Title: Disciple
Author: CelidhO
Summary & Disclaimer: Please see previous chapters.
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It took Scully a moment to realize that the lights had not gone out completely. The candles still wavered and danced at the far end of the immense room, where they silhouetted a maze of dark pillars standing in front of her. Between them snaked slivers of gold, flickering and dancing, but still so dark in between them that she couldn't even see her hand clearly.
She stood, still half-crouching in the dark, her breath coming in great heaves, every sense in her body alert. The terror and disorientation were sweeping in waves through her, and her eyes were wide as they sought to drink in the slivers of light and banish the darkness. She could hear Mulder through the trapdoor almost twenty feet above her, and as she acknowledged the distance between them desperation overtook her for a few drowned moments. Her lips parted slightly, and she between to scrape the first few noises of a word from her throat.
And then something moved in the dark.
The sounds died on her lips, and she felt her stomach fold into itself. She broke out into a gasping wave of sweat, feeling it crystallize on her forehead and upper lip, rapidly as cold as her shaking hands in the damp air of the hall. Realization broke over her with the sweat: she was alone, and almost blind. Slowly reaching behind her back, she patted only a joltingly empty holster. Her gun had been in her hand, she remembered. Now it was gone. Sweet Jesus save me…
Something glittered in the dark beside one of the pillars, dark as a black pearl, like a polluted and stained diamond.
Eyes…
A small noise of fear escaping her lips, Scully threw herself against the wall, pressing her back against it like a child, longing for it to reach out and draw her in, warm and safe and protected, curled under the covers in a cocoon of shaken innocence.
Fabric rustled.
Scully heard, slipping and piercing down into her dungeon of fear, a small mewling sound of pain and confusion. Several slivers of light were cut off and changed as something more concrete began to move at the far end of the warehouse. The sound changed to a low muffled sob, and then to a high, keening chant.
"I want Daddy. The man has my Daddy. Daddy!" Then, long and drawn out, ripping and tearing at the fabric of the air: "Help…"
Scully felt her mind at briefly catapult into a chaos of interior anarchy, wrenched between coming or going, of exposing herself to the dark and the unknown, to the danger and the fear that clutched at the soul so hard that it was an unshakable plague of sticky, grasping fingers. With a small cry of horror that her body let escape, she launched herself from the wall, spinning out into the black, slipping through shafts of light like warm currents that, for a split second, immersed her in life before her own momentum buried her again. She could almost taste the earth in her cheeks.
She wormed between the pillars in desperate flight, slithering to the light and freedom, the high wail that still echoed through the whorls and eddies of the darkness more constant than the beating of her heart. Suddenly, she was marooned, surrounded by tall rectangles of shadow, and a breeze of movement rustled at her back.
She pivoted wildly, and the whisper of noise slipped past her again. The image of the eyes rose before her, and she felt again, chillingly, horribly, immediately the sensation of watching. He was behind the duck blind, the two-way mirror, he was at the window, he was behind the bars, the sunglasses, he was everywhere and nowhere at once, he was hunting, he was stalking, he was consuming her essence, and he was right behind her.
The softest of whispers swished through the air, through her shirt, and through her. Like a caress, like a silken whiplash, it severed her flesh and sent her breath running in shivers down her spine as her body spasmed its protest. Then the movement was gone as quickly as it had come. A renewal of the wail sent her ears ringing as she felt the graceful delicacy of the small trickle of blood tracing its way along her goose pimpled skin.
"Daddy…"
She began to stumble forward again; her only thought a desperate, consuming desire to reach the light. Her eyes were screaming for rest against the constant strain. There were moments where she couldn't be sure if they were opened or closed, so deep was the darkness. Only the streams of light brought any sense of sanity back to her.
She was lost in a tangled web of insanity: his, hers, the world's. So much death and fear and pain and release had crept into the very fabric of the hall that it became impossible to tell up from down, and which directions were where, so that it became something tangible, concrete and heavy on the soul.
"Help…"
With a rush of terror and blood, Scully felt, on the edge of her mind, as the whisper of motion swept out of the unknown again and rushed towards her. Before anything but recognition could register, the gentle lash was across her skin again, parting it from itself while her body screamed in protest against the unspeakable, unnatural atrocity that created such shattering physical loneliness.
With gentle precision the splitting caresses came again and again, rage and hurt filling the air like a drug as Scully fell to her knees under the invisible onslaught. She heard her own cries of pain twist and combine with the keening in the echoes of the hall, ricocheting off the roof high above her, joining the unheard voices of so many others.
The murky distance of the ceiling was a hell choir, the ancient screams of the fallen Disciples ringing out in agony, a fluttering chorus of blackened angels.
Something slammed into Scully's knee as she fell, something rounded and metallic, deadly and silent, that bashed the weaker capillaries and began to spread the small torrents of blood beneath her skin.
Something quieted the chorus.
Something brought the light and sanity back into her eyes.
Something was a sawed off pistol, nestled in the soft familiar safety of her lower leg, so familiarly she had forgotten its presence in the horror of the dark. The creased leather was suddenly warm against her skin. Without faltering in her cries, Scully swept her hand under the fabric of her pant leg, flicked open the snap that harnessed the barrel, and rolled over onto her back, her neck straining to hold her head and the gleaming silver of the gun the only light she could see.
Time was held arrested for a moment as she locked eyes with the darkness. The glitter of the stained jewels blazed as they realized the truth, and Scully felt the power of them sear her like a brand, pinning her to the floor, reducing her to nothing as he watched. Watch. All he did was watch her, and she was an ant under the magnifying glass, the condemned, waiting and knowing that the future cannot be fought, she was the hunted, the prey… she was a tiny boy, chained and bleeding, roped like an animal as he gasped for air, feeling his life slip down the chain crushing his throat, and into the man snarling at the other end; the man who has watched him with eyes that peel and expose him to his deepest layers. And all he can do is wait.
The darkness rushes at Scully with its eyes blazing and its knife glittering, its hands deep red with angel wings, and all she can think is: no more waiting.
The pistol shouts, deep and sudden, and the darkness is rendered form, made flesh, and the eyes are shrouded and still.
Scully was sitting in the light, covered in blood, when the trapdoor opened with groan of twisting metal. She cradled in her lap a small boy, both of them cut, blood mingling on the rough concrete slab to which the boy was still shackled. Both were staring fixedly at the naked body of the man lying only feet away, the crimson-stained scalpel still cradled in his fingers.
In the harsh beam of the flashlights, Mulder was through the pillars and piles of boxes and to her side in seconds. He touched her cheeks with trailing fingers as she looked up at him blankly, absorbing the shivers of the boy as the hot flames of the blowtorch melted away his bonds. As soon as the paramedics' team were down the foldout stairs, they wormed their way to the boy, wrapping him tightly in the scratchy grey hypothermia blanket, and they carried him up out of the warehouse and out of her sight.
As he disappeared, Scully became conscious of her body again, returning to it with shocks of sensation and recognition. She had fingers, toes, hands, ears, mouth, hair, muscles and tendons, each one of them fiercely glad to be alive and moving. The world did not, in fact, belong entirely to the ethereal realm of thought and sensation, fear and motion. The world could be touched, and the world was touching her.
She stood up quickly, and Mulder caught her in his arms, pressing her hard to his chest, low, savage sobs wracking his body as he tried to keep them in. She could feel his heart against her ear, could feel the vibration of his breathing running in shivers up her cheek.
The world was touching her…
She lifted her head and met his gaze, his eyes thick with emotion, soft with caring, and utterly clear.
The world could be touched…
She placed her hand flat against his tear marked cheek, searching for her lifeline and finding it already there, waiting for her, finding it so fast that it brought her up short. She leaned in closer, and his eyes searched hers; asking, not watching. Never watching.
"What are you doing?" he whispered, his voice trembling.
Without a word, Scully moved forward and kissed him, her lips meeting his with every emotion in her and more. And the world was touching her.
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A/N: Well, only the epilogue left. *sniff* Y'all have been so good to me. I'm so glad you gave me your feedback and kept this story going, even when you wanted to kill me in many horrible ways for taking two weeks to update. Don't stop now, and thanks again!
Extra special thanks to my fabbity-fab Beta, my brother Devon: this story has been so much better since you came onboard; and to my wonderful friend April: you sent me the sweetest complments and gave this fic a chance.
All my love to all of you out there who read this story!
~ Ceilidh