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.

Kira stood beside and a little behind Paul at the mouth of the cave, looking out over the sun-sparkled white drifts. "Jeez," she murmured. "You carried me through that?"

"Well," Paul hedged, "it wasn't that deep at the time." Kira accepted this information wordlessly, but her hand slipped into his. "Are you afraid?" Paul asked gently. She nodded, and he smiled. "Don't be. The spirits say we will have many children."

Kira snorted softly. "This is supposed to reassure me? Paul Ironhorse, I'm allergic to pain. I break out in everything from gasps to screams," she told him. "I'm not afraid of dying."

"You're not?"

"There's either something after or nothing after. Littlehawk is a pretty good indication that there's something after, isn't he?"

"Or that I'm crazy," Paul agreed.

"Well, if you're crazy, then I'm already dead," Kira retorted. "I'm frozen under a snowbank out there somewhere."

He chuckled and put his arm around her shoulders, drawing her close. She shivered next to him, enjoying his warmth. "You know," she told him, "no one's going to believe we didn't already have sex."

"I know," he replied. "I can't do much about it." He turned back into their cave and gathered up their weapons while Kira picked up the skins she'd scraped clean during the long hours of the storm.

Kira started to wrap the notlion fur around Paul's bare shoulders, but he shook his head. "It looks better on you. Black and tan stripes are okay for me," he said, taking the other skin.

"You need to be warm," Kira protested. "If you should fall unconscious, I can't carry you."

He smiled and carefully kissed her, just running the tip of his tongue under her upper lip, leaving her weak-kneed with desire. "I want you to be warm," he murmured.

"Oh, I'm hot now," she assured him. "God, you kiss good."

He grinned and started down the slope in front of their cave, holding her hand to steady her as they descended. "Will you marry me then?" he asked.

"Promise to kiss me like that forever?" she wondered.

"I'll get Father Nick to add it to our vows," he promised.

Kira laughed. "'To love, honor, cherish, and kiss her 'til her knees evaporate?'" she quoted. "Then you bet I will. Not that there was ever any doubt."

Smiling happily, Paul drew her close to his side as they made their way around the end of a drift and turned into the lower 'valley' between that drift and the next one.

Half an hour later, Kira told Paul, "I'm lost already. I hope you aren't."

He pointed at a rock formation ahead of them. "I saw that outcropping a week ago, when I was out hunting," he replied. "It's due west of camp. When we get to it, I'll climb up and find something else to sight on."

Kira smiled. "I didn't mean to doubt you," she apologized, "but it's nice to know you know where you're going."

But Paul never climbed the outcropping. As they neared the base, they heard voices arguing:

"We're never going to find them in this."

"For all we know, they may already be back at camp."

"We have to keep looking."

A fourth voice declared from above, "Found 'em," and was greeted by a jumble of exclamations from the other three men.

Paul and Kira looked up and saw Kostmayer grinning down at them. "Hi, Mickey," Kira greeted him.

"Looking for us?" Paul asked innocently as Harrison, Kincaid, and Mulder came into sight around the rocks. They stared.

"Kira ..." Mulder said uncertainly.

She had forgotten that her clothes were covered with bloodstains, and looked down at herself in surprise. "Oh, yeah," she said. "Notlion jumped me."

"And you survived?" Kincaid asked in disbelief.

Kira shrugged. "I wouldn't have, if Paul hadn't found me," she replied. She slipped her hand into his and looked up at him with a smile.

"With Littlehawk's help, of course," Paul said. "Is everyone else okay?"

"They're fine, just worried about you two," Harrison replied. "Littlehawk's back?"

"He was," Paul replied. "He led me to Kira, and then to the cave, but he hasn't been back since Kira woke up."

"I'm beginning to think he doesn't like me," Kira said teasingly.

"He just wants you knocked up," Paul told her, chuckling softly.

Kira made a moue'. "I can't say I'm looking forward to that," she told him. "I have no desire to join Tierney, puking under a bush, but I'm not sure Dana should be chewing on those leaves of hers, either."

"Uhh ..." Harrison began uncertainly.

"You two seem to be getting along a little better," Kostmayer observed.

"Did something happen in this cave?" Kincaid wondered. Beside him, Mulder grinned an evil grin.

"You mean besides waking up naked and wrapped in a bloody, raw, unscraped notlion skin?" Kira asked. "No, not much."

"We talked," Paul said firmly, his arm around Kira's waist. "It's not like we could avoid each other for two days," he added, "and we didn't have any books or TV to keep us distracted. So, Kira scraped the hides she'd skinned off of the animals she killed, I tended the fire, she showed me how to throw a spear using this atl-atl thing she made, and we talked."

Kostmayer chuckled. "I think they're protesting too much, guys. I know I couldn't ignore Sydney that long," he told them.

"Who said anything about ignoring her?" Paul asked. "Until our clothes got dry, I was extremely aware of her. But when she woke up, Kira made it abundantly clear that any ... um, advances ... would not be welcome. Yet."

Kira grinned up at him, blushing furiously. "That was before I found out how good you can kiss," she said.

"Ah-ha!" Harrison exclaimed. The others looked at him. "Kissing," Harrison explained.

Kincaid rolled his eyes. "C'mon," he said, turning back along their path. "People are worried."

They were back in camp shortly after mid-day, finding themselves the center of a jubilant group of relieved people. Tierney and Lainie embraced Kira while Suzanne and Debi hugged Paul, and the rest of their small village gathered around to welcome back their wayward companions. "What were you thinking?" Control and Scully asked almost simultaneously.

"Well," Kira began, "I was just hungry. I wanted to try out the spear-thrower before I handed it off to the hunters. I saw the clouds, but I never expected anything like this."

"I followed Littlehawk," Paul explained. "He kept telling me that Kira was in trouble, and when we got to her, she was unconscious. I wrapped her in the skins that were laying beside her, and carried her to the cave, still following Littlehawk. There was wood outside, a deadfall. I built a fire and did my best to get her warm."

Lainie put her mouth next to Kira's ear and whispered. Kira grinned, but shook her head. "No, Lainie, he didn't; he's a gentleman," she replied. "But I'll tell you, he sure can kiss."

"You kissed her?" Debi asked Paul in happy surprise. "I thought you didn't like her."

"I changed my mind," he told her, reaching out a hand to Kira, interlacing his fingers with hers. "And she's no slouch in the kissing department herself. Kira, ...?" He looked at her questioningly; she smiled at him and nodded. "She's agreed to marry me," he announced.

"Paul!" Suzanne exclaimed.

Harrison and Norton both thumped Paul on the back and congratulated him, the first of many, while Lainie and Tierney gaped at Kira. She nodded at them, smiling sheepishly. "I told you, he's the man of my dreams," she said.

**********

It was almost as if the forces of Nature had conspired to arrange the marriage, and now they conspired to prevent it. While Paul and Kira had been missing, the decision had been made to move north, downstream, to what they hoped would be a warmer climate. The move had been delayed until their missing companions could be found, but now a new urgency arose as the weather warmed, and the deep snow began to melt. Lainie was worried.

"We have to get further away from the creek," she told the group. "There's going to be flooding." She looked at Kira apologetically. "Sorry, cuz. I know you and Paul wanted to get married right away, but we need to get away from here."

Kira sighed. "I guess I can wait a little longer," she said.

"I'm not sure I can," Paul murmured in her ear, earning a grin from his fiancée. "Do you want to sneak off into the bushes for an hour?" Kira's smile widened, but she turned back to the group making travel plans, and he realized that she didn't think he was serious. Disappointed but resigned, Paul contented himself with caressing her back and side, all the way down to where her buttocks began to swell out from her waist; with the priest and the children in the same room, he didn't feel comfortable going any further with his surreptitious petting. With a soft sigh, he turned the majority of his attention back to the discussion.

"There's no sense disassembling the huts," Scott was saying, apparently in response to a suggestion someone else had made.

"Okay," Yvette replied, "you can twist all the new rope we need."

"The kids aren't going to be able to walk very far," Mulder commented. "Maybe we can make some kind of litter to carry them."

"A travois," Kira corrected. "We can use some of the poles from the huts and the - the zebralope skin to make it, cover the kids with the notlion fur to keep them warm. Use the ropes to make a sort of harness and trade off dragging it."

"Well, whatever preparations we're going to make, we'd better make them this morning and get out of here this afternoon," Lainie said. "The creek was already up six inches when I was down there just after dawn. By the time all this melts off, we're going to be under water."