Character: Dana Scully
Fandom: The X-Files
Rating: PG-13
Prompt Mozzie: I just said that to a guy who enjoys killing people with his bare hands. (White Collar) Vol 3. Week 4 on scifi_muses on LiveJournal
Setting: Season Four Episode: Kaddish

Flashing lights cut through the gray haze, curious gawkers stopping on the soggy sidewalks to watch as Jacob Weiss was lifted carefully into the ambulance, an oxygen mask over his still face. Scully supervised the work as behind her a paramedic tended to Mulder, checking him out meticulously despite her partner's loud and disgruntled protests.

"Will you tell them I'm fine," Mulder grumbled, catching her eye and nodding to the bemused EMT, who patiently continued his work.

"He's right for the most part, Agent Scully," the man finally confirmed after a purposely protracted moment, needlessly flashing a light in Mulder's eyes to dilate them once again. "A few bumps and bruises, but on the whole he should be fine."

"I have no medical degree, I could tell you that," Mulder groused, pulling away quickly from the ministrations of the medical professionals and joining Scully as she watched the doors close on Weiss and the sirens begin to sound. "Think he will be all right."

"He should be once they get him looked at. Some esophageal bruising I suspect, he's damn lucky he doesn't have a crushed wind pipe or a broken neck." They had gotten to him just in time, cutting him down from his noose in the rafters of the synagogue, dangling grotesquely in the middle of a house of prayer.

"I say he's lucky to be alive, period." Mulder took back his suit jacket and heavy, wool overcoat, shrugging into both with a grimace and wince, ignoring Scully's pointed frown. "I got tossed around myself by that thing."

"Yeah, but good," she sighed, not completely sold on the idea Mulder wasn't more injured. Already around his throat she could see swollen fingerprints rising, and she was shocked he didn't come out with a nasty goose egg on the back of his skull. Certainly it might explain what he saw up in that dimly lit attic above the synagogue. "You are telling me a man made of mud did all of this?" She reached up to brush the bruising at his Adam's apple lightly. He ducked away as the tip of her finger made contact with the rough skin of his throat.

"Not a mud man, Scully, a golem, according to Kabalistic tradition it is a creature formed from inanimate particles and brought to life, usually using the Sefer Yetzirah, the Book of Formation. Jewish folktales speak of just such a creature being called up in the 18th century in Prague by a famous Jewish scholar and mystic of the day. He had created it to protect the Jews of the city from another pogrom on the part of the Holy Roman Emperor, and according to various forms of the legend he let it run rampant, killing Christians and keeping them from sending off the Jews. I think the same thing was done for Isaac, using the mud from his grave. You remember the tattoos on his hands we saw." Mulder briefly pointed out the fleshy part just above his index finger, the part of Isaac Luria's hand that had the strange, faded symbols. "They were Hebrew for truth. The story goes that this is the mystical word that brings the golem to life. Remove the first letter, the aleph, and it becomes death, destroying the golem."

"Mulder, that's a folktale, a story I'm sure mother used at night to keep their children in bed and asleep. You are telling me that is what was responsible for the death of those boys? Who did it, Jacob Weiss?"

"No," Mulder replied sadly, glancing across the crowd of police and onlookers to where Arial Luria sat quietly, guarded by several members of her father's synagogue. "I think Arial wanted to have her wedding day."

Scully's heart ached for the young woman sitting forlornly in the corner, her beautiful, mud stained white dressed wrapped in her father's coat, silent tears streaming down a face that tried to look brave. She struck Scully then as impossibly young and small to carry such a burden, the grief of loss. She had no idea when Jacob Weiss' wife had passed or how old Arial was when her mother had died. And now there was this, the loss of the man she had loved so desperately, not just once, but if Mulder was to be believed twice. So much heartache for one young girl, it seemed sad and unfair.

"What will they do with Arial?" She hoped nothing, what could they prove really?

Mulder sighed, watching NYPD muttering between themselves with no thought or notion of discussing it with the FBI standing right there. "What can they do, Scully? The only proof they have of a crime is Isaac Luria's fingerprints, and we all know he's dead. And I don't see the DA of New York City really willing to try and make a case that ancient, Jewish magic is responsible for those murders. Likely they will let her go home on lack of evidence and chuck this case into the unsolved pile."

"It hardly seems fair to the families of those dead boys though, not knowing the truth."

"What, and breed more of the hateful sentiment that started this in the first place." For once Mulder was dogmatic against the idea, a surprise to Scully. "These boys were raised in an environment that already hated Jews, what would happen if they heard it was Jewish magic that did this? I think for once its best just letting it remain a mystery. Let Arial find closure, let her move on with her life."

Moving on with her life. Arial had so much life to carry on with. She was twenty-three, twenty-four at best. That was a long time to live with the memory of loss. It had turned bitter and angry in her father, the memory of those long gone from his childhood. Would it be that way for Arial? Would she spend the rest of her long life a black crepe widow, mourning the loss of her first, great love. Scully hoped not. In her mind she liked to think that Arial would move on, like Mulder said, she would heal and she would allow someone else to love her, to marry her, and have a family with her. She wanted to think that Arial was strong enough to do that.

For the life of her, Scully thought with an aching heart, she didn't think she could do such a thing. It occurred to her that she too was no stranger to loss. In the last four years she'd lost her father and sister, not counting the many near misses with Mulder. She'd already had to bury family members dear to her. The idea of a husband was too unthinkable, ignoring the fact she didn't have one and had no prospects for one either. But the very thought of loving someone so completely left her feeling awed in a way of Arial Luria. Just imagining someone walking into Scully's life and earning enough of her trust to allow her to begin to think of loving someone that much, that in and of itself seemed overwhelming. A childhood of constant movement coupled with her father's military upbringing had taught Scully to treat each new relationship in her life with wary caution. Let the other person earn your trust first, feel out the territory, then slowly allow them access into your affections. Consequently her circles of friends had always been smaller than those of say Melissa or Charlie, even Bill. But they had been good friends and true friends, the ones she had made.

Her list of lovers was even smaller. She'd had one serious boyfriend in high school, a handful in college, none of them ever more than just flings, and then Daniel. Her first big test of her heart, her one large failure, and since then she had only had half-hearted attempts with first Jack, then Ethan. It had been nearly four years since the later, and if she was honest with herself Scully admitted that at this point she had given up on the idea of true love or even marriageable love. She was in her early thirties now, a career-minded woman. She had no time to see men of any sort, save for Mulder, a man whose involvement in her life meant madness, chaos, the unpredictable. Mulder who to whom she was tied through his web of conspiracy and intrigue, through her disappearance and her sister's death, through the truths only they knew, through the work only she understood. She was bound to him, linked through their shared experience. Perhaps in her own way it was as sure of a binding as Arial's was to her beloved Isaac.

Except theirs was not a partnership of marriage or even love. There were no castles here, only deeper, darker conspiracies. And as much as she cared for Mulder, and Scully wasn't an idiot enough not to acknowledge the deep and abiding affection she had for her maddening and intelligent partner, she knew that as long as she stood by his side she would never know the sort of love that supposedly drove Arial Luria to resurrect her dead husband. She would never stand at the graveside of a lost lover, aching with that pain of loss, and try to find the inner strength to move on. In so many ways, she realized, Arial Luria was already stronger than Dana Scully would ever be.

"Earth to Scully," Mulder's fingers snapped somewhere behind her left ear, causing Scully to jump and turn on her taller partner, a bemused frown watching her as in the distance someone helped Arial into a warm car, hopefully to take her either home or to her father.

"Lost in thought there," Mulder's gaze teasing but curious. Scully felt color race to her cheeks despite the stinging wet cold, turning resolutely to watch as Arial's car pulled away through the curious onlookers on the street.

"Just thinking about Arial, about her love for Isaac….about saying goodbye."

"Goodbye? Not planning on jumping ship on me yet, are you Scully?"

And if she were…

"Not yet, Mulder." She sighed, shooting him a tired smile. "Let's go home, Mulder, I think we are done here."