Not to beat a dead horse but like... Ilsa being fridged also seems indicative of a larger trend? Like M:I has run on for decades and for that reason it sort of feels like a barometer for mainstream cultural attitudes toward women and what/who audiences believe a women in an action movie IS.
And so yes, I will continue to be angry about how Ilsa Faust died and specifically how she is framed by the narrative in DR leading up to her death (i.e. "she's trouble, she's got it coming, for some reason Kittridge is the message-man now). Like--compared to how she was framed in Rogue Nation? Where we are more directly invited to empathize with her as a complicated, unpredictable mirror to Ethan. As someone trying to persist and be just in a world where she seemingly cannot make a right choice. As something of an equal.
These changes don't exist in a vacuum, especially when the same guy directed these movies.
Ilsa has saved Ethan from being tortured, drowning, and being shot in the head in a nightclub bathroom. Kittridge is straight up wrong when he was like “you get her out of trouble and she always found her way back in” okay well who was the one rolling around on a bathroom floor? who was the one chained to a pole with his shoes off?
Some thoughts on Ilsa Faust and the Iliad and archetypes
Okay there are a lot of reasons why Ilsa Faust getting fridged feels hollow and stupid. But I think my biggest issue with this is one of framing. And I say that because in long-running film and TV series, there does have to be a way to effectively off a character when you need to proceed without them but it's hard to give them a reason to leave by choice.
And this series already has a problem where female characters are treated as sort of temporary and interchangeable. But the more specific problem is that Ilsa already broke that mold. She'd been around for two movies and was very effectively woven into this story as Ethan's mirror-self. And very deliberately framed as a mirror from the moment we meet her.
But because she's a mirror, she holds her own against Ethan in a way that really no other character does. Every other member of the team has a separate, unique skill-set, and they're great at adapting to Ethan's chaos, but chaos isn't in their DNA. And time and time again, Ilsa doesn't just keep up with the chaos, she thrives in it.
Not to beat the Trojan horse again, but she doesn't work as a Patroclus figure who can't quite stand up to Hector. Because in archetype she is much closer to Hector. In every previous movie, she is the person looking across the field at Ethan, who he respects and doesn't want to fight but might have to one day.
The failure of fridging her sticks out WAY more due to how they've previously set her up. Like—fine her let her make her heroic sacrifice. But setting it up to frame she and Grace as kind of interchangeable feels so fucking hollow.
Like in some ways the greatest failure here is that the story is MORE than capable of writing interesting female characters who don't feel wooden and are developed with unique personalities, motivations, and skill sets. Ilsa, Alanna, Grace, Paris, Jane... they're pretty strong characters in the context of an action franchise. But their strength of characterization makes it so much more obvious and cruel when the story subsequently treats them as wooden dolls when it's convenient.
As an audience member, I feel deceived by the storytelling leading up to this. This feeling of "oh I've been had" is maybe why I compare her to Jaime Lannister. Because it feels like the storytelling techniques and character development are saying one thing, but when Jaime needs to die it ends up undermining so much of what's been built. In 5 & 6, the message seems to be "this character is fundamentally unique" and (most prominently in 5) "when Ethan Hunt looks into a shady window, hers is the face that looks back." And that's not, to me, how her death was framed.
If you're going to kill off Ilsa, Grace doesn't need to fill the ecological and emotional niche she left behind in the next movie. And Ilsa deserves to haunt the narrative more than she did.
I've been feeling especially bitter about Ilsa getting fridged in the way she did recently and have decided to do something about it, and that thing is write a very odd fan fiction.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Actually I think that Ilsa Faust should get a whole Viktor-style re-vamp with magic purple veins and funky fucked up powers, in exchange for getting murked in the service of Charismatic Male Protagonist tm
Fandoms: NCIS + Mission:Impossible (just bear with me here)
Pairings: none
Important Tags: Purgatory, Commentary, Weird Meta Nonsense, Jenny Shepard & Ilsa Faust
Note: In my soul, Jenny Shepard is the Patron Saint of the Fridge. I'm interested in the implications of death as a weird limbo space in stories where characters regularly pop back up from the dead like whack-a-moles. And how I can shamelessly exploit this trend by dropping my favorite fridged characters in diner-purgatory to have a existential discussion.
Actual Summary: Ilsa Faust meets a woman in a dive bar who calls herself a Saint.
On AO3
She hopes it means something to Ethan, that she died to save a woman she'd barely met. A woman she didn't even like.
It's a very Ethan stunt, not the sort of twist ending he might expect from Ilsa. Or maybe it is. Maybe he pegged her as quickly as she pegged him, when she looked him in the eye on that gravel strip in Morocco and dared him to kill her. She had wondered, at the time, if she'd have spared him if the roles were reversed. For years, she told herself she would've run him over to complete her mission. She was a survivor, above all else.
That's not true, now. Was it ever?
Maybe every thread, in every world, leads her to this bridge. To this wound. To the smug face of the machine god leering over her as her vision swims and goes dark.
She's never been much for prayer—too wishy-washy. But she understands why people pray when the water closes over her head, and shadows fill her mind like curling tentacles. The lining of a gaping maw splits open then seals again, and she is trapped inside.
In one life, she is wearing a tri-corner hat. Her heart is being cut from her chest even as she bleeds onto the wet wood.
In one life, she worships the sword like a lover but worships vengeance more. She is stabbed through the gut, wins the fight anyway.
In one life, she stands on this very bridge. She is wearing a mask; or rather, someone else is wearing a mask of her. Anyone could be behind that rubber face.
Dying is the easy part. Ilsa has died plenty of times; after a while, it becomes a game. Each time her heart stops, what does she lose? Who is the woman that breathes back into her body?
Staying dead—now that's harder. It takes a real talent for entertaining yourself, for being alone with your own mind. It's why she's never been able to stay dead forever. Eventually, she can't help but seek out Ethan like a magic mirror and hold his gaze up to her own. She grows desperate for confirmation that she can be selfless. That she can be good.
The most honorable thing she's ever done was betray her agency to save Ethan Hunt's life.
Alone in a diner in Maine, she wonders if Ethan knows she's alive. Death in the IMF if a fickle thing. It's often temporary, riddled with holes and unanswered questions. Masks make every death a question until the autopsy is complete. Action makes it hard to get a body back for autopsy, and there you have it. The dead could always be trouncing about in a foreign bar, with a new name, and you won't know until you meet them again, by chance. Death means so little to spies.
How long will this one last? Will she come back to life for the next mission? Or the one after that? The Entity is not her problem, she's decided. She's an old-fashioned spy, trained to move swiftly and silently. She's the one they call before the bomb goes off—before it's even been made—to kill the man who sells a single part.
Ethan's the one they call to catch the bomb out of the sky.
"Coffee?" The waitress motions to pour another pot into her cup.
"Yes, thank you." Ilsa nudges the cup toward her.
A voice—flat, American, slightly hoarse—pipes up next to her, "you look like you've been through Hell."
Ilsa wrinkles her nose and turns to face the woman on the stool. She has cropped red hair that catches the light like an oil lamp through the window. She stares at Ilsa through wide, green eyes that seem to swallow the rest of her face.
"Just jet lag," Ilsa says cautiously. The woman looks about Ethan's age. Despite the diner's casual atmosphere, she wears a pinstripe suit and pumps.
"Oh, spare me the pretense." She holds out her hand. "Sorry; I should have led with introductions. I'm Jen."
Ilsa narrows her eyes. "Jen," she repeats. It feels like there should be more to that name.
"You could call me Director Shepard, I suppose, but that seems a little formal if you've never worked under me. You're Ilsa Faust?"
Ilsa nearly spits out her coffee. She reaches for her gun, moves to trap the woman—Jen—in a lock, but before Ilsa can lay a hand on her, the woman disappears. Just... vanishes, with a snap of her fingers. She reappears on the other side of Ilsa, smiling a bit sympathetically.
(If a shark could smile sympathetically.)
"Please put the gun down," she requests, as if the gun is a pair of classroom scissors.
"You're the Entity," Ilsa infers. How else could Jen have fizzled out of existence like a pile of pixels?
But Jen merely shakes her head. She clasps her hands together in front of her and begins to pace. "I'm a few years too old for artificial intelligence, Agent Faust."
Ilsa keeps her gun trained on Jen, following her easy movement. As she does, she notices that none of the other diners have even looked up from their food. The waitress continues to serve coffee at the bar to a row of silver-haired men in fishing vests, and the cook slides orders wordlessly through the window. Only Jen recognizes the pistol, and she doesn't seem to care if Ilsa shoots her.
The only explanation Ilsa can conjure is that she's inside a computer program. The Entity must have found her and carved a space for itself in her mind.
"Where am I?" Ilsa snarls, emphasizing each word. "Prove you're not the Entity."
"Damn," remarks Jen, "that's not an easy ask. All right; how about this?"
She pulls a newspaper from the hands of another diner. He doesn't acknowledge her but tucks comfortably into his scrambled eggs as if nothing happened. She rests it on the counter and slides it over to Ilsa.
The headline, bolded and dated to 2008: N.C.I.S. Director Jennifer Shepard Dead.
"Call me a patron saint," says Jen with a wry smile.
Ilsa looks her up and down snorts, disbelieving.
"I know; I was as surprised as you are." She pats the stool where Ilsa had been resting and enjoying her coffee. "Come sit with me."
Maybe it's the fact that she hasn't spoken to anyone in weeks. Maybe it's Jen's tired, no-bullshit attitude. Maybe it's the headline from 2008, the fact that Jen died almost exactly fifteen years ago. Maybe it's the cold reality that she can't beat the Entity with her wits and a gun, so even if Jen is a computer program, Ilsa wouldn't know how to free herself. She can't fight a thing with no soul, and she isn't interested in trying.
She sits down.
"What will happen when I walk out of here?" she asks the dead Director. Will she ever walk out of here?
"Life as normal—or whatever normal looks like to you."
"So I'm alive." She hadn't been killed in her sleep. She had flown to the States; rented that quaint room in Port Smith.
"In a manner of speaking."
"And you're dead."
"Until proven otherwise."
For fuck's sake, could she get a single straight answer out of this woman?
"You have a choice to make, Ilsa. You know better than anyone—even better than I do—that Death is just a blip in a life of espionage. When a spy dies, the world flips a coin. There's always a chance you'll come back, isn't there?"
"You're very observant," Ilsa says dryly.
"Don't patronize me, Agent Faust. I haven't been in exactly your position, but I've made plenty of hard choices. I could have gone back at one point, but you only have so much time." She angles her chin toward a booth in the far corner of the diner, where a dark-haired woman digs into an omelet. "Ziva barely came back in time." Then she points to another table, and Ilsa recognizes Director Kittridge. "He didn't tarry too long. He was a luckier Director than me; he got an easier road home. Granted," she pouts, "I suppose fewer people resented him."
Ilsa can believe that.
"And if I don't go back?" she demands.
Jen shrugs. "Stay dead. Become someone else. I don't care."
That was a lie. She seemed like she cared a great deal.
Ilsa crosses one arm over her chest. In her other hand, she holds onto her gun. "What about you, then? Why did you stay dead?"
"Look outside," says Jen. She points solemnly to the window. The bustling street has been replaced with a barren, pale desert. In the distance, Ilsa can see the glint of approaching cars. She glances back to Jen and gasps as the restaurant lights flicker out.
The diners have disappeared. The booths have faded and chipped; dust coats the tables, and the windows are shattered. Four men's bodies litter the floor in a pool of blood and casings, with automatic rifles lying empty beside them. Jen is standing next to her. She's holding a pistol—Ilsa's pistol—in one hand. Her hair is longer, less vibrant, and her suit is no longer pinstriped but pale and rolled up to the elbows. Bullet holes riddle her body, though her shirt soaks up the blood. Distant sirens fill the air.
"It's easier for some people to come back than others," warns Jen, her voice ragged and hollow. She reaches out with one pale arm and taps Ilsa's chin. "Especially with those silly masks of yours."
At Jen's touch, Ilsa blinks and shakes her head.
Sound returns to the diner. She looks to where Jen was standing, but she finds only an empty stool. It spins a little, and the man sitting next to Ilsa furrows his brow in concern before returning to his newspaper. Record lobster caught in harbor, reads the headline, dating to August 2023. His hands are spotted with age, and the pockets of his vest contain what look like old receipts. He has a stark white crew cut that Ilsa recognizes as military, and as Ilsa returns to nursing her coffee, she sees him squint slightly to read the paper's fine print.
There's something in the casual intensity of his gaze that reminds her of Ethan. Ethan read stoically—whether it was the funnies or the obituaries, his expression never changed. It had made Ethan impossible to read, and frustrated her to no end. Watching this stranger, she misses it almost enough to go looking for Ethan, but she knows that's off the table. If she seeks out Ethan now, the Entity will undoubtedly find her first.
She has a little bit of time, right? Kittridge got a decade to do whatever the hell he wanted. Why shouldn't she?
It's easier for some people to come back than others. It's pretty hard to come back from that many bullet wounds, she guesses. She wonders who Jen might've been in a fairer world.
(She wonders if she's losing her mind.)
"Coffee all right, ma'am?" the man asks without looking up from the paper. He's got a slight drawl—not Southern but something unique and un-placeable.
"It's fine," Ilsa replies. The waitress re-fills her cup for the third time.
Summary: Oh hey, it's the final chapter! I finished something!
Safe in Port Washington but unable to contact Stella, Scully waits for her next adventure and reflects on her family's past.
Tagging @smol-scully as usual b/c they're still around, which brings me great joy :)
Previous Chapters: Part 1 , Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12, Part 13
Read it on AO3
Listen to my shameless pirate Spotify playlist.
The house on the hill was quiet today. Maggie Scully had gone out to the baker’s, and in the current heat wave even the insects had fallen silent. From her spot in the garden, Scully could faintly hear waves crash against the cliffs and the occasional shout of dock workers as they brought in a merchant vessel. She’d taken to a hidden-away corner of Maggie’s garden since her return. Often, she tucked herself beneath the shade of the bougainvillea to read.
In the weeks that followed her safe arrival, Port Washington had begun to feel… uncomfortable, like an ill-fitting bodice. She tried to take up old friendships but found herself uncertain what to say. Even after she’d cleaned up properly, her sun-scabbed cheeks and missing eye made strangers flinch when they looked at her.
Even Maggie had wept and held her weather-beaten daughter to her chest.
I’m so sorry, she’d repeated, gingerly touching the leather patch’s edge—as if it were her fault Scully had taken a bullet to the face.
I don’t regret any of it, she’d wanted to reply, but had said instead, “It’s okay. We’re okay,” and sagged into her mother’s arms.
Then Maggie had taken Mulder’s face in her hands and kissed each cheek. He could have been her own son the way she ushered him to the table, told him he could stand to stay for dinner; have something substantial to eat. Scully had felt a sudden pang of guilt. It would have been so easy to love Mulder, to stay in Port Washington for good and finally—finally—rest.
But Scully had never been one for easy answers. Despite her exhaustion, she knew that even if she had fallen for Mulder somewhere down the line, even if she had never met Stella, never sailed the Flying Dutchman, she’d still leave port. The ocean sang in her bones, and who was she to ignore its call?
She’d told Maggie little of her adventure with Stella. She’d explained the story of Davy Jones, how Stella had rescued her in Los Barriles. She’d told her of Spender’s betrayal and Mulder’s rescue; the battle that had cost her an eye. Maggie had nodded along thoughtfully, seemingly unsurprised by the existence of ghosts and the nobility of pirates. But that was just Maggie Scully–she processed everything in her own time, and when she was ready form an opinion you’d best be ready to hear it. So far, Maggie hadn’t voiced dissent or disdain for her daughter; she seemed happy enough to have Dana back. She also seemed to know in her bones that it wouldn’t be forever.
Scully thought back to her mother’s final words to her on the night she left Port Washington: you know better than I where your heart lies, and I won’t deny what it needs, no matter what that may be.
Still, she hadn’t quite been able to form her mouth around the words she knew Maggie was astute enough to infer: My heart lies with Davy Jones.
And Davy Jones’s heart had lain, bloody and beating, in Dana Scully’s hands.
She leaned back and closed her eye, letting the sun beat down on her cheeks. She’d had plenty of time to brood in the last few weeks, certainly more time than she’d had since finding Mulder on that cursed island. Whenever she slept, she saw Stella’s face floating behind her eyelids, just out of reach, and she always woke tossing, as if her body were trying to re-create the rock of a ship on rough waves.
She missed it. She longed for the constant ocean breeze that had dried out her skin and caked the salt to her like armor. She longed for the smell of seaweed and old wood, and the tangy, sweet scent of Stella’s hair and the relief of Stella’s lips and teeth pulling at her skin. Scully had always carried herself stiffly, holding her head high until her neck grew sore from the weight. Stella had un-spooled her, turning her limbs to jelly in the cabin's smoky light.
More that that–more than the sex, or the ship–she missed Stella’s soft, throaty voice reciting the ocean’s treasures. In the cabin, Stella had often read the charts aloud to herself, and Scully had listened, picking up details of hidden coves, springs to fill the barrels, ports that promised a warmer welcome to pirates than to his Majesty’s Navy.
She’d also heard Stella whisper about bounties to be chased–money to be made in the brutal, mercenary way a pirate earned a proper living. It had seemed to Scully sometimes crueler than pillaging, other times more just. That was how Stella and her crew had survived, for many years–they were good enough at killing that they had a choice in who they killed, and how.
And for whose coin?
Often one man’s, Stella had mused, rich enough to pay for revenge.
We don’t get to decide who deserves to live, and who deserves to die, Scully had insisted. She never wanted to grow numb to killing. But then, she couldn’t in good faith call Stella numb, either. Even after decades, Stella spoke of the men she’d slain with solemnity. Not regret, though–never regret.
It’s not about deserving, she’d said. It’s about who I’d rather share the world with. Perhaps it’s selfish, but I’d rather not share this Earth with Paul Spector, nor anyone who thinks like him. And they’d rather not share it with you and me, and so we find ourselves at a crossroads.
Could she be a pirate forever? It was one thing to break the law and sail with Stella; it was entirely another to spend the rest of her life on the run, fighting and stealing and hunting for ancient treasure. Love or not, could she really buck and pillage the Crown her father had spent his life serving? She’d been asking herself that since she got back to Port Washington.
Then again, her father had been done right by the Crown. William Scully Sr. had been honored, titled, and gifted the house on the hill. He had been wed in his Navy uniform, and Maggie had been recognized as his lawful wife, and his children had been recognized as his lawful and loved children, and he had died long before Dana Scully had failed to grow into a lady of standing. He’d never watched her teach herself medicine, never seen the way sailors’ wives shunned her for her affair with Daniel Waterson. He’d not been there the day Spender took over the port, or the day Mulder climbed aboard a doomed ship to serve a man who would betray him.
He’d not been there when the captain of the Flying Dutchman took three gunshots in her hollow breast to save his daughter’s life.
“Penny for your thoughts.” Mulder’s voice roused her from her reverie.
He was standing over her with a glint in his eye that could only mean a mystery to chase. His hair was combed, handsomely framing his face. He’d gained back the color in his cheeks, along with some of the weight he’d lost in captivity. He looked like a man again, less sunken and a bit more well-slept. The ghost of a stubble graced his chin and jaw.
“I searched through the archive’s entire selection of texts on curses and demonology,” he began.
“Of course you did.” She was fairly certain most accounts were dramatic lies, though she liked to think her adventures lent her a discerning eye for true stories. So far, she and Mulder had already found two encounters with the Flying Dutchman which had previously been misfiled.
“I’ve been thinking,” Mulder mused, sitting down beside her on the stone bench. In his hand was a fevered recollection of some obscure shipwreck.
“Ominous,” Scully said mildly.
“I’d like to go North.”
“What’s North?”
He waved the papers in front of her nose. “The final resting place of Blackbeard.”
“Where he supposedly hid a mountain of cursed gold, hmm?”
“And a war helm he stole from a Scottish monastery and took with him to the colonies. An impenetrable relic supposedly dating back to the Vikings, forged for Heimdall the Watchman.”
Scully narrowed her eye. It was difficult to give him the stink-eye, now, she noticed. A shame, really, because the words coming out of his mouth made no sense. A helm forged for a Viking god and buried with an English pirate?
“I know what you’re going to say, Scully.”
“Do you now?”
“Heimdall wasn’t real. It’s just a myth, Mulder.” He pitched his voice up to mimic Scully’s flat rebuttals.
“It sounds like you don’t need to hear me say it, then,” she murmured. Still, she offered him a small smile.
“It’s not much, but it’s a heading,” Mulder insisted. “I need to do more research, but I think I’m on to something. See this priest? He recorded the story from a Dutch sailor who’d made his way down to Port Washington, and he says he saw the Queen Anne’s Revenge. But he was outside the range where we know Blackbeard smuggled. I suppose it’s possible he was mistaken, but Blackbeard was widely known in the colonies.”
A wave of relief washed over her at the cadence of Mulder’s voice as he described the long-lost legend. It had lost some of its hollow resignation in the intervening weeks, though she knew her plan to leave with the Dutchman had hurt him. She’d struggled to shake the guilt she felt for leaving him in Port Washington. The Dutchman will always come for you, Stella had promised. But Mulder would not come with her.
Even if she never saw the Dutchman again, she knew she couldn’t stay here. Eventually, her crimes would catch up to her, or she’d tarnish her family’s reputation beyond repair. She wasn’t Miss Scully anymore, and if she tried to be, she would throw a wrench in lives that weren’t hers.
“What will you do?” she asked.
Mulder shot her a conspiratorial grin. “Well, seeing as we helped rid the Navy of a corrupt commander in league with pirates… I might be able to convince the next trade ship to Boston that they need a cartographer on board.”
“That’s a hell of a journey.”
“So’s Davy Jones Locker.” His eyes softened and he rested his hand atop hers. “You get to have your adventure, Scully. Perhaps this is mine.”
Unspoken: Will I hurt you if I go alone?
Her heart ached for Mulder's kindness. He tried in vain to spare her the same grief he felt at their parting. She was surprised by the lump in her throat as she said hoarsely, “I know.”
I love you, in my way.
She didn’t mentioned that the last adventure was also supposed to be Mulder’s, and not hers at all. She squeezed his hand, pressing the back of her knuckles into the rough stone. Neither of them were meant to stay in Port Washington forever. If they stayed, they’d only be buried by archives and unproven stories.
“I promise I won’t get kidnapped by pirates this time.”
“Don’t make promises you can’t keep.”
I'll rescue you if you do.
* * *
It was a brisk day, colder than the last three had been, when Maggie's ladies’ maid came tearing down the stone steps to the garden with eyes like a wild dog’s.
“Miss Scully! You must hide at once!”
Scully snapped her book closed and hopped to her feet, one hand on her sword.
“What is it, Alice?”
“Pirates!”
“I haven’t heard any cannons.”
“They’re too far out, Miss.”
Scully squinted into the evening light. “Then how do you know they’re pirates?”
“They haven’t flown their flag.”
“Have you sent a man to the fort?” she asked, ignoring the way her heart jumped hopefully at the word pirates.
“Not yet.”
“Hold off for now, and please send a missive to fetch Mulder. Tell him to come to the hilltop lighthouse at once. I’d like to see the ship.” Especially before raising an alarm.
“What should I tell Mrs. Scully?”
“Tell her not to panic, but to be ready to hide or fight if need be. I will ride to the fort myself if they must be warned, but I’ll not spread fear without reason.”
Not until she saw the ship’s course. Not until she was sure.
She clutched her skirts in one hand as she climbed the narrow, winding path toward the lighthouse, which perched high above her mother’s home. Its light had long since gone out, and its keeper had long since passed. The port itself had grown large enough that it twinkled from a distance and no longer needed the lighthouse’s beacon, but it still presented a wide view of incoming ships. Of the setting sun staining the horizon with a blaze of orange.
The lighthouse’s white paint was tinted pink, and the sea glittered. Choppy waves rocked the ships in port. A bit further, she spotted the countryless ship that Alice had warned of. It swayed like a seabird on an updraft, splashed across the horizon, its sails carrying it swiftly toward a remote anchor point just South of the port itself. Scully recognized that empty beach as a spot where Navy men tarried with the town girls the night before setting sail. It was the beach where no one slept, its bed of soft sand turning two days into one.
The ship she recognized too. She’d know it anywhere, sure as she knew the freckles on its Captain’s tan chest.
The Flying Dutchman had come.
“Dana?” Her mother’s voice echoed from the direction of the house. Of course her mother had followed her. “Dana, what are you doing?”
She turned around, fighting her own lack of peripheral vision. Her mother was climbing the hill without a second thought, though she hadn’t climbed it in years. Scully remembered suddenly that Maggie was the one who forged this path, who packed down the whipping grass into muddy steps. She’d built a trail so she could walk each day to the hilltop and wait for her husband to come home. Had Maggie been up here since his death?
“Alice told me there was a ship coming in,” Maggie huffed, catching her breath. The Scully women were about the same height, though Dana suddenly felt tall as her mother rested her hands on her knees and took a deep gulp of air.
“Are you all right?”
“Of course I’m all right. I’m not so old and frail as you seem to think.”
The ship stilled and dropped anchor. Despite its living crew, it was still a ghostly thing, its sails fluttering as if alive.
“Who’s ship is that?” Maggie asked, though her tone suggested she already knew.
Scully watched as a straw-haired woman in a wide hat hopped into the rowboat and began to make her way to shore.
When she turned to face her mother, she couldn’t keep the smile from her cheeks. She was already picking her way down the other side of the hill, toward the beach where Stella’s rowboat carved its sure path.
“It’s Stella’s ship.”
With her father’s pistol on one hip and Stella’s father’s sword on the other, Scully clanked and clattered. Stella and two members of her crew were walking the rowboat through the shallows when Scully’s feet finally touched damp sand. Stella moved with certainty, as if she knew exactly how the waves would carry her boat and could ward it against each break.
She was dressed in burgundy, her blonde hair tied back and her clothes soaked from the crests of the waves. Her eyes crinkled as she looked up and met Scully’s gaze with those knife-bright eyes. Her lip curled into a wanton smile, softened–almost nervous–as she spotted Maggie above them.
“Stella–” Scully breathed as Stella stepped ashore. How strange it felt to see Stella walking on land. How strange the warmth in Stella’s skin and the blush in her cheeks. But dead or alive, she was still Stella Gibson.
“Did you doubt me, my love?” she murmured.
“Not for a day.”
A low chuckle. “I would have doubted me.”
But Scully knew that their journey had changed Stella as much as it had changed her. That something sharp and bitter inside the captain had shifted to make room for Dana Scully on her ship. She cupped Stella’s cheek, searching her hawkish features for new scars, but found none. Only a couple of frown lines between her brows and a sunburn on the bridge of her nose. Unable to wait any longer, she pressed her lips to Stella’s, devouring the salty, metallic taste of her.
Stella cleared her throat.
“I assume that’s your mother?”
Scully followed her gaze to where Maggie waited on the hillside, half-way between the lighthouse and the sea. In her hurry, she’d forgotten Maggie was behind her. She had stopped before picking her way to the beach, as if she wasn’t sure how to proceed. What was safe; what was wanted? There was a wistfulness to her mother: a windswept gray gown and a Navy man’s pin. She scrutinized them not with a judging gaze but a solemn one, looking half over their heads to the sharp cliffs behind them, as if she were seeing a ghost.
Oh. This was the reunion Maggie had never gotten.
"Yes. And you ought to meet her." Before she could protest, Scully took Stella’s hand and led her up the beach, out of the shallow water. Davy Jones’ boots padded softly (safely) onto dry sand.
“We’ll tie her to the log!” Stella called to her crew, angling her head to indicate a massive fallen palm at the top of the beach. They roped their rowboat to it then paused for a rest of their own, unwrapping rations of dried meat.
She led Stella up to the lighthouse, to her mother. She could sense the nervous energy that coursed through Stella, and she did her best to assuage it with her own demeanor. Maggie wouldn't bite (probably). And besides, she’d need to pack a few things before leaving, though she’d never fully unpacked to begin with. Her rucksack still sat on the floor with a compass and a waterskin inside, waiting for the next adventure.
“Captain Stella Gibson, I presume,” said Maggie Scully.
The captain dipped her head. “Stella. And you must be Margaret Scully.”
Maggie laughed aloud. “Christ Almighty, no one’s called me Margaret in a decade. It's Maggie.”
She didn’t bother to hide the stubborn tremble in her chin, Scully noticed. She knew that the Dutchman had come to take her last child away.
“You’ll at least stay for dinner, won’t you? The two of you?”
Stella, for her part, took off her hat. “My crew could use a night in town. They’ll be happy for the fresh food, and the drink in Los Barriles will treat them well.”
They walked toward the empty lighthouse. It was growing dark already, and the hilltop grass shone an eerie silver.
“Sharp as a tack?” Maggie whispered in Scully’s ear, gesturing with her eyes to Stella’s narrow silhouette.
“Sharper.”
“And kind?”
When it matters. To people who deserve it. “She’s good to me, Ma.”
That was all they spoke of the kiss. Maggie did not ask, and Scully did not answer.
“Dana is one hell of a sailor,” Stella remarked quietly, gazing out at the stark shadow of her ship. It was tucked just out of sight of the port proper. Its masts reached for the sky like the prongs of a trident.
Maggie rolled her eyes. “Oh, spare me the pretense.”
Stella studied them for a moment. Beneath the brim of her hat, her expression was impossible to read. Then she turned to Scully, and taking her hand, gently raised it to her lips and said, “my apologies. You’re one hell of a pirate.”
The thing is I didn't GO to Mission: Impossible for a serialized drama with higher stakes in each movie. Like, sure I expect a slightly more unhinged stunt every year because that's how they crash-test the new Tom Cruise model.
But I watched 4 and 5 because they were both just... damn good stand alone movies. I didn't need a ton of context to enjoy them. The stakes were high but never took themselves too seriously, and the action was over the top and silly.
They perfectly filled their niche. I didn't need a multi-film tune in Marvel plot to engage, and I'm really bummed that the later films took that direction. You would've had me without a single cliffhanger, poorly executed tragedy, or recurring villain. Believe it or not, sometimes people go see a movie purely because they think it's going to be fun.
Worldcat is my bestie and my one true love!! Not only does it tell you what library a book is at, but it also price compares different used book sites against each other for easy view! It's how I got Tarot For the Master for $10!!
Oh, and since I have your attention: z-library (books and textbooks) and sci-hub (gatekept scientific journal articles.) I just ripped a textbook for class off z-library and snatched a required reading from sci-hub. Life is good and education should be accessible at every stage and station of life.
basically it’s an au where Tim is an avatar (of either the desolation or the stranger (I haven’t decided yet but probably desolation?)) before the events of canon.
this puts him in an interesting position where due to his place in the Magnus archives he can’t really go find/cause fear so he’s reliant on Elias (ofc it’s Timelias I don’t know what you all expect from me) to find appropriate statements/ project specific events into his head to stay alive/functional
from there events mostly proceed as canon, but Tim is loyal to Elias the whole time and knows more than he lets on
Tim then survives s3 and canon diverges from there!!
it's so wild to me that you absolutely cannot force a hyperfixation to happen. like you'll watch the most perfectly tailor-made-for-you content that everyone says you'll love and feel absolutely nothing, and then the thing you watch on a whim to fill time will reach through the screen and put its damn fingers in your brain and start rearranging the neurons right in front of you and every single time you're like THIS??? THIS??????? and this happens like every 6-12 months forever
Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. I have not been paying attention at the end of season five and um what JENNY SHEPARD DIES?????? SO SOON!?!?!?!? I will have to rewatch both episodes immediately because I did NOT see that happening (I literally wasn’t paying attention)
lol I cried in the shower the first time I watched those episodes. I'm going to die mad about it she's such a fun character. At least she dies like a fucking cowboy
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