#“The Dead Are Everywhere Scully”
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"The Dead Are Everywhere, Scully"
(Fictober, Day 1)
*****
He wakes alone in a field, his body having shed its flesh and left only its bones. The words “putridity and liquescence” come to mind, or to the back of it; and he sits up, knowing he has something to do. There should be someone else here, he thinks as he stands.
His memory is as empty as this afterlife, fields of tombstones stretching around him with names he knows he should know but does not.
Skeletons, he thinks, skeletons are the link. He shovels out thought after thought, leaving open graves of dead girls, dead sisters, dead fathers, and dead mothers as he pushes the boundaries of his mind in pursuit.
And like a bright flash it comes to him: “So first they're going to eat, then they're going to drink, then they're going to dance--"
He moves away from heaps of upturned dust and decay into a happier time-- a gray, distant recollection of two souls swaying in sync, celebrating life and happy endings.
He needs to find his dance partner.
*****
She wakes entombed in choking sand. It sifts through her teeth, collects in her crevices, grinds against her joints. The soft gauze of her funeral dress-- hers or someone else's-- twists around her legs and arms as she bangs the sarcophagus lid for freedom. There is no pain since the nerves spreading from her spinal cord have dropped away; but there is panic and fear and failure, Death and darkness and defeat.
Death has captured her in unbreakable chains: immortality, the curse of eternal life. I won't let this thing beat me echoes, hollow, in the fruitless weight of nothingness.
“I can’t."
But there is another echo that spits out defiance: Yes, you can; and strength and courage and hope stir in its wake.
Her knuckles crack, her fingers scrabble at dangerous angles, her wrists snap; but she mentally chants over the sounds of failure-- I have the strength of your beliefs, Mulder you’re the only one I trust, I won’t let this thing beat me, I won’t let this thing beat me--
And the lid slides off and the wind rushes in and the sand blows away.
*****
They reunite in a graveyard, rain racing down the curved edges of their new perimeters.
“What are we doing here?” she calls across the distance still separating them.
“We’re having a dance, partner.”
“Mulder--” and both of them stop as the truth opens before them.
He breaks the silence: “Well, c’mon, Scully. I think we got a few twirls left in these old bones of ours.”
His infectious enthusiasm and her reluctant amusement finally meet in the middle.
“Which ones, Mulder?”
“You tell me.”
She does.
*****
It is only them, the rain, and the mud.
“Mulder, I don’t understand it, any of it. How did this happen?”
They slow, the rain pours, the mud thickens around their shifting ankles.
“I don’t think we’ll ever know, Scully. Once I would have said ‘I think it’s about fate.'” They carefully maneuver around the awful deaths that time conjures up. “And you later argued for free will over fate on a certain later Monday. But I think we were both right, or both wrong, or both right and wrong; because we’re standing in a place where neither fate nor free will has power.”
“Then what does, Mulder?” She almost drifts away before he draws her back.
“I think it’s a matter of perspective. That we’ll never know, really. But one thing we do know. That you and I are Mr. and Mrs. Spooky--”
“Mulder--”
“And that we’ve beaten the odds, Scully. That we’re here together. That we found each other. That it feels right even if this existence doesn’t make sense, or at least if it doesn’t make sense yet.”
She lets him freestyle them both a little while she thinks. “King Spooky.”
“Hm?”
“You and I alone, together. King Spooky and Queen of the Dead.”
He celebrates her move with a dip. “Now let’s shimmy, Queen Spooky. Get those little legs moving.”
She raised a perfectly poised pointer finger in reproof. “That was a debatable topic even in life.”
“You can’t dress up what Death has dressed down, Scully.”
“And ten to one you can’t dance to it?” she asks, remembering another of his phrases from another world.
“Well, I like to think that our perspective has managed to beat a few odds. Wouldn’t you?”
A thoughtful, settling silence: “Yes, it did.”
And they shake the cold from their bones in tune with the rain.
*****
Acknowledgements: Thank you to @baronessblixen, @welsharcher, and others who have encouraged me to start writing. This is take two; and I really, really like how it turned out.
Thank you to all the mutuals and anons who were so kind on my first fic (Son of Egypt); and thank you to @perpetually-weirdening for (probably not meaning to) getting the idea of immortal Scully stuck in my head.
And my thanks to David Duchovny for the line he wrote in Hollywood A.D.-- it made a wonderful title; and inspired me to wrangle my floating thoughts into one coherent story.
Tagging @today-in-fic and @xffictober2023 and @fictober-event
#txf#fic#Fictober#Day 1#2023#“The Dead Are Everywhere Scully”#my first Fictober!#xfiles#xf fanfic#x-files#the x files#Mulder#Scully#AU#immortal#super proud of this one#slowly trekking along#as I find my “voice”#getting there step by step#mine
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Shine On (16/16)
Read on AO3 | Tagging @today-in-fic
Chapter 16: Crazy Diamond
Farrs Corner, Virginia
February 25, 2015
Two hours later
It turns out that Bunny Man Bridge is just a bridge. And okay, it’s a little creepy-looking—a one lane road going into a yellowed concrete tunnel under a train overpass—but not very eventful on a sunny, late winter afternoon. There aren’t signs of apparitions, dead bodies, or even Satanic graffiti. Which Jackson finds kind of disappointing after all Mulder’s talk.
Mulder drones on about the telltale hallmarks of paranormal activity, but since most of them would have involved interviewing human witnesses, they don’t seem very promising to investigate. There’s no one around but Jackson, Mulder, and Scully. And interested squirrels.
Still, Jackson is enjoying the outing. He and Mulder scramble up to the top of the bridge and look around the railroad tracks for any clues. Scully watches from the road below, leaning against the car, smirking to herself. After a few minutes Mulder begins to call for the Bunny Man like a lost dog— “here, Mr. Bunny Man, come on, boy”—which makes Scully cover her mouth with her hand and laugh.
Mulder looks down from the bridge at her with this goofy little smile, a whole lot like he’s an eighth grader pleased with himself. Jackson tries hard not to shine the man’s mind, as he’s thinking a surprising quantity of inappropriate thoughts for an old guy.
He gets the basic gist, though—the important highlights. They’re back together.
Jackson can’t help but feel happy for them. Mulder’s hope is contagious. It’s everywhere in the man’s mind right now, even in the dirty parts. It’s inescapable, Mulder’s hope. Like an annoying mylar balloon that keeps floating into your face. Even shining him a little makes Jackson’s own emotions begin to feel lighter, too.
“Is the investigation over?” Scully calls up to them. “I’m hungry.” She cocks her head strategically. “We could go pick up fresh bagels.”
Jackson raises his eyebrows. “I could eat.”
“I think we’re just about wrapped up here,” Mulder calls back. “It’s going to be kind of a drive for bagels though. We’re in the country, Scully.”
She shrugs and smiles. From her pocket her phone starts to buzz, and she rushes to pull it out, sliding into the car to take the call. As Jackson understands it, she’s finishing up odds and ends of her hospital job before she goes back to the FBI.
Mulder regards Jackson seriously. “I’ve got to tell you, Jackson—I’m not noticing any classic signs,” he says, gesturing around them. “No change in temperature, no strange odor.” He points to the birds chirping in the trees around them. “I still hear local wildlife going strong.”
“Yeah,” Jackson says with a sigh. “Maybe the Bunny Man really does only show up on Halloween.”
Mulder’s eyes light up. “Well, possibly we could come back—” He stops himself, but it’s too late. Jackson knows exactly what he was going to say, and he knows exactly why he stopped.
They don’t know where Jackson will be at Halloween. That’s eight months away. He could very well be locked in a juvenile justice facility. That reality hasn’t gone away, however much Mulder and Jackson want to forget and play ghost hunter. Everyone keeps acting like Jackson is just going to stay here and play pretend son, but that’s just not the case.
Jackson has to turn away from Mulder now. Sometimes other people’s hope is painful.
They have to be careful on the way down; the embankment down the side of the bridge is steep. Jackson’s feet, skidding out of control, stumble the last few steps down, and Mulder grabs his arm to steady him.
“You okay there?”
“Yeah, thanks,” Jackson mumbles.
Mulder’s thoughts are a burgeoning swell of concern, and Jackson knows he’s probably been doing a little shining. “Listen, Jackson—”
“You’ve actually seen ghosts before, right?” Jackson interrupts. He looks around at the wooded area around the bridge, then back at Mulder. “Not just read about them?”
Mulder considers him a moment. “I have, yes.”
“Who were the ghosts?” Jackson asks.
“The ghosts themselves? You mean in life?”
“Yeah. Did you know them?”
Mulder thinks about his answer. “One time it was a couple,” he says. “A couple who died together on Christmas.”
Jackson thinks about that for a moment, a couple who died together and spent eternity together, too. It seems like that might be good. Not entirely unhappy. He gets little visual flashes from Mulder’s memories, but he pushes them out—he’d rather make up his own little story about these ghosts.
“You never met the ghost of anyone you knew when they were alive?” Jackson asks. He hesitates. “Like … your own parents, maybe?”
Mulder’s head turns sharply to him. His gray-green eyes are sorrowful, then shift infinitesimally into sympathy and pity.
“Jackson,” he says, his words subdued, “you won’t get your parents back by searching for ghosts.”
A bird trills nearby, and Jackson’s gaze follows the sound. “Yeah,” he says.
His eyes again fill with tears. This is one of those things he knows he should know better about. Something he can see is a delusion—an idea gullible kids hold on to— but he wants to believe anyway. He wants to think that one day he might see his mom and dad again. How stupid, to imagine friendly ghosts who might pat him reassuringly on the shoulder and tell him it’s okay.
They both stand facing the steep bank of trees, saying nothing.
A very clear sentence runs through Mulder’s mind. If he were staying with us, I would make sure he got a new therapist.
Jackson can’t help but smile, wiping his tears. “If I were staying with you, I’d probably really need one.”
“Yeah.” Mulder snorts a laugh. “You probably would.”
***
Back in the car, Scully is sitting in the driver’s seat, unmoving, waiting for them. The radio is on, turned down very low, a murmur of voices.
“No ghosts,” Jackson informs her as he slides in the back. “Mulder says we can try Gadsby Tavern in Alexandria next time.”
“You all done with your call?” Mulder asks her, giving her a curious look. “Was it the hospital?”
“It wasn’t.” Scully says in a strange voice. “It was Skinner. He had news.”
“Oh yeah? What kind of news?”
“There’s been new evidence in the Van De Kamps’ case. Apparently a … witness remembers seeing a man wanted in Colorado in the neighborhood that morning, leaving the scene.”
“What?” Jackson inhales.
“The charges against Jackson have been dropped. He’s considered a missing child now. The Rawlins police are having a press conference, so it will be hitting the media today at some point.”
“A witness emerges from nowhere?” Mulder asks.
“Yes,” Scully says, and Jackson watches her eyes latch on to his. “And Skinner says the name of this witness has been strangely hard to come by, even for the Bureau.”
“This is good news though,” Jackson insists. “Right? It means I’m free. It’s good.”
He looks from Scully to Mulder. They both turn to him in the backseat, their faces blooming in simultaneous smiles. They’re both holding something back, but they’re not insincere.
“It is, Jackson,” Scully agrees. “You’re right. It means you have a lot more options.” He senses her worry simmering underneath. Something wrong here. Another shoe about to drop.
“Maybe I can call people now,” Jackson says, his eyes darting hesitantly between them. “My friend Louis. Maybe my uncle Wyatt.”
“Probably very soon,” Mulder says, nodding. “I’d like to wait until we know … just a little more.”
“You’re both worried,” Jackson observes softly. “You think something is weird.”
There’s a silence in the car as Scully starts the engine.
“We’re cautious,” Mulder says. “Happy, but cautious.”
***
When they get home from their bagel pick up—and Mulder was right, it was kind of a drive to get to the place with good bagels—Jackson is washing his hands in the kitchen when he feels Rose’s tiny nudge into his mind.
Apparently she’s back at home now, wherever that is. She tells him to pass on some messages. He’s happy to hear from her. He badly wants to tell her his good news, but he thinks about what Mulder and Scully said, and he decides to wait a little.
Jackson can hear Mulder talking on the phone outside. Actually, he is apparently taking a break from talking to whoever is on the line to discuss something back and forth very animatedly with Scully. Neither one of them really holds back their opinion, he’s noticed.
He’s started to put together a few more pieces about them. For one, he’s been curious about how Mulder pays his bills. Jackson’s parents always were very careful about money—clipping coupons, thinking through monthly budgets—but Mulder thinks about money much less than most adults.
Jackson knows that Scully is a doctor, and Jackson understands that doctors make high salaries, which explains her nice car and nice clothes. But Mulder hasn’t seemed to have a regular job for years, and Jackson doesn’t think FBI agents make enough to retire decades early.
When they came home with their dozen bagels, Mulder and Scully went to call this lawyer right away, both of them very determined. From what Jackson can gather, it seems to be a lawyer associated with Mulder’s family. So, Jackson infers, Mulder comes from some kind of family money. He wonders why Mulder doesn’t use it to buy a fancier house or car.
As he selects another bagel, he wonders about Mulder’s family. Who were they? How did they get rich? He wonders about Scully’s family, too. What’s her mother like, the one who is still alive? He could probably ask them all of these questions now that he isn’t a wanted man. Maybe he could even meet the mysterious grandmother now.
Outside Mulder and Scully still seem deeply invested in talking to the lawyer, so Jackson plops down on the couch with his cinnamon raisin bagel.
Chewing silently, he remembers what Scully said about the media getting the story soon. He searches around for the remote and turns on Mulder’s TV, pressing buttons to find a news channel.
When he does, he can tell instantly: the story is public.
A blonde reporter clad in a bright blue coat stands on a snow-covered street in downtown Rawlins, with the words “New Development in Wyoming Murder Case: Police Apologize to Runaway Teen” sprawled underneath her. Jackson is so shocked to see the familiar storefronts of his hometown on the national news he can barely focus on the words.
“...police believe that the victims’ son fled out of fear, and they hope Jackson Van De Kamp will be found safely.”
One of the police officers who’d been at Jackson’s school that horrible day—Davis was his name, Jackson remembers—stands in front of a microphone, looking gray and stricken: “We admit when we make mistakes, and this was a mistake. Mr. Van De Kamp is innocent of all wrongdoing. In all likelihood, he’s a scared and grieving kid. If you can hear this, Jackson, buddy, we want you to come home.”
Jackson stares at the screen open-mouthed, clutching his half-eaten bagel tightly. The rest of the report seems to slide right past him.
“Was that it?” Scully says sharply from behind him. The news has moved on to something else. “Was that the story about you?”
“Yeah,” Jackson says, his voice sounding like a small boy’s.
Scully walks around and sits down next to him on the couch. She picks up the remote and switches the TV off.
She peers at his face. “Are you okay, Jackson?”
“I don’t know,” he says. “The police … uh, begged me … to come home. To Wyoming.”
Scully’s eyes are so wide, so icy blue—exactly like Rose’s. They run all over him, as if studiously taking in every detail.
“Do you want to go back?” she asks.
“I don’t know,” he repeats, blinking.
She picks up his plate off of the coffee table, offering it to him. He sets his bagel down on it dazedly. She replaces the plate on the table.
“You have some decisions to make, Jackson,” she says, her voice gentle. “Not all of them right away. But you do have some decisions to make.”
Mulder appears behind her, his hand reaching for her shoulder. He’s watching Jackson closely, too.
“We spoke to the lawyer about the … custody possibilities,” Scully says. Jackson recognizes suddenly that she’s very nervous. He can feel fear starting to roll off of her in steady waves. “It’s most likely a relative has official custody of you now. Probably your uncle Wyatt?”
Jackson nods slowly. He can’t think of who else would.
“We can talk to your uncle about other possibilities,” Scully says carefully. “Living with us. Short term … or longer term. There are a range of options in the kind of relationship you could have with us. You could just do visits. We could have some kind of shared custody. There’s, uh, more permanent arrangements. Like legal guardianship. Adoption.” She swallows. Her fear is pulsing around Jackson now like a heartbeat. “I don’t know how your uncle will feel about any of this, but we thought we’d check with you before pursuing anything else. We want you to be the one … in the driver’s seat.”
Jackson reaches out his hand to rest on her arm. He doesn’t want her to be so terrified. It’s stupid. Unnecessary. Of course he wants to live with them. She stills at his touch, her eyes widening.
“Yeah,” he says. “I want to see Uncle Wyatt—like, for visits. He’s family. But I’d like to stay here. If that’s possible, I mean.”
Scully seems unable to suppress her initial reaction: she bursts into a pink-cheeked smile; she exchanges a quick, amazed look with Mulder. Her hand covers Jackson’s, and he can feel her intentionally calming herself down. “We’re happy you feel like that, of course. But that was … a fast decision. Are you sure? You can think about it. All the time you need.”
“Yeah, I’m pretty sure.” He tries to make his own tone sound casual, breezy. “Uncle Wyatt has too many dogs and goes to a crazy church,” he says with a shrug. “And I don’t think he’ll argue with you too much if you say you want me to live here. I broke his big screen TV once, and he thinks I’m annoying.”
Jackson doesn’t say everything he’s thinking. That he would actually really like to see what it would be like to be part of their family. That he’d like to know what love felt like, everyday, with them. That he thinks it would be easy, somehow—much easier than he might have expected. That he thinks he understands now that this new relationship with them has nothing to do with replacing his parents.
Mulder’s smile is so wide that Jackson suspects he eavesdropped. “We’d love to have you, Jackson,” he says.
“We’ll talk to your uncle,” adds Scully. “We can be more specific about your options after that.”
“Rose said she could teach you more about how to block me, you know,” Jackson tells them tactfully. “So you wouldn’t have to worry as much about… not having privacy. You know.”
Scully flushes, and Mulder hides a smile. “That might be nice,” Scully says.
“She also said there was a really good STEM high school in Alexandria,” Jackson suggests with more feigned disinterest.
“Rose is full of advice,” Mulder observes wryly.
“Yep,” Jackson agrees. “I got a message from her, by the way.” He eyes the bagel on his plate again. “When you all first went in to call the lawyer.”
“Really?” Mulder says. “A … psychic message?”
“That sounds kind of overdramatic,” Jackson says, rolling his eyes and picking his bagel back up. “But yeah. She said she was home.”
“Good,” Scully says. “That’s good.” She throws Mulder a glance.
“She also said to tell you something, Scully.”
“She … did?”
“She said to tell you that they listened to her.” He looks at Scully to see if that’s meaningful, but her face looks blank. “Rose said that … she told them what she wanted, and they listened.”
He shrugs, deciding it doesn’t matter that much, and he takes a big bite of the bagel. Scully has a point about getting them fresh, he decides. They taste so much better this way. You could only get bagels in a bag at the grocery store in Rawlins.
A plummeting feeling from the pit of Scully’s stomach makes him look up.
“What?” Mulder asks her. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”
Scully’s face has lost color. “No. I just …”
“Who listened to her?” Mulder insists. “What does that message mean?”
“I asked her … if the Walled Garden leaders listened to her,” Scully says in a low voice. “If they respected her.”
Jackson swallows part of his bagel so he’s able to talk. Through a mouthful: “You think she asked the Walled Garden for something she wanted?”
Mulder stares at Jackson, and then turns back to Scully, his eyes widening. “You think she asked them for something she wanted,” he repeats in a low voice, realizing. “Oh wow.”
“This morning, she said she was going home to take care of something,” Scully whispers, her eyes on him.
Jackson swallows his last mouthful. “What?”
“So she goes home,” Mulder says in disbelief to Scully. “And within a few hours…”
“Is it possible, Mulder?”
Jackson finally gets it. “You think she asked the Walled Garden to make sure the charges were dropped against me. Don’t you?”
Scully and Mulder are still looking hard at one another. “It happened so fast,” Mulder says. “All in less than six hours. If it was really the machinations of the Walled Garden…”
“They have an alarming amount of power,” says Scully. “Over multiple entities of government. An amount of power comparable to…”
“The Syndicate.” Mulder sits next to them on the couch, puts his head in his hands. “Can this be true? I don’t know what to make of an organization like this. They’re not even… strictly human. But they may be involved in… it’s overwhelming.”
They don’t say anything for a moment, looking dazed. Jackson watches them both in profile, unsure what to say.
“What do we do, Scully?” Mulder says.
She looks away, towards the window. There are entire worlds—entire universes—in Scully’s eyes. Jackson feels weirdly like his shine is lost in something enormous.
“I guess it’s fortunate there’s an investigative unit of the FBI qualified to keep an eye on them,” Scully says slowly and resolutely at last.
She turns and picks up Mulder’s hand. He lifts his head out of his hands and meets her stare.
“And keep an eye on Rose, too?” Jackson says incredulously.
“Yeah,” agrees Mulder, a strange finality. “And keep an eye on Rose.”
A fierce undertow of worry from Scully. But is Rose on the right side? How could we convince her? What if Rose were involved with something fundamentally wrong? What about any other members of the Walled Garden Mulder might feel connected to?
They’re frighteningly powerful anxieties, and Jackson doesn’t even understand some of them. They’re shot through with the stinging, luminous heat of her love. But weirdly he doesn’t feel himself getting drawn into these anxieties right now, even though he’s prone to worrying himself.
It’s just the more overwhelming emotion coming at him right now is what’s coming from Mulder. This ridiculous hopefulness. Bigger and more buoyant than ever. It fills up, expands and crowds out all competing feelings.
Jackson isn’t sure if Mulder is essentially being like a gullible kid—if he wants to believe things that aren’t true just to comfort himself. If that’s true, he is much, much better at it than Jackson. Because every cell in his body seems to be singing the same song: somehow, this will be okay. Somehow, what's wrong is going to get better. Jackson decides Mulder feeling like this is a good thing, even if it's not an entirely logical or sane thing.
As Mulder draws Scully into his side, and suggests they watch his favorite movie—some old movie about space that Scully protests vehemently—Jackson notices the influence of Mulder’s hope beginning to work on her, too. She’s arguing back, but she’s starting to relax, too. She’s got this little smile on her lips. Her anxieties are receding, falling into the background.
Jackson pulls his knees up at his end of the couch and stops listening to their good-natured argument. He wonders how it would be received if he asked if his friend Louis could come visit some time. He has a brilliant idea about splashing red paint around the inside of the Bunny Man Bridge and freaking the shit out of Louis. It would be hilarious. Also, he’d just like to see Louis. He misses him.
Mulder and Scully want Jackson to be the tie-breaker in deciding the movie. They both look over and ask him, with curious faces, what he wants to watch.
He doesn’t hesitate. “Finding Nemo,” he suggests at once. “Or The Incredibles.”
“Aren’t those kid movies?” Mulder asks suspiciously.
“Not ... entirely,” Jackson says.
“What are they about, then?”
Jackson considers his answer a minute and lands upon the right words. “They’re about doing crazy shit for your family.”
He wins.
***
Y'all, thank you so much for reading. I’m truly grateful for all of your encouraging, supportive notes and tags. You have no idea what they mean.
#xfiles fanfic#the x files#x files fanfic#fox mulder#dana scully#x files#xf fanfic#msr#jackson van de kamp#x files revival
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Scully comes out to Mulder as bisexual he responds by also coming out as bisexual
They’re kicked back in Adirondacks by the fire circle, the logs popping and sparking when the flames lick dried sap. The air is just crisp enough to make the heat cozy. Scully brought home cider donuts from the farm stand along her commute, which they wash down with a pitcher of sangria. A cinnamon-sugar crust coats her lips.
It’s been two minutes since he asked her and she hasn’t answered.
“So?” he prods, nudging her foot with his. “It’s been long enough all the sin’s gone out of it, Dana Katherine. Fess up, did you experiment some in college? I’ll absolve you if you did.”
He puts the lewdest possible edge on “experiment” so that she can’t in good faith make a quip about organic chemistry or the effects of acetylcholine on Rana pipiens.
Scully flops her head back against the heavy wooden chair; who cares at this point? The meanest nuns are dead. “Yeah,” she says. “I did.”
She turns to him for a reaction
His eyebrows are up, but he looks genuinely interested rather than smirking. “Oh? Do tell.”
She stares up at the rising column of smoke, tracks it to Polaris. Tracks it decades back. “This girl, Elizabeth. Roommate’s boyfriend’s sister. We…um. We all went out to a bar one night while she was visiting.”
Scully leans into the memory. Calgon and ski sweaters and Aqua Net. Layered bangs, Jordache jeans. Liz’s rum and Coke.
Liz’s hazel eyes, Liz’s blue mascara.
“Anyway. We all had a lot to drink and Claire - that was my roommate - Claire and Elizabeth’s brother were making out in his Cutlass Ciera.”
Liz’s mouth like a taut August plum, the taste of her frosted Revlon lips…
“There was this couch in the back of the bar, some coffee tables, you know the feeling. Anyway, Liz pulled me over. We’d been dancing some, Fleetwood Mac I think, and she kissed me. I was shocked, good Catholic girl that I was. But I was three shots in, and it was college, you know? We settled on the couch, kind of drunk I guess….”
She swallows hard, looks at Mulder. “Is this weird? It seems kind of weird.”
He shakes his head, eyes bright in the flames. “Go on.”
“We were kissing, mostly. She touched my breasts through my shirt, slipped her hands down my jeans but not my underwear. It was pretty innocent, I don’t know. I didn’t see her again after that but it definitely changed my perspective some. I began noticing if I found a woman attractive. Got at least a bit more comfortable with the idea, anyway. Stopped telling myself I just liked her hair or her outfit.”
She hears his breathing thicken. Just a little, but it’s there.
“And never after?” he asks.
Scully wonders what else he isn’t asking her. Wonders what it must be like to be young now. She shakes her head, takes a pull of sangria. Chews a chunk of macerated pineapple.
“No,” she says. “I came close a couple of times, but no.”
She wishes she had a cigarette or a joint. Something to do with her hands and her mouth even after so many years. And even after so many years she doesn’t tell him about what she thought of Esther Nairn, about whether she wanted to kill Diana or be Diana or fuck Diana.
They watch the fire for a time. Hear it crackle, gaze into a vast and endless sky. There are old gods there, older than hers. She knows that now. She embraces it.
“What about you?” Scully asks. “All those posh Eton boys at Oxford, surely one struck your fancy.”
She doesn’t really expect anything of it, but she asks to make him confirm or deny. To deflect. It’s how she’s been trained. And she’s endlessly intrigued by his formative years, her well-bred, prep-school lover. They’d practically invented sodomy, hadn’t they?
Mulder makes a soft, throaty noise. Grabs a donut and takes a huge bite.
She turns to him. “Oh my god,” she says. “Did you sleep with Alex Krycek?” Where had THAT come from?
He coughs donut crumbs everywhere. “Scully!”
She clamps on to it. “Did you?”
His turn for the sangria now, blushing. Blushing! Fox Mulder, did you really? she thinks, oddly turned on.
Mulder clears his throat. “He kissed me, but no. He kissed me twice, actually. But no, I didn’t…” he trails off, shaking his head.
“Did you like it?” she asks, her voice sex and sandpaper. Arousing herself further, Jesus.
“Yes,” he says. Holds her stare. Runs his tongue over the lips she’s kissed so many times. That Alex Krycek and Diana Fowley had kissed. The sting is gone, only the fascination left.
All the sin’s gone out of it, he’d said. Yes, it had. Over fifty, of course it had.
“But it wasn’t your first time.” A little breathless, that.
“No.” Licks his lips again. “You guessed right, Agent Scullly, brava. This guy, at uni…we. We didn’t sleep together, but we’d. You know. Touch.”
Agent Scully.
The father of her child looks unimaginably shy. “Ourselves. Each other.”
She knows about Phoebe, all the details. She knows about the cemetery and the gothic drama and the kind of sex that feels like a revelation instead of a mind game.
He knows about Daniel. She sees the child she was then, has long since forgiven the silly girl.
But this is different and, in her mind, sweet. Two boys, lonely, away from home. She hopes they were comforted. Happy.
“Did you…keep up with him?”
Mulder shakes his head, mouth a little swollen in the primal orange glow. “It only lasted a term before he graduated. Never spoke after that. Phoebe, you know. Other women.”
“Alex.”
He grins at her. “You have to admit he was awfully pretty, especially for a complete piece of shit.”
Scully laughs. “That he was.”
She reaches for his fingers in the dark.
In the light.
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Do you think CSM would show up at Mulder and Scully’s wedding? (Let’s be clear on that I don’t want him there, I just want to know if he would show his ugly face there just to piss them off)
i think he would definitely show up. CSM can be a very sentimental figure at times, he likes to think of himself as “affectionate,” with benevolent omnipotence. (i always think of him going to mulder’s apartment when mulder was “dead,” and tearing up holding the photo of mulder and samantha as kids).
he really likes to think of himself as important, as reigning, as part of a legacy. having control.
i think he’d want to watch, and they would find cigarette butts outside. just to fuck with their heads, to say: i’m everywhere. there is nothing that you have without me.
that’s what he wants, more than anything.
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I typed "tiger emoji" into Google and pasted it here for this moment:
🐯
Behold its majesty. XDDD
a very magestic tiger indeed!🐯🐅
btw, thank you for putting all your fics on ao3, it made it way easier for me to go through and remind myself which ones were my favorite😅
"The Dead Are Everywhere, Scully"
I loved this one so much and it actually made me cry a little because it's just so beautiful how even death can't keep them from dancing together in the rain🥺
"Regardless of His Actions Last Night"
I can't ignore this one! You did such a great job with my prompt and of course little mischievous Queequeg was perfect❤️ (also loved the line about Mulder's Christmas hat😂)
"Something Approaching a Normal Life"
Mulder at Thanksgiving with the Scullys! What's not to love🥰🦃 I love the thought of Mulder and Scully going out of their way to be there for each other during their respective "haunted holidays"❤️
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HUGE TRIGGER WARNING AHEAD !!
mentions of murder, child abuse, p€dophilia, r@pe, cannibalism, drugs and sexual assault, necrophilia. (let me know if there's more)
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i warned you at the top of this post, don't read if any of the mentioned topics trigger you.
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i've been studying true crime for as long as i can remember but i've never been that shocked until now. until i heard about the daisy's destruction case. peter scully is a 61 old man (he currently is in jail) who have done the most gut wrenching, horrifying things i've read. he didn't act alone but he was the "brain" of these crimes. he and his two "girlfriends" kidnapped children promising their parents health and a great situation or whatever but that's clearly not what happened. now the story behind daisy's destruction is fucking insane and horrifying so it's not too late to quit, i don't wanna be in charge of any tears or anything take care of yourselves. one of the girls kidnapped three children. liza, cindy and daisy (i believe this is their names, i apologize if not). i haven't seen the video daisy's destruction since we can't find it on this side of the internet, only on the dark web and for obvious reasons i will not go on the dark web. especially not to see this horror. peter basically r@ped those little girls. to clarify, liza was 11, cindy was 10 and daisy was 18 months old. peter had cindy digging her own grave before strangling her to death. liza and daisy are still alive but they obviously are traumatized and it was confirmed that daisy is unable to have children due to severe injuries around her vagina. i wish them the best and i hope cindy is resting in peace after the hell she went through.
jeffrey dahmer. dear lord, where do i even start? jeffrey would hang in gay bars around the 80s due to his sexuality if i'm correct (correct me if not). i've been studying jeffrey's case for longer so i mostly know what i'm talking about unlike peter's case but i'm not perfect so i might make mistakes so don't hesitate to correct me. jeffrey has always been "fascinated" by death and everything that revolves around it. he would dissect dead animals with his father as a hobby. growing up, jeffrey will realize it's more than just a "scientific" fascination. it sexually attracted him. he would start off by drugging his victim's drink so it'd be "easier" to get them home (please stay safe you guys, psychos are everywhere, always hold your drinks wherever you go). his victims were all males in their 20s or so except for one who was 14. jeffrey was grown when he killed that 14 year old boy. i've personally seen pictures of jeffrey's appartement after he got arrested and those picture made me so uncomfortable. i've also seen jeffrey's polaroids and i don't even wanna comment on it. what kills me is that those photos are so easy to find like that just disgusts me and it made me so uncomfortable.
now, why did i tell y'all all that, hm? there's obviously a reason and you're right. there is. it might sound dumb or like i'm overreacting but i promise i'm not. i've seen MULTIPLE facebook pages, tiktok edits and instagram accounts glorifying and idolizing those monsters. mostly jeffrey because peter's case isn't really known but i have seen "fan" accounts of them both. it's sickening. y'all realize they took the life of innocent, beautiful people. OF KIDS. like. even if peter didn't kill liza and daisy, he still took their life away from them. jeffrey murdered, ate and drugged people. peter raped, murdered and tortured little girls and you have nothing better to do than to create a fucking fan account to support them? you're sick. honestly, fucking disgusting. you think peter or jeffrey would show mercy to you if you were in front of them? you think they'd be like "oh you're my fan, all good!" NO, THEY WOULDN'T. they are murderers and you are glorifying their actions. honestly, you're as sick as peter and jeffrey if you think their actions are okay. i'm sick to my stomach just thinking about the edits i saw of jeffrey with a cute ass stupid caption saying "i could fix him" or "he wouldn't hurt anyone" well shame on you. he did and he admitted to it. the families of the victims maybe have facebook, tiktok or instagram. how do you think they'd feel if they saw their son's/daughter's, cousin's, little brother's/sister's, nephew's/niece's murderer being loved, supported and idolized? you guys are sick. you need to get off your phone and go touch some grass seriously.
that's all i wanted to say, goodnight.
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Day 26 of Fictober !
Fandom : X-Files with the prompt "I'm doing it, shut up." (Cheated a bit with this one, I'll admit)
Tagging @today-in-fic and @xffictober2022
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He listens to it every night. In the dark of his appartment, the sound echoes as if it all happens here, the sound of smashed glass and Scully’s cries mingling until the tape ends.
It’s nothing more than an illusion. If it had happened here, maybe he could have done something. He could have pushed Duane Barry through the damn wall, crashed his head against it until the man couldn’t do anything to Scully.
He could have held her, shielding her.
If it had happened here, maybe Scully would still be here, with him. Alive. Safe.
Not gone to God knows where.
Not potentially dead.
He closes his eyes against the thought, but the image of her dismembered body follows him, crawling underneath its lids, carving itself on his pupils. He can’t escape it. It’s everywhere.
He failed her. It’s all his goddamn fault.
‘’I’m sorry,’’ he croaks when the sound of the broken glass echoes for the thousand time, almost drowning her gasp of terror. He imagines it, laying on his couch, fingers digging in his palm. How her blue eyes widened, how she stumbled back to escape Barry, how she fell on the ground and begged for his help.
‘’I need your help !’’ Her voice breaks on a grunt, but he can still feels her fear as if its own, seeping underneath his own flesh, digging and tearing his guts, making his heart gallop in his chest. He wonders if she thought he would save her. If she waited for him until the end, staring at the inky stars on Skyland Mountain, forced to walk towards her doom. He wonders if she would ever forgive him for being late. ‘’Mulder !’’
It’s gut-wrenching to hear her again and again, his name so unfamiliar in her voice distorted by terror. He hates it, dreams of it at night, wakes up to the sound of her screaming. It’s etched onto his brain, the only thing his ears can hear.
It’s his punishment. Every nights, he listens to it. It will only stop when he finds her again.
It’s his only way to be absolved.
‘’Mulder !’’
The lump in his throat has claws, and each of it plunge inside his flesh, tears out arteries and vocal chords, windpipe and oesophagus. He dies on his couch again and again, every time he listens to this tape.
When it’s over, he lays still, eyes on the ceiling. And he talks.
‘’I’m sorry I wasn’t here, Scully,’’ he says to the empty room, to her, lost, somewhere beyond the stars. ‘’I’m sorry I wasn’t with you when it happened. I should have find you sooner. I should have tried harder. Maybe it would have changed things. Maybe he would have taken me instead.’’ It rises before he can stop it, blossoming in his chest, scorching and acid like bile, falling out of his lips. ‘’I wish it had been me.’’
The only answer he gets is silence.
It’s the only things he deserves.
Something ugly escapes him, a broken sound. Too raw. Too sharp. Too Scully-shaped hole. ‘’I’m doing it again, aren’t I ? Feeling sorry for myself. Shut up, Mulder.’’ The tears burn but he welcomes the pain with open arm, cradles it close to his chest, like a child with a plushie. He knows pain intimately. He knows it more than he knows his own damn parents. ‘’Just fucking shut up.’’
The heel of his palms cover his eyes, press against the wetness there.
‘’I’m sorry,’’ he chokes again, ‘’I wish you were here, Scully.’’
Silence weighs on his chest, constricts his lungs. He rewinds the tape and settles back on his couch, closing his eyes.
‘’Mulder !’’
Until he finds her again.
He listens to it every night.
#txf#dana scully#fox mulder#msr#fictober22#xffictober2022#made myself sad with this#i have such a soft spot for Mulder early season 2#his pain is just so... fucking real and heart-wrenching#welp#i hope you'll still like it#and thank you for reading !
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If You Will Let Me
A Post-Milagro X Files Fic
TW: Medical trauma, near death experience, sedation, visit from the dead, mentions of demons
___________________
Chapter 20: Tethered
There is a plane between death and life, a haze of struggling where the soul is suspended. Battered by tempests unseen, haunted by visions of what was and what could be, the spirit is tethered to a silkworm’s thread, swung on a pendulum.
Toward the darkness.
Toward the light.
In the darkness, velvet waves pummel and formless voids gape in hunger. The stench of death wafts from their depths. They wait. Ravenous. They beckon in earnest.
They promise peace. But they have no peace.
They promise safety. They are not safe.
But what can the spirit do, adrift in this ocean, without a compass, without a rudder, at the mercy of currents and the strength of the thread? The soul cries out for an unseen savior, a way to be pulled from mouths that would devour. To be gathered and bound up, a castaway returned, restored to what was. Pulled safely, securely into the folds of light.
The hours passed. The pendulum swang.
It was disorienting. The space in which Scully found herself was not truly anywhere. She knew that much.
But the voices enveloping her, or inside of her, were insistent. Insistent and real.
Their desperation, their hunger spurred her on. Giving in to the darkness would only guarantee her damnation. And his victory. As much as the cavernous spaces yearned to pull her in, she wouldn’t go. God, she couldn’t.
The thread wavered, drawing her along aimlessly, a faceless soul through battering gales.
She felt him near, somehow, even though he wouldn’t, or couldn’t, manifest as he had in her apartment. How much of himself had he woven into her? She was infected. Stained.
She tried to cry out, but found her throat was sand.
The cord twisted. It spun.
She saw a hint of light.
Pale, thin glimmers on an otherwise formless, shrouded horizon.
Another voice began alongside the sounds of hunger. Calling to her. Intent, but with a different tone than the mouths that wanted to consume.
This sound was kind. This voice had hope.
Dad? Dad!
How many years had it been? She tried to reach out, but had no control of her arms. Tried to call to him, but could not find her words. Tried to find him- somehow- but her body felt nothing save the emptiness of this barren plane of existence.
She choked, the absence of breath, the absence of self striking panic.
Dad!
“I’m here, Starbuck. I’m here.”
She wanted to yell for him. Cry out to him. Hug him, one last time.
But he was nowhere and everywhere, and her mouth was mute.
Are you real? She wanted him to be. More than anything.
“This part of me is.”
You… pulled us out of the house. You came for me.
“How could I not? How could I not come for my little girl?”
The flood of loss, of undying love was overwhelming. It suspended them both in a cocoon of bittersweet silence.
Dad. How did you know?
“You will be amazed, someday, at what we get to know. What we get to see, and do, when we are needed. That’s why I’m here now.”
I do, I do need you, Dad. I’ve missed you so much, I thought I could never talk to you again… and you’re here and I just…
She felt like a desperate little girl. She wished she could cry, just to ease the torment inside herself. But she was bound up, inside and out. Powerless. It made her ache all the more.
“You won’t stay here. You’re my fighter. Remember?”
How can I fight what I can’t see?
His voice seemed nearer, somehow. She could almost smell his aftershave, she thought.
“You don’t. Not alone. You have to decide, Dana. Decide what you’re willing to fight for. And I hope you make the right choice.”
What is the right choice?
“I always chose myself, Dana. And my orders, and my job. All the accolades, all the rewards, remember? And I was given permission to come to you, to tell you that is not enough. Not to really live.”
That doesn’t make sense.
“It does. You’re just still afraid to admit it. I left with things undone, sweetheart. I was certain that what I did was enough. I was strong, your mother was strong, I made you kids strong. You were strong because you had to be. Because I wasn’t really there for you to rely on.”
If she could breathe here, if she could speak, she would have screamed at him. As much as she knew his words were true, his confession tore open a flood wall inside her. The sudden deluge of denial and bitterness was too great.
Don’t say that! You were there, Dad, you were.
“I tried to be, sometimes. But I was torn. Blinded by what I thought was important. But ask your mother, when you get home. Ask her about the forgotten anniversaries. And the birthdays I missed, for trainings or ceremonies. Remember who helped you with your homework, and your big projects.” His voice was sad. “I had a lot to do… a lot I thought was more important… She was always so, so good. Forgiving.” He paused, his silence pained. “Service has a cost. Service to our country. Or to the FBI. We choose where to place our time, our trust. That’s what shows love. I didn’t give your mother… or you kids… I didn’t give the time you deserved. When you go back, please tell her I’m sorry. You have to tell her that. I’m so, so sorry.”
If a voice could carry weight, if it could bear upon another with a touch, she would swear she felt him holding her with only his soft timbre.
She desperately wished she could hug him back.
I love you, Dad.
“I love you, too. So much. Listen to me, Starbuck, I want you to know, it is possible to love and be strong. What you’ve been doing, carrying all this. Fighting alone… you don’t have to. Sometimes being strong alone… it isn’t possible. It isn’t what’s best. I wish I had known… wish I had acted on it more. I wish I had shown you all how important you really are.”
You sound like Mulder.
“And I can tell you don’t think that’s a bad thing. Make the right choice, Dana. Don’t wait till it’s too late. You can't get the time back. And don’t forget, I’m here. Always. In your corner.”
But Dad, wait—
The pendulum swung.
The silk thread snapped.
____________________
Opening his eyelids fully was too much effort. Instead, Mulder settled on cracking them just enough to make out the golden glow that surrounded him.
His neural networks processed haphazardly, firing thoughts at random as he regained full consciousness.
Good color. Scully would like it.
His fingers felt next to him, where her body had been resting with him the past nights. He wanted to wake her, to show her the strange tangerine light that enveloped them.
His fingers found cold sheets.
Scully should be here. She’s not.
He fought to force his eyes open, his heart rate climbing as the confusion and panic took root. His pupils registered the plain, sunset stained hospital walls. The heart monitor pads on his chest. The IV lines anchored in his veins. The nurses running into the room.
His mouth became cotton. His forehead grew hot with a strange, chilled sweat and his stomach turned without warning. He bolted upright and managed to twist his body in the hospital bed before he vomited onto the floor, and the shoes of a nurse.
“Oh…gaw..m’s’ry…” The apology slurred out. His tongue felt thick and unfamiliar.
The dark haired nurse smiled slightly at him. “It’s okay, really. Not the worst thing I’ve had happen.” While the other nurse helped clean him up and lay him back on the pillows, the dark haired nurse wiped her shoes off with a towel.
“Fox, is it? My name is Beth,” she continued. “And this is Abby. We’re here most nights. When they brought you in, they told us we have to keep an extra eye on you. They had to sedate you to get you to rest. Sounds like you’re trouble.”
Mulder couldn’t tell if she was joking or not. Even if she were serious, he couldn’t form a coherent rebuttal. He managed a shrug instead. Yes, he did seem to be trouble, he supposed. His bosses and exes would all vouch for that.
Abby was changing fluids in the IV drip. Mulder eyed her. Her hair curled, like Samantha’s. He found himself suddenly leery of these two strangers. They could be another demonic ruse, for all he knew.
“So we will be just outside your room at the nurse’s station, and will come in and bother you, probably more than you want. They said you can’t be alone.” There was a strange tone in Beth’s voice. Irritation, Mulder decided. Or distain. “Anyway, ER bandaged you up nice, so we’ll just be here to change gauze, check your fluids. You’ll be out of here in no time.” Beth patted his hand and turned to leave.
“Where’s’ssshhh,” he managed.
Beth blinked.
“Wurrrss’shee,” he tried again.
“Oh, oh. Where is she…” She glanced at Abby, a pensive look on her face.
He felt his panic building again.
Abby scrambled to tamp down his worry. “Sir, we have to keep all patient information confidential. But I promise you she’s alright.” She offered a kind, reassuring grin.
Beth pursed her lips and gave Abby a disapproving look, then glanced back at him. “And that’s all we can tell you, sir. We shouldn’t even tell you that much.” Her glare settled back on her colleague.
Mulder’s heart rate slowed on the monitor. He nodded, a small smile on his lips.
Scully is alive.
“Get some rest.” Abby finished making notations and both nurses turned to leave. “You’ll feel much better tomorrow. Promise.” She offered another polite smile over her shoulder.
He was so, so tired. Sedated? Given how his body felt, it was entirely plausible. As his eyes drifted closed, he heard Beth from the hallway.
“They told us it’s a DV case! Everyone’s been talking about it! What were you thinking?” Her words hissed through her teeth.
“He was worried, Beth.”
“Maybe. Or maybe he’s acting. Don’t give any more information or you’re gonna get yourself fired.”
“Yeah…”
“I’m serious! You do it again and I’m reporting it. I’m not going down with you just because you think a guy is nice.”
Though his head was still foggy and stomach still swimming, Mulder’s mind was clear enough to register the weight of their words. So much for getting help from anyone here. Maybe once his brain fog lifted he could….
The fresh dose of sedatives in the IV took over as dusk began to settle into the corners of the room.
Fox Mulder fell into a dreamless, leaden sleep.
____________________
“Dad!” Scully’s hoarse voice cut through the monotonous beeping of the monitors. Her eyes flew open as she gasped in air. It was sick-sweet and plastic.
Her fingers found an oxygen mask. Beeping monitors behind her hammered out her elevated heart rate.
Fumbling, she pulled at the mask. It caught, hindered by her hair tangled in the elastic. A nurse ran into her room before she managed to remove it.
“Dana? You okay?” The panic of inexperience stained the young man’s voice. He hurried to her side in an attempt to calm her. Once he secured the mask once more, he eased her back down to the pillow. “It’s good to see you awake, at least.”
“I heard- I swear he was here.” Scully’s eyes searched the dimly lit hospital room.
“Who?”
She blinked back the emotion she felt bubbling to the surface.
“Who was in here?”
She shook her head. “It must have been a dream.”
There was certainly no way she could explain what she had just experienced to anyone else.
“That would make sense,” the nurse said. “You’ve been through a lot, bad dreams can come from that. It’s good to see you so alert.”
Scully felt ill at ease. Her medical mind struggled to process, to make sense of where she was and what had happened. She didn’t remember going to the hospital, but she could deduce why she was there easily enough. What she couldn’t reconcile to herself was the fact that she was alive. After feeling them entering her body… after deciding she was too tired to fight anymore… she should be… dead? Part of them? Definitely not sitting here, she was sure of that much.
She knew that she had her father to thank for that.
“Could I… Can I talk to a doctor, or at least see my chart?” She tried in vain to sit up. “Please, I’m a doctor.”
The young man studied her face seriously. “You have been through a lot,” he repeated. “And you’ve been unconscious. You are really lucky.” He nodded toward the mask on her face. “Oxygen, obviously. Keep it on. Keep resting. Your body needs it. The doctor will be in to make rounds in the morning, and you can talk to him then. The last thing you need is more stress on your mind or body right now.”
“You said I’m lucky.” She sounded strange to herself, muffled through the mask. “What about my partner?”
“Partner?”
Her stomach dropped. She took a breath to steady herself. “Yes, Fox Mulder. He would have been with me.”
The nurse shook his head apologetically. “I don’t know that name. I’m sorry.”
Panic seized her. “I have to find him, you have to let me go!”
She began pulling at the mask again, but the nurse grabbed both of her hands. His face bent down to hers, his eyes serious.
“Listen. This is a big hospital, and you’re in the intensive care unit. Your partner is probably in another area. You need to stay here until we can be sure you’re alright, okay? You’ve been unconscious for a couple days. You lost so much blood they had to do a transfusion. But they don’t know how on earth you lost it.” His brow was furrowed with worry, or pity. “I don’t know what all you went through, but I can tell it wasn’t fun.”
Scully shook her head slowly, reeling at this new information. “No. It wasn’t.” As he let go, she let her hands fall to her sides. Bewildered. Defeated.
“My name is Jordan, I’m here all night. I can stay here for a bit, till you go to sleep? Would you like that?”
He was no Mulder, but she didn’t want to be alone. She nodded softly.
“Yes, please.”
Jordan pulled a chair close to her bedside. She sighed, irritated that her body was so weak and worn. Still, she was thankful for the company.
“How long have you been working here, Jordan?”
The nurse ducked his head in a boyish fashion. “This is actually my first year working. But I completed my clinicals here, too.”
“Mm, good for you.” She smiled at him. “You chose a good line of work; you'll help lots of people. So you're pretty familiar with the hospital then?”
The nurse nodded.
“Would you do something for me, please?” In spite of herself, Scully felt her eyelids getting heavy again. Her body felt utterly spent.
“I’ll try.” His voice was wary.
“Can you find out if my partner is okay? Fox Mulder.” Her eyes were desperate. “I need to know. We were attacked, and I want- just, please find out if he’s here, if he’s alright.” Her jaw clenched tight against tears that threatened. I need him to be alright.
Jordan nodded, holding her gaze. “You know I can’t give you personal information… but I can see if he’s here.” He gave a smile. “I promise.”
The relieved grin she returned was faded from fatigue. “That’s all I want, thank you. Just to know he’s safe. He’s… he’s a good friend.”
Her father’s words wavered in her subconscious as she began to drift off.
You’re right, Dad. I know you’re right.
____________________
Footsteps on the tile floor roused Mulder.
He took great care to turn his head like the hour hand, wary of startling the staff or making himself throw up again.
“How are ya feeling?” Abby’s kind face studied him through the dim light.
He rolled his dry tongue in his mouth as he stared at her. His eyes darted toward the doorway, then back. She was alone… which either meant the nurse was really here alone, or… He felt a low panic begin to creep in. If it was indeed the demons again, he was hardly in a position to resist. He swallowed thickly, moving his mouth in an attempt at words.
“Behht?” He groaned to himself. Stupid sedative.
Abby grinned. “Beth?”
“Mh- hmm.” He kept his eyes fixed on her, watching for a shift, a telltale murmur in the planes of her face.
She let out a small laugh. “She’s not your favorite, is she?”
Mulder grunted.
“She’s on break,” she shrugged. Her long brown curls moved with her shoulders. “I figured now was a good time to check in on you… I dunno. She’s a good nurse. She just makes her mind up about people pretty quick. But I like to decide for myself. Just because you hear something about someone doesn’t mean it’s true, ya know.” She offered another smile.
Mulder licked his cracked lips. “No more. No, no more sedttiff.” He glared at the IV bag to make his point.
She shook her head. “No, we don’t do that unless it’s absolutely necessary. That was supposed to be the last round. As long as you promise not to go crazy and try to hurt anyone again.”
He scrunched his nose and brow in confusion.
“You don’t remember?”
He slowly shook his head.
“Huh. Well, I wasn’t here when they brought you in, but the report was that you were pretty upset. Fighting the paramedics. Saying crazy things.” Her eyes were filled with sympathy. “You must have been in shock, I guess. You look like you’ve been through a lot.” She studied the cuts on his face, his bandaged hand.
“Mhm.” He closed his eyes for a moment, remembering Padgett’s hollow, hateful stare, Scully’s terrified face… the darkness filling him. “T’ tried’t’take us.”
Abby’s eyebrows furrowed. “Take you? So you- you didn’t hurt the other patient.” The relief was evident on her face.
“Never.” He wished he could explain himself more, so this nurse could understand. Scully was his only reason to keep going. The thought of hurting her was unconscionable.
“I knew you weren’t that kind of guy. Who did this to you?”
Mulder blinked, considering his next move carefully. She seemed trustworthy, but if she felt he was crazy or dangerous… He examined her kind face, framed by long curls that were tucked back in a loose, messy ponytail. A glint of metal flashed from one earlobe that peeked through her hair.
He squinted. A cross earring.
She squinted back at him with a small grin. “What?”
“Umm…” Mulder struggled to sit up, fighting the residual dizziness. “D’you b’lieve in God?” He could barely believe the words as they came out of his mouth. Less than a week ago, he would have vehemently denied any plausibility of such things. Yet here he was, tethered to a hospital bed with IV lines and BP sensors, all because of a hoard of demons. The world was a strange place.
Abby tilted her head, then nodded. “Yeah. Yeah I believe in God. Why?”
He took a deep breath. Here goes nothing. “Okay, an’dem’ns?”
She stared at him, her brow twisted in confusion.
“An’demons.” He spat out. He couldn’t wait till he regained full control of his thick, uncooperative tongue.
“Demons,” she repeated.
He nodded. His eyes locked on hers, begging her to take him seriously. She took a step backward, toward the door. Her lips were a thin line.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Mulder, I don’t want to get involved in any of that.”
“Please.”
“This is why you were sedated…” She reached the doorway and stopped. Her arms were crossed, her expression pensive. How many times had he seen that look on Scully’s perfect, freckled face? He would give anything to see her, to hold her again.
“Please,” he tried again. “I need help. Please.”
Abby shook her head fiercely and her curls flung back and forth, magnifying her reticence. “I can’t. Even if what you’re saying is real- and I’m not agreeing it is- even if it is, how could I possibly help?”
Mulder spoke slowly. “Y’don’t understand. Th’want me. An’ her. Not you.” He kept his eyes locked on hers, pleading. “I gotta get help, an’ if I don’t. We die. She dies. I die.” He felt his stomach churning, from the sedative. From the helplessness. “You don’t hafta believe me, but’f you go, you’re killing two people. Two. Is your doubt worth that?”
The hospital room was silent for a long moment, save the beeping of the heart monitor.
Abby licked her lips nervously, then took a deep breath.
“Okay.” It was a whisper. “I don’t want anybody dead… But this doesn’t mean I believe all you said, either. What do you need me to do?”
____________________
#TXF fanfic#If You Will Let Me#txf#TW: medical#TW: near death#TW: visit from the dead#TW: sedation#TW: mentions of demons#msr#msr fanfic#mulder and scully#fox mulder#dana scully
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"the dead are everywhere, scully"
lingering around us, inside us.
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I've been a fan of David McCallum for about 50 years. I wasn't born when he co-starred in The Man from UNCLE but he seemed to be everywhere in the 1970s. He starred in an underrated spy series based upon The Invisible Man, made an appearance in an early episode of The Six Million Dollar Man, and in the late 1970s he co-starred with Joanna Lumley in Sapphire and Steel - which was doing The X-FIles a decade before the X-Files, only with two time lord-like characters instead of Mulder and Scully.
And then, of course, at a time when most people have entered quiet retirement, McCallum created another television icon, "Ducky" in the original NCIS series. (I appreciate that both David and his UNCLE co-star Robert Vaughn, who co-starred in the BBC series Hustle, were able to find great TV roles late in life.)
David McCallum will be missed.
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having just watched s1-7 for the first time, i'm think i'm both a season of secret sex believer and also a personal headcanon haver.
like, i think their first time was way way early on—like s1 early—and neither of them could decide whether they liked it or not because scully was too bossy and mulder was too intense and this was supposed to be quick and stress-relieving, but it wasn't exactly, because neither of them know how to be un-stressed or fast-moving. also they are partners and peers and they actually really do respect one another so that was risky. so they form this unspoken agreement not to ever ever do it again because it was Just Too Weird. technically fine, but Weird.
only, as time passes, they start to have feelings. unexpected, unwanted feelings. feelings that can no longer be strictly categorized as 'professional' or 'platonic.' but it's fine, because they have their agreement in place. a little bulwark: they're not doing that again, and surely if they do something crazy like date they will inevitably end up breaking the rule doing it like horny rabbits.
so they don't do anything at all for, like, six more years. no kisses that aren't tragic goodbye kisses or relieved kisses. kisses with purpose. anything else, just fucking crickets. she nearly dies; he nearly dies; they nearly die for each other with greater consistency and regularity than the average train timetable. meanwhile, they are so in love that it is actually functionally stupid. it occasionally makes them dumb. it often makes them brilliant. they're obsessed with nonsexual touch. and everyone everywhere assumes they're fucking already. but! agreement. no making it Weird.
but then... mulder can read minds and is in lockup and she has to work with the lone gunmen again and she has to go to africa and there's a spaceship and she is trusting skinner with looking after the love of her life and there's ancient texts everywhere and dead zombie fish and she has this moment of 'oh wait. it is so goddamn Weird and intense all the time. everything about my life is like this and i am never going to want anything different.' she likes her Weird ass job and she likes herself and she likes mulder even though his fridge has exactly two things in it at this current moment (orange juice, spicy brown mustard) which is crazy. and also he is out of his mind biting people. but it's too late. she kind of likes shitty hotels, likes racking up airline miles. she loves gas station coffee.
in fact, she loves basically everything on that list, up to and including fox mulder. she decides to tell him about this revelation when he gets his brain back.
and sure, when it happens they are a little (a lot) worried because it's riskier than ever to do this now. and sure, it might be a little (a lot) Weird to do this again after so much time. especially when she's still bossy, he's still intense, and god help them they are still so stressed out.
but they've been partners for seven years now so... huh. they realize nothing is really Weird anymore. not in that way. it's just them how they always were, only they know better, listen better now and they've got a bunch of scars. oh, and they're in love this time. yeah, they're really really in love this time.
so maybe they were just getting ahead of themselves back then. and now they're all caught up. right time, right place for once. how Weird
#dont! tell me if this doesnt make sense. i am sledpy i am going to bed now#i just. had the thoughts and this is how they came out#abbey.txt#txf#mulder x scully#long post#idk anymore tags gnite
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3 and 5 :)
Thanks for dropping in! :DDD
3. Ooh, a repeat question-- which means I get to pick another answer (yay~!)
I've written other more beautiful lines (if I do say so myself)... but the crack energy of this Tunguska fic calls me quite strongly: "Above the thundering chaos, Krycek could have sworn he heard an angel jamming “Chariots of Fire” on his harp."
5. Most popular fic this year has to be "Son of Egypt": the tags on Tumblr and the comments on Ao3 are so beautiful that I regularly reread them. :,)))
Again, thanks for dropping in! I find great satisfaction in talking about my body of work, ahoo hoo (snobby glasses included, of course.)
#asks#welsharcher#fanfic asks#you just can't beat “Son of Egypt” and “The Dead Are Everywhere Scully”... well you can tie them with my other fics#if I do say so myself
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All Eyes Lead to the Truth | Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose (3x04)
When you see death everywhere you go, you learn to focus on the small things. How the sun pokes through the clouds after a storm. The feel of a rough velvet curtain in your great aunt’s living room. The smell of the bouquet of flowers held in the hands of the little old woman at the grocery store who will die next week from cardiac arrest.
It probably should have been scary to see my mother’s death on a random day in early September, but I’d started to get used to that sort of thing by that point. Learning that she would go peacefully in her sleep at the ripe old age of 84 was actually a comfort. She wasn’t going to get in a car accident or maimed by an angry dog. She could eat as much of that Entenmann’s crumb cake as she liked and her arteries would be just fine.
And so it went. I saw the deaths of the bank teller downtown, the dog walker who never picked up shit his charges left on everyone’s lawn, and my kindergarten teacher who sat across from me at the diner ordering the early bird special with a slice of black forest cake for dessert. I guess it was some sort of super power, but after nearly a half century of being “special,” it all just felt… normal.
I can’t remember exactly when I saw my own death, but it wasn’t too long after I started being aware of people’s endings. A funny thing happens when you see your own death. At first you try to make sense of it– what could it mean, why the tears, why her? Then you try to change it– maybe I’ll take the subway today. What if I eat at McDonald’s every day for a month?
Turns out nothing makes any difference. Maybe it did for some people, for some deaths, but for me? It was always the same. A bed, tears, and the young red-headed woman with freckles across her pale, porcelain skin.
Agent Scully, it turns out. Agent Dana Scully. I didn’t recognize her at first, because it’s not like one is used to seeing someone from the future at the time of their inevitable demise knocking on your apartment door. But there was a moment when her eyes locked on mine, blue like ice, that it clicked and I didn’t need to wonder anymore.
I’d been seeing the changes in myself– less hair, larger belly. Age spots. I could tell I was getting closer to that moment in the bed, but it was seeing Dana, standing there asking questions while glancing back over her shoulder at the bean pole of a man she called her partner, that made me realize how near it actually was.
And there was relief, knowing that the time had almost come. I’ve been on this Earth for long enough. Music has gone to shit, milk costs $2.60 a gallon, and Jerry Garcia is dead. What’s the point anymore?
So I tried to play it cool, as the kids say. I pretended like I didn’t know her. I helped with their investigation. Well, to some extent. I didn’t want to ruffle feathers, veer off course, cause a rift in the space time continuum that would shift the future of all mankind.
But now as I’m laying here in this hotel room, on a bed that has more lumps and ridges than an Olympic moguls course, I realize that I have to take the risk.
She really is cute, this Dana Scully. If I weren’t an old man, not exactly on his deathbed, but close enough, I might have made a move. Something about the way she tucked her legs up under herself and asked me about my death just warmed my heart.
I realize now that she deserves to know, because it is just as much her moment as it is mine. (Though really it will be my death, so it’s more mine than hers. All things considered.)
“We end up in bed together,” I tell her, and the shock on her face tells me I should have thought before saying it. I’ve always seemed to have a problem with that. “I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that, I… I don't mean to offend you or scare you, but, uh, not here, not this bed.”
I pause for a moment because this is important, maybe more important than anything I’ve ever told anyone in my life. I want her to understand.
“I, I just mean I, I see us quite clearly in bed together. You're holding my hand, very tenderly…” I can see it in my mind’s eye– her fingers, her eyes– but I pull myself back from the her in my vision to the her in this room. “And then you're looking at me with such compassion and I feel... tears are streaming down my face. I feel so grateful.”
And I do. “It's just a very special moment neither of us will ever forget.”
She’s looking down at her lap, but there’s a small smile on her lips. “Mr. Bruckman, there are hits and there are misses. And then there are misses.”
Her smile grows and I can’t help but return it. She may be humoring me, but I know how our story will end, and it’s a beautiful ending. For now, I’m just honored to be in her presence, to get to know the woman who has followed me in my mind for at least the past twenty years. Maybe more.
“I just call 'em as I see 'em,” I tell her, and she keeps smiling as she buries her eyes back in her lap, almost flirting, or as close to flirting as an old man could hope for.
I can’t remember the last time I was so happy.
Read the other chapters of All Eyes Lead to the Truth on Ao3!
@fridaysat9
#all eyes lead to the truth#season three#s3#the x files#x files#fanfic#the x files fanfic#clyde bruckman's final repose#clyde bruckman#3x04#mulder#scully
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Dear fanfic Queen, may i present to you this prompt ? : Mulder, Scully and one bed. In the morning they wake up wrapped around each other's arms. Scully asks Mulder to stay a little bit longer in his arms. (Ust)
Thank you so much for the sweet nickname and the prompt! This was a lot of fun. Set around late season 2-ish. Tagging @today-in-fic and @xffictober2021
Wc: 835
Fictober Day 8
Mornings and You
He wakes with the smell of roses in his nose, prompting his brain to wonder whether he’s dead. It would make sense; they were so tired last night, driving home late after closing a case, that he wouldn’t be surprised if he crashed his car. Scully kept falling asleep, her head crashing against the car window, always jostling awake when it did. Maybe they never made it to the hotel where there was only one room left and they, way too tired to care, took it anyway. Him and Scully sharing a room does sound more like a dream than reality.
And yet.
Mulder cracks open an eye and is met with a blurry red titian glow. Scully’s hair. So they did make it. His memories of last night are hazy scraps; taking off his clothes, brushing his teeth, and crashing next to Scully, who was already asleep in bed next to him. She’s still asleep now, breathing deeply. He envies her ability to sleep any time, any place. Right now, though, he’s thankful. He watches her, dares to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. He doesn’t want her to wake up just because of a stubborn lock.
The longer he’s awake, the more he becomes aware. It’s not just Scully’s hair in his face or her smell in his nose. She’s everywhere. His arms are around her; one right under her breasts. His breath hitches. He moves his lower body away from her. Not wanting to wake her that way either. They may dance around the lines sometimes, but there are some they haven’t crossed and don’t dare to cross. This is one big, fat red line.
“Hm?” She asks and Mulder involuntarily tightens his arms around her. “Did you say something?” Her voice is sleepy and even though he’s heard it a hundred times on sleepy stakeouts, on long drives, and plane rides, holding her while she sounds like this does things to him. Keeping his groin and his morning wood away from her is easy enough. But his heart is an untamed bronco in his chest, and she has to feel it, considering how close they are.
“Did I wake you?”
“No, I- Mulder?”
“Yeah?”
“Where are we?”
His nerves calm and he chuckles, his nose pressed to her hair. “Hotel room. We were too tired to keep driving last night. Remember?”
She seems to be thinking about it. He holds his breath; any moment now she will flee this bed, claim it’s unprofessional and it’ll all be over. They will never speak about it again. But to his surprise, it doesn’t happen. Instead, she cuddles closer into his embrace.
“One room,” she mumbles.
“We slept together,” he says, and the statement makes her turn around in his arms, her eyes huge. “In this bed,” he clarifies. “We just slept. Together. In this bed.”
“Hmm, okay,” she says, relaxing back into his arms. His earlier theory about being dead returns. This can’t possibly be real.
“Okay?” he asks, just to be sure. Scully nods, moving closer in the process. He’s never thought about how well they fit together. She’s so tiny and he’s decisively not. But here, in this hotel bed, they fit like two puzzle pieces. Her head is under his chin and her breath, still even, still deep, as if half asleep, puffs against his throat. Where his heart currently resides. He holds her tight, not wanting this to end. Her breasts press into his chest and there’s only one t-shirt (his) and one pajama top (hers) between them.
“What time is it?” she asks against his skin. It feels as if she were kissing him.
“Early,” he says. “6 am.”
“We can sleep some more,” she sighs happily. “Can I stay here?”
“I’m not throwing you out of this bed.”
She moves back a bit to look at him. “Here,” she says. “Like this.” As in his arms. Wrapped around each other like meerkats, ready to succumb to sleep.
“Yes,” he says, the simple word feeling heavy in this room, in their friendship. “Of course.” They look at each other, blue meeting hazel. He’s breathing her air, she’s breathing his. All the things they’ve shared already. Why have they never kissed? His eyes go there, stare at her sleep-kissed lips, and he wonders what they taste like. He’s wondered a few times. How could he not?
“Mulder,” she says, closing her eyes. “I never thought I’d say this, but…”
There’s his heart again, beating in his throat. “Yes?” Maybe she, too, has wondered why they’ve never kissed? Why they’ve never shared a bed like this. Just for comfort, just to be close.
“You have awful morning breath,” she finishes, scrunching up her nose.
“Likewise, partner,” he says, smiling at her. Her eyes are closed already, but he sees the small smile on her lips. He watches as her features relax but the smile remains. He falls asleep like this, holding her, and being held in return. Smiling.
#fictober21#i loved this prompt#and can i say i like how it came out?#i hope you guys enjoy it as well#writing about sleep while tired is something else#msr#xf fanfic#my writing#my fic
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24, 25, 26, 27
(x-files themed asks) headcanons edition!
24/ list some college MSR headcanons!
i just know that mulder in college was like...somehow kinda a WASP-y square but a riot at the same time. i just know him and phoebe were writing the most melodramatic prose to each other. we already established that he was fucking on graves. i think he got his ear pierced, i believe this. he was a good student, top of his class, and focused. albeit "in over his head," in his words.
dana, dana, dana...what can't she do. she's a medical doctor with a degree in physics. she rewrote einstein as an undergrad. i feel like she was in every club imaginable. missy said she should join a sorority, but she didn't want to distract herself. she smoked. she's a teacher's pet but a bit lonely.
25/ list some season 1 MSR headcanons
scully called her little friends about her "cute" coworker all the time. on road trips, she would get to pick the music, but mostly she'd rather listen to him talk. they went to the liberty bell (and to the empire state building, and everywhere that they had never been).
26/ list some season 7 MSR headcanons
season 7 MSR to me is exactly like the song "playground" by alison sudol. like exactly. like that entire vibe is season 7 MSR. listen to it and feel the energy.
All the windows open and your legs around me
We were one time strangers, now we’re trying to make a baby
Oh my heart’s over-pumping and your mouth is an ambulance
Oh I can’t stop laughing, I don’t know if I can stand it
cuz i likeeee you sooo well <33
i think they spent all of their time together in s7, finding excuses to sneak across motel rooms. establishing rules, then breaking them. they were happy. basking in each other.
27/ list some season 9 MSR headcanons
i know this to be true for a fact that dana scully, who squeezed her baby when she thought mulder was dead and sang him silly songs that remind her of his dad and dressed him in space-themed onesies, was doing all she could to feel like mulder was close and involved. she rocked the baby by the fish tank. she took photos of everything and made mulder books. she played old videos and voicemails to fill the house with his voice.
#asks#i'm not good at headcanons but these are my Feelings#yes my inbox is a disaster and i'm still working on these#but i'm not apologizing for that bc i love hearing from y'all and i will get to it all when i get to it#MWAH#it's hard to have headcanons for s1 because ITS ALL CANON\#everything you could imagine them doing in that sweet first year they definitely did
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do you... take fic prompts? I've seen you rb some prompt lists and such, and if you do take prompts: "i don’t want you to miss me," maybe like, cancer arc MSR?
I do take prompts so if you ever wanted to send more, feel free too.
s4 | cancer arc | wc; 414 | ao3 | @today-in-fic
The End.
The end was near. There was no reason to kid themselves anymore, to pretend otherwise. She lay in this hospital bed sickly and pale, skin taunt and shallow, her eyes black and sunken. Once she was the picture of health, bright eyes, rosy cheeks, full. There was no running away from the truth anymore, it was coming to an end.
You feel defenceless. Useless and weak. You should be fighting, shouting, trying to stop this. But you tried that. You tried to fix her, you tried to fight them, and you tried to find the cure. All of them came to nothing.
You are left defeated. Your stomach in knots, your chest bound tight. Most of all you feel incredibly alone.
“I don’t want you to miss me.”
Her voice breaks the silence and silent you had both been for a while now. There were no words left to say, you both knew what was coming. Or so you thought.
“What?” you ask. Her voice is distant, far away.
“When I’m gone.” Her voice is also assertive. Confident and sure with her words. “I don’t want you to miss me. I want you to live your life, Mulder. I don’t want this to stop you.”
Did she know you at all, you wonder. Your life revolves around a sister you lost twenty years ago. Your quest, mission, purpose, whatever name is given to it, has revolved around that one person. You can’t leave things without closing them, you obsess until you find your answer, then obsess some more when that answer isn’t good enough. You can’t leave things open ended, without knowing the truth.
But perhaps, in this case, there was nothing else to know. Scully was dying of a cancer given to her because of her abduction what more was there to learn? There were no hidden secrets in that sentence, no cryptic message to crack and analyse. Scully was dying. Dying, a finality. Not lost, not missing, not nowhere and everywhere at the same time. Dead.
You take her hand, cold and bony beneath your own. You don’t want to let go, you don’t want to call it the end but it is and you must. If there was one thing you were going to have closure on allow it to be this.
You take a deep breath and you say to Scully what you’ve always wished to say to Samantha at the end.
“I’m sorry it was you and not me.”
- - -
Ask box is always open to receiving prompts. You can find the prompt lists I reblog tagged under: prompts to send me
#the x-files#the x files#the xfiles fanfiction#txf fic#season 4 fic#cancer arc fic#angsty? idk#prompts#promptsbyswinging-stars-from-satellites#swinging-stars-from-satellitesasks#scullysexualwrites
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