A New World

Series: War of the Worlds, The Equalizer, and The X-Files. Guest appearances in future parts from characters from Due South, The Man from UNCLE, and The Pretender; perhaps from others as the whim takes me.

Standard disclaimers apply. All characters belong to their various creators and the powers that be. Some of these characters belong to Chris Carter, Fox, and 10-13 Productions. I've just invited them over to play for a while, and I promise to send them home when the party's over. Others belong to Universal or Paramount, but it doesn't look like anyone is playing with them at the moment, so I'm going to let them stay as long as they want. Littlehawk belongs to Jan Harley. Thank you, thank you, thank you, Jan, for your wonderful story. I hope you don't mind if he comes over to help chaperone the party; of course, he can come home whenever you need him. Tierney, Lainie, and Kira are mine; they live here.

Constructive criticism is welcomed.

By Wesa.

Darkeagle drew his lips along the line of her jaw and on down her throat to the ridge of her collarbone, marveling at the delicate smoothness of her skin. She smelled faintly of vanilla and cinnamon-he thought it was cinnamon-a scent which for some reason made him feel comfortable and yet excited to be with this woman. She murmured softly in the darkness and raised her hand to his face; he kissed her palm, and she shivered deliciously.

Moonlight poured through the smokehole to fall in a wide pool upon the bed they shared, drowning their entwined bodies in brightness, while somehow leaving the woman's face in shadow. Darkeagle wished that he could see her features. He contented himself with caressing her breasts and on down her ribcage to her hip.

She whimpered softly and protested, "Don't tease me, Darkeagle. Please. I need you." She spread her knees wide, letting him know in no uncertain terms exactly what she wanted from him.

He obliged her, moving between her inviting thighs and pressing deep inside her, whispering, "I love you, Laughing Brook."

Ironhorse sat up in bed with a start, breathing heavily, almost afraid to check for the woman in his bed; but there was no one beside him, not even the imprint of another body in the sheets. There was never anyone there.

Norton had teased him about needing to get laid, "purely as a tension reliever," he'd added quickly when he saw the aggrieved expression on the Colonel's face. Ironhorse had not bothered to disabuse him of the notion that there had been many women in the Army officer's life.

Blackwood, too, had tried to get his friend to go out on a date. At least he had been subtler than Norton, suggesting that Ironhorse should take his girlfriend out to dinner, "or something." Even since his escape from Morthren imprisonment, Harrison had suggested more than once that Paul should get in touch with Grace Lonetree.

He shook his head slowly. When he'd first seen Grace, she'd taken his breath away and left him stammering like a schoolboy. The attraction between them was undeniable, yet they'd both known it wasn't meant to be. He couldn't stay on her tribe's reservation, and she wouldn't leave her people to go with him. And she was not Laughing Brook. He'd known that before he'd undressed her in the one-room school, deserted on that long-ago Saturday afternoon. After he'd returned to the Cottage on Sunday, he'd almost felt guilty for being unfaithful to his dream lover. Then he'd felt foolish for even thinking such a thing.

But Laughing Brook never seemed to hold it against him, though he knew she knew about Grace, and later, Kasey. They made love in his dreams, they talked and laughed together, they discussed what they should name their firstborn; and always in the dark, the moonlight never revealing her features to him.

Damn it, who was she, and why had she haunted his dreams for so many years?

He was about to find out, and he wouldn't like it at all.

**********

Next morning, as Ironhorse was about to enter the dining room, he paused, his attention caught by the conversation between their computer specialist and her two cousins, who were eating breakfast.

"You dreamed about him again, didn't you?" Lainie asked her cousin.

Kira studied her breakfast. "Don't make a big deal about it," she murmured, digging sharply at the cereal with her spoon, but not putting any of it into her mouth.

"How can we not make a big deal about it?" Tierney asked. "We share a room with you. You toss and moan like you're being tortured, for crying out loud. What does he do to you in those dreams, anyway?"

"Nothing I wouldn't want him to do in real life, if I only knew who he was," the archaeologist retorted. Her voice went soft. "I wish I could see his face."

Lainie and Tierney exchanged glances. "Let me get this straight," Lainie said. "You've been dreaming about being married to this guy since you were thirteen, and you've never seen his face?"

Kira shrugged, feigning nonchalance. "I don't know that we're actually married, that's just the way I interpreted it in my teens. We...we make love...a lot," she explained.

"Oh." Lainie leaned back in her chair and raised her eyebrows. "Is that why you never dated much?" she wondered.

Kira nodded. "I wasn't interested in any guy I knew wasn't him."

"But you never call him by his name in the dreams?" Tierney asked.

"He calls me by my spirit name," Kira murmured. "I presume that the name I call him is his spirit name as well."

"What is it?"

"You know I can't tell you that," Kira chided her cousin. "It's enough that he calls me Laughing Brook."

Ironhorse choked and backpedaled out of the doorway. Kira, an archaeologist, was Laughing Brook? But...but he despised archaeologists!

"Who was that?" Tierney asked.

"Who was what, where?" Kira asked.

They hadn't seen him; he was safe. Ironhorse, using all his skills at stealth, stole away before he could be discovered. But later, looking into his bathroom mirror, he asked himself, "Now what do I do? She digs up ancestors, for God's sake!"

***********

"I was afraid to tell you, when I discovered who you were," Darkeagle murmured into Laughing Brook's ear as they lay together in their teepee, pressing their nude bodies close together under their bedding.

"You? Afraid?" she repeated disbelievingly. "Of me?"

He chuckled softly. "Not exactly. You knew about the dreams I had?" She nodded. "I knew the dreams were from the spirits," he continued, "but considering your line of work, I didn't think I could go through with it. I had this stereotype in my mind, and I was horrified that they wanted us to be together. I knew, intellectually, that we needed your knowledge and skills, but I didn't have to like it. When I discovered that you were the woman in my dreams, suddenly I knew that I'd have to learn to like it. I'd been in the Thespian Club back at the Point, but I'm not that good an actor. I couldn't make love with you, not the way I felt about you then. I couldn't understand how the spirits could approve of you."

He let his hand curve over her swollen belly. "I thought they just wanted you for the children you would bear me. I didn't know that I would want to put this child into you." He chuckled again as their child kicked under his father's hand. "I didn't know that not only was your knowledge more important to the survival of our little group than I ever dreamed, but you were not the monster I thought."

"Gee, thanks," Laughing Brook said merrily. "I have to admit, you terrified me at first. When I found out who the man in my dreams was, I couldn't believe you could ever want me, either. And I didn't realize at first that you'd been dreaming, too. I was so uncertain of myself. You made me feel like an awkward, gawky teenager all over again."

"I intended to make you feel womanly and wet," Darkeagle assured her, his hand creeping lower on her abdomen.

"That came later. Are you going to do anything with that hand, or just tease me?"

Darkeagle urged Laughing Brook to move astride him, and sat up to guide her onto his flesh. His face came into the moonlight.

Kira sat up with a cry of dismay, her body throbbing and her mind full of the handsome face. Colonel Ironhorse? What kind of perversity had her mind dreamt up for her now? How could she ever face him again? She frowned, puzzled. Why had his hair been so long?

"Kira?" Tierney murmured sleepily. "You okay?"

"Just a dream. Go back to sleep," Kira murmured, getting out of bed and reaching for her robe.

"That dream again?" Lainie yawned.

"Different this time. Go back to sleep. I'm going to get up for a while," Kira told her cousins. "I'll go read or something."

Kira stopped in the kitchen and heated milk for cocoa, then took her cup down to Tierney's computer lab, where she started to research pottery-making. She had finished her cocoa and was downloading information on firing techniques when a soft baritone startled her.

"Couldn't sleep?" Ironhorse asked.

Kira jumped and screeched, then sat back in her chair and stared at him, laughing faintly. "Don't do that!" she protested before she realized that this was the man from her dreams. She felt her face burn and was grateful for the tan that camouflaged her blush.

"Sorry," he apologized. "I didn't know you were so jumpy. What are you are doing?"

"Just surfing. Why are you awake?"

He shrugged. "I haven't slept well since I escaped from the Morthren. Funny. I slept like a baby while I was imprisoned."

"Seems reasonable to me," Kira told him. "While you were there, there wasn't much to be afraid of. You were already there; what could happen that would be worse? I mean, I know they cloned you and all, and that couldn't have been pleasant, but it wouldn't have seemed imminent while you were in that hole. But after you got out, you might have a very reasonable fear of finding yourself back there. Especially if you're at all disoriented when you wake up in the dark."

Ironhorse smiled wryly. "You make more sense than the psychiatrists," he told her.

"If I'm reading you right," she replied, "you probably never told the doctors what you just told me. You're too alpha to reveal anything that you consider a weakness to another man. I'm no threat to your status, so you can tell me."

He stood looking at her a moment. "Are you sure you're not a psychiatrist?" he asked at last.

Kira smiled up at him, shyly pleased. Was this the man who'd shunned her ever since she'd arrived, the man who had ranted to Dr. Blackwood that they had no use in their group for an archaeologist? "I'm sure," she replied softly.

Ironhorse pulled up a chair beside Kira's. "Mind if I join you?"

She felt the heat rolling off her face again. Her heart skipped a couple beats, and her insides twisted in a very interesting way. "N-not at all," she stammered.

"Is something wrong, Ms. Frayne?" he wondered as he sat down. "You seem nervous."

"I-I sort of thought you didn't like me," Kira explained.

"I don't approve of your profession," he admitted.

A lop-sided smile tugged at Kira's lips. "You don't really know what archaeologists do, do you, Colonel?" she asked.

He seemed surprised by the question. "I believe I do," he replied.

"Archaeology is more than just digging graves, you know," Kira continued. "Don't confuse us with pot-hunters and grave-robbers. Personally, I'd much rather dig a village site or a hunting camp. I'm much more interested in how my ancestors lived than in how they buried their dead. Or didn't bury them, as the case may be."

"Didn't bury them?" Ironhorse repeated.

"Many tribes exposed their dead rather than burying them. Some cremated them. And they all intermarried at some point or another," she explained, wincing inwardly when she realized what she'd said. "Sorry," she apologized when she saw that he'd noticed her flinch. "Didn't mean to lecture." Hopefully that would divert him for the moment. Oh, why did he make her feel so awkward? Kira wondered. She turned back to Tierney's computer.

"Pottery?" the Colonel asked, seeing what she had up on the screen.

"Uh-huh. Ours probably won't be so pretty, but it'd be nice to be able to fire them anyway," Kira said. "I'm finding that there's a lot I don't know."

Ironhorse nodded agreement. "Sometimes you don't notice things that are right in front of you. Then when you do notice them, you wonder how you could have been so blind."

Kira fought to breathe. No, he couldn't mean that. She bit her lip. "I understand that you're from Georgia," she ventured when she thought she could speak. Ironhorse nodded shortly. "Did you do much hunting in your youth?"

Ironhorse snorted softly. "We moved to Oklahoma when I was three. Not a lot of places to hunt near my parents' home; not that my father would have taken me anyway. Grandfather might have, but just as I was getting old enough, he died."

"Oh. I'm sorry, Colonel," Kira apologized. "I didn't mean to bring up painful memories."

"It's okay," he replied softly. "Grandfather comes to me in my dreams sometimes. It's almost like he isn't gone. Why did you ask about hunting?" he wondered.

She shrugged. "I figure we aren't going to be able to find bullets for your guns very long. I just wondered whether you'd be able to hunt the animals that are native to the area after they're gone. We'll need meat and hides," she explained, stifling a yawn.

Ironhorse smiled. "Back to bed, Ms. Frayne. Tomorrow's going to be a long day. I'll shut down the computer."

She thanked him as she rose, hesitated, then fled down the corridor toward the suite she shared with her cousins. Ironhorse watched her until she was out of sight before he turned back to the computer and began to shut it down, shaking his head. For a moment, he'd almost forgotten what she did for a living.