maskormenacelogs | Let's live it up

Entry tags:

Let's live it up

WHO: YOU.
WHERE: De Chima, VA.
WHEN: Saturday August 9th.
WHAT: Registration in motion... among other things.
WARNINGS: None anticipated; please let us know if this should be edited.

" The new frontier of which I speak is not a set of promises -- it is a set of challenges. It sums up not what I intend to offer the American people, but what I intend to ask of them. It appeals to their pride, not to their pocketbook -- it holds out the promise of more sacrifice instead of more security. But I tell you the new frontier is here, whether we seek it or not. "
( from jfk's speech "the new frontier," 7/15/1960. )

While known for being surprisingly quiet compared to other bustling cities like Nonah, De Chima is loud and packed this weekend with news of the Swearing-In Ceremony being held at one of its lavish halls this evening. Spreading like wildfire, people from nearby cities show up at the hall in attendance, many there for the publicity or for the opportunity to meet an imPort themselves. There's no shortage of non-locals in the hall and one may even begin to wonder if just how many non-locals outnumber the De Chima residents who are attending the ceremony.

The hall is brimming with excitement, with members of City Hall having joined the party (but the Mayor had other business to attend to, sorry!) to public figures who've decided to make an appearance much to the surprise of the media who are present (as usual) at these events. Reggie Pressley, Swaggy-Swag McSwag, Bartolomeo Zoccarato, and London Marriott can be found around the hall, some being interviewed by the local media, getting their photographs taken, or giving out autographs to those who ask. Marriott in particular will be poking around imPorts for juicy gossip and other information. Other public figures who have made an appearance tonight are local businessmen and women from the city itself, scouting imPorts in the hopes some will take an interest in their work. While many are looking for imPorts to work in computer, research, and medical fields, there are many entry level jobs in data entry, paying slightly more than minimum wage. These business folk will be around till the end of the event, handing out their cards to anyone who takes an interest.

If anyone is paying close attention to the De Chima locals who are attending, or if they had been out exploring the city earlier, they will have noticed something... peculiar about many of them. Silky smooth hair, unblemished skin that almost radiates, straight, white teeth, perfect eyebrows, noses, jawlines... you name it. These people are good looking and they know it, but more importantly, you can be, too! There are various doctors in the hall, make beelines for identifiable imPorts, and they apparently haven't established what boundaries are. If they can, they will grab a hold of an imPort's arm, shoulder, or boldly go for the hips and babble about their appearances, offering their cards and pointing out any flaws (or perfections that can be improved) the imPort has. "I can help you with that," they'll say about crooked noses, scars, wrinkles, anyone with a little extra weight, etc. A few may forget they're here on business and flirt with the adult imPorts, taken in by good looks (or other appealing features). One particular doctor, Dr. Nic, a man with buoyant personality, will be trying to pass around as many of his business cards as he can.

There are long tables set up overflowing with all kinds of food and drink. Alcohol is served at a bar where ID is a must, so sorry to anyone under twenty-one! There's a space in the middle of the main room of the hall for dancing, where Swaggy-Swag McSwag will domineer unless someone wants to challenge him to a dance-off.

In one corner of the hall, a small crowd has gathered to watch local businessmen exhibit their latest invention: a roomba with musical capabilities! At the top of the room is a slot to fit portable music players and it has wi-fi capabilities, allowing it to connect to someone's music folder from their computers. Like many roombas of the current time, it displays low level intelligence, able to repeat a couple of basic phrases. It also purrs at some point, which results in the crowd glancing at one another with perplexed expressions.

Unsurprisingly, or perhaps surprisingly to imPorts, is stricter than usual tonight. Before entering the hall, security checks everyone's belongings at the door. Jackets are scanned, purses are checked, sometimes pockets are asked to be emptied. Security will ask this of everyone, so don't pick a fight at the door unless you want to be escorted off the premise! Inside the hall, there's a security guard or two at every doorway and roaming up and down the other hallways.

The event begins at 5PM and ends around midnight, but imPorts are free to linger. De Chima is also known for its rainy weather and today is no exception, unfortunately. It pours outside and will continue even late into the night, so imPorts better take care not to wet their nicely done hair or clothes!

( Please state your character's official status -- REGISTERED or UNSETTLED -- in the subject header of your thread. Please also read and state your character's official status at THIS post, considering not every character will post a starter thread!

Additionally, NPCs will not be NPC'd by a mod, but players are welcome to utilize them as they wish, provided it's within reasonable bounds. (Don't shank anyone!))

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

While Frederick Chilton might have found her familiar because of someone named Bedelia Du Maurier, Will hadn't the first clue in his head who Bedelia Du Maurier was, which meant he had no idea what her face looked like (shocking conclusion). Though, if her face looked like anyone who'd been dragged to this ceremony, said face needed some work. Everyone's face needed some work, from faces that were plain to pleasant to perfect to downright stunning. Why would anyone with perfect eye color, cheek bones, and teeth settle for just those three when, with a little help, they could have perfect eye color, cheek bones, teeth, and eyebrows? This was not the Virginia Will knew, though the Virginia Will knew consisted mostly of Quantico and Wolf Trap with little in between. Considering people in Quantico knew him as the guy who shot a serial killer to death in his own home and then lost his mind for it and everyone in Wolf Trap who really mattered was a dog? Will had never had to put up with anything like this.

No one told him to shave, and certainly didn't use his eyes as a starting point to get to it, only to follow it up with the fact that if he did shave so people noticed his eyes, he needed to work on his eyebrows, and then go straight to injections. Countering with the fact that he might do it if he was a model would never have been met with maybe you could be if you did some work, I could help you get there! He'd never been not-so-subtly trying to escape the clutches of one person only to wind up getting grabbed by the belt loops and pulled back, putting him face-to-face with a woman he'd been passing by, one who sent off zero flickers of anything like recognition.

"Hi."

The absolutely miserable look on his face was in no way directed towards her, meant for whoever behind him was remarking about hips and weight and not needing to eat more or less because of whatever the hell it was they could offer. As much as he didn't like it, he didn't twist to get away or threaten violence, just stood there like someone used to being pat down. Loose, limber, they'd find nothing of interest and let him pass.

To the next one.

"Hope this isn't your first time in Virginia. This isn't. Normal."

Something abnormal happening in Virginia?

Impossible to believe.

"Hello."

Pleasant, wryly sympathetic: there's not much she could say to express sympathy any better than the implicit I have been there and I didn't like it much either — referring, of course, to this new stranger's current predicament. She regards him for a few moments, taking in his glum expression, the set of his shoulders, and she comes to a decision not quite reached at any point before this night. Chalk it up to recognition. She's no idea who this man might be, but she recognises the discomfiture. It reminds her of Mulder just enough that she feels obligated to step in.

"You guys want to give it a rest for once?" she cuts in across murmurings regarding his waist size, voice rising in volume and taking on a tone which suggests that she's used to speaking with authority. It's a law enforcement voice, from volume to modulation to diction, and she slips into it easy as breathing. It is strongly suggested that they leave — and if they don't, she thinks, maybe she'll try flashing her badge and hoping it means anything at all. It does the work of being taken seriously when she can't be at home, but here is apt to be another matter. Still, it could be useful, even if it doesn't actually mean anything anymore.

"I used to live in D.C.," she adds as an aside, giving Will a quick, distracted smile. Yes, she's been here before. No, it wasn't for a moment like this.

Sometimes, to be completely honest, it was stranger.

"Georgetown." In a sudden, oddly wrenching moment she finds herself wondering if her apartment building exists in this world too. She wonders if she could find it, walk up to the door and find out who's living in the space she should by rights occupy. It passes quickly enough, and her brow knits as she leans to look past Will's shoulder at his pursuer.

"Fellas, please! Jesus."

He recognizes what that one word really means and gives her an attempted smile in return for it, but he recognizes the tone she uses better, as easily as he recognizes that he has to keep breathing or he'll pass out. He's used it enough on his own, but he's much more used to letting other people use it for him. Will Graham is not a good face for the FBI (not just because he doesn't shave or inject around his eyebrows), so if he doesn't have to speak first for them, he doesn't. It was always Jack, then Will.

(Someone is helping Will Graham, and he doesn't even know them. Can he stay here?)

It seems to have an impact, brief but real, real enough for him to feel like he's ready to pull his pants back up and put his arms down, but then that Jesus cuts through and has him looking over his shoulder, too. Doctor, intern, whatever he is, he seems to have gotten the hint, but his mouth? It goes to open, and Will's not about to listen to anymore. His hand darts out, grabs a card from the shirt's pocket, and he holds it up.

"I'll call you."

He sure as shit won't, anyone who might catch sight of that smile could read it loud and clear, even if they couldn't hear his voice. Will assumes it has more to do with the fact that another party stepped in than it has to do with him, but when the guy nods and smiles and seeks out another target, he feels relieved and pleased just the same. That is also plastered all over his face when he turns back around, stuffing the card in his front pocket. It will meet a similar fate Freddie Lounds' card met months ago in a world that's managed to catch up to him despite efforts to keep it at bay.

"Lotta important people lived in Georgetown." Important being different from famous. "Francis Scott Key lived there, didn't he? Patriotic place." Smalltalk, historical or otherwise, didn't equate etiquette. So without waiting for a real answer, he sticks his hand out and tries for the best smile he can, which only serves to make it obvious that he isn't a smiling sort of person. "Will Graham. Used to live in Wolf Trap, Virginia, back home."

She might go to the plot her apartment building is at and find it empty. Or a business. He knows how it feels to want to go with everything in him and yet...finding something that's not what it should be, and what should by rights be his, that's. Well, that's not a good thing to have to confront.

"Yeah, well, I had a neighbor I'm pretty sure only left his apartment for the morning paper so maybe Georgetown isn't all it's cracked up to be." Or maybe he was afraid of getting shot. Startlingly many people have died in her apartment. Still, she takes Will's hand, giving it the firm, professional, but almost cursory shake of someone accustomed to giving them on a regular basis. By the look of it she's not a smiling sort of person either, though in the subtle sort of way exemplified by the wry and the world-weary rather than the disingenuous. She looks as though she could smile, under the right circumstances. That these aren't have nothing to do with Will, and that is in its way obvious too.

"Dana Scully." Were this a meeting of professionals, had she anything to prove, she'd offer a title, credentials; a Doctor or a Special Agent and not just the name. Those are roles to fill, roles she's proud of, but she has so little opportunity to be Dana Scully first and foremost that in a casual setting (as far as this can be considered casual at all), she's content to let them drop. He's not standing opposite her to keep her out of anything and she doesn't have to justify her place here.

"I've driven through Wolf Trap, but I don't think I've spent any time there." She pauses, looking faintly embarrassed. "Actually I don't remember a thing about it. Lots of travelling, not much staying still."

She remembers saying as much to Mulder, not that long ago, on one late night in the middle of the Nevada desert, cruising along with the hum of the car all around them and their lives ticking by unlived. What if he'd had the opportunity to stop? To slow down? To have a life? Didn't he want to? Didn't she?

Now that she's been given the opportunity, she's not sure she's ready for it. Or maybe it's just that she'd never have wanted it to happen like this.

Will's handshake is much the same, used to doing it on a regular basis whether he wanted to or not, part of the job. That she's not a smiling sort of person doesn't bother him in the slightest, isn't taken personally, and when he slips his hand into his pocket, his own attempt at one is a little better, less of a grimace, less strained. Had she introduced herself as a doctor, the same would have happened. As Special Agent...?

Better for everyone if specific titles don't come up. Will has not used his since he's been here, since he's earned a bait shop, and has no intentions to get it back or try for anything similar. An opportunity was given, one he was ready for but never went through with, and he's taken it with all the ferocity of a starving lioness making her first kill in weeks. Why not?

"Not really much to remember. Just under ten square miles, got a performing arts park, that's about it." He can pull up other figures, percents, consensus reports, but he doubts that's called for or something anyone really cares about. Especially someone who just drove through. Will knows it because he lives there (lived there, now, in more past tense ways than one), but even the other residents wouldn't care. He shrugs one shoulder and looks past her when he spots another one of those touchy-feely doctors grabbing the wrong person the way he'd been grabbed. "Most people travel through it without ever knowing the name. Probably the same here. Almost the same, didn't have hover cars back where I'm from. They new to you, too?"

It's fishing with different questions, as noninvasive as he can make it. Why outright ask are you new here? like she must have gotten already when he can twist it, can turn the focus off of her completely and can find out more than just if she is or isn't (he's never seen her) without plowing into it like he's never tied a lure before?

And, hey, there's a better smile when he finally looks back. Boy next door, this one. Nothing dangerous here, no need to mind words.

"Oh yeah." A moment of shared sympathy; she's a bit too dry for girl next door, she holds herself with a bit too much confidence, a bit too aggressively, as though unconsciously trying to compensate for something which may no longer be relevant here. It isn't difficult to guess why, of course: she's small, she's female, and she's attractive enough that in the world of firm handshakes she needs more than what she was born with to be taken seriously. The sympathy, though, is genuine.

"And the last time I talked to someone over a live video feed it cost a hundred and fifty dollars an hour." There's a hint of discomfort to that admission. Maybe for most people the communicators aren't something worth commenting on. Maybe most people here are entirely accustomed to that sort of technology being easily accessible, rather than restricted to the handful of people with the resources or the need for them.

Either way, she feels a need to comment. It certainly beats what now in retrospect feels a little like talking into a plastic brick.

Still, her smile to him is almost sharp, perhaps only because of the sharpness of her gaze, which has turned assessing, searching for a reaction to her response. She's not used to trusting people, that much is obvious. Her suspicion (general, unfocused, impersonal) is as genuine as her sympathy was, two sides of herself which despite being paradoxical don't seem to be working at odds with one another. Where Scully is concerned, this is simply conversation. Advance and then retreat for a better vantage. That much they share.

He's lucky—as lucky as anyone can be when it comes to having been pulled into a world of superpowers and the rest of the mess here when they have no experience with it—that he's been here long enough the confession doesn't strike him as abnormal. He's seen plenty of strange things in his own world, it's true, but ever since coming here? It's been amplified in ways that he honestly would not have imagined otherwise, has sometimes made him feel like he was doing a marathon of TV shows or movies that catered to science fiction and fantasy in all its various forms. From kids who apparently had the ability to turn into giants to shield maidens to roommates that could turn intangible to escape his dog to robots that had owned puggles, he's well on his way to a new form of desensitization. The fact that he comes from somewhere with things like Skype, somewhere people can talk on video for free if they want to with others all over the world doesn't mean shit here. This Dana Scully might be from a world similar to his but twenty years in the past, and that isn't surprising anymore. That's actually a bit of a relief.

So is how familiar she is, for better or worse. He's been in law enforcement long enough to have come across the voice, the way she holds herself. For all the discomfort she might be feeling, Will's finding himself silently grateful that he at least ended up running into someone who didn't have him questioning if he had to add another world to the list of "shit I never would have thought possible." So far.

"Sounds like the '90s where I'm from." His free hand scratches the back of his neck, now a little more aware of how much stubble he has going on. She can take what appears to be his own discomfort as something that can be blamed on the situation at hand or a general state of his being, eyes shifting from her to the tables with food and beyond. The smile is gone, though he's not frowning. He is getting back to a more mumble than anything else, but he's loud enough that she can hear it. "Used to be like that. Now we've got it set up where you can talk to anyone anywhere at any time, free of charge depending on how you do it. Do hear plenty of theories that all the computers and TVs with cameras in them are being monitored by the government, though I don't think that's the case. Not jealous of whoever's got that job."

His job might be an easy way to drive people screaming and covered in blood out of their skulls, but he would probably end up losing it quicker if he was forced to sit in a room where people who were absolutely no threat ended up shown all day long, playing dancing games or getting fit or gossiping about a mutual friend who shared details with the wrong person.

"Have you tried the bagels yet?"

Garret Jacob Hobbs flashes behind his eyes, but Will seems to still be there with her, just like any normal, grounded person. So what if those bagels weren't on the menu, and so what if they're full of carbs? Will's the last person to judge someone on what they eat, diet or otherwise.

Scully's eyebrow arches, and for a moment she says nothing. Noticing, helplessly noticing, and it must be obvious on her but she couldn't stop it if she wanted to. "Can't say I have much of an appetite at the moment."

Really, she could probably benefit from a quick and largely guiltless tumble off of the diet wagon -- hers is carefully-monitored but not carefully enough that she doesn't occasionally indulge in what she has caught herself thinking of as self-pity food. Sometimes ice cream in front of the television is a necessity, one to which she has an unalienable right, and sometimes a person has to avoid eye contact and meander in and out of topics of conversation. Everyone has their vices. Guilty pleasures.

"But I can tell you from experience that they're probably only watching if you're up to something interesting." Like that, for instance. A wry little offering, a small portion of the load on her shoulders dropped into the space between them in spite of however ill-advised it might be. She's aware that people don't just offer up a history of having been surveilled -- or performed surveillance -- in conversation with people they've just met. "And that in '99."

It might be easier now, but that doesn't make the average person any less boring. Scully feels for them, and she does her best to protect them, but that doesn't mean she can really empathize anymore, that she doesn't know exactly how little they have to offer anyone who might be inclined to watch. They're not dangerous, is the point, not until somebody riles them up, and there are only a handful of those. Easier to keep tabs on that handful than everyone. And the FBI, well... she spent the better part of a year tracing shipments of fertilizer. Big Brother may be watching, but most of the time the view is shit.

The comment about appetite gets a bitter smile, a loud exhale of air through flared nostrils that takes the place of an actual laugh—he understands the lack of appetite from personal experience. He remembers showing up here, being new, remembers what it's like to know he should eat, but being in such a weird, new place (among other things) made it impossible to think about food much. He could have been offered the most delicious thing in the world for the first several days he was here and it wouldn't have done anything for him. That's not such a difficult thing to empathize with, really.

But then she meanders into still just as familiar territory and his eyebrow just about mimics hers, hands now shoved as deep in his pockets as they can go and a little stiff, his movements uncomfortable as he shifts to stand more next to her than in front of her. He's not unsettled by the idea of someone who has experience with the government talking so openly about it, though it might reek of that before he says anything.

"What sort of experience?" Conspiracy theorist taking advantage of someone who he might be able to get facts out of? Nah. "Was with the FBI just before I got dragged here. Teaching, field work. Tracking serial killers. There's plenty of people here who work in legal fields, you'll find."

Give and take, this for that. What branch, here was his, and the offer of more unsolicited information—you're not the only one, this history isn't going to shock us all, something that might pass for comfort. His voice, lower, a bit gravelly, even, might give away that he, too, has the experience of the view with the FBI being shit.

It's all a bunch of shit.

After a moment's considering pause, Scully takes a breath, and offers a small, apologetic smile. "Special Agent Dana Scully. Violent crimes, domestic terrorism, a stint teaching at Quantico."

Another pause. What she says next maybe isn't likely to matter. Maybe their worlds are different enough that the words will be meaningless to him. If they aren't... well, Scully hadn't chosen the assignment, not to start. Her loyalty to it now demands that she continue. "And seven years assigned to the X-Files."

It's an apt means of testing the waters, anyway. Maybe Spooky Mulder isn't an infamous name to this man, and if it isn't, so much the better. At least she won't have to drag Mulder's reputation around after her here, not unless she chooses to. It'll save her some quantum of defensiveness, save her from having to take up arms to defend him at every turn, in every conversation.

"I assume by your comment earlier that you were after my time." Or he knows her and hasn't let on. Or they come from different places entirely, different branches of the universal timeline. The prospect is dizzying when she bothers to think about it, but doing so does nobody any good at the moment and so she sets it aside. Inquiries for sleepless nights. There are bound to be plenty of those. She has no appetite for that, either. "Are after. Jesus."

It's all a mess. All of it.

He keeps his gaze out—he's listening, doesn't have to look at her head on to make that much evident. It's easier to be thought of as distracted than what could be taken as jealous or burdened (ugh Special Agents, not again) or bordering near either; he's already dealt with having to prove himself back home, prove himself without Special Agent status, doesn't want to go through it here. Then again, if she's not introducing herself with her title, perhaps she's wanting to get her own break from it.

Seven years, that would do the trick nicely enough.

"It had just turned 2014 when I got dragged here." He finally looks back over, focused, nothing flighty, friendlier. Warmer. Will doesn't know anything about the X-Files, doesn't know anything about Spooky Mulder, nothing she's said seems to register in that specific way. "I had a class at Quantico, too. Never heard of the X-Files, must have been an...inner department?"

Special Agent and involved in something most people never hear of (or just isn't a thing in his world, he'll realize just after he asks), but content to introduce herself without a title...that's something new. Different. Good. Refreshing. Something he can relate to that doesn't come through anything but experience, something grounding and...

Likeable, dare it be said.

"Basement would be closer." She pauses and then smiles with a genuine but clearly personal humour, casting her eyes downwards. "Actually, the office is in the basement."

Heating never worked quite right. No sunlight. Pencils stuck in the ceiling tiles; all of it. The entire space reeked of Mulder, not in an olfactory sense but simply insofar as the detritus was his, the dominant mark was his. Scully had never even had a desk. She still doesn't. The X-Files were never hers; she's always just been along for the ride. So why is she still so fond?

"They're cases deemed unsolved or unsolvable. Cases which, according to witness testimony or evidence gathered over the course of a previous investigation involve unexplained phenomena. My partner would call them paranormal; it's his pet project, not mine. Actually, I was assigned to debunk his work." She looks up again, and her smile says quite clearly what she'd opted for instead.

"Seven years." It hadn't worked out. "I'm a scientist. A medical doctor, I write the case reports; they'd cut off our funding within the week if I didn't."

She's still smiling, amused, fond. Not the sort of indulgent fondness a person wears for the insane; she doesn't, regardless of the occasional jest, regard her partner as that. Damaged, yes, and prone to grasping at things to believe in a world which doesn't leave much room for belief. She can't quite fault him, whatever she thinks of his theories, whatever she herself believes. She still bears, after all, her own cross on its thin gold chain about her neck, and sometimes she still talks to God.

"It sounds ridiculous. Most of the time it is ridiculous." Scully pauses again, wrestling with some internal process, before tilting her head to one side and giving a concessional shrug, an argument lost with someone not there. "A lot of the time it's ridiculous. But these cases wouldn't get a second glance if it weren't for him."

And that, somehow, settles it. Somehow, to her, there's something halfway noble in that. Mulder certainly seems to think there is, and she wouldn't have the heart to tell him otherwise even if she could make herself believe it. "I assume your work was much more down-to-earth. Forensics, criminology?"

Again, he might seem unfocused as she speaks, looking back out over the crowd. His head's canted at an angle that makes his ear tuned to her voice and nothing else, and every blink gives him a more far off look. It's not that he's ignoring her; impossible to when every word and breath ends up creating her reality, making the scene possible in his mind.

A basement office. No windows, no fresh air, a door that might get repaired only when it comes off the hinges and someone else pays for it. A department deemed so fruitless it has the threat of cut funding hanging over it for the tiniest errors. A dark room, one where broken air conditioning is met with have you heard of fans? and broken heating is met with what, don't you own a sweater? One that was meant to be done away with by her role in it and instead continued. That must have only served to make it worse. A guy at a desk, lamp in need of replacing but it still worked, pouring over details printed on flimsy cheap paper and talking to himself without care or concern who heard. Finding the lost but lost and in need of his own finding—projection on Will's end? Someone who got second glances, but who didn't necessarily command one on his own.

More projection?

She says paranormal, has him thinking of conspiracies, ghosts, aliens, ghosts being aliens, angels are actually aliens, all of that he hasn't any experience with on his own. But there are killers he's chased that have been like fog, ghosts, smoke, impossible to catch but constantly there. Suffocating. Appearing at the least beneficial of times, there but not, always on the mind but never in sight. Like looking for the vampire in the ballroom when all he had to use was a mirror.

There's a pause before he speaks, the tiny smile actually reaching his eyes this time. She has fondness, perhaps meant to be subtle, but with someone who has Will's problems? It's blaring, it's neon, it's flashing, it's everything that her words were not.

Likeable, that wasn't a stretch.

"Used to do lab work, got my degree in forensic science. Just a—I'm not a doctor." Something he hasn't any problem admitting, not in this situation. It's clear, too, turning to her, opening up with something like a shrug. "Ended up doing profiling, for the most part. Catch the killers by the evidence they leave behind that's not fingerprints, hair, DNA, the physical. Sometimes it's too down to Earth, sometimes it's...like chasing the paranormal in its own right. People intent to make themselves gods. To be superior." And yet. And yet. Smile? No, no. That's gone. He's back at what could easily be pushed into cringe territory. "I'm not a Special Agent Will Graham, though. Sort of along for the ride."

Sort of.

Along for the ride earns a glance, curious but not particularly judgmental. Scully, who has consulted for years, thanks to Mulder, with a set of socially-inept, conspiracy-rag-publishing tech-heads, couldn't possibly take the moral high ground. Instead she nods, a bobbing of the head which suggests not agreement but familiarity, a recognition of ground they've both tread.

"My partner was trained as a profiler." More than trained. Oxford-educated in psychology, by all accounts unusually -- spooky, even -- talented, but she doesn't mention that, nor why he left it all for the X-Files. It isn't just the personal crusade, the hunt for his long lost sister, which is too personal for her to be venting it now, to this relative stranger. It's also that he'd got in too deep, and she's seen him do it. Once, she'd even begun to suspect him of falling so far into the mind of the killer he was profiling as to take up where he'd left off. It had been horrible, watching him disappear into the machine, become something she could no longer recognise, something razor-sharp and bloodhound keen.

"It's difficult work. I just do the autopsies." A smile; she recognises the false modesty and makes no effort to hide it. You kept me honest, made me a whole person. Even if she's not sure how much of that she can believe, it deserves more credit than just do the autopsies suggests. There's more to it than that, though -- a comparison being made. Recognition. If it were her job, maybe she'd only want to be along for the ride too.

"Honestly, sometimes I think catching ghosts might be easier." The smile turns almost wan, and she glances down. To the sharp eye, and she's no doubt that he has one, it probably screams experience, not with ghosts but with precisely the sorts of killers he means. And she does. She does. Her gut still twists when she thinks of Donnie Pfaster and what he did to all those women, what he meant to do to her. She's been attacked in her bathroom by a man intent on ripping her liver out of her torso with his bare hands. Another man, not a killer by intent but certainly hoping for some kind of elevation had kidnapped her from her home, inserting into her memory a months-long gap of which she remembers only flashes she hardly dares to entertain.

Fog. Ghosts. Smoke. There's a security in graveyards and abandoned houses that remains absent in human beings. Nobody ever tried to behead and cook her in a graveyard -- that was a field, in a small town in Arkansas.

Curiosity without judgment is easily digestible; now, at any rate. One day down the road, he might find it nauseating. If she's used to working cases about the paranormal, though, perhaps that has helped with the usual reaction, the one he's more than used to. The one that he might have proved the perfect response when that razor-sharp and bloodhound keen nose made a turn for the worse, doubled back through the trails of killers and started adding to the count.

"Just the autopsies?" She's not the only one hearing modesty (false or otherwise), not the only one who can't turn off something like a smile for it. "You don't catch the ghosts, you're gonna have a lot more autopsies to do. That's not easy work. Especially when the ghosts running around are morbid enough you'd think they'd already been put six feet under."

Baltimore, as it's been called, is a sick place, an underground of septic criminals with methods both brutal and twisted. The kind that people don't like to know exists, the kind that would make dating a problem when it came to talking about work. The kind that husbands and wives don't go home and talk about with each other, with the children. Yeah, we caught him. We caught him, okay? Jesus Christ, what else do you want me to say? We caught him, end of story. Don't ask me again. If heaven and hell are real, if hell is set to overflow with the undead, he doesn't want to be around for it. It already seems like hell's coughed up some of the nastiest scumbags it contains, how much worse could it get? For all that comes across as familiarity, as having worked long enough to see and feel and know, he has to wonder if the paranormal set of crimes is, in fact, worse.

But he won't ask. Doesn't want to try and force those memories out, doesn't want to commiserate, doesn't want to hear it and see it without having once stepped foot into her world. Her Federal Basement of Investigation.

"They hook you up with a job like it here, too?"

Curiosity without judgment finally returned. People can get jobs like their old ones, he knows. They can also end up with ones that reflect more than their career. That get them as people. That look past degrees and titles and badges and dig a little deeper. Hook her up—he can't reely resist.

"Forensic analyst." She presses her lips together in what would be a smile if there were any kind of enthusiasm to it, which would require being enthusiastic about working for her kidnappers, for one, and mustering equally much enthusiasm for the idea of returning to normal (dare she say boring?) work. It's the sort of concrete solidity she'd quietly yearned for for years without quite realising that that yearning had sprung from the part of her inclined to lie to herself about what her work with Mulder meant. (Everything, as it turns out, or nearly everything. She'd chosen to stay which should have been evidence enough. All the times it's nearly killed her, all the times something else nearly has, and still she can't bring herself to stop fighting.)

"No, to be honest, I'm relieved. I feel better about a place when I can see the worst of it; I guess that means I've probably been in this job too long." And there's a real smile, the kind that invites -- almost expects -- sympathy, the kind shared between spirits if not kindred then at least similarly-travelled.

There's a pause, in which she gives him another bout of consideration, reassessing, modifying theories. That's the fed in her, that's the part of her that doesn't trust as easily as she wants to trust, or at least doesn't believe in the idea of face value, a defunct currency to begin with to anyone who's had to deal with the criminal and all the more so to Scully, who has found herself not entirely without her own will buried so deeply in conspiracy and subterfuge that she isn't inclined to trust anyone anymore, sometimes -- though rarely, very rarely -- even Mulder. She's always been proven wrong where he's concerned and over time their regard for one another has become unwavering, but that doesn't help matters. All it does is leave everybody else by the wayside.

"I'm sorry," she says, breaking the long silence. "I'm being defensive." Which he's apt to have noticed, and she knows it, because she knows his kind of watchfulness. "No, it's not easy work. Maybe easier when the victims aren't dissolved into slurry or infested with flukeworms the size of my arm. I'll let you know."

That smile is back, there and gone again. There's something unconsciously Pavlovian in how she uses it. Little bursts of kindness, like the ringing of a bell. It's not intentional. Mostly she's just tired.

"How about you, Mr. Graham? Did they make you the same kind of useful, or did you walk away?" There's nothing in either her voice or her expression that suggests she'd blame him in the slightest if he did. If anything, there's something almost imperceptibly wistful about her.

The invitation, the expectation, isn't difficult to see—and, as if filling out an RSVP form for something he's begrudgingly eager to attend, she gets that smile returned, sympathy oozing. Feeling better about a place when the worst of it is readily available is something she's not alone in, something that this scruffy with-the-FBI-but-not-legitimate-FBI understands in every way shape and form. Behind the scenes work is neither glamorous nor enjoyable (not in normal ways; if it becomes enjoyable for reasons relating to actually liking what can be found, then something's not quite right), a necessary evil to combat a world gone mad that some people are equipped to handle and others...not so much.

He's not someone who gets a lot of apologies. The way his eyebrows knit together at hers says as much, the mention of her being defensive getting a twitch of his lips. He gets that, too. This place is a total upset, and this brand of defensiveness is really quite harmless in the long run—though, honestly, he's used to much worse. He can't bring himself to comment on it, to say she doesn't need to worry, to dismiss it verbally. She gets a half-hearted shrug for it, nothing more. Slurry and infested bodies? He pulls a face, looks off—yeah, he's been there, too. Nothing to do with the paranormal, but he's seen plenty of corpses that had problems people try to imagine as impossible.

"They set me up with a bait shop when I got here. Owning one. I took the keys and everything else needed to run it as a business and haven't looked back once."

He has no issue saying it out loud, that he left behind the halls of the FBI to go play with maggots and worms and rods and reels. He hopes to keep it that way, truly. But sometimes things happen, and if anyone here even clues in on why and how helpful he can be, should the need arise...two jobs isn't such a terrible thing to balance. He's done it before.

"You can leave the job the government gives you if you want." A quiet addition, wry, fingers twitching in his pockets as one hand comes up and rubs at his chin, conversational. Easier to seem less watchful when he appears distracted, scanning the area again. The come and go of her kindness does ring like a bell, clear when it's there and completely silent when it's not. He wonders how many people appreciate that bell when it sounds and how many people are incapable of hearing it. "Find work elsewhere; they won't get upset with you for it."

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