how long 'til we eat our fear, and how long 'til we move like deer?

[starbuckaroobanzai]

WHO: Dana Scully, Will Graham
WHERE: The great outdoors.
WHEN: March 10th.
WHAT: Getting out. Shooting the shit. Living life, more or less.
WARNINGS: Mentions/descriptions of violence, whatever else you'd expect from Mrs. Spooky and Cannibal Jr.

[There is a growing cruelty in the strange normalcy of this place, of the routine into which Scully has settled. She works, as ever, with the dead, and sees more of (or perhaps just more in) them than the living. She is surrounded by endings, so much finality, a constant reminder of her own unfragile fragility, of other endings even less kind. Getting out and seeing life came to seem important, and she doubted she was the only one who felt that way. In fact, if anyone could understand, if anyone was apt to share her sentiment, it was Will Graham.

That's not the sole reason she finds herself waiting for him here, on the opening of a trailhead, waiting for him to join her. That would be cruel, to use him to keep her own demons at bay, to have someone with whom to sympathize. The truth is that she does genuinely like him, that she wishes him well, wants to help in the only way she can think to do so: by being present. By dragging him out of his habitual world and into one more pleasant. Someplace living. Someplace that didn't care about them one way or another. Nature is kind and cruel in equal measure, and not in the same way people are. Not in the same way memory is. She hasn't bought that what she told him in the hospital was in any way the full story, but she hasn't pushed him, either, as she wouldn't appreciate being pushed.

This is an alternative. Sunlight on one's shoulders isn't a cure-all, the smell of damp earth won't banish trauma, but there is a quiet nostalgia that perhaps they both share. She thinks of shooting snakes in the woods behind her family home, back on the base. She thinks of her brothers, her parents, her sister -- some left, some gone. That they're all inaccessible to her now for the moment pales next to the fact that she had them.

There are other memories too. Walking paths not unlike this one with Mulder, in search of the inexplicable. Maybe she'd like to rediscover some of that, too, if just in flashes of memory. Some of it is worth sharing, and if there's value to Will in that, too, so much the better. Either way, it'll be good to get out with a friend.]

Comments

[infomodder]

[Sunlight on one's shoulders coupled with the smell of damp earth isn't a cure-all or able to fully banish trauma, it's true, but Will's never found anything quite as peaceful as the outdoors, well, indoors. And even then, there have been times, there have been killers and cases, who've done well at tainting the near-holiness of nature. But he's been around long enough to have some coping mechanisms in place, to know where to lay blame, can spot wild mushrooms and continue on the path, doesn't have to backtrack just because of that one case.

Even if she'd called him to keep her own demons at bay, Will wouldn't have found that such an awful thing. Because here and now, with the murder of Freddie Lounds that will have to end up public and the death of Abel Gideon that doesn't need to go the same way, Will's battling if he should mention work at all. He'll soon be back in the field, so to speak, and Dana Scully has already gone back to what she knows. If she's being truthful, at any rate. Should he ask for names, contacts, people he should try to connect with, anyone she might suggest avoiding? Should he risk tainting this day out with those reminders, should he just get himself back in some semblance of the law, risk running into her one day while on duty, hope she knew he hadn't meant anything negative by not giving her a head's up about it?

He's in the usual plaid shirt, jeans a little threadbare but what fits when one's dealing with the great outdoors. No dog follows, except for a few hairs she might find in the fabric rolled up to his elbows. Though the usual thin, grim line of his lips is nowhere to be seen when he spots her, replaced by a smile one would use with, yes, a friend.

A friend who is absolutely not Bedelia Du Maurier.]

Nice out, isn't it? [Delivered warmer than he would with a stranger, undeniably. Strangers asking about the weather probably wouldn't get this close, either—not that he's invading her space, wouldn't appreciate it being done to him, but there is an impossible to miss receptiveness going on.] Glad you invited me.

[Glad to see you.]

[starbuckaroobanzai]

Beautiful.

[Will's smile is matched, echoed with a genuine warmth that isn't just sunshine and fresh air -- though they certainly don't hurt her mood. That they don't seem to be hurting his any is better. The reassurance that she's doing well for all involved is appreciated.]

I'm glad you came.

[She adjusts her pack on her shoulders and gives a nod down the path. Shall we?]

I have to admit, it's been a little while since I've done the nature walk thing for its own sake.

[Whether that's so forgive me if I'm a little jumpy or forgive me if I'm a little overeager she hasn't quite decided yet. Maybe it'll be neither, but then again you can only run across so much trouble out in the woods without associating the two together. That's probably half of why she wants to be here, which is something about herself she's not ready to start examining just yet. The explanations are probably simple enough, but maybe it's best she saves the dissection of her nostalgia for another time. She doesn't, for example, get the impression that Will Graham wants to go home as badly as she does.]

[infomodder]

[We shall.

Will might put up a nice front, when it seems to fit, that he's undeniably terrible with people, but he picks up on that cue without any difficulty and follows right with it. Going with the flow as she presents it, hands sliding into his pockets as he walks alongside her. His body language is decidedly open, turned into her instead of completely straight ahead or shifting away like he only came to be polite. She can get reassurance from just taking a look at him, how he responds to her. How he lets out a huff in place of a laugh at her admission, his mouth far away from the thin, grim line it's so often set in when dealing with people.]

You picked a good day to change that. [Whether she ends up jump or overeager, it's all fine. Forgivable. No problems with either, not to Will Graham.] Sort of feel like we should see people out planting trees. [So it'll be fine and lovely and nothing will go horribly wrong, right? Right? Rather than kick or crunch the pile of leaves in front of him, he opts to simply step over it. Nature is better than people, protect at all costs.] Watch it start storming now that we've said all this.

[Better than the, perhaps, natural progression to, How've you been?]

[starbuckaroobanzai]

Oh, that's to be expected.

[She spares him a glance, looking away from the trail for just long enough to express a quiet fondness, a smile playing about the corners of her mouth. Part of it is gratitude, but that's always the case with fondness, isn't it? One is grateful for company one enjoys, regardless of what other weights have been tied to that, what other psychic anchors bind fondness to trauma. Fondness is buoyant, it lightens the load, but that doesn't mean it isn't valuable in and of itself -- just more so, perhaps, to them. What Will carries on his shoulders Scully can only guess at, and what she carries is perhaps best not shared. There's just too much. Some of it can be made light of, though, and in that can help carry them along the path they walk.]

It still can't be worse than the last time I got lost in Apalachicola. Have you ever tried lighting a fire with gunpowder and a couple of rocks?

[A valuable lesson learned, there: don't bundle all the survival gear onto one person, if that person is apt to get dragged off and possibly eaten. Eggs in different baskets. She carries a flint now. It isn't just safety: the whole affair, beyond being possibly deadly, was embarrassing.]

[infomodder]

[His face twists, makes it clear he's trying to imagine lighting a fire with gunpowder and a couple of rocks. Even though she can't technically be inside his head (as far as he knows), it's not at all difficult to figure out he's imagining that scenario going horribly, horribly wrong. The angry screaming that comes after it going horribly, horribly wrong. An entire movie scene is playing out behind his eyes, and Will, sponge that he is and feeling the same fondness, doesn't bother to try hiding it.

The image of Dana Scully with soot on her face and her hair sticking straight up like some cartoon who got too close to the ACME bomb, however, is one he's quite glad to keep to himself forever.]

I can honestly say I've never tired that particular mix to start a fire, no. [And his tone injects the same emotion his face displayed earlier: ouch. But he has to ask, voice lowering as though he's doesn't want the world at large to hear this nugget of well-kept insight, hidden from the masses.] Did it work out?

[All people are apt to be dragged off and eaten, because everyone has the capability of being mildly rude in the presence of Hannibal Lecter.]

[starbuckaroobanzai]

Not exactly, no. I was able to get the gunpowder lit, but the point is that it's quick-burning. It was a long shot.

[A very long shot.]

I didn't have anything else and my partner was in shock, seemed worth a try.

[She's not going to mention how, in absence of a fire, they'd huddled up against the cold, or how he'd make her sing so he'd know she was awake and on watch against whatever it was that had dragged their guides off into the brush. None of it was glamorous, but that was truly unbearable. She can't carry a tune to save her life.]

We got out okay anyway, but that was partly luck. Usually is I guess.

[Which, given his field, he probably understands. It holds true in more than just her own particular field of inquiry. Nobody can predict everything. After a point, you either get lucky or you don't, no matter how good you are, no matter how smart or sharp or accomplished. That's why they're out here: nature is the same, it just doesn't pretend otherwise.]

Even so I'm guessing you probably have more experience with this sort of thing than I do.

[infomodder]

[Get lucky or get dead, yeah, Will knows that one. He wrinkles his nose at that more than the idea a partner in shock, though he does, at least, manage a sympathetic wince. He assumes this is the same partner she's mentioned before, and it never took a genius, in Will's mind, to come to the conclusion that Dana Scully had an enormous well of fondness for him. He might be a faceless name to Will, to the rest of the crowd here, but it's the least he can do to not treat him as one, in her presence.

She probably sings much better than Will; perhaps better not to test that one.]

Had a lot of nature around my house, back in Wolf Trap. Nice stretch of woods behind it...little different than having to fend for yourself, but I spent enough time out there, definitely. [Nature is preferable. It doesn't lie, not the same way people do. A venomous snake does not put on the skin of a bunny rabbit and go undetected, a poisonous berry will always be poisonous.] Easier to just go inside if it gets too hot or cold that way.

[Yes, good job, Will. She couldn't get there on her own.]

[starbuckaroobanzai]

Not a whole lot of nature in Georgetown.

[Maybe after some of her experiences with nature that's a good thing. Then again, she is out here, very much of her own volition, and happily so at that. Probably the most happily she's been anything in a while now, which given her growing acceptance of the way things are now is saying more than it would have been a few months ago.]

But I did grow up on a small handful of military bases. When I was... I suppose I must've been seven or eight, I remember I got a BB gun for my birthday. My brothers taught me how to shoot out there.

[There's only the vaguest hint of the wistful nostalgia that grips her at the sudden unearthing of that memory. They'd killed a snake, thinking it good fun, and after it had been finished she'd been filled with a profound remorse, held the lifeless thing in her hands and wept over it. Bill and Charlie hadn't understood, and maybe that was the start of it, the moment she'd started to drift away from them both. Well, she'd never been particularly adept at handling death. No, not death. Her own she'd faced with anger but she'd faced it head-on and knowing. It's loss, irrevocable loss, that she has difficulty navigating.]

We used to play out there, but there's not much room to wander on a military base.

[Not without incurring trouble of all sorts, anyway, and for all her rebelliousness she'd never been keen on that.]

Never really thought I was missing anything, but I'm beginning to think I should've gone camping more often when I had the chance.

[A pause.]

And not in Apalachicola.