Title: Disciple
Author: CeilidhO
Summary and Disclaimer: Please see previous chapters.
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The Canvas was at last expended, its body limp and loose, the Spirit of it departed. He hadn't kept it as long as he would have wished, but it was an irrelevance now. It had ceased to be important the moment he had received his news.
The Masterpiece, his Masterpiece, would soon be here.
Scully stood at the door of Mulder's hotel room, watching heavily as he stuffed some t-shirts into his suitcase.
"Mulder, why aren't you fighting this?" She asked quietly. "There was a time when you never would have let this go."
He continued stuffing the clothes in his bag, crossing back and forth from the tiny closet to the bed. "Because it's not worth it. He'll never change his mind."
Scully watched him intently. He was tightly coiled underneath, almost jumping out of his skin with nervous energy. She was desperately trying to keep her own nervousness and despair from consuming her. The fragile peace she had constructed for herself was falling down around her ears, and it was deafening in its immediacy.
Mulder looked like a caged tiger, his eyes bright, his muscles tensed, strides long and fluid around the room. Despite everything, Scully couldn't take her eyes off him. Suddenly he stopped walking and sat down on his bed, and it bent under him with a creak of disused springs. Scully crossed to the bed and sat down beside him, feeling the warmth of his body spreading up her arm where it touched her. His eyes were soft and vulnerable, and to her alarm they began to fill with tears.
"Oh god, Scully," he whispered. "I just can help feeling like he's right, that I didn't do enough. Have I really done anything to help here at all? I mean, I sweep in here, ruin your life again, throw around theories, stir up dust… and now that it's settled, what's really there? Certainly not the solution. Nothing's clearer then before; there's no triumphant capture, and answer is just as cloaked in shadows as before I started." He heaved a shuddering breath. "It's better if I go. I've done nothing."
"Mulder…" Scully began. "Don't say that. You've done more than any agent has ever done on this case. We found out how he's choosing the victims, we found out what the mutilation was, we found out what he does; damn it, Mulder, we found out who he is!"
Mulder wouldn't look her in the eye. "We, Scully. We. That's the key word there. You didn't need me to find out those things. And not one of them is proven, either. For all we know, we're just grasping at straws as much as before, that we're as lost as Pembrooke was eight years ago."
Scully stood up in frustration, and she began to pace in front of him. After a moment, she stopped and ran a hand over her forehead briefly.
"Stop being so goddamn self-pitying, Mulder," she said finally, her voice tense with restrained anger. "You know you made a difference, you know it! All you have to do is talk to Chilton, or to your AD in Washington. We're so close now. You can't just give up…" She walked back to the bed and resumed her seat softly, her anger cooling, replaced by a growing anxious wave of desperation, threatening to suck her under. "Please, Mulder." She put a hand on his cheek to make him look at her. He was biting his lip gently, eyes swimming. She felt her own begin to sting. "Please don't leave me alone again. I couldn't do it again. I couldn't survive again."
He drew her into his arms and held her close, his heart beating rapidly against her ear. She waited, waited for his answer like she had dreamed of him sweeping in to the departure lounge years before, waiting for him to throw her something to hold on to.
He didn't say a word.
Scully sat in her kitchen, staring despondently at the limp sandwich in front of her. She wasn't hungry. She sighed and ran a hand through her hair, feeling for the soft pain as the strands fell back into place. She was tired, tired of feeling heartsick, of feeling guilty, of feeling frightened, of feeling disgusted, of just feeling so much, all the time. She didn't need this after everything else.
She wasn't ready to let Mulder go again. She couldn't go through that again, she couldn't let him back, and then just expect him to go away. Realistically, she knew things would never be the same with Rob again. She wasn't capable of having a life and having Mulder, as she had discovered very quickly when she had first started on the X-Files. Unfortunately, she knew what choice she was making.
She would call first thing in the morning.
She picked at her sandwich and sighed again. She hadn't quite processed the precise consequences of 'off the case' yet. It didn't seem real. Getting shut down by her superiors was something that happened in Washington, in her old life, with Mulder. Maybe, she wondered with a wry grin, Mulder was bringing the rest of it with him.
The phone rang with a sharp buzzing, and she jumped, her heart thundering in her ears, her skin crawling. She frowned at her own idiocy, and reached for the receiver. The dial tone buzzed gratingly in her ear. The line was silent.
The car purred along the interstate toward the airport as the afternoon sun beat down, gleaming hotly off the silver roof. Inside the car it was thick with thundering silence as Scully glared out through the windshield, her hands white-knuckled on the steering wheel. Mulder sat beside her, the physical gulf between them yawning with unspoken argument. Dan Morris and Paring sat in uneasily in the back, unable, for what seemed like the thousandth time, to penetrate the silences that the other two agents created.
"Great view of the mountains along here," Paring said feebly. "We didn't see much of them on the way in."
"Really?" asked Dan, just as hesitantly, as insincerely. "They're beautiful this time of year."
"Hmmm… They really are." Silence stretched from the front. The scrubby suburban land passed outside the window. Paring rolled down the window and lit a cigarette.
The dry, woody smell of the wild grasses lining the ditches filtered in, mingling with the sweet, rubbery tang of the rental car. Scully watched a road sign until it drew near enough to read, then stared at it until they passed it in a pop of displaced air current. She then turned her eyes to the next sign, repeating the process over and over. Repetition helped order her brain.
They passed a decrepit old playground, swings creaking sadly in the breeze, the slide warped and polished. It was just like any other ancient park, aching and lonely, chipped and silent, but suddenly Scully saw something. She swerved the car to the shoulder, screeching to a halt in a protest of crunching gravel, ignoring the curses of the others. She was out of the car in an instant, the key still in the ignition, and she ran across the road, sliding to a stop at the ditch separating it from the playground.
She scanned the blowing grasses for whatever it was that had sent her heart lurching into her throat, pounding like a drum, whatever it was that stopped her breath and slammed her foot onto the brake.
Mulder came bounding up behind her, his tie blown back over his shoulder and his sunglasses slightly askew. She glanced at him through a haze of red, through the wind-blown strands of her hair. She pulled a few pieces of it out of her mouth, and said simply:
"I saw something."
Mulder nodded. They walked forward together, feet sifting through the grass in tandem, and Scully could almost feel their razor sharp blades cutting into her legs. An image flashed into her mind unbidden; the razor-slashed back of Jamie Holtz, and with it the imagined horror of his blue lips gasping for air in some unknown dungeon as the life drained out of him. She imagined she could still smell the blood.
Scully's foot slithered slightly on the ground beneath her, and she looked down. The world shook around her and she sprang out in sweat, the cold sweep of fear and the hot sting of bile filling her with sensations so strong she thought she would die.
It was not in her imagination. Snaking out from the stems, vibrant in the sun, was a creeping pool of blood.
Mulder saw it too, and hissed sharply through his teeth. Without a word, the followed the trail of liquid, on through the undulating grasses. After a few moments, the pool was thicker, and still moving sluggishly, and Scully's gaze jumped down to a small, pink irregularity; a small finger, pointing through the stems, curled loosely in the lazy, lethargic manner of someone not long dead. A sudden, stronger breeze whipped around them, circling their heads and whipping their hair into their eyes. It also blew apart the long blades of grass, parting them like a curtain, revealing the small figure within.
It was a boy, naked and sprawled on his front, his head propped up grotesquely on the bottom of the slide, his arms and legs spread wide in a sick imitation of flight. On his back were the most lurchingly horrible and achingly beautiful set of wings, curlicued and whorled, intricate, delicate, soaring and spreading, thrillingly paused in the second before unfurling, full of potential and promise. They were powerful and sickening, frightening and absorbing, like a car crash on the side of the road; you can't look away, even though the guilt and revulsion are rising and making your head buzz, the flashing lights and twisted metal terrible and beautiful all at once.
Behind her, Scully heard Dan reach for his cell phone.
Scully was sitting on the swings as the ambulances left, rocking back and forth slowly, her toes dragging in the packed sand beneath her. The rusty chains squealed as she moved, a comforting noise, even as it set her teeth on edge. Mulder walked up slowly, his shoulders stooped, and leaned against the chipped yellow frame of the swing set, idly tracing one of the bared, gleaming metal patches exposed on the hollow pole.
"I said we'd meet them at the morgue as soon as possible."
Scully pumped a little harder. "Autopsy?" she asked. He nodded.
"You don't have to do it today, if you're too tired."
"I said before he couldn't have died more than four to six hours ago. I want to get to him as soon as possible."
"If we're allowed to."
"We found the body, so it's ours until they tear me away." She glanced up at him. "Unless you still want to get on that plane."
He gazed at her inscrutably, then down at his watch. "I've missed it by now, anyway." He said quietly. He sat down on the swing next to her, and began to stretch his legs out, long in front of him. The swing rocked forward with a grating squeal, and Mulder stopped. They both stared out into the huge blue sky, and watched the scudding clouds.
Scully tilted the large black microphone towards her, flipping the switch with a small gesture. She liked the soft, deep thud it made, filling the air with sudden low noise, announcing its presence, waiting to be fed your voice.
"This is Special Agent Dana Scully, badge number JTT0331613, performing an autopsy on an unidentified John Doe. It is now 7:17 pm, June 9, 2003. The subject is a minor, approximately ten years old, weighing 76 lbs. Underweight. 59 inches in length. I am beginning with an external exam." She cast her eye over the body, still laid out on his front, the wings blazing out from his back.
"The victim has sustained severe lacerations to the back, stretching from the upper shoulders and lower neck, and extending to the pelvic area. From the precision of the cuts, the weapon was most likely a razor or a scalpel. Many appear to have been sustained before death, as they have partly healed. Histamine tests from this and several previous subjects believed to be related cases showed that many of the lacerations were sustained up to four to ten days before death. On this subject, the earliest appear to be two days before death." She paused to think for a second. This one had been kept only two days. If Hoffman was the killer, had they frightened him into killing this boy sooner then he had intended? Or was this just part of his general escalation? She shook her head and continued.
"As well as the dorsal lacerations, the subject has severe contusions surrounding his throat, wrists and ankles. The contusions on the wrists and ankles have actually broken the skin in places, which leads me to infer that they were caused by struggling against metal chains or manacles. The extensive ligature marks around the throat are suspected to be the cause of death, as they were likely caused by a chain, due to the ring-like pattern. As well, many other signs of death by strangulation are also present, such as the blue color of the lips and the extensive haemorrhaging of the ocular capillaries." She stopped and rubbed her eyes, weariness and sickness overtaking her. Sighing, she took a magnifying glass and began to go over the carved wings, fighting revulsion as she gazed into the sharp red canyons.
Her back and shoulders had just begun to protest their position when something caught her eye, a thin, translucent film over one of the cuts and part of the intact skin. An idea forming in her mind, she reached for the small tube on the wheeled metal tray near her, and flicked on the tiny, humming light. She swept it over the body, nothing appearing until she reached the spot over the substance, where it was illuminated in a bright, neon green-blue. Saliva.
Infinitely cautiously, Scully took a small, moistened swab and swept it over the area, then put the swab in a small vial of liquid, preserving it and labelling it carefully. Her heart was singing. This was the first concrete evidence the case had ever had. DNA evidence. It was almost too good to be true.
Calming herself, Scully settled back into the exam.
An hour and a half later, Scully was wrapping up the report to the others and to Mulder, who was trying not to grin like a small child.
"No only that," she said. "But I also found trace amounts of seminal fluid on the body's lower thigh, but there was no other evidence of actual sexual assault, so it's more likely that it's auto-erotic in origin."
Mulder smiled. "Oh, Scully. You know I like it when you go all scientific on me." She raised her eyebrow and he fell silent for a moment, thinking hard. He turned to Paring, frowning slightly, all business again. "If he's losing that much control during the mutilations, it could put a new spin on some stuff we've already written."
Paring nodded. "Yeah… It could change what we said about family a bit, and about the stalking pre-crime aspect…" He trailed off and began to scribble some notes on the block of paper in front of him, his face bent close to the page. Dan shifted a bit from where he was leaning against a filing cabinet.
"When I dropped the samples off at the lab," he said. "The technician said they'd be ready in about two hours. I can stick around till then, if the rest of you want to head home." But Scully wasn't really listening. Something was niggling at the back of her mind again. It was something someone had just said, something about family… She turned to Mulder.
"Mulder, what did you theorize about the killer's family?" she asked. He furrowed his brow. "I mean, Alex said you might have to change that, about his family."
"Oh, um, we said we thought that he didn't have much of one, and that he certainly lived alone. He wouldn't be close to his parents, if they were still alive, because they were the source of most of the traumas in his life, and a lot of his anger was focused on them. He wouldn't be able to stay married, trying to accomplish what his parents failed at, although he might have tried once or twice. Why?" There, there it was. A snatch of something Hoffman had said.
My ex-wife is a lawyer…Scully turned to Paring. "Alex, can you pull up the file on Hoffman, and look for any divorces, or any family law cases he's been involved in, in the past? There was just something funny about the way he said that…"
"What?" asked Mulder.
"About his ex-wife being a lawyer… Alex, have you got it?"
"Yeah."
"Thanks." Scully rolled her chair over to the computer, running her eyes down the screen.
May 23, 1994: Marriage certificate issued to George N. Hoffman and Miriam A. Price.
November 4, 1995: Miriam A. Price files for divorce, and is issued a settlement.
May 27, 2003: George Hoffman applies for…Scully's eyes widened, and a sharp churning began in her stomach as she read on. After she finished, she whipped around, her eyes round and horrified, fear sweeping in waves through her body. The others noticed her expression and stopped.
"…applies for custody." She said out loud. "My god… he was granted it yesterday. He has a nine year old son."
The man pushed the door of the bedroom open, admiring the way the golden light from the hallway spilled out over the bedclothes like fresh blood, illuminating the golden hair of the small thing in the bed.
A car hummed by on the road outside. He could faintly hear the night insects in the scrawny tree outside the window of the boxy little room. It was strange how every sensation was heightened by his anticipatory calm. The thing in the bed, so newly acquired, so… easily acquired, was his long awaited masterpiece. So close.
All that unmarked Canvas, that pulsing, hidden Holiness spewing through its veins… All his.
It stirred, disturbed out of slumber by the spilling golden light. It rubbed its eyes and looked towards him, a dark shape in the doorway, silhouetted against the brilliance.
"Daddy?" It said.
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A/N: I know, I know, I'm evil for not updating. I had the week-and-a-half from HELL!!! I wrote this as soon as I could. Big hugs to all you lovely readers for sticking with this, and for continuing to send your lovely, lovely reviews. We're almost down to the wire with this story, and your feedback has kept me writing it. (Although VERY slowly, but that's my fault…)
In other words, PLEASE REVIEW!
~ Ceilidh