#diz writes conspiracies

[xf-cases-solved]

headcanon/fic idea where during the cancer arc, mulder is over at scully's place on a saturday morning going over a case file (that probably could have waited until monday, but he wanted to check on her, and scully knows that, and mulder knows that scully knows, but they both just keep it to themselves). and at one point, scully checks the time and sighs and says she needs to call and cancel her nail appointment for that afternoon, and when mulder asks her why, she says it's bc her dr prescribed her a new med and it's giving her slight double vision, and "it's a common side effect and it's temporary, but i don't want to drive until i adjust to it, and it's not worth it to pay for a cab just for a manicure"

and mulder is like, "i'm not doing anything today, i'll take you"

and obviously scully dismisses the offer, but he keeps insisting, and the truth of it is, with all the constant med adjustments and (occasionally gross) physical side effects of medication and just being sick in general, she hasn't felt particularly attractive in weeks, and while it's not like she is trying to impress anybody, she takes a lot of pride in her appearance and how she presents herself to the world, and her nails are so brittle and the polish has completely chipped away from her last manicure, and honestly, this one little thing, no matter how inconsequential, really would go a long way to making her feel more like herself

so she eventually relents (which pleasantly surprises mulder bc she is stubborn af)

on the way there she's already apologizing for how boring he'll probably find it -- how frivolous and feminine -- and "it shouldn't take too long, i'll tell her to skip the hand massage," and mulder is like, "if you tell her not to give you a hand massage i will hold you at gunpoint until you let her do it" bc he is NOT about to let her skip out on some self-care bc she's worried he'll be judging her for indulging in something "girly"

(he knows she constantly walks a fine line between expressing her femininity and keeping it to herself bc she's worried it will make her male peers view her less seriously)

her nail tech immediately asks if mulder is her husband, even tho she knows damn well he's not bc she asks him if she's found a man yet at every gd appointment, and when she says no, the nail tech is like, "why not? he's handsome and he took you to your appointment, he seems like good husband material"

(they side step out of the conversation, but she is painfully aware of mulder's smirk)

her nail tech asks mulder if he wants a manicure too, and scully thinks she's probably joking, but mulder is like "hell yeah," and scully feels like how she does when he talks about aliens with random cops and witnesses with a straight face -- like, a little embarrassed, but also in awe of his complete lack of giving a fuck

so they are seated side-by-side and get manicures at the same time

mulder doesn't get any polish, but he lets his nail tech shape his nails and apply cuticle oil and, yes, give him a hand massage

he and scully have a brief debate about her nail polish, bc she always gets a super light pink or just a glossy finish (bc anything bolder would feel like overindulging in her femininity and she doesn't want to give any of her misogynistic peers more ammo), but mulder is mercilessly persistent, saying shit like, "that peach color would look good on you" (it wouldn't, she thinks, she's too pale for it) or "that burgundy one would match the new dark lipstick you got a while ago," and she's sat there wondering when the fuck he noticed something as trivial as the shade of her lipstick, and does that mean he's paid attention to other aspects of her appearance? and if so, what does he think of them?

(eventually she lets him talk her into an insanely light shade of baby blue, mostly bc he said it would complement her eyes and she was too caught off guard to tell him to stuff it, and the nail tech makes another casual quip about how good of a husband he would be, and a teeny tiny voice in the back of her head that she can barely hear is saying, "yeah, actually, he would")

when they're finished, he slips the nail tech his credit card while she is searching for her wallet in her overcoat pocket, and he does not look remotely remorseful when she reprimands him, that bastard

in the car, she can't help laughing at the way he keeps checking out his nails, tilting them so the sunlight hits them through the window and he can see how uniform and shiny they are (his nail tech talked him into a clear top coat)

he offers to drive to the chinese restaurant a few blocks from the lincoln memorial, bc she mentioned to him two weeks ago that whenever she is too nauseous to want food, she can for some reason always stomach that restaurant's egg drop soup, and even tho she's not nauseous rn and has also eaten enough egg drop soup lately that it actually sounds a little abhorrent, she says yes anyway, bc she's so touched that he remembered that small detail

they end up getting an order to go (she orders a full entree of vegetable shrimp along with her soup, and the look of relief and delight on mulder's face when he realizes she has an appetite for once makes her blush)

they go back to her place and watch The Thing, and then a rerun of jeopardy (they're pretty evenly matched in terms of useless trivia knowledge, but the final jeopardy question is "this man is the only doctor in history to have a 300% mortality rate," and scully was saying "dr. liston !" before mulder had a chance to process how that was even possible)

she gets drowsy early (another side effect these days), and mulder is discreet in not pointing it out, and instead makes an excuse about needing to feed his fish so he should probably get going, and once again, they both know what he's doing, but they both keep it to themselves

she walks him to the door, and before he leaves, he takes her hand. she lets him raise it up beside her face, even tho she's not sure what he's doing, until he says, "yep, i was right, these make your eyes even prettier," and like ??? what is she supposed to do with THAT??

in the end she does nothing except let him kiss the tips of her fingers, right on the light blue polish, and then lets him kiss her on the forehead. (she tries not to think about where else she'd like him to kiss her, and fails miserably)

they part with shy goodbyes, and it's only in retrospect that she realizes she hadn't actually thanked him, not really

when she is dressed and ready for bed, she slides under the sheets and calls his cell

"mulder, it's me," and somehow he sounds delighted to hear from her, as if they hadn't just spent the entire day together

"i just wanted to thank you for today. i really needed it"

she isn't able to express her gratitude in full, bc that would require being emotionally vulnerable and she's not v good at that, but she suspects mulder hears what she isn't saying anyway

"anytime, scully," he says, and she knows he means it sincerely. "my hands are so soft, i might have to make this manicure thing a regular occurrence"

she laughs

"goodnight, mulder"

"goodnight, scully"

in the morning, the first thing she notices is the blue of her fingernail polish, and the warm feeling it gives her stays with her through breakfast and all the way through the afternoon

[xf-cases-solved]

can i just take this moment to scream about how much this scene in particular is one of my favorite ones of the entire cancer arc? don't get me wrong, your girl here loves -- LOVES -- when mulder is distraught and going insane about scully being in harm's way in any capacity, like it is my drug of choice and has been for 26 years, i'll never love anything more, but! that said, i think this scene highlights his love for scully in a way that we don't get to see v often

here we have scully, who is struggling not just with her new diagnosis, but also with trying So Hard to pretend like she is Doing Just Fine Thanks, when not a single person in the world but herself would fault her for being vulnerable. and she's slipping here. she just had a nosebleed, which is probably terrifying in its own right bc it's a physical reminder of her illness, but then she also had to go and have it happen in front of mulder, and so that just compounded the negative emotions around it. then, after she cleaned up, she was hit with the news that all of those women that were like her are now dead from the same cancer she was just diagnosed with. all of them, except one, and now mulder is here, asking her to go talk with the remaining woman, and she is TERRIFIED. she knows that seeing penny is going to make her feel like she's staring down the barrel of a gun, and the thin veneer of her shield is chipping away, and so she lashes out. she gets frustrated and snappy, like, "oh, should i just go see what dying of cancer feels like? get a cup of tea and let her tell me in detail how it feels for your body to destroy itself?" even tho she knows that's not what mulder meant, but she can't help herself bc the alternative (admitting to being scared) is too much for her to bear

and mulder is SO SO SO gentle about it, omfg

bc he knows that this is her way of saying, "mulder, i am afraid of what i am going to feel when i see penny. i am afraid to think about being sick, and of dying, and more than that, i am afraid that once i face these things, i won't be able to hide from it anymore. my shield will drop. and once someone else sees me losing my edge, then that's it, that's my epitaph written, bc i do not know how to need help and this is not how i am going to learn"

like mulder clocks that shit immediately

and he doesn't agree with it, obviously. he knows that at some point she is going to have to stop trying to act impenetrable. that if she is going to get through this, she will need to get to a point where she can accept that she has limitations, and accept that she needs help

but

he also knows that that time is not rn. he knows that the wounds are too fresh, and her guard is up too high, and trying to push her that direction is just going to make her shut down more

so he pivots. and what he says and how he frames it is so perfect. it shows that he knows her implicitly. that maybe he doesn't always remember birthdays, and maybe he doesn't always respect her time, and can be dismissive, but he is still paying attention. he still KNOWS her to her core

he tells her to go as an investigator, bc he knows that she values her work and she values her professionalism. HE might have ulterior motives in terms of getting her to go see penny, but he knows how to make her need to see her too

his choice of words when he says, "you have one remaining witness, agent scully" is so deliberate, and it works. it catches her attention. for one thing, she's a military brat, she takes titles extremely seriously, and mulder calling her "agent scully" immediately grounds her. where she was starting to feel untethered by all the emotion, he gives her a way to come back to herself. for another thing, she's a doctor. mulder is appealing to that side of her as well. saying, "you can't look at it personally? look at it professionally, then," bc doctors (and ig fbi agents too) need to have a dissonance between themselves and their patients. she would have had classes about that in medical school -- would have been taught over and over again how to disconnect herself from her job -- and mulder reminds her that she is capable of doing that. "that's just part of the job, right, scully? and you are very good at your job, aren't you?" like she can't refute that without diminishing her own talents

[side note: that whole doctor dissonance thing is a whole thing in "irresistible" during her therapy session, like this is definitely not the first time she's tried to use her professionalism to hide her emotions, and she also refrains from saying the words "i'm scared" in therapy, too. her therapist calls her out for talking in second person. our girl is FUCKED UP mentally lol. but i digress]

and then, lastly, he plays into her intense sense of loyalty and justice. this particular case might be in part to find answers for herself, but there were other victims here too. women, in fact, who had their body autonomy stripped from them, and she has always had the strongest reactions to the cases that involve women who were harmed by men. it happens in the show a million times. she feels an immense sense of duty to avenge these women who can no longer avenge themselves, and if talking to penny is what she needs to do in order to properly investigate this case? then that's what she is going to do

and the delightful part about all of this? is that it actually ends up working exactly how mulder hoped it would. it made her face her own sickness, think about whether or not she wanted to fight it even tho it would be hard and she would have to be vulnerable, and it gave her a chance to put her walls down, if only for a moment

now obviously, it doesn't fix everything. she still remains stubborn af (see: elegy), and like, this girl needs so much gd therapy that she should probably be going three times a week, but at least in this one like, ten second clip, mulder is able to do what i doubt anyone else would have been able to do, and that's firstly: recognize what scully ISN'T saying; secondly: find a way to ground her; and lastly: get her to do something that's actually good for herself without fighting him on it

anyway, i just really like this scene lol

he loves her so much, y'all. so so so much, it's insane

One of the few confrontations conversations they ever really had about her being *sick*, and he taps right into her need to distance herself. Although, I think his words were helpful to them both. 

[xf-cases-solved]

headcanon that the moment mulder realized he was down bad was the first time he ever heard scully laugh rly rly hard. like, full belly laugh, hands clutching her stomach, tears down her face laugh. it took him entirely by surprise, bc while she's very funny and has a good sense of humor, she usually sort of just chuckles or snorts. it's hard to even get a single giggle out of her sometimes (he has come to rly cherish that night in the cemetery during their first case when he later learned that she's not usually so unrestrained.) the laughing fit that made him realize he was down bad was probably entirely at his expense, and he didn't even care. if anything, he was proud that something he did -- even if that something was just being an idiot -- made her laugh like that. after awhile she calmed down and caught her breath, and they went on with their day, except mulder now had this new knowledge (exciting and terrifying in equal measure) that he was falling in love with her. he thought about it all day, and that night, during his regularly scheduled bout of insomnia, he mentally added to his list of priorities -- of which included things such as "find samantha" and "learn the truth" -- "make scully laugh again"

and that's still one of his top priorities to this day 😌

[xf-cases-solved]

mulder vs. scully and her period

-first off, he 1000% keeps track of her cycle - it's vital to his survival - but he would never ever ever ever tell scully that

-he learned to start keeping track after too many blunders during their first year working together. like, he'd had girlfriends in the past, obviously, but he didn't travel the country constantly with them day in and day out. even diana was rly reserved about her period, preferring to keep that sort of thing to herself. but scully is a medical doctor. while she may take issue with any emotional aspect, and be uncomfortable and embarrassed about that part, she is completely nonplussed by the physical aspect, and talks about it very bluntly and openly, and that took mulder by surprise at first. he wasn't used to being around a woman who wasn't bashful about it, and it made him uncomfortable at first, but eventually he was like "ok, this is going to be part of working with her, i need to get over myself and up my game"

-in their entire time working together, mulder has made one (1) "are you on your period or something?" joke. it was about six months into their partnership, and scully was (rightfully) irritated at him about something and he had tried for some levity. let's just say that he, ah... he has never made that mistake again

-he always has a tampon on hand. like, always. it is more reliable to ask mulder if he has a tampon than it would be to ask another woman in the bathroom if she has one. he started keeping them on him when she got her period on a three hour long flight that had an hour delay on the tarmac, and she'd accidentally forgotten to take a couple tampons out of her checked luggage, so he'd watched her shift around uncomfortably with a makeshift pad made of thin, coarse airplane bathroom toilet paper, and he felt really bad that he couldn't do anything about it, so on the flight back, he bought a travel pack pack of like, six tampons when he went to get sunflower seeds, just in case. then at some point he was like "mb i should keep a couple in my overnight bag for her," and that led to, "she's in my apartment a lot, i should throw a couple under the sink," until eventually he was King of the Tampons

-(he even has different absorbency levels, okay? like, he is on top of his shit)

-he used to buy chocolate for her on long drives when he knew she was on the rag, always saying something like, "it was two for one, don't worry about it," even when it wasn't, until he started to pay closer attention, and he realized she actually tended to crave salty foods instead of sweet ones, so he switched from chocolate to potato chips and pretzels. (he would play it off as though he got them for himself and then would keep offering her some, bc he knew that would help her not sit there and (completely needlessly) dwell over eating junk food)

-she gets really bad cramps the first day and a half or so, and he haaaates it, bc even tho she waves it off, he can see the way she clenches her jaw, and is hunched over whenever she thinks he's not paying attention. if she's over at his place when they're happening - even if they're working - he makes her sit with a heating pad and encourages her to drink the whole glass of water when she takes her midol. he has massaged her lower back on more than one occasion

-she stopped getting her periods regularly when she was going through cancer treatment, her body too sick and weak. about two months after going into remission, she bled through her slacks on some rural highway in arkansas, and although mulder listened to her complain and validated her frustration, he was secretly so relieved, bc he knew it meant that her body was really and truly starting to heal

-her periods become kind of a taboo subject in a way they hadn't ever been before once she learns of her infertility. she doesn't talk as openly about them anymore, but he's still always prepared and after four/five plus years together he doesn't need her to tell him how to make her feel better. he can intuit it. she doesn't say it, but he knows that she's grateful

-her periods become a dark topic when the ivf fails. the period that confirmed it didn't take was hard on both of them, and she spent every night of it at mulder's apartment letting him hold her and allowing him the privilege of caring for her, which she usually resisted

-he actually noticed that she missed a period before he was taken in oregon, but he had no reason to suspect it was anything but just a fluke, so he didn't say anything. when he glanced at his calendar and saw what week it was, though, he did have a fleeting moment where he was like "what if?" not in a serious capacity, but in a wistful way. i mean, they'd been going at it like rabbits and had never once even considered using a condom. like, why would they, right? but in his brief fantasy, he thinks about how she would react seeing a plus sign on a pregnancy test. it would be familiar - that look of disbelief and awe she got whenever they witnessed something unexplainable - and he would be the cause of it, and how amazing would it feel to be able to give that to her? to give that to both of them? but he knows it'll never be anything more than a pipe dream (bitch, you thought!)

-we won't get into sad later stuff, but i'll just say that he really, really resents the fact that he wasn't there to take care of her during her pregnancy. and he would have been fantastic at it. he would have toed the line between supportive but not overbearing perfectly. she would have had a beautiful nine months, like she had more than earned. he'll never totally forgive the universe for taking that from them

-and to conclude, let me just say for the record, mulder is all about period sex. orgasms help cramps, right? he's just being altruistic. ("YOUR orgasm doesn't help my cramps, mulder" "hey, we'll never know for sure unless we try")

-lay down a towel, lay down your woman, and get to it. bro eats crime scene evidence. there's no way he'd let a period stop him from fucking. god bless and amen

-the end

[xf-cases-solved]

bruh, tyvm

Hey, I’m curious!

What’s the first X-Files fic you read? Mine was If I Am Hopeful, by @all-these-ghosts. Reblog and share your own!

[xf-cases-solved]

i made more x-files words with my brain, wrote them down, and then put them on the internet for you to read and process into meaning with your own brain, if you're so inclined. cancer arc angst for those who are always sluts for s4 like me

click on the following link to consume my words: She Still Has Her Hair

[cw: suicidal ideation and descriptions of illness/hospitals/ivs/pain medication]

here's a snippet:

She hasn't lost her hair, and that's so much worse.

If she had lost her hair, maybe he would have noticed how bad things have gotten before now. 

Because that's what you think of when you think of cancer patients, right? You picture bald heads and missing brows above sunken, darkly circled eyes. You picture tears in the bathroom as the buzz of a razor shears away the remaining tufts among the patchy surface of a scalp. You picture each fallen strand as another inch marched toward a headstone. When you see a cancer patient with no hair, you know that they are Sick with a capital S. When a cancer patient with no hair shows symptoms of their illness, it doesn't come as a surprise.

However, Scully hasn't lost her hair, and so when she calls him at eleven fifteen on a Sunday night—voice a cracked windshield about to shatter into a million pieces, and a sob lodged in her throat like a chicken bone she can't cough up—he's taken by surprise.

He shouldn't be, but he is.

She still has her hair.

But "Mulder, it's me" has never sounded so frail before, and it terrifies him almost more than the voicemail she left on his answering machine two, nearly three years ago; the one that ended with the sounds of a physical fight filled with cries for help before being abruptly cut off, leaving nothing but horrible questions and no answers.

"What's wrong?" he asks. He'd been dozing on the couch with the lights of a muted infomercial dancing over his face, but at the sound of her voice he is instantly upright and alert. When she doesn't answer right away, he presses, more firmly, "Scully? What's wrong? "

"I was prescribed a new medication at my appointment Friday afternoon, and I can't..." Through the receiver he hears her take a steadying breath. "Supposedly this medication is meant to have a less nauseating effect on patients, but in roughly seven percent of cases, it has actually been shown to increase nausea in certain individuals, leading to severe emesis which eventually culminates in dehydration, presenting with symptoms such as dry mouth, lightheadedness, infrequent or oddly colored urine, confu—"

"And are you one of these patients in the seven percent?" Mulder asks, interrupting her clinical recitation that he suspects is her way of keeping herself detached from her own experience. Scully's silence is answer enough. "When was the last time you were able to keep something down?"

"I don't know," she says quietly.

"More than twelve hours?"

"Yes."

"More than twenty-four?" Nothing. "More than thirty-six?" She's silent. "Scully, you haven't been able to keep down food or water for over thirty-six hours?"

"It started early yesterday morning. Before sunrise, I think."

"Is it just vomiting? Is there anything else going on?"

"I..." She trails off, and Mulder suspects her innate desire to never show a shred of weakness to anyone (but especially him, for some godforsaken reason) is currently at war with the part of her that's spent the better part of two days all alone on the bathroom floor. 

"Tell me, Scully. Don't try to lie or sugarcoat it, just be honest."

"The medication, in conjunction with the physical act of vomiting, has led to a fairly severe case of myalgia—muscle pain—that began and is most prominent in the neck and upper back, but which has since spread to... to... oh God, Mulder"—the crack in her voice is heartbreaking—"it hurts everywhere. Everywhere . I'm in so much pain and I haven't taken a piss in over a day and every time I throw up my head pounds so hard my vision goes white. That's not hyperbole, Mulder, these headaches are quite literally blinding, and what if it's not the pain causing it? What if there's new tumor growth affecting my optic nerves, and this is just foreshadowing for what's yet to come? I don't want to go blind, Mulder, what am I going to do? I can't work if I'm blind. I can't do anything. I don't like the dark, and everything in my body hurts, and I just want it all to stop. Please help. Please help make it stop, Mulder, I hurt so bad." 

By the end of her venting, the sob that had been stuck in her throat has been set loose, and she's crying freely now, pouring out her heart in a way that would probably sound like full-blown bawling if she were strong enough. As it is, her weeping comes out in a strained wheeze, like the squeaky whistle of air sneaking through a small crack in the window when the car is speeding down a highway. 

"Please," she begs again, and the way she speaks reminds him of what it was like to wake up with a stomachache in the middle of the night as a kid and cry out for his mother. It reminds him how desperately afraid and alone he'd feel until his mother was finally roused by his calls, and padded into his room with sleepy eyes and a soft voice so as to not wake up his sister in the room next door.

Maybe, he thinks, it doesn't matter how old you are—that no matter what, being sick by yourself will always be your loneliest moment.

"I'm grabbing my keys right now, Scully, I'm on my way out the door." He jingles the ring of keys in his hand by the receiver of the phone so that she can hear their little chime and hopefully be comforted by it. "I'll be there as soon as I can."

"Okay," she whispers, no longer crying, but Mulder suspects it has more to do with a lack of physical strength than anything else.

"I'm gonna have to take you to the hospital," he warns. He's sure she expects as much, but it would be easier to get the fight out of the way now if she's going to be resistant.

It's a testament to how utter dogshit she must feel when she says nothing more than another melancholic, "Okay." Somehow, her agreeing to seek help scares him more than if she were refusing. 

"Hang tight, Scully," he tells her gently. "I'm coming."

[xf-cases-solved]

i wrote a fic inspired by this post i made, about how william should have been a girl named samantha and how i will die on that hill with honor. see below, or click this link to be directed to my ao3, if you so desire

Title: the bitter and the sweet

Rating: Gen

Word Count: ~2400

Back on the vineyard, before Samantha had been taken and the four of them had approximated something approaching a family unit, Mulder's mother would make homemade bread on Sunday afternoons.

The process had always fascinated him—the way she could parse out units of flour, sugar, water, and yeast and combine them together into something that, only hours later, would have the whole house smelling of an artisanal bakery, the atmosphere somehow made warm and inviting by the wafting scent of baking bread. When he was really little—when the biggest unexplained phenomenon to him was the Tooth Fairy—baking seemed like magic to him, and his mother was its wielder. 

How else, he'd figured, could she be able to take all those separate ingredients—banal and basic on their own—and turn them into something incredible?

Tonight, Mulder's feeling a little like how he did when his mother would make bread, only on a much, much grander scale. 

He's finding himself believing in magic, and this time, Scully is its wielder. It's no great surprise to him that she's powerful—he's known that from the start—but it wasn't until he'd found her drenched in sweat, tear tracks down her cheeks, blood staining the insides of her thighs, and a tiny child cradled protectively against her heaving chest that he'd learned that she was a magician, too. 

Out of two ingredients, Dana Scully has made a person.

Mulder has seen things in his lifetime that go far beyond the laws of nature. He's seen ghosts and ghouls; monsters, both bestial and human alike; he's seen proof of life outside this planet time and time again; he has died, his body buried six feet beneath the ground for months, and he's come back to life.

And yet, somehow none of that compares to witnessing the miracle of the most basic, fundamental tenet of existence: Reproduction. Something so innate—the instinctive need to replicate oneself so that one's lineage may live on in perpetuity. Hundreds of thousands of human babies are born a day; if he had known, like really known, how remarkable that is, maybe he would have decided that anything beyond it was simply above his pay grade and given up trying to understand the Universe long ago.

He hears the front door click shut as the Gunmen show themselves out, and yet he doesn't move just yet. He has to take a breath first—has to give himself a moment to shake his head in awe. On the other side of this doorway is his brand new life, and it's daunting to know you're about to walk into a fresh existence.

But no amount of anxiety can outmatch his need to see her. To see them. 

He'd had such little time with them before, and there had been so much chaos going on around them that he hadn't been able to appreciate what he did get, and he's trying not to feel resentful about it. The baby's healthy, Scully's healthy, and in the end, that's what matters most, but still, he can't help but feel robbed on Scully's behalf. On his own behalf, too, if he's being honest. 

After everything she has gone through—after the multitudes of hellfires she's walked through since the day she first stepped into his office—Scully deserved a beautiful pregnancy, with an equally beautiful birth. After everything he's gone through—after every chance he's lost to show the breadth of his love to the people who own his heart—he deserved to care for her, from week one to week forty, and to be by her side as she performed magic in a clean delivery room, with freshly laundered receiving blankets on hand, and the reassurance of trained professionals nearby should something go wrong. Something so precious should have never been shrouded in so much trauma.

It should have been different. They had earned different. 

But he's not going to dwell on it, at least not right now. Maybe in a quiet moment, when his family (his family!) is asleep and peaceful, he'll grant himself the space to feel the bitter in this sweet. 

But that's for later. 

Right now, he has to go to them; he can feel their thrall like the arrow of a compass being pulled north by the Earth's magnetic core, and this hallway suddenly feels a lightyear away from where he's meant to be, the space between them and himself a wormhole, where on his end there's the life he's led until now, and on the other side lies a brand new world he can't even begin to fathom the extent of just yet.

So he walks through the doorway, bending time, stepping out of one reality and into the next. He doesn't mourn what he's left behind—everything that matters now exists inside this room.

"How's everybody doing?" he asks, and if she can hear the thread of anxiety rumbling through his words like a shockwave beneath a tectonic plate, she doesn't mention it—merely smiles widely at him, the corners of her tired eyes crinkling. She's already so tiny, but the giant swaddling of blankets and baby in her arms covers half her torso, making her look even smaller. 

Small, but so incredibly, incredibly strong.

"We're doin' just fine," she says, standing up from the edge of the bed, a hand gently patting the baby's back through the cushion of blankets. As she approaches, he knows his face must look ridiculous—his head shaking in disbelief, his mouth slightly ajar, even as his lips are turned up into a smile, and eyes laser focused on them as though if he so much as blinks they'll disappear—but he can't help it. He's witnessing magic; of course he's awed. 

The baby snuffles grumpily at being jostled, as Scully moves the whole bundle into his expectant arms.

"Hey now," he mutters to the child. "None of that."

He gets the baby's head settled into the crook of his elbow, and the amount of protectiveness that swells within him is so sudden and intense that it almost takes his breath away. 

Words fail him; there isn't a language, on this planet or the next, that could ever properly convey the weight of his thoughts, so he just smiles at Scully and breaths a shaky, "Hi," before turning back to the baby, his body rocking to-and-fro gently on its own accord, and that's something, isn't it? That he instinctively knows how to soothe.

He surveys the baby's face with the focus one would use to parse out a magic-eye poster. He's searching for familiar features, and memorizing all the shapes and slopes and colors that have come together to create the breathtaking picture before him. A long time ago, he remembers calling his eidetic memory a curse, and at the time it had felt true, because in his line of work he saw so many horrible, wretched things, and it would have been a mercy to be able to forget them.

He doesn't consider it a curse now. He thinks that, maybe, he was actually bestowed a blessing, and he just hadn't realized it because it had always been meant for this exact moment in time.

This is... this is a lot. 

A lot, a lot, a lot.

Mulder has always known that he has a tendency to love at a magnitude so severe it is almost to his detriment; he knows that his heart has always been his biggest strength and biggest weakness in equal measure. Once, not long after a bullet had cracked his skull, he had found his way to Antarctica, armed with a vial of antidote, an unreliable compass, and a decent coat, and through the force of his love, he had brought Scully home with a clean bill of health, say for a bit of freezer burn on her cheeks. His love is so mighty, it is almost a type of magic in itself.

But he has never felt love like this before.

He's not even sure if it is love, the feeling so foreign and all-consuming.

He wants to cry with the might of it—feels so full of emotion that he could stand in the center of a field and scream it at the sky until his voice goes hoarse, and even then the precarious glass of his heart would still be dangerously close to overflowing. For all the things he's believed in his life, the hardest thing for him to wrap his head around is the idea that he is capable of loving this big.

"What are you going to call her?" he finds the words to ask. 

Her.

Somehow, the simple use of a pronoun tilts the world on its axis. He thinks it has to do with abstractions. Since he returned from the dead, they've only spoken about her in the abstract. "The baby." "This child." A nameless, faceless, sexless concept that they knew would come into existence one day, but they couldn't quite understand what that existence would mean. 

But she exists now, and she's a she. 

Boy, girl, both, neither—he'd had no preferences nor expectations, but the concreteness of the identifier has his pulse thudding wildly. Scully—the magician and, until very, very recently, the greatest love of his life—has done the impossible and created a person and that person is his... well, they haven't discussed that yet, have they? What he's entitled to referring to her as.

But then she says, "With your blessing"—she's quiet and shy about this, but still meets his eyes with her usual amount of confidence—"I wanted to name her Samantha." 

In some magazine a million years ago, Mulder had read about the art of human suspension. It originates as a spiritual practice that is thousands of years old, wherein people suspend themselves in the air by hooks embedded beneath their skin, and at the time he had been, of course, open and respectful of the concept, but did not particularly see the appeal. While he understood it in theory, without experiencing it, he couldn't quite see how one could endure such intense pain and be grateful for it. To feel revived by it. To feel complete. 

There are no hooks in his skin—he's not hanging from any banisters, trying to reach enlightenment—but he definitely has a better grasp on the practice now. In six words, Scully has taught him how to feel honored by pain. 

This is, he thinks, the utter definition of bittersweet, because god, it's so bitter, but god, nothing has ever been so sweet.

His instinct is to make a joke, because that's what he does when he gets overwhelmed. Maybe make a quip about seeing some of Walter Skinner in this little girl's face, is there something she wants to tell him...? But, unfortunately, it seems that his throat is closing up, so no jokes today, he supposes. Nothing to cover the rawness of his emotion as he blinks the tears out of his vision so that he can see his daughter clearly.

Because that's what she is—Scully just said as much. This is his daughter, named after an aunt she'll never get to meet, but whose memory will live on through her. 

"She deserved so much better than the short time she got," Scully is saying, and although he wants to look at her, he can't because that would mean looking away from his daughter, and that's not possible at the moment. "Mulder, every step we've taken that has gotten us to this point has been because of your love for her. Your search, your passion—everything that brought us together—it's because of her. And through you, I've grown to love her, too. She had no choice in making her sacrifice, but I want to acknowledge it anyway. I want... Mulder, I want our daughter to carry a name that symbolizes enduring strength, and unimaginable bravery, and, more than anything else, infallible, everlasting love." Her hand comes to rest on his wrist. "But only with your blessing, Mulder."

Mulder closes his eyes, a teardrop or two escaping and sliding down the bridge of his nose as he leans forward and presses his forehead gently against his daughter's. He breathes in deep, centering himself and righting his world with the scent of baby powder. Scully waits patiently, her thumb tracing small circles around the circumference of his wrist joint. Finally, he straightens himself out and looks at her.

Once again, language leaves him wanting. 

He settles on a whispered, shaky, "Thank you," that cracks his voice. 

He's thanking her for the in memoriam, certainly, but for so much more than that as well. 

Thank you, he means, for your magic that brought her into this world.

Thank you, for granting me entry into your body so that I could help you make this child, as much as I could.

Thank you, for saving my life, again and again and again and again, so that I can be here to experience true bliss for the first time.

Thank you, for stepping into my office the better part of a decade ago and, against all good judgment and reason, staying by my side ever since.

Thank you, for letting me love you.

Thank you, for loving me in return.

Scully gives a half smile and a nod; he has no doubt that she hears everything he doesn't say, because while all other languages are limited, they have long since created their own mode of communication that only the two of them speak.

There are conversations they need to have. The trauma of Samantha's birth is still shrouded in mystery; the fact that she wasn't taken from them has created more questions than it has provided answers, and that needs to be acknowledged. 

They have to talk about what happens next. What are their roles now? To the world. To their daughter. To each other.

That can all be discussed later, though, when language doesn't feel so useless, and his heart does feel so bruised and battered from all the bitter and all the sweet.

He does the only thing he could possibly do in this moment, and that's lean down and press his lips to hers. She kisses back, one hand holding him by the elbow, Samantha bracketed by their bodies, keeping her safe.

Since he was twelve years old, Samantha has been his driving force.

Today, she still is, but in a different form. A different life.

Mulder loves his baby sister.

Mulder loves his baby daughter.

He thinks he might go into the kitchen tomorrow, and bake Scully a loaf of bread.

[xf-cases-solved]

Hi! I found your fic Fickle Truths! It's so good dude I love it so much I'm about halfway through it so far and I am enjoying it it's incredible good job :D just throught u should know <3

i have NO idea when you sent this bc mobile keeps not telling me when i have inbox messages and also doesn't timestamp them, but thank you! that fic was a labor of love that took way too long to write for no reason. it'll always have a place in my heart (tho plz ignore the multitude of grammar mistakes and typos, i was much more inexperienced at the time, and also have never edited anything in my life ever 😘)

(and also, yk what? shameless self-promotion since i'm apparently doing that today and it's been a while since i've talked about this fic - if anyone sees this and is curious, you can find the fic here 👉����😎👉🏽)

[xf-cases-solved]

um, hello. thank you so much??

Tumblr Tuesday

Have you ever had that feeling where you stumble across a fic you’ve never read from one of your fave writers and you look at the date it was posted and you look at the notes and you think to yourself, “No…No, this can’t be. I can’t be one of the only people who’ve read this. This is just too good. I must reblog, I must shout to the heavens about how amazing this is!!!!”

That’s us with tonight’s rec. It was written by one of our very favorite Tumblr writers (seriously, if you’ve never read “She Tastes Like Candlelight”, you’re welcome in advance, and even if you have, you’re probably due for a re-read), and it’s a crossover with the San Junipero episode of Black Mirror. In other words…it’ll feel like you’ve gotten the best French kiss of your life at the exact same time that you’ve been punched in the gut. 

We had to stand up and slow clap for this fic with tears streaming down our face. We have no doubt you’ll feel the same way. So, you know what you have to do. Read, reblog, and then tell the writer how awesome that was. After all, that’s what fic writers live for.

Title:  I Hear Forever is an Awfully Long Time

Author: @alexkryceksbutt

Rating: PG-13

Length: 12K / 6,000+ Words

Synopsis: It’s a small thing, a glitch in the matrix, but it serves as a reminder: This isn’t real.

Spoilers:  Nothing specific

Triggers: None we’re aware of

[xf-cases-solved]

i just read your msr college au/cancer arc fic and sobbed my way through it, as well as laughed very hard and squealed occasionally (i will deny this if pressed.) and i went to look to see if you had other x files fics, turns out i had already read them and loved them. so thank you!! keep writing you’re incredible at it, your characterization and plot and everything is incredible! no crumbs

apparently you sent me this two months ago and i never saw it, but i was cleaning out my inbox and couldn't just let this go unanswered, bc your words are v kind and were v nice to read when i was in a bad mood. helped cheer me up. i hope you see a cool cloud today, and lots of stars tonight <3

[xf-cases-solved]

hey diz is there any chance you could put some content warnings on your “she still has her hair” snippet? sorry- just for those of us with phobias it would be greatly appreciated

ofc, friend. sorry about that

[xf-cases-solved]

i am aware that this is likely not a new take at all, and i'm not like, claiming it as mine, but i never had the chance to have this opinion (or hear other ppl have this opinion) on a public forum before, so i just want to take this opportunity to say to another person, possibly for the first time with the exception of mb my mother, who is no longer here to agree with me, that "existence" came out when i was 8 years old, i watched it live, and literally the day i watched it i remember thinking to myself "why did they have a boy named william? they should have had a girl named samantha. OF COURSE they should have had a girl named samantha," like it felt so obvious to me

and tho i couldn't rly articulate it this clearly at the time, my little muddy 8 year old thought process was that the entire story of the xfiles starts with samantha, right? mulder has his beliefs bc samantha was taken; he says so in the very first episode. the whole reason he even thinks aliens are real to begin with is bc of samantha. the person he spent his whole life searching for was samantha. he MET SCULLY bc of samantha. samantha is the thread that ties the whole story together, so then how beautiful--how narratively perfect--would it have been to tie THEIR story--their love story (bc xfiles is, at the end of the day, a love story, fight me) up with a bow, where the beginning starts with samantha getting lost, and then ends with samantha there in their arms, finally found, just in a different iteration. (instead of naming the baby after mulder's dad who he doesn't even like? or scully's dad. or scully's brother. or mulder's middle name, which is after his father ik, but still, why are there so many fucking williams??)

like, imagine it. rly sit there and take a moment to imagine how the end scene in "existence" would have gone if mulder had said, "what are you going to name her," and scully had said, "samantha"

not only does it get the "ding ding ding, you're the dad!" point across, but how fucking Touched would mulder have been to have the woman he loves--the PERSON he loves--more than anything on earth honor the sister who took up so much of his soul for so long? who always will take up part of his soul, just in a healthier way. it would be scully saying, "we know she's gone from this world now, but she's not gone from our hearts" emphasis on OUR hearts, bc mulder's pain is scully's pain; mulder's quests are scully's quests. she never met her sister-in-law (they're married, fight me), and will never have the chance, but by naming their child after her, she would be saying, "i love her anyway. i love her because you love her, and because anyone you love deserves my love as well, bc we are intertwined at our core. our fundamental values, our suffering, our joy, it is felt in us both concurrently, bc i am your person, and you are mine, and together we made a whole other person who is a literal representation of our combined selves, and we are going to call her SAMANTHA, bc that little girl you watched get stolen from you however many decades ago has been the pillar that has kept us going as a team for the last eight years"

or maybe it would have been even simpler than that. maybe she would just be saying, "your sister is IMPORTANT, mulder, even in death, and her memory isn't held only by you. it is unrelenting, and preserved forever in our child"

i wanted that scene. i wanted to feel the heaviness of mulder's grief mixed with his elation and gratitude and love. i appreciate william for who he was in the scheme of things, but that moment in the bedroom, with their baby between them, shouldn't have been lessened for me bc they chose a name that made me pause and go "his dad was named william? oh yeah! forgot about that guy, it's been a few YEARS since we saw much of him, and what we did see of him wasn't like... awesome. but sure, name your baby that ig, if you must"

that scene should have hit so much harder, and if that baby had been a samantha? it could have hit like nothing ever has, and for all the mishaps that show took after that (and there were MANY), i think the thing i will always have the most resentment for is the fact that i felt robbed of something that would have meant so much to me as a viewer who had followed their journey from the start (or, well, almost start. i was born the year it came out, so i didn't start watching until 1998, when my brain came online, but i'd seen the past stuff at least)

anyway! that's all to say, 8 year old me was salty as hell about that, and ykno what? she was RIGHT and should have been able to say it. but, again, 2001, 8 years old, not old enough to participate in fandom, so that thought has just festered and rotted away in my brain like a piece of old, putrid meat. but! finally i can give my 8 year old self some catharsis by letting her bitch and bitch and bitch to her heart's content about how "existence" should have been the series finale, and how that baby should have been a girl named samantha, and how i climbed onto that hill 23 years ago, and how i will die there with my heels dug down deep

ty, internet, for coming to my extremely overdue tedtalk. somewhere in the past there is a small child (who definitely shouldn't have been allowed to watch xfiles as young as she did, but what can you do?) finally has a weight off of her chest. it's just a tv show, and in the grand scheme of things, it doesn't matter, but also, it's a tv show that i grew up with in my formative and unfortunately very traumatic years, and it genuinely feels like a loved one who has always been there to comfort me, and so yeah, it doesn't "matter," but the truth is, it Matters so incredibly much

that's all

-diz

[xf-cases-solved]

hey remember that time i wrote an xfiles/black mirror crossover fic? bc i just was reminded. go validate me or something

would anyone read an xfiles/san junipero fic if i wrote one?

[xf-cases-solved]

FICKLE TRUTHS IS COMPLETED

i have so many emotions, and i’m too exhausted to express any of them. plz just get this out of my face. tyvm for those of u who have been reading this. it means the world to me

later,

-diz

[xf-cases-solved]

did u guess fickle truths? then u are correct! here’s the new chapter. plz Validate Me while i work to finish this dumbass story. tyvm

[xf-cases-solved]

this blog is not my well-frequented blog, but a handful of u have asked about my fic fickle truths, so i thought i’d let y’all know it’s finally updated and has a chapter limit now, so the end is, eh, not quite nigh, but probably at least semi-nigh?

for those of you who have no idea what i’m talking about: i have a fic called fickle truths. i’m actually really proud of it, if you ignore the part where i’ve been writing it for nearly three years and it’s still not done. but you should read it! feed my ego! give me the validation i crave and only sort of deserve!

k bye