TITLE:  World Without End, Book Three (7/?)
AUTHOR:  Rachel Anton
E-MAIL:  RAnton1013@aol.com

xxxxxx

There comes a time for every man when he's forced to 
face the indignity of his life head on, when there 
can be no posturing, no pretense, when everything 
conspires to show him once and for all how ridiculous 
his existence is.  I think that Krycek and I have 
just shared this moment.

The afternoon that led us to this point was long and 
hellish.  Krycek had been with Scully during the 
tests, but when it came time to analyze the results 
he was relegated to this makeshift waiting room down 
the hall from the lab where I'd been sitting, perched 
on the edge of a full blown anxiety attack, for 
hours.

I'm not sure why Scully and Roseanne didn't want him 
in there with them.  I know that Roseanne was worried 
that seeing the two of us in the same room together 
might upset Scully which is why she gently, but 
firmly advised me to stay out here throughout the 
procedure.  Once it was done and they were working on 
the analysis, I suppose they just wanted both of us 
out of their way, but close enough to find at a 
moment's notice.  Nobody seemed to have any idea how 
long it would take to find answers.

Whatever the reason, I don't think either of us were 
pleased to be stuck together in this room where the 
chairs are tiny, plastic, uncomfortable and numerous, 
organized in a sloppy circle and the clock on the 
wall ticks louder than any other clock in existence.

He sat down as far from me as humanly possible, which 
put him right across from me because of the bizarre 
configuration of the chairs.  This must have been a 
classroom.  I think we're the first people to use it 
since the students were evacuated.

The staring contest only lasted a few minutes.  For 
the rest of the time we managed to find other points 
of interest.  I watched the clock move from three to 
four to five.  He found a particularly fascinating 
spot on his shoe.  We both shifted and grumbled, too 
big for our seats.  Every so often, a breeze would 
blow through the open window, rattling the door, and 
we'd both look up expectantly, hoping to see Roseanne 
or Scully, praying to be put out of our misery.

I left twice to use the restroom.  He only went once.

I thought about a lot of things sitting in this room, 
waiting.  I thought about Scully, wondered how she 
was feeling, what she was thinking, how she would 
react if this child turned out to be mine.  I 
resisted the urge to concoct twisted fantasy 
scenarios, but I did hope that we'd be able to share 
the experience with joy.

I thought about my own father, my own questionable 
paternity, and I wondered if he knew, how he felt 
when he looked at me and saw my mother's deception.

I thought about those movies and television shows 
from the 50's where the father waits for the mother 
to give birth, happily passing out cigars and 
slapping his buddies on the back.  What a fucked-up, 
ass-backwards version of that we were living.

I thought about Roseanne, how she seems to be falling 
in love with me, or that maybe she's been in love 
with me forever and I never noticed because I didn't 
want to.  I still don't want to.  She's a fascinating 
woman, unpredictable, open and expressive despite the 
fact that she was created in a laboratory, and I 
enjoy her friendship, her companionship.  I've been 
spending a lot of time with her over the past couple 
of weeks, mostly just talking in her room through the 
lonely, silent nights, and I've been grateful for 
that time.  I've been trying not to notice the 
glances and the touches, the sadness in her face 
whenever I leave her.   I don't want her to love me.  
I don't want her to need things from me that I'm 
incapable of giving.

I thought about the inevitable passage of time.  
Sooner or later this had to end.  Sooner or later I 
would be back in my room or in the cafeteria, knowing 
the answer and looking at something other than Alex 
Krycek's bored, stony glare.  But he wasn't bored.  
It was an act, an affectation for my benefit, used to 
cover up the fact that he was feeling exactly what I 
was feeling.  Awkward and frightened.

We spent exactly four hours and thirty-three minutes 
in this strange, self-imposed hell.  I suppose I 
could have gone out into the hall to wait, but maybe 
part of me wanted to be punished.  Maybe part of him 
wanted that too.

Our first sign that the news was not good came in the 
form of Scully's absence.  I'd been expecting her to 
be the one to tell us, but when Roseanne appeared in 
the doorway, holding a stack of diagrams and charts, 
she was alone.  She was anxious and strained- a woman 
walking into a den of lions.  Her demeanor was the 
second sign that all was not well.

"Well?"  Krycek was the first to speak.  He was on 
his feet as soon as she walked into the room.  I 
remained seated.  My knees were shaking too hard to 
stand.

"Well..."  Roseanne paused, looking back and forth 
between us at least four or five times.  "The baby 
appears to be healthy."

That was a relief, but it was quite obviously not the 
only news we'd been waiting to hear.

I twisted my fingers together in anticipation and 
frustration.  Krycek was not as patient.

"And?"  he prodded nervously.  Roseanne took a shaky 
sigh and fiddled with the papers in her hands.

"And...Dana is healthy and the pregnancy shouldn't be 
too difficult, but...there's something sort 
of...unusual."

"Unusual?"  I asked.

"Yes, I'm...I'm sort of at a loss as to how to 
explain it."

She started leafing through her papers, trying to 
find an explanation I suppose, but looking at them 
seemed to disturb her more and she ended up dumping 
the whole pile onto a nearby chair.

"Why don't you start at the beginning," I suggested, 
remembering the tactics I'd used in the past to pry 
stories out of the people I would encounter on cases.

Krycek rolled his eyes, seemingly uninterested in the 
beginning.

"Well, the beginning, um...I suppose the beginning 
would be when Dana was abducted."

"What does that have to do with anything?"  Krycek 
asked, sounding just a tad defensive.

"From what we've been able to surmise, when she was 
abducted she was somehow put into a state of 'super-
ovulation'.  Her eggs were taken from her, and since 
women can only produce a finite number of eggs in 
their lifetime, she was left infertile by the 
procedure.  At least, that's what we all thought."

"Well, her getting pregnant seems to have tossed that 
theory out the window," Krycek interrupted, growing 
more irritated by the second.  As nervous as I was 
myself, though, I was extremely curious about where 
Roseanne was going with this.

"So it would seem," she responded, giving Krycek a 
sideways glance.  "When she got pregnant, we assumed 
that the cancer cure had somehow...somehow cured her 
of her infertility as well, caused her to create more 
eggs which were then fertilized by one of you two."

She was looking at me at that moment, which caused my 
heart to leap ridiculously.  For a split second I was 
certain it was me.

"If that were the case," she continued, "the child's 
DNA would show characteristics similar to Dana's and 
similar to...the father's.  See, um, every child 
receives half its genetic material from the 
biological mother and half from the biological 
father, so when we do a paternity test, we check the 
stuff that matches the mother and then compare the 
rest to the samples from the potential fathers."

Even I couldn't suppress a slight sigh at the 
impromptu genetics lesson.  Was she just avoiding 
having to tell us the truth?  Delaying and prolonging 
the misery?

"Well, when we tried to do that in this case, we 
encountered a bit of a problem.  The, uh, the thing 
of it is...this child doesn't...there is no genetic 
material from Dana.  It's...it's from both of you."

It would be a vast understatement to say that this 
news was shocking.  It would be an overstatement to 
say that it was the strangest thing I'd ever heard.

"Wait, what?"  Krycek asked, waving his hand in the 
air like a referee.  "What did you say?"

"I'm not sure how to explain it, Alex.  Process of 
elimination tells us that it's Mulder's physiology 
that's caused the situation, since he's the one who's 
been um...altered.  The closest I can come to a guess 
is that when he went through the conversion process, 
something there effected his sperm and they're acting 
like eggs in this case."

Even my semen has become an X-File.  I guess it was 
just a matter of time.

"Well, that explains the bloating."

Fortunately, I don't think either of them heard that.

"So, you're saying the child is...that it's..."

Krycek was floundering.  I was making stupid jokes.  
It was an embarrassing scene all around.  But 
somewhere amidst the emasculation and the 
strangeness, I felt happiness.  Elation.

"It appears that the two of you are the child's 
biological parents.  Dana is...well, it's sort of a 
similar situation to invetrofertilization.  She's the 
mother, but not completely."

"Wait.  Just...this, this can't be right.  There's 
no...this is ridiculous.  There's no scientific basis 
for this whatsoever."  Krycek appeared to be 
channeling Scully for a moment there.  Except I'd 
never seen any veins pop out of Scully's forehead.  
"Why would they do this?  It doesn't make any sense!"

"Alex, you can look for yourself," Roseanne offered, 
reaching for her charts.

"I don't wanna look!  Where's Dana?"

"She went for a walk.  She wanted to be alone for a 
little while.  Listen, Alex, I know this is bizarre, 
but it does make a sort of sense.  All the women they 
took, the women they're keeping as slaves now, 
they're all infertile like Dana.  If they wanted to 
use them as vessels for their children, developing 
this kind of biology *would* make sense.  It's just 
more of the hybridization projects we've both seen."

"No.  That's not....no.  I'm not- I won't believe 
this until I hear it from Dana herself."

"Alex, she..."

Before Roseanne could say "wants to be alone," Krycek 
was storming out of the room in a huff, leaving me 
where I am right now, face to face with my own 
mutation.  Forced to recognize how unbelievably 
ridiculous, twisted, funny and wonderful this life 
is.  And I'm laughing.  God help me, I'm actually 
laughing.

I know that this is an inappropriate response.  I can 
tell that Roseanne is concerned for my sanity.  I 
realize that as soon as the reality of this situation 
sets in, I won't find a damn thing about it amusing, 
but right now, in this moment, what else can I do?

I'm going to be a mother.

xxxxxx

Into the freaking woods again.  Why is it always the 
woods?  Why can't she act like a normal person 
instead of a fucking Grimm's fairy tale heroine?

Where would a normal person go?  Home?  A friend's?  
Her office?

Checked all those places and then some.  Woods were 
the only place left and, of course, that's where 
she'd go.  Where she *always* goes.

"Dana!"

I've called her name so many times my throat is raw.  
Branches have scraped bloody trails down my arm and 
face.  Still- can't stop.  Can't stop till I find 
her.

Where the hell is she?

Why the hell did she have to run away?  All she had 
to do was come in and tell me the truth.  Even if 
it's Mulder, I can live with that.  But sending 
Roseanne in to lie to me- how could she do that?  How 
could she do that to me?  Why?

"Day-nnaaaah!"

"Over here."

The voice is small and quiet, especially in 
comparison to my broken hollering, and it comes from 
behind a tree.

She's crouching on the ground, near a stream, tracing 
patterns in the dirt with a twig, private and 
forlorn, and I feel ever the Beast to her Beauty.  
Even the leaves crackling under my boots seem 
disruptive and loud.

"Here you are."

I really want to say "Why are you here?"  but I 
already feel like I've interrupted and compounded her 
sadness.

And she is sad.

I thought that I needed to talk to her, that I 
couldn't-wouldn't believe what Roseanne said until I 
heard it from Dana herself.  I was angry because she 
wasn't there to deny it and offer me another answer.  
But looking at her now I don't have to ask to know 
that she believes it too.

"Dana..."

She must hear the questions in my head, the confusion 
and the frustration.  How can she believe it?

"There's no other explanation, Alex.  The baby is 
human and healthy, but...this baby...it isn't even 
mine."

Her voice cracks in an almost imperceptible way and 
something primal and sickening twists deep inside my 
stomach.  I want to hit Mulder again, to keep going 
this time until he really is dead.  I want to make 
her see what he's done and how he's corrupted our 
lives so completely, like a particularly nasty virus.  
All I can do is vomit.

Heaves of revolting, rancid looking stuff spill from 
my gut and into the stream and when there's nothing 
left I feel her hand, cool and comforting, on my 
back.

"Shh, Alex, it's okay.  It's okay."9

Once I've stopped shuddering she walks me upstream 
where I haven't fouled the water, and we kneel down 
together so that I can clean my mouth out.  She takes 
water into her cupped hands and I drink from them.

"It's okay," she says again, but I'm not sure this 
time if she's speaking to me or herself.

We sit together, leaning on each other and staring at 
the water without words for a long time.  There are a 
thousand questions and contradictions running through 
my head, a thousand reasons why this cannot be true, 
but they fall flat on the journey from my brain to my 
mouth.  It is true.  It just is.

"I'm sorry," she finally whispers, dropping her head 
onto my arm.  I don't want her to be sorry.  I just 
want her to make it go away.

"I just don't understand..."

"I don't either, Alex."

It is then that I feel moisture soaking through my 
sleeve and realize that she's crying.  Of course.  Of 
course she's crying.  How could I not realize she 
would?

I tilt her chin up a bit and try to look into her 
eyes, but they're closed, silent tears trailing down 
her cheeks and lips.

"Hey, it's...don't cry, baby.  Don't cry."

"But it's not...not mine.  Still can't have a baby."

God, she must be reliving the discovery of her 
infertility all over again.  This is worse for her 
than it is for me.  I suddenly feel very selfish and 
stupid and weak.

"It is yours, Dana."

"No, no it's not.  How can I...how can I do this, 
Alex?"

"Do you not want to have it anymore?"

She covers her face with her hands and half nods, 
half shrugs.  I'm surprised that the thought still 
terrifies me.

"Well you...you don't have to.  I mean you could 
still...but Dana, it is yours."

"How, Alex?  How is it mine?"

She opens her eyes finally and the combination of 
panic and anger and need I see in her forces me to 
act, to understand and explain how it really is hers.

"It takes more than DNA to make a baby.  She's 
growing inside you, wouldn't even exist without you."

The arguments are forming fresh in my head as I relay 
them to her.  It's all new to me, but it sounds 
right.  It feels right.  Maybe it's not the end of 
the world.

"I'm sorry, Alex," she says again.  Perhaps that 
sounded more like an accusation than I meant it to.

"Don't be.  I'm glad she exists.  Despite....well, 
anyway, it's not an entirely bad thing."

She sniffles and laughs a little, wipes her nose with 
the back of her sleeve.

"Look at me.  Look at us, Alex.  We're a mess.  How 
the hell are we going to do this?"

"I think we're holding up quite well considering the 
circumstances."

She laughs again, with a bit more joy this time, and 
shakes her head.

"I suppose you may be right about that."

I know that I'm right.  We're the strongest people I 
know.  Anyone else would have crumbled a long time 
ago.

"I just can't believe there's going to be this 
person, this little tiny person who's part you and 
part Mulder, coming out of me and living in the 
world."

Another wave of nausea hits me, but I manage to 
control it this time, push it back down into my gut.  
It makes me sick, but at the same time it makes me 
happy.  It's a combination I'm getting frighteningly 
used to.

I want to ask her if they figured out the sex, if 
I've been right about that, but I'm afraid that I'm 
wrong and that I'll feel even worse knowing it.  A 
boy with Mulder's genes.  What if the baby turned out 
exactly like him?

"Just another six months," she tells me, taking my 
hand in hers and placing it on her belly.  She is 
suddenly wistful.  I'm glad.

"Is that all?"

"Yep.  I'm already starting to get a belly.  Feel 
it?"

"Not really.  A little maybe."

She presses my hand more firmly against her skin, her 
warm, soft, inviting skin, and my muscles clench 
involuntarily.

"Wonder how big you'll get," I muse, trying to 
distract myself from the way she feels.

"Bigger than I'd like, I'm sure."

"Some women don't get very big at all."

Somehow I sense that she will not be one of those 
women, though.

"I'm already bigger than I'd like to be.  Though you 
might enjoy this part..."

She moves our hands up her stomach and onto one of 
her firm, but substantially larger-than-normal 
breasts.  The nipple is hard and she squeezes my 
fingers around it and sighs.

"Anything feel different to you?"

Yes.  Yes, everything.  I can't say that to her 
though.  Not now especially.

"Um...a little."

She's suddenly crawling on top of me, straddling me 
in a seemingly random burst of sexual energy.  Or 
maybe it's not so random.  I was feeling it too.

"It's...it's gonna get dark soon," I manage to 
stammer out, knowing what a lame thing that is to 
say, but unable to think of another excuse.

"Well, we'd better hurry then."

She kisses me with an open passion that startles and 
touches me so deeply that for a moment, I allow 
myself to forget, to truly enjoy it for what it is 
and nothing else.  But before too long the images 
come, like they always do.  I end up coughing 
violently into her mouth.

She pulls back, concerned.

"Are you okay?  You're not gonna be sick again, are 
you?"

"Yeah.  No.  I mean...I'm fine.  We really should get 
back."

"Why?  You got a date?"

She grinds herself against me and I find myself 
hardening despite all attempts to the contrary.  Her 
hands are everywhere.  My face and my chest, my hair.  
It feels so good, so sweet.  Maybe I can do this.

"Come on, baby, I promise not to tell your wife," she 
whispers jokingly, but the violence in me that her 
words invoke is not at all amusing.

"Stop it!"  I bark, desperate for it to end, for the 
pain and the sickness to go away.

She pulls back abruptly, afraid and confused.  The 
albatross hangs more heavily than usual around my 
neck.

"I'm...sorry?"  she tries, but it's wrong.  She's 
wrong.  She shouldn't be apologizing for this.  I 
shouldn't be making her feel this way, spreading the 
disease.

I'm the one who's sorry.  Sorry and sick and wrong.  
But telling her why would be the ultimate selfish 
act.  I've got to either end this or give her what 
she wants, even if it means sinking deeper into this 
self-imposed hell.  For the first time in a very long 
time, I honestly have no idea what to do.

xxxxxx

End Chapter Seven