Two

[Another pretty heavy chapter, they're not all like this, and introducing Skinner!]

Scully Residence

Washington DC – July 2005

Scully sat at a stool in the large kitchen and looked at the sand covering the backyard right up to the fence. She had contemplated wrapping her mother's body in sheets and burying it in the yard, giving her a proper burial as her mother would have wanted it, saying some prayers, but it didn't feel right. There was no soil, the carbon had been stripped from the ground and yet that was exactly what her mother had been reduced to.

It wasn't right.

So she would stay for all eternity asleep in her bed, and as Scully stared at the pile of fresh clothes and nibbled on the corner of a cracker her stomach was doing flip-flops in grief. She had battled through the feelings before, for Mulder and William, and she knew forcing herself to eat was useless; she was just going to throw it up. Still, sometimes throwing up when she felt that way gave her a sense of comfort.

Scully shook her head and sighed, realising how crazy she sounded. She had never made herself sick on purpose, and she was not about to start, but there had been times when her body had overruled her, even when she had been pregnant with William and Mulder had been missing and then apparently dead and buried. At least then she had been able to put it down to morning sickness, when she knew it had been more.

Scully was dressed in her mother's dark jeans and a white t-shirt. She had used a bucket to collect what little water was left in the pipes and washed in the ensuite. She had even managed to wash her hair somewhat thoroughly, though the damp strands combed straight still felt soapy and sandy under her fingers.

Scully knew she would have to spend the night in her mother's home with her mother's body, but frankly she welcomed the company. At least it was a familiar setting. Nothing worked. There was no television, no microwave, no fridge, and no music. But there were books, so many books that she was contemplating whether she had enough water to allow her to read them all before she died. And there was the piano, but Scully was too afraid to approach it. It would make too much noise.

Still, it was there, and it was calling to her just as her big sister Melissa had always begged her to play duets. Thank God Missy died so long ago, she thought. Thank Christ.

Scully abandoned the cracker which she had barely finished and rested her forehead on the cool bench top. She raked in a sudden, sharp breath and spun around on the chair, leaning over the sink as nausea swept over her and forced her stomach to wrench. Tears trickled from her eyes as she threw up what little she had eaten as well as a fair portion of valuable water.

What a waste, she thought glumly as she regained her composure and brushed her hands over her flushed cheeks. God, what a mess. She was such an unsightly mess. She hated it.

She stood and walked into the living room, staring at the photos on the mantelpiece. Her mother still had a picture of her and William, even though she had given the boy away three years beforehand. Scully had photos of her son with her, but she rarely looked at them. It was too heartbreaking to know she had not been able to protect her baby boy, and in hindsight to know that if they had survived, he might still be alive with her.

Stop it, she told herself. This isn't the life you would have wanted for him anyway.

No, she agreed. No, it was not the life that anybody should have to lead, let alone a child.

There was a small part of Scully that wondered what would happen if she did not kill herself and kept walking, if one day she did find somewhere with people. She fantasised about crossing the border into Canada or Mexico and suddenly discovering that life had gone on there, but what if it hadn't? All that wasted time spent wandering the desert, when she could have been entwined with Mulder on some astral plane. In Heaven. In the starlight. With her father and sister, the Lone Gunmen and the rest of her family, all lost to this devastation, this invasion, this 'cause'.

A picture of Scully and Mulder sat beside that of her and William, and she picked it up, smiling sadly. It was the picture that had been by her bed. Her mother had sent her a copy. They had looked so happy to have each other despite all that had been lost by then, she realised. If they hadn't had that stupid fight he would be with her. If he hadn't made such a big deal about her pulling another double shift without letting him know he would be with her. If she hadn't snapped at him about all the times he had ditched her, if she hadn't given him another excuse to do just that, he would be with her.

Scully remembered telling him so many times that they would never leave each other and that he would always be with her, in her heart. She had believed it then, but not anymore.

How could she keep him in her heart when it hurt so much? She had pushed him further down inside her. If she let him free from the part of her soul he now occupied she knew she would scream until she passed out from the pain. She would not let the part of him she held surface from inside her until it was time to take her pills. She wanted him to hold her then but not earlier. She was afraid of splintering her soul, but more importantly, she was afraid that when she did go to let him out, he would be gone.

Screw it, Scully thought, glaring at the piano in the far corner of the room. She crossed the carpet and lifted the lid, staring at the keys. She let her right thumb rest on middle C and the note held its tone and strength. She hiccupped as she fought back tears, and she lifted the lid on the stool to search for something she could attempt; something easy, for she had not touched the instrument in two decades.

Scully was surprised and grateful to discover all her old music still in the chair, a chair she had shared with her sister or mother more than once. She found her beginner's book, and her breath caught as she opened the first page and scanned the contents. Maybe this was not such a good idea, she realised, staring at the simple melodic introduction to the national anthem she had sung so many times in her life.

Then again, who was listening? Who really cared if she broke down halfway and cried?

xxxx

The next afternoon, Scully stared in her mother's medicine cabinet, delighted to find some old antibiotics sitting towards the back. She swallowed two without water and retrieved a bag of cotton wool balls and antiseptic lotion before returning back downstairs. She hated going upstairs now she had the clothes she needed, and she preferred to stay downstairs as long as possible. The prior night she had spent sleeping on the couch, picturing Mulder in his apartment doing the same as though nothing had changed. Sometimes in her dreams she was curled up with him, safe and warm.

Scully knew the house was holding her prisoner. She was trying to ignore the pills in her bag. She could not bring herself to set foot outside except to take advantage of the sparse, sandy backyard for hygiene's sake. It was not as though she had anywhere else to be. Besides, it was somewhat comforting to believe that before she killed herself, she could spend some time in the house she had missed so desperately in the three years since she and Mulder had fled. She had only been back for three days over the prior year's Christmas. The distance had been an excruciating safety barrier to erect but her mother had understood, or at least that was what she had told her during their weekly phone calls.

Scully sighed, sitting on a chair in the dining room with her medical supplies and rolling up the cuff of her jeans. The gash along her calf was taking longer to heal than she would have liked, thanks mostly to the fact she was walking on it so much. She knew a big part of her plans, hell, her only 'plan' consisted of her poisoning herself, but she was still afraid of infection. The doctor in her still thought her euthanasia plan was ludicrous, and wanted to see her leg healed before she did anything else. Rational Doctor Scully won out over irrational, frightened Dana, and the leg was being seriously treated.

The antibiotic lotion and other first aid supplies she had taken from the chemist she had come across after the accident had been working well, but Scully knew rest and nutrition were also necessary to assist with a fast recovery. There was a thin scab, but the surrounding skin was still very red and tender. She winced as she used the cotton balls to apply more antiseptic.

There were so many other little cuts and bruises on her and she had neither the will nor the materials to tend so carefully to them all, but she cleaned the more serious ones. The cut on her leg had come from tripping over what was left of a tree trunk that had been sticking out of the sand. She had been too preoccupied to notice at the time, nearing DC with every step taken and every sign passed along the side of the highway, hoping for any sign of animal or plant life. The branch had scratched from her ankle nearly up to her knee as she had fallen right over it. She was lucky nothing had been impaled, but the lack of life in the trunk had caused it to crumble under her weight, avoiding worse injury. It had been the first remnant she had seen to prove anything like a tree had ever existed, but just like the people and the land, it had been sucked dry and left for dead.

Kind of like her.

Although she wasn't dead yet, and her explorations over the day had given her the means to continue to procrastinate about ending her life. She had broken into the next door neighbour's house that morning and been pleased to discover bottled water in the garage stacked a few boxes deep. She had recognised that if she was truly suicidal, water would not have been such a welcome sight, but she had pushed that thought away and revelled in her find. She had taken the time to move all the boxes to her own home.

Scully realised she was in some sort of serious shock. She had gotten through the whole day comfortable about the fact her mother's corpse was upstairs. Maybe it was just because she was home, or perhaps she did have an infection in her leg and it was messing with her mind. Or maybe after so much time alone and so much travel and sun-exposure she was simply losing her mind, her composure, and her sanity. As though her conscience was deceiving her into this tender calm until one day she snapped and had a complete breakdown. And if that happened, would she still swallow the pills, or would her mother's knives be a more tempting offer?

Scully lowered her injured leg and got off the stool before she began to analyse her mental health. She needed a distraction, and she again found herself drawn to the piano. She had a few hours of light left before it got dark. She sat down; the lid of the piano already lifted, and played a few tentative scales. The music sounded so very loud, the simple string of notes amidst complete silence deafening and grounding all the same.

It felt good to be 'doing' something, Scully realised. There was a purpose to how her hands were moving. She was not wandering aimlessly. She was playing a scale. A real scale, an exercise invented long before she was born and practised the world over by amateurs and prodigies alike. It was a link to the human world, a world that had been extinguished.

Just one little problem though. God had forgotten to take her with the rest.

That was how she felt when she allowed herself to think about the crucifix around her neck, to ponder her faith and its origins. She believed in God, in whatever spiritual form He or She took. A religion was manmade, but the essence of what she had seen so many times, the realities of her experiences, made it impossible for her to deny the existence of an entity greater than the extraterrestrials that had brought her Catholic religion to earth.

Scully needed to believe God had saved her family and friends. That He, as she had always pictured Him, had spared them pain, had taken their souls to a higher plane.

But what about her soul? What about her body? She had not been spared the grief of losing them. She had not been spared the fear of sitting alone underground for a month waiting for her partner to return, of wondering what had happened, or whether or not it was safe to look above-ground.

Why had He left her? Why had He left her alone when all the signs along the way had made her believe that she couldn't be alone, that she didn't want to be alone? Scully still prayed, but not for anything specific. Generally a simple, 'please God' sufficed. She had no idea what she was pleading for, because she knew in her heart the things she wanted most she could never get back. Mulder, her family, her friends. Her son.

Mulder.

Scully stood and rifled through the piano stool until she found the music she was looking for. Again, it was easy piano she had not played since she had been a girl, but she did not care. She knew the music itself well. She would be able to sight-read it.

Tears streamed down her cheeks as she opened to the page she most wanted, anger suddenly rattling in her chest. She took a second to position her hands over the keys, and then she furiously slammed down the chords. Over and over and over, until she did not need to look at the page anymore to know where her hands were meant to be, until her tears prevented her reading any further notes. Over and over and over, loud and painful and excruciatingly lustful, because in that moment she felt the pain those notes evoked in theatre, she WAS that pain, she was that phantom, she was Christine, and Mulder, who had always been her perfect opposite in whatever role she took, had left her.

xxx

Washington DC – one week later

"Hey," Shannon called as she jogged down the front steps of the double storey house and jumped into the sand below. She stared at her waiting companion. "What's with the crap directions?"

Walter Skinner adjusted his glasses and stared at her blankly, the torn page from an old street directory still held in one of his hands.

"We've done this place already," she announced, gesturing behind her. "Place is ransacked."

"No, we haven't," Skinner promised her, running his spare hand over his bald head and readjusting his smudged glasses on his nose. "I'm sure of it. What do you mean ransacked?"

"Well okay, it's not a total disaster, but there's food missing. We must have come here already." He stared at her pointedly.

"Unless somebody else did. Seriously Shannon, we haven't done this street yet." Shannon took a moment to look around and reassess. She stood to her full height, tall and broad. She was attractive and muscular. Her dark brown hair was pulled back in a ponytail. Her blue eyes surveyed their surroundings. The streets did tend to blend into one another, but her sense of direction was well enough attuned to tell her that they had not in fact canvassed that street before. Skinner was right. Somebody else had.

"Odd," she mumbled to herself. "Oh well, let's try the next one then."

The second house on the abandoned street yielded more questions than answers. Shannon and Skinner stood side by side in their jeans and casual shirts, looking at the white sheet spread out over the couch. It was tented and Shannon stepped forward to lift a corner of the sheet. She was wary of what may be underneath, but suspected nothing harmful. Skinner leant forward and peered at the two bodies revealed, dead just as the others, but respectfully sheathed.

Neither of them had ever covered the dead. There was no further decay expected, no danger to their health, and neither had time for somewhat religious acts of respect.

"I wonder how recently this happened," Skinner pondered, flicking the edge of the sheet with his fingers. Shannon moved silently to the kitchen, not needing to answer. He knew she was wondering the same. The fridge was as rancid as everyone else's, but she immediately noted the absence of bread. There were also no cans in the pantry, and there were gaps amidst rows of boxes, indicating that somebody had perhaps removed a box of cereal or crackers.

Skinner came up behind her.

"Point of entry there," she stated, pointing to the broken screen on the back door. "Looks like it was ripped with a knife of some sort. There's a survivor here, probably in the local area. We should do a quick check. Will Sarah be okay?"

"She won't be able to tell whether it's night so that won't scare her," Skinner reasoned. "I agree we should do a check, but we shouldn't stay too long. We can always come back tomorrow."

"Agreed," Shannon replied with a small smile. She saw the pain in his grey eyes when he spoke of his niece, who they had left at the house in which they had been staying. She was not able to help them search for and collect food and water and other tools, and Shannon knew Skinner hated to leave her every day in her world of darkness.

He went to the pantry and looked for himself, before removing a half-empty box of sugary cereal that had been left. Apparently their survivor was well enough to be fussy. He grabbed a handful and then offered the box to Shannon with somewhat of a teasing smile.

"Want some?" he mumbled, chewing. She merely raised her eyebrows. "Oh come on, supersoldier's gotta eat."

"Bite me," she deadpanned.

xxx

"I can't believe this," Shannon concluded after the third house they checked on the street displayed the same modus operandi. Skinner had waited on the footpath as she checked the interior and she had returned quickly. "Forced entry through the back, deceased covered in sheets, food taken. No telling how recent."

"There's something about this street Shannon," Skinner stated, surprising her. She looked up, her brown fringe cut straight across her eyebrows. Her fair eyes pierced his, urging him to continue. "It's familiar, somehow. I think I've been here before."

"Before-before?" she asked. Skinner nodded, frowning and turning in his spot as he observed the nearby houses. "You remember why?"

"I never lived here. But somebody I knew, perhaps. How far down does this street go?"

"Couple hundred metres that way," she pointed. "We have quite a lot of houses to go before it's complete. I think you're right; we should come back tomorrow. It's nearly dark."

"No," Skinner disagreed, unsettled by his sudden sense of déjà vu. "If somebody's living here we should help them. I want to keep looking." Shannon nodded and they both removed small torches from their pockets. They would leave what they had found and come back for it on their way, but first they would search.

xxx

Skinner was staring up and down the street in the fading light half an hour later, taking time to look over each house in his line of sight and remember. Something was familiar about the street, he knew that, but devoid of grass and trees it was hard to remember individual houses.

He tried to think about all the people he had known in his life, as Shannon searched. Skinner had known a lot of people, and he had travelled widely for part of his career. He knew, however, that they were still in DC, and that narrowed the list substantially. He had lived in DC for a long time, but he had visited very few homes.

Think Walter, think, he urged himself. The houses were all upper-middle-class, mostly double-storey, and he could picture all with beautiful green lawns, flowerbeds and large trees. He looked up towards the street lights and imagined it was night, which was not hard considering that it almost was. He tried to remember what street lights had really looked like, how they had cast a certain glow over the bitumen.

Over the snow. Over the ice.

'Don't trip Dana.'

'I'm fine. Thanks for coming with me. I couldn't face-'

'It's okay. I'm happy to have somewhere to be Christmas Eve.'

Oh shit.

"Shit!" he exclaimed. "SHANNON!"

"What?" she asked, appearing in the front door only seconds later, hands on her denim-clad hips. "What's the matter?"

"I know who used to live here," he told her. "I just don't remember what number it was."

"You sure it was this street?" she asked. She watched him turn in his place and then shut his eyes. He was nodding before they opened, and he pushed his glasses back up his nose.

"Positive," he assured her.

"Then we'll keep going," she promised. "There's nothing we can take from here either. It's the same." Walter nodded. He had no hope of finding the resident of the home he remembered alive and well, but he owed it to his old friends, his old life, to make sure the home was at peace.

They walked silently down the street and after another hour determined nobody was living in any of the homes. All the residents had died. Still, Skinner was reluctant to leave. He had not found the house in his memory, but he knew it was there. If not on that street, then the next. A part of him was eager to get home to his niece, but another wanted to see the house. He had seen so little of his old life, and he owed it to Dana.

Stars lit up the night sky and Skinner took the opportunity to enjoy the peaceful calm of the balmy night, despite the uncomfortable sand underfoot. The moon was a thin sliver of crescent silver, and he allowed himself to smile. He wondered how long it would be until the next full moon. When the moon was full, the world did not seem as dark.

Skinner's lip twitched as Shannon reached for his hand, letting the top of her hand rest inside his palm. It closed over her hand and he glanced at her. They smiled at each other. He allowed himself the pleasure of holding her hand, aware she offered him more support than he deserved, aware he enjoyed her touch a little too much. But she knew that already and yet she never pulled away. A part of her liked it too much as well. Too much, and yet not enough. That had always been the problem.

"You remember which house yet?" she asked. Skinner shook his head. "Perhaps we should come back in the daylight," she mumbled. "My eyes are fine, but our torches aren't strong enough for this."

"All these houses look so similar anyway Shannon," he sighed. "I-"

They froze when they heard a loud, angry scream and the sudden breaking of glass. The commotion shattered the silence and echoed down the otherwise empty street. Shannon gripped Skinner's hand a little too tightly, momentarily forgetting her strength, and he pulled quickly from her grasp before she injured him. She realised, but the act of separating was enough to spur them into motion. Her apology was forgotten as they sprinted in the direction of the scream, torchlight bouncing along the uneven layers of sand that covered what had once been road.

The pain and frustration the scream had revealed was human; Skinner knew that without a doubt, and it had come from around the block. Supersoldiers never screamed. Humans screamed, they cried, and they threw breakable objects. They needed outlets for their emotions. They 'had' emotions. Shannon was the anomaly in that regard.

They had really found a survivor, Skinner thought in shock. He had thought there were no others. He had not seen any others. But they had found evidence, proof that somebody apart from them had survived. A woman, he thought. It had been a woman's scream. Incredible.

xxx

Scully fell to her knees in the dark as her scream became a deep, teeming wail that turned her stomach inside out and pushed it up towards her throat. Her eyes were squeezed shut as she shivered in pain and tears pushed their way past her fair eyelashes. Her heart beat quickly in her chest and she struggled to draw breath.

The doctor in her wrapped one set of fingers around her opposite wrist, checking her pulse. Fast and thready. Her head throbbed and her orange hair was loose and uncombed. She let the strength in her back fail her and fell forward over her lap, her head resting near the damp carpet as she rocked. She was immune to the smell of alcohol permeating the room, or the slivers of glass underneath her hands as they clawed at the ground.

She needed to get away. Why hadn't God saved her too? Why didn't he SAVE her?

The pain was almost unbearable. She had been scared, trying to sleep on the couch. She'd had a nightmare and in a moment of weakness had sought out the comfort of Mulder's embrace, his 'real' embrace, a part of him she had pushed too far down inside her to reach again without some sort of pain. Too much pain, she had reminded herself all too late. It was too much pain. She had shut her eyes and felt him around her and then he had been gone, and he was gone, and she wanted to be gone too. No more waiting. No more sitting around, not for another week, not for another day.

"I hate you, I hate you, I HATE YOU!" she screamed uselessly, pushing her face away from the carpet, opening her blue eyes and staring at the wall at which she had thrown the heavy bottle of wine. Her cries were tortured and hot, salty tears trickled over the curves of her cheekbones towards her lips and chin. She covered her face with her hands, continuing to repeat her hatred aloud into her palms, feeling them quickly dampen with sweat and tears.

She looked up and kept rocking, wrapping her arms around herself. Her own touch was a poor substitute for what she had conjured up just minutes ago. It had been so real. So intense. Her vision was blurry and she sobbed as she struggled through the pain. It was so dark. There was no light. But she could see the glass on the carpet just in front of her. A glistening, thick chunk. Big enough to really hold onto, sharp enough to do damage fast.

Scully did not recognise her own voice as she continued to whimper and cry, rocking further forward each time, trying to get the courage to let go of her stomach and reach for the glass.

"Please," she whispered through tears, forcing her right hand to stretch forward. Her fingers skirted the cool metal and she lifted it from its resting place. She could see it in the dark, silver and sharp like a knife. The pills were the farthest thing from her mind as she stared at the clear, pale white of her shaking left wrist, already held out and ready. She did not remember turning it up that way, she realised. She still felt as though her arms were wrapped tightly around her middle.

But maybe they weren't her arms, she told herself wistfully. Maybe Mulder was still holding her, still there. Maybe he had never left and he was just behind her, his chin on her shoulder, whispering to her that it would be all right. It would be over soon. She was doing the right thing. He wasn't mad. He was proud of her. He wanted to see her again. He would make sure it didn't hurt. In the next life, they could be together. They would be. He knew she was weak, and it was time to let go.

God might not have saved her, but He had given her the power to save herself. He had given her Mulder.

Scully watched as she drew a tiny drop of blood from the top of her wrist. Her head swam with nausea. Jesus, she thought. She had to do this. She was strong enough to do this. Do not pass out Dana, she urged. Do not pass out before you do this.

But it hurt. It hurt it hurt it hurt.

Please Mulder, she prayed. Don't let me go.

The arms stayed around her as she dug a little deeper, both hands shaking uncontrollably, as though in seizure. She could not see her veins in the dark but whatever she was doing stung and she tipped her head back and let out another tortured scream. She could feel the blood coming. It was there, it was coming. It was dripping onto the carpet. Scully tingled, she was hot, but it wasn't enough. More, she told herself. Always more. She slid the glass quickly through her skin like a scalpel. It was so close now, she knew. She was so close.

Scully tilted the glass to open the wound and she felt herself nearly freed. Her pulse was strong again. Her blood would be released from its prison inside her to the time of her heavily pounding heart. It was coming. She just had to go deeper, longer. Deeper.

It's coming, Mulder. I'm doing it. Baby, it's coming.

But it hurts it hurts it hurts.

Please stop. Don't do this sweetheart. Please stop.

"I HATE YOU!" she screamed again, this time directing her anger towards the ceiling, where her mother lay just above her, dead, decayed. She dug the glass deeper once again and opened her mouth as pain overwhelmed her, but she did not cry out, her tears silent. The pain wasn't enough. She wanted more. She needed to feel it until it was numb.

She wanted to close her eyes and see Mulder, and her son, and everyone who was lost to her, but she couldn't. Her eyes were forced open and no matter how badly she wanted to close them she couldn't. She needed to see their blood on her hands, red and hot, oozing out of her and over her. It was her fault they were gone. She had pushed them away. She had sent them away to their deaths and now she was left and she was all that was left.

A bright light hit her upturned face and she fell backwards as though she had been hit. Her hand slipped. Her sensitive eyes had been open and as she closed them she saw the flash from long ago, the light from her old home, the way it had come in the night all of a sudden. If she listened hard enough, she could almost hear the screech of her father's military whistle blowing in her ear.

Darkness surrounded her as quickly as the light had come, and Scully relaxed into the carpet. Mulder wrapped himself around her and held her safely in the night, cocooning her as her lashes fluttered a final time. I'm done now sweetheart, she told him, snuggling into his side and feeling his lips on her temple, soft and wet and warm.

So real, she thought with a satisfied sigh. He was so real now. She smiled. No more pain.