Character: Dana Scully
Fandom: The X-Files
Rating: PG-13
Prompt: Scully: I must remind you, this goes against the bureau's policy of male and female agents staying in the same motel room while on assignment.
Mulder: Try any of that Tailhook crap on me Scully, and I'll kick your ass. (Fox Mulder: X-files) 42 on scifi_muses on LiveJournal
Setting: X-files: Fight The Future
The earth rumbled and something on the air shrieked, a thousand shards of diamond hard ice sprayed around her, and she had to hurt as something sharp snagged at the ill- fitting pants she swam in….
"How is she doing?" He sounded like Mulder, a soft, baritone gravel, a low rumble with the hint of the nasal, inflected accent that landed somewhere between New York and Boston. Where had he come from? Why was she there?
Cool fingers grazed her brow, then landed on her right wrist, pressing for a moment, and then a hum of quiet approval. "Better, much better." It was a woman, though one with an accent Scully had never hard before. It sounded vaguely British but off, a bit flat and stretched to thin. No one she knew in DC spoke like that. Where was she?
Cold…miles and miles of white, and she was falling into it, scrambling for Mulder as she hit, crystals cutting into tender skin, rapidly turning numb. The world was a shower of ice and vapor, as Scully closed her eyes, and wondered what hell she had woken up to….
"I think she's coming out of it." The woman sounded as if she approved. As if obliging her, Scully's eyelids fluttered, faintly, as she struggled to make sense of the swimming images that seeped up through her consciousness. There was screaming, and things chasing her…but before that there had been Ahab…maybe…and hadn't she fought with Mulder? Something about Utah, she wanted out. He tried to talk her out of it, to stop her. He had tried….
Her eyes snapped open on a completely unfamiliar face smiling down at her.
"Hullo there," the woman grinned, green eyes crinkling at the corners of her freckled face. "I wondered if you weren't waking up on us."
It took Scully less than a second to recognize her surroundings, even if she hadn't been in the location before. The trappings of a hospital room were becoming more painfully familiar to her as a patient than they ever were as a doctor. But the gray, sleet outside her large, open window didn't correlate with any place in Washington DC she knew of.
"Where am I?" Her voice croaked and rasped, the sound grating out as if she had swallowed barbed wire at some point. The nurse grinned again, it seemed her permanent disposition, even her rainbow printed scrubs smiled, despite the grayness outside.
"Christchurch Hospital, New Zealand, you were flown here two days ago." The woman's dark hair was pulled back in a severe bun, and it jerked across Scully to the corner. "Your partner there nearly caused an international incident trying to get you admitted."
"I at least said 'please' before I started mentioning the US Embassy." Mulder replied, unrepentant and shaggy, his bright, hazel green eyes shining over several days' worth of beard growth. Scully could see why the nurse would be so dubious about anyone looking like that demanding treatment, her normally impeccable partner looked as if he'd hitchhiked to New Zealand, his hair was limp and unwashed and he looked as if he'd been trying to fold his lanky frame into the tiny chair he uncurled out of.
"Christchurch…New Zealand?" The words squeaked out of Scully's much abused throat, as she wondered what the hell had happened to her, and how the hell had she ended up at the other side of the world? Hadn't she just been in Mulder's apartment? "How?"
"For that you need to ask your man here." The nurse cast an amused, appreciative glance towards Mulder, who had succeeded in stretching out cramped limbs enough to reach Scully's bedside. He only shrugged mildly as his long fingers reached for hers, silently tangling them together. What had happened? She tried to silently question him, but he only met her curiosity with assurance.
So much for their silent communication, she thought groggily as her foggy mind tried to piece together what was going on.
"We are work partners," she tried to explain feebly to the nurse, not liking the connotation of the term "your man" at all.
"Yes, I know about you and the FBI," the nurse sounded impressed. What idea did she have about FBI agents anyway? "Your partner says you two were on a case down in the Antarctic. Sounds like a strange place for the US government to be sending a pair of investigators."
Mulder couldn't clear his throat fast enough, it seemed, as he nearly choked in the effort. "Nurse Milligan, is she doing well enough I could have her alone for a bit?"
Sharp eyes cut to Mulder's, slightly greener than his own, and laughing pointedly. "Right…I have some paperwork to put in anyway, report her vitals, and let her physician know. Try not to tire her out too much." She winked at Scully cheerfully before slipping out, closing the door of the hospital room behind her.
Just what in the hell was going on?
"Mulder," she began, as he held up a warning finger, pressing it to his lips briefly as he slipped over to the door. He was paranoid at the best of times, but it struck Scully as particularly over-the-top as he opened the door enough to peek outside, before shutting it again firmly, seemingly satisfied at whatever he observed.
"We are in a foreign hospital, Mulder, who is watching us?" Even tired, confused, and now she realized, aching, Scully could manage to sound peevish as she tried to sit up further in the bed. Now becoming suddenly more aware of herself, it was becoming clear that whatever happened, she had taken a beating. Her joints ached in that sort of way that only happened after a nasty case of the flu, and there were scaly, blistered patches on her hands. Her cheeks felt raw and stung as she grimaced.
"Do you remember anything, Scully?" Mulder turned to her, gaze boring down on her with a familiar intensity. It gave Scully pause. She hadn't seen Mulder this engaged in…forever it seemed. Since before Michael Kirtschgau, before her illness... What was going on?
"No," she breathed, frowning as she tried to make sense of the jumble of images that surfaced to life. "I mean…not really….nothing makes sense." There were unearthly screams rending the air, hot steam against her icy skin, fear, and confusion as she tried to make sense of what was happening. She had just been in Mulder's hallway, just told him she was leaving the FBI; he had begged her not to go. He had told her he couldn't do this without her that he didn't want to. And his lips had brushed hers for the briefest of moments…
Scully's raw, chapped cheeks flushed brightly, her eyes wide as they attempted to meet his, but he was preoccupied, thinking, turning to pace the small length of her hospital room. What had happened in that hallway? Scully struggled to remember, but came up short. A sting…hadn't there been a bee? She had gone into shock. The ambulance came…and there was the unmistakable report of a handgun firing.
"You were shot," she blurted, remembering the terror suddenly, the hysterical fear that her partner was indeed dead.
"What," Mulder turned, blinking for the briefest of moments, clearly lost in whatever thoughts he was mulling over. "Oh…yeah, I'm fine."
"At point-blank range?" Scully eyed him; obviously doubtful despite the fact he was standing right in front of her. Dutifully he sighed, wandering over and lifting a shank of his limp hair. A bright, red welt still stood out, vivid against his pale skin, just across his brow.
"See, now we match." He smirked, reaching for a similar, pale scar that ran just across her hairline, one she had received in his apartment years ago. "I figure we can win at the next office picnic, partners with the most identical scars."
"That's not funny," she admonished, resisting the urge to check out the still healing wound and ensure he was all right for herself. He danced just out of her limited reach anyway, as if knowing that was what she was thinking.
"I'm fine, Dana." Fear flickered to life behind the intensity. Scully's pulse fluttered briefly.
"What happened?" She finally vocalized the one question she had asked herself repeatedly since waking up. "Why are we in New Zealand? What is this about Antarctica?"
Mulder stopped in his pacing, heaving himself back into the chair that was too small for him, seeming to flop into it as he worked out which part to begin with. "You were at my apartment. You were there to tell me you were leaving the X-files."
Leaving…yes. Memory resurfaced finally, the meeting with OPR, AD Cassidy's scoffing derision, Skinner begging her to reconsider. They were separating them, she and Mulder. The X-files were already closed to them; this was the final nail in the coffin. The bombing in Dallas was being laid squarely at their feet, and it was being used as an excuse to keep her from Mulder permanently.
"There was a sting…a bee?" She remembered the sting at least, the lacinating pains, the terror that crept over her as her lungs seized and her breathing struggled. Mulder's grim nod confirmed what she recalled.
"Frohike found the bee later, my guess is that it hitched a ride with us back from the Mexico border."
The cornfields…the strange bio-dome, large hives filled with bees. "I'm not allergic to bees, Mulder, I never have been."
"It wasn't an allergic reaction you were having, Scully, it was a reaction to a contagion…a virus."
A virus? She was too tired and sore to scoff at him, but she knew he could read her dubiousness loud and clear.
"Scully, you've been on a full course of anti-virals for two days now. The same ones you gave me in Alaska. If you want, I can go get the nurse, confirm for you."
"It was a bee sting, what virus is passed on through something as harmless as that?"
"One that no one would suspect. One that can attack quickly and silently, without people noticing." He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, eyes glittering under his unkempt, greasy hair. "The kind that they would blow up an entire building to keep hidden from the public, one that caused the sort of damage you saw in those men in Bethesda."
"What those men died of, Mulder, was something so virulent that it broke down the very cellular structure of their bodies." Absently Scully rubbed her own abdomen beneath the thick blankets that covered her. "I seem to be fine."
"You might not have been if I hadn't gotten to you." Darkness laced his words, and Scully felt suddenly as cold as the skies outside of her window.
"What do you mean?"
"The ambulance that took you wasn't a real ambulance. The people who took you knew what had happened, expected what had happened. Likely as not they knew we were the two who broke into the facility in Texas and they were waiting, on the off chance one of us was accidentally infected with the contagion they were cultivating. It just so happened you were. They got to you first. I wouldn't have known the difference if they hadn't tried to take my head of for asking a simple question." He fingered red scar across his head ruefully.
Scully could remember the ambulance, the gunshot, but nothing more. "I don't know where they took me."
"I wouldn't have either, except that I had a lucky break." He leaned back again, stretching out his long, jean-clad legs. "Kurtzweil is dead."
He was the man who had started all this. "How?"
"I don't know, and I doubt anyone will notice or figure it out. Do you remember the man who we met in West Virginia? The one with the British accent, the one who said he knew my father?"
Scully prodded her still dim brain for a long moment, finally recalling a slim, graying man, one who had warned her not to return home, that they would try to kill her. "He was at your father's funeral. He had tried to tell me…he knows the men who killed my sister."
Don't give up…
Scully shivered.
"He was waiting for me when I went looking for Kurtzweil. He was the one who told me where you were."
Strange. Scully had no idea who the man was, only that he claimed to know Bill Mulder, and that they were all involved in a conspiracy involving some sort of genetic manipulation, one that had somehow involved Mulder's sister. "What did he want?" She was half fearful of the answer. The last time Mulder had been promised the means by which to save Scully had been the year before. He had nearly sold his should to the devil himself then, just to find a cure for her cancer. She didn't want to think of what he was asked this time.
Mulder's answer surprised her. "Nothing."
"Nothing," she echoed, dubious. "When have these men ever given anything away without a price?"
"I won't say a price wasn't paid…he's dead."
That answer sobered her. "You know that for sure?"
"He booted me out of the car just before it exploded, I watched it burn." Mulder sucked at his bottom lip thoughtfully, teeth cutting into the soft flesh. "But not before he explained to me what this was all about, what my father was into…why they took Samantha and not me."
Scully's heart broke as she swallowed hard, her aching throat protesting against the welling of emotions at the site of Mulder so vulnerable. "Mulder…you don't know if what he said was true."
"He had nothing to lose, Scully, only the dim hope and prayer that he could somehow stop this."
"Stop what?"
"The future," Mulder replied simply. "For the past fifty years, Scully, the men that my father worked with have been robbing Peter to pay Paul, to stop a invasion that they didn't understand."
"An invasion…so now it is about aliens again? Kirtschgau told us that was all a lie, a ruse to hide the truth, one they cleverly used to pull the wool over your eyes and play you like a fiddle."
"What Kirtschgau didn't know was that he was only mostly right." The fire that used to blaze so brightly in her partner when she first met him simmered for the briefest of moments, rekindled somehow by this mysterious man's words. "I believe Kirtschgau thought that what he said was true. The government has been working for years on bio-weapons, on a secret virus and antidotes. What he didn't realize was that the alien angle wasn't a lie, only we didn't understand the truth behind it."
"You mean to tell me that this man told you that the aliens brought this virus?"
"No, Scully…the aliens are the virus."
Before Scully could even hope to comprehend him, Mulder pushed on. "Humanity has only existed for a fraction of the time that life has been on this planet. What if we weren't first, Scully? What if there was someone else here, well before us? What if they never quite left?"
"Ancient viruses exist, Mulder, new ones are found everyday…"
"It's not just a virus…think about it, Scully, Purity Control. What was the first thing you said after studying it?"
"That it didn't appear to be a natural, terrestrial occurring life form," she conceded.
"You called it alien. And you were right. How many times have we run across this virus, Scully? And has it ever behaved normally?"
"Normal is subjective with viruses, Mulder, they adapt, they mutate, they change."
"Which is a matter of survival. Think about it, Scully, viruses are one of the most durable life forms on this planet for a reason. And if you were a race that was dying, how better to ensure your survival than to utilize a form that not only perpetuations your own DNA, but infects the DNA of any other creature, allowing you to use that creature to perpetuation your species?"
Scully shuddered at the implication; ignoring the fact she felt it was patently impossible. "Mulder, that isn't how viruses work, any virologist or infectious disease expert would tell you that."
"If it were a terrestrial disease I would agree with you." Mulder scrubbed at his unshaven face. "The pieces all make sense, Scully. The group my father was a part of a group who discovered the truth about the virus years ago, discovered what it was, and thought they could stop it. They had bargained that the virus would mutate, that it would do what it did in Dallas."
There was something ominous in his words. "What are you saying?"
"The men my father worked with believed that they could stop a holocaust. They believed that they could subvert the inevitable. The kidnapping of women, the use of their ovum, the cloning projects…those were just methods to test bio-weapons, they were secret efforts to stave off an infection that would destroy humanity. They hoped they could create a vaccine. In some small measure they did, I suppose. It is what saved you."
The muscles in Scully's sore throat tightened, constricting back to the spot she thought the bee had stung her at. "How did I end up in Antarctica?"
"That I don't know." Mulder shook his head ruefully, and he slumped into the chair, staring fitfully up at the ceiling. "The truth is, Scully, I think it was the only way they could keep you alive. You weren't alone there. There were bodies…millions of them, stretching forever, all encased in ice. It was like a giant storage place, with people reaching back to the dawn of time."
It sounded like a dream, like something out of one of Mulder's horrible, B movies. "What sort of storage facility could house that many people and not be found, even in Antarctica?"
"The kind that can pick up and fly." Mulder's eyes slid from the ceiling to meet hers. "You didn't see it, did you, when we landed on the ice?"
Landed on the ice…Scully could barely remember how she even ended up in the predicament. "What?"
The fire returned, flickering to life above a sad, somewhat manic grin. "I was right all along. There are flying saucers. You were on one, I was on one. The truth about Roswell isn't that aliens made contact and our government was hiding it. The truth is that the aliens returned and made an ultimatum. They are coming back, and the virus…that is how they plan on doing it. We aren't all going down in an Independence Day blaze of glory, we are going to die slowly, infected one by one by an alien host who will use our bodies to gestate their race. What I saw on that ship, Scully, were humans, all infected with the virus, all frozen in time to keep their precious cargo safe, until it was time for invasion."
This couldn't be the story he had to tell her? And yet he seemed deadly serious, worse yet, he seemed…vindicated. He wasn't the fool anymore, not according to this fairy tale; he alone knew the truth, a horrible, terrifying truth about the future. She wanted to deny it, to tell him that the ice and danger put ideas in his head, but her broken memory betrayed her. Images of horrible claws catching at her, of creatures breaking through ice chambers rose to mind, and of falling…down, down, down….
"Mulder, I can't back any of this. And you have no proof."
"Doesn't mean this isn't what is happening. And if I hadn't gotten to you sooner, you'd have been one of them too. They are using us, Scully, to propitiate a new race of these creatures, a creature that existed on this earth well before humanity ever did. No trace of them has ever been found because their remains are the oil like substance we found. And now their brethren have returned to repopulate the species, at the expense of the interlopers who rose to dominance in that time. It is the crossroads my father and these men were at. Either help the invasion along, in the hopes that a few, genetically modified survivors could make it through as a slave race, or resist, and inoculate the entire population against the oncoming storm before it was too late."
"The smallpox vaccinations," that piece of information clicked into place in Scully's mind. "They've been trying to use the smallpox inoculation as a template for a vaccination, likely in order to piggyback the two together, unsuspected. It's common place to vaccinate most everyone for smallpox."
"And that's where your bee comes in." Mulder nodded. "Remember the bee colonies I found in Canada, the ones Jeremiah Smith took me too? They are raising genetically modified bees as carriers. Skinner and I discovered the bees. They are using genetically modified corn pollen to infect them as carriers. They then are set loose in swarms, where of course they will sting people, infecting them with smallpox. But it wasn't smallpox; it was an altered form, one that carried the alien virus. They wanted to see if the inoculations worked. They didn't."
What he was suggesting was horrific, terrifying in the extreme. But when had she ever, ever known Mulder to lie, to make this up? Perhaps regurgitate fallacies he had been told, wholeheartedly believing them, but who would make something like this up? "Mulder…if this is true…"
"I know," he murmured quietly, looking about as frightened by the possibility as she felt. "I don't even know where to begin. These men…they were robbing Peter to pay Paul, Scully, sleeping with the enemy in the hopes of stabbing them in the back. And now…I don't know if it is working." He gnawed at his lip again, pensive.
"The man did tell me one thing. My sister…she was a part of this program. My father was forced to choose, which child to give to their cause, to be cloned in the hopes of creating a genetic hybrid. For whatever reason he had Samantha taken."
And yet there was no explanation as to where she was taken, or if she were still alive. Frustration mixed with grief as Scully thought of graying, broken Bill Mulder, the man she met in Alaska. He had blamed himself for what happened to his children. He hadn't lied about that. "Did this man know why your father made the decision he did?"
Mulder shrugged, shaking his head. "He said my father hoped that Samantha would at least survive. He thought that my father hoped I would be the one to uncover what was going on, to stop it…to fight it."
"Fight it?" The weight of what Bill Mulder laid on his son's shoulders seemed crushing. What he had just said, if even half of it were true, was forbidding, the idea of a virus poised to destroy them all, a secret held by only a few, and an alien race poised to take back what was there's. Scully wasn't certain believed Mulder's story, certainly she was sure no one else would. But who would make up a story of this magnitude, least of all Mulder?
She felt suddenly very small and frightened, lying in her hospital bed, thousands of miles away from home. This was so much bigger than she had ever dreamed, bigger than herself, bigger than Mulder, bigger than anything she had ever wanted to do with her life. She had dreamed of making a difference, of doing good, not saving the world. And now she was caught up into this as anyone. Was it really so simple as backing out of it now?
Especially if Mulder literally traveled to the ends of the Earth to save her when it would have been so easy to walk away and leave her? He refused to give up on her…how could she even contemplate giving up on him. Antarctica…of all places, how in the hell had she ended up there? And how had he gotten to her?
"Mulder," she murmured, raspy, suddenly overwhelmed by everything. "How did you get to me? If I was in Antarctica, how…civilians are just allowed down there unless it is for a purpose."
Mulder's pensive, worried look drew slowly into a sly smile. "I'll owe Skinner from now until the end of time. He pulled some strings with some Marine buddies of his, no questions asked. All I had to say was that you were in trouble. You know, I do believe our boss has a crush on you."
Ignoring the ludicrous suggestion regarding Skinner, glanced out to the cold, gray skies outside. "How are we getting back? Who knows we are here?"
"Don't worry about it, you don't think I haven't been working on it?" Mulder's mood lightened as he rose. "As soon as the doctor's here think you are ready to go, I'll spring you out, we'll head home."
Home…to what? Scully had tendered her resignation; she had no work to go home to. She had walked away from a future that now seemed too heavy and frightening to contemplate. She had walked away from the X-files, from conspiracies, from aliens…from him. What was she going home to?
"Don't think about those things now." Mulder was at her side again, sighing as he brushed hair away from her face with a long-suffering sigh. "Just get better. I'm tired of seeing you in hospitals."
Swiftly he leaned down, brushing his lips against her temple, whiskers scratching the already tender skin there. Scully's face flamed as he made contact, and the memory of the near embrace in the hallways in front of his apartment flared fully to life again. Did he remember? Should she even bring it up to him?
"I'll get better," she breathed as he straightened, turning her embarrassment to wry humor. "But only if you promise to go somewhere and take a bath."
"A bath?" He made a show of sniffing his clothing, wrinkling his aquiline nose as it suddenly occurred to him that I must have been days since he last saw soap and water. "Yeah…I thought all the nurses kept giving me funny looks cause they liked the scruff."
"I think they were wondering if you were homeless."
"Right," he chuckled. "I'll get a room, go get cleaned up. You rest…we'll talk some more later."
Later…so much to talk and think about later. For now…she just wanted to go home. Whatever that meant for her.
