Lights | PG13 | The X Files/Xena: Warrior Princess
Title: Lights
Prompt: Scully’s abduction doesn’t land her on an alien operating table. Instead it transports her back to the days of the gods and right in the middle of a ferocious village battle. Xena takes care of business and Scully is rescued by the warrior. What happens next?
Challenge: 100 Fic Challenge (#24)
Fandom: Scully/Mulder, Xena/Gabrielle, The X Files/Xena: Warrior Princess
Requested by: kitnkabootle
Rating: PG13
Word Count: 713
Disclaimer: Not mine. Wish they were. Please don't sue.
Author's Note: Okay, so I kinda cheated on the prompt. It’s not that I didn’t want to write it as requested…I just had an idea that I wanted to play with so I ran with it. I hope I managed to do an okay job. I couldn’t resist playing with the parallels between both couples, though the XWP elements are minimal. Hopefully Kit won’t mind me tinkering with her prompt ;) Let me know what you think!
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Lights. Everywhere lights. Lights so bright that she can see them behind closed eyelids. Lights so vivid that she can hear their fluorescent brightness, humming loud in her ear like a million bees.
Maybe the hum isn’t from the lights. Maybe the hum is them. Maybe they’re talking, dozens or hundreds of them speaking softly in a low vibrato that weaves around her and makes her skin tingle unpleasantly.
She can’t think about them. They’ll know. She doesn’t want them to know that she’s afraid, but they are probably already aware. They know everything else about her. They control everything. They control her inability to move or speak. They are still trying to control her thoughts, but they don’t have that technology yet. She can still think freely. She can still escape to the recesses of her mind, so that’s what she does. Or does she? Maybe they want her to believe that she has the freedom of her mind. Maybe it’s a false sense of security, a blanket that will slowly suffocate her when they choose.
It’s too frightening to be Dana Scully. Dana Scully isn’t a person…she’s an object, a possession to be tinkered and toyed with. They’ve done unspeakable things to her. She doesn’t want to be Dana Scully. If she’s Dana Scully, she may not survive.
Her mind drifts, and she becomes someone else.
Her hair is longer, lighter. Its former lustrous auburn is faded to dull copper. She’s svelte and lean. She’s scared but she’s strong.
Is this Dana? Is this some manifestation of fantasy and reality, some conglomerate of real and fake?
Mulder is there, but he’s…someone else. A woman. Same brooding expression, same dark eyes and hair, same broad shoulders. He looks at her, at this woman who could be Dana, with a fierce protective intensity.
It feels like them. It’s the same push and pull, the same intense need. Maybe it is them, Mulder and Scully. If this is an imagined reality, a combination of wishful thinking and vast imagination, this could be them in a past life, in a different time. It feels so right. She closes her eyes and escapes.
She’s hurt. Somehow she’s been injured and this woman, this she-Mulder, effortlessly scoops her into her arms and carries her to shelter. She tends to the wound with tender, steady fingers and tells her that she will be all right because she will always protect her. She cups her cheek, calls her “Gabrielle,” and promises that she will never let anything happen to her again.
Dana feels a sharp pang of something deep within her chest. She fears they are performing more tests, fears that she is once more open and exposed to their eyes and their conspiracy and their rough, dirty hands. But it’s not them-they hum in the background, or is that the lights? It’s Mulder. It’s always Mulder. She wants him to save her. She wants him to come in, her warrior, her savior, and take her away from all that is wrong and evil in the world. She wants the lights to go away. She wants to feel his arms, strong and unyielding, around her.
She opens her eyes and blinks up at the lights that beat down upon her. Their heated glow causes a trickle of sweat to roll down her forehead and catch in her hairline. She feels dirty down to her very core, down to the very depths of herself. She wonders if she will ever escape this, if she will ever feel clean and safe again.
Dana closes her eyes to her reality. She shuts out the lights. She thinks of darkness. She thinks of her alter ego and the strong warrior that has saved her. Will her own savior ever come? Is there a point to hoping for something that may no longer belong to her?
She has no hope. She may never escape from these lights, from them. Her mind is her only solace, for now, and so she hides there. Mulder is not there but the idea of him, the fact of him, shines brighter inside of her than any of the lights. She clings to this fragmented sense of safety because it’s all she has…all she may ever have again.
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Prompt: Scully’s abduction doesn’t land her on an alien operating table. Instead it transports her back to the days of the gods and right in the middle of a ferocious village battle. Xena takes care of business and Scully is rescued by the warrior. What happens next?
Challenge: 100 Fic Challenge (#24)
Fandom: Scully/Mulder, Xena/Gabrielle, The X Files/Xena: Warrior Princess
Requested by: kitnkabootle
Rating: PG13
Word Count: 713
Disclaimer: Not mine. Wish they were. Please don't sue.
Author's Note: Okay, so I kinda cheated on the prompt. It’s not that I didn’t want to write it as requested…I just had an idea that I wanted to play with so I ran with it. I hope I managed to do an okay job. I couldn’t resist playing with the parallels between both couples, though the XWP elements are minimal. Hopefully Kit won’t mind me tinkering with her prompt ;) Let me know what you think!
-
Lights. Everywhere lights. Lights so bright that she can see them behind closed eyelids. Lights so vivid that she can hear their fluorescent brightness, humming loud in her ear like a million bees.
Maybe the hum isn’t from the lights. Maybe the hum is them. Maybe they’re talking, dozens or hundreds of them speaking softly in a low vibrato that weaves around her and makes her skin tingle unpleasantly.
She can’t think about them. They’ll know. She doesn’t want them to know that she’s afraid, but they are probably already aware. They know everything else about her. They control everything. They control her inability to move or speak. They are still trying to control her thoughts, but they don’t have that technology yet. She can still think freely. She can still escape to the recesses of her mind, so that’s what she does. Or does she? Maybe they want her to believe that she has the freedom of her mind. Maybe it’s a false sense of security, a blanket that will slowly suffocate her when they choose.
It’s too frightening to be Dana Scully. Dana Scully isn’t a person…she’s an object, a possession to be tinkered and toyed with. They’ve done unspeakable things to her. She doesn’t want to be Dana Scully. If she’s Dana Scully, she may not survive.
Her mind drifts, and she becomes someone else.
Her hair is longer, lighter. Its former lustrous auburn is faded to dull copper. She’s svelte and lean. She’s scared but she’s strong.
Is this Dana? Is this some manifestation of fantasy and reality, some conglomerate of real and fake?
Mulder is there, but he’s…someone else. A woman. Same brooding expression, same dark eyes and hair, same broad shoulders. He looks at her, at this woman who could be Dana, with a fierce protective intensity.
It feels like them. It’s the same push and pull, the same intense need. Maybe it is them, Mulder and Scully. If this is an imagined reality, a combination of wishful thinking and vast imagination, this could be them in a past life, in a different time. It feels so right. She closes her eyes and escapes.
She’s hurt. Somehow she’s been injured and this woman, this she-Mulder, effortlessly scoops her into her arms and carries her to shelter. She tends to the wound with tender, steady fingers and tells her that she will be all right because she will always protect her. She cups her cheek, calls her “Gabrielle,” and promises that she will never let anything happen to her again.
Dana feels a sharp pang of something deep within her chest. She fears they are performing more tests, fears that she is once more open and exposed to their eyes and their conspiracy and their rough, dirty hands. But it’s not them-they hum in the background, or is that the lights? It’s Mulder. It’s always Mulder. She wants him to save her. She wants him to come in, her warrior, her savior, and take her away from all that is wrong and evil in the world. She wants the lights to go away. She wants to feel his arms, strong and unyielding, around her.
She opens her eyes and blinks up at the lights that beat down upon her. Their heated glow causes a trickle of sweat to roll down her forehead and catch in her hairline. She feels dirty down to her very core, down to the very depths of herself. She wonders if she will ever escape this, if she will ever feel clean and safe again.
Dana closes her eyes to her reality. She shuts out the lights. She thinks of darkness. She thinks of her alter ego and the strong warrior that has saved her. Will her own savior ever come? Is there a point to hoping for something that may no longer belong to her?
She has no hope. She may never escape from these lights, from them. Her mind is her only solace, for now, and so she hides there. Mulder is not there but the idea of him, the fact of him, shines brighter inside of her than any of the lights. She clings to this fragmented sense of safety because it’s all she has…all she may ever have again.
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