Privately, pragmatically, she wonders if she's dead. Or maybe this is the process of dying-- some strange hallucination formed of half-baked memory and regret, neurons flaring in chaotic desperation, coming together in some bizarre, illogical fantasy of a future she won't reach. Reaching forward in time (is that an echo of their recent case with the freezing compound?), worrying about Mulder (an ever-present weight), looking for an escape.
It would be impossible enough just to have found herself outside the Hoover building, when she'd been in Rhode Island. But-- if, well, everything she's seen is to be believed, the physical distance is the least of it.
Skinner, to his credit, doesn't seem to have changed much in nearly twenty years. He's outwardly calm (and inwardly losing his mind, she can tell) as he explains what he can: when it is, where it is, some broad strokes of the intervening time. The fact that she no longer works for the Bureau. She sits on an uncomfortable chair in a hotel room he's booked for her (kind, but also necessary; her credit cards are long since expired and Jesus Christ, the inflation) and listens on speakerphone as he tries to call the only person he can think of who might help.
You've reached Dana Scully; please leave a message.
She's not sure how to feel about that one.
And then the next day, Skinner gets a phone call. An unknown number. He looks at it, and he looks at her, and they both just know.
She can hear him yelling without the benefit of speakerphone.
And so... so they go out. To meet Mulder at a bar, because apparently Mulder doesn't live here, doesn't work here; doesn't seem to do anything as far as Skinner knows, and she finds herself second-guessing him on that basis in spite of his kindness, his even-keeled, almost fatherly care. (God-- she can doubt it's been seventeen years, but they show on his face all too plainly.)
She tries to relax, and fails utterly, sitting ramrod straight in his car as they drive out to some restaurant in Alexandria she's never heard of. Didn't there used to be a pharmacy here, yesterday? A decade ago. Whatever.
They walk in and she hesitates, looking around from the door, absolutely lost. It's amazing how disorienting and unfamiliar the very atmosphere is; the way people talk and move and look at their little Star Trek style computer-phones. It grates against her already raw nerves.
It's Skinner who strides confidently towards a booth-- and she realizes it's him.
She squares her shoulders, fixes her face into a neutral, pleasant expression that ought to mask her panic-- at least as far as the civilians around them go-- and follows to sit across from Fox Mulder.
no subject
It would be impossible enough just to have found herself outside the Hoover building, when she'd been in Rhode Island. But-- if, well, everything she's seen is to be believed, the physical distance is the least of it.
Skinner, to his credit, doesn't seem to have changed much in nearly twenty years. He's outwardly calm (and inwardly losing his mind, she can tell) as he explains what he can: when it is, where it is, some broad strokes of the intervening time. The fact that she no longer works for the Bureau. She sits on an uncomfortable chair in a hotel room he's booked for her (kind, but also necessary; her credit cards are long since expired and Jesus Christ, the inflation) and listens on speakerphone as he tries to call the only person he can think of who might help.
You've reached Dana Scully; please leave a message.
She's not sure how to feel about that one.
And then the next day, Skinner gets a phone call. An unknown number. He looks at it, and he looks at her, and they both just know.
She can hear him yelling without the benefit of speakerphone.
And so... so they go out. To meet Mulder at a bar, because apparently Mulder doesn't live here, doesn't work here; doesn't seem to do anything as far as Skinner knows, and she finds herself second-guessing him on that basis in spite of his kindness, his even-keeled, almost fatherly care. (God-- she can doubt it's been seventeen years, but they show on his face all too plainly.)
She tries to relax, and fails utterly, sitting ramrod straight in his car as they drive out to some restaurant in Alexandria she's never heard of. Didn't there used to be a pharmacy here, yesterday? A decade ago. Whatever.
They walk in and she hesitates, looking around from the door, absolutely lost. It's amazing how disorienting and unfamiliar the very atmosphere is; the way people talk and move and look at their little Star Trek style computer-phones. It grates against her already raw nerves.
It's Skinner who strides confidently towards a booth-- and she realizes it's him.
She squares her shoulders, fixes her face into a neutral, pleasant expression that ought to mask her panic-- at least as far as the civilians around them go-- and follows to sit across from Fox Mulder.
"I--" she takes a deep breath, feeling stupid.
"Hello, Mulder."