Author's note: This is an idea I've had for a fic floating in my head for a few years now, and I'm back in the writing mode again, so I thought it's time to press on. I'm going to post a chapter or two and get a feeler on the story... This gross grey winter sky with drizzling rain I see right now puts me in the mood for dragging you all through an angsty journey... enjoy. :) It will be worth your while, I promise!

Timeline: Season 7ish... nothing else happens after that in this utopian XF world.

Empty Hearts

Chapter 1

All your mental armor drags me down,

We can't breathe when we come around.

All your mental armor drags me down,

Nothing hurts... like your mouth.

Dana Scully gazed out the window of her terminal at Washington-Dulles. Rain drops were speckled on the large windows, the clouds grey and low, as autumn began to bleed into winter in Washington, DC.

Sighing deeply, she watched the airplanes take off and touch down. She couldn't help but wonder where everyone was headed. Were they coming home from vacation? Were they going to see family? Friends? Lovers?

Lovers.

Love.

It burned Scully's heart to think about love. She'd just walked out on love. On life, her career, her best friend. Well, it wasn't like she willingly walked out. Mulder had screamed at her to leave. Told her that she held him back.

Even now, she couldn't remember what started the fight. It was a combination of things, as always. She was frustrated where her life was headed. She loved Mulder, desperately, but couldn't tell him. They had both been under the gun with the job lately, and a pretty intense case had left a very brooding Fox Mulder.

"So what else is new?" Scully thought to herself.

Mulder was always brooding about something. He was dark, and while Scully clearly found him physically attractive, she also noted that his darkness was seductive to the point of where it sucked her in, and sucked the life right out of her. It was intense... like looking up and realizing the past seven years have elapsed, and she barely noticed.

It scared her. It was love, and love with Mulder scared her more than anything else.

The only thing that she remembered vividly was the flashing anger in Mulder's eyes as he told her to get out. The anger in his voice. It was unprecedented in their relationship. And it haunted her. It was bone chilling. Something snapped, something happened. And now everything was a mess.

She remembered stumbling stunned and wordless out of the office. Scully had trudged to her car, not even caring what time it was, and she went home. She couldn't eat, all she wanted to do was sleep, sleep forever. She'd awoken at 3am, still in her suit, pumps, and trench coat. That was about the time she began to sob uncontrollably.

Scully's eyes stung with tears at the memory of the fight, not even a week ago. And now here she was, sitting in an airport with half her belongings... the other half somewhere between DC and New Hampshire, in a moving truck.

After the fight with Mulder, she'd put in her letter of resignation with Skinner. Told him it was for real this time. Her friend Meredith from med school had been trying to get her out there to New hampshire for quite some time. Scully finally decided to bite the bullet. And now here she was, after a phone interview, about to be full-time medical faculty at Dartmouth, welding young resident and fellow minds on the joys of forensic pathology.

It seemed so shockingly different. As if some force had take over her body and now she had no idea who she was, about to live some foreign life. Scully felt like she was sinking, or drowning... How did this even happen?

Her mother urged her not to go. Not to give up on Mulder. Margaret Scully had always had a soft spot in her heart for Mulder. But this was a new kind of hurt for Scully. She was angry, she was hurt, she was numb. Her heart was in a million little pieces and her mind kept flashing back to Mulder.

Get out. I never wanted you here in the first place. You work for me. GET OUT.

The only available response was to leave. Run quickly. Her biological response is always to fight not flight... but in this instance, flight was the only naturally occurring to her. And now here she was.

She wondered where Mulder was now. Probably finding the bottom of a bottle of good scotch, at a seedy bar, somewhere in Georgetown.

Scully couldn't believe him... or the fight... his words... They stabbed her right where it hurt most. She'd sacrificed so much for him, for the X-Files. She's lost so much... her father, Missy, Emily... she'd gotten cancer. She and Mulder had followed each other all over this blessed Earth... and for what?

"American Airlines flight 1013 to Manchester would now like to welcome its first class passengers and Star Alliance members."

Scully grimaced as a single tear rolled down her cheek. The sound of the airline worker jarred her from her thoughts.

That was Scully's cue. She gathered her things, took one last sweeping look through Dulles, accepting that Mulder wasn't coming after her, took a deep breath, and bravely boarded the plane to begin a new chapter in her life.