> Every Saturday was the same. Mulder would rise from
> his bed feeling for all the world like Lazarus,
> though he didn't know for certain who or what had
> rolled the stone from his sleep. 

They had agreed to take weekends off, ten years ago,
when they'd started this ridiculous life on the run;
two days of downtime for five days on the road, or,
should they stop in some small town and take odd jobs
to earn extra cash, a work-free Saturday and Sunday,
two days devoted entirely to each other, to each
other's bodies.

She wasn't in the bed, but that wasn't unusual; Scully
liked to take some time to herself on these too-short
respites in too-dingy motels, time to spend doing all
kinds of supposedly age-defying things to her face and
skin.

Mulder didn't know why she bothered. He'd loved her
for going on twenty years now and didn't think her any
less beautiful than when she was in her twenties. 
Besides, he thought, rubbing the stubble that he knew
to be peppered with gray, the years had worn them
both, equally.

He lay back in bed, loving to listen to her
early-morning bathroom sounds. He didn't have much
more time to do so, he knew; December was approaching
all to fast.

He pushed those thoughts aside and listened. But he
was greeted with nothing but silence - Scully was not
there.

* * * * * * *

> The only thought Scully had as she ran across the
> field was the the light was gaining on her, and that
> a hayfield in early fall, splattered with that light
> and dotted with hay bales, looked for all the world
> like a cemetery.

It would be a cemetery soon enough, it all would be,
she told herself, unable to keep pace with the
pounding instructions emanating from the back of her
brain that told her to keep going, keep going, don't
look back and especially don't think of Mulder -

Don't think of Mulder -

She tripped and felt a stabbing pain, and as she
attempted to stand she looked down at herself and
realized with a start that she was still wearing
pajamas. No shoes. Her feet were scratched and
bloody from running through the sharp hay, and she
tried to place herself, to remember where they were.

Kansas, she thought, her mind flooded by instant
associations of "The Wizard of Oz." 

She had somewhere to be, the base of her neck reminded
her with a jolt, and she was suddenly blind to the
pain in her feet as she started running again.

In the distance she caught sight of thin wisps of
smoke, and she knew with certainty that that was where
she was heading, where she belonged, where Mulder
could not follow.

They were ahead of schedule.

* * * * * * *

> The night sky fell and Josh Ancram got on his
> bicycle, heading out Laurel to the end of China
> Street where he'd get to touch what was, to him at
> least, Eternity.

He had told his parents - well, they weren't his
parents, but Roger and Susan Ancram, the cousins of
people who weren't his parents either, who were
nothing more to him than a pair of incinerated bodies
in Wyoming - that he was going to meet his best buddy
Adam. They let him go; they knew he was close to
Adam, treated the other boy as a confidant - they knew
that Adam knew Josh's real name, knew the skeleton of
the reason why Josh lived with them here in
Springfield, why he didn't look anything like the two
people who purported to be his parents.

It was more than anyone else in town ever suspected.

He wasn't going to meet Adam, though. He was going to
meet someone else entirely.

He didn't know how he knew where to go, or when to go,
or why he had to go; it was a kind of an impulse, but
one he'd had before, right before things started to
shake and move and fly, right before Roger and Susan
Ancram yelled at him and fearful tears pricked his
eyes.

He didn't know who he was, what he was. But he
suspected he was going to find out. He was going to
meet someone who would tell him everything.

He waited on the corner, and sure enough, the sky,
skewered by something beyond his comprehension,
opened; light poured down, intense and white and hot,
so hot, and the boy known to the world as Josh smiled
and whispered one word:

"Mother..."