Character: Dana Scully
Fandom: The X-files
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 3233
Prompt: Louis: You think it's too warm in here for the Brie? Wk 41
Setting: Second Season Episode: "Firewalker"
"Don't you think it's warm in here?" Melissa stood over her sister, pronouncing this with all of certainty that she expected her younger sister to rise from her comfortable couch and actually do something about the temperature.
Scully's response to look up from the LAPD Medical Examiner's report at her sister and nod to her window. "Open the window then." Despite it being Mid-October, it was unseasonably warm in Washington, a lovely weekend that called for perhaps a walk through Georgetown, a cup of coffee at a café, perhaps lunch with her sister over salad and chatter.
"It's so nice outside today, Dana, why are you cooped up in here," Melissa was obviously restless. Wandering to the newly repaired, large bay window she opened up the blinds and raised the windows, the new frames squeaking and protesting loudly at the force being applied.
Scully tried felt herself shudder involuntarily at the noise, vague images that refused to coalesce, as she shook her head, clearing her brain. She swallowed hard as she curled her feet further under the couch cushions, propping the medical examiner's report on her knees. "I didn't feel like going out."
"Dana, it's been three weeks since you left the hospital. You're cleared to work even." Melissa leaned out of the window briefly, tugging a leaf off one of the trees just outside, just starting to turn slightly orange. "And it's fall, you're favorite time of year."
"It's only my favorite because I didn't ever get to see changing leaves till we moved to Baltimore," Scully replied practically, ignoring the leaf her sister waved in her face. Melissa was right, she knew, except for doctor's appointments and a visit to the car dealership to have her finally recovered vehicle looked over before the FBI released it to her custody, Scully hadn't been out at all. She had no reason not to, she realized that. At first she had chalked it up to just desiring to feel comfortable and safe again in the home that had been so horribly violated by Duane Barry, facing her fears down and refusing to relent to the desire to run from that which had frightened and harmed her.
Yet there was a small part of her, Scully realized, that was using the apartment to hide as well, from the world outside that had moved on without her in the month she had been gone. One whole month of he life, now missing while thing changed and people went about their daily routines. Perhaps, in the grand scheme of things, a month was a small period of time, mere weeks. Still, it was an aching, empty hole in Scully's life, a period with no memories, no faces, nothing spatially to help her feel that period shift of change. It was blankness, as if her life ceased to exist in that span, even though everyone else had continued to take walks, go to lunches, and sip cups of coffee at Georgetown cafes.
It was disconcerting and unnerving. More than anything in her life, Scully wanted normal now, to feel something that was everyday. And at least a run of the mill, strange-as-hell X-file offered her that sort of comfort. She rifled through the Los Angeles Police Department's Medical examiner's report, frowning as she read the description of John Krieger's strange and mysterious "death" in a cell in the Hollywood area holding facility.
"Do you really plan on spending your entire Sunday reading case files," defeated, Melissa sighed, meandering to the armchair closest to where Scully sat and flopping in it inelegantly.
"It's one case, Missy, and I don't want to be behind starting tomorrow."
"What trouble could Fox possibly find in one case without you on it," Melissa raised an auburn eyebrow as she folded her hands across the bodice of her soft, cotton dress, eyeing the paperwork on Scully's lap dubiously.
"Apparently a lot," Scully lifted the report and waved it at her sister. "A vampire cult, chasing a young woman around the country, on a bloody murder spree that ended in LA." Melissa looked appropriately horrified as Scully tossed the papers on her brand new coffee table, made of wood now rather than glass, and swung her feet to the ground, reaching for her now lukewarm and slightly stale coffee. "Trouble is Mulder will never know for sure what was going on, the bodies all burned in an explosion. And since the Hollywood Hills were already on fire, it took LA County fire far too long to put it out. Their resources were taken up by the wildfires. By the time they even found the victims there wasn't much left to look at." She sighed. Poor Mulder couldn't ever seem to catch a break without her there to hold his hand.
"So where does that leave the case," Melissa wondered, intrigued.
"Well, it leaves Mulder without much of one." She tugged thoughtfully at the case file, sitting by the ME report on the table, and opened it up to pull out the black-and-white pictures of the main suspect in the case, Kristen Kilar...the woman Mulder said he had failed to protect. She wondered what it was about the woman that made her partner suspect her innocents. More so, she mused privately, what about her had tugged at Mulder enough to make him feel guilt over her demise in the explosion that destroyed her and the three other suspects in the killings.
She was almost too afraid to ask him. She wasn't sure she would be terribly impressed with the answer. Mulder didn't sound particularly impressed with himself. But given the circumstances, she almost wondered if she could blame him. Anything to penetrate through that aching darkness, she realized, anything to stave off the raging anger and guilt. Was that how he felt after Samantha disappeared, she wondered? Was this what he'd been carrying for over twenty years?
"Earth to Dana," Melissa called softly, her laughing finally penetrating through her own dark swirl of thoughts. "You with me over there, sis?"
"Yeah," Scully blinked, setting down Kristen's photo. "Sorry, just…thinking."
Melissa smiled tightly as she watched her, her expression sad. "You're already back there…aren't you?"
"Back where," Scully frowned at her sister's vague remark, rising with her coffee in hand, in the direction of her kitchen and her coffee machine.
"Back at work…back at the X-files."
Scully tossed her elder sister a flippant frown. "Of course. It took us months of digging, not to mention my convenient disappearance to get those open again. Where else would I go?"
"Us," Melissa uttered the word pointedly, rising to follow Scully into the kitchen, hands at her slender waist. "When did Fox's work become 'us'?"
Where did her sister's inquisitiveness come from, Scully wondered irritably? "I've been an assistant on Mulder's work. He even asked for me specifically."
"But that's just it, Dana. It's Fox's work, and you're his partner. When did it become 'your' work as well?" Melissa stopped at the kitchen doorway, leaning against it as she watched her sister pour more coffee.
"Why shouldn't it be my work too if I'm his partner?" Perhaps that was the confusion for Scully, she realized, as she moved towards her fridge for the half-and-half inside. "We work as a team, Melissa, it isn't like I do some work for him, and he does some work for me. That's what partners at the FBI do."
"But it wasn't why you joined the FBI," Melissa persisted stubbornly as Scully stopped at the open fridge, staring at her sister.
"Since when were you the one to question why I joined the FBI?" Melissa had been, if anything, her first supporter, "You were the one who said life is a path, we have to follow our heart and it will take us where we are supposed to go'."
"I did," Melissa admitted, nodding slowly. "But I guess what I'm asking is if this is your heart speaking, or if this your own sense of duty."
"Duty," Scully laughed, pulling out the carton from her refrigerator, "What's wrong with duty?"
"Nothing," Melissa replied. "We are a Navy family, Dana. I know all about duty. It taught me that duty can make us a blind at times…blind to others needs, blind to ours."
"I think I'm being very aware of my needs, Missy. I need to get back to work." Scully poured the thick, white mixture of milk and cream into her coffee, turning it a soft, pale mocha color. "I've already lost a month of my life. And the X-files challenged me more than any other work I've done at the FBI." She sighed as she reached for her sugar bowl.
"I understand that," Melissa conceded. "But I also know you. And I know what Fox did for you….well, at least some of it." She shrugged thin shoulders as she watched Scully dump her requisite two spoonfuls of sugar into her coffee before stirring.
"I'm not doing this for Mulder." It nettled her that Melissa would imply such.
"You sure," Melissa pressed, earning the wrath of her younger sister who waved her stirring spoon at her.
"Melissa, I just said I wasn't, God damn it." Irritated, she tossed her spoon into the kitchen sink, perhaps harder than was absolutely necessary. It clattered against the porcelain and into the drain. "I'm…I'm doing this for me, don't you understand?" She practically pleaded with her elder sister. "They took something from me I don't even remember. I don't know who they even were. I came home so deathly sick, I might have died, and with no reason, with no explanation. I don't know why I was taken, I don't know how I got home, or why. I….I am an X-file."
Her eyes welled up as she realized suddenly just how loud her voice was carrying in the small area of her apartment kitchen. "I'm a great, unanswered question. And whether Mulder's there or not, there is a part of me that wants to know…will always want to know what happened, and why."
Her coffee cup was pried from her small fingers gently, as Melissa wrapped her arms around her suddenly shaking shoulders. Without warning, without even really realizing why, Scully felt herself go quite thoroughly to pieces. Clinging to her elder sister, she sobbed for what felt like hours, crying tears for everything she couldn't remember, for things she thought she remembered, and all of the fear that she didn't realize she still held on to, clinging to it like a lifeline. She sobbed till her eyes were so swollen, no further tears leaked out, till her throat was raw, and her nose so clogged she couldn't breath. And when she was done she sank, exhausted to the floor, leaning her back against the cabinet under the sink, propping her arms across her bent and raised knees.
Despite her cotton print dress, Melissa immediately settled beside her, reaching over to smooth the damp, coppery hair out of her sister's sweaty and tearful face. It was a gesture so endearingly like their mother's, and Scully felt herself leaning into her sister's cool fingers, smiling shakily.
"I knew even you couldn't keep up the façade for ever," Melissa murmured gently, reaching up to the table just long enough to grab a paper napkin, and passing it over. Scully accepted it gratefully.
"Mom was worried you know," Melissa continued as Scully mopped her eyes and blotted her nose. "She wanted to ask you not to go back to work. She was afraid….afraid that Dad might have been right."
Scully visibly flinched, stung to her core by those words, the ones that she herself had been privately thinking since the moment she had awoken from her coma. It pained her to hear them come from her mother, who had stood up for her to her father whenever he had protested about her joining the Bureau. Still, she remained silent, only nodding mutely and snuffling quietly.
"I asked Mom if she would say the same thing about Bill or Charlie in the military, or Dad when he was alive. After all, it's no different, really. Wartime comes, or even just a minor military exercise, and any of them could have been or could be hurt, even killed. And there are many places in the world where the fact that they are US Navy could get them kidnapped or killed. It's no safer for them than it is for you. And they don't have the benefit of having a relentless partner who will move heaven and earth to try to protect them." She smiled gently, nudging Scully beside her, and finally eliciting something of a smile out of her.
"She's scared for you, Dana, I won't deny that. This is the first time you've been in danger, real danger. I won't say I wasn't scared for you myself. Death is a natural thing, it shouldn't be feared, but I can't say that I exactly wanted you to leave me just yet."
"I don't think I'm quite ready to leave you either," Scully managed, stuffily chuckling, glancing sideways at her sister. "And I know Mom is scared. I can't say I'm not. But I can't live my life like that, Missy, frightened all of the time, and not trying to understand it. It wasn't how Dad and Mom taught us to be."
"Too much of the Irish in us, I suppose," Melissa chuckled. "I just want you to be sure, Dana, very sure that this is what you want, that this is your decisions to return to work like this. And it's not out of gratitude to Fox, or because you feel you must, or because you worry what everyone will think of you, because no one will respect you less for it."
"I'm not, Missy," Scully sighed softly, sniffing again and blowing her nose into the napkin her sister passed her.
"All right," Melissa sighed, encircling her shoulders in a one armed embrace, squeezing them tightly. "I just have to be sure. And so do you."
"I'm sure," Scully nodded, scrubbing at her face hard with the heels of her hands, rubbing at her tear-swollen eyes. She managed a wobbly smile for her. "I don't think there are many things in this life I am sure about, but going back to work is one of those." She had to work; she had to find her normal again…whatever normal meant working on the X-files.
What a sad, strange statement on her life when the X-files were normal for her. Better, she realized, than cutting up dead bodies all day for a living.
"I want ice cream," Missy murmured thoughtfully, in the sort of tone that indicated she was using it as an excuse to drag her erstwhile sister out of her apartment.
"I have some in the fridge, if you want," Scully began, but Melissa shook her head, stood up, and reached a hand down to her.
"Nope, come on, we are going down the street. We are going to sit in the unseasonably lovely day, in the bright leaves and warm sunshine, and eat the last, outdoor ice cream of the year."
Scully took Melissa's proffered hand and pulled her body up. "Last outdoor ice cream of the year?"
"Well you don't eat ice cream when it's snowing six inches in January here, do you?"
"No," Scully admitted. "But do we have to go out…"
The look on Melissa's face could have come straight from their mother.
"Right, I'll just go wash my face, shall I," Scully replied meekly, sniffing loudly as if to further the point.
"The fresh air will do you good," Melissa called after her as Scully shuffled to the rest room. She hated to admit it when her sister was right, but she was. The fresh air would do her good…and the ice cream. She laughed; sisters existed just for moments like these, good cries and food that was bad for you. It always seemed to make the rough spots go just a little easier.