From: Lyle Bontrager <lbontger@wmcstations.com>
Date: Fri, 10 Apr 1998 22:56:28 +0000
Subject: Hungry (1/1)


Title: Hungry (1/1) 
Author: RocketMan >lbontger@wmcstations.com<
Disclaimer: Mulder and Scully belong to CC, 1013, and Fox. No
infringement is intended.

Hungry

===========================
"who understand better than i
the hunger in old bones
for a son? so here we are
abraham with his faith 
and i my fury. . ."
--Lucille Clifton, "sarah's promise"
===========================

(Twenty years prior)

The days were too long for her anymore and weakness was a way of life.
She could not change her clothes or even rise from the bed and every
move she made caused trembles to climb her old bones.

It made her furious.

He came to her every night, half expecting her to be all right, half
dreading her to be dead. His eyes would blindly seek hers and his hand
would tremble with hers and they would say nothing. Those times were the
only things she lived for.

Mornings found her gasping in air and floundering on the bed, nightmares
racking her frame and his arms around her in a vain attempt to ward of
the feverish visions.

Then, at about six or so, she would wake and push his arms away and make
him swear to go to work, to continue without her. She would joke and say
she would be back so he'd better not be making a mess of things.

She joked, but she would not be back.

She was already dead in many ways. Her eyes no longer opened very far
and her skin was spotted, mottled, as if ready to be shed for the
heavenly body. She couldn't breathe very well and her heart beat only
when necessary. He would nod bravely and wind up at the Hoover building
in a rumpled suit and hollowed out cheeks and sit at his desk staring at
nothing.

Then it was back to her apartment and in her arms and breathing in the
staleness of sweaty sheets and clammy skin and dying cells.

One afternoon, she picked up the phone and called him and talked for an
hour, and gave him the tiny hope that she was getting stronger, that her
strange disease would not claim her.

The night stole over him and he placed the case file he'd been
consulting on in the Out tray and dashed for her place.

She was blue and unconscious and he wondered for a panicked moment if
she was already dead.

She was revived and started on oxygen and given some pain medication and
sent to the hospital, but of course, the doctors had no clue as to what
was wrong and no idea where the strange disease was coming from.

It made him sick to his stomach, sitting there in the hard brown chair
next to her bed, knowing that this time, there would be no magic cure,
no chip to put in her neck to save her, no miracle.

She knew it too.

But she wouldn't give up.

He wanted to marry her, make love to her until she died in sweet
oblivion, until she was sailing toward heaven on the sea made of his
love.

She was a wave, dashing excitedly above the ocean, swelling, swirling,
furious, then suddenly falling, failing, crashing into the shore.

"Mulder?"

He scooted closer to her on the bed, coming right up to her face so she
could see him; her eyesight was getting worse every day.

Her hands clutched for him and he held on tightly, as if this could give
her life back.

"Mulder, I want a child."

It was an odd request coming from a woman who couldn't even stand, let
alone carry a child in her womb for nine months.

"Please . . ."

"Scully. . . I wish I could give you that." he whispered, stroking the
side of her face with a soft hand.

She sort of smiled and shook her head, causing a brief pain to lance
through her body. The medication was working tolerably, but it couldn't
get everything.

He fuzzed and she rubbed her eyes. "No . . . I got a call. Someone
promised."

"Promised what?"

"All I had to do was say yes. I didn't say anything. I -"

She stopped to cough hard into the pillow, her body tightening and
raising up with every explosion out.

"I wanted to tell you first. On the phone, I couldn't say it. I can now.
I want a child, Mulder."

"Scully. It's just not possible."

Dana's head slipped down and her eyes slipped closed and her hand
slipped from his. "No, you don't get it." she whispered.

"Save your breath, Scully. Shhh..."

She sighed and he could tell the morphine was making her slip away.

"She promised I'd be all right if I had a baby."

Mulder's eyebrows flew up as she finally fell into sleep.

He laid beside her and tried to feel her heart beating through the thin
fabric of the hospital gown. Still weakly floundering.

He drew her into his arms and stroked her cheek.

"I wish I could give it to you," he whispered and kissed her forehead.

He was hungry for her.
~~~~~~~~~~

(Now....circa 2020)

Isaac slammed his fist into the table and let his head slump down,
pushing the Calculus text away. He hated not being able to even read the
stupid thing, let alone try and understand it.

He heard his little sister shriek at the television and his mother's
voice on the phone with his father.

Swallowing his tough pride, he stood and grabbed the book angrily,
pushing out of his bedroom and into the kitchen. He was on Spring Break
leave at his parent's house, and trying not to be annoyed at the huge
Calculus text coming up.

His mother spotted him and she turned a bright encouraging smile on him,
her grey red hair swinging a bit as she watched his furious face.

She said good-bye to his father and hung up.

"What's up, Isaac?"

He growled and she gave him a little smile. He knew she liked the noise;
she said he sounded like his father.

"I need you to read this to me."

"Is it getting worse, Zac?"

He didn't want to worry her and he didn't want to move back home. He
liked college and usually his girlfriend read things to him when it got
bad.

"No. It's Cal and it's hard enough muddling through the words to try and
understand it too." he lied.

She nodded and took the book, then pushed him to the kitchen table to
sit down.

"You have your notebook with you?"

"Yeah. I transcribe the notes from the recorder like you suggested. It
really helps because I have to be so slow about it that I can't help but
remember everything."

She smiled. "Your father's memory again." she said and ruffled his hair,
just liked he hated.

"Okay. Where do I start?" she asked as she sat down.

He pointed out the page and the paragraph and attempted to listen.
~~~

Dana stood next to the sink as Mulder brushed his teeth and spat.

"I think it's getting worse, Mulder. His dyslexia is really becoming a
bad problem."

"Our fault though, huh?" he said with a sad grimace.

She bit her lip. "He manages though. Bekah called me once and told me
that she was having to read to him a lot more recently. He's having
really bad nightmares too, Mulder."

Mulder nodded. "Sounds like the disease again."

Her hands balled into fists. "I thought it would be longer than this. I
thought we would have more time."

"Scully, we're going to have to tell him. Let him know the warning signs
so he can look for them. I mean, he's already had the cancer. He got
better; he pulled through. He can do it again."

She nodded and slipped into his arms. "I wish we didn't have to tell
him."

"I wish sometimes that this had never happened."

She stiffened and pulled away.

He shook his head. "No, I don't mean this. I mean the disease. I'm glad
we have Isaac and Abby, that we have us. I just wish it didn't have to
happen like this."

She took his fingers and spread them along her palm. "I know."

He smoothed her skin and kissed her softly. "We'll get Bekah to come
over tonight and then we'll tell him."

"What if he doesn't want Bekah to know?" she said, eyes raising.

His jaw worked under his muscles. "Remember those first few months when
you tried to hide it from me? Remember how miserable it was for you and
me?"

She sighed. "You have a point."

"I'm not letting him even have the chance to screw up like we did." he
said, lifting his eyes to show he was teasing her.

"I think we did all right."

"After screwing things up."

She smacked his arm. "It wasn't that bad."

They both fell silent and looked ashamedly at each other. 

It *was* that bad.
~~~~

Bekah was trying to get Isaac to come out of his room but he was too
ashamed to face her.

He curled up on his bed and moved his long limbs closer to him. The
entire story had been unbelievable, yet the honest scary truth.

How could his parents have done such a thing? And passed on this disease
knowingly to their child.

He remembered being three years old and slow because of some defects in
his heart and the surgery to repair his tricuspid valve. He remembered
the pain and the shame of that and he had only been three.

Yet his parents had decided to sacrifice any normal life he might have
had so that they could try some kind of random, practically hopeless
cure to make her better.

He wasn't so sure he wanted to be alive.

His mind shuddered with the idea. His super-conscience mother
purposefeully becoming pregnant and then taking drugs to alter *his*
chemistry, *his* DNA, to make her well.

Yet, he couldn't really say it was completely wrong either.

Had they asked him, he probably would have said yes, though, right?

He heard Bekah become disgusted with him and leave.

He needed some time alone, time to absorb the utter strangeness of his
discovery.

He heard a light knock and almost snarled.

When he heard his sister's little voice, he was glad he hadn't.

He sat up and opened the door to let Abby inside. She was three and
thought she knew everything, especially since she would soon be four.

"Zachie, are you going to stay in here all night?" she whined, climbing
up on his bed while he shut the door.

"Maybe so, Abigail."

She pouted and leaned over to kiss his chin when he sat down beside her. 

"Will you be all right?"

"Yeah, I'll be fine. I just needed to stop thinking for a few hours."

"Stop thinking?"

"Yeah, Abby. It's like when you're about to fall asleep and things get
very far away."

She nodded and smiled, understanding what he meant.

He smiled back, hoping that his beautiful little sister didn't get this
disease.

He'd had cancer in eighth grade and it had been hellish, but he'd gotten
through it, with Bekah and his parents and friends.

He didn't want Little Abby going through that.

"So Abby, you want to be bored and stay in here with me for awhile?"

Abby adored her older brother, clung to him whenever she could. He knew
she would stay.

"Can I?" she asked, sounding surprised. He realized he'd been in a
pretty awful mood lately.

"Yup. Just don't hurt anything."

She nodded solemnly and tucked her hands under her legs.

He laid down and sighed, closing his eyes. Maybe if he fell alseep,
things would look better and his head wouldn't throb so much.

He was jerked awake a second later by Abby, who had curled up close to
him and put her cold fingers on his neck.

He smiled and kissed her hair, then put his arm around her.

She smiled and gave him a raspberry and then closed her eyes.

"Abby will be very quiet," she whispered.

He laughed and patted her back. "That's good little baby."

She made him feel like maybe it was worth everything.
~~~~

Dana opened the door softly to see them tangled together, Abby so small
and blonde while Isaac was so big and brown. Mulder came up behind her
and let out a little laugh.

"Aww....don't they look cute together?" he said and placed his hands on
her shoulders.

Bekah came in behind them and slipped into the room to wake them up.

She had a camera with her and snapped their picture as she sort of
laughed.

Scully came over and shook Isaac's shoulder as Bekah handed the camera
back to Mulder.

"He's going to be a wonderful daddy someday," Bekah said softly to her.

Scully smiled and sat down, pulling a sleepy Abby into her arms.

"Abby, baby, wake up now."

Isaac groaned and rolled to a sitting position, blinking up at Bekah
with a goofy look of embarassment on his face. "Please tell me I dreamed
my horrible behavior." he said, grinning at her.

Bekah smiled and sat down in his lap, kissing his nose. "Nope." she said
with a huge grin.

Abby snuggled against Scully's shoulder and yawned. It was pretty much
her bed time anyway.

She stood and let Bekah and Isaac stay perched on the bed. Mulder took
Abby from her arms and gave his daughter a big kiss.

"Hey baby, good job. Look, Zac's all better, huh?"

Abby smiled and waved goodnight to the rest of her family while Mulder
took her out, Dana following behind.

Abby was asleep on her feet as they changed her into pajamas and pulled
her into bed.

Abby kissed her parents and fell back asleep immediately.

Mulder took Scully's hand and smiled. "I think everything's going to be
all right. All we have to do is stick around long enough to see our
littlest grow up, huh?"

Dana grinned wryly. "That'll be a challenge in and of itself."

"Ah, we're not that old."

She grinned. "No, I'm not. But you are, old man."

He wrinkled his nose at her. "But I'm just in the prime of life."

"You wish."

"Ah, stop teasing the old man; he can't take it. Might have a stroke on
you."

"If he doesn't stop trying to fool around all the time, he just might."

He grinned wickedly. "I can't help it if I'm young at heart."

She grabbed his hand and squeezed it tightly, suddenly bringing herself
back to the truth.

"I'll never regret what we did Mulder." she said in a tense and urgent
voice.

He shook his head. "I won't either, Scully. And I don't think Isaac
could really blame us. He's a good kid."

She nodded and watched the moon keeping firm hands on her little girl.

"Whatever happens to him, whatever the disease does, he'll make it."

His voice was rough.

"He has a lot more to live for than I thought I did." she added.

"What do you mean?"

"All I had left was you, Mulder. And back then, we were pretty strained.
I had no idea what would happen to us. It was all a huge taboo almost. I
couldn't get enough energy to tell you I loved you, and you couldn't
bring yourself to say it to a dying woman. We were both afraid to hurt.
But Bekah's not. Bekah was here for his cancer and the other problems.
She knows and she openly loves him, Mulder. All we had was a tenous
faith."

"We got through despite my cowardice," Mulder mused.

She nodded. "Despite everything. And that's pretty amazing."

He took her hands in his and led her out of Abby's room, whispering to
her, "I think *you're* pretty amazing."

She smiled her lazy-cat smile and closed her eyes. "Thanks, old man."

His rough hands drifted down her sides, then to her hips. He had that
look in his eyes again: I can't believe I have all of this.

She stood on her tiptoes and kissed his nose, just as Bekah had done to
Isaac. "Let's go to bed, Mulder."

He nodded and followed her to the bedroom; he was hungry.

He was glad he had given her what she had wanted.

In the end, he had gotten exactly what he wanted too.
~~~~

end
adios
RM