A Winter's Tale, Part 3
Dec. 24th, 2007 12:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
anjouficTitle: A Winter's Tale 3/21
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
comice aka Anjou (Anjou@rocketmail.com)
Posting Date: December 2007/January 2008
Rating: R for language and sexuality; M for Mature readers
Classification: Mulder/Scully, UST/MSR, AU
Archive: No archival until the story is completed, please. I'll be submitting to Ephemeral and Gossamer myself.
Spoilers: Through Two Fathers/One Son (S6), then AU. In other words, no Arcadia and beyond. Mytharc-y.
Disclaimer: All X-Files personnel belong to 1013 and Fox. All other elements are mine.
Author's Note: Tomorrow's post (Christmas Day) is likely to be in the evening (EST). To those of you who celebrate, I wish the very Merriest of Christmases. For all of us, I wish for Peace on Earth.
Daily posts can be read on my fic journal:anjoufic, as well as Ephemeral and other XF fic sites. The whole tale will be archived at my website, No Other … , maintained by the generous dtg, when it is completed.
As always, thanks to my sister and editrix, Suzanne, for her support.
Summary: Cast your memory back to the dark days of Season 6, to the period immediately following the confrontation between Mulder and Scully in the Gunmen's Office. It is late winter, dark and cold, the landscape obscured and transformed by snow and ice. One must step carefully, for the very ground can be treacherous. This is a lesson Mulder and Scully have already learned when the pristine snow in Antartica yielded a long-buried secret. But the winter can hold many secrets, and could tell many tales, if it so chose.
This is but one.
~*~
Two hours north of Baltimore, Scully pulled into a rest stop. The wig was giving her a headache, so she put on a close-fitting knit cap and stowed her fake hair in her purse while she was still in the stall. She swapped the eyeglasses for large sunglasses and returned to the Altima after buying a cup of coffee from the vending machine. She had a long way to drive and couldn't afford to be picky about her sources of caffeine. She leaned over and opened the glove compartment, taking out the cellphone that was stowed there and turning it on. It still had battery power, but she looked for the cigarette lighter adapter that he'd left for it and plugged the phone in. Her FBI issued phone was under the seat in the passenger side of her car. She's dropped it down between the seat and the center console, with the phone still on, trying to make it look like it had accidentally fallen from her purse. She wondered where Mulder had ditched his phone.
A folded piece of paper in the envelope next to a map gave her the route he wanted her to take and she sighed, reading it over. Trust Mulder to make her go the most circuitous way ever to reach her destination. The rest of the envelope was filled with cash, and she blanched to see the thousands of dollars stashed there. The idea that Mulder had enough money to leave literal piles of it to be stolen out of a car that might have been towed made her head spin. He'd explained about his trusts and the money he'd inherited from his father on their long trip back from the Antarctic, but the fact that he was so cavalier about it was something that she'd never get used to. She tucked an assortment of bills into her empty wallet.
She studied the route carefully, realizing that he'd planned it out so that she'd go by at least one of their secret stashes. She pulled out of the rest stop and continued up the highway driving carefully, but not driving like a cop. She kept her speed low, trying not to draw attention to herself. The radio was set to an NPR station, and the Sunday afternoon show about how to clean winter debris from one's garden was soothing and not the least bit interesting, but it made her feel less alone. She'd rarely been on such a long drive by herself. After so many years spent traveling with Mulder, she felt the ache of his absence acutely, missed the factoids he would tell her about each town they were passing through, or ridiculous tales of X-Files they should have investigated but never had. The monotonous voice of the gardening expert on NPR was no substitute for the monotone that she missed.
She rubbed the back of her neck tiredly and shifted in her seat as the winter sun slipped closer and closer to the horizon. Would any of this matter? All of Mulder's grandiose cloak and dagger scenarios aside, tracking them wasn't about losing the microchips on their credit and debit cards or even in their phones. She could mail her wallet to the PO Box owned by George Hale in Washington, D.C. and leave her cell phone behind, but the implant in her neck was a whole other matter. Even as she drove to him, she was potentially compromising them both, and whatever he had done. She brooded and drove, her mind churning over these conundrums.
The hell of it was, whether it was by the Consortium's design, Mulder's will or her own desire, she was as compelled to go to him as surely as she'd been driven to Ruskin Dam last year.
Fifty miles north and west of Philadelphia, she let herself into the self-storage place after minimal fumbling of keys and key cards. Early this morning, she'd chipped the caulking away from the soap dish in her tiny shower stall to reveal the bag that held these keys, carefully replacing the dish to hide the hole. The keys numbered more than a dozen; all storage units paid for by Mulder and spread out across the United States. She found the winter suitcase and changed into a more suitably Agent Scully-like outfit, then packed what she'd been wearing into it. She felt rumpled and unkempt. Aside from the fact that it had been in a storage bin for months, the suit that she was wearing was from her pre-cancer days and hung on her frame. She checked the envelope containing IDs that Mulder has left for her, and considered whether or not she should take a bag for him, but then let it go. Mulder could take care of himself.
Outside, she hefted the bag into the trunk of the Altima, and smoothed her rumpled skirt, shivering in the chill as she exchanged the sweater coat for the winter coat that she balled up at the bottom of the Crate & Barrel bag. She'd reholstered her gun while she was in the storage unit. She might have left parts of Dana Scully behind her in DC, but she wasn't entirely foolhardy. The trunk now held a stash of ammo, and a couple of other small arms. She tucked an extra clip into her overcoat pocket as she hurried back to the car and its heater. It was full dark now, and although the mall back in Maryland wouldn't be closing for another few hours, she wanted to keep putting distance between it and any alarm that might be raised when she never returned to her car.
She drove, winding back and forth along the same path, going farther north and west with every passing hour. When she stopped for gas along the route, she made sure to wear a hat with a brim when she went in to pay for her purchase. Her reading glasses and her retainer from her teenage years completed the look. If she was lucky, all the gas clerk would remember is that a woman with glasses and buck teeth came in to buy gas. She made a point of continuing to buy coffee, even as her bladder protested the constant assault of caffeinated liquids, and the frequent stops cost her time. It was better for her to be hyper and peeing than falling asleep behind the wheel.
The miles rolled away and the car began to smell like cheap coffee as the hour ticked past midnight. NPR had given way to late night talk shows, philosophical and religious meanderings and the ubiquitous Art Bell on AM radio. Without Mulder there to roll her eyes at, the show just depressed her and she changed the channel to a program on early music that threatened to send her to her permanent rest if she kept listening to it. At 3:00 am, she drove with the windows cracked and the heat in the car off, making herself sing all the songs from records that she had loved in her teen years. There was something poignant, or perhaps psychotic, about bellowing "Hotel California" as she dodged snowflakes 300 miles east of Pittsburgh.
When she finally pulled into the parking lot of the motel that Mulder was holed up in west of Pittsburgh, she'd been driving for sixteen hours, and even with stops for coffee and to stretch her legs, she was stiff and beyond exhausted. Still, she was shocked to see Mulder awake, dressed in Agent Mulder garb and outside, pacing back and forth under the overhang of the corner room at the end of the motor court. His rumpled overcoat billowed around him as he came forward to greet her, and the grey winter light of early morning clearly showed how relieved he was to see her.
"Hey Scully," he said, opening the door and sticking his head in as soon as she cracked it a sliver. He leaned in so close that she thought he was going to kiss her, but he continued bending down to pop the trunk latch on the floor. She told herself that she wasn't disappointed, and stepped out of the car and stretched as he grabbed all of her bags and dropped them over by the room door then came back, standing in front of her.
"Listen," he said nervously, looking over his shoulder "I know you're tired, but there's something I need to tell you."
"Can you tell me inside?" she asked wearily, closing the car door and taking one step around him, toward the room. "The last time I stopped was a long time ago, and I really need to use the bathroom."
"Scully," he said, as if he hadn't heard her plea, and his voice was so serious that she couldn't help but stop and frown at him in worry.
He stepped in front of her again, blocking her view of the door, his eyes searching hers. Then, he reached out and touched her face.
It was so unexpected after all of the weeks of silence and remove from him that she could not help the flinch that followed his action. Mulder's hand leapt away from her, and he took a long step back. Even though he had turned his head, she saw the hurt that flashed across his face and she sucked in her breath. She hadn't meant to do that. She began to step forward to apologize, extending one arm toward Mulder's back, desperate to do something to bridge the gap between them when she was startled by a small voice that said, "Mulder?"
She gasped, and heard Mulder do the same. At the now opened motel room door, a little girl with disheveled auburn hair rubbed her eyes and shivered in the morning cold, dressed only in a long white nightgown. "Are you leaving me?" she asked in a quavering voice.
Scully felt suddenly lightheaded and swayed like a romance novel heroine. Her foot, which she had lifted to step toward Mulder, dropped to the ground and she stumbled in shock, staring at the little girl whose white face was blurring into Emily's. Mulder put out his arm and caught her, breaking her forward momentum, and she grasped for him as she tried to catch her balance.
"Mulder?" she whispered, her voice tight with stress, gripping his bicep like a lifeline.
When she'd grabbed him and held on, Mulder had pulled her close, wrapping his arms around her while she dizzily tried to make sense of what she was seeing, peering at the child over his sheltering arm. She could hear the fitful sound of her own breathing and knew that she was hyperventilating, but she couldn't stop.
The little girl stared back at her, her blue eyes wide and terrified.
"Hannah, honey," Mulder said in a gentle voice that Scully recognized from far too many interrogations of child victims, "I'm not going anywhere. Go back inside where it's warm and we'll be right in."
She heard his words and the 'we' echoed and rolled around. The fatigue and the strain of the last few weeks, on top of the long, exhausting trip that she had just endured caught up to her and her head swam as his tone led her to the one conclusion she most feared. She struggled for another few seconds and then, for the second time in her life, Dana Scully fainted.
~*~
Part 4
Author:
comice aka Anjou (Anjou@rocketmail.com)Posting Date: December 2007/January 2008
Rating: R for language and sexuality; M for Mature readers
Classification: Mulder/Scully, UST/MSR, AU
Archive: No archival until the story is completed, please. I'll be submitting to Ephemeral and Gossamer myself.
Spoilers: Through Two Fathers/One Son (S6), then AU. In other words, no Arcadia and beyond. Mytharc-y.
Disclaimer: All X-Files personnel belong to 1013 and Fox. All other elements are mine.
Author's Note: Tomorrow's post (Christmas Day) is likely to be in the evening (EST). To those of you who celebrate, I wish the very Merriest of Christmases. For all of us, I wish for Peace on Earth.
Daily posts can be read on my fic journal:
anjoufic, as well as Ephemeral and other XF fic sites. The whole tale will be archived at my website, No Other … , maintained by the generous dtg, when it is completed.As always, thanks to my sister and editrix, Suzanne, for her support.
Summary: Cast your memory back to the dark days of Season 6, to the period immediately following the confrontation between Mulder and Scully in the Gunmen's Office. It is late winter, dark and cold, the landscape obscured and transformed by snow and ice. One must step carefully, for the very ground can be treacherous. This is a lesson Mulder and Scully have already learned when the pristine snow in Antartica yielded a long-buried secret. But the winter can hold many secrets, and could tell many tales, if it so chose.
This is but one.
~*~
Two hours north of Baltimore, Scully pulled into a rest stop. The wig was giving her a headache, so she put on a close-fitting knit cap and stowed her fake hair in her purse while she was still in the stall. She swapped the eyeglasses for large sunglasses and returned to the Altima after buying a cup of coffee from the vending machine. She had a long way to drive and couldn't afford to be picky about her sources of caffeine. She leaned over and opened the glove compartment, taking out the cellphone that was stowed there and turning it on. It still had battery power, but she looked for the cigarette lighter adapter that he'd left for it and plugged the phone in. Her FBI issued phone was under the seat in the passenger side of her car. She's dropped it down between the seat and the center console, with the phone still on, trying to make it look like it had accidentally fallen from her purse. She wondered where Mulder had ditched his phone.
A folded piece of paper in the envelope next to a map gave her the route he wanted her to take and she sighed, reading it over. Trust Mulder to make her go the most circuitous way ever to reach her destination. The rest of the envelope was filled with cash, and she blanched to see the thousands of dollars stashed there. The idea that Mulder had enough money to leave literal piles of it to be stolen out of a car that might have been towed made her head spin. He'd explained about his trusts and the money he'd inherited from his father on their long trip back from the Antarctic, but the fact that he was so cavalier about it was something that she'd never get used to. She tucked an assortment of bills into her empty wallet.
She studied the route carefully, realizing that he'd planned it out so that she'd go by at least one of their secret stashes. She pulled out of the rest stop and continued up the highway driving carefully, but not driving like a cop. She kept her speed low, trying not to draw attention to herself. The radio was set to an NPR station, and the Sunday afternoon show about how to clean winter debris from one's garden was soothing and not the least bit interesting, but it made her feel less alone. She'd rarely been on such a long drive by herself. After so many years spent traveling with Mulder, she felt the ache of his absence acutely, missed the factoids he would tell her about each town they were passing through, or ridiculous tales of X-Files they should have investigated but never had. The monotonous voice of the gardening expert on NPR was no substitute for the monotone that she missed.
She rubbed the back of her neck tiredly and shifted in her seat as the winter sun slipped closer and closer to the horizon. Would any of this matter? All of Mulder's grandiose cloak and dagger scenarios aside, tracking them wasn't about losing the microchips on their credit and debit cards or even in their phones. She could mail her wallet to the PO Box owned by George Hale in Washington, D.C. and leave her cell phone behind, but the implant in her neck was a whole other matter. Even as she drove to him, she was potentially compromising them both, and whatever he had done. She brooded and drove, her mind churning over these conundrums.
The hell of it was, whether it was by the Consortium's design, Mulder's will or her own desire, she was as compelled to go to him as surely as she'd been driven to Ruskin Dam last year.
Fifty miles north and west of Philadelphia, she let herself into the self-storage place after minimal fumbling of keys and key cards. Early this morning, she'd chipped the caulking away from the soap dish in her tiny shower stall to reveal the bag that held these keys, carefully replacing the dish to hide the hole. The keys numbered more than a dozen; all storage units paid for by Mulder and spread out across the United States. She found the winter suitcase and changed into a more suitably Agent Scully-like outfit, then packed what she'd been wearing into it. She felt rumpled and unkempt. Aside from the fact that it had been in a storage bin for months, the suit that she was wearing was from her pre-cancer days and hung on her frame. She checked the envelope containing IDs that Mulder has left for her, and considered whether or not she should take a bag for him, but then let it go. Mulder could take care of himself.
Outside, she hefted the bag into the trunk of the Altima, and smoothed her rumpled skirt, shivering in the chill as she exchanged the sweater coat for the winter coat that she balled up at the bottom of the Crate & Barrel bag. She'd reholstered her gun while she was in the storage unit. She might have left parts of Dana Scully behind her in DC, but she wasn't entirely foolhardy. The trunk now held a stash of ammo, and a couple of other small arms. She tucked an extra clip into her overcoat pocket as she hurried back to the car and its heater. It was full dark now, and although the mall back in Maryland wouldn't be closing for another few hours, she wanted to keep putting distance between it and any alarm that might be raised when she never returned to her car.
She drove, winding back and forth along the same path, going farther north and west with every passing hour. When she stopped for gas along the route, she made sure to wear a hat with a brim when she went in to pay for her purchase. Her reading glasses and her retainer from her teenage years completed the look. If she was lucky, all the gas clerk would remember is that a woman with glasses and buck teeth came in to buy gas. She made a point of continuing to buy coffee, even as her bladder protested the constant assault of caffeinated liquids, and the frequent stops cost her time. It was better for her to be hyper and peeing than falling asleep behind the wheel.
The miles rolled away and the car began to smell like cheap coffee as the hour ticked past midnight. NPR had given way to late night talk shows, philosophical and religious meanderings and the ubiquitous Art Bell on AM radio. Without Mulder there to roll her eyes at, the show just depressed her and she changed the channel to a program on early music that threatened to send her to her permanent rest if she kept listening to it. At 3:00 am, she drove with the windows cracked and the heat in the car off, making herself sing all the songs from records that she had loved in her teen years. There was something poignant, or perhaps psychotic, about bellowing "Hotel California" as she dodged snowflakes 300 miles east of Pittsburgh.
When she finally pulled into the parking lot of the motel that Mulder was holed up in west of Pittsburgh, she'd been driving for sixteen hours, and even with stops for coffee and to stretch her legs, she was stiff and beyond exhausted. Still, she was shocked to see Mulder awake, dressed in Agent Mulder garb and outside, pacing back and forth under the overhang of the corner room at the end of the motor court. His rumpled overcoat billowed around him as he came forward to greet her, and the grey winter light of early morning clearly showed how relieved he was to see her.
"Hey Scully," he said, opening the door and sticking his head in as soon as she cracked it a sliver. He leaned in so close that she thought he was going to kiss her, but he continued bending down to pop the trunk latch on the floor. She told herself that she wasn't disappointed, and stepped out of the car and stretched as he grabbed all of her bags and dropped them over by the room door then came back, standing in front of her.
"Listen," he said nervously, looking over his shoulder "I know you're tired, but there's something I need to tell you."
"Can you tell me inside?" she asked wearily, closing the car door and taking one step around him, toward the room. "The last time I stopped was a long time ago, and I really need to use the bathroom."
"Scully," he said, as if he hadn't heard her plea, and his voice was so serious that she couldn't help but stop and frown at him in worry.
He stepped in front of her again, blocking her view of the door, his eyes searching hers. Then, he reached out and touched her face.
It was so unexpected after all of the weeks of silence and remove from him that she could not help the flinch that followed his action. Mulder's hand leapt away from her, and he took a long step back. Even though he had turned his head, she saw the hurt that flashed across his face and she sucked in her breath. She hadn't meant to do that. She began to step forward to apologize, extending one arm toward Mulder's back, desperate to do something to bridge the gap between them when she was startled by a small voice that said, "Mulder?"
She gasped, and heard Mulder do the same. At the now opened motel room door, a little girl with disheveled auburn hair rubbed her eyes and shivered in the morning cold, dressed only in a long white nightgown. "Are you leaving me?" she asked in a quavering voice.
Scully felt suddenly lightheaded and swayed like a romance novel heroine. Her foot, which she had lifted to step toward Mulder, dropped to the ground and she stumbled in shock, staring at the little girl whose white face was blurring into Emily's. Mulder put out his arm and caught her, breaking her forward momentum, and she grasped for him as she tried to catch her balance.
"Mulder?" she whispered, her voice tight with stress, gripping his bicep like a lifeline.
When she'd grabbed him and held on, Mulder had pulled her close, wrapping his arms around her while she dizzily tried to make sense of what she was seeing, peering at the child over his sheltering arm. She could hear the fitful sound of her own breathing and knew that she was hyperventilating, but she couldn't stop.
The little girl stared back at her, her blue eyes wide and terrified.
"Hannah, honey," Mulder said in a gentle voice that Scully recognized from far too many interrogations of child victims, "I'm not going anywhere. Go back inside where it's warm and we'll be right in."
She heard his words and the 'we' echoed and rolled around. The fatigue and the strain of the last few weeks, on top of the long, exhausting trip that she had just endured caught up to her and her head swam as his tone led her to the one conclusion she most feared. She struggled for another few seconds and then, for the second time in her life, Dana Scully fainted.
~*~
Part 4
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-12-24 05:55 pm (UTC)Merry Monday! :-D
no subject
Date: 2007-12-24 07:01 pm (UTC):: blows you kisses ::
no subject
Date: 2007-12-24 06:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-24 07:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-26 10:01 pm (UTC)Also, I was imagining that the first time Scully fainted was that time when she passed out in S4 when she had cancer.
no subject
Date: 2007-12-27 04:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-27 10:23 pm (UTC)I guess it's the third time Scully ever fainted.
:: slinks away ::
no subject
Date: 2007-12-27 04:31 am (UTC)Possession is a wonderful, marvelous, heartbreaking novel. the film adaptation is eh, although i have much love for both Jeremy Northam and Jennifer Ehle. i hope you love it. :)
< /butting in >
Maravilhoso 3
Date: 2007-12-25 03:53 pm (UTC)E onde está a parte 4? eheheheheheh ;-)
Re: Maravilhoso 3
Date: 2007-12-26 10:02 pm (UTC)I'm glad that you're enjoying this, even with the strain of unanswered questions. You'll just have to wait and see about Hannah.
Thanks again,
Anjou