John was a man of his word. He promised to love her and make her happy.
In February, Monica said she missed chips and guacamole. She didn't complain about being so isolated. The snow and the wind didn't faze her as much as it chapped her cheeks. But when she made mention of guacamole, her brown eyes got watery and she didn't finish her bowl of the stew that had been bubbling on the stove all day.
Her birthday came in March, along with one of the first flights out to Anchorage. John met Billy at the old airstrip and handed over a list of ingredients copied from a magazine.
"These last few months have been hard on her. I'd appreciate you grabbing all this stuff," John said, fixing his steely blue eyes on the bush pilot. Billy just nodded.
"And get something for yourself. The wife," John continued, adding a fifty to the twenty he already handed over.
John watched the plane sputter a few times and then bump down the airstrip, sending divots of dirty snow and mud flying. He liked Alaska. Hell, he always liked the outdoors but the NYPD and then the FBI didn't allow much time to indulge in hunting and fishing. Here the salmon and the deer were easy pickings. He could very nearly fish out his kitchen window.
So he didn't worry about himself. He worried about Monica. After her car crash, the debacle in the desert (as she called it) and going on the run, she seemed to pale a bit. The lines on her face were more pronounced and so were the bags under her eyes. In a way, the last year and a half aged her ten. She cried bitterly sometimes about Mulder and Scully and William. She missed her parents, who knew she was okay but didn't know where she was.
They didn't know if Mulder and Scully made it out of the desert. Skinner arranged for their passage to Alaska, providing them with the cover Dana and Fox were supposed to have. Monica grieved. John wanted to help but part of him grieved too, for the life they never got to have.
He trudged back to their little cabin, where soft light from the front window beckoned. The freezing rain, which had been on and off all day, began again in earnest.
Monica was standing at the stove, shivering. The fire wasn't where it needed to be to fend off the chill and dampness in the air. Her hair was damp, curling slightly.
"Hey. Here," he said softly, draping his warm down jacket over her shoulders. She stepped back into him. John's arms went to her waist and her boniness made him shiver a bit himself.
"I started dinner. I hope you don't mind the last of the potpies," she whispered.
"Mon, let me finish up. Go sit in front of the fire, OK?"
She wandered away, still shaking a bit. They ate in silence, sitting on the living room floor. John tried to get interested in a movie but inside he was thinking about that little plane headed south and his big plans.
In bed, huddled under quilts, Monica was asleep immediately. He knew she wanted to be close but not intimate right now and he couldn't imagine taking advantage of her. They were intimate – a lot – after arriving in Alaska. As a matter of fact, that happened the first night they were on the road at a cheap motel somewhere in Arizona. It was a foregone conclusion to everyone but themselves.
The sex was intense and emotional. He finally said "I love you", but a lot happened in that span of 24 hours. Maybe Monica's problem now was that it was finally sinking in, nearly a year later. They were just John and Monica that fateful morning and by midnight everything was completely different. Four days later they pulled up to a cabin in the wilderness as two different people and had to start a life together.
He could still hear her moaning beneath him in that cheap motel, in the scratchy sheets. Now in the softness of the bed – THEIR bed – he listened to her gentle breathing. He closed his eyes and drifted off.