Heterochromia, by chibiness87
Rating: T
Spoilers/series: 03x12 War of the Coprophages
Disclaimer: not mine.
Summary: Mulder calls her to say the town is being attacked by a plague of killer cockroaches. Of course it is, she thinks. The day ends in 'Y'.
Heterochromia het·er·o·chro·mi·a (hět'ə-rō-krō'mē-ə) Noun. A difference in coloration in two structures or two parts of the same structure that are normally alike in colour. Example: Having both blue and green eye colour.
Dana Katherine Scully was born on the 23rd February, 1964, to two loving parents. Together with her elder brother and sister, and then later with her younger brother, she grew up on Navy bases, moving as warranted by her father's career, and never made a fuss. On her 15th birthday, her mother gave her a necklace which she would wear for most of her days hence; the symbolism of her belief apparent to all. By the time she had completed med school, she was well on her way to being recruited by the FBI, and even after being reassigned from the academy to work with a brilliant but eccentric profiler she manged to keep her head in even the most bizarre situations.
She prides herself on being a well-adjusted, polite yet firm, level headed individual; one whom could overlook the strange to find the science. She follows her brain more than her heart, and is not prone to emotional outbursts or blindly following something without some kind of proof.
Cockroaches do not attack people. They do not compel humans to commit murder. They do not cause intelligent people to lose their heads. These are facts she thought were well known.
And then her annoying partner calls her when she is trying to have a nice, normal, quiet night in. One where she can clean her gun and read a book and be elbow deep in suds over a dog she never knew she wanted until it was there, and her quiet evening goes all to hell while she has to spend it fielding calls and finding the truth, all from 350 miles away.
It's not like she can drop everything and be there at a drop of a hat, no matter how many times she offers. But then he's trespassing, and quite possibly being eaten alive by cockroaches, and hanging up the phone on her.
Later, her moment of relief when he answers after only a couple of rings is immediately gone when he hisses a quiet "Not now," at her, before unceremoniously hanging up on her again, and she feels her heartrate quicken.
Of the two of them, it is not often Mulder that gets caught in a battle of cat and mouse. Infected by weird unknown substances, drugged out of his mind by his apartment's water supply, lured to the middle of nowhere on the slimmest of leads; these are all par for the course. But captured? That's more her forte.
But then again, would being attacked by killer cockroaches really be that out of the ordinary for them? After all, if anyone would be attracted to bugs, it would be him.
Worry and guilt knowing at her, she is surprised she actually falls asleep, but is still awake again before the first trill of her phone falls silent.
And it is not killer cockroaches. At least, not yet.
It's not even bugs of any kind.
No.
What has been the cause of all her worry and fear and horror that, dear god, how she is now supposed to explain to their boss Mulder was attacked by insects, turns out to be nothing but a scientist.
An entomologist, actually. So maybe it does have something to do with bugs after all.
He's wittering on so much that she starts to tune him out; only to be pulled back to the present at the sound of the name of his new friend.
"Bambi?" Seriously? Here she is, one breath away from calling the state police, the Boston FBI field unit, hell, the military, and he's been making goo goo eyes at a fucking deer? She's going to bloody kill him.
"Her name is Bambi?"
And he's off again, round and round in circles, and she doesn't care that he hates bugs, that his childhood had moments of normality despite all the trauma that was to come, doesn't care that it's the middle of the night and he's treating this like any other case, because he doesn't get to do this.
He doesn't get to scare her like this.
They ring off, but she doesn't go back to sleep. Instead, she finds the first flight out of DC to the closest airport to the backwater town he's stumbled across she can find, and is packing her bag before the sun creeps over the horizon. Her dog is passed off to a friendly neighbour; the explanation of work enough to keep the questions at bay, and she is out of the door and into a car before she has quite worked out why she is doing this.
Mulder is fine.
He's fine, with a woman named after a cartoon deer, and bugs which may or may not be robots or aliens.
Because, with Mulder, it always comes down to aliens.
By the time she has found the small town, it is in chaos. A crash happens as she enters the nearest store, and the doctor in her has her checking everyone is ok by sight before she walks into the mass hysteria. She just needs to find a road map, but that simple task is waylaid by the need to calm everyone the fuck down.
She may, she admits, be a little bit cranky at this point.
A moment of calm occurs, before hell breaks loose again, and she sighs. Gives up. The box of chocolates are open anyway, but she still feels a moment of guilt as she pops one into her mouth. The bitterness of the chocolate on her tongue helps, and it isn't long before she has the rest of the box in her hand, pouring over the road map.
Mulder calls her, and, after a moment where she blames him for dragging her up here and he doesn't say she didn't need to come, point in his favour, they find a place to meet. They've been partners for years, and the shorthand they've developed in that time helps, and she pulls up next to his car only a few minutes after he does.
The woman in the front seat calls her partner Fox, and the woman in her wonders again at his insistence that she not call him that, when it seems everyone else they meet, including her own mother, seems to get away with it.
But Dana is not in charge right now; Scully is, and there is a certain feeling of satisfaction when the other woman's eyes bulge at the sight of her checking her weapon. It's not necessary; she knows it's loaded, but still, the spark of jealously she can't quite contain has her performing the action anyway, giving a parting barb to her feelings of her being here in the first place: This is no place for an entomologist.
Back off, she doesn't say. He's mine.
He's not hers. No more than she is his. But that's not exactly true either, now, is it?
The place is a maze, is her first thought.
How she was supposed to find Mulder in all of this she has no idea, so pulls out her phone to call him, only to hang up at the sound of gunshots. She runs towards the sound, only to be met by him running in the other direction, and then they're running together, and it is so familiar she can't help but smile to herself when he leans slightly over her as they cover behind the car as the building gets blown all to shit.
By which she means; shit gets blown up.
All over him, and all over her, and all over her nice coat she just got back from the cleaners.
To add insult to injury, it starts to rain, and in her haste of packing she hadn't thought to bring an umbrella. Mulder graciously, a little too much so, gives that woman the spare out of the car, but he at least keeps the one he's holding angles to protect her from the rain too, as the fire service eventually arrives.
It is still hazily raining as the day breaks, and for reasons she can't understand none of them have quite managed to move from the spot they've been in for a couple of hours, when a robotised wheelchair makes its way over to them. She can't see who is protected by the umbrella until the man is next to them, but Mulder's ease at talking to him has the initial urge to reach for her gun simmer down.
And then Bambi is leaving, and Mulder looks so bewildered, she can't help the stab of glee that fills her. She may find him odd, and eccentric, but she stays. He still has her, after everything, and this, this is why she flies out to meet him in backwater towns being plagued by cockroaches. She'll do it again and again, because they're partners, and that's what partners do.
And then he walks off and leaves her in the rain.
The rat bastard.
Next time, she'll let him be eaten by the monster of the week.
Except she won't. Of course she won't.
She's much too level headed for that.
End
Thoughts?