Disclaimer: I do not own the X Files

Note: Big thanks to Kyouryoku Senshi for Beta reading for me and for the encouragement! This chapter is a lot of transition but I hope you enjoy it!

Time Passes

Time began to pass, at first slowly as people waited for another shoe to drop, but soon enough, the new life post pandemic became almost normal. People could get used to anything. For William, life was new and strange. They stayed in Scully's apartment until the roads were cleared and about two weeks after arriving in D.C.

William had found himself in a car with Mulder and Dagoo headed to the small country house that Mulder and Scully owned. They would bring the small amount of stuff she had at her apartment to the house in a few trips and as soon as the airports opened back up they would take William back to Wyoming to get anything he wanted and to begin to wrap things up.

Scully had been very busy at the hospital and for the two weeks had spent most nights at the hospital, catching sleep in the bunks there. She finally told the guys that they should just start moving and she would catch up.

Every day, more reports from around the country came in and the damage was bad. Every continent was affected, but not every country had been touched. Mulder and Scully wondered about what other battles were being waged out of sight between the super soldiers and the colonists that had caused large populations to not be touched.

They had not heard from Gibson and there had been no sight of the Smoking Man nor Monica Reyes.

As soon as Mulder began to feel better, he wanted to get out there and start looking for answers, but Scully begged him to wait until she was less needed at the hospital. She didn't want Mulder leaving William and running off to dangerous places or worse, taking William with him to those dangerous places. Mulder understood her concerns and listened to them, to a certain extent. He did snoop around D.C. for answers. He took William with him to the basement office and they looked through piles of X Files for answers and found none.

William treasured the time with his biological father. So many of the files came with funny or dramatic stories about his parents that gave him a glimpse into their lives.
Mulder found himself watching William as he read the files and the boy fascinated him. He would smile whenever William muttered things to himself or had reactions to whatever files he opened.

Mulder had not pictured having a family until Scully had asked him to father her child and even then, it had been vague thoughts. It wasn't until he was brought back from the brink and saw Scully's condition that he had actually started to imagine what being a father would be like. When he was on the run, away from Scully and their infant son, he would spend a lot of time daydreaming about raising William. He would picture the three of them in a country home, similar to the one they owned now. Sometimes he would imagine that they could even have more children. He would dream of teaching William to throw a ball and imagine spending late nights having a Star Wars marathon.

When he was reunited with Scully and learned of William's fate, his heart broke into a million pieces. He never let Scully see how much it hurt lest she blame herself for his pain, but as soon as she left his jail cell, he would curl up into a ball and cry for hours over the loss of the life in his dreams.

For Mulder, pouring through the X Files with his teenage son was a dream. It was something he had always imagined. He told William about all of the creepy things they had seen and all of the amazing people they had met. It was all too good to be true.

Scully was a mixture of happy, sad, and stressed. There were times when the sadness at Leah's loss came over her like a thick shroud and she would attempt to ignore it by working extra hard. The sadness would usually dissipate as soon as her son came into view. She would walk into the apartment and see Mulder's dark head and a shorter lighter head. They would turn at the same moment to look at her and smile matching smiles.

It was remarkable to Scully every time she looked into his eyes how similar they looked to the eyes of a young Fox Mulder. Seeing the resemblances had helped her, as they had never fully understood William's origins.

She had heard from Bill a week after the outbreak. He and his family were safe. They had begun to get sick, but were able to get the cure before anyone died or was permanently damaged. It was not till three days after her call from Bill that she heard from Charlie reporting that they were all alive.

Charlie was an aloof person who liked to joke around more than admit he was feeling anything. Like Bill, he too, was quick to anger, but unlike their brother, Charlie was of much better humor. So when she heard his voice break she knew not all was right.

His daughter, Lilly, would be forever crippled from Polio. The doctors were not sure she would ever even walk again. Lilly was only 12 and might never walk again. Scully cried with her brother, but was happy that they had all survived. Knowing that her family was safe had taken a large burden off her shoulders, but there was still a lot that needed to be taken care of.

Similar to her niece, many people were cured, but would forever feel the effects of what they had been infected with. On top of that, each day more and more people were dying. All of the people who the colonists had deemed less significant. All they could do for these people was to make them comfortable during their remaining days.

Every day, Scully would visit the morgue and her eyes would linger on the locker that held Leah Van De Kamp. She knew it was wrong of her to be taking up more space in the morgue, but Scully would not budge on it. She was going to make sure that Leah was buried next to her husband and that was that. So while so many were cremated to make room for the rising body count, Leah's body remained.

William lay in his new room and stared at the ceiling. The date to fly back to Wyoming had been set and in three days they would board a plane back to the only home he ever knew. It would be only for a visit, however.

"And a funeral…"

He thought bitterly.

William rolled over and punched his pillow a few times, making the small dog on the end of the bed jump off. When he exhausted himself, he laid down on his stomach in a huff.

Dagoo cocked his head to the side, as if asking William if he was done with his outburst.

"Come on,." William said and patted the bed.

Dagoo jumped up next to William and walked in half a circle before settling into a ball.

William looked at his cellphone and the texts that had been exchanged between him and his friends from home.

They were all fine, but some had lost people. The virus had hit them a few days later and the cure had been provided but many, like his own mother, had been doomed from the start. Talon had not lost his parents, but had lost both of his grandparents. A seed of resentment ran through William upon hearing that his friend's parents were healthy.

Talon had seemed to be genuinely devastated at the news of Leah's passing and was helpful to William, but it didn't seem fair that Talon got both his mom and dad while William had neither.

You know that's not true. You have Dana and Mulder.

His inner voice chastised him.

He couldn't lie and say that he had not enjoyed his time with them. He found that Mulder had been able to easily distract him from the deep sadness. Night time was harder though. When they had been living in the apartment in D.C., Scully had been around at night more often and seemed to have a sixth sense for when he was awake and sad. She would come and sit with him until he fell asleep.

So while William liked the little country house, Dana had so far only spent one night there with them.

It wasn't that Mulder wouldn't have helped him at night, but Mulder was much more clueless on how to help William. He enjoyed his biological father and found that they could talk for hours about anything, but there was an unexplainable peace that came when William was near Dana.
The connection with his birth mother was strong and almost spiritual. He had known that for years, but in person it was very different.

His fingers found their way to the back of his neck where he felt his small scar. Maybe that could account for the connection.

He thought for a moment and then shook it away. Whatever was in his neck was intended to track and monitor him, it was nothing good.

He had asked many questions about it, but had received few answers. From what he had gathered, the story was this: Dana had been abducted by what they believe to be the government (or people working alongside the government). While she was abducted, they planted a small pole in her neck and stole all of her ova. (William had known that she had not thought she was able to have children, but hearing that it was because of the abduction had chilled him to the bone.) Some time after she was returned, she found the implant and had it removed and analyzed, which had yielded nothing. Dana had explained to him that removing it had caused her to be diagnosed with cancer and that her cure is still somewhat of a mystery.

She steadfastly refused to remove or even examine whatever was in his neck, because of her fear that it would hurt him.

William knew there was more to the story, but they refused to give more and he was not going to ask.

It was obviously all very painful. William had a nightmare of Dana dying of cancer in a hospital bed the night after they had told him. He assumed that it was another vision.

The visions had continued, but were shorter and came at odd times. He used to only get them during his sleep, but now things would trigger a vision during the day. He told Mulder about his visions and his birth father listened seriously with an unblinking face and didn't question a word of it. Dana, on the other hand, wanted an explanation for the visions. She didn't necessarily doubt that he was having them, but she worried that there was something potentially bad happening in his brain chemistry that was causing it. Mulder believed simply that William was gifted and did not need further explanations.

William smiled at how different they were. He saw parts of himself in both of them, but knew that he was more like his father when it came to believing in the unseen.

William had been raised going to the Lutheran church near his home, which he had told Dana about.

As soon as he was healthy enough she began to take him to Lutheran services on Sundays. It touched him that she did this, because he knew that, while she was Catholic, she did not attend mass every Sunday. He knew that she was doing this out of respect and love for his parents and William didn't mind.

Going to church had never bothered him too much. He knew that it meant a lot to his mother and logically, he knew it was only a couple hours out of his week.

"Will?" Mulder's voice rang throughout the house.

"In here!" William responded without getting up.

A few seconds passed before the door opened and Mulder stuck his head in, "You hungry? I was thinking that we could meet Scully for lunch."

William thought for a moment and realized that he was, in fact, quite hungry, "Yeah that sounds good."