Forward To The Past
An X-Files Arrow-Verse Crossover
Part 5 In The Aliens Amongst Us Series
Summary: Mulder and Scully climb aboard Gideon and try to find answers to fighting the current Syndicate by learning their actions in the past. Meanwhile in the present, the newly assembled team starts their own search for the current syndicate's membership – and tries to figure out what devils they'll have to make deals with along the way.
Disclaimer: Oliver Queen, Barry Allen, Kara Danvers, Sara Lance and all the other characters from the Arrow-verse were a project realized by both DC comics and Greg Berlanti. I admire Berlanti's vision even when it flagged so I'm going to keep trying to live up to it. Mulder, Scully and a few other characters you'll be seeing (some of them much younger than in previous stories) belong to Chris Carter and the gang at Ten-Thirteen. Still crazy about them after all these years.
It's been about two years since I did my last story in this fandom and I've been meaning to return to it for a while. The action will begin the day after the last story in this series Tomorrow Has Finally Come. I'm including it in the Legends Crossover because Mulder and Scully will be engaged in time travel for the action even though I intend for a fair amount of the story to be taking place in the present. For the record, the present is roughly 2017 in the Arrow-verse, though that is not necessarily parallel to ours.
There's too much to simply summarize in a few words, so I won't even try. If you've been reading the previous stories you know what's happened so far, and hopefully you won't get too lost. Considering my memory of the Arrow-verse fades by the day, I'm hoping I don't screw it up too badly.
All right, everybody. Let's get started.
Prologue
ONBOARD GIDEON
Mulder had been remarkably silent from the moment the Legends ship had appeared before them out of thin air. He had not said a single word as Sara Lance explained quietly and carefully what this ship was, where it had come from and what she and her team, as leader of this rag-tag team known in what had been a back-handed compliment as Legends, had been doing for the year before Oliver and the rest had sent out a signal for them a few weeks ago.
When she finished talking, Mulder was still silent.
"I think we broke him," Mick said bluntly.
"That is the common reaction to seeing this and hearing our story, Mr. Rory," Stein said.
"Not exactly the best time for him to go into a walking coma, though," Jefferson said.
That did cause Mulder to react. "Hit me with your best shot, Scully."
Scully blinked. "I'm sorry?"
"Come on. Tell me why this is impossible. Tell me how time traveling ships are purely an example of badly financed programs on the BBC. Explain to me how a person can't come from hundreds of year in the future and know everything about what's going to happen. Tell me how this same ship can't possibly have an artificial intelligence system that has a greater vocabulary than most of the human passengers."
"Is that an insult?" Mick said.
"There's a seventy-three percent chance that was sarcasm, Mick," Gideon piped up.
"Only 73 %?" Ray asked.
"I don't know him well enough to say with more mathematical certainty."
Scully looked at him. "I'm sorry, Mulder. I just don't have a logical explanation."
Mulder nodded. "I think Scully and I have to go now."
"What are you talking about?" Sara asked.
"How do you expect me to do my job under these conditions?" Mulder asked. "For seven years I was at my most productive when Scully was questioning every single thing I ever said. Despite the evidence of her eyes and ears, she remained the voice of reason no matter how ridiculous or impervious to evidence that made her seem at times. I mean, she was held prisoner on an alien ship in the Arctic, I rescued her from it, she saw it rise out of the ice and yet just a few weeks later, she stood before an FBI review board and said she could state with certainty it was a UFO."
"In fairness Mulder I was unconscious," Scully said.
"And now she's just agreeing with the evidence of her eyes and ears, regardless of how illogical, unreasonable and most of all, unscientific it is?" Mulder shook his head. "Obviously there's no point to working with her anymore. And if I can't have the usual dynamic with Scully, then what reason do I have to keep working? I mean, sure I'd be stopping the alien takeover of this planet and saving the human race, but where's the fun in that?"
Now everyone knew this was a performance but it was being directed at one person.
"Mulder, be serious for once," Scully said.
"I know, I know, universe has to be saved and everything," Mulder said. "But for the record, the thrill is gone. I blame Superman for this. Man goes flying around a city and gets called the Man of Steel, then it's no longer an issue of wanting to believe."
"All right, now that little bit of performance art is finished, could you tell me what your real reaction is?" Sara asked.
"I can sum it up in three words." Mulder said simply. "What's the catch?"
"You mean, why didn't we use Gideon travel back to 1933 and kill Hitler?" Jackson asked.
"I would have said why not go back to Dallas in 1963 and stop JFK from being killed, but the principle's the same," Mulder agreed.
"When we were given this job last year – or maybe longer, it's hard to tell when you spend so much of your life time-traveling – Rip made it very clear that our primary job was to make sure the timeline wasn't disrupted," Ray said. "The man we'd been recruited to stop – Vandal Savage – was involved in trying to destroy the way time work. Our job was to make sure he didn't succeed at it."
"So that makes you, temporal police officers?" Mulder asked awkwardly.
"You really think Mick and I would have taken the job if it had been put that way?" Snart asked.
"I know. For once, I'm at a loss of a metaphor." Mulder admitted. "I've seen some of you guys in action. You're not at the top of my list for who I'd want to protect the timeline."
"Out of curiosity Mulder, who would your first choice for that job?" Scully asked.
"I wouldn't be on it, that's for sure," Mulder reminded them. "It does make me wonder why you invited Scully and I here in the first place. On our best days on the job, we left chaos in our wake. Putting us on a time machine wouldn't inspire a lot of people with confidence."
"Not Skinner that's for sure." Scully agreed. "On the plus side dinosaurs aren't currently running around the present holding laser cannons on us, so I guess they're doing a good job."
"That's a low bar even by our standards," Jefferson said.
"Well, how do you want us to react?" Mulder said, slightly exasperated. "You bring us on a time machine from roughly five hundred years in the future, tell us that you were handing the responsibility of protecting it because of your reputation in the future, which you learned very quickly was just bullshit from the man who enlisted you, tell us you've spent the last several months or whatever, leaping from era to era trying to stop keep what's going right from going wrong, and yet even though having come from hundreds of years in the future, you don't even know if the colonization I've spent years trying to stop and now have a fixed deadline to meet even has a happy ending?!"
There was a pause. "Okay, that was basically the reaction I was going for when we told in the first place," Sara said with a straight face.
"This is a lot for me to deal with and remember this is coming from a man who was abducted by a UFO, tortured for months by aliens, left for dead and spent three months in a coffin before he was brought back," Mulder turned to Scully. "I'm honestly impress you're dealing with it as well as you are."
"Someone has to stay calm right now," Scully said slowly. "Believe me, it is taking all of my resources to stop from freaking out and running for the hills. " She looked around. "We are still outside Star Labs for the record."
"Of course, you can leave any time you want," Stein said.
Scully nodded. "I can't move," she said slowly. "I'm trying to get myself to walk towards the exit but my feet aren't obeying my brain. What's happening? Is there some kind of gravitational forcefield stopping me from leaving the ship?"
The Legends looked at each other. "Not that we know of," Ray said.
""I'm trying my hardest to run. I'm mentally running to the door right now but I'd can't move." Scully's voice was beginning to raise in register. "Why can't I move, Mulder?"
"I don't know, Scully," Mulder said. "I'm trying to do the exact same thing. You have know idea the kind of PTSD this is bringing on me. At this moment, I'm running as fast I can out that door. So why am I still here?"
"Okay, we've clearly been deeply traumatized by this," Scully said calmly. "We're experiencing some kind of sensory overload that's overwhelming our neural responses and disabling the natural flight-or-fight one."
"Do you think we should interrupt them right now?" Mick asked.
"No, Mr. Rory we have to let this play out a little longer." Stein said.
"I'm very glad you're being rational right now," Mulder said in a slightly higher monotone than usual.
"Someone has to keep calm right now. After all, in the face of a machine whose very existence bends, if not completely breaks all known rules of physics and how we consider space and time, we have to stay rational." Scully was starting to sound a little pressed.
"Right, I mean this is a good thing from my perspective. This is proof undeniable that time travel, a concept that was considered impossible, not only can be but will be mastered in the future at some point." Mulder was clearly trying to restrain his panic.
"Obviously. And the fact that there is a power in force making sure that time travel is strictly regulated and the timeline remains preserved, that's reassuring," Scully said.
"Obviously. Because government oversight always makes things work better," Mulder said. "This is all good. It's promising right."
Scully nodded. "I think I need to lay down right now," she said.
"Me too. A little rest never hurt anybody." Mulder said.
Within three seconds both agents had passed out.
"All right that went better than I expected," Sara admitted.
"Should we bring them to in the medical bay?" Snart asked.
"I think when they wake up it might be easier if we had this conversation back in Star Labs," Stein said. "They're going to need to process this and best not to do it where we completely tore down one of the key implements of the way they saw the world."
"And when they wake up?" Rory asked.
"That's when the fun begins."
CATCO
"Looking at this footage, I feel a grim foreboding. Like millions of you I had wanted to believe that when Superman arrived on the scene five years ago that he was everything, he claimed to be: the symbol of hope, a man fighting for truth, justice and the American way. A beacon in these troubled times."
"But now that the footage from Canada has been brought to our attention all of that must be thrown into question. Yes, it is true that we know far less about this Supergirl then we do about this Superman. Despite their common wardrobe and similar styles, they may very well not be from the same planet, perhaps even the same galaxy. And for all we know this footage may be yet another deepfake, doctored by forces of the media-industrial complex that this humble reporter has spent his lifetime raging against. Certainly there are details unknown to the general public as much as myself."
But based on what we have seen and witnessed over the past year, it is hard to not consider the possibility that Supergirl, who burst on to the scene just last year, may be as much of a threat as the alien forces that attacked this planet last year. And if that is the case then the self-proclaimed Girl of Steel is a threat that this planet may not be able to withstand if she were turned against us. And if this is truly the case she is not a beacon of hope but rather as great a threat our planet has ever seen."
"Kara Danvers, nothing is ever gained by watching that hack," Cat Grant said as she walked over to her protégé. "Need I remind you that Tad O'Malley is so much of a fringe element that Rush Limbaugh called him a raving nutcase?"
"Even if he happens to be right this time?" Kara asked rhetorically.
"This is a man who told his viewers Seal Team Six was responsible for the great hoax since the moon landing." Cat Grant said, rolling her eyes. "You really think anyone takes him seriously?"
In truth Kara was wondering the same thing. She knew the footage that Cadmus had of her attacking members of the military in Canada was going to be leaked by the new syndicate at some point. And given the vast array of resources that Lillian Luthor and Amanda Waller had, it was very odd that rather than go to any of the major media outlets, they had chosen a podcaster who even by the low standards of the lunatic fringe online was considered out there.
However she wasn't convinced there wasn't a stroke of genius to it as well. The people who were going to likely take this the most seriously were in fact the same kind of people that in an earlier era Mulder and Scully had the best track record of convincing. Neither had much use for O'Malley (Mulder had told her if the man came to him offering support he would question all of his life choices) but both admitted that much of his work was the kind of thing the Lone Gunmen and their ilk had spent their life trying to reach. Whichever member of the new Syndicate had sent it to him had managed to make a move that would put the effort in check.
Which in turn made Kara almost certain which member of this new Syndicate had come up with the idea.
"Monica Reyes must have leaked it to him," she told Grant.
"Mulder and Scully's former colleague," Grant said. "That would track. If she did it, there's a certain genius to it."
"The one thing these guys are good at is creating outrage," James Olsen agreed. "And getting views. Last count is four million people have seen this post, the highest viewing he's had since he went on the air."
"As if his ego needed more inflating," Grant muttered. "This'll give that nut the last thing any of them should ever have legitimacy."
"It doesn't entirely track with the overall agenda," Kara said. "If you're involving in colonization of the planet, why whip up a frenzy over how dangerous aliens are?"
"Disinformation campaign," Cat Grant said. "Get the public so focused on one fake enemy they don't notice the real one sneaking in until it's too late."
"Clearly Waller's been talking to her colleagues at the CIA," Kara guessed. She looked at her boss. "The question is how do we counteract it?"
"Somehow I don't think a press conference saying that you've sinned is the answer," Cat Grant noted the blank looks from her younger employees "Maybe I'm lucky the two of you didn't get that reference."
"I don't think there's a spin doctor able enough to get her past this," James said.
"If we've learned anything from this century, it's that trying to deny video is never the answer," Cat Grant said. "If Gary Hart had listened to me on that, he would have been President and our lives would be so much easier."
Now was not the time to tell Cat Grant about their visit from the most recent Harrison Wells. Her mind was open but she didn't want to blow it apart. Yet. "What should we do instead?" Kara asked.
Grant gave it some thought. "We'll take a page out of Hart's playbook," she said. "Attack and retreat, attack and retreat."
"Care to translate for those of us who didn't cut our teeth in Presidential politics?" James asked.
"In this case, it means you have to fall back and go after the Syndicate without being obvious," Cat Grant said. "Translated, whatever happened in Russia last week can't happen again for a while."
Kara knew what her boss meant. "The group's working on at least one front as we speak," she told them. "Though for the sake of deniability, you guys probably shouldn't know the exact nature."
"Probably safest for all concerned," Winn agreed.
"Are Mulder and Scully involved in that particular front?" Cat asked.
"Yes, and they'll be out of contact for the foreseeable future," Kara said.
"Is it all right if I say I'm not unhappy about that?" Cat Grant told them. "Don't get me wrong; they clearly know more about this then the rest of us but it's kind of upsetting that Mulder has less emotional maturity then people who are half his age."
Kara couldn't disagree given that what had happened in Canada was at least partially his fault.
"In a sense that may actually help the cause," her boss told them. "I have an idea about what we can do next but it's going to involve going to places he'd never get into left to his own devices."
"Oh he'd get into them," Kara assured her boss. "He'd just break the door down, get a hundred security guards chasing him, be detained for hours and manage to barely escape with his job. For him, that was a typical weekend."
"I'm very aware of his track record," Cat Grant said. "Which is why neither he nor Scully should be anywhere near what I have in mind. That said, I'm probably going to need to reach out to some of your inner circle – the grownups anyway."
"What do you have in mind?" James asked.
"Mulder and Scully could only listen through keyholes to find out what they did," Cat Grant said. "I've built my life making sure I can get into the rooms decision were being made."
"And if they hold the door closed?"
"Grant gave a smile that had chilled mob bosses. "I have my own ways of knocking them down."
AUTHOR'S NOTES
And we're back. Just a few notes before the main event.
I originally wanted Mulder and Scully to just take this in stride but I thought having them freak out in the sight of a time machine was more fun.
Tad O'Malley was an internet podcaster (played by Joel McHale) who in the revival seasons was critical to Mulder and Scully getting back on The X-Files. I thought it would be a nice wrinkle to have him one of the major threats to Mulder and Scully now and we will see him later on.
Cat Grant actually is quoting Gary Hart. Hart was the campaign manager for George McGovern in 1972 and led a successful primary campaign that led to him getting the Democratic nomination (before losing to Nixon in 49 of 50 states). Hart is quoted of using this line in Theodore White's Making of the President 1972 in reference to a 19th century military strategist.
Story begins in earnest in the next chapter. Read and Review!