Title: Remember When?: Memories without a date

Author: Jen Zoromski

All other information is in the first chapter.

Author's Note: Thank-you everyone for the feedback. You guys are a great inspiration to keep the chapters coming. Thanks! Glad everyone is enjoying it!

Here's more!

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Bethesda Nursing Home

June 9, 2052

Looking around the room it seems very empty. Nothing stirs and for a brief moment a curious onlooker walking by the door wouldn't notice the old woman huddled up in her rocking chair next to the window holding onto her crucifix. A crucifix that has been with her since her teenage years.

A piece of jewelry that has seen sixty odd years of history and has stood for everything that this woman once dispelled and then believed.

Catherine is nowhere to be seen and the older version of Dana Scully watches out the window as the rain trickles down the window. She is not asleep, merely mesmerized by the rain. In the same state that many become when looking into a fire.

Her thoughts wonder to the earlier days. Even though she can rarely remember her life she remembers those years with him. She remembers the day when she realized that she had a problem with this disease. It was raining out.

Rain always brings back the only memories that she has of the later years. She had just celebrated her seventy-fifth birthday and he had asked her where she put the mail.

"I remember getting it, Mulder. I just don't remember where I put it."

"Are you sure, Scully? If anyone should be losing it, it should be me."

An hour later he found the mail in the freezer.

Episodes like that went on for nearly two years before she finally willed herself to go to the doctor. Again it was raining out. Rain always seemed to be falling when her life was falling apart.

He held her hand as the doctor came into the room with a diagnosis.

She stops herself in the memory. Thinking to herself that she's had that happen in her life before. Maybe when she was younger. Scully remembers Mulder holding her hand another time as they waited nervously for a diagnosis from the doctor.

She closes her eyes and can see that day long before she found out that she had Alzheimer's.

Mulder sits next to her nervously. He thinks the cancer has returned. Taking her hand into his own he strokes it, trying to reassure himself as he was reassuring her.

Mulder's younger -- in his early forties.

The older Dana Scully wills herself to continue to remember. It seems important. Very important.

A bubbly young doctor walks into the room and smiles at the couple sitting in front of him. They do not return the favor.

"Well Mister and Misses Mantle I ran a few tests and it appears to me that everything is fine here with Kate, except --"

"I'm sorry that it took me so long--" Catherine interrupts Scully's thoughts.

Her eyes fly open and she looks at the young nurse.

"Damn," she mutters.

"What's the matter?" Catherine asks her.

"The way my mind wanders I was remembering when I found out I had Alzheimer's. Mulder was with me holding my hand, but that memory triggered another one in which we were in the doctor's office holding one another's hand years before. But I can't remember why we were there. But we went by assumed names."

"Does that help you remember?"

"Remember what, dear?"

"The names that you used at the time?"

"You know its like going through a bunch of pictures without any dates on them. You try and piece together what you remember from the year by the way that people looked, by context clues."

"Right, so where did your memory come from?"

"We went by the assumed names of Kate and Liam Mantle during the same year that we were trying to find William. Actually it was the first set of assumed names that we used when we were on the run."

"So this is one of the earlier memories?" Catherine asks.

"Yeah, it must be. But I can't for the life of me remember what we were doing in the doctor's office. Or why Mulder seemed to be so worried."

"Maybe it will come to you," Catherine offers trying to give the old woman some hope.

"Maybe."

All is quiet in the room as the two women look at each other. Scully looks out the window again at the falling rain. It's raining harder now.

"You know the bad things that I remember from my life it was always raining," she tells Catherine.

"Like what?"

"Most recently it was when I found out that I had Alzheimer's. It was probably one of the worst events in my life that I can remember. I'd say getting Alzheimer's was probably one of the cruelest ironies because of the life I had lived. I had witnessed so much and been through so much that it is just so cruel to forget it all anyways. I was a doctor for Christ's sake. I had to remember so much information and yet I'm the one that is struck down with the disease."

"Alzheimer's affects a lot of older people, a lot of doctors, politicians, teachers, people from all walks of life," Catherine starts trying to explain to her.

"I know dear, I know. It's just that I don't remember half of my life. There are so many areas that are shady. Areas that contained information as a firsthand witness of history. History that is locked away in my mind -- trapped there forever."

"What history is that?"

A small smile appears on Dana Scully's lips as she once again becomes very aware of her surroundings and of the thoughts going through her mind.

"You said that the FBI had a scare in 2012. I remember that. I was there."

Catherine stares at the woman dumfounded. Usually any conversation that the two share Dana Scully will forget it within twenty minutes, but apparently she has remembered.

"What?" the older version of Dana Scully asks looking at Catherine's surprised face.

"Usually you don't ever remember what we talk about. Much less what I said."

"Now dear maybe I'm making an improvement."

"How is the FBI part of this history that is forever locked in your mind?"

"Hold on just a second here. I haven't gotten to that part in my story."

"That's right. I'm sorry. You were just telling me about how you found out that your son was missing."

"Yes he was missing, but that evening we received an anonymous phone call."

"From who?"

"A couple who went by John and Jane Doe."

TBC

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More to come in Scully's story. Please R&R!

Thanks

~Jen