Work Text:
“can i write a fanfic of scully just fucking losing her SHIT at mulder?”
“YES!!! For all women in the world dealing with men who can’t handle their feelings.”
“For all the men who are too self-absorbed to see the sacrifices the women make around them.”
---
In her defense: it was going to happen eventually.
The last year had just been so long: arduous cases, kidnappings, brutal crimes, political intrigue. Traveling all over the damn country, and almost being taken advantage of by two different fuck-off men (three, if she agreed with Bill, which she increasingly was).
Oh, and she was kidnapped, herself. Met a bunch of other women who had been as well. Tested on like a lab rat, like something less than human. Held over and then eventually returned to her partner like a bargaining chip. They gave her cancer. They took her memories. They took her ability to have children.
They fucking killed her sister.
It was a hard case. A serial killer in a small town outside of Atlanta, Georgia who had kidnapped, sexually assaulted, and murdered all six of his (female) (late twenties) victims. There had appeared to be no connection (different jobs, different races, different body types, different religions, different backgrounds, different parts of town, different economic statuses) between the women until they pulled an old yearbook and found out they had once been members of the same cheerleading squad. The killer was nothing more than a guy who had middled on the social ladder in high school, obsessing over the women and then taking out his jealousy on them when they moved on with their own careers, partners, children, lives.
They had done nothing but live, and they died for it.
She was practically vibrating with frenetic energy as they made their way to their basement office. It wasn’t strictly necessary they drop off these files tonight, but there appeared to be an unspoken agreement that they wanted to wash their hands of this case as quickly as they could. The halls were empty and shadowed, most of the lights turned off to save energy with no one here so late at night.
Scully was carrying the case of files, which somehow felt heavier in her hand than a bunch of sheets of nine-by-eleven paper and a somewhat beat-up briefcase from Staples ought to. She just wanted to throw it down, sort the piles out over her desk, get her car, and sleep for a day. There was a pounding in her temples and forehead that hinted at a coming migraine, nosebleed, or both.
Mulder opened the door, flicking on the light switch and letting Scully bustle in front of him. She stopped short in the room, her gaze sweeping over his desk - the only desk in the room, how had she forgotten, what had she expected? - with its mess of papers and files and fast-food wrappers. Sighing heavily, she set the briefcase down and started rifling through it. Mulder sat behind his desk and listlessly pulled the strings of a rubber-band ball, tugging and watching them snap back into place. It was a stupid, shitty metaphor for her current mental state and rapidly fraying nerves.
“Still no desk, I see,” She muttered. Mulder looked mulishly up at her from his point lounging back in his chair.
“Really?” He asked testily. This case had worn on him, too. Or maybe it was because Scully had shut down his attempts to explain the victims’ deaths with…she didn’t remember anymore. It didn’t matter, really. “We’re going to start on this at a quarter to midnight?”
“Well,” Scully said, forcing her voice to remain level. “Nothing happened when I brought this up four months ago. Thought I’d try again.”
Not that a desk really mattered at this point. If what the doctors said was true, she’d be cold in her grave by the time they even brought it down here.
“You want a desk, you know the number,” Mulder snapped. “Still not sure why this matters now. Took you four years to ask for a desk.”
“And it took you four years to still not think of it.” Scully could give as good as she got when it came to spats. She’d had plenty of practice growing up with Bill and Melissa.
“Where is he then, Dana?” Bill had asked in the hospital. Scully remembered how sickeningly empty she had felt when her brother asked her that, standing in a bloodstained dress shirt and realizing she was in the hospital while her partner was in fuck-all, wherever.
“That’s it? You’re upset because I didn’t think to call a desk for you?” Mulder demanded. “Because we both always have plenty to think about. I didn’t think I had to tell you that.”
In her defense: it was going to happen eventually.
The one surprise was that it took this long.
She slammed the X-Files drawer shut so hard it actually knocked back into the wall. It was the only warning Mulder (and Scully, if she was honest) had before she whirled around on him.
“Because you never fucking think, Mulder!”
It was lucky that they were alone in the basement, because Scully knew her voice would have carried down the length of the hallway, and maybe to the first floor, as well. Her outburst echoed in the room. Mulder looked like he was about to argue, to try and defend himself, the prick, and she refused to tolerate that right now. Not now. Not anymore.
“You never think about anyone except for yourself. Did you think before you snuck into about five different military compounds? How about when you fucked off to Russia? Rhode Island? What about the times you’ve just gone off on a lead without consulting me? Hell, you’ve even done that with the car we drove there in. What about every time someone says, ‘hey, Mulder, maybe listen when people tell you not to poke into secret government business, it might not go well.’”
Scully was well and truly fired up now. Mulder was sitting there, his mouth open at this sudden, blistering attack, a flush creeping up his neck as his temper grew. But Scully was not having it tonight. Every little irritating thing or dumbass thing he’d done that drove her crazy in the past four years was bubbling to the surface now. It was like a volcano or an earthquake or a mudslide - brutal and rapid and eviscerating everything in its path and a long, long time coming.
“What about when you call me at all hours of the day or night, asking me to come down here, look at this body, run these tests, look at these files, like I’m your own personal lab assistant. Follow me wherever, do whatever I ask, believe in whatever tale aliens and ghosts and cryptids and telekinesis and conspiracies I’ve pulled out of my ass today! Risk it all for some nebulous truth that you never shut the fuck up about.
“Do - do you know what I’ve done for you, Mulder? I’ve broken every single fucking oath I’ve taken. To the FBI, to this country. I’ve testified with lies and circumvented the truth to superiors and to Congress. I’ve lied about my job and my health to my family - and yours, by the way. I’ve risked my career and my medical license and my life to your cause. A cause and belief you couldn’t even have the decency to support me with when it was my turn. I guess religion has never been your thing, huh?” It was a low blow, she knew. But it felt too good to finally scream all of this out.
“And that cause?” Scully said, shoving her red hair out of her face. Her temples were well and truly throbbing now, and she felt warmth trickling down her left nostril. She knew she likely looked like a verifiable she-devil now, screaming and raging and bloody, possessed by a demon or maybe a wailing banshee. If he said anything about it, she would shoot him.
(It was part of her daily thought process: is today the day I finally lose it and just shoot him again? Shoot him or screw him, it was always a toss-up that ended with the coin standing straight up, and she wasn’t going to kill him and she wasn’t going to talk to him about whatever feelings she may or may not have until after her assignment with him ended, and oh wait, now she was even more pissed.)
“Your cause and your meddling hasn’t just endangered me. Not in the normal way, the job way, the one I agreed to. It’s hurt my family. My sister got killed because you couldn’t leave well enough alone. It kidnapped me, stole months of my life. My body and my memories. It gave me cancer. Cancer that is going to kill me - that is killing me as I stand here.” Scully wiped her nose, watching the edge of her sleeve come away blotchy red. “And when I’m gone, and my mother is all alone? It’s going to kill her too. And on my worst days, I blame you.”
Mulder had no response to that. He was still sitting on the chair, face ashen like this is truly the first time it’s occurred to him how much danger she’s thrown herself in front of for him. Scully knew she wasn’t being fair, knew that he had blamed himself every day during her disappearance and that he never gave up hope. How horrified he had been when Melissa died - not only at the death, but that Scully had been the intended target. But right now, tonight, she didn’t care. She clasped her hands in front of her, almost like a prayer, but when she pointed her fingers at him it felt like a damnation.
“And you want to spout some shit about a desk?” She demanded. “From the bottom of my heart: fuck you, Mulder.”
And she stomped off, slamming the door shut behind her.