Classification: TRHA

Rating: PG

Summary: Scully's pregnancy, and everyone's sanity, is in jeopardy right now. But there's plenty of love and tenderness and mushiness to go around, so don't get all bummed by the angst of it all. Besides, there'll be more where that came from.

Spoilers: None to speak of.

Disclaimer: Yeah, you've heard it all before, but let's say it again: Property of 1013 Productions and Fox Television. I'm entitled to use them under the Fair Use Statutes. So go away already.
 

Ho Dechtheis Upo Opheoos Kai Schoinion Phobetai

"Your fear as honed as a battle axe
I'll bear my neck, I'll wear the scar
And if my nerve should fail the task
I know your faith will not roam too far
I've heard all the stories told about love
(two souls into one)
But this tale of love is one we've just begun..."

"White Sail" by Michael Timmins, Copyright 1993 BMG Music Group/Used without permission.

July 24, 1999
Georgetown Medical Center

Frohike and Byers took off in Byers' aging but serviceable Buick. Langly, Miranda, Shelby and I stuffed ourselves into my little Sentra and I let Langly pilot the tiny craft. I wasn't drunk, but I was pretty upset. I needed to turn all of my concentration on to thinking about not letting her lose this baby. I'm not a particularly religious person, but I prayed every prayer I knew in Hebrew and English all the way to Georgetown. Miranda, who loved Dana, was very concerned, and Shelby was trying her best to comfort her.

"Talk about a shitty end to a shitty evening," Langly commented.

I wasn't up to responding. I just shut my eyes and prayed with all my might.
 

We were directed to the intensive care waiting area. Mulder and Mrs. Scully would be the only ones allowed in with her while she was there. Byers handed the girls a $20 and sent them to the cafeteria, both to alleviate the boredom they were about to encounter and to bring us all some coffee.

A woman I recognized as Dr. McNichols emerged sometime later-how much later I'm not sure. My sense of time becomes warped in hospitals. We had been aware that Conan O'Brien was on, but I don't think any of us were paying much attention.

Frohike jumped up first. "Is she all right?"

Dr. McNichols didn't really smile, but she didn't look like she was about to pronounce anybody dead. That was a small relief.

"She'll be fine, and it looks like the baby will be fine as well."

"What happened?" I asked.

"There's a tear in the placenta, a small one, but the only way it can really be dealt with is by having her rest completely for the next few months."

"Placenta previa."

"That would be the medical term, yes." She nodded.

"How is Mulder?" inquired Byers.

"He's holding together for the moment, for Dana's sake, but I'm not sure how much longer he can last like this. He tends to be a bit high-strung, anyway." If that wasn't the understatement of the century. "He hasn't left her, and I don't think he's going to. I can tell him you're here and see if he'll come out for a moment."

"Just let him know we're here if he needs us," instructed Frohike.

"Good enough. Dana's going to be moved from intensive care in the morning. She seems to be stable, but I do want to observe her overnight." She glanced over at Miranda and Shelby, who had returned bearing caffeine fixes. "You might want to get these two home and get yourselves some sleep."

"I'll be staying," Frohike offered. "Byers, go on ahead."

"Are you sure?" Byers just never forgets his manners, even in the worst of circumstances. The man is amazing.

"Yes. I'll get back later."

At that moment, a person who bore a vague resemblance to Mulder stepped into the waiting area. He was wearing a pair of jeans with holes in them, a dark blue flannel shirt that had been incorrectly buttoned, rubber sandals, and the worst case of bedhead I've seen. He looked as if he were in shock.

The four adults (and I use that term loosely, but legally, that's what we are) gathered around him and we all hugged him. He seemed to collapse in our group embrace.

"Thanks for coming," he said softly.

"Did you seriously think we wouldn't?" Frohike looked mildly affronted.

"Actually, I haven't been able to think much the last few hours," he offered.

"How's Scully?" piped up Langly.

"She's okay. The baby's okay. It was really touchy for a while, though."

"We're just glad she's going to be all right. And the baby, of course," Byers soothed.

"Thanks. Why don't you all go home and get some sleep?"

"I'm staying," Frohike stated firmly. "You don't think I'm going to leave you here alone, do you?"

"Well, Dana's mom is here, so I'm not alone."

"Listen, Mulder," Frohike gave him a look that indicated he would brook no argument. "Dana's going to need Mrs. Scully to help her as much as possible right now. But she's never been a father. And I have. I'm staying." I'd not seen a lot of displays of Frohike stubbornness, but when they came on, they were intractible.

"Thanks, Frohike."

"Anything for the man who so generously increased the size and content of my video collection."

I turned to Byers. "Did you want to stay on the sofa at my place?"

He shook his head. "Thank you for offering, but I think one of us should go back to the ranch. Go on, get the kids home. It's after 3:00." He glanced sideways at Langly. "I mean all the kids."

"Gotcha. I'll call you in the morning."
 

Miranda and Shelby were asleep before we got on to the bridge into Virginia. I was feeling pretty drained out. I would like to have seen Dana before I went home, but I would have to settle for seeing her in the morning. She probably wasn't in the mood for visitors, anyway.

"I hope things work out okay for them," Langly said as we crossed over the
state line.

"Me, too."

"Because I really don't wanna be around if this kid...doesn't make it."

I looked over at him. He looked scared.

"You okay?" I asked him.

"Yeah, I'm hanging."

"What're you thinking?"

He finally spoke up. "Y'know, life's been so sucky for so long around here. Finally, some good things start to happen. I'm so afraid that anything any of found that's good is just going to evaporate into the ozone."

"Why would you think that, babe?"

He warmed a bit at the endearment, which seemed to mean a lot to him.

"Okay. You look at Mulder and Scully. They've been together what, seven years? It's only in the last year that anything really good happened to them. And it wasn't all good. I mean, some of it was pretty nasty."

"I don't think they'd be likely to change it," I offered.

"Maybe, maybe not. But like we're here now. And I think I'd die if anything happened to you Ally. I know what you had to go through to get to here. I wish it wasn't like that for you."

"Langly, I've said it before, and I'll never be able to reconcile it, but let me say it again: To this day I wish for Eric to be alive and well and with me. But he's not, and he's not going to be. And at the same time, I'm so glad I met you, and I can't imagine not being with you now. You've crawled pretty deep under my skin, babe. I know this because the nights you're not at my house, I don't sleep as well, and believe me, being afraid has nothing to do with it. Nothing tastes as good if you're not sharing it with me. I can smell you everywhere."

"Hey, I do take showers!" He got a little defensive.

"Langly, chill a bit. I simply meant that I've gotten used to you being on my sheets, on my clothes, in my hair. I can smell you everywhere. And that is something I find very comforting. I used to sleep with one of Eric's old shirts because it smelled like him. I'm not sure exactly when I stopped, but while I did it, it was a real comfort to me." I glanced over at him, making the turn into the street where I lived. "And you are living and breathing and I love you." I brushed a stray lock of hair from my eyes with my left hand.

"Ally?"

"Yeah?"

"You moved your rings."

That made me crack up. "Langly, you are such a guy."

"Huh?"

"Langly, I moved them about 3 weeks ago. In fact, it was the day I got laid off from the Fibbies. And you're just noticing now?!"

"Hey, at least I noticed."

"C'mon, dude, let's get these kids into bed and then work on it for ourselves."

"I can live with that."

Getting the kids in bed was not a problem, but for the two of us, falling asleep was. Between Frohike going morbid on us and Dana's pregnancy still in a precarious state, we were wide awake and feeling more than a little shellshocked.

"I'm more worried about how Mulder's going to deal with this than Scully," Langly voiced both of our concern. "I mean, she's a doctor, she knows what to do. And she'll do what she needs to. But man, Mulder is going to freak every time she feels a twitch. Like we need him to be more of a wreck than he is already."

"He gets a little intense," I agreed.

"Good thing I don't get like that."

I drew in a sharp breath, lest I end up laughing and not be able to stop. "Langly, are you kidding? When you get into a mood, you drown in it! I'm not saying you're like that all the time, but God, when you want to have a good sulk, nobody does it better!"

"Yeah, but it's not like I get that way all that much."

"No, I'd have to agree that Mulder's way more of a head case than you."

"I'll take that as a compliment."

"Take it however you like, babe, but need I remind you that you were certainly in rare form tonight."

"I was not!" He whined.

"Were too. You were sniping at Byers and Frohike all night."

"Only because they deserved it. It's not like they won't return the favor."

"I'm sure they will. So why have you been such a dickhead the last few days, anyway, dude?"

"I have not been a dickhead!" He protested.

"Yes, you have. Not so much to me, but you've certainly been doing a major sulk. Did I do something?"

Now he looked bummed. "Nah."

"So why don't you tell me what the fuck is going on? And Langly, it's 4:45 in the morning, I'm tired, and I'm not in the mood for any bullshit. So give."

He kicked off his Converse hightops, which he'd unlaced nearly an hour ago. We still hadn't gotten undressed. The glasses went on the nighttable, and he sprawled his long frame over the bed, hands behind his head.

"Y'know, it's like I can't believe something like this is happening to me. Y'know, you, us. Nice things."

"And that's bumming you?"

"It's not bumming me," he shrugged. "I just...every time I feel like something good happens, something always happens to fuck things up. I mean, here you had this great husband for years. Same guy. You did the death till us part thing and all that. You had this nice life and all, nice kid, and then one day, it's over. So you come out here, and it's like the shit never stops happening."

Now I was puzzled. "Langly, forgive my constant cluelessness, but you'd better clarify your meaning here. And do a good job. My brain is almost nonfunctional."

"Well, you get dragged out here-"

"Langly, I did not get dragged out here. I chose. I thought it would be good for Miranda and me to get away from the scene of the crime, so to speak, and start over."

"I don't think you know everything that's going on, Ally."

"And so what if I don't? Langly, I chose to come here. And you know something? I'm glad I did. I wasn't expecting things to be a cakewalk. Okay, after being lured out here by the Fibbies, I was pretty surprised to have lost my job. On the other hand, I found one I will probably like better, even if it pays a lot less. I still do some work at the FBI, and they're paying me handsomely for my efforts. I'd like to move to a bigger place, but the fact is that I'm eating and living indoors, and that's more
than a lot of people are doing these days. You oughta know that from your neighborhood. The house is always trashed, but it doesn't seem to scare people from coming over. I miss Eric terribly, but it didn't keep me from being in love with you. I told you before, I just go where the day takes me. And ultimately, I get to a pretty good place."

He looked at me impassively. "Ally, did you ever consider that your coming here wasn't an accident?"

"Langly, I may hang with you guys, but I'd like to consider myself immune from the more extreme forms of paranoia."

"No, you're not listening to me. Did you see the police reports after your husband died?"

"Yeah, I saw them." I suddenly became cold. "What are you implying, Langly?"

He was sitting up now, not looking at me. "When you were at your mother-in-law's funeral, I was hanging with some friends from the WELL up in San Francisco."

"I knew that. Tell me something I don't."

"While I was there, we looked up some...information on Eric's death."

"It's a matter of public record, babe. You've got more talent than that."

"Ally, I don't think your husband died accidentally."

This was too much at 5:00 in the morning. "Langly, we need some sleep."

"Ally, don't you get it? He was killed. I swear it."

I adored this guy, but his having a paranoid attack at this hour was beyond my capacity. I wearily sank on the bed, still in my dress but finally without my sandals.

"Langly, you guys see a conspiracy in everything out there. Do you honestly believe that somebody would go to the trouble of doing in my husband just to get me, an extremely ordinary human being-"

"With a unique skill set-"

"-to come out and work with the FBI? I'm sorry. I'm not buying it. Particularly when they laid me off 8 months after I joined them. I mean, they could have gotten somebody else with a lot less trouble if this in fact was true!" I shook my head. "I cannot believe that anybody would take away my husband and my child's father so that I would take a job as a sign language interpreter and captionist! It doesn't make any sense!"

We were both silent. I was not used to having tirades and he wasn't accustomed to being on the receiving end of them. It took a few minutes to regroup.

"What if I could prove it to you?" He asked quietly.

"Prove that this was not a random event, you mean."

"Yeah."

"Babe, if you can prove it, I'll believe it. But it's awfully far fetched, even you have to admit that."

"Don't think so," he said as he shook his head.

I was getting pretty freaked out. "Can you prove it?"

Shake of that white-blonde hair. "Not yet. But I will be able to." He raised his head up to look me straight in the eyes. "I've got a suggestion. When we go to Vegas, let's take a side trip to LA for a few days. You can see some of your friends and I can...check things out."

The idea of visiting my old home was suddenly very appealing. I was dying to see Robyn, Andy, Rick, and few other people that I exchanged phone calls and e-mail with, but missed their constant presence in my life.

"That'd be cool. Ever been to LA?"

"Yep. I've got some friends in Hollywood."

"Why am I not surprised about that?" That earned me a small smile.

"But Ally, you gotta promise me one thing."

"What is it?"

He looked serious as a heart attack now. "Don't ever call yourself ordinary again. Ever."
 

"Langly, if that makes you happy, I won't."

"It's not about that. It just happens to be true. And you're not ordinary to me. Not at all."

For all his lack of social and romantic skills, that guy has a way of making me weak in the knees sometimes.

We finally went to bed, but maybe slept about two hours before the phone rang. I swore I was going to throw the damn thing out the window.

"H'llo?" I mumbled into the cordless. "Hello?" Nothing.

"Ally, try hitting the talk button," muttered Langly.

"Oh yeah." I clicked it on. "Hello?"

"It's Mulder."

"Hi, Mulder. How're you holding up? How's Dana?"

That got Langly awake, and he took the cordless from me. "Mulder, if Scully weren't in such rough shape, I'd tell you again what a fuckrag you are."

I could actually here Mulder laugh a bit through the line. "So how's she doing? That's good. " He mouthed to me, moved to a room. "And the kid?" "So it looks like the kid will be okay?" He waved his hand in an up and down motion to indicate a situation that was still rather shaky, but promising. You get used to this when your work is dealing with deaf people.

He covered the mouth portion for a moment. "Dana's asking to see you, Ally. You gonna drop by today?"

"Yeah, I thought I'd go in a while," I yawned.

"Yeah, she'll be there after she has her IV infusion of caffeine," Langly informed him. "Is Frohike still there?" Apparently he was. "Frohike, you planning to get any sleep any time soon?" "Why not?" "Frohike, just go the fuck home and take a nap! Ally & I are gonna stop by in a while." "Nobody got any sleep, Frohike, and we're sure as hell not gonna get any now. So go home and pass out for a while!" "Okay!" "Okay, already!" "Jesus!" He snapped off the phone and flung himself back down on the bed. "God, Frohike is such a mother hen!"

"C'mon, blonde boy, get your ass out of bed. We can do the shower thing together."

After a long shower, complete with amorous activity, and enough coffee to fill the Tidal Basin, I was somewhat revitalized.   We left the girls a note as to our whereabouts and took off.

"Wonder why they brought Dana all the way down here? They're up in Annapolis," I wondered aloud.

"I think they're on a first-name basis with all the staff there," Langly responded, yawning heavily. I was driving this morning; I was dragging but he was definitely dragging more. "You always get better service if you know the help."

"I hope she's doing okay."

"Me too. I'm not in the mood for any more crises right now. Of course, you get Mulder and Scully in your life, as you have probably figured out by now, and what you've got is a continuous crisis." He kept yawning and rubbing his eyes. He looked about ten years old, and I had the overpowering urge just to wrap him up in my arms and rock him to sleep.

"Langly, take a nap."

"Mmm." He knocked back the passenger seat of the Sentra and closed his eyes. He fell asleep before we hit the bridge. Apparently no additional inducement or threats had been necessary.

I channel-surfed the radio, finding nothing to my liking. And I thought west coast radio was bad.

"Wake up, babe, we're here."

"Huh? Can't I just go back to sleep?"

"Later. Let's go. They're gonna charge me for the first hour even if we leave now. So we might as well go in."

We wended our way through the maze that passed for Georgetown Medical Center. I had decided that whoever designs hospitals took too much acid in their youth. I'm not directionally challenged, but I always got lost in this miserable place.

"Y'know, at UCLA, where I used to work, they had lines painted on the floor. If you followed a certain color of line, you ended up in a particular place."

"Idiot-proof something and they'll just find a way to build a better idiot," he countered.

Armed with extremely poor directions from patient information, we finally located the room where Dana had been moved to.

"Langly, don't you have a layout of this place somewhere?"

"Yeah, we must. I just never think to bring it." We wandered into the waiting area to find Frohike. He was sitting next to AD Skinner, and he was snoring. Skinner was not asleep, but had his glasses off and was trying to relax a bit.

"Frohike." Langly shook him gently. No response.

"Frohike, wake the fuck up." The shaking became more insistent this time. "Frohike!"

Frohike blinked from behind his glasses, which he had not removed. "And good morning to you too, Langly."

"Frohike, didn't I tell you to drag your ass home! Now do it!"

"I was waiting for you to get here," he countered.

"Well, we're here, and now you're not. Go!" Skinner had slipped his glasses back on his nose by this time.

"Hello, sir," I greeted him formally.

"Allison. Good to see you." He nodded at Langly. "Agent Scully will want to see you, but they're taking some vitals on her right now. Wait a few minutes, then you can go in."

"You planning to camp here?" I asked him.

"For now."

Langly piped up, "How's Mulder hanging?"

Skinner rubbed his head and looked for all the world as if he could use Excedrin-a lot of it. "Mulder's hanging by a thread, but so far, Scully's been stabilized, and the baby is stable as well."

"So they're pretty much out of the woods," I stated, but also inquiring.

"Well, not totally. They've no way of knowing if the baby suffered any brain damage, which is a possibility in a case like this." He was trying to keep his voice flat, emotionless, but not doing terribly well.

"Did they do an ultrasound?"

"They've done a few. So far the baby looks fine and is moving around. But we just don't know yet. And Scully is on maternity leave, effective immediately. She's going to basically have to stay in bed for the next few months."

"Not even desk duty?"

"Not even. Except for trips to the washroom, she's supposed to have complete rest."

"And Mulder's just breaking the new kids in," I added.

"Well, they should be okay, but we'll probably have to assign someone temporarily to the division." He grimaced. "God knows that no paperwork will ever get done without Scully there."

"Ellen and Mark?"

"Agents Sternberg and Smullen share Mulder's attitude on administrative requirements. I'm not optimistic."

"No wonder he hired them," I grinned.

I got a small smile from Skinner, which was as good as it got. "They're good agents. But their familiarity with the division and the caseload isn't there. I'm probably going to have to bring someone in who's had more exposure to the division and the types of cases handled." He yawned, covering his mouth in an attempt to disguise his fatigue. "But enough of my administrative woes. How are you, Allison?"

"I'm well, thank you. I got another job." I looked hard at him on that one.

"And you've been helping Agents Sternberg and Smullen get up to speed, which is really important, and very much appreciated."

"Looks like they're not going to get a lot of practice in the immediate future."

"Probably not. But they need to have this skill, and I appreciate your coming back and teaching them."

"Hey, I am getting paid for it."

"I just want to apologize that things worked out the way they did...we did part on a poor note."

"'S okay. My daughter is happier that I won't be working so many hours." I wanted to add, and I'll have more time to devote to this guy, but as far as I knew, Skinner did not know of our involvement, and Langly was not terribly comfortable around the ex-Marine. The time to start with the true confessions was not now.

"Why don't you head down to Agent Scully's room now. She'll be happy to see you."
 

"Oh, shit."

"What's wrong, babe?"

"Flowers."

"We don't need flowers right now, babe. We can get them later. C'mon, she probably just wants to see some friendly faces."

"You go in. I'll catch up to you in a few."

I crept quietly into the private room-did we really have the same HMO, or was this, as Langly put it, a perk of being on a first-name basis with the staff-and saw Dana lying there with an IV drip still running in her arms. She looked pale and tired, but she wasn't crying.

I tapped her on the shoulder, since she was not going to hear me come in, and she reached out with her good arm and we embraced.

"Thank you for coming," she signed.

"Dana, when I said we'd get together soon and do girly things, this wasn't what I had in mind." That made her laugh, and it made me laugh as a sympathetic reflex. "I'm just glad you're okay, and they say the baby's okay as well." I didn't want to go through the possible scenario presented by Skinner; she was a doctor and she was probably more than aware of it already.

"I can feel him or her moving around right now." That seemed to reassure her more than anything else. "It's a good sign."

I was so busy checking Dana out when I came in that I didn't notice the dark head slumped over the side of the bed. Mulder was in the chair, but he had leaned over and fallen asleep with his head next to Dana's leg, his arms crossed under his face. Being tall has its benefits.

She leaned out as much as possible with her tubed arm and stroked his hair. "He's been through hell."

"Sleep's not a bad thing for him right now."

She gazed upon him tenderly. Here, she was the one with the IV tubing stuck in her arm, she was the one carrying their child, the one who was going to prematurely have to take a very inactive maternity leave...and she was worrying about the man she loved.

I marveled at the irony of it, but even more so at the fact that I understood perfectly. Love makes you appreciate the weirdest things.
 

Langly came running back in, carrying two bundles of flowers. He handed Dana a colorful summer bouquet...and he then handed me a single long-stemmed rose, deep crimson, surrounded by a cloud of baby's breath and two white carnations.

"Well, I never have gotten you flowers. I was there and I said, why not?"

I almost cried. Maybe nobody else would interpret this as a romantic gesture...but knowing the man in front of me, it didn't get mushier than this.

Mulder, rumored to be the world's lightest sleeper, was instantly aroused by Langly's less than silent entry. "Oh, God," he moaned. "Look what the cat dragged in."

"Fuck you too, Mulder. How're you?" Langly walked over to him and clapped him on the shoulder.

Mulder was still bleary. "I think I'd rather have gotten shot." And he signed it as well as spoke it.

Dana smiled weakly. "I can arrange it, G-man."

That got him to smile a little. "Thanks for coming by, you guys."

"Well, Mulder," I said as I caressed the flowers in my hand, "when you got married, one of the famous lines is 'for better or for worse.' Welcome to the worse." I walked over to him and hugged him lightly. For all his reserve, he responded well to touch; it seemed to soothe him in a way that no amount of verbiage ever could.

"Mulder, I'm so sorry this is happening...that sounds trite, I know."

"No, it's not. And I appreciate it. We both do."

We hung out for a while; Langly fetched us all some coffee and we just sat, not talking, just being there. It was okay for a while, but at a certain point I began to feel very stressed.

Langly had dozed off on my shoulder; in view of our height differential, he was going to have one hell of an aching neck when he awoke. I tapped him and whispered into his ear.

"Langly, I have to get out of here. Now."

He stretched-God, he had the world's longest arms and legs, it seemed-and stood up. "Mulder," he said softly. "You gonna be okay? We need to go."

Mulder was lost in a fog, but snapped to. "Yeah, sure. Thanks for coming by."

"Sure, we'll be back later."

I handed him the keys-he'd had two catnaps and I'd had none, so he was in better shape than me this time around.

"Ally, remember, I've got my own."

"Yeah, that's right." I climbed into the passenger side.

And then I began to cry furiously.

"Hey, hey, what's up?" A gentle hand was massaging my shoulder.

I just couldn't stop crying. If I ever needed a drink, it was now.

"Ally, you just gonna sit there and cry or are you gonna tell me what's going on?"

"I think we need to make a beer run," I choked out between sobs.

He scowled. "No, I don't think so, Ally. You don't have to tell me what's wrong, but as long as you're like this, no beer. And no tequila. D'you hear me, Ally? You're not gonna run and hide in the bottle this time."

"You make it sound like I hit the sauce every time I have a bad day," I accused, although I was still crying so hard I could barely form the words.

"Well, you do."

"I do not!"

We were getting close to the Virginia state line.

"Ally, we've had this discussion. Yeah, you don't spend your life drunk. But something ugly happens, and it's cocktail time for you. No. Not gonna happen this time. You can feel as shitty as you want, and you don't have to say anything about it. But you're not gonna pour a couple maggies and then act like everything's cool."

He shook his blonde head slowly. "I can't believe you and Eric never had this conversation."

"We did. Believe me."

"And?"

"I stopped drinking around him."

"Ah, so as long as you just did it with the girls, it was cool, right?"

"No, my alcohol consumption was always a sore topic. He didn't really bitch at me about how much I drank, because it really doesn't take me much to get drunk at 110 pounds. He claimed it was because of the way I used liquor. He saw it as a crutch."

"Well, give the man snaps for being observant," Langly observed wryly.

"I had two really rotten periods where I was drinking pretty heavily," I reminisced. "One was when I got to the end of my rope working juvey. The other was..."

"Yeah?"

"When we lost our second child," I whispered. And the tears came back in earnest.

"Jesus fuck, Ally. I didn't realize...it's in your medical records, but Frohike worked on those. And he didn't say anything."

"Well, it was almost 10 years ago. I figured I'd gotten over it."

"Yeah, like you'd ever get over something like that. Not!" He stared straight ahead. "Ally, don't you think you take this resiliency thing to the extreme? You figure you have one good cry, you feel bad for a while, you have a few drinks, and bam! You're over it! You think that's how it works?"

"Always has for me." I lit a cigarette. Between lack of sleep, too much caffeine, and too many high-flying emotions, my hands were shaking.

"Give me one."

"Okay." I lit one for him and handed it to him. He took a long drag on it.

"Ally, you're classic. You think, maybe if I don't talk about, it doesn't exist."

I felt more tears leaking out. "Langly, I really don't need this shit right now."

"Ah, but you do."

"And where the fuck did you get your degree in psychiatry?"

We pulled into the townhouse complex. I was a mess. We parked the Sentra but didn't get out right away.

He laid a long slender hand on my cheek. "Look, Ally, I'm not trying to give you any shit. I'm trying to listen. It'd help if you'd talk."

"What'd you want me to talk about?"

He swallowed hard. "Let's check on the kidlets. Then let's go upstairs and hammer this out."

I looked up at him pleadingly. "Langly, I really don't want to talk about having a miscarriage. It's a really crummy subject for a Saturday afternoon. It was one of the worst times of my life, and reliving it is not my idea of a great activity."

He placed an arm over my shoulder. "Too bad. It's already been designated as today's topic."
 

Miranda and Shelby were had made themselves grilled cheese sandwiches and were watching "Scream" for what had to be the 40,000th time.

"Y'know, guys, you need to branch out," Langly commented to them as he walked in.

Miranda glared up at him. "Didn't anyone tell you to say hello first, then hassle somebody?"

"Oh, I'm sorry, guys. Hello. Why don't you rent "Nightmare on Elm Street?"

"Where's Mommy?" demanded Miranda.

I was already on my way upstairs. I needed to scrub my face and acquire some semblance of control.

I was stretched out on the bed, taking deep cleansing breaths, when a tall, blonde figure in a Dead Kennedys T-shirt walked in, carrying two glasses of iced tea.

"Thanks."

"Hey, Ally, I didn't know you'd had a miscarriage. I'm really sorry."

I sipped some iced tea and fired up another cigarette. One way or another, better living through chemistry. It took me a while to get my bearings. Langly checked his various and sundry e-mail accounts while letting me take my time.

"You know what the hardest part was?" I finally asked him.

"No," he said, snapping off the monitor and sitting down cross-legged beside me.

"The whole thing was so screwed up. I'd had a really bad pregnancy with Miranda. Fortunately, as you can see, the end product was perfection." I paused. "When Miranda was about two, I got pregnant again. It wasn't planned. We were using foam, but I guess we had some truly determined sperm. I'm not the most regular woman on the planet, so I wasn't cued into
it right away.

"I was sick with Miranda, but nothing compared to what I experienced with this baby. I couldn't work for two months and was in the hospital twice for dehydration. I was barfing that much.

"Eric and I were in the process of buying our house, and it was a difficult deal because we had problems getting the sellers to move out. I was getting seriously burned out at juvey. He was working two jobs, I was having problems at mine, we had a two-year-old, and life was getting pretty hideously stressful. When I announced that I had failed the pregnancy test, he was really depressed.

"I think he really tried to be supportive, but it was really difficult for him. I think at a subconscious level he blamed me, and I felt really guilty, even though I had taken the precautions that had generally served me well. The whole scene was incredibly sucky.

"I got into my fifth month, which is pretty well past the danger zone. It took a long time for the baby to start moving around, and it wasn't very active, but my midwife assured me that the heartbeat was within normal limits. By this time Eric had sort of gotten used to the idea, and I wasn't quite as sick all the time. We moved into our new house, and life began to come together.

"Near the end of my fifth month, the baby still was not very active, but then there was an entire day where I didn't feel anything. And that night, I started to bleed, and it wasn't just a little bit of blood, either. I passed out and when I came to, I was in the hospital.

"It was horrible. Eric was so upset. He hadn't wanted this child in the beginning, and now he felt really horrible about losing it."

"What about you?" He inquired, sipping iced tea and raiding my cigarette supply.

"I was upset in the beginning, and being sick was a horrible experience, but I had gotten used to the idea of another kid around. I like kids, and I figured once it was born, we'd all have a lot of fun. But Eric just pulled into himself. It was terrible. For almost a year, he was moody and uncommunicative."

"Said he was that way anyway."

"He was, but this was a nightmare. He'd go days without speaking to me. He barely responded to Miranda. At night he'd sit in the chair with Mu and just pet her. I cried all the time, and I started to lubricate the day with a little tequila."

"So how'd he finally get out of it?"

"He'd been performing below what his employer was accustomed to, and they told him that his keeping his job was contingent upon getting some kind of help. Our HMO wouldn't pay for more than five sessions of counseling, so he saw a psychiatrist and went on meds for a while.

"He did get better, and things got better. But I felt really scarred for a long time. I couldn't stand to keep crying, so I'd have a maggie and feel a bit calmer and I could go on." I drank the rest of the iced tea. "As Eric got better, I drank less. I'm not even sure that he noticed how much I was doing while he was in his dark period. I quit thinking about it. I sort of rationalized that this child was not meant to be, that it was better this way, that there must have been something terribly wrong or it wouldn't have happened.

"But sitting there, watching Dana and Mulder go through this-it was like being back there. It was as if I crawled back inside a time I didn't want to relive. I really hope this baby makes it, Langly. Because it really bends the back on a relationship to have a child die. Even if you never even knew if that child was a boy or girl." I was leaking a few sobs, but nothing compared to the hysteria I had been experiencing earlier.

"So you didn't know if you had a son or daughter."

"No. And I won't. What really bit my ass was how they incinerated the...remains. My baby didn't even get a Jewish burial. And that's important to me, dude. That's one of my traditions and I needed that."

"I've sort of noticed that the Jewish thing is kind of important to you," he observed.

"Do you have a problem with that?"

"No. It's not like you push it on me or anything."

"And I won't, but I need my traditions. How do you remember where you came from, Langly? What does it for you?"

He barked a short, sharp laugh. "I just prefer to not think about it. Prison, even if it's one of the Club Feds, is not the sort of roots you want to lay claim to."

"I'd hardly call prison your roots, babe."

"Well, I don't really have any others. None that I'd like to claim, anyway."

"You had parents."

He sounded like he was going to spit. "Yeah, I had parents. I had a father who concocted poisons to use on an unwitting public, and a mother who didn't want me. Right. A great legacy."

"You had Joan."

"I don't have her anymore."

I couldn't argue with that. We were quiet for a while. I reached out and clasped his hands in mine, and we just let our breathing settle. After a while, we were strangely in unison.

He broke the silence softly. "I did notice one thing when you talked about Eric and your miscarriage."

"What was that, other than the fact that I cried enough to fill the Potomac?"

"You never mentioned that you thought about splitting up or anything like
that."

"Well, no...he was my husband. For better or worse, and I figured that that had to be the worse. But we couldn't have survived it without each other. Even when things were at their most horrible, we still had each other. And we clung on to that like a life raft. I think that, as much as time and meds, pulled us through."

"And you guys were actually happy again."

"Yeah, we were. We had good times again."

"Wow."

"Why so surprised?"

"I dunno. I'm not sure. I mean, it's like...you know, you two were really messed up for a while. But you stayed around. I mean, I always felt like...like I was never good enough for a relationship like that. Like I needed to be better or something. I dunno. It's hard to explain."

"Hey, Eric and I were never perfect people. Never would be. And the relationship was never perfect. But it was ours, and we cared about it. Even more than we cared about our own misery.

"Look at Dana and Mulder. You want to talk about some strange people?"

"Ally, you don't know the half of it," and we both laughed.

"No, I mean, look at them. They're a mess half the time, particularly him. They're damaged goods. But that doesn't mean that they can't have a love that's good and powerful. And Langly, I really hate some of these conversations with you. They drive me nuts. I don't like dredging up stuff with you anymore than I liked doing it before us. But I feel this very powerful...connection to you.

"I've cried and puked all over you. I've been drunk with you more times than I can remember. You've picked up the slack with Miranda more times than anyone should ever have to when I was too busy or too out of it. You care for us, and it doesn't seem to matter whether I'm in rotten shape or not. You're there. You make me laugh. You make me cry. You hold me and
you badger me and you make love to me like I'm a goddess or something. You deal with a child that you have no biological or marital connection to whatsoever, and you don't bitch about it."

"Hey, she's an awesome kid."

"Doesn't matter. Let's face it, Langly. Not many guys would be willing to put up with a woman eight years his senior with a teenage daughter. And not complain about it."

"Hey, she's just part of the package, I guess."

"You guessed right. And that's one of the things I cherish most about you. You.Are.There. You're no saint, dude. You're paranoid beyond a reality check. Your bad moods, infrequent as they may be, are killers. You get snappish and sometimes your manners leave something to be desired.

"But I love you, babe. You are also the kindest, most tender man I have ever met. You've got one of the best hearts in the universe. I'm honored to be part of it."

He gave me a full embrace, and we didn't let go for a long time. I kissed his eyelashes, which were very pale but surprisingly long. And surprisingly damp and salty. I said nothing; pointing this out was not something this sensitive, suspicious man would take kindly to. I just rested my head under his, and he nuzzled my hair.

"You were wrong about part of my heart," he said, very, very softly.

"Huh?"

"You are my heart."

I curled more tightly into his chest, and I could hear a slow, steady heartbeat, like low music, mixed with even breathing. I let the song lull me into a deep sleep.

END OF PART 17