Unintended Consequences

Fanfiction
Title:	Unintended Consequences
Author(s):	Sarah Segretti
Date(s):	March 2000
Length:
Genre:
Fandom:	The X-Files
External Links:	online here
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Unintended Consequences is an X-Files story by Sarah Segretti.

Reactions and Reviews

2000

Sarah Segretti is quickly becoming a "must read" author. Every time she has something out it just winds up being wonderful. Terrific characterizations, great exchanges between the two leads. Loved this story.

2013

"Unintended Consequences" is a realistic and insightful post-ep for the seventh season episode "Orison." It's almost a guest rec since I rediscovered it looking for a fanfic writer's no longer extant recs page. It's a story I liked even better the second time around.

This is almost a guest recommendation since I rediscovered the story while I was hunting down an old recs page. "Unintended Consequences" is a realistic and insightful post-ep for the seventh season episode "Orison." It's a story I liked even better the second time around.

This was very good. Excellent characterization, great dialogue. This aftermath made a whole lot of sense. I like how messy their emotional landscape is, and how neither of them can quite pinpoint at first why they're experiencing the emotions they are, the impatience, the anger, the frustration over petty things.

I liked how everything is a source of annoyance for Scully, from the position of the bed to the thickness of the blanket, this shows really well how everything is off kilter for her, how everything is a source of anxiety. I liked how the same is true with Mulder, Scully didn't only shoot Pfaster that night, she shot the knowedge Mulder had of his partner and he doesn't know how to deal with it. That night Scully became a killer - it doesn't matter that Pfaster deserved it a hundred times over. She shot an unarmed man. Mulder is a profiler, he understands people for a living - the Scully he knew would never have done such a thing - but she did and this puts into question everything he knows about her and maybe even his burgeoning love for her. I don't think there's anything worse for a man with so many trust issues as Mulder has.

I could go on and on about how working on the X-Files has changed Scully on a deeper emotional level. I think Pfaster was the blow that broke the camel's back - that night she decided she would never be a victim again, no matter the cost. That she would be capable of going to such extremes must have unsettled Mulder deeply and this story does a good job of showing this.

I liked it a lot. I also re-read the Maria Nicole one (Sedimentation), which is also good, but depicts a very different possible reaction to Orison and has a more... relaxed, maybe, tone. Unintended Consequences was a very tense read (for me) until the very end. The tone felt like when you've done something terrible and wish you could escape your own skin. Which maybe is how they both feel.

I haven't watched the episode in a while, but this fic suggests that Scully didn't see Mulder / know he was there when she shot Pfaster.

"I could have killed him, she realized with alarm. I had no idea he was there. I can't believe I'm upset about broken furniture, when I could have killed him..."

It's an interesting interpretation of events. I like it better than the idea that Scully knew Mulder had arrived and still shot Pfaster.

Well, I think everyone here is absolutely correct. Must I say more? Okay. This is such a horrible moment in a possibly romantic relationship for one member to shoot someone to death in a way that goes against her training and moral structure. What should we do with Scully now? Send her home to Mommy? Make her remain in her wrecked apartment curled like a fetus? Of course she has to go home with Mulder, who would have loved to love her except now she's amazingly a killer who is stealing his razorblades. I think the variations of self-contempt are very impressively displayed. And the pain. And I loved the final conversation. They always should have talked more--they would have had sex sooner--but that would have ruined some good, clouded, complicated fics. Of which this is one.

2015

After rereading them all, this is still my favorite episode-tag, because of its realistic, yet sensitive depiction of the trauma’s impact on both characters. Segretti addresses the expectations raised by their New Year’s kiss (in “Millennium,”) but she does it in a way that doesn’t feel forced.