Work Text:
“For truly to pursue monsters, we must understand them. We must venture into their minds. Only in doing so, do we risk letting them venture into ours?” - Dana Scully, “Unruhe”
─── ⋅ ∙ ∘ ☽ ༓ ☾ ∘ ⋅ ⋅ ───
Eerie winds blew angrily toward her, making her eyes narrow to avoid the stinging pain. A tear, desperate to moisten her irritated eye, tickled her eyelash before descending down her cheek. They howled and shrieked as they kicked her hair around, forcing her to tuck it further into her wool cap.
Beside her, he kicked clumsily at the autumn foliage littering the grounds. He of course had underdressed for the occasion. Whereas she had worn a well-tailored business suit and applicable footwear, he decided to grace the case with scuffed tennis shoes and mismatched socks. His shirt held an embarrassing coffee stain that had been a point of contention between them since arriving at the airport in Bucharest.
The case, if one could even call it that, was coming apart at the seams. Somehow, a manila folder filled with stories of a family of cannibalistic vampires had appeared on the sole desk of the basement office. So, in true Mulder fashion, Scully was presented with a ticket and a sad pair of puppy dog eyes that unfortunately worked every single time.
Why she continued to follow this man to the end of humanity was beyond her.
“Do you think she’s really almost ten feet tall?” Mulder asked, eyes still firmly planted on the leaves under his feet. “That’s a whole lot of woman.”
“Mulder, you should be more worried about our lack of cell service and a car with a flat tire three miles back. How do you expect to get back to the airport on time?” Scully asked, sincerely doubting her sanity for agreeing to his antics.
He shrugged in return and shoved his hands in his pockets. His fingers flared out in the garish 90s Knicks windbreaker that he paid way too much for. A single sunflower kernel stuck to his lip, which had been stuck in a permanent pout ever since Scully had chastised him for his poor driving.
“Dunno. I figured we would find a phone in there. Even the most remote of places have wifi now,” Mulder explained. “I’m sure there’s something up there.”
Scully looked to where Mulder nodded and spotted a building just down the path. She didn’t have her glasses on, but the Castle seemed much larger than the reports had said. Granted, they also said that there was almost a zero percent survival rate from the castle. Which, in retrospect, should have been her first red flag.
“So what’s the family’s name?” Scully asked with a scowl. Yes, she had read the entire file, no she had not retained any of it. She really didn’t think that Mulder would fall for something so ludicrous.
Rookie mistake.
“Countess Alcina Dimitrescu,” Mulder recounted the name as if he had listened to it too many times. “Born sometime in the 1930s, Alcina was a jazz singer sick with a blood infection that almost killed her.”
“Hepatitis?” Scully surmised, given the data provided. “Mulder this woman would be almost one hundred years old. What kind of danger does she pose?”
“Oh, ye of little faith, Scully,” Mulder finally wiped the kernel off of his lip. “Haven’t you ever heard of Marie Bathory?”
“She was a serial killer, Mulder,” Scully lamented. “I don’t see why this has any relevance.”
“You haven’t read Dracula?” Mulder asked with a raised eyebrow. “And I don’t mean the movie adaptation from 2000.”
“I’ve seen your collection of videos Mulder, I know what you’re into,” Scully sighed as her feet finally found a gravel path instead of the rough grass field. “Also I did read your case file from when I was abducted.”
“I don’t want to talk about the blood bread - why is it always the blood bread!” Mulder whipped his hands out and threw them in the air in anguish. “I say one thing about it twenty-six years ago and you tease me forever!”
“You had an orgy with supposed vampires and I’m not supposed to tease you?” Scully countered with a raised eyebrow. “You act as if that’s the worst thing you’ve done.”
“We all experiment in our youths! Some of us even with professors,” Mulder said pointedly. “And we can’t change it.”
Scully blew a pesky bit of hair out of her face and gave Mulder a scathing look. He was right, unfortunately. Years of Catholic guilt and repression had led her to make some less-than-wise decisions. That, coupled with their long-term relationship left a lot to be desired in her life.
“It’s getting dark,” she sighed in frustration. “If we aren’t murdered on sight by whoever lives there, we might get eaten by something in the woods.”
“The lights are still on, maybe we could just knock?” Mulder shrugged and bit his lower lip as he surveyed the expansive grounds.
“I am definitely not jumping that fence,” Scully pointed to the wrought-iron fence that looked quite similar to the fence that surrounded the cemetery where the Lone Gunman were buried.
Mulder jogged ahead and looked over the bars that were taller than they both were. He tapped his fingers against his jeans as he walked back and forth. After a minute, he stopped in front of the gate.
“I wonder what would happen if we just went around there?” Mulder pointed to a ravine that had a moat of sorts. The water looked shallow enough but Scully’s shoes were not worth the climb.
“No,” Scully insisted. “If we’re going to investigate this supposed woman, we could just knock. Phrase it as an interview?”
“Not your best idea, Sculls.” Mulder eyed her before impulsively jumping up and over the fence. When he looked at her from the other side of the bars, he chuckled. “Never thought you’d be the one behind bars.”
“Your jokes are worse than your bedside manor,” Scully lamented. “Let me in the front, I guess.”
Smug regardless of her barbs, Mulder jogged alongside the fence’s border while Scully took her time admiring the craftsmanship of the estate’s exterior.
“Mulder, do those scarecrows look strangely realistic to you?” she yelled, pointing to one with sagging, stone colored skin and brittle hair under a straw hat. “Maybe I don’t want to know.”
When Scully finally made it to the front of the iron fence, she waited while Mulder fiddled with the locking mechanism. While he tinkered, she traced a finger up and around the intricate family crest that bound the two swinging gates.
“Ow - shit!” Mulder hissed as he pulled his finger back and stuck it in his mouth. “This thing got me! I didn’t expect to bleed.”
“Mulder,” Scully began. “You dragged me to a Countess’ estate and mentioned vampires no less than three thousand times on the flight over, and you did not expect blood?”
“Well…no.” Mulder looked hurt. “It was all in good fun!”
Before Scully could reply, a deafening hum began to echo around them. A swarm of what looked to be flies descended around them, before morphing into a woman obscured in black, hooded robes.
“Oh, man blood!” she clapped happily. “Mother will be so happy!”
With that, she grabbed Mulder under his arms and pulled him away with surprising agility in speed. Scully surged forward and grabbed the gate with all of her might, moving the panels the smallest bit apart and slipping through.
“Oh, not so fast!” A lower voice sang behind her. “Mother will be extra happy to see you.”
When Scully went to turn around, she was met with nothing - only the fence and forest line of the property. Confused, she turned around again and came face to face with a fair-haired woman with a dreadfully bloody face.
“Boo!” she shrugged happily and grabbed Scully’s hand before tugging. “Come, Mother will be so happy!”
“Mother?” Scully asked, trying to remain calm as the woman half-dragged her across the lawn. “What’s your mother’s name?”
“Nu-uh!” The girl sang again. “Be quiet and you might stay awhile!”
Panic flooded Scully’s entire mind - might stay a while? Where was Mulder? What was happening? Why did she agree to go on yet another stupid adventure with him?
The front doors flew open with a wave of the girl’s hand and Scully was quickly ushered inside and made to sit on a velvety bench in a very ornate looking mud room. Mulder was still yet to be seen or heard, but she could just barely make out the hum of female voices off in the distance.
“Take him to the cellar,” a heady voice commanded as heavy footsteps began to approach. “Bela, what is this gift you speak of?”
“No maiden, I’m sad to say,” another voice called back. “But she is quite pretty.”
Scully tensed and finally relented to the panic in her chest. She’d had so many awful things happen to her over the years, that meeting death at her doorstep just seemed to be another day in the books.
“Here she is!” the same woman who’d grabbed her, appeared around a corridor and looked at her expectantly.
Scully was small, petite, and lacking in the height department - whatever people wanted to say. But, being partnered with Mulder had made her quite used to being towered over. However, when the esteemed Countess bent to enter the room and stood to her full height, Scully felt like a mouse.
“Goodness, she’s nothing but a morsel,” the woman purred. “Absolutely delectable. What’s your name?”
“Special Agent Dana Scully,” Scully rose and offered her hand out of habit. Though, what she expected the woman to do was neither here nor there.
“Lady Alcina Dimitrescu.” the woman bent and took Scully’s hand in a surprisingly gentle way before smiling softly. “I apologize about your friend - no men are allowed on the grounds without explicit permission from me.”
Scully didn’t have time to think about what that could mean before Alcina was standing upright again and speaking to the woman. “
“Bela, set Ingrid to ready the tea room,” she commanded. “Special Agent Scully and I have much to talk about.”
─── ⋅ ∙ ∘ ☽ ༓ ☾ ∘ ⋅ ⋅ ───
“So, that’s how you ended up on my property?” Alcina inhaled her tobacco sensually before exhaling toward the barely-open window. “You really followed him here?”
“I know; it sounds pathetic,” Scully sighed. “I’ve followed him for years. I tried to go my own way and I always inevitably ended up alongside him again.”
“Well, it seems that he has become a harbinger of your pain.” Alcina shook her head slowly. “Men are quite good at that.”
“I don’t have much else in this world,” Scully admitted, surprised by her candor but quite drunk after a few glasses of wine. “I have an overbearing brother who has never known how to treat people and a brother that hasn’t left his underground bunker in years. I have my career and…Mulder.”
“Stay?” Alcina leaned forward and said it again. “Stay here. With me.”
“In Romania?” Scully laughed. “I don’t have anything other than a work visa that grants me forty-five days in the country.”
“With me, here,” Alcina specified. “In the castle. Join my daughters and me. You’ll want for nothing and have people to talk to. You can learn about distilling or making your own garden in the yards. We have ponds for swimming and endless rooms of art to view. Your meals will be supple and your…needs met. I can see how you’ve been neglected for so long.”
Perhaps it was the wine, the tobacco floating through the room, or the desperation deep in her gut to belong somewhere, but Scully looked shyly at her shoes before raising her head and making eye contact with the Countess.
“Sure. Why not? What about Mulder, though?”
Alcina laughed, throwing her head back and taking deep breaths before calming herself.
“Oh, darling, he’ll make a fantastic red next season!”