SEASON 1

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SEASON 5

FIGHT THE FUTURE

SEASON 6

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And Roche plays his hand: "Pick her out," he says, indicating the hearts. "You choose the one that was your sister, and I'll tell you where she is. Come on, it's a fifty/fifty chance. Either way I'm giving you a victim." The tension is so high I have to pause and get up and walk around the room. Mulder chooses, and Roche toys with him a little more: is he sure? Scully slaughters him a thousand times with her eyes. Roche relents, all smiles. "It's a good choice," he says.

Cut to the woods, in what the tag tells us is Forks of Cacapon (??), West Virginia. On a big graffiti-tagged boulder are etched the words "MAD HAT." This must be the place.

Okay, sit up straight, you guys, because this is, I think, my favorite moment of emotional development, and Scully's character evolution, in the whole series, hands down. It's a direct callback to a similar moment in Season 1, in the episode "Conduit". In that episode, searching for a missing girl, Mulder and Scully come across a shallow, hasty grave in the woods. Mulder, already having gone all obsesso about the case and plainly associating it with his sister, gets down and starts hucking boulders off the grave like a madman…and Scully physically grabs his arm, hard, to restrain him. She yells at him to stop, points out that he's disturbing a crime scene. She's a by-the-book girl, S1 Scully; she sympathizes with Mulder's pain, sure, but There Are Rules.

Compare/contrast to now. Mulder crouches beside the inscribed rock and starts digging, barehanded. He's glassy-eyed, panting…pretty well round the bend at this point. Scully hovers beside him, and so, so gently she touches his shoulder and urges him to wait. They can get a team in there to excavate. "Let somebody else do this," she pleads. Mulder's having none of it. "Help me, Scully," he begs, raw-voiced.

And she does. Without another word, she gets down on the ground and puts her perfect manicure in the mud next to him. Side by side, they claw at the dirt. And oh, it just kills me, you guys. Mulder's lifelong grief has tormented and isolated him; that's never been in question. What we see here, though, is how deeply it's affected Scully, in just a short time—how much it's humanized her. Their respective losses have bound them together over the years, but this, I think, is where we see what that's meant to Scully. Here are the lengths to which she's willing to go, for Mulder. Excuse me a sec—something in my eye. All that digging—I think Mulder and Scully have stirred up the dust in my living room, right through the t.v.

Anyway. It doesn't take them long, to expose the rotting fabric and its heart-shaped cutout, through which we can glimpse a few staves of a small ribcage.

Autopsy bay. Mulder flips on the lights and stands far, far away, by the door, for a long moment. The little body lies on a table in the foreground, covered by a sheet. Eventually he approaches, and with a heavy sigh peers at an X-ray from her file. Tenderly, wet-eyed, he uncovers the body, and very gently traces his fingertips along the little wing of bone protruding from the frayed shoulder of the girl's pajama top. Brutal, this scene. Scully enters, and Mulder is quick to voice his thoughts before she can: "It's not her, Scully. Am I right?" Samantha had broken her left collarbone, falling from a rope swing in their yard, and this little girl's isn't broken. "You're right, Mulder, it's not a match," Scully tells him. "It's not her." Mulder's whole body sags over the table, equal parts relief and despair. It takes him a moment to collect himself. "It's somebody, though," he says b leakly, turning away. He and Scully stand for a moment, not quite touching, silent.

VERY dusty in here. Sniffle.