"The Dead Are Everywhere, Scully"
(Fictober, Day 1)
*****
He wakes alone in a field, his body having shed its flesh and left only its bones. The words “putridity and liquescence” come to mind, or to the back of it; and he sits up, knowing he has something to do. There should be someone else here, he thinks as he stands.
His memory is as empty as this afterlife, fields of tombstones stretching around him with names he knows he should know but does not.
Skeletons, he thinks, skeletons are the link. He shovels out thought after thought, leaving open graves of dead girls, dead sisters, dead fathers, and dead mothers as he pushes the boundaries of his mind in pursuit.
And like a bright flash it comes to him: “So first they're going to eat, then they're going to drink, then they're going to dance--"
He moves away from heaps of upturned dust and decay into a happier time-- a gray, distant recollection of two souls swaying in sync, celebrating life and happy endings.
He needs to find his dance partner.
*****
She wakes entombed in choking sand. It sifts through her teeth, collects in her crevices, grinds against her joints. The soft gauze of her funeral dress-- hers or someone else's-- twists around her legs and arms as she bangs the sarcophagus lid for freedom. There is no pain since the nerves spreading from her spinal cord have dropped away; but there is panic and fear and failure, Death and darkness and defeat.
Death has captured her in unbreakable chains: immortality, the curse of eternal life. I won't let this thing beat me echoes, hollow, in the fruitless weight of nothingness.
“I can’t."
But there is another echo that spits out defiance: Yes, you can; and strength and courage and hope stir in its wake.
Her knuckles crack, her fingers scrabble at dangerous angles, her wrists snap; but she mentally chants over the sounds of failure-- I have the strength of your beliefs, Mulder you’re the only one I trust, I won’t let this thing beat me, I won’t let this thing beat me--
And the lid slides off and the wind rushes in and the sand blows away.
*****
They reunite in a graveyard, rain racing down the curved edges of their new perimeters.
“What are we doing here?” she calls across the distance still separating them.
“We’re having a dance, partner.”
“Mulder--” and both of them stop as the truth opens before them.
He breaks the silence: “Well, c’mon, Scully. I think we got a few twirls left in these old bones of ours.”
His infectious enthusiasm and her reluctant amusement finally meet in the middle.
“Which ones, Mulder?”
“You tell me.”
She does.
*****
It is only them, the rain, and the mud.
“Mulder, I don’t understand it, any of it. How did this happen?”
They slow, the rain pours, the mud thickens around their shifting ankles.
“I don’t think we’ll ever know, Scully. Once I would have said ‘I think it’s about fate.'” They carefully maneuver around the awful deaths that time conjures up. “And you later argued for free will over fate on a certain later Monday. But I think we were both right, or both wrong, or both right and wrong; because we’re standing in a place where neither fate nor free will has power.”
“Then what does, Mulder?” She almost drifts away before he draws her back.
“I think it’s a matter of perspective. That we’ll never know, really. But one thing we do know. That you and I are Mr. and Mrs. Spooky--”
“Mulder--”
“And that we’ve beaten the odds, Scully. That we’re here together. That we found each other. That it feels right even if this existence doesn’t make sense, or at least if it doesn’t make sense yet.”
She lets him freestyle them both a little while she thinks. “King Spooky.”
“Hm?”
“You and I alone, together. King Spooky and Queen of the Dead.”
He celebrates her move with a dip. “Now let’s shimmy, Queen Spooky. Get those little legs moving.”
She raised a perfectly poised pointer finger in reproof. “That was a debatable topic even in life.”
“You can’t dress up what Death has dressed down, Scully.”
“And ten to one you can’t dance to it?” she asks, remembering another of his phrases from another world.
“Well, I like to think that our perspective has managed to beat a few odds. Wouldn’t you?”
A thoughtful, settling silence: “Yes, it did.”
And they shake the cold from their bones in tune with the rain.
*****
Acknowledgements: Thank you to @baronessblixen, @welsharcher, and others who have encouraged me to start writing. This is take two; and I really, really like how it turned out.
Thank you to all the mutuals and anons who were so kind on my first fic (Son of Egypt); and thank you to @perpetually-weirdening for (probably not meaning to) getting the idea of immortal Scully stuck in my head.
And my thanks to David Duchovny for the line he wrote in Hollywood A.D.-- it made a wonderful title; and inspired me to wrangle my floating thoughts into one coherent story.
Tagging @today-in-fic and @xffictober2023 and @fictober-event
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Neuralink is going to be eugenics by the way.
It's focused on "curing" disabled people.
There are implants that work for some. But he is expicitly trying to "solve" autism and schizophrenia. He does not want disabled people to exist.
Musk is not a friend to disabled people or animals.
It is going to be eugenics and marketed as cures for disabled people.
Edit: This post is going around. The person who currently has the implant is physically disabled. I wrote the original back when the articles about it mostly mentioned autism and schizophrenia. This is coming for physically disabled people first because we are seen as more expendable.
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