Multiverse 2: Concussion

The truth was out there. A shower of black-confetti ashes, powder-soft, and the thick lingering smell of burned things...

My partner held me, strong hands fastened on my arms, but I barely felt it; the truth was lying around me in shattered pieces on the floor, and that was all that mattered.

Not even the bloody poster had survived... "You are here," proclaimed the Post-It note that my partner had stuck to it, just a couple of mornings ago, as a vague taunt; yeah, there I was, alien object in the middle of a charred ruin...

Who had it been? Krycek? Spender? The black-lunged bitch...?

"Vixen," Daniel said, deliberately using the name for shock value.

I looked up at him. He was worried about me; so what else was new? Danny was always concerned about me: my physical state, or my sanity, or my logic, or...

But then, he was my partner.

For a little while longer, at least.

Oh, God.

"Let's get out of here," he said, softly but firmly; and I let him wrap one arm around my shoulders and lead me away.

The hallway was long and cold and bleak. We moved past firefighters, security personnel, and... "Agent Mulder," said a familiar voice, and I stopped wearily and turned to face its source.

AD Skinner has, in turns, regarded me with disdain, with disbelief, with respect and even admiration -- lately, with a certain veiled protectiveness -- but I'll give him credit: he's never treated me any differently than any of his male agents. I may be "Spooky Mulder" to him, but I'm not "Spooky Ms. Mulder", and sometimes I think I'm half in love with him for that.

"This wasn't an accident," I said harshly -- felt the anger resonating in my throat, the raging fury lurking behind the thinning membrane of shock that still separated me from the world -- knew that if it broke, I'd end up venting at Skinner because he was the only one I could vent to. And knew that if I did, he'd understand. "This was deliberate, and you know it!"

"I know," he said, with what seemed to be compassion. "I also know that no investigation will ever turn up any concrete evidence of that. And so do you."

I started to reply -- sighed, instead. I was too damned tired to argue. The X-Files were dust, and there was nothing left to be said.

"They've won, haven't they?" Daniel said; inflection aside, it wasn't a question.

Skinner looked at him, began to answer... looked at me, his gaze flickering briefly downward from my face, and said instead: "Get some rest. We'll discuss this in the morning."

"This is it," I said to the ceiling. "It's over, Scully. We've lost."

Realized a second after I said it that I was speaking to someone who'd been even more damaged by our fruitless quest than I had: someone who'd survived abduction, cancer, the loss of his fertility and subsequent death of the son he'd never known he'd had, not to mention the murder of his brother... Five years, and look at all Danny had lost; all because he'd stood beside me, instead of against me. Instead of using his scientist's mind to debunk me, he'd risen to the challenge and given me the chance to prove the Truth I so believed in -- and because of that, he'd lost so much...

And all for nothing.

Daniel's eyes were still distant with lingering shock; but he came out of the fog long enough to focus on me. "Not necessarily," he argued. "We still have the copies of the files, the scans, the disks..."

"They're going to split us up," I said, hating the sound of it, the idea of it. What would it be like to work without Scully? I couldn't imagine it.

Especially not now.

I sat up -- it required some effort; Danny reached out and helped me. "We won't let it happen," he said, with determination.

"We won't have a choice," I murmured bleakly.

There was a sharp, indescribable feeling in my midsection, and I winced; Danny's arm tightened around me. "You all right?" he wanted to know, the doctor in him coming to the fore.

"I'm fine," I grumbled. "It's just the kid, kicking again," and rubbed my swollen belly disconsolately. Other women could concoct all the romantic notions they wanted; pregnancy sucked. At least, this one did -- there had been all sorts of weird abnormalities, right from the start... Not surprising, if you considered how I'd gotten pregnant in the first place.

I had both Danny's arms around me now, guiding my head to his chest -- I reminded myself that I hated being vulnerable and dependent on anyone, especially a man, even if it was my partner -- then gave up and settled against him. Everything hurt too much, and I was too miserable, and dammit, my back hurt... I let Daniel stroke my hair and listened to his heart beating, and tried not to think about anything...

And then Skinner called, just as a matter of courtesy, to let me know that Dennis Fowley had been declared dead thirteen minutes before.

I would like very much to see Fox Mulder again. There are so many questions I never got to ask him -- on top of which rests the howl of outrage: You got me pregnant, you bastard! How could you do that to yourself??? Oh, yeah, sure, to some degree that was my own damn fault, but we're both Mulder, after all, with the same pathetic lack-of-sex- life; I'd stopped taking the Pill ages ago, just as he'd gotten out of the habit of carrying a condom in his wallet, and he should have known...

But all that paled, now, before the hugest issue of all: What do we do next?

Was my counterpart still reeling from the image of our office in ashes, our dreams converted to black, sooty dust? Was he sitting on his couch, feeling the weight of his ex- lover's death as I was, facing the probable separation from his Scully, and suffering from the same burden of guilt of knowing that the agony of the second loss far outweighed the first? ...One thing for certain; he sure as hell wasn't feeling the sting of tiny feet trying to kick their way out of his uterus. Lucky bastard.

I picked at the food Danny brought me, mung bean sprouts and vine-ripened tomatoes -- good, healthy food designed to help build a healthy baby -- longing for a burger-with- everything and a side of nice, greasy fries -- and missing my counterpart more than I had in the months since our universes had crossed.

My partner had gone to see the Lone Gunmen, to ascertain the status of the files they'd been helping us stash for several years, now -- just in case something like this should happen... Danny hadn't wanted to leave me, but I'd insisted. Now, I wished I hadn't; I could have used his arms around me, making me feel -- if only for a moment -- that everything would be all right.

A sound distracted me; I looked up. The bathroom door was opening...

...no, it was still closed...

...double-vision, one image superimposed over the other, rippling, shimmering, solidifying, as a familiar figure stepped out of his own universe and into mine, still wiping his hands dry on his jeans.

Our apartments must have been pretty damn similar, because for a long moment he didn't even notice the change; "Fox," I said, and he all but jumped out of his skin. Since he was me, I could look at him and see the realization dawning: that there was someone on his couch, that the someone was me -- "Vixen?" he said, startled and vaguely pleased -- and finally, belatedly, the distortion in my formerly svelte figure.

"Oh, no," he murmured, eyes taking on the look of shock I recognized from having looked in the mirror. "Don't tell me..."

And finally, I had the chance to use the line I'd been carefully hoarding for just such an occasion. "I'd tell you to go fuck yourself," I said, "but..." and let him improvise the rest for himself.

Almost, he grinned. Then the look of lingering shock was back, and I knew -- "They burned it," I said.

"They burned it all," he confirmed grimly, and came to sit on the couch beside me.

His fingers plucked a single bean sprout from my bowl of veggies; he munched on it dubiously, then produced a bag of sunflower seeds and offered them to me -- I took a handful, grateful for my old vice. Danny had forbidden me excess salt, and I only liked the things salted... the hell with dietary restrictions, I decided; this was a special event.

"How are things with Scully?" I asked him, expecting to hear that our universes had paralleled: that they were a couple, that they'd started their journey down the road to romance at the same time that Danny and I had done the backseat boogie on the shoulder of a deserted highway...

Instead, my counterpart shrugged. "The same," he reported. "You?" obviously expecting me to repeat his words back to him.

It almost hurt to tell him. "We were married three weeks ago."

A stricken look crossed his face, and I could all but feel the lightning thought processes -- wondering how, and why, and the sudden burst of fury at the vagaries of fate, that had brought me a shot at happiness and denied him the same... "At least you don't have to worry about reassignment," he muttered.

"Want to bet?" I said.

Silence.

"We've been planning to take family leave anyway," I mused, "but this is different..."

"At least you have a reason," was his angry retort. "Something to look forward to..."

"And what's stopping you, huh?" I shot back. "Are you really that much more of a coward than I am?"

Ouch. That one hit him hard, I could tell.

"Tell her, you asshole," I said.

"I can't," he murmured miserably.

And I understood, of course.

"How'd the wedding go?" he asked, very obviously changing the subject.

I let him get away with it. "It was a fiasco," I told him. "Byers was the best man, he lost the ring; Frohike was the maid of honor, the dirty old broad..."

He started. "Your Frohike is a woman?"

I stared back at him. "Yours isn't?"

After a brief stunned silence, we began to compare notes. Alex and Lexa Krycek, our respective Skinners -- both male, thank God; picturing Skinner as a woman was even more of a mind-twister than envisioning Frohike as a man -- discussing all the myriad similarities and differences in our universes that we'd neglected the last time, because we'd been too busy screwing like weasels -- time passed, and I didn't pay much attention to the odd sensations in my gut, not until the weird feeling became outright pain, and I realized...

"What?" my counterpart asked me.

I just looked at him; and after a long moment, he caught on. "Call Danny," I said. "The autodial, the first number."

"Shouldn't we get you to a hospital?"

"Call Danny!" I screamed at him, terrified out of my wits at the realization that I was actually, no lying, going to push something the size of a large melon out of my loins, two weeks ahead of schedule...

"Everything's going fine, Vee. Just one more push..."

Exhausted, I did as I was told, felt the pain shudder through me -- felt my counterpart, holding my hand tightly, shudder in unison; God only knew what he was feeling, but he was getting some of it, that was for sure -- then the pain and the pressure lessened, and I heard the first small, soft cry...

A few minutes later, I was holding my son, marveling at the features that were too unmistakably mine for words.

"I'm going to do something unspeakably cruel," I mused, glancing up at my counterpart. "I'm going to name him Fox."

"You bitch," said my other me affectionately, and hugged me hard.

"Wait a minute," said Danny, his voice tense. "There's another one. I think."

"I don't feel anything," I reported."Push, Vee," and I did, not understanding. "What the hell...?"

The surprise and startlement in Danny's voice scared me as nothing else could have -- then I felt it suddenly, the renewed pangs of birth, but different this time; I pushed, driven by the reflexive need to get it out of there already, heard Danny mutter a brief stunned expletive... and knew.

Suddenly, I knew.

It made a weird sort of sense. Universes had collided, producing unexpected results; only natural that there should be repercussions. A child born of two dimensions... or two children...

When it was over, Danny was almost holding her, gazing at her in disbelief, trying to see -- as I was -- the tiny face and body that blurred in and out of existence, as insubstantial as a dream, like a wisp of smoke on the verge of dissolving. In another second, an instant, she might simply disappear...

"Give her to Fox!" I said, propelled by intuition, and sudden panic.

Danny caught on in the same moment as my otherself; they exchanged a look that I couldn't begin to understand, something purely male that excluded me utterly -- then Danny reached out and transferred the naked, blood- streaked, not-quite-substantial infant to my counterpart's arms.

His face was a study in disbelief and shock; he turned to me, began to say something...

...and in the space of a breath, my otherself and our daughter shimmered and disappeared.

Danny hung up the phone with a sigh. "That was Skinner. The word's come down, from 'way up high... they're closing down the X-Files."

I nodded, and wondered why I didn't feel more unhappy.

My partner -- and he would always be my partner, no matter what the FBI said -- came to sit beside me, wrapped one arm around my shoulder, and gazed down at my open blouse. "Hungry, isn't he?"

"Greedy," I disputed, as Danny reached out to reverently touch our son's fuzzy little head.

Throughout the months of my pregnancy, I'd always felt as if it was my child -- the product of myself and me, one set of genes doubled to produce a Mulder, squared. Danny had been with me, supportive and caring, the whole time -- and yet I'd felt very alone. Now, somehow, having shared the birth and the results of the birth with myself... now I felt free to share my son with my husband. Now, somehow, he was truly our child.

Fox Daniel Scully.

It bothered me, sometimes, that I didn't feel the need to mourn for his sister... twin, counterpart, otherself, whatever she had been. Surely, I should have felt the loss -- if for no other reason than the fact that another Mulder generation would grow up searching for a lost sibling...

But she was in her own world. Where she belonged. I felt that so strongly that I considered it a certainty.

"What are we going to do, Vee?" Danny wondered softly, his enfolding arm tugging me closer; and I settled into his embrace.

Do about what? Oh yeah... The X-Files were closed. So what? So we'd no longer have the Bureau's resources. Big deal; that had been more of a struggle than an aid. We still had the Files themselves, safely encrypted and secreted where no one could get at them -- and we had far more than that; we had each other.

And we had Fox Daniel: an X-File unto himself.

My partner held me close, and I held our son and winced as his gums clamped down tight on my nipple. The Truth was out there... and the Truth was right here: the truth of Love, wrapped around me, and ensconced in my arms.

Two types of Truth, very different, and very much the same.

Together, my Scully and I would get to the heart of both.

I smiled up at my husband. "We're going to raise our son, Danny," I said, "and someday soon, we're going to take him to visit his sister."

He smiled back, dubious but willing as always to follow my lead -- and I snuggled closer, and was content.

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