Disclaimer/Author's Notes: I don't own the x files, which I'm sure you're surprised to hear. This is a very happy story(!) and I hope you'll enjoy it and read it all. Next chapter is all the time setting details, but for now we'll stick with Scully's dream. This is how it all started:
It was a dream.
She knew it was a dream, yet it had an aching quality of realism that no mere nightmare should have. When she pressed her fingers against the shutters on the window, they came away dirty. The shutters were as realistically greasy as the fast food Mulder loved so much. Apart from the cloth in her mouth, she was entirely untethered, but previously this had not been the case; she could see frayed and mutilated ropes in the center of the room, and the insistent sting of recent rope burn was torturing her ankles and wrists. This sharp pain was also terrifyingly convincing.
A knock on the door, and she jumped. The loud rap sank in the musty, dark room, then a sweet voice, the voice of her would-be saviour:
"Scully? Dana? Are you in there? Scully?" the familiar voice asked softly, and she wanted to cry, to scream, to tell Mulder in her shaky but barely legible whisper, "Yes, I'm here, and I'm fine, but you have to get out of here right NOW!" But she couldn't, couldn't save Mulder from the fate she'd already dreamt him what seemed like so many times before, because the damned gag was stuck in her mouth, and her panicked mind was just starting to form the irrational thought that if she didn't get it out soon, it was most certainly going to suffocate her. Previously, she suspected, she had been chloroformed, by whoever had tied her up and gagged her, presumably.
Mulder paused outside the door, then moved on. Listening mournfully to his footfalls until they grew too distant to hear, she then gave the walls of the room a miserable, dejected look, focussing her misery on the door. Although she couldn't see from this side, she somehow knew that on the other side were numerous heavy padlocks, and at only around 100 lbs. and with a petite frame of 5'3'', she realised she had very little chance of popping the hinges. She had more chance, she thought unhappily, of popping her arm out of its socket.
Minutes passed, then the end-of-dream signal she had been waiting for passed as well.
Somewhere in the ramshackle building, a door opened and a single round tore the thick silence violently in half.
After what seemed an unfeasibly long amount of time, her own door swung open. She almost fell down the stairs to come face to face in her dream what she begged God every day she would never have to witness in real life.
Fox Mulder, dying in a pool of his own sickeningly bright, sickeningly real blood.
Her mind refused to believe it, to recognise with any conviction what was happening. Instead, she watched with sick fascination as what surely must have been a lot more than eight pints of blood gush out of his side wound. She sat serenely and watched her partner, best friend and lover die, then the weight of the event truly hit home, and she howled, an eerie, desperate sound. Dana Katherine Scully sat in the sundrenched hall of a dilapidated building in the middle of nowhere and howled and howled.
Then she woke up and realised her howls had been silent. Beside her, Mulder grunted, sighed, and rolled over in his sleep. Shaking uncontrollably, she slid out of the bed and sat in the wicker chair facing it. From there, she shook, and watched Fox, perfect and beautiful and incredibly alive as he was, and cried for a solid half-hour. After that she climbed back into bed and continued a troubled but gloriously dreamless sleep.
That was the fifth time she had the dream, and the last time she had it for two months.
It was a dream.
She knew it was a dream, yet it had an aching quality of realism that no mere nightmare should have. When she pressed her fingers against the shutters on the window, they came away dirty. The shutters were as realistically greasy as the fast food Mulder loved so much. Apart from the cloth in her mouth, she was entirely untethered, but previously this had not been the case; she could see frayed and mutilated ropes in the center of the room, and the insistent sting of recent rope burn was torturing her ankles and wrists. This sharp pain was also terrifyingly convincing.
A knock on the door, and she jumped. The loud rap sank in the musty, dark room, then a sweet voice, the voice of her would-be saviour:
"Scully? Dana? Are you in there? Scully?" the familiar voice asked softly, and she wanted to cry, to scream, to tell Mulder in her shaky but barely legible whisper, "Yes, I'm here, and I'm fine, but you have to get out of here right NOW!" But she couldn't, couldn't save Mulder from the fate she'd already dreamt him what seemed like so many times before, because the damned gag was stuck in her mouth, and her panicked mind was just starting to form the irrational thought that if she didn't get it out soon, it was most certainly going to suffocate her. Previously, she suspected, she had been chloroformed, by whoever had tied her up and gagged her, presumably.
Mulder paused outside the door, then moved on. Listening mournfully to his footfalls until they grew too distant to hear, she then gave the walls of the room a miserable, dejected look, focussing her misery on the door. Although she couldn't see from this side, she somehow knew that on the other side were numerous heavy padlocks, and at only around 100 lbs. and with a petite frame of 5'3'', she realised she had very little chance of popping the hinges. She had more chance, she thought unhappily, of popping her arm out of its socket.
Minutes passed, then the end-of-dream signal she had been waiting for passed as well.
Somewhere in the ramshackle building, a door opened and a single round tore the thick silence violently in half.
After what seemed an unfeasibly long amount of time, her own door swung open. She almost fell down the stairs to come face to face in her dream what she begged God every day she would never have to witness in real life.
Fox Mulder, dying in a pool of his own sickeningly bright, sickeningly real blood.
Her mind refused to believe it, to recognise with any conviction what was happening. Instead, she watched with sick fascination as what surely must have been a lot more than eight pints of blood gush out of his side wound. She sat serenely and watched her partner, best friend and lover die, then the weight of the event truly hit home, and she howled, an eerie, desperate sound. Dana Katherine Scully sat in the sundrenched hall of a dilapidated building in the middle of nowhere and howled and howled.
Then she woke up and realised her howls had been silent. Beside her, Mulder grunted, sighed, and rolled over in his sleep. Shaking uncontrollably, she slid out of the bed and sat in the wicker chair facing it. From there, she shook, and watched Fox, perfect and beautiful and incredibly alive as he was, and cried for a solid half-hour. After that she climbed back into bed and continued a troubled but gloriously dreamless sleep.
That was the fifth time she had the dream, and the last time she had it for two months.