5AN: This is my own little take off of the "Aubrey" episode. I'm playing fast and loose with canon. There will be at least one other part of this (coming up soon). I blame my darling chakochic (AKA "trash panda") for everything (and I know she accepts it). LOL I fully admit that I'm playing fast and loose with canon for my (and hopefully your) entertainment.
I own nothing from The X-Files.
If you decide to read, I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!
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Dana Scully did her best to ignore the dull, pounding headache that she'd been ignoring for almost two days now. It was from missing sleep and skipping coffee when she desperately needed it. She could diagnose her own symptoms without a problem.
The case appeared to be a routine homicide case. A woman named B.J. Morrow—a local detective, nonetheless—had dug up a body that belonged to a man that disappeared in 1942. Her first story about how she found the remains had said that she didn't know what had driven her to dig up the body. She'd done it on impulse alone. Her second story, which was really no more believable than the first, was that she'd seen dogs sniffing around the area and digging for the bones—bones that hadn't attracted dogs in all these years. Her strange testimony aside, the only other thing that made this homicide more than random uncovering of a decades lost body, was that there was some evidence that might very well link the homicide to others that had taken place.
Yes, at first glance, it looked like a routine homicide case, but Scully already knew that probably wasn't the case. It seemed that, no matter how mundane and routine something might appear, there was always something more to it once she and her partner, Fox Mulder, got involved.
"I think that it'll turn up that Harry Cokely killed more than they originally believed he killed," Scully mused, talking to Mulder as he manipulated the computer to do the work that he wanted it to do. Mulder was much more likely to find the strange explanation for what was taking place—a practice which had earned him the nickname "Spooky" Mulder—while he left it to Scully to find the more practical explanations.
"You might be right," Mulder ceded.
"It's so rare to hear you say that, Mulder," Scully said, swallowing down the hint of amusement she felt. "It's almost disarming. Like you're giving up already."
"I prepared myself for the fact that it could be a cut and dry serial murder before we ever left," Mulder offered. "Still—you have to admit that there's something odd about B.J."
"Odd?" Scully prompted, pushing Mulder into putting his thoughts into words. He stopped fiddling with the computer a moment while he considered what response he might make. He didn't have a chance to say anything, though, because B.J. Morrow appeared in the room.
"Find anything?" She asked.
"We thought the slashes might match," Mulder offered. "We expected the same 'sister' carved here that was found before. But the computer says it's not a match. You OK?"
Scully had been studying the computer screen, but she turned to see that B.J. was clearly under some duress. She stared at the remains on the table near them, and she appeared almost faint. Scully stepped toward her, out of instinct, to offer some physical support.
"B.J., would you like to sit down?" Scully said.
"I'm—not—I'm not well," B.J. stammered. "Excuse me." She barely got the last two words out before she rushed out of the room.
Scully walked back over to the computer to look over Mulder's shoulder as he enlarged the image and made some effort to try to identify any kind of possible pattern that they could locate within the scratches that had been made on the victim's chest.
"See, Scully? Odd," Mulder offered.
"Do you think—some of her jumpiness could have come from the circumstances surrounding her presence out there in the first place?" Scully asked. Mulder abandoned his temporarily futile work of trying to read the scratches like hieroglyphics.
"What do you mean?" He asked. "She was having trouble with the car…"
Scully smiled to herself.
"You can't honestly believe that, Mulder," Scully said. "There's hardly anything out there except the motel. It's the perfect place to go if you needed to meet someone in secret."
The expression on Mulder's face was endearing. To be one of the smartest men that she'd ever met, Mulder could be rather dense when there was something that simply didn't register on his radar.
"What do you mean, Scully? You can't be suggesting that B.J. had anything to do with the murder," Mulder said.
"Not at all," Scully said. "I just feel like there's information here that we don't have yet. B.J.'s presence out there, and maybe some of her reaction to being found out there, may have to do with the clandestine nature of her affair with Lieutenant Tillman."
"How do you know they're having an affair?" Mulder asked.
His surprise, Scully told herself, had everything to do with the fact that he hadn't realized that the two people were involved in an affair, and had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that she and Mulder had only recently admitted their feelings for one another and begun their own affair—something they hadn't really brought out into the open just yet.
Choosing the explanation that Mulder was only surprised at himself for not having picked up on anything, Scully responded to him.
"A woman can sense things, Mulder."
He smirked at her.
"You're suggesting a man can't?" Mulder asked.
The simple words stirred up something inside Scully. Her stomach churned, slightly, in response to the idea that a man could sense things he wasn't looking for. Her pulse picked up. Her face grew warm. They were all common symptoms of anxiety. She ignored the anxiety, and she dismissed any concern she had.
"Evidently not," she offered. "You keep working. I'm going to check on B.J."
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Scully found B.J. in the bathroom, washing her face in the sink. As a show of female solidarity, Scully ripped a few of the paper napkins free from the dispenser and handed them to B.J. so that she could dry her face.
"Feeling better?" Scully asked.
"Yes. I just…" B.J. stopped. She'd started an explanation for her quick exit from the room, but she left it hanging there.
Scully's stomach churned, and she swallowed against the gentle suggestion, from her own body, that she might be sick. The building was stifling—although she hadn't recognized the temperature before. The whole place smelled faintly of mildew, and the bathroom reminded Scully, immediately, that B.J. had only recently been sick herself.
Scully wasn't exactly given to being the overly emotional type, but sometimes things changed. Sometimes people were compelled, by one thing or another, to act in ways that were at least a little removed from how they might normally conduct themselves.
Scully felt an odd sort of kinship with the woman that she didn't really know at all. She felt like a part of her was tugged toward B.J. Something in her wanted to reach out to the woman and relate to her. It was nothing more than hormones, Scully told herself, but even she was given to acting on hormonal impulse from time to time.
"You were out there because you were at the motel, weren't you?" Scully asked. B.J. eyed Scully, and then she redirected her gaze back toward the mirror. "It's just a hunch."
"A good one," B.J. confirmed. She sighed. Maybe she wanted to talk about this. Maybe she needed to say it to someone, and Scully was safe. Scully relaxed, leaning against the wall of the bathroom. Her earlier uneasiness was still churning, but it was fainter now and easier to push into the background of her mind.
"You were meeting Lieutenant Tillman," Scully offered.
"Brian," B.J. said. It was both a way to offer confirmation and to request that Scully use first names, as she'd been asked to do, while working the case. The people of Aubrey, Missouri, preferred to be informal.
"Inter-office relationships can be challenging," Scully offered.
B.J. looked at her, then, and a jolt of realization surged through Scully, tugging just behind her navel. She wasn't the only woman who could sense things. There was also the clear understanding that there was no judgement in the dirty, dingy bathroom.
"Especially when he's married," B.J. said. She looked back at Scully and raised an eyebrow. "I didn't see a ring in there."
Scully sucked in a breath. She considered the fact that somebody else—a stranger—knew the secret. There was something oddly liberating about it, and it was even more so liberating to know that B.J. Morrow had no reason to make this something that had to be discussed, in any way, among their superiors.
Inter-office relationships were frowned upon, to some degree, though not outright forbidden. There were many complications that could come from an inter-office relationship gone bad. Of course, at this point, they were in too deep to simply back away and say that this wasn't going to happen. It had already happened, and neither of them wanted it to end. They didn't intend to keep it a secret forever, though. They intended to share the information. They were just waiting.
Scully knew, though, that they couldn't wait too long—even if Mulder hadn't yet sensed any urgency in the matter.
Scully couldn't imagine the level of complication that might arise if Mulder, like Brian Tillman, were a married man.
"You're pregnant, aren't you?" Scully asked.
"Does it show?" B.J. asked.
"No," Scully said. "Not yet."
B.J. made eye contact with her—long and unbroken eye contact. Scully felt the tugging inside of herself, again. She could diagnose her own symptoms. She did it all the time. She'd spent so much time studying medicine—and studying every minute detail of the human body, brain, and the way those things worked together—that she could detect even miniscule changes in her own body when she wasn't determined to ignore them.
She also believed in what she had said. Women had something of a sixth sense, sometimes. It had served her well as an FBI agent, but she knew she wasn't the only woman who possessed such an ability to read others.
B.J. smiled, knowingly, and nodded her head gently.
"It was an accident," B.J. said. "But—I guess you'd know about that."
"Accidents happen," Scully offered. There was no need for her to make a greater confession.
"Indeed, they do," B.J. said. She laughed to herself. "I just told Brian. We were meeting to talk about it. Somewhere private. Does—he know?"
Scully knew how to keep her breathing even, most of the time, when she felt anxious. She'd trained herself to keep her emotions hidden, for the most part. She didn't want people reading her as easily as she read most of them. She wasn't giving herself away—at least, she didn't imagine she was—but B.J. was as connected to her as Scully felt to the woman. Something in each of them recognized the kindred aspects of their situations.
"No," Scully said. "Not yet."
B.J. smiled to herself.
"I can keep a secret," she offered. She sighed, looked back in the mirror, and smoothed her clothes down. She eyed herself like she was looking for evidence of the pregnancy that hadn't begun to show yet. Scully glanced toward the mirror, herself, and let her eyes fall over her own reflection, this time, instead of on B.J.'s reflection. It was still a secret for both of them. Eyes that were only looking at surface details would never detect the secrets that either of them harbored.
"Brian doesn't want it," B.J. said. "I didn't even have to meet with him to know that. Too much complication."
"What are you going to do?" Scully asked.
"I don't know," B.J. admitted. "Not yet." She looked at Scully. Her eyes seemed to look into Scully for a moment. Scully felt the uneasy need to move and escape such a penetrating stare. She turned her face, backing toward the door a half a step, and B.J. broke the visual connection between them, entirely, by using the napkin in her hand to wipe the counter like she had some concern with the cleanliness of the room. "We figure it out, right? Sheesh—I know now why my mother only had one child. Pregnancy is miserable. She told me about the morning sickness. But she never told me about the nightmares. You know?"
Scully furrowed her brow. She didn't know. She hadn't officially checked—something about having another doctor confirm things made it more real than she was sure she could handle without at least a few more days to settle into the idea of things—but she assumed that she wasn't quite as far along as B.J. She had only just begun to feel the first twinges of morning sickness, after all—a symptom she expected. But she hadn't begun to suffer nightmares.
"Nightmares?" She prompted.
B.J. laughed to herself. It wasn't a sincere laugh.
"Awful," she said. "Terrible nightmares. I didn't tell them before but—they're waking me up. There's always blood everywhere. A lot of blood. Slowly, I'm aware of a location. And then a presence. I can see it's a man. I can see—what he looks like. I can see what he's done to the bodies."
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Mulder sat and listened to the information that B.J. shared with him and Scully about her nightmares. Scully thought that he might want to hear what B.J. had to say. She didn't say as much, but he immediately recognized that she was, in her own way, saying that this was more his area than hers. Scully preferred looking for absolutely rational, scientific explanations for everything. And, even though the things they'd experienced together had definitely made her more open minded, the careful consideration of detailed nightmares, which sounded more like visions, was absolutely more Mulder's area than Scully's.
The moment B.J. had walked back into the room with the body, before she'd even begun to tell Mulder about the nightmares, she'd seemed struck by something. She'd taken a moment to regain herself, waving away the offered assistance of both Mulder and Scully, and then she'd immediately walked over and pointed to the body. She'd identified that the scratches on the skeleton didn't come from the world "sister," such as they'd expected to find in keeping with Cokely's other confirmed murder, but, instead, said "brother" in similar script. The computer had confirmed the word was present in the scratches.
And that's when B.J. had admitted that what she'd called dreams and nightmares didn't only come to her when she slept.
"Sometimes it's like—flashes," she said.
"Visions," Mulder offered. He glanced at Scully. She was wide-eyed, clearly drinking everything in, but she wasn't offering any input. Like Mulder, she would process everything that was being said, and they would discuss it later. "Have you told anyone about them?"
B.J. shook her head.
"I didn't want them to think I'm crazy," she said.
"And the vision is what led you to find the body?" Mulder asked. B.J. nodded. "I think it's something we have to share. It could be important to the investigation."
"Nobody's going to accept visions as evidence, Mulder," Scully offered.
"No," Mulder agreed, "but they'll have to accept the body and the message that the visions uncovered."
"I don't understand," B.J. said, more to herself than to either of them. "Why am I having these visions?"
"You've been heavily involved with the investigations of this area," Mulder offered. "You said your father worked on this case in the forties." B.J. nodded, but looked at him with question. Scully looked at him with no less question on her features. "I've always thought that dreams are the answers to questions we haven't yet figured out how to ask. Maybe you've been seeking this knowledge, and now it's being revealed to you. Or, maybe, you were so close to the murder scene that something in your subconscious mind felt drawn to it—something revealed it to you—even though you didn't know that you were looking for the information."
Mulder immediately got the telltale feeling in his body that something was strange, and that he was close to figuring something out—like he was unravelling a mystery. He'd gotten the feeling so many times in his career that he'd stopped counting how many times the sensation had been an indication that he was close.
From B.J., he simply got a slightly uncomfortable expression. From Scully, he got the skeptical look that suggested she was thinking about how crazy she sometimes found his explanations to be.
B.J. thanked them, and she dismissed herself with the promise that she'd let them know, immediately, if she had any other dreams, visions, or nightmares—whatever the case may be—that might interest them. She'd left them with a spare key to lock up, and they'd done just that.
It was getting late, and it was time to head back to the motel where they'd be sleeping.
Outside, Mulder dropped a hand to the small of Scully's back, the action hidden by the darkness, if there had even been anyone around to witness it, as he walked with her to open her car door for her.
"Let's pick up something to eat," he offered. "I know you haven't eaten anything for over half a day."
"You haven't eaten either, Mulder," Scully offered.
"I didn't say I was going to starve myself," he said with a laugh. "I bet they'll let us both get food to go." He opened the car door and Scully eyed him somewhat suspiciously. He smiled at her. The gesture was small, and it was new, but everything about their relationship—at least this level of their relationship—was new.
Scully got into the car and allowed Mulder to close the door. By the time he got in his seat, she was already buckled in and waiting for him to drive her to the only food place they'd seen since arriving in Aubrey. Before he drove anywhere, though, he sat for a moment and contemplated everything.
"You don't believe in the visions, do you?" He asked. "You don't believe in what I said about dreams being answers to questions that we haven't asked yet."
"I'll be honest, Mulder," Scully said with a sigh. "I don't know what I believe about the visions or dreams—or whatever. Right now, the only evidence we have that they're true is that B.J. claims to have found the body after a vision, and she claims that she saw the carving on the victim's chest in her vision."
"But you're skeptical," Mulder pressed.
"I just believe there's something more," Scully said. "B.J. is pregnant."
"You think that's got anything to do with this?" Mulder asked.
"Pregnancy can have a lot of effects on a woman, Mulder," Scully said. "Some things we can't even medically predict. The hormonal changes and imbalances affect every woman at least a little bit differently, at different times, throughout her pregnancy. I don't think we can dismiss, entirely, that there might be a medical explanation behind these nightmares or premonitions."
"Women sense things?" Mulder asked, teasing Scully. He could see, though, that there was a lot on her mind. She seemed to be chewing on a great deal as she sat next to him.
"I believe they do," Scully said.
"Especially when they're pregnant?" Mulder teased. "Now you're the one with the theories, Scully."
"You're right," Scully ceded. "Still—I'm not entirely convinced that there isn't some biological tie-in. And, Mulder? I've never been more convinced that women do sense things, pregnant or not, that even the most astute men simply miss entirely."
Mulder thought there was something in Scully's tone of voice that was odd. Maybe, even, there was a hint of amusement. Some frustration. Still, he couldn't quite figure out what it was that had come over Scully since they'd arrived in Aubrey. He didn't ask her again, but he did keep working on it, like a puzzle in the back of his mind, as he took them to pick up food they could take back to the motel.
