#chptr 4

@today-in-fic / ao3

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When Dana wakes it is in an unfamiliar bed.

Memories of storms and nightmares, “Do you believe in a past life?”, and “It’s funny, you kind of look like her.” All come flooding back to her.

Her eyes open and she is met with the empty side of the bed, cold, as if he had been gone for hours. Dana slips out of the bed and creeps towards the door. She wonders if her father knew where she slept last night. If he had gone into her bedroom and found it vacant. She feels herself get a thrill out of defying him to sleep next to Mulder.

Back in her own room now, she dresses quickly and makes her way towards the dining room. She remembered something else from last night, too, as she dressed in the best clothes she owned: How she was finally going outside today.

Mulder is in the lounge. Sat in an armchair, back to the door, looking down at something. Dana creeps in, slowly, quietly, so as not to alert him to her presence. Just as she nears, she reaches out to touch his shoulder, followed with a small “Ah” making him jump. She laughs at she sits down on the second armchair.

“Dana,” Mulder says with a smile. “Sorry, I’m an early riser and I didn’t want to wake you.”

Dana shrugs. “That’s okay.” She leans forward, conspiratorial, giving a quick glance to the empty hallway and dropping her voice. “So what time are we going?” She asks.

“Your father is still sleeping?”

Dana nods. “It’s Sunday, he always sleeps in.”

Mulder places the newspaper he was reading down on the coffee table and stands. “Well, if Miss Dana doesn't mind skipping breakfast, we could go right now.”

Dana smiles. Not at all hungry, Miss Dana wouldn’t mind skipping at all. She stands up, ready to go.

“Or…” Mulder says and her smile drops slightly, wondering if he’s about to let her down. “We could find somewhere that does breakfast.”

The smile returns, bigger than before, and Dana excitedly nods. Mulder laughs at her joy.

As quietly as he can, Mulder unlocks the door. Dana holds her breath, waiting for Mulder to open it. He pulls the door open just enough so they can slip out. Dana goes first, onto the front step, staring down at the street she has looked at for what feels like years, no longer separated by a glass window.

Mulder slips out immediately after, gently closing the door, letting the lock click into place.

This was it. Outside. Dana takes one step, then another, off the front step and onto the cobble lined street. She breathes in the air, finally outside.

Mulder holds out his arm. “Ready, Miss Dana?” He asks her and she latches onto it, grinning widely.

“Ready.”

They make their first step down the street. Dana glances back towards the house, up to the window where behind the glass sits her bedroom. Her father would be furious if he ever found out she was out here. At that, another thrill runs through her body. Rebelling felt good.

“I want to see the Main Street,” Dana says, pointing towards the row of shops she often saw her father venture to.

“Main Street?” Mulder asks. “Main Street is nothing, there’s an entire town behind it.”

Dana’s eyes widen. “A town?” She asks.

“Come on,” Mulder gently pulls her along.

The town is brimming with people. Upon approach, Dana unhooks her arm from Mulder’s and runs towards. She stops just where the border for street changes to town, toes just touching the line. Mulder catches up to her, standing next to her. “You ready?” He asks.

Dana nods. She watches as her feet step over the line.

Immediately she is overwhelmed. It is everything she ever hoped for and more. The town was small, just a few shops in a circle around the centrepiece- a pond. Children run past, laughing and chasing each other. Street vendors yell out what they're selling. People chatter all around her, noise coming from everywhere. She points at different shops and Mulder tells her what they sell. She goes one shop after another, her asking and Mulder answering until she comes across a shop that she is very familiar with what it sells.

“A bookshop!” She cries.

Mulder laughs. “Yes. Would you like to go inside?”

Dana nods and Mulder pushes the door open. Instantly, Dana is overcome with the smell of books.

The shop is cramped, shelves upon shelves lined with books from floor to ceiling. It seems to go on forever. Dana stares in wonder at it all, unable to keep still. She wants to explore it all.

“What’s down there?”

She doesn't wait for Mulder to answer or follow. Pulled by some invisible string, she wanders off down the aisle on her own.

“Dana!” Mulder shouts, mid pulling off his coat to hang it on the coat rack. Dana didn’t bother. “Not too far.” He follows her down the aisle.

She finds herself in the section called BIOLOGY. Her eyes read all the titles as she wanders down, falling upon one called Pathology and The Body and brings it down. Mulder, now having caught up to her, watches silently as she opens the book.

The page she finds herself on is titled Autopsy: The Procedure Explained. Frowning, her eyes flick over the words and to the diagram: a drawing of a person with a Y shaped scar across their body. Dana finds her own scar, through the layers of clothing, and places the book down on a narrow table, reading the words beneath the diagram.

To begin an autopsy, you must start with a procedure known as the Y incision…

Eyes move further down.

…This procedure allows uninhibited access to the vital organs. Removal of which must be proceeded with care.

Is this what happened to her, Dana wonders. Was she…autopsied.

Her demeanor changes as she closes the book, Mulder noticing. “Dana?” She looks at him, thinking about what he said last night about the woman who shares her name, who was strangled, who she just happens to look like.

She swallows. No. It was all just a coincidence. She was Dana Spender, Carl Gerhard Busch Spender’s daughter, his greatest creation.

She puts the book back and turns to Mulder. “Um…could we get something to eat?” She asks even though she still wasn't hungry. Why was she never hungry?

“Of course,” Mulder says, clearly confused at her sudden change in demeanor but doesn’t mention it. He just guides her back down the shop, hand on the small of her back.

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Dana picks at her toast, coffee forgotten next to her. Mulder takes bites of his own food but his gaze is stuck on Dana.

“What happened in the bookstore, Dana?” He asks.

Dana looks at him, blinking a few times before speaking.

“What you said last night?” Mulder hums. “About the girl who was strangled, who looked like me, who had my name?”

“What about her?”

“Do you think…” Dana pauses, unable to believe she was really thinking this. “Do you think I could be her? That we are the same person?”

Mulder frowns, shaking his head. “I’m not sure, Dana. All I know is that Dana Scully was buried on the 18th October at 10am.”

Yet that was the day she remembers reading on the newspaper. That day she first woke up on the steel table, when her father took her downstairs.

18th October.

Her head hurt with the possibility.

“Dana…?”

A voice catches Dana’s attention. She turns to find a woman standing not too far away from her, her face frozen in shock. Dana frowns, she’s never seen this woman before. Or maybe…

“It’s just a graze, Dana,” the woman who looks like the woman standing before her, says. “You’ll be fine.”

A younger Dana looks down at her skimmed knees. She hurt herself again trying to keep up with her brothers.

“Is it…is it really you?” The woman asks.

Dana is frozen, lost in the memory of this woman, of grazed knees, and brothers. She’s about to form words when another voice, angrier than ever, cuts through the crowd.

“Dana!”

Her father stalks towards her. Fear runs through her body, freezing her to the spot. Mulder’s own face goes white. They’ve been caught, their fun over before it even started.

Her father reaches for her, bringing her into an embrace.

“I thought something had happened to you, I thought…” His face clouds over with anger once more. “You know you aren’t to be out here.”

“That’s my Dana,” the woman continues and both Dana and her father turn to look at her. Tears are in the woman’s eyes. “That’s my baby girl…”

Her father pushes Dana behind him, standing between his daughter and this woman who thinks she knows her.

“I’m sorry,” her father says to the woman. “But this is not who you think it is.”

“But–”

“You’re daughter is dead, Mrs Scully…”

Scully. Dana’s eyes find Mulder’s, the pieces connecting.

“Go home to your family,” says her father. With that, he grabs Dana’s hand, leading her away from the crowd.

Her father’s hand wrapped tightly around her wrist, so hard it hurts, bringing back the memories of her nightmare. He pulls her back into the house, Mulder trailing in behind them. Anger streams off of him but Dana’s thoughts on stuck on that woman, on Mrs Scully, and the girl she believes herself to be.

“Do you get some sort of kick out of defying me?” Her father asks her, gripping her arms and shaking her hard. Dana can barely keep up. When she doesn't answer quickly enough he shakes her again. “Answer me!”

Dana pulls her thoughts to the confrontation happening in front of her.

“I just…I just wanted to go outside.”

Her father clenches his eyes shut for a moment, breathing in deeply.

“And I have told you it is not safe and yet you do so anyway and with him!” He tosses a hand out in the direction of Mulder who stews away in his own anger, watching.

“What’s so bad about that? I love him!”

Her father lets out a cruel, mean laugh. “Love? You don’t know how to love. You could never love. And nobody could ever love you.”

Dana’s face falls. Her father loved her, though, didn’t he? He told her so every day.

“Hey,” says Mulder, taking a step forward. Her father eyes him darkly.

“And you?” He turns on Mulder. “You were planning on running off with her, weren't you? Stealing my idea. Stealing my creation. Your father set you up to this, boy?”

“My father set me up to nothing.”

“Bill Mulder always wanted whatever I had. I should’ve known it wouldn’t be too long before he took my greatest creation.” He spins, turning back to Dana then and she flinches, stepping back. “Do you want to know what your love can do to him?”

Spender doesn't give her a chance to answer before he is yanking her towards him and exposing her arm. He swiftly pulls his gas mask over his head, and produces a sharp knife from his pocket, deftly swiping it across Dana’s forearm. Dana yells in pain and shock as green blood pours out of her. Mulder stares, shock disgust across his face before the blood begins to hiss and the toxin is released. He falls back, clutching at his eyes now clenched shut, red, and stinging.

“Stop it!” Dana yells and Spender turns to her, his voice muffled within his mask.

“This isn’t me, Dana. It’s you. This is what you are. A monster.” He pulls her sleeve down and Dana tries to run to Mulder who is barely conscious on the floor but spender, ever stronger, pulls her back, flinging her like a ragdoll. He removes the mask. “Now get upstairs.”

“No!” Dana yells and she is met with the back-handed smack of his palm. She falls to the floor, cheek stinging, and sight blurry but she tries to crawl away from him anyway. Her father is quicker and is upon her already, pinning her to the floor. She is immediately reminded of her dream.

“You little whore,” Spender spits. Dana tries to kick him away but Spender kneels on her legs, stopping her movements. “I give you life and this is how you treat your creator.” He pins her arms above her head with one hand, the other headed towards her throat. “You ungrateful bitch.”

“This isn't a life,” she tells him, caught and pinned for the second time. “You trapped me somewhere between. You’re the monster.”

His hand wraps around her throat, squeezing until her air flow is cut off. A second time of dying to strangulation, Dana thinks as her eyes close…

Air comes to her lungs suddenly. She opens her eyes to find Mulder wrapping his tie around her father’s neck, choking the life out of him. Dana stands, running towards Mulder to help, but Spender manages to fight back and elbows Mulder in the stomach. Mulder lurches over, clutching his gut, eyes still red and unable to open.

In the madness of it all, Dana sees her father’s knife left on the floor. She lunges for it just in time before Spender can see it and grab it. Mulder, not quite recovered but still moving, leaps upon Spender again, yanking the tie back around his throat. He pulls the two of them fall to the ground holding the man in place while Dana stands above him, blade raised.

Spender’s eyes darken as he beholds his daughter.

“You’re no daughter of mine,” he croaks out while Dana stands above stoically. “I should have let them bury you in the ground, let you rot away beneath the earth. My worst abomination.”

And it stings to be called such a thing but Dana wills herself not to show it. Instead she is expressionless, emotionless, like the monster she was always set to become, Dana shrugs. “Yeah, you should have.” And plunges the knife into his chest.

Dana watches as her father’s mouth fills with blood, choking on the dregs of it until he turns still, his eyes staring off at nothing.

Mulder releases the tie from Spender’s neck, kicking his body away from him, still clutching at his eyes. Dana drops down next to him, gently touching his face.

“I’m sorry,” she says, tears filling her eyes. “I don’t know what to do.”

Mulder sniffs and even though it pains him so, he forces his eyes open slightly, just enough to look at her.

“Just hold me,” he says and she does, clutching him to her while she stares at the lifeless body of her father, her creator, her captor.

She closes her eyes and lets the tears fall freely, dropping onto Mulder. He lifts his face up and one tear drops on his eye. It sizzles but the sting, it fades.

“Hey Scully,” Mulder says and Dana startles at the new name. “Do that again. I think your tears…are an antidote or something.”

She blinks, letting another tear slide down and fall off her chin, straight into his eye.

Another sizzle and a couple of blinks and he is able to open them again.

“I can see,” he tells her. He pulls her closer to him. “Scully…” he clutches her like his life depends on it. “He was wrong.” He pulls her away, looking down at her, thumbs caressing her cheeks. “You’re not an abomination. You’re a masterpiece.”

His lips touch hers, gently at first, then with more force. Scully welcomes him in, kissing him back in ways she’s only ever read about in her books.

She was free at last. From the terrors of her past life and the entrapment of her second. Free from all those who would do her harm.

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