A New World

By Wesa

Disclaimers: All War of the Worlds, Pretender, Man/Girl from UNCLE, and Due South characters belong to their respective owners, none of whom is me. I mean no disrespect, I hold these characters in the highest esteem, and I'm not making any money off of this.

Rating: PG

Category: Drama/Romance

Author's notes: Thank you, thank you, thank you to all who have encouraged me to continue writing. Apparently you like these characters as much as I do.

I've numbered this part 13a because, even though it is being written after part 15, chronologically it comes after part 13.

By Wesa.

Kasey woke to the nuzzling and snorting of a cold nose against her neck and reached to push the Mountie away, thinking, I've created a monster. Delicious, but still a monster. She was seriously startled to put her hand against fur. She froze, but the animal licked her hand, then her ear.

"Diefenbaker," Fraser said in a chiding tone, "some people don't like to be licked."

Kasey turned over and looked up into the face of the white wolf in awe. "Wow," she said, "he's beautiful. Is he yours, Yukon?"

"As much as a wolf belongs to anyone," Fraser allowed.

From across camp came a chuckle. "I knew Dief would follow you anywhere, Benny," Ray said from the pile of furs he and April shared, "but even you hafta admit this is carrying things a bit far."

"I didn't expect the aliens to bring him along," Fraser admitted, "but I have to admit I'm glad to see him." He rubbed one of the wolf's ears fondly. "Maybe you can make yourself useful," he told him, "and help with the hunting. There's no junk food here." Diefenbaker whined.

Kasey laughed. "Junk food junkie?" she teased, sitting up to rub the other ear. She grinned at Fraser and gave Diefenbaker a thorough all-over petting. "Oh, you're a beauty, you are!" She pressed her face into his thick fur happily. "Most men give their girlfriends stuffed animals!" she told Fraser, her eyes sparkling.

Diefenbaker whined and took a few steps away, then looked back at Kasey; she slipped from her bed and pulled her dress on over her head and swollen abdomen. Fraser reached up and caught her hand, and she paused, looking down at him curiously. "Don't let him take you too far," he murmured. "And he's deaf, so don't plan on calling him back."

Kasey smiled and leaned down to kiss him. "I'll be careful," she promised.

"I don't want you to get overstressed," Fraser told her.

"I'll be careful," she promised again, and turned away to follow the wolf.

She returned an hour later carrying four wolf pups; Diefenbaker carried another in his mouth. Fraser took three of the pups from Kasey's arms, scowling at his white wolf. "It's not polite to allow a pregnant woman to carry more than you do, Dief," he said. Diefenbaker whined. Fraser put one hand on Kasey's belly. "I could have come along, too, you know. I don't want anything to happen to our child."

Diefenbaker twisted his head to one side, then put down his pup and nuzzled Fraser's hand where it lay on Kasey's stomach before picking up the wolf pup and trotting over to the pile of furs where he had awakened them earlier that morning.

"I'm all right, Yukon," she said softly, "but Dief has lost his mate. Her body was there, and there was black fur everywhere. The wolves must have teamed up to protect the pups from one of those big catlike animals."

**********

The pups were nearly too young to be weaned, barely able to eat solid food. To ease the shift, the proud adoptive parents of each cut the food up into tiny pieces and pounded it between two rocks before feeding their small charges. Diefenbaker oversaw each procedure carefully, as if assuring himself that Jared and Angel, Marita and Illya, Francesca and Alex, and Alice and Bill would be good foster parents for his offspring. The pup that he had carried back, however, seemed to be special to his father, and Diefenbaker wouldn't allow them to be separated by so much as the central campfire.

Fraser apologized to Ray, "Kasey thinks there's something special about this last pup to Diefenbaker," he said. "I have to agree, but Dief could watch him just as well if he was your pup."

Ray waved off the apology as unnecessary. "After all the hair he got on my upholstery," he said, "I could probably make another wolf. We'll get one of the next pups. April's disappointed, of course, but after the baby comes, she's not going to have a lot of time for a pet."

"Is she feeling any better?" Fraser asked considerately.

At around four months, April's pregnancy wasn't as advanced as those of the other women, and she was just getting over being morning sick. No one questioned that Ray was her baby's father, as some had questioned Kasey's quick pregnancy.

**********

Kasey moaned softly and shifted her position, waking Fraser from a sound sleep. "What's the matter?" he asked sleepily, turning to curl around her back in the dark.

"Nothing," she denied. "I just-" She moved back to cuddle against his stomach. "My back has ached all day, and I just had a cramp that spasmed all the way to my knees. I'll be okay. Go back to sleep."

His hands moved over her back familiarly, stroking and kneading at the tense muscles. "You're all knotted up," he murmured. "I should have gone with Dief after the pups. You're trying to do too much."

"He seemed to want me to go," Kasey replied. "Oh, Benny, that feels good."

Fraser smiled, his teeth shining in the dim light that came through the doorway of their new hut, finished just the previous day. "Not 'Yukon?'" he teased. Neither of them realized that Diefenbaker, asleep with his pup only moments earlier, now had his head up and was watching them intently.

"I forgot, okay?" she teased back. "Anyway, Angela has too much to do with the new baby to scrape any skins; and with hers here, Francesca's must be due soon, and I am not going to let Marika lose another - oh, God!" she exclaimed, drawing her knees as close to her chest as she could. "Benneeee!" she cried.

He came up onto his hands and knees over her. "What is it?" he asked worriedly. "Is it the baby?"

"Too ... soon ... " Kasey ground out. She gasped, then lay panting beside him. "It's too soon for our baby to come," she repeated when she'd caught her breath a bit. "We should have another month, at least."

"I'll get Jared," he volunteered.

"No, let him sleep," Kasey decided. "It's not time, and that may be the only contraction I have. Plenty of time to get him if I need them."

Fraser was dubious, but he kissed the back of her neck and continued to rub her back.

Before dawn, Kasey was in full labor. Fraser, holding her hands during contractions and rubbing her back between times, didn't notice when Diefenbaker got up and went out into the grey morning.

Ray woke with Diefenbaker snuffling around his ear. He looked disbelievingly at the wolf and complained, "Nooo, go away." He closed his eyes and curled close around the warm softness that was April.

Diefenbaker whined.

"No," Ray whispered firmly. "Whatever it is, it can wait until morning."

The wolf would not be put off, no matter how hard Ray tried to ignore him. Ray pulled the skins that served as blankets up over his head; Diefenbaker pulled them back down, then put his nose under Ray's neck and snorted.

April murmured softly, on the verge of waking up. "All right!" Ray whispered fiercely, "but it's only because April needs her sleep. Understand? Why didn't you wake up Benny?" he asked, skinning into the rags that were all that were left of his slacks. He skittered barefoot and bare-chested out into the pre-dawn morning, following the wolf. "This had better be good."

Ray followed Diefenbaker to the hut his friend shared with Kasey, starting to get a little worried as he ducked inside to see what was going on. "All right, I'm here," he said grumpily. "What was so important that I hadda get up before da -"

He choked off his complaint at the sight of Kasey squatting naked in front of Benny, holding his hands tightly and leaning back against his chest for leverage as she bore down in a very strong contraction.

"Oh, shit," Ray said. "I'll get Jared." He ducked back outside. "C'mon, Dief, they don't need you in there," he added, grabbing the wolf by the heavy mane of fur around his neck.

"Jared! Jared!" Ray hissed at the door of the hut Jared shared with Parker. When there was no answer, he looked down at Diefenbaker. "Don't wake up the baby," he told the wolf. "Just Jared."

Diefenbaker went in. A moment later Jared complained, "What the--?"

"Jared!" Ray called softly. "C'mon, Kasey looks like she needs more help than Benny can give."

Jared was outside before Ray finished speaking, still fastening his ragged jeans. "She's in labor?"

"I see now why they call it that," Ray said, leading the way back to Kasey and Fraser's hut. "She's really working at it."

**********

Inside the hut, Jared softly encouraged Kasey. Derriman and Stavrakos waited outside with Ray and Diefenbaker. Stavrakos was nervously stripping twigs from the stack of branches drying for firewood. The two soldiers stared at each other every time their squadmate made that strange sound that wasn't exactly a scream but much more than a groan. They'd seen Kasey push through when they were both about to drop from exhaustion. They'd seen her take a bullet in the shoulder, grit her teeth and keep on fighting without a complaint. Could childbirth be worse than that?

"That's it, Kasey," Jared encouraged. "Breathe now, gather your strength, and when the next contraction comes, I want you to bear down as hard as you can until I tell you to stop."

Kasey made a sound like a sob, and Fraser said, "Yes, you can. The alternative is a caesarian section, and we don't have the equipment to do one. Besides, I imagine they hurt a great deal."

Derriman looked at Stavrakos. "Jared knows what he's doing," he said, looking for reassurance as much as giving it.

Alex stripped the twigs from yet another branch; he was getting quite a stack. "She's early," he said. "Could there be something going wrong?" he asked. "I feel so damn ... helpless!"

"Push," Jared told Kasey. She made the strange screaming-groaning noise again.

Derriman and Stavrakos looked from the hut to Ray, and Alex got up to pace.

A thin wailing sound came from the hut. "It's a boy," Jared announced in a joyous voice. Kasey's exhausted laughter joined with Fraser's as their friends invaded their hut. Jared finished tying off the umbilical cord and laid the baby at Kasey's breast. "Don't go to sleep yet," he warned. "I want the afterbirth."

Kasey sighed. "Okay," she agreed reluctantly.

Fraser gazed at the infant Kasey held, drawing his finger wonderingly along the outside of the tiny ear. "He's beautiful," he said, "but he's not premature."

She looked at her son, gently kissed his forehead, then looked up at Fraser apologetically. "I'm sorry, Benny," she apologized tiredly. "I really thought you were his father. It must've been something they did to me on the ship."

Jared scraped the afterbirth into one of the crude pots that Alice and Marika had managed to make, and pulled one of Kasey's bedskins up to her shoulders, covering both her and her new son from the eyes of her friends. He smiled at Kasey and patted her shoulder. "You did a good job, Kasey," he told her before he went out.

"I am his father," Fraser told her gently. "It doesn't matter whose sperm they used to inseminate you."

**********

Derriman stood a few feet away from where Kasey and Fraser showed off their son, twisting his head first to one side then to the other as he looked at the baby. Stavrakos propped him up when he nearly fell over. "What's going on?" he wondered. "Do you see something wrong?"

Derriman frowned at his friend, then nodded toward the newborn. "How sure are we that Kasey and Colonel Ironhorse didn't get back together after the war?" he asked.

"Pretty darn sure," Stavrakos replied. "Why?"

"Look at her baby."

Stavrakos looked. He glanced at Derriman, then looked again.

"What are you going to name him, Kasey?" Alice asked softly as she examined the baby.

Fraser chuckled. "She took one look at him and tossed out all the names we'd discussed," he said.

"His name is Paul," Kasey announced, a tender smile flickering exhaustedly at the corners of her mouth.

Stavrakos closed his eyes in dismay. "Oh, jeez," he murmured.