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"Scully, it's me. If we were trapped in a time loop, how would we know?"
Amid the faint rustling of sheets, he heard his partner emit a weary sigh. "I suppose you expect me to be awake for this conversation, don't you?"
"I'm serious. What if déjà vu is more than just déjà vu? What if it's the accumulated weight of the same stretch of time repeating over and over again, until it's happened so many times even the limited perceptive capability of the ordinary human brain can't help but become aware of it?"
"Mulder, déjà vu is nothing more than a series of misfiring neurons affecting one's perception of memory. It's hardly evidence that time is capable of looping back on itself."
"Yeah, but Einstein himself said that time is relative. And we know that time travel is possible, or might have been."
"I still don't think that case had anything to do with time travel, Mulder. And I definitely don't think every single instance of déjà vu means the person experiencing it was in a time loop."
There was a brief pause before Scully continued, in a softer tone: "Mulder… is this about the woman who died in the attempted bank robbery last week?"
"Scully… do you have any memory— any memory at all— of watching me bleed out in your arms on the floor of that bank, right before the bomb went off?"
"How the fuck—" He heard her take several deep breaths before she regained her composure. "It was just a nightmare, Mulder. And given what we both experienced, it makes sense that we'd have similar nightmares, as your subconscious and mine had the same material to work with—"
"Scully."
"What?"
"I'm glad you didn't die in that bank."
"I'm glad you didn't die either, Mulder."