PhaHks Series
by GenieVB





** 

Two evenings later, at their customary dinner together, PhaHks had returned from 
his run lathered in sweat, his hands shaking with fatigue as he took his seat to 
her right. 

He had sat reluctantly. By his smell he hadn't even bothered to bath before 
joining her, something she usually insisted upon. 

After the meal was placed before them, the minutes passed and his remained 
untouched. 

She spoke. Words left her mouth, ricocheted off the walls and never made it to 
his hearing. 

"There is no more need to worry. DhrAh'Ken is a warrior and Kol does not 
question his motives. Kol has no status in the Empire, so being the Sworn-One of 
an ex-priest, though hardly a duty that would bring one to Honor, is a respected 
post. Priests are considered sacred, even to the warrior class." 

PhaHks had never tried to understand all the talk of honor and Swearing one- 
self to another (though he comprehended the concepts), but neither had he much 
cared. As long as the thorny-dicked psycho rapist kept his attention on the old, 
pickled "cling-un" priest and not on him. 

At the pictures in his head, his chest tightened 

*Bleeding, fire-eaten ass cheeks. Broken ribs.* 

Veexow ceased talking abruptly, and now appeared lost in thought. She did not 
look at him and it was out of character. 

*Sharp teeth grinding his fate into his ear.* 

PhaHks hadn't seen the old priest for several days. Wondered absently if he was 
sick. 

*Finger-bruised throat.* 

Still couldn't bring himself to ask after the health of a "cling-un" who, 
whenever he saw PhaHks, bared brown teeth and rolled bloodshot eyes in 
disbelief. 

*Sliced open abdomen, numbed thigh, knife embedded in a slick-wet shoulder.* 

Could not make his arm stretch that few icy inches of table space to take her 
hand in sympathy, as she started to slowly consume her meal. 

Hell bitch had carved out slice after slice of his soul. DhraH'Ken had taken 
another portion. Even Rhengar, with his gentle ways, had extracted his piece. 

*Rape. Monster semen leaking out of him.* 

Satisfaction, not sympathy, was nearer the mark; if Kol was sick, maybe she was 
finally experiencing a bit of the raw mourning he felt every hour of the day. It 
was a kind of victory. 

PhaHks. Veexow. Lovers encased, each separately within their favorite armor, 
neither touching the other. 

Then "PhaHks, you're not eating." It was practiced phrasing born of years 
observing the human. 

His breathing had not slowed very much. Then. 

One breath. 

He shook his head. Defeated motion of the hopeless. 

PhaHks only tried to get air and nothing else. 

Two breaths. Held then released. As though the rooms air had become toxic, 
afraid to inhale. All other parts of him were motionless. 

Veexow stared at her human mate. Nothing else. 

Because he was like an open circuit. Touch him only at great risk. 

He was a quantum explosive. Get too close and he would detonate. 

And now this thick, coiled silence. 

His lips parted. A long, even exhalation. 

"I can't take anymore." Quietly said, perfunctorily delivered. Nothing to do 
with food. 

She sighed. *At last*. "Well, you must eat. I am concerned. Now that we have 
grown closer..." 

He laughed out loud. Two ill-humored barks. 

Ignoring it, Veexow straightened her shoulders. "Kol has died..." 

He looked at her once. Turned away. Knew what was coming. 

"...and we will have to leave Kol'keK." 

Wrapping his arms around himself he was blind to her grief over Kol as his own 
stepped forward to gulp him down whole. 

Veexow had seen this reaction before as his eyes squeezed shut and his breaths 
became great straining billows. He shook from the force of trying not to shake, 
trying to stop the panic and the "fight or flight" reaction (which is what he 
had once called it). 

"What is it?" She wanted to keep him talking before he shut her out completely. 
Her own heartache was momentarily set aside. 

He cared no more. "Nothing." 

Another place, another "new" life. Another series of "adjustments", another set 
of rules. More chains on his feet, more bars on the door. 

*Screens and screens of human body parts, all shiny-coated in grotesquely naked 
patterns. Frozen for all time to be viewed with scientific detachment. Human 
curios.* 

"Do you need something? Water?" 

Christ! she was actually trying to be helpful. 

*Awesome goddamn timing, Bitch*, his mind screamed, and tears rolled down 
parchment skin over cheekbones, *You're one rape and a couple of fucking hundred 
beatings too late*. 

Aloud. "No, I want-" He was shaking so bad, his voice choked. 

"What? What do you want?" She didn't want to deal with this right now. She 
wanted peace and time to grieve over Kol. Good, misguided, drunken, wonderful 
KOL! 

PhaHks heard the irritation in her voice. Hell bitch's good graces never did 
last long. 

"I want to go home." Words he hadn't said in years. Minutes since he'd thought 
them. 

She kept it simple and neutral. It was his sensitive spot and more harshness 
might sink him into another human depression for more weeks. 

"You know that's impossible, PhaHks." 

He cried harder, wrapping his arms around his body, eyes squeezed shut to halt 
tears that wouldn't halt, trying to implode. 

Then suddenly, consequences be damned, she was shouting. 

"I saved your life! Isn't that worth something?!" Kol was dead. PhaHks was 
alive, safe but hating her. Hating her! 

His forehead was on the table, his crying silent and painful. But he managed a 
squeak. 

"Looks like...it's worth *every*thing." 

"This is how things are. It is how they'll be tomorrow. These episodes are 
growing tiresome..." 

He screwed a one-eyed look up at her as she sat, regally marching out the Law. 

His Governess. 

His Disciplinarian. 

His Rapist and Seducer. 

His Zoo-Keeper. 

Here he was sitting down with her to fucking *dinner*!, listening as she spelled 
it all out. As she laid down the fucking facts of life. 

My Years With Hell bitch. For *years* he had even let her FUCK him. He was as 
crazy as she was. 

Fuck. It was a best seller! 

Bitch. 

"...It is your life now, though you may not understand..." she talked on... 

Whore. 

Liar! 

He hated her. He hated her so much. 

Cruel, goddamn fucking vindictive baby killer! 

Does she think I'm stupid? 

Bone-marrow rotten bitch! Does she think I'm some kind of pathetic breed? 
Fucking crippled puppy trained to yelp or whizz on command? 

Fuck *ALL* of it! 

Suddenly he was launching his plate of food in her direction, showering her in 
chunky mush. Slimed her with what in seconds had transformed into just another 
putrid serving of his life. 

Veexow had felt something ripple through the air of the room directly before she 
found herself dripping in food. It'd been rather like the crackle of a 
lightening bolt before it hits, charging everything, tingles shooting across her 
skin. 

A clear warning of danger but coming too late to avoid it. 

The plate bounced off the side of her head with a resounding *THUNK*! 

The heavy table was next and PhaHks sent it crashing over in an adrenalin 
charged rush that surprised even him. 

"Don't you think I know?! Don't you think I know where I am?! I know where the 
fuck I am!! Don't you think I know what you are, you bitch?! I know you, you 
Hole! I hate you! I hate your fucking guts!-" 

Salt water sprayed from his eyes like two fountains. 

"This...*stuff*. This SHIT! I can't fucking DO this anymore, I can't, I can't, 
I-just-fucking- can't-I-CAN'T!-FUCK!-" 

Veexow, all other matters at hand forgotten, watched PhaHks as his frantic hands 
raked his hair over and over, feet circling, the spirals growing tighter. 

She stared, too stunned to move for a moment as PhaHks orbited himself. 

Faster and faster, like he was winding down and down into nothingness. PhaHks 
had collided with a mental black hole and was being eaten alive by it, getting 
smaller and smaller until he would disappear in a burst of anti-matter. 

He stopped long enough to look at her, trembling with rage. 

"-I fucking hate this! I hate this! I hate this goddamn shit! I hate you, you 
FUCK! YOU slut!, You pig! You ugly, stinking, fucking alien Queen Bee! 
FUCKTHISFUCKYOUFUCKYOU!!" 

PhaHks' face was scrunched in torment. Twisted. Crying. Hysterical. 

Veexow had to stop him. She had to calm him down before he hurt himself. Before 
DhraH'Ken used this as a reason to have PhaHks caged or worse. 

He'd been angry before, shouted before, used his human expletives on her before, 
but she had never seen him like,..like *this*! 

In two moves, Veexow got hold of him, one hand on his upper arm and the other on 
his throat - not to squeeze - but to quiet. To silence his screams. To control. 

He fought wildly, kicking and hitting with his one free arm, teeth clenched and 
wild-eyed. 

She forced silence by pressing thumb to voice box, just enough to cut his voice 
but not enough to bruise. It had worked before. Calm him. Placate him. 

Control, comfort, convince. 

Forcing him against the wall to still him, she pressed her whole body to his, 
ready to ride out whatever had set him off. He was trembling in fury and then. 

He was not. He sagged, instantly, as if her touch had somehow exorcized his 
demons. 

Veexow didn't have to calm him. 

PhaHks went limp except for his accelerated respirations. He leaned his head 
back and exposed his throat, that sweet, delectable tissue upon which she had 
sucked, waiting. 

Closing his eyes, it was his invitation for her hand to tighten. 

Veexow caught her breath at the unmistakable meaning. PhaHks wanted her to crush 
the life out of him. Push in that jutting, male larynx and snap vertebrae. 

She immediately let go and stepped back a good meter and when PhaHks felt her 
touch leave, his eyes opened. 

Two sad visions watched each other. Black eyes looked to hazel and were stunned 
by their vacancy. 

Eyes were a window to the soul, PhaHks had said to her. Once. A long time ago. 

Those were rarities, where he would express a private thought, share an opinion, 
open up the tiniest bit and set something free that wasn't stained in anger, 
hatred or fear. 

PhaHks jewels, few and treasured. 

He'd even complimented her once. Had told her (after a particularly satisfying 
afternoon of lovemaking) that he thought she was "sort of pretty". 

Those things, those times, she suddenly realized, were ending here in the space 
of a terrible minute. 

Veexow was not certain how or why or where it had begun, but together they had 
reached a critical mass. Meltdown. 

PhaHks' eyes pleaded. He was reaching out to something Veexow didn't believe was 
present in the room. 

He was asking for something...help? Hope? 

She did not touch him again, alarmed. Then 

He broke. 

PhaHks collapsed forward like he had been severed at the waist. Horrible, 
strangled sobs and he was falling to the floor. 

He had made his request and she had declined. 

Nothing. Left. 

Veexow stopped his fall and he fought her again, feebly. Stopped struggling when 
her unconditional strength made it clear that it was useless. She relaxed her 
grip on him, only to have him sway unsteadily without her stronghold. Quickly 
placing her arms again around his back, he steadied. 

Frozen immobility. 

Both of them frightened by what was happening. 

She, by his physical tremors and defeated countenance, by his grey face and 
blood- reddened orbis's. 

He, she thought, perhaps afraid of everything. Of her and her touch. Of no 
touch. Of living. Of dying. 

Of dying here. 

He didn't move. And no amount of her clutching stilled the trembling in his 
limbs or the quick, shallow breaths in between the deep gulped-back sobs that 
even she had to strain to hear. 

Even now he was struggling for control, if not over her, then over himself. 

But the shaking of him and what she realized was some profound grief, seen with 
her eyes and confirmed by telepathy, stilled her actions. 

She simply did not know what to do. 

Whatever it was, Rhengar's useful injections would not cure it. 

"I'm dying." 

She quit breathing. 

Yesterday, (longer?), he was alive and vibrant. Not happy perhaps but content. 
Content! 

Now,...now dying? Dying because... 

His proud voice had sounded strangled and weak. 

Held him tighter, petted his hair. Somehow it had to end this. In the past, it 
had succeeded. 

Comfort. Control. Convince. 

He whimpered and - gods - it sounded like she was hurting him instead. 

Impossible. 

Could think of nothing better but rubbing his back. 

"Ihateallv'thisss..." His words were strung together and inarticulate. 

"What?" She asked softly. 

He was breakable, she knew, but this was something new and alien. He seemed as 
fragile as cobsilk. The touch of a finger and he would tear in half. 

His face was ashen when she tilted his head back to look at him. The eyes 
sunken, the veined whites glazed. 

It was a sickness. Must be. 

PhaHks focused on her, frowning as if she had just appeared out of vapor and had 
not been standing there holding him vertical. Then he let his head fall to her 
shoulder and made noises. 

Words. Painful sounding confessions for which there was no penance. 

She felt them pass through the fabric of her wrap and enter her. The words were 
his ending and they exploded in her heart. 

"Icandothisssnymooore..." 

She felt him jerk as sobs rose up from some previously untapped reserve of 
sorrow. It was painful to feel him shaking inside her arms, the hacks near 
pulling him apart, clogging his respiratory system. 

"I'vvvelosteverythiiiing..." he cried softly. 

Veexow felt a strange sensation travel through her abdomen, Nameless Fear. 

Fear for what was happening to PhaHks. Fear for her lack of ability to do 
anything about it. 

His cool body was warming under her, which meant he was fevering. 

His hair felt soft under her stroking. His skin was smooth and eatable, but... 

...she sniffed him... 

...he smelled different. 

PhaHks had many smells that she recognized. His sweat after he'd gone for his 
daily run. His clean hair after a mineral swim. His sex after a night of 
coupling. The sea saltiness of his tears and the pungent reek of his vomit 
during one his frequent bouts of seemingly incurable stomach illness. 

But this odor that swirled around her nostrils, this was unknown. 

It was the smell of sickness, yes, but other. 

It was stronger, coming from the whole of him, welling up from his deepest 
tissues. The smell was blood tainted with disease holding the flavor of rot. 

Unhealthy, dangerous smell. It frightened her. Scared for him. 

She had seen PhaHks enter emotional episodes where he would suddenly become 
morose for long periods. Teary-eyed, non-communicative, he'd stay awake for 
days, forsaking sleep and food until she was forced to threaten him into eating 
and resting; that he would be forced to do both through drugs if necessary. 

These states of human instability would eventually pass, with or without her 
intervention. 

Moody creature. 

But he had appeared to adapt well to his life with her, although he still argued 
every decision she made concerning him. And he had still fought her with angry 
words and the occasional escape to the hills back on Romulus or running the 
farthest corners of Kol's moon-based home now. Did so whenever things in this 
life became too much for him; the life he was forced to live; the life she had 
created. 

But how could so adaptable a creature also be so frail? 

A Romulan under the same circumstances would have committed suicide almost 
immediately. Not due to emotional self-torture, but through simple logic. 

Unacceptable state. Leave. 

Leave even if it meant self-murder. 

But PhaHks had stayed. Learned. Accepted. Kept on despite the invisible prison 
which she knew is how he thought of this life. 

Strength was there in PhaHks. 

Extraordinary, that the universe would see fit to place such an indomitable 
spirit inside such a fragile shell. Only to incorporate that spirit with its own 
fragility. 

Human. Red creatures that struggled against impossibilities for survival only 
to, in the end, crumble under their own weaknesses. 

And then a second irony. 

They, not completely succumbing, continued the fight despite themselves. 
Creatures that risked certain death to remain unfettered. 

A species that still lived, even in her time, under the instinct for freedom. 

Confinement, even for PhaHks who had ceased looking for escape years before, was 
a daily test. Though he did not wear any chains, he struggled with his "prison", 
always. 

Before he'd given up, once he had nearly died from exposure to the harsh 
creatures of the Romulan night. The sickness had been a good lesson for him she 
thought. 

Trying to be free, he had come close to killing himself. Nearly died trying to 
live. 

Illogical, ironic, unfathomable creature. 

He defied understanding. 

Veexow slowly, gently, guided PhaHks over to her bed and laid him down on it. 
Quickly locating her small supply of drugs (though it had been some time since 
she'd had cause to use them on him), pressured in a swift injection through the 
fabric of his shirt. 

In a few seconds, his breathing evened out and he slept peacefully. 

Impulsively she lay down with him, draping her one leg and arm across his legs 
and torso, feeling the steady rise and fall of his chest. The silent rest of his 
sleep. 

Somehow, she would bring that kind of peace into his waking life. 

She would. 

For him.

*************

"I cannot reverse what has happened to you. Neither can I change what I am, just 
as I now know you cannot." 

"But, if it's worth anything to you at all, know that as far as I am able, I 
have loved you, PhaHks. I realise that is probably not enough." 

* 

Veexow had gone to PhaHks the next night and lay down beside him in his bed. 
With a gentleness from her he had never known, she had stroked his cheek, his 
hair, his mouth, but with only feather light finger-tips. 

Asking nothing of him, coming only to provide if he should so request, to 
comfort her lover in his terrible state. 

They ended up making love when his lips, in needy supplication, sought out hers. 


* 

Veexow, one article at a time, removed his clothing. 

There was no hurry. She was here for him more than anything. Above all else. 

Later, for herself. 

She lay him out on his bed and her practical, working hands slowed to a measured 
caress. She wanted to take her time now, if eternity would allow it. 

She wanted to look at him. 

Straddling his hips, she wanted him to see her looking. 

Without even touching him, his penis responded to the smoldering desire in her 
black pupils; grew and changed; hardened into a thing of irresistible form. 
Thick and engorged; wet-tipped and ready. 

His breathing quickened and shuddered a little, his lids half closed in the 
weakness of lust. His eyes looked far away to an ecstasy that was calling him. 

Veexow licked her lips and he gasped. 

She plunged forward as if diving to her destiny and stopped just above the silky 
head. 

Kissed it once. A movement of lips just touching, as if in prayer. 

Let her closed mouth rest on the moistened member for a delightful second before 
opening her mouth and swallowing him inch by inch. Lips conformed and molded to 
his shape on the journey down, until she reached almost to his base. 

On the skyward return, tongue squeezed the sensitive underside. 

She sucked. 								

So. Hard. 

And. 

So. Long. 

Drawing her head up, craning her neck, she raised her eyes up as if to a vision, 
as though to the approval of an ancient god looking on. 

And wanted to take PhaHks with her. Wanted to take him to a place where it would 
never stop. Wanted to learn and retain the perfect caliber of his private sex. 
He was the only instrument she wished to play, his desperate moans the only 
music. 

Veexow quickened her motions with her mouth on his turgid cock and her hand 
cupping his swollen testicles, until his hips bucked, his red shaft hardening 
further. 

She placed one finger in behind his delicate sacs and pressed softly up into his 
body. His blood would not escape until she released it. Press. Release. Press... 


Press. Press. 

PhaHks tangled his human hands in her non-human hair so she wouldn't stop 
anything. 

She didn't until he bucked wildly and shot into her over and over, crying out as 
she swallowed and swallowed, as though his hot fluid was the source - the only 
thing - that gave her life. 

In succeeding love plays, he or she administering the greater half, each came to 
know the others secrets. What tongue on what part, what touch and how often, 
what rhythm and how fast, repeatedly took each to the teetering edge of a 
precipice. 

Veexow was over him, on him, watching him as she humped. She wanted to see 
herself fuck him and so would lean back on her muscled thighs, raise her body 
off of his wet, ruddy shoot and then slide back down, eyes never leaving it as 
it was buried in her again. 

His breaths were the gasps of a newborn, his trembling the spasms of a fallen 
bird. 

His beautifully long abdominal muscles flexed and relaxed then flexed again 
under her. She writhed and grinded above him. Splayed hands on male chest, 
tongue and mouth and teeth kissing, sucking and nibbling fine hair and finer 
skin. 

As she moved, changing rhythm often, she watched his face looking back, 
relishing the responses her sexual ministrations evoked in him. 

His features had aged. Tiny crows feet at the outer edges of his eyes were 
evident when he frowned or, like now, when he grimaced, wrapped within her 
promise. 

His eyes half closed, she kissed them over and over. A soft, barely audible moan 
escaped his lips as she lengthened her movements, rocking faster. 

At one point, he opened his eyes, pupils dilated from the drug of sex, reached 
out one hand and stroked her up sloping eyebrow as if it were another sexual 
part of her. It made her groan, that one sensual, beautiful touch. 

"I'm FUCK-ing you, PhaHks!" Suddenly she had to cry it out. All in the Universe 
must hear it and know. "I'm fucking you....fucking you.... I'm going to fuck you 
forever....Forever." The Tongue of possession and one possessed. 

"I love y-o-o-o-u-u-u-u..." 

His answer, "U-h-h-h-h-h-n-n...", open mouthed. A surrendering. 

She looked at him, committing to perfect memory every hair in his eyebrows, 
every uneven colored speck of green and brown in his "Ha-ZaHl" irises. 

Taking his hands in both of hers she gently forced them above his head, using 
them as a brace so she could pump his granite even harder and longer. 

One quick down thrust and he writhed in the pleasure and pain of it. She slowed 
again. 

*Not too much or he will break.* 

The fact that she could actually cause him pain while fucking him was incredibly 
erotic. 

*But only sweet pain, my PhaHks.* 

She wanted him to remember what she did to him here. She wanted him to see, feel 
and be swallowed by her. And to hear his own desperate sounds as she nudged him 
near climax and then eased him away again; building him into such a frenzy that 
every breath that came out of his mouth was a whine; a plea for her to end it. 

She almost came when she heard that but stopped for a few seconds, seeing his 
lips move but unable to speak. Seeing his body spasm but unable to move. Feeling 
his lung's shallow gasping, but unable to draw a full breath. 

She had performed a sexual hypnotism. 

He was deep. 

So vulnerably deep. And the fact that he was hers; every part of his body 
belonged to her and that thought, that he was unknown to all but her alone, that 
he was her forbidden fruit made her want to come again. 

But she wouldn't. Not yet. Not until she was frenzied too. She wanted him to 
hear what he was doing to her as well. 

She kissed his mouth and he opened for her. She sucked and bit his bottom lip. 
She twisted her fingers in his hair, holding his head to one side. 

Kissed his cheek softly, barely touching. Kissed the laugh lines around his 
mouth that had deepened and nibbled hair, temples. Nothing remained untouched by 
her. 

The fact that he had grown older just made her want him more than ever and she 
lay flat on him, breasts pressed onto his cool chest. 

Veexow wanted to learn his body blindly, exploring with tactile hands. She 
wanted his seed inside her with Romulan fury. She had wanted him. 

*I have always gotten what I wanted.* 

She looked at his face, shiny with perspiration, and felt new throbbing at his 
flushed color, at that red hue that was still as alien as it was beautiful. 

Not the color of Romulan blood, green-grey like an ice-covered moon, cold and 
dark, but red, like the burning surface of a star. Like a red sun that had 
existed for billions of years - ancient. 

Existence enduring beyond all comprehension. 

The faint lines at the corners of his alien eyes and the thought of his 
impending old age (he was beyond forty now) made her cry out. 

*Let him think that I cry out in passion and not that he has divided, sewed and 
now severed my heart. PhaHks, what you have done.* 

But she could deny no longer that she loved him, whatever that meant. No longer 
pretend but that she had done it to herself; come to treasure this human more 
than her power or wealth. 

Or her life. 

Now, as the love swelled, so did regret. She'd wasted so many years standing 
coldly, stupidly distant, as though to admit to loving him was a weakness. As if 
it were something to consider, to examine clinically but to avoid as if an 
unpalatable alien dish. 

She focused on him again, rolled with him, breathed him and was almost 
satisfied. 

He gave out a little cry of mercy when she executed some hard down thrusts of 
her pelvis and begged her. 

She rocked him with long measured strokes, sliding up and down his thick cock 
until all she could feel was him. 

Only PhaHks. 

The planet beneath her vanished without form or pull. Gravity and substance 
evaporated. Bed, floor, walls and all things dissipated under their exhales. 

All that existed was the velvet mass of him. 

She was skewered on the center of the universe, loving every inch of it. 

If it were possible, he became harder and she wetter, as his girth rammed her. 

It was too much. 

She finished it, writhing up and down, faster and faster, feeling his monument 
swell her particular spot until she herself could no longer stand the teasing of 
it. 

He stiffened and cried aloud what she had done to him, his body jerking upward 
to meet her as he came inside her. She let out a cry, arching her back, 
trembling as wave after wave of satiation crashed... 

...everywhere. 

It was better than she had expected. 

Better than she'd hoped.





When they had slipped passed the orgasms of sex and calmed into the pleasured 
after state, Veexow did not raise herself up and off him immediately. 

PhaHks said nothing though puzzled by her stillness. 

But this was how she wanted to see PhaHks. This is how she wanted to remember 
him. In many ways, but mostly like this. Connected. 

One being. 

Now that she had made love to him, and he to her her heart began its breaking. 

Veexow knew, this night when she pulled up and allowed air to pass between their 
bodies, once she separated from his softening sex, it might this time be 
forever. 

**** 

Kol was dead and DhraH'Ken had made it clear he now owned KeK. 

Veexow knew it meant the sooner she, Rhengar and PhaHks made their departure, 
the better. 

Two mornings later, she told Rhengar to prepare her shuttle to leave for good. 

* 

As she entered her chamber for the last time before fetching PhaHks from his 
(she'd thought it best he remain in his quarters now that DhraH'Ken was in 
control of things on KeK), Kol's old kitchen servant appeared from around a 
corner and followed her in. 

He stood there in the door, waiting for her permission to speak. He was a quiet 
creature and she remembered he excellent preparation of Klingon fare. Had told 
him so on more than one occasion. 

"What is it?" she asked, not really wishing to indulge in conversation when they 
were nearly ready to leave. 

"I must clear things between us, you were kind to me." he said. 

A cryptic parting message. She supposed he was thanking her, in his Blue-skinned 
BreeOn way, for enjoying his food. 

"Thank-you for your service." Polite but did not encourage further exchange. 

"They are coming, Madam." 

She tended to her packing. ""They"? They who?" 

The BreOn fidgeted. "I overheard him speaking to them late last night. Only 
light years away now." 

Veexow froze. Looked at him. 

The BreeOn had told her everything without saying a thing really. DhraH'Ken 
might spare him if any doubts should surface. 

She closed her spherical case. Went to him, and pressed something into his hand. 


He looked at it. A jewel. One valuable enough to keep him in comfort for years 
to come. 

"Thank-you." She said, looking directly at him, eye to eye. "Thank-you." 

He bowed deeply and, checking over his shoulder, swiftly disappeared down the 
corridor. 

Veexow lost no time in gathering up PhaHks, hurrying him through the vast 
complex headed for the Landing Bay, but saying nothing. 

They entered the Hall of Conquests, had almost passed through when, 

"Leaving so quickly?" 

Veexow spun to see the massive Klingon, Beh'ah'Let in hand, watching them from 
the darkness. The Beh'ah'Let was dripping black blood. 

She stepped in front of PhaHks protectively. "You said it was finished between 
us." 

"Yes, I did. But Kol is dead now, and I have changed my mind. Your Romulan 
police would have arrived here on time to do it for me, but the servant - the 
dead one - warned you, so now I must repay the payment." 

"That is not the way of a warrior." She mocked. She had no weapon. Her energy 
phaser had not been recharged for months and though an excellent fighter in hand 
to hand combat, her opponent had learned from infancy to execute swift, lethal 
strikes. 

And he was outweighed her by one hundred pounds. 

And he had a Klingon sword. 

She was defenseless. 

DhraH'Ken, seeing her step in front of PhaHks, laughed. "My argument is with 
you, Veexow. I decided that simply killing the human is not enough to balance 
the death of my father." 

"And,.." As he spoke, he closed distance. 

Veexow put the table between DhraH'Ken and herself and PhaHks. 

"...The cook, before he died, also told me you had one of your own kind 
slaughtered for your little flower. That is not the way of a Romulan Commander." 


Closer. Within striking distance. 

"It appears we are both liars." 

He lunged, clearing the table in a single leap. 

Veexow used two countermeasures. First, she shoved PhaHks back behind her as 
hard as she could, getting him out of harms way. Next, she dived under the stone 
table and scrambled out the other side. That she had donned casual dress that 
morning was standing her well now. 

PhaHks landed on his butt and watched the next moments unfold. 

Veexow was on the losing side already, and things were about to get a whole lot 
worse for her. And then, for certain, him. 

She was backed against the Wall of Many Battles, its entire surface adorned with 
weapons suitable for slicing and dicing. But all fastened in place and useless. 

DhraH'Ken charged, raising his blade like a club to bring it down and divide her 
in two. 

Veexow just managed to twist and dodge out from under it as the weapon clattered 
against the wall, dislodging some of the trophies. 

One skittered across the floor to PhaHks. 

He scrambled to pick it up. It weighed sixty pounds if it weighed an ounce. It 
felt solid. Potent. 

Veexow was again trapped against the thick table, no escape in sight with 
DhraH'Ken poised to split her in half. 

Once more, she turned the right way as the weapon dropped from above and it 
missed her most vital portions but for her right shoulder. One of the blade's 
many points grazed the slope of it, removing a slice of flesh. 

Blood spurted and she cried out. 

DhraH'Ken had the weapon already above her again and this time she would not be 
able to flinch, not while injured and in pain. 

But PhaHks was there. Behind DhraH'Ken. 

And he had a sword raised high over the Klingon. 

And then he brought it down as if it was a sledge hammer and the Klingon the 
"Test of Strength" target at a fair ground. 

It sliced through air and through DhraH'Ken's shoulder unhindered, lopping it 
off at the hinge. The weapon and the arm that held it tumbled away in a purple 
fountain. 

DhraH'Ken screamed as he watched his warriors flesh and blood abandoned it's 
duty. In his overconfidence, he had forgotten about the warrior human. 

PhaHks had not hesitated in lifting the sword high again. 

This time, his aim had improved and it met DhraH'Ken's neck at the 
shoulder-join. 

DhraH'Ken's head lolled to one side as gushers escaped into un-confining air. 

The warrior's heart still beat but his death was assured as his bled-out body 
timbered to the stone floor. 

PhaHks was not finished yet. Not by a long shot. 

Payback time was what raged through his arteries and he began striking the 
fallen body. 

His mind screamed and he swung and swung the blade again and again until the 
head separated from the shoulders and rolled across the floor, coming to rest at 
Veexow's feet. DhraH'Ken looked up at her with locked eyes. 

DhraH'Ken. 

DhraH'Ken was the reason for it all. 

PhaHks brought the sword down hard. He was striking the other dead shoulder. 

For brutal rape... 

...*strike*! 

For broken ribs... 

...*hack*! 

For two dead little girls... 

...*Hack! Hack!* 

For all the pain brought to every person everywhere in the universe. 

...*slice*! 

For dead fathers and missing children... 

...*gouge*! 

For abductions... 

...*STRIKE!* 

For comas, cancers, murders... 

...*strike, strike, strike!* 

Because of scars on body and in mind, PhaHks dismembered the Klingon. For all of 
it. 

For her. 

For himself. 

He struck and struck until he fell back spent. The blade, finally free of its 
morbid task, lay still on the floor beside him, once again just part of a 
collection. 

********

PhaHks wasn't finished, it seemed, when DhraH'Ken was dead. Veexow was very 
still and stared as a great battle was waged ten feet from her. 

Simultaneously she attempted to halt the flow of her own blood and watch as 
PhaHks caused more to spray the room and those objects in it. 

PhaHks, she, the table, the room, all became sticky with it. Blood mixed with 
tears rained down over them all. 

She watched him as he hacked at the lifeless body of DhraH'Ken with all the fury 
the Klingon had shown but with a face of rage unlike any she had ever seen. 

The face of pure hate and total fury. Of punishment, revenge and grief. Of 
macabre satisfaction. Twisted and wet with tears, it was not quite a sane face 
she saw. 

But it was an very old face. She realised she was seeing thousands of years of 
violence rewarded for violence. Millennia of humans slaughtering their own kind, 
murdering and raping of neighbors and even their own children. For reasons 
political, immoral, demented. Out of religious fervor or selfish gain. 

This is what the Romulan High Council, all those decades ago, had feared. 

Not the civilized, polite Federation with its policies of non-interference and 
good will, but the base, animal brain of the species itself. Instincts that 
shaped the creatures known as Human. 

Territorial. Greedy. Mankind bent on war and self- destruction. 

Instincts that had survived through eons of adaptive change. Urges still present 
in the heart of them. 

The Federation, springing as it had from these roots, had learned to use words 
and sugar sticks instead of violence and weapons. 

This race had enveloped the galaxy. 

The Romulan war with the Federation had been hard fought and slowly won, such 
had been the "die for life" inner force the humans had practiced throughout 
their bloodied history. 

Until that telling war, the humans had thrived because they'd conquered their 
baser desires and refocused them on growth and knowledge. 

PhaHks had killed DhraH'Ken to protect her. 

But a simple death had not been enough for him, she'd seen it plainly, there on 
his face. 

PhaHks had continued his kill, slaughtering the dead enemy to cleanse himself 
perhaps. Or maybe to send someone else to the underworld and give them a taste 
of it. To have an other drink of the cup of despair as he had for years. 

How many strokes of that sword had been struck with her in mind? 

She knew the image of him, mindlessly hacking at the gruesome corpse, would 
remain vivid in her forever. 

But so would the next picture of PhaHks. 

Collapsed on the floor in exhaustion, looking sick. Staring at the gory wrath as 
though it were something unreal and as though he had no idea how it had 
happened. Sweet innocence. 

Whatever force in him that had surged to the surface had expelled itself and was 
gone. He was PhaHks again, the cloak of ancient fury lifted from him as if it 
had never been. 

Then he came out of it, standing and coming to her. 

Checking her wound, he removed his shirt, tore it to strips and carefully 
wrapped it around her upper arm. 

PhaHks shivered in the cool air of the Hall. 

"Thank-you, PhaHks. Are *you* all right?" 

He said nothing but nodded. 

Veexow took PhaHks' hand with her unhurt arm and led him to the Bay where 
Rhengar and the ship waited. 

* 

"Have you set our coordinates?" 

Rhengar was not only an excellent therapist, but a first rate pilot. "Yes, 
M'Lady." 

Veexow occupied the co-pilots seat in her small but well equipped shuttle craft. 
Every so often she would stare back at PhaHks who sat in one of the two 
passenger seats twenty feet to her rear. Slumped down he periodically rubbed his 
hands together, a sort of catatonic daze having had come over him. 

Veexow had led him aboard the craft and he had come without protest or even 
seeming to notice what was happening. 

Now his eyes remained closed and he was non- responsive. Things had folded back. 
She and PhaHks, it seemed, had returned to their beginnings. 

"Rhengar." 

"Yes, M'Lady." 

"I want you to change our destination." As she said it, she input the new 
vectors herself. 

Rhengar stared. "That planet's a myth." 

"It was a well kept Federation secret. One known to only the very highest 
echelon of the Empire. To those in the elite Royal Council." 

"But you are not of them." 

"My father was. He told me stories of it when I was a child." 

"Just stories." 

"No, Rhengar. My father was also a Talshiar Commander. An expert in ferreting 
out the truth. Father never told me faerie tales." 

"But why there, M'Lady?" 

In answer, she looked back at PHaHks who remained unaware of his surroundings or 
their conversation. 

"I see." Rhengar nodded. "But why, M'Lady, after all you've gone through to 
acquire..." 

She glanced sharply at the doctor. 

He finished carefully "...to save him?" 

"What is salvation to one can be torture to another and..." her gaze rested 
sadly on PhaHks. 

"...I have grown weary of causing pain." 

"It is a long journey M'Lady, parts of three days." 

When one elegant hand came to rest on his shoulder, he looked at it sharply. 
"Please, let him sleep through it." Veexow asked. 

If it were possible, his heart softened even more towards her. *I will have this 
woman.* he thought but only brushed her cheek with his fingers. She had said 
please to him a great deal the last few months, and thank-you. 

"For you, Dear Lady, anything. Always." 

Rhengar fetched his medical supplies and the drugs he'd designed for PhaHks. 

After PhaHks was drugged to deep slumber, Rhengar piloted the small ship to a 
new goal. 

** 

"PhaHks..." 

"...PhaHks!" Veexow spoke louder. 

She helped him sit forward. Crouched before him. 

"Come." she said to him. 

"Where?" 

He was still very low. 

"To a nice place. A familiar place. For you, the best place." 

Rhengar had watched the exchange and administered a mild stimulant to hasten the 
humans progress towards consciousness. 

"PhaHks?" 

He had slept for thirty-eight hours. 

Veexow took his hands in each of hers. "We should go now." 

"Trrd. Why d'we haf d'go'gin?" 

He was still in a half-asleep state. 

Perhaps a good thing, she thought. 

Veexow took his haggard face in her hands and kissed him very tenderly. "PhaHks, 
please, just this once, trust me." 

She helped him to rise and he didn't resist. 

"Trust me." 

** 

--------------------------------------------------------------------- Never. 

PhaHks had never lived in her world. 

He had only waited in it. 

Waited and held onto hope like a breath suspended. 

Veexow tried to pull him in, wanted a last close touch but instead he stepped 
away, leaving only a few fingers entwined in her outstretched hand. 

It came to her then. 

It came to her as they stood before The Guardian of Forever. The Portal that 
lived and saw all the living while situated upon a forsaken and lifeless 
planetoid. 

It came to her that it was not hurting him to leave. Not like it was hurting 
her. 

His brown eyes, flecked as they were with green and gold - the colors of Earth - 
did not moisten at this leaving. 

He wanted to go. 

She wondered if she might stop breathing. She wondered if she would have the 
strength to finally release his hand and as she wondered it, he pulled it free. 

He took two steps back, allowing her no opportunity to clasp it again. No room 
to change her mind. 

He knew her well. 

And he was going to leave without saying another word to her. 

She was wrong. 

"Thank you." They'd been spoken out of gratitude. Relief. She couldn't tell. 

He looked away to his right, to distant cliff faces and electric sky, eyes 
closing once, shutting out so many things now, then looked back at her. 

"I want, I hope..." 

Whatever it was he was trying to say, she wanted to hear it desperately. But 
mostly, she wanted to smell and feel him again. She wanted him to stay. 

By stepping away and widening the gap of rocky

soil between them, he had been right. Had he given her another minute, she might 
have convinced herself to make him stay. Convinced herself that she could 
somehow make him want to. 

"I hope..." He didn't finish. Shaking his head sadly, a bone-deep sigh was the 
last thing she heard from his lips before he was turning away - suddenly - 
facing away. 

Veexow gasped softly. Seeing his body turn, he was taking nothing of her with 
him. 

The pain. 

PhaHks had rejected her touch, left her space, and now was severing his physical 
self along with his mind and heart. 

The pain of it. 

He was removing everything he was from her and doing so willingly. Happily. 

Veexow wondered now if she had ever dwelled in him. 

He gathered up the physical part of himself that he *had* allowed into her world 
and was set to again offer it and all he was up to his own time where his spirit 
dwelled. The life he had never really left. 

Somewhere deep in unexplored regions of her passions, something previously 
undiscovered and alive burst and died. When he stepped through the portal, all 
that was left was the shriveled skin of that new death, already brittling inside 
her. 

Veexow grieved as a Romulan: whole bodied, whole minded, but no outward sign. If 
she had known how to weep, she wondered if it would have helped. 

Veexow was alone now before The Guardian. 

Nothing had changed in her universe. The Empire remained. 

There were no human beings. 

She was who she had been. Perhaps. 

On the planet, PhaHks had stepped through and back. 

Now, he was there. Already. In his time and life. His human filled earth. 

The space-time, the exact moment in the continuum, had been relatively easy to 
calculate. 

Eight years to the day that he had been taken she had returned him. 

She wanted him to remember her. Could not have bourn his having no memory of her 
and what they had shared, all of it. 

However small a portion of him she had gleaned, in the end, it had been worth 
it. 

Simple to do the sending of him back. 

The loss she felt was the loss of every wonderful thing she had ever known. 

Imagining him still alive and fighting and beautiful... was some comfort. 

Now, in her time no humans breathed but for the tiny body suspended within her 
womb. Her secret. 

She could have told him. Maybe it would have kept him back. Perhaps he might 
have stayed, then, willingly. 

Perhaps not. 

But bribery? Coercion? 

No. Her Romulan pride had kept her silent. 

She could hurt him no longer. 

But she had kept something alive. 

Half PhaHks. 

Her heart panged even now, his name though unspoken. 

It had been so easy to take him from the Ferengi. So simple to confine and study 
him, lock him away and observe. 

Not so simple when she began to love him. His kind of love; human. Illogical and 
impassioned. An unquantifiable joining that had made her near mad with desire, 
spurring her with a drive to protect him no matter what the price. 

Impossible, then, to see chains, however figurative, ever again encircle his 
wrists. 

The sadness of his abduction, the uncontrollable events that had led to the 
dissolving of her comfortable existence, this terrible fate that had caused two 
voyagers over an eternity of time and distance to by chance cross each other 
had, in the end, twisted them together. 

Adversity has caused a mating of enemies, each blind in their own way. Each 
having learned dependance upon the other so to survive the darkness. 

Now this same destiny had sheared them apart and she, in all those years of 
battles and lovemaking, had never heard him utter her name. It had fallen from 
his lips to greet her, not once. 

Veexow would never hear him speak it now. 

Too much pain caused for her to have even apologized for it, and so she would 
never know its peace. 

She had lied to him for a long time. Lied for herself, wanting him to stay. 
Could not - would not lose him! Impossible to bear! 

Until his own anguish at living in her world, the hopelessness on his face that 
terrible day. 

His Hay-zahl eyes drained of animation, she could no longer look upon and live 
herself. 

The ecstasy of love had bound her to him with such exquisite torture that she 
could not breath comfortably unless she'd known how he was hour to hour; that he 
still lived; that he was all right. 

How much worse the agony in letting him go. 

At the Guardian, she'd been calm, cool and logical as her ancient Vulcan 
ancestry allowed her to be when needed. 

She'd watched him walk through the portal without looking back and had not 
flinched. Had not done what her heart begged of her, to run after him, to hold 
him back, to keep him with her forever. Or go with him. 

But she could no more easily have existed in his world than he had in hers. 

Yet he had been simply a man. 

When he had stepped through and was gone, as it swallowed him from her reach 
forever, grief enclosed her heart in its frozen fist. She thought her Romulan 
soul might go mad. 

Empty wind spoke to her of him and his absence. 

And when it whistled down through the rocks as that pale yellow sun dipped 
behind jagged hills, only then did she come to understand what she had lost. 

She ceased to feel as a Romulan Commander. Knew it had happened long before. 

Wealth. 

Power. 

Position. 

Less than nothing. 

Meaningless. 

Her small understanding of human love had made her send him back against all 
more powerful desires that said bind him. 

Surprised at how strong her ancient Vulcan heritage really was. The urge to 
seize him had almost been beyond her control. An insane urge to possess, outside 
all reason. 

But his grieving face and eyes that begged had defeated those ancient instincts 
to impotence. 

All that mattered had been him. All that remained was him. A small part of him 
inside her. 

A tiny, frail, precious piece that was already growing stronger. Hidden but 
alive. A beating half-human heart. 

She lay her hand upon her already swelling belly, and signaled Rhengar to beam 
her up. 

** 

Veexow returned to her small vessel and to her small room. There she let the 
grief have full sway for a while until exhaustion demanded she rest. 

When Rhengar entered unannounced, it awakened her from a dream that might have 
been pleasant but it slipped away and lost form like a breaking wave on a 
distant shore. 

"Dear Veexow. You should eat." 

He'd brought food and set it on her desk. 

She sat up. "Rhengar. Always practical." 

He sat beside her. "Your health is paramount. Especially now." 

Veexow sat up, saying nothing and making no move toward the meal he had brought. 


Interpreting her silence as a need to be alone, he rose to leave. 

When he reached the door, she called him back. 

"Rhengar. Do you love me?" 

He turned, looking at her beauty and the open sorrow on her features. She was 
showing her self to him for perhaps the first time in his memory. "I think you 
know the answer to that." 

She bowed her head. "Yes." Acknowledging what she'd known for seven decades, 
that he was passionately in love with her. "What would you do for me?" 

He spoke without hesitation. "I would do anything for M'Lady." 

"NO! Not "M'Lady"! For ME, the one you say you love! Do you love me with all 
your soul and life?!" 

He knew she was saying: *As I loved him?* He answered, "I would die for you." 

"I do not need you to die for me, I need you to make him live again." 

Rhengar peered at her unblinking. "What are you saying?" 

"You know what I'm saying. I'm pregnant with Phahks' child and I intend this 
baby to be born and grow up and live as freely and as beautifully as he lives." 

She stood, the passion in her voice becoming tempered with reason, plans being 
laid out, set in motion. "I'm saying I want you to factor out my DNA in this 
fetus, I want all Romulan element removed from his child. I wish it to be fully 
human." 

"The technology is available, M'Lady, but the risk to the child is high, I do 
not know if it is possible." 

"It is possible, we will do it. We must." 

She grasped his arm, to *make* him understand. 

"We, - we took on a role that did not belong to us, that of gods. We judged 
another sentient race as unfit - " 

*PhaHks. PhaHks unfit?! Passionate. Driven. Spiritual, sorrowful, sexual, 
beautiful PhaHks!....so beautiful...* 

" - we decided their fate, their right to exist in this universe and we were 
wrong! We were arrogant. Stupid! I have learned that they had as much right, 
maybe more to be here." 

"I want this child to be human. I want it to be unstained with the guilt of his 
mother whose own people would have murdered his father and his own kind. That is 
a guilt I will have to carry until the day I die." 

"Do you know what it is you ask of me? Do you understand the step you are 
taking? You are speaking of the reintroduction of the human species in the 
galaxy, in our time." 

"I understand what I am saying. Will you do it? Will you do it for me if not for 
him?" 

"I love you, Veexow. You know yourself that I will do it." 

She had been standing before him, every muscle tense with the depth of her 
passion, of what she wanted. Now she visibly relaxed, released his arm and 
turned away. Walked to the food he had brought, looking at it, making no move to 
eat. 

Suddenly, Rhengar was beside her, laying a hand upon her shoulder, turning her 
away from the tray of vegetables and from whatever memories might be found 
there. 

"This grieving will end, Veexow, someday. Eventually you will be yourself again. 
You will feel again." 

"Who I was, Rhengar, is dead. But as long as he lives in this child, I will 
continue. For him, I must." 

"You always have. You have always survived, anything." 

"But to feel again? What does that mean? Feel what? What should I feel?" 

"Something besides grief." 

She sighed, irritated at the thought. "Maybe that is what I want to feel. What 
else is there?" Her tone mocked the impossible. 

"If not those, perhaps love." 

"No. It costs too much. I will never forget what it has cost me, what it is 
costing me. I've lost everything including that for which the sacrifices were 
made. But I would still love him again. I would do everything all over again. 
Don't you understand? I will never forget him. I CAN never forget." 

Rhengar took her hand and held it tightly, bringing it up to his strong, young 
chest, his other hand touched her face with such compassion, she almost couldn't 
meet his eyes for fear of seeing her pain in them. 

"Never?" 

He leaned in and kissed her, his lips saying for him what his words could not. 
She let him, wondering if her heart could possibly break anymore than it already 
had. 

She loved PhaHks. She did not have him. 

She had Rhengar. Did not deserve him. 

"Perhaps, one day, Veexow, you'll let me help you forget." 

******

PhaHks Epilogue 

EARTH. 

There it was. Right in the phone book: "Scully, D.K., MD., Quantico." He lifted 
the receiver and almost dropped it. Wiped his hand on the side of his coat. 
Sweaty palms. 

He was scared shitless for some reason. 

*Jesus, it's *her*, not a stranger. She'll be happy.* 

She wouldn't hang up, would she, thinking it was some sick joke? Fuck. 

Hand shaking, he pressed the little numbered, square buttons that would connect 
him. 

Anyone passing by the phone booth would have seen a tall, brunette, good looking 
man in faded jeans and blue T-shirt, a worse for wear trench coat hung loosely 
about slumping shoulders. Anyone caring to look closer might see exaustion 
etched into the flesh around the dialated eyes. Eyes that looked scared and 
tired and relieved all at once. 

Anyone stopping to look would notice him occassionally covering those eyes with 
his free hand. They would see that he was having difficulties. That he was 
trembling and crying a little and failing to keep it completely hidden. 

No one stopped. 

He heard it ring once on the other end. 

Twice. 

Would she even be there at this hour? 

Eight years, he thought. 

Eight.... 

...*Years!*. 

I'm thirty-seven years old. 

It's Two-thousand, Six. 

Thirty-seven plus eight... 

...forty-five. A forty-five year old man. 

It was gone,...fucking gone,.. 

Once they'd lost nine minutes with no memories. 

She hadn't believed him. 

Now what he remembered bunched together behind his minds eye, orbiting a black 
hole. A legion of demons called. The event horizon of his soul. 

Eight. Forty-five. 

The values really had no meaning. He forced himself to listen to the tiny chirp 
of a ringing phone. 

*Treeeep, treeeep...* 

He didn't want to go insane quite yet. 

Five rings. 

Had Scully moved on? Other job? Better life? He didn't know. But he knew the 
year so she must have. 

He'd seen himself once in a bathroom mirror, after breaking into that familiar 
house and taking some clothes. Brown hair now not all brown. Face not all smooth 
anymore, and his eyes! 

His eyes had scared him. Sunken, except he was not that much underweight, and 
smudged underneath with grey bags. And wrinkles where there'd been none. They'd 
looked like someone else's eyes. 

Left as himself and came home a stranger. A haunted creature that was no longer 
familiar with its own shell. Like a trapped animal which had chewed off its own 
limb to escape, he'd come home missing something. Half a soul. Some of his mind. 


Now that he was among remembered things,... 

...he didn't have to run here. No-one took from him, but left him alone, 
undisturbed, in his phone booth... 

...he was truly afraid. 

As for how he had arrived there... 

His mind was still pretty fuzzy on that point. He did remember crawling over 
rocks, he did recall stepping through a...doorway,......a passage?, something 
like that. 

Then, dressed in only dusty white shirt and trousers, the next thing he recalled 
was walking along a dirt road somewhere on a planet called Earth and he couldn't 
remember where he'd left his car. 

After finding out he had no weapon, keys, phone or money, he'd sat down on the 
scrubby rise at the side of the gravel road and puzzled on it for a while. 
Puzzled for ten, fifteen minutes. Couldn't make sense of it. 

The sky was charcoal against which hung a white, fingernail moon. The air 
smelled good and the dirt felt right. The trees were normal. Coniferous, pine 
odor. Deciduous, their brown leaves teased from their hold in a feeble night 
breeze and dropping. 

When he'd reached a two-lane highway, he began to see discarded fast-food 
cartons and empty cigarette packages and knew for sure he was where he should 
be, as far as he could remember. Sort of. 

But he was - oh - so tired. That really deep, bone-aching weariness that just 
made you want to curl up where you were and fuck it all. 

But instead he walked along the highway's ditch, more-or-less in the right 
direction he thought. 

Found an old Times magazine, thrilled at seeing something so ordinary. Read the 
caption: The Breaking of the Tech' Barrier; Fifty Years of Scientific 
Revolution. 

Then he saw the date: 

2005. 

December, 2005. 

His hands shook so badly that the letters blurred. 

It was fall, it was still warm out at night. Eyes burning, he looked at grass 
and trees. Dead leaves. They were falling. 

Autumn. Not winter. So it must be 2006. September maybe. 

And then his legs turned to water when terror struck. Guts quivering, he fell to 
his knees and then to his elbows in order to contain it. 

Toppling to all fours, crushing the heart-bursting, dirtied glossy cover to his 
face to absorb the tears or the blood or whatever it was that was spurting out 
of his eyes and pouring down his cheeks, he was broken. 

Sobbed. Little whines escaped his lips, words formed within his throat and on 
his mouth that never made it to his intellect. Noises that made sense only in 
the context of the greatest grief imaginable. The power of them had no place in 
everyday language. 

Crashed and burned, metaphorically speaking. 

Hours later, he'd turned away from that mirror, the mirror in his mothers house, 
afraid for himself and, for some reason, ashamed. 

He'd found no money anywhere there, except for a bit of change in his mother's 
emergency jar tucked away behind the books on the living room shelves. It was 
only enough for public transportation and a couple of phone calls, so he'd 
grabbed the only source of food in the pantry, dried macaroni, and shoved a 
handful into his coat pocket. Mom wasn't home. 

Somehow he knew she was dead. 

But he stopped thinking about her. And the calendar date. On purpose. 

He tightly clutched the phone until his fingers ached. A good, honest, self 
inflicted hurt. 

Every so often, he popped a few macaronies into his mouth and munched loudly. At 
least it was filling the hollow in his stomach. 

He wished he could have dressed better, taken the time to shower, maybe brushed 
his teeth, but the house'd been wired with a silent alarm and he hadn't wanted 
to take any chances by staying too long. Showing up after...a long time and 
breaking in would be an easier matter to present to Scully than to the Chilmark 
police department. 

At least he hoped so. Her face caught in his memory, making him smile - inside, 
not outside - still, it didn't come easy. 

That pretty face. 

Suddenly his eyes filled and tears leaked out beneath fingers desperately trying 
to keep them in. Crying made him tired. 

Drew in a long, shuddering breath for control. 

On the sixth ring, a woman answered. 

"Thank-you for waiting, Doctor Scully's office." 

Not her. 

Must be a secretary. *Good for you, Scully.* 

He managed to get out a stammered question, one hand squeezing his eyes shut, 
the other hand holding the phone to his ear, knuckles white. 

He was crying freely now but somehow keeping the sobs out of the mouthpiece. 

In between questions, lots of little gasps though. 

The woman was speaking, giving him answers. 

Yes, Doctor Scully was in. No, she was in the middle of her evening class. Do 
you want to leave a message? Yes, the Doctor is Chief pathologist. What do you 
mean, is she married?? 

*Fucking hell! Did I ask that?! FUCK!* 

The womans voice turned from polite irritation to annoyed suspicion. "Who is 
this? I am not authorized to give out personal information!" The last words he 
heard before she hung up. 

He remembered another number, shocking himself. Pretty good after...after no 
telephones. 

Pushed the right buttons. 

He guessed she wasn't married because she was still using her last name. But 
then, she might anyway. 

One ring. 

"Scully." The disembodied voice announced neutrally. 

He stopped breathing. Felt like sinking to his knees and passing out. But that 
would have to wait for a better time and place. Still, he couldn't make his 
tongue work. Say something!, he begged the person at the other end. 

"Hello?" Now she sounded annoyed. He must have interrupted a speech to her 
students or something. 

Lungs starved for air, he gasped, and the tears would not stop. 

Goddamn it, it should be easier than this. Every word he'd practiced scattered 
in the wind like dust. 

"Pervert!" The line went dead. 

She must have heard his heavy breathing and thought he was some kind of bored 
deviant getting his rocks off. 

Almost the good old days. 

It should be funny and if he could stop crying like a baby, he would laugh. 

He redialed, hand trembling so bad he might have missed a couple numbers. 

"Hello?!" this time she was angry and her tone had said: "If you don't say 
something intelligent immediately I'm hanging up and I won't be answering a 
third time, asshole!" 

The power in her voice, the beautiful fire that came through with that one word 
warmed his soul like no fifty year old bottle of scotch ever could. It helped 
him find his voice. 

And it almost stopped the tears. Not quite. 

"Sc-scully." It had come out all wrong, a sob wrapped in a whisper but it would 
have to do. 

"Hu..hello? Who IS this?" 

At least she'd heard it this time. 

His muscles turned to liquid and the phone dropped away momentarily. He forced 
it back. After two droughts of air: 

"Scully." 

Clearer this time, but he couldn't get out anything else. Nothing came to mind. 
Everything he'd rehearsed seemed ridiculous now. For the first time 
in,...in...so long, he really wanted to speak and couldn't make it work. 

The seconds of dead silence that followed terrified him. 

"WHO is this?" she asked again. Now she was whispering, fearful, puzzled. Afraid 
to believe. 

"It's me." *Brilliant!* But it was a beginning and his heart was pleading. Don't 
hang up! He wanted to say it but didn't. He wanted to say other things, right 
then, while he had the chance, before fate decided to remove the opportunity. 
But then fate had brought him here. 

"Meet me?" It was a question and it was all he could think of. His soul and life 
and everything begged for her to believe. 

Her answer was a sharp intake of breath that caused a sob to escape him, so 
terrified that she would hang up, that she wouldn't believe her own ears. Or 
that she might believe and it would be too much for her. 

A dial tone would kill him. 

It was agonizing, that long minute or more of silence but for her quick breaths 
through the line into his ear. His heart pumped painfully with her uncertainty 
and his own fright. He felt like a six year old lost at the World's Fair. Long, 
sickening waves of fright. 

He was not a child. 

He was a grown man. 

And what happened in the next few seconds or so would either save or destroy 
him. Everything depended on it. 

"Where?" so far away, she had sounded. Light years distant. So faint. A 
whispered scream trying to reach him across years of separation. 

He couldn't stop crying but it felt good now because it wasn't from fear of 
darkness or hopelessness, but from possibility. From the faint light up ahead of 
this black tunnel he'd been stumbling through. He wanted to see her see him as 
she always had. If she saw him and believed, he would be real again. 

It was all he wanted, to be in her sight and feel alive. 

Salvation. 

Scully. 

He forced syllables out through his mouth. "Bus station. Downtown. Gate 23." 
Telegraphically said. Complete sentences still impossible. 

Somehow, she'd located her own voice box. "Stay there. Don't leave. Just stay 
where you are. I'm coming right now, okay? Don't go ANYwhere." 

As if he was planning on going anywhere ever again as long as he lived. 

Whispered "Okay." Unable to manage anything else and didn't want to hang up, 
either, the voice on the other end his only hold on gravity and substantial 
things. He couldn't bear to sever that tenuous connection through fiber optics 
to them or her, not until she hung up and did it for him. 

He replaced the phone before the dial tone came through, wiped his eyes, and 
made his way back through the doors into the building. Off the busy street and 
into the hustle and bustle of the crowded Greyhound station. 

Gate 23 was about in the middle. He choose it because it was central, no other 
reason really. It didn't stand out any more than any other gate but it was the 
easiest decision. 

He didn't sit down in the hard, plastic uniform chairs or lean against the wall, 
he just turned in little circles, feet shuffling, covering about six square feet 
every minute or so. 

Circled where people milled around and moved passed him, some sitting with their 
suitcases and griping about the lateness of their connections. Some drank coffee 
out of Styrofoam cups. 

The aroma of coffee, his first since..., it came to him, eight years, made his 
mouth water. It was physical torture. He had forgotten how good it smelled. 
Couldn't remember how it tasted. His stomach churned acid and uncooked macaroni. 


Small circles. Eight year old habit. 

He looked for her, afraid of the what if's. What if he didn't recognize her, or 
if she didn't know him? 

If she couldn't find him. 

If she changed her mind. 

If she was furious at him and hated him for leaving without warning and 
returning the same way. 

But to see recognition in her eyes when she looked at him would make it all 
better. To know he was not a stranger to *her*. 

Because he was so to himself. 

It wasn't much to ask but still hard to hold on to; to hope for; to believe in 
that little, teetering maybe. 

***** 

--------------------------------------------------------------------- 

***** 

Doctor Scully shut off her cellular, excused her class, removed her goggles and 
hair-cap, grabbed her white lab-coat and made a fast dash for the door, mumbling 
"family emergency" to her wide-eyed pupils. 

Out of the room and the building, into her car and out of the basement parking 
garage, driving as fast as she dared. As she handled the wheel and the quick 
turns she prayed, her first prayer in a long while to her God who had been too 
silent these last years: *Let this happen. I need this. As much as I think I 
still need you, I need this more. I need him.* 

Keeping emotions strictly in check, she swallowed apprehension and doubt. There 
would be no hesitation in her if - when - she found him, she allowed no room for 
it anymore. But, for right now, because she was still a scientist and functioned 
and thought as one, she would await the evidence before committing herself to 
the truth of him. Allow no opportunities for hope unless this time she saw with 
her own eyes the very living reason for that hope. 

Maybe she'd be able to rebuild her faith if this wasn't just all a terrible 
mistake. Someone's cruel joke. 

She thought about phoning her old boss, Walter Skinner, now Director of the 
F.B.I. but no, she would wait until she knew first. Until she found out what the 
voice on the phone wanted and there was some sort of order to it all. 

Couldn't even let herself *think* his name yet. It wouldn't do to allow too much 
in there, in that spot in the center of her chest which was already swelling. 

What to say if he were real? The hundred questions she'd for years stored away 
under mental lock and key meant nothing now. Just words and what were they? 
Noise. 

Stupid to have thought that answers were always the crucial goal. 

To hell with answers. What was really important had nothing to do with pat 
knowledge. Things like friend- ship and warmth, happiness and hope, forgiveness 
and love. Those were worth seeking and fighting for. 

Few words had been spoken during that phone call. 

But enough. 

Her eyes misted. It had sounded like him. 

*God, if you're listening today, listen to me. If you want me to believe in 
miracles, then give me one. Let it BE him.* 

She parked her Explorer right outside, illegally, not giving a shit. Let them 
ticket and tow it! 

Taking only her keys and dressed still in her working greens, she tried not to 
run into the bus terminal, forcing her limbs to behave as normally as possible 
under the rush of adrenaline. Ignored the looks people gave her stained medical 
garb. 

So many people. Everywhere, blocking her view. Where the hell did they all come 
from? Why don't they go home? 

She couldn't see squat. 

The doctor would have given anything if she'd only worn her three inch heels 
that morning. But standing lectures and hours of being on ones feet meant low 
heels or better yet, sneakers. 

She strained to raise herself up above the sea of human heads. 

*Tall. He's tall. Look for tall and dark.* 

Minutes went by and her mind left the pseudo calmness of reason, entering the 
blunt rush of panic. Goddamn it, she couldn't see! 

Then she did. The back of a dark head that reached an inch, two, above most 
others. It was the right shape, the right shade. 

She opened her valve of possibilities and let a little of it flow freely. Bit 
her lip from the painful flutter inside her. 

Hope was beating its wings. 

She moved closer, picking up her pace, finding her way passed bodies. 

The hair color looked the same. Stance, the same. Movement appeared the same. 

Hurry. 

Then the one that seemed to fit turned her way but missed her, looked passed 
her, not seeing. 

She stopped, clamped a hand over her mouth when the rest of him fell into place 
within the mental template of her mind, stifling a sob. 

My God. 

It was. 

Yes. 

*MyGodMyGod*. 

No. Have to touch first. 

Make sure. 

She walked more quickly, pushing passed strangers, getting them out of the way, 
all meaningless obstacles. 

Kept her eyes forward, not letting them drop for an instant, not blinking lest 
she lose sight of what might have been an apparition but, by all that was holy, 
surely was not. 

Quickly. 

Then she saw his eyes on her. And they fit too. 

God, they were the same eyes! They had the same dark depth and the same sorrow. 

Maybe more. 

A laugh escaped her, boiling up out of an unbelievable joy. It mixed with her 
quiet choked-back sobs. Her lips trembled. 

"Ohmygod, ohmygod-ohmygod-ohmygod..." Rushing through the crowd who no longer 
existed or mattered. 

Nothing else did now. Or ever would. 

Not like this.





When he saw her, terrible years and incomprehensible distance shriveled to 
twenty normal steps. 

Tears he'd conquered threatened to resurface at that first sight but he beat 
them down. 

She was closing the last thirty feet, finding a quicker path between dozens of 
bodies while her eyes never left him at all. Her hair was shorter, wavier, 
lighter and softly framed those beautiful features that had almost faded away in 
his mind forever. She was older, must be, yes, but nothing had touched her 
beauty. 

Perfection and paradise walked toward him. 

--------------------------------------------------------------------- 

He'd prepared himself to embrace her tightly, apologize, hold her hand, beg 
forgiveness, defend himself against the anger he knew was coming - anything to 
keep her there. Anything in the world. 

Was not prepared when she, (finally reaching him), gathered his shoulders in her 
arms and then his head between her palms, pulled him down and kissed his lips. 

Then kissed him again. And again, trembling and clutching at him, not letting go 
of any part of him. 

She kissed him, little kisses and then longer ones and back to little ones. 

Heat rushed up his torso to his head when her meaning became obvious to his 
dulled senses. It was no accident, this. She knew who he was and she wanted to 
do this; had wanted it and been denied for years. She meant to tell him her 
meaning silently with her mouth and that it should have been said long ago, 
before the hard lesson had to be learned. She was apologizing herself in a way. 

He responded now, kissing back, then buried his face in her soft neck, smelling 
her perfume and couldn't stop the shaking in his shoulders or the old, 
decomposed, grief anymore. 

"I'm sorry-I'm-sorry-I'm so sorry-I'm sorry..." 

She clung to him, still as an anchor in a shallow lake. 

"It's okay. It doesn't matter. It's okay. You're here. You're here with me. It's 
okay now..." Lifted his face to kiss him again. 

For minutes upon minutes they stayed that way, on their tiny island, while the 
world lapped at their edges. 

Then, strangely, Mulder pulled back, "Scully?" 

She bit her lip then. His face. She'd seen the expression before during her 
medical internship. The time when she'd spent a few weeks in an ER before 
switching to pathology when she found she couldn't take seeing that face 
anymore. 

The face of shock and tragedy. The faces people wore when they were told that 
their son or their daughter, their husband or wife or whole family was dead. 
That their broken and bleeding bodies couldn't be saved. 

Or the face of the victim on the emergency room table, surrounded by machines 
and strangers, when they knew they were in big trouble. When they could see by 
the look in the nurses eyes that they were dying. 

Just like the face Mulder wore now. 

"Scully. Where've you been?" 

"Well, you know, Mulder,...r-right here." He had sounded as if they'd missed 
each other at coffee break. "Just waiting for you,...like always." She forced an 
apologetic smile. Let him think it. 

She drank in the remembered face, seeing unfamiliar faded scars on cheek and 
forehead. And, through his torn T-shirt, a painful looking one in the hollow of 
his shoulder. It was an unusual shape. It was pale, a deeper scar than the 
others, the flesh surrounding it puckered. She noted every new tiny fact but 
asked nothing. That he was warm under her hands was more than enough. Plenty. 

To hell with questions. 

Fuck the truth. 

"I need to ask you something." He said, his face buried in her collar, his voice 
hoarse. 

She kept her cheek against his, if for her comfort alone, so she could keep him 
from vanishing into nothing. She hadn't the courage to let go just yet. 
"Anything." 

His breath was tiny wisps of warmth on her neck, he was buried in her hair and 
skin. Just where she wanted him. 

"Are you married?" 

She smiled a little. Rueful. Interesting first question. She'd just kissed him 
harder than she'd kissed anyone. It had been spontaneous and, she felt, 
absolutely necessary, but completely unexpected for both of them she thought. 
Now he needed to know if it was the only time. 

He seemed to be existing in two mental places at once. Switching back and forth 
from today to years ago and what horrors they had held for him, and back to 
today. 

He was so vulnerable. On the proverbial knife's edge. One misstep on her part... 


But he wanted to know. 

HAD to know if what he was holding was her and was something he could keep - 
hold onto like a life jacket - or did she belong elsewhere? Were things going to 
be the same or was she just some kind of cruel joke god was playing on him. 

And of all the things for him to have said or asked after eight agonizing years, 
it was completely Mulder that it was not only one she couldn't possibly have 
guessed, but one that, in a way, involved sex. She had to chuckle. 

"Divorced." She felt his arms tighten. 

He was glad. "Good. Then I want...I-I want you to...m-marry me, 
Scully,...please." 

She hadn't expected that. "Um, marry you?" Not trepidation, strangely enough, or 
doubt, just surprise. 

He straightened and looked down at her sweetly shocked expression. "I d-don't 
ever want to...lose y-you. I couldn't survive it. Never. Please." 

Scully stared. Really stared. He looked physically exhausted. He looked sick and 
frightened and he was stuttering. Mental exhaustion too. 

Something had reached inside him in those missing years and pulled him 
inside-out. Taken him apart. 

Crushed him. 

She didn't know what or who or just how bad or if he was beyond repair. Mere 
damage control would this time be out of the question. 

"I've missed you." she said to him. "But I think we should take this one step at 
a time." 

"Scully - " 

"-Mulder....I just left a classroom full of med-students standing over a 
partially dissected corpse..." 

...Terrible images against his will. Body parts swam through murky memories. 
People. Dead and dismembered and displayed on shiny metal slabs. On display 
screens with incomprehensible symbols... 

His head hurt. 

..."I don't even remember what I said to them before I ran out of there"... She 
touched his hollow cheek. "And you're not well." 

"Scully, I need to know...I need an answer...something. I don't,...don't 
knuh-know what's going on..." He began to shake. Really shake. A high fever 
trembling that started somewhere and ended everywhere. 

A panic attack? she wondered. Scully felt sure he was near to collapsing from 
fatigue. His eye bags were so deep and dark, they looked as if they'd been 
carved into the flesh with a spoon. Something had made a long meal of him, and 
the simple task of speaking was sucking up the leftovers. 

Whatever he had been through, even in just the last few hours, all the emotions, 
all the tears and possibly the shock of seeing her again, was costing him even 
more. She had to get him out of there and to a hospital, or at least home. 

Her place. 

"Please, Scully." 

This is insane, she thought. Only Mulder could show up out of thin air looking 
like an eight year binge hang-over, ask something like that and pull it off. 

He was ill. He needed rest, food and drugs. Not a honeymoon. 

At his eyes brimming with a bit of hope and a lot of fear, she bit off anymore 
excuses, either for him or herself. 

He needs something to trust. 

I need him. 

Admit it. 

Then she spoke furiously, not leaving either of them wondering a minute longer. 
"Yes, okay. Yes." Nodded. *Fuck. Of course!* She'd been waiting to say it for - 
what? - ten, twelve years? No beating around the bush anymore. "Yes." 

"There's a...a condition." 

She looked up at him incredulously. "What? What kind of condition?" 

He poured the words out, like he wanted to get them over with. "I 
don't..ruh-really k-know what's happened to me..." 

His voice broke. The anguish in it was painful to her ears and what his face 
showed nearly made her heart stop. But she made efforts to follow his jumbling 
sentences. 

"...Don't ask me what..where I've be...what's happened. I c-c-can't talk about 
it, I don't kn-know. A-and you'd th-think I was crazy, and," 

Then in a barely audible voice, terrified of something he could not look at. 

"...I don't...I don't think I ever wi-will...be able to. M-maybe I...I could 
be...I just can't." Pressed the side of his face against her clean hair. 
"Suh-sorry." 

She kissed that face. "I know it was something horrible but it's over now. I 
promise you, I won't ever ask." She held his head between her hands, "Not until 
you want me to." Stroked the faint scar above his right eyebrow. "Anything, 
Mulder. Anything to keep you here." 

"I think it was something...r-really bad...." He wanted to tell her though, even 
though it made his guts twist and melt in fresh fear. Even though the swirling, 
nightmare images were as starkly ugly as she was softly beautiful. 

- Even though he couldn't separate them from the terror in his mind or from the 
pain in his body. 

- Even though they were intertwined within those elements like cancerous 
tendrils. 

Even though all of that - her words of promise had reached one loving hand 
through the bars of his polluted, self-erected isolation, and warmed him. 

So maybe someday he could open it wide and she would cross that dirty threshold. 


"It doesn't matter, Mulder..."

"Scully, there's something else..." 

She looked at his troubled face. "Whatever it is, I'll understand, okay?" 

He swallowed. Nodded. "I'm...there's,...I-I'm totally...." He frowned at 
himself. Took a breath and tried again. "I think...I think I'm 
completely...fuh-fucked up, you know." He said it as if he were describing a 
disease. And warning her. Do you know what you're getting? he was saying. Do you 
know what you're in for? 

"I don't care, Mulder." If he'd had two heads, she'd have kissed both of them. 

"Scully..." 

Physically, emotionally, he did remember some things. 

But mostly the time that he was gone tumbled with visions of terror and pain. He 
was a fallen prophet being punished for sins, replete with the dreams of demons. 


Tears started again. It was as if he was ill with anguish and his body was 
trying to fix it, leach it all out, excrete the terror and hurt like sweat. They 
came steady and silent, soaking through her working clothes to her skin 
underneath as she hugged him close. 

"Please help me." Barely audible, it drifted into her right ear. It was not the 
whimper of the slightly suffering nor the cry of the mildly distraught in search 
of quick healing. No. It was an against-all-odds last request, the faint shriek 
of the hopelessly damaged. It was a death plea. One that contained no 
expectations for salvation. 

So would the forgotten scream from Purgatory. 

She bit her lip. Mulder was not, she sadly realized, even asking for her to be 
his final rescuer. All he wanted was to be brought back to the surface. One 
quick tug to keep from going down forever, even if she would only pass than 
responsibility onto another. 

But she would do much more than that. 

Eventually he would of course need a hospital and a thorough going over, and 
then she'd call Skinner. But for now her only prescription for Mulder was a 
bath, a soft bed, a gentle hand and sleep. For now the destination was home. 

Everything else could wait. 

His quiet shaking crumbled the last of her control and she had no voice with 
which to answer. But two hands would do just as well as she, protectively, held 
him and, possessively, pressed her face into his shoulder, nuzzling him. 

"Oh, baby..." Tender words mouthed silently and she would have sliced out her 
soul and served it up to Satan on Melba-toast if it would've softened her old 
partner's pain. 

So this was loving someone. 

"It's me, Mulder, it's me. It's us. You and me, okay? You and me. Just us, 
okay?" Held him tighter. "Both of us." 

It didn't stop the shaking in his frame, but his breathing slowed. "Take me 
somewhere. I can't stop." He was feeling embarrassed and she was glad because it 
meant he still had an sense of himself. He was still there with her slouched in 
reality, dressed in torn T-shirt, wrinkled coat and ugly black-top sneakers. 
Garage sale Mulder. 

Scully offered up a silent prayer of thanks. 

"It doesn't matter, Mulder. You've come back to me. You're home. I'm taking you 
home. No escaping me now." Took his wet face in her hands, the last three words 
a gentle tease. 

Somehow, heroically, he smiled. Did it for her, she knew. The little crows feet 
at his eyes, the wisps of grey at his temples, were somehow profoundly moving. 
And his face, complete with scars, stubble and red-rimmed eyes heralding the 
look of the newly freed damned, was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. 

>From pictures she had seen of him, in youth he had been recklessly gorgeous. 
When she knew him during their years together on the X-Files, his face had 
sculpted to a rare, but more mature, masculine beauty. 

Now, in middle age, his looks had settled in to that comfortable handsomeness 
that would now be timeless. A few more wrinkles and grey hairs to come, that was 
all. 

Seeing his face every day for the next thirty or so years, which she planned to 
ensure, it *would* stay as it was. The way treasured things kept their same 
colors and texture; they way they kept the faith. His was the face, no-matter 
one terrorized by unknowns, that she remembered and it belonged to her again. 

Her heart was airy and sunlight penetrated, warming it as she held on to his 
arms tightly and kissed him again, unable to get enough of his taste. Kissed 
slowly, responding back to his response. 

"Scully - " 

"I know, Mulder, I know." Held him fiercely. 

""Fox"." He said between kisses. "Fox." 

"Really?" 

He shrugged. "I've k-kinda gotten used to it. N-not sure why." 

She heard him say something else under his breath in an exotic language. She 
didn't understand it of course and he'd said it without thinking. She was sure 
of that, because he was looking at the cross around her neck, and now appeared 
unaware that he'd even said it. He offered no translation and had not seen her 
surprise. 

He'd been somewhere, that was for sure. 

"What are you going to do? Come back to work?" She kissed and asked. 

It seemed the thing to do - normal - to stand in the middle of a crowd in a 
bustling Greyhound Station, hugging, kissing and talking in between. 

"I don't know; haven't th-thought that far. Too much. All I could think about 
was g-g-getting to you. That's all." 

*You did that years ago!* "You could apply to having the X-Files reopened." 

Except for the occasional visit to the damp and dusty office, she had finally 
let them go two years previous. 

He shook his head. "No. No, I d-don't think so. I don't think I w-want, need, 
them anymore. I've h-had enough...'nuff... ..for a wh-while." He liked the feel 
of her in his arms. "I don't want to think about anyth-thing right now. I j-just 
want to go home. P-Please take me out of here." 

"But what about Samantha?" 

Like an electric switch, something in him was turned on. Or off. 

*Click*. 

Scully saw Mulder go still. He was thinking about her words, puzzled, like he 
had forgotten there was long, lost sister in his self-accused, guilt-ridden 
past. 

Saw the transformation, his comportment going from shaky calm to shaking fright. 
"I hope she's a-l-l-r-i-i-ght." 

Scully sucked air, swallowed. He had spoken as if Samantha had vanished only 
hours before. He spoke as he must have when he was twelve. After the hospital 
and the drugs and the doctors trying to figure out why he couldn't speak or 
recognize his parents. He spoke raw, bleeding terrified anguish. 

"I mi-mis-s-s-s her." Said like the suddenly invisible son who could no longer 
bear the silence of the parents. 

A well known truth, Scully thought and hugged him. God, he was shaking. 

Her heart was pounding. 

She kissed his cheek. The way she hoped his mother had when he'd woken up 
screaming from the nightmares of his sister's empty bed. 

"I want to go home now." He said, the trembling fading. 

"I want to go home. N-nothing else." he repeated, shyly, as if worried she would 
think he was asking too much of her. 

His emotions were switching back and forth like a metronome. She couldn't keep 
pace. 

He was hugging her tight and she was soft. She felt like...like...It was faint. 

No, he couldn't remember. 

It was all over, whatever had happened, was history. Finished. A horrible 
nightmare that was fading now. Fading and fading forever...soon even the memory 
of the dream would disappear. 

He sighed contentedly. "Think you cuh-can stand me?" he finished. 

She smiled ironically. Kissed him again in answer. 

Yeah. 

Yeah, she thought she could put up with him. 

After eight years of grief. 

Eight years of searching, of futile inquiries, dead ends, hope shrinking until 
it whimpered and died. X-Files shut down. Re-assignment. Struggles to rebuild, 
new people, new workmates, new job, new secretary, new life. 

One failed marriage. One big mistake. 

Eight months the vows had lasted. One month for every year Mulder had been gone. 
She seen her own sabotage from the beginning and was helpless to stop herself. 
No room for a new man when the old one still occupied one's waking thoughts 
almost to the exclusion of all else. 

Had forced her features into saying: Yes, I have accepted that he is dead and I 
am moving on with life. See (proving it to them)?: New job, new husband 
("This-is-Alan's-wife-Dana- she's-a-doctor-too.". Introductions all around. 
Seminars, conventions. *Drowning* in conventionalism, she'd step forward and 
smile), new life... 

But her heart remained stubborn and unyielding in its devotion to the old one, 
which had quickly become all too plain to her intelligent, surgeon husband. 

He hadn't had a chance really. 

She and Mulder fighting mutant killer worms in the frozen arctic. 

Serial killers, gargoyles, clones, Moth-men and demons. 

Mulder and she tailing alien mercenaries. 

And, of course, the Biggies... 

...Abductions and conspiracies, government death-camps, Black Oil, genetic 
manipulations, U.F.O's, Purity Control, Deep throat, Krychek, Cancer-Man... 

SPECIAL Agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully. 

And then suddenly she was sitting over meatloaf, listening to a man who was her 
husband describing his latest appendectomy. 

In the crazy race, it didn't even place. 

Scully and Mulder against the world. How could Sunday dinner with the in-laws 
ever top that? 

She'd been cruel and unfair to Alan, but the denial had become too much. More 
painful than the Marriage/Lie. 

Eight years and lots of lying. 

Yeah, she thought she could "stand" having back Special Agent I-love-him Mulder. 
She thought she could "put up with" having back in her life forever "Fox 
I-missed-him-so-badly-it- nearly-fucking-killed-me William". She thought she 
could "stand" it. 

Just no more Samantha talk. 

"I kept your Mom's house exactly as it was." In those words she spoke what she 
suspected he already knew, that in his absence his mother had died. 

"Do you think I'd do less for you? My God, Mulder, do you think for one second 
I'm going to let you out of my sight ever again?" She kissed his mouth to seal 
it. "I don't want you walking to the corner store without me knowing. I wouldn't 
take it lying down." 

He hugged her and whispered. "I hope you'll take *some* of whu-what I have to 
offer l-lying down." It had sounded sexy and seductive and humorous, like 
Mulder. He was nearing his limit, his voice fading to a raspy whisper and his 
eyelids drooping. He was shutting down. 

Years ago, it would have been a joke only but now it was medicine to her aching 
heart and bolts of lightening to her body. 

"You're in my life for good, Mulder. It's us. Just like it's always been." She 
took his hand and led him (he was practically asleep on his feet) through the 
swinging glass doors. "Let's go home." 

He didn't protest. 

Scully led him out into everything that was Earth: green and yellow and blue, 
familiar colors. Birds and welcoming sounds, breathing things and life-giving 
sun. 

"Scully?" 

"Yeah, Mulder?" 

"Thanks." 

**** 

On AHNYA (a Neutral Territory trading post), orbiting the Fourth Moon of CEITAN 
PRIME. Year: 2491 (Old Earth Calender). 

"Mother." 

Veexow looked up from her reading, quickly shutting off her monitor. 

"Son." 

Her son. Tall, red-blooded, growing into a man before her eyes, entered her 
sleep chamber. 

His mussed black hair, still damp, told her he had just come from a swim. He 
loved the water, was drawn to it. The child of an ocean planet. 

Something was on his mind and she knew what. His thoughts, always visible in his 
emotions of the moment, ventured forth as his green eyes watched for his mothers 
reaction. 

"Do you know what today is, Mother?' 

Of course she knew. Fourteen years ago, her son took his first breath in her 
arms. He had wailed for a long time. Veexow knew at that moment the sort of man 
he was to become. 

"Certainly." 

Veexow had grown to understand that her child didn't always approach things, 
conversations, head-on. He liked to circle first and gauge the depth. 

He had always been so cautious about her feelings, never wanting to hurt her by 
sounding painful memories. However, in the end, his curiosity usually got the 
upper hand. 

She had even learned to smile for him and did so now. He sat by her. 

"Do you think,,,is there anything else you can remember?" 

The topic she had expected. This was always his question on this particular day 
of the year. 

"Well, I've tried to remember anything about him that I might have overlooked or 
forgotten...there really is nothing you don't already know. But I will repeat 
any part of it if you wish." 

"You loved him." Not a question. 

"Oh, yes." She said. 

Rhengar had known it. Rhengar who had, by her side, raised the male child as his 
own. 

Rhengar, who treated her with compassion, tenderness and love. 

Rhengar, who knew that Veexow, though returning his affections and eventually 
taking the Vow with him, had loved PhaHks more than she would ever love him. 

Rhengar knew this, but was content. 

It was for him enough, as he had assured her on the day of their joining: "It 
will do, Veexow." 

The tall youth looked nothing like his mother but for jet-black hair. He was 
intelligent (spoke eleven languages, including Old Human), and insightful. And 
so curious and passionate. 

Questioning. Searching. 

Always her son needed to *know*. 

She understood these things and had never kept a truth from him. Never, ever 
lied to him. 

Her son settled down on the floor near his mother. "Tell me again why he 
left..." 

She did and soon she was telling the story from the beginning. 

They talked a long time for he had so many questions. Picking out the smallest 
details he would then ask more. Never satisfied. 

Human mind. 

PhaHks' child. Her son. 

She had named him carefully, checking the meanings behind thousands of names of 
all species, languages and cultures. 

Finally discovering, in an old encrypted file that those on AHNYA had forgotten 
about or for which they no longer cared, the right name. One that was all human; 
that made sense; that was perfect. As her tiny baby was perfect. 

An old Earth legend of a beautiful bird that rises from the ashes of its former 
life. 

Phoenix.



Was beautiful. 

~**~





*****END*****(See "CHALLENGE!") 

~*~*~*~*~*~ 

"Suddenly I knew that you'd have to go, My world was not yours, your eyes told 
me so, Yet it was there I felt the crossroads of time. 

And I wondered why..." 

("THE OLD WAYS" by Loreena McKennitt). 

~*~*~*~*~*~ 

AUTHOR'S NOTES: 

"PhaHks" was written in response to a private challenge, that being to write a 
crossover of X-Files and Star Trek where one character (or both) really IS 
abducted and then brought back. The plot-line of "PhaHks" came to me immediately 
and just kept coming until I couldn't stop it. 

THERE were two things I wanted to voice with "PhaHks". 

ONE: If ever anything happened to a person the likes of which Mulder experiences 
in this story, insanity would be almost a given. A person could survive it I 
think, but only by drawing on deep, DEEP reserves of stubbornness and strength. 

Fox Mulder has an abundance of both. And insolence! I love the character, in 
fact I adore Fox Mulder, but let's face it, sometimes he can be an arrogant 
prick! Defenses rearing their ugly heads, though, is sometimes the only way to 
survive in any life. 

TWO: PhaHks is a tragic love story, and one with some pretty dysfunctional stuff 
happening. But, no matter what the plot, you will find that all of my stories 
are either love stories or at least contain one. 

**If in this story, there appears to some to be anti-God innuendo, it does not 
originate from my personal beliefs. I was simply trying to write with power and 
in line with character. 

BY THE WAY: If you're a writer (of my strange ilk), then writing is not a 
pastime for you, it's a disease. One that eats away at you until you start 
treatment by getting to that keyboard or pen and paper. 

Writing is a lover who calls at the worst times (out driving your car, during an 
important meeting, in church, when you're trying to sleep, or when you're just 
getting up and you're already late for work!). 

Ever told yourself: "Tomorrow morning, I can sleep in!" only to be awakened by 
your "lover's" whisper at 01:21 AM? If that has happened to YOU, then we're 
kin... 

*I really enjoyed doing this story. I am working on other stories, (An X-Files & 
an X-Files/Millennium Crossover) but now that "PhaHks" is done, I'm taking a 
break. 

My husband has been an angelic DOLL for putting up with me during the writing of 
this series during which time he hardly saw his wife. But I just looooooved 
using his computer. 

"CHALLENGE!": (I may be continuing the story (a sequel) from the end of the 
Greyhound Bus Station scene. But does anyone care to try their hand at a 
continuation from EITHER of the TWO places I have left off (from AHNYA scene or 
Bus Station)? 

I would love seeing what anyone could come up with!! 

******* 

<"All this because I didn't get you a desk??"> 

*******
GenieVB
avan@home.com