Character: Dana Scully
Fandom: The X-Files
Rating: PG-13
Prompt: Picture of a grand, old style hotel in Prague (Four Rooms) 34 on scifi_muses on LiveJournal
Setting: Season Six Episode: Triangle

AN: In the episode, the ship is the "SS" Queen Anne, but as I recall a lot of the crew was British. Also, the Queen Anne, though fictional, falls in line with the Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth, both "Royal Mail Ships-RMS" and part of the Cunard-White Star line. I made the change in previous chapters, and am going with this small conceit rather than the shows.

"My God," Byers breathed into the silvery twilight, his flashlight shining upwards, reflecting onto eyes as wide as saucers. Beside him Frohike's mouth hung agape, for once at a lost for words. It was Langley who seemed the most unaffected, stirring from his momentarily stillness to grin at the other two in abject delight.

"Mulder found it…he found the Queen Anne!"

At the wheel Scully bit her tongue. Ever the skeptic, she viewed the lights on the misty horizon with out the certainty the others displayed. Sure, she supposed, it could be a luxury liner from 1939. Or it could be a Carnival cruise liner that was making its way to the Caribbean with about 800 middle aged people in Hawaiian shirts and large hats, drinking colorful mixed drinks and complaining about the food and the music. From this distance it was hard to tell, and she wasn't about to get excited over the possibly of a long forgotten ghost ship until she got closer. Frankly, she hoped it didn't come to that. She would rather find Mulder safe and sound first.

"Do you think that everyone is still on it, just as they were in the 1930's," Langley asked, convinced without further proof this was indeed the quarry they were seeking.

"Who knows," Frohike intoned in a low, hollow voice that stopped just short of being spooky. "Maybe everyone died on it after all these years of being trapped, and it is haunted by their ghosts."

"That's now how a tear in the time/space continuum works," Byers quashed the romance of Frohike's theory ruthlessly as he continued to stare out to the horizon. "It is far more likely that the occupants of the Queen Anne are still there on the ship, living their lives and not even realizing that they've been missing for the last sixty years. Chances are for them they still think it is 1939."

"It's sort of like Brigadoon then," said Langley, "They go to sleep in what they think is 1939, and wake up to 1998, and no one is any the wiser."

Both of Langley's compatriots stopped and turned to stare at the tall, blonde man with equally speechless looks on their faces.

"What, I used to work theater tech in high school, we did that one my senior year." Langley tried to shrug off their mocking looks as he plucked at his computer-nerd cool, ironic t-shirt. "Besides, it wouldn't hurt you two to have some culture."

"Yeah, I'll remember than Lord Manhammer when you are busting out Real Genius for the five millionth time," Frohike snorted dryly. "And as for time/space continuum, let's ask the doctor." He turned to her expectantly as if Scully was the fount of all scientific knowledge in the world. Perhaps for these three she was.

"If this is the Queen Anne, and I'm not saying it is," she qualified, "And if the Bermuda Triangle is an area of disturbance in how time and space interact, than chances are the anomaly could mean that a ship from a previous time could slip, unnoticed, into a later or earlier time, depending on the conditions. If this is the case, than the people on board the ship might not even notice the effect." It was a theory, one of several she vaguely remembered from her undergraduate research days when she had aspired to be a physicist before medicine had called her away.

"See," Byers offered, somewhat proud of himself for recognizing that theory. Frohike scowled, disgruntled.

"Or," Scully offered, feeling a soft spot for the strange little man who she hated to admit was her favorite one of the three of them. "If we work with the string theory of time/space continuum, the ship could be trapped between two different dimensions, one in which it did sink sixty years ago, one in which it did not. And the meeting and overlapping of these two strings of time are causing the ship to appear here to us now, but the people on it might be trapped in their own time, unable to see or hear us, even if the ship physically is in between."

"So…like ghosts," Frohike chirped happily, shooting Byers an "I told you so" look.

"Well, as close to ghosts as you'll get me to admit, but frankly I don't believe either theory," she returned, much to the trio's disappointment. "I am more concerned about finding Mulder, so try keeping your eyes out for his boat. If it is anything like this one, it should be here somewhere."

They had flown straight from DC to Miami, and then managed a quick flight to the Bahamas. Convincing immigration that the four of them were just there for a quick visit had been less stressful than renting the boat they had taken out into the Bermuda Triangle. Frankly it wasn't surprising that the rental owner gave them all the once over, she doubted that the three men with her had over been on a boat before, and she was dressed far too formerly to convince anyone she knew how to handle a sailing vessel. After what felt like hours of checking passports and paperwork, (and learning that Langley's first name was Richard, but he went by "Ringo"), they were on the water, following the coordinates that she had gained from Skinner.

Now darkness was setting into the murky, mid-Atlantic waters. And save for the flickering lights on the horizon there was no sign of a boat the size of theirs, or even a hint of Mulder. Nervously, Scully gnawed on her bottom lip, trying to scan the glassy, dark waters for any sign of her wayward partner.

"No storms were reported here all day, the waters should be clear. If he's here, and nothing happened to the boat, we should be able to find him."

"Unless he's at the ship," Langley pointed out rather unhelpfully. Scully sighed. She didn't want to think of Mulder chasing down that ship. Trying to board from a boat this size was dangerous. And if it wasn't the type of ship he thought it was? Likely he could have been plowed under it if he wasn't careful.

"What in the hell was he thinking, trying to take a ship out? He gets seasick and he knows nothing about them."

"You think that would stop Mulder," Frohike snorted. Yet he too looked very concerned for his friend out there somewhere in the growing darkness. "Maybe we should get nearer the ship, see what we find there."

Scully had already steered them in that direction, pointing the bow towards the glimmering lights in the distance. What if this were the Queen Anne, she wondered privately, giving voice to thoughts she wasn't particularly willing to speak out loud to the other three. She thought of her undergraduate studies at Maryland, of the theories for such supposed anomalies as the Bermuda Triangle. No scientist she knew of took the particular phenomenon seriously, but the idea of what it could do had been theorized ad nauseum. What would time travel look like, if it could be done? There had been one case several years ago that she and Mulder worked where the main suspect claimed he could time travel. But he had never said how it worked. Did one step into a machine, such as HG Wells had done, or perhaps fell through a strange wrinkle in time? Were there really pockets in reality where space and time no longer meshed together, or did they tangle up and twist, turning people and things from what they knew to what they didn't? Could matter actually go from occupying one place in space and time and then occupy another? Was it even possible for it to shift so easily?

Mulder obviously believed you could, but Mulder also believed in spontaneous combustion and spectral visitations. Quantum physics was a bit like that, part hard, scientific theory, party wild, insane speculation. The ephemeral nature of it had intrigued her in her younger years, but the lack of solid evidence, the need to go it alone on faith at times had driven her to the much harder science of medicine. At least there a heart was always a heart, a brain was always a brain, and they always operated in the same manner. But in the quantum field, it was a playground for dreamers and believers, for men and women like Mulder. She had played in their sandbox and now stood on the sidelines, agreeing in theory such things were possible, but not ever able to commit to it fully. Perhaps that was what drove Mulder so crazy when it came to her and their work. She knew how it worked, agreed in part it could, but couldn't just come out and say that this was the way it did. It wasn't how Scully was wired, after all these years she would have hoped he knew that about her. Apparently he had hoped that would change.

"Hey Scully," Frohike shouted to her, turning her attention back to matters at hand. "You're not going to believe this, get up here."

"What," she called, bringing the boat to a halt as she scrabbled over to the other three and halted nearly on the spot, staring in awe at what was before her. Far from being a modern, sleek looking cruise ship, before her in the water stood a stately, grand old luxury liner of the sort that used to sail the seas when her grandparents were young. Grander even than the Queen Mary dry docked in Long Beach, now turned into a hotel, this ship was splendid in a way that made Scully think of old, black-and-white films, with women in slinky, sequined dresses, and men in evening attire with tails. She blinked in disbelief at Frohike, who grinned from ear to ear.

"The sky just cleared and there it was.

"The Queen Anne?"

"That's her, " Byers assured her.

"I don't believe it," she breathed into the cooling night air, even as the ship groaned in front of her. This had to be some trick? There was no rust, no build up, nothing that indicated that this ship had been left adrift for sixty years in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. It looked as fresh and as well kept as it must have the day it disappeared in 1939.

"Seeing is believing," Frohike countered, his glasses glittering with the lights shining from on board the massive ship.

"They've got power," Scully wondered. How did they have power after all of these years?

"Maybe Mulder's already on board?" Byers assumed the best. Shocked out of her amazement, Scully glanced around for his boat. She saw nothing that even resembled it.

"Let's hope he is," she murmured, glancing along the waterline of the boat for some sort of way up the side. "Langley, Byers, over there! There's a ladder near the port quarter, do you think one of you could reach it if I got close enough?"

The term "port" had no obvious meaning to either of them, but they could see the ladder above them in the distance. "I think I can snag it," Langley called, tightening his life jacket around his thin body.

"Right," she called back, rushing back to the bridge. With her goal in mind, she turned their boat alongside the ship, her port to its port, allowing Langley access to the ladder above. Thankfully the Queen Anne herself had dropped anchor, and lay still and quiescent in the ocean. That made their job a little easier at least.

"Careful," she whispered as the gangly man stepped ever so carefully on the edge, reaching high, Byers and Frohike each with a steadying hand on his legs. Scully dropped anchor as the boat bobbed near the ship. On the next up swell of waves, Langley snagged the lowest rung and pulled himself up, his thin, scrawny arms struggling to pull up his weight. He was helped by a friendly push on the part of Frohike and Byers, and soon was up enough to scramble on.

"Good," Scully called, coming back up on deck. "See if you can pull up Frohike behind you."

"Me," the little man yelped, staring at Scully as if she were crazy.

"Him," Langley equally protested, his glasses bobbing up and down in the light as he sized up his round, portly friend. "How many cheeseburgers did you eat today, again?"

"Yeah, bite me, you scrawny ass," Frohike hissed, but Scully was not in the mood for one of their snipping sessions.

"Byers, you and me, let's help boost Frohike up, okay?"

Byers looked less than thrilled with the idea, but helped to hold Frohike steady, his totally impractical boots skidding on the slick wood. Langley reached a long arm down to reach for one of Frohike's shorter ones. Scully held her breath as the boat bobbed in the water, and Frohike wobbled, teetering unsteadily and threatening to tip if not for their steady grasp on him.

"Woah," he shouted, eyes wild as he glanced down at Scully. "I don't know if this is such a smart idea."

"To late now," she grunted as she nodded at Byers, and each grabbed at a leg and lifted, boosting him up towards Langley. It took much grunting, swearing, and Langley complaining about Frohike's penchant for pineapple pizza, but eventually he was hoisted up to the ladder above, sweating and shaking and looking considerably worse for wear. Langley beside him wrung his arm fretfully.

"Alright, Langley you move up to the deck, Byers, you go up." She shot the nervous looking man a reassuring smile as he carefully got up. Unlike Frohike, Byers balance was much better, despite his dress shoes, and Frohike was surprisingly strong. Byers was up and settled, looking expectantly at Scully.

"Off with the shoes first," she muttered, kicking off her impractical, chunk heeled shoes, frowning at them in consternation. Did she need to wear these on board anyway?

"Leave the shoes, Scully, I think they'll be more scandalized by the pants than the bare feet," Frohike called.

Scully didn't want to admit that he even had half-a-shred of a point. She chucked the heels aside and stepped up on the side, carefully balanced as she reached for Byers outstretched arm. Lighter and smaller than the men, she scrambled up much more easily, and looked up at the three men, face flushed as they all wore the same expectant expressions on their face.

"Well, your ghosts are waiting, get going," she ordered. Obediently the other three began the long climb up the ships side. It was little more than narrow, iron piping, enough for the maintenance crew to scramble down the side if necessary. Nimbly she followed the slower men, watching as one by one they hoisted themselves up the side and over to the deck.

Whatever it was she was expecting to find, it wasn't a perfectly preserved deck. She hauled herself over, slightly breathless, checking that the three men puffing and heaving as they settled on chairs with plump cushions to collect themselves. The wooden boards at their feet were smooth and shiny even in the dimness, and they felt sound as Scully's bare heel knocked against them. This ship didn't look as if it had been standing in the elements for the last six decades.

Outside of their labored breathing nothing made a sound on the empty deck. Nothing creaked, nothing moved. Only the sound of the water, lapping against the hull, made any noise at all. Not even the massive engines sounded into the night.

"What is going on here," she murmured, glancing around the well lit area, where on an evening like this passengers might be taking a bit of night air before dinner, or strolling before retiring for the night.

The other three noticed as well. "It's like the ship is going, but no one is here." Frohike had a hand to his chest, standing at last to join Scully, curiously eyeing the quiet concourse.

"I don't hear any music," Langley whispered, cocking his blonde head like a dog would, listening. "This is 1939, they would have been playing something at dinner."

"A little Cole Porterat least," Frohike nodded.

"And the engines aren't sounding, though the lights are on," Byers pointed out. "Do you think Mulder is still here?"

"I hope he is," Scully replied honestly. "Let's go down below, start looking. If anything, we might find some evidence of where he got to." She racked her brain for the information on these type of ships her father imparted to her when she was little. Scully had been the Starbuck to his Ahab, fascinated with all the goings on of a ship, and had spent countless hours pestering her father as he worked on models with her brother, Bill.

"If I remember right, Queen Anne was a Cunard-White Star ship." She headed for the nearest entrance.

"Like the Titanic," Langley piped up, earning an elbow in the ribs from Frohike.

"Like the Titanic, sort of," Scully confirmed absently. "Her sister ship is the Queen Mary in Long Beach. My father took me to visit her when I was a kid, my brothers and sister and I climbed all over her." Much to the dismay of the museum tour guides as she recalled.

"If the layout is the same, by the bridge there should be a small supply room. We should find flashlights there. That's our first stop. I don't want any of you tripping and getting hurt, I can't get you off this ship." She quickly found steps to what led to the bridge on the Queen Mary. "Let's see if we can find a map for you guys in case we get separated. We can meet in the ballroom."

Lights were on, but were dim in the hallways of the old ship. The air hardly stirred, but there was no smell of must, no mildew, no rot of any kind. The carpets were thick and plush under their feet, the metal ringing soundly, without rust or chipped paint. Even the bridge, when they reached it, looked as pristine and shiny as it must have in the 1930's. Scully frowned, turning around in the large room, at once awed at its beauty and confused by its lack of modern computers or equipment.

"It looks just like new," she sighed, utterly at a loss.

"Where is the crew," Byers wondered as he walked towards the bow facing windows, glancing out into the night.

"Where are the passengers," echoed Frohike, finding the supply closet and rummaging for flashlights.

"They're all ghosts," Langley snorted, as if it were obvious. "Like Scully said, strings, and touching…and stuff."

"Something like that," she smirked gently, taking one of Frohike's proffered lights. "Did you find a map?"

"Nope," Frohike muttered. "Guess we will all have to stick together." He glared at Langley directly. "That means no chasing after ghosts."

"Look who's talking, you're the one who talked Mulder into this idea in the first place."

"Mulder didn't need talking into it," Byers shot back. "And Frohike's right, we stick with Scully."

"Who says I wouldn't." Langley quibbled, pouting as he took his flashlight.

"Fine," Scully herded her little group to the door. "We'll take the deck and the upper most decks first, the ballroom, the dining room, the kitchen, et cetera. Then we'll move below decks a floor at a time. Mulder could be anywhere, so keep your eyes out."

"I didn't come on this adventure to hike all over creation," Frohike gripped, falling in behind Scully.

"Not that you couldn't use it, lard ass," Langley snickered.

There was a distinct thump and grunt from Langley, but Scully refused to look back or even acknowledge that it happened.

Their voices were the only ones that carried through the open public rooms. The ballroom rang with their shouts of "Mulder", the dining room, the kitchens, the gymnasium. The indoor pool, one of the features of the ship, glowed a disturbing, ghostly blue-green as they checked inside, but no sign of Mulder or of anyone else. The quiet, the lack of human presence on a boat obvious built for their pleasure, made Scully's skin crawl. She shuddered as she lead the way to the first class and crew cabins, taking in the well appointed quarters, the fine furniture, still looking new. It was as if the Titanic really had returned, only fully restored. The Queen Anne still glittered, despite all the stories to her demise.

Unless she had gone down in 1939, and this really was a ghost ship. Scully shook off the notion, disturbed by even the thought. She couldn't explain what the Queen Anne was all about, but she did know one thing. This wasn't a phantom ship, this was a living, breathing one. Whatever had happened to her, the Queen Anne was real….just dead.

"I almost feel like I should turn a corner and find someone there." Frohike voiced Scully's sentiment.

"Where the hell could Mulder have gotten to?" Langley opened a door on a stateroom as if expecting Mulder to be there, laying on one of the luxuries beds. Unsurprisingly it was empty, the white and gold down comforter smooth and unruffled. No clothes lay about the floor, no shoes forgotten under the bed, no personal effects were scattered across the furniture. There was nothing to indicate a human occupant.

"Maybe no one had this room," Byers picked up a heavy, crystal cigarette ashtray, embossed with the Cunard-White Star emblem.

"No, the Queen Anne was full when she disappeared, it was part of what made it all mysterious," Scully opened a closet door, finding it filled with fine, well-made clothes. "There was a physicist on board, supposedly, legend had it that he had plans for a nuclear weapon. Truth is I doubt he had all the plans, but he disappeared, and neither the Allies or the Germans were able to get a hold of what he knew."

"I thought you said that you believed the boat was blown up, not disappeared." Frohike nudged her knowingly. Scully flushed, but shrugged.

"I'm standing on a ghost ship, aren't I?" She couldn't deny that, not if she wanted to. "In any case, let's get moving, there are still two more areas to cover.

The rest of the ship was more of the same, only with less polish and flare as they went further down. The lower quarters were Spartan in their make up by comparison to first class, though comfortable enough for the traveler on a budget. The cargo hold was filled with crates and boxes, and large canvas bags filled with mail that was never delivered to the people expecting it. And still no Mulder, not among the crates and barrels, not in the engine room, which was silent and still, save for the occasional groan of metal. Back up through the decks, not a sound was heard outside of their own footsteps and breathing and the ocean outside.

Nowhere did they find Fox Mulder. Scully felt about to panic.

"I'm sure he's here somewhere," Byers tried to reassure her despite the fact they had just spent nearly two-hours combing the ship. There was nothing. If Mulder made it this far, he wasn't on the ship.

"Let's get back to the boat," Scully ordered. "Perhaps his boat is on the other side, or maybe it was broken up, and we can't see it from here."

Their scramble down the ladder went only slightly more orderly than the climb up, with Scully nearly having to leap into the waiting arms of Frohike and Byers to get back on the boat, nearly knocking all three of them off into the dark waters. She scrambled again to the wheelhouse, pulling up the anchor and turning on the engines.

"You three, keep an eye out as I come around, look for another boat, similar to this one." The lights on deck were bright as she pulled away from the Queen Anne, getting enough distance out to come around to the starboard side and look for any evidence of Mulder there.

"Hey Scully," Langley called, clear fear and worry in his voice. "I think we've got something!"

"What?" She stalled the boat, stilling it as she climbed back to where the three men stood, each staring into the water where the lights from the boat hit. Floating in front of them were broken shards of wood and fiberglass, and what looked like seat cover for the bench that had likely lined one whole side of the deck.

Oh no, her mind raced…no, no, no, no….

"Mulder," she screamed, yelling his name into the night. "Mulder, are you out there?"

"Can he hear us?" Byers pulled out one of their purloined flashlights, turning it on and leaning over the side.

"He can if he's conscious," Frohike stared into the distance. "Can he swim?"

"Like a fish," Scully replied, fear lancing through her as she considered the possibilities. "He grew up on Martha's Vineyard, and he swam in school. Still swims down at the FBI pool twice a week." Not that she had ever gone down there looking for him deliberately. "Mulder isn't much with boats, but he can keep himself afloat just fine."

"Except we don't know the wreck happened," Frohike reminded her gently. "He could have been here for hours."

"Others have survived that long," she shot back, unwilling to believe the worst. "Mulder!"

Stillness…the same eerie, mind-numbing silence that they had felt on the ship was the only response to her cries. Tears began to prick in Scully's eyes as her mind refused to believe the evidence scattered before her. Mulder could be dead this time, really dead. And not from a case or from and X-file, from something as stupid as an old legend of a ghost ship in the Bermuda Triangle. Stupid man, what in the hell was he thinking?

She had come out there to find nothing.

"I'm sure if we search a little more," Byers tried to reassure her. But Scully shook her head. In this darkness, even if Mulder were alive, they'd likely hit and kill him as turn him up.

"No, we have to wait till light," Scully choked, her gut wrenching at the idea. If she waited, she had an idea of what she would find. Her father and brother had told her stories of even the best-trained sailors and swimmers. And Mulder, as good of a swimmer as he was, rarely swam in the ocean.

"Let's pack it up for now, boys, wait till the morning and head back to harbor," she uttered, finding the steadiness in her voice belying the turmoil within her. This felt desperately wrong, but she had no choice. She couldn't leave him behind, not like this.

"Scully, are you…"

"What else can we do," she snapped, nerves raw from fatigue, worry, and stress. She had started her day bitterly jealous that Mulder had flown down to Miami to spend his birthday with Diana Fowley. She ended it mourning his loss on the open water. More than an emotional tiding flowing, it was a raging river, a flood, and an avalanche, threatening to drown her like her partner.

He was gone….he was really, really gone.

In the darkness there a splash, like a body hitting the water none too gracefully, followed by the thump of something coming down after it. The sound nearly caused the three men to jump off the side of the boat themselves to follow it, before Scully's voice whipped them back.

"Stop! Let me get closer. Get the flashlights out, look for Mulder."

She jumped down behind the wheel again, revving the engine to pull slowly forward to the noise. Frohike and Byers shouted as she came to a stop, and Langley practically hung by his feet off the boat, reaching for something down below. Scully clambered back up in time to see Byers and Frohike help grab the limp body of Fox Mulder and deposit him on the deck, water-logged and unconscious.

"Is he?" Langley asked, Mulder's wet, dark head on his lap, fearful that the worst could be the case. Scully pushed him gently aside and began checking the usual vitals. No water in the lungs, he was breathing. But the nasty gash on his head indicated he had knocked himself out but good, likely during his fall into the debris field of his own boat.

"He'll live," she sighed dryly, though utter relief filled her as the other three laughed in reassurance. "Though he may not live for long once I get him awake. Till then, Frohike, go down below, get a blanket, and wrap that around him. Byers, get off as much of his wet clothes as you can manage. Langley, you keep an eye on him, make sure he keeps breathing, call me if he doesn't."

And as for herself, "I'm going to get the hell downstairs and get us to safe harbor."