Title: Turn, Turn.

Author: CGB

Email: luberluber@hotmail.com

Archive: Yes

Rating: PG - 13

Category: V S

Summary: Musings on the fourth season Scully and all that happened in that year.

Feedback: live for it.

Spoilers: Nothing you haven't seen right? Unruhe, Leonard Betts, Never Again,

Disclaimer: Sueing would make me angry. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry....

Turn Turn

To everything, turn, turn, turn, there is a season - Pete Seeger

Dana Katherine Scully remembers the first time she fired a gun.

The size of it is her first concern. It's larger than she imagined. A SIG Sauer 228.

Pretty name for such an imposing object.

She weighs it in her hands during her weapon safety lesson. It holds the foreboding knowledge that tomorrow she will discharge it in the pratice range. It's not as heavy as she expected. Not as sleek either. In fact it is a seemingly clumsy instrument for one that is designed to be the most effective method of personal protection. There is nothing to love about a gun, she thinks.

At the range she finds the visor like looking through a glass barrier. She pretends she sees hands, her hands, firing from the other side of a window. She accustoms herself to the force of the recoil and takes more care with her aim. Her instructor takes one look at the target count and then another at the size of his diminutive student and registers mild surprise. Not bad for a girl, she hears him think.

She never really expected to use it as much as she has. She certainly didn't expect that it wouldn't be around when she needed it.

Years later she finds herself strapped into an old Dentist's chair with her hands bonded to the armrests. How beautifully ironic it is, she thinks, that she was never afraid of the Dentist as a child and the chair does not bring back a surge of disturbing memories. She is free to be scared by her captor alone and not by a childhood neurosis.

Her gun has been removed from her person. Not that she could reach it anyway but it would have been comforting to feel it's cold reassurance against the top of her thigh.

She attempts to talk to her attacker. She tells him she has no unrest. She hasn't. Compared to Schnauz with his legs in stilts and his psychotic episodes materialising on photographic film, everything in her life is hunky-dory-thank-you-very-much.

She is almost apologetic for having the audacity to be dissatisfied on occasion.

On too many occasions.

Maybe that's what a howler is.

"The howlers are in you" she tells him .

For a moment he is apparently willing to listen but it passes. The leukotome looks like an ice pic as it wavers menacingly in front of her face. She wishes she could have died from a gunshot wound instead of an ice pic to the eye socket. This way will no doubt ensure her a place in FBI folklore for years to come and Dana Scully really doesn't want to be remembered in quite that manner.

She hears Mulder calling for her outside and she screams his name back at him. It is his gun that fires on her would-be surgeon and not hers. Mulder, six feet, physically fit and probably even capable of firing a gun with reasonable accuracy out of one hand.

Mulder saves her life and she hates him for it. Something else to depend on.

Scully goes into training. More training.

Her trainer is unusually exasperated. She is asking for more advice. More skills.

"What if there's more of them?" she asks, "what if they have guns?"

"Then you're dead, Dana" he says, but his manner is not as cold as his words, just sincere.

"You know", Mulder says after he reads her report, "You stalled him pretty well. As a professional I'd say you effectively established a bond with your assailant that bought you enough time to be rescued. You downplay your expertise here."

He indicates the paragraph on the report where she has related her attempts to cajole Schnauz into submission. Scully reads it once again without reading. She still has her frontal lobes intact. Isn' t that enough?

She goes home. She reads serial killer profiles for background research. Maybe she'll see the next one coming.

Two things happen.

One.

She is attacked in an ambulance by a man who has resurrected himself after numerous deaths.

She fights. She strikes with her feet and fists and lays blows that are clean and effective. She hears him grunt as each mark is made and she knows he never expected this kind of resistance from her.

She would gain some satisfaction out of that knowledge if he didn't keep coming back.

When he has her cornered she takes a good, long look at his face. His monstrous appearance is not as frightening as the scalpel he is wielding. Mulder would feign exasperation at her lack of revulsion. "You've performed too many autopsies" he would say "nothing grosses you out anymore."

Her mind works fast. She spots the portable defibrillator and leaps for the switch. She needs it to power up in the two seconds she has before he reaches her with that scalpel.

Power up it does. The next thing that registers is her hands in the paddles and her assailant's body hurtling backwards out of the ambulance.

Later Mulder tells her that Lazurus is indeed dead. She ponders the auspiciousness of killing someone who has been raised from the dead.

Two.

She gets a nosebleed. She thinks that there is nothing more affronting than blood on white linen and she wants it gone. Fast.

It's just a nosebleed, she tells herself, but she knows it isn't. Lazurus, Leonard Betts, told her and now she knows.

Fortunately a propensity to weigh statistics against circumstantial evidence or heresay allows her to postpone being a Cancer ward patient for at least another week. Occam's razor has been one of her favourite maxims of method.

And then a third.

She is not sure what she's thinking when she sees the ouroboros. Perhaps she is thinking that getting a tattoo is the last thing anyone would expect her to do right now. She had not foreseen it herself.

Or maybe she is thinking of the pain because it's been a long time since she felt something as uncomplicated as pain. Or as direct.

The strangest thing is that it is not unlike going to the Dentist.

Afterwards, when she is back hiding in the FBI basement, she writes a report accounting for her actions whilst another attempt is being made on her life. There is no dead body this time. Ed is institutionalised. She wants to care but no matter how deeply she looks she is unable to find an emotion suited to all that has happened to her in Philadelphia.

She does, however, have the snake and she still gets nosebleeds.

So maybe this is why, all of this is why, she reacts the way she does when she feels a heavy touch on her shoulder as she is about to open her car door

With the assisted power of her right arm she pushes her left elbow sharply into what she hopes is the ribs of the unidentified figure behind her. She feels the hand leaving her shoulder and a loud "oof as the mysterious attacker takes a step backward to compensate for the force of her blow.

She turns to see him doubled over and taking large gulps of air. Apparently, she has hit him harder than even she had expected.

Her bag falls off her shoulder to the ground and she readies herself for a further assault on the man before her.

Somewhere, she thinks that there is something important she should remember. Somewhere, something is telling her to stop because this is not what is supposed to happen. This is not what it's supposed to be.

But she doesn't.

Instead she fires a well aimed kick to his midriff and backs it up with a blow to the jaw. She spins, gathering momentum for her next attack. She is a machine. She is fully loaded and aimed and she anticipates the recoil. She is automatic.

But her target is on the floor cradling his jaw.

"Jesus, Scully" he's saying "what's gotten into you?"

"Mulder?"

She blinks, not willing to trust the visuals her optical nerves are sending to her brain.

On confirming that he is indeed who she thinks he is she switches to Doctor Scully mode, examining her patient for serious injury that might warrant treatment. For a moment she has forgotten that it was she who inflicted the damage.

Scully reassures Mulder that his injuries are minor

"Well I'm in major pain!" he tells her.

She manages a small smile before she is overcome with guilt.

"I'm so sorry, Mulder" she says "I thought you were...... ...it's been a rough week".

He groans and rubs his jaw.

"You been working out, Scully?"

"A little".

He nods and gives her answer some consideration. It occurs to him to ask. He even thinks she might want to talk about it. But it's her life, isn't it? She told him that.

Beyond being a punching bag, he thinks that his uses to Scully might be quite limited.

She writes another report. This one details the injuries sustained by Mulder and her role in them.

On any other day someone might recommend a Departmental enquiry in regard to Scully's behaviour in this report.

On any other day she may be deemed pyschologically unfit for duty.

On any other day she would at least be in Skinners office, staring at his desk plate whilst he attempted, despite his shortcomings as a personable leader, to ascertain whether Scully has any emotional problems for which the Bureau can refer her to a specialist.

That's what they're for, he would say.

However, on this day she is handing him a different kind of report. A medical one that contains specifics of her Cancer. Psychological enquiries are forgotten in the face of such an immediate explanation.

When Dana Katherine Scully first fired a gun she couldnt help wondering what it might be like to be on the receiving end of such power. Since then, she has learnt that there are many ways to die and each can be more violent and frightening than the last.

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Some stuff you might like to know.

The working title for this piece was Musings on the Fourth Season Scully. She had quite a year that year and Gillian got herself an Emmy to boot. They both deserved it. The final title is a reference to an episode of Cagney and Lacey that was also featured in the middle of a pivotal year for the development of one of the characters. Sharon Gless, who played Christine Cagney on whom the episode was centred, also won the Best Actress Emmy for that year. During the reading of Sharon Gless's nomination they showed scences from this episode.

The song "To everything, turn, turn...." by Peter Seeger (made famous by The Byrds) is based on an old testament passage from The Bible, Ecclesiastes 3. I recommend reading it in a King James version of The Bible because my copy, The Good News, has an entirely different meaning to the song!