Chapter Text
The force of the impact nearly lifted Scully off her feet as she slammed into Datsun's midriff. Her torch flew out of her hand, skittering across the concrete floor.
Datsun recovered quickly, but Scully was already dancing away from him, shimmying back along the wall, her weapon fixed on him. At the exact same moment shocked recognition broke over his face, Scully's heel came down on the rounded edge of the flashlight and she skidded.
The mere moment it cost her to get her balance back was all Datsun needed. He sprang forward like a leopard, his large hands closing around the pistol even as she tried to wrench it away from him.
Taking advantage of both of his hands being engaged, Scully kicked him in the stomach as hard as she could. He let out a huff of air and she closed the gap to follow up with a knee straight into his ribs, using the leverage of his hands being locked over hers on the gun to bring the weight of her whole body behind the drive of her knee.
Unfortunately though, given her most recent circumstances, Scully's entire body weight was not all that much to speak of. Datsun gave an angry grunt as her knee connected, but it didn't so much as knock him off balance.
Using their joined hands as his own weapon, Datsun drove his arms sharply forward so that the back of the gun and his large knuckles crashed into Scully's forehead. Dazed by the impact, she staggered, and he immediately shoved her back against the brick wall, where her head connected with a crack.
Pain arced through her skull and her grip loosened on the gun. Plucking it from her hands, in one quick movement Datsun shoved it down the side of his boot.
Pressing one forearm flat across her collarbones to pin her to the wall, he seized her two wrists in his other hand before she could try to attack again.
"Red the Med!" he drawled, somehow managing to look both amused and furious at the same time. "I can barely believe my eyes. Just what in the absolute fuck are you doing up here?"
They were both breathing hard, his face just inches from hers. He shoved her harder against the wall and Scully groaned, feeling her collarbones creaking.
"Which of our little friends," Datsun growled, not letting up on the pressure, "let you out to play?"
His golden eyes looked demonic, filled with malice.
"Nobody let me out," Scully managed to wheeze.
Datsun paused for a moment. "So what then?" he asked. "You used your magical powers to get out of that chain?"
Scully stared at him mutely. He sighed.
"Red, I can't even tell you how much you do not want to piss me off today. Do you want to know what I've spent my evening doing? Spent my last goddamn weeks doing? Running around, putting out fires, closing down perfectly good ops. Cleaning up utter chaos."
His voice was rising as he snarled into her face.
"And who do I have to thank for every little last bit of that? Your partner. On my back at every turn, digging under every pebble, trying to find out where you are!"
Scully looked down to stop Datsun being able to see her eyes instantly flooding. "Mulder... " she breathed.
Of course he was looking for her. Of course he was. She knew he'd never stop.
"Yes, Mulder. If I never hear that name again it'll be too soon. So he's out there, raining federal fire on everything I do, and now here you are," he growled, crushing her into the wall again, "and you are going to tell me how you got here!"
Seeing that he was gearing up for another shove, she winced and closed her eyes. "I... starved myself," she whispered. "I starved until the chain got loose enough and then I got out of it."
Datsun was struck speechless. His eyes raked over her face, taking in for the first time how gaunt she looked. How her two wrists just barely filled his one palm.
"Yesterday. When you fainted... "
Scully opened her eyes again. "Yes."
A range of emotions seemed to play over his face. Scully tried to read his mercurial expression, not sure which way the pendulum was about to swing.
What he had told her made no sense.
"Datsun - if all of that's been going on - if it was because of me - why didn't you just... let me go?" Scully asked him, not completing her thought out loud. Not asking why she wasn't already dead.
They faced each other silently for a long moment.
Looking down, Datsun hesitated, and then slowly released her wrists. Very slowly, he drew one of her hands to slide into his. He looked back into her face, his forearm still holding her to the wall, but no longer with force. His eyes now deep liquid gold.
"Because I wanted you to stay."
Scully's eyes locked with his. Her mind raced back over the time she had spent here under his power, against her will, fighting to preserve life, while he stood and watched it flicker away. His use of people as his tools, of her as a slave. Him robbing her of what had felt like an eternity of her own life, her own time, in the sole pursuit of his gain. Her desire to help and heal being compromised, twisted, as she was forced to serve his corrupted purposes.
Her newly freed hand traced its path through the air as though it had happened a thousand times before. As though the movements were steps in a graceful dance. Her hand floated up behind her back, where her concealed FBI weapon found its place in her palm like a key fitting a lock. Her thumb made a clean pass over the safety, lifting the last barrier between Scully and her freedom.
Sweeping her pistol up and under Datsun's armpit, she shot him point blank into his chest cavity before he even realised she'd moved.
~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~
It wasn't until she was outside, a block and a half away, calling 911 from a payphone she had no clear memory of running to that the burr of the ringing line drew Scully's consciousness fully back online. The sweet night air swirled around the open payphone booth, washing over her senses and bringing her out of adrenaline-charged dissociation into the dizzying, ecstatic realisation of her freedom. The noise and lights of traffic on the road seemed like a parade of colour and energy just for her.
The 911 operator's tones were calm and clear, the first female voice Scully had heard in many weeks. Once she'd explained the situation, the operator assured her help was on the way, and then asked if she had someone with her.
Scully smiled. "I will soon," she said. "I'm calling him now." For there on the shelf below the phone, cashing in on that little bit of luck Angelo maybe really had wished her, was a scatter of quarters, shining like stars.
Scully's fingertips tapped out the number she knew best in all the world. One ring, two, three.
He picked up. "Mulder." His voice was sweet in her ear.
"Mulder, it's me."
~END~