what_wings_dare | 🅧 Please explain to me the scientific nature of 'the whammy'

Scully, it's okay. I'm not going to leave.

[ Can he make this promise? Does it matter? ]

A park in the Emerald district.

I'm coming.

[ Mulder she will put a fucking tracking device in you, don't test her. She's fairly sure she could find a way. ]

In the wooded part.

She'll find him sitting on the ground, in the center of a tangle of rose bushes. They'd started growing on their own, and then he'd pushed them onward, trying to figure out the capabilities that seem to spring from his knotted hands.

His fingers have grow longer, less human, as he's worked. He hasn't noticed.

The last time Scully came down here, dripping with love-lies-bleeding and bittersweet, coughing up flower petals signifying solitude, she'd been thinking of him and trying not to think of him. Now she's searching.

Mulder is usually easy to find in a crowd; he's tall, he dresses like a fed, he carries himself with the unconscious confidence of his station in life, a fact she takes advantage of often, drafting behind him or letting him follow close behind to part the throngs on her behalf. It takes much longer this time; the paths are winding and, as she discovers, he's half-hidden among the thorny branches, looking like he's going to take root right there.

"Mulder," she calls, once she spots him. Is it just the morning light making him look-- she doesn't want to say more monstrous, but perhaps that's the only way to put it. Less himself than in the soft lamplight of her living room. Like when he loses himself on a particularly bad case.

He glances up at his name, but slowly, as if he's only half in this world beyond the rose bushes. And maybe he is - his thoughts are far away, even with his palm pilot buzzing occasionally. The magic of what's happened to him has caught him, given him a way to live in this changed form without wanting to break it down into compost. He's transfixed.

"Scully." She's angry at him, and he knows it. He can't really blame her. "I couldn't stay in there."

The great thing about angry is that it's fundamentally the more energetic fraternal twin of scared.

"You should have woken me up," she argues, as steadily as she can manage. There's a paper back clenched in one hand, a convenient prop to focus on. She holds it up.

"I got us coffee." But he's going to have to slither out of the woodwork to get it.

"I can only drink so much herbal tea." Being bundled off to bed, a wayward child in her home, a third time was in the cards, and he couldn't stand it. Leaving her proof of his existence and finding an outlet for the overwhelming desire to do something had seemed fairer for them both.

Apparently, it wasn't.

When he stands, he's thinner somehow, the branches behind him more full. They're growing the tender green leaves of early springtime. One long leg steps over the ring of roses he's created, and then the other, and he's standing before Scully. "But coffee sounds okay."

There's a deep, bewildering stab of fear: this is how she loses him. It's not the inhumanity that bothers her but the wilderness, the sense that if she'd slept another hour maybe he wouldn't stand to meet her, maybe he'd sink into the fertile earth and stay there. It's not a rational fear, she tells herself; but she doesn't know.

Her gaze stays locked on his until he's in front of her, when she looks down to rustle the coffee cups out of the bag, handing one over.

"There's a bench up this way." She'd rather keep his feet on the pavement if she can. She gives him a considering look, not quite meeting his eyes; she hasn't bottled up her worry, knows it will break like a wave if he looks too hard at her.

"How's your manna?"

The hand that grips the coffee cup is slender at the fingertips, nailless, his pinky a twig with another, smaller twig branching from it. A leaf bud marks the middle finger of his other hand. Mulder tries not to look at either of them. He can forget the wrongness when he's doing something else, but not when he stares at himself.

It's easier to look at Scully, even if doing that comes with a guilt that sits in his chest and waits to be acknowledged. He doesn't regret leaving, or even choosing not to tell her; he regrets that he wasn't here before, hasn't been here long enough to keep her fears at bay.

"Fine, I think." He's able to sit on the bench, if closer to the edge of the seat than usual. "Yours?"

It's an utter embarrassment to be so plagued with a fear of abandonment. She knows it's unreasonable-- it isn't his fault that he hasn't been here, and if he disappears again it won't be on him, either. But she can't help herself. The pounding of her heart when she woke up alone hasn't fully subsided.

"I think I could use a little," she says casually. It's not untrue. More, she can see what he's been doing and she knows how hard the exhaustion can hit, and suddenly, after heavy use of powers. Exploring the undersea caverns of Marilla had been a delight, but she'd definitely needed some contact to recover once they'd come back to the beach.

She scoots a little closer and hooks her arm around his without asking. Deal with it, Fox. Certainly it's somewhat bolder than she'd be at home, but maybe her time here has socialized her to be more openly touchy-feely; or maybe she's just that worried about him running himself into the ground, potentially more literally than usual.

It's not really about the manna, he thinks, and he doesn't really mind. When he slips his arm out of her grasp, it's only so he can wrap it around her shoulders and pull her a little closer. He's already inclined toward touch as a general rule - blame a chilly early life, maybe, a dad who believed in handshakes over hugs - and if Scully needs the closeness, then closeness is what she's getting.

Somehow, it makes him feel more like himself, too. He can't explain it. He's just here, and when he's capable of typing on a keyboard again, his field journal is getting a major workout.

"Better?" he asks, after a bit, glancing down at her.

God, that really is better.

He tugs her closer and she lets him, leaning into the embrace, not even bothered at the arboreal texture or the way a stray twig catches a strand of hair. Wrapping her hands around her coffee cup she lets her eyes fall shut and focuses on the solid, certain sense of his presence beside her.

This is the sort of thing she lets herself indulge in, now and then, and tries not to think about whether they're crossing the line they perpetually toe. It's different here because everything is at a baseline so permissive, the value on contact and intimacy overriding the social mores people come in with. Passerby aren't likely to think twice.

Certainly they must be synched-- at least in some low-level way-- but she doesn't feel conscious of any difference.

"Better," she affirms, but doesn't pull away.

Mulder thinks he can feel her relax, but whether that's syncing or just her muscles losing their tension, he couldn't say. Both? It might be both. Synchrony with Scully is nothing like synchrony with anyone else, based on his limited experience; it's just sitting with her, maybe feeling slightly warmer than usual.

"Good." There are plants starting to peek through the cracks in the asphalt, growing leisurely over their shoes. These are the dark green ground cover of wood anemone - if they sit here long enough, delicate white flowers might bloom around their toes. More importantly, Scully's exactly who she always is, but nearer: her cheek at his shoulder, the scent of her coffee rising towards his face.

If she wants to talk, she'll talk. Until then, he's quiet, letting himself indulge in her nearness.

Eventually it's going to strike her as dangerous, how easy it is to fall into sharing manna with him. Certainly it will make life easier, not having to ration her energy or work so hard at finding ways to make more, but their bond is so deep already that it would be easy to obliterate whatever decorum remains between them.

For now, though, she'll take companionable silence and a cup of lukewarm coffee right here. She needs the comfort, and even if he's calmer than he was when the change first took him, he needs it more than he's aware of. Somehow or other she'll have to get him to sleep tonight. (Is his biology too plantlike to respond to a tranquilizer? One wonders.)

"Did you have any plans today?" she asks idly, eventually. Fortunately she's off work; though honestly she thinks the gems would've been thrilled if she'd called off to spend the day with a synchrony partner.

"Getting a gun," he admits, though that may have to be put off. It'd be convenient to buy now, says his paranoia, when he's far less recognizable - but if he does get it, he's not going to be able to shoot it unless his fingers start to look like fingers again. "Investigating a curse."

That's definitely going to have to wait; he's nowhere near as agile as he normally is. It'd be suicide to try and chase down leads, and worse, he wouldn't learn anything.

"What about you?"

"I'm off today," she muses. So nothing much. "Pick up my laundry, maybe get lunch somewhere. There's a little bookstore I like."

She might have texted around to see if anyone wanted to join her for lunch, but her aggressive attempts to socialize have slowed a little in the past few weeks.

"I don't know that the term curse is fully accurate; it behaves like a disease, largely."

It's a very Scully kind of day off, quiet and filled with errands and pleasantries. Mulder's not all that good at taking time away from work - even when he's off, he feels like he's still on the job - though he guesses he doesn't get much choice in the matter for the foreseeable future. Maybe he can shuffle along after her today.

No, he realizes. He wants to stay out here, in the sunlight, as long as possible. Cramming himself into a bookstore's narrow, dusty aisles sounds like hell right about now.

"I've read some," he tells her, "but not a lot. What've you noticed?"

"Well... The progression is consistent but the timeline is unpredictable; it's mainly spread through blood contact, though there seem to be other vectors we don't understand as well... Based on some of the data available I think there might be a link between this and whatever mechanism governs the transformations."

She is deeply grateful that the wound from her own... encounter... has healed over, and that she doesn't have to explain that.

"There's a serum that can be administered at early stages which has proven fairly effective at stopping and reversing the effects, but past a certain point we don't have a definitive cure."

"Huh." It's not a lot to go on, but it does have the sound of an illness - if one that doesn't function the same way an Earth illness might. What would differentiate it from a curse around here, anyway? He's got research to do, if only to figure out how Noctians see the line between the two.

And a city to get to know, for that matter. All of this will be easier when he knows the place.

"Sounds a little like rabies - get it, and you're probably not getting out alive." He'll need Scully's help with this. He would anyway, but especially if the situation's that medically based. And that means that he's going to have to get her on board with going out after dark in search of answers. "When I lose the leaves, you want to look into it with me?"

"Don't you mean will you let me look into it with you, Scully," she teases. Working with GemSci means she's got a head start on it. And six months of life lived here means she's better equipped to understand the cultural context, though frankly, not by that much.

She's still leaning against his shoulder, though slightly less slumped, now, as she takes a sip of her coffee and glances up at him.

"Are you going to try the amulet again? Or just wait?"

Mulder grins - and even if the rest of him has changed, his smile's mostly the same. Fine, he'll give her this one. "Will you let me look into it with you, Scully?"

At the mention of the amulet, though, his expression grows serious. Leave behind the magic of - well, all of this - and return to humanity? It's hard to imagine right now, being anything other than this strange configuration of plants, unsettled though he might be. Trees live on a different scale from human beings; maybe this shift in species has affected his sense of time. "It's that easy to switch back and forth?"

You know, presuming night terrors are easy.

"Of course," she says easily. "I'll bring you in as much as I can."

And she's sort of expecting her free time will be a little less free, with him here. She's not troubled at the prospect; the two of them are better together than they are apart. It's not as though she hasn't been trying to investigate things on her own.

"As far as I know it's just a day at a time. You'll be yourself tomorrow unless you wear it again." She really hopes he doesn't want to wear it again. The night terrors are, actually, not a great thing and frankly she'd like to have him be himself.

"I've never heard of any long-term effects, but I don't know many people who use it. I've... never tried myself," she admits.

"Huh. I thought I'd be stuck like this for the rest of the week." So yeah, he's taking the amulet off - probably with Scully's help, given the state of his hands - and he actually has motivation to try to sleep tonight. The thought of changing back is growing more appealing, the way it probably ought to have been in the first place, enough so that he wishes he had it in him to try to nap. Maybe he could outwit the amulet.

When she mentions she hasn't tried it out herself, he laughs. "You never purposely turned yourself into a monster? Say it ain't so."

"It's only a week when it's the week. Assuming you change, even-- not everyone does, and some don't every time."

She fidgets aimlessly with the strange jewelry before slipping it into a pocket.

"Or during the week, you could use it to change to something different, if there's one that's particularly uncomfortable."

She settles back against his shoulder.

"I thought it would be useful to have it for research, I just haven't found a question to justify it, yet."

If he really wanted to see, she thinks, she'd try it tonight; it's not so bad, though she's not eager to invite nightmares. But she can't imagine he'd take the offer. Besides, tonight he absolutely needs to get some damn sleep.

"And if you come up with one, you have a guinea pig to experiment on." Which is to say: Mulder's willing to volunteer for another tour of duty if he needs to. In the meanwhile, he finishes off the dregs of his coffee - he's been sipping it all this while, holding it precariously between his twig-fingers - and sets the cup next to him on the bench.

A moment later, he glances down, realizes he's netted both of them with dark green leaves and little white flowers. With a gesture at their shoes - "Too bad neither of us wants to open a florist's. I can't stop growing things."

[ n a m e ; ]	Dana Katherine Scully
[ c a n o n ; ]	The X-Files
[ g a m e ; ]	spicy times in noctiumrp

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