As a temporary place holder for the longer, better comment I eventually want to make, I've been thinking over the last couple of days, how interesting it is that both this and Heaven were posted within a month of each other, and that both were posted before the start of S8. It changes them in my mind, to think that they were speculation on how things really were, and not simply little ficlets designed to creep out the readers with unfulfilled 'what-ifs' for five minutes, or an afternoon. And I like that the two fics are quite different, yet they share such similarities because they focus so closely on Scully's emotional and psychological state, and they both return to the "bigger picture" of the mytharc in order to make us feels Scully's anguish.