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She has ruined, Sunday school hands.
Ripped nails, blackened beds in silent fingers held low and tight in her lap. Clasped against breech of prayer and the unavoidable nearness of Mulder in the backseat next to her. Commandment one, pop quiz: you will not touch. Two: you will not be touched. Not by him, at least. Not now.
Sunday school hands. Medical school hands. Heart-weighing, killing hands. Her hands in Mulder's and stop -- on your knees and three Hail Marys please.
She had not thought of Jesus as she'd fired her gun.
-
The metallic ring of gunshots had left her fragmented, an unstable element. Part of her sees Mulder and all but shakes with relief at the sight of him. Other parts hang dazed around her head, blown there by the impact of her own bullets in someone else's bones. She is not thinking, not thinking.
"Scully? Scully, it's me. Can you hear me?"
She can hear him. She just wishes he would stop saying her name.
"Did he hurt you?"
Oh, Mulder. Such a smart man and such a silly question. Ask me again sometime, she thinks. Ask me again when I'm not afraid to find out my own answer.
She feels wasted. Blasted and a bit like a California Richter scale nightmare. Once as a child, three hours after an earthquake had rocked their San Diego home, she'd looked at Melissa and said: I think my bones are vibrating.
She's thinking this, but she's reaching for Mulder. Dimly, she's aware that she's pulling him to her in the same way she'd shot Pfaster, in a surge of terrified movement. She reaches and he responds.
He steps over a corpse to touch her.
It's now that her skin pricks around her fingers and the corners of her eyes. The confused, floating parts of her are beginning to reel back like thrown out fishing lines. He should not love her so much with blood all down his shirt and more of it on her hands. He should not.
For a moment, only a moment, because an object in motion will stay in motion unless impeded by an unbalanced force, and she is unbalanced but is not a force of anything right now, and he's coming towards her, she lets him gather the fragments of her and try to press them into something whole. She lets him hold her, for a moment, because he's always dedicated himself to impossible causes. She allows herself one slight, gasping sob into his shoulder, her hands useless and gripping at the worn leather of his coat. And then she swallows air and forces it down into her stomach, fills herself to the brim so there will be no space for him to complete her.
It's only a moment and then inertia has had its say in the matter and is finished.
She digs her nails into his chest, makes use of the pricking feeling in her skin, and pushes him away.
-
The surprise of her is clear across each officer’s face as the scene snicks into place with the tumbling grace of Tetris blocks.
“He broke into your apartment?”
“Yes.”
“You’d had previous interactions with him?”
“Yes. We helped to catch him for a string of serial killings in 1994.”
“Alright.”
They never ask the question they’re meaning to which is this: how are you the one that’s still alive?
-
"Please don't touch me," she whispers when Mulder gets close enough to do just that. Her bible is closed and cool on her bedroom floor. We'll get out of here, he'd said and she'd turned to the nearest officer and asked to be processed at the closest precinct.
Mulder freezes at her elbow. She feels protective, not of herself so much as her blackened fingers and the stains they might leave on Mulder's clothes if she held him like she wants to. She is saving him the trouble.
"Okay, Scully," he says. "Okay."
She nods and he hovers by the door. The part of her that he's worn down with romanticism and the paranormal thinks he looks like a trapped spirit, like he is toeing the threshold between worlds. Because she is selfish, she keeps her eyes on him while the EMTs flit around the edge of her bed and hopes she does not look afraid. Because she is selfish, she knows she cannot fool him. Because he is not, he keeps his distance and mouths "you're okay" over their heads.
When he reaches for it, she allows the medic to turn palm over in his hand. She leaves streaks on his white gloves and does not care.
-
Skinner has the uncanny ability to materialize at the cusp of disaster. He's a footnote to their tragedy. No, that's not right. He's the one writing the footnotes, filling in the blanks in the best way he can. It strikes her that he will outlive them all, in the end.
She doesn't remember Mulder or any of the officers calling him, but he's there regardless. His mouth set in a grim line and his black gloved hand holding open a black lacquered car door. She would rather have been put in the back of a black and white, Mulder left to watching the color-changing temperature of her face through dirty glass windows rather than breathing in the space next to her.
"You didn't do anything wrong, Agent," Skinner says. She wonders if the gruffness in his tone is affected, dramatized until he's fully formed himself into the brusque father figure character from so many big screen successes. But he looks at her in the rearview mirror and she decides no. He's too flatly genuine for that kind of staging.
She says thank you because she's not sure what the etiquette is in these situations. Mulder shifts next to her and she clasps those Sunday school hands tighter, realizes by the slip of silk that she's still wearing her pajamas. Congratulations on your murder, Agent Scully.
Congratulations on your will to live.
-
At the station they question her gently. As if she couldn't tell the difference between a real interrogation and formalities played out by already made up minds. She's been one of those minds, but her conclusion has rarely been so lenient. So willing to forgive.
They ask what she remembers.
What she remembers best is the outline of light around his slanted body as he'd stood over her. If she were not who she was, she would tell herself that's all. That the rest is a blur of violence and graciously dealt selected memory. But her bear-trap mind is true to its name and rarely so forgiving. It sinks blood-blackened teeth into the details of the thing. Shakes until it rattles every end of her like a cage.
Pfaster had made her taste iron as it dripped from her nose again. She remembers warning him: I'm a federal agent. You do anything to me and they will not give you a break this time.
But of course he already had, done something to her. He'd made her taste iron as it dripped from her nose. Again. When she'd said they she'd meant Mulder and when she'd said a break she'd meant he's going to kill you.
Looking back, that was when she'd known she'd do it. That and the light, the outline of light and the slant of his pitched body. When she'd seen him above her, her first thought had been blunt and rusted with old violence, but it had come anyways, unbidden.
She'd seen what she was sure was the devil above her and her first thought was that across religions only saints are said to glow.
-
What does she remember?
The music, she says. I remember there was music.
-
In grade school the playground lesson was occasionally that of the gravity between you hands. If you pressed your firsts close enough together, for long enough, they magnetized. Attached to each other's warmth. When you pulled them apart they would pull back.
On the cold grey police station bench with Mulder a reasonable (for him) two inches from her, she remembers recess laws of physics and puts them into place. If she presses her fists together, tight, she will stop her inclination to touch him.
The thing is this: her hands can remember holding him against her and tilting his head just-so as she kissed him and turning their hands into a combined, muddled shadow against his bedroom walls. They can remember this too: the shivering recoil of a trigger and the slip of gunpowder and the realization that killing wasn't a necessity but a choice and they chose (she chose) and it felt good. It felt good and she chose it. Her hands remember that, too.
So she presses her fists closer.
"Cold?" Mulder asks from beside her and she's nodded before she means to.
He breathes like he's happy with the simple task of resorting some part of her to homeostasis. Her fists come apart as he slips his jacket over her shoulders and she's pleased to feel them ache gently for return to their previous position. She obliges.
He asks her if it hurts and she says no.
It's only later that she'll realize he meant the scrape above her cheekbone. The one from the moulding near her closet, which she'd never imagined becoming so acquainted with but can remember thinking "this is how my apartment looked from Melissa's perspective" and being glad to know.
She cannot say what it was she thought he was asking. Only that she lied.
"We didn't have to come down here, Scully." He lowers his voice, but keeps his eyes on the clock on the wall. Skinner has been in the office next to them with the first responding officer for half an hour now. "I would have taken you home."
"I know, Mulder."
That is, she thinks, just what she was afraid of.
-
When she falls asleep, the space between her fists shudders and goes still.
-
From above, at night, Minneapolis is a glittering metropolis. The image of it demands a failure in short-term memory, convenient forgetting of its dulled grey streets and back-alley heartbeat. Earlier, there had been a kind of pandemonium accompanying their departure. In the middle of it, in the back of a car, he'd tried to tell her it was alright.
He'd wanted to tell her something else too, but it'd been ridiculous. She'd have laughed at him. She's asleep now, with her elbow encroaching on his arm rest and her cheek on her fist. He'd kept his coat pulled up to shield her white-pink tearstained face from the police force as they took the steps together one at a time from Pfaster's mother's house. One at a time.
Next to him, Scully sleeps.
Scully sleeps next to him.
They are not in Minneapolis. She holds her hands tightly in her lap. He loves her in a serious, terrifying kind of way. The kind of way that demands you kill or be killed. When it came down to it, he could see his own hands on Pfaster's throat.
He tells her she is brave.
-
The quiet of a late-night precinct sways. Pendulums of sound -- mountains in response to minor crimes, macho cop melodrama. A side-effect of boredom and too much Law and Order. And then: valleys of stillness as the adrenaline wears off, winding down to the sound of coffee pots drip-drip-dripping. Lethargy stretching its lazy shadow across the police force.
It's a valley and Scully is asleep against Mulder's shoulder, his arm draped around her so his fingers tease the outline of her hip. On second glance, it's clear he's fallen asleep with her and Skinner takes a step back. Their closeness offsets the dim metal of the bench they've chosen to carry their weight. He imagines it is cold; the air conditioner blasting.
Scully's nose is red above the collar of Mulder's jacket and the whole picture suddenly strikes him as unimaginably sad: the Americana thrum of them, restless and bruised and sleeping only when they've outrun anonymous pursuers long enough to deserve it.
Scully shifts, her cheek sliding against Mulder's chest. It's the closest Skinner has seen her let him get in hours. He feels like a voyeur, like he is observing curiously intimate art on display. A some-what modern, Hopper-esque thing. And while it touches him, it's only in a vague, uncomfortable way.
They're the subjects and trapped, doorless, they do not know him. He's dimly aware that he cannot help them now.
He's far past being able to paint them an exit.
-
There'd been other things, too, lately. They were late to the budget meeting a week ago, which wasn't even surprising. Wasn't even worth blinking at. Usually, they came in five minutes late with heads bowed, Scully's lips set into an annoyed pout, which he sometimes suspected was simply for her audience's benefit. Mulder sometimes would shift uncomfortably under the table during those meetings. At least once the thud of Agent Scully's heel smacking off his shin under the table was loud enough to be heard by the room at large.
A week ago, they'd blown in and brought the glancing sweetness of new snow in with them. Meaning: she'd been grinning, straightening the hem of her blazer and throwing Mulder a look that could have been anything from be good to you already were good today.
Sir, she'd said, suddenly serious as she turned to the table. So sorry we're late. Mulder had nodded, smiled with a trace of red-pink lipstick smudged against his jaw.
Now, remembering, Skinner sees the smudge darken to crimson, deepen and drip and become blood. Her hands are slick with it, and Mulder wears that same dazed smile.
So sorry, sir. We were almost too late.
-
"Mulder," he says, somehow sensing that this is the safer name to whisper. He's guessed lucky: Mulder is awake immediately, pulling Scully tighter into him as he sits up on the bench, blinking.
"Skinner." He runs a hand across his face for a beat longer than is comfortable. "What time is it?"
"Late," Skinner says, nods to Scully. "Take her home, Mulder. She needs rest."
Mulder nods and runs his hand down Scully's back. "Thank you, sir. They're agreeing it was self-defense?"
Agreeing, buying, have been convinced. Call it what you will. Skinner nods and turns away as Scully wakes up to the sound of Mulder's voice. She takes a stiletto-breath as she comes awake and pulls herself from Mulder before she's even taken a look around.
He saw it though, before she pulled herself away, the way her hand clenched instinctively tighter against Mulder's t-shirt, drawing him to her before letting go. The expansion and retraction of cardiovascular muscle. A one-two motion, simple as a heartbeat and just as necessary.
-
Mulder offers her his hand as they stand up. It is less a courtesy and more of an open question. She by-passes it, fists her hands in his jacket pockets and asks if she can borrow his phone to call her mom.
"Of course," he says. "Do you want to wait until we get in the car? It'll be quieter."
It would be quieter in the car. Quiet and still and close and she's afraid she might falter, might give in to comfort she doesn't deserve.
"Actually," she stops in the long hallway. "Could you just call me a cab? I can go to a hotel. I don't want to - "
He's shaking his head before she's finished. " - put you out or anything. I'll be fine really."
She's not really sure what she expects him to say. To be honest, she's still sort of stuck on the violence of the thing, the absolute unholiness of it all and her ability to walk out of here uncharged. Unscathed, still.
"Scully." He looks terrified, bewildered. She did this to him, she did. "Are you afraid of me?"
She blinks up at him, genuinely surprised. "No."
She hasn't made it all the way to fear yet. Not of Pfaster. Not of Mulder, not ever. She looks back down at her hands before speaking.
"Aren't you afraid of me?”
-
They are fifteen feet from the bench where he left them when Skinner hangs up the phone with the director and pauses on his way back into the hall. It's not that they are particularly striking at this moment. But there is something about the cast of them that will stay with him, something about the way she's looking up at him and the sharp, bird-like shiver of her shoulder blades under Mulder's black jacket.
It will stay with him: the way a garden of violet and forget-me-not blue blooms, vining up her neck from under her collar as Mulder pushes the leather away just barely from her skin, and she lets him. Hands seeking purchase on warmth to serve as proof of life.
He gets the sense that she is speaking, or he is, but the hallway is silent and without echo. A lightbulb above and to the right, all white fluorescence, lays them bare in harsh new light. The last thing either of them had said aloud was please.
The valley surges upwards then: sirens blaring suddenly from the parking lot and a scramble for movement in the lethargic office.
It emphasizes their stillness. Set off by the sweep of bodies down the halls, the seclusion of them is held carefully in the contrast of his gentle fingers against the exquisite violence of her spine. Her head is bent against his chest as if in prayer and up, up and all around them, the tide swells in with a press of sirens and light.
In the middle of it, black on white, they are building their own quiet.
-
Mulder starts and finishes with her name.
"Scully," he says, like he does when she's shocked all the sarcasm and humor out of his voice and left him absolutely bare. She's never heard him say it like that under fluorescent light before.
"What?" she whispers.
"I am not afraid of you." She shakes her head. "You don't have to be forgiven."
She thinks of Skinner in the front seat of the car and starts to protest. You didn't do anything wrong, Agent.
"But if it matters, I do forgive you. I do."
She shakes her head again, mostly to free lingering tears from the corners of her eyes. "Mulder," she starts and he cuts her off, lowering his voice.
What made me pull the trigger? she'd asked him, earlier, and already known the answer. It sounds gentler in Mulder's voice.
"It was you, Scully." He reaches to touch her but stops himself at the last moment. The air at her cheek goes warm with the ghost of his movement. And then he's answering another question that she hasn't be able to ask, voice lower still. "It's still just you. It's always going to be you."
Her hands shake. That's what she was afraid of, and wasn't at the same time. Your honor, but I love her, was not a defense that held up well in a murder trial. There wasn't going to be a trial, though, and if it wouldn't hold up in court it might hold up here, in a fluorescent hallway, in Mulder's jacket, everything softened by his voice.
"Okay, Scully? Please."
She still hasn't looked up at him and when she does she thinks, oh. Just oh, like blinking against feared light and finding it warm instead of burning. Something sparks, flint on stone. Oh. She looks up at him and is half-sure she shakes.
She raises her hands just slightly at her sides, palms up to shrug off an answer and await benediction. He does not stop her motion. He is close enough to touch but lets her reach.
This is a choice. She's going to tell him about the outline of light, about Sunday school and her dangerous hands. About feeling good. She expects he already knows. This is a choice. This is her making it. Her fingers brush just the barest edges of him, learning his outline.
This is a choice. This is still just her choosing. She touches him, just barely, and he closes his eyes.
Yes, she decides, her palm catching the pulse of his heart. Yes, yes.