Title: Remember When?: In a Miracle

Author: Jen Zoromski

All other information is in the first chapter

Author's Note: Thank you guys for your continued interest in this story. I'm glad that you are all liking it. Please continue to read and review. Thanks!

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June 10, 2052

Bethesda Nursing Home

Once again the room of the old Dana Scully seems deserted. But upon closer examination a frail body sits in the rocking chair looking outside at the cloudy sky. It isn't raining, just overcast. She rocks the chair slowly. Even though she is eighty-eight years old she appears to have a renewal in life. One that she hasn't had for many years.

Catherine walks into the room and watches the old woman. An odd sort of amazement comes over Catherine. She tries to place this woman -- something seems significant, something beyond her just being one of Catherine's many residents that she sees.

"It isn't polite to stare," Scully speaks up turning towards Catherine.

"How'd you know I was here?"

"It's a sense that I acquired over the years. Especially during that year when we were one the run. We were always looking over our shoulders. It got worse once there were four of us and William. We had to do a lot more to look like normal ordinary people."

"You never told me who these people were."

"All I can remember is the assumed names they went by. John was John, but for the life of me I can't remember either one of their last names or her first name."

"Maybe it isn't important."

"After awhile on the run names became unimportant. We were just unknown people trying to blend in with the crowd. But --"

"-- You couldn't."

"Yeah, we couldn't. Not with what we knew. Not with what we were trying to prevent."

"What were you trying to prevent?"

A pained look comes over Scully's face as memories from what they were trying to prevent hits her full force.

It's dark. At first there seems to be no one alive in the vastness of an unknown place. But under the velvet star speckled sky lays out five sleeping bags. Although the couples under the sleeping bags have combined theirs to make a bed more capable of warmth, of the feeling that there was someone there with them.

The fifth sleeping bag is smaller. And the blond hair with tints of red peeks out from underneath it. Two year old William is sound asleep underneath the late August sky. The two pairs of adults next to him are wide awake.

Their voices are in hushed tones.

"How much time do we have?" Monica Reyes asks her eyes wide with the revelation that Mulder had revealed to them.

"Ten years."

"Why didn't you tell us sooner? Why didn't you tell us back in May--?" Doggett inquires starting to get angry. Angry at the thought that Mulder had kept this information secret from them for three months.

"I needed to be assured that I had a solution," Mulder tells them quietly.

"And you have one now?" Doggett asks.

"It all seemed so complex, but now it is so simple."

"What is the solution, Mulder?" Doggett inquires reaching for an answer.

"A vaccine."

"I thought that you've been through this before. I thought that the only means to defeat an alien race that plans to take over the planet was found in William--" Doggett starts.

"But that's gone now," Monica pipes up, looking at both Mulder and Scully confused, "The only way that you'd be able to get this vaccine would be the combination of both your and Scully's unique genes--" Monica stops, her eyes wide with realization.

Realization as to why Dana had been trying to hide her recent trips to the bathroom, her pale face, the fatigue. It all made sense now to Monica.

"Oh my God--" Monica Reyes responds.

"Dana? What were you trying to prevent?" Catherine inquires.

"What? I'm sorry my mind seems to wander," Dana Scully tells her laughing at the discrepancies in her lack of memory.

"The end of the world."

"You're kidding right?" Catherine replies skeptically.

"No, not at all. The world was going to be taken over by a superior race of aliens in December of 2012--"

"--But that never happened."

"We prevented it."

"How?"

Dana Scully bites her lip trying to remember, trying to bring back the memory that she just had, but she can't. It's lost. Gone.

"I don't remember."

"That's okay. Maybe I've pushed you too far. I'm going to leave you alone for awhile."

"No!" Scully says with more force that she wanted.

"All right I'll stay."

It's silent for a long time. Dana Scully nervously fidgets with the crucifix around her neck.

"Are you religious?" Catherine asks acknowledging the cross around her neck.

"Yeah. For many years I questioned my religion, but I realized that it was the thing that pulled me through. Although I was a scientists I saw too many miracles in both my life and in the work that we did to not believe that there was another force at work."

"I was raised in a strong Catholic background. Ever since my mom died my uncle turned to religion and instilled it in both his kids and me."

"I'm Catholic too."

Catherine nods at this. A ton of people are Catholic, no coincidence there.

"I think the reason he wanted to raise me Catholic was because my mom thought it was very important, to carry on her own mother's beliefs."

"That's very important to stay true to your roots."

"Yeah," Catherine is silent.

"What's the matter, dear?"

"I found out this morning that I was accepted in the FBI."

"Congratulations, does your uncle know?"

"I haven't told him yet. I'm afraid to, especially since I'm taking a job in an off stream project."

"Why is he so against it?"

"His parents and friends of theirs nearly lost everything -- including their lives and children."

"I remember feeling a lot of resentment from my father when I joined the FBI. He thought it was an act of rebellion. I thought it was an opportunity to help people. And then when I was assigned to the X-files they were disappointed that I was taking on a new job instead of leaving my 'stage' behind me."

"Did you say the X-files?" Catherine asks with amazement.

"Yeah, why?"

Catherine doesn't respond. She's shocked to be sitting in the room with the woman that she read about in the files even though many of them had been lost she and Jack had found a few. Some his grandfather John Doggett had signed off on. Both Catherine and Jack understood that their families went way back, that her mother was even raised by his grandparents, but the traces to her own grandparents was a paper trail that ended abruptly one in which no one wanted to elaborate on.

Late nights they'd talk about the hardships of growing up. Age wise they were within months of each other. He was born in September of 2026 to a seventeen year old mother and father. She was born in November of the same year to a single mom who to everyone's surprise had conceived a child even though she was told six years before that she would never ever have children as a result of a form of cancer that she suffered from when she was eighteen. Their lives crossed occasionally in the early years when Catherine and her mother would come to visit his grandparents. But when her mom died they lost all contact until they met up again in college.

"Katie, what's the matter?"

"This is all starting to make sense," Catherine responds.

"What is?"

"I need to hear more of your story. I need to know what happened."

Dana Scully nods her head, but looks at Catherine confused.

"Where was I?"

"The hotel where you met went up in flames."

"Ah yes. It was like a blazing inferno."

"And obviously you all made it out safely."

"We did."

"Where'd you go from there?"

"Anywhere we could find. This went on for nearly a month and a half before Mulder found his solution."

"Where'd he find his solution?"

"In a place where no one thought to look. A place that we didn't think was possible. In a miracle."

TBC

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More to come! Please R&R! Thanks

~Jen