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ghostbustermelanieking · 7 years ago

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reconsideration

s6 vignette: the beginning, triangle, dreamland, the rain king, tithonus, one son, arcadia, milagro, the unnatural, field trip. part of my series that i write as i rewatch the x files

summary: Times Mulder and Scully reconsidered the status of their relationship.

note: I realize this is, like, the thinnest premise ever, but season 6 UST is some of the best UST. This story most directly links up to Flights and Renegade (and leads into Auld Acquaintance), but it does contain part of the Tithonus scene from The Fountain. (It is not necessary to read any of these works to understand this story, as they can all technically stand alone.)

She’s been wondering about the kiss.

In the days between their mad escape from Antarctica and their flight back to DC from Australia, she’d been considering the encounter in the hallway. The things she said, the things he said. How close they came to kissing. Some culmination five years deep. The sudden pain in her neck, the way she’d dodged it even though she hadn’t meant to. And then everything that had happened after, blurring together into a horrifying montage. The paramedics, the gunshot. The pain and the cold, the freezing cold. Mulder’s mouth on hers, breathing life into her. He came to Antarctica for her. Antarctica. To the ends of the fucking earth.

Scully is having some trouble wrapping her head around it all, but that doesn’t change what happened. That he saved her, that he said she saved him, made him a whole person. That he tried to kiss her—even if it was only to make her stay, he still wanted to kiss her. Wants to kiss her. And she wanted to kiss him, she has realized. She wants to kiss him back.

She hugs him in the hospital when he gives her the cross back and she leans against his shoulder in the airport like it’s effortless. She faces down the Office of Professional Review back in DC for him, for their X-Files. She meets him at the reflecting pool, tries to reassure him that they can bring down the people who did this, and he tries to push her away in return. He tells her that she was right to want to leave, that he is not going to watch her die. Almost the opposite of what he said in the hallway. He tried to make her stay because he cares about her, and now he is pushing her away because he cares about her. Because he is scared.

She doesn’t know how she would’ve reacted if he’d said these things when she wanted to quit, but she knows how she will react now. He pushes and she pushes back. He was right before, about wanting to quit with a clear conscience, but she can’t do that, there’s too much left to fight for. She takes his hand and repeats his earlier words back to him: “If I quit now, they win.” It’s some sort of reassurance—reassuring him that she isn’t leaving, or maybe reassuring herself that she wouldn’t have left in the first place. She squeezes his hand. She thinks that maybe something can happen between them now. She thinks maybe it’s time.

And then everything goes to hell.

She can’t find what Mulder wants her to find, what he wanted to show OPR. Or rather, what she finds is not what he wanted to hear. They really should have discussed everything before the meeting itself. Mulder is clearly upset with her, and things only escalate when they don’t get the X-Files back. Instead, Jeffrey Spender and Diana Fowley are assigned to it. Scully doesn’t even have time to process it, to maybe have a bit of contempt for the woman who is apparently Mulder’s ex swooping in and taking their jobs from them, because Mulder is too busy feeling betrayed himself. Skinner has led him to a file, some attack in Arizona, and by some paradox, he manages to convince her to go. She doesn’t know what she’s thinking—maybe that they can find more proof, more reason to go back on the X-Files. But Mulder’s theories at the crime scene don’t make sense, even if the evidence doesn’t fit with the crime report.

He is upset with her, at the scene, angry that she is doing exactly what he said has kept him honest, has saved him, and she doesn’t understand it. She tries to understand, takes his hand and repeats his earlier words back to him. “You told me that my science kept you honest. That it made you question your assumptions. That by it, I’d made you a whole person,” she says, trying to remind him. What he’d said was why she’d stayed. “If I change now… it wouldn’t be right, or honest.”

He doesn’t listen. He waxes some poetic bullshit about extraterrestrial life, says, “I’m sorry, Scully, but this time your science is wrong,” before he walks away from her, leaving her blinking in astonishment. Maybe a little hurt. She stayed because he said he needed her. But this is one of the times that she thinks he would like it better if she just wasn’t here to debunk his theories. In this brief moment of chest-stinging hurt, everything Mulder said in that hallway feels like a taunt.

It gets worse. It actually gets worse. They find Gibson half-dead in their car. She convinces Mulder that they need to protect him, but the next thing she knows, Diana Fowley is popping up and dragging Mulder off to chase some lead, leaving her behind to protect the boy. Which she can’t do, apparently; Gibson disappears from the hospital she takes him to. Supposedly, he shows up at wherever Mulder and Fowley went off to, locked in a room with what Mulder claims killed those people in Arizona. He doesn’t reappear.

After it’s all over, Mulder is still unwilling to forgive and forget. He says some biting things that cut her to the core, credits Fowley over her, makes some allusions to Diana not refusing to believe things because of science.

Scully clenches her jaw and plunges on, although she’s not entirely sure why. She reminds him that she doesn’t doubt him, that it comes down to a matter of trust. She asks him to trust her. He has said before that she is the only one he trusts. Maybe she wants that faith back. Maybe she wants him to acknowledge how much he claims to need her. One in five billion, making him a whole person. What else is she supposed to think?

If he is willing to forget what happened in that hallway, then she can forget it, too.

ii.

He is in love with Dana Scully, and he wants to tell her how he feels.

He might be an official time traveler who’s high off his ass on painkillers, but goddamnit, he is in love with her. He has been in love with her for months, years. He wanted to tell her over the summer but he was scared; he thought that if he pushed her away, she would leave and be safe from the X-Files forever. And then he’d been an asshole to her, really fucked it up. But it’s been good since then. Good. They do background checks and manure checks, drive the country like they always have and Mulder books them haunted hotels, passes her glossy brochures over the center console of the car that announce urban legends he can sometimes convince her to chase off hours. They eat together in diners, eat lunch in the break room or go out sometimes in a cliquish way that makes the other bullpen agents whisper. They see each other on the weekend, sometimes, when Mulder isn’t chasing ghosts or ghouls. They spent Halloween looking for demons in a cornfield, and Scully had nearly bent in half laughing at him when it turned out to be kids in crudely-made masks. God, he loves her. He loves her and he wants to tell her.

He can find her anywhere, he proved that today. He found her in 1939. She was beautiful in that wine-colored dress, her hair all curled and her eyes icy the way they get when she is absolutely done with his nonsense. It wasn’t really her, but she was brave and confident and faced down Nazis like it was nothing. She saved the world and he kissed her because he thought he’d never see her again. He deserved that punch. But he is in love with his partner—his partner who is right here beside him. He loves her and he wants to tell her.

“Hey, Scully?” he says as she starts to walk away, rising up on one elbow.

She comes back, standing close so that they are almost nose to nose. “Yes?” she says, very serious.

He looks deeply into her eyes, trying to tell her everything he wants to tell her without even having to speak. When she’s this close, he could kiss her again. Or for the first time. “I love you,” he says, very sincere. He wants her to know.

She rolls her eyes, mutters, “Oh, brother,” and stalks off. And that is the end of that.

Still, he isn’t sorry that he told her. The side of his face stings when he puts it down on the pillow, from where 1939 Scully socked him, and he smiles dopily to himself. She knows, and he will tell her as many times as it takes to make her understand how he feels. How much he cares about her.

He grins at the ceiling. He is in love with his partner. He is in love.

iii.

They fly to Nevada against orders, to investigate some lead an informant gave Mulder. The airport is a couple hours out from their destination, so they rent a car and drive together into the desert. In Area 51, the only thing that is waiting for them is a slew of Men in Black or whatever, who stop them in the middle of the road. There is a confrontation. A light passes over them, and Scully is left blinking, her mind foggy. How much time has passed? She is holding Mulder’s hand.

“Come on, Mulder,” she says, unnerved. “Let’s go.”

—

They don’t talk a lot as they drive away, stirring up red dust behind them. Scully rests her head on the window pane, his fingers tapping the dashboard. Mulder is quiet, his jaw working back and forth as he stares out at the road ahead. “What happened out there, Scully?” he asks finally.

It was a brief, meaningless encounter, completely unmemorable, but it feels like something more and she can’t explain it. She shrugs. “We got stopped. Found nothing,” she says. “What else is new?”

Mulder nods, chewing his lower lip. They pass a diner, the lights startlingly blue. “You hungry?” he offers.

The diner is packed to the brim, something Scully isn’t entirely used to; they usually frequent half-empty shitty places in the middle of the night. There is a family sitting across from them, three kids jammed in one booth, shoving at each other. Scully remembers that she said something about raising families, having something approaching a normal life, on the drive up. It seems like something she said days ago for some reason; she blinks in sleepy confusion. Mulder smudges fingerprints on the glossy menu, waving it at her. He orders her drink for her, exactly the way she likes it. She thinks that sometimes they may be able to read each other’s minds.

“Sorry I dragged you out here for nothing, Scully,” Mulder says after the waiter takes their meal orders and leaves.

Scully pokes at the sugar holder. A baby squeals somewhere across the diner, a couple argues at the counter. The Nevada sky has so much more stars than back in DC. “That’s okay,” she says, more agreeable than she would’ve expected of herself. “Better than background checks.”

Mulder smiles, his teeth too white under the fluorescent lights. She has some faint memory of saying goodbye to him, of sunflower seeds slipping into her palm and through her fingers, clammy from Mulder’s hand, but she has no idea where it came from, because she knows that never happen. Maybe it’s because Mulder has been eating them since the airport. She wonders if his fingers would taste like salt, and then blushes on instinct.

“It’s too bad that lead never panned out, though,” says Mulder, a little regretful, maybe a little bitter, leaving starburst fingerprints in the condensation on the side of his glass. “This was a waste of time.” He snorts out a bitter laugh. “An entire day’s waste of time.”

Scully shrugs, her coat loose around her shoulders. She is unusually jovial, happy to be with him. “It’s like you said, Mulder. This is a normal life.”

Mulder smiles again, almost involuntary. She smiles, too. She steals fries off of his plate when their food comes and he makes a gremlin face at her and she giggles. She has an odd feeling of longing that she can’t explain, and she doesn’t bother to try. They’re in a diner in Nevada, off the clock. Who the hell cares?

Mulder takes a shift driving after they eat, and Scully curls into a ball in her seat and falls asleep. She has some strange dream of standing opposite Mulder in the desert. There are seeds, like the one in that strange non-memory in the diner, and she tells him, I’d kiss you if you weren’t so damn ugly. Well, she notes when she wakes up, the sentiment isn’t entirely off. But still. What the hell is that about?

iv.

They’ve slept in the same bed before, but never quite like this.

Scully can tick off every time they’ve shared a bed. The awkward time in the first year of their partnership where she’d set a token pillow between them and slept on the edge of the mattress (but Mulder sprawls in his sleep, so he’d ended up drooling on her shoulder in the morning, the pillow stuck under his belly). The case in ‘96 where her feet had snuck over on his side every single night. The times she’d fallen asleep in Mulder’s hotel room or he’d fallen asleep in hers. But every time had been different then this somehow, she thinks.

She’d woken up this morning with Mulder’s face half-buried in her neck, an arm thrown over her ribcage, his fingers hot against her side where her shirt had ridden up. His stubble rubbing her neck as he muttered things in his sleep. She had counted to ten in her head. Twenty. And rolled away. His hand had slid over her stomach in a long trail; he snorted and buried his face in the pillow. Scully had shivered, curling into herself on the edge of the bed. And now they are in bed again. He is asleep and she is not and he’s jammed up against her in bed, nose against her upper arm and knees pressing into her leg. Their fingers tangled together on the mattress. Scully stares at the ceiling, ignoring the tickling sensation of Mulder’s breath against her skin. Or trying to.

Sheila was surprised that she isn’t with Mulder. Which apparently the entire town of Kroner can join her in. The missus. Boyfriend. Holman had bid Mulder farewell by saying, “You should try it sometime,” looking at the two of them like he expected something out of them. She supposes her big “relationships-spurning-from-friendship” speech to Sheila didn’t help their Kroner reputation. She doesn’t know why she cares.

Mulder is too warm, jammed up against her with his raspy breathing and the blankets tangled around them. She should move away. She doesn’t know why she doesn’t move away. She told herself that she wasn’t going to do this last summer, after everything with Diana Fowley, after he tried to kiss her and never brought it up. For a little while last fall, in Nevada, she thought she might, but she’d relegated herself, insisted that they are friends and friends only. And despite whatever lover’s pacts some ghosts tried to force them into, despite her falling asleep on his couch at six a.m. on Christmas morning, she has been able to push back the thoughts in her mind of taking their relationship a step further. But now…

Mulder mumbles something in his sleep—something that sounds like the lyrics to Islands in the Stream, which played on repeat at the reunion when one of the speakers glitched—and presses his nose harder against her shoulder. Scully shivers. We are just friends, she tells herself sternly. He’s my best friend. That’s it. That’s all. But Mulder tugs at her hand in his sleep, rolling over so that he lands almost on top of her, and she almost loses her resolve, shivers. She didn’t know it was so cold in Kansas. Or that her partner is a furnace. She shifts in her sleep, cold feet brushing against his feet and trying to wiggle out from under him a bit. Mulder stirs, lifting his head from her shoulder and blinking groggily. “Scully?” he mutters, tugging at her hand before he realizes that he’s holding it and lets it drop. “Oh, jeez, I’m on top of you,” he says, scooting backwards so he’s on the other side of the mattress. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” she says quietly. She hasn’t moved.

Mulder flops over on his stomach, still half-asleep. “We’ll be home tomorrow,” he mumbles into his pillow.

“Yeah,” says Scully. His hair is sticking up on one side; she resists the urge to pet it down. She turns on her side and closes her eyes, determined to get some sleep tonight. But her words to Sheila are still bouncing around in her head. You know, one day you look at the person and you see something more than you did the night before, she’d said. And the person who was just a friend is… suddenly the only person you can ever imagine yourself with.

She wakes up in the morning with her face pressed up against Mulder’s shoulder. She tells herself sternly that it means nothing. She knows she is lying.

When she wakes up in the hospital, Mulder is there. He’s leaning over her hospital bed with his hands in his head. He looks tired, haggard, as if he’s been there for days. Scully has a groggy, overwhelming affection for him, and though she cannot speak, she reaches for him. He looks up, sees her hand moving, and his entire face lights up. “Scully,” he says, engulfing her hand in both of his. “You’re awake.”

She looks up at him, tiredly tries to tell him everything that she is thinking with only her eyes.

Mulder laughs a little, squeezing her fingers. He is practically grinning with relief. “I-I’ll go get your doctor,” he says, standing from his spot next to the bed. Before he puts her hand down, he leans over and kisses her knuckles, and she feels it from head to toe. “You’re gonna be okay,” he says before he leaves. Scully smiles a little to herself. She can’t believe he’s here.

Mulder is there when she wakes up and Mulder continues to be there, through every awkward moment with her mother and brother (both of whom Scully is incredibly relieved to see), through every talk with the doctor, through nearly every moment Scully is conscious for the next two days. She is immensely grateful. She’d missed him. She loves him, she thinks rebelliously to herself one day. She loves him and is so incredibly happy to still be here to tell him so. All those doubts flickering in her mind, leftover from last summer, are gone now. She is ready.

There is a brief moment where she is uncertain, wondering whether or not Fellig was right about immortality, right about love not lasting forever, but she talks herself out of it. She is being ridiculous. People don’t live forever. Life is too short, actually, and she has plenty of proof of that right before her.

Mulder thumb-wrestles her over the blankets tucked around her body, kisses her cheek in farewell every time he leaves. He flies back down to DC with her when she is finally discharged, cracking peanuts between his teeth like makeshift sunflower seeds and trying to distract her with in-flight movies. He visits her frequently in the evenings while she is on medical leave, calls in the middle of the day to complain about Kersh and background checks and the embarrassment of being stuck in the bullpen. He is her best friend and she is in love with him; there was more truth to the things she told Sheila than she thought. She keeps looking for moments to tell him, but keeps coming up short. She doesn’t know how to say it. (They’re both awful at expressing their feelings; is she just supposed to sit him down and say, “Mulder, almost dying has made me realize I’m in love with you?” What about, “So, about that one time you almost kissed me and we never talked about it…?” All utterly ridiculous.) But the time will come. She is confident that the time will come. These things have a way of happening with them.

Later, after the entire ordeal at El Rico Air Force Base, she will attribute the entire thing to what Fellig told her in his apartment. Fear of eternity staring her in the face, loneliness. Vulnerability after almost dying. But she cannot really be in love with him, she tells herself. She cannot.

vi.

He can’t explain why trusting Diana is so important to him.

He is not in love with her. Not anymore. And when he was, it was never as house-on-fire fierce as the way he cares for Scully. But something in him cannot let go of their relationship. Their years together. She remains the only woman he has ever proposed to. The longest relationship he’s ever had. She was there when he discovered the files. He cannot let that go, for some reason. He just can’t.

He doesn’t know why he is so stingingly hurt when Scully is sharp to her in quarantine, because he is done with her romantically and has been for years. She broke his heart. But something in his stomach curdles in annoyance when Scully keeps snapping at her, acts like she’s the enemy. He chides her a little when she gets petty towards Diana, because a part of him is protesting, She isn’t working against me, Scully. She knows how important this is. She left me because the work is important. And he doesn’t know that Scully would go that far for him, for the work. It’s a horrible comparison to make, but it’s true.

The Gunmen turn against her, too. Scully calls him to their apartment, just so she can present all the reasons why Diana is untrustworthy, and Mulder’s annoyance continues to grow. You wouldn’t be saying this if you knew everything she’s done for me, he wants to say to her. What she meant to me, once.

He tells her she is reaching. He tells her she has given him no reason not to trust Diana. He tells her that she is making things personal, and he senses he has gone too far. It’s been personal since Day One, with them. He’d like to take it back almost as soon as he says it, but Scully storms out and Mulder is too annoyed with her to follow her. But Frohike’s glare and the way Byers and Langly avoid his eyes speak volumes.

Embarrassed and maybe a little guilty, he slinks off to find out the truth about Diana, just to prove that he is right. He finds the smoker at her apartment, who offers him a way out. A way to save himself from what’s coming. Himself, he thinks, and Scully, and maybe even Diana. If they can really avoid death on Earth, he and Scully, then it would be wrong to leave behind the woman who is partially the reason he has gotten this far.

Diana comes home and reaffirms her loyalty to him. He tells her how they need to survive and she kisses him. It is a brief kiss, and his mind is buzzing too much to process it all, but he wraps his arms around her on instinct.

—

After it’s all over, he’s overwhelmed with guilt.

He doesn’t go to the air force base because he is chasing a lead with Scully, and he is relieved that they don’t because the entire thing goes up in flames. Diana doesn’t reappear in the immediate days after. Jeffrey Spender gets them back on the X-Files, and then his blood is found staining their office. Scully won’t return his calls.

The guilt is thick in his stomach over the possibility of Diana’s death, the encounter in her apartment. What he perceived as a betrayal of Scully. They may not be together, but he is in love with her. He told her he loves her and he meant it with everything in him. And now, and now. He has hurt her to the point of nearly no communication between them. He has kissed another woman he is not in love with. He has ruined it all.

Diana calls a few days after the entire ordeal, reassuring him that she is alive, and he is relieved. Truly relieved. Maybe some feelings do linger for her, but not in the sense of wanting to actually be with her. It’s mostly nostalgia from his old relationship, mostly loyalty. He��s happy she’s alive. But he’s in love with Scully and he’s pushed her too far away.

He wishes he knew how to make this right.

vii.

She almost resigns after it’s all over.

She gets drunk one night, furious and raving against Mulder, and types up a resignation letter, prints it out and even signs it. She leaves it on the dinner table, determined to give it to Skinner in the morning. She is done with the FBI, the way they’ve scorned her and thrown her out. She is done with the X-Files, tired of the way they beat her up and leave her frustrated and embarrassed when she is proven wrong. She is done with Mulder.

In the morning, she chickens out. It seems ridiculous in the daylight, with the sun shining unevenly across her pillow and her pounding hangover headache. She did hang on this long to resign. Personal interest is all she has, and she can’t give up for her sister or her daughter or herself. And even Mulder. She still cares for Mulder by instinct, knee-jerk reaction.

But there is not going to be a relationship between them now. Not a chance.

In the process of rebuilding their office, reorganizing everything, Scully works quietly, talks as little as possible. The resignation letter stays on her table, like a glaring spotlight. Reminding her of the way she felt when she thought she was leaving. She goes back and forth on it a few times in the weeks following El Rico. She almost changes her mind the day after Diana drops by the office to congratulate Mulder on getting the X-Files back. Mulder almost dies twice. The second time, she is haunted by nightmares of him dying in her arms, gunshot wound to the chest. It breaks her. She can’t resign, she can’t leave him anymore than she could last summer. She has tried, and it doesn’t work. She has not hung on this long, through dead family members and abductions and cancer, to quit because Mulder hurt her feelings. She cares about him, and it is more than a knee-jerk reaction. She isn’t going to resign. She throws the letter out.

But her stance on a relationship between them stays the same. He is her partner, her friend, but nothing more.

xiii.

The Petries has a nice ring to it. Mulder picked the name because of all the Dick Van Dyke Show reruns they’d watched together while Scully was recovering from her gunshot wound. Scully rolled her eyes and smiled a little at the floor when he told her, but sobered up quick. Told him that they had to pronounce it like the dish.

There has been a definite distance between them lately. A distance that only comes down after one of them almost dies. He wishes he knew how to fix this.

Being able to call Scully his wife, though. Being able to put his arm around her and ham it up in front of all the citizens of Arcadia Falls. He kind of likes it—which is unexpected, because he never associated Scully and marriage in his mind until now. He hasn’t been very keen on marriage ever since Diana mailed his ring back, broke off their engagement that had crumbled to nothing at that point. But he could get used to this, coexisting with Scully in a house, their house, sharing a bedroom and eating dinner together. (Maybe without the dorky planned community, though.)

They end up cooking dinner together because neither of them can agree on who should be the one to cook. They’re both terrible at it. Scully rolls up the sleeves of her cute little soccer mom sweater and huffs angrily when she burns the chicken. Mulder abandons the potatoes and pulls out one of the salad kits that Scully had insisted the Bureau buy them. (They’d made a grocery list together, for God’s sake; he loves this case.)

“You liking married life, Scully?” he asks her at the dinner table, after they manage to construct a decent salad.

She snorts a little, stabbing lettuce with her fork. The windows are open, to air out the kitchen from where the chicken was burned, and they are speaking quietly in an attempt not to blow their cover. “Truly blissful, Mulder,” she says dryly. “The honeymoon never ends.”

Mulder chuckles, a little awkwardly, looking down at his plate. “Did you ever daydream about your wedding as a kid, Scully?” he asks.

“Oh, sure, when I was younger.” She drums her finger against the table. “But the daydreams kind of faded in high school, of course.”

“Oh, of course,” says Mulder knowingly.

Scully is still staring at her plate. “I thought I’d get married in my twenties, actually,” she says in a stilted rush, almost like she had to talk herself into saying it.

Mulder’s fork drops from his hand; he was not expecting that. “Really?” he asks in a neutral tone. “What happened?”

Scully shrugs. “I joined the FBI. Broke it off when I saw the full implications of the relationship. I was young, and I thought I was in love. But it would have been a mistake.”

He’d never known that about her. He nods. Scully scrapes her fork through the salad dressing, lifts her chin to meet his eyes. “What about you, Mulder?” she says, and her voice is very serious, like she understands what the answer will be. “Any previous run-ins with marriage?”

He swallows uncertainly. “Diana and I were engaged,” he says carefully. “She broke it off.”

Scully nods, her face neutral. She says just as carefully, “She must have meant a lot to you.”

“She did,” Mulder says. “At one point, she did.”

She holds his gaze for a moment before looking away. Mulder lifts a glass of water to his mouth and gulps a mouthful. It’s too cool sliding down his throat.

He wants to fix this more than anything. He wants Scully to understand why he did what he did, what she means to him. He just wishes he knew how.

ix.

Agent Scully is already in love, Padgett had said, looking straight at him as if he was supposed to have any idea at all what he was talking about. Who Scully could be in love with. If Padgett is even right at all, if he even knows her. Mulder knows that he doesn’t, that he couldn’t possibly know anything about her.

It is stupid to be jealous of him, this creepy little man who has been stalking her for years now. He is not jealous as much as he is furious, wants to shout at him, tear him apart for what he has done to Scully. Padgett does not know her, not the way he does. He is presumptuous, a little voyeuristic shit who thinks he knows and loves a woman because he’s followed her around for a while. He doesn’t know Scully and he is likely a murderer and Mulder wants him gone, wants to make sure he never gets near Scully again.

Agent Scully is already in love. It can’t be true, because Padgett does not know her. Not like he does, not at all. And Mulder doesn’t know who it is that she could possibly be in love with. How he could have missed it. Or if it’s the yearning possibility, the off chance that she might be in love with him…

No. Padgett does not know her. He is lying, playing some new angle. Mulder throws himself into the case, into trying to catch Padgett. It isn’t true, he tells himself. Scully isn’t in love with him. Believing that weasel is the most egotistical thing he could do.

It isn’t until Scully is clinging to him as she sobs hysterically, blood smeared up and down her front, fingers digging desperately into his shoulders, that he considers that it might be true.

His breath on the back of her neck, his nose in her hair, and his arms wrapped all the way around her as they move together, the bat whooshing through the air. Scully giggles helplessly, more delighted than she’s been in months. She feels like she’s in high school again, her heart racing to the point where she’s sure Mulder can hear how nervous she is. How excited.

It’s spring, not very cold at all, but Mulder’s arms are warm around her, the length of her spine pressed to his chest and stomach. Her shoes that are not at all suited for baseball scuff the red dirt. Her feet almost slip out from under her with one swing of the bat, and Mulder’s arms tighten around her, lifting her almost off of her feet as he tries to keep her from falling. Scully belly-laughs, leaning her head back as the bat wavers in her hands. Mulder stumbles backwards under her weight, lowering her to the ground. “I got you,” he huffs, exhausted from holding her up.

Scully lets the bat droop, tapping the dirty ground with its edge. “Yeah,” she says, breathless. She thinks of the latest, unhappy time he had his arms around her like this, while she fell apart on his floor. She thinks of the first moment of arriving at the park, realizing what he meant when he’d said, “Get over here, Scully.” The shivery feeling she’d gotten when he pressed up against her. His lips brush the back of her neck—whether it is on accident or on purpose, she can’t tell, but it makes her think his mouth against hers. The possibilities.

She smiles, leaning back into his chest. “Yeah, you got me.”

xi.

Things are better between them, he thinks. They have been, they are. Less steely silences, less tense conversations. Scully smiles at him now, even bursts into laughter on occasion the way she did on that one golden Saturday. “We should work on the weekend more often,” he’d said the Monday after, a little suggestively, and Scully had smirked back at him just as suggestively. Surprised him so much it almost bowled him over. He loves it.

Things are better between them, their partnership starting to get back to normal, and Mulder is starting to consider the possibility of their friendship finally starting to shift into new territory. (Hey, it only took them a year.) He doesn’t know when or if it will ever happen (although the suggestiveness between them both would suggest that it will), but either way, he’s just grateful to have Scully back. Her friendship, her partnership.

They fuck it up, of course. There is a case in North Carolina, and he presents his theory of UFOs, and she dismisses it, maybe even jokes a little bit about it. And it annoys him, for some reason. “Sounds like crap when you say it,” he says, working his jaw back and forth, wondering why she can never believe him, just once. “I’m just wondering if there’s a connection, Scully,” he adds, defending the theory. “I mean, the conditions of these bodies are reminiscent of certain southwestern cattle mutilations. Those are cases where there’s no physical evidence and they’ve long been associated with UFO activity.”

She replies like she doesn’t know him at all, “Mulder, can’t you just for once, just… for the novelty of it come up with the simplest explanation, the most logical one, instead of automatically jumping to UFOs or Bigfoot or…?”

Irritated, he stands and says, “Scully, in six years, how… how often have I been wrong?” She scoffs. He says, “No, seriously. I mean, every time I bring you a case we go through this perfunctory dance. You tell me I’m not being scientifically rigorous and that I’m off my nut, and then in the end who turns out to be right like 98.9% of the time?” She looks a little hurt now. She says nothing. “I just think I’ve… earned the benefit of the doubt here,” he says, and walks away before either of them can say anything else, because he doesn’t know why this is bothering him this much. He doesn’t know what else he expected.

— As difficult and as frustrating as it’s been sometimes, your goddamned strict rationalism and science have saved me a thousand times over, he’d said in that hallway. Maybe it’s stupid to keep referencing back to something he said a year ago, something he said to manipulate her into staying. But the sincerely behind it had felt real. Everything that has happened between them lately has felt sincere. And once again, Scully doesn’t know what to think

xii.

He knows it isn’t real as soon as she admits that she is wrong. She knows it isn’t real when everyone tells her she is right, again and again. She never really believed she’d lost him anyway.

Their minds meld together through the mushroom hallucinatory haze. They come together, just like always. That is what they do.

Skinner pulls them out of the ground and puts them in the ambulance together. They reach for each other at the same time, Scully searching blindly. She opens her eyes to look at him when he takes her hand. She doesn’t take her eyes off him. They keep looking at each other until they’re unloaded at the hospital.

She misses him at the hospital, through the haze of drugs and pain. She sleeps on and off for a few days, bandages scratchy against her skin, dreams strange and vivid. She’s cold. She is tired of doubting this—their partnership, how well they work together, whether or not they can never be in a relationship. The only reason they survived was because they’d realized what was happening. That something was wrong. The way that they balance each other out, it’s unmistakable. She misses him.

A few nights after the whole ordeal is over with, she slips out of bed and pads down the hall to his room. He’s awake, staring out the window absently when she steps inside. He turns towards her, startled, and his eyes soften at the sight of her. “You okay?” he rasps.

She nods, stepping closer to the bed. “Couldn’t sleep,” she rasps.

He scoots closer to the inside of the bed, shoulder pressed to the wall. She climbs in beside him, their arms pressed together. He tucks the blankets around them both, brushes some hair off of her face before settling back against the pillow. She takes his hand.

“I’m sorry, Scully,” he rasps.

She shakes her head, intending to tell him to save his voice, but he keeps going. “I shouldn’t have… acted like you were being unreasonable. You… I need you. I need your science, and I need you.”

He squeezes her fingers. She closes her eyes, snuggling into the blankets, reminds herself that he is not dead. She is tired of doubting, of lying to herself. They’re both high off their asses on painkillers, but this time, she believes him. “I need you, too,” she whispers, letting her head fall on his shoulder. “I do. I do.”

He kisses the top of her head. She hums raspily, letting her eyes slip closed.She does need him, she knows now. They need each other.

#xf fanfic #i wrote this #xf rewatch

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quranreadalong · 7 years ago

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#54, Surah 8

THE QURAN READ-ALONG: DAY 54

After that exciting trip back in time to learn how much disbelievers suck and have always sucked, we’re in Medina again. Welcome, everyone, to Al-Anfal, or The Spoils of War. It is, thank Allah, only 75 ayat long.

You may recall back in surah three that we dealt with a battle called the Battle of Uhud, which Mohammed’s army lost. This surah concerns the battle preceding that, the Battle of Badr, which they won. I presume y’all remember the caravan raids that Mohammed’s people were engaging in, which resulted in the Meccans getting pissed off and deciding to send an army out to defend their caravans thereafter.

You remember the story, right? If not, here’s a brief recap. Mohammed got kicked out of Mecca for that stunt in which he had some of the Medinan Muslims pledge to be his followers in warfare. He and his Meccan followers moved to Medina, where he announced that they would soon be fighting the Quraysh. So he and his followers began raiding Meccan caravans, though most of the raids were unsuccessful. But then things get dramatic when Mohammed’s cousin Abdallah kills a trader in cold blood during a month of truce, and the Meccans are pissed because this was explicitly against the rules that Mohammed himself agreed to. They complain to him about this, at which time Allah commands Mohammed to say “uhh actually killing during this month is bad but not forbidden if it’s against disbelievers such as yourselves”. The Quraysh are understandably furious and decide that the next time they get word of the Muslims trying this shit, they’re sending an army out to defend their goods.

That day comes when Mohammed hears word of a large caravan returning to Mecca from Syria with lots of goods. He plans to attack it. People at the forefront of the caravan spot Mohammed’s scouts and send word to Mecca that they’re going to be attacked and need help. In response, Mohammed orders his men to march south from Medina to Badr, which is a site of fresh water wells; any Meccan force would need to stop there to drink in order to get to the caravan. To buy time and avoid the fighting, the caravan diverts its route to the city of Yanbu, and then travels down the Muslim-free coastal region until it gets to Mecca. It’s a much longer route but it is also much safer.

The Meccan force is already depleted by the time it gets to Badr, as some men had split after hearing word that the caravan had changed routes and managed to avoid the Muslims. By the time they’ve trudged to Badr, they are wet from a rainstorm and generally unenthusiastic about fighting. Rather than engage in large-scale combat, the Meccans instead ask for a traditional Arab duel, with three men from each army (all of Qurayshi origin) fighting one-on-one. After this ends in the Muslims’ favor, Mohammed signals his archers to attack by throwing a handful of sand or rocks (uh... I guess it was an Arab custom), and it doesn’t take long for the Meccans to say “fuck this battle, fuck those people, I’m going home.”

It was not a particularly immense battle and did not have huge casualties (under 100 even going by the always-exaggerated sira sources, mostly on the Meccan side) but it was the first real army-vs-army fight of the Muslims’ young military existence, so of course it is very hyped up in the Quran. And now the battle is over. Let us discuss important topics, such as: who gets the loot from the captured Meccans and the shit the others left behind after fleeing?

The answer, of course, is Mohammed.

The spoils of war belong to Allah and the messenger, so keep your duty to Allah, and adjust the matter of your difference, and obey Allah and His messenger, if ye are (true) believers.

We will see later in the surah that a full fifth of the total booty (called khums) goes directly to Mohammed, to distribute among a list of various people, including his family members and tribal brethren. (Oh, and Allah. But Allah never claimed his share of the booty, oddly enough.) True believers don’t question this and just shut up and worship Allah; they will be rewarded with paradise. Well, fair enough. I suppose it’s neutral, if slightly unethical to lead a cult, raid and murder merchants, then engage in battle with the brethren of said murder victims and claim the largest single portion of the proceeds for yourself. Just a smidge unethical, though.

Some people were not entirely convinced of this whole arrangement. “This sounds like bullshit,” they said. Mohammed compares these people to those doubters who were reluctant to fight alongside him at Badr. They dispute The Truth.

Telling people to overlook their leader’s questionable behavior by implying that they’re doing something wrong simply for asking questions seems bad.

Now, onto Mohammed bragging about Badr. In 8:7, we learn that the Muslim army was torn between two options: attacking the trade caravan headed to Mecca in one direction or attacking the Meccan fighters in the other direction. Mohammed intended to attack the caravan, but his men were spotted by scouts and they had to change plans. They decided to march towards Badr to face the Meccans instead. That is what is being referred to here, with the “armed one” being the Meccan army and the “other” being the caravan:

Allah promised you one of the two bands (of the enemy) that it should be yours, and ye longed that other than the armed one might be yours. And Allah willed that He should cause the Truth to triumph by His words, and cut the root of the disbelievers

I dunno, Allah “willing” his believers to go kill the disbelieving army (who were, for the thousandth time, fully justified in their actions) so that “truth could triumph” strikes me as bad. I mean, I could put this entire surah as bad by that logic, but I will try to go on an ayah-by-ayah basis, just to be nice.

8:9 repeats surah three’s assertion that Allah sent thousands of angels to help out at Badr to make the Muslims more assured of themselves, which again was overkill on Allah’s part. Also, it rained the day before the battle, which Mohammed says was Allah’s way of purifying his warriors.

Then Allah sent his angels out with this speech:

I am with you. So make those who believe stand firm. I will throw fear into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Then smite the necks and smite of them each finger. That is because they opposed Allah and His messenger. Whoso opposeth Allah and His messenger, (for him) lo! Allah is severe in punishment. That (is the award), so taste it, and (know) that for disbelievers is the torment of the Fire.

Well then! It took us 14 ayat to reach our first kuffar hell counter (1) entry. And I suppose I don’t have to say that it’s bad for Allah to smite the disbelievers’ necks because they opposed Mohammed.

This is not going to be an overly happy surah, if you hadn’t guessed.

8:15 has Allah commanding Muslims to never turn away from the disbelievers while in battle. If they do, they will go to hell. That’s one way to motivate the troops, I guess. Bad.

Here’s a cute one that certainly hasn’t been used to justify all sorts of horrific behavior throughout the centuries!

Ye (Muslims) slew them not, but Allah slew them. And thou (Muhammad) threwest not when thou didst throw, but Allah threw, that He might test the believers by a fair test from Him.

(The stuff Mohammed “threw” was... sand. It was apparently some Arab battle thing, I dunno. But Allah was the one who did it to defeat the disbelievers, is the point!)

8:19 says that the Muslims will attack the Meccans again if necessary but it would really be better if the Meccans would just “desist” in their opposition to Mohammed. We’ve already seen what that means, but I’ll put it down as neutral.

8:20 is an obey Mohammed etc ayah (repeated in 8:24), with the next ayah saying the same thing. Also, the worst living things on earth are people who don’t listen to Mohammed, who are “deaf and dumb”. Allah would have made them believers if he saw good in them, but he didn’t, so oh well.

Finally, everyone should fear one of Allah’s trials, the likes of which we saw in the last surah, because Allah is severe in punishment.

Let’s put that last one and the two about disbelievers being dumb as bad and call the rest neutral. We’re already a third of the way through the surah. Doesn’t it feel great?!

NEXT TIME: The kuffar hell counter makes up for lost time!!!

The Quran Read-Along: Day 54

Ayat: 25

Good: 0

Neutral: 11 (8:1-4, 8:9-11, 8:19-21, 8:24)

Bad: 14 (8:5-8, 8:12-18, 8:22-23, 8:25)

Kuffar hell counter: 1 (8:14)

⇚ previous day | next day ⇛

#quranreadalong #surah 8 #al anfal

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stormcrow-whispers · 7 years ago

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Letter to Ronan #2

Written in Thieves Cant, in very flowery script. Attached to the last page is a drawing of a strange armored cat-like creature

Dear Dad,

It’s been a rough couple of weeks on the road since we left Holden. As if being in the woods wasn’t bad enough, we’ve had to fight a whole slew of creatures along the way. I fucking obliterated a harpy with a firebolt, which was incredible, but I can tell I’m a bit out of practice from not being allowed to use magic much back home outside of sparring or the occasional hit. It kinda reminded me of that one time I saved your ass when you took me on that mission, except with like, none of the drama. Ok, there was plenty of drama, but you know what I mean.

There was also a giant with them, which was ok until its corpse fucking kicked me as it fell. It was disgusting, I wish I could’ve taken like, 5 baths afterwards, but all they have out here are rivers and it’s horrendous. What I wouldn’t give for a spa day in the Marble District right now.

We killed a weird cat creature in Malay as part of a contract with our driver, which was interesting to say the least, but I got new jewelry and some money out of it so I guess I can’t really complain. I’m not really sure what the thing was, but I drew it after we killed it and I made a sketch for you too. I doubt you’ll know what it is either, but maybe you can hang it up somewhere so there’s more variety among my terrible drawings you have hung up.

Malay as a whole is a mess of a town, it’s more wood pilings and tents than anything, but ironically enough we have a presence there already. I found it curious considering how new and decrepit the place is, but I guess it’s better to get in at the start than to wait till it’s built. I didn’t have the pleasure of speaking with anyone there though since my party was so anxious to get going, but it was good to know I wasn’t the only one around.

We’re in Amberoak now, although we nearly died on the way here rushing through the night. It’s a bit of a long story, but suffice to say, the rest of a party thought it would be a wonderful idea to ride hard through the day and night to get here because they thought one of us was dying. He’s perfectly fine, can’t say the same for the cart though. I’m a bit frustrated we’re here instead of Tupelo though, I was hoping to get more information, but considering they lived here for some time, perhaps I’ll still hear something.

We’ve only been here a couple of hours, but I can already say with great conviction that high elves are weird as fuck. They’re too gaudy even for me when it comes to decor, and the nobles here live in the fucking trees. Who in their right mind does that? It’s terrible and I hate it. Oh and apparently the nobles march through the streets parading their wealth every morning? What the fuck is that about? It’s like they’re begging to be stolen from honestly. I was too busy sleeping after the cart ride of death to have the pleasure of seeing it though.

Speaking of sleeping, my dwarf companion (the one who called himself Fang when he introduced himself) asked his parents to let me stay in one of the nicest rooms in their estate by myself. No sharing whatsoever. It’s kind of ironic since he’s initially the one I liked the least, considering his lovely noble attitude. But I guess he’s not all that bad if he had the decency to thank me and acknowledge my kindness and hospitality, unlike the rest of the group. The beds here are even better than the ridiculous one I have at home if you can believe it. It's like sleeping on a cloud.

These people still irritate the hell out of me. I know you said it would be good for me to be around “different” people, but they do nothing but get on my nerves. Half of them don’t know what real hardship is or what it’s like to work and fight tooth and nail for what you have, the other half have no idea how to be subtle or handle conversations with strangers with any sort of tact. Everything is black and white to them, it’s honestly infuriating, no one wants to hear the other side or consider a differing opinion, and people tiptoe around things instead of calling them out like they should. And god forbid you don’t put things nicely. If this little escapade has taught me anything, it’s that I’d rather live in a den of thieves the rest of my life than have to play nice and be mindful of people’s feelings every second of the day. It’s ironic considering no one seems to take my thoughts and feelings into account, they just do as they please and ignore my opinion on the rare chance they ask for it. Hell I tried to give them very good advice about how to approach potentially suspicious people, and they completely ignored me until two of the more well liked people in the group reiterated what I said. I even told my lovely sob story about mum and you and the bullshit we put up with as tieflings in Holden, and the “accident”, but it all fell on deaf ears of course, because everyone seems to think they have it so much worse or that they know so much better. It’s just as well I suppose. As convincing as the story is and regardless of how much some of it is rooted in truth, it still cracks me up because it’s SO out of character for you in every sense of the word.

I have a lot of complaints if you couldn’t tell. They’d be so much more fun to share while drinking wine and sitting on the roof or on your couch back home. But anyway.

The group learned some information pertaining to their own quests, some of it was interesting, but it’s really nothing useful to my current job. If by chance you think I should pass it along anyway I can, but for now I won’t. This letter is already getting kind of long and, if the dwarf’s parents are to be believed, digging into some of the stuff we learned could be very dangerous. You already lead a dangerous enough life as it is, and I’m not about to make it any worse by dragging you into this mess I’ve found myself in too. Trust me, it’s the last thing you want.

We’re going into the mountains soon, so you might not hear from me again until we get to Ormskirk. If I can write before then I will. I’m not thrilled with the prospect of going into the mountains, but I guess they can’t be too much worse than the forest. I hope at the very least they aren’t as annoyingly dirty, I’m so tired of picking leaves and twigs and brushing dirt out of my feathers.

I miss you tons and I wish you were here. I’ve been keeping an eye out for a good place to open that future tea shop of yours, I’ll let you know if I find any good prospects. Amberoak is probably not the best place for it though, I’ll tell you that much right now. Because if the weirdness and the gaudiness irritates me of all people, I’m sure it would drive you insane. And anyway, they already have a well established shop here, I’m not sure you want that kind of competition. Their local tea is pretty amazing though, and so are the weird sap suckers they put in it. I bought you a whole bunch so you could try it for yourself. Maybe you can serve them both in your tea shop one day.

I hope you’re doing well and hope to hear from you soon. I’m still not used to this traveling nonsense or not being able to stroll up to your door to chat when I feel like it.

Lots of Love,

Kallista

P.S.

I'm not entirely sure how pleased they'll be about me using our lovely expedited post to send a gift and a personal letter, but you know I don't give two shits what they think as long as they pay me. Besides, I wasn't about to risk it getting lost or damaged or spoiled or whatever else with the regular post.

P.P.S. Say hi to Lawrence for me! Unless you’ve broken up for the millionth time, then I guess don’t say anything? I never know with you two, it’s exhausting to keep track of your mess of a relationship.

#writings #kallista writes a letter

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sweetmisschesire · 8 years ago

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Voltron AU part 4

There’s a stunned silence for sure

before a slew of that’s ridiculous and that can’t be possibles ring out

everyone’s just sort of shouting at each other and shiro yells over them to get them to stop

he asks pidge to explain themselves

pidge talks about how when they were fighting the two soldiers on there own that the felidana looked familiar to them and they couldn't figure out why

it wasn’t until the other attacked them and took off their helmet revealing that they were matt that pidge realized why

the eyes

they were lance’s

no mistaking that

keith and hunk argue that it can’t be possible, that someone else could have eyes his color and that the felidana wasn't human

pidge insists and argues back that it is lance and shiro has to break up the fight again

he tells everyone to head to the med bay to get treated

keith’s shoulder is reset and he’s put in pod to completely heal

hunk goes off to get some rest (after some insisting from shiro)

shiro then talks with pidge with allura and coran present and pidge explains what happened again and who they know that that’s lance

they don’t have any proof but they know its him

and they’re getting more and more upset and they’re crying again cause this is too much and no one believes them

and shiro just sort of hugs pidge until they calm down

he tells pidge he believes them

the pidge looks at him in surprise as allura and coran tell them that it is possible

the galra are known for committing all types off terrible experiments on their victims

including those involving manipulation of DNA

and that there was a chance this was lance

it could also still not be but they really had no way to be sure

bit of a time skip here to when keith and hunk are awake

and they’re filled in on the rest of the information

and keith is still really skeptical, but part of him is wondering how much of that is denial

and hunk is no taking this well, he feels like he’s going to puke

it’s at this time the ship is contacted

and when allura pulls up the feed, there’s prince lotor sitting in his throne staring down at them with disinterest

he aloofly mentions their latest “floundering stunt” and mentions it as a minor nuisance

and that they would recollect the black paladin and all the aliens they collected

this pisses keith off who goes to get in the glara’s face

but pidge beats him to it

and they just start cursing at them and screaming

and eventually manage to get out

“WHAT THE HELL DID YOU TO THEM”

lotor plays dumb to mock pidge and acts as though he has no idea who they are talking about

and pidge tells them bullshit, curing at them more

“my brother, lance what the fuck did you do to them you purple, furry bastard?!”

lotor feigns understanding at who they meant “ah them”

he then gets this sadistic and sickening grin

“aha yes the blue paladin and the human, write the improvement don’t you think”

at this point there’s just this feeling of just, sicking realization and confirmation that that really was lance and to makes matters worse the other was pidge’s brother

coran is shell shocked, he has no idea how to react to this situation

allura is seething

words cannot describe how mad and disgusted she is with the galra’s actions, absolutely appalled they would go so far

lotor sits there mailing watching their reactions

it’s amusing to them

he tells them about how that galra soldier was sent in as an undercover agent of sorts

and how he was suited with that fake quintessence and the technology to trick the blue lion, though of course they already knew that, but then he mentions how the soldier was also given the ability to manipulate

he could now easily convince anyone of anything with enough time and patience thanks to haggar

including the idea to turn on a teammate who had done no wrong

and the way they treated lance the moment that galra arrived to the time he disappeared comes back on them, and how he avoided them and how long it took them to notice

even if it was the galra’s fault they did it the guilt is still there

(told you there’d be a reason they were ooc)

and lotor goes on to mock them and tell them about how when the blue lion was damaged and the galra “injured” he used the opportunity to disable the cameras and take the blue paladin, he sent him off to haggar and then sent off ship on a sort autopilot into a nearby star, so that way it would look like lance had left and they’d have no way to track the ship to confirm it

lotor keeps going telling them about how lance was put through the fighting ring much like shiro was and how he actually quickly made his way to champion

all the while being experimented on by haggar and having things changed and enhanced to make him stronger

and during all of this they were destroying his mind

slowly breaking him down

lotor talks about the things he would say and do to lance in order to break him further and it’ horrible to hear

then he mentions how they had managed to recapture matt, who had escaped after being champion for a short while

he had become the next champion after shiro escaped, so they decided to do the same to matt as they were doing to lance

and this cycle repeated over and over for months matt broke after 7

lance kept going but by this point is when haggar began to manipulate his DNA, to increase his abilities

it would increase his physical strength yes, but more so his agility and speed and it would heighten his sense, a must for a sharpshooter

and this is not a painless procedure

it’s excruciating and lance was awake for all of it, for every single procedure

at 10 months he begins to break

and the last two months are spent finishing the DNA manipulation and his mind breaking the rest of the way

Lotor tells them all of this with a smile on his face

about how they were now the galra’s best generals

the perfect weapons

and that perhaps the black paladin would be too

lotor didn’t really care if they recaptured shiro or not, it was more so haggar who wanted him back to complete what they were doing to him

allura demands to know why they did this aand why he was telling them all of this

lotor tells them that haggar wanted a way to break voltron, and what better way than to turn one of the paladins into one of their own so to speak

matt was just a “bonus” and the two worked quite well together as a team

they haven’t lost yet, save to the paladins, but that own’t last forever

haggar will keep increasing their strength and testing them till they can tear the paladins apart ease

but his reason for using the paladin and the human was because he thought it would be amusing to watch someone tear their “friends” apart, even more so for a brother to kill his own sister

Pidge is sickened that they did that to them, and that matt was going to be used to deal the finishing blwo to them

shiro is standing there in disbelief, he knew the galra were merciless, but he didn’t think they would go so far

keith can’t describe how angry he is, he wants to yell, he wants to fight, he wants to fucking punch that smile off of lotor’s face

hunk at this point has gotten sick, his nausea had been building up with his emotional turmoil and he couldn’t hold it back anymore

coran is terrified that they have done this to them, and is afraid that there may not be a way to reverse it

and that they may have to kill them if there’s no other way to save them

allura has never hated the galra more except for when finding out they had killed all of her people

she vows to makes them pay for this

lotor then brings up

“as for why I’m telling you?”

“because there’s nothing you can do to stop us”

he then cuts the transmission leaving them there with all that knowledge and guilt and pain to dwell on

and that’s the au so far

feel free to ask me questions

i may do snippets from this or a whole fic

once i’m done with this year, since finals are coming up

but i’m still happy to answer questions about this au

#voltron #From bad to worse voltron au #voltron au #lance #langst #lotor #pidge #matt holt #shiro #keith #hunk #allura #coran #haggar #galra

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sheepydraws · 8 years ago

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And So They Lived (6/6)

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5

Ulrich pretty much just dropped into bed by the time they got back to their room, but after his mid-freak out nap earlier and the late dinner that Jeremie had squirreled away for him Odd was too wired for sleep. He sat down at his desk and rummaged around for his favorite pen and a fresh notebook. It was spiral bound with a flimsy cardboard cover. Odd dicked around for a few minutes, scratching his name into the purple cover and then the eye of XANA under it, but he was stalling. He knew where he had to begin.

I brought my dog to school with me because I was afraid that I wouldn’t have any friends here. I have plenty now, but only because I brought Kiwi and Ulrich had the balls to dognap him.

Odd wrote all night. He kept expecting to reach a stopping point, but the words kept coming. Perhaps it was because he didn’t just include XANA attacks. He wrote what the world thought really happened, too. He wrote about Sissi, and the shitty things she did to them, and the shitty things they did to her. He spent more ink than he would care to admit on Yumi and Ulrich’s ‘let’s fight-let’s fuck’ relationship. He wrote about William and his betrayal. He wrote right through Lyoko’s final summer as they took everything apart piece by piece.

Something strange happened. A narrative emerged. Events took on a shape. Days didn’t just end, arcs did. Things didn’t just change, they grew. When he stopped to explain what he thought were simple things to someone who might not understand, stuff he had never stopped to think about finally made sense to him. He knew it all sounded crazy, but as a story it was a pretty cool one. He remembered that it had been an adventure.

He finished the dismantling of the supercomputer and the scanners sometime around one in the morning. Then he kept going. He wrote about school, and Elizabeth, and trying to live without Lyoko, and how it should have been easy. He got a bit disgusting and sappy, and may have made some terrible metaphors about Elizabeth’s eyes and the night sky, and he might have cried a bit about how it was never going to be the same between him and his best friends, but they were always going to be his best friends, whether anyone else remembered all they had done for him or not.

Ulrich woke him at seven. He was hunched over his desk, drooling on his own hand.

“I have to give this to Elizabeth.” He said before he had even sat up, although it probably came out more like, “I hafta givisss t’Lizze.”

“What?” Ulrich said as his head popped out the neck of the sweater he was pulling on.

“I said, ‘I love you’.”

Ulrich had just kicked off his pajama pants and stood there in his boxers for a minute, staring at Odd. Then he smiled. “Yeah. I love you, too.”

In the cafeteria Odd wolfed down two bowls of cereal and a hot chocolate before Elizabeth arrived. He got up and caught her before she had even gotten in the food line.

“Here.” He said, and he placed the notebook in her hands. “It’s everything.”

She idly flipped through the first few pages and then kept flipping. “Whoa.” She said. “It-“ She stopped on a certain page. “Am I in this?”

“Of course.” Odd said.

She closed the notebook and clasped it to her chest for a minute. She had this little smile that Odd though was going to turn into a laugh, but it became a kiss instead. Not a long kiss, not when Elizabeth was blocking the cafeteria door, and Ulrich, Jeremie, and Aelita needed to be kept from cardiac arrest, but a good one.

“Is that why you’ve been so crazy?” Ulrich said the second Odd was sitting down again. “You’ve been falling for Sissi?”

Odd gave him a mysterious smile. Then, because he hated that kind of bullshit, he said, “It’s why I wasn’t in our room last night.”

Ulrich’s eyes bugged out while Jeremie and Aelita laughed.

“You realize,” Jeremie said, “That once Yumi gets here, you’re going to have to tell us everything.”

“Yeah. I think I can manage that.”

It is impossible to separate this movie from the chaos caused by its trailers. Last year instead of the laughably bad slew of christmas movies everyone seemed to be talking about a trailer that had premiered along side “To The Top” (a movie whose only discerning feature is having ten percent on rotten tomatoes). It was rather tricky to discuss, though, since the trailer did not reveal a plot, title, or release date. It seemed like an advertisement for a boarding school, complete with bored student volunteers, bad lighting, and bland pop songs. The camera recording this waste of tuition runs low on battery and is shuffled around before being plugged in, at which point the screen slowly goes white and a symbol flickers across it before disappearing. Aside from a slide with the words ‘coming soon’ that was the trailer in it’s entirety.

People started talking, but thanks to hefty non-disclosure agreements, no one came forward to explain what was going on. The second and third trailers appeared almost simultaneously a month later, and caused even more confusion. One looked like a sci-fi thriller, the other a young adult romance. However, they shared the same title, Code Lyoko, and the setting and symbol from the first trailer.

Finally, writer and director Odd Della Robbia casually mentioned that he was behind the project while doing an interview with Teen Vouge. The director is best known for his work on Buried in Stars the sleeper hit of the summer movie season two years ago, best described as the surrealist, most vividly technicolor rom-com to ever grace the big screen. When the interviewer asked about the discrepancy between all three trailers, as well as the secrecy that surrounded filming, Della Robbia responded with,

“When I pitched Code Lyoko the first thing they said was, ‘How are we gonna market this? Is it a heartwarming coming of age story or a YA sci-fi thriller?’ and I said, ‘If I can’t convince you it’s both by the end of this, then we might as well scrap the whole project.’ I guess audacity still counts for something.”

‘Genre defying’ is a greatly overused compliment, and in my opinion, it dismisses the importance of genre. There’s something to be said for going into a horror movie and getting a horror. Of course playing too tightly to a genre’s guidelines without shaking something up can be dull, but so can a movie that tries too hard to include many different elements without properly following through on any of them. Code Lyoko, however, does manage to step outside genre lines without over-burdening itself trying to be three stories at once.

Della Robbia deftly mixes over the top action and teenage drama with the keen eyes of someone who has been there before. Though the movie follows several different threads, the core of the story is the small group of friends it follows, and Della Robbia never forgets that. Unlike Della Robbia’s work so far the style is simple and sharp, the colors muted and the lighting high contrast. Even the virtual world of Lyoko, which is a bit brighter and more cartoony, has graphics simplified to the point where they are almost cubist in feel.

This serves the plot well. The main conflict at the beginning of the movie is that Walter (played by John Beck) finds an abandoned computer, which contains a virtual world and Gemma (Gina Pedroza), a young girl who claims that she is a real person who is unable to devirtualize. Walter makes it his mission to fix this, and accidentally begins recruiting people to help his cause. Unfortunately, keeping the computer on so that Walter can attempt to understand the code that will free Gemma allows another program in the computer known as ZENAT to wreak havoc on the outside world. While this could be a movie all on it’s own, the group’s interactions with each other, as well as their parents and other students, along with several satisfying twists, completely fill out the story and make it unforgettable.

Interestingly, the technology examined in Code Lyoko bears a striking resemblance to advances in virtual reality being proposed by Nintendo that are currently being developed in a team with Aelita Schiffer and Jeremie Belpois [Article Here], and though the technology isn’t the showcase here, it is rather shocking to think that this film could theoretically happen in five years time. Although that is not the only element that lends Code Lyoko uncanny realism.

The mixture of high school drama and thwarting an evil invasion shouldn’t work this well outside of an after school cartoon, and it’s not just the depth that Della Robbia gives all the story lines, as well as the fantastic acting, which allows these seemingly dissonant themes to gel. In a subsequent interview with The New Yorker after the film’s release Della Robbia said, “I remember when I first asked my wife to read a draft of the story. As soon as I gave it to her I started to overthink. She told me she liked it, but I said, ‘There’s kids fighting giant robots!…Are you sure I shouldn’t take it out? Or make it a metaphor for standardized testing or something?’ and she said, ‘When I think about high school I don’t think about taking standardized tests, I think about fighting monsters.’ so she saved the monsters.”

By injecting it with sci-fi terror Della Robbia has stripped the fantasy from teenage coming of age stories, allowing it to resonate long after you leave the theater. Five stars.

#code lyoko #multi-chapter #FINAL CHAPTER!!!!!#If you read all of this thank you so much #i'll be so grateful if this makes even one or two people happy #I spent a lot of time on it and I really love it #odd della robbia #oh god there were so many movies in this #sissi delmas #oddXsissi #fanfiction #and so they lived #6/6

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