#pinefluffvariant

[randomfoggytiger]

Hello again, “Mourning the Lost” anon here. Thank you so much for the recs, I was struggling to find fics set directly after the end of This is Not Happening but before Mulder is exhumed; I’m working my way through the list! I noticed your reply to my ask had “Part 1/3” in the title, should I be expecting parts 2 and 3 sometime soon? 👀

Collector's Edition: Season 8, Mourning the Lost (Part 2/3)

My, oh my, how the vacay time flies~.

Yes indeedy, there are a lengthy three parts to your fic request-- because I, for one, can't figure out how to do things by half measure.

Loose chronological order below~

@alsoablankslate/tabulaxrasa‘s (LJ, tripod) Trepidatious

She dressed all in black almost unconsciously. She isn't a widow, she reproached herself. He isn't dead. But she cannot bear anything brighter.

They looked at her like she is a widow. She doesn't want them to look at all.

Within Scully remembers how rich Mulder made her life. 

baronessblixen’s 

A dream, a nightmare (Ao3)

It’s not a conscious decision to grip the shirt, to lie down in his bed, her head against his pillow. This is my side of the bed, Scully, she thinks, seeing him grin at her. She doesn’t need to close her eyes to dream of him. It’s faint, but the shirt still smells like him. Involuntary memory, the mental image of Mulder says to her, walking around in her mind, in her last memory of him. 

Within Scully remembers the night before Mulder left.

Missing You

There was nothing she could do. No matter if there was music, or the whirring of the computer, or Doggett making conversation. The fact remained that there was no Mulder. No mid-day jokes to make her giggle. No humming of random songs that would get stuck in her head, too. No sunflower seeds cracking. She misses that noise the most.

Pre-TINH Scully is bereft in her partner's absence.

Not Today (Ao3)

Mulder used to keep a few mugs on the lower shelf just for her, knowing she couldn’t reach up high. The first time, so early in their partnership, he laughed when she tried her best, on her tiptoes, her blouse riding up. He handed her a mug, promised he’d think of something. He did; he kept his promise.

But that was years ago.

Post TINH Scully refuses to finish moving out of Mulder’s apartment. 

SusanProto’s Dealing with Disappointment 

I wake up each morning and wonder if this will be the day a clue falls into my lap or a piece of information finds its way onto my desk.

I go to bed each night disappointed.

Post Without Skinner observes Scully boldly pressing onward. 

@mytardisisparked's (Ao3) Shirts (Ao3)

Her skin crawls to think of what people might say, not because she’s ashamed in any way, but because she knows that no one will ever understand the depth of her relationship with Mulder; no one can grasp exactly what he meant to her and what she meant to him. They will think of tawdry nights out on the road or locked doors in their downstairs office, rather than the encompassing love and comfort and friendship that lay between them. The rumors will make their relationship sound cheap and dirty when it was anything but. 

And then there are the people who will romanticize it, who will imagine her grief and try to sympathize when they have no real idea of how large the gaping hole in her heart is. 

Post Without-Three Words Scully wears Mulder's shirts.

@ghostbustermelanieking/skuls’s one in five billion - Chapter 2: “You can’t die. Please don’t die.” 

“Mulder,” she says, choked on tears. “Mulder. Mulder.” He is unresponsive, which is strange because he always has something to say. She rocks him slightly. She has never held him, not like this, not when she wanted to. 

TINH Scully begs Mulder back to life. 

pinebluffvariant’s Dresser (prompt #3)

She’d taken great care in selecting his outfit, down to the details: she had carefully searched his surprisingly sturdy thrift store dresser and folded his best dress socks, underwear, and tie into a silk pouch. You shouldn’t get silk wet, so she didn’t cry. She held her breath the whole time.

Post TINH ISTJ flies with Mulder’s body. 

@seek-its-opposite's all the old familiar places (Ao3)

She thinks that grief is an X-File, and wouldn’t Mulder find that fitting. She and Mulder (she and Mulder, she and Mulder) once chased a monster that presented itself as its victims’ worst fears. Grief is that monster without the bare-faced cunning, the obvious motive, the wink at the camera. Grief is that monster in the shadows: a dark kaleidoscopic thing that changes as soon as it’s recognized. It hit her as a whispered “agent” and Skinner’s hand on her shoulder and her feet leaving the floor. It was the vague, throbbing sense that she should fight her way out of Doggett’s arms. It was blades of grass slicing the lifelines on her palms. Wild eyes, denial, a pounding head, everything muffled and blurred and not enough air. The next day, it was forgetting that she’d called her mother already.

After that it was as slick and as tangible as the shirt that she hugged in her sleep. 

Post TINH Mulder’s legacy lives on through Scully, her family, Doggett, and the files. 

@sigritandtheelves's This Last Moment

She holds his hand.

Skinner finds her this way, hours later, expression vacant, still touching him. She is a beautiful thing made of glass that has broken.

“You can’t,” he says, but she only stares at him. “You can’t stay. We need to bring him home,” he insists.

At this her mask trembles. Home. Bring him home. That’s all she wanted to do. She won’t let go when Skinner touches her shoulder. “I just need this one moment. This last one.”

But when she says the word last, something cracks. 

Post TINH Scully (and Three Words Scully) works through the grief of Mulder’s loss (and his distanced resurgence.) 

spookycc's Together, Broken

Fox Mulder. The nameplate stares me in the face, and I pick it up, almost reverently, just as I suspect Agent Scully does. He is the reason she goes on, in the face of all the obstacles we've encountered in our search.

TINH Doggett feels like he's failed Scully.

@starwalker42's (Ao3) febuwhump day 3: immortality

As she stands over his grave, watching the dirt fall from her fingers, all she can think is that he must be out there, somewhere, waiting patiently for her. That seems like something Mulder would do.

Post TINH Scully is afraid she'll won't be able to join Mulder on the other side.

@nachosncheezies's The Bet (Ao3)

She had been wearing his sweatshirt - her sweatshirt - to sleep whenever the weather and the tiny furnace in her belly would allow it. 

AU-- Mulder and Scully married in the Pilot... which complicates her grief after TINH.

@all-these-ghosts/all_these_ghosts's Pray the Light

She calls in sick the day after the funeral. She does not apply for bereavement leave; she cannot bear the thought of filling out the form. She’s filled it out before, for her father, for Missy; there is a blank space that says relationship to deceased and there is nothing, nothing she could write in that space.

So she calls in sick and she drives to his apartment to feed the fish, and then she takes off her shoes and curls herself into a ball on his couch. After some indeterminate amount of time - ten minutes, half a day - she gets up and goes home. And the next day, and the next.

It’s a routine and a relief. The drive to Alexandria is the only prayer that doesn’t taste like ash in her mouth.

Post TINH Scully and Skinner are coping silently.

@scullyphile's (Ao3) missed calls

The worst time of day was between one and four a.m., when she lay awake missing him, especially once she realized she couldn’t sleep because she was hoping he would call.

Post TINH Scully clings to phone, hoping INTP will call.

@cecilysass/cecily_sass/Cecily Sasserbaum's Opposition And Synthesis

Is it the nature of all things to be paired?, Scully wondered.

<Maybe it is. Maybe it is part of a divine design that I do not yet understand fully.>

Post TINH Scully can't fill the hole Mulder's absence has created.

@i-gaze-at-scully/i_gaze_at_scully's Peaches to lovers 

Oh Scully, he murmurs. Don’t cry. She touches her finger to her cheek, surprised at the rivulet she finds making its way to her lips. The salt reminds her of sunflower seeds and she can hear the crack, see him smile around the shell.

Post TINH Scully avoids the memories in her apartment.

Euphrosyne's Starlight

She has taken to seeing Mulder again.

It upset her less than it should; less than it would Skinner, or Doggett, or even Frohike, if she chose to tell them.

Post TINH Scully sits alone in her apartment with her secrets.

@cuminspice's Without You (Ao3)

She lightly touched the top of the headstone, and then traced her fingers across the raised granite letters. M-U-L-D-E-R.

“Mulder it’s me,” Scully said quietly.

Post TINH Scully talks to Mulder's headstone.

@agentwhalesong/sadandangstyagent's (Ao3) Could It Be Any Harder?

“I wish you had been there to see it,” she completes after a few seconds of silence.

Her smile slowly fades as she comes to the conclusion that the answer isn’t coming. She knows that there is no way that he will get out of that grave and suddenly say, “wow, Scully, you’ve really changed since the last time I saw you.”

Post TINH Scully visits Mulder's grave.

TLynn's (LJ, XF Fanfic) Writhing Towards An Unforeseen Divination

Dana Scully was never one to believe in fate or destiny. She refused to accept that her path was already set out for her, whether it be by some unknown and unseen force or her own parents, and she was proud of the direction she had taken herself in the time she had been on this planet. But at the same time, she clung to the belief that everything happened for a reason. There was a reason she went into medicine, there was a reason she met Jack and Daniel, and there was a reason she pursued a career with The Bureau. There was a reason she was partnered with Mulder, there was a reason she believed his stories, and there was a reason she fell in love with him.

But there was nothing to convince her there was a reason for his death. 

Post TINH Scully's baby remains her only anchor.

bellefleur’s Easter Vigil

In this land of miracles, the barren conceive, and the dead live again. Resurrection is possible. Perhaps it is even to be expected. She isn't sure, since she no longer understands the rules.

All she knows for sure is that he was dead. She held his lifeless body. She touched his decaying flesh. She stood watch as they sealed him in the casket and then lowered him into the ground.

He was dead. And then he wasn't.

He is risen.

Deadalive Scully thinks of her waxing, waning faith in miracles.

Thanks for reading~

Enjoy!