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

"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."

You can't tell a story like this without some sore spots; she can imagine staying with his father wasn't easy for Mulder, and she's primed herself to see this as a story about not doing what Bill Mulder wanted, anyway.

She can't help wincing at the idea of him in captivity-- but maybe all's well that ends well. Maybe it was a nosy neighbor or something. Whoever called the cops, Scully is grateful to them.

"And here you are, G-man."

"Here I am." He can't resist any longer, putting an arm around her and pulling her over to him. She's right here, touchable and kissable and incredibly attractive, and he doesn't have to spare a thought to what others might think. Of course it means he reaches for her. "Serial killers and UFOs, that's everything."

It is not, but it's not a bad way to tie things up. "I didn't think you were a customer there, too."

It's the most natural thing in the world to slide closer to Mulder, her gaze rising to meet his, her hand set on his bare chest in a way that feels slightly possessive. Surely, it will stop feeling like such a novelty, to be able to touch him, but she intends to enjoy it thoroughly for the moment.

"We moved to Craiger that summer-- some special assignment they needed my father for. Melissa found Beyond Beyond, of course, but we'd go together, practically every day." She smiles at the memory, soft but faintly pained; it's hard not to feel that way when she thinks of her big sister, all the more when she thinks of that time in their lives.

"Carinda-- I think she genuinely believed in that kind of thing, and meant well." It's taken her a long time to come around to feeling that way; it had been easier at the time to brand her a liar, to blame her for some of what happened. "But Sunlight-- Mulder, he was a psychopath. He was using the store to try and build a cult, and killing anyone who had second thoughts."

And look, he's not about to complain about a little possessiveness. Who wouldn't want Dana Scully to claim them as her own? He's utterly smitten, and now that he has no reason to hide it - outside of their professional lives, anyway - he doesn't bother.

That look of lazy adoration evaporates as she tells her story, though. Scully and her sister getting tarot cards at a New Age shop is cute. Scully interacting with a murderous cult leader isn't. Staring openly, the face of someone who believes and doesn't want to, he says, "Sounds like we dodged a bullet. What happened?"

Before agreeing to read the cards she should've thought it through, that all this might come out. It's not quite the lighthearted party trick she promised.

"We'd moved over the summer and since we really didn't know anyone in Craiger, Missy and I spent a lot of time together. We were taking yoga at the store, and-- well. You know Missy; she was listening to Rhiannon on repeat back then, convinced both of us were reincarnated sorceresses." Again, she can't help a small, sad smile, biting at her bottom lip.

"Carinda encouraged that kind of thing-- the idea that any of us might be psychic, or special, you know. I do think she genuinely meant well by it. But we spent a lot of time there-- they had a little cafe, if you remember. It was... nice."

It's not hard to imagine: Melissa graceful and willowy and aware of it, wanting to be something more exciting than a Navy brat in a new town, and Dana tagging along. What else would there be to do? Craiger was tiny; it must have felt like the middle of nowhere, coming from California.

"You got there after the case was wrapped up," he murmurs, carding his fingers through her hair, "and I was probably out of the country by the time teens started dying. So it's you, your sister, and Carinda. Where does Sunlight come in?"

He's there, of course, lurking in the background. They both encountered him. But he clearly flew under the radar enough that no one looked askance at him, even when the deaths started piling up.

If not for the deaths, it might have been a nice story-- youthful foolishness and a stretch of strange dreams.

"Sunlight lead some of the classes-- more advanced ones, which he'd use to identify victims. People he believed had strong psychic abilities-- he'd invite them to his one-on-one classes and drug them. It was in the incense. He'd tell them the trip was an out-of-body experience and use it draw them into his cult."

She frowns, looking away.

"If they refused, or if he felt threatened, he'd kill them and stage the bodies to look like car accidents. The first I heard about it was one of the seniors-- Melissa knew her a little, I think. I'd never met her."

It's not hard to picture, when he really looks back on it. Sunshine had been the hippy-dippiest kind of guy, a particularly impressive feat when you considered that most of his brethren had moved on to greener pastures by the time Mulder had been old enough to drive. Anyone who went by "Sunshine" in 1978 was in it for the long haul. But at the same time, he'd come off harder than the woman there - Carinda? Carinda, Scully'd said. Neither of their names had made an impression at the time. What little Mulder remembers of the guy was prickly. Two-faced, apparently, if he'd seduced so many teenagers into a cult.

"And after you first heard about it?" He has the beginnings of a guess, too delicate an instinct to put into words just yet It seems likely in the worst possible way: Scully might have read all this in the paper, but if she and her sister had been regular customers at Beyond Beyond, it seems far more likely that the two of them got some first-hand experience.

What it really comes down to is whether it was Melissa who got snared, or if it was the woman he's currently got an arm around.

It's hard to answer that question with anything other than I saw a ghost. And she doesn't want to think-- she doesn't know what to make of it anymore, honestly. As earnestly as she'd believed back then that the experience was real, she'd convinced herself since that it couldn't have been.

"I... became convinced there was more to it," she says, because that's true. "The rash of deaths, the unlikely excuses-- and if you looked beyond the staged accidents there were ritualistic aspects, injuries meant to mimic the deaths of saints. I don't know what I was thinking, honestly, except that no one seemed to care and it was all too strange to be that simple."

There's a faraway look in her eyes as she tries to navigate the memories. She's moved, ironically, from belief to skepticism to a sort of questioning that's inherently uneasy. There are things she never did manage to explain-- and for most of her life she'd decided it meant they couldn't be true. But she has to admit-- she could never disprove most of it, either.

"Carinda thought-- well, I think she thought everyone was psychic, really. She had no idea what was going on; but she was so welcoming, it meant there were always people around for Sunlight. And I guess... It was a confusing time," she says carefully. "I think I was grasping at straws, anything that might help make sense of it, so when he offered me a session to better understand my alleged abilities..."

She grimaces. Foolish, and so unlike her that she half expects Mulder to chide her. Lord knows she's chiding her younger self.

He should be horrified, and he is - in the same way he supposes I was drugged and caged by a serial killer is horrifying, distantly and with the knowledge that he survived it. Look what they've each come through, how close a call they each had. His arm tightens around her in a little squeeze.

But the thing that overtakes any sense of worry for her, eased along by the fact that she's here and apparently fine, is where she trails off. "Your alleged abilities. Have you been holding out on me this whole time, Scully? I could have been getting my psychic readings for free."

Everything else, they'll come back to. Her suspicions regarding ritualized death aren't unfounded; it's the right time period, if a strange choice of subject for a New Ager. He'd always held the assumption they eschewed Christianity for the most part. But there's time for that, and for digging into the details.

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

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

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