Journal 2000 
by MD1016
Gossamer: TAR                                 
Rated: [MA], MSR 
Summary: The struggle continues.



*****
Chapter 1
*****

"...and the emptiness, pointlessness of each passing moment
consumes me. Even the mundane has become insurmountable
tasks of biblical proportions...everything is biblical these days..."
-Dana Katherine Scully
journal entry, June 23, 2000





Hidden City, somewhere in the former Liechtenstein
January 10, 2000



The halls of the underground city were empty.  Night a mile below
the surface of the Earth was much like day, except for the recessed 
lights that lined the rock floor which were dimmed and cast deep
shadows along the rough bedrock walls.  And the lack of
pedestrian traffic.  

Scully preferred the night.  It gave her time to think, time to
breathe.  The twelve foot by ten foot man-made cave she now
called home was barely big enough for the bed, portable shower
and sink, and a battered set of drawers that were meant to make up
for the lack of closet space.  It was little more than a cell, and with
the addition of two people it became claustrophobic.

Really, her nightly prowl wasn't about cramped living conditions,
and it wasn't about the taxing emotional distance that remained
even weeks after Scully had forced her husband to remove the
computer chip from the base of her neck.  It wasn't even about the
newness of being married to someone she'd spent so much time
and effort trying not to be in love with.  Although, to be honest,
being married to him didn't seem much different, other than the
strange new fact that he didn't seem to mind peeing in front of her. 
They still fought about trivial things, they still spoke more with a
glance than with words, and what small comfort she found in that
was laced with the knowledge that her secret wasn't safe behind
locked lips. 

That was something new that came with their marriage: secrets. 
Before, whatever they didn't tell each other had simply been her
business, or his.  Now, there was the added guilt of not disclosing
all.  He suddenly and magically had a right to know.  And he did
know, to a certain extent; he knew she was hiding something from
him, even though he had yet to ask. It was just a matter of time
before he would, though Scully hoped to resolve some of the cool
tension between them before she confessed.

Scully rounded a corner and glanced inside the deserted dining
hall.  It was a cavernous room half carved from the heart of the
mountain, half natural chamber with jagged stalactites and
stalagmites clinging to the ceiling and floor like stretched tar.  Not
surprising, it was empty save for the three cooks -  probably
displaced family of one of the higher-ups - who were already
baking breads for the morning meal. 

"Scully?"  The familiar whirl of tingles began at the base of her
belly when she heard his voice, just as it always did. 

Mulder stood at the end of the short hall with his hair messed,
and a sweater quickly thrown over the tee-shirt and sweat pants he
slept in.  His beautiful hazel eyes were still heavy with sleep, his
lean face full of a guarded concern.  "Are you hungry?" he asked. 
His intelligent eyes darted to the cavern behind her.

She shook her head.  "I just ended up here."

"Renee said you were tired all day today.  You should come back
to bed."  He tried to swallow a yawn of his own.  He was referring
to the French doctor who had befriended her and Mulder on their
recent trek through the Alps.  Scully tried not to be bothered by the
amount of weight he placed in what Renee said.  She was a good
person, and Scully refused to be threatened by her just because she
was a tall, intelligent, leggy, brunette with an ample bust line and a
personality that oozed sexuality.

"When did you see Renee?" 

"When I woke up and you weren't there I stopped by Renee's
apartment.  She always seems to know what's going on."  Then he
added almost as an afterthought: "She also said you're not putting
on the weight you lost on the trip.  We've been here almost a
month."

"Dag's having trouble, too," she snapped more defensively than she
intended. 

"Dag's situation is different."  Mulder was right, of course, but his
dismissive tone irritated her.  Dag's dramatic weight loss had been
because of a radical change in diet, and therefore his recovery was
a slow, painstaking process of modified diet and regimented
exercise meant to condition his metabolism to the foods now
available.  Scully's loss had been the result of a bad case of
pneumonia.  Stress and guilt were now keeping it off. 

She crossed her arms and inhaled sharply.  Tired, cold, and feeling
frayed at the edges, Scully didn't especially need Mulder's
scrutinizing attention.  Even from the corner of her eye she could
read his body language: distant, angry, weary.

He was sizing her up; the boots she hadn't bothered to lace, the
thick blue socks that stuck out under her rolled-up jeans, the
sweater layered over a long-sleeved tee-shirt and long underwear,
the unkept state of her hair. She knew she looked like a vagabond
in the scavenged clothes, and she combed a self-conscious hand
through her over-grown locks hoping to casually add a little order. 

"How did Renee know I was here?" she asked.

He glanced down at his own scuffed, unlaced boots and shrugged. 
"She said that you wander the halls every night.  Is that true?"  He
looked up and into her eyes with an intensity that both thrilled and
scared her.  He was searching for something in her he knew she
wouldn't give willingly.

Scully turned away.  "I've been having trouble sleeping.  I didn't
want to disturb you."  She tried not to let it show that it bothered
her that Renee and Mulder talked about more than just her
nocturnal walks.  In matters of health Scully was her patient, and
therefore should be protected under doctor/patient confidentiality.

He nodded, but his gaze clung to hers, soaking up every nuance of
her expression.  She wondered what he saw when he looked at her
like that, how much her face gave away.

"Maybe Renee could prescribe something for you.  To help you
sleep," he suggested

"I'm fine, Mulder.  Really."  She turned from him, exasperated.

"Then why aren't you sleeping?  I've known you a long time,
Scully, and I can't remember you with insomnia."

"Mulder, trust me.  A few sleepless nights isn't a big deal."

He shifted his feet, and then stuffed his fists into his jeans pockets. 
"Fine," he said with no real finality.  "I'm going back to bed.  You
know where I am if you need me."

She offered him a small smile, but he walked away without
returning it.  Maybe it was foolish to wait for things to get better
between them, but fear of things getting horribly worse kept her
secret locked away.  The nosebleeds hadn't come on this night, but
they could have, and as well as Scully knew her husband, it
terrified her that she had no idea how he would react to blood on
her pillow.


*****

The flourescent lights that reflected off the lab's white floor and
walls were starting to give Scully a headache.  She pressed a
couple of fingers against the pressure building at her temple and
closed her eyes for a moment.  Locked inside the mountain, faced
with only close views put a lot of strain on ocular muscles.  Her
reading glasses were, of course, back in DC, which was, as Mulder
had casually informed her a few days before, drowned under some
thirty feet of ocean and ice.  The satellite photos and
reconnaissance missions had painted a grim picture of the rest of
their world.

Dr. Bohr was across the room carefully preparing minute
specimens on thin slides.  He was an odd man, and Scully wasn't
sure what to think of him.  Physically he looked to be in his
mid-thirties, sandy blond hair that hung straight and overgrown. 
His complexion was pale to the point of being pasty; he looked as
if he hadn't seen the sun in a years.  Not that he was particularly
unattractive in an intelligent, British sort of way.  

Bohr wore a white lab jacket over the standard issue grey jumpsuit
that most people in the City opted for, and tattered loafers with the
back of the heels scuffed all the way to the dull leather.  He was a
brilliant man, but it was difficult to appreciate his intellect
knowing it helped to create part of the technology that led to her
abduction.  Bohr himself wasn't responsible for what had been
done to her - the tests and sterility.  No, those men were long gone,
killed to cover up the deceit of a shadow government.  But he was
there because he was part of the original group that engineered the
vaccine in one of its many incarnations.  He had been one of the
people she and Mulder had fought all those years to expose, and
now Scully wasn't sure if Bohr had switched sides, or if she had.

Circular logic on more than forty hours without sleep only served
to intensify her headache.

"Dana?"  Renee came up behind her with a concerned hand to her
shoulder.  Even after a full day staring at monitors and genetic
schematics the brunette still looked fresh. 

"I'm fine," Scully muttered, pushing her arm away.  "I just need an
aspirin."

"Why do you tell me things I know are not true?"  Renee's thick
French accent softened the recrimination.  "Aspirin will not help
you to sleep.  Again, your husband came to see me.  Do you ever
sleep?"

"I know, I know," Scully said quickly, hoping to stop the lecture.

"But even without him telling me, it is easy to see you don't." 
Renee ran a finger tip over Scully's cheek.  "Did you eat?"

"I ate," Scully snapped as she jerked her head away.  The pounding
intensified.  "I'm fine."  She stepped away and took refuge in the
only other person in the room.  Scully didn't like to be touched by
anyone who wasn't Mulder, something Renee had yet to pick up
on.

Bohr had obviously heard their exchange, the room wasn't very
big, but he looked up at her and smiled when she came up beside
him as if pleasantly surprised by her presence.  He smelled, as
always, of coffee and cigarettes.

"Dana."  His British accent made even her name sound foreign to
her ear.  "How are the slides coming?"

"Look," she said on an exhale.  "I don't belong here.  I don't know
enough about genetics to be of any real help."

"Don't be silly.  You help in a very real way by just being here."

"My being here isn't going to pull a biological weapon from the
junk DNA in my cells.  If it was ever even there to start with."

"Yes," he agreed, the smile slipping from his thin lips.  "It's
difficult to see how they would encode it, and then expect us to get
it out again.  And yet, I'm still convinced that the intelligence is
correct.  Too many people paid dearly for this not to be the answer. 
Including you."

"Even if it is, I'm not going to be the one to figure it out.  My
specialty is forensic pathology.  Dr.  Bohr, I really don't see the
point -"

His face soured.  "Oh, dear.  We're back to Dr. Bohr again, are
we?"  He gave a discouraged shake of his head and straightened
the white lab coat he wore over a brown plaid shirt and corduroy
pants.  "That won't do at all." 

"Pip," she said to placate him.  "My point is that I'm slowing you
down."

"You jest, surely."

"Hardly.  You have to take time and explain every step to me, not
all of which I completely understand.  Renee is learning faster
because of her research background and her familiarity with the
alien technology."  She motioned to the super magnified
microscope that looked more like a microwave oven than a piece
of delicate scientific equipment.  

She motion with her right arm and Bohr caught a glimpse of the
clear, lightweight, not-quite-plastic cast molded around her wrist
and thumb.  The material looked like something akin to cling
wrap, but it breathed like linen and was firm enough to keep her
broken bones set.  "Speaking of alien technology," he asked, "how
is it healing?"  

The puncture wounds left by the bobcat's fangs were little more
than pink scar tissue six weeks after the attack on a remote
mountain side somewhere in the Alps.  "It's fine," she said, and
tucked her arm behind her.  She didn't want to let him change the
subject quite so quickly.  "I'll probably get it off soon."

Bohr leaned closer to her, his pale blue eyes grew serious.  "Dana. 
You are very important to this research team.  Not just because of
the secrets we think are locked inside you, but also for what you
represent.  You are one of the few people in this world who has
come face to face with the Colonists and survived.  Possibly the
only person.  We need to know that our foes are beatable.  We
need the inspiration that you conjure just by being here."

Scully glanced at the hand full of technicians cataloguing and
cleaning up work stations for the night.  She doubted they even
knew her name.  "Thanks for the pep talk, but -"

"Dana," he said solemnly.  "You help in ways you can't even
fathom."  His expression was so intensely sincere that Scully, so
personal that she didn't know how to respond.  And uneasy feeling
filtered through her.

"Aspirin."  Renee appeared beside her with two white pills and a
glass of cool water.  

Scully took the opportunity to step away from Bohr, medicine in
hand, and a half-hearted thank you over her shoulder.  

"Dana, why don't you go home now.  Try to sleep."  

Renee's suggestion gave her the escape she craved.  "I'll do that,"
she told her, without turning around.  And since Mulder probably
wouldn't be back at the apartment for a couple more hours, she
might just be able to breathe for a while.

*****

Mulder woke her when he slipped into bed, though she could tell
by his slow, careful movements that he wanted her to sleep.  He
didn't touch her, but the coldness of their apartment followed him
under the layers of blankets.  The constant 58 degrees in the
Hidden City had seemed like a sauna after weeks spent in the
rough winds of the blizzard that still raged in the outside world. 
But as the days passed into weeks Scully found she was never able
to get rid of that last chill in her bones, and that seemed even more
true when she lay in bed alone.  Her toes were icy in the thick wool
socks when Mulder's legs found hers.

She rolled into him, hoping for body heat, and knowing that no
matter how tense things were between them he wouldn't refuse
her.  That was a comfort, at least.  She found his side, and his arms
curled around her middle, his face burrowed into her hair.  His legs
weren't any warmer than hers through the long underwear she
wore, but having their solid form pressed up against the back of
hers both gave her solace, and made her body sing.  Scully
breathed through the jump in her belly, wishing the warmth there
would spread down her limbs.  He smelled good, familiar.

"Renee said you weren't feeling well," he whispered against the
back of her head.  "Have you been sleeping all day?"

"Off and on," she mumbled.  "Just tired."  The headache was lost
to the cloud of sleep that still lingered in her head.  She reached
down and drew his limp hand from her waist and pulled it tighter
around her middle.  He adjusted to the embrace, pulling her closer
still.

"Then sleep," he urged.  His legs pressed against the back of hers,
and she couldn't help but think he was trying to envelope her
completely.  Had she really become so fragile to him that he
needed to protect her so completely?

No, she told herself.  He was seeking the same comfort that she
was, the same reassurances that the darkness wasn't quite as
absolute as it seemed in their tiny cocoon.  That he wasn't alone.

Mulder sighed deeply, and the heat of his breath bathed her neck
and cheek.  She found a peace in this simple touch, and in the 
strength of his arms around her.  There once was a time when he
would tell her that everything would be all right, and though she
rarely believed him she wished now that he'd say the words.

*****

She watched him stumble through his morning ritual, sleep still
clouding his puffy eyes.  Stretch, stumble to the toilet, hit the light
switch, ignore the lack of a door, pee.  He looked like a little boy
who didn't want to go to school shuffling about on a cold morning.
The idea of getting out of bed herself left Scully weary.  

Mulder flushed and ambled over to the tin of biscuits on the
dresser.  He pulled two packets and held them up for Scully with a
question on his face.  She nodded, and he tossed one to her before
taking their glasses to the sink.  He brought the water to her in bed,
sat with a little bounce, and tore into the cellophane wrapper.

The muscles of his arms and upper body retained the definition
they'd developed on their arduous journey to their new home.  It
had taken months of rafting and hiking to get to the remote
mountain in what was formerly the tiny country of Liechtenstein,
and in that time Mulder had grown lean as his body had been
forced to make up for what hers couldn't handle.  His skin tone had
evened out so that his white, pale jaw that for months hid beneath
a thick beard, and the red, chapped skin on his cheeks were less
pronounced.  He was still a handsome man who didn't seem to
remember he was pushing forty.

"Something wrong?"

It wasn't often she was caught staring.  "No," she assured him
before ripping her breakfast open.  

"You seem...pensive." 

"I'm fine," she told him, but he was already back to the breakfast
biscuit.  He ate it quickly and downed the water.  His Adams apple
bobbed as he swallowed.

"Shower?" he asked, scooping up her trash with his.  He dumped it
in the non-perishables bin on his way to their small, self-contained
stall.  The shower stood against the wall opposite the bed, between
the squat toilet and the pedestal sink.  Their world had shrunk from
two apartments with the breadth of Washington, D.C. between
them to a twelve by ten underground chamber literally carved
directly from the bedrock of the mountain.  Drill marks still scared
the bare stone walls.  Only rooms with delicate equipment like the
lab were lined with stark white plastic ceilings, walls, and floors.

He dropped his pajama bottoms and stepped out of his underwear,
and switched on the water.  Mulder naked was something Scully
would never grow tired of looking at.  The round slope of his
shoulders, the dip at his lower back that flowed into a smooth,
round rear that dimpled when he shifted his weight, the heavy
dangle of his penis, the ripple of muscles in his stomach as he
turned to her, the breadth of his chest - all of the innumerable parts
that he'd hidden for so many years and now he didn't even consider
revealing.

"Scully?" he asked, indicating the stall, already billowing with
steam in their chilly room.  A shiver ran up her spine, her nipples
tightened.

He asked because the hot ran out after five minutes, and sharing
was the only way they'd both get a shower.  She knew this, and yet
there was something incredibly sexy about the way he stood there,
nude and sleepy, asking her to come to him, to share a private
moment.  That, and the confident way he held out his hand,
knowing that she'd leave the warmth and comfort of the bed to join
him.  

Scully yawned as she climbed out of bed, the cold air raising
gooseflesh on her arms and legs.  Mulder watched as she stripped
off her long johns, her panties and socks.  It had been weeks since
he touched her with anything more than comfort, or looked at her
with a lover's eyes.  There was no reason for her to believe that this
morning would be any different, but she had hope - with Mulder, it
seemed, there was always some hope.

"Let's be late to work," he said.  Her heart jumped and her belly
quivered as his eyes traveled the length of her body.

"Late."  She readily agreed.  No one would miss them for an hour
or two.  Two, she silently implored, let it be two.

"We should have a real breakfast," he added as she stepped into
the steam and heat of the shower.  "Something that will stick to
your ribs."

"Breakfast?  We ate already."  

He stepped in behind her and went straight for the shampoo. 
"Don't you want sausage or bacon or pancakes with a gallon of
syrup?"  He caught her hand and squirted a dab of the thick green
gel in her palm.

"Sausage?" Hadn't he noticed what he'd been eating for the past
month?  Breakfast was most likely some sort of gruel.  But more
importantly: "Have you even met me?" Scully couldn't remember
the last time she'd willingly eaten sausage.  

The look of surprise on his face told her how bitterly her words
had unintentionally come out.  "I always thought you ate salads
and yogurt and that tofu stuff because you, like all beautiful
women in American, thought you needed to lose weight."

Scully turned her back to him and began to lather her hair.  She
wasn't interested in defending her eating habits to a man who ate
double Whoppers by the sackful. *Used* to east double Whoppers
by the sackful.

"Scully, you're a doctor, so I know I don't have to explain the
health risks of being underweight."

"I'm not underweight, Mulder."

"Do you even know how much you weigh?  Have you looked in a
mirror lately?  Scully, I can count your ribs in your back, for
Christsake."

Suddenly she felt vulnerable and violated.  Her arms crossed
reflexively over her chest as the water sprayed on her shoulder and
neck.  She couldn't think of a single reason why she'd thought
things might've been different that morning, why it surprised her
that his thoughts were anything but romantic.  Part of her was
starting to doubt that they'd ever made love; like it was some
elaborate fantasy she'd dreamed one night.

"I-I shouldn't have said anything," Mulder mumbled, berating
himself before she had a chance to.  "I'm just worried.  Renee said
there could be a risk of heart problems, seizures -"

"Stop.  Right now.  Don't want to hear her name come out of your
mouth."

"What?"

"Renee.  I don't want to hear it."  Scully turned and met his
confused gaze with a piercing glare.  "When did you start trusting
her opinion above mine?"

"When did I what?"

"Renee doesn't have all the answers, Mulder."

"I don't trust her opinion above yours -"

"You run to her every chance you get, you hang on her every
word!"

"Because *you* won't talk to me!"

"So this is *my* fault?"  Forget the shower.  Scully didn't need it
that badly.  She pushed the door open, but he grabbed her upper
arm before she could escape.

"Scully, what are we talking about?"

"Are you in love with her?"  The words shocked her as much as
they seemed to Mulder, because they held a real question behind
them.

Along with the instant regret for the accusation, there was a sickly
feeling in the pit of her stomach that threatened to upset her biscuit
breakfast.  She couldn't look at him, towering above her so close
that the spray that ricocheted off his shoulders splashed her cheek.  

She expected him to storm out, to slap her, to sadly admit her
jealousies were founded in truth, anything but gently taking her
elbow and positioning her where the water pressure was the
strongest and then slowly, methodically running his long fingers
through her hair to work out the detergent.  He was beyond gentle,
as if her head might shatter like a hollowed out eggshell.  

Just as the water turned he whispered, "All done."  She stepped out
into the cold air and found the towels he'd placed at the sink.  The
water shut off and he stepped out after her.  It took him no time at
all to dress, but he didn't rush out.  Instead, he sat calmly on the
bed and waited as she pulled the layers of her clothes on, brushed
her damp hair and her teeth, and laced up her boots.

When she couldn't avoid him any longer, Scully sat beside him on
the unmade bed and sighed.  "I'm sorry -" she began but he cut her
off.

"Just talk to me."

"What do you want me to say?"

He looked at her profile, sizing her up while she picked at her
thumbnail.  "Tell me why can't you sleep.  And why you feel the
need to hide everything from me.  Am I really that unapproachable
that you feel you can't confide in me?  Have things really changed
that much between us?"

"Some days I think very little has changed at all," she told him
with a cutting honesty.

"What does that mean?  What are you saying?"

"Nothing.  I'm not saying anything, because there's nothing to say."

He looked at her then, long and hard.  He could see the lie, she
knew, when his face grew long and sad.  Slowly, he nodded and
stood.  

"There's nothing I can say now," she amended.  She closed her
eyes to his scrutiny.  "Mulder, I...I'm not ready..."

When she didn't finish her sentence he knelt in front of her, his
large hands ran up and over her knees.  "I'm not mad anymore -
about the chip - if that's what all this is about.  I know I was really
angry, and I took it out on you, but...I'm not mad anymore."  The
tenderness in his voice pulled at her heart.  She leaned into him,
touched her forehead to his.  "Is that what this is about?"

"Mulder," she said his name on an exhale.  "Let's be late this
morning."

He pulled away just far enough to check her serious expression. 
Her heart leapt when he nodded solemnly, and then brushed a faint
kiss across her mouth.  She returned several times over, running
her fingers through his hair, pulling him closer.  The tip of her
tongue slipped between his open lips; his hands smoothed up her
thighs and gripped her rear.  They pulled each other closer until
the only thing that separated them was their clothing.  Mulder was
slow, careful with his passion, but Scully couldn't find the same
control.  She pressed herself against the bulge that was firm
against her crotch and gasped at the pleasure of his small, testing
thrust.  

How could they not do this every minute of every hour of every
day when it felt so wonderful to kiss his stubbled cheek, to run her
finger tips through his hair and feel his breath on her neck?  When
she kissed him it was like everything else went away, and the
world shrank to just the two of them.  Being with him brought out
a yearning in her that no other man had been able to unleash, and
she found that she craved it like a fire craves wood.  

She was barely cognizant of the layers of clothes being peeled
away.  Together their mouths played, fed off each kiss quickly
driving them to the only solution.  They fell back on the unmade
bed, his hips already nestled between her thighs.  Jagged breaths
punctuated the urgency they shared.  Scully reached between them
and stroked him until he whimpered against her neck, and his
fingers curled possessively over her left breast.  Once Mulder was
positioned, he took the lead.  In a single thrust he slid home, and
Scully gasped at the exquisite pleasure of it; so perfect, so
wonderful.  She loved him so much, so completely, and when he
was fully inside her, the heat of him, the pressure was almost
enough to burst her heart.  How had she lived her whole life
without making love to this man?  It was unfathomable to her now.

It took Mulder no time at all to find the rhythm that had worked so
well for them before.  He reached back and ran his hand down her
thigh, over the bend at her knee, and then under the swell of her
calf.  While he kissed her shoulder he slipped her leg up to his
waist and then pushed in even deeper. 

Mulder was amazing to watch as he found his pleasure in her
body.  He fondled her nipples, licked the valley between her
breasts as his hips working their steady cadence.  He moved with
determination, just as Scully did as she explored the muscles of his
working thighs and rear, the dip of his lower back, the hard
roundness of his shoulders.  When his mouth came back to hers,
she cradled his head and kissed him with all the tenderness her
soul held for him.  

For a moment they both got lost in that kiss.

"Wow," he muttered between breaths when they finally came up
for air.  He didn't complain she was too thin now.

"Don't stop," she urged, licked her lips.  He stared down at her,
mesmerized by her mouth.  "Mulder."

His hips resumed their steady pace, but his eyes didn't leave hers. 
On her back, body open wide to him, there was no place to hide
from his intelligent, probing eyes.  He searched her soul as he
moved within her, blending mind and body to seek out her secret. 
She knew him so well, and understood his need to connect with
her; she shared it. 

But Scully closed her eyes.  It was too soon.  She needed this time
with him.  The cancer would simply have to wait its turn.

*****
End of chapter 1
*****
Journal 2000 
by MD1016
Gossamer: TAR                                 
Rated: NC-17, MSR 
Summary: The struggle continues.



*****
Chapter 2
*****

"Just breathe.  What's gone is gone.  Don't think of the past, or
hope for the future.  Don't think.  Don't hope.  Just breathe."
-Dana Katherine Scully
journal entry, July 4, 2000






Hidden City, somewhere in the former Liechtenstein
January 11, 2000


Like plants, humans need sunlight.  Prolonged deprivation can
hamper the body's ability  to create and process certain vital
vitamins.  The specially designed bright white lights of the garden
became a synthetic sun to a people quickly growing weary of life
underground, while at the same time made the food plants grow. 
The cavern was the size of several football fields, and was able to
support enough crops to supply all the food consumed by the
Hidden City that wasn't pre-packaged, freeze-dried, or pickled. 
Most people enjoyed the smell of vegetation and the feel of soft
dirt and grasses between their bare feet.  Scully liked this cavern
the best because it was warm: a constant 88øF.  

She stood near one of the rough walls, donning the standard issue
blue protective goggles and matching modest blue tube top and
briefs that passed for a bikini.  Luckily, no one seemed to notice
her; not the small group of children running and laughing at some
made-up game near the apple trees, nor the handful of women
pulling potatoes up from a deep planter in one of the many rows of
growing vegetables.  Everyone worked in the City, regardless of
who they were related to (which got them there in the first place)
and Scully knew that if she hadn't been assigned to the lab she
would probably be on food labor detail.  Many of the wives were,
and she wouldn't have been an exception.  Doctors were a dime a
dozen in their population.  And, funny as it was, there didn't seem
to be one hair stylist, tailor, or decent cook among them.  It grew
less humorous with each passing day. 

The main group of bathers usually chose to sit in the fifteen
lounging chairs between the rice ponds where the humidity was
higher.  Only eight were taken, but Scully awkward in her self-
consciousness, hung back.  Mulder's comment in the shower the
day before left her self conscious enough to spend half an hour in
front of the mirror that morning, staring into the eyes of a woman
barely recognized.  It was amazing what three and a half months
could do to a person.  

When the Colonists finally attacked, Scully had been a head-
strong, logical professional, a scientist, a Catholic.  Now she
reflected a small, terribly thin woman with hair that had out-grown
its intended cut and dark circles around her pale, unmade eyes.  A
woman who worked in a lab that outdated all of her extensive
scientific background, and wanted nothing more than to blend into
the wall so the group of sunbathers wouldn't notice her.  

Scully couldn't remember the last time she prayed.

"Well, well.  If it isn't Mrs. Mulder."  The Australian accent held a
leer that could only have been Logan's.  "Of course, you kept your
maiden name, didn't you?"  The goggles made his small eyes look
beady, and his straight, angular nose seem too large for his lean,
toned face.  Scully had managed to avoid him for several weeks,
but like fungus he kept creeping up.

"Logan."  It was all she could say and still be civil.

"Well now.  You're just a little thing, aren't you?" he said.  His
eyes grazed up and down her body, his lips circled in a grin that
was part snarl.

"Good-bye, Logan."  She turned to leave.  The next wave of
bathers began to filter in behind him, signaling the merciful end of
Scully's allotted half hour.

"Another time, then," he said lightly.  "But don't bother running
off to meet that husband of yours for lunch.  He's already eaten."

The way he said it caught her ear, and Scully turned to see Logan's
self-satisfied grin.  She didn't want to leave him with the last
word.  "I wasn't meeting him for lunch."

"Oh, right.  Okay, then.  It all makes sense now."

Scully didn't want to take the bait that he so obviously and
deliberately laid for her, but she couldn't help herself.  "What are
you talking about?" she asked, irritated at herself almost as much
as she was at him.

He gave a causal shrug.  "Him and her, huddled close over a table
in the dinning hall.  It must've been an intimate discussion for
them to exclude you."  

Him and her had to mean Mulder and Renee.  Did Logan really
know about her irrational accusation, or was he just fishing?  She
could feel the color warming her cheeks.  "Oh, please.  Do you
really expect me to be jealous?"  Seething at his audacity Scully
sharply raised a questioning brow while she tried to remember if
Mulder had mentioned lunch with Renee.  Even if he hadn't, it
didn't bother her in the least.  Not one damn bit.  He could eat with
whoever the hell he wanted to.  Logan was scum.

"No, you're right," Logan insincerely conceded.  "Surely your
husband would leave you before he began an affair.  He's much
too honorable."

"Mulder would never leave me."

"Of course not," he said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the
world.  "You're his fragile little China doll."

"And you're an asshole!"

He feigned shock.  "Such language.  I must've touched a nerve." 
The bastard didn't bother to hide his smug grin.

Scully turned before she gave him another opportunity to push one
of her buttons.  

He called after her: "Really, Dana, we must do this again."

Logan was a cretin.  Scully knew this, but she found herself
wondering what Mulder and Renee had talked about at lunch. 
Why wouldn't he have mentioned it?  Did they often have lunch
together?  Renee usually left the lab while Scully more often than
not picked from whatever cold sandwiches the food service
brought around on their little plastic carts.  The two of them could
have lunch every day. 

It made her crazy that she cared at all.  Of course nothing was
going on.  It was Mulder, for crying out loud.  He loved her.  He'd
said so himself.  Four times.  Four separate and distinct times.

Scully wasn't, by nature, a jealous person.  At least she never used
to be.  Did she?  A flood of images whizzed through her head: the
blond bombshell Detective White straddling her well-kissed
partner; someone named Bambi who came complete with doe
eyes;  Krycek back when his name was Alex and he was nothing
more than a wide-eyed rookie eager for her job; the tall, brunette,
British Pheobe who knew Mulder and all his hidden triggers...

Scully closed her eyes and forced her mind blank.  She focused on
the beginnings of the headache at her temple and tried not to think
while she slowly dressed in the crisp air of the changing room. 
She needed to get back to the lab and back to the mundane
cataloguing task Bohr had given her.  It was stupid to let Logan
effect her, especially when she knew he was doing it.  

When she was finished she turned to the mirror to comb her
fingers quickly through her hair and froze at the sight of bright red
just above her upper lip.  She'd been so focused on her inner
demons that she hadn't noticed the smell of blood that filled her
nostrils, or the warm wet slowly tracking from her nose.  Scully
yanked a wad of toilet paper from one of the stalls and applied
pressure.  Eight days had passed since her last nosebleed.  They
were getting closer together.  

A wave of nausea rippled through her, and Scully doubled over the
toilet.  She gagged, but nothing came up.  Two drops of blood
dripped into the basin and slowly swirled as they disbursed in the
water.  Breathe, she told herself.  Breathe.

When it was safe to move, Scully sat on the toilet seat with a fresh
handful of tissues and waited a couple of minutes for the bleeding
to stop.  It wasn't too bad, though the nausea stayed with her.  She
washed her face, straightened her clothes, and made sure all traces
of the incident were flushed completely away before she took a
deep breath and headed for the lab.  Just a couple more hours and
she would be able to call it a night without raising suspicions. 

Suddenly Scully was exhausted.

*****

Renee wasn't in the lab when Scully arrived, but Bohr was.  He
stood when she walked in the room and waved his hands in the air
in frustration.

"Dana!  My muse!  Bestow some inspiration on my simple brain!" 
He whipped off his glasses and tossed them on the tabletop.  He
said with a wry grin: "I feel as thought I'm trying to derive the
meaning of life with a rock and a set of chopsticks." 

Scully pulled out a stool and sat beside him, elbows on the table
and head in her hands.  The strange fatigue turned into a
lightheaded, giddy feeling during her walk from the garden.  "Did
the modifications that what's-his-name was going to try work
out?"

"Chester?"  Bohr shook his head.  "He's still fiddling with it.  It
could take some time."  He leaned closer, and placed a warm hand
between her shoulder blades.  "Say, Dana, are you sick?"

"Tired," she quickly corrected.  

"Still not sleeping?  Well, that won't do.  Renee can get you
something -"

"No, no.  I'm fine."  She pulled away from his touch and turned to
her work station.  "There's just so much to do.  I'm just
overwhelmed is all."  She needed to lay down, but her head was
foggy and she couldn't think up a reasonable excuse.

"You don't look at all well," Bohr insisted.  

"I'm fine."  She sifted through the papers in front of her without
really seeing them.  "You looked through this?  What did you
make of the breaks in the junk DNA?  It looks like garbage to me."

"And to me," he said as he came up behind her.  Over her shoulder
dropped some another color enhanced virtual radio image.  "It
would make sense if the ends were split or damaged in some way,
but they're not."  He reached around her and jabbed the photo with
his forefinger.  "See here where they just end, haphazardly and
without warning.  If they were pulled apart I'd expect to see some
damage here and here.  But these look like clean cuts."

"Clean, random, haphazard cuts?  Cutting would suggest a
deliberate act, wouldn't it?"  She couldn't even begin to guess how
someone might cut a single band from a genetic strand, but the
clear cast on her right arm reminded her that there were sciences
beyond her realm of understanding.

"Unless we were talking about a bacteria of some sort.  And a
repetitive base sequence.  We should rule that out, I guess, just to
cover every possibility.  What I find fascinating is that the
fragments are all different lengths.  Presumably specific material
has been isolated.  But why?  These ribbons don't do anything
anymore. If they ever did."

Scully closed her eyes.  She didn't find any of this the least bit
fascinating.  The familiar pain at her temples was beginning to
throb in time with her heartbeats.  "I haven't a clue."  

"It's a puzzle," he muttered under his breath.

"Do you think it's possible that they're supposed to fit themselves? 
Loop around somehow?"  Scully knew she was grasping at straws,
but at this point, it was all she was good for. 

Bohr didn't seem to mind.  He looked at her with his pale blue
eyes, and twitched his lips in that way he did when he wanted to
offer her a smile instead of his frustration. "Bacteria have rings of
DNA, my dear, not humans."

Oh.  Right.  Biology.  She knew that.  Scully ran her fingers
through her hair, and tried to will her stomach still.  She needed to
get out of there before she lost her lunch all over their data.  "I
can't think anymore.  I need to sleep."  

Bohr's thin lips became little more than a line on his heart-shaped,
face.  He turned back to the picture and considered it with a heavy
gaze.  "You go.  Get some sleep.  Feel better.  Bring me coffee in
the morning."

"You need sleep, too," Scully urged.  "Come on, take a break. 
We've been working on this for weeks without a night off.  You
said it yourself, the broken strands don't make sense.  Staring at
them won't change that.  Maybe with a fresh perspective -"

"We need this to work."  

"We need it to work," Scully agreed.  "But in order to get it to
work, you need to be awake and alert.  You need sleep, Pip. 
Distraction.  And so do I.  We've been putting in too much time on
this.  Distance might help."

For a moment, Dr. Bohr's blazing blue eyes studied Scully's face,
the corners of his mouth drooped.  "Yes, yes."  He pushed a corner
of the paper around on the table top.  "It's just difficult to leave the
puzzle so terribly incomplete.  My brain will keep twittering about
all night, seeing little DNA strands wanting completion...longing
for the right fit to make them whole."

"Maybe that's the way these genetic strands are supposed to be. 
Maybe they are happy just the way they are.  It is possible our
science is wrong. Or your information is wrong.   That the answers
are somewhere else, in the enzyme coding or the protein links."

"Possible," Bohr said as he turned to meet Scully's gaze.  "Or
maybe the science is sound, and the fragments just need to find a
mate that can fit all their eccentricities."  There was a not-so subtle
intensity in his stare that released a shiver up Scully's spine. 
Suddenly, she was aware of the seriousness on his face, and the
stillness in the room.  Where had the lab technicians gone?  

"A mate to complete what they were meant to be," Bohr continued. 
"Perhaps all this time they've been forced together with the wrong
mates, and it was just a bad fit.  And when we find their true
mates, we'll all be able to sleep."  

As passes go, this was certainly the most cerebral that had every
been tossed her way, and it was incredibly flattering if she didn't
stop to consider the complete lack of other women in the City that
a single man might turn his attention to, and the fact that Bohr
knew she was married and still thought he might have a chance.  

And still she couldn't quite keep the smile from the corners of her
mouth.  She told herself it was the giddiness and the exhaustion.
"I'm going home, Pip," she said, and then added a pointed, "To my
husband." 

Bohr took the hint gracefully, and tendered her an embarrassed
grin.  Then, he sat back in his chair and looked at her appraisingly. 
"Tell me, Dana, are you and he a good fit?"

They used to be.  Scully hoped they might be again.  "We
compliment each other."

"Ah, I see."  His lips curled into a mischievous grin.  "So if you're
the brains and beauty, what does that make him?"

"The man I have loved since the day I met him."

"Ah."  Bohr's grin became wistful.  "I see."

"Good night, Pip."

"Good night, Dana."



She barely made it home before the vomiting started.  For ten solid
minutes she lost everything she'd put in her body that day, and
once her stomach was completely empty the nausea faded and the
throbbing in her skull subsided, and Scully was left feeling hollow. 
The fatigue intensified.  Lacking the strength to do anything more
than rinse her mouth out, Scully fell into bed and pulled the
blankets over her.  The symptoms were becoming harder and
harder to ignore.  At least there had been no blood this time. 
Maybe this was just a stomach flu, or a bad piece of mystery meat
from lunch making itself known.  At that moment, she didn't care
much.  Nothing hurt, nothing bled, and sleep became too alluring
to resist.

*****

She woke in pitch blackness.  There was no telling how many
hours she'd been asleep.  Enough to make her stomach rumble.

Scully forced herself out of bed, flipped on the light, emptied her
bladder and washed her face.  The mirror above the sink was
unkind in its honesty.  For the hundredth time Scully longed for
her make-up bag lost in the plane crash somewhere in the French
Alps.  It was hard to believe that was only three months ago.  It felt
like a lifetime away.  She quickly brushed her hair and teeth and
then headed for the dining hall.

It was late enough for the corridor lights to be dimmed, Scully
noted, which was odd because Mulder normally made it home by
then.  He'd gotten the day shift from a guy called Jude and usually
managed to beat Scully home from the lab.  Something must be up
in Central Control.  And image Logan planted in her mind of
Mulder and Renee sharing a table flashed quickly in her head. 
Tears left pin-pricks behind her eye lids, not because she doubted
Mulder, but because she couldn't control her irrational fear.  She'd
lost so much, so very, very much, and it seemed her emotional
stability was slowly leaving her, too.



In the dining cavern there were still a few stragglers finishing up
their meals, which turned out to be some sort of meatless stew and
crusty bread.  The cheese was all gone, but it usually ran out
quickly.  Scully helped herself to a bowl and a slice, and ran her
rations card through the slot at the checkout stand.  It beeped
happily.

As she turned to find a clean table, her heart jumped as Mulder
strode purposefully in the room.  She'd forgotten he'd put on a
grey utilitarian jumpsuit that morning.  It looked odd on him, more
blue collar and less Oxford-educated.  He seemed the part of a
disgruntled auto mechanic complete with furrowed brows a scowl
that would make small children run.  When he caught sight of her
he gave her a nod.

"You okay?" Scully asked as he approached.  He looked pissed as
hell.      

"Logan's an ass," he grumbled.  "What's for dinner?"  He looked
over her tray and frowned.

"Nothing you're going to be happy about," Scully told him.  "What
did Logan say?"

He peered past her at the food line.  Scully could see the hope that
there might be steak or pizza that she'd missed.  "I don't want to
talk about it," he said, clearly dismissing the subject.  I'm going to
get something."

Scully found a nearby table and waited while Mulder picked his
way through the vegetables he spooned into his bowl.  Scully had
never known just how picky an eater Mulder could be until they
got to the City.  He didn't like green beans in any type of soup or
casserole, or tomatoes once they were cooked unless they
resembled ketchup, and carrots in any shape or form.  He ended up
with a plate full of bread.

"Is this seat taken?"  Mulder plopped his own tray down and took
the chair next to her.  "I take it from your long face that there were
no significant breakthroughs on your end of the Front."

"Just more questions," Scully confirmed.  "How about you guys?"
  
He began flaking the crust off a hunk of bread and stuffed a wad of
the soft middle in his mouth.  He chewed slowly.  "We established
contact with two more pocket communities, 40 people between
them.  One is out of food stocks and facing starvation.  We're
going to try to get some supplies to them by the end of the week."

"End of the week?"  The phrase hit her funny.  She's stopped
thinking in terms of weeks and months without a sun and moon to
break up her days.  Time for Scully spanned between meals and
sleep.  "What day is today?"

"Tuesday," he mumbled.  "The twelfth."

"Tomorrow's my brother's birthday."

"Bill?"

"No.  Charlie."

Charlie, her sweet-faced younger brother who had breezed into
town on unexpected shore leave one night last October.  The same
night Mulder appeared on her doorstep with a vial in hand and
information on a warehouse holding viable alien embryos.  Only,
the aliens were fully gestated and born when they arrived, and the
vaccine given to Mulder didn't work.  Charlie watched his own
intestines spill on to the floor before he died, a sight Scully
continued to relive in her nightmares.

"He would have been thirty," she said.  Her baby brother Charlie.

The stew was cold, and the bread stale.  Scully pushed her tray
away.  Mulder didn't mentioned the mostly untouched food on her
plate, but his face betrayed his worry.

"I'll see you back at home," she said.

"Where are you going?"

"No where.  I just need to walk."

"Will you be late?  I'll wait up."

She gave him a wistful smile.  How silly had she been to think this
beautiful man beside her, who looked at her with such
compassion, such concern, could possibly betray the years they'd
suffered and succeeded together.  She must've been completely out
of her mind to have entertained such a ludicrous fantasy.  His eyes,
his voice, his very posture screamed to the world that he was as
devoted to her as she was to him.  And oh, how she loved him.

"Wait up," she told him with a nod.  "I won't be long.  There are
some things we should talk about."  Secrets needed to be shared.

His brows lifted, and he gifted her with a small smile of his own. 
It twisted her heart to know that all too soon it would fade.  She
didn't know when she might see it again.

*****
End of chapter 2
*****
Journal 2000 
by MD1016
Gossamer: TAR                                 
Rated: NC-17, MSR 
Summary: The struggle continues.



*****
Chapter 3
*****

"My life is like a knitted blanket, unraveling line by line, and I
can't quite remember what the design is supposed to be."
-Dana Katherine Scully
journal entry, June 23, 2000





Hidden City, somewhere in the former Liechtenstein
February 3, 2000


"Mulder, I know I should've told you a long time ago, and I tried
so many times to tell you this but I just didn't know how, and I still
don't, really, and that shouldn't come as a surprise because you
know that words don't always come easily to either of us - even
the words we need to hear - so I'm just going to say it and get it
out there.   I have ca..."  She couldn't say it.  For a month she'd
tried to force the damn word out of her mouth.  In her head it
echoed like a scream in some b-movie horror scene, aloud it got
caught in her throat.  

Renee knocked on the small private rest room door.  "Dana?  Are
you still in there?"

"Yes.  Sorry.  I'll be right out."  The lab w.c. was the only place
where Scully could lock the door and be alone with a mirror.  She
had to work through the whole c-word block if she ever had hopes
of eating or sleeping like a normal human being again.  The stress
and exhaustion of keeping her secret was burning a hole in her
stomach, and the not-keeping-food-down thing was really getting
old.

But more than that, Mulder needed to know.  He deserved the truth
from her own mouth.  He deserved so much better than she gave
him, or capable of giving him she was starting to think.  It was a
thought that only added to the sleepless nights.   

She just needed to tell him.  And then, logically, she needed to talk
to someone about a possible treatment.  Or series of treatments. 
She closed her eyes and leaned on the pedestal sink.  

The chemo had been bad the first time.  It sapped every ounce of
energy, every slip of dignity from her.  It made her far sicker than
the cancer ever had.  The thought of going through that again,
knowing that it wouldn't do any good - she just didn't have the
strength.  Not just of body, but of spirit.  The fight was too
overwhelming.  Her odds were so completely remote without the
tiny, magic chip.  And she could only fight one hopeless war at a
time.

Mulder had been right that night on the side of a frozen mountain,
and she had been horribly wrong.  It was her fault, not his.  She
had insisted he remove the chip, insisted it was leading the
Colonists to their group.  Mulder had tried to get her to stop and
think, to consider, but she didn't.  She couldn't.  And now she was
terrified it would prove a fatal mistake.

"Dana?"  Renee again.  "There's something we want you to see."  

"I'll be right out."  Scully flushed the toilet, and checked her
reflection one more time.  No blood.  

Renee stood outside the door, hair pulled back from her face, huge
smile brightening her dark eyes.  "It's beyond belief.  Beyond
luck!"

"What is?"  

Renee grabbed Scully's wrist and excitedly pulled her to the main
sub-cellular microscope where Bohr was busy adjusting a few
dials.  "Show her," Renee urged.  Her zeal piqued Scully's interest. 
"Tell her what you found."

"We found," Bohr corrected.  His expression was lighter, more
boyish than Scully had ever seen.  "It was most definitely a group
effort."

"What was?"  Scully stepped up to the viewer and peered through. 
Genetic DNA strands.  Broken or cut.  But different than the
strands she'd stared at for more than a month.  "Whose are these?"  

Bohr's grin grew.  "Mine."  He watched her intently, as if waiting
for her to share his delight. 

"Yours?  I don't understand.  I thought it was just women who
were taken for this."

"Yes, yes," he readily agreed.  "But there was an experiment done,
on Siberian convicts and other unfortunates who found themselves
at odds with the wrong people.  I didn't know what it was for, but I
assumed the black oil was alien origin.  Perhaps I was wrong."

"Siberia?  In a gulag?"  Mulder had only told a handful of details
from his experience in Tunguska with the black oil.  It had been a
bad time.  "You were there?"

"Briefly, yes.  Shackled.  Starved."  The joy drained from his face
as a flash of memory clouded his eyes.  But he continued with the
same energy.  "The point is, if I show these same traits in the junk
DNA I carry, perhaps you are only half of the whole picture."

Bohr continued.  "It was chance that I even looked, really.  I was
thinking about that chat we had, about finding mates..."  As he
hesitated, Scully realized he hadn't moved when she stepped up to
the viewer, and now he was far too close, his gaze heavy and
unnerving.  "And I wondered if the mates were, perhaps, more
literal than the proposed metaphor."

"My strands show normal," Renee said.  "And the rest of the lab
staff, too."

Bohr turned to a terminal close by and pulled up one of the
database files.  "I'm fairly certain there are several men here,
including myself, who spent at least some time in Siberia that
Spring.  But, as you know, you are all that remains of the women."  

He referred to the Allentown women, and yes, she was painfully
aware that she was the sole survivor.  Scully's head began to swim. 
"Hang on.  So, you're telling me this is the key that we've been
looking for?  We join the strands somehow and poof, instant
vaccine?"

"Poof?"  Renee seemed confused.  "What is poof?"

"There is no poof in science, my dear Dana, as you well know. 
And the strands don't just join together.  They have to be bonded
somehow.  Electrical jolt, maybe."  His mind was already hard at
work.  Bohr turned back to the terminal and began typing away.

"No poof."  It felt odd to be disappointed at the first solid
breakthrough they'd had, but Scully had hoped that figuring out
the mystery of the broken strands would lead to more than just
more questions.  Time was running out, she could feel it.

Scully sighed.  "At least we have a direction to work in."

*****

The next morning Scully stepped out of the shower and into a
towel Mulder handed her.  She wrapped it around her middle and
turned to watch her husband pump the last inch of water from the
stall.  Her husband.  His arms bulged as he worked the manual
wench, and his thighs clenched.  He took her breath away, he was
so beautiful, so incredibly sexy.

And that was a subject that didn't come up often enough.  For a
man with triple X bills that ran into four digits some months, it
was disappointing to realize how little it actually took to quench
that particular thirst for him.  Scully always seemed to be parched.  

"Mulder," she said in that low voice that so easily caught his
attention.  

He turned to glance up at her over his shoulder, and she let her
towel fall to the floor.  His mouth O-ed and his expression
dropped, but there was no lust in his eyes.  "Scully."  His face
crumpled.  "Jesus.  You're bleeding."  Her hand flew to her nose
and came away bright red. 

Mulder snatched the towel up and cupped the back of her head as
he pressed it to her nose.  "It's okay," he said over and over, panic
having taken over his speech.  Scully wasn't sure who he was
trying to reassure, her or himself.

He backed her slowly to the bed, and she sat with her head tilted
back trying to figure out what she was going to say.  Her secret
was out, coward that she was.  Her heart drummed inside her
chest.  

She shivered from her wet skin in the cool, still air, and Mulder
pulled the blankets up and around her shoulders.  Then he left her
to hold the towel while he quickly dressed.  

"I'll get Renee," he said as he tugged on his left boot. 

"Mulder, no."

"This could be something, Scully.  You can't just ignore it.  I'll get
Renee to come -"

"Mulder, no."

"What?  Why?  And don't tell me it's the altitude this time -."

"It's not the altitude.  It's what you think it is."

Mulder froze, and time seemed to freeze with him.  An eternity
passed before he even hinted a reaction.  "It is?"  The words
cracked.

Scully nodded.  The bleeding stopped.  She wiped her face with an
unspoiled corner of the terry cloth and then went to the mirror to
wash the rest of the evidence away.  Even her lips looked pale.

"You're...God, Scully.  You're sure?"  His voice wavered on the
verge of tears, which made her own eyes water.  She tried to
swallow them down, but they were too quick and numerous to
control.

She nodded, because really there was nothing else to say.  Except,
"I'm sorry," which didn't trip off her tongue as easily as it had
when she'd practiced in the mirror.  Sorrow was such a two-
dimensional expression for the turmoil that boiled inside her,
because it wasn't just her life that hung in the balance of their new
reality.  His wife and partner were at stake, too; never mind that
she was all of them. 

"How do you...feel?" he asked.  The words seemed dead in his
mouth.

"I'm fine," she told him, but knew that wasn't what he wanted to
hear.  "Tired."

"How long have you...?"

"Ever since I took the chip out -"

"*I* took the damn chip out!"  His outburst of anger was followed
with a gut wrenching sob that surprised them both.  He backed
away, toward the door, shaking his head.  "I've gotta go," he said a
couple of times.  "I can't stay."

Scully understood.  She's spent the better part of two months
hiding from him, from the truth, which she had yet to speak out
loud.  She watched him retreat out the door knowing that he
couldn't go too far, and hoping he didn't really want to. 

*****

"Dana!  Look at this.  Tell us what you see."  

"A Rorschach test with a migraine."  She was in no mood to feign
interest in fuzzy blotches.  The only reason she actually showed up
at the lab was that she didn't know what else to do.  It would be
hours before Mulder would find his way home again.  He needed
time to process.  She of all people could understand that.  She just
hoped it wouldn't take him as long as it was taking her.  

Bohr leaned closer to her and quietly asked, "What's wrong?"

She took a step back and crossed her arms.  "Nothing."  The lab
had been a bad idea.  She could see that now.  There were so many
bad decisions in her life, in the last six months, even. 

"Something has happened."  Once again, Bohr wasn't catching her
carefully sent antisocial signals.

"What is this?" she asked, taping the plastic schematic hoping to
derail him.

"Wait a moment, Dana."  He placed his hands on her shoulders. 
The gesture was too intimate, too personal.

"No," she said as she stepped away from him, shrugged away from
the contact.  "I don't want to be touched."

"My mistake, I'm sure," he said to placate her, his hands raised in
resignation.  "I didn't meant to upset you.  You're obviously in
some distress, and I'm concerned."

"I don't want your concern."  Truly, at the moment all she wanted
was the queasiness to ease some.  Her stomach was in knots, and
the dry biscuit she forced down for breakfast felt like a rock inside
her.

"Then how about friendship?" he asked softly, compassionately. 
Scully shook her head, but he didn't let that deter him.  "Dana, I
know it's difficult for you to open up to people.  You're a woman
of privacy, of discretion.  One might even say mystery.  I respect
that.  I applaud it, even.  But what if we talked hypothetically?"

"Pip, I have no intention of continuing this conversation," she said 
with a glare.

He relented.  "Right, then.  Let me go over what Renee and I spent
most of the night theorizing on.  We won't know for sure if the
science will work until we try, but we've posed the puzzle to the
entire staff and no one has yet to poke a hole in it."

Scully exhaled as she scanned the room.  "Where is Renee?"

"Sleeping, I presume, as I hope to be shortly.  I wanted to stay and
wait for you, though.  To get your input, and put you to task."  He
pulled three of the huge binders that catalogued a majority of the
data and began arranging them in front of her.

"All right, then.  Bring it on."

*****

It was late when Scully finally left the lab that night.  Too tired to
bother with foraging for dinner, she shuffled home fully expecting
to find Mulder fast asleep.  Instead she walked in to an empty
apartment.  The bed was still in the same disarray that she left it in
that morning, the bloody towel still balled up at the bottom of the
non-perishables bin.

It was all her fault.  She should've told him before he saw it for
himself.  He should've been warned months before, when the
nosebleeds were still infrequent.  Then, he would've had more
time to get used to the idea, more time to prepare.  She should've
been stronger, for both of them.  

Maybe it wasn't too late to help him through it.  Maybe they could
help each other.

Mulder wasn't in any of his usual haunts, and Central Control
recorded his shift had ended six hours earlier.  Scully leaned
against the stone wall, hands on her hips, and tried to figure out
where he might have gone.  There were a finite number of hiding
places in the City, and when she'd exhausted them all she went to
the last place she wanted to look.

Scully pressed a fist to her knotted gut and ignored the clamoring
heart as she gave a stiff rap on the thick plastic door.

Renee answered the door in nothing but a t-shirt, panties, and a
pair of black-striped tube socks.  Her thick, dark hair was a mass
of waves around her square shoulders.  "Dana?" she asked sleepily
and stretched one arm behind her head.  No bra.  "You are okay? 
Are you sick?"

"I..."  Scully regretted waking her.  "I know it's late, but Mulder...
Have you seen him?"

"Fox?"  Renee's brow shot up as she asked, "You're looking for
your husband here?"

"I need to find him.  Just tell me, Renee.  Do you know where he
is?" 

"Ask Dag.  Your husband spends much of his time with Dag."

"He does?"

Renee seemed fascinated by Scully's surprise.  "This you did not
know?"

"Uh, no.  Much of his time?  I didn't realize they were such good
friends."  Dag?  Weird that Mulder never mentioned that.  

Renee nodded and pursed her lips.  Her intelligent brown eyes said
something that Scully couldn't quite read.  Aloud, Renee advised
her: "Talk with your husband, Dana."  Then she stepped back
inside her apartment and the door swung shut.

*****

Scully knocked three times on Dag's door before the groggy,
towering man answered.  His pale, baby soft, shoulder length hair
was a mussed halo around his round, ruddy face.  Scully came up
to the bottom of his chest, but the clear blue of his curious eyes
always managed to meet hers with equality and respect.  He stood
before her now, naked from the waist up and smelling of liquor.  

"Dana," he said with sleep still in his gravely bass voice.  

"Dag, is my husband here?"

The tall man nodded and glanced over his lean, muscular shoulder
to a figure on the bed.  Mulder lay unconscious on his back,
jumpsuit unzipped to his navel, arms and legs spread eagle, and
taking up the whole of the mattress.   A pallet of blankets and
pillows on the stone floor beside the bed told Scully where Dag
had ended up.  

"Drink too much," Dag explained, leaning heavily against the door
frame.  It was obvious he referred to both of them.  "Mulder sleep
hard."

"Yeah," she said with a sigh, "I can see that."

"Cry hard," he added, almost a whisper.  He looked from a prone
Mulder to Scully with distress in his tired eyes.  "Very sad."

"Yes."  Dag's limited English seemed to sum it up nicely.  

"Mulder sleep now.  Needs to sleep.  Let him sleep."

Yes, she thought.  He had needed to be away from her.  She would
let him be.  "We should at least put him on the floor.  There's no
reason for you to give up your bed."

"Mulder sleep," Dag insisted through a yawn.  "Let sleep."

She was keeping him up, too.  "I'm sorry I woke you, Dag.  Thank
you for taking care of Mulder."

He nodded a little, but didn't say anything more.

*****

The apartment that night felt twice as cold, even with the rattling
space heater turned up to HIGH.  At least it kept the quiet at bay. 
As exhausted as Scully was, sleep never came.  When the alarm
sounded morning, she forced herself out of bed.  It felt weird to
shower alone.

She was late to the lab.

"You didn't tell him we need a sample?"  Bohr seemed more
shocked than upset.

Scully crossed her arms.  She was in no mood for an interrogation. 
"I didn't *ask* him, no."

"You understand how important this is?"

"Of course I do!"  

Bohr ignored her indignation.  "How incredibly vital it is that we
have as broad of a base as possible to draw from before we
proceed?  We only have a couple dozen ova with which to work -"

"Twenty-seven."  Across the lab Renee looked up from the
microscope.  "The three harvested early this morning aren't
viable."

"What?"  Panic erupted on Bohr's face.  "It's not enough.  Not
enough!  Isn't there somewhere else we can draw from?"

The lack of women in the Hidden City was never so painfully
alarming as when they scouted for possible ova donors.  "We're
doing the best we can," Renee said, with more than a little
irritation in her voice.  "Ova extraction is a painful process.  No
every woman of childbearing years is eager to go through it."

"We all must do our parts," Bohr said.

"We all are," Renee snapped.  She had personally donated seven. 

The tension in the room was thick, and on top of the anxiety Scully
already carried, it settled like a weight in her lungs. She needed to
sit down.  With each breath the room began to dance a little more,
the edges of her vision began to darken.  Scully stumbled a few
steps into one of the stools.  She used it to stabilize her balance on
the way to the rest room.

"Dana?  Are you okay?"  She didn't know who had asked.  It didn't
matter.

"Fine," she said over her shoulder.  The lock on the w.c. wouldn't
keep anyone out that really wanted in, but she threw it anyway . 
Seconds later she vomited her breakfast into the toilet.  

Breathe, breathe, breathe, she coached her self through it.  Anxiety
attack, she diagnosed.  It's all in your head, pull yourself together. 
Scully wasn't sure she believed herself, but she tried to follow her
own advice.  Breathe in, breathe out.   

Her sides ached from weeks of retching, her throat was sore, her
head throbbed.. 

Pull yourself together, and breathe.  Breathe.

She could hear them talking in hushed voices just outside the door. 
They wondered if she was okay.  They argued whether to ask or
not.  Scully chose not to give them time to decide.  Still queasy,
she quickly cleaned herself up, check for blood in the mirror, and
opened the door.

"I'm fine."

No one bought it, especially not Bohr.  He stepped into her
personal space, and with a slender finger he reached out to gently
stroke her cheek.  "Oh, my dear Dana."

"*My* dear Dana."  Mulder's voice, little more than a grumble,
made Scully's heart skip a beat.  She jumped away from Bohr and
turned to find her husband by the door.  He looked like hell; same
rumbled jumpsuit he slept in, no shower or shave.  Hangover.  Not
even a comb touched his head.  Scully wondered if he'd just
woken up.  "Am I interrupting something?"

"Of course not.  I was just coming to find you, actually.  Dr. Bohr's
had a breakthrough."

"Our breakthrough," Bohr insisted.  There was something
proprietorial in the glance that the Brit tossed at Scully.   She tried
not to acknowledge it. 

Renee snorted her opinion.  "So modest, Pip," she said dryly.

Mulder's expression remained a schooled neutral, but his tone
carried the sharp edge of his sarcasm.  "You must be the man of
the hour."    Then, his face soured, and Scully thought he might be
sick, too.  He turned and walked away.  

Scully followed him out into the hall.  "Mulder?  Are you all
right?"

"Fine," he said, walking away from her.  

"Mulder, wait."  He slowed and then stopped.  "I think we should
talk."

He nodded, miserable.  "I think we should, too."  His eyes darted to
her nose, and then away again.  His jaw flexed anxiously.  "How
are you...feeling?"

"I've had better days," she said honestly.  "But I've had worse,
too."

"Same here."  He didn't seem to know what to do with his hands,
and ended up stuffing them into pockets.  "What did Renee say?"

"About what?"

"You...you haven't discussed it with her?!"  

"There's nothing to discuss.  You and I both know that there's only
one cure-"

"We don't know that.  There's all this damn alien technology!"  He
leaned in closer, forcing himself calm again.  "What are your
chances of survival without a treatment?" he asked.  They both
knew the answer without Scully having to say a word.  No
treatment was a certain death sentence.  

Mulder nodded, understanding her silence.  "I won't accept that. 
And I can't believe you would, either."

Scully inhaled deeply.  "There are other things to consider just
now."

"Nothing matters except your health, Scully."

"The vaccine matters, Mulder.  And Pip seems to think we have a
way of making it work."

"Damn the vaccine!  They don't need you to make it.  Let them
figure it out on their own."

"They may need me more than any of us thought, Mulder.  It's not
just what's inside my cells that's valuable."

"What the hell are you talking about?"

She took a deep breath.  "In cloning, one removes the genetic
material from a healthy ova and inserts new strands.  Bohr's idea
runs along the same lines, except my broken DNA will be injected
along with another set with similar irregularities.  The idea being
that the two sets of incomplete code will create a new double
helix.  Which, in a way, is how an ova would naturally be
fertilized."

"Wait.  Are you telling me this is going to result in...offspring?"

"No.  Most likely not.  The odds of the procedure working at all
are very slim.  It's better if the host is also one of the genetic
donors, but even then the best realistic case scenario is a
miscarriage at the end of the first trimester with enough genetic
material to synthesize a vaccine."

"Better if the host is also..."  Mulder was horrified.  He even took a
few steps back.  "It's like I don't even know you."

"Mulder, you're not being fair.  I realize there are moral issues, but
at this point there aren't a lot of options.  Every day the world dies
a little more.  We need a weapon, a biological weapon that will
stop the Colonists."

He shook his head.  "You're sick, Scully.  Gravely so.  You can't
allow them to experiment on you.  We need to talk to Renee, find
a treatment to make you better -"

"I want you to donate some cells, Mulder.  We're collecting
samples from men who were at the gulag in Tunguska at the same
time you were.  There are only a few, and the broader base we
have to work with -"

"Scully, please, think about this."

"I have thought about it, Mulder.  I've done little else.  The only
way I can insure you stay alive is to make this vaccine work."

"Oh, no.  Don't do this for me!  If you want to do something for
me, fight the cancer!"

He said it.  He said the word aloud.  It was as if Scully stopped for
a moment, but time continued for the rest of the world.  Mulder
continued his angry rant, his face grew more red, more disturbed,
but Scully couldn't hear him.  That one word kept playing over
and over in her head.  And somewhere in the pit of her stomach
she felt the nausea rise.  

Not here, not here.  It was a useless chant.  Her stomach was
turning, and there was nothing to stop it.

"Fine!" she heard through cotton ears.  "Tonight, then.  But we are
having it out, Scully.  I won't back down on this."

She bolted for the lab w.c., and even managed to make it to the
toilet before she was sick again.  But when the retching ended,
Scully stood and the world went black around the edges before she
alternately went hot, then cold.  The room swayed.  Her knees gave
way.  She caught the side of the sink on her way down.

Scully passed out.

*****
End of chapter 3
*****
Journal 2000 
by MD1016
Gossamer: TAR                                 
Rated: NC-17, MSR 
Summary: The struggle continues.



*****
Chapter 4
*****

"Job had nothing on me."
-Dana Katherine Scully
journal entry, February 17, 2000





Hidden City, somewhere in the former Liechtenstein
February 5, 2000



Scully came to on the cold, hard stone floor, head pounding,
shivering.  A small pool of blood had begun to congeal where her
nose had been.  There was no telling how long she'd been out, but
the door was still shut and Scully didn't remember locking it. 
Chances were the others thought she was just seeking some
privacy after the rather vocal argument with Mulder out in the hall. 
She pressed a hand to her head.  God.  How much had they heard?

Sitting up was a slow, arduous process.  Her neck and back were
stiff and slow to respond, and her arms felt weak, shaky.  Oh hell.
Mulder was right.  She did need to start some sort of therapy.  The
symptoms were enough to cause their own problems, even if she
wasn't ready for the overwhelming reality of chemotherapy.  And
it was overwhelming.

Damn it!  Mulder was always right.  Why couldn't he, just this
once, have been completely off base? 

Scully closed her eyes and pressed a massaging finger into her eye
to blunt the headache for a moment.  She needed to think, to come
up with a plan of action.  No, no.  She needed to sleep.  To clean
up the bathroom, take a handful of aspirin, go home, and sleep.  
Everything else she would deal with when she woke.



Mulder didn't come home that night, and Scully didn't go out
looking for him.

When he didn't come home the next night she told herself that it
was just as well, because she couldn't give him the answers he
needed to hear.

The night after that she got angry.

*****

February 8, 2000


When Renee answered the door it was obvious that she hadn't
been sleeping.  The blanket pulled around her torso, her messed
hair and loosely swollen lips told Scully that the view Renee
purposely  blocked contained something other than an empty bed.

"Dana?"

"I-"  It hadn't even occurred to her that Renee might not be alone.  

"What do you need, Dana?"

"Nothing.  I'm sorry to bother you."  Scully turned to make a
getaway, but Renee stopped her with a hand.  

"You really must keep better track of your husband," Renee said
with a smirk.  "You are looking for him, yes?"

Scully shrugged.  "I thought - because you seem to know where he
is most of the time -"

"Dana."  Renee pulled the blanket up higher on her chest.  "You
must learn to talk to him."

Damn her.  Scully didn't need couples therapy, she needed to know
where Mulder was hiding.  "Do you know where he is, or not?"

"I do."  No further answer was forthcoming.

Scully raised her brows, surprised Renee would play this game.  Or
was she?  Maybe Renee did know where Mulder was because he
was in the same place he'd been all week.  Maybe her earlier
jealousy was well-founded.  Why would Mulder come home to a
sick, deceiving wife when he could fuck the brains out of a woman
who epitomized every carnal relationship he'd ever had in his life? 
  
Fury burned up the center of her chest and she felt the heat climb
her neck and cheeks.  Scully would not play the fool to their
tawdry affair.  If this was how things were going to be, he would
have to tell her to her face.  She would force him to look at her, to
know the pain he caused her.  And then she'd beat the crap out of
him.  Out of them both.

Scully pushed passed Renee, the grief of a wronged woman fueling
her indignation and froze when she found Logan leaning on one
elbow on the bed, a sheet up to his waist, and a glare on his
angular face.  

"Hello, sweetheart."  His lips curled into a grin.  "What's a matter? 
Think I was Hubby?"  His laughter was tinged with a bitter bite.

Mortified, Scully turned away from Logan and came face to face
with Renee.  In a flash she realized the scope of the mistake she'd
just made, the unspoken accusations of the man she loved and a
woman she wanted to consider a friend.  Where had the intense
jealousy come from?

"Get out," the French woman said.  "I will not be insulted in my
home!"

"I - God, Renee, I wasn't thinking -"

"Get out!"

Scully fled.  How could she be so stupid?  So completely out of
control?  The emotions she normally kept in check were running
rampant through her, dictating behavior that even she found
foreign.  Her raw feelings for Mulder were shaking everything else
loose, making her crazy.  She had to find a way to cope, find some
kind of resolution with him before she alienated the whole City.

*****

Dag answered the door after just one knock.  The lights were out,
but he didn't look as if he'd been asleep, despite the standard
issue, grey pajamas he wore.  

"Is my husband here?"

He shook his head.  "Mulder not here.  He works."

"He's working?  This late?"

"Double shift."

"Why would he pull a double?"  Hers was a stupid question.  He
was using work as an excuse to avoid her.

Dag shrugged.  "Don't know."  His eyes dropped to the floor.  It
was the first time he'd ever lied to her. 

Something inside her crumbled just a little, and Scully sighed. 
What could Mulder possibly be up to that Dag would lie to conceal
from her?  And did she really want an answer to that question?

*****

The lights in the Control Room, like the rest of the City, were
dimmed, and the panels and work stations seemed to twinkle like a
thousand neatly organized stars.  The down shift was mostly
maintenance, there to monitor and crunch numbers for the
following day.  The room was fairly quiet.  Real coffee steeped
somewhere close by.  It had been months since Scully had smelled
that particular aroma, and her mouth watered.

In the back, staring at a map of Siberia graphed out on a
transparent panel, Mulder chewed the tip of a pen.  He arms and
ankles were crossed as he perched on a stool.  His face was
serious, shadowed.  Had he slept at all since she saw him last?

Her anger melted into a hard pit in the back of her throat.  At that
moment she wanted nothing more than to wrap her arms around
him and stroke his hair.  He looked like he could use a hug.

His eyes lifted and met hers as if sensing her very presence.  There
was a weariness in his expression, a coldness that worried her.

"You okay?" he asked, almost as if by compulsion.

"I was just about to ask you the same thing."  Scully stepped
closer.  Mulder stood and met her half way.

"You shouldn't be here," he said.  "You know this room is off
limits."

Scully raised a brow.  "I've been worried about you.  About us. 
It's been days, Mulder.  You promised me a talk."

"Yeah."  He glanced around the room, but no one was interest in
the two of them.  Mulder sighed, shook his head, and shoved his
fists into his jeans pockets.  "I know.  Stuff came up."

"Stuff?"

He shrugged.  "We've lost contact with two groups of survivors. 
Thirty seven people.  We sent two men in a Mirage two days ago,
and lost contact with them as soon as they were out of radar range. 
We were hoping it was just that we lost another satellite feed,
but..."  He nodded to an oversized monitor on one of the wall units. 
Nothing but static.

"You know," he added quietly.  "Stuff."

"Come home," she gently urged.  "You can't avoid me forever."

"I can't."  His gaze didn't meet hers, and she knew it wasn't just
the work keeping him away.

A frightening thought hit her, something she hadn't considered
before.  "Is this something I should get used to?  Us living apart?"

He didn't answer right away.  Instead he watched her thumb as it
played with the ring on her left hand.  "Are you going to go
through with that man's experiment?" he asked. 

"You mean implanting the ova?  We're going to try, yes."  

It wasn't the answer he wanted.  "Why?  How can you let them do
that to you?  Wasn't it bad enough that they kidnaped you the first
time and submitted you unwillingly to tests that nearly killed you?"

"This is different, Mulder."

"It's not!  It's exactly the same!" he harshly said, his anger instantly
rising to the surface.  The veins on his neck stood out.  

"This is something I have to do, Mulder.  Please try and understand
that.  If there's some way I can aid in defeating the Colonists, you
know I have to try."

"Scully, you're sick -"

"All the more reason to do this now, while I still can."

"While you still...do you even hear yourself?  It's like you've
already given up."

"I haven't given up, Mulder, but think about it.  There's nothing
pro-active that I can do right now about my condition."

"You can fight!  There must be some sort of treatment that Renee
-"

Scully placed a hand on his shoulder.  He didn't pull away, and she
took that as a positive sign.  Slowly she stepped into him, wove her
arms under his and hugged his waist.  He smelled of coffee, too. 
"There is only one treatment, Mulder," she said, her cheek pressed
to his chest.  "You and I both know that.  Anything else will just
make me sicker.  Right now, I need to know that you'll be okay. 
That somehow humanity will survive this.  Bohr's science seems
sound, and while it's not at all ideal, it's the best we've got."  She
looked up and met his weary eyes.  "I need to do this."

"I guess then, you do what you have to do, and I'll do what I have
to do."  He finally squeezed her back, but it didn't help the anxiety
that began to well inside her.  Did his ominous truce hark back to
her original question about them living apart?  Was that something
he needed to do to protect himself?  She was too afraid to ask.

Mulder cleared his throat and pulled away.  His expression was
stony, hard to read.  "So, when is the...experiment going to
happen?"

"Tomorrow.  If the ova survive the night.  Three of them blinked
black and died almost immediately."  He was already throwing up
walls between them, closing her out.  Scully couldn't stand it. 
"Mulder, I love you."

He nodded a little.  "You only tell me you love me when we
fight."  

Scully didn't know what to say.  It wasn't true, was it?  Maybe it
was.

"Never mind.  It doesn't matter."  He turned back to the
transparent panel.  "I have work to do."

"Fine," she said, echoing his words from a month before.  "I'm
going back to bed.  You know where I am if you need me."

Mulder didn't turn around.

*****

It was late when she heard the door open and shut.  A moment of
silence told her he was listening for some sign that she was awake. 
Scully laid still, while her tummy briefly tingled.  Then, she heard
the muffled rustle of fabric and the whir of a zipper as he
undressed.  

He crawled into bed and brought the cold in with him, but Scully
didn't move.  He settled beside her and sighed.  The space heater
hummed.  Mulder inhaled as if to speak, but must've changed his
mind.  A hand snaked out and touched her arm through the sleeve
of her thermal top, ran down the length to her wrist, and then to
her belly.  His fingers were like ice against her bare skin as he
dragged the hem of her top slowly up.  Her nipples tightened from
more than just the cold, and she shivered when he brushed the
underside of her breast.

Without a word he rolled on to her, adjusted the covers over his
head as he slid down her body.  His face was cold against her
breast bone, but she didn't complain because his mouth was hot
and wet and wonderful, and he kissed her chest with a savage
ferocity.  Over and over again his teeth grazed her nipples as he
suckled and rolled them over his tongue.  A ball of ache opened
between her legs, right where the weight of his torso fell.  She bent
her knees, raised them high against his sides, and dug her heels
into the mattress.  She was desperate for friction, more than his
stomach offered.

His mouth didn't stop, but his hands found the waist of her thermal
underwear.  He shoved them down over her hips and thighs, and
she kicked them down the rest of the way.  Then she pulled his
head up, above the blankets to her own.  She kissed him deeply. 
He tasted like whiskey.  His tongue was demanding.

"Guide me in," he muttered against her lips.  Leaning on one
elbow, he hooked the other hand behind her left knee and pressed
her leg up and open.  Scully reached down.  His erection was hot
and hard and silky in her hand.  He hissed when she positioned
him, and then groaned when she pulled his hips down.  With one
long stab, Mulder pushed his way inside, and her body was happy
to accommodate. 

The weight of him on her, the girth of him in her gave a sense of
completion she never believed in before she knew him.  Love
making before Mulder had been a past time, something to do with
a boyfriend that didn't involve football or fishing.  Now, as he
began to slowly move within her, it became a chance for her to tell
him all the things she couldn't voice.  The rocking of his hips said
she was equal to the task; his partner in everything.  Her caressing
hands over the working muscles of his back were to reassure him
that she was there, and to encourage him.  Her lips against his told
of her love with each kiss.

His hand left her leg and smoothed tenderly over her hair and the
side of her face, and his mouth relinquished hers while his
rhythmic impaling found a consistent cadence.  On the side of her
neck his labored breath was hot and wet, wonderful, as he thrust,
thrust, thrust inside her.  She gripped his ass, wanting more
contact.  Harder.  Stronger.  Faster.

She kissed his ear, a silent whispered apology for the accusations
and assumptions of betrayal.  She needed his forgiveness, as much
as she needed her own, but she couldn't bring herself to ask.  His
body felt so good on hers, warming her, filling her.  And the
sounds he made, somewhere between pain and ecstacy, they
reminded her of the goal of this particular journey.  She wanted to
reach it with him.  It wouldn't take much, a stroke or two, so she
snaked a hand between their bodies, down to where they joined. 
Mulder raised up for her, not losing the stride he'd reached, but a
little of the depth.  Slick and hot and hard as a bead, Scully
touched that one perfect place between her legs, and instantly her
toes curled and her body tensed as the pressure in her tummy
began to rise.

It was a better high than any drug could manufacture: Mulder
inside her, panting and thrusting and running long fingers from the
side of her sensitive breast down to her thigh and back up again,
mixed with her own rapid dextral manipulation at just the right
pressure and angle.  Her pulse soared, her head buzzed, the base of
her belly tightened as her crescendo approached like a freight
train.  

So good, so good, and oh my God she was coming...

Mulder stopped to ride the wave with her, but she pulled him
down hard and muttered, "Fuck," through clenched teeth.

Hard and fast, and so good.  God, so good.  She pulled her legs up,
but he kept getting caught as her body reflexively clenched around
him.  Not that either of them minded.  

Her muscled turned to jelly, as her climax receded.  Mulder's
thrusts became more sporadic, more chaotic.  Scully ran her hands
over his muscular ass, smoothing and caressing the muscles
quaking from exertion.  She held him when he froze, mid-thrust,
and sighed as he went limp in her arms.  It took a short while for
his breathing to slow, and she took the opportunity to play with the
hair growing long at the nape of his neck.  

"I love you," she whispered, running a light caress over his slack
back.  They weren't fighting now.

He kissed her shoulder in response.

*****

When Scully woke the next morning, Mulder was already gone. 
Again, she showered alone.  Breakfast didn't seem a good idea
because of the general Renee would administer for the procedure,
so Scully skipped that part of her morning ritual.  

It had been too much to hope that Mulder might be there for the
procedure.  Truth be told, she didn't really blame him.  If the
circumstances were different, less dire, she probably would've
sided with him.  The moral grey ground of creating something that
should by all rights be a child, knowing that it would never be - 

No.  She couldn't afford to talk herself out of it.  It wasn't a child,
it was what someone had done to her.  The genetic bonding was
too unstable to support any true life.  It was a cure for a plague; 
like penicillin, nothing more.  She told herself that all the way to
the lab.



 Renee and Bohr were setting up when she arrived.

"We're still doing this, right?" Scully asked.  "Did the ova make
it?"

"Three," Renee told her.  She wore a jumpsuit with a sweater over
it, and no trace of resentment from the night before. 

"How are you feeling, Dana?" Bohr asked.

"Let's just get this over with," she told him.  She glanced at Bohr,
but he remained mute in his brown corduroy pants and lab smock.  

In the restroom, Scully changed into a paper smock.  The mirror
reflected a woman who looked much more calm than she felt. 
Last night had been good for her, for them both.  She hoped today
wouldn't set that back.

The examination room was actually one of the offices cleared of
everything but a bed, a series of monitors, and a portable sink.  

Bohr helped Scully get comfortable on the narrow bed, and hooked
her up to the machinery.  Everything was recorded: heart,
respiration, blood pressure.  Scully looked again at the monitor. 
No, that couldn't be right.

"Mon Dieu!"  Renee was as surprised by the readout as Scully was. 
"You're blood pressure, Dana.  Do you see this?"

"It must be a malfunction.  I don't have a problem with my blood
pressure."

 Renee shook her head.  "Glucose level is dangerously low - when
did you last eat?"  Scully had to think for a moment, but Renee
kept reviewing her vitals.  "You're electrolights are completely out
of balance.  Dana, what have you been doing to yourself?"

From a standing tray Renee picked up something that resembled a
hockey puck.  "I want to listen to your heart."  She placed a small
earpiece on the back of her ear and began waving the black device
over the center of Scully's chest.  "Breathe," she said.

Breathe, Scully told herself.

Renee's eyes bugged out of her head, and her expression startled
Scully.  "Dana."  Her name was little more than a gasp.  "Why did
you not tell me?  How could you not?"

"Tell you what?  What do you hear?"  It couldn't be her illness,
Scully tried to reassure herself.  That was a silent killer.

Renee pulled the earpiece off and handed it to Scully.  Then she
lowered the device to Scully's abdomen.  A soft, rapid swish
became more pronounced.  

"I hear a fetal heartbeat, Dana.  What do you hear?"

Scully's breath got caught in the painful lump in her throat as the
steady whoosh filled her whole consciousness.  It was impossible
that the sound that she heard was what Renee assumed it would be. 
Completely impossible.  Barren women do not conceive.  This was
not a heartbeat.  It was not.

"It's broken," Scully muttered.  Her mouth felt oddly numb.  The
machines beside her went crazy.  

"Pip!" Renee screamed at the top of her lungs.  The slender man
came running.  "Hurry!  She's going to stroke out!"

"I'm fine,"Scully tried to tell her, but the room went blindingly
bright around the edges and she had to close her eyes.

It was hard to say just what happened next.  Scully felt like she
was caught in slow motion while the rest of the world whizzed by. 
Renee was there, and then she was gone.  Prick.  Something was
injected, but by the time she turned to look, the syringe and it's
wielder had disappeared.  The sounds around her distorted into a
symphony of noise.  And then slowly, painfully slowly, everything
began to settle in its place.

"Feeling better?" Renee asked.  

"Much."

"Dana."  She pulled a chair up to the bed.  "You knew you were
pregnant, yes?"

"I'm not pregnant," Scully insisted.  "You know that's impossible." 
She pushed Renee's hand aside.  She needed to get out of there,
needed to find Mulder.

"Middle of your first trimester.  Eight weeks."

"No.  You've got it wrong."  

"Dana -"

"Stop saying my name like that!"  Tears prickled her eyes, and
Scully couldn't hold them back.  Renee knew she was sterile.  The
vindictive bitch was getting her back for the night before. "Get
away from me!"

"No, Dana, stop.  You must remain calm.  Your pressure is
extremely elevated.  We were able to get it down a little, but it's
crucial that you not excite yourself until we can stabilize your
vitals."  

Scully struggled to sit up.  "I need to get Mulder -"

Renee gently pushed her shoulders back down to the bed.  "You
need to rest, Dana.  Pip!"

He came flying in the room, wide-eyed and anxious.  "Good God,
she's awake.  Weren't you going to sedate her?"

"Damn it, Renee, let go of me!"  Scully tried to slip under her arm,
but Bohr grabbed her other shoulder and the two of them
effectively pinned her to the bed.  "Stop it!"

"She's going to pass out again," Bohr gripped, his eyes glued to the
rapidly flashing lights on one of the monitors.  

"Good," Renee snapped.  "Then she won't hurt herself."

"Why are you doing this?!" 

"Dana, stop struggling!" Bohr said between clenched teeth. 

It was futile to fight them like that.  She had to distract them if she
was going to make an escape.  She went limp.  "Fine.  Fine."  

The moment they relaxed their grip Scully scrambled from the
table and dodged their attempts to recapture her.  The lab
assistants were no threat, and Scully darted out into the hall and
down the corridor with both Bohr and Renee hot on her tail.  They
shouted after her, but Scully didn't listen.  She wasn't at all sure
why the morning had turned into a chase, but she was upset, and
needed Mulder.  That was the only thought in her head.  

She passed several people on her way to the Control Room.  All
stopped to gape as she sped past.  The paper gown flapped behind
her, and her bare feet smacked hard on the stone floor.  Her heart
raced, and her lungs ached from the unaccustomed exertion.

When Scully burst into Central Control, all eyes fell on her.  The
room instantly grew quiet, save the mechanical buzz.  Mulder was
no where in sight. 

But Logan was.  "Well, hello, sweetheart.  Come to give us a
show?"   

"Where's Mulder?!" she demanded.  Renee caught up, and stopped
within arm's length.  Bohr wasn't far behind.

Logan's thin brows raised.  "You mean right now?  Probably
somewhere over the Black Sea."  He pointed to one of the
monitors where a green dot blipped.

The back of her throat began to burn.  "Tell me where he is,
Logan, or so help me God, I'll pull your heart out through your
throat!"

Logan grinned like a devil.  "Surely, he told you he was leaving. 
Oh, no that's right.  Mulder would *never* leave you.  Here. 
Without family, or a friend in the world."

Scully's gaze went from Logan to the green dot, and back to Logan
again.  Lies.  They were all liars!  From the corner of her eye she
cause site of Dag.  He sat at a console watching her with
apprehension.

"Where's Mulder, Dag?  Did he go to the Garden?"

The large man sadly shook his head.  His clear, blue eyes fell on
the green dot.  "Mulder is gone," he said.

"Shut up!"  It wasn't true.  It couldn't be.  This was all a horrible
nightmare where everyone had turned against her.  She had to
wake up.  

Dag talked into his mouth piece, and then pointed back at the
monitor.  Mulder's face appeared, wearing a white helmet.  

"Where is she?" the fuzzy image on the screen asked.  

Standing, Dag held out his ear piece for Scully to take.  This
wasn't happening.  It couldn't be.  

As if in slow motion, Scully made her way to Dag's console.  He
set her down in his seat and adjusted the mini camera so it
captured her face.  She slid the earpiece on.

"Mulder?  Is it true?  Why did you leave me?"  Tears rolled down
her face faster than she could wipe them away.

"You're doing what you had to do, and so am I.  I know I
should've told you, Scully.  I wanted to tell you last night, but I
knew you'd try to talk me out of it, and I didn't want to say good-
bye that way."

"Good-bye?"  Her voice cracked.  "Why?"

"You need the chip.  I've got to find it for you.  I will find it."

"I don't need it, Mulder.  I need you.  Come back.  Please."

"Scully, listen to me.  There isn't much time.  I know you're not
going to like this, but I've asked Dag to watch after you.  He
knows a little of what's going on. I don't know how long I'll be
away.  But if I'm not back by the end of the week -" The screen
went to static, and then blacked out all together.  The green dot
faded.

"MULDER!"  Scully gripped the desk.  "What happened?  Where
did he go?"

"Yeah.  We lost contact."  Logan pressed a couple of buttons. 
"Hell.  Another Mirage gone.  That was valuable plane, too. 
Rayson, Conroe, you guys got anything?"  Negative head shakes
answered.  "Hell."

Scully ripped the earpiece from her head and threw it across the
room.  Then she collapsed into the chair and covered her face with
her hands.  

Wake up, she urged herself.  This isn't real.  Just wake up.




The next morning proved just how real it had been.  Dag could
give her little information except to say that Mulder was with a
top-notch pilot, and they were supposed to be headed to
somewhere in Siberia.  When Scully asked when he thought they
might hear from Mulder again, Dag shrugged and shook his head. 
The last plane to fall off their radar had yet to reappear and the two
pilots aboard that plane were presumed dead.




When a week passed with no word from Mulder, Scully fell into a
dark depression that not even the tiny, miracle of light growing
within her could penetrate. 

There had been no cancer.  

*****
End of chapter 4
*****
Journal 2000 
by MD1016
Gossamer: TAR                                 
Rated: NC-17, MSR 
Summary: The struggle continues.



*****
Chapter 5
*****

"They took my home, my job, my family, my way of life and my
god.  They took the dreams I once dared to dream, and the ability
to dream them.  I don't hate the Colonists anymore.  They took
that, too.  And yet, I laughed today.  I laughed.  It felt...foreign."
-Dana Katherine Scully
journal entry, August 1, 2000





Hidden City, somewhere in the former Liechtenstein
February 19, 2000



"Any more nosebleeds?" Renee asked.  Her professional voice was
much colder than the one Scully was used.  She jotted down notes
on a chart even when Scully didn't answer.  "What about
headaches?  You feel fine, yes?"  She looked over the folder and
analyzed Scully's face, and then scribbled something more.  "You
haven't been eating."

"I've been eating," Scully said quietly.  She just hadn't been able to
keep anything down.  Including the nausea pills.

"You're dehydrated, and your blood work is a mess."  Renee tossed
the paperwork aside and once again invaded Scully's personal
space with her hands; she probed the top of her throat for lymph
nodes.  "More sleep, more food, more water.  Dana, you must take
better care of yourself."

"I feel fine."

"Of course you do," Renee dryly said.  She pulled an ear piece
from the pocket of her lab smock.  "Lay down.  I want to listen."

Scully did as she was told.  

The exam table was thinly padded, and cold.  With her arms
crossed above her head, Scully closed her eyes while Renee waved
the disk over her torso and stomach.  She didn't want to know.  It
hurt too much.

"Have you had any swelling in your feet?"

Where was he?  Scully imagined him out in the blizzard, freezing
to death while she was locked inside a mountain and was poked,
prodded, and told she was self-destructing.  She dreamed he
whispered her name even as unconsciousness took him, and woke
screaming for him until her throat was raw.  Sometimes Dag was
there when she woke, and he held her until she asked him to leave. 
He was a quiet man, a gentle man, and slowly was becoming a
much needed friend.  The world had become an infinitely lonely
place. 

She never should have let Dag stop her from going after him that
first day.  At the time it seemed to make sense to see if he might
make it back on his own.  After all, they didn't know where he was
headed, or where he was once he dropped off the radar.  The
possibilities that Logan and Dag bombarded her with ranged from
a simple mechanical malfunction of the satellite they got the relay
from to the total vaporization of Mulder's ship.  Either way, Dag
had argued, there was nothing that she could do.

He also said the magic words, words Mulder must've coached him
to use.  Dag told her to trust in Mulder.  To trust that Mulder knew
what he was doing, that he would make it home safely.  It wasn't a
fair play.  There was nothing Scully could counter with.

Since then, every day, twice a day Scully went to Central
Control hoping that Mulder might have been able to make
contact, or made it to one of the four pocket colonies they knew
existed out in the wild frozen wasteland that now was Russia,
where she left multiple desperate messages for him.  

"Dana?"  Renee's voice grounded her back in reality.

Tears had made wet trails to her ears without her even realizing. 
Scully pulled her arms over her face to shield her surrender to the
emotions.  It was all too much; too much pain, too much
emptiness, too much loss.  She ached from the inside out, and
there weren't enough pills in the universe to numb it all.  

"Go home, Dana.  Try to sleep.  I will bring you some dinner
tonight."  

Sleep.  Scully doubted she could do it.  In the silence of her room
her mind worked overtime.  But it was an escape from the lab, and
the constant reminders of what she possessed inside her, and so
she would go.  It was insufferable to think that she would bare him
a child he might never know exists, and that it was completely
her fault.  It was possible she not only killed her best friend and
ally, her lover, her husband and partner, but she unintentionally
murdered the father of the only child she would ever carry. 

And he would never know.

That was the worst part of it all.  They were the final truths that
would be forever concealed from him.  

*****

The knock on the door startled Scully.  

"Dag?" 
                              
Renee peeked in.  "Just me.  With food."  Scully shielded her eyes
with the back of her hand as she flipped on the lights.

"Just set it down anywhere."

"No.  You need to eat, and I will see that you do."

Scully scowled.  She could smell mystery meat stew from across
the room and it woke her queasiness from its peaceful slumber.

Renee pushed some of the rumpled covers away and slid the tray
onto the flat top of the mattress.  "You should eat before it cools.  I
know it's difficult to believe, but the taste gets worse."

"Why do you care?"

For a moment Renee just looked at her, studied her.  She wore the
familiar brown sweater over the regulation jumpsuit, and her hair
had worked itself loose from the bun at the base of her neck.  It
had been a long day for Renee, and she wore every minute of it on
her face.  With a heavy sigh, she sat on the edge of the bed and
crossed her legs, and her arms above them.  "I care because you do
not."

"I just want to be left alone."

"Yes, yes."  Renee nodded as she stared out across the room. 
"That is not a luxury you can afford.  You're pregnant, Dana. 
You're going to have a baby -"

"Shut up!"  Scully kicked her way to sitting, and Renee managed to
rescue the tray before its contents spilled.  "Just shut up!"

"We've been through this, over and over.  You need to find some
acceptance."

"I need my husband!"  And he needed her.  Every time he ran off
on his own he always got himself in more trouble than he could
handle.  He counted on her to follow and save his ass.  "I've got to
find him, Renee.  If he's alive..."

"We all hope he is, Dana -"

"Don't patronize me!"  The fury in her wouldn't be controlled, and
Scully felt it spill over liked a hot deluge under her skin.  "Get out! 
Get out!  I don't buy the concerned looks anymore, Renee.  You're
no friend of mine!  You want this thing inside me because I
achieved naturally what you couldn't in the lab.  I'm your science
experiment.  You and Bohr can't wait to get your hands on my
baby!  But you won't!  Do you hear me?!  I won't let you touch it! 
So, why don't you crawl back into bed with that snake, Logan, and
fuck his brains out and leave me the HELL ALONE!"

Renee didn't move, and Scully took one of the pillows and blind-
sided her.  The stew went flying and ended up half on Renee's
front, half on the bed and floor.  With slow, deliberate moves
Renee placed what was left of the bowl and its contents flat on the
tray and set it on the rock floor.  Then she stood.  

"I am your friend, Dana.  And you need friends now.  Especially
now."

"And I suppose you want me to believe Logan is a friend, too? 
Bullshit!"

"Logan has his own demons.  I will not defend him to you."

"Good!  Get out!"

Finally Renee gave in and left.  The door wasn't even shut behind
her before Scully slipped out of bed and yanked a pullover on over
her long underwear, and slipped into a pair of jeans that were four
sizes too big.  Then, she left the empty apartment and wandered
the halls until morning.

*****

February 28, 2000


The days seemed to melt into each other, and the nights were
endless.  No further word came from Mulder or his pilot, and after
three weeks he was officially counted among the casualties.  

Eating became easier for Scully when she stopped tasting the food. 
She forced down entire platefuls because she was starving.  She
made herself drink water by the glass full because she was thirsty. 
As she laid in bed, Scully willed her mind blank and slept, but she
always woke exhausted.  And there were no dreams to remember.

Life became a series of rituals that became muscle memory.  If she
didn't think, then it was possible to exist without pain.  If she
didn't want, then there was no emptiness.  She was a reflex, a
response to her surreal surroundings.  Nothing more.

The knock at the door startled her out of her trance.  

"Dana?"  It was Dag.  He sounded hesitant.  "You home?"

"No," she answered.  

The door opened slowly, and a beam of light from the hall fell
across Scully's face.  She turned her head away.

"You sleep all day?  You sick?"

"I was up all night," she lied. 

"Here."  He came in and dropped a small package in her hand
before retreating to the door.  Mercifully, he didn't flip on the
lights.

"What is it?" Scully asked, not understanding what she was
supposed to do with it.  No bigger than a bar of soap the small
package lay wrapped in a hand towel and twine.  

"Chocolate," he told her.  In silhouette, Scully couldn't make out
his expression. 

"Why?"

"Happy Birthday," he whispered, and then closed the door.

She untied the string and smelled the rich, sweet aroma that was
unmistakably the promised chocolate.  A whole bar.  Meant just
for her.

Her stomach rumbled and she ran a hand down over her hardened
abdomen.  In the dark Scully felt the tears come.  Don't think, she
coached herself.  Just breathe.  Don't think.  Just breathe. 

Slowly, deliberately, Scully wound the string around the present
again, and then tucked the package under the bed.  Best not to
think about it.  It broke her routine.  

Clear the mind.  Relax the body.  And breathe.  Just breathe. 

*****

March 10, 2000


The dirt beneath her was soft and springy, and it had the earthy,
musty smell of fertile soil.  If she didn't look up it was easy to
forget that the sunlight was artificial.  The chamber felt like the
outdoors.  For hours Scully was able to lose herself in that fantasy,
and she developed a longing for nature that she never had before.  

It was good to be in the garden, and not in the lab.  Podding peas
took little brain power.  It was a repetitive, manual task that
became almost comforting in its mindlessness.  The stool that they
gave her was nothing more than a crate turned on its side, but that
didn't matter.  For the seven hours Scully put in working in the
garden she was warm and fed.  

Every day they let her eat her fill of the fresh vegetables and fruits,
which proved a minor miracle because once Scully discovered a
food source that hadn't been mutilated by the kitchen crew, her
appetite blossomed and quickly outgrew the allotted credits on her
meal card.  

No one bothered her.  Scully knew they talked about her, but they
did it from afar, and she didn't give it a moment's thought.  Logan
also seemed to keep his distance, not that she really cared.  There
was nothing he could say to hurt her now.  She was beyond their
touch.

"Dana?"  

Scully looked up at the tap on her shoulder to see Bohr standing
over her.  The bright lights halloed his head.  

"Oh.  Hello.  Pip."
                       
"Dana, didn't you hear me calling your name?"

"I guess I was somewhere else."  She pulled a few more pods from
the vine and began prying them apart with her thumb nail.

"Dana," Bohr said again, "You missed your appointment again. 
You're supposed to come see us every five days.  Remember? 
Renee sent me to fetch you."

Seven perfect peas spilled from the pod into the metal bowl in
Scully's lap.  She discarded the shell in the bucket at her feet, and
then began on the next pod.  

Bohr placed a hand over Scully's work, and gently turned her chin
until she faced him.  "Dana, I want you to come with me," he said.

"Okay."  Scully left her bowls by her crate and followed him back
to the lab.



Renee was bent over the computer when they arrived, and Bohr
crossed quickly to her.  "There's something wrong with her.  She's
taken something."

"What?" Renee demanded, as she rushed to Scully's side.  "Dana? 
What did you take?"

"She's virtually non-responsive, even to her name.  Do you think
street drugs made it down here?  I'm fairly certain out medical
supplied are intact."  He began pacing anxiously while Renee
checked her pupils.  "We never should've allowed the transfer to
the garden.  She should be here where we can watch her.  We can
turn the examination room into a bedroom for her and have
someone in here twenty-four hours for constant supervision."

"Perfect," Renee snapped.  "And do we chain her up as well? 
Dana is not our prisoner, Pip."

"She's not capable of taking care of herself.  Or that baby.  We
need that baby.  What we could do with the placenta alone - !"

Renee led her into the examination room and helped her up onto
the table.  "How are you feeling?"  She hooked a few of the sensors
to Scully's body and stood back to watch the data flutter through
the machine.

"I feel..."  She didn't feel anything, not even numb.

"Your pressure is down, well within normal.  Pulse good. 
Temperature normal."  Renee took a prick of blood from Scully's
index finger and fed that to the machine as well.  "Looks like
you're eating better.  Glucose looks good.  Hormone levels are
consistent with the second trimester."

"We lost all the ova, Renee, and without another Dana Scully, that
baby is the only hope of completing a vaccine."  Bohr leaned
against the door, his arms folded and his glasses dangled at the end
of his nose.  "She needs to be monitored, if not for her own good,
then the good of that child, and everyone else on this god-forsaken
planet."

Renee sighed in frustration.  "I can check for toxins, but I don't
think she took any drugs."

"Then what the devil is wrong with her?"

"Grief," Renee said.  "I think this is how she mourns."

"Is she even coherent?" Bohr asked, skeptically.

A tiny flutter at the base of her stomach stole her breath away.  She
knew that sensation, though it had been more than a month since
she'd felt it last.  "Mulder."  It had to be him.

"What did she say?"

Scully jumped down and flew past Bohr.  He had to be there.  And
the moment she saw him she would fling her arms around him and
never ever let him go.  "Mulder?!"

"Dana?  What's the matter?"  Renee scampered after her with her
usual persistence.

"Nothing!  Where's Mulder?  Where's he hiding?  I know he's
here!"  

"Dana, Mulder's not here."

"Of course he is!  I got the..."  Scully placed a hand over her
abdomen.  Another tiny flutter, almost undetectable it was so
slight, not at all like the jolt that Mulder always sent through her.  

"Dana?"

"I felt..."  She did feel Mulder.  Scully ran a hand over her
abdomen and closed her eyes.  Breathe, she told herself.  Breathe. 
But the movement didn't stop, and Scully found that she couldn't
focus on anything else.  "It's moving," she muttered, more to
herself than to anyone in the room.  It was real.  A fetus.  A baby
growing within her.  Her baby.  Hers and Mulder's.

"My God," she whispered.  "I'm pregnant."  The word fell clumsily
from her mouth.  "And Mulder...he's really gone."  How could this
be real?

*****

Dag was sitting in the hall when she returned home.  His head
hung forward from broad, thin shoulders, his untamed straight,
powder blond hair concealed his face.  His knees were drawn up to
his chest like a schoolboy waiting outside the principal's office.

He looked up when she approached, and his pale eyes were red
and swollen from crying, his rounded nose was pink.  

"Has something happened?" Scully asked, afraid she didn't want to
hear the news.  "Dag?  Is it about Mulder?"

He nodded, and Scully's stomach fell as the chill of adrenaline
shot through her veins.

Panic set in.  "Tell me," Scully demanded.

Dag shook his head.  "I look for him.  All day, I look.  He is gone."

"I know that.  Has something new happened?  Did you find
something new?"

Again, Dag shook his head, and then dissolved into a string of sobs
that shook his whole person.  Scully's pulse doubled.  She
crouched beside him and took him by the shoulders.  "Dag.  Look
at me."  His miserable eyes met hers.  "Did you find out anything
new at all?  Was there some trace of Mulder?"

"No.  There is nothing.  Nothing!"  He broke from her grip and
rolled away from her to stand.  "How is there nothing?  How can
he be gone?"

"I ask myself that every day, Dag."  And every night.

"I ask him not to go.  That night.  I tell him to stay.  We drink, and
I tell him to stay.  But he goes."  He ran a thick hand over his face,
but only succeeded in smearing the wetness, not clearing it.

Suddenly it was starting to make sense.  The constant attention he
showered her with, the birthday gift, the middle of the night visits
just to make sure she was okay.  Dag was overcompensating for a
guilt that was rightfully hers.

"It's not your fault, Dag. When Mulder makes up his mind to do
something, nothing will talk him out of it."  Not even reason and
common sense.  He had his own logic.

"And anyway, Dag, he left because of me, not you," she told
him.  "It's my fault he's gone, not yours.  Not his."  Scully felt her
own tears begin to form, and she quickly ducked inside her
apartment to avoid the waterworks.  She'd cried too much, and it
took more energy than she had available.  It had been an emotional
afternoon, and there was nothing left in that reservoir.

Dag followed her in.  "How your fault?  You not know."

"I can't talk about this now, Dag."  Her voice cracked and she put
her hands in her hip and inhaled deeply.  Breathe, she told herself. 
The tears came anyway.  "Dammit!" she swore as she wiped them
away.

Dag's thick, heavy arms wrapped around her shoulders, and he
enveloped her in a strong, warm hug.  "It be okay," he whispered in
the same voice Mulder used to use a million years ago.  "Don't cry
Dana."

The small comfort he offered she readily accepted.  With Dag she
didn't have to worry about ulterior motives.   No wonder Mulder
spent so much time with him.  It was easy to accept his friendship
because it was offered so earnestly, so freely.

A tingle in her belly made her jump from his arms.  The sensation
she always associated with Mulder had a new trigger, one she
wasn't used to yet.

Misunderstanding her sudden withdraw Dag's face dropped, and
he turned to go. 

Scully stopped him.  "No, Dag, wait.  It's okay.  Here."  She took
his hand and placed it on her stomach.  His fingers stretched the
entire width of her body.  "Can you feel it, too?"

His face transformed from a sullen, rejected expression to one of
awe.  "Baby?" he asked, almost breathlessly.  "So small."

Scully nodded.  Dag's wonder was priceless, but there was nothing
she wouldn't give to have had Mulder there in his stead.

*****
End of chapter 5
*****
Journal 2000                                 
by MD1016
Gossamer: TAR                                 
Rated: NC-17, MSR 
Summary: The struggle continues.

                                        

*****
Chapter 6
*****

"...there's a person with a knife wanting to cut my baby out, telling
me over and over that it's inevitable because the ones I love
always die.  They die and it's my fault.  And I can't wake up until I
run out into the sun and I face my attacker.  And always, in the
dream, they wear my mother's face."
-Dana Katherine Scully
journal entry, March 11, 2000





Hidden City, somewhere in the former Liechtenstein
April 17, 2000



Scully clipped the lid on the perishables bin, dragged it into the
hall, and plopped the tied bag of laundry right next to it.  Then, she
went back inside and stripped down for a shower.  It was early yet,
and there were hours before they would expect her in the garden. 
But she wouldn't return to bed.  The nightmare haunted her, even
laying in bed awake.  She had to keep busy to distract herself from
it.

The mirror over the sink was too high to see anything below her
shoulders, and Scully hadn't worked up the courage to stand on the
bed and see how her tummy was filling out.  The bird's eye view
was all she could handle.  

Scully ran hand over the side, and then to her bellybutton.  It
would probably pop in a couple of weeks.  She was carrying high,
or at least it felt like she was.  Her breasts, on the other hand, had
already popped.  They were twice their usual size, and her nipples
had become thick and sensitive.  The bra she had was inadequate
and often painful, and the kid at the dry goods supply counter
laughed when she asked for a maternity bra.  Just one more thing
the men who planned the City had over-looked.

She showered quickly, wanting to escape the silence of her
apartment as soon as possible.  There wouldn't be many people in
the Control Room at this hour of the morning, so there was bound
to be an open console.  She wasn't supposed to be allowed access
to the central computer, but everyone knew who she was, and the
possibility of what she carried within her, and they said nothing.  

It was funny how they treated her, like she was some sort of
celebrity.  Already her life story was twisting into myth.  They
called her The Lady, and over the course of a handful of weeks her
mysterious pregnancy had somehow turned into miracle
pregnancy, and that had mutated into virgin pregnancy, which was
laughable - if Scully could remember how to laugh - because they
all knew that she was married to Mulder even if they weren't
familiar with her sexual history.  Dag had been hesitant to tell her
about the circulating rumors at first, but once he realized that they
didn't bother her, he quickly reported everything that came
through the grapevine.

In the City, every day seemed to be a slow news day.  

What was even more odd to Scully was the resurgence of religion
in the City.  It was difficult to understand how people could find
faith in a god that could allow their world to be so mercilessly
destroyed.  Not that people were handing out copies of the Bible or
Koran, but just the day before Scully had seen three man saying
grace over gruel, thanking God for the bounty they were about to
receive.  

Somewhere back in the first couple of days Scully had lost her
crucifix.  It was painfully apparent that her faith had gone with it.

*****

Once again Scully skimmed the previous day's communications
report looking for anything that could even remotely be connected
to Mulder.  A diabetic child in one of the pocket communities had
gone into a diabetic comma and died.  They simply ran out of
insulin.  Scully closed her eyes and ran a tired hand over her face. 
To have survived so much only to succumb to something so easily
preventable was unconscionable.  There was plenty of insulin in
the City, but no way to get it where it was needed.  Since Mulder's
plane vanished, all flights had been grounded.  No exceptions.

"Dana.  You no sleep."  She looked up to see Dag towering above
her.  He work the standard jump suit, and his hair hung wet and
limp, and he smelled strongly of soap.

"I'm just checking the logs," she told him.

He nodded and left her to her work.  People were beginning to file
in, so she wouldn't be able to stay much longer, but with her last
few minutes Scully checked the weather outside.  If he was still
alive, Mulder was out in that blizzard, whose temperature hovered
at about 25 Fahrenheit.  The wind chill was listed at 3 degrees. 
She tried to remember if he'd been wearing his parka when she'd
seen him last on the monitor, but couldn't conjure an image past
the sad look in his eyes.  She took a small amount of comfort that
the coat wasn't tucked away under the bed next to hers anymore.  

An involuntary shiver ran up her spine.  Logan's name was at the
bottom of the report.  And there was a bio icon next to it.  Scully
glanced around to see if anyone was looking, then she clicked.  A
small photo of Logan appeared.  He was much younger, less lean. 
His sandy hair was loose and straight, and gently ruffled by
whatever wind had been blowing when the shot was taken. 
Cardon G. Logan, born 1963 in Melbourne.  Two University level
degrees.  Seven years with the Australian armed forces,
specializing in wilderness survival, and search and rescue.  The
file on him went on and on, mostly about achievements and special
recognitions.  The final two paragraphs were devoted to personal
info.

Scully's eyes grew wide.  There was more to his anger than she
had ever realized.

*****

"Mother die when I  born."  Dag took another swig from his flask. 
He'd shown up as Scully's door that night with an enormous dill
pickle and whiskey. 

"Oh, I'm sorry to hear that," Scully quietly said.  She took another
chomp out of her treat and savored its salty goodness.  Never in
her life had a pickle tasted so incredible.  

Dag shrugged and slipped a little lower against the cold, uneven
wall.  He sat across the foot of her bed, his calves and feet hung
over the side.  When it was clear he would be staying a while,
Scully crawled under the warmth of her blankets and sat up against
the pillows he'd refused.  She didn't really mind the unexpected
company.  His presence dulled the loneliness.

"No brother.  No sister," he said.  His pale blue eyes glazed over as
he looked past the shower and the stone wall behind it.  They
seemed even paler because of his blond lashes and milky
complexion.  

Scully never really took in Dag's features, but now with him
sitting so still in front of her, she realized that he looked almost
cartoon-ish.  His nose was large, to the point of being bulbous, and
it turned a dark shade of red when he drank.  His face was a
rounded square, with a broad jaw and hairline, under which hung
thick blond, expressive brows.  He wasn't handsome, but there was
a comfort in his face, a compassion that was as strong as any
physical feature.

"You have brother?" he asked, breaking Scully's thoughts.

Instantly an image of Charlie came to mind, and it took her a
moment to blink it away.  She nodded.  "I had two brothers.  And a
sister."  

"Big family."  Dag seemed impressed.  

"It was."  And it was very possible that Scully was all that
remained.  The Gunmen were supposed to have gotten her mother
to safety in Canada, but there remained no contact with that
refugee encampment.  Information on what was left of North
America was sketchy.  Some of the Rockies made it through, the
Black Hills of the Dakotas.  It was hard to tell what was what
anymore because the topography had been so badly mutilated.  

Scully cleared her throat.  "My father died in '93.  Then, my sister
died a couple of years later.  She was killed.  In my home."

Dag didn't say anything.  He waited quietly for her to go on, or
not.

She did.  "Charlie, my youngest brother was killed in October. 
Just before the Colonists attacked.  The day before Mulder and I
got married.  He wasn't even supposed to be there.  He just showed
up one night and asked if he could stay for a couple of days.  I
thought maybe he got in some kind of trouble with his captain - he
was in the navy like my father - or maybe there was a problem
with his wife, but he said no.  No problems.  He seemed happy,
even.

"But then, Mulder was at my door, and he was his usual intense
self.  They'd given him a serum.  They called it a vaccine, but it
wasn't.  It didn't work.  When we got to the warehouse to
administer it to the alien fetus, it had...hatched."  She pushed the
images away.  They were still to raw, too vivid, even months later.

"Anyway, the vaccine didn't effect them at all.  One got Charlie.  I
watched it happen."  Her chin quivered and her voice wavered, and
swirl of motion unsettled her belly.  She inhaled sharply to clam
the emotions back down to a tolerable level, and then took another
bite of her pickle.  The flavor did little to distract her from the
guilt and grief.

"Very hard," Dag said in sympathy.

"Not as hard as telling my mother that another one of her children
had died because of me.  I must've looked horrible because when
she answered the door she knew something had happened.  She
wouldn't let me in the house.  Like she needed to defend herself
from me.  And after I told her, she slammed the door and turned
off the porch light.  I sat for an hour outside on the stoop listening
to her weep for my brother.  Really weep.

"That was the last time I ever saw my mother."  A tear slid down
her right cheek, and Scully quickly brushed it away.  She didn't
want to cry again.  She didn't even know why she'd told him the
story.  She was talking too much.

Dag took another gulp, and made a face as it went down hot.

The pickle had lost its appeal.  "I'm sorry, Dag.  I shouldn't tell
you this."

"No sorry," he told her.  "You and me, friends.  You talk, I listen."
He squeezed her foot under the blankets, and gave her a loose
smile.  "Yo