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.

Ironhorse followed Littlehawk across the plain, looking up at the sky from time to time in concern. "Look," he called over the growing wind, "it's not that I'm not glad to see you, but is this a good idea? It's going to storm soon, and those look like snow clouds to me."

"She needs your help," Littlehawk replied. "Hurry, Darkeagle."

"She, who?"

"I'm not married," Ironhorse protested automatically. "You mean Kira? She's back at camp."

That had Ironhorse's interest immediately. "Is it any good?" he asked.

"It has saved her from the cat that attacked her for the animal she was skinning," Littlehawk explained. "It cannot save her from the coming storm. You must do that. Hurry."

It started to snow, at first only a few flakes, but rapidly growing thicker. It grew cold, and the wind chill dropped the temperature further. The snow ceased to melt when it hit the ground; it started to build up, then drift. Ironhorse was soon completely lost in the blizzard and utterly dependent on Littlehawk to lead him to safety. But Littlehawk was leading him away from camp, deeper into the storm.

Ahead of him, Littlehawk stopped and crouched over a hump in the snow. "No!" Ironhorse cried out, hurrying forward. He brushed the snow away to find Kira unconscious, covered with blood. "Kira? Laughing Brook! Wake up!"

"Come, my brother," Littlehawk urged. "You must carry her. I will lead you to shelter."

Ironhorse wrapped Kira in the skins that lay beside her, and lifted her on one shoulder, picking up her spears as well as his in his left hand. He set off, following Littlehawk, trusting the spirit of his clone.

Littlehawk took them unerringly through the blizzard and up a rocky slope, past a deadfall and into a cave. "You will survive the storm here," he told Ironhorse, fading from sight.

"Wait!" Ironhorse protested. "I want to talk to you!"

"Another time, Darkeagle," came the disembodied reply. "See to the mother of your children."

Ironhorse carefully put Kira down on the floor of the cave, still wrapped in the bloody, unscraped hides of the herdbeast and the notlion she had killed. He looked around, then squared his shoulders and went back out into the storm, to the deadfall, to gather wood.

**********

Kira woke, cold and uncomfortable, only a few feet away from a roaring fire. She lay on her side on something hard and uneven ... a rock floor. She looked around in confusion; the last thing she remembered was stumbling on something hidden in a snowdrift and going down, not having the strength to get back up. She should be dead. She should be frozen under the snow. How ... ?

A warmth moved against her back, a hand against her stomach, skin touching skin. She twisted to look over her shoulder, gasping when she saw his face looming above her, the fire lighting it against the darkness. "Paul ... ?" she gasped. "What are you doing ... ?"

"Are you warmer now?" he asked solicitously. "You were so cold at first."

She picked at the notlion fur in which he'd wrapped them both. "How did I get here?" she asked, her mind still cold-addled. "What is this place? Why are you ... " She suddenly realized they were both naked, and shrieked, rolling away from him. "What are you doing to me?" she demanded. "Don't touch me!"

"I didn't - " he began to defend himself. He paused, running his hand through his thick black hair, just touched with silver. "You were hypothermic," he told her. "Probably you still are, just not as bad. Both of us were soaked to the skin. I took off your clothes and wrapped you in the notlion fur, then built the fire. And since body heat is supposed to be the best cure for hypothermia, at least the best one I had available here, I took off my wet clothes and got under the fur with you. I'm sorry if you didn't like it, but at least you're alive to protest. I swear I didn't - didn't molest you in any way."

Kira stared at him across the fire, and in her eyes Ironhorse could see fear and reason struggling for dominance. "I..." she began, paused, then tried again. "You never have seemed like the kind of man who would take advantage of a woman when she couldn't say no," she murmured, relaxing a little, shivering. "And it's not as if you liked me or anything."

"I still don't approve of what you chose for your profession at home," he admitted, "but I seem to be in the minority on that subject. Even the spirits like you. Littlehawk led me to you."

Her dark eyes widened in her pale, wind-chapped face. "You talk to spirits? Littlehawk is a spirit?" she asked in awe. "I've heard of people who - but I never actually met anyone before who could."

"It's more like they talk to me," he replied. "At least Littlehawk does. Sometimes I can talk with my grandfather while I'm sleeping, if he wants to, but Littlehawk is the only one who could have led me to you. He's the only one I can hear, let alone see, while I'm awake."

Kira pulled the dusky fur closer around her body. "Is he here now?" she asked, looking around nervously.

"If he is, he's being uncharacteristically quiet," Ironhorse replied, unknowingly repeating Ginger's words. "Kira, I don't want you to think I'm only after your body, but you're still shivering. I'm cold. And our clothes aren't dry yet. Come back and lie down over here. Share body heat with me. We can lie on the one skin to protect us from the cold of the cave floor, and pull the notlion fur over both of us."

Kira gazed at him in trepidation, thinking of the dreams she'd had over the years, of the recent revelation she'd gotten about the identity of the man in her dreams, the man who now sat on the opposite side of the fire and invited her to lie down with him. Was this how it would start? Would he make a pass at her, lying naked in his arms? If he did, she knew she would be helpless to resist. Even with the fire between them, it was tempting.

Ironhorse watched her, almost able to read her mind by way of her trembling limbs and parted lips. "You've dreamed, too," he breathed.

Kira was too cold to blush, or her face would have been as hot as the flames between them. "You've dreamed ... about us ... together?" she stammered.

"I didn't know it was you," he told her. "The spirits told me I would have a wife and children, then the dreams started again, like before I was captured, but I could never see your face, it was always shadowed. I kept asking Littlehawk who you were, but he always put me off--" He paused. "My god. He told me the day I picked you up at the airport. He said, 'That's her,' and I told him to go away. No wonder he was laughing so hard. I'd been pestering him for months to tell me more about you, who you were, how we would meet, anything. Then when you stepped into sight, he told me you were the one. I thought he meant you were the one I'd come to the airport to pick up, and I told him to go away!" Ironhorse began to chuckle softly, then sat back on his heels and howled with laughter.

Kira watched him, grinning in spite of their current situation. She couldn't help it; his laughter was infectious, and she began to chuckle along with him.

His head snapped around and he looked at her in wonder. "So that's where your spirit name comes from," he said, his laughter leaving behind only a smile of delight.

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"Your laugh," he explained. "You sound like our brook when you laugh."

"I do? ... Is that good?" she wondered.

"It's wonderful," he assured her, his voice and his whole manner changing in intensity. "Kira," he added, "I don't deny that I find you attractive, but I will not do anything you don't want me to do, and you need more warmth than you can get from that notlion fur and the fire. Please. I don't want to lose all the love the spirits have promised me. Come here, further away from the storm and the snow, and let me keep you warm." He held out one hand to her invitingly.

There was no threat in his manner, so even though she realized he could easily force her into something she wasn't prepared for, Kira returned to the place where she had awakened a few minutes before. Ironhorse spread out the other hide for her to lie on beside him, and she found herself staring at the glory of his body in the flickering firelight, her breath coming a little faster than normal. It was just as she remembered from her dreams: strong, hard and muscular, without an ounce of excess fat, slender without being skinny. She very nearly threw herself down on top of him.

He looked down at himself, saw his straining erection, grimaced and apologized. "That thing has a mind of its own, Kira. All it cares about is that you're female. I won't let it take control of my actions. You don't have anything to fear from me."

"I'm not afraid," Kira lied, kneeling on the hide beside him and unwrapping the notlion fur from her body. She watched his eyes move involuntarily as he looked at her appreciatively. "I know you won't hurt me any more than absolutely necessary. But I guess I should warn you, I ... I've never ... I mean ..."

"You're a virgin?" he guessed, remembering the overheard conversation between Kira and her cousins when he'd found out she was the woman of whom he dreamed every night. She nodded miserably. "Come on down here, I'm cold," he told her. She lay down beside him and he gathered her close into his arms. "You're not ready," he murmured into her hair. "I know you're going to be the mother of my sons. I can wait as long as you need to."

"But that looks like - doesn't it hurt?" Kira asked.

"It aches a little," he replied. "It was bound to. I haven't had sex regularly in a while, not since I was captured by the Morthren."

"There was someone before?" Kira asked, feeling a flash of jealousy. While she had been restricted to dreams, some other woman had been screwing her man.

"I'm almost forty years old, Kira," he told her. "There have been others. I knew none of them were you. Are you angry that I didn't wait for you?"

She hesitated, thinking what it would have been like for him to have waited; forty years and nothing but dreams that always ended just as sex started? "No," she absolved him. "Men are different than women. As long as you cared about them, and as long as you're not still seeing any of them, I won't be angry."

"I cared about them, and none of them are here," he assured her, "though I thought for a while that the spirits meant for me to wait for Debi to grow up."

"Debi?!" Kira exclaimed. "You wouldn't. You couldn't."

"I didn't have to," he replied, and planted a kiss in her hair. "The spirits gave me you."

"I don't belong to the spirits for them to give away," Kira reminded him. "And I won't be a possession, even after I give myself to you. I can't."

"I wouldn't want you to be," he assured her. "Even if it means that we fight occasionally, you must be who you are. Otherwise, you're an extension of me, and if that was what I wanted, well, I've already got Littlehawk."

Kira smiled and cuddled closer to the man who would be hers, not as a possession, but as a companion through life, and the father of her children. "Paul," she said, "be careful."

"What?" he asked.

"I think I'm falling in love with you," Kira explained, chuckling softly, so like the musical sound of the burbling stream near their camp. "Not for your face - though it is very handsome - and not for your body - though it is a body to make a woman crazy. For you, the man behind the face, inside the body."

Ironhorse smiled and laid his cheek against the top of her head, closing his eyes. "Good," he murmured.

**********

"Are they going to be alright, Mom?" Debi worried, shivering against Suzanne's side as they huddled together in their flimsy hut.

Suzanne shook her head worriedly. "I don't know, baby," she told her daughter, looking across the fire at Mickey, Sydney, and Michel, who also clung together for the sake of warmth.

"They'll be all right," Harrison said firmly through his chattering teeth. "Littlehawk promised the Colonel children."

"But," Debi began, then hesitated. "Didn't they - the aliens - do things to all of you?" she asked. "I mean, after what they did, does he have to be alive to have kids?"

"After we find them," Kostmayer said into the silence that followed Debi's question, "we ought to head south, try to find a warmer place to spend the winter."

"North," Harrison corrected.

"North? Are you nuts?" Kostmayer demanded.

"We're in the southern hemisphere of this world," Harrison explained. "Also, north is downstream. Lower elevation, warmer weather."

"Rain instead of snow," Sydney murmured. "I'm not sure that's much better."

**********

"Is it still snowing?" Kira asked when Paul came back from a trip outside to gather wood for their fire.

He threw off his clothing and crawled under the fur beside her, shivering. "Yes," he replied, "and it's getting dark besides. We'll be here at least until morning."

"We'll have to find a way to pass the time," Kira said, turning over and wrapping her arms around him to try to help warm him.

Paul closed his eyes in pleasure, with a silent prayer to the spirits to help him resist the urge to force her knees apart. "Uhm," he murmured. "What did you have in mind?"

"You said there had been others," she said. "Will you tell me about them?"

He sighed. "Do you really want to know?" he wondered. "You won't hold it against me later?"

"I won't," she promised.

So he told her about taking the old shaman home after paying his bail, and about Joseph's beautiful daughter, about the instant attraction between them, about how she had reminded him that he was an Indian alone in the white man's world. "She was a teacher," he told Kira, "teaching the children of her tribe that there is no shame in being Indian. She was doing important work, and she couldn't do it if she left the reservation. And I couldn't stay."

"Would you have, if it wasn't for the aliens?" Kira asked.

"No," he admitted. "Even then, I was looking for you, Laughing Brook; I didn't know that you were real, but I knew you were the one I wanted."

"And if she were to turn up here?"

He shook his head. "It would be awkward," he admitted. "But I couldn't leave you. I hope she would understand."

"And was there someone else?"

Paul kissed her on the forehead, stalling for time. He dreaded telling her about Kasey. "She was one of my squad, one of my sergeants," he said slowly. "It wasn't only sex; I cared about her, but--"

"Kasey Coleman?" Kira guessed. "No wonder she always looked at me so hard."

"I didn't tell her about you," Paul denied. "But we weren't together after my imprisonment by the Morthren. I was ... different than before."

"An experience like that changes people," Kira agreed.

"The spirits had told me that you were real," he told her, "that we would be together, have children, grow old together. They didn't tell me that we would be doing it on an alien planet ..."

Kira chuckled softly. "And you would have accused Littlehawk of smoking peyote if he had," she told him. "Wouldn't you?"

**********

The storm lasted a full day, leaving their campsite blanketed in white eighteen inches deep, but when Mickey, Harrison, Kincaid, and Mulder reached the plain outside their woods, they looked at the hip-deep drifts in dismay. "We won't get far in this," Kincaid said, voicing what they all knew. "If Kira and the Colonel are still alive--"

"They're alive, Kincaid," Harrison said. "We have to find them, somehow."

"What makes you think they're still alive?" Mulder asked, trying to break a trail through a drift. Within moments, he was huffing and puffing, his breath coming like smoky wreaths around his face. "This stuff's set like concrete!" he protested.

"They have to be," Harrison insisted. "Paul said the spirits promised that he'd see his grandchildren, that he would be the one to teach them how to call the spirits."

"Oh, god, Ironhorse has gone off the deep end," Kincaid said. "Spirits! Christ!"

"I saw Littlehawk, Kincaid," Harrison told him intently. "The night we kept Paul from killing Dale. After we got the story out of Debi about what had happened and you went to convince Dale that it would be best if he resigned immediately, before you decided to help Paul beat him to death, I went to apologize to the Colonel. And there was someone else there with him. I just got a glimpse, just that one time. But he is real."

"You are not the model of sanity to convince me, Harrison," Kincaid said.

"I saw him, too," Kostmayer said softly. "The day I brought Tierney to the Center. I was talking to the Colonel, when suddenly he was just there. He convinced me to stay; he told me that Sydney would need me. At that point we didn't know about the asteroid. I didn't have any plans to bring Sydney and Michel to the States. He's real, all right."

"You're not exactly a model of sanity, either, Mickey," Mulder told him.

"Look who's talkin'," Kostmayer replied. "So how do we get out there to find them?"

End of part 7.