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randomfoggytiger · 20 hours

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The Scully Family In-Depth (Part XIV): When Nature Turns So Cruel

Leading into the cancer arc, Scully begins to grapple with the bigger questions: her place in Mulder's life, and what she wants that place to be.

In Season 4, not only does Mulder express himself more openly-- crying on her shoulder for the first time in Herrenvolk, voicing his fantasy of a better life in Home, relying on her completely in Teliko, anguishing over soulmates in The Field Where I Died, hugging her proudly in Terma, leaning on her solely in Paper Hearts-- but the cases themselves no longer bear a passing resemblance: they directly mirror her current experiences. It creates an inescapable glass to look into and constantly compare with: which decisions led her here, and how (and if) she can escape them.

The files are Scully's job, but her loyalty lies with Mulder (her vow in Tooms proves that quite clearly); and insecurity over that loyalty harkens back to her childhood dynamic with the late Captain Scully: "There are other fathers," she tells Ed Jerse darkly in Never Again.

However. I wanted to focus this analysis on the slowly begun but quickly ended arc supplanted by Never Again and the events after Memento Mori.

THE HEART OF THE HOME

Home is a complex episode, factoring in not only Scully’s family dynamics but Mulder’s as well (to be discussed at length another time.)

After the closeted baby autopsy, Scully and Mulder walk out of the sheriff’s department just as a happy family and their giggly baby stroll by. Scully’s first remarks, however, are filtered out through the lens of mangled hopes and cruel twists of life.

“Imagine how a woman’s hopes and dreams for her child, and then Nature turns so cruel. What must a mother go through?” she ruminates in a distanced tone, indicating that this is the first time she's given serious thought to the subject.

What must a mother go through particularly stands out: Scully hadn’t forayed into these maternal or domestic waters before, it seems-- working hard to achieve medical school, then a doctor’s degree, then recruitment, then field agent with the FBI’s best and brightest. In The Jersey Devil, she was shown to be good with kids; but it was Ellen who pushed her towards planning the next step, and Scully who stated she’d need a man first. So, Dana Scully is over three years in on the files with at least three relationships under her belt (discounting Ethan Minette and whatever she and Mulder have) but still hadn’t paused to ponder or plan what motherhood and its hopes and dreams would hold for her… until today. And to have this brought to her attention now, during these dire circumstances, hits closer to home than Scully would like.

“Apparently not much in this case if she’d just throw it out with the trash,” Mulder counters, quietly waiting for his partner’s response when she maintains eye contact while slowly sitting down.

Scully remains/is momentarily silent, sorting through the real reason this case and these hopes are so impactful.

“I guess I was just… projecting on myself,” she admits-- vulnerably honest.

Mulder is immediately puzzled and concerned-- and his first question isn’t 'You want kids?' but instead, “Why, is there a history of genetic abnormalities in your family?” It’s a blend of his usual curiosity, morbid fascination, and something else.

Scully picks up on that something else, “No”ing his question softly and staring at him with more personal interest.

He then gives her a crack-- “Well, just find yourself a man with a spotless genetic makeup and a really high tolerance for being second-guessed and start pumping out the little uber scullies”-- a smile, and a light backrub to soothe away any lingering worries.

In a turnabout equal to an Olympic gold medalist, Scully twists the question around on him: “What about your family?”

“Hm?” Mulder responds, testing to see if his nonanswer will shake her off his tail.

It doesn’t: Scully remains locked onto his face, expecting a straight answer. One might say, needing one.

“Well, aside from the need for corrective lenses and the tendency to be abducted by extraterrestrials--” here Scully turns away, grinning to herself over Mulder’s Mulderness reasserting itself, “--involved in an international governmental conspiracy--” here a shade of disappointment passes over her face, “--the Mulder family passes genetic muster,” here he finishes, adding a comedic muscle flex to farm a smile from his partner.

She smiles, soaking in his unspoken subtext.

In his own way, Mulder has stated exactly where he stands: he can fantasize about settling down in a place like Home, tease her about pumping out the uber scullies, even include his family genetics in with the joke, but all under the context of hypotheticals. Mulder can’t have a normal life until he’s righted the wrongs of his past, saved the world, and gotten the girl. (It’s not until The Unnatural and Amor Fati that he finds "the mystery of the heart" and "another life, another world" can coincide with this one.) Most importantly, Mulder himself is not ready: playing with a baseball while she takes notes, bantering about family history while Scully turns reflectively inward, planning for unreachable hypotheticals (with her in them, yes, but unreachable all the same), and joking them both out of more dangerous, personal topics they've yet to address.

Scully is amused at his antics; but she is also searching for something from him he can’t (she assumes) provide. It’s wisest not to take his oddities or indiscretions personally, to smile over his endless unquenchable, unattached zest for life; but there is a loneliness-- one that is a choice-- that feels isolating, that leads her to question her own choices and outcomes (i.e. Never Again, Milagro, all things.) “You are Ahab”, she told him once on a rock; and her self-inflicted sacrifices to that cycle (posts here and here) stem back to being Captain William Scully, Sr.’s best first mate-- “There are other fathers”, after all.

Mulder watches her closely; and, sensing her withdrawal, opens up, revealing that he does, indeed, understand more than he lets on.

“Scully, that child inside is a tragedy." It's a simple statement spoken with feeling; and Scully responds to it.

But his theory over young, scared kids abandoning their unwanted child switches her gears; and she pivots their conversation quickly into her disagreements.

For the second time, family talk pops up in Mayberry.

Scully, having wrapped up the adult conversation for the night, glances over at her boy-in-a-thiry-some-year-old-body partner wrangling with the fuzzy tv set, smiling in spite of herself.

At her approach, Mulder puts distance between them-- but not because of romantically blurred lines, no, no; but because she might mess with the static on his chosen channel.

Thoroughly unimpressed, Scully cracks, “You still planning on making a home here?”

“Not if I can’t get the Knicks game,” he deflects, pointing the antennae carefully at her forehead for maximum kid antics.

Having had enough for the night, she walks off. “Well, just as long as brutal infanticide doesn’t weigh into your decision.”

He picks up on, and is annoyed by, her undercurrent of condescension, shooting a “Goodnight, Mom,” parting shot.

Scully is pulled up short, her eyes asking if he’d said what he’d said and challenging him to repeat it. Mulder turns away-- not interested in further petty sniping but refusing to give up the ground he’s gained.

She doesn’t call his bluff, deciding to drop further antagonism and just go to bed.

However, there is a snag.

“Mulder, this lock is broken,” she says, head down as she fidgets it back and forth.

Her partner whips back around, lowering his arms for the first time in a defensive, attentive position. He plays it off with a joke-- “You don’t have to lock your doors around here”-- and Scully buys it; but his posture reflects how aware he is of the sudden lack of boundaries in this cozy, folksy, family-livin’ town.

After she shuts the door behind her, Mulder doesn’t stop looking at the lock (visibly weighing his options by stretching out the antenna.) Blinking away his thoughts, he moves quickly over to the table, grabbing and wedging a chair under the opportunity of temptation.

If that’s not symbolism for the next few years for Scully, I don’t know what else is.

The third mention of family-- specifically, of Scully’s family-- occurs in the Peacocks’ field.

“There some secret farmer trick to gettin’ these things moving?” Mulder grunts, giving another forceful shove against the mountain of pigs they have to move.

“I don’t know,” she whispers, exasperated, before receiving a stroke of genius. “Na ram you!” she warbles, louder for the second, “Na ram you!”

“Yeah, that’ll work,” Mulder pipes from behind a particularly large hog.

“I babysat my nephew this weekend,” she explains, applying more force to the hind quarters in front of her. “He watches Babe fifteen times a day.”

“And people call me ‘Spooky’.”

Besides a cameo in Beyond the Sea, this is the first canonical reference Scully has made to her nephew. Although there was a profound lack of show bible on The X-Files, the details-- or lack thereof-- that they retained are interesting to gnaw on.

As discussed in the previous parts here and here, Scully’s two brothers were at her father’s funeral with their wives; but as we know in A Christmas Carol, Bill Scully has yet to have children (unless one got bushwacked and we were never told.) If that’s the case, then nephew Scully has to be Charlie’s boy… which leaves the other boy at the funeral unaccounted for. (Is he Forgotten Nephew? Step Nephew? Who knows?)

Once inside the house, Mulder zeroes in on an Elvis Presley article and Mrs. Peacock’s skid marks while Scully pieces together who Mrs. Peacock is-- another example of their disparate frequencies.

“Mrs. Peacock?” Scully begins. “Mrs. Peacock… you are in immediate need of medical attention. Agent Mulder and I are here to help you.”

“This is our home! Why leave it?”

After the argument for medical attention leads them nowhere, Mrs. Peacock stares into the middle distance, fondly (and a bit lustfully) talking about her sons. “They’re such good boys.”

“Mrs. Peacock, they murdered Sheriff Taylor and his wife. And Deputy Pastor.”

Fired up, Mrs. Peacock rebukes, “I can tell you don’t have no children.”

Scully withdraws, a mixture of stinging confusion and horrified disgusts playing across her face.

“Maybe one day you’ll learn,” the matriarch continues, “the pride. The love. When you know your boy would do anything for his mother.”

Disgust outweighing everything, Scully looks away and licks her lips to compose herself.

Then the boys break in; and chaos ensues.

There is no resolution here about family for Mulder and Scully, the topic and undertones being dropped in favor of a death brawl and subsequent escape. But mothers and their children, death and loss ties very neatly into her and her mom's conversation in Memento Mori. Nature’s cruel twists of life, uh, find a way.

REMEMBER DEATH

While not tangentially related to the Scully family, her opening monologue in Memento Mori sets the stage for Scully's equal parts reticence and openness in the cancer arc, culminating in the interactions between her, Maggie, and Bill in Gethsemane and both Redux episodes.

"For the first time I feel time like a heartbeat. The seconds pumping in my breast like a reckoning. The ruminous mysteries that once seemed so distant and unreal threatening clarity in the presence of a truth entertained not in youth, but only in it's passage.' I feel these words as if their meaning were weight being lifted from me, knowing that you will read them and share my burden as I have come to trust no other. That you should know my heart, look into it, finding there the memory and experience 'that belong to you, that are you, is a comfort to me now as I feel the tethers loose and the prospects darken for a continuance of a journey that began not so long ago, and which began again with a faith shaken and strengthened by your convictions. If not for which I might never have been so strong now as I cross to face you and look at you incomplete, hoping that you will forgive me for not making the rest of the journey with you."

Scully is diagnosed with brain cancer; and calls Mulder to jump headlong into an investigation regarding the dying MUFON women she’d met last year-- all without calling her mother or family first. We find out in Gethsemane that she hadn’t wanted any of her family told, and are left to assume Maggie found out only because of how debilitating Dr. Scanlon’s chemo treatment was expected to be. Their confrontation here is extremely telling: it reveals how much Maggie relies on her daughter, how aware Scully is of this, and how the chasm between them begins to grow as Scully attempts to always be her mother’s “strong one.”

Scully tells Mulder she needs him to bring over her travel bag and “to call my mother and ask her to bring up some things to the hospital.”

Thus enters Maggie: hurt and angry and terrified. “Dana!” she greets, soft and breathless.

“Hi, Mom,” Scully responds, her voice younger as she slips back into mother-daughter comfortability.

Overwhelmed, her mother waits until Scully introduces her to Dr. Scanlon, then begins rambling. “I drove,” she explains, trying to disguise the shake in her voice by talking a bit faster. “I was gonna take the shuttle but it’s only an hour or more by car. Can you imagine?” Dropping off her bag, Maggie draws back to her daughter’s bedside while nervously fiddling with her ear and sniffling.

“Mom, I’m fine,” Scully assures.

At that, Maggie’s face drops-- perhaps relief, perhaps fury at Scully’s denial. Or both.

“I’m going to be fine-- I’m just here for treatment,” Dana continues, gracefully gliding over the change of expression. When Dr. Scalon announces his departure, she gives him a tight, polite smile, well-trained and mannered even in a crisis.

Maggie, however, doesn’t react, letting the man pass without so much as a cursory glance over.

The two Scully women are alone; and Dana shifts her eyes away, then drops her head, steels her shoulders, and lifts her eyes back up to Maggie, anticipating a storm. And she's right.

“Mom, I know what you’re gonna say, but… I don’t have any experience being sick,” she stalls, knowing her mother’s wrath is coming in hot.

Maggie remains silent, taking off her coat and folding it with heavy, precise movements while looking down.

Scully scoots froward, trying to reassure her with a little, unconcerned shrug.

Looking up, Maggie locks eyes, holding herself tightly. “I don’t know why you didn’t tell me.”

Embarrassed and guilty, Scully looks down, swallowing as she prepares herself for what’s coming.

“I don’t know why you didn’t tell me immediately!” her mother explodes, betrayal radiating from her stiff spine and locked jaw as she slams her coat on her purse.

Chastised, Scully looks down once more, willing to let Maggie vent the anger that has accumulated since Mulder’s call the night before. It takes the wind out of Mrs. Scully’s sails; and she folds in on herself, trying again to regain control.

“I wanted to get all the answers first,” Scully says, quietly; and Maggie walks over slowly, nodding as she takes a closer stand by her daughter’s side.

“And you found them here?”

Scully hasn’t. “I have found some clarity,” she cryptically replies. “And maybe a way to fight back.” With that, she raises her head and waits for her mother to look back at her again.

Quite the interesting shift we observe here: we the audience know Scully always run to Mulder-- or Melissa-- before her mother (i.e. The Blessing Way and A Christmas Carol, respectively); but Maggie, it appears, wasn’t aware of this dynamic. To Maggie, her baby girl always came to her first for love and advice or council; and she doted on her baby accordingly. She likely didn’t support Dana’s transfer to the FBI but still helped mend her daughter and her husband’s relationship; she trusted her youngest daughter’s judge of character in Fox Mulder, Albert Hosteen, and Walter Skinner (posts here and here); and she talked her daughter down from a paranoid episode when Dana ran to her for safety (post here.) But last night, she found where she placed on Scully’s priority list: second, if unavoidable. And that crushed her.

Flexing her jaw against the trembling in her lips, Maggie finally looks back at her daughter. “I don’t want to be kept in the dark,” she warns, refusing to let the matter rest, no matter how much Dana is skirting it.

Scully lets a bit of her control go, allowing a shade of vulnerability to peer through her eyes. “I know, Mom.”

Maggie, unable to hold back her fear any longer, covers her mouth before leaning in for kiss on the cheek.

Unable to keep her own self-control complete once enveloped in a hug, Scully almost cracks, clutching desperately at her mom’s shirt for a split second to battle away the impulse to cry.

“You have always been the strong one,” Maggie affirms: a blessing and a burden for Dana Scully. Beginning to sob, she adds, “But you are my only daughter now.”

“I know,” Scully answers, resolved.

To Maggie, strength is not separate from open emotions, tears, and vulnerability; but to Scully, fragile emotions are akin to weakness. This, therefore, places mother and daughter in opposite positions-- mother wanting to share in grief and weakness, and daughter wanting to shield them both against it. Maggie desperately wants Scully to open herself, needing that mother-daughter relationship she has only with Dana now; and Scully desperately seeks to avoid that openness, viewing it as dangerously unstable territory while she gathers strength to help her loved ones.

In canon, it's hard to find Scully harboring blame for Melissa's death after her initial burst of blame in Paper Clip. The knowledge that her sister was killed in her place must weigh heavily; but inferences have to be made about the level of guilt she carries, if at all. She was given a form of closure by turning in Luis Cardinale-- though imperfect, since his was killed before facing justice-- and we know she has fond memories of her sister in A Christmas Carol and a shade of remembrance in all things. Most often, the body count of the mission falls on Mulder's shoulders, with Scully firmly convinced the men who pull the trigger are the ones that bear responsibility.

Knowing all this, it would not, however, be easy to face her mother's pain and fright after her abduction, disgraced disappearance, sister's death, and government-inflicted brain cancer.

Maggie Scully breaks down, clinging to her daughter in anguish.