#Linda Purl | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

slippinmickeys · 2 years

Text

Three Part Harmony (1/?)

The worst thing about it was the screaming. She would never get it out of her head, nor any other thing from that day; the position of the bodies, the smell of cordite pricking the hairs of her nose, a red slash of blood on an old tile floor. If they had arrived five minutes later, it would have already been over, too late, and when she thought about it it made her skin crawl, an actual galvanic response.

They rumbled over the rise that led to the VanDekamp farm just as the sun was reaching the peaks of the mountains that wreathed the valley on which it sat, the horizon to the East a clouded field of magenta and rose gold. The truck they drove could barely make the climb — a Chevy Silverado that had been built during the Nixon administration. It had a tailgate that wouldn’t always hold and a rusty hole in the floor of the cab big enough that you could drop pennies through it and onto the roadway below. Mulder shifted into a lower gear as they started down the hill.

Outside the leaky window, the grass was stiff with frost, and low, brown husks of corn sat in neat rows, cut to the quick to wait for spring. Inside the cab the old radio, which modulated only by amplitude, seeped out a crackling version of Linda Ronstadt’s Blue Bayou . Scully stole another look at Mulder, her eyes coming to rest on the elbow of his red mackinaw which was worn and faded to a light pink.

She’d been thinking about it for weeks, this drive-by. Ever since Skinner had intimated by extremely back-channel intel that there might be some kind of a threat. They were just going to see what the situation was. They weren’t really going to get close.

His eyes connected with hers over the soft flannel of his shoulder, his hair now grown out enough that it brushed the collar of the thin jacket. He was half-nervous, half-angry; he didn’t think this was a good idea, but he’d reluctantly humored her, and she’d pushed, she had.

He’d been going by ‘Steve,’ and he looked the part — like a corn fed good ole boy who’d never left the state — he wore steel-toed boots and faded Wranglers and had a bushy beard that tickled the skin of her stomach in the dark.

Scully took a shaky breath and grinched at her reflection in the side mirror, looked at her dime-store attire and her too-thin cheeks. Her roots needed dyeing again, but that was harder to tell with her hair up, and so she pulled it back with a plastic clip from her purse, though nothing could be done about the wispy flyaways; red at the root and dark at the ends, like a quill dipped in poison.

When she turned back to face the windshield, Mulder sat up straighter on the bench seat, squinting into the sun.

“What is it-“ she started to say, but the words died on her tongue. Up ahead, in the driveway of the old farmhouse, was a large black SUV, parked at an angle across the gravel drive, all four of its doors standing open, exhaust purling out into the cold air in a steady plume.

“Shit,” Scully swore under her breath. Mulder leaned across her and pulled an old revolver out of the glove box before slamming the accelerator to the floor.

He dropped the gun on her lap and wiped the back of his hand across his upper lip as the truck roared down the incline toward the house. “Make sure it’s loaded,” he said, nodding towards the box of ammo still sitting in the compartment before her. Mulder corrected a fishtail which had spun the back of the truck almost to the berm and did not take his eyes off the house.

Scully’s hands shook as she flipped out the cylinder, spinning it to make sure each chamber had a bullet. She then dumped a handful of loose rounds in her pocket and another handful into the pocket of Mulder’s coat. They had only the one gun, a large caliber Smith & Wesson they’d gotten in a trade for labor by a man who no longer wished to be associated with it. Scully didn’t like the provenance, but their need outweighed any lingering ethical hesitation and in their time on the run they’d learned not to ask questions.

“You should take it,” Mulder said, jerking the wheel when they hit a rut going too fast. They were only about 40 yards out from the house and approaching fast. “You’re the better shot.”

But it was just supposed to be recon , Scully thought. Just a drive by the house, just scouting. Maybe a glimpse of the baby, Scully had thought but didn’t say, though in her dreams she is like Wewe Gombel and stole him away in the night. A TARFU situation had not been in the cards. She wasn’t prepared for this, she wasn’t—

A distant shot rang through the air, loud even over the roar of the old engine and growl of the big tires on gravel. A shotgun, Scully’s training informed her. Then a double shot; smaller caliber, semi-automatic. Mulder swore viciously and her womb contracted inside of her, as though it could feel the proximity of its own fruit.

“I’ll get the baby,” she advised him, unable, even now, to say William’s name out loud. The thought of their child hurt, the months without him leaving her with a yearning that felt like addiction. Even just the idea of holding him again sent a thrill through her body akin to a drug-like euphoria. She pressed the gun into Mulder’s lap. “You cover me.”

Mulder grunted an affirmative and pulled in hot, right behind the SUV, gravel shooting out to spray the fender of the big black Yukon, and they were out of the truck almost before it stopped moving.

Training took over and they approached the house at an angle, Scully on Mulder’s hip, quick up the steps to the front door which stood wide open. Silence for a moment in the doorway, and then a shout from upstairs, a crash, a thud, and the godawful wailing of the baby.

Mulder grabbed Scully’s collar as she tried to launch herself past him, and she almost shook him off before coming to her senses and stopping just over the threshold, one hand raised in acquiescence. Her heart pounded and her breath was coming in hot little pants, but it would help no one to get herself killed.

She could smell the sharp tang of apocrinal sweat as Mulder raised the monstrously large pistol and crept in past her, a sheen of perspiration glinting off his forehead.

Just inside and around a corner lay two bodies; what appeared to be a white male, dressed in black with half his face blown off, and several feet further on, the body of what must have been the Farmer VanDeKamp, clothed in faded coveralls with two small bullet holes just off-center of his forehead. Next to him lay a walnut-handled shotgun. Scully paused as they passed to hopelessly feel for a pulse. She glanced around for more buckshot, but seeing none, left the empty rifle where it sat.

From upstairs, the wailing continued, and had she not been distracted by it, she might have been more help.

There was a blur of motion just in front of her and a grunt as a man came sailing out of nowhere and careening into Mulder, pushing him back so violently that one second he was at her side, and the next, he was not. The Smith & Wesson went off like a cannon and clattered somewhere to the floor. Scully screamed Mulder’s name, her voice an unholy screech.

It was impossible to tell if anyone had been hit, with the two men grappling fiercely in the close quarters of the small hallway. They went careening into a wall where someone’s elbow left a dusty hole in the drywall and then separated just enough for Scully to watch as Mulder pulled back his arm to deliver a haymaker which dropped the other man to the floor.

Scully whirled, hearing a strangled shout from upstairs and the pitch of the baby’s howling intensified. When she turned back to Mulder, he was straddling the man he’d felled, his hands around the man’s neck, squeezing, squeezing, the veins on Mulder’s forehead bulging. His assailant was swatting at Mulder’s hands with ever decreasing strength and Mulder finally looked up at her, teeth clenched and eyes wild. “Go!” he grunted.

Scully wasted no more time, turning and flying up the stairs to the sound of the baby’s cries.

The shrieks were getting louder, the child terrified and calling for help that seemed not to come. The sound made her stomach churn as she moved down the hallway, mindful of the doors on either side. They had only accounted for two men, and if the open doors of the Yukon were any indication, they had at least four to contend with. Scully moved slowly and silently, fighting every maternal instinct that told her to run.

The photos that lined the walls were old and sepia-toned with hoary edges, the people in them staring out, unsmiling. Scully ducked down so that she was no longer in their line of sight. She passed a bathroom, a bedroom with a floral quilt thrown back, and then she was at the nursery, her pulse pounding a staccato rhythm.

The sound of the baby screaming seemed to increase in octave and volume the second she crossed the threshold of the child’s bedroom door, and she froze with one foot in, attempting to take in the sight before her.

William — it was him, it was really him — stood up in the crib in the corner of the room, so much bigger and older than when she’d last seen him, hands clenched on the thin railing, his face red with fury or fear, tear tracks in shiny lines down his soft, round cheeks.

On the floor near the crib lay the body of a woman, Mrs. VanDeKamp, presumably, her neck twisted the wrong way, one knee bent limply as though she still meant to get up.

On either side of the dead woman, at angles to both the baby and Scully, were two men, dressed all in black. At first, Scully thought they were standing, facing the crib, perhaps finding it difficult to execute a child, as both men held pistols forward in their hands, but after a few seconds of looking, Scully could tell something was off. For one thing, they were frozen. Not in hesitation or regret, but honest-to-god immobilization, as if they were figures on a TV screen that had been paused mid-action. For another thing, each man was floating almost four inches off of the ground.

Scully blinked once, then blinked again and took one more halting step into the room.

William’s attention shifted to her, but the men didn’t move and the baby only paused his screaming long enough to take a hiccuping breath.

From behind her, Scully could hear Mulder tearing up the stairs, knowing it was him by the sound of his desperation. He stopped in the doorway behind her and Scully could hear his breathing hitch as he took in the sight before him, as he processed the same impossible thing she was witnessing herself. Scully took another step forward, but did not take her eyes off the baby.

“Mulder, get the guns,” she said, her voice having to carry over the sound of the crying child.

“Yeah,” he said breathily, and Scully took several more steps toward the crib.

“It’s okay,” she said calmly, holding out her hands to show she wasn’t a threat. “It’s okay, William.” The boy’s face was beet red and two snotty lines ran from his nostrils to form a gummy parentheses around his still-screaming mouth. The inside of which, she noted with detached fascination, now held four little teeth.

“Shh,” she shushed. She approached the boy as she would an injured animal, warily and slowly and with an empathetic wrenching at her heart.

“It’s okay, baby,” she said, only inches away from him now and the look in his blue eyes was so heartbreaking, tears spilled over her own cheeks. The baby lifted one hand off the crib railing to reach for her, and time itself was wrent to nothing for one glorious moment as she reached back.

The second she picked him up, he stopped crying and wilted against her shoulder, either in relief or exhaustion. Behind her, she heard two loud thumps and Mulder spit out an expletive. When she turned around, the two men in black had crumpled to the floor and Mulder was standing there in surprised confusion, the shiny S&W still in his hands and the men’s two Glocks tucked into his waistband.

“Are they dead?” Scully asked, distracted by the weight of the baby in her arms. He was heavier than she remembered. Of course he was.

“I-“ Mulder stammered, “I don’t know.”

In any other circumstance, she probably would have insisted they stop to check, but instead she just stepped over the man closest to the door and looked to Mulder. “Let’s go,” she said.

They thundered down the stairs and threw themselves into the cab of the truck. They didn’t bother with seat belts as Mulder jammed down the clutch and popped it into reverse, flying away from the farm as quickly as they had flown into it.

Scully still had William in her arms, the warm thunk of his head lolling wetly on her shoulder, his breathing evening out from the hitching hiccupy gasps of the minutes previous. His little hands were clutching rhythmically at the collar of her shirt and she would have buried her face into his neck for a good long huff if she hadn’t slid sideways along the slick vinyl bench seat and into Mulder’s side.

“Jesus,” she muttered, and slid back to buckle herself in, which prompted Mulder to do the same. The road felt more pocked and rough than it had on their way in, and they rattled and shimmied their way away from the house.

“Slow down,” she said. Now was not the time to get a flat or break down, and it was unsafe as it was, with the baby.

Mulder flicked his eyes to the rear view and eased up on the gas and Scully leaned forward to look through the windshield for air cover, but there was nothing there. One more look through the back window — there was no movement from the house, and the SUV just sat there, still running, doors still open, getting smaller and smaller until they were over the hill and out of the valley and there was no longer anything left to see.

Mulder heaved a breath that he’d been holding too long. A moment later he reached out with a shy hand to run the backs of his fingers along William’s felty pajamaed arm.

“Is he okay?” he asked tenderly.

“I think so,” she answered, just above a whisper.

Mulder pulled back his arm and refocused on the road. The baby in her arms took a deep sighing breath and went limp with sleep.

#the x-files #fanfic #my fic #on the run #MSR #family fic but like not fluffy #idk #year of the WIP #I’m fucking insane for this

68 notes · View notes