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Dana Scully is only three years old when a thick, stodgy blue handprint appears on her cheek. Her parents watch, unsure of whether to laugh or scream, as a second handprint blooms over her eye. This one is canary yellow. They share a look when she catches herself in the mirror and laughs. She watches, enthralled, as a series of red blotches trail across her nose like misshapen freckles. They blend with the blue and the yellow, creating a miniature spectrum across the expanse of her tiny, chubby face.
“She’s got her work cut out for her,” her dad says, but he’s trying not to smile. Soon her hands are also coated with paint, primary colors all the way up to her elbows. He’s certain he’s never seen his daughter laugh so hard in her life as she does in that moment, and something tells him he never will.
The laughter stops when the paint washes away and the only color on her face is that of her skin. Later, she asks her mom about what happened, and Maggie Scully smiles and smooths her daughter’s hair down as she lays in bed and tells her the story her own mother told her: the tale of the two souls.
“Two people, united by their faith and their love, will always find one another,” she said gently. “Guided by their hearts… They become one.”
When she looks up, Dana is fast asleep. If Maggie really looks, she’s sure she can see a shadow of blue on her daughter’s face.
Dana is five and she is bored, bored, bored. The sound of rain hitting the ground almost drowns out her mother’s piano-playing in the lounge. She practices her handwriting on a scrap piece of paper to pass time; each backward ‘s’ and golden-arch ‘m’ accumulates to create a string of ‘The cat sat on the mat’ type sentences. Soon the paper has no more room for her smudged pencil letters, so she grabs a felt-tip and writes on her arms instead. It’s an act of boredom, an act of rebellion, of defiance; she has never done such a thing before, and the thought of her parents finding out is scary but exciting.
There are misshapen flowers and lopsided hearts spread across her forearm when she finally notices something on her skin that wasn’t there before.
Her soulmate – whoever they are – has scribbled a picture of a stick figure waving. It’s drawn with a faded biro that looks as though it’s running out of ink. She draws a shaky smiley face next to it. They don’t reply but it doesn’t matter. Dana is practically covered from head to toe when her mom finally checks in on her.
She is seven when he reaches out to her.
Hi!!!
She shows her parents, who smile and encourage her to write back. Her reply is neater than his, though her letters are still a little squashed together.
Hello
Her soulmate’s response makes her parents laugh, but she doesn’t know why.
Do you like Elvis?
Yes, she writes. At least, she’s familiar with him. Her mom listens to him on the radio sometimes. She needs Maggie’s help to spell ‘suede’ as she adds: I like blue suede shoes. That is a good song
I like that one! My moms favorite is teddy bear but my dads is hound dog
My dads favorite is hound dog too!!! One of her earliest memories is of her father doing an awful Elvis impersonation. She doesn’t know that it will stick with her for the rest of her life. While Dana waits for a response she tries to draw a picture of what she thinks Elvis looks like – a cartoonish grin, slicked-back quiff and shades that are slightly wonky – on the inside of her forearm. She goes downstairs for dinner and rushes back upstairs only to find that her soulmate still hasn’t replied.
Dana shrugs it off and smiles to herself as she scrubs away the doodle.
She’s nine years old now, and little has been said between them since the Elvis conversation. Dana’s a little disheartened but she understands. Maybe they don’t have time to talk anymore. It doesn’t stop her from wondering if he found her boring and if that means they can’t be soulmates anymore. Is there such thing as a broken system? she wonders as she stares up at her ceiling. Her friends show off their skin with giggles and bright pink cheeks. She’s made a point of wearing long-sleeved everything to hide that she has nothing. She doesn’t even know his name.
Dana is in school when she gets the first real message in two years. She rolls up her sleeves to wash her hands, and she sees it on the inside of her arm. Her heart sinks like a stone and settles in the pit of her stomach. His words are small and poorly written – they’re uneven and shaky.
I want my sister back
She runs back to class with her sleeves pulled over her hands and sits down. When her teacher isn’t looking she tries to write back to him, but it’s difficult when her skin is covered by her sweater. Still, her handwriting is much better than it was two years ago. She hopes he knows what she’s written.
Where is she??
A moment passes. While Miss Gardner is writing on the board she sneaks a look down her sleeve.
Gone.
Gone where?
She’s missing. She’s never coming back.
Dana isn’t sure how to react when he adds I think she was abducted by aliens because he’s wrong but she isn’t meant to tell him that. She racks her brains for things to say – ‘I’m sorry’ crops up repeatedly, but it doesn’t feel right. Apologies are for when things are your fault. This is out of her control, but she wants to help.
I hope you find your sister, she writes slowly, deliberately, picking her words with care. And I want you to know that I’m here for you if you need to talk. I’m in class right now but I can talk to you later. Really hope that you are feeling okay right now. Then, out of habit, she adds: I’m sorry though. About your sister.
It’s okay, he replies almost instantly. Thank you. I’ll speak to you when you get out of school. Thank you so much for listening to me. I hope I’m not distracting you.
You don’t have to thank me. We’re friends. I’ll speak to you later. She doodles a tiny smiley face at the end and circles it for good measure. For the rest of the day, she can’t take her mind off her soulmate’s missing sister, and his crazy abduction theory, and how miniscule his handwriting really appears when she rolls up her sleeves to have another look at it. A tear rolls down her cheek and splashes her arm, narrowly avoiding their already-blurry messages.
They’ve been speaking almost regularly for the last three years, but Dana still doesn’t know his name. She sits awake one night, watching swirls of ink appear on her skin with a sad smile. All his doodles are alien heads now, and she’s not sure how she feels about that. She grabs a pen from her bedside table and carefully draws a flower on the palm of her hand. It isn’t long before his response comes, erratically scribbled but still readable (just about).
I didn’t think you’d be up so late, he writes. She likes to think there’s an air of pleasant surprise to his comment.
Couldn’t sleep. She waits for him to respond for a full thirty seconds before she realizes it’s on her to elaborate. Is it cool if I ask you a question?
You already did, accompanied by a winking face, is his response. She rolls her eyes and huffs to herself, but she’s smiling. Alright, smartass, she replies. What’s your name?
For a long time, he doesn’t reply, and Dana wonders if she’s crossed a line. She’s about to scribble a hasty apology when her forearm becomes a canvas for yet another doodle. It’s hard to decipher what he is trying to draw, but it looks like a four-legged animal – an extremely sloppy one, with funny ears and an almost elongated snout. Picture clue, he writes underneath. Can you guess it?
Your name is Bear????? Am I right?
She almost laughs out loud at the thought and has to cover her mouth in case she wakes her parents. His reply looks uneven, and she entertains the idea that it is because he is laughing with her.
That’s my bad, he writes. I’ve never been great at art. But Bear’s still a better name than the one I was born with, so I can work with that
Bear. She’s kind of frustrated that he’s swerving the question but she’s still smiling as she gazes down at their conversation, so she supposes she can forgive him. There’s no way your name is worse than BEAR. That’s crazy!
They stay up until a ridiculous hour in the morning talking and drawing on one another. She wakes up the next day just short of noon with ink adorning her arms and legs. Nobody’s home to see her wash away her messages, but Melissa gets in before Bear has a chance to clean his off. She teases Dana non-stop for a solid three weeks until Maggie orders her to cut it out. Dana doesn’t particularly mind. Sometimes she wakes up to a doodle of a bear on her wrist or ankle, and nothing can wipe the shit-eating grin off her face.
Conversation begins to dwindle when she’s sixteen and she begins to wonder if she’s ever going to meet him. She wonders what he looks like, what his voice sounds like, what his lips taste like. When she meets Johnny Weiss at a party her sister dragged her to he looks like a jock and his voice is deep and rough and a little harsh, and when she shares a drunken first kiss with him he tastes like cheap beer. He casts her off and leaves her crying on the porch. She slashes angry red letters onto her arm with a shitty biro she finds indoors and locks herself in the bathroom with tears running down her face.
Don’t hurt me, she writes, and she feels so ashamed of herself that she washes it off before he can see it.
Boys come and boys go after that, none of them sticking around once it becomes clear they don’t belong together. Sometimes Dana wants to write ‘where are you?’ on her skin just to find him, but she can’t muster up the courage to go through with it. She doesn’t want to be dependent or weak. She can’t rely on a boy that she’s never even met before. So she suffers in silence and tries to ignore the pang in her chest when pink, cutesy gel pen emerges on her arm. FM + LS, encased in a ginormous love heart.
She isn’t sure if he’s FM or LS, but he isn’t hers. Dana ignores all the tiny messages scribbled on the insides of her arms and on the backs of her hands after that. She has decided that boys are not worth her trouble… Not even the one supposed to be her missing piece.
She’s nineteen and the world isn’t as bad as she once thought. The world didn’t end when she stopped caring about boys, which came as something of a relief. Occasionally she finds herself checking her wrists for little notes and memos, but only when she isn’t doing anything better. Just once, she finds the name ‘Phoebe’ written on the back of her hand, but by that time she is can just smile and shrug it off. Bear – what a terrible name, she thinks with a laugh – is happy, and he deserves it. She forgets him for a while, amid studying and working up to med-school. For a long time, boys are the last of her troubles, and everything feels good.
Sometimes she thinks she misses him but decides she doesn’t. You can’t miss somebody you never truly had in the first place.
Dana Scully is twenty-one when she notices a tiny scribble on her arm. hi, is all it says. Normally she would ignore it, but there’s something weird going on. They haven’t spoken in years, not really, and his handwriting is so small that she can barely even see it. Hi yourself, she replies, a strange feeling of nostalgia rising from her chest. You okay?
Depends on what qualifies as okay in your books. My girlfriend cheated on me. His reply is dry and witty, but her heart plummets. There’s something about the use of humor that makes the situation ten times worse, and she shakes her head at his bad cover-up response. She keeps her bottom lip firmly between her teeth as she sets about writing her response, her eyebrows knitted together as she jots it down. Her handwriting is light years away from what it used to be when they first spoke; she now talks in swirls and loops and elegance. His hasn’t changed much at all.
What the hell?! I’m so sorry to hear that… I hope you’re alright, but seriously, she isn’t worth getting upset over. Liars and cheaters are the worst kinds of people on the planet. She feels weird giving her soulmate relationship advice. She wonders if it’s weird for him, or if he’s cool with it. Maybe he doesn’t think it’s slightly crazy that she’s telling him to do better when she’s meant to be with him – or so the stories go.
Thanks. I’ll get over myself eventually, I just need some time, I think. There’s a moment of stillness before the ink flows freely across her skin. Hey, I never got your name. Do you still think my name’s Bear?
What else could it be? She joked. The ghost of a smile crossed her face, the ghost of adolescent memories long passed. And you’re right, you never ended up asking for mine. Maybe back then I would’ve just told you, but we could always play the picture game again!
I’m worse at guessing than I am at drawing, so maybe not… I’ll find your name out someday though. For now, I think I’ll call you Daisy. Because of all the damn flowers you keep drawing on me.
Her cheeks are red as she writes, I’m sorry about that. I kind of stress-doodle sometimes. It’s the only thing that relieves stress besides smoking, and I’m really trying to cut that out before it becomes a habit. She catches a glimpse of herself in the floor mirror by her bed and smiles. His chosen name doesn’t match her appearance at all. Daisy is fun and cute and floral and sweet, but Dana is dark and just a little scary. She’s cropped red hair and black lipstick and ripped jeans and oversized band t-shirts. Daisy is a terrible name, by the way. Hopefully someday you’ll find out why.
You don’t need to apologize for the drawing, it’s nice. Kind of comforting. When I’m having a bad day it’s always nice to see that you’ve drawn something. It feels good knowing that no matter what happens, you’re still out there somewhere. A moment passes before he adds: I’m not being stupid, am I? You feel it too?
She writes yeah even though she doesn’t because he hasn’t been there for her in years. But he’s looking for validation, and she’s the only one who can give it to him. It’s nice to know that you’re still around. Part of her hopes the words bite him because she wants to hurt him now. He abandoned her and she’s not sure if she can even be with someone who shrugs off their soulmate for random girls. Over the years she’s seen endless numbers of phone numbers written down in big loopy handwriting with names and added at the end. She wonders if he ever called any of them, or if Phoebe was the only one that mattered to him.
Another part of her feels stupid and childish for wanting to hurt him. She knows what it’s like to have a broken heart, and she doesn’t want to kick him while he’s down. Dana hastily writes thanks for being there before she tugs down her sleeves and ignores him for the rest of the night.
When she wakes up there’s a tiny note on the back of her hand. I wish I knew who you were, Daisy. I want to find you.
She doesn’t know what to say, so she just doesn’t. When they next talk, they pretend the conversation never happened.
When she’s twenty-three their conversations are in full-swing, the last two years just enough time to kick any remaining dregs of animosity under the rug. She discovers that he’s graduating from Oxford and coming back to America in a couple of months to train at the FBI Academy. It’s his dream, it’s his passion, it’s his life and soul, judging by the erratic, excited nature he jots down his messages. He wants to help catch killers, he says, and she’s so proud of this man that a bubble of pride swells in her chest. They discuss her senior thesis until the sun comes up, and when she graduates she has to wear long sleeves because words of encouragement like ‘We knew you could do it!’ and ‘Good luck at med-school!’ have been written down deliberately to try and embarrass her. She has to admit, it works.
Similarly, when he graduates from Oxford she writes the same sort of encouragement. She wonders if he has the courage to keep his sleeves rolled down for the entire procedure.
Sometimes, after a couple of drinks, she presumes, he talks about his sister. They’re the sort of conversations that leave her heart in splinters and have her questioning if it’s possible to fall in love with somebody she’s never even met. One Christmas they both get tipsy at their family homes (he’s at his mother’s – he visits his father on Boxing Day) and Samantha comes up again.
It should have been me.
Don’t say things like that, she writes sloppily, finishing off the wine she carried to her old childhood bedroom. It shouldn’t have been either of you. The world is a fucking disaster and nothing good happens, but you can’t blame yourself for that. Aliens or no, there is always a chance you can find her, or at least discover what happened. Bear, you’re one of the most driven people I know. If anyone can do it, it’s you.
I don’t know where I would be without you, he writes back. Her face flushes wine red and she smiles. The words continue to flow from the crook of her elbow to the palm of her hand. I’ve been a shitty soulmate, and I wasn’t there enough for you and I’m sorry. I should have been. But no matter what happened, you always tried. You always spoke to me when I needed help, when you could have just ignored me or told me to go away. Through the turbulent wreck that is my life, you were the only constant. I’m so sorry if I hurt you or made you feel inadequate.
You don’t need to apologize at all. She doesn’t know why she’s crying because she doesn’t feel sad, but there are tears on her pillow and she’s biting her lips to stop herself from making noise. No matter what happens, we have each other. And I don’t think that’s such a bad set-up. Do you?
Of course not.
When she wakes up she notices another terrible doodle. It takes her several minutes for her to decipher it, but when she does it keeps her smiling for the rest of the day.
On her wrist is a wobbly picture of a bear holding a flower. A daisy, to be exact.
Dana’s twenty-six and she’s having the hugest crisis of her life.
Her parents want one thing, her brain and her heart want another. She asks Bear for help in a quickly scribbled marker-pen note because he’s the only person she trusts to influence her decision.
I don’t think I want to be a doctor anymore, Bear. I think I want to join the FBI.
His response is instant.
Don’t let me influence your choices, Daisy. This is your life and I don’t want to make you feel like I’m forcing you into a choice that you might regret. Her heart sinks and she thinks she might cry until she sees the pen move across her skin again. That being said… It would be amazing if we finally met because of this. I’m being crazy and selfish, but I want to see you. I miss you, I want you. But the most important thing is your happiness. Forget what your parents want, if you don’t think that it’s the right thing for you to do then don’t do it.
She wanted to see him too, but there was more to it than that. This was her life, this was her career. What did she want? What did she really want?
She joins the Academy several months later, and both she and Bear are over the moon. One step closer to meeting each other! He writes, and her chest feels so full that it physically aches.
Can’t wait, she replies, grinning to herself.
It’s 1992 and Dana Scully is out of the academy after staying on as an instructor. The work was demanding but fun, and she’s almost sad to leave. Yet when she’s picked up by Blevins there’s excitement crackling away in her stomach and she’s ready to move on. Finally, she’s going to be assigned to something a little more adventurous, more meaningful. Or so she hopes.
She still hasn’t seen Bear, which is partly due to her work at the academy and his work as an agent. It’s also partly because they decided to date other people, so they were a little pre-occupied. Jack Willis is nice but slightly boring, and he doesn’t make her heart skip the way Bear does when he tells her about his antics at work. She hears that he’s dating a girl called Diana, who he works with. He doesn’t talk much about her until both she and Willis are gone and they’re sharing a glass of wine in isolation again.
I didn’t love her. I couldn’t, and I knew that.
How did you know?
She pretends she doesn’t notice him write Because I have you before he hastily cleans it off. Her heart is racing, and her mouth is dry, so she finishes off her drink while she waits for him to think of another response. I just did is ultimately unsatisfying, and she isn’t sure if she’s relieved or not.
When Blevins fills her in on the X-files, he asks her what she knows about Fox Mulder. An easy smile reaches her face as she remembers the nickname everyone had for him at the academy. He’s “spooky”, he’s strange, he’s obsessed with ridiculous, outlandish claims and conspiracies. (He’s also rather handsome, but Dana tries her best to ignore that). She’s so eager to start her assignment that she doesn’t recall the initials ‘FM’ written in sparkly pink gel-pen all those years ago, or that Bear’s real name is still that of an animal.
Blevins asks her to debunk his work in a way that makes her believe she’s doing the right thing. He’s a promising agent, and a waste of potential if he spends his work hours crumbling away in the basement. Before she knows it the conversation is over and she’s heading down to the basement. She quickly heads to the bathroom and scribbles a quick note on her arm.
I’m about to meet my new partner. God, I’m nervous. Wish me luck.
You’ll knock them dead, he writes back. They won’t even know what hit them. I’ve been assigned a new partner too, since Diana left, so I guess you better wish me luck too!
She does, and in her efforts to unfurl the pit of wriggling nerves in her stomach she fails to make the connection. Before she leaves she draws a tiny daisy on her wrist and smiles.
Her knuckles rap against the door smartly and there is a moment of silence before a dry, monotone voice responds from inside the room.
“Sorry, nobody down here but the FBI’s most unwanted.”
There’s a laugh stuck in her throat as she opens the door and enters the room, but she keeps a straight face. It’s harder to do that when she looks around the room, which is incredibly cluttered, and notices the posters and photos plastering his walls. The most notable is a poster of a UFO tacked up with the words ‘I WANT TO BELIEVE’ hovering underneath. He really is Spooky.
But he’s also very attractive, and when he turns his chair to face her and smiles something warm blossoms in her chest.
“Agent Mulder.” She extends her arm and he shakes her hand. His grip is firm and strong, and he doesn’t tear his eyes away from her face. He’s analyzing her, she realizes, and she’s not entirely sure how that makes her feel. “I’m Dana Scully. I’ve been assigned to work with you.”
“Isn’t it nice to be so highly regarded?” His voice is thick with sarcasm. It’s more self-deprecating than anything. Their hands drop to their sides again, but he doesn’t look. “So, who’d you tick off to get stuck with this detail, Scully?”
She smiles faintly, and her eyebrows quirk upward just the slightest. “Actually, I’m looking forward to working with you. I’ve heard a lot about you.”
“Oh, really?” More sarcasm, more dry wit. It’s refreshing – his skepticism of her is almost entertaining, she thinks, especially in comparison to her previous colleagues who bored her half to death. “I was under the impression that you were sent to spy on me.” He turns away from her and rolls his shirtsleeves up.
That’s when she sees it. The small flower doodled on the inside of his wrist. The faint, smudged conversation on his arm.
The ability to breathe is gone and her lungs are burning with words unspoken.
“Is there something the matter, Agent Scully?
She doesn’t say anything. She simply pushes her sleeve up so that he can see it, too.
It takes him a moment. He looks, blankly, for a couple of seconds that seem to stretch on forever. But she can see the recognition spark in his eyes as he catches on, and when he looks back at her face his mouth is hanging open. Dana watches him stand up slowly, almost in awe, until he’s right in front of her. He positively towers over her, and she needs to tilt her head to meet his gaze.
“It’s you?” he whispers. His voice is hoarse and slightly breathy, and his breath brushes her skin. “You’re Daisy?”
She nods because she doesn’t even trust herself to speak. There’s a small, almost shy smile on her face because she can’t believe her luck. She doesn’t know if it’s a blessing or a curse, because he’s there, and they’re together, and holy shit he’s more attractive than she’d ever imagined he would be, but she’s only in this dingy basement with him because she’s been asked to overturn his life’s work. It’s serious shit, and he knows it as much as her because, for a long, long moment, they both stand and size each other up, wondering if the universe really got it right.
“Hey, I was right,” he murmurs eventually. There’s a smile playing at his lips; it’s light and mischievous. She shoots him a questioning glance. “I mean, your new partner definitely wasn’t prepared for this. You knocked him dead, just like I said you would.” She laughs and shakes her head, but she still feels like she’s carrying half the weight of the world on her shoulders.
“What happens now?” she asks. She kind of hates herself for asking, but she’s waited long enough. Some people meet their soulmates when they’re five, or ten, or eighteen, or maybe even in their early twenties. Dana has been waiting for almost thirty years, and now he’s there, standing a whole foot taller than her with a goofy smile and fluffy hair, the intoxicating scent of his cologne very much present and almost unbearable.
“Well, I’ve got a pretty juicy case in Oregon that I figured would make a great first case,” he smiles. “After that, who knows? Maybe we could grab dinner somewhere. Y’know, if you want to do that. I wouldn’t-“
“I’d like that,” she says, and it takes a lot of willpower to stop her grin from spreading across her entire face. “Sounds pretty good.” As she looks up at him and he gazes down at her, she resists the urge to reach out and touch him. It feels just as crazy as Maggie once described to her years ago; the heady, dizzying feeling of meeting the person your soul is aligned with. She used to think it was exaggerated, that nobody could possibly make you feel that good. But she decides that she was wrong when she watches her new partner drag his teeth along his bottom lip and run a hand through his hair because boy is she in trouble. She clears her throat and meets his stare, her eyebrows darting upward. “So. Tell me about this case.”
He walks over to the projector as though nothing had happened and smiles. “I plan to,” he says. “But first, answer me this: do you believe in the existence of extraterrestrials?”