#you cannot understand mulder OR scully unless you have love for both | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

frangipanidownunder · 5 years ago

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Status Quo: fic

This responds to a mix of prompts - from the anon who sent me a trope mash up: accidentally married/mistaken for a couple and for the @xfficchallenges prompt 4: married sex in the unremarkable house. Not too NSFW (sorry!).

It’s set between The Truth and IWTB. It’s long, so there’s a cut.

The house is set back from the road, greying snow piled up at the wide gates. Skinner warned them it was a doer-upper, but it was the best he could do on short notice. The car scrunches over the frozen driveway and the house appears; tired roof, sagging verandah and peeling paint on the weatherboards, but there’s something appealing in the way it fills the space, the way the land falls away either side. It’s homely. Mulder glances at her and lets out a low breath of relief.

“It’s not so bad,” he says. “There’s even hope for a vegetable patch, Scully.” He points to a shed, door hanging off the hinge, revealing a collection of gardening tools.

“You don’t have a green thumb, Mulder,” she says, opening the door and looking around.

He lifts his hands into the air and waves them around. “Maybe the country air here will help.”

For the first time in a long, hard while, she sees a little bit of the old Mulder peeking through. This man, resurrected once, hasn’t yet been able to come back from the trauma of a death sentence, a jail break, years on the run and the loss of their son.

Skinner had promised them immunity but there were conditions. When she thinks of those years on the run, nights in grimy motel rooms, back-to-back on lumpy beds, days without hearing him speak, his silent midnight tears, any conditions seem preferable.

“If you marry, you cannot be compelled to give evidence against him, Scully.” Skinner spoke in curt sentences. As if saying the words quicker would make them more palatable. But she could hardly swallow, hardly breathe.

Skinner unlocked his fingers, walked closer, softened his taut frame. “It doesn’t have to be real,” he said, slower. “Unless you want it to be?”

She shook her head instantly. Nothing about their lives had been real in any way the rest of the world might understand that word.

“This is a good outcome, Dana. Mulder can still remain off the radar. The FBI is not interested in a lot of the stuff you two investigated any more. But you have to keep him reigned in. Those articles…”

She nodded, but how could she reign him in? The internet was the loosest tether for Mulder. He sounded almost sane compared to some of the theorists out there.

Skinner smirked. He understood. “At least you can get out there, work, if that’s what you want,” he said.

William was out there, living. But they were cooped up inside unfamiliar walls, barely surviving. It couldn’t go on. This state of sameness they were enduring. Something had to change. She told Skinner, “yes”. Guilt jostled next to hope in the pit of her stomach.

Skinner had organised everything. Venue, bloodwork, license. All they had to do was turn up, sign the paperwork and leave. He performed the ceremony himself, a self-appointed marriage commissioner, listening as they recited vows, slotted rings on each other’s fingers and Mulder brushed her cheek with his dry lips. He’d brushed his hair, worn a button-down shirt, held her hand, gripped it really.

“You look beautiful, Scully,” he said as they walked back to the car. Married.

She looked down at her jeans and scuffed boots. Laughing seemed wrong; crying seemed wrong. What do you do when you’ve just been fake married to save your partner from a lifetime of nothingness?

Finding his fingers, she brought his hand to her mouth and kissed his knuckles. “Thank you, Mulder.”

“You didn’t have to do this,” he said and opened the door for her. “You could have left me, got a job, lived something approaching a normal life.”

Inside the house it smells of mildew and stale coffee. She spends her time cleaning out dusty corners, scraping away at the years of neglect. She hangs new drapes, sands back the woodwork, repaints doors and walls and finds treasures in the local second-hand store.

“You have a particular style,” Mulder says, splitting a seed between his teeth. She’d barely seen him for days, as he buried himself in his study, ‘researching’ as he did when he was going through a particularly rough patch.

“I was going for minimal elegance but I think it’s more shabby-chic. But needs must,” she says, before she can stop herself.

There’s a quirk on his lips and he puts his coffee on the kitchen bench, pulls her in for an unexpected hug. His sweater is rough against her cheek but she doesn’t care, enjoying the moment of closeness.

“This house is growing on me,” he murmurs. “Kind of like you did.”

She pats him on the ass and he chuckles into her hair. “You found me annoying.”

“But your impudence at putting me straight got to me in the end,” he says. “We made a good team, Scully.”

“So, how did we get here, Mulder?”

“Because we made a good team.”

They stay pressed close together for a long time. Her lips press into the wool of his top and she says, “I’ve got an interview next week.”

There’s a moment of stillness, where he doesn’t breathe. The pulse of his heartbeat drums in her ear. “You’ll knock it out the park, Scully.”

She opens a good red, bakes a lasagne and sits at the table, nails following the lines of the distressed wood top.

“They’ll ask me about my marital status. It’s a Catholic hospital.”

“What are you going to tell them?”

“I’m not sure. I can’t tell them the truth, can I?”

He shrugs. “We’ve got the license to prove we’re married.”

“But we’re not, though. Not really. I can’t lie…”

“Then you’d be the only person ever interviewed who didn’t lie, Scully.”

She twists the stem of her wineglass between her fingers, watches the liquid smear the inside of the bowl. “Do I ask Skinner to be my referee?”

Mulder grins at the idea, then reaches out for her hand. It still amazes her that she has such a visceral reaction to his touch. “How would you rather have done it, if you could have chosen?”

“A wedding?” She tries not to sound too surprised. But then again, Mulder has spent decades pulling cloths from tables and rabbits from hats. “I wouldn’t.” She says it cautiously, not because she doesn’t want to upset him, but because she’s only just realised it herself. “I wouldn’t choose to get married.” His shoulders slump and she squeezes his hand. “We’re not the marrying kind, Mulder.”

“You’ve made a pretty grand assumption for a woman of science, Scully. There are two of us in this equation.”

“So you want the whole white wedding shebang, a couple of groomsmen and a three-tier cake? Really?”

There’s a hint of wistfulness in his eyes but he chuckles. “Round or square, Scully? Fruit or sponge? How would we ever decide? And no, to answer your slightly flippant question, I wouldn’t want the whole shebang, but I do want to make a commitment to you; that’s what a marriage is all about, after all. A public commitment of love.”

“You pulled me out of a watery pod in Antarctica. I think that’s a fairly bold statement.”

“And this is how the fairy tale continues.” There’s a moment of contemplation for them both at the way life has fallen open and closed around them. She begins to clear the table. “Do you want me to take the job, Mulder? If it’s offered to me?”

He stands behind her, arms looping around her waist, stubble tickling the side of her neck. He feels so good. “I want you to make the right decision for you.” He nuzzles deeper, sending sparks up and down her spine. “Things can’t stay the same forever. I want you to be happy.”

Happy is a foreign concept. Happy is what other people do. Happy is a white wedding with a cake iced with roses and flower girls pulling up their petticoats. Happy is safety, security. Happy is family.

The way he lays her on the bed is so tender. She might not break easily but maybe that’s because she’s spent so long with him. His gentleness with her gives her strength. She believes she provides him with strength too. Each one, on their own, might be fragile, vulnerable, but together they reinforce the other’s spirit.

His kisses are warm on her skin and she imagines cherry-red spots blooming on her chest, arms, stomach. He has always been an attentive lover, careful to make sure she is safe, comfortable, aroused, satisfied. His body is angles and lines but in these moments he’s all rounded edges and smoothness. It’s a physical joining and a spiritual union, even after all these years. Pieces of paper cannot weight this thing they share any more heavily. It’s deeper than oceans. If she spends too long thinking about the impossibility of the scale of their love, she weeps. And she’s about done with crying. They have a house, however, unremarkable. She has the potential of a job, a new career. Mulder is as safe as he can be, in a world that he still views with the paranoia of a tortured man. Their life is, perhaps, on a straight path for the time being.

“I love you, Scully,” he breathes and she digs her knees into the mattress, lets her head sink back and bathes in the serene beauty of her orgasm.

The hospital staff is supportive, friendly even. She is welcomed into their nest. It’s an odd feeling to be useful to more than one person again. Mulder spends the first week greeting her at the door with a pair of slippers and an old pipe he claims he found in the cellar. He rubs her feet, listens to her stories about the young patients, cooks meals.

One day, when she returns, another car is parked outside the house. It’s spring and Mulder has planted tulips and daffodils for colour. They line the top of the driveway in uniform beds he’s dug. The car blocks out the sunny yellows and she frowns at it as she walks by. Perhaps she should be fearful, not annoyed.

Inside, Walter Skinner fills a seat of the couch. She sets her bag on the table and greets him cautiously.

“Dana.” He stands and extends his hand. She’s forgotten how big he is.

“Is everything okay?” Her voice is strained and he hurries to calm her.

“Yes, yes.” He says and smiles at Mulder, who clearly has a head-start on the situation. The double positive equals a negative, that much is clear. “Sit,” Skinner says, waving her into the vacated place. The seat is crumpled, not quite recovered from his weight. Its warmth folds around her and adds to the nausea rising.

Mulder sinks next to her, knee touching hers, bottom lip tucked behind his teeth. “It’s going to be okay, Scully.”

Not ‘it’s okay’ or ‘it’s fine’ but ‘it’s going to be…’ like there’s a road ahead of them to traverse. “What is it? Is it William?”

There’s an image of their son that sits in a safe place in her memory banks. He’s nestled in a soft yellow blanket, face peeking out. His lips curl into a Mulderesque grin and he chuckles. She can hear that little laugh, she can see the crinkle in his button nose, she can smell the milky-warm babyness of his snug body. She dips into the picture when she needs comfort, but now, she’s on the brink of panic, edging forward on the seat until Mulder pins her with his hand.

“William is fine,” Mulder says. And while he can’t possibly know that, his softening expression douses the fire in the pit of her belly. “It’s…there’s been a mistake…”

Skinner clears his throat. “It seems that I was officially recognised as a marriage commissioner, meaning that…”

“We are actually married,” Mulder finishes for him.

She looks at these two men, one former armed services personnel and FBI director, one a trained psychologist and experienced law enforcement officer, as they sit silently in the living room of the house Skinner chose, playing with the cuffs of their shirts and unable to offer a single word of explanation or comfort. When did she lose control of her life? Even during the toughest challenges over the past ten or so years, she had choices, she could make decisions. She leaves them to wallow in their guilt and goes outside.

The evening is warm and with the windows open the light nets flutter outside on the breeze, like a bride’s veil. She can hear the faint drone of Skinner’s car turning onto the main road. Going home, leaving the same way he arrived, nothing different about him, but the very act of his having been here, at their unremarkable house, has rocked her foundations. Nothing has changed except everything.

A mosquito whines around her shoulders and she swats it, leaving a thin line of blood on her skin. It itches instantly. Had she been doing something else she probably wouldn’t have noticed it. It’s funny how the mind works. The cognitive bias, frequency illusion, Baader-Meinhof, whatever, you see patterns where there are none. How even slight disruptions to your routine can cause exponential shifts in our comfort levels. How knowing that you are actually married to the man you love can make you feel disjointed from your life because you didn’t make a conscious choice.

The screen door creaks open and slams shut. Mulder is bearing gifts. A cheese platter and a bottle of Zinfandel. She offered to share this very pleasure with him years before, in a motel room in Florida. She’d survived cancer then. She knew he loved her, had for a while. She had finally reconciled her own feelings for him and felt bold back then, reinvigorated in many ways. But he politely declined and she sat on her own for a while, stung by the rejection, but secretly pleased that the status quo would remain. Unbalancing a steady vessel may have led to unwarranted drama.

“Do you want a divorce, Scully? You can have the house. I’ll keep the tomato plants.” He’s only half-joking.

“Lucky we don’t have a…” she cuts herself off. She was going to say dog, but thoughts of their son invade her mind and she swallows the wine to drown the images.

He slides closer to her. The porch swing was his idea, aimed at balmy evenings spent together. But not as husband as wife. Just as lovers, soulmates, whatever descriptor they chose. Chose. His fingers arch over her thigh and he looks out at the horizon too. Out there, wherever William is. There’s a sense of comfort in the silence. She remembered her parents sitting outside, not speaking, and as a young girl thought it odd that two people who were supposed to love each other could be so silent. She determined, in her youthful wisdom, she would always have something to say to her husband.

Then she grew up.

“We can work this out.” His voice is gentle, warm, hopeful.

The brie is soft and nutty and she savours the salty taste as she thinks about how to undo this.

“It was a genuine mistake,” he says. “Skinner is mortified. I’ve never seen him so flustered.” Mulder chuffs, turns to her. “Of all the strange things we reported to him, this is the one that caught him completely off-guard.”

She lets the small giggle free as the wine warms her throat. “People have been assuming we’re married for years. Remember that case in Texas with the weather man?”

“And the flying death cow? Pretty hard to forget.”

She sees him then, lipsticked and ruffled as the blonde woman attacked him with her misplaced feelings. She wonders if those two are still married, living a happy, silent life on their back deck.

“Bill would be pleased,” she says, locking her fingers into his.

“Oh yes,” Mulder replies, chest wobbling with a chuckle. “Dearest brother-in-law Bill Junior. And your mother will be disappointed she didn’t get to wear a hat and a buttonhole carnation.”

“Perhaps we should throw a party.”

He nods. “With a string quartet and Pimms on the lawn.”

They look at the stubby grass and both burst into laughter. “Maybe that would be a mistake,” she concedes.

He lifts their joint hands and kisses each of her knuckles. “And the marriage? Is it really that much of a mistake? Does it need to be rectified?”

“It wasn’t a conscious decision, Mulder. I feel like it’s something that happened to us, rather than something we chose.”

“I get it, Scully,” he whispers. “But I do want you to understand that I love you, I love you as my partner, my friend, my lover, my wife. Whatever label you want to put on it. I simply love you. And that will never change. That’s the status quo.”

The sun seeps away and the wine reddens her cheeks. The mosquito bite calms and the night music of cicadas and distant traffic rises. Mulder holds her hand as they swing. Back and forth. Past and future. Then back to the middle. The present. The status quo.

#txf fanfic #my fanfiction #msr #xfficchallenges

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ghostbustermelanieking · 6 years ago

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a dozen different lives

summary: Five lives Mulder and Scully shared.

written for a fic prompt by @o6666666 and an anon from a soulmate au prompt list: 19. the one where soulmates are reincarnated and keep finding each other throughout their different lives. it got a lot longer than i expected, so i decided to make it a separate post.

i borrowed a couple of scenarios from my tfwid rewrite, but they don’t necessarily exist in the same universe, and you do not have to read that fic to understand this one. there are also references to tfwid and triangle. in researching the historical portion of triangle, i discovered that the OSS didn’t exist until 1942, but in the TXF universe it existed in 1939, so let’s say that it does here, too.

---

The match is made by their parents. An arrangement that will be beneficial to their families and all of their neighbors. He is skeptical, initially, of the idea of an arranged marriage—although he has been told by his mother and many other people that love is a luxury—and he can tell, as soon as he sees her, that she is, too. But still, skepticism is not necessarily a way out, and they are married that day.

That night, together inside their new home, he offers to let her have the bed to herself. “I do not want you to be uncomfortable,” he says, “since we are strangers despite our new connection.”

Relief washes over her face, and she smiles. She has a beautiful, face-splitting smile. “You are quite kind,” she says, sitting in the edge of the bed. “I believe I will accept your offer, although I do not know if it can last forever. I know that children are expected from this union.”

“It can last as long as we like,” he says. “I would prefer to get to know you, if that is all right.”

She nods, her hands folded primly in her lap. “I would like that very much,” she says.

And so she takes the bed and he sleeps in another room.

When he came up with the idea the day before, he had expected the distance to remain, perhaps for the entirety of their lives together. But that does not seem to be the case. When she shares breakfast with him in the morning, they have a lively conversation, and hope blooms within his heart.

---

Throughout his life, he has seen many unhappy marriages that he knows were arranged. That he knows there is no love in. His parents are an example. He had expected the same thing out of his own marriage. But that does not seem to be the case. He has been getting to know his new wife, and he has begun to care for her. Maybe even to love her. She is incredibly intelligent, maybe even moreso than him, and they often stay up late nights talking and telling stories. She can make him laugh, harder than he's ever laughed before. She is beautiful, radiantly so. She still sleeps alone, and he would never suggest that she does otherwise unless she wanted to, but the way she smiles at him when she says good night makes him melt.

He is not sure that she feels the same way until one night when they fall asleep by the fire. They fall asleep lying next to each other on the ground, and when he awakens, she is curled up next to him with her head on his shoulder, her hair loose and waving. He lays there for longer than she should, waiting until she starts to stir beside him to move. Her face grows red when she sees him looking at her, and she murmurs an apology, avoiding his eyes. He feels ashamed, as if he has overstepped, until that night after dinner. She covers his hand with hers and says in a soft voice, “Perhaps… you could join me in the bedroom tonight, if you would like. It is your bed, after all.”

His heart leaps in his throat, almost involuntarily. He says, “It would be my honor to do so.”

Later that night, she falls asleep curled in his arms. He thinks to himself that it may be the most blissful moment of his life.

---

They spend much time together. Perhaps more (as people like to comment) than a husband and wife should. They go for long walks each day and spend their nights chatting by the fire. She will often accompany him when he is partaking in his duties, and will often offer her own opinions on the matter. They find excuses to spend more time together. He is tempted to explain to people that it is because they are in love, and that is the simple truth of it. He wants to spend time with her, as he should, since she is his wife.

He muses, sometimes, on how fortunate he is. How he could've connected so strongly with a woman who was strange to him not two years ago—how he could've gotten as lucky as to be paired with her. It feels as if it is a miracle.

After three years of marriage, their first child comes. It comes with a bit of a scare, as all births do—he fears, of course, that he will lose her, or the baby, or both—but it is fortunately an easy birth. His wife lives, although she is weak for a few weeks afterwards, and so does the baby. He is so grateful that he nearly weeps at her bedside, kissing her sweaty temple and repeating his thankful mantra: that he is so happy that she is okay, that he does not know what he would have done if he had lost her. He feels as if he is the most fortunate man in the world.

---

Later��years later, when their children are nearly grown and they have been living together for what seems like an eternity—she will take his hands and tell him, “I must admit something to you; I was not at all sure about this union prior to meeting you.”

He laughs with ease. “I will admit the same thing,” he tells her. “It feels so foolish now, to view it in this manner.”

She narrows her eyes at him in a jovial warning. “I was afraid you would be cruel, or quite different from myself. I hated that I had to marry a man I had never met.”

He had felt the same way. He clasps her hand close and listens attentively.

“But you are right,” she continues, looking up at him with the same loving look in his eyes that always brings him to his knees. “Those thoughts seem foolish now. I cannot imagine ever having married anyone else but you. I…” She falters a bit, looking back down. “I find it hard to express, sometimes, the depth of my love for you.”

His chest swells with the same care he has felt for her since that first night they spent together, and he takes her hand and kisses the back of it. “You should not find it difficult,” he tells her. “You make it known. I feel as if the two of us have always understood the other's feelings… and I do understand yours. You need not feel as if there is something lacking in the way you express yourself to me… truthfully, you do not even have to say anything out loud. I know. I would always know.”

She smiles at that, and moves forward until she is leaning against him. He winds his arm around her and leans down to whisper into her hair. “And I love you,” he says, “more than words can say.”

ii.

She has seen the woman before, the one with the fiery hair: at the river when they gather to wash clothes. She has not spoken to her before tonight, but sometimes, when she begins to tell the stories she makes up at night, stories she tells her cousin of fairies and goblins and spirits, she sees the bright-haired woman rolling her eyes, almost playfully.

Now, now their village is ablaze, and she is certain that her family is dead. They were inside the house; the only reason she was not was because she was mending the laundry outside. Her father angers when they burn the lanterns too long, and so she had been mending by the moonlight, and she'd fallen asleep, and woken up with heat on her face and to her little cottage on fire. She had screamed her family's names and they had not answered. The fire spread to the dry grass at the edge of the house, flaring up dangerously close to the edge of her skirt, and God help her, she had ran. She had not known what else to do, where else to go; she did not want to go alone.

And so it was. She had run through the heat, through the burning houses and fields, firelight flickering in her eyes and her skirt clutched in her hands so she would not trip. Until she ran directly into the bright-haired girl from the river. She was her nightclothes, the white of the shift stained with soot, her face smeared with soot and tears, her sunshine hair streaming down her back. She regretted, then, ever describing the girl's hair as fiery.

Neither of them had said anything. They had both been crying, and they were both terrified. The girl had wordlessly reached for her hand, and she had taken it. They both began to run together.

And now, with the inferno far behind them, their pace has slowed to a walk. The girl's hand is cold, as is the night, the freezing wind whipping around them and pushing at their hair. They have never spoken before tonight, but now they whisper to each other in the night as they walk together up the lonely road. The girl speaks of how she escaped, how she had smelled the smoke and felt the heat and slipped out of the window before thinking of her mother, her widowed mother who was the only one inside their small house. The girl cries, and she cries with her, wiping her tears and leaving smudges of ash along her cheeks. She tells the girl of her lost parents and her cousin, a ward of their family who had become like a sister to her. They walk through the moonlight, shivering in the cold.

---

They reach the next village by morning. When they walk into the marketplace, they see the whispers of the men and women at their informality: two peasant girls, one in her dressing gown with her hair loose and uncovered, their faces smeared with soot. When they tell their story, the villagers demand to know why they are the only survivors. They send a rider to go and examine the village, to find whether or not they are telling the truth. There are whispers of witches in the crowd, and she begins to feel for her life all over again. Until an employee of the lord of this manor system spots them and takes pity on them.

They are taken to the manor, being warned repeatedly that they must pray that the lord has much pity as the servant has, that orphans such as them would be fortunate to give such an honor as to work for the lord. There are things she wants to say in response to this, but she bites her tongue and stays at the bright-haired girl's side. Her tongue has gotten her in trouble many times. She does not know what she would do if they were turned away.

But they are not. The pity does indeed extend to two poor orphan girls. The lord remarks that they may start as scullery maids, and that they should learn their duties quickly, and that they should be grateful for the opportunity given to them. They both thank him meekly, heads bowed, although she notes a spark of defiance in the other girl's eyes.

They are shown to a small room with no window, with an even smaller bed that they are to share. And then they are put straight to work.

---

The work is often larger than the work that she used to do in her father's home, alongside her mother and cousin, but it is not that different. Still, she does not take to it quickly, and is often scolded or struck for mistakes. The other girl takes to it quicker and sometimes helps her, offers suggestions in the dark of their shared room. They rise at dawn and to to sleep late at night. Often, she falls asleep with enough space between the two of them that would be considered respectable and wakes up curled up at the other girl's back. Sometimes, she will find the other girl curled up against her as well, her bright hair falling across their faces. It is strangely comforting in a way that initially makes her feel guilty, but she reminds herself that she and her cousin used to sleep close to conserve warmth.

Often, she will have violent nightmares and wake up crying out for her mother, her cousin. The other girl will often press a hand over her mouth, simply to prevent her from crying out too loud—the first time she had woken up screaming, the cook had come into the room and slapped them both, warned them not to wake her again, lest they wake the lord and his family—but then she will calm her. She strokes her hair, wipes her tears away, and whispers, Shush. Shush. You are all right. It is enough to calm her, to lull her back to sleep. The other girl holds her hand as she drifts off.

When the bright-haired girl wakes up crying out, she will do the same for her.

---

As the years pass, the work becomes easier. The punishments and scoffs and cruel words lessen. She grows closer to the other servants, finds a companionable nature in some of them. But the bright-haired girl from her former village remains the most companionable, her truest friend. They often stay up much later than they should, whispering together in the dark. Her friend often urges her to tell her ghost stories, despite not believing any of them. She urges her friend to tell her own stories. They whisper together when mending clothes, when doing the laundry, when drawing the water or changing the bedclothes. They occasionally braid each other's hair in the morning, pick up the slack on each other's chores, share their rations when necessary.

They still sleep curled close together. It is often too cold to do otherwise. Her friend will often reach for her hand and clasp it in hers. Sometimes they will sleep with their arms around each other. Sometimes her friend freezing feet will press against hers. Sometimes she'll wake up with her face in her friend's sunshine hair.

---

The first time that the girl kisses her, in secret in the dark of their room, it feels like they have done something wrong. They both feel guilty the next morning; they avoid each other's eyes, work in silence, slip into bed in silence. She feels guilty, yes, but she also feels embarrassed for her avoidance of her friend.

But she finds she cannot stop thinking about it throughout the days, when she does her chores, in the quiet moments where there is no one to talk to. She keeps thinking of the softness of her friend's lips, of the way she whispered her name just before. She is remembering once when her cousin told her of a kiss with a boy by the river, the way it made her feel. Her cousin said that she was in love. She always said that she had not understood.

The truth of it is that she has lost everyone else she loves in the world, and her friend is all she has left. She loves her dearly; she has known that for years. There is no question of that. (The truth of it is that the two of them go rather unseen. Even their other friends among the servants do not seem to notice them. They do not cry out in their sleep anymore, and so no one comes into their room at night.)

She kisses her friend next, secretly in the dark of their room once again, her fingers tangled in her hair. (Her friend makes a small, surprised sound in the back of her throat, her mouth parting, her fingers clutching tightly at the shoulders of her shift.) It happens again and again, night after night. The guilt lessens each and every time she does it.

---

When the stable boy, the one she has often had conversations with when drawing water, proposes marriage if their lord permits it, she immediately declines.

iii.

She meets him when they are children. Her family lives next to his, and their mothers often do the chores together: hang the laundry, care for the livestock. And so they are often herded along with their mothers to be watched while they work. They begin to play together at a young age, for almost as long as she can remember. The first time he convinces her to run off into the woods while their mothers are distracted, she thinks a part of her knows she has found the right person to spend time with. They come back hours later to their furious mothers and a spanking, both covered in dirt and her dress torn, but she doesn't care at all.

From then on, they are always spending time together, getting into trouble together. She's always afraid he's going to want to play with someone else, but her older sisters have no interest in playing, and his brother is still just a baby. So it's always just the two of them. They get into so much trouble that her mother says, daily, that he is a bad influence, that it's unladylike to run around so and she should sit down quietly like her sisters. But there are no other children around for them to play with, and she refuses to be discouraged. Eventually, their mothers mostly give up.

---

“I want to go places,” he tells her at age ten. They've snuck away from their chores (they usually end up doing chores together; she has no brothers, and since she's always been a bit of a tomboy, her father encourages her to do the chores normally intended for a boy), and they're sitting by the river. He's throwing stones into the river, trying to skip them; she's reading a book from her father's library. “I want to travel the world, and fight pirates, and have adventures.”

“That sounds quite interesting,” she says absently, turning a page.

He throws a pebble; it hits the back of her book, and she looks up at him. “You could come with me,” he says. “You could be my first mate.”

She laughs, rolling her eyes at him. “First mates are not girls,” she tells him. “And besides that, why should you be in charge?”

“Captains aren't girls, either,” he says stubbornly, “but perhaps you could be the first.”

“Aye, perhaps I could be,” she says absently, going back to her book.

He reaches out to tweak her left braid, and she looks up. “I do not want to travel with anyone else,” he says seriously. “Please come with me. You can be the captain, if you want.”

She blinks in surprise, smoothing her mud-stained skirt. “Perhaps I shall,” she says, smiling teasingly at him. “Someday, when we are older.”

He smiles right back. He throws a handful of pebbles into the flowing water, splashes her with a kick of his foot, and she squeals indignantly and splashes him right back.

---

When they get older, talks of marriage begin, of course. Their two small farms have grown into a slightly larger settlement, and there are suddenly more young people around them. Her oldest sister is betrothed, and will be married in the fall, and her other sister begins to whisper. “Are you not betrothed as well?” she asks her with a giggle.

She doesn't want to speak of such things, she tells her sister. She's being incredibly silly. But the older they get, the more she begins to think about it. It is almost involuntarily, but she begins to think about it. When they're mucking stalls together, or hunting, or caring for the cows and pigs. When he's giving back the books she gave him, or telling her stories, or climbing up onto the back of her horse (that she rides bareback despite her mother's horror at how unladylike it is), holding onto her waist and laughing wildly in her ear as she drives the horse into a gallop. They still spend too much time together; her mother tells her again and again that it isn't proper. They are nearly adults, nearly at the age of marriage. They should not be spending so much time alone. But it doesn't matter to her. She's never been much of a listener.

One night when they are seventeen, she wakes to a flurry of pebbles at her window. He's standing in her yard with a lantern flickering across his face, squinting up at her. She's downstairs in a minute, the two of them slipping together into the stables.

They sit together in the loft, brushing aside the hay in case the lantern falls. He hands her half a piece of bread, fresh-baked by his mother, and she inhales deeply, smiling. They chew for a few moments in silence before he bumps his shoulder against hers. “I have learned some news that I wanted to share with you,” he says.

She looks over at him, raising her eyebrows at him. His tone suggests that it is not good news. “All right,” she says.

He takes a deep breath. In, out. He reaches out as if he is going to touch her knee but pauses, pulling his hand back. “I—” he begins before pausing abruptly, clearing his throat several times. “My parents,” he says, “have made a match for me.”

She freezes, her shoulders tensing. The bread, unnoticed, falls out of her hand and below to the floor. “Oh,” she says. “That… that is fortunate.”

“Yes.” His feet are swinging in the air. He isn't looking at her. “It… it is to that girl we often see at the well. They believe her family will be advantageous to have a link to.”

“Indeed.” She swallows, almost painfully. “I… I should offer my congratulations.”

“Thank you,” he says quietly. He reaches out gingerly, again, and does touch her knee with soft fingers. “I… Do you remember when we were young? The things we wanted to do?”

“I do,” she whispers, her eyes half-shut. She swings her own feet. She feels foolish, scrubbed raw, although she could not explain why if she was to be asked. “You wanted to travel the world.”

“I wanted you to come with me,” he says. He taps her knee through her nightgown with one finger. “I… I think about that sometimes. It's tempting to hold onto those childhood dreams.”

Her face goes red-hot, and she shuts her eyes all the way. She feels so foolish, so childish. Like maybe she should have listened when her mother told her that she should not be spending so much time with him anymore. Or when her sister asked if they were betrothed. She wonders if he's ever seen her as anything more than a sister, or a childhood memory. “Yes,” she says, rubbing a hand over her face. She will not cry. There is no reason to cry. Someday she will be married and he will be married and all of this will just be memories. She scoots across the edge of the loft, puts her feet into the rungs and swings herself around so she can descend. “I am very happy for you and your engagement,” she says, swallowing hard. “I'm sure the two of you will be very happy together.”

He sits up a little straighter in the flickering lantern light. “Wait,” he's saying, “wait, don't go…” But she's already gone. She reaches the bottom of the ladder and slips out of the stables, back into the house. She wipes her eyes as she creeps up into her bedroom. She lets herself cry.

---

There is a distance between them following this revelation. They still spend time together, still work together, but there is a distance between them. She feels insecure now, like she has revealed too much, pushed the boundaries. He is as quiet and respectful as she may have expected. They do not discuss the impending wedding, where he will live, if it will be far. They do not discuss it at all.

Her mother begins to speak of a match for her, and she always grimaces at the prospect. She's tempted to say that she'll never be married, but that feels too silly and unbelievable. She had never really considered marriage until recently, and never with anyone besides him. Thinking of it now just leaves her embarrassed, and so she refuses to speak of it. She does the same things she has always done, throws herself into her work and pretends that nothing is wrong.

She must do a bad job of hiding things because he begins to ask, nearly daily, if she is all right. After weeks of replying with a simple, “I am fine,” she loses her resolve and snaps, “And what do you presume is wrong, exactly? Why do you care for my feelings so deeply?”

The way he draws back from her with hurt in his eyes, as if she has slapped him, tells her she may have gone too far, after months of long silences and irritable responses. He mumbles a quick apology and turns away, is gone before she can offer an apology of her own.

They begin to avoid each other. She arranges her chores so that she does not have to work with him. She begins hiding in her room with her father's books (another unladylike habit her mother often comments on, reading) instead of venturing out. Her second sister, now betrothed herself, tells her that she is being silly and she should simply tell him how she feels. She tells her sister that this is ridiculous. She knows he does not feel the same way about her. If she is going to make amends, than she will have to work to preserve their friendship and nothing more. (And even their friendship will ultimately fall through, because it will not be appropriate, once he is married, for him to retain a friendship with a young, unmarried woman.) She tries to tell herself, once again, that she is growing up and a natural part of growing up is losing your childhood. And he is everything she can think of when she thinks of her childhood.

She does not know what else to do. She reads the books he lent her years ago, and greets his fiance as politely as she can muster at the well, and she tries not to think about attending his wedding someday.

---

One day, weeks after their last encounter, his father comes to their house. She foolishly thinks it is about the rift in their friendship, but of course, it is not; he has come to tell her that his son has gone on an extended hunting trip with some of the other men in town, and he wonders if she would mind taking over some of his duties. She's immediately shocked; she had no idea that he was even gone. He has gone hunting plenty of times before, although it's usually with her and they've never gone overnight; her mother would have died with shame. She is a little hurt, but she has no right to be; she reminds herself that she has initiated the distance with him. She tells his father she'll do his chores.

There has been talks of the war; she has heard whispers of them when merchants come through. A few of the valiant men in the growing settlement have volunteered to enlist in the army. But it is largely limited to the coast, and they are far from the ghost. They have not seen any battles, any deaths. It is so far off that they can nearly forget it is happening. And she has forgotten that it is happening, until she gets the news.

A lone member of the hunting party scrambles into town several days later, frantic and terrified. He tells them that the enemy came across their party when they stumbled across a fort. That they took everyone in the hunting party (aside from him; he escaped into the woods) hostage. That they are taking them to the coast, and there were discussions of whether or not they should be killed.

She is instantly horrified, as is the rest of this town. The men gather to discuss negotiations to get the party back, but the general consensus seems to be that they have no power in this situation. The most they can do is try to get in touch with their country's army, to see if they can organize some sort of rescue, but the best thing to do, they tell the families, might be to give their sons up for dead.

She won't accept that. She refuses to accept that. She sees people who are distressed, his fiance distressedly twisting her handkerchief in her hands, almost theatrically, and she doesn't understand it because he isn't necessarily even dead yet. How can they give up on him when he is still alive somewhere, and he needs help? She cannot understand it. She tells her father that they need to go to find him and the other men, that they can't just leave them for dead and rely on an army of people they have never met to save him, and her father tells her sternly that there is nothing that they can do and she should let it go. That she should not think of these things, especially about another man's fiance. Her mother tells her that she needs to forget it, and she should take this as a sign to stop this unladylike behavior that has been going on too long. She can't understand their dismissal, after so many years with him. She's grown up alongside him, he's as much a part of her life as any of her family, and she doesn't understand how her family, his family can just dismiss it. She saw his little brother at the meeting, and he was as angry as she is, protesting the abandonment of his brother, but his parents and his fiance seemed to have dismissed him as dead. She cannot understand it. She needs him to be safe, she needs him to come home.

Her sister whispers to her, “If you truly love him, you could go for him.” And as much as it is her instinct to deny it, she cannot get the suggestion out of her head.

She slips downstairs that night, steals some food from the kitchen, her father's gun she used for hunting, and slips out the door. She takes her horse from the stable, climbing onto its back, and rides off into the woods without another thought. She is going to get him back.

---

She rides for days, her hair flying out behind her and tangling in the wind, her cloak flapping around her. She is headed towards the coast, towards where the man said they were taking the hostages. She doesn't exactly have a plan, which worries her a bit, but she doesn't know that there's a feasible one. She just knows she has to try.

She stops through many towns on her way, and they all have no information, until she reaches one nearly fifty miles from home. There, she finds a unit of soldiers, and finds one who knows of the hostages. She gets information by lying and telling him that she is his fiance; shame rises in her throat, but she pushes it back, tells herself that she is doing it for him and no one ever has to know.

The soldier tells her that there is an attack planned on the fort where they are being held, and that they may be released during the attack, if they are still alive. He directs her to the area where the fort is and advises her to steer clear of the battle.

She rides in the direction he advises, thinking as she goes about all the things he's done for her and she for him, about all of the promises they made and the adventures they planned that seem childish now. She tells herself that whatever happens after this doesn't matter, as long as he gets out alive. She doesn't care if he gets married or doesn't get married or goes off to travel the world; she just wants him to be okay.

---

She gets there in the midst of the battle, which is almost a relief; she would be willing to charge into the midst of a fort to rescue him, but she feels as if doing so would just get them both killed. She can't get anywhere near the front lines, to her frustration, so she stays at an inn nearby, waiting in the pub to hear news. As soon as she hears that the fort has been captured, that their army is victorious, she slips out to the stables, takes her horse from its stall, and rides straight to the front.

The edge of the fort is crawling with soldiers, enemy prisoners, bodies that have not been moved. She picks through, ignoring the questions and jeers of soldiers, until she sees a cluster of men she recognizes, sitting along a log with blankets around their shoulders. She sees men she recognizes, men she's talked to, and then she sees him—the back of his head, overgrown and shaggy, the slump of his shoulders, and she calls his name. She pulls her horse to a stop as he turns towards her, slides to the ground and begins to run towards him. Shock dances over his face as he stumbles to his feet, the rough blanket slipping from his shoulders, a beard beginning along his jaws and his eyes wide. She calls his name again, running to his side, touching his jaw with gentle fingers. There's a bruise along his face, his eye swelling, and rope burns around his wrists, and he looks so small and whole and she's so happy to see him. She resists the urge to wrap her arms around him. “Are you all right?” she whispers.

He nods, his jaw clenched. “Those bastards were plenty rough, but I'm all right… What are you doing here?” He touches the side of her face with the rough palm of his hand; he almost looks as if he's going to cry.

“I’ve come to find you,” she says firmly, not leaving room for questions. She reaches up to touch the spot beside his blackening eye, and he winces. “What did they do?” she whispers.

“What anyone would do with any hostages… You traveled all this way?” He is staring at her in astonishment. “You have come so far… for me? After everything?”

Her nose stings, her eyes burn; she feels as if she's going to cry. “Of course I came,” she whispers, and smiles. “I am your traveling companion, remember? Your first mate?”

“You are the captain,” he whispers, and smiles back at her. “You… I can't believe you…” He cups her cheek, stroking it with one thumb. He leans down and kisses her softly. She kisses him back, her mouth falling open under his; his hands are on her waist, holding her close, and she cannot believe it. They have never kissed before. When his lips touch hers, it feels as if the horrific scene and all the soldiers around them have fallen away.

When he pulls away, he seems a bit dazed. “I… thank you,” he murmurs.

“I would do it again,” she whispers, taking his hands. Her traveling companion. Her dearest friend.

He looks down down at their joined hands, their tangled fingers. “I… I know that I am betrothed,” he says hesitatingly, “but… I do not wish to be married. At least not to her.”

She sniffles. She squeezes his hands.

“I… I think I would prefer to be married to someone else,” he says.

She dips her head to rest her nose against his knuckles. She whispers, “I think that is very wise.”

He pulls one hand out of hers and lifts it, sliding his thumb under her chin and tipping it so that he meets her eyes. He is looking at her in that soft way he used to when they were children and she helped him to climb a tree, when she first came outside after a long, nasty illness that left her bedridden at age twelve, when they had accidentally fallen asleep in the stables at fifteen and had to sneak back into the house without getting caught, that way he'd looked at her when she first woke up. “Shall we go together?” he whispers. “You can still be the captain, the way I promised you.”

Her answer is her lips against his again, when she rises on her tiptoes and takes his face in her hands and kisses him. They will go together, wherever they go, and this is the way it was meant to be.

iv.

She meets him on accident. It's because of the dead-end job that her father got her, a secretary job for a government official that she's only working at to save money to attend college. A reporter apparently has an interest in interviewing her boss, and she's sent instead. He seems as annoyed as she is at the entire prospect, but after a few minutes, she figures out that he's not really annoyed with her. “I think that's pretty demeaning to the both of us, don't you think?” he asks, and that warms her to him considerably.

He doesn't end up interviewing her, but they end up talking for hours. She slips up and complains about her job, about the lapse in her education, about years of basically being ignored or overlooked, and he doesn't chide her or laugh in dismissive amusement. He listens. He offers stories of his own frustrations with reporting, with the dead-end assignments his boss gives him, and she laughs despite herself. She likes him, almost without having to think about it. When he asks her to dinner after the non-interview, against her better judgement, she accepts.

They take it slow, at her insistence. As much as she likes the guy, she doesn't want to rush into anything. She doesn't want to be duped by some guy who's not looking for anything serious. But that doesn't seem to be the case here. He seems to like her, genuinely like her. He doesn't talk down to her, he asks for her opinions on things. He starts wanting her to come along on his jobs, to do some investigative reporting. She should probably say no, but she's always been a sucker for an adventure.

She doesn't do it on purpose—she used to tell her mother as a child, rebellious and furious, that she would never get married—but she finds herself falling in love with him.

---

“You should quit,” he tells her one night in his apartment, nights that have started becoming more frequent now. She used to feel guilty about those nights, but she's a grown woman, and besides that, half the building has gotten real fed up with her late night phone calls. “You're better than that job, sweetheart. A million times better.”

She laughs, her head on his shoulder. Maybe a little bitterly, but it's hard to be bitter when he's touching her this way, his hand on her spine. “I don't know what else you think I could get,” she says. “You got any ideas, you let me know.” College is starting to look like a dimmer option, considering how little money she makes. She always wanted to go further than this, than being somebody's secretary, but she doesn't know if she really can.

“You could do it, hon,” he says, stroking her wild hair. His eyes are sparkling in the dark, and he's grinning at her like she's worth a million bucks. That's what he tells her all the time: You look like a million bucks. “You could change the world.”

---

In 1938, he proposes. He doesn't do it in the big, public way that she's heard about girlfriends getting proposed to—he does it in the doorway to her apartment, when she's groaning and pulling her heels off, swearing she's going to give up dancing, at least to swing music, and she turns around, and there he is with the ring. She says yes, of course, because what else is she going to do? She loves him, and she wants to, and she says yes, laughing and nearly crying. He scoops her up and whirls her around, right there in the hall in her sock feet, and she gasps out something about her reputation, even though it's long been ruined, and then she kisses him right there.

They make plans for a wedding—a small one, of course, neither of them can afford a big one even with her father—and plans for a life, a little apartment in DC and a real story for him and a real job for her and maybe children someday, everything they've ever wanted. She tells him that he's daydreaming, and he tells her anything can happen. What if there's another war? she whispers, because she still remembers the aftermath of the first one, her mother crying over her younger brother who was drafted and died somewhere in a trench overseas, she never got over it. What if that happens to them?

Neither of them want to say there won't be another war. They've been reading about every horrible thing happening overseas; they both lost people in the Great War. He lost his father. So he doesn't say that. Instead he says, I'd come back to you. Or you'd come with me.

Oh, baby, she whispers, I don't think it works like that.

It could. It could, you know. We'd find each other.

She wants to believe him. She wants to believe him badly. She kisses him instead and tried to picture the future. A good future.

---

In the end, Europe goes to war but America doesn't. And she goes to war before he does. Her boss comes out of his office and smiles too toothily and tells her that he has a little job for her, that he's seen her potential, that he knows she can do it. It's work for that new government agency, the OSS. He wants her to go on a ship to Europe, the Queen Anne; he wants her to pretend to be the wife of a scientist, an important scientist that they need in Europe, so that no one will suspect who he is. It'll be like she's protecting him.

She wants to tell her boss that she has a gun, that she could actually protect him, but she doesn't dare protest. This is the best opportunity she's had in ages, the only opportunity to do something important. America isn't in the war, but she's been reading about the Allies overseas, the fight they've been fighting, and she knows she wants a part in it. She doesn't see any choice to accept.

Later, that night, she goes to her fiance's apartment. She feels the need to apologize, apologize over and over again, but he tells her not to be ridiculous. Tells her that this is important, that this is the type of thing that she was meant to do and that he's proud of her. “Just be careful,” he tells her with a wayward grin, holding her hand. “If you're serving as somebody's bodyguard.”

She shakes her head with amusement and tells him that she's hardly a bodyguard, she's simply there as this man's cover story, and that's all. He shakes his head in response and kisses the top of her head. You'd sock someone's lights out if given the chance, sweetheart, I know you would.

She packs the nicest things she owns—which isn't much; she has to borrow things from her roommates, and even calls her mother out of desperation. She packs her revolver, too, sliding it out of sight under her clothes. If this person is important as her boss has hinted, then she's not going to just stand there passively as his cover; she's going to take action, if she needs to. He sits on the edge of her bed and teases her and tells her she's going to save the world. She rolls her eyes at him; she has no idea whether or not this will be important, but she doesn't feel important. She feels like a doll.

The night before she leaves, he comes to her apartment. Her roommates are out at work, working the late shifts in a factory, so it is just the two of them. She's already told him he can't come with her to the docks. He puts on the radio, on a slow song that makes her shiver, and the two of them sway together there in the tiny sitting room. “It's odd,” she tells him, “but I feel like I'm leaving for a lot longer. Like I'm not going to see you for a while.” It's ridiculous, that she feels this way, but she knows the danger. She's headed for war-torn Europe with a man who's essentially a weapon. She could be walking into danger.

He shakes his head, holding her closer as they move. She can hear his heartbeat under her ear. “It won't go like that, sweetheart,” he whispers. “It can't. You're going to be amazing, and then you're going to come back home, and we're going to be married. All right?”

“All right,” she whispers, his coat scratchy underneath her palms.

When he leaves, he pauses in the doorway, turns around and kisses her sweetly. “I'll see you in a few weeks,” he says.

She breathes out shakily and touches the side of his face, smiles up at him. “See you then,” she says.

When he's gone, she takes off her engagement ring, reluctantly, and slides it into a pocket on the side of her suitcase. She hates to do it, but she doesn't want people seeing it and asking too many questions. She swears she's going to out it back on the second she gets to England.

---

The scientist she's traveling with is a lot kinder than she expected. He doesn't seem to think she's incapable of actually protecting him, although he smiles a little indulgently when she tells them about the revolver. He promises to keep a respectable distance from her, and he asks her questions about her wedding plans. They schmooze it up with the rich people every night, and she retires to her room afterwards, slips her ring on her finger and writes a letter to her fiance. It's not exactly idyllic, but it's okay. It's all perfectly okay, and she keeps telling herself that it can bring her new opportunities, a way to move up in the world and get herself a better job, when the Nazis show up. And right behind them, a man in ragged clothes who claims to know her, who calls her Scully. He claims he knows about the scientist, which is enough to terrify her, but then the Nazis start killing people in an attempt to extract the information. They almost kill her, more than once, push her to her knees beside this man who calls himself Mulder and put a gun to her head, and all she can think of is the bed in her fiance's apartment, the ring tucked into the side of her suitcase, his face when she said yes. How he told her that she'd come home. How badly she wants to see him again.

They almost kill her, and then they don't, and this Mulder guy pulls her away from the ballroom and through the ship, talking about time travel and Einstein and almost getting killed a couple more times. She'd hate him if he didn't, somehow, remind her of her fiance. A more arrogant version of her fiance. He insists that she has to turn the ship around or he won't exist, or history will go the wrong way, and then he grabs her and kisses her. Kisses her hard and passionately, but sweetly.

She forgets herself for just a moment and kisses him back, before she remembers herself and tears away. She socks him hard across the jaw, and winces at the instantaneous stinging of her knuckles. She's furious, fuming, and so distracted that when the Mulder guy turns around and jumps right off of the ship, she has no idea how to react. She throws the life preserver into the water, searches the black, churning waves for him because goddamnit, he does remind her of her fiance, and he may be an arrogant ass, but she doesn't want him to drown. But he never reappears. He's disappeared, with the answers to all her questions with him.

She shakes her head hard and turns away from the deck. She slips back inside and finds the captain and convinces him to turn the ship around. The passengers somehow subdue the Nazis as they re-enter the Bermuda Triangle. She finds the scientist and takes him back to her room, locking the door and loading her revolver. The scientist holes up at the desk, scribbling on sheets of paper and muttering under his breath. She sits on the bed, slides her ring back on and holds the revolver in her lap and wishes for home.

But she never gets home.

---

They’re adrift for days. Weeks, months. She loses track of time. The water is black, and the sky is always dark, and it’s so foggy that no one can see where they’re going. The climate is all wrong here, she thinks, they’re supposed to be in warm waters. The sailors comment that they should’ve reached land a dozen times by now. She stops keeping track of time.

She remembers what that man, Mulder, told her: that they were in a time warp, or something like that. She doesn’t believe in such ridiculous things, she tells herself a million times, but how, then, have they not gotten home yet?

She keeps writing letters to her fiance, even though she knows she cannot send them. She wears her ring all the time now; it doesn’t matter what people think. She sits at the foggy window and looks out into the nothing, her head against the cool glass. The scientist tries to console her, but she doesn’t listen. She draws absent shapes in the glass, shuts her eyes and wishes for somewhere else. She wishes for him.

She dreams, sometimes, when she can sleep. Dreams and wakes up clutching her ring so hard the stone has left an imprint in her palm. She dreams of him looking for her, hiring investigators who search and find nothing, who tell him she is dead and leave him screaming furiously in their faces. She dreams of him crying for her, refusing to go to a funeral her father arranges, refusing to give up even when multiple people tell him that there’s no hope. She dreams that America enters the war and he enlists, hoping that he will be able to find her somewhere overseas. He writes her letters that he will never send. She wishes, again and again, that she could tell him that she is alive, but she’s not entirely sure that she is. She cries herself, crumpling her handkerchief in her fist and wiping cold tears off of her cheeks. She halfway wishes she’d jumped off that ship after that Mulder man, so she could’ve swam home if nothing else.

She dreams, some time later, that he dies. He dies, bleeds out on a beach in France, and she wakes up screaming his name, and there is no one to hear her. The halls are empty, the ballroom is silent. He is dead, and she thinks she might be, too, and there is no way to find him or to go back home again.

She dreams, once, that he comes to the ship. That he walks into the full ballroom, looking lost, and she runs up to him and he picks her up and whirls her around, the way he did when she said yes, and he holds her so tight. He's kissing her again and again, kissing the tears where they fall, and he tells her, I told you, I told you we'd find each other. It's so vivid she almost thinks it is real.

Later, she lies on her bed, watching the ceiling, as drowsiness overtakes her. She is so tired. She's thinking of Mulder again, for reasons she can't quite explain; she can't stop thinking of how much he reminded her of her fiance. He was an ass but he acted as if he knew her, as if he cared about her… or someone who looked like her. He looked a little bit like her fiance, when they were kneeling beside each other on the ground or just before he jumped or right after he kissed her. He said, It's me, Mulder, and he called her Scully… he called her Scully…

“Scully,” he whispers. “Hey, Scully.”

On the other side of the bed, she grunts—her Mulder, please don't wake me up grunt. He curls a little closer to her in bed, stroking a hand over her forehead. “Scully, are you awake?”

“I am not,” she mutters irritably.

Mulder leans close and presses his lips to her forehead. She swats his shoulder lightly, but he can feel her irritation melting away. She opens one eye to stare at him. “What is it, Mulder?”

He lays his head on her shoulder, winds an arm around her waist. “Do you ever think about reincarnation?” he asks softly.

She opens both eyes now, runs a hand over his arm. “Not since that case in ‘96,” the says. “With… the cult.” She's dancing around a subject she knows is somewhat sensitive. “Besides,” she adds, rubbing that same hand over his shoulder, “I don't particularly believe in it.”

“Oh, really.” He rests his chin on her shoulder, turning on his stomach to look at her. “Not even a little?” he teases.

“Not even a bit,” she says seriously. She ruffles his hair, leans down to kiss him lazily.

He nuzzles his nose against hers. “What about the idea of soulmates?” he whispers.

She reaches out to touch his cheek, to cup the side of it. “Mulder,” she whispers back, “what are you thinking?”

He shrugs. “I've just been thinking about it,” he says. He runs his fingers through her hair, scratching her scalp in that way she likes. “What if… what if soulmates were real, or if reincarnation was real. What if we'd been reincarnated?”

“Well, according to that hypnotism session you participated in, you have been,” she points out. “Remember that?”

He shakes his head. “I don't buy it,” he tells her. “I think that if I've been reincarnated, I've been with you.”

“Well, that was what you said when you were regressing through past lives, Mulder,” she says. “I was your sergeant, remember?”

He shakes his head. “Not like that,” he says.

“Well, then, like what, Mulder?” she asks, persistent.

He shrugs. He lays his cheek on her breastbone. “You'll think I'm cheesy.”

“Mulder, I already know you're cheesy,” she teases. When he doesn't say anything, she nudges him. “Hey,” she says softly. “What is it?”

He sighs a little, his hand spread over her stomach. “I've just been thinking about it,” he says, teasing a little now. “What if we're soulmates? What if we have known each other in past lives, what if we were meant to find each other in this one?”

He can feel her smirking. “You're right, Mulder, that is pretty cheesy,” she says, and he chuckles, leaning up to kiss her underneath her jaw. “In all seriousness, Mulder,” she tells him, her voice solemn now, “I don't believe in these things. But I think we're as much soulmates as anybody else is, if you want to use that terminology.”

“You're such a romantic, Scully,” he teases.

She rolls her eyes. Leans over to kiss him gently. “If you don't mind me asking, Mulder… why is so important to you?” she murmurs. “Why do you want to believe we've been reincarnated so badly?”

He shrugs. “I don't know,” he whispers. “It wouldn't really change anything… but it's a nice idea. That we've known each other for so long. That I'll never really have to lose you, because I've found you before and I could find you again…” He slides up the mattress to kiss her hair gently. “It's just comforting, I guess.”

“Mmm.” Her voice is sleepy again; she snuggles into his side. “You're sweet, Mulder,” she murmurs.

“But you don't believe me,” he says good-naturedly.

“Oh, I don't know.” She yawns, her face half-buried in his neck. “I don't know, Mulder. If anyone could find each other again and again, through multiple lives… it's us.”

“That's true,” he mutters.

She kisses him, right there at his pulse point. “I love you,” she mumbles. “Now let's get some sleep.”

“I love you, too,” he says. He's loved her for as long as he can remember, and if it's at all possible, he'll love her until the end of time.

#i dunno what this is lol #xf fanfic #i wrote this

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ms31x129 · 6 years ago

Text

MSR/other/long winded responses

@likos064

This is from another blog discussion @likos064 responses in italics and then my thoughts. The other thread was getting long and the tumblr kept timing out for me.

‘Personally, I have no interest in Mulder or Scully/Other. Regardless of whether it is before they met, during the show pre or post relationship, though I ignore any breakup because I find it redundant, even though I understand the limitations of a TV show and Drama 101. What I cannot ignore, however, are double standards when it comes to writing these Other-relationships. Generally, when its Mulder/Other, regardless of whether he and Scully are involved or not, Mulder is portrayed as the bad guy. Excepting pre-X-files, but even that might be a stretch.

Conversely when it is Scully/Other she is portrayed to be in the right, a woman who is simply being true to her desires and taking what she deserves. It doesn’t matter whether she is involved with Mulder, at the cusp or committed she is still entitled to have sex with whoever she wants. But this only applies to her. Even in fics portraying a breakup she is allowed to move on while he has to wait for her to come back, if he wants companionship. And at that point, I don’t want them together any longer.

Retrograde as mentioned above is a good example. I don’t want her anywhere near him and I find it preposterous that he is completely alone so that she can prey on him in his weakness. People can write, like and headcanon what they want. But I am disturbed by the abuse that is so often encouraged towards him. Why make her as damaging as Phoebe and Diana?’

I agree with pretty much everything you said above and perhaps that’s why the ‘break-up’ eps have bothered me, I have trouble with getting into Scully’s mind – perhaps that’s a result of male writers? And no ‘show bible?’ I am a Mulderist through and through and I try not (I might not always succeed) to ‘cut’ Scully down in order to praise Mulder.

Through the seasons I think there have been hints as to Scully wanting a relationship/family – at some point, and it’s actually hard for me to pinpoint when she really chose Mulder – although running away with him in the Truth was a pretty good statement. Jersey Devil, Revelations (her instinct with Kevin,) Home are 3 right of the top of my head. (What’s wrong with a woman who doesn’t want children?) In the back of my mind I think I could always see Scully as being the one to move on and be just another person who left Mulder.

Mulder I think does want a family, I just don’t know if he thinks he deserves it? He really is so good with children in the eps – is that due to his psychology background – maybe? He didn’t ‘bond’ with Kevin in Revelations partly I think due to the Religion aspect although he doesn’t naysay Scully when she wants to keep Kevin with them either. In Home Mulder is telling Scully a happy memory of being a kid, baseball his sister – that dialogue stood out to me as well as the remarks about the kind of home he’d like to settle down in. Cliché it is, but I think he’s was searching for the family he lost the day Samantha disappeared. Even if he hadn’t believed it was Aliens I think Mulder would have kept searching regardless.

‘You’re right she did want to be with him. However, I don’t view the desire to be the same as action though there is definitely emotional cheating on Daniel’s part. A Platonic Romance can be just as threatening to marriage as one with a sexual component. Nevertheless, the fandom interpretation takes the relationship in a direction far different from the one that Gillian intended and that’s what I thought of when you complained about Scully’s involvement with a married man.’

Hmm… I could be wrong, but I thought GA said in several interviews that she intended for it to be obvious Scully and Daniel had been lovers. Even though she knows Scully’s character is Catholic and had been brought up to respect marriage it was one of Scully’s rebellion’s? GA doesn’t have a strict religious view point, so I thought this part of AT was more GA than Scully especially since she seemed to scoff at her sister Melissa’s more open / nature new age beliefs. At the same time within the ep I could view it as did knowing Mulder allow her to open up to other religions? Ideas? IMO it would have been nice to let Mulder know that occasionally.

I will confess that I too have some reservations over her behavior in all things. According to Frank Spotnitz and Chris Carter, Mulder and Scully are already involved in all things. The scene at the beginning with Mulder in bed was to indicate an ongoing sexual relationship not the start of one. Gillian knew this and still wrote Scully as deciding to leave Mulder, per the original script, only to change her mind again.

Well unfortunately we can’t take what FS or CC says for granted. I would love to read those statements though the only one I can recall is Frank S. reminding fans that AT wasn’t the first time M&S were in each others apartments overnight. How many times were we told William is Mulder’s son. For me that rankles as just another way to hurt Mulder, regardless all those years he thought he had a son out there.

‘My issue lies more in that this confirms Mulder’s fears, something that I see him being mocked over consistently; primarily when he runs away from her in Detour. I see numerous complaints about how he waited too long, but I always interpreted it, beyond TV show limitations and the patterns that existed in the 90s, as her not being ready for a relationship. Nor did I see an invitation of wine and cheese as a guaranteed sexual offer.’

I agree with this, I also wonder how much the whole experience with Scully almost dying affected him and wanting to be more, and of course Bill’s reaction I’m sure dug a little spot in his mind too. What is dying but another form of abandonment in a sense. I didn’t like ‘3’ either, but that was much earlier in their partnership so it was a little (very little) more palatable.

‘Nevertheless, I’m curious about your aversion to Scully’s attraction to older authoritative men. I don’t understand why you think she’s too smart for this. I always saw it as a father complex, an extension of the affection and more importantly approval she so desperately wanted from her father. Similarly, I viewed Mulder’s attraction to older women as a mother complex rooted in the affection his mother deprived him of following Samantha’s abduction.’

I know my aversion is mainly from a life experience and a friend’s story. I only took one college class and you could just see the professor eyeing up every girl that walked in until it landed on my friend. She was a straight A student, she wasn’t shy or outgoing we all thought her feet were planted firmly on the ground. He praised her, but you could also see subtle ‘put downs’ – you shouldn’t do it that way only an infant would things like that some worse. And all of us were shocked when she started a relationship with the professor who was 17 yrs older I think. Long story short he was married had 3 or 4 kids, she got pregnant he dropped her like a hot potato, she got an abortion and tried to commit suicide. We ended up finding out she’d been sexually abused as a child by her father or step-father. She moved and I haven’t seen or heard from her in over 30 yrs.

I know there wasn’t any hint of that in Scully and her father’s relationship, but the whole older-man/daddy issue has just always made me angry/disgusted in general.

’I see Daniel as an authority figure as well as a teacher who values her intelligence and makes her feel as though she matters. While Jack has a more obsessive quality towards his work, like her father who prioritized the navy over her. Both would have given her approval because they were teachers and she did her assignments. She mostly met their expectations. Until she didn’t.’

I agree with some of that. Mulder is different than those two men, I don’t see that many similarities. In NA when people say Mulder was treating Scully like her boss – jerk is the term I see most. Well technically he is the dept. head and he could assign her things. When they jointly investigate cases it makes sense to split up when their particular skills are better utilized – he thinks outside the box and she provides the facts/science when possible.

I always saw it as how much trust had formed that Mulder knew Scully would handle things. When he sort of scoffs at Scully handing off the case, I don’t take it as him not trusting/believing her – I think he was looking for any excuse to come back – I could be wrong.

And as I recall Scully has made jokes about Mulder’s dating or ala Jersey Devil Mulder’s “I have a life” reply to Scully. It seems okay when she does it but when he does it’s wrong.

‘Phoebe was manipulative but her mind games could still lead to rewards.’

I’m curious what rewards do you mean?

‘Diana I see as terribly accommodating but just as manipulative as Phoebe.’

Groan – I just hate the character of Diana for so many reasons. I hate when shows just drop in a character for shock value. I can’t believe in almost 5yrs of working together Diana’s name never once came up. That Scully never saw her name in a case file. That the LG never mentioned her before either you’d think there’d have been a comparison of the two, unless DF wasn’t a ‘work’ partner.

This is the man who opens up to Scully on their 1st case together and tells her about his sister in a very intimate way - even though he initially thinks she’s sent to spy on him. Yet when DF appears – initially its just generic basics about her, she gets shot and FTF come out with the whole ��almost kiss’ scene. I’m sure DF would be too confusing for the ‘new’ fans Fox/CC were hoping to entice.

Then the Beginning – no mention of a kiss – Mulder appears so frustrated with Scully, but he trusts her completely with Gibson and it makes sense she’s the doctor. In the other eps with DF we never see Mulder seeking her out, yet he doesn’t seem to be sharing with Scully why he trusts Diana or the audience. To me that whole season (6) was Mulder making a choice to be with Scully at work and after work on cases like Dreamland.

I think the perfect time to introduce a new set of agents would have been right after FTF, are we to believe scientists worldwide wouldn’t have gotten notice of seismographs going off - tremors in Antartica they wouldn’t be down there investigating the cause.

Maybe that’s one of the problems with XFiles trying to straddle that line Aliens – but also real world cases happening in real time?

‘In both cases, Mulder’s need to please and be acknowledged would’ve been satisfied. I feel that Mulder and Scully partly satisfy these complexes in each other. Mulder is in a supervising role and Scully does want his acknowledgment and unless the script says otherwise, see Never Again, she gets it. Likewise, Scully acknowledges Mulder and appreciates him, unless the script calls for otherwise, like in all things. And if you decide to acknowledge the season 10-11 breakup.’

Quite the difference in DD and GA’s script(s), especially in the Unnatural it’s all about learning, a connection to someone, something even though neither M or S are in the ep, but for 7-8 minutes. I know some still get mad for the ‘ticking of her biological clock’ reference, but that is a common saying and Mulder was using it in that light-hearted way. Hollywood AD was a quirky ep and one of the ones that it’s hard to put in the XF ‘case’ universe, but even it had some poingnant moments and again M & S spending time outside of work together enjoying each other’s company.

And then AT – all about Scully, more of a character study. Mulder is flirty with his projector in the beginning and she’s stabbing her salad and snapping at him. I definitely didn’t care for snarky Scully. In the whole ep the only section I like is their conversation on the couch, the way DD plays Mulder and the way he looks at her – that man is in love, period.

S10-11 Breakup = stupid. As per the ratings immediate drop from week 1 to week 2 and kept on going. The idea that Mulder had to choose Scully over going back to work for the FBI – if that’s what he wanted to do is just wrong. And Scully just happening to work for a hospital and one or more of the patrons/dr.’s happening to experiment on his own children. There would have been the perfect ‘case’ to draw Scully back to working on the X-Files with Mulder and if they’d set up those other agents in S6 who knows how the series would have ended.

One other thing that bothered me as the show progressed is what I call the dumbing down of Mulder. In Deep Throat Mulder has the line about his hotshot pilot friend and asks a technical flight question in other eps he also would pull facts both unusual and technical out in dialogue. Then it seemed that slowly faded. Was it to prop Scully up as being smarter? I don’t know I just missed those little moments of Mulder’s brilliance.

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agentelmo · 7 years ago

Text

X-Files Fanfic/episode idea

I have an epicly long fanfic idea but zero talent to make it into a story so... I’ll just leave this here and if anyone wants to make my dream come true, just drop me a link haha... Oh so arrogant... well, at least someone can tell me if they think it would make a good story, right?

So I started to think about the fact that we have never had Mulder or Scully directly confront their feelings for each other - it’s always quite vaguely done, through using “other” words or through a look, a touch of the hand, a kiss on the forehead - you know the drill...

It made me realise that actually, the only direct acknowledgement that they are in love with each other (or at least that Scully with Mulder) is from IWTB where Scully tells Mulder: “this stubbornness of yours; it’s why I fell in love with you.”

I remember thinking “Whoa whoa whoa there!” I was utterly floored when I heard that the first time. Scully telling Mulder that she’s in love with him?! My inner 13 year old just died and went to heaven. Seriously, back in the 90′s this show and being a shipper was my LIFE.

But of course, this is the X-Files so the context of Scully’s declaration of love is that she’s not long ago told him that his incessant pursuit of the case was bringing a darkness into her home that she didn’t want anymore, and that basically she was leaving him... Mulder, still hurt by this responds by telling her that it’s also the reason they can’t be together. Welcome to the X-Files. *sigh*

So I was in the shower, washing my hair, mulling this over when I wondered what Mulder’s response might be if he truly heard the depth of Scully’s feelings - if he could hear her articulate them, like a fly on the wall... hearing her talk to someone else.

So to the fic - I’d like for it to be set between season 6 and 7, before their romantic relationship starts. I’d like to frame it as the reason Mulder finally decides to act on his feelings for Scully and initiate a romantic relationship. I see it as fitting in with the canon, rather than being AU. Of course this disregards slightly the “invited Mulder into your bed one lonely night” comment, which seems to suggest Scully initiated things, but pfft, we’ll never know the ins and outs of how relationship turned romantic *shakes fist at CC* so in my head - Mulder initiates.

Now for the story outline. If I had any writing talent at all, I’d love to write an “episode” of the X-Files where Mulder and Scully are investigating reports of paranormal goings on after an accident at the RHIC in New York leaves a scientist in a coma.

The RHIC is the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider. A smaller version of the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland.

I am not a scientist - not even slightly - so I can’t fill out the details realistically myself, but the idea is that an experiment goes wrong, and “somehow” knocks the scientist out of sync with his body. His soul or “spirit” becomes external, invisible but conscious and able to hear people around him, but not communicate with them; while his body seems to be in a coma, a vegetative state needing life support to stay alive.

Scully and Mulder arrive, and do some investigating - speak with the staff, some of which completely dismiss the events, while others insist they’ve seen things and cannot explain them; they’re scientists so the fact some claim these events to be paranormal fascinates Mulder. Soon after their arrival, the pair observe the wife of the scientist in the coma, recreate the experiment that almost killed her husband – the pair are co-leads on the project. She has altered some key variables and seems determined, almost frantic that these changes will lead to the success of their experiment. But zomg, it goes wrong again and this time it knocks Mulder out of whack - his spirit disconnected from his body.

Do you see where I am going with this? haha...

Mulder will straight away see the scientist standing next to him once he has become a “sprit” himself. He sees his body on the ground, and Scully frantically working to revive him. I kind of visualise it as them being ghosts. They are there, but no one can see or touch them. People walk through them like they’re not there. Mulder talks to the scientist who explains what has happened, but doesn’t know how to get back into his body. He thought if the experiment was successful, he would return to his body, but it had instead failed again and brought Mulder here – the scientist is pretty distraught and has lost hope, he’s resigned himself to being dead. Although Mulder reminds him that he’s not dead he’s in a coma, so there must be some way to get back.

The paranormal angle and the basic concept of why this has happened is that when someone dies, their spirit leaves their body, but if the spirit has strong emotional attachments (i.e. is in love) it becomes anchored and cannot leave until the one they love dies and joins them – a kind of unfinished business, but not. It’s not that they don’t want to leave, it’s that they can’t.

This is a good opportunity for Mulder to ream off obscure knowledge of some (completely fictional) tribe/ancient culture who believes that ghosts are simply the spirits of those who are irreversibly tied to the soul of another and cannot leave until that other soul joins them in death and then they can part this Earthly realm together.

It will turn out that the scientist’s spirit has been anchored to his wife – he cannot leave and truly die, unless she dies too. But since their bodies aren’t dead, they surmise their situation is some kind of unnatural in-between limbo state caused by the experiment gone awry… Mulder refuses to accept that there isn’t a way to return their consciousness to their bodies.

The scientist tells Mulder he has been shadowing his wife for months, looking over her work and her desperate attempts to get the experiment to be successful. She is throwing herself into her work to try and not think about her grief at her husband being gone, and wants to complete their work together as a tribute to him. The husband believed that if the experiment was a success, the process may be reversed; he believed his wife could complete the work alone, but she was unsuccessful.

Mulder tells him he has to work out where she is going wrong, and make the experiment successful. Thinking about this now, I think it also serves as a fun meta commentary on how not just the scientist and his wife, but also Mulder and Scully are good alone, but better together. The wife can’t work it out alone – the husband works out what she cannot; it’s through them working together that things are a success.

Utterly devastated that her continued attempts at the experiment have now potentially “killed” an FBI agent, the wife abandons her work, and takes to her husband’s bedside.

The weird goings on that first drew Mulder and Scully to investigate the RHIC will have been this scientist working out how to affect the outside world in a kind of Patrick Swayze in Ghost type of way - but instead of moving objects he’s able to very briefly manipulate people around him. Make them pick up a pen, flick a switch, type at a computer sometimes even speak. Great opportunity for some Mulder fun in this scene haha... if Mulder was a ghost for a day, I totally think he would mess with people.

Mulder will notice the parallel between the scientist’s wife and Scully. She will have also thrown herself into work, trying not to focus on what’s happened to Mulder and how she feels about it, she will just be focused on trying to save him. She will be certain that whatever happened during the experiment was responsible for Mulder’s condition.

In the course of Scully’s investigation, she will come to the conclusion that the paranormal goings on are not so paranormal at all, the people claiming paranormal goings on were doing it themselves. The creepy voices, the moving things - those that have claimed to have seen it are actually the ones doing it. Scully will interview one such person, who will insist he/she didn’t do it; they have no memory of doing what they see themselves doing on the security cameras. Scully will find it strange, especially coming from highly educated scientists, but the investigation has come to a standstill. She has a copy of the RHIC experiment and sees the variable changes the wife made to the original experiment, but doesn’t understand how or why this could have caused Mulder’s condition. Defeated, she will jack in the investigation and go to Mulder’s side and try medically, to help him - but it will be all for naught; the doctors will be stumped on how to diagnose his condition - he’s physically healthy, there’s no logical reason for his or the scientist’s coma.

Mulder and the scientist will work out that there was one variable that needed to be different, some change that will enable to experiment to finally work. But true to the X-Files, the scientist will have been in this coma for many months, and before Mulder and the scientist can somehow communicate to the scientist’s wife that the experiment can work, she agrees to turn off her husband’s life support in the hospital. His spirit no longer in limbo... while Mulder remains and is now alone.

Lots of angst here for both Mulder and Scully; Mulder cannot manipulate the real world like the scientist could and doesn’t know how. He realises that his spirit has been tied to Scully, we can have some good soul searching here, Mulder admitting to himself that he loves her, has loved her for years - doesn’t surprise him that their souls are bound.

He follows her around, watches her as she tries to cope with his condition. Watches her beg him to wake up in the hospital. I would say at this point, a good two to three weeks has passed since the accident happened.

Scully will be forced into therapy by her mother, and Mulder will listen as she basically spills her guts on how she feels for him to the therapist.

There’s SO much potential here for awesome shippy moments, and for Mulder to hear how she feels about him like a fly on the wall.

Then when Scully is alone at her apartment, once again, going over every detail of the case, and the experiment done at the RHIC, she will break down, be a complete mess and Mulder, so desperate to console her and let her know he’s there, will unexpectedly be able to affect something - he moves her hand. She doesn’t realise at first, but then she looks down and notices something written that she hadn’t written herself. She realises she’s written something down, a variable on the RHIC experiment documents – she’s crossed something out and written something else instead.

God, I am basically writing Ghost here, aren’t I?

HMM... but with an X-Files twist!

She will return to New York and try to convince the scientist’s wife to try the experiment again with the changed variable. The wife will be shocked, how could Scully know to change it? Only she and her husband knows the experiment in enough detail to know to change it in this way. She will be taken aback suddenly – can she be truly thinking that somehow her husband gave this information to Scully from beyond the grave? Scully will insist that something guided her to make these changes and she has to believe it will help Mulder. This will hit the wife like a ton of bricks, she begins to believe and despite the risks, agrees to help Scully run it again.

Because of the previous failed attempts, the wife has been suspended from her post at the RHIC, and so they have to break in and run the experiment without anyone else’s knowledge. Time to break out badass!Scully, all in black and employing the assistance of THE LONE GUNMEN! YAAAS!

Mulder will be by her side throughout, watching her go gung ho to save his sorry ass, and being impressed as all hell and more in love with her than ever. Yaaaaaaaaaas!

They run the experiment, security will be all over them and they’ll almost fail to run it. But just in the nick of time, they initiate the experiment and it’s a success… cut to Mulder’s eyes flutter open at the hospital. Following this, there will be a scene where Mulder and Scully emotionally reunite, but I’d want their romantic relationship initiated later – in some sequel fic perhaps. I love the idea here that Mulder has truly accepted he’s in love with Scully, and has seen the depths of her feelings for him, and now he’s on a mission – he will start a relationship with her, just not while he’s in a hospital bed and she’s tearfully gripping his hand!

In true X-Files fashion, I’d quite like the end to be the scientists wife, many months later - pouring over data, and then suddenly she will write something down unexpected, and be taken aback… she will look around the room, and smile… and then keep working. The husband and wife, still working together, he now truly dead but his soul anchored to his wife, waiting for her to join him in death so that when her time comes, they will cross over together. The subtle implication being that when Mulder or Scully dies, the same thing will happen to them too.

Now some things I haven’t thought about – what the hell is this experiment?! Why is it so important and how could it knock the consciousness of a person outside of its body into a limbo state; a kind of pre-death state. I dunno, I guess it doesn’t need to be explained too much. But I think some explanation of the experiment needs to involve some investigation into alternate dimensions – something like that. Perhaps something to do with string theory. But again, I am not a scientist in the slightest lol so what do I know.

Another issue is whether or not Mulder’s body would need to be near the experiment when it goes off to successfully return to his body. Presumably, yes but would it work with just his spirit being nearby too? Maybe. I think it would be pretty crazy for Scully, on a complete hunch and no evidence at all, whisk a dying man on life support away from hospital. So yeah let’s just say with multiple dimensions and planes of existence, these things don’t matter!

So yeah, that’s my fic idea… a fic I don’t think I have the skill nor patience to write myself lol… I’d love to hear some input though, if you think it sounds like a plausible X-File and if you would want to read it, lemme know… and also if you think it’s utter trash and basically Ghost ala X-Files, I’d take that too – I want to hear thoughts!

#thexfiles #xfiles #x files #the x files #txf #txf fanfic #xf fanfic #mulder #fox mulder #scully #dana scully #msr #msr fanfic #mulder and scully #x files fanfiction

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toraonice · 8 years ago

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I don't think you're homophobic, a bad person, or any of that and am sorry you're getting outright hate BUT I think you're missing a lot of the point. I am not going to presume that you aren't LGBT, but I am unsure if you understand how LGBT people are irritated at how het pairings as "overt" as v*****ri are typically accepted as they are (/cont)

(cont) yet so many gay pairings portrayed in the same vein are “ambiguous” or argue that it isn’t canon. The “they’re DEEPER than romantic love” is also hurtful as people aren’t discriminated against for friendships and erases what makes them so special to LGBT fans.

(cont 3/3) Essentially, I think although you have good intentions in trying to be objective, with what I said in mind when you add separate commentary such as pointing out that soulmates can be platonic or the late night drama thing it does deeply hurt people, because it sounds like you’re trying to downplay them—intentionally or otherwise

Hello! First of all, thank you for making a concrete example and articulating your point logically!

I’m taking this occasion to write a long reply that encompasses my view of Victor and Yuuri’s relationship also with regard to heterocentricity. It’s long, but hopefully it’s exhaustive…

I think some people may be a bit wary about this topic and interpret my words in a negative way. For example, by saying that their bond is “deeper than romantic love” I am not trying to say that romantic love is a bad thing or that they cannot be or become lovers. I actually see it as something positive, not negative. There are people who know each other, start dating, have a passionate love story and then break up within a year. I believe that, since the bond between Victor and Yuuri is not limited to romantic love (which can be included) but also includes respect, friendship and other feelings, this makes their relationship deeper than two people only bound by romantic feelings.

Also, when I said that soulmates can be platonic and that the Japanese Monday dramas are not necessarily centered on love stories, I was trying to be fair to all interpretations. I don’t mean “so this proves that Victor and Yuuri cannot be in a romantic relationship”; it just isn’t something that proves either theory.

Regarding Japanese dramas.. Not sure how many people are familiar with it, but in the 2nd Tiger & Bunny movie there is a scene with the 2 protagonists on the roof of a building that is commonly referred to by fans as “gekku” (the same kind of drama as the scene of Victor and Yuuri at the airport). Usually this kind of scenes, in the TV dramas, feature a man and a woman, but when “gekku” is used to describe something unrelated to dramas, like scenes from an anime, it often includes a slightly humorous nuance, very similar to when two people are fighting and someone tells them “you look like a married couple”. (The scene itself is usually serious and when fans use “gekku” they don’t mean to make fun of it, but at the same time they don’t seriously mean to imply that the characters are romantically involved)

I agree on the fact that if Victor and Yuuri had been a man and a woman everyone and their dog would think that they’re in love with each other, while part of the reason some people are skeptical about it is that they are both men. I myself don’t really it like when, especially in series where the sexuality of characters is not clear, two characters of opposite sexes are seen as more likely to fall in love with each other than characters of the same sex. This happens because some people think that unless a character is declared as homosexual they must be heterosexual because “that is the standard” (these people in many cases are not even trying to be homophobic, they just do not realize that what they are implying is heterocentric). I don’t think that there is a standard, and of course there are many more possibilities than just “heterosexual” and “homosexual”, therefore if a character’s sexuality is unconfirmed I am usually open to any possibility.

I will stray a little from YOI. I was an enthusiastic X-Files fan at the time the series was still airing and the protagonists weren’t officially lovers yet (yeah it’s a long time ago but I might not be as old as this makes you think lol). I was also a member of the official forum and identified myself as “intellishipper”, fans who shipped the protagonists but didn’t necessarily want them to become romantically involved in the series unless it was relevant to the story (normal “shippers” just wanted them to get together). This is because I liked X-Files for what it was — a sci-fi thriller drama — and I didn’t want it to suddenly become a love story or focus too much on the romantic relationship of the characters. In fact, to this day I still don’t really like how their romantic relationship was handled in the series… (even though I’m a shipper!) X-Files taught me that sometimes, even if the characters you ship officially get together, depending on how it’s portrayed it might be disappointing, and in that case maybe it’s better that everything is left vague and that you keep on fantasizing on your own… (Sorry if someone disagrees about the protagonists’ relationship in X-Files, this is just my opinion)

The reason of this digression is to explain that the way I view Victor and Yuuri’s relationship and its portrayal within the series is very similar to my experience with X-Files. I personally like them together, but since the series is fundamentally a sport anime about figure skating, to me it’s fine if they don’t confirm whether they are romantically involved or not, because either way there are enough hints to be perfectly able to perceive them as in love with each other even if it’s not stated out loud. At the same time, I respect people who want them to officially get together and people who prefer to see their relationship as platonic too, because in the end everything is open to interpretations and therefore I don’t think it’s correct to force one interpretation on others.

I understand that people who see this anime as important for the LGBT+ community would prefer that they are confirmed as lovers because we would have a “regular” (non-BL) anime featuring an official homosexual couple with a strong, healthy relationship, which would be a step forward in the portrayal of LGBT characters in Japanese anime too. However, exactly because it’s a Japanese anime, as I tried to explain in a previous post a few months ago, the local cultural background is an obstacle to that, therefore I wouldn’t be surprised if even in future works they never confirm anything. Also, what Yamamoto said about “relationships without a name” too makes me think that maybe she doesn’t find it important to give a name to their relationship but she just wants to portray a very strong bond between two characters which viewers can interpret how they prefer. Kubo too made a few tweets last August that suggest how one of the reasons they didn’t use a man and a woman is that they did not want people to automatically interpret their relationship as romantic “just because they’re a man and a woman”. If you read that negatively you might think “does she mean that if they are both guys they cannot be seen as romantically involved?”. I don’t know what she meant in detail of course, because I’m not inside her mind, but I also think it can be interpreted in a positive way: if the characters are a man and a woman people will see them as automatically in love only because of their genders, regardless of the deepness of their relationship; however, if they are guys the average viewer cannot apply their heterocentric point of view to them and they will only see them as in love because their relationship really suggests that.

By the way, I still think that YOI, even without confirming anything, is an important step forward for the portrayal of LGBT+ characters in Japanese anime because it shows two male characters having an intimate relationship (however you want to interpret it) without their surroundings going “eww gross” or making jokes about them. In the series, no one says anything or questions Yuuri’s sexuality when he decides to interpret the role of a woman in his early version of Eros, no one ever makes fun of Yuuri and Victor’s relationship, no one looks grossed out when they see them with wedding rings (Phichit even congratulates them for their “wedding”). As Kubo said, within the world of YOI no one is discriminated for what (or who) they like. Everything is just portrayed as normal. In a way, the fact that any possibility is viewed as normal might also be the reason why they don’t feel the need to declare anyone’s sexuality or whether they are romantically involved or not, also because in the end whether Yuuri and Victor are engaged or not, or are having sex or not, is not really relevant to their performance as figure skaters. The aspects of their relationship that are relevant to the story are what has already been shown to us.

To sum it up… I understand the various points of views, including the fact that a part of the fans would prefer to see Victor and Yuuri in a confirmed romantic relationship (be it because of their personal liking or because they would like more outspoken LGBT+ representation), but as long as the creators don’t confirm anything I will stay open to any possibility. I’m sorry if some of the things I said were taken the wrong way and I hope that what I wrote above was enough to explain that they weren’t meant as something offensive or negative but were just my attempt to be unbiased toward any possible interpretation. I myself am generally annoyed by the heterocentric view of the world (which in Japan is oh so popular..) and to me whether a pairing is het or homo makes no difference, therefore in my mind Victor and Yuuri in their current stage are very much like Mulder and Scully when their romantic relationship wasn’t confirmed in the series: no matter how you look at them they must be in love with each other, but it’s not confirmed, therefore fans who think their relationship is platonic have the right to think so (in the X-Files fandom too there were fans who didn’t ship them or were indifferent, but this didn’t stop the creators from making them a couple later on).

As a translator, I’m striving to be unbiased toward any interpretation and therefore to translate official material so that the original meaning/nuance is preserved and in English it doesn’t end up sounding more/less suggestive than it was in Japanese. Since they are very different languages, sometimes it’s hard to keep the exact same nuances as the original text, and of course if you ask 10 people to translate a line they will translate it in 10 different ways, but I’m trying to be careful especially with parts that might be easily misread (I mean, it’s useless that I translate something as sounding shippy when the original doesn’t… If the original does, of course I would keep that nuance).

In any case, if anyone ever thinks that one of my translations doesn’t sound right or that something I said sounds homophobic or hurtful, please let me know and I will explain more in detail what I meant. I always try to write my opinion without being offensive to anyone, but sometimes it’s impossible to write something so that all the people who read it will interpret it the exact same way, especially when talking about topics where readers have contrastive views. I respect all opinions (people who like Victuuri, people who dislike Victuuri, people who are indifferent, etc) and I just wish for everyone to live in peace without attacking each other.

Final notes:

1) Sorry for mentioning series unrelated to YOI, but since X-Files contains a het pairing I thought it would make a good comparison to show that my view of YOI isn’t influenced by the fact that Victor and Yuuri are both guys.

2) I was trying to be very neutral when I wrote my short review of the original drama at the YOI event, but to be honest some parts sounded just like a BL drama and it would take a genius to manage to “no homo” all of that… Of course the scriptwriter made it so that if you want to see their relationship as platonic you can still justify everything with “they were drunk”, but yeah…

3) Adding sources: 1) “What Yamamoto said” comes from the May Febri interview which I’m currently translating; 2) Kubo’s tweets from last August are something that wasn’t explicitly related to YOI but were definitely referring to YOI; 3) What Kubo said about no one being discriminated in YOI’s world is also a tweet from the end of last year, I made a post about it too.

#victor nikiforov #yuuri katsuki #essay #long post is long #my opinion

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nofomoartworld · 7 years ago

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Hyperallergic: From Aura Photos to Automatic Writing, an Artist Plumbs the Abyss Between Belief and Disbelief

Susan Hiller: Paraconceptual, installation view (all photos by Jack Helms, © Susan Hiller, courtesy Lisson Gallery, unless noted)

Is Susan Hiller a ghost-believing, holy water–packing, aura-gathering, ESP adherent?

No. But she does get asked that a lot. Call it belief by association. And Hiller is regularly associated with a whole host of supernatural phenomena: UFO abductions and encounters, automatism, levitation, near-death experiences. Over the past four decades, the inimitable conceptual artist has often made these uncanny experiences the subjects of a bracingly astute and acutely catholic practice, an approach she calls “paraconceptual.” Presenting a chewy slice of her work in this left field, Susan Hiller: Paraconceptual, Lisson Gallery helpfully offers a definition for the unacquainted, describing Hiller’s work as “just sideways of conceptualism and neighboring the paranormal.” In other words, paraconceptual has both nothing and very much to do with the paranormal.

To be clear, paraconceptual is not a portmanteau of “paranormal” and “conceptual”; at the same time, let the record affirm that, in the paranormal, Hiller has chosen a similar sounding and felicitous accomplice. Interested in what goes unseen and unheard — what is there in our ordinary, normal lives, but ignored and scorned — Hiller approaches the weird and the unusual with illuminating, liberating aplomb. In her hands, the paranormal is a commonplace, readymade, fantastic abyss to gaze into. But like Duchamp’s “Fountain,” her paranormal works hum with questions and contradictions, though her art tends to be more serious than the Frenchman’s puckish provocations. “I consider that definitions of reality are always provisional … anything which is ‘super’ or ‘extra’ is just a way of throwing up a debate around the kind of experiences that people have all the time,” she has said. For her, either side of the Mulder/Scully, irrational/rational paradigm is a dead end, a trap. Far more interesting is the liminal space between.

The works on display in Paraconceptual are a balancing act of charged curiosity and engineered uncertainty. Hiller tweaks her chosen images, throwing a question mark on them, turning them from objects of ridicule, suspicion, or simple fascination into something more conditional, open, and shadowy.

Susan Hiller: Paraconceptual, installation view

Take, for example, automatism. Writing without conscious thought (what a lovely idea!), automatism or auto-writing has long been one of Hiller’s interests. “Get William” and “So Don’t Let It Frighten,” both from the ’70s, show Hiller trying her hand at this task. The pieces are positioned almost shyly, above eye level, so you’ll have to crane a little to get a good look at them. Much more bold and remarkable is “From India to Planet Mars” (1997–2017). Shining out from a series of lightboxes, these striking black negative photographs, culled from examples of automatic writing and drawing from around the world, look like ghostly messages appearing from the dark. There’s an eeriness to their childlike, sinuous script. Some messages cascade down the page, flowing unbroken in a looping line from left to right, down a space, continuing on from right to left, on and on, dropping down the page until the stream of thought ends.

Typed translations are provided for all the auto-writing pieces (especially helpful for the lightbox that features a text written in the “language of light,” but not so much for the unknown “moon language”). But these notes will likely stir more uncertainty. One image from “From India to Planet Mars” provoked a question in me: Is unrestrained communication actually possible?

Susan Hiller, “From India to Planet Mars” (1997–2017) (photo by the author for Hyperallergic)

Marianne ……[unintelligible writing] help ………. ………[unintelligible writing] I CANNOT UNDERSTAND TELL ME MORE

Even in the paranormal, even without thinking, we can’t seem to escape ourselves and our limits.

For those seeking further reading on automatism, “Homage to Gertrude Stein: Lucidity & Intuition” (2011), a squat little bookshelf stuffed with texts on the subject, offers a sly reference library–cum–defensive beachhead on the subject. (Stein studied automatism in her college years, but she later distanced herself from the practice for fear of being labeled and dismissed as an oddball.)

Showing Hiller in a more colorful light is the series After Duchamp (2016–17) and three other large photographs in this vein, “Homage to Marcel Duchamp: Aura (Blue Woman)” (2017) among them.

Inspired by a painting by Duchamp, this series makes use of a vivid collection of aura photos the artist sourced from the internet. Alleging to show one’s spirit, these photos radiate with voluptuous reds and blues, saturated purples and greens, the aura a cotton-candy wig, a technicolor haze, outside our brains. In some, the sitter’s face is obliterated by color — the spirit overtaking the body, if you will. Grouped in a grid of 50 pictures, After Duchamp shifts the way these fringe-y photos are viewed. In such an arrangement, they’re not isolated activities but seemingly more of a commonplace endeavor to locate the true self, endearing it with the selfies of today. In a similar way, “First Aid: Homage to Joseph Beuys” (1969–2017) turns the tables on art and alchemy. Mounted on the wall are a set of wooden first-aid kits that Hiller has stocked full of holy water she collected from sites around the water — e.g., Lourdes and “Sacred Spring Chimayo” at El Santuario de Chimayo, New Mexico. The piece is an edged tribute to Beuys’s status as an artist-shaman, someone famed for transforming the mundane into treasure objects. But with so many bottles of water from so many difference places, a question seems to be whether Beuys is alone in this alchemical ability.

Susan Hiller, “First Aid: Homage to Joseph Beuys” (1969–2017)

Also included in the exhibit is Hiller’s terrific “Psi Girls” (1999), a five-channel video installation shuffling through clips of cinema’s obsession with young girls with psychic abilities. Edited by Hiller into scenes of identical length and tinted in five different colors (red, yellow, green, purple, and blue), girls from Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker to Danny DeVito’s Matilda make very concentrated expressions (ESP face) as they will things to move and cause others things to burst into flames. (Certainly something is being said here about men’s fear of women’s burgeoning sexuality and independence.) At the end of each two-minute-or-so cycle, the scenes are interrupted by the hiss of white noise, and then the series repeats itself in a different color on a different part of the wall.

Closure and certainty are just not Hiller’s thing. Either with interruptions (as in “Psi Girls”), voids (as in “From India to Planet Mars” or “GH-TS,” 2012, a 4-by-4 grid of ghost photographs that leaves two of its frames empty), or multiplicity (nearly all her pieces), Hiller does not allow a simple reading of the subjects in her works. She’s a quiet disruptor, making viewers find their own way in.

For some, this will be a bother. Since when did ghosts and colorful auras require heavy thinking — or any thinking at all? But this incompleteness, this permeability, works wonders, opening up the impasse between belief and disbelief, rationality and non-rationality; all these binaries and conventions gumming up a different thought. In a mode that is very much her own, Hiller’s work in the paranormal and the paraconceptual transforms through frustration, her art wrapped up in riddle. Question: What can you put in a bucket to it lighter? Answer: a hole. The devil is not in the details; it’s in the gapes.

Susan Hiller: Paraconceptual continues at Lisson Gallery (504 West 24th Street, Chelsea, Manhattan) through June 10.

The post From Aura Photos to Automatic Writing, an Artist Plumbs the Abyss Between Belief and Disbelief appeared first on Hyperallergic.

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atths--twice · 5 years ago

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Chapter Three

A Walk on the Beach

Walking on the beach leads to memories, stories, laughter, gazing, kissing.

As they leave the restaurant, they stop by the limo. They tell the driver they are going to walk on the beach and the pier, so it may be a while. He shrugs, smiles, and turns back to his paper. He’s paid through for the evening, time doesn’t matter to him.

The beach is not far, just past a few restaurants and down some stairs. There is a long pier with some rides and carnival games close by. When they get to the steps, Scully sits down and takes off her shoes.

“You should do the same, Mulder. It’s not any fun trying to get sand out of dress shoes,” she says matter of factly.

He doesn’t ask her how she knows this, but sits down next to her to take off his shoes and socks. He shoves his socks down inside and ties his laces together. Scully is sitting holding her shoes, waiting for him. He glances at her. She is staring at him, flicking her eyes to his lips, her breathing becoming fast. His heart pounds. He recognizes that look.

She licks her lips, drops her shoes and climbs into his lap-straddling him. She locks her arms around his neck and kisses him. He too drops his shoes, wraps his arms around her waist and grabs her ass. She moans and pushes her tongue in his mouth, slowly stroking her tongue over his. He groans into her mouth and pulls her closer as he thrusts his hips up. She rotates her pelvis against the beginning hardness she finds there and they both moan.

He brings a hand up to her neck, grabs a handful of hair and tugs. She gasps and pulls her mouth away from him. Her eyes are dilated and wide in surprise.

“The fuck are you trying to do to me, Scully?” He smiles as he strokes her neck, breathing hard, feeling the scar from her implant. “There is no way this,” he says with a thrust of his hips, “can be remedied out here. Jesus... Control yourself, woman.” He smiles and winks at her.

“Oh, but Mulder.. sometimes you make it so hard,” she purrs and then pouts when he moves her off his lap.

“No, Sister Spooky, you make it so hard,” he says as he stands up, adjusting his pants.

She laughs and grabs her shoes. Mulder takes them from her and puts them in his jacket pockets as he stands up. He throws his shoes across his shoulder and reaches for her hand. He loves the ease at which he can hold her hand or kiss her. Out here, away from the bureau, away from those who may be watching, he feels free.

Case in point, that limo ride. Christ on the holiest of crosses, he thinks with a chuckle, that was ballsy. He normally would have been able to control himself, but goddamn..she is pure sex sometimes. He never would have pegged Scully as one willing to have sex in a limo, but fucking hell.. She has surprised him with the things she is willing to do or let him do to her.

That mouth of hers..it should come with a warning. She makes him so hard with the things she says. Sometimes sitting in the office, after a night together, is pure torture. She is all business and all he can think is how she had begged him to fuck her until she exploded. How she wanted him behind her, under her, and in positions he had never tried before. As soon as she heard his breathing change, she would raise her eyes and grin. She knew exactly where his mind had gone.

God, he has to stop thinking this way. Walking around with an erection was understandably unavoidable when he was fourteen, but he’s a grown ass man. This is embarrassing and quite uncomfortable.

They reach the bottom of the stairs and Scully actually squeals as her feet hit the sand. Mulder looks at her and sees her childlike grin at putting her toes in the cold sand. She squeezes his hand and releases it, taking a few steps forward.

“God, I love the way the ocean smells, the sounds of it, the inky blackness of it at night. There is a poem I remember reading as a child that describes the ocean so perfectly. But, I can’t seem to recall all the words,” her brow furrows as she tries to think of them. “I used to say it to myself every night, the melody of it was so comforting. Hm.. the only thing left is the description of the color, inky black.”

She stands and stares at the ocean, breathing deeply, with a content smile on her lips. Mulder watches her watching the waves. He feels the huge dopey grin on his face and he doesn’t try to hide it. He is so happy right now. Standing in the cold sand, the smell of the ocean around him, watching her hair blow in the breeze, catching her scent mingled with the salt in the air. If he could choose where and when to die, it would be in this moment.

She looks over at him and sees his big grin. “What’s that smile about?” She asks with a wide smile of her own.

“Nothing,” he says and steps toward her and kisses her softly. She smiles at him and it is reminiscent of the kiss they shared on New Year’s Eve, chaste and sweet. He smiles again as he thinks of the many things they have done recently that are most definitely not chaste.

“Come on Scully, let’s go feel that cold Pacific Ocean,” he says as he reaches again for her hand. She laughs and locks her fingers with his as they trudge through the sand.

There are not many people out on the beach at this hour. A few stragglers here and there, but for the most part, they are on their own. The quiet of the beach is nice after the music of the restaurant.

The crashing of the waves is hypnotic. Scully remembers many trips to the beaches as a child; finding rocks, shells, sand crabs, and seaweed. Other than the rocks and shells, Melissa had never wanted to join her in finding those things. Unless the boys could be persuaded to stop playing in the water or digging huge holes, she was on her own. She did not mind her solitary play. Being on her own, she could dig and explore to her heart’s content.

They reach the waters edge and Mulder releases Scully’s hand, bending to roll up the legs of his pants. Scully takes his shoes from his shoulder and holds them for him. She steps forward and then jumps back at the coldness of the water.

“Christ, that’s cold!” She exclaims as she steps forward again. “That first feel of the water is always a shock. But, I love it.” She looks over at Mulder as he finishes with his pants and she grins.

He takes his shoes from her and reaches for her hand again. He pulls her a couple more steps into the water. He inhales sharply as the water hits his feet and she laughs. The water pulls back and they both feel the pebbles rush past them, their feet sinking deeper into the wet sand.

Scully lets Mulder’s hand drop. She raises her arms out and puts her head back, taking a deep breath. She smiles as the next wave crashes and her feet are submerged in water again.

She swears, if she turns around, she will catch a glimpse of her mother on a large blanket, under an umbrella. A big floppy hat on to keep her face protected from the hot sun. She will hear her calling out to all of her kids to be careful of the water. To respect its power. She will hear them all laugh as they brush her warnings off as mom just being worried.

Until Scully had a lifeguard swimming toward her one day, as she drifted too close to the pylons of the pier, did she learn to heed her mother’s words. She hadn’t even noticed she was close until it was almost too late.

The lifeguard had brought her out of the water, given her a talking to about paying attention, and brought her back to her mother-much farther down the beach than she remembered. Her mother had thanked the lifeguard and then looked at Scully. Cold, shaking, and embarrassed, she had sat down on one of the boogie boards the boys always brought.

“Dana,” her mother had begun. “How many times have I said to be careful and aware in the water? The ocean is not a docile creature. She is not forgiving. Today, Dana, today is a calm day and yet you drifted far away from where you began. You are a strong swimmer and able to look after yourself, but you cannot take chances or let your guard down. You love the sea, I know, but it will not love you back. You have to stay vigilant.”

Scully could still feel the way the water felt dripping off her body and her hair as she sat with her head bowed. The heat from the sun on her back, the sand on her toes, and the smell of the ocean all around her.

Her mother had leaned forward and tipped Scully’s chin up to look in her eyes. She gave her a small smile.

“I do not say these things to scare you from your fun Dana, I just want you to be safe,” she said as she pushed Scully’s wet hair back from her face and rubbed her cheek. “My darling girl, so much like your father. He respects the sea, my love, you need too as well.”

Scully had nodded. Her mother pulled her in for a quick hug and asked if she was hungry. She breathed a sigh of relief knowing there would be no punishment for not listening to her mother's words. Her father would not hear about this, for which she was extremely grateful. Her father’s disappointment was something she avoided at all costs. The look on his face was enough to make her feel shame for days.

Her mother had called all the kids to come back and eat. As they all grabbed for sandwiches and snacks, her mother had caught her eye and smiled. Scully felt her heart lighten, and joined in with the fun and laughter of her brothers and sister.

She turns around now almost expecting to see the ghosts of her mother and siblings sitting on the shore. The night wind blows and she could swear she hears the laughter of that day blowing across the beach. She feels a chill and feels Mulder touch her back.

“Cold?” he asks her as he rubs his hand up and down her back.

“No.. just thinking of old memories,” she says with a small smile, turning toward him. “Did I ever tell you about the time my father decided we should try to go to as many beaches as possible in two weeks' time?” She asks as she pushes her toes around in the sand and the water, grazing his toes at times.

He chuckles. “No, I’m pretty sure I’ve never heard that story.”

“Well, we were living here- well not here but in San Diego. Which, as you know, has beaches pretty much everywhere. But my father decided he wanted to see Manhattan, Redondo, Santa Monica. He thought it would be a good teaching moment for us, seeing as there is a lot of history in the beaches. Many Native Americans were the first people to live in those areas. My father never wanted us to just have a vacation, he also wanted us to learn something, you know?” She smiles at him and turns toward the shore.

She starts walking past the tide, her feet beginning to feel cold. When she finds a dry area past where the waves can't reach, she sits down.

Mulder sits down next to her and she puts her head on his shoulder. They sit looking at the waves for a few minutes before he gives her a nudge to continue her story.

She smiles and starts again.

“So, my father has this trip planned and my mother has been packing for it for weeks. We were going to be camping at campsites, so we had to be sure we had everything we needed. We were of no help to my mother, packing wise. I was eleven, Melissa was thirteen, Bill was fifteen and Charlie-“

“Whom I still don’t believe actually exists,” Mulder cuts in, his voice disbelieving. “I’ve met everyone else in your family, except him. What are you Scully’s hiding? Might have to open an X-File,” he says with a look of mock intrigue.

Scully laughs and shakes her head. They have had this discussion before. Mulder expressing his doubts that the youngest Scully member will ever make an appearance, therefore proving he does not exist.

“Anyway,” she continues with a smile. “Charlie was nine and he and Bill didn’t always get along. Bill was too cool for everything back then. He had a short fuse and it seemed to be directed at Charlie the most. They fought constantly, about everything. So, we’re all piled into this old station wagon we had. It’s laden down with suitcases, tents, cookware, pillows, blankets.. so many things. All of us kids are on the bench seat in the back. All of us, Mulder,” she tells him with a look of incredulity before continuing on. “The car has no air conditioning and it’s hot as hell. Oh, and the car had leather seats. So it was that hot where your skin is wet with sweat and also sticks to the seat at the same time. It’s disgusting,” she shakes her head again lost in the thought of that trip.

Mulder can picture them all, squished in, ready for an adventure, but with that little bastard Bill likely to explode. Mulder had been on the receiving end of the rudeness of Bill as an adult. As a teenage boy, he must have been an outright shit to everyone in the family.

“So, we’re in this hot car, loaded down, about forty five minutes into our two and a half hour drive, when Melissa starts to feel carsick.”

Mulder bursts out laughing.

“Oh, did I not mention that she got carsick? Oh god, Mulder, it was always horrible. She would sometimes get carsick going to the grocery store. She had a bucket that stayed in the car permanently, in case she needed to vomit. So here we are, Melissa by the window, me next to her, and the boys next to each other, with Bill by the window. As she says she’s feeling sick, Bill gets mad at Charlie for touching “his side.” Usually I tried to sit between them so that didn’t happen, but I didn’t get there in time.”

Mulder is still chucking, picturing the scene of the Scully kids packed in like sardines. Scully, the peacemaker, trying to calm her brothers and also help her sister. He puts his left hand on her knee and gives it a squeeze. He could envision her fierce look as she tries to appease everyone, he has seen it enough times himself.

She takes his hand from her knee and stands up. She wants to walk the beach a bit before they head back to the hotel. She looks down at Mulder and reaches for his hands. He grabs hold and together they pull him up. He stands and brushes off his pants. He smiles at her as he reaches for her hand again. He locks their fingers and she looks at him and grins. They start to walk down the beach as she continues the story.

“So, Melissa actually starts dry heaving, Bill punches Charlie, my mom is trying to calm Melissa and I am trying to punch Bill because Charlie is crying.”

Mulder laughs even harder at the thought of scrappy eleven year old Scully taking on her tough older brother. She hasn’t changed much. He’s watched her take down criminals twice or sometimes three times her size. Anyone who looks at her might see a petite pretty woman, but she is tough as nails and scary as hell at times.

“My mother is telling Melissa to grab her bucket and I had just gotten a hold of Bill’s hair and I was pulling hard. He was screaming at me to let him go, Charlie was still crying, my sister started actually vomiting, and then I called my brother a son of a bitch.”

Mulder is howling with laughter, actually holding his stomach as he laughs from deep inside. He stops walking, lets go of her hand, throws his head back and he laughs and laughs. He has tears in his eyes as he pictures the shock on everyone’s faces. How quiet it must have gotten. He looks at Scully and she is laughing too, a huge grin on her face, as she looks at him. Hearing him laugh is like a drug. She loves his laugh and she doesn’t get to hear it often enough. He may chuckle here and there, but a deep gut clenching laugh like this-those are few and far between. His eyes are sparkling and his whole face is lit up. God, she loves him.

“God, Scully,” he says, coughing and laughing still, wiping tears from his eyes. “How have I never heard this story before? It has everything. The happy family going on vacation, the unpredictability of carsickness, the antagonist picking on the weak, the protagonist saving the day by avenging the weak and also dropping some swear words in the family car. A god fearing Catholic family car no less. Ah.. It’s a home run of a hit. Classic comedy. God.. so what happened? What did they say to you? I can’t imagine your mom was too pleased,” he chuckles again as he looks at her.

“Well,” she says smiling, turning her head to look out at the ocean, then back at him. “My sister was still vomiting, so that took precedence. I still had a firm grasp on Bill’s hair, and I wasn’t letting go. My mother looked at my father and he nodded. He caught my eye in the rear view mirror and I knew I was in trouble. I let go of Bill’s hair and put my hands in my lap, so worried about what was going to happen..”

As she continues the story, she remembers how she felt that day. How her father’s eyes had burned into hers. The nervousness she felt, her cheeks burning. When her father had started to pull over at the nearest rest area, her heart was pounding.

Her mother had jumped out of the car as soon as they stopped, to take care of Melissa and Charlie went crying with them. She and Bill sat in the car, while her father started rifling for something in the back of the car. He walked past her door and told her to come with him. Her heart dropped into her stomach and her legs felt like they were made of lead.

When she started to walk away, she had looked back at Bill. He was out of the car and leaning against the hood. He had given her such a condescending smirk, she almost flew at him. But, she had kept walking. Her father had walked past the view of the car. He sat on the curb and patted the space next to him. She knew this was it and she had to face the music. When she sat down, he didn’t look at her, but kept his head turned away.

She had felt sweat dripping down her back, her palms sweating, and her heart pounding. When her dad finally turned toward her, he had a huge grin on his face. She knew hers showed puzzlement. What was happening?

“Mrs. O’Malley, Dana?” he had said with a twinkle in his eyes.

“Mrs. O’Malley?” Mulder asks, bringing her back to the present. Lost in her thoughts of that warm day, she shivers slightly in the chill ocean breeze. He sees her body give an almost imperceptible shake. He hands her his shoes and takes off his jacket. As he wraps it around her shoulders, she smiles so tenderly at him, he feels his heart turn over. God, he loves her.

“You’ll be cold now,” she says, feeling his fingers brush her neck when he fixes the collar. She shivers and he pulls her toward him. He wraps his arms around her and holds her tight. He rubs his hands up and down her back, loving the feel of her body against him. She fits so perfectly in his arms, it’s as if she was made for him and him alone.

“Nah,” he says as he steps back to let her put the jacket on properly. He takes his shoes back and then reaches in the pockets of his jacket for hers, holding the small shoes on his long fingers. She slides her arms in the sleeves, which are much too long, but she doesn’t mind. The jacket is warm and smells of him. She loves the way he smells. A hint of the cologne she bought him for his birthday a couple years ago, laundry soap, and the scent that is just unmistakably Mulder. She takes a deep breath and looks up at him.

He is staring at her so intensely, she feels her heart stop. He lays his shoes across his palm, holding both their shoes in one hand. He traces his fingers down her cheek, then holds her neck as he leans down to kiss her forehead, her cheeks, her eyes, the tip of her nose. At last he kisses her lips, softly and sweetly.

She has leaned into him, gripping his shirt, her hands barely visible under his big jacket. His fingers rub her neck, dig into her hair. She opens her mouth and his tongue slides in, caressing hers. She slides her arms around his neck and stands on her tiptoes, crashing into his body. He wraps the arm holding their shoes around her waist, and pulls her pelvis to his.

She gasps into his mouth as she feels his arousal for the second time since arriving at the beach.

Someone wolf whistles as someone else shouts “OWWWW!” causing them to break apart. Both of them are out of breath as they turn to find the owners of the voices.

Approaching them is a group of teenagers. A gaggle of boys and girls walking in two sets. The girls are giggling, at them and at the boys who apparently had done the yelling. Scully turns back to Mulder and puts her head on his chest, mumbling “this is so embarrassing.”

Mulder doesn’t feel embarrassed, not in the slightest. It took so long for them to get to this point, he’d kiss her in front of Skinner if she allowed it. He is completely crazy about her. He grins like a fool at the childish outcry from the boys, but goddamn, he gets it.

He remembers that hormonal adolescent feeling, acting braver than you are, trying to impress a girl. Remembers it? Ha! He feels it every day. Trying to impress Scully, to get her attention. How many times has he acted as much a fool as these boys have done tonight? Making innuendos, asking if his boyish agility is turning her on, showing her a strip of condoms and saying “ouch.” He has behaved just like the boys did tonight.

Christ, she makes him feel like a teenager-hot and excited and acting like a fool, trying to get the prettiest girl to notice him. He grins and yells back to the boys, “Thanks!” as Scully whips her head up and looks at him with wide eyes.

The kids laugh again, but one of the boys bravely calls back, “She’s hot!” Scully closes her eyes and begins to turn around and tell them off, when Mulder chuckles. She turns back to him and looks at him incredulously. He is beaming.

“See Scully,” he says as he adjusts their shoes again and pulls her to him with an arm around her waist. “I knew it was remotely plausible that someone might think you’re hot.” He grins at her, his eyes alight.

She looks up in his eyes and thinks of the man he was the last time he said that to her. Young, disheveled around the edges, still finding himself. He’s grown, changed, become more cautious, more concerned for her wellbeing than his own. And yet here he is, laughing at teenagers whistling at them and calling her hot. She shakes her head and smiles. He may be an adult, but he’ll always hold onto some adolescent tendencies.

He kisses her again, quickly, before she can pull away from him. He steps back from her and turns to follow the group of kids, back to the stairs, toward the pier. He wants to go use that credit card again and he sees a ferris wheel on the pier. Hopefully it will stop at the top and they can make out like teenagers. First though, she has a story to finish.

“So?” he asks, reaching for her hand again, walking closer to the water. This is their last chance to do so; they are leaving tomorrow afternoon. As he feels the cold water splash him again, he looks at her expectantly. “Scully? So, who was Mrs. O’Malley?”

She looks up at him, confused. Then it hits her, she had been in the middle of a story before his kiss had left her reeling.

Scully laughs and then sighs. “She lived a few houses from us when we were on the base. She had eight kids, Mulder, eight, and she was pregnant with her ninth.” Mulder gives a low whistle and shakes his head. “They were all relatively close in age too. She had two sets of twins and they were little hellions. We played with the older kids, but they weren’t always nice. The parents had some crazy fights, woke the neighborhood. He was gone a lot and she was home with the kids. People didn’t have nannies and sitters, especially in base housing. So, it was pretty much just her and the kids.”

Mulder stops walking and drops her hand. He bends down to pick something up and Scully looks toward the group of teenagers. They stopped walking a little ways ahead of them and are now congregated close by. The boys are pushing at each other and making loud crude sounds. The girls are talking close to one another, twirling their hair and making eyes at the boys. What different creatures we are, she thinks. What odd mating rituals we go through to prove our worthiness to one another.

She is sure there is at least one love triangle in the mix of twelve. A girl that is too shy, a boy too overzealous, two girls in “love” with one of the boys, and a boy not ready for any of this so he reverts to childish antics. The same players for all eternity, yet every generation thinks they have it all figured out.

She smiles as she watches them, remembering many nights out, just like the one they are experiencing. She was a cross between too shy and simply inexperienced. She wanted to try, but wanted to be sure she could get it right.

As she watches them now, she can imagine Mulder at that age. Tall, lanky, most likely awkward, but wanting to play it off. Oh.. she spots a kid who could be Mulder’s younger self. He is cocky to the boys, he has some swagger, he’s acting out a bit, but she sees his eyes land repeatedly on one girl in particular. The girl doesn’t seem to notice, she’s watching the other girls. Learning their social cues. God, that could be her. She smiles. Yep, same players, different generation.

“So, exactly how does the youngish woman in the shoe factor into your car trip?” Mulder asks as he stands back up, putting something in his pocket.

Scully smiles at his nickname for Mrs. O’Malley, it definitely suited her. “A week before we left on our trip, they had a doozy of a fight. He got new station orders and they would be leaving right away. Usually time was given to find housing and placements for spouses. But there were special circumstances and they had to leave right away. It wasn’t his fault, he got his orders, he had to go. I can understand her frustration and her anger, though. Eight kids Mulder. With another on the way? Yeah, that’s bound to set anyone off.”

She shook her head and looked at the kids again. The boys were still acting up, but now were wrestling in the sand. Mulder glanced over too as he heard the girls shriek when the sand flew at them. He grinned and looked back at Scully. She rolled her eyes at him, but she smiled.

“So, a crowd had gathered outside their house as their fight reached a new decibel in volume. The kids had fled into the front yard and they were watching with scared interest. Their parents were always fighting, but not like that, it must have been scary. The whole fight culminated when she threw open the upstairs window and started throwing his clothes out the window. He was yelling at her to knock it off, that she was embarrassing him. She called him a son of a bitch and to never tell her what to do again. Her kids, down on the grass, heard her and began chanting “Son of a bitch, son of a bitch!” and running around the yard. I had never heard anyone say that before, and it shook me. My father put his hand on my shoulder and it startled me. I had no idea he was even home. He told us we should go back inside now, that this was not our business and we didn’t need to gawk at our neighbors. We didn’t talk about it, but the words stuck with me. When I yelled them at Bill, I just thought they were hurtful and mean words, not a swear. My father must have realized that was what happened and found it amusing. When he sat with me on that curb, he had laughed at what I said, but also talked to me about saying those words. But Mulder,” she said turning and looking at him with a watery smile. “What I remember about that trip is not the beaches we visited or the campgrounds where we stayed. What I hold so dear in my memories is that before my father talked to me that day, he had taken two Cokes out of the cooler in the back of the car. We weren’t allowed sodas when we were younger, but my father loved them. This was his stash of drinks and I got to have a whole can of it to myself. I had been so worried about his disappointment in me, but on that hot day, on a hot cement curb, my father laughed and shared something he loved with me.”

She has tears in her eyes at the memory of her father. How he had looked when he handed her that cold can of Coke and tipped his can to hers. The coolness of the can as they sat there together, not speaking, just sitting and enjoying the soda. He never got after her for pulling Bill’s hair or punching him. He knew Bill had started it by punching Charlie. His smile to her seemed to say he was proud of her for holding her own with her big brother.

Mulder smiles at Scully, as she sniffs away her tears. He is happy she has good memories of her father. Happy that she is secure in his love and pride of her. Mulder didn’t have the same happy family memories.. but that’s not a thought for now, he thinks with a shake of his head. Right now, her story has filled him with happiness and contentment.

He pulls her to him and holds her tight. “I’m glad for your memories, Scully,” he said into her hair, in that low voice that gives her the shivers. “Glad you grew up with brothers who challenged you to stand up for yourself. Glad you had a father who recognized that as a strength and not something to quash out of you. Glad you had a sister who tried to find truths and paths beyond your own beliefs, even if you didn’t agree. Glad you had a mother who cared for you and let you follow your path and didn’t dissuade you. All of that, all those factors, they made you who you are.”

He pulls back and holds her face in his hand, tipping her chin to look in his eyes. She has tears on her cheeks, but he knows these aren’t like the ones in the restaurant. She is smiling, her eyes shining. He strokes her cheek and kisses her lightly. He rests his forehead on hers.

“I don’t want to sound like a selfish asshole here Scully, but I think your past prepared you for me. For the whirlwind of the partnership we’ve had. For the challenges we’ve faced. For the times your beliefs in science and faith have been tested but you never faltered. For the people, especially men, who have thought of and treated you as less than. For the bosses who thought you would turn tail and run when you were partnered with me. You didn’t. You stayed. You have fought beside me and for me. Your presence in my life represented everything they wanted to try and destroy, but they never wagered on you being their downfall, and my uplifter. You were exactly what I needed. You saved me, Scully. A thousand times over.” He raises his head and looks into her blue eyes that pull at him like a magnet. “Thank you Scully. Thank you for saving me and being who I needed even when I didn’t know it myself.”

She breaks down as she wraps her arms tightly around his waist and hides her face in his chest. She doesn’t know how to respond to his beautiful words. He doesn’t say them looking for a declaration back. She rubs her face across his chest, as much to take a moment as to get rid of her tears. She pulls back and puts her hands on his face, bringing his lips to hers. She kisses him softly as she runs her nails across his neck, drawing him in.

She tries to put a promise in her kiss. A promise that she will always be there to uplift him, to fight for him, and be on his side. She wraps her arms around his neck, breaking from the kiss, and holding him close. She puts her mouth against his ear and whispers “Thank you, Mulder” before kissing his cheek, pulling back and smiling at him.

They stand there smiling at each other until they both hear the kids shrieking again. She shakes her head and sighs while Mulder laughs and looks down at his feet. Then above the noise, a girl calls to one of the boys, “I thought you said we were going to the arcade? Going to play some games?”

Mulder’s head snaps up. His eyes are wide and his mouth drops open. “An arcade, Scully?” He raises his eyebrows and smiles.

She smiles, shakes her head again, but turns to start walking toward the stairs and the possibility of an arcade. “Who knows Mulder,” she says with laughter in her voice. “Maybe there is some kind of first person shooter game, so you have the chance to get your ya-yas out.”

He laughs as he starts to follow her.

“Oh but Mulder,” she says, stopping and turning around. She looks at him with a twinkle in her eyes, as she places a hand on his chest. “If a Miss Jade Blue Afterglow shows up, I may feel the need to blast the crap out of something.” They both grin and she turns to keep walking.

He grabs her elbow and stops her. He steps in front of her, meeting her eyes. “She can’t hold a candle to you, Scully. Never could.” He reaches for her hand, locks their fingers, and squeezes. She gives him a radiant smile and he nods.

He turns toward the group of teenagers who are starting to walk away. “Hey!” He calls out to them. “Did one of you say something about an arcade?”

#walking on the beach #sharing memories #coming closer together #laughing and kissing #happy so goddamn happy

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