Title: 3am
Category: MSR
Spoilers: post Requiem
Summary: Mulder's train of thought through the shadows of the night.
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Disclaimer: Not mine, never were. Make no profit, have no money- do not sue.

*~*~*~*
3am
by xenoprobe

The moon casts a glow across the sheets. I sit beside the bed and watch the level rise and fall of her breast. I had stood by the window for quite a while tonight, wondering about the world. Wondering when it was coming.

Coming to an end.

I try not to let these thoughts enter into my days- it would spoil all we have striven for. So, I let the steady breaths of my lover draw me away from the constellations to instead map the tiny creases of her face. The change is subtle, my wife's face has lost little of her youth over the years. When she rises in the morning, her freckles make her seem decades younger. She is as beautiful now as they day we met.

But she is not the same woman I have known all these years. No.

In the moonlight, I can no longer stroke the lovely fire of her hair. I can no longer call to her by the name that expresses all that I love and more. We are new people now.

I reach out and pull a brown strand of hair from her eyes and remember what it was like those last few months before the past was gone forever. The unmatched joy of our reunion. It was like no other time in our lives- no more protocol no more fears... We simply collapsed into one another and let each other in- all the way in. That's when I knew we had to make a choice. A choice that would irrevocably change the future.

We fled. We said our good-byes to her family, destroying any hope of a connection to them. It was devastating to witness and I doubt I will ever get past the guilt I feel in our decision to leave our lives behind. But all that I had learned, all I had been prepared for while away, told me that those we saw on the streets, those we loved so dearly were already ghosts. They were echoes of a life we will never see to fruition.

We are the only ones. My wife, my daughter and myself. We are the future.

My beauty stirs and opens her eyes in the dark to see me weeping by her side. Her hand reaches out to me and strokes my palm.

"Hey you." She whispers to a man that no longer exists. I am a stranger to even myself.

"I love you." I return, finding assurance in the one thing that will never change.

"Me too." She rises on one elbow and kisses my hand. "The baby's awake." She says and seconds later I hear the muffled cry of our child in the night. She makes to leave the bed but I still her, leaving the room and returning with a bundle of hope in my arms.

"She's dry- I think she just couldn't sleep."

"Like her daddy." Her eyes smile and I lay the baby down on the bed sheets. I sit down again and watch the women in my life show me that love is ever-present. My tears come with more force this time.

"Shh..." I can hear the lump in her throat as she does her best to quell my sorrows. It won't work tonight.

I crawl into bed and spoon against her, wrapping my arms around her slender frame. She pulls the baby to her breast and rolls over in my grasp. She knows as well as I that the planet will be changing. Changing soon. Our child will never know the easy memories that we cling to. Will never know summers on the beach with the scent of sun screen and ocean spray on her skin. Will never know birthday parties with playmates in the back yard.

As if reading my mind, my wife chokes out a ragged cry. My hand goes to her dampened cheek.

"Shhh..." I try to sooth.

"She's so small. It's so unfair."

And it is. So damned unfair that I could die from the weight of it. So damned unfair.

"Try not to think of it that way... Try to think of her as our future. If 'they' were right, if what 'they' told me was the truth- she will save us. In the end she will save us all." I hate saying it out loud. It is such an unnatural burden for a child. But I was told that our love, ours alone, would breed the only one who could save us from the unnamable horrors that lurk in the coming darkness.

I kiss my lover's brow and bestow the same on our daughter's head. She makes a soft cooing noise and my frown fades. Her red curly locks are the only betrayal of our past, our only give away to who we once were.

I look beyond my family once more, out and to the stars. I plead silently for reprieve, hoping that there will be many more nights before the changes come. Many more nights where I can hold them in my arms and feel I can offer even a sliver of protection. A lie I so want to believe.

"I love you." I hear her say, searching for the same assurances as I do tonight.

"Oh Scully..." I pull her mouth to mine and press my declarations to her lips. "Iloveyou IloveyouIloveyou..."

She steals my words into her kisses and I smile inside. The baby gurgles and her little hand grabs at my chest. This is it. The heart of what I know. The truth, no matter the future, is in the love I live through these two beautiful girls.

FIN

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