mulder and scully in season five are sooooooo. something something. she was gonna live with cancer, she was desperate to give her death meaning. she was so angry. the relief in her remission, the way she reconnected with her faith & god, her body & life. she wanted to live, she wanted to move forward with mulder!! she wanted to spend time with him detour and he runs, so she goes along with him and tries opening up to him in between their banter in the woods. and he listens. the brakes were put on and season five is fraught. then she finds emily and mulder backs away when the doctor asks if they're her parents, at the same time diving in head first to help scully get custody despite his reservations. no holds barred in trying to help emily, beating that doctor, calling him a medical rapist. maybe he didn't go hard & fast enough when scully had cancer, emily doesn't have as much time. he saw scully's cross around emily's neck, he found her ova. he doesn't want to hurt her even more and he knows in his gut that's what's waiting for her. he's the one who picks emily up and cradles her tiny body after scully gets that mysterious phone call. he honors scully's choice, and doesn't present her with a harder choice when it's possible he has a cure for emily (we know what a cure means for scully, that chip in her neck — they take it for scully but you can't tell me there's not a niggling fear about what that chip can do and eventually we find out. once an experiment, can you ever be free?). mulder wants to stay with scully and support her through it. scully tell him she wants to be alone. he doesn't go until she looks up at him — i'm not sure if that means she's telling the whole truth, but you know she's definitely lying when she can't look him in the eyes. at least this time he doesn't have to make her look at him. she isn't ready to share this with him, as much as he's there, he backed away. they weren't there yet. i don't think this is a fault of his. scully tells him she can protect emily and he asks who will protect her. they're partners. they're friends. they trust only each other. they both know the answer, regardless of his actually involvement in emily's parentage/parenting. emily was so shy but mulder got her to smile in less than a minute. those scully girls just can't help it. i really think scully wanted him there but she just wasn't ready. this was something she was going through alone. mulder's her partner but not her partner yet. her family doesn't understand, can't handle what it means for her abduction, don't understand that melissa lead to her emily. they try to psychoanalyze her and it hurts. mulder supported her and it hurt. soon, after cancer, after emily, in patient x/the red and the black, she has to face what she's been through. it all peaks here. and she relies on mulder, she realized how much in elegy. but this is a hard year for them both and scully seems to pull back while trying to say more. after elegy and gethsemane and reduxes. she calls and hangs up on mulder in christmas carol (like in never again) but he's there in emily. she asks for his help. she's unsure of what she's feeling when she learns about cassandra but she tries to tell him and she goes to meet her. as she lays in a hospital bed, she tells him about why she followed him but that she can't keep going without her memories and he goes with her to the regression & holds her hand. in all souls, she calls him for help and she takes his advice as much as she can. she tells him about seeing emily. she was afraid and when he's scared for her she takes it seriously. it's different than when she had cancer or with donnie plaster. she doesn't lie or simply push through. it isn't open communication but it's different. there's a different intimacy there, another level of trust & support they're expressing. they've both been through so much.
