SPN/X-Files: Scullyverse a.k.a. CASTIEL/SCULLY OTP!!1

[whynot]

One of the many reasons the Casparty will always have a special place inside my heart is that it gave me Scullyverse. Ya, as in Dana Scully of X-Files fame. What is Scullyverse? I mean, besides an excuse for us to write Castiel/Scully fic. The premise is that before Cas had to go fish Dean out of hell and invade his personal space, he was with Scully and invaded her personal space. And they kind of liked it. Don't try to rationalize the timelines or the Jimmy; we certainly didn't. Why rationalize when you can write angel/FBI agent UST instead?

I for one welcome our new Castiel/Scully OTP.


Proverbs/Psalms
Castiel, Scully; PG. An excerpt from the hypothetical fic that this not!snippet is from. 500 words.


She hears the gunshot and Mulder's voice at the same time. A terrified "Scully!" fired from the barrel of a gun, and then there is something else. Between that and the moment of her death: the beat of wings, a light touch on her forehead.

The world contracts around her.

+

Scully comes to on the floor of someone else's house, wrapped in Castiel's arms. His labored breathing is warm on the back of her head, and she says, "Castiel--" Sits up and looks at him, sees the blood trickling from his nostrils, the thin red line from the corner of his mouth.

Sit up, she says to him. Keep your head back. He's too weak to sit up on his own, so Scully props him against the side of the armchair. She grabs washcloths from the bathroom, looks for ice in the fridge and finds none.

"I thought you said," she murmurs, pressing a wet cloth to his face, "that you can't do that anymore."

"Not often," Castiel admits.

And what can she say but, "Thank you."

His single-minded blue stare, more familiar to her than she expects. "You're welcome."

"You didn't need to do that."

"I did what I wanted to do," he says. "But there isn't much difference between want and need, if you are walking the right path."

"Where are we, Castiel?"

"Someone's summer home. No one is here."

She looks at him carefully. "Can you take us back to Mulder and Sam and Dean?"

His hesitation is her answer.

"How far away are they?" she asks.

"Dana," he says, sounding a little fuzzy.

"What?"

And then Castiel's eyes roll back in his head, and he goes under.

+

There is no cellphone signal out here. The landline is disconnected for the season, and there's nothing to do but make sure her angel doesn't die. Or at least, his vessel. Castiel explained it to her once, how the host must say yes, how Castiel's true form would otherwise destroy her.

"What are you like in your true form?" she asked him.

"Close to what you would think of as fire," he replied. "Angels approximate illumination. We are devoted to it."

Castiel hasn't come to her in years. Eventually Scully stopped expecting him altogether, stopped turning her head at every hint of rustling leaves. She chalked him up to an overactive imagination and a loneliness she would never admit to anyone. But here Castiel is again, a little the worse for wear, as she is too. She knew right away, as soon as he appeared alongside Dean and Sam; she knew him, she recognized him. How could she not? Castiel must have recognized her too, but neither of them said anything, playing their parts.

Sometimes you recognize best the very things you try to forget. Sometimes you have to trust that the things you lose will find you again.

Scully missed him sometimes, just a little bit. She wonders if Castiel missed her.




Wisdom
Scully, Mulder, Castiel; PG. Another snippet from the same hypothetical fic, somewhere near the end. 658 words.


For all that Fox Mulder and Dean Page are incapable of not throttling each other when they're in the same room, they still end up going out for drinks when the case is over.

"You should come, Scully," Mulder says. "Show Omaha what FBI-ing is really about."

"You don't care what FBI-ing is really about," she reminds him. "You have fun, Mulder. I'm going to turn in early tonight."

"You sure? I think Agent Page has a thing for you."

Scully smiles, wry. "I think he'll manage without me."

"Or is it Agent Plant you like?" Mulder grins, and raises his eyebrows at her. "You like 'em tall, dark, and mysterious, right?"

She rolls her eyes and says, "Don't let me get in the way of your boys' night out."

When Scully gets back to the hotel room, Castiel is there, as she knew he would be.

"Hello, Dana," he says. He's sitting on the bed, watching her drape her coat and bag on a chair.

"You feeling better?" Her question comes out, unintentionally, as a tired sigh.

"Yes. Thank you."

Scully turns and rests her weight against the dresser, crossing her arms. He is still watching her; she stares back, finding that she likes the wariness in him. It looks like guilt. "Are you with those agents from Omaha now?"

"Yes."

"They're not really agents, are they."

Castiel hesitates, because angels can't lie.

Scully says, "Their names aren't really Plant and Page."

"No."

"Are they why--" She looks away. She can't take his eyes. Although he claims to not be able to see into souls anymore, he doesn't need to see into hers. Castiel already knows.

"Yes," he replies, softly.

Scully nods.

+

She understands, despite herself.

Push him inside the lines, they had said to her. Don't let him lure you out. If you follow him, you will be alone. The truth is not out there; it is with us.

"Well, this sounds familiar," she murmurs, when Castiel tells her his story.

"You taught me well," he says.

Scully wants to ask him if he expects to survive his war, if he thinks his charge will, if he thinks they will win, and is it worth it, is Dean worth it, does Castiel ever allow himself regret. She resists. They aren't fair questions. Castiel is not just something to decode herself with, and perhaps he can't be anyway. He is not what he once was, but then again neither is she. Their separation has brought them too much into conjunction, and now they are obscured in similar ways.

"Where will you go," Scully asks, "after this?"

"Where I must."

She crosses the room to him, her heart full of the old days, her mind full of the new. Scully remembers the quiet spaces they made for themselves, she and Castiel, something like a soft glow in her memory, something like murmurs settling, the way dust settles between echoes. She stands before him now, aware of proximity and restless for it. Castiel watches her with familiar candor, and she wonders how she used to do this, how once upon a time she would touch his face and he would lean into her without a second thought. How did they do that?

"It's good to see you again," she says.

Castiel says, "Likewise."

"Castiel..." And then she hesitates. He cants his head to the left. Before she can swallow back the question, Scully asks, "Do I not need you anymore?"

His eyes soften. "Dana," he says, and he takes her hands, glances at them before he lifts his gaze to her face, and her heart tightens for it. He rises to his feet, and suddenly they are so much closer than she would have dared. "It's not about need," he says, and she sees galaxies in the blue of his irises.

He kisses her forehead, and Scully closes her eyes.

When she opens them, Castiel is gone.




untitled 5.18 coda
Castiel/Scully; PG. After Cas banishes himself and kills the other angels in what unoshot and I have decided is the remnants of the Garden of Eden, the first place on earth he goes to is... 437 words.


There's a wind that blows in from her kitchen, and Scully thinks that she must be getting on in years, forgetting to close the windows. The wind smells odd -- a little like wet earth, something like rotting vegetation -- and she wonders idly what the neighbors are throwing out when she sees him.

"Castiel?"

He grips the edge of the kitchen counter, white-knuckled and head bowed, but at the sound of her voice, he looks up. The blood, mud, and bruises make his blue eyes seem brighter, more pristine. Scully rushes over with "What happened?" and "Are you okay?" and "Castiel," she says, and when he turns towards her, his shirt falls open, and she gasps, "Who did this?"

But Castiel just says, "Dana," thready and rough, puts his hands on her shoulders and grips tight, and she grabs his elbows to steady him as he squeezes his eyes shut and stumbles. "Dana," he says again.

Scully tries to shepherd them to the living room, but Castiel won't move if he doesn't want to move. She starts talking about first-aid and stitches and What happened Castiel who did this, and he says her name again, like in fairy tales where all you have to do to make something true is to repeat it three times.

"The world is about to change," he says. "I can't stay long."

"What are you talking about?"

He tries to laugh, but he can't, chokes instead. "I killed them," he slurs. "I killed my-- and I'll have to kill him, but he'll kill me first."

"Kill who? Cas--"

Castiel puts his hands on her cheeks, and it stuns her into silence. Something in her unravels. Something in him does too; she can see it in his eyes, as if he too is surprised. Castiel's hands are damp and warm, and Scully can still smell the blood on them.

"Dana," he says, from the edge of a precipice, "I have never once regretted you."

And then he kisses her.

Her eyes flutter shut. There is blood even on his lips, and she wonders if it's his. The kiss is brief, and is maybe not a kiss at all, but a promise that can no longer be kept, made too late. His lips are chapped, and his mouth is dry. Scully raises her hands and cups his neck, and Castiel makes a sound at the back of his throat.

"Castiel--" she says, and he says, "I have to go. They need me."

And Scully says, "Please--"

And Castiel says, "Goodbye."

There is another gust of wind, and she is alone.