Title: Remember When?: Mulder and Death

Author: Jen Zoromski

All other information is in the first chapter

Author's Note: Thanks so much for all of the lovely feedback! You guys are awesome. I'll try and post every couple of days, but since school started today it could be interesting -- so don't give up hope if I don't post for awhile -- I am still here with the story…lol…just bogged down in school work.

Well with all that said -- here's more to the story. Enjoy!

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Bethesda Nursing Home

June 10, 2052

Scully leans over the coffin -- at eighty-five years of age her red hair is just a thought of decades gone by. It is now a snowy white. Looking at the man that she loved for over half of her life she can't help but start to cry.

There are other mourners around her. Many who she doesn't know or remember. John and Monica are still alive -- Skinner died nearly twenty years before.

Other than that they are distant relatives or people who want to pay their last respect to a man who helped to save the world. Nearly 500 people tried to fill the Catholic church -- 500 people.

Scully looks at Mulder's face -- now cold with death. Gone are the twinkling hazel eyes, the dry sarcasm, the years of banter. He was her protector -- and her equal.

She places her lips to his skin for the last time as she kisses his forehead, a gesture that was so often done to her.

Tears stream down her cheeks and after years of trying to stay emotionless in any situation -- this one is too great. How many times had she thought he was dead? But there is a guarantee that he won't come bounding through the doors this time. He died of a stroke.

After everything they had ever fought for and believed in and the many ways he could have and should have died -- he didn't wake up from his nap.

"Mulder," Scully whispers trying to fight back the tears, "We won --"

Scully is waiting for him to open his eyes -- to smile up at her, but he doesn't. He never will again. Only in her memories.

But then her memories are what they used to be.

A tall man, looking very much like Mulder, but with red peppered hair walks up to her, kissing her on the cheek.

"Come on Aunt Dana, let's go sit down."

The fifty-eight year old man leads her to the front pew next to his wife and two children who are in their early twenties.

Scully leans over to the man and whispers, "Why do you still call me Aunt Dana?"

William grins at her with the same smile that Mulder possessed, "Because I think you have a beautiful name. And besides it would take far too long for me to correct myself."

"You're a good man, William, you know that don't you?"

"I'm only trying to be as good of a man as you and dad would have wanted me to be."

"I'm proud of you and your family."

"Thanks mom."

William gives her a reassuring hug, placing his arm protectively around Scully's shoulder.

"He's really dead isn't he?"

William only hugs her tighter.

"Mulder's dead isn't he?" The elderly Dana Scully asks the red-headed woman sitting next to her.

Catherine doesn't respond. She doesn't have to. The look on her face tells it all -- for the last three years Dana Scully would ask out of the blue where Mulder was -- sometimes referring to him as dead, but never truly believing.

Jack shifts uncomfortably in his chair.

"He's been gone for awhile, hasn't he?" Scully questions -- the thought registering on her face. The idea actually making sense to her. For nearly three years she has asked the question and received the same answer. And every time she would have to live through the pain of losing him all over again.

Catherine has seen it before with her.

"Three years," Catherine tells her softly.

"Well then dear, I'd have to say that my mind has left me -- at least for a little while."

"I was reading through the old X-Files -- what's left of it at least and I read that Mulder was assumed dead three times --" Jack starts.

"Two of the times I knew he was alive -- the other we buried his body six feet under --"

"How is that possible?" Catherine inquires.

"His body became host to the alien virus. A virus that made his body appear to be dead -- slowing down all of the systems, but not shutting them off completely."

"That can't be right."

"But it happened," Scully tells her.

Mulder and Scully sit outside on their newly furnished house -- brand new white paint glistens on the outside with the smell still permeating through the air. They are fifty and fifty-three years of age -- just starting to show signs of gray in their hair.

The phone rings.

Mulder doesn't get up to answer it.

They just let it ring.

"Mulder?"

"Let it ring, Scully."

"But it could be important --"

"Scully, we've waited twelve years to sit in front of our own home. No more landlords, no more noisy neighbors, no more living out of the back of a SUV."

The machine picks up.

"Mulder, Scully, pick up!" Doggett's voice floats through the house, "It's Megan -- she's been kidnapped!"

Scully gasps -- her eyes fluttering. She looks around the room and sees that nothing has changed. She isn't sitting in front of a new house. She's not hearing about something happening to their daughter.

All is silent in the room. Jack once again shifts in his chair -- he doesn't feel comfortable here -- but Catherine dragged him here.

"What happened after Skinner's assistant became part of the run-away- gang?" Catherine asks.

"We continued to move around the country -- waiting until I reached the twentieth week of pregnancy."

"Then where'd you go?"

"We had to find our way back to Washington DC -- as carefully as we could. The facility was underground."

"Underground?" Jack questions -- confused.

"In a bunker," Scully grins, "Actually it was right next to the Presidential bunker that was built during the Cold War."

"So you went to the bunker?"

"Yeah, but on the way there we got quite a surprise."

"A surprise?"

"Amy went into labor."

TBC

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More to come! Please R&R

~Jen