Five

Virginia – September 2005

Monica, Gibson, John and Mulder stood in a tight huddle as the wind swept sand up around their bodies. All had their arms up around their heads and had to squint to see. The sand was painful against their sunburned skins and their eyes watered from a mixture of the painfully bright setting sun, exhaustion and the sharp grains caught in their lashes. They all had sunglasses but the wind and sandstorm was so strong that the sunglasses did more harm than good. They would put them on again once the wind died down.

Gibson was more sheltered only by the height of the remaining three bodies, all tall and lean, crowding him as he attempted to speak.

"We HAVE to keep moving."

"No freaking way!" John shouted back, the wind rushing through his ears, making it difficult to hear. "We have to wait it out."

"And where do you suggest we do that?" Mulder quipped. "We're close, I know it."

"We're in the middle of fucking NOWHERE!" John exclaimed.

"That was the whole point of us living out here!" Mulder yelled. "You were in the army right? Suck it up! We're half an hour trek."

"Monica-"

"I'm FINE!" Monica exclaimed hurriedly, waving her hand about her face in a 'don't worry and don't involve me' gesture. "Let's just keep going. I'd rather get to shelter sooner rather than later. Half an hour Mulder?"

"Yeah. I know where we are." Monica nodded, catching his squinted eyes and offering a nervous smile of support and agreement. "We're heading INTO the wind," he added, just so everyone was clear on what they would have to battle against to get to his home.

"Let's just hurry then, before it gets dark!" John relented. "Mulder you lead."

Mulder strode out ahead of the trio, his long legs carrying him faster. He was happy for the time to himself. He had lost track of just how long they had been travelling. He thought they had made good time, but he knew it had definitely been closer to a month. He was somewhat grateful for Monica's pregnancy, in actuality, because it was a pretty good benchmark. He thought they had been trekking for a total of six to eight weeks, for she had to be nearing six months.

She had lost some weight, but not as much as the rest of them, thanks mostly to a unanimous vote by himself, John and Gibson to give her double rations once she had regained her appetite sometime during the first half of their walk. She had objected at first but they had persisted and John had threatened her. Mulder didn't mind that she ate twice as much as he did in a day. She needed it more and they never really went hungry. There were enough homes along the way and they could find enough preserved food for a few days at a time without ever running too low.

Mulder had never spent very much time with Monica, though he knew she had been a good friend to Scully in his absence, and he remembered what she had said at his trial. She was an ally, and a tough but sensitive woman. It had been nice to have one of those around again. She had broken up a lot of fights in the past three months since the invasion, but she had never shied away from her opinions. She was good company.

He was also extremely impressed by her resilience and creativity. She had taken to wearing her jeans with the button and zip open, held lower on her hips by a long strip of sturdy material which she used as a belt. To combat what she dismissed as back pain she had discovered what he was sure had been known as a 'boob tube' in some teenager's bedroom and wore it around her abdomen like a brace. She kept up with them but wasn't afraid to come out and say she needed to rest. There was no point not saying it really; Gibson would call for them to stop if she didn't.

Mulder wondered whether Monica knew he was procrastinating by thinking about her when she suddenly caught up with him, leaving Gibson and John to trail behind. She reached for his hand and he helped tug her forward through the wind. The sandstorm had died down and was no longer flicking at their faces but the wind was still strong. They were all grateful they could open their eyes, and all four had put on their sunglasses, Mulder's and Gibson's stolen from homes they had looted early in their journey.

"Close?" Monica asked, her voice low but still able to be heard over the rushing of sand.

"Yeah," Mulder sighed, squeezing her long, thin fingers tightly. Monica smiled. Out of all of them, even Gibson, he asked her how she was feeling the least often. She knew there were probably various reasons, but she thought one of them was because he understood how horribly annoying it was to be constantly watched. She appreciated the space he gave her, and they had gotten to know each other well since the night he had turned up on her doorstep with Gibson.

Monica had always been able to sense energies better than others, and she could feel Mulder's pain radiating off him. She had not spent a minute with him where he was without it. Suddenly it was strong and she knew he was frightened, so she held his hand. It was something she knew John and Gibson could never give him, but he needed something comforting to hold onto, particularly if they got there and the body that had belonged to Dana Scully was ash.

"Scared?" she asked needlessly. Mulder nodded. "Me too," she assured him. She stopped suddenly when Mulder came to a halt and pointed. They had reached the top of a gentle slope and gotten close enough to finally see it. Mulder waited for John and Gibson to catch up and stop beside them.

"There," he announced, pointing into the distance. Between them and the small, brown rectangle on the horizon was an expanse of sand. "This was all forest," Mulder explained. "This was our backyard, and that's our house."

"Good," John declared. "Gibson?"

"What?" Gibson asked suspiciously. He knew what John wanted, but he was not going to give in. Not where they were. Not so soon. John stared at him and Gibson shook his head. "This isn't the time or the place," he replied. "Let's keep going. It will be night soon."

Mulder nodded, swallowing painfully, his throat dry. He forced his legs to start moving again and tried his best to ignore the moment that had just transpired between his companions. If John had been attempting subtlety it had not worked; Mulder knew exactly what he had been asking.

So, Gibson, can you hear her? Is she in there or was this just a monumental waste of time? Just crazy Mulder, chasing after another ghost.

It was not as though there were too many other voices to get in the way, Mulder realised. Amidst such silence Gibson should have been able to pick up thoughts over a great distance. His refusal to acknowledge any such thoughts from the direction of the house was a clear sign he heard none. Or perhaps he was simply playing coy, Mulder assured himself. He was just being tactful and letting Mulder discover the truth for himself, rather than giving away the game. After all, that was called cheating.

Mulder did not want a cheat-sheet to help him find his answers. Not this time.

The house, as they got closer, looked larger than Mulder remembered. It looked as abandoned as every other house they had passed. There were no lights, no humming appliances, and no signs of life. Monica followed him closely as he approached via the front door. John and Gibson trailed, both eerily silent.

Mulder made sure nobody was standing too close and then he backed up, balanced himself, and kicked the door in. It swung inwards but luckily did not break completely. He would be able to shut it to keep the sand out. He really should have taken his house keys with him. Scully would have been freaking. Mulder calmly let everyone inside ahead of him before putting the door back in place. They congregated in the living room.

"This is huge," Monica whispered in awe. "How many rooms is it?"

"Two floors, more rooms than we know what to do with. Lots of little hiding places."

"I bet," John muttered. The living room itself was simple. There was a large, comfortable couch that dominated and faced the fireplace. A bookshelf held a handful of books but was mostly empty. A television was in the corner of the room but nothing was really pointed at it. The coffee table was littered with magazines and medical journals but they were covered with a thin film of dust. The windows were locked and the air was stale. The last remaining rays of light filtered in through the gaps in the curtains and illuminated dust particles which danced around their faces, disturbed by their presence.

"What did you do in this room?" John asked. It was an odd, impersonal sort of arrangement, he realised. Sparse and uncomfortable. It was nothing like the living room he and Monica had left behind, which had been bright and cheery; white walls, lace curtains and cream cushions, with a large television and a smaller fireplace.

"We sat on the couch sometimes and talked," Mulder answered. His voice sounded calm but the fact he kept shifting his weight on his feet gave away his anxieties. "We mostly congregated in the kitchen and upstairs. My office is here," he explained, walking over and opening the door. He peered around the corner cautiously, as though Scully would be sitting there waiting for him like she had so often in their small, cluttered basement office at the FBI. She wasn't. He shut the door and managed to face his friends with an awkward smile. "Bit of a mess," he apologised.

"What's upstairs?" John asked.

"The bedroom," Gibson replied. "Maybe we should check the kitchen first, in case she left a note."

"Right," Mulder whispered. In case she 'left' a note. Was that Gibson's passive way of again confirming that Scully's conscious mind was not present in their home, he wondered? No, Mulder told himself. For that night Gibson was just an ordinary person. He had no idea what had happened to Scully. Until Mulder saw a body, he was not listening to another living soul's opinion of anything to do with her.

Mulder forgave Monica for opening the pantry as soon as she entered the kitchen. She automatically began retrieving preserved food and putting it on the dusty bench. It was their routine and in times of stress it was soothing to do something so normal. If you could call looting other people's pantries 'normal', but it was as close as they came.

Mulder could see no note from Scully either on the bench, the dining table or stuck to the fridge. Apart from the dust, the kitchen was immaculately clean, and it told him that Scully had probably been pretty mad at him for running out. Everything he had strewn about in his frustration while she had been at work she had put away where it belonged.

Except for the two of them, everything in their home was in its place.

Mulder felt his heart constrict as he glanced behind him towards the staircase.

"Do you want me to come with you?" Gibson asked. Mulder shook his head. "We'll wait here then."

Mulder left the kitchen and managed to walk himself to the bottom of the stairs before fear caused him to hesitate. He shut his eyes and remembered standing on a bridge amidst burn victims. The latest burnings looked just the same as he remembered in so many ways. He remembered thinking Scully was amongst those victims at the bridge. She had been missing; they were all abductees, drawn to their deaths by the chip in their neck.

But Scully had not been amongst the burned. She had survived. She had no explanation for that particular twist of luck or fate, she had very little memory besides what she had discovered via hypnosis, and she had gotten through the whole terrifying incident with minor flesh wounds. It gave him hope that she had survived the burning yet again.

Mulder hated fire and Scully had survived at the bridge; both were good signs that she would not be taken from him that way. She could not be taken from him THAT way.

He propelled himself up the staircase and into the large main bedroom before he could stop himself. It was empty, he realised, his stomach turning in elation and dread. Empty. The bed had been turned down on Scully's side and the sheets looked ruffled, as though she had been in bed and gotten out. The curtain on her side was open, revealing the darkening sky outside. The lighting was dim and it was getting hard to see, and he bolted back downstairs hurriedly. He knew where they kept their torches.

"She's not there," he announced, even though he suspected Gibson had already shared as much. He retrieved their three torches and deposited two on the bench beside the food. "We'll need these to go into the bunker," he added. "I need to check the room more thoroughly." Monica, John and Gibson all nodded, mute, aware he was too wired to pay much attention to them.

"We better go upstairs," Gibson announced after several moments of silence. "He wants to show us things." He took one torch and pushed the other one towards John as Monica hurried off in front of them into the growing darkness.

Mulder was nearly jumping when he met them at the entrance to the main bedroom.

"Come in, come in," he invited excitedly, waving his hand around. "She's alive, I know it. We have to get to the bunker. She wasn't at work, she was right here."

"How do you know?" Monica asked curiously, taking in the room. It was much more lived-in than the living room, she decided. The bed was large and looked comfortable. There was a hefty duchess and two bedside tables. The door to the ensuite was open and revealed an impressive shower-bath ensemble. Personal effects were scattered around both rooms. She already knew Mulder and Scully had lived without a lot of possessions, keeping their life as low maintenance as possible in case they were forced to move, but she was heartened by the home she found in their bedroom; a real home, much smaller and more compact than the large house in which it was carefully hidden. Protected.

"Well see the bed," Mulder explained, ignorant of Monica's observations. "Dana always makes the bed before she goes to work. If she had left for a shift at the hospital, it would not be turned down. I don't care how tired she is, she always pulls it back up. And see the curtains are open and one end is drawn back over the edge of the table. It's being 'held' open. I think she was looking outside at one point. She liked to think there sometimes. And my most important piece of evidence is 'this'!" He pointed the torch at her empty bedside table and Monica and John stared blankly as Gibson chuckled. "Our photo. It's gone, she's taken it somewhere."

"What's it of?" Monica asked gently.

"Her and me in New York not long after we all split up. She's got a Knicks cap on and I've got my arms around her. Her mother took it for us and sent it up. It's in a frame. It's big, eight by ten at least. It doesn't just disappear; hasn't moved from that spot right beside her in three years."

"Anything else missing?" John asked, gradually feeling more positive about the situation. Even though he was bias towards wanting to find Scully alive in the bunker waiting for them, even though he was sceptical about that fantasy becoming reality, objectively he knew Mulder's observations were sound. The evidence did point towards Scully stepping outside what Mulder knew to be her regular pattern. He watched Mulder as he searched through Scully's bedside drawers, and then crossed the room to search through his own.

"Yeah I know what else is missing," he replied after spending minutes checking the small compartments. "We have another photo album. It's tiny; it's got photos of her as a kid and her family and William. It's usually on her side of the bed. It's gone too. We've never removed it from this room. Everything in this room is in a specific place, and nothing gets moved in case we need to pack in a hurry. That way, it's less likely we forget something important because we're in a rush and it's not where it's meant to be."

"You're sayin' if she panicked she would have grabbed the photos out of instinct?" John queried. Mulder nodded.

"These are the only photographic records we've got of our life, save for that." He gestured with the torch to the duchess behind them, where a frame sat with a picture of Mulder and his sister Samantha as children, taken not long before she had been abducted. "That's it," he repeated definitely. "That's all we've got." He walked over to the frame and picked it up. "And I'll be taking this with me if nobody has an objection."

"Not at all," Monica promised. "So...She was here. She might have been in bed when it happened, or at the window. She might have heard the sound, experienced the flash, and realised what was happening. Or if not what was happening, that something serious was happening. And then what?"

"She would have gone into the bunker," Mulder insisted. "It was our plan. She wouldn't need to take anything with her. There are clothes and facilities and it's like a little underground house down there. It took me two years to finish it. There must be...She must have gotten there fast enough to avoid whatever burned everyone else."

"How long will it take to reach it?" Monica asked. "I...I know you're eager, but I'm kind of hungry." Mulder smirked. When Monica announced she was hungry, it meant she was starving. "And maybe we could...clean up a little, maybe collapse on the couch for an hour?" Her voice rose hopefully at the end and Mulder laughed. He was happy enough with what they had found to wait for an hour. If Scully was in the bunker she was safe. If she wasn't, then there would be no point beginning to search the town for her in the middle of the night.

"Yeah," he assured his friend, unable to let her down when she smiled at him so hopefully. "Let's get dinner. Mon I know how you are about using other people's hair brushes, but I don't think Scully would mind if you helped yourself to the contents of our ensuite. We've got half a pharmacy in there."

xxx

Gibson sighed as John dragged him downstairs before Monica and Mulder had finished talking. He willingly humoured the man until they were huddled by the back door.

"Mulder said the bunker's out that way," John whispered, stretching his arm towards the outside. "Is she there?" Gibson simply stared at him with a blank expression on his face. "Look I won't tell them either way," John promised. "You know I want her to be there as much as the next guy but you're not giving off any good vibes."

"I can't hear her," Gibson confirmed in a reluctant whisper. "That doesn't mean she's not there. It might just mean she's...not 'all' there."

"She could be dead you mean?" John asked. Gibson shook his head.

"It's what I was worried about. It looks like she did make it to the bunker. If she stayed down long enough she would be fine, just like we are. The fact I can't hear her indicates not that she's dead but that she's already left and moved on."

"Could she be around locally somewhere?"

"Maybe. It's been about three months since it happened though. Would you be able to sit underground by yourself for three months? Keep coming back to it every night, all by yourself?" John sighed, unable to answer aloud. "As I said, the cities were where most of the destruction was. All the buildings here should be intact, but the virus would have spread. There will be the same burn victims here as elsewhere. This was why I came to you and Monica instead of them. Where this house is, it's much safer. There would have been much more time to get underground before danger set in."

"Mulder said he would stay a week and search, and we can help with that, but did he really mean it?"

"He meant it at the time and I think he still does," Gibson replied. "But it will depend what we find underground. We may need to persuade him. I think in the meantime we should organise dinner."

"Sure, time for a break."

"John," Gibson sighed, shaking his head. "Don't tell him. He wants to find this out for himself. He deserves that much."

"Yeah, no worries I...I just wanted to know," John assured him. "For me. So that I...didn't get 'my' hopes up. I feel for him. He's been so down on himself about all this."

"I know," Gibson reminded him. "He's excited now. At least there's that."

xxx

There was complete silence as Mulder unlocked the trap door, kneeling over the open floor in his cluttered office, his desk covered with tabloids and X File clippings. The hidden door was big enough for one person to fit through at a time, and it opened upwards. Mulder's hands shook as he released the lock and the hinges creaked, protesting at being moved. He couldn't see any telling fingerprints amongst the dust but he just knew Scully had been home when it happened. She had been in her room; she would have gotten to the bunker. Whether she had used this entry point or the other was irrelevant.

Once the door was open he accepted the torch Monica had been shining in his direction and he shone it more obviously down the hole, revealing a short ladder.

"Everyone got their hard hats?" he teased, looking up and grinning. Gibson rolled his eyes.

"It's stable and all?" John asked.

"Totally, and there are even emergency exits," Mulder promised. "We just need some water, maybe some food in case anyone gets peckish. I'll go first. Whoever has the second torch should bring up the rear. It's a five or ten minute walk." He wasted no more time in climbing down the ladder, and Monica was next, followed by John and then Gibson.

"Wow," Monica observed once they were all down, her voice echoing along the dark tunnel in front of them. "It actually smells like the 'earth' down here. It's not sandy at all."

"Wouldn't be so sure of that darlin'," John chuckled, touching her lower back and directing her attention to the ground they were walking on. It was a mixture of gravel, clay, and sand. "Has to filter through somewhere I suppose."

"You're right though," Gibson agreed positively, looking around. "It's still the same underground. These reinforcements will hold."

"Well that's good to know!" John scoffed as they began walking. "Jesus Mulder, how long did you say this took you? Look at these beams. Didn't someone think it was real odd you buying up all this hardware in a tiny town?"

"I was 'renovating the house'," he replied. "And I'm not the one who got the pleasure of buying it all. I'm a wanted man remember? Scully insisted I have nothing to do with her in public. Nobody knew I was here but her. Everyone at her job thought she was single."

"Seriously?" Monica asked. "Oh that must have been so hard on you both."

"Not really," Mulder shrugged. "She didn't have friends at work. We kept to ourselves. I was more like...a drifter people might see around town occasionally and just assume I was visiting relatives or something. If anyone asked, I just said I was visiting or passing through. No big deal. No one ever came to the house."

"Yeah, cos you got a barbed wire gate," Gibson teased. Mulder laughed.

"Pretty neat huh? It's our little hermit house. So Scully went off and bought all this and dumped it in the backyard and I took care of the rest while she was at work."

"And nobody bothered with the fact that your house doesn't look at all renovated?" John asked.

"You should have seen it when we bought it," Mulder huffed. "Did a fair share of work on it too, but mostly just in the areas we used. New kitchen, bathroom, new floors for the bedroom; bits and pieces."

"So what's down here then?" Monica asked. "How'd you get fresh air?"

"There's a battery-operated filter," Mulder explained. "You'll see. It's SO cool."

"Somebody's proud," Monica teased with a grin, letting her fingers touch the cold stone at her side as they walked. "This is pretty amazing. It doesn't feel real."

"You feel that too?" Mulder asked. "I thought it was just me. Keep thinking I'm going to wake up in the desert and it'll be a month ago and I'll realise we're not even close."

"We're definitely here," she assured him.

Five minutes later, Mulder started running ahead.

"Hey!" John shouted. "Mulder get back here!"

"Just around the corner!" he yelled over his shoulder.

"I'll get him," Gibson drawled, unimpressed by Mulder's spontaneity.

"No, let me," John insisted, bolting after Mulder in the dark. He caught up quickly and wrapped a hand around Mulder's shirt, pulling him away from the door he was fast approaching. "HEY!" he shouted. "Stop!"

"I gotta see inside," Mulder insisted urgently, his eyes glazed and frightened.

"I know, I know," John assured him. "But we all go in there together. You're not goin' in alone and you're not shutting us out either. We wait for Monica and Gibson, do you understand?"

"Okay," Mulder sighed, taking a deep breath and forcing himself to calm down. The logical part of Mulder's heart knew that had she been alive and well beyond the door Scully would have heard them coming and made her own presence known. Mulder knew he would be faced either with a dead body or an empty room, and he was not sure which one he wanted to see more. He could not flip out on John, Gibson and Monica before time. He had to stay focussed long enough to absorb the truth, whatever it may be.

Then he could lose it.

"Okay," he repeated. "I'm fine I just, I just need to know. It's been three months John."

"Three months leading up to this moment," John confirmed. "Just relax."

"We're here!" Monica announced, hurrying around the final bend with Gibson beside her. She put her hands on her hips and stared at the two of them, her brown eyes serious and calm, though the front teeth scraping along her bottom lip was enough of a giveaway that she was just as nervous as the rest of them. "What are we waiting for? Open it Fox."

Mulder slid the key into the final lock, and was about to turn it when he stopped and turned back around to face them all. Monica growled in frustration as Gibson chuckled.

"I just want to say," he added, clearly procrastinating though the sentiment was real. "Thanks for letting me do this and coming with me. I know it's taken a really long time and we've had to put up with each other and all that sand and we could have been in sunny Mexico long ago but I...I really-" Mulder stopped when Monica stepped forward and rested a steadying hand on his broad chest.

"Fox Mulder, if you do not open this door-" she warned, the hint of a smile playing at her lips. "We all want this just as much as you," she added more gently.

"You couldn't possibly," he whispered, tears stinging his eyes as he swallowed heavily. Suddenly it hurt to breathe. It felt as though his heart was slowing down. This is it, he thought as Monica pulled away and gestured towards the key in the lock. This was it.