Title : To Regain : A New Beginning (1/1) Author: Jenn Chiprich Rating: The whole thing is somewhere around R Category: SRA Summary: A continuation of the Taking Universe Feedback: ipomea@msn.com Timeline: The future, or a possible future Spoilers/ Episodes: Wellll....since it is in the future, any and all of the episodes and/or the movie is fair game Disclaimer: Dana Scully, Fox Mulder, Walter Skinner and Maggie Scully and any of the previous memories do not belong to me. They belong to Chris Carter, 1013 Productions and to Fox Broadcasting Company. No copywrite infringement is intended.There is no money being made from this. Nor do I ever intend to make money from this. It's just plain fun. And a well deserved break from graduate school. Notes: Hello everyone. It has been a while, but I am determined to finish this. Anyway, this is a continuation of the Taking Universe and what our heroes might do. Please read and enjoy. 2. I would like to extend a special thank you to Ten for being such a patient and wonderful editor. Thank you!!!!! Journal Entry #1: July 2, 2000 I swore. I remember. I swore that I would never again place my thoughts in a sealed book, hidden from others eyes. I had sworn a solemn oath to Mulder that I would never do this again. But, this book will serve a dual purpose. If and when we devise a way around this cluttered and sealed pass that we live in, this book will be a legacy to our children how we escaped a fate worse than death. I am sitting in the recliner in our bedroom, facing the south window, its curtains billowing in and out. Fox is next to me, on the bed, sleeping. Our lovemaking usually tires him out, leaving nothing except a feeling of contentment and a laziness that only sleep can cure. I, on the other hand, after our erotic dance, only feel more awake, more alive. I need these times, when the rest of the world is quiet and I can almost believe that all is right. But it isn't.... Fox and I, us. A bond. A strength. A bond that was nearly severed a short time ago. From here, where I sit, I can see the scar. It is vivid, ugly, menacing. Not only does it represent there sundering of flesh, but also it personifies the tearing of my soul. True, the flesh healed. But, my soul has not. I nearly lost him to the pain afterwards. I had nothing to give him, no medication to offer to lessen the pain. And the need to keep the wound a secret meant that he was unable to remain home for healing. After remaining on his feet all day, remaining upright in his chair at work, and walking, talking, using his body without the luxury of showing the pain, he would come home and weep. Double dressings, praying that the blood would not stain through, that the stitches would remain secure, cleaning it daily with salt water. He lived through it, but the pain ridden facial expressions would never leave my mind. His anguished cries. Ingrained. All ingrained. But, he made it. He is here, alive and well enough to make love to me in his lazy, sensuous way. And I am grateful. Never would I have believed that he and I would be to this point. True, I have loved him for a long time...but I always envisioned our love as a gothic, tragic romance....yet he has become the love and light in my life....the only cause for happiness. He knows how hard it will be, though. That our love might produce a child. Even in the best of times, without this weight of time hanging over our heads, our chances at children would be chancy at best. Since the time that they restricted me to the clinic and did the medically impossible.....reimplanted my ova....I have had the chance of conceiving a child again. The conditions of conception would have to be near perfect...timing and everything. And timing is hard now....my cycle is never the same twice. If I were to conceive under these conditions...the child itself would be a miracle. Much like a miracle that happened a long time ago, with another child. But ..... He stirs. He knows he could only sleep for a short time. He has a meeting with Jerry tonight, as do I. We need to discuss something that has only recently come to light. Yes, my dear, dear, unborn child, there has appeared a light in this darkness that we are now living in....a hope. However, it is the fact that it has appeared on a completely different path from the one that we are currently pursuing that causes a problem. The good news, though, is that it is an easier path....in a way. I must go. He is stretching, moving his muscles and he will wonder where I am, why I am not beside him. "Dana?" Mulder squinted in the coming night to see Scully curled in the recliner next to him. "Scully? What are you doing over there?" "Waiting for you to get up, G-man." Dana smiled gently. "Really tired you out this time." "Still training, been out of shape for a while." Mulder shot back, pulling his covers down. His mind quickly jumped to business, as was his way. "What time is it....? Shit, I keep forgetting we don't have watches." "Yes, and I am utterly surprised that you haven't slipped into catatonic schizophrenia yet." She smiled up at him as he approached the chair and knelt beside it. "Ha, ha, Agent Scully." he tugged on her until she fell forward into his arms. "I love you." His face dissolved into a wistful smile as she sighed and nuzzled his neck. The past month had been bad for them. Long, tiresome hours working on the genome project at home, while struggling to maintain their level of productivity at work. There had been precious few times that he had told her that before their night of intrigue getting the computer file, and even fewer afterwards. He sensed a change in their relationship, though, additively to the physical change that had already occurred. They were truly become each others other part, two halves to a whole. He would kill for her now, even more so than he had in the past; but he also had the strong urge to keep himself away from harm...knowing what it did to her. He felt more cautious, more grounded...loved. "Fox?" "Hmm?" he kissed the top of her head. "We need to get moving. I just heard Skinner go into the utilities room." "Shall we then?" he asked with a joking manner, standing and extending his hand to hers. "When you don at least a resemblance of clothing, Mulder. I might like you this way...but I don't know what it would do to Mom to see you in a state of undress." Scully winked and duck out before he could catch her with the thrown pillow. The utilities room was packed now in days....a various collection of papers sat on the utilities themselves, and more people graced its secret interior. Skinner and Maggie were in attendance as well as Jerry and Kathy, Dana and Fox rounded out the sextuplet. Jerry waited until the newest arrivals had shut the door and sat on the dryer to start. "Now, then....what on earth were you talking about earlier, Dana?" Scully brushed her errant red hair back from her face with a impatient hand and looped her other one through Mulder's. He squeezed it reassuringly and leaned back against the wall. Dana began her speech, reassured and at peace. "Well, about a week ago, I started having a collection of dreams. A weird collection. They weren't repeating, but they were similar...it was as if...." she made eye contact with her mother. " It was as if my subconscious was trying to get my attention and was switching the fine tuning button....trying different angles. Anyway..." she continued, seeing impatience glinting out of Skinner's eyes. "They start out the same...exactly the same. I'm in a laboratory, years ago.....the laboratory where I helped to isolate and work on the alien retrovirus....the one that infected Mulder in Alaska. I am talking with the doctor who had completed most of the work...he was a virologist. He says that although it is unlike any retrovirus that affects humans, it was quite similar to that of a retrovirus that affects retells...in fact, it is so common that it is considered an a permanent inhabitant in their blood. He used a similar isolating technique to figure out what it was in the man we were examining and to determine treatment." she paused for a breath and then continued. "Then the dream shifts to another lab where I had worked shortly after the arrival of the guardians. Here, I am helping the guardians to vaccinate their own against a common reptilian virus found here on earth. All were vaccinated...I mean all...this reptilian virus is the equivalent of smallpox in humans. They wished to eradicate and protect against it. Then I am shown a path....one is rocky, one is smooth, but hard to reach. They both end up at the same spot, far ahead....but the one that is hard to reach insures quicker and easier completion than the other." "What do you think it means, Dana?" Skinner asked from his perch on the chair. "We've discussed it...." Mulder interrupted. " We've discussed it and we've come to the conclusion that her mind feels that we are on the rocky, hard to finish path...." "We all know that it is going to be hard." Jerry held up his hand, his palm facing the ceiling. "Besides, Dana I thought you didn't subscribe to this dream interreptation mumbo-jumbo." "I don't usually....but then again...I've never had my dreams happen this way. I think...in answer to what I was asked earlier, that I think there is an easier way to finish this." "And that would be?" Jerry folded his arms across his chest. "That we engineer a new, slightly genetically variant, reptilian virus that can wipe these suckers out in a matter of days." "What?!" Jerry sputtered, leaning forward suddenly. "Do you even comprehend how much work goes into isolating and mass producing viruses...let alone engineer a new one?" Mulder sat forward on the dryer and held out his hands. "Just calm down, Jerry." "What do you mean, Dana? Engineer a new virus?" Maggie's eyes glittered with glee, she knew that her daughter was now in her element. "Engineer, mom. Find a similar reptilian virus...." Dana began. "Reptilian...why? "Skinner's voice had taken on the authoritarian tone that he had once had in abundance in the FBI. "Essentially, that is all that they are.... in a way. A collection of mammalian characteristics existing on a reptilian based morphology and anatomy." Jerry answered, clearly thinking hard. "We find a similar reptilian virus...and mesh it, if we can...with something virulent and fast working, give it some attributes of the diseases we dread the most...Ebola, Marburg, Lassa Fever. Test it and...." Dana was practically falling off the dryer, she was excited. Jerry grinned suddenly, laying a hand on her leg. "Okay...I see the logic... and the fact that it will probably the easier of the two paths to finish. The slowness of the way we are going now...and not having a clear idea of exactly the genetic mutations that they are trying to cause in us; we would still need another round of shots...but that won't happen until the next round in pregnancies. The way we are going now could take years....definitely take at least five to do it right." "Uh huh." Mulder nodded, holding Dana's hand again. "We knew that from the very beginning that it would probably take that long. But this way...if Scully has described it accurately to me...we could do this in a little over a year....if we really push it....from the time we start." "Good estimate." Jerry answered, beaming still. Then his face fell. "We don't have the resources here, though." "But the Centers for Disease Control lab in Atlanta does." Skinner ventured quietly. Silence answered him, as Jerry and Dana smiled and the others blinked in semi-comprehension. Walter knew that this was one of the few areas that would serve this particular purpose. "So would any major university lab, Walt." Jerry offered. "Besides...I'm not quite sure that we have the know how." "We can't go to any of the major campuses, Jer." Walter started to pace. "They're being used in a similar fashion to this base. The CDC may....by an act of God....be unmanned by the Guardians. Nothing there exists that could hurt them is housed there....they've vaccinated against what can hurt them....." "Wait." a quiet intrusion was whispered into the conversation, carried on a small, scared voice. Jerry turned to Kate, seeing her eyes wide and scared. Kate swallowed, and ignored the hand that was held out to her. "What do you mean the CDC? You're talking about leaving?" Dana looked to Mulder who nodded for her to go to her younger friend. "Yes. Yes...we are, Kate. We are talking about leaving." "But...all the work we've done on the drug....all the trouble you all had getting the Human Genome project...." "Scientifically speaking, the fact that we are deviating off of a course that we set earlier is normal. But this isn't set in stone...we may not pursue this, Kate. But...as we were saying....the course that we are on....it will take too long. We'll be able to accomplish the end we want....engineering a custom infective agent for these guys....this way; however, taking an already existing virus and meshing it....will cut years off. And....we can do so without waiting for others to be harmed." Dana hung her head in exasperation. "I can't continue to do this....I know I have to...but it's killing me." Mulder reached out to hug her....but she moved forward toward her friend. "Yes....Kate....we need to leave....and the information that we have already collected on the drug and on the Human Genome Project will come in handy. We would have to know what it is that the virus attacks and whether it would hurt/harm any of the children." "But...." Kate's hands spanned her growing abdomen. Her eyes filled with tears. "Atlanta...? It's so far." Mulder nodded gently. "We'll talk about it later, you two should get back home. That was a lot to take in one night." Jerry stood and ushered a quiet and shaken Kate outdoors and down the front path. Mulder watched them at the front door, shaking his head. Dana could here his quiet whispering that was only meant for her ears. "I hope that we're right, Dana. I hope that we are going to make a decision that won't get us killed any quicker than we should." "What ever happened to fate, G-man?" Dana sat down in the chair in the kitchen and waited for Mulder to scrunch his larger frame into the one across the table from her. "You know we've been tempting the Fates for years, even more so since we've come here." She stopped her light speech when his eyes met hers, a deep set pain flashing from their hazel depths. "Mulder..... I can't stay here. I can't continue to do this to my own species. You have to understand that." He remained quiet and moody. "Fox." He refused to meet her eyes and got himself up and out of the chair and up the steps before she had a chance to ask or follow. Once he left the room, she turned her face downwards. A hand on her shoulder prevented her from submerging herself farther into introspection. The hand was olden and slightly wrinkled, but was fashioned with a set of warm, elegant fingers. Her mother's. "I don't know what you two were talking about, Dana, but I think you need to clear the air with him." "Mom..." Dana turned her blue eyes to her mother's matching set and sighed. "He thinks that I'm backing out of the plan that we have been living with, that we devised all those months ago. I've asked him to deny all the pain and the dispare that he was feeling to remain on this track for the good of the masses. We both have.... but.... Mom, I can't take this. And he knows it. And I know, deep down that if I wanted to leave this place tonight, Fox would move heaven and earth to ensure that I would. Just like I would for him. That's the problem." "What's that, dear?" Maggie moved to the stove to cut what remained of dinner into the pot. "Somewhere along the way...we have become too important to each other. When I saw him with all that blood last month. I thought that he was possibly going to die. I....it wasn't like anything I've been through before....I treated him....I healed him...but the pain that I felt watching him there.... I wanted nothing else then to pack him up and leave. To hell with the plan... to hell with children and people. I just wanted him safe. I mean.... he's my best friend, my partner, my lover.... he's trying to be the father of my children....." "I know, baby, I know." Maggie sighed and turned her neck to check for Walt's presence. When she saw that he had also retreated up the stairs, she continued. "It was that way for me and your father, sweetheart. There was one time that he was wounded in battle, during the early Vietnam conflict, right after you were born. I was pregnant with Charlie at the time.... He came stateside and was in the hospital, hooked up to every imaginable piece of equipment.... I knew your father, Dana. Since I was a teenager.... I knew that he felt his duty to his country was even above that of his love for his family. And when I married him, I realized that I had the same devotion...I had to...it was the only way to remain sane sometimes. Anyway, it was then that I realized that I could lose him to that cause, to that drive. I was angry, worn out and barely able to think coherently. All I wanted was to bundle him up, and take him away. Hid him, love him. But he had his duty, as I had mine..... and we stayed strong....." she held up a hand to stop the tirade from Dana's mouth. "I know that it isn't the same instance...and I know that it wasn't as powerful...but I loved him and he, me...as much as Fox loves you and you, him. But let that love be your strength, Dana, not your stumbling block. Straighten it out with him, and get yourselves together and make the decision that you have to...just like you always have." With the end of the speech, Maggie turned back to the pot and sighed. Dana, turned to the window and allowed herself to fall into deep thought. And silence fell over the two women, as they retreated into memories and fears. End (1/1)