muse_playground September 80.4
Yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should. -Ian Malcolm in Jurassic Park
“You come to see the wise man but you look as if you've seen a ghost.”
The voice was something that provoked a sensation of disquiet, of prickling fingers and sharp nails ghosting a path that hovered above sensitive skin, promising the blistering pressure of a touch and yet telling a falsehood, never giving what was threatened. He sounded more like dust and less like a man, someone who had puffed his life away into clouds of nicotine with the same lack of regard he had for the existence of anyone else that happened to be around him. This man, he had never cared. Of countless times which danger had been thought to follow wherever he went the truth was the path was reverse, that where he moved he let peril move in front of him as if his hands were holding something other than a cigarette and he were inhaling something that wasn't his own death, but that of others. He liked to play the hand of power, dictating what happened and what didn't, and to who it happened to.
It had always been Mulder he was after.
An invisible pull drew Scully to Mulder's side, where she did not take his hand not out of lack of wanting to, but out of no need. He was close enough to feel her, and if he chose to he would - and could - reach for her. For all the attention he paid her now she might have appeared, to an untrained eye, invisible to him, and yet she was far from it.
“You're no wise man. You're a dead man. Just like Krycek and X.”
Mulder's voice radiated disbelief, menace, and the withered face only smiled. It ran Scully's blood cold and then he looked at her as if he could sense her fear, and the disquiet that came with it.
“You see a dead man, Agent Scully?”
If only. If only it were that easy, to see death and have it be so. Had that been the truth this man would have died long ago, perhaps more than once, and so many things that had happened would never have been. Mulder's life, at that, would be less filled with agony, less time would have been spent running and questioning, chasing shadowed faces in the darkness and living their lives with danger hissing itself at their throat as if it were starving. Scully had a brief, white-hot moment of impossible anger and she found herself wishing that her gun was in its shoulder holster at her side instead of somewhere else - where, she didn't know - so she could take the comforting weight into her hand and empty the clip into the withered, straining chest in front of her. It wouldn't even take the whole clip, just -
“I hoped and prayed you were dead you chain-smoking, son of a bitch.”
Her voice dripped venom, something akin to corrosive battery acid and she thought the rheumy eyes registered mild surprise at her acerbity, another factor which jolted a rough push of satisfaction through her blood similar to a push of adrenaline. She was glad she had surprised him, glad that she possessed the ability to take him off guard because if she was able to surprise him for just another second, then maybe -
And then her eyes fell to the back of Mulder's neck, to the tense line of his throat that she could see, and a cold, yawning chasm opened somewhere in her stomach because she knew then. What she knew wasn't clear, but the emotion that was derived from it was impossible to deny. It was like squinting through a pane of a fogged window in a car, seeing oncoming headlights and knowing it was another speeding vehicle based solely on path of motion and movement, but not knowing the make or model, or exactly where it was going to hit. It would hit, that was certain, but the details were unclear. Scully was suddenly reminded of the magic Eight ball she had played with in her earlier teenage years - answer unclear, ask again later.
But there was no later. Because whatever was about to happen, whatever was about to be divulged, the withered man before their eyes was taking quiet delight in it. In knowing what was about to happen, what was about to happen, take place, whatever it ended up being - and Scully was overcome with the sudden irrational desire to tell him to stop. To stop and think about what he was about to say, because the power was unfortunately in the hands of their enemy. A power that she knew he was aware of, to its full potential, and yet -
- but there was no and yet. There was no going back, no reasoning with a mad man who was certain he had thought through to the outcomeof bringing them to this place, and yet didn't know just what he was capable of doing. Breaking a heart was one thing but breaking a spirit was another and as Scully watched Mulder's pulse beat at the nape of his neck she knew the latter was dangerously close for him. She would pull him back from it, never mind whether she was able to or not - she would make a way, damn the rest of it all - but there would be no forgiveness for it happening in the first place.
The Smoking Man's lips parted again, and Scully found she was holding her breath.
Muse: Dana Scully
Fandom: The X-Files
Word Count: 919