Title: Tellus Mater
(Sequel to Pater Familias)

Author: OneMillionAndNine

Feedback: kokotheuberchimp@hotmail.com

http://www.geocities.com/onemillionandnine/

Rating: Old married NC17, new clumsy NC17, all kinds of 
NC17

Category: AU, MSR, L/O, Sequel, Angst 
(plus bonus Violence, Deflowering, Asthma, Vomit, 
Questionable Parenting, Confusion, Misunderstandings, 
Mistakes, Frohike Singing, Waffles, Disenchantment, Death 
and, you know, the stuff of life)

Archive: if you want to- I mean - there's no accounting for 
taste

Disclaimer: the characters in the story that follows were 
invented by Chris Carter, who never meant them to be used 
this way. Even Thea Fidelis is his but, he might not want 
any them back now, as they are slightly wrinkled.

Title: Tellus Mater
(Sequel to Pater Familias)

Author: OneMillionAndNine

Feedback: kokotheuberchimp@hotmail.com

http://www.geocities.com/onemillionandnine/

Rating: Old married NC17, new clumsy NC17, all kinds of 
NC17

Category: AU, MSR, L/O, Sequel, Angst 
(plus bonus Violence, Deflowering, Asthma, Vomit, 
Questionable Parenting, Confusion, Misunderstandings, 
Mistakes, Frohike Singing, Waffles, Disenchantment, Death 
and, you know, the stuff of life)

Archive: if you want to- I mean - there's no accounting for 
taste

Disclaimer: the characters in the story that follows were 
invented by Chris Carter, who never meant them to be used 
this way. Even Thea Fidelis is his but, he might not want 
any them back now, as they are slightly wrinkled.

Beta: MaybeAmanda - it's her fault. 

Thanks: To MaybeA for spectacular beta and moral support in 
writing what turned out to be a rather odd story.  But at 
least I am happy with it. This would be totally unreadable 
without you. 
And to my husband for Mulder-modeling and other things far 
too numerous and embarrassing to mention . Your kung fu's 
the best, baby.
Last but not least, thanks to Martha, wherever you are, for 
answering my Langly question 

Author's Note : Although Mulder and Scully appear 
throughout and are pivotal to this piece, it is Gunmen-
heavy. As usual, I let the piece take me where it wanted to 
go, which happened to be right here. Take it up with the 
Muse, guys.

Note: In ancient Rome, although society was organized 
according the patriarchal principle of the Pater Familias, 
the father with the power of life and death over every 
member of his household, twice a year the people made 
Blood sacrifices to the oldest deity in the Pantheon, the 
Tellus Mater, or All-Seeing Mother.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*


It began like any bad science fiction movie.

My life had the ham-fisted irony of an episode of the 
Twilight Zone, and not one of the classics with Rod 
Serling, but one of the episodes from the '80's where you 
knew the whole story in the first two minutes.  

Or maybe I have been living with 'Mr. Golden Days of 
Television' too long.

Sylvie was in the backyard, eating mulberries and doing her 
standard running commentary while I valiantly struggled 
with the weeds around the zucchinis.  I have no idea why I 
took the trouble; it was mid-September and I spent my 
nights in a post-coital haze wondering what new and 
exciting dishes I could make with all the damn zucchini in 
my garden.

Yet, I weeded. Martin had just suggested I hollow out the 
day's bounty and make shoes for the children. I nearly told 
him exactly what I could fashion out of my produce but pity 
stayed my hand.  After all, the children were right there.

Danny, in fact, was doggedly pulling weeds beside me. He 
paused only to chide his father and sister.  "Some members 
of this family can be very lazy," he signed to me with his 
grubby little fingers.

The accused rolled their eyes in unison.

"I have a black thumb," Marty signed back at him.  "I so 
much as turn on the hose and our entire lawn will die.  Ask 
your mother."

Danny looked at me skeptically, so I responded, but with my 
back to my husband.  

"It's garbage.  He just doesn't want to do it. But if they 
don't want to, they don't have to, Danny.  This is not a 
prison camp. To each his own, remember?"

My dear spouse, of course, asked his minion, "What's she 
saying, Princess?"

'Princess' was only too happy to oblige, screaming and 
signing at him simultaneously.   "Mom says," her stubby 
purple fingers blazed, "that we don't - we don't -" but her 
high-pitched voice demonstrated her marked tendency to 
stutter "- we don't have to do what he says.  We are not in 
prison!  And you are a liar." She shrugged philosophically. 
"But all the most interesting people are liars, Dad, and 
that means. . ."

And she stopped cold. Not stammering. Not searching her 
burgeoning brain for the right word. No, my little girl was 
frozen, staring into space, and she stayed that way for a 
terrifying three minutes. 

We whistled. Waved hands in front of her face.  In the end, 
we even shook her gently, to no avail. When she was herself 
again, she smiled the broad-beaming smile that she usually 
reserved for cheese cake. "My sister is coming."

"You don't have a sister, sweetheart."  I cradled her to my 
chest.  "You are the sister."

"No."  She struggled out of my arms.  "No. Ask Buddy."

Danny's reply was confusing and it made my blood run cold. 
He nodded seriously and used signs I'd never seen before 
but they could only be interpreted a single way.  "The 
Goddess draws near and she is not alone."

Marty slid straight into panic face as he scooped a child 
up in each arm and ushered us all into the house.

What happened next?

Nothing. 

Nothing happened. The kids nattered on as usual, fought 
about who had what toy and who had encroached on whose 
personal space.  Sylvie kept talking.  Danny continued his 
self-assigned summer project of global domination one 
little sister at a time.  Marty and I were tense, but after 
four days and still no goddess, we were tempted to chalk it 
up to the weirdness that is our lives and move on. By the 
fourth night, it was nothing but a niggling thought in the 
back of our brains.

No matter what you call my husband the man is not 
unattractive, and that night he was in fine form.  The 
stress seemed mostly gone from his face. His brow had 
finally unknit itself.  With the kids in bed, he switched 
on his favorite oldies radio station and began a Martin 
Levine style strip tease.

 BLESS MY SOUL WHAT'S WRONG WITH ME -

-the radio throbbed, and he planted his feet wide apart as 
he slowly began unbuttoning his shirt.

I'M ITCHIN' LIKE A MAN ON A FUZZY TREE

Ohhhh, The King!  I was in for a treat, but I struggled not 
to clap my hands or scream 'take it off!' - any 
encouragement could easily push him from charming into the 
realm of overbearing.

MY FRIENDS SAY I'M ACTIN' AS WILD AS A BUG
I'M IN LOVE  -  I'M ALL SHOOK UP

I watched as his dusky gaze narrowed to mere slits as the 
shirt slid from his broad shoulders to the floor. 

That body.  Don't tell Rabbi Lansky I said it or thought 
It, but -- Help Me, Jesus!!!  

My eyes hit his crotch just as the pelvic thrusts began.  
He turned.  Oh that ass.   He wiggled it just for me.

MY HANDS ARE SHAKIN AND MY KNEES ARE WEAK
I CAN'T EVEN STAND ON MY OWN TWO FEET 
WHO DO YOU THINK WOULD HAVE SUCH LUCK 
I'M IN LOVE  -  I'M ALL SHOOK UP

My heart raced and I felt my stomach tighten as I took in 
his muscled back and narrow hips.  He turned to me, holding 
the ends of his unbuckled belt in either hand.  The broad 
grin I thought was unattractive when I first met him spread  
across his face. I was literally salivating. He pushed down 
his pants in time to the music. It took conscious effort 
not to drool.

I'M ALL SHOOK UP

And out his cock sprang, with a force and silly motion that 
merited some sort of cartoon sound effect.  Not bad at all 
for forty something.  It occurred to me, as it frequently 
did in similar circumstances, that there might be something 
to this SuperMan thing, after all. 

I brushed one knuckle against my lower lip and he got the 
message. Loud and clear. It took about two seconds before 
he was holding his warm penis against my cheek. 

I couldn't help myself. "Mmmmmmmmmmmmm."  

"Oh yeah. Just like that."  He brushed himself back and 
forth across my cheek. "Can I call you, um, that is, can 
you be Scully tonight?"

That nearly ruined the moment for me.  I had to stop 
myself from laughing.  My eyebrow rose of its own accord.  
"I never stopped."

"Say it for me."  He bounced his penis insistently against 
my lips.

"Mulder.  Is that what you want to hear?  Mulder.  You're 
Mulder and I'm Scully and I want you."  I skimmed his shaft 
with my lips again.

I drew my tongue up to his head so lightly I knew it would 
drive him crazy.  I wanted to swallow him at that point but 
I knew my own private Chippendale dancer better than that.  
He'd be disappointed if I didn't drag the teasing out a bit 
longer.  I could feel his pulse on my lip as I rested him 
on my open mouth without so much as getting him wet.  His 
eyes practically rolled back in his head. 

I bit into the underside of his shaft near the base, just 
the way he liked it, edging up on pain, then backing away. 
I rubbed my face again him again, nuzzled his testicles, 
enjoying the wiry hairs against my lips and the smell - 
mmmmm -  the smell of him.  Possibly one of the best things 
about sex with him no matter what his name is.  You have to 
be pretty much between his legs to smell it, but when he's 
aroused, there is the strong odor of sweetness and musk.  
It's almost like wearing a fur sprayed with Chanel #5 while 
eating caramel after caramel.  A strange description I 
know, and but I have yet to fellate him with out the image 
popping into my head. 

I couldn't help myself.  I buried my nose in his pubic hair 
and inhaled, only incidentally glancing his penis with the 
corner of my mouth .

It drove him wild. "Ummfff," he grunted. 

I looked up to see him biting that lower lip.  Another one 
of my favorite things. 

Oh, what a different movie 'The Sound of Music' would be if 
it had starred Marty and me.  Neither of us can carry a 
tune in a bucket, for starters. What do you do about 
problem like Maria?  Or Laura Levine?  Or Dana Scully?

I nipped one flared and fleshy edge of his head with my 
teeth.

"Harder. Bite harder."

I complied, even though this sort of thing tends to leave 
me vaguely worried.

"Mmmmm, God Scully, you know just what I like." 

It was only at times like these that he showed even the 
most vague reverence for the divine.  He hadn't changed as 
much as he supposed.

I bit the other side. Asymmetry has always bothered me.

"Now, make it feel gooooooood."  His tone straddled the 
border between a plea and a command and I had to push it 
over the edge.

To tell the truth, the few times he'd taken command in bed 
had left me feeling ambivalent. Perhaps ambivalent was the 
wrong word - what I felt was both sickened and aroused 
beyond my ability to articulate.  Anyway, that night I 
assumed the role that he enjoyed on me so much - I stopped 
and waited expectantly, being cruelly passive.

"Oh Scully, this is so perfect.  I love the way you make me 
wait until I can't stand it anymore.  You know what I love 
about the way you tease me?  I love it," he said as I slid 
him slowly into my mouth, working my way down to his 
delicious smelling pubic hair, "because I know that sooner 
or later you'll take me all the way down your throat.  
Sooner or later, I'll be inside you."  He stroked my hair, 
pulling out the clip that kept it off my face.  He twirled 
a strand around one finger.

I felt light-headed. My crotch was starting to throb in 
time with the pulse in my mouth. I reached one hand down 
inside my panties. 

"Ohhhhhhh Scully, does it make you hot to give me a blow 
job?"

Yes, I was, as he put it, 'hot,' but that didn't temper any 
of the smart-ass remarks that came to mind.  Luckily, I had 
a large, turgid penis in my mouth or one of those snotty 
retorts might have popped out.

"I love it when you get turned on.  Do you know how many 
times I used to imagine us like this in the office?"

I slid him almost out of my mouth then slowly forced him 
down until my lips met pubic hair again. That fixed his 
wagon. All he could do was breathe for a minute while I 
held him in my mouth, slaloming my tongue from side to 
side. 

I could probably have given a fair estimate of the number  
of times he imagined us like this back in the 
'good-old-bad-old-days,' especially knowing his appetites 
the way I know them now.  Let's see - eight years 
multiplied by...by...

I had suddenly lost my ability to multiply.  Apparently, 
all the blood had left my brain.  My clitoris was pushing 
back hard and wet against my fingers and I didn't have the 
energy to force myself into conscious thought.  Saliva 
flooded my mouth.

"Fuck, that's wet, Scully."

I swallowed, then I forced my throat to relax and eased him 
down the rest of the way.  I ran my free hand up his side 
to his nipple, scraping his skin with my nails as I went.

"Stop."   My husband pulled out of my mouth abruptly.  
"Gimme a minute, Baby.  I don't want to come yet."

He stood there shaking in air-conditioned room, literally 
panting.  "Okay, now."  He tried to put his cock in my 
mouth before he realized my masturbation was reaching a 
fevered pitch.

"Oh Scully - mmmmm - that looks good."  His thumb and first 
two fingers slid in to me as soon as he saw how close I was 
to coming.  I barely noticed as he dropped onto the bed 
with his other hand wrapped around his penis.  He reached 
with his fingers until he pressed the magic spot and 
something inside me whirred like a kitchen blender and I 
came.  God bless you, Dr. Graffenburg.

I had barely finished when he was looming over me, his 
penis bobbing against my lips again.  I looked up at his 
face and somehow that lost and fearful look had crept over 
him.  He was hanging back, waiting for approval, touching 
the corner of my mouth hesitantly, as if afraid I was going 
to hand him a rejection at that late date.

I extended my tongue and drew a series of figure eights 
along his scrotum, then reaching out to grasp his buttocks 
in both hands.  "I want you, I always want you," I 
whispered before swallowing him down again.

There was a sharp intake of breath and unconsciously he 
bucked against me, ever so slightly.  My mouth was 
stretched wide to hold him gently - no sucking, no undue 
pressure - he wanted to make it last, to hold out until the 
avalanche of biology won out over his monolithic 
self-denial. 

I let slip him from my mouth and drew my tongue over and 
between his testicles before moving in a single slow wet 
stroke all the way up to his urethra. The equivalent of a 
nuclear blast in our little war; a few more like that and 
he'd be waving the white flag all over my face.

"Aren't you gonna fuck me?" 

Oh brother.

He gave me a strained version of the kicked puppy face.

There he was, the object of all my stupid passion spread 
out like a feast before me. It struck me as silly to be so 
moved but I remembered all the years I had gone to bed 
alone because I wanted him and desire welled up again in a 
cold wave.  All I could do was nod.  

"Fuck!"  I tried to climb up onto him but my leg chose that 
moment to cramp.

He took advantage of the opportunity to come up behind me.  
"How 'bout like this?  Is it okay?  Do you like this, um, 
Scully?"

All I could do was grunt as he slipped into me and I 
struggled to stay on my hands and knees. I guess the 
question was rhetorical. 

His weight rested on the one hand that gripped my waist 
while the other kneaded my ass.  As he slid home again, his 
testicles bounced up to meet my clitoris.  The rub was 
delicious. He pulled almost all the way out again, then 
moved back to his rightful position - in in in - and again 
his testicles hit my clitoris.  Mmmmm!  Three more strokes 
and I would come. 

Against his will, he was starting to move faster.  If only 
he'd last until he could make me come again. . . 

I will be going to hell for pure selfishness.

Then abruptly, he pulled out. 

"Fuck!" I groaned. "What the -" 

"Did you hear that?" He knelt there, glistening, his head 
cocked to one side.

"Huh?" I listened. 

Lord, someone was knocking at the front door.

"Damn!"  I buried my face in his one thin pillow.

"Better get it before Sylvie wakes up," he huffed.

The most irritating whine came out of my mouth.  "Awwwwww 
Mulder, come on!  I was just about to have another 
orgasm!"

I turned around and watched him put his ratty black 
bathrobe, easily the ugliest thing in his wardrobe.  The 
robe had started out attractive enough, luxurious in fact, 
but in the years since I'd bought it for his first birthday 
'in captivity,' it had gone decidedly downhill.  Nearly six 
years wasn't a bad run for a bathrobe, but every time I 
told him it was time for it to go to the great closet floor 
in the sky, he countered by suggesting a Viking burial.  I 
pulled on his old t-shirt and pajama bottoms and followed 
him into the living room.

She was standing at the screen door.  I never imagined I 
would remember that face, let alone with such clarity, and 
yet I did. Even the name clung to me. It was as if I had 
seen her yesterday and not nearly seven years before. 

Thea.  Literally, The Goddess.  "The Goddess comes and she 
is not alone," Danny had said, and he'd hit that one on the 
head.  

She'd grown.  In the seven years, give or take a month or 
two since I'd last seen her, she had sailed from one far 
edge of puberty to the other.  But not, to stretch the 
metaphor, without taking on passengers. 

Which is to say, she was pregnant. Very pregnant - clearly 
somewhere in her final trimester.  I looked behind her for 
Gibson, but in that sense, at least, she was by herself.  I 
moved the blind just enough to see a primer-gray Chevy Nova 
in the driveway. At least she hadn't hitch hiked here

She was tall, Mulder's height, and except for her 
massive belly, looked rail thin.  Her lips were chapped.  
Her face was all planes and angles, intense but closed off 
somehow.  She wore an odd combination of jeans - unzipped, 
I presumed - a house coat, and what all the chic pregnant 
girls were wearing those days, flip flops. Her hair looked 
to be growing out of a very short and very bad cut.  Her 
nails were similarly abbreviated and ragged.  Her skin had 
the deep, dark color of someone who spent their days 
working unprotected in the full sun.  She didn't look like 
she'd been living the life of one of the beautiful people.

Mulder leaned against the doorjamb, his erection having 
lost steam, holding his robe shut with one elbow pinned 
tight to his body, and yet somehow, managing to look 
jaunty.  Mulder peered at me out of the corner of his eye 
even as he addressed her.  "Can I help you?" 

I remembered what Sylvie had said and a chill ran through 
me.  Her sister was coming.  Her sister. 

Was Thea another of Mulder's children, like Betty 
Roguebull?  Not like Betty.  Please, not like Betty. 

I looked at her again.  It was all too easy to see him in 
her face -  a slightly diminished and unbroken form of his 
nose, his chin exactly, his high, hard cheekbones, his long 
limbs. It was as clear to me as breaking glass.

"I don't think she can hear you," I said, opening the door 
wide.  "Come in," I signed.

Her eyes lit up.  It surprised me that she seemed so 
unafraid as she stepped inside.  Despite the size of her 
stomach, she was remarkably able to hold her waddle down to 
a minimum.

"Your friends the Gunmen told me where I could find you," 
she signed directly at me, trying to look utterly 
unconcerned with Mulder and not quite succeeding.

Mulder led her to the couch, waited until she was seated. 
"Excuse us - we'll be right back," he signed at her 
just before he quite literally dragged me out of the living 
room and into the kitchen.

He leaned back on his elbows against the too-high kitchen 
Counter, his lips pursed expectantly.  "What's going on?  
Who is she?  How does she know you?"

It took me a moment to orient myself.  "Her name is Thea, 
and - "  

"'Thea?'  As in 'The Goddess approaches?' 

"I think so." 

"Oh, that's great. Just great."  He blew out a long breath.  
"So, you knew all along and didn't tell me."

"No," I answered.  "I mean, yes, I met her, once, years 
ago,  but the connection didn't occur to me.  You've read 
the old files from when you were missing, right?  When 
Doggett tracked Gibson Praise to the School for The Deaf in 
Arizona?

He nodded.

"Thea was there with him. Gibson trusted her when he didn't 
trust anyone else.  I think," I rubbed my brow, "shit, I 
think she's another one of their projects."

"And you think they put the two of them together just like 
they with us?"

"Given what we know now, it seems likely."

"You have anymore information?"  Proof?  Suspicions?  
Anything?"

"Until I consult my Ouija board again, you know as much as 
I do," I replied.

He snorted, then went to the refrigerator. 

I found myself staring at the kitchen sink, trying to 
ignore my racing thoughts.  To admit my suspicions to 
Mulder would be to make them real, undeniable.  I forced 
myself to think about something else. 

No matter how conscientiously I tried to keep dirty dishes 
from piling up, as soon as I was busy with something else, 
Mulder would come in and eat.  Unlike in his bachelor days, 
he no longer ate over the sink while drinking straight from 
the pitcher.  Instead, he did his best to supply me with a 
never-ending counterful of sticky, crummy cups, plates, and 
forks.  

There were three plates, a tablespoon, and a coffee cup on 
the counter.  I could not figure out when he had had a 
chance to use them.  I wasn't irate, just puzzled and 
slightly annoyed, but it tipped the scales in favor of not 
telling him out right that I suspected Thea was his child.  
That and that fact that he had probably already figured it 
out.

In the living room, Thea sat bolt upright, looking 
distinctly out of place amid my husband's amorphous and 
expensive Scandinavian furniture, even though the blonde 
wood matched her sun-bleached hair.  Mulder, ever the 
gentleman, had supplied her with a glass of milk. 

I turned back into the kitchen, unable to face whatever 
story was waiting for me. I pulled the coffee down from the 
cabinet and offered a prayer in praise of Juan Valdez.

As I came toward the couch I saw Mulder sign to her,  
"Where's Gibson?"

And her reply.

"Dead.  Gibson Praise is dead." 


*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

End 01/07



Beta: MaybeAmanda - it's her fault. 

Thanks: To MaybeA for spectacular beta and moral support in 
writing what turned out to be a rather odd story.  But at 
least I am happy with it. This would be totally unreadable 
without you. 
And to my husband for Mulder-modeling and other things far 
too numerous and embarrassing to mention . Your kung fu's 
the best, baby.
Last but not least, thanks to Martha, wherever you are, for 
answering my Langly question 

Author's Note : Although Mulder and Scully appear 
throughout and are pivotal to this piece, it is Gunmen-
heavy. As usual, I let the piece take me where it wanted to 
go, which happened to be right here. Take it up with the 
Muse, guys.

Note: In ancient Rome, although society was organized 
according the patriarchal principle of the Pater Familias, 
the father with the power of life and death over every 
member of his household, twice a year the people made 
Blood sacrifices to the oldest deity in the Pantheon, the 
Tellus Mater, or All-Seeing Mother.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*


It began like any bad science fiction movie.

My life had the ham-fisted irony of an episode of the 
Twilight Zone, and not one of the classics with Rod 
Serling, but one of the episodes from the '80's where you 
knew the whole story in the first two minutes.  

Or maybe I have been living with 'Mr. Golden Days of 
Television' too long.

Sylvie was in the backyard, eating mulberries and doing her 
standard running commentary while I valiantly struggled 
with the weeds around the zucchinis.  I have no idea why I 
took the trouble; it was mid-September and I spent my 
nights in a post-coital haze wondering what new and 
exciting dishes I could make with all the damn zucchini in 
my garden.

Yet, I weeded. Martin had just suggested I hollow out the 
day's bounty and make shoes for the children. I nearly told 
him exactly what I could fashion out of my produce but pity 
stayed my hand.  After all, the children were right there.

Danny, in fact, was doggedly pulling weeds beside me. He 
paused only to chide his father and sister.  "Some members 
of this family can be very lazy," he signed to me with his 
grubby little fingers.

The accused rolled their eyes in unison.

"I have a black thumb," Marty signed back at him.  "I so 
much as turn on the hose and our entire lawn will die.  Ask 
your mother."

Danny looked at me skeptically, so I responded, but with my 
back to my husband.  

"It's garbage.  He just doesn't want to do it. But if they 
don't want to, they don't have to, Danny.  This is not a 
prison camp. To each his own, remember?"

My dear spouse, of course, asked his minion, "What's she 
saying, Princess?"

'Princess' was only too happy to oblige, screaming and 
signing at him simultaneously.   "Mom says," her stubby 
purple fingers blazed, "that we don't - we don't -" but her 
high-pitched voice demonstrated her marked tendency to 
stutter "- we don't have to do what he says.  We are not in 
prison!  And you are a liar." She shrugged philosophically. 
"But all the most interesting people are liars, Dad, and 
that means. . ."

And she stopped cold. Not stammering. Not searching her 
burgeoning brain for the right word. No, my little girl was 
frozen, staring into space, and she stayed that way for a 
terrifying three minutes. 

We whistled. Waved hands in front of her face.  In the end, 
we even shook her gently, to no avail. When she was herself 
again, she smiled the broad-beaming smile that she usually 
reserved for cheese cake. "My sister is coming."

"You don't have a sister, sweetheart."  I cradled her to my 
chest.  "You are the sister."

"No."  She struggled out of my arms.  "No. Ask Buddy."

Danny's reply was confusing and it made my blood run cold. 
He nodded seriously and used signs I'd never seen before 
but they could only be interpreted a single way.  "The 
Goddess draws near and she is not alone."

Marty slid straight into panic face as he scooped a child 
up in each arm and ushered us all into the house.

What happened next?

Nothing. 

Nothing happened. The kids nattered on as usual, fought 
about who had what toy and who had encroached on whose 
personal space.  Sylvie kept talking.  Danny continued his 
self-assigned summer project of global domination one 
little sister at a time.  Marty and I were tense, but after 
four days and still no goddess, we were tempted to chalk it 
up to the weirdness that is our lives and move on. By the 
fourth night, it was nothing but a niggling thought in the 
back of our brains.

No matter what you call my husband the man is not 
unattractive, and that night he was in fine form.  The 
stress seemed mostly gone from his face. His brow had 
finally unknit itself.  With the kids in bed, he switched 
on his favorite oldies radio station and began a Martin 
Levine style strip tease.

 BLESS MY SOUL WHAT'S WRONG WITH ME -

-the radio throbbed, and he planted his feet wide apart as 
he slowly began unbuttoning his shirt.

I'M ITCHIN' LIKE A MAN ON A FUZZY TREE

Ohhhh, The King!  I was in for a treat, but I struggled not 
to clap my hands or scream 'take it off!' - any 
encouragement could easily push him from charming into the 
realm of overbearing.

MY FRIENDS SAY I'M ACTIN' AS WILD AS A BUG
I'M IN LOVE  -  I'M ALL SHOOK UP

I watched as his dusky gaze narrowed to mere slits as the 
shirt slid from his broad shoulders to the floor. 

That body.  Don't tell Rabbi Lansky I said it or thought 
It, but -- Help Me, Jesus!!!  

My eyes hit his crotch just as the pelvic thrusts began.  
He turned.  Oh that ass.   He wiggled it just for me.

MY HANDS ARE SHAKIN AND MY KNEES ARE WEAK
I CAN'T EVEN STAND ON MY OWN TWO FEET 
WHO DO YOU THINK WOULD HAVE SUCH LUCK 
I'M IN LOVE  -  I'M ALL SHOOK UP

My heart raced and I felt my stomach tighten as I took in 
his muscled back and narrow hips.  He turned to me, holding 
the ends of his unbuckled belt in either hand.  The broad 
grin I thought was unattractive when I first met him spread  
across his face. I was literally salivating. He pushed down 
his pants in time to the music. It took conscious effort 
not to drool.

I'M ALL SHOOK UP

And out his cock sprang, with a force and silly motion that 
merited some sort of cartoon sound effect.  Not bad at all 
for forty something.  It occurred to me, as it frequently 
did in similar circumstances, that there might be something 
to this SuperMan thing, after all. 

I brushed one knuckle against my lower lip and he got the 
message. Loud and clear. It took about two seconds before 
he was holding his warm penis against my cheek. 

I couldn't help myself. "Mmmmmmmmmmmmm."  

"Oh yeah. Just like that."  He brushed himself back and 
forth across my cheek. "Can I call you, um, that is, can 
you be Scully tonight?"

That nearly ruined the moment for me.  I had to stop 
myself from laughing.  My eyebrow rose of its own accord.  
"I never stopped."

"Say it for me."  He bounced his penis insistently against 
my lips.

"Mulder.  Is that what you want to hear?  Mulder.  You're 
Mulder and I'm Scully and I want you."  I skimmed his shaft 
with my lips again.

I drew my tongue up to his head so lightly I knew it would 
drive him crazy.  I wanted to swallow him at that point but 
I knew my own private Chippendale dancer better than that.  
He'd be disappointed if I didn't drag the teasing out a bit 
longer.  I could feel his pulse on my lip as I rested him 
on my open mouth without so much as getting him wet.  His 
eyes practically rolled back in his head. 

I bit into the underside of his shaft near the base, just 
the way he liked it, edging up on pain, then backing away. 
I rubbed my face again him again, nuzzled his testicles, 
enjoying the wiry hairs against my lips and the smell - 
mmmmm -  the smell of him.  Possibly one of the best things 
about sex with him no matter what his name is.  You have to 
be pretty much between his legs to smell it, but when he's 
aroused, there is the strong odor of sweetness and musk.  
It's almost like wearing a fur sprayed with Chanel #5 while 
eating caramel after caramel.  A strange description I 
know, and but I have yet to fellate him with out the image 
popping into my head. 

I couldn't help myself.  I buried my nose in his pubic hair 
and inhaled, only incidentally glancing his penis with the 
corner of my mouth .

It drove him wild. "Ummfff," he grunted. 

I looked up to see him biting that lower lip.  Another one 
of my favorite things. 

Oh, what a different movie 'The Sound of Music' would be if 
it had starred Marty and me.  Neither of us can carry a 
tune in a bucket, for starters. What do you do about 
problem like Maria?  Or Laura Levine?  Or Dana Scully?

I nipped one flared and fleshy edge of his head with my 
teeth.

"Harder. Bite harder."

I complied, even though this sort of thing tends to leave 
me vaguely worried.

"Mmmmm, God Scully, you know just what I like." 

It was only at times like these that he showed even the 
most vague reverence for the divine.  He hadn't changed as 
much as he supposed.

I bit the other side. Asymmetry has always bothered me.

"Now, make it feel gooooooood."  His tone straddled the 
border between a plea and a command and I had to push it 
over the edge.

To tell the truth, the few times he'd taken command in bed 
had left me feeling ambivalent. Perhaps ambivalent was the 
wrong word - what I felt was both sickened and aroused 
beyond my ability to articulate.  Anyway, that night I 
assumed the role that he enjoyed on me so much - I stopped 
and waited expectantly, being cruelly passive.

"Oh Scully, this is so perfect.  I love the way you make me 
wait until I can't stand it anymore.  You know what I love 
about the way you tease me?  I love it," he said as I slid 
him slowly into my mouth, working my way down to his 
delicious smelling pubic hair, "because I know that sooner 
or later you'll take me all the way down your throat.  
Sooner or later, I'll be inside you."  He stroked my hair, 
pulling out the clip that kept it off my face.  He twirled 
a strand around one finger.

I felt light-headed. My crotch was starting to throb in 
time with the pulse in my mouth. I reached one hand down 
inside my panties. 

"Ohhhhhhh Scully, does it make you hot to give me a blow 
job?"

Yes, I was, as he put it, 'hot,' but that didn't temper any 
of the smart-ass remarks that came to mind.  Luckily, I had 
a large, turgid penis in my mouth or one of those snotty 
retorts might have popped out.

"I love it when you get turned on.  Do you know how many 
times I used to imagine us like this in the office?"

I slid him almost out of my mouth then slowly forced him 
down until my lips met pubic hair again. That fixed his 
wagon. All he could do was breathe for a minute while I 
held him in my mouth, slaloming my tongue from side to 
side. 

I could probably have given a fair estimate of the number  
of times he imagined us like this back in the 
'good-old-bad-old-days,' especially knowing his appetites 
the way I know them now.  Let's see - eight years 
multiplied by...by...

I had suddenly lost my ability to multiply.  Apparently, 
all the blood had left my brain.  My clitoris was pushing 
back hard and wet against my fingers and I didn't have the 
energy to force myself into conscious thought.  Saliva 
flooded my mouth.

"Fuck, that's wet, Scully."

I swallowed, then I forced my throat to relax and eased him 
down the rest of the way.  I ran my free hand up his side 
to his nipple, scraping his skin with my nails as I went.

"Stop."   My husband pulled out of my mouth abruptly.  
"Gimme a minute, Baby.  I don't want to come yet."

He stood there shaking in air-conditioned room, literally 
panting.  "Okay, now."  He tried to put his cock in my 
mouth before he realized my masturbation was reaching a 
fevered pitch.

"Oh Scully - mmmmm - that looks good."  His thumb and first 
two fingers slid in to me as soon as he saw how close I was 
to coming.  I barely noticed as he dropped onto the bed 
with his other hand wrapped around his penis.  He reached 
with his fingers until he pressed the magic spot and 
something inside me whirred like a kitchen blender and I 
came.  God bless you, Dr. Graffenburg.

I had barely finished when he was looming over me, his 
penis bobbing against my lips again.  I looked up at his 
face and somehow that lost and fearful look had crept over 
him.  He was hanging back, waiting for approval, touching 
the corner of my mouth hesitantly, as if afraid I was going 
to hand him a rejection at that late date.

I extended my tongue and drew a series of figure eights 
along his scrotum, then reaching out to grasp his buttocks 
in both hands.  "I want you, I always want you," I 
whispered before swallowing him down again.

There was a sharp intake of breath and unconsciously he 
bucked against me, ever so slightly.  My mouth was 
stretched wide to hold him gently - no sucking, no undue 
pressure - he wanted to make it last, to hold out until the 
avalanche of biology won out over his monolithic 
self-denial. 

I let slip him from my mouth and drew my tongue over and 
between his testicles before moving in a single slow wet 
stroke all the way up to his urethra. The equivalent of a 
nuclear blast in our little war; a few more like that and 
he'd be waving the white flag all over my face.

"Aren't you gonna fuck me?" 

Oh brother.

He gave me a strained version of the kicked puppy face.

There he was, the object of all my stupid passion spread 
out like a feast before me. It struck me as silly to be so 
moved but I remembered all the years I had gone to bed 
alone because I wanted him and desire welled up again in a 
cold wave.  All I could do was nod.  

"Fuck!"  I tried to climb up onto him but my leg chose that 
moment to cramp.

He took advantage of the opportunity to come up behind me.  
"How 'bout like this?  Is it okay?  Do you like this, um, 
Scully?"

All I could do was grunt as he slipped into me and I 
struggled to stay on my hands and knees. I guess the 
question was rhetorical. 

His weight rested on the one hand that gripped my waist 
while the other kneaded my ass.  As he slid home again, his 
testicles bounced up to meet my clitoris.  The rub was 
delicious. He pulled almost all the way out again, then 
moved back to his rightful position - in in in - and again 
his testicles hit my clitoris.  Mmmmm!  Three more strokes 
and I would come. 

Against his will, he was starting to move faster.  If only 
he'd last until he could make me come again. . . 

I will be going to hell for pure selfishness.

Then abruptly, he pulled out. 

"Fuck!" I groaned. "What the -" 

"Did you hear that?" He knelt there, glistening, his head 
cocked to one side.

"Huh?" I listened. 

Lord, someone was knocking at the front door.

"Damn!"  I buried my face in his one thin pillow.

"Better get it before Sylvie wakes up," he huffed.

The most irritating whine came out of my mouth.  "Awwwwww 
Mulder, come on!  I was just about to have another 
orgasm!"

I turned around and watched him put his ratty black 
bathrobe, easily the ugliest thing in his wardrobe.  The 
robe had started out attractive enough, luxurious in fact, 
but in the years since I'd bought it for his first birthday 
'in captivity,' it had gone decidedly downhill.  Nearly six 
years wasn't a bad run for a bathrobe, but every time I 
told him it was time for it to go to the great closet floor 
in the sky, he countered by suggesting a Viking burial.  I 
pulled on his old t-shirt and pajama bottoms and followed 
him into the living room.

She was standing at the screen door.  I never imagined I 
would remember that face, let alone with such clarity, and 
yet I did. Even the name clung to me. It was as if I had 
seen her yesterday and not nearly seven years before. 

Thea.  Literally, The Goddess.  "The Goddess comes and she 
is not alone," Danny had said, and he'd hit that one on the 
head.  

She'd grown.  In the seven years, give or take a month or 
two since I'd last seen her, she had sailed from one far 
edge of puberty to the other.  But not, to stretch the 
metaphor, without taking on passengers. 

Which is to say, she was pregnant. Very pregnant - clearly 
somewhere in her final trimester.  I looked behind her for 
Gibson, but in that sense, at least, she was by herself.  I 
moved the blind just enough to see a primer-gray Chevy Nova 
in the driveway. At least she hadn't hitch hiked here

She was tall, Mulder's height, and except for her 
massive belly, looked rail thin.  Her lips were chapped.  
Her face was all planes and angles, intense but closed off 
somehow.  She wore an odd combination of jeans - unzipped, 
I presumed - a house coat, and what all the chic pregnant 
girls were wearing those days, flip flops. Her hair looked 
to be growing out of a very short and very bad cut.  Her 
nails were similarly abbreviated and ragged.  Her skin had 
the deep, dark color of someone who spent their days 
working unprotected in the full sun.  She didn't look like 
she'd been living the life of one of the beautiful people.

Mulder leaned against the doorjamb, his erection having 
lost steam, holding his robe shut with one elbow pinned 
tight to his body, and yet somehow, managing to look 
jaunty.  Mulder peered at me out of the corner of his eye 
even as he addressed her.  "Can I help you?" 

I remembered what Sylvie had said and a chill ran through 
me.  Her sister was coming.  Her sister. 

Was Thea another of Mulder's children, like Betty 
Roguebull?  Not like Betty.  Please, not like Betty. 

I looked at her again.  It was all too easy to see him in 
her face -  a slightly diminished and unbroken form of his 
nose, his chin exactly, his high, hard cheekbones, his long 
limbs. It was as clear to me as breaking glass.

"I don't think she can hear you," I said, opening the door 
wide.  "Come in," I signed.

Her eyes lit up.  It surprised me that she seemed so 
unafraid as she stepped inside.  Despite the size of her 
stomach, she was remarkably able to hold her waddle down to 
a minimum.

"Your friends the Gunmen told me where I could find you," 
she signed directly at me, trying to look utterly 
unconcerned with Mulder and not quite succeeding.

Mulder led her to the couch, waited until she was seated. 
"Excuse us - we'll be right back," he signed at her 
just before he quite literally dragged me out of the living 
room and into the kitchen.

He leaned back on his elbows against the too-high kitchen 
Counter, his lips pursed expectantly.  "What's going on?  
Who is she?  How does she know you?"

It took me a moment to orient myself.  "Her name is Thea, 
and - "  

"'Thea?'  As in 'The Goddess approaches?' 

"I think so." 

"Oh, that's great. Just great."  He blew out a long breath.  
"So, you knew all along and didn't tell me."

"No," I answered.  "I mean, yes, I met her, once, years 
ago,  but the connection didn't occur to me.  You've read 
the old files from when you were missing, right?  When 
Doggett tracked Gibson Praise to the School for The Deaf in 
Arizona?

He nodded.

"Thea was there with him. Gibson trusted her when he didn't 
trust anyone else.  I think," I rubbed my brow, "shit, I 
think she's another one of their projects."

"And you think they put the two of them together just like 
they with us?"

"Given what we know now, it seems likely."

"You have anymore information?"  Proof?  Suspicions?  
Anything?"

"Until I consult my Ouija board again, you know as much as 
I do," I replied.

He snorted, then went to the refrigerator. 

I found myself staring at the kitchen sink, trying to 
ignore my racing thoughts.  To admit my suspicions to 
Mulder would be to make them real, undeniable.  I forced 
myself to think about something else. 

No matter how conscientiously I tried to keep dirty dishes 
from piling up, as soon as I was busy with something else, 
Mulder would come in and eat.  Unlike in his bachelor days, 
he no longer ate over the sink while drinking straight from 
the pitcher.  Instead, he did his best to supply me with a 
never-ending counterful of sticky, crummy cups, plates, and 
forks.  

There were three plates, a tablespoon, and a coffee cup on 
the counter.  I could not figure out when he had had a 
chance to use them.  I wasn't irate, just puzzled and 
slightly annoyed, but it tipped the scales in favor of not 
telling him out right that I suspected Thea was his child.  
That and that fact that he had probably already figured it 
out.

In the living room, Thea sat bolt upright, looking 
distinctly out of place amid my husband's amorphous and 
expensive Scandinavian furniture, even though the blonde 
wood matched her sun-bleached hair.  Mulder, ever the 
gentleman, had supplied her with a glass of milk. 

I turned back into the kitchen, unable to face whatever 
story was waiting for me. I pulled the coffee down from the 
cabinet and offered a prayer in praise of Juan Valdez.

As I came toward the couch I saw Mulder sign to her,  
"Where's Gibson?"

And her reply.

"Dead.  Gibson Praise is dead." 


*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

End 01/07




*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

"Fucking hardheaded little...little...little bitch!"

I knew you weren't supposed to think things like that about 
the mother of your unborn children, but with every step, I 
wanted to snap her neck that much more. Okay, not snap her 
neck - I've never wanted to snap anyone's neck. Especially 
not hers. Shake her -- that was it. I definitely wanted 
to shake her. 

We'd been over it again and again. DC was no place for 
her, even if the guys would have agreed to let her stay 
again. The waves of infection that swept both coasts and 
not infrequent explosions that signaled an overnight change 
of corporate political backers while the unelected 
president made pronouncements from safe inside his batcave 
in Nevada may not have kept people out of the malls, but it 
made the relative isolation of the Great American Heartland 
look pretty good.

Holy Fucking Shit!

I never imagined myself involved in any crap like this, but 
things had been changing ever since she showed up. So I 
guess I should have - change the input, and you inevitably 
change the output.

It didn't start out looking like the day that would change 
my life forever. I was playing a god-simulation, even 
though Hickey was on my ass to work on some crap he'd 
salvaged from who-the-fuck-knows-where, when there was 
someone at the door.

It was a kid. A girl kid. Tall, but skinny. 15 or 16 
years old. I was surprised when Byers let her in. 

She was deaf. She said Gibson Praise had told her where to 
find us. He told her we could help her. It was plain to see 
that she'd been living on the street for awhile. I figured 
that must have been what killed Gibson. She said he got 
worse and worse off and she never even knew what was wrong.

Then she told us Gibson said we knew her parents, and could 
help her find them. That those parents were Fox Mulder and 
Dana Scully. 

My exact words were, "Yeah, Right. " 

Byers lab contacts ran tests and, fuck me, it was true.

None of us even briefly considered sending her to them. We 
didn't think too hard about turning her out, either.

It wasn't like, like she just moved in and became a member 
of the team over night. It just kind of happened. She'd 
been with us ten days or so when I was trying to break an 
encrypted code. She was hanging around, looking over my 
shoulder all day, when all of the sudden she just reached 
over and started typing on my keyboard.

"Hey!" I grabbed her wrist. "Cut it out!"

She pulled the notepad out of her pocket and wrote IT'S 
MATH, RIGHT? YOU'RE JUST LOOKING FOR THE PATTERN.

I would have gotten it without her; it was just a matter of 
time. I would have gotten it myself, I really would have, 
but as it turned out, I didn't have to because in about two 
minutes, she had me pointed in the right direction.

We spent a lot of time together after that.

Byers kind of, I don't know, he treated her like she was 
the petite flower or something. Fro did too, at first. I 
wasn't sure, but I thought maybe they were thinking about 
Scully's kid that died. But you could tell just by looking 
at Thea she was no kind of sick.

Of course, that wasn't good enough for them. Byers wouldn't 
let her get involved in any 'field trips' until she got 
checked out by a doctor and a dentist. That meant she was 
basically stuck at home hacking until she gave in.

She hated doctors. She signed to Frohike real slow the way 
she did back then, like we were stupid. "Do you two make 
Ringo go to the doctor?"

He signed back to her, "We couldn't keep him away from the 
doctor if we tried." 

Asshole.

After about two weeks of bitching, she caved.

The upshot being, she was as healthy as a fucking ox, but 
her wisdom teeth were coming in. We all had to chip in to 
pay for the oral surgeon. I still say Hickey should have 
let us dip into Mulder's emergency money for that one, but 
I got vetoed.

We all wound up glad she was with us. If you got hurt or 
just had the wind knocked out of you, she'd been there 
right now, ready to sling you over her shoulder whether you 
wanted her to or not. She was also the smoothest fucking 
thief I'd seen in my life. Highly useful for journalistic 
espionage, too.  It did take us while to convince her to 
stop stealing us little presents all the time, though. She 
had to be convinced to, you know, use her powers only for 
good.

She was funny. She could read and write four languages and 
fucking generate code in her sleep but all the normal human 
stuff was news to her. She ate like a pig. The only holiday 
she knew about was Christmas and she called it, "The tree 
and the candy and shall I puke now or later?"

That was probably the weirdest thing about her - she 
wouldn't eat or drink anything sweet. She even signed the 
word 'SUGAR' like it was gross.

No matter how many times she pulled our asses out of the 
fire on a mission, Byers had a bee in his bonnet about her 
safety. She couldn't go out alone. It was too dangerous. I 
think Frohike backed him up on it because he still didn't 
trust her all the way and wanted to keep tabs on her 
movements. 

We were already spending all our monitor time together, so 
I started taking her with me whenever I left headquarters. 
It was cool having someone around.

I taught her to drive and play D & D. I made her a license. 
The name she had me put on it was the one from the sticky 
label on the side of her Zeus Genetics Tank - Thea Fidelis.

She cleaned up okay, not real girly or anything, but okay. 
She didn't have that look that some girls have when they 
aren't wearing makeup; you know, like a mole sticking its 
head up into the daylight. She looked better plain. She 
was like a guy. 

To me, she looked a lot like Mulder. If she had put on 
lipstick, she would have looked too much like Mulder 
wearing lipstick - creepy.

Sometimes she'd put her head on my shoulder or touch my 
hand, but I didn't think anything about it, really. I 
mean, I figured girls were supposed to be touchy-feely like 
that. Yves did that kind of stuff sometimes when she 
wanted something. Thea just did it when she felt like it. 
Besides, it was nice.  

Sometimes we'd wrestle too. It was pretty innocent. Well, 
I thought it was innocent, anyway. Okay, so I was a moron. 

Things went that way for about two years. Then one day we 
were in the kitchen checking the Huevos Rancheros Fro had 
asked me to keep an eye on. I was wearing oven mitts. Out 
of the blue, she kissed me. Grabbed my face and kissed me, 
tongue and everything. 

I felt like a pervert for getting turned on the way I did, 
so I did the only thing a man in my situation could do - as 
soon as I could breathe again, I put my inhaler back in my 
pocket and I went to the arcade.

I wound up staying there all night and blowing thirty 
bucks. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't get into the 
zone. I kept spilling my Big Gulp, too.

I just couldn't shake the dirty-old-man feeling. Mulder 
and Scully had trusted us with their lives and I wanted to 
repay them by porking the teenaged daughter they didn't 
even know they had. 

And that wasn't the worst of it. I had spent pretty much 
all day every day with Thea for more than two years. I 
knew her. I liked her. I liked her a lot. Maybe even more 
than I liked Fro and Byers. 

Maybe that wasn't it. Maybe I loved her. Stranger things 
have happened. Compared to an international conspiracy, it 
seemed almost wholesome. For the first time in I don't know 
how long, growing old with the guys seemed kind of 
depressing.

Despite Frohike's assertion to the contrary, I had been 
laid before. It was always some chick at a show or a 
party, though. I had never, you know, done it without 
drinking a little to loosen up. I had also never had a 
girlfriend - dating was just too weird - let alone had, you 
know, in-house pussy.

I made a deal with myself, though. I'd stand fast. I was 
Iron Man.

As if. 

Wanna guess who was sitting on my bed when I came in?

It sure wasn't Frohike.

She signed at me so fast I didn't understand a fucking 
word.

"Slow down!" I signed over and over, but her damn hands 
were a blur. 

I finally lost my temper. "Fucking stop it! Just shut up!" 
and lunged and grabbed her hands. 

Smooth move. I made the deaf girl cry.

I was never one of those guys who thought crying chicks 
were sexy, and especially not Thea. She always made this 
awful honking noise and got these ugly red bumps all over 
her face, so she sounded like wounded goose and looked like 
one of those weird-ass Muscovy ducks. I tried to wipe her 
face with my shirt. Then my hands. I didn't know what was 
happening, but in about thirty seconds, it turned into a 
hot and heavy round of tonsil-hockey. I might have been 
the one that started it, but it would be a tough call. 

I tried to get my head together by coming up for air. Not 
a real smart move on my part.

She turned away, signing to herself. I looked over her 
shoulder. 

"Dumb dumb dumb!" she sniffed as she signed but a tear 
rolled down her face.

I couldn't help myself - I reached down and wiped the drop 
from her lower lip. 

"You or me?" I asked her.

"I'm ugly," she answered. "You don't want me because I'm 
ugly and stupid."

"Like I'm a Greek god. Thea, you're young - a kid."

"You don't want me because I'm young?" She honked and blew 
a snot bubble. "Or because I'm young and ugly and dumb?" 

"Thea, Thea, I like how you look. You have a nice face." 
I wiped her cheeks with my hands again.

She half laughed. "My body looks like a stick - a straight 
line." She wiped her nose on the bottom of her shirt.

"You're pretty smart. You have tits." I reached out and 
almost touched one before I remembered to pull my hand 
back.

She rolled her eyes.

"Thea, I'm twenty years older than you are. That's too 
old." I suddenly couldn't sit so close to her anymore. I 
moved away and she laid down on my bed. I turned to look at 
the wall and Thea just honked.

What kind of sicko was I that I got monster wood? 

Somewhere outside the sun moved higher in the sky and I 
started to get an ache in the back of my neck. I should 
have been thinking about how I couldn't do it, but instead 
I kept thinking how much I really wanted to.

I could feel her standing behind me, coming closer. Like a 
machine with a busted ventilation system, she gave off 
heat. I was so fucking turned on. "I - I - like you." she 
signed.

I nodded and frowned. "I like you, too. I think. But, 
why now? I mean, how long have you-?"

"I've been this close -" she held her thumb and forefinger 
together and paused before she continued her signing "- to 
jumping you for about a year." She smiled weakly, then bit 
her lip. "I've felt this way since...I'm not sure. 
Remember when Kimmy called me your girlfriend and you got 
mad, so I hit him?"

That wasn't exactly the way I remembered it happening, but 
I nodded. It was one of the high points of 2005.

"Well, I had to hit him, because I wished it was true."

"Why now?" I signed. "Why now, in the fucking kitchen, of 
all places?"

"You look so damn sexy in oven mitts?" she signed, looking 
hopeful, like if she could just make me laugh, everything 
would be cool.

I took a page out of her book and rolled my eyes.

She sucked her lower lip as she started to sign. It seemed 
kind of fucked up, I had to fight to pay attention to her 
hands, but her biceps were really getting me going, her 
nipples were hard, I don't think she even owned a bra, 
fuck! What had she said?

"Why? I wanted to. That's a reason, right? So I did it. 
I...I want to do more." She looked embarrassed. "A lot 
more." How had I fucking missed that? She was kinda hot, in 
a no make-up string-beany geek-girl kind of a way. How had 
I not noticed? 

"Thea are you a...a...I don't know the sign."

"Write it." She handed me the little notebook she kept in 
her pocket.

My penmanship sucks, but I tried to make it look nice for 
her. I wrote the word.

VIRGIN

She nodded. "Sorry," and bit the inside of her cheek.

I took the notepad back. My hands didn't shake, but I felt 
cold in my chest. DON'T BE SORRY. I'VE NEVER BEEN WITH 
ONE BEFORE. 

She wrote back - SO YOU WANT TO DO IT?

It was my turn to nod.

WHAT DO I DO? She handed me the notebook.

The best I could come up with was SLOW DOWN. 

I'M SCARED BUT I WANT IT. She wrote neatly.

I still have the piece of paper she wrote that on.

ME TOO. I wrote back. 

She smiled. 

BUT I'M SUPPOSED TO BE THE MAN. I MEAN - YOU KNOW WHAT I 
MEAN.

That made her smile. YOU'RE THE OLD GUY she scratched.

YEAH. I'M THE OLD GUY I scratched back.

She seemed shy for just a second. DO YOU WANT TO TAKE MY 
CLOTHES OFF? 

What kind of low-rent geek am I? I answered by drawing an 
emoticon with stupid wiggly eyebrows. YOU DO IT. I'LL JUST 
WATCH.

She laughed her honking, snorting laugh, which might 
actually be worse than her crying sound, and we kissed 
again. She could have used some Chapstick, but her mouth 
tasted nice. After the kiss, we just stood there with our 
arms around each other. Fuck me - I was in love.

I took the note pad and dropped it on the floor -we were 
getting side-tracked.  

I didn't mean to lie. I fully intended to watch her 
undress, but by the time I tried to set some kind of 
land speed record for stripping and diving under the 
covers, she was in there right next to me. Naked, too.

To tell the truth, she was bony in a lot of places. Not my 
regular type, for sure, but it didn't change my mind about 
going to bed with her. It did make me want to take her out 
for cheese-steaks afterwards, though.

I don't usually talk too much, you know, in bed, but right 
then there were so many things I wanted to say to her and 
every sign I knew was sliding out of my brain like piss off 
a tray. She could lip read a little even back then, so I 
mouthed the words slowly. 

I LOVE YOU

I DO

I DO

I REALLY THINK I DO

I WANT TO MAKE THIS GOOD

I WANT TO DO THIS RIGHT

YOUR SKIN IS SOFT

She wrapped her hand hard around my dick and I almost came. 

I had to pull away. "No!" I signed, the words coming back 
to me. "Slow down. I'll show you when."

She shrank back and I settled on my side next to her, with 
my arm under her head. I curled myself around her until I 
was able to fit one brown nipple into my mouth. Her 
nipples were especially, you know, nice. Her tits, too.  
Lemon sized. Well, you know, half a lemon sized, really, 
but her nipples were as big as the first joint on my little 
finger. God, they were good to suck.

I slid my hand down her side, rode the plane of her hipbone 
with my fingers, and felt her body stiffen.

I only had one hand free so I spelled it out one letter at 
a time. DO YOU WANT ME TO STOP?

She shook her head.

I spelled again. OPEN YOUR LEGS.

Like I had put in a password, she did it. Abra-ca-fucking-
dabra. 

A cold shiver went down my back. I combed her pubic hair 
with my fingers before I slipped my thumb down onto her 
clit.

I wished I could whisper her name so that she would hear it 
like it was ringing in my head. Thea Thea Thea Thea. I 
traced the letters on her clit with my thumb, softly, 
softly. She was breathing deep into her lungs, faster and 
faster, until she started bucking her hips against my hand. 
it seemed like it lasted forever.

Holy shit. I made her come! 

As soon she was back on the planet with the rest of us, she 
made a sign at me I didn't know. 

WHAT? I spelled with my damp, pussy-smelling fingers. 

She mouthed something I didn't understand. She frowned and 
fell to finger spelling 

FUCK ME LANGLY

Oh. Oh. I could handle that. Maybe. Either that, or 
shoot my wad all over her leg.

I rolled on top of her. I had been so hard for so long 
that I was really starting to ache.

I propped an elbow on either side of her and signed.

I WANT THIS TO LAST BUT IT'S BEEN A WHILE.

"It's okay," she signed. 

She was biting the inside of her cheek, like, like...

Like Mulder, actually. 

If Mulder could have seen me, he'd have beaten me to a 
fucking pulp. As long I remembered that I 
thought I could keep myself from coming. 

It was all wrong. I belonged with some body older. 
Somebody older who was an orphan. Somebody definitely not 
a virgin. Actually, I probably belonged alone, in the 
shower, with Rosy Palm and her five sisters, my regular 
girl.

Damn. She felt good, and I wasn't even really inside her. 
Maybe I could just rub up against her...

Fuck! Mulder would kill me. And Scully...better not to 
think about Scully at a time like this.

Thea rocked her hips. She mouthed a single word. This time 
I understood her. 

The word was PLEASE.

I stopped her hips with my hands. I signed, "Are you sure? 
It'll hurt, I think. I've heard it hurts."

She nodded and made her frustrated face. I was pissing her 
off, but better that than scaring or hurting her.

Okay, I could do this. 

I pictured Mulder mid-rant as I poised my dick over her 
overheated little -- god, none of the words I had for it 
were right, either they sounded too dirty, or not dirty 
enough, or just stupid -- and I pushed as slowly as humanly 
possible. She was so hot and wet. 

I felt it right after the heat. The thing, the hymen, I 
guess. I had to close my eyes when I pushed through. Her 
body went stiff, and I felt her tear and bleed. I felt 
sick to my stomach. She squeaked. 

I couldn't do it anymore. I couldn't not look at her while 
her name was echoing in my head. Thea Thea Thea Thea. It 
was tough to suck it up and keep from crying like a girl. I 
wanted to kiss her, and I would have if I wasn't afraid it 
would make me come. 

The way she was looking at me was another thing I didn't 
have a word for. I think I was able to hold off maybe five 
or six minutes like that. I slipped my hand between us, 
trying to make her come again, but no cigar. It was okay 
with her, though. I think.

I couldn't wait any longer. I came. 

She blew my mind by coming again a second after.

That was when I realized I had shot my load inside a chick 
without a rubber. And not just a chick. Not some skank. 
Not some scary Goth girl I met at concert. Thea. Teenaged 
Thea.

I forgot to put on a rubber for the first time in my life. 
I needed an L-for-Loser tattooed on my forehead. 

"What's wrong? Did I suck?" she asked me, thumping her 
chest for emphasis when she finished signing.

"No." I shook my head and ignored the joke. "Not possible. 
I just - I forgot the rubbers."

She wrinkled her forehead. 

"You could get-" I didn't know the sign. 

"What?" 

I couldn't believe had to ask her. "Do you know where 
babies come from?"

"Other than a lab? Sex. Babies come from sex." 

I was almost relived until she signed, "Have you ever seen 
one?" 

I grabbed my glasses off the top of the alarm clock. Maybe 
I hadn't seen that right. 

"Up close, I mean?"

I must have blinked. "You've never seen a baby?

"Only from a distance," she answered. "Like at the zoo."

I didn't know whether to laugh or throw up.

I looked down at Thea. She was already drifting off. 

I wasn't going to do this to her - pop her cherry like some 
jerk and then go hide under a rock the way I normally did 
after I got laid. There wasn't anywhere to go, anyway. 

To tell the truth, I didn't even want to hide. I really 
wanted to do this again, with her, maybe five or six 
hundred more times. It was weird, but I all at once 
realized I didn't want to sleep with anybody else. 

Ever. 

She was stuck with me as long as she wanted me. I was just 
going to need to be more careful. As soon as I got up, I'd 
go buy some rubbers. No more bare back for me, thanks. We 
were flirting with enough disaster as it was. I was riding 
the wall of death; I didn't need to prove anything by 
going without a helmet. 

Later, when I changed my sheets I realized the blood soaked 
all the way into the mattress. I didn't even try to get it 
out.

You know, I've known guys who skated through everything.  
Guys who lived with reckless abandon and didn't pay the 
price, but that was never my story. I can't fucking 
jaywalk without getting a ticket. 

We had six really good weeks. I mean, I got more action in 
six weeks than some people get in a year - ten years, if 
you're Byers or me. We screwed in every closet in the 
place. We'd say we were going for parts, and wind up at a 
motel. We'd say we were caught up in a big D&D game 
somewhere, and find a place to go fuck like bunnies. 

She found one of those color wheels - you know, like used 
to come with an aluminum Christmas tree back in the '50's - 
at a garage sale. She liked to plug it in and go at it 
with the red and green and blue sliding over our skin. 

We did all the same stuff as before together too. Fixed 
stuff. Played games. Wrestled. Did newspaper shit. 
Fought the powers that be. Sometimes just you know - held 
hands under the table. 

It was nice. You know - happy.

I wouldn't have hid it from the guys if I wasn't afraid 
she'd dump me and Fro would get to say 'I told you so.'

Fucking Byers. It was none of his damn business, but as 
soon as he was able to put two and two together he offered 
to ship Thea off to some maiden aunt of his. Get her away 
from me and my evil machinations, I guess. He told her he 
knew she wasn't to blame, that she most likely couldn't 
even render legally meaningful consent, being young, 
disabled, and for all practical purposes, orphaned. Byers 
understood that she thought I cared, but she was clearly 
confusing love with an older man's warped attentions, like 
I was Humbert Humbert or Jerry Lee Lewis or something. He 
told her he had taken up her cause and would make sure I 
never took advantage of her again.

If such a thing was possible, FroMan's interpretation of 
events was even sicker. In his opinion, Thea sleeping with 
me was iron-clad evidence he was right all along not to 
trust her. No matter who her parents were, she was nothing 
but a temptress working for a faction of the now-splintered 
'Them'. A freaking Mata Hari in flannel. Excuse me, but I 
figured Mata Hari for the type who shaved her legs.

We couldn't just, you know, like each other. Somebody 
somewhere had to be evil. So I never blamed Thea for 
cutting out. I just blamed her for doing it without 
talking to me first.

I quit working on the paper with the guys and stayed glued 
to the monitor, looking for some trace of her somewhere. A 
couple of deaf girls got picked up for shoplifting during 
that time, but she wasn't one of them. 

Of course not. I just wasn't that lucky. And she wasn't 
that sloppy.

More than four months later I got a beat-up letter from a 
migrant worker's camp in Arkansas letting me know where she 
was. Or at least, where she'd been three weeks earlier when 
she mailed the damn thing.

She wanted to see me. 

I left to find her the same day.

It took two weeks to do it. Two weeks of "I am trying to 
find a woman. Anglo, deaf, this tall -" with my hand on 
top of my head "- with short hair," followed by "Soy 
necesidad hallar senorita. Sordo. Alta. Pelo corta. Anglo," 
followed by confused looks. Over and over and over. 

It was just words I'd strung together the best that I 
could. If I'd have thought about it, I'd have gotten Fro
to write something out for me before I left. 

After the first week, I found an overseer at a big 
corporate farm who recognized the surveillance camera photo 
I had printed out.

"That girl worked like a man - even with her big belly," he 
grunted.

"No." I shook my head. "The girl I'm looking for is 
skinny." 

"If it's the one I'm thinking of, the girl you're 
looking for is knocked up." 

"This one here?" I showed him the picture again.

He nodded. "I'd say that's her." 

"You have any idea how far along she was?"

"Do I look like a doctor to you?"

"Any idea where she went?"

"Bunch of workers from here headed out to Nevada. I think 
she might a been one of 'em."

"You know what they called her? What name she was using?"

"Yeah. Everybody called her 'Dummy.'"

I had to sit and shake in the car for awhile before I could 
get it together enough to drive away.

At the next pit stop, I looked something up in the Spanish-
English dictionary. I had a new word for my list. 

Pregnant. Embarazzadda.

The day I caught up with her, she was in a field, with some 
kind of crate in her arms. Her hair was wheat colored from 
the sun, and her belly stood out bigger and rounder than 
seemed right. I tried to count. She'd been gone just 
short of five months - add to that either six weeks from 
that first time when we went bareback, or one month from 
the week when we had two busted rubbers...

She looked like she should have had trouble standing, let 
alone heaving boxes like a teamster.

If I was a cool guy like Mulder, I'd have come up with 
something smooth to say. Of course, if I was Mulder, I'd 
have whole new set of problems.

If there hadn't been a bunch of people standing around 
watching, I might have gone with my gut and just kissed 
her. As it was, I stood there looking like a doofus, 
wondering if there was a sign for 'Uhhhhh.' I think my 
mouth was open.

She smoothed the dirty t-shirt down over her belly, then 
signed slowly. "Miss me?"

"Cut the crap," I answered right before I put my arms 
around her. After a while, I stepped back so I could sign 
without hitting her in the face.

"When did this happen?"

"One of the times we had sex." She smiled. "Either that, or 
I'm starting a new religion."

I nodded stupidly. "You're, uh, you're pretty big for six 
months."

"I think there's more than one in there."

"You think? You haven't seen a doctor?" 

She shook her head. "I haven't been sick." 

What the fuck were we gonna do?

"Let's get outta here."

"Sure. Just as soon as I get paid."

"Thea!" If it was possible to whine with your fingers I was 
doing it.

"I've been here two weeks. If I don't get paid, they get 
all that work for free."

"Don't you wanna sleep? Eat? Sit down or something?"

"I want to get paid."

I nodded, resigning myself, as she took my hand and led me 
away, presumably in the direction of her money. Back at 
the camp I watched as, cash in hand, she shoved a ratty 
robe, my jacket, two men's shirts with the sleeves cut off, 
and a pair of panties that looked like they came from an 
archaeological dig into a plastic Wal-mart bag.

"The priest is here today," she signed, all fake-casual.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means the priest, who comes here sometimes, is here 
today."

It took me a minute. "You wanna get married?"

She bit her lip. "Only if you want to. But if you do, this 
is your chance. I mean the priest, the one that's here, 
doesn't think I'm non compos mentis or anything."

"Does he know you're underage?"

She flipped me off.

But we got married.

I always figured it would scarier, you know? But it didn't 
feel like a big deal. More like, like - like I'd already 
bought the hard drive and I was just standing at the 
counter, waiting for my receipt.

There was more than enough home-made ethanol in the trunk 
to make it to Nebraska. I knew what I said to her about 
the farm, but it was looking really good all of the sudden. 
It was too cold for EBEs most of the year and too far in 
the middle of fucking nowhere for political instability or 
epidemics to matter much. We'd never starve on a farm. 
I'd be pretty freaking anonymous there, too - just another 
Langly in the crowd of Langlys. So what if I said I'd 
never go home? So what if I hadn't been back since my mom 
died? Home is somewhere they have to take you in, right?

Thea apparently thought home meant a tangle of cable and 
metal shelving and one hot meal a day. She thought we'd go 
back to DC and get a little place close enough to the LGM 
headquarters that I could go back to my old life without 
the guys having to see her. 

Like that would work. Like 'Out of Sight, Out of Mind' 
meant anything to Byers and Fro.

She said she didn't want to ruin my life. That I'd known 
Byers and Frohike longer than she'd been alive.

I told her when Fro got pregnant with my child, I'd take 
that into account. We were going to Nebraska where nothing 
bad was going to happen to me or to her and especially not 
to the kids. 

Kids. We were going to have kids. And we could bicker 
about it for the next twenty five or thirty years in 
relative fucking safety.

Nothing was going to happen to her. Even if it meant I was 
going to have to drive a tractor for the rest of my natural 
life.

She said the whole thing was a big fucking mistake. 

I told her it looked liked I'd knocked her up pretty good.

I thought it was settled when she asked me to come to bed.

But there, on our wedding night, at the Land Mark Motel 
with swag lamps and purple shag carpeting, as soon as I 
fell asleep, she fucking ditched me.

I had to give a trucker 300 bucks and a palm pilot to take 
me to take me to the last turnoff. 

At least I knew where she was going. Well, I was pretty 
sure I knew. If I wasn't right, I was gonna climb naked 
onto the top of the water tower and howl like a gibbon.

I passed the high school. A purple and gold banner across 
the front door read: 

Home of the Oracles: 4 years Undefeated and Counting!

The streets were in alphabetical order -

Archimedes
Beta
Cypress
Diogenes
Euripides
Gamma
Hippolyte
Isosceles
Kappa
Lambda
Morpheus
Nostos
Orestia
Pythagoras

I saw my car in the driveway at the end of Rubicon Avenue. 
Tired as I was, I started to run. Before I knew it, I was 
banging on the door for all I was worth and all I could see 
was Mulder's big head in between me and Thea.


*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

End 02/07




*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*


Wanna know how it happened? I'll tell you how it happened. 
It was not through the exercise of our towering intellects 
and intimidating journalistic abilities that Byers and I 
figured out that our esteemed colleague was getting some, 
that's for sure. We screwed up big time on that one. The 
only reason we found out was that we got it on a 
surveillance camera.

Not that we had Langly under surveillance or anything. It 
started with a bad case of gremlins. One of the rear alley 
surveillance cameras kept coming down with problem after 
problem, before I'd taken the damn thing apart and fixed 
one malfunction another would pop up. Frustrated the hell 
out of me. Goldilocks, of course, said he have it working 
fine in twenty-four hours.

He could be my frigging guest.

Two months later I needed a camera for an outside security 
application and I remembered the one the Great Lord 
Manhandler had yet to return. Go figure.

Having lived one room over from the guy for the sixteen 
years, I figured it was probably repaired and sitting under 
the pile of rubble next to his bed.  So I went in and found 
it sandwiched between three books and a pile of clothes. 

The tape was wound to somewhere near the middle. I figured 
I would check the tape to see if the damn thing was finally 
recording right. 

It must have started taping when somebody threw the books 
on to it because if he knew the thing was running, the left 
bottom quadrant of the screen wouldn't have been obscured -  
the whole damn screen would have been painted black. 

It was just Langly, at first, snoring, one arm thrown over 
his head.

Byers looked up from where he was trying to balance our 
monthly accounts probably wondering why I was watching 
footage of He Who Sleeps Loudly. I was just trying to 
figure out how it got turned on. One - two footsteps, and 
another book dropped near the edge of Langly's bed this 
time. The form was apparent now. I knew it was just The 
Kid, so if I had been an unsuspicious soul, I would have 
turned the VCR off.  I guess Santa  was gonna have to put 
me on the naughty list, because I kept watching.

She stood over him for a good long time before she pulled 
back the covers. In about three beats she pulled down his 
shorts and was giving him a blow job. 

"Well, I'll be a son of a bitch."  I whistled long and low. 
"Looks like our boy is growing up."

Byers ran full-tilt over to the machine. "For god's sake, 
Frohike, turn that off!"

"Hold on.  It was just starting to get interesting."  

But he hit eject and threw it in the trash.  "As soon as 
they get back from Delaware tomorrow, we're going to have a 
talk about this. I can't believe. . . I never suspected. . 
. My god, we sent her with him. All the times we've left 
her alone with him. I never once considered. . ."

"Me neither, buddy." I shook my head.

"Should we alert the authorities?" Byers' face had gone 
ashen. 

"Seems like we ought to, huh?  Somehow, though, I doubt 
there's an agency for the protection of 36 year old 
virgins.  Maybe during the Carter Administration. . ."

 "Frohike, I'm serious.  Besides he's 37 "

"So am I."  I sobered, just considering the possibilities.  
"Have you ever known Langly to have a girlfriend, let alone 
date? Have you ever heard of him keeping company with a 
female within her child-bearing years? The boy's a powder 
keg -  one good hummer and all our secrets are history. On 
second thought, we should make sure he didn't spill 
anything on the tape." 

Byers scowled. There was an awkward pause.

"You know what I mean."  I reached down into the trash.

 Byers turned his back to the video screen and began making 
phone calls to the proper authorities. 

Let me start off by saying unstaged sex on video always 
winds up looking very unstaged. This, well, this looked 
even more unstaged than usual. I checked the clock. She had 
been obscuring Langly's crotch with the back of her bobbing 
head for quite awhile. Not nearly as scintillating as I 
might have hoped.

In the mean time, the one man decency league also known as 
John Fitzgerald Byers was suffering aggravations of his 
own.

 It was his fourth call to a fourth government agency. He 
had seen video tape of a friend involved in illicit acts 
with an under-age girl. How old?...17 ish... Oh... No, to 
his knowledge the tape had been made without the consent of 
either his friend or the girl...Oh...Oh... No, the girl 
couldn't fairly be described as mentally incompetent...No, 
there was no reason to suspect any sort of physical abuse 
was taking place...No, he was not the girl's 
father...Hello? Hello? 

Must have been some sort of emergency. They hung up on him. 

Meanwhile, my end was not improving. "Hold on, my bladder's 
full - I don't think I can come," Langly signed at the top 
of Thea's head.

It didn't look like getting laid had made Blondie any 
smoother.

While Casanova was off screen taking a piss, Mata Hari 
picked up a book off the shelf and stuck her free hand down 
the front of her jeans while she read. I recognized the 
cover - The Collected Works of Mary Wollstonecraft.  I 
never figured the Declaration of the Rights of Man were 
exactly jerk-off material but it seemed to be making her 
hot.

He came back and hopped into bed. I tell you this much - 
they looked like they were having fun but I doubt either of 
them had a future in the porn industry. Besides, when it 
came right down to it Langly was just an average white guy. 

The longer I watched them, the more it struck me how 
perfect for him she was. In fact, if I was making a girl 
specifically for Langly, she'd be damn close to the mark - 
if not actually cherry, then young and inexperienced enough 
not to intimidate him. Not perfumy or made-up, which tended 
to make him both nervous and sneezy. A smart, unfrilly kind 
of a girl without a hunch back. 

To tell the truth, she was kind of pretty, in an unmade 
kind of way. Not many curves worth mentioning, but more 
than an A cup might have been too much for Lord Man-
Hammer's delicate constitution. Her obvious resemblance to 
both Mulder and Scully probably put him at ease. 

On second thought, without her clothes, The Kid didn't look 
half bad. Like a young racehorse, all bone and muscle and 
long legged grace. 

Watching her like that, I started to feel dirty. 

I was reaching to turn off the tape when the sheet slipped, 
and when I saw Langly's blindingly white ass pumping away, 
I realized she had to be a plant. 

When she first showed up on our doorstep and I was sure 
they had sent her, I had been right.  No way Langly was 
lucky enough for her to be for real.

Or maybe I was just paranoid. 


*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

I would have gone out and stopped him, really I would have, 
but it was all I could do to keep the kids from running 
outside.

Sylvie had gotten up when I was brewing coffee and 
proceeded to glue herself to Thea's side. Danny didn't wake 
up until Mulder started pacing in accompaniment to Thea's 
story. They flanked her on the couch, rubbing their little 
hands over her stomach possessively.

She had been grown in a Zeus genetics lab tank from my ova 
and Mulder's sperm and by the age of eleven had already 
spent three years paired by Spender with Gibson Praise. It 
was thought an isolated school for deaf would make an 
excellent environment for bonding.

Only things went terribly wrong. The consortium was 
splintered and for four years Thea found herself on her 
own, trying to care for an increasingly ill Gibson. Before 
the inevitable came and he died, he told her what he knew 
of her origins and sent her to the Lone Gunmen. He said 
they knew where her parents were hiding. He said we would 
protect her. 

The Gunmen. For more than two years she lived with the them 
in a city teetering between chaos and fascism. Somehow, it 
seemed she and Langly... she and Langly... had become she 
and Langly, and were now well on their way to becoming 
parents, as well. When the Byers and Frohike expressed 
their displeasure at the alliance, she decided to fend for 
herself, rather than cause a rift between the friends. 
Although she'd known our location for quite some time 
before she left DC, she had chosen a life of anonymous 
manual labor for as long as she could maintain it. 

As far as Thea was concerned, she had done quite well 
working the harvest. The only difficulty she admitted 
having was with what she described as a 'dog sucking mutant 
toad of a ConAgra crop manager in Arizona,' who didn't keep 
drinking water in the fields. But, she signed,  she was 
getting too big to keep up, she came to us. To me, she 
looked like she could go into labor at any minute.

She had come to us to ask for our help, our protection, our 
spare bed room, our whatever it was pregnant teenagers 
asked their parents for.

She wincingly admitted there was also a possibility Langly 
could be following her.

Mulder, the man who persisted in believing in big foot and 
elves with plans for astronomical observatories, seemed to 
have trouble digesting that part of her tale. He kept 
signing, over and over, "Langly? Richard George Langly? My 
*former* friend Langly? He...You? Blond hair? Keeps fifteen 
pairs of Clark Kent glasses in a desk drawer? You -" He 
looked at Sylvie and Danny on either side of her and bit 
the inside of his cheek "- were 'with' Langly? He did 
this?"

You know what people say, 'Speak of the Devil and He 
appears'?  It works for hapless cyber-geeks, too. 

I was willing to bet Langly had never hit anything in his 
life as hard as he was hitting my front door.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

You know, I never expected Langly to take it as hard as he 
did when the kid cut out. Of course, if you'd asked me 
before I saw the tape, I would have sworn the guy still 
thought girls had cooties.

In retrospect, I realize there were a lot of signs I could 
have read. I mean, I just figured it for a sister-brother 
kind of a thing. Guess I figured wrong.

When Thea took off, she left what few personal possessions 
she had behind . The only thing I knew for sure the little 
minx had with her was Blondie's coat. Didn't matter much to 
him - I don't think he went outside once all winter. He 
just sat glued to the monitor. He quit talking to Byers, 
too.

That first day though, after Byers let Thea know he had 
come to her rescue, Langly and Byers exchanged a few words, 
too. Words like 'Bastard' and 'Son of A Bitch' and I 
believe 'Asshole' was passed back and forth, as well. 

"So she's old enough to break into Lockheed-Martin, but not 
old enough to know when she wants to get laid?

Byers face was calm but his voice was loud. "You know it's
Not the same. She worships you."

"You asshole," Langly answered. "Did you ever think maybe 
she loves me?" 

"What do you know about love, Langly?"

For his piece de resistance, Langly squared his shoulders 
and looked Byers in the eye. "You hypocritical fucking 
cocksucker. 

"No, Ringo; that's what you've turned that girl into." 

Langly faltered for a minute before he came back with what 
we all knew was the worst possible comeback as far as Byers 
was concerned. "That's it, isn't it? You're jealous. You 
wish you were the one fucking her."

Byers punched him in the face.

The little girl in question left at some point during the 
melee.

Both John and Ringo thought the other should have the 
decency to move out. Good thing they weren't speaking. Too 
bad I didn't get the silent treatment, too.

Byers was reasonably recovered after a few weeks. 
Eventually he even managed to admit that Thea was very 
close to being an adult, kind of like our esteemed 
colleague.

Langly continued to sulk.

In the end, the blame was mine. When the three of us met 
Fox Mulder and Susanne Modeski and became, well, focused on 
finding out the truth about the American Government, Langly 
wasn't even old enough to buy his own beer. The guy was two 
years off the family farm in Nebraska. Even Byers was more 
worldly than our farm boy, and that's saying some thing. So 
we treated him like a kid, a smart kid, but a kid all the 
same. Never occurred to any of us to notice when he stopped 
being young. Here he was, not all that far from 40, with 
the first female companionship I ever knew of him having. 
It was just plain pathetic, especially the part about her 
being a spy for the Bad Guys.

Okay, so I was wrong about the spy part. It was an honest 
mistake. Anyone would have drawn that conclusion.

Not that I didn't like her. Truth be known and all question 
of trust aside, I had something of a soft spot for the kid. 
She worked hard, made more than her fair share of witty 
remarks, and if you didn't count the mess that followed her 
like a slug trail, was pretty low-maintenance.

I just knew what she was. She was Theirs. She might have 
been Mulder and Scully's kid, but she had been conceived 
before her parents ever met and grown in a Consortium tank. 
But hey, nobody who likes Leonard Cohen could be all bad. 
Not that she listened to him, being deaf and all, but she 
liked to take my vinyl sleeves so she could read the words. 
It showed taste on her part. Not like that crap Langly 
listened to.

Besides, it was a lot like having Mulder around again. The 
Kid poked her nose into anything and everything. Couldn't 
let a sleeping dog lie. Always had an opinion, and wasn't 
shy about sharing it with anyone in the immediate vicinity. 
She even proved she was willing to risk her life for any 
one of our asses. The longer I thought about it, the less 
likely it seemed that she had an agenda and the more I 
started to suspect all she had was bad taste. 

All things considered, I should have known. Like the time I 
found him face down on the floor in front of the sofa, her 
on top of him, both of them fully dressed. He was laughing 
even though she had his arms jacked up behind his back. If 
it was anyone else I wouldn't have even wondered  -  I'd 
have known. Since it was Langly, the thought didn't even 
cross my mind.

He was different after she came to stay. I chalked it up to 
having someone his own age to play with. I never stopped to 
think she was twenty years younger.

He was different after she left, too. If he was cranky 
before, her departure transformed the guy into a flaming 
asshole .

Five months and I'd about had it with him.

Then one day he got a letter from her and left. Like that. 
A dirty bent envelop covered in her handwriting came in the 
mail. on the top of the stack.  He snatched it up, tore it 
open, read it, and stuffed it in his pocket.

Next, he went to the garage, spent fifteen minutes under 
the hood of that stupid car he fooled with from time to 
time, and started loading it with all the ethanol we had.  
He pulled some clothes out of the dryer and threw them into 
the back seat . Wound up taking a pair of my socks. He went 
into Byers' room and walked out with his Rand-McNally 
Atlas. Next the Boy Wonder pulled the blankets off his bed 
and threw them on top of the clothes. Then, the old safe 
he'd built awhile back and set inside a junked computer, 
that went on top of the blankets. There had to be a lot in 
there. He'd been squirreling away every cent he made for 
years.

The last thing he took was a cardboard box full of tapes 
and an MP3 player.

Then he walked back inside and grabbed a cassette case that 
was setting next to his monitor. Poor fool didn't even 
realize it was empty.

He opened up the garage door to leave just as I managed to 
ask him, "What are you doing?"

"What do you care?" 

He jumped in the car and left.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Martin Levine was having an old time Fox-Mulder-on-the-
Jerry-Springer-Show moment. Instead of bringing him inside 
and having a calm rational discussion, my husband pushed 
Langly out onto the lawn, until the two of them stood chest 
to chest under the corner street light.

"You...you...you-" Mulder stuttered.

"Just let me talk to Thea."

"You're in no fucking position to..."

"I need to talk to Thea."

"I think you've had enough contact with Thea."

"Fuck you. Let me see Thea."

"She came to you for help because she had no place to go 
and you used her. What are you planning to do when you get 
tired of her? Pass her to Frohike?"

House lights flickered on, one by one, all over the 
neighborhood.

"Man, I didn't seduce Thea. It was more like I didn't jump 
out of the way fast enough. Get a grip. You didn't even 
know her this time last week. Now let me see her."

"She asked for my help and I'm giving it to her. Now go-"

Even from inside the house, I could see Langly twitching, 
looking very afraid.

"You want to kick my ass? Then do it. It's not gonna change 
my mind."

My dear, dear spouse seemed to have forgotten that his 
friend Vernon, who happened to live two blocks down, also 
happened to be our Sheriff. The moonlight was shining off 
his bald pate. From behind, it looked exactly like a milk 
dud. 

"What's goin' on, Marty? Looks like you're pretty worked 
up. Things are getting kinda loud out here. You wanna tell 
me what's happenin'?"

I could see Mulder and Langly fall seamlessly into 
stonewall mode, while Mulder tried to concoct a plausible 
explanation. Just like old times.

"Vern, this is my friend, George."

"From New York?"

"Yeah.  And he's been playing around with my daughter."

Vern's entire body went taut. "Sylvie?" He pulled out his 
cuffs, looking like he was about a minute away from beating 
Langly himself. 

"Nooooooooo," Marty dragged the word out, groping for an 
explanation. "When I was - before, when I was married to my 
first wife, Laura and I, we had a daughter." 

"Yeah? And?"

"Laura's older brother adopted her. I haven't seen her 
since she was born. Today, well, she showed up. Pregnant. 
Courtesy of my 'friend' George, here."

Cue Thea to come running from around the side of the house, 
with the dog bounding along behind her. She must have gone 
out the back while Sylvie was trying to force her way out 
between my legs. Wonderful. 

Thea swung her arms wildly, signing to Mulder to keeps his 
hands off Langly.

"Go...back...inside...now!" Mulder signed and bellowed at 
the same time.

One didn't have to be particularly proficient at reading 
sign language to understand her reply. I think "Fuck you, 
Dad," is universal.

The three of them stood at the edge of the yard glaring at 
one another, while Vernon spoke soothingly.

A high-pitched scream lacerated the air. Langly whined, 
"Your dog fucking bit me!"  I was willing to bet fat old 
Melvin didn't even break the skin. It was starting to sound 
like just another episode of Cops, and I could see it was 
going to take Vernon all night to get them inside at the 
rate he was going.  So I swung into action. 

I took Danny and Sylvie by the hands and dragged them next 
door. My friend and neighbor, Kim, was trying to convince 
her own husband not to go outside when she answered her 
front door.

"What's going on out there?" she asked me groggily. 

A wan smile was the best I could do under the 
circumstances.  "It seems Martin and I have a bird coming 
home to roost. Look Kim, I'll tell you all about it in the 
morning. Can you do me a favor?"

"Sure." She pressed the heals of her hands into her eyes.  
"As long as I don't have to get dressed. What do you need?" 

"Take the kids for the night.  Things are a little too... 
dramatic at my house right now."

"Sure, not a problem. I'll send you my kids next time Dre 
asks me for a bass boat." 

I knelt down. "Be good." I pointed at my children as if 
this ever did any good. "Go straight to sleep. I know 
you'll mind Mrs. Collins, don't I, Sylvie?"

Kim folded her arms across her chest and smiled with just 
enough menace to straighten my daughter's spine. "We'll be 
fine. Sylvie and I have an understanding now don't we?"

I smiled and raised an eyebrow back at her. "Good. I love 
you, bunnies." I kissed each of them. "Now let's go see if 
I can get your big sister straightened out."

Kim was shocked, of course. "Sister?" 

"Yes." I gave another thin little smile. "Sister."  

"That's bigger than a bass boat."

"It certainly is. Thanks, Kim. I really appreciate it."

I crossed the lawn and joined the unhappy little group. 

"Martin," I said quietly but very firmly, "you are acting 
like my brother. Get in that house."

I should have thought of it sooner; it worked like a charm.

Back inside, Mulder sat on the couch, hands locked together 
on his lap, scowling. Langly and Thea both had decidedly 
pissed-off expressions on their faces as well. It was as 
though 
they were waiting for me to set foot through the door to 
restart the fighting.

"How could you do this? I thought you were my friend." 
Mulder accused.

"Go home, Ringo. Just go home," Thea signed.

"No," Langly signed back.

"Look," I told them, "let's have this discussion in a 
reasonable and orderly fashion. Mulder, I think we already 
know what your problem - your objection - is. It seems to 
me Thea is the party with the most at stake here, so she 
should go first."

"You know we got married?" Langly interjected.

"No, I didn't know," I replied, giving him a stern look, 
"but I believe Thea has the floor." 

He rolled his eyes. 

Thea began signing agitatedly in Langly's direction. "When 
I married you, I thought we were going home."

"Who said that?" he shot back. "Did I say that?"

"I think it was implied. I don't remember you ever 
mentioning 
Nebraska." She turned toward Mulder and me. "Did I tell you 
he wants to take me to Nebraska?"

I couldn't help myself. "Nebraska?"

"Nebraska?" Apparently, neither could Mulder.

"It has a lot of points in its favor. Like I told Thea, 
it's too cold for EBEs most of the time. It's a long way 
from epidemics, not a lot of bombings or riots in a town 
under a thousand, either. My family farms all over the 
county, so she wouldn't starve."

"What about you?" She sat on the edge of her seat, as if 
preparing to lunge or tip over. "What about the paper?" 

Langly twisted the corner of his mouth. "I haven't worked 
on the paper since you left."

"That's great!" Thea frowned. "You've ditched your duty to 
the American public for a chick."

Mulder worked to suppress a bitter grin.

Langly, however, was not amused. "Things we printed ten 
years ago are common knowledge now, and you know what I 
found out? I found out the American public doesn't give two 
shits about truth or justice or democracy, as long as they 
have an uninterrupted flow of cable TV and consumer goods. 
The American people will support any corporate strong man 
who says he can keep gas under 10 bucks a gallon and won't 
close the malls no matter how bad the contagion is. Screw 
the American Public. You think THEY-" he gestured at Mulder 
and me "-are the only ones who get to play Mommy and 
Daddy?"

"Don't patronize me. If you wanted me to have a baby, what 
were the condoms for? Decoration?" she signed angrily.

"Knocking you up wasn't exactly at the top of my to-do 
list, okay? Does that mean I can't change my mind?  I can 
want normal things, too, you know." 

"I am deaf, not stupid," she began. "Don't tell me what you 
think I want to hear.  I don't want to be your duty, so 
don't stay with me because you think it's the 'right' thing 
to do." She gestured to her belly. "You don't want this." 

"If you think I don't want that," he pointed to her 
distended abdomen, "maybe I overestimated your vast 
intellect. I can want something and be scared of it at the 
same time." 

"And the guys?" She tapped her foot distractedly. "What 
about the guys?" 

"What about them?" He rushed his hands.

"You don't owe them?" she replied, slowly.

Langly looked honestly puzzled. "Owe them what?" 

Thea pressed her clenched right hand firmly between her 
eyes and rubbed. "Look, R.I.C.H.A.R.D." she spelled slowly 
with her free hand in a way that seemed insulting somehow,  
"H.O.W.M.A.N.Y.T.I.M.E.S.H.A.V.E.Y.O.U.T.O.L.D.M.E.H.O.W.M.
U.C.H.Y.O.U.H.AT.E.N.E.B.R.A.S.K.A?" She shook out her 
hands and finished signing properly. "I'm not going to make 
you miserable just so I can be safe." She signed the word 
'SAFE' like it had salmonella. "That's why I came here."

Langly, by this point, was reaching some threshold of his 
inner resources. I had nothing but sympathy for him; Thea 
was reminding me more of Mulder by the minute. "So I guess 
it doesn't matter if I want to be with you?" 

Thea all but huffed as she signed. "Then why won't you do 
me?" 

Do me? Do me?!?! 

My god, I did not want to see this conversation. I could 
have lived happily for the rest of my life without that 
image in my mind.

Langly was staring at her with his mouth open. "How could 
I? You're like a house!"

I stood, signing that they clearly needed their privacy, 
pulling a stunned Mulder after me.

From the kitchen it didn't look good. Thea was sobbing and 
Langly had his face buried in his hands.

My mother always told me not to eavesdrop, I should have 
listened to her. If I had turned around and talked to 
Mulder while he made a sandwich, if I had gotten myself  
glass of water or washed the dishes crying out to me in the 
sink or straightened the dish towels or, or - anything - I 
would have missed Langly's shy and somewhat peevish offer 
and Thea's pouty acceptance.

I stepped backwards into Mulder and his sandwich.

"What did he say?" Mulder whispered..

"I don't know what you me-" I started, but he cut me off 
mid-lie.

"Don't play innocent. What's going on in there?"

"Cunnilingus," I whispered. 

He nearly choked on roast turkey. 

"They're not 'doing' it," I amended. "But they've agreed to 
in the near future."

Mulder swallowed. "It's gonna be tough with Langly sleeping 
on the couch." 

I walked to the sink and counted to five hundreed. Twice. I 
returned to the living room to find the subject of 
contention was Nebraska once again.

"I'm still not going to Nebraska," Thea signed, sniffling.

"I'm not going back to DC," Langly signed, then folded his 
arms across his chest.

Mulder stood beside me, looking from one to the other then 
back again. "Stay here, then."

Thea and Langly raised their eyebrows simultaneously, then   
looked at each other. After a few seconds, they nodded in 
unison.

Thea signed and Langly blurted, "Okay."

"Okay?" Mulder asked, astonished. "Okay? Just like that?"

"Jeez bud, we aren't you two," Langly answered. "I mean, we 
CAN agree without six hours of debate." 

He smiled at Thea, who slid awkwardly next to him on the 
couch, immediately winding a strand of long blonde hair 
around her finger in response.

"It is possible," she signed, still tethered to him.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
It was eerie and fun in a sort of a deja vu sort of a way. 
Lugging stacks of computers down the darkened hallway into 
my classroom - for a minute, it was just like old times.  
Every time I caught myself wondering where Frohike and 
Byers were, I had to shake my head.

They took all ten of the school's 233 MHz Pentium II 
processors 32megs RAM 1.5 Gig hard drives and wired them 
together. I was surprised they could get in to change 
anything using the school's old computers; I couldn't even 
get mine to run more than one application at a time.

They built a monster and then they made it sing.

They built themselves completely new identities.  George 
and Althea Froyers, born July 1969 and February 1990 
respectively, and married in April of 2007. He granted 
himself the MIT degree he missed on account being fingered 
for a hack he didn't do. Or, at least, I always believed 
him when he said he didn't do it, mostly because I've never 
known him to give away credit for anything. One of them 
gave her open adoption records listing Martin Levine as 
father and Laura Meyers as mother. 

It took them less than ten minutes to get everything hooked 
together and turned on.  Yet they didn't sign.  They didn't 
even seem to look at each other as they worked with a 
fluidity that seemed almost mechanical. 

Langly had always been good but I had never seen him work 
like that before, as though he had been given a shot of 
magic to grease his synapses.  Thea, I didn't know Thea, 
but what was unfolding left me amazed. 

There is a word in ancient Greek, Arete. It's pronounced a-
rah-tay, for those of you in the cheap seats, and it's 
often mistranslated as 'virtue. It's actually the root of 
the English word 'art' and means 'perfection beyond mere 
technical mastery' and 'efficiency glowing with the power 
of the gods.'  That was what I was seeing. 

Langly squatted at the back of my chair, his legs spread 
wide. I had no idea what he was doing until Thea sat down 
between his thighs.  There they hunkered, three hands 
resting together on the keyboard. She moved the mouse. 
Langly's head hung over her shoulder until they were cheek 
to cheek, their limbs tangled.  The only sound was breath 
and the plastic clacking of keys. They looked like the 
cyberian version of a Hindu god.

I heard it when his orange stubble scraped her smooth, 
golden face. Her face that was so much darker than his 
white gold hair that seemed to want to cling to her. Thea's 
stomach rolled two directions at once. She tilted her 
head and oh-so-subtly rubbed it against his, her motions 
catlike.  He met it, rubbed back. I realized she had a thin 
strand of his hair in her mouth. 

I felt enthralled and unsettled.  I had seen less intimate 
acts involving body fluids. I couldn't even consider 
looking away. 

I was not really jealous, but intensely curious. Was this 
what it was like to look from the outside in? Not at love, 
or at least the cheap kind of everyday love, but something 
else. Something I knew no name for.

It wasn't like Scully and me.  For years, circumstances and 
baroque neuroses kept us at arm's length.  Two perhaps more 
than attractive people, we feasted with our eyes while we 
starved to death. There were times when not our trust, or 
our friendship, but our love seemed all surface, desire as 
thin as paper, but folded in on itself indefinitely.  
Origami love.  A love deep in spectacle.  Circus love in 
the old Roman sense of the word. Throw the lions to the 
Jews and see who comes out on top. 

It turned me on to look at Scully because it was Scully I 
was looking at. Would I love her if her image didn't sear 
my brain like a brand? Sure. At least, I think I would. But 
it would be a different kind of love.

Love in black and white and red. 

This was love in pale, humming blue.

Langly was never anything special to look at.  He had no 
lips, a bulbous forehead, and a nose that would more 
appropriately be called a beak. 

On the other hand, I had no doubt a trip to a salon, a 
thousand dollar wardrobe, and three hours in a make-up 
chair could turn Thea into a super model.  As it stood, she 
had a big nose, a bad hair cut, and thick, chapped lips. If 
pretty is as pretty does, she had all the feminine airs 
of John Wayne.

Their fingers glanced and dragged, skin to skin, without 
either of them once darting their eyes at the other. Love 
like that had to be like falling down a well. 

What did he do to her in bed? It was a terrible question, 
but I couldn't stop myself from asking. I mean, she was 
pregnant, so I assumed there had been penetration and 
ejaculation, but what did they do? Did he hold off until he 
thought he was going to die trying to make every time 
perfect? Did he kiss her throat to make her shudder? Did 
they pause and sign or did he do what ever he wanted, 
waiting for her to stop him? Did he ever fuck her ass?

I failed to realize how close I was standing until Langly 
did something I never imagined in my wildest dreams. 

A faint smile on his mouth, he signed small and close to 
her stomach, "Your kung fu is the best, baby."

Thea responded by turning her head just enough to nip the 
outer edge of his ear with her teeth.

Langly blushed and signed small to her again, "Not in front 
of Mulder."

I had to go stand on the other side of my desk until my 
erection went away.

It was just like Betty, and yet, nothing like Betty.  That 
was when I recognized Scully's round eyes in Thea's face 
and resolved never to step within arms reach of her again. 

When we arrived home, I was swimming in guilt and disgust 
and wanting to bang Scully like an old screen door.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
End 03/07



*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Monday morning, I got the kids off to school and scared up 
a maternity dress from Hawaii Stidham for Thea.

It seemed Thea had never shaved her legs in her short life. 
Well, she couldn't go out onto the streets of Delphi, 
Alabama looking like Thea the Jungle Girl. Even if she had 
some experience with it, there was no way she could reach 
her legs at that point. We were both uncomfortable when I 
did a short strip with Mulder's shaving razor. In the end, 
we used the same thing I always used on my legs. At least 
all that hair made them easier to wax.

I told her it was going to hurt.

After I finished, she asked me, "When?"

In the living room, Langly kept trying to pretend he 
wasn't staring at her legs.

"You're wearing a dress," he frowned and pushed up the 
corner of his glasses as he observed the obvious.

She shrugged and signed, "It's what they had."

"Looks like you," his signing faltered, "shaved your legs."

"No," she corrected him. "She pulled it out with wax." 

He winced.

When I came back with my purse, they were sitting on the 
couch side by side, reading. The hem of her dress was 
suspiciously raised on one side and Langly was 
surreptitiously running his thumb along her kneecap, 
although he appeared quite engrossed in his book. 

I couldn't help but shake my head. "Ready to go?" 

Langly instantly jerked his hand away from her leg.

"Where?" Thea bounced one knee in a very Mulderlike way.

"You need to see a doctor." Langly looked put out. 
We had been discussing it all morning, but Thea was 
pretending she had forgotten the morning's itinerary.

"Oh, please. I know all about pregnancy." She rolled her 
eyes and took on what I could only describe as a tutorial 
pose. She began signing as if by rote: "Pregnancy is not 
illness; as Praetorians you are designed to reproduce 
easily, with multiple births being the norm. The lab techs 
overseeing your particular project will issue your 
offspring both name and numerical designation after birth. 
Do not deviate from your assigned task."

Langly looked horrified, and turned a shade somewhat more 
pale than his usual. 

"Thea," I made sure I had eye contact with her before I 
signed, struggling to keep my exterior as calm as possible. 
"Human mothers tend to have more favorable outcomes when 
they receive medical care during pregnancy. We are going to 
take you to the doctor. Now. Do you have any other shoes?"

She looked down at Langly's spare Converse hi-tops. It 
figured that they wore the same size. If it weren't for 
her pregnancy, I speculated, their clothing would have been 
interchangeable. "It's either these or the flip-flops." 

Thea sauntered out ahead of us. I turned to Langly, trying 
not to scowl. It took everything I had to keep myself from 
launching into a full scale rant. I bit my tongue. 
Literally. "Was it worth it?"

Langly blinked as if he hadn't heard me correctly.

"It's not that she's young so much as she's almost feral." 
The words slipped out of my mouth, but I wasn't certain 
I regretted them. 

His eyes went wide. I didn't feel the least bit sorry after 
the shocks I'd been dealt in the preceding days. 

"Lets hope she doesn't get frightened and eat her young."

Langly started speaking just as I pulled the door shut 
behind me. 

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

This was the point in the story where I called Scully a 
bitch.

Not out loud. Not to her face. Dying would have defeated 
the 
purpose.

But I still called her a bitch.

"You think she's like an animal?"

"I didn't say that. I said feral. Lack of social 
interaction in early life usually results in a crippled 
ability to relate to one's fellow humans." She sighed.
"I don't know what kind of ability she'll have to be a 
mother to her child." 

Some kind of cold, wet gears turned in the pit of my 
stomach.  I didn't even figure into the possible future as 
Scully saw it. 


"I don't blame her Langly. She didn't ask for the life 
she's had, but the chances are bad, much less than average, 
she'll have the emotional resources to parent."  She sighed 
again, world weary, like she saw some inevitable future 
where Thea hared off into the great beyond and dumped our 
unborn children straight in Scully's lap. 

"What about me?" I asked. "I mean, I'm the father. Doesn't 
that count for something?"

"Parenting is a big job, Langly. I've known you a long time 
and you've never even had a house plant."

"Kinda like a certain former FBI agent." I tried not to 
sound snotty, but I couldn't help it. "Only, you know, I 
sleep in a bed." 

"I wasn't a teenager."

I shouldn't have said it, but I did. "No. You were a single 
chick in her mid-thirties who liked dead people better than 
live ones. Only thing missing was some cats."

Scully's face turned red.  It looked like I was gonna get 
my ass kicked. 

After a long pause, she swallowed. "I may well have been, 
as you say, 'a single chick in my mid-thirties,' but I was 
pregnant by choice.  My choice.  My children are not the 
unforeseen by-product of my desire to please someone else." 
She looked at me hard. "Someone who should have known 
better."

I opened my mouth, but I really don't know what I thought I 
was going to say.  I was so damned mad that my eyes 
started, 
well, getting wet. I wasn't about to cry; I was just 
pissed. 
As pissed as she was, at least.  

If I could have gotten it together enough to say something, 
I would have set her straight but when she looked at me 
again, her face sort of softened.

I'm not trying to be a doomsayer here, Ringo." 
She put her hand on my shoulder. "I'm just concerned. About 
all of you."

I held in. I'm pretty good at holding in. I am a Langly 
after all, and if there's one thing we know, it's how to 
hold in.  "You don't know her, Scully. You haven't even 
given her a chance."

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*


My first thought was to ask Scully if she'd ever seen an 
apple doll.

When I was a kid in Saltville, every year my class went on 
a field trip to see the Christmas On the Prairie exhibit at 
the Pioneer Museum. And every year there were these scary 
little dolls with dried, peeled apples for heads . Every 
year I saw those dolls and every year I thought about how 
far my sisters would kick my ass if they found a doll like 
that under the tree.

When Scully pointed out her doctor, Dr. Worthen, he looked 
just like one of those apple dolls, with cotton batting for 
hair and teeth made out of broken pieces of rice. Some one 
even made him tiny glasses with needle-nosed pliers and a 
strand of wire. I asked if he was safe before we came; it 
only occurred to me later to ask if he was competent.

'Cool out,' I tried to tell myself. 'Scully's a doctor. She 
wouldn't bring Thea to some quack.' 

I could feel it coming on. I tried not to fight it. That 
would only make it worse.

I closed my eyes, tried to imagine a far-off place. A 
peaceful glen. Water. The Arcade. Whatever. Trying to 
biofeedback yourself out of an oncoming asthma attack is 
practically a freaking Zen Buddhist Koan.

My last really cogent thought was that it was the memory of 
my sisters that actually triggered the attack.

Thea realized what was happening even before I did. I guess 
she knew my last inhaler was pretty much gone, too. Thea 
wrote down my doctor's usual treatment and got Worthen's 
nurse, then stayed by my side like somebody welded her 
there.

In the middle of all this I caught Scully signing, "Is he 
asthmatic?"

"No," Thea signed blandly, "the chipmunk in his ass just 
gnawed it's way to his small intestine and this is his 
natural response." 

Oh, ha ha.

"You have your father's sense of humor." Scully was prim as 
they walked me between them to the small treatment room. 
The two of them said more to each other, but I don't know 
what; Thea took my glasses and the nurse put the breathing 
machine mask over my face.

I was sitting there beside her, with my glasses in her hand 
and her other arm around my shoulders when I realized I'd 
been a traitor.

Scully's speech had hit on something somewhere and got me 
worrying. More specifically, it got me comparing Thea to my 
mom. Probably not entirely fair on my part.

My mom was a good mom pretty much down the line. She had 
kept seven kids clean, dressed, and fed. Thea was almost 
eighteen and she couldn't wash clothes worth a damn. She 
had the annoying habit of knocking things over and walking 
away. It was a cold day in hell when she put anything back 
where it came from. If given a choice, Thea would live on 
fried meat and milk. The only thing I had ever seen her 
cook was microwave popcorn. When all her clothes were dirty 
she kept wearing them until someone said something. Then 
she wore mine.

I had been thinking, when my breathing problems started, 
that maybe Scully was right, that maybe we were all doomed, 
and I continued on in that pleasant fucking vein until 
Doctor Apple Head walked in.

"If it isn't the lovely Mrs. Laura Levine." He kissed 
Scully's hand. "I hear you've been holding out on us."

She smiled weakly and he continued to smooth-talk her while 
he started examining me. "Here you had this stunning girl 
and you kept her away from us. Didn't give any of the local 
fellas a chance to steal her heart. Well, I can see my 
nurse knew just what to do with your son-in-law, as usual. 
I hear your girl was a big help, knew George's regular 
dosage and everything." He smiled in Thea's general 
direction. "I think she'll make a good little mama." 

Thea smiled back. Not her polite smile either - her big 
grin, the one that made her look like Scully.

I wondered how much she managed to lip read and how much as 
guess work. Lip reading is a lot harder than it looks on 
TV. Quick as she was, even then she only got about a third 
of what anyone said.

He was right, though. She did take care of me. She'd done 
it before. And then there was one time when Kimmy was being 
especially Kimmy and she punched him in the stomach on my 
behalf. She could care about people. She could bond. 

So she wasn't Mary Beth Langly. Big deal - I 'd do the 
laundry. And cook. But she was definitely pitching in with 
the diapers.

I thought about my mom. We only had about four 
conversations in my life . Over and over and .over.

"Ritchie, get out from under the table. I'm sure your 
sisters didn't mean it. You know how the twins are."

"Ritchie, did you brush your teeth? I'm so proud of how 
well you're doing in school. Could you help Eddie and/or 
Bobby with their shoes/home work/science projects? Don't 
forget your inhaler."

"Ritchie, I'm sorry Tom got the last piece of pie. You 
should have said something."

"Oh Richard, don't slouch. You're so handsome. I'm sure any 
girl would be lucky to have you. Are you sure you don't 
want to go to the hay ride/dance/homecoming/prom? There's 
still time to change your mind."

It wasn't her fault.

I was the fourth of seven. Sounds like a Borg designation 
when I put it that way, but until I left Nebraska, that was 
kind of how I saw my self. Not big and handsome and winning 
like Tom, good enough at his school work but great at 
everything else, and such a nice guy, you couldn't hate him 
for it. Not Julie and Carol, the twin 
Scarlet O'Hara-wannabes of the northern plains. Not 
Heather, their little pet. Not Bobby or Eddie, good solid 
guys, whose biggest aspirations involved becoming Dad.

I was the one hiding in the barn with a Theodore Sturgeon 
book. The one who didn't get married before turning 21. The 
only one who didn't live within an hour of the farm.

I think Mom told all the relatives I was a writer. Maybe 
because that's what I told her. My real life was too weird 
to try and explain. "See Mom, one day I was selling bootleg 
cable boxes, and the next I woke up naked and incoherent in 
a warehouse with three other guys - no, wait Mom, this 
isn't a dirty story. See, one of the guys was a federal 
agent, right, and we wound up starting a newspaper and 
working to uncover the truth about our governm-. .  Mom? 
Mom?? You still on the line?"

Anyway, she told everyone I was writer, and sent me a 
homemade quilt or a tin of fudge on alternating 
Christmases. Her heart gave out when she was 56. Even from 
Maryland, I could see it coming.

Thea was never going to be my mom, but she didn't need to 
be. And I sure wasn't going to use Dad as any kind of role 
model.

I leaned my head on her shoulder. My short hair still felt 
weird. See, all I needed was some prednisone and a 
breathing machine and I was okay.

"We fixed Daddy-to-be up for you. Let's see about that baby 
now." He pulled out his stethoscope intently.

Scully spoke up. "Thea's deaf, Dr. Worthen, like Daniel." 

Dr. Worthen's eyes glinted merrily. Up close, he was 
starting to look like a deflated Santa Claus. "Isn't that 
interesting? I think she got my meaning, though. Didn't 
you, Honey?"

"Should I get up in the stirrups now? " she signed at 
Scully. I think she wanted to get it over with.

"No. I think he'll do a general exam first," she answered. 
As if in afterthought, she asked, "Thea, have you ever had 
a pelvic exam before?"

"No," she answered, "but I know all about it."

Scully frowned as she signed back, "I bet you do." 

Thea seemed to hit it off with the doctor right away. He 
ran her through the gauntlet and she didn't give him any 
shit. Maybe the moon was in a good phase. 

I tried not to look too interested when she climbed up on 
the table. I finally gave up - my choices were look away or 
stare. I closed my eyes.

"Well, Sweetheart," he snapped off his rubber glove, "your 
cervix is nice and closed. Nothin's wrong, but I'd like to 
listen to the heart beat again."

"Why?" I pulled off the oxygen, trying not to wheeze too 
much.

"Hang on and breathe a minute more there, George. Your wife 
isn't in any danger. In fact, I'd say she's definitely one 
of the healthiest pregnant women I've ever seen. Good low 
blood pressure, nice reasonable sugar, no swelling in the 
extremities." He tried to keep a straight face as he said, 
"A man like you, with a healthy young wife, needs to learn 
to take it easy." 

I just breathed.

"I'm just having a little trouble-" he polished his 
stethoscope with the bottom of his white coat "-deciding 
whether there are two babies in there, or three. I would 
give her an ultra sound if my machine hadn't up and died a 
few years back."

I looked over at the machine.  Didn't look too complicated. 
"Do you know what's wrong with it?"

He looked confused. "It doesn't work. More than that, I 
can't tell you."

As nicely as I knew how, I said, "I'm pretty good with 
electronics. You think I could take a look at it?"

Sure, he told me, his nurse would lead the way.

It turned out to be one loose wire. A chimpanzee could have 
fixed it. I leaned against the wall and laughed, thinking 
about how that would crack Thea up.

Another fifteen minutes and we knew for sure. 

There were three. Three boys. Bigger and healthier than any 
child of mine had any business being. Three boys with a 
single placenta.

"Identical," Dr. Worthen and Scully agreed.

"Clones," Thea spelled into my hand in the dark.

The doctor held out a hand and helped Thea get off the exam 
table. "So how's Coach takin' all this, anyway?"

Why did Worthen have to give me something else to 
worry about?

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Before Martin and the kids got home from school, there were 
four computers, two toasters, and a sewing machine in my 
living room, all waiting to be fixed.

By morning, Langly and Thea had them all repaired and lined 
up on the front porch.

The next day Bud Collins called George and Martin in to the 
mayor's office and wound up putting George on retainer.

Their first request was have him install those spiffy 
ethanol engines in all three of Delphi's police cars.

George "Ringo" Froyers had just become the most sought 
after man in town.


*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

I'd been telling myself all along I wasn't going to be a 
dad like Hank Langly, but it didn't take too much time to 
figure out there wasn't much chance I was going to be a dad 
like Fox Mulder, either. 

I used to think Mulder was one of us. Okay, that's not 
right. I used to think if you took Byers, Hickey, and me, 
made us into one guy, added looks straight out of GQ, gave 
that guy old money and an Oxford education, that guy would 
be an awful lot like Fox Mulder. Nice as the idea was, 
living with him made me realize it wasn't true.

When I was growing up the only time my dad ever spoke to me 
was to tell me how I was fucking up again. Mulder, on the 
other hand, acted like he was auditioning for the part of 
'the dad' every minute he was with his kids. He would come  
home from work every day and spent an hour rolling around 
on the floor, kissing and hugging Daniel and Sylvie. Every 
couple of days, he'd stand on his head and let them shake 
all the change out of his pockets. They scrambled after 
quarters for the ice cream truck like somebody had busted 
open the cash pinata.

No way I was ever gonna live up to that.

I didn't know whether my dad was a better husband than a 
father or not. Whatever happened between my parents went on 
in private. I never saw them kiss. To tell the truth, if it 
weren't the for the little matter of them having seven 
kids, I would have sworn they were 'just friends'.

Back in the day, I could never quite figure Mulder and 
Scully out. I mean, I knew they liked each other; you could 
tell. But you could tell they were afraid of each other, 
too. Like they could never get too close or too far away. 

It wasn't like that when we got to Delphi. Mulder kissed 
her all the time, and not just, you know, on the face. He 
kissed her hands, her neck when he could get at it. One 
time I found him, bent over in the kitchen, kissing the 
soft part inside of her elbow. She just stood there 
shivering. 

Not only that, but he woke me up every night, giving it to 
Scully. Never took less than an hour. Wouldn't have been 
too bad if they were like regular people with, you know, a 
few muffled bumps and moans. I'd been woken up by Frohike 
and some waitress with more make-up than brains a few times 
over the years, and I always managed to go back to sleep. 
But no, Mulder couldn't screw with his wife without 
providing color commentary.

I had to lay there listening and feeling inadequate and 
holding a girl too damned pregnant to even think about 
putting any moves on.  

Girl was right. She seemed young to me, really young, for 
the first time since I'd known her. I understood why Mulder 
wanted to kick my ass. I decided to try to apologize. But 
what the fuck to say? 

That was going to take a while to think through. 
 
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

I was beginning to wonder when I had fallen in love with my 
husband.

It was not love at first sight, because, not unlike cold 
fusion, I had never heard a reliable report of the 
phenomena. Besides, the first time I saw Fox Mulder there 
was great deal of heat but precious little light. Did I 
learn to persevere because I loved him, or did I learn to 
love him because I persevered? 

I knew it was a pointless question, but I continued to wish 
I could isolate the moment of our true marriage, like 
trying to document the point where simmer turns to boil. 

For one thing, it might have helped me with Thea. When does 
a mother fall in love with her child?

I didn't know what to do for her. For long stretches, she 
seemed mature and more than competent, only to suddenly 
behave as though she had been raised by wolves. I suppose, 
at least metaphorically, that was the case. For example, in 
a rare impulsive moment, I bought her a pair of small hoop 
earrings similar to the ones Sylvie usually wore. She was 
so thrilled that she pushed them through her un-pierced 
ears without so much as flinching.

I had the same feelings for Thea that I had for her brother 
and sister, which was strange, but not inexplicable. The 
visceral tug of motherhood was undeniable, but I had no 
background to frame it - no warm memory of her infant body 
between Mulder and me on the bed, no first tooth, no colic, 
no first steps or skinned knees, no first day of school. No 
nothing. And it seemed unreal that soon she'd be a mother 
herself.

She was more than eager to please me, but what really left 
me impressed was the way she treated Daniel and Sylvie. She 
had no aversion to modifying remote control cars or playing 
Barbies for hours on end. She explained the efficacy of 
good penmanship to her irritable little brother. Daniel 
admired her obvious intelligence and tales of hard labor, 
which, for some reason always fascinated him. Sylvie loved 
her humor and sense of adventure. Together, they gave the 
Barbies haircuts. "The old hair was impractical," Thea 
explained, while one Barbie versed the others on their plan 
to "Bring down The Man."

She read the infant development books I gave her, but 
all her questions were about love. She seemed to want 
something from me, some wisdom I wasn't sure I had.

I wasn't sure if she was being a typical 17, 18 year old or 
simply her father's daughter. She thought the sun rose and 
set on odd, ungainly Ringo Langly. 

Langly, for his part, followed her around and picked up the 
constant stream of things she dropped and discarded. He put 
his arm around her every time she stopped moving.

She gave me any information I asked for and some that I 
didn't. She told me wished she could speak so she could say 
his name.  She said Gibson and Langly were the only friends 
she had ever had. The other Gunmen were different she said. 
Like teachers, only smart. Or like techs, who actually 
cared. They might nag but it was a nice nagging. She would 
have compared them to parents, I think, if she'd had the 
experience to draw the connection. The closest thing to a 
mother she had ever had was John Byers.  

What did it say that I still felt inadequate?

After two days with them, I knew that whatever else Langly 
had done to, for, or with her, parenting wasn't on the 
list. She evidenced the uncanny ability to make him blush 
deep scarlet. One day she told me his cunnimanualis was 
far superior to his cunnilingus. "But," she added 
brightly, "it's so nice to kiss his face afterwards."

I had no idea what the appropriate response to this 
information might be. 

I was very close to being grateful, by then, that it was 
Langly we were talking about, and not someone with more 
guile and self-interest. Truth be known, I didn't think 
Langly knew how to betray; strip him of his sarcasm and 
braggadocio and he was a nice, shy Lutheran boy from a 
dairy farm. He seemed so unguarded with her, almost 
defenseless, the protective egotism I associated so closely 
with him, palpably lacking where Thea was involved.  

A nice boy, that is, but still old enough to be her father.

Ironically, although I was slightly older than the farm 
boy in question, I didn't feel old enough to be Thea's 
mother. When she was conceived in May of 1989 I was still 
listening to Jack Willis tell 'Spooky' jokes. In 1994, 
mere weeks after she was released from her tank and the 
wires feeding information to her developing brain were 
removed, I was abducted. The year she was paired with 
Gibson Praise, I was battling cancer. Had I been there, 
I doubt I would have made a very good mother.

Looking at her wide eyes and chubby cheeks, I couldn't stop 
myself from thinking about Emily. I couldn't bring myself to 
talk about her either. Not with my husband. Certainly not 
with Thea. 

Thea and Ringo would take walks around town in the evening, 
shoulder to shoulder. One night they were coming up the 
walk when I saw Langly run back a few houses while Thea 
stared at him with knitted brow. He trotted up to her, a 
something in hand, and passed it to her with the sort of 
flourish Mulder reserved for flowers and buckets of ice 
cream.

The only sign I could make out was 'feldspar'.

Our daughter blushed and glowed in turns. 

Those two were truly odd.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Ten days in to their stay, Martin and I were getting used 
to their presence. I had, for example, come to accept the 
fact that all life stopped for Star Trek, and Thea wouldn't 
eat anything she couldn't conceivably put hot sauce on.

And every night in the room next door Langly sang to her 
until he dropped off to sleep. It was something of a relief 
to know definitively that I did not have the worst singing 
voice in the world. It was less of a relief to be in the 
room next door to it at bed time waiting for it to drop off 
into a snore so I could have sex with my husband.

On the other hand, we were getting fairly adept at Name 
That Tune. 

"I think he's trying to drive us over the edge," Marty 
whispered one night not too long after they'd come to stay. 

"He has no idea we can hear him," I whispered back.

"Do tell, Mrs. Levine," he said leering and making what I'm 
sure he thought was a subtly suggestive motion with his red 
pen.

"Think about it. I would be willing to bet he has 
significant hearing loss from twenty years of concerts and 
loud music. I know for a fact he's had tinnitus since the 
mid-nineties. They're a good match."  I looked over at him.  
He had a stack of essays on 'A Farewell to Arms' on his  
bare chest and I wished Langly would drop off to sleep 
already. "Too bad we don't have railroad tracks in town for 
them to buy a house next to."

"She's a child, Laura. Scully. A baby. Maybe that's why she 
gets a lullaby." His light mood turning sarcastic for a 
minute.

"She's nearly eighteen.  During many periods in history, 
women were married by twelve or thirteen and, not 
infrequently, to men significantly older than themselves."

Honestly, my feelings on their relationship were more 
ambiguous than accepting, but as usual, my husband's 
outright disapproval pushed me into the opposing camp. 

"Somehow it doesn't make me feel better that Lucrezia 
Borgia was on her third husband at Thea's age." He stared 
down At the paper in front of him and gave Adonis Foster a 
large red C+.

"Thea could fight off a bear if she had to." I suspected 
that perhaps she already had at some point.

"The girls in my Junior English class would rip her to 
shreds." He gave Takeitha Wayne a B-, and I wondered 
briefly what the difference was.

"A shape-shifting alien wouldn't have a chance against 
those girls. Besides, I think she'd do better than Langly," 
I told him. 

He raised his eyebrow. "Do I even have to say it?"

I finally came out and asked, "Do you honestly think he's a 
pedophile?" 

"No!" He scowled, perturbed by the very suggestion.

"Well, what I am attempting to point out to you is that it 
looks to me like they have a remarkably equal relationship. 
He's not a father-figure to her; he's not using her. 
Honestly, they seem equally mature to me. Well, equally 
immature. Besides, I, well, I think they're in love." I 
wanted to laugh at myself for feeling so sentimental.

He looked skeptical as he put the papers on the floor 
beside the fold-out we'd been sleeping on lately. "Yeah?"

I looked at him out of the corner of my eye. "You trusted 
him before, right?" 

He adjusted his pillow. "He never impregnated my daughter 
before." 

"Mart- Mulder, how many times has Langly come through for 
you? He's helped the both of us, right? Because he was your 
friend and because you were working for the same things - 
democracy, truth. . ."

"God, mom, apple pie, and cable TV," my husband, the 
eternal smart-ass, broke in. "Yeah. I trusted him."

"Then trust him now."

He changed the subject. "Is he singing 'Good Night Irene'? 
That is so many kinds of wrong." He worked at distracting 
me running his finger in circles around my pajama buttons.

"At least it's not Motorhead night," I whispered and Martin 
shuddered, snuggling closer

Martin's face took of an expression that was both puzzled 
and pained. "What 'is' that song?" He delayed my attempt at 
answering by tracing the shape of my arm, then my hand, 
with his pinky. He lingered in the crook beside my wedding 
ring.

I closed my eyes and listened. His warm hand was more than 
pleasant. "I think that's 'Coup d'etat' by the Circle 
Jerks. Early eighties."

He peered at me over the top of his glasses. "Why does it 
bother me that you know that?"

Something caused me to return to our original topic. "You 
realize Thea's older than Hawaii Stidham don't you ?"

The look on his face told me it had never occurred to him, 
but after he drew his hand back, he was quick to recover. 
"William Boyd Stidham III never spent three weeks playing a 
computer game."

"William Boyd Stidham III," I countered, "couldn't hack 
into any financial institution in this country."

"Or the D.o.D. Or Monsanto." He rolled his eyes and made a 
gesture reminiscent of male masturbation.

"William Boyd Stidham III couldn't build an ethanol engine 
if his life depended on it," I replied.

"You know those videos that weren't mine? Well, I never 
watched one with William Boyd Stidham III." He pursed his 
lips then added, "And as far as I know, Junior Stidham 
never jerked off over a character in a video game."

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

End 04/07





*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

One morning, Gregor Samsa awoke to discover that, instead 
of a dung beetle, he had been transformed into Ringo 
Langly's father-in-law.

No, wait, that was Fox Mulder, right?  Or was it Marty?

Good old Marty Levine. Life as a dung beetle would have 
been easier to get my head around. I had a son-in-law. And 
that son-in-law was Richard "UberGeek " Langly.  So far, he 
and I had spent a lot of time with our hands in our 
pockets, just staring at each other.

It would have been whiny on my part to complain; it really 
would have been. I had spent more than a week at a time at 
the Gunmen's in my time,  for no better reason than I was 
bored and miserable and I had no one to go home to. The 
guys nurse-maided me through my divorce. They were closer 
to me than anyone but Scully in my old life. I had imposed 
on them far more frequently and with far less than reason 
than Langly was doing now. He was entitled. Thea was 
entitled. I was an asshole.

I saw how Scully loved her. Thea should have been ours from 
the beginning. She should have been able to carry her in 
her body, braid her hair, teach her to chew with her mouth 
closed. She should have been my little girl, like Sylvie. I 
should have been there to kick Langly's ass the first time 
he looked at her sideways.

It was a personal failing that I wanted to sleep in my own 
bed, I guess. According to my wife, making a pregnant woman 
sleep on the fold-out in the office was a violation of 
human rights that would land us on a Amnesty International 
hit list somewhere. If I was a better person, I wouldn't 
mind waiting in line for the bathroom, or sitting on wire 
cutters repeatedly, or coming home to find extra locks on 
the door, or that Langly had eaten up all the cereal. It 
was hard, too, with six people in a three bedroom house. I 
was constantly trying not to accidentally bump into Thea.

I couldn't get over being afraid it would be like Betty 
Roguebull all over again, afraid I would brush against Thea 
and lose every damned thing I had. So many people could 
really get hurt. The very idea was a very special fucking 
family nightmare. 

No two ways around it - they had to get out of the house. 
The sooner, the better. But how the fuck to say it?

Then it happened. 

Langly was coming out of the shower. I was trying to answer 
the phone and Thea was in the way. Our arms brushed. Skin 
to skin contact.

Inside her head was like nothing I ever imagined. The way 
she thought was utterly alien. I never imagined, for 
example, a thought-process centered around printed word 
rather than speech . It was fascinating - printed words 
flew everywhere, floated through a way of thinking that was 
both verbal and visual.

And what was she thinking about?

Langly, of course. 

A picture of him burned itself behind my eyes, milk pale 
skin on dark purple sheets.  Skin that, unlike Scully's, 
had no discernable pink to it. His colorless hair ran in a 
braid down his back. Thea reached her hands out and undid 
the single plait, sifting it through her fingers. His lips 
were moving as she brushed her cheek against his jaw. She 
loved his beard stubble, the way the texture contrasted 
with his soft face. Her hands slipped to his shoulders, her 
face to his chest. She loved his smooth, smooth skin. pink 
nipples, white eye lashes, the eyes I'd always thought were 
light blue, but which I now saw were a dark slate grey.

She had a shocking urge that passed quickly. He took her 
head in his hands and pulled her face to his. Instead of 
kissing, he. . .it was strange, he nuzzled her, I guess 
you'd call it. He rubbed her nose with his. Their faces 
glided over each other again and again, cheekbone over 
cheekbone, brow against brow. It was surprising to feel 
comfort like that without any hurt to go with it, and not 
nearly as bland as I would have imagined.   

Then things started to get surreal. She reached over to the 
milk crates stacked beside bed -  that had to be Langly's 
old room at Gunmen HQ - and grabbed a permanent marker. It 
was shining wet black and he started to giggle without 
sound as she wrote on his body. Ordinary words became 
erotic on his skin, the dark edges crisp and meaningful on 
their papery background. Linger. Found. Surprise. Shining. 
Drink. Pour. Spark. Warm. Burn. Glow. Breathe. Lift. Glide. 
Fall. Catch. The words ran around his legs and torso like 
streamers, until she took his left hand in hers, pressing 
her lips to his wrist to feel the rabbity rhythm of his 
pulse, and carefully wrote two words along the inside of 
his arm.      

El Brujo.     

I don't speak Spanish but I wouldn't be Fox Mulder if I 
didn't know what those words meant.

The Sorcerer.

I felt the blood rush to my groin as Thea pulled away.

It had taken a second, probably less than that, really.  It 
was the most tawdry feeling I'd had in my life, and not in 
a good way. I had gotten an erection for another man, for 
Langly, for fuck's sake. A Ringo Langly I'd never seen 
before who bore only a passing resemblance to the one I'd 
known for years.

He might have looked the same but he wasn't the same at 
all. He was sexy.

I'd have given anything to take that moment back and tuck 
in my elbow.

It took a few weird moments on the phone to shake the 
resonating desire. The day I had the urge to kiss Langly 
would live forever in ignominy. If I explained it to Laura, 
maybe she'd do me a favor and shoot me in the head. It 
wasn't just lust I felt; that was the problem. There were a 
few minutes of solid adoration in there. 

My god - he was beautiful to her.

Thea looked at me disdainfully, as though I had done it 
intentionally.  

"Why did you do that?" she signed. 

"Purely accidental," I gestured back at her. "And trust me, 
I could have lived the rest of my life in utter contentment 
without seeing that."

"Please!" She rolled her eyes. "That was gross. You are 
disgusting. A disgusting dirty old man!" Then she squinted 
at me, Scully-like. If she had spoken, she'd have said  
"Eeeeewwwwwww!"

"I hope someday your children talk like this to you," was 
the best curse I could give her.

At least I knew, once and for all, she didn't have a hidden 
agenda.


*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*


He meant well, but "Man I'm sorry" wasn't going to cut it.

"Dammit Langly, you think she's just some girl? Some kid 
Scully and I had and never knew about. Think! Why would 
they design her?" I hadn't intended to, but somehow I had 
backed him up against the wall.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"You really don't know? What do you think they were making 
in those labs at Zeus Genetics? Girl Scout Cookies?"

He froze. "Uhhh, well, she's really smart. They made her 
smart."

"Yes, she's smart. Hell, we're all smart. Even you are 
smart." I didn't mean to make it insulting, but it sounded 
that way. 

Disgusted, I fell back and took a seat on the edge of the 
coffee table. "But they didn't make her smart; they made 
her, period. Langly, from what we've been told, been able 
to figure out, they made me. They made Scully. I know you 
don't hear this very often, but you're the most normal 
person in this house."

Langly swallowed hard, but said nothing. 

"That's why we had to go, why we had to get out of the 
whole mess. It was the only way I could think of  to, I 
don't know what I was trying to do, exactly. Be free, 
maybe." I ran my hands over my head and Langly stepped up 
close.

"Frohike knows, doesn't he?"

"He knows everything I do," I sighed. "But most of what I 
know is conjecture and second hand."

"Tell me." Coming from him, it was almost pleading.

"Thea probably could tell you more." I rubbed my hands 
together nervously.

He looked down at his feet. "She wouldn't tell me anything 
that would upset me." 

"Oh." I nodded. Made sense, really.  She was protective; 
she was born to be protective. "Okay. Okay, yeah. Want a 
beer?"

Four beers later,  neither of us had said a word. We'd both 
peeled all the paper off our empty bottles, though. I had 
to tell him what she was. What I was. What he'd gotten 
caught up with on a cellular level, as it were. 

It took another two beers apiece to be able to even 
consider saying any of it. 

"I'm afraid, the longer you're here, the more likely it is 
that, um, that I'll want to um, sleep with her."

Langly clenched his jaw and held his bottle close his 
chest.

"That's - that's why I don't touch her," I blurted. "The 
Praetorians - that's what they call us, me and Thea, the 
others like us, - we're designed that way.  Designed to 
want to breed."

He squinted at me. "What?" 

"It happened before. One time. In Oklahoma. I asked you 
guys to run some DNA on a woman, Betty Roguebull. I touched 
her and, um, and I wanted her.  I mean, we almost, we 
damned near, the two of us, me and Betty, we - we nearly 
raped Scully."  I drew my knees up to my chest. 

"Holy shit," Langly breathed.  

"Yeah, um, skin to skin contact is the trigger."

He blinked at me.  I could see the gears turning behind the 
thick lenses. "It's a tool to accelerate the evolution of 
the product line, isn't it?" 

"That's my best guess." 

"Pretty smart if you got the stomach for incest." He slid 
lower on the couch. "But I guess, considering that we've 
discovered so many of the Project guys were old Nazi 
doctors, I suppose there's not a lot they didn't have the 
stomach for." 

I nodded. Our feet were lined up side by side on the coffee 
table. I looked at his beat-up tennis shoes.

He looked up at me again. "Jesus. All that time, 'you' were 
the proof you were looking for."

"Yup." I rolled the bottle in my hands. "But who would I 
show me to? The world has seen me, Langly, and it was not 
impressed."

He was quiet a moment. "What else is there? I mean, what 
modifications?" 

"All the systems are kicked-up -- immune, reproductive, 
adrenal. Brain, too. They did a lot to the brain, actually 
- eidetic memory, increased synaptic connection. And 
emotionally, too, we're, um. . ." I  trailed off. I 
wondered if he could even hear it.

"What do you mean?"

"We were made. . .we were designed to protect the 
consortium's genetic stock."

"Some kind of SuperCop?" He sounded impressed.

That was so funny, I had to laugh. "More like some kind of 
SuperSheepDog. You know, there are some sheep farmers that 
take a large breed puppy before it's eyes are open and they 
feed it sheep's milk and they keep it with the sheep so it 
bonds. Then they have a dog that will fight to the death to 
protect the flock. We were made to bond with the flock. Or 
at least, one particular member of the flock." I looked at 
him for a comment and got none.

"You ever wonder-" I had to clear my throat before 
continuing. "I mean, did it ever seem strange that I looked 
for my sister for so long? Other boys loose their sisters 
and they don't spend the rest of their lives beating their 
chests about it."

"I guess I just figured you were close." He sounded 
tentative.

"We were, but other boys go on with their lives. They grow 
up, get married. I tried, but I couldn't do it. When they 
assigned Scully to be my partner, she took Sam's place. Not 
as a sister," I couldn't stop the sad grin that crossed my 
face for a moment, "but there was a bond, from the very 
beginning, with Scully that was completely different from 
anything else in my life. The evidence suggests They 
intended it to happen that way."

He nodded. "So, Thea and Gibson?" he asked

". . .were not just Hansel and Gretel holding hands in the 
Consortium forest. She was assigned to keep him alive, and 
I'm still not sure how or why, but she failed. It's her 
basic programming - mine too, for that matter -  to protect 
the flock, even if it is a flock of one.  Honestly, Langly, 
if he hadn't told her, you know, 'ordered' her, to go find 
you guys, she probably would have ...well, she wouldn't 
have lasted too long. We're like that." I chuckled. 
"Without a greater purpose, we tend to become even more 
endearingly reckless."

"So you're saying what? That you think I'm her 'purpose'?" 
His voice was flat and quiet.

I nodded. That was about the size of it. Huge as it was.

He sniffed. "So, she doesn't love me? I just flipped the 
right switches, triggered the right circuits? Figures."  
I'd had this same conversation, or a variation that was 
more of an argument, with Scully about a million times. 
We'd debated it to death. The answer I came up with always 
the same. 

"I love Scully. She and I, we were made for each other."

"Really, truly made for each other." He sneered. 

I tried not to take the sneer personally, but I was getting 
frustrated, probably because I couldn't help imagining 
Langly heading right out the door and not coming back. Not, 
come to think of it, unlike I had pictured Scully doing 
over and over.

Luckily, the cavalry came charging to the rescue drying her 
hands on a dish towel. "Do you love Thea, Langly?"

He nodded, frowning. "I didn't chase her across the country 
to get my jacket back," he answered, and sniffed again. I 
couldn't tell if he was holding off tears or a sneezing 
fit.

"Did you decide to feel that way?" 

Langly sniffed. "Well, I-" 

"No," Scully answered for him, "you saw that she was an 
available female in her breeding years, with bright eyes, 
clear skin, thick hair, and a number of other indicators of 
good health. Her personal loyalty to you indicated to the 
primitive part of your brain that she'd be an attentive 
mother. I'm willing to guess she made some sort of initial 
advance, and it all fell into place." 

"But I-" 

Scully plowed on. "Mammals evolved the nurturing instinct 
to improve the survival rate of increasingly helpless 
young. All the evidence suggests that humans evolved the 
pair bond for the same reason. Love isn't fire from the 
gods; it's simple biochemistry and evolution in action." 
She turned her focus on me. "For all of us. For everyone."

I couldn't help giving my usual response to her usual 
lecture. "Tish! I love it when you speak gobbledegook!"

She glared at me like she wanted to mount my head on a 
pole. Then she swooped down and kissed me, like maybe she 
had other plans for me.  

When I looked up, Langly had gone to bed.


*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*


I pushed my way through the bedroom door to find Thea 
looking really, really hot, all of the sudden.

I tried to shake the buzz in my ears. I was a lot more 
wasted than I meant to get, I guess, because I couldn't 
remember what I wanted to say to Thea.

For the first time since I 'd found Thea again, I looked at 
her pregnant body and I wasn't uncomfortable. I was turned 
on. I did that, I thought to myself. Me. Not some jerk in a 
lab.

Wasn't there something I wanted to ask her?

The cotton panties I bought her somewhere in Colorado must 
have shrunk or something because that night, they were so 
tight that they made a perfect white triangle on her ass. 
The MDC shirt I wore the entire time I was hitchhiking 
didn't even cover a third of her stomach. Her belly button 
was wrong side out. I turned my head to look at it.

She was staring at me.

Oh, I remembered the question.

"Do you love me?" I asked, trying not to weave.

She looked concerned, but Mulder 'let me get you a pillow' 
concerned, not Scully 'order a spinal tap' concerned. 
"Langly, you're drunk," she signed at last.

"Don't call me that The." I accidentally left off her 'a' 
as I signed. "I don't wanna be like them." I pointed over 
my shoulder at the living room. "Call me Ritchie."

"Fine. I love you, Ritchie," she signed my name with 
exaggeration. "Now come to bed."

"Do you? Or am I just a substitute? Second best?" The 
buzzing in my ears was getting really loud.

"For who?  For G?" That was the closest she ever came to 
spelling out his name.

I nodded, but it wasn't a good move. 

Her eyes narrowed. "This jealous thing doesn't look good on 
you, R.I.T.C.H.I.E."

"Do you - did you ever think about him when you were with 
me?" 

She blinked at me. "Did I ever wish I sucked him off like I 
do you? Like I 'did' you I mean, because you won't let me 
anymore? Is that what you want to know?" 

Man, I felt dizzy. "Yeah. Did you? Do you?" 

"He was a sick boy with no one else in the world but me," 
she signed as if that settled it.

I shrugged and spread out my arms. "Small world. But I 
think you need to answer the question."

She pulled herself until she was sitting up in Mulder and 
Scully's bed. I had clearly pissed her off.

"I loved him, but it was different than this. I never 
thought about," she shook her head "even kissing him. I 
never wanted him this way." She rubbed her stomach. "I 
think he saw so much of it in people's heads all the time 
it disgusted him. When he got older, and he didn't feel too 
bad, I think, I think he hated those feelings when he had 
them." Her fingers stumbled.

"If you could trade me for him, would ya?"

"No!" she signed. "No." She seemed guilty. 

"So, you love me?"

"Yes," she signed. "I love you and your skinny white ass, 
too, and your green nylon wallet and your ugly glasses. I 
especially love your green nylon wallet. Now, get in bed."

I forgot to worry about love for a minute. "You think my 
glasses are ugly? You know, I'm not pathetic. I mean, I 
don't look like Mulder but I'm...I'm...My kung fu is the 
best."

"You're a genius, Ringo," she signed seriously.

"Yeah. Yeah, I am. So don't feel sorry for me." I warned 
her.

But she grabbed me by the collar and started kissing me. It 
started kind of rough, the way she could be sometimes, but 
it turned into one of those long, slow her-tongue-in-my-
mouth-then-up-the-side-of-my-jaw kind of things. By the 
time her lips were on my ear, I was putty in her hands. 

Well, maybe not putty. Putty was definitely the wrong 
analogy.

I had joined the ranks of the pussy-whipped. 

It probably happened the first time I went to bed with her. 
But that night, that was the first time I noticed. And it 
wasn't so bad. I was starting to think the only guys who 
said that were guys who weren't getting any.

Then I fell off the edge of the bed. Of course, her 
sympathy was truly touching. She laughed at me.

From where I was sitting, even her hand and the top of her 
head looked pretty. It was lighter than I was used to her 
being. After I climbed back onto the other side of the bed, 
I wanted to touch it.

Her hair was like Scully said. There was a ton of it, but 
thin and shiny, as soft as, as, I dunno, feathers. It 
seemed like there was so much about her I had never 
noticed. She needed studying. 

I inhaled. Okay, I knew her smell. I kind of knew it at 
first from sitting next to her when I was trying to teach 
her stuff. Then the first time she jumped me and started 
tickling. I didn't even realize I remembered it. She 
smelled like a rabbit.

I kissed the little soft place behind her ear. On second 
thought, it was rabbit and something else. I could suck 
down that smell all day. My fingers ran over her thigh but 
stopped on the edge of her panties.

The inside of my head sounded like a blender. She wobbled 
and took her panties mostly off. They were still on one 
knee. Hint, hint. Real subtle. 

I tried to concentrate on the skin on the inside of her 
thigh, but I wanted to screw her before she even took her 
panties off.

No way. No way. I couldn't fuck her this big. I shouldn't 
have even been doing this much. And god, in Mulder's house. 
In his bed. It was wrong wrong wrong but I was drunk drunk 
drunk.

I brushed four finger tips in between her lips. It didn't 
count if there was no penetration, right?

I tried to crawl in between her legs but I hit my nose on 
her stomach.

It hit back.

That was really funny for a minute.

I hadn't done this too much. I pressed my face into her 
thigh. I held my hands over my head and signed. "Oh Hell. 
I'm lame in bed. I'm sorry."

She sat up and rubbed my head. I couldn't look at her. She 
took my hand and started spelling into my palm with her 
finger.

I LIKE WHAT YOU DO.

I spelled back with my free hand without looking up  WHAT 
DO YOU KNOW? YOU'RE A VIRGIN.  WERE, I MEAN. YOU DON'T HAVE 
A LOT TO COMPARE ME TO.

Instead of arguing, she took my hand and put it right on 
her clit. 

It was a really simple premise. I ground down. She 
shuddered. I sighed and did it again. One, two, three, four 
times. She lifted her hips and I pushed harder with the 
heel of my hand. The smell was floating up from her, like 
hot baked goods. My whole head was filled with the smell of 
rabbits. 

She signed at me but all groggy. "Glasses - hand them 
over."

"I'm drunk," I answered. "I need to see what I'm doing." I 
ducked my head and kissed her clit. I knew it was probably 
wrong, but it was what I wanted to do. I was bad in bed. 
I'd show her just how bad I was. I'd do what seemed right 
and she'd see.

I swallowed my fear and started to suck. I sucked on her 
clit. I tasted it and felt the shape of it in my mouth. 
Between my sweat and the fog on the inside and her, uumm, 
whatever on the outside, I couldn't see a thing out of my 
glasses except smear and a couple of pubic hairs, but I 
didn't stop. She pushed up against me, shaking, and I kept 
going. In a minute, she did it again. 

Maybe it wasn't wrong, after all. It looked like I made her 
come twice. Cool. Maybe if I didn't stop I could do it 
again. I paid close attention to the pressure of my tongue 
as she shook some more. My face was all wet. I slipped two 
fingers up inside her and licked with big broad strokes, 
like a dog. I licked her like a dog. She seemed to like it. 
She kept coming, anyway. Five times altogether, I think, 
before she kicked me off her.

Okay, maybe she didn't exactly kick me off of her. More 
like she was trying to wiggle away and accidentally kneed 
me in the chest. 

"Owwwwwww!" I yelled before I signed, in shock, "That 
hurt!"

She moved over to me faster than I thought she could, 
stripped my shirt off, and started checking me for broken 
ribs. "Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry," she signed.

"Ow. You're hurting me. Take it easy."

"You're okay?" She squinted at me.

"Yeah."

"You swear?"

"On the grave of Joey Ramone. Now lay down and let me hold 
you." I signed and put my useless glasses on the night 
stand.

She was huge. If she went all the way to nine months, we 
were gonna have to use a winch to get her off the couch. 
She'd have to give birth in the house because we weren't 
going to be able to get her through the door. And she was 
giving me serious wood.

I couldn't just hope she wouldn't notice; it was like 
hoping Frohike wouldn't steal one of your fries.

Her hand went straight to my hard-on.

"Let me," she signed.

"I'm drunk and I need to sleep."

"I could sit on the floor, you could sit on the bed," she 
signed, and licked her top lip. "I'll show you what a deaf 
girl can do with her mouth."

"I know what you can do with your mouth. I just want to 
hold you like this tonight, okay?"

Thea frowned and closed her eyes. I put my arm around her 
and waited for the hard-on to die down. I wanted to go to 
sleep, too, so I could wake up and feel awful and get the 
whole thing over with.

But she was staring at me. Her breath smelled like milk. 
Her eyes were a bright, strange green, like leaves. 
Underneath the brown, her cheeks were flushed pink.

She had legs. I mean, I knew she had legs. But they were 
chick legs - long, muscular chick legs. I looked at her 
face. If she wore make-up, she might not look creepy. She 
might just look like a regular girl. Her little tits were 
changing, too, were bigger, heavier. It occurred to me I 
had married a chick and didn't even notice.

That didn't sound right. 

My dick was so hard it hurt. It was not going away. 

Screw it. I'd go jerk off in the bathroom. 

I threw back the blanket and got out of the bed.

"What are you doing?" Thea stared at me. 

I was pissed off, suddenly, but I wasn't sure why. "Going 
to the bathroom." 

"To?" she signed, then shrugged and pumped her fist up and 
down.

I nodded. "I thought if I waited it would go away, but you 
keep making it worse."

She reached up and stroked my stomach, then slipped half 
her hand down into the front of my jeans. "Can I help?"

"Uhm, no thanks. Just let me go take care of..."

"Can I watch?" I think she was leering. 

I felt less drunk, but incredibly tired. "I really want to 
get it over with, okay?"

I went in the master bath and closed the door. At least, I 
mostly closed the door. I didn't slam it because I didn't 
want her to think I was mad or anything. 

I stood in front of the bathroom mirror. Washed my glasses 
and dried them on a towel so they were all linty. The ache 
had traveled from my balls up to the pit of my stomach. I 
felt nauseous. I turned my back on the mirror and unzipped 
my jeans.

Ten minutes later, I hadn't gotten very far. I was still 
hard and in pain. One thing had changed, though; I was 
feeling desperate. I couldn't figure out what to picture. I 
mean, it would have been disloyal to jerk off to some Laura 
Croft fantasy with Thea in the other room, right? And I'd 
never been turned on a by a pregnant chick in my life, so 
thinking about Thea was weird, too, even though I couldn't 
stop myself. 

I shut my eyes and tried to picture her looking, um, 
normal. I tried to think about the time she convinced me to 
do it in alley behind the headquarters. Up against the wall 
in the surveillance camera's blind spot. It was stupid and 
scary and really, really hot. I had thought my heart was 
going to explode the whole rest of the day. 

But I kept getting flashes of her on the bed - with a black 
t-shirt not covering her belly. When I tried to picture her 
the way she really was, I was kind of distracted by the 
fact that she was about ten feet away.

I tried to open the door, but she was standing on the other 
side. Who'd have thought a deaf girl the size of a 
Winnebago could sneak like that?

Man, how could I have been mad at her? None of this was her 
fault.

"Lord Manhammer retired to his chamber, only to be greeted 
by the lusty sorceress, Ygrain," she signed and waggled her 
eye brows. 

It made me smile. The couple of times we'd played this way 
it had been fun. "Hey, babe, wanna polish my sword?" I 
signed and she made a little laugh snort.

Before she could answer me, I grabbed her hands and wrapped 
them around my dick. That must have been just what I needed 
all along, because I came pretty fast.


*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

There were some things I knew were true.

I knew my mother was a liar. I knew my mother wasn't my 
mother at all. I didn't think my father was really my 
father, either, but I wasn't one hundred percent on that 
one. I did have eyes, though. There was no way the two of 
them could have made me together. My father had brown hair, 
green eyes, and peach-colored skin. My mother was white. 
White skin, white hair - her only color was some pale blue 
in the center of her eyes.

I have black hair. Curls. My skin is light brown. My eyes 
change color.

Even if I never talked about it, I remembered. I remembered 
a time when she wasn't my mother. I remembered sleeping in 
a bed between a woman with long black hair and dark skin, 
and a man with curly blonde hair. I remembered that man 
flying me like an airplane, like you saw dads do sometimes. 
I remembered playing with a badge and that there was a gun 
in the house. Maybe my dad before was a cop. The woman had 
a messy office with a chalk board. She looked Mexican or 
Hawaiian, I think.  

Sometimes, if I tried hard, I remembered a funeral. And 
another man, a bald man, with the dark haired woman. 

But I might have been making that up. Maybe I saw it on TV. 
I'm not sure.

There were some things I knew were lies. My mother said the 
dead body with only one arm dumped in the front yard wasn't 
Dad. She also said it wasn't full of worms and it didn't 
smell that bad.

She said I was becoming a man, but as near as I could 
guess, I was twelve. That didn't sound much like a man to 
me. I didn't know why she said it. I thought it meant she 
wanted me to drive or something.

I didn't think my name was really Alex Krycek Jr. either. 
The one I remembered from before sounded like GHEE. But 
maybe I was making that up, too. 

She seemed crazy right then. Or maybe she was crazy when 
she was at home yelling at Mrs. Gresham about some thing 
wasn't dusted right, or because the windows were streaky, 
and she was really only normal at times like this, 
surrounded by guns and medical equipment.  

It was scary though, her being so quiet and watching, paying 
close attention to everything. Paying attention to me. Like 
she was looking at me and seeing him. Even if she was not my 
mom, she shouldn't have stared like that.

Then one day in the car She called me Alex. She said this was 
going to be a fun trip. 

Even then I knew some things were lies. I wished I was 
home. I wondered, if I made a run for it at the next gas 
station, could I make it back home to Martha's Vineyard?

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

The two months that followed HairBoy's departure were 
strange. Byers and I, we tried not to think about it too 
much, but if you live with a guy for over a decade, it's 
hard not to have a little twinge when he up and takes off. 
It's human nature.

Then, one day we were sitting there, not talking about 
Langly, not looking at his empty chair, when who should 
arrive at our front door but the artist sometimes known as 
Yves Adele Harlow. She looked up and into the surveillance 
camera. "Frohike, let me in."

I flipped the switch and gave her her answer. "Not by the 
hair of my chinny-chin-chin."

She tapped her foot, looking very bored. "If you're trying 
to get me to threaten to blow your house down, give it up 
now."
 
"Can't fault a guy for trying, beautiful. Come on in," and 
I went to unlock the locks.

About half way through the opening procedure, she yelled 
through the door, "It's the human mushroom I really need to 
talk to." 

I couldn't help but look at Byers behind me.

As the door swung wide, she pushed her way through and 
started turning on her heel. "Where is he? Don't tell me 
he's finally left the house? Is he still in bed?" 

"He's gone," Byers spoke up.

"Where? The arcade? Some Dungeons and Dragons game? The 
allergist?" She was antsy. "Optometrist?"

"What do you want with him?" I asked the obvious first.

"I need to ask him a very important question." She crossed 
her arms. "When will he be back?"

I shook my head. "Sister, you just asked the sixty-four 
thousand dollar question." 

She looked down her nose at me. "What are you babbling 
about, Frohike?" She turned her gaze to Byers. "What is he 
babbling about?" 

"He's gone," Byers answered quietly, rubbing his hands 
together. "It's been more than a month. He got a letter 
from Thea and he just left."

"Do you know what the letter said?" she asked me.

Byers beat me to the punch. "I think it's time for you to 
answer some questions, Miss Harlow."

"Such as?" She wrinkled her nose 

"What do you want to ask Langly?"

"Why do you want to know it so bad?" I chimed in.

"And does it have anything to do with Thea Fidelis?" he 
came right after.

"There are some dangerous people looking for Miss Fidelis 
right now. One dangerous person in particular, and I can 
only think of one reason this person would want to get her 
hands on Miss Fidelis. If anyone could confirm my 
suspicions, it's Langly"

"Why not ask us?"

"What do you know about Thea Fidelis, about what she is?"

"She's a praetorian, just like you," I told her.

"No, Frohike, not just like me. Betty Roguebull and I, as 
well as the rest of our particular production line, were 
legitimate, above-board stock designed to be utilized to by 
the entire Consortium. Thea Fidelis was part of a side 
project most of the conspirators considered so dangerous 
that they destroyed the lab where the work was being 
performed. Only two of the experimental models survived."

"What were they afraid of?"

"That Spender would succeed."

"Succeed how?" Byers asked. 

"His aim was to build a praetorian that could produce 
SuperSoldiers outside the lab."

"Produce SuperSoldiers? How?"

She smirked. "The old-fashioned way."

"What's this got to do with Langly?" I asked. 

"What do you think the chance is Thea could be pregnant?" 

Byers stepped backwards. I let out a long whistle without 
meaning to.

"Well?"

"Anything's possible," I answered, trying to think on my 
feet. Of course. That could have been it; that could have 
been why Langly cut out of here so fast. It could also have 
explained why she left in the first place, aside from the 
obvious threat of Byers' Maiden Aunt. 

It didn't seem right, though. Sure, Blondie could be a 
lame-brain from time to time, but not even he would get 
nookie without taking some precautions, right? 

Right? 

Jeez, didn't his old man ever have that talk with him? Of 
all the bonehead bullshit the guy had ever done... I wanted 
to... I didn't know what I wanted to do to him but whatever 
it was it was painful.

"Exactly what can you tell me about their relationship?" 
She pursed her lips. She could make faces all day and it 
wasn't going to change how much Byers and I knew, or didn't 
know. 

"Nothing."  I shrugged. "I mean, we know they were doing 
it. We're pretty sure it was a regular thing. From what we 
saw and pieced together, it was a regular thing."
 
"Marvelous." She leaned backwards against the wall with a 
sigh. "The world may very well have to brace itself for 
some splendidly geeky SuperSoldiers."

I was flustered. Okay, more than flustered. I was spinning 
my wheels, thought-wise. "What?" 

"You think she knew?" Byers sounded as rattled as I felt. 

"Unlikely," was Yves's only reply.

"Would it even work?" I finally managed. "If you're right 
about Thea being one of Cancerman's side projects-" 

"Oh, let me assure you that I am right about that," she 
replied. 

"-even if," I continued, "It's just Langly. The guy's not 
exactly what comes to mind when you think 'prime genetic 
material.'"

"Regardless," she answered, pulling herself to her full 
height, which wasn't much at all, but seemed like more. 
"Someone wants to know, and wants to know very badly." 

Byers looked at her steadily. "Who is it?" 

"Yeah," I added, "and why the hell do you care?" 

She turned her gaze on Byers. "Marita Covarrubias." Then 
she turned to me. "And call it sisterly concern."
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

End 05/07




*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

I couldn't believe what Mom was going to do. What she 
wanted me to do. 

She was nuts, whoever she was.

She said there was a pregnant woman - no, she called her 
'the Subject' - who we were going to kidnap. Only she said 
'abduct.' She was very picky about the words she used, and 
she kept using that one - abduct. We were 'to abduct the 
Subject' then 'take possession of the Subject's offspring.'

The next day she added, "It may require impromptu surgery."
I must have looked at her funny or something, because she 
smirked at me and added, "Don't worry. I'll be handling 
anything difficult."

I was right about one thing. She did make me drive. "You 
don't look a day under 16," she said, and looked at me the 
way she used to look at Dad. It made my stomach hurt. 
"Where did my baby boy go?" she asked, and put her hand on 
my knee.

We spent of Halloween in a field in Virginia. She had me 
shoot pumpkins, then apples, 'til I couldn't hear or focus 
any more.

"If you're going to be watching my back, you are going to 
be prepared," she said.

It was kind of chilly, but not really cold. I was pretty 
tired and sweaty, but I made sure I cleaned Dad's old Glock 
before I tried to give it back to her.

Then she smiled at me. Really smiled. She didn't do that a 
lot. And then she said, "Keep it. Another candle or two on 
your cake, and we'll see how well you can really fill your 
father's shoes." 

When in doubt, say, "Yes, Ma'am."

She all of a sudden stepped away. "Don't forget - Alex 
Krycek was either a bastard or a fool everyday of his life, 
but never both at the same time."

I 'yes ma'am'-ed again, but slapped me anyway. 

I forgot to say, 'Thank You.'

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

We were banking on him being able to find her. He was 
driven. He had to find her. HairBoy might be a lot of 
things but a quitter wasn't one of them. There were only 
two places Langly would go once he found her. 

He hadn't gone home to Nebraska, which had been my first 
bet. He had talked to his older brother Tom, though asked 
if he could use a hand around the farm, then called later 
and told him there had been a change of plans. I knew there 
was more Tom wasn't saying, but prying loose what little 
info we got was like pulling teeth. I've seen trained CIA 
spooks with looser lips.

Three days later, we were deep in the heart of Dixie.

Yeeha.

I could have called Mulder first, I guess. But, honestly,  
there are some things you just need to tell a guy in 
person. Like, you know, "Sorry we didn't tell you about 
your daughter, but by the time we figured she wasn't 
working for the bad guys, we were too attached to let her 
go," and "The jailbait you've been playing naked hide-and-
geek with was built to produce indestructible killing 
machines, so I hope to God you've been wearing a raincoat, 
Buddy."

It was safer to surprise Mulder than Scully any day, so we 
figured the school was the obvious place to start. We 
pulled up across the street from 'The Home of the Oracles,' 
and realized we had only one problem - we had no idea where 
to find him. He was a coach, right? So, maybe the gym. 

We walked around the perimeter of the school looking for 
the rear entrance. There was a guy leaning up against the 
wall, right under the NO SMOKING ON SCHOOL GROUNDS sign, 
lighting up.

He had the build and the presence of a silver-back mountain 
gorilla and he looked at us like he might charge at any 
minute. With his tie and khakis and ink stained shirt 
pocket, he had to be a teacher, but his aura was pure thug.

"Hey!" I decided that a frontal assault was our best bet. 
"maybe you can help us out? We're looking for Martin 
Levine."

He raised his eyebrows. "And you would be?"

"I'm John Meyers." Byers reached out and shook his hand.
"Martin is my brother-in-law."

"You work here?" I asked.

"You know, I stare at my paycheck and wonder that myself." 
He took a drag. "I'd take you to Marty myself, but I'm 
teaching right now." He took another puff of his cigarette. 
"Actually" he stroked the blond van dyke that would have 
been fashionable ten years ago and squinted one eye at us 
"it's Marty's knuckleheads I'm teaching."

"Oh?" Byers asked brightly.

"Yeah, the basketball team." He snorted. "So there I was, 
trying to explain some basic physics to these yahoos, and-"

I couldn't help myself. "Why?"

"I'm a physics teacher - the name's Swan, by the way, 
Robert Swan, call me Rob - anyway, I don't know shit about 
basketball. They wear shorts in the winter and they make a 
loud thumping sound that can be heard in my classroom even 
with the door closed. That is the extent of my knowledge of 
basketball. Oh, and the ball is orange." 

"Three for three," Byers agreed. 

"So I figured I'd discuss physics as it applies to throwing 
a ball. That's a jock thing right? Throwing a ball? I mean, 
my trainer has me on a heavy schedule of naps balanced by 
hours in front of the computer.  So I tried to explain the 
physics involved. I'd never seen anyone go to sleep 
standing up before," he drawled.

"Can't say that I'm too surprised," I muttered.

"I started explaining how curiosity about the simplest 
things can lead to huge scientific breakthroughs. For 
example, Richard Feynman's wobbling plate and..."

"...how the work it inspired eventually earned him the 
Nobel prize in physics." Byers broke in.

"Yeah.  I might as well have spent twenty minutes going 
like this." Swan put his finger in between his lips and 
made a cartoon noise something like 
"Buudeeebuuudddeeeebuuubrrrrrrdeeeeebrrruuuuudddeeee" that 
I had never seen a grown man make before, especially a 
grown man who looked like he could pull your liver out 
through your nose.

I couldn't help myself. I started laughing. Rob the 
Silverback made a low cough like chuckle in the back of his 
throat. Byers let out a surprised guffaw.

This Rob guy was okay.

"No tellin'," he lit another cigarette, "when Marty's going 
to be done. He's up in his office with Vern and Dre."

I was about to ask what that meant when he cleared his 
throat.

"The sheriff and the baseball coach. They're okay guys. 
Well, not dumbasses, anyway."

"May I ask where Martin's office is located?" Byers asked.

He pointed with his cigarette at the cupola, complete with 
stained glass windows, on top of the building.

"What are those images on the windows?" It was sunny and 
Byers squinted up at the dome.

He spoke around the cigarette in his mouth. "Some dead 
Greek guys who were wrong about, well, pretty much 
everything." 

"Can't argue with you there, Rob." Byers looked a little 
scandalized, but the guy had a point.

He threw his butt on the ground and opened the door to the 
gym. "Well, I guess I better go corrupt the youth of 
Athens."

"Mind if we. . .?" I pointed inside.

He shrugged. "Sure. And tell George 'hey' when you see him, 
for me." 

"We'll do that."  I tried not to let on I had no idea who 
the hell George was.

*****

We climbed up the final flight of tiny steps into a room 
that was no way meant for five people and a purple ditto 
machine.  And yet, once we entered, along with a ton of 
book and another ton of boxes, that's exactly what it 
contained. Guess Mulder was just fated to spend his working 
life in storage. 

The first thing Mulder did when I opened the door was 
blink. Then he tackled me.

"Melvin! What took you so long?"

I hadn't seen the guy in 6 years, but he looked the same. 
His dyed grey hair looked just as fake as it did the day 
Langly colored it in our bathroom. He was a little puffier 
around the mouth and jaw, a little more lined around the 
eyes, but even with that, he looked healthy, rested, 
younger than his driver's license said he was.

"Hey," I floundered. I didn't know what to call the guy.

"John," he slapped his arms around Byers.

A husky black guy in a Smokey-the-Bear hat and another in 
sweat suit looked us up and down like we had just appeared 
out of nowhere. Which, come to think of it, we had.

"John, Melvin, meet Vernon and Andre."

Byers extended his hand past me. "Pleased to meet you. I'm 
John Myers. I'm Laura's brother. She's my sister." He 
sounded like he didn't even believe it himself.

Mulder shot me  what could only be called a wry look, while 
Vernon and Andre peered at me expectantly. Hell, if I knew 
what to say. I extended my hand. "Nice to meet you. I'm 
Melvin F--" I stared at the colored windows, considering 
whether a leap would actually kill me. "Melvin Fenster. 
John's friend."

Mulder cleared his throat. "Friend and long-time 
companion," he added, knowingly.  

That asshole.

The two guys nodded at me. One coughed. No doubt with some 
really unsavory images of Byers and me in their heads, 
courtesy of Mulder. Fucking lovely.

I considered shooting him a dirty look.  Then I considered 
shooting him, period.  But we had to maintain cover, so I 
just looked at everyone's shoes and made a mental note to 
get good and even with the bastard later. 

Now, to business. I wanted to ask him if he'd seen Thea 
lately, but if he hadn't, if he had no idea who the hell 
Thea was, I didn't want to have to explain it in front of 
an audience. "So, Marty," I asked casually, straightening 
my vest, "you seen Ringo around these parts?"

Mulder frowned picking up a stack of papers. "Oh yeah. I 
get a good look at him on a regular basis these days. Give 
me half an hour and you can see him for yourselves, such as 
he is." He handed me a sack of papers.  "Hey Melvin, you 
know how to run a ditto machine?"

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Mulder stopped earlier than I expected, just few blocks 
past the school, on Hippolyte Avenue, in front of a 
fleshly-painted oyster grey two story with white trim. In 
the drive way, I saw the weirdest shit I've seen in my life 
- looked like some guy was putting one of Langly's ethanol 
engines in a late-model acid-green minivan. As we got 
closer, I noticed his head was turned at a really familiar 
angle. I recognized him. Before I knew what I was doing, I 
was running up the walk.

His hair was all but buzzed and he was wearing a pair of 
Ben Franklin type glasses. He had on what looked to me like 
they were probably Mulder's clothes - white t-shirt and 
khaki pants - all the right length, but a little loose.  

"Langly?"

It was him all right, and it looked like he'd found. . .

Oh shit. 

She was sitting on the front porch steps. She was so 
pregnant she looked like a freaking weather balloon. She 
waved.

Well, that answered that question.

I hadn't seen the guy in two months, and the first word out 
of his mouth when he saw me was, "Triplets," followed by 
that smirk, that 'The-Pentagon-JPL-and-Queen's-Bank-of-
Georgetown-Cayman Islands-I-hacked-them-all-inside-of-
nineteen-minutes' smirk.  You'd have thought the guy 
invented knocking up teenaged girls, or something. 

Bet he accomplished that inside of nineteen minutes, too.  

He walked over to Thea and threw his arm around her 
shoulder. 

Way under nineteen minutes.

Thea held up three fingers on one hand, and rubbed her 
belly in some kind of Thea-style invitation with the other. 

It was a weird second there, but Byers and I couldn't help 
it. We stood there like a couple of morons, touching her 
belly. Sure felt like triplets to me. 

Langly kept a hold of her like she needed his protection. I 
guess it was normal but it sure hurt.

Mulder cleared his throat behind me.

Byers shocked the hell out of me, out of all of us, 
probably,
by leaning over and giving Thea a quick kiss on the cheek.  
"Thea," he signed, "we've been so worried."

"Don't blame Ritchie, okay?" she signed, glancing back and 
forth between the two of us. The sunlight glinted off what 
looked like a pink gold ring on her left hand, which, big 
surprise, appeared to match the one Langly was 
twisting on his own finger.  

Yeah, Buddy, I saw them. I thought about saying it out 
loud, but I didn't. 

Jesus. House, hair cut, minivan, kids; she was swell kid, a 
great girl, but she might as well have put that ring 
through Goldilock's nose.

"They aren't here to blame anyone for anything, Thea," 
Mulder signed. "They are your friends, and they've come to 
visit."

Thea nodded, but looked skeptical. 

Langly swallowed. "Well, don't just stand there bringing 
down the property values, guys." Never letting go of Thea 
once, Langly ushered us inside. 

A dozen computers, an air conditioner, and couple of
toasters had their guts strewn across the ugliest blue
chintz sofa and matching love seat I'd seen in my life. The
decor was Early Death Star Construction Zone meets
Midwestern Seventies Frump.

As soon as Mulder left, pleading his duty to educate the 
future voters of limestone county, the four of us squared 
off around their too-new kitchen table. It was too big 
table for the tiny kitchen and really belonged in a dining 
room, only their dining room was full of stacked boxes and 
spare parts.

We were quiet for a while. Thea was the first one to say 
something, not literally, but you know what I mean - she 
was the one to break the ice. 

"It would mean a lot," she signed, then stopped.  She 
drew some Japanese character across the table top with her 
finger, the way she did when she was nervous, but, as 
usual, her expression stayed pretty flat. "Mean a lot if 
you were happy for us." 

What the hell could I say to that? 

Byers saved me the trouble.  He smiled like he was about to 
vomit, and said, "Believe me when I tell you both," he 
looked Langly in the eye for the first time since we'd 
arrived, "I don't want anything for you and your children 
but all the joy in the world."

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

We drove around town for a while the night we arrived. I 
didn't know what mom was looking for, but I could tell she 
was looking for something.  I knew better than to ask. 

Delphi was like, like a toy town, the kind you see in the 
windows of those touristy stores sometimes, with trains and 
trees and stuff. All clean and tidy. Hardly any people on 
the street. Really fake. 

We drove by a Dairy Queen and mom asked if I was hungry. I 
could smell hamburgers and fries and grease and I hoped my 
stomach wouldn't rumble, because that always pissed her 
off. "Yes, ma'am," I answered. She was going to stop for 
hamburgers, maybe even cheeseburgers. "Thank you, I am 
hungry." 

She made me eat a peanut butter sandwich from the cooler. 

Dad was right; she was a bitch.

I was getting more and more scared.

We passed a school after driving around for hours. There 
was a big sign in front of it that said, "Home of the 
Oracles: Four Years Undefeated and Counting!"

Weird name for a team. 

I remembered a story then that Dad told me.  From Greek 
mythology, he said. Fortune tellers, sort of. 

I wondered if there were any real oracles in this Delphi. 
Maybe they could tell me what to do. 

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

I don't know who we all thought we were, kidding trying to 
go to bed at 10. In the years I've known him, Langly has 
gone to bed before 3 a.m. maybe six times. Not even Byers 
goes to bed before 12. We were all full of shit.

By 10:45, we were all back downstairs, watching Mystery 
Science Theatre 3000. Byers made coffee.

It was kind of weird seeing Langly and Thea together like 
that. The kid was curled up on the love seat with her head 
in Langly's lap. His hands kept going to her hair. I think 
it made Byers uncomfortable, but hey, they had the 
right. They were Mr. And Mrs. George Froyers, after all. 

Half-way through 'The Prince of Space,' Thea sat up, 
rubbing her face on her paramour's arm like a cat or 
something. She scratched the bridge of her nose. "You 
people want something to eat?" 

Langly looked at her like he was about to say something, 
but wound up just frowning.

"Get a grip, Sweetpants," she signed. "I won't turn on the 
stove. I'm strictly talking hunting and gathering." She 
stretched just enough to kiss his ear lobe. He turned and 
I'll be damned if he didn't sink his own face into her 
neck, like we weren't even there.

"Just some more coffee, 'kay? If it's not too much. You've 
gotta be tired." He was looking up at her through his 
eyelashes, flirting and had his hand on her knee.

Damn. I'd never seen him do anything like that before. 

"I'm hungry." She grinned back at him, all dimples and 
arched eyebrows, "Besides, laying down too long gives me 
heart burn." She stuck out her tongue and made a face meant 
to indicate the desire to vomit. "Guys? Want something? A 
sandwich?"

In two years living with us, the kid had never offered to 
bring me so much as an olive much less a whole sandwich. It 
was hinky. 

"Ummmmm. . ." I mumbled and I looked at her. It was weird 
trying to get back into the groove of signing again.  "No 
thanks, Sweetheart," I finally got my fingers to reply. 

Byers just shook his head. 

Langly had to help her off the couch. It had to be getting 
close to time. She couldn't get much bigger without 
actually exploding, could she?

I had to know. "So what's up with that? The Hostess Barbie 
routine?"

Langly shook his head and shrugged. "Scully's a bad 
influence."

"Don't let Mulder hear you say that," Byers replied. 

"If you ask me, it's time one of you knuckleheads learned 
some manners," I said. 

"No one asked you," Langly muttered, but it was good- 
natured. 

"Um, Richard," Byers began, then, "Ah, Ringo, we have to, 
to discuss something with you."

Man, I found myself having to decide between ducking to 
avoid the collateral damage and sitting up straighter to 
get a better view. I went with sitting up straighter, but 
moved further away from Byers on the couch.

"Discuss what?" Langly asked and from his tone I could tell 
he was ready for a fight.  

Byers went on. "I hope you 're aware of how fortunate you 
are."

Well, that wasn't a  bad opening. I was even on board with 
the sentiment.

"Yeah, Goldilocks, you're one lucky son of a bitch. Looks 
like you got it made."

"Yeah," he said, concentrating on the badly dubbed Japanese 
on the screen, or trying to look like he was, anyway. 

"You know, kid, if you screw this up, me and Byers'll be 
down here to kick your ass post-haste." Byers nodded before 
I was even finished saying it.

Langly snorted. "Yeah, well, you'll have to get in line." 
His eyes never left the TV. 

"It's been kind of quiet around without you, Buddy." I 
meant it, too.  

"Well," he swallowed and cleared his throat in a choked up 
sort of way, "I admit having to eat my own cooking does 
blow goats."

"She ever give it a shot?" I asked him.

His lip curled like I was nuts just for asking.

I didn't know how to tell him what we'd come here to say. I 
looked at Byers. He was in worse shape than I was. Since 
we'd gotten there, the only thing he'd made eye contact 
with was Thea's belly. 

"Look, Langly. . . " I started, but I froze.  

Without turning his head, his eyes turned to me. 

I blew it. I couldn't say it. I looked around the room. 
"Byers, a little help, please."

Byers gave me one of those 'if looks could kill, you'd be 
dead' look, but sat up straighter.  He breath out heavily, 
then began. "There is a chance your children are going to 
be, to be, that is, they will probably be, um very 
special."  He said it in that earnest John Byers way that 
would sound insincere coming from anyone else.

"Those might be some pretty special buns you put in 
TankGirl's oven." I worked on not losing my nerve now that 
I'd found it. 

Langly just gave us that smug, superior look of his.  "Old 
news, Dudes. The Artist Formerly Known as GMan Spooks 
already clued me in about the souped-up genes."

All of a sudden Byers looked really young. "I don't think 
Mulder or Scully is aware of the information we have 
received."

"We thought we ought to tell you first." I sounded lame. 

Langly's voice was soft. "Just say it. Whatever the fuck it 
is, spit it out." 

"You remember the Kid's story about the warehouse fire on 
the day they took her out of her little Zeus Genetics 
aquarium? You ever wonder why that happened? Who'd want to 
do that? Why? We know."

"We think we know," Byers cut in. He was looking at the 
kitchen doorway the whole time. 

I was starting to get pissed at Byers. "Our sources are 
good. Turns out the little woman was part of unauthorized 
side project of the Smoker's. A side project, to invent a 
method for producing SuperSoldiers outside the lab."

Langly looked confused. "What?" he said and signed at the 
same time.  I realized he'd been doing that all along - 
speaking and signing at the same time. 

"The other conspirators apparently felt the entire idea 
was, well, ill-advised, and attempted to destroy the 
research being done." Byers explained, finally tearing his 
eyes from the door. "Only two of the experimental models 
were saved from the fire. Thea and Rhea. We don't know what 
became of Rhea."

"Thea's not a SuperSoldier," Langly huffed.

"We know that, genius. But there's - well, there's a good 
shot those kids of yours are."

"No - uh uh, no way you are full of shit..." Langly ranted 
quietly, his hands moving agitatedly at the same time. 
"Who's this fucking source? Who sold you this load of 
crap?"

"Yves," Byers said quietly.

"Fucking Yves?" Langly snorted. "You morons. You can't 
believe half of what she says. For fuck sake, we don't even 
know her real name. Fuck that shit." His knees were 
bouncing and he had started cracking his knuckles. I knew 
the guy well enough to know any second he was going to 
start tearing around the room. "No fucking way."

"There are some things about Yves you don't know," I tried 
to tell him.

"Yeah I think I just said that."

I was glad Thea couldn't hear us, because we were all 
yelling. "Langly, shut the fuck up a minute. Yves is a 
praetorian. Not a custom job like your little honey muffin 
in there, but she's still one of them.  Like Betty 
Roguebull."

"Made for the same purpose," Byers broke in. "Made from the 
same basic materials." 
  
"Mulder's same basic materials, if you catch my drift." I 
didn't even remember getting up, but I was standing over 
him "She's her sister, half-sister, whatever.  Yves knows 
Thea is in danger, and she had no choice - and I mean no 
choice, Langly - she came to us out of concern. None of the 
splinter groups are even aware The Kid escaped the fire."

"Spender was able to cover up exceptionally well." Byers 
added. "According to Yves' information, Krycek was the one 
who broke the tanks and saved her life."

"Saved his employer's property, is more like it." I brought 
my voice down. "Rumor has it Krycek is dead, dead for real 
this time, and his old partner is looking for Thea. . ."

"It seems Marita Covarrubias is of the opinion that a 
matched set of loyal SuperSoldiers would be...desirable," 
Byers continued to spell it out for him.

Langly was quiet a long moment, glaring and Byers and me, 
but I could see he was trying to think it all through. "It 
doesn't even makes sense, guys. How would Martia even know 
Thea was, um, ..." He hesitated.

"The word is 'pregnant.' Man, you are a piece of work, 
Langly, you can knock her up right under our noses, but you 
can't say it preg-"

"From what I understand," Byers broke in, shooting me a 
dirty look in the process, "her line was designed -"

"'Specifically' designed," I emphasized. 

" - with a very strong, um, procreative urge." Byers 
supplied. He was good at that kind of thing, I still don't 
know how I'd have put it. 

"Bull," was Langly's only comment, but I could see he was 
giving it some thought. 

John went on. "Initially, it was hoped her intense drives 
would overcome Gibson Praise's illness and -"

" - and Spender would find a Psychic SuperSoldier in his 
stocking one Christmas," I helped him out. "It looks like 
Krycek and company were keeping close enough tabs on her 
know she was living with three men." I had to stop and 
cough. "I guess they figured the outcome was inevitable. 
All he had to do was sit back and wait. Well, the waiting 
is almost over."

"Thea has no idea about any of this," Byers interjected

"And now probably isn't the time to tell her," I warned him 
"What we need to do is talk to Mulder and come up with a 
plan. This isn't some monolithic consortium we're up 
against anymore. This is doable. It's just one woman -"

"But one very determined woman." Byers amended. 

Langly looked sick, like he was going to faint or throw up 
or stop breathing, but couldn't decide which to do first.  
I wondered if he had his inhaler handy. 

Something squealed, then slammed shut.  I figured the 
hinges on one of the cupboard doors needed oiling. That was 
when I realized Thea had been in the kitchen for a pretty 
long time all things considered.

"Where's the missus?" I whispered.

Ten seconds later, the three of us were searching the 
house. There was coffee and jalapeno flavored potato chips 
spilled in the doorway to the living room, but no Thea. 

The back door was wide open; the screen was door closed 
tight.  But the spring squealed when I opened it.

"Dammit!" Byers ran his hand through his hair.

"It's okay. We can find her," Langly said quietly. "It 
won't be hard."

"I know it's a small town, but..."

Langly cut me off.  "That's not what I mean."  He went to 
the kitchen and came back with what looked like an 
old-fashioned palm pilot. 

"How's that going to help?" Byers asked. 

"I. . .I. . .she's wearing a, oh shit, she's wearing a 
transmitter." Langly's words came out in a rush. "I put it 
in her ring. Her wedding ring."

"What?" Byers practically screamed. "You can't be serious, 
Langly.  It's unethical, it's wrong, it's absolutely-" 

"Byers," I put my hand on his shoulder, hoping to calm him. 
"Byers, right now, it's all we've got."

"She's moving fast," Langly said, squinting at the read 
out.  "Shit. She must be in a car. What in the. . .?"  Then 
his expression changed. "Come on. We gotta go. Now."  

Byers was right - it was unethical and wrong. But 
ultimately, that paranoid, devious son of a bitch saved her 
life. 

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

It was so easy, I was stunned. Mom was trying to explain 
some plan she had for us getting into the Subject's house, 
and then getting us out again, when the Subject all but 
pounded on the hood of the van and asked me to grab her.

So I did. 

Even Mom seemed to think I did good.

Mom was right; she was a girl, not a woman. She was long 
and tall, a little bit taller than me, and her stomach was 
so big. Humongous. I never saw a pregnant woman look like 
that. 

She fought hard but you could tell that giant stomach held 
her back, and she didn't seem to be able to get a good 
breath.

But it was easy. At first, I mean. You could tell nobody 
ever taught her to fight in what my Dad called a 
'systematic way.' I got her in the van. I got her 
handcuffed and put the cloth bag over her head.  I did what 
I was told.

She didn't fight or cry or anything. I probably would have 
cried if it was me, but she just sat there with that bag 
over her head, breathing hard.  All still. 

"Alex," Mom called back to me from the front of the van and 
she started the car and took off.  "Give her the shot. 
Now."

"Are we almost there? I mean, are you ready? I, I, I, umm 
she's not fighting or anything."

"Alex," she said, "I can guarantee she is not going to keep 
still for what we are going to do. Give her the shot."

I sat there and stared at her. She looked more angry than 
afraid. That worried me. 

"Have you done it?" Mom's voice was quiet. The scary kind 
of quiet.  She went on before I could answer. "You give her 
that shot before I count to three or you will live to 
regret it. One -"

I grabbed the hypodermic out of the tackle box and looked 
at the gir- the Subject. 

It was her or me. I picked her.

"Finished yet? Or am I going to have to come back there?"

I knew I was supposed to lift up her dress, pull down her 
Panties, and put it in what Mom kept calling the fleshy 
part of her buttock.  She went over that again and again. 
But I just stuck it in through the dress and everything. 

She didn't move a muscle. 

Maybe everything would be easier when she was asleep. But 
it was hard to push the plunger down. 

"Are you done?" 

I couldn't get the plunger down any more. The needle was 
still half-full but I would have done anything to keep Mom 
from coming back there, so I pulled it out and squirted the 
rest onto the floor. The Subject wasn't moving, anyway, so 
it must have been enough

"Yes ma'am, all done, ma'am."

I was pretty sure no one saw me grab her, but Mom was 
driving pretty fast now, anyway, trying to get far away. 
Out past the hi-way, into the mountains, where the woods 
were thick, she pulled off the road and drove the van under 
a bunch of trees.

"How is the Subject?" Mom asked. 

She was slumped over. She looked like she was asleep.

It was all hot and muggy in the van, but outside, it had 
started to rain, so Mom opened up the back doors. That 
helped a lot. We could kind of breathe. A couple of drops 
hit me in the face and it felt good.

"The equipment, Alex." 

I kept my mouth shut and helped Mom lay out the stuff she 
needed: scalpel, clamp, towels, blankets, diapers, some 
other stuff I didn't know the names for, and a heavy black 
bag with the zipper. 

Mom pulled the bag off the Subject's head, then checked  
pulse at her neck, then her heart with the stethoscope. 
Next she pulled back her eyelid and flashed a light in 
Subject's eye.

I guess that's when Mom figured the girl hadn't been 
asleep, at all.

In like, a second, she butted Mom right in the head and 
knocked Mom flying backwards. And Mom just laid there, 
breathing hard, stunned, I guess.  I was too surprised to 
do anything, which is right when she brought up her hands,  
all cuffed together, and hit me in the mouth with them.

I actually saw stars, like in cartoons. 

It really hurt. Even Dad never hit me that hard. So you 
can't blame me for crying. 

Of course, Mom did anyway.

"Alex Krycek," Mom's voice was all raspy and wheezing, but 
god, was she mad, "you don't know how close you are to 
having something to cry about. Don't let her get away!" 

There was no point in arguing. 

"And don't forget your gun!" she called after me.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
End 06/07

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

I didn't want to look dumb, but it was dark and it was 
raining and there were an awful lot of trees.  Mom caught 
up to me, but went in circles and then we went in more 
circles. Every time a twig snapped Mom had me follow it. 
Half the time, you could tell just by listening it was a 
rabbit or rain or something and no way big enough to be 
that girl. Mom never would have made it in the Indian 
Guides. But I didn't want to think about what Mom would do 
if I didn't find the Subject, so I kept looking.  

Then I found her. 

Tripped over her really. She was sort of squatting down in 
this little valley kind of place. I saw a flutter of brown 
and it was the edge of her muddy dress in the wind.

I grabbed her by the cuffs and pulled her up. She didn't 
fight me - I think the drugs were making her really dopey - 
but she was harder to move than before.

"Got her!" I yelled over the wind.

"Bring her back here." Mom's voice was clear even over the 
rain and a sudden crack of lightning.

I tried to get her to Mom as fast as I could. Something 
about how she looked was starting to scare me. Her knees 
kept buckling. She was crying now, but it sounded weird, 
not like normal crying, and that scared me more.  I had to 
almost drag her the last part of the way, but I got her to 
Mom.

"Do you want me to take her back to the van, Ma'am?" 

Mom unlocked her just long enough to cuff her to the 
nearest tree.  "No. Run back to the van and get the 
blankets and the body bag. I'm going to need you to cover 
me, so be quick." Then, with one really smooth move, she 
kicked the girl's legs out from under her.

I ran as fast as I could. This was no time to piss her off.

That must have been when I did it. I was just trying to 
hurry.

When I got back with the things Mom wanted, she had pulled 
the girl's dress up over her head so it hung on her arms 
beside the tree. Her gloves were stuffed in the  girl's 
mouth and she was dipping into the top of her belly with 
the scalpel she had stuck in the pocket of her wind 
breaker. I guess it didn't matter if it was sterile any 
more.

Then I heard a shaky man's voice. "Drop the knife, Miss  
Covarrubias."

I looked around in the darkness until I saw him. A man with 
a  beard in a trench coat was pointing a gun at Mom.
 
Oh god. I felt in my pocket. No gun. He had my dad's gun 
and it was pointed at my Mom.

"And how many do you think are pointed at you right now, 
Mr. Byers? Would you like to take a guess?" Her voice was 
silky, just like it got right before she was about to reach 
out to smack you. That man, he should have been very 
afraid. 

"I'll shoot if I have to." He sounded like he was about to 
cry.

"I think I'll keep to my own agenda, thank you."  Mom said 
and she started to drag the scalpel back down into the cut. 

And just like that, "Bang!" 

Mom fell over backwards.  In the moonlight, I could see the 
blood on her chest. 

For a second, the man and I just stood there looking at 
each other. 

"Who are you?" the man asked. "Junior, is that-?"    

But then he seemed to change his mind.  He ran over to the 
gir- the Subject.  He put the gun down and took off his 
coat and started pressing it into the girl's belly. "I need 
help over here," he shouted. "I found her and I need help 
NOW!" 

Then all of the sudden I realized she was dead. Mom was 
dead. He'd killed her. I was alone. I had nobody. I didn't 
even know my real name.

He yelled again. "I need help, guys! Over here!"

The man looked at me. "I need your help, son," he said. "I 
need your help or this woman and her babies are going to 
die. Help me." 

She wasn't a woman. Couldn't he see that? "She must be 
special to you." My voice sounded kind of weird. 

"She is," the man answered. "She's very special."   

It seemed really obvious then what I had to do. I felt calm 
for the first time in about a million years. "Okay," I 
said. "Okay.  I'll help you." 

"Good," the man said. "Come over here."  

So I did. I walked over to him, stood behind him. Blood was 
pouring out of the Subject, running out from under the 
man's coat. 

I thought about Dad telling me once that when you got blood 
on your clothes, you had to burn them right away, because 
no matter what you did, no matter how many times you washed 
those clothes, that blood would never go away. That blood 
was with you forever.   

I looked at Mom. She was dead. She was dead and her suit 
and her shoes were ruined. 

She might not have been a very good Mom, but she was all I 
had.

"I'll help you," I said again. 

"Good," he said. "Good. Hang on, Thea. Hang on." 

I picked the gun up off the ground, and I shot him. 

I don't know why I didn't expect him to have as much blood 
as my Mom. I didn't expect it to come out of his mouth. I 
didn't expect him to try to turn around, to slump back over 
mom's dead body and her ruined suit and die.  

But he did. 

They both smelled like shit.

I threw up.

I heard running.  So I ran, and I kept running. Someone 
tall flashed past without even seeing me, but I didn't stop 
until I got to the van. The keys to the van were still in 
my pocket. 

I didn't know where I was going, but I turned the ignition 
and stepped on the gas. 

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

How Langly managed to find her, and find her quickly, in 
the middle of nowhere, I do not know. But I do know that 
mere feet from the corpses of his best friend and the woman 
who had attempted to murder Thea, Langly managed to deliver 
his sons.

Thea was both hypothermic and in shock, as well as rapidly 
losing blood. Langly managed to skewer himself pretty 
effectively through the palm while sawing through her 
handcuffs with a pair of wire cutters. His injury didn't 
deter him from untangling cords and babies in a vaginal 
delivery a skilled obstetrician wouldn't have dared.

In the one act that was pure Ringo Langly, he tied off 
their cords with bits of coated wire he just happened to 
have in his pockets. As each baby was delivered, he 
stripped off a layer of clothing and swaddled the 
newborns - the first son was in his leather jacket, the 
second in flannel, the third in a black short sleeve t-
shirt that read 'Animal Boy.' They were his from the second 
they came into the world.

When we found them, the blow flies had started to gather 
around Byers and Covarrubias. The living were bloodier than 
the dead, and a half-naked Langly was huddled together with 
his children and their delirious mother, trying desperately 
to shield them from the rain. Thea didn't come anywhere 
close to coherence until she was in the ambulance half an 
hour later. It was clear he had saved her life.

Amid the screaming and flashing lights, Vern Collins handed 
us a key piece to the puzzle of our lives that we hadn't 
even been searching for. He put his arm around Mulder and 
very quietly said, "Marty, Walter told me before you two 
even got to Delphi that you were in some kind of 
trouble, but believe you me, I never saw anything like this 
coming." 

Mulder started, aghast. "Before? You mean you-"

Vernon put a finger to his lips. "Don't worry about any of 
this. It's taken care of." He headed back toward the 
cruiser, then turned back to us. "And congratulations on 
the grand babies.  Fine looking boys."

The next afternoon, we made a somber trio in the small 
hospital neonatal lounge, Frohike, Mulder and I, each of us 
exhausted, each of us with a healthy, bright-eyed baby in 
our arms. 

I scrutinized the child I was holding. He had a 
startled pink face with a tiny cleft chin, and a heavy 
thatch of white hair, which no amount of smoothing could 
subdue, stood out on the top of his head. He was 
indistinguishable from his brothers and they were, without 
question, Langly's. 

Still, there were signs of the rest of us in them. Their 
long thin bodies reminded me of my own children and their 
eyes looked exactly as Daniel and Sylvie's had when they 
were born. They had their grandfather's eyes, and 
although Mulder maintained there was no way I could have 
known at that point, my nose. What would become their broad 
faces and sharp cheek bones were an interesting amalgam of 
Richard Langly and Fox Mulder. The round mouths were like 
Thea's and mine.The raised area near the top of their 
little spines were Spender's legacy. And underneath the 
skin what appeared to be a small metal vertebrae. Bantam 
Supermen with iron some how woven into their very DNA, 
newborns of steel. Sweet smelling and gorgeous.

Despite my conversation with Thea earlier in the day, 
I knew she'd come around.  She would hold them in her arms 
and everything would be fine.  It was just the drugs 
talking.

I was surprised by my own reaction to them. I never 
expected to fall in love with someone else's children. I 
found myself kissing his little fingers. For the moment, 
they were just babies. My flesh and blood. Mulder's. 
Langly's. Thea's. Ours. With luck, they would never have to 
be soldiers of any kind. I crossed my fingers, hoping that 
they would grow up to be SuperDoctors, ImmortalAccountants, 
anything else.  If they had to, they would fight on the 
side of right, of justice.  They'd be the good guys. I knew 
it. 

"Hey champ, try keeping those little feet in the blanket, 
will you?" Mulder rewrapped the squirming infant on his 
lap. "Actually, they aren't that little, are they?" He held 
one ink stained foot against his palm. I could see the 
Delphi basketball ball team of 2022 taking shape in his 
head. Well, there went all his big talk of early 
retirement.

It was patently unfair, that there we were with family and 
plans and these beautiful new lives, when John Byers, the 
man who both desired and deserved love and security as much 
as any of us, was dead. What would he want? I tried to 
imagine.

I had always gotten the impression that what he truly would 
have wanted was Susanne Modeski and a family of his own. I 
fought back an onslaught of tears. That day would never 
come.

I tried to focus. The John Byers I knew would want us to 
cherish Thea and her children. Teach them to believe in the 
things that meant so much to him; democracy, truth, 
justice, kindness, compassion. I looked at Mulder murmuring 
kisses in the Red Wire Boy's ear. We could handle that.

I looked at Frohike. Mulder had once told me, after  
swearing me to secrecy, that Frohike had two daughters 
around Langly's age living in Florida. They chose not to 
see him. Apparently his break-up with their mother had been 
less than amiable. It was entirely likely that he had 
grandchildren he had never seen. Might never see.

I had never heard Langly once, in the time I had known him, 
mention his own father. For better or worse, it looked to 
me like Frohike filled that role for him. I wondered if 
Melvin ever noticed how much his approval, his simple 
acknowledgment meant to Ringo. If Mulder was one 
grandfather, then Frohike was, for all practical purposes, 
the other. 

The little man was stroking Green Wire Boy's head.

"Hey, Sunshine," he cooed. Who would have imagined Melvin 
Frohike could coo? "Are you happy, little guy? Well, you 
oughta be. Don't let Grandma and Grandpa fool you; we're 
all so happy we're about to bust." He made clucking noises 
through his tears. 

He was right. It was true. I was startled to find myself 
deliriously happy and completely heartbroken at the same 
time. It was a distant but familiar feeling.
 
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

I woke up in hospital bed with my hand so damn bandaged it 
looked bigger than my fucking head. Everything I had hurt. 
It was like some kind of hangoverzilla.

Owwww, fuck!

 I turned, and on reflex, grabbed my head with my hurt 
hand. Shit, that smarted. If I squinted, I could see there 
was someone in the other bed. It took a minute and I had to 
drag my IV stand along side, but I got to the other bed.  

It was empty. Damn.

I hobbled to the doorway and looked both ways.  She was 
either one way or the other. I knew for a fact when we got 
there she was in worse shape than I was, so it would stand 
to reason she was closer to the nurse's station. Right? 

My hand hurt like hell. Throb did not even begin to cover 
it. And I'd have given anything for my glasses. 

The hall opened up onto a lounge area where I could see 
vague shapes and hear Mulder and Fro and some little baby 
noises.

I turned and headed the other way.

Thea was in the next room over. She was laying in the bed, 
the pillow over her face. 

As soon as I sat on the edge of her mattress, she waved me 
off. I guess the nurses had been hassling her.

I drew a T in the hollow of her throat. She raised her 
pillow and turned her face to me in one motion. Her face 
was pale, almost grey, but her eyes and lips were red and 
swollen from crying. 

"I'm sorry," she signed and sniffed, trying to suck it up.

WHAT FOR? I spelled before I wiped her face with the hem of 
my hospital gown.

"The monsters. I had monsters." She shut her eyes for the 
count of ten but kept signing. "I thought,  I thought I 
could give you, I thought I could make something good, like 
you see sometimes, you know, two people with some babies. 
Danny and Sylvie and Marty and Laura.  Like that."

A. FAMILY, I spelled

"Yeah, a family."  Her shoulders were starting to shake. "I 
thought I was going to give you babies, but they're 
monsters. All I can give you is monsters." She was making 
that terrible honking noise and her face was shining wet.

YOU SEE THEM? I asked patting her tears with my bandaged 
hand, but soft enough so I didn't start crying, too

"In the ambulance." She shook her head. "But my mother told 
me," she sniffed again, "about how they have 
the...place...the bump on the backs of their necks."

"SHE TOLD YOU THEY ARE PERFECT TOO."

Thea just shrugged. 

THEY LOOK LIKE ME, I spelled

Must have been the wrong thing to say because she started 
crying even harder after that. That's when I noticed her 
tits looked uncomfortably hard and full underneath her 
gown. It had to hurt.

HOW ARE YOUR TITS? I asked in my own stupid spelling. I 
should have known better than to ask her, she hated to 
admit she was anything less than ten feet tall and bullet-
proof.

"Like tits." She frowned.

SORE?

She just scowled at that.  

I wasn't quite sure how to ask. CAN I SEE THEM? 

She grinned, wiping her tears. "Sure, my glands are your 
glands. You like them big like this?" she signed before she 
raised her gown up over her chest.

I saw the black sutured scalpel cut down the top of where 
her pregnant belly used to be and winced. I nodded at her, 
reaching out to feel them.

Just like I thought;  rock hard and hot. I breathed in 
pretty deep - I felt like I might faint for a minute.

LOOKS LIKE YOUR MILK CAME IN I spelled.

 She stared, stunned.

I KNOW WHAT TO DO, I told her.

She tried to sit up and watch me, but it must have been too 
much for her. She gave up and used the button on the bed 
rail.

Getting all the towels in her room hot and wet in the 
little sink one-handed turned out to be a good chance to 
rest my forehead against the wall.

I laid the steamy towels on her chest and petted her head 
while they cooled.

After the third time I reheated them, she signed, "Thank 
you."

I nodded at her. I didn't know what else to do. Except - 
well I remembered better than I thought I would. I wrung 
out the towels the best I could with the unbandaged hand 
and sat down on the side of her bed.

I kissed her forehead.

I put my palm on the underside of her left breast and 
rolled my fingers toward her nipple squeezing into a towel. 
The technique wasn't hard to adapt to a human. Actually, I 
was probably much better at it like this. 

Her face was starting to look a lot softer by the time I 
got up to wring the milk out of the towel. She was still 
really full, but at least she wasn't impacted anymore.

"Ritchie," she signed, patting the empty side of the bed 
for me to lay next to her.

Good thing too, since I was this close to falling over.

We laid there for awhile, all scrapes and IVs and stitches. 
This was a juncture I never imagined my life reaching. Fuck 
me if I knew what to do. 

I closed my eyes and tried to go to sleep. It didn't work.

I needed to tell her then and there. I had reached some 
kind of high water mark of purpose and clarity, freezing to 
death in the woods with my hand inside her, trying to 
untangle babies and cords. I thought about my dad. What 
ever else I had to say about him, he was there. I had to 
tell her.

I poked Thea in the side. I WANT THEM, I spelled. I WANT 
THE BOYS.

"How can you?" she signed, her jaw flexing.

THEY'RE MINE. OURS.  IS IT A CRIME TO WANT MY OWN KIDS? I 
shifted onto my side trying not to crimp the IV.

She didn't sign a word.

JUST BECAUSE THEY'RE DIFFERENT DOESN'T MEAN THEY HAVE TO BE 
BAD, I spelled.

Her jaw was set and she was squinting. "I wanted them to be 
like you. Not the Babies from the Black Lagoon."

ARE YOU A MONSTER? DO YOU THINK YOU'RE A MONSTER? My 
fingers were cramping.

"The shoe fits," she answered in terse sign

 BECAUSE OF HOW YOU WERE MADE? I asked.

 She nodded.  

I felt really shy, all of the sudden. I wanted to remind 
her how we made those babies in my messy bed, not in some 
lab, but I couldn't say it. YOU, MULDER, SCULLY, DANNY, THE 
BABIES. I GUESS I LIKE MONSTERS. I tried to make myself 
smile but it didn't work.

She turned her head away. 

I didn't mean to, but I couldn't help it. I started to cry. 
I grabbed her face with my good hand and pulled it toward 
me. "No, nuh uh," I said, wishing I had a pen. I wiped my 
face on my arm and started to finger spell. NO. DON'T DO 
THIS TO ME.

"This isn't about you," she signed, looking mad.

I CAN'T TAKE IT, OKAY?  That was when I realized she didn't 
know about Byers. 

She knew something was up, well more was up than she 
already knew about. She pursed her lips and cocked her 
head. "Tell," she signed.

BYERS, I spelled and stopped.

"What? Byers what?" She started to look more afraid than 
mad. "Is he hurt? Can I see him?"

DEAD. I spelled.

I'd never seen her look like that before. Her mouth flew 
open and her eyes went wide and she made this sound half 
way between a bark and a squeak. She went straight into 
sobbing, every breath squeaking out of her lungs. 

I couldn't hold back then.  It really hit me. Like somebody 
scooped out my guts with a shovel. My tears started to 
spill onto my hospital gown and I didn't even try to stop.

All of a sudden ,she started to sign. "That stupid son of a 
bitch. He died to save babies that can't be hurt."

I don't know what came over me but I could have strangled 
her when she said that.  I grabbed her wrist. "No," I 
mouthed deliberately and in her face "No.  He died to save 
you."

She jerked her hand out of mine and covered her face with 
both arms. We both laid there and bawled, even after we'd 
run out of tears. If anyone was worth it, Byers was.

"He, he, he," she signed over and over. "I loved him, like 
Sylvie and Danny."  She stopped and wiped her face on her 
gown. "Like they love Scully and Mulder. He was good, a 
good person. I wish he was my Dad."

DON'T BE HARD ON MULDER. NOT EVERYBODY CAN BE JOHN BYERS, I 
spelled at her.

"I know. I like Mulder. I just, I could have been Byers', I 
could have been his and Susanne's," she signed. 

I looked at her and wondered what the hell Byers had said 
to her about Modeski. 
She didn't have a clue. She couldn't 
have been theirs in a million years. She was Mulder and 
Scully's to the core.

HE LOVED YOU LIKE THAT. YOU WERE IMPORTANT ENOUGH TO DIE 
FOR, TO KILL SOMEBODY OVER. I didn't have to tell her that 
John Byers being willing to kill was a lot more shocking 
than him being willing to die. FRO LOVES YOU TOO, YOU KNOW, 
NOT JUST ME I MEAN -  My fingers were starting to cramp up. 
I DON'T KNOW WHAT I MEAN.

"I hope you people are right. I hope I'm worth it," she 
signed.

A second later it sounded like the freaking Orc Army was at 
the door.

"We've got some hungry little guys here,  so Dad, get your 
hand out of her shirt," I heard Frohike yell through the 
door right before he opened it.

He looked bad. His eyes were red and swollen. To tell the 
truth, I bet we all looked that way  -  red eyes and runny 
noses but smiling.

The babies looked even better now, wrapped tight in their 
little blankets. 

Thea looked afraid. "Well?" she signed at Frohike, 
swallowing. "Who do you think is hungriest?"

"This little guy started complaining first," he signed with 
the baby over his shoulder. As Fro passed him to Thea, it 
was plain to see the baby could hold up his wobbly head. He 
hunched his little shoulders, finally worming his arms out 
of the blanket, then he started to flail.

LET ME, I told her

With my good hand, I helped him get the nipple into his 
mouth. "Here have a little mama ta ta," I whispered and he 
calmed down right away, turning his head enough to look at 
me. His eyes were clear and focused. He knew the sound of 
my voice. He recognized me. I put my hand on his head and 
touched his bristly white hair. "You know your old man, 
don't you?" I felt hot and cold in my chest and tried to 
suck back whatever it was that was trying to start up all 
over again. I leaned in and touched the back of his head 
while he nursed.

"If you moved to a chair I could nurse two at once," Thea 
signed to me repositioning the baby first over her 
shoulder, then under her arm, like a football, his head at 
her tit. 

Her face was changing. It was hard to explain, but she 
looked softer, more relaxed. Endorphins, maybe?

Scully helped her get another boy latched on. They sounded 
like a couple of puppies, squirming and sucking. I could 
hear them swallowing, I could hear the milk going down 
their throats.

Shit, my hand hurt.

Mulder stepped up to me with a baby, and I was almost 
surprised.  I was so wiped out I forgot for a minute how 
many there were. That was less than encouraging. 

I looked over at Thea.  She had a sad smile on her face and 
was touching their little faces her finger tips. She raised 
her hands at the wrists.slightly

"Mother " she looked at Scully and signed, restraining her 
movement just enough to keep from disturbing my feeding 
babies. "Are babies always this soft? Their skin, I mean?"

"They smell good, too," Scully signed and nodded. "When  
Danny and --  when  your brother and sister were born, I 
used to just sit and sniff them."

Thea bit her lip. "I wish," she signed but Scully cut her 
off her jaw clenched.

"There's no point wishing to change what's already done," 
Scully signed quickly.

One of Thea's hands clenched.

"Thea," she signed at her stepping closer. "You should 
know. When your father and I were still working for the 
FBI, I found a girl. She would have been your sister. She 
was your sister." 

"What happened to her?" Thea asked tight and close to her 
chest.

"I tried to get custody of her from the state, but I was 
denied. It turned out the manipulations they tried to make 
to her DNA were too radical. She developed a rare blood 
condition and she died." She looked cold, stony even, as 
she gave Thea the facts. "Her body disappeared from the 
hospital almost immediately afterwards." 

"She was younger than me, right?" Thea continued to sign 
small as Mulder and Frohike got busy entertaining the last 
baby who was starting to get hungry. We were going to have 
to name them soon.

"She was born November 2, 1994," Scully signed, beginning, 
against her will, to show more feeling. "She was one of 
their failures."

"Why did you want her?"

"She was my daughter. Just like you are."

That was when Thea started nodding to herself. She looked 
just like Mulder does when he's working up his courage. 
"Like these are mine, mine and Ritchie's, right?" She 
looked down at the one who had stopped sucking to look 
around. Gently, she lifted him in one arm his head in her 
palm. Scully leaned forward and took him.

"Hey Gramps, looks like there's a feeding station open," I 
interrupted whatever negotiations Mulder and Fro were 
having with the baby on the edge of crying. Scully operated 
the baby exchange. I wound up with the full one on my lap.

"You know, we need to name them," I said out loud, because 
my one good hand was occupied.

"What?" Thea asked, before Scully could sign it to her.

"That's easy," Thea answered.  "Primus, Secondus, Tertius "

I gave her the look.

"Larry, Curly, and Moe?"

My expression didn't change.

"Manny, Moe and Jack? I really like the name Moe. It looks 
funny when hearing people say it." She made an O with her 
mouth.

"John Fitzgerald," Frohike croaked as he signed. 

Thea and I nodded. When Fro was right, man,  he was right.

"This one seems most like him." She kind of pointed at the 
one on her left side and started to cry again.

"What ever you do, don't name any of them Melvin," Frohike 
volunteered, signing and talking at the same time, choking 
back what looked like tears even though he was trying to 
cheer everybody up.

"The dog is already Melvin," Thea signed.

"Or Fox," Mulder chimed in, sniffling.

"William is a nice name," Scully offered.  My father and 
Muld- Marty's father were both called William." 

"For the record, I'd like to cross Charles Gordon Byron off 
the list," Thea signed.

The rest of us looked confused for a minute.

"You know, CGB? Grampa Caligula?" She looked expectant, 
waiting for us to laugh.

"That was his name?" Mulder asked soberly

"You didn't know?"

We all shook our heads.

"We always called him The Smoking Man," Frohike signed.

"Kenneth," I said.  "This one should be Kenneth."

Mulder signed to Thea for me, and asked, "After The 
Thinker?" and Thea signed " Like the guy who broke into the 
MJ files?"

I nodded at both of them.

"I'd like to name one after Thea - you know, Theodore - 
Ted," I said.  Scully signed for me that time.

Thea wrinkled her nose and shook her head.

I turned my head so she could read my lips. I knew she was 
better at it than she'd always let on. "You got something 
else?"

"Beautiful," she signed then spelled it out. "Name him 
BEAUTIFUL."

 GIMME A BREAK, T,  I spelled, the baby cradled in my bad 
arm. Man, he was heavy.

Fro stepped forward and wiped Thea's hair out of her eyes 
with his hand. "Why do you want to name the boy BEAUTIFUL, 
sweetheart?"

Her hands were shaky. "After his- "she had that looking for 
a word expression on her face,"-his DADDY." 

Everybody seemed to hold their breath. Personally, I was 
waiting for someone to point out that my looks aren't 
exactly my strong suit.

Hickey leaned closer and kissed her cheek. "I think that 
would be a fine middle name.  Go with Ringo on the Ted, 
though."  He signed to her, his elbows on the bed rail. 
"For me? Please? And you," he pointed at me. "I don't want 
to hear you give her any shit about this. Capice?" 

I nodded.

He wiped his eyes on his sleeve. "Teddy, Kenny, and John. 
Jesus, sounds like they're gonna summer at damn Hyannis 
Port."

Mulder made a noise behind him.

"Huh? What did you say?" I asked.

"Oy," Mulder said again, but a little more clearly.

"Oy," Fro repeated rubbing his eyes. "You may be a shiksa, 
Farmboy, but you're our shiksa."

Scully hhhhmphed at them, crossing her arms across her 
chest and sniffling. "Well, what can I say about modern 
children? You two going to sing Hava Nagila now or the 
Fiddler on the Roof medley?"

Mulder actually stuck out his tongue at her.

For the first time, I knew we were gonna be 
alright.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

My first cogent memory is from the morning of my third 
birthday. Before that, there are snatches, sounds, seconds 
of silent motion, but the earliest complete memory I have 
is searching the house for an adult. I woke up as usual in 
my parents' bed with my brothers. Someone was kicking me.

I went downstairs to the kitchen.

No, Uncle Mel wasn't standing there making breakfast, like 
he was supposed to be. And the floor was cold on the one 
foot that had lost its sock in the night.

Maybe it was Saturday. I went up to his room and looked 
under his bed for his going-to-temple shoes. They were gone 
and his one suit wasn't on the door knob. He had gone to 
morning services with Grandma and Grandpa in Birmingham. I 
was slightly put out, as usual, that I had not been 
invited. It wasn't my fault my brothers couldn't sit still. 
Sylvie was nine years old and she didn't sit still any 
better than Kenny and she got to go.  

I stamped my cold foot. I'd bet anything they went to the 
electronics store afterwards.

I checked both bathrooms. No Mom. No Dad.

I went back downstairs and checked the living room again.

They were on the couch. Asleep. Together. Dad's face 
pressed was against Mom's neck. I figured if I lifted up 
the quilt carefully enough I could slip in there without 
either of them noticing.

They were naked. 

"You're naked!" I signed at them. I'd seen them both in the 
shower before but naked, asleep, on the couch, was 
confusing. Of course, signing to sleeping people was fairly 
useless and neither of them noticed.

I looked at them a little longer. It occurred to me this 
probably had something to do with what my grandfather 
called his romance. Did my parents have a romance? I felt 
almost certain they did, and it was something they had been 
leaving my brothers and I out of for years. I wanted to 
cry. So I did.

"I want to be part of your romance!" I yelled it three or 
four times before Dad sat up and put his glasses on, 
jolting Mom awake. I remembered he seemed especially 
embarrassed to not be dressed. Mom didn't particularly 
care. She wrapped the quilt around him.

"I want to be part of your romance!" I tried to sign my 
frustration but I didn't know the sign for what I was 
trying to say. Dad filled it in for me.

Mom scooped me up into her arms and kissed the side of my 
face.

"Hey, Beautiful, you've always been part of our romance. 
You came from our romance. You are made of pure romance," 
she signed slowly

"But but but," I signed knowing she was 
side-stepping the real issue.

Dad, of course, knew just how to snap both of us out of our 
oedipal quagmire.

"Anybody want to go out for breakfast? I think I got some 
early birthday presents around here some place."

I also remember eating waffles in Debbie's Delphi Diner.

As usual, Dad had finished first and fallen asleep with his 
head on our mother's shoulder and the newspaper he 
pretended to read in his syrup. Mom was dunking her waffles 
in her side of cream gravy and eyeing the three of us.

Kenny kept sticking his red birthday car in his milk and 
sucking it clean. John was driving his car one complete 
circuit around his plate rim for every bite he took. My car 
was still secure in my pocket while I worked on poking my 
index finger through all the squares in my birthday waffle.

I had a question for mom. I tried to sign, forgetting the 
waffle stuck on the end of my finger.

She raised her eye brow. I laid the waffle on the table.

"Why are we here?"

Her long hands signed lazily, still holding her waffle 
between two fingers. "Dad doesn't know how to make 
waffles."

"No, no, no. No, I mean here, in this life?"

"You're here," she bit her lip, "because Dad and I made 
you." She looked mischievously at my brothers. "Sometimes 
we get carried away with a good thing."

"No I mean, I mean people. Why are humans, you know, people 
here, on this planet, alive?"

She laid her waffle on top of her coffee cup. "Be 
specific."

"What's the reason? Is there a reason? You know, why?"

She squinted. "Your grandmother says the reason we are here 
is to find a reason." The way she signed it was tentative.

"I want to know, I want to know what you think," I signed.

She looked at me and then at my brothers who were watching 
closely. "To build. I think the purpose of life is to 
build."

I thought about that. 

I was still thinking about it when Kenny held up his milky 
Volkswagen. "Mom, you think there's any chance I could 
trade this for a cow?"

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
End 07/07
End Tellus Mater
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