Chapter Text
The wolf wakes up in a dark, confined space, its limbs aching, eyes wildly casting about the peculiar items surrounding it. It tries to stand, and finds it nearly impossible, as though it never used its legs before. The wolf flails, spooked by the unknown, by its own body betraying it. Somewhere in its hind brain it knows that this place should be familiar to it, but the scents are too disorienting. It can detect the smell of wood, but there are no trees. It catches a whiff of steel, which puts it in mind of traps and rifles.
The wolf doesn't know where it is, and it is afraid. The wolf, who had not existed before tonight, yet existed always, whines in fear and confusion. It remembers the rush of blood in its ears as it chased prey, the taste of fresh meat on its tongue. It used to run free with its pack, the wind ruffling their fur, moonlight guiding them. Now, it is alone, with no recollection of how it came to be here. Of how it came to Be.
But… there! The wolf feels a sting of cold wind. It moves on unsteady legs to the source of it, eager to escape this strange prison, to hunt down its jailors and tear them to pieces, but all its hopes are in vain. It’s trapped here. It can smell the damp night air, can see the moon’s pale face peeking out of the clouds to pass its silent judgement. It cannot, however, find a way out. Eager to tell the moon about all of its misfortunes, the wolf howls.
***
Dana Scully wakes up on the floor of her bedroom, copper hair tangled, not wearing a stitch of clothing. She looks around, shaking off the remains of her dreams – something about being trapped – and tries to get her bearings. Perplexed, she takes in the mess that is her usually neat apartment. Panic grows in her throat as she tries to remember last night's events and finds that she can not. She does recall getting home from work, but after that it’s a complete and total blank. Did she get drugged? Robbed? Were the burglars not expecting to find her at home, so they knocked her out? Her hand flies to the back of her head, expecting to find a bump or a wound, anything to explain this gap in her memory. There’s nothing of the sort, nor does she experience double vision or nausea. So, probably no concussion then. She'll have to run a tox screen and a rape kit to get to the bottom of it, as much as she hates the thought. It's a hard pill to swallow: all her self-defense training and sharp-shooting skills amounted to nothing in the face of someone – or something, that wouldn't be out of the question – catching her off-guard in her own home. Wrapping herself in a fluffy white bathrobe, Scully sighs and starts surveying the damage.
She finds her gun on the bedside table, still in its holster. A lamp lies on its side like a fallen soldier, pieces of broken glass scattered across the floor. Also on the floor: a chair with a broken leg, her laptop computer (they didn't even take the laptop?), her clothes – mere rags now. Her cross necklace rests beside them, glinting in the pale October sun, its delicate chain torn. Curiously, her bed is exempt from the surrounding chaos. The covers are pulled neatly on top of it, just like she left them yesterday morning. The latest issue of JAMA rests on the pillow, the bright abstract painting of a chess player on the cover standing out against the blue cotton. Her antique dresser creaks unhappily when she pulls open the top left drawer, revealing her jewelry box, all of its contents still in place.
Scully frowns: were they looking for something specific? She checks her bag; the wallet is still there, so is the money and the credit card. In a haze, she moves to the front door, already knowing what she’s about to see. Sure enough, the door is locked and chained. Similarly, the windows are locked (which doesn’t prevent them from letting in the morning chill, she notes unhappily), and the vents – yes, she makes sure to check those too – are bolted in place.
“Well, fuck,” she mutters, confounded. She keeps her language in check at work and around her friends who dutifully go to Mass every Sunday, but it’s nice to remember that she is, after all, a sailor’s daughter.
Resigned, Scully pads to the bathroom. If she did indeed get violated, the perpetrator was a ghost, and those don’t generally leave any traces of their DNA. This job, she thinks tiredly, is turning her into some new age freak. Mulder would be proud of her mind opening to new possibilities. She takes a glimpse of herself in the mirror before stepping into the shower. Her reflection stares back at her with bloodshot eyes, as though she didn’t sleep a wink last night.
“What happened to you?” She asks her reflection, who wants to know the same thing.
Under a stream of lukewarm water, she mulls over the facts available to her. One: she can remember getting home, alone and fully sober. Two: nobody could get in or out. Three: there are no signs of physical assault. Her liver, as far as she can tell, is still intact. The only marks on her body are the four pale pink lines on her shoulder: a scratch that she got a month or so ago, almost fully healed. Conclusion: she needs to call Mulder. His theories may be out there, but this is, as much as she’s loath to admit, not exactly the kind of situation that she can science her way out of. She doesn’t let herself dwell on thinking of Mulder in the shower. Her thoughts, she supposes, just naturally gravitated towards the only person who might help her understand what’s going on. He might help you wash your back, too, replies the sarcastic voice in her head. Shut up, Scully tells it, and reaches for a towel.
***
“I’m flattered that your first call was to me and not 911,” Mulder says, examining the scene. He’d agreed to come over immediately when she asked, uttering no complaints about it being 7 AM on a Saturday.
Scully rolls her eyes.
“What’s my emergency? Well, you see, I woke up naked on the floor of my apartment with no memory of last night, my bedroom is messy, but nothing was stolen. Oh, and the door was locked from the inside. Please send in your best officers to arrest this devious specter.”
“You’re right, invisible assailants are more my speciality,” he smiles, but not in the mocking way that her friends from the academy would.
“So what are your theories, o invisible assailant expert?”
Mulder crouches on the floor, peering under her bed.
“Well, many alien abductees report having been taken from their homes, and later returned with no memory of what had occurred while they were missing,” he says, having found no monsters. He gets up and moves to her closet, as if hoping to find some little grey men there.
“Hmmm, and how do they know they were abducted if they can’t remember anything?” She prods, grinning despite herself, her panic subsiding a little. She can tell Mulder genuinely attempts to be helpful. He’s taking her seriously, even though she doesn’t always extend the same courtesy to him.
“Their recollection of the events comes back gradually within a few days or months, or sometimes with the help of hypnotherapy. Remember Dr Werber?”
“Yes, Mulder, I remember.” She didn’t find the hypnotherapist’s session with Billy Miles as enlightening as Mulder did. What she found quite illuminating was Mulder looking at her through the one-way mirror as if he could truly see her, sense her in some special muldery way.
“But don’t you think if there were… extraterrestrials here, the sky above my building would be crawling with unmarked helicopters? Wouldn’t you be the first to hear about a UFO hovering above Georgetown?”
“Maybe…” he says distractedly, his lanky form hunched over the windowsill. “Scully, do you own a dog I don’t know about?”
“A… dog?” she frowns. “What are you talking about, Mulder?”
“A large one, by the looks of it. See here?” He guides her to the window with a gentle touch on the small of her back. “When I was a kid, we had a family dog, a massive newfoundland named Rocky. So Rocky, when he wanted to go outside, would stand on his hind legs and try to dig his way out of the front door. He’d leave scratches like these.”
The windowsill is indeed covered in what appears to be claw marks, which she somehow overlooked in her panicked state.
“So what, I got attacked by some… ghost dog, and instead of biting my head off, it scratched my window?”
“Well, there are some urban legends mentioning phantom hounds, but they don’t usually attack people in their homes. Generally, they’re said to appear in the woods or graveyards. They’re more of an ill omen than a harmful presence.”
“This is gonna be an ill omen for my landlord for sure,” she mutters glumly, surveying the damage.
“You sure you aren’t hurt, Scully? What’s this on your shoulder?”
He carefully pries open the blue flannel shirt she’d thrown over her white tank top, revealing the barely-there cuts.
“That’s nothing, it’s from that case last month, with the, uh, with the wild animal attacks,” she replies, hastily buttoning up.
“Did he bite you?” he asks, concern wrinkling his forehead.
“He, Mulder? There was a mountain lion. It just grazed me, nothing serious. I didn’t even need stitches.”
“It wasn't a mountain lion, Scully, I don't know why you're being obtuse. Why didn't you tell me about this?”
She crosses her arms defensively, glaring up at him.
“Do I need to report to you about every scratch and bruise, Mulder? Why are you suddenly so interested in this?”
“Because, Scully, Lyle Parker experienced the same thing you did: he woke up with no clothes on and no recollection of the night before – that night, if you recall, was also a full moon – as well as no memories of mauling his father to death.”
“Well, thankfully my father is in no danger of getting mauled,” she bristles, turning away.
A long, awkward pause stretches between them. Scully heads to the kitchen, Mulder silently following her like a second shadow. She pours herself a glass of water, pointedly ignoring his presence. Her second shadow stands a hair’s breadth away from her, smelling of rain and aftershave.
“I’m sorry, Scully, I really am, but you wanted me to help you find out what happened, and this is exactly what I did,” Mulder says quietly, just before the silence could turn deafening. “I’m not going to sugarcoat the truth for you.”
“The truth?” She repeats, setting the glass down with more force than necessary. “Where’s your proof then? Besides some marks on my windowsill, which could be anything. Wooden sills tend to absorb water which causes them to crack, you know.”
“Oh sure, and how often do they crack overnight, forming a bunch of long straight lines? Come on, Scully, you sound even weirder than I do.”
She’s pacing the kitchen like – well, like a caged animal. She can’t say what irritates her more: Mulder’s ridiculous accusations, or the fact that she can’t come up with any reasonable explanation.
“What do you want me to say, Mulder, that I’m ready to abandon all my scientific principles for… what? A folk tale?”
“Scully, we both saw-”
“I saw nothing!” She exclaims, forgetting all about trying to be more open-minded. “I was in a dark room when something attacked me, then it got spooked by the gunshots and ran away.”
Mulder sighs, leaning against the counter.
“Alright, then how do you explain your thrashed bedroom?”
“Maybe I was sleepwalking.”
“Uh-huh, and maybe you glued on some press-on nails and tested them on that sill there while you were at it.”
Scully buries her face in her hands with an exasperated groan.
“Let’s just… put this X-file in the “unsolved” folder for now, shall we? I don’t want to argue with you.”
“Oh, I thought arguing with me was your favorite pastime,” he fake-pouts, and she laughs.
“Not before I had my coffee.”
“I’ll make sure to print that on a mug for you. Come on, let me treat you to some breakfast.”
She shrugs on her dark, wool coat suitable for an October morning, and watches Mulder put on his own, not much different from hers, except for the size. She likes their matching coats. In her mind, they represent a united front: fighting against the world’s injustice, carving the night with their flashlight beams. Or in this case, simply heading to a diner.
The crisp, fragrant air carries the memory of rain, and the ground has tangible evidence: puddles with the rotting corpses of fallen leaves. A golden oak leaf pirouettes on the wind before landing on her shoulder. Mulder picks it up, admiring it for a moment, and hands it to her, like a teenager shyly presenting his prom date with a humble rose.
“It suits you,” he says, gently tucking a strand of russet hair behind her ear.
She carries the leaf with her the rest of the way, caressing its soft leathery skin and tracing its delicate veins.