#thinking about scully crying into mulder as she tells him that she knows he'll find all of his answers but she'll NEVER find hers

[carefulfears]

this dramatic ass blog post on ghouli.net about scully's eyes...mulder's kid fr

[deathsbestgirl]

thinking about conduit & paper hearts & closure.

scully tells mulder to stop looking for samantha. he tells her he's walking into that room everyday. he will not give up on that girl until they find a body. she follows him, but she stops him from digging.

no one but scully has ever listened to mulder, would bear witness to his grief, followed him. and as kevin is chasing after his sister, mulder shielding his body with his own, sitting in the dirt. mulder tells kevin that ruby probably isn't coming back. no one ever told mulder to stop looking for samantha because they actually cared. he didn't want kevin to live with the same burden. even though he knows he can't stop, won't stop.

thinking about "i used to think missing was worse than dead because you never know what happened. now that i know, i'm glad my wife's not here. she got luckier." it's part of both mulder's & scully's fear about samantha.

paper hearts is what scully thinks happened to samantha. she honestly cant face it much better than he can. but she does because it's samantha, his entire existence. she can't protect him, but she can be there. she can stand between mulder & roche, mulder & skinner. she can help him find the truth and she'll be there with him when the dust settles.

in paper hearts, she kneels next to him and helps him dig this time. in closure, she digs up anything she can find about samantha.

scully never tells him to stop again until sein und zeit/closure. she's crying as she holds him on the floor. after losing his father, now his mother...he has to know. and only then does scully truly start to look. she does what he can't, what he won't. she finds files, she talks to the nurse, they find her journal. scully holds mulder's hand over sam's journal. so similar to the one scully was once writing to him on her deathbed, that she decides he'll never read but he finds it anyway. (completely unlike teena who burned everything, leaving him with nothing. sam & scully wanted him to have something. they wanted him to know.)

they always do for each other what the other can't. scully is always trying to protect mulder, tell him what his parents should have.

[the-spooky-alien]

Day 15 of Fictober !

Fandom : X-Files with the prompt "What are you doing ?"

Tagging @today-in-fic and @xffictober2022

-

He wakes up.

In the darkness, he hears his sister screaming for help, a remnant of his dream. A remnant of his childhood, of Stratego games and warm Christmas. Of the girl, lost in the stars, young and naive, believing her big brother would come for her.

Fox, help me !

(He tries so hard. Every time he comes too close, Samantha's shadow slips from his outstretched fingers, leaving behind nothing but the bitter taste of guilt on his tongue.)

The room is cold, or maybe the cold comes from somewhere deep in his soul. His body shivers, goosebumps rising on his arms. Glancing to his side, he notices Scully, curled in a ball, has hogged all the covers, leaving him with nothing.

Even the sight of her, soft and warm, isn't enough to ease the weight settling on him. With an inaudible sigh, he gets to his feet, the cool floor chilling him further until he doesn't know if he'll ever get warm again.

Her living-room is awashed with the street's lights. For a moment, he stays still, studying the peacefulness of the room, witnessing how alive it is under the moon's rays. It feels vibrant, like Scully is, and he can't help but feel out of place, both here and not here, at once lost and found.

He feels like he's drifting, his little boat gliding on a still water, the horizon so far away he'll never reach it. And no matter how much he would like to stop, to get out of the boat, it keeps drifting.

Sometimes, he wonders if he'll ever get out. If Samantha's ghost will always hover above him, whispering with her sweet voice in his ears, weighing on his shoulders as if she's sitting on them, like the child she is.

Was.

Is.

Not knowing if she's out there, on a boat too, desperately searching for him, for his help, is what wakes him up at night, sending adrenaline rushing through his body because he still hasn't found her. She has no one but him.

(No one has found him either. He's drifting on the sea, pushed and pulled and threatened to be swallowed by the waves.)

He blinks and finds himself on Scully's couch, with no recognition of how he ended there. He blinks again and Scully is here, studying with a frown.

''Mulder,'' and her voice echoes in the quiet of the room, gentle, like the caress of the breeze on his cheeks on summer days, ''what are you doing ?''

Words are heavy on his tongue, heavier on his mind, so he shrugs. Absently, he notices the burn growing in his eyes, the lump planting its roots in his throat. Scully's face wrinkles in concern but she says nothing more and simply settles next to him, close enough to brush against his side.

She's so warm, he wants to bury himself in her until she sets his soul aflame.

Instead, he hangs his head and sighs, tries to will away everything rotten in him so he can tell her to go back to sleep.

(He can't. He's selfish like that, he wants her, yearns for her, especially when the dark tugs at him. She's his light, his anchor, he realizes, and without her, there's no hope for peace. For the drifting to stop.)

''Do you need anything ?'' she asks at one point, turning slightly until her words are muffled against his shoulder. He turns to her, watches her face, so adorably sleepy, and wants to cry.

He shakes his head, and, from the depths of his mind it rises, unbidden, tumbling out of his mouth before he can think about it.

''I miss her.''

Scully's hand falls to his, their fingers interlacing. She knows who he's talking about of course.

Who else could wake him up at night, could drape him in a blanket of sorrow and guilt, if not for the sister he failed - fail - to save ?

''I know.''

It's all she says, but it's enough to open the dam, to make everything floods his mind until he can't repress the wrenching sobs from tearing his throat. Without hesitation, Scully moves on his lap, wrapping herself around him to shush his cries and hold every pieces of him together, keeping him from shattering completely.

(He wonders if the sharp edge of his shards makes her fingers bleed. If the blood is enough to prevent her from mending him back, or if she doesn't care about the crimson stain, about her own pain, when it comes to him.)

''Shh, Mulder, it's okay,'' she croons against his ear, one of her hand craddling his head, in a way that is so tender he can only cry harder. ''It's alright. You will find her.''

He's so tired of false hopes and the acid taste of disappointment. ''How can you believe that ?''

Scully pulls away slightly, combing back his hair from his forehead. ''Because if someone can, it's you. Because you will never stop until you do. Because I will help you do so.'' Her lips curl in a smile, small and sad. ''Because you're her big brother, and maybe that's what big brothers and sisters do. Find each other no matter what.''

He thinks of Melissa, buried six feet under the ground.

He thinks of Samantha, lost in the stars.

He thinks of them both, lost sisters, and weeps for their broken life.

Through it all, Scully holds him, anchoring his drifting boat.

[swinging-stars-from-satellites]

even more of exactly the same

725 words | AU where Scully walks away after the end of Never Again | cancer arc | pre-MSR | tagging @today-in-fic

1.

She leaves. It's as simple as requesting a transfer and the pain of walking out that basement door and not planning to come back. She has her own desk now, and her own little nameplate. Special Agent Dana Scully, M.D.

She almost apologizes, almost picks up the phone when it rings and she knows, beyond a shadow of a doubt, who it is, because he's the only person who really ever calls her at home anymore. But she doesn't. It might hurt too much to acknowledge that she walked away from her best friend of four years over a stupid fight, a pointless desk and the point of a needle dripping ink into her skin. A part of her misses him, the part that wakes up panicking and praying she won't find blood on her pillowcase, but another part is still angry.

He has no claim on her. She has no claim on him. That makes her sad.

2.

She ignores the nosebleeds, chalks them up to stress or any number of other perfectly reasonable things, for about two months. She ignores what Leonard Betts said to her until she can't anymore, until the migraines start to interfere with her daily life and she nearly passes out at birthday brunch with her mom. Maybe doctors do make the worst patients and she's not exempt from that. After that, with her mother frowning across a table at her in concern, she finally makes an appointment.

3.

When the results come back and she's standing tiny and barefoot with the x-rays that have sealed her fate in her hands, her own life in her hands, in a way, he's the only person she can think to call. She doesn't even know if he'll answer and she'll be forced to accept it if he doesn't, if he pays her back in kind, but typing out his number is muscle memory.

"Mulder, it's me."

4.

He rushes into the room, palms up confused and a little bit desperate, and when she confesses her diagnosis she thinks he might collapse. She hasn't seen him in over two months, the sound of his voice is the only thing keeping her from crying.

"I'm sorry," she says, and means for leaving him and leaving again now. She never truly wanted to leave, she doesn't want to die. "I'm sorry." It's barely louder than a breath and he's shaking his head, reaching out to touch her and she knows he refuses to believe this, can't believe that she's dying because neither can she even with the proof right here in front of them. She's missed him, shudders at the feeling of his hands on her face, on her shoulders, and he won't stop touching her once he realizes she'll let him.

He asks "Did you know?" and she's not sure what he means, and he must see that and for once understand without her needing to say it. "When you... left," he says, "Was that... did you know?" And she says no, she didn't know then, but she was afraid. She's still afraid. And this time, he understands that.

5.

She tells him, "I have things to finish" as she stands tired in a hospital hallway and prays he'll understand what she's saying. She has things to prove and hasn't that always been the case, wasn't that why she left two months ago? This is her life, but it's become his, too, in some way. They're too firmly entangled and she realizes that now. "For my own reasons."

And Mulder smiles desperately down at her, reaches out to hold her, and whispers, "Come on back." So she leans into him and lets him support her and cries, just a little bit, into his shirt, and he takes her face in his hands and presses a lingering kiss directly over the spot where the tumor is, like he was always going to.

That's the claim he has on her and the claim she has on him is her cold hands holding onto him because right now she needs the support and comfort and because she missed him and missed their office, theirs, because it was never really about a desk anyway. She was just scared, and she still is, and so is he, but it's not in that same angry way any longer.

[swinging-stars-from-satellites]

going around in circles

MSR | 1k-ish words | season 7 AU | AO3 | rated T (for the topics of terminal illness and infertility) | tagging @today-in-fic and @baronessblixen :D

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

1. She stays with him after her second encounter with Pfaster. Something changed at New Year's, but they haven't talked about it. If they talk about it, he'll have to face the fact that they are running out of time. So: they don't talk about it. They curl together at night, because Scully refused to let him take the couch, says she doesn't want to be left alone. Mulder doesn't want to be alone, either. He wants every moment he can have with her. Holding her through her nightmares is a privilege; holding her otherwise even moreso. He doesn't want to leave her.

2. She finds the medical report. It's been buried under various other things on his desk because he hasn't wanted to think about it. His condition isn't improving, but it isn't getting worse, either, and he hadn't wanted to tell her unless it got worse. He doesn't want to put her through what he went through three years ago until he knows for sure it's terminal. He wouldn't wish that pain on anyone, let alone the woman he loves. But he sees it, flashing in her eyes as she tries to cover it with anger, snapping at him and asking when he was planning to tell her that he is dying. That night, they hold each other and both cry.

3. The next morning Mulder wakes up to noises in his kitchen, after fallen tears forced his eyes shut with his body still wrapped around Scully. She'd kissed his forehead the way he'd once done her, after her own diagnosis. They exist, he thinks, as mirrors of each other. The ouroboros tattoo on her back is a fitting symbol. Snake biting its tail. One or the other of them dying, the only time they can be open in their love for each other.

She's making coffee and making too much noise about it, like the harsher version of familiar motions helps her clear her head. She glances over her shoulder when she hears his approach, but doesn't say anything. They'd joked about having unspoken communication, but now he thinks it's even more true. He'd read her mind once, but he thinks she still knows him better. He wraps his arms around her from behind, buries his face in her hair, and thinks this is all I want.

He says it, then, soft in her ear, and she stills. She sets down the container of coffee grounds, and doesn't turn or break his grip around her waist, but she stills and he knows it implies a question. Scully, he says, and hesitates when his voice cracks on her name: Scul-ly. He has asked so much of her, can he ask her to become his widow?

Scully, he says, thinking of a vacation to Maine and pencils in a foam ceiling, Marry me.

It goes unspoken how brief the rest of his life may be. He knows how much he's asking of her; he knows he would have done it for her in a heartbeat. They get the marriage license that afternoon.

4. They don't have rings, at first, not until Scully comes home from an appointment with the fertility doctor with tears in her eyes, and something in Mulder snaps as he holds her and they grieve together for what could have been. He goes out the next day and buys a pair of rings — simple, gold bands; nothing fancy but all that they need. Scully deserves so much more than he can give her.

He looks over at her sometimes, in their office or at home, and it hits him all over again that they are married. All these years of loving her, and it's finally come to something tangible. Scully, the most important person in his world almost since she entered it, married him. Spooky Mulder, with his head in the clouds. Once, she catches him grinning like a little boy over the top of a steaming coffee cup and asks what he's looking at. My wife, he says, awed, still smiling. He can't help it.

They don't keep anything from each other, now — she's spoken with his doctors, looked over the information herself with less-than-objective doctor's eyes. They are in this together, for better or worse, in sickness and in health. At least it's less obvious than her cancer was. At least it's brought them this.

5. Apparently, their marriage — marriage — is also living up to the in richer or poorer aspect of the vows. The audit takes them both by surprise, and Mulder's we could start sharing hotel rooms comment isn't even a joke — they already have. The thought of being shut down by something so mundane, after everything, is a shock to the system. When they hear the call from Billy Miles, they look at each other and immediately understand that they're thinking the same thing: they have nothing left to lose, either with the Files or in their personal lives. Mulder thinks of it as a swan song, though he never outright says so to Scully.

Snake eating its own tail: beginning and ending in a motel room in Bellefleur. He is afraid for them both; he's dying and they both know it, something is happening to Scully and they both know that, too. He doesn't want to die, but more than that, he wants her to be alright after he's gone. There's so much more than this, he whispers, and kisses her cheek as she shivers in his arms at the hotel.

He means more than risking everything to search for the truth. He means more than hotel rooms and cramped cars. He means, in a way, more than him.

Everything after that happens too fast. He can't let Scully go back to Oregon a second time, no matter what Krycek and Marita say. Not when she'd collapsed and still won't admit she's not fine; not when those being taken are previous abductees. He can't let anything happen to her, but she won't let him go alone. He thinks, once more, there's so much more than this. If he only has a few months left to live, he wants them to be with her.

But he goes anyway. There's a part of him that can't let go of the search that's been his entire life until recently, even with everything he stands to lose. He's not ready to leave Scully, not yet, but he does it anyway because he's still a selfish man. He doesn't do it against her will, though; she agrees that he and Skinner should go check out what Krycek had told them. She may not like it, he may have a horrible feeling about it himself, but she tells him to go and he can't get over how lucky he is to have her. He thinks they both want closure.

And Mulder goes back to Oregon. They'd thought that this was the end, but it's only another beginning. They're only going in circles.

[swinging-stars-from-satellites]

one word? omg omg can u do ‘children’ pls (IM GOING TO CRY)

I've never seen you as a mother before, Mulder had said once, and it was like a revelation. He'd seen her with the Eves, with Kevin Kryder, even once with her godson because he'd stopped by while she was babysitting. Scully's gentleness is something he's not sure he'll ever learn the end of, but he's all but entranced to see her like that. He doesn't register it as mothering at first, but once he does, he can't forget the thought.

That same conversation in Home, Pennsylvania held more than just that realization, though. They'd brushed up against something, the prospect of their futures — even, tentatively, backhandedly, a future together; one, singular future. Über-Scullys and genetic compatibility were as close as they could get, being who they are, to hinting at something more.

Mulder has been thinking about it since the case in Maryland, with the subliminal messaging via television tapes; he'd thought Scully was dead, and it hit him like yet another flash of sudden insight: he loves her. And somehow, despite the horrors playing out around them in Home, that's the main thing on his mind. She lets him flirt, lets him put his hand on her back and talk about starting a family, and he wants to tell her. He wants to tell her he loves her, that he wants that future and family with her, but all he can say is "I've never seen you as a mother before".

And nearly a year later, seeing her with her very real daughter, seeing her lose her daughter, he wants to tell her again. It's the wrong time, she's barely hanging onto her emotional control now, but he drives her back to his hotel room instead of her brother's house after the small funeral and wants to tell her he loves her. He's seen her with children before, but he's never seen her so bright and hopeful as those few minutes they played on the floor with her daughter. It's exceedingly selfish to be thinking like this right now and he knows it, but when he sees her turn her face away in the passenger seat so he doesn't see her cry (even though he knows she's crying), something in him aches with longing.

Sand in a casket makes him grit his teeth, because no matter what else Emily was, she was a little girl and she was Scully's little girl. He's always had a soft spot for lost little girls — he has a psychology degree, he knows exactly why — and while he wants nothing more than to comfort Scully right now, he also has some kind of belated protective instinct that makes him want to avenge her lost little girl. Scully deserves so much better. Emily deserved a life.

He'd once told Scully he hadn't thought of her as a mother before, implying then that he had a new perspective — and he did; the thought took root in his mind, Scully with a child, children, a future together. It wasn't until he saw her with Emily that he fully conceptualized what that meant; he would have given up anything for Scully and her little girl — his work, his search for his sister, everything he's put his whole heart into for so long. He would have asked Scully to marry him.

Now, he lets her into his hotel room and watches her curl up, fully clothed, on his bed. She doesn't say a word, and he doesn't either. He doubts she wants him very close right now, but he sits at the end of the bed and gently, tentatively reaches out and rests a hand on her ankle. He's here if she wants him to be; however she wants him to be. He can't comprehend her pain at finding and then losing her child, and his own pain is irrelevant. He should have told her before now about her ova, he thinks, because now she's grieving her inability to have children as well as the daughter she did have.

He'd never seen her as a mother before; now he sees it painfully clearly.