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

Mulder's brows rise, but they've already come this far. Just a little further, and she'll get the whole truth - though he's not sure he'll need to elaborate too much.

It occurs to him briefly that she spent some of her youth on the East Coast. Could she know about the case? Under other circumstances, maybe he'd suspect her of fashioning a narrative based on something like cold reading - but she's just too convincing here. He knows her too well, probably; while she's not beyond trying to pull a fast one on him, that's not what's happening here.

"What does the Sun represent?" he asks. Guessing isn't hard - there's a palpable joy in the artwork - but where it fits in with sacrificed children, he's not sure.

"Happiness, plenty, success, joy. Even reversed it doesn't really have a negative interpretation-- it's always a ray of light," she muses, brows drawn. "It's completely at odds with the rest of this."

From the start she'd expected a difficult story, but this current row is darker than she'd wagered... except for the sun.

She reaches for the deck, thumbs a card off the top.

"I need more context," she explains, and sets it face-up, overlapping the edge of the wayward Sun. The High Priestess, serene and-- judging from Scully's perplexed expression-- not very helpful.

She regards it with a low, puzzled huh.

It does make sense, if in a roundabout way. Maybe it's only here for the symbolism of it all: a child under the sun, dead but - in someone's mind, at least - happy. Or maybe it represents something more selfish, Mulder glorying in closing a case at seventeen. But that would be someplace in the after, wouldn't it? They're still in the during.

When she turns over the High Priestess, with the moon at her feet and a scroll labeled TORAH in her arms, Mulder's got no idea what it might mean. "So, what's our context?"

"Not very helpful," she murmurs. "I would generally read this as-- intuition. Inner wisdom-- that I should trust my gut. And then in the context of this reading, it could mean.... well, me, since I'm the one doing it. But that doesn't make sense either."

She's treating this as deadly serious as a crime scene; like there must be a correct answer here, buried under symbolism and misdirection. Like these are clues.

"Which-- if I take that to mean, what do you think of the Sun and the High Priestess, I have a strong personal association for that, but I don't see how that could tie into what we're talking about."

"Couldn't it?" This is, perhaps, even more interesting a twist than hearing her explain his past to him, without realizing just how close she is. "These are your cards, Scully. For decades, by the looks of them. Maybe they're responding to you as well as me."

Maybe their lives have been so densely intertwined at this point that one of them can't help but bleed into the other, psychically speaking. If he's willing to believe in the validity of tarot cards - and she's making a convincing argument here - then he needs to be willing to believe that her hands touching them matter as much as his.

(Or maybe he's just in the kind of mood that responds well to Scully's involvement in anything, including a serial killer incident from a time when they probably lived thousands of miles away from each other. She's never more beautiful than when she's trying to puzzle something out. He's not sure he's ever loved her more than he does in this moment.)

Of course Mulder is willing to make the leap of faith there. She's not sure if she's more annoyed by the prospect that he could be right, and there could be something here, or by her inability to put the pieces together as they're laid out before her.

"Actually, it's where the cards are from," she murmurs, almost offhandedly, like it's just a little bit of trivia. With everything that happened it's a wonder she didn't throw the cards away-- certainly it had been years before she could touch them again, and always with a certain mistrust. It's all far enough in the past now; now, they just make her think of Melissa. As terrible as what happened was, they'd been so close that summer; that part she doesn't mind remembering.

Of course Melissa would want her to follow the thread of intuition, even if it makes no sense.

"There was a little store Missy and I used to go to-- the sun and the high priestess, to me that means Carinda and Sunlight," she murmurs, leaning back a little to better regard the spread as a whole.

"Carinda and Sunlight," he repeats, brows going up. "Out of a town in Maryland so small, they don't even bother putting it on maps."

Carinda's name wouldn't ping him on its own, but it's hard to forget the kind of guy who'd call himself Sunlight on purpose. He doesn't remember much else of them, beyond the fact that they'd existed, and that he and his friends had a major breakthrough at their little New Age shop. Like Gimble, Phoebe, and the rest of his life in the 70s, they'd faded away into obscurity for him.

It's not surprising, Mulder supposes, that Scully'd be familiar with that shop as well. Maybe Annapolis wasn't a hip and happening spot for palm-readers and tarot freaks, and from what he knew of Melissa before her death, she would have needed a place like that. And Scully got dragged along with, probably. It's still a little eerie to realize that their paths nearly crossed, though, long before they ever worked before. The Eastern Seaboard isn't that small.

That catches her attention, her head snapping up and her eyes wide.

"You were in Craiger?"

It sounds a little closer to panic than is perhaps justified by a teenaged near-miss. That couldn't mean--

She looks at the cards again from that perspective, but can't fit them into the story she knows, not really. The things that felt significant don't match up to the facts as she remembers them-- though, she reminds herself ruefully, you apparently spent half that autumn high.

"That puts this-- Summer of 1979 at the latest," she murmurs. "You met them?"

"Guilty as charged." But that's not a normal reaction to oh, you're familiar with my old stomping grounds. Mulder watches her quizzically, trying to read her the same way she's trying to read her spread: looking for the little details that could unlock a mystery whose details are tantalizingly out of reach.

For a moment, he reviews what he remembers of the shop. Beyond Beyond, was that the name? Your bog-standard occult shop, the kind that was mildly interesting when he was seventeen and a tedious parade of overpriced crystals now that he's not. "I took a...class, I guess you'd call it? It felt more like a support group, if you ask me. I'm probably damaging the scientific validity of your results by telling you this, but we learned about chaos magic."

"Oh my God," she murmurs, looking back between the cards and him. At least that provides some context for the rest of it. "Not one of his private classes? Just--" She shakes her head. "It doesn't matter. It explains the sun, but the spread isn't really about him, I don't think."

She can't entirely ignore the question of why, though. Melissa would say she should tell him about it-- about all of it-- that maybe this whole idea of reading his cards was an excuse to open up about it. After what happened with Daniel, it's harder to dismiss than it ought to be.

"Wherever you went from there, you ended up in trouble." She bites her lip. "Should I keep going?"

The last row should be easier; he clearly made it through his misadventure.

"Open to the public," he assures her, though now he's got questions to ask as well. That's not something people ask when the follow-up is they were so insightful, nothing bad happened there. Especially not when little signs of tension keep showing up in her face and body.

But first, they have another row of cards to get through. "Keep going. Maybe that'll give you the clarity you're looking for."

With a nod, she moves her hand to the next row, leaving Sunlight and the High Priestess where they are. Little chance she'll get away with not explaining it, but she wants to see this through to the end.

The seven of pentacles, six of wands. This time she's considerably more relaxed, turning over the last card-- four of cups, facing toward Mulder.

"There isn't any detail on how you got out of it," she muses, almost apologetically. "You were diligent and focused and worked hard. Whatever you were trying to do-- you succeeded. There was recognition-- you impressed people." Slowly, she's relaxing, puzzling out the happy ending. "It was a formative experience, actually-- you weren't sure what you wanted from life before, but it helped set you on the path you're still on."

Her composure regained, she offers a shrug and a small smile.

"I told you-- you don't really read specifics, most of the time."

Just coincidences, cold-reading, and the collection of background knowledge you forgot you had.

Easy.

The cards are all the little ones, the minor arcana, and he's never been able to keep those straight. But they provide a cheerful wrap-up to the story, which fits the facts of the case - and hopefully it'll make up for the part where he has to tell her what actually happened.

"So that's that." Mulder gives her a knowing little smile, marking points off on his fingers as he continues. "I'll give you points for the balance of chaos and order up here, because you justified the two fathers theory. Points for my two best friends. For the sword, your New Age store owners, the symbolism of eight arrows, living with my father, rescuing a young girl, being trapped - behind bars, no less - and figuring out what I wanted to do with my life. Which comes out to an A+, but I wouldn't expect anything less from you."

You overachiever, you. He leans over the cards to kiss her, because the luxury of doing so whenever he wants is still novel. "I hate to break it to you, Scully, but I think you might be psychic."

This part, she likes. The part where he looks at her like he still knows her, and where he still wants to kiss her, and where he does. They could do with a lot more of that-- now that it's a thing they do. A person can only hold back for so long, and she's done trying to pretend she doesn't want him.

And he says that, and she can't tell whether it's a joke or not. But it doesn't sting the way it might have, back then. Maybe that's what growing up does for you. Or maybe that's what an epiphany does.

When he pulls back, she scoops the cards together, messily dropping them back onto the deck.

"Would you believe you're not the first person to say so?"

"After this? I'm surprised more people don't." Once the cards have been put away, he stretches out in their place, lying on his side with his head propped against his palm. It's comfortable, and it's also an offer to let her ogle him; he hasn't lost the taste for her undivided attention since they let things turn physical. "Do you want all the other details, or do you want to tell me how you know Sunlight and Carinda?"

In fact she is very happy to feast her eyes on him; really she might never give back the shirt.

"Fill in the bits I missed," she suggests.

"A series of murders," he says, taking in the sweep of her gaze. She can keep that shirt as long as she wants if it means she's hanging on his every word; even if her rapt attention is for the shape of his chest rather than what he has to say, he'll take it. "Spring of 1979. I was on spring break in D.C., and my best friend came down from the Vineyard for it. Children - eight, nine years old - were being murdered and left in crypts near my father's apartment. Each one of them was found holding a dead magpie pierced with eight arrows made of human bones.

"The thing that got me...aside from seeing one of the bodies, that is...was the latest victim. Eight years old, abducted from her living room after the lights went out. Her mother was home at the time, but there weren't any clues besides an open front door." His expression clouds, perhaps inevitably. "I think you can see where that led me."

Scully can multitask. He's easy on the eyes, but the story isn't an easy one to hear-- even if she'd guessed much of the shape of it. The young girl, the inevitable comparison to his sister-- though she wouldn't have guessed how similar the disappearance.

Eight arrows made of human bones, though-- that's chilling; she tries to tell herself the eight of wands was a coincidence, but it fits neatly enough to give her pause anyway.

"You couldn't leave that alone," she says sympathetically, stretching out to mirror his pose, the haphazardly-stacked cards forgotten for the moment. "Who was-- was there someone else? The other adult who was... not helping, exactly. Involved in the investigation?" That had been hard to parse, but she'd felt so confident about it with the cards laid out.

She's not so bad herself. Any time he gets to see the slender line of her stretched out like this, his shirt drooping just open enough at the top to reveal some nice décolletage, he's torn between basking in it and making a pass at her. Now's not the time for the latter, though; he'll just take some private comfort from the sight of her, a next-level-up version of what he's done for years now.

"The Major." It occurs to him that he could probably look up what happened to the guy, but if it involved institutionalization or death, he's not sure he'd want to know. "One of my only real friends, senior year of high school - his dad was a conspiracy nut. Wouldn't leave his house, treated everything like a black ops mission, made Gimble call him "sir." He was obsessed with alien abductions and this series of fantasy novels. Ever hear of Michael Moorcock?"

Sooner or later she'll stop looking and start touching. There's a difference between the intentional prolonging of anticipation now and their long stretch of poorly-concealed wistful glances, the way her skin tingled beneath his fingers on her lower back. They can talk through this first and he'll still be there after. The luxury of a relationship built on partnership and friendship; sex and conversation aren't either-or.

"Hmn-- I don't think so?" It sounds, maybe, vaguely familiar, like a name she's heard that means nothing. The description, though, fits neatly into what she felt when she'd looked at the hermit. Literally, if the man was housebound. "Who is he?"

"I'm not surprised - his books aren't your usual fare." He gives her a little smile. They weren't really his, either; if he hadn't had to pore over Stormbringer in order to understand what was happening, he probably would have skipped over it at the bookstore. He apparently had been, for close to fifteen years. "He wrote about an albino elf named Elric, who existed to balance law and chaos. He was the Eternal Champion."

If the cards were still out, he'd be prodding them. "He had a sword called Stormbringer - typical stuff. The Major must have had fifty copies of one book stored in his house; he gave me one nearly every time I came over. I used to give them back to Gimble at school the next day, so he could take them back to the stash. But the Major wasn't the only one obsessed with these books. Earl Roy, the murderer - he was trying to appease the Eternal Champion, because every death gave him strength. Something like that. It was heady stuff for a senior in high school."

Jesus, high school. The idea of Mulder diving into danger, chasing serial killers at, what, seventeen?-- well, it checks out, to be fair. But that doesn't mean she has to like it.

So the sword was at least semi-literal; she can't help but be fascinated by the parallels between the story he's telling and the one she wove out of the cards.

"I can't imagine anyone other than you took the Major seriously. Honestly-- how did you even make the connection?"

In retrospect, it was one of the worst things he's ever done; he went in unprepared and only barely survived to tell the tale. But back then - and even now - the fact that he did survive means it was fine, basically. Not his worse experience tracking down serial killers by any means.

"The Major was following deaths of adults - cases that had been ruled accidents and suicides, mostly. There were arrows near them all, and there was reason to believe they might have been the sources of all the hand-carved arrows left with the children." They had fit together in his mind, perhaps inevitably. "We thought there was an occult angle - and so did the cops. Serial killers were everywhere, and ritual murders like these had to have to do with cults, or sacrifices, or Satan."

Mulder laughs a little at the memory. Idly, he reaches over to pull a hanging thread from her collar. "You know what the 80s were like - and we were right on the cusp of them. Preschools were about to be turned upside-down with claims of Satanism. So we found a New Age shop in Maryland - for research purposes - and it turned out our killer had been there, too. He got some of his symbolism from their chaos magic group,and we managed to pull his name and address out of their records. After that, it was a piece of cake - up until he caught me in his living room, anyway."

It's a wild story, the kind she might doubt from anyone else. The kind she might doubt if she wasn't sitting on the tale of Sunlight, even now.

"And you hadn't told anyone where you were going?"

It's the obvious next step, she figures, though it leaves her puzzled as to how he escaped. That part had been left a mystery, or perhaps she just couldn't see it in what they had. (Perhaps, she chides herself, because tarot cards are not actually magic, and magic is not real.)

(She can almost smell the incense. She can still picture the chemical structure of the drug.)

"Who would I tell? My father?" He feels a little pang of guilt, saying it like that, but only a little one - and it dissipates a moment later. "The police? They didn't believe us when we tried."

Not surprising, Mulder suspects. It's a patently unbelievable story, from his cemetery run down to his time spent in a dank basement, struggling to survive.

"I ended up in a dog cage for a few hours, but - actually, we never found out who called the cops. Someone did, and they came out to the house. Turns out they'll believe it when it comes from someone else. The little girl was alive, we both got rescued, and I ended up interviewed by the FBI. I'm pretty sure John Douglas read the transcripts of that."

[ 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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