Title: Remember When?: Storytelling

Author: Jen Zoromski

All other information is in the first chapter

Author's Note: Sorry that I haven't updated in awhile -- but here's the post of the last three chapters. Thanks so much for all the feedback and a final author's note will be at the end.

Enjoy! And please R&R!

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June 10, 2052

Bethesda Hospital

"Aunt Dana, I never knew," William replies looking at his own mother. Aunt Dana was how he had known her from the time he was three and Aunt Dana she remains even though he's known the truth for a long time.

"Your father and I didn't want you and Meg to know about it all. It was too dangerous."

"What about John and Monica? What did they think about all of this?"

"They had Marc and didn't want to endanger him. They also were raising you and Meg. No one was ever truly safe. There was always someone out there trying to ruin our family."

"But why?"

"Because we ruined the plan for total dominance over the entire world which eventually would have led to the end."

"The end?" Jack asks.

"Of everything."

Everyone is quiet for a long time. All processing their own thoughts. Maybe their own thanks for the sacrifices that Dana Scully and Fox Mulder had made for them.

Absently Scully looks at them, "You know indirectly the people who have been after us all these years put this entire sequence of events into motion."

"Aunt Dana?"

"They took Mulder's sister and subjected her to tests. If they would have never taken Mulder's sister he would have never found the X-files."

"And if he wouldn't have become interested in the X-Files you wouldn't have been assigned to him -- you would have never met him and your children wouldn't have been the answer to the entire thing," Jack summarizes.

"That's it exactly."

"Talk about the butterfly effect -- that's insane," Kate replies.

"One wrong move and none of us would be sitting here," Scully says smiling at the thought.

"But didn't you think that you were taking wrong moves every step of the way?" William inquires.

"Of course I did. I had to give up my children. I didn't get to settle down and live a normal life. The sacrifice at the time seemed so much more than taking the right move. But I'm relatively happy now," she smirks, "aside from the occasional lapses in memory."

They all laugh at that, but the mood turns somber as the old woman on the bed shows fatigue. A tiredness that was not present the other day. Scully is worn down.

"Mrs. Mulder are you sure we aren't tiring you out?"

She shakes her head profusely, "I haven't had this much fun in years."

"Come on Scully, open it!" Mulder urges wiping away a strand of gray hair.

She looks at him suspiciously, "Mulder it's not my birthday and the holidays aren't for another few months. It's not my anniversary either."

"Just open it!"

Scully obliges him and does so, "Plane tickets? To Bellefluer, Oregon?"

"Do you know what today is?"

At first she gives him a blank stare but then looking at the calendar on the wall it hits her. March 6, 2032 -- forty years since their first case together -- forty years since they met.

"Remember Bellefluer, Oregon, Scully?" seventy-one year old Mulder questions.

"Of course I do. But what exactly are we going to do in Bellefluer, Oregon?"

"Dig up some old graves."

"You can't be serious?" she replies skeptically arching her eyebrow.

Mulder grins at her with the playful twinkle still in his eyes, "Forty years, Scully, -- that's a long time."

"I know it is Mulder, but I'm still not going to go and dig up graves."

"What about getting the old scrubs out and slicing and dicing away?"

"Mulder."

"Right, didn't think so."

"Well?"

"Actually, I found William."

"He lives in Oregon?"

"Strange isn't it?"

"Mulder we can't go."

"Just one week Scully, that's all he's asking."

"He contacted you?"

"Yeah."

"What did he want?"

"Closure."

"Mrs. Mulder?"

She looks at Kate startled. It takes a moment for the events to register, "I'm sorry?"

"You seem like you're in a daze."

"I was thinking of when Mulder brought me out to Oregon to see you Will."

"I remember that, Aunt Dana. It was right after Meg died."

"Yeah it was."

Kate looks at them both confused, "I don't remember that. I think I would have remembered meeting you and Mulder."

"We didn't want to endanger you or William's family. We met with him in secrecy to make sure that you were all getting on all right after Meg."

"It seems as though much of you later existence was in secrecy," Jack concludes.

"By the time we reached that stage in our lives we were used to it. It wasn't easy, but it was worth it."

"Wouldn't that mean we are all in danger now of talking to you?" Kate asks.

"No. The threat has been gone for nearly ten years. People die and their quest goes with them."

"So these people are gone?"

"More or less."

"What do you mean?" Jack inquires.

"What I mean is that they have lost their drive for their cause. The threat is gone."

"And your story? How does that end?" Will asks.

"William, even as you get older I can still see that stubborn two year old in you. It's the eyes. The Mulder eyes."

"I'm sorry."

"For what?"

"For not being there for you and dad when you needed me."

"William Fox Mulder you and your sister were the greatest things that ever happened to us."

"You missed out on so much."

"Regardless of what you thought Mulder and I kept in contact with John and Monica. We knew what was going on in your lives. We knew and we were proud. No matter what you ended up doing in life we were proud because you were are son."

"You were happy then?"

"Very happy. And proud too. You were our miracle baby. Well, miracle baby number one, but a miracle none the less."

"Aunt Dana--"

"Let me finish, Will. Then you can pass this story onto your grandchildren and theirs and generations after that about a pair of FBI agents who wanted nothing more than to fulfill a quest of one man."

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More to come!

~Jen