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

"Nice that he cares." He's only a little sarcastic. It probably is, when he's not being a jerk about it. And since she's sure - and knows what's going to get her in trouble better than Fox could - he lets it go.

The walk back over to Beyond Beyond isn't all that notable - he asks her if she likes Craiger, and conversation goes on from there. By the time they're back, he's antsy to talk to Carinda, as nice as it's been to have company. He pauses near the entrance. "Thanks for showing me the library."

It is nice, even if it's annoying. She gets it enough not to complain about it. She loves Bill, after all, even when she doesn't like him.

They walk, and it's nice, but there's an air of sadness as well. It's only a matter of time before they part ways; there's nothing more she can do to help him out, and she likely won't know if he ever finds his sister.

Somehow standing in front of the store feels like the end of a date. At least she sort of imagines so.

"I hope Carinda can help," she says, with a little smile.

"Yeah," he says, looking down at that soft little smile of hers. It feels like the end of a date for him, too - he took a girl to eat something and then to someplace interesting. Which makes it awkward, if not totally unpleasant, that he can't really do anything except shove a hand in his pocket and try not to get his hopes up.

For Carinda, that is, not for a kiss. He already knows the latter's not happening.

"Good luck with yoga," is all he can come up with as a final comment, and with that, he walks into Beyond Beyond and out of Dana's life. Probably forever.

Probably forever.

For a few days she thinks about him a lot. And then less. And then a long, long time goes by when she doesn't think of it at all. Everything that happens at Beyond Beyond sours her on thoughts of the occult; a pleasant day with a stranger researching psychic phenomena loses its shine when a psychopath is trying to manipulate you into believing you're gifted and joining his bizarre crusade of bloodshed. So it goes.

She doesn't think of him for a long time, but then in the academy she reads a monograph and thinks-- there cannot be two men in the world named Fox Mulder. By then, it's much easier for her to look into it. She'd found the articles about the murders after they'd met, but none had mentioned him by name-- there's little officially to tie him to it even now-- but it's easy enough to draw lines of cause and effect. Funny, a little bit.

And one day someone asks her, Are you familiar with an agent named Fox Mulder? And what she says is not a lie, exactly; if it's not the full truth, it's only because she doesn't think it's worth trying to explain. She knows him by reputation. He's brilliant, they say.

Taking the elevator down to the basement-- okay, that's a little inauspicious-- she feels excited, really. How could she not? It's an odd assignment, but they picked her for it, and she's thrilled to feel useful. Having a bit of a personal connection is just the icing on the cake.

She takes a breath, and she knocks on the door.

Everything's changed, and nothing has. Fox Mulder has jettisoned the "Fox," lived abroad, shot a gun, and nearly lost his mind tracking serial killers...but Samantha's still missing. His father's still an asshole. And he hasn't given up on the occult.

He has, however, come to trust that any knock on his door at the J. Edgar Hoover building is going to lead to trouble. The best days are those when he doesn't have to see any other agents, much less old colleagues from Violent Crimes. The worst are when the elevator ride's interminable and someone wants to know if he's captured Bigfoot yet. When's his next trip to Roswell. Funny stuff, all of it - if they weren't busy chasing criminals, they could have an excruciating open-mic set downtown.

"Sorry," he calls to the door, making no move to leave his chair. "Nobody down here but the FBI's most unwanted."

The only reason he turns around at all, straightening up from his lightbox, is because the footsteps are lighter than he expects. And for good reason: The woman walking over is petite and pretty, with the kind of eager smile that screams fresh out of Quantico. For once, he doesn't have an acerbic comment to offer. The bastards upstairs wanted to catch him off-guard, and they succeeded.

Sarcastic, but the tone is familiar. Good to know the intervening years haven't changed much-- she remembers him and Bill in the library, and oh God, that's not a great thing to have between you and your new boss, is it? Maybe she should've said something. Still, too late now. (It was one day, Dana, you'll laugh it off and it'll be fine.)

The office inside is... not, actually, what she was hoping for from her first assignment. For starters she has no idea where she's supposed to sit; if there was ever a second desk in here he's clearly moved it out in favor of extra cabinets and boxes and a scattershot array of equipment.

Even if she hasn't run into him at the Bureau, before this, she's been peripherally aware of him. It feels like everyone's vaguely aware of Spooky Mulder; knowing what little she did, it doesn't surprise her that he's still chasing unconventional leads. What everyone's agreed on-- and maybe it's really the spooky part-- is that he gets results.

She approaches, offers a hand. "Agent Mulder. I'm Dana Scully." There's no way he remembers her, thinks, but there's a little part of her that can't help but hope. "I've been assigned to work with you."

Mulder doesn't take her hand, staring up at her like he's not sure where she came from or why she's in here. Sure, she just explained it - but why?

(The answer's obvious: Someone up there wanted her down in the bowels of the building, watching him spend the Bureau's money. She's here to report back on his investigative techniques, his demeanor - hell, maybe his neckties. The whole package. Which just leaves one question, and he has to admit he's curious.)

"You must've drawn the short straw." When he gets out of his chair, pulling off his reading glasses and folding them up in the process, he towers over her. "Who'd you piss off to get X-Files duty, Agent Scully? You can name names - I won't tell."

Under other circumstances, maybe he would...but at this point, who would he tell? Even if he stopped burning bridges at this very moment, he'd be left with a lot of fire-damaged wood.

Irrational hope aside, she didn't really think he'd remember her-- or be thrilled about the coincidence if he did. But she wasn't expecting outright hostility. She doesn't mean to wear that surprise on her face, but can't keep her eyebrows in check.

He stands, and she has to look up to meet his eyes-- but it doesn't cow her at all. The upside of being short is she's used to this, and holding her own.

"I don't know what you mean," she answers, her tone much more neutral after a moment to gather herself. If nothing else it confirms he has no idea who she is, which is fine-- but it hardly feels like the moment to tell him.

"Your record speaks for itself, Agent Mulder. I'm looking forward to working with you."

It's a nice sentiment, but under the circumstances, it doesn't mean a damn thing. The quality of his work is a double-edged sword: It's the only reason anyone's letting him at these cases, but it's also the reason they all want him back on serial killers, rapists, and robbers.

She doesn't hesitate when he questions her, though. He does like that - the way she stands there like she could fill up the whole room if she wanted to. It's easy to see how someone would recruit her to the FBI.

"My record," he repeats, dubious. "See, I was under the impression you were here for some inter-departmental espionage."

(They say Spooky Mulder is a little crazy. She's never taken that too seriously-- Dana Scully has context for him that much of the Bureau lacks-- but for a moment, she has to wonder if she's the one mistaken.)

"Espionage," she repeats, incredulous. "My background is in medicine-- I'm here to provide a scientific perspective on cases. Evidence-based analysis." She's here to help, Fox.

"Medicine and physics," he corrects, though that doesn't change his opinion on the nature of her presence. It takes a moment of hunting through stacks of paper, but he eventually comes up with her CV, sitting underneath his phone. (He put it there because it was important, believe it or not. "Einstein's Twin Paradox, A New Interpretation. Dana Scully, Senior Thesis. That's bold - rewriting Einstein."

It catches her off guard, a little, which is no doubt what he intended. So her showing up hadn't been a complete surprise-- unless he'd thought, or hoped, that she'd try to turn it down. (As if she could; she hardly has the standing to refuse an assignment.)

"Constant questioning is a fundamental facet of science; there's no understanding that can't be used as a stepping-stone to learn more." It had been... bold. She recognizes that, but what's wrong with boldness? "Have you read it?" she asks, deadpan but halfway joking, because why would he?

She's willing to argue. He can imagine her defending her thesis - do they bother with that for a BS here? - with the same aplomb, staring down her professors as she lays out her vision for time travel. And he can't deny his interest in the subject. Reading it had been an interesting way to spend an hour, late on the night he'd first been made aware of her.

(Admittedly, he hadn't been sure she was a her, at first. He'd been given her CV without any preamble in a terse memo informing him of his new subordinate. Dana Scully could have been a male medical doctor.)

"Of course I read it," and his voice is nimble, something lightening it. Admiration of her work, if not her presence. "I found it compelling."

Of course. The answer surprises her, and for a moment she isn't sure how to reply. It's almost complimentary, a complete turnaround from his attitude thus far.

"Then you should know I'm perfectly well-qualified to help with your work. Our work."

He snorts. Our work. He'll be the judge of that - but he's at least tentatively willing to give her a try. It won't be possible to fob her off on anyone else if it doesn't work out, but he can probably make it miserable enough that she'll ask for a transfer.

And maybe she'll work out. She hasn't been scared off by what she can see of his work; she might be able to hack it.

"Let's test that theory." He reaches for the slides he's been peering at, poking them into a slide projector's carousel. "Hit the lights."

Part of her wants to object to being ordered around, but if it's our work then they're also our light switches, and you catch more flies with honey. (You don't, though. You catch the most flies with shit. Still.)

It's a chance, and that's what she needs, right? Right. And she's curious, genuinely.

So she crosses, heels clicking dully on the worn carpet, and flicks the lights off.

"Okay," he says, letting the slide projector's glow fill the room in lieu of the fluorescent lights. The first slide he clicks to is a photo of a corpse's face. "Case out of Oregon. Victim is female, twenty-one, no established cause of death. Only thing the autopsy turned up were these."

Click. There's her back, and on it, two lumps.

Here's the thing about Dana-- something he knows, but doesn't know he knows-- curiosity is a powerful motivator for her. It's gotten her into trouble more than once. It likely will again. Still, she drifts back across the room, eyeing the projected slide thoughtfully.

"Some kind of bite? Or needle marks-- maybe an attempt to make it look like a bite."

His attention stays on her. These slides aren't new to him, at this point - he's been squinting at them for the last day. What is new is seeing Agent Scully react to them; this is a test of sorts, of her commitment to her new work.

And so far, he has to admit she seems engaged. "The county coroner couldn't tell us. All we have to go on is the substance found in the surrounding tissue."

Click.

"Recognize that molecule?"

For a long moment she studies it.

"Some kind of synthesized protein?" she hazards, unsure. "I don't recognize it. What is it?"

At this point she could care less about whether Fox Mulder is kind of a jerk, or if he remembers her. This still isn't a Hardy Boys book, but these days she absolutely could help solve a murder, or catch a serial killer.

"Search me." It's promising that she doesn't recognize it, though. Scully's clearly bright, but her expertise is decidedly earthbound, from the sound of it. If, as he suspects - hopes - they're looking at something sourced from a little further afield, it's liable to be unrecognizable for them both.

Click. This one's a teenage boy.

"I haven't been able to identify it, and neither has anyone in Sturgis, South Dakota." Click. Another body, unidentifiable so close up. "Or in Shamrock, Texas. We have a nationwide mystery on our hands, Scully. Probably international, but I haven't been able to verify cases outside the country."

She hums thoughtfully, low, considering the images one after another.

"Do you have autopsy reports?" The pictures don't show much detail, especially not with the fuzziness of the projector. And though Fox clearly knows his stuff, she doesn't expect him to have answers for all the questions she might come up with, the nuts and bolts of mysterious deaths.

"What's your theory?" Of course he must have something in mind.

"I do," he says, "and I have a theory."

She's on board - he thinks she is, anyway. Even if all of this is going to end up in the inboxes of a few well-placed suits upstairs, her questions sound genuine so far.

He's been walking around as he talks, in what space there is to pace, and now he comes back to her. "My theory is that we should take this case out of the category of unexplained phenomena and put it somewhere a little more concrete. We're investigators, Scully. Refusing to investigate, consigning this case to history's junk drawer, is a cowardly act."

"I thought that was the point," she answers, watching him move, still not entirely sure where things stand. "Explaining the unexplained."

It's an awkward thing to say, she realizes. But she doesn't sound the least bit sarcastic-- she's fully on board with the notion. His reputation does speak for itself.

"Agent Mulder, what are you suggesting?"

Mulder gives her a wry look. She's playing along - not playing, really - and it's been so long since someone was willing to discuss his work with him. He blossoms under attention, especially now that it's positive.

"Theories the Bureau would prefer we weren't pursuing. Tell me, Scully: Do you believe in extraterrestrial life?" One hand comes up, fingers wiggling - oooh, spooky.

[ 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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BUT THEN, IN THE 90s . . . .

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