Scully Does Cleveland
"Vampires aren't real," Dana Scully muttered to herself as she scanned the contents of the unusually thick file marked, "Sunnydale, California." Fox Mulder, her partner, stood over her, wide grin on his face.
"Oh, come on, Scully," he began, and Scully almost winced at the tone she'd heard too many times. Mulder got off on his diatribes just fine without her, so she tuned him out, concentrating instead on the Sunnydale coroner's reports that had piled up over the years.
"Two puncture wounds on the neck. Bodies drained of blood -"
Deciding to humor him with a response, Scully said, "That could be any number of things. Cultish rituals? Satanism?"
"The town was swallowed whole, Scully. There are people who referred to a kind of hell mouth -"
"Hell mouth?" Scully couldn't help but smile. "How about sinkhole, Mulder?"
"A hellmouth," he continued, seemingly choosing to ignore her remark, "that let loose all sorts of demons on this earthly dimension. Vampires included."
"Now there are demons?" Scully finely straddled the line between amusement and annoyance when she flipped to a document that captured her attention. "Mulder, what's a 'slayer'?"
Excited by his partner's newfound interest, Mulder replied, "I was just getting to that." He moved to stand behind Scully and pointed to the photograph of a young woman who, the document read, was one Buffy Summers, onetime resident of the recently disappeared beach town of Sunnydale. Blonde and petite, she looked to Scully like any other stereotypical California girl. Raising an eyebrow, she waited for Mulder's explanation.
"She," Mulder tapped on the picture for effect, "is a slayer."
"Ah."
Mulder smiled, one of his "wait for it" smiles. "'Into every generation, a slayer is born. One girl in all the world, to fight the vampires where they gather, and to stop the spread of their evil and the swell of their number. A chosen one.'"
Holding up the picture, Scully looked at Mulder skeptically. "This girl, what, battles evil?"
Nodding, Mulder replied, "Yes, Scully. And the line about "One girl in all the world'? Events that have transpired recently suggest this no longer to be true. Meaning there could be a whole legion of girls, all around the world, with superpowers. Power to fight the hordes of evil."
Only sheer force of will kept Scully from rolling her eyes. "That's a good thing, isn't it Mulder?"
"It very well could be, Scully, if all these girls knew about their shared destiny. Which is where we come in. We help find some of them-"
"Mulder-"
"Look, do me a favor, Scully. Skinner's on my back right now. There's no way he's going to let me go to Cleveland. But you could go and meet with this man, this Rupert Giles. He's a former Watcher, a part of a syndicate that's kept track of these girls for ages and-"
"Mulder, I'm not going to Cleveland on another one of your leads. I've got.paperwork." She waved her hands over her desk, which was indeed covered with piles of background checks that needed to be gone over. "As much as I miss the weirdness, the X-Files are closed, Mulder."
"Come on, Scully. It's just a meeting. I'm sure this Giles guy can convince you that what I'm talking about is very real, and important." Mulder leaned in close to Scully and put a warm hand on her shoulder. "Please? For me?"
The Magic Box was small and cramped, filled from top to bottom with odd trinkets and books, the sort of thing new age hippies went for. When Dana Scully, FBI agent and pushover, walked in, the place seemed deserted. "Hello," she called out. "Mr. Giles?"
A beaded curtain jangled as a man walked through it. He was in his mid-forties, probably, and dressed in attire Mulder might have described as professorial chic. There was something shy about the way he adjusted his glasses and said, "I'm Rupert Giles. May I help you?"
Scully automatically reached into her trench coat and pulled out her identification. She flipped it open for him. "My name is Special Agent Dana Scully and I'm here because-"
"Are you Agent Mulder's friend? He called and said you would be coming."
"Partner, yes."
Mr. Giles reached a hand out to her and smiled. "I can't thank you enough for meeting with me," he said as he shook her hand. "It didn't seem like something. Well, I've never had this sort of experience before. I didn't think the government knew about what really went on in Sunnydale. Though it had crossed my mind, I admit, that such phenomena couldn't possibly go unnoticed."
Scully flinched internally. "Well, to be honest Mr. Giles-"
"Rupert, please."
"Rupert. To be honest, Rupert, I'm not really here representing the FBI. This is something Mulder's involved with. I'm here as a favor to him."
"Oh, I see." Rupert, whose accent marked him as English, removed his glasses and began wiping them with a handkerchief he'd produced from his vest pocket. "Well, you'll want to here about it, from the beginning."
It wasn't as long a story as Scully had feared. He told her about slayers and prophesies, vampires with souls and Hell mouths (Sunnydale had been constructed over one). There were witches, and scythes, and some entity called the First Evil. All of it culminated in the destruction of Sunnydale and the creation of thousands upon thousands of slayer girls. It sounded like a Saturday matinee horror movie to Scully, but she listened politely and intently.
"How does the FBI help you, Rupert? It seems you've all done pretty well without outside interference."
"Well, Agent Mulder contacted us. And we're frankly not too proud to accept any assistance he can afford us, Agent Scully."
"Oh, Dana, please, since I'm not here in any official capacity."
"Of course."
"You have to understand how all of this sounds to someone coming from the outside."
"Why, yes, no doubt. But, as I just said, Agent Mulder came to me. I've no desire to explain myself to those who do not believe or understand. It would take very little to convince them, I assure you."
Scully tilted her head, interested. "Really?"
The cemetery was the newest in the city of Cleveland, built to accommodate an ever expanding population of the dead. Rupert Giles and Scully arrived near midnight. Rupert carried a crossbow. He had given Scully holy water, which she had wordlessly accepted and kept in her pocket. She wasn't about to argue with a man carrying a crossbow. Besides, she was just about ready to be convinced.
They walked a bit until Scully could make out two figures waiting by a large crypt. One of them Scully recognized from the Sunnydale file. She was the girl Mulder had called the slayer, Buffy Summers. The other was another girl, taller and with dark hair, more sturdily built.
Rupert called out to them. "Buffy, Faith, I have someone for you to meet."
Thinking of all the places that were better meeting spots than a cemetery, Scully waved to the girls and smiled diffidently. Whoever they were, or thought they were, this was their territory. "Hi," she said. "I'm Dana Scully."
The girls looked at each other, and then at Rupert who added, "Ms. Scully is an agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation."
The darker girl eyed Scully suspiciously and said, "FBI? No shit?"
Before Scully could offer that, in fact, it was no shit, something hit her from behind, hard. She fell, face first, to the ground. She turned, and as she struggled to make out what had happened, the girls, Buffy and Faith, were tackling a man. Sitting up, Scully could see the man's face was horribly disfigured. When he bared his teeth, they looked like fangs. Scully could only watch as the fighting continued until Rupert let loose an arrow from his crossbow. The arrow hit the man dead in the heart and then. the man disappeared. Scully shook her head. He hadn't disappeared. He'd turned to dust.
Rupert held out a cup of hot tea, which Scully accepted gratefully. It was three in the morning and she sat in Rupert's apartment, a small living space which was accessible through the Magic Box.
"Are you all right?" he asked.
Scully nodded, cradling her cup of tea in one hand. The wrist of her left hand was bandaged tightly. "It's just a sprain," she replied. Then an odd smile crossed her face. "Vampires."
Rupert nodded and sipped his tea. "Yes."
She spent the night in his apartment. He kindly offered his bed and, exhausted, she accepted. He slept on his couch.
The next morning they had breakfast together and talked about what could be done to help find the other girls, the other slayers. She told him that she would send him any information that crossed her desk and thought of how smug Mulder would be to hear her say that.
Rupert seemed pleased with the offer. "Fighting evil is lonely work, Dana. We're always happy to have a lending hand."
Scully stayed on three more days. Partly because she didn't want to get back to processing background checks, partly because she liked the way Rupert made her tea.
They observed the slaying (Scully was impressed with Rupert's level of participation; she could do no more than watch from a safe distance, as her gun, she'd discovered, had little to no effect on vampires) for two nights. On the third, Rupert offered her dinner as compensation for her future help.
She accepted.
Later, she would wonder how it started. Whether it was the brandy or two she'd had after dinner. Or Rupert talking about his dead girlfriend, the one he'd loved so much. Or her own surprising admissions about her father, how she wondered if the dead really could communicate with the living. How much she wished (and Rupert nodding, nodding because he'd had even more brandy than she had) it was possible. All that talk about loss and pain and suffering had to lead to something.
They approached each other very slowly, embracing in the most tentative of ways, kissing gentle, hesitant kisses. But the taste of warm, diluted alcohol from another's mouth is its own intoxication. They didn't bother getting up from the couch. Or removing all their clothing. He kissed her and she pressed into him. He slipped his hand under her skirt - the same kind of skirt she always wore to work - and she let him. She was glad of his roaming fingers, glad of his breath against her neck, glad of the pressure he built and promised to dissipate, glad of the words, the sounds, he made to show her he was glad of her.
Rupert saw her to the airport. "We'll see each other again?" he asked.
"I hope so." She nodded, aware of the smile on her face. "We'll fight our own set of evils and meet back here to compare scars."
A rueful grin formed on Rupert's face as he ran a hand across his hair. "Not too many, I hope."
"No, not too many."
"How was Cleveland, Scully?"
"I saw vampires, Mulder."
"So, you finally believe?"
"I do, Mulder."
Mulder leaned back in his chair, smug. Scully didn't even mind.