Chapter Text
~ M ~
Equilibrium. That feels like the word I've been looking for.
My green light streak since leaving my apartment this morning is unbroken, the coffee I drank as I flung everything into my travel bag now at the zenith of its activation. The radio is dialed up to fill the car with psychedelic rock, my thumbs keep time on the steering wheel, and I feel the same little thread of new-case excitement tugging on me that I always feel. But even more so today. I'm driving over to Georgetown to pick up my partner, and we’re heading out of town for our first case together since Scully was cleared to come back to work.
I’m still experiencing intense, stomach-dropping flashes of relief whenever I remember how our last case ended versus how it might have ended. While Scully and I have long withstood the darkness that reaches out to us in the kind of work we do, the portal it reached through in our Maryland case was somehow the more sinister for its familiarity - the mundane medium of a television.
Formerly, I would have attributed such a thing no power beyond that of distraction and numbing the mind. But in Maryland, a mind I cherish as much as I do its owner was warped and overpowered, and I had cause to fear for my partner’s life.
Now, here on the threshold of whatever can be considered normality returning to our work, there is a pleasant sense of the details sharpening around me, like everything has come back into focus again.
I’m humming along to Riders on the Storm, and the song fades out as I pull up at Scully's apartment, giving way to the burble of a traffic news announcement. There’s a pile-up on our airport route. Crap.
Heading into Scully’s building, I take the stairs two at a time, eager to see her, eager to get on our way and start our investigation. We are headed to the nondescript industrial town of Redglen, MA, whose factory-working residents have been lighting up their local PD switchboard with ranting calls about seeing spirits of the dead walking among them, walking their streets. With coinciding reports of multiple deaths in that same town, Skinner was almost breathless in his haste to get us involved. I know we’re already right on the knife edge of being able to help contain whatever this is before the story explodes into the media.
Scully opens her door before I can rap even three times. She has her coat on, and I feel an internal lift at having her with me on the job again, organised as ever, plainly also keen to get going.
"Hey, Scully," I greet her.
"Hey," she says, and there's a little flare of something warm in the space between us. We're back, and I know we both feel how good it is.
I stroll in and head for Scully's coffee table, where I commandeer her remote control. "There's been a crash out on 66, let's just see if we can get an idea of how bad it is. Could be worth going up along the river to get around it."
Flicking on the TV, I immediately start flipping channels to hunt for news bulletins.
"Mulder!" Scully complains, snatching the remote from my hand. She stabs at it with her fingertip, fumbling for the off button. I hold my hands up in surprise - ok, sorry! - but she cuts her eyes away from me, and marches for the door. "If you think the traffic will be that bad, we should be on the road, not standing around watching the news.” Her tone is brisk, but the sharpness has gone out of it.
"Well, I am a little early. I thought we might..."
But my thought is not destined to be known. Scully is in the doorway with her bag slung over her shoulder, and an expression that says let's move.
So we move. The detour up along the Potomac offers no hindrances, and we reach the airport with time to browse around a newsagent for a few minutes. I loiter near the counter, trying to sneak-read the morning paper without having to buy it, but the guy at the till barely notices us, his eyes on the TV set mounted on the wall. Seeing an aerial close-up of a car wreck, I realise it’s coverage of the crash on the freeway.
"Scully, look at that. Three lanes of traffic at a standstill on 66 – we’d never have made it."
Scully doesn't respond. Glancing down, I see only the crown of her head as she thumbs through a magazine. The fluorescent lights pick out bright threads of copper and gold in her sleek hair, which I allow myself a quick moment to admire. "Scully?"
"Mmmh."
She isn't looking, isn't even listening.
I go back to my covert ops on the newspaper, feeling the slightest ruffle in my feathers at the way her mood has seemed to cool since we first met this morning. She was quiet on the drive here, and seems distracted now. But then once we're on the plane, we drop straight into our usual flow, dissecting the file, swapping possible explanations for the sightings of the dead in Redglen.
“Sounds Biblical, right? New Testament? Saints raised up in Jerusalem.” I want to provoke her a little, tease her, and I see those blue flames come up in her eyes as she levels me with a look.
“You’re consulting the Bible on cases now, Mulder?” she says, the tiny curve at the corners of her mouth looking every bit as good as a megawatt smile to me – Scully wasn’t even off work for all that long, but already I’d missed the mutual kick we get from this kind of banter.
Missed her.
I look back at her, waiting, knowing she’ll bite. “The book of Matthew,” she finally agrees. “Saints coming out from their tombs after the Resurrection. Which has nothing to do with this,” – Scully waves her hand over the file on my lap – “whatsoever.”
We keep the ideas bouncing through landing, through the drive to Redglen’s precinct headquarters (domain of our utterly bewildered local contact, Sheriff Belton), and then there’s a full day of footwork. The main industry of this busy town turns out to be pharmaceuticals, and we find that the pharma connection weaves its way all through the lives of both those who have died and those who have been seeing spirits alike. There’s a lot to try and unpick, and by the time we trudge through the door of our motel that night, we are both grim-faced at the realisation of how many tedious employee interviews and dusty HR files could well await.
But amidst it all, I feel the hope of fishing up a whale from among red herrings. The witnesses we’ve spoken to were awestruck, entranced, reverent at what they say they’ve seen. Their eyes gleamed as they described streets teeming with silver-grey shadows of past lives, a rift torn in the veil between the worlds of the living and dead.
I’m utterly hooked. We need to find more witnesses. I have to hear their stories.
My partner, on the other hand, has let her arching eyebrows reach their full potential today, clearly not buying any of it.
Scully immediately slumps into the small armchair in my room once we enter the motel. Giving a soft groan, she tips her head back and rolls it slowly from shoulder to shoulder. My cellphone buzzes. It’s Sheriff Belton, calling with an update.
“The news will be on in a minute,” I tell Scully. “Belton just heard there’ll be a report on all the deaths and weird incidents – he was approached for a comment about his “ghost town”. I’m amazed it took this long. We’ll see what the locals are saying, anyway."
Scully drags herself out of the armchair, and moves around the desk beside it towards the connecting door between our rooms. "I'm tired, Mulder. You watch it, ok? And you can fill me in tomorrow."
I stare at her. "Scully, it's barely 8pm! We've got almost nothing to go on so far, we need to hear from every witness we can. And there's a medical aspect here, with this pharma stuff - that’s your area. C'mon, we need this. Then we can make a plan for tomorrow."
Scully is looking at the floor. She murmurs something I don’t hear.
“What?” I ask, and I hear the touch of an edge in my voice. My partner has been off and on with me all day, disconnected. I feel a little hurt, a little reactive to her not seeming as excited to be back as I am to have her back.
"I said, I don't want to watch it," Scully replies, the words sibilant as they pass through what sounds like clenched teeth.
She’s actually pissed off now? I feel the spark of my own temper wanting to kindle. But then my eyes fall to her hands. They are clamped to the back of the black vinyl chair at the desk between us. Her fingers are dug into it like claws.
I cross to her side immediately. “Scully? Hey, what is it?” She is already turning away so that I can’t see her face.
I slip my hand over her two, covering them. I let a moment pass, and then weave my fingers through hers, gently easing them away from the back of the chair.
She resists only briefly before she relents, sighing. I keep hold of the hand nearest to me.
"Alright. Loud and clear. You don't want to watch the news," I say, letting the statement sit there between us, waiting to see if she wants to add anything. Scully stands mutely, still turned away, and real concern flickers through me.
I opt for some gentle teasing. "Do you just not want to watch it with me?"
There is no irritation in my words now. We work together, she’s only just back, sometimes people get sick of each other after a full-on day. I can handle that.
"I don't.... I haven't since... I..." Scully finally says, her voice catching in her throat. Turning back slightly, she waves an arm helplessly towards the TV.
Understanding floods through me, along with such a sense of my own stupidity that my fist clenches at my side. The way she snatched the remote from me this morning…her disinterest in the crash update at the airport….
"You haven't watched TV since... you were in hospital?" I ask, putting my arm around her shoulders so I can steer her to the bed to sit. She walks stiffly, clearly hating this show of vulnerability, this unavoidable exposure.
I take her hand again, angling myself to look at her as we sink into the edge of the mattress. In profile, her face is partly shadowed, the weak light of the desk lamp washing pale gold across the elegant planes of her forehead, cheekbone, jaw.
"Since before the hospital. Yes."
I’m confused. “You were watching with your mom when I came to visit you, I thought…”
“Mom had only just turned it on when you came in. And I was still feeling the sedatives they pumped me with the night before,” Scully explains haltingly. Her eyes are once again fixed on the floor.
"But Scully..." I don't want to patronise her. She knows as well as I do that the circumstances that caused her break from reality are over, done with. "There's nothing for you to be afraid of, now. You won't..."
I can nearly feel her hackles rise.
"Mulder. I know. Okay? I know that. But it's like..." Scully pauses. I see she is fighting against a quiver in her chin, her mouth tense. "Like vertigo. Knowing there’s a drop up ahead, and even though there’s no way you could fall, you keep thinking of how it would feel to go over the edge…with nothing to hold on to…”
"Is that how it felt for you?" I ask gently. I want her to tell me all of it, as I had from the moment I'd known she was truly safe. I’d wanted her to feel she could share this with me.
"Yes," Scully says, very softly. "I was falling. Unmoored from everything that made sense.” I feel her fingers give a little pulse against mine. “I know you Mulder, and I couldn't understand how you could ever betray me. But... I also knew I wasn't myself. At some level, I think I knew my own reason was betraying me too."
For the first time, Scully turns to look at me, and I see the depth of fear still haunting her, this being of science and logic who witnessed an earthquake of delusion open the ground at her feet. "My entire world was collapsing around me. And even though I know everything's ok now… has to be ok..." Her eyes drop away again. "The rest of me just can't seem to catch up."
Getting to her feet before I can offer a word of comfort, Scully crosses to the desk, picks up the remote, and holds it out to me.
"So could you just watch for both of us, tonight?"
Oh Scully, if you only knew the extent of what I would do, if it could be done for both of us. I'd carry any pain you bear and make it my own. Fight off any threat, any danger, let it fall to me alone to face, if ever you could be spared.
But all the while, I'd know that that isn't what you want from me. And that however much I would spare you, you would spare me too. How did you ever manage to find your way into my life? How the hell did I stumble into yours?
I put out my hand, taking the remote from her. "I'm really glad you told me. And... it's going to be ok, Scully. We'll figure this out."
She nods once, eyes dark sapphires in her pale face. All the spark has gone from her at having to admit to someone, even me – maybe especially me – that she's struck an obstacle she cannot overcome.
It occurs to me that, Scully being who she is, whatever's happening with her when she attempts to watch TV must be bad indeed. Otherwise I know she'd simply force herself to sit there and endure it, no question.
Scully turns and walks through the connecting door to her room without another word. As the door clicks shut behind her, I flip the TV on with a jab at the remote, and glower at it through the remainder of the stupid fucking news report. I absorb nothing. My mind loops around and around the memory of how brilliant, how sensitive I was when my brave and usually stoic partner actually opened up to me about her troubles - and I sat there like an idiot telling her, "You'll be ok."