Dreamcatcher 14
Ally

Dreamcatcher May 4th 1999 5:17p.m.

It was dazzling. A light so bright that Scully could still see the glare even after she slammed her eyes closed, and with the light came pain. Pain so intense that she couldn't help but cry out. It radiated from deep within her, an all encompassing, dreadful pain. She felt her legs folding beneath her and she began to fall, through the light, tumbling endlessly toward nothingness as she finally blacked out.

And then, later, the feel of a hand in her hair, stroking softly, bringing her back to alertness.

{Mulder?}

She dismissed the thought. No, not Mulder. But if not Mulder, then who?

"Dana?"

Scully struggled to open her eyes in response to the voice, fighting against the urge to just sink back into peaceful oblivion. Every muscle, every bone, every fiber of her being ached and she was terribly afraid that to wake up completely would just serve to intensify the pain.

"Dana..." That voice again. Louder this time. More insistent.

Scully groaned softly, knowing that she couldn't hope to ignore it for very much longer, and almost against her will she felt her eyes flutter open, struggling to focus on the child's face that hovered above her.

"It hurts," she whispered.

Felicia smiled gently as she once more began to run her small hand up and down Scully's hair. Stroking softly, calming.

"It's OK. It always hurts the first time. It goes away," she said matter-of-factly.

Scully struggled up in to a sitting position. "The first time?"

Felicia shrugged. "The first time you have to find your way here by yourself. I can only help you to come here once. Then you have to do it by yourself. It gets easier, though. You just have to stop fighting it."

She watched as Scully stretched out her limbs, knowing that the pain was abating. A little at least. In a few minutes, it would disappear completely. But the questions that burned within the woman before her would take longer to reconcile. Much longer. Maybe even a lifetime.

"I don't understand. Where am I? How did I get here?"

Scully finally allowed herself to look around, to take in her surroundings. Green grass beneath a canopy of giant redwoods so tall that she became sickeningly dizzy when she tilted her face upward to better appreciate them. It was cool here, the trees effectively blocking out the sunshine that she was sure lay beyond. The coolness was welcome, and she let it wash over her.

Fliss cocked her head on one side, frowning slightly as she did so. "Don't you know? Even after last time?"

Scully began to shake her head, but almost immediately realization hit. "The Dreamcatcher?" she whispered, her words almost swallowed up by the gentle rustling of the leaves above her. "But that was a dream...a nightmare..."

In response to her words, Fliss's expression darkened suddenly, and Scully had to fight the urge to physically recoil from the child.

"You think all this..." The girl waved her arm in a wide curving arc as her voice rose in pitch. "You think all this is a *dream*? Conjured up by your subconscious? I thought you were smarter than that. Smarter than the others. I thought you would be the one who could help us."

The child stopped suddenly, her body stiffening, a study in absolute unwavering stillness, and Scully's heart began to beat painfully against her chest. Something in the girl's expression chilled her to the very core, and inexplicable as it might be, her every instinct screamed out at her to simply scramble to her feet and run far away from this place.

But she found she couldn't move. Couldn't breathe as she watched the color drain from Fliss's face. It was all she could do to reach out a shaking hand and wrap her fingers around the girl's slender arm. The skin was ice cold.

"What is it? What's wrong?"

Fliss snatched her arm out of Scully's grasp, finding her voice at last as she bolted to her feet. "We have to go. It's coming for us."

Scully just stared at her dumbly. "What?"

{It's getting darker. Why is it getting darker?}

She was hardly conscious of the thought. Focused as she was on the terrified child before her, Scully had barely noticed the lengthening shadows that crept toward them, consuming everything in their path, obliterating shape and form as it ate into the safety of the light.

Fliss, though, had noticed and realization flooded her features as she reached down and roughly hauled Scully to a standing position, oblivious of the woman's shriek of pain as her protesting muscles cramped suddenly and painfully.

"Run, Dana! We have to run."

Scully took an uncertain, faltering step in response to the insistent tugging, but the pain was too great and she sank once more to the ground, almost bringing Fliss down with her. Tears poured down the child's face as her face twisted into a grotesque mask of terror and pain.

"GET UP!! PLEASE GET UP!!"

She began to tug once again at Scully's arm, as though sheer will power alone could get her on her feet and moving again. But Scully just shook her head numbly.

"I can't."

"YOU *HAVE* TO!!! PLEASE TRY. PLEASE....."

Scully slammed her eyes closed in an attempt to block out the sound of the pleading child, a child who suddenly seemed so much younger than she had previously. A voice from another time, another place.

{Emily?}

And suddenly, the voice was gone. It was replaced with an eerie silence, an inexplicable sense of calm as the darkness closed in.

Slowly, tentatively, Scully opened her eyes. The action, though, was futile. She was alone. Consumed by an inky blackness so intense that she couldn't even see her hand in front of her face. As though to affirm that she was even here at all she brought her hand closer, starting slightly as her probing fingertips made sudden contact with the soft skin of her own cheek.

She wasn't even aware of whether she was still sitting in a crumpled heap on the ground. She could feel absolutely nothing; it was as though she were suspended in a space that stretched to infinity.

And then she heard it. A faint buzzing sound, a sound that got closer and closer even as she strained to identify it. With the buzzing came a series of vibrations, the feeling traveling through her body as though she herself were a conductor for this strange phenomenon. She began to shake as the vibrations intensified, and felt the fillings in her back teeth begin to rattle in answer to the unearthly motion around her.

{This is not happening. I need to wake up now.}

She let out a long, shaky breath as the vibration suddenly ceased. She closed her eyes once again in an attempt to gain some control of her shaking limbs, and then the world seemed to stand still as she felt it.

Hot, fetid breath on her neck. Hot enough to burn almost.

For a split second she was frozen by the sheer terror that hammered at her, and then the spell was broken as she whirled to confront this unknown assailant. Her outstretched hands made sudden contact with a warm, slightly textured surface.

{Leather?}

But she hardly had time to register the thought before the pain hit her. Radiating from the tips of her fingers, it obliterated lateral thought, a burning, agonizing hurt that forced bile to rise in the back of her throat.

Dimly she was conscious of a wailing, agonized, scream. The sound bounced around her to be swallowed up in the darkness, growing fainter and fainter as the pain consumed her.

She vaguely felt the iron grip that suddenly wrapped itself around her, and even as she screamed, she fought against it with every ounce of energy she possessed, striking out blindly, feeling her fingernails sinking into soft, pliant flesh.

The grip on her loosened marginally, and she scrambled backwards, tumbling sideways in her haste to escape. Her head connected solidly with a hard, unyielding surface, the shock of which was enough to prompt her eyes to fly open.

The darkness was gone. It was replaced with a soft orange light that framed the bruised and bloody face of her partner as he stared uncomprehendingly down at her from his position on the sofa.

{I hurt him. Oh, God, I hurt him!}

"Scully?"

He didn't seem to be aware of the blood that trickled from the long ragged rent that stretched from the corner of his eye to halfway down his cheekbone. His focus was directed solely on the woman before him. Watching her carefully, searching for signs that she was awake, that she was back in control.

Scully couldn't speak. Didn't trust herself to open her mouth without screaming again, and instead settled on nodding slightly. But as she reached out to him, partly seeking comfort, partly in a silent apology, as his eyes widened in horror.

"Jesus Christ, Scully!"

Scully frowned up at him, her mind still fuzzy, refusing to process thought into action. Eventually though, she managed to force the word out. "What?"

Mulder shuddered, unable to tear his eyes away from the sight before him. "Your *hand*. What the hell happened to your hand?"

And then she saw what he saw. The soft, white skin. Now red and angry. Covered in a blanket of fluid-filled blisters that distorted the delicate shape of her tapered fingers.

And the pain returned with a ferocity that took her breath away.

Next