Divinities
(PhaHks Series)
by GenieVB








Scully knew without asking who their "company" would be. 

"We have to get those kids to safety, sir." 

"If we open fire, we'll have a war on our hands and some of them
could be caught in the crossfire." 

Their F.B.I. task force was good but not perfect. Some of the masked
invaders would get by and soon the place would be swarming with
F.B.I. and Enemy both armed with cannons trying to get the upper
hand. 

Skinner announced a strict no-fire order on the secure radio channel
that was to stay in place until the location of the children could be
determined and a suitable course of action decided. No Waco's or
Ruby Ridge fiascos would happen under Skinners command. 

Scully would do her utmost to make certain of it. the only difficultly
lay in how to bring about that end. 

She noted that their armed visitors were, strangely, also obeying
the order. 

It was Spooky. 

All that could be heard were running feet on grass and rustling
leaves through forest and brush. No firing, no shouting, no cocking
of rifle bolts reached her ears. Nothing violent sounded out across
the fields, not even shouting. Birds twittered in the branches
overhead, as if the forest were empty of all life but that which
belonged there. Peaceful park afternoon. 

It was as if the peace of the place had invaded _them_. 

Eerie. 

"Why these children?" Skinner asked her, "It's no more or less
particular than any other orphanage or Bible School or Y.M.C.A.
Summer Camp." 

"Why any of the children, sir? That's a question none of us can
answer yet." And maybe never will, she thought. 

"There's been no activity from the house since they went inside."
Skinner observed, "But they had to have heard something by now.
They have to know we're here." 

"They probably-" Scully suddenly knew. Like a cat with its nose to
a mouse hole realizing its empty. "Oh my God," She said as the
thought hit her, "There was a tunnel under the Mueller house." 

* 

Inside the neat and clean main house, twenty empty chairs
surrounded a long dining table set with plates. Bacon bits
and cold egg remnants littered the flatware. 

Scully had her team check the floors. "Look for an opening,
trap door, cellar, loose boards, any kind of tunnel." 

They found one. 

Scully was the first to go, followed by Skinner and two other
agents. "Do a search of the entire grounds and send teams
out to the fields. Get the choppers in and ground sweep. This
tunnel probably leads to the outer edge of the property. Keep
you eyes open for any unauthorized planes or helicopters." She
fired the instructions while checking her weapon. Fully loaded. 

"Where do you think they're going?" Skinner called after her as
they descended the rusted ladder into the dark. 

"I don't know. Away from here, away from any threat." 

"Who the hell are these people, Agent Scully?" 

"I'm not sure about that either, sir, but whoever they are, there's
something special about them. Why else would the Spree Killers
be after them? Why would Frank Black, former F.B.I. agent
and father have kept his daughter hidden with them for over a
decade?" 

She puffed and she ran. The tunnel was just tall enough for her
not to have to duck. Skinner, however, was running at half mast. 

"I don't know the answers, but the questions are enough, don't
you think?" 

"Do you think Mulder's nephew might be here?" 

Damn him for bringing her mind from her task and back around
to Mulder lying in the hospital. "I don't know." But she hoped not.
Not with all the guns parading around. 

* 

Outside, F.B.I. and invaders swarmed around each other like
angry bees but without a sound. 

Rifles were raised and aimed but no fingers tightened on triggers. 

Skinner kept in contact with his perimeter troops. "What's happening
out there, Morrison?" 

The tactical officer answered: 

"Nothing." 

Skinner exchanged puzzled glances with Scully. "What do you mean,
"nothing"?" 

There was a significant pause before the befuddled voice of his man
came back, 

"I mean nothing, sir. They're all out in the open, we're looking right
at each other. They've got us in their sights and we're ready to open
fire, but..." 

"But what?!" Skinner demanded. 

"No one's moving." 

* 

Scully bulleted down the tunnel with Skinner on her heel. He was
letting her take the lead in their next move. She had no idea what
that should be. 

The tunnel sloped upwards until daylight could be seen and they
emerged out upon a field of sunflowers, all in full bloom, all bursting
with ripened seeds, some so top heavy they were bowing under their
own weight, looking like worshipers standing in the courtyard of the
Vatican. 

The sight made Scully pause only seconds. 

Skinner emerged seconds after her and stood beside her, his eyes
following the path of hers to where she was held under a sight that
made him shiver involuntarily. 

The children stood in a group only yards away, their guardians with
them, all looking at them and waiting. 

One woman came forward a few steps, beyond their reach but close
enough to be heard. 

"Don't." she said. 

Scully saw the dark, wavy hair, recognized something in the woman's
eyes that was like her father's. "Sydney Black?" 

She nodded. "I know my father thinks I'm in danger, but please, he is
wrong as are you. No one is in danger here." 

"You may not know that there are men looking for you - for the children -
to possibly harm them and they've arrived. Our force will keep them
away but as a precaution you need to come with us." Skinner told her. 

Sydney Black shook her head. "Despite our request, you came anyway.
Please, it's dangerous for you to be here. You weren't invited." 

Scully stepped forward. "Ma'am, please. It is very important that you
come with us, all of you." She addressed the children, looking for a
dark haired little boy among them. 

"How can I convince you?" Sydney asked. 

Scully licked her lips, frustrated, puzzled by the woman's reaction but
curious, desperate to know in fact, willing to do almost anything in
order to understand what was happening and the meaning behind
Miss Black's warning. 

Frantic to have some good knowledge to take home to him. A parting
gift, something more than a kiss goodbye while he died. 

"Why are _you_ here, Miss Black? What brought you here, to these
children? What is it about these children?" 

The woman looked back as if at one who had gouged out her own
eyes. "You know." 

Scully's heart thumped in her chest, denying the woman's implication
but needing - _needing_! She spread her hands then let them fall,
weak with her inner hunger, her intellect flat-lining because all of
this was so beyond her. She was a creature in a cage being stared at
and startled by ones who had seen life beyond the bars and knew
different. 

"Please. I,..._please_...I must know." Everything in her life depended
upon it - this one truth. She felt if she got an answer to this, to where
the children came from and what they were, everything else would
fall into place. It would all make sense, somehow, all of it: Her father,
her cancer, Melissa, her daughter Emily, dead these ten years. 

Even what was happening to Mulder. Just one answer. 

_One_! 

"Is there a little boy here named Caleb?" Scully asked, hoping that if
the woman wasn't willing to divulge anything about the flock, perhaps
she would send out a message regarding a single member. One tiny
lamb of truth. 

"There was. He's gone now. He choose to leave and go to his father
alone." 

"Where did they go?" 

The woman only shook her head sadly. "You do not understand. I don't
think you were meant to, Miss Scully." 

Scully was about to ask how the woman knew her name when Skinner's
radio crackled and Morrison's voice shot out, ending their strange
meeting. 

(During it all, Skinner had remained silent as if he hadn't been invited to
witness their odd religious rendezvous. Scully had actually forgotten that
he was present): 

"Sir! There's something happening...a storm. Hail like knives - we don't
know where it came from - we can't see-"... 

Then, over the same radio, after seconds that seemed like hours, 

"Holy God!" 

* 

"What's happening, Morrison?" Skinner managed to speak the single
question before they were hit with what Morrison and his men had
already seen. 

Wind that felt like daggers hit them and, as though an invisible hand
had reached out to slap them, they were knocked to the ground. 

Scully saw Skinner go down and searched for the children and Sydney,
only to see a building sized dust cloud whipping where they used to be.
Light was there too. 

Scully had a memory flash then, of herself standing on a bridge at night
and lights that blinded sweeping across her field of vision, above her,
sharp and penetrating her soul. Intelligent light, it seemed, eating a
woman. She remembered men without faces - alien men, demon men -
who came with a burning touch, incinerating those left behind. She
recalled a lightening blue sky and the black chariots overhead and all
of it sending her logical and reasoning mind spinning out of control.
Spiraling into a torturing pit of hell fire things unrecognizable and
misunderstood, things that made no sense but somehow, for someone,
must make all the sense needed to understand them. 

Scully wanted to understand now, but she could not open her eyes long
enough to see through the storm of dust and of sunflowers suddenly air
born or beyond the neutron star that had without warning appeared and
pulsed, burning their eyes and preventing any from seeing anything more. 

Scully felt suddenly like a wayward child and that she, in her faith
abandoned, had made a pilgrimage to the site of Fatima's Holy Vison,
hoping for the revelation of the third prophesy, to have it then appear
to her, but only to be blinded by it. 

If it's unveiling was taking place before her now, in this ridiculous field
of sunflowers, with these strangers watching under their God's approval,
for her, a blasphemer, it's fantastic light of truth was too bright to see by. 

Scully was in darkness. Yet her mind saw things from her past as if they
were occurring again there in the sunflowers, one, the most memorable,
was the time when she was a child of seven sitting in Sister Ruth's class,
sister Ruth scraping out her symbols on the chalk board, stern but loving
to the thirty small children whose secular and spiritual life had been
placed under her care. A responsibility she had not taken lightly: 

"Today's topic is The Veil of Moses..." 

Sister's voice reached out to them one by one: 

"The veil of Moses, the light beautiful but terrifying. The understanding,
only there for those who would open their figurative eyes wide enough
to see it." 

Scully lay on the ground as her retinas were heated unbearably, afraid
now, to really know the truth of what it was she was seeing. 

She felt the tingle of where her implant had been and where the chip
that saved her had been placed by men and laughed, one of hysteria
and confusion and the need to believe and hold faith battling with her
want for irrefutable proof to back them up. 

Scully did not want to go as Cassandra Spender had gone. She did not
want to die because she did not know where Cassandra was. Or her
father, Emily or anyone else. 

Once, she thought she knew. 

Now, without her to guide him there in his disbelief, where was Mulder
to go? She couldn't bear the thought of him ending by becoming a few
ounces of gritty dust, useless but for encouragement of new weeds. As
many weeds pushed through as daisies. Mulder was worth more than
that, no matter what he did or did not believe for sure. Christian, Muslim,
Jew, or Newtonian, he had earned something better. 

Mulder believed in visitors. She used to believe in God. 

Even here, with something like the star of David shining brilliantly
under skies that had darkened in contrast, it was not enough. Even
this was not enough evidence for her to accept which was truth and
which was lie. 

She started crying, Scully resolved that she would never have
resolution. No answers. The scientist in her rebelled, the child under
God in her felt shame at her lack of trust. 

Why should she have to choose?



Scully heared in her waking dream: 

//"hold me hand, sweetheart." 

She saw her mother, looking down at her from above. 

"How do I know Grandma is in heaven if I can't see her?" She as a
tiny girl whispered, holding her mothers hand tight in the big house
filled with adults all talking so quietly. 

Her mother's sad eyes smiled for her little one. "You must have
faith, Dana. Like we have faith that Daddy is coming home soon
from the sea because he said he would. God says Grandma is in
heaven. You must have faith that what God says will come true
too."//



She'd believed but she was a child then and the day came when
her faith had been first tested: her father died on Christmas Eve'.
After that, her doubts grew over the years in the form of her sister
and her daughter and Mulder until she could no longer find any
reason to enter a Church. 

"We always learned that the healing gifts would be done away with,
Dana." Her mother had told her when Mulder was in straps and under
drugs and screaming, begging her to let him be released from his pain
in mind as well as body. That was back at Greenlawn, back before he
really got sick, way back when where hope existed.



The Sister's had never said anything about miracles being removed
though. 

Was a miracle happening here? 

Scully opened her eyes. "I do believe." She whispered. "I believe." 

But the field before her was empty. 

* 

Skinner appeared above her and she took his extended arm. "The
children disappeared." 

Scully didn't answer him. what did she have to report after all?
"Where did they go?" Asked the question despite her heart that gave
her the choices and then prodded her with: "Where is your faith saying
they went?" 

"They must have had helicopters standing by." She heard Skinner
say and then he added a comment about the freak storm. 

"Yes." She responded. 

By the time Skinner and she returned to the main house, Skinner's
men had several dozen black masked figures in handcuffs with
his own men surrounding them, automatic weapons at the ready. 

One immobilized captive drew special notice. 

He was sitting on the ground, doubled over, hands cuffed behind him
and muttering. 

Skinner asked Morrison about the man's odd behavior. 

"I don't know, sir, he's been mumbling like that ever since the storm
hit. I can't make it out." 

Skinner walked over and pulled the mask from the man's head. 

"Krycek." 

Skinner crouched down and lifted the man's head up by his chin.
Krycek, his one time agent and then all around lying double crossing
killer, did not resist or even seem to acknowledge the touch. 

"If it isn't the hair of the dog that bit us. Have you got something
to share, Krycek?" 

Krycek didn't even blink. 

"You'd better say it." Skinner encouraged the to all appearances near
vegetative man, and then noticed something about his face . "Scully.
Look at his eyes." 

He stood, making room for Scully to lean closer. 

Krycek's green eyes were smoked over with cataracts. "My God." She
said, passing her hand before his blank gaze that didn't flinch. "He's
blind." 

Krycek heard, it seemed, and spoke: 

"But we were right. They were the ones, but, but... we were
supposed to save them.... only,...only,... we were wrong about...
about.... ageless,..huge,...ashlez-z-z.." 

Krycek's words were nearly incomprehensible and growing fainter.
Scully leaned in to hear more if there was anything more to gather.
She seriously wondered if the man had gone insane. But by what or
who she couldn't guess. 

As if reading her thoughts, Skinner asked, "Is he crazy?" 

She looked at the opaque irises of Mulder's former partner and Cancer
Man's former muscle. "I think the things he has done would drive any
normal man crazy." A suffering in his own mind, she thought. A mind
gone mad. A mind that had decided the fate of many with a twist of a
lip. The punishment was fitting. 

Krycek continued to mumble and Scully put her ear within inches of
his mouth. 

"Only one with any conscience left, Agent Scully." Skinner said, then
saw her stiffen and straighten up as if what she heard had bared fangs
and snapped at her. 

"Sir?" 

Skinner heard something in her voice. She was asking him for
a confirmation of some kind, but he did not know what of.
She was not looking at him, just at Krycek who sat still and
wide-eyed. 

"Sir, what did you see during the storm?" 

"You were there. I told you. Helicopters." 

Scully nodded, and looked over at Morrison. "And you?" 

Morrison, big gun in hand, seemed puzzled at the question. "All we
saw was the storm, but we heard them." 

"You don't remember calling us on the radio or what you saw that
made you call us?" Scully asked again and yet nodding, as though
the information coming was already expected, and when it arrived... 

"Beg 'pardon, Ma'am?" 

...as if it had just been delivered right on schedule. 

Skinner gave her a penetrating look. "Why, Agent Scully? What did
he see?" Nodding to the stricken Krycek huddled in the dirt. 

She took a deep breath and answered with a no nonsense voice that
said take it or leave it.


"He claims he saw Angels, sir. The Army of Heaven." 

She envied him.

*******

DIVINITIES, Chapter 4


By the force of her accelerated forward motion, the double doors
swung wide. Scully pushed through with both fists clenched,
and broke into a trot when she saw her mother sitting against
the wall in the Emergency Ward, Intensive Care just another
double door away where he most likely would now be. 

It had taken her almost two hours to arrive. An hour and
forty minutes on the freeway. Twenty sitting at lights that
refused to turn. 

"Mom?" 

Margarete Scully rose when her daughter approached. "Bill found
him, Dana." 

Scully stopped before the anxious eyes of her mother and then
glanced toward the doors to ICU "What happened?" 

Margarete spoke quickly, breathlessly, to explain to her daughter
who's eyes searched her own for explanation and reassurance
that he was not yet dead. For hope, too, that this was just another
setback, and that soon he could go home. A few short hours from
then in fact. 

"Bill found him, throwing up blood in the bathroom. We just stepped
out to the store, both of us, just for a minute. We had to get groceries,
the fridge was going empty, my car is at the mechanics, Bill had to
drive me-" Margarete stopped when Scully looked at her in horror.
"It was just a half hour, Dana, we didn't think - how could anything
happen in just thirty minutes? He was sleeping, everything was okay.
Dana, I'm sorry, honey, I'm so sorry. Bill did everything he could-" 

Her mother's last sentence sounded like a finality of some kind,
that doing everything had resulted in futility, as though - 

"Where is he?!" 

Margarete's saddened face turned to her right. "In ICU" 

Scully turned away, pushed passed her mother and her brother Bill,
who had been seated only two chairs away yet invisible against her
own terrifying thoughts. Images blasted at her at the speed of light;
Mulder in an empty house curled on his side; her partner throwing
up his life-force all over her mothers' yellow tile; Fox crying and
dying with his head between the sink and the toilet. 

Scully found him lying flat, white and still, on an ICU bed with the side
rails up. After consulting with the resident surgeon who had treated
him and the nurse who had been checking his monitors, she looked
him over herself, paying special attention to the bandage covering the
newest scar on his abdomen. 

"It was a quick operation." The surgeon told her, when she gently
replaced the sheet. "Only a two inch scar. We had to cauterize three
bleeding vessels in his stomach and suture two others. We think they'll
hold but, as you know, his tissues...". 

She knew. 

"...There were three small gastric-aneurisms that had burst. He lost a
lot of blood, but we caught it in time. His mother brought him in?" 

The doctor looked at her for confirmation. The last statement had
sounded like guesswork on his part, an assumption that the dark
haired woman named Margaret waiting out in the hall was his frantic
mother. 

"No - _yes_." Scully shook her head then nodded once. "His mom." 

The doctor waited. 

She asked, "I'd like to stay with him for a while. Can we pull the
curtain?" 

He gestured for the nurse to comply.



Scully sat and watched. It was a vigilance of hope where there
was none. A form of self-comfort where there was no other to
be had. She touched his fingers, the back of his pale hand,
taped where an IV, one of several, had been inserted into his
hardening veins. Scully wondered how many pokes it had taken
before success. 

"It's cold in here." She stated to Mulder who was still unconscious
and unhearing from the anesthetic, and to anyone within earshot
who had reason to be in the ICU. Wistfully, she hoped one of the
hearers might be God, but was no longer counting on it. 

In reality the coldness dwelled inside her. She was chilled with the
thought of him dying, that it was finally here, that it had arrived much
too soon for acceptance to even begin, that it had come too violently
and painfully and that now she was required by on-lookers and
listening-in-er's to, (as a professional), expect and, (as a level headed
partner), accept that nothing could be done. 

She didn't think Cancer Man would show up offering her a deal and
nice little vial with a chip init. 

Scully was frozen by helplessness. Iced over with anger. Buried in
a white, blinding grief that, she was sure, for the rest of her life
would never ease. 

Scully found a vacant bathroom in an unoccupied private room where
she pressed her forehead against the cool wall, and cried and moaned
until her throat ached. 

She thought she had known grief. Emily and her short life, her tiny little
body wracked with pain, her face twisted in hurt. She remembered it
all; the sounds, the feelings, how everything had seemed unreal. Perhaps,
back then, she'd been stronger or maybe she'd learned to swallow the
anguish that comes along with the outrage any new mother has at losing
a child. 

But this. 

This was the tearing away of half of herself. This was the brutal murder
of the counterpart, the future, the hope of her tomorrow. 

More than a decade of nurturing and learning to love more deeply with
each passing day was about to be snuffed out. His wick sputtered now.
Soon it would become blackened and cold, the tiny wisp of smoke rising
in mockery to his curled up life that once was, and that could have been. 

She made her way to the chapel where she lit candle after candle for
him. Until they were all burning bright and high. Maybe God would see
one and grant a reprieve. Maybe their heat would spark some renewed
desire for living in her. 

Would this kill her? She honestly did not know. 

* 

"Mom?" 

Margarete Scully looked up at her daughter and Scully saw that
it was not only Mulder who had arrived at the hospital that evening with
injuries. Her mother's eyes were red and puffy. "I'm sorry, Mom. I know you
both did the best you could. No one, none of us, could know in advance
that this would happen, or that it would start this soon." 

She took her mother's hand and sat beside her. "I'm sorry for the way
I reacted." 

"You don't have to be. " Both women fell silent. 

"Dana?" 

Skinner stood over her, his face grim and with the fidgety look of one
intruding. "I was called. The, uh, Mulder's medical status...they have to
call the Bureau now, in the event of...anything like this." He stumbled
over words meant to convey an apology for being there at such a
deeply personal time. He did not feel like it was his acceptable place. 

Scully briefly took his hand that was at his side, twitching, not at
rest. "I'm glad you're here." And he immediately relaxed, sitting. 

"What's the word?" He asked. 

"Stable for the time being." Scully told him. "But, other than that,..." 

She hadn't been told much at that point. Mulder's blood pressure had
fallen which was, because of the conditions of his sickness, in actuality
good. But his blood volume, needed for oxygenating organs and other
tissues, was depleted as a result, which was very bad. 

"It's win-lose." Scully added. "I don't think there is any more to be done.
I think this is the beginning of the end." 

That final word, spoken aloud for the first time, caused her tiny sphere
of hope to crack and fall away like pieces of a fragile goblet. She could
feel it striking somewhere beyond her corporeal senses, dashed down
by the flesh less hand of a specter. 

Scully rose and left the small group, walking away down the corridor
and out the front doors onto the lawn of the hospital. Out and away
until she couldn't hear the voices of the doctors, the ringing phones
or hissing breathing apparatus. 

She walked until the last reminders of her broken dreams receded.
There was the shape of peace, if not peace itself, in the silence. 

In that quiet Scully searched for sound and found her heart still beating. 

She searched for visions and found the thousands of stars visible to her
eye. Many, she knew, were already dead, their light long gone
in cataclysms eons past. 

Yet they shone above her. 

They said: We Live in your present. In you. 

"Oh, God." Whispered, audible only to her and if God also heard, she
doubted if he would act to save him when even those lights in
the night sky above her had been allowed to die. 

She sobbed. "Mulder." Saying it for herself. Just one word and it would
not be enough for God she thought. 

Spoken anyway, even if only the trees and grass had ears to listen, if
only the insects lent their attention, she said it. "I love you." 

*** 

"Hey." She said to him, when his eyes opened at last. 

"Hey." His mouth made the words but no sound came out. 

Scully nodded, understanding his forced silence. 

Her partner's throat had been anaesthetized via a spray which the
nurse would carry in every hour or so, apologizing for the interruption.
She would have him tilt his head back and open his mouth, cautiously
insert the long nozzle and spray twice. His throat was both raw and
coated with a sticky antiseptic ointment. 

"Sounds like you had an adventure." Scully said. 

He smiled a bit, his lips smirked. Shrugged helplessly in his own
apology and as an attempt to ease her worry. She knew the lines
in her forehead were visible and told him all he needed to know. 

Mulder gestured for a pen and paper which Scully located on a tray
next to his headboard. 

"Where do we go from here?" He wrote. 

Indeed, Scully thought. In a moment, she wrote something back
and showed it to him. He raised his eyebrows at her. She was leaving
it up to him. His life. His choice entirely now. 

"Where do you want to go?" She had written. 

He answered: 

"I want to find Caleb when I'm stable enough to leave here." 

Scully nodded and wrote: "In the meantime, I'll keep checking with
the guys to see if they've uncovered any leads." 

Mulder nodded, thanking her. He wrote: 

"I'm sorry." 

Scully read the words and almost lost her control once more. She'd
grappled with herself for twenty minutes out on the hospital grounds
and her carefully tucked into place emotional state threatened to
unfold and fly in the quiet storm behind his eyes. Even now, he
struggles for me, she realized. Even now, he says he is sorry for his
pain that hurts me. 

"No reason to be." She scribbled the words quickly. "I understand. I
would have done anything for Emily." 

He read and knew her meaning. Samantha was dead, the son still
lived. 

Mulder had strength enough to take Scully's hand and squeeze it.
His eyes spoke the rest. They said to her what she had revealed to
the living world of the gardens outside. 

It would serve very well as an answer of a kind. One answer. One
very good resolution gleaned from so many years of effort and failures,
pain and loss. It was an ending. Perhaps, in some way, a good one. 

"Why so little?" She asked. 

**
Mulder came home and they continued their search for
Caleb. Scully went to work each day and then came home. 

Days if they were lucky, Doctor Watts had said. 

Entering the house silently because it was so late, Scully
closed the door and turned the deadbolt silently, sinking
into the cushions of the couch. Just a moments rest before
walking up those stairs to his room and having to confront
her worst fears. 

Mulder was dying with each minute that passed but she did not
move. Each step up the stairs, she thought would only compound
the terror in her heart. She felt like a coward, unable to face him
because she could not bear to see his pain or hers that would
multiply a thousand fold by virtue of seeing it. 

She could hear Bill rustling around in the kitchen. 

"Dana?" 

"I'm here." 

"There's coffee here." 

She nodded to herself. It was like Bill to offer her something -
food, drink - when he could think of no way to help her. When
all the words had been said and he felt helpless. He wanted to
fix things for her. He was his father's son and she did love him
for it. 

"No thanks, I'm fine. How's Mulder?" 

"Sleeping." 

"I'll just pop in and check on him before I go to bed." She
said as her brother entered the living room with a mug. 

"He's _okay_." 

Scully turned her head toward him. Just by rolling her neck, she
could see eye to eye with her older brother who wanted to, in his
own gruff way, protect her from all the hurt, like when they were
kids. 

"No, Bill, he's not. Mulder's going to die and I have to face that." 

He looked at his coffee as if it had suddenly become terribly
fascinating. Nodded. 

She took his hand. "Thank you for helping me with him. It means
a lot to me, you being here. It takes a lot of the pressure off Mom." 

He nodded again. "Look, Dana, I'm not a very open person but
you're my sister. If you need help, just ask." 

"Thanks." 

He stood, as if needing to put some distance between himself and
the emotions circling them. "I'm going to go freshen this up. Sure
you don't want any?" 

Smiling slightly, she shook her head. 

Her cellular phone called to her. 

* 

>From the kitchen Bill heard a ruckus and returned to the living
room, confronting his sister halfway down the stairs. She was
supporting a grey-faced Mulder by the waist, half carrying him
down, one step at a time. The man was dressed in jeans and
loose fitting white cotton shirt but it didn't hide the shadows of
his rib bones that could be seen through the thin fabric. 

"Dana, what the-?" 

"Never mind, just help me." 

She pulled Mulder's right arm over her shoulders and pulled his
waist more firmly to her side, but he could barely put one foot in
front of the other. 

"Where are you going? He can hardly walk, Dana." 

"Listen to your sister, Bill." Mulder joked lightly who received
only a frown from his partner's stern sibling. But Bill took
Mulder's other arm and pulled it over his own wide shoulders,
releasing Scully from the burden and practically carrying Mulder
down the stairs with her bringing up the rear. 

"Where the hell are we going?" Bill asked as she opened the front
door. 

Scully said nothing, passing through the door first and leading the
way out to her car, opening its passenger door. 

Bill huffed a bit, helping ease Mulder into a more or less seated
position in the front seat of her car. 

Closing the door, he turned to her, "I care about you, and whatever
stunt you're pulling-" 

"We're not kids anymore, Bill-" She began, ready to spit words back
and forth with him, but instead stopped, dropping her eyes. "Look,
Bill, the Gunmen, some friends of ours, think they may have located
Mulder's nephew, his sisters son." 

"And we're going to find him? Is that was this is?" 

"Yes. But just Mulder and myself." She answered firmly, daring any
protest. 

Bill looked at her tired face, eyes circled in black. He held out his hand.
"Keys." 

She stared. "No." 

"Keys! If you're going on this wild goose chase, especially with him
half dead, I'm driving. I'm coming along to see you at least get home
safely." 

Scully looked at his hand, palm up, ready to help when she had least
expected it. "Bill,..you don't have to do this." 

"Shut up, Dana. Stop telling me what you think I should do. Give
me the dignity of helping my own sister when she's in trouble. God
knows you left little enough room in your life for me to even make
the offer all these years." 

He was right, she thought as she felt little heart pangs. He was
so right. She had cut him off from her feelings, from her need. She
hadn't needed him, she thought. But, in reality, she'd only been
willing to accept the good from him, the support she wanted,
his agreement over her choice of life-mate, his approval of her
decision to stay with Mulder. But Bill had a right to his opinion,
even if his opinion had altered only recently. He'd become almost
tolerant of Mulder lately, almost kind. 

And Bill wanted to help her, his sister, now, in her darkest hour.
And in Mulder's. 

She put the keys in his hand. "Thank you." 

***** 

Scully sat behind her brother as he drove. It was the best place to
be. She could keep an eye on Mulder. 

"Where are we going from here?" Bill asked as he came to the
T intersection of Eighty-Five. 

"South." Scully said, glancing at Mulder who had drifted off. She
hoped he'd sleep for the entire trip. 

"What's our final destination?" Bill asked again, sourly. "We'll need
gas if this is far." 

"We're going to Vancouver, Tennessee. A place near there. A farm." 

"Tennessee?! Are you nuts?" His voice rose a few decibels but their
ill passenger was far too deeply asleep to be awakened by it. 

"I'm deadly serious. and if you're having a change of heart about
coming along, now's the time." In her overnight bag, along with
bottles of pills and sundry to treat Mulder's symptoms, in a side
zippered pocket, she had a hand drawn map of the location of a
farm. On that farm, if the gunmen were correct, was Caleb Mueller. 

"I HAVEN'T changed my mind!" He growled, "This is just...Mulder
didn't tell me about his nephew." 

Scully looked up from her perusal of the map. "Since when do you
know anything about it- ?" 

"We've been talking." 

"You're kidding? You and Mulder, talking? You hate Mulder, Bill, you
always have." 

"I still do. Who's farm?" 

"I don't know. We're acting on a tip our friends received. But it's the
best one we've had yet." 

"Just a tip? We'll be driving all night! Suppose it turns out to be wrong?" 

"Then it's wrong." She offered no further comment, settling back into
her seat, satisfied that Mulder was deep asleep. Rest was good for him. 

***
Mulder woke beside him and right away Bill's nerves
went into overdrive. On edge, ready to fray, tight
as piano wire, all those, when he heard Mulder's
usual wheezing grow louder as his body rose from
the relatively easy rest of slumber to the agitations
of the waking state. 

"Dana. We should go back, he's not breathing well." 

"Keep going, Scully," Mulder, now fully awake, countered.
"I'm still okay. Keep going, don't stop." 

She wouldn't hear of it and Bill's further pleas fell on
deaf ears. 

When they arrived at the farm, Scully felt historical irony
that it turned out to be a corn plantation, with acres and hills
of the stuff that could be seen for miles. 

"This is where Caleb is." Mulder said, as if it were fact and not
that they had driven a day on a tip from an unknown and
highly dubious source. He had to take a breath after every
second or third word. Even talking was fast becoming
an impossibility. 

Scully stopped the car. "Wait here." She spoke to both of them,
to Bill to stop his interference before it began, and to Mulder
so that he should rest through this preliminary contact. If a door
knock produced nothing, then they would discuss the next step,
whatever that would be. 

Scully had her badge and gun ready but it was token preparations.
If they wished her dead, they could shoot her through a window.
If they didn't want to speak to her, they would not come to the door. 

She was unsurprised when no one answered. 

"Dana!" 

When she looked behind her, Bill was standing outside the driver's
door, looking, not at her, but at something beyond her field of vision,
at something happening at the side of the house. 

"Is that your guy?" He asked, trying to be heard over wind that had
whipped up, sending dirt and twigs flying all around them. 

She looked and, yes, it was the same boy, being lead away by the
same man they had first discovered and who had eluded them. 

When she stepped off the porch to follow, a flash of white
lit up the blackening clouds followed by an enormous thunderclap. 

"That was a close one!" Bill called to her. 

In only a moment, the wind had gone from stiff and incessant to
wild and angry, allowing no peace for even the thickest trees in
the driveway. 

"We'll never find them in that field or this storm!" She called and
ran back to the car, on the way, the rain began. Whipped sprinkles
turned to painful buckets in seconds. 


She and Bill both retreated to the safety of the vehicle. 

Mulder was awake. "Who was that?" 

Scully couldn't lie to him but she was hesitant. "Mulder, we'll
never find them in that field. It's almost impossible to see
through the storm already." 

He lifted his passenger side door handle. "I'm going after him.
If Caleb's here, I have to find him, Scully! 

"Mulder-" 

But he ignored her and stepped out of the car, swaying and nearly
falling over in the now gale force tempest. 

Scully followed him. "Bill. Stay calm." She barked out the order as if
he were a cadet on his first sailboat, and got out of the car. 

"Mulder!" She faced him, holding onto his upper arm, gripping for life.
His life. "This is crazy, you can't possible catch them. _I_ couldn't do
it in this. We have to send for help!" 

Mulder, his limbs protesting mightily over his sudden movement
from the car, warned him with shooting pains. His chest pumped
frantically, trying to get the vital oxygen to his muscles and brain.
He ignored it all. 

"That will be too late, Scully, and you know it!" He faced her,
inches away to be heard, both above the storm and through
her cautions. 

"Mulder, please!" She pulled a little. Despite her promise to help
him find Caleb, it seemed like insanity, now, standing out while
the sky fell turning the ground to mud, the wind sending the rain
sideways now, cutting like icy little needles. 

He pulled away. "No, Scully! This is my last chance to know anything!
It's may not be the answer I wanted but at least it's _an_ answer!
There'll never be time to find any other. Please!" His eyes begged her,
if not for her help, then her non-interference. "_Please_, Scully!" 

She stared back with wide, frightened eyes, knowing this insane,
reckless moment might be their very last together, their words said
now the last spoken. And there was no time to choose the right ones. 

"GO!" She yelled above the voice of the thunder, rendering
the word from a body shaking but full of power. There was left
no room for a sob. Regret or second thought were strangers
discarded years ago. 

Mulder kissed her, quick and fast, once, on the mouth and left
her there, half walking, half jogging to the edge of the stalks,
not looking back. 

She moved to follow, but Bill had also climbed out and
grabbed her arm from behind. 

"Dana, what are you doing? This is insane!" 

"No! Bill." When he tried to restrain her, prevent her from
following Mulder out into what was turning out to be
a furious thunderstorm. Already the gale had made it difficult
to walk. 

"No." Scully wrenched her hand from her well meaning brother,
and shielded her face against the whipping, stinging rain pelting
her skin like pebbles. 

Bill did not understand. He had never faced anything like what
she had. Like the things Mulder and her had stared at, wide-eyed,
shocked to their souls. Bill Scully was her brother, she loved him,
but he had no insight here and so no opinion she cared to hear. 

Facing him, "I will not let Mulder die in a hospital bed with tubes
sticking out of him and a machine doing his breathing. Don't
you understand?" She had to yell to be heard over the sound
of the storm and across the five feet of metal car roof. He stood
with his back to the wind, but his head turned to her, his
eyes wide with incredulity at her risk, at where there were
and what they were doing while her partner ran through
a cornfield in the middle of a rain storm - no - probably
fallen already, maybe even already dead. 

"Dana, he's dying! Can't you see that?!" 

"YES! And if it's the last thing I do, on my life he will do it
where he wants to!" 

"You're a doctor!" 

"I'm an investigative agent first, and this is our last case. HIS!
I want you to use the cellular call for help but that's it. Do NOT
interfere." 

She wrapped her jacket around her, grabbed her gun and,
shoving it in her pocket, ran after Mulder. 

Bill Scully soon lost sight of her between the flattening corn
stalks and the rain falling all around him that was rapidly turning
the dusty driveway into a quagmire. It was raining so hard, the
water was bouncing off the ground and hitting his shins. 

He got back into the car and put a call through to the local
law enforcement. Even with the wipers on High, he couldn't
see through the windshield for more than a second with each
swipe. The house was gone, just a white blur, the corn mere
spindly stick men, wildly waving their skinny arms in accord
with the will of nature. 

* 

Scully ran and, after a moment of panic, caught up to him.
Then it was a struggle to keep him in sight. Mulder was using
every last scrap of strength in him, she knew, to keep up the pace
he had set and she was hard put not to fall behind.
But at least she was ready to assist if he fell or if it grew to be
too much for him and even his extraordinary will faltered under
the monster disease eating him alive, beating him back more
and more with every step. 

Until she fell. Hard. Flat on her face. 

"Goddamn it!" She cursed aloud. 

By the time she righted herself, Mulder was nowhere to be seen. 

"Mulder!" Terror passed into her. "M-U-U-U-L-D-E-R!" The rain had
worsened and if he was still close by, he was invisible in the
downpour. 

"Oh my God." 

Scully ran ahead, fast, with no turns, praying he had not deviated
from the course they had first set which was an unbroken straight
line toward the far edge of the field, where could be seen huge
maples, heavy with leaves. 

"Oh, God, please..." She ran. 

** 

"Ca-a-l--e-b!" Mulder yelled when he thought he saw
a form moving just ahead, just out of range of visual acuity,
just beyond the edge of real sight. 

He fell, not for the first time. his suit was thick with mud.
Waterlogged shoes added to his weight and slowed him down.
"Caleb! Stop! I'm her brother!" 

Pain shot through his chest and he gasped with it, balling fists
to his breast ti alleviate it. It was crippling and he screamed
in frustration: 

"C-A-L-E-B!! Please!! PLEASE STOP! Samantha, your mother,
was my sister- AHH-!" 

He fell to his side from the pain. Waves and waves of it and,
when he coughed, blood slicked his bone-chilled fingers. He
could no longer yell. Could not draw enough breath to even sit
up. 

The end. 

This was his end and he had accomplished nothing. Sister, father,
mother, career, health, life, all - in that order - done. Finished.
Over. 

And not only his. Scully's sister, career, even her failed marriage,
he suspected, had been because of him and his obsessions that he
had passed on to her. His badge of dishonor. His torch of defeat. 

She had his bug now. Psychosis by osmosis. 

It brought a tiny chuckle to his lips. 

"I'm dying in a corn field in the rain," He laughed at the
picture they would come upon; him on his side in a fetal
position as if he'd curled up for a nap. 

"...looking for a kid that might or might not be my sister's
mystery child who might or might not be a product of
selective alien abduction and genetic manipulation." 

He gasped between every few words. He was confessing his
sins maybe, he thought, in a moment of death bed religious
hysteria. He didn't think God was listening though. Whoever
or whatever might be would, however, be getting a good laugh. 

"I'm dying. I'm lying here dying and this is my best shirt too." 

Laughed louder because he was talking to himself. "I
think there's a hole in my shorts." 

Maybe he really was just a lunatic and he'd managed to
fool them all these years and himself too. Maybe he was
that good of an actor! 

"Oh, Christ, I'm insane, I'm insane..." 

His laughing subsided and he rolled over onto his back, letting
the rain strike him full in the face, letting it wash away the
muck from his skin, the leaves and twigs from his hair. 

Maybe it was the one merciful act God would grant him. He'd
go to his grave clean behind his ears at least. 

For minutes he lay there, until the feeling of crazed hopelessness
washed away and he was left empty. 

A strange, unexpected calm settled over him. 

//Probably your brain shutting down.// The little devil dancing on
his shoulder whispered. 

Mulder smiled. Whatever. 

The last thing he saw before he closed his eyes was a vision
of Scully looking down on him and smiling her warm, sweet,
seldom offered smile. 

If it was a hint to him that he was destined for heaven, then
heaven was beautiful. 

"All aboard." He whispered. 

* 

"Fox." 

The first thing he saw when he awoke seconds later - it had
to be seconds, he was still on his back in the rain in a corn
field - was a shadow standing to his right. A small, dark
human form stood there looking at him. 

He turned his head. 

"Caleb?" And sat up. 

The small figure, the little flesh and blood boy, crooked
his finger at him with a tease in his eyes. 

Mulder sat up. There was still pain but it was manageable. 

Caleb nodded and, encouraging him to follow, started walking
backwards through the bent corn stalks. 

Mulder got to his knees and then staggered to his feet, but it
was hard. He was stiff and sore and the pain in his chest was
back though not as bad as before. Blood spatters trailed down
the front of his shirt. 

"Caleb, stop, I...I can't." 

"Yes, you can." The child answered, nodding and moving faster,
backwards, backwards until Mulder was afraid that if he didn't
move, he would lose him again. 

He followed. 

Caleb turned and walked away, faster. Mulder followed, tried to
hurry but Caleb wasn't waiting. 

The harder Mulder pushed himself, the faster Caleb went. 

Soon, Mulder was dropping behind. "Ca-," He gasped. Coughed.
"Caleb, wait, wait. I'm sick, I can't follow you...I can't keep up." 

Caleb turned and looked at him while still retreating. Through all
that pounding rain that was not letting up even one drops worth,
Mulder could see the whites of his eyes. 

"Yes, you can." Caleb said and broke into a run. 

** 

"C-A-Y-LE-E-E-E-B!" 

But he could not be heard above the roaring of the wind. It
screamed in his ear and his thoughts turned, inexplicably,
to that night Dad sent him out in the rain. 

** 

"Fox. Go find your sister before she catches her death."
Seven year old Samantha had gone to the park and had
not returned by supper. 

He could hardly see through the down pour. But the swings
and teeter-totter were empty. All creatures, great and small,
had taken refuge in their nests, holes and houses. 

After searching through the trees and in the wooden playhouse,
she had still not turned up, Fox became terrified that something
was indeed wrong. Suddenly his little pesky kid sister had become
the whole world and finding her the one thing necessary to
banishing the increasing hollow feeling in his stomach. 

When he did find her, huddled inside the big hollow of a drainage
way and giggling with her friend Elsa, he wanted to shake her
senseless and hug her close, too, until he could breath again. 

** 

The screaming of the storm around him, accompanied by the pellets
of rainwater, made walking difficult now. He'd lost his shoes to
the mud yards back and his socks were soaked. 

Teeth shaking, he stumbled on. "Caleb!" But as soon as he thought
he could see the tiny form of his nephew at the edges of his vision,
just standing there calmly in the rain and bowing corn stalks, as if
patiently waiting for him to catch up, the downpour would thicken
and the vision would be lost. 

He clenched his jaw in frustration, but miraculously, he kept going.
Somehow, he was jogging, and then running to keep up. His betraying
weakening physical state was, for once, not impeding his
last, final wish. The cold rain and the forced rest must have taken
his temperature down, slowed his metabolism. 

If this _was_ Caleb, his sister's son, if he could die knowing that he
lived, knowing that something was left of his family, see that someone
would survive beyond the tatters he'd made of his life, something
innocent, something that could be protected and made safe always,
then this crazy highway he'd been traveling for decades might not
be the dead end he feared. 

And maybe, just maybe, he was not insane after all. 

The lights were being seen more and more across the world. The sights
in heaven and earth, the visions claimed by many as aliens come to
save or destroy humanity, said by others to be angels here to fight
the final fight, the great war of God, the people gathered to that
place to await their denunciation or salvation, all these things,
as he ran through that sodden field of corn, their heads now lying
almost flat in the mud, their fruits rotting and useless, meant nothing
to him. 

The reasons behind it all were beyond him. Perhaps they had always
been so. Perhaps the reasons were not so important as the personal
choices made despite them. Despite who or what. 

Maybe, even if the aliens or demons or fallen angels
with their own sacrilegious agenda were about to destroy
the world, this one beautiful child might be free from it. 

Was that a good choice? Was it enough to justify all that had been
sacrificed? 

He didn't know how to assure Caleb's survival through whatever
was happening, he only knew that he must. Scully would help. 

Suddenly, he reached a small clearing - in all that corn that
had gone on for miles - and Caleb was there again, standing very
still at its center. 

Mulder fell to his knees, gasping, the pain lancing through him.
He knew how foolish it was to drive his body as he had done, he
knew it could kill him, right there, right then, while Caleb watched. 

"Caleb." He managed to speak when his lungs had gathered
enough air to prevent his blood from boiling away as it seemed
about to do from the burning he could feel in his torso. 

Caleb looked at him with an expression of wonder. As though
Mulder were a manifestation of something he had known long
ago but forgotten. 

"Why did you run, Caleb? We're here to help you. We're here to
protect you." 

"Why?" His voice was that of a child, a question of curiosity,
requiring simply knowledge, simply fact. 

"Because-" Mulder paused, not knowing how to explain. It was
so complicated. "Because there are those who want to hurt you.
I promised Sam - your mother - I'd protect you." 

"Mom's gone." 

"I know. I'm sorry, Caleb." 

Mulder reached out to him but the boy stepped back, a move
designed to keep from being touched and not from fear at all.
No fear what-so-ever. 

He looked up at the grey sky, his hair flat against his tiny skull
from the water. "She's with them now." 

Mulder squinted his eyes, trying to see into the simple pictures
that made up a child's mind. Does he know? Was that really
Samantha who was shot? Was it her corpse or had he been taken
for a fool again? And how does Caleb know whether or not Samantha
is with the aliens? These children are special, he knew that much.
The only question that still remained was: Special in what way? To
whom? 

For whom? 

_Why_? 

"We should go, Caleb. They might be coming." 

Again, in reaction to his reach, Caleb stepped back. 

"Caleb, please..." 

Instead, the child looked at him and smiled, a wide, sweet grin
of which only a little boy was capable. Then he laughed with
a child's happy laughter, for a reason only the child could understand.
Delight at something unknown to those no longer innocent. 

"Mommy sent me to you. She has something she wants me to give you." 

Mulder stared, shocked that Caleb's words were adding strength
to his own speculations. "What do you mean? Is Samantha alive. Is your
mommy, is she with them? The aliens?" 

Caleb reached out to him, stepping forward to close the distance
between them as the rain soaked them both. 

The wind and roaring grew louder as Caleb reached for him. "This is for
you, Fox." 

The voice was no longer just Caleb's, but a female who's soprano was
both familiar and alien. 

Mulder felt weak. Weak and tired and wet to this bone marrow. Now
was not the time, no! his mind screamed as pain traveled over him
with elephants feet, pounding him in agony until his body gave up and
fell sideways in the mud. It cooled him and he dug his fingers into it,
the pain subsiding almost immediately. Mulder tried to sit up again
but nothing physical cooperated. His mind seemed to have no more
connections with his corporeal flesh or even the seat of his will. 

Light could be seen above and around. The white, blinding light
of a brainstorm, Mulder thought. His mind's last desperate attempt
to form thought, his axons and neurons all firing together in some
last stand before blanking out forever. 

White, swirling Calebs flew around him in ghost images, wings or
arms or rotted corns talks waved goodbye. A cyclone appeared,
blinding him, lifting him into the heavens, telling him things in
oceans of blue lightening. Samantha's little hands touched his
wet hair. She was a child again and laughing, running across
their yard to the swings, motioning for him to follow her, but
he was too big for the swings by then. Twelve and growing like
a weed. "I can fly higher than you Fox!" She yelled and giggled. 

And then he was awake from the dream his mind had made for
him, brought home to earth again, all in a second of time. 

All in a dream. 

Caleb spoke to him in the dream or in the cornfield: 

"Perhaps there are things you've forgotten Fox. Or perhaps
what you know or what you think you know has only now just
begun." 

The sun came out and sang in her voice, making him whimper
with its beauty. Making him know for certain she was all right
and that she loved him and that one day he would see her again. 

In the rain and the blue-white sun shining through it, music
touched him with a thousand fingers until every nerve was
on fire and he screamed. Pain eased and left and he became sleepy
with their absence, having forgotten what it felt like to not feel
anything but good. 

He listened to the music of his sister. 

Samantha sang to him until he wept. 

The tears caused him to remember that he had eyes and he opened them. 

To see Caleb who was his last vision before he lost consciousness. Caleb,
Samantha's child, his sister's son, his nephew, faded away in the rain and
sun as his lids closed. 

"Caleb, stay." Was also his last conscious thought before the rain,
sounding like steak frying in a pan, and the burning sun, blinding his
lids red, swallowed up even that. 

* 

"Mister Meuller, you are under arrest for suspicion in the disappearance
of your son, Caleb Mueller..." 

Miranda was read to him, he was cuffed and piled into the back of a
waiting County car. 

******** 

Back in D.C. before she had time to change her clothes, she reported
to Director Skinner's office prior to heading to the hospital where an
unconscious Mulder had been taken. 

"Where was Mr. Mueller found?" Skinner asked her. 

"Asleep in the farm house. He claimed he had been there all morning.
He says he remembers nothing." 

"Nothing? He's lying." 

"I'm not sure why, sir, but I don't think he is." 

"Why makes you think that?" 

"Because he said...he said he doesn't know anyone named Samantha
Mueller or Mulder or any boy named Caleb. He says he's never been to
D.C. or even out of Tennessee." 

"But his marriage license?..." 

"If there was one, no one can find it." 

"This is unbelievable." 

"I realize that, sir, but I'm beginning to think that nothing unbelievable
exists." 

** 

The words came on small puffs of gentle air that tickled and
warmed his ear. 

"Mulder, it's me. You're in the hospital. Everything's okay." It
said when he stirred against the envelope of drugs and mind
lethargy. "Everything's okay, you're safe. I'll be here when
you're ready to wake up, okay?" 

He wanted to say something, tell the voice what happened, ask
where Caleb went, but couldn't make his mouth work right. All
that came out was a soft moan. 

Lips touched his ear then, so soft and comforting, so intimate,
it was enough to drive the disturbing questions away for now. 

He was content to listen. 

"I'll be here. Everything's okay now." 

Scully was speaking to him. He believed her and slept. 

** 

Scully had heard the words, denying them. "No," She insisted,
"No, that's just not possible." 

Watts opened his mouth to repeat his conclusions to her for a
third time but stopped at her head shake. He frowned at her,
raised his eyebrows in a defeated shrug. 

"No matter what I say to the woman", he thought, "she argues."
Watts placed the chart in her hands and walked away. 

She read it, and then again, until she once more came to
the final few sentences that confirmed what Watts had tried
to tell her, his face inscrutable, his eyes strangely protruding
and bright under the flourescent lighting, his words coming
rather too quickly but otherwise as clear as crystal: 

"Complete remission." 

** 

Scully did not know how it was possible for her body to have
contained the amount of water her eyes shed that day. 

Mulder still lay on a bed in a recovery ward. He still wore
the white gown of sickness but it was no longer a white flag.
There would be no surrender here. 

He was well. Not just stable. Well. 

Free of disease. 

Dozens of tests later, designed to see into his blood and cells,
bone and tissue, confirmed the undeniable miracle of his
healed body. 

The crowd of doctors all scribbling, shaking their heads because
they could find no medical answer to explain the shocking
discovery of his good health, looked over at Mulder as if he
were a curious new species. But it was just Mulder. 

Scully also watched him but for different reasons. They would
find no explanation here, for their many questions and though
their journals would be filled with speculative theories, none
of it would find rest under proof. It was guesswork at best, why
Mulder why lying there, healthy and new looking. 

Scully knew, though, the questions would never really cease
being asked. There would always be someone ringing him
or her on the phone or at their door (_their_ door!) wondering
why and recording their answers that were not good enough
all on tape for this magazine or that article. 

No understanding would be forthcoming. There were no petri
dishes or beakers or tubes of truth to be unstopped that they
could look at and declare: "Oh, yes, we know why." 

The white coated puzzlers filed out the room, finally leaving
them in peace. 

All foreign invaders had gone and that included those
who would have been conqourers. Whether aliens, demons
or Klingons, no human had seen a sign or dreamed a dream
about visitors since the "God's Children Event", as the
news media had coined it. 

She and Mulder would continue to investigate the occurrance.
But she understood that her mind set had to change. Before,
she had always tried to categorize the paranormal into
something explainable, something she could relate to what
she already knew. 

But she'd been mistaken. All along, she had tried to "solve"
their cases before solving them. Now she would work hard
and let the answers speak for themselves. Let others try
to file and reference if they were so bold. 

The X Files were not behind them, but she at least, now knew
how to feel about them. 

And about her good fortune embodied in a sweetly living
Fox Mulder. 

Only twenty minutes before, in a washroom down the hall,
Scully had shed buckets but they were because of that joy.
And because, in all the years since her own abduction and
her other personal struggles with life and death and the
events that followed; her sister's death; her cancer; Emily;
during it all, she had had Mulder, her partner, then friend,
then lover whom she had lost and then found, and who had
been nearly lost again. 

Joy had poured into her as her tears had poured out. 

Mulder was the one - her one - who made everything bad
bearable and everything good wondrous. 

He filled her empty places, he completed her picture of herself.
Mulder who made her whole was coming home and her soul
was a garden of new growth beside a diamond river of hope
that flowed far ahead and around the bend.



She returned from her bathroom trip and sat beside his bed.
Upon her insistence, he would remain in the hospital until every
test they could think of had been run to determine absolutely,
positively, certifiably and undeniably that he was heathy and
would remain so. 

For once, he wasn't complaining about resting or even about
the food. 

** 

"Father O'Malley?" 

"You've returned." 

"Yes." 

"You've had a change of faith. Something's
brought you to it." 

"Um,...a lot of things have happened. Things I can't explain." 

"You have questions." 

"Yes." 

"Instead of asking them, would you tell me something?
Would you tell me if you have learned anything since
we last spoke?" 

"I've learned that there's more in the universe to know
and understand than I think we are ever capable. I think
some things will remain beyond the scope of our understanding." 

"Or beyond the reach of science." 

"Yes." 

"So you believe what now?" 

"I believe that there is a love in each of us and yet, it seems
to come from without as well. I'm not sure if I'm making sense,
but my friend, the one I told you about, he's cured. He's going
to live." 

"So now you believe that God exists because you think he has
done this thing for you." 

"I know it seems selfish that my faith pivoted on it, but yes. I
believe that something extraordinary caused his remission. I
believe that he was in some way miraculously made well. Do
you think it's possible?" 

"Faith is the assured expectation of things hoped for though
not beheld. There is no doubt that faith, hope and love are
real. The greatest is the love. Did God cure your friend? I don't
know. If so, He never announced it to me." 

"My friend thinks he was cured by something else, he doesn't believe
in God." 

"Really? you might be surprised to know how many people, who
say they do not believe, believe." 

"I don't know what to think." 

"You are a free moral agent, we all are. Keep the love, Dana,
keep it strongly in your heart, that is where you will find your faith.
Love is the strongest thing in the universe. It endures all things, hopes
all things, _believes_ all things. 

" _Conquers_ all things. Don't forget that. The issue is universal, this
question of faith. It's a matter of choice." 

"Why do so many still look to evil, if love is so powerful?" 

"Choice. Failing to look beyond themselves to a Higher law. "The
demons believe and shudder" the scriptures say. They know but
made the wrong choice. Perhaps those who had harmed your friend
and you did so as well." 

**




"Where'd you go?" 

"I had to powder my nose." 

"Cute nose." 

"Cute? Hooked." 

"_Cute_. I love it." Mulder stared passed her out the window.
There was a spring rain. 

Scully loved the thought of the greener grass and the purple
flowers it would bring. "What are you thinking about?" 

"I was thinking," Looking at her, "When I get out of here, what
do you say we take a trip somewhere." 

"Sure. Where?" 

"Well, I was thinking along the lines of a shopping trip. Maybe,...
maybe we should scout around for a h-house." 

Despite the stutter of nervousness, he was looking straight
into her eyes. Mulder was no longer afraid of anything. Not even
her. 

She looked back, embracing the idea. Easy to accept something
that had been there, in her own mind, lurking for ages. "Absolutely." 

"You pick the area." 

She nodded and it was wonderful seeing her old, very trusted
and very loved friend and lover blossom into someone who was so
much more. 

Life partner. It was a brave term but she felt up to it. Really, it was
the best adventure she could think of. 

She took his hand "Mulder?" 

"Yeah, Scully?" Though lying flat per doctors orders, he was
fiddling with his blanket that had bunched up, trying to smooth
it. 

"Would you marry me?" 

If he was afraid, it didn't show. If he'd expected it, he didn't say. 

"Yeah." Flowing smoothly and naturally, his answer was truthful.
His very own kind of faith. "Yeah, Scully, I'll marry you. I asked you
once, remember? Think you can put up with me?" 

She nodded. Not a problem, she thought, in sickness and in health. 

"I don't know what to believe about all this." Mulder said. 

She held his hand and had been holding it off and on since her
arrival. 

"Maybe we're not supposed to have all the answers Mulder." 

"How can you say that, Scully? You're a scientist. Answers
are what science is all about." 

"But truth is the beginning of wisdom and the truth isn't
always about answers. We can ask our questions and
that's good, I think, but we're not always going to find
the answer, or maybe if we do find one, sometimes it's
not the one we wished for." 

"Have you been talking to Father O'Malley?" 

She smiled. "I know you don't believe in it, Mulder, but
sometimes we have to take things in life on faith alone." 

"I've never been able to. I don't know if I ever will be able." 

"No one's perfect." She teased. "But that's okay too. You've
got so much love in you, I think that makes up for it. Faith, even
hope can fade. Love remains." 

"My faith is in the truth, Scully. I don't think that's ever
going to change." 

"My truth is I love you." She stroked his fingers, rolling
them in her hand, admiring their strength that had returned
in golden coloring. 

"What do you think about all this? About what's happened?"
He asked. "It's as if we were wrong about everything we
expected. It's as if we made a left turn while everything else
went right." 

"I'm not sure. Maybe something beyond our understanding.
Many people reported seeing amazing things this morning,
when Caleb disappeared." She spoke the name softly,
knowing Mulder's emotional fragility over Samantha's lost
son. She herself believed Caleb had not died or
been washed away in the storm. Nor did she think the
colonists or whoever or whatever they had been had
whisked Caleb away to life aboard a mother ship. 

Nor did she absolutely believe that he was in heaven. They had,
after all, no evidence either way. There were no facts to confront. 

But hope was not dead. Had never been so, Scully mused.
The only despair they had experienced had been their own
fear. Their lack of faith. Their ignorance about what love was. 

Fear had no place in love and it had taken her a lifetime
to learn that. Such a simple place. What a long road behind
her to find it. 

True, Caleb's fate was a question mark, one Mulder would try
to solve, she knew that, but she believed it would be, in the
end, an unanswerable struggle, with no simple solution. 

But, she was also certain, now, that the struggle, and not
the solution, was the important thing. She believed Mulder
would, some day, reach that understanding. 

"I don't know what's happened, Mulder. But I think men,
any group of people who take on their tiny shoulders the
fate of the world based on their human and fallible perceptions,
is gross presumptuousness. 

"We were listening to a bunch of Chicken Littles. They
felt a few hailstones and assumed that the sky was falling.
They listened to a voice from the heavens without really
knowing who's it was. I don't have the answer, but I
have a faith that whoever does, we have nothing to fear
regarding it." 

He held her hand tight. She loved the strength in his
touch. Vibrant, perfect life was in his hand. Perfect
for her. Everything she needed. 

"You're an amazing woman, Dana Katherine Scully." He said. 

Where did you come from, Mulder? She thought as she felt
his touch and listened. Who am I that you were sent to me? 

She said: 

"At risk of sounding like a hopeless fanatic, I have something
you might be interested to hear." 

"Yeah?" 

"I was curious and looked up something up. "Caleb".
Do you know what that name means?" 

"No." 

"It means The Messenger." 

"You think he was from God?" 

"I don't know. You're going to live, so you know what? I don't
care." For her, Message Received. "But it's nice to think he
might have been." 

Mulder squeezed her hand and looked at the ceiling, a bit
uncomfortable with the metaphysical conversation. 

"Do you really think those kids were special, Scully?" 

"Of course. Wasn't Samantha? Wasn't Emily? And Caleb too?" 

"I mean special beyond the norm, beyond scientific explanation.
Special in a way contrary to what we know to be normal." 

"Yes, I do." 

Mulder turned his head until he could see out the window.
The hospital was keeping him for one more night, until
all their test results came back, and then he would be
declared well and could go home. 

Mulder would go home with her. 

"Really?" He said, as the sunlight lit his skin yellow
and created tiny replica's of itself in his pupils. 

"How many were there?" He asked, the question not really
directed at her at all, she thought... 

"...hundreds? Thousands?..." He spoke aloud but not to her. 

She would take him home. 

"...More?..." He seemed to be asking the daylight. 

Home. Tomorrow. 

"I wonder..." He murmured. 

Tomorrow was another day and there would be hundreds more.
Thousands. 

"Thousands of children taken?..." He puzzled. 

Thousands. They would see each one together. 

"Taken back by aliens?..." He questioned. 

Where he was concerned, she would rejoice in all things from
that moment forward. 

"...Called by God?..." He asked the springtime. 

No matter what. 

"Special?..." Mulder sighed. 

No matter who. 

He looked at her now. "Divine?..." 

No matter about anything ever again. 

"Do you really think those kids were divine, Scully?" It was meant
for her. 

She looked back at the healthy man on the pillow who would
live and who would love and who had yellow stars in his eyes. 

"Mulder." She leaned close. Always it would be this way. 

Close enough to touch. Touch and believe without fear. 

"Mulder. I think _you_ are."

**** 

UNDISCLOSED DATE:


It rained so much that fall. 

Everything was greener though than it had been all summer. 

I kept one eye on the moisture running down the glass while the
other watched my husband limp away to the bedroom where
he was going for his afternoon nap. 

He had already kissed my cheek and patted my behind, laughing
at my protest, the old perv'. 

We have an old oak tree in the yard that's seen better days, and
through the pane, I followed it's gnarled trunk with my eye. It
was still tall and proud and reached above the power lines.
Not a leaf left on it, but there was no reason to chop yet, we both
had a soft spot for old things. It had stood there for nearly a
century and had as much right as we did to be given the
opportunity to see another sunrise. And another. 

It was antique like most of our furniture. 

The house is filled with them because of the garage sales
we'd seen, my husband and his hobby of finding and fixing
things; even old frail looking junk that appeared beyond hope.
I had no idea, all those years, of what his gentle hands were
capable, but he restored them all to glory. 

My favorite was the old tea table by our back porch window in
a tiny alcove just off the kitchen. They used to call them Sunrooms.
That was our special place, where we'd bring our coffee and
breakfast and watch everything wake up around us. It was that time
of day when new things are spotted in the usually seen ordinary and
everyday world. 

We'd sit and talk for an hour. Every morning for one hour we'd talk,
about anything, whatever was on our minds. Always. It was like
making love with our eyes and our lips, something just between
us and for us, before time came to do other things; chores, phone
calls, shopping...
I loved that hour. 

My husband failed to appear for dinner and when I checked on him,
he felt as cold under my fingers as the dampened room and I knew
that even my mother's quilts would not infuse warmth back into his
body. 

He'd opened the window by his bed two inches and gone to sleep. 

I lay down beside him and cradled his body to mine. I wanted my
skin to remember. I wanted a physical imprint of him, something
that would never fade from my body.
I cried so much. 

The next morning the clouds lifted and the sun chased away the
last of the dew, drying out the yard and two days later, everyone
came at two o'clock to say their goodbyes. 

His family and mine, friends, old co-workers and some people who
were strangers to me extended condolences while casting saddened
eyes to the tiny antique wooden chest that held his ashes. Everyone
wished me well and filed out into the sun. 

"Everything dies." He had once said. Later he'd admitted that "Well,
not _everything_." with a sheepish grin. It was an old joke that
I was far too stubborn ever to leave this mortal coil. 

I still use that tea table and think about him. About what he had
been to me and what I had been to him. All I can say is unless
you've loved like we have, you can't know. 

You can't know. 

I miss him.
My body still aches for him.
My soul still searches for him.
It always will. 

**

UNDISCLOSED DATE.


The solid oak door, a rare possession in her day and
age, opened silently, not a hint of squeak on the hinges, to
reveal her visitor. 

Whom she couldn't quite clearly see without her glasses. 

"Yes?" she inquired politely, pushing a stray grey hair
out of her eyes and behind her ear. Most would have
asked it through the door but she preferred things met
head-on. It was how she'd lived most of her life. 

Her visitor seemed tongue-tied. A young man, that much
she could make out of the slightly fuzzy image. Tall. Dark
hair. The rest, who knew? 

"Who are you looking for?" She tried again, thinking "I
hope it isn't another insurance salesman. Another one
of those this week and I might just have to haul out my- 

"Fox Mulder." 

She started. If there wasn't already enough light and warm
animation in her eyes, they became even more replete
with both. Her voice, patient as it was on occasion to be, now
was gentleness itself. "I'm afraid you're about twenty years
too late, sweety, my husband is dead. Died twenty years ago
next month." 

If there was upset on his face, in the dimming evening light,
she couldn't tell. 

"I am sorry." He said kindly. Her hearing wasn't what it was
either but it was a lilting tenor, with a trace of accent she couldn't
place. 

"I was too, believe me. Did you know him?" He would have had to
have been very young if so. 

"No. No, not really. Someone I know knew him and they counseled
me that if I ever...traveled this way, to look him up." 

"I see." She didn't know what else to say to him. He seemed like
he wanted to extend the conversation, maybe come in and sit a
while, while she, on the other hand, wanted to get back to her
still-life. She'd taken up painting about fifteen years back and quite
enjoyed it. 

As much as she loved to talk about her late husband, the water
colors were drying and it was tough to overlap and blend shades
if the paper got too dry. 

"I'm sorry to have disturbed you. " He said. 

She heard the sadness now. Just that hint in his tone that was
asking her if only she would spare a minute...? 

"Perhaps you'd like to hear about him?" She offered. What the
hell. She needed to work on her bordering anyway. "I may not be
as entertaining a narrator as he was but..." 

Her guest smiled - she was pretty sure - and she stepped back to
let him enter. 

He did. 

She lead him to a small, sunny sitting room with yellow wicker
furniture. He sat, somewhat stiffly in the hardback chair she pointed
to. She chose a gliding rocker opposite. Through the sparkling clean
windows, sunshine fell on them both. 

"I suppose we should begin with names." She suggested. 

He cleared his throat. "My friends call me Phen." 

"Unusual. Would you like something to drink?" She offered, as she
lowered herself and began a gentle rocking, it helped ease the ache
of her creeping arthritis, but readied to rise again and fetch him
something. 

"No thank you Mrs. Mulder." 

Easing the chair into motion, "Call me Dana." She heard his unease
and though his posture was stiff and straight, like a school boy in a
principals office, there was also an elegance in his bearing. Nothing
artificial about this young man. "What did you want to know about him?" 

"Everything you can tell me." 

Dana Scully-Mulder tilted her head, the lines between her brows
permanent marks after many years, deepened at her odd visitor.
Everything? 

"There is an awful lot to tell." 

"I heard,.." He hesitated, as if broaching the subject might be an
intrusion into a secret history only she had a right to. "I heard he
had disappeared." 

Her frown cleared but the eyes beneath became a sadness. A human
emotion he shared. A grief he understood and had sometimes seen
reflected in his own face. 

"That was a hard time." She answered. 

"I'm sorry, if you don't wish to talk about it-" 

"No. No, I want to. I've never spoken about it to anyone, I mean, my
part. How it nearly drove me mad." 

"I'm terribly sorry, Mrs. Mulder. If this is too painfu-" 

Quickly, "-Have you ever loved someone, Phen?" She didn't want to
dwell on too much sadness today. It spoiled her creative mood. 

"Yes. In fact, I left my wife and children behind to make this journey.
I didn't realize that I'd be so late. I didn't know he had died." 

"What would you sacrifice for your wife and children?" 

He paused at the question but only for a second or two. "Everything." 

She nodded once, unconvinced by just words. Would he? Time might
tell another story. "Then you understand what it means to be with
someone who is your other self. YOU, only the better version, the
parts of you that were missing. He filled those gaps in me. To me,
he was perfect even when he was making mistakes." 

"I think I understand." 

"That time when he disappeared was the worst eight years of my whole
life. When he came back or was brought back by whomever had taken
him, things were terrible. Whatever happened to him nearly destroyed
him. And me. 

"He was sick when he returned, did you know that? So very ill. Dying.
Even in those times, even when we fought, even when it seemed
certain we were going to lose him, those times I cherish, I cling
to them because he was alive and struggling - both of us - struggling
against heaven and earth it seemed, he was still beautiful. To me." 

Her visitor was listening like a child would while a parent read him a
brand new fairy story filled with untold wonders. 

"But he survived." 

"Yes. He lived to a good old age and died in his sleep. Peacefully.
A well earned peace I might add." 

He said nothing. 

"How did your someone know him?" 

Her question startled him, she thought, but he appeared to have
made up his mind to be truthful. Out of respect, she suspected.
Right away, he's struck her as a man who respected others. "My
mother knew him." 

Dana's rocking chair stilled. His words rang true but the whole
truth had not been told to her. But it was impossible wasn't it?
"Your mother?" 

"Yes." 

"When?" 

"Many years ago." 

"It cannot not be that long, can it? I can't place your accent, it's
foreign, you enunciate English unusually, as if it were not your
native tongue." 

"Well, I speak many languages, I've traveled." 

"So you've said." She looked at him, her curiosity growing
in proportion to his nervousness. "What did your mother tell you
about my husband?" 

He sat forward and suddenly she was struck by the familiarity
of the gesture. How he laced his fingers together, resting his
elbows on his knees, his great long legs bent at ninety degrees,
the slope of his shoulders, the dark hair, the angled jaw, the eyes -
their shape, yes - but the color, the color she did not know. Damn
her failing sight! 

"She told me some of the things he had told her, that's all. There
was one that I have always been curious about." 

Dana did not fail to notice his clever skirting of her previous question.
He knew things he was not ready to tell her or was afraid to. Again,
she thought, it was out of respect. 

"She said that at one time he had told her - it was a phrase that
seemed to mean something to him, but my mother never really
understood what he meant by it -" 

"-What phrase?"

""Not everything dies."." He quoted. 

Dana heart leaped, but the only hint of her whirling emotions was
the sweet smile of memory on her face. "I remember. Fox lost
everything when he was young. His whole family eventually. He
was the last of his father's children. We never had any of our own
you know. His sister did but she died and her children died with
her. Not all at once. 

"Interesting phrase for someone in that position, wouldn't you
say?" Remembering things so buried in the past did dampen her
spirits somewhat, but this young man was just too unusual a
guest to let it sway her from speaking of them. 

He seemed uncomfortable now and made a motion to rise. "I'm sorry,
I seemed to have stirred up some sad memories. Perhaps I should go." 

Suddenly she was desperate for him not to. Looking at him, a connection
in her mind popped into place, settled like a rabbit in its hole, by
instinct and without effort. 

Like when she free-painted, working without a model. Sometimes, if
she just allowed it the freedom, the bristles would apply the colors
to the thick paper by their own will, without her directing the stroking
of the brush. She would not try to see ahead to the end of the work
but just allow the colors and the paper to guide her until the picture
was complete. 

Often, the portrait or the vase of yellow sunflowers that resulted would
be a piece of special power. Those she would frame and display. 

A picture was being created inside her mind and heart of this young
man. 

"Phen-" She halted his rising and he settled back again, waiting. 

"Fox knew a great deal. He was brilliant, loving, kind, impulsive,
sometimes downright crazy, but one thing he was not, and that
was always correct. He wasn't always right." 

"What do you mean?" 

"Phen - is that your real name? - when I see you sitting here
before me, in that chair, looking like him and sounding like him
and smart like he was, I realize how wrong that statement of
his was. You're from Russia, aren't you? That area at least? Fox
was there for a time. He never did tell me what happened. Or
are you from some place else? From a very, very _far_ place?" 

She knew he would not answer that question. "How like
him you are." It didn't matter. If he was indeed who she thought
he was, she already knew what the answer would be. 

//"Might we not finally look to the fantastic as a plausibility?"//


Her heart was beating very fast. " I see you sitting there and soon
you'll walk out that door and go on living your life, breathing,..tell
me, are you going to return to your wife?" 

Something crossed his features, a tiny but clearly seen
few seconds of grief. "This was a one way trip. I can't.
She,..." Phen looked away. "She knew why, knew it
was important to me. She agreed." 

Scully leaned forward and took his hand in her two, clutching
at him. Holding him in her gaze and the embrace of her
understanding. "God works in mysterious and wonderful
ways, handsome Phen. Marry again and if you can, have
more children. Rejoice in them. I know I will. And in you." 

Soon, she could not help the tears that fell when his hands
grasped hers in return. "Know that Fox Mulder was a great
man. A very great, great man. And you, here before me,
alive and beautiful, have brought him back to me for this
hour. I can't tell you what it means to me to know that he
will keep living through you. You're his son, Phen, aren't you?" 

He stared. Nodded slowly, as if unsure what the news would
do to her. As if it would hurt her! She laughed aloud, the tears
unstoppable now, at the thought. "Fox, my husband, your father,
that lovable, frustrating, infuriating, kind and gentle creature,
was the most perfect thing to ever enter my life. Fox was beautiful.
But still, he was wrong." 

"Wrong how? I don't understand." 

""Not everything dies", he said. Don't you see?" 

Dana Katherine Scully-Mulder brought his hands to her wrinkled
breast, pulling him closer, so she could see his face more clearly; that
face she had missed so much, seeing every morning, kissing goodnight
each and every evening through eighteen years of marriage. Missed
so terribly. Loved so deeply. 

She touched Phen's hands, and in that touch, she was holding
Fox's once more. Mulder's strong, tender fingers once again laced
in her own. The warmth in that touch was the fountain of youth.
It was God's Grace to her, a last glorious gift from somewhere in
the heavens, a place that she still did not understand. But understanding
was no longer paramount. That she had loved and had been loved
was. That she had known and loved a man as extraordinary as he
had been was her prayer of thanks back to God. 

Phen was looking down at their locked fingers in wonder. It was
as if he had never touched another human before. It was something
extraordinary to see, those eyes filled with curiosity and energy. It
was magical and miraculous. Once upon a time, Mulder might have
called it. 

Paranormal. 

Scully laughed, staring into the perfect depths of the dark pupils and,
seeing Phen, she saw _him_ again, looking back. "Don't you see, dear
Phen?" 

Her thin lips, lined with the years, smiled with the happiness of youth
and endless life ahead. In that grin she was a young woman again, in
love with the man who was to become her husband and realizing it for
the very first time. 

Vocal chords breaking,... 

"Dearest Phen,"... 

...their music was not sorrow, however, but the voice of joy made
perfect.

..."nothing dies at all."



*** 

THE END



AUTHOR'S NOTES: 

This story was a long time in coming. For that I apologize
and thank you for your patience from the bottom of my
heart.
However, this was an emotional trip for me, writing these
last chapters of Divinities. I went through some heavy duty
memories to conjure up some of the scenes you've tasted
throughout these passages, but it was a good trip
none-the-less. 

I wonder if you caught the fact that you were given no
concrete answers to who the aliens/angels/demons were
or what really happened to Caleb? Or what/who cured
Mulder - aliens or angels?
Well, I'm a Canadian writer and that means there are no
neat little bow ribbons at the end.
What I tired to give you were living, vibrant characters
and a human struggle, the drama and conflict that is
part of any struggle with a bittersweet end.
If it seemed ambiguous or a "cheat" not to tie up all the loose
ends, well, I answer with - 

Ambiguity, thy name is Carter. 

If you read this and concluded that I hold religiously
ambiguous views, I do not. But one can not always write
just from one's own POV. That would be too limiting.
I did not want to produce anything that either preached
belief or doubt in anything. That would have been
insulting to you, the reader, and too limiting for my
need, as a writer, to explore.
I wanted Mulder and Scully to experience things and
for you to share in what they saw, but for you to draw
your own conclusions about the meaning and about
the changes, if any, in the characters as a result.



Divinities will most probably be my last novel length X-File
fic', but by no means my last X-File fic. I have a few shorter
ones planned before the year of 1999 draws to a close. 

I'm not a FILK-er, but I thought the following stanzas
by Enya, from The Memory of Trees, personified the love
of Dana Scully & Fox Mulder (and their struggle together)
well. It is also a personal belief that love conquers all.
At least, that is the way it should be. 

Perhaps you think the same. 

*
Hope Has A Place: 

One look at love
and you may see
it weaves a web
over mystery.
All raveled threads
can rend apart
But hope has a place in the lover's heart. 

Under the heavens
we journey far
on roads of life
we're the wanderers.
So let love rise,
So let love depart.
Let hope have a place in the lover's heart. 

Look to love
you may dream,
and if it should leave
then give it wings.
But if such a love
is meant to be;
Hope is home and the heart is free. 

Enya.



Thanks for reading.
Love and peace to you, 

Genie Van Boeyen