Title: Tellus Mater (Sequel to Pater Familias) Author: OneMillionAndNine Feedback: kokotheuberchimp@hotmail.com http://www.geocities.com/onemillionandnine/ Rating: Old married NC17, new clumsy NC17, all kinds of NC17 Category: AU, MSR, L/O, Sequel, Angst (plus bonus Violence, Deflowering, Asthma, Vomit, Questionable Parenting, Confusion, Misunderstandings, Mistakes, Frohike Singing, Waffles, Disenchantment, Death and, you know, the stuff of life) Archive: if you want to- I mean - there's no accounting for taste Disclaimer: the characters in the story that follows were invented by Chris Carter, who never meant them to be used this way. Even Thea Fidelis is his but, he might not want any them back now, as they are slightly wrinkled. Beta: MaybeAmanda - it's her fault. Thanks: To MaybeA for spectacular beta and moral support in writing what turned out to be a rather odd story. But at least I am happy with it. This would be totally unreadable without you. And to my husband for Mulder-modeling and other things far too numerous and embarrassing to mention . Your kung fu's the best, baby. Last but not least, thanks to Martha, wherever you are, for answering my Langly question Author's Note : Although Mulder and Scully appear throughout and are pivotal to this piece, it is Gunmen- heavy. As usual, I let the piece take me where it wanted to go, which happened to be right here. Take it up with the Muse, guys. Note: In ancient Rome, although society was organized according the patriarchal principle of the Pater Familias, the father with the power of life and death over every member of his household, twice a year the people made Blood sacrifices to the oldest deity in the Pantheon, the Tellus Mater, or All-Seeing Mother. *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~* It began like any bad science fiction movie. My life had the ham-fisted irony of an episode of the Twilight Zone, and not one of the classics with Rod Serling, but one of the episodes from the '80's where you knew the whole story in the first two minutes. Or maybe I have been living with 'Mr. Golden Days of Television' too long. Sylvie was in the backyard, eating mulberries and doing her standard running commentary while I valiantly struggled with the weeds around the zucchinis. I have no idea why I took the trouble; it was mid-September and I spent my nights in a post-coital haze wondering what new and exciting dishes I could make with all the damn zucchini in my garden. Yet, I weeded. Martin had just suggested I hollow out the day's bounty and make shoes for the children. I nearly told him exactly what I could fashion out of my produce but pity stayed my hand. After all, the children were right there. Danny, in fact, was doggedly pulling weeds beside me. He paused only to chide his father and sister. "Some members of this family can be very lazy," he signed to me with his grubby little fingers. The accused rolled their eyes in unison. "I have a black thumb," Marty signed back at him. "I so much as turn on the hose and our entire lawn will die. Ask your mother." Danny looked at me skeptically, so I responded, but with my back to my husband. "It's garbage. He just doesn't want to do it. But if they don't want to, they don't have to, Danny. This is not a prison camp. To each his own, remember?" My dear spouse, of course, asked his minion, "What's she saying, Princess?" 'Princess' was only too happy to oblige, screaming and signing at him simultaneously. "Mom says," her stubby purple fingers blazed, "that we don't - we don't -" but her high-pitched voice demonstrated her marked tendency to stutter "- we don't have to do what he says. We are not in prison! And you are a liar." She shrugged philosophically. "But all the most interesting people are liars, Dad, and that means. . ." And she stopped cold. Not stammering. Not searching her burgeoning brain for the right word. No, my little girl was frozen, staring into space, and she stayed that way for a terrifying three minutes. We whistled. Waved hands in front of her face. In the end, we even shook her gently, to no avail. When she was herself again, she smiled the broad-beaming smile that she usually reserved for cheese cake. "My sister is coming." "You don't have a sister, sweetheart." I cradled her to my chest. "You are the sister." "No." She struggled out of my arms. "No. Ask Buddy." Danny's reply was confusing and it made my blood run cold. He nodded seriously and used signs I'd never seen before but they could only be interpreted a single way. "The Goddess draws near and she is not alone." Marty slid straight into panic face as he scooped a child up in each arm and ushered us all into the house. What happened next? Nothing. Nothing happened. The kids nattered on as usual, fought about who had what toy and who had encroached on whose personal space. Sylvie kept talking. Danny continued his self-assigned summer project of global domination one little sister at a time. Marty and I were tense, but after four days and still no goddess, we were tempted to chalk it up to the weirdness that is our lives and move on. By the fourth night, it was nothing but a niggling thought in the back of our brains. No matter what you call my husband the man is not unattractive, and that night he was in fine form. The stress seemed mostly gone from his face. His brow had finally unknit itself. With the kids in bed, he switched on his favorite oldies radio station and began a Martin Levine style strip tease. BLESS MY SOUL WHAT'S WRONG WITH ME - -the radio throbbed, and he planted his feet wide apart as he slowly began unbuttoning his shirt. I'M ITCHIN' LIKE A MAN ON A FUZZY TREE Ohhhh, The King! I was in for a treat, but I struggled not to clap my hands or scream 'take it off!' - any encouragement could easily push him from charming into the realm of overbearing. MY FRIENDS SAY I'M ACTIN' AS WILD AS A BUG I'M IN LOVE - I'M ALL SHOOK UP I watched as his dusky gaze narrowed to mere slits as the shirt slid from his broad shoulders to the floor. That body. Don't tell Rabbi Lansky I said it or thought It, but -- Help Me, Jesus!!! My eyes hit his crotch just as the pelvic thrusts began. He turned. Oh that ass. He wiggled it just for me. MY HANDS ARE SHAKIN AND MY KNEES ARE WEAK I CAN'T EVEN STAND ON MY OWN TWO FEET WHO DO YOU THINK WOULD HAVE SUCH LUCK I'M IN LOVE - I'M ALL SHOOK UP My heart raced and I felt my stomach tighten as I took in his muscled back and narrow hips. He turned to me, holding the ends of his unbuckled belt in either hand. The broad grin I thought was unattractive when I first met him spread across his face. I was literally salivating. He pushed down his pants in time to the music. It took conscious effort not to drool. I'M ALL SHOOK UP And out his cock sprang, with a force and silly motion that merited some sort of cartoon sound effect. Not bad at all for forty something. It occurred to me, as it frequently did in similar circumstances, that there might be something to this SuperMan thing, after all. I brushed one knuckle against my lower lip and he got the message. Loud and clear. It took about two seconds before he was holding his warm penis against my cheek. I couldn't help myself. "Mmmmmmmmmmmmm." "Oh yeah. Just like that." He brushed himself back and forth across my cheek. "Can I call you, um, that is, can you be Scully tonight?" That nearly ruined the moment for me. I had to stop myself from laughing. My eyebrow rose of its own accord. "I never stopped." "Say it for me." He bounced his penis insistently against my lips. "Mulder. Is that what you want to hear? Mulder. You're Mulder and I'm Scully and I want you." I skimmed his shaft with my lips again. I drew my tongue up to his head so lightly I knew it would drive him crazy. I wanted to swallow him at that point but I knew my own private Chippendale dancer better than that. He'd be disappointed if I didn't drag the teasing out a bit longer. I could feel his pulse on my lip as I rested him on my open mouth without so much as getting him wet. His eyes practically rolled back in his head. I bit into the underside of his shaft near the base, just the way he liked it, edging up on pain, then backing away. I rubbed my face again him again, nuzzled his testicles, enjoying the wiry hairs against my lips and the smell - mmmmm - the smell of him. Possibly one of the best things about sex with him no matter what his name is. You have to be pretty much between his legs to smell it, but when he's aroused, there is the strong odor of sweetness and musk. It's almost like wearing a fur sprayed with Chanel #5 while eating caramel after caramel. A strange description I know, and but I have yet to fellate him with out the image popping into my head. I couldn't help myself. I buried my nose in his pubic hair and inhaled, only incidentally glancing his penis with the corner of my mouth . It drove him wild. "Ummfff," he grunted. I looked up to see him biting that lower lip. Another one of my favorite things. Oh, what a different movie 'The Sound of Music' would be if it had starred Marty and me. Neither of us can carry a tune in a bucket, for starters. What do you do about problem like Maria? Or Laura Levine? Or Dana Scully? I nipped one flared and fleshy edge of his head with my teeth. "Harder. Bite harder." I complied, even though this sort of thing tends to leave me vaguely worried. "Mmmmm, God Scully, you know just what I like." It was only at times like these that he showed even the most vague reverence for the divine. He hadn't changed as much as he supposed. I bit the other side. Asymmetry has always bothered me. "Now, make it feel gooooooood." His tone straddled the border between a plea and a command and I had to push it over the edge. To tell the truth, the few times he'd taken command in bed had left me feeling ambivalent. Perhaps ambivalent was the wrong word - what I felt was both sickened and aroused beyond my ability to articulate. Anyway, that night I assumed the role that he enjoyed on me so much - I stopped and waited expectantly, being cruelly passive. "Oh Scully, this is so perfect. I love the way you make me wait until I can't stand it anymore. You know what I love about the way you tease me? I love it," he said as I slid him slowly into my mouth, working my way down to his delicious smelling pubic hair, "because I know that sooner or later you'll take me all the way down your throat. Sooner or later, I'll be inside you." He stroked my hair, pulling out the clip that kept it off my face. He twirled a strand around one finger. I felt light-headed. My crotch was starting to throb in time with the pulse in my mouth. I reached one hand down inside my panties. "Ohhhhhhh Scully, does it make you hot to give me a blow job?" Yes, I was, as he put it, 'hot,' but that didn't temper any of the smart-ass remarks that came to mind. Luckily, I had a large, turgid penis in my mouth or one of those snotty retorts might have popped out. "I love it when you get turned on. Do you know how many times I used to imagine us like this in the office?" I slid him almost out of my mouth then slowly forced him down until my lips met pubic hair again. That fixed his wagon. All he could do was breathe for a minute while I held him in my mouth, slaloming my tongue from side to side. I could probably have given a fair estimate of the number of times he imagined us like this back in the 'good-old-bad-old-days,' especially knowing his appetites the way I know them now. Let's see - eight years multiplied by...by... I had suddenly lost my ability to multiply. Apparently, all the blood had left my brain. My clitoris was pushing back hard and wet against my fingers and I didn't have the energy to force myself into conscious thought. Saliva flooded my mouth. "Fuck, that's wet, Scully." I swallowed, then I forced my throat to relax and eased him down the rest of the way. I ran my free hand up his side to his nipple, scraping his skin with my nails as I went. "Stop." My husband pulled out of my mouth abruptly. "Gimme a minute, Baby. I don't want to come yet." He stood there shaking in air-conditioned room, literally panting. "Okay, now." He tried to put his cock in my mouth before he realized my masturbation was reaching a fevered pitch. "Oh Scully - mmmmm - that looks good." His thumb and first two fingers slid in to me as soon as he saw how close I was to coming. I barely noticed as he dropped onto the bed with his other hand wrapped around his penis. He reached with his fingers until he pressed the magic spot and something inside me whirred like a kitchen blender and I came. God bless you, Dr. Graffenburg. I had barely finished when he was looming over me, his penis bobbing against my lips again. I looked up at his face and somehow that lost and fearful look had crept over him. He was hanging back, waiting for approval, touching the corner of my mouth hesitantly, as if afraid I was going to hand him a rejection at that late date. I extended my tongue and drew a series of figure eights along his scrotum, then reaching out to grasp his buttocks in both hands. "I want you, I always want you," I whispered before swallowing him down again. There was a sharp intake of breath and unconsciously he bucked against me, ever so slightly. My mouth was stretched wide to hold him gently - no sucking, no undue pressure - he wanted to make it last, to hold out until the avalanche of biology won out over his monolithic self-denial. I let slip him from my mouth and drew my tongue over and between his testicles before moving in a single slow wet stroke all the way up to his urethra. The equivalent of a nuclear blast in our little war; a few more like that and he'd be waving the white flag all over my face. "Aren't you gonna fuck me?" Oh brother. He gave me a strained version of the kicked puppy face. There he was, the object of all my stupid passion spread out like a feast before me. It struck me as silly to be so moved but I remembered all the years I had gone to bed alone because I wanted him and desire welled up again in a cold wave. All I could do was nod. "Fuck!" I tried to climb up onto him but my leg chose that moment to cramp. He took advantage of the opportunity to come up behind me. "How 'bout like this? Is it okay? Do you like this, um, Scully?" All I could do was grunt as he slipped into me and I struggled to stay on my hands and knees. I guess the question was rhetorical. His weight rested on the one hand that gripped my waist while the other kneaded my ass. As he slid home again, his testicles bounced up to meet my clitoris. The rub was delicious. He pulled almost all the way out again, then moved back to his rightful position - in in in - and again his testicles hit my clitoris. Mmmmm! Three more strokes and I would come. Against his will, he was starting to move faster. If only he'd last until he could make me come again. . . I will be going to hell for pure selfishness. Then abruptly, he pulled out. "Fuck!" I groaned. "What the -" "Did you hear that?" He knelt there, glistening, his head cocked to one side. "Huh?" I listened. Lord, someone was knocking at the front door. "Damn!" I buried my face in his one thin pillow. "Better get it before Sylvie wakes up," he huffed. The most irritating whine came out of my mouth. "Awwwwww Mulder, come on! I was just about to have another orgasm!" I turned around and watched him put his ratty black bathrobe, easily the ugliest thing in his wardrobe. The robe had started out attractive enough, luxurious in fact, but in the years since I'd bought it for his first birthday 'in captivity,' it had gone decidedly downhill. Nearly six years wasn't a bad run for a bathrobe, but every time I told him it was time for it to go to the great closet floor in the sky, he countered by suggesting a Viking burial. I pulled on his old t-shirt and pajama bottoms and followed him into the living room. She was standing at the screen door. I never imagined I would remember that face, let alone with such clarity, and yet I did. Even the name clung to me. It was as if I had seen her yesterday and not nearly seven years before. Thea. Literally, The Goddess. "The Goddess comes and she is not alone," Danny had said, and he'd hit that one on the head. She'd grown. In the seven years, give or take a month or two since I'd last seen her, she had sailed from one far edge of puberty to the other. But not, to stretch the metaphor, without taking on passengers. Which is to say, she was pregnant. Very pregnant - clearly somewhere in her final trimester. I looked behind her for Gibson, but in that sense, at least, she was by herself. I moved the blind just enough to see a primer-gray Chevy Nova in the driveway. At least she hadn't hitch hiked here She was tall, Mulder's height, and except for her massive belly, looked rail thin. Her lips were chapped. Her face was all planes and angles, intense but closed off somehow. She wore an odd combination of jeans - unzipped, I presumed - a house coat, and what all the chic pregnant girls were wearing those days, flip flops. Her hair looked to be growing out of a very short and very bad cut. Her nails were similarly abbreviated and ragged. Her skin had the deep, dark color of someone who spent their days working unprotected in the full sun. She didn't look like she'd been living the life of one of the beautiful people. Mulder leaned against the doorjamb, his erection having lost steam, holding his robe shut with one elbow pinned tight to his body, and yet somehow, managing to look jaunty. Mulder peered at me out of the corner of his eye even as he addressed her. "Can I help you?" I remembered what Sylvie had said and a chill ran through me. Her sister was coming. Her sister. Was Thea another of Mulder's children, like Betty Roguebull? Not like Betty. Please, not like Betty. I looked at her again. It was all too easy to see him in her face - a slightly diminished and unbroken form of his nose, his chin exactly, his high, hard cheekbones, his long limbs. It was as clear to me as breaking glass. "I don't think she can hear you," I said, opening the door wide. "Come in," I signed. Her eyes lit up. It surprised me that she seemed so unafraid as she stepped inside. Despite the size of her stomach, she was remarkably able to hold her waddle down to a minimum. "Your friends the Gunmen told me where I could find you," she signed directly at me, trying to look utterly unconcerned with Mulder and not quite succeeding. Mulder led her to the couch, waited until she was seated. "Excuse us - we'll be right back," he signed at her just before he quite literally dragged me out of the living room and into the kitchen. He leaned back on his elbows against the too-high kitchen Counter, his lips pursed expectantly. "What's going on? Who is she? How does she know you?" It took me a moment to orient myself. "Her name is Thea, and - " "'Thea?' As in 'The Goddess approaches?' "I think so." "Oh, that's great. Just great." He blew out a long breath. "So, you knew all along and didn't tell me." "No," I answered. "I mean, yes, I met her, once, years ago, but the connection didn't occur to me. You've read the old files from when you were missing, right? When Doggett tracked Gibson Praise to the School for The Deaf in Arizona? He nodded. "Thea was there with him. Gibson trusted her when he didn't trust anyone else. I think," I rubbed my brow, "shit, I think she's another one of their projects." "And you think they put the two of them together just like they with us?" "Given what we know now, it seems likely." "You have anymore information?" Proof? Suspicions? Anything?" "Until I consult my Ouija board again, you know as much as I do," I replied. He snorted, then went to the refrigerator. I found myself staring at the kitchen sink, trying to ignore my racing thoughts. To admit my suspicions to Mulder would be to make them real, undeniable. I forced myself to think about something else. No matter how conscientiously I tried to keep dirty dishes from piling up, as soon as I was busy with something else, Mulder would come in and eat. Unlike in his bachelor days, he no longer ate over the sink while drinking straight from the pitcher. Instead, he did his best to supply me with a never-ending counterful of sticky, crummy cups, plates, and forks. There were three plates, a tablespoon, and a coffee cup on the counter. I could not figure out when he had had a chance to use them. I wasn't irate, just puzzled and slightly annoyed, but it tipped the scales in favor of not telling him out right that I suspected Thea was his child. That and that fact that he had probably already figured it out. In the living room, Thea sat bolt upright, looking distinctly out of place amid my husband's amorphous and expensive Scandinavian furniture, even though the blonde wood matched her sun-bleached hair. Mulder, ever the gentleman, had supplied her with a glass of milk. I turned back into the kitchen, unable to face whatever story was waiting for me. I pulled the coffee down from the cabinet and offered a prayer in praise of Juan Valdez. As I came toward the couch I saw Mulder sign to her, "Where's Gibson?" And her reply. "Dead. Gibson Praise is dead." *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~* End 01/07 Title: Tellus Mater (02/07) (Sequel to Pater Familias) Author: OneMillionAndNine Feedback: kokotheuberchimp@hotmail.com http://www.geocities.com/onemillionandnine/ See 01/07 for detailed headers. *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~* "Fucking hardheaded little...little...little bitch!" I knew you weren't supposed to think things like that about the mother of your unborn children, but with every step, I wanted to snap her neck that much more. Okay, not snap her neck - I've never wanted to snap anyone's neck. Especially not hers. Shake her -- that was it. I definitely wanted to shake her. We'd been over it again and again. DC was no place for her, even if the guys would have agreed to let her stay again. The waves of infection that swept both coasts and not infrequent explosions that signaled an overnight change of corporate political backers while the unelected president made pronouncements from safe inside his batcave in Nevada may not have kept people out of the malls, but it made the relative isolation of the Great American Heartland look pretty good. Holy Fucking Shit! I never imagined myself involved in any crap like this, but things had been changing ever since she showed up. So I guess I should have - change the input, and you inevitably change the output. It didn't start out looking like the day that would change my life forever. I was playing a god-simulation, even though Hickey was on my ass to work on some crap he'd salvaged from who-the-fuck-knows-where, when there was someone at the door. It was a kid. A girl kid. Tall, but skinny. 15 or 16 years old. I was surprised when Byers let her in. She was deaf. She said Gibson Praise had told her where to find us. He told her we could help her. It was plain to see that she'd been living on the street for awhile. I figured that must have been what killed Gibson. She said he got worse and worse off and she never even knew what was wrong. Then she told us Gibson said we knew her parents, and could help her find them. That those parents were Fox Mulder and Dana Scully. My exact words were, "Yeah, Right. " Byers lab contacts ran tests and, fuck me, it was true. None of us even briefly considered sending her to them. We didn't think too hard about turning her out, either. It wasn't like, like she just moved in and became a member of the team over night. It just kind of happened. She'd been with us ten days or so when I was trying to break an encrypted code. She was hanging around, looking over my shoulder all day, when all of the sudden she just reached over and started typing on my keyboard. "Hey!" I grabbed her wrist. "Cut it out!" She pulled the notepad out of her pocket and wrote IT'S MATH, RIGHT? YOU'RE JUST LOOKING FOR THE PATTERN. I would have gotten it without her; it was just a matter of time. I would have gotten it myself, I really would have, but as it turned out, I didn't have to because in about two minutes, she had me pointed in the right direction. We spent a lot of time together after that. Byers kind of, I don't know, he treated her like she was the petite flower or something. Fro did too, at first. I wasn't sure, but I thought maybe they were thinking about Scully's kid that died. But you could tell just by looking at Thea she was no kind of sick. Of course, that wasn't good enough for them. Byers wouldn't let her get involved in any 'field trips' until she got checked out by a doctor and a dentist. That meant she was basically stuck at home hacking until she gave in. She hated doctors. She signed to Frohike real slow the way she did back then, like we were stupid. "Do you two make Ringo go to the doctor?" He signed back to her, "We couldn't keep him away from the doctor if we tried." Asshole. After about two weeks of bitching, she caved. The upshot being, she was as healthy as a fucking ox, but her wisdom teeth were coming in. We all had to chip in to pay for the oral surgeon. I still say Hickey should have let us dip into Mulder's emergency money for that one, but I got vetoed. We all wound up glad she was with us. If you got hurt or just had the wind knocked out of you, she'd been there right now, ready to sling you over her shoulder whether you wanted her to or not. She was also the smoothest fucking thief I'd seen in my life. Highly useful for journalistic espionage, too. It did take us while to convince her to stop stealing us little presents all the time, though. She had to be convinced to, you know, use her powers only for good. She was funny. She could read and write four languages and fucking generate code in her sleep but all the normal human stuff was news to her. She ate like a pig. The only holiday she knew about was Christmas and she called it, "The tree and the candy and shall I puke now or later?" That was probably the weirdest thing about her - she wouldn't eat or drink anything sweet. She even signed the word 'SUGAR' like it was gross. No matter how many times she pulled our asses out of the fire on a mission, Byers had a bee in his bonnet about her safety. She couldn't go out alone. It was too dangerous. I think Frohike backed him up on it because he still didn't trust her all the way and wanted to keep tabs on her movements. We were already spending all our monitor time together, so I started taking her with me whenever I left headquarters. It was cool having someone around. I taught her to drive and play D & D. I made her a license. The name she had me put on it was the one from the sticky label on the side of her Zeus Genetics Tank - Thea Fidelis. She cleaned up okay, not real girly or anything, but okay. She didn't have that look that some girls have when they aren't wearing makeup; you know, like a mole sticking its head up into the daylight. She looked better plain. She was like a guy. To me, she looked a lot like Mulder. If she had put on lipstick, she would have looked too much like Mulder wearing lipstick - creepy. Sometimes she'd put her head on my shoulder or touch my hand, but I didn't think anything about it, really. I mean, I figured girls were supposed to be touchy-feely like that. Yves did that kind of stuff sometimes when she wanted something. Thea just did it when she felt like it. Besides, it was nice. Sometimes we'd wrestle too. It was pretty innocent. Well, I thought it was innocent, anyway. Okay, so I was a moron. Things went that way for about two years. Then one day we were in the kitchen checking the Huevos Rancheros Fro had asked me to keep an eye on. I was wearing oven mitts. Out of the blue, she kissed me. Grabbed my face and kissed me, tongue and everything. I felt like a pervert for getting turned on the way I did, so I did the only thing a man in my situation could do - as soon as I could breathe again, I put my inhaler back in my pocket and I went to the arcade. I wound up staying there all night and blowing thirty bucks. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't get into the zone. I kept spilling my Big Gulp, too. I just couldn't shake the dirty-old-man feeling. Mulder and Scully had trusted us with their lives and I wanted to repay them by porking the teenaged daughter they didn't even know they had. And that wasn't the worst of it. I had spent pretty much all day every day with Thea for more than two years. I knew her. I liked her. I liked her a lot. Maybe even more than I liked Fro and Byers. Maybe that wasn't it. Maybe I loved her. Stranger things have happened. Compared to an international conspiracy, it seemed almost wholesome. For the first time in I don't know how long, growing old with the guys seemed kind of depressing. Despite Frohike's assertion to the contrary, I had been laid before. It was always some chick at a show or a party, though. I had never, you know, done it without drinking a little to loosen up. I had also never had a girlfriend - dating was just too weird - let alone had, you know, in-house pussy. I made a deal with myself, though. I'd stand fast. I was Iron Man. As if. Wanna guess who was sitting on my bed when I came in? It sure wasn't Frohike. She signed at me so fast I didn't understand a fucking word. "Slow down!" I signed over and over, but her damn hands were a blur. I finally lost my temper. "Fucking stop it! Just shut up!" and lunged and grabbed her hands. Smooth move. I made the deaf girl cry. I was never one of those guys who thought crying chicks were sexy, and especially not Thea. She always made this awful honking noise and got these ugly red bumps all over her face, so she sounded like wounded goose and looked like one of those weird-ass Muscovy ducks. I tried to wipe her face with my shirt. Then my hands. I didn't know what was happening, but in about thirty seconds, it turned into a hot and heavy round of tonsil-hockey. I might have been the one that started it, but it would be a tough call. I tried to get my head together by coming up for air. Not a real smart move on my part. She turned away, signing to herself. I looked over her shoulder. "Dumb dumb dumb!" she sniffed as she signed but a tear rolled down her face. I couldn't help myself - I reached down and wiped the drop from her lower lip. "You or me?" I asked her. "I'm ugly," she answered. "You don't want me because I'm ugly and stupid." "Like I'm a Greek god. Thea, you're young - a kid." "You don't want me because I'm young?" She honked and blew a snot bubble. "Or because I'm young and ugly and dumb?" "Thea, Thea, I like how you look. You have a nice face." I wiped her cheeks with my hands again. She half laughed. "My body looks like a stick - a straight line." She wiped her nose on the bottom of her shirt. "You're pretty smart. You have tits." I reached out and almost touched one before I remembered to pull my hand back. She rolled her eyes. "Thea, I'm twenty years older than you are. That's too old." I suddenly couldn't sit so close to her anymore. I moved away and she laid down on my bed. I turned to look at the wall and Thea just honked. What kind of sicko was I that I got monster wood? Somewhere outside the sun moved higher in the sky and I started to get an ache in the back of my neck. I should have been thinking about how I couldn't do it, but instead I kept thinking how much I really wanted to. I could feel her standing behind me, coming closer. Like a machine with a busted ventilation system, she gave off heat. I was so fucking turned on. "I - I - like you." she signed. I nodded and frowned. "I like you, too. I think. But, why now? I mean, how long have you-?" "I've been this close -" she held her thumb and forefinger together and paused before she continued her signing "- to jumping you for about a year." She smiled weakly, then bit her lip. "I've felt this way since...I'm not sure. Remember when Kimmy called me your girlfriend and you got mad, so I hit him?" That wasn't exactly the way I remembered it happening, but I nodded. It was one of the high points of 2005. "Well, I had to hit him, because I wished it was true." "Why now?" I signed. "Why now, in the fucking kitchen, of all places?" "You look so damn sexy in oven mitts?" she signed, looking hopeful, like if she could just make me laugh, everything would be cool. I took a page out of her book and rolled my eyes. She sucked her lower lip as she started to sign. It seemed kind of fucked up, I had to fight to pay attention to her hands, but her biceps were really getting me going, her nipples were hard, I don't think she even owned a bra, fuck! What had she said? "Why? I wanted to. That's a reason, right? So I did it. I...I want to do more." She looked embarrassed. "A lot more." How had I fucking missed that? She was kinda hot, in a no make-up string-beany geek-girl kind of a way. How had I not noticed? "Thea are you a...a...I don't know the sign." "Write it." She handed me the little notebook she kept in her pocket. My penmanship sucks, but I tried to make it look nice for her. I wrote the word. VIRGIN She nodded. "Sorry," and bit the inside of her cheek. I took the notepad back. My hands didn't shake, but I felt cold in my chest. DON'T BE SORRY. I'VE NEVER BEEN WITH ONE BEFORE. She wrote back - SO YOU WANT TO DO IT? It was my turn to nod. WHAT DO I DO? She handed me the notebook. The best I could come up with was SLOW DOWN. I'M SCARED BUT I WANT IT. She wrote neatly. I still have the piece of paper she wrote that on. ME TOO. I wrote back. She smiled. BUT I'M SUPPOSED TO BE THE MAN. I MEAN - YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN. That made her smile. YOU'RE THE OLD GUY she scratched. YEAH. I'M THE OLD GUY I scratched back. She seemed shy for just a second. DO YOU WANT TO TAKE MY CLOTHES OFF? What kind of low-rent geek am I? I answered by drawing an emoticon with stupid wiggly eyebrows. YOU DO IT. I'LL JUST WATCH. She laughed her honking, snorting laugh, which might actually be worse than her crying sound, and we kissed again. She could have used some Chapstick, but her mouth tasted nice. After the kiss, we just stood there with our arms around each other. Fuck me - I was in love. I took the note pad and dropped it on the floor -we were getting side-tracked. I didn't mean to lie. I fully intended to watch her undress, but by the time I tried to set some kind of land speed record for stripping and diving under the covers, she was in there right next to me. Naked, too. To tell the truth, she was bony in a lot of places. Not my regular type, for sure, but it didn't change my mind about going to bed with her. It did make me want to take her out for cheese-steaks afterwards, though. I don't usually talk too much, you know, in bed, but right then there were so many things I wanted to say to her and every sign I knew was sliding out of my brain like piss off a tray. She could lip read a little even back then, so I mouthed the words slowly. I LOVE YOU I DO I DO I REALLY THINK I DO I WANT TO MAKE THIS GOOD I WANT TO DO THIS RIGHT YOUR SKIN IS SOFT She wrapped her hand hard around my dick and I almost came. I had to pull away. "No!" I signed, the words coming back to me. "Slow down. I'll show you when." She shrank back and I settled on my side next to her, with my arm under her head. I curled myself around her until I was able to fit one brown nipple into my mouth. Her nipples were especially, you know, nice. Her tits, too. Lemon sized. Well, you know, half a lemon sized, really, but her nipples were as big as the first joint on my little finger. God, they were good to suck. I slid my hand down her side, rode the plane of her hipbone with my fingers, and felt her body stiffen. I only had one hand free so I spelled it out one letter at a time. DO YOU WANT ME TO STOP? She shook her head. I spelled again. OPEN YOUR LEGS. Like I had put in a password, she did it. Abra-ca-fucking- dabra. A cold shiver went down my back. I combed her pubic hair with my fingers before I slipped my thumb down onto her clit. I wished I could whisper her name so that she would hear it like it was ringing in my head. Thea Thea Thea Thea. I traced the letters on her clit with my thumb, softly, softly. She was breathing deep into her lungs, faster and faster, until she started bucking her hips against my hand. it seemed like it lasted forever. Holy shit. I made her come! As soon she was back on the planet with the rest of us, she made a sign at me I didn't know. WHAT? I spelled with my damp, pussy-smelling fingers. She mouthed something I didn't understand. She frowned and fell to finger spelling FUCK ME LANGLY Oh. Oh. I could handle that. Maybe. Either that, or shoot my wad all over her leg. I rolled on top of her. I had been so hard for so long that I was really starting to ache. I propped an elbow on either side of her and signed. I WANT THIS TO LAST BUT IT'S BEEN A WHILE. "It's okay," she signed. She was biting the inside of her cheek, like, like... Like Mulder, actually. If Mulder could have seen me, he'd have beaten me to a fucking pulp. As long I remembered that I thought I could keep myself from coming. It was all wrong. I belonged with some body older. Somebody older who was an orphan. Somebody definitely not a virgin. Actually, I probably belonged alone, in the shower, with Rosy Palm and her five sisters, my regular girl. Damn. She felt good, and I wasn't even really inside her. Maybe I could just rub up against her... Fuck! Mulder would kill me. And Scully...better not to think about Scully at a time like this. Thea rocked her hips. She mouthed a single word. This time I understood her. The word was PLEASE. I stopped her hips with my hands. I signed, "Are you sure? It'll hurt, I think. I've heard it hurts." She nodded and made her frustrated face. I was pissing her off, but better that than scaring or hurting her. Okay, I could do this. I pictured Mulder mid-rant as I poised my dick over her overheated little -- god, none of the words I had for it were right, either they sounded too dirty, or not dirty enough, or just stupid -- and I pushed as slowly as humanly possible. She was so hot and wet. I felt it right after the heat. The thing, the hymen, I guess. I had to close my eyes when I pushed through. Her body went stiff, and I felt her tear and bleed. I felt sick to my stomach. She squeaked. I couldn't do it anymore. I couldn't not look at her while her name was echoing in my head. Thea Thea Thea Thea. It was tough to suck it up and keep from crying like a girl. I wanted to kiss her, and I would have if I wasn't afraid it would make me come. The way she was looking at me was another thing I didn't have a word for. I think I was able to hold off maybe five or six minutes like that. I slipped my hand between us, trying to make her come again, but no cigar. It was okay with her, though. I think. I couldn't wait any longer. I came. She blew my mind by coming again a second after. That was when I realized I had shot my load inside a chick without a rubber. And not just a chick. Not some skank. Not some scary Goth girl I met at concert. Thea. Teenaged Thea. I forgot to put on a rubber for the first time in my life. I needed an L-for-Loser tattooed on my forehead. "What's wrong? Did I suck?" she asked me, thumping her chest for emphasis when she finished signing. "No." I shook my head and ignored the joke. "Not possible. I just - I forgot the rubbers." She wrinkled her forehead. "You could get-" I didn't know the sign. "What?" I couldn't believe had to ask her. "Do you know where babies come from?" "Other than a lab? Sex. Babies come from sex." I was almost relived until she signed, "Have you ever seen one?" I grabbed my glasses off the top of the alarm clock. Maybe I hadn't seen that right. "Up close, I mean?" I must have blinked. "You've never seen a baby? "Only from a distance," she answered. "Like at the zoo." I didn't know whether to laugh or throw up. I looked down at Thea. She was already drifting off. I wasn't going to do this to her - pop her cherry like some jerk and then go hide under a rock the way I normally did after I got laid. There wasn't anywhere to go, anyway. To tell the truth, I didn't even want to hide. I really wanted to do this again, with her, maybe five or six hundred more times. It was weird, but I all at once realized I didn't want to sleep with anybody else. Ever. She was stuck with me as long as she wanted me. I was just going to need to be more careful. As soon as I got up, I'd go buy some rubbers. No more bare back for me, thanks. We were flirting with enough disaster as it was. I was riding the wall of death; I didn't need to prove anything by going without a helmet. Later, when I changed my sheets I realized the blood soaked all the way into the mattress. I didn't even try to get it out. You know, I've known guys who skated through everything. Guys who lived with reckless abandon and didn't pay the price, but that was never my story. I can't fucking jaywalk without getting a ticket. We had six really good weeks. I mean, I got more action in six weeks than some people get in a year - ten years, if you're Byers or me. We screwed in every closet in the place. We'd say we were going for parts, and wind up at a motel. We'd say we were caught up in a big D&D game somewhere, and find a place to go fuck like bunnies. She found one of those color wheels - you know, like used to come with an aluminum Christmas tree back in the '50's - at a garage sale. She liked to plug it in and go at it with the red and green and blue sliding over our skin. We did all the same stuff as before together too. Fixed stuff. Played games. Wrestled. Did newspaper shit. Fought the powers that be. Sometimes just you know - held hands under the table. It was nice. You know - happy. I wouldn't have hid it from the guys if I wasn't afraid she'd dump me and Fro would get to say 'I told you so.' Fucking Byers. It was none of his damn business, but as soon as he was able to put two and two together he offered to ship Thea off to some maiden aunt of his. Get her away from me and my evil machinations, I guess. He told her he knew she wasn't to blame, that she most likely couldn't even render legally meaningful consent, being young, disabled, and for all practical purposes, orphaned. Byers understood that she thought I cared, but she was clearly confusing love with an older man's warped attentions, like I was Humbert Humbert or Jerry Lee Lewis or something. He told her he had taken up her cause and would make sure I never took advantage of her again. If such a thing was possible, FroMan's interpretation of events was even sicker. In his opinion, Thea sleeping with me was iron-clad evidence he was right all along not to trust her. No matter who her parents were, she was nothing but a temptress working for a faction of the now-splintered 'Them'. A freaking Mata Hari in flannel. Excuse me, but I figured Mata Hari for the type who shaved her legs. We couldn't just, you know, like each other. Somebody somewhere had to be evil. So I never blamed Thea for cutting out. I just blamed her for doing it without talking to me first. I quit working on the paper with the guys and stayed glued to the monitor, looking for some trace of her somewhere. A couple of deaf girls got picked up for shoplifting during that time, but she wasn't one of them. Of course not. I just wasn't that lucky. And she wasn't that sloppy. More than four months later I got a beat-up letter from a migrant worker's camp in Arkansas letting me know where she was. Or at least, where she'd been three weeks earlier when she mailed the damn thing. She wanted to see me. I left to find her the same day. It took two weeks to do it. Two weeks of "I am trying to find a woman. Anglo, deaf, this tall -" with my hand on top of my head "- with short hair," followed by "Soy necesidad hallar senorita. Sordo. Alta. Pelo corta. Anglo," followed by confused looks. Over and over and over. It was just words I'd strung together the best that I could. If I'd have thought about it, I'd have gotten Fro to write something out for me before I left. After the first week, I found an overseer at a big corporate farm who recognized the surveillance camera photo I had printed out. "That girl worked like a man - even with her big belly," he grunted. "No." I shook my head. "The girl I'm looking for is skinny." "If it's the one I'm thinking of, the girl you're looking for is knocked up." "This one here?" I showed him the picture again. He nodded. "I'd say that's her." "You have any idea how far along she was?" "Do I look like a doctor to you?" "Any idea where she went?" "Bunch of workers from here headed out to Nevada. I think she might a been one of 'em." "You know what they called her? What name she was using?" "Yeah. Everybody called her 'Dummy.'" I had to sit and shake in the car for awhile before I could get it together enough to drive away. At the next pit stop, I looked something up in the Spanish- English dictionary. I had a new word for my list. Pregnant. Embarazzadda. The day I caught up with her, she was in a field, with some kind of crate in her arms. Her hair was wheat colored from the sun, and her belly stood out bigger and rounder than seemed right. I tried to count. She'd been gone just short of five months - add to that either six weeks from that first time when we went bareback, or one month from the week when we had two busted rubbers... She looked like she should have had trouble standing, let alone heaving boxes like a teamster. If I was a cool guy like Mulder, I'd have come up with something smooth to say. Of course, if I was Mulder, I'd have whole new set of problems. If there hadn't been a bunch of people standing around watching, I might have gone with my gut and just kissed her. As it was, I stood there looking like a doofus, wondering if there was a sign for 'Uhhhhh.' I think my mouth was open. She smoothed the dirty t-shirt down over her belly, then signed slowly. "Miss me?" "Cut the crap," I answered right before I put my arms around her. After a while, I stepped back so I could sign without hitting her in the face. "When did this happen?" "One of the times we had sex." She smiled. "Either that, or I'm starting a new religion." I nodded stupidly. "You're, uh, you're pretty big for six months." "I think there's more than one in there." "You think? You haven't seen a doctor?" She shook her head. "I haven't been sick." What the fuck were we gonna do? "Let's get outta here." "Sure. Just as soon as I get paid." "Thea!" If it was possible to whine with your fingers I was doing it. "I've been here two weeks. If I don't get paid, they get all that work for free." "Don't you wanna sleep? Eat? Sit down or something?" "I want to get paid." I nodded, resigning myself, as she took my hand and led me away, presumably in the direction of her money. Back at the camp I watched as, cash in hand, she shoved a ratty robe, my jacket, two men's shirts with the sleeves cut off, and a pair of panties that looked like they came from an archaeological dig into a plastic Wal-mart bag. "The priest is here today," she signed, all fake-casual. "What's that supposed to mean?" "It means the priest, who comes here sometimes, is here today." It took me a minute. "You wanna get married?" She bit her lip. "Only if you want to. But if you do, this is your chance. I mean the priest, the one that's here, doesn't think I'm non compos mentis or anything." "Does he know you're underage?" She flipped me off. But we got married. I always figured it would scarier, you know? But it didn't feel like a big deal. More like, like - like I'd already bought the hard drive and I was just standing at the counter, waiting for my receipt. There was more than enough home-made ethanol in the trunk to make it to Nebraska. I knew what I said to her about the farm, but it was looking really good all of the sudden. It was too cold for EBEs most of the year and too far in the middle of fucking nowhere for political instability or epidemics to matter much. We'd never starve on a farm. I'd be pretty freaking anonymous there, too - just another Langly in the crowd of Langlys. So what if I said I'd never go home? So what if I hadn't been back since my mom died? Home is somewhere they have to take you in, right? Thea apparently thought home meant a tangle of cable and metal shelving and one hot meal a day. She thought we'd go back to DC and get a little place close enough to the LGM headquarters that I could go back to my old life without the guys having to see her. Like that would work. Like 'Out of Sight, Out of Mind' meant anything to Byers and Fro. She said she didn't want to ruin my life. That I'd known Byers and Frohike longer than she'd been alive. I told her when Fro got pregnant with my child, I'd take that into account. We were going to Nebraska where nothing bad was going to happen to me or to her and especially not to the kids. Kids. We were going to have kids. And we could bicker about it for the next twenty five or thirty years in relative fucking safety. Nothing was going to happen to her. Even if it meant I was going to have to drive a tractor for the rest of my natural life. She said the whole thing was a big fucking mistake. I told her it looked liked I'd knocked her up pretty good. I thought it was settled when she asked me to come to bed. But there, on our wedding night, at the Land Mark Motel with swag lamps and purple shag carpeting, as soon as I fell asleep, she fucking ditched me. I had to give a trucker 300 bucks and a palm pilot to take me to take me to the last turnoff. At least I knew where she was going. Well, I was pretty sure I knew. If I wasn't right, I was gonna climb naked onto the top of the water tower and howl like a gibbon. I passed the high school. A purple and gold banner across the front door read: Home of the Oracles: 4 years Undefeated and Counting! The streets were in alphabetical order - Archimedes Beta Cypress Diogenes Euripides Gamma Hippolyte Isosceles Kappa Lambda Morpheus Nostos Orestia Pythagoras I saw my car in the driveway at the end of Rubicon Avenue. Tired as I was, I started to run. Before I knew it, I was banging on the door for all I was worth and all I could see was Mulder's big head in between me and Thea. *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~* End 02/07 Title: Tellus Mater (03/07) (Sequel to Pater Familias) Author: OneMillionAndNine Feedback: kokotheuberchimp@hotmail.com http://www.geocities.com/onemillionandnine/ See 01/07 for detailed headers. *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~* Wanna know how it happened? I'll tell you how it happened. It was not through the exercise of our towering intellects and intimidating journalistic abilities that Byers and I figured out that our esteemed colleague was getting some, that's for sure. We screwed up big time on that one. The only reason we found out was that we got it on a surveillance camera. Not that we had Langly under surveillance or anything. It started with a bad case of gremlins. One of the rear alley surveillance cameras kept coming down with problem after problem, before I'd taken the damn thing apart and fixed one malfunction another would pop up. Frustrated the hell out of me. Goldilocks, of course, said he have it working fine in twenty-four hours. He could be my frigging guest. Two months later I needed a camera for an outside security application and I remembered the one the Great Lord Manhandler had yet to return. Go figure. Having lived one room over from the guy for the sixteen years, I figured it was probably repaired and sitting under the pile of rubble next to his bed. So I went in and found it sandwiched between three books and a pile of clothes. The tape was wound to somewhere near the middle. I figured I would check the tape to see if the damn thing was finally recording right. It must have started taping when somebody threw the books on to it because if he knew the thing was running, the left bottom quadrant of the screen wouldn't have been obscured - the whole damn screen would have been painted black. It was just Langly, at first, snoring, one arm thrown over his head. Byers looked up from where he was trying to balance our monthly accounts probably wondering why I was watching footage of He Who Sleeps Loudly. I was just trying to figure out how it got turned on. One - two footsteps, and another book dropped near the edge of Langly's bed this time. The form was apparent now. I knew it was just The Kid, so if I had been an unsuspicious soul, I would have turned the VCR off. I guess Santa was gonna have to put me on the naughty list, because I kept watching. She stood over him for a good long time before she pulled back the covers. In about three beats she pulled down his shorts and was giving him a blow job. "Well, I'll be a son of a bitch." I whistled long and low. "Looks like our boy is growing up." Byers ran full-tilt over to the machine. "For god's sake, Frohike, turn that off!" "Hold on. It was just starting to get interesting." But he hit eject and threw it in the trash. "As soon as they get back from Delaware tomorrow, we're going to have a talk about this. I can't believe. . . I never suspected. . . My god, we sent her with him. All the times we've left her alone with him. I never once considered. . ." "Me neither, buddy." I shook my head. "Should we alert the authorities?" Byers' face had gone ashen. "Seems like we ought to, huh? Somehow, though, I doubt there's an agency for the protection of 36 year old virgins. Maybe during the Carter Administration. . ." "Frohike, I'm serious. Besides he's 37 " "So am I." I sobered, just considering the possibilities. "Have you ever known Langly to have a girlfriend, let alone date? Have you ever heard of him keeping company with a female within her child-bearing years? The boy's a powder keg - one good hummer and all our secrets are history. On second thought, we should make sure he didn't spill anything on the tape." Byers scowled. There was an awkward pause. "You know what I mean." I reached down into the trash. Byers turned his back to the video screen and began making phone calls to the proper authorities. Let me start off by saying unstaged sex on video always winds up looking very unstaged. This, well, this looked even more unstaged than usual. I checked the clock. She had been obscuring Langly's crotch with the back of her bobbing head for quite awhile. Not nearly as scintillating as I might have hoped. In the mean time, the one man decency league also known as John Fitzgerald Byers was suffering aggravations of his own. It was his fourth call to a fourth government agency. He had seen video tape of a friend involved in illicit acts with an under-age girl. How old?...17 ish... Oh... No, to his knowledge the tape had been made without the consent of either his friend or the girl...Oh...Oh... No, the girl couldn't fairly be described as mentally incompetent...No, there was no reason to suspect any sort of physical abuse was taking place...No, he was not the girl's father...Hello? Hello? Must have been some sort of emergency. They hung up on him. Meanwhile, my end was not improving. "Hold on, my bladder's full - I don't think I can come," Langly signed at the top of Thea's head. It didn't look like getting laid had made Blondie any smoother. While Casanova was off screen taking a piss, Mata Hari picked up a book off the shelf and stuck her free hand down the front of her jeans while she read. I recognized the cover - The Collected Works of Mary Wollstonecraft. I never figured the Declaration of the Rights of Man were exactly jerk-off material but it seemed to be making her hot. He came back and hopped into bed. I tell you this much - they looked like they were having fun but I doubt either of them had a future in the porn industry. Besides, when it came right down to it Langly was just an average white guy. The longer I watched them, the more it struck me how perfect for him she was. In fact, if I was making a girl specifically for Langly, she'd be damn close to the mark - if not actually cherry, then young and inexperienced enough not to intimidate him. Not perfumy or made-up, which tended to make him both nervous and sneezy. A smart, unfrilly kind of a girl without a hunch back. To tell the truth, she was kind of pretty, in an unmade kind of way. Not many curves worth mentioning, but more than an A cup might have been too much for Lord Man- Hammer's delicate constitution. Her obvious resemblance to both Mulder and Scully probably put him at ease. On second thought, without her clothes, The Kid didn't look half bad. Like a young racehorse, all bone and muscle and long legged grace. Watching her like that, I started to feel dirty. I was reaching to turn off the tape when the sheet slipped, and when I saw Langly's blindingly white ass pumping away, I realized she had to be a plant. When she first showed up on our doorstep and I was sure they had sent her, I had been right. No way Langly was lucky enough for her to be for real. Or maybe I was just paranoid. *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~* I would have gone out and stopped him, really I would have, but it was all I could do to keep the kids from running outside. Sylvie had gotten up when I was brewing coffee and proceeded to glue herself to Thea's side. Danny didn't wake up until Mulder started pacing in accompaniment to Thea's story. They flanked her on the couch, rubbing their little hands over her stomach possessively. She had been grown in a Zeus genetics lab tank from my ova and Mulder's sperm and by the age of eleven had already spent three years paired by Spender with Gibson Praise. It was thought an isolated school for deaf would make an excellent environment for bonding. Only things went terribly wrong. The consortium was splintered and for four years Thea found herself on her own, trying to care for an increasingly ill Gibson. Before the inevitable came and he died, he told her what he knew of her origins and sent her to the Lone Gunmen. He said they knew where her parents were hiding. He said we would protect her. The Gunmen. For more than two years she lived with the them in a city teetering between chaos and fascism. Somehow, it seemed she and Langly... she and Langly... had become she and Langly, and were now well on their way to becoming parents, as well. When the Byers and Frohike expressed their displeasure at the alliance, she decided to fend for herself, rather than cause a rift between the friends. Although she'd known our location for quite some time before she left DC, she had chosen a life of anonymous manual labor for as long as she could maintain it. As far as Thea was concerned, she had done quite well working the harvest. The only difficulty she admitted having was with what she described as a 'dog sucking mutant toad of a ConAgra crop manager in Arizona,' who didn't keep drinking water in the fields. But, she signed, she was getting too big to keep up, she came to us. To me, she looked like she could go into labor at any minute. She had come to us to ask for our help, our protection, our spare bed room, our whatever it was pregnant teenagers asked their parents for. She wincingly admitted there was also a possibility Langly could be following her. Mulder, the man who persisted in believing in big foot and elves with plans for astronomical observatories, seemed to have trouble digesting that part of her tale. He kept signing, over and over, "Langly? Richard George Langly? My *former* friend Langly? He...You? Blond hair? Keeps fifteen pairs of Clark Kent glasses in a desk drawer? You -" He looked at Sylvie and Danny on either side of her and bit the inside of his cheek "- were 'with' Langly? He did this?" You know what people say, 'Speak of the Devil and He appears'? It works for hapless cyber-geeks, too. I was willing to bet Langly had never hit anything in his life as hard as he was hitting my front door. *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~* You know, I never expected Langly to take it as hard as he did when the kid cut out. Of course, if you'd asked me before I saw the tape, I would have sworn the guy still thought girls had cooties. In retrospect, I realize there were a lot of signs I could have read. I mean, I just figured it for a sister-brother kind of a thing. Guess I figured wrong. When Thea took off, she left what few personal possessions she had behind . The only thing I knew for sure the little minx had with her was Blondie's coat. Didn't matter much to him - I don't think he went outside once all winter. He just sat glued to the monitor. He quit talking to Byers, too. That first day though, after Byers let Thea know he had come to her rescue, Langly and Byers exchanged a few words, too. Words like 'Bastard' and 'Son of A Bitch' and I believe 'Asshole' was passed back and forth, as well. "So she's old enough to break into Lockheed-Martin, but not old enough to know when she wants to get laid? Byers face was calm but his voice was loud. "You know it's Not the same. She worships you." "You asshole," Langly answered. "Did you ever think maybe she loves me?" "What do you know about love, Langly?" For his piece de resistance, Langly squared his shoulders and looked Byers in the eye. "You hypocritical fucking cocksucker. "No, Ringo; that's what you've turned that girl into." Langly faltered for a minute before he came back with what we all knew was the worst possible comeback as far as Byers was concerned. "That's it, isn't it? You're jealous. You wish you were the one fucking her." Byers punched him in the face. The little girl in question left at some point during the melee. Both John and Ringo thought the other should have the decency to move out. Good thing they weren't speaking. Too bad I didn't get the silent treatment, too. Byers was reasonably recovered after a few weeks. Eventually he even managed to admit that Thea was very close to being an adult, kind of like our esteemed colleague. Langly continued to sulk. In the end, the blame was mine. When the three of us met Fox Mulder and Susanne Modeski and became, well, focused on finding out the truth about the American Government, Langly wasn't even old enough to buy his own beer. The guy was two years off the family farm in Nebraska. Even Byers was more worldly than our farm boy, and that's saying some thing. So we treated him like a kid, a smart kid, but a kid all the same. Never occurred to any of us to notice when he stopped being young. Here he was, not all that far from 40, with the first female companionship I ever knew of him having. It was just plain pathetic, especially the part about her being a spy for the Bad Guys. Okay, so I was wrong about the spy part. It was an honest mistake. Anyone would have drawn that conclusion. Not that I didn't like her. Truth be known and all question of trust aside, I had something of a soft spot for the kid. She worked hard, made more than her fair share of witty remarks, and if you didn't count the mess that followed her like a slug trail, was pretty low-maintenance. I just knew what she was. She was Theirs. She might have been Mulder and Scully's kid, but she had been conceived before her parents ever met and grown in a Consortium tank. But hey, nobody who likes Leonard Cohen could be all bad. Not that she listened to him, being deaf and all, but she liked to take my vinyl sleeves so she could read the words. It showed taste on her part. Not like that crap Langly listened to. Besides, it was a lot like having Mulder around again. The Kid poked her nose into anything and everything. Couldn't let a sleeping dog lie. Always had an opinion, and wasn't shy about sharing it with anyone in the immediate vicinity. She even proved she was willing to risk her life for any one of our asses. The longer I thought about it, the less likely it seemed that she had an agenda and the more I started to suspect all she had was bad taste. All things considered, I should have known. Like the time I found him face down on the floor in front of the sofa, her on top of him, both of them fully dressed. He was laughing even though she had his arms jacked up behind his back. If it was anyone else I wouldn't have even wondered - I'd have known. Since it was Langly, the thought didn't even cross my mind. He was different after she came to stay. I chalked it up to having someone his own age to play with. I never stopped to think she was twenty years younger. He was different after she left, too. If he was cranky before, her departure transformed the guy into a flaming asshole . Five months and I'd about had it with him. Then one day he got a letter from her and left. Like that. A dirty bent envelop covered in her handwriting came in the mail. on the top of the stack. He snatched it up, tore it open, read it, and stuffed it in his pocket. Next, he went to the garage, spent fifteen minutes under the hood of that stupid car he fooled with from time to time, and started loading it with all the ethanol we had. He pulled some clothes out of the dryer and threw them into the back seat . Wound up taking a pair of my socks. He went into Byers' room and walked out with his Rand-McNally Atlas. Next the Boy Wonder pulled the blankets off his bed and threw them on top of the clothes. Then, the old safe he'd built awhile back and set inside a junked computer, that went on top of the blankets. There had to be a lot in there. He'd been squirreling away every cent he made for years. The last thing he took was a cardboard box full of tapes and an MP3 player. Then he walked back inside and grabbed a cassette case that was setting next to his monitor. Poor fool didn't even realize it was empty. He opened up the garage door to leave just as I managed to ask him, "What are you doing?" "What do you care?" He jumped in the car and left. *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~* Martin Levine was having an old time Fox-Mulder-on-the- Jerry-Springer-Show moment. Instead of bringing him inside and having a calm rational discussion, my husband pushed Langly out onto the lawn, until the two of them stood chest to chest under the corner street light. "You...you...you-" Mulder stuttered. "Just let me talk to Thea." "You're in no fucking position to..." "I need to talk to Thea." "I think you've had enough contact with Thea." "Fuck you. Let me see Thea." "She came to you for help because she had no place to go and you used her. What are you planning to do when you get tired of her? Pass her to Frohike?" House lights flickered on, one by one, all over the neighborhood. "Man, I didn't seduce Thea. It was more like I didn't jump out of the way fast enough. Get a grip. You didn't even know her this time last week. Now let me see her." "She asked for my help and I'm giving it to her. Now go-" Even from inside the house, I could see Langly twitching, looking very afraid. "You want to kick my ass? Then do it. It's not gonna change my mind." My dear, dear spouse seemed to have forgotten that his friend Vernon, who happened to live two blocks down, also happened to be our Sheriff. The moonlight was shining off his bald pate. From behind, it looked exactly like a milk dud. "What's goin' on, Marty? Looks like you're pretty worked up. Things are getting kinda loud out here. You wanna tell me what's happenin'?" I could see Mulder and Langly fall seamlessly into stonewall mode, while Mulder tried to concoct a plausible explanation. Just like old times. "Vern, this is my friend, George." "From New York?" "Yeah. And he's been playing around with my daughter." Vern's entire body went taut. "Sylvie?" He pulled out his cuffs, looking like he was about a minute away from beating Langly himself. "Nooooooooo," Marty dragged the word out, groping for an explanation. "When I was - before, when I was married to my first wife, Laura and I, we had a daughter." "Yeah? And?" "Laura's older brother adopted her. I haven't seen her since she was born. Today, well, she showed up. Pregnant. Courtesy of my 'friend' George, here." Cue Thea to come running from around the side of the house, with the dog bounding along behind her. She must have gone out the back while Sylvie was trying to force her way out between my legs. Wonderful. Thea swung her arms wildly, signing to Mulder to keeps his hands off Langly. "Go...back...inside...now!" Mulder signed and bellowed at the same time. One didn't have to be particularly proficient at reading sign language to understand her reply. I think "Fuck you, Dad," is universal. The three of them stood at the edge of the yard glaring at one another, while Vernon spoke soothingly. A high-pitched scream lacerated the air. Langly whined, "Your dog fucking bit me!" I was willing to bet fat old Melvin didn't even break the skin. It was starting to sound like just another episode of Cops, and I could see it was going to take Vernon all night to get them inside at the rate he was going. So I swung into action. I took Danny and Sylvie by the hands and dragged them next door. My friend and neighbor, Kim, was trying to convince her own husband not to go outside when she answered her front door. "What's going on out there?" she asked me groggily. A wan smile was the best I could do under the circumstances. "It seems Martin and I have a bird coming home to roost. Look Kim, I'll tell you all about it in the morning. Can you do me a favor?" "Sure." She pressed the heals of her hands into her eyes. "As long as I don't have to get dressed. What do you need?" "Take the kids for the night. Things are a little too... dramatic at my house right now." "Sure, not a problem. I'll send you my kids next time Dre asks me for a bass boat." I knelt down. "Be good." I pointed at my children as if this ever did any good. "Go straight to sleep. I know you'll mind Mrs. Collins, don't I, Sylvie?" Kim folded her arms across her chest and smiled with just enough menace to straighten my daughter's spine. "We'll be fine. Sylvie and I have an understanding now don't we?" I smiled and raised an eyebrow back at her. "Good. I love you, bunnies." I kissed each of them. "Now let's go see if I can get your big sister straightened out." Kim was shocked, of course. "Sister?" "Yes." I gave another thin little smile. "Sister." "That's bigger than a bass boat." "It certainly is. Thanks, Kim. I really appreciate it." I crossed the lawn and joined the unhappy little group. "Martin," I said quietly but very firmly, "you are acting like my brother. Get in that house." I should have thought of it sooner; it worked like a charm. Back inside, Mulder sat on the couch, hands locked together on his lap, scowling. Langly and Thea both had decidedly pissed-off expressions on their faces as well. It was as though they were waiting for me to set foot through the door to restart the fighting. "How could you do this? I thought you were my friend." Mulder accused. "Go home, Ringo. Just go home," Thea signed. "No," Langly signed back. "Look," I told them, "let's have this discussion in a reasonable and orderly fashion. Mulder, I think we already know what your problem - your objection - is. It seems to me Thea is the party with the most at stake here, so she should go first." "You know we got married?" Langly interjected. "No, I didn't know," I replied, giving him a stern look, "but I believe Thea has the floor." He rolled his eyes. Thea began signing agitatedly in Langly's direction. "When I married you, I thought we were going home." "Who said that?" he shot back. "Did I say that?" "I think it was implied. I don't remember you ever mentioning Nebraska." She turned toward Mulder and me. "Did I tell you he wants to take me to Nebraska?" I couldn't help myself. "Nebraska?" "Nebraska?" Apparently, neither could Mulder. "It has a lot of points in its favor. Like I told Thea, it's too cold for EBEs most of the time. It's a long way from epidemics, not a lot of bombings or riots in a town under a thousand, either. My family farms all over the county, so she wouldn't starve." "What about you?" She sat on the edge of her seat, as if preparing to lunge or tip over. "What about the paper?" Langly twisted the corner of his mouth. "I haven't worked on the paper since you left." "That's great!" Thea frowned. "You've ditched your duty to the American public for a chick." Mulder worked to suppress a bitter grin. Langly, however, was not amused. "Things we printed ten years ago are common knowledge now, and you know what I found out? I found out the American public doesn't give two shits about truth or justice or democracy, as long as they have an uninterrupted flow of cable TV and consumer goods. The American people will support any corporate strong man who says he can keep gas under 10 bucks a gallon and won't close the malls no matter how bad the contagion is. Screw the American Public. You think THEY-" he gestured at Mulder and me "-are the only ones who get to play Mommy and Daddy?" "Don't patronize me. If you wanted me to have a baby, what were the condoms for? Decoration?" she signed angrily. "Knocking you up wasn't exactly at the top of my to-do list, okay? Does that mean I can't change my mind? I can want normal things, too, you know." "I am deaf, not stupid," she began. "Don't tell me what you think I want to hear. I don't want to be your duty, so don't stay with me because you think it's the 'right' thing to do." She gestured to her belly. "You don't want this." "If you think I don't want that," he pointed to her distended abdomen, "maybe I overestimated your vast intellect. I can want something and be scared of it at the same time." "And the guys?" She tapped her foot distractedly. "What about the guys?" "What about them?" He rushed his hands. "You don't owe them?" she replied, slowly. Langly looked honestly puzzled. "Owe them what?" Thea pressed her clenched right hand firmly between her eyes and rubbed. "Look, R.I.C.H.A.R.D." she spelled slowly with her free hand in a way that seemed insulting somehow, "H.O.W.M.A.N.Y.T.I.M.E.S.H.A.V.E.Y.O.U.T.O.L.D.M.E.H.O.W.M. U.C.H.Y.O.U.H.AT.E.N.E.B.R.A.S.K.A?" She shook out her hands and finished signing properly. "I'm not going to make you miserable just so I can be safe." She signed the word 'SAFE' like it had salmonella. "That's why I came here." Langly, by this point, was reaching some threshold of his inner resources. I had nothing but sympathy for him; Thea was reminding me more of Mulder by the minute. "So I guess it doesn't matter if I want to be with you?" Thea all but huffed as she signed. "Then why won't you do me?" Do me? Do me?!?! My god, I did not want to see this conversation. I could have lived happily for the rest of my life without that image in my mind. Langly was staring at her with his mouth open. "How could I? You're like a house!" I stood, signing that they clearly needed their privacy, pulling a stunned Mulder after me. From the kitchen it didn't look good. Thea was sobbing and Langly had his face buried in his hands. My mother always told me not to eavesdrop, I should have listened to her. If I had turned around and talked to Mulder while he made a sandwich, if I had gotten myself glass of water or washed the dishes crying out to me in the sink or straightened the dish towels or, or - anything - I would have missed Langly's shy and somewhat peevish offer and Thea's pouty acceptance. I stepped backwards into Mulder and his sandwich. "What did he say?" Mulder whispered.. "I don't know what you me-" I started, but he cut me off mid-lie. "Don't play innocent. What's going on in there?" "Cunnilingus," I whispered. He nearly choked on roast turkey. "They're not 'doing' it," I amended. "But they've agreed to in the near future." Mulder swallowed. "It's gonna be tough with Langly sleeping on the couch." I walked to the sink and counted to five hundreed. Twice. I returned to the living room to find the subject of contention was Nebraska once again. "I'm still not going to Nebraska," Thea signed, sniffling. "I'm not going back to DC," Langly signed, then folded his arms across his chest. Mulder stood beside me, looking from one to the other then back again. "Stay here, then." Thea and Langly raised their eyebrows simultaneously, then looked at each other. After a few seconds, they nodded in unison. Thea signed and Langly blurted, "Okay." "Okay?" Mulder asked, astonished. "Okay? Just like that?" "Jeez bud, we aren't you two," Langly answered. "I mean, we CAN agree without six hours of debate." He smiled at Thea, who slid awkwardly next to him on the couch, immediately winding a strand of long blonde hair around her finger in response. "It is possible," she signed, still tethered to him. *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~* It was eerie and fun in a sort of a deja vu sort of a way. Lugging stacks of computers down the darkened hallway into my classroom - for a minute, it was just like old times. Every time I caught myself wondering where Frohike and Byers were, I had to shake my head. They took all ten of the school's 233 MHz Pentium II processors 32megs RAM 1.5 Gig hard drives and wired them together. I was surprised they could get in to change anything using the school's old computers; I couldn't even get mine to run more than one application at a time. They built a monster and then they made it sing. They built themselves completely new identities. George and Althea Froyers, born July 1969 and February 1990 respectively, and married in April of 2007. He granted himself the MIT degree he missed on account being fingered for a hack he didn't do. Or, at least, I always believed him when he said he didn't do it, mostly because I've never known him to give away credit for anything. One of them gave her open adoption records listing Martin Levine as father and Laura Meyers as mother. It took them less than ten minutes to get everything hooked together and turned on. Yet they didn't sign. They didn't even seem to look at each other as they worked with a fluidity that seemed almost mechanical. Langly had always been good but I had never seen him work like that before, as though he had been given a shot of magic to grease his synapses. Thea, I didn't know Thea, but what was unfolding left me amazed. There is a word in ancient Greek, Arete. It's pronounced a- rah-tay, for those of you in the cheap seats, and it's often mistranslated as 'virtue. It's actually the root of the English word 'art' and means 'perfection beyond mere technical mastery' and 'efficiency glowing with the power of the gods.' That was what I was seeing. Langly squatted at the back of my chair, his legs spread wide. I had no idea what he was doing until Thea sat down between his thighs. There they hunkered, three hands resting together on the keyboard. She moved the mouse. Langly's head hung over her shoulder until they were cheek to cheek, their limbs tangled. The only sound was breath and the plastic clacking of keys. They looked like the cyberian version of a Hindu god. I heard it when his orange stubble scraped her smooth, golden face. Her face that was so much darker than his white gold hair that seemed to want to cling to her. Thea's stomach rolled two directions at once. She tilted her head and oh-so-subtly rubbed it against his, her motions catlike. He met it, rubbed back. I realized she had a thin strand of his hair in her mouth. I felt enthralled and unsettled. I had seen less intimate acts involving body fluids. I couldn't even consider looking away. I was not really jealous, but intensely curious. Was this what it was like to look from the outside in? Not at love, or at least the cheap kind of everyday love, but something else. Something I knew no name for. It wasn't like Scully and me. For years, circumstances and baroque neuroses kept us at arm's length. Two perhaps more than attractive people, we feasted with our eyes while we starved to death. There were times when not our trust, or our friendship, but our love seemed all surface, desire as thin as paper, but folded in on itself indefinitely. Origami love. A love deep in spectacle. Circus love in the old Roman sense of the word. Throw the lions to the Jews and see who comes out on top. It turned me on to look at Scully because it was Scully I was looking at. Would I love her if her image didn't sear my brain like a brand? Sure. At least, I think I would. But it would be a different kind of love. Love in black and white and red. This was love in pale, humming blue. Langly was never anything special to look at. He had no lips, a bulbous forehead, and a nose that would more appropriately be called a beak. On the other hand, I had no doubt a trip to a salon, a thousand dollar wardrobe, and three hours in a make-up chair could turn Thea into a super model. As it stood, she had a big nose, a bad hair cut, and thick, chapped lips. If pretty is as pretty does, she had all the feminine airs of John Wayne. Their fingers glanced and dragged, skin to skin, without either of them once darting their eyes at the other. Love like that had to be like falling down a well. What did he do to her in bed? It was a terrible question, but I couldn't stop myself from asking. I mean, she was pregnant, so I assumed there had been penetration and ejaculation, but what did they do? Did he hold off until he thought he was going to die trying to make every time perfect? Did he kiss her throat to make her shudder? Did they pause and sign or did he do what ever he wanted, waiting for her to stop him? Did he ever fuck her ass? I failed to realize how close I was standing until Langly did something I never imagined in my wildest dreams. A faint smile on his mouth, he signed small and close to her stomach, "Your kung fu is the best, baby." Thea responded by turning her head just enough to nip the outer edge of his ear with her teeth. Langly blushed and signed small to her again, "Not in front of Mulder." I had to go stand on the other side of my desk until my erection went away. It was just like Betty, and yet, nothing like Betty. That was when I recognized Scully's round eyes in Thea's face and resolved never to step within arms reach of her again. When we arrived home, I was swimming in guilt and disgust and wanting to bang Scully like an old screen door. *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~* End 03/07 Title: Tellus Mater (04/07) (Sequel to Pater Familias) Author: OneMillionAndNine Feedback: kokotheuberchimp@hotmail.com http://www.geocities.com/onemillionandnine/ *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~* Monday morning, I got the kids off to school and scared up a maternity dress from Hawaii Stidham for Thea. It seemed Thea had never shaved her legs in her short life. Well, she couldn't go out onto the streets of Delphi, Alabama looking like Thea the Jungle Girl. Even if she had some experience with it, there was no way she could reach her legs at that point. We were both uncomfortable when I did a short strip with Mulder's shaving razor. In the end, we used the same thing I always used on my legs. At least all that hair made them easier to wax. I told her it was going to hurt. After I finished, she asked me, "When?" In the living room, Langly kept trying to pretend he wasn't staring at her legs. "You're wearing a dress," he frowned and pushed up the corner of his glasses as he observed the obvious. She shrugged and signed, "It's what they had." "Looks like you," his signing faltered, "shaved your legs." "No," she corrected him. "She pulled it out with wax." He winced. When I came back with my purse, they were sitting on the couch side by side, reading. The hem of her dress was suspiciously raised on one side and Langly was surreptitiously running his thumb along her kneecap, although he appeared quite engrossed in his book. I couldn't help but shake my head. "Ready to go?" Langly instantly jerked his hand away from her leg. "Where?" Thea bounced one knee in a very Mulderlike way. "You need to see a doctor." Langly looked put out. We had been discussing it all morning, but Thea was pretending she had forgotten the morning's itinerary. "Oh, please. I know all about pregnancy." She rolled her eyes and took on what I could only describe as a tutorial pose. She began signing as if by rote: "Pregnancy is not illness; as Praetorians you are designed to reproduce easily, with multiple births being the norm. The lab techs overseeing your particular project will issue your offspring both name and numerical designation after birth. Do not deviate from your assigned task." Langly looked horrified, and turned a shade somewhat more pale than his usual. "Thea," I made sure I had eye contact with her before I signed, struggling to keep my exterior as calm as possible. "Human mothers tend to have more favorable outcomes when they receive medical care during pregnancy. We are going to take you to the doctor. Now. Do you have any other shoes?" She looked down at Langly's spare Converse hi-tops. It figured that they wore the same size. If it weren't for her pregnancy, I speculated, their clothing would have been interchangeable. "It's either these or the flip-flops." Thea sauntered out ahead of us. I turned to Langly, trying not to scowl. It took everything I had to keep myself from launching into a full scale rant. I bit my tongue. Literally. "Was it worth it?" Langly blinked as if he hadn't heard me correctly. "It's not that she's young so much as she's almost feral." The words slipped out of my mouth, but I wasn't certain I regretted them. His eyes went wide. I didn't feel the least bit sorry after the shocks I'd been dealt in the preceding days. "Lets hope she doesn't get frightened and eat her young." Langly started speaking just as I pulled the door shut behind me. *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~* This was the point in the story where I called Scully a bitch. Not out loud. Not to her face. Dying would have defeated the purpose. But I still called her a bitch. "You think she's like an animal?" "I didn't say that. I said feral. Lack of social interaction in early life usually results in a crippled ability to relate to one's fellow humans." She sighed. "I don't know what kind of ability she'll have to be a mother to her child." Some kind of cold, wet gears turned in the pit of my stomach. I didn't even figure into the possible future as Scully saw it. "I don't blame her Langly. She didn't ask for the life she's had, but the chances are bad, much less than average, she'll have the emotional resources to parent." She sighed again, world weary, like she saw some inevitable future where Thea hared off into the great beyond and dumped our unborn children straight in Scully's lap. "What about me?" I asked. "I mean, I'm the father. Doesn't that count for something?" "Parenting is a big job, Langly. I've known you a long time and you've never even had a house plant." "Kinda like a certain former FBI agent." I tried not to sound snotty, but I couldn't help it. "Only, you know, I sleep in a bed." "I wasn't a teenager." I shouldn't have said it, but I did. "No. You were a single chick in her mid-thirties who liked dead people better than live ones. Only thing missing was some cats." Scully's face turned red. It looked like I was gonna get my ass kicked. After a long pause, she swallowed. "I may well have been, as you say, 'a single chick in my mid-thirties,' but I was pregnant by choice. My choice. My children are not the unforeseen by-product of my desire to please someone else." She looked at me hard. "Someone who should have known better." I opened my mouth, but I really don't know what I thought I was going to say. I was so damned mad that my eyes started, well, getting wet. I wasn't about to cry; I was just pissed. As pissed as she was, at least. If I could have gotten it together enough to say something, I would have set her straight but when she looked at me again, her face sort of softened. I'm not trying to be a doomsayer here, Ringo." She put her hand on my shoulder. "I'm just concerned. About all of you." I held in. I'm pretty good at holding in. I am a Langly after all, and if there's one thing we know, it's how to hold in. "You don't know her, Scully. You haven't even given her a chance." *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~* My first thought was to ask Scully if she'd ever seen an apple doll. When I was a kid in Saltville, every year my class went on a field trip to see the Christmas On the Prairie exhibit at the Pioneer Museum. And every year there were these scary little dolls with dried, peeled apples for heads . Every year I saw those dolls and every year I thought about how far my sisters would kick my ass if they found a doll like that under the tree. When Scully pointed out her doctor, Dr. Worthen, he looked just like one of those apple dolls, with cotton batting for hair and teeth made out of broken pieces of rice. Some one even made him tiny glasses with needle-nosed pliers and a strand of wire. I asked if he was safe before we came; it only occurred to me later to ask if he was competent. 'Cool out,' I tried to tell myself. 'Scully's a doctor. She wouldn't bring Thea to some quack.' I could feel it coming on. I tried not to fight it. That would only make it worse. I closed my eyes, tried to imagine a far-off place. A peaceful glen. Water. The Arcade. Whatever. Trying to biofeedback yourself out of an oncoming asthma attack is practically a freaking Zen Buddhist Koan. My last really cogent thought was that it was the memory of my sisters that actually triggered the attack. Thea realized what was happening even before I did. I guess she knew my last inhaler was pretty much gone, too. Thea wrote down my doctor's usual treatment and got Worthen's nurse, then stayed by my side like somebody welded her there. In the middle of all this I caught Scully signing, "Is he asthmatic?" "No," Thea signed blandly, "the chipmunk in his ass just gnawed it's way to his small intestine and this is his natural response." Oh, ha ha. "You have your father's sense of humor." Scully was prim as they walked me between them to the small treatment room. The two of them said more to each other, but I don't know what; Thea took my glasses and the nurse put the breathing machine mask over my face. I was sitting there beside her, with my glasses in her hand and her other arm around my shoulders when I realized I'd been a traitor. Scully's speech had hit on something somewhere and got me worrying. More specifically, it got me comparing Thea to my mom. Probably not entirely fair on my part. My mom was a good mom pretty much down the line. She had kept seven kids clean, dressed, and fed. Thea was almost eighteen and she couldn't wash clothes worth a damn. She had the annoying habit of knocking things over and walking away. It was a cold day in hell when she put anything back where it came from. If given a choice, Thea would live on fried meat and milk. The only thing I had ever seen her cook was microwave popcorn. When all her clothes were dirty she kept wearing them until someone said something. Then she wore mine. I had been thinking, when my breathing problems started, that maybe Scully was right, that maybe we were all doomed, and I continued on in that pleasant fucking vein until Doctor Apple Head walked in. "If it isn't the lovely Mrs. Laura Levine." He kissed Scully's hand. "I hear you've been holding out on us." She smiled weakly and he continued to smooth-talk her while he started examining me. "Here you had this stunning girl and you kept her away from us. Didn't give any of the local fellas a chance to steal her heart. Well, I can see my nurse knew just what to do with your son-in-law, as usual. I hear your girl was a big help, knew George's regular dosage and everything." He smiled in Thea's general direction. "I think she'll make a good little mama." Thea smiled back. Not her polite smile either - her big grin, the one that made her look like Scully. I wondered how much she managed to lip read and how much as guess work. Lip reading is a lot harder than it looks on TV. Quick as she was, even then she only got about a third of what anyone said. He was right, though. She did take care of me. She'd done it before. And then there was one time when Kimmy was being especially Kimmy and she punched him in the stomach on my behalf. She could care about people. She could bond. So she wasn't Mary Beth Langly. Big deal - I 'd do the laundry. And cook. But she was definitely pitching in with the diapers. I thought about my mom. We only had about four conversations in my life . Over and over and .over. "Ritchie, get out from under the table. I'm sure your sisters didn't mean it. You know how the twins are." "Ritchie, did you brush your teeth? I'm so proud of how well you're doing in school. Could you help Eddie and/or Bobby with their shoes/home work/science projects? Don't forget your inhaler." "Ritchie, I'm sorry Tom got the last piece of pie. You should have said something." "Oh Richard, don't slouch. You're so handsome. I'm sure any girl would be lucky to have you. Are you sure you don't want to go to the hay ride/dance/homecoming/prom? There's still time to change your mind." It wasn't her fault. I was the fourth of seven. Sounds like a Borg designation when I put it that way, but until I left Nebraska, that was kind of how I saw my self. Not big and handsome and winning like Tom, good enough at his school work but great at everything else, and such a nice guy, you couldn't hate him for it. Not Julie and Carol, the twin Scarlet O'Hara-wannabes of the northern plains. Not Heather, their little pet. Not Bobby or Eddie, good solid guys, whose biggest aspirations involved becoming Dad. I was the one hiding in the barn with a Theodore Sturgeon book. The one who didn't get married before turning 21. The only one who didn't live within an hour of the farm. I think Mom told all the relatives I was a writer. Maybe because that's what I told her. My real life was too weird to try and explain. "See Mom, one day I was selling bootleg cable boxes, and the next I woke up naked and incoherent in a warehouse with three other guys - no, wait Mom, this isn't a dirty story. See, one of the guys was a federal agent, right, and we wound up starting a newspaper and working to uncover the truth about our governm-. . Mom? Mom?? You still on the line?" Anyway, she told everyone I was writer, and sent me a homemade quilt or a tin of fudge on alternating Christmases. Her heart gave out when she was 56. Even from Maryland, I could see it coming. Thea was never going to be my mom, but she didn't need to be. And I sure wasn't going to use Dad as any kind of role model. I leaned my head on her shoulder. My short hair still felt weird. See, all I needed was some prednisone and a breathing machine and I was okay. "We fixed Daddy-to-be up for you. Let's see about that baby now." He pulled out his stethoscope intently. Scully spoke up. "Thea's deaf, Dr. Worthen, like Daniel." Dr. Worthen's eyes glinted merrily. Up close, he was starting to look like a deflated Santa Claus. "Isn't that interesting? I think she got my meaning, though. Didn't you, Honey?" "Should I get up in the stirrups now? " she signed at Scully. I think she wanted to get it over with. "No. I think he'll do a general exam first," she answered. As if in afterthought, she asked, "Thea, have you ever had a pelvic exam before?" "No," she answered, "but I know all about it." Scully frowned as she signed back, "I bet you do." Thea seemed to hit it off with the doctor right away. He ran her through the gauntlet and she didn't give him any shit. Maybe the moon was in a good phase. I tried not to look too interested when she climbed up on the table. I finally gave up - my choices were look away or stare. I closed my eyes. "Well, Sweetheart," he snapped off his rubber glove, "your cervix is nice and closed. Nothin's wrong, but I'd like to listen to the heart beat again." "Why?" I pulled off the oxygen, trying not to wheeze too much. "Hang on and breathe a minute more there, George. Your wife isn't in any danger. In fact, I'd say she's definitely one of the healthiest pregnant women I've ever seen. Good low blood pressure, nice reasonable sugar, no swelling in the extremities." He tried to keep a straight face as he said, "A man like you, with a healthy young wife, needs to learn to take it easy." I just breathed. "I'm just having a little trouble-" he polished his stethoscope with the bottom of his white coat "-deciding whether there are two babies in there, or three. I would give her an ultra sound if my machine hadn't up and died a few years back." I looked over at the machine. Didn't look too complicated. "Do you know what's wrong with it?" He looked confused. "It doesn't work. More than that, I can't tell you." As nicely as I knew how, I said, "I'm pretty good with electronics. You think I could take a look at it?" Sure, he told me, his nurse would lead the way. It turned out to be one loose wire. A chimpanzee could have fixed it. I leaned against the wall and laughed, thinking about how that would crack Thea up. Another fifteen minutes and we knew for sure. There were three. Three boys. Bigger and healthier than any child of mine had any business being. Three boys with a single placenta. "Identical," Dr. Worthen and Scully agreed. "Clones," Thea spelled into my hand in the dark. The doctor held out a hand and helped Thea get off the exam table. "So how's Coach takin' all this, anyway?" Why did Worthen have to give me something else to worry about? *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~* Before Martin and the kids got home from school, there were four computers, two toasters, and a sewing machine in my living room, all waiting to be fixed. By morning, Langly and Thea had them all repaired and lined up on the front porch. The next day Bud Collins called George and Martin in to the mayor's office and wound up putting George on retainer. Their first request was have him install those spiffy ethanol engines in all three of Delphi's police cars. George "Ringo" Froyers had just become the most sought after man in town. *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~* I'd been telling myself all along I wasn't going to be a dad like Hank Langly, but it didn't take too much time to figure out there wasn't much chance I was going to be a dad like Fox Mulder, either. I used to think Mulder was one of us. Okay, that's not right. I used to think if you took Byers, Hickey, and me, made us into one guy, added looks straight out of GQ, gave that guy old money and an Oxford education, that guy would be an awful lot like Fox Mulder. Nice as the idea was, living with him made me realize it wasn't true. When I was growing up the only time my dad ever spoke to me was to tell me how I was fucking up again. Mulder, on the other hand, acted like he was auditioning for the part of 'the dad' every minute he was with his kids. He would come home from work every day and spent an hour rolling around on the floor, kissing and hugging Daniel and Sylvie. Every couple of days, he'd stand on his head and let them shake all the change out of his pockets. They scrambled after quarters for the ice cream truck like somebody had busted open the cash pinata. No way I was ever gonna live up to that. I didn't know whether my dad was a better husband than a father or not. Whatever happened between my parents went on in private. I never saw them kiss. To tell the truth, if it weren't the for the little matter of them having seven kids, I would have sworn they were 'just friends'. Back in the day, I could never quite figure Mulder and Scully out. I mean, I knew they liked each other; you could tell. But you could tell they were afraid of each other, too. Like they could never get too close or too far away. It wasn't like that when we got to Delphi. Mulder kissed her all the time, and not just, you know, on the face. He kissed her hands, her neck when he could get at it. One time I found him, bent over in the kitchen, kissing the soft part inside of her elbow. She just stood there shivering. Not only that, but he woke me up every night, giving it to Scully. Never took less than an hour. Wouldn't have been too bad if they were like regular people with, you know, a few muffled bumps and moans. I'd been woken up by Frohike and some waitress with more make-up than brains a few times over the years, and I always managed to go back to sleep. But no, Mulder couldn't screw with his wife without providing color commentary. I had to lay there listening and feeling inadequate and holding a girl too damned pregnant to even think about putting any moves on. Girl was right. She seemed young to me, really young, for the first time since I'd known her. I understood why Mulder wanted to kick my ass. I decided to try to apologize. But what the fuck to say? That was going to take a while to think through. *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~* I was beginning to wonder when I had fallen in love with my husband. It was not love at first sight, because, not unlike cold fusion, I had never heard a reliable report of the phenomena. Besides, the first time I saw Fox Mulder there was great deal of heat but precious little light. Did I learn to persevere because I loved him, or did I learn to love him because I persevered? I knew it was a pointless question, but I continued to wish I could isolate the moment of our true marriage, like trying to document the point where simmer turns to boil. For one thing, it might have helped me with Thea. When does a mother fall in love with her child? I didn't know what to do for her. For long stretches, she seemed mature and more than competent, only to suddenly behave as though she had been raised by wolves. I suppose, at least metaphorically, that was the case. For example, in a rare impulsive moment, I bought her a pair of small hoop earrings similar to the ones Sylvie usually wore. She was so thrilled that she pushed them through her un-pierced ears without so much as flinching. I had the same feelings for Thea that I had for her brother and sister, which was strange, but not inexplicable. The visceral tug of motherhood was undeniable, but I had no background to frame it - no warm memory of her infant body between Mulder and me on the bed, no first tooth, no colic, no first steps or skinned knees, no first day of school. No nothing. And it seemed unreal that soon she'd be a mother herself. She was more than eager to please me, but what really left me impressed was the way she treated Daniel and Sylvie. She had no aversion to modifying remote control cars or playing Barbies for hours on end. She explained the efficacy of good penmanship to her irritable little brother. Daniel admired her obvious intelligence and tales of hard labor, which, for some reason always fascinated him. Sylvie loved her humor and sense of adventure. Together, they gave the Barbies haircuts. "The old hair was impractical," Thea explained, while one Barbie versed the others on their plan to "Bring down The Man." She read the infant development books I gave her, but all her questions were about love. She seemed to want something from me, some wisdom I wasn't sure I had. I wasn't sure if she was being a typical 17, 18 year old or simply her father's daughter. She thought the sun rose and set on odd, ungainly Ringo Langly. Langly, for his part, followed her around and picked up the constant stream of things she dropped and discarded. He put his arm around her every time she stopped moving. She gave me any information I asked for and some that I didn't. She told me wished she could speak so she could say his name. She said Gibson and Langly were the only friends she had ever had. The other Gunmen were different she said. Like teachers, only smart. Or like techs, who actually cared. They might nag but it was a nice nagging. She would have compared them to parents, I think, if she'd had the experience to draw the connection. The closest thing to a mother she had ever had was John Byers. What did it say that I still felt inadequate? After two days with them, I knew that whatever else Langly had done to, for, or with her, parenting wasn't on the list. She evidenced the uncanny ability to make him blush deep scarlet. One day she told me his cunnimanualis was far superior to his cunnilingus. "But," she added brightly, "it's so nice to kiss his face afterwards." I had no idea what the appropriate response to this information might be. I was very close to being grateful, by then, that it was Langly we were talking about, and not someone with more guile and self-interest. Truth be known, I didn't think Langly knew how to betray; strip him of his sarcasm and braggadocio and he was a nice, shy Lutheran boy from a dairy farm. He seemed so unguarded with her, almost defenseless, the protective egotism I associated so closely with him, palpably lacking where Thea was involved. A nice boy, that is, but still old enough to be her father. Ironically, although I was slightly older than the farm boy in question, I didn't feel old enough to be Thea's mother. When she was conceived in May of 1989 I was still listening to Jack Willis tell 'Spooky' jokes. In 1994, mere weeks after she was released from her tank and the wires feeding information to her developing brain were removed, I was abducted. The year she was paired with Gibson Praise, I was battling cancer. Had I been there, I doubt I would have made a very good mother. Looking at her wide eyes and chubby cheeks, I couldn't stop myself from thinking about Emily. I couldn't bring myself to talk about her either. Not with my husband. Certainly not with Thea. Thea and Ringo would take walks around town in the evening, shoulder to shoulder. One night they were coming up the walk when I saw Langly run back a few houses while Thea stared at him with knitted brow. He trotted up to her, a something in hand, and passed it to her with the sort of flourish Mulder reserved for flowers and buckets of ice cream. The only sign I could make out was 'feldspar'. Our daughter blushed and glowed in turns. Those two were truly odd. *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~* Ten days in to their stay, Martin and I were getting used to their presence. I had, for example, come to accept the fact that all life stopped for Star Trek, and Thea wouldn't eat anything she couldn't conceivably put hot sauce on. And every night in the room next door Langly sang to her until he dropped off to sleep. It was something of a relief to know definitively that I did not have the worst singing voice in the world. It was less of a relief to be in the room next door to it at bed time waiting for it to drop off into a snore so I could have sex with my husband. On the other hand, we were getting fairly adept at Name That Tune. "I think he's trying to drive us over the edge," Marty whispered one night not too long after they'd come to stay. "He has no idea we can hear him," I whispered back. "Do tell, Mrs. Levine," he said leering and making what I'm sure he thought was a subtly suggestive motion with his red pen. "Think about it. I would be willing to bet he has significant hearing loss from twenty years of concerts and loud music. I know for a fact he's had tinnitus since the mid-nineties. They're a good match." I looked over at him. He had a stack of essays on 'A Farewell to Arms' on his bare chest and I wished Langly would drop off to sleep already. "Too bad we don't have railroad tracks in town for them to buy a house next to." "She's a child, Laura. Scully. A baby. Maybe that's why she gets a lullaby." His light mood turning sarcastic for a minute. "She's nearly eighteen. During many periods in history, women were married by twelve or thirteen and, not infrequently, to men significantly older than themselves." Honestly, my feelings on their relationship were more ambiguous than accepting, but as usual, my husband's outright disapproval pushed me into the opposing camp. "Somehow it doesn't make me feel better that Lucrezia Borgia was on her third husband at Thea's age." He stared down At the paper in front of him and gave Adonis Foster a large red C+. "Thea could fight off a bear if she had to." I suspected that perhaps she already had at some point. "The girls in my Junior English class would rip her to shreds." He gave Takeitha Wayne a B-, and I wondered briefly what the difference was. "A shape-shifting alien wouldn't have a chance against those girls. Besides, I think she'd do better than Langly," I told him. He raised his eyebrow. "Do I even have to say it?" I finally came out and asked, "Do you honestly think he's a pedophile?" "No!" He scowled, perturbed by the very suggestion. "Well, what I am attempting to point out to you is that it looks to me like they have a remarkably equal relationship. He's not a father-figure to her; he's not using her. Honestly, they seem equally mature to me. Well, equally immature. Besides, I, well, I think they're in love." I wanted to laugh at myself for feeling so sentimental. He looked skeptical as he put the papers on the floor beside the fold-out we'd been sleeping on lately. "Yeah?" I looked at him out of the corner of my eye. "You trusted him before, right?" He adjusted his pillow. "He never impregnated my daughter before." "Mart- Mulder, how many times has Langly come through for you? He's helped the both of us, right? Because he was your friend and because you were working for the same things - democracy, truth. . ." "God, mom, apple pie, and cable TV," my husband, the eternal smart-ass, broke in. "Yeah. I trusted him." "Then trust him now." He changed the subject. "Is he singing 'Good Night Irene'? That is so many kinds of wrong." He worked at distracting me running his finger in circles around my pajama buttons. "At least it's not Motorhead night," I whispered and Martin shuddered, snuggling closer Martin's face took of an expression that was both puzzled and pained. "What 'is' that song?" He delayed my attempt at answering by tracing the shape of my arm, then my hand, with his pinky. He lingered in the crook beside my wedding ring. I closed my eyes and listened. His warm hand was more than pleasant. "I think that's 'Coup d'etat' by the Circle Jerks. Early eighties." He peered at me over the top of his glasses. "Why does it bother me that you know that?" Something caused me to return to our original topic. "You realize Thea's older than Hawaii Stidham don't you ?" The look on his face told me it had never occurred to him, but after he drew his hand back, he was quick to recover. "William Boyd Stidham III never spent three weeks playing a computer game." "William Boyd Stidham III," I countered, "couldn't hack into any financial institution in this country." "Or the D.o.D. Or Monsanto." He rolled his eyes and made a gesture reminiscent of male masturbation. "William Boyd Stidham III couldn't build an ethanol engine if his life depended on it," I replied. "You know those videos that weren't mine? Well, I never watched one with William Boyd Stidham III." He pursed his lips then added, "And as far as I know, Junior Stidham never jerked off over a character in a video game." *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~* One morning, Gregor Samsa awoke to discover that, instead of a dung beetle, he had been transformed into Ringo Langly's father-in-law. No, wait, that was Fox Mulder, right? Or was it Marty? Good old Marty Levine. Life as a dung beetle would have been easier to get my head around. I had a son-in-law. And that son-in-law was Richard "UberGeek " Langly. So far, he and I had spent a lot of time with our hands in our pockets, just staring at each other. It would have been whiny on my part to complain; it really would have been. I had spent more than a week at a time at the Gunmen's in my time, for no better reason than I was bored and miserable and I had no one to go home to. The guys nurse-maided me through my divorce. They were closer to me than anyone but Scully in my old life. I had imposed on them far more frequently and with far less than reason than Langly was doing now. He was entitled. Thea was entitled. I was an asshole. I saw how Scully loved her. Thea should have been ours from the beginning. She should have been able to carry her in her body, braid her hair, teach her to chew with her mouth closed. She should have been my little girl, like Sylvie. I should have been there to kick Langly's ass the first time he looked at her sideways. It was a personal failing that I wanted to sleep in my own bed, I guess. According to my wife, making a pregnant woman sleep on the fold-out in the office was a violation of human rights that would land us on a Amnesty International hit list somewhere. If I was a better person, I wouldn't mind waiting in line for the bathroom, or sitting on wire cutters repeatedly, or coming home to find extra locks on the door, or that Langly had eaten up all the cereal. It was hard, too, with six people in a three bedroom house. I was constantly trying not to accidentally bump into Thea. I couldn't get over being afraid it would be like Betty Roguebull all over again, afraid I would brush against Thea and lose every damned thing I had. So many people could really get hurt. The very idea was a very special fucking family nightmare. No two ways around it - they had to get out of the house. The sooner, the better. But how the fuck to say it? Then it happened. Langly was coming out of the shower. I was trying to answer the phone and Thea was in the way. Our arms brushed. Skin to skin contact. Inside her head was like nothing I ever imagined. The way she thought was utterly alien. I never imagined, for example, a thought-process centered around printed word rather than speech . It was fascinating - printed words flew everywhere, floated through a way of thinking that was both verbal and visual. And what was she thinking about? Langly, of course. A picture of him burned itself behind my eyes, milk pale skin on dark purple sheets. Skin that, unlike Scully's, had no discernable pink to it. His colorless hair ran in a braid down his back. Thea reached her hands out and undid the single plait, sifting it through her fingers. His lips were moving as she brushed her cheek against his jaw. She loved his beard stubble, the way the texture contrasted with his soft face. Her hands slipped to his shoulders, her face to his chest. She loved his smooth, smooth skin. pink nipples, white eye lashes, the eyes I'd always thought were light blue, but which I now saw were a dark slate grey. She had a shocking urge that passed quickly. He took her head in his hands and pulled her face to his. Instead of kissing, he. . .it was strange, he nuzzled her, I guess you'd call it. He rubbed her nose with his. Their faces glided over each other again and again, cheekbone over cheekbone, brow against brow. It was surprising to feel comfort like that without any hurt to go with it, and not nearly as bland as I would have imagined. Then things started to get surreal. She reached over to the milk crates stacked beside bed - that had to be Langly's old room at Gunmen HQ - and grabbed a permanent marker. It was shining wet black and he started to giggle without sound as she wrote on his body. Ordinary words became erotic on his skin, the dark edges crisp and meaningful on their papery background. Linger. Found. Surprise. Shining. Drink. Pour. Spark. Warm. Burn. Glow. Breathe. Lift. Glide. Fall. Catch. The words ran around his legs and torso like streamers, until she took his left hand in hers, pressing her lips to his wrist to feel the rabbity rhythm of his pulse, and carefully wrote two words along the inside of his arm. El Brujo. I don't speak Spanish but I wouldn't be Fox Mulder if I didn't know what those words meant. The Sorcerer. I felt the blood rush to my groin as Thea pulled away. It had taken a second, probably less than that, really. It was the most tawdry feeling I'd had in my life, and not in a good way. I had gotten an erection for another man, for Langly, for fuck's sake. A Ringo Langly I'd never seen before who bore only a passing resemblance to the one I'd known for years. He might have looked the same but he wasn't the same at all. He was sexy. I'd have given anything to take that moment back and tuck in my elbow. It took a few weird moments on the phone to shake the resonating desire. The day I had the urge to kiss Langly would live forever in ignominy. If I explained it to Laura, maybe she'd do me a favor and shoot me in the head. It wasn't just lust I felt; that was the problem. There were a few minutes of solid adoration in there. My god - he was beautiful to her. Thea looked at me disdainfully, as though I had done it intentionally. "Why did you do that?" she signed. "Purely accidental," I gestured back at her. "And trust me, I could have lived the rest of my life in utter contentment without seeing that." "Please!" She rolled her eyes. "That was gross. You are disgusting. A disgusting dirty old man!" Then she squinted at me, Scully-like. If she had spoken, she'd have said "Eeeeewwwwwww!" "I hope someday your children talk like this to you," was the best curse I could give her. At least I knew, once and for all, she didn't have a hidden agenda. *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~* He meant well, but "Man I'm sorry" wasn't going to cut it. "Dammit Langly, you think she's just some girl? Some kid Scully and I had and never knew about. Think! Why would they design her?" I hadn't intended to, but somehow I had backed him up against the wall. "What's that supposed to mean?" "You really don't know? What do you think they were making in those labs at Zeus Genetics? Girl Scout Cookies?" He froze. "Uhhh, well, she's really smart. They made her smart." "Yes, she's smart. Hell, we're all smart. Even you are smart." I didn't mean to make it insulting, but it sounded that way. Disgusted, I fell back and took a seat on the edge of the coffee table. "But they didn't make her smart; they made her, period. Langly, from what we've been told, been able to figure out, they made me. They made Scully. I know you don't hear this very often, but you're the most normal person in this house." Langly swallowed hard, but said nothing. "That's why we had to go, why we had to get out of the whole mess. It was the only way I could think of to, I don't know what I was trying to do, exactly. Be free, maybe." I ran my hands over my head and Langly stepped up close. "Frohike knows, doesn't he?" "He knows everything I do," I sighed. "But most of what I know is conjecture and second hand." "Tell me." Coming from him, it was almost pleading. "Thea probably could tell you more." I rubbed my hands together nervously. He looked down at his feet. "She wouldn't tell me anything that would upset me." "Oh." I nodded. Made sense, really. She was protective; she was born to be protective. "Okay. Okay, yeah. Want a beer?" Four beers later, neither of us had said a word. We'd both peeled all the paper off our empty bottles, though. I had to tell him what she was. What I was. What he'd gotten caught up with on a cellular level, as it were. It took another two beers apiece to be able to even consider saying any of it. "I'm afraid, the longer you're here, the more likely it is that, um, that I'll want to um, sleep with her." Langly clenched his jaw and held his bottle close his chest. "That's - that's why I don't touch her," I blurted. "The Praetorians - that's what they call us, me and Thea, the others like us, - we're designed that way. Designed to want to breed." He squinted at me. "What?" "It happened before. One time. In Oklahoma. I asked you guys to run some DNA on a woman, Betty Roguebull. I touched her and, um, and I wanted her. I mean, we almost, we damned near, the two of us, me and Betty, we - we nearly raped Scully." I drew my knees up to my chest. "Holy shit," Langly breathed. "Yeah, um, skin to skin contact is the trigger." He blinked at me. I could see the gears turning behind the thick lenses. "It's a tool to accelerate the evolution of the product line, isn't it?" "That's my best guess." "Pretty smart if you got the stomach for incest." He slid lower on the couch. "But I guess, considering that we've discovered so many of the Project guys were old Nazi doctors, I suppose there's not a lot they didn't have the stomach for." I nodded. Our feet were lined up side by side on the coffee table. I looked at his beat-up tennis shoes. He looked up at me again. "Jesus. All that time, 'you' were the proof you were looking for." "Yup." I rolled the bottle in my hands. "But who would I show me to? The world has seen me, Langly, and it was not impressed." He was quiet a moment. "What else is there? I mean, what modifications?" "All the systems are kicked-up -- immune, reproductive, adrenal. Brain, too. They did a lot to the brain, actually - eidetic memory, increased synaptic connection. And emotionally, too, we're, um. . ." I trailed off. I wondered if he could even hear it. "What do you mean?" "We were made. . .we were designed to protect the consortium's genetic stock." "Some kind of SuperCop?" He sounded impressed. That was so funny, I had to laugh. "More like some kind of SuperSheepDog. You know, there are some sheep farmers that take a large breed puppy before it's eyes are open and they feed it sheep's milk and they keep it with the sheep so it bonds. Then they have a dog that will fight to the death to protect the flock. We were made to bond with the flock. Or at least, one particular member of the flock." I looked at him for a comment and got none. "You ever wonder-" I had to clear my throat before continuing. "I mean, did it ever seem strange that I looked for my sister for so long? Other boys loose their sisters and they don't spend the rest of their lives beating their chests about it." "I guess I just figured you were close." He sounded tentative. "We were, but other boys go on with their lives. They grow up, get married. I tried, but I couldn't do it. When they assigned Scully to be my partner, she took Sam's place. Not as a sister," I couldn't stop the sad grin that crossed my face for a moment, "but there was a bond, from the very beginning, with Scully that was completely different from anything else in my life. The evidence suggests They intended it to happen that way." He nodded. "So, Thea and Gibson?" he asked ". . .were not just Hansel and Gretel holding hands in the Consortium forest. She was assigned to keep him alive, and I'm still not sure how or why, but she failed. It's her basic programming - mine too, for that matter - to protect the flock, even if it is a flock of one. Honestly, Langly, if he hadn't told her, you know, 'ordered' her, to go find you guys, she probably would have ...well, she wouldn't have lasted too long. We're like that." I chuckled. "Without a greater purpose, we tend to become even more endearingly reckless." "So you're saying what? That you think I'm her 'purpose'?" His voice was flat and quiet. I nodded. That was about the size of it. Huge as it was. He sniffed. "So, she doesn't love me? I just flipped the right switches, triggered the right circuits? Figures." I'd had this same conversation, or a variation that was more of an argument, with Scully about a million times. We'd debated it to death. The answer I came up with always the same. "I love Scully. She and I, we were made for each other." "Really, truly made for each other." He sneered. I tried not to take the sneer personally, but I was getting frustrated, probably because I couldn't help imagining Langly heading right out the door and not coming back. Not, come to think of it, unlike I had pictured Scully doing over and over. Luckily, the cavalry came charging to the rescue drying her hands on a dish towel. "Do you love Thea, Langly?" He nodded, frowning. "I didn't chase her across the country to get my jacket back," he answered, and sniffed again. I couldn't tell if he was holding off tears or a sneezing fit. "Did you decide to feel that way?" Langly sniffed. "Well, I-" "No," Scully answered for him, "you saw that she was an available female in her breeding years, with bright eyes, clear skin, thick hair, and a number of other indicators of good health. Her personal loyalty to you indicated to the primitive part of your brain that she'd be an attentive mother. I'm willing to guess she made some sort of initial advance, and it all fell into place." "But I-" Scully plowed on. "Mammals evolved the nurturing instinct to improve the survival rate of increasingly helpless young. All the evidence suggests that humans evolved the pair bond for the same reason. Love isn't fire from the gods; it's simple biochemistry and evolution in action." She turned her focus on me. "For all of us. For everyone." I couldn't help giving my usual response to her usual lecture. "Tish! I love it when you speak gobbledegook!" She glared at me like she wanted to mount my head on a pole. Then she swooped down and kissed me, like maybe she had other plans for me. When I looked up, Langly had gone to bed. *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~* I pushed my way through the bedroom door to find Thea looking really, really hot, all of the sudden. I tried to shake the buzz in my ears. I was a lot more wasted than I meant to get, I guess, because I couldn't remember what I wanted to say to Thea. For the first time since I 'd found Thea again, I looked at her pregnant body and I wasn't uncomfortable. I was turned on. I did that, I thought to myself. Me. Not some jerk in a lab. Wasn't there something I wanted to ask her? The cotton panties I bought her somewhere in Colorado must have shrunk or something because that night, they were so tight that they made a perfect white triangle on her ass. The MDC shirt I wore the entire time I was hitchhiking didn't even cover a third of her stomach. Her belly button was wrong side out. I turned my head to look at it. She was staring at me. Oh, I remembered the question. "Do you love me?" I asked, trying not to weave. She looked concerned, but Mulder 'let me get you a pillow' concerned, not Scully 'order a spinal tap' concerned. "Langly, you're drunk," she signed at last. "Don't call me that The." I accidentally left off her 'a' as I signed. "I don't wanna be like them." I pointed over my shoulder at the living room. "Call me Ritchie." "Fine. I love you, Ritchie," she signed my name with exaggeration. "Now come to bed." "Do you? Or am I just a substitute? Second best?" The buzzing in my ears was getting really loud. "For who? For G?" That was the closest she ever came to spelling out his name. I nodded, but it wasn't a good move. Her eyes narrowed. "This jealous thing doesn't look good on you, R.I.T.C.H.I.E." "Do you - did you ever think about him when you were with me?" She blinked at me. "Did I ever wish I sucked him off like I do you? Like I 'did' you I mean, because you won't let me anymore? Is that what you want to know?" Man, I felt dizzy. "Yeah. Did you? Do you?" "He was a sick boy with no one else in the world but me," she signed as if that settled it. I shrugged and spread out my arms. "Small world. But I think you need to answer the question." She pulled herself until she was sitting up in Mulder and Scully's bed. I had clearly pissed her off. "I loved him, but it was different than this. I never thought about," she shook her head "even kissing him. I never wanted him this way." She rubbed her stomach. "I think he saw so much of it in people's heads all the time it disgusted him. When he got older, and he didn't feel too bad, I think, I think he hated those feelings when he had them." Her fingers stumbled. "If you could trade me for him, would ya?" "No!" she signed. "No." She seemed guilty. "So, you love me?" "Yes," she signed. "I love you and your skinny white ass, too, and your green nylon wallet and your ugly glasses. I especially love your green nylon wallet. Now, get in bed." I forgot to worry about love for a minute. "You think my glasses are ugly? You know, I'm not pathetic. I mean, I don't look like Mulder but I'm...I'm...My kung fu is the best." "You're a genius, Ringo," she signed seriously. "Yeah. Yeah, I am. So don't feel sorry for me." I warned her. But she grabbed me by the collar and started kissing me. It started kind of rough, the way she could be sometimes, but it turned into one of those long, slow her-tongue-in-my- mouth-then-up-the-side-of-my-jaw kind of things. By the time her lips were on my ear, I was putty in her hands. Well, maybe not putty. Putty was definitely the wrong analogy. I had joined the ranks of the pussy-whipped. It probably happened the first time I went to bed with her. But that night, that was the first time I noticed. And it wasn't so bad. I was starting to think the only guys who said that were guys who weren't getting any. Then I fell off the edge of the bed. Of course, her sympathy was truly touching. She laughed at me. From where I was sitting, even her hand and the top of her head looked pretty. It was lighter than I was used to her being. After I climbed back onto the other side of the bed, I wanted to touch it. Her hair was like Scully said. There was a ton of it, but thin and shiny, as soft as, as, I dunno, feathers. It seemed like there was so much about her I had never noticed. She needed studying. I inhaled. Okay, I knew her smell. I kind of knew it at first from sitting next to her when I was trying to teach her stuff. Then the first time she jumped me and started tickling. I didn't even realize I remembered it. She smelled like a rabbit. I kissed the little soft place behind her ear. On second thought, it was rabbit and something else. I could suck down that smell all day. My fingers ran over her thigh but stopped on the edge of her panties. The inside of my head sounded like a blender. She wobbled and took her panties mostly off. They were still on one knee. Hint, hint. Real subtle. I tried to concentrate on the skin on the inside of her thigh, but I wanted to screw her before she even took her panties off. No way. No way. I couldn't fuck her this big. I shouldn't have even been doing this much. And god, in Mulder's house. In his bed. It was wrong wrong wrong but I was drunk drunk drunk. I brushed four finger tips in between her lips. It didn't count if there was no penetration, right? I tried to crawl in between her legs but I hit my nose on her stomach. It hit back. That was really funny for a minute. I hadn't done this too much. I pressed my face into her thigh. I held my hands over my head and signed. "Oh Hell. I'm lame in bed. I'm sorry." She sat up and rubbed my head. I couldn't look at her. She took my hand and started spelling into my palm with her finger. I LIKE WHAT YOU DO. I spelled back with my free hand without looking up WHAT DO YOU KNOW? YOU'RE A VIRGIN. WERE, I MEAN. YOU DON'T HAVE A LOT TO COMPARE ME TO. Instead of arguing, she took my hand and put it right on her clit. It was a really simple premise. I ground down. She shuddered. I sighed and did it again. One, two, three, four times. She lifted her hips and I pushed harder with the heel of my hand. The smell was floating up from her, like hot baked goods. My whole head was filled with the smell of rabbits. She signed at me but all groggy. "Glasses - hand them over." "I'm drunk," I answered. "I need to see what I'm doing." I ducked my head and kissed her clit. I knew it was probably wrong, but it was what I wanted to do. I was bad in bed. I'd show her just how bad I was. I'd do what seemed right and she'd see. I swallowed my fear and started to suck. I sucked on her clit. I tasted it and felt the shape of it in my mouth. Between my sweat and the fog on the inside and her, uumm, whatever on the outside, I couldn't see a thing out of my glasses except smear and a couple of pubic hairs, but I didn't stop. She pushed up against me, shaking, and I kept going. In a minute, she did it again. Maybe it wasn't wrong, after all. It looked like I made her come twice. Cool. Maybe if I didn't stop I could do it again. I paid close attention to the pressure of my tongue as she shook some more. My face was all wet. I slipped two fingers up inside her and licked with big broad strokes, like a dog. I licked her like a dog. She seemed to like it. She kept coming, anyway. Five times altogether, I think, before she kicked me off her. Okay, maybe she didn't exactly kick me off of her. More like she was trying to wiggle away and accidentally kneed me in the chest. "Owwwwwww!" I yelled before I signed, in shock, "That hurt!" She moved over to me faster than I thought she could, stripped my shirt off, and started checking me for broken ribs. "Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry," she signed. "Ow. You're hurting me. Take it easy." "You're okay?" She squinted at me. "Yeah." "You swear?" "On the grave of Joey Ramone. Now lay down and let me hold you." I signed and put my useless glasses on the night stand. She was huge. If she went all the way to nine months, we were gonna have to use a winch to get her off the couch. She'd have to give birth in the house because we weren't going to be able to get her through the door. And she was giving me serious wood. I couldn't just hope she wouldn't notice; it was like hoping Frohike wouldn't steal one of your fries. Her hand went straight to my hard-on. "Let me," she signed. "I'm drunk and I need to sleep." "I could sit on the floor, you could sit on the bed," she signed, and licked her top lip. "I'll show you what a deaf girl can do with her mouth." "I know what you can do with your mouth. I just want to hold you like this tonight, okay?" Thea frowned and closed her eyes. I put my arm around her and waited for the hard-on to die down. I wanted to go to sleep, too, so I could wake up and feel awful and get the whole thing over with. But she was staring at me. Her breath smelled like milk. Her eyes were a bright, strange green, like leaves. Underneath the brown, her cheeks were flushed pink. She had legs. I mean, I knew she had legs. But they were chick legs - long, muscular chick legs. I looked at her face. If she wore make-up, she might not look creepy. She might just look like a regular girl. Her little tits were changing, too, were bigger, heavier. It occurred to me I had married a chick and didn't even notice. That didn't sound right. My dick was so hard it hurt. It was not going away. Screw it. I'd go jerk off in the bathroom. I threw back the blanket and got out of the bed. "What are you doing?" Thea stared at me. I was pissed off, suddenly, but I wasn't sure why. "Going to the bathroom." "To?" she signed, then shrugged and pumped her fist up and down. I nodded. "I thought if I waited it would go away, but you keep making it worse." She reached up and stroked my stomach, then slipped half her hand down into the front of my jeans. "Can I help?" "Uhm, no thanks. Just let me go take care of..." "Can I watch?" I think she was leering. I felt less drunk, but incredibly tired. "I really want to get it over with, okay?" I went in the master bath and closed the door. At least, I mostly closed the door. I didn't slam it because I didn't want her to think I was mad or anything. I stood in front of the bathroom mirror. Washed my glasses and dried them on a towel so they were all linty. The ache had traveled from my balls up to the pit of my stomach. I felt nauseous. I turned my back on the mirror and unzipped my jeans. Ten minutes later, I hadn't gotten very far. I was still hard and in pain. One thing had changed, though; I was feeling desperate. I couldn't figure out what to picture. I mean, it would have been disloyal to jerk off to some Laura Croft fantasy with Thea in the other room, right? And I'd never been turned on a by a pregnant chick in my life, so thinking about Thea was weird, too, even though I couldn't stop myself. I shut my eyes and tried to picture her looking, um, normal. I tried to think about the time she convinced me to do it in alley behind the headquarters. Up against the wall in the surveillance camera's blind spot. It was stupid and scary and really, really hot. I had thought my heart was going to explode the whole rest of the day. But I kept getting flashes of her on the bed - with a black t-shirt not covering her belly. When I tried to picture her the way she really was, I was kind of distracted by the fact that she was about ten feet away. I tried to open the door, but she was standing on the other side. Who'd have thought a deaf girl the size of a Winnebago could sneak like that? Man, how could I have been mad at her? None of this was her fault. "Lord Manhammer retired to his chamber, only to be greeted by the lusty sorceress, Ygrain," she signed and waggled her eye brows. It made me smile. The couple of times we'd played this way it had been fun. "Hey, babe, wanna polish my sword?" I signed and she made a little laugh snort. Before she could answer me, I grabbed her hands and wrapped them around my dick. That must have been just what I needed all along, because I came pretty fast. *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~* There were some things I knew were true. I knew my mother was a liar. I knew my mother wasn't my mother at all. I didn't think my father was really my father, either, but I wasn't one hundred percent on that one. I did have eyes, though. There was no way the two of them could have made me together. My father had brown hair, green eyes, and peach-colored skin. My mother was white. White skin, white hair - her only color was some pale blue in the center of her eyes. I have black hair. Curls. My skin is light brown. My eyes change color. Even if I never talked about it, I remembered. I remembered a time when she wasn't my mother. I remembered sleeping in a bed between a woman with long black hair and dark skin, and a man with curly blonde hair. I remembered that man flying me like an airplane, like you saw dads do sometimes. I remembered playing with a badge and that there was a gun in the house. Maybe my dad before was a cop. The woman had a messy office with a chalk board. She looked Mexican or Hawaiian, I think. Sometimes, if I tried hard, I remembered a funeral. And another man, a bald man, with the dark haired woman. But I might have been making that up. Maybe I saw it on TV. I'm not sure. There were some things I knew were lies. My mother said the dead body with only one arm dumped in the front yard wasn't Dad. She also said it wasn't full of worms and it didn't smell that bad. She said I was becoming a man, but as near as I could guess, I was twelve. That didn't sound much like a man to me. I didn't know why she said it. I thought it meant she wanted me to drive or something. I didn't think my name was really Alex Krycek Jr. either. The one I remembered from before sounded like GHEE. But maybe I was making that up, too. She seemed crazy right then. Or maybe she was crazy when she was at home yelling at Mrs. Gresham about some thing wasn't dusted right, or because the windows were streaky, and she was really only normal at times like this, surrounded by guns and medical equipment. It was scary though, her being so quiet and watching, paying close attention to everything. Paying attention to me. Like she was looking at me and seeing him. Even if she was not my mom, she shouldn't have stared like that. Then one day in the car She called me Alex. She said this was going to be a fun trip. Even then I knew some things were lies. I wished I was home. I wondered, if I made a run for it at the next gas station, could I make it back home to Martha's Vineyard? *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~* The two months that followed HairBoy's departure were strange. Byers and I, we tried not to think about it too much, but if you live with a guy for over a decade, it's hard not to have a little twinge when he up and takes off. It's human nature. Then, one day we were sitting there, not talking about Langly, not looking at his empty chair, when who should arrive at our front door but the artist sometimes known as Yves Adele Harlow. She looked up and into the surveillance camera. "Frohike, let me in." I flipped the switch and gave her her answer. "Not by the hair of my chinny-chin-chin." She tapped her foot, looking very bored. "If you're trying to get me to threaten to blow your house down, give it up now." "Can't fault a guy for trying, beautiful. Come on in," and I went to unlock the locks. About half way through the opening procedure, she yelled through the door, "It's the human mushroom I really need to talk to." I couldn't help but look at Byers behind me. As the door swung wide, she pushed her way through and started turning on her heel. "Where is he? Don't tell me he's finally left the house? Is he still in bed?" "He's gone," Byers spoke up. "Where? The arcade? Some Dungeons and Dragons game? The allergist?" She was antsy. "Optometrist?" "What do you want with him?" I asked the obvious first. "I need to ask him a very important question." She crossed her arms. "When will he be back?" I shook my head. "Sister, you just asked the sixty-four thousand dollar question." She looked down her nose at me. "What are you babbling about, Frohike?" She turned her gaze to Byers. "What is he babbling about?" "He's gone," Byers answered quietly, rubbing his hands together. "It's been more than a month. He got a letter from Thea and he just left." "Do you know what the letter said?" she asked me. Byers beat me to the punch. "I think it's time for you to answer some questions, Miss Harlow." "Such as?" She wrinkled her nose "What do you want to ask Langly?" "Why do you want to know it so bad?" I chimed in. "And does it have anything to do with Thea Fidelis?" he came right after. "There are some dangerous people looking for Miss Fidelis right now. One dangerous person in particular, and I can only think of one reason this person would want to get her hands on Miss Fidelis. If anyone could confirm my suspicions, it's Langly" "Why not ask us?" "What do you know about Thea Fidelis, about what she is?" "She's a praetorian, just like you," I told her. "No, Frohike, not just like me. Betty Roguebull and I, as well as the rest of our particular production line, were legitimate, above-board stock designed to be utilized to by the entire Consortium. Thea Fidelis was part of a side project most of the conspirators considered so dangerous that they destroyed the lab where the work was being performed. Only two of the experimental models survived." "What were they afraid of?" "That Spender would succeed." "Succeed how?" Byers asked. "His aim was to build a praetorian that could produce SuperSoldiers outside the lab." "Produce SuperSoldiers? How?" She smirked. "The old-fashioned way." "What's this got to do with Langly?" I asked. "What do you think the chance is Thea could be pregnant?" Byers stepped backwards. I let out a long whistle without meaning to. "Well?" "Anything's possible," I answered, trying to think on my feet. Of course. That could have been it; that could have been why Langly cut out of here so fast. It could also have explained why she left in the first place, aside from the obvious threat of Byers' Maiden Aunt. It didn't seem right, though. Sure, Blondie could be a lame-brain from time to time, but not even he would get nookie without taking some precautions, right? Right? Jeez, didn't his old man ever have that talk with him? Of all the bonehead bullshit the guy had ever done... I wanted to... I didn't know what I wanted to do to him but whatever it was it was painful. "Exactly what can you tell me about their relationship?" She pursed her lips. She could make faces all day and it wasn't going to change how much Byers and I knew, or didn't know. "Nothing." I shrugged. "I mean, we know they were doing it. We're pretty sure it was a regular thing. From what we saw and pieced together, it was a regular thing." "Marvelous." She leaned backwards against the wall with a sigh. "The world may very well have to brace itself for some splendidly geeky SuperSoldiers." I was flustered. Okay, more than flustered. I was spinning my wheels, thought-wise. "What?" "You think she knew?" Byers sounded as rattled as I felt. "Unlikely," was Yves's only reply. "Would it even work?" I finally managed. "If you're right about Thea being one of Cancerman's side projects-" "Oh, let me assure you that I am right about that," she replied. "-even if," I continued, "It's just Langly. The guy's not exactly what comes to mind when you think 'prime genetic material.'" "Regardless," she answered, pulling herself to her full height, which wasn't much at all, but seemed like more. "Someone wants to know, and wants to know very badly." Byers looked at her steadily. "Who is it?" "Yeah," I added, "and why the hell do you care?" She turned her gaze on Byers. "Marita Covarrubias." Then she turned to me. "And call it sisterly concern." *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~* End 05/07 Title: Tellus Mater (06/07) (Sequel to Pater Familias) Author: OneMillionAndNine Feedback: kokotheuberchimp@hotmail.com http://www.geocities.com/onemillionandnine/ See 01/07 for detailed headers. *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~* I couldn't believe what Mom was going to do. What she wanted me to do. She was nuts, whoever she was. She said there was a pregnant woman - no, she called her 'the Subject' - who we were going to kidnap. Only she said 'abduct.' She was very picky about the words she used, and she kept using that one - abduct. We were 'to abduct the Subject' then 'take possession of the Subject's offspring.' The next day she added, "It may require impromptu surgery." I must have looked at her funny or something, because she smirked at me and added, "Don't worry. I'll be handling anything difficult." I was right about one thing. She did make me drive. "You don't look a day under 16," she said, and looked at me the way she used to look at Dad. It made my stomach hurt. "Where did my baby boy go?" she asked, and put her hand on my knee. We spent of Halloween in a field in Virginia. She had me shoot pumpkins, then apples, 'til I couldn't hear or focus any more. "If you're going to be watching my back, you are going to be prepared," she said. It was kind of chilly, but not really cold. I was pretty tired and sweaty, but I made sure I cleaned Dad's old Glock before I tried to give it back to her. Then she smiled at me. Really smiled. She didn't do that a lot. And then she said, "Keep it. Another candle or two on your cake, and we'll see how well you can really fill your father's shoes." When in doubt, say, "Yes, Ma'am." She all of a sudden stepped away. "Don't forget - Alex Krycek was either a bastard or a fool everyday of his life, but never both at the same time." I 'yes ma'am'-ed again, but slapped me anyway. I forgot to say, 'Thank You.' *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~* We were banking on him being able to find her. He was driven. He had to find her. HairBoy might be a lot of things but a quitter wasn't one of them. There were only two places Langly would go once he found her. He hadn't gone home to Nebraska, which had been my first bet. He had talked to his older brother Tom, though asked if he could use a hand around the farm, then called later and told him there had been a change of plans. I knew there was more Tom wasn't saying, but prying loose what little info we got was like pulling teeth. I've seen trained CIA spooks with looser lips. Three days later, we were deep in the heart of Dixie. Yeeha. I could have called Mulder first, I guess. But, honestly, there are some things you just need to tell a guy in person. Like, you know, "Sorry we didn't tell you about your daughter, but by the time we figured she wasn't working for the bad guys, we were too attached to let her go," and "The jailbait you've been playing naked hide-and- geek with was built to produce indestructible killing machines, so I hope to God you've been wearing a raincoat, Buddy." It was safer to surprise Mulder than Scully any day, so we figured the school was the obvious place to start. We pulled up across the street from 'The Home of the Oracles,' and realized we had only one problem - we had no idea where to find him. He was a coach, right? So, maybe the gym. We walked around the perimeter of the school looking for the rear entrance. There was a guy leaning up against the wall, right under the NO SMOKING ON SCHOOL GROUNDS sign, lighting up. He had the build and the presence of a silver-back mountain gorilla and he looked at us like he might charge at any minute. With his tie and khakis and ink stained shirt pocket, he had to be a teacher, but his aura was pure thug. "Hey!" I decided that a frontal assault was our best bet. "maybe you can help us out? We're looking for Martin Levine." He raised his eyebrows. "And you would be?" "I'm John Meyers." Byers reached out and shook his hand. "Martin is my brother-in-law." "You work here?" I asked. "You know, I stare at my paycheck and wonder that myself." He took a drag. "I'd take you to Marty myself, but I'm teaching right now." He took another puff of his cigarette. "Actually" he stroked the blond van dyke that would have been fashionable ten years ago and squinted one eye at us "it's Marty's knuckleheads I'm teaching." "Oh?" Byers asked brightly. "Yeah, the basketball team." He snorted. "So there I was, trying to explain some basic physics to these yahoos, and-" I couldn't help myself. "Why?" "I'm a physics teacher - the name's Swan, by the way, Robert Swan, call me Rob - anyway, I don't know shit about basketball. They wear shorts in the winter and they make a loud thumping sound that can be heard in my classroom even with the door closed. That is the extent of my knowledge of basketball. Oh, and the ball is orange." "Three for three," Byers agreed. "So I figured I'd discuss physics as it applies to throwing a ball. That's a jock thing right? Throwing a ball? I mean, my trainer has me on a heavy schedule of naps balanced by hours in front of the computer. So I tried to explain the physics involved. I'd never seen anyone go to sleep standing up before," he drawled. "Can't say that I'm too surprised," I muttered. "I started explaining how curiosity about the simplest things can lead to huge scientific breakthroughs. For example, Richard Feynman's wobbling plate and..." "...how the work it inspired eventually earned him the Nobel prize in physics." Byers broke in. "Yeah. I might as well have spent twenty minutes going like this." Swan put his finger in between his lips and made a cartoon noise something like "Buudeeebuuudddeeeebuuubrrrrrrdeeeeebrrruuuuudddeeee" that I had never seen a grown man make before, especially a grown man who looked like he could pull your liver out through your nose. I couldn't help myself. I started laughing. Rob the Silverback made a low cough like chuckle in the back of his throat. Byers let out a surprised guffaw. This Rob guy was okay. "No tellin'," he lit another cigarette, "when Marty's going to be done. He's up in his office with Vern and Dre." I was about to ask what that meant when he cleared his throat. "The sheriff and the baseball coach. They're okay guys. Well, not dumbasses, anyway." "May I ask where Martin's office is located?" Byers asked. He pointed with his cigarette at the cupola, complete with stained glass windows, on top of the building. "What are those images on the windows?" It was sunny and Byers squinted up at the dome. He spoke around the cigarette in his mouth. "Some dead Greek guys who were wrong about, well, pretty much everything." "Can't argue with you there, Rob." Byers looked a little scandalized, but the guy had a point. He threw his butt on the ground and opened the door to the gym. "Well, I guess I better go corrupt the youth of Athens." "Mind if we. . .?" I pointed inside. He shrugged. "Sure. And tell George 'hey' when you see him, for me." "We'll do that." I tried not to let on I had no idea who the hell George was. ***** We climbed up the final flight of tiny steps into a room that was no way meant for five people and a purple ditto machine. And yet, once we entered, along with a ton of book and another ton of boxes, that's exactly what it contained. Guess Mulder was just fated to spend his working life in storage. The first thing Mulder did when I opened the door was blink. Then he tackled me. "Melvin! What took you so long?" I hadn't seen the guy in 6 years, but he looked the same. His dyed grey hair looked just as fake as it did the day Langly colored it in our bathroom. He was a little puffier around the mouth and jaw, a little more lined around the eyes, but even with that, he looked healthy, rested, younger than his driver's license said he was. "Hey," I floundered. I didn't know what to call the guy. "John," he slapped his arms around Byers. A husky black guy in a Smokey-the-Bear hat and another in sweat suit looked us up and down like we had just appeared out of nowhere. Which, come to think of it, we had. "John, Melvin, meet Vernon and Andre." Byers extended his hand past me. "Pleased to meet you. I'm John Myers. I'm Laura's brother. She's my sister." He sounded like he didn't even believe it himself. Mulder shot me what could only be called a wry look, while Vernon and Andre peered at me expectantly. Hell, if I knew what to say. I extended my hand. "Nice to meet you. I'm Melvin F--" I stared at the colored windows, considering whether a leap would actually kill me. "Melvin Fenster. John's friend." Mulder cleared his throat. "Friend and long-time companion," he added, knowingly. That asshole. The two guys nodded at me. One coughed. No doubt with some really unsavory images of Byers and me in their heads, courtesy of Mulder. Fucking lovely. I considered shooting him a dirty look. Then I considered shooting him, period. But we had to maintain cover, so I just looked at everyone's shoes and made a mental note to get good and even with the bastard later. Now, to business. I wanted to ask him if he'd seen Thea lately, but if he hadn't, if he had no idea who the hell Thea was, I didn't want to have to explain it in front of an audience. "So, Marty," I asked casually, straightening my vest, "you seen Ringo around these parts?" Mulder frowned picking up a stack of papers. "Oh yeah. I get a good look at him on a regular basis these days. Give me half an hour and you can see him for yourselves, such as he is." He handed me a sack of papers. "Hey Melvin, you know how to run a ditto machine?" *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~* Mulder stopped earlier than I expected, just few blocks past the school, on Hippolyte Avenue, in front of a fleshly-painted oyster grey two story with white trim. In the drive way, I saw the weirdest shit I've seen in my life - looked like some guy was putting one of Langly's ethanol engines in a late-model acid-green minivan. As we got closer, I noticed his head was turned at a really familiar angle. I recognized him. Before I knew what I was doing, I was running up the walk. His hair was all but buzzed and he was wearing a pair of Ben Franklin type glasses. He had on what looked to me like they were probably Mulder's clothes - white t-shirt and khaki pants - all the right length, but a little loose. "Langly?" It was him all right, and it looked like he'd found. . . Oh shit. She was sitting on the front porch steps. She was so pregnant she looked like a freaking weather balloon. She waved. Well, that answered that question. I hadn't seen the guy in two months, and the first word out of his mouth when he saw me was, "Triplets," followed by that smirk, that 'The-Pentagon-JPL-and-Queen's-Bank-of- Georgetown-Cayman Islands-I-hacked-them-all-inside-of- nineteen-minutes' smirk. You'd have thought the guy invented knocking up teenaged girls, or something. Bet he accomplished that inside of nineteen minutes, too. He walked over to Thea and threw his arm around her shoulder. Way under nineteen minutes. Thea held up three fingers on one hand, and rubbed her belly in some kind of Thea-style invitation with the other. It was a weird second there, but Byers and I couldn't help it. We stood there like a couple of morons, touching her belly. Sure felt like triplets to me. Langly kept a hold of her like she needed his protection. I guess it was normal but it sure hurt. Mulder cleared his throat behind me. Byers shocked the hell out of me, out of all of us, probably, by leaning over and giving Thea a quick kiss on the cheek. "Thea," he signed, "we've been so worried." "Don't blame Ritchie, okay?" she signed, glancing back and forth between the two of us. The sunlight glinted off what looked like a pink gold ring on her left hand, which, big surprise, appeared to match the one Langly was twisting on his own finger. Yeah, Buddy, I saw them. I thought about saying it out loud, but I didn't. Jesus. House, hair cut, minivan, kids; she was swell kid, a great girl, but she might as well have put that ring through Goldilock's nose. "They aren't here to blame anyone for anything, Thea," Mulder signed. "They are your friends, and they've come to visit." Thea nodded, but looked skeptical. Langly swallowed. "Well, don't just stand there bringing down the property values, guys." Never letting go of Thea once, Langly ushered us inside. A dozen computers, an air conditioner, and couple of toasters had their guts strewn across the ugliest blue chintz sofa and matching love seat I'd seen in my life. The decor was Early Death Star Construction Zone meets Midwestern Seventies Frump. As soon as Mulder left, pleading his duty to educate the future voters of limestone county, the four of us squared off around their too-new kitchen table. It was too big table for the tiny kitchen and really belonged in a dining room, only their dining room was full of stacked boxes and spare parts. We were quiet for a while. Thea was the first one to say something, not literally, but you know what I mean - she was the one to break the ice. "It would mean a lot," she signed, then stopped. She drew some Japanese character across the table top with her finger, the way she did when she was nervous, but, as usual, her expression stayed pretty flat. "Mean a lot if you were happy for us." What the hell could I say to that? Byers saved me the trouble. He smiled like he was about to vomit, and said, "Believe me when I tell you both," he looked Langly in the eye for the first time since we'd arrived, "I don't want anything for you and your children but all the joy in the world." *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~* We drove around town for a while the night we arrived. I didn't know what mom was looking for, but I could tell she was looking for something. I knew better than to ask. Delphi was like, like a toy town, the kind you see in the windows of those touristy stores sometimes, with trains and trees and stuff. All clean and tidy. Hardly any people on the street. Really fake. We drove by a Dairy Queen and mom asked if I was hungry. I could smell hamburgers and fries and grease and I hoped my stomach wouldn't rumble, because that always pissed her off. "Yes, ma'am," I answered. She was going to stop for hamburgers, maybe even cheeseburgers. "Thank you, I am hungry." She made me eat a peanut butter sandwich from the cooler. Dad was right; she was a bitch. I was getting more and more scared. We passed a school after driving around for hours. There was a big sign in front of it that said, "Home of the Oracles: Four Years Undefeated and Counting!" Weird name for a team. I remembered a story then that Dad told me. From Greek mythology, he said. Fortune tellers, sort of. I wondered if there were any real oracles in this Delphi. Maybe they could tell me what to do. *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~* I don't know who we all thought we were, kidding trying to go to bed at 10. In the years I've known him, Langly has gone to bed before 3 a.m. maybe six times. Not even Byers goes to bed before 12. We were all full of shit. By 10:45, we were all back downstairs, watching Mystery Science Theatre 3000. Byers made coffee. It was kind of weird seeing Langly and Thea together like that. The kid was curled up on the love seat with her head in Langly's lap. His hands kept going to her hair. I think it made Byers uncomfortable, but hey, they had the right. They were Mr. And Mrs. George Froyers, after all. Half-way through 'The Prince of Space,' Thea sat up, rubbing her face on her paramour's arm like a cat or something. She scratched the bridge of her nose. "You people want something to eat?" Langly looked at her like he was about to say something, but wound up just frowning. "Get a grip, Sweetpants," she signed. "I won't turn on the stove. I'm strictly talking hunting and gathering." She stretched just enough to kiss his ear lobe. He turned and I'll be damned if he didn't sink his own face into her neck, like we weren't even there. "Just some more coffee, 'kay? If it's not too much. You've gotta be tired." He was looking up at her through his eyelashes, flirting and had his hand on her knee. Damn. I'd never seen him do anything like that before. "I'm hungry." She grinned back at him, all dimples and arched eyebrows, "Besides, laying down too long gives me heart burn." She stuck out her tongue and made a face meant to indicate the desire to vomit. "Guys? Want something? A sandwich?" In two years living with us, the kid had never offered to bring me so much as an olive much less a whole sandwich. It was hinky. "Ummmmm. . ." I mumbled and I looked at her. It was weird trying to get back into the groove of signing again. "No thanks, Sweetheart," I finally got my fingers to reply. Byers just shook his head. Langly had to help her off the couch. It had to be getting close to time. She couldn't get much bigger without actually exploding, could she? I had to know. "So what's up with that? The Hostess Barbie routine?" Langly shook his head and shrugged. "Scully's a bad influence." "Don't let Mulder hear you say that," Byers replied. "If you ask me, it's time one of you knuckleheads learned some manners," I said. "No one asked you," Langly muttered, but it was good- natured. "Um, Richard," Byers began, then, "Ah, Ringo, we have to, to discuss something with you." Man, I found myself having to decide between ducking to avoid the collateral damage and sitting up straighter to get a better view. I went with sitting up straighter, but moved further away from Byers on the couch. "Discuss what?" Langly asked and from his tone I could tell he was ready for a fight. Byers went on. "I hope you 're aware of how fortunate you are." Well, that wasn't a bad opening. I was even on board with the sentiment. "Yeah, Goldilocks, you're one lucky son of a bitch. Looks like you got it made." "Yeah," he said, concentrating on the badly dubbed Japanese on the screen, or trying to look like he was, anyway. "You know, kid, if you screw this up, me and Byers'll be down here to kick your ass post-haste." Byers nodded before I was even finished saying it. Langly snorted. "Yeah, well, you'll have to get in line." His eyes never left the TV. "It's been kind of quiet around without you, Buddy." I meant it, too. "Well," he swallowed and cleared his throat in a choked up sort of way, "I admit having to eat my own cooking does blow goats." "She ever give it a shot?" I asked him. His lip curled like I was nuts just for asking. I didn't know how to tell him what we'd come here to say. I looked at Byers. He was in worse shape than I was. Since we'd gotten there, the only thing he'd made eye contact with was Thea's belly. "Look, Langly. . . " I started, but I froze. Without turning his head, his eyes turned to me. I blew it. I couldn't say it. I looked around the room. "Byers, a little help, please." Byers gave me one of those 'if looks could kill, you'd be dead' look, but sat up straighter. He breath out heavily, then began. "There is a chance your children are going to be, to be, that is, they will probably be, um very special." He said it in that earnest John Byers way that would sound insincere coming from anyone else. "Those might be some pretty special buns you put in TankGirl's oven." I worked on not losing my nerve now that I'd found it. Langly just gave us that smug, superior look of his. "Old news, Dudes. The Artist Formerly Known as GMan Spooks already clued me in about the souped-up genes." All of a sudden Byers looked really young. "I don't think Mulder or Scully is aware of the information we have received." "We thought we ought to tell you first." I sounded lame. Langly's voice was soft. "Just say it. Whatever the fuck it is, spit it out." "You remember the Kid's story about the warehouse fire on the day they took her out of her little Zeus Genetics aquarium? You ever wonder why that happened? Who'd want to do that? Why? We know." "We think we know," Byers cut in. He was looking at the kitchen doorway the whole time. I was starting to get pissed at Byers. "Our sources are good. Turns out the little woman was part of unauthorized side project of the Smoker's. A side project, to invent a method for producing SuperSoldiers outside the lab." Langly looked confused. "What?" he said and signed at the same time. I realized he'd been doing that all along - speaking and signing at the same time. "The other conspirators apparently felt the entire idea was, well, ill-advised, and attempted to destroy the research being done." Byers explained, finally tearing his eyes from the door. "Only two of the experimental models were saved from the fire. Thea and Rhea. We don't know what became of Rhea." "Thea's not a SuperSoldier," Langly huffed. "We know that, genius. But there's - well, there's a good shot those kids of yours are." "No - uh uh, no way you are full of shit..." Langly ranted quietly, his hands moving agitatedly at the same time. "Who's this fucking source? Who sold you this load of crap?" "Yves," Byers said quietly. "Fucking Yves?" Langly snorted. "You morons. You can't believe half of what she says. For fuck sake, we don't even know her real name. Fuck that shit." His knees were bouncing and he had started cracking his knuckles. I knew the guy well enough to know any second he was going to start tearing around the room. "No fucking way." "There are some things about Yves you don't know," I tried to tell him. "Yeah I think I just said that." I was glad Thea couldn't hear us, because we were all yelling. "Langly, shut the fuck up a minute. Yves is a praetorian. Not a custom job like your little honey muffin in there, but she's still one of them. Like Betty Roguebull." "Made for the same purpose," Byers broke in. "Made from the same basic materials." "Mulder's same basic materials, if you catch my drift." I didn't even remember getting up, but I was standing over him "She's her sister, half-sister, whatever. Yves knows Thea is in danger, and she had no choice - and I mean no choice, Langly - she came to us out of concern. None of the splinter groups are even aware The Kid escaped the fire." "Spender was able to cover up exceptionally well." Byers added. "According to Yves' information, Krycek was the one who broke the tanks and saved her life." "Saved his employer's property, is more like it." I brought my voice down. "Rumor has it Krycek is dead, dead for real this time, and his old partner is looking for Thea. . ." "It seems Marita Covarrubias is of the opinion that a matched set of loyal SuperSoldiers would be...desirable," Byers continued to spell it out for him. Langly was quiet a long moment, glaring and Byers and me, but I could see he was trying to think it all through. "It doesn't even makes sense, guys. How would Martia even know Thea was, um, ..." He hesitated. "The word is 'pregnant.' Man, you are a piece of work, Langly, you can knock her up right under our noses, but you can't say it preg-" "From what I understand," Byers broke in, shooting me a dirty look in the process, "her line was designed -" "'Specifically' designed," I emphasized. " - with a very strong, um, procreative urge." Byers supplied. He was good at that kind of thing, I still don't know how I'd have put it. "Bull," was Langly's only comment, but I could see he was giving it some thought. John went on. "Initially, it was hoped her intense drives would overcome Gibson Praise's illness and -" " - and Spender would find a Psychic SuperSoldier in his stocking one Christmas," I helped him out. "It looks like Krycek and company were keeping close enough tabs on her know she was living with three men." I had to stop and cough. "I guess they figured the outcome was inevitable. All he had to do was sit back and wait. Well, the waiting is almost over." "Thea has no idea about any of this," Byers interjected "And now probably isn't the time to tell her," I warned him "What we need to do is talk to Mulder and come up with a plan. This isn't some monolithic consortium we're up against anymore. This is doable. It's just one woman -" "But one very determined woman." Byers amended. Langly looked sick, like he was going to faint or throw up or stop breathing, but couldn't decide which to do first. I wondered if he had his inhaler handy. Something squealed, then slammed shut. I figured the hinges on one of the cupboard doors needed oiling. That was when I realized Thea had been in the kitchen for a pretty long time all things considered. "Where's the missus?" I whispered. Ten seconds later, the three of us were searching the house. There was coffee and jalapeno flavored potato chips spilled in the doorway to the living room, but no Thea. The back door was wide open; the screen was door closed tight. But the spring squealed when I opened it. "Dammit!" Byers ran his hand through his hair. "It's okay. We can find her," Langly said quietly. "It won't be hard." "I know it's a small town, but..." Langly cut me off. "That's not what I mean." He went to the kitchen and came back with what looked like an old-fashioned palm pilot. "How's that going to help?" Byers asked. "I. . .I. . .she's wearing a, oh shit, she's wearing a transmitter." Langly's words came out in a rush. "I put it in her ring. Her wedding ring." "What?" Byers practically screamed. "You can't be serious, Langly. It's unethical, it's wrong, it's absolutely-" "Byers," I put my hand on his shoulder, hoping to calm him. "Byers, right now, it's all we've got." "She's moving fast," Langly said, squinting at the read out. "Shit. She must be in a car. What in the. . .?" Then his expression changed. "Come on. We gotta go. Now." Byers was right - it was unethical and wrong. But ultimately, that paranoid, devious son of a bitch saved her life. *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~* It was so easy, I was stunned. Mom was trying to explain some plan she had for us getting into the Subject's house, and then getting us out again, when the Subject all but pounded on the hood of the van and asked me to grab her. So I did. Even Mom seemed to think I did good. Mom was right; she was a girl, not a woman. She was long and tall, a little bit taller than me, and her stomach was so big. Humongous. I never saw a pregnant woman look like that. She fought hard but you could tell that giant stomach held her back, and she didn't seem to be able to get a good breath. But it was easy. At first, I mean. You could tell nobody ever taught her to fight in what my Dad called a 'systematic way.' I got her in the van. I got her handcuffed and put the cloth bag over her head. I did what I was told. She didn't fight or cry or anything. I probably would have cried if it was me, but she just sat there with that bag over her head, breathing hard. All still. "Alex," Mom called back to me from the front of the van and she started the car and took off. "Give her the shot. Now." "Are we almost there? I mean, are you ready? I, I, I, umm she's not fighting or anything." "Alex," she said, "I can guarantee she is not going to keep still for what we are going to do. Give her the shot." I sat there and stared at her. She looked more angry than afraid. That worried me. "Have you done it?" Mom's voice was quiet. The scary kind of quiet. She went on before I could answer. "You give her that shot before I count to three or you will live to regret it. One -" I grabbed the hypodermic out of the tackle box and looked at the gir- the Subject. It was her or me. I picked her. "Finished yet? Or am I going to have to come back there?" I knew I was supposed to lift up her dress, pull down her Panties, and put it in what Mom kept calling the fleshy part of her buttock. She went over that again and again. But I just stuck it in through the dress and everything. She didn't move a muscle. Maybe everything would be easier when she was asleep. But it was hard to push the plunger down. "Are you done?" I couldn't get the plunger down any more. The needle was still half-full but I would have done anything to keep Mom from coming back there, so I pulled it out and squirted the rest onto the floor. The Subject wasn't moving, anyway, so it must have been enough "Yes ma'am, all done, ma'am." I was pretty sure no one saw me grab her, but Mom was driving pretty fast now, anyway, trying to get far away. Out past the hi-way, into the mountains, where the woods were thick, she pulled off the road and drove the van under a bunch of trees. "How is the Subject?" Mom asked. She was slumped over. She looked like she was asleep. It was all hot and muggy in the van, but outside, it had started to rain, so Mom opened up the back doors. That helped a lot. We could kind of breathe. A couple of drops hit me in the face and it felt good. "The equipment, Alex." I kept my mouth shut and helped Mom lay out the stuff she needed: scalpel, clamp, towels, blankets, diapers, some other stuff I didn't know the names for, and a heavy black bag with the zipper. Mom pulled the bag off the Subject's head, then checked pulse at her neck, then her heart with the stethoscope. Next she pulled back her eyelid and flashed a light in Subject's eye. I guess that's when Mom figured the girl hadn't been asleep, at all. In like, a second, she butted Mom right in the head and knocked Mom flying backwards. And Mom just laid there, breathing hard, stunned, I guess. I was too surprised to do anything, which is right when she brought up her hands, all cuffed together, and hit me in the mouth with them. I actually saw stars, like in cartoons. It really hurt. Even Dad never hit me that hard. So you can't blame me for crying. Of course, Mom did anyway. "Alex Krycek," Mom's voice was all raspy and wheezing, but god, was she mad, "you don't know how close you are to having something to cry about. Don't let her get away!" There was no point in arguing. "And don't forget your gun!" she called after me. *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~* End 06/07 Title: Tellus Mater (07/07) (Sequel to Pater Familias) Author: OneMillionAndNine Feedback: kokotheuberchimp@hotmail.com http://www.geocities.com/onemillionandnine/ See 01/07 for detailed headers. *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~* I didn't want to look dumb, but it was dark and it was raining and there were an awful lot of trees. Mom caught up to me, but went in circles and then we went in more circles. Every time a twig snapped Mom had me follow it. Half the time, you could tell just by listening it was a rabbit or rain or something and no way big enough to be that girl. Mom never would have made it in the Indian Guides. But I didn't want to think about what Mom would do if I didn't find the Subject, so I kept looking. Then I found her. Tripped over her really. She was sort of squatting down in this little valley kind of place. I saw a flutter of brown and it was the edge of her muddy dress in the wind. I grabbed her by the cuffs and pulled her up. She didn't fight me - I think the drugs were making her really dopey - but she was harder to move than before. "Got her!" I yelled over the wind. "Bring her back here." Mom's voice was clear even over the rain and a sudden crack of lightning. I tried to get her to Mom as fast as I could. Something about how she looked was starting to scare me. Her knees kept buckling. She was crying now, but it sounded weird, not like normal crying, and that scared me more. I had to almost drag her the last part of the way, but I got her to Mom. "Do you want me to take her back to the van, Ma'am?" Mom unlocked her just long enough to cuff her to the nearest tree. "No. Run back to the van and get the blankets and the body bag. I'm going to need you to cover me, so be quick." Then, with one really smooth move, she kicked the girl's legs out from under her. I ran as fast as I could. This was no time to piss her off. That must have been when I did it. I was just trying to hurry. When I got back with the things Mom wanted, she had pulled the girl's dress up over her head so it hung on her arms beside the tree. Her gloves were stuffed in the girl's mouth and she was dipping into the top of her belly with the scalpel she had stuck in the pocket of her wind breaker. I guess it didn't matter if it was sterile any more. Then I heard a shaky man's voice. "Drop the knife, Miss Covarrubias." I looked around in the darkness until I saw him. A man with a beard in a trench coat was pointing a gun at Mom. Oh god. I felt in my pocket. No gun. He had my dad's gun and it was pointed at my Mom. "And how many do you think are pointed at you right now, Mr. Byers? Would you like to take a guess?" Her voice was silky, just like it got right before she was about to reach out to smack you. That man, he should have been very afraid. "I'll shoot if I have to." He sounded like he was about to cry. "I think I'll keep to my own agenda, thank you." Mom said and she started to drag the scalpel back down into the cut. And just like that, "Bang!" Mom fell over backwards. In the moonlight, I could see the blood on her chest. For a second, the man and I just stood there looking at each other. "Who are you?" the man asked. "Junior, is that-?" But then he seemed to change his mind. He ran over to the gir- the Subject. He put the gun down and took off his coat and started pressing it into the girl's belly. "I need help over here," he shouted. "I found her and I need help NOW!" Then all of the sudden I realized she was dead. Mom was dead. He'd killed her. I was alone. I had nobody. I didn't even know my real name. He yelled again. "I need help, guys! Over here!" The man looked at me. "I need your help, son," he said. "I need your help or this woman and her babies are going to die. Help me." She wasn't a woman. Couldn't he see that? "She must be special to you." My voice sounded kind of weird. "She is," the man answered. "She's very special." It seemed really obvious then what I had to do. I felt calm for the first time in about a million years. "Okay," I said. "Okay. I'll help you." "Good," the man said. "Come over here." So I did. I walked over to him, stood behind him. Blood was pouring out of the Subject, running out from under the man's coat. I thought about Dad telling me once that when you got blood on your clothes, you had to burn them right away, because no matter what you did, no matter how many times you washed those clothes, that blood would never go away. That blood was with you forever. I looked at Mom. She was dead. She was dead and her suit and her shoes were ruined. She might not have been a very good Mom, but she was all I had. "I'll help you," I said again. "Good," he said. "Good. Hang on, Thea. Hang on." I picked the gun up off the ground, and I shot him. I don't know why I didn't expect him to have as much blood as my Mom. I didn't expect it to come out of his mouth. I didn't expect him to try to turn around, to slump back over mom's dead body and her ruined suit and die. But he did. They both smelled like shit. I threw up. I heard running. So I ran, and I kept running. Someone tall flashed past without even seeing me, but I didn't stop until I got to the van. The keys to the van were still in my pocket. I didn't know where I was going, but I turned the ignition and stepped on the gas. *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~* How Langly managed to find her, and find her quickly, in the middle of nowhere, I do not know. But I do know that mere feet from the corpses of his best friend and the woman who had attempted to murder Thea, Langly managed to deliver his sons. Thea was both hypothermic and in shock, as well as rapidly losing blood. Langly managed to skewer himself pretty effectively through the palm while sawing through her handcuffs with a pair of wire cutters. His injury didn't deter him from untangling cords and babies in a vaginal delivery a skilled obstetrician wouldn't have dared. In the one act that was pure Ringo Langly, he tied off their cords with bits of coated wire he just happened to have in his pockets. As each baby was delivered, he stripped off a layer of clothing and swaddled the newborns - the first son was in his leather jacket, the second in flannel, the third in a black short sleeve t- shirt that read 'Animal Boy.' They were his from the second they came into the world. When we found them, the blow flies had started to gather around Byers and Covarrubias. The living were bloodier than the dead, and a half-naked Langly was huddled together with his children and their delirious mother, trying desperately to shield them from the rain. Thea didn't come anywhere close to coherence until she was in the ambulance half an hour later. It was clear he had saved her life. Amid the screaming and flashing lights, Vern Collins handed us a key piece to the puzzle of our lives that we hadn't even been searching for. He put his arm around Mulder and very quietly said, "Marty, Walter told me before you two even got to Delphi that you were in some kind of trouble, but believe you me, I never saw anything like this coming." Mulder started, aghast. "Before? You mean you-" Vernon put a finger to his lips. "Don't worry about any of this. It's taken care of." He headed back toward the cruiser, then turned back to us. "And congratulations on the grand babies. Fine looking boys." The next afternoon, we made a somber trio in the small hospital neonatal lounge, Frohike, Mulder and I, each of us exhausted, each of us with a healthy, bright-eyed baby in our arms. I scrutinized the child I was holding. He had a startled pink face with a tiny cleft chin, and a heavy thatch of white hair, which no amount of smoothing could subdue, stood out on the top of his head. He was indistinguishable from his brothers and they were, without question, Langly's. Still, there were signs of the rest of us in them. Their long thin bodies reminded me of my own children and their eyes looked exactly as Daniel and Sylvie's had when they were born. They had their grandfather's eyes, and although Mulder maintained there was no way I could have known at that point, my nose. What would become their broad faces and sharp cheek bones were an interesting amalgam of Richard Langly and Fox Mulder. The round mouths were like Thea's and mine.The raised area near the top of their little spines were Spender's legacy. And underneath the skin what appeared to be a small metal vertebrae. Bantam Supermen with iron some how woven into their very DNA, newborns of steel. Sweet smelling and gorgeous. Despite my conversation with Thea earlier in the day, I knew she'd come around. She would hold them in her arms and everything would be fine. It was just the drugs talking. I was surprised by my own reaction to them. I never expected to fall in love with someone else's children. I found myself kissing his little fingers. For the moment, they were just babies. My flesh and blood. Mulder's. Langly's. Thea's. Ours. With luck, they would never have to be soldiers of any kind. I crossed my fingers, hoping that they would grow up to be SuperDoctors, ImmortalAccountants, anything else. If they had to, they would fight on the side of right, of justice. They'd be the good guys. I knew it. "Hey champ, try keeping those little feet in the blanket, will you?" Mulder rewrapped the squirming infant on his lap. "Actually, they aren't that little, are they?" He held one ink stained foot against his palm. I could see the Delphi basketball ball team of 2022 taking shape in his head. Well, there went all his big talk of early retirement. It was patently unfair, that there we were with family and plans and these beautiful new lives, when John Byers, the man who both desired and deserved love and security as much as any of us, was dead. What would he want? I tried to imagine. I had always gotten the impression that what he truly would have wanted was Susanne Modeski and a family of his own. I fought back an onslaught of tears. That day would never come. I tried to focus. The John Byers I knew would want us to cherish Thea and her children. Teach them to believe in the things that meant so much to him; democracy, truth, justice, kindness, compassion. I looked at Mulder murmuring kisses in the Red Wire Boy's ear. We could handle that. I looked at Frohike. Mulder had once told me, after swearing me to secrecy, that Frohike had two daughters around Langly's age living in Florida. They chose not to see him. Apparently his break-up with their mother had been less than amiable. It was entirely likely that he had grandchildren he had never seen. Might never see. I had never heard Langly once, in the time I had known him, mention his own father. For better or worse, it looked to me like Frohike filled that role for him. I wondered if Melvin ever noticed how much his approval, his simple acknowledgment meant to Ringo. If Mulder was one grandfather, then Frohike was, for all practical purposes, the other. The little man was stroking Green Wire Boy's head. "Hey, Sunshine," he cooed. Who would have imagined Melvin Frohike could coo? "Are you happy, little guy? Well, you oughta be. Don't let Grandma and Grandpa fool you; we're all so happy we're about to bust." He made clucking noises through his tears. He was right. It was true. I was startled to find myself deliriously happy and completely heartbroken at the same time. It was a distant but familiar feeling. *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~* I woke up in hospital bed with my hand so damn bandaged it looked bigger than my fucking head. Everything I had hurt. It was like some kind of hangoverzilla. Owwww, fuck! I turned, and on reflex, grabbed my head with my hurt hand. Shit, that smarted. If I squinted, I could see there was someone in the other bed. It took a minute and I had to drag my IV stand along side, but I got to the other bed. It was empty. Damn. I hobbled to the doorway and looked both ways. She was either one way or the other. I knew for a fact when we got there she was in worse shape than I was, so it would stand to reason she was closer to the nurse's station. Right? My hand hurt like hell. Throb did not even begin to cover it. And I'd have given anything for my glasses. The hall opened up onto a lounge area where I could see vague shapes and hear Mulder and Fro and some little baby noises. I turned and headed the other way. Thea was in the next room over. She was laying in the bed, the pillow over her face. As soon as I sat on the edge of her mattress, she waved me off. I guess the nurses had been hassling her. I drew a T in the hollow of her throat. She raised her pillow and turned her face to me in one motion. Her face was pale, almost grey, but her eyes and lips were red and swollen from crying. "I'm sorry," she signed and sniffed, trying to suck it up. WHAT FOR? I spelled before I wiped her face with the hem of my hospital gown. "The monsters. I had monsters." She shut her eyes for the count of ten but kept signing. "I thought, I thought I could give you, I thought I could make something good, like you see sometimes, you know, two people with some babies. Danny and Sylvie and Marty and Laura. Like that." A. FAMILY, I spelled "Yeah, a family." Her shoulders were starting to shake. "I thought I was going to give you babies, but they're monsters. All I can give you is monsters." She was making that terrible honking noise and her face was shining wet. YOU SEE THEM? I asked patting her tears with my bandaged hand, but soft enough so I didn't start crying, too "In the ambulance." She shook her head. "But my mother told me," she sniffed again, "about how they have the...place...the bump on the backs of their necks." "SHE TOLD YOU THEY ARE PERFECT TOO." Thea just shrugged. THEY LOOK LIKE ME, I spelled Must have been the wrong thing to say because she started crying even harder after that. That's when I noticed her tits looked uncomfortably hard and full underneath her gown. It had to hurt. HOW ARE YOUR TITS? I asked in my own stupid spelling. I should have known better than to ask her, she hated to admit she was anything less than ten feet tall and bullet- proof. "Like tits." She frowned. SORE? She just scowled at that. I wasn't quite sure how to ask. CAN I SEE THEM? She grinned, wiping her tears. "Sure, my glands are your glands. You like them big like this?" she signed before she raised her gown up over her chest. I saw the black sutured scalpel cut down the top of where her pregnant belly used to be and winced. I nodded at her, reaching out to feel them. Just like I thought; rock hard and hot. I breathed in pretty deep - I felt like I might faint for a minute. LOOKS LIKE YOUR MILK CAME IN I spelled. She stared, stunned. I KNOW WHAT TO DO, I told her. She tried to sit up and watch me, but it must have been too much for her. She gave up and used the button on the bed rail. Getting all the towels in her room hot and wet in the little sink one-handed turned out to be a good chance to rest my forehead against the wall. I laid the steamy towels on her chest and petted her head while they cooled. After the third time I reheated them, she signed, "Thank you." I nodded at her. I didn't know what else to do. Except - well I remembered better than I thought I would. I wrung out the towels the best I could with the unbandaged hand and sat down on the side of her bed. I kissed her forehead. I put my palm on the underside of her left breast and rolled my fingers toward her nipple squeezing into a towel. The technique wasn't hard to adapt to a human. Actually, I was probably much better at it like this. Her face was starting to look a lot softer by the time I got up to wring the milk out of the towel. She was still really full, but at least she wasn't impacted anymore. "Ritchie," she signed, patting the empty side of the bed for me to lay next to her. Good thing too, since I was this close to falling over. We laid there for awhile, all scrapes and IVs and stitches. This was a juncture I never imagined my life reaching. Fuck me if I knew what to do. I closed my eyes and tried to go to sleep. It didn't work. I needed to tell her then and there. I had reached some kind of high water mark of purpose and clarity, freezing to death in the woods with my hand inside her, trying to untangle babies and cords. I thought about my dad. What ever else I had to say about him, he was there. I had to tell her. I poked Thea in the side. I WANT THEM, I spelled. I WANT THE BOYS. "How can you?" she signed, her jaw flexing. THEY'RE MINE. OURS. IS IT A CRIME TO WANT MY OWN KIDS? I shifted onto my side trying not to crimp the IV. She didn't sign a word. JUST BECAUSE THEY'RE DIFFERENT DOESN'T MEAN THEY HAVE TO BE BAD, I spelled. Her jaw was set and she was squinting. "I wanted them to be like you. Not the Babies from the Black Lagoon." ARE YOU A MONSTER? DO YOU THINK YOU'RE A MONSTER? My fingers were cramping. "The shoe fits," she answered in terse sign BECAUSE OF HOW YOU WERE MADE? I asked. She nodded. I felt really shy, all of the sudden. I wanted to remind her how we made those babies in my messy bed, not in some lab, but I couldn't say it. YOU, MULDER, SCULLY, DANNY, THE BABIES. I GUESS I LIKE MONSTERS. I tried to make myself smile but it didn't work. She turned her head away. I didn't mean to, but I couldn't help it. I started to cry. I grabbed her face with my good hand and pulled it toward me. "No, nuh uh," I said, wishing I had a pen. I wiped my face on my arm and started to finger spell. NO. DON'T DO THIS TO ME. "This isn't about you," she signed, looking mad. I CAN'T TAKE IT, OKAY? That was when I realized she didn't know about Byers. She knew something was up, well more was up than she already knew about. She pursed her lips and cocked her head. "Tell," she signed. BYERS, I spelled and stopped. "What? Byers what?" She started to look more afraid than mad. "Is he hurt? Can I see him?" DEAD. I spelled. I'd never seen her look like that before. Her mouth flew open and her eyes went wide and she made this sound half way between a bark and a squeak. She went straight into sobbing, every breath squeaking out of her lungs. I couldn't hold back then. It really hit me. Like somebody scooped out my guts with a shovel. My tears started to spill onto my hospital gown and I didn't even try to stop. All of a sudden ,she started to sign. "That stupid son of a bitch. He died to save babies that can't be hurt." I don't know what came over me but I could have strangled her when she said that. I grabbed her wrist. "No," I mouthed deliberately and in her face "No. He died to save you." She jerked her hand out of mine and covered her face with both arms. We both laid there and bawled, even after we'd run out of tears. If anyone was worth it, Byers was. "He, he, he," she signed over and over. "I loved him, like Sylvie and Danny." She stopped and wiped her face on her gown. "Like they love Scully and Mulder. He was good, a good person. I wish he was my Dad." DON'T BE HARD ON MULDER. NOT EVERYBODY CAN BE JOHN BYERS, I spelled at her. "I know. I like Mulder. I just, I could have been Byers', I could have been his and Susanne's," she signed. I looked at her and wondered what the hell Byers had said to her about Modeski. She didn't have a clue. She couldn't have been theirs in a million years. She was Mulder and Scully's to the core. HE LOVED YOU LIKE THAT. YOU WERE IMPORTANT ENOUGH TO DIE FOR, TO KILL SOMEBODY OVER. I didn't have to tell her that John Byers being willing to kill was a lot more shocking than him being willing to die. FRO LOVES YOU TOO, YOU KNOW, NOT JUST ME I MEAN - My fingers were starting to cramp up. I DON'T KNOW WHAT I MEAN. "I hope you people are right. I hope I'm worth it," she signed. A second later it sounded like the freaking Orc Army was at the door. "We've got some hungry little guys here, so Dad, get your hand out of her shirt," I heard Frohike yell through the door right before he opened it. He looked bad. His eyes were red and swollen. To tell the truth, I bet we all looked that way - red eyes and runny noses but smiling. The babies looked even better now, wrapped tight in their little blankets. Thea looked afraid. "Well?" she signed at Frohike, swallowing. "Who do you think is hungriest?" "This little guy started complaining first," he signed with the baby over his shoulder. As Fro passed him to Thea, it was plain to see the baby could hold up his wobbly head. He hunched his little shoulders, finally worming his arms out of the blanket, then he started to flail. LET ME, I told her With my good hand, I helped him get the nipple into his mouth. "Here have a little mama ta ta," I whispered and he calmed down right away, turning his head enough to look at me. His eyes were clear and focused. He knew the sound of my voice. He recognized me. I put my hand on his head and touched his bristly white hair. "You know your old man, don't you?" I felt hot and cold in my chest and tried to suck back whatever it was that was trying to start up all over again. I leaned in and touched the back of his head while he nursed. "If you moved to a chair I could nurse two at once," Thea signed to me repositioning the baby first over her shoulder, then under her arm, like a football, his head at her tit. Her face was changing. It was hard to explain, but she looked softer, more relaxed. Endorphins, maybe? Scully helped her get another boy latched on. They sounded like a couple of puppies, squirming and sucking. I could hear them swallowing, I could hear the milk going down their throats. Shit, my hand hurt. Mulder stepped up to me with a baby, and I was almost surprised. I was so wiped out I forgot for a minute how many there were. That was less than encouraging. I looked over at Thea. She had a sad smile on her face and was touching their little faces her finger tips. She raised her hands at the wrists.slightly "Mother " she looked at Scully and signed, restraining her movement just enough to keep from disturbing my feeding babies. "Are babies always this soft? Their skin, I mean?" "They smell good, too," Scully signed and nodded. "When Danny and -- when your brother and sister were born, I used to just sit and sniff them." Thea bit her lip. "I wish," she signed but Scully cut her off her jaw clenched. "There's no point wishing to change what's already done," Scully signed quickly. One of Thea's hands clenched. "Thea," she signed at her stepping closer. "You should know. When your father and I were still working for the FBI, I found a girl. She would have been your sister. She was your sister." "What happened to her?" Thea asked tight and close to her chest. "I tried to get custody of her from the state, but I was denied. It turned out the manipulations they tried to make to her DNA were too radical. She developed a rare blood condition and she died." She looked cold, stony even, as she gave Thea the facts. "Her body disappeared from the hospital almost immediately afterwards." "She was younger than me, right?" Thea continued to sign small as Mulder and Frohike got busy entertaining the last baby who was starting to get hungry. We were going to have to name them soon. "She was born November 2, 1994," Scully signed, beginning, against her will, to show more feeling. "She was one of their failures." "Why did you want her?" "She was my daughter. Just like you are." That was when Thea started nodding to herself. She looked just like Mulder does when he's working up his courage. "Like these are mine, mine and Ritchie's, right?" She looked down at the one who had stopped sucking to look around. Gently, she lifted him in one arm his head in her palm. Scully leaned forward and took him. "Hey Gramps, looks like there's a feeding station open," I interrupted whatever negotiations Mulder and Fro were having with the baby on the edge of crying. Scully operated the baby exchange. I wound up with the full one on my lap. "You know, we need to name them," I said out loud, because my one good hand was occupied. "What?" Thea asked, before Scully could sign it to her. "That's easy," Thea answered. "Primus, Secondus, Tertius " I gave her the look. "Larry, Curly, and Moe?" My expression didn't change. "Manny, Moe and Jack? I really like the name Moe. It looks funny when hearing people say it." She made an O with her mouth. "John Fitzgerald," Frohike croaked as he signed. Thea and I nodded. When Fro was right, man, he was right. "This one seems most like him." She kind of pointed at the one on her left side and started to cry again. "What ever you do, don't name any of them Melvin," Frohike volunteered, signing and talking at the same time, choking back what looked like tears even though he was trying to cheer everybody up. "The dog is already Melvin," Thea signed. "Or Fox," Mulder chimed in, sniffling. "William is a nice name," Scully offered. My father and Muld- Marty's father were both called William." "For the record, I'd like to cross Charles Gordon Byron off the list," Thea signed. The rest of us looked confused for a minute. "You know, CGB? Grampa Caligula?" She looked expectant, waiting for us to laugh. "That was his name?" Mulder asked soberly "You didn't know?" We all shook our heads. "We always called him The Smoking Man," Frohike signed. "Kenneth," I said. "This one should be Kenneth." Mulder signed to Thea for me, and asked, "After The Thinker?" and Thea signed " Like the guy who broke into the MJ files?" I nodded at both of them. "I'd like to name one after Thea - you know, Theodore - Ted," I said. Scully signed for me that time. Thea wrinkled her nose and shook her head. I turned my head so she could read my lips. I knew she was better at it than she'd always let on. "You got something else?" "Beautiful," she signed then spelled it out. "Name him BEAUTIFUL." GIMME A BREAK, T, I spelled, the baby cradled in my bad arm. Man, he was heavy. Fro stepped forward and wiped Thea's hair out of her eyes with his hand. "Why do you want to name the boy BEAUTIFUL, sweetheart?" Her hands were shaky. "After his- "she had that looking for a word expression on her face,"-his DADDY." Everybody seemed to hold their breath. Personally, I was waiting for someone to point out that my looks aren't exactly my strong suit. Hickey leaned closer and kissed her cheek. "I think that would be a fine middle name. Go with Ringo on the Ted, though." He signed to her, his elbows on the bed rail. "For me? Please? And you," he pointed at me. "I don't want to hear you give her any shit about this. Capice?" I nodded. He wiped his eyes on his sleeve. "Teddy, Kenny, and John. Jesus, sounds like they're gonna summer at damn Hyannis Port." Mulder made a noise behind him. "Huh? What did you say?" I asked. "Oy," Mulder said again, but a little more clearly. "Oy," Fro repeated rubbing his eyes. "You may be a shiksa, Farmboy, but you're our shiksa." Scully hhhhmphed at them, crossing her arms across her chest and sniffling. "Well, what can I say about modern children? You two going to sing Hava Nagila now or the Fiddler on the Roof medley?" Mulder actually stuck out his tongue at her. For the first time, I knew we were gonna be alright. *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~* My first cogent memory is from the morning of my third birthday. Before that, there are snatches, sounds, seconds of silent motion, but the earliest complete memory I have is searching the house for an adult. I woke up as usual in my parents' bed with my brothers. Someone was kicking me. I went downstairs to the kitchen. No, Uncle Mel wasn't standing there making breakfast, like he was supposed to be. And the floor was cold on the one foot that had lost its sock in the night. Maybe it was Saturday. I went up to his room and looked under his bed for his going-to-temple shoes. They were gone and his one suit wasn't on the door knob. He had gone to morning services with Grandma and Grandpa in Birmingham. I was slightly put out, as usual, that I had not been invited. It wasn't my fault my brothers couldn't sit still. Sylvie was nine years old and she didn't sit still any better than Kenny and she got to go. I stamped my cold foot. I'd bet anything they went to the electronics store afterwards. I checked both bathrooms. No Mom. No Dad. I went back downstairs and checked the living room again. They were on the couch. Asleep. Together. Dad's face pressed was against Mom's neck. I figured if I lifted up the quilt carefully enough I could slip in there without either of them noticing. They were naked. "You're naked!" I signed at them. I'd seen them both in the shower before but naked, asleep, on the couch, was confusing. Of course, signing to sleeping people was fairly useless and neither of them noticed. I looked at them a little longer. It occurred to me this probably had something to do with what my grandfather called his romance. Did my parents have a romance? I felt almost certain they did, and it was something they had been leaving my brothers and I out of for years. I wanted to cry. So I did. "I want to be part of your romance!" I yelled it three or four times before Dad sat up and put his glasses on, jolting Mom awake. I remembered he seemed especially embarrassed to not be dressed. Mom didn't particularly care. She wrapped the quilt around him. "I want to be part of your romance!" I tried to sign my frustration but I didn't know the sign for what I was trying to say. Dad filled it in for me. Mom scooped me up into her arms and kissed the side of my face. "Hey, Beautiful, you've always been part of our romance. You came from our romance. You are made of pure romance," she signed slowly "But but but," I signed knowing she was side-stepping the real issue. Dad, of course, knew just how to snap both of us out of our oedipal quagmire. "Anybody want to go out for breakfast? I think I got some early birthday presents around here some place." I also remember eating waffles in Debbie's Delphi Diner. As usual, Dad had finished first and fallen asleep with his head on our mother's shoulder and the newspaper he pretended to read in his syrup. Mom was dunking her waffles in her side of cream gravy and eyeing the three of us. Kenny kept sticking his red birthday car in his milk and sucking it clean. John was driving his car one complete circuit around his plate rim for every bite he took. My car was still secure in my pocket while I worked on poking my index finger through all the squares in my birthday waffle. I had a question for mom. I tried to sign, forgetting the waffle stuck on the end of my finger. She raised her eye brow. I laid the waffle on the table. "Why are we here?" Her long hands signed lazily, still holding her waffle between two fingers. "Dad doesn't know how to make waffles." "No, no, no. No, I mean here, in this life?" "You're here," she bit her lip, "because Dad and I made you." She looked mischievously at my brothers. "Sometimes we get carried away with a good thing." "No I mean, I mean people. Why are humans, you know, people here, on this planet, alive?" She laid her waffle on top of her coffee cup. "Be specific." "What's the reason? Is there a reason? You know, why?" She squinted. "Your grandmother says the reason we are here is to find a reason." The way she signed it was tentative. "I want to know, I want to know what you think," I signed. She looked at me and then at my brothers who were watching closely. "To build. I think the purpose of life is to build." I thought about that. I was still thinking about it when Kenny held up his milky Volkswagen. "Mom, you think there's any chance I could trade this for a cow?" *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~* End 07/07 End Tellus Mater kokotheuberchimp@hotmail.com