The Tunnel At The End Of The Light (XF)

[finisterre]

After proclaiming earlier on tonight that I hardly ever write first person stories, it turns out that in terms of stats, I have written quite a few. It's a chastening experience looking at your own output sometimes. This was my XF fic swansong, save for a few drabbles, though I never meant it to be. I like this story, even though it's a fairly

Comments

[wendelah1]

This is a pretty grim little story, although not the most depressing of its genre, by any means. I guess "Women's Work" and "Bitter Algebra" are even harder for me to read, though excellent in their own right.

This cuts closer to home for me in some ways, although I don't have any men in black to blame. Still, I can empathize with Scully's loss in this story, so her strength is the face of that loss, on top of the loss of her partner, is quite poignant and heartrending. The way she can focus on the reappearance of Samantha, and just get down to business, is one of the reasons I admire her character. She never lets her emotions get the better of her in this story. She just takes the anger and the sorrow and turns them inward, letting her razor-sharp intelligence cut through and solve the mystery.

Still, the grief does surface, in a small but meaningful scene.

"Let me," she whispers. She gently slides one arm under his back and the other under his legs, scooping him into her arms and cradling his head against her neck. He mutters and

[finisterre]

Thank you for saying such nice things.

The only way you could make Closure work is if you allowed the relationship between Mulder and Scully to blossom, so you could present it as him turning from the obsession that has driven him and the mystery he can never solve to building the relationship with Scully -- a deliberate leave-taking of his past in favour of his future.

I think that one of the things I didn't like about season eight was that the Scully I saw didn't match the one I thought I'd see. I thought I would see a driven Scully, obsessed with finding Mulder, turning herself into him. I think we saw glimpses of that, but if they had let us see her working ordinary cases with Doggett *and* pushing herself to find Mulder in the background, it would've hit the angst button 1013 were trying to press *and* felt true to the character. I see a mourning Scully as arid, dry, like the sand we saw in the dream sequence in A Christmas Carol/Emily, not the weepy, half-daft Scully we saw too much in S8.

[amyhit]

okay, so i've come back for day two of the swamping-you-with-feedback-a-thon. it seemed like, once i had momentum, why not? besides, if i'd read these at the time you wrote them i would have given feedback for every single one, so it seems a cop out not to, just because they're not brand new

[bmerb]

I'd like to say brilliant insightful things about your stories, but honestly they are just fantastic and I am so thoroughly enjoying reading them, years and years later. This one was fantastic. Thank you.