Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

He is truly unbelievable sometimes, Scully thought. There were stormclouds rolling in her, threads of electricity flickering in their midst. 

The resounding dismissal she had just let loose upon her partner’s plan for their weekend — chasing unborn crop circles over in England — still hung in the air between them.

“I’ll just cancel your ticket,” was all Mulder said. “Thanks for lunch.” 

He didn’t raise his voice. Didn’t argue any of the points Scully had made. He simply accepted that she wasn’t coming, and went quietly to the door.

But of course, he had given her that look.

Scully stared at him, trying to quell the part of her that actually wouldn’t say no to an airing of grievances right now, an all-cards-on-the-table argument.

“Look, we’re always running,” she said, wanting him to understand. “We’re always chasing the next big thing. Why don’t you ever just stay still?” 

It was impossible to keep the frustration from her voice, and she saw it register on Mulder’s face as he lingered at the doorway.

“I wouldn’t know what I’d be missing,” Mulder replied, an edge in his voice now. Turning, he stalked off down the hall.

Scully slumped on her chair, watching her partner’s slides stutter as his abandoned projector clicked and whirred. The way Mulder had just announced that she would join him, on her weekend, to go investigate a nonsense overseas event that hadn’t even yet occurred….she dug her thumbnails into the carton of half-eaten salad in her hands.

She’d felt a bitter satisfaction in skewering Mulder’s excited rundown of the mysteries plaguing foreign fields with her own take: sneaky farmers who happened to ace geometry in high school. Because why the hell shouldn’t she lose patience with him? 

Here she was, fresh from the morgue, worrying about hospital paperwork on a Saturday, denied so much as ten minutes to herself since finishing late last night and then starting early that morning - all in the name of getting Mulder’s casefile to completion. 

And while she’d sliced, diced, and scribbled reports, what had he been doing? Entertaining himself, from all that she could see. Delving into his folklore hobbies while he relaxed with music in their office, booking them plane tickets to England without even bothering to call and check in with her first. The Fox Mulder Show in high gear. 

Well, he could handle this one on his own.

And yet….and yet. Hearing his footsteps retreat down the hall, the memory of his face, disbelieving and definitely slightly hurt as she’d shut him down fresh in her mind, Scully found herself wavering. Not for the first time, not for the hundredth time. 

Why was he so damned hard to say no to?

With an annoyed sigh, Scully propelled herself off the chair and marched out of the room. “Mulder!” she called.

He was waiting for the elevator at the end of the hall. Turning over his shoulder, he gave Scully a hopeful half-smile. 

Putting her hands on her hips, Scully scowled at him. “You could have just asked me first,” she said as she walked up the hall, still pissed, but as always, unable to stop herself from wanting to follow the leads, follow him into the next adventure. 

Why is our dynamic still so much leader and follower though, even now? Why can’t he just tell me what’s happening, and we decide together?

Mulder looked back at her, all innocence. “So you’ll come?” he asked happily. Watching unreserved jubilation flood Mulder’s face, it was hard to keep her irritation at full boil. 

Maybe, Scully reasoned grumpily, he thinks deciding together is exactly what just took place.

“Can you at least get us onto a later flight, Mulder?” she asked. “What is it, eight hours to London? Less? If I can have a little more time to finish things up here, pack, and take a nap, we’ll still get there well within the timeframe whoever you’re dealing with in England has outlined for any, uh…” She searched for the right word, consciously trying not to be cutting. “Phenomena, to occur.”

Nodding, Mulder took Scully by the shoulders as he moved past her, swapping their places in front of the elevator. “I’ll try and change it now,” he said, eyes alight, already halfway back down the hall towards their office. 

“Mulder - what are you going to tell Skinner?” Scully called. She knew there was no kind of work-related justification they could hang this trip on.

“We have a budget for research and training,” Mulder called back breezily, hovering at the office door. “Just like any other department. This is research, Scully!”

He disappeared from view, and the elevator dinged beside her, its doors gliding back. Shaking her head, already engulfing herself in second guesses, Scully stepped inside. 

Fatigue washed over her as she watched the digital display tick through the ascent to the car-parking level. If I’m going with him, I’m going when I’m ready, or not at all. Tickets be damned, she thought.

~~   ~~   ~~

Scully had just awoken from a deep and restorative sleep after a flurry of report-writing, packing and finally, showering, when her cellphone trilled.

“Scully,” she said groggily, clamping the phone to her skull. 

“Hey, Scully,” Mulder said. “I couldn’t get a later flight. I tried, I’m sorry.” He sounded contrite, but it was secondary to that tone of giddy impatience she knew so well, his evergreen desire to spring into the next case, the next quest. “Could you still make it for five thirty?”

Turning over to check the time, Scully made some lightning internal deliberations. There was an odd sense of a precipice in the moment. But she sighed, and gave a soft hum into the phone. “Yeah. I just have to make a couple of stops, drop in this paperwork,” she said. “I’ll see you at the airport.”

She found Mulder loitering by the international check-in counters. He gave her a lopsided welcome grin, and as she smiled back, the cogs of reality suddenly rolled into gear in Scully’s brain. This wasn’t a case. They weren’t even going to be on US soil. Somehow, Mulder had convinced her to fly to England with him, for something that had nothing at all to do with their work, however he might imagine himself pitching it to Skinner. 

She and her partner were ostensibly researching crop circle phenomena in Avebury, assuming the computer calculations Mulder had been so excited about led to farmland events beyond chasing wild geese. But while they were there, what else would they do? Go visit the area, no doubt. Go out for meals together. Stay somewhere with zero threat of local PD or anyone else they knew turning up with questions or updates. 

It would just be her and Mulder, on what she now realised sounded far more like a vacation than anything else. 

Mulder reached for Scully’s bag, carrying it along with his to the check-in desk. As they handed over their passports and received boarding passes in exchange, Mulder leaned in to bump his shoulder companionably against Scully’s. “Glad you’re coming along after all?” he asked.

For some reason, in the wake of her most recent thoughts, his words set off an echo of the annoyed feelings Scully had had during their exchange at the office that morning. Was Mulder even aware of how his invite…no, summons, on this trip had looked from her point of view? His cocky assumption that she would drop everything to come with him, his failure to let her even draw breath before launching into the next thing on his agenda? 

And yet hadn’t she just gone right along with it, even so?

Dipping her head with a tight smile, she took a couple of strides out in front of Mulder, making him tail her as they progressed through the security queue. 

He caught her arm as they came out the other side and began the walk towards their gate. “Hey - Scully, wait,” he said, drawing her gently around to face him. Scully lifted her chin, brows arched.

“I get it, I should have asked you about the trip. I’m just so used to thinking of us as…a team.” Something flickered in his eyes. “But…I dunno. Maybe you feel like I’ve dragged you along,” Mulder said. He turned to scan the listings of upcoming departure times, his face shadowing.

“Mulder!” Scully exclaimed, taken aback. “This has nothing to do with us being a team!” She looked up at him, her hand half-lifting to reach for his arm, but he continued to evade her gaze.

Seeing his face, Scully’s mind flashed back to a moment, not so many weeks ago, when she had stood and defended her reasoning for going roadtripping with the Smoking Man, Mulder staring at her with hurt blazing in his eyes. I know we’re not past it yet, she thought. 

And there was still so much more unsaid, unresolved in the invisible tapestry they had slowly woven between them over these past years. An energy that was sometimes more undertow than undercurrent.

Wanting to make peace, she offered her answer to her partner’s original question at the check-in desk. “Mulder…I am glad I’m coming with you.”

Softening, he finally turned back to her, a little sheepish now. “And I’m glad you’re here too, Scully. Really glad,” he said.

Chapter Text

The sky was still silvery-pink with dawn light when the agents walked out of London’s Heathrow Airport, Mulder squinting sleepily as he followed signs for the car rental depot. Feeling hazy with jetlag, Scully admired the beautiful wash of colours slowly spreading out from the horizon, enjoying the expanding glow of her first English sunrise.

“This way,” Mulder said, his voice gravelly with fatigue and the hours of recycled air on board the plane.

“Have you driven on the left before, Mulder?” Scully asked as they walked across the carpark. 

“Have you forgotten that I studied at Oxford, Scully?” Mulder shot back, scoffing good-naturedly. 

“How would I know if you had a car back then?” Scully said, grinning at him.

“Ok yeah, I didn’t. But I did a bit of driving here and there. Exploring when I could,” he said.

“Did you ever go to Avebury?” Scully realised suddenly that she hoped he hadn’t. It would be nice if they could explore the area together, as brand new terrain for them both.

Mulder was shaking his head. “It’s crazy that I didn’t. It’s so close to Oxford. But in my student days, when I was looking for an out-of-town adventure, the call of London was strongest. The countryside is beautiful here though, Scully, you’re going to love it.”

Yawning, Scully nodded. She waited outside the car rental office, watching the sunrise continue to unfurl as Mulder collected their keys, then followed him over to a compact cobalt-blue Ford Fiesta sitting on its own in the lot. Mulder went to open the trunk to throw in their bags, and Scully dropped hers on the ground at his feet before trudging wearily around to the passenger’s side. 

She looked up at Mulder in confusion when he came to stand beside her. “Did you want to drive?” he asked with a little smile, holding out the keys to her.

“Uh…no? You can drive, Mulder,” she replied, frowning slightly at his amused expression. He pointed through the window, still smiling. Scully turned to see the steering wheel there. She was standing on the left-oriented driver’s side. “Oh! Right, sorry.”

They got into the car, with Mulder at the wheel. Scully rubbed her eyes as she flipped the map Mulder passed her around a few times. “Where did you say we’re staying?”

“Marlborough,” Mulder said. “It’s only a few minutes drive from Avebury. I booked a B&B there that’ll do an early check-in for us.”

Tracing the motorway out from Heathrow with her finger, Scully quickly found the small town, eager for a chance to go and get an extra hour or two of rest after the unsettled sleep she had had on the plane. Mulder rolled confidently out onto the road, and after a few minutes of disorientation from sitting on the left side of the car while not driving, Scully relaxed into her seat, watching the sun begin to light up the fields around them.

As Mulder had said, the countryside was truly lovely. The way to Marlborough passed among flowering hedgerows, old stone bridges arching over clear streams and fields dotted with cows and sheep. I really did just fly all the way to England, with Mulder, Scully thought, still processing the detour her weekend had veered onto. 

Although the two of them had travelled outside the US before, this time had a very different feel. Mulder was making a big show of there being something for them to pursue here in England, some link to their wider quest, but she knew that crop circles were, above all, something he wanted to look into for the sheer fun of it.

And he wanted you to come have fun with him, and you shut him down, her inner voice reminded her.

Scully looked out the window. What was work and what was fun where Mulder was concerned was becoming something with increasingly blurred lines. He wasn’t just a colleague anymore, not for a long time now. They were friends, friends that had been through the unimaginable together. But beyond the professional scope of their relationship, she didn’t know what he truly thought or felt about her, about them - even with that indefinable undercurrent tugging away in the background of everything that passed between them. 

And as always, when faced with uncertainty, Scully took her refuge in reason. Despite those little blips in their past where high emotion had seemed like it might cross into something more, despite them sharing a whole language of touch and gesture, an almost-kiss, and even a real kiss, she and Mulder seemed to be locked into an unshakeable status quo. They would plunge side-by-side into danger, treading dark roads of revelation together. They’d move heaven and earth to help each other. Then she would go into the office Monday, Mulder would look up from the next casefile to smile hello, and their standard operating procedure as colleagues resumed.

Mulder pulled the handbrake with a sharp jerk as he parked partway up a little incline on the road into Marlborough. The street was lined with stone cottages, each displaying its own personality by means of bright flower gardens, edging the sidewalk with riotous colours. Plucking a piece of paper from his shirt pocket, he checked the number of the rose-wreathed house they had pulled up at. 

“This is us,” he said. 

“The white cottage there? It’s so… charming,” Scully said, her eyes wandering over the trailing boughs of pink and white roses climbing the house walls. 

She had just caught her jetlag-misted brain in time to stop herself from saying romantic.

Shouldering their bags, the agents made their way up the path to the house, breathing in the sweetness of the herbs thickly planted alongside the mossy cobblestones. The blue-painted front door had a little white sign on it saying “Roseneath” in a golden script. 

To Scully’s relief, the proprietor Gwen, an artsy-looking woman with wild, wiry grey curls, didn’t try to get any conversation going beyond politely showing them around. She led them to two rooms at the end of a little hall in her tidy, white-walled cottage, and handed them each a key. 

“The bathroom is one door along,” she said, pointing back up the hall. “Plenty of hot water. I can cook you some breakfast once you’re up. Enjoy your stay.”

Pushing open her door to see an old brass four-poster bed piled with rose-printed quilts, and thick crimson window-drapes hanging ready to plunge the room into darkness at a tug, Scully let out a satisfied sigh.

“We’ll meet up with my contacts this afternoon,” Mulder began. “We can take the long way, check out some…”

Scully held up a hand. “Sleep first, then plans,” she told him firmly, seeing the same shadows under his eyes she knew hers also bore. Mulder gave her a little salute, smiling, and they both turned to enter their rooms. 

~~   ~~   ~~

A few hours later, rested and bathed, the agents were both comfortably seated at the table in Roseneath’s cosy redbrick kitchen, finishing up a hearty cooked breakfast. Mulder was shuffling through the collection of maps spread across his side of the table. 

“I already spoke to the guys,” he told Scully. “Tomorrow is when it’s all kicking off. So I said we’d meet them in Avebury around say four or five this afternoon — just to check out some of the landmarks there, meet the team, and hear more about what’s been going on.” 

He thumbed through the file balanced on his knees, and pulled out an A4 printed photo of a tiny village, ringed by a large circular trench dug deep into the face of the land, long smoothed over by grass. “Look at this place, Scully. No wonder it’s a hotspot.”

Spearing the last few buttery mushrooms from her plate, Scully watched as Mulder went over the photo, tapping Avebury’s various highlights with a fingertip. “Neolithic henge earthwork. Standing stone circles. And the village sits right on a major ley line alignment.”

“Ley lines?” Scully said, attempting to keep her eyebrows level. “Where towns and churches and monuments all seem to line up across a distance? Aren’t they supposed to be more of a coincidence than anything else?”

“Depends who you ask,” Mulder said, feeling his usual investigative energies now buzzing away again after sleep and strong coffee. “Anyway, we have time for some site-seeing on our way. I was talking to Gwen earlier, while you were getting ready, and she said there’s a few old stately homes in the area that are open for visitors. Wanna start with one of those?”

He was pleased to see some genuine interest come into Scully’s face. “Really, Mulder? I thought you’d already have a whole day’s worth of crop circle touring plotted out for us?” she said, a teasing note putting a lilt into her voice.

Mulder shrugged. “Tomorrow is supposed to be the big one, might as well start strong. Or maybe we’ll catch one or two as we’re driving around, this whole area has been active. But anyway, I thought today we’d focus more on seeing stuff you would like.”

He met Scully’s eyes across the table, noticing her wondering expression. A tiny touch of pink had arisen in her cheeks. 

“Well, ok, sure. I’m ready when you are,” she said, patting her napkin over her lips.

Mulder jingled the car keys in his hand, and found he suddenly couldn’t keep from grinning. Catching his mood, Scully laughed. “As long as you’re still doing the driving, that is.”

Chapter Text

Back in their rental car shortly afterwards, the agents planned out their route. Mulder’s map lay unfolded and at the ready on Scully’s lap. 

“Highglade House is where we’re headed,” Mulder said, sketching a pencil loop around the area of the map Gwen had pointed out to him. He started the car. “It’s not far out of a village called Ethelmere.”

“I’m on it,” Scully said. Glancing at her as she pored over the network of country roads, sun streaking through the car window to set her red hair aflame as they drove, Mulder could see she looked much more engaged with their plans than at any prior point since the prospect of the trip first came up. He felt a pang of regret at the thought of the rocky ground they’d started on. 

Lately, the natural simpatico he always felt with Scully had been pulled a little thin, strained by separation. Not so long ago at all, she’d gone on the road with, unbelievably, Cancerman, completely duped by the slimy blacklunged bastard, and by the sounds of it, nearly killed. Then in the wake of that madness, Skinner had sent him off chasing ravens in Vermont while Scully was on stakeout in DC. And as was so often the case between them, too much had been let go, too much they should have talked about.

He knew his partner had done only what she thought was right, caught like a fly in a web of smoke, but even now, it all seemed nearly too surreal to fathom. 

We need this, Mulder thought, watching the way open out ahead, awaiting discovery, as they drove out of Marlborough. All we need is some time.

With new landscapes blurring by in a blaze of sunshine, exploring the English countryside with his partner and closest friend, it seemed he could nearly feel little fibres reattaching one by one, fusing whatever had been fraying between him and Scully back into accord. She looked happy, he was glad to see, already scanning the wider map and wanting to know what else Gwen had recommended they see. 

After first passing through the small and sleepy village of Ethelmere, Mulder and Scully reached Highglade House close to noon, approaching via a long drive that wound through a patch of woodland. The house appeared suddenly ahead as they rounded a bend, a imposing pale grey two-storey building with tall sash windows, set back on smooth lawn rolled out like a royal carpet before it. Ivy grew over most of the lower face of the house, rambling up to garland a large stone archway in the middle, where two great doors stood open. 

Pulling into an empty gravel carpark off to the right, Mulder sat and looked at the house for a moment. “I don’t think I’ll be able to stomach my apartment anymore once we see inside this place, Scully,” he said. 

Scully nodded in mock sympathy, smiling. “Maybe you’ll get some ideas for a decor upgrade, anyway,” she teased. 

The agents walked up to the house, finding a little counter just inside the main door. A middle-aged man with sandy brown hair was lounging in the chair behind it, reading a book. 

“Ah! Hello, hello!” he said, springing up and straightening his navy suit upon seeing them. “Glad to have you, we’re unusually quiet today.”

“Hi. I hope we didn’t need to phone ahead to arrange a tour of the house today… Rodney?” Mulder asked, spotting a brass name tag on the man’s lapel. 

“Our tour is self-guided,” Rodney said, accepting the credit card Mulder passed him to buy his and Scully’s tickets. “Just keep the little red arrows to your left as you pass through the house.” He held out a folded pamphlet for Scully to take. “Plenty of information for you here, but I’m happy to answer any questions?”

“How old is Highglade?” Mulder asked. From the look of it, he assumed it must have stood there, grand and serene, for maybe hundreds of years. 

“Oh, it’s only a newcomer by the standards of this area,” Rodney said, just a little snootily. “Built mid-nineteenth century. But that’s why it’s so well-preserved.”

“A hundred and fifty years new,” Scully said. “Still a lot of history for the families who lived here, I’m sure.”

“Well, yes and no,” Rodney said. “We understand it was more of a summer home, even in its heyday. And it hasn’t been lived in for a very long time. The previous owner, he was some decades back now, went a bit mad, you see. Quite a sad story. He said his wife simply disappeared one night, that the house was cursed and he’d never live in it again.” 

He gave the agents a confiding smile. “However, local rumour had it that she’d really run off with a lover she’d been seeing over in Ethelmere! He just couldn’t bring himself to believe it, poor man. Dropped dead of a stroke not two years later.”

With his cheery tale concluded, Rodney beamed at his visitors. “Right! You’re heading this way,” he said brightly, gesturing to the long hallway ahead. “Do enjoy.”

Mulder and Scully turned to make their way into the house. “The owners must have had the Midas touch, huh Scully?” Mulder said. The hall walls were covered in silk damask with a glossy gold floral motif, and banner-like tapestries spun from silver and gold threads hung from ceiling to floor midway along. 

Their steps on the polished wood floor were muted by a wide ochre-coloured rug, depicting scenes of a hunt in white all the way down its length. Scully bumped into Mulder as the cleated heel of the sturdy walking boots she’d chosen for the day’s exploring caught in one of the thickly knotted gold tassels running along the rug’s edge. 

“Damnnit!” she hissed, clinging to Mulder’s proffered arm gratefully as she righted herself. 

“That kind of rug was designed more with dainty slippers in mind, I guess,” Mulder said, smiling. 

“Not extra-grip boots,” Scully agreed, treading more carefully. 

Following the arrows, the agents passed in and out of the rooms along the hall. 

“This is amazing. Like stepping into the past,” Scully said, taking in the ornate furniture, elegant damask-covered walls and elaborately moulded ceiling cornices. 

“It’s nice. I couldn’t sprawl out on that satiny recliner thing like I can on my old leather couch though,” Mulder said. 

“That ‘satiny recliner thing’ is called a chaise lounge,” Scully told him, smiling. 

They had reached the parlour, which was an inviting, airy space picked out in soothing tones of green and cream. A series of deep white-plastered alcoves were set into the pale green walls, each containing an oval-backed chair with a wide cushioned seat of seafoam silk. Shelves of ornaments and framed cameos ran along the back wall, and a similar rug to the one in the hall lay over the carpet, this one woven in mint and emerald shades. 

Scully was drawn to a large painting in the far right corner of the room. It showed a beautiful rolling meadow edged by deep forest, the trees painted in legion shades of green. As she stepped towards it, the heel of her boot again hooked into one of the knotted carpet tassels. Mulder turned upon hearing her wince, but was too far away to assist this time as Scully stumbled, arms outstretched, and then crashed bodily into the side of a walnut bookcase set against the wall. 

There was an audible click, and then a light grinding sound. A panel rolled back beside the bookcase, revealing an additional arched white alcove to match the others. 

“Jesus!” Scully muttered, holding her upper arm, which had taken the force of the blow as she’d hit off the bookcase. Straightening, rubbing the sore muscle, she noticed the open space newly revealed in the wall. 

“Hey, look at this!” she called to Mulder. “I wonder why they boarded this one up?”

“Maybe it’s damaged?” Mulder suggested, already crossing the room upon seeing her trip. 

Scully stepped into the alcove. “Don’t think so,” she said, looking up and down the curved inset space. “It looks perfect. No different from the others.”

Mulder squinted at her. The light from the parlour windows was softened by veils of fine lace. Yet sunlight seemed to be hitting the alcove from an impossible angle, making Scully look fuzzy to him, somehow indistinct. He took a step nearer to her, frowning, and felt a sudden bolt of astounded fear as he realised what he was really seeing. 

"Scully! You're…fading!" Mulder cried out. 

Scully turned to him, smirking, an eyeroll ready to offer in response. But at seeing his face, blank with shock, she followed his gaze down over her body. She let out a horrified gasp at seeing the line where the alcove wall met the floor clearly visible through her legs, her limbs hazed over with a fine, flickering static. 

"Scully!" Mulder yelled. With his partner vanishing before his eyes, he did the only thing he could think to do, and lunged to seize Scully's hand as she flung it out in dismay.

Intending to pull her back, he instead felt a sickening drag pulling on him, as though his centre of gravity had dropped through the floor, plunging dizzily down towards the centre of the earth.

Chapter Text

Damp grass pressed against his cheek, a strange smell like iron and salt heavy in his nose. Mulder groaned, feeling as though he had just taken an almighty punch to the gut. 

Gingerly, he lifted his head, finding himself sprawled flat upon the ground in a large clearing, surrounded by forest. Golden afternoon light poured through a perfectly round gap in the treetops overhead, the tall trunks around the edge of the clearing looking black and gloomy by contrast. Mulder's hip and ribs ground against some smooth flat stones as he rolled to his side. 

"Scully?" he mumbled, concern knifing through him as the full memory of what had just happened seared the fogginess in his mind.

He turned his stiff neck to look behind him. "Scully!"

Scully lay on her back at his side, one arm thrown out towards him, blades of short green grass spiking up between her fingers. Her eyes were closed, her face pale among the locks of red hair pooled around her head. 

Wriggling forward on his elbows, Mulder grabbed Scully's hand in both of his. He let out a relieved breath as he passed a thumb over her wrist and found a lively pulse there.

Getting to his knees with a wince, Mulder took his partner by one shoulder, giving her a gentle shake. She made an unhappy sound, her brow tensing. Then with a sudden gasp, her eyes snapped open, her hand flying up to seize Mulder's forearm.

"Mulder!" she breathed, eyes raking over him. "I was...oh…” She turned her head from side to side, bewildered. “Did I faint?"

"We both did, I think. Can you sit up?"

"Mmh…" she murmured, and he scooped an arm under her shoulders to help her.

Scully passed a hand reflexively over her hair, smoothing it, and looked slowly around, her eyes widening.

"Where are we?" she demanded. "And how the hell did we get here?"

"Your guess is as good as mine," Mulder said, shrugging. "I only came to a moment before you."

They got to their feet, brushing down their rumpled clothing. Getting a better view over the clearing once upright, Mulder took a few steps across the open space. He saw that the stones he had been lying on were part of an array, set into the earth in a distinctive pattern. They formed a large spiral fanning out from a tight coil in the centre of the clearing, looping around and around to end at the treeline. 

He felt an eerie prickle chase across his shoulders. 

“So, we've been drugged,” Scully said. Coming over to Mulder's side, she reached up to open out his collar. He tilted his head distractedly, letting her check his neck for needle marks.

“Maybe…” he replied.

“Maybe? How else would we have gotten here?” Scully said, her eyes now also tracing the spiral on the ground. "What is this place?"

Mulder stood thoughtfully, his eyes tracking shifting shadows among the trees. "Scully, how much do you remember of what happened before we woke up here?"

“I…” Scully began, halting as confusion flickered over her face. "We were looking around Highglade House. I tripped, and knocked a panel open in the wall."

"And?" Mulder prompted, recognising a very familiar look of reluctance to admit she'd seen something unexplainable appear on his partner's face.

"And, whoever drugged us must have already done it, as we...we then shared a hallucination." Pressing her lips together, Scully lifted her chin.

"What was the hallucination, Scully?" Mulder asked softly. "What did you see?"

She looked away, unable to put words to those terrifying moments of watching her own body fading like smoke on a breeze. 

"Because what I saw," Mulder went on, "is you stepping into a space that had been sealed up, blocked off in a very deliberate way... and as soon as you did, you started vanishing like the Cheshire Cat."

"What are you suggesting, Mulder?" Scully demanded, her confusion putting a snap into her tone. "What else could that be, other than a hallucination? You and I have had far worse.” 

"I don't know," Mulder admitted, holding up his hands placatingly as he recalled the oozing hallucinogenic fungal slime that had once nearly digested the two of them. "But look at this place, Scully. Don't you get a weird feeling here?" He gestured around the clearing, the flood of golden light washing over the spiral of pale stones, making them appear almost luminous. 

"Yes, there's a lot to feel weird about," Scully shot back, still sounding annoyed. "I just woke up in a forest, not one of my favourite places given our track record. I don't know how we got here, and I want to know who the hell is messing with us. I'd quite like to have a weapon on me right now, if I'm honest." 

"Well, let's try and find our way out to the road. Maybe there are trails through the woods," Mulder said. 

"Tell me what it is you're thinking, first," Scully insisted, well-acquainted with the early signs of Mulder in theory-formation mode. "If you think you have some kind of explanation, I'd like to hear it." 

Mulder sighed. "I don’t, Scully. But what we're standing in looks very much like a ceremonial site to me. An ancient glade. And combined with having just seen you nearly do a vanishing act, I'm.... curious what it all means, is all." 

"A glade? You mean in the Bacchanalian sense? Nymphs and satyrs and woodland revelry?" Scully said, eyebrows lifting. 

"More in the druidic sense. Ritual and nature-worship and magic," Mulder explained. 

As he spoke, he felt a light chilly zephyr passing through the clearing, and narrowed his eyes to peer into the treeline once again. He saw Scully rub her arms. She had felt it too. 

Apparently not interested in discussing the potential role of magic in any recent events, she turned on her heel. "Let's go and find the road, Mulder, like you said."

With no idea which direction was best to go, Scully crossed to one side of the glade at random and moved warily into the trees, Mulder following closely behind. Despite how dark the forest had looked from the bright space of the clearing, once their eyes had adjusted, they could easily see their way. Mature oak and yew trees grew thick and tall among the other woodland plants, with afternoon sun-rays filtering down through their branches.

The two walked on for some time, glad they had been dressed for visiting farmland later in the day in comfortable walking boots, jeans and light shirts. They spoke little, silenced by the almost unnatural hush of the forest as they trod its earthy floor. Gradually the denser clusters of trees gave way to bushy undergrowth, more and more light reaching through the thinning treetops overhead. Then at last they reached the edge of the woods, and saw fields of lush green grass rolling away from the treeline. 

“Thank God,” Scully muttered. 

Mulder nodded in general agreement. The reality of the situation was pressing in. They were in a foreign country, already somehow mixed up in strange happenings, and with the day wearing on, how to get back to the car was a question he was keen to have answered.

"Do you think anyone could be following us?" Scully asked him. Shielding his eyes with one hand, he peered across the landscape.

"We won't stick around to find out," he said. "Look, see that grey line over there? That looks like a stone wall. Maybe the road runs alongside it." 

Marching across the large field with renewed energy after escaping the woods, they soon reached the wall. Mulder climbed atop it easily with his height advantage, and reached down to help hoist Scully up beside him. To their disappointment, the other side of the wall revealed nothing but a rough grit track, unsealed, plainly just a private laneway over someone's farmland.

Groaning, Scully hopped down from the wall. "Great," she said. "Which way now?" 

Mulder looked up and down the track, seeing only fields and small clusters of trees in every direction. "It looks like the land dips into a valley this way," he said, pointing to their left. "Maybe there'll be something down there we can't see from here."

Scully hummed agreement. The track must lead to a road somewhere. 

Turning back to the wall, Mulder rummaged among the looser rocks piled atop it. He pulled out a few large stones that were closer to white in colour than grey. 

"What are you doing?" Scully asked. 

"I don't know just how badly lost we are here, Scully. If we have to turn back, we'll at least know exactly where we got onto this track." Mulder dragged some stones out of their place on the top of the wall, and shoved his nearly-white stones into the gap to replace them. Side-by-side, they made a clear section of pale stone that stood out, a light stripe against the darker grey. 

Keeping the wall to their left, the agents set out along the track, the land gradually sloping downhill as they went. Now able to see that there was nothing but peaceful countryside around them, it was all the harder to guess at why anyone would have gone to the trouble of bringing them unconscious to the glade, only to leave them there unguarded.  

The thought of how often, in their experience, the most unlikely explanation had proven to be the one that applied kept rolling around Mulder’s brain. For now, he was ignoring it.

Just as he had been trying to ignore the cold tingle that had been chasing along his spine ever since they left the strange stone spiral in the clearing.

Chapter Text

The sun was beating down as they walked, and Mulder was beginning to really wish for the sunglasses he’d left in the car. Bringing up a hand to rub the back of his too-warm neck, he stopped suddenly, hearing the distinct sound of horse's hooves from up the way behind them. He shot Scully a grin, seeing his relief mirrored in the bright flash of her blue eyes.

As the sound drew nearer, they could hear with it the crunching roll of wheels passing over the track. A moment later, the welcome sight of a horse and cart came into view. Mulder stepped out into the road and began waving immediately, giving the driver plenty of time to see him and slow down.

A little charmed at getting to see a farmer still using a horse and cart in rural England, Mulder and Scully approached with friendly smiles. 

"Sorry to bother you, sir," Scully called up to the driver, a craggy-faced older man in a tweed flatcap and brown, work-stained overalls. "We need your help. We're lost, and we need you to take us to the nearest town, or a house where we can use a phone, please."

Twisting the reins in his hands, the man gawped down at her as if she'd just asked him to fly them to the moon.

He squinted back and forth between Scully and Mulder, suspicion written large across his face, and looked Scully up and down several times in a way that put Mulder on edge. 

"I don't want any trouble," the driver said gruffly, already gathering up his reins to move on. His grey mare huffed through her nose, ears flicking.

"No! No trouble," Mulder said, surprised.  "I'm sorry if we're on your land, sir. We really are lost, and we just need to get to the nearest house to call for some help. Are we anywhere near Highglade?"

"Highglade?" the man asked, half-gesturing back over his left shoulder. "No houses there. You're not far from Braceley now though. I suppose I can take you along a little ways."

He was still staring oddly at them, reluctance visible on his face, but he gave a nod towards the back of the simple wooden cart. Reaching behind his seat, he pulled on something that made the tailgate release. It swung down, opening up the back.

Grinning, Mulder turned to Scully as they stepped in behind the cart. "May I?" he asked gallantly, tilting his head towards the open back. The cart's wooden floor sat high enough above the track that it would take some undignified scrambling on Scully's part to get up to it, so she nodded, smiling back at Mulder as he put his hands to her waist. In an easy movement, he lifted her, and Scully felt herself flushing a little at the feel of his hands upon her, his ready strength.

A moment later, he followed her up, both sitting with their lower legs hanging over the back of the cart, facing out to the road behind. The farmer, peering over his shoulder to check they were settled, clicked to his horse and moved off.

"What did he mean, that there were no houses at Highglade?" Scully whispered to Mulder.

"I don't know. And he was staring at you like you'd just popped out of the ground," Mulder murmured back. He kept his tone light, but the way the old farmer had glared disapprovingly down at his partner had unsettled him. Feeling protective, he turned to check the man still had his eyes on the road, Scully’s shoulder bumping softly against his upper arm with the gentle rock of the cart.

The track rolled away beneath them, the horse's tack jingling over the sedate clop of her hooves. Now that they were on their way back to civilisation, the agents found themselves enjoying the view of the beautiful fields, with meadow flowers nodding in the light breeze. It all looked so natural and untouched, in stark contrast to the faraway concrete clutter of DC. Somewhere high overhead, a skylark was singing, its sweet voice rippling through the warm air. 

The cart wheels creaked as the farmer pulled up his horse outside a large stone gate, formed by two fluted grey pillars, each topped with a stone ball. "Braceley," he said. 

Mulder jumped down from the cart, and gave his hand to Scully as she hopped down to land at his side. They walked around the high cart wheel. "Thank you so much for helping us," Scully said to their impassive rescuer. "Could you just tell us..."

But the farmer, merely giving a curt nod to Mulder, was already rolling on, leaving them at the stone gate without a further glance.

Mulder and Scully shared a grin, suddenly seeing the funny side of how awkwardly the man had behaved.

"I was only going to ask how far we are from the nearest town," Scully said, turning up her palms with a resigned smile. 

“So much for a welcome wagon," Mulder joked.

Scully looked down at the gritty ground beneath her feet. The driveway to Braceley was no more than another dirt track running off the one they stood upon. "Mulder — I thought we were on farmland all this time! This can't be the main road?"

"I guess we're just further out into the country than we knew," Mulder said. "Come on, let's get up to the house and get a police car out here." 

Already feeling dubious over how long it might take a car to inch its way up such a rough narrow road, Scully sighed and followed Mulder up the drive.

Braceley was even more striking than Highglade. It rose before them on an expanse of manicured grass, the sand-pale stone walls inset with alternating sash and diamond-paned windows that caught the light of the sun. A double row of pruned hedges made a neat green band around the perimeter of the house, with a little collection of what looked like barns and stables off the right. Behind a line of trees to the left of the house, there appeared to be a large garden. 

Mulder and Scully looked at each other, impressed. “Was Braceley one of the places Gwen mentioned?” Scully asked as they ascended the flight of stone stairs up to the front of the house. 

“I don’t recall that name,” Mulder said. “But she told me these old homes are nearly all open to the public now — they’re just too expensive to run as private residences anymore.”

They had reached the top of the steps. Not seeing any obvious visitor’s entrance, Mulder took hold of the enormous brass ring on the huge wooden front door, and struck three booming raps. A moment later, the door opened, and a grey-haired man came forth, his rigid shoulders square in a long black suit jacket. A grey waistcoat and crisp white shirt and cravat completed his old-fashioned butler’s outfit.

Appreciating the authenticity, Mulder grinned at him. "Hi. I'm glad you're open. Would it be alright if we came in to use your phone? We uh, got a bit lost while exploring the area."

The man at the door was staring at him, his expression so very similar to that of the farmer that Scully felt uneasy. Were people really so unwelcoming out here in the countryside?

"If you are looking for work," the butler said, his voice ice cold, "you may enquire at the back of the house. But I fear we currently have no requirements for any..." - his eyes scathed over Mulder's clothes and boots - "...labourers."

"Labourers? No, we're not looking for work!" Mulder said. "Like I said, we just need to use your phone please, sir?"

The butler, a sneer on his face, was beginning to push the door closed, and Mulder, in angry surprise, put out his foot to block him. "Hey, come on! We've walked a long way and we just need a little help, alright?" 

A light female voice came from behind the door. "Eldon? What is it, who's there?"

"Vagrants, here seeking work, my lady," the man replied frostily, not taking his eyes from Mulder and Scully. "I'm sending them off."

"We are not vagrants!" Scully cried. "We are American travellers, and we're lost! Would you just give us a moment to explain, please?"

The door opened wider, and a slight blonde woman with a young face and a sunny expression wriggled past the butler and into the doorway. "Miss Beaumont!" he said to her warningly, lifting a hand as if to take her by the arm, but only going so far as to hover.

"You're really from America?" she asked Scully, her eyes shining.

"Yes. We're here on vaca... on holiday," Scully corrected herself, anxious that there be no more misunderstandings in this utterly bewildering conversation.

The woman seemed to glow with delight. "How exotic! It is my dearest wish to travel, to see anything of the world at all, but most especially America."

Just as the farmer and the butler had done, she swept her eyes over Scully's clothing, but her expression was more curiosity than disdain. "And this is how women dress in America?” She wrinkled her nose in puzzlement. “Like.... like men?"

Scully looked at the woman's dress. Like the butler's, it was an outfit from another time. Her long, dusky pink dress was gathered in just under her breasts in the empire-line style, the neck dipping low, with little cap sleeves at the shoulders. 

"Uhh... yes," Scully said, knowing that what women wore in the US was no different to what they wore in the UK. Was this some gimmick for tourists visiting Braceley, sticking to character as if they were in a period drama? Or had they wandered into some rich country lady's private fantasy world? 

"Miss Beaumont!" the butler implored again, in a tense undertone. 

In no mood to play along with either scenario, Scully moved to bring the conversation back to reality. 

"Miss Beaumont, my partner and I were drugged, taken against our will and left in the forest up the road earlier today. We're tired, and we could really use..." 

"Oh, how dreadful! There are brigands at every turn," Miss Beaumont gasped, her clear blue eyes going round with shock and pity. “What an unhappy welcome you have received to Wiltshire, I am sorry to hear of it.” She looked from Scully to Mulder, seeming to be making a decision. “You must come in and rest for a moment.” 

Miss Beaumont turned to her butler, whose mouth was opening and closing in silent protest. “Eldon, escort our visitors to the drawing room and call for refreshments." 

Eldon’s face was a picture of disapproval. But at Miss Beaumont’s glare, he turned to do as he was bid. Scully shot a relieved look up at Mulder, and was surprised to see a guardedness in his expression, more caution than relief.

Well, we’re out of options for now, Scully thought, discreetly patting her sleeve along her damp hairline.

They were entering the unknown with these two eccentrics, clearly. But with a glass of water and hopefully a cup of coffee hanging in the balance, she was ready to take her chances.

Chapter Text

The four of them made a little procession through the grand archways of a beautiful ivory-coloured hall. Scully’s eyes caught on the high ceiling, with its elaborate plaster motifs and series of small chandeliers dripping in crystal. 

Eldon opened a door to their left, and stood back, reluctantly showing them into an elegant sitting room, decorated in white, grey and silver tones with splashes of teal upholstery. 

Gesturing graciously towards a plump wooden-legged couch covered in blue-green silk, Miss Beaumont smiled at her guests. She suddenly looked a little shy, and Scully realised she couldn't be much older than her early twenties. 

"I'm more thrilled than you can imagine to meet visitors all the way from America, here, at Braceley," the young woman burst out once Mulder and Scully sat down, conscious of their dusty clothes against the rich fabric. "It is endlessly quiet here in the country. I hope you would not find it an imposition if I were to ask you to share just a little about your travels with me?" 

"Miss Beaumont," Mulder began politely. "We’ll be happy to tell you whatever you'd like to know. But as my partner mentioned to you, we were drugged earlier today. It would very much set my mind at rest if I could ask you a few questions to ensure our reason has not been in any way... uh...compromised." 

Scully looked at him in astonishment, but Miss Beaumont nodded agreeably. 

"Of course!" she said, settling herself a little in her chair.

"Firstly, could you tell us the date?" Mulder asked. 

"The date today? Certainly, it is May the 1st, in the Year of our Lord, 1819," their hostess rattled off. She looked amused at his question. 

Scully's eyes flashed again to Mulder's, annoyed. How far was this woman going to take the period-drama parlour games? 

"Miss Beaumont, I need to make you aware that we are federal agents," she began, her tone crisp, but Mulder cut her off.

"Scully.... just... hang on." He thought for a moment, then asked, "Who is the current leader of your country?"

Miss Beaumont smiled, but answered readily. "Prince George, the Prince of Wales, is our good regent."

Her patience quickly worn thin, Scully was fizzing with irritation. But as Mulder turned to her, the angry response she had been about to give their host died in her throat. To her surprise, her partner had a strangely closed look on his face. 

An expression not a million miles removed from one Mulder had once named his "panic face". 

He cannot possibly be buying any of this!

Miss Beaumont rose gracefully from her chair. "You do both look so very tired and careworn," she said sympathetically. "I will go see where Eldon has gotten to with arranging your refreshments. He can be a little…obstinate.”

Sweeping from the room, she closed the door quietly behind her. 

Scully spun to Mulder in the same instant. "Mulder, what the hell are you doing? You actually want to spur her on with this bygone days crap when we haven't even laid eyes on a phone yet?" she hissed. 

Mulder rubbed a hand over his chin, looking slowly around the drawing room as he weighed his words. "What if she's telling the truth?" he said quietly. 

Scully stared at him, her stomach dropping at the realisation he was serious. Her hand twitched in her lap, wanting to make its way into her partner's hair to check for injuries. She still had no idea what had been done to them earlier. Had Mulder been dosed with something that put him into a heightened state of suggestibility? 

"Mulder, listen to me," she said, trying to keep her tone calm, reasonable. "Something strange happened to us earlier today, and we need to find out what. But I need you to stay focussed, ok? Stay with me. I can't have you being suckered into all this..." She waved a hand around the room, with its sumptuous furnishings and glinting crystal candle-holders. "Whatever this is."

"Scully, just look at this place. Really look,” Mulder said. “Do you see any signs of electricity, anywhere at all?” He gestured to the mantlepiece capping the grey marble fireplace to their left. “Oil lamps. Melted candles everywhere. Did you see a telephone wire or power line anywhere outside the house? In the road? Any sign that cars ever pass this way?" 

"Mulder, none of that means anything!" Scullly snapped, frightened by how readily Mulder was being pulled in. "So okay, they've gone to some effort to make it look realistic for tourists!"

"Do you know what I saw when the charming Miss B was bringing us through?" Mulder said, his voice low and serious. "A door popped open right in the middle of the hallway wall, just for a moment. There was a maid inside, carrying a chamber pot."

"Mulder, have you lost your mind?" 

"She was inside the damn wall, Scully! In a servant’s passage — she nearly fainted when she caught my eye. That’s already weird. And I don't care how realistic anyone wants to be, there's not a chance you'd have tourists paying to stay in a fancy place like this and signing up to use chamber pots."

He pressed on as Scully gaped at him. 

"But even if we call all of that circumstantial, at Highglade today, I watched you just about evaporate in front of me. You were fading into thin air, Scully. I grabbed your hand, and something caught hold of me at the sternum and yanked down on me like...like..."

"Like an anchor off the side of a boat," Scully said, the words leaving her lips in spite of herself, barely above a whisper. 

Mulder nodded. "Exactly."

"Mulder, this... this cannot be what you think it is. It isn't possible." 

"If it isn't, this will all come to nothing, Eldon will walk in with a phone for us to use and we'll be on our way. But Scully... if it is, if we really somehow fell through time... we have to make this work out for us here at Braceley. We've got the clothes we stand up in, and nothing more." 

The image of Eldon trying to turn them away at the door flashed into Scully's mind. Vagrants, he had said, nearly spitting the words as he looked down his nose at them. Chilled, she put a hand to her stomach, now rumbling with hunger. No matter what era they were in, she didn't want to be pushed back out into the empty countryside, with no clue which way to go and not a penny in her pocket as the day edged toward evening. 

"You're actually scaring me, Mulder," Scully said unhappily. "I don't know what the hell's going on, but... I guess for now we'd better just play along with it." 

The door creaked softly as Miss Beaumont re-entered the room. Her eyes sparkled with tears, and her cheeks were flushed.

"I'm so sorry to leave you alone so long," she said, her voice shaking. "My father hasn't been well, and he's just had a very bad turn. And ohh... I forgot all about your tea.." Putting a hand to her face, she let out a sob. 

Scully was on her feet in an instant, crossing to the young woman's side. Concerned, she laid a hand on her shoulder. "Can I help at all? I'm a medical doctor." 

Miss Beaumont stared at her, startled despite her upset. "Whatever can you mean, you're a doctor?" 

Scully looked helplessly at Mulder. "Medicine has lately become a field some American women may choose to practice in," he said smoothly, going to their hostess's other side. "I can assure you, if your father is in need of any care, he would be in the most capable hands if you’d like my partner to check him over." 

Miss Beaumont looked into Scully's face, a sudden hope shining in her eyes. "Are you in earnest?" she said shakily. "You practice medicine?" 

“Yes, I do," Scully said gently. 

“There is no doctor nearer than a full days' ride," Miss Beaumont said, her tears spilling over anew. "I told Father we should remain in London until he was stronger, but he wouldn't stay another moment."

Scully couldn't help scrutinising her, wondering if this was all part of a wild fantasy act. But Mulder's words about falling through time were still ringing in her ears. It was utter madness, and yet... how could this woman be sobbing over her ill father but talking nonsense about days of riding, instead of calling him an ambulance? 

Focusing only on the issue at hand, Scully thought fast. Whatever was going on at Braceley, Mulder was right, they should tread carefully. "Perhaps it would, uh, confuse your father to hear of a female doctor. Why don't I check him over, and then my partner can give him my instructions?" 

"Yes, oh certainly yes...please, come this way. I cannot thank you enough," Miss Beaumont said, turning back towards the hallway at once. 

Mulder and Scully followed her through the door, stealing glances at their opulent surroundings as she led them further along the hall and then up a flight of polished wooden stairs with white bannisters. Scully scoured the ivory damask-covered walls with her eyes, looking for power points, wires, or bulbs, but found nothing she could point out to Mulder as a sign of modernity. 

At the end of the upstairs hallway, Miss Beaumont paused, placing a hand over her heart as she appeared to compose herself. Then, opening the door, she called in a light, gentle voice. “Papa? I have good news, I have brought a doctor to see you.”

She went ahead in a sweep of soft pink skirts. Exchanging a wary look behind her back, the agents hovered for a moment at the doorway, and then stepped into the room.

Chapter Text

It was dim and stuffy in Mr Beaumont’s chamber, an uninviting space made more sombre by the dark tones of the aubergine rug, heavy mahogany dressers and walls shaded a deep crimson. Propped up on pillows, the grey-haired man looked thin and frail in the weak light sharding through the curtains and over his huge bed in the corner of the room. 

The table at his bedside was cluttered with an array of small glass bottles with cork stoppers, used handkerchiefs strewn in little knots on the floor below. He had a purpling bruise on his right temple, beaded lightly with blood. 

Preparing himself for a little thinking on his feet, Mulder went over to the bedside. “Mr Beaumont? I'm Dr Mulder. This is my...uh...assistant, Miss Scully, whom I will be instructing in your examination today." The man's bleary eyes flitted uncertainly back and forth between the two of them, and he gave a weak nod. 

“May I?” Mulder asked, not waiting for an answer as he turned towards the window, throwing back the curtains so Scully could see better. 

"Tell me to check his temperature," Scully told him in the faintest whisper. Mulder called out her instruction, and she stealthily picked up one of the little bottles from the bedside table to examine as she leaned in to lay a hand upon the elder gentleman's forehead. Sniffing the bottle, then squinting at the label, she stared at it for a moment, astounded. 

It was a vial of laudanum. 

Placing it back down, she turned her attention to their patient. There was no point trying to keep Mulder's instructions in line with any hazy notions she had of nineteenth-century medicine. And besides, Scully thought, if they really had been in that era, a doctor’s word would be law, however mysterious. 

Miss Beaumont watched, looking anxious, as the newly-qualified Dr Mulder told Miss Scully to lay her head down to listen to her father's heart, to time the pulse in his wrist, to have him sit up and take deep breaths in and out while the pair of them listened intently, before performing various other physical investigations. 

Finally, following a murmured conversation with Scully a few paces back from the bed, Mulder returned to Mr Beaumont's side. 

"Sir, how often are you dosing yourself with these medicines?" Mulder asked, gesturing to the glass bottles.

"Whenever I feel a turn coming on," the older man replied. 

Scully muttered something soft and low, and Mulder asked, "What are these turns, exactly?" 

"My head aches. The... the room spins, I cannot see clearly. Often, I fall to the floor," Mr Beaumont mumbled, touching his fingers to the bruise on his head. 

Mulder nodded sagely. "I believe you have a condition called low blood pressure. Taking laudanum when you have a turn will make you feel much worse, not better. You are not to take it any longer," he said imperiously, starting to enjoy himself in his new role. "Drink plenty of water each day, and have salty broths with your meals. Take your time when you stand up or sit down." 

Glancing at Scully to silently verify he hadn't missed anything, he went on. "Miss Scully will give my instructions to your cooks on what is best for you to eat.”

"Yes, thank you, Doctor," the gentleman said, reaching out a shaky hand to clasp Mulder's gratefully. 

Miss Beaumont led her guests from the room. A little way down the hall, she paused, her eyes flitting back to her father's closed door. Then, turning to Scully, she visibly steeled herself. 

"Will he... will my father die from the low blood pressure?" she asked, terror plain upon her pretty face. 

"No, he won't," Scully said quickly, realising she should have made this clear. "At his time in life, new health issues can always emerge, but the blood pressure is something that, in his case, should be manageable. Get all that laudanum out of his room though. People can become reliant upon it."

Miss Beaumont gave a tense little nod, and then burst into tears of relief, throwing her arms around Scully. "Thank you so much," she wept. 

"I'm happy we could help," Scully said, touched by this effusive reaction. She patted Miss Beaumont's back reassuringly, and then, in the moment of realising the young woman's total sincerity, the entire picture suddenly crystallised in Scully's mind. The glade. The horse and cart. The time-capsule house, the olden-day clothing, a frail and sickly man dosing himself from dainty laudanum-bottles. 

Her heart going ice-cold in her chest, Scully realised she was starting to believe. 

~~   ~~   ~~

"You will of course stop and dine with me?" Miss Beaumont asked as they descended the stairs. Scully had gone very quiet, Mulder noticed, so he accepted politely, and with some relief. He was starving, their breakfast at Roseneath feeling as though it had been three lifetimes ago.

"Is there somewhere we can wash up?" Mulder asked, holding up his hands.

"Yes, of course, this way," Miss Beaumont said. As she showed Mulder to a little side room where a basin and ewer of water stood on a wooden bench, she took Scully's arm. 

"Miss Scully, might I speak with you for a moment?" 

Scully stepped aside, nodding to Mulder to go on ahead. 

Miss Beaumont guided her to sit down in a pretty alcove in the wall, inlaid with intricate plaster moldings and fitted with rose-embroidered seats. Picking nervously at the silver brocade trim along the edge of her seat, Miss Beaumont cast her eyes down. 

"Miss Scully, I would never wish you to think me ungrateful, but... I'm afraid I must ask. Why is it that you don't go by your husband's name? Why does he call you 'Miss'?" 

Momentarily gobsmacked, Scully floundered. "I...uh..."

The young woman looked up at her, her blue eyes suddenly piercing. 

Oh God, what is this mess we're in? Scully thought. 

"Mulder is not my husband," she said, internally wincing at the shocked look on Miss Beaumont’s face. 

"But, you call each other partner? So he is not kin to you?" 

Scully licked her dry lips. She had every understanding of what the situation would look like to a woman of the 1800s, if that was truly what their hostess was. But in her exhaustion, still bewildered by the day’s events and now put on the spot, her mind struggled to produce any response that would sound reasonable. 

"I do not at all wish to embarrass you," Miss Beaumont went on, her own cheeks glowing bright pink. "But Miss Scully, if you are travelling alone, with a man who is not your husband... I could be as good as ruined simply for having you in my house. Already there is a frenzy of talk among my servants regarding your arrival here. Eldon thought it most reckless of me to have invited you in, which, I confess, it rather was.”

Scully found herself actually feeling quite embarrassed under the kind young woman's pitying scrutiny. Unable to give her defense from a modern viewpoint which, she was increasingly fearing, did not yet exist, it was oddly mortifying to think that the decorous Miss Beaumont might consider her some kind of fallen woman. 

Desperate, knowing her and Mulder's dinner and, if they were lucky, a place to rest for the night depended on it, she began to try and stitch a story together. 

"Mulder and I are colleagues - we work together. That’s why I call him partner," she began. 

"Yet - he is not a doctor?" Miss Beaumont questioned. 

"No, his field is... I suppose you would say, more academic. Research."

“You say that you are a doctor, and Mr Mulder an academic,” Miss Beaumont said. “But earlier, you told me you were federal agents. I will admit my confusion as to what this means.” She paused, clearly now a little wary. “And my hope that my ignorance does not act against me.”

Best to keep as close to the truth as possible, Scully thought. 

"We both belong to a kind of.... society... that helps people who have been the victims of, uh, deception, or foul play," she explained, improvising wildly to fit their story into language a sheltered young lady (sheltered, but certainly not stupid, Scully was realising) might understand. "We use our respective skills to help with enquiries when, uh…people appointed locally haven't been successful. Mulder and I travelled here as part of an investigation on behalf of farmers who'd had their crops damaged and destroyed on a wide scale, by persons unknown. But we did also want to visit England, so our trip was intended to be a holiday of a sort."

"And this is federal work you do, with this society?" Miss Beaumont asked, intrigued, and apparently accepting Scully's artfully worded suggestion that they had been travelling with their "society", not alone. 

"I'm sure it seems strange," Scully said, cautious of leaning too hard on the excuse that things were different in America. "That's the nature of our work, really. Assisting in matters that may have a less obvious conclusion." 

"And do you believe it was as a result of your investigations that you and Mr Mulder were….abducted?" Miss Beaumont asked, her expression now as fascinated as it had been upon hearing she had Americans at her front door earlier that afternoon. 

"It's hard to say. Mulder has many theories about it all," Scully said, trying to tactfully guide the conversation towards rejoining her partner. 

Miss Beaumont sprung to her feet. "How terribly rude you must think me, questioning you like this when you must be so tired and hungry. Please, come along this way."    

They met Mulder hovering a little awkwardly just inside the dining room, which he had wandered on down to find. Eldon stood silently in the corner opposite the door, giving him a look of frank disapproval. Scully darted to the washroom to do her own quick cleanup, and the three of them were all soon seated at the dining table, clustered at one end of a long stretch of snowy white linen tablecloth, set out with twinkling crystal candle-holders. 

Mulder looked around, considering the yawning gulf between dining at a table like this every night, and his own home dinners - slumped back on the couch, a plate balanced on his knees, surfing TV channels for a decent movie. The dining room walls were patterned with a motif of unfurling ruby-coloured leaves on a cream background, reaching up to meet a white coving reflecting the same design. The room was well lit by tall windows spanning one wall, framed by heavy drapes in a champagne-pink shade.

"Miss Scully has just been telling me about the society you belong to, and your investigations. It seems a very noble use of your time, to help others in this way,” Miss Beaumont said to him as Eldon waved in a little procession of servants carrying covered dishes from a door at the far end of the table.

Not knowing exactly what Scully had told her, Mulder simply smiled, leaning back to allow his plate to be filled, and feeling somewhat uncomfortable with the process. "We're glad to be able to do it,” he said.

Miss Beaumont paused for a moment as if measuring her words, her eyes following Eldon and the servants from the room. "She also said that you had hoped to make your trip something of a holiday. If that is the case, and if your investigation is not extremely pressing... I wondered if I might perhaps ask you both to stay with me for a little time?" 

Scully looked at her in surprise. She could hear from the quaver in the woman’s voice that she was again close to tears. 

"That’s uh… such a kind invitation," she stalled, glancing at Mulder, who was subtly nodding at her. 

"How feeble I am today!" Miss Beaumont said, giving a rueful laugh as she touched her fingers to the damp corners of her eyes. "You must please allow me to explain myself. These past months have been a time of much sadness for my family."  

She took in a breath, straightening in her chair. "Last winter, my older brother Frederick passed away after a short illness. Since his loss, my poor mother has had no peace in herself. She finds she cannot rest, lest the thoughts of his passing overwhelm her. She is visiting our cousins in the Midlands presently, but we expect her home soon, perhaps as soon as tomorrow.” Her voice softened. “As for my father, Frederick's loss has seemed to age him ten years."

"I’m sure you feel something of that too," Mulder said, thinking back to one long-ago night he had entered as a boy, and left with both his sister and his childhood forever lost to him. 

Miss Beaumont nodded. "I feel as though I was only a child when Frederick passed, running around with not a thought in my head. He was so wise, and had everything so well-managed. And now he's gone, and both Mama and Papa are so changed…" 

She sighed. "Where there were four of us, now not one remains as we once were."

Feeling a great empathy for the young woman, Scully reached across the table to take her hand. "I lost my sister only a few years ago," she said gently.

"And I lost mine when I was young," Mulder added. 

Miss Beaumont let herself ease from her stiff posture, a look of relief on her face. "Then you know every sorrow I have felt," she said quietly, looking from Mulder to Scully. The three of them sat in a brief shared silence, remembering the siblings they had each loved so much.

Despite the unexpected warmth of the moment, Scully felt a sense of disorientation ripple over her. If all of this is real, she thought, Miss Beaumont’s brother is not even a year dead. But Mulder and I…

The madness of it crowded in, making her feel breathless, almost faint. Mulder and I are grieving sisters lost to us over a hundred years before them ever being born.

Chapter Text

"Miss Beaumont, we would be very pleased to stay a little while with you, if you're sure it wouldn't be an inconvenience," Mulder said, reading agreement on Scully’s face at a quick glance. "I must say I am curious to know why you would offer us your hospitality after such a short acquaintance, though?" 

Already he could hear himself dropping into the young woman’s more formal way of speaking.

"I often feel myself very alone," she said simply. "I meet no one new that my mother has not arranged for me to meet, as she grows ever more fixated on securing my connection with my brother now gone. We have visitors to pass the hours with in superficial talk of picnics, music, weddings. I find I cannot take much interest in such things, while I yet feel grief’s shadow.”

She looked intently from Mulder to Scully. "My place now must be with my family, and perhaps the chance to travel will never be mine. But I would so love to hear about where you come from — to learn of anything at all beyond Braceley and the ton." 

"We arrived in strange circumstances, as you know. And there are still questions we need answers to," Mulder said. “But…” he glanced at Scully again, conscious of their mutual dependence on the conversation going just right. "It’s true that we hoped to spend some time visiting the countryside here.”

"I will do all I can to help you find your answers," Miss Beaumont assured him. Her eyes lowered, briefly studying the casual shirts her guests wore. "And in my first act of helpfulness, I must ask that you let me find you both clothing that will not immediately make you a spectacle anywhere you go." 

"We couldn't..." Scully began, but their hostess held up a hand to quell her protest, smiling. 

"You will do me a service," she said. "It would be nice to see poor Frederick's clothing put to use. And my mother orders more dresses than I could ever hope to wear." 

The maids came in quietly to clear the table, and Mulder saw the way their eyes beaded at Scully. The sooner she had something less conspicuous to wear, the better, he thought. Their luck could change again at any moment. 

Miss Beaumont had been watching the reactions too. Once the maids had gone, she leaned forward to look earnestly at her guests. 

"A final suggestion. Pray do not mention your society to others you meet here. I will demand to know all you are willing to tell me of it," she said merrily, "but if you wish to earn the trust of all you may speak to, no story shall serve you better than that of a respectable doctor, doing good wherever he goes." 

She looked apologetically at Scully. "Or she. But Miss Scully, I rather fear my good neighbours, like my father, take comfort in the familiar where medical matters are concerned."

Scully gave a tight smile. The chill of her deepening fear that maybe this insane timeslide really had taken place just as it appeared kept rolling over her. It had gone way past the point of a joke, or a bit of tourist entertainment. And yet, how the hell could she and Mulder have simply slipped between centuries?

“I can continue to act as an assistant while we’re here,” she replied. “And please, call me Dana,” she went on. “My partner prefers to go by Mulder.” 

Miss Beaumont looked a little surprised, and Scully wondered if she had again unwittingly veered into improper territory. But the young woman smiled at her offer of familiarity. “Then…you must both call me Helena,” she said shyly.

“Helena, could you tell us a bit more about this area?” Mulder asked. “Are we anywhere near a city? Even a town?”

“The village of Ethelmere is not far at all, only a short journey,” Helena told him. 

“Ethelmere?” Scully asked quickly. “So we are still very near to Highglade House, then?” Relief coursed through her. If they could get back to the house, maybe that would at least provide a starting point for figuring all of this out.

Helena was looking at her with lifted brows. “Highglade House?” she said. “There is nothing at all at Highglade. It is but a patch of forest.” 

Scully looked desperately to Mulder. He had his elbows propped on the table, hands to his chin as he chewed the end of a thumb thoughtfully. 

“Helena, some of the questions we’ll need to ask may not make much sense to you, but — is there anything unusual about Highglade?” he asked. “Any….odd stories you’ve heard?” 

“It’s old forest, I believe,” Helena replied. “Some of the land has been cleared - my grandfather once mentioned a larger woodland being there when he was a boy.” She gave a little laugh. “We went picnicking there last summer, but my Irish maid became quite overwrought and said she’d never go near it again.”

“Why not?” Mulder asked, seeing Scully lean forward from the corner of his eye, just as he had done.

“Oh, I couldn’t tell you! She is simply brimful of superstition. The nonsense we’ve had out of her over things like salt being spilled, a cracked mirror… I sometimes worry it isn’t quite Christian of her to fuss over such matters,” Helena said, shaking her head. 

Making a mental note to track down and interview this maid as soon as possible, Mulder nodded sympathetically. 

“No doubt your travel companions will be most concerned over your absence by now,” Helena said. “You will want to arrange to send word to them, I’m sure. Where was it you were visiting, before you were abducted today?” she asked. Her eyes were sharp and curious as they flicked between her two guests.

Scully thought frantically. Avebury was far too close to name, too easy for their kind hostess to offer to convey them to. London was too distant for them to have been taken from and brought all the way here…

“We set out with our companions from Oxford,” she said, thinking that was at least somewhere Mulder knew. “And more than that, I’m afraid we cannot tell you, Helena. I know you will understand why the people we assist would expect us to say nothing of their personal matters to anyone else. Just as if you had called us here to help you with a problem, particularly something that could involve criminal elements, the thought of your friends and neighbours knowing your troubles would be…upsetting, I’m sure.”

Helena’s eyes were huge. “Just exactly so,” she agreed. “I’m very sorry. I only meant to try and help you find your quickest route back to your party.”

Mulder smiled reassuringly. “You’ve said nothing wrong at all. Please don’t worry. We can take care of everything ourselves, now that you’ve been so kind as to offer for us to stay.”

“I feel utterly selfish for my motivations,” Helena confessed, her shoulders drooping. “I wanted company, stories from the Americas and the comfort of knowing you could help my dear father. While all your own thoughts are of how best to serve others.” 

“Helena, if not for your thoughtfulness, Mulder and I would likely be sleeping in a field tonight,” Scully said. “I really can’t think of what would serve me better than a warm bed right now.” It was still early in the evening, but Scully could feel a monstrous fatigue settling over her, borne of jetlag, shock, and having to do so much thinking on the spot.

“Of course,” Helena said, immediately taking the hint. “I will have the maids prepare you rooms.”

She went out into the hall, leaving the door standing open behind her. Hearing hushed voices and footsteps passing outside, and uncertain if they could themselves be overheard, the agents sat in silence at the end of the long table, expecting each approaching step to be Helena’s.

“Scully…” Mulder finally began.

Scully looked at him, reading a swirl of thoughts and feelings in his face, in the way his eyes locked on hers. Knowing what he must want to know above all, she reached out to take his hand, letting his fingers slip from her grasp a moment later.

“It’s alright, Mulder. I’m fine,” she lied.

~~   ~~   ~~

With rooms now awaiting them, Scully and Mulder soon found themselves shepherded along the hall and up the stairs by two maids in plain grey muslin dresses. Standing at the foot of the stairs, Helena called up her wishes for them to sleep well and not feel that they should rise too early. 

Ushered into her room by one of the maids, Scully looked around with interest. To the left of the chamber was a large wooden four-poster bed with a forget-me-not quilt. A luxurious chair with a robin’s-egg satin seat stood at the end of it, leaves and flowering vines carved into its walnut arms and legs. A wide, squat rosewood dresser sat under the window on the wall facing her, and the right wall had a small empty fireplace and a wardrobe set into it. 

Although the evening was still light outside, the maid went across to touch the lit candle she had brought with her to a fat, slow-burning candle on the mantel over the fireplace, warming the room’s cream walls to a flickering gold around it.

“Thank you,” Scully called as the maid left the room. She went over to stand before the open wardrobe doors, seeing the outlines of several dresses in soft pastel tones hanging within. They had, she assumed, been freshly picked out for her from among Helena’s surplus. She ran her fingers over the rich fabrics, tugging one or two gowns towards her to examine the minutely embroidered designs worked into their long skirts. 

None of this feels real, Scully thought distantly, gliding her hand down a length of palest coral silk. It was hard to even picture herself wearing something so floaty and fine. 

And impossible to imagine appearing in front of Mulder in it. 

The dresses were beautiful, but the image they evoked of a world so entirely unknown, a world she was about to try and navigate, seemed suddenly overwhelming. The breathless near-panic she had felt at the dining table rose up in her again, and she closed the wardrobe hastily, crossing to the window in search of another distraction.

A yellow cotton nightdress had been placed atop the dresser there, neatly folded. Feeling the weight of fatigue heavy upon her, Scully toed off her boots. Stripping down, she tossed her jeans and shirt onto the satin chair, slipping into the loose, cool nightdress gratefully. Curious, she pulled out one of the wide dresser drawers, finding a mixture of white cotton garments inside that appeared to be underlayers. No corsets, at least, she thought with relief.

Her exploration of the room complete, she turned towards the bed. Spying for the first time the edge of a discreetly placed porcelain chamberpot that had been tucked underneath it, she prepared to face a particularly jarring facet of her new reality with a mixture of horror and resignation.

She had at last put out her candle and settled herself into bed, lying wide-eyed and restless despite her exhaustion, when two very faint raps sounded on the door. A second later, Mulder slipped into her room. "Scully?" he whispered.

"Mulder! Quick, close the door!" she hissed. Nothing could be worse right now than someone seeing them alone together, sneaking around in the dark, if it risked them being turned out into the road after all.

Mulder eased the door quietly shut, and came over to her bedside. Relieved to see him despite her concern, Scully had to press her hand over her mouth to stifle a laugh at noticing what he was wearing - a loose white cotton nightshirt, the hem coming only to knee-length on his long lean legs. She saw the flash of his teeth in the now fading light from the window as he registered her amusement.

"Ok, not my best look. But it's actually very comfortable," Mulder said.

"You shouldn't be here," she told him as he came to perch on the edge of her bed. "If the servants are literally in the walls of this house, you never know who might be watching." 

"I’m not sure how easily we may get another chance to speak alone," Mulder said. He hesitated. "Scully, are you still in any doubt about all of this? About us somehow having landed at a point in time before Highglade House was ever built?" 

Scully pressed her fingers to her temples. "There's still no definite proof," she said, reluctant even now to fully commit herself. "And I'm still hoping that this is all going to turn out to be some kind of wild joke. But...I don't think Helena is lying, or that she's crazy, or that she would let her father go without medical attention if it was available." 

She paused, thinking of the way the Smoking Man had so remorselessly played her with his sad voice and empty promises of medical miracles. "Some recent events, however, have led me to think I can't necessarily trust my own character judgement. And Mulder…” Scully stared helplessly at her partner in the half-darkness. “If it’s true…it’s all just so utterly mindblowing.”

“It’s beyond comprehension,” Mulder agreed. “But we have to figure out our plan now, Scully. Are we going to try and get back to the glade tomorrow? See if... I don't know. See if anything happens, once we're back there?" 

"Maybe we should," Scully said. "But what if nothing happens at the glade? Do you think Helena would accept us just turning up here again afterwards? She thought we were married. I had to tell her we came here with an investigative society and we were only travelling alone together because we got separated from our companions." 

"You think she'd find it unseemly, if we went off on our own?" Mulder said. 

"I know she would. She was worried she could be ruined just for having us here, until I spun us a cover story," Scully told him. 

Mulder sighed. Already he was kicking himself for not having immediately said he and Scully were husband and wife. Now, everything they did would have to be carefully cloaked in propriety. 

"Ok. Then we need to talk to the maid Helena mentioned," he said. "She must know something about Highglade, if she was that spooked by it." 

"Yeah, and it sounds as though the family history in this area goes back at least a couple of generations.  Maybe Helena's father will have heard something?" Scully said.

"We'll keep up his treatment, and we'll mention that you love spooky stories," Mulder said, grinning. "See what he has to tell you."

"Why am I the one that likes spooky stories?" Scully objected. 

"Scully, I'm a very important, busy doctor," Mulder said. "I don't have time for nonsense like that." 

Grinning, she shoved at him with her knee through the bedcovers. "Get out of here, before I scream that there's a strange man in my chambers." 

Mulder got to his feet. “We’re going to figure this out,” he said. He paused for a second, then placed his hand lightly on her knee, wanting to smooth a thread he knew was still a little tangled between them. “And Scully…it’s not that you’re a bad judge of character. You just wanted to believe the best of someone. But nothing could have redeemed him.” 

“It was a mistake, I know,” Scully answered softly. “But I guess I can say, one made for the right reasons.” 

Mulder gave her knee a tiny squeeze, then moved to the door. “Sleep well, Miss Scully,” he said, and slipped out into the hall like a phantom.

Chapter Text

Mulder stood in front of the open wardrobe in his room, perplexed. A reasonable selection of men's clothing was neatly hung inside, and the maid who had shown him his room the night before had told him that Helena intended all of it for his own use while he was staying at Braceley.

He had a fairly strong inkling that although all the garments looked quite formal to him, there would be a right and wrong degree of formality among them for wearing down to breakfast. Plucking a few different items from the hangers, he put together what he hoped was an acceptable ensemble, irritated by all the little buttons he had to wrangle along the way. 

The entire look felt awkward to him though, and he began to feel flustered. Hearing footsteps in the hall, Mulder crossed his fingers, and popped his head hopefully out the door. 

"Excuse me," he said to the valet who was just passing his room. "Would you have a moment to help me, please?" 

Several minutes later, feeling as though he was setting off for a costume party, he made his way downstairs.

Scully and Helena were already in the dining room when he entered. Scully was sitting facing the door, and when Mulder walked in, she found she’d somehow sprung to her feet before she even knew what she was doing. The two of them stood staring at each other for long seconds, Helena looking from one to the other with a puzzled little smile.

Mulder swallowed. "Good morning," he said. He was addressing both women, but felt powerless to stop his eyes from roving over Scully.

She wore a long, sky-blue dress of the same style Helena had on - its neckline dipping low, the bodice fitted close under her breasts, with a full skirt flowing loose to the floor. The colour set off her short, fiery red hair, and her crystal-blue eyes were glowing as she looked back at him.

He didn't think he was imagining the approval in her expression.

"Mulder," was all Scully said, dropping suddenly back into her seat.

He looks incredible, she thought, conscious of the powerful throb she'd felt in her pulse when he walked in.

Certainly by no means blind to her partner's good looks at any given time, Scully found herself transfixed by this new version of the man she was used to seeing in either suits, jeans, or running gear. Mulder was wearing fitted trousers the colour of pale sand, his long-sleeved white shirt tucked in at the waist, and a white cravat around his neck. He had a light tan waistcoat over the top, and wore dark brown hessian boots.

Pushing scenes from the pages of historical romance novels she had flipped through as a teen from her head, Scully tried to focus on the conversation.

“Oh, you do look well, Mr Mulder!” Helena was saying. “I did think your build was very like Frederick’s. Mama will be so pleased to see you when she arrives.”

Remembering what Helena had told them yesterday about her mother’s prolonged grieving, Mulder was uncertain. “You don’t think she would find someone wearing his clothes upsetting?”

“I think not,” Helena said. “She has mentioned how she wishes there was more to remind her of Frederick in the house. It’s the fact of his being so utterly and completely gone from our lives that upsets her so.”

“If you’re sure,” Mulder said gently. He picked up a soft bread roll from the wooden platter Scully pushed towards him, and reached for the teapot. “Helena, we wanted to ask you about the maid you mentioned yesterday, who was afraid to go into the woods at Highglade. Would it be possible for us to speak with her this morning?”

“I would be happy to arrange it, but Róisín has taken leave to care for her cousin, who is unwell. Though she may return at any time,” Helena said.

Mulder met Scully’s eyes across the table in shared disappointment. Following up their one possible lead would have to wait. 

“Now!” Helena said cheerfully. “As soon as you’re finished, I will show you the house, and the gardens. I want you to feel quite at home here.”

“May we look in on your father first?” Scully asked. “I’m sure you’re anxious to have him checked over again. I’d be happy to speak to your kitchen staff then, to let them know what kinds of foods would best suit his condition.”

Helena looked visibly relieved. “Yes, please,” she said. “I felt I would be rude to ask it before you are properly welcomed here.”

“It’s no problem at all,” Scully assured her. “I’m only happy to be able to offer some help in exchange for you having us stay with you.”

“Already I feel we are friends,” Helena said, smiling at her and Mulder. “Come, then, we’ll go up to him.”

∽∽  ∽∽  ∽∽

Now out of his laudanum haze, Mr Beaumont was much more alert, and showed a similar pleasure to that of his daughter in learning he had American visitors staying in the house. 

Following whispered instructions from Scully before they entered his room, Mulder was ready with some further questions about how the older man was feeling, and a few more suggestions to support his general health. They left him enjoying the morning sunshine, peering through his wiry silver spectacles at a book Helena had brought up to him.

“It is such a comfort to me to have a doctor here at home with us, Miss Scully,” Helena said as the three of them made their way back towards the stairs. “I never thought to have fears for anyone’s health before, and since Frederick passed, I think upon it constantly.”

“It’s Dana, please,” Scully reminded her, smiling. “Try not to worry for now. Your father will soon be doing better, I’m sure.”

“Helena, would you mind if I go back and speak to Mr Beaumont for just a moment?” Mulder asked. “I was thinking that he would be a good person to answer some questions I had about the history of the area. I’ll be careful not to tire him.”

“He will love that,” Helena said, eyes twinkling. “Papa longs for an interested ear to hear all his stories of growing up here. I fear I struggle to entertain them now that I have heard them all so many times!” She smiled at Mulder, pointing down the stairs to the wide French doors below. “Come find us in the gardens, when you’re ready.”

Mulder turned to head back to Mr Beaumont’s room, and Scully watched him go, hoping against hope that the old gentleman would know something about the glade. Something, anything, that could help them start to figure out what had happened to them.

As she and Helena passed through the doors at the foot of the stairs to go out to the garden, Helena took her arm, giving her a slightly impish smile. “Mr Mulder so very well suits the English style of dressing, does he not? You must find him very handsome after…” She stopped herself, eyes going round in fear of being impolite.

“After what he was wearing yesterday?” Scully said, laughing. “You’re right, the look does suit him. It was so kind of you to find clothes for us.”

Helena waved her hand. “Clothes are better worn than not,” she said dismissively. She moved eagerly back to her previous topic. “So, you and Mr Mulder are travelling together, you work together - but is he not courting you?”

“He is not,” Scully replied. She knew enough about the workings of nineteenth century society to have already wondered how long it would take Helena to pursue this line of questioning.

“He is engaged to another, then? Or you are?” Helena guessed.

“We, uh…no. No engagements,” Scully said, feeling the intensity of Helena’s fascinated stare.

Helena stopped in the middle of the path. “But….you have such a rapport with one another. Why, then? Do your families not allow it?”

“Helena, where we come from…” Scully stopped. How would she even explain a concept like professional conduct? Putting the work first? 

That’s bullshit, and you know it.

How, then, to explain that the only thing worse than being silently in love with your best friend would be telling him, and finding out that he didn’t feel the same? 

And he didn’t, as she already knew. Mulder had kissed her on New Year’s Eve, and she had lost herself to him forever at the touch of his lips. As if there had ever been a question. Afterwards, she had waited, and she had hoped, but life had simply gone on. After all these years of their two lives twining into each other like vines slowly climbing towards the sun, that ultimate moment of illumination had never come.

Scully couldn’t blame herself for having been confused. Hadn’t she and Mulder shown each other in every conceivable way how deep their mutual commitment ran? When the spectre of death by cancer hovered at her shoulder, he’d been the one out frantically searching for a cure. He’d gone to the furthest icy reaches of the earth and descended into what sounded like hell frozen over to bring her home safe. She’d helped him fake his own death, held him through his anguish at his mother’s suicide, and been ready to drain the ocean if it would bring him back from Bermuda. 

She’d laughed to herself at Mulder’s delirious profession of love after he was pulled out of the water, even as her heart warmed with certainty that she would hear those words from him in earnest someday. The night of their baseball game, the feelings she was sure he shared seemed like a magnetic force between them, his arms tight around her, her back snug against his chest.

But every hope that had arisen in her only ebbed away again with the passing of time, and she had tried to make herself accept that maybe that hope had only ever been hers.

Mulder would do anything for her, Scully knew. Just as she would for him. He had turned to her in that Maryland hospital hall, the millennium itself turning with him, and her entire heart had opened up like a flower at the realisation that this, this was the moment.

But Mulder had kissed her in friendship, and friends they remained. 

With an effort, Scully pulled her thoughts back to the present. “Where we come from, it’s not at all strange for men and women to work together, and be close companions, and courting not to even enter into it,” she explained to Helena.  

Helena was staring at her. “But you must find Mulder attractive!” she said in disbelief.

“He is a friend, a very good man, and I trust him entirely,” Scully said. “And beyond that, I will simply say that we are asked as federal agents to make our work the priority.” 

Helena was relentless. “And were it not for your work?” 

Scully was spared answering by Mulder’s appearance further up the path. Helena waved to him. “I hope Papa was helpful?” she called.

Mulder came to join them. “He’s an encyclopaedia. I’m already promised a few rounds of backgammon when he rejoins the family evenings, so he can tell me the full history of Braceley.”

Pleased to hear her father was eager to be out of his bed, Helena smiled. “I shall finish giving you the tour of it, in the meantime!” she said, turning to continue on down the garden path.

Behind her, Scully flashed Mulder the quick lifted eyebrows that meant: Anything?

Mulder shook his head. Mr Beaumont had been eager to share all he knew about Highglade, but it amounted only to woodland animals, family picnics and boyhood games.

They were no closer to knowing what had brought them here, or whether there was any way to get back.

Chapter Text

Scully followed a few steps behind Mulder as they descended the stone staircase leading to the lower part of the garden. With no way to resolve the immediate concern of how to get home, she found there was a welcome distraction in the serenity of the colourful flowerbeds laid out in a great sunken cartwheel pattern before them, stirred by a sweetly-scented breeze. 

She couldn’t ignore the soft, unfamiliar swirl of her long skirt against her legs though, or the way Mulder’s outfit made him seem less like her partner and more like a noble figure striding out of history. The luxury and splendour all around them only added to the surreal feeling of being out of step with time. 

Their hostess, at least, seemed to sense nothing of the uncertainties surrounding her. After her troubles and tears of the day before, Helena appeared to have found a lift for her spirits in showing her home to her guests. It was easy to warm to the bubbly personality she revealed as they all toured the grounds and house together. 

After Scully had met with the kitchen staff to discuss Mr Beaumont’s diet, Helena had a light lunch brought out to a sunny little paved seating area overlooking the garden for the three of them. The servants had just removed the last of their empty dishes when there was a sound of dogs barking from the other side of the house. 

Helena sat up in her chair. “They only bark like that at carriages,” she said. “Perhaps Mama has arrived. I will go and see.”

Standing, she gave the agents a hopeful smile, and went up the path towards the house. 

Checking over her shoulder that Helena was out of earshot, Scully turned to Mulder. “So, nothing at all from Mr Beaumont? How did you even bring it up?”

Mulder shook his head. “I just went in and said I forgot to mention that we may not be staying here long, and I wanted to quickly ask him about the historic sites of the area. I told him I had a fascination with ancient traditions and I was wondering about a stone spiral we had seen at Highglade.”

“And?” Scully asked. 

“He remembers playing there as a kid. No trips through time, no one going into the woods and not coming back.”

Scully folded down into her chair with a sigh. “There’s still the maid to talk to,” Mulder reminded her, seeing the disappointment in her face. 

She nodded glumly. 

“Anyway, Mr Beaumont told me if we want to see more ancient places like Highglade, we won't need to look far. Burial mounds and standing stones are scattered all around people’s back yards in this area, he said.”

Thoughtful, Scully let her gaze settle on the light green swathe of pastureland at the horizon. “If we get to meet any of the Beaumont’s neighbours, maybe they’ll know more. Stories or legends about…I don’t know. What those kinds of places were used for.”

Mulder leaned back, squinting against the sunshine, wishing again for the sunglasses he had left far away in the future. “Got to start somewhere.”

Hearing voices behind them, they turned to see Helena coming down the path with a rosy-cheeked older woman. She had salt and pepper hair pinned up into a coil, and the same clear blue eyes as Helena. Mulder and Scully both stood, smiling politely as the women approached. 

“Mama, may I present Dr Mulder and Miss Scully, our guests from America,” Helena said. 

Mulder went to put out his hand, and then realised he had no idea if something as physical as a handshake would be welcomed in this reserved society. “A pleasure, Mrs Beaumont,” he said, nodding to her, and keeping his hand at his side. He saw the woman’s eyes pass over his clothing, a soft smile coming to her kindly face.

“Dr Mulder and his assistant, Miss Scully, were travelling with a group, but after they were so kind as to agree to come and help Papa after he had a bad turn, I invited them to stay with us,” Helena said smoothly, making it sound as though they'd all casually struck up an acquaintance down in the village. 

“We've been most grateful for your daughter's hospitality, Mrs Beaumont,” Scully chimed in. “I’m looking forward to visiting the area.” 

“Of course you should stay with us, I am going mad from the silence within these walls,” Mrs Beaumont said at once. “How is my poor husband? Helena and I have just been up to see him, but he had fallen asleep.” 

“He was looking better this morning,” Mulder replied, “and we have a treatment plan for him that I do believe will help.” He looked at Scully. “Miss Scully has already discussed my advices regarding his diet with your kitchen staff.” 

He saw Mrs Beaumont giving Scully a curious and somewhat measuring look, clearly wondering at her being appointed with a role in Mr Beaumont's care. He knew his and Scully's unfamiliar accents and provenance were probably going some way toward fending off further questions.

“Shall we sit, Mama?” Helena suggested, but her mother gave a dismissive flutter of her hand. “Already I have sat for hours in the carriage. Let us walk in the gardens.” She led the way towards a path flanked either side by wisteria trellises, a lily pond glinting in the sunlight beyond.

“Where is it that you come from in America?” Mrs Beaumont asked Mulder as they ambled slowly down the path. “I know that it is vast, but not as yet all settled and at peace.” She smiled at him. “Of course, our own country has not enjoyed an altogether perfect peace with yours.” 

Mulder hesitated, keen to avoid any commentary on matters of peace and politics. “We come from a place called Okobogee,” he said, keeping a poker face as Scully stopped mid-step, her hand going to her mouth to suppress a laugh. 

“I have not heard of it, I confess,” Mrs Beaumont said, stooping to pick herself a couple of stems of lavender. She rubbed them between her palms, inhaling. “Is our country so very different to yours, do you find?” 

“We were not all that long into our visit when we met Miss Beaumont,” Mulder said truthfully. “I’ve spent time in Oxford, but we are yet to see much of your countryside.” 

Mrs Beaumont stopped to look up at him, and he saw something like relief in her face. "Well!" she exclaimed. "In that case we shall go out visiting at once. I know just where we shall go — our friends the Sinclairs live the other side of Ethelmere, and it is a beautiful drive over to them." 

Scully saw her surprise mirrored on Mulder’s face. "Mrs Beaumont...you've only just arrived home," she protested. "There's really no need to..." 

"But of course we must take you to see the area, after your great kindness in coming here to care for my husband," Mrs Beaumont told her firmly. "And I know the Sinclairs' eldest son should just be home now from a long stay in Europe, he has been managing the affairs of an aged uncle living in Italy these last few years. The family will be wondering why we have not called." 

She was already bustling off down the path. "Allow me but a moment to make ready!" she called as she hurried back towards the house. 

Helena was watching her go, a look of sorrow and sympathy on her face. "Poor Mama," she murmured. "Already it troubles her so, to be here at home again." 

~~   ~~   ~~

The carriage was soon readied, and Mulder, Scully and the two Beaumont women went down to the stables together. A great black horse with a glossy mane and tail was hitched up to the carriage, a baleful expression in the eye he rolled at the approaching group. 

“This is Seraphim,” Helena said, introducing the horse with a smile. He laid his ears back in response, tossing his head. "And our driver, Farley," she went on, as a slightly stooped older man in a smart black coat and white breeches came around the side of the carriage. He put out a hand to assist the ladies up into it, touching the black top hat he wore respectfully. 

Mulder stepped up last, taking in the plush interior of the carriage. It was lined in garnet-red velvet with seats of burgundy leather. He settled in beside Scully, the two of them facing Helena and her mother opposite. With a little jerk, the carriage rolled forward, and they were on their way. 

“Miss Scully, my daughter has expressed a great admiration of your chosen way of life to me," Mrs Beaumont said, looking at Scully curiously. "She tells me that the roles a woman may choose to take on are very different in America, and that I must not offend you by asking too many questions about it." 

She paused, eyeing her new acquaintances, and apparently deciding that at least a few questions couldn't hurt. "But you are not engaged to Dr Mulder, I understand?" 

"I am not," Scully confirmed. "I help Dr Mulder with his patients and his treatments, and we have worked together in friendship for many years now." 

"Can it be so many years?" Mrs Beaumont asked, leaning forward to peer into Scully's face. "You are only young yet." She swivelled to scrutinise Mulder. "Both of you?" 

Scully cleared her throat. The life expectancy of this era was far lower than that of their own time, she knew, and she and Mulder would probably be considered astoundingly well-preserved for people in their later thirties. Deciding there was no need to draw attention to their age if the Beaumonts thought them younger, she demurred. "Our work keeps us so busy. It seems the time passes before I even realise it." 

Mrs Beaumont sat up straighter, clearly ready to let fly with a string of further questions, but Helena was prodding her mother's side with a restraining elbow. "We are so glad, then, to have you pass a little of your time with us," she said. 

"Indeed, indeed," Mrs Beaumont echoed. 

Looking out the carriage window, Mulder's eye caught on a smooth grassy mound in the middle of a field, with a single tall stone standing atop it. 

“America is still a new land for a great number of its inhabitants,” he told Mrs Beaumont. "It isn't often I would get the chance to see anything with any significant history attached to it.”  He gestured out the window to the mound. “Whereas here your history is etched right into the face of the earth. Have you been to see Avebury?" 

"Oh yes, Mr Beaumont and I have visited it, such a place would appeal more to him than I. It was pleasant, all the same,” Mrs Beaumont replied.

"Dr Mulder has a great fascination for such places, and I enjoy them too," Scully said. "We'd be pleased to get to visit any ancient sites that exist in the vicinity. Perhaps we might ask your friends if they know of anything in this area?" 

"Oh, most certainly you should ask them," Mrs Beaumont said. "And Helena, you must ask if they would consider collecting Mrs Howard for church. She has dismissed her driver, my maid tells me..." 

Mulder and Scully settled into quiet enjoyment of the trip as Mrs Beaumont segued into telling Helena about her time in the Midlands, and all the news of their cousins. The drive was beautiful, just as Mrs Beaumont had said. They passed first through Ethelmere, seeing surprisingly little change in the peaceful village from when they had gone through it by car many years into the future. The calm of the main street was broken only by voices floating up from a market in the village square.  

Surrounded by white-painted cottages with sloping thatched roofs, Mulder’s memories of small towns he had visited near Oxford as a student rose to the surface. At that time, as a fresh arrival in England, the narrow cobbled streets, stone walls and ancient, huddled-together houses had been the closest thing he could have imagined to stepping back in time. Now, faced with the reality, he found there was an odd charm amidst the strangeness of it all.

The Beaumonts called for a brief stop at the village store, where the agents had to put on a charade of mailing a note to their travel companions at an address Mulder made up on the spot. Then, rolling on once more, their little party passed by green meadows, clear, bubbling streams weaving among smooth rocks, and small copses of trees with cows and sheep resting in their shade. The sky was an endless reach of blue, the day already feeling like summertime, and Mulder found himself wishing he'd been able to arrange a journey something more like this with Scully when they'd arrived in Marlborough. 

We're always running, Scully had said to him back in DC. Why don't you ever just stand still? 

Maybe, Mulder thought, starting their first day in England without his big hurry to cram it with activity would also have changed their course, circumventing the problems that now prevailed –  the two of them lost in time, knowing that sharing their story would shatter anyone's faith in their sanity. 

The carriage creaked slightly as Farley turned up a long drive, planted out with birch trees standing like tall sentries all the way along both sides. The grand house at the other end was made much less imposing than Braceley by the way it had all but merged into the gardens around it, the entire facade grown over with ivy and climbing roses. Scully liked the look of it immediately. 

Farley offered her his hand as she stepped down from the carriage, and the four of them went to the front door, quickly to be ushered along to the drawing room by the Sinclairs’ butler. Like the Beaumonts’ home, it was richly decorated, with deep blue tones repeated in the furniture, curtains and carpet, the walls striped in cobalt, bronze and white. Once again, the agents found themselves in a world of such finery it felt like an alien landscape. 

Perched on the edge of a luxurious couch, Mulder caught Scully's eye. She flicked her eyes around the room, and then back to his, her meaning clear. How the hell did we ever wind up here? 

The butler appeared again, opening the drawing room door and letting in a little procession - a woman of about Mrs Beaumont's age with steel-grey hair, three dark-haired daughters around Helena's age or a little younger, and a son Mulder would have guessed to be in his mid twenties, dark-eyed and dark-haired like his sisters, but tanned where they were pale. 

The families were clearly good friends, and Mulder and Scully were briefly left aside as a happy reunion took place. 

"Sinclair! How well you look, you have truly flourished under the Italian sun," Mrs Beaumont cried, beaming up at the young gentleman. "You mustn't leave your poor mother so long again now, she needs you here as man of the house."

She turned to her guests. "I forget myself. May I present our visitors, some American friends Helena has lately made — Dr Mulder, and Miss Scully." 

"You are a doctor, sir? Oh, wonderful. I hope the Beaumonts will employ all of their persuasion to encourage you to remain in Ethelmere!" Mrs Sinclair said, smiling at Mulder, her expression sincere. 

"Have you never had a doctor living in the area?" Mulder asked. 

"We did, a Doctor Mervyns," Mrs Sinclair replied. "He went to open a new practice by the coast almost a year ago, and we have sought a replacement for him ever since. Some of us are lucky enough to be able to travel when in need of medical treatment, but for the working people of the area, it's very hard indeed."

Scully thought of Helena's story about losing Frederick just the previous winter. Had her brother died only for lack of a doctor nearby? 

"I hope the position will be filled soon," she told Mrs Sinclair sympathetically. 

"We all do," Mrs Sinclair replied, giving Mulder another hopeful smile. 

The party settled themselves upon chairs and couches, and Helena fell into conversation with the younger Sinclairs, while Mulder listened in amusement as Scully took a thorough grilling from the senior women. 

What were the current fashions in America, and how long had her short hair been in vogue? What was the society of Okobogee like? How did people like to decorate their houses there? 

And were there really so many women like herself, choosing to stave off suitors and childbearing in favour of working like men?

Seeing a distinctly deer-in-headlights expression taking hold on his partner's face, Mulder came to her rescue. "I'm afraid Miss Scully is not best placed to answer your questions," he said regretfully. "As my assistant, she must work long hours, travel, and visit remote places at times. I have always stipulated that the work must take priority over any social inclinations."

"Oh, quite," Mrs Sinclair said respectfully, though looking utterly bewildered at the thought. "It's.... quite a life you have chosen for yourself, Miss Scully." 

Scully was spared further comment by the youngest of the Sinclair daughters bursting into the conversation. "Mama! Helena says that there is to be a ball at Braceley on the eighth! Please say we may all go! Please!" 

"Kindly calm yourself at once, Caroline," Mrs Sinclair said crossly. "Naturally we will be going, Mrs Beaumont wrote me about it some time ago." Unable to keep her stern demeanour in place, she grinned, dimples appearing in her cheeks. "I was just waiting for your new dresses to arrive so I could surprise you." 

Caroline let out a happy shriek, and her mother's dimples vanished. "Caroline!"  she seethed. 

Helena and her mother were laughing. "I knew your girls could be relied upon for enthusiasm," Mrs Beaumont told their hostess, who was still scowling at her daughter. 

“We will be happy to attend, if Caroline can manage to keep herself in order,” Mrs Sinclair said, and Caroline dropped meekly to the couch, her eyes shining.

The conversation continued over tea, scones and sandwiches brought in by two maids, and then on through a stroll around the Sinclairs’ garden. It was much less manicured than the Beaumonts’ prim grounds, with a charming almost-wildness. After her initial discomfort at being interviewed by the two older women about a life in Okobogee that didn’t exist, Scully found herself beginning to relax as she and Mulder wandered with the friendly Sinclairs. 

“It’s weird how easy it is to almost forget where we are, and what’s happened to us,” she murmured to Mulder as they finally followed Helena and her mother back to their carriage. “This time yesterday I’d never have believed we’d have gone out socialising, had a tea party, and half-planned a visit to Italy after hearing all about it from Sinclair.”

“I know,” Mulder agreed. “I guess if we were fully able to take it all in, you and I would be catatonic by now. Better that we just flow with it.” 

His polite questions to the Sinclairs about mysterious ancient sites in their neighbourhood had borne no fruit. But it was hard to feel disappointed when he’d seen Scully so at ease and even happy among them, the glassy-eyed fright that had been fixed on her face for much of the previous day no longer in evidence.

Mulder gave her his hand as she stepped up into the carriage, and Scully felt him squeeze her fingers gently. She squeezed back, guessing they were sharing the same thought.

We’re together, and we’re ok, and for now, all we can do is carry on.

The thought of what things could be like for her now if Mulder hadn’t managed to grab onto her hand in the alcove at Highglade House sent shadowy spines into Scully’s mind. 

Despite the warmth of the carriage, she shuddered. 

Chapter Text

Scully woke the next morning to a slight noise in her room, and opened her eyes to find a maid she hadn't seen before quietly setting out a tin basin, ewer and towel for her on the dresser.

"Good morning," she greeted the maid awkwardly, feeling uncomfortable at the thought of anyone having to wait on her.

"Morning, miss. I'm just done here. All ready for you now." The smiling young woman had a cloud of loose brown ringlets, bright hazel eyes — and an Irish accent.

"Are you Róisín?" Scully asked her, a sudden flash of hope at the prospect of a lead bringing her instantly fully awake. 

"I am indeed, miss," the maid said politely. 

"I've been hoping we would meet," Scully told her, sitting up in her bed. 

Reaching to open the curtains and let in a blaze of sunlight, Róisín gave her a curious look. “Is there something you need of me, miss?”

Scully got up to slip into her robe, and sat on the edge of her bed. She hesitated a moment. She and Mulder had been treading carefully, trying to fit in at Braceley as best they could.  

But now she was going to have to take a risk.

"Are you very busy just at the moment?” she asked Róisín. “I’d really like to speak with you, if you have time.”

Róisín stared at her, plainly not used to having guests of the house take into account how busy she might be before asking things of her. “I am here to offer any help you may need, miss,” she began cautiously.

“I’m not here to put you to any trouble, Róisín — I’m just a visitor. Please, call me Dana, if you’d like.” Scully said, wanting to put the maid at ease. She gestured to the chair at the foot of her bed. “Would you like to sit down?”

Róisín was looking increasingly uncertain, but she sat down stiffly, clasping her hands in her lap.

“This is going to sound strange,” Scully said, deciding to get straight to the point. “But I need to know if there’s anything you can tell me, anything at all, about the woods not too far from here. Highglade.”

Róisín relaxed a little, seeming to realise she wasn’t about to get into trouble. “Highglade? Are you thinking of somewhere to go walking, miss?”

“No. I’m asking you because...Miss Beaumont told me you didn’t want to go into those woods when you visited there with her last summer. She said you were afraid.”

Róisín gave her a measuring look, and Scully hastened to reassure her. “I am not going to tell anyone what you tell me. And maybe you’d be so kind as to do the same for me. Please trust me. I really do need your help.”

“Well, I wouldn’t be telling you anything others here don’t already know,” the maid said hesitantly. “I get…feelings. About people, places. Sometimes things.”

“And you had a feeling about Highglade?” Scully prompted.

“In Ireland, where I’m from, we speak of ‘thin places’,” Róisín said. “Places where there’s a crossing between the here, and the hereafter.” She looked directly into Scully’s eyes, and Scully felt a strange little tingle run over her skin. “A door into the spirit world, miss. It’s not wise to spend time in places like that.”

“How do you know where they are, these thin places?” Scully asked.

“I can feel them. Feel something like…like a cold breeze. But it’s not just cold. It’s as though there’s something lost in it, something that’s searching. Wanting to pull you in and take you with it.” She paused, her face troubled. “That’s what I felt at Highglade, and that’s why I wouldn’t set foot in those woods.”

Scully steeled herself to take a leap of faith, hoping the young woman wouldn’t share her story with the rest of the staff, and make the entire household think she was mad. “Róisín, I experienced something incredibly strange at Highglade too. I was travelling, very far from here, with Miss Beaumont’s other guest, Mr Mulder. And we both felt something pulling on us, just as you say.” 

The memory of the disorientation and confusion she had felt, waking up with the earth at her back and the sky overhead, suddenly seemed very sharp. “I don’t know what happened, exactly,” she said. “But we found ourselves in a clearing, in some unknown woods…at the centre of a stone spiral marked out on the ground.”

Róisín’s face had gone white, but Scully pressed on. “I don’t know if these thin places you mention are all the same. Maybe some do border with the, uh, hereafter. But the one at Highglade brought us here from…somewhere else. And we have to find our way back through.”

“I knew those woods were cursed,” Róisín spat, springing to her feet in horror. “I don’t want to hear any more. I don’t even know what kind of…of creature you may be, coming here from that place!”

”Róisín, please!” Scully said desperately, leaping up to stop the frightened maid running for the door. “You told me you get feelings about people.” She grabbed hold of the woman’s hands. “Please. Tell me what you feel now, about me.”

Róisín struggled against her at first, but then stilled. Scully felt the tingling sensation prickle over her once again as the maid looked intently into her face. Slowly, after a long moment, Róisín relaxed, letting out a sigh.  

She took a step back as Scully released her hands.

“So?” Scully asked gently, trying to lighten the tension with a little smile. “Not a creature after all, I hope?”

“No,” Róisín confessed, looking slightly sheepish. “What I felt in you was…goodness, Dana, and strength,” she went on, using Scully’s name for the first time. “And I’m sorry for my words. But there is a powerful aversion in me to any force not of this world, and your story is every kind of thing I most fear.”

“I understand,” Scully said. “It has been beyond frightening for me too. And I’m afraid to upset you by saying too much more. But Róisín, please believe me - to return to where we belong, I know my friend and I will have to pass through Highglade again. And you are the only person who might be able to help us find out how.”

Róisín sighed. “The very idea is so wrong to me,” she confessed, shaking her head. “I ask that you allow me to think upon it.”

“All I’m asking is for you to tell us anything you know about places like Highglade, nothing more,” Scully pushed. “Is there somewhere we could speak alone, with my friend Mulder? He’s just as worried as I am about how we can get back to where we should be.”

“I can serve the two of you when you come down for breakfast,” Róisín suggested, her voice full of reluctance. “Miss Beaumont has eaten already, and is in the library with her mother.”

“We’ll be right down,” Scully promised, feeling somewhat guilty that their hosts had already risen and begun their day while she and Mulder languished in their beds.

Róisín nodded, saying no more.

As soon as she had left the room, Scully flung on a pale mint-coloured dress, first impatiently tugging the various under-layers into place, and burst out into the hall. She hurried up to Mulder’s door, and knocked briskly.

“One moment,” she heard him call. He opened the door, and Scully was met with the image she was still getting used to - the Mulder of a bygone era. In soft, grey-green breeches that clung around his hips and thighs, and an untucked, white cotton shirt that opened to partway down his chest, he stood before her, his hair fluffed up from sleep, the sheen of water still on his cheeks from where he’d splashed himself awake in the basin.

“Uh…hi,” Scully said, feeling slightly breathless. “Can you get ready right away? I need to talk to you.”

“Yeah, I’ll be right with you,” Mulder said. He closed the door over, finished making himself presentable enough to be seen by the rest of the household, then came out to join Scully in the hall. 

“I just met Róisín,” Scully said. She gave Mulder a rapid-fire briefing on everything Róisín had said, careful to keep her voice to an undertone as they descended through the house. 

“She’s going to bring us breakfast this morning,” Scully finished. “Mulder, we need to get her onside. She’s scared to death of everything to do with spirits and whatever the hell is going on up at Highglade. So don’t go off on one of your…spiels.”

Mulder turned to give Scully a little salute as they reached the dining room. “No spiels,” he promised, opening the door for her. He felt anticipation like a sudden charge in the air as they sat down.

The door leading to the kitchen passage swung open, and Róisín walked in, carrying a covered tray. She placed it on the table, stepped back and clasped her hands in front of her, looking nervously from Scully to Mulder.

“This is my friend Mulder. Mulder, this is Róisín,” Scully said. She lifted the lid and took some eggs, ham and bread from the tray, all the while anxious that the young maid could have decided she didn’t want to pursue the conversation about Highglade any longer.

Róisín was clearly on edge. She gave a worried glance over her shoulder towards the door behind her. “They’re all saying you’re a doctor, Mr Mulder. That Mr Beaumont is already strengthening under your care, and the house is indebted to you. I don’t want anything but to make my living here. I don’t dare have it reach Miss Beaumont’s ears that I was telling you fairy stories about Highglade or anything else.”

“Are they fairy stories, Róisín?” Mulder asked gently, accepting the plate of food Scully passed to him. “Or is what you told Miss Scully all true?”

“Of course it’s true,” Róisín said at once, a little fire coming into her eyes. “I am no liar.”

“Then I hope you can forgive me when I tell you that I am,” Mulder said, following his instinct that the way to build trust with Róisín was to take her into confidence. “I am no doctor. I have let everyone in this house believe that I am, but in truth, Miss Scully is the doctor. Where we come from, this is nothing unusual, but here, we have had to allow ourselves a little pretense to appease custom.” 

He watched Róisín’s face, hoping the spark of trust he sensed in her would kindle. “All we really want though, is to find our way home, and let everyone’s lives return to normal.”

Róisín’s eyes flicked between them. “You are the doctor?” she asked Scully, forgetting to be polite in her curiosity.

Scully nodded, hoping they were doing the right thing in trusting the young maid with their secrets. “Yes. And while I am sure there must be other women with medical knowledge in this ti…in this country, it seems it is unheard of where we find ourselves now. So Mulder is acting as my…” she looked at him across the table, her lips twitching. She suddenly wanted to tease him, but thought better of it for the moment. “Proxy.”

“‘Puppet’ is probably the word the good doctor feels best fits the situation,” Mulder told Róisín, narrowing his eyes at Scully even as he grinned.

Watching their back and forth, Róisín shook her head in bemusement. “The two of you are the strangest guests we have ever seen at Braceley,” she said. “How does it fall to me to be the one getting mixed up with you?”

“Does that mean you’ve decided to help us?” Scully asked. “We really do need to learn anything you can tell us about the thin places you told me of — places like Highglade.”

“I must have taken leave of my senses,” Róisín sighed. She looked at Scully thoughtfully, and Scully remembered the moment they had shared upstairs, when Róisín had held her hands and told her she sensed the good in her. “But…I wouldn’t see you stranded here. If there’s some way I can help you, then yes. I will try.”

Chapter Text

“I’ve told you much of what I know already,” Róisín said hesitantly, with another glance towards the kitchen passage door. “But it came to me that I should ask you this. When did you arrive here, exactly?”

“May the first,” Mulder told her. 

“May Day. I might have guessed as much. A very special day in the calendars kept by the ancients,” Róisín said knowingly. “In Ireland it’s called Bealtaine. A festival long celebrated with fire and feasts and ritual. Here in England, they keep old traditions on that day too.”

Mulder nodded, remembering the way the first rays of the May dawn were heralded into the world with reverent choir-song at Oxford. His mind’s eye recalled the silent thousands he’d seen thronged across Magdalen Bridge, watching, listening. 

“The place we arrived at in the woods looked like a ritual site. There was a stone spiral marked on the ground,” he said. “Do you think people may carry out old rituals there, even now? Could someone have been doing some kind of ceremony that made the way open from...from other places?”

He had been about to say “other times.”

“It is possible,” Róisín said. “There are many that keep the traditions, even today. We’re out in the country here, people live close to the earth. But I can’t say I’ve ever heard talk of this kind of ritual, Mr Mulder.” 

She paused. “Places like Highglade have their own kind of power that is nothing invoked by man or woman. That spiral you spoke of exists because the wise people of old perceived what was already there, and they put a marker on it. It’s the Wheel of the Year, the pattern of seasons and stars and the light shifting to darkness that brings these natural energies into their power.”

“So the festivals you mentioned, days like May Day, those are the times these kind of energies are strongest?” Scully asked, barely believing the words she heard herself say. Just starting my new career path from doctor to druid, she thought.

She could tell by Mulder’s expression that he was thoroughly enjoying the novelty of Dana Scully asking how to use arcane forces of nature to find a path through time.

Before the maid could answer, the door to the hall swung open and Helena entered. “Oh, here you are!” she said. “I see you have met our Róisín, as you’d hoped.”

“She’s been taking extremely good care of us,” Mulder said, his praise bringing a little blush to Róisín’s cheeks. 

“We couldn’t do without her,” Helena said, giving the young woman a warm smile. “Have you both finished? Mama and I wondered if you might join us in the library. She wants to tell you more about her plans for the ball.”

“We’ll come and join you now,” Scully said. As Helena turned back towards the hallway, she, Mulder and Róisín all shared a conspiratorial look. “Thank you for everything, Róisín,” Scully said, putting an extra emphasis on everything.

The library was a calm oasis in the back wing of the house. It had a high, wide, diamond-pane window in the centre of the left-hand wall, letting sunshine stream into the room. There was a cushioned seat running right along the wall under the window, covered in jade velvet. A round table covered with a long white linen tablecloth stood nearby, a few books strewn over it. Mrs Beaumont was seated there, her book lying neglected upon her lap. A dainty pair of spectacles on her nose caught the light as she looked distractedly out the window.

Opposite the door, a smaller window brightened the other side of the library, the desk below it covered in pages of notes, scattered quills and an inkpot. The walls were lined from top to bottom with bookshelves, filled with leather-bound books in crimson, green, blue and brown. Their gold-embossed spines glimmered faintly in the sunlight.

Mulder and Scully went to sit at the table, Helena sitting down beside them. Mulder felt a little tense. Were they about to hear that the household would be too busy with ball preparations to have them stay on as guests?

Mrs Beaumont smiled at them. “I hope you both slept well?” she asked.

“Very well, thank you,” Mulder said. He noticed Scully was working the edge of the tablecloth through her fingers, and guessed that she, too, was wondering if their luck was about to run out at Braceley.

“We are going to hold a ball here at Braceley in only a matter of days, as you know,” Mrs Beaumont began. “Helena told me that you were travelling with companions when she met you, and I am wondering if you would wish to invite them to join us for the occasion? Are they staying nearby?”

Keeping a cool exterior, Mulder looked calmly to Helena, who wore a startled, tight-lipped smile. The little fib she had told her mother to avoid questioning had blown up in the face of the older woman’s kind interest in making her guests welcome, and her wish to meet the rest of their party.

“In truth, the companions we were travelling with are known to us through our field of work,” Scully told Mrs Beaumont. “It has already been such a welcome rest for myself and Dr Mulder, visiting Braceley, and having the chance for conversation unrelated to patients and procedures.” 

She glanced at Mulder as if for confirmation. “Your offer and invitation is extremely kind, but I hope you wouldn’t consider it impolite of us to decline? I can’t help but think the moment we rejoin our group, our holiday will feel as though it is ending,” she said. 

Mrs Beaumont was looking at Scully in sympathy. “But of course you should rest, and enjoy yourselves,” she said. “And I do hope that Dr Mulder,” she shot Mulder a somewhat sharp look, “will consider how you may be permitted more time to take your rest, and attend your social engagements, after seeing here how pleasantly you might choose to pass your days.”

Scully dipped her head, and Mulder saw how she was fighting to keep the smile off her face. He was a little stung to realise how closely Mrs Beaumont’s words echoed the sentiment Scully had been expressing to him the morning before they had flown to London - that he had her running around the place, with no time to herself. And here they were, stuck in the wrong century, when all Scully had wanted for her weekend was to be able to take a bath.

He went to give her an apologetic look, but couldn’t catch her eye.

The library door opened, and a maid popped her head into the room. “Sorry to disturb you, my lady. Mr Beaumont is up, and he wondered if you would go up to him.”

“Up out of bed?” Mrs Beaumont asked, her face lighting, and the maid smiled. “Up out of bed, my lady.”

Helena was already on her feet. “I’ll come with you, Mama,” she said.

“Please let us know if Mr Beaumont needs any kind of help,” Mulder called as the women left the room.

Helena closed the door behind them, and the agents turned to each other with hopeful faces, finally free to discuss their conversation with Róisín.

“So it wasn’t just some freak anomaly, how we got here,” Scully said. “People have known that these places, these rifts exist for centuries. They’ve built little sites to enshrine them, like the glade in the woods.”

”You may recall that us being on an ancient ritual site was the first thing I pointed out when we arrived,” Mulder said dryly. “But I’m glad you found Róisín the more credible source.”

Scully tsked at him impatiently. “The point is, if it is some kind of gateway, we really might be able to pass back through it. We need to find out more about those ritual days she mentioned. It sounds like the key is being there at the right time.”

Mulder stood up, crossing to the bookshelves. He skimmed along the spines of the densely packed leather volumes, pulling out one here, one there, as he passed.

”Let’s start with these,” he said, dumping them on the table.

Scully reached out to split the books into a smaller pile for each of them. “Old Moore’s Almanac?” she asked, picking up the first of her pile. “Mulder, this is for gardeners.”

“You’d be amazed what’s in those things,” Mulder said. “Folklore and moon phases and all kinds. It’s been running for over two centuries. By our time, that is.”

He was busy scouring the pages of a heavy green tome. “This is all about the history of the area,” he told Scully. “Listen, ‘Festivals, Fêtes and Celebration Days’. We’ve got religious ones…ok…then days to honour the monarch…ah, here we go. ‘Pagan and Celtic Briton’.” He leaned over the page, peering at the columns of small print. “There’s Imbolc in February…then Bealtaine, that’s the one Róisín said.” 

Mulder looked at Scully, his eyes glowing. “I wonder how many unsolved mysteries and disappearances through the years could be explained by what was happening down at the local glade or standing stone or whatever, on these days. The hidden alcove you found in Highglade House must have been built dead centre on that clearing we landed in.”

“But Highglade was a family home! People lived there!” Scully protested. “There would have been people disappearing from the alcove all the time — or at the very least every May Day!” 

She thought back to Rodney’s story about the prior owner of Highglade House. The man who had spoken of a cursed house and a vanished wife, no one believing him. He must have seen her fade into nothing with his own eyes, and closed up the alcove out of pure terror.

“We know absolutely nothing about how this works,” Mulder reminded her. “Maybe, as Róisín said, these thin places really are spirit-thresholds. There may only be rare circumstances where they are active enough or strong enough for humans to pass through. At certain moments of a certain lunar cycle, let’s say. Or on the old ritual dates, but only every hundredth year. The scope for permutations is endless.”

“So when’s the next of these sacred festivals?” Scully asked, prodding the book Mulder had open. She was happy to leave speculation about the spirit realm to her partner. Despite the nature of the time travel they had experienced, Einstein’s realm of possibility was still far closer to her comfort zone. 

Mulder ran his fingertip slowly down the page. “The Midsummer solstice. Also called Litha, in the pagan calendar.” He grimaced. “It’s on the twenty-first of June.”

“June?” Scully hissed. “Mulder, that’s weeks away!”

Mulder raised his shoulders, feeling somewhat under fire. “Ok, I didn’t choose it!”

Scully looked around the quiet library, and out the window to the peaceful grounds beyond, trying to imagine what possible ruse they could come up with to warrant staying on so long. Not to mention what to do with all that time. 

The thought of being stuck in a holding pattern for nearly two months, prevailing entirely upon the good nature of their hostess all the while, filled her with a mixture of embarrassment and panic. 

“We can’t wait until then. We’ll go back and try now,” she decided. “Or as soon as possible. Tonight.”

“Back to Highglade? Scully, for a start, we can’t go there by dark. We’d get totally lost in those woods. And say we go all that way, and the…rift, or whatever it is, is closed?”

“Do you think Róisín would be able to tell, if it was open or not?” Scully said, her voice faltering. The insanity of the situation felt like it was crushing her.

“Even if she could, she made it pretty clear to you that she isn’t going near Highglade for any reason,” Mulder said.

Scully dropped her face into her hands.

Scooting his chair closer, Mulder threw a glance at the library door to make sure they were still alone, then put his arm around Scully’s shoulders. “Hey, we’ll be ok. We’re going to find a way to get through this, Scully.” 

He felt her soften as she let out a sigh. Turning towards him, she slipped an arm around his ribs, and leaned her head in against his chest. Knowing she was genuinely upset, and doing her best not to show it, Mulder pulled her in close. He lifted his hand to gently smooth her hair, wishing he had any kind of reassurance to offer her.

“I’m just…completely overwhelmed, Mulder,” Scully said hopelessly. “I can’t make sense of any of this. I want to be back in our time, looking at your crop circles. Even touring them in a UFO if we have to.” She lifted her head to give him a wan smile. “I would honestly have picked that as the more likely scenario to find myself in with you, over doing the goddamn time warp.” 

“I’m still getting my head around it too, Scully. But I do think that if we were able to come through, then there has to be some way we can get back,” Mulder said, letting his hand come to rest on her shoulder. 

“I want to believe that as much as you do,” she whispered. “But what if we can’t?”

There was nothing he could say to comfort her, with no options available but to keep trying, and keep hoping.

“Ok. Tonight, then,” Mulder said. “We’ll go back to the glade tonight.”