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

"It's just not very specific."

Honestly she's a little taken aback by his stating it so baldly, but the last thing she wants is to seem like she can't handle whatever he has to say. Since they're here for him to tell her about things which are, objectively, much worse.

The college thing, she thinks, is not that odd. Maybe he's fixated on one in particular, but of course it'd matter to the mysterious Bill Mulder that his son had his future in order, right?

"What kind of work does he do?"

It sounds like small talk, but she's genuinely curious-- trying to figure out what sort of work could so consume someone.

"Stuff for the government." It occurs to him that he might have said too much already. It's such a relief, though, to just say things. That he doesn't like his dad, that the feeling's mutual, that everything about his life is at least a little fucked up - it's better than sitting silently and pretending everything's fine.

And she doesn't seem to mind. She seems concerned, but not put off.

"He's high-level," he adds, since what does he do for the government is the kind of question that's easier asked than answered. "But it's not like he'd be a better father if he didn't have top-secret clearance. He's - oh. Hi."

The waitress doesn't care about anyone's shitty father. She just wants to know what they want to drink, and do they want to look at the menu a little longer.

It's not much less vague, but at least it's a direction. She nods to acknowledge it, considering what it might mean. Top-secret government stuff seems like it could be distracting to say the least. All in all Dana is a relatively neutral observer-- but she understands the lure of duty, even if it's a different sort.

When the waitress comes by she straightens up and smiles automatically, like they're not discussing classified government jobs and serial killers. (Who would care in Craiger, anyway?) She orders a chamomile tea-- less exciting than Carinda's herbal blends, but it sounds pleasant.

She waits for the woman to leave-- which gives her a moment to consider it.

"How about your mom?"

He orders coffee and a basket of fries for them to share - because no matter what else might be true in his life, he's almost always hungry. Once they're alone again, she asks what might, in retrospect, be an obvious question. It's one he doesn't know how to answer, though.

With Dad, it's easy. He hates everything Fox likes. They butt heads constantly, provided neither of them is currently ignoring the other. But Mom...he's simultaneously angry at her, at the way she's just given up in favor of pretending things are normal, and worried about her. At least she acts like she cared at some point. At least she still seems upset, even if it's weird and distant. Going to her house feels like visiting a stranger for dinner, but she's not actively picking apart everything he does, all the time.

It's another question he takes too long to answer, his brow furrowed, and eventually he gives up. "I don't know. What's your mom like?"

It's hard for her to describe Maggie Scully any other way than as a mom. Archetypally maternal, or at least that's how it feels to Dana. She shrugs her shoulders as she considers it.

"She's not as strict as Dad," is where she lands, though maybe it's only half-true. The better way to put it is probably that she keeps the house and the family to her husband's standards. But if she says that to Fox it'll sound like a complaint, and it isn't, not really. It's just how things are, especially when her father ships out.

If anything it's strange how much he's been here in Craiger. She doesn't entirely understand the nature of his special assignment-- it's none of her business, she knows, which is maybe something she and Fox have in common. A lack of security clearance that goes beyond not being included in grown-up business.

"She's a good mom, I think."

"You're lucky," he says, and the waitress comes back with a mug for each of them. It occurs to him that he doesn't know what chamomile tea tastes like - but it looks pale and kind of bland to his eye. He takes a sip of his coffee, grimacing at the burnt flavor of it. "You're really lucky."

Easy to say when he's known her for ten minutes and met no one she's ever associated with, but Fox Mulder's used to making snap judgments. More importantly, he's used to shooting his mouth off without any consideration whatsoever.

"I know," she admits. Which-- what else can she say? They have the normal kinds of disagreements, she thinks, her parents. It could be a lot worse. At least she knows they love her no matter what.

She takes a sip of her tea, eyeing the fries but not trying to steal one. (Yet.)

"Though I don't think they'd be very happy with me if I ran off trying to solve murders."

"No," he agrees, letting himself be led back to the subject they're ostensibly here for. He squeezes a blob of ketchup out onto one corner of the pile of fries as he goes on. "It's dangerous, it's stupid, and it's getting in the way of the police. But if you don't -"

And here, he meets her eyes again, utterly intent.

"- then a kid's going to die. She was taken from her own home, while her mom was in the basement. She should have been safe." It's been months now, and he's still never quite shaken that sick feeling he got the first time he saw Sarah Lowe's picture on the news. Not when he really thinks about the stakes. "And the cops don't know how to find her. You'd look for her then, wouldn't you?"

You'd think, having been the one to raise the topic, that she'd be better steeled to talk about it. But she isn't. Though the truth is it's not the words that give her a chill-- it's the look in his eyes. He isn't bragging, though you might imagine someone who-- allegedly-- stopped a serial killer would. It's more an echo of--

Of some desperation, the way he must have felt to go off and do that.

She lifts her chin, trying not to seem too shaken.

"I don't know," she admits, softly. "I can't imagine what I could do that the police couldn't."

He shrugs. Maybe she'd be as lost as the cops - but maybe not. There's no reason to think she wouldn't try; she's interested enough to ask about it, and she's watching him steadily, looking at him like she's trying to puzzle out whether he's telling the truth or not.

The fact that she's even trying puts her ahead of plenty of real authorities. She's giving the story a chance, even though he knows it sounds crazy.

"If you found a clue they didn't understand," he says, drawing the thought out as he bites down on a fry, "and they wouldn't listen to you. What would you do?"

It's hard for Dana to picture herself in that position; she just can't imagine how she'd stumble into an inscrutable clue that way. Her life is fairly boring, and this sounds like a mystery novel.

"Honestly, I don't know," she muses. Wouldn't she-- well, if the police wouldn't listen, who could she go to? Her parents, maybe? But if they didn't believe her, either?

"What did you find?" she asks, instead, a little uneasy at the idea of being the only thing standing between an innocent life and a tragedy.

He can see it in his mind's eye again: A little boy lying on his back, his skin already discolored from all the things that happen to bodies after they stop living. The bird, just as stiff and dead, resting on his chest with its halo of arrows.

"I saw things," he says quietly, because he's not sure how she'll take it if he starts describing a corpse in detail to her. A lot of people wouldn't be able to handle hearing about the details; there are nights when he can't handle the things he's seen. "One of the bodies. I knew the stuff they didn't tell the reporters. And that's why I knew that one dead kid was related to a living one who was kidnapped. But the police wouldn't listen to me. So -"

This is where it starts to get hairy. "I got their case file. I read what they had about the murder."

The lack of detail is probably for the best; she can read between the lines, at least enough to follow. She's terribly curious about it, actually-- not about the body, but the specifics. What he could possibly have noticed.

That last bit, though, makes her eyebrows shoot up with surprise... and a little suspicion, admittedly.

"There's no way someone just let you read a case file,"

She's so straightforward about it - enough so that it dissipates some of his dark mood. He smiles, just a little sheepish. "I never said I asked permission."

"Now I'm not sure if you're a detective or a spy," she says, fixing him with a deeply skeptical look. But he's got her hooked.

"So how did you do it?"

"My friends distracted the police long enough for me to find it." When they're basically a step up from Keystone Kops, it's not that hard to get around them - just a little nervewracking. He picks up another fry without actually eating it. "Then we started looking into the crime scene - a stone that was left there, and a poison. And we needed a New Age shop, which is what brought us to Craiger."

Which reminds him of her earlier question - why Maryland? Why not Massachusetts? "Beyond Beyond's only an hour and a half from D.C. That's where I live right now."

"You're definitely a spy," she teases, and tries not to feel self-conscious about doing it. She leans back, considering him as she takes a packet of sugar to add to her tea.

"That almost makes showing up here the most plausible part of it." Stealthily-- not at all stealthily-- she steals a fry.

"Double-oh nine," he says, nudging the basket of fries closer to the middle of the table. He could polish off the whole thing, if he wanted, but he's more interested in talking; there's plenty of opportunity for Dana to get her fair share. "The weird thing is, we weren't the only ones who found Beyond Beyond. The killer did, too."

"No," she gasps. That idea, genuinely, shocks her; Beyond Beyond is more or less her favorite place in Craiger. (Don't tell her mom.) The idea that going there could mean rubbing elbows with murderers is...

"Okay, just... tell me everything."

"Okay." He leans in a little, arms resting on the table. "I don't know if they still meet there, but there were these people who did chaos magick. They invited us to sit in - and I recognized their flag. The killer was...he used the symbol, too."

He still can't quite bring himself to explain the bone arrows or the dead magpie to her. Dana seems nice, and she seems like the kind of person who's never had anything really bad happen to her; most people seem that way to him. She shouldn't have to imagine what happened to Billy, or what almost happened to Sarah.

"The chaos magick people thought he was a creep, so they kicked him out - but they still had his name and address on file. So we drove out to his house." Which, in retrospect, sounds exactly as insane as everyone said, back when everything happened. He glances down at his hands. "It was pretty stupid of us."

Unconsciously she mirrors his action, coming closer, though she (primly) keeps her elbow off the table. It feels appropriate, given the seriousness of the matter, to keep it quiet.

He doesn't give details-- she's glad for that-- but something in the way he pauses gives her a hint of the magnitude of whatever it was he saw.

"It sounds... dangerous," she says carefully. It does sound stupid, but she wants him to keep talking.

"It might not have been," he says, and he's torn between feeling self-conscious and proud. It's going to impress her, he's certain of that. He's just not sure whether it'll be for good or bad. "If I hadn't gone inside, it probably would have been fine."

Personally, he still thinks it was the right thing to do. He's still proud of himself: finding him, getting in there, getting out again. Saving Sarah from Billy's fate.

"You didn't try the police again?"

If they'd turned him away, she understands why-- kind of-- but still.

"But.... you made it out okay," she says, unsure. Obviously he lived to tell the tale....

He hesitates a moment. "We tried some stuff between point A and point B. But the long and short is that he caught me there. So technically a serial killer caught me before I caught a serial killer."

That makes it sound like it wasn't a big deal, and like he doesn't have nightmares about it still. Telling a girl about walking up gasping, feeling like your chest's compressed, isn't going to impress her. "But my friends got the police. And we got the guy before he could kill again."

"I guess that's the important part," she says softly. Of course she's curious-- how could you not be?-- but not enough to make her ask for details. It's the kind of thing you want and don't want to know at once. Dana wouldn't be surprised to hear it left him with nightmares. (At least his have some explanation. Hers just have the Devil to blame.)

"I can't believe I've never heard any of this," she adds, the slightest frown creasing her face. "Did Carinda know him?"

[ 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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