Title: Tellus Mater (02/07)
(Sequel to Pater Familias)

Author: OneMillionAndNine

Feedback: kokotheuberchimp@hotmail.com

http://www.geocities.com/onemillionandnine/

See 01/07 for detailed headers. 
 
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

"Fucking hardheaded little...little...little bitch!"

I knew you weren't supposed to think things like that about 
the mother of your unborn children, but with every step, I 
wanted to snap her neck that much more. Okay, not snap her 
neck - I've never wanted to snap anyone's neck. Especially 
not hers. Shake her -- that was it. I definitely wanted 
to shake her. 

We'd been over it again and again. DC was no place for 
her, even if the guys would have agreed to let her stay 
again. The waves of infection that swept both coasts and 
not infrequent explosions that signaled an overnight change 
of corporate political backers while the unelected 
president made pronouncements from safe inside his batcave 
in Nevada may not have kept people out of the malls, but it 
made the relative isolation of the Great American Heartland 
look pretty good.

Holy Fucking Shit!

I never imagined myself involved in any crap like this, but 
things had been changing ever since she showed up. So I 
guess I should have - change the input, and you inevitably 
change the output.

It didn't start out looking like the day that would change 
my life forever. I was playing a god-simulation, even 
though Hickey was on my ass to work on some crap he'd 
salvaged from who-the-fuck-knows-where, when there was 
someone at the door.

It was a kid. A girl kid. Tall, but skinny. 15 or 16 
years old. I was surprised when Byers let her in. 

She was deaf. She said Gibson Praise had told her where to 
find us. He told her we could help her. It was plain to see 
that she'd been living on the street for awhile. I figured 
that must have been what killed Gibson. She said he got 
worse and worse off and she never even knew what was wrong.

Then she told us Gibson said we knew her parents, and could 
help her find them. That those parents were Fox Mulder and 
Dana Scully. 

My exact words were, "Yeah, Right. " 

Byers lab contacts ran tests and, fuck me, it was true.

None of us even briefly considered sending her to them. We 
didn't think too hard about turning her out, either.

It wasn't like, like she just moved in and became a member 
of the team over night. It just kind of happened. She'd 
been with us ten days or so when I was trying to break an 
encrypted code. She was hanging around, looking over my 
shoulder all day, when all of the sudden she just reached 
over and started typing on my keyboard.

"Hey!" I grabbed her wrist. "Cut it out!"

She pulled the notepad out of her pocket and wrote IT'S 
MATH, RIGHT? YOU'RE JUST LOOKING FOR THE PATTERN.

I would have gotten it without her; it was just a matter of 
time. I would have gotten it myself, I really would have, 
but as it turned out, I didn't have to because in about two 
minutes, she had me pointed in the right direction.

We spent a lot of time together after that.

Byers kind of, I don't know, he treated her like she was 
the petite flower or something. Fro did too, at first. I 
wasn't sure, but I thought maybe they were thinking about 
Scully's kid that died. But you could tell just by looking 
at Thea she was no kind of sick.

Of course, that wasn't good enough for them. Byers wouldn't 
let her get involved in any 'field trips' until she got 
checked out by a doctor and a dentist. That meant she was 
basically stuck at home hacking until she gave in.

She hated doctors. She signed to Frohike real slow the way 
she did back then, like we were stupid. "Do you two make 
Ringo go to the doctor?"

He signed back to her, "We couldn't keep him away from the 
doctor if we tried." 

Asshole.

After about two weeks of bitching, she caved.

The upshot being, she was as healthy as a fucking ox, but 
her wisdom teeth were coming in. We all had to chip in to 
pay for the oral surgeon. I still say Hickey should have 
let us dip into Mulder's emergency money for that one, but 
I got vetoed.

We all wound up glad she was with us. If you got hurt or 
just had the wind knocked out of you, she'd been there 
right now, ready to sling you over her shoulder whether you 
wanted her to or not. She was also the smoothest fucking 
thief I'd seen in my life. Highly useful for journalistic 
espionage, too.  It did take us while to convince her to 
stop stealing us little presents all the time, though. She 
had to be convinced to, you know, use her powers only for 
good.

She was funny. She could read and write four languages and 
fucking generate code in her sleep but all the normal human 
stuff was news to her. She ate like a pig. The only holiday 
she knew about was Christmas and she called it, "The tree 
and the candy and shall I puke now or later?"

That was probably the weirdest thing about her - she 
wouldn't eat or drink anything sweet. She even signed the 
word 'SUGAR' like it was gross.

No matter how many times she pulled our asses out of the 
fire on a mission, Byers had a bee in his bonnet about her 
safety. She couldn't go out alone. It was too dangerous. I 
think Frohike backed him up on it because he still didn't 
trust her all the way and wanted to keep tabs on her 
movements. 

We were already spending all our monitor time together, so 
I started taking her with me whenever I left headquarters. 
It was cool having someone around.

I taught her to drive and play D & D. I made her a license. 
The name she had me put on it was the one from the sticky 
label on the side of her Zeus Genetics Tank - Thea Fidelis.

She cleaned up okay, not real girly or anything, but okay. 
She didn't have that look that some girls have when they 
aren't wearing makeup; you know, like a mole sticking its 
head up into the daylight. She looked better plain. She 
was like a guy. 

To me, she looked a lot like Mulder. If she had put on 
lipstick, she would have looked too much like Mulder 
wearing lipstick - creepy.

Sometimes she'd put her head on my shoulder or touch my 
hand, but I didn't think anything about it, really. I 
mean, I figured girls were supposed to be touchy-feely like 
that. Yves did that kind of stuff sometimes when she 
wanted something. Thea just did it when she felt like it. 
Besides, it was nice.  

Sometimes we'd wrestle too. It was pretty innocent. Well, 
I thought it was innocent, anyway. Okay, so I was a moron. 

Things went that way for about two years. Then one day we 
were in the kitchen checking the Huevos Rancheros Fro had 
asked me to keep an eye on. I was wearing oven mitts. Out 
of the blue, she kissed me. Grabbed my face and kissed me, 
tongue and everything. 

I felt like a pervert for getting turned on the way I did, 
so I did the only thing a man in my situation could do - as 
soon as I could breathe again, I put my inhaler back in my 
pocket and I went to the arcade.

I wound up staying there all night and blowing thirty 
bucks. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't get into the 
zone. I kept spilling my Big Gulp, too.

I just couldn't shake the dirty-old-man feeling. Mulder 
and Scully had trusted us with their lives and I wanted to 
repay them by porking the teenaged daughter they didn't 
even know they had. 

And that wasn't the worst of it. I had spent pretty much 
all day every day with Thea for more than two years. I 
knew her. I liked her. I liked her a lot. Maybe even more 
than I liked Fro and Byers. 

Maybe that wasn't it. Maybe I loved her. Stranger things 
have happened. Compared to an international conspiracy, it 
seemed almost wholesome. For the first time in I don't know 
how long, growing old with the guys seemed kind of 
depressing.

Despite Frohike's assertion to the contrary, I had been 
laid before. It was always some chick at a show or a 
party, though. I had never, you know, done it without 
drinking a little to loosen up. I had also never had a 
girlfriend - dating was just too weird - let alone had, you 
know, in-house pussy.

I made a deal with myself, though. I'd stand fast. I was 
Iron Man.

As if. 

Wanna guess who was sitting on my bed when I came in?

It sure wasn't Frohike.

She signed at me so fast I didn't understand a fucking 
word.

"Slow down!" I signed over and over, but her damn hands 
were a blur. 

I finally lost my temper. "Fucking stop it! Just shut up!" 
and lunged and grabbed her hands. 

Smooth move. I made the deaf girl cry.

I was never one of those guys who thought crying chicks 
were sexy, and especially not Thea. She always made this 
awful honking noise and got these ugly red bumps all over 
her face, so she sounded like wounded goose and looked like 
one of those weird-ass Muscovy ducks. I tried to wipe her 
face with my shirt. Then my hands. I didn't know what was 
happening, but in about thirty seconds, it turned into a 
hot and heavy round of tonsil-hockey. I might have been 
the one that started it, but it would be a tough call. 

I tried to get my head together by coming up for air. Not 
a real smart move on my part.

She turned away, signing to herself. I looked over her 
shoulder. 

"Dumb dumb dumb!" she sniffed as she signed but a tear 
rolled down her face.

I couldn't help myself - I reached down and wiped the drop 
from her lower lip. 

"You or me?" I asked her.

"I'm ugly," she answered. "You don't want me because I'm 
ugly and stupid."

"Like I'm a Greek god. Thea, you're young - a kid."

"You don't want me because I'm young?" She honked and blew 
a snot bubble. "Or because I'm young and ugly and dumb?" 

"Thea, Thea, I like how you look. You have a nice face." 
I wiped her cheeks with my hands again.

She half laughed. "My body looks like a stick - a straight 
line." She wiped her nose on the bottom of her shirt.

"You're pretty smart. You have tits." I reached out and 
almost touched one before I remembered to pull my hand 
back.

She rolled her eyes.

"Thea, I'm twenty years older than you are. That's too 
old." I suddenly couldn't sit so close to her anymore. I 
moved away and she laid down on my bed. I turned to look at 
the wall and Thea just honked.

What kind of sicko was I that I got monster wood? 

Somewhere outside the sun moved higher in the sky and I 
started to get an ache in the back of my neck. I should 
have been thinking about how I couldn't do it, but instead 
I kept thinking how much I really wanted to.

I could feel her standing behind me, coming closer. Like a 
machine with a busted ventilation system, she gave off 
heat. I was so fucking turned on. "I - I - like you." she 
signed.

I nodded and frowned. "I like you, too. I think. But, 
why now? I mean, how long have you-?"

"I've been this close -" she held her thumb and forefinger 
together and paused before she continued her signing "- to 
jumping you for about a year." She smiled weakly, then bit 
her lip. "I've felt this way since...I'm not sure. 
Remember when Kimmy called me your girlfriend and you got 
mad, so I hit him?"

That wasn't exactly the way I remembered it happening, but 
I nodded. It was one of the high points of 2005.

"Well, I had to hit him, because I wished it was true."

"Why now?" I signed. "Why now, in the fucking kitchen, of 
all places?"

"You look so damn sexy in oven mitts?" she signed, looking 
hopeful, like if she could just make me laugh, everything 
would be cool.

I took a page out of her book and rolled my eyes.

She sucked her lower lip as she started to sign. It seemed 
kind of fucked up, I had to fight to pay attention to her 
hands, but her biceps were really getting me going, her 
nipples were hard, I don't think she even owned a bra, 
fuck! What had she said?

"Why? I wanted to. That's a reason, right? So I did it. 
I...I want to do more." She looked embarrassed. "A lot 
more." How had I fucking missed that? She was kinda hot, in 
a no make-up string-beany geek-girl kind of a way. How had 
I not noticed? 

"Thea are you a...a...I don't know the sign."

"Write it." She handed me the little notebook she kept in 
her pocket.

My penmanship sucks, but I tried to make it look nice for 
her. I wrote the word.

VIRGIN

She nodded. "Sorry," and bit the inside of her cheek.

I took the notepad back. My hands didn't shake, but I felt 
cold in my chest. DON'T BE SORRY. I'VE NEVER BEEN WITH 
ONE BEFORE. 

She wrote back - SO YOU WANT TO DO IT?

It was my turn to nod.

WHAT DO I DO? She handed me the notebook.

The best I could come up with was SLOW DOWN. 

I'M SCARED BUT I WANT IT. She wrote neatly.

I still have the piece of paper she wrote that on.

ME TOO. I wrote back. 

She smiled. 

BUT I'M SUPPOSED TO BE THE MAN. I MEAN - YOU KNOW WHAT I 
MEAN.

That made her smile. YOU'RE THE OLD GUY she scratched.

YEAH. I'M THE OLD GUY I scratched back.

She seemed shy for just a second. DO YOU WANT TO TAKE MY 
CLOTHES OFF? 

What kind of low-rent geek am I? I answered by drawing an 
emoticon with stupid wiggly eyebrows. YOU DO IT. I'LL JUST 
WATCH.

She laughed her honking, snorting laugh, which might 
actually be worse than her crying sound, and we kissed 
again. She could have used some Chapstick, but her mouth 
tasted nice. After the kiss, we just stood there with our 
arms around each other. Fuck me - I was in love.

I took the note pad and dropped it on the floor -we were 
getting side-tracked.  

I didn't mean to lie. I fully intended to watch her 
undress, but by the time I tried to set some kind of 
land speed record for stripping and diving under the 
covers, she was in there right next to me. Naked, too.

To tell the truth, she was bony in a lot of places. Not my 
regular type, for sure, but it didn't change my mind about 
going to bed with her. It did make me want to take her out 
for cheese-steaks afterwards, though.

I don't usually talk too much, you know, in bed, but right 
then there were so many things I wanted to say to her and 
every sign I knew was sliding out of my brain like piss off 
a tray. She could lip read a little even back then, so I 
mouthed the words slowly. 

I LOVE YOU

I DO

I DO

I REALLY THINK I DO

I WANT TO MAKE THIS GOOD

I WANT TO DO THIS RIGHT

YOUR SKIN IS SOFT

She wrapped her hand hard around my dick and I almost came. 

I had to pull away. "No!" I signed, the words coming back 
to me. "Slow down. I'll show you when."

She shrank back and I settled on my side next to her, with 
my arm under her head. I curled myself around her until I 
was able to fit one brown nipple into my mouth. Her 
nipples were especially, you know, nice. Her tits, too.  
Lemon sized. Well, you know, half a lemon sized, really, 
but her nipples were as big as the first joint on my little 
finger. God, they were good to suck.

I slid my hand down her side, rode the plane of her hipbone 
with my fingers, and felt her body stiffen.

I only had one hand free so I spelled it out one letter at 
a time. DO YOU WANT ME TO STOP?

She shook her head.

I spelled again. OPEN YOUR LEGS.

Like I had put in a password, she did it. Abra-ca-fucking-
dabra. 

A cold shiver went down my back. I combed her pubic hair 
with my fingers before I slipped my thumb down onto her 
clit.

I wished I could whisper her name so that she would hear it 
like it was ringing in my head. Thea Thea Thea Thea. I 
traced the letters on her clit with my thumb, softly, 
softly. She was breathing deep into her lungs, faster and 
faster, until she started bucking her hips against my hand. 
it seemed like it lasted forever.

Holy shit. I made her come! 

As soon she was back on the planet with the rest of us, she 
made a sign at me I didn't know. 

WHAT? I spelled with my damp, pussy-smelling fingers. 

She mouthed something I didn't understand. She frowned and 
fell to finger spelling 

FUCK ME LANGLY

Oh. Oh. I could handle that. Maybe. Either that, or 
shoot my wad all over her leg.

I rolled on top of her. I had been so hard for so long 
that I was really starting to ache.

I propped an elbow on either side of her and signed.

I WANT THIS TO LAST BUT IT'S BEEN A WHILE.

"It's okay," she signed. 

She was biting the inside of her cheek, like, like...

Like Mulder, actually. 

If Mulder could have seen me, he'd have beaten me to a 
fucking pulp. As long I remembered that I 
thought I could keep myself from coming. 

It was all wrong. I belonged with some body older. 
Somebody older who was an orphan. Somebody definitely not 
a virgin. Actually, I probably belonged alone, in the 
shower, with Rosy Palm and her five sisters, my regular 
girl.

Damn. She felt good, and I wasn't even really inside her. 
Maybe I could just rub up against her...

Fuck! Mulder would kill me. And Scully...better not to 
think about Scully at a time like this.

Thea rocked her hips. She mouthed a single word. This time 
I understood her. 

The word was PLEASE.

I stopped her hips with my hands. I signed, "Are you sure? 
It'll hurt, I think. I've heard it hurts."

She nodded and made her frustrated face. I was pissing her 
off, but better that than scaring or hurting her.

Okay, I could do this. 

I pictured Mulder mid-rant as I poised my dick over her 
overheated little -- god, none of the words I had for it 
were right, either they sounded too dirty, or not dirty 
enough, or just stupid -- and I pushed as slowly as humanly 
possible. She was so hot and wet. 

I felt it right after the heat. The thing, the hymen, I 
guess. I had to close my eyes when I pushed through. Her 
body went stiff, and I felt her tear and bleed. I felt 
sick to my stomach. She squeaked. 

I couldn't do it anymore. I couldn't not look at her while 
her name was echoing in my head. Thea Thea Thea Thea. It 
was tough to suck it up and keep from crying like a girl. I 
wanted to kiss her, and I would have if I wasn't afraid it 
would make me come. 

The way she was looking at me was another thing I didn't 
have a word for. I think I was able to hold off maybe five 
or six minutes like that. I slipped my hand between us, 
trying to make her come again, but no cigar. It was okay 
with her, though. I think.

I couldn't wait any longer. I came. 

She blew my mind by coming again a second after.

That was when I realized I had shot my load inside a chick 
without a rubber. And not just a chick. Not some skank. 
Not some scary Goth girl I met at concert. Thea. Teenaged 
Thea.

I forgot to put on a rubber for the first time in my life. 
I needed an L-for-Loser tattooed on my forehead. 

"What's wrong? Did I suck?" she asked me, thumping her 
chest for emphasis when she finished signing.

"No." I shook my head and ignored the joke. "Not possible. 
I just - I forgot the rubbers."

She wrinkled her forehead. 

"You could get-" I didn't know the sign. 

"What?" 

I couldn't believe had to ask her. "Do you know where 
babies come from?"

"Other than a lab? Sex. Babies come from sex." 

I was almost relived until she signed, "Have you ever seen 
one?" 

I grabbed my glasses off the top of the alarm clock. Maybe 
I hadn't seen that right. 

"Up close, I mean?"

I must have blinked. "You've never seen a baby?

"Only from a distance," she answered. "Like at the zoo."

I didn't know whether to laugh or throw up.

I looked down at Thea. She was already drifting off. 

I wasn't going to do this to her - pop her cherry like some 
jerk and then go hide under a rock the way I normally did 
after I got laid. There wasn't anywhere to go, anyway. 

To tell the truth, I didn't even want to hide. I really 
wanted to do this again, with her, maybe five or six 
hundred more times. It was weird, but I all at once 
realized I didn't want to sleep with anybody else. 

Ever. 

She was stuck with me as long as she wanted me. I was just 
going to need to be more careful. As soon as I got up, I'd 
go buy some rubbers. No more bare back for me, thanks. We 
were flirting with enough disaster as it was. I was riding 
the wall of death; I didn't need to prove anything by 
going without a helmet. 

Later, when I changed my sheets I realized the blood soaked 
all the way into the mattress. I didn't even try to get it 
out.

You know, I've known guys who skated through everything.  
Guys who lived with reckless abandon and didn't pay the 
price, but that was never my story. I can't fucking 
jaywalk without getting a ticket. 

We had six really good weeks. I mean, I got more action in 
six weeks than some people get in a year - ten years, if 
you're Byers or me. We screwed in every closet in the 
place. We'd say we were going for parts, and wind up at a 
motel. We'd say we were caught up in a big D&D game 
somewhere, and find a place to go fuck like bunnies. 

She found one of those color wheels - you know, like used 
to come with an aluminum Christmas tree back in the '50's - 
at a garage sale. She liked to plug it in and go at it 
with the red and green and blue sliding over our skin. 

We did all the same stuff as before together too. Fixed 
stuff. Played games. Wrestled. Did newspaper shit. 
Fought the powers that be. Sometimes just you know - held 
hands under the table. 

It was nice. You know - happy.

I wouldn't have hid it from the guys if I wasn't afraid 
she'd dump me and Fro would get to say 'I told you so.'

Fucking Byers. It was none of his damn business, but as 
soon as he was able to put two and two together he offered 
to ship Thea off to some maiden aunt of his. Get her away 
from me and my evil machinations, I guess. He told her he 
knew she wasn't to blame, that she most likely couldn't 
even render legally meaningful consent, being young, 
disabled, and for all practical purposes, orphaned. Byers 
understood that she thought I cared, but she was clearly 
confusing love with an older man's warped attentions, like 
I was Humbert Humbert or Jerry Lee Lewis or something. He 
told her he had taken up her cause and would make sure I 
never took advantage of her again.

If such a thing was possible, FroMan's interpretation of 
events was even sicker. In his opinion, Thea sleeping with 
me was iron-clad evidence he was right all along not to 
trust her. No matter who her parents were, she was nothing 
but a temptress working for a faction of the now-splintered 
'Them'. A freaking Mata Hari in flannel. Excuse me, but I 
figured Mata Hari for the type who shaved her legs.

We couldn't just, you know, like each other. Somebody 
somewhere had to be evil. So I never blamed Thea for 
cutting out. I just blamed her for doing it without 
talking to me first.

I quit working on the paper with the guys and stayed glued 
to the monitor, looking for some trace of her somewhere. A 
couple of deaf girls got picked up for shoplifting during 
that time, but she wasn't one of them. 

Of course not. I just wasn't that lucky. And she wasn't 
that sloppy.

More than four months later I got a beat-up letter from a 
migrant worker's camp in Arkansas letting me know where she 
was. Or at least, where she'd been three weeks earlier when 
she mailed the damn thing.

She wanted to see me. 

I left to find her the same day.

It took two weeks to do it. Two weeks of "I am trying to 
find a woman. Anglo, deaf, this tall -" with my hand on 
top of my head "- with short hair," followed by "Soy 
necesidad hallar senorita. Sordo. Alta. Pelo corta. Anglo," 
followed by confused looks. Over and over and over. 

It was just words I'd strung together the best that I 
could. If I'd have thought about it, I'd have gotten Fro
to write something out for me before I left. 

After the first week, I found an overseer at a big 
corporate farm who recognized the surveillance camera photo 
I had printed out.

"That girl worked like a man - even with her big belly," he 
grunted.

"No." I shook my head. "The girl I'm looking for is 
skinny." 

"If it's the one I'm thinking of, the girl you're 
looking for is knocked up." 

"This one here?" I showed him the picture again.

He nodded. "I'd say that's her." 

"You have any idea how far along she was?"

"Do I look like a doctor to you?"

"Any idea where she went?"

"Bunch of workers from here headed out to Nevada. I think 
she might a been one of 'em."

"You know what they called her? What name she was using?"

"Yeah. Everybody called her 'Dummy.'"

I had to sit and shake in the car for awhile before I could 
get it together enough to drive away.

At the next pit stop, I looked something up in the Spanish-
English dictionary. I had a new word for my list. 

Pregnant. Embarazzadda.

The day I caught up with her, she was in a field, with some 
kind of crate in her arms. Her hair was wheat colored from 
the sun, and her belly stood out bigger and rounder than 
seemed right. I tried to count. She'd been gone just 
short of five months - add to that either six weeks from 
that first time when we went bareback, or one month from 
the week when we had two busted rubbers...

She looked like she should have had trouble standing, let 
alone heaving boxes like a teamster.

If I was a cool guy like Mulder, I'd have come up with 
something smooth to say. Of course, if I was Mulder, I'd 
have whole new set of problems.

If there hadn't been a bunch of people standing around 
watching, I might have gone with my gut and just kissed 
her. As it was, I stood there looking like a doofus, 
wondering if there was a sign for 'Uhhhhh.' I think my 
mouth was open.

She smoothed the dirty t-shirt down over her belly, then 
signed slowly. "Miss me?"

"Cut the crap," I answered right before I put my arms 
around her. After a while, I stepped back so I could sign 
without hitting her in the face.

"When did this happen?"

"One of the times we had sex." She smiled. "Either that, or 
I'm starting a new religion."

I nodded stupidly. "You're, uh, you're pretty big for six 
months."

"I think there's more than one in there."

"You think? You haven't seen a doctor?" 

She shook her head. "I haven't been sick." 

What the fuck were we gonna do?

"Let's get outta here."

"Sure. Just as soon as I get paid."

"Thea!" If it was possible to whine with your fingers I was 
doing it.

"I've been here two weeks. If I don't get paid, they get 
all that work for free."

"Don't you wanna sleep? Eat? Sit down or something?"

"I want to get paid."

I nodded, resigning myself, as she took my hand and led me 
away, presumably in the direction of her money. Back at 
the camp I watched as, cash in hand, she shoved a ratty 
robe, my jacket, two men's shirts with the sleeves cut off, 
and a pair of panties that looked like they came from an 
archaeological dig into a plastic Wal-mart bag.

"The priest is here today," she signed, all fake-casual.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means the priest, who comes here sometimes, is here 
today."

It took me a minute. "You wanna get married?"

She bit her lip. "Only if you want to. But if you do, this 
is your chance. I mean the priest, the one that's here, 
doesn't think I'm non compos mentis or anything."

"Does he know you're underage?"

She flipped me off.

But we got married.

I always figured it would scarier, you know? But it didn't 
feel like a big deal. More like, like - like I'd already 
bought the hard drive and I was just standing at the 
counter, waiting for my receipt.

There was more than enough home-made ethanol in the trunk 
to make it to Nebraska. I knew what I said to her about 
the farm, but it was looking really good all of the sudden. 
It was too cold for EBEs most of the year and too far in 
the middle of fucking nowhere for political instability or 
epidemics to matter much. We'd never starve on a farm. 
I'd be pretty freaking anonymous there, too - just another 
Langly in the crowd of Langlys. So what if I said I'd 
never go home? So what if I hadn't been back since my mom 
died? Home is somewhere they have to take you in, right?

Thea apparently thought home meant a tangle of cable and 
metal shelving and one hot meal a day. She thought we'd go 
back to DC and get a little place close enough to the LGM 
headquarters that I could go back to my old life without 
the guys having to see her. 

Like that would work. Like 'Out of Sight, Out of Mind' 
meant anything to Byers and Fro.

She said she didn't want to ruin my life. That I'd known 
Byers and Frohike longer than she'd been alive.

I told her when Fro got pregnant with my child, I'd take 
that into account. We were going to Nebraska where nothing 
bad was going to happen to me or to her and especially not 
to the kids. 

Kids. We were going to have kids. And we could bicker 
about it for the next twenty five or thirty years in 
relative fucking safety.

Nothing was going to happen to her. Even if it meant I was 
going to have to drive a tractor for the rest of my natural 
life.

She said the whole thing was a big fucking mistake. 

I told her it looked liked I'd knocked her up pretty good.

I thought it was settled when she asked me to come to bed.

But there, on our wedding night, at the Land Mark Motel 
with swag lamps and purple shag carpeting, as soon as I 
fell asleep, she fucking ditched me.

I had to give a trucker 300 bucks and a palm pilot to take 
me to take me to the last turnoff. 

At least I knew where she was going. Well, I was pretty 
sure I knew. If I wasn't right, I was gonna climb naked 
onto the top of the water tower and howl like a gibbon.

I passed the high school. A purple and gold banner across 
the front door read: 

Home of the Oracles: 4 years Undefeated and Counting!

The streets were in alphabetical order -

Archimedes
Beta
Cypress
Diogenes
Euripides
Gamma
Hippolyte
Isosceles
Kappa
Lambda
Morpheus
Nostos
Orestia
Pythagoras

I saw my car in the driveway at the end of Rubicon Avenue. 
Tired as I was, I started to run. Before I knew it, I was 
banging on the door for all I was worth and all I could see 
was Mulder's big head in between me and Thea.


*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

End 02/07