spengie

[spengie]

And Yet.

Read it on ao3

The first time I heard it, I don't know that I consciously understood. High stakes, high emotions - my mind was in chaos, my understanding in shambles. A cacophony of input, suddenly narrowed to a single, broken sound.

My body knew though, because how could it not?

I was knocked, utterly at a loss for what had dropped me to my knees, as unfit for the role I found myself in as I was fundamentally unwelcome.

And so I held her, as confused by my own reaction as I was by everything else that day.

Confused by the way her pain ignited my own.

And yet.

She consistently reacts with hostility. Wears taciturnity as armor. Defaults to anger and reticence, hastier to attack than to expose anything that might be construed as weakness. Before I knew there was anything more than the rumors I'd heard, she was unequivocally icy, her bearing distant and haughty. She's smart; she knows it and will not let you forget she can and will hold her own.

And yet.

There's a vulnerability there, if you listen to the things she doesn't say. If you watch her eyes darken, watch the crease pull above her left lip, see the way she recoils defensively when she can't stop herself.

Subconsciously guarded, terrified to let anyone see through her facade. But you can see through the fractures if you bother.

If you really look, you'll find that shift, that softness. That smile that isn't as empty as the last. Glimpses of a truth she never intends to reveal. A contradiction, perhaps, to feel so enormously but show so little; she fights her own nature, her profound ability to feel, to empathize, to suffer. To love.

And yet.

There was no one else, anymore. Proven again by the past few days, proven by the stares and whispers, by the logged complaints. I knew the rumors, had read the personnel file.

No one bothered to get to know her at all, perhaps sensing they'd lose a piece of themselves if they did. She unwittingly demands it of you, through her perceived indifference; that you recognize her, that you feel her, that you hear her.

That you do what few ever dare to do.

That you see.

That you listen.

And yet.

I think everyone who knows her falls in love with her, at least a little bit. I'm not talking about mere attraction, although few would disagree that she's beautiful; I mean actual, inexorable love. The kind that punches you in the gut, steals your breath, then leaves your hands grasping at nothing. She doesn't belong to you and it wrenches something inside you that she doesn't actually belong to anyone.

Least of all, perhaps, even herself.

And yet.

Deeply stoic and profoundly aloof, she's an intensely private person. She keeps herself so carefully hidden.

I see it for what it is, now, although I didn't always. Protection, a desperate bid for survival, against so many enemies, on so many levels. A desperate need to not need anyone.

And yet.

Somehow she pulls it from you, this ill-advised love, without your permission, without your knowledge. You can't fathom it, can't see through her storminess, until suddenly she moves - or speaks, or smiles, or, God help you, giggles - and you find yourself categorically devastated.

I don't understand it, couldn't give you the slightest hint how it happens, but like so many things in our work, I don't have to understand it to know it's true.

I am certain, however, that she doesn't realize it. That she somehow goes through her life collecting soldiers, completely unaware of the army she could amass within the span of a single of her breaths if only she called.

And yet.

Strength is her singular option. She's outcast, in her own eyes - safe only as long as she trusts no one. Because there's no one left.

The knowledge that she can't do it alone but the certainty that she must war within her incessantly; she's fighting a battle she cannot win yet cannot concede.

It's breaking her, little by little.

She's losing, and I'm genuinely unsure how much more she can bear.

How much more I can watch her bear.

And yet.

There's a softness hidden within her stoic beauty, an unexpected coltishness; she tries to mask it but it's an undeniable, essential piece of her. I wonder what she'd be, who she'd be, if she weren't here.

Before you know it, she has you; a move, a word, a hard-won smile.

I think it probably was a sigh, for me. An exasperation that was ordinary until it suddenly wasn't, although it was months until I understood how completely I'd been bound.

She had me long before I ever heard her laugh; I might have realized sooner, how utterly fucked I was, if she'd had any cause for joy, in the beginning.

And yet.

Through all of it, she is still trying to hide. I doubt I know even a fraction of her anguish. She buries it in work, in secrets, hoping with every new trial that this time, this time she can quell her heartache.

Mostly, she succeeds. She doesn't get her frigid reputation for naught.

And yet.

Few notice when her mask falls, when her suffering finally exceeds what her tiny body can contain. It's frustrated and choked, that sound again, barely exceeding a breath, and yet monumentally more.

Strain, anguish, and a desperate bid to subjugate her vulnerability, to silence her own suffering; still it escapes, forcing its way out despite her reticence.

I recognize it now, the sound of her distress that so disarmed me before. Now, when I can see her so clearly and so profoundly; it nearly takes me to my knees every time.

In those moments, more than anything, I cannot imagine anything I want to do more than to take her in my arms. I also cannot imagine anything she wants less.

She doesn't belong to me.

She doesn't belong to anyone.

And yet.

And yet, I can't help myself. I love her still.

[spengie]

Slow Returns

tagging @today-in-fic

This is a Three Words fix-it fic.

tw: pregnancy, depression, season 8

She was running as though in a bad dream, as though through water. She could not move fast enough; she didn’t. Doggett found her screaming on her knees and when he helped her up, she could not keep her balance. Her legs tingled, and her speech was slurred. The second time he’d carried her someplace. He’d sat her in his passenger seat—they could follow Mulder’s body to the hospital—when he’d said “Mulder’s body,” she’d moaned—and she could get checked out there too. She had wanted to tell him, It’s a fight or flight response. It’s a panic attack. All my blood is going to my heart. That is why I can’t feel my legs. That is why I am sweating. That is why I am slurring and breathing hard.

Her mother comes to get her. Mulder’s body, pronounced DOA, is behind an ER curtain, and soon someone will come to take him to the morgue. 

“I have to go,” she tells her, when they roll him out.

“No, Dana,” her mother says, holding on to her arm, because she cannot really get up from her seat, because the attending nurse had insisted she take a sedative. (Pregnant, she’d told the nurse. It’s safe for you, the nurse had told her, as she knew already. Still, she hadn’t wanted to risk it. If Mulder was parenting a baby, carrying a baby, he’d do it like a hippie, a homeopath, like her sister. Like if he wanted the baby he might try to sell her on some big, inflatable in-home birthing tub and its potential for multiple uses, and she would look at him fake-annoyed and say No, Mulder.

She hadn’t want to risk the sedative because she had not protected Mulder properly. She had not protected their family properly. And she could not afford another mistake. But when someone handed her a bag of Mulder’s “belongings”—the blanket he’d had wrapped around him in the ambulance—she’d wailed. And Doggett had said, Dana. And the nurse had offered again, and she’d accepted the pill because her hands were shaking too hard to hold the blanket in its large Ziploc baggie.)

She watches Mulder on the gurney, down the hall, through the doors, feeling like a deserter. 

“He’s alone,” she cries into her mother’s shoulder. She thinks of their basement and how desperately, madly he is wanted. Needed beyond want.

“He’s here with you, Dana.”

“My—" she chokes. My husband, she thinks. How when they told her she was pregnant, before they told her he was gone, she’d imagined them together forever. My partner. “My baby,” she says instead, low and keening, holding her stomach.

-

Later, when the medicine wears off, when her nervous system is no longer depressed, when her mother drives her home, she will cling to Maggie’s shoulders on her sofa. “I can’t do this, Mom,” she will weep, hyperventilating. “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t…” 

Maggie rocks her like a child. She reminds Dana that she’d taken home a prescription for panic attacks as needed. After the first dose Doggett had talked to Maggie in hushed tones. Mrs. Scully… after she saw him, she was just layin’ on the ground.

Dana takes it to go to sleep. Dana takes it for the funeral. Dana takes it to reduce the premature urge to nest, to reduce her conviction that she is already an inadequate mother. 

-

The best day of her life, she thinks: when Mulder comes back. She argues and argues to treat him and to save him, as though running slow, through water.

“Who are you?” he jokes when he wakes up, and she is so grateful. She wants to tell him Go easy, I am barely off the sauce, and Please only be exactly yourself.

-

She leaves him at the hospital to pick up her car and his change of clothes, and when she returns, she is barely holding it together. She wants to take something, but if he sees her, she thinks he will disapprove, and regardless, she needs to drive him home.

It makes her heart beat fast and fearful to even think of leaving him alone. To even think of being apart. 

“Whatever neurological disorder you were suffering from, it’s no longer detectable,” she assures him. He eyes her suspiciously, as though he is confused as to why she is not furious with him for not telling her of the aforementioned. Maybe when their family is together and whole and safe in her arms, she will worry about trivialities like his lies, or his long betrayal.

She goes on, “The scars on your face… on your hands, on your feet, on your chest… they seem to be repairing themselves.” He touches his face, and she wonders if anyone has yet given him a mirror. 

She tells him he is in perfect health. She means, I will always take care of you. I will never let this happen to you again. You have always been perfect.

“Wow,” he says. 

“How do you feel?” the doctor asks. 

Mulder is glib. He borrows her deadpan humor. “Like Austin Powers.” She has missed, missed, missed him.

-

At Hegel Place, she insists that she carry his bag. He is distracted by the familiar and does not argue, which makes her feel displaced, like she’s out of line for needing tenderness, specifically his. Inside his apartment, her chest gets tight. A lump comes to her throat.

She wants him to smile at her for preserving this space, here, for them. She wants him to say Remember the last time we were on that couch, Scully? and waggle his eyebrows. She wants his approval, his assurance that she has done enough because here they are, together.

She fights, failingly, for control of her breath. Her palms begin to sweat. She digs her nails into the skin. 

“Something looks different,” he says. She twists her fingers, his perusal making her nervous.

“It’s clean.” Her arms are numb, her legs are numb. Her tongue feels thick in her mouth.

“Ah, that’s it.” And then, “Missing a molly.”

“Yeah,” she whispers. “She wasn’t as lucky as you.” Stay positive, she tells herself, be positive, make him comfortable, it’s all on you. If she fails to make his return to Earth run smooth, she will fail this baby, their baby, again.

She wonders at his grimace if she deserves to be a mother, to be entrusted with his child. If she is worthy of his love. She’s wanted him back, but she’s wanted him for her.

“Mulder,” she says, trailing off at the second syllable because her voice sounds unnatural to her ears. She knows she is dissociating for self-preservation, feels her soul leave her body like a snake from old skin.

“I don’t know if you’ll ever understand what it was like.”

He stares.

“First learning of your abduction, and then finding you dead…”

Mulder nods.

Her flat affect is a poor ruse. She has wanted nothing more than for him to be there for her for months, but she can’t ask it of him, she won’t, not yet. She panics that he can smell it on her, the desperation, and resents it.

It is still her turn to be strong. Everything still depends on her. 

“… And now, to have you back…” her voice rises and cracks.

“Well, you act like you’re surprised.” He Vanna White-s himself. The strength to stay positive leaves her.

“I prayed a lot,” she tells him. “And my prayers have been answered.” Her vision blurs. She always cries.

“In more ways than one.” His first acknowledgement of their child. All she’s ever wanted, and now it is up to her to make it work, save them all.

“Yeah.”

“I’m happy for you.” His nodding is so fucking… fake. “I think I know… how much that means to you.” It ruins her composure.

She thinks, This isn’t how it’s supposed to be. And, still, even with him in front of her, Oh my god, I can’t do it.

Her lips tremble; she can feel her face crumple; she can feel it go numb; she looks like a little girl. “Mulder—”

He’s saying something to make her stop crying—“I don’t mean to be cold or ungrateful”—but she should be the one doing all the work, and then the zinger: “I just, I have no idea where I fit in… right now. I just… I’m having a little trouble… processing everything.”

Well, me fucking too.

-

She offers to give him a little space. She leaves his apartment building and crosses the street and realizes she cannot drive home when her hands shake so badly that she struggles to find her keys in her purse. In the driver’s seat, she watches them tremble on the wheel.

And she hears it again: I don’t really know where I fit in.

And she feels it: the paralyzing fear that if she leaves him alone, he will not be here when she gets back.

The baby moves. She has to protect them both. He would never forgive her if she didn’t protect them both; already he hasn’t forgiven her; you act like you’re surprised.

She had wanted to run from Mulder’s apartment, to make him comfortable, to give him space, but she can’t leave, she has to protect them, what if something happens to Mulder while she is gone, what would she tell her baby then. She’d thought of him—My husband, because none of her claims to him felt adequate—she’d thought: what will we do without him. They couldn’t do anything without him. After they found him, she hadn’t left her apartment for a week, not until Maggie implored her to take out the trash otherwise she’d never return to Baltimore. (She hadn’t even wanted Maggie to leave. She hadn’t even been capable of caring for herself alone.)

And now he’s back, but he doesn’t know where he fits in. And she doesn’t know where she fits in if he doesn’t know, because she’d always assumed it would be—she can’t even think it, only: what if something happens if I drive away.

So she doesn’t. She heaves big breaths. She hopes she will stop sweating. She wraps her arms around herself because weight on the chest depresses the nervous system, like burial, like a grave. She cannot take one of the pills in her purse because, though she won’t be driving, she must stay alert.

She sits across the street from Hegel Place in the driver’s seat, watching his window. She cries herself to sleep.

-

When she comes to, it’s dark out. Someone is yelling and knocking at her window. “Scully! Scully!”

She jolts awake, but still feels sluggish. Her eyes go wide, she blushes; it’s Mulder. He looks confused and horrified. A hand goes to her stomach, checking the baby—what the fuck was she thinking, falling asleep like that—the other to the door. “Open the door, Scully, Jesus Christ,” he’s saying, and he’s looking at her like she’s crazy, and she’s shaking her head.

The moment it clicks for him that she is not totally with it, perhaps hasn’t been for weeks or months, she sees it in his eyes.

She has failed, because she was supposed to stay awake to protect them. She remembers all her previous failures—all day today, and every day, for months. He is mad at her, she thinks. She is scared. He is going to leave her. She hasn’t even told him: I can’t do it. She needs some air. She needs to beg, she realizes. She unlocks the door. 

In a second, he yanks it open. His hands on her face. She sighs; it is such a relief to feel him. “Scully?” Feeling all around, fingers to her neck, checking her vital signs, checking the baby. “You okay, Scully?”

Him. Touching her. She begins to cry. She holds her stomach. “I’m sorry,” she weeps. “I’m so sorry, Mulder—”

Mulder brushing the hair from her face, Mulder looking confused. 

Mulder feeling like he has no idea where he fits in right now, but sure as hell knowing how to play her hero. 

“I’m sorry,” she’s choking, and he’s crouching by her to get a better angle, pulling her legs out of the car so her shoes dangle just above the pavement, just by his legs. “I can’t do it.”

“Shh,” he tells her, “Shh, you’re shaking. Take a deep breath. Take a deep breath.” 

She shakes her head. “I can’t.” Tears leak from her eyes but she is silent except for when she inhales, tries to inhale.

“Scully,” he tells her, sternly, but soft, like in a good dream, and he smells like himself, and he’s saying her name.

She hurts. “My chest,” she tells him. 

“What’s wrong? Scully, what’s wrong, why are you in here? Have you been in here this whole time?”

“I’m sorry,” she cries. 

“What are you doing here, Scully?” he’s asking, but his voice is tender, like he’s worried, not angry.

“I’m sorry, Mulder, I didn’t mean to fall asleep, I was—I was—I was going to—I…” her mouth is open but she doesn’t know what to say, and she cannot breathe, she can’t.

“Alright,” he whispers. “It’s alright. Come here.” And then he is taking her hands, pulling her out of the car, pulling her close. The compression of her chest slows her nervous system.

“What are you doing out here, Scully?” he asks again, rocking her back and forth and back and forth. “It’s late.”

“I… I couldn’t leave.” It is easier to talk into his sweater, the one she had left the hospital to retrieve from her own apartment. 

“S’that why the pajamas under my pillow smell like you?”

She is embarrassed. “I’m sorry. I was just… keeping watch. If you… if something happened I-I couldn’t go on, Mulder.” She can’t perform a moment longer, and he has always seen right through her.

“Oh, Scully…” he pulls back to look at her, as if to say, finally, Baby, you are eight months pregnant, who the fuck do you think you need to protect?

Her chin wobbles. “I’m—”

“Shh,” he tells her. “Don’t be sorry.” And then: “It’s okay. It’s alright. I’m here.”

It absolves her.

She nods. She cries a little more, and says “Yeah.” After a minute, she speaks again. Her voice is high and thready. “I haven’t been… doing well, Mulder.”

He looks into her eyes and nods very seriously, comprehending.

She feels the burden leave her body. She feels partnership, at once foreign and dear.

“Come on,” he says. The first time since waking up that he has not felt helpless. “Let’s go to bed.” She nods. She is so small.

He takes her upstairs.

In bed, she tells him, “We’ve missed you so much,” and puts his hands on her stomach. And the night moves like water, like all her father’s slow returns from war.

[spengie]

Gengar!

every pokemon is someone's favourite and i'm determined to find a person for every pokemon so please reblog this and tell me what your number one favourite pokemon of all time is

[spengie]

[spengie]

USA people! Buy NOTHING Feb 28 2025. Not anything. 24 hours. No spending. Buy the day before or after but nothing. NOTHING. February 28 2025. Not gas. Not milk. Not something on a gaming app. Not a penny spent. (Only option in a crisis is local small mom and pop. Nothing. Else.) Promise me. Commit. 1 day. 1 day to scare the shit out of them that they don't get to follow the bullshit executive orders. They don't get to be cowards. If they do, it costs. It costs.

Then, if you can join me for Phase 2. March 7 2025 thtough March 14 2025? No Amazon. None. 1 week. No orders. Not a single item. Not one ebook. Nothing. 1 week. Just 1.

If you live outside the USA boycott US products on February 28 2025 and stand in solidarity with us and also join us for the week of no Amazon.

Are you with me?

Spread the word.

[spengie]

Listen, if a Bad President can come in and take away our rights and we're dependent on a Good President replacing them in four years to give us back our rights, then we do not have any rights.

If politicians can take or distribute them, then they're not "inalienable" and they're not "rights."

We don't have inalienable rights we have conditional privileges, divvied out according to the whims of whoever currently holds the reins.

And if we want to have actual rights, then we must build a system in which no one has the power to take them away to begin with.

[spengie]

heard someone say archive of our own should install a "dislike" button and I thought I should say this: no, there's absolutely no need for archive of our own to install a "dislike" button.

why? because archive of our own isn't tiktok or youtube or twitter/x where users can monetize their content. archive of our own is a nonprofit site run by fans for fans, which means every content — every fanfic — you see on archive of our own was made out of pure love and passion from the artists/authors.

ao3 authors write because writing about these characters is their happiness and passion. they write for themselves, but they were generous enough to share with you their creations.

they're not "content creators" the way tiktokers or youtubers or instagram models are. they don't "make content" for views and engagements that can be monetized.

so no, you don't get to "grade their works" unless they specifically and directly ask you to.

you don't get to "say what you dislike about their works" unless they specifically and directly ask you to.

you don't get to "dislike" works that are not made specifically to please you in the first place. you're just a guest in someone's house, a house in which they let you in because they were kind, you don't get to roam around their house and say what you dislike about their furniture. you don't get to roam around their house and say you "dislike their house".

of course, you can have your opinion about the house its host invites you in. but if it's a negative one and you find yourself not liking the house, the polite things for you to do is excuse yourself and leave without telling them you dislike their house.

and just because you personally dislike the house doesn't mean the house is "ugly" either. the house you dislike could be a favorite, most luxurious place to many others.

my point is, don't be entitled by wanting the rights to voice your disapproval of things that you get to enjoy for free. don't be entitled by wanting the rights to voice your disapproval of things that were made out of love and passion — things the artists made for themselves for fun.

it makes you look like an entitled jerk with main character syndrome. the universe does not revolve around you.

now repeat after me: don't like don't read. no one forces you to continue reading a fic you don't like. quietly leave instead of being rude to authors who write for free because writing is their source of comfort.

people are so used to contents that were made because it's a trend / contents like tiktok that were made with the main purpose of reaching high engagement and making profits that they forget sometimes things can be made out of love and be made just for fun. sometimes things are supposed to just be for people to enjoy, and if some people don't enjoy them, then they can simply leave without being unnecessary unkind.

[spengie]

These men just stole the personal information of everyone in America AND control the Treasury. Link to article.

Akash Bobba

Edward Coristine

Luke Farritor

Gautier Cole Killian

Gavin Kliger

Ethan Shaotran

Spread their names!

[spengie]

this blog hates donald trump

Look how many people hate him. I’m pretty damn happy about that 😁😁😁😁😁😁

[spengie]

[spengie]

not my candy ass becoming a crab fisherman

[spengie]

[spengie]

today is an important day to remember this poem 💙

[spengie]

For some reason the versions of this where he gives two salutes is being deleted and replaced with a version with a quick cut to a cheering crowd so I’ll just share it here 🙃

[spengie]

There is no way of accidentally doing a nazi salute twice in a row while the entire world is watching. This man needs to be killed

[spengie]

what do you mean elon musk did a nazi salute on live tv at the united states presidential inauguration twice and is now erasing the evidence off the internet by replacing the footage with the crowd cheering instead?

would be a shame if people reblogged this, wouldn’t it?