Disclaimer: I don't own the X-Files, I'm just an unpaid but enthusiastic fanficcer with too much time on my hands.

Happy Halloween everyone! Hope you like it!

Agent Scully is in the morgue, which is fairly normal. She stands over her own dead body, which is not. Vague memories flicker as she tries to recall how she got here. She'd been out shopping, minding her own business, coming out of the grocery store. Naturally, she hadn't thought to wear Kevlar under her street clothes. The last thing she remembers is a gunshot in the back and then it all got fuzzy.

She watches as her mother comes to identify her body, unable to touch or make herself heard. Unable to console her. She watches the autopsy, then some time later both Mulder and Skinner arrive to see for themselves. Both men are reduced to emotional wrecks. The ordinarily impenetrable A.D. Skinner sobs dryly, clutching at Mulder in their shared grief. Any attempt of Scully's to speak to them is utterly useless. She steps forward and passes right through them. They leave and she remains, dutifully bound to her physical form, as though by parting with it she would admit she had no further use for it. There hadn't been any pain. It was over too fast for her to even know what had hit her. It's possible that the bullet that felled her hadn't even been meant for her. She may have been two steps away from being a witness to a murder rather than the victim.

For hours, Scully stays in the morgue, leaning up against the drawer her body has been rolled into. Then the room brightens, and a white figure stands before her.

"Dana!"

Scully peers, squinting into the brightness. "Missy?"

The image of her sister holds out her hand, "Come with me. It's over. It's all right. It's time to come home."

Staring at her sister's outstretched hand, Scully hesitates. Something holds her back. "I'm not ready," she breathes. "I can't be dead."

"I felt the same way. I was surprised, too, when it happened to me."

"Missy, I'm so sorry."

Her sister smiles, unperturbed by the past. "That doesn't matter now. Come. It's time."

"I need to get to Mulder. Tell him what happened."

"He was here and you couldn't speak to him. I saw. What makes you think he'd hear you?"

Irritated by this feeling of powerlessness, Scully paces, appealing to Melissa, "I don't know, I can make him, though! He believes in ghosts and-"

"And so do you. You've seen them. Haven't you?"

Scully runs a hand through her hair, messing it up from the front on back."God, Missy, is that what you've been doing all this time? Watching me at work?"

"Believe me, yours was more interesting than the others'."

"Right...So, you have to let me try again. Please! I don't want to die. I have to talk to Mulder."

"Look, Dana, I've been sent to bring you back with me. If you're not coming I don't know when the next trip up will be. You might not get to come," Missy tells her regretfully. "Please. Mulder will be all right. You'll be able to watch him whenever you want."

"Dammit, Missy, I don't want to watch him, I want to stay with him!" she blurts out in a moment of fierce honesty. "I'm not dead, I'm not!"

Missy walks the room over, gestures to the drawer her sister's body is in. "I'd call that pretty dead, wouldn't you?"

"We've been through too much. Accidents and illness and global conspiracies, alien abduction, hired hit-men..."

"And you were caught in crossfire and died," Missy informs her bluntly. She takes in the hopeless look on her sister's face, knowing that all the reasoning in the world won't get her anywhere. "Go on, visit Mulder."

"How? I don't even know how I got here."

Missy stands next to her sister, placing her hands on her shoulders. "You exist here, your body's here. But you exist there, too, don't you? Part of you is there. You can go. Just concentrate."

"What if I can't...?" Scully trails off uncertainly with a skyward glance.

Her sister shrugs, "That's your choice, and your risk. Is he worth forsaking Heaven?"

Scully gazes up at the column of light her sister descended from, catching just a glimpse of what might await her there. "I couldn't be happy there alone."

"I thought so. Kind of makes you wish you'd done something while you were alive, doesn't it?"

Scully nods. She gives Missy a smile, thinking how long it's been since they've seen each other, and how long it might be until their next reunion. "Mulder doesn't believe in Heaven. I won't leave him."

"I thought so. Take care, huh?"

"Yeah. You, too."

They embrace one last time and Missy leaves. The room returns to darkness and Scully is alone among the dead. In her mind and in her heart, she focuses on her partner, the only man she'd have forsaken Heaven for. It's as easy as thinking of him and she finds herself in his apartment. He's on the couch watching a movie, "Plan 9 from Outer Space". He watches with glassy eyes, not even seeing or hearing the movie, just frozen in grief. Scully sits next to him as she's done dozens of times before. She half-expects him to scoot towards her or acknowledge her in some way. The situation is too normal for it to be anything else.

"I'm staying, Mulder. I don't know if you can see or hear me...but I'm staying."

Mulder shifts position, laying down with the TV still on, to sleep. For a moment, his legs are stretched out right through her before she moves off the couch. She wonders if he can feel anything; if, in her spectral form, she is warm or cold or if she just doesn't register to the living at all. Scully sits next to him on the floor, glad to be spared Earthly discomforts from her lack of an actual body. Hours pass. As a ghost, she doesn't need to sleep, so she just sits up with him and watches contentedly. Well, not quite contentedly. As much as she'd tried to deny it when she was alive, she's very much in love with this man. There comes a certain clarity with having died, that she can't ignore it anymore. With a twinge of painful regret, Scully wishes she could snuggle up to him forever and ever. She places a hand over his, and it passes through him like mist. Still, she stays like this all night, murmuring softly to him while he sleeps fitfully, hoping she's doing some good by being near him.

The next morning, Mulder opens his eyes and sees Scully next to him. He stares, wide-eyed, and sits up. Several seconds pass as they just stare at each other. Scully is equally off-put, then she sees...She brings a hand to her mouth in mild horror. Still lying on the couch is Mulder's body, as his spirit sits up to regard her. "Oh, Mulder..." she sighs regretfully.

Mulder follows her line of vision and starts back in shock. "Yahh!" he shudders, standing up and scuttling behind his partner, pointing at his own corpse. "What...what...?!"

"I've read about this," Scully answers, standing up as well and stepping towards him. "Usually happens with married couples. Some die within days of each other with no known cause."

"Grief. I...I died of grief. Wait...what are you doing still here? I thought you had a first class ticket up that-a-way?" He gestures to the ceiling.

Scully nods with a shrug. "I stayed. I wanted to. I couldn't leave you behind."

"But...you might not ever get to go now. What if you're stuck here as a spirit forever?"

Scully smiles serenely, slipping her hand into his, "I love you," she admits at long last. "I chose to stay with you."

"You stayed because of me. Scully..." he pushes his irritation aside and takes her into his arms. "We have to get out of here. How long until they find...?"

"Skinner knew what happened to me. I don't think he'd be surprised if..." she, too, trails off, with a significant look at the body. Just then, the phone rings. The answering machine picks up and after the beep they hear the caller:

"Mulder, it's Skinner. Look...I'm on the way over. What happened yesterday...this changes everything. I'll be there in 20. Don't do anything rash."

They exchange looks, "Well, that answers that. Want to stay until he gets here?" Scully asks.

"Nah. So where do we go?"

"I talked to Missy yesterday. She made it sound like we could go anywhere we existed. If we were somehow attached to a place, we could appear there."

"You saw your sister? What else did she say?"

Scully shrugs, "Just that if I didn't go with her, I might lose my chance of...going...at all. That she doesn't hold a grudge against me for what happened to her. And she suggested I should've done something about us while we were still alive rather than wait to show my feelings after I was gunned down."

"Better late than never, though. I'll give you points for style." Mulder tells her, giving her a tight hug and kiss on the forehead. "Now we just have one question left. Where do we haunt?"

A wicked grin crosses Scully's face, immediately mirrored by her partner. As usual, they're thinking the same thing. "I have a pretty good idea..."

"Could be a federal offense."

"Come and get me."

In the blink of an eye, they stand together in the basement office they'd spent so much of their lives in. They both look around at it and have to smile, they're home. Mulder settles in his chair and looks up at his collection of pencils littering the ceiling. "So, now what? Apart from sitting down for some reason, we can't touch anything." He looks up at his partner and sees a highly determined look on her face as she reaches towards the stapler. On the first try her fingers go right through it. She clenches her teeth and looks intensely focused. She reaches out again and nudges it an inch. Mulder looks amazed. "How did you do that?! I forgot you had a head start on me with this whole 'being dead' business we've got going on.

"Ghost," she utters

"Being ghosts, then."

"No, Mulder, the movie Ghost. They say if you focus your energy hard enough it lets you touch things. It's hard at first, but I think we'll get better as we practice."

"And the chick flick is suddenly useful." He tries to lean back in his chair but ends up falling right out the back of it. Picking himself up with as much grace as he can, Mulder dusts himself off. "Great, this is just great. Yesterday we were contributing members of society, now we have to practice to be able to touch things."

Scully doesn't seem to be bothered by this turn of events, "No one ever said that being a ghost is easy. Plus, how are we supposed to properly haunt the place if we can't move stuff around...Spooky?"

"After you, Mrs. Spooky," he snarks back. Looking up to see her reaction, he's surprised to see she's smiling at him. A little sadly, but it's definitely a smile. She likes being Mrs Spooky? He wonders.

They spend the morning "practicing" and it seems no time has gone by at all when Skinner comes down into the room. Instinctively, both agents straighten up respectfully for their superior, then together they realize he can't see them and they relax again. Skinner paces, looking all around as though he'd just entered a sacred shrine. Two more steps bring him literally on top of Agent Scully and he freezes in place. It gives him the distinct impression that he's not alone in the room, he senses a strong presence that he can't put a name on. "Hello? Is someone there?"

"Sir, it's me, it's Dana Scully. I'm here. Mulder's here, too."

"Hello? Anyone?"

Now realizing that sensing her isn't enough, Scully removes herself from him, looking shaken. "That was weird," she admits.

Mulder looks her over, obviously concerned. "You all right?"

She raises her eyebrow at him. "Mulder, I'm dead. Apart from that, I'm just peachy. That was weird, though, standing right in him. I felt...I think I felt his soul. It was actually kind of nice." Knowing that going into detail won't help matters, she thinks to herself how it had felt to be that close to him, close enough to feel his beating heart. Was it her imagination, or had Scully actually felt the pain that Skinner was suffering, the loss of his favorites who'd given him such a hard run of it over the years? Yes, it had been real. He'd come to feel for the infamous pair as though they were his own son and daughter, and the loss he feels now is close to unbearable. Scully watches him inspect their office, sharing his sadness and regret.

They watch Skinner walk around the room, muttering to himself. "I could've sworn...felt like someone was here." He raises his voice significantly, "If either of you are down here, if you can hear me...it won't be the same without you. I, uh..I'll miss you." He steps behind the desk and faces the bulletin board. He removes the pushpins from Mulder's poster and takes it off the wall, rolling it up in a tube.

"Hey, that's mine! You put that back!" Mulder protests uselessly. Scully puts a hand on his arm, shaking her head and bringing him to heel.

"Let him have it. If he wants it to remember you by, let him keep it. I'll try to get his attention." Scully tries her luck with her new-found abilities, flicking a pushpin off the desk, hitting Skinner square in the back. "Yes!" she cries out in triumph. Skinner brings a hand to his back where the pin had struck, whipping back around to see what had caused it. Seeing nothing, he leaves, but gives the room a shifty look. Both agents share a glance and follow him out, for lack of anything better to do. On the way up the elevator, they take turns prodding Skinner, watching him look around for the culprit, giggling to themselves like naughty schoolchildren. They spend the remainder of the day in Skinner's office, reading over his shoulder as he goes over their old reports with an occasional chuckle of remembrance. Mulder and Scully start giving each other a running commentary of various cases.

"Remember the time we just got back from Texas and that whole vampire business?" Mulder offers.

Scully makes an annoyed sound, barely concealing a laugh, "I thought he was going to kill us. And you, Mr. Suave, 'I was drugged!'"

"Well, that's what you told me to say!"

"Yes, to bring it up or at least lay some stress on that fact, not use it as your opening and closing defense! God, I'm surprised we didn't go to prison for that!"

"Well, the kid wasn't dead, luckily. Just undead!" He growls eerily, wiggling his fingers at her. "Hey, Scully?"

"Hmm?"

"Any idea what we do next?"

She thinks about it, looks about ready to say she doesn't know, when Skinner puts their old cases aside and the phone rings. He picks up and a short conversation ensues.

"Yeah...yeah, both of them. Thank you, it's...difficult to say the least. I don't care what anyone else thought of them, they were the best field agents I've known, they'll be hard to replace. Thank you. Already? Look, I'm all for efficiency, but...the bodies aren't even cold yet! Fine, fine, send him on up. I just hope he's up to scratch. What do you think they wouldhave thought of him? Ah. Well. Yes, I'll see him." Both dead agents wonder if it's a trick of the light or if they see a smile hinting on their boss's face...what could this mean?

"We're being replaced already?!" Scully demands, looking thoroughly unsettled.

"At least they're not closing down the X-Files," Mulder allows, "That's something." A few minutes later, a man enters. He shakes hands with Skinner and sits down.

The two ghosts hang back silently, watching the interview with their replacement. John Doggett seems to be a clean-cut, down to business kind of guy, whose attitude to the paranormal mirrored Scully's from when she first started out. It really brought to the fore how much ground she had made over the years, how much she became willing to accept during her time as Mulder's partner.

"So what do you think?" Scully leans in and asks softly, forgetting for the moment that they can't be heard.

"He's definitely a piece of work. Does he look like the guy from Terminator to you?"

Scully grins evilly, giving him a nudge with her elbow. "I see potential, anyway. This is perfect, the guy's never seen or experienced anything weird. He'd be great to practice on. He'd probably even get freaked by what we can do now. This promises to be fun."

Mulder leans in and murmurs into her hair, "I love you."