The office door eked open, catching Mulder off guard. Scully stood in the doorframe, lab coat and briefcase in hand looking decidedly hostile in stature. She tucked her thick winter jacket neatly under her arm, considering him with an air of annoyance.

"How long have you just been sitting here?" She asked casually.

"I haven't just been sitting here" Mulder argued, "…as a matter of fact, I've been working"

Mulder was lying through his teeth and there was absolutely no convincing the woman before him. In the recent weeks he'd barely mustered enough vigour to pick up a case file. Now, he couldn't even fathom the energy to masturbate in his empty and prolonged days.

She studied him up and down.

"Have you showered today?" She questioned, placing her briefcase on the carpet.

It wasn't intended to be a criticism but it certainly felt that way in his current mental state.

"What the hell's that supposed to mean?!"

"It's a simple question, Mulder"

He glared at her, wishing she'd leave him in peace to get on with his nothingness, "No, I haven't"

"Have you eaten anything?"

"I'm not hungry."

Unshaven and having not changed his shirt in three days must have been the immediate giveaway.

He turned his back on her, wandering why he was intent on acting like a total ass to her. He couldn't understand it himself, but years of psychological profiling lead to the single obvious fact that he was severely depressed. Whether he wanted to admit it or not, the thick cloud of swirling despair had been following him for months and Scully's efforts to get him help had only proved to aggravate him further.

Scully folded her arms, "I've umm, I've booked you an appointment with the doctor next week… I really feel you ought to go"

"Oh for fuck sake!" He rolled his eyes, "I'm fine Scully. I just need you to get off my god damn back for once"

Scully stood for a moment, planning her next move, the anger slowly boiling over.

"You are not fine, Mulder…and I am sick and tired of seeing you mope around this house"

He snapped, "You think it's easy for me? Seeing you going out to work every day, living your life. While I sit here, hiding away!"

"They cleared your charges"

"…And destroyed my work and my reputation in the process!" Mulder shook his head, "You have no idea…not a fucking clue what that feels like"

"Oh really? I think you're completely overlooking the fact that I worked all those years alongside you, Mulder. Your loss was just as much mine. Now, do me a favour and stop acting like a selfish child!"

Mulder couldn't have felt more cornered. He wanted to hug her; confess he was struggling and that he didn't understand why, that he needed her, but his stubbornness as usual got the better of him. He did the one thing he knew in such confrontations, his one safeguard fall back. He distanced her.

"You're really starting to piss me off" He sighed.

"Well that's good, because maybe then you might start to understand just a percentage of the shit I have to deal with from you on a daily basis"

"Fuck you." He snarled, storming out and slamming the door behind him.

He hated himself and he hated her, but more than ever he hated life and what it had done to him. His parents, his sister, his job and career, even his son had all been cruelly snatched away from him. If he believed in a god he'd be cursing him for his malice.

….

Agent Mulder counted the tiles on the medical bay ceiling for the ninth time in a row. The room was quiet and so was the hallway; his only link to reality the gently pattering of shoes against the laminated flooring as the nurses did their rounds.

Two doctors crossed paths outside his room, updating one another on news from the mainland. Whispering failed to hide the sheer scale of the epidemic; the fear in their expressions confirming the out of control and rising death tolls.

Mulder shifted uncomfortably, trying to remember why he was confined to a gurney on this particular occasion. He peeled the white sheets away from his chest and examined the dressing plastered across his side. The wound gave a twinge, warning him not to spring out of bed any time soon.

Regardless of the gaping hole in his back, Mulder refused to spend the remaining days before colonisation had completely taken over confined to a hospital bed.

"Nurse" He yelled into the darkness.

The young women scuttled into the room flicking on the bedside light as she went.

"I need to speak to Agent Scully, can you call her for me please?"

"I'm sorry, but Agent Scully asked not to be disturbed unless an absolute emergency" She smiled, fluffing up his pillow.

"Fine…" Mulder said hauling himself upright in bed.

"Sir, you haven't been discharged yet"

"That's fine, I'll come back after" He assured.

The nurse looked disconcerted, "Agent Scully advised to sedate you if necessary…"

"Oh she did, did she?"

Trust Scully to anticipate his lack of cooperation with the medical staff, "How quickly can you load a syringe?"

The nurse's threats appeared to be empty as she stood half-heartedly trying to usher him back into bed.

"Can you take this out of me please?" He waved the IV drip in her direction, "I'd really rather not have to do it myself"

Upstairs in the research block, Mulder had searched every inch of the laboratories. Needless to say the lack of residents was a little unnerving. The entire building was a ghost town with large sections of building completely absent of power.

Mulder leant his weight against the final lab room, careful to lean on his undamaged side. The door creaked open to reveal the small redheaded women seated in front of her computer screen, rubbing her tired eyes in protest.

She looked up, a little startled with his presence.

"Mulder" She began, placing her glasses on top of the stacks of paperwork.

He reached her before she had a chance to stand, wrapping an arm around her and planting a soft kiss on her head.

"Hey" He managed.

"What are you doing here, Mulder? Who discharged you this soon?"

She was looking for the doctor in question so she could make a point of kicking his ass.

"I discharged myself, so to speak. I had to see you, needed to talk about something…"

"Oh" Scully raised an eyebrow, "What exactly did you want to talk about?"

She'd helped herself to his dressing, lifting his shirt out of the way to get a better view of the stitching underneath.

Mulder held her wrists pulling her away, and sitting in the office chair beside her, gesturing his need for her undivided attention.

"Scully, I-" He wasn't entirely sure where he was going with this, "I never apologised for what happened between us, all those years back. A lot of things were said… things that I didn't mean"

She didn't want to have this discussion, wished he'd forget it and move on as she had.

"I'm sorry that it's taken me this long to get around to saying these things. I guess, more than anything I couldn't deal with the guilt. The guilt of putting you through such hardships during the x-files. The guilt of robbing you of your life… all those years we went into hiding" He cleared a lump in his throat, "You should have been able to watch your son grow…"

The computer bleeped its notification and Scully fought to turn off the acknowledgement of failure once more. Her hair was a mess and she looked in desperate need of sleep.

"The vaccine isn't going so well?" Mulder asked.

She shook her head slowly, "It's proving… difficult… to say the least"

The lab technician wheeled a cart of medical supplies and samples into the small office.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt, can you sign for these Dr Scully?"

Scully scribbled a signature and the technician left just as swiftly.

Mulder handled a blood sample, studying the label closely. She was about to tell him to leave it alone when the marker pen inscription caught her eye.

"William Van De Kamp" Mulder pronounced.

"It must have been from when you were both brought in from the crash site, after the attack. William fainted after he-" It felt silly to admit their son had bought him back from the dead but that was exactly how it happened, "Well, they ran some tests just to be on the safe side"

"You tested his blood for traces of alien DNA?" Mulder asked, holding the sample up against the light.

"Yes, of course, when he first got here…"

"Could it have changed since you last tested it?"

She paused, considering the blood sample in her partner's fingers, "It doesn't really work that way…"

"But he was normal, completely normal, until he did the thing with the-" Mulder illustrated, "Putting 'life' back into something… that's not normal"

Scully folded her arms and paced the room as her partner continued,

"…I'm just saying. What if things changed"