"Pilot" by Loligo (Folklore Challenge)
Jan. 25th, 2007 04:28 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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sga_flashficTitle: Pilot
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
loligo
Rating: PG
Author's Note: This fic brought to you by nostalgia and the letters A, T, X, F, and C.
Summary: On some worlds, the Wraith are just crack-pot rumours and urban legends. Nobody believes in them.
"It's a mosquito bite, Scully."
"Are you sure?" She feels the heat of the candle as he bends closer to the raised mark between her shoulder blades.
"Yeah, I got eaten up a lot myself out there."
She pulls her robe closed, turns and grabs him in relief, lets the world anchor itself again. That thing she removed from Ray Soames's back, right where all the other victims had the strange red welt -- it was like nothing she'd ever seen before, its metallic fibers grotesquely entangled in the mummified nerve tissue.
"You okay?" Mulder asks, patting her back. She recollects herself and pulls away. "Yes, I'm fine."
"You're shaking."
"I need to sit down." She perches on the edge of a chair. She wants her professional demeanor back, but it's lost in the fitful candle shadows and torrential rain.
He sits down, too. "Take your time."
xXx
Their conversation is more comfortable than she would have imagined, and even after the night loses its eerie edge she's not in a hurry to leave his room. She ends up leaning against the headboard, curled up in a blanket, while he sits on the floor beside her.
"I was twelve when it happened," he tells her. "My sister was eight. She just disappeared out of her bed one night, just gone, vanished. No note, no phone calls, no evidence of anything."
"You never found her?"
"It tore the family apart. No one would talk about it. There were no facts to confirm, nothing to offer any hope." His voice is soft, and his face is pale in the dim light from the window as he leans back to look at her.
"What did you do?"
"Eventually I went off to school in England, I came back, got recruited by the Bureau. Seems I had a natural aptitude for applying behavioral models to criminal cases. My success allowed me a certain freedom to pursue my own interests. And that's when I came across the X-Files. At first, it looked like a garbage dump for UFO sightings, alien abduction reports, the kind of stuff that most people laugh at as being ridiculous. But I was fascinated. I read all the cases I could get my hands on, hundreds of them. I read everything I could about paranormal phenomena, about the occult, and..." He sighs, and she can see him start to close up, sinking into his own thoughts.
"What?" she prompts him.
"There's classified government information I've being trying to access, but someone has been blocking my attempts to get at it."
"Who? I don't understand." She thinks of the grey men in that office, their unspoken expectations, the way they underestimated her.
"Someone at a higher level of power. The only reason I've been allowed to continue with my work is because I've made connections in Congress."
"And they're afraid of what? That you'll leak this information?"
"You're a part of that agenda, you know that." Mulder stares at her, eyes wide, and she's not sure whether he's begging her to deny it, or daring her to confess.
"I'm not a part of any agenda," she says, her voice dipping low. "You've got to trust me. I'm here just like you, to solve this."
She can see the moment he decides. He kneels up, leans closer. "I'm telling you this, Scully, because you need to know, because of what you've seen. In my research, I've worked very closely with a man named Dr. Heitz Werber and he's taken me through deep regression hypnosis. I've been able to go into my own repressed memories to the night my sister disappeared. She was terrified of something, something in our house. I couldn't see them, they were like shadows. She was so scared, she ran out, and then there was the light... A cone of light, and a terrible sound, and she was gone."
Her face must have betrayed her, shown some confusion or disbelief, because he leans even closer and gets more intense. "Listen to me, Scully, this thing exists."
"But how do you know --"
"The government knows about it, and I've got to know what they're protecting! And these incidents, they're increasing. It's not just the abductions. These kids here in Oregon, with the implants; three old women found outside of Amarillo last month with handprints burned on their chests; a deer hunter in Wisconsin who says a white-haired monster stalked him and his buddy, and his friend didn't make it out alive. It's all part of some pattern, and I have to solve it! Nothing else matters to me." His voice softens again. "I won't quit until I've found her. Not until I've found my sister."
And she believes him.
xXx
Author's Note: Nearly all dialogue lifted verbatim from The X-Files pilot -- except for the Wraith bits.
Author:
loligoRating: PG
Author's Note: This fic brought to you by nostalgia and the letters A, T, X, F, and C.
Summary: On some worlds, the Wraith are just crack-pot rumours and urban legends. Nobody believes in them.
"It's a mosquito bite, Scully."
"Are you sure?" She feels the heat of the candle as he bends closer to the raised mark between her shoulder blades.
"Yeah, I got eaten up a lot myself out there."
She pulls her robe closed, turns and grabs him in relief, lets the world anchor itself again. That thing she removed from Ray Soames's back, right where all the other victims had the strange red welt -- it was like nothing she'd ever seen before, its metallic fibers grotesquely entangled in the mummified nerve tissue.
"You okay?" Mulder asks, patting her back. She recollects herself and pulls away. "Yes, I'm fine."
"You're shaking."
"I need to sit down." She perches on the edge of a chair. She wants her professional demeanor back, but it's lost in the fitful candle shadows and torrential rain.
He sits down, too. "Take your time."
Their conversation is more comfortable than she would have imagined, and even after the night loses its eerie edge she's not in a hurry to leave his room. She ends up leaning against the headboard, curled up in a blanket, while he sits on the floor beside her.
"I was twelve when it happened," he tells her. "My sister was eight. She just disappeared out of her bed one night, just gone, vanished. No note, no phone calls, no evidence of anything."
"You never found her?"
"It tore the family apart. No one would talk about it. There were no facts to confirm, nothing to offer any hope." His voice is soft, and his face is pale in the dim light from the window as he leans back to look at her.
"What did you do?"
"Eventually I went off to school in England, I came back, got recruited by the Bureau. Seems I had a natural aptitude for applying behavioral models to criminal cases. My success allowed me a certain freedom to pursue my own interests. And that's when I came across the X-Files. At first, it looked like a garbage dump for UFO sightings, alien abduction reports, the kind of stuff that most people laugh at as being ridiculous. But I was fascinated. I read all the cases I could get my hands on, hundreds of them. I read everything I could about paranormal phenomena, about the occult, and..." He sighs, and she can see him start to close up, sinking into his own thoughts.
"What?" she prompts him.
"There's classified government information I've being trying to access, but someone has been blocking my attempts to get at it."
"Who? I don't understand." She thinks of the grey men in that office, their unspoken expectations, the way they underestimated her.
"Someone at a higher level of power. The only reason I've been allowed to continue with my work is because I've made connections in Congress."
"And they're afraid of what? That you'll leak this information?"
"You're a part of that agenda, you know that." Mulder stares at her, eyes wide, and she's not sure whether he's begging her to deny it, or daring her to confess.
"I'm not a part of any agenda," she says, her voice dipping low. "You've got to trust me. I'm here just like you, to solve this."
She can see the moment he decides. He kneels up, leans closer. "I'm telling you this, Scully, because you need to know, because of what you've seen. In my research, I've worked very closely with a man named Dr. Heitz Werber and he's taken me through deep regression hypnosis. I've been able to go into my own repressed memories to the night my sister disappeared. She was terrified of something, something in our house. I couldn't see them, they were like shadows. She was so scared, she ran out, and then there was the light... A cone of light, and a terrible sound, and she was gone."
Her face must have betrayed her, shown some confusion or disbelief, because he leans even closer and gets more intense. "Listen to me, Scully, this thing exists."
"But how do you know --"
"The government knows about it, and I've got to know what they're protecting! And these incidents, they're increasing. It's not just the abductions. These kids here in Oregon, with the implants; three old women found outside of Amarillo last month with handprints burned on their chests; a deer hunter in Wisconsin who says a white-haired monster stalked him and his buddy, and his friend didn't make it out alive. It's all part of some pattern, and I have to solve it! Nothing else matters to me." His voice softens again. "I won't quit until I've found her. Not until I've found my sister."
And she believes him.
Author's Note: Nearly all dialogue lifted verbatim from The X-Files pilot -- except for the Wraith bits.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-26 01:58 am (UTC)Powerful stuff. *two thumbs up*
(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-26 01:58 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-26 02:51 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-26 02:00 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-26 03:04 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-26 02:01 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-26 05:09 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-26 02:04 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-26 12:32 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-26 02:04 pm (UTC)Comment
Date: 2007-01-28 01:41 am (UTC)--Silverthreads
(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-28 11:18 am (UTC)