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cecilysass · 2 months

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Milagro Fic Recommendations

These are good for any time of year, of course, not just February 14. But here are my favorite fics related to the season 6 episode Milagro, a long time favorite. (And @sisterspooky1013's favorite episode of all time: happy VD, girl!) I’ve been reading and sifting through these for some time, and I have tried to include some from all eras: newer AO3 fics, some written right after the ep aired, etc. But I'm sure I've missed some, so hit me with your own faves, please.

Because of Milagro's ending, this entire genre of fic tends to be heavy on the hurt/comfort and angst (which is fiiiiine by me), but that’s not all that’s here. Many of these are smutty, but not all.

Adagio - Terma99 A meditative, peaceful take on the aftermath of Milagro by a veteran author that includes both agents realizing something they had learned. Lovely.

Alma - 6hoursgirl (@sixhours) A lovely hurt/comfort Milagro piece. This one is Mulder POV, which is a little less common for post-Milagro, I think, and I like this characterization of Mulder as desperately wanting to help Scully, desperately wanting to protect her, but also a tiny bit scared of the intimacy and relationship he feels they’re on the cusp of. He’s so good-hearted and also a little dysfunctional here, and I love it.

Bated Breath - dreamingofscully (@dreamingofscully) This one has an original take on Scully's experience; it leaves Scully with clarity and new direction in her relationship with Mulder. DreamingofScully tends to write a more confident, in-charge Scully in the MSR than some do, and I appreciate it.

Beyond the Strokes of a Typewriter - storybycorey (@storybycorey) When Scully is stricken and ashamed that it’s been so long since anyone has seen her as a woman as Padgett did, Mulder is pushed to revelations. Mulder 3rd person POV. Very good smut build up. And nobody does a gorgeous feelings reveal from Mulder like storeybycorey, man.

I Believe - Diana Battis There are a lot of lovely, heartfelt hurt/comfort fics about the aftermath of Milagro (for obvious reasons), but this one is especially well done. Viewed from Scully’s third person point of view, it focuses on Mulder’s capacity for tenderness and guilt. Plus some smut.

Don’t Look Up - ArtemisX5 After Padgett's hallway revelation, Scully is horrified that she has no secrets left. But you know, Mulder is much slower on the draw than she gives him credit for. There is also such moving hurt/comfort in this.

Intimacies with Strangers -mldrgrl (@mldrgrl) This mid- and post- Milagro piece has Mulder and Scully simmering in tension and then boiling over. Their relationship is complex and painfully entangled, and I love how it plays out. There is also excellent Scully characterization. This one helps me to get more fully why she might have been drawn to Padgett initially, something I struggle with in the episode.

La Madrugada - h0ldthiscat A carefully told tale of RST that takes both characters seriously and is sincerely moving. Excellent.

Lacuna - Aloysia_Virgata (@aloysiavirgata) This is a longer work, not really a classic post ep per se. But I love this moody, angsty casefile set right after Milagro. This Scully has not come to terms with her emotions, is thoroughly freaked by how she reacted to Padgett, and hasn't even entirely worked out how she feels about Mulder. There is Scully/other here, but the ship is steering home. The end of this is so moving, but cw: dark themes in the casefile, extreme violence against children, traumatized agents.

Still Life - Seek_Its_Opposite (@seek-its-opposite) Ah, this is such a thoughtful and exquisitely written Scully character piece — and it contains some truly beautiful insights about Mulder, too. It suggests the heartbreaking idea that Mulder’s way of showing Scully respect (giving her distance) is continually hurting her. So tragic (and consistent with canon, e.g. Never Again.) One memorable line: “Every one of their fights is about how to care for one another, every last one.”

Alma Gemela - matchingfabric (@matchingfabric) After the events of Milagro, Scully (and Mulder) get accustomed to platonically sharing a bed for comfort. This is a slightly different take on post-Milagro. Exceptionally, irresistibly sweet. Oh, and smutty.

What did I miss? Tell me. And yes, I'm working on my own short Milagro fic that will be coming soon-ish.

#x files fanfic #xfiles fanfic #xf fanfic #fox mulder #dana scully #msr #milagro #fic recs #fic rec list #love fic recs #season 6 #xf valentines day #valentines day

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randomfoggytiger · 9 months

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Fire and False Romance, Ice and Love

Mulder's and Scully's wrong romantic choices always end in fire--

Fire

War of the Coprophages

Syzygy

Never Again

The End

One Son

Milagro

Amor Fati

Bonus: The Field Where I Died (Melissa died in concentration camps.)

--whereas the testament of their love held true on the ice.

Ice

End Game

Fight the Future

Thank you for reading~

Enjoy!

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hola-soy-una-persona · 3 months

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A veces siento que cada día en el que no me suicido es un milagro.

Adry.

#adry #citas #notas #frases #textos #escritos #letras #a veces #siento #suicido #milagro #post #tumblr #pensamientos #sentimientos

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prometteya · 11 months

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#s06e18 #Milagro #TXF #the x files #x files #mulder and scully #Dana Scully #Fox Mulder #секретные материалы

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cada-sonrisa-que-finjas · 1 month

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Nadie que venga caminando me hace correr a mí.

-Milagro Batista

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viejospellejos · 10 months

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¡¡Milagro!!

aporte: @clocasduende

#milagro #miracle #silla de ruedas #wheelchair

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welele · 6 months

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#milagro #bizcos #disparar #w3

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sixhours · 3 months

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Alma

Rated: PG Length: ~4k

Notes: Post-episode for Milagro; the aftermath. Milagro remains one of my favorite episodes; this is my interpretation of what happened after. Huge thanks to @perplexistan for the beta, the glowing feedback, and for wrangling my dialogue's syntax. :)

Originally posted on AO3 10/1/2014

~*~

The first thing he sees is the blood.

He doesn’t remember the sound of his own footfall, doesn’t remember kneeling or reaching out, all he can think is that he’s lost her. The thought is cruel and terrible; you lose a bet, you lose your car keys. You don’t misplace your best friend’s life between the cushions, you don’t lose a person.

And yet, she is lost.

Her eyes are closed, her chest is still, her shirt is the color of dirty rubies. The smell in his overheated apartment is heavy with her last breath.

Scully.

His heart is racing in his chest, but hers has gone missing.

Oh, Scully.

He reaches to check for a pulse, and suddenly he’s staring into eyes of blue crystal, shocked and surprised as his own. She shudders against him, the roar of her breath an echo of reassurance. Her arms are a welcome vise grip, pulling up, clawing at his back, and he holds on for dear life.

That was too close.

When he finally speaks, her sobs have dulled to hiccups, but her fingers are tight through the fabric of his shirt. “Are you bleeding?”

She shakes her head, and he eases back, gently disentangling them. “Did he…”

“Hurts,” she mumbles.

He pulls back. “Just gonna look, ‘k?”

She nods her consent, closes her eyes. His fingers fumble at the buttons at her stomach, swallowing thickly at how soaked her blouse is. His hands are stained by the time they work the last button free.

Shit, it’s deep…

He moves tenderly along the underside of her sternum, surprised to find only bruises, the outlines of someone else’s fingers where they bored under her ribs. She winces when he grazes the skin.

“It’s a contusion,” she whispers, auburn lashes to ivory cheeks, like wildflowers pressed between dusty tomes.

He shakes his head. “Uh uh. Be right back.”

The 9-1-1 operator recognizes his name and address before he can give him the badge number.

He returns with a glass of water to find her struggling to her feet.

“Jesus, Scully, you shouldn’t—“

“I’m fine,” she says. “Just sore.”

He bites the inside of his cheek, hard. “Then let me help.”

He’s careful to avoid her left side, where the bruising is worst. She is warm and solid against him, but he can feel the tremors like tiny earthquakes along his side.

“What happened?” he asks, helping her ease down to the worn leather cushions.

“He came at me after you left,” she says, flat and dry, as if talking about the weather. “I fired...I fired twice? Three times?”

“It was four,” Mulder says, handing her the water. “Checked your clip.”

Her words ring hollow in the glass as she sips. “I must’ve missed.”

“You know you didn’t,” he whispers, leaning over her to grab the blanket from the back of the couch, draping it over her shoulders to quell the trembling. “Called for backup. Paramedics are on their way.”

“I don’t need—“

“Don’t say it,” he threatens gently. She scowls but sinks back and closes her eyes.

The response team is quick this time. The lead EMT, his name tag reads Bernard, makes a feeble joke about putting in a station next door, a private service for the guy whose bad luck always follows him home. Mulder doesn’t laugh.

He leaves her side only to show the investigative unit to the basement. The cops kneel over Padgett’s body, exclaiming and making wisecracks about love stories gone awry, so cavalier it makes Mulder’s stomach turn. Not that he has any sympathy for the dead writer, but he can’t stop imagining Scully with her heart in her hands.

They’re examining her injuries in the living room when he returns, so he takes the phone to the bedroom. Skinner is characteristically gruff, but he softens when Mulder explains.

“You think Padgett’s responsible?”

“Yeah, but he won’t be penning his memoirs anytime soon. They found him in the basement. It’s just like the other victims.”

“Of course,” Skinner sighs. “Alright. I want you in my office first thing tomorrow. And Mulder?”

“Yeah?”

The other man lowers his voice, a gesture of mutual understanding. “Don’t let Agent Scully out of your sight. If this guy comes back—“

He won’t, Mulder thinks, but he’s distracted. Her voice carries through the plaster; she’s giving the EMTs hell.

She’s going to be fine, sir. She’s feeling well enough to fight.

“Agent Mulder,” Skinner barks into his ear. “Did you hear me?”

He clears his throat, looks over his shoulder, drawn to her rising tones. “Got it, sir. I gotta go.” The phone clicks off before Skinner can lay into him. He’ll get his ass handed to him tomorrow, but tonight he has more important things to worry about.

She has her hands on her hips, facing off with the senior paramedic, who looks like he got more than he bargained for.

“I’m a medical doctor, I know the symptoms, and I don’t have them. You said it yourself, my vitals are fine, there’s no swelling.”

“Ma’am, you know very well that a hemorrhage might not present until—”

“It’s Doctor,” she says icily. “And if I have symptoms, I’ll go to the hospital. Until then, I’m refusing medical treatment beyond a cursory physical exam.”

The other guy looks pointedly at the blood smears on the carpet, then toward Mulder, as if to ask for help.

But Scully is looking at him, too, eyes wide, nostrils flaring. Daring him. He opens his mouth to take the dare, to tell her to go to the damned hospital because she would demand the same of him, but something in her eyes holds him back. Her posture is strong, but there’s a subtle tremble in her chin that gives it away.

He, too, softens in the face of her fire.

“It’s uhh, it’s OK guys,” he mutters. “We’ll take it from here.”

Bernard blinks. “Agent Mulder, with all due respect—“

“She said she’s fine,” he says, his tone sharp, though his eyes don’t leave his partner.

The other man presses his lips in a line and begins re-packing his bag, muttering something about the loonies at Hegal Place. Mulder sees the paramedics out, letting the door slam just a little too hard, all the while thinking he is a lunatic for letting them go.

He comes back to find her buttoning up her shirt, reaching for her jacket.

“Do you want to get cleaned up—“

“Home,” she says, frowning at the floor. “I want to go home.”

There’s a pause. She won’t look at him, won’t meet his eye.

“Right,” he swallows, “I, uh…I’ll drive.”

He steals glances at the passenger seat as he maneuvers the car through darkening streets. Scully rolls her head on her neck and stares out the window, diminished in her silence. She’s distant, set apart; something vital inside her has torn but doesn’t bleed. Padgett’s psychic surgeon failed to seize her heart, but he’s taken something else in its stead.

When he reaches over to take her hand, she doesn’t look up, doesn’t acknowledge him, but the bones of her fingers hold fast to his, reflexive in their icy grip.

Her apartment is cool and smells like her; vanilla and cinnamon, familiar and exotic. Her voice is drawn and husky when she speaks.

“I’m going to shower. Help yourself.”

He does. He makes tea because he knows where she keeps it—third cupboard from the left, middle shelf, next to the honey. He finds the kettle, puts the water on to boil, and tries not to think about the blood (her blood) congealing on the floor of his apartment.

He finds a lemon in the back of the fridge, the contents of which are similar to his own—heavy on the condiments, a lone half-gallon of milk, carrots in the crisper whose stalks have wilted to gray-green dust.

When was the last time one of us ate a meal that didn’t come wrapped in foil?

There’s the creak of the floorboards as she moves about on the other side of the kitchen wall, the groan of the building’s pipes as the shower comes on; the bedroom door is ajar, and soon steam wafts from within, fragrant and humid.

They’ve spent the last six years living side by side in adjoined motel rooms, but she never leaves the door open.

He takes a seat on the couch to wait, tipping his head back into the cushions. His mind goes back to Padgett, the last of his fatal novel’s pages curling in the ashes…

…the things he wrote about her.

He rubs at his eyes, exhales sharply.

She’s a grown woman. You’re not her keeper.

Keeper.

The couch is soft, the running water is white noise, and sleep teases the edge of his consciousness.

Keeper. Keep her.

There’s a scream, a forlorn wail that wakes him with a start; he’s on his feet before his eyes can adjust to the darkened room, stumbling blindly toward the source.

“Scully? Scully!”

The forgotten kettle pops and hisses on the stove; he rushes over to shut off the burner. He’s dimly aware the scream came from the kettle, not his partner, but his pulse doesn’t believe it. They live in a world where the sick imaginings of a lonely man can come to life and kill you, after all.

Was she lonely, too?

He leans back against the counter, blinking, trying to ignore the feeling of dread coiled in the pit of his stomach. Something feels off. The refrigerator hums and chuckles at his side, there’s the tick of a clock from across the room, but otherwise, the apartment is quiet…

The shower isn’t running.

His hand goes to his holster on instinct as he makes his way to the bedroom. There’s no sign of her, save for her ruined shirt, a spilled pool of sullied cotton on the floor.

“Scully?” his voice comes out as a whisper. He feels like a trespasser.

The bathroom door is also open, bleeding light onto the plush carpet. He creeps to the threshold, listening for movement. She should be toweling off, maybe brushing her hair, applying one of those god-awful green mask things to her face—anything but heavy silence.

Seconds tick by in an agonizing crawl, but there is only the sound of his breathing. He feels himself raise the gun before he realizes he’s going to do it, and swings his body into the doorway, tasting tin and salt on the back of his tongue.

Oh. Oh…

She’s sitting in the shower stall with her back to the door, so still.

Her hair is a dark brown stain down her back, her skin a shimmering pearl silhouette. He can see the upper half of her tattoo at the base of her spine, a haze of reds and blues through the mottled glass.

So very, very still.

Oh God, not again…

He’ll find her blood on the floor, her still-beating heart in her hand…

Her shoulders shudder and tense, her head tips forward, and he is baptized in relief.

“Scully,” he breathes, lowering the gun.

A thready gasp as her head snaps around, and he glimpses the slope of her nose, the pink in her cheek, the subtle furrow in her brow, delicate as a watercolor portrait. The sight takes his breath.

“Mulder?”

“Shit, I’m sorry,” he says, “Sorry, I didn’t mean…I thought you were…that he—” he says, tripping over his words as he tries to gather his wits.

“I’m fine, Mulder,” she sighs, her voice as bruised as her ribs. A million sarcastic responses perch on the tip of his tongue, but he swallows them like medicine. She doesn’t stand, doesn’t make an attempt to cover herself.

“I’m fine, I’ll be out in a minute,” she repeats when he doesn’t leave. He’s fixed in place, irrationally terrified she’ll fade away if he can’t see her.

Don’t let her out of your sight.

He recalls the way her fingers wouldn’t let go until they’d parked at the curb, the confusion and fear in her eyes when he’d disentangled them.

Not fine. Not this time.

He turns in a half-circle and lowers himself to the floor with a grunt, his back pressed to the shower. “No can do,” he says. “I’m under strict orders from the boss to keep an eye on you tonight.”

“Oh? I don’t think this is what Skinner had in mind,” she mutters, but she doesn’t ask him to leave.

“You know me, Scully. I follow orders.”

She snorts. He imagines he can feel her shivering through the glass. The tile floor is hard and cold, the warmth from the steam has dissipated, but their silence is comfortable. He thinks of the tea water cooling on the stove, the lemon shrinking in its paper skin, her heart thudding against her ribs like a prisoner seeking escape—

“Do you fear death, Mulder?”

Only when you don’t answer your phone.

He swallows, stalling. “Have we had this conversation?”

“I asked if you’d ever thought about dying, not if you feared it—there’s a difference.”

“If we’re going to argue semantics, you should put some clothes on,” he quips. “We’ll be here all night.”

He hears her shift behind him, imagines he can feel the plane of her back pressed against his own, the steady beat of her heart like a bird fluttering against his right shoulder. She’ll wait; she’s strong enough to wait forever, if that’s what it takes. He sighs in surrender.

“I fear dying without knowing the truth...without closure,” he admits, dancing lightly around the whole of it; that she is as much a part of his unfinished business as any conspiracy. What lies between them is a spirit he can only glimpse in his peripheral vision; when he confronts it head on, it disappears.

He’s come too close to meeting her ghost tonight.

There’s a smile in her voice. “Why am I not surprised?”

“You got me. I’m predictable,” he says, casting a glance behind him. He can see the milk-white skin of her back, a dark curl of auburn hair kissing the slope of her neck. He turns away and coughs, unsettled at the intimacy. “Do you? Fear death, I mean.”

“Spiritually, no,” she says softly, “but on an instinctual level, I do. I think what I fear more is the threat, and how the constant threat changes us, more than the act of dying itself.”

He frowns, chews at his lip. “I don’t follow…”

Another pause, longer this time. He bites at the edge of his cuticle until it’s raw.

“I love this job,” she whispers. “We’ve given so much to this…this work, and I accepted the risks. But sometimes…” she pauses, there’s a soft click in her throat when she swallows. The quiet draws itself around them, and he grows still as stone, as if any movement might frighten her back to the hollow place she found in the car. When she finally speaks, her words are curiously detached and small, like a child’s.

“Sometimes I don’t like what it’s made me.”

“And what’s that?” he asks, closing his eyes, unsure if he’s ready to hear it. The irony isn’t lost on him, that for all his seeking, some truths are better left unfound.

“You learn to assume the worst of people. And when you don’t, when you’re foolish enough to let your guard down…” she trails off again with a shaky breath. “…Well. Here I am.”

“You had no way of knowing Padgett was going to end it like this.”

“Didn’t I?” she says, and the bitterness in the question makes him wince. “As investigators, we’re trained to rely on our instincts, yet I ignored everything mine were telling me—everything you were telling me—against good reason.”

“You didn’t know—“

“I did. And why? To become the object of a sad man’s perverted fantasy? As if I were as lonely as he wrote me,” she scoffs, and he hears her nails kiss the shower floor.

He tips his head back, feels the plates of his skull meet the cool glass wall, heavy with the weight of her unrest. In a moment of striking clarity, he understands that this isn’t the first time she’s sat like this, walled in glass and berating herself for some self-perceived failure, but it’s the first time she’s let him bear witness.

He doesn’t know whether to feel touched or guilty, but the guilt is an old friend, so he lets it in. Part of him wants to leave, grab his jacket off the back of the couch and run. Every time she gives a piece of herself, it makes it that much harder to look at her as a friend, and not something more.

But it’s too late; she’s talking, her words gaining momentum. An object in motion stays in motion, and he isn’t strong enough to stop her.

“Do you know what they say about ‘Mrs. Spooky’ when they think I’m not listening? That I bring it on myself,” she says, a grating whisper. “That I must be a masochist to stay, to do what we do…or…” she trails off.

Or you wouldn’t come back to me, he thinks, trying to swallow the lump in his throat.

“I do the job because being an Agent is part of who I am. But it’s also the reason I can’t remember what it’s like to be…to be just…Dana.”

He swallows dust, numbly nods an assent she can’t see, and listens. He remembers as a boy, the pain of a blister under his thumbnail, how his father showed him to use a screw to make a hole and let out the blood. She’s doing it now, her words as honed and meticulous as a drill bit against supple flesh.

“These men, these creatures...they never really die. They follow me home every night, and I can only thank God that I’m strong enough to withstand living with them. I wish I could say the same for their victims.

“But I’ll never have that…that simple, unwavering faith, that at the end of the day, the world is a better place for what we do,” she whispers, her voice low and thready and ready to break. “I just know I have to do it. There’s no other choice.”

He closes his eyes and wonders when she became as brittle as him; if the change happened slowly, over the course of weeks and months, measured over miles and cases, or if this is the definitive moment, and she’ll emerge from her glass chrysalis a new creature, a changed thing.

Six years have graced him with a multitude of useless facts about his partner. He knows how she takes her coffee, her favorite shade of lipstick, and that she eats the yogurt with the pollen so she can justify the extra doughnut he’ll buy at lunch.

He knows that when they’re on a case and she can’t sleep, she’ll visit his motel room to share leftover pizza and watch noir films, and she cries at the sad parts when she thinks he’s not looking.

He knows she colors her hair, because her natural strawberry blonde waves are beautiful, and beauty doesn’t intimidate the good ol’ boys at the Bureau the way a glossy burnt auburn can.

But he’ll never know the person she was before she met him, before their truths became irrevocably entangled. Their physical losses were great, but the scars they can’t see are the ones that linger, and she is marked by him—partners until the very end.

He wants to know when she realized she couldn’t turn back.

As the silence draws itself around them, he knows there is nothing he can offer. She’s drawn her line in the sand and crossed it every time. All he can do is wait for her on the other side.

She has faith and science; he has her.

“Scully?” he says softly, when enough time has passed, when his legs are pins and needles, and the thought of her naked on the cold tile is hurting his sense of New-England-bred chivalry.

“Yeah?”

“My ass hurts.”

She barks a laugh into the narrow stall, but it works. He hears her movement, the door sliding open behind him with a metallic groan. He gets up, careful to keep his back to the shower, even though they’re past any pretense of modesty.

He coughs, rubbing at his thighs to wake them from their prickly sleep. “I made some tea, we could order pizza and watch one of those romantic comedy things you—“

The sob is barely there. He turns without thinking, searching her face, glancing over her nakedness to see through it. She’s standing on the bathmat, eyes downcast, water and salt mixing on the linoleum. The bruise along her side blossoms under her ribs like a black peony.

He reaches for a towel and wraps it around her shoulders, interrupting their careful, sympathetic orbits in an embrace. Her skin is ice, but she doesn’t seem to notice. Another sob, but this one catches in the fabric of his shirt as he pulls her close. Soon his nose damp with the scent of her shampoo.

“You have every right to be angry, Scully,” he soothes at her temple, with a protective ferocity that surprises them both. “But only with them. Not yourself. Never yourself.”

Her breath is sharp, shuddering, and he wonders if he’s said the wrong thing. He doesn’t know if “them” refers to the suits at the Bureau or their indomitable superiors or the citizens of Reticula or God himself. He breathes against her, tightens his grip, decides, fuck ‘em all.

She sniffs, and he can feel the heat of her pressed to him, bare, little more than a damp t-shirt between them. It takes all his effort to let go when she pulls away, and he averts his eyes as she wraps herself in the towel.

She tucks a lock of red-burned hair behind her ear, a nervous habit. “I’m sorry, I, um—”

“If I were a lesser man, Scully,” he whispers drily, and her sudden laughter is bubbling and warm, a salve to their shared wounds.

She tips her face to his, one eyebrow in a slender arc, her eyes damp and wry. “A lesser man, Mulder? What are you implying?”

Her closeness, coupled with the subtle innuendo, catches him off guard. He’s suddenly terrified she might kiss him, more terrified because he would let it happen, a wonderful and dangerous thought.

Something ethereal whispers at the edge of his mind’s eye, and he resists the urge to check the back of her neck for bees.

Instead, he takes a step backwards, toward the door. “I’ll, uh, wait outside. Pizza?”

“No peppers this time,” she agrees, turning away, showing him the line of her back, her shoulders squared. He watches a drop of water roll down the gentle arch of her spine, absorbed by the edge of the towel. “I’ll be out in a minute.”

He makes it to the threshold, but can’t resist; has her pull always been this strong? He turns, watches her reflection, a ghost coming to life in the mirror.

“Hey, Scully?”

“Mmm?”

“Thanks.”

“For what?”

For coming back. For staying.

He opens his mouth to say it, but in the end, what he wants to say and what he’ll allow himself to say are two different things.

He shrugs. “For…leaving the door open, I guess.”

Her smile is faint, but genuine; enough for now.

The spirit catches his eye and fades away.

#fanfic #the x-files #milagro #fox mulder #dana scully #fox mulder/dana scully #hurt/comfort #old fic is old

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carefulfears · 9 months

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Can you compare the Irresistible hug and the Milagro hug please !!!!!!!!! I love Milagro so much

okay our best and brightest @scullysflannel already talked about this once but let's chat on it (+ unruhe because i watched it last night) just for you babes xxx

/ irresistible

irresistible is my favorite of the three, and my favorite scully trauma™ episode, as it's the most dedicated to the emotional progression.

this episode encapsulates an understanding that the x-files never shied from, that the scariest monsters are human men, it's pointless to pretend otherwise.

fresh off her abduction, a violation and loss of autonomy that she still doesn't understand, scully's reaction to the crimes of donnie pfaster is intimate: his victims are the dead, a group she's always been more connected with than most.

her grief and discomfort at the desecration of women that she's bearing witness to is so overwhelming, and it's something that she's alone in, as the men around her continue with business as usual.

as the investigation continues, scully decides to go back to washington, telling mulder that she'll "better drive this investigation" if she focuses on the evidence.

SCULLY: I'm not having trouble, Mulder.

MULDER: I'd understand, Scully. This isn't exactly easy to stomach.

SCULLY: I'm fine with it. Really. I just think we're a long way from catching this guy. If we could get a print, we'd have something to go on. Right now we're at a standstill.

MULDER: I think it's a good idea. I just don't want you to think you have to hide anything from me, Scully. I've seen agents with twenty years in the field fall apart on cases like this.

Scully: I'm fine, Mulder. I can handle it.

i love this scene. his response here is so perfect. apart from checking in and asking if she's okay a couple of times, he hasn't commented on her state of mind in this situation, but he knows she's having a hard time. he supports her decision to take a step back, playing along that it's a "good idea" for her to direct her attention to the tangible evidence, but encourages her to communicate how she's feeling.

and he tells her that to struggle with a case like this is understandable, it doesn't matter how much experience you have or your position, it's normal.

(another understanding that this show always had: to react emotionally to the brutality of the world and the exploitation of the vulnerable is human, it's the people who look at destruction unflinching who are wrong.)

back in D.C., scully sees her therapist. she tries, you guys. scully's "i'm fine" complex has never meant that she ignores a problem or shuts down, she tries to cope in a way that she's comfortable with. she removes herself from the scene. she goes where she'll be more useful. she schedules therapy.

MULDER: Are you staying on there, Scully?

SCULLY: No. I'm coming back tonight.

MULDER: Look, Scully. I know this is a pretty horrific case -

SCULLY: I'm okay with it, Mulder. Besides, you can use my help.

MULDER: Always.

after her session, scully decides to go back. she's okay with it. she's going to keep trying.

this is one of my favorite moments. she spends this entire episode putting on a front, he spends it meeting her exactly where she is; saying, "i see you," but only to comfort, not expose.

her "you can use my help," is one of their jokes. a way to say, "i'm okay, i'm ready," that's lighthearted and doesn't show too much. when he responds, "always," his voice has such a different tone. it's so earnest, and sweet. his response takes her very seriously, her contribution and state of mind and comfort.

she'd told her therapist, "i trust [my partner] as much as anyone. i trust him with my life...but i don't want him to know how much this is bothering me." he already knows.

(her smile on the phone, they are best friends)

i'm gonna borrow from the post linked up top for this next bit:

"Scully’s abduction is the major turning point in terms of how much the job affects her, and Irresistible is basically a replay of her abduction that gives her more control: she gets the catharsis of a fight, and she knows who she’s fighting (men)."

after being taken by pfaster, when she's found, she pulls out one more "i'm fine," but her suppression and image can't withstand confrontation. mulder gently lifts her chin, and the moment she meets his eye, she breaks down crying into his chest. she tries so hard, she has "always been the strong one," she did not want him to know that this was bothering her. but you can't survive it without facing it.

i didn't notice until today that her gag is still around her neck, she's still so ensnared. police are still making arrangements around them. it all just fades away though.

(he's whispering "it's alright," just for her to hear. when she moves her arms to hold onto him, pull him closer, his face breaks. he closes his eyes to keep from crying. he's so careful with her after her abduction, he's never had anyone come back before. this is a moment they're in together, a sort of catharsis after she returned. it's so foreign and painful to be needed, for the first time in so long.)

/ unruhe

unruhe, written by my beloved vince gilligan, is the most introspective that the x-files ever gets on the dichotomous reactions to gendered violence.

"She can hear him, still stomping around inside the trailer, no doubt looking through the pictures carefully, hoping for yet more insight into the depths of the now-dead serial killer’s mind. In the back of her throat, burning acid threatens to force its way up. The luxury of curiosity, she thinks."

-selbst

throughout unruhe, mulder is hyper-focused on gaining an understanding, attempting to find the killer (and at first, the abducted women) by looking into what has been left behind, and dismissing any other courses of action.

ultimately, nothing he does assists in the case at all, and it's scully's connections and discernments that locate schnauz, mulder and herself never on the same page. unlike irresistible's quiet contemplation and gentle understanding, they're consistently frustrated with each other.

(note that in this episode, scully is bound and held captive by a man obsessed with the loss of his sister. a dynamic that she is very aware of, as she asks schnauz, "why [do i need to be saved]? do i remind you of your sister?")

from the moment that schnauz's first victim resurfaces and they do the PET scan (something that only scully is able to read and understand, not mulder. something again rooted in her personal background), there is a shift in scully.

these women are being lobotomized, and they're being lobotomized incorrectly. schnauz is weaponizing medicine that he doesn't have proper knowledge of, and reducing these women into nothing. when mary lefante is found, she is unable to speak, except to repeat over and over the motivation of her captor ("unruhe," the german word for "unrest.")

things escalate when the body of the second victim is found, and in my favorite scene of the episode, mulder and scully quietly observe the remains in horror, before scully just walks off and gets back in the car (in the driver's seat, a rare occurrence).

MULDER: Hey, Scully, that word "unruhe", "unrest", is bothering me. Maybe he thought he was curing them somehow, saving them from damnation, from those things in the pictures, you know, he called them the "howlers."

SCULLY: It's over, Mulder.

MULDER: Well, then that photo wouldn't be his fantasy. It would be his nightmare.

SCULLY: What the hell does it matter?

MULDER: Because I want to know.

SCULLY: I don't.

(She starts the engine. Mulder stares at her for a second, then gets in the car.)

when mulder approaches the car to ramble about "unruhe," scully never looks over at him or makes eye contact. she doesn't wait for him to get in the car before putting on her seatbelt and starting it. it is over.

i've written about this before (in the previously linked post), but mulder always wants to believe that people who do evil things have a good reason, that they didn't really mean to. that they were just trying to help, or were just following a biological imperative. scully knows that it doesn't matter.

it's the ending of 2shy, when mulder is right, incanto is only killing women because he needs their fatty tissue to survive. and he looks at scully and says, "when you look at me, you see a monster, but i was just feeding the hunger." and scully answers, "you're more than a monster. you didn't just feed on their bodies, you fed on their minds."

what the hell does it matter?

ultimately, scully is forced to "empathize" with schnauz, to survive. she has to utilize the insights that mulder gleamed about him to forge a connection with him, and stall. (she is always listening, and she knows mulder is right. sometimes it just doesn't make things any better.)

as the situation progresses, when she hears mulder outside she's able to wrestle her arm out of its constraint and rip the tape off of her mouth. by the time mulder breaks in and shoots schnauz, she's all but freed herself.

mulder takes her hand and helps her up, and she bypasses him, walking out of the trailer into the light, with one last look back at schnauz. she leaves mulder with the body, as he's looking at the photos. (the luxury of curiosity.)

the only time that we see scully show emotion or vulnerability in this episode, is in the final frame. sitting alone in her apartment, she looks at the altered photos of herself, and her lip quivers as we cut to the ending credits.

where irresistible saw her actively trying to gain control, unruhe is more genuine. she's not trying to conceal anything, she's just tired, and she's alone.

/ milagro

ah, milagro. quintessentially season 6 in a way that i can never establish as positive or negative.

milagro is all about desire: a desire for attention, for approval, for relevance. it's only fitting that it should be so punishing.

ultimately, milagro is about voyeurism, and we have this represented through our monster-of-the-week: scully's stalker phillip padgett.

when scully meets padgett (who had recently moved into the apartment next to mulder) in a church, it's to observe the painting displayed there, "my divine heart."

as he reveals that he knew she would be there to see the painting, as well as many personal details that he has "noticed" about her, it's a heavily emotional discomfort to be so seen.

so much of this episode builds in padgett's apartment, just one door over from mulder. when scully knocks, she tells padgett she was on her way next door and just thought she'd stop and return the milagro charm that he'd given her (a symbol of a burning heart) because she "can't return the gesture."

we talked about this when we talked about small potatoes, but this episode is...embarrassing for her! the kind of attention that she craves is embarrassing to her.

when she comes into padgett's apartment, padgett remarks that it's because she's "curious." she notices things too.

SCULLY: Well, you lead a curious life.

PHILLIP PADGETT: It's not so different from yours I imagine-- lonely.

SCULLY: Loneliness is a choice.

loneliness is a choice, babes! the way that small potatoes ended in classification of mulder as a "loser by choice" (for all of the things he could have, and all of the things he chooses not to pursue), and scully absolving him of that criticism, milagro puts the agency of this mutual repression back onto scully.

(choice and agency is a very important reiterated theme in scully's character. this whole thing only works if she chooses to be here.)

and when mulder comes in to arrest padgett based on evidence found in the murder case, scully is in his bedroom by choice. (very very embarrassing for her)

like these tags said, "psychologist mulder taking two years to connect the dots scully laid out for him in never again."

god, this episode makes me so uncomfortable. it's also the only one of these three that i've never rewatched, so that's why i'm a little more lax in discussing it.

MULDER: No one can predict human behavior. No one can tell you what another person's going to do.

SCULLY: Well, isn't that what you do, Mulder, as a behavioral profiler? You … you imagine the killer's mind so well that you know what they're going to do next.

MULDER: If he imagines it, it's a priori-- before the fact. I think that's pretty clear from what he wrote about you.

laughs nervously...isn't that what you do!! don't you know people's minds and desires!!

when mulder tells scully that padgett's book ends with her having sex with the narrator, and asks, "i'm assuming that's a priori too?" it's so reminiscent of office desks and tattoo ink.

when she replies, "i think you know me better than that," they're both thinking of philadelphia, of something etched in her back that they've never put to words. that too, ended in fire, with desire punished.

(i'm always slack jawed at him asking her flat-out if she fucked the stalker. quintessential season 6, baby! eat your heart out!)

PHILLIP PADGETT: I made a mistake myself.

MULDER: What's that, Mr. Padgett?

PHILLIP PADGETT: In my book, I'd written that Agent Scully falls in love but that's obviously impossible. (looking at MULDER) Agent Scully is already in love.

agent scully is already in love, agent scully already desires so viscerally, (agent scully is making things personal, as mulder had rebutted in defense of diana, not long enough ago)

i know a lot of people love this line, but it just makes me want to weep for her. scully is such a discreet person, she values her privacy so much, and has so little of it left. it's the emotional equivalent of her physical exploitation, to have her most personal and intimate feelings exposed like this.

loneliness is a choice, and that’s her’s to make, the way mulder’s choice was affirmed in small potatoes.

(padgett as a character is a stand-in, he represents the voyeurism of an audience, of projecting a persona onto someone for personal gratification. he isn't ascribed any motive. but this to me, feels like a power trip, even if unintentional. he's perhaps just being honest, but he's recognizing that he can't have her body, so he exposes her soul. he also doesn't know scully as well as he thinks he does.)

both never again and milagro are about a caricaturized self, embracing or rebuking who you are in someone else's eyes. whether scully is perceiving herself as mulder's loyal first mate who "always does as told" or padgett's lonely object of lust, she responds by leaning into that exposure, going where she's wanted, and continuing her ascribed "cycle" of devotion and rebellion.

the reveal in the end, is that this week's monster is not truly padgett, but a character that he's created, who is committing the murders described in his book.

like padgett himself, the killer is a personification of longing; it's him who declares that the only way for the book to conclude, is for scully to die.

but just as jerse did in never again, padgett throws himself in the fire to narrowly absolve scully of the fated ending, and sacrifices his heart for hers.

when mulder realizes what's happening and races back up into his apartment, the sight is bone-chilling. she actually looks dead, unconscious and covered in blood, from a wound that's now healing.

when she wakes up and sees him over her, she reaches for him as abruptly as she opens her eyes. she claws into him, her fingers never stop grabbing at him, pulling him closer and closer and sobbing into his neck.

so little of it actually matters. she almost died without him there. this is after tithonus, and she's remembering those lessons again. (what about love? you don't want to be around when it's gone.)

and just as in irresistible, mulder breaks too, feeling the weight with her.

anon, to compare the three, i would say they each represent the theme of their particular place in the narrative and scully's characterization.

irresistible is the fragile dependence of a post-abduction season 2: perceiving comfort as a weakness, fear as a burden, but needing it anyway. recognizing who you trust, what that means, and that wounds can't heal in detachment. from each other and from the brutalization of the world itself.

unruhe is the building isolation of season 4: going where someone can’t follow, whether in societal experience or the looming instability that’s close ahead.

and milagro is the painfully confrontational tension of season 6. having your heart ripped out of your chest, bleeding, in attempts to be understood. just clutching what you need, weeping, in the end: there’s no use fighting it. (or hiding it. loneliness is a choice, but there’s freedom in being stripped of options)

it is a growth, in a diminishment of pretense and self-consciousness. it just comes at a cost.

i also want to bring it back to @scullysflannel’s post on this topic, because she summarized another aspect of it that i didn’t touch on:

“Scully tells the therapist in Irresistible that she doesn’t want Mulder to think he has to protect her, and I feel like the end of Milagro is about Scully accepting his type of protection, and by extension his type of love. Padgett makes her want Mulder to pursue her in a way he’s never done, but Padgett also ultimately shows her the danger of being sought after like that, and it makes Mulder’s straightforward protectiveness look pretty good. it doesn’t matter right then if Mulder is giving her everything she wants. she needs him.”

milagro is about desire, and ultimately it’s about a relinquishing of desire. scully is drawn to padgett because he offers her something that mulder doesn’t (won’t?) give her, and she’s ripped to pieces because of it.

it is punishing, to want something so badly. ultimately, when she almost loses it all, she’s clinging to what she has.

(but mulder is learning too, and they’ll get there. they’ll get to all of it.)

#asks #irresistible #unruhe #milagro

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