X-Files OctoberFicFest Day 7: Wetwired

Scully drawing on him, her blue eyes wild. Scully with her gun leveled at him. Scully in the shadows of her mother’s house like some creature in its den.

He had felt her slipping away. He hadn’t understood it. She had flicked her eyes sideways at him in the car like she was assessing her chances of pitching herself out the door. It had stung like a paper cut, a swift slice that throbbed for hours.

Scully didn’t trust him. Some outside force had slipped a wedge between them. He hadn’t thought it was possible anymore: their bond exceeded anything he’d known. Scully was incorruptible. Maybe there had been some rot at the heart of them that he hadn’t understood. Something had festered, maybe since the beginning. Maybe it was the loss of her sister that had tipped her over the edge, or hell, her dog.

She had fired at him. Worse, she had fired at a civilian. What were a few bullets between partners? But to fire on a civilian was out of character, out of line. It wasn’t Scully.

The sinister signal had slipped into her mind and warped something in it. What did she see when she looked at him? Did he stink of cigarettes, in her imagination? Was he a war criminal or a wicked scientist? Was he Pfaster or Boggs or Tooms? Or worst of all, was he himself? Maybe she’d always been waiting for his betrayal.

His heart had stopped when the police had called. There was no bracing himself against the possibility of seeing her lovely face turned waxen, a death mask. He’d whispered a silent apology to the corpse for the relief he’d felt. Surely Jane Doe hadn’t deserved to die. Whoever she was, she deserved justice. He wasn’t going to give it to her, but it ached all the same, under the dizzy rush of euphoria that she wasn’t Scully.

He’d found Scully hiding with her mother, alive but not herself. Unwell. Feral and fierce, a Jersey Devil trapped in a suburban Maryland home. He couldn’t get through to her. When he reached for her, she snarled, caged in her own mind. She had shot him before to save him. That wouldn’t be her aim this time. He remembered their conversation on the rock. In her mind, he could play the part of the fanatic pushed beyond all reason. What was there to do with a mad dog but put it down?

Maggie had a softer touch. She held out her hand and Scully surrendered, saved by motherlove. It was astonishing to watch. He had forgotten that kind of maternal tenderness. He’d only experienced it in a dilute version, standing in for Scully when she’d been abducted. It warmed his heart and broke it all at once. But she was safe. That was what mattered. That was the only thing that mattered.

The cleanup of the evidence had been completed in his absence, as Mr. X had assured him it would, but Scully would be all right. He would make that choice every time.

Maybe one day she’d believe it.