Title: This Fragile Universe
Author: Neoxphile
Keywords: MSR; alternate universe (literally and figuratively)
Spoilers: late season seven & some eight.

Timeline: Begins very late season seven just after Je Souhaite, which I contend takes place late summer of 2000. Requiem doesn't happen. Some of season eight remains intact, nonetheless.

Summary: in 1972 frightened boy splits reality, creating a world with an alternate destiny. Twenty-eight years later, there is trouble in paradise. Special Agent Fox Mulder may be their only hope. ...but who will save him?

Author's notes: * I promise that, outside of third party dialogue, I will not refer to our Mulder and Scully as "Fox" and "Dana" except in the pre-series portions of this fic.

This is a posting experiment. Due to very little reader interest, I put this fic aside without finishing it four years ago. If people show interest in it through feedback, I'm willing to give finishing the story a go.

Prologue:

Miramar Naval Air Station
San Diego
December 18th, 1970

"Dana, come on."

Looking up at her mother's inpatient tone, the little redhead put her crayons down with great reluctance; Santa and his sleigh were neatly filled in, but the team of reindeer were still off-white, and leaving it half done bothered her budding sense of aesthetics.

Still, her mother was helping Charlie get his coat on, and she knew that she'd be expected to get herself ready before Maggie was ready herself. Zippers were tricky for small six-year-old fingers. As far as Dana was concerned, this "big girl" stuff was overrated, no matter what her mother and Missy said.

Mittens on, she slipped her hand into Charlie's. His mittens had teddy bears on them. Publicly she agreed with Billy - but now he wanted everyone calling him Bill, which confused her - that they were babyish, but secretly she wished her mittens had bears too.

"Where we going, Mommy?"

"Captain Nightwoods is being transferred to a base in Massachusetts, so we are going to say goodbye to his family."

"What about Daddy, Missy, and Billy?"

"Daddy will say goodbye later, and I don't think that Missy or Billy have ever met the Nightwoods. Jamie and Jordon go to a different school."

"To my school," Dana said, referring to the public elementary school. Her older siblings attended Catholic school, but were lobbying to go to public school well, taking the fact that Dana hadn't been transferred to their school after kindergarten as they had as a sign that private school was losing its appeal to their parents.

"That's right," Maggie agreed, ushering the children out the door.

"Will Santa know where Jamie and Jordon are?" Dana asked as they reach the Nightwoods' driveway. "'cause it's almost Christmas."

"Of course."

"How?"

"There's an elf whose job it is to keep track of where kids moved to in December," Maggie told her.

"Like the post office does?" Dana asked thinking of forwarding orders. Her family had already moved twice in her short life, so they were something she was familiar with.

"Exactly."

"Are we going to move too?"

"Not now."

"But someday?" Dana persisted.

"Maybe. I can't see into the future, Dana."

"Jamie," Charlie said, pointing the thumb of his left mitten at the open front door of the house where a dark-haired boy was standing. In the house full of talkers, Charlie was the only one to considered words at a premium.

Dana approached the house shyly. She liked Jordon okay, but Jamie was an even older kid, and that always made her little anxious - she is always scared that she'd do something dumb that make them teased her. Like Billy always did.

Jamie gave them a sad smile when his mother invited them in.

"I am sorry that you're moving," Dana told him and eight-year-old Jordon.

"Me too," Jamie said with a sigh

"It ain't fair we gotta move," Jordon added.

"Jordon Nightwoods, how many times to have to tell you not to say 'ain't' and 'gotta'?" Mrs. Nightwoods scolded.

Before Jordon came up with an answer sure to get him into trouble, the mothers got to their goodbyes.

Right before they left, Dana worried that are mother was going to make her kiss the Nightwoods boys goodbye. It happened to her friend Kathy - her mother had made her kiss a boy on the cheek while the mothers had cooed about how sweet it was. Fortunately, that didn't happen this time.

"Goodbye," Dana said when her mother took Charlie's hand.

"Goodbye." Both boys looked forlorn.

Dana was sure she'd never see either of them again.

Chilmark, Massachusetts
October 30th, 1972
4:45pm

"Fox, have you ever heard of a soap bubble universe?"

Fox looked up with a frown. Even though he kept asking people to call him Mulder, no one listened; of all people he thought Jimmy would, since he often griped that his parents still called him Jamie, as if he were five. Jimmy was looking back at him, with an excited gleam in his brown eyes. His friend really dug physics, which wasn't something he really cared for. Still, Jimmy was his friend, so he repressed an annoyed sigh. "Don't think so. What is it, a world made out of soap?"

"Nah. Back when the big bang had just happened, and the universes were still forming, all the new universes got surrounded by bubble of ionized gas. But not little bubbles like when we're taking a bath-"

"You take bubble baths?" Fox asked, incredulous. Samantha kept a bottle of Mister Bubble in their bathroom, but he never heard of a boy over the age of six admitting to taking one.

"No. anyway, they were huge pockets of gas, and they eventually got absorbed into the new universes as they expanded, and eventually all of the gas in space was ionized."

"Okay...how come you're thinking about that?"

"I was reading a biography on Joseph Cornell that my dad bought me."

"Oh. Have you read Flowers for Algernon? I think it came out about six years ago. It's about this guy who's dumb that they make smart -"

"Yeah, I read it." Jimmy pushed his dark bangs out of his eyes and looked at the metal alarm clock sitting on Fox's bureau and compared it to his watch to see if it was accurate. It was. "Wow, it's getting late, I better get home before my mom has a fit. She's already been in a grouchy mood all week because Jordon got into another fight at school."

"Your brother gets into a lot of trouble," Fox observed. "That's one of the only good things about having a little sister, she doesn't make my parents mad by getting into trouble."

"Aww, come on. I know you like your sister, so that's not the only good thing about her."

"I said about having a sister. I like her, mostly, but it'd of been better if she'd been born a boy, you know?"

"I guess. I've always kind of wanted a sister, though."

"They're more trouble than you'd think. Oh, I forgot, Mom said you could stay for dinner if you wanted."

"Aww man, I can't. My mother would never let me at the last minute because she's already made dinner, I bet."

"Too bad," Fox said glumly. "Maybe next week."

"Yeah, maybe," Jimmy echoed, stuffing things back into school bag.

4:55 p.m.

Jimmy reached the intersection before his road when Mrs. Snow drove by in her gold Cadillac. She noticed Jimmy and lifted one hand to wave to him before continuing down the road a little ways before pulling into her driveway. Jimmy waved back, but he wasn't sure that she saw him.

The kitchen light wasn't on when Jimmy got home, and that struck him as a little odd, since his mother should have gotten back from picking Jordon up from detention by then according to his watch. The front door wasn't locked, so he thought that perhaps the light had blown out or there was a power failure. Looking over his shoulder, though, he could see the glow of a TV in the neighbor's window. "Gotta be a bulb blown out," he muttered before opening the door and calling uncertainly. "Mom?"

Instead of his mother's voice, he heard a male one. Unfamiliar. "You bitch! I told you that you better not call anyone!"

His mother's voice answered, high and pleading. "I didn't! It's my son, it's just my son."

"I don't believe you," the voice growled back. "That's your son there, so how could your son be outside?"

"I have two sons!" his mother shouted.

Then there was a sound that Jimmy's brain couldn't quite conceptualize. It was a bang, and it sounded familiar, but it wasn't a house sound. It was a movie sound effect, for action films and war movies. Gunfire.

His mother screamed once, long and low, then felt silent. Jordon didn't make a sound.

The boy squeezed his eyes tightly shut. "This is not happening. This is not happening."

4:54 p.m.

Jimmy opened his eyes, and was startled to find that he was half a block away. He looked down the street, hoping that he could go to Mrs. Snow for help. She was his neighbor, and knew his mom. If his mother was dead, he wanted someone with him when he found out. An adult.

Mrs. Snow's driveway was empty. He blinked in confusion, since it'd only been a minute since she passed him and waved. The sound of a car behind him made him turn, and there the gold Cadillac was, and Mrs. Snow was raising her hand…

It wasn't possible, Jimmy told himself, but his wristwatch said that it was a minute earlier than when he looked at it the last time.

One glance at his darkened house was enough to make up his mind. If he'd somehow been given a second chance, he wasn't going to blow it. He turned on his heel and ran back to Fox Mulder's house.

Teena Mulder greeted him with a warm smile. "You're back."

"My mom had to go to my grandma's at the last minute, she left me a note…is it too late to change my mind about staying for dinner?" Jimmy lied glibly as he secretly battled to stay calm. Everything that had happened before was his imagination, and he hadn't actually seen his mother dead, so it was just a dream, or maybe a hallucination. It had to be.

"Of course not."

The boy almost collapsed with relief when Fox's mother bought his story. Dream or not, he didn't want to have to call home, just in case.

The two boys were doing the dishes when Jimmy's father pulled into the driveway. They heard him talking to Mrs. Mulder in a low voice, and she made a sympathetic sound that set Jimmy's nerves on edge. He wiped his hands and walked out to them.

"I'm glad you were here, Jamie," his father told him, slinging an arm around his shoulder. "Someone broke into the house about an hour ago."

"Are Mom and Jordon okay?" he asked in a voice not much more than a trembling whisper.

"They're shaken up, but they're okay. The thief didn't hurt them, but he scared them pretty bad with his gun."

Jimmy's eyes searched his father's face, wondering if he was lying, but the man's expression was utterly sincere. "I'm glad that they're okay."

As they drove back to the house, Jimmy stared out the window, into the growing dark. Hearing his mother being shot had to be his imagination. It just had to be.

He threw himself into his mother's arms as soon as he saw her, and couldn't explain to anyone why there were tears running down his face.