Is it like this
In death's other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.

When she closes her eyes she can see it—the burning and the rubble and the terrible darkness of it all. Every time the body changes.

Sometimes it's William.

Melissa.

Emily.

Mulder.

Everyone she's ever failed to save.

And she tries and she tries and she tries but she can't save them.

She can never save any of them.

The landscape stretches before Monica, a desolate, barren wasteland. She briefly considers waking Dana when she can't keep her own eyes open, but Dana looks so peaceful with her head against the car window that she doesn't.

She hasn't slept, she knows. Dana hasn't slept since she had the baby, since Mulder left, and Monica knows she should let her rest while she can.

So she drives. Mile after mile after mile of landscape stretches before her.

She doesn't even know where she's going. Dana doesn't either, but they're heading deeper into Canada, into the woods, chasing a cult Monica isn't sure she wants to get tangled in.

But they killed her son, and Monica knows Dana will do whatever it takes to get them back.

Her phone rings.

"Reyes," she says, short and clipped and tired.

"Where are you?"

Follmer.

She closes her eyes for a brief second and then a horn blares and she jerks the wheel.

"Driving," she says.

"Dammit, Reyes."

"I'm with Scully. We're fine."

She doesn't know why she adds that caveat, it's certainly far from true. They are not fine. Dana is far from fine, and she—

She doesn't know what she is.

She's driving across Canada in search of a cult she has no idea the location of, Doggett is in the hospital, Scully is broken, Mulder is lost. The pieces of everything she knows are scattered to the wind like dust and she'll be damned if she doesn't at least try to put something back together.

"Did you find him?"

She hesitates. If she tells Follmer it's over, he'll insist they come back to DC, that there's nothing left for them out there.

"No. The… the cult took William to a different location. We're tracking them down now."

It's not a complete lie but it's one that'll save their asses for now.

"Where are you tracking them? We'll meet you there."

"Arizona," Monica says, the first place that pops into her head.

If Follmer shows up it's all over. She knows that.

"Where in Arizona."

"We're still figuring that out. I'll call you when we know," she says, and hangs up.

Maybe he'll fire her for hanging up like that, but maybe she doesn't care.

Scully stirs beside her, rubbing her eyes and sitting up. She hasn't talked much since they got in the car except to give Monica vague directions about driving north, deeper into Canada.

"Who was that?" she asks, sitting up and opening and closing the glove compartment with small clicks.

"Follmer."

Scully winces. "What did you tell him?"

"We'd tracked the cult to Arizona. It'll take him a few days to realize that was a false lead, so we have time."

"Did you tell him…"

"No. I didn't," Monica says, just to spare Scully from having to finish that sentence.

"Any news on Doggett?"

"Follmer didn't say," Monica says, and Scully falls silent after that.

So she drives. She drives deeper and deeper into the woods even though she isn't sure where she's going, deeper into darkness shaded by trees. The air here is still and quiet, not unlike the air at the spacecraft.

She wonders what it means. Now that William is dead, if they don't find Mulder, what does it mean for the rest of the world? What's going to happen to them? To everyone?

She's not sure she wants to know the answer.

Scully presses her cheek against the car window as Reyes keeps driving. She doesn't know exactly where they're going but the piece of ship she has pressed in her pocket keeps pulling her north, a small insistent tugging like a child.

She knows Follmer took the one from Brad Comer, she knows it, but there was piece left at the site her son died Monica didn't see her take, the fragment in her pocket she hasn't tried reading.

She misses him. It's been less than 24 hours and the ache in her chest is raw and open. Her son is gone.

And she was too late to save him. Too late to do anything. She failed him and it's all her fault, and she knows he wasn't meant to be, none of her children were anything except the government's attempts at guarding their own asses.

And yet they were hers. And William was hers and Mulder's, and if that link is gone—

She doesn't want to think about it.

She has to find that spacecraft. Has to make the cult pay for what they did. Has to know what the prophecy about her son really says, because if—

If he was meant to die—

It doesn't make it easier, and she immediately scrubs the thought from her head, digs short pink nails into the thigh of her slacks to distract herself.

Instead she thinks about the prophecy. William would save the earth and prevented the invasion, but only if Mulder was alive. Josepho wanted proof of Mulder's death. Scully knows he's alive, knows him in her marrow.

If Mulder is alive, her son died for nothing.

What's the life of one child to the lives of everyone on the planet, she thinks.

But she knows: it's everything. Because he was her son, Mulder's son, because he would have saved them.

Mulder has to be alive. She has to find him alive.

And when she does, when she finds him—

They'll make the cult pay for killing their son.

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