TITLE: Something Worthwhile Out of This Chase AUTHOR: Maidenjedi FANDOM: The X-Files RATING: R CATEGORY: MSR, post-film SPOILERS: IWTB, general series spoilers DISCLAIMER: Not my characters, my concept, or my show. Damn it. ARCHIVE: Anywhere, just keep my name on it. SUMMARY: In the aftermath, and beyond. NOTE: Title from "Displaced" by Azure Ray. Also, this story takes place as though the post-credits bit doesn't happen. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Father Joseph Crissman is buried quietly, and there is no formal funeral for him. A notice in the paper is two lines long and lists no next of kin. Mulder cuts it out and pastes it on his wall, in between a clipping about the two-headed dog carcass discovered buried in the snow and one about experimental stem-cell therapy that mentions Christian Fearon. Like a scrapbook without the frills, Mulder thinks. These three pieces represent the first in over six years that deal directly with something Mulder had been involved in. That Scully had been involved in. As though their lives had been put on pause and someone just now pushed the play button. Scully disagrees with this sentiment, though she is through arguing the point. -- The snow doesn't last much longer. Soon the sun is shining for longer periods of time and spring begins to brave the cold. Scully stops wearing long-sleeved t-shirts under her scrubs and Mulder sits outside reading in the afternoons. They begin to talk about the future, tentatively. Skinner comes to see them, telling Mulder the heat really is gone, that their lives are their own again. Mulder doesn't regrow the beard. But it's all off somehow, like the wolf was let in the door and even though it's gone, its scent lingers. Scully gets a call one day from the Bureau about strange autopsy results in two domestic violence cases, and then Mulder is asked to contribute to a journal article on recidivist offenders, and suddenly they aren't having dinner at home more than once or twice a week because they're always in Arlington, or Georgetown, or the District itself. -- "What do you think about moving, Scully?" Startled, she puts down her book and takes off her reading glasses. "What do you mean? You want to leave this place?" "We could move closer in, so we aren't driving as much." "Reduce our carbon footprint or something like that?" Her mouth is pursed slightly as she surpresses a giggle. "Something like that." Mulder is more serious. Scully sighs a little, because she had expected this since the night Mulder shaved off his beard. Their cocoon is breaking apart, and they are to emerge in the world transformed. -- They don't move, but Mulder begins going for runs again at odd hours as well as the morning, his adrenaline pumping as though he is a rookie at the Bureau all over again. Scully resists the urge to cut her hair for another six months, finally going with a bob that makes it easier to survive the District's humidity. They aren't working for the FBI, though they are called in for a case or two when Drummy senses he is out of his league. They are working on their own, making contacts and coming back from the dead. Mulder is surprised how many of the old crowd are gone, and Scully is not at all surprised to find they've all been replaced by younger, fresher versions that are painful to behold. Monica Reyes calls them from Louisiana. The Baton Rouge police are handling a murder case that requires Mulder's specific expertise. Can they come? Scully hedges and Reyes laughs. "Come on, Dana, I can show you the town and we can catch up. This is just as much about that as it is ghosties and ghoulies." They go to Baton Rouge. -- Ghosties and ghoulies it isn't, though Mulder suspects a vampire clan has been residing in some 18th century dwellings and catching unsuspecting teenagers. Three have been killed so far, but Mulder's efforts shut down the district and the clan apparently leaves town. "They probably came up from New Orleans to escape the hurricane a few years ago. There's no record of vampire activity in Baton Rouge after the War of 1812, so they must be nomadic." He's thinking of Texas and the trailer park variety they ran across there, and Scully has to resist the urge to laugh thinking about the same thing. No one believes him, of course, and the lead detective looks at Scully quite disbelieving that someone like her would end up with a nut like Mulder. She just smiles and takes Mulder's hand as they leave the scene, making a point of demonstrating her allegiance. To say it was like old times was a stretch, but the steps and cadence were familiar. Reyes meets them and takes them to a Cajun seafood place that looks a tad shady, but turns out to have a great beer selection and the best crawfish in town (says the waitress). Scully was never one for Cajun but has to agree, this is excellent. They ask about Doggett, and Reyes' voice gets somewhat high and fake-sounding as she says that he is in New York and has been for two years. Mulder wants to ask more questions and Scully gives him a look, and they talk about other things. Mulder is in the restroom when Reyes asks Scully very quietly about William. "We can't. Not yet. Maybe not ever." Mulder pretends not to notice the pall that has fallen over the women and resumes a conversation with Reyes about a New Orleans werewolf cult. -- They have a routine, and the darkness doesn't quite reach them. Though Scully is watchful. The wolf's scent is never far from her thoughts. Mulder is unaware, or perhaps acutely aware, that she holds him closer at night, that in some ways it's like they are on the run for real all over again. Mulder is giving a lecture at American one day when Scully gets a strange phone call while treating a patient at Our Lady of Sorrows. "Can you come to South Dakota?" says a woman's voice without preamble. "Who is this?" "I think you know." -- Scully is in the car almost before Mulder consents to her scheme. "What else did she say, Scully?" "She wasn't willing to say much. She said he needs us, that it's time." "How did she know who you are? How did she know to find you?" This stops her, like pushing pause. She shakes and Mulder takes her in his arms clumsily. "I don't know, Mulder. But how can we just sit here and pretend anymore? I can't do it. I can't keep this up." Mulder wipes her tears and tells her to switch seats with him. He's driving. "'Cause your feet just don't reach the pedals, Scully." She laughs, a manic note, and slugs his arm. -- Prairie winds blow her hair from her face with vicious force, and Scully is glad to have cut it. They make contact with a woman named Judith Van de Kamp at a small restaurant outside Sturgis. She says she is William's mother. "Adoptive mother," she corrects, seeing Scully's eyes red from unshed tears. She hasn't brought William with her, and she keeps calling him Justin, because that was the name she had picked out when she adopted him all those years ago. "How is he?" Scully asks. Mulder interrupts. "More to the point, Mrs. Van de Kamp, why have you contacted us now?" Her shaking hands push an envelope across the table. Inside is a typed letter, threatening exposure of Justin's "special skills" if the Van de Kamps don't give the writer an obscene amount of money. I know about the boy's origins, says the letter. Scully's eyes finally overflow and Mulder is left to ask the questions alone. "But how did you know to contact us? How did you know who we are?" Judith sips from a glass of water. "I contacted a man named Skinner about three years ago. He came to us about a year after we adopted Justin and told us that our boy was special. He told us that if anything odd or suspicious ever happened, to contact him immediately. He told me how to contact you, just a few weeks ago." She shakes her head. "He's always been able to do things a bit...faster than the other kids. He walked early, talked early, learned to read early. We homeschool because he's just too much for the teachers here." She sighs and looks out the window. "My husband is with him right now. You understand, this isn't what we wanted to do. We want to keep him. But this letter is not the first, and strange men have been following us for years. Recently there are more of them. We have moved four times in the last two years, but they show up." "Strange men?" asks Mulder. "Men in black suits, driving dark cars and looking like something out of a horror movie. They don't approach us or Justin, but they're creepy. Every time we report it to the authorities, we get laughed at. No one has ever caught them." She says all of this in a rush, very softly, as though they won't believe her and it'll be just like all the other times she's dared to speak these things aloud. Scully takes her hand and Judith looks up. "You're doing the right thing. I'm not saying that because he's my son. His life...he's always been in danger. I prayed it wouldn't follow you." They stay in South Dakota for a month, getting to know William (he answers to his birth name as readily as the other) and reassuring the Van de Kamps. Scully makes a tentative friend in Judith Van de Kamp, and they hold each other close the last day. "Take care of him, Dana. Keep him safe." Scully doesn't answer, but clutches her friend a little tighter. -- They are an odd family only if you look very close and see that Mulder and Scully speak to their son as though he is a kid (since he is) and he answers them as an adult might. This would be precocious in any other child, and in William it is natural. He learns to react more like a child might as time goes on, though it always has a practiced air to the studious ear. William adjusts to his new surroundings with relative ease, and Scully makes the decision to go into private practice to spend more time with him. His abilities don't go further than a highly developed intellect, though Mulder quietly suspects that William shares Gibson Praise's psychic ability. He doesn't bring it up with Scully, who is still in awe of her son and her finally complete family. The men in black make their first appearance after three months. Mulder is more worried than he lets on. He spends more time in the District, meeting with Skinner or with some of the Gunmen's old contacts (those still willing to be seen in public). He wants to know who they are, these stalking hulks who don't come too close but who are constantly there. It is Jeffrey Spender who arrives one day with news. His nephew sits at his feet, playing with trucks like a disinterested child might, but with an ear cocked toward the conversation. Jeffrey smiles, a slightly gruesome vision to Scully. He's never been able to look exactly the same again. "They are aliens, members of the original race that wished to conquer our world." "Wished?" Mulder is alert to the past tense. "Other races have been competing for decades over the idea. This race, the ones who crashed at Roswell and conducting the first experiments, gave up the idea long ago. They were the ones responsible for those deaths at Skyland Mountain, when my mother was abducted. Human collateral - they were really after the shapeshifters. Without getting into interstellar politics, it boils down to this, as far as we know; they are watching William because they are afraid of him." William stops playing and his attention is fully on his uncle. Scully hasn't slept much recently, but she is also alert and riveted by this statement. "Afraid?" "They don't understand him. They assumed another race would destroy him. What we did with the magnetite seemed to avert that, and these aliens don't understand why. They are afraid, but they also seem to think he's got the key to stopping colonization in the future." Just like that, the wolf is back through the door. Mulder's voice, cracking slightly, cuts through the silence. "What about those letters the Van de Kamps received?" Jeffrey shrugged. "We never knew. Probably cranks, or locals who just didn't like the family very much." Not very reassuring, but they let it go. There are suddenly heavier worries than there have been in a long, long time. -- But they are a family, and they continue. Mulder and Scully sleep with their bedroom door open, and sometimes William comes in and sleeps between them, if there's a thunderstorm or if he thinks there is a monster in his closet. Scully is no housewife, nor is she particularly skilled in domestic arts, so she relies on her mother to provide cookies and brownies. She does learn to make Rice Krispie treats, which William loves to help with. Mulder brings up the idea of getting married, one day when William is playing with a puppy Skinner has brought for him. Scully takes Mulder's hand and says she has no desire to have their relationship consummated and recognized by the government, and kisses him. Mulder is content with that answer. -- 2012. Skinner sits in his office and thinks, not for the first time, that it might have been helpful if the Consortium were still around, so that there would be an enemy to fight. Something to do, while that date lingers in all their minds. But he has a meeting with the Director at two, and there is paperwork to push, and the president has requested his presence at a domestic terrorism briefing. He never misses the smell of Morleys. ---- END. Feedback and concrit is always welcome at maidenjedi@gmail.com I don't remember the last time I stayed up so late writing like this.