Title: Remember When?: There's Always Hope
Author: Jen Zoromski
All other information is in the first chapter.
Author's Note: Thanks so much for all of the awesome feedback. I hope you guys are starting to figure this out…hehe…because I'm enjoying planting all of these clues…so once you figure it out you'll be able to go back and see were I put them…but anyways I'm loving the way this story is turning out and your continued support helps to fuel the story. Hope you enjoy! Please R&R.
*****
June 10, 2052
Bethesda Nursing Home
Dana Scully rocks back and forth in the old rocking chair, one that has been with her for years. Catherine is once again out of the room leaving the eighty-eight year old woman alone. Always alone. It had been years since she'd last seen her son. Or maybe just days. She couldn't remember. Who knows he could have visited her a few hours ago and she can't remember if he did or didn't.
On her lap lays a photo album with pages yellowed with age. Many of the pages are missing pictures all together, but she pages through it anyways.
On one page is a picture of her and Mulder smiling despite the obvious situation that they were once in -- it's their wedding picture. She's wearing a simple white dress and Mulder is wearing a black tux. Next to the picture is her handwriting: Mr. & Mrs. Fox Mulder married October 9, 2003. A year after she found out she was pregnant with their second child. To the right of the picture is one of John Doggett & Monica Reyes nicely dressed to accompany their friends. Monica is holding a baby girl while John is holding onto the hand of a two year old boy. Dana Scully's handwriting is scrawled next to it: John and Monica with William, 2 ½, and Megan, 8 months.
She stares at the picture, confused.
"Dana how does it feel to finally be Mrs. Fox Mulder?" Monica asks her as she bounces the eight month old baby in her arms.
"It feels right," Scully responds simply as she reaches out to smooth the baby's strawberry blond hair down.
Megan reaches out her arms towards Scully with a huge grin on her face. Even at eight months old this baby was a smart one. She wraps her pudgy arms around Scully's neck and Scully kisses the top of her head, smiling at the fact that she is holding the child's weight in her arms.
"Momma!" the baby says as Scully continues to hold her, directing the 'Momma' at Scully, not Monica.
Tears appear in Scully's eyes and she bites her lip to keep her emotions at bay.
"I didn't think it would be this hard," Scully says as she hands Megan back over to Monica.
"She'll be safe with us," Monica reassures her.
"I know."
"Dana, what are you looking at?" Catherine asks as she walks back into the room.
"Nothing, dear, nothing at all."
Catherine takes the photo album off of Dana's lap and places it back on the bureau which holds the framed pictures too. She looks at the ones in the frame, knowing that Dana Scully was very particular about what she'd let people see and what she wouldn't. The pictures in the frames were the ones that she wanted to display to everyone who would enter the room, but the ones locked away in her photo album were her own secrets, pictures from a painful time.
"I have something for you," Catherine says, breaking the silence.
"Oh really?"
Catherine reaches into her pocket and pulls out a picture of Catherine and her mother -- when she was three years old.
"I figured since you have let me hear your story and look at your pictures I could bring you something of mine to show."
Dana Scully took the picture into her hands and stared at it intently. She smiles at the cute little three year old girl with strawberry blond hair and those hazel eyes that look so much like William's.
"You were a blond," Scully says.
"Not really. You can already tell that my hair in this picture is starting to turn red. My uncle and mom both had blond hair before it turned to the auburn shade. I inherited their looks."
Scully then looks to the woman seated next to the three year old little girl. The twenty-six year old woman has a huge smile on her face accented further by her bluish hazel eyes. William's eyes. Mulder's eyes. The woman looks like her only with hazel eyes instead of the piercing blue.
Scully swallows past a lump that has formed in her throat. She recognizes this woman, but from where?
The hospital stench filters through Scully's nostrils as she walks silently next to Mulder. They are older now, Scully is fifty seven years old. She glances over at Mulder. He hadn't taken the idea of turning sixty in a few months too lightly, but he still looks good. Really good, an older version of the handsome man he was twenty years before -- his hair now speckled with gray and age lines starting to deepen around his eyes and mouth.
They walk in silence. After the numerous times they had been in the hospital you'd think they would have gotten used to it by now.
Scully stops at a door and turns to Mulder, taking his hand reassuringly.
"She knows, Mulder."
"I think they've always known -- she's a spitting image of you, Scully," Mulder tells her gently.
"Are you ready for this?"
Mulder only nods his head. He turns the doorknob and they walk into the room. She's asleep, her face pale.
John and Monica watch over her like the protective parents that they've always been towards her. William, at twenty years of age, sits in the chair at the opposite side of the bed holding onto his sister's hand, asleep next to her.
"How's she doing?" Scully whispers, longing to reach out to the eighteen year old child.
"She's dying," Monica replies tears immediately forming in her eyes.
Scully stares at Monica in disbelief, shaking her head, not wanting to take it in.
"There's an inoperable tumor in the frontal lobe of her brain," Monica informs them trying to keep her voice in a low whisper while biting back tears.
"No," Scully denies, "I won't accept that."
Mulder puts his arm protectively around Scully, tears forming in his eyes as well. They hold one another as Scully stares at the pale face with her auburn hair splayed over the white pillow.
"How long?" Mulder inquires.
"Two months," John answers for his wife, comforting Monica.
"There must be something, a cure, a way --" Mulder starts.
John shakes his head, grimly, "There's nothing."
"No," Mulder tells him forcefully, "There's always hope."
"Dana? Are you okay?" Catherine asks her while shaking her gently.
Tears well up in Dana Scully's eyes as she tries to search for an answer, anything to say, but she comes up with nothing.
"Do you recognize her?" Catherine inquires, questioning the expression on Dana Scully's face.
Scully swallows hard, too many emotions have been brought up, too many memories of the hardships that she can associate with the woman in the picture.
"I think I do."
"How?" Catherine asks.
"I don't know," Scully tells her putting her head down in defeat.
"All right," Catherine tells her placing a hand on her shoulder reassuringly, "Maybe it will come to you."
"I hope so."
"Do you feel up to continuing on with your story?"
"I suppose I could."
"You remember where you were at don't you?"
"Yeah," Scully says smiling, "Mulder and I found out that we were pregnant."
"The thing I don't understand is how come you were so shocked? Pregnancies happen all of the time."
Dana Scully chuckles at this and looks up to Catherine with a smirk on her face, "I was told I was barren, yet I conceived two children."
"Mistakes happen all of time."
"You said you had just opened the X-Files, you'll have to find my file and read up on why this one wasn't a mistake."
"I'll do that," Catherine tells her once again amazed that Dana Scully has actually remembered what they've talked about. It has been the first time in nearly five years where Scully was like the Dana Scully she once was -- remembering and cherishing the conversations that she held with others.
"Why is this child so important?" Catherine inquires.
"Our child had the genetic make-up that could save mankind."
"Why?"
"The genes that our children both possessed were immune to the coming plague and the vaccine could only come from their DNA."
"Dana, are you sure you're feeling all right?" Catherine questions.
"I'm not crazy," Scully says laughing, "Even though it does sound kind of bizarre."
"Yeah, so what happened after you found out you were pregnant?"
Dana Scully stares out the window, not really listening to Catherine, she's lost in her own thoughts about the woman that was in the picture.
"Dana?" Catherine questions.
Absently Scully looks over to her and asks, "What was your mother's name?"
"Megan Elizabeth Doggett."
TBC
******
More to come! Please R&R! Thanks
~Jen
