#bc also ‘never again’ obviously and ‘ebe’ and ‘lost art of forehead sweat’ and so many others i took off

[carefulfears]

Top 5 Scully moments! 💗

off the top of my head <3 you’re getting 8 sorry

(i left off triangle because we already talked about it today but in my heart it truly is top 3)

1/ clyde bruckman’s final repose

when the hotel scene opens on her sitting criss-cross on the bed with playing cards and you just hear her finish up explaining the plot of moby dick to bruckman and connecting it thematically to hamlet…i can hardly contain myself. she was EXPLAINING THE PLOT OF MOBY DICK to the psychic.

and then after all her talk, her shift is over, and before leaving she leans in close and sighs and asks, “alright. so how do i die?” shh don’t tell mulder she asked ❤️

(and his tender answer: “you don’t.” immortality in reciprocated kindness.)

2/ beyond the sea

giving up the chance to know what her father’s last message to her was, and saying that she already knows what he wanted to tell her.

“he was my father.”

she seemed so disappointed and confused in the beginning, when her mother gave that same response (“he was your father”) to her questions of if he was proud of her. it’s not enough evidence, that someone was a father, to really know the things she was doubting.

but in the end, when she tears up and whispers her answer, it’s clear. it’s not that he was a father, and therefore loved and was proud of his children, because that’s what fathers do. he was her father. and she knows how he felt and what he wanted to tell her because she knows him, and she knows the relationship that they had, and she knows how much he loved her.

it’s that kind of implicit understanding that sets her apart, both from mulder and in the world.

(additionally: bursting into boggs’ cell and screaming at him that if mulder dies she will gas him out of this life herself and no one will stop her. she is 5 feet 2 inches of ferocious love.)

3/ memento mori

her letter. god, i make fun of her for it but god does it say so much. she was dying and she was completely alone and she was in that bed every single day writing, writing to him. begging forgiveness, asking for grace, pleading to be seen.

she knows herself so intimately and so completely, and she knows the world she lives in so fully, and she loves it and she loves him so deeply.

she didn’t even want him to read it, it was enough just that it existed, that it was hers and it was real.

4/ detour + william

singing to mulder in the woods, and then years later singing that same song to their baby. she has memorized everything. every moment is so important, so worth passing along.

(“that’s the other thing you’ve given me, mulder, courage…and i hope that’s a gift i can pass on.”)

5/ irresistible

there’s something so resonant and intimate about her fear in this episode. both her lingering fear in the trauma of bearing witness to this kind of brutalization, but also her fear of vulnerability. the way she does everything right, she does everything that you’re supposed to do: she takes a step back, and goes where she’s more useful. she goes to therapy. she handles it herself, like the good captain’s daughter. like she says, it is her job to deal with these things.

she doesn’t just shut down and avoid it, she’s conscious; she’s trying to cope in the way that she’s comfortable.

and it still just isn’t enough. until that moment she says once more that she is fine, and mulder tips her chin so that she has to look at him. and she just breaks down sobbing the moment she sees his face, grabs onto him and weeps into his chest.

she has “always been the strong one,” she did not want him to know that this case was getting to her, but ultimately, there was no way to survive it without facing it.

(thinking of 23+ years later in a motel, the way she creeps into his room and says the case is really bothering her, ducks under his covers.)

6/ ghouli

when the windmill snowglobe, the one thing that she has from her son’s life, breaks outside the hospital. and the person she bumped into (who turns out to have actually been jackson in disguise) apologizes, and she just smiles sweetly and says, “no, it’s my fault. it’s okay.”

she has no idea how important that moment is, she has no idea that this stranger is secretly her baby, noticing the things she’s holding onto from him…and she’s so understanding and gracious in impossible circumstances anyway.

that’s what gives her (and mulder) that miracle moment in the end of the episode, of getting to see jackson. (that’s immortality in reciprocated kindness)

7/ fight the future

my absolute favorite favorite favorite moment of the movie: mulder and scully make it out of the vent. they’re both collapsed on the ground in antarctica. scully has just been revived after she stopped breathing, she’s passing out…and the spaceship comes out of the ice.

and mulder is looking up at the ship with the most joyful heart-melting grin and wonder, and he says “scully. you gotta see this.” (the exact same thing he said 5 years earlier on their second case)

and she whispers, “i see it.”

it’s so special.

and then, bless his heart, mulder’s recently-shot-in-the-head exhausted ass just fully passes out on the spot.

and she sits herself up and grabs him and pulls him over to her and just holds onto him. they’re alive, and she saw it, and she barely has anything left in her at all but she finds enough for both of them.

honorable mention: “shut up, mulder. i’m playing baseball.” <3 girls when they quietly beg the person they love to invest in something “on this planet” and they understand when that first step is being offered to them, they do not need it explained.

it’s so reminiscent of a moment that almost made this list, when mulder gives her the apollo 11 keychain for her birthday, and they’re interrupted before he can tell her why. and in the end, looking up at the stars, she tells him that she thinks she knows. she tells him that this novelty keychain is about “extraordinary moments” and history leaping forward and how you “must dare to dream” and how far perseverance and teamwork can take you but how “no one gets there alone” and remembering sacrifice and achievement.

and he’s just silently staring at her like…like she’s everything and she’s dying and it’s completely unimaginable. like he knows, in that moment.

she sees so much in him, without explanation.