The priest’s voice, a rich tenor, was well above average.  Such niceties as pitch of voice were, however, completely lost on Fox Mulder.  He had been in a state of near-catatonia since they had tried to take his partner’s body away from him.  He had resisted, violently – content to do nothing but sit there and rock her, croon to her, talk to her.  All the time with scalding tears streaming down his face.

The agents that had been with him had tried distracting him, but it had not worked.  Skinner had been called, but had had no more success with Mulder than the agents who had gone before.  He had let Mulder be after seeing the guilt and grief in his eyes – eyes so full of pain that he had had to look away.

To a greater or lesser degree, everybody had known that the link between these two agents had been something out of the ordinary, and had at least respected that, regardless of whatever else they might have thought of ‘Spooky’ and his partner.  Skinner included himself in this group.  He had, however, not known before what he knew now – that the man who sat there with that body, the man who had refused to let anyone near, loved her more than he had loved anyone in his lonely existence.  Dana Scully had been Mulder’s life in a way that nothing would ever be again.

"The Lord will open to them the gates of paradise, and they will return to that land where there is no death, but only lasting joy."

Skinner had left orders that no one was to take Scully away from Mulder.  He then made tracks for Mrs. Scully's place.  Margaret Scully was possibly the one person left alive whom Mulder would listen to.  Mrs. Scully came at once when she learned what had happened; in the midst of her own grief she knew that Mulder - who had told her once, in awe and wonder, that he loved her daughter more deeply than he had ever thought himself capable - would be tearing himself apart with guilt and pain and regret.  He needed help to cope with the depth of that pain.  <No, he doesn't.  All he needs is the one thing beyond our power to give him.  I don't think he'll ever properly recover from losing Dana. > Somehow, something Margaret Scully said must have gotten through to him, because he let himself look away from Scully and look at her mother. One word only did he let fall from his lips; even in a voice raw with pain it held so much love that it was now obvious just how much this woman had meant to this man.  Mrs. Scully reflected briefly that, in the utterance of her name, Mulder had turned his love for her daughter into a holy, hallowed sacrament.

"Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and I shall be healed."
 
He had said nothing more after that one name.  However, although he still refused to let her out of his sight, he let the attendants take her body to the mortuary.  Normal procedure stated that only blood kin were permitted to go with the body.  Nevertheless, Mulder flatly refused to leave her, and after what they had already seen that day, no one wanted a repeat performance. Skinner issued orders to the effect that Mulder was to be placed under suicide watch but he was not to be forced to leave.  Those in charge protested, but Skinner said that if they wanted only one body instead of two then they had better do as they were told.  Once they realized that there was no room for maneuver, they gave up. They gave Scully's jewelry to her mother.  The gold cross she passed to Mulder, knowing – or at least having a pretty good idea – how much it meant to him.  The stud earrings she decided to dispose of later.  However, the diamond ring they had found on her finger - a ring, she realized, that had to be an engagement ring - she had no idea what to do with.  She turned, in one movement, to Skinner  (who had taken over the first part of the suicide watch).  He raised his eyebrows in surprise before bestowing a glance of wordless sympathy on Mulder, who was sitting staring at the mortuary slab.

"We seem to give them back to thee, O God, who gavest them to us.  Yet, as thou didst not lose them in giving, so we do not lose them by their return.  Not as the world giveth, givest thou, O lover of souls.  What thou givest, thou takest not away, for what is thine is ours also if we are thine.  And life is eternal and love is immortal, and death is only an horizon, and an horizon is nothing save the limit of our sight."
 
The casket seemed pathetically small.  If you hadn’t known it was an adult’s, you’d have been forgiven for thinking it was a child's, Mrs. Scully thought. Mulder's soulmate was in that casket, and somehow there didn’t seem much of him left.  He was, she surmised, holding on to Scully’s belief - Roman Catholicism, with its promise of life after death – almost desperately; although he was not a particularly demonstrative man, he was intensely caring, and he loved Scully with complete abandon.  Her death was hurting him terribly; he utterly refused to believe that he would never again see the few people - Scully and Samantha  - who he had truly loved.  Knowing nothing of his convictions, and still less of what drove him on, people had tended to label him ‘spooky’ or ‘obsessive’.  However, the few precious souls he could call friends – who knew something of the life he had had – did not condemn the near-pathological fear of abandonment.  After all, it had reared its ugly head too often in his past.

"May the angels lead you into Paradise, the Martyrs welcome you as you draw near and lead you into Jerusalem, the heavenly city.  May the choir of Angels welcome you, and where Lazarus is poor no longer, there may you have eternal rest."

"Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine: et lux perpetua luceat eis."

Mulder could not properly remember what followed, until Mrs. Scully told him some three-and-a-half months later.  Apparently, he had been sitting at the head of Dana's coffin, with Skinner hovering somewhere near.  One minute, Mrs. Scully told him, he had bent his head down toward Scully's.  The next, he was holding his service-issue revolver to his head, with tears running down his cheeks and with his face filled with such agony that it made both those with him wonder briefly on the fairness of making him stay without Scully - crying out to the woman he loved just how much he was hurting.  Skinner and Margaret talked gently to him, saying whatever came into their heads.  Anything, so long as he put the gun down.  Eventually he listened to them long enough for what they were saying to sink in; a minute or so later the gun had clattered to the floor and Mulder had been back in the state he had been in before.  After the gun had been disposed of, Mrs. Scully went over and began to do what Mulder himself had done a day before.  She held him, hugged him, crooned to him; anything and everything in an attempt to bring him back into the land of the living.  She was more convinced than ever that, wherever her daughter's spirit was just then, Mulder's had followed her in its aching to join it.

"It has pleased Almighty God to call our sister, Dana Katherine Scully, from this life to himself. Accordingly, we commit her body to the earth whence it came.  Since Christ, the first fruits of the dead, has risen again and will refashion our frail body in the pattern of his glorious risen body, we commend our sister to the Lord.  May he embrace her in his peace and bring her body to life again on the last day."

The funeral mass had been intolerably painful for both Mulder and Scully’s family, but it was over now.  The casket had been lowered into the grave, and it was time for the last service that those left behind could perform.  The family took a handful of earth from the side of the grave and threw it onto the casket; Mulder followed this – just before his face was contorted by sobs - by the most perfect red rosebud he had been able to find.  His tortured, whispered "I love you, Scully.  So very much ... " was heard only by Skinner and Mrs. Scully, who were standing on either side of him literally holding him up.

"We pledged ourselves till death ... but we never thought it would come so soon, this terrible separation.  But you have taken her away and she's dead, Lord; my lovely, happy, beautiful one is dead!  How can I get on without her?  I believe in the resurrection of course, only not very strongly just now, and I beg you to let me really believe and to sense her closeness, her life, her love ... you see, I feel so very much alone as I struggle on without her physical presence.  Oh, God, I'm so lonely and lost."

The sun finally managed to break through the cloudmass that had obscured the sky for most of the day just as the funeral party departed.  As the family group took one last look at the graveside, they saw a shaft of sunlight fall across it as if in a final, wordless, act of benediction.  Mulder – for the lack of anything else to attribute it to – took it as a sign to say that Scully was, at last, fine.