Title: Everlasting 1/?
Author: Mary Parker
Rating: apocalypse
Spoilers: Tithonus, baby arc
Disclaimer: They're not mine.  Never were, never will be,
even if I treat them better than CC does.
A/N: Seriously.  I am on an apocalypse kick.  And this is
a work in progress that may never be completed.

At a certain age, Dana Scully began to believe in fate and prophecy.
It hadn't happened all at once, although the realization settled over
her like snow one day while she was looking in her last sliver of
mirror and thinking that her skin was still as firm as it had been 
in the days when she'd cared about those sorts of things and had
been able to get cleanser and exfoliants.  Rougher, yes, but still 
firm and unwrinkled.  The envious dead whispered in her ear as 
she critically examined the fragment of her reflection: tell me how
I die you don't you don't you don't.  

She remembered the hotel room - she missed hotel rooms - and
the kind face of Mulder's supposed psychic, who had turned out
to be helpful then.  He hadn't lied about this either, she knew now,
and it had only taken an apocalypse to make her believe.  She
smiled wryly.  Mudler would have laughed at her, that big bright
laugh that made his somber face light up, and he would have 
wrapped her in his arms and called her his immortal.  She could
nearly feel the warmth of him.  Scully still wasn't comfortable with
these moments - she refused to call them visions or premonitions
the way that Monica wanted - but she had learned to live with them.

Mulder.  Rhyme to her reason, and the sanest crazy thing in her
world.  

She sighed and carefully wrapped up the sliver of glass and put it
away.  More than hotel rooms, more than Old DC or her mother or
fresh orange juice, she missed Mulder.  At least he had died 
peacefully, with his silver head heavy in her lap.  At least they had
had some time together.  Skinner had not had such an easy passing: 
she had heard him go out the door with Doggett all those years ago 
and heard soon after the volley of shots that had shredded his body.  
She had calmly salvaged what organs and biomaterial she could, back 
in the day when they had still had medical facilities and a hope of 
fighting the virus, but had cried a little over the splintered wreckage of 
his glasses when she'd found them kicked into a corner of the morgue.  
Doggett had lasted longer, dead only two or three years now, his earnest 
heart overwrought and overcome by the cares of recolonizing a planet that 
had been so effortlessly theirs once.

Stubborn Mulder had been the last to go.  He ran his body past its 
resources, striving to make a better life for them in the colony, 
taking care of her and Monica and William.  Scully still felt her heart
clench when she thought of him.  It had been a year and a half.  She 
still expected him to slip into bed beside her in the middle of the
night.

At least she still had William, her lost and found son, lean and 
dangerous now as his father had been.  She still had Monica, too,
slowing down but vibrant.  They were all living lost and found
lives now.  They had been lucky to find each other again in New DC,
and lucky to find passage to this colony in what had been British
Columbia, she thought.  It was peaceful here, for now, and rainy 
and green.  Scully still wasn't used to how quiet it was compared to
the city, and how startling the noise of animals could be at night.
But it was good.  Life was good.

She lifted her shirt and touched the scar on her belly that was the
mark of her immortality.  Here she was at 66 with the face she'd had
at 42.  Her muscles were firmer and larger than the FBI had ever
required; she could ride a horse, shoot a rifle, and fix the few cars
the colony had left.  She could camp, forage, and cook.  An unexpected
life.

Someone knocked gently at the door - a rare luxury, the door, but as
a doctor she still held a certain status, and as a former militant.
Scully smoothed her shirt down over her lean stomach.  It wasn't 
difficult staying slim these days: the one advantage of the death of
civilization as she had known it.

"Come in," she said, raising her voice to dissipate the memories, but
they seemed to seep into her skin instead, absorbing along with the
realization of her shocking longevity.

The door creaked and Monica put her head into the room.  "Hey."

"Come in, come in," said Scully.  Monica moved slowly in and shut the
door behind her.  She had aged well.  Her hair was mostly silver but her
body was strong and her eyes were luminous.  She looked weary now, 
fidgeting with a folded piece of precious paper.  

"Is something wrong?" Scully asked, running through a list of possible
answers in her head.  Monica looked at her, tipped her head, smiled a 
little, and sighed.

"Well, General," she said, and Scully shivered, "the natives are 
restless again."  

She hadn't heard that name in a while, or that particular phrase.
The war had been over for five years; there hadn't been any need
for the coded phrase that signified an attack, or for her nickname,
assigned half by humour and half by deadly earnest.  There weren't
really any generals in the resistance forces, but people had followed
her willingly, and she had led, caught up in the desperate need for
authority figures.  Her rank had been one of the reasons she had kept
her hair flame-red: it was helpful to be recognized.  Her hair became
a banner, red as a revolution flag; it kept eyes on her, it commanded
attention and she commanded respect.

During these years of peace she had clipped her hair to her shoulders.
She had let the bronzy roots grow out.  She was still recognized, but
the ease of the post-war time had lessened the shock and awe of her
presence and she liked it that way.  Perhaps it was time now to raid the
defunct supermarket again: all the food was gone, and the hygiene products,
but there were things that were still easy to get.  At the end of the 
world, no one cared about hair dye.

"What's the paper say?"  Scully nodded toward it, a little too sharp,
a little too brusque.  How quickly she slipped back into the role of
the little general, she thought, yearning toward the paper.  Monica
held it out reluctantly.  It was greyish, well-creased.  Scully's hand
trembled slightly as she reached for it.  She paused as her fingers
brushed the edge of the paper and Monica's roughened fingertips.

"Good news or bad?" she asked.  

Monica shrugged.  "Hard news," she said cryptically, and Scully took the
scrap of paper and unfolded it.  

Dear General, the note began, the natives are restless again.  Please 
advise.  We will be heading your way.  I am bringing someone you need
to meet.  Best, Charlie.

"What aren't you telling me?"  Scully asked, studying the paper.  Charlie
had been lucky to survive.  He was the last of her siblings.  She folded
the note with careful fingers and smoothed it before tucking it into her
pocket.

"I do wonder if you're psychic sometimes," said Monica.  "Really, Dana,
after all these years..."  She trailed off as Scully stared at her.

"Monica."  The word was firm, delivered in the soft tone Scully might
use with her soldiers, but she let enough compassion seep into her voice
to let Monica know that she recognized that the world was going to 
come apart again.  

"From all reports," Monica began, and Scully felt something indescribable
begin to swell in her chest, some wild melange of emotions that was too
strong to suppress.  "From all reports, Dana...it's Mulder with him."


Scully's hands tightened into white-knuckled fists and
then relaxed.  She firmed her stomach muscles to keep
her voice steady.  "Monica, that's not possible.  He
died.  He died in my arms."

"I know."  Monica lifted her palms in helpless 
supplication.  "It doesn't make sense, but who would
know if Charlie wouldn't?  He was with us at the 
beginning of the war for a long time.  He knew Mulder.
He would know what to ask and what to look for."

Scully turned away.  "Where are they?"

"A couple of days' ride yet, as far as I know."

"Where's William?"

"I'll find him and send him in."  Monica paused.  
"Dana?"

"Don't ask me anything right now, Monica.  Please."

"I'll just go get William," Monica said, and closed
the door quietly behind her.  Scully slumped onto her
bed and put her face in her hands.  She had considered
this possibility, this multiplicity of Mulders.  She knew
about clones.  Mostly she had imagined that she might be
cloned - not something she had enjoyed thinking about,
and not an exercise of egotism, but as a leader of the 
people's army and a potential point of vulnerability.  
She took a deep breath.

William would know if it was really Mulder, or really a
Mulder, or however one termed these things.  She hadn't
ever come across clones of herself, thank God, just those
infinite Samanthas.  She wondered what it was about that
family that made people want to replicate them, and then
thought of Mulder's incredible passion and the softness
of his hair and thought that in a position of power she 
might be tempted to make endless copies, just to be sure.

She could tell she was in military mode by the way her 
mind clicked over to checklists.  How old was this Mulder?
No, first and foremost, was he Mulder?  Were there others?
Was he a resistance fighter or a plant?  There again
William would be helpful; Scully loved her son, but he was
eerie, lean and quiet and able to read people's minds.  
Sometimes she looked at him and marvelled to think that she
and Mulder had produced such a person, although he certainly
looked like Mulder, though his hair was more red, and he had
a Scully way about him, a precision that Mulder had never
had.  He didn't talk much, but he was warm and affectionate
with her and Monica, and had been with Skinner and Doggett
and Mulder when they were alive.  He called her Scully, 
though.  She found it amusing: he had picked it up from 
Mulder, who had laughed and laughed.  Doggett had been 
horrified.

"It's so cold," he would say, shaking his head, but Scully
and Mulder had always been beyond his comprehension in
some ways, and their son was the same.  They went on calling
each other Scully and Mulder and letting their son do it
too.  It was half joke and half long habit; they knew how
to infuse the surnames with tenderness after so many long
years together.    

Scully pushed her hair back from her face.  It had been loose,
but now she pulled it back in a severe braid that made her 
face look like the prow of a ship.  She fumbled in the drawer
of her dresser for an elastic, and then for the insignia pins
to put on her jacket.  She knocked the dust off her boots.  
There hadn't been much riding to do lately; she missed the flex
of the horse under her, though she knew Mulder would have 
something to say about that, and the way riding was such an 
intimate way to travel.  You got acquainted with the land.  It
was the best way to do recon work, in her opinion - it took less
time than walking and was nearly as effective.

Scully pulled her Napoleon jacket, as Mulder had lovingly dubbed
it, out of the closet, and the pants that went with it.  She 
shed her comfortable everyday clothes and slipped into the jacket
and pants, turning her head to survey herself critically.  Five
years of peace hadn't made her any softer, sadly; the clothes 
still fit perfectly.  She put her feet into the boots and clomped
around the room to get used to the feel of herself again.  As a
finishing touch, she strapped on her holster, with the familiar
weight of her pistol chilly at the small of her back.  Once
her uniform had been a tight blouse and high heels.  Sometimes she
missed that, when dressing to kill had not been literal.

Enough wistfulness, she told herself firmly, squaring her shoulders.
She had work to do.  Her brother was coming, and maybe - she couldn't
stop her heart from leaping - just maybe, her love.  It could be 
true that her Mulder had been a fake and this Mulder was the real 
deal.  

No.  She had to stop that.  Her Mulder had been Mulder, the one that
had been hers, he told her, from the moment she stepped through his
office door with her enormous glasses and her dowdy suit and her
inquisitive mind.  The Mulder who had died in her arms was the one
with whom she had conceived and raised her brilliant son, the one
with whom she had lived and died and revived and killed and kissed
in the quiet dark.

"Scully?" came the startling baritone of her son through the door,
and she slapped the wrinkles out of her jacket arms.

"Come in."

He stepped in, reddish hair falling over his eyes.  He was a man
now, about to have a family of his own.  William had married a 
girl, as much as anyone could be married these days - there weren't
many priests around.  The faithful had trusted in God to deliver
them from the dire effects of the virus instead of killing 
themselves as so many had, once the symptoms were knowns, and so
the reverends and fathers and priests belonged to the Greys.
Scully thanked God that William had been born immune.  Presumably
his son or daughter would be immune as well.  She wondered if he
could tell what sex his child would be yet.

"No," he said calmly, "but I haven't really tried, either.  You
didn't want to know either, did you?"

Scully smiled, for what felt like the first time in a long time.
The corners of her mouth were heavy.  "I knew you would be a 
miracle either way."

William smiled back with Mulder's lips, and then became suddenly
serious.  "So.  Uncle Charlie's coming, apparently with some 
version of Mulder?" 

"So Monica tells me."  Scully fished for the paper in her other
pockets and handed it to him.  "How far away does he have to be
before you can tell?"

"They're about a hundred miles away at the moment, I guess," he
said absently, fingering the creases of the note.  "And as far
as I can tell, he's the real thing.  One of the real things.  He
doesn't have some memories, though.  It's strange - he doesn't 
know about me.  He's worried about you.  The last time he saw
you, you were sick.  He only remembers holding you in a hallway
and then the two of you going back to his apartment and you fell
asleep on his bed and then he had to leave and you had to go
back to the building."

"Oh."  There was nothing else to say about that.  That had been
so long ago that it seemed like another woman with her face in
the memories.  

"So when do we leave?" asked William, lounging against a corner
of the bureau.  He was so effortlessly graceful, his father's 
perfect son.  

"As soon as Monica rallies the troops," Scully said, hunting
through her closet for a rucksack.  "So to speak.  We'll take
out a small party.  Just us and a couple of the boys from the
local.  Maybe Ethan, if he wants to come."  John and Monica's
eldest son was close to William.  They worked together like a
pair of classical musicians: Mozart and Salieri, but neither
cared who was whom.  The precision and beauty of their work
was constant.  Sometimes Scully forgot that they were young
men still, or what she thought of as young men.

"He will," said William with confidence.  "He's bringing the
horses up."

"Good."  Scully tossed the rucksack to him.  "Take this down
to the kitchens, would you?  We'll need food.  I'll go check
the weapons and ammunition."

"As if you don't oil that pistol every week," said William
fondly.  

"That's a fine Smith and Wesson," Scully mock-scolded him,
one hand on her hips and the other sternly pointing at him.
"You don't mistreat a weapon like that.  Besides, I've had 
it since before you were born.  It's like your older 
sibling."

"Yeah, Scully, I've heard it all before," William grinned.
"All right.  I'm off down to the kitchen."  He ducked out
the door.  "And Scully - Mom - it'll be all right."

Tears prickled briefly in her eyes.  She felt automatically
for the pistol, which already felt at home in the groove 
of her back.  She and Mulder had done well with William.
God willing, they would do well again.  She was off to find
out what to do with the rest of her everlasting life.

Scully swung neatly up onto the big bay horse.  She felt tall and 
powerful, her hands light on the reins and the horse shifting under
her.  She had called him Ishmael; it amused her.  She patted his
neck firmly and he snorted, ready to go.  She tried to ride a few 
times a week, but sometimes playing doctor to the fifty or so
people in the colony proper and the few hundred building a 
makeshift town around the reclaimed high school that was the core
of the community took up most of her time.

"What's the word, General?" asked Monica, nudging her grey 
mare up next to Ishmael.  

"Truth," said Scully lightly.  "As usual.  Will says he's as close to
the real thing as anything.  But he won't know you, I think.  He only
has memories up to the time he was abducted."

Monica nodded.  "Ethan and Will are coming up shortly with a 
couple of the locals.  Two of the kids from here and Grace."

"Grace?"  Scully swung her head sharply, making Ishmael dance
at the length of the rein she allowed.  "Why Grace?"  

"Of all people, I'd expect you to be fine with it," Monica 
said.  "She's my daughter.  I trust her.  You trust her."

"I don't want her to live the life we lived."  Scully stroked
Ishmael's neck until they both calmed down.  

"There's no chance of that," Monica said, her lips twisting into 
a sweet wry smile.  She gathered the reins in one hand and set 
the other comfortingly on Scully's arm.  "Hey, Dana.  She 
worships you.  She loved Mulder.  Let her live whatever life she 
can find in this mess of a post-apocalyptic world."

"Yeah."  Scully slouched in her saddle for a moment, then straightened
when she saw Will and Ethan approaching with Grace and the two boys
whose names she could never remember.  They were blonde and polite
and did what they were told.  It worked out for everyone.

"Ready?"  Ethan leaned forward with a bright smile like his mother's.  
He gestured toward his full saddle bags.  "Food, tent, et cetera."

Scully glanced briefly at Grace, who beamed, and then at Monica, 
who narrowed her eyes the slightest bit.  "All right," said Scully.  
"Let's go. Be alert - there's talk of another invasion."

"We know how it goes," said William.

"This is how we've always lived, Dana," said Grace.  She shrugged, in
a gesture Scully knew was meant to be reassuring.  Beside her, she 
could sense Monica's pride in her daughter, tinged with a bit of 
smugness and a suspicion of bitterness.

"Right," Scully said.  "Move out, then."  Automatically she crooked
her arm in one of the silent gestures they had used in actual battle.
She glanced back.  Will saluted and Grace gestured her acceptance with
a flick of her fingers.  Scully sighed at the thought of ordering her
own child into battle with Monica's children.  She pressed her heels 
into Ishmael's flanks and wheeled him out of the fenced yard of the
colony.

As they rode, quiet except for the squeak of leather and the beat of
hooves, she watched the sky.  The Greys were notoriously unsubtle; they
had never expected to lose, and that was why she had won, she and Mulder
and the others.  Scully knew she could count on Will and Ethan to sweep 
the woods for suspicious activity, and the blond boys - Erik and Greg,
that was it - to follow whatever Will and Ethan did.  Her body settled
comfortably into the rhythm of Ishmael's long strides, and the miles
rolled away like a familiar movie.  They rode along the edge of a 
deserted highway when they could.  Scully didn't like to go past the old
residential neighborhoods - the houses were mostly intact, but they 
smelled of death.  The suburbanites had left blood spatters on their walls
or bathtubs and only the desperate lived there.  No one knew how long
the virus could survive outside the host, or whether the hosts were still
there.  Scully preferred the converted high school, though it made her
laugh sometimes: some life she had.

They made camp on the top of a small hill near a river hours before dark.
Scully set Grace to making a fire, sent Erik and Greg for wood, and drew
Will aside.

"They're about thirty miles away now," he said, anticipating her question.
"We'll meet them sometime tomorrow morning."

"Okay."  

William patted her shoulder awkwardly.  "It'll be fine, Scully.  Don't
be nervous."

"Aren't you nervous?"

He shifted his weight from foot to foot.  "Yes."

Scully wrapped her arms around him in a motherly hug.  He was too 
tall for it, really, but he leaned against her anyway.  Sometimes she 
felt more like Will's peer than his mother, given his maturity and 
his abilities, but sometimes he was still just her son, the baby 
she'd fought for since the moment of his conception, the child she'd
sung to sleep with Three Dog Night.

"I want it to be him too," he said softly.    

She wanted to say something, but the complexity of her emotions was
too great.  It was as if her heart had swelled with hope and love and
memory and it was pressing on her lungs and she couldn't draw breath
to speak of it.  "Let's go find something to eat," she said instead,
releasing him.  "Thanks, Will.  You're a good son.  Sorry to take you
away from Maddy."

"It's okay.  She understands.  And Scully - you're a good mother."

She smiled.  "Stew?  Think you can find a few veggies somewhere to 
put in it?  Or a rabbit?"

"Yes, General ma'am.  Dinner it is."  He began to walk away, paused
and went to the pile of tack on the ground.  He fished in the saddle
bags with sensitive hands like a raccoon, seeking whatever it was 
without looking.  Scully put her hands up to catch as he found whatever
it was and tossed it to her.  

"Will!"  It was a box of hair dye.  The photograph on the front was 
faded, but she could tell the woman had hair like fire.

"You're welcome, General."  He ducked his head at her and vanished into
the woods with a rifle and a spade.  

Scully settled her hands on her hips and looked around.  There wasn't
much for her to do, really: Monica and the kids were well versed by
now in how to set up camp.  Scully decided to set up the tents, although
it wasn't necessary yet.  It was soothing to notch the posts together
and pound stakes for the rain fly.  She knew she was putting off the
hair dye, and that there wasn't any reason for it.  She was ready to
become a symbol again - no, not ready, but prepared, and resigned.  She
didn't really want to dye it in the river, but there wasn't much of a
choice.

"Monica?  I'm just running down to the water.  I'll be back in a while."
Monica pretended to salute and Scully sighed.  It was good to have the
support of her nearest and dearest, but frustrating that she had to 
play the general even with them.  Mulder had understood.  In the 
privacy of their room there had been no ranks, no boundaries, no war.
Her red hair was autumn leaves to him, not the colour of blood or
revolution.  

Enough, she told herself.  This nostalgia was senseless.  She had a
mission, and at least this one was frivolous enough to be amusing.
There would be enough dire missions later that didn't involve any
sort of cosmetic improvement in her appearance.  She knelt by the 
river and undid her hair, following the familiar ritual, hands lost
in baggy plastic gloves.  The dye reeked and she wasn't sure whether
she hadn't colored half her forehead, but it was pleasant to rinse 
and rinse her hair.  She finished, wrung her hair out, and tied up
the soggy weight of it.  She would let it dry by the fire and the
whole campsite would smell, but the others would adjust.

"Very nice," Monica said approvingly, stirring something in a pan
over the fire.  Ethan whistled, a quiet little trill of appreciation.

"It's getting dark," said Scully.  "You can't even see."

"Ah, but we were in on the plot," said Ethan.  

"How do you feel?" asked Monica, and then "Here, taste this."  She
held a spoon to Scully's lips.  Scully opened her mouth automatically,
chewed, and swallowed.  The stew was decent travel food.  Will must 
have found a rabbit somewhere.  She could see him rustling around in
the tents now.  

"That's good.  I'm hungry.  And...I'm excited.  Resigned.  I thought
we were done with this for a while.

"Yeah," Monica said wistfully.  "I'm too old for it.  You don't seem
to have aged at all, though."

"You would have liked being around for that one," Scully said 
irrelevantly.

"An X-File explains why you look young?"

Scully bit her lip.  "Not exactly.  Someone told me once I was never
going to die, but I think it was a joke.  You would have liked him,
though."  She thought of the photographer - Albert something, wasn't
it? -  and the sound of his voice as he told her to close her eyes.

"But you believe him now?"

"I don't know what to believe," said Scully, and laughed suddenly in
the darkness.  "Let's eat."  Despite the sense of impending doom, her
heart was light.  She was here in this familiar place with those who
meant the most to her, and in the morning, she would see her love 
reborn.