#Mulder and the Two Scully Sisters

[randomfoggytiger]

The Scully Family In-Depth (Part IX): Mulder and the Two Scully Sisters

The last part of One Breath's Scully Family coverage is here.

Mulder is out of options; and Scully is certainly dying. 

“You know Fox--,” Melissa begins, conversationally in the cafeteria; but she pauses when Mulder raises with jerky back-and-forth movements. Recalling Scully’s earlier forewarning, she restates, “Sorry. Mulder.”

Mulder shakes his head at her, a combination of annoyance at having to politely listen and annoyance at also having to listen to her drawn-out rephrasing. He’d rather be incorrectly called “Fox” than have to waste time waiting for the correction. 

Melissa is frustrated by his vengeance shoddily veiled with apathy, her open expression dropping into older sister admonishment.

“You could… spend the rest of your life finding every person  who’s responsible and it’s still not gonna bring her back.” 

Mulder is heavily annoyed, staring her down and responding only with an exaggerated sigh.  

On first glance, in theory, or on paper, Mulder and Melissa should have gotten along. Both are open to extreme possibilities and believe they can communicate with ghosts, spirits, and (likely) aliens. Why they don’t is because Melissa lacks the critical, pessimistic filter Mulder judges his own theories by-- he is a very pessimistic man to beliefs he can’t or won’t swallow (ex. Scully’s faith and established religion.) Melissa’s harmonic boogaloo is one of those things; and he casts her willful optimism into the same light as negligible and irresponsible naivete. 

Melissa senses this; but she also senses his outright refusal to address his own leaking wounds or be there-- really there-- for his dying partner, denying them both that peace before she passes. She’s determined to stop that. 

“Whoever did this to her has an equal horror coming to them,” Melissa says. 

Mulder nods to himself, convinced he, too, is culpable for Scully’s death (which will be revisited in S5’s Kitsunegari.) “Including myself.” 

Pinning him with her eyes, Melissa freezes. Her appraisal is cut short by a third party interruption; but she still squeezes out-- with the classic skeptical Scully raised eyebrow-- “What do you mean ‘yourself’?”

The first hint of true Scully skepticism seems to have placed him in a more open, honest mood. Mulder responds more to straight talk, thinking Melissa's pretty phrases and kumbaya sentiments are phony and dismissible. For the first time he regards the other Scully with something other than tolerance, leaning forwarding and becoming more vulnerably honest-- softening his expression and curving his arms comfortingly rather than erecting them as a stiff, unpassable barrier. He even absently curls one of his hands in a simple, limp-wristed gesture of little-boy-awkwardness, a sign he’s intensely focused on choosing the right words rather than guarding his thoughts and feelings. After all, he has no place left to run; and the emotional turbulence Mulder feels is so great he’d rather confide in this annoying Scully sister (the pre-Queequeg, if you will) than keep company alone in his head. 

Of course, this almost-vulnerability is cut short by the next mission, the next lead-- like Mulder and Scully’s moment in the basement when he reads about Arthur Dales in an old newspaper article-- and he gets up and walks off in pursuit of vengeance. Melissa doesn’t stop him, watching silently as he makes his decisions (as she had for Maggie, post here.) 

Many a failure and pep talk and second chance later, Mulder sits in his apartment, revenge in his grasp, thirst for blood in his mouth. His trap is interrupted by a knock from Melissa. 

Side note: Mulder heard her knock and was about to shoot her. Melissa should have learned not to show up to federal agents’ dark apartments without expecting to catch a bullet. 

“Mulder,” she calls after several unanswered raps. When he springs out the door, disheveled and searching the hallway, Melissa swivels her head around, too. 

Seeing nothing, she decides she’s accidentally disrupted a very disoriented Mulder from his nap. “I’m sorry,” she mumbles. “I came by… you weren’t answering and your machine wasn’t on.” 

Melissa is shaky, a bit startled… but very relieved. She knows how devastating losing Scully is for Mulder; and, when she hadn’t heard from him for a few hours, she tracked him down (most likely learning where he lives from Maggie… which means Maggie knows where Mulder lives) and had to make sure he was alright. Which means that Melissa could sense how thin a string Mulder is held together by after Scully’s tether has been snapped. 

Mulder reads this genuine concern, and he looks down-- feeling for the first time a connection with this strange amalgamation of Scully’s care, Maggie’s paranormal tendencies, and (to him) plain wacko opinions. 

A hint of his guilt pops through: he feels for Melissa’s loss (keeping far away from his own feelings on the matter) but is combatting that regret with what he thinks is avenging justice for her, Maggie, and Scully. And he is very angry when she disillusions him of that notion. 

At Melissa’s “Can I come in?”, Mulder panics, not thinking of a response fast enough. 

Melissa’s suspicion radar is activated, and she scowls. “For a second?” 

Giving up, Mulder leads (read: jams) her in, swiftly shutting the door behind him. 

“Why is it so dark in here?” she asks, concerned. 

“Because the lights aren’t on.” 

Concern fleeing in the face of aggravation, she mildly responds, “Okay” and passes over Mulder’s pique. 

Straightening her posture and folding her arms in a “no-nonsense” pose, Melissa informs, “I just came from the hospital. Doctor Daly says…” 

She stops, mimicking another classic Scully gesture: sucking in her cheeks and rubbing her tongue across lips from stress.  

“...she’s weakening. It could be… any time. So I figured you’d want to come down and see her.” Looking down with filling tears, she prepares for an onslaught from Mulder. 

Which doesn't happen. 

“Well I can’t.”

Instant righteous Scully indignation-- the kind Maggie and Scully herself uses on a regular basis. It runs in the family. 

“Well, I think that you would.” 

“Yeah, well--” Mulder snaps, intent roiling under his pointed response. He falters, “I would--”; then hobbles over his voice crack with a definitive, “I can’t. No right now.” 

Melissa came on a mission of mercy; but it now dawns on her that Mulder is slapping that offer away willfully, more ready to dole out danger than to inflict it on himself. 

Anger building, she steps forward and mutters, lowly, “Listen. I don’t have to be psychic to see that you’re in a very. dark. place. Much darker than where my sister is.”  (As Scully told Luther Lee Boggs, “It may be a cold, dark place for you; but it's not for Mulder.")

Sidenote: Her "you're in a very dark place" is unintentionally on par with the humor of "the lights aren't on" because:

#1. He is morally and emotionally in the dark; but also

#2. Mulder is literally standing in a dark patch of the room. 

Melissa, despite drawing nearer to the darkness, stays in the light. She tries to reach through the shadows and engage Mulder’s disengaged morality (“Willingly walking deeper into darkness cannot help her at all. Only the light--”); but her speech only angers him more, as he twists her sweet words in saccharine empty platitudes. 

“Oh, ENOUGH--” Mulder yells, conscience pricked. But his frustration brings out more honesty: “You’re not saying anything to me.” Desperation taints his voice, a subtle plea: “make sense, make it stop” warring within himself while she talks.  

Melissa knows that Mulder doesn't want to understand; and, furious, steps firmly into his business for the first time and squares off: “Why don’t you just drop your cynicism. And your paranoia. And your DEFEAT. Y’know, just because it’s positive and good doesn’t make it silly, or trite. Wh..why is it so much easier for you to run around trying to get even than just expressing to her how you feel?”  

Mulder has been looking down, trying to shut away the truth; but at her last sentence, his head bolts upright. Before he can make a snappy rejoinder, Melissa cuts him off, refusing to let him break her eyeline while forging ahead on the steam of disappointed indignation.

“I expect more from you-- DANA expects more.”

Again, Melissa speaks for her sister (post here), relaying her messages in the present tense, confirmation that she’s spoken at length with her dying sibling.  

Mulder looks away once more; and she huffs, storming off towards the door. On the tail of his relieved sigh, she spins back and sends a parting shot: “Even if it doesn’t bring her back--”

Mulder shifts his eyes down again, spoiling for a fight (but restraining himself with a clenched jaw.)

“--at least she’ll know. And so will you.” Melissa sweeps out the door, not giving him room to even react. 

After another jaw clench followed by a door slam (and a hard lean to prevent him from breaking it down and screaming after his unwanted visitor), Mulder retreats back to the dark. 

But not for long.  

The right decision and a preemptive bout of mourning later-- the first time Mulder has broken down about someone other than his sister-- he answers the Scully call, expecting to hear of his partner’s death… and is overjoyed when told she’s woken up. He joins all three Scully women at the hospital, bearing gifts and a clear conscience. 

The loud click and squeak of the room door startles Maggie and Melisssa, and pulls Scully into awareness. While she slowly shifts her head, Melissa bounces from the chair, hoping Mulder will take her place by sinking into it. No such luck-- he’s not ready to be observed in his hospital vigils yet (he will by Redux II); but his smile lights up the whole room as he tugs a little gift behind him (ala the charm in Fresh Bones, the keychain in Tempus Fugit, and the doll in Empedocles.) 

“Hello, Fox,” Maggie coos, blissfully serene. 

The first thing Scully says is a correction (because of course it is): “Not ‘Fox.’ Mulder.”  

Beaming, she pops open her eyes with a cheeky grin on her face; but dials it back into as close to her own signature, serious expression as Scully can manage, her shirked Starbuckian duty-- lack of evidence for "Ahab"-- weighing down her joy. 

An important point: this is the first “Mulder” smile-- besotted, appreciative gazing-- that is shown in the series. Before now, he shared S1 smirks and S2 grins with his unacknowledged crush; but now he beams unabashedly raw emotion in triumph o’er the grave. He is in love; and he knows it. 

The first thing Mulder says is his concern (because it always has been): “How ya feelin’?” 

Scully swallows, searching his face. “Mulder, I don’t remember anything.” A rare woman Scully is: wakes from a coma, fears her partner’s disappointment, but level-headedly gives him the truth, anyway. Taking a winded, bracing breath, she tries to get her words out, but starts hasten and stumble over them after mentioning Duane Barry (her eyes flinching and her words shoving together.)  

“Doesn’t-- doesn’t matter,” he assures, shaking his head to dismiss the topic. He does, however, clench his jaw, a sign he’d caught how desperate Scully was to reassure him she’d done her best. It’s sad and telling how focused she is on not failing him, even on her own deathbed (which will be revisited, again, in Redux II.) 

Mulder has already chosen Scully over the Truth by sitting at her deathbed; but this is the first time she sees him make that choice. She nods; then closes her eyes to collect herself.  

As Mulder sweeps out his celebration gift-- Superstars of the Superbowl (a “we won, Scully! We beat the odds in the game of life!” flourish)-- and earns a “I knew there was a reason to live” from his partner, Melissa watches from behind, framed as a benevolent angel keeping guard as her two charges fumble around and titter in their newly realized love and glee. When he starts to walk off without the important words said, Melissa leans her head back against the post, fondly exasperated at the two of them. 

Scully, gaining a second wind, steps up to the bat. “Mulder….”

Melissa tries and fails to keep a smirk off her face as Mulder spins around, his feet sweeping loud circles on the hospital floor. At Scully’s measured “I had the strength of your beliefs”, two things happen with him at once:  

#1. Mulder self-consciously peeks sideways at Maggie to see if she’s aware of his private conversation the night before (or if she’s read between the lines, destroying his subtlety. Hint: Maggie figured out his feelings in Ascension-- post here-- and Melissa took one look at his middle-school-crush hair and oversized jacket and closed the case.) 

#2. Mulder quickly jumps from “I had the strength of your beliefs” to Scully’s cross, having kept himself afloat with the strength of her beliefs. Remembering that he has it in his pocket-- a personal talisman-- he reaches in and tenderly hands it back. 

A bonus third point: 

#3. Melissa hadn’t known he’d been the necklace keeper; and she plainly shows her surprise as the proceedings go on. 

Maggie is touched, melting in her miracle and rewarded trust. 

Scully discerns that this is her necklace, and immediately turns to her mom. The two hold a silent conversation-- the mother still tying religious value to the gift that her daughter does not-- and Scully is comforted (in an ironic way... and aware of that fact) that nothing has changed. She then turns back to Mulder; and the two stare silently at each other.

Mulder stops himself from further, heartfelt words, reminded that Maggie and Melissa are there-- and are staring like hungry vultures. Getting shy, he slithers off (but not before getting a full view of Melissa’s big, plastered, satisfied smirk.) 

Overall, Melissa Scully and Dana Scully are two very different women; and Mulder is probably the most thankful man on this planet for that fact. While he gives Melissa her due, the two are oil and water; and between her and Bill (who we will get to), family holidays would probably have been a very... interesting time.

Mulder recognizes, however, how right she was in this circumstance; and that her persistence made him admit to himself his love for Scully, taking a massive step forward in his emotional growth. Without Melissa's influence, Mulder's "gazing" wouldn't be to the same degree that we recognize as part of his character. Not only that, but he would also have missed out on a powerful, life-changing (and, for Scully, life-saving) lesson.

And thus ends One Breath.

Thanks for reading~

Enjoy!

[carefulfears]

thinking about maggie looking up at mulder from her deathbed, grabbing his hand, directing her final words to him, rather than her daughter. 20 years after she stepped in between him and a gun, wanting to leave him with something. her grandbaby’s father. how mulder brings up scully’s coma, but for those 3 months “back in the day,” it was him and maggie. it was him and maggie at the crime scene and on the bench outside the fbi and choosing gravestones. how he was always invited by her. “this is a moment for the family, but you can join us.” so many decades of phone calls, check-ins, the way that in wetwired when he calls and she doesn’t answer, he knows. the inherent connection that comes with knowing your closest person’s closest person: two emergency contacts, two people who always have to be notified, two people who are always at the side of a hospital bed or funeral or event. two people who know what “i’m fine” means, what an eye roll means, what a nosebleed means. closeness in the periphery.

[garashir]

this Colony/End Game arc is all over the place

[bakedbakermom]

@onlineproblems asked me this while workshopping some fic and I don't want to go to the grocery store so I'm gonna procrastinate by answering!

So to understand where I'm coming from, we first have to go back to the pilot.

When Scully goes down to the basement office for the first time, she introduces herself as Dana Scully, and the next words out of Mulder's mouth are, "Who'd you piss off to get stuck with this detail, Scully?" The way he says it is so fascinating to me. The emphasis. The hint of teasing. The deliberate dismissal of her first name, as if he's certain she's not going to stick around long enough for him to care, and moreover that he doesn't WANT her to stick around, doesn't WANT to care. He's all alone in the basement, the FBI's most unwanted, and he likes it that way (or at least he thinks he does).

In that scene, "Scully" itself becomes a nickname. Like she's his annoying little sister (🥺) tagging long on his adventures but she's NOT welcome.

Little does he know that Dana Scully is not just a little sister, but the THIRD child, and therefore has taken Little Sistering to a professional level. She gives it right back to him without missing a beat, sassing and challenging and not flinching away from his questions or his graphic (for 90s TV) slideshow. She teases him right back every step of the way, countering his "Scully" with her own "Mulder" in precisely the voice you know she used to use when Bill was being a little shit about "no girls allowed."

Thus "Mulder," too, becomes a nickname. Like he's her jerk older brother trying to exclude her from his Very Serious Work, but he doesn't know what a tenacious little pomeranian she is and she won't let him get away with it.

From then on, that's what they are to each other. Scully and Mulder. Mulder and Scully. A team, but not always on the same side. A pair, but able to split toward their own purposes. A unit of two individuals.

I came across this post this morning, about how they are CONSTANTLY saying each other's names. Like, every other line of dialogue, if not more. I swear Mulder starts and ends his sentences with "Scully" sometimes. It really is A LOT.

But also, when they do this, it's so incredibly intimate. They assign so many different meanings to their names with just the tiniest lilt and tremor and shift in cadence. (This is a testament to both GA and DD's acting skills, that they can pack whole paragraphs of emotion into just two syllables.) They say it with fear, with fascination, with tenderness and curiosity and challenge and anger and frustration and humor and disbelief. As prayer and plea and profanity. With promise and passion. And eventually, with love. So much love.

They say "Scully" and "Mulder" the same way I call my husband "honey." It's not just a name. It's who they ARE to each other. Their names are just a shorthand. An anchor. A question and an answer in one. She's his Scully. He's her Mulder.

It's not the syllables that matter. It's the feeling behind them.

Which brings me to pet names. When I write MSR, I tend to leave the pet-naming to Mulder for the most part, because he seems like a pet-namey kind of guy. And Scully, who has never struck me as a pet-namey kind of gal, lets him get away with it because he calls her "baby" the exact same way he calls her "Scully," and he calls her "Scully" the exact same way he calls her "baby." They have spent so much time calling each other by nicknames that aren't nicknames, that the actual sounds coming out don't matter anywhere near as much as the emotion inside them. He could call her "sasquatch" or "football" and she'd know exactly what he meant. (HC that she gets some Chewbaca-inspired lingerie at some point, and he calls her a sexy little sasquatch, and she's stunned by how turned on she gets.)

Scully only uses pet-names sparingly, in times of great emotion or overwhelm. He told her once (just once) that he doesn't like being called Fox, and so "Mulder" is her baseline name for him in nearly all circumstances. She'll call him "honey" when he kisses her neck just so, or "baby" when he's hurt and needs comfort, but the truth is he loves hearing every last shade of "Mulder" from her lips. Every possible way she could ever say his name, he hoards those syllables like a dragon hoards gems. He's never loved the sound of his own name, except when she's the one who says it. When she does use a pet-name, on those rare occasions, it resonates with him in a very deep way. Sparkling diamond "sweethearts" amid the troves of emerald and ruby "Mulder"s. A glowing opal "honey," slow and sweet as a sigh. "Baby" like a sapphire, like her eyes when she kisses him as if he's the only other person in the world.

If they ever did marry--even if it's just them in their unremarkable kitchen with a pair of second-hand rings and nothing but stale cereal as witness--their vows would be simple. Four syllables, evenly divided.

[aloysiavirgata]

Unremarkable house, Brother Bill, rooster

Mulder is in the big hammock out back, sprawled like a Roman Emperor. The chickens are out, pecking for bugs among the goat droppings. He has a lemon shandy in a frosty glass. He has a tomato sandwich with tomatoes from their garden and homemade bread. He has Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell next to him.

He has misgivings.

Scully enters his field of view, stage left, “Mulder, you’d better put those damn chickens away before he gets here, especially Francisco. That rooster is a complete menace.”

She glares at the enormous bird. They’ve had a few scuffles, she and Francisco. There have been Band-Aids and three stitches.

He slurps at his drink. “You don’t think your brother wants to see my big cock?”

She is silent for a long moment. Then, “I swear to God I will literally kill you, Mulder. I will shoot you and I will bury you out here and I will put a big gazebo over your grave and every time I sit in it I will think about how much you had it coming.”

She stalks back to the house.

“Jesus,” Mulder says to the chickens. “Someone is in a mood.”

***

It’s an awkward greeting, but not as awkward as he’d imagined. He and Bill have always hated each other, which makes it easy to pick up where they’d left off, like two enemy pirate captains running into one another at a bar in Tortuga.

Bill, per usual, looks like he was waiting for the Dulcolax to kick in. Douchebag plaid shorts that Rob Petrie wouldn’t have touched with a ten foot golf club.

He sweeps his sister up in a massive hug and she got rather teary and Bill, to his credit, looks a bit pink around the eyes and nose as well. He puts his sister down after a moment, smoothing her hair.

Bill and Mulder then acknowledge one another’s undeniable existence on the material plane. Shake hands like sulky but well-mannered children after a baseball game.

***

Now they’re on the deck while Mulder tends the grill, three gorgeous steaks from a neighbor’s cow before him.

“It’s beautiful out here, Dana,” Bill says.

“Mostly Mulder’s doing,” Scully replies, sipping at the wine her brother had brought. “He’s honestly a wizard with this property.” She glances at him when she says it and he smiles back.

“Really?” Bill says. “Well, color me impressed. Mulder, I had no idea you were such an adept little homemaker.”

Mulder moves the steaks to a serving platter. “Oh, sure. Dana just uses me for cooking, yardwork, and sex.”

Bill chokes on his beer and Scully closes her eyes for a beat the way Anne Boleyn must have when they led her from the Tower.

Mulder sets the platter on the table, uncovers the potato salad and the asparagus. Sourdough rolls and goat-milk butter.

“Now Bill,” he says, “you tell me if that steak is too rare and I’ll pop it right in the microwave for you. Let me know if you need anything else, some A-1 or ketchup or anything at all. I want you to feel at home.”

Absolute daggers in Scully’s eyes.

Bill coughs lightly. “Everything looks fantastic, thank you both.”

“It was good of you to make the drive, Bill,” Scully says, loading up plates with food. “I know it’s a bit of a haul.”

Bill smiles indulgently. “Couldn’t be this close to my kid sister after so long and not swing by!”

“Though we would have understood,” Mulder says, warmly. He butters a roll and passes it to his brother in law. “Never feel obligated.”

Bill narrows his eyes as he accepts the bread. “Thank you.”

“I’m going to need some new pictures of the kids,” Scully says brightly. “Matthew must have grown six inches since that school photo you sent, Bill! And Mom says Claire has lost two teeth.”

“I’ll tell Tara to send some,” Bill says, puffing up.

They eat in silence for a time. Knives cutting through the tender steaks and stabbing into waxy potatoes and young asparagus. Butter dripping down chins.

“It’s a shame William isn’t growing up here,” Bill says, wiping his plate with another roll. “Dana, how could-“

Her fork clatters to her plate and he shuts up.

A roaring silence like an event horizon.

“Bill,” Scully says, sweetly. “We have the most beautiful rooster to show you.”

[tennant-the-tigger]

Cheat

M: I'm way too wired, I'm going for a run, you want to come?

Can I say, Scully would have been ready to run if she wanted to? Homegirl was wearing running shoes, cross-legged in bed while typing those reports. Also running ahead is definitely a baby sister of two brothers move. And this Mulder is adorable.

TXF Fanart ☆ MSR Fanart

[is-on-its-way]

The moment Mulder quits

A point in which Mulder was ready to quit the minute he saw Scully hold a baby in season 7 and its effects in season 8

*this is my headcanon, its not gospel obviously Firstly, two scenes that are very linked in my head

Season 7 Ep 22 Requiem and Season 8 Ep 16 Three Words

Look at that face. That dead serious, at all costs face.

Season 7

Requiem. The culmination of Scully and Mulder's secret yearish? long quest for a baby. They've tried for a baby with IVF already. Mulder has promised her he wont give up on a miracle for her and they're well... trying basically, throughout season 7. Perhaps I would call it "hoping" for a baby. Maybe Mulder is hoping and Scully is characteristically ambivalent? Fully not using any contraceptives and I know there's a fic in there somewhere, anyway

The first scene above is why Ive never watched past the season 8 finale. nothing past them agreeing to be a family makes any sense because of Mulders face here. People knock Duchovny for not showing out when acting, but I will always be a defender of subtle acting. The way he can say an entire monologue of dialogue with the minute expressions on his face is quite breathtaking here.

Hes goes from sorrow at Scully not being able to have a baby, sorrow at her loss, sorrow at not being able to give her that; to regret at what he thinks is all his fault, at dragging her into this life; to pure love and affection for her seeing this baby in her lap and how good she is with him; and then a smile peaks out. A smile of hope that could compete with the Mona Lisa. Hope for their future and the certainty with which he knows what he wants so clearly, maybe for the first time in his life. His own family.

Like for the first time hes really deciding the cost is too much and he chooses her over the mission. He chooses their future over everything. And he's hopeful and perhaps even happy about it. which for someone with his amount of family trauma is a seismic shift. For so long he's chased the past in hope of fixing it, completely discombobulated and reckless in his search for well, his family.

Though, from the beginning of that moment in the rainy graveyard, he has slowly unconsciously coming to regard Scully as his family. In small gestures, a hand on her cheek or voicing out loud how important she is to him; to big gestures, giving up who he believes is his actual sister to save her.

We are lucky here, to be able to witness the moment the sparks of unconscious thought bloom into the flame of certainty. He follows up as well. Tells her she has to stay, that the cost doesn't outweigh the price anymore. Sure he wants to finish out this case, but he doesn't work without her, thats been established. Him telling her to stop, is his resignation as well. (There's a fit there too, with Skinner and him on the plane probably Skinner already knowing he's done.)

Thomas Flight praises subtly in acting better than I could ever articulate here:

Season 8

Mulder was weird and the PTSD was implied, but I choose to see it everywhere. After the moment in three words where Mulder tries to let them go gently because he thinks he's too damaged to be a father (Thanks @randomfoggytiger for the meta on that) (there's a fic here obviously where Scully gives him the space to be broken and also hers) After this though, he's not the Mulder as we've seen, ever. He's not the Mulder who

cares about exposing the government so he can say I told you so

cares about saving the public from the invasion

cares about finding the ultimate truth that has driven him since he found the X files

cares about solving cases and one upping the FBI, trying to force them to admit the truth out loud.

Mulder is fighting the entire season for his family.

he cares about exposing the conspiracy so everyone including his child will be safe.

he cares about saving the earth for his child's future

he cares about his childs and his families safety

he has zero concern about the FBI and what they do anymore.

In the second scene above, he's about had it with the entire conspiracy and he's downright pissed. He wants it all to end he doesn't care how. He wants to protect his child above everything. Sure he's usually reckless but this isn't for him and his self involved cause anymore, it's for his family, his wellbeing be damned at some points along the way. He states his thesis in three words while breaking into FBI files in an astonishing show of recklessness

"Look, Scully, I need to make sense of what happened to me. So that I can stop it. Because if I can't stop it, it could happen to anyone. It could happen to you. And who's to say it's going to stop there?"

I always wondered why he was putting Scully through all that, without realising this was the reason. Poor guy. There's nothing else in his purview anymore besides that baby who's in danger, and his family, so much so, when he is ultimately fired from the FBI, he's positively giddy at his newfound freedom.

If he had then gone down a path temporarily where he murdered his way through the remnants of the syndicate to assure the safety of his family John Wick style, I would've absolutely believed it.

It would've been insanely intriguing look at an evolving dynamic between Scully and Mulder. Scully law abiding Mulder reckless as always but with a different motivation. Becoming what he's always feared, to protect the family he has never had. A family he feels like he's only grasping at, as they're slipping through his fingers due to the danger and his recent and past traumas.

There's a reason a lot of the fandom sees Mulder as a happy stay at home dad post wherever they decide to end watching. Thats what he's been searching for his entire life. A happy family with loving parents. When he let go of that dream for himself in Closure, he found he could want that for his future family whatever that looked like (adoption, a miracle, etc.) in Requiem. And I personally don't believe he ever would let that dream go once he realised, I mean we all saw the devotion he had to his sister right?

In other words these are my reasons season 9 onwards make zero sense and I regard them as AU

[mulders-too-large-shirt]

my favorite scully and mulder moments from s1

the evergreen classic mulder reaction to a terrified scully knocking at his door in the very first episode- how he checks over her, holds her close, and brings her into his room

(and then ANOTHER instance of examining each other for aliens in episode 8 which was wild. if i had a nickel for each time they had to look at each other's bodies for evidence of aliens, i'd only have two nickels, which isn't a lot, but its weird that it happened twice)

him playing with scully's necklace in episode 3, while admitting he feels "territorial"

the first time he calls scully "dana", right after her father dies- which surprises her so much she mumbles her name back to herself- and he follows up by grabbing her face and gently running his finger over her cheek

(and the first time she tries to call him "fox", after he had been awake for 3 straight days on a stakeout, and she begs him to go home- he laughs and says he even made his parents call him mulder)

((still, she brought him a sandwich and a drink- “if there’s an iced tea in that bag, could be love” “must be fate- root beer”))

scully in Doctor Mode™ after mulder got stuck in the fire in episode 12, trying to give him water as he lays in bed, while he gets all emo and pushes her hand away

when scully gets kidnapped in episode 15 and mulder calls her "dana" again over the phone, her first name slipping out in his fear, then he tells the kidnapper "listen to me, you lay one hand on scully, and so help me god..."

(and THEN he tells everyone going on her rescue mission that this is a very important mission to him, so please everybody do their best)

the endless banter: "i still don't get it. what does this have to do with us?" "robbing a jewelry store is a federal crime" (flatly) "thank you."

when he is at an autopsy with scully in episode 18 and makes it very clear he does Not Want To Be There (but she still is sad he won't join her on her next one in episode 22!)

"happy birthday scully!" (pause of confusion) "you're two months early!"

when she finally listened to the psychic to get evidence for a case in episode 13, trying to make mulder proud- "i'd thought you'd be pleased i'd opened myself to extreme possibilities"- only for him to yell at her for putting herself in danger

(later in the same episode she screamed at the criminal, saying that if he did anything to mulder, she'd kill him herself)

((AND their conversation at the end of that episode when mulder is laying in a hospital bed: "why can't you believe?" "i'm afraid"))

the very empire strikes back coded fighting in the arctic compound in episode 8

"you think it's remotely plausible that someone might think you're hot?" (stunned silence. scholars are still trying to figure out what was going on here)

oh, this one made me weepy: "i have never met anyone so passionate and dedicated to a belief as you. it's so intense, sometimes it's blinding. but there are others who are watching you, who know what i know, and whereas i can respect and admire your passion, they will use it against you. mulder, the truth is out there, but so are lies" aka the episode 17 monologue… what if i melted into a puddle? how would you react to this news? how about mulder the protector turning into mulder the protected?

(also, episode 17 had a moment where he grabbed her shoulder and leaned in and i had to restrain myself)

them having hand signals to indicate watch what you say, we’re being listened to

in episode 18, the preacher’s kid tries to taunt mulder with information about his sister and scully tries to shut him down Immediately

they’re looking for each other in the dark in episode 19 while a wild beast is on the loose and mulder finally kicks open the door and finds scully while she whispers “it’s okay, it’s me, it’s okay”

episode 20, when he shows her a bunch of lumberjacks, which he describes as “rugged manly men in the full bloom of their manhood” and he says she should look for anything unusual or a boyfriend among them... and she laughs

scully losing her mind when the evil cocoon bugs get on her, screaming at mulder to get them off of her, while he holds her still and explains it’s okay as long as they're in the light

(and then they sit on the bed, side by side, talking through the night)

when mulder’s friend dies and she kneels and says to him, “you’ve been through a lot… more than I think you realize” and encourages him to take some time for himself

any episode where they both wear big coats (for the snow in episode 8, or the rain in 20) is an instant classic to me

“mulder, you’re rushing me out of the room… is there a girl coming over?” from episode 11... yeah I laughed. and then laughed even more when he was just hanging out with deep throat in the next scene!

episode 23’s “how was the wedding? Did you catch the bouquet?” “maaaaybe 😊”

and who can forget the finale! she apologizes for doubting his alien leads; “I should know by now to trust your instincts” “why? no one else does” (both smile and i, once again, collapse)

there's so much to unpack here and i could spend a lifetime doing it, but before i watch s2 for the first time i needed to make note of the things that especially made me happy or brought great angst to the forefront; i am studying their dynamic and putting it in a bottle <3

[mytardisisparked]

Toothbrushes

While Doggett searches Mulder's apartment during "The Gift," he finds evidence that connects some non-case-related dots.

Read on AO3

The apartment is only a little dusty, which is a miracle, considering how long he’s been gone. The fish in the corner bookshelf seem content and their tank is fairly clean; a testament to Scully’s care. Doggett appreciates that she looks after her partner’s pets and home while he’s gone. There is a special kind of trust there, in giving a key to your home to someone else and knowing they will know what to do in the event that something happens to you.

Doggett tries not to think about the lockpicks in his breast pocket.

He gives the fish a little feed as a way of apologizing for disturbing their afternoon, disturbing their home.

He’s opened all the drawers in the living room with little to show for it. It’s mostly papers, supplies, bills, mail, and the occasional case file borrowed from the basement. Nothing of note. 

Despite the clutter, which Doggett feels a little bad adding to, the living room does not yield the gun he suspects Mulder has hidden here somewhere. 

He moves to the bedroom. The carpet is clean and appears to be fairly new. The mattress and bed frame are the same. He can’t help but wonder what might make a guy buy all new carpet and bedding at the same time, but he lets that thought go after failing to find anything of interest under the bed or around it, aside from a few shoe boxes full of trinkets. The nightstand is clean and holds only a few small items – a generic medicated chapstick, a photo of a young boy and girl that Doggett assumes must be Mulder and his abducted sister, and a baseball cap that says “STONEHENGE ROCKS” on it in bold letters. 

As Doggett smiles and looks at the hat, his eye catches on a small, black box tucked underneath. He sets the hat on the bed and picks up the box, his heart skipping a beat when he realizes that it’s covered in velvet.

He swallows and opens the box, finding exactly what he expected inside: an engagement ring. Judging by the wear on it, it’s old – perhaps it belonged to Mulder’s recently deceased mother? He relaxes. Carefully, he replaces the box in the drawer and sets the hat back on top of it before rocking back onto his heels and taking a deep breath.

He moves to the closet next, finding a few boxes of files inside, all pertaining to the Samantha Mulder case. They’re covered in dust. Doggett thumbs through them briefly, but finds that most of them are out-of-date. He figures Mulder has kept them for sentimental reasons, or as backups. Hanging above the boxes are a few suitjackets and a collection of the ugliest ties Doggett has ever seen. He smiles as he examines a few, reminded of the ties he wore back in the 80s. 

The bathroom is clean and well-organized. The medicine cabinet has a handful of bottles; mostly NSAIDs, but there are a few others that he assumes were for managing Mulder’s illness. There are some band-aids and other basic first-aid items. Most of the first-aid kit appears to have been used – par for the course, Doggett supposes, when you’re working the X-Files.

Under the sink is a plunger, shaving supplies, and an unopened box of tampons. Doggett nods at that – he always kept a box in his glove-box for his female coworkers, too. Beside it is a hairdryer and a scrub brush for the toilet.

Doggett stands and takes one last look around the bathroom for anything he missed. His eyes stop on a small cup by the sink.

The cup holds a comb, a tube of toothpaste, and toothbrushes.

Two toothbrushes. Equally used.

Doggett suddenly feels his cheeks heat. Investigating the life of an agent he has been tasked to find is one thing, but those toothbrushes mean that he’s looking at someone else’s life, too. Her life. Agent Scully’s life.

He knew that Mulder and Scully were close and that their relationship probably crossed more than one professional boundary, but he has never asked, never dared to assume. It’s none of his business and he doesn’t need to know.

But those toothbrushes…

The persistent, hard look in Scully’s eyes makes sense now that he has a better approximation of how far this goes, how entwined their lives really are. He can’t help but wonder what she was like before Mulder disappeared, what she would be like if she was happy.

What she’s like when she’s with the man she loves.

Doggett backs out of the bathroom and looks away from the toothbrushes. He feels a little sick to his stomach about it, but he needs to keep looking for that gun. He makes for the dining room and kitchen, hoping that space feels less sacred.

[deathsbestgirl]

i actually think we need to talk about big brother fox mulder and little sister dana scully. they are not siblings but these roles they have play into their dynamic, especially (mostly) early on. whenever i think of season one, i think of the way scully teases mulder. the way its all in good fun because she likes him. and she doesn't go too far because she respects him (and she's an adult who understands boundaries & limits). i think of the way it takes mulder time to adjust to this. like it's a shock that she's being friendly, but that isn't the only reason. but also because he hasn't had this dynamic in a long time. i think of the way scully admires mulder, wants to learn from him. she doesn't want to be like him, but there are aspects of his character she wishes she had. mulder values scully for who she is, in a way her father, brothers and past authority figures haven't. they are not sibling like at all really. they're something completely brand new to each other, that neither has experienced before. i think there's a deep respect surrounding family between the two of them that's extremely hard for me to articulate but it colors their relationship, it's part of their personal respect & understanding, it's something they give to each other freely (purposely & not), it's a reason scully dedicates herself to mulder & the x files, it's a reason scully earns his trust. these two have so much love within them, and family has been the place they've been able to express that most. even if it wasn't always healthy or good, even if it wasn't always accepted or reciprocated. they both had so much to offer each other. they both had wounds to heal. in a way, they healed it for each other. gave each other the tools to do it. but it's a life long process.

[actual-changeling]

One breath, but Mulder shows up in Scully's hospital room with tear tracks still drying on his face and his first real smile since she was taken. He's out of breath, probably broke several dozen traffic laws on his way back to her, but she's awake.

Not Fox, Mulder, Scully corrects her mother, and she is reaching for him before she can think better of it. His hands are warm and shaking and familiar, and he sits down next to her like she's made of glass. Like he is going to break her if he allows his fear to spill out onto the floor.

His mouth opens and closes repeatedly until he finally manages a hi, watching her lips move into a smile. hi. Mulder tentatively lifts their intertwined hands and kisses her knuckles while squeezing his eyes shut.

He wants to fall to his knees and thank every god he doesn't believe in for bringing her back to him, he wants to hold her and press her to his chest until he no longer feels empty inside, he wants to bury his face in her hair and fall asleep with her safe in his arms. At some point during the last few weeks, he must have slept, even if only for a few horrifying hours, yet all he recalls is suffocating darkness and her screams echoing in his mind.

I missed you, Mulder whispers against her skin, but she hears him—she always does.

I heard you, she responds, tugging on his hand to pull him closer. I heard you, Mulder. I felt the strength of your beliefs.

Maggie and Melissa are silently watching the exchange, but they've never cared less about prying eyes and unsatisfied curiosity. Scully's gaze catches on something, and Mulder follows it to the glinting gold cross around his neck. The chain runs through his fingers like water, thin and fragile, and the only thing that helped him stay sane enough to keep going.

Kept it safe for you, he tells her, and takes it off to fasten it around hers instead; it's finally back where it belongs. Tears burn new, glistening paths down his cheeks, and he doesn't bother wiping them away.

I was so scared. It's a confession, it's an apology, it's a promise, and he shuffles closer and closer and closer.

I was so fucking scared, Scully.

Her fingertips are cool against his flushed skin, and he closes his eyes at the contact, fearing that if he moves, she will disappear again. For so long, nothing in his life mattered more than the nebulous truth hiding the fate of his sister. Then she walked into his office with a smile and trust in her heart, and suddenly she wasn't simply helping him discover the truth—she became the truth.

Scully squeezes his hand and traces the line of his jaw, and two warm pairs of eyes look away when she tilts her head upwards, meeting Mulder in the middle as he leans in close, closer, touching.

She kisses him softly because she wants to. Because she can. Because she can taste salt, relief, and light on his tongue, a sunrise swallowed and hidden away throughout the night.

Thank you for not giving up. He couldn't have lived with himself if he had, and it's written across his face and woven into his soul. Losing her would have meant losing himself, and there is nothing that could have stopped him from following her to wherever they would have gone. Together or not at all, and he has no idea why she stayed, why she is still staying after everything he put them through.

You found me, he cannot say; you found me and brought me home. You found me and you saw me, and I don't think I will ever know why you decided I was deserving of your grace and your presence in my life.

They press their foreheads together, and a by now familiar hand lands on his shoulder as Maggie reaches for both of them—family, she had called him, over and over—and there is nothing but warmth offered to him.

Thank you for coming back.

[randomfoggytiger]

The Scully Family In-Depth (Part XXIV): Guardian Angels and Inverted Nativities

I was struck with the overt nativity symbolism while combing through this two-parter-- not as a direct religious comparison (a mother to an impossible child), but as a poignant antithesis to Scully, Mulder, and Emily's story.

(**Note**: A deep dive into the Scully family spanning A Christmas Carol and Emily can be found in this post here.)

EMILY, SCULLY, MULDER: A DISASTER IN THREES

When we first glimpse Emily, she is cradled in her father’s arms, silent and expressionless in the wake of her mother’s death. She locks eyes with Scully and refuses to look away, following her movements in that room, during Scully’s second visit, during the arrest of Mr. Sim, after the social worker van drives away, and in her hospital room: an intense, though bland, fixation. Emily, it seems, was beckoning Scully to her; and was perfectly content to be in her company while chaos was erupting around her. Although part of this has to do with Chris Carter’s characterization in A Christmas Carol-- which Spotnitz, Gilligan, and Shiban tone down in Emily-- the germ of that idea remains: in short, Emily quite blatantly chose Scully-- whether because she was obeying a supernatural or biological or other more normal and sacred impulse. 

This is important because of two reasons: 

That inclination sends her biological mother into a spiral of questions and doubts, which culminated in a fight for custody and willingness to leave the FBI to raise Emily. If she had not fought to adopt her, Scully wouldn't have been able to keep her safe during Emily’s final hours on Earth.

That inclination creates friction between Scully's intentions and Mulder's subdued resistance.

To set the scene: Scully has been avoiding the temptation to call her partner up to ask for help-- in fact, she bailed on the only phone call to his apartment and worked around him to get answers (Mulder’s friend Danny at the FBI-- not TLG, not Mulder himself.) On the one hand, we know she is conflicted and struggling with her infertility; but the struggle is greater-- much greater-- than she is letting on. As discussed in the previous part, she nearly breaks down in tears trying to convince the social worker to advocate for her: “--” Scully either found out she was infertile during her cancer treatments (but didn’t have the time or energy to abstract that fact into her reality) or she found out afterward (either before or after Mulder dodged-- intentionally or not-- her cheese platter in Detour.) And yet, she has not shared this burden with her partner nor (until Maggie applied a little pressure) with her family.

If this be the case, of course she would avoid Mulder’s calls: her sister’s voice eerily over the phone? A niece, she presumes, who is involved in a cover-up conspiracy? Everything would point, in Mulder’s mind, back to the Conspiracy; and Scully isn’t allowing herself to entertain that notion. But now, against her first inclination, she is left no choice but to call Mulder: Emily is her daughter, and that means she is a part of the Conspiracy with a capital ‘c’. “Well, how did she come into this world?” Scully asks when Mulder arrives; and avoids a direct response when he replies, “Have you asked yourself that?” Because no, she hasn’t-- hasn’t wanted to. 

And that’s the (not-so-subtle) subtext: everything, to Mulder, is the key to everything, to his quest for the truth. And where does that leave her, newly recovered and ready to let her walls down? She tried to change but he hadn’t: he’s still the same Mulder running after mothmen and trying to find answers about his sister. It’s the endless line again, it’s Never Again again, it’s a preemptive taste of a weekend tossed aside for crop circles.

The next big question is: where does this begin and end for Mulder? 

Over the course of ten days (according to this timeline), Mulder receives two phone calls: one Scully drops and another where she asks him down to be a character witness. But that, of course is not the full picture: his partner asks him down to be a character witness to adopt her daughter whose parents have been murdered and whose case she has been investigating without asking for Mulder's help. In short, he feels purposefully excluded and reduced to the boxes of "partner" and "character witness."

Mulder seemed secure in his brief appearance in A Christmas Carol: Scully was out of town, but she’d be back; and he’d get up to shenanigans in the meantime. 

Mulder shifted to being insecure, withdrawn, and downright fearful in Emily: not only had he, in his eyes, already lost his partner right from under his nose, but he might alienate her further because of the information he’d kept from her-- the fact he’d known about her infertility as far back as her early cancer diagnosis. 

If that wasn’t bad enough, Scully is calling him in as a character witness to win the adoption rights for her daughter; and all the facts he has to give are deemed unworthy of a normal court’s time. 

Lastly, he knows-- he just knows-- that something is off with Emily. If she is a product of Scully’s ova, there is no way on Earth that the Syndicate hasn’t tampered with her DNA. The clones he met in Memento Mori who called her and other MUFON abductees “our mothers” prove that to be the case. 

And he knows that Scully either doesn’t know or doesn’t want to know this. 

To Mulder, this spells disaster: Scully dropping out of the FBI and leaving him behind to raise a child that is most certainly half-human, half other. What is even more disastrous is that he doesn’t know how to react or respond to this situation: does he council her against the adoption? He can’t in good conscience. Does he support her decision to adopt, which would mean he supports her transfer from the X-Files department? Does he warn her of the consequences and dangers of trying to raise Emily? Yes. But does that change Scully’s mind? No. His hands are tied.

And how do his concerns and his fears factor into this dynamic? In short, how could a miraculous conception-- quote on quote-- spell disaster and doom for him, Scully, and Emily? 

MULDER ARRIVES

Emily opens on Mulder’s arrival at the children’s foster care center, a lone figure asking directions to where his partner and her daughter are. And that loneliness continues when he finds them: Mulder hangs back, observing Scully’s happiness and Emily’s complacency with dread. Already, Mulder is placed as an outsider-- more precisely, he is placing himself as an outsider by hanging back. 

Why is he hanging back? Why, specifically, is he hanging back from Scully and her daughter instead of embracing this?

Simply put, we know Mulder is bracing for disaster. And we also know that he is in no place in his life to make space for a family, to “settle down, have something approaching a normal life” (as Scully says a year or so later.) Put these two factors together,  mix them up with a child he suspects is the half-human result of his partner’s abduction, and Mulder has already set up sky-high brigades to protect himself. 

This is not new for him, either: after her remission, Mulder put barriers back in place between himself and Scully; and when she tried to explore their boundaries, poke them or topple them with a cheese platter in Detour, he purposefully muted his awareness and ran after monsters. And his decided, purposed avoidance of settling down or having a family or-- in short-- leaving the quest was a decision he’d made before Scully came into his life (one he stated decisively to her in The Jersey King.) It’s not until The Unnatural that Mulder realizes he can have both, that his goals won’t suffer by living just a little normally, enjoying life just a little bit. (And afterward, Scully approaches him for the IVF, post here.) 

Combine all of that together, and it explains why he nearly sags when seeing Scully smiling eagerly at her daughter-- a child, he tells her, that was never meant to be: his guard is up, and he's keeping a distance between himself and little Sim (and warning his partner to do the same) despite his kindness and gentleness, despite chasing leads and yelling threats to save her life. In short, he’s saving this girl for Scully, not himself. And because he loves Scully, truly loves her, he's willing enough to lose her for a child that was not meant to be. 

But Mulder is Mulder, and his partner and her daughter are Scullys: he puts on a brave face when Scully looks up at him from the floor, walks over, and tries to strike up a friendship with Emily. He then proves he’s a natural with kids, particularly shy ones: he asks what Emily what she’s coloring, waits for her answer, and makes an exaggerated Mr. Potato Head face to lower her guard. It cheers her up instantly, and makes Scully smile as well.

Another warning sign lights up for him right after: he notices Scully's cross around Emily's neck. His partner is already attached.

But what a conflicting brew of emotions that would be. He wore that cross during her abduction, while her ova were taken and her daughter-- who is now wearing it-- was created. It's a passing of the baton Maggie did for him in Ascension, one that must have stung a little for her as Scully distanced from her mother to draw closer to the work (and Mulder.) But Mulder is given no choice or prior warning (like the keychain in Alone): it's happened; and that connection between them has been made significant another, different way... for someone else.

When Scully insists, “I can protect her, too,” he persists: “And who’s going to protect you?” Despite his reasoning-- that both the Sims are dead to protect the Syndicate’s interests-- Scully replies, “I know. I-I’ve considered that. But I’ve also considered that there’s only one right thing to do.” Mulder doesn’t seem to agree: silently here, publicly in the judge’s chambers; but he supports her decision both times (just as he supports her decision to let Emily die.) 

“Why didn’t you call me sooner,” he asks, the same edge in his interrogation in Elegy. 

“Because I couldn’t believe it,” she answers, the same response as Elegy. 

Predictably, he is annoyed, irritated: he feels the step backward in their dynamic. When Scully states she called him to be a witness on her behalf, he (quietly) snaps, “And I should have declined.” Off her hurt expression, he softens and clarifies, “If I never want to see you hurt or harmed in any way.” 

Branching off of this conversation, the judge’s chambers reveal a deeply rooted psychological insight into Mulder’s character. He lays out the facts as he knows them-- the dangers and unanswered questions-- but states, in closing, “The fact that she can adopt this child-- her own flesh and blood-- is something I don’t feel I have the right to question and I don’t believe anybody has the right to stand in the way of.” ‘Her own flesh and blood’ and ‘the right to question’/‘right to stand in the way of’ are specifically coded in the language of Fate.

The irony, or serendipity, or fate, really-- and this two-parter is dripping in Fate, be it because of Emily’s miraculous birth or Melissa’s miraculous guidance or the lingering vestiges of Scully’s partner and late sister’s belief in Fate-- of Mulder being completely correct (that Scully will get hurt) and of Scully being completely correct (in the face of her family’s disbelief and her own desire to stay at the FBI) is beautifully tragic; and horribly marred by the Consortium's last spiteful maneuver (a coffin full of sand.) “No matter how much you love this little girl, she was a miracle that was never meant to be, Scully”-- that is the theme of A Christmas Carol and Emily. 

It’s not the first time Mulder has alluded to the concept of fate or its working in his and Scully’s life-- in fact, Mulder builds the identity of his quest on top of that concept of Fate (post here.) He lost his sister because of fate; but his fated, mythical quest will bring her back. His father played with the hand of fate and lost. The Consortium choose to tamper with Fate, taking it into their own hands; and Scully was taken and Emily born because of it. But it was Fate to bring mother and daughter back together; and he doesn’t see it as his right to step in the way of or prevent that fate. 

By contrast, Scully’s own beliefs are in direct opposition to Fate: she argues Mulder out of his own biases and beliefs, calls into questions the lies he chooses to believe in (or tells himself), and points out that she chooses to stay by his side, that she chooses to be his partner. “I wouldn’t put myself on the line for anybody but you” is a choice she made as far back as Season 1; and the FBI a choice she made farther back than even that. 

Emily is a wedge of in both systems: she was not fated to be, according to Mulder; but she is there and must be protected, leaving Scully no choice. The Consortium played with Fate, making themselves god, and created a life that had no purpose other than to die; and the Consortium ripped away Scully’s one choice by robbing her of the peace of burying her own daughter. 

(As an aside: this is why I’m so invested in Scully’s pregnancy in Requiem-Existence: William’s conception and birth was not an act of fate, but an act of freewill and choice. Scully chose to stay with Mulder in all things; and he was conceived that night-- according to Frank Spotnitz, post here. Season 8 played with the confusion of “Is this fate?” from all parties; and all parties were proven incorrect. Mulder and Scully’s baby wasn’t what anyone were predicting-- not some special, magical, or given-by-God-to-save-the-world figure. He was simply, and beautifully, normal. “But that doesn’t make him any less of a miracle, does it?” Mulder asks; and Scully agrees. He’s their miracle that they conceived and worked hard for and angsted over during the long, hard months that Fate tried to rip them apart forever. Free will, then, wins.)

After advocating for Emily’s adoption, Mulder waits for Scully on the Scully family couch, attention caught by the Nativity scene-- the same one that caught her attention in the previous episode (post here.) He fiddles with one of the wisemen-- again, breaking that direct comparison between his own ties to this story-- until his partner approaches; then he turns the figurine around and sits back as she approaches.

As touched on previously, the religious imagery filtering throughout these episodes-- the Nativity scene, Mulder pondering Joseph’s figurine, Scully's face fading out to the Virgin Mary's stained glass image-- serves to invert and pervert the Nativity story. More often than not, this episode is read through a ham-fisted, morally superior, distasteful parallel between Mary the Mother of Jesus and Scully’s surprise motherhood. The reality is, the narrative points of the Biblical story do not at all align with Scully or Mulder or Emily’s journey-- in fact, the latter three serve as its antithesis.  

Mulder is not only a man who feels excluded from this miracle but also one who chooses to avoid becoming a father figure. 

Scully is an expectant mother not through divine blessing for her strength of character but because of ruthless, corrupted, and inhumane interference. 

And Emily is a child who doesn’t see Scully as her mother, who staunchly holds her separate from her own beloved Mommy (“Mommy said no more tests.”) 

The writers themselves said they weren’t trying to set Scully up as the Virgin Mary incarnate, either (post here)-- the parallel was simply a Christmas one-- and I believe them. Because they wrote the true parallel between Tara and the Nativity, showing the display first by her side in A Christmas Carol. From then on, Scully and Mulder separately gazed or pondered or played with the Nativity as an unreachable, almost inconceivable notion-- because it is, for them. (For now, anyway, if you cosign canon after Je Souhaite.) 

“It takes two of us to get my sister-in-law in bed these days,” she says, explaining her length of absence and attempting to lighten the mood. 

Sincerely, Mulder asks, “When is she due?”

“Two weeks ago.” 

(Which means-- if the math maths correctly-- that the Scully family expected baby Matthew before Christmas; and since he hasn’t arrived, Maggie and Scully might have then expected to stay longer and help Tara and Bill transition into parenthood. Or maybe Maggie intended to stay and Scully to fly back. In any case, her almost panicky reaction to the baby kicking (mentioned in a previous post here makes more sense in context.) 

When the phone rings, Scully is almost afraid to answer it (sitting on the couch a few seconds longer than necessary as Mulder stares at her.) This time there is no voice, no “go to her Dana”, which would probably be more unsettling than her sister’s instructions, at this point. 

Emily Sim, they find, is deteriorating (Mulder, in fact, finds the green cyst on her neck); and both scoop her up and rush her to the hospital. It’s bad news after bad news (as he predicted.)

“Now, are you two the parents?” asks the doctor. 

Scully looks from him to Mulder, eyes troubled and almost pleading. When her partner notices, he tilts his head away, sags, and withdraws: this is her child, and her call. For Scully, this signals that he is not ready to commit further-- won't, in effect, join her in these new responsibilities; and feels the rejection like a blow. Although Mulder didn’t mean to reject her-- he thinks that she’s leaving the work (and him) to be a parent, something he can’t do; and now feels outside the circle of her decisions-- his meaning is clear. From now on, Scully feels she must battle for Emily’s life on her own, reliving the struggle and isolation of her diagnosis and treatment in Scanlon’s office. 

“How did you know?” Scully questions Mulder after Emily’s blood has incapacitated a doctor. He continues dancing the thin line between keeping information from her and telling her just enough, and the little he gives his partner weakens her resolve and sends her into a mild panic: “She’s just a little girl. You say that I can’t protect her, but I can’t let this be her life. Just a few days ago she was fine.” 

“She was also being treated,” he points out; and Scully’s eyes widen, more proof she is so rushed that she hasn’t considered this circumstance-- her daughter, the adoption, the Conspiracy-- from all angles.  

As Emily’s condition worsens, Scully keeps watch, knowing she has no real authority to save her daughter but hold onto what little foothold she has. The little girl, however, begins to resist: “Mommy said no more tests.” Again, an inverse of the Christmas story: a child drawing away from its biological mother.

Stung by the reality of their situation, she doesn’t deny Emily's statement, carefully deflecting, “We just want you to get better. That’s what these tests are about.” And with each test and each procedure, she has to endure worse and worse news: a tumorous infection, the doctor proclaims; a possible revocation of rights, the social worker warns. After storming against Emily’s possible removal, Scully relents to a quiet, “What do you want me to tell them you’re doing for her?” Pausing, she admits, “I don’t know yet. But I will”: active choice, Freewill, beginning to assert itself. During her daughter’s last round of tests, Scully gently talks her through the procedure. It seems to work, at first, before Emily starts screaming; and she rushes to try to both help and calm her down.

The last glimpse we have of the two together is of Emily near tears and Scully unable to soothe her completely. 

And where is Mulder while all this is going down? Hunting down and assaulting men that won't “Help that little girl!”, causing havoc and mayhem and disruption… and finding yet another Scully baby submerged, alive, in green goo (post here.) But he does not save this baby or any other baby there-- knows he cannot, now, with so much at stake-- but instead grabs a cure for Emily; and flees. 

Mulder is committed to protecting the innocent; and, though he fears how this will play out, he is willing to stand by Emily’s hospital bed (and Emily’s coffin)-- there for his partner, and for her daughter, as much as he can. It might not be in ways Scully needs from him, but it's the best he can do.

Unfortunately, Emily Sim slips into a coma before the cure can arrive. 

Scully is staring at her body, watching her breathe up and down, when Mulder rejoins. She is gutted, but accepting, knowing without having to ask what he’s thinking: “I’m okay, Mulder.” 

As they stand there together, she shares her resolution: “It’s what’s meant to be,” she says. Paths and purposes, saving a girl to deliver her up to death, guiding her from life into her sister’s arms in the afterlife. She was meant for the FBI, and Emily was meant for her for a short time; but both weren’t, ultimately, meant for each other. 

“But if you could treat her--” Mulder begins; and is shocked by her conviction. 

“I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t do it to her.”

“Are you sure?”

“Mulder, whoever brought this child into this world didn’t intend to love her.” 

Surprised at her stability-- and trusting to it-- he carefully admits, “I think she was… she was born to serve an agenda.” His way of having her back, of saying “I would do the same thing.”

“I have a chance to stop that.” Face crumbling, she mourns, “You were right: this child was not meant to be.” 

Looking from Emily to his partner, he assures, “I’ll stay with you”; but Scully, still remembering his gun-shy distance, feels she must grieve this loss alone-- a loss she knows he sympathizes with, but hasn’t internalized for himself. And, despite Mulder’s growth since the early days of their partnership (post here), she is right.

“I think I’d like to be alone,” she requests, casting her watery eyes up for understanding. And as rejected and dejected as he feels, he understands. 

Mulder retreats without telling her about the cure, sparing her the moral quandary of second guesses-- knowing his partner well enough to know she would doubt herself and revive Emily, only to watch her die a second time. 

Alone, Scully climbs into Emily’s bed, cuddling up against her daughter. The scene transitions to a stained-glass window of the Virgin Mary-- another mother doomed to lose her child to the cruelty of others; one with, however, a happier ending-- as the girl quietly passes away.

Alone, Scully sits in the church, withdrawn. But alone no longer: Mulder wanders in, last but not least; and surprises (and amuses) his partner with flowers he'd bought for Emily, determined to do this right. He may be a man who doesn’t see the value in convention, who remembers birthdays in dog years, and who kisses hands one day and runs off to the woods the next; but he is also a considerate soul who understands these conventions are meaningful for other people-- for his partner, most of all. 

“Who are the men who would create a life whose only hope was to die?” Scully questions, seeking the truth from the only one who will give her that truth. 

“I don’t know.” Seeing the pain in her face, he reassures, “But that you found her… and you had a chance to love her…. Maybe she was meant for that, too.” Melissa would certainly agree. 

“She found me,” Scully replies; and, again, this draws me back to my earlier theory on Emily’s psychic prescience (post here): in each dream, Emily made herself known; in each run-in, Emily sought her out with her eyes; at each step of the way, Emily looked up to her like a guardian angel-- her rescuer. And, in turn, Emily rescues Scully, as well (All Souls.) 

There is no evidence of Calderon’s work, Mulder explains; and Scully quickly realizes, “There is evidence.” Walking up to the coffin, she stands before Mulder’s bouquet, shooting him a shaky last side glance before raising the lid; he, in turn, pivots away, unable to stomach what he suspects she will find. 

And there is nothing but sand; nothing but second guesses. Scully concludes, as the episode’s opener, “It begins where it ends, in nothingness. A nightmare born from deepest fears, coming to me unguarded, whispering images unlocked from time and distance. A soul unbound, touched by others but never held. A course charted by some unseen hand. The journey ahead promising no more than my past reflected back upon me-- until at last I reach the end. Facing a truth I can no longer deny: alone, as ever.” 

Season 5 was, as I’ve previously discussed, a rough season for Mulder (post here), but the loneliness and guilt and indecision that molds to Scully will not be torn from her until All Souls, and then only under more painful, more disharmonious circumstances. 

ALL SOULS AND ALL THINGS

All Souls begins and ends with Scully’s confession, the doubts kicked up from A Christmas Carol-Emily doubled and tripled in the two-fold issue of religious uncertainty and biased doubt from her partner.

This episode, for Scully, does not end kindly: she must make peace with Emily’s loss, and let her go; and she must begin a serious battle with her own abilities-- is she helping anyone? Can she help anyone? Emily died, Mulder’s struggling, her resolve is cracking. Soon The Pine Bluff Variant will play on that distance, and Diana Fowley will swoop in to exploit it. Soon the office will burn; and, in spite of all her efforts, Scully will feel like she failed herself, her partner, and their work. Soon, she will embrace him as he stands in transfixed horror, unable to reciprocate back. 

All Souls is set up to break and subvert the patterns the previous two-parter set up, just as that two-parter set up just to subvert the Nativity scene: Scully calls Mulder for help from the get-go, but he dodges her call; Mulder sneers at rather than investigates other possibilities; and Mulder comforts her about seeing Emily in a vision but believes she is allowing herself to be compromised on a case. At least in Emily, Mulder knew the answers (or suspected them), and advocated for her exactly how and when she needed him to. What she recounted, he confirmed; what she guessed, he affirmed; what she grieved, he comforted with larger concepts like Fate. But here, Mulder is detached-- religion and its religious superstitions and beliefs are such an ugly concept to him that he gave no credence to Scully’s visions and tried to talk her down from her intuition instead of supporting her in crisis.  Mulder is proving, again and again, that he has not changed from the ditch in Detour-- and, moreover, that he can’t: this year, he’s just trying to keep his head above water. Like I’ve mentioned before, Scully has changed, Scully has grown, Scully is working to lower her shields… but over and over, she finds that Mulder is not ready for that vulnerability and avoids it: “Have you ever thought seriously about dying?” she asks in Detour, and chuckles-- at the time-- over his flippant “Only once, at the Ice Capades” response. 

But All Souls also provides an interesting flip in her relationship to Emily-- i.e. mother and daughter reverse roles. Like Scully had last Christmas, Emily is there to save vulnerable children and guide them to a better afterlife. And like Scully, she has accepted, in death, that her role on this Earth wasn’t “meant to be”: she pleads with Scully, “Mommy, please, let me go.” 

It’s striking, then, that Emily becomes the spiritual medium instead of Melissa. I understand why it was written that way-- Scully connects her sacrifice and Emily’s death to the church, and her faith, to bring her comfort. (And I don’t think Melissa Scully would be too keen to dabble around with Catholic mythologies.) It’s even more striking that Emily becomes the only truth Scully clings to or believes in: no one else, be it deeply entrenched priest or well-researched paranormal partner, believes in her eyewitness accounts. (Or, in Mulder’s case, does… but suggests it’s born from outside manipulation.) 

This episode is yet another ouroboros: Scully her only witness, Scully her only source of strength-- a pattern that began in Beyond the Sea and loops back around and around until she puts it to rest in all things. And there's another parallel: Melissa acting as her conscience and guardian angel; Emily acting as her literal conscience and guardian angel. It was Scully herself who spotted the physical similarity between the two; and the narrative continues to connect that similarity to Scully's emotional growth.

“You believed you were releasing her soul to Heaven?”  the confessor asks after Scully admits to a fourth girl's death.

“I felt sure of it,” she says, tears brimming. 

“But you still can’t reconcile this belief with the physical fact of her death?”

“No. I thought I could, Father, but I can’t.” 

“Do you believe there is a life after this one?”

“Yes.” 

“Are you sure?” 

She stops, confused; and doesn’t answer. Second-guesses, doubts, and an inability to know her own conscience: all bubbling to the fore, once again. The ouroboros.

“Has it occurred to you that-- maybe this, too, was part of what you were meant to understand?”

“You mean accepting my loss?” 

“Can you accept it?” 

Tears trickling down her cheek, Scully trembles out, “Maybe that’s what faith is.” 

Her journey of faith has always been fraught (will continue to be so, post here) but Scully is mistaking belief in faith as an acceptance of loss-- a loss which she believes to be a punishment. She is afraid of attaching to others, has been since as a little girl; and that has driven her to and from God in different moments of extremis.  

Further, the struggle to be always in the dark, to never fully understand, is not one she gives much thought to… if she doesn’t have to face it, alone. However, Mulder-- her backup-- has been drifting aimlessly in recent months; and, because her own family can’t completely understand the strange horror of her reality, there is only one person left to lean on: her faulty perception of God. 

Why can’t Scully accept and believe what Emily has asked of her-- to let her go-- when she believed and accepted that truth when her daughter was dying? Because her conviction was shattered when she saw Emily’s coffin filled with sand: a spit in the face to her deliberate choice and hard-won decision. She has lost faith in herself; and the one person who she relies on-- as she admitted in Irresistible and Elegy-- for strength (inadvertently) withheld that comfort and support in All Souls, shattering it further. 

And the reality is, Mulder withdrew in All Souls because he was afraid of her (as he perceived) blind faith. Mulder himself is in desperate straits; and the thought that he could lose Scully-- to adoption (Emily), to a belief in aliens (The Red and the Black), to a wackier belief in God and angels and demons (All Souls)-- scares him to death and stirs up his distance or anger. While they were working towards a common goal in the cancer arc, neither needed to feel out-of-sync in their partnership, or question her nosebleeds, or withdraw from each other (more than their normal withdrawal parameters.) But now? Now, they’re completely out-of-sync-- Scully two steps ahead, doubting her progress, doubling back; and Mulder slouching, slumping, then sliding down a wall. 

THE GREAT CHANGE

What sets them right? 

Mulder’s confession in Fight the Future (post here) is mandatory to the shift from Season 5-- his dissipation and disbelief; her discouragement and lack of self-esteem-- to Season 6-- her assuredness and slow-build to loneliness; his wobbles forward into embracing a life on this planet with his touchstone. (I also recommend my meta on their Season 6 push-and-pull, post here, to understand why both had a lighter tone and higher confidence compared to last season.)  

TLDR: Scully was walking-- “You never needed me, Mulder. I just held you back”-- because she felt useless and worthless. Mulder was forced to battle with his own fear and insecurity or lose her forever; and, clutching his courage, chased her into the hall and tried his best to convince her to stay: by telling her, honestly, how much he truly needed her. 

CONCLUSION

Emily Sim was not meant to be; just as Scully was not meant to leave the files, nor Mulder to set aside his mission and walk away with them. Her birth, her life, and her death were a circumstance forced by a tampering with Fate-- the antithesis to Scully's freewill.

While Mulder rules his life by Fate-- parroting its principles, enshrining his quest and his losses in those terms-- Scully rules hers by choice: it is her choice to join the FBI, her choice to stay, and her choice to leave when she chooses (e.g. Season 8-- to be discussed in future.) Without her, Mulder’s life would become chaotically imbalanced, thrown about on every whim that promised to satisfy, toyed with by every voice that sold him lies; and without him, she would be confused and lose faith in herself and her choices.

This child was not meant to be... but what about those that were? That is a meta for another time~.

Thanks for reading~

Enjoy!

[carefulfears]

thinking more about this moment in closure, and how his hands are on samantha’s words, and her hand is on him.

[baronessblixen]

Fictober Day 30: When You Know What You Want

Prompt: "I won't let you down"

Mulder and Scully have to babysit baby Matthew Scully. Rating: T, wc: 1,416

Tagging @today-in-fic @xffictober24

“Mulder, it’s me.” The clock reads 8.57 a.m. when he answers Scully’s phone call – the same time she usually strolls into their basement office.

“Is everything all right?” He’s trying to keep the panic out of his voice. Whatever is going on, Scully doesn’t need him freaking out.

“More or less,” she says with a sigh and he’s half out of his chair already. “I can’t come into the office today.”

“Are you sick?” He squeezes the phone between his ear and shoulder, opening his email, ready to inform Skinner that neither he nor Scully will be available today.

“No, I’m fine – I mean, I’m not sick.” She sighs again. “My sister-in-law Tara called me half an hour ago, frantic because my brother Bill is running late and she has a job interview. My mom is on a trip with her book club and well, I guess that left me.”

“You didn’t mention your brother was in town.”

“I didn’t know,” she says through gritted teeth. “He didn’t want me to know. It was supposed to be some big surprise. That completely backfired. Either way, I’m watching the baby until Tara comes back and it could be hours.”

“Do you want company?” He doesn’t even need to think about it. He’d much rather babysit Bill Jr. baby son than sit around in the office all day, missing Scully.

“You don’t have to do that, Mulder.”

“What if I want to?” She takes her time thinking about it.

“Only if you want to,” she says, but he’s certain he hears relief in her voice. Or maybe that’s just wishful thinking on his part.

“I’ll contact Skinner and then I’m on my way.”

“Oh Mulder, if you’re coming over, could you pick up a few things on the way for me? Just in case.”

“Sure thing. I won’t let you down.”

*

Scully’s “just-in-case” list is longer than any grocery list he’s ever written for himself. He finds everything easily enough and catches several looks from women – mothers, mostly – who gawk at him.

“Your wife is so lucky,” one says in passing and Mulder stares after her, speechless, convinced he’s in a parallel universe. He forgets about it quickly, hurrying to get to Scully and baby Matthew. He met the boy as an infant; his face had been wrinkly and his eyes closed.

Since then, he hasn’t even seen a picture of the boy. He wonders why. Scully has mentioned him here and there, just like she’s mentioned other members of her family. But he doesn’t know what to expect when he knocks at the door, hoping the baby isn’t asleep.

Scully opens the door with the boy on her hip, smiling at Mulder.

“Hi,” he says, overwhelmed all of a sudden. Scully with a baby in her arms is a sight he doesn’t get to see often. He’s surprised how many emotions it unleashes in him.

“This is my friend, Mulder,” Scully explains to Matthew in a soft voice that makes Mulder stare at her in awe. “Do you want to say hi?”

“No.” It’s more spit than letters and the expression reminds Mulder of the baby’s father. He hopes the dislike isn’t genetic.

“That’s his favorite word,” Scully says, running a hand over Matthew’s soft, reddish hair. The Scully genes must be strong.

As he steps inside, he can’t help but wonder what their child would look like; his and Scully’s. Would their child have red hair, too? Would it have Scully’s nose? God, he hopes so.

“Here’s the- here’s everything you asked for.” He hands her the bag, forgetting that she has the child in her arms. The transfer is awkward but they manage.

“Can you hold him for a second? He doesn’t bite.” Scully hands him the baby and for a moment, the two just stare at each other.

“Hello, Matthew. You probably don’t remember me,” Mulder says as Matthew reaches for his nose. They always go for the nose. “I met you when you were born.”

“Guh!” he exclaims, seemingly agreeing with Mulder.

“I work with your aunt, you know. She’s great, isn’t she? She is. You smell like cookies, Matt. I bet she let you have cookies, huh? Remember how cool she is. You can always come to her when your parents – well, when you need a place to stay.” Matthew listens to him carefully, a finger in his otherwise open mouth. He’s quiet and not fussy, surprising Mulder. He’s heard horror stories of toddlers having crying fits when in a stranger’s arms. Not this little Scully.

“I think you might be my new favorite Scully,” Mulder confesses to him, tickling his stomach and making him gurgle with laughter.

“I’m no longer your favorite?” Scully just stands there in the doorway, her arms crossed, a big smile on her face.

“Matt, I think I’m in trouble.” The boy just laughs again. “You’re still my favorite Scully, Scully,” he assures her. “But this one’s quite cute, too.”

“He is,” she agrees and he thinks he sees a flicker of pain cross her face. “You can hand him back now. Unless you want to feed him.”

“Sorry, pal,” Mulder says, handing the toddler back to Scully, “I’m not qualified for that.”

*

“Toddlers are messy,” Mulder remarks a couple of hours later after Tara has come to pick up Matthew. She apologized to Scully – and Mulder – for springing the boy on them, but both assured her that they didn’t mind.

“They are,” Scully agrees, picking up random toys. She didn’t ask him to stay and help her clean up, but he thought it was the least he could do. Especially after his interactive storytelling in which several plush toys were flying around Scully’s living room.

“But they’re also cute.”

“They are that, too.” Her voice is soft; too much so. He thinks about the moment earlier when he thought he saw something in her expression. There’s something in the air and he isn’t sure if he should grasp for it.

“He has that Scully hair.” Scully chuckles, without looking over at Mulder.

“Bill always hated it when he was younger. I hope it will be easier for Matthew.” She’s holding one of the stuffed animals in her hand; a small giraffe. Mulder just watches her, waits.

“Mulder?”

“Yes?” She’s still not even looking at him, making his heart beat faster, knowing she’s going to say something important.

“Have you ever… I know we once talked about- but have you ever seriously considered having children?” He wishes she were looking at him. He wants to see her face when he says this. But he knows this moment is fragile as it is and he’ll take what he can get.

“For the longest time, I didn’t. It just never crossed my mind and my life – the job… it just wasn’t anything I thought about. Then I met Emily and I saw you with her and…”

“Emily?” Scully turns around and her eyes are full of tears. He nods slowly.

“That’s when I started thinking about it.”

“You could meet someone tomorrow and-”

“I have met her already, Scully. I think you know that.” His admission is not a surprise. Scully glares at him for a second before she looks away, nodding to herself.

“That’s… that makes this easier, actually,” she says, laughing uncomfortably.

“Makes what easier?” Suddenly his heart is pounding, his throat dry.

“I got a second opinion on my ova and um, they say there’s a chance. A chance for me to have a baby.”

“Scully, that is wonderful news.”

“I’ve been thinking about it – debating it, actually. Whether it was something I even wanted to explore. Today showed me that I… that I want to at least try. I have to try.” A few tears fall from her eyes and Mulder nods, overwhelmed by emotions, too. A Scully baby. Red hair, blue eyes, and a sweet smile.

Her child.

“When I thought about it, even before I made a decision, the only person I considered asking…,” she trails off. He has a hunch, but right now is not the time to jump ahead. So he waits. He looks at her, proving that he can be patient. He will be there for her, no matter how long it takes.

“I want you to be the other part of the equation.”

And there it is. His heart takes flight and he doesn’t even need to think about it. He grins at her, hoping she understands.

[scullygazer]

Hi everyone! I hope you all are having an amazing holiday season 😊 This is for the Poang Pals Secret Santa 2024 gift exchange and my giftee is @sagan-starstuff 😊 I really hope you love it! The image makes sense with the fic, I swear 💚❤️

Mischief and Mistletoe

Rating: G

December 23rd, 1994

Fox Mulder hated parties. It didn't matter what they were ... birthdays, weddings, bachelor parties for co-workers, it was all the same to him.

Dana Scully wasn't fond of parties either. While she was used to them having come from a fairly large family that liked to host them all the time when she was growing up, as an adult, she didn't mind stepping back and declining invitations every now and then.

Neither one of them would consider the "FBI Annual Christmas Celebration" as a great way to spend a Friday evening after a long week of work. Both of them would rather be home, watching a good movie and ordering a pizza (Mulder's ideal evening) or taking a long bath with a glass of wine and a book (Scully's idea of a good night).

Here they were however, sitting at a long table with fellow agents conversing over drinks and Hors d'Ouerves. Scully nibbled on a few crackers on her plate and sipped slowly on a glass of merlot. She was switching to water in a few minutes, knowing she had to drive home. Meanwhile, Mulder was staring at his bottle of beer, attempting to pay attention to the "hilarious" story of Agent Thompson's golden retriever stealing a pie the past Thanksgiving but not succeeding. He envied Scully's ability to at least look interested though he sensed her mind was likely elsewhere too.

Scully noticed how bored Mulder looked. The two had been lucky to find two empty seats next to each other. She was at the point however where she was thinking of reasons to get up and leave this thing. It was almost 9 PM. She had used the restroom excuse twice as had Mulder. Luckily, three other agents ended up deciding to call it a night and it was a good chance for her to politely make her exit. She lightly tapped Mulder's foot under the table and subtly nudged his knee.

"Well, I need to get going" Mulder said, standing up and putting his bottle in the recycling bin. Scully followed him.

"Good night, happy holidays!" she said as she left the table.

"See you next year!" one agent said to them. "Haha" Mulder thought. Like he hadn't already heard that one a million times. He was surprised to not see Scully rolling her eyes but he also knew she was far too polite to do that.

As they walked away, Scully thought she heard somebody say her name. She peeked over her shoulder to see two agents whispering and one was pointing at Mulder. Despite it not having been very long since she began working with Mulder and only about a month since she had returned to the FBI after being in the hospital, she was very familiar with the rumors surrounding them every day. "Mrs. Spooky" she would hear others calling her when they didn't realize she was listening.

"Whatever" she thought as she headed into the basement to grab her coat and purse. She had stopped caring a long time ago. If that was all they had to say about her, she didn't think it was that bad.

Mulder wasn't bad either. She had heard about the lengths he had gone to after Duane Barry took her from her apartment and before she found herself in a hospital bed with wires attached to her whole body and her mother and sister surrounding her as she began to wake up and come to. Despite having no memory of how she ended up there, she had remembered the moment Mulder had walked into the room. Not a lot of people would do all that for a coworker, she knew once he told her all about it.

He was different from anybody else she had ever met.

He was special.

Dana Scully was also not someone who didn't plan things through. She was always known among her family, friends, and colleagues as somebody dependable and reliable.

However, she also knew that some risks are worth taking. On her way out, she decided to make one pit stop before getting in the elevator.

--------------

When she entered their basement office, Mulder was collecting his belongings and looking for his coat. He could have sworn he left it by the door, maybe he put it on a chair? It wasn't on his desk either.

"Scully, I think I deserve extra presents this year. I was a very good boy and I resisted several urges to just walk out or tell Skinner I had an annoyance-induced headache" he said.

"Well", Scully thought. She had her own little gift for him. They had agreed to not exchange anything more than cards this year. Everything he had done for his this past year was already the greatest gift a girl could get.

"Mulder, I did something a little naughty before leaving the party" she said, with a sly smile

"Oh, Scully" Mulder said, curiously "I didn't know you were such a rebel"

Scully reached into the pocket of her tan blazer and pulled out a small piece of mistletoe

She giggled miscevously as she stood on her toes attempting to hold it over Mulder's head. Since she was struggling to do so due to her height (even with her heels), Mulder plucked it out of her hand and placed it over her head.

She turned bright red. Then she went in for the kiss. He met her rosy lips and kissed her back. After a few moments, they pulled away slowly and smiled at each other somewhat shyly.

"Merry Christmas, Scully" Mulder eventually said

"Merry Christmas, Mulder"

----

Thank you so much for reading! I really hope you enjoy this and have a very Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and an amazing new year! ☺️☺️☺️

Also... I had to check just because I'm a bit of a perfectionist and December 23rd in 1994 just happened to be a Friday so it worked out very well for that 🤭

[aloysiavirgata]

A Mulder-Scully child/children in an interfaith household. Chag Urim Sameach, Virgata Family!

From here, darling. Merry (late) Christmas and Chag Sameach! https://www.tumblr.com/aloysiavirgata/761731982784888832/loved-your-skinner-pov-i-am-the-ultimate-sucker

***

Baby Matilda, dimpled and blue-eyed with a thick shock of cinnamon hair. Baby Matilda, fat as a soup dumpling, blinking curiously as her siblings and parents and grandmother gaze down.

“Chag sameach,” say William and Fiona, Hebrew-school mindful. Their ch- careful as their father’s Bar Mitzvah lessons.

Silas and Clara, less confident, mumble Merry Christmas to her, though it’s two weeks away. Mulder palms their glossy heads, beaming. The tree lights are tacky and bright and gorgeous. They make stained glass circles on his children’s faces.

Margaret, chamomile-warmed and still a little baffled by the existence of these children, cuddles Tilda close.

Salt-dough handprint menorah ornaments on the Christmas tree. Cocoa and dreidels by the fire. Latkes and dripping goose fat and boozy sweet fruitcake. Marzipan and mistletoe and sufganiyot.

William retreats to the big leather armchair with his illustrated book of winter holiday traditions from around the world. Silas and Clara head off to find the cats, and Fiona sneaks another marshmallow into her mug.

Mulder does not believe in god because the notion of an interventionist deity like Scully’s is a Lovecraftian horror to him. But Scully still wants to. Scully cannot look at herself and her five children and not believe that there must be Something who loves her, at least a little.

***

2 AM.

Mulder brings Tilda over to the bed, warm in a deep blue flannel sleep sack with silver moons on it. She is complaining loudly. She is the mottled pink and yellow of a Rainier cherry, with flailing round fists.

Scully takes the unhappy baby to her breast and sighs as the milk lets down. Tilda, already the fiercest of her children, latches on with something like aggression. Tilda has the fattest cheeks of all their babies, the plumpest dinner-roll feet.

“I think maybe she was also a twin but ate the other kid in the womb,” Mulder observes. “I’m going to see what Si and Clara think. As the house experts.”

Scully adjusts the baby. “That’s great, that’s exactly an appropriate question for preschoolers.”

Mulder stretches out beside them on the bed. He loves these lost hours. “Ahhhh, these modern kids are too soft. When we were babies they just gave us bottles full of lead paint and sent us off at six to the asbestos factory.”

She looks at him in amused disbelief. “Mulder you were wearing Brooks Brothers at birth. Your mother had a night nurse for you and Samantha. There’s a picture of you at like 6 eating latkes with crème fraiche and caviar.”

“Okay well first of all those were blini and that’s how they’re traditionally served so pardon my cultural sensitivity.”

Even Tilda pauses nursing to look at him.

“Oh you too?” Mulder pokes his daughter in the belly. “Watch it kid, because she won’t be making all your meals forever.”

Scully sticks her out tongue, switches Tilda to the other breast.

Mulder begins to doze when a blood-curdling shriek splits the night from down the hall. He jumps up, reaches for his hip out of habit.

Fiona, still shrieking, races into the room and launches herself into the bed. She clings to her father like a koala, sobbing. “The Yule Cat,” she wails into his neck.

Tilda, born into the whirlwind, remains unperturbed by her sister.

“I DIDN’T DO IT!!!” William yells, racing in after, hair sticking up everywhere like his father’s

Scully narrows her eyes at that. “William what-“

“SHE STOLE MY BOOK I SAID IT WAS TOO SCARY FOR HER!”

Fiona, tear-stained but no longer howling, points a finger at him. “I didn’t steal your dumb book I just was LOOKING at it while YOU sneaked another sufganiya!”

William scowls back. “Well I wasn’t going to tell but I saw you ate four more marshmallows!”

Mulder peels Fiona off his chest. He looks sternly at both of his children. “First of all we do not narc in this family.”

“Tattle,” says Scully, exasperated.

“We do not tattle in this family,” Mulder amends. “Unless someone is making a choice that will endanger them or someone else. You only tell us to HELP not to HURT.”

Fiona’s lip starts to tremble again. “He eats you up,” she whispers. “Daddy the Yule Cat eats you all up.”

“Oh, honey, it’s not-“

William takes her hand. “Fee?”

Her eyes are brimming again. “Yeah?”

“Come in my room and we can read about Saint Lucia’s Day. The oldest girl gets a special dress and a crown.” William’s face is earnest, excited to share something new with her.

She brightens, Yule Cat seemingly forgotten. “Yeah? Daddy can I have a Saint Lula dress and crown?”

“Sure,” Mulder says, yawning.

Fiona hops down, still holding her brother’s hand. They head to his bedroom and his reading light goes on.

Mulder takes the baby, tosses a blanket over his shoulder, and gives her a few solid thwacks. She belches like a sailor.

Scully laughs, delighted. “God, remember when you first tried with William and I had to explain the goal was to burp him, not put him to sleep?”

Tilda is already out cold and Mulder returns her to the bassinet. “Listen if I broke the miracle baby you were going to be really, really pissed. Now that we have a basketball team…eh.”

Scully curls against him when he’s next to her again. “Mulder, I feel kind of awful, but I’m glad William took her because god help me, I did not have the energy for that child in the bed tonight.”

Having Fiona in bed was a lot like having a bag full of ferrets in bed. “No, no. Me too. Little narc.”

Scully pinches him. “Let’s sleep while the sleeping’s good.”

They nestle into the pillows, exhausted. The white noise machine, the scent of the fire, of jam, of cinnamon…Scully drifts into a gingerbread dream.

Little feet on the hardwood. “Mama,” Clara hisses. “Silas got scared when he heard Fee and now I’m scared too.”

“Got scared,” Silas echoes. “Me and Clara.”

Mulder barely wakes as he heaves his children into the bed. They jostle and squirm but eventually curl together, safe from the Yule Cat.