Blinded By White Light by Dasha K.

If you would like to archive, please ask me first.

Summary:  What are we, but the sum of our memories?
Classification: SRA
Rating: NC-17 for adult themes.  If you are under eighteen, 
please read something else.
Keywords: Ah, but that would be telling tales out of 
school, wouldn't it?  Rest assured, no one is raped, dies 
or does any slashing. <g>
Spoilers: No major ones.
Feedback: Please?  dashak@aol.com
Disclaimer:  These characters are the creation of CC and 
company.  I have borrowed a few elements of the setting 
from Marge Piercy's fine novel "He, She and It."  She 
freely admits that she borrowed from William Gibson, so I 
figure it's all up for grabs. <g>

Many thanks and cookies to my editors and dear friends, 
Gwen and Plausible Deniability.  

More notes and acknowledgements at the end of the story.


Another Song

I will no longer repeat
unspoken words.
But in memory of that non-meeting
I will plant a sweetbriar.

There the miracle of our meeting
shone and sang,
I did not want to go back
to anywhere from there.
Putting happiness before duty
was my bitter joy.

I talked with someone I shouldn't have
I talked for a long time.
Let passions which demand an answer
choke those who are in love,
but we, my darling, are just souls
at the edge of the earth.

~Anna Akhmatova



One night, just after her daughter Julia was born, she 
couldn't sleep.  In the dark she heard John roll over and 
knew he was still awake, too.

"Honey?" she said to his still back.

"Yeah?" he mumbled thickly.

She didn't know why she asked it.  It was something that 
was never talked about.  You just didn't mention it.

She flopped onto her back and blinked in the darkness.  
"What do you remember," she whispered.  "What do you 
remember of Before?"

John's breath came out in a long trail of air but he said 
nothing.  She touched his shoulder and he jerked.

"What do you remember?" she repeated.

"I don't remember anything."

Just then she heard Julia's cries from the baby monitor and 
she sat up.  "I'll go," she said and left the room.

She never mentioned the subject again.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

She walked across the deserted Plaza of Heroes, her heels 
tapping on the immaculate squares of concrete.  It was 
still early and the square wasn't yet crowded with people 
heading off to a day's work.

Sipping her thermal cup of tea, she considered the question 
she'd asked John two years ago.

What do you remember?

What do I remember?

She remembered the smells of the street, the exhaust from 
passing cars, a stand selling greasy hot dogs, the stench 
of overflowing trash receptacles.

She remembered noise, the babble of many languages on the 
streets, snatches of rock music from open windows in an 
apartment building, the wail of police cars.

She remembered herself, very young, dressing in a suit and 
staring at herself in the mirror, wondering if she 
presented a professional image.

Bits and pieces, scraps and rags of memory.  Nothing fit.

It was like that for everyone else, she knew.  But it 
didn't make it any easier.

She sighed and entered the glass doors of the East Side 
Health Building, striding purposefully to her destination.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Dr. Hanley poured a cup of coffee and offered her one.  She 
sat in the leather chair near the window and shook her 
head, pointing at her mug of tea.

The doctor sat behind her desk and brushed some flyaway 
strands of blonde hair out of her face.  "How has this week 
been, Dana?"

She sighed.  "It's been okay.  Work has been stressful.  
We've encountered some problems in the lab with our protein 
samples, but it seems to have straightened itself out."

"And life at home?"  Dr. Hanley tapped something into her 
notebook.

"Fine," Dana said.  "I haven't seen much of John lately, 
with the late hours in the lab, but we're doing okay.  
Julia has been having a lot of temper tantrums again, and 
it's probably because I haven't been spending enough time 
with her."

"Are you planning on changing that?"

"Tonight I'm taking her to the park after work.  John is 
going to pick up dinner and then we can all eat together 
like a normal family.  And I've told Harold that I'm going 
to take a few afternoons off this week so she doesn't have 
to be in Primary Care all day.  Even though I know it's a 
great facility, I don't like her to spend all her time 
there.  She's not even three yet."

Her therapist smiled.  "It's tough balancing a career and 
parenthood. It sounds like you are taking some positive 
steps to get it all together."

Dana nodded.  "I try, but it's hard. Sometimes I feel like 
John spends more time with Julia because of his career and 
the fact that he can do some of his work at home.  And 
sometimes I wish my mother was around to give me advice."

"I think we all wish our mothers were around."  Dr. Hanley 
had two young sons herself, Dana knew.  Their photograph 
was sitting on the desk, two cherubic boys grinning and 
holding footballs.

Leaning back into the leather of the chair, Dana shut her 
eyes.  "I had another one of those dreams last night."

The doctor's voice was soft.  "Tell me about it, Dana."

"I'm more and more convinced that it's not just dream 
imagery, but something from Before, leaking in.  It's been 
nearly the same dream every night for a week."

"What happens?"

"I'm standing in a hallway.  It's a hospital or a clinic of 
some kind, I think.  I mean, it looks different from any 
hospital I know, but it has that atmosphere, you know?  I 
can smell the antiseptic.  In the dream I'm in a bathrobe 
and I'm so cold and I'm shaking from fear and sorrow."

"What are you sad about?"

She shook her head.  "That's just it-- I have no idea.  I'm 
terrified and my mouth is dry, but then he comes and holds 
me, stroking my hair and somehow I feel better.  I say 
something to him, but I can never remember what, and then 
he says something back.  And then he kisses me on my 
forehead, very softly, and I always wake at that point."

"Who is the man, Dana?"

"I have no idea."  She bit her lip in frustration.  "I 
can't really see his face.  He's tall and has dark hair, 
but that could be anyone.  All I know is that I trust him 
and his presence is comforting to me."

Last night, after she'd had the dream, she climbed out of 
bed and went into the living room, pacing the small space 
over and over again, trying to think, to force her brain to 
recall his face.  It didn't come and finally she'd fallen 
asleep on the couch, with one of Julia's baby blankets 
pulled over her body.

No one talked about it, so she had no idea if others had 
the same dreams of the past, the same struggle to remember.  

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The official line was this--the treatment for the Plague 
had the side effect of erasing much of their memories of 
the past.  The Survivors could not mourn the past.  Wives, 
husbands, children, gone forever.  

As she entered the Tube after work, Dana considered it for 
the eight thousandth time that week.  Nearly ten percent of 
the world had survived, but they did so with only fragments 
of their memories.

She'd had a mother, a father, perhaps sisters and brothers.

Maybe a husband.  Not a child, for her gynecological exams 
before getting pregnant had shown she'd never given birth 
before.

She'd been a doctor; she knew that, a pathologist.  Her 
training and skills had been intact when she'd awakened 
after her treatment in the Clinic.

She knew she was forty years old and her birth date was 
February 23, 1964.

Once she'd lived on the East Coast, in a city called 
Washington D.C.  It was the capitol of the United States of 
America.  She could still remember the stately buildings 
and monuments, seen through a car window.

And her name was Dana Katherine Scully.

These rags of memory had survived intact.  There were very 
few official records left, of course. They'd gone up in 
flames.

That was about it, she thought with a sigh as she sat in 
one of the blue plastic seats of the Tube car and it took 
off with a whoosh.  That was the sum of thirty-five years.

There had been a war, between Earth and the Enemies.  It 
had been a speedy thing, destroying much of the world in a 
few days of fire.  Disease spread like wildfire, picking 
off more of the survivors of the fighting.  And then the 
Others came and saved them all.

She could remember none of this.  Her life began the 
morning she woke in the Clinic, blinking at the artificial 
sunlight.

In truth, she was only five years old.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

She got off the Tube at Morningside Station, pushing her 
way past the crowds on their way home.  Outside the 
station, the street was as light as day, but if she looked 
up she could make out the starry sky outside the dome of 
the city.  She always wondered what night smelled like.

It was February, which made it winter.  Sometimes she could 
recall playing in snow as a child, gathering handfuls of 
the white, fluffy stuff into something called a snowball 
and throwing it at other children.  Of course, the city was 
climate-controlled.  There was no winter in a dome.

Dana couldn't really remember how cold felt.

The street was crowded with pedestrians, still wearing 
suits or work unit uniforms, talking and laughing and 
planning tonight's dinner.  There was a line outside the 
takeout deli, which meant that not many people were in the 
mood to cook tonight.  She knew she wasn't.  Dana was tired 
and her feet ached after standing over test tubes for much 
of the day.  

At Primary Care Number 32, a crowd of mothers and fathers 
stood with their progeny in hand, gossiping and patting 
small heads.  She stopped off for a brief chat about shoes 
with Joanne Ling and then went inside to get Julia.

Her daughter was playing with a yellow dump truck, pushing 
it back and forth on the bright red carpet with vroom-vroom 
noises.  Leilah, the teacher of the two year-olds, came 
forward and smiled.  "She had a good day, Dana.  We did 
some dancing and she pretended to be a frog."

Dana smiled at the young woman with long dark hair.  "She 
saw a frog in the park last weekend and couldn't stop 
talking about it."

Julia looked up and smiled, tiny white teeth flashing in 
her rosebud mouth.  "Mommy!" she shouted and ran to wrap 
herself around Dana's gray trousers.

She stroked her daughter's light brown hair and thought, at 
least you'll grow up to remember your mother.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The park was small, tucked between two towering apartment 
complexes.  There were other, larger parks in the city, but 
she liked the intimate feel of this little park, and the 
fact that it was just two blocks from her own apartment 
made her a frequent visitor her with Julia.

Dana spent a while pushing Julia on the swing and then she 
let her daughter run off with a little boy her own age to 
get thoroughly dirty in the sandbox.  It meant she or John 
would be scrubbing sand out of the tub that night, but 
Julia loved to dig holes in the sand.

She settled on a bright orange bench and enjoyed the 
sensation of simply sitting and reflecting.  It had been so 
hectic lately, with the demands of her growing child and 
the always-frantic pace of the lab.  It felt peaceful to 
smell the greenery of the park's trees and watch Julia 
laugh with her new friend.

There were few people in the park.  Often she ran into 
neighbors here and spent a companionable time discussing 
child rearing.  Tonight there was just a lone woman across 
the park, reading a magazine, and two men pushing babies in 
strollers over by the jungle gym.  She could hear the crack 
of a baseball hitting a bat and some boyish laughter from 
the field behind her.

She looked up in surprise at the sound of a male voice.  
"Do you mind if I sit here?"

He was a tall man, slender, dressed in a sober gray suit.  
"Of course not," she said.

"This is the best spot to keep my eye on Adam.  He's the 
one in the sandbox."

She laughed.  "So I won't be the only one digging sand out 
of fingernails tonight.  He's playing with my daughter, 
Julia."

The man smiled, a warmly crooked smile that illuminated his 
handsome features.  Dana guessed he was her age, or a few 
years older.  He had smile lines around his gray-green eyes 
and a few strands of gray in his dark hair.  She had a few 
gray hairs, herself, but her hairdresser covered them with 
Warm Auburn once a month. 

"I'm glad to see Adam making a new friend.  We just moved 
here a month ago, and he's having a hard time adjusting to 
his new Primary Care.  He loved his old teacher and the 
change has really thrown him for a loop."

"Where did you move from?"  For some reason, this man made 
her feel curious.  She wasn't one to ask a lot of personal 
questions of strangers, but the question had come out of 
her mouth before she'd thought about it.

"Boston," he said, adjusting his metal-rimmed glasses.  "My 
wife is the new Dean of the School of Education at the 
University.  We hated to move, but then again, the cities 
are all pretty much the same, aren't they?"

"Yeah, I guess so," Dana said.  She'd only left the city a 
few times, once for her honeymoon at Miracle Beach and 
twice to conferences in Chicago.  But he was right-- one 
domed city was like the other.  Quiet, clean, peaceful.  
"What do you do?"

"I'm a developmental psychologist.  I work with school-age 
children, and I was able to transfer to the school system 
here when Sarah got her new job.  How about you?"

She turned to him and surreptitiously studied his face.  
Something about it reminded her of her husband, perhaps the 
intensity of his eyes, or the curve of his lower lip.  
Interesting, Dana thought.  "I'm a medical researcher.  I 
work in a lab that's studying congenital birth defects, the 
legacies from the Plague."

"That has to be fascinating," he said, nodding.

"It is."  And then a wail emanated from the sandbox as 
Julia clopped the little curly-haired boy on the head with 
her plastic shovel.

"Julia!" she shouted.

"I guess this is our cue," the man said and rose to soothe 
his son.

She sighed and went after her seemingly homicidal daughter.  
The Terrible Twos, she thought ruefully.

As she left the park with Julia in tow, it occurred to her 
that she'd never learned the man's name.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

After Julia had been bathed and put to bed, Dana curled up 
on the couch and started clicking her way through the 
family photo album on the telescreen.  Tonight the 
apartment seemed especially cozy for some reason.  The 
drapes were shut against the winking night-lights of the 
city and the living room was lit by lamplight.  From the 
open bathroom she could hear John cleaning out the tub.  
He'd drawn the short straw.

The pictures began right after she'd met John.  There were 
photos from their dating days, the two of them at parties, 
at concerts, grinning at each other at the public pool.

It had been fast, their courtship.  In those early days, 
when everyone in the city was so desperate to connect, to 
have a family, there had been a three-month waiting list to 
have a marriage ceremony at the Hall of Magistrates.  She'd 
met John at a Social in August and they were married in 
December.  In the pictures she looked radiant and slightly 
embarrassed in her long white dress, clutching John's hand 
outside the Marriage Chamber.  They both looked drunk and 
flushed at their wedding party, surrounded by their work 
friends.

Her face was serious in the photo of them signing their 
Marriage Contract.  Even though she and John decided to get 
married just a month after meeting, she took the commitment 
seriously.  When she'd sworn before Magistrate McLean to 
love, honor and cherish John Rosen, she'd meant it.

He was all she had, after all.

Dana flipped forward to pictures of herself sitting in the 
park, huge with pregnancy.  She'd ached for the mother she 
couldn't remember during those months.  It was scary to be 
responsible for her unborn child's life, to know that soon 
she would have the awesome responsibility of being a 
mother.  How could she be a mother to her baby, when she 
couldn't even remember what it was like to have a mother?

And then there were literally hundreds of photographs of 
Julia.  They showed her growing from a goo-covered 
screaming little creature in the Maternity Clinic to a 
little girl with straight brown hair cut to her chin in a 
bob, sticking her tongue out at the camera.

John padded in the room and sat down next to Dana.  "God, 
she's beautiful, isn't she?" he said in a tone of awe.

She turned to John and traced the line of his cheekbone 
with her index finger.  "Who do you think she looks like, 
you or me?"

He grinned.  "She has your smile, but my nose."

"Thank God," she laughed.  She hated her nose and had 
considered having it taken care of at one of the new 
surgical boutiques that had popped up.  It seemed vain, 
though, so it was merely a fantasy.

"I love your nose, Dana."  John kissed it at the bridge and 
she sighed in pleasure.  It had been weeks since they'd 
made love.  Their schedules had just left them too tired 
for anything but half-hearted cuddling at night.

She flicked off the telescreen and turned to her husband, 
smiling at the way his brown eyes were sleepy and aroused 
at the same time.   

"Let's go to bed," she said.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

That night she had a new dream.

She was making love, but it wasn't with John.  It was 
another man, the faceless man with dark hair and gentle 
hands.

It was morning and they were in a bed that was unfamiliar 
to Dana, but it smelled like home to her, like her own body 
and perfume and the smell of his skin. He smelled like 
sleep.  God, he felt so good, touching her lazily in the 
early sunshine, kissing her with lush lips.  She loved him.  
Oh, how she loved him.  Only him.

The man held her and kissed her after they'd both come and 
said, "I'll never forget this, Scully."  

Strange, he called her by her last name.

She woke then, sitting stark upright, her heart drumming 
away. After a few disoriented minutes, she climbed out of 
bed.  John, who could sleep through anything, didn't stir, 
even after she stumbled over her running shoes on the 
floor.

In the bathroom she brushed her teeth and drank a glass of 
water, and stared at her reflection.

I wonder how many lovers I've had, she thought.  

For all intents and purposes, John had been her first and 
she, his.  But it had felt instantly familiar as John had 
entered her that first night; the rhythm felt like one 
she'd known before.  And as she'd arched against his body 
and cried out with her orgasm, she'd felt the sense of deja 
vu that had haunted her in the months since she'd awakened 
at the Clinic.

Dana shook her head and vowed to stop obsessing about the 
past.  It wasn't healthy, it wasn't fair to John and Julia 
and the new life she'd managed to build for herself in the 
last five years.  Other people were living their lives and 
building their own new memories just fine.  She needed to 
do the same.

I don't want to remember you, she silently told the man 
from her dreams.

She climbed back to bed and moved against John's warm, bare 
back, clutching him like a security blanket.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

On Sunday morning Dana awoke to bright, false sunshine 
streaming in through the windows and John's arms around 
her.  He was humming something under his breath, a song she 
found familiar, but couldn't name.

"What are you singing?" she mumbled and buried her face in 
his sandy hair, which smelled like chamomile shampoo.

John shook his head.  "I don't know," he simply said.

It was funny how things like that would simply come.  One 
night, a few months out of the Clinic, she'd been at a 
Social at the Fellowship Hall.  There was a piano there and 
fascinated by the ivory and ebony keys, she'd sat down and 
laid her fingers on the cool keyboard.  Suddenly, her 
fingers began to move and shape a song.  She could play 
piano.  Somewhere in her past, she'd taken piano lessons.

Dana stretched and yawned, enjoying the sensation of not 
having to get up for work.  They'd taken Julia to a 
barbecue given by Deborah, the head of John's office, and 
hadn't gotten her to bed until nearly midnight.  Normally 
her daughter would be up and hollering for attention, but 
she could hear Julia's even breathing through the monitor.

With a morning-stubbled face, John nuzzled her neck and she 
growled, feeling her nerves begin to spark to life.

His voice was so quiet she almost didn't hear him.  "Are 
you happy, Dana?"

Her eyes opened wider.  "What do you mean?"

John pulled away from her and sat up, staring out the 
window.  "Are you happy?  With me, with us?"

She sat up, too.  "What are you talking about?  You know 
how happy I am with you."  

"It's just . . ." His voice trailed off and he turned to 
her with his brows knitted together.  "You've been having 
so many bad dreams, you've seemed so lost in your thoughts 
in the last few months.  I worry that you're no longer 
happy."

She wasn't as good an actress as she liked to believe.

Wrapping the quilt around her, she lightly touched his bare 
arm.  "I am very happy with you, John.  Nothing has 
changed.  But I've been having these dreams and I think 
they're about Before."

He nodded.  "I just wish you could let it go."

"The past?"

"Yes.  Dana, it doesn't do you any good to think about it, 
to try to remember it."

Closing her eyes, she wished she could simply make it stop.  
But she couldn't.  It was beyond her control.

It took her a while to find her words.  "John, don't you 
ever want to remember?"

Her husband didn't even hesitate in his answer.  "I don't 
want to mourn what I can never have again."

Not for the first time, she wondered if John had had a 
wife, a family.  She wanted to know what he'd been like as 
a boy, who the first girl he'd kissed was.

John leaned over and kissed her cheek.  "You have to let it 
go, Dana.  You have a new life now.  The past should remain 
in the past."

She nodded and smiled at him, the features that had become 
so familiar and beloved to her.

Still, as they lay back down and cuddled under the quilt, 
the same questions continued to run through her mind.

Who did I love, before?

Who were you?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 
Julia listened attentively as Dana read "Jerry the Blue 
Spaceship" to her.  With chubby fingers, she pointed to the 
proper pictures when Dana asked her which was the 
satellite, which was the launching pad and which was the 
moon.  Watching her daughter's intelligence grow daily was 
astonishing.  It was hard to believe that the sturdy little 
girl by her side, wearing the red corduroy overalls, had 
begun as a single cell in Dana's body.

Across the room, John sat in the black leather desk chair, 
his eyes closed and the connect cable clipped behind his 
ear, deep in the Net.  Nothing short of an elbow in the 
ribs would rouse him as long as he was in full immersion.

Dana turned to the last page.  "And then Jerry flew high in 
the sky and the moon began to clap for him."  Julia 
applauded along with the moon.  It was her favorite story.

With a disgruntled sound in his throat, John hit the 
disconnect button on the computer and unclipped the cable. 

"Something wrong?" she asked from her seat on the rug.

He stood to his full, lanky height and began pacing the 
living room.  "It's the team in Sao Paulo.  They've fucked 
it all up."

"John!"  She pointed at Julia, who appeared fascinated by 
the new vocabulary item from her father.

"Sorry."  He sat down on the floor with them and pulled 
Julia's red-ribboned ponytail.  "Dana, there's major 
problems at the site.  They need me to fly down tomorrow."

While John's career as an industrial engineer meant he 
could do a large amount of his work from home through the 
Net, he also had to spend time at his sites.  Dana accepted 
this as a fact of life, but still she groaned.  "For how 
long?"

He shook his head.  "I don't know.  A week, maybe two 
weeks."

"And there's no way around it?"

"There's no way."  He kissed her cheek.  "I'll make it up 
to you when I return.  Maybe we can both take a few 
personal days and spend them together."

Dana forced a smile.  "You'd better make it up to me . . ."

"All the more reason for me to hurry home," he laughed and 
swung Julia into his lap.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Later in the afternoon, after John took Julia to buy 
supplies for dinner, Dana hopped on the Tube to the river 
for a run.  Located on the far eastern end of the city, the 
river was her favorite spot for a solitary run.

She didn't get much of a chance to exercise anymore, not 
since having Julia, but she loved to push herself and feel 
completely alive as her body moved down the running path.

The riverside was crowded with runners, families on bikes 
and couples pushing strollers in the Sunday afternoon 
sunshine.  Dana reflected on the fact that most children 
were under the age of five, the products of the new 
families that had sprung up after the Others had come.  
Very few children younger than late teens had survived the 
War and the Plague.

Now the city was in full family frenzy.  Everyone wanted a 
baby.  At her lab, coffee and lunch breaks were taken up 
with discussions of breast-feeding, infertility treatments 
and potty training.  Lately, Dana's entire social life 
seemed to be taken up with baby showers and naming 
ceremonies.

Dana walked to the tree-lined bank of the river, watching 
it lazily flow below her.  The river came from Outside, but 
it first went through a treatment plant to remove pathogens 
and impurities.  

Looking to her left as she did her quadriceps stretch, she 
spotted a familiar-looking figure, also stretching out.  It 
was the man she'd met at the park last week.

She walked over and tapped him on the shoulder and he 
turned and grinned in delighted surprise to see her.  He 
was wearing a rather tatty navy blue t-shirt and sweatpants 
that looked like they'd seen better days.  Dana rather 
liked that, that he didn't feel he needed to wear a 
perfectly coordinated exercise ensemble like so many other 
of the runners at the river.

"I know you," he said, and extended his hand.  "But I never 
got your name."

"Dana Scully," she said, shaking.  "And you?"

The man let go of her hand and lunged into a stretch.  "Fox 
Mulder, but you can call me Mulder.  I don't like my first 
name very much."

She grinned.  "Fox," she repeated.  "You're right, it 
doesn't really suit you for some reason.  Have you thought 
about changing it?  I mean, it's not like anyone is going 
to get upset over it."

He looked up at her with astonished eyes and her face began 
to color.  Shit, she knew better than to even suggest 
Before.  It was highly impolite.  But Mulder just smiled 
wryly and moved out of his stretch.  "Nah, I'm too lazy to 
get used to a new name."

"How far are you planning on running?" she asked.

"I'm kind of out of shape.  Haven't had a chance to run 
since we moved, so I thought just three miles or so.  Why, 
you want to run together?"

"Why not?"

"I personally can't think of a reason why not, so let's do 
it."

They stretched for a few more minutes and then took off at 
an easy pace down the winding trail.  She got the feeling 
he was running more slowly than usual for him, but she was 
glad, for it gave them a chance to talk without getting too 
out of breath.

"I was hoping I'd run into you again, Dana," he said, 
deftly weaving around a pregnant woman with a small boy in 
a carriage.  "I wanted to ask you for a date."

She nearly stopped running and felt her left eyebrow, of 
its own accord, begin to rise.  "A date?"  She'd mentioned 
she was married, right?

He snorted a laugh.  "Yeah, a play date.  Adam and Julia 
seemed to get along pretty well."

"Until she smacked him on the head with her shovel."

"Adam likes the aggressive ladies."

"Then he'll love Julia.  She can be a terror at times."

"Nah," Mulder said.  "She's just exploring her autonomy 
over the world right now.  Classic behavior for a two year 
old."

They continued down the path for another mile, and then 
looped back at the Monument to Lost Souls.  She was glad 
they didn't linger there.  For some reason the giant 
granite statue of a man and woman looking at the sky, 
presumably mourning their lost loved ones, made her shiver.

When they reached their starting point, they bought bottles 
of water at a refreshment kiosk and sat on a low stone wall 
that overlooked the river.

"I like it here," Mulder said, wiping sweat from his brow.  
"It's one of the few places that feels real."

"What do you mean by real?"  Dana had an uneasy feeling she 
knew what he was talking about.

"Yeah, real, like the world must have been at one time.  It 
feels like memories I have of running Before."

Her breath came out in a whoosh.  "No one ever talks about 
Before."

He nodded.  "I know.  Classic denial mechanics at work.  It 
scares people to delve into their pasts, to sit down and 
think about the fact that they had lives before this one.  
It just seems so huge."

She nodded.

"I'm sorry," he said.  "We don't have to talk about it if 
it bothers you.  I mean, we don't know each other very 
well, and here I am, going off about sensitive issues."

A small smile began to form on her lips.  "No, it doesn't 
bother me, not really.  I just don't ever talk about that 
kind of stuff with anyone.  My own husband won't even 
discuss it with me."

"Neither will Sarah.  I just get this stony look if I bring 
up the subject.  Sometimes I look at her and wonder what, 
if anything, she remembers."

Dana watched a small group of teenagers from one of the 
Youth Homes, dressed in hiking gear, being led by an 
athletic young woman who looked rather harassed by her 
charges.  "God, is every relationship like that," she said.  
"One person looking at the other and wondering, who were 
you before I knew you?"

"I wish I knew who I had been," Mulder said and drained his 
water.

"So do I."

They stared at each other for a long, uncomfortable moment, 
as if aware they had just shared confidences that weren't 
really appropriate for new acquaintances.

Mulder hopped off the wall and checked his watch.  "I 
really should get back.  What's your number?  We can set up 
that play date."

"I don't have any paper to write it down."

He flashed her a crooked smile that made him look a decade 
younger.  "I've got a good memory, I'll remember it."

She told him and he took off towards the Tube station with 
a jaunty wave.

For a long time she sat on the wall, stunned into near 
paralysis.  

Before, she thought.  He wanted to talk about Before.

She wasn't sure if it was fear, or hope, she felt.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

That night, after John and Julia went to bed, she sat down 
at the desk and started a list.

Things I know:

--My name.
--My birth date.
--The city I once lived in.
--My medical skills and knowledge, but not where I got 
them.
--I had a major injury once, to my abdominal area.  I have 
a scar and it appears to be from a gunshot wound.
--There is a small tattoo on my lower back, of a snake 
eating its own tail.
--I never was pregnant before Julia.
--I can play piano, but not very well.
--I'm not a good dancer.
--I'm right-handed.
--I must have studied German at one time, because I 
understood a lot of that tele-program that was filmed in 
what was once Germany.
--I once played in snow.
--I think I once had a lover who had dark hair.  He called 
me by my last name.
--I like to read, especially novels and medical journals.
--I've always liked my coffee with cream, no sugar.  Once 
there was a way of making coffee called a latte and I 
really liked those, but I can't remember what's in it.
--I like spicy food, especially Chinese food.
--I enjoy running and it seems to be something I used to do 
frequently.
--I feel the most peaceful around water, especially the 
river.
--I knew how to cook and still can remember recipes.
--I might have been religious once.  Sometimes a line or 
two of a prayer will come to me.
--I wore suits to work Before.

She stared at her list, trying hard to remember more.  
There were other things she'd remembered here and there, 
but they'd been brief flashes that had lasted only a 
moment.

Is that it, she thought.  The sum of thirty-five years?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In the morning, she took a shower and began to dress for 
work.  She had a routine, a rhythm to her mornings that was 
so deeply ingrained there was no need to think about it--
she simply woke up and got going.

Before she'd gotten in the shower she'd made a pot of 
coffee.  Now she sipped from her blue and gold Mexican mug 
as she chose a black suit and a cream silk shell to wear.  
NPR prattled along in the background as she slid on black 
nylons and buttoned her jacket.

Her hair took a bit longer.  It had an annoying tendency to 
wave and she had to comb in styling lotion and blow it 
straight with a round brush to keep it in the neat bob she 
preferred.  Finally, she patted her face with matte powder, 
brushed on some brown mascara and stained her lips with a 
natural beige-pink.  Earrings, watch and she was ready to 
go.

Suddenly, awareness dawned and her hand rose to her throat.  
Her necklace, her tiny gold cross on a chain-- where was 
it?  She never took off her necklace, not even to sleep or 
shower.

There had only been two times in her adult life when she'd 
gone without her cross.  Both times he'd found it and kept 
it safe for her.

Panic bubbled in her throat as she searched the top of the 
dresser, the bedcovers and the bathroom.  The chain and 
cross were nowhere to be found.

This can't be happening, she thought.  My mother gave me 
this cross for my fifteenth birthday.  It's the only 
material object I truly value.

She could remember resting against the pillows in the 
hospital, touching the familiar coolness of the cross at 
the hollow of her throat and thinking, he kept it for me 
all this time . . .

And now it was gone.


The world shifted and melted and Dana found herself in a 
bed, her bed, her husband anxiously patting her shoulder.

"Are you awake now?" he asked, his eyes large and alarmed.

She blinked through matted eyelashes, utterly disoriented.  
What was real and what was the dream?

Yes, it had been a dream, she thought, another possible 
memory disguising itself as a dream.

John turned on the bedside lamp.  "You were talking in your 
sleep again, mumbling something about losing your 
necklace."  He kissed the top of her head, which was damp 
with night-sweat.  "Did you dream you lost your coral 
necklace?"

She shook her head.  "No.  It was a small gold cross on a 
chain.  My mother gave it to me."

"Your mother?"  His dark eyebrows lifted.

"I think my dream was another memory from Before."

"Oh, Dana," John sighed and drew her closer into his sturdy 
arms.  "I hate to see you suffering like this."

"It's okay."  She took a deep breath of his familiar smell 
and her heartbeat began to slow.  "I think I want to 
remember."

I hate being a blank page, she thought.

John nodded.  "I don't understand why you want to remember.  
I want to understand, but I don't."

"I know you don't," she whispered.  "I know it scares you.  
It scares me, too."

"Then why do it?  It's not healthy.  And it's not fair to 
Julia and me, or yourself.  This is your life now."

A brief flash of anger stabbed through Dana.  She 
remembered what Mulder had said after their run-- it's just 
too huge.  Yes, it was huge to consider a whole life 
erased, but why couldn't John understand her desire to 
know?

She wondered if her husband truly knew her, after all.

Still, three a.m. was no time to discuss this topic, 
especially with John leaving for Sao Paulo in the morning.  
The adrenaline had burned itself out in her body and she 
suddenly felt exhausted.  All she wanted to do was get back 
under the quilt and sink into mindless and blank sleep.

Dana slid down onto the mattress and closed her eyes.  
"Let's just go back to sleep, John."

She prayed she wouldn't dream.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

With a gleam in her gold-brown eyes, Julia expertly shot a 
bit of cheese omelet across the room from the tines of her 
plastic kiddie fork.  "Julia," John admonished, his brows 
knitting, but Dana simply sat back, sipping her coffee and 
smiling. 

After they'd woken, John had accessed the airport from the 
Net and discovered that his flight was delayed three hours 
due to bad weather.  Outside the dome, threatening-looking 
storm clouds roiled overhead and looked ready to dump snow 
on the clear, rounded surface, where it would melt and 
slide away.

With some time to kill, they'd walked seven blocks to the 
Greenlawn Corners Cafe.  It was a cozy space, with only 
twenty or so tables.  They rarely had a chance to eat out 
together as a family, but this was a place casual enough to 
accommodate a noisy, messy toddler and the kitchen served a 
mean plate of huevos rancheros.  And Dana liked the back-
talking waitresses and the cheesy holograph of monkeys 
gamboling on vines-- it gave the restaurant a cartoonish 
jungle feel.

She looked across the room at a young couple, looking 
rumpled and flushed, as if they hadn't gotten a whole lot 
of sleep the night before.  The woman facing her was tall 
and gorgeous, with a mane of black hair tumbling down her 
slender back.  She smiled with bewitching sensuality at her 
lover, a smaller woman with cropped blonde hair.

I remember those heated days of first love, Dana thought, 
stabbing at the yolks of her eggs and watching them pool 
with the bright red of the salsa.

She touched John's hand.  "Do you remember the first time 
we came here?"

He set down his coffee cup and blinked at her.  "The first 
time?"

Fighting the urge to roll her eyes, Dana said, "You know, 
the *first* time . . ."

A look of panic crossed his face, as if he knew he was 
about to get into trouble.  John shrugged his broad 
shoulders.  "The first time?"

She swatted at his hand, which made Julia begin to giggle 
from the high chair.

"Dana, you have to help me out here," John said, conceding 
defeat.  "You know I'm bad with that kind of stuff."

"The first time," she repeated and dropped her voice as if 
Julia really could understand them.  "Think about it, John.  
Remember your old apartment, before we got married?  
Remember how it's just around the corner from here?  Come 
on-- Chris, Mike and you and a whole lot of dirty clothes 
on the floor?"

John's eyes opened wider and he began to chuckle.  She 
popped a forkful of eggs and tortilla in her mouth and 
smiled triumphantly.

"Now I remember," he whispered.  "The first time we came 
here was after the first time we were together."

They'd been so like those two lovers across the room then.  
Giddy with it, with discovering that pleasure could be 
theirs.  And amazed that despite the vacuum that was their 
histories, they could, and had, found love.

"And then we came here right after we found out I was 
pregnant," Dana said.

John put more pieces of egg on Julia's plate.  "For a 
little corner restaurant, there's a lot of memories here."

She nodded and poured more coffee in their cups from the 
carafe on the table.

"Speaking of pregnant," John said, pushing away his plate.  
"Have you thought more about having another?"

Any remaining hunger fled at John's words.

Even though he'd been with her for the tests, the endless 
rounds of doctor's visits, holding her hand during the 
laparoscopic treatments and the cell therapies, she 
sometimes wondered if her husband truly understood how 
painful the entire process of trying to get pregnant had 
been.  So much had seemed at stake then.  She'd hated to 
have to disappoint him with her failure to have a child.

She could still remember, with perfect clarity, lying on 
the table after the third IVF attempt, gritting her teeth 
and chanting silently, IwillIwillIwillIwill . . .

It hurt to want something that much.

And it was perhaps even more painful to realize how much of 
herself, and her marriage, had been wrapped up in the 
effort.

Dana put down her fork and touched John's hand, which was 
resting on the shiny black table.  "I think about it a 
lot," she said, keeping her voice even.

His expression was expectant.  "Any conclusions?"

I wish I could be like you, John, she thought.  Your mind 
goes neatly from point A to point B and arrives at point C, 
completely decided.  At heart, you're a mathematician.  
While I need logic and reason to carry me through the day, 
life is more tangled for me.

She looked down at the ruins of her breakfast.  "No," she 
said.  "No conclusions.  I don't know if I want to go 
through all that again.  I don't know if I can."

I don't know if I can stand feeling like a failure when my 
period comes, she thought.  I don't know if I can take 
being rushed to the Urgent Clinic with another early 
miscarriage.  I don't know if I can spend all my time 
berating my body for betraying me.

Dana looked at Julia, who was kicking her feet in the 
confines of the high chair in a desperate attempt to escape 
and running egg-covered fingers through her hair.

She looked at her husband and gripped his hand.  "I don't 
know if I can," she repeated.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

All down the long hallway, Julia hopped like a frog.  It 
slowed their progress somewhat, but Dana didn't mind.  Her 
daughter's ribbiting provided comic relief.

At end of the hall, they stopped and rang the door chime 
for 1582.  After a moment the door opened to reveal a tall 
woman with an athletic build and short, curly brown hair.  
The woman wore a pale cream pantsuit that set off her olive 
skin and dark eyes.  She smiled.  "You must be Dana," she 
said in a low, melodic voice.  "I'm Sarah Morelli."

"It's nice to meet you," Dana said and they shook hands.

Sarah dropped to a crouch so that she was eye level with 
Julia.  "And this is Julia, I presume?"

Julia made an anguished face and hid her head in the folds 
of Dana's skirt.

"She's shy with strangers," Dana said apologetically.

"I can understand that.  So am I."  Sarah rose and pushed 
the door open wider.  "Come on in.  The place isn't quite 
put together yet.  We've been so busy since we moved in."

The living room was much like Dana's own-- a medium-sized 
room with a small nook for the computer desk, beige 
carpeting and a full wall of windows that showed off the 
glittering lights of the city at night.   There were still 
a few packing cartons stacked against one wall, and the 
room had a bare feel to it.  There were no pictures hung on 
the walls and very few ornamental objects that would 
indicate long residence in the apartment.

"Honey," Sarah called out.  "Dana and Julia are here."

Mulder loped out of the kitchen, wearing a pair of worn 
jeans and a paint-splattered gray t-shirt, his short hair 
sticking out in every conceivable direction.  "Hey," he 
greeted her.  "Sorry that the place is a mess.  I got all 
domestic today.  For some reason I had the bright idea I 
could install kitchen cabinets."

Julia continued to cling to her leg like lichen, staring at 
the strange people around her.

"Is this a bad time?  We can come back another night . . ."

He shook his head.  "I just finished up.  Adam's excited to 
play with Julia."

As if on cue, the little boy appeared from the hallway, 
running up to Julia.  He stared at his new friend with 
chocolate brown eyes that looked just like his mother's.

"Adam, do you remember Julia?" Sarah asked, running her 
fingers through her son's curls.  "She's here to play with 
you."

"I have tools," Adam announced to Julia, who began to 
bounce up and down on the balls of her small sneaker-clad 
feet.

"Go show them to Julia," Mulder said and gave him a small 
push.  The two children ran out of the room.

"He's been obsessed with tools lately," laughed Sarah.  
"We've been doing all this work on the apartment and he 
kept taking off with the tools, no matter how well we 
thought we'd hidden them.  We kept finding them in his bed.  
As a compromise, we bought him a set of plastic toy tools 
and that seems to be an acceptable substitute."

"Adam still sleeps with his tools," Mulder said and made a 
face.

Sarah picked up a brown leather briefcase from the end 
table.  "I've got to run," she said.  "Dana, I wish I could 
stay, but the Trustees are meeting tonight at the 
University."

"We'll have to do this again, after John has come back from 
his business trip," Dana said.

"Sounds great."  Sarah lightly kissed her husband on his 
evening-stubbled cheek.  "I have a feeling we're going to 
run late, so don't wait up for me."

Mulder smirked.  "My wife is just too important for words . 
. ."

"And don't you forget it for a minute," Sarah warned as she 
walked out the door.

The door closed with a thunk and Mulder said, "Let's go see 
what our horrible children have gotten themselves into."

Adam's small bedroom was painted light blue and held a 
small youth bed covered with a comforter decorated with 
garish cartoon mice.  On the floor, the two children were 
banging colorful plastic blocks with their tools, to the 
accompaniment of much shouting.  They were so engrossed 
they didn't even look up at their parents.

"They haven't killed each other yet," Mulder said in a 
martini-dry tone.  "I guess it's a good sign.  Why don't we 
have some adult time?  If we hear screams of agony, we can 
always run in."

In the small kitchen, Mulder showed off the new white 
cabinets with bashful pride and put the kettle on for 
coffee.  "I'm glad you could come," Mulder said, searching 
in the refrigerator for milk.  "Sarah and I haven't made 
that many friends yet.  It was hard to leave our circle 
back in Boston."

"I can't even begin to imagine having to uproot myself."  
She made an awkward gesture with her hands.  "This is . . . 
this is all I know now."

The shiny black kettle began to shriek.  Mulder turned off 
the heat and poured the hot water into a glass pot filled 
with an inch of ground coffee.  The room filled with the 
savory scent of coffee as steam rose from the top of the 
pot.

"It's nice to finally have real coffee again," he said, 
pushing down on the plunger to filter the grounds out of 
the coffee.  "The ersatz stuff we got from the Others never 
tasted quite right."

Dana nodded in agreement and followed him out into the 
living room, where they settled on the brown and white 
striped couch.

With a small sigh that Dana couldn't quite read, Mulder 
poured her a cup of coffee and handed it to her, allowing 
her to add her own milk.  He glanced around the room and 
said, "Ah, domestic bliss."

Dana blew on her coffee, allowing herself an appreciative 
sniff.  Coffee had only been widely available for the past 
year, and she still considered it a treat.

"Is it?" she asked.  "Is this domestic bliss?"

She couldn't figure out exactly why, but Fox Mulder made 
her want to ask personal questions.

He leaned back against the cushions.  Dimly, Dana could 
hear their children, still smacking blocks with tools and 
giggling.

"I suppose it is domestic bliss in way," Mulder said.  

"In a way?  What is that supposed to mean?"

Mulder grinned and set down his cup on the coffee table.  
"I have a wife I love, a beautiful son, work I find 
interesting and challenging, but . . ." His voice faded 
out.

"But?"

"You mind if I get personal for a moment, Dana?" he asked, 
leaning fractionally closer to her.  She imagined for a 
moment that she could smell his skin.

"No, I don't mind."

"See, I have this way of putting people off.  I scare them 
by asking the wrong questions and saying the wrong things."  
His lips stretched into a grimace.  "I don't want to do 
that to you."

"You're not putting me off," she said.  "I tend to have the 
opposite problem.  It's hard for me to open up."

Mulder looked at her in mild disbelief.  "Really?  You 
haven't seemed that way to me."

Dana shifted uncomfortably in her seat.  There was no logic 
to explain why she was unusually at ease and willing to 
talk to this man.  There were people in her life with whom 
she'd instantaneously clicked.  Meghan, her lab partner, 
was one.  John was another.  Perhaps it was a matter of 
some arcane interpersonal chemistry.

She decided to bring the conversation back around to the 
original subject.  "So, you were talking about domestic 
bliss . . ."

Mulder looked down at his hands, spread across his knees.  
They were large hands and looked as if they were strong, a 
pale gold color and knotted with prominent veins.

"I should be happy," he finally said.  "I *am* happy, most 
of the time.  But lately I've been sinking into these-
funks.  I can't tell you why.  I look around at my life and 
everything's just fine, but inside, it's as if I'm in deep 
mourning for something."

Her breath came out in a rush and she realized she'd been 
holding it.   "Or somebody."

"Or somebody," Mulder repeated.  "It's frustrating not 
being able to remember.  Part of me desperately wants to 
know and the other part-"

"Needs to move forward," Dana cut in.

Mulder looked at her with astonished eyes.  She noticed how 
the ring around the iris was a dark green, but the color 
was made up of the tiniest flecks of gray and gold, like 
the colored shards of plastic in Julia's kaleidoscope.

"That's exactly it," he said.

Her voice came out in a whisper.  "I feel the same way, 
Mulder."

He nodded.  "We're a world in denial.  Everyone is living 
their everyday lives and trying to pretend the past is 
irrelevant.  The Enemies never came, the war and the Plague 
never happened.  We've always living in these cities and 
the Others have always been our allies and trading 
partners.  Who cares what happened to us Before?"  His 
voice had an edge to it as bitter as the coffee Dana was 
sipping.

She was stunned to hear the thoughts that had been going 
through her mind for so many years finally articulated by 
another person.

"Hey," he said, touching her arm lightly.  Dana could feel 
the heat of his palm though her sweater.  "I'm sorry.  I 
tend to go off on these rants.  Usually Sarah's here to 
shut me up."

"It's okay.  Really.  It could have been me, saying the 
very same thing."

Dana watched him nervously run his tongue along his lower 
lip.  Mulder looked down at his hands again.  "I just need 
to know the truth.  It probably wouldn't change anything, 
or make me any happier, but at least I'd know."

An outraged shriek emerged from the bedroom and Julia came 
running out, her pigtails flying behind her, to bury her 
head in Dana's lap.

"What's wrong?" she asked, rubbing her daughter's back and 
stifling a sigh.  It was hard to go from talking about 
Before to full Mommy-mode.

Julia looked up at her with teary eyes.  "He took my 
blocks!"

Mulder shook his head and stood.  "It looks like adult time 
is over-- all ten minutes of it."

She grinned, knowing just how rare those times were.

He started off for the kitchen.  "The only thing that will 
end this squabble is cookies," he said over his shoulder.

Looking at her daughter's round face, Dana smiled in 
chagrin.

Yes, domestic bliss indeed.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It was two o'clock and she couldn't sleep.  After another 
futile change of position in bed, Dana sat up and switched 
on the bedside lamp.

The apartment was too quiet without John's presence.  It 
was difficult for her to sleep without the warmth of his 
body next to hers.  Or perhaps it was the coffee she'd 
drank at Mulder's.  Either way, her mind wouldn't quiet 
enough to allow her to slide into sleep.

For a moment, Dana considered using one of the sleep derms 
Dr. Hanley had prescribed.  They were non-addictive but 
still had the nasty effect of making her groggy in the 
morning.  She had a full day of intricate lab work 
scheduled for tomorrow and it wouldn't do to be yawning and 
disoriented for them.

She wondered if John would be upset if she called him in 
the middle of the night at his Sao Paulo hotel.  With a 
sigh, she decided he would.

Her doctor had given her some mental exercises to try when 
she had one of her bouts of insomnia and Dana figured it 
wouldn't hurt to give one of them a shot.

She turned the light off and rolled onto her right side, 
curling up in the fetal position.

Allowing herself to take slow, easy breaths, she tried to 
remember a time when she'd felt utterly calm and at peace.  
A time when she'd been nothing but happy.

Inhale.  A happy place.

Exhale.  In this very bed.

. . . lying, almost half-asleep, drugged with the 
aftereffects of pleasure and fatigue.  John's warm body 
next to hers, still slick with sweat, his chest against her 
back, one arm draped over her body and his hand resting on 
the small, swelling globe of her belly.

And her eyes struggle to remain open, to remember and savor 
the sweet contentment of this moment, his warm breath 
tickling her ear, her body still glowing from her orgasm.  
Finally, finally after nearly a year of trying to get 
pregnant, of often-painful tests and procedures, 
experimental ova regeneration therapy, now their baby is 
growing and thriving in her body, almost five months old 
now.  And once again lovemaking can be about sharing 
affection, the give and take of pleasure, not the business 
of procreation.

She listens to John's breathing drop into a sleep pattern-
long inhale of oxygen, slow exhale of carbon dioxide.

Finally, finally . . .

Dana felt sleep reaching for her as it had that lovely 
night years before and a faint smile curved her lips as she 
began to sink.  Lower and lower, darker and darker, sleep 
had finally arrived.

. . . not tonight, Scully, it's not time, let's just keep 
each other warm, please, for me, one more night, I want to 
see another morning with you . . .

Her eyes snapped open in the black of the bedroom and she 
struggled for breath.  What, what, what the fuck was that?  
It had been a low, raspy male whisper, as if someone had 
been in bed with her.

Her stomach lurched painfully.  She climbed out of bed onto 
shaking legs and made it to the bathroom just in time to 
vomit in the toilet.

Resting her cheek against the cool of the white bowl, she 
shut her eyes and fought off the lingering wave of nausea.

I don't want this, not tonight, she thought.  All I want is 
to sleep.

Finally, she stood and brushed her teeth and drank a glass 
of cold water.

She didn't want to think anymore.

Conceding defeat, she opened the medicine cabinet over the 
sink and pulled out the box of sleep derms.

Ten minutes later, the drugs had entered her bloodstream 
through the skin of her inner arm and she lost herself in 
heavy, dreamless slumber.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"I have this theory," Mulder said, splashing water with his 
bare foot.  "Do you want to hear it?"

They were at City Center Park, the largest park area, 
several square miles carved out in the middle of the 
business district.  Sarah and the kids were on the other 
end of the large marble fountain, floating plastic 
sailboats in the shallow water.  Adam and Julia had been 
stripped naked and were as wet and slick as small seals.

Mulder and Dana had removed their own shoes and socks, and 
rolled up their pants, and were enjoying the sensation of 
cool water on bare feet as they ate sandwiches.

She lifted a single eyebrow, unable to comment since she 
was chewing a bite of turkey sandwich.  She swallowed and 
said, "You seem to have a lot of theories, Mulder."

It felt so easy and nice to be simply hanging out at the 
park, surrounded by trees and grass and families, her 
daughter cheerfully splashing in the water.  The strange 
events of two nights ago almost seemed as if they hadn't 
happened.

"It's kind of a weird theory," Mulder said, crumpling up 
the paper wrapping from his sandwich.  "I haven't ever told 
it to anyone else."

Why are you telling me then, and not your wife, she 
thought.  But she knew the answer--Sarah didn't want to 
discuss those things, just like John.

"Go ahead," she said.

"What year is it?" Mulder asked.

She shot him a look of confusion.  "It's 2004," she said, 
in a tone that added an unspoken 'of course.'

"Are you so sure about that?"

"Of course I'm sure.  It's what my calendar and computer 
tell me . . ."

Mulder turned his head and gave her a strangely intense 
look.  "That's what they say, but bear with me, Dana.  We 
know that the Others rescued the Survivors.  We were held 
in stasis for a while, treated for the Plague and awakened 
in stages to find ourselves in the new cities the Others 
had created for us."

Dana nodded.  This was old news to her.

He splashed some more water with his feet.  "The timeline 
says we were in stasis for about three months.  What if 
that's not true?"

She felt her brow wrinkling.  "Why wouldn't it be true?"  
She watched as Sarah pulled Julia by her arms through the 
water and heard her daughter's delighted shrieks of 
laughter.

"I don't know."  Mulder shook his head as if he, too, were 
confused by his own theory.  "It just seems odd to me that 
the Others have been so good to us, and have asked so 
little in return.  They saved us, helped us recreate a 
semblance of our former world and gave us self-rule.  Their 
motives have been wholly altruistic, except that they now 
trade with us and have access to some needed natural 
resources from Earth."

"And you doubt their good intentions?  Don't you think that 
if the motives of the Others were less than honorable, they 
would have shown their true faces by now?  It's been five 
years."

Mulder chuckled.  "I like the way you challenge me, Dana."

She smiled at that.  "So, what does this have to do with 
the timeline?"

"It's just something I ponder now and again.  What if we 
were in stasis for longer than three months?  It could have 
been as long as a century, even longer, for all we know."

"For what purpose?"  She took a long sip of her lemonade 
and turned to look at his grave face.

"Anything," Mulder said, shrugging.  "Experiments, 
collection of genetic material . . .  I've even considered 
that perhaps there never were the Enemies, or a war, or the 
Plague.  Maybe the rest of the world was killed, or taken, 
by the Others.  How do we have any way to truly know?  No 
one can remember."

A chill passed through Dana as she considered his words.  
But she shrugged it off.  Mulder had been right, it was a 
strange theory.  "It's pretty far-fetched," she said.

"Yeah, I know.  But that's how my mind works."

"It's a disturbing idea."  It was difficult to imagine that 
everything she knew to be the facts could be utterly false. 

"I didn't mean to frighten you.  From all we've seen, the 
Others are the good guys.  Like I said, I just get these 
ideas."

"I like it," she said, looking at the pale shapes of her 
feet underwater.  "It's refreshing to be able to talk about 
these things and know you don't think I'm insane."

"You're the one who should think I'm insane.  But you 
don't." 

"You're not insane," she said.

 Mulder lightly touched her hand with his and she felt 
something electric shoot up her arm.  It was awareness, 
sudden realization that the man sitting next to her was an 
attractive man.  He was staring at her with an expression 
that allowed her to see the sexuality in the man, the 
passion that existed behind his wry humor and oddball 
ideas.  Mulder was looking at her as if she were the only 
person on the Earth at that moment.  Don't think that, she 
told herself and forced herself to look at his wife on the 
other end of the fountain, soaked to the knees of her jeans 
and playing patty-cake with the children.

He seemed to snap back into comprehension of where they 
truly were.  He swung his legs over the edge of the 
fountain and began to shake the water off his feet.  "You 
brought towels, right?"

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When she and Julia returned home, there was a note from 
John on her Mailserve, asking her to call him at his hotel.  
She gave Julia a quick bath, read her a story and left her 
daughter sleeping in the light of her Bud the Lizard 
nightlight.

She sat in front of the telescreen and punched the number 
for John's hotel into the remote.  After a minute they 
connected and the image of her husband, wearing his pajamas 
and sitting on the end of his hotel bed, flashed on the 
screen.  He smiled to see her.  "Hey babe, I miss you," he 
said.

"Me, too."

"I tried to call you twice tonight.  Where did you go?"

She knew he wasn't asking out of suspicion but curiosity, 
but the question made her feel strange all the same.  "A 
play date.  I met a nice couple, Sarah and Mulder, the 
other day.  We took the kids to City Center Park tonight."

"Awww, I miss her so much.  Is she in bed?"

Dana nodded.  "Yeah.  Do you want me to get her up for 
you?"

"No, let her sleep."

"Are you still planning on coming back Saturday?"  Only six 
days, she told herself.  It's not that long.

John grimaced and ran his fingers through his brown hair, 
which was beginning to recede gracefully.  "That's what I 
was calling about.  The project is really messed up.  I've 
been spending sixteen-hour days at the site.  I don't think 
I'm going to be able to get back for another two weeks."

"Two weeks?" She tried not to sound too disappointed, but 
she failed.

"I know, Dana, and I feel terrible.  I miss you and Julia 
so much.  And I know I'll miss your birthday."

That's right.  She'd entirely forgotten that her birthday 
was on Sunday.

"Oh well, we can celebrate when you get back."

He smiled at her, a sweet and guilt-laden little smile.  
"We will, honey, you can count on it."

A few minutes later, after some more talk, they said 
goodbye and disconnected.

I forgot to tell him I love him, she thought, as she rose 
from the couch and began to pick up scattered toys from the 
floor.  But he knows how I feel.  

She decided that after she cleaned up the living room, 
she'd send him a Mailserve message, telling him just how 
she felt.  It would strengthen their connection so many 
miles apart.

An hour later she had just about fallen asleep when she 
realized she'd forgotten to send the message.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The next evening, after she'd put Julia down for the night, 
Dana finally got to the Mailserve message to John.  It was 
relaxing after spending the day presenting at a seminar on 
Spina Bifida to sit back in the comfortable computer chair, 
shut her eyes and see only the amber letters on the black 
background, her fingers automatically typing away on the 
keyboard she couldn't see.  She was in the middle of an 
impassioned paragraph about their honeymoon when a bright 
yellow Page intruded itself on her field of vision.

*Centralnetsytem user fwmulder2411 requests user 
dkscully8732 to Netspace AE3456-AT*

Curious, she mused, Mulder has a Netspace.  She briefly 
considered finishing her message, but curiosity got the 
better of her and she closed the Mailserve.

It was rare for Dana to fully immerse herself in the Net.  
From time to time, she had to attend a networked conference 
or meeting, but she didn't particularly enjoy sinking into 
complete immersion for fun.  Many people, including her own 
husband, enjoyed going into its synthetic world for 
entertainment, news and games, but it slightly disturbed 
her. The world inside the Net was somehow *too* real and 
the division between her virtual and real-life selves 
seemed too blurry for comfort.  In immersion, if she 
touched a wood table in a conference room, it felt as solid 
and smooth under her fingertips as the table in her 
kitchen.  She knew she wasn't really feeling the table when 
immersed and that her brain was simply being manipulated by 
the software into sensing something that wasn't truly 
there. Everyone she knew accepted Net immersion as a way of 
daily life, but Dana preferred the prosaic reality of the 
world outside the computer.

She took a deep breath and punched in the address for 
Mulder's space and the Net connect button.  A bright flash 
of light made her jerk, as it always did when she went into 
immersion.  One time she'd asked Evan, her neighbor across 
the hall, why connecting to the Net produced the flash.  He 
was a systems analyst for Centralnetsytem, the public Net 
utility for the city.  Evan had laughed.  "It's all 
psychological.  The flash doesn't need to be there, but it 
makes people feel like they're really going somewhere . . 
." He'd offered to go into the works of her computer and 
take the flash out, but absent-minded as Evan was, he'd 
never gotten around to it.

Her virtual self emerged in a long, metallic hallway with 
an endless series of doors, all marked with their Netspace 
numbers.  She was right outside AE3456-AT.  The door's 
scanning software registered her presence and smoothly 
swished open to reveal a black void.

Feeling like Alice in Wonderland, a book she'd bought for 
when Julia got older, Dana stepped into the darkness . . .

. . .and into the seaside.

Curiouser and curiouser, she thought.  She was standing on 
a windswept beach, the ocean white-capped and crashing on 
the sand.  It was so real it took Dana's breath away.  She 
swore she could smell the salt in the air, and she heard 
the cries of seagulls overhead.  The sky was a leaden gray.  
The wind whipped her hair into her face as she scanned the 
landscape for any sign of Mulder.

"Too much wind for you?" Mulder said.

She turned around and he was standing next to her, looking 
exactly as he did in real life.  People could, with the 
right software at home, present themselves in immersion any 
way they wanted, and she was relieved he hadn't chosen to 
come as a giant warthog or a tall, gray-faced Other.  
Fantasy was all very well and good, but enough was enough.

Dana shook her head in disbelief.  "I've never seen such an 
elaborate Netspace.  Did you design this yourself?"

"Are you kidding?"  He started to laugh.  "I'm pretty much 
an idiot when it comes to this stuff.  I paid a designer a 
whole lot of credits for this space."

"It's beautiful.  I've never seen an ocean like this."

They began to walk on the sand toward the water.  "Have you 
been to the ocean, then?" he asked.

"Yes, on my honeymoon.  We went to New Zealand, to Miracle 
Beach."

"This is the Atlantic.  Before Sarah and I got married, I 
went with her to a conference in Maine.  There's a resort 
up there for high-level officials only.  The atmosphere 
there is safe to be outside.  While Sarah was hobnobbing 
with academics, I spent nearly all my time on the beach.  
I'd never felt so at home in my life."

They reached the water's edge, just far enough away to 
avoid getting wet from the surf, but every few waves she 
caught a little of the cold spray on her face.

"Do you come here a lot?" she asked.

He looked up at the dark sky.  "Only when I need to think.  
It seems like all my best thinking gets done on this 
beach."

"I can see why, it's peaceful here."

"This is where I do my remembering."

She looked at his eyes, which today were as gray as the 
clouds overhead.  "Remembering Before?"

Mulder shrugged self-consciously.  "Yeah.  There's nothing 
here to distract me from thinking."

Dana picked up a handful of brown sand and let the grains 
slide through her fingers.  Amazing, she could actually 
feel each individual grain.

She had a question for Mulder, but didn't know if she dared 
ask it.  If her own husband wouldn't tell her, why would 
Mulder?

But she asked, anyhow.  "Mulder," she said in barely 
audible voice, "what do you remember?"

Instead of seeming offended, he turned to her and smiled.  
"Do you really want to know?"

She nodded.

"Not a lot," he admitted.  "Just some general impressions.  
I know I had a younger sister and she had dark hair, darker 
than mine.  I have memories of riding my bike as a kid and 
playing baseball.  And I can remember standing on a beach 
that was a lot like this one."

"Anything from your adult life?"

"Most of my memories are of childhood.  I know I was 
trained as a psychologist, but I don't think I worked with 
kids like I do now.  Recently I remembered that I was in 
law enforcement of some kind."

 "Law enforcement?  You were something like a Guardian?"

"Something like that.  There was an agency Before, called 
the Federal Bureau of Investigation.  Have you heard of 
it?"

"Sure.  I've read about it and I saw a movie that survived 
the War, that had some FBI agents in it."

"It may sound odd, but I think I was one of those agents. I 
have this small fragment of a memory, where I'm looking at 
my badge."

Her eyebrow rose.  "Have you tried to see if any records 
still exist?"

"Yeah, I have."  The expression on Mulder's face spoke of 
his disappointment.  "The records on the Net aren't 
accessible.  They're locked up tight, and like I said, I'm 
no computer genius."

She had a flash of inspiration.  "Mulder, I have a 
neighbor, a friend of mine.  He knows everything about 
computers.  I could ask him to look for you."

"You'd do that for me?"  His eyes widened and for a moment, 
Dana could see what Mulder had looked like as a boy.

"I'd do that."

For a moment he took her hand and squeezed it.  Before she 
could even register the sensation, he dropped her hand.  
"It would mean a lot to me, Dana."

She smiled.  "You and I are a lot alike.  We want to know 
more than anything."

For a long moment, Mulder was silent, staring at the surf.  
Finally, he said, "Sometimes I think we're the only two 
people in the world who do."

"It doesn't feel so lonely anymore," she whispered. 

Dana turned to him, the breeze now blowing her hair off her 
face.  "Why did you ask me to come here tonight?"

He grinned self-consciously.  "Because you're the one who 
understands what this place means to me."

Mulder put his arm around her and they stood together on 
the sand, companionably watching the ocean. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The party was already in full swing when she pushed open 
the door to Mulder and Sarah's apartment.  People she 
didn't know, dressed to the nines, stood in little groups, 
talking and drinking wine.  The air smelled like women's 
perfume and in the background she could hear jazz piano 
playing on the sound system.

Dana stood in the doorway, not sure what to do.  Usually, 
when she had to deal with a whole roomful of strangers, she 
had John to navigate her way through the crowd and help her 
strike up conversations.  Now she was on her own.  This is 
silly, she told herself.  You're intelligent and 
independent and you don't need your husband to get through 
this evening.

Sarah spotted her from her perch on the couch and came 
over, elegant tonight in a chocolate-brown dress that 
matched her eyes and displayed her full breasts to 
advantage.

"I'm glad you came," Sarah said, liking arms with Dana.  
She dropped her voice to a confidential whisper.  "This was 
my idea, not Mulder's.  I wanted to celebrate finally 
unpacking."

"Where is he?" Dana asked.

"I think he's sulking in the kitchen.  Mulder doesn't 
really like parties . . ." She spotted new guests coming 
through the front door.  "Well, I have to run and play 
hostess."

In the kitchen, Mulder was opening bottles of wine, with an 
expression of intense concentration on his face.  Before 
she had a change to greet him, he looked up at her and 
smiled.

At that moment, Dana wished she hadn't chosen to wear a 
dress that made her feel so bare.  The invitation had 
specified dressing up, though, and this was the only decent 
evening dress she owned.  She'd bought it after finally 
getting her body back in shape after pregnancy.  The dress 
was sleeveless and made from a thin, silky, shimmering 
material of the darkest red just before maroon.  It was 
modestly high at the neck, and the hemline only came to 
right below her knees, but in the back it was cut down 
nearly to the tattoo on her lower back.  Now she felt 
strangely naked before the up and down sweep of Mulder's 
eyes.

What the hell is going on here, she thought.  She felt a 
little awkward after the sweet little moment they'd shared 
the other night in Mulder's Netspace.  Granted, if you did 
it in cyberspace, it didn't really count, but she'd felt so 
content and at peace as they'd watched the waves with his 
arm around her.

Dana handed him a paper-wrapped package and he pulled out a 
bottle of Australian Cabernet.  Australia had suffered 
relatively little damage during the invasion, and its 
vineyards were again exporting wine.

"So much wine," he said, shaking his head.  "I can already 
feel the hangover I'm going to have tomorrow."  He gave her 
a glass of red wine he'd poured and set on a tray.

She sipped the wine. "Sarah says you don't like parties."

Mulder shrugged.  "Too many people all at once-- it's 
sensory overload.  I tend to get as cranky as Adam if he's 
up past his bedtime."

"Speaking of which, where is he tonight?"  There was no way 
a child could sleep through a party in such a small 
apartment.

"There's a nice elderly lady who lives three floors 
upstairs, named Rose.  She adores Adam and was glad to take 
him off our hands for the night.  How about Julia?"

"My lab partner's place.  She and her husband don't have 
any children yet, so they like to practice on Julia."

He grinned at that, and she thought about how dangerous his 
smiles were.  Mulder was dressed all in black tonight-- a 
black shirt unbuttoned just enough to reveal a few curling 
dark hairs, and black pants.  It almost hurt to look at 
him.

Get a grip, she told herself.

"I'm glad you could make it, Dana.  Most of the guests are 
Sarah's colleagues from the University.  I hardly know a 
soul."

"I'm glad, too."  It felt free to be out without John or 
Julia.  A bit scary, yes, but she could dimly recall a time 
when she'd been entirely on her own.

They wandered out into the thick of the crown and were soon 
separated.  She steeled herself and made introductions with 
an affable-looking group of professors.  Soon they were all 
discussing the upcoming elections.  November would be the 
first all-world presidential elections, now that Interim 
President Lobacheva's term was ending.  They argued over 
the major candidates.  She was in favor of Hirako 
Yamaguchi, but most of the others were rooting for Stephen 
Michaels-St. Clair.  Dana found herself, surprisingly, 
having fun as they debated the candidates like pundits on a 
political tele-program.  Conversation in her social circle 
seemed to be entirely taken up with science or parenthood.  
It was refreshing to discuss agricultural reform and one-
language legislation with intelligent people.

The party wore on and Dana was surprised to see, glancing 
at her wristwatch, that it was midnight.  The crowd had 
thinned out a bit and she noticed that Sarah was slumped 
over on the couch, asleep from the effects of too much 
wine.  Mulder was nowhere in sight.  The room was almost 
stifling from lingering body heat and even through her 
dress was on the skimpy side, Dana was hot.  She needed 
some air.

With her fourth glass of wine in hand, she stepped out the 
front door.  God, I'm tipsy, she thought in the elevator, 
checking out her flushed face in the mirror.

Outside, the street was quiet and deserted, the only noise 
a cleaning servo moving down the pavement and spraying 
water as it went.  Between Mulder's apartment and the next 
there was a small green space, not big enough to count as a 
park.  There was merely a patch of green grass, a set of 
swings and a bench.

Dana sat on the bench and looked up at the stars twinkling 
behind the dome.  There was a song she remembered, that she 
sometimes sang to Julia now.  "Twinkle, twinkle, little 
star, how I wonder what you are."  She thought about the 
Others, and how they'd driven off the Enemies.  Who else is 
out there, she wondered, picking out constellations.  We're 
definitely not alone.  

"Have you ever made a wish on a star?"

She jumped a bit at the unexpected voice breaking her 
reverie, but it was only Mulder.

He laid a hand on her should.  "Sorry, I didn't mean to 
startle you."

"Escaping your own party?"  Dana raised an eyebrow.  
"You're a bad host."

"That I am."  He sat down next to her and looked up at the 
sky.

"Well, it was nice of you to throw me a birthday party."

Mulder turned to look at her.  "It's your birthday?  I 
didn't know."

She grinned.  "Well, I didn't tell you, so don't feel bad.  
Besides, my birthday is tomorrow."  Dana looked at her 
watch.  "Actually, it's today now."

"If you'd told me, we could have gotten you a cake and a 
present."

"Don't be ridiculous.  I don't need any of that.  I'm 
planning on celebrating tomorrow night at a friend's place.  
She's making dinner for me."

"So, how old are you?"

She shot him a look of annoyance.  "Don't you know that 
after a woman reaches a certain age, it's not polite to ask 
that question?"

Mulder snorted.  "Please, Dana, you make it sound like 
you're eighty years old.  You don't look a day over 
seventy-nine."

Dana made to swat at his cheek, but he intercepted her hand 
and grasped it in his.  Oh, she couldn't breathe.  "Come 
on, spill," he said, grinning.

Tugging her hand away, she said, "I'm forty-one."

He rolled his eyes.  "Is that all?  I'm ancient compared to 
you.  I'm forty-five."

She leaned back and crossed her legs.  "We're getting old, 
Mulder."

Sometimes she wondered what she'd looked like when she was 
young, before she'd had fine lines around her eyes, before 
the gray hairs had begun to creep into the red.

With a cool hand, Mulder touched her cheek.  "You're a 
beautiful woman, Dana, for any age."  She would have 
laughed his words off if he hadn't said them in such a low, 
serious voice.

Dana stared at him as if in disbelief and then looked down 
at her shaking hand, which was clutching her wineglass as 
if it were a life preserver.

His fingers lifted her chin, so she was forced to look at 
him again.  "Don't you believe me?" he whispered.

Oh, she could see the arousal in his eyes, practically felt 
it coming off his body in waves.  Her skin prickled into a 
thousand goosebumps in response.

I have to get out of here, she thought, but she couldn't 
move.  She felt hypnotized by the hungry expression on 
Mulder's face.

He blinked and slightly moved towards her.  He's going to 
kiss me, she frantically thought.  I can't let this happen, 
I can't.  But another part of her wanted him to.

Dana pulled away from Mulder and felt a self-conscious 
smile grow on her face.

Say something and defuse this moment.

Clearing her throat, she said, "What's going on here, 
Mulder?

He made a sound deep in his throat.  "I don't know."

"Neither do I," she said, looking at the empty swing set 
instead of at Mulder.  "But something is going on between 
us."

"I can't stop thinking about you."  Mulder sighed.  "Not 
since we first met.  I don't know how to explain it, but I 
just can't stop."

Her mouth was dry and she took another sip of wine, her 
brain buzzing with too many thoughts for her to be able to 
adequately articulate any of them.

She felt his hand on her bare arm.  "Is it the same for 
you?" he asked in a voice so hesitant it wrenched her 
heart.

I don't want to have to answer this, she thought, because 
I'll have to tell you the truth and if I do, I don't know 
what will happen.

The pressure on her arm fractionally increased.  "Is it?" 
he repeated.

Still looking away from Mulder, she nodded.

"I know it's wrong," Mulder said.  "Believe me, I know."

Finally, she got the courage to turn her head and look at 
him.  She'd known Mulder for such a short time, but already 
his face was so beloved to her.  But still, they couldn't 
do this.  Not now, not ever.  "It's wrong," she softly 
said.

"Yes," he agreed.

I want to so badly to kiss him, she thought, just once so 
I'll have a taste of what it's like to love him.

Dana felt tears begin to well in her eyes and she blinked 
them away.  She never cried in front of anyone else, not 
even John.  It made her seem weak.

"I have a husband and I love him," she said.  "You have a 
wife and you love her.  We . . . we can't . . ."

"You're right."

But even as they were saying the right and proper things, 
his fingers had laced themselves with hers and their faces 
had come so close together their noses were almost 
touching.  She could smell the wine on his breath.

The air seemed to thicken to Dana, to be almost crackling 
with the tension.  Mulder's free hand rose to the back of 
her neck and she felt the tiny hairs there stand up on end.

"We can't do this," he whispered, but he pressed his lips 
to hers.

She forgot to think as he kissed her, logic and 
responsibility temporarily bound and gagged.  Her hands 
rose to his face, to pull him closer to her, to pull him 
deeper into her mouth.  Their tongues touched for the first 
time and she nearly jerked at the contact, at the raw wave 
of arousal that flooded through her body.

It was alien to kiss someone who wasn't John, to feel a 
strange tongue twining with hers, to taste his wine-soaked 
lips and mouth.  But it also felt oddly familiar to kiss 
Mulder.  There was no awkwardness of noses and lips, no 
fumbling, just one perfect, explosive kiss, bittersweet 
with longing and need.

They pulled apart after what felt like hours of kissing, 
breathing hard and staring at each other in stunned 
silence.

Finally, Mulder spoke.  "I'm sorry, Dana.  We shouldn't 
have done that."

She nodded, her lips still throbbing from his kisses.  
"Maybe we shouldn't be around each other anymore."

His face looked so stricken at her words that she felt the 
tears begin to well again.

She wiped her face with a trembling hand and rose from the 
park bench.  "It's late.  I need to pick up Julia."

Mulder reached for her hand and squeezed it.  "I know that 
what we did was wrong, but I'm having a difficult time 
regretting it."

Somehow, she felt herself smiling.  "Me, too.  That's the 
problem, Mulder."

She turned to walk back out onto the street.

"Hey, Dana?"

She spun around on her heel.

Mulder ran his hands through his hair, making the short 
strands into a multitude of spikes.  "Did you mean what you 
said about not seeing each other?"

She raised her hands in a questioning gesture.  "I don't 
know, Mulder.  I need to think."

The trouble was that she could probably spend the rest of 
her life thinking about it and not come up with the correct 
answer.

"I think we both need some time," he said.

She nodded.

"One more thing," he said, rising from the bench.

"What's that?

"You're insanely beautiful after you've been kissed . . ."

Dana couldn't help but smile at that, but she turned around 
and walked away all the same.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Alone in her bedroom an hour later, Dana tried to think of 
anything but the kiss she'd shared with Mulder.  She 
mentally walked herself through each step of preparing 
tissue samples for an MCR-DNA test.  Next, she balanced the 
family budget for March, paying the bills and setting aside 
the remaining credits in the family account.  She even made 
a checklist of cleaning products she needed to buy for the 
apartment.

But underneath her thoughts, running like the refrain of an 
annoying pop song she couldn't get out of her head, was the 
shocking awareness that she'd kissed Fox Mulder.

She'd kissed a man who wasn't her husband.

When she'd spoken her vows that December morning in the 
Hall of Magistrates, she'd taken them seriously, but 
entirely in stride.  Of course she would love, honor and 
cherish John Rosen forever.  And of course she'd never even 
consider another man.  There was no one but John.  She 
hadn't been able to even grasp the concept of anyone but 
John.

Now, years later, there was another man in the picture, 
whether it was right or wrong.  Mulder had entered her life 
in a series of chance encounters and somehow, over the past 
few weeks, he'd become important to her.

And now she had some decisions to make.

The problem was that she didn't know what the hell to do.

She touched her lips and they still felt swollen from his 
kiss.  Never had she experienced a kiss that felt like the 
one they'd shared.  Granted, she'd only kissed two men in 
her memory, three if you counted the phantom lover from her 
dreams.  It had been an explosion of unchecked emotion, 
that kiss on the bench, an utterly intoxicating blend of 
attraction, fear, lust, shame, and tenderness.  It had been 
a singular kiss.

Dana regretted taking Julia to the park that evening.  If 
she hadn't gone, she never would have met Mulder and 
nothing would have happened.  Her life would have continued 
on its quiet, steady path.  She would have done her 
research, raised her daughter and loved her husband.  The 
dreams and memory fragments would still have haunted her, 
but she would have coped.  She was a survivor.  Besides, 
she'd been coping ever since she was brought back to life 
in the Clinic as a shell of a woman.

If she hadn't met Mulder, she never would have begun to 
imagine a life in which she could explore her past and try 
to reclaim the person she'd once been.  Mulder gave her 
permission not to be ashamed to want those things.

She rolled onto her side, and adjusted the pillows under 
her head, finally admitting to herself that she wanted 
Mulder, not just the singular friendship they'd developed, 
but the man himself.

She'd never desired like this before.  When she'd first met 
John, she'd been attracted to him, of course, but it had 
been more of an understanding that he was a man who would 
always remain by her side, a man with whom she could 
rebuild her life.

With Mulder, now that she'd had that first taste of what it 
was like to know him physically, she craved more.

Dana wanted to unbutton that black shirt he'd been wearing 
and touch the skin of his chest and run her fingers through 
the hair there.  She wanted to know what his body looked 
like without clothes.  He was about the same height as her 
husband but had longer legs and arms.  She imagined 
counting his ribs with her fingers and running them down to 
his navel as he groaned at how close she was getting to the 
part of him that most wanted to be touched.

A small moan escaped her lips as she let her hand slip 
between her legs.  She didn't often touch herself for 
pleasure-- she was rarely alone and it seemed empty not to 
be able to share it with John.  But now she stroked herself 
with insistent fingers, for the first time imagining 
herself making love with someone other than John.

She pictured herself taking off Mulder's pants and having 
him stand in front of her, erect and gazing at her with 
that look of intense arousal he'd worn on his face earlier 
in the night.  

And the reality blurred with her fantasy and she was there, 
with Mulder.  Dana touched his thick, dark pubic hair and 
moved her hand to cup and stroke his balls, feeling his 
shiver of response.  She kneeled and let her tongue drag 
along the length of his hard cock as his hands gripped her 
shoulders in unspoken encouragement.

With her mouth and tongue, Dana loved him, demonstrating 
the emotion she was finally allowing its freedom.  He made 
soft sounds of approval, as he slid in and out of her 
mouth.

As Mulder came with a low cry, she came too, back in the 
reality of her bed, arching her back and smothering her 
groans in the pillow.

The clock by the bed turned to three in the morning as she 
fell asleep, burning with shame, burning with ecstasy, 
burning.

She dreamed of fire that night, of squatting by a small 
campfire, shivering and coughing so hard she was afraid she 
would break a rib.  This is where it ends, she thought in 
her dream, this is where we end.  I never imagined the end 
would be like this.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A few interesting things happened on Sunday morning.

First, she was awakened at seven by the door chime.  A 
delivery-bot was outside the door, with a bouquet of 
hothouse flowers for her: daisies, irises and lilies.  Dana 
brought them into the living room and found the card tucked 
behind a spray of baby's breath.

*To the woman who has taught me everything about love.  
Happy Birthday.  John.*

The rush of guilt she felt as she read the card was almost 
crippling.  Dana had to sit down on the couch and take deep 
breaths.  What a terrible wife I am, she thought.

She got Julia out of bed.  After dressing the squirming 
toddler, Dana set her on the kitchen floor to play with her 
plastic animal set.  Julia made cow and chicken noises as 
Dana mixed together the ingredients for pancakes.

Just as she was spooning the batter in the pan to fry, the 
door chimed again, as if on cue.  This time it was Evan.  
He was young, only twenty-four and lived in the studio 
apartment across the hall, a small space she knew was 
covered in posters for obscure Afro-Beat groups and 
littered with takeout sushi containers.

Evan often came sniffing around on weekend mornings for 
breakfast and Dana had a soft spot for the young man with 
perpetually wrinkled clothes and a head full of black and 
blue plaits.

"Are those pancakes I smell?" he said, grinning bashfully.  
She let him in with an indulgent pat on the head.

He produced a small brown package from the folds of his 
stained jacket.  "I brought you a pound of bacon for your 
birthday."

Dana smiled in delight.  Bacon, imported all the way from 
South America, was an expensive treat she could rarely 
justify buying.  The soy bacon was an acceptable 
substitute, but nothing tasted like the real thing.

She put the bacon in the frying pan and started a pot of 
coffee as he dandled Julia on his knees, making up nonsense 
rhymes about robots.  Despite Evan's strange hair and kohl-
rimmed eyes, Dana could recognize that he had the makings 
of an excellent father.

As the room filled with the scent of the bacon, Dana had 
the vague sensation of familiarity she always got when she 
smelled that particular odor.  It made her feel warm and 
secure and she surmised that bacon must have been a 
favorite breakfast treat of hers as a girl.

Evan was on his ninth pancake when she got the nerve to ask 
him what had been on her mind since she'd opened the door.  
She finished chewing her bacon and said, "Would you be 
willing to do a favor for me?"

He spread more imitation maple syrup on a fresh stack of 
cakes.  "What kind of favor, Dana?"

"A computer kind of favor."

"That's the kind of favor I do best."

Evan practically lived in the Net.  She knew that some days 
he was in immersion for more than eighteen hours, 
unplugging only to eat and go to the bathroom.  His system 
administration job was entirely done from his home and Dana 
sometimes wondered if he ever left the building, except his 
occasional visits to strange underground dance clubs.

"It's kind of personal," she said, carefully choosing her 
words.  "You'd have to keep it to yourself."

"I am the soul of discretion," Evan said in a mock-serious 
whisper.

"I have this friend and he's trying to find his past . . ."

"You mean like Before?" Evan interrupted, raising his dark 
brows.

"Yes.  He seems to think he had been an agent with 
something called the Federal Bureau of Investigation."

"Oh yeah, the Feds.  Gotcha."

"He's tried to access the surviving records, but he can't 
get in.  Think you could do it?"

Evan puffed out his chest with pride.  "I can access 
anything.  You want me to take a little look?"

"Could you?  I wouldn't want you to get into any trouble."

He snorted.  "Give me a break.  This will be pathetically 
easy, Dana.  Besides, information is power.  What's the 
guy's name?  I'll go in and search for it in the records."

"Fox Mulder," she said, and grabbed a notepad off the 
kitchen counter to write it out for in.

"Consider it done," Evan said, stuffing the paper in his 
pocket.  "I'll need a few days, though.  I'm working on 
this huge interface upgrade."

"Thanks so much."

Evan licked syrup off his fork.  "It's the least I can do, 
with you guys feeding me all the time."

She sat back and felt content in the knowledge that she was 
helping Mulder to reclaim what had been lost.

In the afternoon, Julia took a nap and Dana took the 
opportunity to check her Mailserve.  There was only one 
message and it was from Mulder.  She took a deep breath and 
opened the folder.

*I wish I could blame our kiss last night on too much wine, 
but I can't. Have a happy birthday, Dana.  M*

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Tell me about it, Dana."

With a small sigh, Dana took a fortifying sip of her coffee 
and shut her eyes.  I'm in a safe place, she told herself. 
I can say anything here and she won't judge me.

Things always seemed much clearer in the confines of Dr. 
Hanley's office.  The pale gold walls and hanging ferns 
were soothing to her morning-bleary eyes and today the 
doctor was playing soft Vivaldi on her sound system.  For 
one hour every few weeks or so, Dana could sit in a chair 
and talk, with no distractions.  The phone wouldn't ring 
and Julia wouldn't cry for her.

The therapist's voice was soft.  "Is this difficult for 
you?"

She nodded.  "I feel guilty even thinking about it.  I've 
been trying to put it out of my mind, like it never 
happened, but it keeps creeping into the most innocuous of 
my thoughts."

"Denial is never the way to deal with your problems.  If 
you bury something, it's still there and eventually it'll 
emerge."

In other words, Mulder wasn't just going to go away.  
Neither was John.  

Fine, she'd talk.  She had nothing to lose.

Dana's hands fumbled as she struggled for her words.  "I've 
never met anyone like Mulder before.  I can't explain it, 
but when I'm around him, I somehow feel complete, like I've 
been waiting for him these past five years, but I never 
knew it."

Dr. Hanley looked up at Dana from her notebook.  "Tell me 
this, do you feel that any of this has to do with the fact 
that John has been gone for almost two weeks?"

"I wish it were that simple-- that I was resentful, or 
angry at John, or feeling rebellious because he's been 
gone.  This doesn't have anything to do with him, though.  
It hasn't changed the way I feel about John."

"How does Mulder make you feel, compared to your husband?"

She thought of the evening they'd spent at the park, 
dangling their feet in the fountain.  If she were never to 
see Mulder again, she'd still remember the intense 
expression in his eyes.

"I can't compare them," Dana said.  "They are completely 
different people."

"Do you love Mulder?" 

Shrugging, she said.  "I don't know.  I'm not sure I know 
what love is, after all.  I thought I loved John more than 
anything in the world, and look at what's happened.  
Perhaps I'm not capable of love."

"Do you really believe that?"

Dana let out her breath.  "Right now, I'm questioning 
everything in my life.  I thought I had everything I 
wanted, but my feelings for Mulder have made me realize the 
things I'd never dared wish for."

"Such as being able to talk about your dreams and possible 
emerging memories?"

"Yes.  I don't feel like a whole person without my past.  
What are we but the sum of our life experiences?" 

The doctor smiled.  "An interesting point."

Usually when she sat in Dr. Hanley's office, Dana could 
unravel her problems, like someone steadily picking at a 
difficult, knotted rope.  This time, however, the more she 
worked on the rope, the tighter the knot became.

Dana looked at her therapist.  "Bottom line is, I don't 
know what I should do.  What do you think?"

"Dana."  The doctor raised a warning finger.  "You know 
better than that.  My role is not to tell you what to do, 
but to help you sort out your issues yourself."

She grimaced.  "So, I pay you to solve my problems myself, 
huh?  I should go into psychology."

To her credit, Dr. Hanley laughed heartily.

Dana left the doctor's office feeling vaguely unsatisfied.  
While it had felt good to simply talk freely in a way she 
couldn't even do with Meghan, she hadn't come to any 
stunning conclusions in the black chair.  Nothing had 
changed.

With a short sigh, she straightened her spine and lifted 
her chin.  It wasn't time to think about her problems 
anymore.  She had lab reports to write, phone calls to 
return, a department meeting to attend.  The rest of the 
workday didn't belong to her.

Dana crossed the square to her building and determined not 
to think for the rest of the day.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Despite what Dr. Hanley had said in the session that 
morning, Dana came home from the lab determined to practice 
denial.  Mulder had never kissed her and she most certainly 
had not returned that kiss.  Nothing had happened, nothing 
at all.

Julia was in rare form that night.  First there was a 
temper tantrum about changing out of her school clothes and 
then one over having to eat her green beans.  She kicked 
and screamed when Dana tried to put her into the bathtub.  
John was better at calming Julia when she was in one of 
these moods and Dana felt helpless in the force of her 
daughter's overwhelming will.

She called John at the hotel.  Thankfully, he was back from 
dinner and spent twenty minutes reading "Jerry the Blue 
Spaceship" to Julia, who sat in front of the telescreen 
and, with round eyes, touched the image of her father.  He 
didn't need the book to tell the story.  Both he and Dana 
had memorized the words through repetition.

Calm and happy now, Julia slid onto Dana's lap.  Dana 
smiled at John on the screen, but her heart was beating 
rapidly.  Was there any way John could sense her guilt?

"Just one more week," he said, still making silly faces at 
Julia, who squirmed and cackled with glee.  "I can't wait 
to come home.  I'm sick of hotel food and how hot it is 
down here."

"You're too used to dome-conditioning."

"Yep, I'm a wimp.  I'm man enough to admit it.  I just want 
to come home, cook a big pot of spaghetti and sit down with 
you and Julia for dinner."

"I can't wait, either," she said.

Yes, when John returned, everything would be back to 
normal.

She let Julia sleep with her that night.  As her daughter 
slept, Dana stroked her silky hair and thought, this is 
where I belong, with my family.  She fell asleep listening 
to the steady rhythm of Julia's breathing.


A hot, hot night in West Virginia and they're stuck in a 
town so remote the single motel doesn't even have air-
conditioning, just a rusty fan that only pushes the humid 
air around the small room.

After they've made love, he falls asleep on the sweat-
soaked sheets and she goes off to the dingy bathroom to 
take her third shower of the day.  She turns on the water 
so cold her skin prickles in response and her teeth 
chatter.

She doesn't even towel off but climbs onto the bed, 
dripping wet. There's momentary relief as the noisy fan 
blows on her chilly body.

It's been a long, exhausting day and she craves sleep.  
She's just sinking down into the first stage when she feels 
it.

Oh God.

they'recomingthey'recomingthey'recomingthey'recomingthey're
coming 

She sits bolt upright in the sagging bed, stifling the urge 
to scream.

It's a million times stronger than the night she was called 
to the bridge.  She can feel it centered in the nape of her 
neck and radiating out to her limbs.

They're coming.

It's too late.  Everything they've done to fight this 
thing, it has come to nothing.  They're almost here; she 
can feel their collective presence, getting nearer by the 
second.

She never wanted to believe in this day.  She demanded 
proof, something tangible she could see with her own eyes, 
something to believe in.  Anecdotes and shadowy informants 
weren't enough.  Even the hazy recollection of something in 
the Antarctic sky wasn't enough.  Not even her trust and 
faith in the man sleeping by her side.  It was too huge and 
terrible for her to imagine.

"They're coming," she gasps through trembling lips.

He rolls over with a groan and switches on the bedside 
lamp.  "What's wrong, Scully?"

This time she screams the words.


Dana momentarily woke and blinked in the dark.  Just a 
dream, she thought, touching Julia's cheek.  It was only a 
dream.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In the morning, Dana braided Julia's hair while Newsmorning 
recited the world news in the background.  "Don't squirm," 
she said to Julia, who for once went obediently still while 
Dana tied blue ribbons on the ends of her braids.

White and red spots suddenly began to dance in front of 
Dana's eyes.

She knew what the spots meant. Damn, a migraine was coming.  
She hadn't had one in months.  There was no stopping it now 
that it was on its way.  Her Migranex inhaler would work on 
the pain, but she'd be useless for hours under its drugging 
influence.  The waves of nausea were already rising in her 
belly and she began to regret the oatmeal she'd eaten for 
breakfast.

Dana rushed to the bathroom and retched up breakfast and a 
good portion of dinner from the night before.  She looked 
up from the toilet bowl and saw Julia staring at her with 
curiosity.

"Mommy threw up," she declared.

She nodded weakly, the throbbing setting up camp in her 
temples.  After brushing her teeth, she sucked on the 
plastic Migranex tube, wincing at the metallic taste of the 
vapor.

She changed back into her pajamas and stumbled to the couch 
to call Meagan, praying her partner was still home.

Meagan answered in her pink bathrobe, her short, dark hair 
still wet from the shower.  "Dana, are you all right? You 
look like hell."

Dana touched her forehead, her eyes squinting at the light 
from the telescreen.  "A migraine," she said.  "I don't 
think I'll be coming into the lab today."

"Oh no," Megan said, concern on her round and pretty face.  
"But don't worry about it.  We were just going to work on 
our proposal for next year, remember?"

She nodded, the pain intensifying, white-hot flashes that 
beat in time with her heart.

"Sweetie, I'm coming right over.  I just need to get 
dressed.  I'll take Julia to Primary Care today."

After disconnecting, Dana curled up on the couch, hoping 
the drug would kick in soon.  Julia patted Dana's arm.  
"Mommy, you sick?"

"I'm sick," she said and groped for the remote, switching 
it to a children's cartoon program.  The sound of gamboling 
animals, even with the volume turned down low, made her 
wince, but the cartoons kept Julia quiet and out of 
mischief.

Twenty minutes later, Meagan came bustling in.  She had a 
spare access card to Dana and John's place in case of 
emergency.  Dana was grateful for this, since the thought 
of moving was unbearable.

"Meggie!"  Julia shouted and Dana groaned at the outburst.

"Hey, kiddo," Meagan said in a soft voice.  "You have to be 
very, very quiet right now."

Meagan walked over to the couch.  "Don't worry about a 
thing," she said to Dana.  "Just rest.  I can take Julia 
home with me tonight.  Tom and I would love to have her."

Dana nodded.  "Thanks," she managed to say. "Julia, do you 
want to sleep over at Meagan's house tonight?"

Julia, who had spent quite a few nights at Meghan's to give 
her parents some time alone, began to jump up and down at 
the idea.

Meagan found the afghan and spread it over Dana's body.  
With the brisk efficiency that made her an outstanding 
scientist, she got together a bag of clothing and 
toiletries for Julia.

"Come on Jules," she said.  "Let's get you to school."  She 
squeezed Dana's clammy hand.  "Call me if you need 
anything."

Eyes closing, Dana mumbled, "I just need to sleep."  The 
pain was receding, beginning to be replaced with the heavy 
weight of drugged fatigue.

Julia pressed a slobbery kiss on her mother's cheek and 
then they were gone, leaving the apartment in blessed 
silence.

She wrapped the blanket around her and let herself sleep.

She dreamed of falling leaves-crimson, gold and orange, of 
raking and smelling the earthy tang of autumn.

When Dana finally woke, she looked at the telescreen clock 
through bleary eyes.  It was four p.m.  Nearly an entire 
day had passed while she'd slept on the couch.  She hated 
wasting an entire day like that, but she also knew it was 
the only way to let the migraine pass.

The pain was gone now.  She felt a bit dizzy from the 
Migranex and hunger, but the storm in her head had moved 
on.

She showered and changed into a t-shirt and leggings.  In 
the kitchen she drank a full bottle of water while warming 
up a package of chicken noodle soup.

Dana had just settled back onto the couch to eat her soup 
when the telescreen announced a caller.  She considered 
letting the Messenger pick up the call, but she worried it 
could be from Primary Care or Meghan.

Mulder's face appeared on her screen.  From the background 
of a shelf full of books, she could tell he was calling 
from his office at City Edcom.

"Are you all right?" he asked, eyes blinking behind his 
glasses.  "I tried you at the lab, but the message said you 
were out for the day."

Dana's hands began to shake in her lap at the sight of 
Mulder, the sound of his voice.  "I had a migraine," she 
said.  "I slept it off and I'm fine now."

He smiled, his full lower lip expanding to give him a 
slightly goofy, but decidedly sexy, look.  She could still 
remember how it had felt to kiss those lips, to take that 
plump lower lip in her mouth and suckle on it.

"I was . . . I was hoping we could talk tonight," he 
stammered.

I have the same effect on him, she thought.

Dana sighed.  "I don't know if that's a good idea, Mulder."

"Please, Dana, we need to talk about this."

There goes the whole denial plan, she thought.  Mulder 
doesn't seem to do denial.

"You're right," she said, conceding defeat.  "Can you come 
over at six?"

A minute later she clicked off the telescreen and let out 
all her breath.

This is a good thing, she told herself.  We'll talk and 
straighten everything out and put that kiss behind us.  
We're intelligent, rational adults. 

We both know what the right thing to do is.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Even though Dana's doorbell chimed precisely at six, she 
still jumped at the sound.

She took a deep breath and crossed the living room in four 
long strides.  The apartment seemed empty to her and she 
wished she had the protection of Julia's presence.  It 
would be the two of them, alone.  The only other time she 
and Mulder had truly been alone . . .  She didn't even want 
to consider what had happened that time, not as she wrapped 
her fingers around the doorknob to open it.

Mulder was still dressed in work clothes, a navy blue suit 
and red tie, but the tie had been loosened and his hair was 
standing on end in the back as if he'd been running his 
fingers through it.  He had his briefcase in one hand and a 
white shopping bag with handles in the other.

"Hi," he said, a half-smile forming on his lips.

She let him in.  "What do you have in the bag?"

The smile widened, but it was somehow bashful.  "How's your 
head doing?"

"I feel fine, but you didn't answer my question."  

He set the bag and briefcase down on the carpet.  "I needed 
to know how you were feeling before I answered the 
question.  Are you up to getting out of the house?  The 
Europa Symphony Orchestra is playing a free concert tonight 
at City Center Park.  Jeanette Paderre, the cellist, is the 
featured soloist.  In case you wanted to go, I stopped and 
bought some food for a picnic."

A picnic, music, the park-- wonderful.  And they wouldn't 
be alone in her apartment, either.  

"It sounds perfect," Dana said.

They took the Tube to the park, emerging from the Center 
Zone station into the glittering shopping district.  It was 
still crowded with people on their way home from their 
jobs, and others who were wandering up and down the wide 
boulevard, eating ice cream and window-shopping.  They 
passed large plate-glass window displays of outrageously 
sexy holo-models cavorting in lingerie and overhead, neon-
enhanced advertising begged them to wear Ryoko Dai's shoes 
and to drink Lion Lager.

As they walked by the Wedding Shoppe, Dana averted her eyes 
to avoid the display of brides tossing bouquets and 
adjusting their frothy veils.  

At the end of the boulevard was the north entrance to the 
park.  "The concert is on the Green," Mulder said as they 
traveled on the stone walkway.

The Green was a large, gently sloping hillside, with the 
Amphitheater at the very bottom.  All of the benches had 
been taken and the hill was crowded with concert-goers 
sitting on blankets and munching on food either brought 
into the park or bought from the refreshment stands inside 
the grounds.

They stood at the top of the hill, admiring the spectacle 
in the rapidly dimming light of dusk.  

"So many people," Dana said.  "Sometimes I forget the city 
is so big."

Mulder nodded.  "But think about how much bigger the world 
was Before.  Six billion people lived on Earth, and now the 
population is just under five hundred million."

There was a word for such destruction, such loss.  
Decimation-- to reduce drastically in population. Such a 
dry, neutral word.  Every one of those five billion and 
five hundred thousand people had lived, worked, loved.  
They'd had families and friends.  They'd had history.  Yet 
no one seemed to mourn them, except in meaningless displays 
like the Monument at the river.

All around them people were laughing and opening bottles of 
juice, wiping the runny noses of their children as if their 
world hadn't ended and begun again five years before.

Dana shook her head in wonder.  "It's too much to even 
comprehend."

"Of course, now there is very little poverty or crime, 
especially in the Northern Hemisphere.  Resources are no 
longer stretched and perhaps the world can fall into 
balance," he said, thoughtfully touching the loosened knot 
on his tie.  "Still, was it worth it, to lose so many?"

Her voice came out a raspy whisper.  "No."

She started at the touch of Mulder's hand on her sweater-
clad arm.  "I'm sorry," he said.  "We're supposed to be 
having fun here . . ."

Dana turned to him and blinked.  "I thought we were going 
to talk."

His expression turned serious, as if he were remembering 
why they were there.  "That, too," he softly said.

She scanned the crowd.  "We're never going to squeeze in 
there."

Mulder pointed to the right.  "How about over there?"

They walked off to a row of large oak trees that looked as 
if they'd been growing for centuries, even though Dana knew 
they were the product of genetic manipulation and had only 
been planted three years ago.  There were few people on 
this end of the park, even though there was a good, if 
distant, view of the amphitheater.

They spread the blanket Dana had brought from home under 
the leaves of the biggest tree.  Mulder pulled bread, 
cheese, apples, roast chicken and bottles of water from the 
bag.  "I would have brought some wine," he said, "but I 
thought that with your migraine it probably wasn't such a 
good idea."

Dana tore off a hunk of bread.  "Where are Sarah and Adam 
tonight?"  She realized her tone had sounded rather 
accusatory.

"They flew to Boston this morning for a few days.  Angela, 
Sarah's best friend, had her first baby."

"Oh," she said, gulping.  

Not a good turn of events, not good at all.

"That's not why I called you," Mulder said. "I'm not that 
calculating."

"I didn't say you were."

"I'm not some guy who's bored with his wife, looking for 
something hot and forbidden.  I never wanted this to 
happen."

"What is happening?" she asked.

He let out a sigh.  "You asked me that on Saturday and I 
didn't have a good answer then.  I've thought of nothing 
since and I haven't come up with anything.  Have you?"

"No, I haven't."

A self-conscious smile crossed his face.  "Then you'd 
better eat some of your food.  Maybe we'll come up with 
something on full stomachs."

The orchestra began to tune up and Dana's skin tingled at 
the sound.  She didn't know much about music, at least she 
didn't remember that she knew much, but there was something 
thrilling about the sound of the musicians readying 
themselves to play.

"Have you heard them before?" Mulder asked, passing her his 
knife to cut her apple.

"No, I haven't."

"This is quite remarkable.  There are so few orchestras 
now, and the ESO is playing a free concert.  Sarah was 
disappointed she had to miss this event."

"This is the first time I've heard a live orchestra," Dana 
said.

"The first time that you remember . . ." Mulder said.  "I 
always wonder what I liked to listen to Before.  So few 
recordings survived.  I've tried to buy a little of 
everything, to see what I like."

"Any conclusions?"

He grinned.  "Do you remember Elvis?"

She snorted in laughter.  "Unfortunately, I do.  Fat guy, 
sequins, Las Vegas."

"That's the one." Mulder ducked his head in embarrassment.  
"I think I even went to his home, Graceland."

"You've got to be kidding . . ."

"I wish I were."

"You're an odd man," Dana laughed.

Mulder's face was actually turning red, she was gratified 
to notice.

He cleared his throat.  "I'm going to change the subject 
now," he said, "before I get into more trouble."  Mulder 
reached into the shopping bag and drew out a white box, 
tied with a red ribbon.  "I brought you a birthday present, 
Dana."

"You didn't have to do that," she protested, the heat 
rising in her own face.

"It's nothing, really."  He handed her the box.

With fumbling fingers, she undid the ribbon and opened the 
box.  Inside lay a thick book, bound in black leather, the 
pages tipped in gold.  When she opened the leaves of the 
book, she saw that the thick, creamy pages were blank.

"It's gorgeous," she gasped.  

Not only gorgeous, but also expensive.  This was something 
old.  While paper magazines and newspapers were still 
published, most books, save those for children, were 
published electronically.

"There's a story on the West Side of the city that sells 
things salvaged from Before," Mulder said, bowing his head.  
"I go there sometimes, just to see what's there, see if 
anything stirs any memories.  When I saw the book 
yesterday, I knew I had to give it to you.  You can use it 
as a journal, or to write down any memories you might 
have."

Hot tears began to slide down her face and she tried to 
wipe them away before Mulder saw them.  It was too late, 
though.

"I didn't mean to make you cry," he said.

"It's okay," she said, blinking rapidly.  "I'm just 
overwhelmed by how wonderful this is.  I don't know how to 
thank you."

Mulder reached into the breast pocket of his jacket, which 
was lying on the blanket, and pulled out a handkerchief.  
He gave it to her and she dabbed at her eyes.  "You don't 
need to thank me, Dana," he said.  

The conductor walked onto the stage to deafening applause 
from the audience, which was amplified by the park sound 
system.

And then the music began, haunting and lovely, floating up 
to them under the trees.  Dana and Mulder fell silent, 
letting the music wash over them.

Dana closed her eyes, listening to the notes weaving 
together perfectly.  How remarkable this is, she thought.  
Five years ago the world was in ruins and now I'm sitting 
under a dome, listening to an orchestra.  How extraordinary 
music is, that a musician can rub strings with a bow or 
blow on a reed and create beauty.  Science is wonderful, 
but this is alchemy.  Music cannot be defined.  It is pure 
beauty, pure pleasure.

After she finished eating, she lay back on the blanket and 
concentrated on each thrilling note Jeannette Paderre 
pulled from her cello.  Somewhere in her haze she heard 
Mulder lie down, too, and realized he was mere inches from 
her.

Can anyone see us, she wondered, but realized they were 
largely hidden in the dark, under the tree.

Besides, we're not doing anything wrong.

For a moment, she allowed herself the indulgence of 
pretending that she and Mulder were just another couple out 
to enjoy the music and the park.  John and Sarah didn't 
exist, never had.  It was only the two of them.

Mulder turned to her and opening her eyes, she could just 
barely make out his features.  His eyes were glittering 
with tears.

"Is something wrong?" she whispered.

"This music, this piece by Dvorak.  It reminds me of the 
Clinic. I'm sure it was the same for you, but classical 
music was always playing on the Ward, to keep us calm."

Dana nodded.  "I remember lying in my bed, staring at the 
ceiling and crying.  I cried for three days straight.  The 
worst part was that I couldn't figure out why I was so 
sad."

"I was aggressive, almost violent," Mulder said.

She touched his shoulder.  "You were?  You don't seem like 
you could be violent."

"Well, I was for a few days in the Clinic.  I don't 
remember much of those first days but when I was leaving, 
one of the nurses told me I screamed for almost the whole 
first day after I came awake.  I was shouting, 'Where is 
she?  What have you done with her, you bastards?  I'll 
fucking kill each and every one of you if you hurt her.'"  
Mulder's voice was sandpaper rough with remembered pain.

"Do you ever wonder who she was?" Dana asked, deliberately 
keeping her voice gentle.

Mulder closed his eyes and said nothing for a long time and 
Dana feared she'd said the wrong thing, finally pushed him 
too far.  The silence between them was filled with the 
sound of the plaintive cello.

His eyes opened again.  "I don't know," he said, "but she 
was everything to me."

She thought of her own lost one, the man who lived only in 
her dreams.  "Do you ever dream of her?"

He shook his head.  "No, I wish I did.  I don't have dreams 
about her, I don't remember her, nothing.  Nothing at all.  
But I know she existed."

Dana touched his soft hair and nodded.  

"Can I tell you a secret?" he said in a voice that was 
barely audible over the rising tide of the music.

"Of course," she said, but her heart began to pick up 
speed.

"I've been having this fantasy lately . . ."  Mulder's 
voice trailed off and he got an embarrassed look on his 
face.  "Not *that* kind of fantasy," he hastened to add.  

"Tell me," she said.

"I was standing on my Netspace beach the other day and I 
began to fantasize that you were the woman from Before, the 
woman I loved."

She turned her head away from him, unwilling to let him see 
the tears in her eyes.  How pathetic they were, cast adrift 
and conjuring up little fantasies about each other to try 
to explain it all.

"That's not possible," she said.  "It's statistically 
improbable, as lovely as it sounds."

A close-lipped smile crossed his face.  "I know, it was 
just this silly fantasy running through my brain.  I think 
it helps me feel less guilty."

Ah, so he was feeling it, too.  

"Are you unhappy with Sarah?" she asked.

He shook his head.  "I wish that were true, this would be 
so much easier.  Are you unhappy with John?"

"No," she said.  

When she was with Mulder, she couldn't lie or practice her 
religion of denial.

His fingers glided down her cheek and she shivered.  "Dana, 
if I wanted an affair, I'd find some random woman and fuck 
her.  I don't want this, I don't want to betray Sarah, but 
. . ."

She inhaled sharply.  "But what?"

"I'm in love with you."  Mulder's voice was flat and 
clipped but it rang with the truth.

She sat up and hugged her knees, shivering despite the mild 
dome night air.  There was a rustling behind her and she 
heard him rise to his knees, wrapping his arms around her 
waist.

"I'm sorry, Dana," he whispered in her ear.  "If I could 
stop the way I feel, I would."

Wouldn't it be wonderful, she mused while staring at the 
bright lights of the amphitheater down the hill, if we 
could just turn our emotions on and off like switching off 
the telescreen remote?  Wouldn't it be nice to just stop 
this thing, go home and live my life like it was before?

She leaned back into the warmth of his chest and wished 
they could simply stay this way forever, not having to 
choose, just reveling in the comfort of each other's 
presence.

He loved her.  It was too large even to grasp.

Dana wriggled out of his embrace and turned to face him.

"I don't think I want to stop," she said, the words leaving 
her mouth before she had a chance to consider their import.

His eyes widened.  "First we have to start," he whispered.

You can leave, she thought, you can just get to your feet 
and it's only a few short steps to the park exit and then 
two blocks to the Tube station.  In twenty minutes you'll 
be home with your marriage and your honor intact.

Dana touched Mulder's face, the light stubble growing in on 
his upper lip and jawline.  With the tips of her fingers 
she traced the strong, irregular outline of his nose and 
the exaggerated bow of his lower lip.  He closed his eyes 
and tipped his head back a little.

"Don't do this to me, Dana," he said.  "Not if you don't 
mean it."

"This is the most serious thing I've ever done in my life," 
she whispered.

When she'd met John, it had been so natural, one event 
flowing into the other.  They met, they dated, eventually 
they slept together.  After a short time, they loved each 
other and decided to marry.  There had been no agony in her 
choice to love John.  It didn't burn like this.  It had 
been warm and comforting, like a hot bath after waking up 
sore from a long run.

Mulder made her burn.

She moved into his arms, wanting only to touch the fire 
again.  Her lips brushed against his and his mouth opened 
under hers.  A groan came from deep inside her chest as she 
again felt the sheer electricity of kissing Mulder.

Perhaps she'd never truly considered the intimacy of 
kissing.  To her, it had always been a nice preamble to 
sex.  Now she realized how close she was to him, how she 
could feel the stubble scraping her cheek, feel the rough 
and wet texture of his tongue as it slid against hers.  
Under her hands she felt the firm muscles of his arms and 
as she pressed into him with the growing intensity of their 
kiss, she felt him hardening against her belly.

Dana nearly gasped at the feeling of arousal coursing 
through her, the dizzying need and the realization that 
Mulder wanted her.  She'd never known desire could be so 
potent, so fierce that it could erase her volition, the 
good sense for which she was known.

A wave of applause rose from the crowd and she realized 
with stunned embarrassment, that she was kissing a man who 
was clearly not her husband, in a public park.  They 
weren't exactly out in the open, but this couldn't go on 
any longer, as tempting as it was with Mulder leaving her 
lips to suckle at the flesh of her neck.

"We can't . . ." she said, as she rocked her belly against 
his erection.

"Can't stop," Mulder muttered, his hands rising to gently 
touch her breasts through the thin material of her sweater.

"Not here," she said.  "We can't do this here."

She realized she'd placed too much stress on the word here, 
when he looked up at her, his eyes alive with crazy desire.

"Where should we go then?"

Dana tilted her head.  "I don't know."

"I want to be alone with you," he said in a voice that made 
her stifle a rising moan.

With shaking legs, she stood and began to gather their 
picnic things.  She looked down at him.  Mulder was still 
kneeling and staring at her with a stunned expression.

"I don't know where we should go," she said in a brazen 
voice she didn't recognize, "but we need to go there.  
Now."

With speed born of desperation they walked out onto the 
boulevard.

"Not the Tube," Mulder said, raising his hand.  "We'll get 
a cab."

Within seconds, a shiny yellow vehicle screeched to a halt 
in front of them.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Welcome to Metro Taxi!" the car cheerfully said as they 
got in the back.  "Please tell me your destination."

Mulder turned to her, his eyes shaded in the gloom of the 
cab's tinted windows.  "Where?" he whispered.

Options ran though her mind but none of them seemed right.  
Where is the perfect place to commit adultery?  Not my 
apartment, she thought, and not his.  

She said to the car, "Cascade Falls Hotel."  She'd passed 
the hotel many times while on a run and it was the first 
one to pop into her head.

"Excellent.  The fare is twenty-eight credits."

Mulder pressed his palm to the metal plate on the dashboard 
and it hummed as it scanned for payment.

"Thank you," the car intoned.  "Sit back and enjoy your 
ride with Metro Taxi."

The car pulled out into the street and accelerated through 
the light evening traffic.

Dana sat stiffly, her spine not quite touching the car 
seat.  Now that they were in motion and heading towards the 
hotel, it all seemed too real.  The future was here and 
she'd made her decision back in the park.  She and Mulder 
weren't out to talk or to have a play date with the kids.  
They were sitting in the back of a cab as it zoomed up 
Southeast Parkway, past the endless blocks of towering 
apartment buildings, off to a hotel to make love.

Mulder squeezed her hand, and she noticed the tremor in his 
fingers.  "We don't have to do this, Dana," he whispered, 
as if the car could hear and understand them.

She shook her head, the ends of her hair brushing her 
cheeks.  It was too late now.  Somehow they'd passed the 
crucial point of no return when he'd told her he was in 
love with her.

"I want to," she whispered back.

He leaned closer, so that his breath was warm on her ear.  
"I'm scared."

This made her smile, just a little.  What a strange and 
wonderful creature Mulder was, so unlike the other men she 
knew.  He was willing to be open with his feelings, to bare 
his true self to her even if he ended up looking a bit 
foolish.

"I'm scared, too," she admitted, stroking the top of his 
hand with the tips of her fingers.

Dana leaned into his body to kiss him again.  Whenever she 
kissed him, her doubts and guilt were able to slide 
gracefully away, replaced only by the immense rush of love 
she felt for him. 

Yes, she thought, as her hands rose to tangle in his thick 
hair, I love him.  It's an entirely different species of 
love than I feel for John, but it's love.  I know it.

She wasn't sure if she should feel lucky or not.

Mulder groaned as she rained small kisses on his closed 
eyelids, his chin, the dark mole to the right of his lips.  
"God, what you do to me, Dana, there just isn't words . . 
."

"I know," she breathed.

She felt wild with need for him, the primal urge to connect 
astounding her.  Instead of closing her eyes and placidly 
accepting his touch, she felt aggressive, wanting to 
discover every inch of his body, to touch it and lick it 
and claim it for her own.

God, what you do to me . . .

Out of the corner of her eye Dana vaguely saw the night 
lights of the city strobing past the cab, but she was only 
aware of Mulder, his warm scent of park grass and male 
skin, the apple taste of his tongue when she touched it 
with her own, the astonished sound of his breathing as 
their kissing intensified.

I wish this was cheap, she hazily thought, cheap and wrong 
and I could push Mulder away and resume my rightful place 
as a loyal wife.  But this is beyond attraction, beyond 
forbidden sex and infidelity.  What Mulder and I have is 
something rare.

Mulder pushed her hair away from her forehead and looked at 
her.

"What is it?" she asked, unable to read the expression on 
his face in the dark.

"I just can't believe this is real.  I almost don't want it 
to be, but it is."  He took her hand, placing it on his 
heart, and she felt its steady rhythm under the cotton of 
his button-down shirt.  "Being with you is like finding the 
answer to a question I never knew I'd asked."

"You say things so much better than I can," she whispered 
and kissed him again.  If she couldn't tell him, she'd have 
to show him.

They both pulled apart and looked up as the car drew to a 
stop.  Dana saw they had arrived at the small white hotel, 
just a block from the spot at the river where she and 
Mulder had run together.

"Dear passengers, this is your destination," said the car 
in a tone of delight as the doors automatically opened.

She climbed out onto the curb, Mulder following her.  

"Have a lovely evening and thank you for riding with Metro 
Taxi," the car sang before the doors closed again and it 
drove away.

Side by side, Dana and Mulder walked into the lobby, which 
held only a small plum-colored sofa and a wide, illuminated 
view panel that showed the various types of rooms 
available.  She gave Mulder a sidelong look.  "You choose," 
she said.  "I've never done this before."

"And I have?" He touched the panel for a double room with 
river view.  

"The Cascade Falls thanks you for your choice," said the 
view panel.  "The price for the room is 325 credits."

Mulder paid.

"Do you need luggage service?" asked the panel.

"No," Dana said, wondering how she'd ended up checking into 
a hotel with no luggage with a man she hadn't even known 
three weeks before.

The panel hummed and a moment later the key card dropped 
out of a slot.  "Your room is 724.  Have a peaceful stay at 
our hotel. For customer service, dial extension 333."

They were silent in the elevator on the way up, standing at 
opposite ends and both staring at the floor numbers 
flashing by above the doors.  It seemed to take an eternity 
to walk down the long, silent hallway.

When they reached their door, her hand was shaking so much 
she could hardly swipe the access card against the lock.  
The bolts clicked and the door swung open.  For half a 
second Dana wished that when they stepped inside she'd be 
at her apartment.  Just another night at home, John sitting 
on the couch and avidly watching Japanese League baseball 
and Julia building a tower on the floor with her blocks.

Instead they walked into a smallish hotel room-- cream-
colored walls, dark green carpeting and a large bed with a 
comforter that matched the walls.  The green draperies were