#the blessing way

[ragnarockz]

The X-Files Topps Trading Cards ft. Mulder and Scully pt 2, 1996 👽

[randomfoggytiger]

The Scully Family In-Depth (Part XI): The Last Conversations of One Melissa Scully

Melissa Scully is not long for this meta series; but what she does contribute is a rather intriguing peek into Scully's psyche-- exposing how drawn her sister was to radical or "out there" ideas long before Scully admitted it to herself-- as well as the funny confirmation that both her sister and her mother find Melissa's antics aggravating.

SEASON 2'S ABDUCTION FALLOUT

The effects of Scully’s abduction silently punctuate her resolutions throughout Season 2, spurring her to appear stronger than her capabilities (Firewalker’s “Mulder, I appreciate your concern. But I’m ready. I want to work” and Irresistible’s “I’m not having trouble, Mulder. I’m fine. Really”), an extension of her denial in Beyond the Sea but with more mature fragility. (Both are, of course, symptoms of growing up in a Naval household with an eagerness to please a father that respected perfection in himself.)

Although Scully references her experience on the brink of death once in Dod Kalm--“Mulder, when they found me, after the doctors and even my family had given up, I experienced something I never told you about. Even now it’s hard to find the words. But there’s one thing I’m certain of: as certain as I am of this life, we have nothing to fear when it’s over"-- the theme of her loss plays heavily upon the rest of the Season, be it Mulder's overprotective streak or her resolution to appear stronger than her capabilities (i.e. Firewalker, Irresistible, Our Town, etc.)

This response stems back to her childhood: wanting to please her Naval father, she internalized and emulated his efforts to achieve perfection in himself. In The Blessing Way, Scully is told that her self-perceived failures would be considered strengths by the late captain; but it takes years for her to embrace that truth for herself.

Digging a little deeper, we find that, although she relates tidbits of her time in the beyond, Scully leaves out her communion with Melissa, Nurse Owens, and especially her father-- still not able, at this point, to accept those parts of her experience.

MULDER'S DEATH AND SCULLY'S SHAME

Anasazi and The Blessing Way are a whirlwind for Scully, leaving her vulnerable, bashed, and beaten down when all her efforts are seemingly in vain.

After being put on leave from the FBI and “losing” the tape her partner died for, Scully stumbles to her mother’s house, ashamed and wavering in her convictions. 

When her mother opens the door, Scully is lightly tapping at her right thigh with her shoes, an attempt to focus on that repetition rather than her stampeding emotions, and attempts to keep a semblance of control through her tearful confession (without much success.)

Maggie welcomes her with a gentle “Dana…”; and Scully forces a practiced smile as she breathes an answering, "Hi, Mom."

Taking in her daughter’s fragile stance and barefoot condition, Maggie asks, “What’re you doing with your shoes?”

It's a tell-tale sign that all is not well: despite the various difficulties in the field or at home, Scully has never voluntarily taken off her shoes unless in extremities; and her mother, knowing these prim and proper habits, immediately intuits something serious has happened.

“They, uh, they started to give me blisters…” Scully warbles, lifting and dropping her shoes as more of her facade cracks, reality cruelly setting in.  

Her mother’s incredulous, “You walked here this time of night?” breaks the last of her escape from reality: there is nowhere else to escape, no other distraction on hand to keep her emotions at bay; and Scully can no longer pretend that everything is alright as long as she puts one foot in front of the other (a method she’d tried and failed to use in Beyond the Sea-- and will again in Memento Mori, Elegy, Gethsemane, and Redux.) 

Her composure melts completely, face crumpling as she moves into Maggie’s arms to simultaneously seek comfort and hide from her own vulnerability. It’s a signature of Scully's the audience and Mulder were introduced to in Season 1's Pilot and Season 2's Irresistible; and is now confirmed to have been her coping mechanism stemming from childhood.

Matron Scully scoops her up unhesitatingly, worriedly questioning her baby girl until Scully admits, heartbroken, “I’ve made a terrible mistake. Dad would be so ashamed of me", and breaks down into an onslaught of constrained tears and grief.

MELISSA FUMBLES THE BALL

The Blessing Way has a notorious deleted scene; and this analysis would not be complete, I believe, without including it. Not only does it align perfectly with canon, but it also reinforces the interpersonal dynamics present in One Breath; and is, therefore, vital to the Scully Family meta series.

After Scully has poured her heart out, Maggie does her best to glue her daughter back together. “I don’t see how you can fault yourself. You had to make a choice-- you did what you thought was right.” 

“No,” Scully negates, voice wavering, eyes turned aside, “I did what I thought was right for my partner.” 

Their interaction is incredibly telling not only of Scully’s Starbuck complex but also of her modus operandi when acting outside of known variables: trusting another person’s judgment over her own. This kneejerk reaction can be used healthily if she follows her own intuition as well (e.g. Anasazi and All Things); but if Scully distrusts or doubts her intuition, she kneejerks to an opposite reaction, shutting down and seeking purchase wherever she can (The Blessing Way, Never Again, and also All Things.) This aspect of her personality isn’t resolved until Season 7 when Scully saves Daniel Waterston’s life by relying solely on her instincts; but until then, Mulder and her family act as the solid foundation upon which she builds herself... until, until.  

"Wouldn't Mulder have done the same for you?"

That sentence is two-fold interesting: not only does Maggie call Mulder "Mulder" here instead of "Fox"-- likely due to a scripting error or perhaps in deference to her daughter's pet peeve-- but she also places complete faith in the man that shouldered her daughter's disappearance and recovery alongside the family. It's a simple, touching nod to Mulder's impact and the bond she shares with him.

“Yes, but that’s exactly it, Mom! I behaved exactly how Mulder would have behaved-- I lied and I countermanded my superiors because I thought that the pursuit of the truth was more important.”  

Maggie listens, unruffled. “And wasn’t it?” she asks, showing her naturally rebellious streak that is not deterred or dissuaded by protocol, rules, and regulations-- completely opposite to the obedient military wife one could easily attribute to her. 

“I don’t know what the truth is,” Scully admits. “But as far as the FBI is concerned, the truth is that if all of their agents behaved this way… they wouldn’t be able to do their job. And they’re right.”  

Maggie knows what her daughter won't, can't say out loud; and cuts through the doublespeak to give the assurance she could not in Beyond the Sea: “Dana, if you’re really worried what your father would think of you… I think that he would see that there’s no right choice… and no wrong one.”  

From Scully's view, the disobedience to her superiors outweighs the pursuit of the truth, at least to her father. But in light of Maggie's revelation and rejection of that notion, it leaves the audience-- and her daughter-- wondering how well Scully knew, or thought she knew, the late captain. As strict and striving and ladder climbing as he seems to be, at a glance, Captain Scully was also a man who stood by his principles and married a woman prouder of her husband's personal achievements than his professional ones, willingly carrying on his legacy to their children after his death.

Though comforting in its nuance, this thought is at odds with what Scully supposed of her father, failing to alleviate her doubts long after this conversation ends. Not until she irons out her own internal struggles can Scully accept the wisdom her mother provides.

Reaching out to draw in Scully's chin, Maggie adds, “He would have been very proud and supportive of his daughter.” 

Another interesting sidenote: Maggie’s action and Scully’s response is another proof of Mulder's instincts to draw her attention back by gently maneuvering her chin or face. Without being told, Mr. VCU Golden Boy divined a second method of comfort stemming back to his partner's childhood (as if those two’s connection wasn't spooky enough.) 

Scully still clings to her naysayings. “Mom, there was a right choice to make. And I didn’t make it. I went with Mulder to New Mexico--” 

They’re both interrupted by the door opening abruptly, her eyes blinking in vexation as she prepares for a domestic intrusion.  

Melissa barges in, halts, and treads carefully forward as Scully seamlessly picks up the thread she’d dropped a moment ago: “I never should have let him go off by himself. He was in no condition…” 

This sets up the dynamic present not only in The Blessing Way but also throughout the show: Scully is reluctant to offer up information unprompted to her mother, but does not seem to share the same reticence with her sister (no matter how meddlesome or pushy Melissa tends to be.) 

Melissa pulls a psychic prediction out of her hat-- “Something happened to the man you work with, hasn’t it?”-- and smiles, elated, over the talent of her sixth sense.

Maggie, as usual, tries to cut off her older daughter’s intuitions… which means that even a woman who believes in her own loosely psychic dreams barely tolerates Melissa’s enthusiastic tirades (post here.) 

“Melissa, please.” 

“No,” her daughter continues, “no, I’ve been feeling it for the last couple days. He’s become ill or something.” 

Scully, predictably, looks annoyed at her wound being so blindly poked at. 

Melissa predictions raises an interesting point: if Melissa can sense when Mulder is gravely ill or on the verge of death, does she channel it through her sister, like Maggie did when predicting her daughter’s abduction? If so, that further proves my "Scully is a conduit" theory (posts here and here.) 

Maggie, noticing that Scully has shut down after Melissa’s speech (and fed up herself), announces “I’m going to go make coffee” before stalking away to take a breather. 

Melissa hesitates, reading the tension in the room while internally debating if she should probe further; but, incorrigibly, she decides not to let the matter rest.

“I’m right, aren’t I?” 

Scully keeps her sister in the peripheral, sighing as she prepares herself for the impending conversation.  

“Melissa, Mulder is very likely dead.” Even after seeing the smoke billowing out of a train car, even though she believes it herself, Scully still won’t admit to what can’t be proven. 

Melissa pauses, stares into the middle distance as she searches for something, and pronounces, “No-- you don’t believe that.” 

“No, I do.” Scully insists. 

“I’m getting very strong feelings otherwise.” 

Scully looks almost frightened by her sister's denial. The fear of the unknown is driven by Scully’s fear of not truly knowing herself; and she avoids what she cannot understand-- her father’s death, her memories, her endless line, her cancer, etc.-- but can’t stop feeling until her concerns are addressed (in this case, through Melissa’s insistence; in other cases, through Ed Jerse or Daniel Waterston's false leads or Mulder's insistence that she face facts.)

“I wish it weren’t true…” Scully begins, wobbling over gathering tears. 

“No! No, Honey, it’s more than that--” Melissa ecstatically reassures, kneeling beside her sister and rambling in her enthusiasm. Here, she can help; and she intends to do so. “You’re radiating, Dana.”  

However, the bonding moment is lost when she mentions, “You have a connection with him that’s still strong, powerful,” hitting on two things Scully doesn’t want to own: the depth of her love for Mulder and her current disbelief in her own intuition (which is still whispering that Mulder alive.) 

“Melissa. Don’t do this.”  

Melissa recalibrates, but insists. “Well, I know what I feel.” 

“Fine, we’ll leave it at that,” Scully snaps, getting up as fast as she possibly can, “because you have no sensitivity to my feelings.” 

“Oh, Dana.… I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t feel so sure.” After a second of empathetic silence, Melissa again insists, “You need a second opinion.” 

“This isn’t a medical condition, Melissa. It is a statement of fact-- it is either true or it isn’t.” 

Melissa tries to salvage the conversation, but accidentally hits nerve after nerve in her unwieldy use of the truth: “...you may even be feeling responsible right now, but if you could just see through your guilt and your anger, then maybe you can look past this Western empiricism.”  

Predictably, her sister does not relent: “I’ll make sure to consult my taro cards when I’m out looking for a new job, thank you.” 

Casting her eyes to the heavens (a tic often used in fractious conversations with her sister), Scully doubles back to chastise and more accurately vent her feelings. “Melissa, I have lost somebody.”  

Even though Melissa wisely shuts her mouth rather than doubling down, the brief second she'd pondered it nettles her sister further.

“I would like to deal with it in my own way.” 

Again, Melissa stays silent (against her better judgment), allowing Scully to have the last word before following in Maggie's footsteps by walking swiftly away.  

Once Scully is no longer in sight, Melissa grips her forehead, clasps her arms around each other, and turns inward, reflecting on Dana's throbbing wound and, perhaps, how she could have handled the situation better. 

DENIAL AND UNWIELDY TRUTH

When Scully finds the chip in her neck, her desperation drives her back to Melissa, another proof that she and her sister's bond is tighter than any temporary annoyance or fight between them.

But it also begs the question: Why not her mother? 

When Scully reaches out to Maggie-- The Blessing Way, Wetwired, Redux II, A Christmas Carol, etc.-- it is only when she is on her last leg and has given up and given in, seeking maternal comfort in a "weak" moment of strong, human emotion. These moments, however, are fleeting when compared to the times she reaches out to Mulder and Melissa; but if we look closely, a pattern emerges. When Scully needs to be encouraged to fight her battles, she seeks out Mulder or Melissa; when she needs to bind up her wounds and heal, she finds Maggie. Overtime, Mulder takes on both of these roles, becoming both tender protector and immovable truth pursuer; but the shift truly begins after Emily Sims's death, carrying through the events of Season 5 and onward (and widening the gulf begun between mother and daughter during Memento Mori.)

“I don’t even know how long its been in there,” Scully tells Melissa, shaken by another layer in the many unknown layers lingering from her abduction. “I have absolutely no recollection of it being put there.” 

“That is frightening,” her sister agrees, while Scully visibly shakes at the opposite end of the table.  

Both sisters know how terrifying this: Scully relies on what she knows and can prove; which ties her memory directly into her understanding of the world, either through knowledge of its mechanics or direct, first-hand experience. To have that taken was one of the greatest evils inflicted on Scully; but the fear of recovering even more traumatizing memories keeps her in a paralyzing stasis, too fearful to face how much she has lost and too fearful to reclaim what little she can.

“Dana, this is very serious-- you’ve gotta find out… what this is.” 

Scully’s shift from shaking tower of strength to bothered and inflexible little sister goes unnoticed-- or ignored-- as Melissa twists the chip back and forth in scrutinizing study.

“I don’t have access to the FBI labs,” Scully begins before Melissa, stunned at her sister’s priorities, redirects with, “No, I’m talking about access to your own memories.” 

This is stage one Melissa: so focused on uncovering a particular truth that she obliviously steamrolls over the other person’s silent objections-- tactless in her fervor. Any attempts to cut her off only escalates her feverish insistence-- “I mean, obviously you have buried this so deep you can’t consciously recall it."

Scully visibly struggles to press her emotions and fears down in order to shut the conversation down-- “Melissa.”

“I know someone who can help you--”

“NO!” yells Scully, slapping the table hard enough to shake the dishes. In her anger she betrayed weakness; and both she and Melissa know it. 

Melissa, hurt but sympathetic, swallows her own frustrated feelings and shifts into stage two: purposeful pushing of another person’s boundaries (ala confronting Mulder in his apartment in One Breath)-- measuredly pointing out a weakness with an honest rebuke.  

“What are you so afraid of, Dana?”

“You’re afraid you might actually learn something about yourself?”

This pulls Scully up short, tapping into the perpetual struggle she’s warred with since Beyond the Sea (and that won’t put to rest until ourobors tattoos and Buddhist temples.)  

“I mean, you are so shut off to the possibility there could be any other explanation except for your rigid, scientific view of the world.”  

Scully swallows down her fears once again, angrily ping-ponging back and forth between rebuttal or allowance. Ultimately, the words stick-- perhaps echoing her later partner’s own confrontations or guidance-- and she slowly lowers her defenses, walking closer to (but not toward) her sister. 

Melissa continues: “You’re carrying so much grief and fear that you can’t see that… that you’ve built up these walls around your true feelings and the memory of what really happened.” 

Scully is too exhausted to keep fighting, having flailed nonstop against herself and her beliefs and her convictions since Mulder’s death; and at Melissa's “Just do this for me" she acquiesces, expelling more fear in a rushing outtake of air.

Melissa isn’t satisfied with a non-answer, pressing further with an “As your sister. Please” until Scully’s face shifts into firm resolution. 

As we know, Scully bails on the regression hypnosis; but this this scene highlighted a key aspect of her of her relationship with Melissa, especially when contrasted to her ones with Maggie and Mulder:

It established her sister as the person Scully gravitated to for advice: even if Melissa's words were chafing or unintelligible, she still sought out that comforting, “bigger picture” perspective, the same one her partner has provided since the Pilot. Before she even met Mulder, Scully had a thirst for other perspectives, and was more open to taking in and heeding “out there” opinions than she liked (likes) to let on.  

Maggie Scully was not her daughter’s confidante. Throughout the series, Scully avoids life-changing decision talk with her mother (joining the FBI, giving credence to her mother’s dreams, telling her directly about the cancer diagnosis or the baby’s sex, etc.); and, as previously mentioned, that begins to widen the gulf between mother and daughter. Maggie feels loved when her loved ones share their personal feelings and struggles with her-- which Melissa and Bill Scully seem to do more freely (we’ll get to that) and Dana does not. Why is this the case? Perhaps it has something to do with Maggie's gossiping tendency (which we shall hit upon in Gethsemane), or perhaps it's because of the strict lines she draws in and around her personal life.

Scully does not want crossover in her life: her family and friends are organized into two categories-- comfort or confidante-- and stay in those categories for their protection and her sanity. Maggie Scully is her mother, not her confidante; Melissa is her confidante, not her mother; and when the two try to cross into areas not offered to them, Scully gets annoyed and withholds even more information. Mulder, it seems, is the only person to peel back the dividing line between the two; and even then, not without resistance and patience (Memento Mori, for example.) It’s part of Scully’s fear of letting her walls completely down (as explained in her monologue to the social worker in A Christmas Carol); and part of the mystery of Mulder, who is the perfect combination of Maggie’s comfort and Melissa’s persistence: helpful and supportive but truthfully exacting. 

THE LAST CONVERSATION

Melissa calls after the mytharc plot kicks up to dangerous levels for Scully, eager to help her sister process whatever was uncovered in the (ditched) hypnosis session. 

"Hello?" Scully asks, on-edge; but walks back from her paranoid greeting when Melissa responds, “Dana? It’s your sister.” 

Melissa’s “Hi-- where’ve you been?” implies she’s been calling for a day, maybe more, in worry when Scully left her high and dry after their talk.

“I, uh, I had to go to Boston. For a funeral.” 

“Well, I was worried about you.”

“Why?”

“Because I haven’t heard from you since you saw Dr. Pomerantz.” 

Scully immediately tenses, knocking herself mentally over the head for forgetting; then realizes she either has to face Melissa's scrutiny now or slough off her concerns for a more convenient time.

“Missy, something strange happened to me today," she says, admitting her panic over strange events that were unfolding in her life.

Anticipating and accepting her sister’s offer to drive over, Scully ends the call with renewed resolve: having turned a new, hopeful leaf after her vision from Mulder, she is-- more than ever-- ready to listen to her intuition, open her heart, and confide her fears and feelings to someone else. 

That openness follows her to a reunion with Mulder… but clams up, once again, after her innocent decisions lead to the death of her sister.

Thank you for reading~

Enjoy!

[all-eyes-lead-to-the-truth]

All Eyes Lead to the Truth | Season Three Master Post

We’ve come to the conclusion of a momentous season! From some of the most iconic episodes to some of the most beloved characters, season three was full of intense chapters!

Check out this thread to see all the characters we got to meet!

3x01 | The Blessing Way - The Well-Manicured Man (@fridaysat9

They were all living on the precipice of the end of the human race, but they were only concerned with jobs, school assignments, and playdates.

Life, as it should be.

3x02 | Paper Clip - Victor Klemper (@monikafilefan)

The offspring of a rebel syndicate member unearthing truths Victor has spent decades trying to bury beneath buttercups and begonias has marked him for certain death.

3x03 | D.P.O. - Darin Peter Oswald (@gaycrouton)

His friend was scared of him, and it made Darin feel powerful.

3x04 | Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose - Clyde Bruckman (@fridaysat9)

A funny thing happens when you see your own death. At first you try to make sense of it– what could it mean, why the tears, why her? Then you try to change it.

3x05 | The List - Dr. Juan Ullrich (@monikafilefan)

Juan fidgets with an evidence bag, trying not to blatantly stare at the agents holding an entire conversation with their eyes while systematically categorizing every sway of their bodies, every touch of her hands.

3x06 | 2Shy - Lauren MacKalvey (@gaycrouton)

2SHY > You have no idea how beautiful I think you are. I must confess… I feel inextricably drawn to you. I can’t stop thinking about what you said the other day… You don’t deserve to feel lonely, Lauren.

3x07 | The Walk - Leonard 'Rappo' Trimble (@admiralty-xfd)

Every night, he walks again. And every morning he wakes in the same bed with the same phantom pain. Every day he wishes he’d just died; that explosion that didn’t quite kill him cost him his life, anyway.

3x08 | Oubliette - Lucy Householder (@monikafilefan)

She has to go. It’s all so clear now. She has to go back. Through the woods, through the house — into the dark. Maybe she was never meant to leave it at all.

3x09 | Nisei - Penny Northern (@gaycrouton)

It was the strength of these women that got her through those experiences, and it was the strength of these women that would help her embark on this dark path they were all destined to walk.

3x10 | 731 - First Elder (The Well-Fed Man) (@admiralty-xfd)

The one thing that can be manipulated more effectively than any other is her fear of the unknown… of what happened to her last year.

3x11 | Revelations - Owen Lee Jarvis (@fridaysat9)

He gave of himself, abandoning what little life he’d had, to honor God’s words and do as he had been called.

3x12 | War of the Coprohages - Dr. Bambi Berenbaum (@gaycrouton)

Bambi felt a flush spread across her chest as his hypothesis brought a smile to her face. Hearing that he hadn’t been merely indulging her earlier was a refreshing change of pace.

3x13 | Syzygy - Detective Angela White (@admiralty-xfd)

Detective White stops as Agent Scully finally glances over at her, somewhat defensively. And then she gets it. Everything about the way she’s been treated since the agents arrived makes perfect sense.

3x14 | Grotesque - Agent Bill Patterson (@fridaysat9)

Patterson figured that Mulder might have a theory about a potential copycat killer, but no; he’d been researching gargoyles and goblins. Monsters recorded in dusty old tomes pulled from the library shelves.

3x15 | Piper Maru - Kimberly (@monikafilefan)

Kimberly Cook is good at her secretarial job. So when the man she’s been working closely with for two years is troubled, she refuses to let him file the feeling away like some confidential case in his cabinet.

3x16 | Apocrypha - Luis Cardinal (@admiralty-xfd)

The Scully woman is not simply angry, she’s unhinged. And there’s a small part of him that understands; it’s the part of him that, prior to working for the Smoker, had never been asked to shoot an innocent woman before.

3x17 | Pusher - Agent Frank Burst (@fridaysat9)

Frank doesn’t care if he has to tell him his mother’s maiden name and his favorite breakfast cereal if it means getting his location.

3x18 | Teso Dos Bichos - Officer (@monikafilefan)

He doesn’t get paid enough for this shit.

3x19 | Hell Money - Hsin Shuyang (@gaycrouton)

The gods might not be listening, but the devil was waiting for him down the street, ready to play a game with all the men whose American dreams had turned into nightmares.

3x20 | Jose Chung's From Outer Space - Detective Manners (@fridaysat9)

That's a bleepin' dead alien body, if I ever bleepin' saw one.

3x21 | Avatar - Carina Sayles (@monikafilefan)

She can tell he doesn’t do this. Doesn’t drink alone in a bar, letting a stranger slowly seduce him.

3x22 | Quagmire - Queequeg (@gaycrouton)

Queequeg was loved.

3x23 | Wetwired - 'Doctor' Stroman (@admiralty-xfd)

Another town, another test, another shitty motel room… but always the same boss.

3x24 | Talitha Cumi - Teena Mulder (@monikafilefan)

If only Bill had known back then that the untrustworthy person he was referring to would sleep with his wife and father his son.

Stay tuned for more perspectives coming in Season Four!

1 | 2 | 3 | 4

[backintimeforstuff]

obsessed with the fact that scully is canonically immortal but mulder's the one who's always dying and coming back from the dead ?? truly they are made for each other

[x-files-scripts]

The X-Files - “The Blessing Way”

Written by Chris Carter

July 12, 1995 (BLUE)

Deleted scene:

Flashbacks reveal how Mulder escaped the boxcar...

Melissa takes a bullet...

[sixhours]

Helianthus

Rating: Teen Word count: 3.6k

Notes: Mulder's favorite snack from Scully's point of view; three vignettes.

Originally posted at ao3 09/29/2014

She sighs, sitting back to survey the stained wood before her. It's insult and injury that her sister's body is barely cold in the ground, and she's on her hands and knees cleaning the mess the crime scene crew left behind.

In fairness, both Mulder and her mother offered to help, but she'd turned them down. She can't face her mother's grief, or Mulder's guilt.

But it's not going to come out.

The stain is too deep; the floor is a dull burnt umber where she's scrubbed at it with the wire brush, the warm oak finish all but stripped, leaving an ugly three-foot by three-foot permanent reminder of Melissa's death.

There goes the security deposit.

The landlord will be pissed. She'll have to put down carpet. She wipes at her eyes, the tears appearing and disappearing just as quickly, a leaky faucet broken by a careless tenant.

Damn you, Missy.

The wall is cool and firm against her back, grounding her, and she tosses the brush into the bucket. Gray-brown water splashes onto the unfinished surface, but what does she care? The wood's already ruined.

She groans, stretching, and watches as the late afternoon light draws long shadows across the hand-me-down coffee table, the chintz sofa, the pine cabinet in the corner. The first apartment that felt like a home, the first place she didn't share with roommates or lovers, a place that was solely her own, its familiarity and security tarnished.

This will always be the place where she died.

Her fingers press themselves to her lips to stifle a whimper as the weight of dusk settles beneath her skin.

She remembers when she was twelve, and Melissa was fourteen, the two of them camped in the backyard. They'd roll out sleeping bags on the hard, government-subsidized dirt and watch fireflies flickering through the tent's mesh window, the air fragrant and warm with the scent of lilacs.

Melissa loathed the bugs, the way the humidity teased her hair to frizz, but Dana could persuade her older sister to do almost anything to hide from the boys. Bill was bossy, and Charlie was a goof; the sisters had to stick together.

Away from their mother's prying eyes, Melissa would roll Dana's hair in rag strips, rub tinted powders into her eyelids until they were raw, and paint her blunt, boyish fingernails a lurid shade of red that seemed to bleed under the glow of the flashlights.

"For Christ's sake, would you smile, Dana?" she'd say when they were done, as Scully winced and glared through a half-pound of strange-smelling potions and creams, meant to make her beautiful. "A smile brings it all together."

Scully tips her head back against the wall and closes her eyes at the rush of memory. Her hand absently traces the grain of the ground beneath her, solid as it is stained. She'd sat at Melissa's bedside as the last of her life faded, and all Scully could think at the time was how her sister would have hated being the center of such sadness.

It was supposed to be me.

Mulder had offered to drive her home from the hospital, but she'd declined, too frayed, vulnerable, transparent in her grief. The sling on his arm, the telltale rasp in his voice, reminds her that she could have been mourning two deaths—a close call, small graces. She could no more lose him than a sister, but this makes his presence that much more unnerving.

There was a time when she'd considered introducing them. Melissa would have appreciated Mulder's quirkiness, his far-out theories, his rare and unexpected charm. She would have laughed at all the right moments, been coy and sweet, everything her baby sister was not.

And Mulder would have appreciated her sister's…well, she doesn't know, exactly, but if Phoebe Green was any indication, he liked his women tall, leggy, and a touch psychotic. Two out of three ain't bad.

But she hadn't gone through with it, and now Melissa was dead. A big fat moot point.

More tears. She reaches for a rag, intending to wipe her nose, but her hand finds something peculiar instead.

Oh.

The fragment is hard, rough at her fingertips, smaller than a button or a penny. She squints, bringing the black, cold, oblong disc to her face, but it's grown too dark to see.

Her thoughts go to bugs, implants, tracking devices, computer chips, bright-white lights, and cigarette smoke—the strange places with which her partner is intimately familiar. Her late sister would not recognize the Dana who struggles to her feet, weak-kneed, bringing the fragment into the light with her heart in her throat.

Just a seed. A shell.

The laugh bubbles up from nowhere, threatening at the back of her tongue; the sound that escapes her is startling and strange until she stops trying to hold it back.

She laughs at herself, her errant paranoia, her deep relief. She laughs because she doesn't know what else to do.

She laughs, because her sister would want her to smile.

~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~

It's late by the time she leaves the office.

Even Mulder went home an hour ago, but not before standing in the doorway with a curious look on his face, a look she'd pointedly ignored even though she could see it out of the corner of her eye, could practically feel it radiating off him like fever heat. She'd finally met his gaze with her own—ice blue, no words necessary.

"G'night, Scully," he'd sighed, and there was no mistaking his disappointment.

She's outlasted him, staying late every night this week, until the papers on her desk are little but a blur of scratched ivory on oak. She hasn't slept well since the Padgett case, and Mulder's persistent hovering hasn't helped.

She doesn't know if she lingers to avoid him, or to spite him.

It's not until she's left the Hoover building behind, breathing in the stale, humid air of the parking garage, that she realizes she was supposed to go to the store during the lunch break that never happened—instead, she'd stabbed at her wilting salad and argued with her partner over the presence of plasma-slash-mucous found on the body of an unlucky young woman in the North Carolina wilds.

Her theory prevailed, for once, but now she's heading home to an empty fridge. Again.

She'll swing by the corner store to pick up the essentials, she decides—milk, coffee filters, tampons, all scrawled on a ripped Post-It note stuffed hastily into her jacket pocket as she flew out the door this morning.

The checkout lane is lined with easy temptations, and she picks up a Snickers. Pathetic excuse for a meal, her inner MD admonishes, but she hasn't eaten since noon; she can make a case for the protein in the peanuts.

She plunks down the groceries and removes her wallet from her jacket pocket, bringing with it a scattering of hollowed-out sunflower shells. They rattle over the belt, earning a pointed eyebrow from the cashier.

"Sorry," she mutters, using the back of her hand to wipe the husks away, wondering if Mulder was aiming for her when he was spitting the damned things every which way, or if he dropped them in her pocket after the fact. He's snuck into every corner of her life over the last six years; whether by accident or not, she supposes it doesn't matter.

She's carrying the groceries to the car when her mind conjures an unwelcome thought, born of exhaustion and untended wounds.

I wonder if Diana found them in her pockets, too.

The thought nags her as she takes the Georgetown exit. Things had been better lately, so the sudden wash of petty irritation is raw, too human to acknowledge. She ignores the twist of jealousy in her stomach, ignores it all the way home.

He's waiting outside her building when she pulls up to the curb, holding up a sheaf of folders in greeting.

"Hey. Thought I'd drop these off."

"Mulder, it's late," she frowns, juggling the groceries, her purse, and her briefcase as she digs into her pocket for the keys. He leans against the wall, watching, doesn't offer to help.

"Nice to see you, too. Figured you'd be up, anyway."

He's hovering again, distracting as she tries to wiggle the stubborn key into the lock. His sense of personal space has always been calibrated to socially inappropriate.

"Come in," she says through gritted teeth, hoping her irritation conveys, but he's looking at the files now and doesn't seem to notice. Her dinner is melting at her hip, a chocolate mess in her pocket.

She flicks on the light to find her apartment clean, tidy, just as she left it. It's easy to be fastidious, never home long enough to leave an imprint. So still, one might call it sterile; a fitting metaphor on a number of levels.

Perhaps she's just a figment of some lovestruck writer's overactive imagination after all.

"So what do you have?" she sighs, brushing off the thought, moving to the counter to divest her briefcase and the paper bag. Her stomach growls, but she won't give Mulder the satisfaction of teasing her about her less-than-nutritious meal substitute.

"Just some light weekend reading," he says drily, dropping two inches of paperwork on her coffee table. "Research. I think you may be onto something with your bioluminescent mucus theory, but I maintain it's unlike any other kind of organism we've encountered so far, and we should—"

She grips the edge of the counter hard, letting his words roll over her and away. "It couldn't wait until Monday?"

He shrugs, as if the thought hadn't occurred to him, shoving his hands into his pockets. His voice is too pleasant, saccharine. "I'm sorry, I didn't realize you had plans."

Her nostrils flare, she lets out a single, calculated breath as she puts the milk away. The cold air from the fridge draws gooseflesh along her arms. "I'll look at it tomorrow."

A pause as he clears his throat. "Sorry if it's not as entertaining as your recent non-fiction habit," he smirks, and she turns, color rising in her cheeks. The skin of her sternum may not have been broken under the Stranger's hands, but her ribs and her pride are still bruised.

I think you know me better than that, Mulder.

Mmm. Well, you might want to finish it.

She wipes her damp, shaking hands on a towel and faces him squarely. "What are you implying?"

He closes his eyes, rubs his hand over the back of his neck, suddenly contrite. "Nothing. Never mind."

"No. Tell me."

He opens his mouth, closes it again, reaches into his pocket. The crack of the shell between his teeth is unmistakable, reminding her of the mess at the grocery store, her persistent, untoward thoughts…

You hesitated, Mulder. I told you the truth, and you hesitated. Maybe you don't know me as well as I thought.

The idea is so disturbing, his insinuation so infuriating, that the words fall off her lips before she can stop them. "How's Agent Fowley?"

"What does that—"

"Did you fuck her?"

He blinks, slowly, as if waking from a dream, as if he can't reconcile the sentiment coming from his partner's pristine mouth. "Excuse me?"

"Diana," she says, this time more slowly, relishing the way his payback feels on her tongue. "Did you fuck her?"

"I don't—"

"Since you're so interested in my extracurricular activities, it seemed like a fair question."

He bites his lip, still staring. "I…don't see how it's any of your business."

"She could compromise the division…everything we've worked for."

"It won't," he fumbles, then corrects with emphasis, "She won't."

Cornered and caught.

She folds her arms across herself, unconsciously protecting the place where her heart is beating too fast, a fluttering moth. "So, you're sleeping with her."

"I…goddammit, Scully, that's not what I said," but his eyes shift and a flush creeps into his cheeks, a petulant child caught playing with someone else's toy.

She lowers her eyes, measuring her gaze with surgical precision.

Don't lie to me.

He stares as if he doesn't recognize her. Past the heady thrill of asking the forbidden question, she wonders if she wants to know the answer.

Too late.

"Fine. I slept with Agent Fowley," he says, "is that better? Again, not that you have any right to the dirty details of my personal life. Consider it a favor, since I know you're still suffering a bad case of writer's block."

"Fuck you," she spits, surprised by her own brevity.

"Past tense. Slept," he continues through gritted teeth. He's in her face, she can feel his breath on her cheek. They've gone too far, pushed too hard, this isn't the time or place—platitudes that do nothing to still the unrelenting tension. She lets her chin drop.

"You should go."

"You know why I did it, Dana?" His voice is low and full of delicious threats, sending an unwanted shiver to places she doesn't want to think about.

She meets his gaze once more, sparkling blue crystal to his muddy green, but she can't keep the tremor from her jaw or the hurt from her voice. "Because she says what you want to hear. She's easy to believe."

He shakes his head. "Because you wouldn't talk to me," he whispers. "Because you're so goddamned stubborn, because you won't admit—"

"Admit what?" she challenges, eyes flashing like heat lightning at the end of the storm.

Say it, then. Say it.

He swallows hard, drops his head, folds.

Agent Scully is already in love.

"Go home, Mulder," she whispers, adding as an afterthought, a quiet apology, "I'll see you on Monday."

He does.

The chocolate tastes delicious.

~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~

It's a Friday night spent like most Friday nights, now that they've crossed the invisible boundary between friends and lovers. They're making up for seven years' lost time.

Her apartment. There was wine and Vietnamese food and the pretense of work, an untouched pile of documents and photographs spread on her coffee table.

She'd been worrying the tip of a pen with her tongue, absently scanning witness' statements, making notes for the report she'll prepare tomorrow, and she'd caught him staring. Pupils dilated, lips parted, damned if they weren't distracted by each other lately.

A final twirl of her lips round the smooth tip of the pen cap and one perfectly arched eyebrow became their undoing.

She found herself pinned on the couch, a key piece of photographic evidence from the case crumpled beneath her. Later, they'll explain to Skinner why half the file looks like it spent the night between the sofa cushions.

They'll agree it was worth it.

Her bed. His hands on her thighs, guiding them apart with long, slow kisses that burn all the way to her core.

She says a silent prayer to God for every sunflower seed that has ever crossed his lips, each one building to this very moment with that smart-ass tongue, and then she can't think because there's a familiar warmth at her center, threatening wildfire, its slender fingers spreading up and out, out, until every nerve is alight.

She comes to as the stubble along his chin grazes the tender skin at her belly. His slow, steady crawl back to her is peppered with kisses and tender words, and she lazily threads her fingers into his spiky-soft hair.

His weight is comforting and arousing, but he's focused on her neck, the soft spot at her throat, running his tongue along the ridge of her clavicle. He growls a possessive vibration into her breast as he tugs gently on a nipple, and her head falls back, eyes closed. She can't watch, she can't wait, she needs him but she's not ready to admit it. Her fingers run the length of his back, tracing the ridge of muscle and bone along his spine, digging her fingers into his ass to guide him, but he sways his hips slightly, just out of reach.

Not yet.

He grins because he knows what he's doing. They both do, this familiar dance they've danced for years, long before their bodies knew what their minds refused to acknowledge.

She reaches between them, holding him, stroking him, and the effect is instantaneous. He stills, breathing hard against her neck, and now it's her turn to grin. Her given name is a prayer on his lips.

All's fair, partner.

Sex softens them. She relishes a post-coital Mulder like a fine wine, luxuriating in his warmth at her back as his hand caresses the pale, bare skin of her abdomen, making lazy circles along the ligaments and muscle groups. She recites them in her head as his fingers traverse each one, trying not to think deeper. The words come at times like this, words they can't otherwise squeeze in between red-eye flights and tired motel rooms, chasing monsters in the dark.

"Did you have names?"

She blinks, wondering how he does this; how he can delve into her deepest, most sensitive recesses and hit that last, grating nerve. Somehow, the question makes her feel more vulnerable than if she were tied and splayed naked before him—a not entirely unwelcome proposition given their relationship's recent evolution, but that's for later, she thinks.

She stalls. "What do you mean?"

"The IVF." He softens this prying open of her rusty wounds with a kiss to her porcelain shoulder, his five-turned-eleven o'clock shadow scraping the oversensitive skin.

She resents it and craves it in equal measure, his prying. No means yes, yes means no, but she doesn't have a word for the duality of her feelings in her feminist vocabulary.

A wire of unease draws itself taut across the back of her shoulders. "No. No names," she lies.

Melissa, for a girl. William, for a boy.

Mulder is as persistent with her inner workings as he is with everything else—both in bed, and out.

"You could try again."

She notes his choice of pronoun—"you", not "we". The money's in the sperm bank, as it were, and there are egg donors, surrogates, adoption…too much potential lost hope to quantify.

"I don't think so."

He makes a noncommittal sound, hand splayed warm and tender across the empty space within. "What do you think he'd have looked like?"

She frowns. Sometimes a conversation with Mulder feels like sailing during a hurricane, the waves and wind tossing her about hard enough to incur whiplash.

"Newborns look the same," she says, letting her voice drop into a clinical monotone of protection, "Most perceive them to look more like the father at first, but that perception is biased. One theory suggests it's an evolutionary attachment mechanism, a conditioned reaction on the part of the mother to keep the father from straying…"

She pauses, unwittingly caught on the f-word. She tries to picture her partner with spit-up on his Armani, tripping over alphabet blocks to warm a bottle for the midnight feeding, pinning cryptic to-dos on the fridge: Bigfoot sighting, AZ…US Air 2365 3:35p…need diapers.

It occurs to her that her subconscious picked him for more than his friendship, or his genetic resilience; his life left no room for the messy entanglements a baby would bring. Having his child meant she could let him go.

And yet, here they lie, entangled, metaphorically and otherwise. A laugh dies in her throat at the irony.

"What makes you think it would have been a 'he'?" she asks, an attempt to sound playful that falls flat.

"I don't know," he admits, "Guess I imagined it that way."

He leans on his elbow, drawing himself up and away, and she mourns the loss of his skin against hers, all the while she wants to crawl to the other side of the bed and close her eyes until he's gone, evaporated into the new morning like dew.

That he imagined anything, save for making an intimate deposit in a sterile plastic cup, is beyond her comprehension. She feels selfish, sad, and furious at once. Her heart cracks along weathered fault lines at the thought that he might have lost something in their failed experiment, too.

"You'd make a good mom," he says, forced nonchalance evident in the soft click in his throat when he swallows. He lies back, staring hard at some point beyond the ceiling that she'll never be able to reach.

"Maybe," she acquiesces. She threads their fingers together and accepts what he can offer; her consolation prize, now drifting off to sleep.

He rouses early, mattress shifting, murmuring something about a run, there's coffee, ticklish nuzzling at her ear. A golden autumn light spills through the blinds. By the time she wakes, he's gone.

She finds his shirt under the bed, half-empty glasses on the table, yesterday's tie thrown over the back of the couch. She lets the mess lie; it feels like home.

Coffee beckons as promised, its warm, sultry scent drawing her like a magnet as she crosses the floor to the kitchen. There's a pinch, a prick at her heel, and she scowls until she sees it, deeply entwined in the carpet's plush pile. Then, a smile, the softest quirk of her lips.

Missed one.

She picks it up, notes this one has not yet been cracked open; it holds something small and tender. Five-second rule be damned, she slips it between her lips. She relishes the salt, the sharp crack of the shell between her teeth, the fullness on her tongue as the seed bursts forth, ripe, and full of possibility.

[figureofdismay]

Albert Holstein's family shoulda given Mulder a "Fry Bread Inspector" tee shirt when he was recovered and allowed to change his clothes after the sweat 😂

[auralatrocityabyss]

Erik's Lament

The Blessing Way

Symphonic black metal based on the Phantom of the Opera. It takes a narrative approach to song structure and utilizes numerous vocalists and vocal styles, giving it an almost manic sound, suitable for the source material.

The stylistic approaches vary from song to song, keeping each track unique and setting excellent atmospheres for the portions of the story being told.

It can be purchased from Bandcamp.

[amplifyme]

The Blessing Way

[framerate24]

The X-Files: Culturally Speaking

According to the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) Ryan Coogler is going to launch a reboot of Chris Carter’s The X-Files, a series that ran from 1993-2018 and revolved around two FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) agents tasked with investigating weird and uncanny cases. The series had some great seasons, particularly earlier in it’s run till it eventually collapsed under the weight of…

[ragnarockz]

Got some new art cards in those VHS! 👽💚

[randomfoggytiger]

The Scully Family In-Depth (Part XII): Prophecy, Death, and the Question of Fate

Melissa Scully's death is upon us; but I must make a slight meander to point out the unexpected impact she leaves on her sister's disbelieving-believing partner, Mulder.

As mentioned in previous meta posts (here), Melissa acts as intercessor in One Breath-- the conduit of Scully's inner voice that was consecutively silenced, reanimated, and reburied under tightly packed layers of rationality-- steering Maggie Scully's indecision into respecting her daughter's predetermined medical decisions and chastising Mulder's vengeance into honoring his partner's dignity with a final goodbye.

Mulder, who'd lost his way after losing his partner, flailed from anger to dejection to revenge to truth; and, by heeding Melissa's wisdom and doing what he knew to be right, was rewarded with a recovered self-worth and reawakened Scully. That experience began Mulder's own spiritual journey, concurrent to but widely different from Scully's own; and culminated in his salvation from vengeance and "rebirth" on the Navajo astral plane. Although his peace is destroyed in Paper Clip, the changes begun during that experience continue to bloom and grow, opening new possibilities that help to, effectively, fill in the hollow of Melissa's loss. "Fate," he repeats at the end of episode, an unwitting echo of Melissa's "There is no right or wrong-- life is... just a path" and a far cry from his angry resistance in previous conversations with the deceased Scully sister.

MELISSA, THE NAVAJO, AND "LIFE IS JUST A PATH"

As Scully is interrogating Skinner, Melissa scurries up to her sister's apartment, pulls out her own key (which means Scully must give copies to her trusted loved ones), and walks inside... to an ambush. 

Albert Hosteen’s monologue sets up the mythological backbone of Paper Clip, Melissa's sacrifice and death, and the nature of direct faith working through Mulder and Scully to bring about change and "rebirth" for all.

"To the Navajo, the earth and its creatures have great influence over our existence. The stories passed from generation to generation help us to understand the reason for our tears of sadness and our tears of joy. Animals like the bear, the spider and the coyote are powerful symbols to our people.

"When the F.B.I. man Mulder was cured by the holy people, we were reminded of the story of the Gila monster, who symbolizes the healing powers of the medicine man. In this myth, the Gila monster restores a man by taking all his parts and putting them back together. His blood is gathered by ants, his eyes and ears by sun, his mind by Talking God and Pollen Boy. Then lightning and thunder bring the man back to life.

"At the end of the ceremony, when the F.B.I. man had been healed, we heard the news from other Native Americans in the northern plains that a great event had taken place. Like the Navajo, these people have their own stories and myths. One of these stories tells of the white buffalo woman who came down from the heavens and taught the Indians how to lead virtuous lives and how to pray to the creator. She told the people she would return one day, then she turned into a white buffalo and ascended into the clouds, never to be seen again. But on this day, when the holy people had given the F.B.I. man a miracle, a white buffalo was born and every Native American knew, whether he believed the story or not, that this was a powerful omen and that great changes were coming."  

Mulder talks later with Scully about “fate”; and Scully, too wounded to decode metaphors and miracles, focuses on the loss of her sister instead. 

The White Buffalo Woman had ascended with the promise to return again; and that return is-- to the neighboring tribe-- symbolized by the birth of a rare white calf. Its birth, however, comes at the cost of its mother's life; and the episode is not shy about drawing the parallel between either Mulder's or Scully's salvation (or both) and Melissa's doom (which will be discussed further below~.)

MAGGIE SCULLY AND GRIEF: REDUX

Maggie sweeps into the hospital under the assumption that it was Dana, not Melissa, who had been injured. This begs a theory: 

Maggie had been alerted by either Scully’s building manager or neighbors, since the hospital had not called her (or, at least, not as Melissa's emergency contact.)

Maggie must have made connections or even friends with the people in Scully’s building to keep an eye out and let Maggie know if (or when) another terrible incident occurred. 

If that is the case, when did Maggie and the neighbors become contacts, before or after Scully’s abduction? We know Mulder arrived late to the scene in Ascension (having driven home after a late night at the office, listened to the voicemail, and booked it back out to Scully's) but he still beat Maggie to her daughter’s place-- meaning, Maggie was alerted then by the police and not the curious, watchful, or nosy neighbors. My guess? She made connections during Scully’s disappearance while coming to clean and watch over her youngest daughter’s apartment between October 13th and November 11th (Scully’s abduction dates here.) 

Another touch that bolsters this theory: Maggie does not rush to the front desk upon arrival, running instead to the nearest doctor and asking him for information: “Uh, pardon me, my daughter was brought here late last night.” Not only was she not alerted for hours, Maggie was not even called at all, it seems; because her clarification was for “Dana Scully”, not “Melissa Scully.” 

The doctor sympathetically explains that the patient was her a Melissa, not Dana, Scully; and compassionately relays the diagnosis and surgery procedures while Maggie, shocked into inarticulation, slowly shakes her head as reality clashes with what she believed to be true.  

After being personally escorted to Melissa’s room, Maggie drifts to her daughter’s bedside, dazed and horrified, wobbling out a “Missy? It’s Mom…” announcement.

The doctor walks back to her side, detailing a bit of the “drastic” measures he and the medical team opted to do in light of the severity of the injury: coma. At “coma”, Maggie whips her head around but refrains from further comment, listening to the full explanation before relaxing her rigid posture and leaving the situation in capable hands.

And then, while the doctor asks the nurse to fetch a chair, Mrs. Scully begins to fall apart, repressing her sobs but not her violent shakes and unchecked tears. 

I've discussed grief and the Scullys different reactions to it here and here; but suffice to say, it's still interesting to note how each Scully woman grieves: Scully, alone; Maggie, leaning heavily on someone for support; and Melissa, providing support and harshly necessary advice. In hindsight, it's easy to see why Maggie married her late husband-- a rock she could always cling to-- and how that hole in her life naturally fell to either Dana or Bill to claim and fill (as will be discussed in future meta on Seasons 4 and 5.) In the opposite direction, Scully grew up as “the strong one” (a compliment Maggie gave to her, not her two sons), shadowing her father's example by internalizing her feelings completely, equating strength with denial of “weakness” or pain. That, in turn, drew her to Mulder and Mulder to her, each recognizing in the other a mutual coping mechanism and feeling safe enough to let down some of their emotional barricades in times of crisis.

When Scully is told about the shooting second-hand from Frohike,

she bolts, making a blind dash for the exit until Mulder catches up with and reasons her out of her first, irrational instinct: to run blindly forward in a frenzied attempt to prevent disaster or death at all costs.

Scully continues a childhood pattern established in A Christmas Carol and introduced in Beyond the Sea: death is her fault-- the rabbit she’d tried to protect from her older brother suffocated, the exacting captain died disappointed with his little Starbuck, the wayward partner slipped from her grasp to his preventable death; and now, her innocent sister takes an ugly, black bullet that was while on a mercy errand to soothe her anxieties.

It’s an interesting dichotomy, Scully and Death. She sought out distinguishment during her medical career, to make a difference outside of the hospital or the morgue or any place other than boots-on-the-ground in the field. Scully has her own demons she’s trying to conquer, that irrepressible thought of “failure, failure, failure” echoing deep inside her mind. She might think the blame lies in fathers or dead rabbits or lost partners and sisters; but the reality she wasn't and isn’t ready to face in Beyond the Sea or The Blessing Way or Anasazi or Never Again or A Christmas Carol or All Souls or Orison is that that the hollow gong of self-condemnation clangs only by her own hand; and will never stop-- no matter how many fathers or sisters or daughters or partners praise or assure her otherwise-- until she no longer hits it. (An aside: Tithonus was equal to Irresistible and Orison in forcing Scully to face her worst fears: death and personal weakness, defying the confines of even immortality.)

Mulder gives her focus-- a redirection that has helped him, over and over, in his relentless struggle against loss and for the truth-- and Scully does focus on that… but not for long. Because Scully can’t focus forever eye on the chase-- the gain and the lose, the lie and the truth-- while her loved ones are paying the price for her quest. It’s a core part of her character Mulder has learned to respect and yield to, and will again and again the rest of their lives (Paper Clip, Memento Mori, Gethsemane, Detour, Emily, etc.) 

ALBERT HOSTEEN ARRIVES

Maggie, meanwhile, has no idea where her daughter is, sitting alone by Melissa’s bedside as the Consortium plant agent unsettles her further by swimming laps around the hospital room. When the nurse drops in to announce a visitor, she brightens-- “Is it Dana? Is Dana here?”-- and is, again, disappointed. 

When Albert Hosteen walks into the room, she recoils-- too many figures in the shadows for her to trust let alone welcome this strange new man-- 

but when he repeats Scully’s message, Maggie grasps onto his words immediately: “You know where she is? Is she okay?” 

From Mrs. Scully’s perspective, Melissa is in a coma and Dana is missing; and for the past few hours she must have teetered between despair that her youngest had been taken again and hope that she was coming soon, soon, soon. 

Maggie follows Albert as he plods to Melissa’s bed; and, though immediately wary when he grasps an uninjured hand, she waits to see his next action.

“She is weak,” Albert intones, almost surprised. 

“She is getting better,” Maggie insists, her tone bordering on scolding… but with doubt creeping at the edges.  

“If it’s all right, I would like to pray over her here.” 

Maggie nods after a second; and only after her consent does Albert begin his (off-screen) ritual. 

There are a few key details that are quite interesting: Maggie is alone and very aware of strangers keeping her under unsubtle surveillance; and with one daughter in a coma and the other missing, it's hard to believe a complete stranger that waltzes into the room and claims acquaintance with her family. And not only is Albert tall, somber, and potentially physically intimidating, but he is also a man whose beliefs and practices would be at odds with Maggie's traditionally Catholic teachings and doctrine. While Maggie is more open to supernatural occurrences than her daughter-- believing in dreams and omens despite Scully's flippant disagreement-- she likely filters those experiences through a religious lens, ala the prophetic dreams in the oral and written traditions of her own faith. She, like Scully, is uncomfortable with broader explanations (i.e. walking away from Melissa’s “out there” speeches in One Breath and The Blessing Way, posts here and here); yet, Maggie still lets Hosteen in, permitting him to clutch her daughter’s hand and disagree with her doctors on nothing more than simple faith in her absent daughter's judgment. That trust will change after Scully’s behavior during Season 4’s cancer arc.

THE CHOICE IS UP TO YOU (AND YOU)

Mulder and Scully uncover a dangerous truth or two, then rendezvous with Skinner in order to create a battle plan. He wants to barrel down the path they’re on, trump card firmly in grasp; but relents after she practically begs him to return home-- a first for both: Scully giving up with tears in her eyes and Mulder relinquishing the chase (and the ground he'd gained to avenge his father and his own death) after her uncharacteristic plea.

“Look, I want exactly what you want! …But I need to see my sister.” 

Scully quickly grows self-conscious, dipping her head down and slapping that age-old faux smile across her mouth-- the Dana Scully coping mechanism-- until Mulder, too, looks down and away, giving her space to recover. 

“It’s up to you, Scully,” Mulder gently stipulates, leaving the final decision in her hands. (This decision, of course, leads to her further devastation later this episode when they not only lose their advantage but also Melissa, who will die in her sister’s absence, anyway. Another “failure” Mulder tries to relieve with a talk about Fate, and one that Scully can’t accept yet... and won’t for years.) 

Scully is surprised and disturbed at having to choose, swiveling her eyes from Mulder’s retreating form to Skinner’s neutral posture, afraid of the judgment or disappointment he might be expressing because of her decision.

Ultimately, she chooses for them to return-- but with a stipulation of their own, a concession to her and Mulder’s equal partnership. “I told Skinner to make the deal. But not to hand over the tape until you agreed to it.” It’s an echo of “I wouldn’t put myself on the line for anybody but you”, and a precursor to “Even if that were true, I wouldn’t change a day”: Scully trusts Mulder’s instincts above all others; and her trust in him solidifies and reinforces their partnership, giving his wishes equal placement to her own wants and needs (and sometimes greater precedence than, in her self-conscious moments.) 

Mulder’s rejoinder-- “I’m sorry about your sister, Scully”-- is appreciated but redirected: “I just need to know she’s going to be okay.” 

THE BUFFALO SUPPORT GROUP AND SKINNER

Albert Hosteen’s narration picks back up in Melissa’s room: “For two days, I prayed for the FBI woman’s sister. Her doctor said she was getting better; and her mother, who would not leave her bedside, was able to sleep. But word have come from my brothers in the North that did not give me hope. 

“The white buffalo calf had survived; but after a day it would no longer drink its mother’s milk. On the third day, the mother buffalo laid down in her stall and would not get up. They said the men could do nothing for her. That night, she died.  

“My father taught me when I was a boy that this is how life is: that for something to live, another thing must often be sacrificed.” 

As we can see (and are told), the dynamic has shifted over the course of two days: Maggie has fallen asleep without sending Albert away, trusting in his protection and preferring his company to being alone. 

Skinner arrives, strait-laced, with answers and reassurances, disrupting Albert from his prayers and Maggie from her sleep. 

“My name is Walter Skinner-- I’m an Assistant Director of the FBI.” 

Maggie, unimpressed, closes her fashion magazine and looks down and away, already anticipating an endless line of questions from Dana’s higher ups. 

Skinner, thrown off by the cool reception, puts his badge away and gets down to business. “I’m very sorry about your daughter,” he begins again; and, again, Maggie silently brushes him off. 

Coming to the point, Skinner says, “Dana asked me to deliver a message.” 

Maggie comes to life, immediately turning to the assistant director and becoming wide-eyed and taut with anticipation. “You’ve been in contact with her?” At Skinner’s “Yes,” she immediately sets aside the blanket and stands, pouring anxious wrath (which we will see again in Memento Mori) onto her youngest’s innocent messenger-- “Well, I want to know where she is”-- before ending in near tears-- “and if she’s okay….”  

Skinner’s affirmation is not soothing: “She’s okay. But she’s in a very serious situation which prevents her from being here.” 

Slumping, Maggie huffs out a fake trademark smile of her own before shifting into more serious anger: “What kind of situation?” She’s either questioning Skinner’s story or her daughter’s honesty; but either way, Maggie has never been a “face value” believer (Beyond the Sea, Ascension, One Breath, etc.) and her patience has been stretched thin over little bits of communication boiling down to nothing more than a shaky promise or two.

“One that we hope to reverse so that Dana can come back to work.” 

Before anyone can respond, Maggie’s eyes jerk back to the shark agent circling outside their room, tipping off Skinner. 

Albert Hosteen chimes in with a helpful, “That man you just saw. He’s been very curious about this room.” 

This turns Skinner’s attention to Hosteen, who passes inspection and agrees to the assistant director’s injunction not to leave the room. 

LOSING MORE THAN MELISSA

The last we see of Melissa’s hospital room is after Scully has arrived-- too late-- sitting alone in the dimly lit calm of the recently deceased. Mulder arrives later, joining in his partner's grief and consoling her as best he can.

“It happened three hours ago. She went into surgery-- the damage to her brain was worse than they had hoped.  Her blood pressure started to rise; and, uh…. She slipped away. 

"She died for me,” Scully mourns, “and I tried to tell her I was sorry, but I don’t think she’ll ever really know.”

Scully has sat in this chair for who knows how long trying to form an apology, unable to form the words; and now feels like even more of a failure for not at least giving this one thing in exchange for Melissa’s sacrifice. 

“Oh, she knows. Melissa knows," Mulder insists.  

Scully can’t accept that for herself-- won’t until she releases all the guilt and shame she’s holding in, at last, in All Things-- and so stays silent, regrouping with Herculean effort. 

Sucking in a reinforcing breath, Scully detours the conversation away from her rightful pain to her unwarranted self-flagellation: “You were right. There is no justice.” Meaning: my actions stripped my sister of her life and doomed her to injustice after death. 

“I don’t think this is about justice, Scully,” Mulder contradicts. 

“Then what is it about?” she questions, desperately needing a belief to cling to, a direction to head in. 

It’s in this moment Mulder takes on the role of conduit to Scully's inner voice from Melissa: “I think it’s about fate.” 

As mentioned in the opening paragraphs, Mulder's time on the astral plane has changed his openness to spiritual connections beyond his understanding. The problem of belief, however, remains: Mulder believes that "the truth is out there", that paranormal or supernatural happenings exist... but he doesn't believe in them. Without Melissa's influence, it takes Scully another five years before she works her way back to believing in them the way she used to, the way that Melissa was helping her rediscover before her untimely death.

Scully wants to accept this, too; but, again, cannot. 

Mulder pauses, gulps, and gently, indirectly questions, “Skinner told me that he talked to you. That you were insistent about coming back to work. …Now if Melissa’s death--”

Scully parries his probe for the guilt that haunted her in Beyond the Sea: shaking her head to pacify his worries and dissuade his scrutiny, she adamantly insists, “I need something to put my back up against.”  

“I feel the same way,” Mulder continues, softly treading back to territory she wants to avoid. “We’ve both lost so much.” 

Scully looks down, pebbles her chin, steadies it, and looks back, not wanting to minimize his grief while avoiding her own. 

“I believe that what we’re looking for… is in the X-Files," he continues, "and we’re certain more than ever that the truth is in there.” 

Scully does not take comfort in balancing tragic loss against truths uncovered, staking her position firmly and unshakably in measured, avenging justice: “I’ve heard the truth, Mulder. Now what I want are the answers.” 

Mulder scoots over to embrace Scully; and she, giving in to the comfort and the pain, allows him to do so, reaching for a tighter grip around his neck. 

And thus ends Paper Clip. 

THE WHITE BUFFALO CALF: MULDER OR SCULLY?

Albert Hosteen at first compares Mulder's recovery in The Blessing Way to the Navajo tale of the Gila Monster: "When the F.B.I. man Mulder was cured by the holy people, we were reminded of the story of the Gila monster, who symbolizes the healing powers of the medicine man. In this myth, the Gila monster restores a man by taking all his parts and putting them back together. His blood is gathered by ants, his eyes and ears by sun, his mind by Talking God and Pollen Boy. Then lightning and thunder bring the man back to life."

However, Hosteen soon receives word from another (unnamed) tribe that links the birth of their legendary white buffalo calf to the day of Mulder's recovery: "Like the Navajo, these people have their own stories and myths. One of these stories tells of the white buffalo woman who came down from the heavens and taught the Indians how to lead virtuous lives and how to pray to the creator. She told the people she would return one day, then she turned into a white buffalo and ascended into the clouds, never to be seen again. But on this day, when the holy people had given the F.B.I. man a miracle, a white buffalo was born and every Native American knew, whether he believed the story or not, that this was a powerful omen and that great changes were coming." 

Canonically, this sets up exciting possibilities that aren't followed through (or, at least, not very well); but if one takes a step back, the Mulder and Calf comparison doesn't work at all:

Melissa's sacrifice is drawn directly to Scully throughout the entire episode, with Scully repeating that fact in doomed tones over and over and over.

The White Buffalo Woman is a feminine mythology, tying more neatly to the mother buffalo/Melissa's "sacrifice" and the calf/Scully's "rebirth" (as foretold in the legend.)

Not only does Melissa act as the "maternal" guide to Scully's inner voice, she is also her protector, supporter, and keeper-- in this life and the next: saving her sister from irrational rationality and her niece from an existence only relieved by her death (Beyond the Sea, The Blessing Way, A Christmas Carol, etc.)

If parallels between Mulder's "rebirth" and Melissa's "sacrifice" can be drawn, so can Scully's escape from her assassins and "rebirth" back into normal civilization alongside Melissa's death. It would also line up narratively with Albert's monologue about the buffalos: “The white buffalo calf had survived; but after a day it would no longer drink its mother’s milk. On the third day, the mother buffalo laid down in her stall and would not get up. They said the men could do nothing for her. That night, she died." Scully, too, was separated from her sister for a period of three days; and Melissa, too, died on the third.

Furthermore, there is no connection between Mulder's set of circumstances and Melissa's, narratively or mythologically.

However, we all know The X-Files is loaded with errors because of a lack of show bible and a broken, incohesive narrative; that means, unfortunately, there is one possibility for the comparison to work-- and that is by taking The Field Where I Died's canon seriously.

TFWID posits that Mulder, Melissa Rydell, and Scully are connected soulmates, recycled together as an unholy trio in each life (kind of like the vampires in 3) and doomed to suffer tragic fates until they get it right. (On the surface, this might further prove the hypothesis that "the X-Files was always a dark show with an unhappy ending" except that Chris Carter himself said that wasn't the case-- though he might have changed his mind recently.) Massive plot holes of the episode aside, TFWID also posits each soul is reborn into a new body regardless of the sex of that body, meaning Mulder was alternately a Confederate man and a Jewish woman in previous lives.

And the Jewish woman reincarnation is the stickler... because that was the last past life Mulder had (to my knowledge) before his current one. Meaning, Mulder soul could very well be the White Buffalo Woman at some point in his past, reborn in this life, again, to bring about the justice and better ending he'd failed to accomplish in the preceding ones. It would do away with the feminine-only bent to the mythology, at the very least; and it would tie into Chris Carter's overall vision for the show-- fate vs. freewill, with fate winning out again and again in Mulder and Scully's lives.

However, that would negate the more interesting and accurate interpretation of the White Buffalo Woman mythology: that Scully, not Mulder, was the woman fated to save the world.

That interpretation would also make sense because Scully often experienced visitations from the dead or dying in the series (posts here and here), including Albert Hosteen's apparition in Amor Fati... which was right after the revelation that shook her to the core: finding the key to everything in Africa. And if that be the case, then the files and the Conspiracy and being a part of Mulder's quest was Scully's fated journey; and that Mulder had made repeated mistakes that destroyed his life in each of the past ones. That Scully was here, now, to "keep him honest, make him a whole person" and safeguard him from danger (and himself) while saving the world.

Furthermore, this interpretation of canon (which I argue is the only factual one) would also negate the late-in-the-game comparison between William and buffalos in Season 9 since:

The White Buffalo Woman was prophesied to be reborn with agency-- to be a leader herself, not a vessel for the next "Messiah."

It would mean Scully's son was a natural product of her and Mulder's dedication to each other, a bonus to saving the world and setting her partner's life to rights.

Of course, there is the third option: that both Mulder and Scully are tied into the legend as they are in every other area of their life-- together (shoutout to @deathsbestgirl's meta considerations here.)

MOTHER EARTH AND UNCONSCIOUS TRUTHS

Melissa, the voice of Scully’s unconscious truths, has died-- at the hand of the Conspiracy, no less. Her impact is far from over, however, trailing behind Scully until she is given (and is able to give back) a form of justice, showing her worn and weary sister that the unknowable and inevitable need not drag her down-- that life and death are both “just a path.” That, like the native tribes believed, all of life’s joys and pains must be held in equal balance to truly understand and appreciate what it is to live.

Scully’s ouroboros is that struggle. Death is terrifyingly final; and she fears what little of her impact or legacy will be left with those who have gone before and those that will come after, flipping rapidly back and forth between guilty rumination and morbid, fascinated terror. The fear of her lack of consequence drives Scully back to Maggie for reassurance, away from Mulder’s lack thereof in Never Again, and into the arms of any man who will consume her griefs and guilt in a temporary, enamored embrace… only to repeat the cycle again, restlessly seeking peace. Melissa, her father, Mulder, Maggie, and Emily have given her reassurance and absolution, repeatedly; but it isn’t until Scully embraces the incomprehensible experiences of Amor Fati and All Things that she is able to, at last, settle those doubts into calm, even joyful acceptance. 

What I find most fascinating about Melissa's character is that the development of her bond with Scully builds, not lessens, as the years roll on: the nuanced angles of their relationship aren't fully revealed until Season 5’s A Christmas Carol; and the lessons that have nibbled since their father’s death in Beyond the Sea are recontextualized each time Melissa's influence stretches out from the grave to save her sister from rigidly unyielding scientific explanations or excuses.

Some day, after years of confusion and misinterpretation, her pleas will be able to be heard and will, at last, help her sister achieve peace.

Thanks for reading~

Enjoy!

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Carrizo Peak in the Sierra del Sacramento, Alamogordo Co, NM. Photo: Carrizo Works (Aug 23, 2022)

(Scott Horton)

* * * *

“He acted like he had no relatives,” Leaphorn thought and grinned wryly at the old-fashioned expression. When he was a boy, it was the worst thing his mother could say about anyone. But then the Navajo Way made the relatives totally responsible for anything one of the family did. Now that was changing and there were more young men like Horseman. Souls lost somewhere between the values of The People and the values of the whites. No good even at crime.

The Blessing Way (Leaphorn & Chee #1) :: by Tony Hillerman

+

The only clouds this morning were high-altitude cirrus so thin that the blue showed through them. Beautiful to Chee. He was back in Dine’ Bike’yah, back Between the Sacred Mountains, and he felt easy again—at home in a remembered landscape. He stood beside his pickup, postponing for a moment the four or five hours he still had to spend driving, and studied the mountain. 

It was something Frank Sam Nakai had instructed him to do. “Memorize places,” his uncle had told him. “Settle your eyes on a place and learn it. See it under the snow, and when first grass is growing, and as the rain falls on it. Feel it and smell it, walk on it, touch the stones, and it will be with you forever. When you are far away, you can call it back. When you need it, it is there, in your mind.” 

This was one of those places for Chee—this desert sloping away to the hills that rose to become Dook’o’oosli’id, Evening Twilight Mountain, the Mountain of the West, the mountain built by First Man as the place where the holy Abalone Shell Boy would live, guarded by the Black Wind yei. He had memorized this place when he worked out of the Tuba City agency. He leaned his elbows against the roof of his pickup and memorized it again, with rags of fog drifting away from the snowy peaks and the morning sun making slanting shadows across the foothills. “Touch it with your mind,” Frank Sam Nakai had told him. “Inhale the air that moves across it. Listen to the sounds it makes.” 

The sounds this place was making this morning were the sounds of crows, hundreds of them, moving out of the trees around the trading post back toward wherever this flock spent its winter days.

The Ghostway (Leaphorn & Chee, #6) :: by Tony Hillerman

[backintimeforstuff]

the most insane thing scully ever did was to continue to live in her georgetown appartment FOR YEARS after melissa was gunned down in the doorway there. like was she just stepping over the threshold everday going yep. nothing to see here. everything is fine. let me just answer the door to the pizza delivery guy and stand in the exact spot where my sister was murdered.

[scifipinups]

Melinda McGraw The X-Files 'The Blessing Way' (1993)

[happyheidi]

｡ﾟﾟ･｡･ﾟﾟ｡ ﾟ. April will bring blessings.

ﾟ･｡･ﾟ