Archive of Our Own

“Hey, Scully, check this out.”

Mulder squats on the muddy bank of the Rappahannock River, fingers on the edge of a flattened expanse of grass. His partner glances at him from the doorway of the old stone warehouse that rises several stories above them, blocking the late-afternoon sun and the quiet rumble of downtown traffic. 

Scully is mid-conversation with the owner of the warehouse: a middle-aged man with enough Civil War trivia to fill a textbook—a textbook they had been subjected to as he led them through the bowels of the warehouse to the riverbank at its back. Mulder is not interested in the cannonballs embedded in the old building's facade, though; he’s here exclusively for what lies in its backyard. 

His partner raises her eyebrows at him—an expression he’s slowly beginning to catalogue as not one of disbelief, but interest. She’d left her suit jacket in the rental car earlier in the day, and now has the sleeves of her dress shirt rolled up to accommodate the summer heat. This Scully, slightly sweaty in the dappled sunlight with her forearms exposed and her curling hair pinned back, is a less-buttoned-down version of the one he’s accustomed to. Off her eyebrows, he launches into explanation.

“These tracks are an identical match to those that have been reported with other sightings of Chessie. The wide drag marks are consistent with a large, legless creature—larger than any ordinary wildlife native to the area.”

“‘Chessie,’ Mulder?” Scully’s expression begins toeing the line between interest and increasingly familiar exasperation.

Mulder smiles. This is why he saves the big guns until they’re out in the field. 

“Yeah, Chessie. The sea monster rumored to inhabit the Chesapeake Bay since the mid eighteen hundreds. Sightings have dramatically increased over the last 30 years, and she’s described as a big, snake-like reptile.” He taps his fingers in the damp grass. “Tell me this doesn’t make you think of a garden snake on steroids.”

She cuts her eyes to the warehouse owner and picks her way over to the bank next to Mulder. Squatting next to him, she says in a low voice, “Mulder, please tell me you did not bring me out here under the pretense of a missing persons investigation to go chasing sea monsters.” 

“Pretense who? I think the two are connected.”

“What, you think the kids were eaten by this… this local legend? There’s nothing to substantiate that, Mulder.”

“It would explain the blood at the site of disappearance. It would explain these tracks, which indicate the creature has some sort of, of land-based nest. And if she’s nesting, if she’s reproducing, that would explain the increase in sightings.” He looks up at her hopefully.

Scully shakes her head, gazing intently into the stamped-down trail that leads into the swollen, muddy waters. “This isn’t the size of a ‘garden snake on steroids.’ It’s the size of a kayak.” She looks at him pointedly. “Someone launched their boat here, Mulder, that’s all. Not to mention we’re something like 70 miles inland from the Bay.”

He meets her challenging stare, smothering the urge to smile lest she think he’s teasing her. In the handful of months they’ve been assigned together, not once has Scully dismissed him out of hand. She challenges his every theory; his every word, but not because she thinks he is stupid or crazy—he’s come to learn it’s in her nature to push back. She argues with him about aliens, about Jersey devils, about Chessie, like she has something to prove, and people don’t tend to think Mulder is worth proving themselves to. 

He gives in to the impulse to smile and stands, shoes squelching and squishing in the wet earth. Slimy mud is definitely soaking into his socks. “Then you won’t have any objections to checking out the local Heritage Center with me. They have records dating back hundreds of years, and we can see if Chessie has ever graced the waters of the Rappahannock before.” Mulder extends his hand to Scully, who takes it to rise and step onto drier ground. She sighs, dusting her hands off on her pants.

“No, Mulder, I don’t object to that. But the sheriff currently trawling the river for bodies might question the use of our time.”

They amble back towards the old stone warehouse, where Mr. Civil War Facts is waiting for them. “Well, if he finds the bodies, then the missing persons case is closed, and we can all go home,” Mulder replies easily. 

“Do you know how many teenagers drown in this river doing stupid things every year?” Scully counters as they begin to ascend the rickety wooden steps of the warehouse back up to street level. “Let’s look at those records at the Heritage Center. Tubing, kayaking, white water rafting… Mulder, not a summer season goes by without an accident.”

“Accidents, Scully, precisely. With witnesses and recoverable bodies. When’s the last time good police work failed to turn up a drowning victim? Thanks,” he adds to the warehouse owner as they exit onto the sidewalk. The man eyes him warily and closes the door between them. 

Scully gives Mulder a long-suffering stare, but says nothing. Out of earshot of interlopers, he’s noticed, she’s more likely to let an air of derision slip into her tone, although she never stoops to outright ridicule. She does not believe there is a sea monster, may not even believe that there was foul play of any sort in these disappearances. But she steps in line beside him as they head up William Street towards the museum that houses local records. 

There are not many people about on a weekday afternoon. Some kids ride their bikes towards the bridge that crosses the river, and a gaggle of men convene outside a pool hall, but Mulder and Scully otherwise have the street to themselves.

“Hey, Scully, look, they have a French restaurant. Wanna dine in style on the Bureau's dime?”

She glances up at him. “I’m not sure they’d appreciate that, Mulder. And I mean both the Bureau and the restaurant patrons forced to hear about Chessie the sea monster.”

She does that, he’s noticed. Rebukes his attempts at connection even when they’re meant in jest. In spite of himself, Mulder is beginning to trust her—she throws herself towards truth with the same vigor he does, and though they may start from opposing theories and orient towards contrasting explanations, he has no doubts as to her dedication. It makes him want to find a way around the high walls she has constructed around the softer parts of herself; the parts that aren’t no-nonsense, logic-driven stubbornness. He wants to know what else she’s dedicated to. There are glimpses, here and there, but she does not let them show at mere invitation.

Mulder hums in agreement. “Better not, then.”

Scully must take his following silence as constraint rather than contemplation, because she says, “Alright, tell me.”

“Tell you?”

She raises her eyebrows. “The history of Chessie? I never did get a slideshow.”

Mulder grins down at her, her pale face shining in the afternoon sun and turned towards his. He feels something embarrassingly akin to his stomach swooping. “You sure know the way to a guy’s heart, Scully.” She smiles, bumping her shoulder amicably against his arm. “So the increased sightings this century actually coincide with the opening of a nuclear power plant up in Maryland, so some people say this is some sort of native wildlife affected by radiation—how’s that for scientifically based? Get this, though—a few years ago, the actual US Fish and Wildlife Service used Chessie in a children’s coloring book to support environmental protection…”

A pleasant spring breeze pulls some wisps of Scully’s hair free, dancing across her vision as she squints up at the man in front of her. He’s the manager of the historical reenactors of colonial Williamsburg, and he’s currently rattling off lunch recommendations to herself and Mulder. 

He’s fairly cheery considering three of his employees have turned up dead in as many weeks.

“Yep, right at the end of the road, can’t miss it,” he’s saying as Mulder nods in confirmation. 

“Thanks, and we’ll follow up if we need anything else.” Mulder puts his hand on Scully’s elbow, and she lets him guide her back towards the main road. 

If it weren’t for the murders, it would be a pleasant trip, she thinks to herself. The main road is wide and paved with pebbles, the original colonial-era buildings still intact on either side. Actors in period-appropriate dress flit in and out of the tourist-y stores and restaurants, oblivious—or at least pretending to be—to the violence streaking through the town.

“Did you catch that, Scully?” Mulder says, lightly bumping into her to get her attention. “We’re going to an authentic colonial tavern for lunch.”

“Which part is authentic?” she teases, smiling up at him. “The fare or the hygiene?” 

He chuckles, the wind threatening to disrupt his carefully coiffed hair. It’s difficult not to be deliberately contrary when she can count on it to make him smile like that. The power to make him laugh is one she’s beginning to cherish.

They amble towards the end of the pedestrian area where the tavern is. A woman wearing a colonial-style dress, complete with bonnet and apron, gives a tour on the porch of an old apothecary. 

“Think you could do it? Live back then?” Mulder asks, watching her watch the woman explain the medicinal uses of different herbs.

Scully considers. “If I didn’t know any different, sure. But if I did? No running water, no aspirin? I think I’d go crazy.”

“You like your creature comforts,” Mulder supplies.

“And you don’t? I could name quite a few amenities you’d miss in the sixteen hundreds, Mulder.”

He ducks his head, but this only enables her to see his bashful grin better. “Careful, Scully, or I’ll see to it that you end up like that guy.” He points to a tourist posing for a photo in makeshift stocks.

Scully suppresses her own smile. For as much as she relishes in his delighted reactions to her teasing, she’s hesitant to show her hand with her reaction to his. Because she finds herself equally amused by his little jokes as he seems to be with hers, and if his profiler’s brain can peel back the amusement to see the molten core of genuine care that has rooted itself in her marrow—

Best not.

So she huffs a laugh and rolls her eyes, pretending not to notice the way he checks for her reaction. 

Mulder continues on pointing out particularly overzealous tourists and reenactors for her amusement, and Scully lets her mind follow that train of thought as they amble towards the restaurant. Barely a year assigned with him and she can’t imagine having anyone else as a partner—an agent whom she was supposed to discredit and move on from within a month, if Blevins and her other superiors are to be believed. What do they think now, reading field reports that challenge but never quite contradict Spooky Mulder? But her dedication is to the truth, and though Mulder’s first assumptions about a case often fall short of capturing the whole story, so do her own—so she refuses to dismiss him out of hand.

What has become dedication to Mulder himself—that is something else entirely. Their partnership has evolved so naturally over the last year, to the point where Scully is wary of the attachment she is developing to him. Attachment—in this line of work, for a woman, for her—is dangerous. And yet, she likes and values his work, his devotion to cases deemed too worthless or difficult to solve; likes his style, his single-minded dedication to finding answers; likes his presence next to her at crime scenes and diners and endless FBI meetings. Likes him. 

“This looks like the place,” Mulder says, tipping his chin towards a squat building coming up on their left and pulling Scully out of what is becoming a spiral. She inhales and nods, ducking under his arm as he pushes open the sticky wooden door to enter the dark and slightly dingy tavern. Scully tamps down the urge to wrinkle her nose.

They step forward to the counter together, where Mulder orders a Reuben and Scully a BLT, and before she even registers what she’s doing, she’s pulling out her card to pay for their meals. 

Her card, not the Bureau’s. 

Mortified even as she’s moving her arm to hand it to the oblivious cashier, Scully’s spiral begins anew. Why did she do that? They don’t pay for each other’s food. The bureau card is tucked in her wallet right next to hers.That’s an idea, she can just say she reached for the wrong one and make him pay her back. Oh, god, what’s going through his mind right now? He’s probably thinking that it’s unnecessary, bordering on inappropriate, because it is. He can probably read the inner workings of her mind right now as easily as he can a suspect’s. She takes a deep breath disguised as a sigh as they step over to the pick-up area.

Mulder nudges her foot with his. “You didn’t need to do that, Scully; they pay me, too, y’know.”

Damn him. “Well, you got the coffee this morning, so now we’re even,” she finds herself replying easily. A wash of relief—her tone sounds nonchalant, matter-of-fact, like it’s nothing.

But glancing up at Mulder, she finds him smiling softly like it’s not nothing. Like she bought his corned beef and rye out of fondness instead of obligation, which, Scully chides herself, she did. She clears her throat and avoids his gaze until their orders are called. 

Wanting to avoid the dim atmosphere of the tavern’s interior, Scully makes them get a table outside facing the pedestrian walk. The breeze has settled down enough to use a napkin effectively, and the open sky will make her feel less trapped.

They sit on rickety wrought-iron chairs and begin unwrapping their sandwiches. Scully carefully unfolds the paper around hers; Mulder tears right through his.

“So,” she says around a soggy tomato, “any theories?”

Mulder chews, idly watching a horse-drawn carriage clop down the road. “Starting to develop one, yeah. The manager of the reenactors, he, he said they’re not acting as generic colonial citizens, but as actual historical figures, right? I wanna hit the library after this.”

Scully raises her eyebrows, already sensing where this is going. “And why is that?”

“To see how they died.” He turns towards her, gaze intense. “The bizarre CODs are what brought us here—hanging, exposure, burns. I mean, how does someone die from hanging without being hanged? How is someone burned alive without any other trace of fire?”

“By having a killer who’s careful to dispose of evidence, Mulder,” says Scully, exasperation slipping into her tone. “You think, what, we’re gonna go to the library, and look up how these historical figures died, and—”

“And it’ll be the same cause of death as the victims.”

“And then what? We say, ‘Wow, what a coincidence,’ and go home? That doesn’t point us to a suspect. Someone is killing these people.”

“I know,” he acquiesces. “But it’s a start.”

Scully shakes her head, smiling in spite of herself. She should know by now that, though he might listen to reason on occasion, he never acts on it. “Alright. There’s a library on the campus, back the way we came. We’ll head over there when we’re done.”

“And when my theory solves the case, we can take off early and spend the rest of the day at the Busch Gardens we passed on the way in.” He grins around another mouthful of sandwich.

“Yeah, your sea legs on a roller coaster—that, I’d like to see,” Scully scoffs in response. He does that, she’s noticed—slips in these joking little invitations to spend time with her outside of work. They’re not serious, she knows, but she finds herself turning them down out of principle. What would he do if she said why, yes, Mulder, I would like to go to an amusement park with you? The image it conjures up is so ridiculous: Mulder standing in line for a ride he’d barely fit on, wearing shorts and eating cotton candy. She imagines him screaming going around a loop-the-loop and trying to orient himself with an upside-down park map. Would he try to convince her the Big Bad Wolf was based on a real cryptid? Would he insist on buying her a hot dog to make up for her earlier lapse in sanity?

“What’s so funny?”

Scully doesn’t bother bluffing, she can feel the smile on her face. “Just imagining you at Busch Gardens.”

Mulder balls up his sandwich paper and aims it for a trash can across the patio. Nothing but net. 

“C’mon, Scully, let’s go see how those poor colonial sons o’ bitches died.”

Scully pulls her trench coat more tightly around herself, but it does little against the bitter wind that’s beginning to rip across the rapidly darkening mountaintop. A few paces ahead of her, Mulder tips his head back to take in the sight they’d driven up the winding mountain road to behold. 

The Roanoke Star towers over them, a massive structure of interconnecting metal beams reaching towards the heavens. Unlit LED lights adorn its front, and at civil twilight, they’ll shine down over the city below, or so her partner says. Footpaths allow them to walk right up underneath it, and Mulder does, craning his neck to look up at the apex of the star from directly below.

Typically, Scully would not hesitate to voice her displeasure at jumping into a case as the sun is going down—the star will still be here in the morning, Mulder, she can practically hear herself say—and after a four hour drive, no less. But any reluctance she displays now will feel too akin to weakness, and Mulder would try to convince her to step away from the case out of some combination of misplaced worry and guilt. 

So she bites her tongue as she steps up behind him, saying only, “Well?”

“This is the place, Scully. This is where that professor disappeared, where the good townsfolk down below have been seeing strange lights.”

Scully tries to sigh wearily, but the breath she sucks in is so icy it takes away the satisfaction. This is not one of their strongest cases. Mulder dances around the perimeter of the star, as if expecting to see a mysterious flash before his very eyes.

“Mulder, come on. Flashes of light seen above this… this behemoth metal monstrosity? Did you ever think maybe the good townsfolk are seeing lightning?”

He leans around a support beam, hanging off of it with one hand. “Scully, it’s the middle of winter. I don’t know about you, but the temperature feels a little low for an electrical storm.”

“So if it’s not lightning, then it must be aliens.” She levels him with her best deadpan stare, but he just smiles sweetly down at her. 

“You said it, not me.”

Scully grabs the beam just below where Mulder’s holding on, aiming to mirror his pose, but snatches her hand back as soon as it makes contact. “God, that’s cold. C’mon, let’s look for your lights before we freeze to the ground.”

The dirt and grass crunch underfoot as she inspects the steelwork. The lightning theory was a weak rebuttal, but maybe there’s some sort of wired connection hidden in the star’s frame, a hoax or a prank set up by some bored small town resident. She digs out her pocket flashlight and scrutinizes the seams and bolts at ground and eye level.

Mulder, on the other hand, has his gaze turned skyward. Scully smiles to herself, taking a moment to observe him without notice—she can imagine his internal monologue saying maybe this time, maybe this time. 

The wind chooses this moment to howl menacingly around them, the groaning of the star adding an eerie baritone. Scully, caught with her eyes on Mulder, sees as he turns to look at her, seemingly aware of the specific ambiance of the evening for the first time. A concerned crease appears between his brows. 

Scully knows what he’s thinking. She’s thinking it, too. A mountaintop in the Blue Ridge at dusk with the wind picking up? How could she not?

“Scully—”

“I’m fine, Mulder.”

He starts towards her. “Maybe we should call it a night, or, or you can wait in the car—”

“Mulder—”

“—and I’ll check for whatever you wanna check for, not just…” He briefly raises his eyes towards the sky, voice soft. “...Little green men.”

She hates that he thinks she can’t handle this, something barely reminiscent of her abduction, but his offer to fill her role, to leverage her skepticism against himself in her absence, takes some of the sting away. 

“I’m okay,” Scully says, meeting his intense gaze. “Really. Mulder, nothing is going to happen to me.” 

He exhales through his nose, and Scully’s patience crumbles slightly. She is not incapable. She is not a victim waiting to happen. 

“I know,” Mulder agrees softly. Somehow he can look up at her through his lashes even while towering over her. “Let’s finish up soon anyway, though. Don’t want you to blow off the mountain.”

Scully snorts, rolling her eyes. Equilibrium reestablished. 

Mulder ambles over to a wooded area to the east of the star, hopefully looking for actual evidence of the professor’s disappearance and not… ectoplasm, or something.

She sighs. She should know by now that ectoplasm is ghosts, not aliens. 

Circling around to an observation deck overlooking the city at the front of the star, she pauses briefly to read an informational plaque. Roanoke, Star City of the South. 

I’m not sure about that, Scully thinks, looking out across the streetlights just beginning to come on amid the suburban sprawl. The surrounding mountains are brown and bristly with dead winter trees, scraping at the horizon like a horsehair brush. The pale gray clouds that hid the sun on their drive down now hide any emerging stars that the light pollution from down below hasn’t already quenched. 

Scully leans her hands on the cold, splintery wood of the observation deck railing, forgetting her objective to disprove Mulder’s aliens for a moment. Thinking instead of how he still looks at her like she’s going to disappear. The air is even more bitter now as the sky continues to darken, the wind finding its way right inside her clothes and twining itself around her bare arms. Her coat serves only to flap noisily around her legs. Scully finally gives in to the urge to shiver.

“Enjoying the view?” 

Mulder’s voice is right behind her. “Jesus, don’t do that, Mulder, I almost reached for my gun.”

He laughs quietly, and then— “Aw, Scully, you’re shivering.”

She huffs. “Yeah, well, it’s only about twenty degrees out here.”

“Here.” He steps up behind her—right behind her, chest to her back—and rubs his hands up and down her arms. “That better?”

Scully smiles and leans back into him, just a bit. Maybe she’s up in the Blue Ridge mountains at nightfall, but she’s not alone, and she’s never felt safer. How to convey to Mulder that riding up there in his passenger seat as opposed to a madman’s trunk makes all the difference in the world. He keeps holding her arms, even when he’s stopped trying to use his hands as makeshift fire starters. The city below seems a little less dreary than it did a moment ago.

There’s a CLUNK followed by an electrical hum from behind them, and suddenly their shadows are cast long and dark down the face of the mountain. The Roanoke Star is illuminated, all seventeen thousand watts, casting herself and Mulder in perfect relief. 

“Let’s get out of here,” Mulder says, squeezing her shoulders. “There’s a three star motel with the FBI’s name on it down there.”

“Mulder, I can handle it, it’s not that cold,” Scully starts to protest. They don’t need to cut their work short because poor delicate Dana Scully couldn’t—

“Yeah, but I’m freezing.” And then his hands are gone from her shoulders and at the back of her neck, fingers pressing in icy cold under her collar and behind her ears. 

She shrieks, squirming away under his arm as he twists to follow. “Mulder!”

He laughs joyously behind her, still managing to hold onto her sleeve, getting tugged back towards the star. “C’mon, Scully, let’s leave right now, and I promise I won’t do that again. I’ll even buy you a Big Mac on the way back.”

“I don’t want a Big Mac, Mulder. You want a Big Mac.”

“Okay, fine, then I’ll have yours too.”

She doesn’t think of Duane Barry at all for the rest of the night.

Mulder sidesteps a pile of horse manure as he jogs to catch up with Scully.

“Hey, c’mon, you don’t really believe that guy, do you? The real culprit is still out there, Scully.”

Her eyelids flutter as she raises her eyes skyward, not breaking her stride. “‘The real culprit’ is the man we just got a confession from, Mulder. The man whose prints are on the gun. The gun whose bullets we determined to be in the bodies. I’m not sure how much more open and shut the case could be.” 

He shakes his head minutely, marveling at her pragmatism. The sky is blue, the sun is shining, and Dana Scully thinks eight dead horses can be explained away by one lunatic with a gun. 

Which, he concedes, they could be. But in this particular instance, he’s not convinced. 

“What about the very first death? That horse was exsanguinated, Scully. Something happened after Hotch shot it that he can’t explain, and so far, neither can you or I.” 

They come to a stop at a small paddock at the end of the busy dirt strip. Several foals skitter nervously around the edge as Scully drums her fingers on the fence. “Speak for yourself—he hit a major artery. It’s, it’s perfectly reasonable to expect an animal to bleed out from a shotgun blast to the neck.” She looks up at him with a challenging gaze. 

“Then where’s the blood? A two ton animal bleeds out and there’s no blood at the scene? How does your shotgun blast explain that?”

Scully drops her hand from the rail and glares up at him. The ends of her hair are beginning to frizz in the muggy coastal heat and her hairline is damp with sweat. Mulder is sweaty underneath his suit, as well, but he figures he always looks kind of rumpled, whereas Scully’s blurry edges are a much rarer occurrence. 

“Mulder, it’s the middle of July. Do you know how many thunderstorms have blown through here between time of death and discovery?” She doesn’t wait for him to respond. “A lot. And need I remind you that determining time of death in humans is an imprecise science, let alone a horse? The animal bled out and the elements washed it away, it’s, it’s the simplest explanation.”

Flyaway hairs, dust sticking to her shoes, and eyebrows raised in pissed off disbelief—he’ll try not to insult her by beaming at her indignation. He steps closer, though, just to raise her hackles further, and says softly, “All of the blood, Scully? Not a trace left behind?”

One of the foals next to them snorts. 

Her eyes dart back and forth across his face in that way they do when she’s approaching her limit with him—like she’s looking for a physical hole in his reasoning she can exploit. He feels a sudden swell of affection for her; of pride in himself as she opens her mouth to chew him out. He knows exactly how to wind her up, exactly how to stray just on the far side of push in their habitual push and pull. He’d never admit to pressing her buttons on purpose, but it can’t be helped when the result is so predictable: She’s cute when she’s proving him wrong.

“Even if the blood loss of one horse was significant,” Scully begins testily, “we solved an actual crime here, Mulder. Hotch admits to shooting every one of those horses in his crusade to drive the tourists away. It’s not an X-file, our job is done.” She raises an arm to gesture to the scene around them. “Now we can either go chasing the bodily fluids of a horse whose cause of death has already been determined, or we can enjoy the festivities for a while to make sure that sonofabitch rots in jail for nothing.”

Mulder lets his gaze follow the general direction of her outstretched hand. Children run ahead of their families, many with stick ponies between their legs and shirts and hats bearing the words Beebe Ranch. Other small, sandy paddocks line the road, some with more foals and others with wary adult horses, all with gaggles of tourists sidled up to the edge. He can hear the fast-paced voice of an auctioneer from back the way they came, the price of one lucky (Unlucky? Do they like leaving the island?) pony climbing steadily higher. 

“What, Scully, you want me to buy you a horse? Now that would be a fun expense report to file.”

Her face holds its frustration for a beat, like she’s trying to decide how badly she wants to still be mad at him. Not very badly, he supposes, because she drops her gaze to smile softly and shake her head. 

Score. Back in her good graces, although he likes being in her bad graces, too. 

“Y’know, somehow I don’t think my landlord would approve.” Scully glances at the treeline to the east, as if trying to see through them across the Assateague Channel. “We missed the pony swim cooped up in interrogation yesterday,” she remarks forlornly. “Still, there’s supposed to be a museum at the miniature pony farm, down at the other end of the island…” She trails off and looks over at him hopefully.

If she wanted to go off and see this museum on her own, she’d already be gone. The fact that she’s even bringing it up means she wants him to come, too, and Mulder feels that pang of fondness again. Usually he’s the one trying to drag her on extracurricular outings. 

“Oh yeah? They have an exhibit on the bloodsucking monsters of the Eastern Shore? ‘Cause I’m telling you, Scully, I’ve got some files back at the office—”

“Actually, Mulder,” she says, taking a step back onto the path, walking backwards so she’s still facing him. Smiling because she can tell now that he’s just winding her up. “It’s supposed to be a pretty fascinating exhibit on the origins of the wild horses and the pony swim here. They even have taxidermies of the horses from the book that popularized it to the extent that our friend felt he had to take action.”

“Taxidermies? Don’t you feel like you’ve seen enough dead horses for a lifetime?” He falls into step beside her, though, never able to refuse her something she wants from him. Especially not something as ghoulish as taxidermied horses. 

Scully turns forwards and Mulder brings his hand to the small of her back as they head past tourists snapping photos in front of some foals. She glances up at him, cheeks rosy in the midday heat. Maybe he should buy her some sunscreen. “What, does a stuffed horse turn your stomach? Mulder, you’ve watched me cut open people dead for less than 48 hours.”

“Yeah, and I’ve almost yakked every time. You’re the one with the strong stomach, Scully. Lead the way to the reanimated pony graveyard.”

“Right, I forgot what a big tough G-man you are. Don’t worry, these are just foam and fur, unless that’s too much for your delicate sensibilities?”

“Hey, who was it that wanted to go looking for blood and guts not twenty minutes ago? And who was it who wanted to cut class and go look at the pretty ponies?”

“Mulder, you know full well…”

Mulder pokes halfheartedly around the display rack, brightly colored packaged snacks crinkling as he shifts their boxes. The owner of the tiny Asian grocery store watches him expectantly from across the cramped space, arms folded.

“Well? You find what you need?” The man has a slight Chinese accent and visibly dwindling patience. Though he’d relented at their badges, he was not pleased to have the federal government rummaging through his store. Mulder can’t blame him, especially when any evidence he’d anticipated is not materializing before his eyes.

“Um, no, sir, we’re still looking,” he answers lamely. “You’re sure you didn’t notice anything… odd, about the break-in?” The string of robberies targeting Cary Street merchants have all ended the way they began: locked doors, in-tact alarm systems, and a dead-end lack of evidence. Standing amid wire shelving units weighed down with foods he can’t read the names of, Mulder is beginning to rethink his theory of a burglar that can phase through walls.  

The shop owner doesn’t even bother to answer him. Mulder sighs, looking down at the bag of candy he’s in the process of inspecting. It reads ミルク in spiky lettering and the wrappers are printed with cows. Scully may be right on this one.

Scully.

She’s an aisle over from him, the top of her head barely clearing the shelf, dutifully examining a stack of ceramic bowls. 

Mulder's breath leaves him momentarily, the way it does when he looks at her too long nowadays, the skin under her eyes blue and papery, her knuckles too sharp. She'd been quieter than usual in the car down, the two hour straight shot down 95, even though it’s a lackluster case even by Mulder's standards. You think the perp what, walked through the walls, Mulder? he’d at least expected her to say. There’s nothing to support that, now or ever. Nothing indeed. 

She had taken an aspirin when she thought he was busy checking for traffic at a right on red, slipped it in her mouth and swallowed it dry. She’s always at her worst the day after chemo, and she’d had to reschedule her typical Friday afternoon appointment to Monday when he’d gotten them stuck at a Missouri layover during a storm last week. But here she is, investigating this bullshit case with him without complaint, even though he knows she feels like garbage.

She’s an aisle over from him, swallowed up by her black overcoat in an attempt to block out the persistent winter chill as she sets down a bowl printed with fish. Mulder squeezes between the shelving units and sidles up behind her, keeping his voice low.

“Hey, partner, you’re starting to flag a little. You need to go sit in the car?”

He bites his tongue almost as soon as the words are out of his mouth, because it’s exactly the sort of phrasing that will incline Scully to buck up and muscle through on her own. She doesn’t even look that tired, he just wants to give her the option of an out. 

“I’m fine, Mulder.” Of course, he knows that if she wants out, out she will go, option given or not. Never mind that this is the third store they’ve poked around in in as many hours, finding nothing but as many disgruntled merchants. “Just tired.”

Mulder blinks. Just tired is huge. He’s seen her beaten and kidnapped and grief-stricken and nothing ever follows fine. Just tired is uncharted territory as far as he’s concerned, potentially the brink of death. 

“Alright, well, I’m ready to wrap up here, anyway,” he says easily. “We aren’t gonna find anything, Scully, I think you were right. There’s no X-file here.” She’d never actually argued with him that it wasn’t an X-file, but maybe if he pretends things are normal, she’ll roll her eyes and say his name in that disapproving tone and they can pick back up their characteristic push and pull from where they dropped it back home, that familiar game of tug-o-war. C’mon, Scully, take the rope, we’ll be okay. 

He glances down at her and knows immediately he is not going to get the smug I-told-you-so inflection he’s crossing his fingers for. Scully clearly hasn’t even heard him, her grip white-knuckled on the shelf, even paler than before and breathing through her mouth. 

“Mulder,” she says, voice small, and he knows what’s about to happen. He’s only seen her throw up once before, when he was driving them along a winding Appalachian road during her first week of treatment and she’d barked at him to pull over. She hadn’t let him get out of the car, but the door was open and he’d been able to hear everything, had to pretend with her that nothing had happened when she got back in stony-faced and silent, mouth red from rubbing it against her sleeve.

Her face now is the same as before she made him pull over in east Tennessee, wide-eyed and clammy. Mixed in is a determination of some sort, as though she can will this not to happen to her.

“Hey, just hold on, okay?” Mulder blinks away his panic at her involuntary display of vulnerability and squeezes her arm as he turns to weave his way towards the guy at the counter. The man looks at him warily. 

“Hey man, you got a bathroom in this place? My partner, she’s—she’s not feeling well.” He’s regretting coming in proverbial guns blazing now, waving his badge and talking about inhuman powers. The shopkeeper raises a disbelieving eyebrow.

Mulder lowers his voice. “Look, this isn't some trick t-to get behind closed doors without a warrant. She has cancer.” He feels sick breaking out that word, and Scully would definitely kill him if she knew, but he figures it’s a smaller indignity than the one she’ll have to endure otherwise. It works, too, the man still somewhat incredulous but handing him keys, pointing towards a door down a narrow hallway at the back of the store. 

Mulder takes the keys gratefully, lowers his voice further to say meaningfully, “You usually take a smoke break or something right about now?” The least he can do is assure he’s the one and only member of this audience. Mercifully, the guy picks up what he’s putting down, affording Scully one more small scrap of dignity as he maneuvers towards the door. 

Key in hand, Mulder hurries back to Scully, still standing where he left her, eyes now clenched shut against what he’s sure must be intense nausea. He takes her by the shoulders and guides her in front of him, murmuring c’mon, just over here, hold tight as he steers her out of the aisle of bowls and dumpling steamers and down the back hallway. The light from the front windows doesn’t permeate all the way back here, the walls closing in in a dim grayscale.

The lock sticks a little when he puts the key in, but he shoulders the door open to reveal the tiny, dingy bathroom, toilet and sink facing each other, brick-colored tiles that he associates with industrial kitchens. 

Scully squeezes in past him and drops to the toilet; thankfully she still has the wherewithal to push the lid and seat up before she starts emptying her stomach. Mulder’s heart constricts seeing her crumple on the floor. He has a split second to decide which side of the door he’s going to end up on and he knows what she would choose, posturing strength and independence right up until she’s bedridden, comatose, hitting the ground, but the thought of intentionally leaving her alone to be sick from her chemo (his fault his fault his fault) in some nasty public bathroom—no matter how much she wants to play fine for him—makes him want to die. 

So he fits himself in behind her with difficulty, trying not to step on her coat fanned out on the ground, and shuts the door. 

The world is suddenly very small, just the chipped gray paint on the walls revealing blue and white and darker gray and the grime in the grout of the floor and Scully’s retching echoing pathetically off of the tin mirror. He doesn’t want to overstep, but he’s already cornered himself in here and can’t just stand there and it’s Scully, so he crouches on the floor beside her, narrowly avoiding cracking his head on the sink as he finds his balance. 

“It’s okay,” Mulder murmurs, reaching forward and pulling her hair back from where it’s stuck to the side of her face, holding it loosely at her nape. It’s not okay, she’s not okay, but what do you say when your standoffish coworkerpartnerbestfriend is coming apart in front of you?

Scully spits a stringy glob of saliva into the toilet. “Mulder.” Her voice is wrecked. “You don’t need to…”

“Hey, I’m already here. Just let me, okay?” He rubs her back with his other hand, can feel her bird bones even through her coat. Now that her hair is out of the way (fine and soft, sweat-damp at the base of her neck), he can see the shine of tear tracks on her nose. The next retch has her whole body convulsing—"Oh, Scully," he says, because he can tell it’s the kind of sick where there’s nothing left but stomach acid that burns coming up. 

He tries to keep up a quiet stream of meaningless comfort, unsure if it’s wanted or helpful—for all he knows, the sound of his voice makes her ill. I’m sorry, Scully, I’m sorry, it’s gonna be okay. We’re gonna get out of here and I’ll take you home, I’ll tell you about the case that ended up on the desk yesterday on the way back. Did you know there’s a being known as the Devil Monkey said to inhabit southwest Virginia? I’m sorry, honey, it’s gonna be okay.

The endearments start to slip in as his knees start to go numb, and he knows he should stop, but he’s never wanted to gather her in his arms and shield her from the world more. She’s so small. There shouldn’t be room for two people on this bathroom floor, but here they are.

When her body is done trying to tear itself apart and her shaky hands are gripping the sink instead of the toilet, Mulder fumbles with a soggy wad of toilet paper, ready to clean her face up as best he can. She takes it from him, though, mumbling, “I got it, let me,” so he lets her, giving her back some modicum of control.

Later, back in the car, she says thank you as she buckles her seatbelt, eyes in her lap. Anytime, he replies.

Thin raindrops fall from a pale sky, finding gaps in the foliage of the old-growth trees that intermittently line the path to land on their umbrella with a soft patter. Waterlogged yellow ginkgo leaves drop from the branches and stick to its surface; line the brick path and cling to Scully’s shoes. In the scant space between them, Mulder’s hand holds the handle. 

Scully sometimes tries to maintain some equilibrium in their relationship by doing things like holding the umbrella, but she can begrudgingly recognize that, really, she just looks ridiculous stretching her arm up far enough to fit him underneath. That or he stoops, or she takes his eye out. After nearly five years of bile and blood and bedsides, she’s relinquished her defensiveness about relying on him for something as harmless as avoiding the rain—rather, she quietly enjoys a pretense other than grief to stand close to him. 

“...but all in all, I do think his research is credible,” Mulder is saying. “I mean, he’s a professor of anthropology, it’s his bread and butter.”

“I don’t think cryptozoology and anthropology are the same thing, Mulder,” Scully says, plucking a damp leaf from her sleeve. “Just because you found some old guy with a degree to agree with you doesn’t mean the Snallygaster is real.”

“Something happened to those hikers, Scully. People don’t just disappear into the Shenandoah wilderness.”

She looks down under the guise of carefully stepping over a puddle, letting her hair obscure what he can see of her face. She is quite used to their little dance these days, the roles they let themselves fall into. He spins a fanciful tale of danger and drama and monsters under the bed, and she pulls on the singular shining thread of rationality woven in until it unravels into something explainable—usually by Chemistry 101 or dangerous men. It’s what they do. It works. They will investigate the idea of the Snallygaster and, in the process, find out what happened to the hikers. Together, she thinks with satisfaction, they make an effective pair. 

This does not mean she thinks a flying dragon beast scooped them off the Appalachian trail. 

“Of course they do, Mulder, those trails are dangerous. There’s—there’s cliffs and bears and bodies of water. These people either got lost or fell down the side of a mountain.”

Mulder’s turn. “Yeah, well, the professor said—how did he put it?—he said it’s ‘pretty fucking unlikely’ for three experienced hikers to up and vanish like that. Not to mention the ‘shitton’ of local Snallygaster sightings he attested to.”

Scully smirks. The guy had had a mouth on him. "Is that a precise estimate?"

Mulder acquiesces with a soft laugh as she glances up at him. His head is ducked down and he’s smiling sheepishly, cheeks a little rosy despite the mild air. In profile like this, his long lashes are visible, dark and soft against his zygomatic bone. The humidity has frizzed his hair and an errant raindrop clings to his jaw. 

Her breath catches momentarily. He is… dear to her.

In ninth grade, her health teacher had everyone take home a raw chicken egg and tasked them with keeping it unbroken until the end of the week. This was meant to impress upon all of the fourteen year olds the level of difficulty and responsibility in taking care of a baby so that they wouldn’t have a repeat of Shirley Sanderson—a girl in Melissa’s grade who’d fallen pregnant (“fallen pregnant,” that’s how they’d talked about it, like it was an illness) and dropped out. Scully had taken the assignment as seriously as she took anything, which is to say she never let her egg out of her sight, carrying it from room to room in the palm of her hand. When a hairline crack appeared after Charlie handled it, she’d tried to fix it with a paste of sugar water.

Scully did not receive Mulder unbroken, but desires fiercely to shield him as best she can from the forces against them, to prevent further cracks branching out from the quarter-century old wound, to cradle him close. It strikes her in little moments, how vital he is to her. He wound himself around her in tiny increments until he was tight around her corpus callosum, as base an instinct as breathing. 

She was one of only three students to return her egg whole. 

As they round the corner, a weathered stone building begins to peek out from behind the foliage, markedly different from the red brick, white trim buildings that make up the rest of the campus. It’s a chapel, Scully realizes, its narrow windows affixed with stained glass and its shingled roof reaching up to the low-hanging clouds. The doors are propped open and a lilting chorus of voices is wafting out into the rain. 

“Mulder, listen,” she says, touching his hand as they come to a stop. Closer now, she can hear the overlapping notes, the low thrum of baritone accentuated by clear alto, a dozen voices moving as one many-mouthed creature.

“Some choir practice,” Mulder says quietly, the sacral hush seeming to extend outside the chapel walls.

Scully steps forward, peering inside. “No, I think it’s—it’s an a capella group. They’re students.”

They stand together, close by necessity, and listen as the voices layer, pitching and yawing mellifluously up into the pine rafters. On the umbrella handle, her hand is still on his. 

Students with sodden backpacks pass by on either side of them, oblivious or accustomed to the show emanating from the building before them. No one else seems to notice. They’re an audience of two. 

The warm-up comes to an end, the speaking voice of the conductor echoing gratingly off of the pews in comparison. Scully blinks out of her reverie, aware again of the dampness of the air, the weight of her coat on her shoulders, the warmth of Mulder’s skin. She squeezes his hand.

“Come on, Mulder. We’re almost to the library.”

He nods obligingly. “Special collections.” The anthropology professor had recommended it for its information on local folklore; Scully is interested in digging into the records of hiking accidents. They meander down the brick walkway in no great rush, students hurrying to class buffeting past them. As they pause at a crosswalk for a bus and a cyclist to pass, Scully leans into Mulder’s side. She continues looking ahead, but feels him glance down at her.

“You alright, Scully?”

She smiles softly as they step as one into the road.

“Yeah. I am.”

Scully rubs her hands roughly over her face, trying to chase away the headache building behind her eyes. There’s hardly enough light to work by in this dingy motel room—dingy even by their standards, she’s seen at least three roaches since they checked in—and she has to squint to make out her field notes on the four mysterious deaths. She’s dragged the tiny desk as close to an outlet as it will go, but her laptop still sits precariously on the edge.

Mulder is sprawled out on the bed (her bed, she thinks with some annoyance, his bags are in the other room) with files from the local precinct fanned out around him. He stares intently at one in front of him before abruptly reaching around to grab a second, hunching over to compare them and generate a connection only he can see. 

Sometimes Scully enjoys watching him work, enjoys seeing him pull on seemingly random strings until she’s blinking in the face of a coherent picture. Tonight, though, she does not possess the grace to appreciate his mind nor the ignominy required to fawn over him, even internally. He’s dominated the case since they arrived in Norfolk this morning, taking charge of witness interviews with surly locals and chasing after his own leads without so much as a backwards glance over his shoulder. It’s true that he’s recently been accustomed, not by choice, to working on his own and withholding information from her; maybe there are growing pains as he comes out of perpetual fight or flight and reacquaints himself with walking in step with her. Despite her efforts at rationalizing his behavior, it feels frustratingly akin to the earliest days of their partnership, when she was just there to reign him in, when the X-files were just his.

Presently, Mulder clears his throat as he taps some papers together on the bedspread. She’s already looking at him (annoying to be caught in even on a good day), so she raises her eyebrows in acknowledgement.

“Scully, tomorrow I need you to re-autopsy the second victim. He was cut open by the local ME before the connection to our case was made and he’s not in the ground yet.” He snaps a rubber band back around a manila folder. “Think you can do that first thing in the morning? I’ll be heading over to that museum to follow up on my theory about the old amusement park.”

Scully blinks, his words not permeating for a moment because that can’t possibly be what he’s saying. “Mulder, I arranged for us to meet with the water treatment plant in the morning. You were there when I made the phone call.”

“Can you see if you can reschedule? They wanna bury this guy by the end of the week, and if I’m right about the amusement park—”

“We need to investigate all possible avenues,” she says testily, turning to face him fully. They don’t often fight, not really, but when they do, it’s like a storm coming in off the coast, the air crackling dangerously with ozone. “It’s much more likely for there to have been a malfunction at the water treatment plant, and I can get a toxicology report—”

“Come on, Scully, it’s not going to be the water. We’d be wasting our time.”

She gapes at him. 

It’s a slap in the face. Truly, she might be less stunned if he’d struck her. He always gives her theories the time of day. But he’s been bulldozing over her since this case began, shutting her out of his thought processes and surging ahead on his own, like she’s just another backwater cop or gung-ho young agent and not his partner, his friend, of five years. Is it so surprising that he’d vocalize what his actions have so clearly been telling her? Her next breath shudders, and she slowly closes her mouth. 

Mulder seems to take her silence as acquiescence, because he continues, “Poisoned water would affect a greater area than just this neighborhood. The fact that every death has occurred within the former boundaries of that park tells me—where are you going?”

Scully has stood and her hand is on the doorknob. If she stays, she is going to be catastrophically, immutably angry, and then he’ll be angry, and she’ll be hurt. Leaving is just an act of self preservation.

“I need some air. Clearly the work I’m doing over here is a waste of time, anyway.”

He has the grace to look ashamed; she sees it in his shoulders before she turns. “Come on, Scully, you know that’s not what—” 

But she’s already opened the door just enough to squeeze through and shut it sharply behind her, stepping out into the sticky night air. The separation from Mulder, however slight, begins to lessen the heat of her anger, the tightness behind her sternum dissipating minutely. Waste of time. Her indignation curdles into something more bitter as she starts off aimlessly down the uneven sidewalk, thinking of all the useless, fruitless leads she has given him the time of day for over the years. They used to be so in sync, the tension in the rope that bound them together making them stronger, making them one, but recently, there seem to be fissures spider-webbing across their skin, compelling them to crack back into two. 

The sidewalk is littered with broken glass, scraggly weeds growing up through the cracks, and the smell of pot hangs heavy in the air. Scully scrunches her nose as she passes through the worst of it. Their proximity to the mouth of the bay ensures the copious presence of sand, which makes itself known uncomfortably between her nylons and insoles.

Speaking of the bay, Scully can hear white noise of water, the soft rush of waves meeting the shore. They’re closer to the coast than she’d realized. Ahead to the left, there’s a splintery wooden path leading into the brush, and, on instinct, she turns down it. 

Her shoes echo hollowly on the boardwalk, mingling with the cricketsong and the bassline thumping from a nearby window. It’s maybe a hundred yards to the end, the trees on either side thinning out until she’s walking under open sky, the sand becoming thicker underfoot. The path eventually directs her up and over the dunes, and she pauses at the top, taking in the sight before her.

The crest of the boardwalk overlooks a grubby beach, brackish water lapping over damp sand. Despite the giant stormwater pipe jutting out into the water and a lingering smell of trash, Scully picks her way down the stairs and across the sand, standing just at the edge of the foam. The Chesapeake isn’t the ocean, and the muggy air isn’t pleasant, and Mulder doesn’t have her back, but she can pretend, for a moment, that standing here is calming, and maybe it will be true.

No, Mulder does have her back. He might doubt her, but he always trusts her. 

Moments like these, though, burrow into the folds of her brain and whisper that the best days of their partnership are behind them. What if something is permanently broken? What if they’re approaching the end? Everything this year has made their hold on the files seem ever more tenuous, and if they lose the work now, she’s scared they’ll lose each other, too.

Well, she’s still scared of losing him after that display. That’s something. 

He finds her, of course, in his shirtsleeves, with his tie flapping in a breeze that momentarily chases the mugginess away. 

Scully doesn’t acknowledge him, her affront having fizzled into a dull, inevitable ache. They stand wordlessly together, watching the lights of a distant container ship slowly creep across the horizon. 

“We’ll go to the water treatment plant in the morning,” he says softly. 

Scully holds back a sigh, because it’s not really about the water treatment plant. It’s not his compliance she desires. 

“I know,” says Mulder, as if he’s read her mind. Sometimes she thinks he can. 

“I got lost in myself back there,” he continues, voice still subdued. “That’s been happening lately, since Haley, since Pincus. I see this—this bright, shining path to an answer, to the truth, and I feel compelled to follow it to the exclusion of anything else.” 

“Yeah, Mulder. I know that’s how you work,” Scully says tiredly. 

"Yeah, it’s how I work. It’s not how we work.” He pauses, kicks his toe in the sand. We! her brain sings, We! “I trust your judgement, Scully. Above all else.” 

She nods a little. Okay. In fact, it’s the salve she’s yearned for all day, the reiteration of what she knows to be true. It’s humiliating, actually, how reassuring it is. Okay, Mulder, I forgive you. We’re not hurtling towards an end. Next to her, his eyes are focused on the sand, on bits of slimy green plant matter caught in the foam. 

“I’m sorry. Nothing you deem important is a waste of time.” 

“Thanks.” Her voice is quiet but sincere. This is probably the cleanest end they’ve ever had to a disagreement like this, the kind where the work becomes personal, and for that, she’s grateful. The festering of resentment is perhaps the most unbearable ending of which she can conceive. 

The container ship is now all the way in the west, curving under a distant bridge. We’re okay, Scully thinks. We’re okay.

Mulder steps out under the blue autumn sky, the bell tied to the police station door jangling noisily behind him. On the sidewalk, Scully stands with her arms crossed, always waiting for him to catch up. Free of stuffy bureaucratic interiors and droning talk of fertilizer, he angles them towards the main road.

“Whaddaya think, Scully, should we take a stroll through Virginia or Tennessee?”

Their hotel is on the Virginia side of State Street, so they cross wordlessly to the north sidewalk. Low brick buildings with painted on signs box them in on either side, a classic old railroad town. In the distance, the rusty tipped Appalachian mountains brush up against the sky.

“They planned the city this way, you know,” Scully remarks, stepping up onto the curb. “Split across the state line. I wonder how many administrative headaches it’s caused.”

“Not enough, if they’re bothering to have us investigate agricultural terrorism. There’s nothing here to terrorize, Scully.”

“What, you don’t think it’d be ‘a good place to live?’” She tips her head towards a grand metal sign arching over the road in the distance: Bristol, a good place to live.

He chuckles, times his next step so their arms bump together. “Maybe if they opened a field office. That’d be the FBI’s biggest oxymoron yet.”

He catches the tail end of her smirk, her chin tucked into her collar like it always is when he makes her laugh. There’s a new scar on her face from the summer, a thin white line just barely hidden in the arch of her brow, sliced maybe by ice or wind or alien claws. The Scully next to him feels as distant as she did then, a great, unacknowledged cavern yawning between them, an invisible barrier that they can’t find their way around. He understands her less than ever: The tension that binds them together has always been synonymous with safety, holding him back from tipping over a cliff’s edge and plummeting them both to a watery grave below. Now they’re adrift on that very churning sea, two pieces of flotsam still holding onto the rope, circling a drain. Sometimes it seems as though Scully is holding on tight, trying to reel him in, but others, it’s as if she lets go entirely, tension going slack, leaving him to drown, to fall. 

The new scar crinkles as she squints into the sun to look up at him. “What?” she says. 

He’s been looking too long, casts about for something to say and ends up with, “Did you know this place was just christened the birthplace of country music? All your favorite artists, Scully, it all started right here.”

She scoffs and lets her shoulder bump his arm. Right now, she’s holding on. 

He knows why, he’s not stupid. Knows all the recent changes have unbalanced them, suspects even that Scully feels territorial. God knows he’s felt the same about her, would feel that way if a stranger tried to step into the X-files (does feel that way about Spender) (and isn’t it mollifying that Scully should feel so protective over the files, he thinks proudly; for all her hemming and hawing and perfunctory dubiety, she does, in the end, walk hand in hand with him). But he can see a way out of the bullpen, out of fertilizer and farmers and back to the basement that she’s choosing to be blind to. He can see allies where she sees only foes. 

So it’s a brittle sort of tension between them now, one undercut with intruders and windburn and things long unsaid floating just beneath the surface but never breaching. Scully still here next to him, but somehow always an arm’s length away. 

She is still here next to him, though. She could be in Utah or a Fairfax county hospital, but she is here under a cloudless sky walking the state line with him. 

Mulder clears his throat. “So Scully, word on the street is this fertilizer business is kind of a drag.”

He can almost hear her eyebrow raise. “Mm-hmm.”

“Word is also that there may be something more interesting for us to devote our abilities to.”

“Something local?”

“Oh yeah.” He jumps in. “Southwest Virginia is a hotspot for UFO activity—really, all of Appalachia in this area. West Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina—I know you’re familiar with the Brown Mountain lights. Similar sightings extend right here into the Old Dominion, and get this: Langley has a buddy down here who’s been tracking this stuff for thirty years. Supposed to be some of the most detailed records about saucers over Appalachia in existence. What do you say we blow this fertilizer stand and pay him a visit?”

He is criminally overselling Langley’s buddy. Let’s get our normal back, Scully, please. 

She looks up at him now, eyebrow definitively raised. “Is there any recent activity for us to investigate?”

Bluff called. “Well, no, not exactly.”

“So what ‘exactly’ would we be investigating?” 

“Think of it less as an investigation and more as… an excursion.”

“An excursion.” Her voice is heavy with skepticism, as if he’s just suggested they fly to Mars and be back in time for dinner, and does he even need the files back if he can elicit that tone from her? Come on, Scully, roll your eyes. Tell me how ridiculous this is and run after me anyway.

“Mulder.” They come to a stop at a cracked crosswalk, where she turns to fully face him. “Are you asking me to play hooky with you so we can go listen to a friend of a friend’s unsubstantiated, irrelevant claims of UFO sightings?”

He bends ever so slightly into her space, an offer, a dare, an out. “Scully, that is precisely what I am asking you."

The corners of her mouth turn up; she drops her head as her smile overtakes her, short hair doing little to hide the telltale lift of her cheeks. Perhaps arm’s length is not so far—after all, she has come back to him from the end of the earth and death’s embrace and places altogether unknown. There’s still something amiss beneath the surface, a kraken circling under an icy pond, but for a moment, the pull between them blooms warm in his chest. 

“You know what?” She leans minutely up towards him. “Screw agricultural terrorism. Show me some aliens, Mulder.”

There’s no time to tamp down the unabashed delight that surely colors his expression—the challenge in her eyes is irresistible.

“Come on, then.”

They continue as one down the road, angled always towards the more perilous path. Temporarily, they’re adrift on the same piece of flotsam, winding themselves around one another before it splits back into two, hand in metaphorical hand.

The washed out gray sky bleeds into brittle gray trees bleed into crunchy gray ground, frozen underfoot. Scully adjusts her gloves and takes a half step closer to the sheriff’s car, seeking the heat from the idling engine. “It’s about a quarter mile through the woods that way,” he’s saying, directing them to the site of their alleged ritual murder, “then another five hundred feet or so once you cross the trail. Big pile of ash, can’t miss it.”

Next to her, Mulder nods. The black of his coat, the red of his cheeks stand out against the desaturated landscape. “Thank you, sir,” he says, "we’ll take it from here.”

The sheriff pulls away, leaving them with the acrid smell of exhaust and the fading sound of gravel popping against his car. Having shown them the parts of the park accessible by car (a sandy parking lot, a visitor center with the blinds drawn shut, a disused pool with sickly green water collecting in the deep end), he had informed them they were on their own for the trek through the winter undergrowth; something about the park cops being short-staffed. Scully prefers this—with no bystanders, they are free to openly discuss witchcraft or pyrokinesis or whatever other theory she can sense marinating in Mulder’s head, no need to tiptoe around verbiage that might encourage local law enforcement to call them off the chase. She likes him at his spookiest.

That's another blessing about being left alone, she thinks, watching the police car disappear around a curve; the noise that has built in her head this past month quiets a little. It’s not about image, per se, but she worries—worries outsiders can read what they did last night in the way the empty space shimmers between them, can see exactly how intricately they are tethered together. Are they standing too close? Is she looking at him too long? This is, of course, entirely within her head—no intruding eyes are tracking her gaze or measuring the distance between herself and her partner, and even if they were, they would likely draw consistent conclusions between now and one, three, five years ago.

“Ready to venture out into the great unknown?” Mulder says, turning towards the woods.

“Mulder, I have a map. But go on, Indian guide, lead the way.” 

He ducks his head in a laugh, and his reciprocation to her teasing shouldn’t be so charming, it’s the same repartee of the last six years, but she finds herself incapable of resisting her own smile. 

They begin picking their way through the dead undergrowth and last autumn’s leaves, the din their blundering creates sending a flock of birds fluttering up into the overcast sky. Surprisingly Mulder does not launch into explanation of local covens, but lets an amicable silence grow between them, the only sounds the crunch of dry plant matter underfoot and the rustle of squirrels chasing one another in the branches above. Without the anticipated case related back-and-forth, her mind pulls her towards the other variety of back-and-forths they have engaged in of late; the texture of the skin under his jaw, the warmth of him at her back the one morning they woke up together, his hands as he—

“So Mulder, I’m still convinced this is textbook ritualistic.” 

“Is that so?” 

A fallen tree lays across the way forwards in front of them, cracked bark spiderwebbed with lichen and ice alike. Mulder clambers over easily, the flowing tail of his coat giving his movement the illusion of fluidity. 

“Yes. Given the history of the teens involved, it’s what makes the most sense. I expect the burn patterns will indicate the fire was put out haphazardly, by amateurs who didn’t expect it to get out of control.”

He lands buoyantly on the other side, the sharp crack of frozen branches echoing between them. Turning on his heel, he extends both hands over the log towards Scully. 

“You paint a compelling picture, Scully, but kids involved in a ritualistic killing is pretty rare. What ritual are they acting out, what cult are they a part of?”

She raises her eyebrow, levels him with her best I see right through you look, but places her hands in his nonetheless. Leather on leather, their joined hands squeak as she steps up, up and over the log, sticking the landing as she hops down an inch from Mulder’s oxfords. They stand like this for a moment, a beat longer than they would have before.

“I don’t know. A self-made one, to accentuate their importance, to uphold the social hierarchy?”

Mulder hums, considering. “Maybe so, but teenage cult still doesn’t rule out witchcraft. In fact, I’d say such a group would be incredibly likely to turn to the supernatural to entice their members, or, or to keep them in line.” He steps back to let her pass but releases only one of her hands, forcing her to fall into stride with him as one four-legged creature.

“Mulder.” She tugs against his grip.

“What? There’s no one here but the squirrels, Scully.”

“We’re working, Mulder. We’re investigating.”

“We’re on our way to an investigation, yes. Right now we’re just taking a stroll through the woods.”

She resists the urge to look over her shoulder, adjusting her grip in his. They’re alone, they’re okay, but, even so, it feels improper. He’s her partner and she’s still adjusting to the new allowances between them, still thinks oh, it’s you when she pulls back from a kiss—it’s you, the same Mulder who puts together slideshows for an audience of one, who she’s bailed out of countless unnamed government facilities, who she shot, who wordlessly holds her hand during takeoff, who has sat next to her for hundreds of hours of driving and interviews and paperwork and research. Her world has cracked in two and she’s still stitching it back together. 

So Scully leaves her hand in his, and they walk.

They haven’t yet crossed the promised path; the scorched murder scene is not yet within view, waiting for them somewhere in the distance. To their left, the trees begin to thin out, the pale gray of the sky filling in the gaps between bare branches. New color is visible in the space between, the muddy tan of the slow moving river, dark, damp sand of the narrow beach. River birches intersperse the rest of the deciduous foliage this close to the water, their white, flaky limbs stark against the tangle of dark bark around them, reaching up, up to the weak sun. Together, they pause, taking in the yawn of the Potomac before them. It’s impossibly wide, the opposite bank completely out of view as if it expands into a shallow, freshwater ocean, dropping off the end of the earth. 

“Hard to believe that’s our river,” Mulder remarks quietly, and it is, isn’t it? That this endless expanse of water is the same river she drives along from her home to his.

It is, though. Still the same. It’s unfathomable, sometimes, how something so small can become so big.

They silently watch the water pass them by, out to the Chesapeake, out to the Atlantic. Still joined, still one. Pioneers of the unknown. 

She squeezes his hand. “Come on, Mulder. We’ve got a case to solve.”