Redemption (1/1) by Jessica (Dreamland525@aol.com, formerly Gemini599@aol.com) Keywords: Mulder/Scully friendship Category: VA Rating: PG Spoilers: Irresistible, Orison Summary: The events of Orison with flashbacks to Irresistible; Scully POV Archive: Anywhere, please give credit where its due Disclaimer: Dana Scully and, unfortunately, Fox Mulder, do not belong to me. Chris Carter gets all the credit for this dynamic duo, and for the X-files, etc. etc. etc. I'm a college student, so it's not like you'll get millions if you decide to sue me. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX In the dictionary, the word 'redemption' is defined as a chance to be redeemed. To extricate oneself from an undesirable state of mind. To right past wrongs. But to me, redemption was a victory over the all-consuming emotion we call fear. Fear of the sort that has been plaguing my soul for over five years now, every time my memory chooses to brush upon my experiences with Donnie Pfaster. To me, redemption was a release. Even it came with a price. I am not a stupid person, nor do I believe myself immortal. When I joined the F.B.I. and became a field agent, I knew perfectly well the risks. The people I would deal with on a regular basis would sometimes not be people at all; they would be monsters. Capable of the kind of cruelty and sickness that the normal person cannot, or will not, comprehend. I knew there was a chance that I'd cross paths with one of these monsters, and I knew, too, that there was a chance I could become a casualty in one of their transgressions. But those are the risks. You understand them, you accept them, and you move on. You do what you're there to do. Your job. I was doing exactly that in January of 1995, another case file with my partner, and it was on that chilling, overcast day five years ago that I first became acquainted with a man by the name of Donnie Pfaster. I would not yet know him personally, but int o my mind he seeped with frightening speed. He was so demented, his motives so twisted and so wrong, I felt repelled by the very thought of him. By the thought that someone like him could actually exist. Did he not realize how truly disturbed he was? That particular case was unsettling from the beginning. I tried to tell myself at first that my unease was due to the disturbing nature of the murders, but gradually I came to terms with the real reason behind my irrational fear: the fact that the victim s held captive before Pfaster saw fit to dispose of them were a haunting reminder of my own abduction not long before. It was just too close for comfort; too much, too soon. But cases have bothered me before. I make an effort not to let it show; I have always projected an image of myself that I am strong, in control, and highly professional. It is my nature, much that I wish it weren't sometimes. So I went about my busines s, assisting with the case when I was needed, trying not to let things get too personal and failing miserably. Perhaps that was why it was so terrifying when Pfaster came after me. It was like my worst nightmare - what I had secretly dreaded; what everybody secretly dreads - was coming true. He was there, and he had taken me, locked me away in a dark closet in a deserted house. And I was so alone, so frighteningly alone with my thoughts; haunted with gruesome images of the man's previous victims, their fingernails ripped away and their hair grotesquely shorn. That would be me. In just a few short hours, that would be me. That was how Mulder would find my corpse. The thought was almost too much to bear. Limping through the darkened, musty old house as I tried to make my escape, hearing Pfaster banging into walls and doors as he struggled to catch me, I had never before felt such terror. In every shadow I saw the horrible, conceptual faces of demons, wat ching me, taunting me. The house itself was an extension of Hell; the man I was running from a monster indeed. What I was facing here was pure, ancient evil, threatening to swallow me up like the black pools of shadows in every darkened hall. It was as if I were facing the darkest sides of all humanity, the sides nobody dares to acknowledge, in the manifestation of a single man and a single purpose. I was going to die. The thought richoched crazily through my head as I heard him pursuing me. It has been said that in moments such as this, of fear so strong we can feel nothing else, we become our ancestors once again, relying only on our instincts for survival. My sense s were sharpened, my heart thudding in panic, adrenaline coursing through my veins. I had two options: I could fight or I could flee. As I tumbled down the stairs I made up my mind that this would not beat me. This evil would not take me down, not without a fight. And so I fought. And I won. I survived. And Donnie Pfaster left my life as quickly as he had come, though for months I was haunted by nightmares of what had transpired in that house. I had never expected to see him again. Then came Reverend Orison and the biggest mistake he could ever have made: letting Pfaster out of the confines of prison, where I'd expected him to rot for the rest of his life, and back into a society that has no real idea of the Evil that lurks beneath the surface of humanity. And I was afraid. From the beginning, when I first heard the name 'Donnie Pfaster' spoken again, it was like my own downward spiral into Hell had begun. Slowly, I was sinking back into memories I'd managed to repress. The details snapped back, one at a time, vivid and terrifying. The monster was loose, and I was the one that had gotten away. If I'd acknowledged this, it would have frightened me more; I bottled it up and struggled to maintain a professional front that I'm sure my partner didn't buy for a moment. He kept shooting little glances at me, which would have been slightly endearing i f it didn't irritate the hell out of me. My nerves were frayed and I was haunted by a constant urge to glance over my shoulder, held only in check by Mulder's safe and assuring presence at my side. When we discovered Reverend Orison's body in the forest, I found that I could not even grieve. I was mentally exhausted; emotionally drained. Mulder and his sixth Scully sense decided that we were going home. Let me just state for the record: bad idea. Despite my fear, it had never really occured to me that Donnie would come after me again. It had been five years, and really, who would expect him to mess with the FBI? Apparently I underestimated him. We all did. He must have been waiting for me in my apartment when I arrived home, drained and confused, wanting only to sleep for the next month or so. He must have been watching me as I slipped into my routine; as I got changed for bed and moved wearily around the room. God, he'd been watching me all along... I realized a split second too late that something was terribly wrong. I was not alone in this room. Although at first all I saw was the flash of an intruder flying at me, I knew instantly. He'd come for me again. My mind had screamed at me as I stumbled backwards. I was just a second too late in sensing the danger, and now I was going to pay for letting down my guard. His scent had assaulted my nostrils; a smell I remembered, from before. He was the foul odor of death and decay, masked only by freshly laundered clothes and a cheap cologne that smelled vaguely like wine; Donnie's obsessive-compulsiveness made him a hyg enic psychopath, if nothing else. It was the smell that brought the onslaught of terror, something else I remembered from before. For a brief moment I froze, every gut instinct telling me to snap out of it, to run, run, run. But it was too late. He loomed over me, dark and huge, eyes glittering with a malevolence that I suddenly could recall. His body pressed me up against the wall, his slender hands snaking around my throat, squeezing. Choking. I couldn't breathe. For a second I thought it w as over, right then, right there. But I hadn't counted on myself. Tramping the fear down, I tapped reserves of strength that I didn't even realize I possessed, and lunged, drawing blood as my nails made contact with the tender skin of his eyelids. He screamed in pain and stumbled backwards, fumbling blindly for the instant that it took for me to gain the upper hand. The next few minutes are hazy and unclear. I remember pain splintering my head as it cracked against a hard surface. I remember dig ging my nails into the flesh of his arms. I remember his hot breath on my face, drops of moisture as he wrestled me to the floor. I remember flailing limbs, gasps of pain and the air being thick with our combined fury. I could not tell you what happene d, how I managed to emerge victorious, but somehow I was pushing a bookshelf over to come crashing down on his body. And then I was running, straight for the phone, dialing - who had I started to dial? Mulder? He came after me, suddenly ten times stronger than before in his rage, yet even so his voice was eerily calm as he pinned me to the floor, arms jerked painfully behind my back. "Who does your nails, girly girl?" Bastard. I was angry too, furious. He was nothing but a sick man with delusions of grandeur in that instant; no longer the Devil as I'd imagined him to be for five years now. Just a sick little man whose game would soon be up. His response to my taunts was to drag me to the closet, bound and gagged, and lock me inside. A minute later I heard the bathwater begin to fill the tub, and terror clenched at my heart once again, sapping away the fury which had been fueling my strength since this nightmare began. The crawl across the floor to my gun was the longest journey of my life. Each second seemed to fill an hour, as I maneuvered my way out of the closet and beneath the bed. 'Don't Look Any Further' pulsed in the background, lending a surreal feel to this nightmarish trek across my bedroom floor. The muscles in my shoulders ached from being bound; my skin raw where the rug had chafed it. Something warm and wet trickled from my nose, something that tasted metallic. Blood. And always, there was the thoug ht that Donnie would walk in and catch me in the act. That I would fail. I would not fail. I could not fail. And then suddenly, everything seemed to happen at once. A door being flung against the wall and a familiar, gruff voice in the hallway alerted me to my partner's arrival, just as I glanced up to see Pfaster standing in the doorway. Just looking at me. Looking at me as if he could not believe that I was reall y there. Mulder was talking, shouting something, and although I could not see him, his presence gave me the strength I needed to force myself the final inches across the floor, and pick up my gun. The hysteria that had been building inside me ceased as I felt the familiar weight of the gun in my hand. I felt strangely calm all of the sudden, as if I were floating outside my body, watching myself from across the room. With an odd sense of detachme nt, I got to my feet and walked out of my bedroom. I was confronted with an odd tableau. Mulder held a gun to Pfaster's head, his mouth moving as he spoke, but I could comprehend no words. My partner noticed me, his gaze slipping past Donnie, who also turned as I appeared in the doorway behind them. I noticed the scratches on his face from where I'd broken the skin with my nails; the dried blood encrusted on his upper lip. In the dim light of the hallway he looked as though he had turned to stone, his face blank and expressionless. I lifted my eyes to his...and in them, I saw a plea. A plea for humanity. Mine. But it was too late. Already too late. In a detached sort of horror, I felt myself tilt the weapon in my hand. I felt myself pull the trigger. Over. And over. And over. And he was falling, the lights shattering above our heads and sprinkling the morbid scene with glass that winked and flashed as it fell over the body that had once been Donnie Pfaster. I thought. I appraised the body on the floor at my feet with morbid fascination, saw the red stain spreading across his chest, seeping through his shirt. I could feel Mulder's eyes on me. Watching me. Could feel the shock radiating off his body as though it were a physical entity in the room beside us. But I did not look away from Pfaster. Not once. Not when Mulder phoned for backup. Not when he stoo d beside me, his hand resting on my shoulder in mute support. Not as the minutes ticked by in silence. I didn't look away until the ambulance arrived, and Donnie was taken away on a stretcher, a sheet covering his blood-spattered body. Because I killed him. I did not notice that Mulder had removed the gun from my hand until I looked down and saw that it was no longer there. I did not notice the tears running down my cheeks until I reached up and felt them. I did not realize my mistake until it was too late. In refusing to yield to Donnie's humanity in those last moments of his life, I had also denied my own. my mind screamed at him. It would have been so easy to feel no remorse if Donnie Pfaster had remained till the end a thing of pure Evil, a demon, as I'd witnessed in him five years before. He had taken many lives, and he had intended on taking mine that very day. He was a monst er. Not worthy of mercy after the horrors he had inflicted on so many. But in the end he'd been a man afraid of death by my hands. A man who would surely pay for his sins in the afterlife, if such a thing truly existed. A man in whom peace had never existed, whose life had been filled with bitterness and regret, hatred and fear. A monster, yes. But very much a human being. And his blood was on my hands. The look in his eyes as I pulled the trigger would stay with me till my dying day. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX Much later, I sat in Mulder's apartment cupping a mug of steaming hot chocolate in my hands. A quilt covered me snugly; it was cold in the apartment, and I could not get rid of the chill. Mulder sat beside me, remote control in hand as he pretended to watch David Letterman. I knew he was pretending because he didn't laugh at any of the jokes, and he stared at the screen as though fascinated during the commercials. And because I know him. He's worried about me, more worried than he'll ever admit. But what he doesn't know - what he needs to know - is that I'm going to be okay. I am okay. I've been doing lots of thinking these past hours. I am calmer than I was, which helps. And I've come to realize something. I may never be able to completely justify the death of Donnie Pfaster within my own mind, no matter if they rule in favor of my actions. But what I can justify is the fear. The fear that spurred me to do what I did. The fear that I was finally able to let go of the moment I pulled the trigger. My redemption comes from that. I have prevailed because I conquered that which tried to tear me down. Pfaster was all of the things I loathed in myself, because he had taken away my strength and made me vulnerable. But I am strong. I am redeemed. And most importantly, I am human. "Scully?" Mulder had abandoned all pretense of watching Letterman, and his troubled hazel eyes were now fixed on me. He paused, choosing his words carefully. "It's over, Scully. All of this... It's all over." I smiled. "It's over," I echoed, nodding my head. He seemed relieved yet tense, his eyes suddenly darkened with gravity. He leaned toward me ever so slightly, so that I would be sure to understand the importance of his next words. "What you did was right," he said forcefully. "Pfaster wasn't human. He deserved it. He was going to kill you, Scully." I nodded. "I know, Mulder." I didn't correct him. I didn't remind him that in spite of everything, Pfaster really was merely a human. He doesn't need to know that. Although maybe in his subconscious, he already does. Maybe that knowledge has to rema in in his subconscious for him to be the successful profiler that he is. Maybe he chooses not to see the human side, and chooses only to see the monster. God knows, I of all people understand how much easier that makes it to justify a death. Mulder dropped his eyes, and took a deep breath before meeting my gaze once more. "I would have done the same thing," he confessed quietly. "If you hadn't...or if he'd hurt you...I would have done the same thing. Make no mistake." I reached over and covered his hand with my own, and squeezed it reassuringly. "Be glad you didn't, Mulder," I murmured. "Be glad you weren't the one." In his eyes, I can see that he understands.