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randomfoggytiger · 9 days

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The Scully Family In-Depth (Part XIII): The Erosion of Scully’s Security, on Tape

Scully’s abduction is split into many mini arcs. Season 2 scratched the surface of her trauma with allusions to her and Mulder’s recovering stability (One Breath, Firewalker, Red Museum, Irresistible, Our Town, Anasazi); Season 3 taps into the loss of Scully’s family and innocence; Season 4 will dig deeper into her denial and loss of faith; Season 5 will twist her burgeoning confidence into a weapon against herself; Fight the Future will find her center; Season 6 will show her determination and growth; and Season 7 will shed the last of her self-consciousness with resolution.

Each of these arcs showcase the impact of the wrongs done to her and the women (and people) by the Consortium, as well as her strength of character, righteous conviction, and unbreakable spirit and will. While Mulder initially crumbles under loss and heartache, Scully battles against it; and, once finally exhausted, leans against her partner for strength to move forward. Both of them fight hard in the coming years; and on the heels of Paper Clip, their reliance on each other is so unbreakable that Mulder and Scully never question their reciprocal loyalty, despite the allure of pretty faces or treachery of madness. The show may hinge on Mulder’s childhood trauma, but it takes equal (if not more) time to explore Scully’s pain and emotional turmoil properly-- which is fair and right.

EVIDENCE OF THINGS ONCE SEEN

Season 3 continues its focus on Scully’s losses, bookending the arc with the Syndicate and their video tapes, ala Nisei and Wetwired.

OH, NISEI CAN YOU SEE IN THE CAR OF 731

Scully and Mulder get in trouble (again) when Mulder’s magazine alien autopsy video tape leads them straight to shifty activity and a suspicious Japanese diplomat. After further (officially discouraged) investigation, Scully stumbles upon a MUFON group where the women claim to know her. Here, the seeds are planted for her cancer arc in Memento Mori, complete with an introduction of Penny Northern.

One of the women asks Scully: “Did you have an unexplained event in your life last year? Were you missing for a period of time that can’t be accounted for?”

This implies that Scully was part of the latest round of abductions; and that no one has been taken since their return last November (post here.)

“You may not remember-- you’ve only had one experience. Most of us here were taken many times.”

“Taken where?” Scully asks.

Their answer-- “The bright, white Place”-- unlocks a flash from her experiments.

At her reaction, another member asserts, “You remember it, don’t you?”

“I don’t know,” she responds, shakily.

“There are men there, performing tests,” the member continues.

“What men?”

“They don’t reveal themselves. They take our memories away; but somehow, they start to seep back.”

“Some may have come back to you, but they don’t make sense,” Penny adds; an unintentional foreshadowing to her and Scully’s interactions in Memento Mori.

When asked if she knows about regression hypnosis, Scully looks down, closing her eyes and answering, “Yes.” This is the first of several reminders of Melissa's impact on Scully-- it was Missy, after all, who'd urged her into hypnosis therapy; and Scully who'd bailed from the session right before her sister’s death.

“Have you ever considered it?” the women press; and Scully backs away from the subject as fast as she can, regaining her scientific skepticism in the face of their probing: “I’m sorry. I don’t think I’m ready to discuss this.”

“You’re afraid to remember, aren’t you?” the member from before questions, moving closer to Scully in understanding. “It’s okay. We were all afraid at first.”

Scully takes in the women seated around her-- all different ages and stages of life-- trying to fit herself into a group so disparate yet united under one common tragedy. She doesn’t yet know these women have prepared to fight for their freedom and lives; and will all, in a matter of months, die before her own battle against cancer begins.

“I don’t know: when I opened that door and saw you standing there, it was like a revelation-- the image your face was so clear to me,” the first MUFON women expounds.

The dialogue here is filled with biblical language, likely on purpose: image and revelation hand-in-hand-- a nod, perhaps, to the fated and religious undertones Chris Carter often works into his scripts. Scully and Mulder are often painted with allegorical higher callings and fated purpose, creating a contradiction between the mytharc fate versus stand-alone freewill episodes. Scully, in this case, seems fated to be abducted and returned, to meet these dying women, and to get cancer; but she turns out to be the only one to beat this fate, and survive. This could play into my hypothesis on breaking the soulmate curse inflicted on her, Mulder, and Melissa Rydell in The Field Where I Died, (post here), or fall in line with fate ala the Navajo’s White Buffalo prophecy (post here.) I think that topic requires more in-depth discussion than would fit here; and suggest we press on with Season 3 for now.

“But why is it I don’t remember you?” Scully prods, shaken.

“All you remember in the beginning is the light,” Penny consoles. “And then sometimes the faces of the men that performed the tests.”

This triggers another memory Scully forgot-- the stomach air pump-- and she scrambles for a different explanation other than the simple truth. “How do you know you’re a not mistaking me for somebody else?”

“You have the mark, don’t you?” the other MUFON woman says, drawing Scully’s attention and showing her the recent scar on the back of her neck.

Scully closes her eyes again, fearfully.

The women then show their extracted implants, proving their words as one.

Afraid to believe, Scully tries to flee, (her go-to trauma response, post here): “I have to go. I just came--"

“--to see Betsy,” the women chime in.

“Yes-- to see Besty Hagopian. Why are you all at her house? Where is she?” Scully raises her arms, surprised she hadn’t questioned this fact before.

The MUFON spokeswoman and Penny then take her to Betsy’s oncology treatment center, explaining she is in "the advanced stages of full-body tumors"-- a different type of cancer than Scully had.

“They’d been taking Betsy since she was in her teens,” Penny reveals. “This is what’s going to happen to all of us.”

“What do you mean,” Scully softly questions.

“I don’t know if you understand this or not, Dana,” the spokeswoman spells out, “but we’re all going to end up like Betsy."

“We’re all dying,” Penny confirms, “because of what they do to us.”

It’s especially heartbreaking because this scene confirms two things:

Scully is the only MUFON woman to be abducted once-- confirming that she wasn’t an intended target, only collateral decided upon on Sleepless because her expertise; and only returned alive because of CSM’s intervention. Meaning she, unlike the MUFON women, was intended to die in captivity. It’s a testament to her knowledge and skill that Scully was such a threat to the Consortium so early on: still green; and barely on the field before being yanked off of it.

The MUFON women never realized their chips were the cures to their cancers. Each woman still had their chips intact-- only Scully’s had been damaged due to Pendrell’s tampering-- and could, probably, have had them reinserted. But would they have done so? Would these women have wanted their chips reinserted, allowing nefarious abductive forces to easily find and recapture them for test after test after test? Regardless, they were never given the opportunity to choose.

When Scully reunites with Mulder, she’s both stunned by her experience and stunned that Mulder isn't curious about her discoveries (at first):

“Why is the door locked?"

“I’ve got something to show you.”

“Do you have any idea where I’ve been?”

“Allentown.”

“I went to go see those MUFON members to find out about that woman-- Betsy Hagopian?”

Now intrigued: “What’d you find?”

“I found out that she’s dying.” Scully looks down-- an instinctive response when facing information that is personally implicative, “along with a lot of other women who claim to be dying, too. All of them who say they have these implanted in them,” she adds, handing over one of their chips to Mulder.

When Scully adds, “It’s the same thing that I had removed from my own neck,” Mulder’s head immediately snaps up, worried; and he quickly asks, “But you’re fine, aren’t you, Scully?”

“Am I?” she parries, seeking as much assurance from him as he is from her. “I don’t know, Mulder. They, they said that they know me, that they’ve seen me before.”

It’s a trigger response Scully has when lacking security, latching onto Mulder or “other fathers” or illusory footholds when science offers little clear-cut answers for her-- i.e. Beyond the Sea, Fresh Bones, Never Again, all things, etc. Scully largely expunges all outward traces of this behavior from Season 4 onward, thinking she must become what her mother calls “the strong one” in the face of Mulder’s fragility post Herrenvolk, The Field Where I Died, Paper Hearts, and Memento Mori.

“They know things about me, about my disappearance,” she rambles, watching Mulder scrupulously zero in on the chip in hand.

This interaction also shows a parallel aspect of Mulder’s: when Scully faces a personal crisis-- her panic over glowing bugs, her fears, her cancer, her daughter’s illness-- he puts up a front of strength, grounding her focus with logical, provable facts, even if (and when) he suspects the worst.

“That is disturbing,” he quietly agrees. “But I don’t think you should freak out until we find out what this is.”

Scully is hindered from a clearer admittance when the phone rings; and the conversation takes a turn away from the MUFON trip.

As Mulder fills in Scully on his findings about Dr. Ishimaru’s ghastly experiments, she recognizes one of the men in the faxed photo; but is dissuaded (“I don’t think so, not unless you’ve been in Japan in the last fifty years”-- which she was, in 1966. Post here.) Four of the doctors in the photo were recently murdered; but Scully isn’t yet ready to draw ties between their and the Nazis' experiments to alien-human hybrids; and neither have connected the dots between these inhuman experiments and her recent disappearance.

When she begins to discredit his theory, Mulder cuts in reproachfully-- “Scully, after all you’ve seen”-- before softening-- “after all you’ve told me you’ve seen, tunnel filled with medical files, the beings moving past you, the implant in your neck-- why do you refuse to believe?”

At Mulder’s question, Scully looks down to hide her fear, continuing the pattern of avoidance begun in Beyond the Sea and The Blessing Way. “Believing’s the easy part, Mulder,” she insists. “I just need more than you-- I need proof.” Proof allows her something to cling to when the foundations of her beliefs are shaken. Scully eventually comes to term with that realization, shifting away from strict reliance on proof as learns to trust her instincts (all things.)

“You think that belief is easy?” he retorts, a window into his naturally cynical, pessimistic view of life. That cynicism is eventually addressed in Amor Fati, and fully (or mostly) resolved in Closure.

Scully can’t rebut his statement; and with nothing else to say, she sighs and hangs her head.

“Well, we have proof,” Mulder reassures, switching topics to comfortable ground and revealing his ace: a picture of a secret government train car. When asked where he got it, he discloses “From someone like you who wants proof.” Weighing the cost of his next words, he decides to mildly confront her once more. “Who’s also willing to believe.”

Scully remains silent, both aware she’s not ready to take that next step.

Scully takes the chip to Pendrell, who raves about its sophistication and other scary technological advancements (and coming off a tad creepy.) The full weight of the government using computer chips to possibly monitor their test subjects appalls Scully, spurring her to take a more active role in the current investigation.

Back in the office, she reviews the video Mulder bought, realizing her recollection of Ishimaru stems from her abduction.

After Mulder jumps on the train car, Scully is contacted by a Syndicate shadow man (for the second time) and reiterates the (half) truth sold to her: government experiments, yes; but not alien government experiments. “It all makes sense, Mulder-- Ishimaru Zama, he was using the secret railroad to conduct his tests across the country….”

The conclusion of the Nisei and 731 mini arc is the deepening of Scully’s denial. Without Melissa there to push her, and with Mulder (who is supposed to fill-in for her sister, post here) focused on the bigger mystery, her abduction trauma is shoved aside and minimized.

As we will learn in Piper Maru and Apocrypha, Scully has yet to make peace with her sister’s loss; and those open wounds spur her burning desire for revenge-- becoming more and more apparent the more turmoil is piled on her plate.

STEERING THE SHIP OF MEMORIES

Scully’s childhood is the backbone for these two episodes, from the first conversation with A.D. Skinner to her reminiscence on the base with her father’s friend.

Skinner calls Scully into his office, informing her that the investigation into Melissa Scully’s death has bellied up. Stung and indignant, she confronts the FBI’s obvious oversight and his placatory platitudes.

“It’s strange,” she bites, furious tears in her eyes, “Men can blow up buildings; and they can be nowhere near the crime scene but we can piece together the evidence and convict them beyond a doubt. Our labs here can recreate out of the most microscopic detail the motivation and circumstance to almost any murder-- right down to a killer’s attitude towards his mother and if he was a bedwetter. But in the case of a woman-- my sister-- who was gunned down in cold blood in a well-lit apartment building by a shooter who left the weapon at the crime scene, we can’t even put together enough to keep anybody interested.”

“I don’t think this has anything to do with interest,” Skinner begins.

“If I may say so, Sir,” she cuts in, unwavering, “it has everything to do with interest. Just not yours. And not mine.”

When Mulder asks after Scully’s mood, she deflects his concerns back to their newest case, later impressing him by recognizing a submerged North American P 51 Mustang aircraft. She explains: “It’s the shape of the canopy. I watched my father and brothers build World War II model planes as a kid.”

As we know, little Dana Scully was a tomboy; but it’s interesting to learn which activities she did and didn’t think were worth her time-- the Dana who shot air guns but didn’t play baseball, who memorized plane models but didn’t build them; and who learned Latin in college and always loved The Exorcist.

While pursuing a new lead, Scully momentarily relives a happy memory with her and Melissa playing on a familiar military base sidewalk.

Young Dana is triumphantly swung around by an exuberant young Melissa, both overjoyed by her unbroken hopscotch; and modern Scully’s smile slips back and forth between the somber present and nostalgic past as she slowly drives on.

Meeting up with her father’s old colleague, she introduces herself with a delighted, self-conscious smile. “I’m Dana Scully-- I used to live three doors down. My father was Captain William Scully. I, I went to school with your son.”

The past is a haven for Scully, even now (for now): a place to become at home and centered in. Her father died suddenly, with words unsaid; her sister died tragically, with justice delayed; but still they bring a smile to her face in reminiscence. But more than that, Scully beams with pride at meeting a man so like her father in age and familiarity-- her Starbuck nature bobs to the surface, putting her best foot forward in her efforts to please.

“I’m sorry, my memory isn’t what it used to be,” Commander Johanson says, a mirror of Teena Mulder’s pretend amnesia (post here.) At first, he assumes-- or pretends to assume-- Scully is asking after his son; but when questioned about his past with the Piper Maru, he again pleads forgetfulness.

“Say hello to your father for me,” the Commander suggests as they shake hands goodbye.

“I wish I could,” Scully remarks, her smile dropping a shade and (again) looking down out of discomfort. “He’s passed away.” In response to his “I’m… very sorry,” she gives a tight-lipped smile and walks away without comment-- fleeing the moment (again) as quickly as possible.

An interesting thing happens next: Commander Johanson changes his mind, having his visitor’s car pulled over so he can quietly fill her in on the coverup courtesy of CSM, Bill Mulder, and other Consortium men. Captain Scully’s death hit him hard: it connects him to Scully, the fact that they have both lost a loved one to the dead; and it itches and itches at Johanson, driving him from the house and after his friend’s daughter for atonement and peace.

Scully, when commanded to pull over by Johanson, immediately obeys, surprised but not suspicious. Loyalty to her father and his associates runs deep, even after three years, a murder, and a Conspiracy.

“I can’t give your regards to my son, Scully,” Joe wobbles, addressing her by name not only for the first time but also as an equal. “He was killed in a training accident.”

It’s here that Johanson passes on a statement that rings true as it sinks and settles into Scully’s mind: “We bury our dead alive, don’t we? We hear them everyday-- they talk to us, they haunt us, they beg us for meaning. Conscience. It’s just the voices of the dead, trying to save us....”

He tells her his tragic, paid-off history, concluding with: “Whatever killed them, I was allowed to live: to raise a family, to grow old. None of us ever got an explanation why.”

Skinner is shot and Scully rushes to his side, bouncing from Mulder’s room to his while advocating for his interests. When he admits the shooting might be a coverup to permanently halt Melissa’s murder investigation, Scully flares up: “You’re saying that they closed down my sister’s case not because of lack of evidence but because they didn’t want us to catch the killer.”

In the last twenty-four hours, Scully’s trust in her country’s higher ups has eroded so rapidly she now concludes, rightfully, that Melissa is disposable collateral in their latest coverup.

Ignoring Skinner’s warning, she presses for more details, fuming over Krycek’s involvement.

“Listen to me,” Skinner warns, “anger is not a luxury you can afford right now. If you’re angry, you’re gonna make a mistake-- and these people will take advantage of that. …Scully, if you can’t keep your head, it’s all right to step away.”

“That’s exactly what they want.” Scully’s anger is fueling her thirst for vengeance, driving her to more dangerous potentialities.

After returning on Mulder's hunch, she finds Skinner mid-relocation to another hospital; and quickly hops on the ambulance in time to counteract another attempt, intercepting the gunmen and forcing him to give her answers at gunpoint.

“Are you Luis Cardinale! Are you the man that shot my sister! You shot my sister! TELL ME!” she screams over his pleas, weapon drawn with lethal intent. Her motions are erratic, aggressive, and unhinged, tears building as her voice climbs higher and higher.

Cardinale bargains for his life and Scully wavers, hunched over her prey while an inner voice screams shoot him, shoot him repeatedly in her head. She is so unstable, so unsure, that she looks like her younger, greener self watching the fabric of her world fall apart in Luther Lee Boggs’s cell (post here.) But the cops appear, yelling at them both before she can decide; and, with one final struggle, she lowers the weapon in anguish and retrieves her FBI badge.

Luis is toted away in handcuffs, leaving Scully alone with the equal horror of her loss of control and opportunity.

She calls Mulder, confessing his instincts had been right and relating that they’d caught Melissa’s killer; but immediately cuts off his potential sympathy by turning his attention back to the mission.

In the end, it’s all in vain: Scully and Mulder lose the salvaged UFO and Krycek, nullifying future leads for the case. Grateful to at least have Luis behind bars, she visits Melissa’s grave with flowers, taking a moment to commune in the language of the dead: with her conscience, in silence.

Mulder arrives with a bouquet of his own; and she bites her lip, moved by his gesture and frustrated with her surfacing emotions. Pulling herself together, Scully smoothly stands, accepting his consideration and shoulder touch with a genuine though fleeting smile.

“I was just thinking about what a man said to me. That the… that the dead speak to us from beyond the grave. That that’s what conscience is.”

“It’s interesting. I never thought of it that way,” Mulder considers.

“You know, I thought-- when we found him, this man that killed Melissa-- that, that when we brought him to justice, I would feel kind of closure. But the truth is, no court, no punishment is ever enough,” Scully confesses-- a follow-through to her Paper Clip closing line: “I’ve seen the truth, Mulder. Now what I want are the answers.”

And Scully is denied even that, having to listen to another victim of these men in power admit that justice was derailed, that Luis Cardinale was murdered in his cell before he could face trial. To Mulder, the end of Cardinale’s existence is a form of justice; but to Scully, it is a cruel circumvention of the system she believes in and fights for.

“I think the dead are speaking to us, Mulder. Demanding justice. Maybe that man was right-- maybe we bury the dead alive.”

Mulder considers this, too; and is silent.

In this episode, the darkness infesting Scully’s life stained backwards to her childhood: her brother and father building WWII planes that were sunk by the Consortium, her father’s friend a bought-and-paid-for Syndicate witness, her hopscotching sister murdered by a hired gun. Those incidents may not have directly touched the Scullys’ lives as they were then, but the innocence she was able to escape to is no longer afforded to her without darker shadows crying out from the corners.

HERE BE MONSTERS

Wetwired is the last straw.

During her investigation into malevolent mass hysteria, Scully thoroughly watches each and every infected tape she and Mulder recover from the crime scene. Slowly, it eats away at her security, eroding the last shred of credibility the infested, corrupted system had to offer her: the valor of moral individuals. And the last moral individual she could trust-- the man in the trenches with her, who lost and fought and continues to fight for a brighter day-- was Mulder.

Hallucinating Mulder feeding intel to CSM, she spends the next morning, afternoon, and evening harboring heightening paranoia against her partner; and finally snaps when he ignores her command to stay away, shooting at him through the door of her ruined motel room and running away.

Mulder calls Maggie after the sun is up and the investigation is already in full swing, having probably put it off until the last second in hopes of recovering Scully first. Maggie, still in bed at 6:01 AM, picks up the phone the phone, giving us an opportunity to scope out the family pictures displayed on her bedroom table.

An interesting revelation: Melissa’s photo is placed most prominently, perhaps to honor her death; then Dana’s; then her and a mystery baby… which leaves one of her children off of the table.

My guess? Charlie is missing, as he is likely absent from his mother’s life at this point. If this is true, Maggie seems to use her photos as an indication of her children’s interest in her life, not as a showcase of her favorites.

How can we prove this?

Melissa is dead; but while her eldest daughter was alive, Maggie was constantly rubbed the wrong way by her insistent, unmoderated proclamations at the tensest moments (posts here and here.) Yet, her picture takes center-stage.

Bill Scully is often the Scully child most likely to cater to her whims or speak in a language she understands (to be explored in Seasons 4 and 5.) Yet, his picture is placed at the back. We know he is often at sea during this period, pointing to infrequent contact between himself and his mother; and probably even less contact than that, because he would more likely call his wife Tara instead.

Scully’s picture is of second “importance” on the table, despite Maggie’s reliance on and openness with her daughter (acting as her comforter in the following scene and calling her “the strong one” in Memento Mori.) There is often a loving side she reserves for her baby girl, sensing that Dana needs it more than Bill does, or Melissa did.

Which leaves Charlie. Scully doesn’t mention him after Roland-- except for a slight mention in Piper Maru-- until Home (stating she babysat her nephew for the weekend.) Very little is known about Charlie other than the brief glimpse we see of him in Beyond the Sea (post here) and One Breath (post here); and it’s Maggie’s fond flashback of him we are privy to in the latter episode. So, what’s Charlie’s deal? Is he estranged by his own choice; or does Maggie keep him at arm’s length, only remembering him in childhood when he fit her expectations?

From what we know of Maggie Scully thus far, it seems unlikely she would cut a child off for a personal decision they made-- in fact, her actions prove the opposite (i.e. reconciling Dana to Captain Scully in Beyond the Sea, putting up with Melissa’s New Age speeches, trusting a Navajo medicine man to watch over her dying daughter, and celebrating the anti-Church conceptions of both Bill’s and Dana’s sons.) It seems out-of-character for her to isolate the youngest Scully from her affection, no matter his choices.

Or an alternate theory presents itself: the baby is an old picture of Maggie's only grandson-- the nephew Scully babysits in Home. That would mean only one of the two boys flanking Charlie in Beyond the Sea is biologically his... which makes an interesting other implication about his possibly older wife and her own son. Theories, theories.

“Mrs. Scully? Hi, it’s Fox Mulder.”

Maggie immediately knows something’s wrong, her voice dropping an octave. “What is it, what’s the matter?”

“I was hoping that you’d heard from Dana,” Mulder responds. It would seem Mulder calls Scully “Dana” to Maggie, either for Mrs. Scully's comfort's sake or because he and she communicate so rarely he's yet to fully define his and Scully's partnership.

“No, something happened?”

“I’m not exactly sure there’s… there’s some confusion here.” Mulder hunches slightly, pursing his lips and looking down ashamedly-- a posture he's exhibited on a larger scale to his father (post here.) At Maggie’s “What do you mean ‘missing’?”, he stumbles over his words-- “Well, she ran off last night-- screws up his face, and beats at his thigh, anticipating a disappointed or angry reaction-- “We, we’re looking for her as best we can, but we are a little concerned.”

Skinner arrives, and Mulder knows it’s time to go. “Look, Mrs. Scully, I hate to do this to you, but I’ve got to hang up on you right now.”

“Fox, would you please just tell me what’s going on?” Maggie asks, respect and civility barely keeping her from demanding an immediate reply.

“Hang by the phone, I’ll call you as soon as I know something,” he answers, disconnecting the call immediately after.

It’s only after hours of frantic search and heartache that it dawns on him where Scully might have gone.

Where does Dana Scully run to feel safe whenever her life spirals out of control? Home.

Sure enough, Maggie opens her door strung out: jumpy and tense, unwilling to let Mulder in.

“Is she here?” he asks, hopeful.

“Uh, no,” she refutes.

“You haven’t been answering your phone,” Mulder prods, not unconvinced but still suspicious.

It’s Maggie’s exit-- “Well, I’ll call you when I hear from her, okay?”-- that gives her away, too smooth and too quick to slam the door in his face with a daughter missing for the second time.

“I need to see her,” he insists in desperation; and when she still refuses, Mulder ignores her pleas and barges through, halting only when met with the barrel of Scully’s gun.

Maggie isn’t afraid, only scared for him: getting into his face as he carefully pushes past, then shutting the door behind him to prevent someone else from walking in.

“Dana, put down the gun!” Maggie shouts, only drawing Scully’s attention momentarily from Mulder.

“I’m here to help you, Scully,” Mulder announces quietly.

“I told you, Mom-- he’s here to kill me,” she warns, quivering and shifting her stance for a surer shot.

“I’m on your side, you know that,” he replies.

“Put the gun down, Dana,” Maggie repeats, more calmly.

Scully’s eyes, wide and panicked, lessen only slightly when they glance toward her mother, growing wilder when Mulder tries to advance. She warns him back while cocking the trigger.

Maggie, sensing Dana has reached the end of her rope, backs him up: “Dana, he’s telling you the truth.”

“It’s not the truth, Mom,” Scully wobbles, betrayed. “He’s lied to me from the beginning. He never trusted me” Despite Mulder’s heartfelt, “Scully, you’re the only one I trust,” she rebukes, “You’re in on it. You’re one of them.”

Pausing, she gears up for her most wrenching accusations: “You’re one of the ones that abducted me. You put that thing in my neck! You shot my sister!”

“That’s not true, Dana,” Maggie repeats.

“It is,” Scully insists, voice weakening in heartbreak.

Maggie steps forward in spite of her daughter's escalating cries, beginning her attempts to talk Dana down.

“You trust me, don’t you? You know that I would never hurt you. That I would never let anybody hurt you.”

Scully begins to sweat, wavering between fear for her life and belief in her mother.

“That’s why you came here, isn’t it? You’re safe here. Put the gun down, Dana.”

Scully slowly points it up and away, but doesn't relinquish it even as she collapses, sobbing, in her Maggie's arms.

Later, Mulder joins both happy ladies in recovery, sticking up his arms in comedic effect for their (vague) amusement.

Mrs. Scully, sensing they need space to reestablish their equilibrium, soon after leaves the room.

“How are you feeling?” he asks.

And in expected Starbuck fashion, her first response is: “Ashamed.” He waits, letting her fill in the silence at her speed. “I was so sure, Mulder. I saw things, and I heard things. It was just like the world was turned upside down. Everybody was out to get me.”

“Now you know how I feel most of the time,” he jokes-- a balm of understanding.

She smiles, continuing her train of thought with less discouragement. “I thought you were going to kill me.”

“I’m not surprised,” he nods, leaning forward to summarize his theory on paranoid mind control: “...a virtual reality of their own worst nightmares.”

“Like me thinking you were going to kill me.”

The knowledge that any action of his holds that much weight in Scully’s life is a fearful realization in itself; and Mulder tries to ward off the power of it (and the last twenty-four hours) by leaning on his shaking, folded hands.

“I was so far gone, Mulder, I thought that you had gone to the other side.”

Sinking further into his posture, he asks, “What do you mean?”

“That Cancer Man-- the man that smokes all those cigarettes-- I was sure I saw the two of you sitting in your car in the motel parking lot. You were reporting to him. You handed him a video tape.”

And while Mulder runs off to check out that lead, we conclude where we began: the video paus de deux, a rectangular reel that bookends the beginning and end of Scully’s media madness.

CONCLUSION

Scully concludes her erosion arc with Mulder's steadfast loyalty, the one stable variable in her insane, topsy-turvy world. The past may be lost, the present may be shifting, and the future may be uncertain; but Mulder is her assurance.

Season 4 then shifts that upends that assurance by turning dependable into dependent.

Thanks for reading~

Enjoy!

22 notes · View notes

deathsbestgirl · 7 months

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Please talk more about how not fine Dana Scully is, people really tend to underestimate how fucked up she truly is, honestly the way she manages to hold onto her kindness and integrity through so much violation is kind of miraculous

sometimes it makes me a little crazy. like, dana scully was so light in season one. she smiled and laughed a lot, she teased mulder, she loved working on the x files with mulder and it was obvious. even on the days she would get frustrated with mulder for doing something crazy. and i think that's true throughout the show, until the later years where it meant losing mulder, giving up her child, going on the run...

but. for me, a change occurs in beyond the sea. probably more for the audience than scully or mulder.

scully sees her dad's ghost before she even learns he's gone. she had her parents over for dinner and wanted him to be interested in her work, instead of being disappointed with her career choice. he only asks how it's going right before they walk out the door, and then he's gone. part of her wants to believe she really saw him, but it's also really scary. she almost looks for x files with similar happenings but as she finds them, slams the door instead.

she buries herself in the case as soon as the services are over. she believes boggs as mulder nearly begs her not to. when mulder is shot, she loses it on boggs. and in the end, she tells mulder she's afraid to believe.

scully was afraid to believe before she was abducted. after her abduction, believing is more terrifying. she clings to skepticism and focuses on proof. in their line of work, only what you can prove really matters. it's what mulder needs her for, and later on, she clings to it harder even though she can't deny there are certain fantastic things she believes in.

after her abduction, everything is heavier for both mulder and scully. we saw how lost he was in 3, how self punishing & self hating. and when scully comes back, she's determined to get back to work. she won't take any time before heading back because that would mean sitting alone with what happened to her and she can't possibly deal with that. fear of the unknown to the extreme.

scully never believed samantha was taken by aliens. then she was taken like her, returned completely battered an inch from death with no memory of what happened. whether that was the work of whoever (or whatever) took her or her own mind...either thought is terrifying.

in firewalker, mulder is so cautious with scully. he can't bear her disappearing on him again. he tries to keep her safe and it ultimately puts in a dangerous position. but she's quick, and she saves herself while the girl handcuffed to her dies on the other side of the door.

mulder was so gentle with her after her father died, calling her dana for the first time that we see. he does it again in lazarus when jack willis/dupre kidnapped her. he's careful with her feelings whenever she's vulnerable. after her abduction, in firewalker, when he finds her alive, he cups her cheek like he did in beyond the sea. she is so precious to him, they're best friends. and she tells him she's fine over and over again.

in irresistible, the case already disturned scully on a core level. she couldn't comprehend the violence and violation of what donnie pfaster did to the dead, and later his victims. as a pathologist, she can't imagine desecrating a body. what she does, she does because she cares about people and justice. she can't save them when they're already gone, but she can find the truth and honor them.

in season two when they're separated and she's teaching again, she goes on about the man lying dead in front of her.

"what this man imagined...his dreams, who he loved, saw, heard, remembered...what he feared...somehow it's all locked inside this small mass of tissue and fluid."

and her student calls her spooky.

although scully doesn't love people the way mulder does -- untethered, unchecked -- she loves humanity & her country, and she wanted to do something important with her life. she decided in squeeze to be on the victims' side, like mulder. with mulder.

all through irresistible she is so disturbed and trying to be strong and hide her feelings from mulder, so she goes back to d.c. for a therapy session & to get them some leads. and then as soon as she comes back to work the case with mulder, donnie pfaster makes her a victim again. so shortly after her abduction and almost dying in firewalker. karen kosseff tells her how vulnerable she was, and it's like it almost doesn't seem real. because she doesn't remember, she healed, and if it weren't for the missing time & everyone around her having lived those horrible months without her, it would be like it didn't happen.

she fought like hell against pfaster. injured from a car accident, bound & gagged, in a house she didn't know. hallucinating him as other evil men & the devil. she was spiraling and she only had herself to depend on in the moment. hoping that mulder & co would find her in time. but ... the man worked quickly.

she didn't seem too affected after lazarus, but she believed it was her friend and that he was sick. after her abduction, she didn't have anything to cling to. after pfaster, she had mulder and she only leaned on him when she was completely overwhelmed & he wouldn't let her deal with it alone.

she has new fears.

she loses her sister and mulder loses his dad. both murdered by the same people. aliens or the shadow government, when they decide scully is a problem they have her abducted or attempt to have her killed. and she can't really do anything to prevent it when she has no idea what or who she needs to protect herself from.

there are a few moments that really stick out for me, that i just think it's clear she's not okay. scully bottles things up and keeps her pain close. she doesn't unleash it, does her best to hide it & bear it alone.

but in piper maru, skinner tells her they're letting melissa's case go inactive. cold. she's opened her eyes to government conspiracies. and she flat out tells skinner "if i may say so, sir, it has everything to do with interest. just not yours, and not mine."

there's no reason they couldn't solve her sister's murder. they have the weapon, and like scully says, they can catch people with much less. and then she goes down to the basement office where mulder is working on a case. he's going through everything, actually doing some normal pre-investigation things. and he won't ignore what's going on when so many men have suffered and may well die, just because the government is trying to sweep it under the rug.

and scully loves him so much for this.

(side note: i always love when mulder does this. it's like "do you think i'm spooky?" he wants her to think of him as well as he thinks of her. they're best friends. it matters to him what scully thinks of him. a rarity.)

then there's wetwired. scully watches all the tapes they find and very quickly becomes paranoid about mulder, specifically. now, i don't think she really believes it, i think it's a thought that scares her when she's at her lowest. but she was assigned to the x files to debunk his work, he gets neck deep in alien & government conspiracies. she didn't always understand the specific dangers of their particular work. she's so ashamed when she's back to herself, and mulder doesn't blame her at all. and when she starts talking about what she remembers, mulder takes her so seriously. mulder believes she saw something, but like the others, she misinterpreted what she saw because of the heightened paranoia & anxiety. one woman thought she saw her husband cheating with a blonde, and it was her neighbor with his golden retriever. so it's very possible she did see someone having a meeting with the cigarette smoking man outside their motel, or at least someone involved with their case.

scully is always afraid to be taken again, to be murdered. she knows the smoking man has something to do with all of it. she knows she stayed because of mulder. and she will continue to work on the x files with him. because it isn't just about him anymore. she needs answers too.

and then there's the cancer arc. i wrote all about memento mori already, and i think that all says a lot. but then there's gethsemane. kritchsgau told scully the shadow men gave her cancer to make mulder believe. it guts her, it almost kills him, but they know where her cancer came from and they haven't been able to do anything about it. i can't get over the way her voice cracks in redux. mulder is waiting for her in darkened bedroom and tells her that everything goes back to the fbi. her abduction, her cancer. she wasn't ready to face where her cancer came from, and mulder tries to help her. and any time she almost has a grip, another thing makes it come crashing down around her. the men who had her abducted, her sister killed, gave her cancer being part of the same institution she is...that's unbearable.

scully grew up with a father in the navy. they love their country, they trust their government & military & law enforcement. the x files turns everything she's ever known and understood about the world upside down.

and then there's seasons 8-11. i don't have anything to say except: scully is NOT okay. she gave up her son and has never forgiven herself. she thinks about william everyday and prays he's safe, that she did the right thing. as if there even was a right thing. you never see a more raw or vulnerable scully than in the revival. and if mulder wasn't there holding her together and doing what she couldn't...i don't think there would be a scully.

#i can talk more about s8&9 + the revival #but like. scully is just never the same after her abduction #her light becomes something very different #mulder and scully are always the light in dark places #but mostly they're each other's light in their suffocating darkness #dana scully #the x files #txf txt #beyond the sea #lazarus #little green men #piper maru #cancer arc #gethsemane #reduxes #mulder and scully #fox mulder #also i got lazy and did not look for scripts or even transcripts #this is just my brain and i'm so tired l

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all-eyes-lead-to-the-truth · 7 months

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All Eyes Lead to the Truth | Piper Maru (3x15)

“…And I’ll fax copies of the reports to the Section Chief as soon as we’re finished.” Kim scans this week’s schedule again, dotting every “i” and crossing every “t”. When she looks up from where she’s seated across from her boss, she pauses. “Sir?”

“Hmm?” His broad shoulders are slumped, his tie askew, and his round glasses do little to hide the dark circles beneath his eyes. She frowns.

Kimberly Cook is good at her secretarial job. No, she’s pretty damn great at it, if she’s honest. So when the man she’s been working closely with for two years is troubled, she refuses to let him file the feeling away like some confidential case in his cabinet.

“Sir, are you sure you don’t want me to clear your schedule until lunch? I can rearrange your day however you need.”

“No thanks, Kimberly.” Assistant Director Walter Skinner pinches the bridge of his nose. “It’s fine. I’m just a little tired this morning.”

“I would be too…” Kim eyes last night’s memo half-hidden beneath a familiar case file. Its edges are well-worn, the label’s ink faded and smudged from frequent touches of worried fingertips. “If I stayed up all night fretting.”

She takes the file that’s been haunting her boss for five months, slowly sliding it across his desk to face him.

He grunts at it. “That’s my job.”

“Sir—” Kim hesitates, reaching out to still his hand tracing the letters of the name Scully, Melissa with her own. “Walter, you’ve been working hard on this one. Very hard. You can’t blame yourself for what the memo says.”

She wasn’t supposed to see the memo. It arrived late last night after Walter had suggested she go home. She didn’t, of course, reluctantly placing it on his desk, reading the words “URGENT: case cold. Refile as inactive until further notice” with Melissa Scully’s case number attached.

“I’ll be appealing the decision,” he says tightly. Kim nods, sympathetically squeezing his hand, already guessing how that will go. She moves to stand, stopping when his hand finds hers again. “Thank you, Kim. I appreciate your concern.”

Kim smiles, flushing as their hands part. If she wasn’t married with a baby on the way…

Her eyes flick up, catching a flash of red hair bobbing by the office window. “There’s Agent Scully.”

Walter quickly moves into the door, beckoning Dana Scully into his office. Kim bites her lip, realizing he’s about to give an agent he respects news that will disappoint her. That will hurt her.

“Kimberly, would you excuse us please?”

“Certainly, sir,” she says, already in motion.

“A memo came across my desk last night…” Walter starts as Kim closes the side door behind her.

Her feet stay rooted where she stands. Fragments of the conversation creep through the cracks in the doorframe. She doesn’t usually eavesdrop, but something compels her to listen. The threatening conversation she’d overheard regarding her boss’s favorite agents just days ago leaves her mind racing…

Kim straightens piles of reports into stacks atop her desk when she smells it: cigarette smoke wafting through A.D. Skinner’s closed door. It’s him, the tall, older man who saunters in unannounced, his gray eyes cold, conniving. That’s when he wants to be seen. There are times, like now, where she knows he slips in through the side door like a snake stalking its prey. With concern creasing his brow, Walter had warned her to avoid the smoker, and Kim would never ignore his advice.

Muffled voices rise.

Agents Mulder and Scully’s names are mentioned, along with the words “end this,” and “obey orders.”

Kim stiffens, worried.

A door slams shut, followed by strings of obscenities.

That chain-smoking jackass is bullying her boss again, her friend, into betraying his agents’ trust, and she hates it. Kim sneers at the door as a stream of smoke slithers its way out. An appropriate euphemism, she’s certain.

The growing knot of concern for Walter only tightens further in her gut.

Her fists clench at the memory. Then Agent Scully’s heels thunk along the floor of the office as she speaks, urging Kim to tilt her head to hear more.

“You know, it's strange. Men can blow up buildings, and they can be nowhere near the crime scene, but we can piece together the evidence and convict them beyond a doubt. Our labs can recreate out of the most microscopic detail the motivation and circumstance to almost any murder…”

Kim’s eyes slip shut.

Agent Scully’s voice shakes, overflowing with emotion, and Kim instantly knows their A.D. will take it personally.

“But in a case of a woman, my sister, who was gunned down in cold blood in a well-lit apartment building by a shooter who left the weapon at the crime scene, we can't even put together enough to keep anybody interested,” the agent passionately continues. Defeat and frustration evident, even through walls.

“I don't think this has anything to do with interest,” Walter placates.

“If I may say so, sir, it has everything to do with interest,” she retorts. “Just not yours, and not mine.”

Agent Scully marches out of the A.D.’s door and around the corner by the window where Kim stands, stunned in the office’s anteroom.

Kim cares for her boss. He’s a good man and their friendship means more to her than she’d thought possible coming from a man of high ranking authority. But Agent Scully is right, the real interest that affects others lay with manipulative shadow men.

The agent’s fierce stride slows to a stop. Her back is turned, but there’s no mistaking her swift intake of breath. Kim knows a stifled sob when she sees it. She wishes she could help. She wishes she could tell her she’s sorry without making her cry.

Then the formidable pathologist swipes at her eyes and walks determinedly towards the elevator, jabbing at the DOWN button, impatient to return to where Kim suspects she feels most comfortable.

Down to the basement, at Agent Mulder’s side.

Read the rest of All Eyes Lead to the Truth on Ao3

@monikafilefan

#all eyes lead to the truth #mulder #scully #msr #x files #fanfic #x files fanfic #kimberly #skinner #secretary #season three #s3 #3x15 #piper maru

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x-files-scripts · 1 year

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The X-Files - “Piper Maru”

Written by Frank Spotnitz & Chris Carter

January 5, 1996 (BLUE)

Scully assumes Mulder is also aware that the FBI is dropping the investigation into her sister’s murder...

Scully has a nostalgic moment as she drives down a familiar street...

Krycek returns...

The script called for a glimpse of a classic alien in the bright flash effect...

#the x files #x files #scripts #txf #season 3 #txf s3 #txf bts #piper maru #script #frank spotnitz #chris carter #mythology #david duchovny #gillian anderson #mulder #Scully #krycek #screenwriting #tvwriting

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rigormorton32 · 6 months

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Summary:

A rewrite of the airport scene in Piper Maru from Krycek's perspective. His thoughts and feelings as Mulder hits and chokes him.

Fingers curled aggressively into the fabric of Krycek's shirt, taking him by surprise as an angry first collided with his nose with a loud crunch, sucker punching him hard enough to draw blood.

Mulder. A tiny smile slid across his lips at the sight of him.

Rating: M

Tags: Masochism, pain slut Krycek, one sided attraction, the black oil

#the x files #fox mulder x alex krycek #fox mulder #alex krycek #the x files season 3 #piper maru #the x files fanfic

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freckleslikestars · 2 years

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The X Files: Piper Maru

Living Polariod Project: 64/219

#living polaroid project #living polaroid project season three #the x files #my gifs #xf gifs #txf #x files #msr #mulder #scully #fox mulder #dana scully #piper maru #‘I just got very turned on’ the way she looks at him when he says that #but also women knowing planes is incredibly hot so I get that #season three had some big hitters #although i just checked and this is the first season of a trend of two two parters per season #so its not actually that important in the long run #but having two two parters - particularly so close together - feels important when its the first time

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unremarkablehouse · 2 months

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Aww family resemblance

#txf #the x files #gillian anderson #piper maru #DNA test complete #flipping the bird #sex education #hannibal #the fall #house of mirth

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whovianderson · 9 months

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Scully saying to Mulder “I’m just constantly amazed by you” and that she’s “afraid of his relentlessness”, and his response being “that’s what you think of me?” THEN THEIR CUTE SMILES I can’t stand them.

WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK?!?! SCULLY IDENTIFIED THE PLANE FUSELAGE AND MULDER SAID HE “JUST GOT VERY TURNED ON”??! GET A ROOM ALREADY!!!

#in 3x16 their soft smiles in the hospital 🫠#and their lil laughs about the oil theory stop they’re so cute #pip watches txf for the first time and goes insane #3x15 #3x16 #piper maru #apocrypha #the x-files

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nelsonandersonfan · 2 years

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From Piper’s Instastory (9/20)

#nelson anderson #piper maru

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carefulfears · 7 months

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can you pleeeease please pls pls talk about piper maru/apocrypha theeee apex of the early myth arc obviously i just rewatched it and also you rewatched it a few months ago but i rly would like to hear you get super into it. talk about watever you please but i wld love 2 hear stuff about specific scenes/line or plot implications or performances or technical stuff you liked or what have you. i love you xoxo mikey

okay coming back to this because we just watched these together lol but the thing about piper maru/apocrypha is that like...they speak so much for themselves. and they have a lot to say, about the core themes of the series. it's not just the apex of the myth-arc, it's a subtle love letter of everything that the show believes in.

firstly, i've said this before, but that opening sequence of first scully and skinner, then scully and mulder, is so much of what it all boils down to. and, almost in contrast to the rest of the arc, it's relatively loving and hopeful. just not in the sense that everyone wants things to be.

the government is not going to pursue melissa's murder investigation. the FBI does not care. those in power do not care. they have the tools and technology to piece together any crime, but, as scully says:

"in a case of a woman, my sister, who was gunned down in cold blood in a well-lit apartment building by a shooter who left the weapon at the crime scene, we can't even put together enough to keep anybody interested."

scully is always bubbling with this benevolent indignant rage, just under the surface, and it's so moving when it breaks. it's her sister. and no one is even interested.

it matters that skinner tells her that he's fighting it, he's going to appeal. he's going to go over all of the evidence personally, make sure nothing was overlooked. i love the way he tells her that he got the memo last night and debated calling her at home, you can tell that he's been sitting with it all night.

when she goes downstairs, and mulder is buzzing about some ship wreckage that he's already researched coordinates and weather and radiation spots before anyone else got there that morning, the way she smiles is the end of any confusion as to why she stays. it's been 23 years since the last time anyone cared about his dead sister, and he's down there digging. ("i'm just...constantly amazed by you.")

it's nice that someone stays interested. it's nice to spend your life with someone who cares, when no one else does.

later, in san francisco, i always cry when scully drives onto the military base where she grew up, and sees the kids playing. and it flashes to the kids as her and melissa. once again, this episode is a love letter to everything this show believes.

and when she speaks to her old neighbor, it's spelled out in my favorite quote of the franchise: "we bury our dead alive, don't we?"

i always think of @scullysflannel's post on this thematic arc:

But then I also think about “we bury our dead alive” and “nothing disappears without a trace” and how The X-Files is always in conversation with its ghosts...It matters that the show is saying both everything ends and nothing’s ever really over. You can’t stop moving forward, but there’s also a duty to remember, both out of love (“I want to remember how it was”) and to prevent the same things from happening to anyone else. The future won’t be any better unless people honor the ones who came before. Progress on The X-Files is this constant push and pull between hope and tragedy; you can’t have one without the other.

the x-files is always in conversation with its ghosts, and everything buried still speaks.

when the first installment of this two-parter ends, skinner is shot for his unwillingness to abandon melissa's case. and krycek's soul is overridden with visible darkness, before mulder's eyes.

(i also want to talk about krycek lying, in the airport, and telling mulder that he didn't kill his father. but i think that may be a larger post on krycek/mulder and trust.)

(it literally can't be stressed enough that krycek briefly becomes an alien in this episode and mulder doesn't notice. mikey like that one time you were like "if i were possessed by a demon and a guy who i know personally sat next to me on a twenty hour flight and didn't notice at all i would be so mad")

moving on to apocrypha...well...the x-files is about love, you guys. i love scully running into the hospital and holding skinner's hand. most of this episode is a whirlwind of allies, of understandings. and a testament to how much it matters, to have allies. to have someone you can call. to have three friends who will pull off an elaborate ice-rink locker heist. to have someone who will come hold your hand, chase down an ambulance to watch over you.

back at the FBI, pendrell breaks down the data they've collected on skinner's shooter. partial prints and saliva and secretors and hemofactors and chromosome-stains and hair fibers. i love the run-down that they give, it really drives home the point that scully was making in the beginning. they have all of this equipment and all of these resources and all of this science. but what does it matter when no one cares enough to follow through?

ultimately, it's scully that pieces together the evidence, and realizes that the man who shot skinner is the same man who killed melissa. (at the same time, the syndicate is starting to grow impatient with CSM, as the man suspected in the shooting is: "one of yours, isn't he?")

but in the end, there's nothing. they're pulled out of the silos without finding any evidence. they lose krycek, after learning of his involvement. the man who killed melissa is dead in his cell. "nothing vanishes without a trace," but everything can be controlled.

when mulder goes to melissa's grave to tell scully that cardinale is dead, it's one of my favorite details of the series that he's holding flowers. it just makes me tear up that he stopped to bring missy flowers. even though he was just going by to tell scully news. (it was only a year ago that it was missy sitting having coffee with him, or banging on his apartment door. that it was missy who didn't give up on him, when scully was gone. these sisters linger. there's a kind of reverent respect.)

"You know I thought... when we found him, this man that killed Melissa, that...that when we brought him to justice, I would feel some kind of closure. But the truth is no court...no punishment is ever enough."

four years before the show concludes "there is no closure," scully quietly betrays, there is no closure. nothing would ever be enough. her sister is gone. there are no answers, there is no justice, that would make it better. (and what a statement to make)

and the episode ends on scully repeating back: "maybe we bury the dead alive."

as we cut to krycek, locked in the missile silo, banging on the door, crying, screaming for help.

it is on this note that the x-files leaves its most thematically relevant arc. there is no closure. we bury our dead alive. and no one is ever coming to save you.

#i love you more xoxo kae #asks #piper maru #apocrypha

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