Places That Scare You, The (part 3/3)

by Rose Campion

warnings, disclaimers, etc. please see part 1

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Mulder:

The instant I heard John say, "Better," I knew and I sat straight up in bed, ready for action, but I let him continue speaking. Then I started putting our oft talked about plans into effect finally.

"You go wake up Georgie and call Dr. Abbott," I told him, throwing off the covers even though the room was freezing, even for me. "I'll wake up Walt and we'll start setting up the pool."

"No need for hurry. It might be hours yet, my contractions are still five minutes apart," he said. Then he huffed in suddenly. He sat down heavily on the bed that I'd just abandoned and worked his way through the contraction, breathing in and out and massaging his belly. For a few brief moments, this person didn't seem like my lover anymore, but some other entity, a creature of instinct. Perhaps that was just because it is at these most human of moments- sex, birth, death, that we are also at our most animal like. I realized suddenly that John, the mind that was my lover might have prepared for this birth by pouring through books and on the internet, searching for fact after fact, but that when push came to shove, it was his body that was going to be delivering these babies and it was that body that had known what to do all along. I could suddenly imagine him giving birth alone in the wild, with only instinct for a midwife, some bushes for cover, the night sky overhead for a ceiling, doing what was most human and animal by starlight.

I had thought that this moment might seem strange, unnatural. Instead, it was a normal panic that I felt watching the person I loved torn in pain by forces I could neither control nor even want to hinder.

When it was over and John was back with me, he said, with a rueful grin, "Make that about three minutes. They're getting closer fast."

"Jackie, how long have you been in labor?" I asked. "Why didn't you wake me sooner?"

"The shower felt too good to leave. I think maybe two hours. Maybe longer. I was having a weird backache most of the evening, but I didn't think it was anything."

Two hours? Hell! "You'd better call Abbott now. Look at it out there. It's going to take him forever to get here. Assuming he even can."

John looked out the window and saw what I'd gotten a quick glance at- one of the worst winter storms outside of the Arctic that I've been in. The snow was blowing practically sideways. I'd say we'd gotten another twelve inches since we'd gone to bed, to add to the six inches that had fallen over the course of the day before and the foot or so of accumulation from earlier in the week.

He must not have realized it was so bad. He looked out the window with horror. Then his brow furrowed and he got a look of intense determination on his face and he said, "He's got a four by four. Dollars to doughnuts, he'll get here sooner that I want anyway."

"Jackie, I thought you were okay with Abbott."

"This is going to sound strange, but I don't want anyone but you around me at the moment," he said.

"No, that doesn't sound strange at all. It sounds completely normal. This is one of the most private and personal moments a person can have. Go on, wake Georgie."

He went downstairs and I got dressed quickly, throwing on the first pieces of clothing that came to hand. I was bouncing off the walls practically, hardly able to think anything other than a chorus of "the babies are coming, the babies are coming!"

Thank God we were having these kids here. I don't like to think about what a hazard on the road I would have been at this moment.

It was only a few moments and I was rapping on the door to Walter's room and calling to him. Strange that all these months I'd lived here in his farmhouse, like part of his family and I'd never been in his bedroom. I guess in some things, Walter still maintains a glacial distance.

"Mulder, what is it?" answered a gruff, sleepy voice, door still firmly shut.

"Babies are on the way, Walter. Hop to. Time to get busy."

"Hold on," I was told. Walter's voice transformed from half asleep to completely awake in about half a second. "Let me throw on some clothes. Is he anywhere ready to need the pool yet?"

"I'm getting the feeling that if we don't start filling it now, he won't get a chance to use it at all," I said as Walter emerged in a flannel shirt and jeans.

We'd done a practice run with the pool earlier in the month, just to make sure we understood how it went together and so that we could be sure that the floor wouldn't collapse under the weight of the water after all. We weren't exactly the smoothest working of teams, but Walter and I had managed to put up that pool and get it filled with warm water in short order.

"We'll probably have to heat some water on the stove," I said as we walked downstairs. "Sounds like Jack took a long shower before getting me up and that must have depleted the hot water tank."

The pool had a built-in heater, but things went much faster if you filled it with warm water in the first place. It takes a lot of time to heat up that much water.

And so we got to work. John was kneeling on the floor of the living room, resting his arms and head on the seat of his favorite recliner, breathing deeply, partially through another contraction. I moved to his side, to massage his back or do something for him, but he snapped at me, "Get workin' on the pool, dammit."

Georgie was tending to the fire in the wood stove while talking with Abbott on the phone. As Walter and I unpacked the box with the pool, she was hanging up. As she shut the heavy iron door to the wood stove, she said, "I checked John's dilation. I wouldn't be surprised if at least the first one gets here before Bob does. He's already at three centimeters."

It took multiple contractions to get the last of the plastic framework pieces snapped into place and the lining fully secured. Each contraction my attention was torn away from my work, watching how my lover was doing, how his body would heave with his heavy breaths, how his brow would furrow even deeper. How he would make a noise that wasn't quite a scream, but louder, more heartfelt than just a moan.

"We're starting to fill it," I was finally able to tell John, while he was resting between contractions. Labor had hit him fast and furious and I wondered maybe if the babies would be with us before full morning light. We had put big pots of water on the stove to heat and add to the mostly tepid water of the birthing pool and for the moment, there was nothing left to do but wait.

Walter had suddenly made himself scarce, I noticed. I supposed that after everything, it was asking a bit much to expect him to stay for the birth. I suspected this was more than not wanting to see John naked. Walter had once told me that he was scared to look beyond his one experience with things that went beyond normal reality, and that might have something to do with it. Either way, one could forgive Walter his squeamishness. The situation was hardly believable in a rational universe.

We were not alone, I realized suddenly, looking around. No, the room was crowded. A veritable Grand Central Station of the dearly departed. Monica watched John the closest, hovering over his shoulder as he leaned his upper body against the chair, occasionally brushing his hair. Scully was close by as well. Once, I heard Monica murmur something to Scully. "Isn't he beautiful?" she asked.

A little boy with blondish hair watched intently. I recognized him from a picture in a file I'd seen once. He was John's son Luke. The Gunmen hovered in the corner, my three unlikely guardian angels. All of them, all of my beloved dead were here at this moment and more, persons I did not recognize, two old women that I could only assume were John's grandmothers, the one's that we would be naming the children after. There were others, perhaps spirits connected with the house, members of the Skinner family tree that we had been grafted onto.

Realizing we were not alone, I lost my panic, suddenly as calm as John seemed. The room was filled with such a sense of blessing and love that the path from life to death, the eternal, unbroken circle of existence was palpable. It seemed, at this exact moment that nothing could go wrong.

It was a beautiful, serene moment, perfect in all respects, until John finished with a contraction, got up and walked over to me. In the full intense seriousness that only he can convey, he said to me, "I swear to God you'd better go through with that appointment of yours, Mulder, because if you ever put me through this again, I swear I will rip your fucking balls off. As slowly and painfully as I can."

I tried not to take it personally.

"I love you, John," I told him. "What do you need me to do for you?"

He wanted me to hold him up as he labored in a squatting position. I did, rubbing his shoulders as he gripped my waist or alternatively, anchored himself by pulling down on my hands. One particularly bad contraction he grabbed my hands so hard I was afraid he would break one of my bones. And then I saw Monica lean over his shoulder and say, "Breathe, John. You can do it. Breathe."

It wasn't until she'd said that that I realized he'd been holding his breath against the pain. He relaxed slightly as she spoke to him, brushed her hands against his body. And then he inhaled, deeply and steadily, and exhaled slowly.

Eventually, the water in the pool was ready, a nice, warm, body temperature. I helped John pull his clothes off and climb into the water. He seemed to ease into the water immediately. The furrows on his brow never disappeared completely, of course, but they were not quite so deep. The pain had obviously eased significantly just from his being in the water.

I would have crawled into the tub with John, except Walter called me from the kitchen. "Mulder, get in here," he said. I'd heard him come in and out and couple of times, but hadn't been able to think about it. I went to go see what Walter wanted.

Walter had, at the point of a very deadly looking military rifle, a fully uniformed Marine, in winter combat gear. Walter had a Smith and Wesson in hand as well, one that looked like a FBI service weapon. The Marine wasn't trying anything, just standing at attention. If it had taken a scuffle for Walter to capture the Marine, they sure didn't look like it.

"Walter, I appreciate the thought. I mean, a Marine of my very own is what I've always wanted, but since I already have one, you'll have to send this one back," I said. I couldn't help making the crack. Walter was seriously not amused. "Really? What the hell is going on here, Walter?" I asked. "Who is this?"

"I was hoping you might tell me, Mulder," Walter said. "I think there are more of them out there. I caught this one between the chicken coop and my workshop. He won't tell me anything but that he's on patrol, under orders, but he won't say from who."

I thought I had a pretty good idea of what he was doing out there. Images of the night William was born came to me. Scully being hunted because of the child she carried. It'd been a night of death and destruction, in addition to a night of new life.

"You're under orders from Col. Doggett, aren't you?" I asked. I got no verbal answer, but there was a flicker of surprise on his face, enough answer for me. "Walter, give the man his gun back, kick him back out into the blizzard and let him get down to his business. I suspect there's as much out there for them to worry about as there is in here for us to worry about."

I'll give Walter this much credit. Over the years, he's learned to trust my instincts, sometimes even more than I trust them myself. He threw the rifle at the Marine, hard, but the Marine caught it neatly. "You heard the man," Walter said, with that famous reined in fury that had served him so well in the Bureau. Walter had been a man used to saying jump and seeing people fall all over themselves to see how high they could go, myself the obvious exception. He still had it. "Get back out there. I don't want to see you or any of your men. Just go do your patrols, hear me?"

"Sir!" the Marine snapped straight to attention, then turned towards the door.

When we were left alone, Walter holstered his weapon so it was concealed under his parka. "You'd better be getting back to Jack," he told me, then he turned to the door. "I'm going to get more firewood onto the porch, in case we need it."

"Be careful out there, Walter," I said. I suspected that the Marine, if you'd looked, would have some very interesting looking bumps on the back of his neck. One of Col. Doggett's men. One of the supersoldiers that were being subverted to our side, if the Col. could be believed or trusted. I hoped for all our sakes that he could.

And if the supersoldiers didn't get Walter, the weather might. It was near whiteout conditions out there. Only the fact that Walter grew up here kept me from protesting that he went out at all. He knew, had to know, how dangerous it could be and wouldn't risk himself.

"I won't be long," Walter promised. "We probably have more than enough. I just want to be sure."

I left him to it and went back to John.

John was in the pool still, looking, for lack of a better word, radiant. People have written often over the centuries about the transformative power of some kinds of suffering, but never had I seen it illustrated so well. This was not pointless pain. Instead, it had a beautiful purpose and you could see that reflected in John's eyes.

"It won't be long now," Georgie said as I approached John. "He's already entered transition."

He was fully dilated then, and getting ready to start pushing. Labor was nearly over. I stripped quickly and got into the pool with him. The next couple of hours passed in such a distortion of time that I could hardly account for them. Moments like one of John's guttural moans could take an eternity, other times passed in the blink of an eye. I had the feeling, for the first time that I was not only in the center of something bigger than myself, but that I was an active maker of events, not being buffeted about in a storm made by others, as I had been my whole life.

John and I were at the center of a maelstorm, holding fast to each other. His hands were hard on my body, demanding my support, no, that I be his rock fast center. For these brief hours, nothing else existed for me but John. Everything else faded from my attention. Even Georgie was just an occasional presence, mostly ignored except for when she checked on how John was progressing. Rapidly was how he was progressing.

At four-thirty five in the morning, the head of our first baby was just crowning. My first glimpse of our child, a view stolen quickly as I dunked my head underwater, was of thick, black hair. It took only a few minutes more and our daughter was free in the water, tethered only by the umbilical cord that still provided her with oxygen.

She seemed to accept her new world with aplomb, perhaps because it was just a bigger, less crowded version of the womb she had been swimming in so long. Babies born in the water instinctively do not breathe until their face breaches into the air.

I caught her up in my arms and slowly brought her to the surface, turning her so that her face could be in the air and the rest of her body in the water. Once out of the water, she took her first breath, not a scream, just a gentle opening of herself to the world. Her eyes opened as well. They were hazel, like my own. I'd thought that most babies were supposed to be born with blue eyes that change to their permanent color later, but I didn't stop long to wonder about this. Eye color was hardly the most mysterious circumstance of her birth. Those eyes should have been unfocused, instead they seemed to take in the world with avid interest, looking all around her. They seemed so innocent and young, like she was a new soul.

I wasn't sure which name John wanted to use first, so I just said, "Welcome to the world, baby girl."

Astonishing, how small and perfectly formed her body was. Each little part a masterpiece, from the sharply defined dent just under her nose to her full arched lips, to the flawless light brown skin just starting to be visible under the vernix that covered her. I marveled at the utter perfection of her as I lifted her slowly up to John and set her on him, chest to chest.

He'd been resting, eyes closed, leaning back against the wall of the pool, but he opened them at the touch of her weight. He smiled at her and rested a hand lightly on her back.

"Hey, Gracie baby," he said. I felt a momentary surge of jealousy at the sight of him falling in love with her. He would never be entirely my own again, I realized, but hey, who wouldn't mind sharing their man with such a beautiful brunette? He couldn't hold her long. He was in thrall to labor pains again in seconds. Georgie moved in fast, to tie off the umbilical cord, clamping it in two places. Then, she had me cut it, freeing her from her father, so he could get on with the crucial business of birthing her sibling.

They say that the average time between the births of twins is seventeen minutes, and on that one thing, John was right about on par.

Just before five, another baby girl was born into the world. Instead of Gracie's pale caramel skin and black hair, Garnet Scully Skinner was born with pale skin that was alarmingly, angrily red at first. She screamed when I brought her face up out of the water and didn't stop until I took her completely out of the water and held her against my chest. She had almost no hair at all, just the faintest hint of strawberry blond fuzz on her bald head. Her eyes, when she finally opened them, were deep blue. Those eyes seemed so old, almost tired already, and I was left with the instinctive feeling that I had known this person before. This was an old soul come back into my life for some reason, for us to learn something from each other, for us to love, in a different way yet again. The last time I had felt so certain about this was in a field in Tennessee. I wondered who this soul was and how I'd known them before. Had it been a lover, husband or child of mine that had consented to be born into my life? Perhaps it was this more than anything that drove home to me the awesome responsibility I was facing. Because Gracie was new and sweet and I would fall in love with her very soon, just like John had.

But this one, this life currently known as Garnet Scully Skinner, I loved her already, and had for time untold. And she had trusted me enough to consent to be born as my child. It was a staggering realization.

Compared to Gracie's compact, round form, Garnet was a long, skinny baby. She, too, was every bit as perfect as her sister, in her own way. What finally wrought creatures we humans can be, I thought as I traced one of my fingers over each of her tiny ones. I held her until the afterbirth had been delivered and Georgie had pronounced John and Gracie to be perfectly fine. Garnet, in turn, was content to be held by me. Georgie finally demanded I hand Garnet over so that she could be looked over and I did so reluctantly.

Finally no longer focused exclusively on John, I looked around the living room. Apparently satisfied that all had gone well, our beloved dead had slipped away back to whatever place it is that they wait between manifestations.

Not long after came a rattle on the door. I was already out of the pool and dried off. I was helping John out, a difficult procedure because he was holding Gracie and wouldn't let go of her. Georgie handed Garnet back to me and went to answer the door.

There was a draft of cold wind suddenly, that was mercifully brief, then the soft sounds of Georgie and Dr. Abbott talking in the next room.

"You missed out completely, Bob," she said. "Not a thing left for you to do except congratulate the lucky fathers and fill out the birth certificates."

I'd been helping John get dry and before Abbott burst into the room, I managed to assist John in shrugging into a robe.

"Gentleman! Congratulations! And there's nothing I like better than a birth so quick and so easy, I don't have to do a single thing," Abbott said. He was beaming like he'd been the one to deliver the babies himself.

"Lord God, you think that was easy?" John asked, though he was too tired for the snap to have much venom to it. No, John's expression was a kind of tired bliss. His endorphin levels would have been sky high right then.

"Not at all, Mr. Doggett," he said. "But assuming you were in labor only two hours before I was called, you had a labor of just under five hours, significantly shorter than average. And no tearing according to Georgeann. I'd say you're pretty lucky."

John had sat back in his recliner and he leaned back. He took one look at the baby in his arms, smiled and said, "Yeah, you're right about that. Hey, somebody oughta tell Walter that the gross part is over and he can come back in now and meet his new nieces."

Abbott examined John, just be certain he was all right, an examination which John accepted grudgingly. Then the babies were looked over, weighed and fussed over, given a first sponge bath and dried off. We wrapped them in diapers and blankets, then put one of those sweet little knit caps on each of them. Gracie was a mere seventeen inches long and weighed six pounds, five ounces. Garnet was nearly twenty-one inches long, but weighed only a few ounces more, clocking in at six pounds, eight ounces.

Gracie was such an easy baby. She accepted anything that happened to her with perfect equanimity. Garnet, on the other hand, squalled at the top of her newborn lungs anytime she wasn't being held by either John or myself. The whole time Abbott was looking her over, she was screaming.

Before the birth, there'd been much debate, most of it between John and himself about whether he'd try to breastfeed the girls or not. At first he wasn't sure if he could, then when the colostrum made it's appearance and it was obvious that he probably could produce at least part of their diet, he wavered between wanting to try it for a while and not wanting to get them started. His reason for not wanting to do it was that he didn't want to be stuck at home until they were weaned. They'll be babies, he had argued. They wouldn't know why he couldn't nurse them in public. In the end, he decided to give it an experimental run, at least for the first few weeks, switching them over to formula supplements as he started feeling like going out into the world again.

Babies have a natural rooting instinct. Held against a chest, they tend to seek out the obvious, traditional source of nourishment. John started first with Gracie, holding her close, supported by pillows in the so-called "football" position, guiding his small nipple into her mouth in the way that we'd read about. She took it eagerly and sucked hungrily. John looked kind of surprised at first. Finally he said, "Okay, hand me Garnet, I think I should be able to do both of them at once."

Doggett:

The pressure of Gracie's mouth on my nipple had been greater than I'd anticipated, but it wasn't so bad. After a moment, I realized I could handle it. She seemed to be taking it pretty smoothly. My breasts had swollen a little more during the last month of my pregnancy, but they were still very small and it didn't seem possible that they'd produce enough for the girls, even though I'd been assured again and again, by books, by the internet, by Georgie and by Abbott that the size didn't matter. Now that I was experiencing it, I thought I might be a little bit more comfortable if I had a little more breast to offer. Things seemed like they were pulled kinda tight, like she'd managed to pull the whole darn tit into her mouth.

I asked for my other girl. I hadn't had much of a chance to hold her yet, what with Mulder holding her tightly and staring at her like she was the greatest thing since sliced bread. Hell, forget bread. Like she was best thing ever. Georgie practically had to pry Garnet out of Mulder's arms with a crowbar in order to examine her. When he finally surrendered her, I realized that Mulder would no longer be entirely my own. He belonged to a little girl now. Two little girls. But hell, who wouldn't mind sharing their guy with such swell-looking gals?

Garnet was starting to fuss even though she was being held. She must be getting hungry. Mulder handed her over and with his help, I got her positioned, propped up and under my arm. I put my breast up to her mouth and she popped on immediately. Only it wasn't smooth like Gracie. It was like somebody had applied a vise grip to my nipple. It hurt so much I could only gasp in pain. "Lord God, that hurts," I managed to get out.

"I don't think she's latched on right," Georgie said. "Why don't you try popping her off and positioning her again."

Georgie showed me how to break the suction by sticking my finger in Garnet's mouth. But the instant I did that, she started screaming again. Which set off her sister who spit her side out, then added her voice to the general ruckus. I tried to think clearly. Not easy with two human sirens going off right in your ear and being exhausted from the hardest night's work I'd ever done. You know, I had a new appreciation for my ex-wife, I really did.

Before I could come up with a solution, Fox said, "Jackie, why don't you give me Garnet for a little while. Focus on one at a time before you try both."

Fox claimed Garnet again and her screams dropped to a whimper the instant she hit his arms, and stopped altogether as he started walking her around the room, whispering sweet nothings at her. If I heard right, he called her 'Princess'. Somehow I suspected, we were going to have a real big problem not spoiling these girls. Freed from Garnet, I was able to position Gracie right back on the nipple and she went to it eagerly, a real trooper. I was surprised my let down was so good. As Gracie worked one nipple, generous dribbles of colostrum leaked from the other at the same time. Then Walt finally made his reappearance, poking his head cautiously into the room as if still afraid of what he might see.

Fox took charge of him, came up to him and presented him with Garnet. "This one's Garnet, Jackie has Gracie," Fox said. "I see a distinct family resemblance, Uncle Walt. I'll let you hold her, but don't take it personally if she screams. She's done it for both Georgie and Bob."

Then Garnet was handed over, Fox showing Walt how to support her head. Walt gingerly took her into his arms, like she was a bomb, and perhaps she was. A ticking-time bomb of fussiness. In his big hands and arms, she just about disappeared. Surprisingly, she didn't erupt into screams immediately. As Walt held her, any remaining traces of surliness melted right off his face, replaced by pure wonder. I don't think I've ever seen the man smile quite like that. "It's a miracle, Jack," Walt said. "Somehow, I just didn't quite believe it until now."

A few minutes of being held by Walt set Garnet off into fussiness, not full blown screams yet, just whimpering. Walt handed her back off to Fox before she even got going. By this time, Gracie had drifted off to sleep, my nipple still in her mouth. "You want to hold Gracie while she sleeps, Walt?" I asked.

I carefully popped Gracie off, afraid I was going to wake her. I did, but amazingly, she didn't start crying. She just looked at everything around her with unfocused eyes. She accepted being held in her Uncle Walt's arms just like she had everything else. It was as if she had a perfect trust in the world- that no matter what, it would continue to take care of her and provide for her like it had so far. As far as Gracie was concerned, I thought, there would always be strong arms to hold her, and warm rooms for her to be in and good milk to drink.

Taking Garnet from Fox, I decided that she was already doubtful that her needs would be met. I wondered why her and not the other. I prepared myself mentally for her clamping mouth to be placed back on my body. I was kidding myself that having done it successfully with Gracie, I'd be able to do it with the other. Guiding my still aching nipple more carefully into her mouth this time, I held her close to me and sweet talked her, hopefully into not hurting me so much this time.

It didn't hurt quite as much, but it still nearly caused tears to roll down my cheeks. The pain eased a little bit when I managed to push more of my breast into her mouth and her hard little gums weren't directly on the nipple anymore. I think she must have let up just a little when she realized she didn't have to work so hard to get results. I just about fell asleep, despite Garnet's vacuum suction mouth, except Abbott decided to bug me just then about the birth certificates.

"We're still going through with the plan we discussed earlier?" he asked.

We'd decided, Fox and myself, with some input from Georgie and Walter, that even if it was the truth, or as close to the truth as covered my situation, you just couldn't put my name down on the mother line, nor could you get away with putting, "Unknown" on the mother line and my name on the father's. A genetic father might easily be a ship passing in the night, so to speak, especially in today's moral climate. But a mother is always known. We'd decided that some name or another would have to go on the mother line, and that mine would go on the father's. We would tell the truth to the girls as they got older and were able to comprehend it. For the moment though, the "mother" of my children was going to be "Monica Reyes", a cover story I was even more glad of when I realized how much Gracie, with her black hair and brown skin, looked kind of Mexican. The story would be that we weren't even sure it was the woman's real name. She was just passing through, looking for work and caught I caught her eye, she decided to stay a while and got in the family way, but as soon as she was able to limp off after the babies were born, she hit the road again.

"Yeah, unless someone can think of a better story," I said.

I just wanted to get some horizontal time, even if I might have been too wound up to actually sleep. Walt had claimed the rocking chair he'd made for me and was sitting with Gracie, rocking her. From the looks of it, he was even getting her to sleep. Even though I didn't make it back up to our bed like I'd wanted, as the sun rose on a perfectly blue sky, the storm having blown over during the night, I eventually drifted off to sleep in the recliner. One baby was in my arms, one baby was in good hands. Yeah, life was good. Somebody had been making vague noises about opening presents, but somehow that seemed kind of anticlimactic comparatively. Presents could wait.

Mulder:

After catching up on some sleep, I joined Walt on a look-see around the property. Much as I thought, there was no evidence, no matter how slight, that there had been a Marine patrol on the grounds last night whether supersoldiers or mere human. Not even a footprint. Those had been covered by drifting snow that had blown to drifts five feet high in places, scoured to bare earth in others. As often happens after a big storm, the temperature dropped drastically. Bad weather happens in midst of transitions- clashes between warm and cold. In this case, a mass of cold Arctic air had bullied its way down this far south. But because of this, the air was clear, the sun brilliantly reflected from the infinitesimal little mirrors of the snowflakes. Yes, the weather was perfect and crisp. I guess I couldn't see why John hated it.

He'd spent the majority of the day so far huddled in the living room, with the fire going as high as we could make it, and still he hid under thick blankets with one or both of the babies at a time, depending on who felt like holding the other. All his attention was divided only between the two of them, with occasional breaks to sleep, mostly when they did. I wondered if John would kill me if I went for a run. I felt cramped, the need to stretch having invaded my muscles. Restless. I was restless.

Walt meanwhile was looking around shaking his head. He looked a dignified kind of ridiculous with one of those rabbit fur-lined hunting caps on top of his bald head. I suppose with so little hair, he was probably more susceptible than average to heat loss through the scalp. "You'd think we'd see at least one footprint. Something. Who were those people, Mulder?"

"Special forces from Project Zodiac. Under direct command from John's uncle. More supersoldiers. Supposedly fighting against the aliens. God. I don't know. They're gone. I guess we're safe," I said. I had no real idea whether that was the truth or not. Hell, you'd needed a score card to keep track of the conspiracy before the supersoldiers had arrived on the scene. There was so little I knew to be absolute truth these days. Only one or two things I knew for sure, and one of them was that I loved John beyond reason.

"For now," Walt said, looking out over the cornfields that surrounded the farmhouse. The wind continued to sweep over those gently rolling hills uncovering the stubble at the heights of them.

"What do I do now, Walter?" I asked. For so long, I had been focused on the simple task of getting those children into this world safe and alive. It seemed almost unreal that it had actually happened and that if I were to close my eyes and walk back into the living room of the farmhouse, when I opened them, John and they would vanish in a sudden, malevolent reverse miracle. For so long, I hadn't really believed in the future and yet here it was, in the form of two perfectly shaped girls. That future stretched out before me too wonderful and terrible to contemplate without feeling my soul tremble within me.

"You live, Mulder. That's all. You just live. You have a family now and they need you," Walter said.

Could I do that? Was that possible? I had no more chosen this family than I'd chosen any other family members. No, the insistent and perverse demands of the heart, that organ that had reason of which reason knew nothing, had directed my every coming and going until I had no more control over loving John than I had over needing oxygen, and loving our daughters followed as naturally as gravity. But yet the same perversity of life that had given me a reason to live had given me far more to fear than ever. I didn't know what to say to Walter, a man who had trusted me at times when even Scully barely did. A man whose authority had been my shelter, a man I loved in ways too complex to explain. He had become family as well, by virtue of the generosity of his heart.

I think Walter understood my reticence as fear and uncertainty. "You just do the next thing, Mulder," he told me. "You just love them."

Would that be enough though? When Walter turned back to the house, I followed him, leaving behind the shining, Christmas day, with its cold that was bitter right down to the bone. Someone had once told me, not kindly, that it's my instinct to jump first and expect the parachute to materialize on the way down. When I got back into the house and saw John stretched out on the sofa with our two babies laid out on his chest, I felt suddenly like I was plummeting very fast, to a hard ground miles down. And the parachute hadn't yet made its appearance. It was a cold, cold feeling indeed, like I hadn't shed the frigidity of outside, even though I'd come into the hot room that smelled intensely of wood smoke from the stove. No, this fear had settled right down into my bones for the moment.

As if he sensed both my presence and what I was feeling, John's eyes popped open. "Hey," he said. "You want to hold the girls for me? I gotta hit the little boys room."

I figured that I could hold one in my arms while the other lay across my lap. I took Garnet from him and sat down at the foot of the sofa. As he got up and laid Gracie across my lap, he leaned close to me and whispered in my ear. "We're okay, right," he said. "You, me, the girls, we'll all be okay."

"Yeah, we'll be okay," I told him in a voice that wasn't quite a promise. I wasn't ready for promises, especially not ones that I didn't know I could keep.

Doggett:

I wish I could tell you that everything was all better after the girls were born. That everything came up goddamn roses and lollipops. That we had a happy ever after starting right then. Well, life doesn't work like that. It's always something.

And what made it worse was that this time my worst enemy was myself. In the months immediately following the girls birth, my own brain tried to kill me.

The fog, the wall of gray that descended over me started early, within the first few days after they were born, and ironically, not as the lassitude I would have expected from depression, but as anxiety. Instead of sleeping while my babies were sleeping like I should have, I would lie awake, irrationally fearful that they would just plain stop breathing on me. Or that supersoldiers or some other enemy force would break into our little, private world and steal them away from me. That Fox and I would be helpless to prevent this. Worse were the times I woke up from nightmares, convinced that I would be the one to hurt my children. These anxieties could be banished by force of will mostly. I could separate out the true, real frightening things we were up against and rationalize away the fears that were strictly from some depths within me. Except no matter how much I chased away my own nightmares, there was still the flavor of those fears, tainting my thoughts.

In this way, I learned that sometimes the scariest monsters that you have to fight aren't external, aren't anything that could be hunted down or chased with a gun. No, they are immaterial, internal. So pervasive that you hardly know they've penetrated your defenses until it is too late.

Every minute worry added up, like individual words add up to pages which add up to books. And it was in this way that the fog descended on me so slowly that I had hardly seen it until one day I looked and I could hardly see anything else. It robbed me of every feeling but anxiety. It took every pleasure I took in my children, in my lover, in this remote little farmhouse that was calling itself home at the moment. I think my insomnia had something to do with it. I think the insomnia fed on the fog and the fog fed on the exhaustion resulting from my insomnia.

More importantly than my pleasure, the fog slowly robbed me of my ability to function, as a parent, even just as a person.

It really didn't help that I had two such small, helpless creatures depending on me for everything. I am morally certain that all three of us would have been dead within the first two months if it weren't for Fox, and to a lesser extent, Walter and Georgie. But it was Fox who saved me and taught me how to fight against the monsters I couldn't even see.

Gracie would have been such an easy baby, if she ever slept at all. Her disposition was naturally sunny and easy going. She didn't cry much and when she did, it was usually for good reasons- like a soiled diaper. But in those first couple of months, I don't think she ever slept more than an hour and a half solid. She was a cat napper and a grazer. She'd feed a little, sleep a little and then wake, wanting to be fed again. Consequently between this and the anxiety, I don't think I slept at all for a while, not more than minutes at a time.

Garnet was another story. Thankfully, she was a sleeper. I worried about it even. She'd nurse deeply, almost sucking me dry, then she would sleep for five, six hours at a time, through the night almost from the get go. Which was a relief. Because whenever she was awake, she was a clingy, needy baby. She'd cry and cry so hard that you couldn't calm her, so hard occasionally that she threw up. Most of the time, she was okay if you were holding her, but put her down and you'd set her off. I learned to juggle her in my arms when I took a leak. I learned to eat with her in my arms. And forget about her sleeping in that beautiful crib that Walter had worked so hard to make. She could be fast asleep, but the second you'd put her down in it, she'd snap awake and then instantly into scream mode. First Garnet, out of sheer necessity, then Gracie out of convenience found their way into our bed, the cradles beautiful, but mostly unused. Surprisingly, Fox took their presence in our bed with good humor and no complaint.

Still, it was hard, so hard. I think I had my first intimation that something was seriously wrong with me the night, about three weeks after the birth, when Garnet woke at about five in the morning, crying to wake the dead. And I couldn't do anything about it. I lacked the ability to reach out to her. It was as if some great and unseen force, like a gravity almost, had settled on me like a blanket, heavy and stifling. I was awake, cognizant of the fact that my child needed me. All I was able to do was stare at the ceiling in the absolute darkness of our bedroom. It felt almost like I had been stricken with a stroke or something, but I knew I hadn't. This was far more dangerous than a simple vascular accident.

After a little while of this, Fox stirred. First uncomfortably, as if still half asleep, then moments later, he sat up, completely awake.

"Jackie?" he asked, snapping on the lamp closest to him. He looked at me, taking in that I was awake, but unmoving. The light hurt my eyes, but I didn't blink. "Are you okay?"

I wondered what he thought. He sounded seriously worried. "Yeah, I'm okay," I told him.

He immediately ignored me then and reached for the crying child. Gracie was still sleeping. I'd just got her settled down into one of her catnaps and nothing would disturb her until her natural short cycle had brought her out of it.

"She's dry," Fox said, trying to hand me the writhing, screaming mass of infant. She was mad, oh was she mad, arching her back, little hands clenched in tiny fists, red with the effort of screaming. If anyone but Gracie was asleep in the household I would have been surprised. I didn't reach out for my girl. I couldn't.

"I know you can hear me, Jackie. And if you can't hear me, I know you can hear her. I can't give her what she needs. I'm not the one lactating," Fox said, still attempting to foist her off on me.

He seemed like he was about to snap on me. I wasn't the only one who was seriously sleep deprived these days though I was bearing the worst of it. Still, something was wrong with me. Seriously wrong. I shouldn't have been able to hear my baby crying like that and not be moved to swoop her up and take care of those tears any way I could. I didn't understand what was happening to me, only that it felt like I'd been buried alive.

"Jackie?" he asked, sounding unnerved by my silence.

My heart was strung out, being dragged across the broken glass of her cries. But all I could think about was how hard it would be, getting up, letting her feed. How hard her damn mouth would be on my nipple, the kind of discomfort she was still causing me. Then, in all likelihood, her getting so upset again that she'd throw up all that milk that my body had worked so hard to produce. I couldn't do it. I just couldn't.

Fox saw something in my eyes maybe, some begging. He was Mister Rational again for the moment. He put aside his temper. "Okay," he said, not quite pleasantly. "I think maybe you need the sleep. I'll go see if I can get her to take a bottle."

He took her downstairs, away from me. I couldn't feel relief, I couldn't feel anything. He didn't return to bed that night. As dawn made an appearance, and the gravity slowly lifted just enough for me to escape the bed, bringing Gracie with me, I made my cautious way downstairs. He and Garnet had fallen asleep on the sofa together, empty bottle dropped on the floor beside them.

I settled down in the recliner to nurse Gracie. Fox woke eventually. "Are you okay, Jackie?" he asked, this time his voice soft with concern. He sat up, still holding Garnet and walked over to me. He sat on the arm of the chair and gently stroked my hair, then down my scratchy cheek. It'd gotten too hard lately to make the effort to shave. My beard looked like hell, patchy, with bare spots in places, and thinner than it used to be. I figured the female hormones were starting to play havoc with my body. I don't know. Maybe the beard was more than just sheer laziness, but trying to prove to myself that I was just as much of a man as I used to be.

"Yeah. I think so," I lied. "I just need more sleep than I'm getting."

"I'll help more than I have been," he promised.

And he did. Oddly, as time passed and more and more often, I found myself unable to even reach out a hand to gather my child to me, he got more and more patient with me, not less. For every coldness I found myself unable to avoid showing to my lover and to my children, he answered back with a greater tenderness. There were many nights where I would lie in bed, listening as he paced the floorboards and comforted Garnet, saying, "Don't cry, Princess. Daddy's right here." He wore both those babies as much as he could, worked so hard to stop their cries before they could even disturb me.

When I say he wore them, I mean that literally. One day, he came back from a shopping outing bearing a sack from one of the fancy mother and baby shops in Omaha. Inside was an assortment of cloth objects. He pulled them out one by one, saying as he did, "I told one of the ladies at the shop about how Garnet just won't stand to be put down and how hard it is to carry her all the time. The lady thought one of these might help. I bought them all. I figured one of them will work best. Baby Bjorn," he said, pulling out a set of navy blue cloth straps. "A regular d-ring sling. A snuggli. Guatemalan style sling. Kangaroo style pouch. Baby Trekker."

There'd been a couple more that he didn't name, but all of them were some kind of arrangement of cloth straps meant to tie a baby to your body. And so Fox Mulder, one-time hunter of serial killers, chaser of little gray men, the only real threat to global takeover, strapped Garnet to his body with the baby bjorn and wore her just about every waking moment, unless he was handing her over to be fed. It cut her fussiness considerably to be carried constantly in this way. If I had been in any kind of better state to appreciate this, I probably would have been stunned by the level of devotion he showed to both the girls and to me. I should have been welling with returned love. Instead, I felt nothing.

Mulder:

Watching him was like watching a man drown slowly and standing on the shore, unable to help. Looking back, I should have said or done something sooner. It wasn't that I didn't see what was going on. It wasn't that I didn't know what was going on. It'd been so long since I'd thought about any kind of psychology, except maybe forensic, but this was obvious. The presentation of his illness was textbook perfect. I watched him struggle for weeks, helping as best I could from the sidelines, taking as much of the pressure off him as I could, hoping that he would snap out of it. That I was wrong. That he just needed some time to adjust. That this wasn't anything but minor "baby blues." It was denial, simple denial on my part.

It was hard to be struggling though, with two babies, when he stared at the wall, not moving to help me as I changed diapers. He still fed them when I handed them to him, but did little else to care for them. Thankfully, I was too tired from being up all hours with the babies too, because any time I made a move to anything more intimate than a kiss on the cheek was met with either outright refusal or were deflected by being ignored. We no longer slept in our spoon, but with the babies separating us. Any attempts on my part to talk to him about his situation were met with silence and a weak, cold anger on his part. He never told me directly, but he didn't want to talk about it, and that message was crystal clear, albeit non-verbal.

About a month after the birth, I tried to tempt John out of the house. He hadn't been further than the front porch of the house sometime since December, Abbott having come to him for all his latest examinations. It was an unexpectedly mild day, sunny and warm enough to melt the top couple of inches of snow. No bad weather was expected for a good four days. It would be as good a day as any for the girls first outing. First thing in the morning, I dressed them warmly, in sweaters and little overalls, with knit caps on their tiny heads. Gracie's hair continued to grow thick, glossy and black, with hints of curls, but Garnet remained bald other than the fuzz. I thought she might be a red head in the future. It might be months before she had a full head of hair though. Either way, both of them still needed the extra warmth of the hats. Then, I went to go see if John could be tempted to get dressed.

"I was thinking about heading to Omaha," I told him. He was sitting on the side of the bed, unshowered, not having shaven in days. John was staring at the wall. Somehow, that was worse, more horrifying than if he'd spent all his time watching television. "Why don't you come? I was thinking maybe we'd do a little clothes shopping for you, get some lunch, then catch a matinee."

"Uh-uh," he said, shaking his head slowly. "The girls aren't ready to be left alone with Walt and Georgie yet."

Well, I agreed with that. My hands were currently resting on Garnet, who I had strapped to my chest. Gracie was fine, for the moment, laid in her crib. But somehow I doubted that either of them could face an afternoon without John or me. "We'll bring them with us. I figure if we time it right, the girls would sleep right through a movie."

"No, there's no movie I want to see and I don't need anything," he said. The former was, of course, subjective and I could hardly evaluate it for the truth, but the latter was decidedly a lie. He was still wearing the maternity clothing that Georgie had made for him by altering clothes. Only now they hung loose on him in a way that only underscored how gaunt he was getting. He looked, frankly, like hell, without even a tiny trace left of that 'pregnancy glow'.

"Jackie, please," I said. "I want you to come with me. What's the matter? A month and a half ago, you were itching to get out of the house and go just about anywhere."

I reached out and stroked his cheek gently, still able to love the feel of stubble and skin under my hand. He slapped my hand away roughly and gave me a dagger stare. "Give it a fucking rest, Mulder. I don't wanna go. Period."

I thought I understood the anger. It was easier to deal with than the sadness he must be feeling. Anger gives energy, makes you feel alive. Sadness drains you. It is a passive, waiting feeling. One doesn't escape it, really. You can't run away from it forever. The only way to truly find one's way through sadness is to travel all the way through it, a long, hard, uneasy process. I know. It was far easier to brutalize Alex Krycek than it was to cry for Bill Mulder, the man I knew as my father. Anger was easy, but fury could sustain a person for only a short time. It left one empty, burned. Hollow.

"Okay, Prince Charming," I said to him. "Maybe tomorrow. Maybe next week. Whenever you're ready, we'll head out. Just let me know what you need, I'll get it to you."

Meanwhile, the wheels of military justice ground slowly. Walter fielded more calls, made more calls. Mostly solemn, deadly serious calls that consisted more than anything of listening to things that he did not tell me. He made one, brief trip back to DC that had him grumbling about having to dig suits out of the back of the closet. He returned a few days later with no more conclusive reassurances than, "I think I've found our military law expert. Sean Granville, up until recently, a Captain in the Marines."

"He's one of them, Walter," I said, my hackles rising suddenly at the mere mention of the Marines.

"He's the son of my lieutenant in 'Nam. He's young. Sharp as they come, Mulder. The time comes when you have to trust someone and something beyond what you can hold close to your chest. If you really think that nothing and no one are beyond suspicion, what do you have that is left fighting for? His dad was a good friend. Not everything is corrupt in this world."

Actually, I truly feared that it was. That I had truly come to believe something that I had been warned about for years, to trust no one. Well, no one beyond a few chosen people and the dead.

I trusted Walter. What he was asking me to trust his judgment of character. I knew he was trying to do his best for me. The softly bewildered look in his eyes as we sat across from each other over the kitchen table, the weak gray light of a winter dawn limping through the windows, let me know that once again, Walter felt out of his depth. That he no more trusted his ability to find me a way out of the snafu that my life had become than I trusted my ability to provide a safe future for my own children.

"Okay. You think he's one of the good guys, that's good enough for me," I said. I suddenly heard Garnet crying again. I'd left her upstairs with John and Gracie, thinking she was sleeping, down for the count. I didn't hear any moves on John's part to comfort her. I stood up and said, "I've got to get her."

Even Walter had noticed that something was not right with John. "Is he sick?" he asked. "Have you talked to Dr. Abbott?"

"No, Jackie doesn't want me to," I said. "If I were a practicing psychologist, I'd diagnose depression, I think. But I'm not sure it's chemical yet. It may be situational. He's had a lot to adjust to, and if you haven't noticed, these aren't exactly the easiest of kids. Scully says William was a lot easier."

I didn't know that for sure. I'd missed the beginning and the everything after of his life. I wasn't going to miss it for my girls. I headed upstairs. John had put both the girls in their cradles. Gracie was happy. The solar system mobile that I'd hung over her cradle was spinning around lazily, though it was hard to tell if it was doing that because of her, or because of the fact that her cradle rocked slowly, seemingly of its own volition. Garnet's cradle was moving as well, but not rocking. No, it was shaking, as if an invisible hand was pounding on the floor next to it. Inside, Garnet was red-faced, with her all too familiar arched back. John was curled up, sitting on the bed, knees pulled to his chest, staring at the pair of moving cradles. His face was white, his eyes as wide as a saucer.

Steadying Garnet's cradle with a well-placed hip and a foot on the rocker, I reached for Garnet. "What's the matter, Red?" I asked. I guess I'd started calling her red, not so much because of what I thought her hair color might be, but because of the red face she got when she cried. "Cubs not win the pennant this year either? You think your sister will be okay with Dad while we go down to the bar and get you a double? You okay, Jackie?"

Garnet's cradle had stopped its poltergeist act, but Gracie's was still describing its slow, regular pattern back and forth, with the planet's of her mobile making stately revolutions around each other. This wasn't the first time we'd seen signs that the babies were something out of the ordinary but it was the biggest manifestation of it thus far. Funny. Once upon a time ago, a man who shared the same name and face as I do would have killed to have such proof positive of the supernatural to shout to the world, but now that such proof was coming from my daughters, the only thing I wanted to do was conceal it, for their safety.

"I don't know, Fox," he said. "I don't know what I was expectin' but it wasn't this."

Doggett:

One day in early February, he was sitting, looking at me. He had a bag packed, waiting by the door. Walter had a bag packed by the door. Fox had Garnet in his arms. He was, I could tell, evaluating me, trying to decide if he could leave me for the night. He'd already rescheduled his vasectomy once, the first time because he thought I wasn't ready to be left alone for the night so soon. He obviously wasn't sure if he could leave me for the night yet. I wasn't sure if he could leave me for the night yet.

I must have looked like hell. The baby weight had melted off me, leaving me with a slightly flabby middle, but otherwise, skinnier than I'd ever been. I mean count my ribs skinny. I wasn't eating well, in addition to not sleeping well. Georgie had given up trying to tempt me with my favorite foods in favor of just pushing the highest calorie foods at me whenever I seemed distracted enough to eat. I was wearing the same sweatsuit that I'd worn yesterday, and the day before. Hell, that I'd worn all week.

"Just go get the damn vasectomy, Mulder," I told him. "I ain't having sex with you again until it's done."

I had been cleared a week ago, to have intercourse again, should I want it. I didn't. My libido had been shorn off at the roots, no remaining trace of it left. I had allowed Mulder very little bodily intimacy at all, nothing more than kisses. I had only just recently stopped bleeding entirely, having bled on and off for weeks, in amounts that varied from simple spotting to amounts that worried me. Abbott had assured me it was normal, just the uterus shedding the last of its lining. But more than the pregnancy itself, or even the birth, this bleeding had made me feel uncomfortable and vastly uncertain of myself. It made me wonder, would I get a period? Go through menopause someday?

"Okay," he said. "I'll go. You know you have Georgie here if you need anything."

I knew that she and Mulder talked, softly, worriedly between themselves about me when they thought I wasn't listening. I knew something was very wrong with me, but I lacked the ability to explain it, or even to admit to it.

Garnet started fussing in Mulder's arms and so I reached out for her, to pop her onto me for a feeding. I knew that's what she wanted. It had been hours since she'd eaten. Mulder didn't hand her over. Instead, he got up and started warming up a bottle for her.

"There's something I want to talk to you about, Jackie," he said, as he started mixing the powder into the water. It was a foul smelling thing, the formula, and it made their diapers smell far worse than they did when they were strictly breastfed. Worse, every bottle of formula they drank rather than milk from me made me feel more of a failure. It'd been hard to sell me on the breastfeeding thing at first, but once I hopped on the bandwagon for something, I was on for good.

"Listen to me. I know this will be hard for you to admit to. But I think you're depressed. Clinical, chemical depression. You more than meet the criteria in the DSM-IV. I want you to understand that it's nothing you've done, or thought about or anything like that that makes you feel this way. It's a chemical imbalance, brought about, probably in this case, by the sudden fluxes in your hormone levels after the girls' birth. What's happening is your serotonin levels have dropped seriously and that interferes with your abilities to do a lot of things, including sleeping even. I want you to call Dr. Abbott and make an appointment. I want you to consider going on an antidepressant. Only none of them that I researched are safe for nursing mothers. You'll have to wean the girls to bottles."

"I'm fine," I told Mulder, with the shadow of anger flaring up under the relentless gray of my feelings. "It's been hard to make some adjustments and I'm still not getting enough sleep. But things will even out soon enough. I don't want to talk about this any more. Give me the baby and get going."

I held out my arms for Garnet and, ignoring the bottle that was offered alongside of her, I popped her onto my body. She sucked eagerly at a nipple that was sore and cracked already. The pain, at least, reminded me that I was still alive.

Fox and Walter left finally. Nobody in the house that night got a wink of sleep. Not the babies. Not Georgie and especially not me. I'd had to give over Gracie's care entirely to Georgie. Gracie wasn't happy about that, but she was less unhappy than Garnet was when I put her down. Despite my holding her, offering every kind of comfort I could think of, Garnet still spent most of the night crying.

"I think she's colicky," Georgie said as we both tried to quiet the babies. She'd taken over the rocking chair and had Gracie mostly calmed. Except that Gracie broke out in squalls at any hint that she might be put down. Garnet, on the other hand, hadn't put a stopper to herself in an hour, though she was wound down to tired sobs at the moment. Except every time I thought she'd give up the ghost and go to sleep, she started up again, just as fresh as before. She was perfectly dry. She refused both breast and bottle again and again. She didn't have a fever. I'd tried dressing her up more in case she was cold and that didn't work. I'd tried stripping her down some in case she was hot. Nothing worked.

"No," I said. "I think it's that Fox is gone and she knows it."

You know, I had an all-new appreciation for my ex-wife since the girls were born. I used to think I was a pretty involved father. I'd loved my son. I'd changed diapers. I'd gotten up in the middle of the night more than a few times. As much as possible as my work allowed, I'd been around, helping out.

But that was just it. I'd been helping. The buck hadn't stopped with me. If I couldn't get Luke to stop crying, I always had backup. I could wake Barb, hand the problem off to the expert. She expected it even, often relieved me of my duty before I'd had a real chance to play daddy. I thought I'd been involved, but I knew now just how much she had borne the brunt of child-rearing.

Just like I was now. The buck stopped with me. It was my responsibility to get her to stop crying long enough to eat something, to fall asleep. Here she was, screaming as if she was in terrible pain, and I wasn't able to do anything about it. I was a failure, I realized. A fuck-up. I couldn't function as a person anymore. I couldn't even get my own baby to stop crying.

Hell, I couldn't even stop the subtle and insidious thought that threaded its way through every thought I had, that I could stop her crying with a well-placed pair of hands over her mouth and nose.

I nearly dropped her as the thought finally came to the forefront of my mind and I realized just exactly what I had been pondering.

Oh.

God.

The thought suddenly, obsessively starting flashing before my mind, of her sad, still, dead little body, held in my big hands.

If she hadn't been screaming in my ear at that moment, I would have had to shake her awake, prove to myself that I hadn't killed her.

"John? John!" Georgie stared at me, knowing something was wrong, but unable, obviously, to tell what. Because the emergency was all in my head.

I stood up and as much as I hated to put it all on her, I had to. I placed my screaming baby on her lap, with my other one, who was now fussing.

"I'm sorry, Georgie. But I have to get away now. I'm going to hurt them," I managed to get out, before I stuffed my hand in my mouth at the horror of the thought. I could still see myself doing it. Putting pillows over both their faces. Snapping their delicate little necks in my big, masculine hands. I could even hear in my mind the soft crack that their bones would make, the tender flesh powerless to resist under my fingers. Holding my babies under bath water like that one woman had.

I'm not a man to run from danger. I face it. Charge headlong into it. But this horror was something I couldn't fight. The monster had so invaded me, become such a part of me that I couldn't even see where to start, what way to face it. I had to get myself away, not from the danger, because I was the danger, I had to get myself away from those I would cause danger to.

Georgie watched in pained silence, with my two babies clutched closely to her, one in each arm, as I rummaged around the house, until I had found a coat, shoes and a random ring of keys, not even sure whose keys they were.

Out in the bitter, starless night, I fumbled around until I found a key that matched a lock on one of the cars. Fox's police cruiser was the winner. I got in and started it. I said a little prayer as it turned over, then caught. Not bothering to buckle myself in, I drove down the driveway, into the seemingly endless Iowa night, taking whatever turns presented themselves to me.

Mulder:

We were on our way back already. I had been unable to rest in the Des Moines motel room, worried about how things were going back at home. I think my restlessness must have infected Walter as well, because as I tossed and turned in my bed, unable to get comfortable, despite the painkiller I'd been given, he moved from bed to chair, to window and back again, unable to settle.

It didn't help when Scully made an appearance. "Mulder," she said, sitting down on the corner of my bed. Walter didn't see or hear her. He was looking out the window again at the parking lot. "I know you're in pain, but I think you should consider heading back right now."

"Let's go home," I said to Walter at about ten o'clock. I wasn't exactly in pain, but my groin felt it had been unjustly abused. Definitely that kicked in the balls feeling, but I didn't think that tossing and turning in some strange bed was going to make it any better. My tormentor, the coolly efficient doctor, had been swift but without much compassion. She had approached me in much the same way as I remember Scully approaching her autopsy victims, snapping on the latex quickly, as if to say, let's get this over with. I was in and out of the office in less than an hour. I had been pricked, cut, snipped, stitched, shaved and bruised. Yes, my whole groin, especially my penis, was dark with spectacular bruising. I deserved the comfort of my own bed, I thought, but given Scully's warning, I somehow thought it would be a while before I got it. Oh, well. I'd functioned in far worse pain and levels of health.

I was surprised when Walter agreed, not just readily, but eagerly. I hadn't thought that he'd be so eager for a multi hour drive so soon. "I'm worried," he said, as I questioned him on this. He stuffed the few things we'd packed back into the bags, and added, "John's not himself entirely, is he?"

"No," I said, thinking about how empty his eyes had looked when I'd said goodbye to him this morning. I thought that I knew that place where he was right now all too well. I had been there, getting ready to eat my gun. I hadn't seen him try that just yet, but he was close. I shouldn't have left him.

"Depression will do that to a person," I said.

"I don't like leaving Georgie alone with them," Walt said as he pulled on his shoes finally. "In case you didn't notice, she's not really much of a baby person. It's hard on her."

"Let's go," I said. By then I'd managed to put on enough outer wear to make the trip through the sub-zero windchill to the car. It took only a few more minutes for us to get out to the car, get checked out of the room and get on the road.

I was able to drift asleep, finally, in the car, lulled to complacency by the steady rhythm of the wheels on the pavement, but I was woken instantly when Walter's cell phone jingled at him.

"Georgie?" he said, then listened. Silently. Gravely. Something in that silence made my guts tangle in fear. "You'd better talk to Fox. We're on our way home already, just another two hours or so. It'll be all right."

Walter handed over the phone and I said, "Georgie, what's up?"

She seemed, for the first time in the months I'd known her, like she had been crying. She was such a solid, strong, rock hard even, person, that I could hardly imagine what had happened. In the background, I could hear the wailing of not one, but both of the girls. "John has gotten worse since you left. I believe he's in a dangerous state."

"Georgie, if you haven't already, I want you to hide all the firearms in the house," I told her, imagining the worst. "Sit on the clips if you have to."

"He's gone, Fox. He got in your car and he left. I don't think he's going to harm himself. He said he was going to hurt the girls. He looked...I can hardly say. I was scared by it though. I let him go. I think I really was afraid that he would hurt them."

Fuck. Double fuck. I noticed that Walter had increased the speed of the car significantly, as fast as he probably dared to go on small, dark state highways that made sudden curves without warning. He drove with a grim expression that I could see in the green glow of the dashboard lights.

"He has access to a firearm in the car," I told her. "I don't know if he knows it's there. Under the driver's seat. With a clip in it," I said. "Georgie, look. I want you to call Bob right now. Make an appointment for first thing in the morning. Tell him you think that John is definitely suffering from severe postpartum depression, and that we're afraid he might have snapped into postpartum psychosis. Or if you can get Bob to come out tonight, that'd be even better."

"I've called already," Georgie said. "Bob is on his way."

I had already decided, all personality quirks aside, that push came to shove, Bob Abbott was a good man. An arrogant son of a bitch sometimes, but a good man. My judgment was reinforced again.

"Good," I said. "Look, I don't think John is going to hurt the girls. I think he left to stop himself. If hurting them was what he really wanted to do, he would have taken them up to his room or the bathroom or something. Found some excuse to send you out on an errand. I'm not afraid for the girls. I'm afraid for him. He just might decide he needs to punish himself for having these thoughts. Hold tight, Georgie. we're on our way."

It was a long, grim trip home.

When we pulled into the driveway, after first making a survey of the immediate neighborhood to make sure he hadn't driven the car into a ditch or something, I noticed that Abbott's car was already there.

In the house, I decided that Abbott probably had decided to become an OB because he liked babies. He had braved the foul beast that was my little, bald-headed screamer. And I thought he just might be winning. He was walking her around the house, cooing at her, bouncing her up and down as he walked. It was a funny sight, this fat old man, soothing a baby like that. But her sobs appeared to have died down a good bit, with periods of quiet in between. She seemed on the verge of falling asleep on his shoulder.

"Any word from John?" I asked immediately. "Did he call to tell you where he was going or anything?"

"No, nothing," Georgie said. She was baby-free at the moment, though she looked over at the cradle containing Gracie every now and then.

I was torn. I should be heading out, searching for him. I was exhausted. I was in pain. The bumpy ride from Des Moines had not been good for my general state of well-being or the comfort level of poor, abused groin. Georgie looked at me and said, "You sit down, Fox. Bob and Walter will go out looking for John. You take care of the children. I'll stay here with you."

Abbott held out Garnet to me. She seemed grateful to be back in my presence. With a few whimpers, she settled into my arms and proceeded to sleep, something I gathered she hadn't done since I'd left the house well over eighteen hours ago. It looked like I'd have to stay with her and trust that Walter could find John, and once he found him, talk him off that ledge that he must be wavering on.

Doggett:

I hadn't really gone looking for the Glock. My hand just found its way under the seat and there it was, in the same place I'd have put it if it were my car. The gun found its own way into my hand and I'd driven for miles and miles with it sitting on my lap. Its weight was heavy on my legs and cold through my sweats. Occasionally some more rational portion of my brain would kind of pick at what keeping that gun close to hand meant to me, kind of like a kid would pick at a scab. It felt like that too, raw and tender, and part of you thinking that if you could just pull it off, it'd feel better.

I'd taken the county roads kind of as they came to me, each time I came to a turning, I took a random chance on left, right or forward. But once I hit the highway, I found myself presented with less choices. The road stretched out before me, my options limited to where the builders had decided to put exits. I could go to Omaha. I could go to points beyond. I could stop at any number of small towns in between. I headed to Omaha, a place I hadn't yet been during my time here. Once I'd passed most of the way through it, I decided if nothing else, I should stop someplace, get a coffee and try and clear my head, decide what I was going to do. Except one thing, I thought. God, I'd better not get pulled over, because I didn't have my wallet. Not that there was much in there at the moment, just the fake driver's license and the credit card Fox had gotten me. No stopping. No coffee. Unless.

When I pulled into the first restaurant I found off the highway, I reached under the seat again. Not as obvious, but after a moment of digging, I was able to pull out a roll of cash- twenties mostly, probably, two, three thousand dollars. I peeled off the top most couple of twenties and stuck the wad back where I found it, along with the Glock. It made me feel slightly better knowing it would still be there when I got back to the car. I didn't have any pockets on the sweats I was wearing and I couldn't even tell in the dark if they were anything approaching clean. Probably not. I stuck the money in my shoe for lack of a better place to put it, and headed to the diner.

The restaurant was a Denny's, surprisingly empty, despite it being nearly two in the morning by this point. I found my way to the nearest empty booth and claimed it. There was only one waitress working the joint and she seemed kind of bored. I realized, suddenly, that it was a damn good job that the place was so empty. I don't think I could have handled the full crowd, just because it had been so long since I was out of the house, other than briefly being ferried to the doctor's offices, off hours, for appointments that couldn't be done at home. I hadn't so much as ordered a simple cup of coffee in a restaurant or seen strangers since before August.

The waitress was fat, with frizzy hair. She looked like hell. I could identify with that. She was yawning. "Sorry 'bout that," she said. "I just got switched shifts. Still not used to this late night thing. What can I get for you, sweetie?"

A way out of this hell that's calling itself my life? To set back the clock so none of this ever happened? The quiet peace of the grave which had to be better, could only be better than a life filled with obsessive thoughts about suffocating one's own children?

"Coffee. Black," I said. "For now."

"Right up," she said and left me alone with my thoughts.

I didn't know what I was going to do. What I wanted was to die. My family, my girls, would be far better off without me, their murdering father. The simplest, most obvious solution at the moment was looking to be that Glock. Everyone in law enforcement knows if they're going to take their own life, they ain't gonna mess around with pills, or trying to drown themselves or cutting their wrists. No, someplace nice and quiet and a nine-millimeter, in through the mouth, up through the brain was what did the trick, quick and simple.

"So tell me about it," the waitress said, as she turned the cup at my place setting over and filled it with coffee that smelled as strong as diesel fuel, like it'd been on the burner a while.

"About what?"

"About whatever troubles has got you sitting in a dump like this at one in the morning, away from your baby and family."

Was I going to even try and explain it to a total stranger. When the pain was so profound, so wrenching that I couldn't even begin to speak it to those I loved the most.

"How did you know I..."

"Have a baby? You've got throw-up all over your shirt, sweetie. I remember those days like they were yesterday. Oh, that was yesterday. I had to switch to the nightshift because it's the only time I can get my mom to watch my baby boy. Must have been some night for you to walk out looking like that," she said. Then she indicated the phone with a nod of her head. "You want to call your wife, let her know you're okay?"

"I don't have a wife. I was never married to my kids' mother and she walked out on me right after they were born. It's just me and the twins."

She looked at me like she suspected I was one of those people that would leave their kids in the car while they went in somewhere.

"I left the girls at home with my sister," I explained. "I just had to get away for a little while, you know."

"Oh, believe me, I know. Must have been one of those nights where the kid just would not stop screaming and you wanted to throw that baby right out the window. Hold on, sweetie, I'll be right back," She said, as the door opened again. Some stranger walked in and sat down.

I felt suddenly overwhelmed again, by the kindness, by the thought that maybe she understood something of what I was going through, and yet that I couldn't explain it to her, because I was so different. I couldn't tell anyone except the small circle of people who knew already that I was going so haywire because those babies had been birthed from my body. As she talked to the stranger, my breath felt choked and heavy. I had to get out. Abandoning my coffee, I stood up. I threw one of the twenties from my shoe on the table without waiting for change and just left.

Once back in the car, I didn't start it, not knowing where I wanted to go next. Even thought it'd been only twenty minutes since I'd left it, the car interior seemed nearly as cold as it was outside. Bitter. Bone chilling. Leaving me feeling like I was ice. My hand found its way automatically to that Glock again. I sat with it in my lap watching my breath turn into white clouds for hours, trying to make some kind of decision. She'd be the one to find me, I knew. The kind waitress would hear the shot and rush out to the parking lot to find my brains spattered all over the windshield. Actually, there'd be a whole chain of strangers who would have to deal with my death if I took it here. The cops who'd be called out. I knew that, having been on the other side when I was a cop. I'd had to break into some sap's car who'd decided to take this way out a few times. There'd be the EMTs who'd end up having to take me to the morgue. The medical examiner who'd be puzzled by the fact that I was neither fish nor fowl. There'd even be some poor sap car detailer who'd be the one to scrub my blood out of the upholstery.

All these reasons not to do it, but nothing presenting itself as an alternative, nothing that would end the pain. You know, I think I almost preferred feeling nailed down to my bed, unable to do anything to this feeling like I was choking on quicksand, drowning in it.

Sometime a while after dawn, there was a rap on my windshield. I'd had to break down, eventually and turn the car on, just for the heat, after I had started to shiver so badly that I knew I wouldn't even be able to pull a trigger. Even so, the windows were icy from condensation and I couldn't see through. I switched the heater to defrost and swiped at the windshield in the direction of the rap, wondering if it would be a cop telling me it was time to move on or something.

It wasn't. It was Walt. I could see his worried face through the little hole in the frost that I'd made.

I guess they'd worried about me. Not that I deserved their care. I reached out to unlock the car. Walt walked around to the passenger side and got in, allowing the cold in for a minute. I shivered as he sat down. He didn't say anything for a long time. Perhaps gathering his reserves to give me a good reaming out like I deserved.

Instead, he pulled his cell phone out of a pocket and handed it to me. I took it and stared at it a while, not because I didn't know what he wanted me to do with it, but because I didn't know if I could find it in me to talk to Mulder just at this minute. Even though duty nagged me, I still felt as if I were lost in my cold, gray fog.

"You scared the hell out of our sister," he said, finally. He was reminding me of the connection that we had made between us. "Not to mention the rest of your family. Two on the speed dial."

I suppose one of the good things about family is that they don't let you get away with crap. Just from the determined set on his face, I could tell that neither of us was going anywhere until I'd made that call. It was ridiculous, really. Me. John Doggett, now Jack Skinner, sitting in the frozen wasteland of a Denny's parking lot in Ass End Nowhere, Nebraska, grounded by the man who'd elected himself my brother, because I was afraid to make a call to my lover, because I was scared that he would tell me something I already knew- that I was sick. Finally, Walt made the decision for me. He reached over, grabbed the phone out of my lax hand and pressed the buttons for me. He handed the phone back to me before I could protest.

It rang for a few times, then was picked up, by a very tired sounding Fox Mulder. "Hello," he said. Then when I was silent in response, he said the same again a couple of times.

"Hey, Fox," I said. My voice, normally kind of raspy, sounded gratingly harsh to my own ears.

Mulder's voice though, was sweet softness to me. His relief at hearing my voice came through the phone loud and clear, even if he spoke at a near whisper, as if afraid of waking someone. "Hey, Prince Charming. When you coming home?"

"I'll leave soon as I'm done talking to you," I said, aware of the gun on my lap. Guess that no longer was an option, if it ever really was. No doubt they'd have me on a suicide watch back at home. Oh, they wouldn't be obvious about it, but my every step would be watched. I put it back into the place I had found it, remembering to put the safety back on first. "I'm on the far side of Omaha, I think. Walter's with me. Fox...I...I want to know if you can call Dr. Abbott for me. I think I need some help. I wanted to hurt them last night. That's why I left."

"Bob's out looking for you too. I'll call him as soon as I get off the phone with you," he said.

"He is?" I was surprised.

"I get the feeling there's very little he wouldn't do for Georgie," Mulder said. "Just like there's nothing I wouldn't do for you. We'll all talk when you get home. See you soon, Jackie."

He hung up on me, leaving me, for the first time in a while, hungry to be with him again, to talk to him some more. I wanted to know that my daughter's were okay, that the reason he'd been quiet is that they were sleeping and he didn't want to wake them. I handed the phone back to Walter and waited. I expected to get the royal treatment. The full ream out. It didn't come. Instead Walter was all business, deciding that though the obvious choice would be for me to drive the car back home, that I wasn't up for that. Talking to the people inside the restaurant, asking if it would be okay to leave Mulder's car there for a while.

Somewhere along the line, after I'd been deposited into the passenger seat of Walter's truck, I fell asleep. It'd been a good thirty-six hours since I'd had any sleep by that point, and though I'd once prided myself on being able to work round the clock, it was a rough time, considering I'd just come off a whole month and a half of virtually no sleep. I didn't wake up until I heard the crunch of gravel under the car wheels as we turned onto the county road that led to the farm house. It was starting to snow again, just a few flakes here and there at the moment, but with promises of much worse in the dark clouds overhead. I wondered if this winter would ever be over. Bob Abbott's car was waiting in our driveway when we pulled in. We were at home, sweet home, which somehow or another, had gotten to be a run down farmhouse in the middle of nowhere.

Mulder didn't rush out to meet me, but I got the feeling that he would have, if he weren't currently wearing Garnet. He met me at the door. He must have been watching me since the instant he heard the crunch of car wheels on gravel. Garnet was sacked out, limp in the baby carrier. Finally getting a little sleep. I suppose all that screaming really takes it out of a girl. Mulder didn't wrap me in his arms right away, but gently stopped me as I was walking past him by touching me under the chin. He looked into my eyes for a long time as Walter brushed past us. Of course I had to return the look. His eyes seemed dull, tired. Concerned, of course. But without that lively sparkle of potential mischief. These past weeks had been hard on him too, I thought. Though it had been the longest time since I'd wanted to be touched in any way, I pressed myself close to Mulder. I took my chin out of his hands and rested it on his shoulder.

"I'm so tired of this, Fox," I said. I was also suddenly aware that my breasts were uncomfortably full. The proximity of the girls caused it I suppose. I could feel the let down starting, soaking little wet spots in the front of my much abused sweatshirt.

"It's not you," Fox told me. "It's a sickness, but one that you have to take responsibility. God knows I don't believe in medicating away every bad feeling, but this is an obvious case of organic dysfunction."

Gracie chose this moment to wake. Even though she was in another room, I could clearly hear the tiny whimper that meant she'd woken hungry. My let down picked up again, soaking my shirt even more. I moved towards her, then stopped, remembering what Fox had told me yesterday, that I'd have to wean them. I didn't want to do that. Gracie, at least, had turned out to be an easy nurser. I wouldn't call it exactly pleasant having that suction pump and hard gums on my nipples, but there had been a certain peace I had gotten when I nursed her.

"Let me get her," Mulder said.

"No, just a few more times before we switch them to bottles entirely. Please," I said.

"Well, you haven't started the medication yet," Abbott said.

He'd come to the kitchen, bearing Gracie with him and he must have listened silently for a moment or two. He handed me Gracie. She'd been watching me, her whimpering shifting up to nearly a full cry once she realized I was in the room and she wasn't in my arms. It was almost an automatic response to shed my jacket, drop it where I stood, and pull up my sweatshirt. She popped onto the nipple almost like a sunflower turning to the sun. Her eyes closed as she suckled and as I walked us to the nearest chair to sit down, her little hands waved around. Then, when I held my hand near hers, she grabbed one of my big fingers with her tiny ones, holding tightly to me.

This is love, I thought as she nursed and I examined her. Everything just as it had been, each little dimple, each black curl. Love was the warm weight of her in my arms, the subtle but distinctive smell of her. I lost it. I tried to tell Mulder how much I had missed him too, but there was a catch in my voice that swallowing hard wouldn't make go away. Then I was crying, at least I have no other excuse for the streaks of wetness on my face. It was the first time I'd cried since before their birth. Fox held me. He didn't offer any overt comfort, just his presence as he held me. and his lack of judgment. A man could cry in Fox's presence and not feel any less a man for it.

Later, after I'd cried myself out and we'd fed both the girls, Fox and I had slept from the morning into the afternoon. I had my talk with Abbott.

Or rather, he talked at me and I gave the occasional monosyllabic grunt when he seemed to demand some answer. Eventually he pronounced, "We'll try you on Zoloft first."

I think some part of me must have been grateful, but it wasn't at the forefront at the moment. I didn't growl at Bob when he prescribed the antidepressant, but I wasn't pleased either. I guess I'd had some secret, futile hope that maybe he'd say something like, "It's all insomnia. Get enough sleep, it'll go away" or "All new mothers go through this. Wait another month and it'll go away."

No. I guess with not just Fox, but another professional diagnosing me, I had little choice but to accept that I was depressed and that it wouldn't go away on its own.

After Abbott gave the prescription, Fox held his arms out for both the girls and said, "You go shower and shave. After that, we'll go out and pick up your prescription."

Fox handed a clean shirt at me pointedly until I pulled my dirty sweatshirt over my head and changed into the clean one. Fox held the filthy shirt out at arm's length and said, "I think I may have tried to arrest this thing in a New Jersey sewer once."

"I don't think washing it is going to save it," I said. "May as well put it on the burn pile."

With us having to haul all our garbage to the dump ourselves, anything that was flammable practically, we burned. It was one of Georgie's favorite chores, so she claimed.

"You just might be right," Fox had said, but he chucked the shirt in the laundry anyway.

It'd probably been a week since I'd showered, as for the beard, it'd been longer. I thought about keeping it, but as I evaluated the man in the mirror, I decided that only nice clothes separated him from looking like a street person, with his hair and face looking like it was. My bangs had grown so long that I was having to push them out of my eyes. Yeah, I'd say a haircut was in order as well as a shave. Get myself together into something I recognized as myself.

After the shower, first I had to use scissors to cut the beard down to a length I could shave. As I pulled the safety razor down, stripe after stripe, revealing pale skin from under white foam, I wondered, was this myself emerging again? Understand that I still wanted to die like I had in that car, but sometime during that night, I had made up my mind to fight this thing.

Finally clean shaven again, I left the mirror behind. I could almost feel Fox on the other side of the door, even if he was a room away. No matter. Wherever he was, I could tell that he was wondering just what I was doing in the bathroom, why it was taking me so long. If I was going to harm myself, in other words. Oh, nobody would out and out call it that, but I'd earned myself a suicide watch, at least for a while. Not that I didn't deserve it.

Once back in our bedroom, I reached for some of my familiar, now comfortable clothes. The ones I'd been wearing since I'd been pregnant with the girls- one of those big oxford cloth shirts and a huge pair of sweats that I had to pull tight on the drawstring to keep up on my hips these days. Huge on me, but comfortable and they hid the fact that while the rest of me was gaunt, my stomach was still kind of flabby with loose skin. And that my hips were obviously bigger than they ever had been before.

"Uh-uh," Fox shook his head while digging in his own drawers, an awkward exercise for him even with Garnet in the baby bjorn. He held out a pair of jeans, his jeans, and a thick sweater at me. Fox and I used to be something along the same size. We wouldn't have been comfortable wearing the same suits, but for casual clothes, we once could have raided each other's drawers with impunity. Now, though, he was looking better than ever, his abs slim, buff, toned, his upper body bigger than it had been. And I was a physical wreck. He seemed to understand my hesitation. "Give 'em a try, Jackie. It's time to pack away your big clothes."

I'd been contemplating just wearing them until they fell to rags. That, or burning them. I don't see why he used the words, 'pack away', because it wasn't like I was going to use them ever again. I was never, never, never going to go through with this again. He'd even shown me the bruising to prove that he'd gone through with the operation.

"They're my loosest pair," Fox said. "They might work."

In face of such obstinacy, I thought it might just be easier to give in and try the damn things on. I pulled them on. I was skinnier than I thought, perhaps my body image still distorted by my pregnancy weight, but I was able to easily pull them over my hips and zip them up. They fit kind of funny, with plenty of room in the waist and not quite enough room in the seat, but they did fit. With the sweater over top, I almost looked normal again.

"You could use a haircut," Fox said, brushing a strand of drying hair out of my eyes. He reached up on tippy-toes to give me a kiss on the forehead, then said, "But other than that, you look great. Let's go. Daylight's burning."

Actually, there was very little daylight left. We'd slept most of the afternoon away. We'd be driving home in the dark for sure.

Walt was going to drive out with us, to retrieve the car we'd left in Omaha. Fox also wanted to bring the babies. I tried to put my foot down on that, but he kept wrapping Gracie up in one of those buntings that he'd bought. She took it in fairly good grace though she looked like a little pig in a blanket. Her sister was already wrapped up and waiting in her baby bucket, entertained by her own hands.

"They haven't had an outing yet," Fox said, soothingly. "We can't keep them here all their lives. Don't you want to share these adorable babes with the rest of the world?"

"Not really," I said, thinking about what I knew of the rest of the world. Keeping my girls hidden on an Iowa farm seemed like a good plan to me.

"If we take them, we'll have every cashier and the pharmacist cooing over them. We'll have to fight them off with sticks. What do you say? Just a quick run to the drug store and back?"

And so he wore me down and I finally relented. As the sun was finally setting, we were fitting the as yet unused car seats into Walt's car, borrowed for the trip. You know, when Luke was born, car seats certainly were available, but it wasn't unheard of for parents to ride with infants in their arms either. Now, I was thinking that it might be a good idea to get another set of car seats for, maybe even a third. See, I was thinking that once I was more myself, I'd get a car for myself. If I accepted that the money in that savings account that belonged to Jasper Skinner was mine, I had the money for it.

As if reading my mind, Fox said, "You know, if we go to the Wal-Mart, we can pick some things up while getting your prescription. Some clothes for you. Another set of car seats maybe. It'd be a longer trip though."

"Sure, fine," I said. "Whatever."

I wasn't quite ready to deal with going out yet, especially not with the girls, but I might as well make good use of it while I was out. The trip was mostly silent. Walt and Fox were in the front, I was in the back, wedged between two car seats. Even after we dropped Walt off at the Denny's parking lot and watched him drive away, we were quiet until we hit the Wal-Mart parking lot.

"You want Red or Gracie?" Fox asked, as he parked the car.

Tough question, really. It was going to be hard not to favor Gracie, considering the way that Garnet glommed onto Fox any chance she got. But Gracie was easier to handle, quiet and sweet. Garnet was a more difficult child to love, which somehow made the times she slept on my chest more sweet- they could be hard won victories.

"Garnet," I said. "You've been holding her all day. It's my turn. What is it with you two, anyway?"

"Do you believe in reincarnation, Jackie?" he asked. He'd opened Gracie's side and had gotten her out of her car seat. He started to strap her to him. She liked the classic style sling better than the baby bjorn.

Oh, no, not that supernatural bullshit again. I gave him a look that I hoped communicated exactly what I thought of that theory as I slipped into the tangle of straps that was the baby bjorn. Even in the yellow and shadows of the parking lot lights, he could read my skepticism.

"This is something I couldn't prove to Scully's satisfaction. I don't think I could prove it to yours either. But again and again, I meet people with whom I have an immediate connection that I can't deny. The same players meet on different stages, again and again. I believe that Garnet and I have known each other before and that we have come together again in this life. Perhaps in the past she has protected me. Now it's my turn to protect her."

At least he turned off the faucet of bullshit as we entered the front doors of the store. The greeter was a pudgy, white-haired woman, who, if she wasn't someone's grandmother, should have been. She seemed like one of nature's own Grandma's. It seemed natural almost to let her approach the girls as we took off the blankets that were protecting their faces from the cold.

"What a beautiful little girl," she said, of each of them. I'm not sure she got it that they were twins, or that Fox and I had even walked in together. We didn't correct her, just headed towards the corner of the store that probably had the pharmacy.

Fox had been right. Nearly everyone we ran into cooed over the babies. It was a curious kind of anonymity. We were so noticed, yet only as the impersonal bearers of these babies. If we were asked any questions at all, it was "Where is her mommy?"

Part of me wanted to lay claim to them, to say out loud, damn you, I am their mommy. I brought them forth after months inside me by hours of pain and work. But I didn't. I couldn't. Fox answered for us, with the simplest of lies. "She's not with us anymore," he said, refusing to clarify when asked more questions.

My biggest surprise of the day arrived as we were pushing a cart up and down the baby supplies aisle. As I was reaching for a big bag of diapers, not really watching, suddenly another hand was on the package, helping me guide it into our cart. I was surprised, because I'd thought that Fox was behind me.

He was. I looked up. It was my Uncle Phil. The hell? I had always assumed that once he'd caught up with Fox in that laundromat, that despite any evasive maneuvers Fox had taken on the way home, Uncle Phil knew where he was going, and therefore, where I was. But he'd ignored me thus far. Had he, or someone close to him been watching the farm. Had he been waiting for the opportunity to make some kind of move. I looked first at Uncle Phil, then at Fox. Fox kind of shifted where he stood, as if feeling for the familiar weight of his holster and gun. I'd studied everything about Fox once, when I'd been searching for him. I knew his record of firearm discharges. It was rare for him to pull his weapon, but when he did, when he took a shot, it was almost always decisively fatal.

I decided to take a casual approach to this confrontation. Acting like it'd just been last week since I'd seen him, I said, "Hey, Uncle Phil."

"How's it going, son?" he asked, taking the cue from me, keeping his voice light and neutral sounding.

"We're getting by," I said.

"And the girls?" he asked.

This was where I took the opportunity to convey my feelings on that subject. My voice as low and menacing as I could make it, I hissed at him, "You touch them and you're a dead man. That clear?"

Then I raised my voice back to pleasant and conversational. I added, in the voice of an appropriately proud pappa, "Aren't they beautiful?"

"The loveliest little ladies I've ever put my eyes on," he agreed. He turned to Fox and held out his hand, "Good to see you again, as always."

Fox seemed kind of suspicious, but took my Uncle Phil's hand and shook it. Something seemed kind of funny. I'm pretty quick on the uptake and I was sure that he was palming something off on Fox.

"Well, it's good to see the both of you again," he said, stepping away. "We'll have to get together sometime. I'll bring a proper baby gift."

Then he walked away, leaving me feeling frustrated. He disappeared into the aisles even as question after question that I wanted to ask him popped into my head.

"Don't worry," Fox said, "I'm sure we'll be hearing from him again sometime soon. He seems to have taken a personal interest."

It wasn't until after we were back in the car, babies locked into their car seats, and on the road again, that Fox showed me what my uncle had palmed to him. It was about the size of a fat pen, with cords coming out of one end.

"Some baby gift. If I'm not mistaken, it's a USB drive," Fox said. "I wonder what sort of interesting tidbits are on it. I'm sure, considering the kind of risk he took to get it to us, they must be good."

Later that night, I nursed both the girls to sleep for one last time. Then I sat on the edge of the bed, staring at the little, amber plastic bottle that was supposed to take my mental pain away, at least enough of it that I could think clearly again.

"You won't be on them forever," Fox promised. "Take it and then we'll hook the USB up to my computer and see what's on it."

I wrestled with the childproof cap for a minute, then shook out one of the little pills. It seemed like such a small thing to do everything that I'd been promised it would do. I took it with a glass of water. Then Fox hugged me. Just like I'd said to him once, right after the girls had been born and he'd come in from the outdoors looking vaguely shell-shocked, as if he couldn't believe what had happened, he said to me, "We'll be okay, Jackie. You, me, the girls. We'll all be okay. We'll make it through this. "

Then he added, with grin on his face, "So, should we flip now for who has to wait up all night on prom night?"

"We make it that far and both of us are going to be up chewing our nails and you know it," I told him as he got out his laptop computer. It took him a few minutes to get everything hooked up and for the information to be scrolling across the screen.

"It's garbage," I said, looking at the random seeming streams of characters that filled the window.

"No, it's encrypted," he said. "Damn. I wish the Gunmen were around still."

He looked at something over my left shoulder, then looked to me. I could see him making some kind of decision. Then he talked to the empty space behind me. "Yes, I know your kung-fu is still the best, Langly, dead or alive. But can it help me out with this mess on the screen?"

"What are you doing?" I asked as Mulder set the computer aside on the bed. I knew what he was doing. Acting crazy. Thinking he was talking to dead people again.

"Watch," Mulder said.

I've seen some strange things in my time. I've seen monsters. I've seen a blind guy nail a shot through solid walls. I'd seen my daughters cradles' rock back and forth, seemingly on their own power. I've never seen anything like this.

The computer seemed to take on a life of its own. The keys depressed like someone was typing, but there was nobody there. We waited. The nonsense strings on the screen changed, and changed again.

"That computer is haunted," I was finally able to admit. I couldn't think of any way else to describe it.

"No, more like I'm haunted," Fox said.

Mulder:

I was mildly surprised to find out that the three stooges could still hack with the best of them. No, perhaps even better than they ever had. I had known that my beloved dead are able to bring me physical objects. The man I knew only as X brought me the address of Marita Corvarrubias on a small slip of paper. That they are able to manipulate the physical world in other ways shouldn't surprise me. But to see them engage in such complex tasks seemed unlikely.

Past projects I'd worked with the gunmen had always gone smoothly. They easily worked as a team, their whole greater than the sum of their odd parts. But now, Langly was the center of their trio, the one at the keyboard, but the other pair stood at his shoulders, still, as if lending their power to him somehow.

I remembered how they'd picked up Jimmy as a fourth once, and I thought about that now. Groups of four are more stable, politically speaking. But I thought that a grouping of three is more powerful somehow. As if the tensions in the uneasy groupings produce a current that is not possible with a more stable arrangement. If nothing else, Western culture seems to recognize the potential inherent in threes. The chief power symbol of one of the still strong hegemonies of western culture is a trinity, after all. Trinitarianism possesses cultural supremacy while Unitarianism remains a footnote, a near fringe religion for liberals.

At long last, John spoke again. "So, the Gunmen are returned from the grave for one last hack?"

"No," I said, softly. Not that I could disturb the trinity now, I was sure, but the situation seemed to demand some kind of solemnity. "They, and the rest of the ghosts, come back to help me. I think if anything will save us, it will be them."

"I don't believe it," he said. But his eyes were telling me otherwise.

Over time, even the computer lost interest for us and we slept. I woke sometime in the dawn's light. John was changing Garnet and the Gunmen were still at work. But a few minutes later, Frohike said, "A few more keystrokes, then, sure as bob's your uncle, we're in."

"That was a brilliant hack," Langly said, at last.

"All you need now, Mulder, is someone who reads Russian," Byers added.

"Russian?" I asked, looking at the screen. They were right. The ASCII characters in nonsense strings had changed into Cyrillic text. It might or might not have been further encoded in the text.

"It appears to be, to all appearance, research notes of some kind," Byers said. "Our expertise ends here, Mulder."

I had once known someone who spoke fluent Russian, though I hadn't seen him around for a while. I had my own suspicions as to what happened to him, and if that were the case, then for damn sure, I'd rather have him where he'd gone than available to be my translator again. Look what happened to the both of us last time I used him as a translator anyway. Perhaps I was now getting my chance to make up to him what I now recognize as unnecessary cruelty and violence.

"It's really a damn shame that Walt's father wouldn't let their mother speak any Russian to their children," John said. She'd been allowed to transmit only the smallest amounts of her culture to her children.

We were, for the moment, at a dead end with this information. I shrugged.

"Breakfast?" I asked. There was nothing else to be done for the moment.

We left the computer behind and went downstairs with the girls. I was pleased to see John take the time to shave, then dress. And dress in the new jeans we'd gotten him from Wal-Mart. And a shirt that wasn't already permanently stained from baby throw-up. It was the little things that made me hopeful. Little things like taking his pill without argument.

After breakfast, I went upstairs, and got a surprised. I was disappointed to see Alex Krycek sitting in front of the computer now.

"Thought you'd finally managed to ditch me for good," he said, when he caught sight of my fallen face. "Too bad. I'm back like the proverbial bad penny."

"No," I said. "It's not that. I just hoped that maybe I was getting a second chance with you. A fresh start."

"You thought I'd risk coming back into a family where one of the parents has a temper like yours?" he said. "Fat chance, Mulder."

"If you'd come back to me as a child, I'd never hurt you, Krycek," I said. No, it was a solemn promise for all that I didn't phrase it that way. I don't believe I really have a bad temper. Krycek always just brought out the worst in me, a situation made worse by the betrayal I'd suffered from him.

"I'll take that under advisement," he said. "Now, shut up and let me get back to work."

Doggett:

I didn't ask what was in that document. Mulder would tell me when he knew and at the moment, my own problems seemed more important than whatever was happening in the wider world. He told me that he had found a translator who was working on it. I left it at that even though I knew that whatever it was, it was serious. Fox's mood passed quickly from almost jubilant to guarded and worried. He didn't sleep much during the next couple of days, even when the girls would let us get sleep. He was decidedly keeping something from me. Only, I didn't have the energy to go prying just yet.

For a couple of days, I struggled just to keep my head above water- to do the things I needed to do. Taking care of the girls, getting dressed, taking my medication, this was about the limits of my ability at the moment. Anti-depressants don't work instantly. My problems weren't gone with one magic pill, though I did feel better in the sense that I felt like I was taking action against the fog, rather than allowing myself to sink into it.

I knew that something was extremely important it the information that my uncle had given us even before Fox told me what it was. I saw it on the news, just as a sidebar item, just barely mentioned. Three days after I'd seen him in the Wal-Mart, there was a military helicopter crash, an 'accident'. A Blackhawk went down. The fatality list, though short, included then name Col. Phillip James Doggett. It hardly seemed real. I had just spoken to him days ago. He'd promised me I would see him again. I wouldn't get the chance to go to the funeral and I would never get the chance to ask him why he'd done what he'd done. Why he'd chose me. I watched the brief news item slack jawed, then went to find Fox. Thankfully, for once, both girls were napping, Gracie in her cradle, Garnet in the baby bjorn. I quickly threw a blanket over her before I went out into the cold. Hopefully, I wouldn't be long.

"How much progress have you made on those files?" I asked, when I found him in the chicken coop. Over time, he'd taken on some of Walter's chores, including cleaning the coop.

"Some," he said, guardedly. I knew that he knew more than he was letting on. His mouth was closed tightly, an almost frown.

"It's incendiary, whatever it is," I said. "Uncle Phil gave his life to get it to me. I just saw it on the news. A Blackhawk went down, for no reason, near Camp Lejeune."

"I was going to tell you later today. It's hard to find the words. Let's go inside and talk," he said, pitching one last fork full of used bedding out of the coop, then stepping out and closing the door behind him. We headed back to the house. When we were inside the house, shedding our boots and jackets, Mulder said, "Bedroom."

That was the place we went when we were having any kind of discussion we didn't want Walt and Georgie walking in on. I loved them, but I was really looking forward to getting a place with just Mulder. The farmhouse was a pretty big house, but it was still crowded with four adults and now two babies living in it. I almost considered seeing if we could have this talk in the living room, where it would be warmer next to the stove, but I thought Mulder wanted to have this conversation in bed. Probably with his arms around me. He was touching me again and again as we walked upstairs, guiding me gently to the stairs, just letting me know he was there. It took a while for us to get settled in bed, Garnet, still sleeping, in between us, but finally, he buried his face in my shoulder for a short while. His voice, when he talked, was a low rumble that I felt against my skin. His hair was silky under my fingers. It seemed right to run my fingers through it.

"You don't need any more bad news, in the state you're in. But you also need to know what I know. My source is not done translating the document, but I know this much. It's not just information. It's a warning. We have to find my brother as soon as we can. We need to get him to give our girls the same gift that he gave William. We have to go to him. We can't wait until he can travel to us."

"The magnatite? What's the hurry?" I asked. We'd discussed this before and we'd both come to the same conclusion, that when the time was right, if we could get our hands on it, we would administer the magnatite solution. Then hopefully, our little girls would grow up to be just normal girls. "William was months old when it was given to him."

"We need, as quickly as possible, to drive out anything in them that's alien," Mulder said. "The thing I've been looking for. The thing that has the power to prevent colonization. The thing that will end the conspiracy that's here now. It's been found. By the Russians. And they've unleashed it already."

"What?"

"It's a virus. They conquer us through viruses. Now somebody in Russia has finally figured out the way to use the master's tools to tear down the master's house. I guess they were seeking to perfect the vaccine against the oil but they surpassed themselves. It's deadly to any of the aliens. The grays. The oil, you know like we ran across on the oil rig turns to dust when exposed to it. The bounty hunters. Any of the aliens. The supersoldiers even. All of the aliens, what they have in common are several key proteins making up their organic structures. These proteins are unlike anything found in terrestrial life forms."

"And anything that has them..."

"Dies when it comes into contact with this virus. We win. Endgame. Humanity lives happy ever after. Except our girls..."

"Fuck."

"Precisely."

I'll give Mulder one thing. He sure knows how to scare a guy. And I didn't want to think that the universe was so cruel as to give me something so precious to love as my children and then would just take them away again. Except I knew for a fact that it did that kind of thing all the time. I'd seen it done before. All the time. It'd happened to me. I pulled him as close as I could, hoping I wasn't disturbing Garnet too much.

"There's nothing we can do to stop it's release?" I asked. It might have been selfish, but yes, I would have sacrificed humanity's chance against the aliens for the sake of my girls.

"Too late. It's been released already. The only thing we can do is get our daughters the magnatite injection and hope that's good enough protection for them, that it destroys the part of them that's alien. The document gives a release date of a few days ago."

"Have you contacted your brother?" I asked. Personally, I still didn't trust the slimy weasel, but Fox did. But hell, everyone has an in-law that they don't like but they put up with for the sake of family harmony. Besides, if anyone knew where to get that stuff, Jeff Spender did.

"I did. We're just waiting to see if he can get his hands on what we need. He'll know soon. If he can, we'll be meeting somewhere in Tennessee, which is about in the middle of where he is now and where we are. We'll leave as soon as we know. There's other arrangements we need to make too," he said. Then he wasn't able to speak anymore for a while.

What do you mean, arrangements?" I asked finally, impatient in the face of his silence. The way he said arrangements was the way people usually said funeral arrangements.

"I just want to have things in order. In case," he said. He composed himself. He must have done the exact same thing hundreds of times when facing Skinner with some completely ridiculous report. "I want to get you the information on where all my various safe deposit boxes are and the couple of other places I have cash stashed. And I'll need to get you access to my various off shore accounts. And then, if there's a chance that I could be exonerated, I'll want to update my will, so that's what left of my assets can go to the girls. In case..."

"Cut the crap. What are you trying to say here, Fox?" I asked. I was getting more and more worried with each sentence. Sounded like he was planning on dying. That was not something I was going to hear.

"The virus doesn't just affect the aliens, Jackie. It affects hybrids. Like myself," he said. And then, just in case I didn't get it. Just to pound the nails into the coffin a little deeper. Just to twist the knife boring into my heart a little more viciously, he added, "There's a very good chance, no, an almost certain chance that this virus will kill me."

The universe is perverse. And cruel. The universe is a goddamn, mean, nasty, son-of-a bitch.

You'd think I'd be used to having the rug pulled out from under my feet and finding myself standing out over a chasm like in the goddamn cartoons. It'd happened enough in my life so far.

I couldn't accept this. There was nothing about this that was even vaguely acceptable. To have talked myself down from a ledge a couple of days ago, still sometimes wishing that I would just die in my sleep, mind you, then to find this out. To know that the person who I trusted most in this world, the man I'd grown unexpectedly to love, would be taken from me, along with my daughters possibly.

No. It wouldn't happen.

I did the only sane thing a man can do at a time like this. I denied it.

"You're trying to tell me you're an alien, Fox? What kind of BS is that? In the hospital, after you were dug up, Scully cured you. All those anti-virals. You trying to tell me that it didn't work?"

"Oh, they stopped that particular transformation," Fox said. "But they couldn't cure what's been part of my genetics all along. I am a hybrid, Jackie. I can't deny that. Alex Krycek confirmed that I am at risk for this virus."

"Great. So what I hear you telling me is that at the drop of a hat, we're going to have to set out on a cross country trip, with two infants who may or may not get sick and...and...and.." I couldn't finish for a minute.

"As long as I'm breathing, Jackie, that will not happen," Fox said.

"And that at some point during this trip, you will almost certainly get sick and die. And there's nothing we can do to stop that, and that even if we could, we probably shouldn't."

"That's about the whole of it," he said finally. I wondered, how many of the past couple of days had he known about this and kept it from me.

"I refuse to accept that. I wouldn't let you go down without a fight before, and I'm not doing it this time."

It seemed impossible, that in this warm bed, cuddled into the man's strong arms, the baby nestled between us, all evidence of the man's physicality surrounding me, from his masculine smell only tainted a little by chicken poop, to his velvety skin still cold under my hands from having been outdoors, that something should happen to him.

"It's not acceptable," I said again, holding him as if I could stop him from going.

"Life is rarely acceptable," Fox said. He was holding me back exactly as tightly as I was holding him.

"What are we going to do?" I asked. As always, I was more comfortable with some concrete plan, something to do. Something to investigate. An action to take. Something to fight against.

As for plans, I knew exactly what I would do if I lost both Mulder and the girls. No thoughts of waitresses finding my body would stop me. Not even thoughts of Georgie and Walt, having to bury their youngest sibling, again, would stop me. If just Mulder was affected and the girls survived, oh, it would be hard, but I would be obligated to continue. They deserved at least one parent.

"Have you told Walt?"

"Not yet," he said. "He's got enough on his mind."

Walt was busy, on the phone all the time, planning the hearing that might exonerate Mulder with that military lawyer he'd found. Tomorrow, he'd be flying back to DC for the hearing.

"He probably won't be able to go with us to meet your brother," I said.

"No. I don't think we should bring Georgie with us either. I don't want her in any kind of situation where she could get hurt. I think it'll be just me and you. I'll make sure you have numbers. People you can call if you have to go it without me. People you can trust. And my ghosts will always watch out for you."

Mulder:

And they would. Indeed, the house had started to take on that grand central station of the dead look again. Everywhere I looked, every place I glanced, there was some spirit or another.

I think I would have known something was about to happen to me, even without the news from John's uncle. I was in danger. It was clear from the constant attendance of my beloved dead. Besides Alex Krycek still hovering over the laptop computer, translating the last scraps of that document and looking for any hint, any information at all that might save me, Monica was hovering over Gracie's crib as she slept. Monica was singing softly some lullaby type song, in Spanish. I didn't understand a word of it, but Gracie continued to sleep. Monica was rocking the cradle in time to the music.

It would have been so peaceful. A wonderful loving scene. Except for I knew the axe that hovered over all our heads. There have been times before where I have thought I was going to die. That brain disease had been a frightening time. When Scully had been dying of cancer, I thought that I too, might die. But never before had the stakes been so great.

Strange to realize it now. For so long I had denied that my personal life even existed. The quest for the truth had seemed the highest stake there could be. That there was a danger threatening the lives of every person in the United States, in the world even, had been more important to me than the comfort of human company. If I'd known then what I knew now, I would have taken Scully to bed years before she died. We wouldn't have been so lonely together for so long.

Because you don't really love people in the abstract. That's not love. It's duty. Or something. No, you love people in all their glorious, banal reality. You love them and their petty irritations and their beautiful, solid, physical forms. You could feel a kind of hollow righteous anger that someone could threaten strangers' children with smallpox bearing bees. But you loved the weight of your own daughter against the crook of your arm, the particular pitch of her cry, the soft whimpers she makes in the night. And the mere thought of her being harmed is something that knives straight into your gut.

And perhaps in the large scope, my problems, my terror at being separated from my beloved family, might not be worth a whole lot, not even a hill of beans compared to everything that was going on out there. But for me, these stakes were higher than they had ever been.

"John, listen to me," I told him. "If this thing gets me, I will wait for you. We will meet again. Somewhere. Somehow. It may be a different stage, but it will be the same players. You and I will love each other again. And as long as you need my protection, I will haunt you, like my ghosts haunt me."

"No, I don't believe it," he said. "There has to be something we can do. Someway we can fight this."

As always, he was beautiful, strong-headed man. And by all the things I hold sacred, I wished that I could believe as he did- that I was not doomed. That some struggle against my fate would be fruitful and I would end up growing old with him. But who would know best who is fated to join them next than the dead themselves and they were hovering around me like turkey vultures around a road-killed deer. John held each other the rest of the day, until Georgie came up to find us. I guess John had volunteered to cook dinner earlier in the day. And she was wondering when he was going to get started, being as it was nearly seven already.

"I don't think either of us is going to be hungry, Georgie," John said to her. "Bad news."

Then he told her.

And I had my proof that his strength had come through his depression unharmed. He held Georgie as she crumpled, let her cry in his arms. She didn't cry until after she had asked the same questions he had. Isn't there anything we can do? How can this be happening? Why? Only when our helplessness in the face of this microscopic, but very virulent threat was confirmed did she let herself slip from her normal, stoic self. She let herself have about five minutes before she gathered herself up again.

Somehow, like always, life carried on. Somehow or another, we got dinner on the table, while juggling the babies, making bottles for them. Somehow, Walt was told, his only response a tightening of the jaw and a looking away, over my shoulder at the wall beyond me. I could almost see him wishing for someone like that black-lunged, cancer-riddled bastard or any other devil to make a deal with for my life. When dinner was served, it was in a terrible quiet we looked at each other over our soup and grilled cheese. The times were too profound for mere words, perhaps.

The ringing phone was a relief. Not the house phone, but one of my cells. I answered it sitting at the table, knowing it was the call that I'd been waiting for. The one that might bring salvation to my daughters at least.

My half-brother's damaged, raspy voice told me, "I have the packages you requested. I'm already on my way to the agreed delivery point."

"Understood." I told him. After that, he hung up. We didn't risk anything more than that. I shut down my cell and stuffed it back into my pocket. Then I stood up from the table, looked at my companions, especially John, and said, "We leave tonight. As soon as possible."

He shoved his bowl away, the vegetable beef unable to hold any more interest for him. "I'll start packing," he said.

I'd somehow expected him to protest, to demand that we start out in the morning with a good night's sleep behind us. Instead, he stood up from the table and was about to head upstairs immediately, when he remembered that it was time to take his pill. He grabbed the amber bottle with a few foul words whispered under his breath. "You know, if I didn't have to be on these, we wouldn't have to worry about packing all of this crap," he said, indicating all the bottles and formula paraphernalia. It was going to be a logistical nightmare, driving straight through with the babies but I couldn't see what else we could do. We had to get them to that serum as quickly as possible.

Packing was a rushed affair, with the both of us grabbing as much stuff as we could and putting it in bags. Most of what we grabbed was baby stuff. The average invasion of Europe has nothing on the sheer amount of impedimenta it requires to take a baby anywhere. Then double that. I'd gladly wear the same jeans for several days in a row, but babies are messy and inconvenient. Their diapers leak from the legs and make their cute little pink rompers disgustingly dirty. They throw up. The