#literally read the entire transcript of the pilot just for sequence of events

[swinging-stars-from-satellites]

msr + world war ii

the way I could technically spin this to fit with the actual canon in-universe AU (6×03 Triangle) but like... I'm actually gonna do a twist on the 50s AU I started trying to write while I was brainfried from a cold this past week lol. this is so random and probably won't make any sense without reading my tags on this post lol

Binary Star

~2k words | WWII AU Pilot | pre-MSR | AO3

Dana Scully nearly lost her younger brother from violent illness when she was eight years old. What she did lose was the proper use of her left leg, but what she gained was an intense need for understanding of the human body. It's only intensified as she grows older, fights her way into medical school right as boys her brother's age are fighting their way through enemy lines in Europe.

Young men in the prime of their lives with the lives they planned to lead stolen from them see a young, pretty woman with a crippled leg using a cane coming to treat their injuries and they have one of two reactions: they either look sidelong at her with scorn, or they start crying. All the doctors are healthy, said one boy, her younger brother's age, and no one can understand each other. That's the moment Dana knows she chose the right profession.

Fox Mulder lost his little sister when he was twelve, and gained an intense need to understand why, and what happened. His father was a government contractor before the War, and got back in with the secret services as soon as the States decided to step in. Fox dodged the draft because of the familial privilege that couldn't save his kid sister, and because the FBI wanted him on the home front. Maybe his father couldn't bear to sacrifice another child to whatever happens behind the scenes in those smoke-filled government offices where they claim war plans are made, when really it's so much more than that.

Dana has seen things that she can't explain. Men with their flesh eaten away, that she can only treat with dangerous doses of painkillers; some who came home with fifty years added to their age after only being gone for a few months; a nurse who exhibited symptoms of radiation exposure despite never leaving the country and another who died painfully of a tumor that Dana has only ever seen in illustrations, eating through her sinus cavity into her brain. That last is the one that piques Dana's medical curiosity; the woman had insisted with a surprising gravity and calmness that she'd been abducted and experimented on. The vividness of her descriptions, of white light and fear she could never fully remember, was such that Dana has to doubt it was all contrived, or a symptom of the cancer. She's heard talk of conspiracies, the government conducting secret experiments in New Mexico or other unlikely places; her sister believes it all, but Dana questions. She wants to know.

Mulder isn't expecting the knock on the door of the basement office; he isn't even supposed to be down here. There are more important things to worry about and work on than the mysterious x-files, what with a war going on all around them. But there's a folder down here with his sister's name on it, because if any case can be considered unexplained, it's Samantha's abduction. His father had ordered an FBI investigation, but Mulder thinks it was all for show. He knows a little too much about what goes on down in Roswell, New Mexico; just enough that he keeps a lookout over his shoulder. No one knows he came down here again, so he pretends he doesn't know he's always putting himself in danger and he quips that there's no one down here, just the FBI's most unwanted.

Dana was told she might find the man she's looking for down here, in an unused office full of files. She wonders if her answers are down here, or if Fox Mulder is holding them in his hands. He pulls off a pair of reading glasses and looks at her with mild surprise. "Agent Mulder," she says, resting both hands primly on the buffed, comfortable handle of her cane, "I was told you might be able to help me."

He listens, absolutely intent, to the little doctor who limps into his office and rattles off a description that lines up with half the abductee stories he's heard. He has permission to take a case in Oregon, teenagers disappearing and coming back wrong or broken. It sounds a little too much like the boys who are sent home from the front lines, and a little too unearthly; they're sending him to make sure whatever facet of their conspiracy it is doesn't get out. So, on impulse, he invites Dana Scully to come along with him. He doesn't have a partner right now, he says — Diana was sent to a Naval base overseas — and he could use her medical expertise. Maybe they can help each other.

"Do you believe in the existence of extraterrestrials?" He asks when he hands her the file, and Dana scoffs. Her patients have told her some terrible, inexplicable tales, but no matter what she doesn't see behind the scenes of this war, she's never given credence to the notion.

"Logically," she replies, "I would have to say no. Given the distances needed to travel from the far distances of space, the energy requirements would exceed any kind of craft's capabilities."

Mulder's eyes brighten and he smirks. "That, Dr. Scully, is conventional wisdom. What do we do when, in the case of these kids or your patient who died, convention and science don't offer us the answers we need?"

"The answers are there, you just have to know where to look." This is the tenet she has built her life on. Her search for knowledge began when she was eight years old, the first time she questioned God and the world she lives in, and has led her here. And when she's on a train the next day, sitting across from Mulder's sleeping form, she wonders if this is the right place to look.

Mulder squints one eye open, watching the little doctor, or maybe little spy, as she watches things he can't see pass by outside the window. She's got bright, curious eyes; he'd seen it in how intensely she argued with him about the existence of life beside their own, in the way she fixed him in her gaze like she was trying to figure him out. He's still doing the same; he's just as curious about her as she seems to be about the world around them.

He rolls onto his side, reaches across the space between them and carefully taps her left knee — the one she favors, pretty heavily by the worn look of the top of her cane. "A doctor with a gimp leg?" He asks, maybe a little bit teasingly just to see the reaction he'll elicit from her, when she looks at him.

Dana is used to the questions about her disability, but she's also used to the disapproval or doubt in her soundness as a physician that tends to come with it. Mulder, sprawled across the seat in front of her, seems purely curious. She blinks down at him, finding it strange because when they're standing, he's so much taller, and folds her hands on top of her knee.

"Polio," she explains. "When I was a girl. One of my brothers nearly died, I came up crippled. That's the reason I went into medicine, actually."

Mulder nods, like he understands. Later, in a dark hotel room, he'll tell her how the loss of his sister sent him running to solve mysteries that others wouldn't care about; they might just be more similar than either of them thinks. Their innate curiosity, longing for knowledge, to understand, draws them together. They both want to understand each other, as well.

Dana isn't an investigator, but Mulder is a mystery she wants to solve. He touches her gently, hesitantly, when she impulsively flies into his arms, he flinches at the flames when the hotel lights on fire and then turns angry. His entire face lights up in a tremendous, all-consuming grin when she starts laughing in disbelief in the cemetery and he catches her when her cane slips and she loses her footing on the wet terrain. He calls her by her last name, not her title or "Miss" like she's used to hearing; it reminds her of how people have always referred to her father.

For a moment, it's like there's no war; she forgets about Bill Jr. deployed with the Navy, forgets about Charlie deserting from boot camp and never calling. She forgets, for a second, that she is not and will never be normal or whole, and that she's caught up in a mystery that might put her in danger.

Scully argues with him, almost constantly. She's the skeptical daughter of a Navy captain who's spent her life fighting for a place in a profession that would have her be only a nurse, secondary to everyone else. She questions everything, won't believe a word of his theories. But she listens. She doesn't disregard him, doesn't tell him he'd be better off codebreaking or spying on the Axis; she wants to learn, wants scientific answers for unscientific questions, and when she's caught in a corner, barely staying upright because it's muddy out and she's staring down into an empty grave, she laughs. She doesn't rail against her own lack of knowledge, doesn't argue the way she's been since the moment they met. She looks up at him, something intense shining in her eyes, and she laughs. Mulder cannot comprehend her.

She loses her cane trying to keep up with him in the woods, trying to either hide from or find the source of the blinding lights hovering over the forest. He's not sure which it is; if she thinks they're in danger, or if she wants to know more. Billy Miles, comatose only hours before, is in the light, with Theresa Nemman in his arms. The wind picks up, the light blinds him, and he's not sure where Scully is or if she's seeing this; he hopes she is.

She shouts his name over the sound of the wind whipping through the branches, and he finds her limping through the undergrowth, shining her light toward the ground. He drops to his knees and digs around in the brush for a minute, counting the seconds. He wonders if his watch will have lost time again. Scully balances herself against his shoulder, staring up at him with wide eyes.

"It was incredible," he breathes, and she nods.

Her mind is playing air raid sirens, instincts shouting at her to get out of there, that the light came from a foreign plane or weaponry; nothing she's ever heard of can hover that way, though, and she knows Mulder is thinking of flying saucers. She can see it in his eyes, feels it mirrored in herself when she sees the sheriff's boy and the medical examiner's daughter, alive and whole. It's absolute wonder.

She came here looking for answers, but found something she cannot explain. No answer, just more questions. She's found a mystery, or maybe two. Maybe a friend. Maybe more.

He knows, as well as he knows the back of his own hand, that there are, in fact, more important things to worry about. Abductions by extraterrestrials, experiments done by the government or secret services, should be secondary to winning the war, but what if the two go hand in hand? What if the same is true of him and Scully; she's small and curious and determined enough to be a soldier herself, fits into the mysteries he's after like she was born to be there.

Neither of them expected to find each other in the midst of the tension wrought by the war. Maybe neither of them knew where to look.