Chapter Text
Consciousness came back to her in pieces, torn and singed at the edges, floating past her half-shut eyes like pages from a notebook tossed into a fireplace. She reached out a trembling hand, trying to grasp at the evidence, only to withdraw it in horror.
Her fingers, curled and shaking, turned ghostly under the fragmented, artificial light, were dark with blood.
Her eyes darted to the room as it sharpened into focus around her, eerily unfamiliar even in her slowly-returning vision. The walls may once have been white, but seemed to sag, tinged a seedy nicotine-brown to compliment the thin comforter adorning each of the twin beds flanking the room; one crystalline-neat, untouched, the other a crime scene of its own making, the sheets a snarled, sordid mess atop a lumpy mattress.
Scully’s eyes stung against the feeble lamplight, the visual information flooding her and burning on its way down. When did they check into a hotel? She couldn’t remember a case - hadn’t they just closed up the last of the Boston paperwork on Friday? Hadn’t she retired for the weekend, leaving Mulder, hair mussed and eyebags prominent, slumped over their tiny, shared desk?
Steeling herself, she chanced another look down at her hands, panic gnarled and baying in her stomach, hope clawing at her mind, praying for a miracle, a trick of the light or her own, sleep-fogged brain…
Instead, she came up crimson.
The blood held fast, thick and putrid and unmistakably human, drying against her knuckles and creeping its way into the cracks of her palms. Scully felt her chest constrict, suddenly struck by the smell of it - fresh, recent, warm…
She scrambled for the phone, her gore-slicked fingers leaving rusty smears on the keypad. Her stomach curdled at the sudden movement, and she caught the vignette at the edges of her vision that teased another impending descent into darkness. With her heart thudding a metronome against her chest and her eyesight beginning to blur, she tried, futile, to fight against the waves of nausea, unconsciousness beckoning her like an old friend.
Weakened and trembling, she felt her eyes fall closed, a tiredness overwhelming her as she slipped away from sentience once more with Mulder’s area code at her fingertips.
______________
Consciousness came to Mulder more kindly - the slow, languid sounds of an Alexandria Sunday morning trickling through his living room window.
He twisted against the leather of his couch, rejecting the morning light and sprawling to stretch the ache in his muscles. A chill had crept in overnight, uncharacteristic for a June evening, and the thin T-Shirt he’d drifted off in had done nothing to shield him from a cold that now sat persistently under his skin.
He sat up and shook his head, trying to dislodge the barrage of thoughts that suddenly surged through him, unbidden. One anecdote after another, rising to him in printed ink and encased in manila, begging to be addressed, to be considered. Accounts of the correlation between unseasonable cold snaps and the onset of hauntings, or individuals reporting feeling a chill moments before the worst experiences of their lives…
Outside, the sun shone warm and earnest, springtime-pink and streaming through his grubby windows. Mulder shook his head again, harder this time, and cast a wary glance around his apartment. It was in its usual state of unrest, littered with loose papers and takeout menus. A pizza box from the previous night (or was it two nights ago?) perched precariously on his kitchen counter. Exactly as he’d left it before he’d finally let sleep pull him under the night before.
He let himself sigh, tear his eyes away.
No ghosts here that weren’t here already.
The heat of the shower did little to rid him of the dread that seemed to have settled over him like a fog. Frustrated, Mulder scrubbed hard at his skin, eyes fixed on the halo of soap scum circling his drain, trying to will himself back into reality.
It came with the territory, sometimes. Ever the believer, Mulder proudly left the door open for the unexplainable, but all too often he’d found paranoia stepping through it instead. He had come to learn, through years of maddening self-analysis, that while opening yourself up to extreme possibilities sometimes meant uncovering the truth, it also sometimes meant wasting a Sunday in the throes of a paralysing, irrational fear, because your apartment was a few degrees cooler than normal.
Stepping out of the steam, Mulder ran a hand over his face. On weekdays, he had a crutch. He could lean against Scully’s unwavering skepticism, steady as a wall, long enough to convince himself that no, a chill down his spine did not mean a poltergeist lurked behind the next corner. He would study her face, picture the way her eyes rolled back when he was being particularly outlandish, and be content with his distinction between logic and insanity.
On the weekends, however, his paranoia was a different beast. And today, as he felt the cold trickle through his body, it had Mulder thoroughly and completely by the horns.
______________
If she’d awoken again before now, Dana had no recollection of it. Strangely, even amongst all of the terror of the situation at hand, it was this thought that most unsettled her.
She’d only ever “blacked out”, in the true and terrifying sense of the phrase, once before, in her junior year of college. Her boyfriend at the time, Henry - older than she, because they all were - had mixed her vodka cranberries so strongly that she hadn’t even realised she’d been near the edge before she plummeted over it.
She’d woken, half-dressed and sweat soaked, on the couch of his friend’s apartment, clad in only her bra and haunted by the blank space where her memory should have been. She'd strained against the headache creeping in between her temples, catching flashes of rosy liquid, paper cups, and little else. Prickled with gooseflesh and overcome with horror, all of the previous night’s imbibements had come rushing up her throat, staining the heather grey of the couch a sinful magenta.
After promising to pay for the drycleaning and being ushered, shamefully, back to her own apartment, Dana had begged Henry for an account of the night before. Something about a version of her that had walked, talked, existed and experienced being completely out of her reach, separated only by a few meagre hours of sleep, made her stomach churn. Hours of her life had been stolen from her, hours where anything could have happened, and though she tried desperately to reconcile her state of undress, it kept circling the drain of her thoughts - taunting, driving her mad.
But Henry had only laughed, wryly, tossing her a bottle of aspirin but caring little about where it landed.
“There’s nothing to tell, babe,” he’d said, almost bored. The aspirin had bounced off the mattress, rolling towards the far corner of her nightstand, out of her pitiful reach.
“You got fucked up, I put you to bed. End of story.”
And he’d left her with a condescending pat on the head - the slamming door echoing in her headache for the rest of the day.
Since that night, Dana had exercised a characteristically scientific caution when it came to alcohol. She’d spent the rest of her college years in a constant state of control - firelit nights with her hands draped around the same slender, amber neck of a single bottle, her fingernails familiar with the way a label would peel beneath them as the liquid within slowly warmed against her touch. When caught, she’d been labelled a prude, or a square, or a buzzkill, or a dozen other goading, nonsensical terms that her classmates thought might convince her to “live a little”. But, stubborn and resolute, Dana never relented. She’d sworn, somewhere between Henry’s exit from her apartment and her third trip to the bathroom to bring up nothing but bile, that she’d never stare down that lightless tunnel where her memory should be, again.
She’d had tastes of it since, the flavour bitter and familiar on her tongue.
Once, after Brother Andrew, when she’d stepped into that room, let him close the door behind her and then…
And then, Mulder had been there, and Brother Andrew had been on top of her, and she was scrambling, she was stumbling and Mulder’s hands were on her blouse and she’d realised, distantly, that he was doing her buttons back up… And once they were away from the piercing eyes of the Kindred, Mulder had asked her what happened, and she’d turned in her memory, stared once more down that long, black, inaccessible hallway, and promptly emptied the contents of her stomach into the damp farm air.
It had happened once more, though Scully typically did better than to even try to think about the months she’d lost during her abduction.
She’d coped in various ways - at first, telling herself that she was grateful not to know, that whatever she’d lost must have been far too damaging to risk holding on to.
When this didn’t work, she’d tried a different approach, becoming obsessed with tracking Mulder’s own movements during the lost months, replacing her own missing memories with his. She’d used every spare second, every moment he wasn’t around, to pour over casefiles and field reports (though they were few and far between), studying his notes on her case like gospel.
She’d stood beside him on Skyland Mountain, watching the beacon-bright lights as they retreated from the sky. She’d autopsied Duane Barry, noting the peri-mortem bruising with a cool and clinical hand. She’d travelled to Los Angeles, and stalked the sultry, neon-backed strip, breathed in the tang of blood that carried in on the smoke.
She’d read, and mourned, and read some more, until she felt as though she’d lived his desperate search right alongside him. No missing memories to speak of.
Now, Scully stared again into the depths, not a hallway this time, but a trench; dark and deep and drowning her. Somewhere, above the surface, far away in a foreign motel room, a man was shining a light and asking for her name. Faceless hands surged through the water, roamed her body, examining, and she thrashed, fought, lashing out at anything she could make contact with. The hands became firmer, pressing her down, and suddenly the water around her was not cold, but hot, carrying the smell of blood, the smell of smoke. A flash of memory - her palms soaked red - sent her flailing, trying to open her eyes against the current.
When she finally managed, it was much later, and she found that the water was gone. She was dry, and weary, and staring at the stark white of a hospital curtain. The scent of blood had retreated, leaving a low hum of terror and a tang of something metallic in the air behind it.
Scully cast a glance down at her hands. They’d been cleaned, hastily, but crimson still clung to her cuticles, outlining her nailbeds. She lurched forward and felt her wrist catch against a bite of metal.
The handcuffs glinted under the fluorescent lights - one circling her pale wrist, leaving a trail of angry, raw skin in its wake, and the other jingling against the rail of her hospital bed. She let her head fall back against the pillow, suddenly coming to register the pressure that was pounding beneath her skull.
Just as her headache seemed to be reaching its crescendo, she heard the telltale shriek of the curtain rails, and the curtain before her shifted, parted, and Scully let her eyes raise, allowing herself the indulgence of hope.
There hadn’t been a single hospital visit, since they’d met, where Mulder had not come for her.
She’d long-since abandoned the embarrassment of his seeing her at her worst - swathed in a paper-thin gown, her face bare and drawn. She’d worried, in the beginning, that he’d think her weak; something to be coddled and excluded, kept from her seat at the table for fear that she’d tip out of it. But then, he’d been shot, during the Boggs case, and she’d seen through his eyes, felt through his heart, and understood. A bedside vigil against the metronome of a heart monitor was not overprotection, but devotion. A promise of loyalty, of what they owed to each other. He to her, sure, but also she to him.
But whatever small and girlish thing had awoken in the back of her chest at the promise of her partner immediately shrivelled as the curtain fluttered to the side, revealing a man with cold eyes and close cropped hair. Not Mulder, but a foreign, stone-faced uniformed officer, regarding her with a look of disdain that rattled her spine.
The intruder snatched at a white plastic bag stationed on a single chair opposite her bed, emblazoned with the words “PATIENT PROPERTY”, and rummaged carelessly through it, withdrawing a small, faux-leather wallet that she recognised as her badge. He flipped it open, trailing his eyes on her.
“Dana Scully, FBI, huh?” He drawled, raising his eyebrows.
Scully realised, after a concussion-hazed beat, that he was waiting for her to respond. She swallowed, nodding slowly.
“Yes, sir.”
Her voice was hoarse, ragged as though she’d been screaming, and this new piece of information did nothing to settle her roiling stomach. She closed her eyes against the nausea, and opened them to find the officer’s eyes on her, his gaze intense with something she couldn’t quite place.
“So, Agent Scully,” he began, perching himself on the edge of her bed and snapping open his notebook, “you want to tell me what you were doing in that motel?”
His tone sent something prickly to the surface of her skin - it felt all wrong, the way he curled his tongue around the words before they left his mouth. Scully felt her body move on its own, shifting as far away from the man as she could get herself within the confines of her handcuffs, feeling withered under his attention.
“I’m sorry, I don’t… I don’t remember anything.”
Scully hated the small, apologetic sound of her own voice, how it made her appear even weaker than she already felt. The officer - Michaels, according to his name badge, raised his eyebrows at this, disdainful, disbelieving, and Scully wondered distantly if this was some cosmic punishment for all the times she’d used such an expression on Mulder.
Mulder… She ached for her partner, longing for the steadiness of his unwavering belief and quick, analysing intellect. If Scully needed someone to go digging, to dive deep into the trenches of her stolen memories, she wanted it to be Mulder. Mulder, who latched on to a mystery, all teeth and claws, refusing to let go until his jaws could clamp down around the meat of it - the truth he sought so doggedly. With his belief like a beacon, he would emerge from the depths and present her with a theory, or an answer, or a promise, gleaming like a pearl.
She sighed lightly, something like relief settling over her despite the pain between her brows. All of this; Officer Michaels and his clinical, cross-examining stare, the pillar of darkness where her weekend should be, the tiredness she could feel down to her spine, it could all wait until Mulder was here, until she could put her back up against him and face it head on.
“Miss Scully?”
Officer Michaels was wearing an expectant expression once more, and Scully knew he must have asked her another question. She felt suddenly impatient with him, a bubble of anger bursting in her chest and changing the texture of the fear that lingered there. Still, she slackened her jaw and let her voice fall syrupy from her lips as she pressed a light hand to her forehead.
“I’m sorry, officer, I really don’t think I’m quite up for questioning right now…”
To her surprise, Officer Michaels smiled, though the unforgiving overhead light transformed it into a grimace, his lips drawn back to show his teeth. Scully’s chest tightened around her irritation as he rose to his feet, eyes flicking between her and her heart rate monitor.
“Oh, sure, we’ll pick it up later.” He sneered, pulling something small and metal from his pocket and advancing towards her.
She flinched before she recognised the glinting talisman - handcuff keys.
“But… We’ll be doing it down at the station.” Michaels continued, fussing with the cuff that was attached to the bed.
“See, act however you like, but the doctors cleared you for transport, so…” He cleared his throat, and Scully got the sudden, searing impression that he was enjoying himself.
“Dana Scully, you have the right to remain silent…”
_________
Monday morning arrived, just as frosty as its predecessor.
Mulder, in what may have been a weak attempt at optimism (but was, in truth, more like a casual disregard for his own wellbeing), had done nothing more to bundle up than he had the previous night. He now felt the cold bone-deep, his teeth chattering as he heaved himself up from his vigil on the couch.
It had been a particularly bad Sunday. Despite his desperation to stave off the dread, it had taken up residence in him like an unwanted house guest.
He had run at least five miles longer than he normally would, he’d worked, he’d scrubbed every surface of his dingy bachelor’s kitchen until it gleamed first-date clean. He’d even, in a moment of true weakness, called Scully, and only remembered after the low beep of her voicemail rang in his ears, that she’d told him she’d be out of town for the weekend.
He had wanted to be relieved, glad to have been spared the embarrassment of coming up with an excuse to have called her, but something in his chest couldn’t stop wishing that she’d picked up anyway.
Now, he thought, as he walked stiffly towards the elevator, all that awaited him was a lecture about his poor self-preservation skills. He clung to it, played it in his head like a radio jingle.
“Honestly, Mulder, only you could manage to catch a cold this close to July…”
The most he could hope for was that it came with a hand on his forehead and a sympathetic smile.
It wasn’t unusual for the basement office to be empty upon his arrival. Creature of the night that he was, Mulder frequently beat the sun (and Scully) to work. Still, the sight of it, dark and undisturbed, did little to settle the residual weight that sat heavy in his gut. He sank into his chair, flipping open the first file he could get his hands on, and dove into the narrative of an unexplained death, sometime in the early 80s.
He didn’t watch the clock.
Well, he tried not to watch the clock.
Really, all he did was watch the clock.
Once the hour had slipped, pitilessly, past 9am, the hands of worry had started to grip him in earnest. Their office had remained painstakingly silent - no clip of heels down the hallway, or breeze of that soft, powdery perfume, strongest in the mornings. No sign of Scully.
He felt the tide of his thoughts turning, but was content to let them. Either Scully would appear, any moment now, or this fear would drag him under, and without hearing from her soon, he knew he’d go willingly.
The sudden bleat of a ringing phone sliced through the silence, and Mulder nearly tripped over the leg of his chair in his haste to reach it. She was running late, maybe, or unwell. But here she was, checking in.
He felt the tempest of his mind quieting already, and it was so, so much easier now, to ignore the cold spot he passed over as he lifted the handset to his ear.
“Scully, where are you?” he answered, abandoning formalities for the sake of a quicker resolution to his fears.
“Agent Mulder…”
All at once, the clipped, formal tone of the Assistant Director started the storm anew. Mulder’s ears rang with the volume of it, and he only just managed to make out Skinner summoning him to his office above the din.
He didn’t remember leaving the basement, couldn’t have discerned whether he’d run into anyone in the elevator on the way to the fifth floor. One moment he was telling Skinner he’d be right there, and the next, the older agent was asking him - no, ordering him - to have a seat.
Skinner’s brow was furrowed, a ghost of the expression he’d worn after they’d wheeled Duane Barry out of the interrogation room on a gurney - that intersection of anger and concern that always, always meant trouble. The ringing in Mulder’s ears grew to a scream, wailing and pounding itself against the walls of his skull. He swallowed down bile and all-but fell into the offered seat.
“Agent Mulder,” Skinner started, pressing his fingers to his temples as he studied the man in front of him. Mulder suddenly felt as though he were wearing the sleeplessness of his weekend like a cloak, gaudy and begging to be examined.
“I just got off the phone with the San Diego police department. They caught a case early yesterday morning, a murder, and…”
Pieces of information rose and burst like fireworks in Mulder’s field of vision, each one sending a fresh wave of nausea cascading through him.
Scully’s tight smile as she informed him she’d be out of town that weekend.
The slight straightening to her spine that always indicated she’d be visiting family.
A line in a personnel file, listing Bill Scully’s address as 6410 Ambrosia Drive, San Diego, California.
San Diego PD. Calling Skinner about a murder.
God no. No, no, no, no…
“Mulder!”
He hadn’t noticed Skinner rising from his chair, nor did he register that he’d crossed from behind the desk, and now stood at full height above his trembling form.
He startled as the Assistant Director lay a rough hand on his shoulder, slamming back into reality as he shook him firmly. He looked up, the question he was too afraid to ask painted in every crevice of his face.
“It wasn’t her, Mulder, I’m sorry I should’ve-” Skinner began, and Mulder felt all the air punch out of him in a strangled wheeze, relief replacing the tension coiled around his muscles.
But then…
“At least, it’s not… She’s okay, Mulder, but they’ve got evidence and, with the way they found her…”
Skinner seemed to falter at every sentence, and Mulder, whose thoughts were steadily arranging and rearranging, had to fight the urge to tell him to get on with it. Behind his eyes, a pounding had now replaced the wailing, keeping him upright as he waited for his superior to finish, to drive home the blade that he could already feel snug against his ribcage.
She’s okay. She’s okay. She’s okay.
“The SDPD have a case, and they like her for it.” Skinner said at last, regret soaking the words. “They called me as a courtesy, but Agent Scully was placed under arrest early yesterday evening, on suspicion of homicide.”
Not for the first time that day, Mulder felt the world go quiet, and this time, he let himself be consumed by the roar.