Chapter Text
Scully
We’ve been partners for almost two years.
I’m getting ahead of myself.
My name is Dana Katherine Scully. I’m the daughter of a professional Naval Officer, his homemaker wife and the third of four children. By the time I graduated high school, we had lived in three countries and moved every two years on average. Despite all this, or maybe because of it, I excelled at schoolwork. It’s not hard to study when you’ve given up joining clubs and making friends because every time you do, it’s time to up and move again.
Ten years ago, I managed a full academic scholarship to the University of Maryland. At the same time, my father finally decided to take a Navy Information Operations Command desk job. Finally, our family had a permanent home, one that was in the same state and city as the educational institution I attended. I lived at home, studied physics and avoided taking out a student loan. After four years, I became Dana Scully B.Sc with a bachelor’s degree in Physics.
Rewriting Einstein proved instrumental in my future. It impressed Stanford along with my 4.0 grade point average and extracurriculars. They granted me a medical scholarship. Four years free ride, I just needed to fund my living expenses. The freedom of existing well beyond the amendment of my parents paled into the mounting cost of one of the most expensive cities in the United States. During my final year, I became romantically involved with a much older man. He was my academic supervisor. When I became Dr Dana Scully, I needed to escape the situation I caused. It turned out my lover had a wife and daughter four years my senior. I had no intention of being labelled the other woman or a home wrecker. Even though I was not the first of Daniel’s indiscretions, I was the one who pushed him over the edge and into divorce. Once I had him, I found I didn’t want him.
The FBI was thrilled with my academic skill set. Only a few doctors take a carer pay cut to enter public service. The opportunity to distinguish myself in an area not associated with a well-known and influential surgeon appealed and became vital to my reputation. I took on the title of Agent in training Dana Scully. Twenty weeks at Quantico and I realised I hadn’t learned my lesson. At twenty-eight, I again took up with a man more than ten years older, an instructor, my senior and a colleague. He was not, however, married. We dated during the first year I taught forensic pathology and completed one autopsy after another. I guess this is where my story begins. The day I graduated to field status, I gained the Special Agent title.
On the last Monday in February 1992, I was ordered to wrap up my classes, hand my students over to a new instructor, decline further autopsies and await reassignment. I had until the end of the week to present myself to Section Chief Belvin’s office. I walked into the J Edgar Hoover Building at oh-nine-fifteen, Friday, 6th March 1992. Half an hour later, I was asked to debunk the work of Special Agent Fox Mulder. Once the golden boy of the profiling, his spooky reputation preceded him. I wasn’t quite sure exactly what I’d be walking into.
First, I visited the library and looked up my new partner’s file. the generally available sections of my new partner’s file. There wasn’t much in there I didn’t know. Single, white, male, privileged and highly educated. He joined the bureau in 1986, recruited directly from Oxford University because of his PhD in profiling serial offenders with a bent for the occult. Top of his class at Quantico. Spent his first four years in the violent crimes behavioural sciences unit and gained a golden, glowing reputation and multiple commendations. Things changed in 1989 when he became interested in unusual cases. A year later, he petitioned to open the X-files. He was finally assigned to the division in 1991 and was given the latitude to work alone after his last partner left very suddenly. I was to be the sacrificial lamb, the replacement, the spy, the one he didn’t want.
Taking the elevator to the basement, I knocked on the door. The moment he challenged me, I knew I would stay for one of two reasons. Sheer dogged determination to prove him wrong because science held the answers. Or because he lived up to his devastatingly handsome picture and seemed to back up those looks with a rebellious intellect. In the latter case, I just hoped I wasn’t about to make the same mistake and fall for a man who should be off-limits in every possible way.