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“What do you think of them?”
Julie shakes her navy pen, hoping to jolt the last beads of wet ink loose. “Who?”
Agent Kramer, green as the soda pop can he’s drinking from, nods towards the corner of the room. “Mulder and Scully.”
She hadn’t known that they were going to be here; it’s not their type of case. But sure enough, there they are.
“They’re fine, I guess,” Julie says. “Kinda weird.”
Weird as in: she gets a feeling like brain freeze if she looks at them for too long. Weird like: when they lean in to speak to each other, they make the conference room go still and November cold. She would need something far stronger than coffee before she’d admit it, but there have been moments where Julie could not tell them apart.
When she looks up again, Kramer is quietly watching her, lips parted like something real wants to come out.
“Why? What do you think?” She asks.
Kramer shrugs coolly. “No, same. They’re weird.”
The first time she met Mulder, Julie’d been at the Bureau for all of three weeks.
They were hunting a Vietnam vet who kept on evading capture and Mulder was standing in a huddle of agents who called him childish names when he stepped out for the restroom.
As he’d turned around to shake her hand, Julie would’ve sworn on her granddad’s tattered old Bible that she saw it.
His face was a flesh-toned blur, a Macy’s mannequin; shadowed sockets where his eyeballs should have been. Clear blue currents arched from his temples.
And for a moment – just for a moment – she could see that he was bleeding black from a nostril he did not have.
It made no sense, given his beak of a nose. But there it was.
Blink and you miss it, Mulder was imperceptible.
Blink, she did, and his face crystalized. Mossy eyes coming into focus, the curve of his lips sharpening in the nanosecond it took the light to hit the back of Julie’s retinas.
“Fox Mulder,” he’d said, sticking out his cool, electric hand.
He was cute, she'd thought, but that was certifiably freaky.
Mulder and Scully step out of AD Skinner’s waiting room and Julie thinks – not for the first time – about their boss. She has never been alone with them, but she has a looming suspicion that it would feel like solitary confinement.
They bluster down the hall sheathed in static, Scully’s face obscured by glossy, copper wire hair as she reads the file splayed open in her hands, keeping in perfect step with her partner. Or, whatever.
“They’re definitely fucking,” Agent Chang says with all the confidence of a recent Academy grad.
Oh, baby, she wants to tell him, whether they’re fucking is the last thing you should be worried about.
Julie wonders about Mulder and Scully like she wonders about forest fires, sucking up oxygen as they eat everything they touch; an otherworldly energy that feels too close to Hell.
This she knows for sure: they are best observed from a safe distance.
Three weeks and two missing little kids later, Mulder is brought onto a Violent Crimes case to draw up a profile.
They’re late to the briefing, settling into the back in a rush of whispers. She can’t make out what they’re saying, she never can; their dark, hushed words were not meant for her ears.
Agent Lipner elbows his neighbor, motioning over his shoulder to Scully. He is not the sharpest knife in the drawer, as her Nana would say. Though Julie cannot deny the illicit appeal of them.
The story writes itself. Monsters in the basement, leaving behind a string of bodies – not unwitting victims, but those who willingly threw themselves into the flame, trying to get a taste.
After the briefing, Julie lingers back in a small cluster of suits. Scully brushes past the group to get to the trash can, where she tosses a paper takeout coffee cup.
Agent Chang nods at her in greeting. “Agent Mulder,” he says with all the confidence of a recent Academy grad.
The being before him gives a wary look.
“It’s Scully, actually.” Not cold but certainly not friendly either.
Yes, it is Scully. A dripping molten gold crown around her coifed bob. Catch her in the right light, and you will see that there’s a rippling shine underneath her velvet, plasma skin.
She politely tips her head to their group and walks away, her three-inch heels crisp on the tiled floors. White hot star fragments flitter to the ground where her footprints should be.
Poor Agent Chang stares after her, wide eyed and changed.
See? See?
Tom Colton knew Scully from the Academy. Before Mulder, as the story goes.
When she gets a chance, Julie asks him, “Was she always like this?”
Did she use lava fangs to claw her way out of her mother’s womb in search of him? Was little Dana Scully filled with righteous fury at the universe that dared take away that which was rightfully hers?
Colton drops his voice even though no one is around to listen in. “Not quite,” he says.
For Christmas 1998, Julie’s mom drives her Nana Jane up from the deep south.
Nana’s a Lady at 82. Even though Julie’s been at the Bureau almost two years now, Nana gets misty eyed during her tour of the Hoover building, saying over and over that she’s so proud of you, baby. And since Julie’s latest love interest turned out to be a mooch and a slob, Nana is her date to the annual Christmas party.
No cheap date either, Julie’s thinking as she returns to their little table, second round of margaritas in tow. She sets the one without the salt rim in front of her persnickety plus one.
“Baby,” Nana says seriously, “tell me you don’t hang 'round with those two at the end.”
“What? Who?” Julie demands.
With octogenarian brazenness, Nana raises a bent finger towards the bar.
“Nana,” Julie hisses, pulling her hand down.
“Oh, hush. They ain’t looking.” She takes a healthy swallow of her drink. “You worry so much, it’s not good for your heart.”
Julie rolls her eyes with a smile. “My heart’s just fine. It’s your liver we ought to be worried about."
Then she swivels to scan the bar, ready to pull her Sig Sauer in a venue full of FBI agents if someone gave her Nana trouble.
Pendrell is here, and Kramer with his new girl – a blonde in a tiny slip of a dress. There’s a small bundle of tech guys, two secretaries from the fourth floor giggling over martini glasses. And perched at the end: it’s them, their finer features obscured in the moody darkness of the room.
Scully looks up at Mulder and smiles at something he’s said, and Julie feels cold. The energy of the party dims just for them, with their chameleon eyes and vacillating profiles.
Julie sucks in a breath. Good, something ancient tells her, fill your lungs while you still can.
“Nana.” Julie sets her drink down. “Which two? Who were you talking about before?”
“You know,” Nana says, waving a hand vaguely. “The two at the end. Somethin’ ain’t right with them.”
"Did they say something to you?”
Nana shakes her head. “Baby, they don’t see nobody but each other. Listen now, their souls are split. I met folks like them, and it’s nobody you should be runnin’ around with.”
“Sure, Nana, I– I don’t hang out with them. But what do you mean their souls are split?”
“Your mama shoulda taught you these things.” Nana snicks her tongue. “There was so much time spent on schoolwork when you were a little girl.”
Julie groans. “Bring that up with your daughter. Now–”
“You bet I did! Your mama wasn’t hearin’ none of it. Children need time to be outside, you know.”
She leans in and tries again. “What did you mean about their souls?”
“Oh, baby, don’t worry ‘bout that,” Nana drawls, plucking a nibbly bit from Julie’s dress. “It’s just old folks’ tales. Steer clear of ‘em for me and we’ll be just fine.” She motions towards Julie’s full glass with her own half drained one. “Now don’t let all that ice melt away in there, it’ll spoil the liquor.”
It’s one of those things that wasn’t really supposed to happen.
The operation – a suspect holed up in his mom’s house – is three days late, their previous intel wasting away when a hurricane blew through and the Bureau pulled back, battened up. It’s hopelessly muggy and Skinner’s got everyone shoved into musty Kevlar dug up from some rodent-infested crevice of the Tampa field office.
Even Scully and Mulder are starting to snap at each other. Julie thinks to tap a palm tree for dew and blood.
Their guy is wanted for kidnapping and rape. Kramer, Scully, Julie, and Jackson are going in through the white shingled house’s front door while another team heads around back. Mulder, recently concussed, is stuck on the sidelines with Skinner and he hasn’t let anybody hear the end of it.
Kramer pounds on the door. “FBI,” he commands, “open up!”
Nothing happens for a stretch of time.
“FBI!” Kramer shouts again. “You got about three seconds to open this door, Evans!”
Sweat drips down Julie’s slimy spine. She swipes a hand over her pooled upper lip, sees Scully copy the motion.
“Battering ram,” Scully decides.
A local agent comes scuttering up with it, heaving it into Kramer’s waiting hands. Fucking show off that he is, the beaten old door goes flying open on a single hit.
A gnat buzzes Julie’s sticky left eyebrow.
Jackson and Scully step into the gaping doorway, weapons drawn.
A shot rings out.
Then another. From inside the house, the rhythmic thumps of a body coming down a staircase. Jackson goes in to confirm the casualty.
When Scully turns back to Julie and Kramer, the starched cotton white on her bicep is stained like a Veteran's Day poppy. So, she bleeds.
“Shit,” Scully mutters.
From down the street, from inside her head, Mulder shrieks. "No!”
It’s Mulder’s voice. It’s something eldritch and livid, coming their way now.
She wants to cover her ears and hide like a little kid. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death… Kramer gives in to the instinct, reminding her of the boy her little brother used to be.
Too quickly, Mulder is right there, breezing past with a chill. In his wake, a trail of fluttering, wispy crows. Gooseflesh bubbles up on her forearms.
It’s just Mulder.
It’s Mulder with a crown of shimmering black; arched smoke wings and feathery coal teeth. He crackles, she sees it. Somewhere offshore, Hurricane Irene's next sibling awaits his signal.
“I’m fine, Mulder,” says Scully, pressing a firm palm against her wound. She glances past him, to Kramer, who is backing down the creaky porch steps. Quietly, to the creature tearing her bloody sleeve in two, she says, “take a breath.”
He does, but the slick fear lodged in Julie's throat doesn’t go away; just slides thickly down, sludge settling into her gut.
It’s just Mulder. Kind, murderous, hurricane-wielding Mulder. He once offered her a scoop of sunflower seeds when her stomach rumbled during a meeting; and had Scully died, he would have lit this whole block up without a second thought.
After Skinner clears them to leave, Julie hands the rental keys to Kramer. They sit in their parked car for a minute, cooling down.
Through the bug-spattered windshield, Scully sits in the back of an ambulance with both doors swung wide open. Mulder fidgets nearby, shifting his weight, hands on his hips as he studies the pavement. Waiting for her.
“You good?” Julie asks.
Kramer scoffs playfully, but it’s not very convincing. “Me? Yeah.”
He twists the keys in the ignition.
“It’s just Mulder,” she reminds him.
Kramer nods. “It’s just Mulder,” he echoes.
In a DC bar on a Friday night, three drinks in, Kramer rubs his finger through the condensation pooled on their cheaply lacquered table and says: “Do you believe in soulmates?”
Julie rolls her eyes. “Please don’t tell me that’s your way of coming onto me, Kramer.”
“Please,” he emphasizes, making a face. “I’m loyal.”
That is a crock of shit, but it’s her turn to buy the next round and Julie’s got a bet going with herself that if he downs this drink fast enough, he’ll forget and throw his card down anyways.
“Not really,” she admits.
Kramer swigs from his whiskey sour, adjusting his napkin just right before he sets the glass back down. “I was, uh…” He clears his throat. “My sister was telling me this old folktale last weekend. I’m not really into that stuff, but–... Well, she was telling me that there’s this Greek myth about Zeus–”
“Zeus!?” She interrupts before she can help herself; a little tipsy. She presses the back of her hand against his forehead. “Are you feelin’ alright over there?”
He swats her away. “Cut it out, Jules.”
“No, I’m listening. Go on.” She takes a sip of her marg. “Soulmates.”
He sighs, looking at the collage of photos on the wall behind her. “Never mind.”
Oops. Too far, Julie.
“Kramer. No, tell the rest. I wanted to hear it,” she says. He quietly sops up the mess that his sweating glass has made of their high top. He can be such a baby sometimes, so she adds, “I mean it. Please tell the rest.”
He keeps his eyes low as he talks, fascinated by his partially disintegrated napkin. “Alright, let me talk then. Apparently, the ancient Greeks used to believe that humans were originally made with four arms and four legs. Because they were too powerful like that, Zeus split them up. That mostly worked, but with some of the pairs, he accidentally split up their souls, too. So.”
Kramer takes another drink, still fiddling with his sodden scraps of paper. “So, I guess some people still believe that there are people walking around today with only half a soul.”
“Half a soul, huh?”
“Yeah. I guess they’re supposed to appear like normal humans, but just a little off. Like, a little uncanny.”
If there is one thing Julie knows for sure, it’s that Kramer did not just happen to hear this story from his sister. She thinks of Mulder’s outburst in Tampa and her Nana’s warning from last Christmas – their souls are split.
“Sounds pretty creepy,” Julie says.
“It would be,” he agrees. “If that shit was real.”
She pretends to think, hamming it up for him. “Little known fact, Kramer. I think the FBI’s got a department for weird shit that might not be real.”
Slowly, he breaks into a full-tooth grin.
Oh, c’mon. Did he really think she didn’t see it?
Julie’s camped out at the pizza joint down the street from the Hoover building, her half-finished report spread out in three parts in front of her. Technically, she’s not allowed to be working in here, but the testosterone at the office was overpowering today. She can only spend so much time surrounded by overgrown boys in suits.
As she’s lumbering over to refill her fountain drink, Scully – or maybe not – walks in under the chime of the doorway bell.
The other one steps in after them. Julie snaps a to-go lid on her cup and heads back to the table, starts gathering up her things.
They drift up to the counter, universe bending for them. They could warp the path of a tornado, she’s sure of it. They have startled herds into stampeding and sent alley dogs into barking fits.
The toddler who’s been fussing for the past five minutes goes slack-jawed at the sight of them, her mother obliviously munching on a slice of pepperoni.
When Mulder and Scully slip into a corner booth and out of view, the little girl’s wide, Godiva eyes waft over to Julie.
See? See?