Work Text:
Doubt. Clandestine. Action.
“And you're worried that all your life, you've been seeing elves?”
“In my case... little green men.”
“But, Mulder... during your time with the X-Files, you've seen so much.”
“That's just the point. Seeing is not enough, I should have something to hold onto. Some solid evidence. I learned that from you.”
“Your sister's abduction, you've held onto that.”
“I'm beginning to wonder if... if that ever even happened.”
“Mulder, even if George Hale only saw elves in his mind, the telescope still got built.”
He thinks about that, later, lying on his couch in the dark and staring at the ceiling. Scully’s right, of course, as she often is. In the weeks since the X-Files were closed and he’s been assigned to this mind-numbing surveillance detail, he’s had plenty of time to ruminate. In his lowest moments, he has wondered if perhaps his memories of Samantha’s abduction were false after all. Regression hypnosis is a controversial practice, whose detractors claim that it can cause the creation of false memories. Who’s to say that what he remembers of the night his sister was taken isn’t some fantasy he’s concocted, the product of a traumatized mind and a burgeoning obsession with the supernatural?
But something happened to her. Something unexplainable. And he’s seen too much now to deny the existence of paranormal phenomena. Scully’s words run circles around his skull, and he understands what she was trying to tell him. Whether or not the answers are what he thinks they’re going to be, the answers do exist. The truth is out there, even if it isn’t the truth he’s been searching for. One way or the other, he has to keep going. He can’t give up now.
When he sleeps, he dreams of that night. Trapped in his twelve-year-old body, he watches in horror as Samantha is suspended in white light, spirited away into the endless dark, while he remains paralyzed, unable to reach her, unable even to scream for help.
He wakes, sheened in sweat, to the sound of knocking on his door.
“We’re going to the hill.”
A few hours later, he’s on a plane to Arecibo, with nothing but a destination and a printout given to him by Senator Matheson, and it’s as if he’s finally waking from a cold and miserable dream. Weeks of stagnation, of creeping doubt, and finally a lead. Something to go on, a place to start. He feels alive again, the blood roaring in his veins.
He’s supposed to show up for surveillance duty first thing in the morning. This thought doesn’t occur to him until he’s already in the air, and when it does it barely registers. If Skinner wants to fire his ass, let him. Without the X-Files, the FBI is only holding him back. He doesn’t know what he’ll find in Puerto Rico, he doesn’t know if he’ll even make it back. It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters except this.
The plane is beginning its descent before he realizes he hasn’t called Scully.