A New World

by Wesa

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.

"How long have you known?" Control asked.

Tierney smiled at him. "Most of my life," she replied softly. "I knew Mom didn't want me to see it, so I never told her, but when I was about ten I found the photograph of you she kept hidden away."

"Wait," Norton protested. "He's your father?"

Tierney nodded, then fixed Norton with a worried look. "I know he can be intimidating, but he's really a big teddy bear. Isn't he, Yvette?" she appealed to her father's goddaughter.

Mickey snorted. "'Teddy bear?'" he repeated. Sydney elbowed him in the ribs, and Robert shushed him. Scott exchanged amused smiles with Trudy and Ginger.

Yvette grinned at her. "You knew, all that time, and you never told me? Tierney, you rat!" she accused. "Didn't you trust me?"

"But I wasn't supposed to know," Tierney objected.

"Well, you fooled me," Ironhorse told her. "Norton, you're not going to let him scare you off, are you?"

Norton grinned. "If I can bear you as cousin-by-marriage, Big Guy," he teased, "I can surely bear having Control as my father-in-law." He looked to Control questioningly, adding, "If I have your permission, sir?"

At Control's amused nod, Norton turned to Tierney. "I seem to have your father's permission. Now I need yours. Tierney, will you marry me?" Tierney stared at him a moment, then threw her arms around his neck and kissed him.

"I'd say that's a yes," Kincaid observed.

**********

When they stopped each afternoon and built their shelters for the night, several of the men, and sometimes Trudy or Ginger, would go hunting, while others would work on their hunting gear, making new spear tips, attaching them to shafts, making rope, or hafting knives. Some of the women would go out looking for berries, edible herbs and beans, or the minty leaves that Scully had discovered would fend off morning sickness. Others worked on the clothing they were making for themselves or their loved ones, or prepared skins for bedding or clothing.

Yvette, Tierney, and Kira experimented with the soils they found at each new campsite, trying to find the right consistency and technique to make clay pots. Not only would they be able to cook more foods more ways, but also Kira had explained that if they had pottery, she might be able to make soap. "Soap?" multiple voices had repeated, not all of them female, and since then everyone else in camp had followed their efforts with intense interest.

Debi was generally drafted as babysitter, taking Samantha and Michel with her to cut the reeds that still grew in thick clumps along their stream, now a river, and whenever he was not out with the hunters or making weapons, Eric joined them. This worried Suzanne at first, and she mentioned it to Paul, who followed them clandestinely for several days, reporting back to Suzanne nothing more worrisome than a swift kiss that had definitely been Debi's idea. "She's young," he agreed, "and it looks as if Eric is making sure she survives to be old enough for him. He always takes his weapons. You notice that when he doesn't go with them, he always makes sure that Mulder or Kostmayer or I go. He just wants to be sure she's safe."

As they continued to walk, looking for a good place to settle, the landscape around them slowly changed from savannah to forest, and the weather continued to warm. On the morning after Norton and Tierney had formally committed themselves to one another, they had been walking only about an hour when the wind shifted around to the north. Walking at point, Robert and Control hesitated and looked at each other. "Do you smell it?" Robert asked.

Control nodded. "The ocean!"

That afternoon when normally they would have stopped and set up camp, they pressed on instead, and just before sunset they reached a cliff. Lining up along the edge, they looked out over the top of a narrow strand of trees to where breakers crashed on a rocky beach.

"Surf's up!" Scott murmured, his arm around Trudy's shoulders.

All along the edge, couples looked at each other hopefully. "Will this do?" Sydney asked Mickey, hugging Michel to her side. "Can we settle here?"

"I'm tired of walking," Debi told Suzanne.

"I don't see any sign of storm surges coming this high," Lainie said.

"Please, Paul?" Kira asked.

That night they held a meeting, gathering supperless around the central campfire. "I think everybody wants to stay here," Nick said, shoved into moderating the meeting, "but is it safe? Could a devastating storm hit us this close to the ocean? Will we have enough to eat? Can we build permanent shelters, build a civilization? How civilized?"

Robert spoke up. "This may not be the best place - but right now we don't know where a better one might be; we don't know where to look. We're all tired. Dr. McCullough's pregnancy is starting to become difficult, and at least five of the other women are pregnant as well."

Several of the others looked around in surprise, and Kira whispered to Paul, "Did you tell him?" Paul shook his head.

"They must rest," Robert continued, noticing but not acknowledging the consternation his count had caused. "We need to settle."

"I agree," Kincaid said. "If we have to move on later, we can, using travois if necessary to move our belongings, the women who are too pregnant to do that much walking, babies and small children. But just settling in one place will give us a chance to begin some kind of civilization."

"There may be other things we need," Control said, "but mostly they're not urgent needs. We have some food here. There are rocks and trees to build permanent shelters. There's clay for pottery, and if the river's flow is reasonably steady, I may be able to build a mill, if I can get some help from time to time."

"With a mill, we could grind nuts. We could have flour, and bread," Ginger commented.

"With a mill and a source of ore," Kira said, "we could have iron tools."

"Let's not get carried away," Harrison warned. "The sun is still moving south, and we don't know how far it's going to go. Winter hasn't even started yet, technically. We don't know how cold it'll get here."

"The sea will moderate it a lot," Lainie said soothingly. "If the storms aren't too bad, we should be all right."

"With time to build warm shelters," Scully said, "time to hunt and gather and store food, time to make warmer clothes, we can survive more than we think we can."

"We can put up one large hut first," Paul suggested. "The very fact that twenty-three bodies are packed into it will help keep us warm."

Mickey nodded. "Then we could build a smokehouse to preserve meat and fish for the winter, and a latrine so we don't freeze when we do have to go outside," he added.

"If Harrison's right about winter still coming on," Control said, "we'll be very lucky to get that much built before freezing weather catches up with us."

**********

Control took charge of building the first large communal hut, with help from everyone who wasn't hunting, gathering plant foods, or working or sewing hides for clothing. There was no shortage of rocks to build the walls with, and they mortared and chinked them with a mixture of clay, sand from the beach below, and small rocks from the river's edge. It dried hard, like concrete, but had an unfortunate tendency to shrink and leave openings that the wind whistled through. Control scowled and scratched his head.

Yvette patted his arm consolingly. "European castles were drafty, too," she told him. "That's why they invented tapestries and wainscoting."

Her godfather kissed her. "Yvette, you're a genius," he told her, and went on with his work.

"What are we going to use for diapers?" Dana asked. She was scraping a hide to make a dress for herself. Her fair skin had freckled from all the sun exposure she had gotten, and the hide was exactly the same soft shade of brown as the spots.

"I've seen a lot of moss around," Kira said. "If we gather and dry it, it'll be pretty absorbent. Stand still, Paul, unless you want your leg punctured," she admonished her husband, fitting one side of a pair of leggings around his upper thigh, punching holes in the softened zagelle hide with an awl made of the creature's horn. "What I want to know is, how is Control going to put a roof on that thing?"

"I've been wondering the same thing," Suzanne agreed, finishing up the last seam of Debi's tunic.

"Don't worry," Paul assured them. "I'm sure that if he doesn't already have something planned, we'll figure something out between us."

"Speaking of Control, Ginger," Dana asked, "when are you two going to get married? Father Nick is just champing at the bit to keep you two from living in sin."

"Probably about the same time you and Harrison do," Ginger laughed.

**********

Paul and Kira huddled together in the lee of one of the walls of the unfinished shelter. One of the moons shone brightly down upon them as he reverently caressed her still almost-flat belly. "I've lost track," Kira murmured, looking up at the moon. "Is that the ninth or tenth time the smallest moon has been full since we got married?"

He looked up at the blue-silver orb above. "I don't know," he replied, his hand drifting up to fondle her breast. "Why?" He pressed his lips to the side of her forehead.

Kira closed her eyes and leaned into the kiss. She sighed. "I was trying to use it as a calendar," she explained. "We had been here eleven, maybe twelve cycles of the smallest moon when we got married. It was only two cycles later when I began to suspect I was pregnant."

"Okay, but why does it matter?" he wondered.

She looked sideways at him and shook her head. "Men!" she chuckled, turning in his arms and tracing her fingers up his sides.

Paul grunted, stifling his natural reaction, grabbing at her hands. "Stop that," he chided her.

"So it's true." Kira laughed softly and tried to free her hands. "Debi told me you were ticklish."

"Do you want to be spanked, woman?" he asked. Now he was laughing too.

"You can't spank me, I'm pregnant," she taunted softly.

"If you two don't shut up over there, I'm going to help him," Kincaid called, "and you being pregnant won't stop me."

Paul rose, bringing Kira and their notlion hide up with him, and stepped carefully over the people between them and the door.

"Where are you going?" Harrison asked sleepily.

"We'll be right back," Paul promised. He carried Kira into the forest a few yards from their camp. "How's this?" he asked as he set her on her feet.

"Fine, unless you want to play Tarzan some more," Kira replied, tugging him down.

They lay quietly together for a long time afterward, catching their breath, covering each other's faces and shoulders with kisses. Finally Paul moved aside, turning onto his back and gathering Kira close into his arms. He heaved a deep sigh of satisfaction and his breathing slowed, becoming deep and regular.

"Paul," Kira said, nudging him in the ribs. "We should go back." He groaned, complaining. "I'm afraid to sleep here," she told him. "The notlions..."

Paul sighed. "We've got to have our own house," he murmured, as he got wearily to his feet. He helped Kira up, then straightened and adjusted his breechclout while she found and put hers back on.

"I smell like sex," she said.

He grinned. "And you're all over me."

"Everyone's going to know what we've been doing."

"They knew what we were going to do when we left," Paul pointed out. He picked up the notlion fur and wrapped it around both of them, and they slowly walked back to the half-finished hut. Both slept soundly that night.

**********

Paul was concerned over Littlehawk's silence. He hadn't heard from his clone for weeks, not since the morning Kira had told him she was pregnant. Not that he associated the two events; he only knew it had been a long time.

The communal hut was finished, as was the smokehouse. Wind still whistled through the holes in the chinking of the hut, but it was much warmer inside than out, for winter had indeed caught up with them. The animal skins with which they had lined the interior walls helped a great deal. While outside snow piled up against the walls, inside, bellies swelled. Paul turned toward Kira, caressing her belly possessively, pleased that he had put this child inside her. Recently he had been seized by a sense of déjà vu, as if he had seen her pregnant sometime, somewhere before, though of course that wasn't possible. The child kicked his hand, and he smiled. He loved Kira; he loved their child. Far from home, kidnapped by aliens, married to an archaeologist, for God's sake, and he was happy. The only part of his life that was less than perfect was the missing spirit of his clone.

As if the thought had summoned him, Littlehawk came in from out of the storm. He smiled at his original and squatted on his heels next to him. "You see, Darkeagle," he said softly, "everything has happened just as I told you it would."

"Well, almost everything," Paul allowed, "and I suppose the grandchildren will come with time."

"They will," the spirit said, looking troubled. "But this daughter will bear you no grandchildren, my brother. Before the next conjunction of the moons, Laughing Brook will deliver the child, stillborn. Grieve with her, Darkeagle, as I will. Build a house where she can bear your other children, for the rest will thrive, and your children's children will play around your feet before you join us here." He gestured and Paul looked reflexively.

Littlehawk faded from sight as Paul turned back to demand an explanation.

Kira woke at his movement. "What is it?" she asked.

"Littlehawk," Paul replied, frowning. "Laugh - Kira," he amended, seeing that Mickey was awake beyond her, "are you feeling okay? He said -- " Paul frowned and edited heavily. "He said he would grieve with us. It didn't make any sense."

"I'm fine." A strange expression came across her face. "Paul? I - Ooh!"

"What is it?"

"Ooh, that hurts!"

**********

After nearly two days of labor, the new planet's first human child was born, already dead. Paul took the tiny fetus from Suzanne and wrapped his daughter in the softened zagelle hide that was to have been her first clothing. He looked to Suzanne for advice, then put the bundle into Kira's arms. "We'll bury her on the high point of the cliff," he said softly. "It'll make her climb to Heaven shorter and easier. She's so little."

Kira sobbed, and Paul felt the tears sliding down his own cheeks. He cradled his wife and dead child close to his chest and cried, heartbroken.