Title: Canticle
Author: CeilidhO
Summary: Four years after the capture of serial killer George Hoffman, Mulder and Scully's new life together is shattered when an unexpected visitor sweeps them into a new case, more terrifying and deadly than either could have imagined. (Sequel to "Disciple")
Disclaimer: Chris Carter and 1013 own the rights to Mulder, Scully, and all characters and concepts from the series. I, however, am the proud owner of all characters and situations I invented myself. All mine…
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Over Omaha, Nebraska
October 20
8:13 am
The view out the window of the plane was one of endless brown plains cut with circular fields. Scully remarked absent-mindedly that they looked just like basic crop circles. Mulder just held her hand more tightly. The persistent drone of the engine filled the cabin and blocked Scully's ears, making everything seem muffled and far away, as if from underwater. Judas stared out the plexi-glass window intently, silent and unblinking, as he had since they had boarded the plane.
"Excuse me," he said suddenly, his voice thick. "I need to use the restroom." He got up and shuffled past Scully and nodded curtly to Mulder, who had to stand up to let the boy pass. Scully frowned, and looked up at the concerned face above her.
"I'm going to go after him," she said softly to Mulder. "I'm worried. He hasn't cried yet."
Mulder gazed after Jude, his brow furrowed. "Give him his space, Scully. It's… it's not easy to let anyone see you cry after something like this. I remember what it felt like, but at least he knows one way or the other."
Scully leaned over the empty aisle seat, still radiating warmth from him, and took his hand again. "I love you," she said, surprising even herself. She almost never told him that. In this case, she had meant to say 'I'm sorry' or 'I understand', but her mouth had given him the real message. He just smiled at her softly, and she got the message too.
After several more minutes, Jude came back down the aisle and slid into his window seat, not once saying a word. His eyes were raw and red, his cheeks were puffy, and his forehead was damp, the fine black hair curling slightly on his skin. Scully didn't say anything either, but she simply placed a gentle hand on his leg and then took it away.
The rest of the plane ride was silent.
The plane rumbled into the terminal in Salt Lake City at ten-forty in the morning, and the three of them stood and shuffled their way down the body of the plane, crushed between fellow passengers waiting for escape from its confines. Scully's heart was pounding, her hands were clenching and unclenching rapidly, and she tucked a strand of hair behind her ear for what felt like the thousandth time.
Coming back to Salt Lake always did this to her, and she had only been back twice in the three years, almost four years, since Hoffman. That was the way she thought about it, about linear time in her life; pre-Hoffman, post-Hoffman, like A.D. and B.C. for the rest of the world. This time, though, there was some other menace out there, unspeakable danger and sickness that was just waiting to swallow her whole. It was like a shrill song on the edge of her mind, a terrifying concept with ramifications so horrible that she couldn't even mange to consider them. She had managed not to really process the information since that hideous phone call, since the sound of Mulder's padding bare feet on the hallway floor.
Wings, she thought, sickness beginning to churn inside her. There were wings carved into a little boy's back, the one thing I hoped, I prayed, never to see again in this life. With a metallic sound like a knife blade through air, a memory flew back into her mind with a terrifying ferocity. It was from the very first day of the Hoffman investigation, from a cold tent off I-15 in Provo, and it was Jamie Fredrick Holtz.
When Mulder parted the thick flaps of the tent door, the cool air rushed out at them. The open canisters of liquid nitrogen had allowed the sheriff's department to keep the body cool enough to wait for the FBI. The cold air crept along her skin.
And then Scully saw the boy.
He was propped up grotesquely, a medium sized rock under his chin to hold up his head, his arms flung wide, his legs parted slightly. He was completely naked. The most striking and disturbing feature, though, was his back.
On it were swirls and lines, curves and loops, and they all seemed to resolve themselves into an incredibly ornate set of wings, delicately carved into his back. Suddenly in struck Scully what she was actually looking at: a small boy, maybe nine years old, with wings carved, goddamnit carved into his body. The word kept flying around her mind. Carved…
She felt the bile rise in her throat, choking her, stinging her, burning her throat and the back of her mouth. She breathed, slowly and carefully, in and out, knowing it would be easier if she didn't close her eyes, but desperately wanting to. She felt the impulse retreat slightly after a few moments, but it still lurked, low in her throat.
She packed line of people began to move more steadily towards the exit now, and Scully heaved a grateful sigh, reaching up to collect her small carry-on bag. Wordlessly, as always, she and Mulder and Jude shuffled along and finally out of the door and into the tunnel connecting them with the arrivals gate.
"Is anyone meeting us?" Jude asked suddenly.
"Well," Mulder said hesitantly. "I'd imagine your foster parents are, and there might be someone from the regional FBI office to meet Scully and I."
The boy's thin black eyebrows came together. "You mean I'm not staying with you? But I want to."
Scully looked at him, puzzled. "Jude, don't you want to stay with your foster parents? You seemed…" He flinched at her use of the past, and she changed her words immediately. "You seem very attached to you foster brother."
"Yeah, well…" he said, and then trailed off. "They're fine, but they have a lot of other kids and are really busy, and… and… You can protect me."
Scully raised her eyebrow and pulled Jude to the side of the tunnel, ignoring the stares from the other disembarking passengers.
"Jude, why would you think that you have to be protected?" She realized that it was a ridiculous question in the silent moment before his response.
"Because the man who… killed… my foster-brother carved wings on his back. Wings! Just like my fathe- Hoffman did. And I'm the one that got away." He said the last phrase very slowly, like she was an idiot. Despite herself, Scully felt her temper rise slowly. Seeing the tension begin to show on her face, Mulder ushered them forward to the end of the tunnel, his hand hovering above the small of Scully's back.
The arrivals gate was bustling and chilly with air-conditioning, and Scully scanned the crowd for a person in uniform. To her surprise, she was suddenly grabbed by the shoulders and whirled around. Her heart leapt into her throat, her stomach twisted, and her right hand twitched towards her belt, where her holster would usually be. Before she could react for more than a second, she was swept into an embrace, and she recognized the smell of the shirt she was pressed against.
"Dan?" she exclaimed. She pulled her head back, and there, beaming down at her, was Daniel Morris, her ex-partner. "My god, Dan, it's so incredible to see you!" She hugged him swiftly again, and then stepped back to look at him. He smiled sheepishly at her.
"Do I pass muster?"
Scully looked at him carefully. The gray in his hair was more plentiful than ever, almost the dominant shade now, and his face was more lined and his stomach more rounded, but he was still the same warm, friendly, intelligent man she had known for years.
"With flying colors," she said warmly. She remembered Mulder with a start, and turned to him, but he was already exchanging a brief, manly back-thumping hug with Dan.
"Mulder," he was saying. "I hope you've been taking good care of her, because she sure is missed down here."
"I try," Mulder replied with a grin.
"And this must be Jude," Dan finished. "It's nice to see you again, son, and you probably don't even remember who I am." At the boy's headshake, he smiled. "That's all right. I wouldn't remember me if I were you."
Suddenly there was a commotion, and a frazzled looking couple burst out of the crowd and charged toward them. The woman was in the lead, her hair mussed and her expression determined. A battleship of a woman, as her father would have said. The woman marched over and swept Jude into a fierce embrace.
"Don't you ever, ever, ever do something like that again," she lectured into his hair. "Do you have any idea how worried we were? Any idea… And then we get the news about Mattie… We thought you had to be dead too, until that FBI woman called us…"
Scully coughed discreetly, irritation swelling in her throat. The woman obviously cared for him, but honestly, the boy needed room to breathe… Without warning, the image of Jamie Holtz, the ninth victim of George Hoffman, flashed into her mind, the image that had haunted her throughout the case years before.
Jamie, roped and gasping for air, the chain around his throat crushing his windpipe, blood pouring from the wings on his back, tiny blue lips parted in desperation as the air was ripped from his lungs.
Scully immediately cursed herself for her internal choice of words. She walked forward, shaking the image from her vision, and stuck her hand out to the woman clutching Jude.
"Mrs. Holderman? I'm Agent Scully, we spoke on the phone." Mrs. Holderman reached around the squirming boy to clasp her hand limply.
"Hi, Agent Scully. Thank you so much for bringing my boy home to me, he's caused us such an agony of worry over him." And your foster son who died, she thought, are you at all agonized over him? But she didn't repeat it out loud.
Dan stepped forward and handed his card to Mr. Holderman. "We'll be dropping by sometime tomorrow," he said. "To interview you and Jude about Matthew. We're so sorry for your loss."
Goodbyes were said all around, but Scully moved through them like a robot. Only one thing filled her head: the name of the dead boy. Matthew. Matthew, a Disciple name. Was it all beginning again?
- - -
"It'll be fine, Scully. You're not alone with this, not ever." With a lopsided smile, he returned her rare favor of words from the plane trip. "I love you."
Scully turned and smiled tremulously back at him. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad this time. Maybe, finally, she wasn't alone…
They entered the familiar gold-mirrored elevator, and Dan hit the button for the sixth floor, a floor, Scully recalled, made up entirely of small cubicles for partners to share, wood veneer desks front to front inside the plastic boxes. Sure enough, the elevator disgorged them into just such a scene.
Agents bustled back and forth, carrying bundles of paper, manila folders, data disks. The air was spilt by the periodic ringing of phones, and a healthy buzz of conversation occupied those intervals. The smells of coffee and hot plastic from the scanners constantly in use mingled in her head, and the thin gray carpet was faintly spongy beneath her feet. Her head slightly spinning, Scully realized just how much she had learned to take for granted the hushed silence that usually prevailed in the corridors and lecture theaters at Quantico.
Dan conducted them to a more secluded cubicle at the far right of the room, where two medium sized desks crouched, facing each other in the center of the boxy, pale green space. Another surprise was waiting for them there; seated at the far desk, young face alight with happiness, was Agent Alex Paring.
He jumped to his feet as they entered, and swept Mulder into a strong hug. A grin split his face as Mulder squeezed the life out of his former partner. They pulled away, and Paring grinned as well. He turned to Scully next, gripped her in his arms, and then admired them both at arm's length, turning to Dan after a moment.
"Now," he joked. "Isn't that just the prettiest couple you've ever seen?"
They all laughed, and Scully looked Paring over as he teased Mulder good-naturedly. He was definitely older than the twenty-five he'd been on the Hoffman case, but the intervening years had been good to him. His face was fuller and more jovial; he'd lost the slightly gawky look in his bones, and had filled out more, but Scully could tell that it was all muscle. His eyes, too, were livelier; when Scully had first met him, he'd been nursing an unfortunate infatuation with Mulder, but the pained, over-serious look he'd often worn was gone.
"So, Alex," Mulder was retorting. "Who's the new man, then? You've hinted in your e-mails, but never told."
"Never you mind," Paring shot back, a shy grin hovering on the corners of his mouth. "You don't know him."
They were distracted a sharp ring from the phone on Dan's desk. He scowled at the number on the display, and picked it up quickly.
"Agent Morris speaking." His frown deepened as he listened, and Scully noticed again how much older he looked in a sudden rush of compassion. "Uh huh, thanks, John. No problem. I'll be there to sign the forms in just a minute. Thanks."
The laughter in the room died instantly as he put the phone down. Dan rubbed a hand down his face and sighed. "Dana, I'm afraid you're going to have a busy day tomorrow. That was John Pilings, in the lab. Matthew's body has just arrived."
A/N: Hey everybody! I'm really sorry that this took so long to post. I got really mixed-up, and I was convinced that I'd posted this already, and so I started working on the next chapter. But, as you all know, I hadn't posted it… Anyway, I hope you enjoyed it.
Please, please, please review, and thanks so much to everyone who's reviewed so far.
Ceilidh