Part II - The Devil's Instant NOTE: This chapter contains aspects of what I believe are Mulder and Scully's views on God and religion during the episode "Orison." They are in no way intended reflect my own beliefs or those of anyone but the characters expressing them. ~*~ Journal of Dana Scully March 11th, 2000 I want so badly to believe that everything happens for a reason, that my inability to conceive children was meant to be, but it is difficult when my prayers are rewarded only with more devastation. My greatest fear now is of losing my faith, of losing my belief in a God who would allow my hopes to be destroyed seemingly without reason. There are things I have seen that have forced me to question my faith, in God and in all the things I was taught to believe. But in the end I have always returned to the place from which I started. I have always regained my faith because God has continued to give me hope, a reason to believe. Now, however, I cannot fathom His reasons for such loss, and I can only pray that He will send me some kind of sign. If He has His reasons they are now kept secret, leaving me in the dark. And if my steps are hesitant now, it is because this darkness obscures my path, weakens my footing. If anything, today's events have left me more wary than ever. After a bizarre power surge that woke me early this morning, I got a call from Mulder telling me that Donnie Phaster had escaped from prison. I had hoped that today I could begin to put the past behind me, to come to terms with the fact that the future I had always assumed I would have will never come to be. I had not yet allowed myself to accept this loss, but I had hoped to leave it and the part of me that wished for a family behind, in the past with all my other losses. Ironically, it was the past that sought me out instead. Maybe if it had been another case that had drawn our attention I would have been glad for the distraction. As it is, I am afraid of what searching for Phaster again will do to me. Five years ago when we investigated his crimes I was struck with a vulnerability so utterly complete that I nearly gave up the search. I was shocked then by my own fears and disappointed in myself for not having the strength to face the evil head on. But perhaps my weakness was a warning, a sign from God about what was to come. Looking back, I can't help but wonder how different things may have turned out if I had heeded that warning. Now I find myself constantly searching for more symbols along the path, for another sign. Donnie Phaster is a man who is capable of more evil than I ever would have thought possible, a man who kidnapped me and would have killed me if it had not been for Mulder's profiling skills. I could not turn down the chance to catch him, no matter how strong the ache of remembering or how overwhelming the fear. My sense of vengeance has grown strong in these past years. Mulder, of course, asked me to stay home. Maybe I should have, I don't know. But I am determined not to give in to weakness in front of him now, not after his puzzling distance over the past week, not so soon after what has happened. I could never sit alone in my apartment, knowing that Mulder was out there doing a job I should have been a part of, that Donnie Phaster, my own captor, was free and capable of murder. The decision to go was made for me by my own conscience. I hope that I will be able to draw now on Mulder's strength as I have so often done before but I fear that he has closed off that strength to me, perhaps for the very same reasons the he has not been able to look me in the eye for more than three days. Still, I cannot help but hope that getting through this case together will bring things back to the way they were. He is asleep now, two rows ahead of me on the plane. Booking seats so late made it impossible to find them together; we haven't even had a chance in all of this to talk about the case, much less the distance that has grown between us. He handed me the file as we boarded the plane, but I haven't opened it yet. I haven't been able to make myself. Flying has always made me so nervous, anxious, jittery; yet Mulder sleeps easily. I used to think it was just another of his idiosyncrasies, a man with chronic insomnia drifting off so quickly while thirty-five thousand feet above the ground. But I think that maybe I understand now. A man so far from the rest of the world cannot possibly be expected to save it. If the weight of the world is resting on the shoulders of my partner, perhaps it is lifted for the few hours that our lives are in the hands of strangers. If this is the case, I am glad for it; Mulder deserves all the peace he can find. But if the troubles of the world are Mulder's burden, then my own sense of failure is mine, sparked by my inability to conceive the child I have always wanted and ignited by the coldness and distance of my own partner. ~*~ Illinois was cold, dreary, and wet when the plane landed. As the day progressed, things didn't get much better-- dirty prison, angry guards, disgruntled inmates, and no leads whatsoever. As Mulder and Scully walked through the halls of the building from which Phaster escaped, one of the prisoners made a lewd comment in Scully's direction and it took every ounce of control Mulder had in his body not to grab the man and punch him. Scully had seen the tenseness in her partner's jaw, the curled fingers of his fist, but had stayed blessedly silent. A few minutes later, Mulder turned to see that she was no longer at his side. He was convinced, for just a few seconds, that the man who had made the comment had somehow gotten a hold of her and was doing the unmentionable things of which he had spoken. His heart leapt into his throat and the cold wash of adrenaline poured through him before he spotted her standing in the chapel and looking perplexed. He had tried one last time, standing there in a room a thousand miles too late, to get her to relent and refuse this case. He had seen on her face how difficult it was for her to come out here, to even step onto the plane, but of course she wouldn't give in, wouldn't give up the chase, no matter what her emotional state. His attempt had been a half-hearted one, but he needed to plead with her just one last time for his conscience's sake. In a different hallway, a few hours later, Mulder grabbed a hold of Scully's arm and dragged her out into the hallway to explain to explain his theory of Phaster's escape. As he spoke about group hypnosis, raising and lowering his hand to demonstrate, he watched Scully's face closely, hoping for some kind of clue about where her mind was. She smiled a little, to Mulder's great delight, and gave him that comforting look that told him she thought he was crazy. There was potential in that smile. Scully continued to argue with him, and Mulder found his hopes climbing. If they could argue than maybe everything wasn't as far from normal as he had thought. Miracles could happen. Hallelujah, amen. Then suddenly, Scully's face fell, became a mask of concentration, and she turned her gaze to the ceiling behind her. Mulder followed her eyes with his own to a vent through which a faint sound was drifting. It was the sound that seemed to have his partner riveted. "Scully, what ...?" Mulder looked between Scully and the vent. "That song. Can you hear that?" He followed her over to where they could hear better. Mulder, frustrated at having his rhythm thrown off, just shrugged. "Barely." "I haven't heard that song since high school. That's the second time I've heard it in the last hour." Mulder plastered a smile on his face that he didn't quite feel. "Well, I think if it was a make out song I think it'd be ruined forever now, huh?" Scully sighed as the song went over and another came through the vent. She shook her head, taking a step back from Mulder. For a few moments it had seemed that things were falling back into place, but Mulder was beginning to fear that the awful week they had been through would diminish Scully's resolve, leaving her vulnerable, open to suggestion, and searching for meaning in all the wrong places. Mostly, he was afraid that she would be hurt in her pointless search. He wasn't prepared to let her seek something else and come up empty-handed. "Come on, Scully," he said. "Let's get out of here." He placed a hand on her back, leading her down the hallway to the exit. She nodded and moved with him, but her mind was still far away. ~*~ The pair of F.B.I. agents returned to the motel at around eight-thirty, tired and weary from a long day of unpleasant investigation, to their cold side-by- side motel rooms. Not a single clue as to the whereabouts of either Donald Addie Phaster or anyone who may have been involved in his escape had been uncovered; they had been thanked for their input and told that they weren't needed any more today. Mulder, who was drained to the point where every now and then his vision blurred and his surroundings swam before him in a hazy fog, slipped into his pajama bottoms and had every intention of sliding into the lumpy motel bed. Instead, for reasons he could not fathom, he knocked lightly on Scully's connecting door before pushing it open and stepping through. "Scully?" His voice was tentative, quiet. His partner lay on her side on the bed, atop the covers, still fully clothed and facing away from him. "You awake?" he asked. At his question, the small body on the bed heaved a sigh and rolled to face him. "Yeah." Mulder approached the bed gingerly, hesitating before he finally lowered himself to sit beside her. Her eyes tracked his movements with a lazy half-interest, but she didn't move. She looked disheveled; her mascara had smeared and her hair declared mutiny on its normally careful and precise style. Scully couldn't have cared less. At that moment, she felt more numb and tired than she had in two years. She wanted nothing more than to curl up and go to sleep, but from the look on Mulder's face, that wasn't going to happen just yet. He looked like he wanted to talk. Impeccable timing, as always, Mulder. "How are you feeling?" Anger and frustration surged in Scully's blood at his words, but she refused to give in to the temptation to put her feet up against his side and shove him off her bed. She kept her gaze icily calm. "I'm fine." Mulder's own brand of anger and frustration rose within him. "Scully-" "What?" She cut him off. The look in her eyes dared him to challenge her statement. Clenching his jaw and drawing a deep breath, Mulder forced the anger away. He reached a hand out for hers, but she drew it back sharply. Stung, he let his hand drop back into his lap. "I only wanted to make sure you were all right." Scully watched him carefully, saw the sincerity in his eyes, but didn't quite believe it. "Why now?" she asked him. "Why bring this up now, after barely speaking to me for a whole week? Why, when I'm so tired I can't see straight and we're a thousand miles from home, do you suddenly feel the need to talk?" She had pulled herself up into a sitting position, placed her back against the headboard, and drawn her knees up to her chest. She was looking at him from behind a mask of wariness and exhaustion. Mulder clenched his jaw and drew his fingers into a ball at his side. "For a number of reasons actually, but most importantly, at this specific moment, because we both have just undertaken a case that neither of us is exactly emotionally detached from. And at a time when..." He trailed off, unable to finish the statement. Scully's eyes narrowed in rage as she realized what he was implying. "Professional judgment? Is that what this is about?" Mulder, who had been trying to appeal to the rational side of his partner, discovered only too late that he had made a terrible mistake. "Partially," he admitted, "but obviously it's more than that." There was a moment of silence while Scully's remote fears escalated into horror as a grim realization settled over her. He thinks I'm too weak to take this case, she thought. Too weak to take *any* case. It was as if he had slapped her in the face, told her she was unworthy of being his partner, and though she couldn't have been more wrong in her thoughts, the certainty was strong within her and her accusations were equally sure. "Is that why you had me stuck behind a desk all week?" Her voice was soft as she began, almost startled, but as her words continued, they gained strength. "Were you afraid that I'd do something stupid in my overly emotional, weakened state? That I'd get us killed? Or worse?" "No!" Mulder tried to protest further, but Scully had already hurled herself up from the bed and was pacing back in front of him like a lion in a cage. He could almost see the fury coming off her in waves and he feared that she may just bite. For the moment at least, her shock and horror had been lost down the cold path of anger. "Mulder, I realize that sometimes the lines may blur, but I expect you to respect the difference between my personal life and my professional life. They are not the same. Just because you may know something about one, you do not suddenly have the right to make decisions for me about the other." Calm words at the center of a raging sea. Mulder pressed on just the same. "Scully, don't you think this case is a little bit different? This man tried to *kill* you!" "I know that! But it's not affecting the way I am approaching this case. It's not going to change how I work. I'm treating this investigation the same way I would treat any other." She crossed her arms over her chest in a defensive posture that spoke of closure on the subject, but her mind knew differently. The song, it whispered. What about the song? But she wouldn't let herself think about the song tonight, wouldn't think of it until she had to. Tomorrow, when she would hear it again, it would strike a chord of remembrance in her so loud she would startle and gasp at the pain of memory. Then she would have to think of it, but tonight, she would not allow it to gain the weight of significance. Mulder was shaking his head in defeat, though he didn't fully believe what she had said. "Okay," he conceded. "Okay." With a sigh, he stood up from the bed and faced his partner who watched him with her arms still crossed over her chest. Mulder reached out and placed a hand against her cheek, looking at her and hoping to convey all the things he hadn't been able to say. "Goodnight, Scully," he murmured, not sure if she had caught any of what his eyes were trying to tell her. Silently, he went back into his own room and pushed his connecting door most of the way closed. Alone again in her room, Scully began to cry. She stripped her clothes as she walked into the bathroom, naked by the time she stepped into the shower, though if the distance had been shorter she may have climbed in still partially clothed. She felt dirty suddenly, ashamed for not realizing sooner what Mulder had been thinking. No wonder he had ignored her all week-- he was too embarrassed to tell her he didn't think she was fit for duty. She let her silent tears mix with the spray of the water as she scrubbed at her skin with the small bar of soap. She was barely aware of her own tears, lost in her own self-loathing. Later, after she had crawled from the steaming bathroom into her bed, stopping only to pull a shirt over her head and kick her connecting door shut, she would blame the tears on exhaustion, the argument on lack of food, and the unbearable sense of weakness on nothing but stress. But as she stood under the hot water that nearly scalded her skin, she let her emotions consume her. ~*~ Mulder flopped onto his bed and rubbed his hands over his face. He wanted very badly to tell Scully what he had been feeling, why he had been so distant, but now was not the time, and here was certainly not the place. A part of him was angry at her for closing herself off so completely, though he supposed it was his own fault. He found it hard to blame her for emotional distance when he was guilty of the same thing. What was happening to them, he wondered. He had never felt so lost in a conversation with her, so unsure of where he stood and what she was thinking. The remote control for the television was sitting on the night table beside the bed. Mulder picked it up and turned on the TV, leaving it muted as he listened to the sound of the shower running in the room next to his. Fifteen minutes later, he jumped as her connecting door slammed shut. He tried to relax in the glow of the television as he was so used to doing and waited for sleep to take him away from his own mind but it was a long time before the sound of the slamming door stopped echoing in his mind. ~*~ March 12th, 2000 Early the next morning, Mulder woke from a fitful sleep to the sound of his phone ringing. With a grunt, he rolled over and fished it out of his jacket pocket, pressing the 'talk' button as he raised it to his ear. "Mulder," he mumbled, still not out of his sleep-fog. A tinny voice on the other side of the line informed him that there had been some kind of incident at a café nearly fifty miles away. "What kind of incident?" Mulder demanded. "Someone says they've spotted Phaster. The rest isn't clear, but there are at least two injured." "Where?" Mulder listened as the man gave him directions, scribbling them onto the notepad he kept by the bed. "We'll be there as soon as we can." With that, he clicked off his phone and tossed it back onto the pile of clothes that was growing on the floor. He sat there on the bed in his pajama bottoms, scratching the top of his head and staring at the paper he'd just filled with arrows and road names before he finally got up to wake Scully. He pressed his ear to the connecting door, listening for signs that she was awake, but heard nothing. "Scully?" Silence. "Hey, Scully!" Finally, he heard a muffled rustling of sheets as she climbed out of bed. Mulder stepped back from the door. When it opened, his partner stood before him in only a T-Shirt and looking like she hadn't slept a wink. He just stared for a moment before his brain caught up with his eyes and he was able to speak. "There was an incident at a diner not too far from here. Phaster was there." "Did they catch him?" Mulder shook his head that they hadn't and Scully just nodded. "I'll get dressed." She took the handle of her connecting door and moved to close it. Mulder sighed and stepped back again, turning to do the same. They drove to the diner without a word passing between them. ~*~ Mulder and Scully left drove forty minutes to spend thirty seconds in a diner where they learned virtually nothing. At least they had located the prison chaplain, though they weren't sure how much help he could be to them. He'd been hit by a car under mysterious circumstances and taken to a local hospital, and as was consistent with their luck, witnesses didn't seem to be able to recall much else. Now, after another silent trip in the car with Mulder, Scully stood at the foot of the Reverend Orison's bed, watching him as he struggled to sit up. He eyed her with a peculiar gaze and she wished briefly that Mulder could be in the room with her-- he was much better at reading people than she was. When the man in the bed didn't speak, Scully picked up his chart and began flipping through it, remarking on how lucky he was to be alive. "Who are you?" he finally asked, his voice gravelly. "Special Agent Dana Scully." He regarded her for a moment before speaking. "Believe in the Lord, Agent Scully. He believes in you." "That's nice." She didn't give him a chance to continue. "But my partner and I are more concerned with several disappearances from maximum security facilities that seem to involve you." "Don't be concerned. God has them," he answered cryptically. "What do you mean?" When he didn't answer, she pressed on. "Reverend?" "You're a believer aren't you?" "This has nothing to do with me, sir." "It has everything to do with you. You have faith. Have had faith. You hear him calling you, but you're unsure what to do." Scully heaved a sigh as he spoke, pulling her cross necklace out from her chest and waving it at him. "It's not exactly a long shot, sir." "You stand as you do now, neither here nor there: longing, but afraid. Waiting for a sign. But the signs are everywhere." For the first time, his words struck a chord with her, held a truth that she recognized but wouldn't dare respond to. Instead, she tried again to bring the conversation back to the investigation. "What happened to the inmates sir?" Orison ignored her. "Everything has a reason, Scout. Everything on God's earth. Every moment of every day, the devil waits for but an instant. As it is, it has always been. The devil's instant is our eternity." Scully's eyes widened at his words and her heart thundered away impossibly fast in her chest. Everything happens for a reason. Scout. Scout. He called her Scout like Mister Ross. He called her Scout like Mister Ross and Mister Ross is dead and when he died, she was... God. She had been listening to that song. ("Dana..." Her mother's voice-- strange, sympathetic, soothing. Something was wrong. "Dana, I just got a call from Mrs. Andrews from church..." "Mr. Ross has been killed..." Oh God. Murdered. Her Sunday-School teacher was killed while he was watering his garden in front of his house. ) Her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of the door opening. Startled, she turned to look and saw Mulder enter without giving her a second glance. He walked directly over to the man in the bed and began speaking. "The good reverend. How do you do? Or maybe I should say, 'how do you do it?'" "His is the word. I am but the messenger who delivers it." "Well this delivery arrived a little late. A little late and a little cold, as a matter of fact. I thought you'd want to see it." Mulder dropped a photograph into the man's hands. In it, a woman slouched in a bathtub full of blood, her head drooped to the side, face obscured by what remained of her hair. Her mangled hand rested limply across the top of the tub, covered in blood, which dripped down its side in red smears and pooled on the light-blue tile of the floor. Orison looked away from the picture in disgust, handing it back to Mulder. "What is this?" he asked. "Blood of the lamb, Reverend. The handiwork of Mr. Donnie Phaster. A young girl he picked up at the bus stop." The reverend winced, looked away from the photograph. "Oh Lord." "Where is he, Reverend?" There was a long pause before the man answered. "He took my car. She wasn't supposed to die." "No, Donnie was supposed to die. You were supposed to kill him. That's why you freed him. God knows you're capable of it." For the first time since he entered the room, Mulder spared half a glance in Scully's direction. She was barely paying attention, her eyes unfocused. "The Reverend Orison is really Robert Gailin Orison, convicted in 1959 of first degree murder, served 22 years in Soledad." "God spoke to me. He told me to look after Donnie." The voice from the bed sounded distant in Scully's ears, as if it had drifted in from another room. "When god spoke to you, reverend, did he happen to mention where Donnie was headed?" Orison just looked stupefied in his hospital bed, his expression neutral, his shoulders slumped. Mulder clenched his jaw as he snatched up the photos and moved quickly to the door. For a half second Scully couldn't make herself move, couldn't drag her feet from their position on the floor. She stood frozen in place as she heard Mulder's footsteps move to the door and pull it open. Finally something inside her snapped as she realized that Mulder was already out the door, and she charged after him, catching him as he started down the hallway. "Where are you going, Mulder?" He turned to face her, unsurprised, as if he had rehearsed the movement, been expecting her. "To prove that man's a liar." Scully's forehead wrinkled. "How do you prove that somebody isn't being directed by God?" Mulder raised his eyebrow without enthusiasm. When he didn't reply, Scully pressed on. "You don't believe that it happens?" "God is a spectator, Scully, he just reads the box scores." "I don't believe that." Something shifted in his disposition, hardened, as anger gripped him. "You think God directs that man? You think he directs him to kill?" "Donnie Phaster isn't dead and we don't know that the other inmates who escaped are either." "So you think what? That he lets the prisoners out to kill?" "No. But I believe the reverend believes what he's saying, that it's God working through him." "Yeah, well plenty of nutbags do." Mulder looked at his partner for a moment, felt his anger at her persistent belief swell. "Has he ever spoken to you?" Scully was silent for a few seconds as she took in what he had asked her. "I'm trying not to take offense." Instead of backing off, Mulder drove the wedge in further. "What did he say?" Scully took a deep breath to calm herself. She wouldn't fight back, wouldn't play that game right now. "Mulder I have heard that song three times now. That may not mean anything to you, but it means something to me." "What does it mean?" "I never thought about it before. It never meant anything to me until yesterday when it made me remember something." "What?" Finally, he seemed to be paying attention to her. "When I was thirteen my father was stationed in San Diego. I was listening to the radio, to that song, when my mother came in and told me that my Sunday School teacher had been killed. He'd been murdered in his front yard. And that's the first time that I ever felt there was real evil in the world..." She stopped, looked at her partner to gauge his reaction. "Mulder, Reverend Orison called me 'Scout.' That's the same name that my Sunday School teacher called me. Donnnie Phaster escaped from prison at 6:06 a.m., that's *exactly* the same time that I woke up yesterday morning when my power went out." Mulder seemed to consider her words carefully before he spoke, as if whatever anger had come over him had subsided for the time being. "So what do you think that god is telling you?" Scully fumbled, shrugged, but was unable to come up with an answer. Mulder nodded, understanding. "Come with me Scout. I'll show you how the reverend talks to God." ~*~ End part 2a ~*~