He didn't feel such an overwhelming desire to escape. Mulder was long gone. The interaction with Ricky Soreno, from the intense sessions of reading the minds of his people and a few enemies, knowing that he was sending many of them off to their deaths, to the incident with the pen that ended in John shooting out the kneecaps of one of the men, it made him feel very unsafe, very much like the 14-year-old boy that he truly was, even when he didn't get to feel that. John and Monica were obviously more than capable of protecting him, even though he knew in the end, they would not be able to help, and if the alien bounty hunter came after him, or a supersoldier, they would be helpless. And the images of Mexico playing in Monica's head made him a little more than curious to see it.

Monica was indeed thinking to Mexico. She hadn't been home in over a year, and really since going off to college, she hadn't returned to her country other than to fly into Mexico City and be driven straight to her parent's home. She seemed excited and nostalgic. He worried about her when she had to face the facts about being in hiding. It wasn't going to be all tequila and the beach.

"We just need to think of it as a long, extended vacation," she said, as though she knew he were probing those thoughts.

He shook his head but didn't say anything in response.

John knew how rough it would be. He knew how hard it would be for them to live below the radar, to get by on next to nothing, to living in dingy apartments, not being able to get a real job. He was trying hard to see how it could possibly be a vacation, but he didn't contradict her. Gibson could tell that he needed her and her positive nature. And then he got a series of scenes about other reasons John wanted her around.

He didn't stare – it wasn't like this was the first time someone had thought such dirty things in his presence, but John knew and suddenly decided to visit the men's room.

"What was that all about?" asked Monica.

"Oh, he's just thinking about you and it embarrasses him when he does that in front of me."

She looked towards the bathroom and he could hear her begging to know just what was going on in John's head.

"People are weird. You all sit there in your own heads, thinking your own thoughts, and even when you know that the other person is thinking them, you get scared and decide that you're completely wrong. John likes you, you like John, and you're both waiting for the other person to do something about it."

Her head popped with repetitions of John likes me? and John likes me. "He's not ready though. I know. I've known him for a long time and I've watched him slowly come to terms with the concept of us, but he's not yet ready to do anything about."

Gibson sighed and played with the wrapper of his straw. "You wanted to know. I'm just telling you. He likes you. He thinks about you all the time. Sometime he thinks things about you I don't want to know, but you think the same kind of things too. He just doesn't believe that you like him too, even though he knows you do."

John emerged from the men's room where he'd done nothing more than splash frigid water on his face and try to think about the logistics of their escape. He thought of NASCAR and the world series, the war, his father, how to repair the transmission on his old '83 Chevy. But the harder he tried not to think of her, the harder it was not to. And seeing the two of them, heads bent together in discussion, didn't help either. He worried that the boy was sneaking into his head and sharing all of his secret thoughts with Monica, which of course he was.

"What are you two talking about?" he asked as he took his seat. Monica looked like she'd won the lottery, beaming her most beaming smile, so he had to look away to the boy who never seemed to smile. Neither one divulged the contents of their conversation.

Before they left, Monica took advantage of the bathroom and the luxury of five whole minutes to get herself put together for the day. She was only partially thinking of what Gibson would say to John, her head begging him sometimes to tell John, sometimes telling him not to get involved, and sometimes just not believing what she'd been told.

John and Gibson sat silently in front of one another. "Maybe," said Gibson, "if you two would just admit you like each other, it would be more bearable for me to be around you both."

"What are you talking about?" asked John, knowing full well what he was talking about. Gibson looked at him unconvinced.

"Why don't you just kiss her or something?"

"Because she's my friend and I am not going down that road, especially not while I'm trying to keep you safe."

"But you don't want her to be your friend. You want her to be your girlfriend."

John sat in stony silence, praying for Monica to return soon.

"It's ok, you know. She wants to be your girlfriend too."

Gibson turned around and looked out the window. Grownups were really weird.

They continued on their drive. Gibson was grateful for the headphones that came with the Gameboy, for it made it slightly easier to concentrate on his game instead of the explosion of thoughts he'd helped to create in their heads.

Monica wanted to talk. And she wanted to talk in privacy, if they could manage it later when Gibson was asleep. But he seemed to be up for the day and she herself was starting to feel the kind of tired you feel when the world starts spinning. Her whole heart and soul wanted to be with John, to hold his hand, to talk to him about what he felt, to finally be with him in some sort of mutually desired relationship. But instead, her body needed to shut down, so she traded spots with Gibson and curled up in the backseat, slipping into unconsciousness within minutes.

So Gibson moved to the front, deciding that he would spend the next several hours (until Monica woke up and changed with John) trying to defeat the next level of his game. He had only started to play when he felt John want to talk to him, but struggling to come up with a subject or something appropriate. He didn't know how to relate to him and his thoughts kept coming back to his own son, who would be a little older than he was now.

"I'm not like him, your son."

"I realize that. Besides, I don't know what he would have been like as a teenager."

"Well, I can't take his place. And I don't want to." His video game character was attacked and died, and he put the game down. Playing wasn't going to work well if John didn't leave him alone. "I don't need a surrogate father either."

"You had Mulder, though."

Gibson shrugged, though John didn't see. "I guess."

"He took good care of you, though, right?"

"I guess."

"You miss him."

"Sometimes."

"And your real father?"

"He's dead. I didn't really know him anyway. He was a business man in the Philippines. I figured out how to do the chess thing when I was five and I started going off to tournaments with my mom for a while and then even she just left me to my manager. So I was never home and never saw him, really. And then he was dead. My mom too."

"I'm real sorry. I figured they were gone…" He stopped talking. Of course Gibson knew that he suspected his parents were dead. He probably also knew that John assumed they were killed. He knew everything John knew and it made him tired to try to comprehend.

"People worry too much about their thoughts. You can't think anything that could offend me. Your thoughts aren't any different than anyone else's. Except that you know I can hear them and so you feel guilty about everything all the time."

He knew John wanted to know about their deaths, but he didn't want to talk about it. He hated death. Death had come into his life all too often, killing his friends, his family, his protectors. He was tired of it. And his parents' deaths weighed too heavily on him, so he always did his best to avoid the subject and never think on it.

"I want to play my game again," he said and promptly went about ignoring John again, and doing his best to avoid reading his mind.

They had just crossed into the panhandle of Texas when John knew he couldn't go on any further. They all needed to eat something more substantial than crap from the gas station, so he pulled into a barbeque joint and looked back at Monica who seemed to be sleeping quite soundly. He felt a pang in his heart at the sight of her and once again wanted more than anything to kiss her, or at least touch her. She looked so beautiful to him then, as beautiful in sleep as she was when she laughed or was standing in a dingy warehouse office holding a gun on a thug. Her eyelids fluttered open and she smiled when she saw him.

"Hey," he said gently.

"Are we stopping?"

"Yeah. Thought we could grab some dinner and then you could drive through the night."

"What time is it?"

"Nearly 8."

"You let me sleep that long? John, you can't drive yourself to exhaustion. You don't have to. I'm here to help you."

They ordered pulled pork sandwiches and ate them at the next rest stop they came across, sitting at a picnic table in the dusk. He could tell by the way that she looked at him that she truly was smitten. She, for one, did not normally let that look sit on her face, but she was still practically giddy at what Gibson had told her.

As they walked back to the car, she took his hand and flashed a smile at him, making him feel dizzier than the sleep deprivation already made him. God, I love this woman, he thought, before quickly adding, And don't you go telling her that, boy. Gibson looked at him and rolled his eyes, which only made Monica look at him with a furrowed brow as she wondered what had just gone on between them..

John did his best to settle into the backseat and Gibson stayed up front with Monica. He was finally starting to really like her. "You say what you think," he told her. "I like that. Most people aren't so honest."

"Thanks, Gibson. I try to be honest. I feel like it's a good trait. I should be more honest with him though."

"Yeah. Well, you'll talk to him while I'm sleeping. I'm sure you'll tell him all that stuff you keep from him."

"We'll see."

"You should tell him about wanting to go to Mexico City and see your parents. He's not going to like that, though."

"Why do you say that?"

"He's got it all mapped out in his head and he's already decided that avoiding your friends and family is the safest course. There is always a weak link somewhere in your friends and relatives. Also, he's only agreeing to Mexico because he likes you. He'd rather go overseas."

"John would never be so foolish in making a decision so as to put his feelings ahead of his mission. Trust me on that. I'm starting to think you're not being honest with me." She wondered if he had made up the stuff he'd said about John liking her.

Gibson just shrugged and turned on his Gameboy again. They didn't talk anymore and eventually he fell asleep, propped up against the door.

She stopped an hour south of Albuquerque to stretch her legs and use the restroom. Gibson crawled wearily into the back and fell asleep again quickly.

"John," she said as they started down the road again. "I want to see my parents."

"I don't think that's wise, Monica."

"Maybe not, but I need to see them. What if this is my last chance to say goodbye? We're putting our lives on the line for Gibson and I'm surprisingly ok with not getting to say goodbye to any of my friends or other family. But, I don't know, I just have this… feeling. Like we might be on the run for a very, very long time. I haven't even talked to my mother in a month. She may not even know yet what has happened."

"Well, it's good that you haven't contacted them in a while. The first thing they did was go through our phone records. Have you made any calls to Mexico lately?"

"No. The last two weeks, in fact, the only people I called were you, Scully, and Skinner. If they look at that, they may suspect I'm just hiding in the Hoover Building, as I looked like I was just married to my job."

"They will have contacted your parents by now, but probably just to explain the seriousness of the situation and that they need to turn you in if you show up on their doorstep. I've made plenty of those calls in my day, but I can say that most parents do not turn their children in, and if they do, it's only after helping them to get what they need to stay on the run longer. They'd get them a car and as much money as they could spare, send them on their way and call us an hour or two later. It's hard for parents to turn in their children even under penalty of law."

"My mother would never turn me in, not even under penalty of death. There is a sense of honor among Mexicans that Americans lack."

John sighed. "Mon, I do not doubt your convictions, but I have to say I don't think it's wise. I understand where you're coming from though. But maybe after things have calmed down, maybe in a year or so, we could do that. Now, though, we need to concentrate on getting into Mexico and slipping out of sight."

"I still want to see her," she said with a tone that said the discussion was over, despite having no winner. "I want her to meet you too," she added.

"To meet me?" he asked, perplexed.

"I've… she knows a great deal about you and I've always wanted her to get to know you, but it's never worked out before. One of you is always in the wrong place at the wrong time."

He didn't feel like responding mainly because it embarrassed him that she talked to his mother about him. It stayed quiet in the car for a long time before she spoke again.

"John?" she said, hesitating. "I just… I just wanted you to know that… I do like you."

He couldn't speak, as his heart was somewhere up in his throat. His silence scared her.

"Gibson said you felt the same. I thought maybe we should clear the air. Maybe it would make things easier on this trip. So neither one of us has to pretend that there's nothing between us. Because there is something between us. And I know you know it. And I feel like you've know that since I moved to DC."

"Maybe," he managed to say. "I don't know, Mon. I mean, sure, I have feelings for you, but you're my friend and you've been a good friend for a long time, and I don't particularly want to lose that. I mean, there's nobody else I can think of who would have dropped their entire lives to come help me keep this kid safe from people who wouldn't think twice about killing us to get to him."

She took his hand again, allowing herself to rub her thumb across his skin. "I really couldn't have done it any other way. I've liked you for far too long to just let you slip out of my life so easily."

He smiled at her in bemusement. "A long time?"

She nodded. "A long time indeed."

He was rubbing her hand in return by now. "What, since '98 when you came to visit me for my birthday? My buddies all thought you liked me, but I knew you had that thing going on with Brad, so I didn't believe them."

"No, longer than that."

"Before that? Man, I don't know. Was it during my divorce or something? I know we used to talk a lot back then."

"John, since the moment I met you and realized what kind of man you were, I loved you." She hadn't meant to say that, though she did mean it.

He grew melancholy. "That long, huh?" he asked, a little chilled by the fact that she had fallen in love with him during their first days of interaction as they worked on finding Luke.