Eight

"How is everyone going?" Skinner asked as he led the trail out of the suburbs. "Any last stops before we hit what I assume used to be the highway?"

"We're fine here," Scully promised, walking behind and off to the side of him. Sarah was beside her, her left arm resting around Scully's elbow and her right holding the cane out in front of her, slowly learning the landscape of the sand. They were both wearing dark sunglasses and ghastly, old-lady hats Scully had found at a nearby house, but they shrouded their faces in shade and kept the sun away. Skinner was even wearing a dark baseball cap to prevent his bald head from sunburn. Shannon needed nothing, and was tugging the raft behind her at the back of the line. It was heavy enough to keep her at a very slow pace, but Scully and Sarah did not mind, and Skinner was blessedly patient with them all.

"If we stop to get any more stuff," Shannon exclaimed from the back. "Walter I'll murder you."

"Yeah, yeah," he laughed, turning his head far enough to meet her amused blue eyes. He grinned when he saw her smiling. "You want me to have a go?"

"Get real," she taunted. "I saw you having a go a few days ago. You didn't do any better than Dana and you know it old man."

"Let's just get out of here," Sarah agreed. She was still quiet, but Scully was secretly enjoying the way she was holding onto her arm. It was nice to be relied on again. It was nice to feel needed and amongst friends. It felt good to be doing something other than sitting in the house contemplating her life. She knew Sarah felt the same way. The wind was not strong and cooler than Scully remembered, though the sand underfoot was still hot and sharp. But she was better prepared second time around. They had spare shoes, oodles of medical supplies, and there was no worry about where the next meal would come from; Shannon was towing at least six months of meals over her shoulders.

As they slowly walked away from DC, Scully spared one more thought for her mother, alone in her bed, and the mess she had presumably left in the house. It had been night, and she had not been back since, but she did not need a very active imagination to picture what might have been left considering the length and depth of her fresh, pink scar.

Not that it mattered, she reasoned. Nobody was ever going to see it. Still, her mother had deserved a clean house to rest in. Though her spirit was long gone, the dutiful daughter in Scully still wanted to put things right. But she was part of a team again, and her selfish needs were secondary to the needs of the group. She liked that. She had not dealt well on her own and she did not want to go back there. They all needed each other, and there was some hope amongst them. They were heading towards possible safety, potential civilisation. Even the slim chance of freedom in a new world was enough to inspire her to look forward and not into the past. There was nothing left for her there.

xxx

Mulder and John had no trouble breaking into the Scully house when Mulder located it. John spared a moment to thank the Heavens for Mulder's photographic memory; apparently it worked well for directions also. The back door had been forced but left closed, and they had merely turned the handle to allow entry.

The kitchen was the first room they found themselves in. John knew enough about Maggie Scully to know she would not have tolerated her kitchen in such a state.

"Looks like looters," he commented. "We're definitely not alone out here." Mulder walked to the kitchen bench and examined the sprawl. He took off his sunglasses and peered more closely, a deeply lined frown settling across his tanned forehead.

"No," he hissed, gesturing to the mess. "Look at this." Some empty cans of food had been left, but John finally realised what had caught his attention. The bench was not covered in random mess. It was leftover medical supplies. Several empty packets that had contained medical padding or gauze had been left, and as John followed Mulder to the sink he realised most of that padding had been left in the stainless steel basin. Dried blood stained the white fabric. A lot of blood, he realised as he looked around and saw drops on the bench and the floor, and all around the stainless steel sink.

"What happened here?" John asked softly, trying to put it all together. Mulder was staring at the blood on the floor, and his brown eyes drifted away from the kitchen.

"There's a trail," he announced unnecessarily, pointing. "From there to here. An injury was treated in here."

"Looks like quite a bit of blood," John added, voicing his concern. Mulder only hummed. A minute passed in silence. Then very slowly Mulder began to edge his way along the outside of the trail, towards the living area John remembered from the Christmas party.

Mulder stood still as he allowed his mind to take in the living room. It was not at all what he had expected to see. He had expected a big, giant nothing to greet him, for their first stop had been a failure. This, however, was something else. It was not success, for there were no signs of life in the house, but it also was not failure.

"John," he called, not needing to raise his voice. "Think you should see this." He felt John stand beside him and heard his surprised intake of breath.

If the kitchen was messy, the living room was a disaster area, Mulder summarised. Directly opposite him, the piano was open and the stool pulled out. Somebody had been playing. He squinted to make out the title of the sheet music open on the stand above the keys. Phantom of the Opera, he read. The music itself looked uncomplicated, though he was without an instrumental bone in his body and to him it all seemed rather complex. Still, he knew the difference between Beethoven and beginner.

Scully had never mentioned whether she favoured the musical or that level of piano, but Mulder did know she had played as a girl. Perhaps that was where her skill level had stalled.

Mulder noticed the mantelpiece next. He knew he was doing what he had done in the bunker, avoiding the things he wanted to see the most, but he had to work his way around the perimeter and then zero in. He had to make sure he saw everything there was to see, that he was not preoccupied by the obvious, thereby missing an important clue perhaps hidden in the not-so-obvious.

There were two photos in frames on the mantelpiece that were lying down and not standing proudly as the others. Mulder could see the old family photos, of Maggie and Bill Senior in their youth with their young children, all smiling and happy. Mulder recognised a young Scully, and her sister Melissa, and the brothers he had met only a few times. Mulder knew what photos were lying down without needing to look. He remembered Maggie had sent them a picture in a card after one Christmas of the family all together and posing for a photo 'to send to Aunty Dana'.

Scully's nieces and nephews had crowded in the front, her brothers and sisters-in-law and her mother in the back. But behind those smiling faces, Mulder had seen 'the photo'. He remembered wondering whether Maggie had positioned her family on purpose, as though to somehow include Mulder and Scully as family members in the group photo despite their absence. On the far left of the mantelpiece had been the photo that had lived on Scully's bedside table, the picture she had drawn on the second last page of her journal.

Mulder knew he had to check but he didn't want to. Luckily he didn't have to. John had seen him staring and had taken the initiative to cross the room and look for himself.

"They're of her," he whispered seriously, standing the frames back upright out of respect. "You and her, and her and William." Mulder nodded, grateful for the confirmation.

On his way back, John stopped by the pale wall and the deep red stain that started around the level of his hip and dripped downwards. He rubbed two fingers over it and brought them to his nose, sniffing warily. Mulder knew it was not blood. The broken, green shards of glass under John's feet allowed that assumption to be made easily.

"Wine," he confirmed. Mulder again nodded, allowing his gaze to travel cautiously to the couch. Blood streaked the top of the cushion on one side. It was only faint, as though it had seeped through something to get there. Mulder had seen many hundreds of blood stains in his career as a profiler for Violent Crimes and on the X Files, enough to be confident in his identification of the substance despite the fragile physical evidence.

Suddenly Mulder had nowhere else to look but to the floor. He had allowed himself to see the glass early on, but not the pool of blood just a metre from where he stood. It was much more than had been in the kitchen or that was on the couch. It was ground zero for whatever had taken place, and the trail to the kitchen led straight to it and to nowhere else. Mulder did not think it looked like a life-threatening amount of blood, but it was enough to make him feel sick. He could see larger pieces of glass near the site; he could see the drops of blood on the carpet below some of those pieces as they angled upwards.

The only conclusion he could draw was that the wine had been thrown to the wall in a fit of frustration. It had not been thrown by somebody very tall, because though it would have curved downwards naturally before hitting the wall, he knew that when he threw objects in anger they tended to make contact at shoulder-height. Scully was not as strong as that. She would have pitched low.

But had it been Scully? Mulder had to know. He walked forward and knelt on the carpet beside the significant stain. He did not remember the carpet. He remembered floorboards.

The blood had dried but it had soaked first into the pale carpet. It was more blood than Mulder had seen in many years, and he knew once he saw a long, orange hair stuck in it that it had been Scully's.

Scully's blood. Without warning he flashed back to the scary, sudden nosebleeds she had suffered with during her fight against the cancer that had invaded her body nearly a decade earlier. He remembered her letting him take a peek at the gunshot wound on her stomach in the hospital and the blood he had seen on the raw wound and padding. He saw the blood on her white blouse as she lay on the floorboards in his old apartment, momentarily unconscious as he scanned her chest for signs of psychic penetration.

He had seen her bleed a lot, but not this much, he realised. Never so much.

Mulder could see her in the living room. He could build a profile of events based on the evidence left behind, based on how he knew her. She had thrown the wine, she had cut herself with the glass, and then she had gone to the kitchen to clean up, maybe spent some time lying on the couch afterwards. But she had not cleaned up after herself. She hadn't even put the bandage wrappers in the bin. That part did not fit her profile.

"Was it her?" John asked. Mulder swallowed painfully and nodded. It had to be. Her hair was again at his fingertips. It had to be. "Doesn't look life-threatening but it looks like it must've hurt a hell of a lot. Looks like maybe she changed her mind?"

"Yeah," he whispered, not sure whether he was grateful for the possibility she was still alive or whether it would have been better to find a body. "I'm going to check upstairs," he announced suddenly, standing and taking long strides to the steps. John decided to wait, taking an opportunity to more closely examine the living room now that Mulder was no longer blocking vital evidence. He sighed at the sight of her hair upon closer inspection of the couch. It was unmistakably hers, long and orange like in the photos.

Mulder returned quickly.

"There's no one up there. Her mother's a pile of ash in the bed, and it looks like some clothes might have been taken from the wardrobe. I found a few more of her hairs in the sink in the ensuite, but I reckon she would have stayed out of there as much as possible."

"Guess when she realised FBI was out, she came here," John reasoned. "There's orange hair on the couch too Mulder. Maybe she slept down here." Mulder nodded. "So what happened to change her mind? Why couldn't she go through with it?"

"I don't know," he sighed. "I wouldn't blame her if she did, but maybe she had help. Judging by the amount of blood in this room I'd expect the trail to be more obvious, but it's not. Maybe she was just holding the wound herself, but I'm not sure she would have been able to walk if she had been in shock and bleeding heavily. She was a doctor but from a scientific point of view her blood pressure would have been all over the place."

"What part of her do you think that blood is from?" John asked cautiously. Mulder said nothing and his jaw twitched as he pressed his lips together, but he tapped the inside of his left wrist in reply. John nodded. That was what he had suspected too. Scully was right-handed. "Where would she go after something like that?" he asked.

"I dunno," Mulder shrugged. "There's no more family here. She didn't have any friends she kept in touch with here. Her mom was the only person that meant something to her who lived in this city still. After this, I dunno where she would have gone."

"What about Arlington?" John suggested. Mulder stared at him curiously. "The Lone Gunmen were buried there," he added. Mulder bit his bottom lip at the gentle reminder, curiosity stirring his stomach. He had never been to visit the graves of his friends. He had never said goodbye, or thank you, and he had wanted to. Particularly once Scully had told him of their continued loyalty to her and William in his absence.

"Okay," he agreed. "I think it would be desert by now but we should check."

"We'll check any other places you can think of Mulder," John promised firmly, his blue eyes wide in earnest.

"Thanks," Mulder mumbled, nodding and frowning at the same time. "I appreciate that. I just don't think there's much else here. She...This wasn't our home anymore. She said she wanted to be somewhere where she could feel close to me to end her life. That's how I understand it. Maybe her mom's place was an equal first or even a second choice, but after that I don't know. The 'where' would be important to her. I know it would."

John nodded. He wanted to say something to help but was out of ideas. Everything Mulder said made sense, and it fit within the idea of Dana Scully he remembered. But perhaps Mulder was still biased, John realised suddenly, because he wanted to believe she would find somewhere sentimental to die. Maybe she had, but maybe it had less to do with him and more to do with the Bible she had left behind.

"What about a Church?" John asked. "Did she have a Church she visited often here?"

"Often, no," Mulder answered. "We travelled too much...Her family parish is not far from here though. I went there once for a funeral. It's on the way to Arlington."

"Good. Do you want to take those photos?"

"What?" Mulder asked, snapping in surprise.

"The photos," John repeated, pointing to the mantelpiece. "Dana took them from your home. You should have them too. I think her mother would have liked that."

Yeah, Mulder realised sadly. She would have. He nodded dumbly as John took it upon himself to collect the photos. He then held them out to Mulder as seriously as he would have had he been delivering the American flag to the widow of a fallen soldier. In a way that was exactly what he was doing and he expected the expression on Mulder's face as he accepted the offering had been mirrored through time by widows and parents worldwide.

"Remember what that Psalm said," he added. "She believes in you." Mulder nodded once again, still silent, tears beginning to blur his vision. He blinked and pushed them away. "You want a minute here?" John asked gently. He nodded again. "I'll wait around back."

Once John had left, Mulder turned to stare not at the floor but the couch. He could imagine her sleeping there, unwilling to share a floor with her deceased mother. Had she thought of him sleeping on his own couch and wondered at the irony? Had she been in pain? If her injury had not been life-threatening, then he was sure she had been in terrible pain. Mental as well as physical, for it took a macabre sort of determination to end a life, and it was not something Scully had ever naturally possessed. Mulder knew she would have stepped outside herself in that moment, and she only would have done that if something had pushed her, if she had been subjected to a pain her soul could not withstand.

God, I did that, he thought, allowing his tears to slip silently onto his cheeks. He had never really believed her to be capable of suicide, but he was standing in front of a large pool of blood that told him otherwise. Still, she had survived and walked away. She could have tried again if nerves had first overcome her. Most people who chickened out or got interrupted tried again. But she had walked. Why? To find somewhere better? Or because she had realised the tragic surrender involved with suicide wasn't her game?

Because it wasn't, Mulder assured himself. It wasn't her. It didn't suit her. It wasn't her style. But if she was in pain great enough to make her even try, did he want her to live? Could he stand to know she was out there, all alone, suffering somehow? Suffering because he had left, suffering because her mother was dead, her whole family, suffering because the world had ended and nobody had thought to warn them.

He reached down to touch the arm of the couch, imagining her hair beneath his fingers as her head rested there, imagining her face peaceful in sleep, imagining the bandage and thick padding on her wrist. He wanted to cover her in a blanket in that moment and tell her they would make it through this nightmare they were in, but in reality only he was in his nightmare, and the couch before him was empty and cold, stained with drops of her blood and blessed by only a few long strands of orange hair.

"Shit," he whispered, rubbing his face with his free hand, the other clutching his photos. He had thought retracing her steps would allow him to say goodbye, but it had only brought him more questions that needed answering. Questions he had no hope of ever asking, for nobody he could ask would know the answer. Only her, and she had walked away, this time leaving no clue as to where she was going. He would check her mother's favoured Church and Arlington, but he knew instinctively she would not be at either.

This time she had left him, he realised. She had moved on. He was at a dead end, standing in a room of wine, glass and blood without a body, and yet he could not say goodbye. Could he?

xxx

"I miss fire," Mulder sighed that night as he and John sat around the faint light of a torch that converted into a lamp. They were sitting on their sleeping bags on the floor of the Church Mulder remembered. There were no bodies in the main section, and at least they were indoors. John smirked at him.

"Well we are surrounded by lacquered wood," he teased. "How big a fire do you want?"

"Ever wonder why they took the trees and not all this?" Mulder asked. John nodded.

"But I don't think we'll ever find out. Maybe dismantling our construction was deemed too much effort. Maybe all they wanted was the chlorophyll in the trees and grass. I'm glad they left places like this. Nice to have some shelter."

"Yeah," Mulder agreed. "Tomorrow I think we should go home."

"What?" John gasped. "Mulder, we only just got here this mornin'. You telling me you've given up already?"

"I can't feel her here," he mumbled. "She didn't leave any clue as to where she was. She doesn't want to be found. She's angry at me."

"Mulder," John sighed, his heart aching at the innocent tone in Mulder's choked voice. John wished Monica had been there. She would have known just what to say. But she wasn't and it was up to him. What would she say, he wondered? Slowly, the words came to him. "She's not mad at you. She told you that in her letter, and I'm sure in that journal. You don't go to all that trouble to leave such an elaborate goodbye for somebody you're angry at. And, and maybe she didn't leave a clue not because she didn't want to, but because, well, first off she thinks you're dead, and secondly, what if she wasn't in a fit state to think about it at the time? I mean she might not have lost a dangerous amount of blood, but she lost more than would make me pretty light-headed and it was more than likely self-inflicted. What if she simply forgot?"

"Doesn't change anything," Mulder sighed, shaking his bowed head. "Still can't find her. I won't find her here. All I've found here is her pain, her blood. That's not what I wanted."

"Well we can't have everything we want. She was alive when she left, that's something."

"I guess," he whispered. "Do you have what you want? With Monica, I mean, with all this?"

"I have most of what I want," John replied. "But I have everything I need."

"I don't have anything I need," Mulder mumbled.

"Gee," John laughed. "Don't I feel special?"

"Not like that," Mulder corrected quickly. "It's just...I don't need you like I need her. You'd feel the same about Monica, right? Tell me it's not just me John."

"It's not just you," he echoed seriously, honestly. "Look," he continued, thoughtful. "Let's stay a couple more days. If she left injured, maybe she's around. We can go to Arlington and restock our supplies and then in a couple more days we can head home. You owe it to her and yourself to stick around and give this a shot. You owe it to Monica and to Dana. Are you really prepared to give up on her that quick?"

"No, I know," Mulder whispered. "Okay uh, we can stay another couple of days. We should. Maybe there are some more places we could check."

"Like?" John asked. Mulder sighed.

"Like our old apartments," he answered. He did not think she was there, but he did owe it to Scully to check. Just in case.

"That's the spirit," John assured him positively, before settling down in his sleeping bag for the night. "Ah crap, you know what?" he added suddenly. Mulder looked down at him, expressionless. "It might be nice to have a ceiling and some walls, but this floor is friggin' uncomfortable compared to the sand."

xxx

"I'm back!" Gibson called as he entered the front door. It was night, and he had stayed out longer than planned. He was happy to be back in familiar surroundings. It was strange not to hear any voices around, and that feeling in itself was odd to him because he never could have imagined total silence to be an unwelcome part of his life, but maybe it was.

He knew Monica was upstairs in the spare room lying on the air mattress they had found, and he hurried upstairs. She hadn't bothered calling to him but she was awake and telling him where she was. His footsteps echoed on the old wood and it creaked beneath his weight. Mulder and Scully had really gotten to the stage of needing to do more renovations, he thought. Maybe while they lived there they could all pitch in and help. It would at least give John and Mulder something to focus on besides time and the women in their lives, or not in their lives in Mulder's case.

"Hi," Monica greeted when he finally entered the room. The single bed had been abandoned due to the fact it was the most uncomfortable bed either of them had ever slept in, and neither wanted to spend much time in Mulder and Scully's room. Gibson agreed with Monica's observation that their home had been in that bedroom, more so than in the rest of the building, and for that reason and out of respect it should not be disturbed.

So the air mattress it was. Gibson slept on the couch on the ground floor. It had been just over a week since John and Mulder had left, and they were both still enjoying the space, though there were moments of boredom and sometimes Gibson got sick of all the time he had to think. That being said, he had conserved a lot of energy in not having to strain to block out the guilt-ridden thoughts of Mulder.

He really liked Mulder, he always had, but the man was so single minded it was tiring, and reading the mind of someone with a photographic memory meant his thoughts were detailed; often Gibson got just too much information, way more than any other person should have. It made him feel bad he was seeing so clearly into a man who was so private, but he liked to think he helped in his own way by making sure Mulder had enough space or distracting him when he needed it. That helped a little, he supposed.

"Hello," he replied to Monica, aware he had been standing in silence thinking for longer than she expected. "I got you something." She pushed herself up to sitting, her hands braced behind her, and smiled at him. The gas light was not far from her and the room was a dim yellow.

"Oh yeah?" she asked. "Should I start guessing?"

"Here," he declared with a wide grin, reaching into his back pocket and retrieving two chocolate bars. "Which one is your favourite?"

"Ooh, chocolate," she whispered, excited. Gibson laughed as she pointed to the milk chocolate, which left him with dark but he didn't mind. It was all the same in the end. "Thank you Gibson," she added as she ripped the wrapper and took a tiny bite. "Just what I've been craving too; what a surprise!"

"Shut up," he replied, enjoying her teasing. Gibson really, truly liked having Monica around. She treated him like an ordinary person. It wasn't that he didn't enjoy John and Mulder's company, but Monica, despite being a woman so more complicated in a lot of ways, was far less complicated in her thoughts. She was more positive than John and Mulder, for starters. He respected the way she had pushed Mulder and John along and kept them going; they didn't know it or want to acknowledge it but she had.

But he knew she was worried about John, and he had been gone for most of the day himself, venturing into town to look around once more. It had been a long walk and he had not come back with much in the end, but it had been nice to wander aimlessly. The sand had not gotten too high around the buildings, and it had not been as hot.

Gibson sat down on the single bed as Monica rearranged herself on the mattress on the floor, sitting on one hip and to the side as she ate her chocolate. Gibson would save his for later.

"So where did you go today?" Monica asked, looking up at him with interest.

"Just walked around really," he replied. "I checked out the hospital some more that Scully must have worked at. There's lots of stuff there we can use for the baby." Monica nodded, happy with his observation. "And there are still lots of places that have not been touched, homes and stuff, so we won't run out of food and water before we go."

"There's enough downstairs to keep us going a few months at least anyway," she replied.

"Yeah, and...I just walked around. What did you do?"

"Sat around," she teased, laughing when he smirked at her. "If it's possible, in the last week I actually think I've started putting on some weight again, which is good. I'll need it to work off later."

"Yeah, we've got a bit more freedom to eat more here," he assured her. "So are you worried about John and Mulder?"

"You know I am or you wouldn't have brought it up," she mentioned gently, smiling. "But I'm sure they're fine. They would be in DC by now."

"I don't know how you do it," Gibson stated curiously. "You really believe what you just said and everything."

"Why wouldn't I?" she asked.

"Well most people, and this is speaking from first-hand experience of most people's minds, would be running through all the scenarios of what might have gone wrong along the way. Not you. You just know they would be in DC. You're just sure they're 'fine'."

"They probably are," she shrugged. "Worrying wouldn't do me any good, and it would probably turn out for nothing."

"Do you think they'll find her?" he asked.

"Maybe," she replied with another hopeful shrug. "If not her, maybe some more evidence of her."

"You expect Mulder to walk around the country tailing her until he catches up?"

"I think if she's still walking, she's too far ahead for a simple tail to catch up," Monica reasoned. "But I think it's a good thing he got the chance to go back there. That was his home before this was, and it was Dana's home, and, hell, maybe he will find her. Maybe she did kill herself. I can't believe it."

"Why not? She wrote it in her letter."

"No she didn't," Monica scoffed. "Dana said when she 'thought' about where she 'might' end her life she thought about being somewhere where she felt close to Mulder. Then she traipses off to DC."

"So?" Gibson asked. He thought he knew what was coming but Monica was deliberately holding it back and he only heard a glimpse, so he humoured her. Besides, he enjoyed their banter even if he did know. Somehow she always made it sound different aloud.

"HELLO!" she exclaimed loudly. "What do you think that room is down the hall? If it wasn't the perfect place to off herself I don't know what was. She and Mulder 'lived' in that bedroom. There was no real need for her to go back to DC. They had spent a lot of time there, yeah, but they were never really 'together' there. I don't get it. I think she was just confused, and hurting, and really struggling with the need to 'do' something besides just sitting around. Plus, hundred bucks she was curious as hell to explore for a while. I think in expressing all of that she came up with that letter. I'm not sure she was suicidal at all, and I might not be Catholic, but that Bible passage she circled for Mulder wasn't exactly 'oh ye though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death'."

"Mulder thought that too," Gibson pointed out. "He was confused when he put it all together as well."

"Who wouldn't be?" Monica agreed. "Dana was probably as lost as any of us, even more because she was alone. At least we had you explaining to us what had happened. I'm really glad you came to us Gibson. Mulder too. It's been nice to spend some time with him. We always wondered...what had happened to them, how they were doing. I always wanted to know what he was like. So thanks. I don't think I've ever really said it to you."

"I'm glad I came to you too," he replied with an embarrassed smile. He had never smiled much in his life, but with Monica he discovered it was contagious, and he couldn't help himself. She just made him feel happier, even though nothing had changed. "Thanks for a lot of things," he added, not sure how to put the rest into words. She grinned, cocking her head to the side and finishing her chocolate. She tossed the wrapper on the ground; she would put it away next time she had to stand up. "So how's the baby?" Gibson asked.

"Pretty good," she assured him. "Why, you excited?"

"Little bit," he admitted, amazed that sometimes it seemed like she could read his mind too. "But I meant it when I said we don't know anything."

"I know enough. I'll just need some support and I know I've got that. As long as nothing goes wrong at the last minute, which I don't think it will, then we'll be right. Women were having babies in all sorts of wild places before God invented hospitals."

"True," Gibson laughed. "But I don't think John would appreciate that joke."

"No," she agreed. "Mulder might. Hey, I don't mean to use you as a spy here Gibson, but...when he left did he have any intention of keeping the promise he made to me?"

"Yes," Gibson promised, suddenly serious. "He'll come back. He knew that he wanted to and I know you left John with strict instructions to look after him, and I think John will do that. He's better at that stuff than he thinks he is. Plus, Mulder's a little bit excited about the baby as well. He wants to be there for it." Monica smiled softly and nodded.

"I want him to be there too," she whispered, emotional tears filling her brown eyes. Gibson nodded as the room fell into silence. He knew she did.