#I do think that marti's family is at least a bit religious

[alatismeni-theitsa]

This post is based on my knowledge of traditions of the north and center mainland of Greece. However, I am pretty sure most of those things apply to Greek Orthodox people universally. Needless to say, each village and town can has its own local traditions when it comes to religious occasions.

I am a Greek Orthodox living in Greece, raised into the religion.

I will translate some phrases directly, hoping to give a more “raw” meaning.

If you are not sure you understood about certain information in the post, feel free to ask me on Tumblr!

Google Drive Link for the post in .docx format

Table of Contents

Philosophy.

The Church as a building and as a center of faith.

Chapels and even smaller churches.

The Communion.

Livanisma / Thimiama – Incense burning.

Home Altars.

Clothing.

Komboskini - The prayer rope.

Tama - Votive

Crosses in high places.

Wedding

Baptism

Wedding & Baptism.

Burial customs and honoring the dead.

Agiasmos - Blessing.

Protomaya.

Martis - The protective bracelet of Spring.

Easter Traditions.

Vasilopita on Christmas

Kalanda

Mount Athos

Pilgrimage to Tinos

The Catching of the Cross

More customs

Random Information

1.   Philosophy

Love and Forgiveness are the main pillars of the faith. Some people follow the Bible to the letter, others pick the parts that think reflect our age and most of people keep the general message of the teachings. The Holy Texts are interpreted differently by different people and there can be contradictions in lifestyles and believes. However, the notion that having love and forgiving is what makes you a Christian is widely believed.

Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. - 1 John 4:8

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.- 1 Corinthians 13:4-5

There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. - 1 John 4:18

Don’t say ‘I am hated, and that’s why I do not love‘. For this is why you out to love the most. - Ioannis Chrysostomos

“But I say to you who hear, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you” Luke 6:27

“Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven.” -  Luke 6:37    

"Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, 'Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?' Jesus answered, 'I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.' "  -  Matthew 18:21-22

 2. The Church as a building and as a center of faith

Jesus and the Apostles gave us some directions for the worship but most of practices, as well as the architecture of worship came from the Greeks themselves. I jokingly say that Greeks are low key pagans, because religion didn't change the culture. (It did, but only a bit). Christians first worshipped inside the old temples of the Hellenic gods (the Parthenon was once the temple of Virgin Mary) and they built their first churches in that style. The architecture changed with time but it still carries the mark of ancient temples.

Agios Demetrios Thessalonikis

In this link you can view the different styles of architecture for Greek Orthodox Churches. (Link)

In Orthodox churches you don't have to have a feeling of the dominance of God, like in the Catholic or protestant churches, but a feeling of warmth and belonging. In the hall you can buy a candle to light on a display of candles in the hall, to get a blessing for yourself and the soul of anyone you want. Nobody supervises you there.

You can also not pay but I haven't seen anyone not giving money, so far. After that you kiss all the icons displayed in the hall and cross yourself.

As you enter church, men on the left side, women on the right. There is also a special place for women, an interior balcony which is really cool and women go there if they want to. Nowadays man and women can go there.

 3. Chapels and even smaller churches

Chapels serve the same purpose as churches but liturgies rarely happen in them. You can get married in them sometimes.

They can be carved in stone or into a cave - even in a tree or in between multiple trees.

The also exist in big hospitals to bless the patients and invite people to pray for their sick.

They can be seen in some big hotels, too!

But the churches can become even smaller!

Traveling the roads of Greece you will see dollhouse-sized roadside chapels. Some are elaborate little things made of terracotta or even marble, plonked in the middle of nowhere, high up in the mountains; no village or houses for miles, and yet impossibly, most of them are faithfully maintained with a candle always burning inside.

There’s a number of reasons for these heartfelt shrines, some as old as the roads themselves. Placed by the roadside, an initial assumption is that they’re built to remember a victim of a traffic accident victim, and sometimes this is exactly the case. But just as often, shrines will be built by survivors of accidents, thanking a saint at the location of their ordeal.

They can be found in home yards of people who want to come closer to God

4. The Communion

We all take part in Communion with the same spoon. The Communion has bread crumbs in. Even babies drink a tiny bit of the wine (blood of Christ). Traditionally you were "unpure" if you had your period - others believed the blood of Christ would come out of you as period blood if you drunk it, so generally getting the communion during your period is a no for many.

 5. Livanisma / Thimiama – Incense burning

Today, Orthodox Christians use incense throughout the church services. The priest “censes” certain areas at certain parts of the liturgy. The incense is placed inside a device known as a “censor”, which is fairly ornate in appearance and has bells on it so that we not only smell the fragrance, but hear the jingling sound as the priest uses it. This action is meant to remind us that are prayers are rising to the heavens to be heard by God.

Typically in the Orthodox Church, dried incense cones are used. In order to provide the heat needed to allow the cones to burn, a special type of charcoal is used. You also may burn resin, such as Frankincense or Myrrh, directly in an incense burner using charcoal without taking the extra step of mixing it with a binding agent.

Churches often get their incense from special suppliers and maybe even monasteries where the monks or nuns make their own. Typical scents that are used include Frankincense, Myrrh, and Rose.

The believers can also burn incense in their homes and say prayers to ward of Evil.

6.  Home Altars

An Orthodox Christian is expected to pray (to be connected with God) constantly. According to Bishop Kallistos Ware, "In Orthodox spirituality, [there is] no separation between liturgy and private devotion." Thus the house, just like the Temple (church building), is considered to be a consecrated place, and the center of worship in the house is the icon corner.

An icon corner is normally oriented to face east. It is often located in a corner to eliminate worldly distractions and allow prayer to be more concentrated. Here is where the icons that the family owns should be located, normally including at least icons of Christ, the Virgin Mary, and the Patron Saint(s) of the family.

An oil lamp normally hangs in front of the icons. The careful trimming of the lamp to keep it burning at all times is interpreted as symbolic of the attentive daily care faithful Christians should take over their souls. Relics of saints (if the family possesses any) and a Gospel Book and a blessing cross would be kept there, as well as incense, holy water, palms and pussywillow from Palm Sunday, candles from Pascha (Easter), and other sacred items, as well as a personal Commemoration Book (containing the names of family and loved ones, both living and departed, to be remembered in prayer).

7. Clothing

People should enter the church in modest attire. No shorts and no short skirts. Women don’t need to cover their head. In fact, almost no woman under 80 covers her head in church.

With special occasions being the exception, Greek Orthodox Priests wear a black himation because of the fall of Constantinople. They wear it all the time, even to grocery shopping. They have long hair and beard. In rare cases you will see women dressed with a long black cloth - something like a burqa but the whole face is uncovered. They are nuns or devoted to Christ.

 8. Komboskini - The prayer rope

The prayer rope, known in Greek as a κομποσκίνι (komboskini), has long been a powerful weapon for the Orthodox Christian. It has a very simple design, but is filled with meaning. The rope typically comes in one of three lengths, 33 knots, 50 knots, or 100 knots, though there are some in use which are as long as 500 knots. The 33 knots of the shorter rope symbolize the 33 years Christ spent on earth.

It is used in conjunction with the Prayer of the Heart. On each knot is said, "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner." This prayer is occasionally shortened to, "Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me," and other prayers are sometimes said, such as, "God be merciful to me a sinner." Prostrations can also be made with each prayer or after a certain number of prayers. By carrying a prayer rope on us discreetly, we are reminded to “pray without ceasing”.

The prayer rope is attributed to St. Pachomius (4th century). The devil would untie the simple knots he would make to count his prayers. Inspired by a vision from an angel of God, St. Pachomius was able to create a special knot composed of nine interconnected crosses (representing the nine angelic classes), that the devil was unable to untie.

 9.   Tama - Votive

Tama is a form of votive offering or ex-voto used in the Eastern Orthodox Churches, particularly the Greek Orthodox Church. Tamata are usually small metal plaques, which may be of base or precious metal, usually with an embossed image symbolizing the subject of prayer for which the plaque is offered.

The tradition comes from the ancient years, when Greeks offered metal or marble plaques to the gods, often for the cure of an ailment. Eyes may indicate an eye affliction, hands or legs may indicate maladies of the limbs, a pair of wedding crowns may mean a prayer for a happy marriage, etc.

Tama also means Promise. Usually the believers promise something to a saint in exchange for their help on something. My aunt made a tama to the saint Anastasia Farmakolitra ("saves through medicine") to change her name day from the day of the Resurrection to the day of Anastasia Farmakolitra's day if her daughter passed to Pharmaceutical School. Many promise to light big candles (Lambathes) as an offering to the saint or make a donation to their church. Making a lambatha in your height is a standard tama.

 10. Crosses in high places

The Greeks want to feel watched over by the Divine but also leave their mark in the area they live. A way to show their devotion is to place big crosses in hills and mountains which overlook their city, town or village.

In some cases you find those crosses in high, remote places.

Some crosses light up at night!

 11. Wedding 

When the priest says "and the woman should     fear the man" in a wedding, the bride may step on the groom's foot to     show dominance. 

In the bride’s shoe sole her unmarried friends     write their names. The woman whose name fades first will be the first to     marry

The relatives also put money into the shoe of the     bride “so it can fit better“ - but really it’s just a gesture to give     money to the couple

The Crowning is the highlight and focal point of     the Sacrament of Holy matrimony. The priest then takes two wedding crowns     (stefana), and blesses the bride and groom in the name of the Father, and     the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and then places the crowns upon their heads.     The Best Man or Best Woman then interchanges the crowns three times as a     witness to the sealing of the union. People keep their stefana in their     house and even frame them.

12. Baptism

Greeks take their names from their grandparents (since ancient years) and the name is kept a secret until the baptism.

It is a ceremonial moment because prior to the Christening, the individual is not yet part of the church family. In the church hall the priest asks the person to be christened to renounce Satan. If the individual is an infant, the godparent does it for the child. In the next major part of the ceremony, the person being baptized is immersed in the water three times, which is symbolic of Christ’s birth, death, and resurrection. The person is oiled - so they can be blessed and slip from the hands of Satan - and a tuft from their head is cut - to symbolize new beginnings, devotion to Christ and to give Satan less hair to grab them from. If baptized as an infant, after immersion the child is placed in the arms of the godparent with a white sheet, which symbolizes purity. Then, the child receives the sacrament of Chrismation.

The godparent gifts a golden cross to the baptized and, as long as the baptized is young, they buy them shoes for Christmas and an Easter Candle for Easter.

13. Wedding & Baptism

You can do a wedding-baptism to save money. First     the marriage, then the baptism. If the child is about to die before a     baptism gets arranged - God forbid - they get baptized in the air (and not     in water) by a priest.

Koufeta (Sugar Coated Almonds) are mainly served     in weddings but also when wedding and baptism happen in the same day. They     are placed in little bags in odd numbers and are served on a silver tray.     Odd numbers are indivisible, symbolizing how the newlyweds will share     everything and remain undivided. Tradition holds that if an unmarried     woman puts the almonds under her pillow, she'll dream of her future     husband.

After wedding and/or baptism there is - of course     - a feast with hundreds of guests. 

 14. Burial customs and honoring the dead

Pouring wine on the graves during the burial, as an offering or to prevent the dead from coming to life. (I am not sure but that is probably wine blessed in the church).

There is a feast after every mystery. Even funerals.There are more feasts for the dead as time passes. You have to do them in 3 days, 9 days and 40 days. You don't have to do all of them but it's showing respect to the dead and most people do them. 3 and 40 days feast are very important. For the 40 days feast - as for the funeral - there are flyers on the area, which invite people. When 1 year and 3 years pass you go to Church and the priest mentions the name of the dead in the blessings and later comes from the grave to chant.    

During the Sabbath of Souls you have to bring koliva (wheat) to offer to the dead in the family. Supposedly the dead "feed" from them. So it has to be boiled!

Charon is the one who takes souls in our recent tradition.

Graves stones often have sketched pictures or photos of the deceased on them.

15. Agiasmos - Blessing

The start of the New Year in the tradition of the Orthodox Church is marked with the blessing of homes and businesses with Holy Water, or an Agiasmos (literally, to make blessed). This practice commences immediately following the Feast of the Theophany (the annual celebration and remembrance of the Baptism of Jesus Christ – January 6). This blessing is not something done for good luck or to prevent bad luck, but rather a blessing to help strengthen and protect.

The following items are needed for the ceremony:

Small or medium size bowl, filled halfway with     cold tap water

Small twig of fresh basil (floral kind)

Icon displayed behind the bowl

Hand censer, lit and burning incense during the     service

The service is also provided in schools when the new school year starts. This is a particular occasion which can be annoying but also fun for the students because... water shower! Please watch this video (Link). I love it because the priest comes too close to the children - sometimes they want to bless too much - and the kids try to avoid getting wet from head to toe!

 16. Protomaya

May, according to Greek folklore, has two meanings: The good and the bad, rebirth and death. The custom celebrates the final victory of the summer against winter as the victory of the life against death go back at the ancient years and accumulated at the first day of May. This day was also dedicated to the goddess of agriculture Dimitra and her daughter Persephone, who this day emerges from the under world and comes to earth. Her coming to earth from Hades marks the blooming of nature and the birth of summer.

Another ancient celebration that Protomagia has its roots is Anthestiria, a celebration in honor of Dionysos (the Greek God of theater and parties) a festival of souls, plants and flowers, celebrating the rebirth of man and nature.

The custom of May 1st  is to decorate the doors of houses with flower wreaths in a way to welcome the power of nature into our home. The wreath is made ​​from various flowers, handpicked and knitted together. In some parts of Asia Minor, people put on each wreath, except flowers, a garlic for the evil eye, a thorn to protect the house from enemies and an ear for good harvest. The wreaths adorn the doors of the houses until the day of St. John the Harvester (June 24) when all the wreaths of the neighborhood are gathered and burnt in a big fire, the fire of the saint.

See my hashtag #protomaya for more

17. Martis - The protective bracelet of Spring

It’s said it’s an ancient tradition dating back to the cults of Demeter and Persephone. Eleusis was the ancient city where the ancients performed secret rites for the cult. As a form of initiation into the cult, which was one of the Eleusinian Mysteries, the faithful wore a bracelet called a “kroki” around both their right hand and left ankle. Amazingly, the ancient tradition still lives on today in modern Greece. However, there are certain rules that one must abide by when creating and wearing the symbolic bracelet which celebrates the arrival of Spring.

Most importantly, the bracelet must be woven on the last day of February and it must be made of white and red thread. The white thread of the bracelet symbolizes purity while the red represents life and passion.

In ancient times, people believed that the bracelet helped protect the person who was wearing it from diseases, as well as the strong rays of the spring sun during the month of March. Today they say it protects from the strong rays but also the cold of March. Since it’s a transitional month you can burn from the sunrays but you also need wood for your fireplace!

Part of the ancient tradition in Greece calls for the person wearing their red and white “Martis” bracelet to take it off and tie it to the first flowering tree they see in March, in order to yield a healthy harvest and to keep the tree healthy.

Another practice with Martis bracelets occurs when the first swallow of the Spring is sighted. The first person who sees a swallow upon the bird’s return from its winter migration, ties their bracelet around the nearest rose bush to encourage the bird to make its nest there.

 18.  Easter Traditions

Easter is the biggest celebration of the Greek Orthodox tradition. The Holy Week, preceding Easter Sunday, is a time to ponder on Jesus’ Passion and Crucifixion. It is often regarded as an opportunity for body cleansing through fasting, visiting their town of origin and embracing local traditions.

We fast for 40 days (cutting more and more foods every week). Before the fasting we have Tsiknopempti when we eat as much meat as we want, to give our body what it needs before cutting it for 40 days. (It's sort of a celebration and people go out). University restaurants and private restaurants always have fasting options this period. The first day of the fasting is called Clean Monday and it's also like a celebration. It’s the first day we start eating “fasting” food and we also fly kites!

Kyra Sarakosti - Lady Lent

She can be made out of paper or dough. Lady Lent has seven feet. They represent the seven weeks of Lent. Each passing week, on each Saturday, children get to break off one foot. This is a great visual way to countdown the weeks until Easter.

Lady Lent has no mouth. The missing mouth symbolizes fasting. No consumption of meat, dairy products or eggs. She has no ears, this means that she refuses to listen to gossip. Her cross represents the easter religious services in the church, her hands are folded for prayer.  

After the last foot is cut off, it is tradition to place this foot in a bowl with fruits and nuts and whoever finds it receives a special blessing.

You don't have to fast if you don't want to. Fasting from bad thoughts and words is equally - if not more important - than food fasting.

Epitaphios threnos (funerary lamentation) is the name of the matins of Holy Saturday, served in Good Friday evening. Within a liturgical context, this is also the name of an icon, usually made of cloth and richly embroidered, depicting the body of Christ being laid in the grave, often by the Virgin Mary and some disciples.

On Good Friday morning, the icon is placed on a platform, resembling a bier, typically topped with an elaborately carved wood canopy. In most cases, the canopy is heavily decorated with ornate flower arrangements, ribbons and sometimes candles. Young girls (the "virgins") have to adorn it with flowers.

Throughout the day, people can come into the church and venerate it. Kids have to pass under the platform in order to take a blessing.

In the evening the service begins; near the end of the ceremony, the canopied platform bearing the icon is lifted on the shoulders of priests or churchgoers (usually four to six people) and carried through the streets followed by the believers.

In towns with more than one parish, the processions starting from different churches may converge to a single spot (usually the town square), where they temporarily stop and a common hymn is sung before they resume their routes. In large towns, the chants are often performed by a marching band.

The epitaphs in the Central Square of Larissa (Short Video)

These practices have numerous variations according to regional traditions. On the island of Zakynthos in the Ionian, instead of an embroidered cloth, a lamb is used: this is a figure of the dead body of Christ, cut out from board and painted from both sides, placed vertically so that it can be seen from either side of the bier. Another famous custom, the “burning of Judas”, where an effigy of Judas is set aflame on a bonfire, is usually regarded as an Easter Sunday ritual; in some parts of Thrace and Macedonia, however, it takes place on Good Friday, after the procession. In some coastal towns, most notably on the islands of Hydra and Tinos, the men carrying the Epitaphios march right into the sea, until they are at least waist-deep in water, where they may remain for several minutes, often holding the platform high to protect it. During this time, prayers are said for the welfare and safe return of the many seafarers coming from those communities.

Watch footage from the Epitaphios procession in Kaminia, Hydra (Short Video Link)

Τhe flowers used for the adorning of the Epitaphios are considered blessed and women used to put them under their pillow for protection or to dream their future husband, or to put them in talismen for their beloved or use them as medicine, or they put them in the home altar.

On 00:01 on Easter Sunday the priests happily chant "Christ has risen from the dead!" in one of the most known and iconic chants in Greek Orthodoxy. There are fireworks and we kiss each other on the cheek having this exchange: - Christ has risen! - True! This exchange is used by many as a greeting for 40 days after the resurrection. In the Resurrection the priest offers the Holy Light and people go to get it and pass it to their own company or anyone else who asks for it. The candle is held in candles you buy yourself but for children their god parents buy them. With the smoke of this fire you make a cross above your door and you don't clean it up - never. A door can have multiple black crosses above it. With the Holy Light you light up the lamps of your home altar. Some people have breaking eggs contests right after the announcement of the Resurrection, others do them when they come home. We also eat a special soup that night called Magiritsa. It has meat so with this we cut our feast. When the morning comes we host family gatherings and eat as much meat as we want.

19. Vasilopita on Christmas

The Greek word Vasilopita is directly translated as “Sweet Bread of Basil”. When the Vasilopita is prepared, a coin is baked into the ingredients. When the observance begins, usually on New Years Day, the bread is traditionally cut by the senior member of the family, and the individual who receives the portion of the Pita which contains the coin is considered Blessed for the New Year.

Vasilopita is also cut in educational institues and the workplace. Whoever finds the coin usually receives a gift.

This age old tradition commenced in the fourth century, when Saint Basil the Great, who was a bishop, wanted to distribute money to the poor in his Diocese. He wanted to preserve their dignity, so as not to look like charity, he commissioned some women to bake sweetened bread, in which he arranged to place gold coins. Thus the families in cutting the bread to nourish themselves, were pleasantly surprised to find the coins.

20. Kalanda

Caroling (kalanda) has roots in ancient Greece. Children would carry small boats and sing songs honoring Dionysius. In Ancient Greece the children would praise the head of the household. At this time in history they would also gift the head of the household with an olive branch, which signified prosperity. Greek Christmas carols date back to the Byzantine times.

After singing for the household, the children receive money (and sometimes sweets). Before the financial crisis one could gather hundreds of euros from Kalanda.

Children say Kalanda on Christmas Eve, on New Years Eve, on Epiphany Even and Lazaros Sabbath. The songs are different for those four occasions.

21. Mount Athos

Mount Athos is a mountain and peninsula in northeastern Greece and an important centre of Eastern Orthodox monasticism. It is governed as an autonomous polity within the Hellenic Republic. Mount Athos is home to 20 monasteries. It’s commonly referred to as Agion Oros (Άγιον Όρος, 'Holy Mountain').

According to the Athonite tradition, the Virgin Mary was sailing accompanied by St John the Evangelist from Joppa to Cyprus to visit Lazarus. When the ship was blown off course to then-pagan Athos, it was forced to anchor near the port of Klement, close to the present monastery of Iviron. The Virgin walked ashore and, overwhelmed by the wonderful and wild natural beauty of the mountain, she blessed it and asked her Son for it to be her garden. From that moment the mountain was consecrated as the garden of the Mother of God and was out of bounds to all other women.

22. Pilgrimage to Tinos

15 August is a national holiday in Greece and sees a mass departure from the cities to the islands and holiday homes in the mainland. However one island in particular witnesses more activity than most; the island of Tinos. Across Tinos are churches and shrines, the most famous of which is Panagia Evangelistria, the most holy church in Greece which houses the ‘Miraculous Icon of Virgin Mary’. In the Greek Orthodox religion, the Icon is considered to be the protector of all of Greece.

In the Orthodox Church the 15th is ‘Virgin Mary Assumption Day’ where the Virgin is believed to have ascended to heaven. The ritual of travelling to pay homage to such a sacred Icon at this time is highly emotional for Pilgrims, with the Holy Icon in Tinos serving as a main passage between the Virgin and the believers who seek comfort and miracles on their trip.

Often pilgrims crawl to the church from the boats that they arrive on on their hands and knees to show their devotion and pray for compassion, good health and healing. The final part of the pilgrimage often happens in the blazing heat which makes the effort even more momentous.

The atmosphere at and around the Church in the days proceeding the event is sincere and intense. Other pilgrims will arrive at Tinos the night before and sleep in front of the Church to ensure they have the opportunity to see and pray to the Holy Icon.

On the day itself the Holy Icon is carried through the streets of Tinos by members of the Greek army and navy, followed by the Greek Orthodox priests, political figures and the public. The procession leads down to the port when the Icon is stationed on a marble podium and speeches are made. The desire of members of the public to touch the icon often leads to a frenetic atmosphere as pilgrims try to touch the Icon itself. After the procession and speeches the Holy Icon is returned to the Church.

__________________________________________

In the same day Epitaphs of the Virgin Mary are honored and are taken to the streets so everyone can pay their respects. 

23. The Catching of the Cross

On the sixth of January, the Christmas holidays in Greece officially come to an end with the ‘festival of light’ (‘ton foton’ in Greek), also known as Epiphany.

In the Greek Orthodox Church, Epiphany is celebrated as the revelation of Christ as the messiah and second person of the trinity, at his baptism, by John the Baptist, in the River Jordan. 

Another cause for celebration in the Greek Orthodox Church on this day is that Christ’s baptism was only one of two occasions when all three persons of the trinity revealed themselves, at the same time, to humanity:

 God the Father, speaking from the clouds, God the Son, being baptized in the River Jordan, and God the Holy Spirit, revealed as a dove, descending from heaven.

On Epiphany, the Greek Orthodox Church performs

 the ‘Great Blessing of the Waters’.
 This ceremony is usually performed twice, once on the eve of Epiphany which is performed in the church, and then again on the actual day outdoors with priests blessing large bodies of water, sea, rivers, lakes etc.

The tradition is that

 a priest, surrounded by brave young men and boys, throws a cross into the sea, either from the harbour or from a boat at sea; the minute the cross leaves the priest’s hand, the divers jump into the freezing water to catch the cross. The lucky one who finds and returns the cross is blessed by the priest. As the cross is victoriously brought back, the priest releases a white dove, as a symbol of the holy spirit. 
This tradition is carried out to commemorate the baptism of Christ and to bless the waters.

  24. More customs

Each city, town and village is protected by a different saint. When the saint of the area celebrates a fair is organized. There is music, dance and stalls where the peddlers sell their merchandise.

But Greeks know that some of their customs are not approved by the church. We do it anyways and sometimes the priests join, too!

Το celebrate the Epiphany and chase away the evil spirits some residents dress up in scary attire and make a lot of noise with their voice and bells. They drink excessively, they dance and even fight with each other “to the death“ (it’s fake, don’t worry!). This custom exists in many areas of Greece, from Thrace to Cyprus. Even though the people who dress up have many names - momogeroi, babougera, ragoutsia etc - they all symbolize the carefree spirit, childish fun and trickery. Don’t get in their way because they will chase you though the village!

In these festivals there are different characters like the bride, the devil, the cop etc, who can symbolize fertility, the New Year, the Old Year and other concepts.

Sometimes the bride (usually played by a man) is abducted and it’s said to be a remnant of a re-enactment of the abduction of the goddess Persephone by Hades.

In other areas the Dionysiac character of the festival is eccentuated by the presence of a man who pretends ot be the god of wine, vegetation, happiness, Dionysos.

In some areas there is also dancing around a gaitanaki!

In some areas a fake camel (three people under a cloth) is presented on the streets. It probably started as a spectacle for kids but in some cases today it’s a symbol of resilience and patience. It can also remind us of the magi who rode camels to visit baby Jesus.

There is also the story where a Greek woman is abducted by a Turk and three young men pretend to be a camel to enter the Turk’s wedding with her and steal her back! (Something like the Trojan Horse!)

25. Random Information

Namedays are the days when the saint who has your     name died. It's said that you actually take your name from them - even if     it comes from your grandparents the saint is the reason you have it.     In that day you bring treats to your school or work, or you treat your     friends to drinks or coffee. People give you wishes ("enjoy your     name" is the most common) and they call you on the phone to wish if     they are away. The most common name in Greece is Maria and in Maria’s     nameday everybody has to call half of their relatives and friends to wish.     It’s a bit offensive if someone doesn’t remember your nameday or if they     don’t call.

We bring food to the workplace in happy events -     like when your child was accepted into a university.

Lots of people cross themselves when they pass     outside a church.  They could be passing on foot, on the bus, or even     when they drive a motorcycle.

You also cross yourself when you call god for     protection or when you hear something strange (accompanied with "come     Christ and Virgin Mary!")

Making embroidery with the face of Jesus and/or     Virgin Mary is a thing.

40 days after the pregnancy women and their     newborns can     woman can go out of the house but they have to go to Church to be blessed     by a priest first.

We say "Christ!" when a person is     chocked and "Small healths!" when someone is sneezing.     When a baby is yawning bad spirits could come in so we cross their mouth.     We also give them eye bendants so the Evil Eye won't get to them. People     spit (just saying "ftou ftou ftou") the child after saying good     words for them so they can protect them from others who will flatter them     with malice. The Evil Eye is recognised by the Church. See more in my #mati     tag.

Bell ringing every day before the morning and     evening liturgy. It also chimes every hour. On Good Friday it rings solemnly all day.

Priests are considered spiritual leaders by many     in the sense they can listen to you and guide you like a psychologist. "My spiritual" people     call them.

You don't have to have your mind unguarded,     that's why Greek orthodoxy is against yoga which teaches the emptying of     mind 

Mondays and Wednesdays of all year are for     fasting - just meaning you don't eat meat. Some people also fast sexually on those days.

Hatzis- (from middle eastern "hajj") is     for people visiting the holy land (Israel) on pilgrimage.

The icons of saints you buy have to be blessed by     the Church before you hang them, so they can offer you a connection to the     divine.

Every day at school children gather in the yard     and one child says the Lord’s Prayer

We don't know the hymns by heart. They are too     many and long. But there are books you can read and older people (usually     women) usually study them.

All the saints in hagiographies look kinda     malnourished because they are supposed to avoid the earthly     pleasures. 

We give epithets to the saints according to their     characteristics - like we did with our ancient gods.

Lots of saints probably “covered” the dominions of older deities because Greeks were used to having smaller powerful entities for different stuff (there is even a saint who helps you find stuff if you dedicate a pie to the church)

We have a set of explanations for dreams (Ονειροκρίτης). For example, if you see something very good in your sleep about a person, misfortune will find them. If you see them dying, they will live for many years.

We read the future in the bottom of the cup of Greek coffee.

From the Byzantine era and today people buy holy wood - from the cross of Christ they say - and bones of saints. In the old time those were also used for witchcraft.If you are born on a Saturday you     don't see creatures or ghosts. Also people born on Saturday are lucky and     whatever they wish comes true.

Dick festivals are a thing in some areas and they mostly happen on Greek Carnival. Traditional sex songs with dances are also a     thing.

Virgin Mary is the mother of Greece, and you see her as a mermaid even. We are pretty chill with our divine figures - we use them in swearing a lot, too.

Many people cross themselves before and after     eating.

We take oil blessed from the Church and we put it     in the lamps of our home altars. We also anoint people who want to keep     safe with it. (My grandma made a cross in my forehead, for example). Many     take it home the myrrh produced by the bodies of saints.

We place a bone of a saint on the ground where a     church is going to be built.

Sometimes we call a priest to bless our new     vehicle!

Also, it’s not a very safe practice but a lot of people hand crosses and icons from their front mirror.

Notice that the #mati is also there!

[mentalcurls]

11. Una scelta stupida

Episode 11! The end of S1! I almost can’t believe I made it, I’m emotional. So this is I think the longest of all my analysis/ramblings posts of season 1 (almost 6 pages on GDoc) so good luck to any all brave souls who read this! Hopefully you’ll find interesting my opinions on trophy husbands, pregnancy scares, new and old headcanons on Elia and Edoardo and boys seldom facing the same consequences girls do for their actions. And of course at the end you can find the results for the Bechdel test!

look how cute the girls look in Eva’s pjs!

ok, so Eva’s parents are not home and she has the house to herself… except she hesitated quite a bit the night before to tell the girls she was available to take Silvia (and the rest of them) in; that’s not Eva-like tbh, the only reason I can see to do that is if her parents had somehow found out about Edoardo and Silvia’s rendezvous and had forbidden Eva to have anyone over

Eva’s mom has such a cool job, from the way Eva tells it she’s a textile buyer or seller (aka the dream for me): she’s one of the people who decide a couple of years before we see the runways what will trend in fashion as far as materials and print go

Giorgio Brighi is a trophy husband and he knows it and enjoys the perks

Sana being the icon she is and not drinking coffee, but tea

Federica. Fede. Girl. You had a perfectly good cutting board to put the oranges you already squeezed on. Why didn’t you??

btw, ok, I get it, orange juice is breakfast-y, but it’s JUNE which is not exactly prime orange season. Why force it? Put Fede to prepare toast with jam, she can make a mess of crumbs

if I’d just woken up all disoriented like Silvia, Eleonora crossing her arms at me would have scared me like shit

still, bless Eleonora Sava and her no-nonsense approach to the following conversation: Silvia can’t not eat, nothing special happened the night before, there’s a question they need to ask, how sure is she, ok so they’ll go to the free clinic this week, all without paraphrasing or being vague or judging Silvia; that is definitely the best way she could have handled it

and it is of course so important that the two people who talk to Silvia the most are Eleonora and Sana, the one who she had the most problems with, the ones she’s the most convinced will hate her

look at her! Silvia apologizing for being unwell and throwing up because she made a fuss! She was not low maintenance, she was actually so high maintenance she couldn’t anything by herself, she inconvenienced all the girls and forced them to take care of her and she made a scene! She doesn’t really know, but of course she imagines she made a scene at the party, arriving drunk at the party and making a spectacle of herself, fainting, making people worry about her. It is the very worst thing for her because she simultaneously acted not at all like a proper, refined girl and was super high maintenance: the stuff of nightmares for her

and if this scene isn’t a mirror of the very first scene of the series, where Gio and Marti mocked Eva for her mark in the history test and Gio “tried” to cheer her up saying that she was good at other things (I’d link to my post about ep.1 for my thoughts on that, but Tumblr would disappear my post from tags so 🤷‍♀️): except here the girls tell Silvia she’s good at something that genuinely is hard work and she actually is good at and worked to be good at and makes her proud of herself, even though the atmosphere is still silly and light and there are still jokes to make her laugh

I so empathize with the girls all looking at one another when it’s time to ask Silvia is she’s pregnant cause none of them wants to say it

Silvia can’t find her voice to answer them verbally 💔

Sana putting her mug down and exhaling, Fede inhaling sharply, opening her mouth like she wants to say something but can’t find the words

Eva is the one to think to ask, albeit indirectly, if Silvia took a test and she’s the one who reads the test and recognizes what it means: so she is pretty familiar with pregnancy scares and all that goes with them apparently, but wait a minute, why, exactly? Eva??

and really, I’d like to take a minute and appreciate Eleonora Sava here, because for all that she insisted on Silvia having safe sex, on taking her to the free clinic the first time around, for all she was pretty pissed when Silvia told them she and Edo didn’t use a condom, now that she could say “I told you so” in a multitude of ways from the most direct to the most subtle, she says nothing and offers Silvia an actionable plan for the near future to make her feel supported and comfortable 👏👏👏

honestly, Eleonora being able to just say entire sentences backwards is cool yet slightly creepy

yeeees the theatre kids are back! I missed them 💖 (they’re so passionate and they don’t care what people think of them and they reach out to people! Fucking role models)

theatre girl keeps sneaking looks at Ele, is there some unrequited crushing going on here???

Ele’s thumbs up cracks me up

bless him, theatre guy really wants people to believe there are almost no spots left, he’s so cute

I just realized who theatre guy goes to harass after Eva and Eleonora: he yells “Santini!” and while that is a pretty common surname, I know deep in my heart of hearts that he’s talking to Elia, so Elia used to be in the theatre group too when his, Eva’s, Gio’s and Marti’s class was in Succursale NEW HEADCANON ACCEPTED you can now pry it from my cold dead hands

so Edo has been texting Ele for a couple of weeks and she hasn’t answered any of his texts and, still, he waited at least ten days before trying to talk to her again: my headcanon that he thinks he’s some sort of mysterious romance novel guy a là Edward Cullen gets stronger and stronger (honestly, check out Brooding YA Hero on Twitter, half of the tweets are Edo, the other half are Nico when he’s trying to impress Marti. Honestly: these guys)

and again with that stupid “Eduardo” when they could have gone with gems such as Eriberto

his “Buongiorno, eh” that implies that she should have been the one to greet him first and she ignored him instead, even though he was standing behind her, find his perfect match in Ele’s “Wow” which shows exactly how impressed she is that he finally had the balls to at least actually talk to her face to face again

OMG the way he says her full name like he expects to get a prize or something for discovering it, like he expects her to be impressed and for that to woo her into his arms, instead of sounding borderline stalkerish

in fact, Eva is supremely unimpressed throughout the conversation

backwards compliments will get you nowhere Edo: if you tell her she’s smart, you don’t say she doesn’t show it the next minute (but again, this is a typical Brooding YA Hero move)

that “Everytime you say no to me, I only want you more” is straight out of some clichè romance novel like GOD, can you be more obvious Edo?

Ele’s unimpressed raised eyebrow gives me life

and when nothing else works, like any good asshole, Edoardo goes goes for simple shock value, goes for the thing that will make Ele look stupid and uptight and a jerk if she gets mad about it, goes for words she can’t have a rebuttal for, goes for fake vulnerability and kindness (as proven by the way he smiles smug like he knows exactly what he is doing), goes for physical attractiveness which can imply objectification and sexualization (especially when you think about the fact Edo complimented her intelligence but immediately backtracked a couple of line earlier)

Eva saved you there, Edoardo. Ele might have been taken aback for a second, but when she saw you smirking, she started gearing up for one hell of a roast and I honestly struggled to think how you would have survived another one

the girls just march into the doctor’s office unannounced???

Sana’s eyebrow raise at the doctor’s “Salam aleikum” is 💯💯💯

for realsies though, how sarcastic is that “Benissimo” from the doctor?? Like, she spent what I expect was an excruciating amount of time teaching Silvia how to put on a condom (based on how scared Silvia was of the fake dick she would have had to practice on) and now it seems she didn’t even use it? She’s over it

oh, but Ele and Sana have both been thinking bout this, they’ve planned how things will go for Silvia: in Ele’s mind how she’ll have to have an abortion, she doesn’t even need her parents permission since she’s 16 but at the same time she’s just 16 and the father is not in the picture as well as an asshole, she has the maturità next year and she can’t really handle a pregnancy and a newborn baby at the same time as school and her exams and the psychological aspects, and she has the beginning of an ED on top of all of that; Sana on the other hand is planning for Silvia keeping the baby, influenced by her being religious, but she’s a practical girl nonetheless and thinking of adoption I expect, then of how Silvia will have to face the music at home and at school and the girls will have to support her, but also of how a pregnancy might be in some ways good for her because it will make her have a completely different relationship with her body and food and boys and even with her family

and Silvia doesn’t speak. Silvia doesn’t have an opinion in this. She tried to “kill Edoardo’s baby” the previous week, but here she doesn’t speak, even when it is her body and potentially her baby on the line

the only thing she’s insistent about is that she took a test, even when the doctor is prescribing some actual medical tests (not saying pharmacy bought pregnancy tests aren’t accurate, but they can sometimes be wrong)

she’s just so resigned

Silvia and the other girls don’t seem to know what an ovulation test is?? But they were so well informed about contraceptives in ep.5! Fall of a myth

Silvia’s poor cousin who wants to have a baby but can’t check if she’s fertile so she can have sex at the right moment 😕

the relief on the other girls faces when the doctor says Silvia’s not pregnant

and the doctor is good, she saw right through Silvia and understood immediately what was the actual problem, but I’m kind of mad she didn’t say anything more than “You can’t live on love and air” to Silvia about eating better, she’s a doctor ffs

woman-on-a-mission-Eva is back and walking towards Marti, I’d be scared if I were you bby, she even wore the heavy boots to kick your ass better

aaand he tries to act  like nothing’s wrong; Marti, did you really think you’d get away with it??

Eva is so impressed Marti called her to talk and all he talks about is Gio and not telling Gio about how he knew of Eva cheating and the mess he made

and I can’t even imagine how betrayed Eva feels right now: not only she finds out about more lies Gio told, but it is also confirmed that someone she relied on, someone she thought was on her side, at least back then, was not, ever

and I said it before, but Gio and Marti would happily take a bullet for one another, Eva was a bit naive there thinking Martino would side with her; sure, it turns out he didn’t exactly side with Gio for the last part of this story, acting in a self-serving way, but he sure as hell never really spared much thought to Eva

just so you know, I’m torn: half of me is like “he did all of that and now he has the nerve to CRY?” and wants to grab him and shake him out of stupid; the other half is going “my baby! my poor baby! OMG, this is breaking my heart make it stop” (S2 I blame you)

“un po’ un’infamata”/”a bit of a shitty thing” UN PO’? UN PO’???? (imagine me pulling a full Captain Raymond Holt reacting to Agent Rosa Diaz telling him he and his husband need to “bone”)

everytime Eva turns to Marti, then turns away, she gets more disbelieving and a piece of her heart breaks a bit more

and all the pieces fall into place, finally, so Eva finally feels like she has the full picture of when and how her life fell apart: she takes a step back while listening to Marti, look at it attentively, and she can’t help but pinpoint one specific moment as the one where it all went to hell

yes, great choice telling a kid with a mentally ill mother he’s a “psycho”

“It’ll sound absurd, but I never wanted to hurt you” YES IT DOES SOUND ABSURD AND I DON’T NEED PERMISSION FROM YOU TO THINK THAT MARTINO ALSO GO TO HELL

also, look who’s been taking lesson from bodice-ripper-clichès-spouter extraordinaire Edoardo Incanti *drumroll* Martino, and the pupil is already better than the master cause he’s far more convincing

and I can’t really begin to pretend to understand what goes through Eva’s head here, why she decides to joke and forgive Marti this quickly: is it because she’s seen the big picture and come to her decision and has decided thing would have come to this one way or another anyways? Is it because she’s gotten attached to the idea of Marti being into her and she’s planning to give him a chance, like she obviously does at the end of the year party? Is it honestly because she feels like it’s karma/the universe paying her back for how she hurt Laura? Is it because her and Marti were really close even before she dated Gio? (which makes only half sense to me since they’ve only known one another four year tops, and yeah, okay, it’s four years, but it’s also just four years)

that shot where Eva leans her head on Marti’s shoulder though. Poetic cinema.

and WHAT ARE THE ODDS? Gio is there

and like, why’s Gio so worried about justifying who he’s with, when he and Eva are on a pause??

also he’s in red again here with his brother. But he’s in dark green at Eva’s the next day, which is in his normal palette of cold colors

“There was a very real possibility you would’ve rejected me or that a mess would have happened.” and that’s it. The possibility of a mess never actually happened in Gio’s view of things, because he never really face much consequences of his cheating on his girlfriend: Laura dumped him, sure, but she made her peace with him, he still goes to her house even; his friends are still his friends and support his new relationship (Marti wanting to break them up is not because of the cheating, is because of his own reasons so it doesn’t count rn), no one really holds a grudge against him, he doesn’t have a bad reputation, he doesn’t feel insecure at all, actually going from girl to girl like that probably boosted his self esteemed and raised the opinion his friends have of him

and while with Canegallo Eva didn’t actually kiss him first, so at least she had that; with Gio she did, she kissed him first, so she probably feels like she deserved all the shit that happened to her

and really, these kids waiting for signs from the universe through playlists on shuffle, who do they think they are, Romeo and Juliet? (They probably do.) (They should have seen the break up coming then, though, cause Romeo and Juliet don’t really have a “ and they lived happily ever after”)

and finally Eva lies it all out on the table for him, all the thing he never fully understood she had to go through because of him, of them

and maybe this hurt him, but as Eva says, she’s been hurting for a whole year and he never got that, he never hurt, he never tried to really understand and support her, he was just same old Gio and a good boyfriend by his own standards, but I doubt he ever stopped to ask Eva what she really needed (and like, it’s fine. He is 16 years old, he’ a kid, he’s allowed to make mistakes, but he needs to be put face to face with them to see them and grow, and I love him so much anyways, he’s my favorite always)

on a less profound note, those shoes. They really look like a perfect Tumblr aesthetic pic when they hug and their feet are close, the Eva gets on her tiptoes

and I’d kind of forgotten how they show of the sex scene? again, like I said in ep.2, 7.6 Due ore and the red room scene in 8.5 Tu non sei di Milano are perfect and I love them and I wouldn’t change a thing, but it objectively true Evanni sex scenes are more “graphic” than Nicotino sex scenes

confirmed that staring contests are Evanni’s version of post sex-cuddles

Maria Sorgato is back! Look at her being a queen and rocking that black Gucci-esque top and playing MC

oh, God, Canegallo sounds like one of the guys who run the rides at local fairs and hypes up 13-year-olds to take those 5-for-the-price-of-4 deals on ride tickets

now, I’m Italian, I went to 4 end of the year parties during my 5 years of high school and we never, not once, did something so cheesy as this, nor did a 1995 song ever play at such a party, nor any Renato Zero song, and definitely not “I migliori anni della nostra vita” (which I’ve read someone call “somewhat of a hymn for Italian teenagers” and I was like W H A T? Where? When?) so I can say for sure this is terrible representation of Italian culture, but a cute-ish scene on its own

Alice waving to Eva, awww 💕

Gio waving to Eva, double awww 💕 + bonus Elia and Peccio hugging like there’s no tomorrow next to Gio 💕

Eva lately doesn’t have much time or patience for niceties with Marti, she goes straight to the point

woah, such enthusiasm from Marti at the news Eva is finally single!

awww but it’s because he’s a good friend, he’s worried about how she feels, if she’s hurting! (Ok this is me being bitter, he actually is a cutie about this)

what is Marti looking at when Ele is checking her phone? What draws him to the bar as fast as possible? Gio??

YASSS for surprise hugs and amends! Good for you Laura, you’re looking like a nicer person already without all those grudges

oh, Silvia’s dress is so cute, except why does it fit so poorly? The neckline is all skewed and the armhole gapes! It’s her Revenge dress™! She’s been planning her look for 3 weeks! It should be tailored for the gods!

on the other hand, look at Silvia walking out of the woods, both the real-but-fake ones that are part of the decor and the metaphorical ones of the last few months

and in fact, look, they make light of the incident at Alice’s friends party!

except then the monsters of months past (Edo) come visit and start looming over Silvia

Edoardo jumping over that fence thing to go talk to Silvia is 100% Olio Cuore romance novel clichè

Silvia actually takes a few step backwards as he get closer to talk to her, she’s honest to God scared of what he wants to tell her, she fully expects him to be there to make fun and humiliate her again

and then he kisses her on the cheek! Why? Dude, I went off William og in my previous discussions of your behaviour towards Silvia and that means you don’t want Silvia around you because she’s too clingy and you don’t want her to believe you have feelings for her: why kiss her on the cheek then? You apologized, you were nice, you could have just said “See you around at school next year” and be done with it, leave her without any delusions; instead you went for the one act that might give her hope she has some of your affection. Why? Is is your inner Harlequin hero taking control of your body? Is it just that you secretly enjoy having a harem of girls pining for you? (oh, soz, you do enjoy that, I’d forgotten)

look how excited Silvia is! She was expecting the worst and she got almost the best instead! Of course she’s enamoured with Edo all over again, he’s not even a monster anymore!

at least he says bye to Eva too

this party has been pretty amazing for Eva up till now, whereas it must have been so fucking stressful for poor Ele?! She has to manage Edoardo, both making sure he fulfills his promise and keeping him at bay re: their date, she has to find fricking Silvia and on top of that she finds gay porn on Marti’s phone

btw, how did that happen? Ok it’s in his favorites, but you don’t exactly see browser favorites from the phone app 🤔 girl you wanna tell me something? Were you planning some nasty surprise for him cause Eva told you he was the one who triggered the fight, the school-wide rumors, the whole mess with Gio? (Look at Ele hitting back for her girl, cause sure she’s into Eva but she also just wants her to be happy and Marti made her definitely not happy 😡 also Evanora always on my mind)

and then 30 seconds straight (lol) of Eva being baffled and confused and just generally shook

Bechdel test: this episode passes the test! The conversations that make it pass are the two conversations at Eva’s house in the morning, despite a brief mention of her dad and the almost-ever present ghost of Edoardo over Silvia, and the conversation at the free clinic with the doctor.

Thank you so much for sticking with me through this!

This post is part of my complete series of meta about Skam Italia season 1. If you’d like to read more of my thoughts about the other episodes, you can find the mastepost linked in the top bar on my blog under SKAMIT: EVA. Cheers!

[ghostbustermelanieking]

locking out the ghosts chapter five

chapter one, chapter two, chapter three, chapter four

s5 fic: spoilers for all souls and a little bit for the pine bluff variant and mind’s eye, part of my series that i write as i rewatch the x files.

disclaimer: i’m not trying to be preachy with this chapter in any way, shape, or form. most religious-related stuff is straight from 5x17 all souls, and the rest is just my interpretation of what scully would be feeling during/after the episode. 

warning for discussion of child death (in the context of all souls and emily).

Things are fine afterwards. Fine. They work the Marty Glenn case in Delaware, and things are fine—at least between them. They don't agree on Marty Glenn’s innocence, not at first, but the truth comes to light easily. Marty goes to prison and Mulder seems disappointed. He goes to visit Marty in prison, offers to talk to the judge, but Marty refuses. Waiting outside for him, Scully wonders if he has a crush on Marty, the same way she did on Esther or Jack. If he does, she suspects it will fizzle out to nothing the same way her crushes did. If he does, she can't be jealous, because she's the one who broke up with him.

Time moves forward with ease, cases coming and going, little to no tension arising between them. Nearly before Scully realizes what is happening, it is Easter and her mother is flying down to see Bill and Tara and Matthew again. (She is absolutely delighted with this first grandchild of hers. Somehow, Scully has thought more than once, Emily doesn't exactly count.) She invites Scully, who vehemently denies and tries not to feel hurt. Her mother prods gently, suggesting that they visit Emily’s grave with flowers. Scully knows she means well, but her daughter's name in her mother's mouth after months of silence on the subject stings like a slap across the face. “Thank you, Mom, but it's too soon,” she says instead. “I'd rather stay here. I'll go to Mass.” She's been going to Mass every Sunday lately—she'd started going every now and then after her cancer went into remission, but since Emily, she's gone every Sunday that she's not been out of town on a case. She'd hoped that God could help her find peace.

(She thinks she is starting to find that peace. She'd moved the picture of Emily from her wallet to her desk drawer back in March, where she won't keep accidentally stumbling across it. She hasn't moved the chair in front of the spare room, though. Something inside of her won't let her. Like whatever is inside might get out. Like if she moves the chair, she'll be letting Emily go.)

She goes to the Easter service, and Father McCue asks for her help afterwards. He tells her about the Kernofs, and she feels that familiar pang in her chest when he tells her of their lost daughter Dara. She thinks that he wants her to investigate, until he says, “The Kernofs are devout, but their faith is giving them little comfort. I thought with your background your words might carry a certain weight.” Scully realizes then, the pain in her chest sharpening, that Father McCue wants her to comfort them. Because he knows about what happened to Emily. Her mother must've told him, she hasn't confided in Father McCue about this. He could mean her background in criminal investigations, of course, he could want her to tell them that everything is fine and the girl's death wasn't painful or was inevitable or something to that degree. Or he could want her to relate to them in their shared losses. Either way, he seems to want her to solidify their faith in God.

She doesn't tell him that she doesn't feel like her own faith in God is very strong at the moment, after the things she's seen and experienced. That her recent regular attendance of Mass is an attempt to restore that faith in herself.She tells Father McCue that she's available to meet with the Kernofs on Tuesday. The next day, at work, she considers telling Mulder, but ultimately decides not to. This could be a case, or it could be a simple hour or two spent attempting to comfort the Kernofs. If it turns out to be nothing, there's no need to pull Mulder into all of this.

When Scully goes to see the Kernofs the next day, the husband barely speaks to her. The wife is kinder—an understandably muted kindness. She offers Scully a drink before heading off to find a picture of Dara to show her. She tells her that Dara was found dead in the streets, eyes burned out. She shows her a picture of Dara on her birthday and tells her that their theory is that she was struck by lightning, that they have no idea how she even got out of the house. That she was praying when her father found her. The way Mrs. Kernof describes her husband is painfully similar to everything Scully has been feeling. The lack of understanding as to why God would let an innocent girl die. She agrees to help them.

The coroner clears things up and makes things muddier all at the same time. She tells Scully that the cause of death is unclear, due to the lack of burns anywhere but her eye sockets. The religious overtones are obvious, between the rigored kneeling position Dara is still in and the coroner commenting that it's as if God struck her down. Scully has no idea why God would do something like that.

The coroner hasn't looked into Dara’s birth parents. Scully decides on a whim to involve Mulder, at least to find some information for her. She calls him, but he doesn't answer; he must be busy or something. She leaves him a message urging him to call her back as soon as possible and heads home. It starts to rain, hard. She steadies her breathing, staring straight ahead out of the windshield. She keeps her mind firmly on Dara Kernof and doesn't let her mind wander from the case. It doesn't matter. She is going to help this family find peace. Dara Kernof is not Emily, and she is going to find her killer. Or at least find out what happened to her.

At home, she flips through the crime scene photos, looking for any clues as to what could've happened. She finds nothing, Dara's charred eye sockets staring out at her. They start to look as if they are pleading, crying out for her help. She falters. She gives into this pull in her stomach, her heart, pulls open her desk drawer and digs out Emily’s picture underneath all the stuff she slid it under. Her daughter's bright face grins out at her from underneath banners and a party hat. A birthday party she never saw, that she should've been the one throwing. A week is not enough time with your baby. She wonders if the Kernofs are thinking about all the birthdays they will never celebrate with their daughter, all the years they've lost.

Overwhelmed, she sighs, letting her eyes slip closed. The rain pours. It had rained the night she'd arranged Emily’s funeral, Mulder's hand squeezing her knee for comfort as she called the funeral parlor where the Sims had been buried. She thought it was fitting, like the sky was broken open and sobbing. She hoped it never stopped. But the sun had shone the day of the funeral. It felt wrong.

The phone rings and she scoops it up, answering with a simple, “Hello.”

“Hey, Scully,” Mulder says on the other end, voice rushed. “I’m returning your call.”

“Hi,” she says. “Uh, something’s come up. I was, uh, hoping that you could do me a favor.”

“Why? What's going on?”

“This isn’t official FBI business so I was hoping that we could keep it outside of work,” she explains.

“Hey, look,” he blurts, “I’m, uh…  I’m kind of tailing a possible suspect right now, so I’m kind of rushed, so, uh…”

“I need some birth and adoptive records on a Dara Kernof.”

“Who?”

“Dara Kernof. I can’t tell you much more than that, Mulder. I’m sorry,” she says, somewhat apologetically.

“You want to give me a hint? Anything?” he prods.

“Not until you get me those records,” says Scully.

She expects more prodding on his part, but instead he says, “All right, I'll talk to you later,” before hanging up. He must've really been busy.

Scully sets the phone down, rubbing her temples wearily. Resisting the urge to look at the photo again, she slides it back in her desk, shuffling the crime scene photos and sliding them back into the folder. She can't work anymore tonight. She takes a scalding shower and goes to bed. She tries not to think.

The next morning, the police department that investigated Dara's death calls her early in the morning. A girl, Paula Koklos, has died in an identical way to Dara Kernof. A girl who is physically identical to Dara Kernof. Another young girl dead. Scully goes immediately.

Mulder finds her there, somehow. He's eager, immediately intrigued by the entire case. Scully tells him that she didn't want to involve him, although she's not entirely sure why. Maybe because this feels too personal. Or maybe because of the way he's treating it like some big, magical X-File. He's found Dara's birth records, he tells her. He's found that she was a quadruplet. That there are two other girls out there, Dara and Paula’s sisters, who may still be alive.

Mulder's theory is that some religious wacko is the murderer, based off of the position the girls died in and the upside-down cross found in Paula’s room. The social worker—one Aaron Starkey—directs them to Paula’s intended adopted father, one Father Gregory. They leave immediately, some unspoken agreement that Mulder would be consulting.

In the car, Mulder asks the inevitable question. “So, not to prod, Scully, but why didn't you want to involve me? Want this one all to yourself?”

Scully swallows, cheek pressed against the window. “No, I… thought you wouldn't be interested. Religious imagery and all,” she says lightly.

“I'm always up for a case,” Mulder teases. “Even with religious imagery.”

He's never seemed very interested in those in the past, but Scully doesn't say this. They're mostly quiet until they reach The Church of St. Peter the Sinner. “Unusual name,” Mulder cracks.

The church is just as unusual as its name, and Father Gregory is a fitting pastor. He claims to have wanted to protect Paula, to have known her birth mother. He seems to think that Paula and Dara's death was the will of God. Mulder thinks he's full of crap. Surprisingly—or maybe unsurprisingly, considering Mulder's beliefs that have been made clear in the past—he seems to think that there is no supernatural element to this case. He acts like he doesn't know what she's talking about when she brings it up.

“Well,” Scully says in response to this, “Dara Kernof was baptized on the day of her death. She was sanctified by the ritual sacrament… submerged in the spirit.”

“And why would God allow this to happen? Why do bad things happen to good people? Religion has masqueraded as the paranormal since the dawn of time to justify some of the most horrible acts in history.”

“I was raised to believe that God has his reasons, however mysterious.”

“He may well have his reasons but he seems to use a lot of psychotics to carry out his job orders,” Mulder says, like he's trying to be funny, like he's trying to be cocky. “You want to find out who did this? I suggest you autopsy the body of Paula Koklos before it’s interred, before the man who killed her has a chance to find her sisters.”

He heads for the car, climbing into the driver's side. Scully follows wearily. This is why she didn't want to bring him on; because he always freezes up on religious cases, becomes rigid in his disbelief in those things. It's infuriating, because if this were any other case, she knows he would believe every word out of Father Gregory’s mouth. But once again, they've found themselves at odds. Where they usually are.

She goes to begin the autopsy on Paula Koklos and hallucinates her baby on the metal slab. Emily’s pleading eyes, blue as her mother's and her sister's. She looks so small under the blanket. She calls her Mommy. “Mommy, please,” she says, pleading, and Scully can feel herself crumbling. This is not real, she tells herself after turning away and finding Paula there when she turns back. She is trying very hard not to cry. You are seeing things as a result of stress brought on by the similarity of this case to a traumatic experience you've recently had to deal with. But this doesn't erase the image. The sound of her daughter's voice calling her Mommy, calling for help. And she can't help but wonder if this is all a sign, if God is sending her visions. If this is all happening for a reason and she is an integral part in his plan.

She finishes the autopsy. She doesn't know how, but she finishes it. Types up the transcript and goes home. She crawls into bed and finds herself unable to sleep, tossing and turning and pushing at the layers of blankets. She's so cold. It's April in Virginia, and she is freezing.

It's not until Scully gets up and goes into the living room to retrieve her photo of Emily that she can fall asleep. She curls, shivering, in the bed with the only thing she has left of her daughter under her hand. She wakes the next morning with the photo a little crumpled under her cheek. She thinks she dreamed, but she can’t remember what about.

---

The autopsy bay is crowded the next morning. Scully decides to reexamine the results of the Paula Koklos case, having judged that she wasn’t in her right mind the night before. (She couldn't really have found those winglike things, she had to have imagined or misdiagnosed it.) She is putting up the x-rays when Mulder calls, with the news that he may have tracked down another sister and that he and the social worker Aaron Starkey are looking for her in DC. He hangs up on her before she can finish explaining the night before. Less than an hour later, he's calling to tell her that the third girl is dead and Father Gregory is in custody.

Hearing the news, Scully can't help but feel a rush of frustration. I should've been there, she wants to scream. God must want her to save these girls; that's why he sent Emily to her. But another one is dead, another innocent life. She is failing.

Father Gregory insists that he is protecting the girls, that the devil wants to kill them. He tries to find common ground with Scully.  “You know. You’ve already guessed… what they are.” He tries to convince her to let him go so that the fourth girl can be protected.

Scully doesn't. Aside from the fact that Mulder would think her insane, she doesn't think it's necessary. Father Gregory may play an integral part, but she is going to save the fourth girl (who Mulder identifies as Roberta Dyer directly after their interrogation of the Father). She has to be the one—why else would God have sent her the vision of Emily? Those who have visions have some sort of purpose, and this is hers.

If only Mulder knew that. “Don't let this guy get in your head,” he tells her encouragingly, almost comfortingly. “That’s the last thing you want. Sometimes the most twisted ones are the most persuasive.”

“Mulder, he knows where she is,” she says.

“Well, that’s okay. As long as he’s locked up here, it doesn’t matter.”

“You’re not going to find her. I think you’re being misled,” she says in a rush.

“By who?” he wants to know, and she has no answer. None that he'd believe, anyway. “Scully, I think you’re the one who’s being misled. Not just willingly, but willfully. I’ve never seen you more vulnerable or susceptible or more easily manipulated and it scares me because I don’t know why.”

“I saw Emily,” she says, because maybe it will make him understand. He's believed people on visions of Samantha before—the miracle healer from years ago, for one thing. Second time they've mentioned her name aloud in months. “She came to me in a vision.”

Mulder doesn't say anything. She looks away, suddenly unable to look him in the eye. He steps closer, puts his hand on the back of her neck and leans close enough that their foreheads are almost touching. He looks off to the side as if checking for someone, and for an absurd moment, Scully thinks he's going to kiss her forehead in the middle of a damn police station to comfort her. She doesn't even think she'd mind at this point.

Instead, he says, “I think you should step away.”

He steps back, hand coming down to cover her shoulder, and she looks off to the side, blinking hard before looking back at him. “Personal issues are making you lose your objectivity,” he's saying, “clouding your judgement.”

Like that hasn't been an issue for him on a thousand goddamn cases. She's lost people too, now, damnit. She should get the same pass he's had for a while now. “You go,” she says out loud, nearly before she realizes she is saying it. “Go find the girl. I'm going to finish up with Father Gregory.” Because it's easier to agree than argue, especially in situations like this, and damnit, is this how he felt when she told him he should be off Modell’s case? She'd felt she was right at the time, and surely that's the same way Mulder feels. That he's protecting her from getting herself or others hurt. But then again, he was right on the Modell case and she feels she is right now. She knows she is right, she has to be.

“Okay,” Mulder is saying softly, taking the folder from her and walking off. Scully swallows, doesn't say anything else. She looks back down at the photo of Roberta Dyer, running her fingernails over the edge. There has to be a way to save her. She can't fail someone else.

But any hope of Father Gregory helping her is lost—he's found dead in the locked interrogation room, skin harshly blistered and burned with a guard right outside.

It takes a long time for everything to be cleared up, for them to interview everyone nearby about anything they may have heard or saw or done, and to take the body away. Scully puts in a request to do the autopsies, but she's not allowed to that night. So instead, she heads out to her car at close to ten, planning to call Mulder on the road and touch base with him. But her key won't turn in the lock of the driver's side.

Brow furrowing, she shuffles the keys in her hand, planning to try again when the phone rings. She pulls it out of her pocket and pulls out the antenna, putting it up to her ear. “Hello.”

“Yeah, hi, Scully, it's me,” Mulder says in a rush.

“He's dead, Mulder,” she tells him, bluntly.

“Who?”

“Father Gregory,” she says, fiddling with her keys. “They found him alone in the interrogation room. No one can figure it out. There was a guard sitting right outside the room.” The keys tumble from her hand and she kneels to pick them up, still holding the phone to her ear.

“We didn’t find her. The fourth girl—she was here,” Mulder is saying. But something seems to outweigh that. A strange whispering sound, and black shoes in front of her that have appeared seemingly out of nowhere. She didn't hear anyone else out here.

“Hey, Scully,” Mulder says. She doesn't respond. She looks slowly up, slowly… “Scully, you there? Answer me.” It's a man, light protruding from behind him, and yet it can't be a man. “Scully?” Mulder prods on the other end, and she can't answer because she's staring up in horror as the man's face shifts, changes to an eagle and then a lion, and Mulder is still calling her name, and the light grows brighter as the faces change…

When it fades, she is alone, still crouched on the ground with her keys in hand, her knees aching. The thing is gone. Her phone is silent in her other hand.

Scully gets to her feet, trembling a little, and scans the parking lot quickly. No one—no one going to their car or driving away, no men with many faces. The only lights are fluorescent. Shaking her head hard, she tries her key again. It works this time.

Her phone rings again a few minutes later. She answers it. “Scully?” Mulder shouts into the phone, frantic, before she can even put the phone up to her ear.

She tucks it between her cheek and her shoulder, says, “I'm here.”

Mulder's sigh is one of both of relief and of exasperation. “Thank God,” he says shakily. “I thought you were… I almost called the police.”

Somehow, Scully thinks bitterly, digging her fingernails into the leather of the steering wheel, I don't think God is who you would be thanking. “I'm fine,” she says.

“What the hell happened?” Mulder demands.

She swallows dryly. “I… I saw something.” She did, she can't deny it. For the first time in a long time, she can't deny it. Not after everything that's happened on this case.

“What? Another vision?”

Scully licks her lips. “I suppose you could say that,” she says carefully—because that thing couldn't have really been there, the same way Emily wasn't there. God is trying to speak to her.

“Jesus, Scully,” Mulder says in quiet awe. “This case… what the hell is it doing to you?”

She clenches her jaw, holding the wheel tighter. “Mulder…”

“I'm worried about you,” he's saying. “I think you need to walk away from this case, Scully. You seeing things… that's definitely not normal.”

“And you seeing things is normal?” she snaps. “What about you, Mulder? You see things on every case we're on ,and you never get booted off for that. And you're always furious when you are! Remember how upset you were when Skinner and I pulled you off the Bowman case?”

He doesn't say anything for a minute. “That's… different.”

“Why? Because you were right then and you think I'm wrong now?”

Mulder's silence is longer this time. Scully stares straight ahead at the road, glaring at the headlights across the median. Something bigger than a religious fanatic murderer is going on here—she just wishes someone could see it besides her.

“I'm just worried about you, Scully,” Mulder says finally. “Worried about your…”

“Call me if you find the fourth girl, Mulder,” Scully says tightly and hangs up, letting the phone drop in the seat beside her.

---

She goes to see Father McCue the next morning instead of going into the police station, to get his opinion on the things she's been seeing. If she could just figure out what God's trying to tell her…

Father McCue identifies the thing from the parking garage as a Seraphim from her description, an angel with four faces. The story he tells of the Nephilim, the children of the Seraphim and mortals, and the way that they are called back to heaven to protect them from the Devil, feels too familiar. It feels too much like what is happening. But Father McCue doesn't agree. He thinks she is imagining it based off of hearing the story a long time ago. Clear that she will get nowhere with him on the subject, he tells Scully that he believes God has his reasons. In the moment, she believes that, too.

Directly outside of the church, the social worker, Aaron Starkey, shows up and tells Scully that Mulder has been trying to reach her because they found the fourth girl at Father Gregory’s church. She rides with him down there, panic coursing through her the whole time. Whatever happens, she has to protect the girl. She has to protect Roberta.

When they get to the church, Scully goes straight in while Starkey lingers behind. The church is empty and silent, no sign of Mulder or any police ever having been there. When she turns to question Starkey about it, he answers in a low, menacing tone. She looks down and sees horns atop his shadow. Like the devil. She swallows and turns away to look for Roberta.

She finds Roberta under the stairs, cowering in fear. She reassures her, offers her a way out, and the girl tentatively reaches out to take her hand. Scully leads her further into the church, away from Starkey’s angry demands, muttering reassuring things. And then the light comes.

The light fills up the room, blinding her. Starkey is protesting in an inhuman voice. Roberta steps towards the light. Scully holds onto her hand, pleading with her to stay back. She can't let the girl die, she's still so young…

She looks again and sees Emily. Emily asking her to let her go. Emily calling her Mommy. “Emily,” she says in a trembling voice. She could never let her go, not her daughter…

“Mommy, please let me go,” Emily says. “Mommy, please.”

Her little fingers slip out of Scully's.

Scully watches her walk away, and she cries out for her. Not her daughter, not again. “Emily?” she calls, desperately, pleading, but Emily steps into the light anyway. “Oh, God,” she whispers, eyes slipping closed.

When she opens them, Emily is gone. When she opens them, the light is gone and so is Starkey. When she opens them, Roberta is dead.

Weakened by grief, by fear, by guilt, Scully collapses into a chair.

She tells herself that Roberta is in heaven now, where she'll be happy with her sisters. (She reminds herself that Emily is there, too, and she is in a better place.) She tells herself that this is God's will, that his means are mysterious but there was a reason he made her see Emily. He wanted her to let Roberta go. She tells herself she did the right thing.

But it is impossible to believe these things with Roberta stiff in her kneeling position only feet away. Her charred eyes look like they're calling for help, the same way Paula’s and Dara's did. An innocent girl. Scully calls for someone to come and get the body. When she hangs up, she bursts into tears.

---

When Mulder gets to Father Gregory’s church, he arrives just in time to see the stretcher being taken out of the building. The bizarrely-shaped black body bag that has the impression of kneeling.

“Oh, shit,” he whispers, moving into a jog. “Scully?” he calls out, though he has no idea if she's here, and enters the building in time to see her slumped in a chair in the makeshift sanctuary. Her arms are wrapped tightly around her torso, as if to try and shield herself. Her eyes are haunted, red and puffy.

“Scully.” He skids to a stop in front of her, putting his hands on her shoulder. “Scully, what happened? Was that Roberta Dyer?”

Scully nods, jaw clenched. She's looking at something somewhere past her; her hands clutch her arms tighter. “She's dead,” she says in a hollow voice.

“Are you okay?” Scully nods. Mulder doesn't let it end there, plows on like a freight train. “What the hell happened? Were you too late?”

She doesn't answer, still not looking at him.

Mulder sighs, collapsing in a chair beside her. Another girl dead, an innocent girl they should've been able to save. God, this must be killing Scully. And if she was here… “How did you know she was here?” he wants to know.

She finally turns to meet his eyes. “Starkey brought me,” she says numbly, but slightly accusatory. “He said that you were trying to reach me, that you had found the girl.”

“I don't know what you're talking about,” he says, hands flat against his knees, pressing down. “I thought you were going to take some time off. I thought that was what we agreed on last night, after you didn't answer me on the phone for about ten minutes and scared the shit out of me.”

Scully's shoulders tense even more, something he would've found impossible a few minutes ago. “I thought you needed me to come out here. That's what Starkey told me.”

“I never said a word to Starkey.” Mulder's hands ball into nervous fists on his knees. “Where is he, anyway?”

“Gone,” Scully mutters. Her arms are hanging loosely by her side now, her fingers trembling.  

“Gone where?”

“I don't know. Mulder, I think Starkey might’ve been who we've been looking for. I think he might’ve had a hand in what happened to those girls.”

“So, what, you think he's God?” Mulder demands. “Or the Devil? How did he kill Roberta Dyer?”

Scully's mouth thins. “Mulder, you're not being fair. Of all the theories I've gone out on a limb for, because you believed them…”

“This is different.”

Something inside Scully seems to snap here. “How? How is it different? An innocent girl is dead, and I should've been able to stop it!” she explodes. “And maybe I would've if I hadn't… if you hadn't… we are partners, Mulder, and goddamnit, you believe in everything, everything except for God. You conveniently decide not to believe, and you're not there when I need you… when I need your help…”

“I thought you didn't need my help,” Mulder says in a low voice, hating every word as it comes out of his mouth. Hating himself. “You made that pretty clear in San Diego.”

Scully flinches, looks away. He notices just then that her hands are shaking; her hands are shaking, and he's bringing up San Diego, and fuck, he's such an idiot. Fuck.

Scully stands, her eyes teary but her face steely as ever. Her voice, too, strong and clear as a bell as she says, “Fuck you, Mulder.” And then she gets up and turns to leave.

---

The next day is Saturday, so Scully has more than enough reason not to go into work. That's good; she's tired of taking sick days. She downs sleeping pills and sleeps for hours at a time. She dreams tumultuous dreams of the quadruplets staring at her with their charred eyes, pleading for help. And Emily, looking tiny among the angels and demons and the wash of bright lights. She reaches for help that Scully can't give. She cries out for her, calls her Mommy.

Scully wakes with a start, hobbles to the bathroom to splash cold water on her face. It doesn't help. She crouches, trembling, on the tile and presses her face into the cotton of her towel so she won't have to hear her sobs echoing off the empty walls. She mutters something again and again into the fabric. It might be I'm sorry.

Eventually, Scully picks herself up off the cold tile and goes to sit on the couch. She turns on the TV with no idea what is playing. She loses hours at a time, the way she did the first few days after San Diego. She remembers dinner when it starts to get dark outside, goes into the kitchen and microwaves a frozen meal.

Her mother called at some point during the day to check on her; they hadn't talked for awhile, and she wants to know if Scully is planning to come to Mass the next day. When the phone rings again, Scully assumes it's her mother calling again. She lets it go to voicemail and is somewhat surprised when Mulder's voice crackles over the answering machine. “Hey, Scully, it's me,” he says. “If you're screening this, pick up. I'm worried about you.”

Scully doesn't pick up. She chews on her thumbnail absently. Mulder sighs. “I'm sorry, Scully. I shouldn't have said what I said yesterday. I don't blame you for Roberta Dyer's death. God knows I've fucked up that way plenty of times, and you're always there to pull me back from the edge. I know now… how hard this case was on you. I wish… I wish I'd figured it out sooner.” He sounds miserable. He sounds sorry. Tears well up at Scully's eyes; she stares down at the plastic case of shitty spaghetti she didn't heat up enough.

“I'm sorry for bringing up San Diego, Scully. I'm not mad at you about that. I'm not… I know I fucked up again. I've done that too much lately. And I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. And I just wanted you to know…” The beep of the answering machine cuts him off.

Scully sniffles, wiping her eyes. She climbs out of her chair and curls into the side of the couch, TV droning on in the background. She thinks about calling Mulder. She thinks about visiting Emily’s grave. She thinks about driving all night to clear the images in her head. She wonders if God will ever forgive her.

At some point, she crawls off the couch and pads into the kitchen, retrieves the bottle of wine from the fridge.

---

Sometime in the middle of the night, when he's half-awake on his couch, he makes the decision. The idea had sprung up when she didn't answer his phone call, but it solidified in his mind when he got the call from Scully's mom, saying that she'd called Scully several times without an answer. Her worry only rose when Mulder said he hadn't heard from her since Friday, and that she had a hard time on the latest case. “I know how hard the past few months have been on Dana,” Maggie had said, “and I feel awful that I haven't been there for her more. I'm… I'm honestly not sure she wants me to be.” Mulder hadn't said anything, scraping his teeth over his lower lip. Scully has barely mentioned her mother in the months since San Diego, but he suspects she has been avoiding her. He knows facing her family after Emily wasn't exactly easy.

“I've been worried about her, too,” he said aloud.

Maggie had paused for a minute before saying, “Would you mind letting me know when you hear from her? Or maybe even going to check on her? I think she'd rather hear from you than from me.”

Somehow, I don't think so, Mulder had thought, but he agreed to call her when Scully contacted him. And since then, he's been waiting. Trying to decide what to do.

And around midnight, it really does seem clear: he should go ahead and check on her. It's late, but she might still be awake. He can tell her that her mother is worried. He can tell her he is sorry. And he really is worried about her: the state that she was in when she left the church on Friday would worry anyone. He knows Scully, and he knows she can't be dealing well with any of this. He knows he should've been there for her.

He makes the decision and he gets up from the couch, shoving his feet in shoes and grabbing his keys. He just wants to know she's okay.

At Scully's place, he has to let himself in because she doesn't answer his repeated knocks. Inside, he finds a nearly empty bottle of wine, a glass shattered on the floor. “Scully?” he calls out cautiously. “Scully, are you okay?”

He heads towards Scully's bedroom, but stops in his tracks in the hall. He sees her lying on the floor in front of a door, in front of a chair wedged under a door. She's wrapped in a blanket and huddled on the ground. She's wearing an overlarge t-shirt that's he's stunned to realize is his—the Knicks shirt he's had for years. She's breathing slowly in sleep, but she jolts as soon as Mulder touches her shoulder. “What,” she mumbles, pulling the blanket tighter around her. He can smell the alcohol on her breath from here.

“Scully, it's me.” He touches her cheek. “Are you okay? What happened?”

“Mm, ‘m fine Mulder,” Scully mutters irritably. “Just tryin’ to sleep.”

“Why are you sleeping out here? Instead of in your bed?” He reaches for her cold fingers and pulls them into his.

“I wanted to be… didn't wanna leave her,” says Scully sleepily, her lids raising slightly. He gives her a look of confusion. The phone slips to the floor as she reaches for her necklace, to clasp it in her hands. “This would've been her room,” she clarifies.

Mulder sucks in a breath of surprise at that, feels the weight of her statement settle in. “Oh, Scully,” he whispers, pulling her up off of the ground and into his arms.

“I had it all planned out, was gonna get a bed and paint…” Scully shifts against him, balling a fist into the hem of his shirt. “I was gonna take care of her. I really loved her, Mulder. I wanted to be her mom.”

“I know.” He's stroking her hair a little. He'd mostly managed to block out what little things he'd remembered about Emily, but now they're back and crowding his brain, making him near physically ill. If he feels this terrible about a little girl he had a total of two interactions with, how must Scully be feeling? “I know,” he says again, and kisses her hair.

Scully sniffles into his shoulder. “And I barely even knew her. I never had the chance t-to love her. They took that away.”

“I know. I'm so sorry.”

Scully wipes her nose, her eyes. “I let her die,” she mumbles, her breath hot against the cotton of his shirt. “Both of them. Emily and Roberta… it never should've happened. I should've been able to save her… but I looked at her and I saw Emily. She asked me to let her go. She called me Mommy.” She sniffles again. “And I did it. I let her go. I let her go, Mulder. And now Roberta Dyer is dead because of me.”

Mulder rubs the space between her shoulder blades. “Maybe that was what was meant to happen,” he murmurs.

Scully laughs bitterly and loosens her hold on his shirt. “You don't believe that. Y-you said. You didn't… you didn't believe me. You never believe in anything religious… God… you n-never…”

He stiffens, his arms slack around her. She's right, he didn't believe. He doesn't believe, not in God. But he doesn't blame her, not for Roberta Dyer's death. But she needed him to believe. She needed him to believe…

“I'm sorry, Scully,” he says against her temple. “I'm so sorry.”

Scully pulls out of his embrace, mumbling something that sounds like, “Let go.” She leans forward on her hands and knees, lowering herself back to the floor. “Wanna sleep.”

“You should sleep in your bed,” Mulder says, touching her shoulder. “It's warmer there.”

Scully shakes her head firmly, huddling down in front of the chair and pulling the blanket tight around her. Mulder gives up, shifting to sit against the wall. Scully mutters something indecipherable into the blanket, pressing her face into it. “It's okay,” Mulder whispers. “Get some sleep.”

As soon as she's asleep, he pulls off her shoes, finds a pillow and another blanket on her bed and brings them to her. (He might as well make her as comfortable as possible.) He sits beside her again on the floor. Her right foot slides across the floor in her sleep, bumping against his arm. Her toes are freezing, so he reaches down to rub some warmth into them and vows to buy her some socks this Christmas.

Samantha used to sleep on the floor outside their mother's room when she was little and had nightmares. He wonders, briefly, if Emily would've had nightmares and if she would've slept outside the door to Scully's room in this same fashion. If Scully would've let her crawl in bed after nightmares, even though parenting books advise against letting your child sleep in your bed. He doesn't know the kind of parent Scully would've been. (Will be, someday.) Hovering, he assumes—she flat-out refuses to leave his side when he's injured. The doctors at Emily’s hospital described Scully as “one of those tiger-mothers”, said she chased a man down the hall with a gun. What if she had gotten a chance to be a mother, if the courts had approved her adoption petition. Would she have stayed in California with Emily? No, because she said that her spare room would've been Emily’s room. So, what then? Would she have brought Emily back to DC in tiny winter coats, held her hand in the elevator? Would she have painted her spare room a bright color? Would she read picture books to her daughter in bed, carry a gun so that no one could ever hurt them again? Would she have stayed on the X-Files? Would she have stayed with him?

Mulder rubs warmth back into her cold feet, closes his eyes to try and grab at the image. He'd do anything to give her this life, he thinks. Anything. Even if it had meant sacrificing their fledgling relationship. He would've lost her either way, it seems, so better to have her gain a daughter in the process. But then again, maybe she wouldn't have broken things off if Emily had lived. Maybe she wouldn't have. Are you the parents, the doctor had asked, and she'd looked to him as if for confirmation before looking away. Maybe they could've been. Maybe they could have.

Mulder sits on the floor with Scully as she sleeps until his ass hurts. Her toes curl into the palm of his hand. He rubs a thumb over the curve of her foot. He sits there with her until his phone rings. Scully turns on her side, muttering something and throwing her arm out. Worried he'll wake her up, he stands quickly and heads out into the living room, answering the phone with a sighed, “Mulder.”

“My colleague heard you speak in Boston, Mr. Mulder,” says an unfamiliar voice on the other side. “Your take on alien conspiracies and the men in Congress.”

Mulder huffs out a laugh. It won't be the first time that he's gotten calls from conspiracy nuts. Not the first time in the middle of the night, even. But he's really, really not in the mood right now. “Well, tell your colleague that three a.m. is a little late for fan mail,” he says irritably, rubbing at his forehead.

“Don't underestimate the gravity of this phone call, Mr. Mulder,” the voice says, and it sounds deadly serious.  Serious enough that he revises his plan to hang up. “It would seem that your belief system aligns with ours. A man like you could be very valuable to our movement.”

Mulder tenses from head to toe. Pacing across Scully's living room, he can still see the top of Scully's bright head. “And what kind of movement is that?”

“I'm afraid I can't say any more over the phone,” the man on the other end says smugly. “We'd like to arrange a meeting to discuss this in person.”

Mulder rocks back and forth on his heels, turning away so he can't see Scully. “Can you give me a hint, at least?”

“You're notorious for your curiosity, Agent Mulder. I'd think that'd be enough.” The man pauses before whispering, “The fountain at Meridian Hill Park. Six a.m. Don't be late.” The dial tone clicks over, ringing harshly in his ear.

Mulder lets the phone clatter down on the counter, considering. Typically strangers calling him to arrange a meeting could be considered dangerous, something he'd want to avoid. But still… what if they're allied against the Syndicate, the people doing experiments on little girls and putting honing chips into the necks of innocent civilians? He has to go. For his sake and Scully's and Emily’s and Samantha's and any chance that this purported movement could be fighting against these people. He rubs his eyes again and heads for his coat.

He starts to leave without saying anything, thinks better of it. He tears a scrap of paper loose from the pad Scully uses to make grocery lists and scribbles a note: Scully, Had to go. I'm sorry. Take these. Have a good weekend, get some rest, and call me if you need me. He sets two aspirin on top of the note before grabbing his keys and heading out the door.

---

Scully wakes up alone on the cold tile of her hallway, a blanket tucked around her shoulders. Her head is pounding. Groaning, she sits up, rubbing circles on her forehead.

She doesn't remember much from the night before, aside from a bottle of wine that tasted salty with her tears. She thinks Mulder may have been there. She finds the phone shoved under the legs of the chair shoved under Emily’s doorknob, and deduces that she called him. She got drunk enough to forget things and apparently fell asleep outside of her spare bedroom.

This can't keep happening. Scully grabs the chair and scoots it away from the door for the first time in months. It makes a screeching sound as she moves it across the floor. She can't keep hiding her feelings at the bottom of a bottle. She has to find a way to ask for forgiveness, to reconcile this all within herself.

There only seems to be one solution, she decides as she shoves the chair back underneath the table. (It seems ridiculous, suddenly, that she left it there for so long.) She needs to go to confession. She needs to absolve of her sins, to understand why God has let this happened and used her to do it. She needs to know that she did the right thing. She decides to go in the afternoon, when she knows Father McCue isn't there. This is too personal to talk to her mother's old friend about.

She finds the note that Mulder left and takes the aspirins on top of them. She drives to the church in the late afternoon, when she knows she won't run into her mother. She tells the priest her story, grateful for the grate between them so that she cannot see his face. The shame is thick in her throat.

At the end of her story, the priest asks if she believes in a life after this one. She finds herself unable to answer. She wants to believe, but sometimes… after everything she's seen… She needs to believe that there is a better place, for Roberta and Paula and Dara and their nameless sister. For Emily, for Melissa. But she doesn't know what to believe anymore.

“Has it occurred to you that maybe this, too, is part of what you were meant to understand?” the priest asks her.

“You mean accepting my loss?”

“Can you accept it?”

Scully swallows. She can't forgive the men who created Emily and ensured that she would die. And she's not sure if she can ever forgive herself. But can she forgive God? (Will she ever be forgiven?) Can she accept that her daughter was meant to die, meant to go on to a better place where she could be with the only family she'd ever known? “Maybe that's what faith is,” Scully says quietly.

In the end, she doesn't know whether or not she did the right thing. And she's not entirely sure where her faith lies. Despite having moved the chair in front of the spare room (having, in a way, let Emily go), she knows she has a ways to go in the healing process. She's still haunted by her lost daughter. She needs to deal with it.

In the end, she calls Karen Kosseff and makes an appointment for that Monday. She's helped Scully get past things before, and Scully hopes to accomplish the same thing again.

She calls Mulder once she gets home, hoping for a full scenario of what happened the night before. He doesn't answer.

---

By the next evening, he's had a gun shoved in his ribs, been invited to join a ruthless terrorist group (called the New Spartans, of all things), and told by The People Above Him that he has to. He staggers in his door sometime after five, exhausted and wishing he'd carried Scully to bed and fallen asleep beside her instead of picking up the phone and stumbling straight into a trap. Stupid, stupid. He left Scully drunk and asleep on her floor to run off and become a double agent in an assignment that will likely kill him. He trusted a lead with absolutely no basis and ran headfirst into a ruthless militia. He left her alone. When she needed him. He collapses on the worn leather of his couch and dials her number. (Speed Dial 1, just like always.)

She picks it up with her usual, brisk, “Scully.” His first thought is, She sounds better, but then he remembers that Scully has a talent for hiding her emotions. The cracks in her foundation are hairline fractures, and she remains the strongest person he knows.

“Hey, Scully, it's me,” he says.

“Mulder?” She sounds confused. “Were you… were you at my apartment last night?”

He chews at his lower lip. “Uh, yeah. Your mom called me, worried about you, and I was, uh, I was worried about you, too, so I came over to check on you… you were asleep on the floor…”

“Oh.” Now she sounds embarrassed. “Was I… I was drunk, wasn't I.”

“You'd… yes.” Mulder exhales slowly. “I was worried about you. I am worried about you. Are you okay?”

“I'm fine, Mulder, I…” He imagines her rubbing her temples wearily. “I don't remember much from last night. It's been a hard weekend.”

He closes his eyes, her words sinking into his skull. “Scully, I'm… I'm sorry about what happened on Friday. I was an ass this entire case. I haven't… I haven't been there for you lately. I should be there no matter what.”

“You called to tell me you were sorry,” she says softly. “And you were there last night.”

But I ran off before you woke up. He licks his lips, starts, “Scully…”

“Mulder, can I call you later? It's been a long day, I've just come from Confession...” Her voice is trembling, uncertain.

“Sure,” he says, digging his fingernail into a crack in the couch. “As long as you're okay. You can talk to me if you need to. I'm here.”

“Thank you,” she says softly. “I guess I'll see you tomorrow.”

“See you tomorrow,” he agrees. She hangs up on the other end. He curls further into the corner of the couch, stretching his legs out.

He wanted to tell her. Wants to tell her. Skinner told him he couldn't. “The more people that know, the more dangerous this situation is,” he said. “You're at a delicate position, Mulder. If it ever slips that you're a double agent, they won't hesitate to kill you on the spot. Even make an example of you as a warning to others.”

“Scully's my partner,” Mulder said fiercely. “She's the best ally I have.” The only one I trust, he resisted the urge to add. “If I don't tell her, she's going to get suspicious. And I need her on this.”

“If you put her on this,” said Skinner, “you run the risk of the New Spartans targeting her. If they find out she knows…” And that was enough to convince him.

He still wants to tell her—Scully can handle herself, she'd be furious if she knew that was the reason he was keeping this from her. But now is not the time. She's been through too much in the past week—the past few months—to be worried about him. He can't tell her.

He should tell her. This assignment is dangerous. More than dangerous. Skinner went over the history of the New Spartans with him, and they have left a lot of dead behind them. They are good at disguising the dead so that the bodies aren't found for months and they're hard to identify when they are. If he dies—and he will die if he is caught, they have killed several federal agents before—Scully won't know that he is dead for weeks or months or even years. She might think he is still alive until they find him. He can't do that to her. If he doesn't come home, she deserves to know why. But. But he can't risk her. He doesn't want her to die, and she deserves a chance to move past these things that have haunted her these past few months. This should be his burden alone.

He tells himself that Scully will be okay if he dies because she is Scully and she is strong. But he knows, somewhere, that his death will be enough to break her. For the same reason that she couldn't leave him after a computer tortured him. She cares about him, even if it's in a solely platonic way, and Scully has lost too many people in her life. Attended too many funerals. They both have.

God, he hopes he doesn't die. He doesn't want to die. And he doesn't want to leave her alone. Of all the times he's let her down, that might be the worst.

[nomorelonelydays]

Patater Week - Day 2

Feb. 7- Proposal/Wedding Day/Wedding Night (1.5K) “I’m nervous,” Kent says. “Change your mind?” Alexei teases, only feeling a tiny bit worried. He doesn’t think Kent will actually bail on him, now that they’re both in their suits and the hall is surely packed with their families and teammates. Bittle would cry if anything happened, Alexei thinks. And then skin both of them alive. But then again, Alexei did see Runaway Bride twice with Snowy, when he was first learning English and someone had the brilliant idea that the best way to learn is to watch all the classic romcoms. Snowy, it turns out, is a big fan of Richard Gere. Kent doesn’t look like he’s ready to bolt, but he did seem skittish, and in the movie, Julia Roberts had been very skittish. “No, never,” Kent says, taking Alexei’s hands and rubbing his thumb over Alexei’s palms. His hair is already a little mussed, the untamable cowlick threatening to pop back up. “Not about you. I know I’m an ass about a lot of things, but you’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me.” “Good to know,” Alexei says, letting out a breath of relief. “You tell me now, then what you say for vows?” “Oh, God,” Kent laughs nervously. “Oh man. That’s—that’s the thing. The vows. In front of a bunch of people. I could probably do it. Maybe. You wouldn’t happen to be carrying Xanax on you?” He chuckles and scratches the back of his neck, but his jaw drops when he sees Alexei rummage in his pockets. “Wait, I’m just joking. I don’t actually—what the hell is that?”

Alexei shrugs as he shows the tiny blue pills in his palms. “Snowy put in pocket. He say ‘just in case.’ I’m not check yet, is maybe candy. He knows I’m like Smarties.” “What kind of Smarties are shaped like this? Did your goalie seriously give you Viagra? What’s wrong with your team, man?” Kent pauses. “Isn’t Viagra prescription? Oh my God, does Snowy need Viagra? That’s the best thing I’ve heard all day. I’m going to tell everyone later.” “Viagra?” “He fucking gave you penis pills, Alexei. He’s messing with you.” “I’m not need penis pill,” Alexei says. “My penis work.” “Don’t I fucking know it,” Kent mutters. “Wait. Wait, wait. What if we fuck? Like, in the supply closet or something before we go in?” “You meaning…right now?” Alexei looks around the church, scandalized. He hisses, “You crazy? Here? Where God see us?” “Alexei, you’re barely religious,” Kent mutters. “The only time I’ve seen you cross yourself was when that stew burned when your mom told you to watch it while she went out for supplies. Like, another thing of sour cream. Why does she need that much sour cream? Makes no sense.” “She not kill me that day is big miracle.” Alexei pointed to the door in exasperation, where the guests surely are waiting for Kent and Alexei to walk through. “But my point! Maybe God not care. But even worse thing, if my mother—” “Gross, that’s a boner killer,” Kent says, looking at the Viagra in Alexei’s hands. “Thank God we have these. Haha, hashtag blessed. Gimme a penis pill.” Alexei actually startles and tosses the pills behind him, where it clatters on the tile floor in a rather anticlimactic way. “No! No one have penis pill.” “Stop littering, Alexei. Christ, do you want us to get kicked out?” Alexei furrows his brows in disbelief. “You want to fuck in church and say I’m get us kick out?” “I’m freaking out, Alexei. You know I’ll say anything after an orgasm. Remember that time we had sex on your couch and I told you I hated that couch afterwards? Even though two days ago, I said it was a great purchase?” “Which couch? Yellow one or purple?” “Yel—wait, oh, God. Both of them are so fucking ugly. Um. I think yellow?” “You said you love the purple one,” Alexei argued. “Said it remind you of Barney the dinosaur.” “That wasn’t a compliment!” “But you love dinosaurs! Always buy the chicken shape like dino. How I’m know?” “Stop yelling at me! Who the hell doesn’t love Dino Nuggets, what are you, some kind of savage? I didn’t know I had to spell it out for you! The—no, we’re going off topic.” “I’m not yell,” Alexei not-yells, wringing his hands for good measure. “I’m not the one who want to fuck in church!” “We need to fuck,” Kent insists. “I’ll make it through the vows in front of ten thousand people only if I orgasm, since Jeff won’t let me touch alcohol. Which is a good idea, I don’t want to puke on your shoes. I’ll probably throw in a joke or two. It’ll be great.” “I’m not fuck you before ceremony,” Alexei says firmly, and Kent’s face falls. “Besides, only about 150 people. Maybe 152 if Sergei and his wife make in time, but they text me say they lost—” “Ugh, don’t tell me the number. Why didn’t we host the wedding in our backyard? Jesus, why didn’t we just elope?” Kent whines. “I actually live in Vegas. Couldn’t even have a Vegas, Elvis-themed wedding. What kind of fraud am I?”   “Hey, hey, come here.” Alexei doesn’t gather Kent into his arms so much as open his arms and have Kent barrel into his chest a little too eagerly. “Tell me why you really worry. Not crowd, I don’t think. Kent Parson love crowd and camera.” “Shut up, sometimes I like to sit in my room alone and do nothing, too,” Kent’s muffled voice says. “And then post picture on Instagram,” Alexei says, smiling into Kent’s hair. Kent doesn’t make a noise, only holds his fiancé tighter. Alexei lowers his voice to a coax, and with each name, he presses a kiss down Kent’s face, “Kenny, Kenny V. Parson. Going to be my Kenny Vincent Parson Rostislav Stanislavovich… Dostoevsky…Anna Karenina…Mashkov—” “Shut the fuck up, I hate you, Dostoevsky isn’t even a real person,” Kent complains into Alexei’s shirt. “I’m pretend I not hear that.” “And we agreed to hyphenate, you ass.” “Tell me what is bother you,” Alexei says, kissing the corner the Kent’s mouth. “And maybe I reconsider naming our child Leo Tolstoy. Is probably only name you can pronounce.” “I wouldn’t let you name our dog Leo Tolstoy,” Kent says. “Well, maybe Leo is okay for a dog. I take that back. And I can pronounce your name.” “Eh, more or less.” Alexei huffs a sigh. “Come, Kenny, tell me what I’m do so you feel better.” He feels Kent stiffen at his side, then whisper, so quietly that Alexei almost doesn’t catch it, “Can I just say my vows right now to you, so even if I mess up in there and every asshole sitting down waiting for me to fuck up knows I’m no good, at least you’ll know what I meant?” And there it is, all of Kent Parson’s fears laid out in the open. Kent doesn’t bother to look up, but he doesn’t pull away from Alexei, either. He’s always been stubborn, anyways. “Hey. If you mess up, and you thinking people think this,” Alexei murmurs, feeling Kent hold his breath, “then fuck them. Fuck all of them. Wedding for you and me. Maybe Kit, too. But not them. They only come for free food and alcohol.” Kent’s eyes aren’t exactly shiny when he does lift his head, but they are wide with surprise. “Already know you give more than I deserve, Kenny. So you can stand there, maybe only sing Britney Spears in front of God and Mama and nothing else, and I always know what you mean. Okay?” Kent’s mouth is slightly open in shock, but he seems to regain his sense when he grabs Alexei’s head down for a movie-worthy kiss. Alexei holds on to him, tipping Kent’s face back and rewrapping his arms around Kent, kissing him in that sure and happy way that only Kent can draw from him. “Sergei!” a woman’s voice says from behind them in annoyance, followed by a sound that sounds suspiciously like a purse smacking someone’s chest. “We miss it! Look, they already kissing! I knew I should have drove.” “No, they do this all the time, I think,” Sergei, Kent’s teammate says, as he readjusts his lapel. His wife, a tall, blonde woman in sharp heels and a tight, Tiffany blue dress, waves happily at the pair but stops when she hears a crunch beneath her feet. “Ew, what’s I’m stepping in?” she says, checking the remnants of the smushed Viagra pill on her shoe. Sergei coughs and waits for Kent and Alexei to pull apart before he continues apologetically, “Sorry. Hope we’re not late?” “You just on time,” Alexei says. He turns to Kent, “Ready?” Kent takes his hand. “Even if I sing Britney?” “Even if sing Britney.” (Kent doesn’t sing Britney. He says his vows perfectly, and Alexei thinks his mother cries a little bit in the front pew. And when they kiss, he feels Kent suppressing a happy, relieved laugh. He pulls back briefly before he has to dip Kent to kiss him again, and again, and again, until he hears Zimmboni quietly say, “Oh, wow, haha,” and Snowy in the background scream, “Yeah, Tater! That’s my fucking guy up there! Kissing his fucking husband!” before Marty pulls him back down in his seat.)