Clarke's Second Law

[madimpossibledreamer]

Main Points:
Buffy the Vampire Slayer/X-Files (The Truth is Out There {Stranger than Fiction})
Summary: Scully and Mulder nearly have a run-in with an unpleasant individual, and Scully gives her hypothesis.
Word Count: 1135
Rating: Teen

        This time, it’s Mulder that pulls Scully out of harm’s way, just as they’re about to enter the school. She raises her eyebrows, but she’s willing to play along at least as far as ducking into the bushes. “A hunch,” he mouths at her, but doesn’t actually say anything out loud, and when someone storms out muttering about kids today and following the rules and discipline, he’s fairly glad for his instincts. Again. They wait until he gets in his car and drives away. As much as Mulder’s itching to arrest him, they have neither the evidence nor the jurisdiction. He memorizes the license plate number, though, just in case that might come in handy for identification later. Presumably Scully’s also done the same. He’s worked with a lot of talented agents over the years, and she’s one of the best.
        “How’d you know?” She’s curious about his thought process. Which is flattering; he’s always found her interest in his mind and how it works to stroke his ego.
        He’s more than happy to provide, but he can’t help but joke around first. “What, I didn’t tell you, Miss Telepath? I have ESP.”
        She rolls her eyes, and he grins.
        “In all honesty, it’s the way he was moving. That wasn’t a man fearing whatever’s out there. Even the locals used to how spooky things get around here weren’t taking it in stride. Yet here’s a man who’s treating all of this not only like a nuisance but blaming it on schoolkids? You probably won’t be surprised by this, but I pulled plenty of pranks as a boy. I get that kids can be brats, and even then, this kind of reaction is excessive.” He pauses, but it’s not like he’s held back from sharing any of his wild theories with her before, once he’d gotten to know her; why should now be any different? “Also, I just had the feeling like I’ve met the man before. One of the fundamental aspects of the science of repressed memories is body memory.”
        Scully shakes her head. “While trauma can cause humans to fail to form memories or experience retrieval failures, there is no scientific basis for assuming that the rest of the body can do so as well.”
        “All right, then riddle me this, Scully: these aren’t our bodies. The brains inside are those of unrelated teenagers.” He suddenly has the very uncomfortable realization that that means this body wasn’t actually his own, but he hadn’t known that earlier when making his point. Just like his feeling about the balding man, he feels like she wouldn’t blame him, that if she somehow ended up in a man’s body she’d do the exact same thing, but it’s hard to know that for sure. He just has to trust that’s the truth. “From a conventional view, they should only contain the memories of those teenagers. Yet somehow, our own memories are here too.”
        He has a sinking feeling at her expression, because she’s not too happy about the possibility herself. “Multiple Personality Disorder? I don’t want to believe that I’m not real or—or that there’s a very real possibility we’re just hallucinating all of this, but that’s the only scientific explanation I can think of.”
        He’s kind of surprised that’s what she’s going with. He wants to argue that he wouldn’t remember everything he’d learned at university or all the facts he’s picked up since, but, just like with the simulation hypothesis, since all of the internal facts and logic would be consistent with the framework there’s no way to disprove it, either. Which isn’t very scientific, and it’s probably some combination of the resulting identity crisis and unscientific nature of the idea that’s bothering her. “After you yourself stated that has been largely debunked? No evidence has been found to support it, especially combined with claims of satanic rituals, remember.”
        “The same could be said of regression hypnosis, Mulder,” she points out, sympathetic. “Now we’ve both put forward a theory we don’t want to believe. Out of curiosity, Mulder, do you believe it?”
        “I...used to. It would be a giant cover-up, but it’s not the first time we’ve run into something like that. Now, I…” He’s had, one might say, a crisis of faith. He still believes, but he’s shaken. “I don’t think they’re all lies, but if we go back to what Deep Throat said and how he himself had acted at times, I think that their standing policy is burying the truth under a pile of bullshit, because they know no one wants to get their hands dirty.”
        She smiles at him, reassuring. “We’re here.”
        “And I’m thankful every day you walk beside me into the muck.” He wants to let the moment sit, but he can’t. “In any case, the difference between our theories is largely academic. They lead to the same place at the end—we’re just visitors borrowing the bodies of two teenage girls. The major difference is the ‘how’.”
        “That ‘how’ might make a difference for our next move,” Scully points out, but she’s going along with it anyway. “Do you think that constitutes a confession?” Scully’s leaning hard in that direction.
        “He’s a suspect at least, but we can’t exactly confront him as we are now. We might be armed, but he’ll never take us seriously like this…” Something suddenly occurs to him, and he examines his gun again. It looks the same, but he can’t be sure. “If these aren’t even real, that would explain how much effect they had on the boar demon.”
        Scully examines her own carefully. “It feels right down to the weight and how they feel to fire. Unless someone went to a lot of effort to produce a convincing replica, these are real. That’s a lot of work for a mere prop.” She pulls out her badge, next, prompting him to do the same, and it looks right. He’d need to talk to some of the forensic document experts at the Bureau to know for sure, and he probably doesn’t even have those resources right now.
        “Hopefully, that wasn’t Giles. We have some answers. What we need is backup.” And she’s right, too—whatever the resolution is going to be might very well point to how they’ve even gotten here in the first place. “After you.”
        “Enter all who seek knowledge,” she reads as they enter. Keeping up on her Latin, it seems.
        “That’s us.” On another hunch, he decides to prod her a little, see if she has anything lingering she shouldn’t know. “Which way to the library?”
        “How should I—” she begins, suddenly looking a little troubled when he just keeps staring expectantly, and then points tentatively.
        “That’s the way I thought, too.” It’s not definitive, but it is interesting.