JUST A FAN of FAN ART & FANFIC, XFiles

Just my thoughts:

When the IVF fails, she tells Mulder "it was my last chance" and not "it was my only chance", so I take it as they have tried before. This gets me thinking that there might have been a time when the IVF did take, but then she miscarried, and why they have a pregnancy book in the office. Not a medical book on IVF or other medical research book. For a moment, they were looking forward to a pregnancy together.

He says "don't give up on a miracle" which suggests that she could still get pregnant without IVF because they were already doing it. He wouldn't suggest a "miracle" with another man. No way.

I think you're looking for the "Pregnancy, Birth, and Family Planning" book, credit to @dreamingofscully.

The still is from Brand X (or earlier?), credit to @fashionbooksboozefeminism):

You could also argue it was present in Amor Fati:

But to answer your last question: Scully could have had multiple attempts, of course.

Personally, I think not. Because--

Parenti's pressure when Scully consulted him: a "good chance" he called it, with the caveat, "it's not out of the realm of possibility if we start soon." I'm no medical doctor, but I don't believe he'd say that if her remaining ova could be preserved and stored reliably.

I believe the writers were referring to Emily (since Frank Spotnitz not only had a large hand in her fate but also in Scully's pregnancy.) As Scully said in A Christmas Carol: "I feel like I was given a second chance." Her language in Per Manum ("It was my last chance") was in keeping with and building on (and concluding) past sentiments.

Mulder's face. If this had been the final of a series of attempts, his reaction would have been different: more worn, weary, stricken. Instead, he rises nervously, rambles about sleeping on her couch, and tries to read her expression to know if the attempt was successful. Those are first timer responses: he's unused to this new side of his partner (and them.) By the second, third, or etc. time, he would have known within a glance ("that unspoken.")

Meta and Resources

“Pregnancy, Birth and Family Planning” (and Emily's photo?)

All IVF Roads Lead Away from The Unnatural and to Millennium

"Life on This Planet" Before the IVF Arc

Biogenesis-The Sixth Extinction and Scully's healed fertility

Mulder Didn't Use Scully's Apartment Key Until He “Belonged”

The Scully Family In-Depth (Part XIV Home and Part XXV: Existence.)

The X-Files (In-Depth): Scully's Pregnancy, Mulder's Abduction, and the Truth Behind Requiem and Season 8

Bonus

Fan Theories on the IVF Arc's Placement

@settle-down-frohike's Treatise on the Intimacy of IVF

@carefulfears and @gabby-msr on Mulder's IVF parenthood

Scully looked almost like she’d seen a ghost, and he should know; he’d seen her after she’d seen one. Her fingers flexed on the back of one of her high wooden chairs. “It’s because I haven’t been getting enough zinc.” She swallowed. “Isn’t it.” 

When he stepped toward her she kept the chair between them. She could break his heart if she weren’t so busy scaring the shit out of him.

He tried, “Scully.”

The low, sibilant way she used to take to like a body to water, in the middle of the night, in the flail of some nightmare: Where is my weapon. Did I take enough zinc. And -- Scully, till she sagged with it. Her muscles going long against her bones, which had gone still against his. Scully, alright Scully. Asleep in his arms untense as an exhausted swimmer. 

But now she was rigid. And her eyes were so open, he could see straight to the very blue bottom of her confusion, which was something terrible and true.

“No,” she said. “Don’t do that.” One hand went to her mouth and the other to her chest. Like she was going to throw up and recite the Pledge of Allegiance at the same time. “Oh my god,” she said, all but doubled over with it. “Please don’t do this to me.” 

She hadn’t answered the door when he’d knocked, though he’d hardly knocked. The buzz of anonymous highway had been in him, dirt still in his hair, and he’d realized on the walk up to her apartment that he was wearing a rather nice suit, probably Armani.

It was all too strange, even by his generous measure. He’d woken up under a slice of clear blue rectangle in North Carolina that morning. In his gums, it made his teeth ache.

And then there was Scully.

Don’t do this to me, that’s what she’d said when he’d come in the door, too, bolting upright on her couch, scrabbling for her service weapon. Had she been asleep? It was two o’clock in the afternoon. It was, per the gas station calendar as he’d hitched statelines, a Tuesday. Her hair had been a fright. There were bruises under her eyes as purple as any cadaver’s little finger.  

He’d thought — what had he thought? What was he supposed to think? She was Scully. The steps were quite simple: If things were strange, he found Scully. Sometimes, yes, it took a moment to travel from point A to point B. Sometimes there were many smaller steps between those two essential ones. But the fact remained that, in ketamine dreams or the throes of self-imposed psychodemetia, the buck stopped with Scully. Once he found her, some broader leap toward not-strangeness, or at the very least a better kind of strange, could almost always reliably be made. 

Except this was worse, undeniably. Scully cornered across her kitchen where she’d flown after failing to locate her gun. It was not so much that she seemed afraid. The first thing she’d said, before imploring him that she could not take it, had been his name. And she’d said it just like she always had, with a tugging in it, a slur that was like closing a distance. It sounded exactly like the buck still stopped at her front door. 

“Please,” she was saying still, but she had stopped looking at him, sobbing to the hard wood and pale tile floor. “I don’t know—”

“Scully,” he said, in a different way, older and more urgent. “It’s me. It is me.” 

And damn if her face didn’t snap right up to his again. Yes. The echo and aftershock of recognition. His Scully of the basement office and the connected motel room door. Since forever, his assigned seat-mate, his stalwart, his level best. The dutiful daughter whose eyes had looked like that — Christ, just like that — when her father had died. 

Still, she was shaking her head. Her chin in that self-loathing crimp. “I can’t,” she said. 

“Yes,” he told her, though he didn’t know what, really. Anything. “Sure you can, Scully. It’s alright.” 

Scully took a deep breath. When she tore loose of herself it was with a shudder. The same rent-apart way she'd looked when she recalled burning spaceships with her hands open, or when she’d stepped through the doorway into his room, that first time. 

Upon him then, across the room, the dig of her forearm into the flesh of his neck like an incision, like that was how close she wanted to be: to the bone. The chair rattled.

“Hey,” he said, “hey, oh —” He put his arms around her ribs and spine. He put a hand in her hair to hold her and mean it. He said her name one more way, a way that wasn’t worth describing. 

Scully cried like to bring down high heaven. She cried like when she’d nearly had her heart torn out on his ratty living room floor. She cried in a way he’d never heard her cry before. 

AU ficlet for the end of The Truth because William should have been there with them.

This was meant to be written for the X-Files Bingo. Then everything went to hell, and I didn't finish it in time. I've decided to finish it and put it out in the world as it is.

Tagging @today-in-fic

~

The rain patters against the roof outside, but inside, it’s quiet. Mulder barely dares to breathe too loudly, to move too quickly, to make a single mistake. He’s made too many of those already. His hand is on his son’s stomach, rising and falling with the boy’s even breathing. It’s everything he’s dreamed about these last couple of months. What kept him going.

When he closed his eyes at night, he pictured Scully and their son, just doing everyday life things. All the things he was missing. He pictured them smiling, just living. And that’s what kept him alive, too. Hoping that one day he could return, be with them again.

His son has grown into a solid form, bigger than Mulder expected. When he left, when William was only a few days old, he felt light in his hands, but took up all the room in his heart. His reddish tuft has turned a darker shade, as have his eyes. The ghost of Scully’s features is there on the boy’s face. As well as his own. They’ve always been a perfect team, working well together. Their son, however, is their masterpiece.

They confer professionally with long silence. Scully’s raw with bruises and rough handling. He recalls how, in Graceland, he had addressed her a postcard but not gotten it sent. Scully — scrawled, and that was all.

4x6 sentiment. The square footage of them. If they got another desk she’d have to stand in his shadow to reach anything of value. Her face is familiar, and silent, and WISH YOU WERE HERE! is what the card had had to say before he’d ever touched it.

The quiet grows to the size of the room.

“I may be in love with you,” is how he chooses to fill it.

After he’s said it, he knows it is true. Before he’d only had his hunches.

Scully says nothing. Impassive. But he sees it, a kind of wince, to the right of her eyebrow, with the bruise, like he, too, has caused her some pain. She leans forward and slides a file off the desk, tucks a paper clip to it, then looks down to her brief case and neatly puts it away.

Had he spoken? Mulder blinks at the place where a moment ago her face had been, absent now as she ducks about her business. 

“Scully?”

Half-rising. “Hm?” The smooth, unflinching side of her face. 

It’s astounding. He blinks again at nothing. “Did you hear what I said?”

Scully gives him an absent, midweek smile. A Thursday night, reports done, let’s call it early crimp. Then it’s gone. “Been a long day,” she says. “Night, Mulder.”

Previously on Kokoro

481. 359th Day

(MUSIC: “HAVE YOURSELF A MERRY LITTLE CHRISTMAS” — FRANK SINATRA)

It could be 1999 and it could be 2029. It could be the beginning of the world because he’s finally gotten her back and safe in his arms, or it could be the beginning of the world, again, because the last spaceship has left Earth.

He could be 38 or 68. This could be the first morning or every morning. Just another one for him and his Scully.

It’s snowing, again. It hasn’t snowed in ages. The weather is strange, but it’s always been strange. Is it still global icing?

It's on Ao3, too: https://archiveofourown.org/works/85942206

On the Run

There is a photograph of him asleep on a bed in a motel room, his head resting on the pillow – a dark cloud in the semi-darkness of a hot July afternoon (dandelion clock ticking our time away, make a wish, make a wish that will save us before it’s too late).

He’s far away in his own space, in this moment that will not repeat itself in the years to come. I can see the boy he once was, an innocence no one can judge.

In that room in New Mexico, or Utah, or Colorado, I still believe we’ll be like this from now on, one and separate.

And there is one thing this picture will not reveal to anyone but me because it happens outside its edges: in his sleep he has placed his hand on my leg both claiming and protecting me --

Love does not diminish with time and age, with the fear that will follow nor be altered by pain, the gaze of others who cannot see what a photograph recounts of love, of who we were, what it discloses, nor the secrets it keeps to itself.

As any avid fic reader knows, fic recs somehow just accumulate. How I happened upon the work, when, etc... who knows? But if I read something that really hits, I can't help but screenshot it as a reminder to shout it out into the fandom. The creator gifted us with something that I love, and maybe you will too. This is how I say thanks.

Post-episode: One Breath (S2 E08)

"Please Come Back" by sagan_starstuff - this was the first of sagan's that I read, and it is just...

Mid-episode: 731 (S3 E10)

"The X Between Us/Season 3, Chapter 10: E10 - 731" by Atths2 - a series by episode that I am hoping to catch up on in order to add to my rewatch regulars; the insight on this one is fab

Mid-episode: Herrenvolk (S4 E01)

"The View from the Outer Office: Herrenvolk" by Lara Means - I enjoy all of these fics written from Kimberly's POV, but this one in particular. I think it's because it's the setup for that scene in the hospital hallway? (M&S move through the crowd as if no one else were there)

Set After Terma (S4 E09), But Before Tempus Fugit (S4 E17)

"Bright Time (It's the Right Time) by sospooky (backintimeforstuff) - I am not big on Christmas fic, but here we are

"The Haiku Files" by geekgirl25 - a series of poems by episode that is currently at the same point that I am with my rewatch (S5 complete with FTF coming up). Here are a couple of my favorites from Volume Four: "Chapter 20: Small Potatoes" (S4 E20) "Chapter 25: Custody" (S4 E18)

Mid-episode: Demons (S4 E23)

"In Times of Trouble, Chapter 6: Demons" by stolendreams - I previously recommended from this series on my Scully's Cancer Recs and believe it is still in progress; his and hers angst here

Five Years In - Unspecified Timeframe

"It Just Happened" by beagentlesoul - current work-in-progress where M&S cross that inevitable line; explicit

General, Unspecified Timeframe

"Escape Speed" by Punk - short with early season feels

"Destined Reckoning - a Journey through The Stand" by Spark_a_Flame1013 - an msr set in Stephen King's post-apocalyptic world, but it is an independent story. This one's a long journey. I may have a thing for journeys.

xxxxx

Beyond the Pale: These fic are set in Season 6 or later, beyond where I've posted in my rewatch blog. Newbies be warned. Here there be spoilers.

Set sometime after Triangle (S6 E03)

"The Lake" by MSR_Pusher - from this past MSR Bingo challenge; this is unspeakably good

Set sometime in Season 6, Unspecified

"The Darkness Within" by Fox_sync - another current work-in-progress, this one features ProfilerMulder on the hunt, and Scully gets to see the dark side up close and personal. It's a psychological angst-fest, not for the faint of heart. I'm addicted.

Set sometime after All Things (S7 E17)

"You, Me, and The Rain" by Baroness_Blixen - from this past Fluffuary, I can't resist the Mulder spin on this scene. The timing doesn't really matter, but M&S are in an established relationship.

"Yes" by TabithaJean - from Fictober 2025, early relationship; super-short, it cuts straight to the truth

Pre-Revival (S10)

"I believe in us" by Baroness_Blixen - revival breakup makes me bawl. This is no exception, but I love the way BB writes Scully's insistence on hope

I don't really know which writers are on Tumblr. If you see your name, I'm happy to tag you. Just let me know. Thanks again for writing and reading and dreaming of the msr with me.