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katy-kt-katie · 1 year

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Mulder on the Witness Stand

Gift for @agent-troi for #XFSecretSanta2022

Prompt: MULDER IS ON THE STAND BEING CROSS-EXAMINED ABOUT SOME CASE AND SOMEHOW IT COMES UP THAT HE’S FORCED TO CONFESS HIS FEELINGS FOR SCULLY BECAUSE HE’S UNDER OATH.

CW: A big of Patriarchal Slut Shaming; Rated T

Betas: @tofuttim and Elise (Thank you)

Read on AO3: LINK; Love your comments or kudos if you liked it.

James A Byrne U.S. Federal Courthouse; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Scully sat quietly at the back of the packed courtroom; her shoulder nudged against Mulder’s.

“Defense calls Special Agent Fox Mulder to the stand,” a defense attorney in the front of the courtroom said loudly. Scully and Mulder had learned that this attorney, Rod Stancy, was one of the most cutthroat, aggressive defensive attorneys in Philly.

Scully turned to look at Mulder and he smiled just a bit, a reassuring grin that this will be okay.

Scully was a key witness against Sevlov Pudovkin, a Russian expatriate who turned out to be a con man working for the mafia. He was facing charges of extortion and credit fraud.

Scully had already testified to the exchange of money she saw in the back of the grocery store as well as the encounter she’d witnessed at the tattoo parlor. What happened with Ed Jerse was brought up too. Scully was embarrassed to answer questions about her night with Ed in Philadelphia several weeks ago. She managed to avoid answering most of it as she was a witness in his still pending prosecution.

They testified in cases often, but Mulder was surprised when he had received a note from the prosecutor yesterday, giving him notice that he might be called to testify as well. The prosecutor was unclear about what would be the nature of his questioning, since the defense planned to call Mulder and Mulder hadn’t worked this case.

Murder took the stand, raised his right hand, and was sworn in for testimony.

“Special Agent Mulder, please tell us about your role at the FBI,” Stancy said.

“I am an agent at the FBI, assigned to cases that may be, as of yet, unexplained or deemed unsolvable.”

“Thank you. Have you met Mr. Pudovkin before?” Stancy pointed toward his client at the defense table.

“Yes, I met him once, with my partner. He claimed to have information that could be helpful in a case. Those claims ended up being unsubstantiated.”

“You mentioned your partner,” Stancy said, “who is that?”

“Special Agent Dana Scully. She testified yesterday,” Mulder said, while looking at the jury box and smiling. “She ended up following Pudovkin to Philadelphia as I was ordered to take time off. She testified to witnessing the acts in question…”

“Agent Mulder,” Stancy cut him off, “I didn’t ask you about her testimony. We all heard that yesterday. I would like to ask you about Agent Scully though.”

“Okay,” Mulder smirked, confused.

What do they want to know about me , Scully wondered, nervously.

Snapping Scully back from her thoughts, Stancy continued. “How long have you known Agent Scully?”

“We met when we were assigned to work together, four years ago.” Mulder scanned the courtroom and found Scully’s eyes. He seemed anxious to talk about her. She smiled nervously and nodded. Letting him know it was okay.

“That seems like a good enough amount of time to get to know someone. Would you say you know Agent Scully pretty well?”

Mulder nodded. “Yes. Very well. The nature of our work requires it.”

“So then, Agent Mulder, answer this for me. Isn’t it true that Agent Scully was distracted by a man during her visit in Philadelphia? At the same time, she was supposedly witnessing these acts by my client, she was busy gallivanting around with this, Ed Jerse?”

Scully felt her face turn red with a mix of rage and incredible embarrassment.

“As Agent Scully indicated yesterday, his trial is still pending and so we can’t go into specifics about that case at this time.”

“That’s fine Agent Mulder, and I’m not planning to ask you details about Mr. Jerse’s case, but I do want to understand more about your partner and your knowledge of what she did while working the case against my client in Philadelphia."

"OBJECTION!” The prosecutor argued from her desk. “Agent Mulder can’t talk about this pending case.”

From the gallery, Scully’s eyes turned to Stancy as he spoke up in defense of his line of questioning, “Your honor, I would like to discuss Agent Scully’s actions, with Agent Mulder. I do not intend to dive into the Jerse case in any depth.”

The Judge nodded, “Okay, I’ll allow it. Let’s be careful threading that needle, Mr. Stancy.” He turned to the court reporter, “Mira, can you read Mr.Stancy’s question back to the court?”.

The court reporter piped up, “Mr. Stancy asked, ‘So then, Agent Mulder, answer this for me. Isn’t it true that Agent Scully was distracted by a man during her visit in Philadelphia? At the same time, she was supposedly witnessing these acts by my client, she was busy gallivanting around with this, Ed Jerse?’”

“She did meet a man, Ed Jerse,” Mulder said, factually.

“And this man has pending charges for murder, kidnapping and assault?” Stancy continued.

“That is true, Mr. Jerse is facing those charges,” Mulder said.

“And according to police reports, your partner Ms. Scully, was found in this man’s apartment, wearing nothing but his shirt…”

Scully could tell Mulder was getting annoyed and tried to jump in, “…Yes, but…”

Stancy held his hand up, indicating to Mulder to stop. Scully cringed. “So let me see if I have this straight, Agent Mulder. Your partner wants the jury to believe her account of what she supposedly saw my client doing. But at the same time, she’s meeting up with some random guy who is facing murder charges and she’s found prancing around his apartment half naked in his clothes.”

“OBJECTION, argumentative!”

At the same moment, Scully saw Mulder’s expression turn from displeasure to anger. He stood and started to yell, “Mr. Stancy, how dare you…”

The Judge intervened with a stern voice, “Agent Mulder, sit back down. You may answer Mr. Stancy’s question, calmly.”

Mulder grunted, clearly very irritated. Scully could not believe what was just said about her in a public courtroom, she leaned forward and hung her head in her hands.

“Mr. Stancy, how dare you sir. My partner’s personal choices and activities are not my business and certainly not yours. Are you shaming her personal intimate choices in a public courtroom? Because she is a woman? She is a federal agent, she is a medical doctor, she has saved countless people from violence and even death.”

Scully looked up from her hands, taken aback by Mulder’s defense of her. She knew he was disappointed by what had transpired in Philadelphia; that in some way it hurt him personally. But as he sat on the stand, he defended her vehemently; he had her back as always.

“Let’s not get dramatic Agent Mulder,” Stancy continued. “At the end of the day, you want us to trust her version of events. She doesn’t seem like a very trustworthy person. She doesn’t seem to have made good decisions while she was in Philadelphia.”

“I would trust Agent Scully with my life!” Mulder said, assertively. “In fact, I trust her more than any person on this planet on any day of the week, in any city, at any time.”

Scully smiled; she knew their partnership was built on a strong foundation of trust and despite what happened with Jerse, that foundation remained solid.

“Okay, Agent Mulder. You trust her. That’s clear. But let me ask you this; is this normal behavior for her? What she got into with Mr. Jerse?”

Scully saw Mulder pause, she knew he was considering his answer. The previous questions solicited explosive responses from him, but this one was confounding him a bit.

“No.It’s not normal. At least, I don’t think so.”

“What do you mean? You said you know her well?”

“I do know her well,” then he whispered to himself, repeating “I do.” He paused and fidgeted a bit on the stand. “It’s her life Mr. Stancy. It’s not up to me to know or judge what she does outside the scope of our work.”

Scully could see he was getting emotional. When they talked in their office after the Jerse case, it was clear to her that Mulder was struggling with concern for her as a person versus as a partner. The truth was, their lives had become so intrinsically entwined that when one of them did anything that seemed outside the norms of their partnership, it felt like an affront to their entire existence.

While she didn’t regret taking a chance and being spontaneous for once, she did regret that Jerse turned out to be the worst person to be spontaneous with; and most importantly she truly regretted how it seemed to hurt Mulder. Despite his pain, he sat on the stand and defended her and her right to privacy. Watching this man who had become her number one defender and protector, brought tears to her eyes.

“But we are to believe her version of events, even though she was clearly distracted and acting out of character at the time?”

“Yes, you are,” Mulder said calmly and directly.

“Why is that?” Stancy questioned with a ton of irritation.

“Agent Scully’s work at the FBI is beyond reproach,” Mulder paused and then speaking to the jury box this time, “Beyond reproach! She is the most honest, diligent, brilliant agent I’ve ever known. No one should ever question her work; she is as close to perfect as any human I’ve known.”

Scully gasped quietly. Just when she thought he couldn’t defend her more vigorously; her heart flooded with emotion. She’d known for a while that she loved Mulder in some kind of way, it appears the feelings are mutual.

Stancy wandered to the jury box, with intent to break the hold Mulder had on the jurors, “as close to perfect as any human you’ve known, huh, Agent Mulder?” Stancy said, placing his hand on the edge of the jury box as he shook his head and chuckled. “Sounds like you and Agent Scully may be even closer than I thought. Are you two in a relationship…outside of work?”

“OBJECTION, relevancy?” The prosecutor said.

The judge turned to Mr. Stancy.

“Just trying to understand the nature of this relationship sir. We need to understand it so the jury can make their decisions on the credibility of their testimony.”

“I’ll allow it,” the Judge said. “Agent Mulder, please answer the question.”

Stancy repeated the question to remind Mulder, although Scully assumed he hadn’t forgotten…she certainly hadn’t. “Are you two in a relationship…outside of work?”

Scully had gotten pretty good over the years at reading Mulder’s mind, so she was sure he’d say, “No. We are good friends.” Instead, he said:

“No, because partners aren’t allowed to pursue romantic relationships.”

She gasped again. For the second time, his eyes caught hers. He stared at her intensely and she blushed. What did that answer mean , she wondered. Does he mean, the only thing keeping them from pursuing a romantic relationship, in his mind, is this Bureau policy?

She’d been interested in him as more than a platonic partner for a while but didn’t think it was mutual. After all, he’d shown pretty clear interest in Detective White and Bambi, but never seemed to show any interest in Scully like that. Somewhere in the darkest corners of her heart, she knew part of her reasoning for pursuing Jerse was to see what kind of reaction it elicited out of Mulder. While he had seemed pained by what had transpired, it in no way moved them forward into a relationship.

“I don’t know about you Agent Mulder, but your voracity for defending her, when she was clearly making irrational decisions while in Philadelphia, is suspect. I’d ask the jury to consider what we’ve learned about Agent Scully when weighing her testimony.” Stancy paused for effect and then turned to the judge. “No further questions.”

The Judge indicated that the prosecutor could now question Mulder.

The prosecutor, herself a young woman, had seemed extra annoyed at Stancy’s line of questioning.

"Agent Mulder, as I see it, you have a partner whom you’ve worked with for years. You trust her implicitly and you feel her work is beyond reproach. You believe the jury should find her testimony credible because you believe her to be completely credible. Is that a fair recap?”

“Yes, that is correct,” Mulder said, proudly.

“Thank you, Agent Mulder, No further questions.”

“Mr. Mulder, you are dismissed,” the Judge said to him. Then turned to address the courtroom, “Court is adjourned until tomorrow at nine am.”

“Please Rise!” the bailiff said, as the Judge left the courtroom.

Mulder was stopped momentarily by the prosecutor before walking straight to Scully, grabbing her hand, and pulling her towards the door.

“Mulder...” she started to say.

“The prosecutor said we can go home. I want to get out of here, Scully,” he said, determined.

They walked in silence to their car. His hand still gripping hers.

When he reached the car, he let her go then abruptly slammed his fist into the roof of the sedan. “Damn it,” he growled.

Scully stared in surprise and began to reach for the handle to the passenger side to get in. He held his hand up indicating for her to stop. She saw him intentionally calm himself down, before walking around the hood of the car to her and grabbing her into a tight hug. His arms wrapped around her like he was clinging for his life.

They held the hug for a minute or two; Scully decided to break the silence. “Mulder?” she questioned, as her head was buried against his collarbone.

He pulled back and silently turned away, getting into the car and turning it on.

The Silence continued for a solid hour of their trek back to D.C. He seemed fueled with energy, but his demeanor towards her was soft and sweet, smiling gently whenever she’d catch his eye. She was replaying his testimony in her head and was sure he was too, as several times the silence was broken by him growling to himself or sighing.

Finally, as their car was passing over the Chesapeake Bay, he broke the silence.

“I’m so sorry Scully. That was so unfair. You should never have your character called into question. That man is a total asshat.”

Scully started to cry. She worked so hard on keeping her emotions from Mulder; to not let him see any sign of weakness, but it just hit her. She reached into her purse for a tissue.

“Oh Scully,” he said, reaching over with one hand to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. “Don’t cry. It’s okay. You are okay. We are okay.”

“Mulder, I’m so sorry for everything that has happened as a result of what I did with Jerse. I’m sorry if I hurt you,” she blew her nose. The crying was slowing down now that she was talking.

He grabbed her hand over the console and gave it a squeeze.

“Mulder the way you defended my character…thank you. You always have my back.”

Still holding her hand, he started stroking little circles on the outside of her hand. “Scully, you are worth defending and furthermore everything I said is true. It’s none of my business what you do in your personal time and your character and work as an agent are beyond reproach.”

She sighed and let go of his hand, patting him gently on the thigh twice before returning her hand to her lap. Silence befell the car again for several miles. Now she was replaying this emotional conversation they’d just had. How her Mulder was here for her again.

“Mulder you know I feel the same way, I’d always defend you; your character, your heart.”

“I know you would Scully,” he said smiling, eyes on the road.

She was struck by how much this man who was her perfect opposite was also her perfect protector. Then her mind thought about how he surprised her with his answer about a romantic relationship between them. How could she not want more with this man that was everything to her.

“Mulder, I have to ask you something. You said the reason we aren’t in a relationship together is because Bureau rules forbid it.”

“Yeah,” he said, seeming to grow suddenly cautious. She felt an energy shift in the car.

“Mulder, I'm sorry for asking about this, but I was shocked by that answer. Maybe I’m reading too much into it…but…is that the only reason?” She whispered, “I mean, would a relationship with me be something you would want if the bureau didn’t prevent it?”

He tossed his head back against the headrest, seeming to think; he sighed. She felt like looking at him while he thought about it, but at this moment it was too intense and oddly private. She turned to look out the window.

“Scully…I…” he paused. She turned to look at him. “Any man would want a relationship with you. You are beautiful, smart and loyal, among so many other things.”

“First of all, that’s categorically untrue, all men are not interested in me,” she scoffed, breaking the ice a little. “But Mulder, I’m asking about you. Are you interested? Just tell me. It won’t hurt my feelings.”

She reached for his hand, mirroring his earlier action. He gripped it tightly and sighed.

“Yeah Scully, of course I’m interested in you. I always thought that was obvious. But, even if you are interested in me, we can’t do it. They’ll split us as partners and our partnership…” he turned to look into her eyes briefly. “It means everything to me.”

“Me too,” she said, softly.

“You too what? You are…” he whispered the words, “interested in me or you value our partnership?”

“Both,” she sighed. Moving her hand from his hand and gently stroking his arm, from his foreman to his bicep and back.

The car fell quiet again for a moment, the familiar sights of Georgetown coming into view.

“I could keep it a secret, if we ever wanted to try, you know…more.” She moved her hands back to her lap and fidgeted nervously with her fingernails. There it is , she thought, I’ve laid it on the table as an option .

“Scully,” he paused and smiled at her. “But just look at what I had to do today, what If I’m asked on the record about it. Would we lie?”

“You handled it perfectly, we would just state the bureau policy, deflecting…”

“…And if that didn’t work?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” she sighed and looked at him, tears in her eyes again, “but I know we could figure it out, together.”

He smiled and reached across the console and placed his hand on her thigh, not in an act of passion but in an act of intimacy. It felt like a sign that he was open to trying for something more with her. She placed her hand on top of his and he interlaced their fingers.

They pulled up to her apartment building and Mulder released her hand only to put the car in park. He reached back down and grabbed her hand again, pulling it to his mouth to kiss each knuckle.

She sighed happily and before she could catch her breath he was leaning across the console. She leaned towards him, and their lips met, his lips felt warm and soft and she immediately felt a spark and knew kissing was another thing they were meant to do exceptionally well together.

She wanted to make her intentions clear; this was not just a friendly kiss, so she gently pushed her tongue against his lips asking for access to him, which he granted. He moaned quietly as their tongues met before she pulled away.

She placed her hand on his chest, creating a modicum of distance between them. “Thank you for today; for defending me, and for always telling me the truth.” She stood to get out of the car, before leaning back down to briefly catch his eyes. “Maybe you could ask me out sometime?”

He smiled and she giggled, grabbing her bag, and heading into her apartment by herself, but not feeling alone; never alone when Mulder had her back.

#XFSecretSanta2022 #today-in-fic #todayinfic #the x files #mulder and scully #fox mulder #dana scully #ed jerse #first kiss

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all-eyes-lead-to-the-truth · 3 months

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All Eyes Lead to the Truth (4x13) | Never Again

He hangs up the phone as his former boss’s scolding rolls around his brain like a boulder. Fired. Fucking fired again. He slams the phone down over and over, tossing the receiver.

He inhales, frustrated. The air in his apartment, thick with stale cigarette smoke and knock-off Calvin Klein he can barely afford, only further twists the knife.

Loser, she’d said.

His coworker had called him a loser, right there in the office. Right in front of him, as if he couldn’t hear her. As if he wouldn’t say anything, wouldn’t do anything about it. Just like always. Well he’d shown her, throwing the shit from her perfect little desk to the floor, daring her to call him names to his face.

Daring anyone to call Ed Jerse a loser again.

His jaw clenches. If only it had been Cindy’s desk he’d destroyed. Cindy who he’d screamed at instead of sitting mute in divorce court as she stuck it to him one more time. The raw skin on his freshly inked arm begins to burn, and in hindsight, the tattoo reminds him of a younger version of his newly-made ex-wife. A permanent reminder of his life’s failings etched five layers deep. How fucked is that?

A banging noise resounds from the apartment below him before a woman laughs menacingly.

“If you were any kind of man, you would have told her to kiss your ass,” the feminine voice mocks. “But no, another woman sticks it to you. Ain’t that right... Eddie.”

What the hell? Only his mother calls him Eddie, and he fucking hates it.

Ed crawls on the floor, presses his ear to the hardwood, listening to the woman below unpack loudly, hearing her ridicule him.

He bangs on the floor, “Hey! I can hear you down there. Hey! Stop it! Shut up! Shut up down there!”

Something dark and dangerous swirls beneath his skin.

It’s always women. Every single one of them. Controlling him, shaming him, emasculating him every chance they get. He can’t stand it, is sick to death of it. There’s a draw he cannot deny, a menacing pull that tugs on this hatred expanding deep down he can’t quite identify. Like a low simmering, it waits, burning him from the inside. These damn women…

Sometimes he wants to reach out and just—

Music blares up through the floorboards. He keeps banging and the song keeps getting louder until he hears a knock at his door.

Some woman tries to suck him into speaking of a God who’s forgotten him.

“You hear that? She’s trying to drive me crazy,” Ed interrupts.

The religious woman shrugs him off, disagreeing. Telling him he’s wrong.

“Somehow, she knows what I'm thinking,” he emphatically pleads. “I don’t want to feel it — but they know, like psychics or something, or an implant thing, trying to drive me crazy!”

When she leaves, the pamphlet she’s given him says, "Are you a Failure?"

“Mm-mm-mm,” the voice taunts. “You see? Even the Jehovah’s Witness babe won’t waste her time on you. No woman would, and you just sit and take it.” Ed covers his ears with his hands. “Take it like a man.”

A searing headache forms at the base of his skull as sweat blooms across his brow. Why is he so damn hot, so… angry? His head pounds in time with the throb of his tattoo. And that fucking music is too fucking loud!

Then, like magic, he’s suddenly in front of his disrespectful neighbor's apartment, kicking her door in. He doesn’t even remember how he got here.

“Hey, what are you doing?” she shrieks. “Get out of here!”

It takes all of his willpower to move his feet, but instead of heading out the door, he finds himself stalking towards this stunned woman, his fists clenched tighter than his jaw — as if some invisible force is propelling him forward. Because yes, he hates her, too.

Deadbeat. Loser. Failure.

He’s heard it all, and he has had enough. No one humiliates Ed Jerse anymore. No, not now. Never again.

“What do you think you’re doing?” she yells, backing up, her halting hands outstretched. “Get out of my apartment!”

The room swells with his rage. When the taut string keeping the violence bound within him snaps, Ed lunges.

Ear-piercing music drowns out the sounds of crushing bone and squelching bodily fluid spewing from his screaming neighbor's mouth.

As if in a dream, Ed is across the room now, watching himself punching, kicking, bludgeoning the blonde woman crumpled to the floor beneath him. Mesmerized, he doesn’t try to stop himself from hurting her. Doesn’t quit slamming the stereo’s remote control against her skull until the blood spatter coats her face and the rise and fall of her chest ceases. Doesn’t restrain himself from shoving her lifeless body into an empty moving box, dragging the heavy blood-stained cardboard down the basement stairs, and tossing the mangled remains of Ms. Schilling into the fiery furnace.

Adrenaline thrumming through his veins, Ed reaches inside the box and pulls out the bloody remote. He is in control now.

“Attaboy, lover,” the familiar voice encourages. “From now on, I’m your right-hand gal. You and me.”

There it is again: the hatred in his head. Only deeper, his mind churning verbal vitriol around his brain like sickness in his stomach. The tattoo pulses painfully along his bicep like a hammering heart, and the fire flares. Sweat beads across his body while the acrid stench of burnt hair and blood sting his nostrils. As he stares wild-eyed into the flames, he can’t help but think that maybe he’s finally not failed at something. Maybe this woman’s voice has been waiting to be heard long before ink bled black beneath his skin.

“As long as I’m with you, no one will ever hurt you...”

Ed looks down at the bright lines of his tattoo’s smirking face and wonders if this is what reclaiming his life feels like.

”Never Again.”

Read the rest of All Eyes Lead to the Truth on Archive of Our Own!

@monikafilefan

#all eyes lead to the truth #x files #fanfic #season four #s4 #x files fanfic #never again #4x13 #ed jerse #tattoo #mulder #scully

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lilydalexf · 9 months

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The X-Files "Never Again" behind the scenes photos

#tbt #never again #that time scully went on a date in a crummy bar #and almost got killed by a talking tattoo #gillian anderson #behind the scenes #ed jerse we hardly knew ye

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nachosncheezies · 6 months

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just thought if they had aired never again before leonard betts, as written and intended, there is almost certainly a not-so-small proportion of people who would still conclude that scully's night with ed was about her illness bc There's A Tumor In Her Head And That Must Be Making Her Act Crazy; Ain't That Great Foreshadowing

#which is really a shame #look i deeply appreciate that scully being kinda fucked up was subtle& sprinkled across the whole series like a lil dusting of cake glitter #bc she was roundly beat up and traumatized so many times as main plot points and they could EASILY have gone down the route #of making The Woman's Suffering/Feelings the third main character in every episode like so many other shows #and that really WOULD have changed her #but it's a shame that in doing so it also became something people could miss or forget about #to the extent that Never Again could look like some wild hard right turn that came out of nowhere for her character #and be something that needs some kind of external explanation #rather than being nothing more or less than exactly what she said it was: herself. circles. patterns. ✋.#ig maybe in that sense a lot of the audience is mulder lol #ed jerse doesn't need explaining 😁 she's just Like That.#x files #the x files #scully #txf #txf s4 #i'm sure i have other thoughts if the migraine leaves but this one just came and perched on my shoulder so

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benoitblanc · 4 months

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#this woman is a menace i love her so much #arwen does polls #the x files #dana scully

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koschei-the-ginger · 9 days

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My rating of fake Mulders in the x-files

Ed Jerse - potrayed by Rodney Rowland

younger than Mulder, creepier than Mulder, this guy is supposed to look like him just enough for it to bother you. totally looks like someone who would kill his neighbour. 7/10

Kansas city FBI agent - portrayed by Steve Kiziak

virtually irrecognizable from some angles, eastern european, real life stunt double, even gets his ass beaten to a pulp by Kansas city Scully. I love him. 9.5/10

fake txf movie Mulder portrayed by Gary Shandling - potrayed by real Gary Shandling

appearance wise not a good fit but I love a good internal joke and he's horny enough - 7/10

Agent Miller - potrayed by Robbie Amell

minimal resemblance, zero charisma, character flatter and plainer than a toast bread, he's not even eastern european, he's not even jewish, absolutely terrible -100000000/10

#i literally just wanted to say how much i hate miller lol #anyways heres another 2014 ish post i am very unoriginal and unfunny #released from my drafts #txf #the x files #fox mulder #i dont think i forgot anyone if im not counting everyone scully ever flirted with bc luke wilson? definitely doesn't count

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bakedbakermom · 3 months

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dana scully x jagged little pill

empty bottles x "not the doctor" (track 11/12)

"Mind the empty bottle with the holes along the bottom" (a lyric that took me 25 years to understand)

So many of Scully's love interests are empty bottles: men looking to her to fill their needs, to perform a role, while doing nothing to fix those things in themselves they're asking her to tend to. To Padgett she is character to be controlled and adored, so long as she never steps outside the narrative he has written in his own head about her. To Ed Jerse she is someone to hold him together when the rest of his life is falling apart. To Daniel she is a memory, a dream, an ideal that can never be met because ultimately the past can never be recreated and she will again never be the same person she was back then. To Jack she is a way to bring back the thrill of his youth, the fresh young cadet on the brink of adventure while he is mostly resigned to teaching the next generation.

Rather than see her as a whole, complete, and complex person, they reduce her to these archetypes in order to make themselves feel less empty. No wonder Mulder - who worships her in all her varied shades, and in fact begs to be let in to those parts of her that she has learned to hide and suppress - is a breath of fresh air.

(Not pictured: Sheriff Hartwell, as funny as it would have been to include him for the line "I don't want to be your food or the light from the fridge on your face at midnight," because he was really only ever a joke between them. LMK if you'd like a bonus gif of that lol.)

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randomfoggytiger · 11 months

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Milagro In-Depth (Part II): Loneliness Is a Choice and Lamps Go Dark

We pick up where Part I left off (see post here)--

Scully stalks into the morgue, having left the church but not her unsettled feelings. Her expression mildly lifts seeing Mulder there waiting for her.

Mulder sidles up, subdued and gentle, obviously having mulled over her earlier reproof in the office. “Hey, you weren’t joking about being late. I was about to start slicing and dicing myself.”

He’s so caring that it melts Scully’s armor, bringing out her Starbuck guilt complex: “I’m sorry,” she offers. To her partner’s “Where were you?”, she responds “I was doing some research, and learning that I owe you an apology.”

Intrigued but cautious, Mulder straightens his posture and purses his lips. “For what?”

“The milagro charm,” Scully snips as she casts back on her experience, “you were right on its insignificance.”

Mulder states, “No, I think I was wrong. I think it is very significant. I think it may be a communication from the killer.”

She is initially frazzled that Mulder’s first response to her position-- especially in light of her “research”-- is a flat-out contradiction. Yet again, Mulder is sending the message-- accidentally-- that Scully’s ideas are always one step behind. But as he prattles on about his own research on psychic surgeons claiming to be “filled with the holy spirit” she is amused into complaisance.

Scully hands Mulder a metaphorical milagro charm of her own, giving weight to his ideas and debating them as intellectually and thoroughly as her tried and true science, expressing her repressed love in the only way he will accept.

Mulder only has Padgett half-right-- "...most credible practitioners of psychic surgery believe themselves to be imbued with the Holy Spirit, that their hands become the miracle tools of God"-- since Padgett doesn’t dabble in his sorcery to benefit others, only to try to "heal" his own diseased heart; and Scully also has Padgett half-right in her rebuttal.

“Mulder, this--” she says, taking and brandishing the charm as a statement, “is nothing more than a tool used by a lovelorn Romeo who just happens to be your next-door neighbor.”

Mulder’s pulled up short by this… and he’s not happy about the idea. “Who, the writer??”

“Yes,” Scully replies distinctly, hiding her stress behind a forced smile, “my secret admirer, who claims to know the mysteries of my heart.”

Mulder is completely blindsided but even more tender. “You’re kidding….”

Her tearful emotions briefly break to the surface as Scully recounts, “No, I wish I were. He cornered me today and told me my life’s story. He was kind of frightening, actually.” She looks down, unused to personal admissions still connected to unprocessed emotions.

Mulder flounders, flummoxed, shaking his head and stumbling for words. A Scully stripped from her defenses is a rare occurrence; and he is uncertain what to say. He retreats to safe ground: “Is… he… our killer?”

“No,” Scully clarifies, “‘Frightening’ as in ‘too much information and intimate detail’.” As Mulder is left with no ground left to hop on, his partner turns away to delicately sneer at the wall-- “What kills you is his audacity” before she takes a deep, stabilizing breath.

Dipping his head in solidarity, Mulder mulls over these new facts, toeing the line between empathizing with her shake-up and pretending not to notice how shaken Scully is. But he forms a resolution, raising his head with fire in his eyes and grim determination pulling at his mouth: “Did you get a name?”

His little rulekeeping rebel responds: “No, but that shouldn’t be too hard to find out, should it?” She walks off to do her work, letting Mulder read her face and draw his conclusions directly from her indirect response.

Scully knows her partner is on a vengeful hunt, giving him her unspoken blessing to do whatever he deems necessary.

Mulder now becomes an active part of the story rather than someone who wove in and around Scully or who Scully, the main focus of Padgett’s (and the narrative through his eyes), wove herself around.

He pulls out a lockpick set (proving everyone right on this poll about previous key or lockpick lore) and digs into his floor's mailbox. While swiping a letter, Mulder notices a pile of discarded newspapers, picking one up to pour over later for clues. In that hopelessly clueless way Mulder has, he's forced to snap out of his configurings by the harsh, cruel reality of his surroundings: needing to press an elevator button to make the door open. He makes a face, hits it, and waits.

Two thoughts:

#1. Gaze, focus, and attention continue to play heavily in this episode: Mulder having only eyes for his work (in this case, the newspaper) to the exclusion of the world around him (“life on this planet”) is given center stage as he fumbles around the normal world like someone who wants to run through it in pursuit of the next glorious chase.

#2. IMO, Mulder would love smart appliances and cool new innovations that cut down on minor daily decision-making (lacking the paranoia about technology and its advances as The Lone Gunmen do… or did); but they likely wouldn’t have liked him back since he’s already terrible with the conveniences he has in his “modern” world.

Padgett pops in, needing the elevator, too; and Mulder feels busted as he palms the man’s stolen letter and uncollected newspaper. He and Hoodie face-off on the ride up before Mulder turns away, evoking the polite, unspoken social norm of “stop staring.” His neighbor doesn’t follow those codes, eyeing the paper and Mulder’s increasingly annoyed expression.

“I’m sorry, I forgot your name,” Mulder fishes.

“Padgett.”

“Padgett,” he fake smoozes, Rob Petrie dripping in disdain and moral superiority.

“You’re a writer. Anything I’d know?”

Padgett is unfazed. “I don’t think so.” His story is not about Mulder-- an incidental second fiddle-- but about Scully, her motives and her heart.

The second act concludes this scene by a slight repetition of before: Padgett encountering a character on the elevator, staring into their soul, and following them down the hallway like a shadow. At this point, his role is not as a "person" so much as a conduit, becoming lost in the liminal spaces between both worlds. It’s not until the third act when Padgett becomes a flesh and blood human being, realizing the futility of Naciamento’s madness and tearing his heart out in sacrifice.

At his door, Padgett prods, “You’re an FBI agent. Working on anything interesting?”

Mulder calls his bluff, becoming as obtrusive in his study as his neighbor is, purposefully trading meaningful looks. “A murder case.”

His neighbor freezes, the rattle of his door loud in the silent hallway. To Mulder, he reveals that dichotomy of himself, the Naciamento side-- menace and meaning folded into one. “Anything I’d know?”

Mulder’s deceptively monotoned “Possibly” isn't intended to fool.

It’s very clear that Padgett views Mulder as a rival and a threat-- an intelligent suit who Scully buzzes around for attention while, in Padgett’s mind, bearing up, unrewarded, under neglect.

Mulder slips into his apartment first, the door serving as the last word to these hallway interludes. The writer-- the avatar, the conduit, the theme, the symbol-- is acutely aware of this, running into his own apartment as well, hoping to beat the FBI agent in like it’s a kindergarten foot race. Mulder is the clear winner this round, upper-handing the situation by unsettling Padgett and toying with his interest; and his unconcerned confidence gives him that detached edge that allows him to drop conversations or topics at the toss of a dime, leaving the other person shortchanged and aware a second too late.

This interaction sends Padgett into a jealous and desperate writing session that culminates with an explicit happy ending for himself and Scully, enviously hoping to rob his rival of the jewel that sits right under the other’s nose. He “directs” his FBI neighbor to listen through the vent system, deriding Mulder for his “Hegelian justification” with regards to breaking the Amendments, smug loathing pouring out of his eyes as he types out his own measure of control.

The episode plays with free will as well as gaze and focus quite a bit: does Padgett direct Mulder to break those rules and listen? Or does he pin Mulder down in the elevator and write a piece so thoroughly correct about the other’s character that he can “predict” rather than direct what his actions will be?

I believe Padgett is seeking control of his own life by controlling those around them; but this episode reveals that the only person he can fully control is Naciamento. Even further: his own creation reveals the truth to his creator: the writer was never in control-- the only truth his work created is something beyond himself, something that could not be bound by control; and that the unruly characters he tried so desperately to bind to a “greater” narrative whole were already free from his grip, and never wholly his to begin with (script here.)

Philip Padgett writes his words into Scully’s head, flavoring them with sexual interest but still detailing a grain of truth: “She was flattered. His words had presented a pretty picture of herself, quite unlike the practiced mask of uprightness that mirrored back to her from the medical examiners and investigators and all the lawmen who dared no such utterances.”

A key point is explored here: Scully pulls out the charm, a version of Padgett’s verbosity running through her own mind; but a colleague rushes by, and she drops it down out of focus in time with the writer’s “...she felt and involuntary blush; and rebuked herself for the girlish indulgence.”

Here, writer man believes his words have the power to sweep her off her feet and into his bed, two lonely souls finding love and wantonness in the company of only each other.

The camera pans back to Mulder from the on-high perspective of the vent, casting judgment and doom upon his rival (to no avail.)

He is unaware, but suspicious, of Padgett’s unspoken intentions, finally ripping open his mail (after hours of completely silent observation) and noting “Mr. Popularity”' has no records of calls placed or received. Mulder is a lonely man himself; but his loneliness is consumed by the quest and banished by Scully’s company, however he allows himself to receive it. Padgett has no one; and choses to write a better life into existence for himself, stealing from someone else’s work.

Collapsing back in exhaustion, Mulder contemplates his next move, this problem proving more sinister and desperate because of its subject’s stark isolationism. In his boredom, Mulder picks up the newspaper, opening it up and incidentally sending himself down a rabbit hole of clues.

Scully arrives on the 4th floor, flustered, bewildered, intrigued, confused; but this time she pauses, hearing the click click click of Padgett’s typewriter as clearly as if she were right next to it. Typewriter clacking this loudly is unnatural; and Scully is torn between fleeing it and figuring out what it means. She is a woman of science; but all of Scully’s pragmatism is a defense against her own unscientific inclinations, a tendency to give too much credence to supernatural signs or simple gut feelings. It saved Kevin Kryder in Revelations, it saved her daughter in Emily, it guarded the girls in All Souls, and it will warn her in Orison.

Her investigator instincts win over, and she pays a visit to Room 44, unaware of how dark Padgett's intentions are. She couches her visit as a gift-return; but Padgett, delighted twofold-- that his plan is working but also that Scully is here to unwind his mind-- plainly asks her “Why?”

Scully steels herself for his reaction-- and in reaction to his unabashed openness-- and replies, “Because I can’t return the gesture.”

Padgett lets the moment hang, playing on her kindness and natural sense of dutiful guilt; and it leaves her no choice but to further admit “I can’t.”

He, of course, misreads her denial as reluctance, not realizing that her heart has already been given; and that Mulder has known this since at least Memento Mori (her journal describing then “That you should know my heart, look into it; finding there the memory and experience that belong to you-- that are you….”)

At Philip Padgett’s “You’re curious about me”, Scully huffs, struck and shaken again by his relentless dissection of her mind. There is less animal fear now as she acknowledges the truth with a slight nod; but it curdles in her gut, tears threatening to pool after her study of his Spartan apartment. She is aware that a man who has this much of nothing will be unwilling to give up what he now thinks of as his something.

But there is also pity. As Padgett’s intense investigative skills reflect Mulder’s empty personal life, so too does his apartment the howling chasm of Scully’s internal isolation-- the empty desert she retreated into after Emily’s death was an expansive emptiness, making room for the width of her loss and the intelligence of her and heart and mind. Padgett has only a desk, a lamp on the floor, and a bed; and the littleness of this life strike a chord-- though not the one he wrote to strike-- of commiseration at the emptiness of his existence and the flagrancy of his honesty. It’s a fear Scully has never admitted to, let alone lived brazenly.

She asks about his books-- “Anything I’d know?”-- echoing Mulder’s own question.

“No. They’re all failures. Except the one I’m working on now,” Padgett triumphs.

Scully draws back from his intensity, though she continues to question. “Why now all of a sudden?”

Padgett unfurls his thinking, possibly even how he obtained his abilities: “Best not to question it.”

She understands this, living that motto daily with her partner; and looks down to cover her own vulnerability.

“See? You are curious about me.”

Denial kicks in: “Well, you lead a curious life.”

Padgett puts his foot in the metaphorical door: “It’s not so different from yours, I imagine.” And that is all he can do: imagine, and try to unite his life with someone else who, he thinks, will understand him better than he does himself, the description of a writer he gives Scully a scene later.

His point is accurate; and Scully allows it to sink deeper even as she quickly puts up her defensive, sarcastic guard. He breaks it back down it a pointed, “Lonely.”

Padgett’s words sear at her wound, twisting a knife into her heart; but she manages to answer a measured “Loneliness is a choice” by rapidly blinking back tears and swallowing down her pain.

At Padgett’s “So how about a cup of coffee?”, her eyes flash defensively; but she is drawn in by his prepossessing honesty and transparency, wanting it for herself. Perhaps if she had some for herself, perhaps if she were more forthright-- a litany of “perhapses" as maddening as Padgett’s elusive self-discovery.

What I find interesting is the idea that this is Padgett’s Never Again and Scully is his Ed Jerse. He is unable to understand his heart or motives, the truth behind his actions; and she is alluring and broken-hearted and fearing that love will never be returned to her equally. The unbalanced nature of The Quest is her divorce court and her assurance and self-reflection is his ouroboros.

Separated by a wall, the two agents do their own reading. Mulder has done his homework, doubling back for the rest of the neglected newspapers once he’d found a love dedication that Padgett had circled; and Scully takes a peek at Padgett's unfinished manuscript, pondering over the last sentence “How will it end?”

Clutching the coffee cup Padgett gave her, she bows before it in confession: “My life’s not so lonely…. It’s actually anything but.”

Padgett again hears (looks) but doesn't listen (see.)

Her questions become more pointed: “How is it you think you know so much about me?”; and to his “I’m writing about you”, she gets sick of the staring game, pointedly sticking her neck out.

“Since when?”

“Since I first noticed you. You live in my old neighborhood.”

“And you moved into this building by coincidence?”

“No.”

“You moved here because of me.”

“There wasn’t anything available at your building. And it’s not like you spent a lot of time at home.”

Scully is confused-- she is wired to be drawn to people that listen, truly listen, to what she has to say and notice her and her interests so closely; but she is continually reminded that Padgett is an obsessed, sick man. But the adage “physician, heal thyself” easily follows that thought; and it’s easier to run away than to dwell on them.

Padgett stumbles over her horror. “I, I should have said something; but I just couldn’t get it all down fast enough. To really write someone I have to be in their head, I have to know them more completely than they know themselves.”

What strikes Scully is how “Mulder” that is-- getting into someone’s head and crossing lines and boundaries, asking for forgiveness rather than permission. The difference, she knows, is that her partner uses those gifts in extreme circumstances and for the ultimate good whereas this man is completely self-serving and egotistical in his mixture of self-abasing hubris.

“This is all about me?”

“Well, you’re an important part.”

“May I read it?”

When her request is denied, Scully shrinks down, pulling her shoulders up. She knows what that means: there is something in his manuscript to hide, or something that might color her against him more than she already is. Her hand shakes slightly at his “Would you sit and stay a minute?”; but she rallies in caustic suspicion (“You don’t have anywhere to sit.”)

Padgett lures her to his room-- a completely different apartment setting than her experience had been with Ed Jerse or even Mulder this entire episode-- shutting down her warning and excuse (“I’m due next door”) with a page out of her own logical book (“You haven’t finished your coffee.”)

Scully, left with no subtlety, cuts through her own reticence. “I’m very uncomfortable with this.”

“Why? You’re armed, aren’t you?”

The light won’t turn on, something Padgett hadn’t written or anticipated. “Imagine that.” He opens the curtains further, pinning them up against the wall before pressing past (and up against) a dazed Scully who seems to be wavering, either under the spell of his words or her own dizzying indecision.

Again her pity chord is struck with Padgett’s view-- a brick wall, so different from the view one door down. Scully gives in, drawn to the powerful and unexplained (ex. Luther Lee Boggs and Clyde Bruckman and Alfred Fellig): “If you know me so well, then why am I standing here when my instincts tell me to go?”

“Motive is never easy. Sometimes it occurs to one only later.”

She chastises herself, disappointed with his answer and her own foolish question. At the repeated invitation, Scully almost leaves, but sits down anyway. When the light bulb burns out once again, she is startled, but Padgett is alarmed then resigned in awe (“Imagine that.”)

They sit, waiting; and Padgett turns, knowing the precipitous moment is arriving-- but when Scully still sits, seemingly unmoved, he leans forward, shocked and hoping a change in position will end any indecision.

It's then that Mulder busts through the apartment door.

He immediately puts up his gun at Scully’s “Mulder” but evades further questions after having confirmation she’s alright. He zips over to the typewriter and throws around the pages until he finds an incriminating one, delicately hands it to his partner and pushing Padgett against the wall to arrest him.

Scully, startled, doesn’t attempt to stop him; and stares, horrified, at the words "warm, beating heart" staring right back at her.

Part III coming sometime soon.

Thank you for reading~

Enjoy!

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dunhamhairograpy · 2 years

Text

Never Again Script: Scully is repeatedly turned on by Ed being rough with her 💋

'He grabs her arm, forceful... however, to her, this is more a turn on... than not.'

'As Ed holds her wrist ... the physicality [is] arousing.'

She's also turned on by the pain of a tattoo needle.

Ed grabs Scully arm with force. She doesn't pull away.

Scully's eyes and expression indicate her arousal and approval.

#never again #season 4 #xfiles #thexfiles #xf bts #gillian anderson #mulder #david duchovny #scully #mulder and scully #dana scully #msr #ed jerse #the x files fanfic #xfedit

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figureofdismay · 3 months

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i want to know about the extreme outlier opinion on never again!

ooh, thank you for your interest and I hope I don't get myself in trouble with this lol!

So this opinion is in multiple parts.

The first part being the one most unpopular, which is that Ed Jerse was not to only man who was not Mulder that Scully, that Dana had a night or a mini fling with between Jack Willis and/or then getting assigned to the X files and when MSR got together (whenever you believe that might be), and probably not the only dangerous one to some degree.

She's got that thrill seeker side to her, which is to some extent satisfied by chasing Mulder around on the X files. But Mulder keeps her in a sexless box in his perceptions -- IMO this is partially self defense on his part because if he lets himself go there even a bit in thinking of her dating potential/as a potential romantic-sexual partner his already limited ability to hold onto any kind of boundaries would just collapse. And I don't think this sexless view of her is at odds with my belief that Mulder was in love with her within a few months of working with her and knew it, but he doesn't think he deserves a relationship like that and more importantly he doesn't think Scully wants a relationship like that with him, or maybe not with anyone at all because she's given up dating completely after Jersey Devil, and what they talk about is work and theory and science and case notes and things within the kind of fixed shadow of their partnership/the files. Thus he's got this view of her that's completely divorced from her hedonistic, risk taking, rebellious, attention seeking, obsessive side.

I believe her ruthlessly compartmentalized nature and her constant awareness of other people's expectations of her, especially the expectations of people in authority or pseudo authority combined with a need for a release valve and a clear thread of sensualism in her character make it highly likely that there were other times when she picked a near-stranger and acted out a role with him, letting herself act out parts of herself she doesn't often express and using him as a proxy for her conflicted and/or baser feelings towards the Ahabs and 'fathers' in her life in a very limited capacity that is both satisfyingly dangerous (near stranger, almost certainly someone she doesn't really trust or want to get to know, after all she's not looking for a real and lasting relationship) and very safe because she can just stop playing that character and stop seeing that man and he won't even have ever 'met' the person she is the majority of the time.

I don't think she does it a lot, but by 'never again' it had been 4ish very high stress years with Mulder and 5ish years since Jack Willis, which, since Ethan didn't make it into the Pilot, was her last relationship, so yes. Maybe once or twice a year there's a bit of an 'i'm crawling out of my skin i need to tempt fate' ritual. And since we see so little of their personal lives, not hearing about it doesn't rule it out, the reason we saw this time because it was such a disaster and became another X-file -- and because Jerse was so dangerous and violent, and because Mulder found out about it, that particular game stopped being interesting even in a self destructive way. Plus very soon she would realize she had cancer and would take stock of her life in a different way and get closer to Mulder on another level so there was less of a need for a pressure valve rebellion.

And I don't think that this idea cheapens her relationship with Mulder or means she was cheating on him if that did happen, because it would be about simple attraction and being not 'herself' and also a proxy thing for her feelings and frustrations about Mulder that she's too afraid of tarnishing his image of her to let him into directly. And if it would make Scully's jealousy of Mulder interacting closely with other women hypocritical, well, she's certainly allowed to be a flawed character and is shown to have double standards about a number of things.

Part 2 of my outlier opinion is that Ed Jerse isn't out of character for Dana. Going back to Jack again, instead of believing in possession, she thought he'd had a mental break after years of obsessive work and mutilated a cadaver and killed a guy and she was not surprised at all. She had a fairly long relationship with him while believing he had that level of instability and violence in him when pushed. That means Jerse lines up for her.

part 3 of my outlier opinion (I guess it is, I don't see it talked about directly afaik) is that the story is dark as fuck with Jerse and his ergot psychosis but at the same time the tone is not horror-bleak the way Blood is and many s2/s3 with similar types of plots, but more extremely darkly ironic or wry. Between Mulder in Graceland and the extended Rocky and Bullwinkle plot discussion, and the fact that all it takes is a divorce and an Evil!Rosie the Riveter tattoo to push this guy over the edge there's this air of like, pulp noir mundane and ridiculousness. Fandom generally treats it as this like this profound statement about Mulder and Scully's relationship and Mulder's selfishness and thoughtlessness and if he just brought her a bottle of wine and asked about her day a la Van Blunht in Small Potatoes she could've been flinging that fling with him. Except, no, she couldn't use him as his own proxy, so she'd have to crack herself open a lot more than she was ready to. But also it's a story about both of them spinning their wheels and not getting anywhere and ending up feeling dumb, it's absurdist, it's a comment that neither character is smarter than their narrative, it's not a statement about a fractured partnership.

Part 4 is a little more out there and whatever but I do think Mulder's reaction is interesting. He's obviously hurt and completely baffled because he can tell Scully's given him very little of the actual framing of her distress and because 'i'm bored at my job' is both hurtful to him and something he can't conceptualize as leading to 'so i'll have a one night stand with a violent man' -- because that isn't her complaint, it's just what he heard. But in that last scene he doesn't read as angry or jealous, even the hurt doesn't exactly read as sexual jealousy. He's confused, he doesn't know what she wants, and he gets in some cheap shots with his annoyed. But there's an interesting tone to it. Maybe i'm reading too much in. I think there's a combination of trying to laugh it off/brush it off because he can tell she's feeling too exposed, and aside from the 'was the professional dissatisfaction worth all this??' he was curious. He'd caught a glimpse of the barest silhouette of her wild child side.

like a combination of 'so you slipped off your pedestal and bounced a little, so your halo got dented, so what' (paternalistic, dismissive, kidding) (reassuring) and 'oh, so she's a little like that? what else does she like? can a person get her like that without actually being on the verge of snapping?' He knows about Willis and Jerse now. It's more than one, and Willis is now certainly not a fluke. He's got to be sure there's some fascinating things brewing in her subconscious, and he's got the idea that her sexual side is one part girlish wounded bird, one part manic live wire, and one part intellectual 3D chess. He's curious about what that means for him and them. Curious about what she might be willing to do with him now that he's been reminded she'll do it with other people. He's even optimistic, I think, about what he could coax from her.

Probably also reminded to be cautious about what entanglements with him that he could accidentally 'manipulate' her into with some of his more demanding behavior, though. But like, even though they're both feeling bitter at that moment i do feel like there's a 'positive' in the kind of colliding worlds event of the episode in Mulder being reminded of Scully being a human woman with a carnal side.

And that is... I think the bulk of what I wanted to talk about re: NA? I think? My brain feels overcooked now. But I rewatched it to refresh my memory (i'm now in s5) but I stand by this. And also I think I need to break my custom and do post-episode fic about it, honestly.

#character theory: scully #character theory: mulder #txf never again #txf s4 #i think this needs my #msr #tag so i can find it later but yes whether or not this belongs in the ship tag is debatable. feels shippy to me though!#i'm sorry this ask took so long it needed some thinking and a rewatch XD #txf #also sorry not sorry but i do Get It about Jerse like yes i agree Scully too bad he turned out to be *that* over the edge lol #also a good reminder to have an interpersonal relationship (no matter how brief and doomed) call her Dana #it'd been a few seasons

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