#threads; scully

[ladiesandwitches]

@wiccawcnder sent: “Power. I have it. They don’t.” / vivi to scully!

While Scully couldn't deny that the statement, on its own, definitely held some truth-- she had seen for herself what dangerous people would do for power, how they would try and take it from others, and how the truth was the greatest power of all-- but coming out of a young woman, it sounded more like a statement of mis-placed confidence or even arrogance.

Either way, it wasn't an answer.

"Is that why those men were chasing you?" Scully asked, choosing to go along with the girl's 'explanation' for now. "Because you have power?"

[ladiesandwitches]

Scully could see from his expression that she had already lost him, that his mind was already full of ideas of what this creature might be, of finding it and having evidence of what he so firmly believed but had no proof. An affectionate smile pulling at the corner of her mouth, Scully shook her head a little, accepting her fate.

Mulder was undeniably brilliant-- their working relationship or their friendship couldn't have flourished as it had if he wasn't-- but that brilliance came at a price. And as much as his outlandish theories and beliefs sometimes exhausted her, she couldn't deny the search often intrigued her. After all, wasn't that the point of science? To discover proof and answers to things other people had only ever searched in vain for?

"A tranquiliser is probably a good idea," Scully agreed. Whatever this thing was, they needed to take it down fast. "If we use the same mg as for a leopard, or a lion maybe, it should work. I'm sure there's a wildlife service nearby if the officers don't have any."

"Did you find anything?" The sheriff asked as they came into sight, looking like he was hoping for the answer 'no', and Scully was forced to disappoint him.

"A body. We have reason to believe it's your missing hiker, Sheriff."

"Crap," the man cursed. "Do you know what happened to him?"

"Erm..." Scully looked at Mulder, feeling a little uncertain in her answer. "Well, it looks like an animal attack."

Despite the potential danger they were still in, Mulder allowed himself to fantasise for a moment about handcuffing a huge, terrifying panther-man and bringing him in for the FBI to witness. The evidence would be undeniable, finally vindicating the X-Files and all the work he had done on them, and everybody would be incredibly impressed by his monster hunting prowess.

Or, someone would try to explain away the beast. Mulder supposed they would claim it was a mutation, and the man was just a disturbed individual. It was frustrating how far people would go to deny reality, especially when it was staring them right in the face.

"Maybe we should try to tranquillise it," Mulder suggested. "You know, like they do with wild animals. Maybe the Sheriff has a tranquilliser rifle we could requisition."

And speaking of the Sheriff, he was pretty sure he could see the edge of the woods approaching. Mulder couldn't help breathe a sigh of relief. Despite what people may say about him, he wasn't insane; he had no desire to be stuck in a forest with a dangerous predator actively stalking him - and he wanted Scully to be put in that position even less! Unless something was about to jump out at them and drag them away, they'd made it back to safety, and they could gear up and go back in again more prepared for the threat they had discovered.

[ladiesandwitches]

@imjustanauthor for Mulder

Watching Mulder work, when he had an idea in his head or a determined theory, was almost mesmerising. The way he refused to be deterred, the things he'd find that a hundred other people wouldn't even look at, was, for all its fixation, something to be admired, whether it was a search for the truth or the search for a lake monster.

Or, in this case, proof of...actually she wasn't entirely sure. Mulder had been more than erratic in his fevered explanations that it had been a bit hard to pick up the details.

Finding herself smiling as he pushed papers around, she stepped forward to stop one folder falling from the table.

"No one could ever question your fire, Mulder," she told him with quiet affection, the smile audible in her voice.

[ladiesandwitches]

@wiccawcnder sent; ❝ let’s go to the haunted house! oh, please, please, please, please?! ❞ // vivi to scully bc i JUST saw 'How the Ghosts Stole Christmas' and deeply believe it's more Halloween episode than Christmas. also love how she was *not scared* 😅

Scully frowned, unable to believe that Vivienne hadn't only found details of that particular night, and particular house, decades ago, but that now she also wanted to visit it.

"Well, aside from the claims, the urban legends, that the supposed ghosts in there only appear on Christmas Eve....it's not a haunted house," she told her. "There's no such things as ghosts. What happened to myself and Mulder in that house was..." She thought of the things she saw, of the couple she spoke to, the bodies under the floorboards, of how convinced she had been that Mulder had shot her, how stepping outside they had been fine, how fast they ran to their cars. "Well, I don't know what it was," she admitted. "But I don't advise going back."

[littlepikmins]

So I'm not a fan of Titans character Bernard Fitzmartin because he just doesn't seem like comics Bernard at all. But @the-shark-is-a-mammal informed that the irl actor for Bernard in Titans, James Scully, seems more like Bernard Dowd since he's a fun dude and wears lots of fashionable outfits! I looked at James Scully's Instagram and gathered some pics of outfits I could definitely see Bernard Dowd wearing!

[ladiesandwitches]

@imjustanauthor sent; ​❝ please, enough with the pumpkin spice. ❞ @ Scully, from Mulder

Undeterred and unaffected by Mulder's protestation, Scully lifted the coffee cup to her lips, sipping audibly while her blue eyes stayed fixed on him, defying him with every sip.

"I wasn't aware you had such strong opinions about coffee, Mulder," she commented with quiet amusement, holding the offending drink in her hand now, its seasonal scent trailing up in the air. "I wait eight months a year to enjoy this," she told him, having no intention to set it aside.

[ladiesandwitches]

"Or maybe they were with him as recently as they said they were," Scully countered, willing to give the parents the benefit of the doubt not just because these tragedies could happen, but if these abductors were really what she thought they were then no amount of attention from Marcus Trent's parents could have kept him safe.

Subconsciously, her hand went to her abdomen, remembering the baby growing in there and instantly worried about how to keep them safe, wondering if they'd be at risk from the same things. Would these things come for her child the same way they'd come for Mulder?

"You can do the check, but I don't think you're going to find anything. At lest, not any kind of traditional connection. Finding out if they military background, or government links might be useful," she added, thinking aloud, biting her lip a little as she debated how much to share.

"You said you're aware of the work on the X Files, of the strange cases we deal with," she began. "Well..." She paused, taking a breath. "I believe I know who-- or rather, what-- might have taken this boy. The only question is why."

𝐃𝐀𝐍𝐀 & 𝐂𝐀𝐒𝐒𝐀𝐍𝐃𝐑𝐀 @ladiesandwitches

Cassandra couldn't argue with that. She'd known that gas wasn't a viable explanation as soon as she'd said it. And with Agent Scully's scientific explanations, she was now sure of it. But that still didn't tell them what had actually happened.

She'd never seen anything like it in a Delta Green mission before, and frankly, she was stumped. But without doing some research, she believed it was no use trying to theorize an explanation blindly.

"Yes, good idea," she nodded. At least security teams could see the real faces on the video monitors. It wasn't ideal, but it was better than nothing.

"The child is called Marcus Trent," she explained, "he's 7 years old, brown hair, blue eyes. His parents swear he was with them seconds before the abduction. But I suppose that with the guilt..." A sigh left her lips. "I've seen it happen before. Parent recanting their testimony a few days later, admitting they weren't keeping such a good eye on their kid after all."

"I was gonna do a background check, see if anyone might want to hurt the Trent family. Grudges, old rivalries, enemies. Might take us to a lead."

[loubetcha]

hi <3 like that wetwired post right now I am thinking about s6 angst and how it wasn’t really about Diana, not really, but about every lie Mulder has ever told her and Scully’s greatest fears. We know that Scully fears that Mulder will choose his quest over her; Wetwired tells us that her greatest fear is him allying himself with the people who were responsible for her abduction and her sister’s death— that he is lying to her. And in one fell swoop, with his callousness, he manages to confirm all of these.

It’s only her faith in him that keeps them together. Agh.

OUCH????

but you’re so right it wasn’t about jealousy or neglect it was about that by putting his trust in someone else who was exceedingly untrustworthy, it ultimately felt like the trust they held so close was shattered. “sleeping with the enemy” so to speak doesn’t imply jealousy on those who see it, but betrayal.

[ladiesandwitches]

A Scully starter for @maggicktouched who liked the thing

A mixture of both her FBI training and her experiences on the X Files, things that had even haunted her after she left the bureau, in her work as a medical doctor, all the way back to her return to investigating the strange and hard-to-explain with Mulder all these years later, meant that she heard the noise instantly, as quiet and almost unnoticeable as it was.

Someone was in her home.

Already dressed for work, Scully quietly stepped over to her bedside table, silently removing her gun from where it lay in its holster, her every movement careful so as not to alert the intruder. Even the safety was turned off with a near-silent flick of her thumb.

While she kept her gun aimed at chest level, she used her free hand to gently nudge her bedroom door open, quietly walking down the hall into the main room...where she saw an unfamiliar, and young, woman going through her things.

"Turn around," she ordered, gun steadily aimed on them. "Slowly." She waited until they were facing her, so she could see the stranger's features. "What are you doing in my house?" She demanded, her mind already filled with William, with Cancer Man, with viruses and alien DNA. "What are you looking for?"

[ladiesandwitches]

@maggicktouched sent: "How many snails can I get in my room?" From a very small Beck to Scully.

"Snails," Dana repeated, a quiet confusion, and disbelief, in her expression as she looked at her daughter. "Well," she began to answer carefully, "as a general rule that would be none. Snails don't belong indoors, they live outdoors. Usually in gardens." Scully paused as something occurred to her. "Beck, do you have snails in your room?"

[gwuisin]

" those stars may be dumb, enormous balls of gas, but they're smaller than my love for you. " @6tasis.

[evilandcrazygirl]

yes

[heartorn]

the bear and xfiles tags

[ladiesandwitches]

"You're over fifty?" Scully repeated, an eyebrow raised as she judged the age for herself. She certainly wouldn't have thought the woman was in her own age range, in fact she would have estimated that she was much younger, and it was certainly more than being a case of looking good for her age. Which was a harsh reminder of the fact that Scully, while she might look good-- she didn't always hate what she saw in the mirror, at least--she certainly didn't look in her twenties anymore.

"Well, I'll cross that bridge if and when I come to it," she reasoned with a slight eyeroll. If she really was immortal, if she couldn't die, then she knew there was one way she could change all that. If taking that implant from her neck once before caused her cancer, taking it out again would do the same. If she was brave enough to do it.

"Okay, say I believe that what you can do is due to some...chemical alteration of your body, that it's more than mere manipulation, how can you ever be sure that what anyone does around you is their own free will? How can you be certain of anyone? How..." she sighed, looking at Kara with a sad sympathy in her eyes. "...how do you live with that kind of power?"

Huh. Well, that was an interesting confession. That was the big secret? Possible immortality? She had to admit, she could relate, but that didn't seem like the secret one would be keeping.

"For the record, I am immortal, or at least, functionally so. I don't look it, but I'm over fifty at this point, and my body regenerates any wound. Same with my father actually. So I definitely understand the whole watching everyone around you age or die. But admittedly, I'd be more worried that if you're immortal, you're not ageless, because if you still age, then you'll end up trapped in your own body."

Totally not a depressing thought.

"Now, as for possible, my powers are the real deal. Everything I've told you thus far about them is the truth. You can try to ignore them all you want, but I can keep proving it to you as many times as you demand it."

[ladiesandwitches]

Scully for @w3atherwitch who liked the thing

"Mulder, weather phenonema is, by its very nature, strange and unpredictable. Just because the weather in question is strange or unexpected isn't indicative of anything but what every meteorological office will tell you; that even their accuracy is never--" Scully stopped mid-conversation as she heard a click sound on the other end of the phone. "Mulder? Mulder?"

He'd hung up.

With a sigh of irritation, Scully put her cell phone away in her back pocket and looked out at the scene before her, the one that her partner had sent her to without deeming to join her there himself. Her suspicion was that while strange weather intrigued him, the rumours of so-called superheroes, or whatever else they were called, was enough to make even Mulder want to hold back.

"Excuse me," she called out, stepping forward with her FBI badge already in hand, ready to flash her ID. "can someone tell me what happened here? In more detail." Hopefully something more detailed than Mulder's 'weird weather and weird crimes explanation. "Are you a witness?"

[orphanedshadow]

continued from (x) with @ladiesandwitches

“Well, even urban legends, no matter how ridiculous, are said to have come from some original basis of truth, so I suppose it’s reasonable to believe that they might have some helpful information,” Scully allowed, if reluctantly. Though the young woman made a fair point, she didn’t like the idea that even giving so much as an inch of allowance to any kind of ridiculous, fantastical local stories would also give Mulder more of a an allowance to take them seriously and drag her all over the country to investigate mothmen and yetis.  “So which is it?” Scully asked, “Someone being cruelly practical in silencing their victim or someone who believes they’re doing a ritual to honour some old voiceless God?” Both were equally likely; there had been enough killings in America over the decades due to cults and fanatical belief systems, that it wasn’t too out there to believe someone might think themselves a devotee of a deity-level boogeyman.  “They would have just left them there? Screaming for as long as possible because they thought it was an offering?” Scully couldn’t hide her disgust or her horror even as she tried to remain professional, “Have you seen this before? Or have you just read about it?” She hoped it was the latter. If the girl had seen it for herself before then that meant there was either a serial killer, or an entire cult creating ‘offerings’.  Scully hesitated over the buttons on her phone, “What do you mean you don’t see eye-to-eye?” She was starting to sense something as off as the mutilated corpse on the ground, and every instinct in her body was telling her to be on age, to not trust everything she was seeing. Trust no one, Mulder always told her. “Who are you really? You said you’re a ‘metaphysical investigator’, but I don’t think you’re telling me everything. I think you’re keeping secrets and you know more about all this than you’re saying” Her hand went to her gun, ready to draw it if necessary, “You have no intention of explaining yourself to anyone I call in; well you’re gonna have to explain it to me””

Why did investigators always want more answers than she wanted to give? Who she was didn’t matter, this wasn’t her victim, and the hunter couldn’t do her job if she was stuck babysitting an FBI agent.

“Yes, I have seen this sort of thing before, I have been doing this since I was very little. Call it a family business, one that is not always appreciated by your kind.” Normal people, law enforcement officers, it was all the same in that regard. No one seemed to appreciate her work, or even noticed anything more than a change in the local mortality rates.

“As for your question. In this region? Based on the patterns? I suspect followers of the voiceless god. Especially given the depth to which it was buried and the disinterment. This region was colonized by one of the lycan sects, and there are some indications on trees near the burial site.

Her hands moved to twist into a claw-like shape as she knelt down by the corpse once more, lining her fingers up with the markings on the bone, though she kept her other free just in case. "These were made by a wolf’s-claw, a sort of tool that mimics the claws of a wild animal. They slide over the fingertips, somewhat akin to metal thimbles, and are sharpened to rip through flesh. Some variants are held in place by the thumb, but not all of them.”

Fingers hovered over the corpse, pointing out tiny pinpricks on the bone. “Now these ones lack hesitation marks, and would be in non-vascular areas. They would be done by a leader or an elder, in the initial sacrifice. They would be painful, but not enough to cause shock.”

Other bones were soon gestured towards, these ones with a variety of scratches “As for these ones, they are of different distances, indicating different people with different hands. Some have hesitation marks and are quite small, potentially from someone participating for the first time. These would be delivered once the person passes out, to draw out the "last scream” and would usually be performed by all those who are of age. It is believed that the more of these that are delivered the moment before the victim perishes, and the more people participate, then the more fruitful the harvest will be.“

Kara decided it would be best not to mention that there was a reason that most of the smaller and shallower of the claw marks were located on the outside of the thigh, or how those areas were considered "safe” for the youngest to test their claws on.

“Most sects sacrifice the oldest ram of the flock, like this one may have in the past. There were traces of wool around the burial site, as well as a fire and bone bundles. The sheep are eaten afterwards, then the bones buried for a time, until they are dug up, left to dry for a few weeks, and then bundled.”

After a second of thought she gestured vaguely to the surrounding area, a region that had clearly had a few bad harvests in the past. “When harvests fail despite the sacrifice of rams some people will resort to the older methods. In many faiths that practice such things is believed that the more value a sacrifice has then the more the gods will listen…” And perhaps they would…but unfortunately this path tended to lead to some rather unpleasant places.

“Are those enough answers agent, or is there more you need?”