One:

Time slips into that sickening slow motion that it does when something terrible is happening. Sound becomes muffled. Frohike is suspended above his body, looking down at Dana Scully drifting to the floor like a loose dove feather, caught on the tips of their fingers as he and the others ease her descent.

When he covers her with his black leather jacket, Agent Scully appears very small, her face a white smudge in the darkness. Her pale lips move and her vein-etched eyelids flutter, but she isn't truly present in the room. He loosens her clothing and elevates her feet and now has nothing to do but fight his terror as the EMT's finally arrive-seven minutes felt like hours. Time is still moving with the grind of rusty gears. He has to break its glacial bond to the events.

"Anything?" he barks at Byers, motioning toward the man's cellphone.

"It's going straight to Mulder's voicemail," Byers reports with a shake of his head.

One EMT has a clipboard. With his pen hovering over the form, he asks, "And chance Ms. Scully is pregnant?"

John Byers speaks first. "There's no-"

Time stops, then flares like a star imploding, briefly blinding Frohike. He cuts in. "It's a possibility, yes."

Byers and Langley stare at him with their mouths hanging open.

The parametric takes that note and tucks the clipboard between Scully and the bodyboard. Two more EMT's wheel in a gurney and the three friends step back.

Frohike returns to the matter at hand. "We've got to get Mulder on the phone," he commands. "He has to be warned...And told about this."

Langley dials too. "Straight to voicemail," he echoes.

"I'll try Assistant Director Skinner," says Byers, scrolling through his phone's numbers.

Frohike doesn't take his eyes off Scully. Still unconscious, she is carefully lifted and placed on the gurney, then the straps put in place over her. As she's wheeled past, he takes her hand briefly. "We'll be at the hospital," he promises her, even if he wasn't certain that she understands. But he always goes to her sickbed; he'll be there again.

The other two men are still fighting with their phones in frustration. "Nothing," they announce in unison.

Checking the clock, Frohike shakes his head. "It's after midnight in Oregon. We'll have to contact the closest field office and see if we can get some agents out there to check on them. I don't want to be the one to tell Agent Scully that we've lost touch with Mulder."

Trailing behind him, John and Langley mirror his head shake.

But half an hour later, ensconced in a line of waiting room chairs, there is still no contact with either Skinner or Mulder. Frohike now wishes fervently for time to not just slow, but stop dead until that phone rings back.

Byers crosses his legs and straightens the crease on his slacks. He clears his throat. "Frohike, why did you say that Agent Scully may be pregnant?"

The older man leans forward to rest his elbows on his knees. He peered at John over his shoulder. "You didn't actually believe Agent Scully's story that she was dropping off donuts when we met her coming out of Mulder's apartment that morning, did you?"

John smooths his tie. "I haven't really considered it one way or another," he says with great dignity.

"I did," confesses Langley, his adam's apple waggling.

"Me too," Frohike says, brooding.

"But that is not to the case," protests Byers. "One does not follow the other because we know all too well that Scully isn't able to-"

"Mulder told us to watch out for her," Frohike says. "I was covering all contingencies."

Byers nods unhappily and finally falls silent.

Under the hot stare of the subject herself, Mulder had pulled the three of them aside before he left the Hoover Building. Only to have her take Skinner in a corner, her low voice somehow the strongest one in the room, giving her supervisor his own implicit directions.

Byers' phone rings, stopping any further protests. He quickly connects his call. "Yes, Mr. Skinner?"

Langley and Frohike slump slightly at the name that's not Mulder.

After listening to a terse few words from Skinner, Byers blanches white under his beard. Frohike buries his face in his gloved hands.

"I see...Yes," mutters Byers. Then, after a long pause, adds, "I'm afraid there's bad news on our end as well." He goes on to explain, then nods at whatever Skinner is saying, even though the other man can't see him.

When he hangs up, he says, "Well, that's it. He's coming back as soon as possible. There's nothing more to be done in Oregon."

Frohike nods, his head still in his hands.

The minutes tick by in their precise, painful sixty second intervals before a doctor finally comes for them. He surveys the motley group. "Only one," he announces.

Squaring his shoulders, Frohike stands. "I'll do it," he says, more to them than the doctor.

Having listened to the usual warnings not to stress the patient, Frohike enters the dim room and sinks to the chair beside Scully. Her eyes are closed. He gently lifts her slack hand and cradles it in his gloves. Her fingers warm and flex slightly.

"Mul'er?" she murmurs, her eyelids fluttering.

"He's not here yet, Agent Scully," Frohike hedges.

She lolls her head over to focus on him. "Okay," she says child-like, her gaze wide-eyed.

He takes a deep breath to hold back his emotions at this sight. "Good to have you back with us. No more laying down on the job," he says too gruffly, trying to cover.

Her squeeze on his fingers shows that she forgives him.

"Thank you," she whispers.

"For what?"

"They tell me that you warned the EMT's that I may be pregnant; averted possibly endangering my fetus."

There's that breath again, so like a sob, rising in his barrel chest. "No problem," he manages to say.

Her brow furrows. "How did you know...If I couldn't know."

That finally breaks the tension for him. He adores Dana Scully when she worries that she's missing a joke, even if it's a cosmic one.

"I make my living by imagining the unexpected, unexplained and unbelieved, Agent Scully. It was just another such moment."

"My pregnancy and flukemen...On the same front page," she says and he quickly makes clear, "Never."

The grip tightens on his hand. Her smile is tremulous. "I need to talk to Mulder," she says and it sounds like a question instead of a statement.

Her hand is light; the white feather floats in his grasp again. He lifts it to his mouth, and presses his lips to the translucent skin on the back. He cannot meet her gaze or say the words, but in the hitch to her breathing, he knows that she understands.

But she still says it again: "I need to talk to Mulder," and there is no question this time.

end ~ part 1

E/N: Yes, I took the comic relief characters and made them be angsty!