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sunflowernyx · 8 days

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Chapter 1 I Newest chapter

He’s halfway up the stairs, patting his pockets for his keys, when he finds the note. A folded, plain sheet of paper with the inscription in a familiar hand by a manicured hand:

In case you and Dr Scully would like to throw the first stone; there is more than one way to kill a god.

On the other side is an address.

He pockets it.

Mulder knows not to let Spender get in his head, but it’s difficult. He’d painted a picture that kept expanding with very little information and very few admittances on his own meddling in Scully’s life and affairs, but by the time the door opens to his home, Mulder can’t help but wonder if Dana Scully was placed in his path to create a weakness or to spy on him.

Which had been the whole point of Spender’s set-up. It’s never just a one-sided trap, and Mulder knows if he avoids it now there’s a whole minefield ahead of him.

He wants to believe her. He needs her to be who she claims to be so badly. For himself and for Emily. Because for once in his life, he wants to be able to do the right thing by the people in his life.

And it would be easy too, coming back home to the vision that greets him as he steps into the living room.

Golden light falls across bookshelves, couches and half-empty mugs of cooling cacao, warming the skin of the girl and the woman curled up sound asleep in a nest of blankets and pillows. The television flickers silently on the midpoint of a family film, keeping them company in the night without disturbing their rest.

Scully’s knees curl up and her arm goes around the little girl, whose head is nestled under her chin, her cheek rounding against Scully’s shoulder. And it is so peaceful, so picturesque, that Mulder could easily delude himself into imagining this to have been what he came home to for many months already, that it is, has always been, and always will be the norm.

He crosses the carpet on soft feet and kneels by the two girls to brush his fingers lightly down from Scully’s temple to her chin.

The hood of her eyelids slides up, revealing the clear blue sky below, and he watches the clouds of sleep clear with momentary pleasure.

“Mulder?” She murmurs, void deep with sleep.

Her arm tightens carefully around Emily.

“‘Morning,” he greets her. “Sorry for coming back so late. I know you have work in the evening.”

“It’s okay,” she says, and he knows she means it. “How’s the case going?”

Her hand brushes over Emily’s head in a caress light enough it doesn’t wake her.

“Slow,” he admits. “Thanks for watching her for me. I know it can’t have been easy to get time off work.”

Scully hesitates, and he can see it in her face; the war between greedily wanting time with her daughter and her practicality. If he had not reminded her of work he’s sure she would’ve asked if he needed a babysitter the next day too, and the next.

It makes him want to do dumb, reckless things.

Scully has been in their lives for only a handful of weeks, and in that time she has spent every free moment she could manage getting to know Emily. It’d meant a Saturday at the zoo, and another drinking hot chocolate by an ice rink.

He’d taken a Tuesday off on an invitation to visit a lab with her at the University of Maryland, where they’d done the DNA testing assuring everyone that there was no doubt in terms of familial connection. Afterwards they’d gone for a walk in the park, below the snow covered trees and Mulder had swung Emily up on his shoulders, while Scully brought them hot churros, and not for the first time had he considered what they might look like to passers-by. How easy it would be if that image weren’t just a superficial reflection on the water, hiding a much deeper, more murky truth.

“The rest of my duties on this involve paperwork and leading meetings, though,” he says in the present. “So I’ll be home at regular times from now on.”

“Oh. That’s good,” she lies.

And Mulder, he—

He almost laughs. Sleepy and adorable and transparent, he doesn’t think Dana Scully could lie even if she tried.

“Which means I’ll have time and space for dinner,” he clarifies, unable to keep his smile to himself. “This was your first time alone with Emily tonight, and I thought we should keep the momentum going so she really gets used to you. What do you say?”

Start chapter here

#msr #the x files #dana scully #fox mulder #louie writes #fic #txf #fanfiction #writing #fanfic #Vantalize the stars fic

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sunflowernyx · 11 days

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"university of maryland, 1982. fox mulder is in love with the library girl."

Obsessed with the energy in Paracosm on AO3 by @softnow

#bump to the writing blog #10/10 can recommend the fic btw!#A+ writing #msr #txf

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sunflowernyx · 11 days

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Many have pointed out that Mulder does little to no actual detective work, and often just blurts out the answer with no evidence as if he’s read the script. The real explanation for this is lazy writing, but my preferred in-universe explanation is that Mulder is mildly psychic and just doesn’t realize it.

We know that humans in The X-Files share DNA with the aliens due to panspermia, and sometimes the genes for psychic ability can be turned on, as in the case of Gibson Praise. We meet a lot of different kinds of psychics with varying abilities, like Clyde Bruckman, but their powers probably all have the same underlying cause. It seems to manifest somewhat randomly throughout the population.

It would also help explain whatever nonsense is going on in Biogenesis. The reasons they give for the alien rubbing only affecting Mulder are pretty unsatisfying. Maybe it makes him psychic because he was already mildly psychic.

Lmao, maybe Mulder isn’t a brilliant criminal profiler; Maybe he can just sort of read the serial killers’ minds a little bit.

#Listen #this man astral projects like 7 times throughout the series #of course he's psychic #txf

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sunflowernyx · 15 days

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Chapter 1 I New chapter

Dana dreams.

The crowd of people thrums with energy. It’s a sizzling thing in the air, full of the kind of excitement she hasn’t experienced since she went regularly to church. Like they’re all experiencing magic - a miracle.

Their whispers carry to the stars high above them, framed by the mountains and the top of the bridge lit from below. Orange against deep blue. And Dana looks up, follows the sound, the light to stare into bottomless cosmos.

And from that open space, that calm atmospheric ocean, a storm picks up. Wind picks at the trees, pitching them over, and pulls at her hair. It is the only warning she gets for the black ship that appears above them, little lights at the edges.

It hovers unnaturally, as if the laws of the planet are too insignificant for its grandeur. Silently it twirls on its axis, blocking out the sky. Imprisoning them between the supports for the bridge.

As Dana looks around, everyone else look up. Enraptured, minds as one. Like all they have ever been waiting for is this ship, like it is their god here to save them from judgment.

Light falls around them like a physical thing. It touches everything with the deceptive warmth of a mother’s hand, casting a blue sheen at the periphery, and the darkest shadows.

The woman at her side, at the centre of it all, raises her hands to the divinity above them.

Someone screams.

It sizzles through her, tears her puppet strings as only a cry for help can.

Dana’s head whips around for the source.

But all she catches is the sight of fire.

Then the dream of the future becomes a dream of the past.

The light turns off, the line cutting through the horizon vanishing. The spaceship zips back the way it had come, not just in space but in time. The sun follows it, setting in the wrong direction, night becoming evening, becoming afternoon, becoming morning and, once again, night. Sunrise and sunset in the wrong order, over and over again, at impossible speed.

Until Dana is alone on a mountain top with a broken down car behind her, her friends from med school talking in the background. The stars are the same, the sky is the same.

The ship comes, and so does the light.

She doesn’t scream.

***

The first thing Scully sees the next morning, bleary eyed and groggy, is Mulder’s face.

He’s sitting, crouched in front of her, his hand retracting from her shoulder.

“What time is it?” She murmurs, pushing herself up.

Mulder retreats slightly to give her space, seating himself on the coffee table.

“Half past seven,” he says, offering her a mug with the bad news she’s only had three hours sleep. “I’m sorry it’s so early, but I figured you’d want to be awake and clean by the time Emily wakes up in an hour.”

“Thanks.”

Scully takes a big gulp of the tar-like coffee, relishing in the knowledge it’ll wake her up proper.

The winter sun being slow to rise means that the living room looks much as she had left it. It gives the disorienting sensation that she had only closed her eyes a second, that the time she has lost is a different sort of time loss.

To root herself in the present, she casts her eyes around. The photo albums and tea mugs, the boxes with manila files documenting the impossible, are all gone from the kitchen. Any sign of their long conversation just a few hours ago has been cleared away for the sake of the child still sleeping feet away.

And that, too, makes it feel eerie and unreal, what they had spoken of, what Mulder had shared with her.

Something she had already pointed out to him the evening before.

He had smiled the bitter smile of a man who has seen the truth and keeps his terror of it to himself.

“Why do you think that is?” He says. “If the evidence is only convincing to some, disappears from the hands of others, mixed with incorrect facts later proven wrong, and leaked by improbable sources, only a fair few will believe. And the rest, like you, will consider those to be unreliable sources, as well.”

Scully, not unfamiliar with societal gaslighting, gives him a look and he laughs.

“I know,” he says. “The policy is biting me in the ass as we speak. I’m surprised you haven’t booted it out the door yet.”

“Must be your natural charm,” she quips, dipping her smile into her mug so he can’t see it and enjoying his laugh.

In front of her are open files, photographs and blueprints of impossible things like hovering spaceships and constructed DNA, all decades beyond any technology she has ever been abled to imagine. Alien technology, Mulder calls it.

Beside it are photo albums full of pictures of the Mulder family, of his parents and sister, Emily and their friends. People from the state department that Mulder’s father has worked with. Generals, scientists, nazi captives. A man with a cigarette smiling tiredly at the camera as if he only indulging the photographer.

Scully’s fingers itch to return to the pages with Emily’s baby pictures.

She had laughed at him at the suggestions that governments were secretly working with aliens that intended to enslave the human race. She doesn’t even think that she’s seen a Cold War movie with that audacious plot. But then she’d realised he weren’t laughing.

“Okay,” she says, casting about for common ground, something she has discerned they both treasure. “So, if you’re telling the truth, and little green men are out there with all the answers, what’s the point to any of it? If we already know what’s out there we can give up on the search for the answers to life, the universe and everything.”

His eyes sparkle in the familial lighting of the kitchen. “Oh, but Scully,” he says, leaning conspiratorially across the table, recognising her dismissal for what it is: a challenge. “Don’t you see? Just because you know aliens exist, doesn’t mean the search stops. It just means there’s more information, more evidence to gather and guard. Scientifically, the universe could be our oyster, but even if it isn’t, just the slightest access could teach us so much more about ourselves and our home world.”

Continue reading here!

#fanfic #fanfiction #fic #msr #txf #the x files #dana scully #fox mulder #louie writes #vandalize the stars fic

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sunflowernyx · 16 days

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And the force summoned Teresa Nemman's body into the woods tonight. Yes! But Billy Miles took her there. Summoned by some alien impulse. That's it!

The X-Files (1993-2018) | 1.01

#Exchange Teresa and Billy's names for Scully and Mulder and this perfectly describes #their first case together and the start of their relationship/attraction #the first episode is so masterfully written #and the cinematography and acting is perfect #just masterful #the x files #txf

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sunflowernyx · 17 days

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“I’d rather have you home, too. Thanks for doing our dirty work, Scully. Literally.” Scully just grunts in response. Mulder puts his hands on the sides of her neck, thumbs on her cheeks, and looks down at her. “Do you want to go get dressed, and I’ll make breakfast that is a little less…” he glances at her failed meal, “Runny and charcoal?”

She nods. “Thank you, Mulder.”

“Of course.” He presses a kiss to her head and releases her. As she retreats to the bedroom, Mulder continues, “But I want that shirt back!”

“Tough luck, sweetheart!” She shoots over her shoulder with a grin.

read chapter four of you are in love on ao3, or below the cut!

Morning, his place

Burnt toast, Sunday

You keep his shirt

He keeps his word

And for once, you let go

Of your fears and your ghosts

One step, not much

But it said enough

***

December 1996

Scully’s alarm goes off at 7:00 on a dim Sunday morning, rousing her hours earlier than she would like. She groans and wriggles out of Mulder’s arms to silence the clock before it can wake him as well.

The goddamn lab is backed up, and the today is the only day open for her to run tests on the river dirt all through Gillyberg’s body, which needed to be removed, sampled, and analyzed meticulously.

She’s really not looking forward to it. Especially not in the dreary December morning light, in the cozy bed she desperately wants to stay in, with a sleeping Mulder still trying to hold her warm body close to his.

She brushes his hair out of his face and kisses his temple before getting out of bed. She slides glasses on her face and her feet into her slippers, foregoing pants and trodding out into the kitchen for coffee wearing just one of Mulder’s old t-shirts.

Scully is not exactly what one would call a morning person. Especially not on Sundays before 9. Especially not on Sundays before 9, expecting to be on her feet for at least five hours, and when every goddamn kitchen appliance seems to be malfunctioning.

Her coffee is weak. Her eggs are runny. The final straw is when her toast burns to a crisp. She pushes the plate across the counter and drops her head onto it in defeat.

“Scully?” A sleepy voice calls from the hallway. She lifts her head to look and oh, oh suddenly everything makes sense.

A Mulder-shaped blob shuffles toward her. She thinks he might be rubbing an eye, which would be absolutely adorable and Mulder-like, but she can barely make out the shape of him through glasses that, apparently, are not her own.

“I can’t see anything.” She says dumbly as Mulder approaches. He lifts his hand to remove the glasses, and slips the correct pair onto her face. He takes her into his arms, and she goes willingly, wrapping her arms around his back. She’s slotting right into a place that has always been hers.

“I put mine on your nightstand by mistake last night.” He explains, “Sorry ‘bout that.”

“I don’t want to work today.” She mumbles into his chest.

She nods. “Thank you, Mulder.”

“Of course.” He presses a kiss to her head and releases her. As she retreats to the bedroom, Mulder continues, “But I want that shirt back!”

“Tough luck, sweetheart!” She shoots over her shoulder with a grin.

***

Scully ends up stuck at work all goddamn day. After finishing the autopsy, she calls the house to tell Mulder that she’s going to the lab to try to get something on the dirt samples she extracted from Gillyberg’s digestive system. Her insides had been absolutely packed, more so than would normally occur with a body drifting downriver, so there had been a number of samples. When she calls their landline, she is greeted with her own bored voice saying “You’ve reached Fox Mulder and Dana Scully, please leave a message after the tone.” She catches him on his cell, and tells him that she’ll be home for dinner.

When she does make it home, it's to the sound of a rock song that she knows Mulder has played before but can’t quite place, and a pleasant smell coming from the kitchen.

“Finally, I was starting to think that you’d gotten locked in one of those corpse drawers or something.” Mulder calls from the kitchen as Scully slides her badge and gun into the drawer in the front hallway and places her jacket on the coat tree by the door.

“Sorry, honey, I was waiting on the test results on the dirt from the potential dump site.”

“Find anything?”

“Yes, we ran tests on just about everything, pH, phosphate, nitrate and nitrite, organic matter, you name it… they all match, Mulder. The dirt from the woman’s home matches the dirt found in her digestive tract.”

“So they killed her in her home, and threw her in the river in a panic? Do you think it was premeditated?”

Scully puts her coat on the hook and her gun, keys, and wallet on the entryway table. “I don’t think so. I think it was definitely intentional, but not necessarily well thought out ahead of time. The sheer amount of dirt in her body wouldn't happen naturally, and there are signs that she was decomposing in open air prior to being tossed in the river. I don’t think it was done in a panic, Mulder, I think the decision to dispose of the body that way was made days after killing her. It was planned, just very poorly.”

“Where does that leave us?”

“I don’t know. Nowhere, for tonight. Confirming the dump site doesn’t help us solidify a motive, or tie her to the medical group we were tipped off to.”

Mulder taps the wooden spoon on the pan thoughtfully. “Do you think the guys could get into their records and try to find something?”

“Let's leave it for tonight. I’m hungry.” Scully leans on her elbows over the kitchen peninsula. “What’s for dinner? Can I help with anything?”

“I found your stir fry recipe. You want to chop the veggies?” He nods towards a cutting board next to the stove, where he stands stirring enough to prevent the contents from sticking.

Scully washes her hands and complies, chopping routinely. When the CD finishes, Mulder nods towards the stereo, “Do you want to choose the next one?”

Scully selects a CD from the shelf below the player and slips it into the disk bay before returning Mulder’s CD – apparently, Green Day’s Dookie – to its case.

I wanna hold the hand inside you

Scully reenters the kitchen and Mulder beams at her, “Mazzy Star, good choice.”

“Thank you,” she replies before returning to her cutting board.

I wanna take the breath that’s true

Mulder’s eyes don’t leave Scully, he just takes her in. The only difference between now and when she left this morning is the lack of suit jacket and heels, and the soft, unguarded expression on her face.

I look to you and I see nothing

The slope of her nose. The angle of her chin. The slightest smear of mascara under her eye. He does his best to stamp the image into his mind, so he never forgets what she looks like when she’s cooking with him in their home, dancing around each other’s space in comfortable, practiced motions. He loves her, loves the domestic routine they’ve built so much it hurts.

I look to you to see the truth

Scully finally catches him staring, and looks back up at him. “What?”

You live your life, you go in shadows

He clicks the stove off and steps toward her, and she puts the knife down in turn. “Mulder?”

You'll come apart and you'll go blind

“Come here.”

Some kind of night into your darkness

Mulder grabs Scully’s hand and draws her in. He wraps his free arm around her back and her own presses into his bicep.

Colored your eyes with what's not there

He starts to sway, and leads her around the kitchen. Not quite the ballroom dancing from his youth, but it’s close.

Fade into you

Strange you never knew

Fade into you

I think it's strange you never knew

The way Scully is smiling up at him makes something burst and shine inside him. He’s reevaluating his concept of happiness, unsure if it's ever burnt this bright in his chest before. He doesn’t think he could keep off his face if he tried.

She’s beautiful.

A stranger's light comes on slowly

Mulder spins Scully out, and pulls her back in, even closer than she was before. She’s pressed against him.

A stranger's heart without a home

She rests her head on Mulder’s chest and listens to his heartbeat. He wonders if she can tell how fast it’s racing, if she knows the effect her proximity has on him.

You put your hands into your head

Something seems to have shifted in her. Like a barrier has been moved, and he can see a whole new part of herself that she’s kept walled off from him for the past three years of their partnership, for the past year of their marriage. This isn’t the usual, guarded Scully; this is Dana.

And then its smiles cover your heart

Scully looks back up at him. He sees something in her eyes, in her slightly open lips, and reads it as permission. As desire.

Fade into you

Strange you never knew

Mulder lowers his head minutely, bringing his and Scully’s faces closer. Her eyes lower to his lips, and her hand snakes up to rest on the back of his neck, nails running along his hairline and making him shiver.

Fade into you

I think it's strange you never knew

Scully’s hand applies slow, firm pressure, bringing him down, closer, and god, he’s nearer to her than he’s ever been. Closer to everything he’s ever wanted.

Fade into you

Strange you never knew

The moment shatters. It shatters along with the gorgeous, bee shaped stained glass window. It shatters along with the cupboard door, right near where Mulder’s head would be if he wasn’t leaning down to kiss Scully. It shatters with Mulder’s hope.

Fade into you

Scully reacts before he does. She drops to the ground, bringing him with her, and he lands right on top of her with a grunt.

“Where’s your weapon?” She asks, clearly shifting into fight mode a lot faster than he is.

I think it's strange you never knew

“The bedroom.”

“Dammit, mine’s in the front hallway.”

I think it's strange you never knew

“I’m going to run for yours, it’s closer and there are more walls between it and the shooter. Stay. Here.” She orders.

“Scully, don’t–”

Mulder tries to grab her, tries to keep her on the floor where they’re mostly covered and mostly safe, but she’s off and running in an awkward crouch before he can get the sentence out. Another shot rings from the window, once again just missing her and landing in the couch. She grabs the gun off the entryway table and scuttles through the living area to couch behind the couch and match the shooter’s angle. She fires three rounds and there’s a thud from the backyard, and the sound of bullets hitting the brick of the back wall cease.

“Scully?” Mudler asks, still crouched behind the counter.

“Mulder, are you alright?”

“I’m fine.” He peeks over the countertop at his partner, her gun and eyes still trained in the direction from which the shots were fired. She risks a glance at him to confirm he’s intact.

“I think I got him. Or at least scared him off. Grab my gun and call 911, I’m going to go check.”

“Wait a second.” He rounds the peninsula separating the kitchen from the living room and takes her in his arms. She relaxes at the contact, dropping her rigid shooting stance to embrace him back. “You’re okay?”

“I’m okay.” Her voice is muffled in his shirt. She breaks away and focuses back on her mission. “Go.”

For once, Mulder does as he’s told.

***

Scully did, in fact, hit their assailant. He and his rifle had been perched in the tree in the backyard, and had fallen out when Scully had hit him in the shoulder. He was unconscious when Scully found him, and was cuffed to a gurney as soon as he woke.

The gunman, being the world’s worst assassin, conveniently confesses immediately to being hired by someone within the Excellium Medical Group, the very organization they were investigating in connection to Gillyberg. The one that, after poking through the woman’s computer in a less than legal manner, it turns out was involved in some very illegal organ trade. Gillyberg was preparing to report them, so they had killed her. Sloppily.

When Mulder and Scully had started poking around, they put out a hit. Luckily for Excellium, they were almost always together, so there was no need to coordinate assassinating them both. Unluckily for Excellium, they were almost always together, and therefore virtually impossible to kill.

When Mulder finally locks the door behind the last CSI tech, he leans back against it with a thud and drops his head into his hands.

Fuck. Fuck. He’d almost kissed her. And that fact had saved his life, if the trajectory from the stained glass window to the bullet hole in his cabinet door is any indication. If he hadn’t been leaning down, the bullet would have lodged itself right into his head instead of the cabinet.

Well, at least being head over fucking heels with his wife who isn’t really his wife had done something good for him. She had saved his life, again.

“Mulder?” Scully calls from the other room. She pokes her head into the entryway. He lifts his head to look towards her. She’s wrapped in a blanket that is usually kept on the couch, the one from his apartment. It doesn’t match the couch, but they keep it there anyway.

“You alright?”

She nods, and holds her arms out to him. He bundles her up into his own and tucks her head into his chest, nestled under his chin. Right where she fits, right where she belongs.

“Let’s go to bed.” She mumbles into his shirt, grabbing at the fabric at the back. He pulls away and kisses her forehead.

“Yeah. Let’s go to sleep, Scully.”

<- previous chapter

#fic rec #the x files

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sunflowernyx · 17 days

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Every time Shuffle throws Rock n Roll Thugs by Icon for Hire at me, I end up thinking an MSR au where scully goes to classical music school (and meets Mulder ofc) in defiance of her family would be rad, but then I remember I don't know anything about music so I can't write it damnit

Also Scully doesn't have a musical bone in her body but whatever it'd be perfect for her punk phase

#random rambles #msr #the x files #Something with a vibe like Your Lie in April

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sunflowernyx · 17 days

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Is it an X or a cross around your neck, Scully?

#Dana Scully #x files #the x files #txf

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sunflowernyx · 22 days

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I love Mulder is deliberately giving off the impression he's a bad team player to others.

This is a man who is excellent at several team sports and loves them, but will he work well with others professionally?

Only if it's Scully

Otherwise that's a hard pass

You can even see it sort of develops after meeting her, throughout season 1. He has an excellent relationship with his former ASAC, he cared about earlier co-workers, and as soon as Scully gets kidnapped in Lazarus, he takes over the investigation and starts directing everyone around him with ease and comfort.

Mulder knows how to be a leader and a team player, he just doesn't want to

#fox mulder #mini meta #the x files #txf

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sunflowernyx · 22 days

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Chapter 1 I New chapter

Dana Scully’s time has stopped twice in her life. Once when she vanished from the face of the earth for three months. And once in a hospital bed.

She’s still there, sitting across a man in a black coat, listening to his arguments for why she should give up the child she had no recollection of conceiving, but had carried to term none-the-less.

Sometimes she can forget it. Most days it is a buzz in the back of her head, a room, a memory, she passes during her rounds at the hospital oncology ward.

But the memory had come thundering at her that day when she met Fox Mulder. She hadn’t heard its approach at first, she had been too busy attending to this father with his sad green eyes and his mouth, so full of love and despair. It had flickered in her periphery, a thousand extra x-ray photos, snapshots from four years ago, out of the corner of her eye as she had knelt beside Mulder on the floor, as she had touched his shoulder.

Familiar.

It had all been so familiar.

But it is easy to hide a terrible history in places that look like it, and recognising which is which becomes an impossibility all on its own.

The door had closed behind him, his dark coat fluttering around his feet.

And the memory had snapped into such sharp relief, of a man in a similar coat leaving, her daughter in his arms.

She’d gasped.

Gravity propels her forwards, and her palm connects with the door.

Leaning heavily against the stubborn barrier, she clenches her eyes shut and clutches at her chest.

This is just—

Basic biology. A deterministic, preconditioned set of hormones triggered in the brain and body at the prospect of an attractive man in her vicinity. It’s just memories forced to the forefront by visual similarities.

She wants her daughter back, but projecting that onto a dying father is cruel and egoistic even for her.

Dana pushes away from the door and presses her palms to her face. Pinching the bridge of her nose, she wills herself not to cry, to breathe evenly. And then, to return to the comfort of her work where her private life and suffering has no right to intrude.

But even as she tells herself that this isn’t about her, that Emily is beyond her reach forever, that she needs to focus on her patients first, it nags at her, the familiarity.

Fox Mulder is familiar as a shadow.

And by the time she signs off for the night she is running for her car, tearing across town to her lonely apartment in Georgetown, and throwing her door open. The files and folders that’d been left with her by the man who’d taken Emily have a place of honour on her bookshelf and she whips them out of their place, dust flying in clouds behind her, to slam them down on her kitchen dining table.

And there, on a business card, tucked into a plastic pocket on the inside of the first folder is the name in a clean font: William Mulder.

Mulder.

Hope cuts cruelly through the seams in her heart, tearing her clean in half.

***

The first snow trickles from the sky onto Alexandria, as Dana slides her car onto the impressive street, a calm chill. An omen.

Melissa would be proud of her.

The thing is: Dana shouldn’t be here.

It had taken her hours just to get her apartment door open.

How was she even going to find the Mulder family? How could she know that the child Fox Mulder had spoken of was her Emily? What were the chances?

They weren’t in the phone book. It’s the first place she had checked, but there was no record of any Mulder in it. She could call the Hoover building and ask for Special Agent Fox Mulder, but she didn’t think the secretaries worked at this hour. There was a line for emergency contacts, of course, but Dana didn’t want to have to use it. Too much attention couldn’t be good.

And she doesn’t want to get involved with the government again if she can manage.

She’d paced. And paced. And paced.

And then her eye had fallen on the pendulum her sister had given her. A trick gift, it was gold and delicately ornate, to make her keep it, if nothing else then as a decoration.

“All the Scully women have the gift, Dana,” Melissa had said. “You should at least have a tool to channel it. And if nothing else, a reminder of our history.”

She doesn’t believe. She doesn’t believe. She doesn’t believe.

But desperation will drive us all to insanity eventually, and so she had grabbed the pendulum and a map of DC, sat down, and breathed.

She tries not to think of the fetch, her father’s foreboding ghost in her apartment, or her mother’s disappointment like a physical entity around her. She wills herself instead to think about Fox Mulder’s soft sadness and fiery love, to breathe in the ghost of her daughter, her baby scent and sweet smile.

The pendulum swings in the chill winter air, tugging back and forth between her fingers in a rhythm that promises the standstill is coming to an end. Or maybe it’s just displaying her agitation to no one, not even the ghosts in her life.

Dana is alone.

She is alone in her rationality, her terrible decisions, and her wilful loss. The consequences of what she has done cutting through her every single day of her life, a thousand numbing knives, soothed only by empty white walls, the cool detachment of her scientific journals and the tragic, hopeful smiles of the slowly dying.

And now her brain has conjured up an impossible hope, too; a string to grasp at. And Dana will abandon anything — her world, her sanity, her loneliness — to chase it.

So she reaches.

For the beautiful man whose life and death rests in her hands.

For the family she has lost.

And it comes to her on running steps and the laughter of a child. The flash of a girl with a sharp bob of red hair and the brightest smile in the world holding out her hand.

The answer she has been looking for comes in the vision of her daughter’s joy.

But the drive to Alexandria is just long enough that the thrill of breaking all her rules sizzles off, and Dana is once again stuck with a brain that thinks too much and too fast, laden down with too much guilt and shame for her not to have to pull over twice to breathe, and to cry.

And now, too, the long classicist apartment block looms above her, asking her what right she has to this?

She had been asked never to make contact. She had sworn she wouldn’t, convinced by William Mulder’s words of the danger threatening her and her daughter’s life. Dana had promised—

But what, she asks herself for the thousandth time, evidence did he really show her that proved he was telling the truth?

And for once the question is not a self-deprecating jab at her own bad choices, her own trusting nature, her issues, her obedience to men so much older than herself. For once, she doesn’t ask the question in hatred of her self-destructive people-pleasing ways.

For once it is asked in defiance.

For once it leads to courage.

So, hands trembling, she locks her car and steps across the icy road and finds Mulder engraved on a silver plate out front.

Melissa would be so proud of her, is her last coherent thought.

She doesn’t remember what she says to the doorman to convince him to let her in. She doesn’t remember the elevator. Her heart beats so fast she can’t hear her stilettos clicking on the marble floors.

Dana knocks on the door that had been closed to her for so many years, and Fox Mulder greets her, soft and quiet and familiar.

“Scully?”

It changes something in her.

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#msr #txf #the x files #dana scully #fox mulder #writing #fanfic #fanfiction #fic #louie writes #vandalize the stars fic

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sunflowernyx · 25 days

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The Field Where I Died//4x05

#I hate this episode #genuinely #so much #listen I love reincarnation romances and I was so looking forwards to it #but it didn't have the right emotional oomph and HE WASN'T EVEN ACCURATE #it's like he just WANTED her to be there so badly his brain projected her soul into different people he knew #It haunts me #it burns me up #the x files #CC I just want to talk

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sunflowernyx · 26 days

Text

He knows who she is the moment she steps through the door. And it isn’t just his doctor.

Dana Katherine Scully, age thirty-three. Short, slim, with short red hair — though he only knows the last part from the file — she is the youngest doctor in the oncology ward of the Holy Cross Memorial Hospital.

What the file doesn’t describe, what her black and white photo does not credit her with is elegant features, as if she were carved in marble by an ancient Greek master, or wide blue eyes that swim with the right balance of heavy respect and sympathy to make it genuine, personal. What the file doesn’t prepare him for is the aura of professionalism and kindness that makes Mulder want to trust this woman with his life.

And, to his credit, it isn’t that she is breathtakingly stunning — there is too much at stake in this small room, with its bright LED wall and sterile equipment, and not just his life. No. It isn’t even all the competence that radiates out of her exemplary scientific journal entries displayed on his shelf at home. Though those two facts do make him think of staking more than his life on this impossible, predestined, chance meeting.

It is simply the way she narrows in on his face with humanity and says his name like she already knows him, knows the burden he is carrying.

“Fox Mulder?” He nods and receives her hand. “I’m Dana Scully, one of your oncologists. I’m sorry we have to meet under these circumstances. It must seem disorienting to come face to face with a new doctor in the middle of the process.”

He finds a smile so easily in the face of her. “Not all that disorienting,” he assures her. “Nor surprising. As you may have noted from the file I’m very eager to fight this thing, so inviting in new doctors has been a recurrent decision.”

And he has the means to do so, he doesn’t add.

She’s difficult to read, Doctor Scully. When she presses her plumb lips together, he can’t tell if it’s to keep back condolences that he has come to the end of his rope and is now being treated by someone young and comparatively inexperienced, or a note on the funds he’s using, looking for a cure.

But the fire he sees in her blue eyes gives him hope that the young and comparatively inexperienced may be more willing to risk and be reckless.

“Well,” she says, “let’s see if we can’t meet your expectations somewhat today.”

Scully flips open the file she has on him and produces several x rays, newly minded and fresh off the press.

Even in her white lab coat, she is a foreboding black silhouette against the white LED wall surrounded by a series of sculls, and even without her translation it is clear that the cancer has yet to leave him alone.

She distracts herself momentarily, looking around for a chair, and Mulder is struck by the consistency in her kindness. He has been invited to sit enough times to know from the gesture that this will not be an optimistic delivery on her part, but a cursory look around the room should have made her note the lack of chairs, and Scully taking her time to doublecheck tells her all he needs.

With nothing tangible to offer him, Scully gestures instead for him to take a step closer.

“Don’t worry,” he assures her, taking advantage anyway to fall into her field of gravity. “I won’t faint at bad news.”

She finds his eyes then, attention drawn, and Mulder is pleased to see a smile crinkle at there corner of hers.

“I don’t think you should try to catch me anyway,” he adds, keeping his voice low.

Another spark, defiance, crackles in her impossible eyes. “That’s my job, Mr Mulder,” she admonishes him. “So I will.”

He grins, a flash of teeth.

Oh, Doctor Scully is interesting.

She doesn’t like being reminded of her short stature or the expected strength difference inherent in their bodies, but it doesn’t matter. Because right this moment, Scully seems the most formidable, most powerful defender of his life that he could ever entrust his fragile body to.

“So,” he says, with real cheer. “Cancer.”

Closer now, he can see the red circle she’s marked a white growth with. Right between his brows.

“Yes,” Scully confirms, her voice shifting to one of complete medical professionalism. “It’s a Nasopharyngeal mass,” she says. “It’s a small growth on the wall between the superior concha and the sphenoidal sinus. A tumor, in other words. But you already knew that.”

“I did,” he admits, rubbing the soft skin between his brows carefully.

Seeing it confirmed right in front of him like this once again sends a burning sensation through his body, his grief like a phantom pain his brain cannot yet express in any other way.

It’s been his constant companion for five years now.

“It doesn’t look like it’s grown since last time,” he observes, keeping his eyes glued to the profile x ray.

If it pushes into his brain, he knows, he will have no chance of survival.

And no matter his hatred towards himself, the odd sensation that the planet has found a way to punish him appropriately for his betrayal, he cannot die. It is simply not a possibility he is willing to entertain or humor.

Beside him,, Scully shifts silently. A distraction that draws him.

“I hate to have to correct you, Mr Mulder,” she says. “But, while it hasn’t grown towards your brain, it has widened its reach horizontally and vertically.”

She produces another frontal x ray from his file, the one from a couple of months ago. Silently she places the two x rays beside each other, and shows him with a specialised electronic ruler how it has grown. Almost nothing to the naked eye, but there it is in clear digits, black-on-green.

Mulder keeps very still right at her side.

“What can you do?” He murmurs, when he can no longer simply stare at the evidence of his body having taken up his habit of self-destruction.

He doesn’t ask if surgery will solve it. He already knows what the answer will be.

When she turns the full front of her body to him, it’s like she’s dragged him out of a trance, freeing him from having to face himself. And Mulder mirrors her, the easiest thing in the world.

“The truth is that the type and placement of the tumor makes it difficult to the extreme to treat and impossible to operate.”

Mulder stares down at her, and is reminded of another set of wide blue eyes, another bob of hair, the colour of which he can’t accurately discern. Vertigo hits him so powerfully, his hand flies out to steady himself.

The LED war buzzes under his hand like a thousand bees, unsteadying him further.

It’s a slow thing when he falls apart. The crumbling of his limbs like an ancient building that loses its foundation across history. The strength goes, and he glides down the electronic wall like a man sitting himself in the chair.

His sigh falls between his fingers, warming his palms.

“I have to refuse to believe that.”

There’s a tiny rustle, as his tiny doctor kneels at his side. A warmth on his shoulder as she connects their bodies, touches him for the first time since their introduction.

“Of course, you have to fight this,” she says. “And I’ll do everything I can to help you live—“

“No,” he corrects her, looking up from the darkness of his own hands. “This isn’t about me.”

Lit by the LED wall behind him, Scully is a flame of light that gives life to his shadows.

“I have a daughter,” Mulder tells her. “A tiny, four year old sprout of a girl. I have to live for her.”

That is it. That is all. Everything that defines Fox Mulder is the child entrusted to his protection and care, gifted to him to keep him in line. And he will do anything, sacrifice anyone, to keep her healthy and smiling.

If that means keeping his sorry ass alive, then so be it.

“Okay.”

Mulder doesn’t know what he looks like, but he sees the moment that he becomes less of a hollow of a man and much more a fire alike to hers in Scully’s eyes. He sees the shift in the blue when he becomes more human than patient, when she understands what gives him a reason to live.

“Okay,” she says again, nodding, as if his quest has become hers. “Of course. Let’s start with that.”

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#the x files #txf #msr #fox mulder #dana scully #fic #fanfic #fanfiction #AU #Emily sim #writing #louie writes #Vandalize the stars fic

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