One

[This story begins very much from Scully's POV but this will change in the second chapter :-D]

Arlington National Cemetery

Washington DC – July 2005

The wind was unusually calm. Most days since she had left it had been strong and hot. A desert wind, she reminded herself, for that was where she was, and it was her own private Hell. Yet with her eyes shut, Scully could let herself remember. She was sitting, not on sand, but on a grassy patch underneath a sprawling, ancient tree. In front of her was a green, sloping landscape, tended to with reverence and perfection. Each headstone stood identical to its neighbours, lined up in neat rows that traversed the slope and seemed never-ending. A never-ending representation of those who had come before.

And for what, Dana Scully thought as she opened her blue eyes and took in the reality. There was no grass, and all the trees had gone away. Sometimes she spotted the remainder of a trunk, but they were all dead from the inside. If she touched it, it would crumble. Life had been sucked away from all around her.

A city that was once called home was in ruin. Government buildings had been crushed. The water in and around the monuments that had also toppled had dried up. The sky above her was blue and there were not even any clouds to offer shade; clouds would mean there was moisture in the air, and there wasn't.

The desert in front of her was dry, hot and sandy. She was dressed in long, brown cotton pants and a loose white shirt over a dirty white singlet top. Usually she wore a hat but since it was late afternoon she had taken it off. Her waist-length, orange hair was thick and wavy in the heat and without her straightener she kept it pulled back in a rough ponytail. She brushed it before she slept at night, to remove as much of the sand and as many of the knots as she could, but she had a feeling she never achieved very much.

At least I have a brush, she thought, glancing at the backpack beside her. It was bright orange with black strapping, and she remembered when they had bought them. Mulder's was purple, and he had made some crack about the colour purple being associated with sexual frustration. She had rolled her eyes at him and pointed out the orange. 'Ooh,' he had teased. 'We're all about the hot colours today, aren't we Scully?' She had laughed.

Scully missed laughing. She allowed herself to smile wistfully as memories came back to her, but she missed the way she let herself giggle when Mulder said something particularly amusing. She missed his own mischievous giggle when he had a particularly dirty thought. She missed how it felt to smile when he smiled at her. She hadn't let herself smile very often in her youth, and in hindsight she should have.

Because my life is over, she reasoned sadly, staring at the sand around her sandals as tears pricked at her eyes. Scully had made her peace with death more than once, many times in fact, but the acute knowledge still filled her with great pain. Pain because this time it was true. Her life was over.

Scully had not seen another living person in more than a week. She had survived whatever had killed them all and was the only one left. The logical side of her brain told her there had to be others, that surely other people had been underground when it happened or shortly afterwards. But so what if there was? Even if they found each other, what were they going to do? Wander the desert until they all died?

It was better to end it on her own terms. She had always believed that, and she had the means to do just that in the medical box in her pack. They had packed the bags shortly after settling and hidden them where she had hidden, and in hers she held the means to take their lives. Mulder had insisted. 'There are some possibilities in the realm of imagination I know neither of us wants to live with,' Mulder had admitted softly.

So Mulder, Scully spoke silently. Was this within your realm of imagination?

He was gone, he had to be. She had realised that almost immediately upon reaching the underground bunker, upon being reminded of everything he had achieved. She had not been the only one working for 'them'. Hadn't he seen that? He had made them a haven and it had saved her.

But without him there, she had nobody. Not even a bird flapped its wings in the sky. All life was gone. The current state of things had never been within her realm of imagination, but she had always been in a position to imagine Mulder's death. He had come so close so many times. She had even buried him once. She knew that reality so well that the pain she felt at his loss was much worse than any emotion brought on by something she never could have envisaged.

The thought that she had been left alone in a wasteland that had once been the shining capital of the United States left her confused and uneasy. But the thought of Mulder's death at a time and place unknown, level of suffering unknown, and the knowledge she had not been there and there had been nothing she could do? That was the thought that had her glancing towards the bottom of her bag and the supplies she knew she carried.

My life is over.

The place she had chosen to meet her end was no longer accessible, and she now faced a dilemma. She had wanted to die close to Mulder when she made that decision. She had come to Arlington, or where she remembered it to be, seeking some sort of connection. She had seen servicemen and women buried there in the past. She had witnessed the burial of friends there. But the land was desecrated. It was a disgrace. She could not lie down and take her final breaths on the slope of a hill that had been completely gutted by those that had come.

Scully had always known there was a good possibility that the aliens would come, that their world would end. It was why they had the bunker, and the packs, and the suicide pills. She and Mulder had known the truth. But she had been completely unprepared for its reality. They had come, but they had come seven years before schedule. Why? She had no idea. She did not know anything about the pathogen which had killed everyone. She had no basis for understanding the science and no means to take or test any samples. She had no motivation to fight or search for the truth. What truth?

The base truth of her life was that if she was alone she was without power. Scully had always possessed a power within herself, a confidence, a wit, an intelligence that kept her level and strong. But to impress the world with that power she had always been empowered, either by an FBI badge or her medical degree. She had been empowered by Mulder. How many times had she thought about giving up their quest, of leaving him? How many times had he convinced her that the only way they could survive was if they worked together?

And they didn't even do that anymore. She might have been a scientist and a doctor, but her specialty was the natural earth, the human race. Those were not elements of the future of the planet she resided in. Without the use of that degree, without the FBI, and without Mulder, she was empowered only by what was left of her self-respect. And thanks to the regret that still coursed through her veins at allowing Mulder to walk out that day, the day before they came, she had little self-respect left to help her.

The will to live had faded and was now stalled with indecision and the insane notion she clung to that whatever she did, however she did it, it would have to be perfect. It would have to mean more than taking her life. It could not be cheap or tragic. It could not be sad. Mulder had insisted she not feel sad or guilty about one day being in the position to end his suffering and then hers, or vice versa. He had tried to promise her he would be okay with killing her. She hadn't quite believed him, because she certainly was not okay.

She did not want to be alone, but she also did not want to die alone.

Tears stung her eyes as she shut them against the sight of the desecrated graveyard. Her father had been entitled to burial there, but he had chosen otherwise. For maybe the first time in her life, Scully was grateful for his choice. She was grateful his body was not among the disturbed dead surrounding her.

Night was fast approaching and Scully knew she had to keep moving, but after more than a week walking and psyching herself up to meet her end only to discover what she had hoped would be impossible she was spent, and just wanted to sit a little longer. That is, if the wind held off. She did not want to be embroiled in a sandstorm. The sand was everywhere. It felt like sand as she knew it, of the earth, but perhaps it wasn't. She had no way of knowing. It could have been toxic and there would have been nothing she could do. She was covered in it. It was stuck under her nails, in her hair, on her legs and arms and in her sandals. It coated the bottoms of her feet, making walking painful. She had several blisters she was tending to.

She really had to move, she repeated to herself. There were still plenty of homes untouched, and she hoped to find her mother's amongst them. Scully wasn't sure why homes had been left standing, why the resources within those homes had been unwanted or ignored by those who had taken everything else from her. The homes left standing might have housed bodies like large catacombs but at least there were some comforts there; food, water, shelter.

She stared up at the blue sky and sighed, attempting to banish thoughts of the desert. Instead she soaked up the silence, pretending she'd had a stressful day at work amidst bustling, impatient federal agents, pretending the silence was welcome and comforting. She was on her way home, to take a bubble bath and read on the couch. It almost worked, but as soon as she allowed her eyes to drift shut against the hot rays of the sun she saw his face. Mulder came to her so often these days, she pondered. Snippets of their past together came back to her almost constantly, as though he was speaking to her, as though he was helping her remember him before she died. It was painful but she didn't want to forget him, so she let herself remember.

They were sitting on his couch. That awful couch he more often than not called a bed. Popcorn, Scully thought. She remembered popcorn. They had watched a stupid movie, and she had turned to him to announce it was time for her to go home. She had stared at him in shock, for he had been asleep and to see him that way in his own home was still novel and oddly domestic. It spoke of a trust between them that had only been growing deeper. Strange, she had thought. She had not known their trust in one another could get much greater than it already had been, but it had, for he had rarely fallen asleep beside her. His plump lips were parted and his eyelashes fluttered as he dreamt. He was reclined back against the couch with his head tilted to the side, and Scully remembered the way her affectionate heart had quickened in her chest.

Reach forward, she had thought. He never sleeps. Just reach forward and touch his face. Wake him. Say goodnight. Tell him you love him.

'Mulder,' she had whispered. 'Fox, sweetheart.' He had opened his brown eyes, brown but filled with so many other emotional shades of green and grey, and stared at her.

'Peace on earth Scully,' he had mumbled. She had frowned, shaking her head a little.

'Mulder wake up,' she had urged. 'Wake up, it's late. You should go to bed.'

'Come with me.' Scully had gasped. Their relationship had moved beyond that of working partners, beyond that of best friends, but she still had not been comfortable in thinking of him as her lover. They loved each other in a way she had never experienced before, but the label of lover still made her nervous. It was not the term. It was the man. They hadn't properly spoken about the times she had stayed, the times they had been intimate. All two times, she thought dryly.

The first had 'just happened' because she had gone to his bed in the night, and she had left in the morning as though she hadn't. And the second? They had both been drunk after that disastrous movie premiere. It had almost cancelled out the sentiment of the first time, and had left her confused. What did he think they were? Yes, they had said, 'I love you', they had made love once, but that second time had been sex and nothing more. Right? So what was he asking for now? A casual fuck, or did he want to make love to her again? Truth be told, she wasn't sure she minded either way, but she still wanted to know.

'Mulder, I-'

'I just want to hear you beside me Dana,' he had whispered. 'I don't want you to go.' Tears had stung her eyes as she watched him. No matter her doubts she had not been able to help shaking her head, leaning forward over his strong, broad body, allowing him to wrap his arms around her and support her frame. They would make it work, she promised herself. They could make 'them' work, because she loved him, so they had to.

'Then I won't go Mulder,' she had promised. 'But first, what was your third wish?'

'You bribing me?' he had asked, smirking, sleep clearing from his eyes. She had ducked her head, allowing her chin to nuzzle his chest from side to side. Her eyes had never left his. She had merely smiled, coy but playful and tender. 'I set her free,' he whispered. 'I can only hope I gave her a gift in this life that you gave me, Dana. I set her free.'

Scully let her eyes open as tears trickled down her cheeks, just as they had that night, in his arms on the couch and in bed after they had made love. She had felt so embarrassed at crying, she remembered, but the security and the joy she had felt had been overwhelming. She had realised then that he really had been in love with her and that her confusion had stemmed from an uncertainty as to whether his feelings for her would fade, whether he had only loved her as a partner and best friend but not as a woman. His feelings hadn't faded, he loved her as everything she was to him, and in that moment she had allowed herself to accept that she was happy there.

She had cried in front of him before, in moments where death had nearly taken her or him, when the adrenaline that had surged through her in the struggle to survive left her, when she had looked into his eyes and seen concern and protection and fear. But she had never cried with him as she had that night. It had never been soft or sated, it had never truly been happy. She could see herself blushing as she wept into his chest. She could hear herself apologising to him for being emotional, for spoiling their intimacy. Mulder had merely wrapped her in the blankets and his body and hushed her to sleep.

Scully couldn't remember what it had actually felt like in his arms, and she at once cursed her memory for dragging forth a moment that made her crave his embrace so badly. It had been so long. One glance at her watch told her just how long. Not that it was even her watch, she thought to herself as a swift breeze picked up sand from nearby and swept it up into her face. She quickly ducked her head into her knees and covered herself, her ponytail sweeping upwards and around her. She let the wind and sand encase her. It would pass in time.

Time, she thought again. She remembered the body she had pulled the watch off; a woman in a car amidst a highway of cars. What had been left of her arm had been outstretched right in Scully's path, as though the analogue timepiece was being delivered to her in the wake of all digital technology being rendered useless.

Useless.

It was frightening to think of all the technologies she had come to depend on in her life, now obsolete. There was no electricity. When it got dark at night, it got DARK. There were no phones, no traffic, no fridges, no ATMs, no money, and, what was the other, more important thing? Oh, oh yeah, she huffed, no goddamn people!

She felt like the only person left in the world, and Scully suddenly knew exactly why her memory had recalled that particular moment from their past, and how Mulder had felt after wishing for peace on earth. She knew exactly why he had held onto her so tightly that night, why he had wrapped her so carefully in the blankets as she cried. She had been crying because he loved her, but he had held her because he was afraid he would lose her.

And he had.

Scully had always fought with him, but never against him. So she had let him go. She had made her displeasure known but she had let him go. On foot. With no supplies.

And they had come. Scully shut her eyes, trying to block the memories, trying to stop their assault on her. Didn't they come to her enough already? As much as she tried she could not forget the sound, the flash. The closest thing she had to an analogy was from her childhood, and the times when her older brothers had blown their father's military whistle in her ear. The sound had been that, times a thousand. And yet at the same time it had been deathly quiet, as endings often were. She had been alone in a house big enough for ten, not two, and the neighbouring houses were miles away.

It was as though they had come back just for her.

Scully pulled herself into a ball in repetition of the same actions she had taken that night, beside her bed, as the flash overcame her. It had illuminated everything even behind her shut eyelids, and for a few minutes after it faded Scully thought she was blind. Once she had been brave enough to pull from her crouch, remnants of the flash still blocking her vision, she had searched blindly through her bedside drawer, retrieving the small photo album her mother had brought her. Of her family, her childhood, and her son.

On top of the table had been the only framed picture in the entire house of herself and Mulder, and she had taken both and gone straight to the trap door. She had locked it behind her and descended into the bunker. It was located away from the house, and she had travelled underground for several hundred metres before she had gotten to it.

See, she remembered thinking. What did Mulder have to complain about? He had spent years building this safe haven and what if it actually worked? What if it worked and he was too much of an ass to have stuck around and witnessed it for himself? He had protected her. He had protected her again but run away because he hadn't been able to see. He had never been able to believe how much he really meant to her. How grateful she was. How she didn't give a shit about her job or her income as long as he was safe.

Had it really been because she hadn't shown him? Scully didn't think so. Surely not. Dana Scully had only ever been in love with one man. She had loved others, to varying degrees, but not since her youth. Not since before the FBI. Not since before Mulder.

She had hidden in the bunker for over a month, filling pages of paper with retellings and angst-filled fantasies about him coming back for her. He had never come. Two weeks into that month of her life, she had started to fantasise about going to find him instead. Even though he had stormed out, what did it matter? They made each other feel whole. After him, who or what could ever fill those gaps left by his absence? She didn't know.

Before Mulder. After Mulder. Why did she measure her life by that man?

"Because," she whispered, hearing her voice for the first time that day. "Because he was mine." Her voice was low and scratchy from the sand in her mouth and the lack of water. She hated hearing her voice. She hated how she sounded. She did not sound like Dana Katherine Scully, M.D. She sounded like a broken woman, and she was not that. She wasn't. Right?

Was. He was mine. The sound of her own voice hung in her mind, which was suddenly filled with nothing else beside her use of the past tense. This time he was really dead. Really, truly, unable-to-be-recovered dead. There was no body to exhume and magically bring back to life. There were no other doctors to help her, no emergency rooms she could burst into shouting orders about how best to save her partner's life. There was not even enough gauze to pack any wounds should he have sustained them.

She had nothing but her memories and her photographs. Fox Mulder was gone.

The sun was setting behind her and Scully winced as she pulled her legs closer to her body, curling even tighter. Would it be so bad to sleep in the middle of a desecrated cemetery, she wondered? What was the worst that could happen? Zombies? Poltergeists? Satanists?

"I hate you Mulder," she whispered, though the tears in her eyes and the shake of her damaged voice reminded her and him, if he was listening, that she did not mean it.

She should at least do what she had come to do before dark, she told herself, preferring to speak in her head and not out loud. What was the point if nobody could hear her?

Slowly, Scully allowed herself to unfurl. She tried not to think about the sort of shape she was in, but she knew she was blistered and sunburned. She knew the muscles in her back and legs were aching from the constant walking. She knew she had cuts that needed proper attention, but she would not tend to them until she was in another cleaner, safe place for the night.

Scully took a deep breath of fresh air and thanked the Lord that oxygen had not been taken. Yes, the trees and grass were gone, but she could still breathe. She was grateful for that much. She could survive in the desert for as long as anybody else around the world had survived in deserts for centuries. She had lots of shelter and enough water and food for another week, and she would go in search of more the next day. It would tide her over until she found a proper place to end her life.

She bit her bottom lip in pain as she took her first steps down the sandy slope. She was already in the cemetery, she knew. She had technically just been sitting on somebody's grave, or perhaps between a couple, but she thought she had her directions right, and she thought she knew instinctively where to go.

Remnants of the ordered, military graves remained amidst the destruction. Every nutrient had been taken. Every grain of life had been removed. Dana had once stood in Arlington and felt the souls of those who had gone before her, but now there was nothing. They had transformed a Holy, patriotic site of remembrance into a desert. A desert, for fuck's sake!

She pressed her lips together and tried to stay as angry as possible, but it was hard when 'they' weren't even around for her to fight. She did not know whether they had left or whether they were in another country, doing the same thing to it that had been done to her home. Scavenging, destroying, killing.

Scully had hoped to make it out of the city by nightfall, to inspect the suburbs, but as night approached she knew she had sat and remembered for too long. She would need to find somewhere to sleep that night and continue her journey the next day.

Her journey to find answers before she died. To find the truth. To make sure she knew exactly where those who were once important to her were. If they were anywhere at all.

It struck Scully how much that sounded like what Mulder's plan had been, once upon a time. Find his sister; find the truth behind why she was taken and what was done to her, even if it meant finding her body. Wasn't that what she was doing? Wasn't that EXACTLY what she was doing? And without him.

After doing her best not to trip over upturned, broken headstones she thought she was in the right place. She really had nothing but instinct and memory to guide her, and neither was very reliable in her opinion anymore. Still, she allowed herself to sink to her knees and begin dragging her rough, small hands through the grainy sand.

Where had the soil gone, she thought? All that beautiful, rich, brown soil. Vanished.

She remembered scraping the sand with her hands before, in Africa, brushing at the spacecraft, its teachings, its religions and sciences. Her religion and her science. She let a shiver consume her from her tailbone to her neck, her legs and arms tingling as she ducked her head and continued dragging the sand. For proof. For anything.

Please, she thought desperately, just as her hand scratched something sharp and she pulled away with a startled cry. Blood began to seep from the skin on the outside of her thumb and she swore, sticking the digit in her mouth and sucking instinctively to clean it. She had antiseptic in her bag but she had to be careful with it and she had to wait until she was in a more stable environment before she tended to her cuts.

Her other hand reached back down as she pressed her tongue against the cut to try to stop the blood flowing. It was only a flesh wound, but it smarted under the heat of her mouth. Her uninjured hand wrapped around the hard rock she had encountered, and though it was heavy after a few minutes she had lifted it partially out of the sand. She forgot about her cut and used both hands to scrape sand away from the headstone, suddenly panicked.

Melvin.

Scully could have cried, but she didn't. She had been right. She had found them by dumb luck. Mulder's friends. Her friends. The men she had trusted so many times to help her. The men who, in their own dorky way, had meant so much to her, and she had never told them. It hurt to realise their graves were as badly damaged as everyone else's. The other graves had all belonged to military men and women, distinguished public servants, presidents even, and yet here were the remains of three paranoid computer hackers who had worked their way into her life just as Mulder had, who had sacrificed their own lives for the good of their country.

And for what? For THIS?

Scully curled forward into a child's pose and rested her forehead against the half of Frohike's headstone she had uncovered. She missed them. She wanted Frohike to ogle her one more time, or wrap a protective hand around her elbow. She missed Langley's techno-drawl and his long, blonde hair. She missed Byers in his suit with his earnest eyes. She missed the way they had all accepted her as Mulder's 'sceptic' partner, helped her learn, protected her, protected Mulder, and protected their son.

She just wanted someone who knew her, but they were all dead. Most of those she had seen were horribly burned, reminiscent of deaths she had witnessed many years beforehand. Scully hated to picture her loved ones that way. She hated what she would have to do the next day, and for a moment she envied the Lone Gunmen the safety of their coffins underground.

But that's what the pills are for Dana, she reminded herself. Once you know you are truly alone, you can let go and join them.

And she would.

xxxxxxx

Scully awoke in the sand, squeezing her eyes shut in defence when she realised her face was turned towards it. She sat up with a start and began brushing herself off. She looked around for her backpack frantically before realising it was in front of her. She had wrapped herself around it in her sleep. She sighed. It sure didn't look like Mulder, she thought sadly, reaching out to run her hand over the orange and black synthetic material. But it did remind her of him.

Without bothering with a brush she undid her ponytail and ran her fingers through her knotted, sandy hair before tying it up once more. Once she was done, she looked around to get her bearings. Sometimes she would wake up and not remember where she was or how she came to be there. Some days her grief directed her to resting places.

But as the sun rose and the sky turned from black to navy she remembered exactly where she was. Glancing down at where her hand was bracing her weight against the sand, Frohike's headstone glared back at her. She checked her watch; four thirty in the morning. It was a good a time as any to start walking, she decided. Before it got too hot.

She sat up with more purpose and reached for the backpack, retrieving her second last bottle of water and taking a large sip. She was afraid to drink more than a third of the small bottle but she was desperately in need of water, the back of her head thumping in a familiar morning ritual consisting of nausea and dehydration headaches. She groaned, shutting her eyes as the cool liquid sped down her throat. It did not feel like enough, and as a doctor she knew it wasn't, but it would have to do.

When she got to her mother's, she would raid the fridge. It would be like old times.

Scully knelt on the sand in front of the graves she had discovered, and let her hand rest on the sand above each one, silently thanking them for all their help and protection over the years, praying for their safety, praying for her own safety as she prepared to face her end. She knew that somewhere, along the way, they would be there. Somewhere they knew.

It felt silly to say anything out loud, and Scully debated whether or not she needed to. No, she finally decided. It would be better to conserve her strength, and she had so little physical and emotional strength left. Speaking to nobody was just too much effort.

xxxxxx

It was nearly dark by the time Scully got to the house. It was untouched. The whole street was untouched. Except of course for the complete absence of life. Painted wood and bricks might not have been useful, but the street looked like a development site. Her mother's front garden, which she had been so proud of and which usually bloomed with colour in the early summer, was replaced by sand. Dry, dusty, silicon.

Scully walked around the back of the house. She knew she was going to have to break in and she knew doing so would make some noise. She had weapons but she did not want to attract any wild animals or vagrants. Not that she had seen any of either since they had come.

The glass in the back window broke under the force of her elbow and Scully reached in to unlock the door, pushing it open before carefully removing her arm from around the jagged shards she had been too preoccupied to first clear. Sweat dribbled down her back as she stepped over the threshold. Her heart beat fiercely in her chest and not for the first time she wondered whether a fatal heart attack would be more favourable than the temporary but debilitating anxiety attack she felt coming on.

Be neutral, she tried to tell herself. Don't panic. Be strong. Look in the kitchen first.

Using water from melted ice cubes stored in the defrosted freezer to wash her face was something Dana was used to. It was not the first time she had broken into somebody's house. The water was cool and untainted, preserved since before the invasion. It felt fresh against her skin and in the comfort that this had been her own home for so many years she allowed herself to use some soap to clear the sand and grime from her face as well.

Most of what was in the fridge had expired, and Dana knew then for sure her mother was dead. She retrieved the stale bread and put it on the bench behind her; nearly a full loaf. There was not too much else in the fridge she could take, but that was enough. In the pantry she collected crackers and cans of tuna, tomatoes and the peaches she knew her mother had always kept for her nephew to have with ice cream after Sunday lunches. There was an unopened packet of chocolate as well as two full jars of jam and honey.

Scully could not help her happy smile as she gathered it all on the bench and stared at it.

God bless you mom, she thought, tears stinging her eyes painfully as she took one last look at the pantry. This was where she was at home, she realised. Mulder might not have been there, but this was second best. It would do. Her last meal was going to be a good one.

She lifted her backpack onto the counter beside her collection of food and opened it, trying to work out how to cram all her food into the remaining space, before a thought stopped her in her tracks. Her clothes.

Scully and her mother were basically the same size. They wore the same size clothes and shoes, though Maggie had been slightly taller. Scully left the kitchen, abandoning her pack for the time being, and bolted up the stairs. She ignored the blisters on her feet and pushed through her mother's bedroom door. She was eager to get to the closet. She wanted to look nice when she killed herself, after all. Not like some homeless woman who had stolen her clothes from another homeless woman.

Or another dead person's closet, she added dryly.

She was halfway to the wardrobe before she caught sight of the reflection in the large mirror above her mother's duchess. It was not her own appearance that had caught her eyes, and her heart broke instantly at the realisation of her basic human selfishness and her ignorance as to what she would really find in her mother's room.

There was a reason you started in the kitchen, dumbass, a voice told her. Scully licked her lips, willing herself to turn around. She felt afraid, even though she knew what she would see thanks to the reflection in the mirror. Still, she needed to see it. She wanted to. She turned slowly on her heel, her head lowered, her ponytail quivering against her neck as her body began to shake.

The covers were pulled up over the body, and Scully could see the outline of legs and torso beneath the thin blankets. Her mother's body was pulled up into a tight foetal position, a reaction to intense heat or perhaps some sort of infection. There was no hair, no skin, no eyes; nothing to prove to Scully that the charred skeletal remains in the bed was her mother.

But nobody else had slept in that bed since her father had died thirteen years previously. Her mother had never dated another man as far as she knew, had never let herself fall for another, had thrown herself into her family and their lives, committing to the people she loved the most.

And now she was carbon, Scully realised. She had seen so many bodies in a similar state that the gruesome nature of the death didn't bother her. She thought it had been quick, but perhaps that was only what she wanted to believe. Everything around the bodies was always untouched, as though death had come specifically for and touched only them. Scully had seen death once, but she did not think this was the same. Death rarely needed so many at once.

Scully felt suddenly guilty as she let her fingers trail over the end of the bedspread, her eyes not leaving the corpse of the woman who had given her life, who had helped her through so much pain and provided her with so much love. And all Scully really wanted was her clothes.

"I'm sorry mom," she whispered, allowing herself to speak, again for the first time that day. "I love you. Sleep tight."