"Two can be as bad as one, it's the loneliest number since the number one..."


Title: Two

Author: Me!

Rating: PG or K or whatever. Tame save for great angst.

Time: Post-colonization. Set kind of after my other two fics. Please read them and RR

Characters: Mainly Scully perspective, Mulder, Skinner

Author's Note: At this point, I'm 9 episodes through season 5. I know the general outline of all seasons, arcs, and the end of the series. I do not know everything. Therefore, I apologize if my characterization sucks or the like. I really appreciate constructive criticism.

This fic will be composed of a series of vignettes I'll write when I feel up to it. My other two fics definitely fall into this story.


A Part


Amidst the bleakness of colonization, vibrancy exists, moves, tries to survive. Survivors find each other…or don't. Everyone dies, but these days, most die young or don't die at all.


Scully gasps as she wakes. The settings are unfamiliar, an abrupt wake up call every morning as she tries to remember where they are. Sometimes she doesn't remember, but Mulder is always besides her, his warmth close and reassuring. She has something to hold on to, and she is ever grateful.

"Mulder?"

He sits straight up, his head coming to a crashing halt as it collides with the cave ceiling. "I've got to stop doing that," he groans, as she starts to laugh. She forgets what's funny before too long.

"You won't have to deal with this much longer; we're close to the mountain complex. If it hasn't been stripped or destroyed, we'll have a chance."

He says nothing, but she can tell he is nodding in the darkness.


They reach the complex in the early evening; the sun has just set beneath the mountains, and the trees have only begun to echo alien shapes across the ground. When winter comes, they'll be able to survive.

Most of the complex is completely intact. Medical equipment abounds, and Scully tends to other's injuries—Landon's broken arm, Skinner's minor concussion, Aria's twisted ankle, etcetera, etcetera.

Everything appears perfect. There is surveillance equipment, stocked in an old closet. It still works.

Better yet, there is a freezer. Large, too. They've found that heat signatures make them vulnerable, detectable. The equipment is what any community needs to survive.

The next morning, Mulder, Frank and Emily scout the town that lies below the valley they've settled in. It's abandoned, but there are multiple roads leading in and out. Anyone looking for a haven could be led there, and their community could attempt to contact them. This is what the surveillance will be for.

Donna Marks says they need a schedule. She has these quirks, and Scully could diagnose her mental illness if anyone cared. Everyone has a problem now, a complex or a phobia, something that could strike in any unknown situation. Donna is not unique. She's better than most of them.

So they create a plan, schedule, dole out jobs and responsibilities to get them on their feet. Every two days, roughly three people will journey to the town, check surveillance, run tests and monitor the air for changes that could alert them to imminent doom. Everyone will go at some point. Others will hunt, explore the complex, work on detection systems and things they don't know they need.

The mountain air is brisk and lovely, and Scully thinks Mulder was right about the country. She throws her head back and laughs, and feels better. Mulder catches her and in the bright sunset holds her, smothers her, and she smiles as he kisses her because she is tired of feeling hopeless, so tired of drowning. For a moment, they both forget that they are both dead, and get lost in the cool air and warm breath.


EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE. EEEEEEEEEEEEE. EEEEEEEEEEE.

The alarm sounds, and they are plunged into chaos. Only three short notes are their clue that something is wrong. Surveillance has caught something, has sighted something in the sky! Those in the town should be running through the hills, trying to make it back to the complex before the ship gets to close. The air is rumbling and there is lightning searing their skin as they climb towards the valley, towards salvation in a hell of frost and darkness.

It had to be Mulder in the group, this time. But Scully knows better, and is helping Aria limp towards the lower levels, towards the freezer where everyone should be by now. The group, the three from the town, aren't back yet.

The alarm sounds only three times, because Skinner worried that it the noise could be picked up by approaching ships.

Once in the freezer, the 63 people are to shut up, the lights are to be turned off. The group knows what to do.

A part of Scully dies there, in the cold and in the dark. Her ears are ringing, and she can't hear anyone breathing, not even herself. There is no one beside her, no warmth in the room. Something crawls over face, and she resists the urge to scream. If anyone exists besides her, she wouldn't want to kill them. She would never want that.

It is cold and it is dark, and she is all alone. Mulder is gone, Mulder is gone, and she can't stop repeating it in her head. The silence is deafening, and she is screaming in her own head, driving herself mad, because there is no one but her there, and she can't breathe by herself when she can't understand the world around her. Blind and alone and freezing, she feels her brain shutting down. Mulder is gone, Mulder is gone. She only becomes aware that she is still standing when she falls, and hits her head against the frosty floor without bracing herself. A part of Scully dies in the freezer, the part that she's used for so many years to tell herself that she will be fine, that he will be fine, that everything will be fine. Overuse, and in a moment of supreme terror, a part of her snaps and dies.

And suddenly, the light is blinding, and a dark shadow is in the door. Two more, and the darkness is all consuming again.

"SCULLY. SCULLY. DANA. Oh my God, Scully, breathe." Mulder hisses frantically, and she realizes she's been holding her breathe. Forgot to breathe. For a moment, it strikes her that she's probably seen that on a death certificate before. She probably thought it was funny.

In Mulder's strong arms, Scully is wheezing, remembering the concept of air and of existence. He's whispering that he loves her, and she's clinging to his neck trying not to cry.


The next afternoon, a group of them sit in the mess, eating freeze dried sandwiches, thinking of that instant and wondering about the coming hours. Most are engaged in some sort of small talk, whether it be recounting the previous days ordeal, how they survived, or playing a word game because they've lost everything else.

As she and Mulder leave to pack for an excursion, she overhears a conversation in low, boasting tones.

"—it was so close though, we almost lost him. I've got nothing against him personally—" he gestures and smiles, states something she can't quite catch, "beyond the usual…" He gets cut off, as the man next to him starts a finishes the story.

"Anyhow, Mulder nearly fell down the slope. If he had only broken something, we could've left him, I mean, seriously! He isn't doing anything special or anything, and maybe then at least I might have had a chance with her—"

Her face burns and a part of her drowns itself in anger and defiance. They have no right, none at all. This is the moment when Scully finally lets a piece of her mind hate the human race. They are to blame for this mess of a world of a life. Those people, them, they are at fault. A piece of her will never forgive anyone.

At least she has something tangible to fight again.


Six months pass before the sirens sound again. Many times Scully or Mulder have taken shifts in the town, and there have been no aliens, no invaders. Sometimes people. No aliens.

The sirens are sounding, and Mulder is in the town. She allows herself a fervent "GODDAMMIT," even though she knows God will most likely damn nothing except her.

Someone grabs her arm and is practically dragging her to the freezer. It's a hard job, something Mulder must have told a friend to do if he wasn't there. Make sure Scully doesn't do something stupid. She can see him in her mind's eye, as if Mulder is imparting wisdom, and some Mulder protégé and worshipper is nodding solemnly.

The person she cannot name is holding her hand in the freezer. He is not Mulder, but at least she can concentrate on The Hand, and not on the lack of door silhouettes.

They are in the room a half hour before the door opens. Only two shadows enter. No one finds Scully in the darkness except whispers.

The door opens again, only this time, people are leaving. The Hand disintegrates in hers, and the mystery person follows the others out.

"Mulder?" She whispers, mouths, as in a nightmare. Something is chasing you, and all you can do is croak when you need to scream.

Scully? She doesn't hear him, doesn't hear her name shouted towards her. Scully is waiting for her name for someone to whisk her away. Something can't have happened.

Oh, but it can.

"Scully?"

It's only Skinner.

But she's never seen him cry before.

It isn't anything emotional; a stoic, worn face, except for the tears that have tracked their way down his cheeks. He looks exactly the same without them.

"We…we were in the town Dana, we sounded the sirens and were running out of the building. But the…the vibrations of the ship must have affected the structure of the building, it collapsed on us. We barely made it out on time." He clears his throat staring at her cold blue eyes. Defiant, after all this time.

"He wasn't with us. We turned to go back in the building, there was a shot—we think his gun must have discharged when he fell—he was lying there—" his voice cracks now, just a bit, only she felt it in his calm voice—"His eyes were open. There was blood everywhere. We couldn't stay." Skinner's voice is gruff now, and the silence is closing in on Scully, poor Scully, standing there believing and unbelieving, as she always has.

"I'm sorry."

Scully sees the other man then, the one at the lunch table where she re-learned what the word unforgivable meant.

"You're sorry," she hisses, moving closer until she is face to face with him.

"You're sorry. You left him there! God damn it, you left him there to die! HE ISN'T DEAD! He can't be! You left him there and if he hasn't frozen to death, they've found him and are subjecting him to everything all over again!"

She screaming at him, and she can see the pain in Skinner's face. Scully's hurting him, but in that instant, she doesn't care.

Skinner doesn't find her until late the next morning. He questions several people fruitlessly; all say that she said that she was "Fine."

So now he's frantic, because he knows she isn't. He finds her in the med lab, facing a table filled with blood samples.

"Scully." She faces him, impassive.

"Scully, please, talk to me—" He stops mid-sentence, because she looks so pale in the basement light, because her blue eyes look like ice, and she isn't really listening.

There is nothing else for him to say, so Skinner leaves. When he does, Scully's mask breaks, and she collapses, sobbing, to the floor. Everything is over.

Huddled in a corner, she closes her eyes. She forgets that anyone else exists, and is almost able to forget how to breathe.

In the hospital wing, Skinner sits in a chair by her beside. Someone found her passed out, and he made an official call that she wasn't to be left out of sight. Skinner sits, and wonders how a person copes when their life is gone.

Scully wakes up screaming, screaming "Mulder!" over and over again, before dissolving into sobs when Skinner tries to hold her down, to keep her calm. He tells her he isn't here. Mulder's gone Scully he says. They sound like only words to her.

Scully looks at Skinner with pained, frightened eyes as he tries to face her with something she doesn't know. A part of her gets up and runs away then, after Mulder, after certainty, after the world that has been stolen from her. That part looks back at Skinner sitting by her bedside, and her eyes tell him how sorry she is- how ashamed and how lost- before she dashes away, away from attackers she has never been able to see. The majority of her being runs away that night, chasing all she has fought for and cannot live without, if only to die trying.

In spirit, she leaves that night. Her physical body remains, only to seek her mind in the morning.

A part of her won't ever give up.