Eleven
Scully was nervous, and she did not know why. She thought she would be nervous because she was returning to her old home, but that was not the case. Even the broken front door did not bother her; Gibson and Monica had obviously broken in. She had crossed the threshold with little fear, hesitating only for an extra second. The sound of her footsteps on the wooden floors was familiar and welcome, and instead of fear or sadness there was a comforting warmth spreading through her body which she could not explain. It embraced her. It made her feel safe and urged her to relax, causing her to shiver.
Just that feeling of coming home, she presumed. Mulder's spirit greeting her, perhaps.
The raft had been locked and left out the front. Nobody could steal it because nobody besides Shannon could move it and considering Shannon never slept she was its constant guardian. She and Sarah had stayed behind outside so Sarah could find a space in the sand to relieve herself. Scully felt sorry for her in not being able to see and needing someone with her, but her embarrassment had abated to a certain extent over time. As Scully told her often, she was a doctor and Shannon had been in the army. Combined, there wasn't anything either of them hadn't seen before.
Scully sighed as she looked around her living room. She suddenly knew why she was nervous. Monica and Gibson were fussing. Gibson was not a young man who had ever fussed over anything. He was always calm and collected, but perhaps her arrival had shaken him, or perhaps he had over-exerted himself in trying to catch up to them in time.
"I'll get it," he announced suddenly, bolting upstairs. Energy certainly was not the problem, Scully realised, confused. He had apparently read Monica's mind and Scully shared a look of uncertainty with Skinner. Thankfully he looked as lost as she felt.
"We only have a few beds set up," Monica explained, as Shannon and Sarah returned to the living room from the front in silence. Shannon shut the front door and wedged a chair under the handle to prevent it being opened from the outside. "Until we find some more a few of us might need to sleep outside. It will be more comfortable than on these floors. Dana, your room has been kept for you."
"Kept for me?" Scully asked, amused by the nervous expression on Monica's face.
"Neither of us wanted to sleep there," she explained, blushing.
"Well I don't know if I particularly want to sleep there either," she admitted. "So I will only spend the night in that room if you're with me, because you're pregnant and you should have a proper bed."
"She's done okay without one until now," Gibson stated seriously as he returned with an armful of blankets and pillows. He dumped them all on the floor between the couch and fireplace. "We haven't endangered her, Scully."
"No, I know," Scully assured him with a wide smile. "But things will change. Trust me; I've been pregnant. It is NOT comfortable." Monica chuckled as Gibson turned a bright shade of red. "Okay so all this standing around is a bit strange," Scully announced quickly. "What's going on? Are we eating, going to bed? It's up to you, but if I get a say I'd like some answers before we do anything."
"So would I," Skinner added seriously, his voice deep and probing. "I want to know what the two of you are doing together and what the hell you're doing here."
"We came looking for Scully," Gibson replied obviously, shrugging. "And-"
"Hang on," Scully interrupted. Her mind was sorting through the information she was hearing more slowly than usual. She had only just processed Gibson's promise to her.
We haven't endangered her, Scully.
We?
"Who is we?" she asked. Gibson's mouth dropped open and his eyes widened in shock when he realised she had picked up on his mistake. He hadn't even realised he had made one. Uh-oh, he thought.
"I don't think we can put this off any longer," Monica sighed, saving him from Scully's slowly deepening, suspicious glare. "Dana we need to talk about how we found this place. Let's set up some proper lighting and open some food and some drink and have dinner and uh, we can talk. I think you all might like to hear this."
xxx
"Well I would like to make a toast," Skinner announced as he sat cross-legged on the blankets in the living room an hour later. Everyone had a glass of champagne besides Shannon and Monica, and Scully grinned as she waited for him to come up with the words she had been trying to find for herself since she had heard her name on the wind. "To old friends," he continued. He turned to Scully and smiled. "And to coming home."
"Aren't you glad I told them?" Sarah asked her. Scully laughed, nodding. She was.
"Cheers," she whispered, leaning across the centre of the blanket and touching her glass to Skinner's, silently inviting everyone else to do the same. Beside her, Monica giggled and it took all of Scully's energy not to cry. She felt like she was in ten places at once and didn't know what to do. Even though the food in front of her was somewhat of a banquet she wasn't sure she was hungry. She was too excited, and happy, and terribly, terribly sad that Mulder was not with her to share in the wonderful happiness she felt in that moment.
Skinner, sitting directly opposite Scully, saw the tears first, and he suspected Gibson had known it was coming as well, though she had only been smiling a second ago. Maybe they had all been surprised.
Scully was not aware of putting her glass down and she felt Monica gently ease it from between her fingers as it hovered dangerously close to the blanket. Scully's other hand had shielded her face as she sobbed, and once her fingers were free of the glass she brought it up to help hide her. Her face felt flushed but she could not stop the tears or the way her chest constricted, squeezing her heart and her stomach, squeezing the grief out of her like it was as smooth and gentle as toothpaste. It was anything but, Scully thought. In her throat and her eyes it felt razor sharp, and her happiness did little to quell the pain.
Monica and Sarah, on either side of her, rested hands on her back, and Monica reached up to draw a few long strands of hair from around her face, tucking them behind her ear. She remembered Mulder picking up one of Scully's hairs in the bunker and running it through his fingers. He had let it fall slowly back to the table, and if that moment had not been heartbreaking enough she was listening to Scully cry over something she wrongly thought was lost.
"Dana-" Sarah whispered, worried.
"I'm so sorry," she wept, brushing her cheeks self-consciously and sitting back up, sniffling. She suddenly looked tired, Monica realised. Just like that. Her blue eyes had become bloodshot and puffy, and her pale face was patchy and red. "I'm okay. I'm fine."
"No you're not," Monica hushed, running a tender hand along her ponytail, settling it down the centre of her back. "But you will be. I'll start, okay? Don't interrupt me. Don't anybody interrupt me. Just listen. Okay?"
"Okay," Scully whimpered, drying her face and staring at Monica with searching, confused eyes. "What is it?"
"I'm married," she stated. "Did you know that?"
"I know you have rings," Scully mentioned, reaching down to rest her hand against Monica's, feeling the sharp diamond and white gold bands there. Monica turned her palm over and held Scully's hand with both of hers. She turned herself around to sit cross-legged facing her. Scully unconsciously did the same. She got the feeling Monica wanted to speak directly to her and not to anybody else, though they were welcome to listen.
"Do you know who my husband is?" Monica asked gently. Scully pressed her lips together and shook her head. "Aren't you curious?"
"I...I didn't want to ask in case he...was dead."
"You thought I might be in the same position as you," Monica stated calmly. "That I lost someone close to me too." Scully nodded, not questioning how Monica knew she had lost Mulder even though she immediately picked up on Monica's unusual choice of words. Though obviously she had looked around the house, Scully reminded herself. She had been free to make that assumption when Scully had returned without Mulder. Duh.
"Are, um, are you?" she asked cautiously.
"No," Monica smiled widely. "No, my husband is alive, Dana. It's John. John Doggett."
"I remember him," Scully stated, unable to help rolling her eyes and smiling at the way Monica was speaking to her. As though she had completely forgotten the man? Honestly!
"We had been living in Texas," Monica continued. "Now here is where I need you to just hear me. You can ask whatever you want at the end." Scully nodded seriously, her bemused smile fading as she bit her lower lip, her eyes displaying both hope and dread in various shades. Monica managed a comforting smile, taking a deep breath.
"Just tell her Monica," Gibson whispered from somewhere beside them. Scully did not dare turn her head away from her friend's wise, brown eyes. She had missed them so much, she realised. She had thought about Monica and John often, but she had never allowed herself to miss them. Now she was free to admit that she had missed them.
Every day.
"On the night this started," Monica explained, focussed on her own thoughts. Every word that came out of her mouth and how it sounded was important. She needed Scully to understand. "John and I were reading. The phones had gone out the day before, and there were problems with the television and radio, so we were reading before bed. There was a furious knocking on the door, and John got up to answer it. When he came back, Gibson was with him." Scully nodded, frowning. "He wasn't alone."
Scully raised her eyebrow and grimaced and Monica smiled reactively. Old times, she realised of her friend's curious expression. Scully had really not changed one bit.
"Gibson had to catch a bus to get to our home," she continued. "He came to warn us. He can explain this to you later but he didn't come here because he knew you had provisions for your safety here. Mulder must have bragged in one of his emails." Scully smirked sadly. That she could believe. "When Gibson was at the bus station waiting to board, another bus pulled up near where he was, and he heard this person he brought with him to our home that night. This person had come to see Gibson, and it was just dumb luck Gibson happened to be standing close enough to recognise him. You see, if he hadn't, this person would have gone to Gibson's home and he would not have survived, but Gibson made him buy another ticket and forced him to tag along to come and find us."
"Okay," Scully whispered, doing her best not to think and just to listen, as Monica had requested, but she was confused. If the story was true, where was John, and where was this other person?
"There wasn't time to send him home, you see. We stayed underground for five weeks," Monica continued softly. The only indication she was nervous was the way her hands were shaking as they held Scully's, but Scully gripped her fingers tightly to calm her.
"It's okay," she assured Monica when there was a long pause. "I'm listening."
"When we came outside, well I'm sure you had a similar reaction." Scully nodded seriously. "Gibson told us we needed to go south, that in Mexico humans had survived, and that there would be the means for us to survive there too. It would have only taken a week to cross the border, perhaps only a month to reach one of those places. But as you can see we did not go to Mexico. You see...the person we were with had spent the past five weeks in a state of deep regret, locked in a basement with one person who could read his mind and two others he barely knew. There was no privacy, you realise, and though he was very good about it, he was hurting badly. So...We took the first vote. We decided not to go south, but to journey north-east, to Virginia."
"W-w-why?" Scully asked, her heart hammering in her chest. She thought she knew the answer. Monica stared at her for a long minute before she let the last two words roll off her tongue, her voice barely above a whisper.
"For you."
"Oh my God," Skinner whispered from behind them, staring at Gibson and silently asking him if his sudden epiphany was correct. Gibson merely turned the corner of his lips upwards in a tiny smile. His focus was on Scully, Skinner knew that, but he was grateful for the recognition.
"For me," Scully repeated on a deep exhalation. Monica nodded.
"We took some other votes along the way. It took us two months to get here because I was so sick and we had to rest so often. But we got here, Dana. We were led straight here by this person. It was not luck or coincidence that brought us to this house. It was not fate. It was human will, and the sheer determination of this person to know...if he had made the biggest mistake of his life in walking out on you over something selfish."
A tear escaped Scully's lower lid and trickled down her cheek as she removed her front teeth from her lower lip, allowing it to part from her upper lip naturally. Her usually full blue eyes looked vacant, Monica realised. She hoped Scully did not go into shock.
"When we got here," she continued quickly. "We didn't waste any time. We went underground. He took us down there. We knew you wouldn't be there because Gibson couldn't hear you, but we all felt you in there. You had been gone a long time by then."
"Are you saying-" Scully hesitated. No matter how much she wanted to, she could not complete the sentence. She could not say it. She could not say his name. He was alive?
"Go upstairs Dana," Gibson whispered, breaking the silence. He hated her fear. He had to prove it to her and he knew how. "You left a photo behind. We all saw it when we got here. It's not there now. Go and check."
"Okay," Scully whispered innocently, letting go of Monica's hands and standing, stepping around the blanket and the people sitting in a circle around it. She walked upstairs slowly as though in a trance, but she returned quickly. She said nothing until she had sat back down in her place. Her palms were spread out over the blanket in front of her, needing to ground herself. The photo of Mulder and Samantha as smiling children was indeed missing. That photo had accompanied Mulder everywhere, and only one person beside Mulder had ever been allowed to touch it. Her.
"He took it with him," Monica whispered, clearly seeing the indecision and disbelief in Scully's expression in the dim lamplight. It told Monica that Scully knew what she had seen but that she still was not sure of what it meant. She wasn't ready to accept. "He's gone with John," she added, doing her best to sound upbeat. They're okay, her voice said.
"W-w-" Scully's own voice failed her as her eyes filled with fresh tears. She was not sure what kind of tears they were. They felt like nothing tears. Suddenly there was no pain or happiness or grief or relief. Her mind was blank. She wanted to ask where he had gone with John, but she couldn't, because what if they never came back?
"Uh," Monica chuckled sadly, reaching down to cover Scully's hands with her own. "Dana they've gone to DC."
"What?" Skinner exclaimed from behind them, sitting forward in surprise. Monica nodded as Gibson also laughed softly. "We just came from there."
"And if I had been with Mulder instead of John I probably would have found you earlier," Gibson explained. "But we needed a break from them."
"Why the hell did they go to DC?" Shannon asked, confused.
"Well," Monica began, returning her full attention to Scully. "Dana, Mulder found what you left for him, under the covers of the bed." Scully swallowed a sob and nodded. "We all read your letter. We decided he should go. I had already decided that we would stay here until after the baby was born. It's not a long trip, considering what we did to get here, and...If there was even the slightest chance they could find you- It had always been a long shot, but just to know you had survived; it was such a triumph for us Dana. They left not long after we got here. They would be on their way back now or very close to leaving. I'm not sure how long they would have taken to search. When they left they had no plan beyond the FBI you mentioned in your letter and your mother's."
"The Hoover building's demolished," Skinner mumbled, staring cautiously at Scully when he saw her pale. "Dana-"
"Oh God, it's a mess," she whispered. "They're going to see-"
"See what?" Monica asked. Scully turned her head to stare at Skinner with wide, desperate eyes.
"How much blood did I lose?" she asked. He stared at her blankly and shook his head, unsure. "How MUCH?" she screamed, her voice breaking. "Did it look bad, I mean, oh my God-"
"It's okay," Monica interrupted hurriedly, reaching for Scully's hands as they began to shake. "Scully look at me," she urged. She lifted one of her hands to Scully's face and turned it gently back to her. "Dana," she hissed. "It doesn't matter. You are not there. That is all they will care about. Obviously you walked away."
"We left the kitchen in a state," Shannon added. "Wrappers and sponges and stuff like that. I don't know Mulder but I know John Doggett, and he won't miss something like that. They'll figure out that you were treated and that you moved on."
"But you don't understand I...He's going to think that's how I wanted it to be, but it wasn't. I just wanted to feel him again and I let him out from where I kept him all that time and it hurt so bad and I don't even remember...I just remember Skinner sitting with me on the couch and I asked him for pills so I could pass out because I didn't want to be awake anymore and, and then I woke up in this house. They're going to think that I..."
"What, that you're human?" Monica asked gently, brushing her thumb across Scully's flushed cheek while her other hand kept a firm grip of Scully's trembling hands. "You were completely alone. Do you know what that thought did to him for all that time? You have nothing to be ashamed of. I know, beyond any doubt, I would not have been able to survive this on my own, Dana, but you did."
"I had help, it wasn't me," she insisted weakly.
"So what?" Monica pressed, removing her hand from Scully's face and shrugging. "That doesn't mean you deserve to be here less than any of us. For goodness sakes, we've all had help in this room. It only makes us stronger."
"And...They're coming back?" Scully asked timidly, her voice gentle but hopeful. Monica smiled, nodding.
"They were allowed to leave on one condition; that Fox Mulder returned to this house alive, no matter what. I'll have John's head if he comes back without him."
"They would have been in DC when we left," she whispered. Monica nodded. "Did he find everything I left?"
"Yes," Monica assured her. "He was up all night reading through your journal. I came and sat with him for a little while. He's got it with him. He doesn't let it out of his sight. That was a cute picture of you as a kid you left too." Scully managed a watery smile.
"I remembered that he liked it."
"He still does," Monica promised, catching Scully's eyes as she saw her smile strengthen. "Are you okay?"
"Is he really alive?" she asked. "You're not making it up?"
"Dana," Monica laughed. "I wouldn't lie about something like this. Mulder has been a wonderful friend to us all this time, but not a second has gone by in a day when he hasn't thought of you. Ask Gibson. He will come back here extremely disappointed in himself for not being able to find you. I was prepared for that. I had been preparing myself to help him through that. But to have you here...I'm actually afraid he might have a stroke."
"I feel like I'm having one right now," Scully whispered, suppressing a sudden giggle as Monica laughed.
"Can I ask something?" Gibson asked once he saw Scully's posture relax and heard a stunted but genuine laugh. It was something he had never heard from her in their old lives, and it made him smile.
"What?" Monica asked, turning back around to face him as Scully did the same, the two women rejoining the group. Shannon was to Monica's right, next to Skinner. Gibson was between Skinner and Sarah. It looked as though none of them had moved the whole time, and Monica was glad she hadn't lost her nerve. It had not been as hard as she had feared, in the end. Scully's earnest eyes were easy to face, particularly when the news was good.
"Can we eat now?" Gibson pressed obviously. Scully laughed, shaking her head and blushing. She was actually starting to feel hungry. The shock was fading. She repeated Monica's words over in her mind. Fox Mulder. Returned to 'this' house. Alive. Scully could only pray that nothing disastrous had happened to prevent that promise being fulfilled, because if nothing else Mulder was a man of his word. Mulder, she repeated. Mulder. Alive.
"Let's eat," Skinner agreed quickly, reaching for the warm champagne he had abandoned beside him. "If this news isn't cause for celebration I don't know what is."
xxx
"Are you sure you'll be comfortable here?" Monica asked in the dark, kneeling beside the air mattress on the wooden floors in Scully's spare room.
"I'll be fine," Sarah promised from just below her, lying on her side, her head resting on a fluffy pillow. "Seriously this is the most comfortable I've been in a very long time." Monica chuckled.
"I can imagine. If you need anything during the night, you remember where the room is?"
"Yes but I'll be okay. I've got water and my bucket and I'm warm enough."
"Good," Monica replied, happy Sarah had anticipated all of her questions.
"Thank you Monica," she whispered. "Goodnight."
"Night," Monica replied kindly, standing and leaving, letting the door shut gently behind her.
Scully was sitting on her bed in her room when Monica returned, staring at the shelf from which Mulder had removed his picture of his sister. The gas lamp had been moved in with her and shone brightly from its resting place on the otherwise empty bedside table that Mulder had told them was hers. Scully was yet to return her photo of them to it.
Scully had been lucid and happy to chat for a few hours after Monica had told her the truth, but since they had all begun to retire to bed she had become mute. Monica hoped to get her talking again before she slept, but she was not sure if that was what Scully really needed. Monica didn't even know what she herself needed. She could not believe Dana Scully was sitting right in front of her. Monica had not grieved for Scully like Mulder had, and she had pushed him to continue his journey to trace her, but a part of Monica had never expected her to have survived. She completely understood Scully's stunned speechlessness because she felt the same way.
"Are you sure it's okay if I stay here Dana?" she asked cautiously from the door. "You don't want privacy?" Scully turned to her, startled by her voice and the question.
"Of course you can stay," she whispered, standing and shifting her weight from side to side. "I was just...thinking. Is he...okay?"
"Mulder?" Monica asked. Scully pressed her lips together to hold back her emotions and nodded. Monica smiled. "Physically he's fantastic. He and John got a bit thin for a while. They all took a vote and made me take double rations so they weren't getting as much food but uh, they took a lot with them. None of us have been sick, well, besides me."
"I'll do a proper exam tomorrow," Scully stated. Monica simply nodded.
"I would like that," she conceded. "I...I'm not worried, but I'm still glad you're here. Can I uh, see your wrist?"
"Sure," Scully whispered, as Monica entered the bedroom properly and shut the door. Scully sat back down on the bed and Monica followed, balancing on the edge of the mattress with one leg folded partly underneath her. Scully offered up her left arm willingly and Monica held it gently. She huffed, relieved, when she realised Scully never could have killed herself with such a cut, but it certainly would have bled.
"You kind of missed the runway," she teased.
"As Skinner told me, I was so distressed I wouldn't have been able to hit it if it was lit up in lights," Scully assured her. "I was in a real state, Monica. It took me weeks to feel like myself again. Skinner refers to it as a panic attack, but it was more than that. If they hadn't found me, I don't know, I might have gone completely mad."
"I could never imagine you losing control like this," Monica admitted. "Even when I thought about what you wrote in that letter, you never said anything definitely, and then you left that Psalm highlighted and it was such a strong message. It was confident. It spoke of courage. I don't think any of us really understood what you were feeling, or what you really meant or intended to do when you got to DC."
"The Psalm had given me courage," Scully whispered certainly. "But in leaving it behind I...was leaving that support behind. If Mulder came back I wanted him to have it." Monica grinned widely, her eyes shining with tears. "What?" Scully asked.
"That's the first time I've heard you say his name," she told her. "You're feeling okay?"
"Yes," Scully hissed. "I...I dreamed about seeing him again so often."
"I know," Monica explained. "Mulder showed me some of your drawings in your journal that night I sat with him. He said the drawing on the back page was his favourite, with the lyrics, and I just know that drawing will come true, Dana. I didn't know it then, and I cried with him that night, but I know it now."
"He cried?" Scully asked, tears suddenly filling her eyes. Monica softened.
"For the first two weeks every day," she whispered. "Not that he wanted us to know. He waited until we were all trying to sleep. But we all heard. It broke our hearts. Gibson told me he had a lot of flashbacks."
"He has a photographic memory," Scully reminded her. "He can replay anything he wants, but uh, sometimes he doesn't get a choice and it just comes to him. But his mind hasn't done that to him since we came to live here. Neither of us suffered in this house. The dreams faded. We had a life. It wasn't perfect but...I loved it. You know I thought he was dead right from the moment it happened."
"I know," Monica whispered.
"I've been living with this grief for so long...just as I did before, and when we left DC last week I told myself that I was moving on, and that I could be happy. I don't know what to feel anymore Monica. I don't know if I can let go of that grief or take a backward step from the promises I made to myself. I don't know how to move on anymore."
"Just take it day by day," she suggested. "Honestly if when they come back you and he shut yourselves in this room for a week, none of us will care. We came all this way. Sometimes he started to give up and I would ask him what he wanted and he just kept saying he wanted you. That alone should tell you that it will be okay, it will work out."
"Where is everyone sleeping?" Scully asked. Monica smiled. Apparently Scully had accepted her reassurances and relaxed enough to focus on something else. Or perhaps she was just avoiding confronting her emotions by changing the topic. Either way Monica didn't mind. She was enjoying talking. She wanted to communicate with her friend.
"Sarah is in the spare room on the mattress, and Gibson is on the couch. Skinner and Shannon are outside in sleeping bags by the, uh, the 'raft'. And, odd question but Gibson obviously knows so didn't ask before but, what is Shannon even doing amidst all this?"
"You know how Gibson came to warn you?" Scully asked. Monica nodded. "Shannon went to warn Skinner. They'd had sort of a relationship in the past; I'm not sure whether it was ongoing at the time. Obviously...Shannon thought it wouldn't be fair to Skinner to continue down that path, but they, I think they still have a relationship. They are very close, but they are insanely discreet."
"Do they sleep together?" Monica hissed curiously. Scully's eyes widened in ignorance and she shrugged.
"I think so?" she queried. "Supersoldiers are still sexually human so-" Monica's mouth opened in shock and Scully giggled. "What?" she asked. "They are!"
"I just got a mental image of that!" she exclaimed loudly. "Thanks a lot!" Scully laughed more freely as Monica playfully shoved her.
xxx
Gibson rolled his eyes as he lay on the couch with his arms folded over his chest, listening to the raucous laughter from upstairs. Monica and Scully were giggling like immature teenage girls at the thought of their old boss doing the nasty with a supersoldier. But that thought was pretty funny, he conceded. And gross. Gibson let himself chuckle and relax. Everyone would sleep well that night, he determined. Everyone was tired from a long and emotionally exhausting day.
Gibson was happy Monica was happy, and he was overjoyed Scully and Skinner had survived. He had felt bad not warning them, but he'd had to make a choice.
They had all made choices, but somehow, despite all of those decisions, they had all found each other. There were just two people missing, and Gibson could not wait for them to come home. Mulder and John would be SO surprised, and so happy. Gibson was excited. He had honestly enjoyed the extra opportunities for silence over the past fortnight, but suddenly he was thrilled by the prospect of having other voices in his life again. He had not realised how much he had missed them.
Mulder and Scully together had always been a powerful motivating force. When Gibson had been with them, he had heard them together. They had often been hoping to reach the same goal but in different ways, and it had always sort of blended together so that in the end he only really heard both their voices saying the one thing, the one path they took. That meant something important to him. Something he had no ability or need to define.
Neither deserved to live a life without the other, and Gibson was grateful he would no longer have to live with Mulder's passionate grief and guilt. It overpowered everything. Gibson had caught only glimpses of Scully's own pain in the short time they had spent together that day, but he knew her regrets had been just as debilitating. It was good Skinner had found her. She had always liked to think she was okay without other people around, but that had never been completely true. Gibson knew that. He always had.
Gibson shut his eyes and smiled at the atmosphere of friendship and hope that had warmed the expansive, darkened house. Upstairs, Monica and Scully had settled and were slowly falling asleep side by side amidst softly-spoken stories of their pasts. Without the burden of any negative thoughts, his own or those of others, Gibson allowed their gentle, emotional whisperings lull him into his own, peaceful slumber.