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madimpossibledreamersomeone lazy actually dressed up as the football mascot, but added claws because they thought it’d be funny. ‘razorbacks’ doesn’t get to be funny in sunnydale.
Surprise Amy was a surprise for everyone, including me.
Relevant quote from when I was looking for a title for this chapter from Dr. Iskra Fileva in “Psychology Today”: “For in sharing darkness, however terrible, we are not alone.” (https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-philosophers-diaries/202006/despair)
title from Nietzsche referencing “great pain making us more profound”, but it’s also a loving and embracing fate thing and is therefore kinda ironic with Mulder (or, honestly, Scully here)
Main Points:
Buffy the Vampire Slayer/X-Files (The Truth is Out There {Stranger than Fiction})
Summary: Things rapidly devolve into a waking nightmare.
Word Count: 1805
Rating: Teen
Warning: canon-typical violence/death.
Scully doesn’t ask him if he’s enjoying himself. She does firmly grab his sleeve any time he’s tempted to wander off and look at something else, which he appreciates. Because the thing is, he is. This is fascinating. Ever since he’d discovered the existence of the X-Files, he’d wanted proof that there’s more out there than your average person would believe, and after so long scrabbling for scraps he’s finally drowning in it. It’d seemed normal enough from the surface. A quaint little suburb in any one of the dozens of towns they’ve visited in the course of their partnership, all decked out out for Halloween, which at least answers the ‘when’. It’s only when they begin walking that the sinister air of the place becomes apparent. One minute they’re walking down the street and a couple trick-or-treaters run by, laughing, and it actually makes Mulder smile. Sure, most of those best memories were with Melissa, but even though it hurts to remember it’s the good kind of hurt. The next there’s screams. Not the playful kind, the ones kids have when they’re having fun. The ones that speak of real terror. Mulder and Scully don’t have to even glance at each other before they start running, fully in sync. Being shorter is a bit of a pain here; he’s definitely slower, but it seems like he’s still gotten a lot of running in, so he’s not completely out of shape. Neither is Scully. At least they have their guns and they’re not missing those like their cell phones.
There’s something with something between claws and hooves and far too many teeth and tusks looming over a kid. And there’s blood, way too much blood. But instincts kick in; they’ve been trained to try to avoid using lethal force when not necessary, and even if the training itself wasn’t effective the absolute pain in the ass amount of paperwork you’d have to file later is a good enough deterrent for any agent not looking for a chance to kill. “Stand down!” he yells.
It just turns to look at him and squeals, deep and echoing in a way that doesn’t sound natural, revealing more rows of jagged teeth, like a shark. Scully doesn’t hesitate, and while the shots hit center mass, they’re not enough. Mulder gets off a few rounds, but that doesn’t help any either, just seems to make it mad. It starts to charge them, and then something else in black leather tears past, tackling the beast and starting to just pound on it, fists and greenish ichor flying. Their rescuer, who looks human but absolutely can’t be, seems to be doing just fine, and it’d be really difficult to get a shot off without hitting their rescuer, never mind the fact that so far their guns have done nothing, so Scully and Mulder exchange glances and then immediately go to the kids. From the blood loss and deep lacerations, he’s not too hopeful, but they have to try.
“She’s alive, if groggy,” Scully reports.
“I’m going to need a hand over here, Scully,” he tells her. “No breath, no pulse.” He’s already felt a rib break, hands slipping a little in the blood as he starts the chest compressions. She immediately comes over to help, and they take turns until Scully calls it.
“Mulder, stop.”
He sees the signs too—the skin turning cold to the touch, the stiffening of the body and muscles, but even if he tells himself she’s right, they were probably too late the second they got here, that at least the kid hadn’t suffered, he can’t. The world is blurry and he’s getting exhausted but he can’t force himself to stop going through the rhythm, even if it feels like he’s starting to lose his pace and his arms are cramping. Scully has to physically haul him away, pulling him into a hug, and humiliatingly he feels his tears stain her jacket. The only comfort is that he’s not alone, because his jacket feels a little wet, too.
“You’re, um. You’re not Willow, are you?” The tentative question comes from the porch behind them, and they turn to find another teenager standing and looking at them. “After Mom, I...kinda know when someone’s not acting like themselves, so...Dad’s home, and we can look after one girl for the night.”
“Do you know what’s going on?” Mulder asks, and she shrugs.
“I mean, not exactly? There’s a lot of magic around, more than usual, but I was trying not to notice in the name of not ruining a father-daughter night, you know?” She pauses and then yells behind her, “...another victim of magic out here; could you get the first aid kit?” She looks back at them. “We’ll take care of her. Much as it sucks, having a best friend die in Sunnydale is, like, a rite of passage.”
That’s straight-up horrifying. Scully beats him to the question first. “A—a right of passage? How many people die here?”
“Our school newspaper has an obit.” At their horrified stares, she quickly adds, “...It’s not like there’s someone to report every week, but…” She sighs and then decides to go for the CliffsNotes. “This town got built on top of a Hellmouth, kind of a magnet for the spooky.”
Mulder is a little too stunned to even make a weak joke about how that’s his name.
“Magic, demons, and vampires, mostly, but it’s always something new and usually horrifying. Now, no clue what exactly is going on this time, but from the looks of things, people are...turning into their Halloween costumes? Getting possessed by them? I think you’re usually Willow and Alexandria. Those look like the suits you were wearing earlier today. You’re usually helping solve any of this stuff—the guy you’ll want to speak to is Giles. He’ll probably be at the school library. Oh, right...you’ll need directions.”
She rattles them off, so it’s a good thing they have had a lot of experience talking to all kinds of witnesses, and helps the little girl (covered in her friend’s blood and definitely in shock, damn it all) into the house.
“You’ll need to keep her warm, and call the hospital when you can,” Scully tells her. The smile and nod is tentative, but real.
“Excuse me, Willow, Alex? Have either of you seen Buffy?” their rescuer asks, approaching quickly. He has a cut on his cheek (bleeding red, Mulder notes), but otherwise the only blood on him seems to have been the creature’s.
“We’re neither at the moment, so we don’t even know who this Buffy is,” Mulder informs him, pulling out his badge.
Their rescuer nearly argues, but changes his mind when the moment stretches on just a little too long and they don’t tell him it’s a prank. “She’ll be a blonde wearing a ballgown and probably fighting off all of this,” he tells them without hesitation. “I’m going to check her house. If you see her, tell her to go there, Angel’s waiting.” And then he sets off.
“Wait; wouldn’t it be safer to go together?” Mulder calls after him, and the man stops, turning, fists clenched.
“Safer, but not faster.” He glances around and walks over to the fence, tearing off one of the metal bars without seemingly any effort whatsoever before tossing it and what looks like a whittled stake to them, not caring if they catch them or not. “Stake a vampire through the heart. Some demons can’t stand iron. But that’s a last resort. If you can, run.” And then, as if to demonstrate, he disappears off into the night.
“Friendly guy,” Mulder remarks sarcastically, handing Scully the stake—it sounds more effective, anyway.
Scully shakes her head. “Given the welcome from the rest of the town, he’s the second most friendly person we’ve met,” she responds, which, well, he can’t really argue with that one. As clear as Angel had been that he’d considered their lives secondary to Buffy’s, he still had bothered to save them and at least try to give them some tools and advice to survive Halloween.
Scully is probably still convinced this is a dream rapidly devolving into a nightmare, but she’s also spent enough time around him to actually bother to try to keep them both alive just on the off-chance that dying here kills them in the real world too. For Mulder, it’s not a case of believing, but even having an explanation laid out before him by a native doesn’t actually help. He doesn’t know what to believe.
He can’t deny that curiosity keeps pulling him off the directions they were given, but each and every time Scully pulls him back like a wayward child, and he can’t even say he resents it. Not when that careful hand is very possibly the only thing standing between him and death.
“I know what you’re thinking, Mulder, and the answer is no,” she finally breaks the silence to tell him, and he manages a smile.
“Why, Scully, I didn’t know that you had telepathy. You’ve been holding out on me.”
She proves, again, that she knows him, because she doesn’t try to defend herself or scold him. “Yes, this is killing a lot of people. Even children. But so is this...spell. And we have a better chance of stopping that—our witness said so.”
“You heard her. She said a Hellmouth. Implying that there’s more than one. How are we going to have a chance at beating this if we don’t even know how it works?” The conversation is familiar and they both know it.
“Mulder, I don’t know about you, but I have no idea how to break a magic spell, let alone remove what is apparently a natural mystical feature of a location.” Her breath is shaky but with an effort she forces it steadier. “We’re out of our depth. We can turn to the experts, but we have to focus on what we can do.”
“If everyone just looks at how things are and says ‘this sucks, but what can we do’, nothing will ever improve.” The death is eating away at him, and he knows that voicing these thoughts, these fears, these inadequacies will only hurt her, but he can’t stop himself.
“Even if we worked every single ‘normal serial killer’ case they sent us, we couldn’t track down every single one in the United States.” She puts a hand on his shoulder and he leans into it, the emptiness dark and vast and threatening to consume him if not for her light. “We can ask this Mr. Giles about both.”
He puts his hand on hers, footsteps slowing, unable to put his gratitude into words, but judging by the fact she smiles and nods at him, she knows anyway.
Surprise Amy was a surprise for everyone, including me.
Relevant quote from when I was looking for a title for this chapter from Dr. Iskra Fileva in “Psychology Today”: “For in sharing darkness, however terrible, we are not alone.” (https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-philosophers-diaries/202006/despair)
title from Nietzsche referencing “great pain making us more profound”, but it’s also a loving and embracing fate thing and is therefore kinda ironic with Mulder (or, honestly, Scully here)
Main Points:
Buffy the Vampire Slayer/X-Files (The Truth is Out There {Stranger than Fiction})
Summary: Things rapidly devolve into a waking nightmare.
Word Count: 1805
Rating: Teen
Warning: canon-typical violence/death.
Scully doesn’t ask him if he’s enjoying himself. She does firmly grab his sleeve any time he’s tempted to wander off and look at something else, which he appreciates. Because the thing is, he is. This is fascinating. Ever since he’d discovered the existence of the X-Files, he’d wanted proof that there’s more out there than your average person would believe, and after so long scrabbling for scraps he’s finally drowning in it. It’d seemed normal enough from the surface. A quaint little suburb in any one of the dozens of towns they’ve visited in the course of their partnership, all decked out out for Halloween, which at least answers the ‘when’. It’s only when they begin walking that the sinister air of the place becomes apparent. One minute they’re walking down the street and a couple trick-or-treaters run by, laughing, and it actually makes Mulder smile. Sure, most of those best memories were with Melissa, but even though it hurts to remember it’s the good kind of hurt. The next there’s screams. Not the playful kind, the ones kids have when they’re having fun. The ones that speak of real terror. Mulder and Scully don’t have to even glance at each other before they start running, fully in sync. Being shorter is a bit of a pain here; he’s definitely slower, but it seems like he’s still gotten a lot of running in, so he’s not completely out of shape. Neither is Scully. At least they have their guns and they’re not missing those like their cell phones.
There’s something with something between claws and hooves and far too many teeth and tusks looming over a kid. And there’s blood, way too much blood. But instincts kick in; they’ve been trained to try to avoid using lethal force when not necessary, and even if the training itself wasn’t effective the absolute pain in the ass amount of paperwork you’d have to file later is a good enough deterrent for any agent not looking for a chance to kill. “Stand down!” he yells.
It just turns to look at him and squeals, deep and echoing in a way that doesn’t sound natural, revealing more rows of jagged teeth, like a shark. Scully doesn’t hesitate, and while the shots hit center mass, they’re not enough. Mulder gets off a few rounds, but that doesn’t help any either, just seems to make it mad. It starts to charge them, and then something else in black leather tears past, tackling the beast and starting to just pound on it, fists and greenish ichor flying. Their rescuer, who looks human but absolutely can’t be, seems to be doing just fine, and it’d be really difficult to get a shot off without hitting their rescuer, never mind the fact that so far their guns have done nothing, so Scully and Mulder exchange glances and then immediately go to the kids. From the blood loss and deep lacerations, he’s not too hopeful, but they have to try.
“She’s alive, if groggy,” Scully reports.
“I’m going to need a hand over here, Scully,” he tells her. “No breath, no pulse.” He’s already felt a rib break, hands slipping a little in the blood as he starts the chest compressions. She immediately comes over to help, and they take turns until Scully calls it.
“Mulder, stop.”
He sees the signs too—the skin turning cold to the touch, the stiffening of the body and muscles, but even if he tells himself she’s right, they were probably too late the second they got here, that at least the kid hadn’t suffered, he can’t. The world is blurry and he’s getting exhausted but he can’t force himself to stop going through the rhythm, even if it feels like he’s starting to lose his pace and his arms are cramping. Scully has to physically haul him away, pulling him into a hug, and humiliatingly he feels his tears stain her jacket. The only comfort is that he’s not alone, because his jacket feels a little wet, too.
“You’re, um. You’re not Willow, are you?” The tentative question comes from the porch behind them, and they turn to find another teenager standing and looking at them. “After Mom, I...kinda know when someone’s not acting like themselves, so...Dad’s home, and we can look after one girl for the night.”
“Do you know what’s going on?” Mulder asks, and she shrugs.
“I mean, not exactly? There’s a lot of magic around, more than usual, but I was trying not to notice in the name of not ruining a father-daughter night, you know?” She pauses and then yells behind her, “...another victim of magic out here; could you get the first aid kit?” She looks back at them. “We’ll take care of her. Much as it sucks, having a best friend die in Sunnydale is, like, a rite of passage.”
That’s straight-up horrifying. Scully beats him to the question first. “A—a right of passage? How many people die here?”
“Our school newspaper has an obit.” At their horrified stares, she quickly adds, “...It’s not like there’s someone to report every week, but…” She sighs and then decides to go for the CliffsNotes. “This town got built on top of a Hellmouth, kind of a magnet for the spooky.”
Mulder is a little too stunned to even make a weak joke about how that’s his name.
“Magic, demons, and vampires, mostly, but it’s always something new and usually horrifying. Now, no clue what exactly is going on this time, but from the looks of things, people are...turning into their Halloween costumes? Getting possessed by them? I think you’re usually Willow and Alexandria. Those look like the suits you were wearing earlier today. You’re usually helping solve any of this stuff—the guy you’ll want to speak to is Giles. He’ll probably be at the school library. Oh, right...you’ll need directions.”
She rattles them off, so it’s a good thing they have had a lot of experience talking to all kinds of witnesses, and helps the little girl (covered in her friend’s blood and definitely in shock, damn it all) into the house.
“You’ll need to keep her warm, and call the hospital when you can,” Scully tells her. The smile and nod is tentative, but real.
“Excuse me, Willow, Alex? Have either of you seen Buffy?” their rescuer asks, approaching quickly. He has a cut on his cheek (bleeding red, Mulder notes), but otherwise the only blood on him seems to have been the creature’s.
“We’re neither at the moment, so we don’t even know who this Buffy is,” Mulder informs him, pulling out his badge.
Their rescuer nearly argues, but changes his mind when the moment stretches on just a little too long and they don’t tell him it’s a prank. “She’ll be a blonde wearing a ballgown and probably fighting off all of this,” he tells them without hesitation. “I’m going to check her house. If you see her, tell her to go there, Angel’s waiting.” And then he sets off.
“Wait; wouldn’t it be safer to go together?” Mulder calls after him, and the man stops, turning, fists clenched.
“Safer, but not faster.” He glances around and walks over to the fence, tearing off one of the metal bars without seemingly any effort whatsoever before tossing it and what looks like a whittled stake to them, not caring if they catch them or not. “Stake a vampire through the heart. Some demons can’t stand iron. But that’s a last resort. If you can, run.” And then, as if to demonstrate, he disappears off into the night.
“Friendly guy,” Mulder remarks sarcastically, handing Scully the stake—it sounds more effective, anyway.
Scully shakes her head. “Given the welcome from the rest of the town, he’s the second most friendly person we’ve met,” she responds, which, well, he can’t really argue with that one. As clear as Angel had been that he’d considered their lives secondary to Buffy’s, he still had bothered to save them and at least try to give them some tools and advice to survive Halloween.
Scully is probably still convinced this is a dream rapidly devolving into a nightmare, but she’s also spent enough time around him to actually bother to try to keep them both alive just on the off-chance that dying here kills them in the real world too. For Mulder, it’s not a case of believing, but even having an explanation laid out before him by a native doesn’t actually help. He doesn’t know what to believe.
He can’t deny that curiosity keeps pulling him off the directions they were given, but each and every time Scully pulls him back like a wayward child, and he can’t even say he resents it. Not when that careful hand is very possibly the only thing standing between him and death.
“I know what you’re thinking, Mulder, and the answer is no,” she finally breaks the silence to tell him, and he manages a smile.
“Why, Scully, I didn’t know that you had telepathy. You’ve been holding out on me.”
She proves, again, that she knows him, because she doesn’t try to defend herself or scold him. “Yes, this is killing a lot of people. Even children. But so is this...spell. And we have a better chance of stopping that—our witness said so.”
“You heard her. She said a Hellmouth. Implying that there’s more than one. How are we going to have a chance at beating this if we don’t even know how it works?” The conversation is familiar and they both know it.
“Mulder, I don’t know about you, but I have no idea how to break a magic spell, let alone remove what is apparently a natural mystical feature of a location.” Her breath is shaky but with an effort she forces it steadier. “We’re out of our depth. We can turn to the experts, but we have to focus on what we can do.”
“If everyone just looks at how things are and says ‘this sucks, but what can we do’, nothing will ever improve.” The death is eating away at him, and he knows that voicing these thoughts, these fears, these inadequacies will only hurt her, but he can’t stop himself.
“Even if we worked every single ‘normal serial killer’ case they sent us, we couldn’t track down every single one in the United States.” She puts a hand on his shoulder and he leans into it, the emptiness dark and vast and threatening to consume him if not for her light. “We can ask this Mr. Giles about both.”
He puts his hand on hers, footsteps slowing, unable to put his gratitude into words, but judging by the fact she smiles and nods at him, she knows anyway.
