Find The Future - Chapter 7
William closed his eyes and listened. The sound was like thousands of voices whispering all at once, and it got louder the more he concentrated on it. The endless babble started to make his head hurt after a while, and so he put the TV on to drown it out. The channel selection was restricted, but he found one showing old movies and The Wizard of Oz was on. He was content to sit and watch it. The Kansas scenes reminded him of the place he had spent most of his life; his adopted parent's farm in Wyoming.
They had moved to Illinois when he was nine, after his father had suffered serious leg and back injuries in a farming accident. The Van De Kamps were unable to hold on to their livelihood, and had been forced to sell up and look for alternative means of support. They ended up moving to Illinois after an old school friend of Mrs Van De Kamp offered her a job there. William missed the farm, and the peace and quiet of country life, but he had enjoyed discovering what the city had to offer. His adopted parents weren't quite so adaptable, and they had both found the transition from green fields to the concrete jungle extremely difficult.
He found his sadness at losing them was unequal to his joy at being reunited with his birth parents, and he felt bad about that. The Van De Kamps had provided for him for eleven years, and for that he was grateful. He knew his adopted mother had lingering fears that all was not right with him. He heard her thoughts, which were mostly about how she worried that he would inherit the sins of his birth parents, whom she assumed to be delinquents. William was amused by her fears, especially as he knew that the truth would have blown her mind. He had dreamt about Mulder and Scully for as long as he could remember, and to finally have them close at hand really was a wish come true for him. He decided that he wouldn't dwell on the past and what had been lost. He would concentrate on the future instead and what lie ahead. Jeremiah Smith had asked for his help, and for the sake of all of their futures, he knew he had no choice but to accept his request.
"Do you think they'll let us leave?" Scully whispered her question in Mulder's ear, as they waited for William to join them.
"I'm not so sure we should, I mean, we're probably safer here," he argued in a low voice.
"But we can't trust them," she countered.
"Besides, we'll all go stir crazy if we stay locked down in here," she couldn't imagine living in an underground bunker indefinitely.
Mulder was about to respond, but Jeremiah Smith entered the room, and so their tête-à-tête was cut short.
"I've asked William to give us a few minutes to talk, and then you can go directly to him when we're done. I need to make sure that you understand why we cannot let you leave. I know you were wondering about that. But your lives are in great danger, and we won't let you take the risk. The prophecy still has many followers, and we have less than nine months left before the planned invasion date," he explained.
"The prophecy? For God sake, not all of that crap again. William is not the messiah," Scully raged.
"He's not the messiah; he's a very naughty boy," Mulder deadpanned, unable to resist quoting Monty Python.
Smith and Scully gave him a look of disapproval before continuing.
"All I know is there was some crazy guy, who wanted me to bring him your head by the way," she said pointedly to Mulder.
"This guy kidnaps my son, then tells me William is the miracle child who will lead the alien invasion, but only if his father is dead. Where did this prophecy come from anyway? Not from God, that much I do know," she questioned.
"Doctor Scully, you know as well as I do that sometimes it doesn't matter where something comes from, as long as enough people believe it. There is a theory that this particular prophecy originated with a man who fancied himself as a kind of God, but he was probably about as far removed from a higher being as it is possible to get," Smith gave them both a knowing look.
"I guess he wanted to keep his legacy alive, in more ways than one," Mulder said bitterly as he thought of the man with whom he'd shared biology, but nothing else.
Scully reached for her husband's hand, and she gently squeezed it in a comforting gesture.
She was still sceptical about the prophecy, and its origins, but she couldn't dispute that their lives were in danger.
"We can't stay here forever, what about when the aliens invade? Didn't you say you had a plan to stop it happening?" Mulder questioned.
"We do, but it's not going to be easy, and we will need to be prepared for the fight of our lives," Smith cautioned.
"What about the vaccine?" Scully asked, as medicine was almost always something she could put her faith in.
"We will have reached ninety five per cent of the population by the middle of the year. But that will only stop human infection, it won't save the planet from invasion. Once the aliens realise they can't use the Earth's population to birth more of their kind, they will want to destroy you all. We do have a secret weapon, but I can't tell you anything more about that at this time, I just want you to know that all is not lost, not by a long way," he sought to offer them hope.
"This facility wasn't exactly built with your particular circumstances in mind, but we'll do all we can to make you and your son comfortable. We will move you to adjoining rooms, where you'll be able to spend some quality family time together. I know William is looking forward to that. I've contacted Walter Skinner, and he will take care of matters with regards to your respective workplaces, and the Scully family," he assured them.
"Oh my God, mom, Bill and Charlie. What will Skinner tell them?" Dana asked.
"Only that you've both gone missing, we cannot risk anything more specific," Smith replied.
She sighed as she thought about all the pain her family had suffered because of her, and now they would have to endure this.
"What about William? The Van De Kamps were his legal guardians, and I gave up all rights to my son when I gave him up for adoption," she asked.
Scully already knew she would not give him up for a second time, no matter what.
"Don't worry about all that now, it isn't important. The authorities consider him to be missing, and most likely dead. Anyway, they might soon have much bigger things to concern themselves with," Smith got up to leave.
"These new rooms you have for us, will they be surveillance free? I mean, if I want to show my wife how much she means to me, do we have to worry about prying eyes?" Mulder asked pointedly.
"You can be assured that your privacy will be respected."
Neither Mulder, nor his wife, were convinced.
William turned the volume down on the TV for a second, to check if the whispering voices were still there. They were. He focused on the melee of jumbled words and was able to pick out one distinct voice. It called out to him.
Come to us.
It appealed to him over and over. William ignored it, and instead he turned the volume on the TV back up.
There was a knock on the door and he jumped for a second, in fear that the owner of the commanding voice had come to seek him out. But as the door slowly opened, he saw only the concerned faces of his parents.
"Is everything o.k?" His mother inquired.
"Yeah, mom, I was just watching an old movie," he pointed to the tv screen.
They turned their heads to look, in time to see Toto reveal the real Wizard of Oz behind the curtain.
"I must've seen this movie a hundred times," Mulder said with a smile.
"I remember telling you once, to close your eyes and say; there's no place like home."
Scully recalled their conversation from long ago, after he'd gone looking for the ghost ship 'The Queen Anne', and had almost drowned.
"That was the first time I told you that I loved you," Mulder said with a smile as he recalled the same event.
"That doesn't count. You were as high as a kite!" Scully was incredulous.
"I knew what I was saying," he insisted.
William laughed at his parents' fond bickering. They both began to blush as they'd quite forgotten he was there for a second. He wanted to hear more of their stories, because although he'd seen glimpses in his dreams, it was different now that they were actually there.
"You worked together at the FBI for a long time, right?" He asked, and they nodded their reply.
"When did you fall in love?"
He was very direct, and for a moment neither Mulder or Scully knew how to respond. They exchanged awkward glances, as they tried to pinpoint something which had gone without declaration or definition for so long. Neither of them had ever committed to a specific time or place. They'd always just accepted the fact they had both developed long held and deep feelings for one another over their years on the X Files. Both of them quite forgot about their son's ability to read minds in that moment, and while they took their time responding, he was busy listening. Finally Scully thought of a response she hoped would satisfy them both.
"I guess I was a little like Dorothy," she nodded at the TV screen as the final scene of The Wizard of Oz unfolded.
"I didn't realise, for many years, that my heart's desire was right under my nose the whole time," she smiled at Mulder, and he returned the gesture with an appreciation for her words.
"Of course, if I'd been literally under your nose, I'd be a Munchkin," he couldn't resist a playful jibe about her small stature.
She gave him a mock stern look, and then burst out laughing, as her husband and son joined in.
"What about you, dad? And when did you ask mom to marry you?" William asked after they had settled down.
It was Mulder's turn to try and put their love story into words for his son.
"Well, a long time ago, your mom was very sick. When I thought I might lose her, that's when I knew I couldn't live without her," he sighed as the painful memories resurfaced.
"My marriage proposal, such as it was, is actually quite a funny story," he laughed nervously.
"Yeah, we can laugh about it now," Scully said with a roll of her eyes, which she swiftly followed with a genuine smile to let him know she was only teasing.
"Anyway, I was sorting through some old boxes of stuff that I had stored, when I found my mother's engagement ring. I put the ring in my pocket, so I could put it some place safe when I was done, but I forgot all about it. Later that day, when your mother came home from work. She asked me to pour her a glass of wine, and I spilt some on the counter. Here comes the funny part, so I pulled a paper handkerchief from my pocket to mop up the wine and the engagement ring went flying out onto the floor. I was on my knees looking for it, when your mother came into the room. So there I was, literally on bended knee, and holding up the ring which I'd just found," he paused for effect.
"So you didn't really mean to propose?" William sounded disappointed.
"Well, when your mother went into shock, I realised what it must have looked like to her. But I felt I was frozen to the spot in that moment. I found I couldn't move or say anything. Then it suddenly hit me that the whole thing was fate, and I couldn't think of one good reason not to ask your mom to marry me," he gave Scully a look that made her melt inside.
"Anyway, after some persuasion, she finally said yes, and we had a small ceremony a month later."
"You don't know how much we wished you were there with us on that day," Scully expressed her lingering regret to William.
He got up and went to hug her.
"Don't be sad mom, I'm here now," he said.
The room went quiet as they all held onto each other for comfort. William was the only one who could hear, the now screaming voices that filled the air around them.
We command you, come to us. Come to us, now.
I just wanted to thank everyone who is still reading this fic, I really appreciate you all taking the time, and if you have a moment to comment, that would be great.
Feedback will help me to improve my writing, and I welcome it, good or bad, as long as it's constructive criticism. I also wanted to add, that although I have been a fan of The X Files since day one, I have never been actively involved in the fandom. I do know, and respect, there were many different interpretations of the Mulder/Scully relationship, and I'm only offering my take on it. I hope I have presented their special connection in a believable way, and that having them be married at this point can be seen as a natural progression from where they were in IWTB. I fully respect those who see things differently, but I can only write it as I see it.
Thanks again. - Mrs P.
