"She falls apart by herself.
No one's there to talk or understand."
~ Sugar Ray

"FLIGHT 1117 CRASH LEAVES NO SURVIVORS," blared the headline of the Washington Post that lay on the kitchen table next to Dana Scully. She had retrieved the newspaper from her hallway only minutes before, but hadn't touched it since.

Despite the fact that she had stayed up all night, watching coverage of the crash and ignoring the ringing of her telephone, she was unable to comprehend what the crash details meant. She mentally ran through the facts one more time, willing them to come to a different conclusion.

Mulder had been on flight 1117.
Flight 1117 had crashed.
There had been no survivors in the crash.
Therefore, Mulder had not survived.
If Mulder had not survived, then he was dead.

But that couldn't be right, she argued with herself. They had plans for this week. He had promised her a nice vacation. A small, nagging voice told her that their plans didn't mean anything, but she ignored it, burying it deep in her mind.

The shrill ringing of the telephone startled her, and she tensed as she waited for her machine to pick it up.

"Dana?" It was her mother, she noted in the back of her mind. "Dana, honey, are you there? I just heard from Mr. Skinner, about... about what happened to Fox. Are you all right? I want to talk to you, sweetie. Please pick up the phone..." There was a pause, and then a small sigh. "Please call me, Dana. I want to talk with you, to make sure
you're all right. Please."

Scully barely noticed that her mother had hung up. Fox. Fox was Mulder, and something had happened to him, her mother said, and her mother never lied to her. But that would mean that it was true, and she didn't want to believe that. That would mean he wasn't coming home. He wouldn't smile and kiss her again, wouldn't tease her about her neatness, and that just couldn't be right, could it? She leaned back, staring at nothing, unable to reconcile her mind to such a ridiculous thought. He wasn't really dead. He had been "dead" before, after all. He had come back all those times, and he would come back this time.

That small nagging voice reminded her that one time she had helped him fake it, and the other she had just known instinctively he was alive. It was different this time, or she wouldn't be so resistant. She picked up her coffee mug and flung it against the wall, trying to drown out that damned voice, before bursting into tears and burying her head in her arms.

~*~

Scully sat in the darkness of her apartment, curled under a blanket on the couch, taking large sips from the wineglass in her hand. She and Mulder had bought several bottles of wine in preparation for their week off, and one of them was on the table in front of her. She hadn't done much of anything in the week since the crash. She knew that she had spoken at Mulder's funeral, but couldn't remember for the life of her what she had said. For the most part, people were leaving her alone. Her mother had called daily, asking how she was, asking her daughter to pick up the phone, but she had nothing to say to her or to anyone, so she let the machine take every call. The one person she wanted to hear from, she never would. She knew Mulder was dead now. The Gunmen had managed to take a bit of the samples the FBI had claimed as the former Fox Mulder and did their own tests on it. That message was another of the furiously blinking red lights on her answering machine.

She finished the drink with a gulp and emptied the rest of the bottle into her glass. This was still the first bottle, but she had plans for more. If nothing else, maybe some of the pain would disappear, even for a little while. Skinner had called, told her to take as long as she needed before coming back. Time for what? She had nothing to do here. Of course, she had nothing waiting for her at work, either. And it would look bad to show up completely hung over, which is what she would be come morning, so she would have to take at least tomorrow off. She sighed. Another day here, alone. Everywhere she looked, she saw something that reminded her of Mulder. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She knew that she would get through this, somehow, but right now all she wanted to do was forget. Forget the pain, forget the loss, forget everything that had happened. She swallowed down the last of the pale liquid in her glass, and leaned over to open a new bottle from the stash on the floor next to her. Forgetting would require at least another bottle and she was ready. She rearranged the blanket around her and prepared to embrace the oblivion.