A/N: As the summary may imply, trigger warning. Also, this really wasn't written to be set in a specific season, but it could probably be seen as an au to season one, since that's where I am in the series. Thanks for reading, reviews would be great!

When they tell you your partner is dead, you're not quite sure what to say. Or even what to think.

All that happens for those first long, arduous moments is that you shake your head. Over and over, starting slow and minute and going until your hair starts shifting down by your shoulders. And you're not even exactly certain what you're shaking your head at – the doctor in front of you, the words that just came out of his mouth, the inescapable feeling of looming fear and dread, all of it, who knows? You're just not thinking.

You don't really have it in you to think right now, but your mind betrays you. It wouldn't be the first time you've wished to un-hear words or un-think thoughts, and you suppose it won't be the last. Regardless –

Your thoughts are racing in spite of yourself, and the only thing they focus on is that your partner is dead. Dead, dead, dead, and you wonder how in the world that could possibly be true. You were standing next to him just hours ago, dragging your feet over the motel room carpet, going over files, and now you're standing by yourself in a crowded emergency room, face to face with a doctor who still has a few rusty smears of blood on the edges of his scrubs, and your next thought – fierce and sudden and cold – is that he must be lying to you.

Your partner's survived worse than this. You tell that lying doctor so; you plant your feet and square your shoulders and stand up as tall as you can make yourself and say that Fox Mulder has survived everything. He's survived point-blank bullets and raging fires, homicidal lunatics and every single strange, impossible thing you've seen since being assigned to work with him. He's a fighter; you know he is. He fights tooth and nail and in the end he always survives, and you tell the doctor this. You don't feel the tear tracks on your cheeks.

And that doctor just keeps staring at you with that awful look of pity in his eyes, and somewhere outside yourself, you know it must be true. Doctors don't come out to meet you, still wearing spots of blood on their clothes and apologizing for your loss, if the patient lives. You would know. You think that maybe in some alternate universe, one where you took your parents' advice, you would be standing right where he is standing and saying the very same words.

Well, you don't want to say those words. You don't want to hear them. You don't want to think them.

But you should be used to not getting what you want by now.

You ask in a shaking, unsteady voice if you can see him. Your dead partner, that is. As if you would want to see anyone else.

By the look in the doctor's eyes, you think he's about to say no. He's knitting his eyebrows and visibly hesitating, but you add a small please - and he concedes.

What you find when they finally let you in is that your partner is still warm and not yet stiff with death. They spare you the task of having to remove the sheet, and then they leave you alone.

(Because that's what you are now. Alone. You'll be flying back to D.C. by yourself, carrying luggage for two.)

You look at his face and think for a moment that he looks impossibly young. Vulnerable and calm, as if in sleep, but you know that's not the case.

He's dead. He's gone, and you're alone.

You don't even think about it as you reach forward and touch the backs of your fingers to the side of his face and feel the fading warmth of his skin. You disregard the entire notion of boundaries as you take a deep breath and run your fingers through his hair, because he's not here anymore to mind it. You think the gesture might have been comforting, if he were alive to receive it. But he's not.

It strikes you as you pull your hand away from his hairline that you're not the only one who must be feeling so alone. Because you remember splitting, in spite of your incessant argument that it was a terrible idea. But Mulder was absolutely nothing if not insistent and stubborn as all hell.

Now you're sitting by his corpse, reminding yourself that even though he died within this hospital's walls, he fell asleep – or rather unconscious –alone, by himself in the middle of the cold woods.

You think he must have felt terrified.

You grab onto his hand and hold it until it goes cool in yours.

His parents are wholly inconsolable. You don't blame them.

They're alone now, too. As they tell you, with broken sentences and struggling breaths, your partner was the only child they had left. They lost their only daughter so many years ago, and now their only son is being put in the ground.

You remember reading about Samantha Mulder and listening to those tapes. You remember how your partner said that the voices promised him – promised him – that someday his sister would return to him.

You think there's sort of a cruel irony to that.

You somehow can't stop yourself from tearing through the top drawer of your partner's old desk and going over each and every file inside.

You spend hours reading them. Each and every one, and then you throw them at the wall with a frustrated cry because there's nothing – not a single thing to give you the slightest semblance of hope.

There are no x-files on necromancy. No x-files on cloning, on ghosts, on time travel. You think, it figures.

There's an x-file for every other phenomenon in this world that makes no sense, but there's nothing that would help you or your partner.

Or maybe just you, now. Your partner is far beyond help.

You look up from the last file in your hands and find that the office around you is all but destroyed. Papers and folders strewn across the floor, the projector knocked over, the lamp hanging off the edge of a table. You almost feel bad.

But it's no matter. It isn't as if he's here to be annoyed about it.

The Bureau assigns you to a new partner in a matter of weeks. You don't like it a bit. But regardless, you comply. Or, at least, you're perfectly willing to comply at first.

But the second your new partner says a thing about Spooky Mulder, you snap. You go off and just start yelling because this guy dares to talk about your partner as if he was a joke. As if he wasn't one of the best agents the Bureau ever had, as if he didn't die trying to save people.

So you yell and yell until your voice grows hoarse, and the new guy seems to get the message. He doesn't say another thing about Fox Mulder.

Still, you're reassigned in a heartbeat. And this time, you're back where you started. Back where you were before you ever met your partner, when Fox Mulder was just a name thrown around every so often by other agents looking over case reports.

You're alone, now. Back to your office and computer and medical reports. It's almost funny, you think. You never once thought you could miss flying across the country and chasing after every inane, ridiculous lead. You never thought you could miss all that talk of UFOs and meteors and space aliens. But you do.

You miss it all. You entertain the idea, just for a moment, of going to your superiors and opening that X-File project once again. But even though you miss it terribly – you're not the right one for the case. Because in spite of everything, you're still the same skeptic you always were. And even if you weren't, you doubt you'd pursue it anyway.

Some things, you suppose, are best kept as memories.

You just wish you weren't the only keeper.