Chapter Text
The house was quiet in that particular way Dana Scully had come to recognise: not peaceful, not restful, but held breath. A stillness with an edge. The kind of quiet that made her footsteps sound like intrusions and her keys clinking on the entry table feel like a disruption to some invisible equilibrium.
It was early evening. A slate-blue dusk pressed against the windows, and the air carried that heavy Virginia humidity that promised rain but never delivered it. The lamps were off. Jack liked the house dim when he worked. Said it helped him focus. Said bright lights made him “feel like he was still at the office.” The blinds were drawn tight, as if daylight itself was a trespass.
Scully unwound her scarf and hung it with her coat. Her shoulders ached from hunching over an autopsy table for hours, but she moved quietly, carefully, as though she might disturb him simply by existing too loudly.
“Jack?” she called, softly.
A muted clatter from the kitchen answered her: a coffee mug, maybe. Or a plate. Something was placed down with more force than necessary.
She exhaled, nose wrinkling at the scent of burnt coffee lingering in the air. He’d probably reheated the same pot twice. She shrugged off the discomfort in her stomach, a soft, habitual dread, and told herself it was nothing. It was simply a long day. They both had long days.
She stepped into the kitchen.
Jack stood at the counter, sleeves rolled up, tie loosened. His jacket was draped over a chair like he’d thrown it there instead of setting it down. His posture carried a tension she recognised immediately, the same wiry coil, the same stiffness in his jaw, and she felt her own frame mirror it before she could stop herself.
He glanced at her. Not really looking, just… taking inventory.
“You’re late.”
Not a question. Not a greeting. Just a verdict.
Scully set her bag down gently. “I know. We had a backlog of cases today. Quantico’s short-staffed and—”
“I called you.”
She swallowed. “I know. I couldn’t answer. I was in the middle of—”
“You didn’t call back.”
Her eyes flicked to the darkening window for a moment. The outside world felt distant, unreachable.
“I should have,” she said quietly. “I’m sorry.”
Jack picked up his mug and took a long sip, his movements controlled in that way he used when he felt wronged, as though every gesture had to be measured, deliberate, a performance of calm masking simmering frustration.
“Just common courtesy, Dana,” he said. “If you’re going to be out late, you let your husband know.”
Husband.
He always emphasised it like a reminder.
She forced a small smile. “I know. I really am sorry. It won’t happen again.”
Jack stared at her a moment too long, deciding whether to believe her. She couldn’t read his expression. She never could, not anymore. He used to be so easy, open-faced, charming, a little cocky but warm in a way she found disarming. Now he felt like someone in a suit that didn’t quite fit, rigid in places that used to bend.
“It better not,” he murmured.
The words weren’t loud. They didn’t need to be.
She busied herself with the kettle, filling it halfway even though she wasn’t sure she wanted tea. It was something to do with her hands, something that filled the space Jack’s scrutiny carved out around her.
“How was your day?” she asked, aiming for conversational. Neutral.
Jack shrugged. “Fine. Busted my ass so certain people can swan around playing doctor.”
Scully froze.
He said it casually. Like a joke. Like something harmless. But she felt her throat constrict, a flush creeping up her neck. She fought the urge to defend herself, to tell him how hard she worked, how long her hours were, how much responsibility she carried, because she knew where that path led. It never helped. It never soothed. It only gave him more to use later.
So she smiled again. Thin. Tired. Practiced.
“Well,” she said softly, “dinner’s in the fridge if you’re hungry.”
“I ate.”
“Oh.”
“Didn’t know when you’d bother coming home.”
Something in her chest tightened, a small, sharp sting she’d grown numb to over time. Or told herself she had.
Marriages take work, she reminded herself. This is what work looks like sometimes. You love through the rough patches. You adapt. You meet each other halfway.
But halfway kept shifting, slowly, inexorably, closer to him and further from her.
The kettle rumbled to life. She kept her gaze fixed on the rising steam, letting it fog the space between her and everything else.
Jack moved behind her, his presence large, too close. She froze again, not out of fear, she told herself, but uncertainty. She never knew which version of him she’d get.
His hand settled on her shoulder.
It wasn’t gentle.
She tensed. He squeezed, a shade too tight, fingers biting into muscle.
“You said you’d be home by six,” he said into her ear. “It’s seven-thirty.”
She nodded, forcing air into her lungs. “I know. I’m sorry.”
He squeezed harder.
Just for a second.
Just enough.
Then he released her, as if the gesture had never happened.
Scully kept her eyes on the kettle, blinking rapidly to clear the sudden stinging in her vision. The water boiled over slightly, and she killed the heat.
“Let’s try to have a normal night,” Jack said, already walking out of the kitchen. “Okay?”
She nodded again, even though he wasn’t looking.
Maybe especially because he wasn’t looking.
When he disappeared down the hall, she let out the shaky breath she’d been holding since she walked through the door.
The house was quiet again.
Not peaceful.
Not restful.
Just quiet.
And Dana Scully, brilliant, capable, fiercely composed, felt impossibly small.
The following day, by late afternoon, the house felt too quiet.
Not peaceful, Dana rarely confused the two anymore, but that thick, padded sort of quiet that seemed to absorb sound instead of reflecting it. Jack liked it this way. He claimed it helped him “think,” though he never specified about what. Dana moved through the hallway on soft steps, careful without meaning to be, a muscle memory developing beneath conscious thought.
In the kitchen, sunlight slanted across the countertop in long, golden bars. She paused to appreciate it, the warmth on her hands as she rinsed out her coffee mug. Small things mattered lately, quiet signs that her life still had corners untouched by tension.
She’d barely set the mug down when she heard the front door open.
Jack’s arrival always changed the atmosphere. Not dramatically; not in a way she could point to. The air simply tightened, molecules rearranging themselves as if acknowledging a shift in gravity.
“Dana?” he called.
“In here,” she answered, gentling her voice.
He walked in a moment later, suit jacket slung over one arm, tie loosened but still present, like he hadn’t fully left work behind. His expression was carefully neutral, the version he wore when he was taking her emotional temperature before showing her his own.
“You’re home early,” she said, hoping the observation sounded pleasant rather than wary.
“They cut the meeting short.” He glanced at the empty counter. “You haven’t started dinner.”
Her throat tightened. “I was waiting to see what you wanted.”
A small pause. Jack stepped closer and kissed her cheek. “I told you this morning what I wanted.”
She had no memory of that. Or maybe she did, but she’d been lacing her shoes and trying to make it out the door without turning the morning into a negotiation. Hard to tell which.
“I can make something quick,” she offered, already reaching for the fridge.
He didn’t say thank you. He didn’t say don’t worry about it either. He just took off his cufflinks and set them down harder than necessary on the counter, one sharp click, and then another.
“I don’t know why we’re having this issue again,” he said casually, but the underlying criticism slid out like a blade in velvet. “Your schedule is all over the place lately. You’re barely here.”
Dana swallowed. “There was a last-minute seminar at Quantico.”
Jack’s jaw shifted in that tiny, inevitable way. “I understand that you like the work. But you can’t keep disappearing into it. That’s not what marriage is.”
It landed in her chest with the weight of a rule she hadn’t realised she’d broken.
“I’m not disappearing,” she said quietly. “I’m contributing. Helping. I thought you valued that.”
His silence stretched, taut and tentative. Then: “I value you being present.”
The implication hung unspoken: At home. For him. On his terms.
She busied herself with the cutting board to keep from saying the wrong thing. A carrot snapped cleanly beneath the knife. The sound felt too loud in the room.
Jack watched her work, arms crossed, an evaluation more than a partnership. “Maybe you need to re-evaluate how much you can handle. You push yourself too hard.”
“I can handle my schedule,” she murmured.
“Can you?” His voice didn’t rise, but the edge sharpened. “Because from where I’m standing, you seem exhausted all the time. Distracted. Forgetful.”
Her pulse flicked painfully beneath her skin. Ungenerous, she wanted to tell him. You’re being ungenerous. But she bit her tongue. That phrase had started fights before.
Jack moved behind her, hands smoothing over her shoulders. The gesture should have been comforting. It wasn’t. His touch felt like a weight settling into place.
“You know I just want what’s best for you,” he murmured into her hair, the tone too soft to trust. “For us.”
Dana held still beneath his hands, unwilling to flinch but wanting to step away. Wanting space to breathe. Wanting, God, something she couldn’t name without sounding ungrateful or dramatic.
The knife trembled slightly as she set it down.
“I’m fine,” she said, though it tasted untrue.
Jack’s hands tightened briefly, just a fraction too firm, before he let go. Enough to register. Enough to mark the moment without leaving evidence.
Her breath caught. Not from pain, but from the knowledge that this was new. A line crossed, not loudly, but undeniably.
Jack exhaled sharply. “You get so sensitive when you’re tired. Let’s not make a thing out of nothing, okay?”
He said it like a kindness.
Dana forced a nod. “Okay.”
He kissed her temple, the gesture almost affectionate.
Almost.
Then he left the kitchen, the sound of his footsteps receding down the hall. The quiet returned, heavier now, settling onto her shoulders with a strange, echoing ache.
Dana stared at the half-chopped vegetables and felt… hollowed out, somehow. As if part of her had stepped outside her own body to watch a version of her life unfolding that she didn’t entirely recognise.
She’d always believed marriage was something you tended, something you steadied with effort. But standing there in the stillness, she felt the fault lines under her feet, hairline cracks forming in the foundation she’d sworn she could fix.
She wasn’t afraid. Not exactly.
She was… disappearing.
And the worst part was how easily she could convince herself that wasn’t happening at all.
Dana didn’t realise how tightly she was bracing herself until dinner was over.
Jack had been… cordial. That particular brand of brittle pleasantness that passed for good behaviour in their house. He asked about her day, nodded at the right moments, made small jokes about his colleagues, and she responded automatically, as if reading from a script they’d both grown used to performing.
No one raised their voice.
No one slammed a door.
And yet her skin prickled with the sense of a storm circling just out of view.
She carried the dishes to the sink, rinsing each plate with methodical precision, something to keep her hands occupied, something to measure her breathing against. The domestic choreography gave her the illusion of calm.
Behind her, Jack leaned against the counter with a beer in hand.
“You’re quiet tonight,” he observed.
“I’m just tired,” she said. “It was a long day.”
“At Quantico,” he added, the word landing with too much emphasis.
She hesitated. “Yes.”
A long pause.
“That’s becoming a pattern, isn’t it?”
Her shoulders stiffened. She kept her back to him, watching suds dissolve in the stream of water like a chemical reaction that made more sense than her marriage did.
“I work for the Bureau,” she said evenly. “You do too. You know how unpredictable the hours can be.”
“That’s not what this is about and you know it.”
She set a plate down a little too carefully. “Then what is it about?”
Jack didn’t immediately answer. He never rushed these moments; he let them simmer until what he said felt inevitable.
Finally: “You’ve been staying later and later. And don’t tell me it’s mandatory. I checked the scheduling logs.”
Her spine went cold.
“You… checked my hours?”
His tone sharpened. “I needed to understand what’s going on with you.”
“Jack.” Her voice was soft, but it held a warning. “That’s not appropriate.”
“It’s not appropriate for my wife to be gone ten, twelve hours at a time for no reason.”
Her pulse hammered once, hard.
“I had reasons,” she said, keeping her words precise, contained. “There were evaluations. Lab reviews. A case review for Forensics. I wasn’t hiding anything.”
“You say that, but you’ve been different.” He took a slow step closer. “Distant. Distracted. And when I try to talk to you, you… disappear into your work.”
She closed her eyes for a beat. Control. Surveillance. Emotional leverage. The clinical terms flickered through her mind, unbidden. Textbook patterns she’d studied long before she ever imagined encountering them in her own life.
She turned to face him, drying her hands on a towel. “I’m not disappearing. I’m doing my job.”
“You’re doing it at the expense of this marriage.”
Her jaw tightened. “That’s not fair.”
“Isn’t it?”
The air between them thickened, charged. Jack moved closer, too close, and she could feel the pressure of his scrutiny like heat on her skin.
“I’m trying,” she said quietly. “I really am.”
“Then try harder.”
There it was, the shift, the fracture line slicing through the conversation, exposing the raw nerve beneath.
“Jack,” she began, careful, steady, “I can’t keep—”
“Don’t start with that tone.” His words cut through hers. “Like you’re the sensible one and I’m being irrational.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to.”
His voice rose, not loud, but sharper, thinner, stretched tight like a wire ready to snap.
“You need to decide whether this marriage still matters to you,” he said. “Because lately I feel like I’m the only one fighting for it.”
An old ache bloomed in her chest. They’d been here before, this circular logic, this twisting of her intentions into accusations. She swallowed against a tide of exhaustion.
“It matters,” she said. “Of course it matters.”
“Then prove it.”
He moved past her toward the fridge, and she reached out instinctively, just to steady the moment, just to keep the conversation from fracturing further.
“Jack, please—”
He spun back faster than she expected, and his hand closed around her upper arm before she could react.
Not a strike.
Not a shove.
Just fingers digging in, too hard, too urgent, his grip a reflexive clamp of frustration made physical.
Dana inhaled sharply.
His hold loosened almost immediately, as if he hadn’t realised how forceful he’d been.
“I—Jesus, Dana.” His face paled. “You startled me.”
That’s not what happened, she thought distantly. But the clinical part of her mind was already cataloguing the event like evidence:
Grip strength. Location. Pressure. Duration. Reaction. Pattern.
“I’m fine,” she said. Automatically. Predictably. The practised response of someone trying to de-escalate a situation before it metastasised into something unmanageable.
Jack touched her arm again, softer this time, thumb brushing the skin in a gesture meant to soothe. “I didn’t mean to grab you like that.”
“I know.” She forced a small smile. “It’s okay.”
It wasn’t okay.
But saying that felt like lighting a fuse she wasn’t ready to ignite.
He exhaled shakily, relief washing over his features. “Let’s not do this. We’re both tired.”
“Yeah,” she murmured. “We are.”
As he walked past her, heading upstairs, the ache in her arm throbbed, dull, insistent, a pulsing reminder of the line they’d crossed.
When she finally turned off the kitchen light, the house felt even quieter than before. Not peaceful.
Hollow.
And in that hollow space, the thought formed, small and fragile but unmistakably real:
I can’t keep living like this.
By the time she lay awake in bed hours later, staring at the ceiling as Jack slept beside her, the catalyst had settled into place like a weight on her chest.
Not escape.
Not yet.
But a change. A shift. A step toward some version of herself that wasn’t shrinking to fit the shape of his expectations.
A transfer, she thought, pulse steadying around the idea. A more active role. Something challenging. Something that demands me in a way this life doesn’t.
Not running away — no.
Reframing.
Reclaiming.
Regaining control.
In the morning, she would submit the request.
And she would tell herself it was about the work.
About purpose.
About contributing more.
She wouldn’t call it survival.
Not yet.
Dana woke before the alarm.
Not from rest, her body felt hollowed out, as if she hadn’t slept at all, but from a kind of internal jolt, the mind snapping awake before the world had permission to intrude.
Grey morning light spilled through the blinds. The house was still. Jack’s steady breathing at her side should have been comforting.
Instead, it pressed against her like a reminder.
She lay there for a long moment, staring at the faint cracks in the ceiling paint, tracing them with her eyes the way another person might trace the lines of a map. A map back to herself. A map out.
But maps didn’t help if you refused to admit you were lost.
Her arm throbbed, a muted pulse beneath the skin, the ghost of last night’s grip. When she shifted, the ache sharpened, a physical echo of something she’d tried so hard not to name.
She brushed her fingers over the tender spot. Not enough to hurt. Just enough to acknowledge it was real.
Jack stirred beside her, rolling slightly toward her warmth, unaware of the tension knotted along her spine. She didn’t move away, though part of her wanted to. Instead, she eased herself out of bed carefully, a slow, practised extraction that wouldn’t wake him.
She needed space. Air.
She padded down the hallway and into the bathroom, closing the door with the softest click. In the mirror, the bruise was barely visible, just a faint impression on her upper arm, like someone had tried to erase a thumbprint and only half succeeded.
She exhaled through her nose.
Objectivity, Dana. What do you see?
Findings:
– Mild contusion.
– Localised tenderness.
– No lasting damage.
– Not the first time.
– Not the worst sign, but a sign.
Assessment:
– Something is changing.
– Something is shifting beneath the surface tension of their life.
– Something she can no longer dismiss as stress or miscommunication.
Her reflection stared back: calm, capable, clinical. A woman who knew better. A woman trained to assess risk. A woman steadily rationing her own pieces.
She dressed quietly, choosing a blouse with sleeves, habit, instinct, protection. As she buttoned it, she felt a slow, decisive resolve crystallising in her chest like ice.
She needed a transfer.
Not because she was fleeing.
Not because of last night.
Not because she was afraid.
Because she needed room to breathe.
Because something inside her had been whispering for months that she was stagnating at Quantico, that she was capable of more, that she wasn’t being challenged, not really.
Because distance wasn’t an escape.
It was perspective.
She held onto that thought like a lifeline.
Downstairs, she brewed coffee and sat at the table, waiting. Waiting for Jack to wake. Waiting for the moment she would tell him. Waiting for the reaction she already half-anticipated but couldn’t predict.
She traced slow circles around the rim of her mug with her fingertip.
She could already hear how she would frame it:
A new opportunity.
More field experience.
A chance to apply her medical expertise where it mattered.
Nothing to do with him.
Nothing to do with last night.
He wouldn’t like it.
She knew that.
But she could justify it, logically, professionally. She could make it sound reasonable, pragmatic, and beneficial for both of them. She could cloak the truth in ambition and purpose until even she almost believed it.
Almost.
Footsteps on the stairs pulled her attention up. Jack appeared in the doorway, hair mussed, tie draped around his neck but not tightened yet. He offered her that morning half-smile she used to trust, the one that now unsettled her without warning.
“Morning,” he said, leaning down to kiss her cheek.
She stiffened at the contact but masked it quickly.
“Morning,” she replied.
He poured himself coffee, scraping the chair back as he sat across from her.
“You were up early,” he said. A subtle probe.
“I couldn’t sleep.”
He studied her face, too intently. “Are we okay?”
The question struck her like static. Loaded. Preemptive. Defensive.
“We’re fine,” she said, and hated how easy the lie came. “I wanted to talk to you about something.”
His eyes narrowed a fraction. “What kind of something?”
She kept her voice steady. Professional. Controlled.
“I’ve been thinking about taking on a different role. Something more active. A field assignment.”
He blinked, surprise flickering into something sharper. “At the Bureau?”
“Yes.”
“You want to leave Quantico?”
“I want to expand my skill set,” she corrected gently. “I think it could be good for my career.”
Jack set his mug down a little too hard.
“You’ve never said anything about this.”
“I’ve been considering it for a while,” she said. Another half-truth, stretched thin over something far more fragile.
Jack leaned back in his chair, jaw tight. “Why now?”
Because she was suffocating.
Because she couldn’t keep shrinking herself.
Because she’d woken this morning with a bruise on her arm and a bruise somewhere deeper she couldn’t ignore anymore.
But she said none of that.
“I’m ready,” she murmured.
A long silence unfurled between them, thick and uneasy.
Finally, Jack spoke, voice flat. “I don’t like the idea of you running around god-knows-where chasing criminals.”
“It’s not like that,” she said. “It would still be Bureau work.”
“Not safe work.” His tone hardened. “Not the kind of work you should be doing.”
Her fingers tightened around her mug.
The kind of work you should be doing.
As if her life belonged to him to allocate.
As if her decisions needed permission.
She took a slow breath. “It’s something I want.”
Jack stared at her, searching her expression for something, weakness, maybe. Hesitation. Anything he could leverage.
Instead, he found resolve.
Eventually, he looked away.
“I think you’re making a mistake,” he said.
Dana nodded once, quietly. “Maybe. But it’s mine to make.”
Jack didn’t respond.
He finished his coffee in two sharp swallows, grabbed his jacket, and disappeared upstairs without another word.
Dana sat alone at the table, pulse settling around the steady rhythm of a truth she couldn’t deny anymore:
This wasn’t an escape.
This was survival by increments.
And she was finally, finally choosing herself, if only in the smallest, first step.
The Bureau smelled the same as it always did, industrial carpet, old paper, burnt coffee. Familiar. Neutral. Safe in the way sterile spaces sometimes were. Scully stood in the elevator watching the numbers climb, her reflection faint in the brushed metal doors.
She looked composed. Professional. Everything in place.
No one could see the tightness in her throat, the pulse sprinting in her wrist. No one would notice how her blouse sleeve pressed lightly against a tender spot beneath the fabric.
She exhaled slowly through her nose.
One step at a time.
Quantico had become a life measured in routines, hallway greetings, lab reports, and hours at a desk that grew longer each month. She’d convinced herself it was fine. That the steadiness meant security. That she’d chosen it freely.
Today, that illusion felt thinner than the worn carpet under her heels.
When the elevator doors slid open, she stepped into the corridor with her usual posture, shoulders back, chin slightly lifted. Her body knew how to move through this space even when her mind faltered.
Voices murmured behind office doors. A copier whirred somewhere down the hall. Someone laughed, sharp, sudden, too alive for the fog in her chest.
Scully walked straight to the Assistant Director’s secretary’s desk.
“Agent Scully,” the woman greeted pleasantly. “Good morning.”
“Morning,” Dana answered, her voice steadier than she felt. “Is Assistant Director McClure available?”
The woman checked her schedule. “He has ten minutes before his nine a.m. meeting. You can go in.”
Ten minutes. Enough to change the next year of her life.
Scully knocked once, brisk and controlled. “Sir?”
McClure glanced up from a stack of files, glasses perched low on his nose. “Agent Scully. Come in.”
She stepped inside, closing the door behind her. The room was warm, faintly claustrophobic with the scent of his aftershave and the hum of the radiator.
“What can I do for you?” McClure asked.
She handed him the sealed envelope she’d prepared last night in a brief stretch of courage. It felt heavier than paper should.
“I’d like to request a reassignment,” she said. Clean. Precise. Like reporting a specimen. “Preferably a field position.”
McClure opened the document, brow lifting slightly. “This is unexpected.”
“I know.”
“You’ve built quite a reputation at Quantico.”
“I’m grateful for the opportunities I’ve had,” she replied, a script she’d rehearsed in the car. “But I feel I could be more effective in the field. Contribute more directly.”
McClure studied her for a long moment. “Fieldwork is demanding. Unpredictable. Not always compatible with personal obligations.”
There it was, the knife wrapped in a casual remark.
Scully kept her spine straight. “I understand the demands, sir. I’m prepared for them.”
McClure nodded slowly. “I’ll take this under review. I can’t guarantee where you’ll land, but we have a backlog of divisions requesting scientific support. You’ll likely hear something within a week.”
A week.
She thanked him, stepped out, and only when the door closed behind her did she feel her breath deflate from her chest in a shaky exhale.
Jack didn’t mention her request that evening.
He didn’t ask if she’d submitted it. He didn’t ask how it went.
He barely spoke to her at all.
He came home late, hung his coat carefully on the rack, loosened his tie with that tight precision he used when he was angry but masking it.
“Dinner’s in the fridge,” she said softly.
“Already ate,” he replied, not looking at her.
That was it.
The silence stretched through the night like an invisible tripwire. Dana moved through the house cautiously, as though sound itself might trigger something.
She washed her face, brushed her teeth, and climbed into bed long before exhaustion set in. Jack didn’t join her until much later. When the mattress dipped under his weight, she shut her eyes reflexively, body smoothing itself into stillness.
He didn’t touch her.
She didn’t reach for him.
The space between them felt like an entire ocean.
The next few days unfolded in a blur of controlled movements and internal unease. Scully went to work, submitted reports, taught her trainees, attended briefings, every piece of her life continuing in its familiar rhythm while something enormous churned beneath the surface.
At lunch, she found herself picking at salads she barely tasted.
At home, she kept her sleeves long.
In bed, she stared at the ceiling until the shadows blurred.
She waited for an email, a phone call, a knock on her office door.
Each morning, her stomach tightened with the same nervous question:
Where will they send me?
Every possibility played out in her mind: violent crimes, forensics units, managerial roles in regional offices. But the one thing she didn’t imagine, not once, was the basement.
The small, dusty office with one strange man and a reputation no one in the Bureau wanted to touch.
She didn’t know her life was about to be tethered to it.
She only knew the dread, quiet, insistent, was becoming a constant hum beneath her ribs.
The dread… and something else.
Something that felt almost like hope, muffled but persistent, rising despite everything.
Because whatever assignment came next, even the worst one, it would be hers.
A choice she made.
A direction she claimed.
A crack of daylight in a house full of locked rooms.