Chapter Text
The bell hanging over the doorway jingled as they stepped into the overcrowded antique store in Alexandria, Virginia. Scully inhaled the scent of warmed wood, of musty books, rugs, and a heavy flowery perfume smell. It was darker inside the maze of a store. There were big heavy curtains half pulled over the large shop windows to keep the spring sun out.
Mulder took a sweeping glance around and spotted an older woman in the back corner looking over sets of china. There was a man off to the left side of the room as he flipped through a box of records that sat among several other boxes atop antique tables.
An older gentleman with graying thick hair and a close trimmed beard emerged from an open doorway behind a glass display case. There were rows and rows of jewelry inside and a register sitting on top. He perked up when he saw them and quickly came around the counter. He was dressed sharply in what would be a three piece suit, but no jacket. A pocketwatch sat in the front pocket of his vest, the chain clipped to his shirt underneath.
“Welcome,” he offered a smile and clasped his hands together in front of himself. “Can I help you?”
“I’m Agent Mulder,” Mulder said and returned a tight smile to the man. “I spoke to you yesterday on the phone. This is my partner, Agent Scully.”
Mulder indicated her, glanced at her, looked her over really. Because sometimes his gaze strayed or lingered without a thought and it was only after that he realized he needed to look away.
“Agent Scully,” the man turned his sights on her, gave her a warm smile. “E.P. Dwyer. Thank you for coming out today. Follow me.”
Dwyer glanced at the customers in his shop, then turned and led the way toward the counter. Mulder indicated with an open arm for Scully to go first. She followed after Dwyer as he led them behind the counter and through the open doorway.
The back stockroom was worse than the front of the store. Furniture was stacked precariously, some pieces several feet high. There was no rhyme or reason to the groupings, everything found a place to be held until it could make its way to the front of the store. Half the items were draped over in cloth or curtains.
Dwyer led them on the very narrow path towards the back of the store where a set of double doors were closed with a big FIRE EXIT sign above them.
“As I said to you on the phone, Agent Mulder,” Dwyer began, “It’s been such an inconvenience to my shop that I didn’t feel safe even selling it. It’s power… it seems to work fast on some people…”
“And it changes them?” Scully questioned. “The mirror?”
Mulder had briefed her on their short drive to Alexandria. The case was very straightforward. A mirror that seemed to possess people, to affect their personality, and they were here to investigate it, to find merit in the claims.
Dwyer stopped beside a tall, thin fixture completely draped in what appeared to be a green and red checkered tablecloth. He regarded Scully for a moment.
“I can’t say for sure, but it changed my wife,” he admitted, his tone dropping a bit, his businessman demeanor giving way as he grew somber. “And the customers, the ones who seemed to… become enamored with it, my usuals who don’t act so usual anymore, it changed them, too.”
Mulder took a step forward. “Let’s see it.” He was eager to examine the mirror. It sounded like something out of a fairy tale, a magic mirror, but if it could truly change someone… well, it was worth the investigation. After all, he needed to know how to change them back, too.
“Sure,” Dwyer agreed and reached for the cloth, but paused. He looked back at both agents. “Don’t look too long, it might get you, too.”
“Thanks for the caution, I think we’ll be fine,” Scully assured him.
Dwyer nodded and drew in a deep breath before tugging the cloth free from the ornate mirror with a quick swoosh. The cloth fluttered away and landed in a crumpled heap at their feet.
Scully found that it was mirror, plain and simple, definitely aged. It had lost some of its reflectiveness to a bluish hue, a haziness over the entire surface. There were spots and scuffed marks along the edges, blackish blemishes that didn’t even take away from the mirror, but added to its overall statement that it had lived.
The craftsmanship of the frame was something to note, a deep walnut with intricate carvings that reminded her of Swiss cottages with their peaked tops. Flourished lines and swirls began at the pointed top and wove their way down the sides and to the base where the frame stood on two delicate pronged feet.
Scully tore her gaze from it and looked first at Dwyer, who appeared uneasy, a frown settled on his face. He was doing his best to avoid eye contact with the mirror. Mulder was looking it over, checking out the front of it, the back of it, eyeing every nick, notch, and scratch in the wooden surface that encased the mirror.
“How long was it, did you say, that it took for your wife to change in personality?” Mulder asked as he straightened up and emerged from behind the mirror.
“Overnight,” Dwyer answered. “We obtained the Maycott Mirror from an old friend who bought it from an estate sale. We purchased quite a bit from him from the sale, actually, and while I unloaded, my wife spent a lot of time fussing with the mirror. The next morning, she was… different. Completely.”
“Huh.” Mulder nodded and disappeared behind the mirror again.
Scully shifted on her feet and folded her arms over her chest as her gaze returned to the mirror. It was nothing more than glass and wood, coated in maybe silver that was slipping away with time.
A bell dinged in the distance and Dwyer startled. “I must tend to a customer. I’ll be back shortly. Please, be careful with it.”
“Of course,” Scully replied and watched as the man dashed off, finding his way back through the hazardous room without harm. She turned toward the mirror as Mulder was coming back out from behind it after his close examination of the wood, especially the writing he couldn’t make out along the bottom of it. “Well, what do you think?” she asked.
“Not sure,” Mulder answered, his voice soft.
He touched the glass, pressed on it, then gently ran his fingers down it. In all appearances, it was just a mirror, his reflection trying to follow his every movement through the haziness of it all. He pressed his lips together, let out a slow breath through his nose.
“We should smash it,” he stated.
Scully’s eyes widened in surprise as she dropped her arms to her sides. “Excuse me?”
“So it can’t hold the power anymore, Scully,” Mulder explained and began looking around.
“I don’t believe smashing it’s a good idea, Mulder,” Scully said, her eyes following him as he appeared to be looking for something he lost. “It’s just a mirror. It can’t change people. Whatever Mr. Dwyer believes is his opinion. People have bad days, marriages of twenty three years can hit rough spots, and suddenly he feels his wife isn’t the same anymore.”
Her words fell on deaf ears as Mulder pulled a heavy handheld statue of Atlas holding the world from within a pile of bookends that shifted and fell over on the wooden desk they resided on. He turned to the mirror full force, whacking the center of it with the world.
“Mulder!” Scully exclaimed as she stepped toward him, hand outstretched and landing on his arm. The mirror cracked right in the middle, but it did not break. “What are you doing?”
“It’s evil,” Mulder stated simply as he looked the mirror over again, searching for the perfect spot to put an end to it. “And it has to be destroyed.”
“Stop it,” Scully scolded. “You’re not acting like—” Her eyebrows drew together, she frowned at him. “Give me that, he’s going to come back here.”
She reached for Atlas, stepping in front of Mulder as she did so, invading his personal space. Scully wrapped her fingers around the globe as Mulder’s grip remained tight around the body of the god. She tugged on the statue, but he held on through two pulls before something clicked in his brain, something didn’t make sense, and he let go without warning.
Scully stumbled back and slammed into the mirror, causing it to teeter, but she didn’t fall against the mirror, she was falling into it. She passed through the wooden frame as if no glass existed there at all. She dropped the Atlas statue, it landed at Mulder’s feet, and Scully tried to grab onto the wooden frame, her fingers grazed the wood, but didn’t get a grip, and she continued to fall.
Mulder’s eyes widened in surprise and he reached for her, but much too late. He didn’t expect her to go through the mirror. His hands slammed into the glass with a loud thwack, they didn’t pass through, they couldn’t. The mirror tilted back from his unintentional push.
“Scullaaay!” he yelled as she fell, mirror and all. She was too far away now, the expression on her face unreadable.
Mulder tried to stop the mirror as it rocked backward, as it hit some pile of junk that caused the crack he made to worsen. The mirror slipped sideways and dropped to the floor, the frame cracking, the glass shattering as half the shards fell out onto the floor.
“Scullaaay!” Mulder called again and he dropped to his knees in front of the mirror. He still saw her there within the slivers of the glass in front of him, blue eyes, wide and fearful, red hair blowing about before she was gone completely.
“Scully…”
He awoke with a start, panting breaths out in his darkened bedroom. His heart was hammering in his chest and the fear residing within him was lodged in his gut. She was stuck in a mirror, trapped, and it was his fault.
Or… was it a dream?
He should call her just to make sure she was okay. Mulder glanced at his clock, it was nearly four in the morning. She wouldn’t be awake yet, and she might even give him an earful for waking her so early because of a bad dream.
Mulder would see her later and regale the tale to her and he’d make some wisecrack joke and she would assure him all was well, maybe even joke back that he should stop dreaming about her. Because it was nothing more than a dream. A weird, whacked out dream.