Notes: This one is a departure for me; my first attempt at writing slashfic. If you
don't like it, please be gentle; my ego is fragile and bruises easily. <g> It's
dedicated to my lovely friends on the Scullyslash and BsfS lists. Enjoy the ride!

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Nightside
by Lynn Gregg

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I knew of Dana Scully by reputation, of course; had seen her around the
Hoover Building and at Quantico on occasion, but we'd never been formally
introduced or anything like that. *That* Dana Scully was highly regarded as a
scientist, a thorough and capable investigator, a consummate if rather cold
professional.

I also knew of her through her association with her current partner, the
legendary Fox "Spooky" Mulder. I hadn't been in Behavioral Sciences five
minutes before the Legends of Spooky were being related to me in all their lurid
tabloid glory. The guy sounded like a freak--brilliant, yes, but definitely out there.
His credibility wasn't all it could've been, and Dana Scully's reputation had taken
on some tarnish as well in some quarters. Rumor had it that a file existed,
somewhere in their basement headquarters, detailing her alleged abduction by
aliens. Little green men? Ooo-kay, whatever.

So needless to say I was more than a little intrigued when word came from my
Section Chief that I was being temporarily reassigned to the X-Files Division to
assist Special Agent Scully on a case involving the apparent kidnaping of her
partner, the aforementioned Spooky. I was the chosen one not only for my
profiling skills and my background in clinical and abnormal psychology, but also
because of my knowledge of the occult. The case apparently had some occultish
overtones; the suspect or suspects, who had contacted Agent Scully twice via
cryptic and thus-far untraceable messages, made frequent references to the ritual
abuses to which they were subjecting her partner.

I'm personally very skeptical of peoples' claims of magical occult powers,
particularly delusional, clinically diagnosable peoples'. I am, however, convinced
that such people *believe* they have these powers, and those beliefs, coupled with
their psychopathologies, have a way of setting events in motion that are at times
inexplicable by conventional scientific methodology. I knew this; and given five
years in the basement with Mulder, I suspected that by now Agent Scully knew it
too.

So my job was simple: Find Satan's Little Helpers, and help Agent Scully get
her partner back in one piece.

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After an initial briefing with Assistant Director Skinner, I was delivered into the
bowels of the Hoover Building where, at the end of a suitably dark and forbidding
hallway, I discovered a door marked "X-Files Division." I knocked, waited, then
knocked again; and after a pause, a husky voice invited me in.

Dana Scully rose as I stepped uncertainly in. Her face was a calm mask, the
eyes fixed on me blue-grey steel; but even from several paces' distance I could see
the redness that ringed those eyes, the slight puffiness of the upper lids, the faint
purplish shadows beneath. Not so cold, then; she'd obviously been crying, and
recently. Agent Mulder had been gone now for two days.

Advancing, I offered my hand, all brisk and businesslike. "Special Agent
Scully, it's a pleasure to meet you. I'm--"

"Special Agent Constance MacInnes from BSU," she finished for me, taking
my hand in a cool firm grip. "I only wish we were meeting under more pleasurable
circumstances. Please, have a seat."

I sat, taking the chair facing hers and hoping my expression was as composed
and unrevealing as her own. Why hadn't anybody told me--warned me--that this
woman was literally breathtaking?

My distant glimpses of her in the past had shown me little; nothing more, really,
than that she was short and compactly built, fair-skinned with a smooth cap of hair
even more blazingly red than the coppery mass that so clearly betrayed my
ancestry. No revelations there, just an attractive but unremarkable young woman--
or so I'd thought.

Small, yes, and compact; we were similar in build, though I had two or three
inches' height advantage over her. Fair and red-headed and blue-eyed, yes, these
things I already knew--but up close...

She was luminous. God, that sounds so lame, but it's true: the formidable, bad-
ass Agent Scully radiated the kind of glow I associate with actresses in 1930's
movies. She should've been slinking around a la Dietrich in a tuxedo, with a long
ebony cigarette holder. It was more than just the composition of her features,
which was admittedly exquisite; more than her smooth lovely skin like egg custard
dusted lightly with cinnamon. It went beyond the firmness of muscles toned to
peak condition and the keenness of the eyes veiling a mind of Bureau-fabled
brilliance. Dana Scully exuded a--a magnetism, a pull as elemental and irresistible
as the moon's sway over the tides. After less than five minutes in the room with
her, had she laid out a bed of hot coals and asked me to go for a little walk, I'd've
been stripping off my shoes and getting ready to dance--and I am not, by any
stretch of the imagination, a weak-willed individual.

God, down here in the basement with *her* every day, how the Hell did old
Spooky stand it?

Fortunately, I'm what they call in the theatre a "quick study"; I had ascertained
and assimilated all those things in seconds and managed to get my Fed Face back
in order before she caught me gaping at her like a lovesick schoolgirl with a crush
on the gym teacher. *That* would never do. I mean, for Christ's sake, I'm a
grown adult, an FBI agent, with a PhD and a divorce already under my belt.
Solving a case like this could boost my career status up to about Warp Nine, if I
didn't blow it by drooling all over my new SAC.

But even as I very intelligently and professionally discussed the known facts of
the case with her, a part of my mind was wondering if this astonishing person had
ever considered being with another woman.

Yet another part was wondering if I'd ever have a shot in Hell at being that
woman.

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For the record, I'm not a lesbian--not, to quote Jerry Seinfeld, that there's
anything *wrong* with that. At least, I don't *think* I am, though I can't
discount the possibility. Anything can happen, right?

I have at times found other women attractive, even erotically stimulating,
though I've never been moved to act on those impulses. My sexual relationships
with men have been satisfying; I've not been living a socially convenient lie. My
immediate gut reaction to Dana Scully was all the more intense by it's very
strangeness. I'd been divorced long enough that I couldn't just write it off as
some weird psychological glitch, a desire to run off in a totally oppositional
direction as a way to avoid dealing with the fallout from the failed relationship.
There was just something about her that resonated with me; and that resonance
only intensified as we talked and got to know how each others' minds worked.
Usually I have trouble communicating deeply with other women; so often it seems
that their interests are not at all my own. I had no problems communicating with
my new colleague.

And, glory to God/dess in the highest, she seemed to take an immediate (if
inexplicable) liking to me, too.

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The messages thus far received were inarticulate paeans to a mishmash of dark
forces, along with gloating references to what a lovely "sacirfice" Agent Mulder
would make to those forces. I was rather disappointed in them. Far from being
the menacingly Satanic verses I'd expected, they were cartoonish, high-school crap
that seemed to have been lifted from the "Necronomicon" or some heavy metal
record. The second note spoke rapturously of what a beautiful corpse he would
make, a nauseating Alice Cooper-ish hymn to the pleasures, post-mortem, of the
flesh. There was also, for a bonus, a litany of abuses aimed directly at Scully.

"This person speaks as if he--or she--knows you," I told her.

"'She'?"

"It's a possibility. Escalating fetishism and necrophilia are admittedly rarer in
women than in men, but they are by no means unheard of. This could very well be
a female we're dealing with, and one who knows you, or knows of you."

She was silent for a time. A *long* time, turned partially away from me, her
fingers steepled together beneath her chin. Just when I was on the verge of
breeching the silence, she spoke, quietly, as if every word pained her to pass it.

"Several years ago--Mulder and I hadn't been working together very long, a
little over a year--we became involved in a case. Desecration of graves, of bodies-
-tokens taken from the corpses, usually hair clippings, fingernails...When you
mentioned escalating fetishism it reminded me. The suspect moved from
desecrating corpses to selecting victims, killing them and then mutilating them."

"What was his MO?"

"He'd held a number of jobs, in funeral homes and morgues, working as a
cosmetologist. Invariably he was caught violating the bodies--"

"Sexually?"

"No. We never turned up any evidence that he was actually performing any
sexual acts on the bodies; he was apparently a pure fetishist, who derived
gratification from the act of acquiring the fetish objects, acquiring them and
hoarding them. Eventually he began killing to obtain what he needed, but stopped
short of true necrophilia."

She fished out a file and passed it over to me, resuming both her seat and her
silence. I skimmed over it for maybe thirty seconds before coming across
something that stopped me, you should pardon the pun, dead.

"Jesus Christ," I breathed. "He kidnaped YOU." Throwing the file folder
down on the desk, I got up and started pacing. "Where is this guy?"

"Prison. He won't even be eligible for consideration of parole for years. Plus,
his victims were exclusively female. It can't be him, MacInnes."

"Call me Cory," I muttered, abstractedly, still circling. "Oh, shit. This changes
everything."