Collector's Edition: The Bitter and the Sweet of Immortality
Immortality is mostly tragic for one Dana Scully; but not without its sweet spots.
**Note**: I want to put in a special word for Deadcanon's "X-Tropy"-- just found it, it's incredible. Can't recommend enough.
Loose chronological order below~
@myassbrokethefall's Scully told Mulder (more as a joking aside than anything, of course) what Bruckman said to her and his eyes got big with delight
"Mulder, even IF he meant it literally, which -- "
"Why wouldn't he mean it literally? That thing he said about you ending up in bed with him, it wasn't what you expected but it did HAPPEN, but there's a lot less ambiguity in -- "
"Well, what about what he said about how you die?"
"Well. Uh, he wasn't. He wasn't saying that ABOUT me, he was just using it as an example. I think he was just trying to get me to shut up."
"Uh-huh."
Post-Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose Mulder clings to the immortality theory as years, then decades, roll by.
@leiascully's (Ao3) Xeranthemum
She’s intrigued, of course, and hopeful, and terrified. She can imagine outliving her mother, now, but she doesn’t want to. She can imagine outliving Mulder, though it makes her breath come short and her heart thud. She can’t imagine outliving everyone she’s ever known.
Scully mulls over the gifted curse of immortality.
Brandon D. Ray's (Gossamer, xffics) Cant Bear to Look (Gossamer)
He stands by my bedside and continues to speak to me in a low, lifeless voice.
He's telling me how sorry he is; he's telling me how miserable he feels about the whole thing; he's telling me how he feels he let me down. But the words are just flowing around me; I can barely hear them.
Because he's gray.
And that means he's going to die.
Tithonus Scully now sees the dying in black-and-white.
Namarie's (LJ, mulderscreek) The Quiet Limit of the World
"Do you remember the car accident a few weeks ago?" She meets his eyes again, and sees his puzzlement. This obviously was not what he was expecting.
"Of course." He opens his mouth to say more, but evidently decides against it.
Scully shifts her attention to her hands in her lap. "I didn't get a chance to mention to you that I'd cut myself when the car hit us. Nothing serious, and there were more important things to do at the time." She cannot make herself look at him now. "But when we got back to work, I went to check on the cut in the bathroom, and - it was gone. I mean completely gone, not just scabbed over. The only thing left was some dried blood on my sleeve."
AU-- Post-Tithonus Scully battles with depression over her fears of immortality (and failed IVF attempts.) Still, all hope is not lost.
Deadcanons's X-Tropy
“Scully?” a familiar voice said, full of gentle awe.
Scully’s eyes snapped open. The TV in the living room was on. Standing in front of it, haloed from behind by the bright light of the screen, was her partner. His soft face and tousled hair brought a familiarity that ached. His features were extreme in the TV’s backlight, but when Scully looked at him she knew instantly how absurd it was to think that she would ever forget him. She would recognize him anywhere: in shadow, in light, in a blade of grass, in a single shaking atom. If some cosmic force in the universe really wanted to make her forget, they would have no choice but to burn her brain out, to smash her body on a rocky cliffside, to throw her into an alien spaceship and suck her memories out on a drip. And even then, when the drugs wore off and she woke up in an unmarked hospital bed, the first thing out of her mouth would be to ask where Mulder was.
Scully came towards him, her exhaustion forgotten. “Mulder?”
She was about to fall into his arms. Then she just fell into him, instead. She went right through him.
AU-- This fic covers Scully's life after Mulder's untimely death: on the run from an alien bounty hunter, run-ins with Doggett and bat monsters and Reyes and ghost Mulders and witchy mediums, and the world-- more specifically, her apartment-- returning to normalcy after the meteors.
LieutenantDru's Monday Night: Dream and Dress Myself Like a Charcoal Sketch
Dana woke up from a nightmare about Mulder getting shot. She didn't like those nightmares. They happened a lot, in a variety of settings. Mulder took up enough of her waking hours, he didn't need to take her sleeping ones too.
Post-Monday Scully is not comforted by thoughts of immortality.
MargsLover's Make It Through Monday
"Are you suggesting that the entire earth reset... that time itself was altered and repeated- because of me? Because I am... immortal...?"
"Well, when you put it like that..." he says sheepishly.
AU-- Post-Monday Mulder helps Scully rationalize her fears (and more.)
@greekowl87's (Ao3) Fighting the Inevitable (Tumblr)
He coughed. Blood dribbled from the corner of his lip. “Scully, you are hurt.”
“Mulder, let me take care of you!” She snapped.
“Just keep pressure on it. Isn’t that right?” He coughed and blood trickled down his lip. She heard sirens in the distance. The back up they had called for. His eyes were glazed and tried to focus on her face. “Scully, I don’t…”
“What?”
“I don’t want to die.”
AU-- Post-Monday Scully is forced to share her immortality.
@shadequeenscully/IfMulderCouldSeeMeNow's Back in the Day is Now - Chapter 3
The paramedics storm through the door with a stretcher and he grips her hand tightly as she is hoisted up, an oxygen mask placed over her face.
“Scully, you have to relax,” he tries to reassure as they lift her into the ambulance. “You’re going to be okay.”
She shakes her head furiously, tears slipping from her eyes as she begs him to see.
Post-Milagro Scully panics over possible immortality.
Singing_Violin's Alive
When I came to, someone was looming over me, and I startled, only to realize, moments later, that it was just my partner.
My partner, who will die one day, and there will be nothing I can do to stop it. "Agent Scully is already in love," Padgett had said. And destined to lose that love forever.
Post-Milagro Scully breaks down.
ML/ML_is_me/ml_griffonnage's (site, Ao3)
Age Cannot Wither and Nor Custom Stale
Once her son knew the truth, Scully stopped trying to hide her unchanging face. They traveled the globe together, looking for answers. They never stayed long enough in a place for Scully's unchanging appearance to become a problem. She'd also learned a thing or two from the Gunmen about hiding her identity, though in the end she always went back to Scully. Always Scully. She wanted to be sure Mulder could find her, no matter what.
But though they found many things, and had many adventures, they never found the one thing they sought, and as far as she knows, no one ever sought them during that time.
When at last her son is gone and she is truly alone in the world, she goes on as best she can.
AU-- Post-Requiem Mulder is returned to Scully's Bellefleur, Oregon hospital hundreds of years later.
vulcanscully's Begin(e)n(d)ings
“I just…” she finishes, truthfully, because however many things she’s hidden from Mulder over the years she never could be openly dishonest with him. “I didn’t want to admit it myself.”
“What do we do?” His voice is that of a child—the believer rendered helpless in disbelief.
She leans over to take his hands. His tremble where hers are still. “We keep living,” she says, and while he takes it as a point of inspiration, of wisdom based on all they have been through together, she knows that it is her only option.
AU-- Post- MSIV Scully cuts out her chip, the source of her immortality, after the X-Files' legacy is created anew.
AU-- Scully may be immortal, but she can't stop the clock for her partner.
curiouscuriouscurious's the end of the longest day
“Scully, I know the secret that you intended to keep. You were immortal, weren’t you? Yet somehow, you found a way to… die or maybe death found you — the light, you saw it too.” He drops his head down to look at her hands and plays with her little frail-looking fingers. They are beautiful despite how how much they’ve aged. Scully is beautiful.
AU-- Post-MSIV Mulder passes on, knowing Scully isn't too far behind him.
WildwingSuz/Suzanne Feld's Fallen Leaves (Ao3)
I have been given a second chance.
And if there is a Heaven, as I still believe, I know Mulder’s smiling down on me.
AU-- Forty years after Mulder's death, a lonely Scully finds her son.
leslieknopedanascully's immortal
Just a few feet away, Scully’s granddaughter slept in the hospital bed. Her head was turned away from Scully, her messy hair—the same vibrant red Scully’s once was—covered her face. The memory of her granddaughter’s birth already felt nondescript, too similar to her current situation, too similar to every other birth she had witnessed, to stand as an independent memory. And in time, those congealed memories would fade away at the edges until there was nothing left but a nagging feeling that she couldn’t quite place.
AU-- Scully is there for the birth of her grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
@naraht/Naraht's (DW) Yet certain am I of the spot
As surely as I have inherited the universe, Mulder has inherited the kingdom of heaven.
AU-- Scully puts her lifetimes to good use.
@teethnbone's (Ao3)
One of few remaining photos
"Though Dr. Scully is a noted recluse and her exact whereabouts remain unknown, if she is alive today she remains the oldest living human being on record."
AU-- Scully holds one final press conference, then vanishes.
Das Ding
For the billionth time it occurs to her that he is the one who should have been made immortal. It’s easy to imagine: Fox Mulder and his Book of Sand. She can see him hunkered in that 20th century office, flipping page after page and finding each account more amazing then the last. The days waxing and waning with the same fixity of a pendulum’s swing, the seasons ebbing and flowing in a kind of slow, mesmeric torture, and through it all the tall, shambly shape of him behind the desk: dropping slides into the carousel and whistling lonesomely into the face of eternity. He could have lived one billion days on this planet, and still found something fascinating to poke at on his billionth and one...
“What does it feel like”, Amil had asked her once, years ago.
“Like a million year picnic and you’re the only one at the table,” she’d told him and Amil had nodded once and never asked again.
No, Scully thinks. She would never wish this on him.
AU-- Parallel worlds, lifetimes, immortality, and deep-sea mysteries.
@keatingscully's Torn Out Page
Grey hairs, wrinkles, and rocking chairs with the National Enquirer on his lap. "Monkey babies and UFOS," he'd rasp after a sip of tea and a coughing fit. He’d shake his head and gaze beyond the wooden porch railings with the chipped paint and rotten floor boards.
She would just watch him through round glasses, untouched from the harshness of time other than the long strand of grey hair he loved to tease her about as he ran it between trembling fingers. Little did he know that she had dyed it to make him feel better about his mortality.
AU-- Scully loses the memories most dear to her.
@lepus-arcticus's the after
Any semblance of Scully’s mortal vanity had long since dissolved, but there was nothing to be done about it–she would always be beautiful. She wore her copper hair cropped close to her head, and proud, tawny freckles lay spattered across her cheeks. Her eyes were still as blue as a new star.
AU-- Post-Colonization Mulder and Scully have achieved their own versions of immortality.
@scully-loves-ruthie's Fictober Day 20
“Well,” Scully offered between breathes as they came down the sloping side of what was once a lovely single-family home with, oh look at that, lovely rose China. She stepped over it feeling somehow pained at crushing it further. “It looks like our visit to the necromancer really paid off.” She took a long slug of her water jug as Mulder steadied her by the elbow the rest of the way down.
Post-Colonization Mulder and Scully are immortal, together.
Pale The Chicken's Seven More Days
I never realized that the world would look like this. Never. Everything is a hallow shell of brunt meat, children look like the paper dolls they used to play with. Now, us 'leftovers' will play the creators, make up the dolls in prom gowns and wedding dresses, we are the children, they are our toys.
AU-- Post-Colonization Scully survives an illness that rampaged the country, without her partner.
@this-is-surely-tru/yours_truly's Ashes to Ashes
The Word became flesh, and see! The home of God is among mortals. Does she still count? Does an undying wraith have any need for resurrection? Her lungs may still draw breath and her heart may still pump blood, but she’d testify that she knows death as well or better than anyone could.
AU-- Post-Colonization Scully and Biblical allegories as the world crumbles around her.
BONUS
@morewinepls's She was supposed to be immortal
The doctor said it was old age. That she died of natural causes. But he knows better, knows who’s the immortal one.
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Reading this fic is a very visceral experience. The words make Mulder and Scully's thoughts and actions hit deeply and with a strong familiarity, as if the story is telling one already known. But no, it's just two characters expertly written in their dark, weird world of constant paired travel.
Title: The Ansted Graft
Author: @teethnbone
Summary: Something small carved out of something larger.
Length: ~2,800 words
Classification: None provided.
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: None listed.
Favorite line: He stood fussing with the Geiger–Müller with the wind in his coat, twisting it around him like a flag around a flagpole, and for a moment Scully savored the dark shape of him in his trespassing blacks, framed by a lunette of sky.
Read the story!
@teethnbone replied to your post “What's that word in some non-English language for intense grief for...”
Not exactly what y'all are looking for, but I stumbled on the German word 'sehnsucht' a few years ago, which comes close. Ha, I think I learned it trying to say something to thegrotesckque about S7...
Listen, the Literary Society here is you and @thegrotesckque and @mashnotesofthemythopoeic and I am living for it. Please let me be your acolyte and light your candles and carry your censers for your midnight meetings or whatever.
This is a casefile set just before Biogenesis in season six. Thank you to @teethnbone for throwing me scraps to use as inspiration for this story.
Read Part One Part Two Part Three
Part Four
“Scully? Sculllllaaay?”
She could hear him but she couldn’t move. The Moon-Eyed Man had disappeared, leaving her surrounded by frigid darkness. Cold. She was so cold, the hairs on her arms stood up, her toes and fingers ached to the point of numbness, her lips were dry. Her blood pumped slower as she sank to the ground again. She sucked in the cool air, trying to fill her lungs. Pain sliced through her chest. She opened her mouth to call but the effort was too much. Why should she be the one who always made the effort? Would it be easier to just slip away quietly?
“Scully, tell me what to do? Scully? Can you hear me? Wake up.”
She could hear him. She could hear the note of desperation in his voice. That tremor of terror that he was losing someone again. Did it matter that she wasn’t his sister? If he were to martyr himself to the loss, did it matter who he was losing?
He pulled her up and shook her face. She felt the sharpness of his nails on her cheeks. She didn’t want to open her eyes, couldn’t bear to look at him but he was holding her now, enveloping her and she felt warm, she felt the blood flowing again, thinning out and running through her body.
“Scully? We need to get out of here. Can you walk?”
He moved and she stumbled. He pulled her up and she let him. She felt the tickle of her hair against her face and her eyes fluttered open. She blinked, looked around, felt his hands on her shoulders, weighting her to the spot.
“Scully?”
“Mulder,” she said, the word tasting bitter on her tongue.
“Can you walk out with me?”
“Mulder, I can’t see.”
“What?”
“I can’t see. I can’t…” She choked and fell into him, connecting with his shoulder. His chest hitched and he grasped her upper arms.
“I need to get out of here, Mulder.”
“I’ll guide you. Let me guide you.” He took her hand, squeezed it in his palm.
The trill of his phone hit her like a jolt from a defibrillator, energy and knowledge and absolutes fizzing back into her. She stumbled back from him, turned, held her hands out and stepped forward.
The freedom felt good. She walked on, brushing the wall of the cave to guide her through the intricate tunnels. She knew she had to look deep inside herself to find the way. Just like the Moon-Eye had said. The quicker she moved, the more certain she became. She didn’t need to see the way, the way was clearing for her.
She knew she must be deep in the system because the air was frigid, tasted bitter and thick with dust. Shivering. Lungs heaving. Tension in her skull building. Waves of pain criss-crossing her chest. She folded her arms around her, circled slowly, looking up but seeing nothing. When she sank to her knees she clutched at her heart. Was she trying to keep it in? Or help it to squeeze out? So she wouldn’t have to feel anymore. She pressed her forehead to the ground.
“Walk with me.”
The words washed over her, tidal. She felt filled with them, not just her ears but her organs, her blood, her skin. She stood up, reached out her hand, felt his grip as he squeezed her fingers.
“Scully…this way. With me.”
Her legs were weak, like she’d spend weeks in bed, wasting. Breathing hurt, like her ribs were on fire. Needles of pain shot through her forehead.
“Why did you run, Scully?”
Had she? “Is it much further?” She stumbled as he pulled her along. The sharpness of the cave floor pushed into her knees, stinging. “I can’t do this, Mulder.”
“We need to get out of here. Just hold on to me. I’ll guide you.”
She heaved herself up, knowing exactly what look he was giving her. “Do you even know where the entrance is? I feel like we’ve going round in circles.”
He hissed out a breath. “It would have been straightforward if you hadn’t decided to do the extended tour.”
In the quiet, she heard a soft click. He must have been using his flashlight to see where they were.
“I’m sorry, Mulder. It was the strangest feeling. Like an impulse I couldn’t control.”
“Like the chip?” he asked in that quiet voice that came from fear.
“Everything seemed clearer somehow.”
When his arm snaked around her waist, she held her breath. “What do you mean?”
“I can’t explain it. It’s like I just knew what I had to do. It makes no sense, Mulder. I don’t know what happened.”
She heard the soft smack of saliva through his lips as he sighed.
“You think it was the Moon-Eye. The ciladaids. That my blindness is caused by spirit beings from the sediment here, don’t you?”
He moved her forward. Walking with her now. “We’ll figure it out, Scully. When we get out of here.”
“Why can’t we figure it out now? I didn’t die, Mulder. Why not? If your theory is correct, my soul should have been freed and my body would be lying in that spot where you found me, frozen to death. And I should have been seeking some answer, searching for the truth, looking for enlightenment.”
“And were you?”
“Don’t you find it ironic that we’ve spent years searching for the truth when we continually lie to each other?”
“We don’t lie, Scully. Well, I don’t.” He moved her to the left. “Here, this way. That way’s too narrow. You’ll have to step over a small rock jutting out of the floor here. That’s it.”
She did as he instructed and they walked on. “We certainly don’t tell each other the truth, Mulder.”
He sighed before he spoke again. “Maybe because it’s too hard, Scully. We’ve got to duck here,” he said. “Even you.” His hand felt light on her neck as he pushed her down. She felt him straighten and she did too.
“Why is that, Mulder? Why can’t we be honest?”
“Because the truth might hurt.”
“More than the lies and the deceit?”
“Who’s lying and deceiving, Scully?”
“You tell me, Mulder.”
“You think Diana is getting in the way of our partnership. Is that it, Scully?”
“Is she?”
He stopped and she knew he was running his free hand across his chin. She could hear his fingers scrape across his stubble.
“She…she’s made me an offer.”
She nodded quickly. Tears burnt at the edges of her eyes. She hoped they would burn the sight back into her. She needed to see his face when he told her. She blinked but the darkness remained. “What kind of offer?”
“One that I’ve been considering.” His voice was even but she detected restraint, a careful choosing of his words.
“I see.”
He chuffed out an ironic laugh. “Maybe I should have been the one to talk to the Moon-Eyed Man, Scully. Maybe then we wouldn’t be having this conversation in the cave.” His words jammed together, tension fuelling their speed.
“And what enlightened decision would you have made, Mulder? To leave me so you can carry on fucking Diana Fowley until she fucks you over?”
The spite in her voice rebounded off the cave walls and slammed back into her.
He cursed under his breath. “Is that what you think I’ve been doing?”
“Well, isn’t it? You can’t stand to spend more than hour a time off the phone to her. You won’t tell me where you’re going. You seem to trust her a whole lot more than you trust me.”
“I’ve known her a long time, Scully.”
“And you hadn’t seen her for a long time before she came back into your life, Mulder. People change. I have never understood just what it is that she holds over you. So I can only assume it’s emotional.”
“It’s none of your business, Scully.”
“It is if our partnership is on the line.”
“Fuck you! You really want the truth, Scully? Well, here. Have it.” She felt the spray of saliva as he yelled at her. “I’m fucking her. Does that make you feel better? Knowing it? And you know what else? The only reason I’m fucking her is because I can’t get close enough to you.”
She bit her lip so hard she tasted the tang of blood. She squeezed her eyes shut against the lancing pain that seared her brain. She heard him draw a shuddering breath in. She knew he was crying.
“Because if I let myself, I’ll hurt you. I’ll damage you. I’ll break you. And I’ve already come so close to that, Scully.”
He pulled her to him, wrapping his trembling arms around her. She pressed her face into his chest, listening to his heart, beating strong and true. They stayed like that, his chin resting on her head, her tears wetting his tee-shirt.
“Scully, he’s back.” His voice was a warm whisper in her ear.
“Who?”
“The Moon-Eye, behind you. It’s like he’s illuminating the cave. I shouldn’t be able to see him without the flashlight, but he’s just here, glowing.”
She opened her eyes and the world was lighter, a fuzzy grey through which she could make out shapes of things. She turned to where Mulder had told her the Moon-Eye was and she saw him too. A wavering silvery figure. Smiling. They followed him until he disappeared into the blossoming light of the cave entrance.
She pushed the sunglasses up her nose as they drove away from Fort Mountain. A low sea of clouds undulated over the rocky backdrop, softening it, but the light still hurt her eyes, a low-grade headache still throbbed.
He waited an hour to speak. “I told Diana that I wasn’t prepared to give up the X-Files, Scully. I thought you should know.”
That was a start, she thought. A start on the path to enlightenment.
@teethnbone replied to your post “am i the only person who googles directions around DC just so i can...”
don't you just want to put in fic footnotes sometimes? Like, look I researched this. I spent actual time on this. I did my homework, I looked at screencaps and Dana Scully does, in fact, own a microwave. Please see link below.
OMG annotated fic. I wish this was real. I get so hung up on small details like that too. Would she turn left to go into the kitchen or right? Someone’s gonna know! I want it to be correct!!!
Does Mulder’s car look more like the ‘91 or the ‘92 model? THE STEREO WAS DIFFERENT I NEED TO KNOW WHERE THE KNOB FOR THE STEREO WAS!!!!
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality
Anya is LIVE right now
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Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
Mulder and Scully stand around some dilapidated ships, and it is wonderful. It would be tough to find a more perfect little nugget about two deeply strange people.
Title: In the Dust of This Planet
Author: @teethnbone
Summary: The Concrete Fleet at Kiptopeke OR, alternately: smut that didn’t play, from the WIP that would not P.
Length: ~700 words
Classification: None
Rating: soft R
Spoilers: None
Favorite line: He took her hand in his and pressed it to a patch of green on the concrete, admiring the dendritic spread of their two-toned fingers against the sandy grit of the wall.
Read the story!
