Ten

"Such a pretty little desert," Mulder teased as he and Scully walked barefoot through the warm sand. He reached over to flick the rim of Scully's large hat which she had rediscovered amongst her things at the processing centre. She laughed at the comment and his attention and stretched a pale arm up to steady the sun-protecting accessory. Scully had always been pale, but even the freckles he had once been used to along her cheeks and shoulders had faded in Antarctica, and she was lily white; a few hours in the equatorial sun and she would fry. Even Mulder had sunscreen and a collared shirt on. Neither of them wanted any pain.

It was the afternoon after they had watched the sun rise together from the watch tower, and they were heading back the way they had originally come, to the west coast, to relax on the beach and watch the sun set. They had no idea how or why they had been returned, but they had thoroughly explored the processing centre and found no other signs of life. Everything had been exactly as they had left it, including the amount of food and water and other supplies. Mulder had expected Eddie or Michael to at least leave a note.

"Race ya," Scully announced suddenly, removing her hand from his and jogging up the last dune. They could hear the water lapping against the shore and they knew the edge was close. Mulder did not try to run after her. He was carrying a bag with blankets, food and water and a few other bits and pieces. After the sunrise, Scully had slept for a few more hours and had rediscovered her energy. However Mulder, having remained awake all morning, felt like he needed a nap.

Thoughts of tiredness disappeared as soon as Scully screamed. It was not a frightened scream, he realised, because instead of running back down the dune to him she took off ahead, disappearing over the edge. It had been more like the 'there's hot water' scream he remembered from so long ago. Or perhaps just the previous week, depending on which possible reality he chose to believe.

"MULDER!" she shouted. "COME QUICK!"

"Coming!" he called back loudly, lengthening his stride and pushing himself to get up and over the sand, following her footsteps. When he got to the top, he found himself staring at a clear, blue ocean and a lowering sun in a lighter blue, clouded sky.

And then he saw it, and he realised why Scully had screamed.

It was still there. The sixty foot luxury schooner anchored exactly where Mulder remembered leaving it. Had nothing changed, he wondered? Surely Shannon and Ted had taken the boat back to wherever they had brought it, because how else had Ted gotten off the island?

He scratched his head and searched for Scully. She was on the edge of the shore, her bare feet only just meeting the top rise of the tide. She was turning between the boat and Mulder quickly, as though checking both were still where she wanted them to be, and when she saw Mulder she waved him down, grinning madly under her large hat. He laughed, jogging down the rest of the way and dropping the bag a few metres from her.

"Look, look it's still here!" she exclaimed excitedly.

"I can see that," Mulder teased, amused by her choice of words. It's still here, as opposed to 'it came back' told him exactly where her mind was at. She didn't really think they had come back either, and Mulder was not sure what to do with that belief. "Who brought it back?"

"Maybe it never left," she suggested. "I mean if we really did hallucinate the last year of our lives or if we lived it virtually or something, maybe it never, ever left?"

Mulder had never heard Scully so excited that she forgot all her training as a scientist and immediately jumped to the most implausible of explanations just to justify something she really, desperately wanted. He laughed, reaching for her fidgeting hands and holding them both tightly in an effort to calm her before she started jumping around like a three year old.

"Deep breaths," he teased as water lapped at his ankles.

"Mulder it's like somebody HEARD me!" she insisted, her blue eyes wide and searching his as she stared up at his face from the level of his chest. He peered down at her curiously. "When you asked me everything I wanted to do before I died, it's like somebody heard."

"Dana if that's true," Mulder whispered, cupping her jaw to still her and forcing her to maintain eye contact. "They were your dying wishes. It would mean you were dying."

"But I am," she hissed, tears instantly springing to her eyes. Mulder's heart wrenched as he fought not to visibly cringe. She reached up with one hand to cover his against her face and hold it there. "We both are. We're...I don't know where we are, or why, and we're alone with only a few weeks of food and water stored here, and what on earth are we going to do?"

"What do you want to do?" he asked nervously. They had deliberately not spoken about the situation during the times of day they had been awake, but it had been playing on both their minds. They had been dumped back where they had been picked up, discarded or saved; either way sentenced to a death just as certain as any earthquake would have caused.

"I had a dream this morning," she told him, her voice serious. "And I dreamed we were sleeping in our home, and since this boat is here it all fits. It's like it was a sign for us, Mulder. I think that's what we should do. I can sail us into Chesapeake Bay, and we can walk home one more time, and we can die there. I've still got everything in my pack to make that happen; I checked."

Mulder did not brush away the tears that trickled onto his cheeks as he listened to her describe ending their lives in a manner completely unbefitting of the sentiment. It was not sad, or even detached. It was happy. She was happy she had found a solution and that they would be together. It was what they had always wanted, after all. It was everything they had always felt they deserved; to go together, to journey onwards together, neither of them left behind. Neither of them could have handled that, not at this stage in their lives. When they were younger they might have learned to cope, but not anymore. Not when it was all but over. What was there to cope for? Who would benefit?

"Okay sweetheart," he whispered, his voice shaking and his throat aching. Scully pulled herself onto her tiptoes and urged his head down, pressing her lips to his in a firm, reassuring, closed-lip kiss which Mulder returned. When he pulled away for air she pressed her forehead to his and held him there, hunched against her, his hands settled on her hips.

"We'll be okay, Mulder," she promised softly. "We'll cry together, and laugh, and make love, and then we'll take the pills and it won't hurt. I would never hurt you."

"I know," he mumbled, stroking her cheeks when he heard her own voice break. "I know. Do we have to leave right away?"

"No. Maybe we can have a look on board this evening before it gets dark and then tomorrow talk about it some more. For now, let's take a tour and see if anything's different, and then we can watch the sun set and just enjoy it."

"Bit of cloud about; should be a good one," he told her. She nodded against him and pulled away, smiling sadly into his brown eyes and stroking her hands along his face.

"I'm scared too," she whispered certainly, holding his gaze. He nodded. He believed her.

They walked around the boat in relative silence, speaking only to point out little discrepancies and interesting facts. For example the boat was empty and unlocked, but it was not dusty, as though it had been cleaned and left there for them to discover at their leisure. It was fully stocked with supplies and all the navigational maps and compasses were in order. Scully mentioned they would have to check the sails before making any decisions, in case any had been damaged, but on the whole the boat looked extremely well looked after. It looked like they had only just gotten off it, and time had stopped to take care of it.

"Strange," Mulder whispered as they settled on one of the blankets on the rise of the dune to watch the sun set just to the right of the schooner. The clouds reflected magnificent shades of bright pink and orange and they lay on their backs side by side, watching.

"So what do you think, Mulder?" Scully asked eventually, her hat pulled low over her eyes. She turned her head towards his so that she did not have to look directly at the sun, and he raised his eyebrows, silently urging her to elaborate. "Do you think we've lost a year of our lives, or maybe just a week?"

"I have no goddamn idea," he admitted. "I've never been more serious in my life either Scully. I have absolutely no idea. It 'felt' real. We spent a lot of time together and it 'was' real, because we remember the same events, so you were there when I was, where I was. Just, waking up in bed yesterday, and finding everything how we left it... The only thing I can't explain is that the clothes we woke up in were not the clothes we had on when we were first put under, and somebody had stacked our photos and the album and your diaries- Your diaries, obviously, did not write themselves."

"No, that does seem to indicate it was real, or at least real enough for me to be able to write but...God, I don't know. At the same time it doesn't seem real. It feels like it happened in another lifetime, in another world, like it was us but it wasn't."

"You said something like that to me in Antarctica," Mulder pointed out. "You said you didn't feel like 'you' anymore, that you had lost a part of yourself and that you wanted to come home. Maybe what you're feeling now is just the realisation of how you were feeling then; that it wasn't really 'you' there, that it wasn't happening and that it was just some dream."

"But it 'did' happen?" she asked.

"I think it did," he confirmed. "Do you really feel like it didn't?"

"I don't know," she whispered. "Maybe I...want it to feel like it didn't because I...never felt like I fit in there. I fit in with you, in our little home there but we weren't there all that often." She covered her face with her hands and shook her head on the blanket. "I just didn't want that to be where we ended our lives, Mulder," she wept. "I wanted to be here, somewhere 'real', even if it was in the desert."

"We will be," he promised, rolling onto his side and settling a hand on her abdomen as she sobbed. He carefully removed her hat so he could see her face. "Scully, I...Don't cry."

"I'm sorry. I think I'm still a bit hyper-sensitive from the drugs and the excitement. I'm just tired. I'm always tired." Mulder nodded, accepting her explanation and sitting up. He urged her to do the same as she removed her hands from her face, and she sat back against his chest as one arm wrapped around her waist and the other was stretched behind him to balance them against the dune. They watched the sun finish setting in silence, and when stars began glittering through the clouds in the night sky Mulder pressed his lips to Scully's neck in a silent question. "Can we sleep here in the fresh air?" she asked. He had almost expected it.

"Of course," he promised. "I brought another blanket." They parted so Mulder could dig through the bag, and after taking turns running to a faraway patch of dark sand to relieve themselves and sharing some water and a nibble on some crackers they settled down to sleep.

xxx

"Scully! This is the last of it," Mulder announced loudly as he paddled the small, wooden lifeboat up alongside the schooner. Scully peered over the edge of the stairs and smiled when she realised it was their backpacks. He had brought food, water and medical supplies over, and she was glad he had remembered their belongings.

Scully climbed down into the dinghy to steady it as Mulder ascended with the bags. It was a balancing act but one which they had perfected over the day's work. Scully had more closely inspected the boat and it was seaworthy. The weather was clear, the wind was good, and she was hoping they could set off that afternoon.

"I looked over the maps," she explained once the lifeboat had been resecured. They were both standing at the bow, leaning against the railing casually, watching the water drifting around them and listening to it lap against the hull as though the world had not changed. "I think we'll be able to follow the coastline up depending on the winds. We have fuel on board, almost a full tank, and it's not as though we plan to need it after this, so at our discretion we could use that too."

"Whatever you say, Captain," Mulder assured her with a cheeky smile. He lifted the sleeve of his light blue t-shirt to reveal the motion sickness patch on his tricep. "Ready when you are."

"If you say aye-aye next you'll be in trouble," Scully drawled, smiling at the sound of his giggle. "Well let's have some lunch first," she suggested. "We should run through some emergency procedures before we set off."

"What to do when aliens invade!" Mulder hissed in a spooky, bad horror movie voice. Scully laughed, shaking her head in shame as he grinned. They had woken up side by side in the sand under the safety of blankets that morning, and despite what they were returning to, or perhaps because of it, they were both happy to get organised and leave the island. It would be Scully's last chance to sail, and Mulder knew that was a special thought for her having grown up idolising her Navy father. Mulder only hoped they did not run into any surprise storms.

"OI MAN, YOU FORGET SOMETHING?"

Mulder and Scully pulled apart at the sound of a voice not their own. They turned back towards the island, in the direction it had come, only to see Eddie standing on the beach up to his knees in water holding a dark, long and thin bag around his shoulders.

"What the HELL are you doing here?" Mulder shouted back, angered by his sudden reappearance. They had been alone, dammit. They had CHECKED.

"Doctor ordered a dress, didn't she?" he asked presumptuously. "Think we should talk. I'd swim right out but this thing aint waterproof!" Mulder and Scully shared a doubtful look but ultimately they conceded. Eddie appeared to be alone, and he had never hurt them as far as they were aware. And he was real. He would have answers that they wanted.

"Let's get the boat. I'll go get him," Mulder mumbled.

"Where did he come from?" Scully hissed curiously.

"Last night I guess," he sighed. "While we were asleep." She nodded thoughtfully, following him towards where they had stored the dinghy at the side of the hull to untie it.

Several minutes later Eddie's long, dark legs climbed aboard. He was wet and sandy from his cream shorts to his toes but the rest of his pants and his white t-shirt were dry. His afro was the same. Scully had almost been expecting him to appear as the old man she first remembered, but apparently he had decided he liked the Eddie body so much he wanted to keep it. Maybe he thought they would respond better to him when he looked like that, she reasoned, tall and strong and dark. He looked friendly, but there was a subtle reminder in the spread of his chest and the muscles on his arms that he was stronger than they had first assumed. He handed Scully his package and then turned to help Mulder put the smaller boat away without being asked or even bothering to offer.

Once they were done Eddie led the way back to Scully and soon found himself standing between a very short, redheaded doctor and a very tall psychologist, both of who were not happy with his last-minute surprise.

"You weren't about to set sail without me, were you?" he asked, chuckling as he looked between their glares. "I thought you'd be out for longer. I gave you a top-up when we got here hoping you wouldn't wake up before I got back."

"How long have we been here?" Scully asked pointedly.

"Uh...less than a week," he answered uncertainly. "I don't really know, cos I haven't been around. I had to leave you so knocked you out til I could get back. Either I was away longer than I thought or you both woke up faster than expected. You feeling okay?"

"It's taken a while," Mulder conceded. "What are we doing here? You're right, we were just about to leave, so unless you have a reason why-"

"Open the bag, Dana," Eddie interrupted. "It's yours." Scully looked at him sceptically but then dropped some of her grip on what appeared to be a garment bag so that she was holding it up beside her. She began lowering the zip and peeked inside, and her mouth dropped open in surprise as she turned back to stare at Eddie, speechless.

"What is it?" Mulder asked, although he was beginning to get a good idea.

It's like somebody heard me, she had said.

And they had. Scully pulled the zip down further to reveal the bodice of an emerald green evening gown on a hanger. Mulder pressed his lips together to avoid looking as surprised as she did, but he was. He had never seen Scully in a dress, let alone something so beautiful. Suddenly he wanted to.

"What is going on?" Scully pressed, quickly zipping the dress back up, concealing it in the garment bag. She laid it over the nearby wooden bench and turned back to Eddie with impatient hands resting on her hips. "I want to know how you know I ordered anything like that!"

"You already know," he assured her with a soft smile. "Let's call it a talent. It's not something that everybody can do, you see. I didn't know I could do it until I came here. Michael cannot see your thoughts, but he knew I could and that frustrated him because it made him feel less important."

"So great, you heard what I said to Fox and dropped us back here and was it all some elaborate joke to you then?" she exclaimed. Her cheeks were flushed with confusion as she waited for Eddie to reply.

"It was not a joke," he answered seriously. "I did what I could to prolong your life. What we experienced in the complex was the effects of drilling into the ice which had begun several hundred kilometres away."

"That's not very far," Mulder mumbled, wincing. "Who was drilling?"

"My people," Eddie replied. "Dana had told me of her own geological knowledge of the continent and I was preparing a submission to convince those above me to abandon a search for a cure to our plague on the mainland and to focus on the ice. Obviously my instructions would be that the humans there and all the resources there were relocated first, but... I tried to block these thoughts from Michael but he worked it out, and took it over my head, and they didn't wait."

"Shit," Mulder hissed. "So we lost everything there?"

"No. Michael was just as pissed as I was, and once we had knocked you out we got what we could. We hid it here after putting you in bed and drugging you, and then we went back for a little meeting and to survey the damage."

"Please tell me they did not destroy Antarctica," Scully seethed. "If that ice melts, I mean...right now, we'd be metres underwater. You cannot change the earth like this. You don't have the right to do it!"

"That's my belief but it's not shared," Eddie replied steadily. "It's not destroyed, though. It's got a few holes in it but it's still there. They found nothing useful which had not already been tested. But they are going to go ahead and strip the south. It's already begun." Scully crossed her arms and turned her back on him, shaking her head. Mulder stood silently, scratching his cheek and trying to work out how he felt about anything. All he felt was numb.

"So...What could you save?" he asked eventually.

"Medicines, the notes, the science. We were able to recover a large portion of Tower Three. I've asked those above me for a research grant and they're considering it now. I beg you not to leave until I find out whether I'm successful."

"Were they ever going to listen to you?" Scully asked as she faced them. "Eddie, I know you mean well, and we are grateful, but we just want to go home-"

"And kill yourselves. Yes, I know," he answered grimly. "I am not forcing you to stay, but I am pleading with you to give me some more time."

"But what could the outcome be? That we're allowed to live? In what sort of world? Half sand, half rising seas as you destroy the ice caps and everything that is living about this planet. We'll be the last things left alive and that's wrong, because we can't survive that way. We haven't evolved to live in that sort of environment. I know you can understand that."

"Of course," Eddie assured her. "Look I have no attachments to my planet. I don't have family; I'm not responsible to anyone but myself. With Michael's support I've asked permission to recreate part of your world to study, to preserve. For research. If they let me do that, I'll stay, and I want you to stay and help me."

"But you've... your people have affected our climate. How could we-"

"Only on the surface."

"So you're just going to 'try' to recreate hundreds of millions of years of evolution in what, a few days?"

"I don't know how much space I'll be given," he answered. "We control this planet now and it's no longer up to me. I have to listen to my government. But we could do that, yes."

"What about the people?" Scully asked in a soft whisper, tears stinging her eyes. "Do you realise that I lost my mother, my brothers, their wives, their children? Who says I want it to go back to how it was if they can't be there?"

"I guess that's your choice," Eddie replied. "You know what you can live with. If I'm successful, I'll get a small excavation and rejuvenation team and we'll start small. Here, and Hawaii. Places which were ecologically exciting and vibrant."

"What are we meant to do then?" Mulder asked. "Obviously you've already got every species which survived on the earth catalogued by name and genome. When you say you want us to help you...help you how? Because we don't want to be your humans in the museum."

"I can give you somewhere comfortable to live, and you could help. You-"

"And what's going to happen to us if you're unsuccessful?" Scully interrupted. "If you don't get this 'grant' you're seeking."

"Then I wouldn't stand in your way," he answered. "You could do whatever you wanted. Just, I had to make sure I caught you before you left, but I have to get back. Just please wait. At least wait until I get back to say goodbye."

"Yeah okay," Mulder groaned. "You're lucky you're so goddamn cute."

"Hey man," Eddie laughed, his grin of bright white teeth wide and amused. "You trippin'."

"Go practise your slang somewhere else Eddie," Scully taunted dryly, crossing her arms. "We'll be here." Eddie pressed his palms together in a prayer configuration and bowed to her seriously before jumping straight over the edge of the boat into the shallow water. Scully and Mulder hurried to the edge, afraid he would have hurt himself, but he was swimming lazily back to the shore. "Did you hear a splash?" Scully asked when she felt Mulder's elbow brush hers. He shook his head.

"So," he began after they watched Eddie until he disappeared over the top of the dune. "Are you going to try on that dress or should I?"

"Mulder, I don't know about this," she whispered, hoping they were alone again and that Eddie couldn't hear them. She thought of Gibson, and whether Eddie heard them the same way he did. Or had. She didn't know what had become of him. "I just want to go."

"Yeah, me too," Mulder mumbled, rubbing her back over her shirt as she squinted towards the bright sun. "But if there's a way that we can help I suppose we...owe it to them." Scully pressed her lips together and nodded, but Mulder knew her heart wasn't in helping. Not that long ago she had told him she wanted to return to the colonies to help as a doctor, and perhaps that would be what she would be asked to do, but suddenly Mulder couldn't see it. He couldn't see the fire in her eyes to do that again. He wasn't sure she cared either way.

xxx

"You want me to sail us where?" Scully exclaimed an entire three days later when Eddie finally returned. She was mad. They had waited, and fallen asleep waiting. At various times both she and Mulder had felt like giving up and heading off anyway, but they had always pulled each other back in and convinced them to wait. At the end of the third day Eddie suddenly reappeared over the dune as though he had only been gone for a few hours.

However, to the man's credit, Scully determined, he obviously knew their thoughts and realised he had been gone for a long time, and he was being very patient with their tempers.

"The Panama Canal," he repeated calmly. "South-south-west. It's not far and it's the fastest way to get to the Pacific from here."

"What's in the Pacific?" Mulder asked.

"Hawaii," Eddie answered, trying hard not to control his wide grin at his success. "Home base. You remember Ted?"

"Shannon's friend on the inside of the supersoldier program," Scully instantly recalled. "What about him?"

"He's getting together a rejuvenation team. Excavation is going to begin immediately."

"Excavation of what?" Scully snapped. "Look around, Eddie. We're in the desert. I'm pretty sure you excavated everything already."

"Our mining was mostly biological. You may have noticed that your buildings are untouched. The sand was a by-product of the mining, and we can clear it."

"To reveal invisible nations," Scully seethed. "You can't put life back after more than a year. What space did they give you?"

"The closest continent to our current position above the Equator. One hundred humans have been recovered alive and will be relocated."

"One hundred," Mulder repeated slowly. "One-zero-zero."

"There were twenty billion people on this planet," Scully growled.

"Yes," Eddie smirked. "And you were all doing a fabulous job of killing that which you depended upon for survival. Why not embrace the opportunity to start again? I've been given permission to rebuild a human city for historical purposes and as somewhat of an apology to those who have survived. I have spoken to them at length about your assistance in attempting to find solutions to our own plague."

"Why would any alien want to help us?" Mulder asked curiously.

"You don't get it, do you?" Eddie shot back with a soft chuckle. "When we first came here we tried to accommodate you. We had no reason to distrust you. Your people gave us that reason by deceiving us. It has taken a lot of arguing on my part to convince them that I have with me two humans who have earned that trust back, and who have gone out of their way to assist us, when they of course have no reason to trust us."

"You sing our praises unnecessarily," Scully mumbled. "Remember we had no choice to come to Antarctica?"

"You could have sulked there but you didn't," Eddie reasoned. "I realise you hide your distress very well, both of you, but I know it's there. Look I won't leave. Ted's getting together a group of people who, like us I suppose, prefer it here to there. If we can't find a cure for the plague what's left for us back there anyway? We're going to stay and continue searching but colonisation of your planet is no longer on the agenda. I would be honoured if the two of you helped me with design. You'll come up with more practical ideas; my study of you all is too theoretical sometimes."

"Design," Mulder echoed with a frown. "But all the buildings still exist. Where-"

"Obviously without the base systems those buildings were created to depend on we'll need to make some changes," Eddie replied, cutting Mulder off with barely restrained enthusiasm. "And we'll need plenty of area to farm. Suggestions?"

"Depends what you want to farm," Scully sighed, thoughtful but exhausted. "Obviously you can't recreate sophisticated power grids so; I mean there are already places in the United States where groups of people survived without-"

"I aint going to live in no Amish farm," Mulder interrupted, smirking at Scully when she glared pointedly at him. Realising he was half-kidding, she managed a tentative smile as he raised his eyebrows suggestively. "Unless you wear the little bonnet," he reconsidered. She laughed, shaking her head.

"Well I'm partial to Virginia myself, but there would be space in Pennsylvania and North Carolina, or in the central states: Kansas, Nebraska or Oklahoma. I'm sure those borders mean nothing now, but you get the idea. It depends on what's going to happen to the climate. We experienced a winter there already and, uh, it definitely didn't snow."

"We'll have to wait and see what your atmosphere does with the weather, but we can do that from Hawaii. Can you get us there Dana?"

"Uh...It's an extremely long trip Eddie. If we hit rough seas or crosswinds I can't guarantee...I'm not an experienced sailor. I don't have a licence. At least in getting to Panama we'll have land never too far away but in the open ocean I...I don't know."

"Why do we have to sail when I know you can get us there faster?" Mulder asked.

"Escapees from one of the colonies. Ted tells me Shannon McMahon assisted them. He told Shannon to expect us."

"Psychic, is he?" Scully asked dryly.

"Shannon asked him about you before she left to retrieve them. He spoke to us while you were unconscious, so instead of taking you straight to Hawaii we brought you back here."

"I can't guarantee their safety on this boat," Scully repeated. "Mulder and I sailing up the coast is one thing, it didn't matter so much if we ran into problems, but in the open ocean with a cabin of people I...am not sure I want to be responsible for that when I'm not in the most pleasant or positive state of mind."

"Just get us to Panama and we'll do the rest then," Eddie assured her. Scully sighed. She nodded and turned away from them, crossing her arms defensively over her chest.

She knew Eddie could hear her, but she was used to Gibson and knew how to handle that. What she could not handle was being led around for other people's wishes, being told where she was going and why and for how long, and being forced to be responsible for other people's lives. She had chosen to be a doctor, but it no longer felt like a choice. It felt like she was just being kept around because she was useful if they wanted some humans to survive. And if that was true, then she was the reason Mulder was being kept. Her work or skills were the only reason he was still alive, and that wasn't fair to him. It wasn't fair to either of them.

"Dana-" Mulder whispered. He rested his hands on her shoulders and she felt herself flinch and take a definite step forward, pulling away. The light fingertips which had touched her also jerked away and Scully did not turn around. She didn't want to see the hurt or confusion in his eyes.

"Just leave me alone for a minute," she hissed, tears stinging her eyes and forcing them closed.

"No rush," he promised after an extra second's hesitation. She heard him retreat with Eddie, two sets of slow, masculine footsteps ambling away, leaving her be. She tried to convince herself it was just another Sunday afternoon and they were just one of many boats out on the water. But it simply wasn't true, and she could not make herself see things that weren't there.

Scully wished that she could. She wanted to see her parents. She wanted to ask them what she should do; she wanted to know whether it was peaceful where they were. Because for all the quiet that was in the world she had left, all Scully really wanted was some peace.