Progeny (4/9)
by Zephathah

Disclaimers and such in part 1.
Do not archive at Gossamer.
Missing chapters available at http://zephathah.tripod.com/

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Chapter 4
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Scully awoke to faint rays of early morning sunlight.  At this time of
the year, that meant she'd slept too long.  But she found she was
unable to begrudge herself the extra hour or two of rest.  She felt
almost whole this morning.  The pain still lay heavy in her heart, but
she knew in time it would ease.

It was a somewhat depressing thought - her life had been so tossed and
turned by one crisis after another that bearing the pain had become
almost commonplace.  But she couldn't lay down the burden, not
while the Consortium still acted with impunity, not while the Truth
was still out there.

It had become personal the moment she'd been abducted, and there was
no backing down now.

She sat up in bed and stretched her arms toward the ceiling, arching
her back and feeling the strength of purpose coursing through her
limbs.  Mulder had been right; she'd needed to take a break.  And as
always seemed to happen, things appeared much more manageable in the
morning.

She slipped out of bed and into her robe and slippers, then made her
way to the bathroom, wondering if Mulder had overslept as well.
Probably not, although she thought she would have heard him if he was
up and about.  If he was awake already, he probably had his nose back
in the reports, planning their moves for the day.

When she approached the couch where she'd left him the night before,
she found she'd been both right and wrong.  He was asleep, *and* he
had his nose buried in a report.  He must have either stayed up
working after she'd gone to bed or awakened earlier and fallen asleep
again.

An open file lay on his chest and rested against his chin.  She
carefully picked it up without waking him and placed it on the table.
When she sat next to him on the edge of the couch, he mumbled and
shifted a little, then sank back into quiet slumber.

His face was so peaceful, relaxed.  He'd been driving himself as hard
as she had; she wasn't the only one who had needed to rest for a
while.  She knew in some ways he felt her pain more sharply than she
did.  She drew a light finger along his strong, stubbled jaw.  Such a
stubborn chin he had.  Willing to stand up to anything or anyone,
including her.

Despite all the suffering the past seven years had brought her, she
couldn't bring herself to regret any of it.  Because of the X-files,
she had Mulder.  Because of the X-files, her life was more vibrant,
more real.  More painful, without a doubt, but also more intense.
After all this time with Mulder, she had come to equate 'normal' with
boring, despite her protestations to the contrary.

She sat there without noticing the time passing, lost in unthinking
contemplation of his face.  Her finger traced a line down his forehead
and nose, then rested oh-so-briefly upon his lips before sweeping up
along the edge of his face.

Mulder awoke to the feel of a light touch on his cheek.  He opened his
eyes to find his partner smiling softly down at him, and his answering
smile spread sleepily across his face.  She looked one hundred percent
better this morning, though from his own experience he knew she was
still hurting.  The difference now was she'd found a way to direct it.

"Hey," he croaked, his voice still raspy with sleep.

"Hey yourself."  She drew her hand back from his face but continued to
smile.

He struggled into a sitting position, leaning forward until they sat
with their shoulders almost touching.  His mouth was next to her
cheek, and his breath tickled her ear as he whispered, "Good morning,
Scully."

She pressed against him until they were cheek to cheek, enjoying the
rough feel of his face against hers.  A low hum escaped from her
throat as her nose nuzzled his cheekbone.  She was so glad he was
here, her partner, her best friend, the one person who was always
there to face the world with her.

Her eyelids fluttered closed as she enjoyed this rare moment of
intimacy.  Usually she was too well-protected by her armor to let
Mulder know how much she appreciated his presence, but somehow it was
easy, natural, in the early morning light, to sit with her partner,
feel his closeness, feel his warmth.  She shifted until their
foreheads rested against one another.  Their noses bumped once
lightly, then again, in a kind of slow, inadvertent Eskimo kiss.

With impromptu decision, Mulder tipped up his chin until his lips
pressed firmly against hers in a very deliberate kiss.  Her body
stilled entirely for a moment; he neither advanced nor retreated.

When he felt her lips part beneath his, he almost groaned aloud.  His
heart started pounding as he brought a hand up to pull her closer to
him.  Her hands tightened around his head and held him fast as they
gently explored each other's lips.

A shiver of electricity traveled from gut to lips, from lips to groin.
He sucked lightly on her lower lip as she tasted his upper lip with
the tip of her tongue.  Their tongues met once, briefly, before their
lips drew apart slowly, reluctantly.

They regarded each other from beneath heavy-lidded eyes, both of them
breathing a little faster than normal.

Her forefinger moved of its own volition, landing once more upon his
soft, full lips.  "Good morning to you, too, Mulder."

Scully's voice was an octave lower than usual, and its husky tone sent
his blood roaring south.  Watching her closely, he opened his lips and
drew the tip of her finger into his mouth, nipping at it lightly with
his teeth.  She leaned toward him like a nail drawn to a magnet, until
she could rescue her finger by replacing it with her lips.

This time the kiss was short and chaste, but full of promise.  When it
ended, neither pulled away, instead resting temple to temple.

"Scully?"

"Hmmm?"

"Did we just kiss?" 

She hmmmmed affirmatively.

"Just checking."

Later, while Mulder was taking what was probably a cold shower and
Scully was toasting bagels, she reflected on this thing, this kiss,
that had happened between them.  These kisses.  Two of them.  One,
two.  He kissed her, and then she kissed him.

She had kissed her partner.

Not that a couple kisses necessarily changed anything between them.
They were already closer than most married couples she knew.  But it
was... nice.  Nice to have this new way of communicating.  They'd
always said so much with just a glance or a light touch, but
increasing their vocabulary wouldn't hurt.  No, it wouldn't hurt one
bit.

********

Shortly after they arrived in their basement office, the Gunmen called
with news of a lead.  With the information they had collected on Emily
and Laurel, they'd been able to make a connection in the person of
Leonard Sczerba, aka Jack Laurence.

"I think you're going to want to take a look at this yourself, 
Mulder," Byers was saying.  "Some of the information we found isn't
making any sense to us."

"In what way?"  Mulder's face wore an intense look of concentration as
he intermittently chewed on a plastic coffee stirrer and asked
questions into the phone.

"What's the news?" Scully asked after Mulder had hung up the phone.  

Mulder tapped the stirrer against his lip as he thought about what
Byers had said.

"They aren't sure," he said finally.  "They're finding conflicting
information; I think we need to go and see what they've got.  It all
has to fit together somehow.  We just need to figure it out."  He'd
been leaning against one corner of his desk, and now he stood and
moved quickly to grab their trench coats, tossing Scully's to her.

Her hand on his arm stopped Mulder from leaving the office.

"Mulder, what have they found?" she asked implacably.  She made no
move to put on the coat she held in her arms.  She needed to be
prepared for whatever she was about to see.

"They-"  He stopped, looked away.

She softened and turned the hand on his arm into a caress.  "What is
it, Mulder?"

He looked down at her fingers, placed his own hand over hers.

"There was a lot of activity two years ago.  After..."

"After Emily."

He nodded, studying her to see how she would react.

But she just nodded to herself, her thumb rubbing idly against his
hand.

"Scully, they think there were other children."  He hated to give her
the news, but she was right; she needed to know before they went to
see the Gunmen.

He saw the shutter drop over her eyes, the stiffening of her back.
Her thumb stilled for a long moment, then resumed its slow movements.
She nodded again, stiffly.

He squeezed her hand, and she took a deep breath before facing his
gaze unflinchingly.

"What else?" she asked.

He shrugged uncomfortably.  "That's when it gets confusing.  It looks
like all the projects involving the children were stopped about a year
and a half ago."

"But Laurel was obviously still part of an ongoing experiment," she
said.

Mulder nodded, unhappy with the two pieces of information that didn't
reconcile.

She gave his arm a squeeze and withdrew her hand, pulling on her coat
and heading for the door.  "All right."

"Scully?"

"You said it yourself Mulder, we just need to figure out how it all
fits together."

This time it was he who stopped her from leaving the office.  She
turned to him impatiently, still struggling with the buttons of her
coat.

"Scully, look at me."

She arched a questioning eyebrow at him, her eyes conveying slightly
amused exasperation.

Mulder chose to take a chance and follow his instincts.  That's what
he was good at, right?  He ignored her surface countenance and spoke
instead to the pain he knew was hiding behind those bright, blue eyes.
"I'll be with you, all the way."

For a moment he thought she wasn't going to acknowledge him, that she
would shrug off his attempt to reach through her defenses, but then
the mask slipped.  She took a step toward him, into his waiting arms.

"I know, Mulder."  Her voice was muffled against his chest.  A long
sigh hummed into his chest.  "That's the only reason I can go through
with this."  She seemed almost embarrassed to admit it.

He held her tightly, smoothing her hair and pressing a kiss into the
top of her head.

After a minute she pulled back, armor in place once more.  He was
saddened by its reappearance, but understood the necessity.  Back in
dynamic duo mode, they strode from the office, ready to face the
monsters.

********

Frohike took Scully's coat with a gentleman's grace, and she gifted
him with a grateful smile in return.  "Thank you, Frohike."

"My pleasure, my dear Agent Scully."  He offered a short bow, then
laid the coat carefully on top of Mulder's, which was haphazardly
piled on a chair.

She walked over to where Langly was already showing something on the
computer to Mulder.  "Well?"

"I can't think of any other way to explain it, Scully."  Mulder tapped
a couple keys to quickly glance through the material on the screen.
"From what they've got here, it definitely looks like there was some
sort of split.  This Sczerba character went out on his own."

Langly turned to Scully and said, "We've got files from his old
company's computer system that show he was supposed to spread the
cease and desist orders to all the affiliated labs, then collect the
children."

"To what purpose?" she asked.

Langly glanced up at Mulder, who transferred his attention from the
monitor to Scully.  His face wore a carefully controlled expression as
he said, "To destroy them."

She flinched at his words, despite her effort to control the reaction.
It was no more than what they'd expected.  In the car, Mulder had
explained in more detail what the Gunmen had found:  high levels of
activity for a brief time after Emily died, then nothing.  Labs were
shut down or removed beyond the reach of the Gunmen's contacts.  She
and Mulder had gotten too close, and They had wanted to take away the
main incentive for continued investigation - her children.

Langly continued, "Looks like the Steadman accident really was an
accident, and Sczerba saw it as a chance to take Laurel, to continue
his work.  After that, he disappeared, no more contact with the rest
of the group."

Then Byers came up to them, offering Scully a file folder in the same
way Mulder had offered the information about Laurel in their office
yesterday.  "There may be another one."

Frohike followed right behind Byers, ready with the details.  "Justin
McGowan.  Kidnapped from his home around the same time Laurel was
taken from Social Services.  From what we can gather, Sczerba got to
him before the bosses got wind of his defection with Laurel.  Sczerba
may not still have him, but- Agent Scully-"  His voice rose in alarm.

She was sinking, but Mulder was there to hold her up.  A son.  She had
a son.  Two beautiful daughters, and now a son.  With Mulder's arms
around her to keep her steady and the Gunmen looking on, she opened
the file.  A laughing baby boy looked out of the photograph that lay
inside.  She had a son.  An adorable boy with sandy curls framing his
pudgy face.  A button nose, big blue eyes, and little Scully ears
lying close against his head.

In the picture, he was barely old enough to stand on his own.  He held
his arms out toward whoever was wielding the camera, his little foot
raised to take a step.  Was this the first time he'd managed to walk
without support, without falling down?  Her heart spasmed in pain at
the thought of being only a secondhand witness to Justin's first
steps.  Her son, Justin.  He had a name of his own and a face any
mother could love; this knowledge almost eclipsed the horror of an
unknown number of children meeting their deaths because she'd gotten
too close.

Abruptly she closed the file and turned her face away, swallowing
hard.  It was easier when they didn't have a name, didn't have a face.
The fleeting wonder of learning she had a son quickly faded before
painful uncertainty.  Was he still alive?  Even if he was - how long
until he died, too?  She was horrified at her own thoughts and closed
her eyes as she tried to regain control.

Deep breaths.  Inhale, exhale.  Inhale, exhale.  

She leaned back slightly into Mulder's chest, letting him support some
of her weight.  She tried to block out the Gunmen for a minute and
focus on his presence, let it comfort her, allow it to settle her
churning insides, follow it back to herself.

She felt Mulder's questing nose and lips in her hair, and she murmured
a soft reassurance to him.  She would be fine, she just needed a
moment.  He tightened his arms around her briefly in response,
ignoring the speculative glances of their friends at this un-
partnerlike behavior.

With another deep breath, Scully straightened, holding on to Mulder's
hands as she stepped out of his embrace.  She pinned the Gunmen with a
stare and asked, "What kind of information do we have on where Sczerba
is now?  Is he still in the area?  What have you found on the
warehouse?"

The three men blinked at this sudden onslaught.  Byers was the first
to recover from the abrupt turnaround.  "Uh, certainly Agent Scully.
Right over here."

********


end part 4/9 of Progeny
Missing chapters available at http://zephathah.tripod.com/

Please send feedback to zephathah@yahoo.com