Chapter Text
Dana Scully watched as the English landscape slid by her train window. Rain droplets ran horizontally across the glass and she traced their path with the tip of her fingernail before letting her arm fall back to her side. Even though it was barely early afternoon, the sky seemed to be darkening by the second. The changing of the light was something that Scully had learned to love about England. Every moment could look different, depending on a seeming million different factors. Maybe it was because the change could easily mirror her own moods. As the train swayed on, it became harder for Scully to keep her eyes open.
As it stood, her mood was terrible and her brain was fogged with exhaustion. Scully’s body still carried the dull ache of resentment of the flight from Washington. Turbulence over the Atlantic had turned the cabin into a long, collective exercise in endurance as seatbelt signs chimed on and off for hours, drinks and meals were abandoned half-finished, and the plane shuddered as if it were reconsidering its own purpose. Scully had spent most of the seven hour flight awake, shoulders tight, jaw clenched, wrapped in her own coat for comfort. The weather, she had reminded herself, was not personal. It could feel hostile without intent.
Still, she had disembarked at Heathrow with a blinding headache and a sense of undeniable relief. If it was up to her, she wouldn’t be flying anywhere again until her time at Cambridge was up in August. Yes, even though her time with the FBI had meant jetting all over the United States multiple times a week for years, Dana Scully hated flying. Everything about it tested her patience and her physicality. Flying meant surrendering control and agency. Once that plane started down the runway, there was nothing she could do and no where she could go. She was stuck. And her body and mind despised being stuck.
After a brief stop, the train had pulled smoothly out of Royston, the announcement barely audible over the hum of rain and wheels, and Scully checked her watch out of habit more than necessity. She could’ve taken a hired car right from Heathrow back to Cambridge, but she couldn’t bring herself to sit in bumper-to-bumper traffic during London rush hour. Instead, she had quickly jumped on the Elizabeth Line and prayed that the morning congestion on the Tube wouldn’t be too bad, and she was remarkably blessed until Zone 1. Even better, she managed to just make the 8:35 Great Northern Line from King’s Cross.
She knew the route well enough now. King’s Cross to Cambridge station. A cab. Lower Park Street. The small terraced house Jesus College had assigned her was a compact, sensible space that smelled faintly of old stone and radiator heat. She would drop her bag, change her shoes, and go for a run if the rain relented. If it didn’t, she would concede to the convenience of a hot cup of tea, an even hotter shower, and unpacking her suitcase. She had learned, over the years, when to stop forcing things to work out the way she wanted them to. Now, she was able to simply…pivot.
Her return to Cambridge marked the beginning of Lent term, though the word still struck her as faintly theatrical. The term system at the University of Cambridge felt ceremonial, as though the process of learning was something to be ushered in with bells and rituals and names borrowed from lore. Scully was back as a visiting fellow at the Jerry Lee Centre for Experimental Criminology at University of Cambridge Institute of Criminology—a title so long and redundant it was almost laughable. Her interest had shifted since leaving the FBI and what those three little letters represented. For the first time in her professional life, she let her mind chase her own interests without influence. No Ahab and Margaret Scully pushing her through medical school. No Mulder pushing her into believing something she was so certain was not real. No superior pushing her to take her pathology work more seriously.
It had taken almost a year, but it had happened. Her research interests narrowed and deepened in ways that genuinely surprised her. Female violent offenders. Not pathology. Not hard, biological science. Instead she found herself invested in history, psychology, and cultural framing. She let herself be led by the nose after coming across an academic article about women and habitual violence in Edwardian and Victorian England. She let her curiosity wander, especially when tracing how certain behaviors were named monstrous while others were quietly contextualized based on the period’s virtuously pious compass. It boggled Scully’s mind how science borrowed language from morality and so many pretended not to notice.
It was the pretending that interested her most. From there, it was easy. Before she knew it, her work and theories had caught the interest of quite a few R1 universities, but it wasn’t until Cambridge came calling that she even considered heading into the academic circuit.
The leather tote at her feet contained only the essentials: a slim laptop, a folder of notes she hadn’t yet typed up, a paperback she hadn’t managed to even crack open. Her wallet and passport. Her carry-on was stowed in the luggage rack by the door, light enough to lift without strain. Years of travel—fieldwork, conferences, cases that blurred together —had taught her the elegance of packing with restraint. She no longer packed for contingencies she couldn’t control, though the forgotten umbrella was an unfortunate minor oversight.
Scully caught her reflection in the darkened glass as the countryside gave way to industrial edges and wet brick. Her hair had grown out into a long bob, red dulled slightly by the low light, pulled back behind one ear and escaping everywhere else. She hadn’t bothered with makeup when she had washed her face in the Heathrow bathroom sink. Clean lines mattered more to her now than polish. A smattering of freckles across her nose. Diamond studs. Black narrow trousers. Sensible flats. A wool jumper soft from wear. Over it all, a black overcoat heavy enough to feel impenetrable when the wind picked up. The leather gloves tucked into the pockets were still warm from her small hands.
Presentable, she thought. Stoic. That had always been the goal. To look as though nothing could easily dislodge her.
The train slowed, the familiar approach announced not by signage but by density of the buildings that began to press in. It felt like a rush, the sudden proximity of other lives after the emptiness of rolling across the fen. Rain intensified, drumming against the carriage roof with renewed force, and Scully felt a small, anticipatory tightening in her chest. Arrival always did this to her. Not nerves, exactly. Attention. A recalibration. A start.
Cambridge had a way of performing in wet weather. Stone darkened to near-black as pavements became slick and reflective. To Scully, it felt like the city was most itself when it was showing off in the gloom.
As the train came to a stop, Scully rose with the other passengers, steady and unhurried, retrieving her bag and slipping her gloves back on. The platform smelled of wet metal and cold air. The teenager just ahead of her puffed at a vape that wafted right into Scully’s space – it tasted like a sickeningly sweet strawberry pastry. She pulled her coat closer as she stepped out, rain immediately finding the exposed line of her hair.
She didn’t hesitate as she made her way down the platform and through the station. A cab queue had already formed, and she took her place without complaint even though she could feel the cold rain dripping down the nape of her neck and into the popped collar of her coat.
The queue moved fast, and a driver loaded her bag with practiced efficiency, glancing at her once in the mirror as if to confirm if Scully was a tourist, or someone who belonged. The given address at Lower Park Street answered his silent question.
As the cab pulled away, Cambridge slid past the window again—closer now, more insistent. Buildings loomed and receded. On Mill Road people dashed across the street and in between shops. Archways swallowed the last of the remaining light. A crew was still working on taking down the Christmas market on Christ’s Pieces. The massive, wooden back gate of Emmanuel College was still closed. Other university buildings quickly left Scully’s line of vision. Somewhere behind those walls were lecture halls she would return to, offices with too-small desks, rooms where arguments unfolded politely and with consequence. Somewhere, too, were histories she hadn’t yet learned, patterns still obscured by tradition and weather and the careful language of ancient institutions.
Scully rested her head briefly against the glass, cool and solid, and closed her eyes.
—
The cab let her out just past the narrow mouth of Lower Park Street. Scully paid the fare, thanked the driver, and hauled her suitcase the short distance to her front door, number 19, with its brick darkened by nearly two centuries of pollution and weather. The block dated to the 1830s—early enough to feel purposeful, late enough to feel domestic—and its age announced itself not with grandeur but with small details: uneven steps, a door that resisted for half a second before yielding, a stairwell that smelled faintly of stone and something vegetal.
Scully unlocked the door, stepped inside, and closed it behind her with a small sigh of relief. It was her home. Hers alone.
The space greeted her the way it always did—modest and warm like an embrace from an old friend. One bedroom, furnished, the pieces chosen less for cohesion than for endurance of constant use. The sofa cushions sagged a bit; the armchair by the window had been reupholstered at least once, the fabric a muted floral that felt almost similar to a chair Scully had in Washington back in the 90s. Everything in this house had survived multiple rotations of scholars and their spouses and Scully had no doubt that everything in the space was expected to continue to pass muster long after she was gone.
Scully set her bag down and removed her soaking wet coat, hanging it carefully on the hook by the door. The radiators announced themselves a moment later, as if offended by the cold she’d let in. Old and iron-heavy, they knocked and clanked with theatrical reluctance, ticking as heat crept back into their bones. Scully had learned their language over Michaelmas term. She learned when to wait, when to tap a valve, when to accept that comfort in this country often arrived noisily and on its own schedule. Now, she found the sound oddly reassuring. Proof that the house was awake. Proof that warmth, however argumentative, was on its way.
She pulled her fingers out of her gloves, already warming, and took a moment to stand still and take in her home. She had learned to love the lived-in quality of English spaces, especially the way comfort came not from perfection but from accumulation. This house had taught her that. Over Michaelmas, she had slowly made it hers, not through renovation but through attention. Potted plants lined the windowsills and clustered on a small table near the kitchen doorway: ferns, a stubborn monstera, a peace lily that leaned decisively toward the light. Art collected from charity shops and artisan markets dangled from small nails in the walls—linocuts, a small abstract watercolor, a framed fragment of something that might once have been an instructional map. A large charcoal drawing of a cathedral in France found at an antique market that she had paid only a single pound for and had made her laugh out loud in delight. None of it matched, but all of it felt deliberate.
Her kitchen was narrow but efficient. Mismatched antique flatware sat in a ceramic crock by the sink, silver dulled but usable. Floral dinner plates were stacked in an open cupboard, their edges chipped just enough to suggest history rather than neglect. On the counter, her favorite mug waited where she had left it before Christmas—blue-grey, thick-walled, bought on a last-minute trip to Lincoln when she’d taken a train north on a whim to see the cathedral and ended up staying overnight because the light had been too good to leave.
Throws were draped over the backs of chairs, rugs layered where the wood floor grew cold near the windows. Lamps stood in corners and on side tables, their light soft, indirect, and forgiving. The bedroom was up the stairs at the back of the house, just beside the bathroom. It was a quieter, smaller space and the walls slightly bowed with age. The brass bed was low and wide, layered in linen and wool, one of Scully’s indulgent luxuries. She could eat off second hand plates all day long, but she would spend an exorbitant amount of money to make sure that she slept all the way through the night. From the bedroom window, she could see down into the small back garden, now blurred with rain—bare branches, damp soil, a narrow path that led to a rundown shed. In the mornings, the light there was gentle and unassuming.
Back in the living room, her desk occupied the far wall beneath a bookshelf. The surface was stacked with books and loose papers, a working mess she understood intuitively. Her spare pair of readers balanced on top of a stack of magazines. Above it, the shelf held photographs she’d brought over from her storage unit in Washington: a handful of faces, places, moments she didn’t need to catalogue to recognize. Snapshots of her former lives. Her and Melissa when they were teenagers in bikinis tanning in the backyard when they lived in California. A blurry polaroid profile of Fox Mulder in a banged up rental car somewhere in the middle of Wisconsin. A faded portrait of her parents on their wedding day. A large mounted landscape of a house in the middle of nowhere. A school photo of a little boy with a gap-toothed smile.
Scully exhaled, slow and deep, and felt the residual tension of travel loosen its hold. She moved through the house with small, practical gestures—unpacking her bag, setting her laptop on the desk, popping on the kettle. Outside, the rain continued. She would try to go for a run later in the evening if she could keep her eyes open.
The kettle clicked off. She poured water into her mug, steam rising, and leaned against the counter. This place, she thought, had been good to her. It asked little. It held what she gave it.
For now, that was enough.
As she settled further back into the kitchen counter, adding a splash of milk into her mug of tea, Scully heard the faint - yet tell tale - wailing of police sirens tickling something at the back of her skull.
That’s not my life anymore, she thought.
It’s not for me, and won’t be for me. Not anymore.
Tomorrow she would hopefully wake fully rested and get back into her morning routine. She needed to head to her office and wade through her inbox of emails she ignored through the last of the festive season. But it could all wait until tomorrow.
—
Scully woke at 3:07 a.m. with the unhelpful clarity of someone whose body had decided the night was finished. The house was quiet except for the radiators, which ticked faintly. She lay still for a while, eyes open, listening—to the walls, to her own breathing, to the low, ambient awareness that had settled in her chest.
Though she willed it desperately, sleep did not return.
She turned once, then again, sheets tangling around her legs, irritation building not toward fear but toward stasis. This far into her forties, her system knew that it needed regulation. Movement had always been the most reliable answer.
Ten minutes later she was dressed: running tights, a crew neck pulled close at the throat, an ear band keeping her hair back. The air outside was cold but clean, the rain finally done. She locked the door behind her and descended the stairs quietly, joints already loosening in anticipation.
The street was empty, the early hour suspending her in a sense of disbelief. If she tried, she knew that she could trick her brain into thinking it was a dream. Her trainers struck the pavement in a steady rhythm, a sound she found grounding and measured. Breath in through her nose, out through her mouth. Over and over. Though tired, her mind was deliciously clear. She ran toward Jesus Green, the open stretch of darkness beside the river welcoming in its own way. Fog hovered low over the grass, the Cam catching what little light there was and breaking it into soft, shifting fragments. The spookiness of it did not unsettle her. It felt earned. Night, she had learned, stripped places down to their essential truths, and Cambridge was no different.
She followed the river’s edge, pace even, shoulders relaxed, then doubled back toward the back gates of Jesus College. The metal bars loomed darker than usual, but they yielded easily after she scanned into the key pad, as they always did. Inside the grounds gravel replaced pavement beneath her feet, crunching softly.
That was when she saw the lights.
Blue lights strobed brief and intrusive, throwing the familiar geometry of the college into sharp relief. A police van idled near the back side of the college library, its presence unmistakably wrong at this hour, in this place. Scully slowed instinctively, then felt the pull of curiosity tighten in her chest. She veered up the lane, footfalls lighter now, more controlled. She felt her body tighten up with muscle memory as she eased behind the group of officers.
There were only a handful of them—no cordon, no crowd, no need outside of term time—but the scene had already settled into gravity. A body lay on the ground at the base of the building, arranged by impact rather than intent. Windows rose dark and indifferent in three stories overhead.
Scully stopped a careful distance away, still in the shadows, hands resting on her hips, heart rate elevated but steady. She took in details without effort: the angle of the body, the way one shoe had come loose, the absence of visible blood where there should have been some. The smell of cold stone. The quiet professionalism of the officers, already speaking in lowered voices.
She noticed the blonde woman standing just apart from the rest.
Tall in heels. Still. Her coat dark against the light, posture composed in a way that suggested authority without performance with her arms tight across her chest. She was watching the scene, gaze moving deliberately from body to building to people and then back again. When she spoke—briefly, to one of the officers—her voice carried, calm and precise, the kind that did not need to rise to be obeyed.
Something in Scully’s awareness sharpened. A slight tap at the back of her skull.
The blonde turned slightly, catching sight of her at the edge of the light. Their eyes met for a fraction of a second—long enough for Scully to realize she had startled her.
Scully stepped back then, instinct reasserting itself, the boundary between witness and intrusion settling into place. Quickly, Scully realized that the hour wasn’t going to let her slip away as a passerby. Her mind rebounded.
Dammit Dana, she thought. This isn’t for you. This isn’t your space.
One of the crime scene techs shouted something from across the courtyard. The woman’s attention returned to the scene, to the work at hand. Scully slipped into the shadows and back the way she came.
Whatever this was, it did not belong to Scully.
After she exited the college gates, she jogged away more slowly than she’d arrived, pulse gradually easing, the cold finally beginning to seep through the fabric at her wrists. Behind her, the lights continued their silent insistence against the night.
By the time she reached her house again, after a few laps around Jesus Green and Midsummer Common, it was still far from daylight.
Scully did not know—could not yet know—that this was the third time the Cambridge police force had been woken like this in a month. That someone had apparently slipped, once more, from a height. And that the university, for all its careful language, was running out of places to let things fall unseen and unheard.