you’re walter skinner . you partner one of your brightest and most skeptical agents , dana scully , with one of your most … unique agents , fox mulder , to monitor his work . great . you think , this will finally solve some of my problems . scully is grounded . scully is stubborn . mulder may not like her , but he’ll have to respect her . she’ll be able to reign him in . and at first it works — you read her reports , sipping on your once hot , now room - temperature coffee , listening to your secretary type outside . ignoring how the sun starts to sink over d.c , bathing your office in deep orange . another late workday . and , as those late workdays pass , you stand confident in your decision . sure , you start to realize that mulder and scully get along better than you had anticipated — hell , you can’t share silent , amused glances in a room full of investigators and think nobody would notice . scully’s reports are granting more leniency to mulder than you perhaps would care for , but even you can’t deny that mulder has a certain charm about him . it helped him , on those occasions where he’d storm into the office with that indignant look on his face , those days where the phone calls never ceased about what the hell was mulder up to now — scully seemed to reign him in with her quiet insistence . great . you are confident in this decision .
you’re walter skinner . and for the first time in ... well , for the first time in a long time , scully is without her partner , and she’s angry . you wouldn’t think someone you stood a whole head over would be so intimidating angry , but she is . where’s mulder ? you’re walter skinner . you try to give her an answer she would be satisfied with , or at least get her to leave your office . but as she fixes you with that defiant stare , you realize you’ve seen it before , just on a different face . and then you realize with dawning horror that you had thought that it was scully reigning mulder in . and you’d been horribly mistaken .
