Cunegund's Restoration

Fanfiction
Title:	Cunegund's Restoration
Author(s):	Livia Balaban
Date(s):	39,000+
Length:
Genre:
Fandom:	The X-Files
External Links:	online here
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Cunegund's Restoration is an X-Files story by Livia Balaban. It has the subtitle: "or, The Best of All Possible Worlds, Really."

Reactions and Reviews

Unknown Date

Your mission, Livia, should you choose to accept it, is to give all the characters the happiest of all possible endings in the best of all possible worlds. A funny, smart-mouthed romp, worth reading for the end-of-story summary alone.

2007

The alternate title for this fic is "The Best of All Possible Worlds, Really", which it is. It takes place post-Requiem, it's the ultimate in feel-good fic, and I figured I might as well end my month here with a fic full of happy endings for almost everyone. However many times I read this fic, it never fails to make me grin. It was written before the utterly depressing ninth season, but Livia acknowledged up front that, given The Powers That Be's propensity for torturing Mulder and Scully, there was no way that the show was gonna end like this. But this story was about trying to make everything turn out the best way possible, and it succeeded admirably, but still without going overboard. Everything isn't sweetness and light, and it's as realistic as it could be, given that there was pretty much no way Chris Carter and 1013 was going to let Mulder vindicate himself before the entire world by taking over and publicly landing the spaceship he was abducted in. Which is really too bad, because Livia proves that that scenario, along with many other good things, can make the characters happy while still being in the spirit of the show.

2017

Imagine for a moment that you had watched Requiem as it aired the first time. The shock, the horror, the tearful sweet/sad/happy feeling you’d have felt when Scully tells Skinner that she’s miraculously pregnant, but you literally just watched Mulder willingly walk into the light and get abducted.

Then imagine not knowing for certain if your beloved show, if your favorite characters, would ever be returning to TV. Or, if they did, that Mulder might not be a part of the show in the same capacity. So much uncertainy.

(Sidenote: We find ourselves, as a fandom, in much the same position as we did 15 years ago. An uncertain future, a Mulder in peril, and a child that looms unseen but still very much emotionally present throughout the revival. The more things change, the more they stay the same…)

How much fix-it fic would you have needed as a fan back then? Well, today’s fic writer made a list of everything she’d want fixed to her satisfaction after watching Requiem, and today’s rec is the result. It’s wildly AU now, but wasn’t when she wrote it. It also features one of our favorite recurring characters, Morris Fletcher, who she writes supremely well. And while it verges on vaguely cracky (which she acknowledges in her notes), and indeed we felt that some of the plot elements stretched the limits of credulity, the characters and the dialogue were pretty damn spot on.