This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man's hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.
Her world ends with a bang. Not a whimper. A yell. Anguish. Pain.
Monica senses it before she hears it. In the rubble, in the dust, in the flames—Scully's heart breaking.
No. No no no no no—
It's the silence that's going to kill her, kill them both. The godawful emptiness of this place. The air feels dry and hot around them. They didn't stop driving from DC to Canada, so hell-bent on getting to William before the cult could do anything to him.
And now, among the rubble, the broken pieces of the space craft, the dust and the flames and the heat, she feels the charge of the night. The sense that something happened here, something big-something to shift everything into motion. Monica Reyes doesn't pray, but she finds herself pleading to the God Scully believes in, to anyone who might be listening—
Don't let them have killed him, please. Let him be alive.
Like all her prayers, she knows it's futile.
Dana ran ahead of her, legs pounding, surging on by adrenaline and that red hair flying like a beacon and even though Monica's legs are longer she found she had a difficult time keeping up.
She could feel it before they even stepped into the area, that notion of wrongness, of stillness, of—
Of death.
And she wanted to reach out and grab Dana by the arm and stop her from seeing what Monica already knew, because she could feel the emptiness and the fear and the pieces of a puzzle falling into place.
But Scully was too fast for her to catch her, and then the silence is pierced by Scully wailing, and Monica wants to avert her eyes from what she knows she'll see—her friend cradling her son's body, shoulders shaking.
Dammit. God dammit, they killed him.
Monica's never felt so fucking useless as she does in that moment, kicking the dirt and listening to her friend's heart tear in two.
She was stupid, so fucking stupid to believe they wouldn't kill him, how no religion decreed the death of a child—wasn't Abraham supposed to sacrifice Isaac for the good of his people, after all?
She doesn't know. She can't remember. Those stories are more Scully's forte than hers.
Monica takes a few hesitant steps forward towards her friend's bent form, her dark red hair falling like a curtain around her face, almost like a shield, protecting her dead child from prying eyes.
Her dead child. Jesus.
But at least Dana has stopped screaming, though Monica doesn't know if this is a good or a bad thing.
She breathes in, takes in the night air tinged with warmth and smoke and suddenly she can't breathe anymore because Dana has shifted and she can see her son her son her—
Monica turns away and retches, clutching her stomach, heaving. The smoke is burning her eyes, she thinks, but she can't cry because the only thing in her head now is she has to has to has to be strong for Dana.
But right now that feels impossible.
There will be no funeral. No prayers, no mass, no incense to clear the air or priest to bless her son.
Her son.
Her son is dead. Destined for some higher purpose and now—
She feels numb. Nothing. She can hear Monica retching behind her but it doesn't register, nothing registers but this bundle in her arms.
She can hear Monica's words from earlier echoing around her head. Your child is a miracle, Dana.
But if he were a miracle he wouldn't be dead, would he?
After all the trying, the hurt of losing Emily, her nights with Mulder-
Mulder.
MulderMulderMulder.
Her heart starts beating faster, if she can think of it as beating still.
If they killed William—
Maybe—
Maybe there's a chance Mulder is still alive. Because if not, then she's cradling her last link to him in her arms. Her last link is gone, her son, her son is—
She coughs, blinks away the stinging in her eyes. Monica has stopped vomiting, and it takes Scully a minute to realize her hand is now hovering above her shoulder, afraid to reach out.
"Dana?"
It takes her a minute, too, to realize that's her own name.
"Dana, let me..."
"No," she growls, and she clutches William's body to her chest and looks up at Monica, a wild, feral thing ready to attack.
"Let me help you up. I won't take him," Monica says gently. "I just want to help."
In that moment she hates her. She hates the pitying look on Monica's face and her outstretched hand, because Monica doesn't understand, she will never understand, and Scully hates her for it. Nothing Monica does is going to help.
With panic rising in her chest Scully realizes they never had William baptized, never had him christened, and now it's too late.
She prays God takes him. She prays harder than she ever has in her life, harder than she did when Mulder was in the hospital, all those times she's thought he was dying.
Please. Please save my son. Please redeem him please take him please please please-
For the first time, she doesn't think anyone's listening.
It takes all of Monica's convincing for Scully to get up, and they are there in that desolate patch of earth for hours, digging a grave for William.
Scully refuses to go back to Washington with his body, and a part of Monica knows that if they bury him here, in this field, if there is no grave to visit or to mark who he was—what he was—then it will be easier for Scully to accept.
She doesn't bring up Scully's faith, the possibility of the funeral, though the cross swinging around her friend's neck almost looks like it's burning in the glow from the embers. It feels wrong to speak, to say anything really.
At last the grave is dug, the body (it's so hard to think of him as William, as the baby she watched and helped sing to sleep a few nights, helped deliver) is placed in, and Dana stands there with a fistful of earth she can't bring herself to drop until Monica gently pries her fingers apart.
Dana isn't sobbing anymore. She's staring into the ground, blank-eyed, numb. Monica leads her to the car, decides on her own it'd be best not to drive to DC tonight, or at all, and finds the two of them a motel.
(She knows a shower and food won't help, not really, but she can hope, right?)
(How do you fix a wound like this?)
She resists the urge to call Skinner and tell him what happened, not knowing if Follmer's going to be listening in or not, not ready to admit the truth-that they failed, that Dana's son is dead, and that Mulder probably is, too.
She pays for a motel-in cash, one bed, since she doubts she'll be sleeping after this anyway. She carries their backpacks in and Dana follows her without a word, and when they step in and shut the door Monica sits in a chair and Dana just-
Stands there.
"You should shower," Monica says, and it's the first she's said since she offered to help Dana up.
But Scully doesn't move towards the shower. Instead, she heads to her backpack, opens it, dumps the contents on the bed and begins pawing through them furiously.
"Dana..."
But she doesn't hear her. She claws through her belongings like they're dirt until she finds a piece of paper and Monica doesn't see it but she watches Dana clutch it to her chest like it's a lifeline.
"He's not dead," she says, voice choked and raw.
Monica's heart skips. "I saw the body, we buried him..."
"Not Will-not my son. Mulder. He's not dead."
She says it with such certainty Monica freezes. She looks up at Monica and her eyes are bright, sparking like they haven't since they saw the body. "I know it."
"Dana..."
"Don't," she says. "You... you read auras, you feel things, don't tell me you think he's dead." Her voice is hoarse. And suddenly, like a whirlwind, she begins throwing things back in her bag. "I have to find him."
The implication is clear. I have to tell him myself.
"Since the cult kill-since they—that means they'll go after Mulder next. Ensure the prophecy doesn't come to light, but either way we're preparing for a war, and either way—"
She doesn't finish, but Monica knows. It's the same look she's seen in Doggett's eyes whenever Luke is brought up.
Either way, someone has to pay for this.
"You can't go now."
"Why not?" Her voice is a live wire.
"Because you're distraught and you need to sleep and you can't drive right now-"
"Like hell I can't."
Monica stands up out of the dusty motel chair, grips her friend's elbow, and Dana shakes her off so violently she almost falls.
"Don't try to stop me," she says.
"I won't. Not fully, but please, think this through—you'll do better if you're rested, if you're well, and you've already been through a lot tonight—"
"That's why I have to go."
Monica shakes her head. "Then fine. I'm coming with you."
"I don't need you."
Monica flinches but tries to ignore how much that comment hurts her.
"You need someone who's going to make sure you're not reckless and stupid," she says.
"They killed my son," Dana cries, and the spark that was blazing in her eyes turns to something wild and manic. "What else am I supposed to do? Sit around here and wait until they kill Mulder too?"
Her voice breaks when she says it, and Monica watches as the fight drains out of her and suddenly she rushes forward to catch Dana before she slumps to the ground, dead weight in her arms.
She lays her on the motel bed, stares too hard at that dark green and blue checked pattern.
"You will get your revenge," she says, the words surprising her. "We'll catch them, I promise. We'll find Mulder. But if we're doing this, we're doing it together, and we're leaving in the morning."
Dana doesn't fight her. It's like someone flipped a switch and let the fury flow out and left only a husk, a shell. She curls up on the bed and doesn't protest when Monica sits and keeps watch in the chair, and right now she doesn't look like a woman capable of revenge, only something small, fragile, broken.
But Monica knows that's a lie.
a/n: this is my first chapter in a new series i'm super excited about! as always, comments are welcome (and i do respond to them), particularly suggestions for where the story should go!