Mulder would be fine, and she'd 
nodded, feeling numb and frozen. They began the process of searching 
through the lists of all-known aliases they had for Mulder, looking for 
credit card activity, phone records, anything. She watched them all as 
if from a great distance, and left hours later with no new information. 
She walked out into the darkest and coldest part of the winter night 
without even drawing her coat closed, feeling nothing but fear.

  Whatever Mulder was doing, he was out there all alone -- and she'd 
driven him to it. 

~*~

   When the phone finally rang on Saturday morning, she shot out of bed 
to answer it after a couple of hours of thin and unsatisfying sleep. It 
was the service desk at her mechanic's calling to let her know that her 
car was ready. She just managed to thank them civilly before she hung 
up, still trembling from the adrenaline surge. On the way back from the 
mechanic's shop, she called the Gunmen but found that they had nothing 
new to tell her, although Frohike hastily assured her not to be 
discouraged. Instead, she steeled her resolve and drove to Alexandria, 
driving around the block a couple of times to find a parking space. 
Mulder's car was nowhere to be seen, but that wasn't unusual, or 
unexpected.   

  His apartment already had the undisturbed air of a rare books room at 
the library, although she had a fleeting moment of hope when her key 
still worked. It had to mean that something yet remained of the 
partnership that they'd once fought so hard for. The lone fish in the 
tank watched her balefully as she silently assessed Mulder's few rooms, 
looking for clues. The small kitchen, with its half a pot of ancient 
coffee in the cold carafe, empty mug in the sink and ruffled pages of 
Tuesday's Post on the table opened to the filled out crossword 
told her nothing, other than the fact that Mulder had finished the 
puzzle, in ink. She passed into the unexplored territory of Mulder's 
bedroom, but it was harder for her to tell if anything was missing from 
it. His closet door had been left flung open, but despite the seeming 
invitation, his neatly hung suits accused her of treachery as she 
patted them down, finding nothing. His drawers, both literal and 
figurative, also refused to yield any secrets. 

  Before she left, she wandered over to the fish tank and shook a few 
food flakes onto the surface.  

  "What do you know?" she demanded of the fish, and watched with grim 
amusement while its mouth worked soundlessly, as if it indeed had 
secrets to tell. 

  She sighed and turned to leave the too-quiet stillness of Mulder's 
apartment behind her, but found herself lingering on the threshold for 
one last look around. Her melancholy was deepening, and she tried to 
reason with herself to keep it at bay, but she was tired of only 
hearing her own voice in her head with its obnoxiously stifling 
pragmatism.  Something was wrong, and she knew it without being told, 
without seeing proof. She straightened her shoulders and scanned the 
room one last time, eyes lingering on Mulder's couch, the site of so 
many of their late night conversations, trying to picture the both of 
them there, laughing and happy, only to feel the  unwelcome sting of 
tears. She turned and walked out the door, and tried not to look back.

~*~

  She was determined not to worry about what might possibly be 
occurring, and had convinced herself that she wasn't thinking about 
Mulder as she mechanically ate a small amount of Thai food taken out 
from a nearby restaurant. She watched the news, and something mindless 
and maudlin on Lifetime until she finally found an old noir film on the 
local PBS channel. Somehow, knowing that it would all end in bloodshed 
and sadness was soothing. She mused to herself idly as she flossed her 
teeth after the movie had ended that it was because the shape of the 
story was proscribed by its narrative form. That was an elegance that 
would not be accorded to her, still in the middle of her own formless 
tale. She smoothed lotion on her hands and feet and gave one last call 
to the Gunmen before she turned in for the night. As she expected, 
there was no news to be had, but the stifled hope lay thick in her 
chest. It didn't matter how rigidly guarded against such a possibility 
she held herself, because she felt it nonetheless.

  She slid her feet between the cool sheets and picked up the copy of 
Possession that she'd been trying to read in fits and starts for 
years now. It was Mulder's, of course. A mystery set at Oxford, full of 
epic-length poetry –- how could it not be Mulder's? He'd been effusive 
in his praise of it for weeks, reading passages of it to her on planes 
as they traveled here and there. He'd even quoted bits and pieces of it 
from memory as they drove around those endless months of mind-numbing 
'shit details' for Kersh, years later. He'd given her his copy long 
ago, and she'd always meant to read it. He wanted her to love it as he 
did, and had taken to tucking it into her suitcase when he'd come over 
to harass her while she was getting ready for their inevitable trips 
out of town. Fondling the worn spine of the large paperback now, she 
wasn't too surprised to feel her eyes filling up with tears. Mulder had 
been her friend, hadn't he -- the best friend she'd ever had.

  The ringing phone startled her so much that she gasped and fumbled 
for it, already flipping the covers off and half-standing, sure that 
the Gunmen had found something after all. The sound of Mulder's 
monotone on the other end of the line pinned her to the ground and she 
stopped all forward motion, stunned into silence, as he said her name 
worriedly. 

  "You busy, Scully?" he asked again, but there was a tension in his 
tone that warned her, and she turned the words over in her mind, 
hearing them echo for a moment.

  "Just getting ready for bed, Mulder," she answered automatically, and 
then went cold with sweat remembering weeks of coaching in various 
rental cars, as Mulder had worked out the rudiments of the codes with 
her. Her heart, which had stopped the instant that she heard his voice 
on the phone, began to pound wildly at the implications of his 
seemingly casual statement. She'd answered him by rote, but that 
question … this was as big as she had feared all along. "What're you 
doing?" She remembered to add after long seconds of mental flailing.

  "Watching the Knicks game," he said casually, but that edge was still 
in his voice, "I've got some old tapes that are awesome, and sometimes 
I can't resist taking them out for a spin."

  Oh God. Her mouth went spitless with panic as he said the words that 
she'd feared. She sat down hard on the edge of the bed from where she'd 
been hovering and tried to choke out her next phrase, but it got 
caught.

 Mulder sounded alarmed as he said her name. 

 "Sorry, Mulder," she apologized, coughing and then taking drink of 
water, improvising. "I was taking my pill and I tried to talk at the 
same time."

  Now it was Mulder who sounded a little choked, but he went back to 
the script and asked her what her plans were for Sunday. Behind his 
question, she could plainly hear the plea: would she come to him? 

  "I've got brunch with Mom after Mass tomorrow and then I'm planning 
to go to the mall and return some things." She answered him using the 
code, and imagined that she could feel some of the tension leeching 
from him at the other end of the line. "Don't tell me there's a 
flukeman that needs our attention on my day off," she joked lamely, 
trying to keep the conversation light.

  He laughed, and Scully felt herself relaxing, even as her fingers 
were still gripping the phone. "Aw, Scully," he teased, "don't lie to 
me. 'Returning some things' is the same as buying new stuff and even 
poor ol' Flukie would be no competition for a really good sale, am I 
right?"

  "I'm just returning things," she insisted, "that shoe sale at 
Nordstrom's has nothing to do with it, really."

  Mulder chuckled, but she could still sense the edge behind the 
banter, and she fought to regulate her breathing as she waited for him 
to reply.

 "Scully," he answered her, "I really worry about your credit card 
debt."

 Her scalp began to sweat. Whatever he'd done, it was huge.

  "I suppose that means you don't want to go see The Return of the 
Swamp Thing at the revival house, then?"

  "Do I ever, Mulder?" she asked him, hoping that the tremble in her 
voice wasn't as evident to those who might be listening as it was to 
her.

  "Oh, well, Scully," Mulder said, "Can't blame a guy for trying. Get 
some sleep, partner."

  The phone went dead in her hands and she just sat there and stared at 
it, trembling. Sleep was out of the question, but she laid down under 
the covers and turned the TV back on, hoping that the noise would drown 
out the sound of her tears as she cried a short, sharp burst of relief 
and terror into her pillow, waiting for it to be tomorrow.

~*~
   
  The winter day was clear and bright. She found herself awake early, 
wandering around her apartment marking time until she could go to Mass. 
She knew that she was memorizing things, not just the mementos of her 
daily life for these past few years, but the way the light filled the 
space. Despite everything that had happened here, this apartment had 
been hers alone. She wondered if she would ever see it again. It was a 
strange and discomfiting thought, and one that she wasn't used to 
consciously contemplating, despite the fact that her job put her life 
on the line often enough. Hell, just a year before she'd been sure that 
she'd never return to these rooms from her hospital stay when the 
cancer was at its worst. Maybe she'd been too sick to feel nostalgic 
then, but she was now as she went from room to room looking at her 
possessions with a dispassionate eye. If she never came back, what 
would her apartment say about her to a stranger? Neat, clean, 
methodical, precise, feminine but not frilly – this had been the home 
she'd made for herself. Was she really going to leave it now?

  Hand on the doorknob, she stood for a minute with head bowed and 
thought hard about what she was contemplating doing. Staring down at 
her feet, she thought about Melissa's blood, dried somewhere under the 
floorboards, of what was owed for what had been taken. She picked up 
the heavy Nordstrom's bag from the floor and slung her purse over her 
shoulder. Her overcoat was already on, the keys in her pocket. There 
was no choice.

  The rest of the morning passed as if in a dream, complete with 
hyperreal colors and imagery. She wasn't sure that she had heard any of 
the Mass at all, as she was too consumed with praying for her family, 
for strength, for Mulder, for forgiveness for what she might yet do and 
for the fortitude to do what might be necessary. The candles seemed 
brighter, the songs more sweetly sung, all of it sharpened into 
significance as she got herself ready to do battle with evil.

  At an early brunch with her mother, she compelled herself to stay in 
the present and to enjoy being there, and not to think about how it 
might be the last time they saw each other. It was hard to force more 
than a little food around the lump in her throat, but she thought of 
the long road ahead and tried to get something into her stomach. When 
she said goodbye to her mother, she made sure to hug her tightly, but 
not too tightly, and to tell her that she loved her. Her mother had 
been surprised by the sentiment, but not overly so. It was the kind of 
thing that Dana'd used to say more often, although she had probably 
been more likely to say it to her father than to her mother. Her mother 
told her that she loved her, kissed her with fondness and some 
exasperation, urged her to be careful at work, and then gotten into her 
car and driven away.

  Scully numbly drove to the nearby mall as planned, not bothering to 
hide her route for anyone who might be following her. She parked in the 
structure at the opposite end of the mall from the Nordstrom's, 
entering the complex via The Gap. She bought a couple of utilitarian 
items – a ubiquitous white button down and a soft, long-sleeved t-
shirt, and returned a sweatshirt from her bag of tricks. She took both 
bags with her into the bookstore and perused the new releases. On the 
rack set aside for the staff favorites someone named Rose had picked 
Possession as her choice and Scully smiled. Mulder's copy lay on 
the bottom of her Nordstrom's bag. She bought a couple of other books 
and went into Victoria's Secret for some new underwear, then browsed 
Williams Sonoma for a good long time, trying to bore any follower into 
utter submission. She bought nothing in the store, but amused herself 
by trying to stock her perfect kitchen -- never mind that her perfect 
kitchen would come complete with chef to prepare the meals for her, or 
that she'd have to win the lottery to stock it with items from Williams 
Sonoma.

 She wandered across the mall to the food court and bought a cup of tea 
and settled down at the table with a copy of the latest Vanity 
Fair from the bookstore. She opened it, but spent as much time 
people watching as she did pretending to read the magazine. If she was 
being tailed, she was having a hard time spotting it. She hoped that 
they were waiting for her where she'd parked her car. 

  Mulder had chosen this mall because security didn't actually tow the 
cars until at least a week after they'd been 'abandoned'. One test car 
that he or the Gunmen had ditched lingered almost two weeks before it 
was towed. She'd never bothered to ask where they got the cars from, as 
she was afraid that she wouldn't be pleased with the answer.

  Nordstrom's beckoned from the other end of the mall and she made her 
way toward it, stopping in the Ann Taylor to return a sweater set that 
Tara had sent for her birthday. It was flowered and brightly colored 
beside, and although Scully loved Tara, she positively loathed it. On 
the way to register, she saw a simple sweater set in a warm blue that 
she was surprised to find herself drawn to. It was cashmere, and the 
amount it cost was staggering, but the exchange brought the price down 
to a manageable level. She didn't hesitate to buy it, wanting to 
indulge herself a bit. 

  In a similar vein, she bought herself two pairs of shoes at 
Nordstrom's. One was a practical work pump, chunky yet chic. The other 
was more of a utility boot, low-heeled and sturdy. The boots looked 
warm, and fearing that she might need them in the near future, she 
snapped them up. She idled at the perfume and jewelry counters, 
watching out of the corner of her eye for any observer before she 
proceeded up to the next floor. The evening clothes at Nordstrom's were 
always beautiful, and she spent some time going through the racks 
before going to the more practical side of the floor where the upscale 
work clothes were. She tried on a couple of suits, and put one on hold, 
thoughtfully fingering the handsome jacket while the saleswoman wrote 
up her information. When the transaction was concluded, she thanked the 
saleswoman, walked toward the elevator bank and slipped into the nearby 
women's lounge. 

  Less than ten minutes later, a bespectacled blonde woman with a 
ponytail came out of the bathroom wearing a long sweater coat and 
carrying an oversized handbag and a large Crate & Barrel bag. She 
walked briskly through the casual clothes, stopping to look through two 
racks, then went to the up escalator. She exited the store into the 
parking structure on the third floor and walked confidently to a Nissan 
Altima parked in the middle of a row, not too far from the store 
entrance. She bent down to adjust her knee-high boots near the driver's 
side wheel well, and then clicked the trunk open when she straightened 
up, depositing her shopping bag before getting into the car and driving 
out of the mall. While the clerk was toting up her unusually high 
parking fee, she casually put lipstick on, using the driver's side 
visor mirror to block a full view of her face as she did so. When her 
change was handed to her, she nodded to the cashier and simply drove 
out of the garage, heading west away from the mall. She made a series 
of looping right hand turns for a few miles before she got on the 
highway and headed south, back toward DC. A few miles outside of the 
city, she got off the highway and dropped a small padded envelope into 
a mailbox, then headed back to her car and drove west for several 
miles. When she was convinced that she wasn't being followed, she 
finally turned onto the northbound highway and began her journey.

~*~

  Two hours north of Baltimore, Scully pulled into a rest stop. The wig 
was giving her a headache, so she put on a close-fitting knit cap and 
stowed her fake hair in her purse while she was still in the stall. She 
swapped the eyeglasses for large sunglasses and returned to the Altima 
after buying a cup of coffee from the vending machine. She had a long 
way to drive and couldn't afford to be picky about her sources of 
caffeine. She leaned over and opened the glove compartment, taking out 
the cellphone that was stowed there and turning it on. It still had 
battery power, but she looked for the cigarette lighter adapter that 
he'd left for it and plugged the phone in. Her FBI issued phone was 
under the seat in the passenger side of her car. She's dropped it down 
between the seat and the center console, with the phone still on, 
trying to make it look like it had accidentally fallen from her purse. 
She wondered where Mulder had ditched his phone.

  A folded piece of paper in the envelope next to a map gave her the 
route he wanted her to take and she sighed, reading it over. Trust 
Mulder to make her go the most circuitous way ever to reach her 
destination. The rest of the envelope was filled with cash, and she 
blanched to see the thousands of dollars stashed there. The idea that 
Mulder had enough money to leave literal piles of it to be stolen out 
of a car that might have been towed made her head spin. He'd explained 
about his trusts and the money he'd inherited from his father on their 
long trip back from the Antarctic, but the fact that he was so cavalier 
about it was something that she'd never get used to. She tucked an 
assortment of bills into her empty wallet.

  She studied the route carefully, realizing that he'd planned it out 
so that she'd go by at least one of their secret stashes. She pulled 
out of the rest stop and continued up the highway driving carefully, 
but not driving like a cop. She kept her speed low, trying not to draw 
attention to herself. The radio was set to an NPR station, and the 
Sunday afternoon show about how to clean winter debris from one's 
garden was soothing and not the least bit interesting, but it made her 
feel less alone. She'd rarely been on such a long drive by herself. 
After so many years spent traveling with Mulder, she felt the ache of 
his absence acutely, missed the factoids he would tell her about each 
town they were passing through, or ridiculous tales of X-Files they 
should have investigated but never had. The monotonous voice of the 
gardening expert on NPR was no substitute for the monotone that she 
missed.

  She rubbed the back of her neck tiredly and shifted in her seat as 
the winter sun slipped closer and closer to the horizon. Would any of 
this matter? All of Mulder's grandiose cloak and dagger scenarios 
aside, tracking them wasn't about losing the microchips on their credit 
and debit cards or even in their phones. She could mail her wallet to 
the PO Box owned by George Hale in Washington, D.C. and leave her cell 
phone behind, but the implant in her neck was a whole other matter. 
Even as she drove to him, she was potentially compromising them both, 
and whatever he had done. She brooded and drove, her mind churning over 
these conundrums.

  The hell of it was, whether it was by the Consortium's design, 
Mulder's will or her own desire, she was as compelled to go to him as 
surely as she'd been driven to Ruskin Dam last year. 

  Fifty miles north and west of Philadelphia, she let herself into the 
self-storage place after minimal fumbling of keys and key cards. Early 
this morning, she'd chipped the caulking away from the soap dish in her 
tiny shower stall to reveal the bag that held these keys, carefully 
replacing the dish to hide the hole. The keys numbered more than a 
dozen; all storage units paid for by Mulder and spread out across the 
United States. She found the winter suitcase and changed into a more 
suitably Agent Scully-like outfit, then packed what she'd been wearing 
into it. She felt rumpled and unkempt. Aside from the fact that it had 
been in a storage bin for months, the suit that she was wearing was 
from her pre-cancer days and hung on her frame. She checked the 
envelope containing IDs that Mulder has left for her, and considered 
whether or not she should take a bag for him, but then let it go. 
Mulder could take care of himself. 

  Outside, she hefted the bag into the trunk of the Altima, and 
smoothed her rumpled skirt, shivering in the chill as she exchanged the 
sweater coat for the winter coat that she balled up at the bottom of 
the Crate & Barrel bag. She'd reholstered her gun while she was in the 
storage unit. She might have left parts of Dana Scully behind her in 
DC, but she wasn't entirely foolhardy. The trunk now held a stash of 
ammo, and a couple of other small arms. She tucked an extra clip into 
her overcoat pocket as she hurried back to the car and its heater. It 
was full dark now, and although the mall back in Maryland wouldn't be 
closing for another few hours, she wanted to keep putting distance 
between it and any alarm that might be raised when she never returned 
to her car. 

  She drove, winding back and forth along the same path, going farther 
north and west with every passing hour. When she stopped for gas along 
the route, she made sure to wear a hat with a brim when she went in to 
pay for her purchase. Her reading glasses and her retainer from her 
teenage years completed the look. If she was lucky, all the gas clerk 
would remember is that a woman with glasses and buck teeth came in to 
buy gas. She made a point of continuing to buy coffee, even as her 
bladder protested the constant assault of caffeinated liquids, and the 
frequent stops cost her time. It was better for her to be hyper and 
peeing than falling asleep behind the wheel.

  The miles rolled away and the car began to smell like cheap coffee as 
the hour ticked past midnight. NPR had given way to late night talk 
shows, philosophical and religious meanderings and the ubiquitous Art 
Bell on AM radio. Without Mulder there to roll her eyes at, the show 
just depressed her and she changed the channel to a program on early 
music that threatened to send her to her permanent rest if she kept 
listening to it. At 3:00 am, she drove with the windows cracked and the 
heat in the car off, making herself sing all the songs from records 
that she had loved in her teen years. There was something poignant, or 
perhaps psychotic, about bellowing "Hotel California" as she dodged 
snowflakes 300 miles east of Pittsburgh. 
 
  When she finally pulled into the parking lot of the motel that Mulder 
was holed up in west of Pittsburgh, she'd been driving for sixteen 
hours, and even with stops for coffee and to stretch her legs, she was 
stiff and beyond exhausted. Still, she was shocked to see Mulder awake, 
dressed in Agent Mulder garb and outside, pacing back and forth under 
the overhang of the corner room at the end of the motor court. His 
rumpled overcoat billowed around him as he came forward to greet her, 
and the grey winter light of early morning clearly showed how relieved 
he was to see her. 

  "Hey Scully," he said, opening the door and sticking his head in as 
soon as she cracked it a sliver. He leaned in so close that she thought 
he was going to kiss her, but he continued bending down to pop the 
trunk latch on the floor. She told herself that she wasn't 
disappointed, and stepped out of the car and stretched as he grabbed 
all of her bags and dropped them over by the room door then came back, 
standing in front of her. 

  "Listen," he said nervously, looking over his shoulder "I know you're 
tired, but there's something I need to tell you."

  "Can you tell me inside?" she asked wearily, closing the car door and 
taking one step around him, toward the room. "The last time I stopped 
was a long time ago, and I really need to use the bathroom." 

  "Scully," he said, as if he hadn't heard her plea, and his voice was 
so serious that she couldn't help but stop and frown at him in worry. 

  He stepped in front of her again, blocking her view of the door, his 
eyes searching hers. Then, he reached out and touched her face. 

  It was so unexpected after all of the weeks of silence and remove 
from him that she could not help the flinch that followed his action. 
Mulder's hand leapt away from her, and he took a long step back. Even 
though he had turned his head, she saw the hurt that flashed across his 
face and she sucked in her breath. She hadn't meant to do that. She 
began to step forward to apologize, extending one arm toward Mulder's 
back, desperate to do something to bridge the gap between them when she 
was startled by a small voice that said, "Mulder?"

  She gasped, and heard Mulder do the same. At the now opened motel 
room door, a little girl with disheveled auburn hair rubbed her eyes 
and shivered in the morning cold, dressed only in a long white 
nightgown. "Are you leaving me?" she asked in a quavering voice.

  Scully felt suddenly lightheaded and swayed like a romance novel 
heroine. Her foot, which she had lifted to step toward Mulder, dropped 
to the ground and she stumbled in shock, staring at the little girl 
whose white face was blurring into Emily's. Mulder put out his arm and 
caught her, breaking her forward momentum, and she grasped for him as 
she tried to catch her balance.

  "Mulder?" she whispered, her voice tight with stress, gripping his 
bicep like a lifeline. 

  When she'd grabbed him and held on, Mulder had pulled her close, 
wrapping his arms around her while she dizzily tried to make sense of 
what she was seeing, peering at the child over his sheltering arm. She 
could hear the fitful sound of her own breathing and knew that she was 
hyperventilating, but she couldn't stop. 

  The little girl stared back at her, her blue eyes wide and terrified.

  "Hannah, honey," Mulder said in a gentle voice that Scully recognized 
from far too many interrogations of child victims, "I'm not going 
anywhere. Go back inside where it's warm and we'll be right in."

  She heard his words and the 'we' echoed and rolled around. The 
fatigue and the strain of the last few weeks, on top of the long, 
exhausting trip that she had just endured caught up to her and her head 
swam as his tone led her to the one conclusion she most feared. She 
struggled for another few seconds and then, for the second time in her 
life, Dana Scully fainted. 

~*~
 
  She was only unconscious for a few seconds and when she began to rise 
through the strands of clinging grey fog, she could hear Mulder's 
voice, reassuring the child. "No, she's OK, honey, she's just really 
tired." She could feel his arms, one underneath her legs and the other 
around her back, as he carried her, then laid her down upon a soft 
surface. "Why don't you go into the bathroom and get her a glass of 
cold water?" Mulder suggested in his calm, kind voice and she tried to 
lift her hand, but it felt leaden. 

  "Scully," he said to her quietly and urgently, "Scully, please wake 
up." He was chafing her hands and wrists like they did in Victorian 
novels and she was surprised to feel that it actually helped. 

  She tried to say his name, but all that came out was, "Mmmm …"

  He tilted her head up and trickled some cold water into her mouth and 
then laid her head back down. There was a pause and then she felt a 
spattering of cold drops on her face. "Mulder," she complained.

  "Oh, thank God," he said. "I'm sorry, Scully. What should I do? 
Should I sit you up so that you can put your head between your knees?"

  She shook her head and opened her eyes. "No, too much blood pressure 
change and I'll probably faint again," she murmured. 

  "Eat this," Mulder ordered and handed her half a Twix bar. 

  She opened her mouth to protest again, but Hannah was half-hiding 
behind Mulder, and the child still looked terrified at her dramatic 
entrance. 

  "When was the last time you ate something, Scully?" Mulder demanded 
of her, and she looked up at him in exasperation. He was still wearing 
his overcoat, and by the creases in it, she assumed that he'd liberated 
it from one of their storage lockers. He looked tired, but he was wide 
awake with fear and worry, the energy practically snapping off of him. 

  She started to say "I'm fine," but stopped herself before she 
actually uttered it. Casual white lies between them had done nothing 
but create more problems over their years of partnership. "I've been 
too worried to eat," she said levelly.

  Mulder looked startled, but dropped to his knees next to the bed. She 
thought that he might touch her again, and she tried to will herself 
not to flinch this time. "I'm sorry, Scully," he said sincerely, "I 
really am, and I can explain everything, but …" He stopped waving his 
hands around and ran them hard through his own hair.

  Hannah. The little girl had moved away to the end of the bed and was 
staring at them with a very worried expression on her face. She looked 
to be about four, or maybe five years old, with a mop of auburn hair 
that spilled over her shoulders in loose curls. Her eyes were dark 
blue, much darker than Dana's own. She bore a resemblance to Emily, but 
was clearly not her clone. 

  "Can I introduce you to someone?" Mulder asked, "Please?" He radiated 
anxiety and tension.

  Scully stared at him and tried to get her voice to work, but nodded 
instead, eating a bit more of the candy bar. 

  Mulder stood up, taking off his overcoat and spreading it over her 
before he turned and smiled at the child standing warily at the end of 
the bed, looking from him to Scully with measured curiousity.

  "Hannah banana," Mulder said, and the child tucked her chin down and 
looked up at Mulder. He took a long step and then crouched down beside 
her in a catcher's pose. "Hannah banana," he said again, drawing her 
name out until she giggled. "Can I introduce you to someone?" He asked 
her formally. 

  Hannah didn't answer, but stepped into the vee of Mulder's legs, 
leaning against him, peeking at Scully shyly from underneath her hair. 

  Mulder gave her a squeeze. "Hannah, this is my friend Dana Scully."

  Hannah just stared at Scully, but didn't say a word.

  "Do you remember that I told you that my friend Dana might be shocked 
to see you?" he asked her.

  Hannah nodded, her eyes never leaving Scully, "Because I look like 
her little girl who died," she whispered, as Scully's heart 
constricted.

  "Yes," Mulder said and squeezed her fondly, "you do." 

  "But…" Hannah whispered, turning her head into Mulder's shoulder, 
"she seems really mad at me." 

  "Oh no," Mulder said, "she's not mad at you, Hannah." He tipped her 
face up so she could see him, and wrinkled his nose and made a funny 
face. "She's mad at me."

  "Mulder," Scully protested in shock, sitting up as his rumpled 
overcoat slid into her lap. "I was just very surprised." 

  Mulder jumped to her side as she swung her legs over the edge of the 
bed, "I'm fine," she said to him, "Really." She drew in a deep breath. 
"Hello, Hannah," she said.

  "Hello," Hannah said quietly, worrying the material of her nightgown 
over her belly. She stood half-hidden behind Mulder. 

  "It's very nice to meet you," Scully said, feeling absurd, but 
extending her hand, as if this were normal, meeting what was most 
likely her daughter this way. 

  Hannah stared at Scully's hand and then looked at Mulder, who had 
returned to his crouch at her side. He nodded at her. Hannah's ready 
acceptance of Mulder stung just a little bit more than Scully would 
have liked to admit, but Hannah stepped forward and put her hand into 
Scully's and shook it briefly, then stepped back and looked at Mulder 
again before she turned and said to Scully, "Are you my mother, too? 
'Cause I don't have a real mom." 

  Mulder answered before she could do more than gape at the child. "We 
don't know who your mom is, Hannah," Mulder said carefully, smoothing 
the hair back from the child's face. "But we're going to try and find 
out, OK?"

  "OK," Hannah whispered, and peeked at Scully again, before she turned 
back and addressed Mulder. "I'd like to have a mom and dad," she said, 
and her sincere, innocent tone pierced Scully's heart. She couldn't 
quite stifle the gasp that followed Hannah's words, so she tried to 
cover by grabbing the glass of water and sipping it.

  "I had a little chocolate stuck," she said weakly.

  "You should put your arms up over your head," Hannah said seriously, 
"that's what Mulder told me to do when I ate the cake too fast and I 
choked." She continued on in a rush, not even waiting for Scully's 
response. "Have you had chocolate cake? I never had it before, but it 
was so good that I just wanted to eat all of it right away. I think I 
should have chocolate cake with every meal, for … " she searched for 
the word, turning to Mulder, "what was that word?"

  "Dessert," Mulder said quietly. "Dessert is the sweet stuff that you 
get after you eat all your vegetables."

  "You don't like broccoli very much," Hannah accused and Scully's 
eyebrow rose. 

  "But, I ate it," Mulder said lightly, "and then I could have my 
dessert."

  "It was sweet potato pie," Hannah told Scully, "I didn't like that at 
all. I'd rather have the chocolate cake."

  "Oh," Scully said, nodding. "Have you eaten a lot of dessert with 
Mulder?"

  "After every meal," Hannah said, "since he came and took me from the 
hospital."

  Scully sucked in a sharp breath, but tried to keep her voice level. 
"Were you sick, Hannah?" 

  "I don't know," she answered, reaching over Mulder's arm to pick up a 
striped tiger from the bed. Scully glanced at the bed and saw that the 
toy had several companions, all equally new-looking. "I lived there."

  "Do you know what being sick means?" Scully asked Hannah, curiously.

  "Mulder said it's when you don't feel good," Hannah said, "like being 
tired during the day, and needing to sleep all the time, or when your 
stomach hurts or your head does, but that didn't happen to me. 
Sometimes when they'd give me the shots it would hurt for a long time, 
and then sometimes they made me very sleepy but I don't think that's 
the same thing. Is it?" She asked Mulder. 

  "I don't know, Hannah," Mulder said easily, making a stuffed 
rhinoceros lumber over to the child while she giggled. 

  He seemed about to say something else when Hannah continued, "Are we 
going to have breakfast now, 'cause I'm hungry." 

  Mulder looked at Scully appraisingly, and then said, "Maybe we should 
go out and buy some breakfast while Scully takes a nap." 

  Hannah shrieked with joy and ran across the room.

  "Mulder, no," she answered, still sitting on the bed's edge. "I just 
need to go to the bathroom and freshen up and I'll be fine."

  Mulder looked dubious at this pronouncement. "We've got another long 
drive ahead of us, Scully," he said, "I think it would be better if you 
stretch out and get some real sleep before we have to get on the road. 
We can bring you something back."

  Hannah was already busily digging into a new-looking "Blue's Clues" 
suitcase. The thought of going outside with the child seemed more 
exhausting than staying here and being left out of whatever was going 
on. She glanced at Mulder to find him studying her again, and she 
sighed. She wasn't going to get any answers out of him any time soon, 
anyway. 

  "Coffee, Mulder," she ordered, "lots of it, and some bottled water." 
She walked to the bathroom door and closed it, resting her aching head 
against the cool wood. It wasn't thick enough to block out the small 
voice from the other room, the one that signaled that nothing was going 
to be the same. Again.

  "And waffles!" Hannah exclaimed. "I like waffles!"

~*~

  By the time Mulder and Hannah left the room, she was already close to 
sleeping, watching from under her eyelids. She supposed that she must 
have dozed during part of the time that she was watching them get 
ready, only half-remembering Mulder patiently negotiating with Hannah 
about appropriately warm clothing. And surely, she must have been 
dreaming Mulder awkwardly but gently brushing Hannah's hair while she 
chattered away, waving a hairband around in the air. 

  But if she had been dreaming, it didn't explain why it was that 
Hannah was wearing that hairband, hours later, while she rode in the 
back seat of Mulder's rental as he led them to where they'd return her 
own rental. She had slept for a couple of hours, but instead of feeling 
refreshed, the sleep had left her muzzy-headed and lost, wondering if 
she was still dreaming, wondering when she'd wake up in her own bed in 
Georgetown, still waiting for the phone to ring. 

  From one car length away, she caught sight of Mulder watching her in 
his rear view mirror while they waited for the light to signal all-
clear for left hand turns. She supposed that she should smile 
reassuringly, or wave, or do something to acknowledge his concern, but 
she was too weary to do anything more than stare straight ahead. She 
could barely focus on anything more than just following Mulder's car 
mechanically, trying to puzzle out what in the name of hell was going 
on, where they were going, and to what purpose. It was all so 
exhausting that she couldn't even think about it, and found her mind 
occupied with mundanities instead.

  For example, Mulder had put the hairband too far forward on Hannah's 
head, and he hadn't caught the hair underneath it on both sides, so 
only one side was turned back. As much as it bothered Scully to look at 
it, she had successfully resisted the urge to adjust it. She hadn't 
touched Hannah except for that once when she'd held her small hand for 
a few seconds, and even though her palms itched with the desire to fix 
her hair, or to adjust the waistband of Hannah's stretchy pants where 
it had rolled over upon itself, she hadn't done it. If she touched 
Hannah, she'd be confronted with the physical evidence, the bodily 
solidity, of what might actually be happening. For now, she was much 
more content with just letting that potential reality slide right on by 
her.

  She wondered why it was that she never let herself think about the 
fact that there might be more of them, more children like Emily. It's 
not like she needed to be told that the potential for more existed, 
what with the harvesting of hundreds of her ova. But she also knew that 
she excelled at not thinking about things, purposefully avoiding that 
which was too painful or disturbing. She'd spent years pushing away the 
dim memories of her gruesomely distended belly, and other nightmare 
images. She'd convinced herself that they were the result of reading 
too many of Mulder's files, or Magic Bullet hypotheses seeping 
into her subconscious until a year ago, when Emily had appeared. Now 
that she's no longer sure that those images weren't just the result of 
fevered imaginings, she had no idea what it all meant. Did she bear 
something – not a baby, certainly – but something foreign and 
horrendous during the three months that she was gone? 

  She turned the corner behind Mulder, watching the silent movie 
interplay between him and Hannah as they talked in the car ahead of 
her. Hannah had already picked up some of Mulder's mannerisms, her head 
and hand movement aping his as she spoke soundlessly. Whatever she said 
had made him laugh, and Scully watched his eyes crinkle warmly in the 
rear view mirror, only half-thinking about more things that she wanted 
to forget. She had been so bloated and heavy when she'd been returned 
from her abduction, and hormonally, she was a mess. She'd had her 
period for three weeks after being returned, which her gynecologist had 
attributed to the stress of what had happened to her. No thought was 
given to the fact that it might have been post-partum bleeding, as she 
hadn't been gone long enough to have given birth. Her rape kit had been 
negative, as well, which wasn't too surprising, as there was barely any 
physical evidence of what had been done to her, aside from the 
bloating, branched DNA and her never-ending period. 

  Besides, it wasn't as if it hadn't happened before, which made it 
easier for her to write-off as a result of stress. Back when she'd been 
in med school, she'd once bled for an entire exam period, spotting 
every day after the heavier flow of her period had ended, ultimately 
bleeding for almost a month. Her then-gynecologist had believed that 
her body wasn't ramping up to produce enough FSH to start the ovulatory 
cycle over again, and had urged her to go on the pill to regulate 
herself. 

  She'd stayed on the pill for years, until the chemotherapy had 
required her to come off of it. It's not like she was trying to prevent 
a pregnancy anyway, and if she survived the cancer, she was likely to 
be forced into perimenopause by the effects of the chemotherapy and 
radiation. At a certain point during her illness, she'd lost so much 
weight that her periods had stopped entirely. 

  She'd spent considerable time wondering what to do about her hormones 
after she'd recovered from the cancer. She knew that having had cancer 
once, even if it had been provoked by the removal of her implant, 
adding extraneous hormones to the chemical mix of her body could have 
disastrous results, even if her cancer hadn't been hormonally based. 
But the idea of being menopausal at 34 was a little hard to accept. 
Then, of course, there was the implant, and its unknown effects upon 
her. She wondered now if its presence was responsible for her periods 
starting again after she'd regained most of the lost weight. Three 
months was all it took for her to cycle again, and this time, her 
previously erratic period was as regulated as it had been when she had 
been on the pill, starting precisely on a Wednesday, and ending the 
following Saturday. Her gynecologist had wanted her to have her blood 
drawn every few days for a menstrual cycle to chart her hormonal 
levels, but she'd demurred, saying that she wasn't expecting to start a 
family any time soon, and so didn't see the necessity. The truth was 
that she hadn't wanted to know what was going on. 

  She pulled into the busy car rental lot at the small local airport in 
Columbus, OH and returned the car, waiting outside in the cold air for 
the shuttle to take her to the airport. Once there, she got off at the 
main terminal and walked in the door, only doubling back to meet Mulder 
and Hannah after she'd changed her coat and put on a wig in the 
bathroom. Her bag, which she'd been carrying by a long strap, was now 
wheeled behind her as she exited the terminal and walked in the 
direction of ground transportation. Mulder pulled up and popped the 
trunk, and she put her bag in it. He was wearing a short-brimmed all 
weather hat that was remarkably hideous, and large, concealing 
sunglasses. When she got in the car, Hannah was dozing in the backseat, 
her kingdom of stuffed animals spread out around her. She roused a 
little when Scully closed the door, but dropped back off to sleep 
before they exited the airport.

  She raised an eyebrow at Mulder, surprised that Hannah was sleeping 
in the middle of the day, but Mulder just smiled.

  "Car coma," he said quietly. "Didn't you used to pass out on long car 
rides?"

  She smiled briefly, and buckled her seat belt. He knew very well that 
she often fell asleep in cars. It was one of his main excuses for doing 
the lion's share of the driving. "Where are we going, Mulder?"

  "Near Rochester, Minnesota," he answered. 

  She knew it was useless to press him for more information with Hannah 
in the car and likely to wake up, so she nodded and turned her head to 
look out the window at the grey landscape. The Mayo Clinic, she 
thought, and let the rushing images outside her window blur into 
nothingness. Despite the uncertainty facing her, knowing that Mulder 
was here with her allowed the tension to leave her body, and she let 
the world outside fade away, as the song of the wheels against the 
pavement lulled her to sleep. 

~*~

  It was full dark by the time they got to the motel in Springfield, 
Illinois where they'd be bunking for the night. Mulder had grinned at 
her raised eyebrow and she rolled her eyes in answer. He'd been trying 
to get them to come to this town for years. Despite the number of 
Springfields throughout the United States, Mulder maintained that this 
small city was the home of the fictional Simpsons, a longtime favorite 
of his. "Land of Lincoln, Scully," Mulder said, getting out of the car. 
"It's educational." She yawned and stretched as she stepped out of the 
car, but otherwise ignored him.

  The recipient of said educational benefits didn't seem in the least 
interested. "Are we finally there yet?" 

  "Yes, we are," Mulder said, scooping her up out of her car seat. 
"Now, what do you say about going in and putting our stuff away, and 
then …" Mulder drew out his voice as Hannah pouted. He turned 
dramatically and pointed across the street to a small park with swing 
sets and other kid paraphernalia. "We go play for a while."

  "Can we?" Hannah asked with shining eyes. 

  Scully felt herself frowning, even though she recognized that Hannah 
had been cooped up in the car all day long. "Mulder," she warned, "it's 
awfully dark and cold."

  "We won't stay out long," Mulder said, "just long enough to get some 
fresh air. Right, Hannah?"

  Hannah had clambered down from Mulder's arms and was gathering all of 
her stuffed animals. "Right," she answered, then looked at Scully. 
"Please …" she pleaded, "I loved the swings when Mulder took me on them 
before." 

  Scully felt her heart constrict at the idea that this child had never 
played outside until Mulder had stolen her from wherever he'd found her 
in the first place. "OK," she said softly, "but just for a little 
while."

  "Yay!" Hannah said brightly, flinging her hippo in the air. Mulder 
laughed and caught it, then cheered with her, gathering all of their 
things and opening the door to the small, clean room in front of their 
car. 

  Scully walked in behind them and looked at the two double beds and 
the ubiquitous pressboard bureau and TV stand, then closed the door to 
reveal a small café table that stood between two hard plastic chairs. 
She put her laptop from home on it carefully. The Gunmen had assured 
her that they'd made it impenetrable to malevolent sources, but it had 
been an act of faith for her to stow it in the bottom of her shopping 
bag. 

  "Wear a hat," Scully instructed Hannah as she began pestering Mulder 
about going out again, before he'd done much more than heave their bags 
onto the luggage racks at the ends of the beds. 

  "Oh," Hannah said, her face crumpling, "do I have to?"

  "Yes," Mulder answered mildly, "remember what we talked about?"

  Hannah pouted and dug into her suitcase, pulling out a knit cap with 
an orange pompom that clashed violently with her hair. 

  Scully pursed her lips against the laugh that was struggling to come 
out. "We'll buy you a new hat tomorrow, Hannah," she promised, ignoring 
Mulder's offended 'hey' at Hannah's look of relief. "I'll let you help 
me pick it out, OK?" She had turned away to open up her suitcase, so 
she couldn't help the start of surprise when she felt Hannah press 
against her legs, briefly hugging her. "Oh," she said, reaching down to 
push Hannah's hair back with one hand awkwardly. "You should take your 
hairband off before you put the hat on," she said in a flustered tone, 
"it'll hurt if you don't."

  "OK," Hannah said agreeably, handing the hairband to Scully. "Are you 
ready to go, Mulder?" she asked plaintively, jamming on her silly hat. 

  Mulder cleared his throat before speaking, but his voice was thick 
with emotion. "Just let me take my tie off," he said. 

  From the corner of her eye, Scully could see his discarded suitcoat 
laying on the open case at the foot of the other bed. She could feel 
his pointed regard of her, but she couldn't raise her eyes to his, no 
matter how hard she tried. Instead, she found her eyes fixated on the 
slim gold band on the third finger of his left hand. Her breath caught 
painfully at the sight and she felt herself flush, and turned away from 
Mulder to hide it.

  She heard him cross the room to the door and tell Hannah to wait on 
the motel sidewalk for him. "Scully," he said quietly. He had a clear 
view of her now, and she wouldn't turn around again so as not to face 
him. She wasn't that much of a coward.

  'I'm fine,' she wanted to say to him. 'I'm just fine.' The words, 
usually the first to come to the fore in speech for her, would not 
come. She raised her eyes to Mulder's, but dropped them almost 
immediately at the nakedness she saw in his glance. 

  "Why don't you come with us?" he asked. "The fresh air might do you 
some good."

  She opened her mouth, but her head was already shaking 'no'. "I'm 
going to take a bath," she said, but in her head she was pleading with 
him to understand as she raised her eyes to look at him again, afraid 
of the pity that she might see in his gaze. Mulder's expression was 
full of sorrow, but she could feel his compassion as he regarded her 
for the measure of a few heartbeats. 

  "We won't be long," he said. "I'll take first watch." Part of her 
wanted to snap out of her stasis, to move her leaden limbs toward him 
and seek the solace in his arms that she knew he was offering, but she 
was frozen in her grief and fear, unable to break out of the silence 
that had fallen between them for the past few weeks. 

  She nodded in mute frustration, and as he waited, still watching her. 
When he moved, it was to step gracefully backward through the open 
door. He pulled it closed, watching her until she couldn't see him 
anymore. Hannah's excited chatter was muffled as they moved away.

  She crossed over to the window and watched Hannah dancing around 
Mulder as they moved across the parking lot, his dark overcoat 
billowing around his legs in time with his long strides. He was 
laughing as he scooped Hannah up and swung her over a pile of snow to 
stand on the sidewalk, letting her press the button to get the walk 
signal. He held her hand as they waited. She was gesturing with one 
mitten-clad hand, and bouncing up and down with excitement. Halfway 
across the street, they slipped into shadows and she was surprised to 
find herself straining to see them, hands against the cold glass. She 
drew back in surprise as the stones on her left hand glittered in the 
room's light. 

  When they'd stopped for their last gas and bathroom run before 
getting to Springfield for the night, he'd stopped her before she got 
out of the car. Hannah was dozing in the backseat again, and Mulder 
kept his voice low. "I thought we'd have some time this morning to talk 
by ourselves, but it didn't work out that way." He pulled a small box 
out of his pocket. He sighed. "It'll be easier for us to pass as a 
family if we look more the part." 

  He opened the velvet box. Inside it was a thin platinum band crusted 
with diamonds, and a matching old-fashioned looking square-cut diamond 
surrounded by smaller stones that diminished into a trail of diamonds 
around the band. She knew that she was staring at him with her mouth 
hanging open. "Please, Scully?" His voice was quiet, but there was no 
mistaking the tone. Fox Mulder was begging her to play along. "I 
promise that I'll explain when Hannah's asleep for the night. Can you 
just trust me for now?"

  Her eyes were heavy with tears when she reached for the band, and her 
fingers trembled as she slid it on. It was a perfect fit. She stared at 
it for a minute, starting when the diamond ring appeared in her line of 
vision. She could see that Mulder wanted to put it on her, but he had 
hesitated to touch her since she had flinched away from him earlier. 
She extended her finger, and he slid it gently down past the first 
joint, careful not to touch her. His care made the situation even 
worse. When she went to move the ring the rest of the way down, he 
withdrew his hand swiftly. If she hadn't known better, she'd think that 
he'd done so to wipe at his own eyes. She wasn't sure what he had to 
cry about, although her eyes were filled with tears. This whole 
situation was just so wrong, almost like a mockery of what might have 
been. 

  When Mulder went out to put gas in the car she blew her nose and 
wiped her tears, watching him move around at the pump. It was only then 
that she noticed that he'd conjured up a gold band for himself from 
somewhere and put it on. At the diner later on, they'd looked the 
perfect family, with Hannah enthusiastically calling Mulder 'Daddy' 
every chance she'd gotten. She had yet to once call Scully 'Mom'.

  Dana Scully looked at the rings sparkling in the cheap light of their 
motel room. Were they real? Or were they just another part of the roles 
they were playing: Mommy, Daddy and Hannah makes three. The tears were 
hot beneath her eyelids again when she pulled the curtains closed and 
went to turn the taps on in the bathroom and then to collect her 
things. Although she could have taken the rings off, now that she was 
securely in the room for the night, she did not. 

 She didn't think about what that meant, or allow herself to dwell on 
why exactly it was that she fought back her tears in the too-small 
motel tub.   

~*~

  It was the little things that were wearing her down, chipping away at 
her resistance bit by bit. She'd seen a man creating an ice sculpture 
once, and she was amazed at how he coaxed the shape of the mermaid out 
of the square mass of the ice in front of him. Mulder was working on 
her bit by bit, pulling her into this world he was creating with 
Hannah. He was doing it by making it clear that she was free to join 
in, but that she needn't feel obligated. If she'd asked, she was sure 
that Hannah would have told her that Mulder was paying attention to her 
every move, and it's true, he was. But he was eminently capable of 
paying attention to more than one thing at a time, as he proved when he 
was helping Hannah get ready to take her shower. Scully had booted up 
her laptop to compose a brief message to the Gunmen from one of her 
anonymous e-mail accounts, and was waiting for the dial-up connection 
to the internet to be verified. Once again, she was treated to the 
sight of Mulder with a hairbrush as he patiently brushed the mass of 
Hannah's hair into some sort of order, before inexpertly trying to 
smush it atop her head to be held by the too large shower cap. In so 
doing, he positioned Hannah so that Scully had a perfect view of the 
unmarred nape of her neck and the top of her spine. She felt some of 
the tension in her body ease at the sight, as an unaware Hannah giggled 
at Mulder's inefficient attempts to get her hair into the shower cap. 

  While he was brushing her hair, Mulder told Hannah that he used to 
brush his little sister's hair. "It was really curly," he told her, 
"and it would get tangled really easily. Sometimes my mom would get a 
little impatient with the knots and the snarls …"

  "But you never did," Hannah finished triumphantly.

  "Well," Mulder shrugged, "that's not exactly true. I tried not to 
hurt her as much as I could, but sometimes I did anyway."

  Scully's hands stilled on the keyboard; she could feel the weight of 
Mulder's gaze upon her. She kept her eyes on the blinking cursor for as 
long as she could, but when Hannah asked Mulder a question about the 
playground, thought it was safe to raise her eyes. Mulder's hands were 
trying to stuff Hannah's hair under the cap again, but he would have 
been doing a better job of it if he hadn't been watching her instead of 
what he was doing. She felt the ghost of a smile come over her face at 
the intensity of his expression. It was unorthodox and not nearly 
enough, but she knew an apology when she heard it. 

  The moment was broken when Hannah's hair tumbled out of the cap 
again, and Mulder stifled an oath. "Oh, shi – oot!" he said, lamely.

  "Hannah," Scully said, not breaking eye contact with Mulder. "Let me 
see if I can do it, OK?"

  Hannah was surprised but trotted over to Scully easily. She brushed 
Hannah's hair, finding it free of all tangles, then scooped it into her 
hand, making a ponytail which she twisted up onto the back of Hannah's 
head. Holding it there, she put the shower cap on back-to-front and 
tucked the excess elastic over onto itself. It was a quick fix, but it 
would probably hold for a shower. "Are you sure that you can wash 
yourself?" she asked Hannah, trying to sound kind, rather than brisk.

  Hannah shrugged. "I always took a shower at the hospital," she said. 
"But my hair would always get wet." She patted her cap. "Thanks."

  Scully smiled at her, but noted that Hannah had yet to call her by 
any name, not just 'Mom'. She sighed and went back to her e-mail. It's 
not that she wanted Hannah to call her mother exactly, but if she was 
her mother … She pushed the thought away, and then went on to surf the 
day's news while she waited to see if there would be a response from 
the Gunmen. With Hannah in the bathroom showering, the room was 
suddenly very quiet. She felt herself tense up again.

  "Scully," he said, "I went back to the Gunmen's after that day."

  She nodded, raising her eyes to his. 

  "Some of the files that they had led me in some interesting 
directions."

  "Obviously," she said dryly.

  "I didn't really know what I was going to find," he said.
 
  "But then you found Hannah," she said.

  "I found Dr. Scanlon," he said quietly. 

  She jerked at the mention of Scanlon's name, but her mind was racing, 
thinking back to the bruises on Mulder's hands. There must have been 
some sort of struggle.

  "He got away." She stated this far more calmly than she felt.

  Mulder sighed. "The cavalry arrived. I was tracking him when I found 
Hannah in the back room of another clinic." He continued off her 
quizzical look. "They called it a hospital. Scully –" he broke off. 
"Hannah remembers other children being with her at the hospital."

  Scully broke away from his gaze and walked over to the window, 
pulling the curtain back to look at the featureless parking lot 
blindly. "How many?"

  Mulder was silent behind her in the room. She looked over her 
shoulder and saw him hunched over on the side of the bed, staring at 
his feet, still clad in their wingtips. He was clenching the muscle in 
his jaw. 

  "How many, Mulder?"

  "I don't know," he said. 

  She made a dismissive noise.

  "I don't, Scully." He stood up and took a step toward her, then 
halted. "I thought I was breaking into a records room, with files about 
one of their secret projects. I had no idea that there would be a child 
in the room." He ran his hands through his hair and began pacing in the 
small space. "They left her in there alone at night, with the TV on for 
company."

  "Alone?" Scully asked, and then wondered why she was so shocked.

  "She was monitored," he said, "but not well. The alarms didn't sound 
until after I left the room with her. We were almost out the door when 
the security guard came after us." He turned toward Scully. "I couldn't 
leave her there all alone, in that room with those empty beds." He 
stopped at a noise coming from the bathroom, and walked to the door. 
"Hannah? Are you OK in there?" he called. 

  "I'm all done," she said. 

  "How many empty beds, Mulder?" She asked. Her voice was rough with 
exhaustion. 

  "Three," he answered as Hannah came out the door. Her nightgown was 
buttoned wrong, and her hair was damp around the edges. 

  "Can you help me with the toothpaste?" She asked Mulder. 

  "Sure, honey," he answered, pulling off the cap, and crouching down 
to fix her buttons. "Did you clean behind your ears?" He checked behind 
them, making her giggle.

  "How would I get dirty behind my ears?" she asked Mulder. It was 
clear that she found him extremely silly. 

  "It could happen," Mulder said.

  "How?" she demanded, raising an eyebrow.

  "Maybe when you were on the seesaw," Mulder said easily, moving her 
into the bathroom, "you kicked up some dirt and it landed right behind 
your ears."

  "That couldn't happen," Hannah said, skeptically. "It would be all 
over my head!" 

  "Oh, you think so, do you?" Mulder asked, handing her the brush. 

  "Yes," Hannah argued, brushing and talking at the same time.

  "Less talking, more brushing," Mulder said. "Maybe there's some of 
that dirt on your back teeth."

  Hannah's protest was garbled.

  "Mad dog!" Mulder said, wiping off some of the froth as Scully 
watched. "Here, go over the sink so you won't get it all over the 
floor." He lifted her up to reach.

  Scully could feel herself smiling, but her chest felt unbearably 
tight. Behind her, she heard the chime of incoming e-mail and dragged 
herself away from the vision of a life that wasn't really hers to hard 
cold reality. Frohike's encoded note was terse, but reassuring. They'd 
watch all channels at the bureau and let her know when the alarm was 
raised at their disappearances. He gave instructions, encrypted of 
course, as to where and how to contact him next. She was surprised that 
the e-mail didn't self destruct after thirty seconds. 

  Hannah came out of the bathroom and hovered near the table. She could 
hear Mulder grumbling in the bathroom about all of the puddles left on 
the floor and wondered if there would be any dry towels for the 
morning.

  "G'night," Hannah said very quietly.

  "Good night, Hannah," Scully said. She stood up and held out her hand 
to Hannah. She could see that Hannah was surprised and unsure, so 
Scully took her hand and led her to the bed, pulling back the covers. 
"Who do you want to come in with you?" Scully asked, patting the bed so 
that Hannah would get in.

  "My tiger," Hannah whispered. 

  Scully handed her the tiger, and crossing to the other side of the 
bed, lined up all Hannah's stuffed animals, tucking them under the 
covers. When she finished, she returned to Hannah's side, smoothing the 
covers over her. "There you go," she said, "now all of your friends are 
tucked in with you." 

  "Thanks," Hannah said, smiling shyly. 

  "You're welcome," Scully said, smoothing the hair back from Hannah's 
forehead. She really was a beautiful little girl, and Scully ached to 
think of her having been so alone in such a place. It didn't matter 
whose child she was – no child deserved such a life. "Do you want me to 
leave the light on?" She asked Hannah, indicating the lamp over her 
bed. 

  "Off," Hannah whispered, "but …" she hesitated. "Could you put the TV 
set on?" she asked. "I always sleep with it on."  Her face was worried, 
as if Scully might deny her that one comfort. 

  "Sure," she said lightly. Leaning forward, she whispered 
conspiratorially to Hannah. "Mulder can't sleep without the TV set on, 
either."

  Hannah's eyes shone. "Really?" 

  "Really," Scully answered, and then surprised both of them by kissing 
Hannah on the forehead. "Go to sleep, Hannah." 

  She stood up and walked over to the TV set. In the reflection of the 
bureau mirror, she could see Fox Mulder standing in the bathroom door, 
gripping a damp towel in his hands and watching her with an anguished 
expression on his face. She switched on the TV and found a re-run of an 
old sitcom. Turning the sound down low, she sat back down at the table 
and determinedly began to surf the net. 

 ~*~

  Mulder was dozing when she came out of the bathroom, but he stirred 
when she swung the door nearly closed, leaving enough light seeping out 
for Hannah to see where the bathroom was if she woke in the night. When 
her eyes had adjusted to the dimmer light, she could see Mulder's cat's 
eyes glittering from underneath long lashes via the reflected strobing 
of the TV. He was lying on the bed in seeming repose, eyes mostly 
closed, ankles crossed, sleeves rolled up. He'd look relaxed if not for 
the fact that he was atop the covers with his shoes and belt still on, 
not to mention the implied menace of the loaded SIG Sauer close to his 
right hand. As she went around the room, making sure the curtains were 
drawn and shutting off the light on the bureau, Scully could see the 
gun in his ankle holster where his pants had ridden up. 

  He turned his head toward her when crept up between the two beds to 
check on Hannah, her silk pajamas making a gentle noise as they rubbed 
together in the near silence. Mulder had muted the sound of the TV set 
and turned on the closed captioning so that he could listen for any 
outside disturbances. He was lying on the right side of the bed that 
had the clearest shot at the door; Hannah was on her side facing him, 
across the small space that separated their two beds. She smoothed the 
covers up under Hannah's chin, then froze when Hannah stirred, mumbling 
something before she returned to sleep.

  When Hannah had completely stilled, she crept away from the bed and 
went back around to the empty side of Mulder's bed, and opened the 
bathroom door a bit more. Then she pulled her service weapon from the 
waistband of her pajamas and placed it on the bedside table, feeling 
Mulder jerk with surprise when she pulled the covers down to slide 
under them. 

  "Scully?" he asked.

  "What?" she answered quietly, wondering what he would say. She knew 
that he'd expected her to sleep with Hannah.

  He was quiet as she settled down, turning on her side so that she 
could see Hannah sleeping. Her stuffed tiger was clutched tightly to 
her chest, and if Scully squinted, she could see the REM movements 
behind her eyelids over the rapid rise and fall of Mulder's chest as he 
lay next to her, puzzled and wary. She raised her eyes to find him 
studying her.

  "What?" she asked again.

  "Are you all right?" he asked her. His concern was sincere, and she 
knew his question wasn't about her sudden decision to share a bed with 
him. 

  Her gaze returned to Hannah's face. Now that the child was asleep, 
she could look at her with abandon, analyzing how exactly it was that 
she resembled, or didn't resemble, Emily. Hannah's hair was darker and 
far more thick than Emily's had been, and unlike Emily's stick straight 
strawberry blonde hair, it was a mass of heavy waves. Emily's face 
might have been very much like the childhood version of Melissa's, but 
Hannah's hair, from its coloring to its texture, was very much 
Melissa's. Hannah's face was longer than Emily's had been, the line of 
her chin not as sharply defined in its oval shape. And her eyes, with 
their long dark lashes and deep blue color, were nothing like the 
typical Scully blue eyes. She watched Hannah over Mulder's chest, 
noting that his respiration had decreased as his surprise at her 
presence faded.

  "I don't know, Mulder," she answered. "I don't know how to answer 
that question."

  She shifted under the covers and Mulder's left hand came up off them 
to let her maneuver more easily. She stared at his ring for a moment, 
and then asked the question she wanted answered, rather than the one 
that he expected her to ask.

  "Where did your ring come from, Mulder?" 

  "I had it in the box with the other ones," he answered her.

  She looked up at him sharply, wondering if his inability to give her 
a straight answer was due to his hiding something or if it was just a 
habit. Were these his rings? She stared at her hand, wondering if the 
rings she was wearing had been meant for some other woman. The idea 
that she might be wearing a ring he'd bought for Diana Fowley made her 
feel distinctly ill. 

  "That's not what I meant, Mulder," she said shortly. 

  He looked at her for a moment, his head turned on the pillow. He held 
up his hand. "Technically, I guess the ring is mine," he finally said.

  She raised an eyebrow at him, but said nothing, hoping that he would 
expand upon his answer.

  "This is not a happy story, Scully," he warned her. "Do you really 
want to hear this now?"

  "I wouldn't have asked if I didn't want to know the answer, Mulder," 
she challenged him.

  He sighed, and turned his head away from her. The room fell to quiet, 
and Mulder's profile was lit by the blue fluorescence of the TV screen, 
as he stared at the ceiling. 

  "I had one really good friend at the Academy," he began. "Dean was 
just …" He sighed and stopped again. "He was just a good guy. Everyone 
liked him, but he was my friend." Mulder paused. "Even after the whole 
Monty Propps thing happened and Patterson – he never treated me any 
differently. He was curious about how I figured things out, but that 
was more because he was trying to understand my process."

  He was quiet for a minute, looking at the ring. "You know, maybe it 
was because we weren't competitors," he said. "Dean was brilliant, but 
not interested in the BSU, much to Patterson's chagrin." He looked over 
at her. "He was interested in bank robberies, or maybe organized crime, 
you know?"

  "Ah," Scully said, having met the type in her day. "The real G-Men."

  "Yep," Mulder said, spinning the ring on his finger. "Yep. I went to 
BSU and he went to the BRTF. We played basketball, we swam. He had a 
girlfriend from college, a nice girlfriend," he felt compelled to point 
out, "that he asked to marry him when we were two years out of the 
Academy."

  "What was her name?" Scully asked.

  "Her name is Lindsay," Mulder answered. "She said yes. Dean asked me 
to be the best man."

  Scully had foreseen the end of the story since Mulder had started 
talking. He'd never mentioned a friend named Dean, and she was sure 
that she would have met him at some point in the past six years. "The 
wedding was two weeks away when he was killed." He rubbed his brow as 
if he had a headache. "Bank robbery bust gone bad. The SAC fucked it up 
royally, and Dean got a bullet under his arm."

  Scully could picture the injury, had seen what would happen when the 
bullet circumvented the protection of the vest. 

  "I'm sorry, Mulder," she said quietly. 

  "He'd already given me the rings," he said. "Lindsay told me to keep 
his. I don't think she could face having it, and not him." The stark 
statement broke her heart. He was quiet for a few moments, then said, 
"I was so angry after Dean died. Not only was it a bad bust, but the 
guys they did catch weren't the ones running the show. These guys were 
organized, intelligent – everything the perps they busted weren't." 

  She nodded, listening. "You found them."

  "Oh yes, I did," Mulder said, and although his voice was light, there 
was an edge in it that was uncompromisingly hard. "I put on Dean's 
ring, and I put my head down and it didn't matter what Patterson threw 
at me, it didn't matter that it wasn't my case, I found them all."

  "What do you mean?" Scully asked.

  "It was a ring," Mulder said, "ironically enough. They'd been running 
bank robberies for years, getting more and more sophisticated. Money-
laundering, funds trading, the whole nine yards. It was an 
international operation. When I ran out of Americans, I kept going and 
turned the case over to Interpol. It took me well over a year, between 
cases for Patterson, to do it all. I wore this ring that whole time."

  "That must have gotten a few comments," Scully remarked.

  "So I was told," Mulder said, "later. At the time, if I heard any 
cracks I just ignored them. None of those guys were worth a damn 
anyway, not compared to Dean. When I couldn't do anymore to break the 
ring, I focused on the SAC who fucked up the bust. Lindsay's father was 
more than happy to help."

  "Lindsay's father?" She asked.

  "Senator Matheson," Mulder answered shortly. "Of course, he knew my 
father too, so that helped."

  Pieces of Mulder's history were reforming themselves in Scully's 
imagination. "How's Lindsay?" she asked.

  Mulder shrugged. "Still single," he answered. "She adopted a baby 
girl from Guatemala last year. She seems happier."

  Scully felt a twinge of something -- jealousy or identification -- or 
both.

  "Do you see a lot of her?" 

  Mulder shook his head. "I haven't seen her in years," he said. "I get 
the occasional e-mail, a card at the holidays. We talk every year on 
the anniversary of Dean's death. She moved out to California about a 
year after I got the X-Files."

  Scully couldn't help the next question. "So, she met Agent Fowley?"

  "You could say that," Mulder answered grimly. He was silent for a 
minute, then turned his head to look at her again. "They didn't get 
along."

  'Imagine that,' Scully thought, although all she said was, "Oh?"

  Mulder was looking at her levelly. "I know that you don't like Diana, 
Scully," he said. "Lindsay didn't either." He thought for a minute. 
"Well, she didn't trust her. But Diana was my partner at a critical 
point in my life. I was pretty lost." He was watching her, gauging her 
reaction. "I was drinking a lot, too much for a man with my family 
history, and I was smoking constantly. I didn't sleep. I'd stopped 
exercising, and after cracking the bank robbery ring, I was adrift. I 
needed a focus. She got me to do all those things, and eventually, she 
convinced me that I needed to take off Dean's ring and move on, to 
focus on my career, to do something with my life."

  'Oh, Mulder,' Scully thought sadly. 'You were so ripe for the 
picking.' 

  "Diana did a lot to help me pull myself back together, and yes, she 
set me on the path that I've been on for the past few years. And no 
matter what, Scully," he said, turning over on his side to face her, 
"no matter what, I'll never regret that path because it led me to you."

  She sucked in her breath in surprise, and felt her eyes well up with 
tears.

  "I'm sorry for what it's cost you," he said, "I am. But I can't 
regret it."

  She could feel her mouth trembling as it tried to smile and to cry at 
the same time. 

  He lifted his hand and tentatively traced her cheek softly with the 
first and second fingers of his right hand. 

  Her eyes dropped closed and she turned into his touch, as his 
fingers, feather light, skimmed over her jaw line. She felt his breath 
against her skin for long seconds before he placed a lingering, tender 
kiss against her forehead, and then another glancing one against the 
corner of her eye. "Please don't cry anymore, Scully," he said softly. 
"I can't take it."

  Outside, voices were suddenly audible, then a car door slammed and an 
engine started up. Mulder leapt from the bed and stalked to the window, 
his weapon pressed against his leg as he flattened against the wall to 
check out what was going on. He pulled the curtains open carefully as 
another door slammed, followed by the sound of a second engine whining 
in the cold. It was quiet for a couple of minutes, save for the sound 
of the cars warming up, then headlights slid across the ceiling as, one 
after the other, the cars backed away. Scully was sitting up in bed, 
gun in hand, as Mulder moved to the other window scanning the parking 
lot to make sure that all was well.

  "No Tell Motel?" She asked as he walked back to the bed.

  He nodded, and stared down at her, clearly uncertain of whether or 
not he should assume his former position. She returned her gun to the 
nightstand and pulled Mulder's pillow out, laying it atop the bedspread 
on his side of the bed, before returning to her recumbent position. 
"You gonna stand there all night, Mulder?" she asked. "It'll be hard 
for me to sleep while I'm feeling bad for you."

  Fox Mulder smiled at her, his vulpine grin showing even white teeth 
that she hadn't seen for weeks on end, just before he bounced down next 
to her. "You gonna crack jokes all night long, Scully, or are you 
actually going to get busy with the drooling?"

  She ignored him, then bunched her pillow up so that she could see 
more of Hannah's sleeping form over Mulder's chest. They lay there in 
the silence for a few minutes, both of them breathing easier than they 
had in a while, until she spoke.

  "Mulder?" she said. 

  He hummed inquisitively, turning his gaze from where it had been 
caught by David Letterman interviewing some starlet. 

  She sighed, wondering if she dared to break the fragile peace that 
lay between them, but knew that she couldn't live with unspoken words 
building more walls to separate them. She took a deep breath in, and 
laid her hand on his left bicep, feeling the warmth and strength of 
him. He stilled at her gesture. "I think Lindsay was right about Agent 
Fowley." 

  She looked at him, but his face was neutral. "I … there are things 
from my abduction," she said carefully, feeling him tense at this turn 
in the conversation. "I can never be sure, Mulder," she wanted to be 
very clear about that. "Well. I could never prove it to you." She 
paused. "But over the past few years, I've begun to remember things." 
She could see how startled he was by her revelation, and she hastened 
to explain. "All I remember are bits and pieces of what happened to me, 
but," she bit her lip and looked down again, then up at him. "Mulder, I 
remember Agent Fowley."

  "Scully …" his voice was merely breath, the utterance one of shock, 
but she was gratified that he did not seem to be disregarding what she 
was saying.

  "I'm reasonably certain that …" it was harder to say out loud than 
she had imagined it would be. "Mulder, I remember Agent Fowley being on 
the train car," she finished. "When they did what they did to me, she 
was working with them."

~*~

  Mulder was asleep when she awoke in the early morning, surprised to 
find that she had both her arms wrapped around his left one. She was 
holding it to her chest the same way that Hannah held the tiger to 
hers, like a bulwark against loneliness. Even more shocking was the 
fact that her fingers were laced through his. His head was turned 
toward hers on his pillow. Despite the horrible content of their last 
conversation, his face appeared peaceful, even happy. She searched his 
expression for any hint of a smirk, flushed at the thought that he'd 
been awake when she'd wrapped her arms around his and pulled in close. 
She wondered which of them had taken the other's hand, but surmised 
that this had been Mulder's response to her overture, from the way her 
hand was held inside his. It seemed like an echo of the careful regard 
he'd shown for her during the remainder of their conversation.

  She'd fallen asleep during one of his long periods of silence between 
questions, aware that his mind was racing to assimilate the things that 
she'd told him, that he was formulating theories and drawing 
conclusions. After his initial shock at her statements about Diana 
Fowley, he'd pressed her for details about what exactly it was that she 
remembered from the time she was abducted. She felt that he was being 
careful not to press the Agent Fowley issue too hard, and for that she 
was grateful. 

  Talking about any of what she remembered had been extraordinarily 
difficult for her. She didn't like to think of herself as being 
uncourageous, but knowing that she had been spread wide open on a table 
while unknown men inserted their hands and devices and God knew what 
else inside her vagina to steal her ova was –- well, if it wasn't the 
definition of medical rape, she didn't know what was. The very idea of 
it was both obscene and humiliating. She had fought so hard to be seen 
as an equal in a patriarchal world and to be reduced in such a way, to 
have her choices and her essence stolen from her, was beyond demeaning. 
The idea that another woman would have participated in the acts that 
had violated her was an elemental betrayal that made her loathe Diana 
Fowley all the more. 

  Mulder had wondered if there was something particular about her, and 
her DNA that had made her a subject, and although the argument smacked 
a little of blaming the victim, she gave serious credence to the 
notion. She had always assumed that Duane Barry had snatched her to 
forestall his own kidnapping, as he'd said. But why her? Had his 
implants compelled him to take her? Was there something particular 
about her, or was it merely her proximity to Mulder that had placed her 
in harm's way? She shifted her hand out of Mulder's carefully, and 
unwrapped her stiff arms from around his. Her right shoulder was still 
thoroughly asleep from having been laid upon all night, but her bladder 
was wide awake and functioning. She shuffled into the bathroom rubbing 
her shoulder, aware that Mulder had awakened as soon as she moved. 

  When she re-entered the room, Mulder whispered, "Good morning," in a 
husky voice. 

  She smiled to see that he was rubbing the blood back into his left 
arm. "Sorry," she whispered back. 

  "Don't be," he answered her, and she stopped at his words, then sat 
down on the side of the bed she'd vacated. "Don't be sorry about any of 
it," he said. "I'm glad you told me, and I …" 

  Hannah rustled in her bed, making a whimpering noise, and then 
stretched before falling back into a disturbed sleep. 

  Scully glanced at the clock. It wasn't quite six o'clock, and by her 
calculations, Hannah had only been asleep for about nine hours, far 
less than she needed at her age.  "Shhhh …" she shushed Mulder, 
indicating the child. "Let's let her sleep a little longer." 

  He nodded, watching Hannah move in her sleep. Her tiger had gotten 
jammed up under her pillow in the night, and the toys lined up on the 
other side of the bed were in a jumble.

  "Mulder?" she whispered, waiting until he turned to look at her. "How 
old is Hannah?"

  He shook his head, "I'm not sure" he said. "I think that she's 
between 4 and 5, but that could be on some of the discs I stole from 
the clinic." He shifted off the bed and went to his suitcase, pulling 
out a case of zip discs. "Do you think your laptop can read these?"

  "I brought the external drive with me," she answered, moving quietly 
to the table where her laptop was and turning it on, "but I'm not sure 
how good the decryption software I've got installed is." 

  "Well," Mulder answered ruefully, "I've got nothing with me. I 
thought I'd be taking these discs home to crack." 

  "When did you find Hannah?" 

  "On Friday," he said, "the night after you followed me."

  She started in surprise, almost dropping the drive on the table as 
she took it out of the pocket of the bag. "You saw me?"

  Mulder imitated her, giving her the eyebrow.

  "I was in a different car," she protested, whispering fiercely. "I 
covered my hair!"

  Mulder looked at her fondly. "I'd know your face anywhere, Scully." 
The warmth in his voice reminded her of the tender way he'd touched her 
the night before and she felt herself flush suddenly, her skin 
tingling. 

  "Oh," she said, staring at him. 

  He stared back at her, his expression filled with emotion. The sound 
of her computer booting up provided the soundtrack for their fraught 
exchange. 

  "So you weren't going down by the river," she said. 

  He smiled. "No," he said, eyes twinkling. "Did you go dancing?" 

  "Mulder," she said, rolling out his name. 

  "Anyway," he said, stretching up into the air. She could hear his 
spine cracking. "I drove to Albany. I'd traced another potential clinic 
site there to a mostly deserted strip mall, and I observed it for a 
while, then caught some zs at a highway motel. I broke in after hours. 
There'd been nobody in or out of the building for a long time, and the 
security guard was asleep in his little booth. I thought that it would 
be a quick, uncomplicated job."

  She nodded, glancing over at Hannah, who had turned over again, and 
motioned for Mulder to lower his voice. 

  "She was behind a door that said 'Medical Records: No Unauthorized 
Admittance'," he said wryly. 

  "What did it look like inside?" she asked him.

  Mulder paused, pursing his lips and giving the description some 
thought. "Well. It wasn't a records room," he said, hands on his hips. 
He was bending slowly from side to side, still stretching out. It was 
actually quite distracting. "There was a small room, almost like a 
vestibule when you opened the door. Desk, lamp, file cabinet, computer. 
That's where the discs were," he said. "There was a locked case on top 
of the desk. I took the whole thing, but those pass keys Frohike gave 
me opened them." 

  She nodded, sticking the first disc in the drive and activating the 
decryption software.

  "There was a microphone on the desk, like an old-fashioned PA, and 
there was a small room visible beyond it. The first room looked like a 
really tiny nurses' station, and the next room was like a supply room. 
It had stuff."

  "Like what?"

  She watched him think. "IV bags, gloves, syringes, masks, scrubs," he 
added thoughtfully, "And those hazmat suits on a hook on the right hand 
wall."

  "The full suits?" Scully asked him, surprised. 

  "Yeah," Mulder said. "At that point, I thought that it was going to 
be another ova storage room behind there, or a lab with more embryos." 
He paused, gauging her response. When he'd told her about her ova after 
she'd found Emily, they'd had a lot of conversations about what 
information she expected to be told about. She'd been very clear, and 
very angry at his unwillingness to tell her the truth in some misguided 
effort to spare her. Those who had taken her had given her no such 
consideration, and keeping the truth from her only served to compound 
their crime. It was her body that had been violated, and her DNA that 
had been taken for experiments that she would have never authorized. 
Her not wanting to think about the things that had been done to her was 
her own choice –- but if there was information out there about her or 
her ova, it was her right to know it. For all they knew, Hannah could 
have been one of the embryos that he'd found in California. 

  "Go on, Mulder," she whispered. 

  He sat down at the table across from her, his eyes coming to rest on 
Hannah, curled in her bed. 

  "There were two windows on either side of another door, but the 
curtains were drawn on the inside. The lock was electronic, coded, but 
that keypad bypass that Frohike gave me cracked it in a few minutes. 
You'd think that an international conspiracy could afford better 
security."

  "Mulder," she huffed in exasperation, wanting him to get to the meat 
of the story.

  "There's not much more to tell, Scully," he said. "I opened the door 
and there were four beds, set up like a small hospital ward, with two 
TVs hanging from the ceiling. Hannah was in a bed near the windows, 
fast asleep. She was holding one of those coughing pillows like a teddy 
bear, and the TV was on above her bed. It was some show on 
Nickelodeon." He stared at Hannah, and then turned to Scully. "She was 
so tiny in the bed. She woke up and looked at me with those big eyes 
and said, 'Who are you?' and … she didn't even have a coat, Scully. I 
don't think she'd ever been outside. I wrapped her up in blankets and 
carried her out of there. I gave her the box of discs to hold. The 
security guard was so startled that he couldn't get his gun out of his 
holster, which is the only way we escaped disaster. I put her in the 
car and drove and drove. I headed back to DC but decided that going 
home was foolish. I made a pit stop for a couple of items I needed then 
I stopped at our storage locker outside Baltimore -- I got some ID and 
other stuff, and then went to a mall to get Hannah some things."

  She nodded. "That must have been interesting," she said. 

  "I wore the ring," he answered. "I told the saleslady that our house 
had burned down -- that you were away on a business trip and I came 
home from work and fell asleep on the couch after I put Hannah to bed 
and some wet laundry in the dryer. That we'd escaped with the clothes 
on our backs and I had no idea what sizes she wore because you always 
took care of those things."

  She pictured the scene in her head, knowing how charming Mulder could 
be, but still surprised that even when he was acting, he'd cast her in 
the role of Hannah's mother.

  "She was very helpful," he said.

  "I'm sure," Scully said dryly. "How was Hannah?"

  "Stunned," Mulder said. "She was really quiet, with all the people 
and the lights and the noise. I carried her around and just kept 
talking to her. It played like she was traumatized by what had 
happened, so it worked. After she was dressed, I ditched my car at BWI 
and rented a new one using ID from the storage place."

   The decryption software beeped to signal that it had identified the 
length of the string that passcoded the disc. Scully counted the spaces 
silently, turning the laptop so Mulder could see the screen. "Sixteen," 
she sighed. "This is going to take forever."

  Hannah stirred in her bed, and rubbed her eyes, then opened them. 
Mulder's face was transformed at the sight of her, his smile brilliant. 
He got up and crossed the room, crouching by her bed. "Hi pumpkin," he 
said, "How are you?"

  Hannah yawned. "I don't think I look like a pumpkin," she said 
sleepily. "My hair's not that orange." 

  Mulder laughed. "How'd you sleep?" he asked. 

  "OK," Hannah said, and tried to sit up but stopped, pushing down the 
covers. "I'm stuck," she said. Her nightgown was twisted all around 
her. Mulder stood her up in the bed and helped her get unwrapped. 

  "I think that's why Scully wears pajamas," he told Hannah, picking 
her up. 

  "Yes, it is," Scully answered. She wondered if Mulder had any idea 
how much in love with Hannah he was. 

  "Oh," Hannah said, yawning. "I need to pee."

  Mulder walked them over to the bathroom and then put Hannah down, 
bowing as he opened the door for her. 

  She giggled and entered the room.

  Scully checked the clock on the computer. It was barely 7:00. "You 
probably should have let her sleep longer," she said to Mulder. "She 
should be sleeping twelve hours of the day at her age."

  Mulder shrugged guiltily. "She was awake," he said. 

  Scully gave him the eyebrow, but said no more.

  "Any numbers or letters yet?" Mulder asked. 

  Scully shook her head as they heard the toilet flush. 

  "I'm hungry," Hannah announced as she came out of the bathroom. Her 
bedhead was truly impressive. 

  Mulder picked up his shaving kit. "OK," he said to Hannah. "Let me 
just get cleaned up and then we'll go get some food, all right?"

  Hannah yawned in answer. "OK," she said blearily.

  "Are you OK, Hannah?" Scully asked her.

  "I dunno," she answered. "I'm sleepy."

  Scully gave Mulder a significant look, and he sighed, starting to go 
into the bathroom, before he turned and looked back at her from around 
the half-open door. "Sixteen digits?" he asked her.

  "Or letters," she said, "but yeah, sixteen. Why?"

  He nodded. "Try 00 00 121 336 540 009."

  "Mulder?" 

  "Just try it, Scully," he urged. "00 00 121 336 540 009."

  She keyed in the digits, wondering what on Earth he was up to. The 
disc drive whirred, and then clicked as the disc opened. She knew her 
mouth was hanging open.

  "It worked?" Mulder asked quietly.

  "Yes," she said levelly, waiting for an explanation. 

  "Can you brush my hair?" Hannah asked from next to her elbow.

  "Sure, honey," she answered, turning to the child. 

  Behind her, the bathroom door closed. 

~*~

  After breakfast and a stop at the mall to buy Hannah a new hat and 
some snow boots, they finally got on the road. Mulder was anxious to 
get going, and positively rushed them through the mall, even putting 
the kibosh on stopping to get Hannah some new pajamas. Exasperating as 
he could be, Scully understood. The drive to Rochester should have 
taken one day, but there was a distinct possibility that they were in 
for some rough weather. A huge snowstorm was expected to blanket the 
area in the next few hours, although how far north it was going to 
reach varied from forecast to forecast. All the meteorologists agreed, 
however, that the storm was going to be the prevailing weather for the 
next couple of days. Although they'd decided to push through the storm 
as much as possible, they both were concerned about driving in 
horrendous weather with Hannah in the car. 

  For her part, Hannah was excited about the possibility of actually 
being outside in the snow, as opposed to only seeing it from her window 
or on TV. She'd asked a million questions about why it had to be cold 
to snow, and how snow felt. Mulder had spent most of the morning 
listening to Scully's patient explanations to the child, smiling 
distractedly while he kept the radio tuned to an all-news AM band, 
looking for information about the snowstorm. She couldn't really blame 
him for his anxiety –- tramping through snowfields had permanently lost 
its luster for her after their sojourn to the Antarctic. After a couple 
of hours on the road, Hannah had finally run out of questions, and 
fallen asleep in the back seat. Scully saw this as evidence that Hannah 
was still tired from the night before and was just about to make that 
observation when Mulder spoke.

  "I think that we should let her sleep for about an hour or so, then 
stop and get some lunch," he said. "If we stop at one of those 
McDonald's that has a playground, then she can get some exercise before 
we get back on the road. I'd like to get as close as we can to 
Rochester today."

  "You don't think we're going to make it?" she asked, staring at the 
ominous sky.

  "I have no idea," Mulder said. "But the closer we get, the better off 
we'll be if we can't get there today."

  "Obviously," she answered. 

  "Sorry," Mulder said, "I guess I'm just worried. You know these 
rental cars have horrible tires."

  Scully shivered, remembering more than a few dicey drives in their 
past. She changed the subject. "Where'd that number come from, Mulder?"  
She watched his hands tighten around the wheel at her question, 
knuckles whitening. 

  "Do you remember when I broke into Dr. Scanlon's office, and met the 
Kurt Crawford clones in Allentown?" he asked.

  She stifled the sharp remark that rose to her lips. "When you found 
some of my ova?" She paused. "I'm not really sure how I could forget 
that."

  Mulder sighed and shifted in his seat, then cleared his throat and 
answered in his most 'just the facts' monotone. "When I first met the 
Kurt Crawfords in Allentown, and they showed me the DNA storage chamber 
they had for abductees' ova, that sixteen-digit code was on the drawer 
with your name on it."

  Well, she thought. That certainly was an answer.

  "Scully," he said. "What are you thinking?

  She breathed in and out for a few minutes, trying to gather her 
whirling thoughts. "Was that code only on the drawer with my name?"

  "Yes," Mulder answered. "Other drawers had different codes."

  "Was there anything else on the label?"

  "A date," Mulder answered. "Your name, that sixteen-digit code and 
the date October 28, 1994."

  She nodded, "Just before I was returned."

  "Yes," he said, looking from the road to her. She had been staring 
straight ahead for this whole exchange, but could see his head 
swiveling back and forth in her peripheral vision.

  "And you think that the date is when my ova were harvested," she 
stated.

  "Yes," he answered.

  "So, you're sure that she …" she turned now, to look at Hannah 
sleeping in the back seat and pointed at herself, just in case Hannah 
was only dozing. 

  Mulder took his hand off of the wheel and covered hers, looking her 
in the eye. "Yes."

  "But she's not like …" Scully protested.

  "I don't think she is," Mulder answered. "I think she's different."

  "For what purpose was she created?" she whispered, and the tears were 
thick in her throat. 

  "I don't know, Scully," Mulder said. "I promise you, I don't know, 
but I'm hoping that we can get some answers where we're going."

  "Where are we going, Mulder?" she asked pointedly, fighting back the 
wave of tears with a burst of irritation. She felt that she'd been more 
than patient in waiting for an explanation.

  "I'm pretty sure that I've tracked down some other Crawfords," he 
answered succinctly. "I know that they were at this location a while 
ago, and I thought that if anyone had answers," he pointed with his 
chin toward Hannah in his rearview mirror. "They would."

*~*  

  They made it to Iowa City before the snow got really serious, and 
outside of Waterloo, Mulder made a bad joke about disastrous decisions 
and then decided to head west on Route 20. She'd argued that point with 
him. Mulder, of course, was consulting nothing other than the atlas in 
his brain, but she worried that heading deeper into the storm was a 
risky strategy. 

  "I don't want to go west, Scully," he answered, "but I don't want to 
go on a secondary road, either, and that's our choice if we continue 
north from here. You know the plowing is better on the interstates. If 
we go west about 50 miles, we can hook up with 35 and go north again on 
a bigger road."

  She sighed and consented to the change in plan, turning around to 
check on Hannah who was quiet in the back seat. "Are you OK, Hannah?" 
she asked. The child looked terribly bored, and seemed lethargic. 

  "It's not as nice as I thought it would be," Hannah answered, looking 
out at the snow. 

  "Let's play a game," Mulder said. "How 'bout … 'I Spy'?"

  "What's that?" Hannah asked, and Scully listened as Mulder explained 
the rudiments of the game. 

  It was enough to keep them occupied for a while, but the truth was 
that it was difficult to focus on the game when there was so little to 
see other than snow falling. Mulder finally gave up the ghost on 
driving somewhere outside of Mason City, and Scully was relieved to get 
out of the snow. It wasn't windy or excessively stormy, but it was 
snowing hard, and the sky was low and white as far as the eye could 
see. There was close to a foot of snow on the ground when they stopped, 
and the weather reports that they'd heard were predicting more of the 
same until the early hours of the next day. They found a large 
supermarket and got enough food and supplies to keep them fed and 
occupied for the next 24 to 48 hours. 

  Hannah had been tired and grumpy by the time they'd checked into the 
motel room and eaten, and had been unusually stubborn about taking a 
shower. She wanted to lie on her bed and watch TV instead, and Scully'd 
found herself hiding a smile as she watched Mulder trying to be an 
authority figure to a crabby child who'd never had a parent. 

  "You take your shower in the morning!" Hannah accused Mulder, with a 
child's unerring sense of fairness coupled with innocent egotism. "So, 
why should I take my shower at night?"

  An exasperated Mulder was momentarily floored by Hannah's question, 
and Scully thought his next words were going to be 'because I said so, 
young lady', so she intervened.

  "Hannah," she said quietly, "we all have to take showers tonight. 
Sometimes when it snows, the electricity gets shut off, and it'll be 
very dark and hard to see in the bathroom if that happens."

  She could see that Hannah immediately became worried by such a 
notion. "No TV?" she asked. 

  "If the electricity goes off," Scully said, "so it would be a good 
idea to take a shower now." She could see Hannah working up to an 
objection, so she continued on, "and after you take a shower, then you 
can watch some TV." Her voice was quiet, but firm. Hannah opened her 
mouth to argue, but Scully deftly blocked the argument with logic. "The 
person who goes to bed first is the first person in the shower." 

  "OK," Hannah said begrudgingly. She collected her things and went 
into the bathroom, while Mulder threw up his hands. 

  Scully snickered and made him trudge outside to throw the garbage 
from their dinner in the dumpster where it wouldn't stink up their too 
small living space. 

*~*

  Later, while Mulder showered and Hannah slept, she stood next to the 
window and watched the snow relentlessly piling up outside. If she had 
to guess, she'd think that they weren't going to be able to go anywhere 
tomorrow, and the thought made her feel trapped and helpless. They were 
a little over 200 miles from some potential answers about Hannah … and 
maybe about herself. It was hard to imagine that after all of the years 
of assiduously not thinking about things she was suddenly desperate for 
answers, but it was true nonetheless. She wanted to know what had been 
done to her, needed more confirmation than a sixteen digit code on a 
file drawer to believe that this child, no matter who she reminded her 
of, was hers. 

  Hannah tossed and turned, kicking her covers off; Scully moved to her 
side after she quieted down. Even with so little experience observing 
her, Scully felt that Hannah was unusually restless. She reached down 
tentatively and laid her fingers against Hannah's brow. She seemed warm 
to the touch. Scully swept the hair off Hannah's forehead and moved her 
fingers behind her ears, and then lower to the maxillary pulse point 
and listened, counting. She confirmed her observations by checking the 
carotid and then the radial pulses, placing Hannah's hand gently back 
under the covers, and smoothing them up over her. 

  "Scully?" She could hear the anxiety in his voice, and drew in a 
breath to calm her own nerves. She'd heard the door open while she was 
checking on Hannah, but had hoped that she was just being overly 
cautious and wouldn't have anything to report. 

  "I think I know why she was so grumpy earlier," she began, "her pulse 
is strong and quick, and she feels warm to me," she said. 

  Mulder came over to her side and put his hand on Hannah's forehead, 
then moved it to the back of her neck. He was wearing long pajama pants 
and a white t-shirt, his hair still damp from the shower. "Scully," he 
said again, staring at her.

  "She has a fever, Mulder." Her voice trembled, and she pressed her 
fingers to her lips as if that motion could stop what was happening, 
but her words tumbled out faster and faster. "And I don't have any 
pediatric drugs, or even a thermometer. I can't get her to take a pill, 
and what if she's allergic to something? She could have a serious 
reaction to anything I give her, because we don't know a thing about 
her, really." Her voice was rising, and she could see that she was 
alarming Mulder, but all she could think of was that this was how 
Emily's death had begun. Mulder wrapped her up in his arms and held on 
to her as she continued to spill out her fears. "What if she's been 
altered in some way we don't understand when she was created? And it's 
snowing and we're too far away from Rochester and what if I can't help 
her …"

  He kept saying her name, but it took her a while to hear him over the 
sound of the blood pounding in her head. He finally took her face in 
his hands, forcing her to look him in the eye.

  "I'm going back to the store," he said. 

  "Mulder, it's snowing so hard," she protested weakly, her habit of 
arguing with him too ingrained to stop even now.

  "I don't care," he answered. "I'm going. Tell me what you need."

  When she nodded but remained silent, he pulled her in tight again and 
just held onto her for a few more seconds. She stood with her head 
resting over his heart, listening to its strong, rapid beat and trying 
to relax. She didn't know if she was grateful or resentful that he 
hadn't tried to reassure her that everything would be all right. 

  Finally, knowing that she was wasting precious time, she broke out of 
Mulder's embrace and turned to the table, looking for paper and a pen. 
When she turned back, he'd already shucked his pajama pants and was 
rummaging through his suitcase, wearing only his boxer briefs.  

  "Mulder," she said and then stopped, unsure of where to begin. 

  He looked up from the end of the bed, pulling out the black jeans 
he'd been wearing the night she followed him. "Just make a list, 
Scully. Try to think of every possibility. Assume we're going to be 
here for the next couple of days."

  She was terrified by the mere idea, but she sat down and began to 
write, meticulously running through a mental checklist of all the 
differential diagnoses for pediatric illnesses that she could recall. 
She made sure he had his new phone, and then he was gone in a swirl of 
wind and snow, tires protesting the lack of traction. She closed the 
door and made herself boot up her computer to reacquaint herself with 
common pediatric illnesses. 

  She feared that anything she could do for Hannah would be less than 
adequate. Mulder had always been her most challenging (and only living) 
patient, but he had the advantage of being formed in the usual manner. 
There was not enough time for her to unbundle the years of 
experimentation on the disks that Mulder had stolen when he found 
Hannah. She needed to be logical and to treat for the most probable 
source of the problem. If the electricity held out and the snow kept on 
falling, she'd have plenty of time to search for the improbable. The 
only sound in the room was that of Hannah's too loud breathing. She had 
shut the TV off so that she could concentrate, but when the windows 
rattled ominously and Hannah muttered in her sleep, she shot up out of 
her chair and got her gun, laying it on the table next to her while she 
waited. Hannah had her tiger for security; Dana Scully preferred her 
SIG Sauer. She grimly continued with her reading, willing herself to 
focus on the words.

*~*

  There had been plenty of time in her life where she had simply 
endured, but having had such extensive experience with such 
undertakings didn't make the hour and a half that Mulder was away from 
their motel room go any faster. When he returned, she shoved her feet 
into her boots and went outside to take the first of the bags from his 
hands, not caring that she was outside in the pelting snow in just her 
robe and pajamas. He didn't even make an attempt at a smart remark, 
just handed her one bag while he grabbed another and kicked the car 
door shut, ushering her through the piles of snow with an arm around 
her back, another heavy bag banging against her shin as it dangled from 
his hand. 

  Mulder dumped his two bags next to the table and bent down, pulling 
her boot clad foot toward him. Caught off balance, she braced a hand on 
his shoulder but continued digging through the bag she'd put on the 
table. "I'm going to try the Motrin first," she said, shifting to get 
to the second bag as Mulder pulled at her other boot. He thumped over 
to the door and toed off his own boots, dropping them all in a heap 
next to the door. "Did you get some?" He nodded, stripping off his 
overcoat and hanging it off the door hinge, making sure the door was 
latched tight.  

  "I got the eyedropper and the one with the cup," he answered. "I 
figured you might need the eyedropper to give it to her if she was 
asleep." He crossed the room to Hannah's side in three long steps, 
crouching down beside her. "I got three different kinds of 
thermometers, too," he said, putting his large hand on Hannah's 
forehead. "How is she?" 

  "I don't know," Scully answered quietly. "How much do you think she 
weighs?"

  "Thirty-six pounds," Mulder said immediately. He looked up at Scully, 
who knew that her expression reflected her surprise. "Car seats have 
weight requirements on them," he said, shrugging, "so I weighed her 
before I bought one. Even if it was off a few pounds, she wasn't heavy 
enough for the next size up seat."

  She shook her head in bemusement. 

  "I know," he said with mock modesty, "I'm good."

  She smiled at him for the first time in weeks, tossing him the ear 
bulb thermometer. "Open that up, big guy." 

  He grinned at her, and tore the package open with his teeth. She 
ignored him and double-checked the dose she'd measured into the cup. 

  She took the alcohol swabs over to Hannah's bedside and wiped down 
the thermometer before placing it in Hannah's ear canal. Hannah 
murmured in protest, but settled down. "Hold this," Scully said, and 
Mulder placed his hand on the bulb. While they waited for her 
temperature to register, Scully sucked the dose up into the eyedropper, 
carefully getting each drop. 

  "102.1," Mulder said quietly, when the ear bulb beeped. "That's not 
too bad."

  "No," Scully answered, "but I don't want it to go any higher."

  "When is it …" 

  She interrupted Mulder before he could finish, "107 or higher is 
dangerous, but a sustained temperature of 104 or higher indicates a 
serious infection, usually bacterial."

  Mulder's shoulders relaxed. 

  Scully slipped the eyedropper between Hannah's parted lips, and was 
relieved when the child sipped the medication without rousing. It was 
probably habitual. Hannah most likely had no idea how often she'd been 
given medication over the course of her short life. She sighed.

  "Now we wait?" Mulder asked.

  "Now, we wait," she answered.

  He nodded and smoothed the hair back from Hannah's brow, kissing her 
before tucking the covers up around her.

~*~

  It was her turn to keep watch, which was just as well, since she 
didn't think she would be able to sleep anyway. Mulder seemed 
unconcerned that anyone would try and grab Hannah on such a beastly 
night, but to Scully it seemed that a night like this would provide the 
perfect cover. She flattened herself against the wall and peered out 
from the side of the drapes at the outside world. The night was still 
except for the constantly falling snow. No car had been by their motel 
in hours, not even a snowplow on its way to the nearby interstate. The 
wind had picked up and drifted the snow, but she had to believe that it 
had snowed several more inches in the hours since Mulder had returned. 

  She crossed the room quietly and placed her gun back on the bedside 
table that stood between her and Hannah. She and Mulder had swapped 
sides of the bed, but Mulder was curled on his side, facing Hannah even 
in his sleep. Mulder was a surprisingly quiet sleeper. She'd assumed 
that he'd snore terribly because of the size of his nose, but over the 
years had learned that he only did so when he had one of his infrequent 
colds or was sleeping on his back. Turned on his side, as he was now, 
he slept with almost no sound, the line of dark lashes resting on his 
cheek as he dreamt. One hand was placed in front of him, open palm down 
on the bed. It looked like he was extending it toward Hannah, but she 
knew that he was looking for her, had watched him place his hand in the 
space where she'd been lying when she rose 45 minutes ago. She turned 
from her observation of him when he began to stir. Mulder was a 
notoriously light sleeper, and she didn't want to rouse him 
unnecessarily. 

  She picked his watch up from the bedside table and watched the second 
hand roam across its face as she slipped her fingers under the covers 
to find Hannah's wrist. Hannah slept heavily, but Scully could see the 
shadows under her eyes, and the rosiness in her cheeks seemed stark, 
too-bright spots of color against the pallor of her skin. She listened 
to Hannah's pulse while the wind kicked gusts of snow against the 
building. It was slower than when she'd checked an hour ago, but still 
fast and strong for a pediatric pulse. She made a note on the pad on 
the bedside table, and then picked up the ear bulb and inserted it 
gently into Hannah's ear. She hadn't let herself check Hannah's 
temperature endlessly, knowing that it would take time for the medicine 
to reduce her fever. She held her breath as the numbers rose over 100, 
and then stopped at 101.2. She sighed. It was a reduction, even if it 
wasn't as much as she'd hoped.

  "Scully?" Mulder was wide-eyed in the dark.

  "101.2," she answered. 

  Mulder closed his eyes in relief. "It's going in the right direction, 
Scully."

  She nodded absently, drawing the dose up into the eyedropper, and 
then giving it to Hannah, who had a quizzical expression on her 
sleeping face. She drew the covers back up around her, then 
straightened out her animals. She could feel Mulder watching her as she 
smoothed the hair back from Hannah's brow and sent a silent prayer 
heavenward, but she didn't turn to look at him again. She felt too 
vulnerable. Instead, she cleaned up the bedside table and got things 
ready for Hannah's next vitals check and dosage. She crossed the room 
and went to the bathroom, washing and setting the cup and eye dropper 
to sterilize in a plastic container she'd had Mulder buy for the 
purpose. She used the toilet and washed her hands carefully, swinging 
open the door to find Mulder sitting on the side of the bed waiting. 
She was startled and wary to see him so – she wasn't really in the mood 
for talking, but Mulder stood before she could say anything and moved 
toward the bathroom, making his intentions clear. She passed him in 
silence and went to her side of the bed as he closed the door, lying 
down on her side to face Hannah. 

  He was quiet when he came out of the bathroom, climbing into the bed 
and lying down behind her without comment. Without looking, she knew 
that his body rested in a pose that was a mirror of hers. He wasn't 
touching her, but the gap between their bodies, just a few inches, 
seemed charged with energy. She could feel the warmth emanating from 
him, and closed her eyes and tried to will herself to relax, and to 
maintain her position and not to drift magnetically backwards toward 
him. Last night, when she had been so bold to share a bed with him, the 
atmosphere had been different. Tonight, something between them had 
mended, but something else had changed. 

  She opened her eyes and watched Hannah sleeping in the faint light 
that bled out from the bathroom door. Still, it wasn't the right time 
for her to be feeling this way. It never was. 

  She sighed and Mulder stirred behind her, as if roused from a light 
doze. She felt his hand sliding across the gap between them just before 
he brushed his fingers over her spine, resting his open hand against 
her waist. "Go to sleep, Scully," he said thickly, his voice heavy and 
slow in the mid-night air. "Stop thinking. Rest." The last word was 
expelled almost on an exhale, and she closed her eyes and tried not to 
think, willing herself to sleep … and to stay on her own side of the 
bed this time, keeping the only point of contact between them the one 
he had initiated.

*~*

  She must have fallen asleep at some point, because her first reaction 
when she rose to that liminal state where thoughts were cascading 
through the back of her mind and merging with the remnants of her 
dreams, was surprise at the feel of Mulder's breath against her cheek. 
Her eyes popped open to see that she was still in the exact same place 
that she'd been the last moment she'd been aware of, but now she was 
held fast in Mulder's arms. He was wrapped around her thoroughly, his 
head behind hers on her pillow. Somehow, he'd gotten both of his arms 
around her without waking her and gathered her in so closely that her 
upper body was barely resting on the mattress. His arms were crossed 
over her torso as possessively as Hannah's around her tiger. When she 
stiffened in surprise his arms tightened and she could feel a quizzical 
rumbling from his chest. She forced herself to relax and Mulder's grip 
on her loosened as he sighed. She could hear his early morning stubble 
as he rubbed his face against the pillow, his feet shifting restlessly 
somewhere far beneath her own. 

  She shifted a hand out from under the covers to the table, reaching 
for Mulder's watch. It had been almost two hours since the last time 
she checked Hannah's vitals. She took one more minute to savor the 
warmth of Mulder's arms and to record the physical sensation of being 
held this way. She'd never have imagined Mulder to be a cuddler, or 
maybe it was just her -- she didn't seem to inspire cuddling in her 
partners. She'd also never noticed how low in the bed Mulder slept. His 
feet were definitely hanging over the edge of the mattress -- she could 
feel the draft from the bottom of the bed where the bedclothes had been 
kicked out. Mulder's long legs weren't tangled up with hers, though. 
Curled on her side, her toes were somewhere just below his knees, her 
bottom pressed against the base of his abdomen, but above his groin. 

  That was probably for the best, she mused, and moved to get up, 
resigned to the fact that doing so would wake Mulder and lead to an 
awkward scene between them. To her surprise, Mulder moved away from her 
easily, flopping onto his back but remaining asleep. She stood next to 
the bed and peered at him. He wasn't pretending. She stopped at the 
foot of the bed to cover up his big feet as she went to use the 
bathroom and wash her hands before checking Hannah.

  When she returned to the room, she resisted the impulse to take 
Hannah's temperature again, and just focused on observing her and 
recording her pulse. It was definitely slower this time, and more 
relaxed, both good signs. She marked the results down and turned back 
to the bed to find Mulder's eyes on her. Interesting that he hadn't 
woken when she'd broken away from him, but now appeared wide awake. 

  "Scully?" he whispered urgently, at her continued failure to give him 
the information that he'd woken up for.

  "She's doing fine, Mulder," she answered, slipping under the covers, 
and reaching for her glass of water to cover the sudden awkwardness she 
felt. He probably had no memory of holding her in his sleep, an idea 
that made her terribly sad.
 
  "Scully?" she felt his hand search hers out under the covers and give 
it a squeeze. 

  "I'm OK," she said. "Tired."

  Mulder nodded, and got up out of the bed, picking up his gun from the 
bedside table, and shivering in the cooler air. He prowled to the 
window and pulled the curtain back warily. "Still snowing," he said. He 
wandered by the front door, absently checking the bolt and then, 
scratching his stomach, went into the bathroom. 

  When he came back out, she was lying on her back with her eyes 
closed, trying to will herself back to sleep. She had tried to lie on 
her side facing Hannah, but her back felt so cold that it practically 
ached. She chastised herself for feeling bereft over something that was 
probably just instinct on Mulder's part. It was cold, and she was a 
warm body in the bed next to him. There was nothing more to it than 
that. Her rationale firmly in place, she kept herself still when Mulder 
got back into the bed. The mattress dipped under his greater weight and 
she felt herself slide a little bit toward him. He turned onto his 
side, facing her, and after a minute she felt him tuck the blankets 
down in between them so that she wasn't getting a draft.

  "Thanks, Mulder," she said softly, eyes still closed. 

  She heard his answering chuckle, and then felt his hand tuck the hair 
behind her ear. "I got your back, Scully," he whispered.

  She could feel herself smiling as she drifted off once more. 

~*~
  
  It was still very early when she awoke for good. Mulder's watch told 
her that it was just before six o'clock, but his side of the bed was 
empty. She lay there for a minute, wondering if it was still snowing. 
She had a few minutes to wait before taking Hannah's temperature again, 
and if Hannah's fever stayed reduced, she'd like to get some breakfast 
in her before giving her next dose of medicine. Hannah's four o'clock 
temperature had been 99.4. It wasn't close enough to a normal 
temperature for Scully to consider Hannah's fever reduced, but it was a 
good sign, as was the fact that Hannah's temperature was conforming to 
normal circadian rhythms despite the persistent elevation. Still … 
Hannah had to achieve and maintain a normal temperature for at least 24 
hours before she'd stop worrying. 

  She sighed and sat up, picking up her water glass. Just as she 
realized that the bathroom door was still slightly ajar, Mulder's head 
and shoulders appeared, hovering over the foot of the bed. 

  "Jesus, Mulder!" she spluttered around a mouthful of water. "What the 
hell are you doing down there?"

  "Push-ups," he whispered, smiling at her. "And be quiet!"

  Hand over her pounding heart, she noted his posture, with his hair 
hanging over his forehead. He was slightly flushed as he dropped back 
out of sight. She flopped down after placing her water glass back on 
the nightstand. It suddenly occurred to her that she'd most likely be 
spending the day trapped in a tiny motel room with a man whose energy 
level could power a small city on a normal day, and a little girl who 
was sick. She groaned aloud, but quietly, and Mulder's head appeared 
over the edge of the bed again. 

  "Scully?" he asked, standing up and coming around the bed. "You're 
not getting sick, too, are you?" He really looked worried.
 
  "No, no," she said hastily, levering herself up on an elbow. "Just, 
uh … my back kinda hurts."

  Mulder looked mystified. "Really?" he said. "I thought that was one 
of the better motel mattresses I've ever slept on," he was gesturing 
expansively but whispering, standing there in his too thin pajama pants 
with his t-shirt clinging to his torso. The muscles in his forearms 
were corded in definition due to his recent exertions. "I had a great 
night's sleep." He was just a bit more than six feet of walking 
temptation, thrumming with energy and total obtuseness.

  She bit back a moan at this confirmation of her theory and shooed him 
back to the foot of the bed. "Exercise, Monster Boy," she ordered. She 
dropped back down onto the bed.

  "Scully!" he whispered from the end of the bed. Sit-ups this time, 
she surmised, raising her head to see what he was doing. "It's still 
snowing," he announced. 

  She covered her head with his pillow and moaned. Thank God she had 
reminded him to get more coffee. 

~*~

  Mulder was actually surprisingly good at amusing a four-year-old, 
although Scully wasn't really sure who was amusing whom to watch him 
playing with Hannah. After watching Sesame Street and a few 
other more dubiously educational programs, Mulder had turned off the TV 
set and taught Hannah how to play Go Fish. Hannah was still in her 
nightgown, looking pale and tired. Mulder had piled pillows behind her 
to prop her into a sitting position and was sprawled across the foot of 
her bed, patiently teaching her how to play War. Earlier, he had tried 
to teach her how to whistle, which had been interesting, since Mulder 
could barely whistle himself. 

  Outside, the snow showed no sign of stopping, although it had slowed 
down considerably. Weather reports were now predicting that it would 
continue into the early evening, with final accumulations somewhere in 
the two-foot range. They had enough food to last another day, but 
Scully hoped that they wouldn't need to be here longer than the next 
morning. 

  Her research on Hannah was tough slogging. She'd ascertained that 
Hannah was considered to be four years old, having been 'born' in 
February of 1995. If Mulder's hypothesis was right, and Hannah was her 
daughter, that would mean that Hannah's pre-natal development had been 
somehow artificially accelerated. However, the records Scully had only 
contained minimal information about Hannah's early years. There was a 
basic history, with information about when Hannah had achieved certain 
developmental milestones. Most of those seemed to be later than 
expected, a fact that Scully was attributing to her abnormal 
gestational period. In some ways, Hannah's early development was 
analogous to that of a very premature infant, but looking at Hannah 
now, Scully could see no evidence of prematurity. Hannah at four would 
be considered tall and slender for her 'age'; despite her odd 
socialization in a clinical setting, her vocabulary and conversational 
skills were high. 

  The limited medical history indicated that she'd 'born' as one of 
four in her group, but from what Scully could glean, they were not 
clones. There seemed to be subtle embryonic differences between the 
four girls, which were referenced in the experimental documentation. 
Scully was forwarding files of RFLPs to the Gunmen for confirmation of 
variances from the typical genome. With no access to a high-speed 
internet connection like the one available at work, there was no way 
that she could verify her thoughts on genetic alteration in a timely 
manner. It seemed from the limited documentation that she had, however, 
that the alteration had been made to the germ cells that had been used 
to make the zygotes, but she couldn't be sure. 

  She sighed. It was all so very frustrating. If Mulder was right, and 
the ultimate goal of the cloning experiments had been to make a hybrid 
resistant to Purity, then Hannah might be an unusually successful 
example of that process. Scully had carefully examined her lymph glands 
this morning, and not only was there no evidence of the green nodule 
that Emily had had, Hannah's lymph glands didn't seem to be swollen, 
except for under her jaw and at the base of her ears. There was also 
the fact that it appeared that her three siblings, all girls, were 
dead. They'd all undergone the same course of dubious treatment that 
Hannah had survived. The records referred to those 'experiments' as 
unsuccessful, and Scully found the use of scientific terminology to 
cursorily describe the deaths maddening, and had to repeatedly force 
herself to focus on Hannah's records. She could do nothing for Hannah's 
sisters – at least, not at the moment.  

  Reading Hannah's records was like picking up a book and realizing 
halfway into it that you were reading the last part of a trilogy. 
Scully had no proof of the why or how of Hannah's creation, just 
dizzying piles of data about her responses to obliquely described 
experimentation. It seemed possible that this experimentation had not 
begun until the past year of her life, and she could not say for 
certain what exactly had been done to Hannah. In addition, she could 
find no record of the common pediatric vaccinations that Hannah should 
have been given in the first years of her life included in the 
perfunctory history attached to her experimental records. Nor was 
Hannah herself a reliable witness to what had been done to her, which 
meant that Scully had to consider a far wider universe of possible ills 
than the norm. She simply couldn't assume that Hannah had been 
appropriately vaccinated, nor could she decipher the mysterious 
designations for what appeared to be sequences of something 
vaccination-like that appeared repeatedly in Hannah's records of the 
past year.

  She sighed again, and Mulder looked over at her from the bed. In 
honor of their snow day, he was wearing his black jeans coupled with 
one of his work shirts. His long feet were bare, and his hair was 
flopping over his brow.

  "You need a break, Scully," he said.

  She eyebrowed him. "And, it's such a nice day for a walk, too," she 
answered sardonically.

  "It is?" Hannah asked, puzzled.

  "Oh, snow walks are the best," Mulder answered. "It's so quiet 
outside and everything looks so pretty." He wrapped Hannah up in the 
extra blanket from the closet and carried her to the window, pulling 
back the curtains. "Look at the trees, and the snow on the chain link 
fence over there."

  "It's very pretty," Hannah agreed, putting her hand on the glass and 
then withdrawing it quickly, "but isn't it really cold?"

  "Yes," Scully answered her, stretching up from the chair and 
wandering over to the window. "But it's nice if you know you're going 
to come inside and have something warm to drink."

  "Like that soup in a cup?" Hannah asked dubiously. She had protested 
having soup for breakfast, but had rejected the instant oatmeal in a 
cup outright. Mulder had insisted that she needed to eat something 
warm, so soup it was.

  Scully smiled, reaching up to Hannah to smooth her hair back and 
surreptitiously feel her forehead. It was still warm, but not 
worryingly so. "No," she said, "like hot chocolate …" Hannah looked 
intrigued, "with melted marshmallows."

  "That sounds much better than soup," she said enthusiastically. "Do 
we have any of that?"

  Mulder laughed. "Yes," he said.

  Hannah sat patiently at the table waiting while Mulder got milk out 
of the snow-packed Styrofoam cooler and warmed it in the same electric 
hot pot he'd used earlier in the day. Her continuing quiet was a 
contrast to her nearly constant chattering from when they'd first met, 
and was a clear indicator that she was not feeling well.

  "Hannah, did you drink milk when you were at the hospital?" Scully 
asked suddenly. It had just occurred to her that allergies were an 
immunological response.  

  "Yes," Hannah answered, puzzled. 

  "Did it look like the kind of white milk Mulder is using," she asked, 
"or was it more beige?"

  "It was white," Hannah said, and Scully nodded, lost in thought, eyes 
sliding back to the computer screen. 

  While they sipped their cocoa, Mulder got coloring books, crayons and 
colored pencils out of the bags of stuff he'd bought on the first trip 
to the supermarket. Scully smirked into her cup as she watched him 
explaining to Hannah how to color. He demonstrated with a double panel 
drawing of kids playing on a playground. He was coloring the left side 
of the double picture, and Hannah was supposed to be coloring the right 
side, but as time went on, she was spending more time correcting Mulder 
than she was on coloring her own part. She began to sort through the 
crayons to hand him appropriate colors, emphatically telling him what 
went where. Mulder dutifully complied, hiding a grin and occasionally 
hectoring Hannah to color her own side of the picture. It was hardly a 
surprise that he colored outside of the lines.

   Scully absently looked through the assortment of coloring books that 
Mulder had bought: playground scenes, with simple words; animals in 
their habitats; a book about families; a book of numbers and letters 
with simple words and their illustrations; a tablet of blank sheets. 
The one at the bottom of the pile was filled with complex outlined 
mosaics, some like stained glass windows, others like the elaborate 
floors and wall panels that one saw in museums. She glanced up at 
Mulder to see him watching her. The last book was clearly for her, but 
she picked up the one about animals in their habitats and began to flip 
through it.

  "Whatcha lookin' for?" Hannah asked curiously. She was sitting on 
Mulder's right leg, still wrapped in the spare blanket from the closet. 

  "Pictures of foxes," Scully answered sweetly.

  "Hey …" Mulder warned, while Hannah looked puzzled.

  She found what she was looking for and began to sort through the 
crayons which Mulder had unceremoniously dumped in a pile in the middle 
of the table, along with an assortment of colored pencils. 

  Hannah watched her as she colored the eyes of the fox in with a green 
crayon, then lightly ran over it with a brown one. "See," she said to 
Mulder, "she stays in the lines."

  Mulder rolled his eyes at Scully, and she stuck out her tongue at 
him, finding a burnt orange crayon to start coloring in the fox's fur. 

  "OK," Mulder said, "but my way is more artistic."

  Scully raised an eyebrow at him, and fished around in the unruly pile 
for a black crayon. She looked at the fox in the drawing and then 
outlined the animal freehand on the empty page next to it.

  "Wow!" Hannah said, impressed. "She made another fox!"

  "She's just copying the drawing," Mulder protested. "That's not that 
hard."

  "Oh, right," Scully said, laughing. 

  "Your turn, Mulder," Hannah announced. She was flipping through their 
coloring book looking for a blank page, but there were no pages that 
didn't have a drawing on them already. Scully helpfully handed over the 
tablet of blank pages. This time, Mulder stuck out his tongue at her. 

  "Fine, fine," Mulder grumbled. "Fine. Hannah, I need you to move you 
over here."

  "Oh, making room," Scully said.

  "Art needs room for expression," Mulder loftily responded.

  "I'll bet," Scully said, as Mulder began sorting through crayons and 
pencils. "You're just making a bigger mess," she protested. 

  "Scully," he said, waving a pencil at her, "cramping." She rolled her 
eyes, as Mulder looked thoughtful and began to draw something. "Wait a 
minute," he said, crossing through that drawing, "I need to start 
over."

  Scully smothered a giggle as Hannah encouraged Mulder, then watched 
as he began to draw a face on the pad. Her jaw dropped as he began to 
fill in the small features, until in just a few lines, Mulder had drawn 
a rough caricature of Hannah.

  "That's ME!" Hannah said breathlessly. "You drew ME!"

  Mulder was definitely smirking. 

  "Mulder …" she broke off, trying to look at the drawing again, which 
Hannah had scooped up to stare at. "That's really … where did you learn 
how to do that?" As soon as the words left her mouth, she remembered 
Mulder during the case that sent Patterson to jail for life, surrounded 
by drawings of gargoyles.
 
  Mulder shrugged, "Well, one day I was coloring outside the lines and 
…"

  She threw her crayon at his head. 

  "Ow," he said, then protested, "You've seen me draw things before."

  "Doodling doesn't count, Mulder."

  "It does too."

  "Now draw her!" Hannah demanded, turning the page. "Right here."

  Mulder looked at Scully over Hannah's head. "Right there," he said 
slowly, and Scully blushed, wondering what exactly he was imagining in 
his mind's eye. 

  "Oh, Mulder," she said, "you don't have to …"

  "Yes," Hannah insisted imperiously, "draw Scully." 

  She was surprised to hear Hannah referring to her by the name Mulder 
had given her, but Mulder was already sifting through the pencils, his 
laughing hazel eyes darting from her to the pile and back. He settled 
on a drawing pencil a shade darker than his beloved #2s, then glanced 
at Scully again mischievously before he bent over the pad. She bit her 
tongue, wondering what her caricature would look like as he began to 
outline the shape of her face. 

  It took her only a few seconds to recognize that he was drawing her 
expression as he must often see her. Her caricature looked at him 
skeptically, head tilted back and one eyebrow arched in challenge. She 
was relieved to see that the expression on her face was amused, and not 
angry. The words he'd said to her the day before -- 'I'd know your face 
anywhere, Scully' -- echoed in her memory. As Mulder's hand stilled on 
the page, she could barely raise her eyes from what he'd drawn in 
simple lines. She didn't think of herself as being beautiful, but 
Mulder … the woman that he'd drawn was beautiful. 

  "Mulder," she whispered, choked up. "Thanks."

  He reached over and touched her cheek. "I got you big time," he said. 
She covered his hand with hers and nodded, too touched to say anything 
more. 

  "Now, draw me a tiger!" Hannah demanded. 

  Scully let go of his hand, just catching one last glimpse of how 
Mulder saw her before he turned the page.

~*~  

  The hours after lunch were a sharp contrast to the lighthearted fun 
of the late morning. Hannah's mood had deteriorated, and Scully's 
suspicion that her temperature was up was confirmed when the 
thermometer registered 100.7. Still, it took Mulder considerable 
cajoling to charm Hannah into resting after lunch. He finally laid down 
on the bed with her to watch cartoons, absentmindedly winding her curls 
around his long fingers. She fell asleep after Mulder had endured 
almost an hour of Rugrats. He rolled his eyes at Scully after he 
crept off the bed. "Cartoons were better when I was a kid," he 
muttered, going to the window to check on the weather. "It's really 
slowing down."

  Scully nodded, only half-listening. 

  "Anything interesting?" Mulder asked, sitting down next to her at the 
table. He was twirling a pencil around his fingers, over and over. His 
fidgeting was so ingrained that she barely noticed it anymore, but in 
light of his surprising revelation of the morning, she was viewing his 
fascination with pencils in a new light. 

  "I don't know," Scully said. "A lot of what's been done to Hannah 
seems like an inoculation series, but … I could be just assuming that 
because Hannah said she'd been given shots, remember?" she looked at 
her notes. "But whatever they were doing it seems like they were 
repeating the same series over and over again."

  "Why?" Mulder asked. "And what kind of shots?"

  "I don't know," she answered, the frustration evident in her voice. 
"The abbreviations aren't for any vaccine series that I remember. 
Arguably, my pediatrics rotation was a long time ago, and I know that a 
lot of new vaccines have been added to the rotation, but these acronyms 
don't align themselves with anything on the current schedule of 
recommended vaccines from the CDC. I sent the guys an e-mail a while 
ago, and they're searching for the abbreviations, but so far…"

  "Do you think they're inoculating her against Purity?"

  "I have no idea what they're vaccinating her against," Scully said. 
"In fact, I can't even say that these are multi-part vaccines, or 
sequential inoculations, or vaccines at all. It's just the patterning 
that suggests that they are." 

  Mulder looked thoughtful. "Like the kind they give you when you go to 
Africa or India?" Off her look he continued, "I went to India one 
summer instead of coming home. Or, are you saying Purity is like 
rabies?"

  "I don't know, Mulder," she said wearily. "I really can't tell 
anything from these schedules, other than they're sequential, and 
repeated."

  Mulder sighed and turned toward Hannah, who was curled up in a ball 
in the bed. "Is she sick because she's due for some shots?" 

  "I don't know, Mulder," she said quietly.

  He turned around and looked at her assessingly. "What's going on, 
Scully?"

  She hesitated, but knew that he wouldn't rest until she answered his 
question. "I think it's possible that the room that she was in was a 
kind of clean room," she said, watching his expression carefully. "The 
Haz-Mat suits, the separate rooms," she continued. "I think that 
Hannah's not been exposed to a lot of germs."

  Mulder closed his eyes and grimaced, "In other words, this is my 
fault."

  "What choice did you have, Mulder?" she answered him. "Do you really 
think that she would have survived their experiments?"

  His eyes popped open. "What're you saying, Scully?"

  "Hannah did have three siblings," she said. 

  "Siblings? Not clones?"

  "Not clones," Scully said. "From the RFLP information that was 
included in their records, they're not clones. There were subtle 
differences in the sequences that I could see."

  Mulder's brow was drawn down in thought. "Variations on a theme … now 
why would they do that?"

  "I don't know, Mulder. I do know that they were all subjected to the 
same series of experiments, and only Hannah has survived. If their 
immune systems were altered, it's a logical deduction that the 
environment was limited so that it wouldn't have an effect on the 
experiments, and that those experiments, perhaps in concert with the 
alterations, were what killed them." 

  Mulder pushed his chair back away from the table and strode to the 
window. He looked furious, but remained silent. She got up and followed 
him. The snow had slowed down to a trickle, and no longer seemed to be 
accumulating. The world outside the window was white and still, with 
nothing moving except for the occasional drifting of the snow. She 
shivered at the sight.

  "What are you thinking, Mulder?"

  "I'm not," he said after a minute, "I'm feeling incredibly angry and 
..." he shook his head, "After all this time, part of me still cannot 
accept the absolute barbarity of what they've done." He turned away 
from the window and looked at her, his eyes dark. "To you, to my 
sister. How many more do you think there are, Scully? Women and 
children like Hannah, and Emily. I'm sure you noticed that these 
bastards never seem to experiment on themselves, and hardly ever on 
their sons."

  She opened her mouth to point out that their experimentation was 
focused on reproduction, which made their human subject choices 
explainable, but he continued on, his voice hot and low.

  "And is it any surprise, really? How else could it have turned out 
when they used Victor Klemper and men like him to design their 
experiments?" He paused, "They're not scientists, they're monsters." He 
was flushed and couldn't meet her gaze. She wondered exactly to whom he 
was referring. "Sometimes, I wonder who's worse? What they're claiming 
to protect us from, or the supposed cure?"

  Hannah made a distressed noise in her sleep and suddenly rolled over, 
diverting their attention to her. Scully noted how she looked with a 
sinking feeling, glancing over Mulder's shoulder to the unblemished 
snow outside. There was still no sign of a plow.

  He shook his head in frustration. "Damn it!" His voice had dropped 
back to a whisper, but there was a desperate edge to it. "As soon as 
they plow, we're leaving," he said intently. "That way, we can get to 
the Crawfords first thing in the morning at the latest."

  She nodded her agreement, and he stared at her, still for the first 
time in a while, stopped by her lack of argument. "I agree, Mulder," 
she said quietly. "She's not getting any better. We should go as soon 
as it's safe."

  "OK," he said, snapping back into action. "I'm going to find a shovel 
to dig the car out." His hand enclosed her wrist for an instant as he 
passed by her, already in motion. 

~*~

  Eight hours later, Scully sat huddled in the backseat of their 
rental, travel-weary, exhausted and terrified. In her arms, Hannah lay 
in a stupor, having passed into a quiet, heavy sleep that frightened 
Scully far more than the fevered thrashing that had occurred most of 
the car ride. Hannah's temperature now hovered somewhere near 104 
degrees. She'd tried to convince herself that it was unlikely to be an 
accurate reading. Hannah was not only wearing her own coat, but Mulder 
had wrapped her in the purloined blanket from the motel and his own 
overcoat. When they finally got into their room, she'd take Hannah's 
temperature again. She searched for a glimpse of Mulder via the window 
into the motel office, but he and the proprietor were still out of 
sight. He'd been outside for a few minutes, bouncing on the balls of 
his feet and chafing his arms against the cold penetrating his thin 
suitcoat, ringing the bell of the office repeatedly until a tall older 
woman, wearing a flannel bathrobe and carrying a double-barreled 
shotgun, had appeared. 

  Less than ten minutes had passed since he entered the door of the 
office, but Scully felt panicky at being alone with Hannah. It wasn't 
like Mulder could do anything for Hannah, but while he was there, at 
least her feeling of impotence was shared. She didn't know what else 
she could do for the child other than worry. On the long drive as 
Hannah's fever had raged, and Mulder drove carefully behind the 
snowplows, inching ever closer to Rochester, she had worried. She 
worried that the Motrin was no longer reducing Hannah's fever, but was 
too worried to try another fever reducer. What if Hannah had a reaction 
to the acetaminophen? Aspirin was out of the question from the reading 
that Scully had done, and yet it was probably still the most effective 
fever reducer available. Yet, with visions of Reye's Syndrome and 
Kawasaki Disease running rampant in her imagination, she wouldn't risk 
giving Hannah either drug. 

  She found herself checking Hannah's lymph nodes again and again, 
running fingers over them lightly to see if they were swollen. She'd 
checked the skin on the palm of Hannah's hands repeatedly, and examined 
her mouth and her tongue with her penlight. 
 
  If Hannah had developed a serious pediatric illness, she would have 
to wait another eight or nine hours to even begin treatment. Scully 
felt her scalp break out in a sweat at the very idea and clamped down 
on the rising wave of panic. They couldn't take Hannah to a hospital – 
although they would have to if they couldn't find the Crawfords or 
worse, if there was nothing that they could do for Hannah. Mulder was 
firm in his belief that the Crawfords would know what to do, and she 
could only hope that whatever instinct guided his movements was right 
yet again. Still … the Crawfords last known location was a nondescript 
office park off secondary roads. The Gunmen were monitoring the plowing 
being done in the area and had promised to call as soon as the roads 
were passable. It was all taking too long.

  She stared down at Hannah, feeling the solid weight of her in her 
arms. This was her child, and she was a doctor, and there wasn't a 
damned thing she could do to help her. She swallowed the tears that 
threatened to overcome the panic and wondered how in the hell anyone 
could be a mother when it was such a jumble of overpowering emotion all 
the time. This child, the one whose possible existence she hadn't 
contemplated 72 hours ago, had become essential to her just as Emily 
had before her. How many more times would she have to live this 
horrendous scenario before her own heart exploded from grief?

  She heard the sound of Mulder's voice as he exited the motel office 
with a key dangling from a big piece of plastic. "Thank you for helping 
us out," he said with strained civility, "my wife and daughter are very 
tired." As soon as his back was turned to the door, the polite mask 
that he'd been wearing crumpled, and she could see the worry and fear 
return. He ran the few feet to the back door, shivering convulsively in 
the cold air. She leaned over and unlocked the door across from her 
just before he fumbled for the handle, sliding a bit on the ice in the 
parking lot. 

  "We're just down the row two doors, and …" he said, as the door 
opened, but whatever he might have said was lost as he bent down and 
saw her face. "Oh, Scully," he said sorrowfully. 

  She lifted Hannah toward him with arms that had long ago cramped from 
holding her weight, feeling the imminence of the tears that threatened 
to overflow at his stricken expression. He leant in across the seat and 
reached for her instead, cradling the back of her skull in his large 
palm as he pressed a lingering kiss to her forehead. "I'm so sorry, 
Scully," he said in anguish. "I wish …"

  "I know," she said, "I know." She moved Hannah toward him again as he 
hovered over her. "Mulder, please," she whispered. "Help me. We need to 
get her inside." 

  He gasped a little at her words, but nodded and lifted Hannah out of 
her arms easily. Hannah didn't stir at all, and the sight of her so 
still made Scully question whether or not they should just take her to 
the hospital after all. She stumbled as she got out of the car, not 
realizing until she stood upright that her legs had gone to sleep from 
Hannah's extra weight compressing them. 

  "Scully?!" Mulder turned from the sidewalk in front of the car as she 
clung to the top of the door. Hannah stirred in his arms and half-
opened her eyes.

  "I'm fine, Mulder," she said automatically, even thought she was 
dizzy and tired and the world was blurring at the edges. "My legs are 
asleep. Get her inside." 

  Hannah had begun to shiver in the cold, despite all of the protection 
she had against it. "'m cold," she whined, and Scully felt incredible 
relief to hear the plaintive sound. 

  "OK, honey, OK," Mulder soothed, turning back toward the door, and 
then peering over his shoulder. "I'll get the stuff from the car in a 
minute, Scully," he said. "Come with us." 

  She nodded and shambled along in his wake, wincing at the pins and 
needles that ran along her right side and through her legs. She rubbed 
at her extremities as she moved, stopping to stamp her feet once or 
twice on the cleared and dry sidewalk. Her head ached with the cold. 
Shivering, she stepped through the door of the motel room and found, 
like Alice in Wonderland, that it seemed she'd stepped back in time. 
The room was nearly the reverse image of the one they'd left eight 
hours ago, a fact that did nothing to help her muddled thinking. The 
sitting area was to the right of the door, and the bathroom was at the 
back, next to the closet. The heap of Hannah's outdoor clothing was 
piled on one of the two queen-sized beds that were squeezed into the 
space along the left wall. When she closed the door to the parking lot, 
a small walkway to maneuver around the end of the second bed appeared. 
A nightstand between the two beds with a phone and a bureau with a TV 
set opposite the bed farthest from the door completed the set-up. It 
was clean and neat, and the only difference between it and the room 
they'd left behind hours ago was that somewhere along the way, the 
motel must have had a lodge theme, because the walls were paneled with 
faux-knotty pine.      

  She could hear the low murmur of Mulder's voice in the bathroom, and 
realized that he was trying to cajole Hannah into using the toilet. She 
walked over to the wall unit on tingling legs and turned the heat up 
all the way, then made her way back around the end of the bed and 
crossed the room to the closet, hanging up her coat. She walked back to 
the bed, stomping her feet as she went, and found Hannah's coat under 
Mulder's, hanging it up. She left Mulder's coat where it was in the 
vain hope that he would actually wear it outside when he went to 
collect the rest of their belongings. It was useless to suggest to him 
that the cold made him more vulnerable to illness. Mulder hardly ever 
got sick; in all the time she'd known him, his visits to the doctor had 
almost always been due to injury. It was one of his more annoying 
traits, since she tended to get every cold that passed through the 
Hoover and hold onto it for a week or two, while Mulder would maybe get 
a sniffle for a day or two. 

  She realized that her thoughts were whirling, but very slowly, and 
then felt her own forehead speculatively. It was impossible to judge if 
she had a fever, but her cold hand felt soothing against her head. She 
took an inventory, running her fingers lightly over the lymph glands in 
her throat. She was achy, addled and her throat hurt. However, she was 
exhausted and had been dumping adrenaline into her bloodstream all day 
while consuming thoroughly inadequate amounts of food. Her jaw ached 
from tension and her mouth was dry from her nearly constant state of 
spitless panic. She was, most likely, very dehydrated. 

  Mulder brought Hannah out of the bathroom and tucked her into bed, 
propping her up on two pillows. "I'll be right back," he said to her, 
his hand circling her elbow briefly as he passed by her. 

  She sighed in his wake and went over to the bed to pick up the 
overcoat he'd ignored and hang it up. Hannah watched her listlessly, 
already half-asleep again. 

  Mulder was back in the room in an instant, dropping bags on and 
around the table and leaving the door open while he ran back to the car 
for the last of their belongings. She heard the sound of him skidding, 
then a curse and a muffled thump like he'd bounced off the car. By the 
time she got to the door, however, he was already halfway back to the 
room, holding the cooler in his hands. 

  "I'm fine," he announced as he strode by her into the room. "I just 
slipped."

  She closed the door behind him. He had retrieved a Gatorade from the 
cooler, which he moved toward Hannah with as he spoke. "I didn't 
flush," he said to Scully over his shoulder, "she hardly peed at all, 
and it's very dark."

  She moved into the bathroom and stared down at the orange liquid in 
the toilet basin, before closing the door and trying to void her own 
bladder. Her own output was similarly minimal and dark. She stared at 
her pale, exhausted face in the mirror. The truth was that she had 
already been run down before this latest adventure had begun. If what 
Hannah had was communicable, she was definitely vulnerable to it. There 
was nothing she could do about it right now. She washed her face and 
hands and dried them, going back out to the room. 

  Mulder had turned the TV on, but was sitting next to Hannah on the 
bed with his back to it. A half-drunk cup of Gatorade stood abandoned 
on the night table, but Mulder hadn't given up. He was feeding a dozing 
Hannah the liquid through one of the unused eyedroppers. She took off 
her shoes and went to the cooler for a bottle of water for herself, 
opening it and guzzling it down while she watched him patiently feed 
Hannah. The set of his back was determined, but he was extremely gentle 
with the child, not forcing her to drink. He paused between eyedroppers 
full of liquid, watching to make sure that Hannah swallowed before he 
continued. She shucked her suitjacket, hanging it up in the closet, 
then paused. She really should change into more comfortable clothes, 
but it seemed like such a huge effort at the moment. She stood at the 
opened door of the closet, swaying in indecision.

  "Scully?" Mulder was looking over his shoulder at her. "Are you all 
right?" 

  "I'm so tired, Mulder," she said, after a pause. 

  He got up from the bed and took off his own suit jacket, dropping it 
at the end of the bed, and rolling up his sleeves. He was studying her, 
as he unknotted his tie and laid it atop the jacket. He toed off his 
shoes and walked over to her. "Why don't you lie down for a while?" he 
asked in a gentle voice.

  "I …" she started to speak, but his quiet voice undercut hers.

  "She can't have any more meds for a while," he said, "and I'm not 
tired. I'm going to get some more of this Gatorade into her." He 
ushered her over to the other bed, pulling back the covers. "I promise 
I'll wake you if anything happens. Just lie down for a while." 

  He pushed her gently down to the bed, and it felt so good underneath 
her that she moaned a little. 

  "I really shouldn't …" she protested weakly, but Mulder had picked up 
her feet and tucked them under the covers. 

  "Just rest for a little while," he ordered. 

  She closed her eyes. 

~*~

  It seemed like only minutes later that Mulder was urging her to wake 
up, the panic in his blank voice evident. When she started to sit up, 
he pulled on her hands to aid her; she saw that he was wild-eyed with 
fear. "Her temperature's 104.5," he said. 

  She bolted from her bed and crossed the small space between them to 
crawl onto Hannah's bed. Hannah's face was flushed with fever, her hair 
matted with sweat on her brow and at the base of her neck. 

  "Did you give her another dose?" She was searching for Hannah's pulse 
as she spoke. 

  "At midnight," he said. He'd crossed to the other side of the bed, 
and was kneeling by Hannah's side, still wearing his rumpled slacks and 
shirt. "You were sleeping, so I just went ahead." His voice was 
anguished. 

   "OK, OK," she said, trying to gather her racing thoughts as she 
counted heartbeats. "Let's get her in the tub."

  Mulder shot to his feet, picking up Hannah as he went. Scully crawled 
all the way across the bed and opened the door to the bathroom, 
squinting in the too-bright light as she stoppered the tub and turned 
the water on. She held up one hand to halt Mulder's progress while she 
made sure the temperature was appropriately tepid. While the tub 
filled, Scully tried to get Hannah out of her nightgown. Mulder finally 
sat down on the closed toilet so that they could maneuver Hannah's limp 
limbs out of the tangled nightgown. Hannah's torso was flushed with 
fever, her skin dry and hot. 

  "You need to hold onto her, Mulder," Scully said, tugging on his arms 
to get him to stand.

  "I won't let go," he promised. He lowered himself carefully to his 
knees, and Scully joined him, grabbing a washcloth from the rack above 
the toilet. He was holding Hannah above the water, and she checked the 
temperature one more time before she pressed down on her feet, urging 
Mulder to let them dip into the water. Hannah jerked in Mulder's hands 
at the contact and she held onto Hannah's legs while he wrapped his 
arms around her more securely. 

  "You just need to hold her head up, Mulder," she whispered, turning 
the warm water up a bit more. 

  Hannah was restless in the water, arms and legs moving. Scully 
smoothed the lapping water up and over Hannah's torso as she began to 
cry thinly, barely conscious. Her voice echoed up and around them, the 
fretful wailing bouncing off the tiled walls and mixing with Mulder's 
murmured words as he tried to soothe the child. The string of his 
murmuring was mostly nonsensical, alternating between hushing and 
soothing Hannah, his voice strained but quiet. As the bath went on and 
Hannah's tears continued, Scully realized that Mulder was crying as 
well, but his utterances had transformed into a mantra that he 
whispered to Hannah over and over. "You're OK, we're going to make it 
better. I promise."

  She looked up at him in surprise, and his tear-filled gaze caught 
hers, hot and challenging, as if daring her to contradict him. His 
rolled-up shirt sleeves were soaked, and he was rocking Hannah in his 
left arm, dribbling water over her head like a baptism with his right 
hand. 

  "Just lay her back, Mulder," she whispered. Hannah started to shift 
in Mulder's grasp as he did so, and she leaned over to catch Hannah's 
face so that she wouldn't turn it into the water. They were pressed 
against each other and the side of the tub, and she raised her eyes to 
find him still staring at her, tears streaming down his face. She had 
witnessed Mulder's tears more than once over the course of their years 
together, and had always been surprised by the artless and raw manner 
in which he cried, as if he were still a boy. Like most adults, she'd 
learned to feel shame at such a display; as a consequence, her own 
tears were repressed more often than not. When they did finally 
overflow, they did so against her will and every effort, in a silent 
stream that rebuked her lack of control. But tonight, Mulder's quiet 
tears mirrored her own unshed ones. 

  Unlike her, he made no effort to check them as their eyes caught and 
held. The intensity of his gaze threatened to melt the stone of ice 
cold fear behind which her tears were dammed, but for once she gave no 
thought to the display that might occur if that happened. Instead, she 
was overwhelmed with feeling. She loved him impossibly at that 
particular moment, could not think of any man other than Mulder who 
would stand by her so steadfastly through nightmare after nightmare, 
who would love her child, misbegotten as she had been, so easily and 
completely. She raised her left hand to wipe the tears that he was 
crying for all of them off his face, forgetting that it was already 
sodden and useless for such a purpose.

  He lifted her hand from his face and placed a kiss on the wrinkled 
tips of her fingers silently, never breaking her gaze. The rings that 
she had somehow never taken off since he'd given them to her days ago 
glittered in the unforgiving light of the bathroom.
  
  She closed her eyes as he leant forward and pressed a kiss to her 
forehead, sending a prayer heavenward as she did so. God help her, but 
she wanted to believe his promise.

~*~

  Her first sight of the office park that was supposed to hold Hannah's 
salvation did not seem promising. She knew that any place would seem 
ominous to her in the winter dark, but the anonymous tree-lined roads 
that led them deeper and deeper into a maze of squat pseudo-industrial 
buildings looked nothing like a place where a desperately ill child 
could get competent medical assistance. In the driver's seat, Mulder 
fidgeted as he followed Frohike's directions. She could hear an 
occasional word from the phone as Mulder questioned whether or not this 
was the right place. It was far larger than she'd expected. They'd 
already passed a UPS facility, and several office supply businesses of 
one sort or another -- companies for machines, paper, even furniture. 
They'd passed a medical records company a while back, but Frohike had 
insisted that it wasn't the right place. She sighed and tried to relax, 
looking back at a dozing Hannah, and smoothing down her last passable 
skirt nervously. 

  She'd slept lightly for the scant time after Hannah's bath, and had 
risen from her uneasy rest when she felt Mulder get up from the bed and 
pad into the bathroom. Hannah'd slept between them for those few hours, 
the sounds of her breathing devolving into wheezing and weak coughs 
that threatened to become more overpowering the longer she went 
untreated.

  By the time Mulder had exited the bathroom in a swirl of humid air, 
she'd salvaged an outfit from her one remaining skirt and the new 
sweater set she'd purchased days before. She'd showered and dressed 
swiftly, and they'd left the room just after six o'clock to set out for 
this bleak destination, only rousing Hannah enough to dress her warmly. 
Mulder had carried Hannah out to the car, and tucked her tenderly into 
her carseat while Scully stood on the threshold of their room and 
watched, filled with anxiety. The dark morning seemed foreboding to 
her, despite the bright light of the winter constellations against the 
clear, pre-dawn sky. She was a winter's child herself, but that fact 
gave her daughters no inoculation. Emily had died just as winter began. 
What chance did Hannah have when winter held the world in such a harsh 
and unforgiving grip?

  The car fishtailed as Mulder turned yet another corner and he swore, 
letting go of the wheel so the car would straighten itself out. In the 
confusion, she almost missed the anonymous structure that had suddenly 
appeared on their right. She just made out the word Prometheus on a 
sign mostly buried in a snowbank and sucked in her breath.  

  "Mul—" He cut her off before she finished. 

  "Got it, Frohike," he said. He braked sharply to turn into the mostly 
deserted parking lot. A few white panel vans sat in neatly plowed 
spaces, their roofs capped with snow. On the other side of the lot, 
near the blank eye of the front door, the lumps of what looked to be 
sedan cars were visible under the snow. A Bobcat stood next to the cars 
silently, snow still in the bucket to be moved elsewhere. 

  "Think we're expected, Scully?" Mulder asked. He dropped the now 
silent phone into an empty cupholder, and pulled out his gun as he 
maneuvered their rental into a parking space not directly in line of 
the front door. She had taken hers out as soon as he'd turned the 
corner into the parking lot. "What's the plan, Mulder?" she asked. 

  He put the car in park, but didn't cut the engine. "Get behind the 
wheel, Scully, would you?"

  He lifted up and stepped over while she slid underneath him, as he 
moved to the passenger side. She rammed the seat closer to the wheel, 
using her left hand.  

  "I'm going to ring the bell," he said grimly, trying desperately to 
keep his knees from being wedged against the dashboard as he waited for 
her to hastily adjust the mirrors. "Shoot anyone who approaches the 
car." He turned around and looked at Hannah, dozing in her carseat, and 
then turned back to her with a smile. "Try not to shoot me, though, 
OK?" 

  "Mulder," she said, protesting faintly. 

  "I really didn't enjoy it the last time," he continued. The long 
fingers of his left hand circled her wrist loosely for a second, and 
then he opened the car door and stepped out into the cold air. She took 
the safety off her gun and watched him go, scanning the parking lot and 
building roofline for signs of life. There were no windows cut into the 
blank façade of Prometheus Strategies Inc, just a small one in the door 
that Mulder was walking toward. The left front of the building was 
dominated by a loading dock, the three large doors pulled closed 
against the weather. It looked like they'd been unused in a while, as 
the snow had drifted across the empty expanse of the dock ledge and 
piled against the grated doors. 

  Hannah coughed in the back seat, and Scully startled at the sound, 
turning her head to ensure that Hannah was OK and that there was no one 
behind them.

  When she turned back, Mulder was at the door, leaning on the bell 
without letting up. She put the car into drive, but kept her foot 
planted on the brake, leaving her left hand on the wheel. Mulder had 
his ear pressed to the door, listening, and she tensed as she saw him 
move away from it and flatten himself against the building. As the door 
opened, he ducked and came up low. She forced herself to look around 
her and Hannah, although she wanted to back the car up and over to see 
what was going on. She could see Mulder's mouth moving, but the tension 
in his stance did not ease as he waited for a response. As the seconds 
ticked by, she scanned the mirrors and all visible sightlines, feeling 
exposed and vulnerable and utterly incapable of keeping all three of 
them safe. 

  When Mulder shifted his posture, she swung her gun up and out toward 
him. He took a step backward into the parking lot and the door swung 
open all the way to reveal a slender young man with auburn hair. He was 
wearing a lab coat and looked curiously over to where she sat in the 
car. Despite the time that had passed since their last encounter with 
him, his youthful appearance was unchanged. As she looked on in 
surprise, the young man stepped out onto the snow-covered asphalt and 
walked directly over to her car, Mulder trailing behind with his gun. 
He stopped and bent over to peer in the passenger window at her, his 
expression not changing at the sight of her own drawn gun. Instead, he 
looked right past the weapon to her face, and she realized with a start 
that she, and not Hannah, was the object of his curiousity.

  "Agent Scully," Kurt Crawford said in a mild voice, "welcome to 
Prometheus. Please come inside."

  She sucked in a gasp of surprise, hating the tremble of the weapon in 
her grasp. She swung it at the sound of someone trying to open the 
locked back door, but saw Mulder, gun nowhere in evidence, trying to 
get to Hannah. "Scully," he said to her through the window, "open up." 

  She stared at him for a long moment through the glass that separated 
them and wondered how many unimagined questions would be answered on 
this journey. She wasn't at all sure she wanted to know the answers.

  "Scully," Mulder pled, watching her through the glass. "Get the 
files." 

  "Agent Scully," Crawford said a beat later, repeating himself, 
"please come inside." 

~*~

  The reception area of Prometheus was small, clean and looked utterly 
unused. It looked like a set rather than an actual workplace, with its 
neat guest chairs and coffee table complete with carefully fanned 
magazines. Behind the empty reception desk, a door stood open and she 
followed Kurt Crawford and Mulder through it, starting when it closed 
behind her. She turned, only to come face-to-face with Kurt Crawford, 
again. 

  "Agent Scully!" the young man said, in a tone of subdued surprise, 
even though his face was still relatively affectless. She heard a 
ripple of voices repeat her name in exactly the same tone and turned 
back to see that Mulder and the first Kurt Crawford were farther down 
the long hall than she. In the intervening space, she could see several 
more Kurt Crawfords at the doors of rooms that opened off the halls. 
All of them were staring at her with identical expressions of 
curiousity. 

  "Scully," Mulder's voice urged her to him, and she grasped for it 
like a lifeline, hurrying down the hall after murmuring something that 
might have sounded like hello and excuse me. A ripple of sound, a 
whispering of Mulder's name, followed her as she moved down the 
corridor.

  "There are a number of us here," the first Kurt Crawford said to her. 

  "I see," Scully said, although she did not understand at all.

  "We have a lot of work to accomplish," he continued in his matter of 
fact voice.

  As they continued down the hall, she saw the green water filled tanks 
in one room and shivered. Most of the rooms they passed seemed to be 
fully operational labs, although their passage in the corridor drew the 
identical occupants away from their benches and hoods to peer at them. 

  At the end of the corridor, they came to yet another door. "This is 
our infirmary," Kurt said. A clone could be seen through a window, 
turning on monitors and readying a bed. "Please put her on the bed, 
Agent Mulder."

  "Hannah," Mulder said shortly as he moved through the door. "Her name 
is Hannah."

  Kurt nodded, "Yes, so you said. For H in the series." He turned to 
Scully, "Do you have the data?"

  Scully stared at him for longer than was polite, looking at his 
features and trying to comprehend their alien familiarity. 

  "Scully?" Mulder asked, "did you leave the bag in the car?" 

  She nodded, and tore her eyes away from the clone's imperturbable 
gaze to Mulder's troubled one. "I'm sorry, Mulder," she said, "I just 
…"

  He nodded, and held out his hands for the keys. "I'll go get it," he 
said, "you tell him what's been happening."

  Before she could open her mouth to protest further, he was moving 
back the way they'd come, and she was left alone with a pair of the 
Crawford clones. 

  "Could you please describe the presenting symptoms?" The clone at 
Hannah's bedside asked her. 

  Scully tore her eyes away from the first clone to find herself 
regarding the second. He had put a pulse oxygen monitor on Hannah's 
finger and was checking her vital signs. Hannah had a digital 
thermometer in her mouth, and was lying atop the bedclothes, still 
wearing her boots, overcoat, hat and one mitten. Although she had 
submitted to the clone's ministrations easily enough, she looked 
faintly terrified of the whole situation. Scully shook herself out of 
her reverie, and sat next to Hannah on the bed. She took the 
thermometer out of Hannah's mouth and handed it back to the clone for 
the moment, then removed Hannah's hat and mittens, and held her hand as 
she spoke. 

  "Agent Mulder found Hannah approximately six days ago …" she began, 
only to be interrupted by the first clone, who was now holding a clip 
board and a pen. 

  "Yes, we know," he said implacably, "but we don't know when or how 
she began to decompensate."

  Scully closed her eyes and tried to gather her thoughts. "More than 
60 hours ago, Hannah began to exhibit signs of illness, primarily 
fever, rapid pulse and listlessness. Her fever has ranged from a high 
of 104.5 to a low of 99.4, but it has not dropped below 101 at any time 
for the last 24 hours. In the past 24 hours, she has developed a deep 
cough. Her temperature spiked to 104.5 approximately eight hours ago, 
despite the fact that she has been receiving a weight appropriate dose 
of ibuprofen for the past 48 hours."

  Mulder burst into the room with the discs just as she finished.

  "Mulder!" Hannah said. She sounded relieved, and Scully tamped down 
the momentary pang of jealousy that flared. 

  "Hi pumpkin," he said warmly. "How're you feeling?"

  "OK," she croaked, and then began coughing. Scully adjusted the head 
of the bed to a higher position and asked one of the clones to get her 
some water.

  "Is your throat sore, Hannah?" Scully asked. 

  "I guess so," she said. "It hurts."

  "How about your chest?" Scully asked her. "Does that hurt?" 
  
  "When I cough," Hannah answered wheezily. 

  Scully gave her some water to sip, and continued to divest Hannah of 
her outerwear. 

  When she was under the covers in her nightgown, the clone gave her 
back the thermometer. "Put this under your tongue, Pumpkin," he said to 
Hannah in his nearly affectless voice. 

  Scully could feel her eyebrows rising in surprise at the clone's 
attempt at bedside manner. Behind her, she could hear a strangled 
rumble from Mulder as he choked back a laugh and tried to speak at the 
same time. 

  It was Hannah, however, who said to the clone gravely, "You should 
call me Hannah," with particular emphasis on the first word. Her tone 
was polite, but brooked no argument. 

  The clone, seemingly not in the least offended, nodded and reminded 
her to place the thermometer under her tongue. Mulder stood behind him 
and watched the numbers on the screen as they rose. 

  "103.5," he said to Scully before the clone could. "It was 104.5 
early this morning."

  "So Agent Scully reported," the first clone said. "I think that our 
best course of action would be to take some blood and other samples and 
see if there is any bacterial growth. Until then, however, I'd suggest 
that we rehydrate and begin a course of a broad-spectrum antibiotic 
such as amoxicillin or cephalosporin. What is your opinion, Agent 
Scully?"

  "I concur," she said. "Hannah's fever has been elevated for too long, 
and she does have some inflammation of the lymph glands under her jaw. 
However, I'm concerned that amoxicillin might be too much of an 
allergen risk."

  The first clone nodded to his counterpart, who exited the room. "Was 
there any indication of allergy in these records, Agent Scully?"

  "None that I can decipher, but it can't hurt to be safe," she 
answered. "There were codes and abbreviations with which I'm not 
familiar. Perhaps you could decode some of them?"

  "Perhaps," he answered smoothly. "Let me take a preliminary look at 
the records. In light of the lack of information, I agree that it is 
advisable to try cephalosporin first."

  Scully nodded her agreement.

  "Would you be comfortable taking the swabs and the blood samples?" 

  "Yes," she answered immediately. Although in truth it had been years 
since she'd done either, she wasn't about to let one of the clones test 
Hannah. 

  "I'll be in the lab across the hall looking at this data," the first 
clone answered. "You can bring the samples there when you're ready." He 
left the room, and Scully stood and took off her own overcoat, looking 
for the sink to wash her hands. She could hear the low rumble of 
Mulder's voice as he talked to Hannah, asking her how she felt and if 
she wanted to watch some TV. She tucked her rings carefully into the 
waistband of her skirt before she washed, and then gloved, her hands.

  The clone who seemed to work at the infirmary had returned in the 
meantime, and was hanging an IV bag for rehydration, as well as the 
smaller bag of cephalosporin. Scully returned to Hannah's bedside and 
asked Hannah if she understood what Scully was going to do. 

  "You're going to stick me with that needle," Hannah said matter of 
factly, "and then tape it down so the stuff in the bag runs into me."

  "So you've had IVs before?" Scully asked.

  "Yes," Hannah said. "How long will it hurt me?" Her tone was stoic; 
Mulder was visibly startled and sat down on the bed, watching her 
closely. 

  "I'll try my best not to hurt you when I put the needle in, Hannah," 
Scully answered. Her already shaky confidence in this whole procedure 
was undermined by this evidence of Hannah's negative past experiences. 
"Do you have any numbing agent?" She asked the infirmary clone. 

  His brow drew down in concentration. "I believe there is some 
lidocaine gel in the formulary."

  "Please go get it," Scully said firmly. She turned back to Hannah. 
"I'm going to numb your skin so the needle won't hurt when it goes in," 
she said to her.

  Hannah looked very puzzled. "The needle doesn't bother me when it 
goes in," she said. "The stuff that goes inside me hurts."

  Scully regarded her with a dawning dread. "Did it look like this?" 
She pulled the rehydrating solution off the IV pole.

  "No," Hannah said, looking at the bag. "Not the stuff that hurt. It 
was black." 

  Mulder looked like he might be sick, and she knew how he felt. She 
had a sharp, physical memory of the feel of the black oil writhing in 
her veins, corrupting her. She struggled to keep her expression neutral 
as she addressed Hannah. "I will never put anything inside of you to 
hurt you, Hannah," she promised. "Never. This medicine will make you 
feel better, not worse."

  "OK," Hannah said. She seemed pleased, but puzzled, which made Scully 
feel even more sad. It was clear that she had no expectation of being 
cared for in this kind of setting, and Scully found herself at a loss 
for words to explain it any clearer. She appealed to Mulder silently to 
help her, their eyes locking across Hannah's bed. 

  "Hannah, doctors are supposed to help people," Mulder said quietly, 
"not hurt them. The people that had you before were not good doctors."

  Hannah contemplated this explanation while Scully accepted the 
numbing agent from the clone and smoothed it on Hannah's arm. She 
quietly instructed the clone to heat a blanket in the microwave while 
she watched Hannah.

  "So that's why Heather and Hilary and Hope went away?" she asked. 
"Because the bad doctors didn't help them?"

  Scully could not help fisting her hands in their gloves, and only 
hoped that her nails would not pierce them where they pressed into her 
palms. 

  Mulder was stricken by Hannah's words, but his mild expression did 
not change as he smoothed Hannah's hair from her face. "Yes," he said 
succinctly. He swallowed several times. "Were they very sick?"

  "They cried a lot," Hannah said matter of factly. "It made my head 
hurt worse, so I would try to go back to sleep. I don't really remember 
it. I woke up and they were gone. I think Hope left first."

  "Did you see her leave, honey?" Scully asked, wrapping Hannah's arm 
in the blanket. 

  Mulder shifted position so that he was sitting next to Hannah with 
his back to her pillows. He wrapped his arms around the child. 

  "No," Hannah said, watching what Scully was doing intently. "When I 
woke up, she was gone. And then I hurt some more, and then Hilary was 
gone."

  "You were very sick," Scully whispered, still holding the warm 
blanket around Hannah's arm. She had never quite understood the 
murderous impulse as viscerally as she did at this moment.

  "I thought you said I was sick now," Hannah said, confused. "It 
doesn't feel the same at all."   

  Scully reached up and touched Hannah's face, "I'm glad," she said. 
"Hannah, I want you to listen to me. I won't let anybody hurt you ever 
again."

  "Oh," Hannah said. She looked at Scully with an expression of wonder. 
"You won't?" 

  "No," Scully said firmly, choking back her tears. Mulder was resting 
his head on Hannah's smaller one and she could see his chest heave as 
he tried to repress his own emotions.  He was smiling at her, despite 
his trembling chin, as she caressed Hannah's cheek and shook her head, 
looking directly into Hannah's wide eyes. "Never."

  "Oh!" Hannah said. She reached up and took hold of Scully's hand, 
hugging her arm to her chest. "OK," she said brightly.  

~*~

  When Hannah was settled in her bed watching cartoons with Mulder, 
Scully washed her hands again and returned her rings to their place. 
She smoothed her hair in the mirror and was not surprised to find 
Mulder regarding her with an expression so full of emotion that she'd 
need a year just to catalogue all the shades of it. What was clear was 
how very proud he was of her. She turned, and leant against the sink, 
gazing back at him. He pressed a kiss to Hannah's head and she nodded, 
picking up the tray that held blood and sputum to be cultured.

  "I'll be back," she said to them both. 

  Hannah was glassy-eyed and mesmerized by the TV, but Mulder nodded. 
"We'll be here," he said. 

  She crossed the now quiet hallway without encountering any more of 
the Kurt Crawford clones, hesitating slightly as she crossed the 
threshold of the lab. What was it that they were working on here? She 
had her suspicions, but she wasn't sure if they were reflective of 
anything other than her own hope. At the far end of the long lab space, 
she could see several clones working silently. She moved into the room. 

  "Agent Scully?" 

  She turned and found the Kurt Crawford that had escorted them into 
the complex rising from a desk. She was grateful that although they 
were wearing lab coats, they were not wearing identical outfits. This 
Kurt Crawford appeared to be reading the disks that she and Mulder had 
brought. "Mr. Crawford," she answered.

  "Please just call me Kurt," he said. 

  She nodded. "Do I address all of you as Kurt?" 

  "Yes," he said succinctly. "I'm sure it's very confusing to you, but 
we all know ourselves as Kurt." 

  "All right," she answered. "May I ask what you've learned from the 
data that Agent Mulder and I brought you?"

  "Certainly," Kurt answered, "if you'll just accompany me to this hood 
so I can get these cultures growing, I'll be happy to answer your 
questions."

  The curiousity overcame Scully at that point. "What exactly is it 
that you do here at Prometheus?"

  "We look for answers," Kurt said. "Ways to help the humans."

  "Hence the name," Scully said. 

  "Yes."

  "Are you trying to create a vaccine?" 

  "Yes." 

  "So you need to make more alien-human hybrids to help you do that."

  "No," Kurt said. "We don't make more. We just recreate ourselves." 

  "I'm not sure I understand the distinction," Scully said.

  "There once was a Kurt Crawford," he answered. "Our original self."

  "And he was taken," she answered, thinking of Samantha … and herself.

  "He was given," Kurt answered. "as many others were given, by the 
senior members of the project. It was 1973; he was 10 years of age."
 
  Scully could not school her expression fast enough to mask her 
distaste. 

  "You have met his maternal grandfather, I believe," Kurt continued, 
as if he had not seen. "He was an older gentleman, a British national."

  Scully stared at Kurt for a long moment, seeing his features 
reassemble themselves in light of this news. "Yes," she said, "I met 
him at Agent Mulder's father's funeral, and …" she hesitated, not sure 
how much more she should reveal.

  "And later, he gave Agent Mulder a version of the vaccine to give to 
you. We worked on that vaccine."

  "Thank you," Scully answered.

  "There were many of us involved in the necessary work," the clone 
said mildly.

  "Nonetheless," Scully countered, "we're having this conversation 
because of that work."

  "Without Agent Mulder finding you and administering the vaccine, this 
conversation would not be taking place," the clone rejoined.

  "And as I've already thanked him for his effort, it's only 
appropriate that I thank you for yours," Scully volleyed back, and then 
changed the subject. "Have you refined the vaccine since then?"

  "We are trying to create a preventative vaccine," Kurt offered. "The 
vaccine you received is little more than a fail-safe we have used to 
protect collaborative humans in the very early stages of infection."

  She considered this statement. "You do not use it to protect 
yourselves?" 

  "We are expendable," the clone answered. "We occupy short lifespans 
and are easily re-created. Since we document what we've done 
meticulously, the learning curve for our new selves is relatively 
short."

  "I'm sorry," Scully said, "but that seems completely barbaric to me."

  "It is our choice," the clone answered. "In any case, the failsafe 
vaccine is ineffective for our altered physiology, and we have deemed 
it an inefficient use of our resources to spend time trying to protect 
ourselves. Besides, our short lifespan ensures that we would not be the 
target of colonization efforts, as it would have a negative effect on 
the health of the colonizing parasite."

  Scully blanched at the notion of parasites but ignored it for the 
time being to return to a previous statement for her next question. 
"You say that you have made these choices freely, yet when Mulder met 
some of your predecessors, they were working for Dr. Scanlon."

  "Yes," the clone answered, "although things were not perhaps exactly 
as they seemed." He closed the hood and removed the samples to another 
bench to grow. 
  
  She remained silent, hoping that the clone would continue.

  "We have had to participate in experiments sanctioned by the main 
project in order to reproduce ourselves in great enough numbers so that 
we may do the work that we deem important. It has allowed us to gain 
access to necessary materials, knowledge and funding." He paused. "We 
do not trust other clones to participate in what we're trying to do, 
hence the necessity for secrecy. Our brothers are now a vast network. 
We collaborate, but we have sabotaged as well. We do what is necessary 
for the greater good of humanity." The clone spoke earnestly, but still 
without a pronounced affect.

  Scully crossed her arms across her torso and rocked back and forth 
before she asked her next question. "Did you participate in the 
experiments that created Hannah?"

  "No," he answered succinctly, then explained further when he saw that 
she wanted more information. "Dr. Scanlon has not allowed us near his 
projects since Agent Mulder first met some of us in Allentown. In his 
view, we are a corrupted line. Our original self's grandfather was able 
to convince the overseers of the project that the Kurt Crawford Agent 
Mulder met had been seduced by his ideas. Our work on the vaccine was 
too valuable to be abandoned, so we were not terminated as a line."

  "What about the project that produced Emily?"

  "Work that our forebears did on refining cloning methodologies was 
used in the formulation of the Emily line," the clone said, "but we 
were not directly involved."

  "The Emily line?" Scully asked.

  "The child that you met was not the only one," the clone said. "The 
typical presentation is groups of four. Mutations slip in when larger 
batches are created using the same materials."

  "So Emily was a clone?" Scully felt quite nauseated by this 
conversation, but she wanted to continue it.

  "Yes. She was essentially your clone." 

  "Essentially?"

  "She was produced through a somatic cell nuclear transfer. Egg fusion 
was used but the nucleus of one of your ova was altered with alien 
material. However, it caused irrevocable damage to the genome, 
specifically the lymphatic system."

  "And the purpose of this alteration was an attempt to make resistant 
alien human hybrids?"

  "That has been the general purpose of the reproductive experiments 
for the past fifteen years."

  Scully caught his distinction. "And what were the other purposes?" 

  The clone looked around the room where other Kurt Crawfords were 
working. "There was also the need to create a workforce."

  'Drones,' Scully thought sadly. She was just opening her mouth to ask 
another question, when an alarm on the clone's watchband sounded, and 
was echoed elsewhere in the room. She looked down the end of the long 
room to see that most of the clones that had been there earlier were 
now gone.

  "Agent Scully, we have a status meeting at this time," he said. "I 
can bring you data on what we know occurred as part of the reproductive 
experiments so far. As I said, we've not been involved in any way in 
the project of which the child in question is the result. Data on that 
project needs to be gleaned from the disk."

  He began moving her toward the door. "You're free to look around the 
facility. I believe that breakfast has been brought into the child's 
room."

  She stopped him in the corridor with a hand on his arm, looking over 
her shoulder to make sure that they were alone. "Just one more 
question, Kurt," she said firmly. "What happened to the original Kurt 
Crawford, the boy who was given to the project?"

  For the first time, the clone seemed surprised at her question. "He 
did not survive the experimental process," he said simply, and almost 
as if he thought it a very silly question. "We have documentation of 
the process he underwent. It was more than twenty-five years ago -- the 
methodology was far more crude. The idea of parthenogenetic 
experimentation was in its infancy, as it were."

  "I see," Scully said, forcing an air of calmness that she most 
certainly did not feel. "What about the other children who were given 
to the project?"

  Kurt regarded her with drawn down brows. "I'm not sure what your 
question is."

  "Did any of the other children that were given to the project 
survive?" she asked quietly. 

  "No," Kurt answered. "None of those given survived in their original 
form. I'm afraid that any others you have met were clones like myself, 
although some may have not realized it."

  "I see," Scully said, in a whisper. God help her, she needed 
clarification. "So, Samantha Mulder?" She could not finish the 
question, but stared at the clone hoping he would answer her ellipsis 
nonetheless.

  "Her original self expired in 1975," Kurt answered. "I can have that 
data brought to you as well."

  Scully nodded. "Not today," she said in a ragged voice. "And please 
do not give that data to Agent Mulder."

  "As you wish," the clone answered. "I really must go."

  Scully nodded and watched blindly as the clone hurried down the hall. 
All these years, all this time, all the death and the suffering … this 
was the outcome she had always feared would come to pass, but being 
right about it gave her no satisfaction at all. 

  She had never had to look someone in the eye and break their heart 
before, not even a previous lover. In their work, it was usually Mulder 
who broke the bad news to the parents whose child had died; it had only 
been her responsibility once or twice, and it wasn't quite the same 
thing. She'd never loved any of those people, past lovers included, the 
way she loved Mulder.

  She'd ached for the pain of bereft parents in a different way in the 
year since Emily, but this … she'd bleed for Mulder. For the first 
time, she felt the tiniest spark of empathy for Mulder's decision not 
to tell her about her ova because the desire to protect him from such 
sorrow was so overwhelming. But she knew it was not a secret that she 
could keep for long. Not now. 

  She turned and walked quietly to the door of Hannah's room, and then 
had to stop to hide the smile behind her hand, even as a tear spilled 
over her lower lid. Mulder and Hannah were both asleep on Hannah's bed, 
the television blaring uselessly above them, their breakfast trays 
untouched. She wiped away her tears and walked into Hannah's room. She 
found the spare blanket that she'd used to warm Hannah's arm and 
covered Mulder with it, then walked around the bed to look at her 
daughter's beautiful face. She thought again of the men who'd created 
this project -- of the sacrifices they had made of their children, both 
the given and the left behind, their wives, her own life. She pondered 
the enormity of what they had done and wondered how these things could 
ever have resembled choices worth making, how they had become 
reasonable decisions.  

  She sat down next to the bed and covered Hannah's hand with her own, 
feeling the warmth of her, the life in her. However she had come to be, 
this was her child. She could never give her up to a life of terror and 
pain. She would die first. She laid her head down upon Hannah's lap. 
She would kill them both first. 

  But before she did, she would take as many as possible of those who 
would force her to make such a horrendous decision with her, to Hell.

~*~   

  Dana Scully rotated her neck gingerly as she sat in the chair next to 
Hannah's bed. She'd fallen asleep with her head in Hannah's lap, and 
only awoken hours later when Mulder tried to move her so that Hannah 
could use the bathroom. Her neck had been bothering her ever since, and 
the data that she was reading did nothing to ease her discomfort, or 
improve her dark mood. 

  As promised, the records of the how of Emily's creation had been 
provided for her. Mulder had pointed them out to her when she sat up, 
but firmly insisted that she eat some lunch before she dove into them. 
His concern for her led her to believe that he knew exactly what was in 
the files, although much of the documentation was highly technical. 
After her late lunch, Mulder had gone off to explore the facility while 
Hannah dozed again in the high hospital bed. She would have been more 
concerned about Hannah's continued sleepiness if not for the fact that 
her temperature had dropped as well, an apparent good response to the 
administration of the antibiotics. Her oxygen saturation was still 
slightly lower at 96% than what Scully would like, but the rails of 
Hannah's coughing had not seemed to deepen, either. Scully hoped that 
the administration of the cephalosporin had come at the appropriate 
time, and that maybe the grip of Hannah's infection had been broken.

  She stood and placed the files on the bedside tray table and then 
stretched, working the kinks out from her head down to her toes. She'd 
have given anything to take her shoes off and really stretch, but she 
wasn't trusting her bare feet on the floors of any kind of medical 
facility. She was moving her head from side to side when she heard a 
calm voice ask, "Agent Scully?"

  "Kurt," she said, opening her eyes in surprise. It was far too soon 
for any kind of results from Hannah's tests. "Is everything all right?"

  "I believe so," he answered evenly. "I've had a chance to go through 
more of the data that you brought, and …"

  "Let's step outside," she ushered the clone away from Hannah's 
bedside. "I'd like Hannah to have some uninterrupted rest."

  The clone glanced up at the wall clock. "I believe that she'll be 
served dinner with the first group in thirty-five minutes."

  "I'd like her to rest as much as possible, nonetheless," Scully 
countered, and then gave into her curiousity. "Who cooks for you?"

  "We do," Kurt answered, and once again Scully got the feeling he was 
amused by her question. "We rotate responsibility for feeding 
ourselves. Food supplies are ordered via the internet and delivered to 
the building. It's relatively easy for us to avoid outside contact." 

  She nodded, thinking how sad and isolated their lives seemed to her. 
"Thank you for taking care of us."

  "We couldn't do anything other than that," the clone said easily.

  She tilted her head to one side, considering her next question. 
"Because Agent Mulder and I are part of this project?" 

  The clone blinked. "I suppose one could view it from that 
perspective," he said, "but we've always considered that we are on the 
same side as you and Agent Mulder. That consideration obligates us." 

  Scully wondered who exactly had instilled this sense of duty and 
ethics within these clones. How much, really, was due to influence and 
how much to the nature of the original Kurt Crawford who'd never been 
allowed to become the man standing in front of her? If the clone 
noticed anything odd about her continued silence, he did not say so, 
just stood there quietly while she pondered. 

  "Scully?" Mulder's voice as he walked up the hallway was wary.

  "Is everything all right?" she asked for the second time in a few 
minutes.

  "That was going to be my question," he asked her. She looked at 
Mulder as he stood in the hallway watching her with a searching gaze. 
He'd removed his suitcoat, and rolled up his sleeves, as if this were 
any other workday, exploring in this warehouse of oddities. He seemed 
tense and discomposed, and she wondered fleetingly if he'd asked the 
clones about his sister.  

  "I'm fine," she answered, and hurried to continue on with her 
thoughts when Mulder's hazel eyes had darkened at her use of the 
phrase. "I'm trying to comprehend some things, Mulder."

  He observed her for a few seconds, hands on his hips, examining her 
face for any hint of a lie. "OK," he said. His shoulders relaxed 
fractionally. "How's the pumpkin?" he asked with real concern.

  "Dozey," Scully said, "but she's not coughing as much, and her fever 
keeps going down, bit by bit."

  Mulder sighed in relief. "I'll go sit with her, then." His statement 
was more of a question directed at her, but she nodded.

  "I'll be a while," she added.

  She and Kurt moved away from the center of the hallway to the lab 
doorway opposite the infirmary as Mulder turned into Hannah's room, 
giving her one last searching gaze over his shoulder. 

  "What did you learn about Hannah?" Scully asked the clone.

  "As I suspected, she is one of the 'H' series of experiments that 
used your ova."

  Scully nodded, but felt no surprise at his confirmation. Instead, she 
asked the question to which she dreaded to hear the answer.  "Which 
would mean that there are series of experiments of which I've been 
unaware," she said evenly. "A through D, F & G …" she paused. "Are 
there other series currently being conducted?"

  "The A through D series were unsuccessful," Kurt said. "They were 
part of an earlier attempt to clone individuals who might prove 
disruptive to the Project's general mission. Those clone lines were 
susceptible to the same kind of problems that befell the original Dolly 
project, however."

  Scully's eyebrows were at her hairline. "They were trying to clone 
me?" she asked incredulously. Her hand unconsciously went to the back 
of her neck, "To replace me," she said. 

  "Yes," Kurt said, "and the cloning process employed the same rapid 
aging technology that had been utilized successfully in the 
amplification of our original self, as well as others. However, the 
older the original self …"

  "The more rapidly the clone degraded," Scully mused. "This is 
incredible science that you're talking about."

  "Not to those of us involved in this project," he answered. "However, 
the limitations of that kind of parthenogenetic reproduction were not 
yet evident to those running those experiments." 

  "So, Emily?" she asked, beginning to think she knew the answer.

  "When they realized that replacement was not going to be an option, 
they reverted to using your genetic material in the same way that other 
female abductees' ova were being used." Kurt paused. "Dr. Scanlon was 
in charge of the projects from E onward."

  Scully nodded. "And how far into the alphabet has he gone?"

  Kurt looked puzzled by her question. "H," he said. 

  She didn't even attempt to hide her surprise. "Why did he stop at H?"

  Kurt really did seem confused by her question. 

  "Kurt?" she prompted.

  "I'm very sorry, Agent Scully, but I assumed that you knew more of 
this information. To the best of our knowledge, no planned project 
using your ova has gone forward since you discovered the E line in San 
Diego. In fact, initial work on planned experiments I through L was 
discarded."

  "Because I found out?" Scully could not imagine that the answer was 
so simple.

  "No," the clone said slowly, "because of Agent Mulder." 

  "What?" For a moment, she was filled with a burning rage. If there 
was more that Fox Mulder had kept from her she would … but then she 
remembered her own discovery about Samantha earlier in the day, and the 
rage was replaced with fear. "Why?"

  "When Agent Mulder went to Dr. Calderon to demand answers, he was 
extremely forceful."

  She was sure that her mouth was hanging open. "Forceful?"

  "Extremely," the clone said, with no sense of irony. "He not only 
physically assaulted Dr. Calderon, but he destroyed his office. Later, 
he destroyed experiments associated with your ova at another facility."

  "Fox Mulder?" She said to the clone. Of course, she knew that he had 
a temper, and a highly honed sense of protectiveness, but she had never 
seen him use raw physical force as a weapon –- he was far more likely 
to wield his intellect than his fists.

  "Yes," Kurt said implacably, "and when Dr. Calderon ended up dead, 
many labs affiliated with the project refused to have anything to do 
with your ova."

  She was reduced to stuttering again.

  "In fact, most labs destroyed your ova."

  "Most," she said, hoarsely. 

  "Yes," he said, "and then, of course, his recent physical assault on 
Dr. Scanlon at the now defunct Norfolk facility just cemented the 
opinion that using your ova was far too dangerous. Project researchers 
believe that if they're using your ova, Agent Mulder will find out and 
come after them."

  "I see," she said faintly. "He did tell me that he'd recently seen 
Dr. Scanlon."

  "Well, when he saw him, he beat him quite severely," the clone said. 
"It took a number of project security guards and a taser to get him off 
Dr. Scanlon."

  "A number of security guards?" she repeated. She was still not sure 
that they were talking about the same man. It was unfathomable. Perhaps 
a shapeshifter had impersonated him –- but that would not explain his 
bruised hands from last week. She shook her head in wonder. She knew 
that Mulder was capable of a certain level of violence, that like all 
agents he had been trained to react and to fight, but this … she had 
never imagined that Mulder would behave in such a way.

  "And a taser," the clone said. "The rumor is that all of your ova 
have been destroyed."

  "All of them?" she asked. "Are you sure?"

  "We're trying to find out definitively, but the rumor is that they 
were all destroyed, over Dr. Scanlon's strenuous objections."

  She opened her dry mouth. "So Dr. Scanlon isn't afraid of Mulder?"

  "I have no way of knowing that," Kurt said thoughtfully. 
"Historically, Dr. Scanlon has argued that your responsiveness to the 
vaccine when you were exposed to the black oil during your first 
abduction made your genetic material valuable for immunological 
experimentation. However, since the other scientists on the project do 
not like to be beaten, it appears his argument has been nullified."

  "I was exposed to the black oil when I was abducted in 1994?"

  "Actually, both times you were abducted," the clone said succinctly.

  She turned and walked around the hallway with her hand on her aching 
head, thinking furiously. "I was not expected to survive," she posited, 
but the clone did not respond, until another thought occurred to her. 
"The virus is why my DNA was branched," she said.

  "Yes," the clone answered. "You're one of the few abductees who've 
been infected with more than one variant of the virus and responded to 
the treatments in both cases."

  "Which variants?" 

  "Like Agent Mulder, you were infected with the Tunguska variant and 
received the so-called Russian vaccine. The variant that you received 
from the Africanized honeybee was a sub-variant that's been altered for 
ease of delivery."

  "And you have a vaccine for that variant?" she asked, dizzily.

  "As I said earlier, not as a reliable preventative, no," the clone 
answered. "When we have tried to vaccinate prophylactically, the 
subject would invariably become infected and resistant to further 
intervention. We have theories about why this is occurring, and 
actually, would be very grateful if you'd give us your perspective."

  "I …" she held up her hand, "forgive me, but I'm very far behind you 
on this learning curve. Are you telling me that Mulder and I are both 
immune to the black oil virus?"

  "Most likely, in your case," the clone answered. "Agent Mulder is a 
different order of magnitude as far as immunity is concerned. He alone 
has resisted every variant that he's been infected with. He has even 
survived infection when no treatment was offered."

  She couldn't believe what she was hearing. "I thought Mulder was only 
infected in Russia."

  "Agent Mulder was first infected in childhood."

  She remembered a changed file folder label in the bowels of a coal 
mine in Virginia. "I'd like to see those records, please." She took a 
deep breath and turned to see the clone moving into the lab. "Kurt, not 
at this moment. I'd like to go back to our previous conversation."

  "Of course," the clone said. 

  "Emily was created using some variant of somatic cell nuclear 
transfer, correct?" 
 
 The clone nodded. "Yes. Although both ova were yours, the nucleus of 
one ovum was altered with alien DNA."

  She continued, "With the failure of the earlier cloning attempts, why 
persist in using an almost parthenogenetic process? My cell line was 
obviously older, and there were males abducted by the project, both 
children and adult. Why not use a more conventional reproductive 
methodology to start the process of fertilized cell division?" 

   "The aliens reproduce asexually, which is what they were trying to 
replicate."

  "The aliens reproduce asexually," Scully murmured aloud. "Oh my God. 
So, the original experimenters thought that they could alter our genome 
to reproduce asexually?"

  "Not exactly," the clone said serenely, "the hypothesis was that 
creation of a successfully resistant human/alien hybrid would probably 
require cloning to mimic the asexual reproductive process of the 
aliens. Ultimately, they hoped this hybrid line of humans would breed, 
creating a resistant population via sexual reproduction."

  She started to interrupt the clone, but he anticipated her question. 
"Yes, most of the cloned lines were functionally sterile, which was 
problematic, but negligible considering the high rate of mortality, 
short lifespans and general instability of the recombination. In 
addition, there were too many offshoot experiments that came out of 
those experiments, which severely undercut the focus necessary for 
perfecting the cloning process."
 
  "Such as?"

  "The notion of creating adult replicants such as the A through D 
series that utilized your ova is one example. That scheme itself was 
born from the founders' desire to replicate resistant versions of 
themselves that could survive colonization. They were, after all, more 
than middle-aged in most cases."

  She nodded, but did not comment. The selfishness of the men that Kurt 
referred to as the founders was no longer surprising, even though it 
was still staggering in its scope.

  "However the plan changed over time, the notion of creating a 
resistant human using alien DNA and regrafting that into a population 
has always been the stated goal."

  "But not the general population," Scully said angrily, thinking of 
Operation Paperclip. "This was genetic engineering designed for the 
chosen few, specifically the families of the collaborators. The rest of 
the human population would fall to the bees, right? And if any of the 
collaborators became infected, they could be restored via your 
vaccine."

  The clone nodded. "Yes."

  "Have they created a resistant alien/human hybrid?" 

  "Not as such," Kurt said. "We are an example of a more successful 
line, but as I said, our lifespans are short." 

  "And Hannah?" 

  "She could be described as a kind of hybrid," the clone said slowly, 
"but that is not entirely accurate. She is far more human than anything 
else."

  "What does that mean?!" Scully was at the end of her rope now, on 
information overload.

  "As you know, the E line was not successful…" 

  Scully drew in a long breath through her nose, and stifled the urge 
to scream. She could see that her emotional responses were making the 
clone nervous. He was blinking quite rapidly, and his words had become 
more rushed.

  "The decision was made to alter the hybridization process to more 
closely mimic human reproduction," he said. 

  "In what way?" she demanded.

  "The F and G lines were created using genetic material from two 
different abductees," he answered, "one of which had been altered with 
alien DNA."

  Scully had a momentary flash of Penny Northern's kind face and her 
russet curls, and felt a sinking in the pit of her stomach. She closed 
her eyes. All she could see were little girls like Hannah with bags of 
poison attached to their arms. 

  "The distinction between the two lines was the amount of alien DNA in 
the reproductive equation."

  She looked askance at the clone.

  "Their immune systems are not that robust," he answered her. 
"Probably as a result of their parasitic form of reproduction, and the 
manner in which it uses the virus as a primary means of doing so. Their 
species does not mutate new viruses the way we do, the way this world 
does, which makes them vulnerable. We have data on that as well, if 
you'd care to see it." 

  She nodded wearily. "Not today, Kurt. Please continue."

  "The F and G lines also failed. My understanding is that Dr. Scanlon 
created the H series using a different set of standards. That was the 
rumor at the time, but as he no longer trusted any of us, that 
information could not be verified. It's only upon a preliminary viewing 
of the data you procured that any understanding in this matter has been 
confirmed."

  "Go on," she said. "What do you mean by standards?"

  "The H series is not a line of clones," Kurt said. "They were, more 
accurately, siblings, although not full siblings. The amount of alien 
genetic material in each iteration in the line is different, although 
the parental genetic material remained the same."

  "I understood that from the data I was able to decipher," Scully 
said.

  "The decision was made to create the H series using more traditional 
human biological mechanisms, but to focus on the immunological systems 
by utilizing two immune genetic donors."

  "Are you saying that the all of the abductees weren't infected with 
the black oil?" 

  "There is always a control group," the clone answered. 

  "Oh my God," Scully answered, "but if they infected those children 
without giving them full immunity –- why would they do that?" She saw 
the answer in the clone's eyes, and let out a breath. "To see what 
would happen. To see where the line was."  She closed her eyes in 
thought. "But Hannah's other mother is also immune, that's what you're 
saying? I don't understand then. Why didn't her siblings survive the 
experiments?"

  "Oh," the clone said, "I'm afraid I didn't explain that clearly. 
Hannah was not created by egg fusion, but by an altered sperm being 
injected into an ovum."

  There was silence in the corridor for a full ten seconds, and when 
the question came, it was not her voice that spoke it. Mulder's voice, 
low and lethally angry, cut across the hallway like a whip crack as she 
turned her head in surprise. "Whose sperm was it?"

  She turned back in time to see Kurt blink, as if the answer was 
obvious. "It was yours, Agent Mulder," he answered simply.

~*~

  Mulder made a noise that she'd only heard once, when a suspect's 
punch had caught him in the solar plexus. She stepped away from Kurt 
toward Mulder who was staring at the clone in open-mouthed shock. 
Through the fog of her own surprise, she registered the anomaly of his 
appearance. Finally, here was a situation that Mulder, the man who 
regularly believed six impossible things before breakfast, had never 
considered. As she watched, still stunned herself, Mulder's expression 
transformed from disbelief to seething rage. In all the years that she 
had known him, she had never seen him look so angry.

  "When?" Mulder gritted out through bared teeth. "How was my sperm 
acquired?"

  Scully could see that Kurt was literally afraid of Mulder, 
remembering his earlier words about Dr. Calderon and the opinion of 
scientists involved in the project. "Mulder," she said to him in a low 
voice, stepping in front of him and putting her hand on his forearm. 

  His hands were planted on his hips, and he shifted sideways at her 
touch, almost as if he was going to shake her off, but then thought 
better of it. He was steadfastly staring at the clone.

  "Mulder," she said to him in a sharper tone, holding his arm firmly. 
"Ellen's Airbase, for one." His head swiveled to hers, but he stared at 
her blindly. "Think about it, Mulder," she said, "Alaska, Tunguska – 
there's been plenty of opportunity."

  "Scully," he said suddenly, as if seeing her for the first time. 
"Hannah …" his voice was choked, and he couldn't continue.

  "I know, Mulder," she said softly, her own eyes filling with tears. 

  "So Scanlon made her to be a hostage?" Mulder demanded of Kurt. 

  Scully bit her lip, trying to find the words to remind him that 
Hannah had not always been alone in that hospital room in Albany, but 
Kurt spoke first. 

  "As I indicated to Agent Scully earlier, I believe the motivation 
would be replication of your immunological system." 

  "Scully?" Mulder's look was accusatory. 

  "A few minutes ago, Kurt told me that you've been infected with the 
black oil virus multiple times."

  Mulder was shaking his head in denial before the words had finished 
leaving her mouth. "That's not true," he said.

  "It's extremely well-documented," the clone said. "From your earliest 
tests until the most recent ones."

  "What are you talking about?" Mulder demanded. "What early tests?"

  "You were first infected in 1967," the clone answered. "You were 
hospitalized and given a small dose of the black oil, and then given 
what they thought was a vaccine at the time."

  "That did not happen," Mulder said in a certain tone. "I'd remember 
that."

  "Mulder," Scully soothed. "Do you remember being in the hospital when 
you were six?"

  "I was five," he snapped. "It was in June. We drove to Boston, and I 
had my tonsils out." 

  "They may have also taken your tonsils out," Kurt said, "but you were 
most certainly infected with the black oil. You were the only child to 
survive the treatment. They thought they were on the right track with 
the vaccine for years because you survived. Later they realized that 
you were simply resistant."

  Mulder gaped at him. "What are you talking about?"

  "When no one else survived the experimentation, your pediatrician was 
replaced with a project-approved doctor in 1971." Scully felt Mulder 
start. "You were injected with small doses of the vaccine, which also 
proved to have no effect on you. I told Agent Scully earlier that 
virtually no one who has received the vaccine as a preventative has 
survived. You are the exception." 

  "This has got to be a lie," Mulder insisted. "My parents …" 

  She could see the thoughts cascading through his mind, but couldn't 
even guess at where he was going with them. From her perspective, his 
parents had never protected either of their children from harm. She 
couldn't believe that he was defending them more than reflexively.

  "Your parents consented to the first test without truly understanding 
what it entailed," the clone answered. "None of the parents did. It was 
a test of their loyalty to the project."

  "But if I was resistant," Mulder said, his voice rising, "then why 
take Samantha? Why not take me and test me?"

  "They did test you, Agent Mulder," the clone said. "You must have 
noticed that your pediatrician drew blood when you went for your 
frequent check-ups."

  "I was anemic," Mulder whispered, "that was why I had to go so often. 
I had to take those … " Mulder stopped and stared at the clone. "Those 
weren't iron pills that we kept in the freezer, were they?"

  "No," the clone said levelly. "They were not. And no matter how many 
times or ways they tried to infect you, you shed the virus. They took 
your blood to figure out how and why. It was your blood that led to the 
vaccine that you administered to Agent Scully in the Antarctic."

  Mulder was shaking his head 'no'. "This doesn't make any sense!" he 
yelled. "If this is true, then why take Samantha? Why take any of them? 
Why not just take me?"

  "That was proposed," the clone answered, "but they didn't make you 
resistant."

  "I don't understand," Mulder said, but Scully believed that she was 
starting to.

  "Mulder," Scully said, "there is always a minority that is immune to 
a virus." 

  He stared at her, clearly not comprehending. 

  "Why didn't the Black Death kill everyone who was exposed to it?" she 
asked. "Some people, a few people, were infected and survived. That's 
you. They infected you when you were a child, and somehow you survived 
it. The problem is that they don't know how your body fought off the 
original infection; they thought you had responded to their vaccine. 
They were trying to formulate a process for making a resistant human, 
but your body fought off the infection and became resistant without 
them having done anything. They didn't know how you made the antibodies 
to the virus, just that you did."

  Mulder was still shaking his head 'no', but he was listening to her. 
He raised the arm that she wasn't holding onto and raked it through his 
hair, then broke away from her hold and began to stalk back and forth 
in the hallway. Occasionally, he would stop and stare at Kurt, then 
turn and look at her with an inscrutable expression on his face. 

  After a few minutes of this, she finally broke the silence. "Mulder?"

  "So, this is why they never killed me, isn't it?" he addressed the 
question to Kurt. "All these years, I could never understand why they 
didn't just shoot me in the head and dump my body someplace where it 
would never be found. It's not like they haven't made people 
disappear." He was as still now as he'd been frantic before, but the 
air around him was coiled with tension. "That's it, right? If all of 
their plans failed, and colonization started, I'd still be alive. I 
won't be changed, and I'd still be able to fight the aliens."

  "That is the argument that's been forwarded, yes," the clone said. 
"My understanding is that your continued existence has been a subject 
of much discussion for years, with many dissenting opinions."

  "Such as?" he demanded.

  "Some project directors felt that you should be killed, that the risk 
of letting you discover what was going on was too high. Some felt that 
you should be captured for study."

  Mulder nodded. "I assume that whoever took my sperm at Ellen's was in 
that latter category." 

  "Yes," the clone answered. "I understand that you were released only 
because your disappearance would have been difficult to cover up. You 
had been very visible at the base."

  "And where does Dr. Scanlon fit into this?" 

  "When he heard that another division of the project had gotten some 
of your genetic material, he was determined to have it."

  "And he obviously did!" Mulder shouted. "How many other children do I 
have?"

  Kurt shrank backwards at Mulder's raised voice, and Scully stepped 
between them. In the long corridor that ran back toward the front door, 
she could see a dizzying number of clones, all of them looking 
fearfully back at her. 

  "Mulder!" she said sharply. "Kurt told me that he has never 
participated in the creation of any clone other than himself."

  "And you believed him?" he asked incredulously, his voice cracking in 
strain.

  "You're scaring him," she said firmly and then held up her hands when 
it seemed he would keep speaking. "I know how you feel," she reminded 
him. "I know." 

  Mulder sagged at her words. 

  "He didn't do this to us," she added softly.

  "Scully …" he said in a low murmur that only she could hear, his eyes 
closing in pain. Her throat constricted at the agony in his voice. She 
reached out to touch his face, but for the first time that she could 
recall, he withdrew from her. "I can't," he said to her, opening his 
eyes and pulling away. "I just can't." He turned away from her, only to 
face the door to Hannah's room. 

  "Mulder," she said, in surprise.

  "I can't," he said again, and then as she watched in disbelief, he 
began to walk rapidly down the long hall that led outside, while the 
clones who had been watching in the doorways ducked out of his way.

  "Mulder!" She couldn't believe that he was doing this to her. He 
broke into a run as she called his name, and then disappeared through 
the doorway that led to the reception room and the winter's twilight 
beyond. 

 "Mulder …" she exhaled his name in a sigh of disappointment, but he 
was already gone. She closed her eyes, her body heavy with exhaustion 
and sorrow. 

  "Scully?" It wasn't Mulder calling her name. She could hear the fear 
in Hannah's voice, and she felt an ache that this would be the first 
time that Hannah had ever called for her. She felt the weight of all 
that had happened bearing down on her, but Hannah called for her again. 

  She squared her shoulders, opened her eyes, and walked into their 
daughter's room.

~*~

  Two hours later, she was still waiting for Mulder to return. Hannah 
had fallen asleep only after being reassured repeatedly that Mulder 
would come back, that he would never leave her. No matter how angry 
Scully was at him for leaving them, she didn't hesitate to make the 
promise. She knew that it was true. He would come back. The problem was 
that she didn't have the luxury of waiting for him. If he didn't come 
back right away, she would have to force the issue, as hypocritical as 
that would seem to him. Last winter, when she'd finally made him tell 
her everything he knew about her ova, she had rewarded his honesty by 
fleeing. When he'd told her of his dealings with the Kurt Crawfords in 
the lab in Allentown, and what she now realized was a carefully edited 
version of his dealings with Dr. Calderon, he'd tried to make her 
confront the possibility that there were other children like Emily in 
the world. 

  She'd gotten up from his couch and walked out of his apartment. She 
hadn't answered her phone for three days and she hadn't gone home, 
either. She'd driven toward the sea after driving aimlessly for hours, 
staying at an anonymous motel on the Maryland coast, paying cash for 
her room. She'd gone for long walks and thought about nothing at all, 
barely eating and not sleeping because when she did, her dreams were 
hideous, full of images of her distended belly and green-blooded, toxic 
children. When she'd finally returned to work on a Wednesday, hollow-
eyed and gaunt with exhaustion, she'd ignored the fact that he looked 
little better than she, or that his face was awash with guilt and 
sorrow. Instead, she'd made it very clear to him that she did not 
intend to discuss the subject any further. Ever. She knew that she'd 
frightened him very badly by leaving. He had never brought it up again.

  They were masters of avoidance, the both of them, a matched set. That 
was going to have to end, because it wasn't just about them anymore. 
She shifted carefully off Hannah's hospital bed, then double-checked 
the silent cellphone on the bedside table to make sure that she hadn't 
missed a call. Mulder's suit and over coat were still slung over the 
visitor chair, as if he'd be back any minute. She'd pointed that out to 
Hannah while calming her for the first of many times, before she 
excused herself to the hall to get Frohike to put a trace on Mulder's 
cellphone, which she hoped was still in the car with him.

  Frohike had only grudgingly agreed to do so after she insisted. He 
didn't understand why she wouldn't just call Mulder and 'kick his punk 
ass', but she had refused to explain what was going on. It was too 
personal, and she wouldn't discuss it with Frohike before she did so 
with Mulder. Her explanation that Mulder had received some upsetting 
news was met with sarcastic commentary about Diana Fowley and Mulder's 
relative level of maturity, which made her smile sadly. Frohike was 
nothing if not loyal to her, but she knew that at least half of his 
anger at Mulder stemmed from his disappointment in a man for whom he 
had a certain level of hero worship. 

  She wondered how the Gunman would feel when they learned everything 
that had been revealed to them today. Mulder was even more 
extraordinary than Frohike had ever imagined, and for no other reason 
than some random combination of his parent's genes. It was as oddly 
fitting as it was horrendous to contemplate, the idea that Mulder would 
remain one of the last few humans on this vast planet should the 
invasion he'd always foreseen actually occur. It was beyond crazy; it 
was science fiction, a genre she'd never had an ounce of fondness for, 
much less a desire to live out.

  She walked around the room restlessly. This insanity was her life 
now, and everything that had been done to her, everything that she had 
withstood, probably guaranteed that if Mulder were the last man 
standing, she'd be right there by his side. And Hannah … Kurt was 
concerned that her immune system was not as mature as it needed to be 
to combat terrestrial illnesses because of her alien genomic material, 
but he was working on an avenue of gene therapy that would require 
Mulder's cooperation. If that worked, then Hannah would be with them. 
Provided that they could protect her. If Kurt could create a viable 
therapy in the first place. If Mulder came back. If, if, if … she 
stared at the silent phone in her hands, willing it to ring, wanting to 
throttle Mulder and hug him at the same time.

  She looked at Hannah, sleeping in the hospital bed, arms wrapped 
around her tiger. Mulder had stuffed it into his overcoat pocket before 
they left the motel this morning, knowing that Hannah would need it to 
comfort herself. She felt a smile blooming on her lips at the proof 
that Mulder had already been a good father to Hannah, simply when he 
was being himself. He was a good man, possibly the best she'd ever 
known, despite the sorrow and the irritation that life with him 
guaranteed her. 

  Looking at Hannah, she wondered how it was that she had never seen 
what was now so obvious. Hannah's full mouth was opened slightly as she 
breathed deeply and evenly, occasional wheezes escaping her. Scully 
could see Mulder's reflection in Hannah's long limbs, the shape of her 
face, the tangle of long lashes that surrounded her unusually dark blue 
eyes. His genetic heritage had underwritten her own to create this 
child; their families had recombined in her, Hannah's wild mane a 
contribution from both of her lost aunts. 

  Melissa would have loved Hannah, she thought with a pang. There was a 
kind of whimsy about them both that even as a girl Dana Scully had not 
had. Melissa and Hannah would have whispered secrets to each other; 
Melissa would have spoiled her with gifts and told her fairy tales, 
filling her head with lyrical nonsense. But then again, Mulder would do 
that anyway … wouldn't he? 

~*~

  The Kurt with whom she'd spent the most time was dubious about her 
following Mulder back to the motel, but from Frohike's tracking, that 
appeared to be his most likely destination. In her heart of hearts, she 
didn't truly believe that he was packing up to leave her and Hannah. He 
was probably going to get a warm coat -- or more likely, to plan his 
vengeance on Dr. Scanlon, but she wasn't about to stand by and wait for 
the next phone call. Those days were over, a promise she'd made to a 
sleeping Hannah when she kissed her goodbye, after impressing upon the 
infirmary Kurt the necessity of calling her if Hannah awoke before she 
and Mulder returned. 

  She walked across the paved blacktop toward their motel room in her 
sturdy new boots, leaving the worried clone at the entrance to the 
parking lot. The night was clear and cold, with dizzying swirls of 
stars scattered across the sky. The moon was just a sliver, barely 
visible above the western horizon, its dim reflective light no 
competition for the brilliance of the late winter constellations. She 
recognized the planet Jupiter, shining hard and bright above the 
thumbnail moon. A sailor's daughter still, she knew the patterns of the 
universe in their seasons, could rely upon them to light her way in 
case she needed to navigate unfamiliar waters. Today was the first day 
of the lunar month, a day appropriate for starting new patterns of 
behaviour, Melissa had always told her. Winter, despite the piles of 
snow visible all around her, was ending in just a couple of days. It 
was St. Patrick's Day, and St. Joseph's Day was just around the corner.

  She wasn't superstitious, but even she could not ignore such a 
confluence of positive signs. She would take all the help she could 
get, supernatural or otherwise, to get her through these next few 
minutes. A hand on the hood of their rental car assured her that Mulder 
hadn't been back in the room long. As she drew closer to the door of 
their motel room, she was startled to hear the sounds of a struggle 
coming from inside. She thought grimly of the chip in her neck, and 
drew her gun, sure that they'd been discovered. She peered in at the 
windows, but could see nothing through the tightly drawn curtains. 
Inside, the sounds of crashing and breaking wood continued. She tested 
the doorknob. To her surprise, it gave easily. She didn't hesitate, 
coming in low with her gun drawn, forgoing announcing her presence. 
Just this one time, she wanted to have the element of surprise on her 
side. 

  It took her a few seconds to register what she was seeing before 
Mulder wheeled on her, drawing his own gun. He was alone in their room, 
chest heaving and red-faced with fury. The splintered door of the 
closet swung drunkenly on its hinges; the bureau gaped like a jack o' 
lantern where drawers were missing. Empty, they lay smashed on the 
floor in front of her, looking as if they had been stomped on.

  Mulder stared at her, and for the first time ever, she saw the madman 
in him that all of the naysayers at the FBI had warned her about. He 
was feral and furious, and not at all happy to see her. He tossed his 
gun on the bed they'd slept in the night before, and said, "Go away, 
Scully," before he turned and administered a savage kick to the closet 
door.

  "No," she said, her voice still faint with shock. She stepped into 
the room and closed and locked the door, while he kicked and pulled at 
the closet door, trying his level best to break it.

  "Go away," he ordered, not turning around.

  "No," she said again, holstering her gun. "You come back to the 
clinic with me. Hannah is terrified that you've left her."

  His head swiveled at her words and for an instant, she saw pure 
hatred.

  "That," he said, in a rough voice he'd never before used on her, "was 
a really cheap shot."

  "It's the truth," she countered. "I had to reassure her over and over 
again that you'd be coming back. She heard you yelling, you know. It 
frightened her." She continued on ruthlessly. "She has adored you from 
the minute you found her, Mulder. You are the first person that has 
ever loved her, the only father she's ever known."

  Mulder closed his eyes in real pain at her words, "Scully."

  "You are her father, Mulder," she said firmly, knowing that she was 
being brutal, but not caring to pull her punches. She barely stopped 
herself from adding, 'Act like it.' 

  He wheeled around from the closet door and faced her, towering in his 
rage. "You think I don't KNOW THAT!" he bellowed at her. "I loved her 
from the instant I saw her!" His eyes were wild with grief and loss. "I 
loved her because she was yours, and now …" he trailed off, and she 
felt her own tears welling up. 

  "I know how you feel, Mulder," she reminded him, taking a step toward 
him.

  "Do you?" he challenged her. "Do you really, Scully?"

  That did sting, and the tears that she'd been damming up for days 
began to fall in earnest now. "How could you say something like that," 
she spat out, choking on her tears, "to me. Of course, I know how you 
feel."

  Mulder was shaking his head 'no' at her insistently, and although he 
looked stricken at her tears, he wasn't backing down. "No, you don't," 
he said.

  "Mulder!" She was puzzled and angered by his recalcitrance. She took 
another step toward him, but he flinched away from her, striding across 
the room to the window, and turning his back to her.

  "You don't, Scully!" 

  "Oh, really?" she said, "because your feelings are so precious 
somehow?" Her tone was blisteringly caustic. "Because I don't know what 
it's like to be raped? To have all my choices taken from me?"

  She heard Mulder's painful exhalation from across the room an instant 
before he kicked the wall hard enough to make the windows rattle. When 
he spoke again, it was clear that he was fighting for control. 

  "You don't understand, Scully," he said, but his tone was flat with 
sorrow.

  "Then tell me!" she shouted at him. "Tell me!"

  Mulder was silent for a while, his whole body still. His arms were 
wrapped around himself protectively, hands over his elbows. He did not 
turn to face her. "They would have let the whole world die," he said 
quietly, "and given me a front row seat to watch it -- left me all 
alone to fight it, after they have done their level best to strip me of 
every weapon I've ever tried to raise against them."

  She felt her blood freeze at the desolate, blank tone of his voice.

  "You don't understand, Scully, that it's never enough with these 
people," he continued, "they ruin everything," he said with 
emphasis. "And I never understood why, but now I see it. They hate me 
for being the one thing that they can't be, so they have ruined 
everything in my life."

  "Mulder," she said to him softly, walking around the bed to get 
closer to him, but he drew further away. "No, Mulder."

  "They took Sam," he said, "they destroyed my family. Not that it was 
worth much, as it turns out, but they ruined it anyway." His voice was 
remote, as if he were circling the Earth from a great distance. "I was 
a suspect in Sam's disappearance, you know," he said conversationally. 
"And Martha's Vineyard is a small place. I was an outcast for the rest 
of the time that I spent there, pretty much. So, no home," he laughed, 
but it was more like a sob, short and bitter, "nothing to go back to, 
nothing to depend upon."

  His voice was ragged with tears and getting softer. "Until … well. I 
had this idea," he was whispering now, "I had this dream. When I found 
out what they'd done to you, I knew it wouldn't come true, but I still 
… I dreamt about it anyway."

  It was hard to understand him through his tears, so she got as close 
to him as she possibly could without touching him. 

  "But they couldn't even leave me that," he said wonderingly. "Because 
they have to ruin everything. So they took it, and they perverted it," 
he said in a tone of disgust. "They corrupted it, and they ruined it."

  She drew in a breath, realizing to what he was alluding. "No, 
Mulder," she said to him. She put her hand on his back, and when he 
tried to pull away from her, she blocked him into the corner, knowing 
that this time he wouldn't force his way by her. 

  He was shaking his head, "You're wrong, Scully. Because they can't 
even leave me my dreams – they'll find a way to ruin them anyway."

  "No, Mulder," she insisted, pulling at his elbow so that she could 
get in between him and the wall. If she could just get him to look at 
her … but his voice, affectless yet somehow full of pain, continued on 
in an insistent drone.

  "That's why you should get away from me, Scully, because it'll just 
keep happening if you stay, they'll just keep ruining everything."

  "No, Mulder," she said desperately. She wedged her shoulder in 
between him and the wall, but kept her other arm wrapped around him 
tightly so that he couldn't get away from her. "That's not true," she 
was crying now, openly. "They can't ruin this."

  "They ruin everything, Scully," he insisted.
 
  She grabbed hold of his head and turned his face toward her, seeing 
the exhaustion in his eyes. They were dark with sorrow and pain, the 
rage that had been driving him for hours extinguished like a candle 
that had been blown out. 

  "No," she repeated. "They can't ruin this." It was an impossible 
situation, in an impossible world, and she needed him to be there with 
her, fighting by her side. Hannah needed him. "They can't ruin us."

  "Scully," he said, and a ghost of a smile touched his lips before it 
twisted down into a grimace. "They already have."

  "No." She thought of the past month, of the silence and remove that 
had existed between them, of her own fears that what he said was coming 
true, and the determination grew in her. She rose on her toes and 
pressed her mouth to his, feeling him go stock-still in her grip. She 
used his surprise as leverage, and pushed more of herself between him 
and the wall, pressing against him as fully as possible. She tipped up 
again and ran her hands into his hair, pulling him down to her.

  She kissed his full lips tenderly, tasting both of their tears. She 
breathed against his mouth, "They can't have this, Mulder." His eyes 
were closed, so she kissed their lids, willing him to hear her, to open 
his eyes and see the truth. Her fingers traced the ridges in his hard 
head, the cage of bone that encompassed the mind she loved so well, 
trying to impress her will upon him. "I won't let them take this."

  She was halfway to his mouth again when she heard his gasp, and felt 
him push her back against the wall. She looped her arms around his neck 
and readied herself for a struggle. She was not letting go.
    
  Mulder's eyes were open and he was staring at her as if he'd never 
before seen her. 

  "Are you listening to me now, Mulder?" she asked him quietly, not 
flinching from his penetrating gaze. She spoke clearly, her own tears 
in abeyance for the moment. "I won't let them take this, and I won't 
let you give it to them. They can't have it," she enunciated clearly. 
"They can't have us."

  "Scully …" his name for her was exhaled in a tone that was half 
question, half wonder. He was searching her eyes. 

  There was something in his expression that reminded her of being in 
his hallway the summer before. Then, his yearning for her had been 
clear, but there had been something of defeat in his posture, in the 
very air about him, even as he moved in to kiss her. Or maybe she was 
the one who was different. Months ago, she'd barely been able to admit 
to herself that she wanted him to kiss her, much less believe that was 
what he wanted. 

  It was all different now. She returned his regard steadily, letting 
him see the truth in her eyes. She watched his surprise transform into 
hope and then darken into hunger the instant before he bent his head to 
catch her parted lips with his own. The arms that he'd used to hold her 
away from him wrapped around her as he pressed himself against her.

  "Scully …" he whispered in a husky groan as she slid an arm down to 
his lower back, pulling his hips closer to hers. 

  His kisses were urgent now, grasping for more as they clung to each 
other. 

  She couldn't keep the smile from her lips at the feel of him, hard 
and ready for her, and their kiss broke as they both gasped for air. He 
took the opportunity to trail kisses over her jaw line and down her 
neck. She moaned and tilted her head, running her hands over his 
shoulders and up through the hair on the back of his head. After all 
this time, all the longing … he really did love her. 

  "Scully," he said to her again, sounding dazed. 

  She planted a hand behind her to push herself away from the wall and 
guide them toward the bed, when the pounding in her ears was echoed by 
a pounding on the front door. 

  Mulder and she both started at the sound. She pulled her gun, 
relieved to have it no longer digging in her back; Mulder bent over, 
reaching for his ankle holster. 

  "I have the key," a woman's voice said sternly. "If the door doesn't 
open in twenty seconds, I'm going to use it."

  Mulder closed his eyes. "Manager," he said. 

  Scully nodded, wiping around her mouth to get at whatever lipstick 
remained. "I imagine she has her shotgun," she said. 

  "Yeah," he said, starting to move toward the door.

  "Mulder," she said, stepping in front of him. She glanced pointedly 
downward, then pushed him to sit on the bed, handing him her gun. "I'll 
go."

  She straightened her clothes and hair hastily as she moved, grabbing 
Mulder's gun from the other bed and tossing it to him before she 
stopped behind the door, gathering herself. She glanced over at Mulder. 
He'd put the guns on the far side of him so they'd be out of sight, and 
sat with his elbows braced on his knees. He nodded at her, his face 
flushed from passion, his eyes still sparkling.

  "I'm coming in!" the voice announced from the other side of the door. 

  Scully opened it and came face to face with the irate owner of the 
motel.  The woman's shotgun was out and pointed toward the open door, 
but she lowered it when she saw Scully, using it to lever the door open 
further so that she could peer into the room. She made a noise of 
disgust when she saw the closet and the bureau, her mouth a thin line 
of anger. Her frank gaze turned to Scully; it was clear that she 
disapproved of what she saw. "I thought better of you," she said to 
Scully. "You looked like an intelligent woman from what little I saw of 
you. If you need help getting away from him, it's here now."

  Scully shook her head, dismayed to realize what the motel owner 
thought. "It's really not that kind of situation," she said. "I'm very 
sorry about the damage, but we'll pay for it."

  "Oh, he'll pay for it all right," the woman said, "but what in the 
hell are you doing? You've got a little girl to protect, and instead 
you're putting her in danger by being with him."

  Scully felt the sting of tears, but she spoke firmly and reflexively. 
"He would never hurt our daughter."

  Behind her, she heard Mulder choke back something that sounded 
suspiciously like a sob. 

  The woman peered into the room, stepping further into the doorway so 
that she could see Mulder, who now sat with his head in his hands. 

  "Where is your little girl?" she said suspiciously.

  Scully stepped in between her and Mulder again, wanting to shield him 
from scrutiny. "Our daughter's in the clinic," she said quietly, and 
then hastened to continue when the woman's gun began to rise. "We came 
here because she's been so sick," she said, "and today they told us …" 
she drifted off, her thoughts scattering. She'd never been a very 
nimble liar and she couldn't think of what to tell the woman that was 
believable. Behind her, the sound of Mulder crying became audible, and 
she stumbled, repeating her last words and then covering her mouth in 
distress at his pain. Her own tears began falling thick and fast. 

  The motel owner stared at her, and then at Mulder. Her stony 
expression changed as she regarded him, and she turned to look at 
Scully with true sympathy. "I'm very sorry," she said. 

  Scully nodded, barely able to speak, realizing what the woman had 
inferred and just how close it had come to being true with Hannah, as 
it had been with her sisters. "My husband is just very upset right 
now," she choked out. "We'll pay for the damage. I'm sorry."

  The woman returned the shotgun to rest across her body, cradling it 
in the crook of an elbow. She pointed at Scully's cross, and then said, 
"If you believe, then don't give up. I will pray for your little girl." 
She paused. "And I trust that I won't have to be coming back here."

  Scully nodded and closed the door, resting her head against the cool 
metal for a moment. She wondered exactly what it was that she believed 
in anymore, here in the incomprehensible world in which she now lived. 
Mulder's choked sobs brought her back to herself and she stepped over 
to the bed and around him, picking up their guns and putting them on 
the nightstand. She turned back, intending to sit down next to him, 
when he surprised her by reaching out and drawing her into the space 
between his legs, laying his head against her abdomen and encircling 
her with his arms. He had quieted for the moment, but she could sense 
that his tears hadn't been as cathartic as she'd hoped. It was just a 
momentary calm. Her hands sifted through his hair while she waited, 
feeling Mulder breathe against her. 

  After a while, he let out a long breath, then looked up at her. 
"Samantha's dead, isn't she, Scully?"

  She could not possibly have kept the shock from her expression, and 
knew that he could see the truth in her eyes. His own closed in pain 
and he turned his face back into her stomach. She bent to gather him 
more securely in her arms, but he was wrapped tightly around her, and 
the pose was awkward. 

  "I'm sorry," she said over and over, "Kurt just told me. I don't know 
how, Mulder. I swear I didn't know until today."

  Her only answer was his weeping, and it was the raw sound of his 
heartbreak that finally got to her. She wrapped her arms around his 
head and let go of all the tears she had held in forever. 

*~*

  When she began to calm down, she found Mulder watching her with 
something like his usual intent expression, but with the addition of 
the assessment that she'd become too used to seeing over the course of 
the past month. She closed her eyes against whatever insight he was 
having. She was drained, and his grasp on her was probably the only 
thing keeping her upright. She was slumped against him, knees pressed 
along the edge of the bed, his legs still bracketing hers, his arms 
wrapped around her. He shifted so she was sitting on his right leg, 
then leant over and plucked tissue from the nightstand, handing some of 
it to her. She expected him to attend to his own tears, but when he 
began to dry off her face, she returned the favor, wiping his wet 
cheeks and nose. 

  "Blow," he said to her, and she made a face at him instead, wresting 
the tissues from his hand. She blew her own nose, and tried to calm 
herself. She was still shaking, the aftershocks of so much emotion 
jangling her nerves. 

  He discarded their used tissues with his usual aplomb, sinking them 
into the basket in a high, arcing shot before turning back to her. He 
drew her against his chest, drawing patterns on her hip with his thumb. 
His other hand smoothed her hair, tucking it behind her ear. He 
regarded her with a tender expression, while her breath hitched in and 
out. He leant down and kissed her brow, while his hand drifted down to 
her left hand. His long fingers lightly traced the rings on her finger 
as he regarded her. "I liked to hear you call me that," he said.

  "What?" she whispered back.   

  He looked at her, his face and hair damp from both of their tears, 
his reddened eyes pinning her with their intense stare. His arm held 
her firmly in place as she leant against him, exhausted. "Your 
husband," he said. 

  She swallowed hard at his statement, but didn't break his gaze. 

  "Could you see me as your husband?" he asked. His voice was serious 
and soft.

  "You are my partner, Mulder," she said, but he didn't answer her, 
just continued to look her in the eye. 

  The silence spun out in the room, but she could still hear the echo 
of her own voice naming him as such. She knew that no matter what she 
said, he could already see the answer in her eyes. What he wanted was 
to hear her say it, for her to be as honest with him now as she'd been 
earlier. She took a deep breath, and never breaking his gaze, gave him 
the only possible answer, the truth. "Yes."

  Mulder's chest heaved under her ribs; a light came into his eyes that 
she'd never before seen. His lips curved into something not quite a 
smile, and settled there. The hand that had been tracing her rings, 
rose to trace her face, her neck, her shoulder, her side. He laid her 
back on the bed, hovering above her as his hand continued down over her 
hip and leg until he reached her boot. He drew the zipper down, 
watching her the whole time. She was poised, waiting for his kiss, but 
instead he continued to watch her, gazing into her eyes as first one, 
then the other boot was discarded. He hooked his arm around her knees 
and pulled her legs up onto the bed, and settled himself over her. 

  He was still regarding her with that intent gaze, tracing her 
hairline with his fingers. She felt like she could see right into his 
soul, and was aware that he was looking into hers. Part of her had been 
afraid that his desire for her was tied to the losses he had suffered, 
that she was all he had to cling to. But the things he'd said earlier, 
the way he was looking at her now ... 

  He kissed her once, sure and sweet, and drew back, his hand slipping 
down to unknot his tie, and then unbutton his shirt. He drew his 
clothes off one by one, only stopping to kiss her. There was nothing 
hurried about his movements. He was measured in the way he revealed his 
warm skin to her, his eyes a steady burn as they returned to hers over 
and over. It was almost like he was assuring her and himself that this 
was no dream, that the connection between the two of them was real, 
that this was really happening. 

  She needed no such reassurance, overwhelmed as she was by the 
physicality of him, bared and alive under her hands. She was unable to 
stop herself from touching him, kissing him as he began to surely 
divest her of her clothing. 

  It was easier and more intense than anything she'd ever experienced. 
He pinned her to the bed with his eyes as they moved against each 
other, learning, adapting to each other. He was whispering something, 
but she wasn't sure that she comprehended it, lost as she was in the 
sensation, in the finality of it all. 

  She understood why it was that he wouldn't close his eyes for long, 
why he kept returning to their intimate gaze. In all their years 
together, this was the only way that she had not known him, and she was 
hungry for the experience. Watching the naked love in his eyes, feeling 
it resonate through her very bones, she felt a kind of ecstasy 
unassociated with her body's rising tenor. She could never have felt 
this way with anyone other than Mulder, would never have allowed 
herself to be known in this way with any other.    

  In the aftermath, when their breathing had returned to its normal 
pace, he kissed her over and over, until they were both smiling too 
much to continue. He moved them under the covers as they clung to each 
other, shivering this time from the cold they had not before noticed. 
She reached over him to retrieve yet more tissue to wipe away their 
mutual tears. It was the first time in forever that she had cried 
because of happiness, and they laughed at the same time. She knew 
without asking that they had shared the same thought.

  Mulder lay in her arms, head against her breast, listening to her 
heartbeat. Somehow, it didn't surprise her that he wasn't sleepy. She 
felt far too alive to sleep just now. Instead, she explored the wide 
expanse of his shoulders and his back. She'd always secretly loved that 
part of his body, and now she committed it to sense memory, allowing 
her fingers to drift up to the nape of his neck and back down across 
the warm skin that sheltered him, muscle and bone. 

  Mulder's eyes were closed, and he hummed against her in satisfaction. 
They rested there together in the quiet for a long time, not speaking. 
She had always wondered if it would be awkward, the aftermath of their 
inevitable lovemaking, had imagined several different scenarios. She'd 
never considered this ease as one of the possibilities.

  Mulder shifted up out of her arms to lay alongside her. He propped 
his head on his hand, then began to trace her features with an elegant 
finger, dropping his head to kiss her after running his fingers over 
her lips. The new light in his eyes had not waned, and she said a 
silent prayer that it never would. He drew back and watched her again, 
his generous mouth still curved with happiness. "I love you, you know," 
he said to her.

  She smiled to hear him say it, despite the fact that she had no 
doubts about his feelings for her. She nodded in affirmation, leaning 
up to kiss him. "I love you too, Mulder," she said.

  This time around, Mulder's Cheshire cat grin was full of teeth. She 
could feel herself smiling back at him, and watched his smile grow even 
wider. They were impossible and absurd, and she was happier than she'd 
ever been, despite everything that had happened to bring them to this 
moment. Mulder leant forward and kissed the tip of her nose, and then 
the mole above her lip. 

  "I've always wanted to kiss you there," he announced. 

  She eyebrowed him in what she hoped was an evocative fashion.

  "I suppose it's only fair to warn you that's just one out of many 
places," he said. 

  "I'll consider myself warned, then," she said in a mock serious tone.

  He was stroking her collarbones, tracing the bones in her shoulder. 
"Was Hannah really upset?" he asked suddenly. 

  "Yes," she answered, "but she was sleeping when I left."

  He sighed. "We should go back soon," he said regretfully.

  She nodded, but made no move to break away from him. 

  "We have a daughter, Scully," he said wonderingly. He shook his head, 
"I never really thought any of this would happen." 

  She watched him speaking, letting him share his thoughts with her. 

  "It's what I always wanted," he said finally. He'd been quiet for 
long minutes, but his hands had not been idle, as he continued mapping 
her flesh. 

  "A family, Mulder?" she asked.

  He shook his head. "A family with you," he said. "My whole life, I've 
been trying to get back the family that I lost. Samantha …" he said 
quietly, and she watched him carefully, afraid that they'd lose the 
equilibrium they'd so recently gained. "Since my goal was to get back 
what I lost, the idea of having a family of my own wasn't something I 
really considered." He had been watching his hand sliding across the 
skin of her breast as he spoke, but now he looked her in the eye. 
"Until I met you." 

  She felt her skin flush at his words. 

  "Not right away," he said apologetically. "Not for a long time, if 
I'm truthful about it. It wasn't until you were sick that I realized, 
that I actually became conscious of how I felt about you. When I was 
faced with losing you -- that was when I understood myself."

  "But, Mulder," she began, "you knew that I couldn't have children."

  He shrugged. "I figured that we'd find a way around it. Besides," he 
said, sliding his hand up to cradle her chin in it, "having you would 
have been enough family for me."

  "All that time," she said to him, and she knew her voice was faintly 
accusatory.

  "I never said I was brave," Mulder said. "It was easier to indulge 
the dream, to believe that someday would just … come. I never 
considered that it wouldn't happen, until recently." 

  She regarded him soberly. The wound from their recent estrangement 
was just barely scarred. "We have to talk to each other, Mulder," she 
said. "We can't keep secrets from each other, not anymore. No more 
secret investigations for either of us."

  He was nodding as he listened to her. "I know." He lay his head down 
on his bicep, and she turned on her side, facing him.

  He took a deep breath in, and played with the cross at her neck. 
"What do we tell Hannah?" 

  "You mean, how do we tell her that we're her parents?"

  "Should we tell her?" he asked.

  "Why wouldn't we tell her?" she was confused by the very idea.

  "If she's just got a matter of months …" Mulder swallowed very hard 
and looked on the verge of tears. "It seems cruel to me."

  "Mulder!" she propped herself up on an elbow and stared at him. "What 
makes you think that Hannah's going to die?"

  His expression was wary as he addressed her. "The Kurts that I spoke 
to at the lab said that their average lifespan is five years." 

  She was shaking her head before he finished speaking. "That has 
nothing to do with Hannah, Mulder," she said. "The Kurts are the clones 
of a teenaged boy whose genome was altered in ways that I can't even 
begin to comprehend."

  Mulder stared at her. "But the alien DNA …" he said, "they said that 
the recombination of human DNA with it was unstable."

  "You saved her life by taking her away from Scanlon," she said 
firmly. "But before that you saved her life because she had enough of 
your DNA to withstand their 'treatment'," she spat the word out, 
repulsed at the notion.

  Mulder looked stunned. "But the other girls …"

  "They died because they couldn't withstand the repeated exposure to 
the black oil," she said. "It's ironic, but it is probably the alien 
DNA that killed them. Kurt believes that Hannah's immune system is 
immature because of her alien DNA, not because of us."

  "Are you saying that she's going to survive this?" He seemed afraid 
to hope.

  Scully nodded. "Kurt does have concerns about Hannah's immune system, 
but he has an idea of how to fix that. Hannah needs your blood, 
Mulder," she said. "We need to graft some of your super-immunity into 
her."

  Mulder looked astonished. "Are you sure about this, Scully? Are you 
sure she's going to live?"

  "I'm not positive, Mulder, but the Kurt who has reviewed Hannah's 
records seemed confident to me. He's offered to show me the data, but 
from what he explained of the processes that were utilized to create 
the clones, it's vastly different from the IVF-like process that they 
used to create Hannah," she answered him. "She is not a clone, and 
she's not susceptible to the same sort of aging problems that the Kurts 
are."

  "And Samantha was," he said, "Right?"

  She nodded sadly. "Kurt offered to share the data with me on 
Samantha, but I haven't seen it."

  "The original Kurt Crawford is dead though, isn't he?" Mulder's voice 
was quiet, but sure.

  "He told me that none of the original selves of those that were 
'given'," she grimaced in distaste as she placed emphasis on the word 
that Kurt had used, "survived the process."

  Mulder startled at her words, "Cassandra Spender?" 

  Scully could feel her brow draw down as she thought about that, "I 
don't know the answer to that question, Mulder," she said slowly. "Kurt 
is very literal, and I asked him if any of the children had survived 
the hybridization process, and he said that none had survived in their 
original form. He said that any that we had met were clones, but that 
some of them may not known they were clones."  

  Mulder reached his hand out to play with her cross again. He was 
nodding. "I met one of those Samanthas," he said quietly.

  "Mulder?" She had no idea what he was talking about.

  "When you were sick," he said, and paused. He looked at her, and she 
saw the pain in his eyes. "When you were dying," he said hoarsely, 
"Cancerman offered me a deal to save you. He used Samantha to bait the 
hook."

  "What happened?" she whispered.

  "I met her at a diner," he said. "She looked just like the other 
adult Samanthas we'd met, but she was dressed like a suburban mom. She 
was very ill-at-ease with me," he paused. "She told me that she thought 
our mother was dead and that Cancerman was her father," he said 
bitterly, "And that she didn't remember any other family, and she 
wasn't interested in getting to know me."

  "Oh, Mulder," she reached out and put her hand on his face. 

  "She said that she had a family of her own, children to consider. She 
practically ran out of the diner to get away from me, back to the car 
where he sat waiting, smoking. She let him wipe away her tears."

  She hadn't thought it was possible for her heart to break more than 
it already had, but this life seemed to determine to prove her wrong. 
She wrapped her arms around Mulder and pulled him close. He accepted 
her comfort for a few minutes before he broke away. 

  "It pretty much destroyed me at the time," he said, brushing the hair 
from her brow, "especially with you so sick. I really thought that I 
was going to lose the both of you at the same time."

  "I'm right here," she reminded him. She felt his hand slip around to 
the back of her neck. His thumb ran over her scar.

  He bent to kiss her, then pressed their foreheads together. "You'll 
never know how grateful I am for that, Scully," he said. "Truly." He 
was quiet for another minute. "The more I thought about the woman in 
the diner, the less it seemed plausible to me that she was really 
Samantha," he said. "But the idea that he would raise one of the clones 
as his own, just to use as a blind at some future point …" He shook his 
head. "That seemed insane, even to me. But now … seeing all those Kurts 
today, knowing that they're the clones of someone else's lost child, a 
child that no one ever mentioned once … how could Samantha have 
survived?"

  "I'm so sorry," she reiterated, feeling that her words were totally 
inadequate. 

  Mulder accepted her condolences wordlessly, but his eyes let her know 
that he understood. She wasn't sure that was true. 

  "I have never wanted to kill another person," she said to him, 
choosing her words carefully, "never understood the impulse that would 
drive someone to feel that they had the right to make that decision. 
But I understand it now. Those men, Mulder, they deserved what they got 
at El Rico. They deserved to die," she said fiercely. "Not because of 
what they've done to me and you, but because of what they did to their 
own children, to our children. The only sorrow I feel is for their 
family members."

  Mulder nodded at her words. 

  "I think of Jeffrey Spender now, and I feel horribly sad for him," 
she continued. "If Cancerman really was his father …" she drifted off, 
watching Mulder. "What chance did he have at a good life? He believed 
that his mother was crazy, but the truth is that his father allowed his 
colleagues to torture her, all so they could save their own skins."

  "I wonder about how the whole hybrid program started," Mulder said. 
"Was it all a ruse all along, an idea that the aliens planted to keep 
the Consortium members diverted?"

  She shook her head. "I don't know."

  "And what does it mean that they're all dead now? I can't believe 
that bodes well for us. It feels like a double-cross," he mused. "And 
if anyone deserved to be double-crossed, it was Ol' Smoky. There is 
irony there, I guess." 

  "But he still managed to escape though, didn't he?" She was aware how 
bitter her voice was, but didn't attempt to rein in her tone.

  Mulder looked guilty. "I've had more than one opportunity to kill 
him," he said, "and I didn't take them. I'd like to believe that's out 
of my desire to expose their deeds on the world stage – because if we 
stopped them without public exposure, they'd just re-start their 
projects elsewhere, but … the whole truth is that he's toyed with me 
over the years." His tone had turned scathing. "He'd dangle Samantha 
over my head, and I'd jump, time after time after time. I should have 
known that she was dead a long time ago. I just didn't want to believe 
it." He paused. "Not anymore. It's time to stop doing what they expect 
us to do." 

  "What are you thinking, Mulder?" she asked him. 

  "I don't exactly have a plan yet," he said, "but I do know that I'm 
damned tired of being their pawn." 

  She nodded in response. "What were you looking for, Mulder?"

  He looked confused by her question, "When?"

  "When you found Hannah," she said quietly.

  His expression cleared. "I … " he tilted his head back and stared at 
her, his expressive eyes green and bronze in the lamplight. "When you 
said that this was personal – I knew that, Scully. I've known that for 
a long time, but I guess I understood you in a different way than I had 
before," he said. "I found myself thinking about everything that's 
happened to you," he paused. "And I decided it was time to find Dr. 
Scanlon. I thought that I could get some justice for you, for all the 
women they robbed and murdered." 

  She felt the sting of tears in her eyes, but for once, didn't try to 
hide them. 

  "And I thought, if I found him, I'd find another store of your ova," 
he continued softly. "I wanted to give your choices back to you."

  She closed the small distance between them, pouring all of the love 
that she felt for him into her kiss. 

~*~ 

  Their lovemaking that second time was ardent enough that she stumbled 
over a pillow on the floor by the bathroom door when she went to wash 
up later. It had somehow traveled from their bed over the empty one, to 
lie in wait and trip her. 

  She turned from the door, the laughter bubbling in her throat and 
couldn't help but survey the room with her investigator's eye. If she 
were trying to reconstruct the last couple of hours, she could 
certainly make the case that this had been a crime scene, with the 
marked disarray of the bed and the damage done to the furnishings. 

  But the other clues, the pile of clothing intermingled on the floor, 
the askew lampshade on the nightstand, and of course, the body in the 
bed, told another story. Mulder lay on his stomach, barely covered by 
the bedclothes she'd left behind when she fashioned herself a toga out 
of a desire for warmth, if not modesty. His arms were under the one 
pillow that they'd found on the floor, and he regarded her sleepily, 
one eye peering at her from under the overhang of his tousled hair. The 
bruising and burn mark from the taser was still faintly visible on the 
skin over his ribcage, but even that jarring sight was a testament of 
his love for her and didn't detract from his overall beauty. 

  "Why don't you come recreate the scene of the crime from over here?" 
he asked. His tone was honeyed, despite the gritty quality of his 
sleepy voice. "The view is equally good."

  "Not from my perspective," she answered archly, as he rolled and 
stretched languidly, propping himself up on an elbow. "My view is 
unparalleled." Her tone was rich with innuendo.

  "Scully," he huffed in surprise.

  She was secretly pleased to see a blush stain his skin. She'd always 
suspected that he was not as shameless as he pretended to be. Happily, 
he was shameless enough in just the right ways. 

  "We need to get back to the clinic," she said, and he sighed, but 
nodded his head. She knew that he wanted to stretch their idyll here to 
its limits, but it was after two in the morning, and reality, in the 
form of a worried four-year-old, beckoned. "Are you coming?" she asked, 
turning into the bathroom as she dropped her toga on the hapless 
pillow. 

  She only half heard his predictable response as she turned on the 
water in the shower.

~*~

  They were lucky that Hannah was still asleep when they got back to 
Prometheus, although from the worried expression on her face when they 
crept into the room, Scully was sure that hadn't always been the case. 
She read Hannah's chart carefully, pleased to see that her vital signs 
had stabilized further as her temperature had continued to decrease. It 
was still elevated at slightly more than 100, but Hannah had not yet 
been on the antibiotics for 24 hours. However, the fact that it 
remained elevated raised a red flag for Scully. It could be that 
Hannah's infection was more resistant than she had anticipated. 
Conversely, she wasn't actually sure what Hannah's true body 
temperature was when she wasn't sick, and with the alteration of her 
genome, she couldn't assume that 98.6 was the suitable standard. She 
looked up at the clock to check the time. Hannah was voiding 
appropriately, so rehydration therapy had been discontinued. Her next 
batch of antibiotics would be hung in a few hours, and the line in her 
hand had been capped off for the moment. She made a note to check 
Hannah's hand to ensure that the needle was situated correctly before 
the next infusion was begun. 

  When she finished with her notation, she found Mulder sitting next to 
Hannah staring intently at their daughter. She felt a thrill of 
recognition at his expression as he sat, right arm braced on the other 
side of Hannah's small sleeping form, searching for the familiar in 
her. She moved from the end of the bed to the other side, looking from 
his beloved and well-known profile to the newly beloved and less known 
countenance of their daughter. She was making her own comparisons 
between the two of them, when she realized that Mulder's intent regard 
was slowly but surely waking Hannah. Like father, like daughter -- she 
could feel herself smiling, and didn't attempt to stop Mulder. It was 
probably better for Hannah to be reassured than to stay asleep right 
now.

  "Scully?" Mulder's whisper cut through her reverie. He looked 
pointedly at the chart dangling from her hands before his eyes returned 
to hers.

  "Oh," she began to answer, "she's …"

  "Mulder?" Hannah's worried voice cut through hers, and Mulder's head 
snapped toward the child.

  "Hi –" before his mouth had finished forming the word, Hannah had 
popped up out of the covers, flung her arms around his neck and burst 
into tears. "Oh, pumpkin," Mulder said sorrowfully, and Scully could 
see how sorry he was. "I'm right here, sweetheart," he said. "I'm so 
sorry that I worried you." 

  He rubbed her back as Hannah started to calm, then her body became 
rigid and she looked around frantically. She relaxed when she saw 
Scully. "You both left me!" she accused, and Scully dropped the chart 
on the night table and sat down on the bed next to Mulder, her left hip 
bumping against his right in the middle of the bed as they faced 
Hannah. 

  "I'm sorry, Hannah," Scully said. She leant toward Hannah, intending 
to kiss her forehead, but Hannah surprised her by wrapping her arms 
around Scully's neck to pull her closer, although she did not retreat 
from Mulder's lap. 

  "I was scared," Hannah hiccupped. "I don't like being alone." 

  Scully's eyes filled with tears as she fought back the images of 
Hannah alone and sick while her sisters were dying around her in that 
room in Albany. 

  Mulder put his right arm around Scully and tugged her closer so that 
the both of them were sheltering Hannah. She pulled her legs up onto 
the bed.

  "I know, Hannah," he soothed. "We promise it won't happen again."

  Hannah backed away from Mulder enough to look from one to the other 
of them suspiciously. She was rubbing the fabric of her nightgown 
worriedly between her fingers, a gesture that Scully hadn't seen her 
make in days. It caused an unexpected pang. "You promise?" she said 
querulously. Her eyes were large in her pale oval face, framed by her 
unruly, sleep-mussed hair. 

  "We promise," Scully said firmly.

  "OK," Hannah said, after a minute. She curled up against Mulder with 
a contented sigh, but put a hand on Scully's leg as if to hold her 
there, watching her with one bright eye.

  Mulder kissed Hannah's head, wrapping his left arm around her tight. 

  "Where'd you go?" she asked Scully softly.

  "Back to the motel," Scully said. "I met Mulder there, and we got our 
things."

  "Oh," Hannah said. "Are we going somewhere else?"

  "Not until you're all better," Scully said easily. "So your – Mulder 
and I thought we should get our things so that we'd have them here with 
us." She was surprised at how easily calling Mulder 'your father' had 
almost slipped right out of her mouth. Luckily, Hannah hadn't noticed, 
but Mulder certainly had. He was grinning at her. 

  He nodded at her, encouraging her, but she wasn't sure how to explain 
that they were her parents to Hannah. In truth, she wasn't that sure of 
how much Hannah understood about parents and families. Everything 
Hannah knew about family life she'd learned from television, not from 
any real experience. And she wasn't sure if it was a blessing or an 
additional sorrow that Hannah didn't seem to realize that the other 
girls in her room in Albany had been her sisters.  

  She took a deep breath in. "Hannah, do you remember that Mulder told 
you we were going to try and find your family – to find out who your 
mom and dad are?" Someday, she knew, they would have to explain to 
Hannah just how it was that she hadn't been with them for the first 
years of her life, but today was not that day.

  "Yes," Hannah said, but her lower lip began to stick out. She pulled 
her hand off of Scully, and turned her head, burying her face in 
Mulder's chest.

  "What's the matter?" Mulder asked, looking down at her.

  "I don't want to go away from you," she said. Her voice was muffled 
because she was speaking into Mulder's torso, but the petulant tone was 
clear. 

  Scully felt the tension that had gripped her at having this 
conversation just ebb away as Mulder jostled Hannah and kissed her 
head, trying unsuccessfully to get her to look up. Hannah just burrowed 
in deeper. 

  "You don't have to go anywhere, Hannah," Scully said surely, and 
Hannah became completely still in Mulder's arms. "I promise you. You 
belong with us, Mulder and me. We are your family." 

  Hannah's head popped away from Mulder's chest. One hand raised up to 
push the mass of curls that had flopped over her brow away so that she 
could look at them both. Her brow was drawn down in concentration as 
she looked from Mulder to Scully. "You're my mom?" she whispered. 

  Scully nodded, aware that she was smiling through the tears that were 
falling. "Yes," she said, "and Mulder really is your Daddy." 

  Hannah launched herself at Scully, and Scully gasped as Hannah threw 
her arms around her neck. Until that moment, she hadn't realized how 
very much she had wanted Hannah to do that. Her arms wrapped around her 
child fully for the first time and she closed her eyes and just held 
her. When she opened them, Mulder was regarding her with a heartfelt 
expression of love, tears streaming down his cheeks and over his wide 
smile. 

  "Hey!" he complained after a minute. "Don't Daddies get any hugs 
around here?"

  Hannah giggled; Scully could feel the vibration against her neck, the 
rise and fall of Hannah's small body against her breast. It was an 
exquisite sensation. She bent her head and kissed Hannah on the cheek. 
"Do you think we should hug him, Hannah?" she teased.

  "I already hugged him," Hannah said, speaking into Scully's neck. 

  Mulder pouted, and Scully could not help but laugh. His expression 
had a totally different resonance for her now. 

  "That was before I was your Daddy," Mulder said in a whiny tone. 

  Hannah giggled again, and Scully eyebrowed him. "Technically, Mulder 
…" she began, but he interrupted. 

  "So, that's it, then," he said. "No more hugs for Mulder?"

  Hannah turned around out of Scully's arms, and looked at him sternly. 
"Daddy," she corrected. Then, she held out her arms.

  Mulder looked like he might burst into tears, as he bent over to hug 
Hannah, leaving her in Scully's lap. 

  When he broke away from Hannah, he pointed at Scully and asked 
gently, "And who's that?"

  "That's my mom," Hannah said in a satisfied and proud tone. She 
leaned back against Scully, who couldn't help but wrap her arms around 
her. 

  "Yes, she is," Mulder said, smiling through his tears, before he 
engulfed them all in a hug.   

~*~

  After breakfast, a new bag of cephalosporin was brought in by the 
infirmary Kurt. The clones in general seemed wary of Mulder, although 
the infirmary Kurt had relaxed enough to get within striking distance 
of Mulder when bringing in the new medication. After Mulder and Hannah 
settled down to watch some Sesame Street, Scully went in search 
of the Kurt with whom she'd spent much of the previous day. 

  Scully wondered how on Earth she was going to distinguish one clone 
from the other politely, but she was saved the embarrassment when she 
was approached by a clone shortly after she crossed the threshold of 
the large lab across from the infirmary space. 

  "Agent Scully," the clone said, "I take it that you were able to 
resolve matters with Agent Mulder?"

  "Yes," she answered. "Agent Mulder still has a number of questions, 
as do I." She noted that the clone's expression held a hint of worry 
behind its usual imperturbable façade. "Agent Mulder understands that 
you are not personally responsible for his gametes being stolen. 
Notwithstanding that fact, however, it remains a very upsetting issue 
for the both of us."

  "I do see that," the clone said. "I cannot say that I truly 
comprehend it, but I do recognize that." He paused. "What did you wish 
to speak to me about? As yet, I don't have any answers for you on the 
bacteria colonies from the child's samples, but expect to within the 
next few hours. In my opinion, she is responding well to the 
treatment."

  "Yes, she is," Scully answered. "And I thank you for looking after 
her last night in Agent Mulder's and my absence. We'll be remaining in 
the infirmary with Hannah until her situation is resolved, if that's 
all right with you." 

  The clone nodded. "Of course," he said. 

  "I did want to discuss your ideas about strengthening Hannah's immune 
system," she said. "It appeared to me from Agent Mulder's description 
that the facility she was discovered in was maintained as a sterile 
environment. I wondered if you have any knowledge of that."

  "I wouldn't characterize it as sterile," the clone said, "but it was 
certainly restricted. My understanding is that the children were in an 
environment that limited their exposure to microbes, probably for the 
purpose of getting the most pure response to the virus. The staff took 
precautions to not expose the children to any elements outside the 
room. In fact, until Agent Mulder removed this last child from the 
facility, it's doubtful that any of the children had ever been in an 
unrestricted environment." He paused. "Her relative health given the 
limitations that she was raised under is actually a testament to how 
robust her innate immune system is."

 "Are you saying that you don't think Hannah is going to require gene 
therapy to boost her immune system as we discussed yesterday?" Scully 
asked, surprised. 

  "That is unknown at this time. It would be my recommendation that the 
child be given the standard immunizations that she should have received 
up until this point. It would be preferable that the process be done in 
a controlled environment such as this, once she has truly recovered 
from this current infection. Her response to the introduction of those 
new elements into her system will give us a more accurate picture of 
how well her immune system is functioning."

  "You seem to have made a large shift in your opinion since yesterday 
evening," Scully said. "Does this have anything to do with Agent 
Mulder's display of anger?"

  The clone blinked once, then again. Scully had the impression that he 
was insulted by her question, but he answered her. "Agent Mulder told 
some of my brothers that he took Hannah into a mall after he found 
her."

  She nodded.

  "A mall," the clone said firmly, "with hundreds of people and 
millions of microbes to which she'd never before been exposed. The fact 
that she isn't deathly ill, considering the circumstances of her early 
life, makes the case for her immune resilience."

  Scully shook her head in thought. "I hadn't actually considered it 
from that perspective," she said. "I'd assumed that she'd gotten ill 
from that exposure, of course, but never considered that she actually 
withstood more contagion than she was exposed to. She may be more like 
her father than I'd suspected," she mused.

  Off Kurt's questioning look, she continued. "Agent Mulder and I have 
worked in close quarters for a number of years," she said. "And over 
that time, I've observed that his susceptibility to illness is 
strikingly low. For example, our offices were changed from a small 
space in which just the two of us worked, to a large room where more 
than fifty agents worked. During the weeks following the move, I spent 
much time fighting illness. Agent Mulder did not show any signs of 
illness." 

  "Intriguing," the clone said. "Do you know if either of his parents 
showed this same capacity?"

   Scully shrugged. "I have no idea," she paused. "I could ask Agent 
Mulder, but can't see how that would aid you."

  "I admit that the question is purely one of curiousity, considering 
how it is that the colonizing virus replicates," the clone paused. 
"Agent Mulder's resistance to that virus is unprecedented, as you know, 
but we had not considered that his microbial resistance in general 
might be high." 

  Scully nodded. "I see. You realize, of course, that immunity is 
considered to be an acquired human trait."

  "I concede that is the general understanding, but if humans can 
inherit predispositions toward certain immune syndromes from mutated 
genetic material they inherit from their parents, the reverse postulate 
should also be entertained," the clone said. "In fact, it may go a long 
way toward explaining the function of this so-called natural immunity 
which you brought up yesterday. There must be a genetic explanation for 
such an ability."

  "You think this might be a fruitful research avenue as far as your 
vaccine work is concerned?" Scully asked. She had to admit that she was 
intrigued by the notion.

  "I cannot foresee its ultimate worth," the clone said, "but it 
certainly appears to be worth investigating."

  Scully nodded, thinking. "I believe that I may speak for Agent Mulder 
in this case. If we can assist you by giving you genetic samples for 
you to study, we're willing to do so."

  "That offer is appreciated," the clone said, "and I accept it. Did 
you have any other matters you wished to discuss?" 

   "Yes," Scully answered. "I have concerns about how Hannah was 
created. You have referred to the recombination of human and alien DNA 
as being unstable a number of times; your brothers made mention of that 
to Agent Mulder as well. I want to understand what implications that 
will have for Hannah in the long-term," she said. "In addition, I'm  
concerned that if we stay here for the length of time that it will take 
to inoculate Hannah successfully, we'll be putting your operation at 
significant risk."

  "The first answer is more complex, and one I'm not sure that we can 
answer easily without doing a more in-depth analysis of how exactly the 
child's genome was altered," the clone said. "That will require some 
time and more information than has been found so far in the records 
Agent Mulder procured. As to the second part of your statement, I'm not 
sure I understand how you and Agent Mulder would be putting this 
operation at-risk," the clone said. 

  "I have an implant," Scully said levelly. "Agent Mulder and I are not 
aware of the breadth of what it can do, but I do know that if we 
continue to stay out of sight, the chances of me being called via it 
will rise."

  "I'm sorry, Agent Scully," the clone said, "I should have mentioned 
this yesterday. We broadcast a dampening signal around this building. 
Your implant cannot be activated within a radius of 4 square miles." 

  "What implications does that have for my health?" she asked. 

  "None in the short term," the clone answered. "The implant is 
essentially a micro-transmitter and receiver that can only be removed 
by a tool that transmits an appropriate signal. Removal of the implant 
without that device provoked the broadcast of a malevolent electronic 
impulse that began the process of cancer replication in your 
nasopharyngeal cavity. When an implant was resituated and began 
receiving electronic impulses from their systems, it halted and 
reversed the process."

  "But they won't be able to locate me," she said. "Won't that make 
them suspicious?"

  "Perhaps," the clone answered, "but there are many sites that are 
dampened. It will take time for them to figure out which of the many 
sites you're at."

  "I admit that I don't know how the implant works, but I can't imagine 
that scenario to be likely," she argued. "If word gets out that Mulder 
and I are missing, I'd assumed that they'd be able to work backward 
from the last place my signature was recorded at. Logically, the 
nearest dampened site would be the first place to search."

  The clone seemed to be giving her answer serious thought. "We can 
transmit our data, disassemble necessary laboratory equipment and move 
within a twelve-hour period. We've had to do so before. Do you know if 
your absence has raised such an alarm?"

  She looked at her watch. "Agent Mulder should be checking in with 
some of our allies to see if the trail they planted to cover our 
absence has worked. We expect to know that answer in a few hours."

  The clone nodded. "I'll tell my colleagues to prepare, just in case." 
She stepped aside to give him room to pass her, but the clone didn't 
move. "There is one other thing that you should consider, Agent 
Scully." 

  She nodded, encouraging the clone to continue.

  "We have the removal tool here. If you desire it, we can safely 
remove their implant and free you from their machinations."

~*~

  Scully followed the sound of Mulder's raised voice through the 
hallway that led to the loading zone of the warehouse, not surprised to 
find him in the relatively unused area. Hannah had told her that "Daddy 
got a call from a man he told me to call 'creepy Uncle Melvin', and had 
to go away because he was scaring the Doctor Kurt," before she 
continued on with her coloring. 

  Mulder was gesturing largely across the room, still unaware of her 
presence. "That's not even a question, Frohike."

  He paused. 

  "I'm telling you that I know it, and that should be good enough," he 
said heatedly. "10 years, Melvin." 

  He paced as he listened. "Yeah, well the point is that I want to know 
who did this – I need to know who did this to us. Every single one of 
them, and you can start with Jonathan Buckley, M.D., the quack that had 
me ingesting the black oil."

  "l-e-y," he paused. "I have no idea. Wait, I remember that his 
diploma said that he graduated from Johns Hopkins Medical School," he 
rubbed his forehead, "1956. And don't forget Dr. Scanlon. All the 
information I've got on him is in the file. You have the back-up for 
that, except for the update on my home computer." He made a face. 
"Whatever, Langly. And then there's that ratfucker CGB Spender. I know 
he walked away from the flambé at El Rico. I need to find the hole he 
slithered into. I owe him. I figure we'll be even in about twenty-five 
years."

  He paced, walking in tight circles. "Last, I don't have any of the 
information with me that I took from the day after," he paused, and 
then continued. "Where was Diana Fowley in the fall of 1994?" 
 
  He sighed. "Could you just look it up, Frohike?"

  "I'm not sure Scully would appreciate me telling you," he said. The 
hand he'd been gesturing with braced itself against his hip. "Scully 
does not keep secrets from me!" he said indignantly, and she found 
herself hiding a smile at his blatant lie. The thing was, he seemed 
convinced that he was telling the truth.

  "Eventually, we tell each other everything," he insisted.

  "Yes, we do, Frohike," he said through gritted teeth and paused. 
"That is none of your business." He made an exasperated noise and then 
listened for a few seconds before saying, "Because Scully thinks that 
she was there in the train car, that's why," in a dark tone.

  "Guys?" Mulder pulled the phone away from his ear to see if the call 
had been dropped. "Cheap piece of … " he muttered, "Guys? Oh, you are 
there." He listened. "Of course, I believe her!" he yelled. "She would 
never say something like that if it wasn't true!"

  He listened again, "Because I want to know where she was, Frohike. I 
want to know what her assignment," he spat the word out, "was." There 
was another, longer pause, and then Mulder said, "I promise you -- I 
swear on Samantha's grave --  if she did this to us, if she 
participated in any way in what they did to Scully then she will be 
first up against the fucking wall!" His voice had been rising steadily 
in volume and anger as he spoke. "First!" 

  She had been walking toward him, but his outburst stunned her into 
immobility. She stopped and leant against an empty desk as Mulder's 
words swirled around in her head. Scully couldn't believe that he 
actually meant that he'd kill her, but the tone of his voice told her 
exactly how furious he was at Diana Fowley. In a sick way, his words, 
crude as they were, were a declaration of love for her more powerful 
than any promise of forever.

  He paused again, "Thank you, Byers. Listen, I have to go back, 
Hannah's still freaked out because of last night and I don't want to 
leave her alone for too long."

  Mulder hung up without saying goodbye, only to turn around and come 
face-to-face with her. All forward momentum on his part ceased, and he 
ran a hand through his hair, hard. The tips of his ears turned red. 
"Scully," he said, in an embarrassed tone, "How long have you been 
there?"

  "Long enough," she answered him thoughtfully. She held out a hand to 
him, and he crossed the distance between them a bit warily, and took 
her hand. She motioned for his other hand, and he dropped the phone 
into the pocket of his shirt before he gave it to her. 

  She tugged on his hands until she pulled him into the space between 
her legs. She regarded his hands, running her thumb over his friend's 
wedding ring, remembering how painful it had been to her to see Diana 
Fowley holding his hand months ago. "First up against the wall, 
Mulder?" 

  "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," he said sheepishly. He was 
definitely blushing. "When the revolution comes." 

  "Are we going to lead that revolution, Mulder?" She kissed his hand 
and smiled up at him, watching the slow smile break over his face as 
her words sunk in. She opened her hands and pressed her palms against 
him while he mirrored her movements. She linked their fingers together, 
pushing Mulder's hands towards him until he resisted her.

  He was nodding before he spoke, "About time, don't you think?" He 
pressed back against her and they balanced somewhere in the middle, 
meeting for a kiss. After a few minutes, he drew back from her with a 
questioning expression on his face. "What's up, Scully?" he asked.

  His intuition was really quite striking – she had to admit it. 

  "I have some things to tell you," she began, and immediately, his 
brow creased in worry. She raised their still linked hands and ran a 
finger over the lines, smoothing them away. "No," she said, "for once, 
Mulder, it's not anything bad."
  
~*~ 

  She was curled on her side trying to focus on Possession when 
Mulder came out of the bathroom wearing his pajama bottoms and a t-
shirt. He grinned at the sight. 

  "Finally!" he said, carefully climbing up onto their makeshift double 
bed. She'd taught him an old resident's trick – they pushed two of the 
empty beds in the infirmary together and locked their brakes in place 
before they lay the mattresses across the bed frames to cover the seam 
between the two beds. With extra pillows to cover the top of the bed 
where there was a gap, they'd made a passably comfortable Queen-sized 
bed, although she had her doubts that Mulder would keep to his own side 
of it. Hannah slept on her own in the bed next to them, her tiger 
tucked up under her chin. 

  She raised her eyebrows in response to his comment, looking at him 
over her shoulder as he curled up against her back. "After everything 
that's happened in the last twenty-four hours, it's me reading this 
book that provokes that outburst?" She made a disbelieving noise, and 
returned to her reading. 

  He kissed the back of her neck very gently. "Scully, I'm surprised at 
you. Are you trying to provoke an unseemly display in front of a minor? 
Our minor, I'd like to add."

  "I don't think that hat with the light would fit over her hair, 
Mulder," she said, putting her finger in the book to mark her page. She 
could hear him wincing behind her.

  "Scully, we really have got to work on your sense of humor," he 
deadpanned. "Maybe I can buy you one for your birthday?" 

  "Last month," she noted dryly. 

  "Who says we need to be pedestrian and give and receive presents on 
the actual day?" Mulder said archly. "What about the element of 
surprise?"

  She huffed a laugh and then regretted it, feeling an ache deep in her 
belly.

  "You OK?" he asked tenderly. "Need another icepack?"

  She moved the nearly melted one off her abdomen and handed it to him, 
turning gingerly over onto her back so that she could see him. "I'm not 
even sure that it's doing anything other than easing my mind," she 
said. "There's no way that ice on my skin could help inflammation in my 
ovaries."

  Mulder smiled at her. "Mind over matter, Scully."

  She harrumphed.

  "Do you want another?" She laid a cold hand against his chest and he 
shivered, but didn't shy away from her. "Just keep that hand north of 
the border, I beg of you." He began rubbing her cold hand in both of 
his desperately. 

  She laughed this time, and immediately moaned, causing Mulder to 
grimace. 

  "What does it feel like?" he asked. 

  She thought it over for a bit. "It feels really weird," she finally 
said. "It's not exactly painful, but it's very strange to be aware of a 
part of your body that you knew was there, but have never really felt 
before."

  He nodded. "You never had mittelschmerz before?"
 
 "Not that I recall," Scully said wryly. "Besides, that's only supposed 
to be affect one ovary at a time." She paused. "Exactly how much 
reading have you done on this subject, Mulder?" He was a dangerous man 
with a search engine.

  "On ova regeneration, or on mittelschmerz?" he asked. 

  She thumped him with her still cold hand, and he laughed, capturing 
it.

  "You're going to have to write an article for me to read on the 
first," he said, "and I had a girlfriend at Oxford who had 
mittelschmerz." 

  "Phoebe?" she asked. There was no longer any need for her to hide her 
distaste.

  "Phoebe was a pain in a different part of the anatomy," Mulder 
answered, raising her hand to kiss it, while she smiled at him. "Now, 
really, how do you feel about all of this?" 

  "Sore," she answered.

  Mulder made a face at her and waited.

  "I'm glad, Mulder," she said. "On one level, I can't believe that 
they could regenerate my ova with the implant, but if the implant could 
cause healthy cells to become cancerous and then spontaneously remit, 
then it's not that unbelievable, relatively speaking." She made a face, 
listening to what she was saying aloud. "I guess."

  Mulder waited for her to continue. 

  "I'm still not sure that I believe it, despite the discomfort," she 
said. "I'm going to have to confirm it with my own doctor." She gripped 
his hand. "I think maybe I'm afraid to count on it too much. If I could 
have a baby," she began, "should I?" They'd both been keeping their 
voices low, so as not to disturb Hannah, but her tone had taken on a 
note of urgency. "I worry that we won't be able to keep Hannah safe," 
she whispered. "How could we keep another child safe? How do we know 
that Scanlon won't to try to take Hannah, or any other child we might 
have?"

  Mulder's eyes were hard at her words. "I will kill him where he 
stands," he said. 

  "Mulder," she said.

  "I'm serious," he said.

  "I know you are," she answered him. "But you can't help keep her safe 
if you're in jail! We need to figure out how we're going to protect 
her," she said. Behind her, Hannah coughed and Scully's head jerked in 
the direction of the sound. Her hand flew out of Mulder's grasp and 
went to the back of her neck as Mulder winced. 

  He got out of the bed carefully and padded over to peer at Hannah, 
who had roused a bit. 

  Scully had rolled onto her back, still holding onto her neck. Mulder 
gave Hannah a sip of water through a straw and waited for a second, 
making sure she was settled before he returned to his side of their 
bed. "She didn't really wake up," he whispered. "Do you need an ice 
pack for your neck while I'm up?" 

  She started to shake her head, but thought better of it. "It's fine," 
she said, and then rolled her eyes at Mulder's expression. "Really, 
Mulder. I've had much worse. It's a tiny burn." She had turned back on 
her side to face him.
 
  "The laser that came out of that … thing," Mulder said, getting back 
under the covers and sliding over next to her, "was one of the stranger 
things I've seen."

  She agreed with him. "It was so cold – it didn't hurt at all while it 
was happening, but now I feel it when I turn my head too fast." She 
changed the subject. "What did Byers say?"

  "He wasn't back yet," Mulder answered, "but Frohike said he'd called 
in to say that Skinner had showed up at the meeting and that he'd 
agreed to verify the paper trail if asked. So far, no one has been 
looking for us."

  "Where does the 302 say we are?" she asked. 

  "In California," Mulder answered, "following up on leads related to 
the El Rico massacre. Langly and Frohike moved your car from the mall 
parking lot to BWI, and the plane manifest shows that you flew out of 
there on Sunday evening."

  "With you?"

  "No," Mulder answered. "I flew out of there on Saturday morning."

  "So if Scanlon is looking for Hannah," she said, "he'll look there 
first?"

  "If the reproductive experiments are in as much trouble as the Kurts 
think they are, Scanlon has bigger problems than losing Hannah," Mulder 
said. "Besides, it sounds like the whole program is in disarray with 
factions fighting for supremacy since the burnings."

  "We can't just trust that she'll be safe, Mulder," she insisted.

  "I have no intention of doing so," he said heatedly. 

  She pressed her hand against his chest in apology. 

  He calmed down and continued on in a softer voice. "I have an idea," 
he said. "But it's going to require a lot of coordination, and a little 
time."

  "Tell me," she said. 

  Mulder drew in a long breath through his nose and covered her hand 
with his. "We're going to have to lie," he said. 

  "Fine," she answered. 

  Mulder looked at her skeptically.

  "Mulder," she said, "she's our daughter. I'll do what's necessary." 

  He looked faintly surprised. 

  "I asked nicely with Emily," she said, "and look where that got me. 
If she'd lived," she fought off the wave of bitterness, "they wouldn't 
have awarded her to me. What's your plan?" She was ready to poke holes 
in it.

  "We could do this a couple of ways," Mulder said. "But basically, the 
first thing we need to do is to raise our profile and Hannah's to make 
it so that any further action against any of us would be a disaster for 
whatever factions remain active."

  Scully was surprised to hear him set the tone for this discussion in 
that way. In general, Mulder preferred to keep a low profile. Back in 
the days when Patterson had been trying to groom him as his second-in-
command, Mulder had resisted being paraded in front of the press – it 
had been one of their first and most persistent disagreements. "Go on," 
she encouraged him. 

  Mulder took a long breath in. "We could say that you were pregnant 
when you were kidnapped, and that they kept you just long enough for 
the baby to be viable. We make the case that Hannah was kept as 
leverage by the people who were burned at El Rico. We charge Strugholm 
and a few of the others that are dead with conspiracy and kidnapping, 
of both you and Hannah," he was watching her carefully. "And we charge 
Spender and Scanlon specifically with attempted murder charges against 
you, both for when you were kidnapped in 1994 and almost killed, and 
for Scanlon's treatment of your cancer."

  She blinked at his audacity. "They would both die in jail," she said 
slowly. 

  "They'll probably die before they get to trial, Scully," he said. "If 
we can even find them in the first place. But we get their names, and 
most importantly, their faces on the Ten Most Wanted. There's bound to 
be publicity about the case, making it so they can't take Hannah 
without giving credence to the whole kidnapping story."

  She had to admit that she was impressed with the idea, even though 
there were a tremendous number of moving parts to it. She started to 
ask him a question, when Mulder held up his hand. 

  "But Scully, if we do it this way, then people are going to feel 
validated in every rotten thing they've ever said about us and about 
our relationship. The Bureau may even try to go after us for 
fraternization. We could be destroying both our careers."

  "I don't care about that," she said. "Really, Mulder. How else are we 
going to explain Hannah's sudden appearance?"

  "We could say that your ova were stolen when you were kidnapped and 
that she was created …"

  "No," she said firmly. 

  "Scully, your reputation …" he began.

  "No," she said. "Your first idea was the better one, even if it's 
sketchy, and you know it. Why are you balking?" 

  He shook his head in frustration. "The idea that some of those 
bastards we work with will talk about you, the way I know they'll talk 
about you, makes me crazy. Saying that we've been in a relationship all 
these years just validates all the sexist bullshit that they spout 
about male-female partnerships."

  "Mulder," she said affectionately. "I really think you're kidding 
yourself by believing that they don't talk about me, about us, that way 
already. Just because they'll believe that they're justified doesn't 
make any difference to me. I would never have lasted as long as I have 
at the Bureau if I didn't have a thick skin."

  Mulder looked distinctly grumpy. "Well," he said, "Frohike had an 
idea: he said that he can make it look like we've been secretly married 
since 1994. We're already going to have to alter your hospital records 
to make it look like you had given birth before you were returned. He 
insists that he can make it look legit."

  She laughed out loud, sore gut be damned. "Mulder! And you think 
that would cause less gossip!?" She was touched, but not truly 
surprised, by Frohike's chivalrous impulses toward her.

  He looked even more grumpy at her laughing at him. 

  "That would become the whole story, Mulder, and would make it more 
scintillating – we need the focus to remain on the crimes that took 
place," she said. "Besides, how would we explain that to my mother?"

  Mulder looked distinctly uncomfortable at her words.

  "Is that what this is all about?" she asked him incredulously. 
"You're afraid that my mother will be angry because I was pregnant 
without being married?" She narrowed her eyes and really looked at him. 
"Or angry with you for making me pregnant?"

  Mulder had the good sense to look chagrinned at her words. "Scully – 
I know that she's going to have an opinion about it."

  "Oh, she definitely will," Scully said, "and I'll make it clear to 
her that her opinion is duly noted, and then continue on with my life." 
Mulder looked dubious at her words. "Mulder, trust me -- she's more 
likely to be angry that she didn't know that I was pregnant, or that I 
had a kidnapped daughter, than she is about me being pregnant without 
being married!" 

  "Well, that's another issue," Mulder said. "How are you going to 
explain this to your mother?"

  "I'll tell her that we didn't know there was a baby, because it was 
so early in the pregnancy. I could tell her that until Emily was found 
that the possibility of our child being alive had never occurred to me 
and that we began actively looking for her. The problem will be in how 
to explain who Emily was," she mused. "I've already told my mother that 
because of what they did to me when I was kidnapped that I couldn't 
have children."

  She heard Mulder hesitating, and she looked up at him. "I will not 
disavow Emily, Mulder," she said firmly. "I know that the easiest thing 
would be to say that Emily's appearance was a blind, meant to hide 
Hannah – that we were getting too close because of ongoing 
investigations and that they panicked and tried to fool us, but I won't 
do that." 

  Mulder leaned forward and kissed her forehead, and then her cheek. "I 
didn't think you would," he said, running his fingers through her hair. 
"What if we said that Emily and Hannah were twins?" he asked. She 
started at the suggestion. "Who is going to challenge us or correct the 
information we put out?" he asked. "The consortium? You can tell your 
mother that I've been suspicious since Emily was found, and that I 
never stopped investigating, but that I didn't tell you about it, 
because I didn't want to get your hopes up."

  She stared at him. "You'd do that?"

  Mulder looked confused. "Scully, I would have been looking all this 
year if you hadn't put down the edict against it."

  "No," she said quietly, "you'd really claim Emily?" Mulder actually 
looked a little hurt at her words, so she squeezed his hand and 
whispered, "Thank you," before she kissed him. 

  Mulder relaxed against her, gathering her into his arms carefully. 
"Don't thank me, Scully," he said when they broke apart. "I should have 
said something at the time."

  She placed her fingers against his lips. "You're saying it now," she 
countered. "It still counts, as far as I'm concerned." She lay there 
thinking for a moment, her head on Mulder's shoulder, her hand 
smoothing over the cotton of his t-shirt. "The problem with that is 
that we don't run to twins in my family, Mulder," she said. 

  "Not even Irish twins?" Mulder teased. 

  She poked him, but she was smiling. 

  "Actually, I had twin uncles," he said. 

  "Had?" Scully asked.

  "My father's older brothers," he said. "One of them died before I was 
born – WWII," he explained. "The other one died shortly after I 
finished Oxford."   
  
  "Dare I ask what their names were?" Scully asked, looking up at 
Mulder. 

  His expression was pained. "Forbes," he said finally. "And Brooks."

  "Brooks?" Scully asked. 

  Mulder covered his face with his right hand. "It's a last name, 
Scully," he said. "In this case, one of my paternal grandmother's 
family names."

  "Not that Forbes is much better," she muttered.

  "Oh, Forbes-y was all right," Mulder said, clenching his jaw and 
affecting an upper-class accent. "Never quite right after losing his 
brother in the war, you know, but still a good man."

  "Your relatives would be horrified that you've chosen to breed with 
the help, Mulder," she said. 

  "Fuck 'em," Mulder answered. 

  'No, thanks,' Scully thought, but kept her mouth shut. "Going back to 
the plan," she said, "the big problem I see is that my kidnapper was 
Duane Barry." 

  "No," Mulder answered, "he was the one who took you, but he delivered 
you to unknown others – which reminds me – don't let me forget to put 
Krycek on the Ten Most Wanted," he sounded gleeful at the prospect. 
"The actual file on the conspiracy surrounding your kidnapping has 
never been closed, and the contents relating to your medical condition 
when you appeared at the hospital were classified as 'need-to-know'."

  She startled at this information. "But I read ..."

  "You 'needed to know'," Mulder said sarcastically. "I'm sure that 
Cancerman pressured Skinner, or probably Blevins, to classify it 
because they knew that exposure to the virus was what had branched your 
DNA, but it'll work in our favor now. They'll never be able to prove 
that what we're saying isn't true without revealing how they know."

  "But the original information, the paper files –" she said.

  "Frohike says he can take care of that," Mulder said.

  She raised her eyebrows at him. 

  "I told him not to tell me how," Mulder said. "I suggest you don't 
ask, either."

  "Plausible deniability?" 

  "It works for them," Mulder answered.

  "What if the Bureau balks?" she asked.

  "I'm expecting them to," Mulder said. "I can't believe that Blevins 
was the only one in league with Cancerman, not to mention the fact that 
we're implicating two ex-FBI agents in your kidnapping and the 
subsequent kidnapping of our two children." 

  She felt herself flush at the easy manner in which Mulder had adopted   
Emily, but he continued on. "The Director's Office isn't going to be 
too happy about the scandal this whole situation is going to cause, and 
if we went to them first, they'd definitely try to squelch the whole 
thing," he said. "That's why we're not going to them first."

  "Who are we going to?" she asked, puzzled. 

  "Matheson," Mulder answered. "His position on the Intelligence 
Committee gives him the clout we need. My plan is to get him to contact 
the Director just before we get back and make it clear that the story 
here is how the FBI has uncovered the long-term results of a corruption 
scandal that has already implicated a Section Chief. The only thing I 
can't figure out is how to work Jeffrey Spender's disappearance into 
this."

  She was surprised to hear him say as much, and knew that her 
expression reflected that.

  "I keep thinking about what you said about him, about what kind of a 
chance he had because of who his father was. I think I understand him 
more than I did before." Mulder paused. "Besides, I owe him that much 
for his support. And I figure there has to be some way to make it look 
like Baby Spender set us on the trail to find Hannah. That way, I can 
put out an APB on Diana as a person of interest with regard to his 
disappearance and Hannah's discovery."

  "Mulder –" 

  "She's still alive," Mulder said surely, "and there are a lot of 
questions that she needs to answer." His voice was hard, but level.

  She decided not to press the issue any further, since she knew that 
Fowley's betrayal was still a sore subject with Mulder. "Still, the 
question remains – what are we implying that the conspirators were 
doing?" Scully asked. 
  
  "As far as what the press gets told, we emphasize the corruption 
angle, implying that Hannah was kept as a hostage to ensure that if we 
got too close, we could be stopped. I'm sure that when the press digs, 
they'll find out more about what it is that we do, and they'll have 
more questions, which is fine by me. Especially since I'm going to have 
Samantha declared dead." 

  She looked up at him in surprise. "Do you think your mother will let 
you do that?" she asked.

  "I'm not asking for permission," Mulder said tightly. "If what the 
Kurts say is true, then both my parents have lied to me, not just my 
father."

  "Mulder," Scully said, "you don't know if that's true. You don't know 
what your mother knows."

  "And she will never tell me," Mulder said darkly. "I've been thinking 
about my parent's arguments, the way they escalated in the months 
before Samantha was taken," he paused. "I think about her taking me to 
the doctor's office, and how on edge she always was. That was when she 
started taking pills. She's always known a lot more than she's ever 
been willing to tell me. They were both a part of this."

  Scully wrapped her arm around him, thinking. She couldn't imagine 
what kind of forces would have compelled Mulder's mother to capitulate 
to the Consortium, how she could have stood over Mulder every day for 
months, watching while he took his 'iron pill'. She and her mother had 
always had markedly different opinions on a number of things, but she 
had never once questioned the fact that her mother would never do 
anything to physically harm her. She knew, deep in her bones, that her 
mother would do exactly the opposite, that she would do anything to 
ensure her children would not be harmed. As Scully herself knew that 
she would do anything for Hannah. "I'll never understand these people, 
Mulder," she said, her voice was harsh with sorrow. 

  "My parents?" Mulder asked.

  "All of them," she said. "Kurt's parents and grandparents, Spender. 
Strughold. How they could choose between their children, deciding which 
one would die so the others could live? What kind of a person can make 
that choice?"

  "Sophie's Choice," Mulder said.  

  "And she lost both her children," Scully said. She couldn't help but 
think of the children she'd never known, Hannah's sisters, Emily's 
clones, the nameless girls from the F and G series, all taken from her, 
and sacrificed on the altar of a vast and failed medical experiment.   

  Mulder wrapped both of his arms around her. "That will not happen to 
us, Scully. We're going to keep Hannah safe."

  She closed her eyes and said a prayer that he was right. 

  When she spoke again, after silence had claimed the room except for 
Hannah's snuffles, he startled at her voice. "Are you sure that Senator 
Matheson will help us, Mulder?"

  She could feel him nodding above her. 

  "Lindsay will make sure of it," he answered her. "Frohike's setting 
up a clean call tomorrow so that I can let her know what's going on. 
She'll help us, Scully." He had begun playing with the rings on her 
left hand as he spoke. He bent and kissed her forehead, and then lifted 
her chin so he could see her. "You never asked me about your rings," he 
said.

  "I just assumed they were Lindsay's," she said, wondering at the 
expression on his face.

  "No, Scully," he said. "They're your rings."

  "My rings?" she echoed.

  "Yes," he said quietly. "When you were sick …" she sucked in a 
breath, "I bought them then. I thought that if I had them, they would 
be a hedge against a future without you."

  She stared at him, thinking how his friend Dean's ring had provided 
no such protection. 

  He shrugged, "I know it was stupid, but I bought them anyway."

  A thought occurred to her, "Were these what you came back to DC to 
get?"

  He nodded. "When I found Hannah, I knew that she was yours. I thought 
that I could prove to you that I was committed to this, to you." He 
shook his head, ruefully "but then when you got to us, nothing went 
like I had pictured it. It just … didn't." 

  She held her hand up and stared at her rings. 

  "I should have given them to you a different way," he whispered. "I 
should have asked you when you got better."

  She propped herself up on his chest and looked down at him. "I 
thought you asked me yesterday," she said softly. 

  He shook his head at her. "There should have been candles," he said. 
"A nice dinner, first." She smiled at his wistful sentiments. "And what 
are we going to tell Hannah when she asks about how I asked you?"

  She smiled at him, then took her rings off and handed them back to 
him. "Ask me now," she said.

  "Let me just get up –" 

  She shook her head, pressing him back against the bed. "No," she 
said. 

  He looked up at her, his mouth twitching to hold back a smile. 

  "What?" she asked.

  "It's just interesting that you're on top for this conversation," he 
said. 

  "Just think of it as a post-modern twist on being down on one knee, 
Mulder," she said, smiling down at him. "Quit stalling."

  "I think I'm nervous," he confessed. "Is that stupid? Because you 
already said yes, didn't you, Scully?" His eyes were searching hers, 
his fingers rubbing the empty space where her rings had resided for the 
past few days. "Scully?"

  She smiled enigmatically. 

  Mulder closed his eyes and blew out a breath. When he opened them, he 
looked her right in the eye. "Dana Katherine Scully," he said, "I love 
you more than anything else in this world. Please say that you'll marry 
me and be my family." He lifted her hand and kissed her ring finger. 

  She smiled down at him. "Yes," she said succinctly.

  "Yes," he said, but there was a question in his tone.

  "Yes," she said. 

  "That's all I get?" he complained.

  She rolled her eyes. "You know that I love you, Mulder. You've been 
my family for a long time now. I'll be proud to stand up in front of 
the whole world and declare that you and I and Hannah are a family." 
She leant forward gingerly, careful not to strain her abdomen and 
Mulder leant up to meet her kiss. "Yes," she whispered against his 
mouth. 

  When she pulled back, Mulder was smiling at her through the tears in 
his eyes. He kissed her rings, one by one. "I knew they were lucky," he 
said triumphantly. 

  She laughed at him, then winced at the twinge in her belly. 

  Mulder shifted in the bed so that she could lay on her side. He 
picked up her ring finger, and then looked at her before he began to 
slide the wedding band onto her finger. 

  "Oh," she said, "Mulder, you need to hold onto that one for the 
wedding."

  "Right," he muttered. He jammed the ring onto his pinkie finger after 
staring at it for a second. "It looks better on you," he said 
critically. He slid the engagement ring onto her finger and looked at 
it for a few seconds, before he bent his head and kissed her hand 
again. "Now, we're official," he said, holding onto her hand.

  "Kiss me, Mulder," she said and he smiled before he applied himself 
to the task thoroughly, kissing her like she was everything in the 
world that he'd ever wanted. When they broke apart regretfully, 
recognizing their fundamental lack of privacy in their current 
circumstances, she was breathless and flushed and Mulder was no better. 
"Rain check," she said, fighting to control her respiration. 

  "Oh, yeah," Mulder said, rolling away from her. 

  They lay there side by side, chests heaving, staring at each other. 

 "Scully," Mulder said conversationally. "Where'd you put that ice 
pack?"

  She laughed and rolled onto her side, away from him. "G'night, 
Mulder," she said.

  "It could be better," he muttered, then curled up behind her, 
tenderly kissing her neck once more. "Good night, Scully."

~*~ 

May 9, 1999

  In the end, it was four weeks from the day that Mulder ditched her to 
when they finally returned to the Hoover Building.

  Their time away hadn't just been about refining their plans, however. 
An additional complication had manifested itself in the form of the 
nanites that Assistant Director Skinner bore in his bloodstream. Ten 
days after their disappearance, Skinner suffered another, more brazen 
attack and was hospitalized and in critical condition for three days. 
When the Gunmen were able to arrange for one of their allies to get to 
him, he was adamant that he be left alone and not be told any 
information regarding Mulder and Scully's whereabouts. The nurse 
supervisor who'd made contact with Skinner had had a sister who died of 
nasopharyngeal cancer after frequent disappearances in their youth. She 
arranged for a blood sample of Skinner's to be diverted into the 
Gunmen's hands for further study. She also reported that during one of 
his worst attacks that the Assistant Director had been muttering 
something that sounded like a Slavic swear, a word that ended in 
'check'. This information was dutifully reported to Mulder and Scully, 
and redoubled Mulder's determination to get Krycek's name and face on 
the Ten Most Wanted.

  When Skinner's attack had occurred, he'd been on his way to a 
rendezvous with Mulder and Scully. As far as the FBI knew, he had been 
en route to California for a face-to-face progress report. In reality, 
he would have been meeting Mulder at the airport in Chicago to hand 
over a small case full of pediatric vaccines, procured by the Gunmen, 
before continuing on to California for his 'meeting'. This time, 
however, his seizure in the main lobby of the Hoover was witnessed by a 
number of Agents and other Bureau personnel. Skinner had always had a 
reputation as a tough but fair Assistant Director. He worked hard, and 
he expected excellence from his teams, but he was perceived as a 
straight shooter and a boss whose ambition did not outweigh his talent. 
The Agents who had seen him fall, his veins bulging and skin ominously 
and unusually darkened, knew that the official line that Skinner had 
had an angina attack didn't add up. 

  The fact that he was on his way to meet the equally absent and always 
mysterious Agents Mulder and Scully only added fuel to the fire; a 
murmuring in the building about biological attacks and dirty tricks 
began, and no matter how the official statement to the rank and file 
was phrased to counter such impressions, the rumors did not stop. Of 
course, it didn't help matters that such communications were coming 
through Assistant Director Kersh, who had never commanded the level of 
respect that Skinner had among the rank and file. When Skinner had been 
in charge of the X-Files, it was noted, Mulder and Scully had taken 
their share of lumps. In the brief period when Kersh had been in 
charge, however, both of the newly-assigned Agents had gone missing in 
a matter of months. The puddle of Agent Spender's blood had not been 
forgotten. In a building full of trained, elite hunters, hard questions 
began to be asked, if only covertly. 

  Of course, Scully had her own questions. Mostly, they were about the 
accuracy of Frohike's sources within the Hoover Building, although she 
had to allow that she'd witnessed Agents being far from discreet. Their 
time in the bullpen had been highly informative in that regard – she'd 
been shocked to see that Agents would routinely leave sensitive 
information in full view on their desks during their breaks or even 
overnight. They thought nothing of having candid discussions about 
cases, not to mention office gossip, in the full hearing of anyone who 
happened to be in the area, Agents or not. The news of the rumors might 
have been exaggerated, but there was probably a kernel of truth in it. 
At the very least, she knew that Kersh was generally loathed by the 
Agents in the bullpen, who considered him more loyal to those in power, 
and fueled by his own ambition to rise to their level, than to the 
ethos that was supposed to rule the Bureau. 

  With Skinner incapacitated, Frohike had brought the vaccines himself 
when he'd arrived for a brief visit the day after the aborted meeting. 
Scully had her suspicions that Frohike had come to check up on her, 
which she kept to herself. Frohike had still seemed angry with Mulder 
when he first arrived, but had changed his behavior abruptly when he 
saw the effect his attitude was having on Hannah. Hannah's attachment 
to Mulder was both sincere and obvious, and Mulder never made any 
effort to discourage that affection, and every effort to encourage it 
between Hannah and Scully. Hannah's confusion and upset at Frohike's 
manner, in concert with Mulder's tender solicitude toward both Hannah 
and herself, had gone a long way toward breaking the tension between 
the two long-time comrades-in-arms. 

  In truth, it was probably Hannah herself who changed Frohike's 
opinion. It had taken Hannah less than 48 hours to make a conquest of 
her 'Uncle Fro'. Scully knew that she was biased, but Hannah was a 
charming and loving child – the neglect in her early life almost 
ensured that she would be responsive to those who showed her affection. 
Happily, she'd also proven to have her own powers of discernment about 
people. Scully was constantly amazed at Hannah's ability to distinguish 
individuals amongst the clones that surrounded them at Prometheus. With 
the addition of Frohike to the mix, Hannah's happiness at making a new 
friend was contagious, and Frohike was helpless to resist. 

  The afternoon he left them to return to DC, she'd found Frohike in 
the warehouse playing hopscotch with Hannah, on a court that Mulder had 
painted for Hannah on the floor. Mulder was sitting at a nearby desk in 
front of her laptop, on the phone with his feet up, a bemused and 
slightly smug expression on his face. Before he left, Frohike had 
solemnly promised her that the Gunmen would do whatever was necessary 
to ensure that Hannah was safe. Scully had kissed Frohike on the cheek 
after he said it, touched at the value of his promise, and the both of 
them got a little misty-eyed. Frohike had broken away with a gruff, "I 
got to get on the road," accepted a hug from Hannah, and flinched away 
from Mulder, who had puckered up for his own kiss goodbye. He walked 
out the door of Prometheus disparaging Mulder's ancestry under his 
breath. 

  Frohike's visit had also brought about an unforeseen alliance. He was 
fascinated with the clones in general, but had actually bonded with a 
number of them over discussing Skinner's nanite problem. Several of the 
Kurts were intrigued by the possible implications of the nanite 
technology, and much data had changed hands between the Gunmen's lair 
in Takoma Park and the Prometheus installations in Minnesota and 
elsewhere, as they posited methodologies for freeing Skinner. The 
Crawfords had a basic knowledge of the technology that had gone into 
the creation of the nanites, and their work in creating the dampening 
field around their own facilities had led to long discussions about 
high-altitude satellites, and radio waves and their roles in the 
implants, among other topics. A germ of an idea to aid Skinner began to 
take shape: until the nanites could be safely removed, a dampening 
device would be created to ensure that he would be free of the 
predation of whoever had implanted them in the first place. It was a 
stop-gap measure that showed great promise, although Frohike also 
seemed to be onboard with Mulder's idea of finding Krycek and beating 
the answers out of him, unfeasible as that seemed to be. 

  The alliance between the clones and the elder Gunmen found common 
ground elsewhere. Since Mulder had first met the Crawfords in 
Allentown, they had eschewed any more public contact with MUFON or its 
membership out of fear of exposure. In so doing, however, they had also 
cut themselves off from the abductee community, losing both access to 
information and a pool of vaccinated humans. The Gunmen's ties within 
the abductee community however, gave them access to both with the 
promise of anonymity so that they could continue their work on the 
creation of a viable vaccine. It was ironic, but the failure of the 
alien/human hybridization program had proven what Mulder's father had 
argued all along: the only way that the human species would survive 
colonization was for immunity to be established via a working vaccine, 
or perhaps with gene therapy, if some of the clones' new avenues of 
research proved fruitful. Still, Scully could not help but mourn the 
fact that the theory had been proven only after the deaths of hundreds 
of abductees, and the sacrifice of an unknown number of children 
created to suffer unspeakable experimentation. 

  The Crawfords' new working relationship with the Gunmen meant that 
when Mulder, Scully and Hannah finally left the Prometheus warehouse 
behind that first full week of April, their car was the first in a 
loose southerly bound caravan, all taking different routes. Prometheus 
had set up operations in an office park near the Gunmen in Takoma Park, 
and Scully suspected Mulder had used some of his inheritance to ensure 
that their research went forward. 

  The day that they left the office park that had been their home for 
three weeks was clear and bright, and Scully felt a bit like 
Persephone, arising from the wintery gloom of the windowless warehouse 
into the spring. Of course, it had been hard to reconcile the vistas 
that first greeted them with the idea of spring. The sun shone 
brilliantly on the fields of white snow on the by-ways that led them to 
the highway. Scully had seen a robin on a split rail fence near one of 
the larger snowfields and excitedly pointed out the harbinger of spring 
to Hannah, while Mulder smiled at them both. Everywhere they drove, the 
snow was melting, even the hard mounds of salt-rimed and blackened snow 
that was piled along each roadside and corner. 

  Hannah hadn't truly understood her mother's enthusiasm at the sight 
of the robin – her excitement stemmed from the fact that they were 
going somewhere else – she'd long since grown bored with the confining 
environment of the warehouse. She'd only been out in the real world for 
a tiny fraction of her life, but she was her grandfather's daughter, 
and couldn't resist the lure of exploration. Scully couldn't wait to 
take her out on the sea in the summer – she had visions of herself 
teaching her daughter to sail, to always reach for the horizon.

  When they'd finally entered the DC limits, after two days of travel 
and innumerable games of I Spy, they'd gone directly to the Gunmen's to 
pick up Mulder's car, as well as appropriate work attire for them both. 
This also gave Langly and Byers an opportunity to meet Hannah. Langly 
deemed Hannah 'cool', but in Byers' wistfully soft smile as he spoke 
with Hannah, Scully saw a longing that didn't surprise her. She'd often 
wondered where the woman was that had given John Byers her ring to 
wear. She very much doubted that he had a family that he'd left behind, 
but it was clear that at some point, he'd had a hope of one. She knew 
that she and Mulder had received a miracle in the form of their 
daughter's life, and felt sorrow that her gentlemanly friend had so 
little hope of receiving a similar boon. 

  They'd left the Gunmen and driven into the District just after lunch 
on a Friday. As they'd moved further and further south, the snow pack 
had receded and they'd been rewarded with the sight of nature softly 
retaking the barren earth, decorating it with greenery and delicate 
flowers. Scully had harbored a secret hope that their return would be 
in time to at least see some of the celebration of sakura, the 
Cherry Blossom season in the District. Her dream had been realized when 
she cajoled Mulder into driving by the basin to find the trees just 
past their bloom but still glorious. Hannah had been wide-eyed at the 
sight, and they'd slowly driven along with the windows rolled down, 
letting the soft spring breezes awash with the scent of the flowers  
envelope them. Despite being nervous about being out in public with 
Hannah without a battalion of armed guards, Mulder couldn't resist 
Hannah's desire to see the blossoms up close. The image of Hannah, 
dancing in delight around her father while he broke off a flower for 
her as the cherry blossom petals rained down around them, was one that 
she would always treasure. 

  Their time under the blossoms had been sadly abbreviated as they had 
appointments to keep at the Hoover Building. They had a private meeting 
scheduled with her mother before the press conference. Scully knew that 
her absence during Easter, and her silence during most of the previous 
month, meant that her mother would be quietly frantic with worry. She 
also knew that her mother would forgive her when she understood all 
that had occurred. Hannah's safety was paramount, and Scully couldn't 
trust that communication between her and her mother wouldn't be 
compromised, jeopardizing it. In addition, they'd needed every 
available hour of the day to not only put Mulder's plan into effect, 
but also to ensure that Hannah had some basic inoculations in her 
system before she was once more exposed to the wider world. Standard 
pediatric guidelines for uninoculated children of Hannah's age 
recommended giving her a vast number of shots at the same time, but 
Scully had been unwilling to do that, and Mulder had agreed with her 
decision. They'd been cautious, and so far Hannah had not had an 
adverse reaction to any of the shots that she'd had, other than a 
slight fever. 

  Still, she could not help but regret the expression of pain and shock 
on her mother's face when she had seen Hannah for the first time. Their 
arrival on the floor where Skinner's office was located after such a 
long absence and with a child caused a buzz of activity. Of course, the 
presence of Senator Matheson in Skinner's office, and the rumors about 
the impending press conference, had caused enough discussion that her 
mother heard their names and opened the door to the conference room 
where she'd been waiting. She had immediately recognized Hannah for who 
she truly was, and her surprised expression of recognition had given 
credence to the stories that began circulating the building once the 
press conference was underway.

  Once past her initial shock, however, Margaret Scully had accepted 
her new granddaughter right away. As Scully watched the two of them 
interacting now, she found it hard to remember the frank and angry 
conversations that she and her mother had had about her intransigence 
over clarifying her relationship with Hannah's father through the 
years. Her repeated mantra of "It's complicated, Mom," had been met 
with exasperation that had begun to fade as this day had gotten closer. 
She knew that her mother would never understand her true relationship 
with Mulder, and that she could never explain how exactly Hannah had 
come to be, but was pleased that her mother had finally begun to accept 
the answers that she'd been given. Just yesterday, Scully had overheard 
her mother sharply telling her brother Bill that it was entirely 
appropriate that there were things that Dana only shared with Mulder, 
just as there were things that he only shared with his own wife, and 
that he should mind his own business.

  She smiled at the memory, and checked her lipstick one last time in 
the mirror. 

  "You look beautiful," Hannah said to her worshipfully, and Scully 
smiled at her daughter. Hannah was dressed in a white dress that had a 
pale blue overlay, complementing the blue-toned white of Scully's own 
dress. In the month since they'd been back, Hannah's curls had been 
tamed with a more flattering haircut, and were now crowned with a 
circlet fashioned from the same flowers that Scully would carry. 

  "So do you, pumpkin," Scully answered. "How's Daddy look?"

  "He's beautiful, too," Hannah said seriously.   

  "Oh, Hannah!" Margaret Scully exclaimed, pausing from where she'd 
been fussing with the back of Scully's hair to hide a smile, as her 
daughter laughed aloud. "Men aren't really beautiful," she explained, 
"but your dad does look very handsome." 

  Hannah looked dubious at this pronouncement. "I don't know about 
handsome," she said skeptically, "my Daddy is beautiful."

  "I agree," Scully answered, putting an end to her mother's protests. 
"Are we ready to go?" she asked her mother, looking at her in the 
mirror. At her mother's teary nod, Scully adjusted one of her mother's 
pearl and diamond earrings so that it sat correctly on her ear. Then 
she straightened the bow on the basket of flower petals before she 
handed it to Hannah.

  "Now, that's a pretty picture," Frohike said from the doorway. 

  Scully smiled. She'd seen Frohike push the door open, but her mother 
started, not having had heard him. 

  "Hannah, just move a little bit closer to your mom," Frohike said, 
"And Mrs. Scully, please take one step forward." They did as he 
suggested, and then smiled at his urging. Scully's smile was a little 
larger than the others, due to her own happiness as much as to her 
amusement over the situation. Frohike certainly was taking his role as 
wedding photographer quite seriously. 

  "Agent Scully," Byers said from the doorway, "we were just coming to 
tell you that we're all ready for you downstairs."

  "Thank you," she said to Byers. Both he and Frohike were dressed in 
suits that complemented Mulder's own – even Langly had consented to 
wear a suit for this one occasion. "We'll be right down." 

  "Thanks again for letting us commandeer Mother's Day, Mom," Scully 
said as she stood up, carefully smoothing her dress. She bent to 
straighten out Hannah's bow, which had gotten crushed when she'd 
pressed up against her mother to watch her wedding preparations.

  "Don't thank me, Dana," her mother answered, "this day is as 
important to you now as it is to me." She fussed a bit more with 
Scully's hair, and Scully could see her biting her tongue. Scully knew 
that her mother would have preferred it if she'd consented to wear a 
veil, but she wasn't interested in wearing that, or a tiara, or even a 
crown of flowers like Hannah's. Aside from the fact that such an item 
wouldn't complement the sophisticated sleeveless sheath that she was 
wearing, it simply wasn't her. She was going to walk down the aisle to 
Mulder exactly as she was, albeit wearing a beautiful dress and 
carrying a beautiful bouquet of flowers, with Hannah and her mother as 
her attendants. Her brother Charles, home from wherever it was his 
latest secret assignment had taken him, was her official witness. He 
took great pride in referring to himself as the Maid of Honor, although 
he'd laughed aloud at Langly's calling him the 'Dude of Honor'. 

  Charles had offered to walk down the aisle with her mother and Hannah 
as an attendant to the bride should, but there was only so far she was 
willing to stretch convention. Instead, Charles would simply join her 
and Mulder at the altar from his seat, along with Lindsay Matheson, who 
was serving as Mulder's Best Man. She knew that it was just this kind 
of break from tradition that had her older brother Bill seething, but 
mostly he was angry that she'd not even entertained the notion of him 
walking her down the aisle to 'give her away' for more than ten seconds 
before she'd firmly rebuffed him. In truth, that was more consideration 
than the idea deserved: she and Mulder were committing themselves to 
each other, and no one else was involved in that process. She would 
give herself, binding her life to her partner, as he was giving himself 
to her.

  She came out of the bedroom at the top of the stairs of their new 
house in Alexandria, ignoring the Agent with the earpiece who reported 
her movement to their colleagues downstairs and outside. She was 
slightly exasperated with the amount of security that they had been 
talked into accepting for what she wanted to be a private event, but 
there was not much she could do beyond laying down certain ground rules 
and trying to be gracious in her acceptance. Skinner had been adamant 
about the security plan, and although she knew that he was acting out 
of real concern for her and for Hannah, she also suspected that he was 
reacting to all that had happened to him in the past few months. Even 
with the dampening device that the clones and the Gunmen had made for 
him clipped to his belt, she knew that Skinner would never be easy 
until he was rid of the nanites. For that, she could not blame him – 
the feeling of relief she had at the absence of her implant had not 
waned in the weeks since it had been removed. 

  Besides, Skinner wasn't the only one who wanted the tight security on 
their family. The press conference with Senator Matheson and Director 
Freeh about her own kidnapping and Hannah's birth and long confinement 
away from them had provoked a staunch groundswell of support within the 
ranks of their coworkers. It was true that law enforcement officials 
tended to react negatively whenever one of their own was hurt or 
killed, but this went beyond that. The idea that she had been 
kidnapped, violated, and had her children kidnapped had been met with 
anger. Nor had the intimation that Emily's illness and subsequent death 
was somehow related to her kidnapping gone unnoticed. There had been a 
list of volunteers for their security detail, from a number of branches 
of federal law enforcement, before the press conference had finished 
airing. 

  Likewise, where there had been plenty of Agents who had disparaged 
Mulder in the past, there was a new and unexpected sympathy, and not 
just for him as a bereaved father to the twin that had been found, only 
to be lost. The idea of Samantha Mulder, the sister who had been 
kidnapped and never returned, suddenly became real to many of their 
colleagues. That Mulder had had a sister who was kidnapped was unusual 
enough, but to have his partner kidnapped, and their children stolen 
from them and hidden by unknown conspirators? It was unthinkable. While 
both Mulder and Scully were officially on parental leave, they had been 
in the building on enough occasions in the past month that Hannah's 
charm had worked its usual magic, while the idea of her dead twin 
slowly but surely began to inflame their colleagues. Perhaps, the 
thinking went, there always had been something to the wild theories 
that Mulder had spouted.

  It had been extremely strange to hear her history being re-written, 
but she was powerless to stop it. Where once their colleagues had been 
determined to disparage, now it seemed they were equally determined to 
praise. After all, Mulder had been one of the best profilers in the 
history of the Bureau, and Scully was no investigative slouch. The 
painstaking pathological work that she had done for many of her 
colleagues was suddenly remembered, and Scully found herself in the odd 
position of being thanked for having done her job, on cases that had 
sometimes been closed years before. On one of her solo trips to the 
Hoover, Scully had overheard Mulder's loudest detractor in the bullpen 
opining that the real reason Mulder hadn't pulled his weight on 
background checks was because he'd been desperately, actively searching 
for Hannah to keep her from her sister's fate. Furthermore, he believed 
that Mulder and Scully's reassignment had been designed to keep them 
from discovering the truth about Hannah, and that Diana Fowley had more 
than likely been in on it from the beginning. The whispering that had 
begun with Skinner's collapse in the lobby got ever louder, and 
speculation on what part Assistant Director Kersh had played in their 
colleagues' suffering became a frequent topic of discussion. Agent 
Spender, the rumors said, must have discovered something that had led 
to his ominous disappearance.

  Mulder had had his own firsthand experience with the bullpen's 
newfound solidarity with them when he'd stopped in to file paperwork 
declaring their new insurance status as a family. He'd forgotten one 
form, and commandeered an empty desk to fill it out while Hannah had 
chatted with a few of the nearby Agents. With Mulder seemingly 
distracted, their colleagues had formed a loose protective phalanx 
around their child. When Mulder had heard a meaningful quiet come over 
the bullpen, he'd told Scully in a still amazed tone, he'd been 
astonished to note that there were agents covering all of the access 
points to the area, most of them with their hands on the butt of their 
guns. The hush heralded the arrival of Assistant Director Kersh, who 
came sweeping into the bullpen seemingly ignorant of the high level of 
animosity directed toward him by the rank and file. He came over to 
Mulder and Hannah with more than his usual false bonhomie, speaking 
loudly and extending a hand to Hannah, who immediately drew away from 
him and moved back toward her father. One of the larger bullpen Agents 
stepped between Hannah and the AD saying, "Miss Mulder's been told not 
to allow strangers to approach her," in a firm tone. 

  Kersh's blustering remark that Hannah was certainly more safe here at 
the Hoover Building than she was in her own home was met with an 
ominous and chilly silence. It also did nothing to move the Agent 
blocking the way. Only when Hannah was situated in his arms, and after 
Mulder had asked, did Agent Bailey begrudgingly stand aside. Mulder was 
further surprised to find that he was flanked by several Agents, all of 
them radiating incredible levels of hostility toward Kersh. Hannah, 
probably reacting to the not-so-subtle posturing of the 'nice men at 
Mommy and Daddy's office', had said 'hello' to Kersh, and then hidden 
her face in Mulder's neck for the rest of the conversation. Hannah's 
reticence toward Kersh only served to fuel the rumors about his 
potential involvement. 

  Shortly after that incident, Skinner had informed them that he'd been 
approached by a Senior Agent who wanted to know why there was no Task 
Force investigating the crimes against Mulder and Scully. The SA had 
insinuated that he'd heard that the lack of a Task Force could be laid 
at Kersh's feet, and he questioned whether Kersh should have a role in 
the investigation, considering his well-known antipathy to both the 
Agents involved. He also told Skinner that there was a rumor going 
around that Kersh was trying to cut the security force watching Mulder, 
Scully and Hannah, and warned him that if it proved true, that he was 
not alone in being prepared to expose it, and Kersh, to the tender 
mercies of the press. Skinner's mordant wit and professional mien 
defied the description of gleeful, but that had been the impression 
Scully had been left with as he detailed the sharp turn Kersh's fortune 
had taken. For his part, Kersh was doing all he could to counter his 
negative image with the brass, but it had been irrevocably tainted –
first, by his inability to find Agent Spender or to account for the 
whereabouts of Agent Fowley, and now by the rumors questioning his 
possible involvement in the crimes perpetuated against them. Skinner 
knew very well that a man suspected of culpability in a case with such 
a magnitude of harm would never rise to a leadership position beyond 
the one he now occupied. For all intents and purposes, Assistant 
Director Alvin D. Kersh's career at the FBI was over. Scully had to 
agree with their AD about one point – even if it hadn't been their 
original intention, it couldn't have happened to a nicer guy. 

  Their notoriety didn't just extend to the FBI. The sensational nature 
of the crimes against them had guaranteed that there was extensive 
media coverage of the press conference and many subsequent interview 
requests. Assistant Director Jana Cassidy had tried to get them to 
accede to a number of these, arguing that both she and Mulder, whom she 
characterized as photogenic, would be good for the FBI's recruitment 
efforts. Considering everything that they'd been through, and the 
reasons that they'd become notorious, Scully wasn't sure AD Cassidy's 
reasoning was sound, but kept her opinion to herself, promising only to 
discuss it with Mulder. In the end, she and Mulder had kept their 
exposure minimal, consenting only to an appearance on America's Most 
Wanted with John Walsh, a man who understood the loss of a child 
and was more than happy to broadcast the faces and names of those they 
sought to bring to justice. 

  They'd moved into their new house the day after the broadcast had 
aired and the Chief of Police for Alexandria had been one of their 
first visitors. He came to welcome them to the neighborhood and to 
assure them that the Alexandria PD would be paying particular attention 
to the Scully-Mulder household. As a housewarming gift, he'd brought a 
map enumerating all the law enforcement officials in their immediate 
vicinity, including contact numbers. They'd accepted his information 
graciously, although they were already aware of most of it – the 
numbers of law enforcement officers in the general vicinity had been 
one of the deciding factors in their buying a home in this particular 
neighborhood. 

  The large scale publicity had also allowed them to get a waiver from 
the Archdiocese to hold their wedding at home, in a location more 
private than a church. Father McCue was waiting for them under the 
flower-bedecked tent that stretched from the back deck to the back 
fence in an attempt to keep the photographers at bay. One of the more 
unsettling outcomes of John Walsh's publicizing Hannah's kidnapping and 
recovery on America's Most Wanted had been the fact that Mulder 
and Scully had become prime fodder for America's insatiable appetite 
for celebrated crime stories. In fact, their security team was mostly 
occupied with keeping tabloid reporters away from them. There were only 
so many concessions they were willing to make to keep Hannah safe, 
however, and loss of privacy on their wedding day wasn't one of them. 

  She stood near the back door of their kitchen, looking out across 
their deck to where Mulder stood, at the end of the aisle directly 
opposite her, talking to one of the Agents on security detail. From the 
look of him, not to mention the hand gesturing, he was talking about 
sports. Her eyes skimmed over his lean form and surveyed the backyard 
with an assessing eye. The flowers really had come out well, if she did 
think so herself, and Mulder's idea for laying out the backyard to 
accommodate the wedding had turned out to be quite striking. When she'd 
rejected the idea of walking down the aisle to meet him while he'd 
waited for her, Mulder had drawn up his notion of a wedding floor plan, 
announcing "X marks the spot!" 

  Father McCue stood in the center of the X awaiting them. Mulder and 
she would meet in the middle, and be joined by Lindsay and Charles 
coming in from either side of the X. They would marry, after receiving 
a brief blessing. Although Mulder had been very congenial about the 
whole Catholic aspect of the ceremony, he would not agree to the 
inclusion of a Mass, much to her mother's chagrin. Secretly, she was 
glad of his recalcitrance, because it had allowed her more latitude in 
the planning. She had wanted this day to be intimate and about them, 
and despite the number of Agents that were inside and outside the house 
to provide security, it was. It was a gloriously beautiful afternoon, 
with blue skies, white clouds and abundant sunshine. They had been 
provident in choosing this weekend, as it had turned out to be one of 
the rare spring weekends where the weather was warm and pleasant, with 
no hint of the oppressive DC summer to come. 

  The number of guests was small, and slanted toward the Scully side of 
their soon-to-be merged family, not that Mulder seemed to mind. He had 
finally consented to invite his mother, but only after much debate. 
Mulder loved his mother, despite her many faults, and the fact that he 
was tremendously angry with her. Still the image of Mrs. Mulder 
sitting, dignified and subdued, next to Senator Matheson and his wife, 
was a sad one. Lindsay and her daughter were seated in the row behind 
them, and Scully was pleased to note that Lindsay and her daughter 
seemed to be engaged in a friendly conversation with John Byers, as 
Langly fidgeted next to them, uncomfortable in his suit. If anyone 
could understand heartbreak and loss, it was Lindsay Matheson, whom 
she'd liked the instant she met her. Perhaps she and John might hit it 
off – but that was for another day. Her thoughts drifted as she caught 
sight of Frohike prowling the tent, taking candids of the guests. She 
would have liked to have the Kurt with whom she'd spent the most time 
in Minnesota present for the wedding, but he'd demurred the invitation, 
and she'd understood. Skinner was conducting one last sweep of the 
Agents in the backyard before he went to take his seat. 

  On her side of the tent, her brother Bill looked as miserable as her 
old friend Ellen looked happy. Charles caught her eye from across the 
distance and smiled. They spoke so rarely, and saw each other even less 
often, but the bond of understanding that existed between them was as 
strong as ever. Charlie knew what she had here, and she was more 
grateful for his quiet support than she could express. She smiled at 
him instead, radiating all of the happiness that she felt at seeing the 
jumble of family, friends and colleagues who'd been a part of their 
lives all together to celebrate this day with Mulder and her. 

  Across the backyard, Mulder turned away from the conversation he'd 
been having and toward her. His heartfelt smile at seeing her clearly 
expressed his appreciation, but just in case she was in doubt of his 
sentiments, he pressed his hand over his heart and made a subtle motion 
like he might swoon at the sight of her. She shook her head at him, but 
unlike the old days, made no move to check her smile. The diamonds in 
the wedding ring that Mulder would soon give her sparkled in the 
filtered light as he gestured. He'd taken her ring off to have it 
cleaned, but other than that, had worn it on his little finger while it 
awaited the transfer to her hand. She pressed her finger against her 
left thumb, running it over the ring that she'd bought for him. The 
band was both white and yellow gold, forged together in an unbreaking 
circle. It reminded her of the two of them, with their differing 
temperaments. She'd seen it and immediately known that it was the one 
for Mulder, and he'd agreed. 

  Behind her, the Agent murmured that 'all systems were go' and she 
rolled her eyes, but the smile never left her face. The strains of "The 
Wedding March" began and her mother turned to look at her one last time 
before she stepped across the deck and began her trip down the aisle. 

  "Be happy, Dana," her mother said to her, kissing her cheek. 

  Her smile grew even wider. "I am, Mom," she assured her. "I am."

  Hannah was nervous after her grandmother left her to walk down the 
aisle, but Scully was calm, bending down to kiss her after they walked 
down the deck stairs together. "Are you all ready?" she asked Hannah. 
"All you have to do is walk down the aisle to Grandma, but if you want 
to throw some flower petals on your way, that would be very nice."

  "OK," Hannah said solemnly, her eyes wide. "I can do it."

  "I know you can, pumpkin," Scully said. "3, 2, 1 … off you go."

  She stood at the end of her aisle and watched their daughter walking, 
intently focused on strewing her petals. When she got to the center of 
the X, she bypassed her grandmother in favor of walking toward her 
father, strewing petals in his path before she hurried back to her 
grandmother, swinging her empty basket. 

  She could hear Mulder's soft laugh from clear across the tent, above 
the murmur of the crowd chuckling at Hannah. She looked away from their 
daughter to find him regarding her with a wry but apologetic smile on 
his face.

 She shrugged her shoulders as if to say, "Why not?" and Mulder laughed 
again.

  They stood there smiling at each other one minute longer, Mulder as 
beautiful as Hannah'd said he was in his dark green suit. As their 
gazes caught and held, she knew that he was thinking about the miracle 
of this moment, as was she. She took a deep breath in and savored it, 
and saw him doing the same. The small crowd stilled, while the music 
wound around them. 

  Suddenly, Hannah's voice rose above it in a loud whisper. "Aren't we 
starting now?" 

  Scully could hear her mother shushing Hannah as she fought the bubble 
of happiness that threatened to send her into gales of laughter. She 
could see Mulder's eyes twinkling with restrained mirth at her from 
across the tent. 

  He nodded at her, and as one, they both took one step toward each 
other and then another, knowing that they would meet in the middle, 
forever. 

~*~

The End

End Notes:

Well. Nearly nine years after I had the original idea, and almost 
65,000 words later, A Winter's Tale is finished. I'm elated, and 
exhausted. This has been a labor of love, but there were times when it 
was really hard to get through as much as a paragraph of new text. In a 
story of this length and scope, that's a lot of days sitting staring at 
the ticking cursor as it taunted me. 

Thanks to JigZone, Super Mah Jong and Santa Balls 2 for helping me 
"think" my way through the rough passages. Also, thanks to Portishead, 
John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman, Placebo, Beth Orton, Joe Jackson, 
Mighty Mouse and the Vince Guaraldi Trio for providing the soundtrack 
for my writing.  

Thanks as always to my sister Suzanne, who is patient when I am not, 
and who challenges me to be a better writer. 

As always, you can direct your comments to Anjou@rocketmail.com, but I 
will state for the record that I have no plans for a sequel, at least 
at this moment. 

Give me another nine years, though – who knows what will happen!

You can find the rest of my stories at No Others … Love Stories for 
Mulder & Scully at http://the-cave-online.com/anjou/index.html, a site 
maintained by the generous dtg. Newer stories, outtakes and fragments 
are also available at my fiction journal 
http://anjoufic.livejournal.com/.

Thanks for reading.