Multiverse 1: Collision

Thunderstorms. God, I really hate 'em. Especially the weather-alert type where the rain pounds down in a raging torrent while the skies rumble like the subwoofers at a Megadeth concert, and every other breath brings a jagged- sharp burst of white fire splitting the darkness like Fury incarnate... Bad enough to be in the midst of one. Worse still to be traveling through it, in a rental car whose tires and brakes haven't been checked in who knows how long...

Thankfully, Daniel was driving. Now, don't get me wrong, normally I would take every opportunity to heckle his skills behind the wheel -- he's as careful a driver as I'm not, never sparing so much as a glance from the road, keeping religiously to the speed limit -- but on this night I was glad he was driving; having him navigating made me feel as safe as I possibly could feel. And never mind that I'd have to spend hours readjusting the seat tomorrow, so that (as my partner had once phrased it, in one of his snarkier moments) my little feet could reach the pedals...

I should've been perusing the case file, but then again, I already knew it by heart -- much more enticing was the chance to peruse my partner. He's tremendously easy on the eyes, y'know; and besides which, it kept me from paying too much attention to the storm, and my paranoid certainty that I was going to die a hellish death on this stretch of black rural highway... Gorgeous, by any definition of the word; and his calm steadiness helped take the edge off my nervousness. I chewed on what was left of my fingernails, studied Daniel as if he were a case file, and tried not to think about the storm.

The radio was nothing but static, and we'd been maintaining a companionable silence for some time; Daniel broke it, with, "You know this is a load of hogwash, Vee," delivered in that wry patient tone I somehow could never get angry at.

"There are numerous documented cases of such occurrences," I argued mildly, "the Bermuda Triangle being the one that comes most readily to mind," knowing that I didn't stand a chance in hell of convincing him, any more than he had the faintest chance of changing my mind. It was a part of who we were, and one of the reasons why we were so effective as a team. It was also fun -- the constant conflict kept us both sharp, and alert, and added spice to our lives.

He seemed about to add another comment, when suddenly there was a BANG! that resounded even louder than the thunder, and "Hang on," Daniel called out, as he struggled to keep the car from skidding.

I managed not to scream in terror, but just barely. "What was that?" I demanded, hoping my voice wasn't as panicky and shaky as I felt.

"We blew a tire," my partner shouted back, and I shut up and let him concentrate on maneuvering the car to the side of the road.

Finally, we stopped. I spent a moment or two catching my breath and forcing my heart to stop galloping in my chest - - felt it speed up all over again as Daniel's hand fastened on my forearm. "You all right?" he queried.

"Fine," I muttered, then quipped, "but it's a good thing that I have superior bladder control," and watched the corner of his mouth twitch upward in a faint grin.

"I'm going to check out the damage," he told me, "you stay here," doing his typical gallant protect-the-lady thing, a move guaranteed to get me out of the car and into the (shudder) rain like nothing else could. I regretted my knee-jerk reaction as soon as the first drops of rain hit my skin, penetrating clothing like icy needles; but by then it was too late. I started around the car toward the tire that had blown -- then stopped, and stared.

A few feet ahead of us was another rental car, same make and model as ours, which might not have fazed me except for the fact that it had the same license plate number.

I have a photographic memory, particularly for numbers; but just in case, I glanced down at our plate, then back to the other car's -- yeah, identical. No chance of error...

Now, I know that I should've made sure I had backup -- it's Daniel's biggest gripe, the way I'm always going off half- cocked and without seeing to it that he's there to watch my back -- but he was by the trunk, fiddling with the spare, and my damnable curiosity was blaring full-force in my head; I ventured forward warily, to see what I could see. There was a figure huddled by the front left tire of that other car, the same one we'd blown... My danger senses were tingling, and I reckoned that a forged license place was adequate grounds for suspicion, so I rested one hand on my gun and drew out my badge with the other, and shouted, "Hold it! FBI!"

The man looked up at me without any apparent concern and remarked, "Funny, that makes two of us." He reached inside his jacket -- "I'm reaching for my badge," he said, when I tensed, and I let him complete the gesture -- and displayed identification that seemed, at first glance, to be as valid as mine.

Then I took a step closer, took another look, and read what it had to say.

And then I looked at him.

Oh my god.

Daniel came up behind me then, weapon drawn, ready to go after anyone who might be causing me grief; good ol' Daniel, I rely on him even more than I rely on myself -- "What's up, Vee?" he said, in a deceptively mellow voice.

I couldn't stop staring at the other man -- yeah, same eyes, same nose (though he wore it better than I felt I did), same bone structure; too much so to be a coincidence. "Mulder," I said to him, in something that emerged as a whisper. "Fox?"

He shook his head -- but it wasn't a negative; it was an expression of disbelief. "Vixen," he said to me.

Now that, I knew how to deal with. "Call me that again, and you die," I informed him.

A wide grin spread across his face. "The feeling is mutual," he said.

There was another person coming around the car to stand with him, a woman who was as much the pint-sized version of my Daniel as I was of this strange man who bore -- almost - - my name and identity. "Let me guess," I said. "Danielle Scully?"

"Dana," she corrected me automatically, then looked at the man who I assumed was her partner. "Mulder, what the hell is going on?"

Her statement matched the look my own partner was giving me; and I answered for all of us. "Must be an X-File..."

"Okay, I admit it," said Daniel, over coffee and lemon pie, "this is weird."

It turned out that both of our spares were blown; so we'd taken a tire from their car, put it on our car, and left theirs by the side of the road. A little ways down the road, we'd found a diner, and now we sat in a corner booth, slugging down caffeine and eating various dessert products, unable to take our eyes off each other.

All I could think was, if I was as pretty as my doppelganger was handsome, I'd been underestimating myself for years. Vaguely, it crossed my mind to wonder what he would be like in bed, what it would be like to sleep with him -- with myself. A second later, it occurred to me to wonder if he was thinking the same thing... I looked at him, but his gaze slid away from me awkwardly. Then I watched, as his mind worked through the same series of thought processes mine had; and our eyes met in a moment of perfect mutual understanding.

"What the hell are you grinning about?" Daniel wanted to know.

"Nothing," I said, mustering every ounce of control I had to keep from blushing.

He shot me a dark look. "Y'know, one of you was scary enough," he muttered, and there was a strangled sound from across the table, and I realized that Dana was stifling giggles.

Scully, rather. They called each other Mulder and Scully, and while it startled the hell out of me to hear someone else being referred to by my surname, it did make things easier. Upon first hearing them converse, I'd wondered if maybe they weren't as close to each other as me and Daniel -- but no: they had their own language of expressions and silences, most of which was so familiar that I could read their unspoken communication as easily as if it was ours.

We'd gone over some basic ground in the car: the FBI, the X-Files, the bare bones of our respective backgrounds, all paralleled eerily. Which left us with one major question - - "What the hell happened?" Scully voiced it for all of us.

I began to speak, and realized that my alternate had spoken at the same instant; we glanced at each other sheepishly. He motioned at me to proceed, the same gesture I would have used; not one to give up the floor once I had it, I took him up on the offer. "Possibly the collision of adjacent versions of reality," I theorized.

"Some kind of ripple in the space-time continuum, allowing matter to move between alternate universes," the other me added, on the heels of my remark.

Wow, I thought, finally, someone who understands me! "The touching, and merging, of two normally separate planes of existence," I continued, starting to get excited about the conversation.

"This sort of phenomena might account for a great number of unexplained disappearances," he added, and I could see that he was enjoying this as much as I was.

"Oh, God," Dana murmured, "tag-team Mulders," and Daniel burst into laughter.

I shot my partner an evil look, saw from the corner of my eye that my alternate was doing the same thing to his Scully. "Do you have a better rationalization?" I wanted to know.

"No," said Daniel, "but I do have a question. Assuming that your hypothesis holds true, whose universe are we in - - and who's picking up the tab?"

My otherself and I exchanged startled glances; he reached for his wallet, and I reached for my purse, and in short order we were comparing the contents. Good ol' George Washington on both singles, and even under close scrutiny, there was no telling which was which... "Looks like we split the bill," my alternate said, with a shrug.

"Great," said Scully. "And then what?"

We all looked at each other helplessly.

There was a cheap motel down the road; from the looks of the parking lot, awash with tractor-trailers, we weren't sure that they'd have rooms -- but they did, and we snagged the last two.

We did the obvious thing, i.e., we split the rooms along gender lines... a fact that I wasn't all too happy with. I didn't know this Dana; I knew Daniel. He was my partner, and I would much rather have shared a room with him -- even though, like always, there wasn't much chance that we'd use it for more than sleeping.

And then there was the idea of splitting the rooms along personality lines -- an idea that was both oddly alluring and strangely disquieting; just what was my otherself like in bed, anyway?

But here I was with Dana, the pint-sized version of my Daniel (well, he wasn't really my Daniel, but that was the way I thought of him), watching out of the corner of my eye as she emerged from the bathroom... she was wearing a nightgown, a long sensible flannel thing that made me smile. It reminded me of Daniel, and his oh-so-normal pajamas... Myself, I was wearing my usual t-shirt-and- sweatpants sleepgear; and I saw her look at me and grin, which made me wonder if she was seeing the same echoes of familiarity in me.

"So," Dana said, and I saw her lips begin to form the name 'Mulder' before they settled on, "Vee..."

"Dana," I responded, feeling the strangeness of the name in my mouth; it should have been 'Daniel', my Scully...

And for several long moments we just sat there, cross- legged on our respective beds, gazing at each other with curiosity and disbelief.

"Did you have cancer?" I heard myself asking, and was shocked at myself for the presumption.

She gave me a sad smile in response. "It's in remission." Oh, God. Both of them.

Then, very softly, she asked me, "And what did you almost trade for the cure?"

Shit.

"Touché," I said, feeling the aching hollowness that I hadn't let myself feel for a long, long time. Sam...

Her hand stretched across the space between the beds, and for no reason I could name, I reached back and took it.

"Are you in love with him?" I asked her, because suddenly I had to know.

"Of course I am." Her voice was so quiet that I had to strain to hear it. "And you...?"

"Of course," I echoed.

And again, we stared at each other, until finally I said what we were both thinking: "If you, who are him, are in love with he, who is me, then does that mean...?"

Dana sighed. "That's the sixty-four-thousand dollar question."

"Seventy-two-thousand," I corrected her automatically.

Realization hit, and we exchanged startled glances... "I guess your game shows pay more," she mused.

"I guess so," I agreed.

Nightmare. Daniel, wasting away from robust health into a gaunt shadow of his former self; someone who might have been my long-lost brother Sam, telling me that he didn't have room for me in his life; demonic figures offering me what I'd most wanted, everything I needed, in return for such a small token favor: my integrity, my self...

I awoke, sweating, to darkness. The analogue to my partner was still sleeping soundly, but that wasn't enough; I had to see him, I had to know...

Padding softly across the room, I eased open the connecting door, ducked my head inside the adjacent room -- and there he was, fast asleep, red-gold hair tousled across the pillow, perfectly healthy, very much alive.

And beyond Daniel, my analogue self was sitting cross- legged on the bed, gazing back at me.

Our eyes met, locked; and silently he rose, moved across his room to the doorway where I stood -- I stepped back, giving him room to look, to see that his Dana was alive and well.

Of course I understood. How could I not understand? He was me.

He was me. He'd spent hours and days and weeks watching his partner waste away from a disease that he felt certain was his doing. He'd resisted the alluring invitation of safety for the one he loved most, he'd resisted the promise of the sibling he'd thought forever gone, he'd stuck to ideals and principles he wasn't even sure he believed in anymore, because it was what his partner would have wanted... he lay awake nights thinking about that partner, dreaming, fantasizing, yearning, yet never quite daring... I knew this, with a sudden sureness that was beyond question. I knew this, because he was me.

He was me; and when I reached out and took his hand, I felt a sense of subliminal connection between us that resonated through me, shaking me to the core.

His fingers curled around mine, locking us together; and together we moved silently through my room and out the door.

There was a rickety covered porch sheltering the motel room door -- the rain still beat down, but not as fiercely. And still we held hands, still that weird feeling sang between us -- not passion, no; something deeper, truer. Connection. As if we were one being, separate and yet not.

"You've never had the courage to tell yours, either," he noted sadly. "Not even when he was dying."

"Nor even when he was spared," I said bleakly. And looked up at him. "Is it rejection that we fear... or acceptance?"

He shook his head slowly. Of course he didn't know the answer -- I didn't; how could he?

"I wish you didn't exist," I heard myself murmur. "I would never have wished the burden of being me on anyone else."

A soft sigh. "It's all right," he said. "Maybe we're necessary, somehow. Maybe the worlds need a Mulder in them, to keep things from getting out of hand."

I considered this for a moment. "It's not enough," I decided finally. "Though... it is kind of nice, to know that I'm not alone."

This elicited a faint smile from my otherself. "We're not alone," he said. "We have Scully. Both of 'em."

Now there was a warming thought. "That makes it all worthwhile," I said; and though my tone was sardonic, I knew that he'd know me -- know us -- well enough to read the truth beneath the jest.

Then I looked up at him, and he looked down at me, and all at once we were kissing -- not passion, but connection; completion, in some odd way that my mind couldn't comprehend, but that my body understood absolutely. He was me; and it seemed to be a universal constant that Mulders didn't have sex lives beyond the consumption of erotica and the occasional fantasy. My fantasies were all wrapped around Daniel's red hair and strong muscles... and my otherself's fantasies? I didn't have to ask.

His arms slipped around my shoulders, and mine wrapped around his waist, and we went on kissing -- no, not passion. More like we were trying to merge with each other, two severed parts of a single being struggling to become one... It wouldn't work, of course, because both of us were damaged in the same ways. Combine two broken eggshells, you don't get an unblemished egg; you get a mosaic of off-white crunchy confetti underfoot. No matter how tightly we clung to each other, the effort was doomed to failure.

But it felt nice, regardless.

Was this what it felt like to be close to a man? It had been so long that I'd forgotten... There hadn't been anyone in years, not counting Vampire Karl. Which I didn't; Daniel had been missing at the time, and that hadn't been sex, it had been a Band-Aid trying to staunch a gaping hemorrhage in my soul. It hadn't worked: Karl had been an unsuccessful Band-Aid, and the sex had been spectacularly lousy. But for that one night, I hadn't woken up sweating and screaming from the nightmares...

I would have asked my counterpart who his Vampire Karl had been, but my mouth was otherwise occupied. With my counterpart's tongue, mostly.

He tasted... like me. In a really weird way, it was like kissing myself -- or kissing someone telepathic enough to know every move I was going to make before I made it. More like masturbation than making out. Not passion... but very comfortable, as familiar as my right hand would have been but far, far better.

Not passion, but arousing nonetheless.

His hard-on pressed against me, tangible evidence of what we were both feeling... and sweatpants were certainly easy-access clothing, but were we really going to do it here? standing up on an open porch, with our partners only a few feet away behind tissue-thin walls? Apparently so; his hands moved, settling on the elastic waistband of my pants and easing them down, and there wasn't the faintest thought in my mind of resisting. But if I was going to be standing here on the porch with my bare butt hanging out for the world to see, then so was he...All I can say is, it's a good thing I exercise regularly, because between the logistical difficulties of doing it vertically and the height differential between us, it required all my limberness and dexterity to make it work. But it was worth it, oh yeah. Especially when he thrust inside me -- he was so big, and it felt so good, and there was that feeling of completion again, strong and sweet and overwhelming... It didn't last long, but it was incredible while it lasted. And even though simultaneous orgasm only ever happens in fairytales and erotica, we came together, in the same instant, in the same breath, contractions occurring in perfect rhythm, making it even more intense and perfect.

And as we clung to each other afterwards, gasping for breath and regaining our equilibrium, I realized why it had happened. Neither of us really knew how to trust anyone but ourselves... so we could trust each other; and this intimacy was safe.

I wished it had been Daniel, though. Wished that his arms were holding me, absently stroking my hair; wished that it had been his cock filling me -- wished it with a desperate fervency that brought me nearly to the point of tears -- and in the moment that I realized what I was thinking, I spat out the words before I could lose my nerve. "Tell her," I said.

He looked at me, bewildered, with the first traces of guilt forming in his eyes.

"Tell her," I repeated, feeling my voice shaking. "Don't spend the rest of your life wishing and never knowing. Don't throw away the one chance you have at something better than this loneliness! Tell her, Mulder," hearing our name echo in my ears and wondering which one of us I was really lecturing. "Tell her how you feel."

His gaze was steady, a little sad. "I will if you will," he said.

I nodded -- not agreement, really, but the sealing of a pact that the universe had already made for us. I will if you will. From the sounds of our past histories, it had been that way for all our lives already, though we'd never known it until now.

We separated then, and busied ourselves with the task of rearranging clothing, making it look as if we hadn't just fucked like rabbits right out in the open, and when we felt ready, we stepped back into the room...

...which was empty. Dana's bedsheets had been tossed aside. And the door to the connecting room, which had been open before, was now closed.

My counterpart stared at that door, and I could feel his jealousy, his guilt, his rising anger... could feel his emotions, because my own mind was awhirl with the idea of my Daniel with that woman...

He started toward the threshold; I reached out and grabbed his arm before he could open the door. "Mulder," I said, and again I was talking not to him, but to both of us, "do you really want to know?"

We looked at each other, and exchanged unhappy, sardonic smiles, again with that perfect mutual understanding.

We fell asleep in each other's arms, in the bed that had been mine: with my ear pressed against his chest, it was the rhythm of his heartbeat that lulled me to sleep, the same pounding beat that thundered in my own breast, counterpoint to the rain drumming down outside. Even our respiration was in the same pattern -- I tried to alter my own, but no matter how often I forced myself to breathe out of synch, my lungs kept coming back to match his breathing. It made sense; we were the same person, after all.

I fell asleep in his arms, feeling as if I'd found a part of me that I'd never dreamed existed...

And I woke up alone.

Gone, without a trace. No dent in the other pillow; no sign of Dana's luggage. I strode to the connecting door and flung it open, found Daniel making the same bewildered check of his surroundings. "They're gone," he said unnecessarily.

"Yeah," I murmured, trying not to feel the sense of loss that tugged at me mercilessly.

Daniel's face seemed shadowed, as if he was feeling the same sudden isolation I did... and I wondered: had he and Dana... But I didn't want to know. Maybe he'd found the same uncommon connection with her that I'd found with my own counterpart. From a logical standpoint, there was nothing wrong with that... but I didn't want to know.

"Do you have a theory?" Daniel wanted to know.

Theory? All I could think of was how good it had been, to not be alone... and how much more alone I felt, now that my otherself was gone. "Worlds collided," I murmured, "merged and then separated again. It couldn't last."

"I guess not," agreed my partner, in a vaguely melancholy tone.

We dressed, checked out and hit the road -- just another typical day in the lives of Special Agents Vixen "Spooky" Mulder and Daniel Scully, M.D. The sun was shining now, the storm a distant memory, and the bright cheery sunlit day seemed somehow obscene when compared with my dark mood...

Daniel. Sitting in the passenger seat as was usual, gazing out the windshield at the ribbon of road that stretched out ahead of us, lost in his own thoughts. Was he thinking about his counterpart? Or something else entirely?

Of course I am. Scully the female had said that, when I'd asked if she loved him. Of course. As if it were a natural law of the universe that Scullys should love Mulders; beyond debate, beyond question.

Tell her. What I'd said to my otherself, after we'd had sex. As if it were a simple thing, no big deal, like declaring a preference for Coke rather than Pepsi.

I will if you will. A challenge, a promise, a statement of fact. Or maybe a plea...

"Daniel," I said, and had to clear my throat, because it felt suddenly dry and obstructed.

"Mmm?" The usual quiet response, just a sound to let me know he was listening.

When worlds collided, how long did the effects last? When worlds were parallel, just how far did the similarities extend?

If I reached out to my partner, here... how many Mulders might be spurred to do the same?

Or was I merely echoing the actions of my otherself?

I cleared my throat again. "Something I wanna tell you," I managed to say.

"Mmm?" Again, that non-response, neither encouraging nor discouraging.

What would happen, from a dimensional point of view, if I chickened out?

What would happen, in the here and now, if I didn't?

"I'm in love with you, y'know," I said, in the most casual voice I could muster, not daring to sneak even the slightest glance sideways to see how he was taking it.

Silence, maybe just a heartbeat's worth, but enough to drag me into Hell and cast my anxious soul writhing into the flames...

"I know," he said, in a very soft voice.

My heart stood still, waiting to know whether it would shatter or sing.

Then I felt his hand wrap around mine and draw it from the steering wheel it was clutching so tightly. "Just been waiting for you to admit it," he said, in the same soft tone. And a gentle feather-touch, as his lips pressed against the back of my hand in a slow kiss.

Oh my god.

I forced myself to breathe; for a moment, I'd forgotten. Forced my eyes to watch the road, instead of closing in relief or blurring with tears. Forced myself not to react in a way that might run us into the guardrail, or cause me to pull over and start tearing his clothes off, right there on the shoulder of the Interstate. Behavior of that sort was generally frowned upon, for Federal Agents and other law enforcement personnel...

It was a close thing, but I managed.

And briefly I wondered if I'd given a gift of courage to my counterpart, or if I'd been the recipient of his leap of faith; I sent a silent prayer to whatever gods might be listening that I wasn't the only Mulder in existence who was feeling this sudden surge of hope, this almost unbearable wave of relief and joy and love.

Then I stopped thinking about my counterpart's sex life, and started thinking about my own; and then I thought, to hell with regulations, and pulled over to the side of the road anyway.

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