Six months later…

--

The curtains had been drawn. The stage had been set. There was no turning back now.

As Doggett strode to her place, he knew something had changed. They had shifted. Someone had pulled them into high gear. Electricity sparked in his veins.

Doggett was not a superstitious man, but he would have bet his life on his instinctual premonitions. The dark side of his heart knew that the world would tilt that day. There was an invisible line that needed to be crossed. This was it.

They had come so far.

Doggett had reached Scully's apartment and found her crumpled on the floor. Half alive. Under his gaze she did not stir.

"Dana!"

Weighed down with fear he rushed to her lifeless form and marvelled at the accuracy of his intuition. Was this the culmination of their unfulfilled sin? An answer to the ghost of a question?

It was their final day of reckoning. It had to end sometime.

Spurred by his urgency, Scully finally moved. Sporadically, like a woman who had already been devoured by the madness of her fate. Scully's breathing wavered as she gasped for air. Any small piece of normalcy.

"John?" She asked with a faraway voice. Her eyes were glazed over, tracing a world that he could not see.

Her face held an emotion he could not quite understand, an emotion he was certain she never wanted him to see.

"He's gone." She whispered, over and over again. As if the words could somehow make the reality easier to accept.

Scully collapsed, defeated, into Doggett's arms.

"He's gone."

It was an irritatingly sunny day that shone down on the congregation. A handful of grievers surrounded the casket, but no one uttered a single word. They simply watched the unbidden anguish that sketched Scully's face. This woman, stronger than all else, was coming undone. Her pain put every other emotion and condolence to shame. It was a testament to his fallen soul.

The priest rambled, almost an afterthought to the proceedings. Almost a mockery of everything that had come before, of everything that would come after. Had anyone even known him besides her? Had she even really known? Scully clung valiantly to each hollow phrase.

What had his last words been? His last thought? Had he thought of her? Would she do the same when she took her dying breath?

Scully had never been the one who found the answers; that had been his job. She was the one who had chosen to run away.

Maybe she had run too far, too fast.

"May his soul and the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace."

In one swift moment, Fox Mulder was set deep into the ground, never to rise again.

Doggett wandered aimlessly, unsure of his own footing. He had barely known Mulder. All he could recall was the faint edge of hatred, but it now seemed remarkably unfounded. Did he have the right to forgive a man whose faults were eerily similar to his own?

He stumbled upon Scully. She was seated rigidly on a decrepit park bench. Doggett took his seat quietly, afraid to make any noise, afraid to frighten her away. She was like dirty glass that had been waiting to shatter.

She turned to face him with a sense of déjà vu. How many times had the two of them sat like this, side-by-side, unable to speak the truth?

Did Scully even know what the truth was anymore?

"I can't stay here." She started. "I have to stop this."

"Stop what?"

Scully levelled her shoulders, regaining a shred of her dignity and her resolve. "The informant that Mulder had gone to see contacted me. This was no accident, Doggett. This was foul play."

Doggett nodded. For the first time he knew exactly where their conversation was headed.

He would have done the same.

"I have to find out why he died. I have to finish what he started." Scully felt the bile bubble to her throat. "No one else will."

This was what she had turned her back on. This was the one thing she had vowed she would never do again. Scully had promised herself time after time that it wasn't the life she wanted. Now all of her reasons sounded frail as they tumbled through her mind.

Without warning, the sky rumbled to life and torrential rains began to fall, mingling with the tears that finally emerged from Scully's crystalline eyes.