Work Text:
“This had better be important.” Emily enters the mudroom of the house they grew up in, kicking off her boots. She brushes her strawberry blonde bangs out of her face and leverages her best skeptical-big-sister look.
“Ewwww.” Will’s face twists in affectionate disdain as he examines her outfit. “Skinny jeans? In 2024? Emily Christine, I raised you better than this.”
“Don’t even start with me, Will.” Emily, who has already professed via text that she does not want to do this right now, is riding the razor’s edge of genuine annoyance. “You can peel them off of my cold, dead millennial legs. And anyway, they’re slim-straight.”
“You don’t call, you don’t write.” Will performs his lines with characteristic Scully-Mulder family dryness, as though they don’t text almost every day, and grins. “That’s how you greet your only baby brother after not seeing him for over two months?”
Emily rolls her eyes as only the daughter of Dana Scully could, then softens. “Okay, bring it in, asshat. I’m really glad you’re home from summer stock. Sam misses her uncle.” She pulls him in for a big hug, ruffling his hair. “But seriously. She’s actually napping right now, which never happens, and it’s the only time Chris and I can get anything done. So what’s up? You said you found something?”
“It’s weird,” Will warns her.
“Well, yeah,” she says, “if it has to do with Dad.”
“No,” he says, grabbing her arm, his voice serious for once in his life. “For real, Em. Like I actually think this could be bad.”
Emily freezes. “You’re scaring me, Willy.” She sucks her teeth and presses a hand to her temple. “Dad wouldn’t… Dad’s Dad. He’s not like. You don’t think he’s having an affair or something, do you??”
“No.” Will chews his lip, his eyes cryptic. “Worse.”
Will leads her down to the stairs to the room that they dubiously designate as Dad’s Office. “Office” is a generous word for the situation at hand; however, their dad’s preferred terminology is Man Cave, presumably to get a rise out of his family, so obviously that isn’t an option. Once, in a magnanimous mood, Mulder gleefully offered up Dude Den as a possibility, but Scully and the kids had concluded that that was somehow worse.
Dad’s Office is basically his retirement den in the technically-finished-but-decidedly-unglamorous basement, and its vibes are exactly as expected. The room features coarse beige carpeting, piles of unread books, and a fish tank that houses a miniature replica of Stonehenge and several mollies. The mounted wall shelves spill over with framed family photos: the four of them together a few years ago; Emily, in her flower girl dress, with her parents on their wedding day; Emily and Chris on their wedding day; a smiling Scully holding baby Samantha right after she was born; a very old photo of Mulder with his sister Samantha when they were kids; a cute one of Scully clutching Mulder to her chest and laughing, taken when they were probably in their late 30s or early 40s.
The shelves are also peppered with Star Trek collectibles, signed baseballs, his diplomas, a mothman figurine, and other random Mulder paraphernalia. The disaster desk that lends the room the nerve to call itself an office is littered with empty coffee mugs and papers that their dad will never, ever look at, let alone sort. Regrettably, there is a lava lamp. French doors with burgundy curtains were added at some point, giving Mulder’s lair some separation and privacy from the ping-pong table, the abandoned NordicTrack, the laundry room, and the unfortunate basement bathroom that Emily and Will grimly refer to as The Shit Pit.
An ancient leather couch acts as the room’s spiritual center. At some tipsy family dinner after both of the kids were legal adults, it had somehow come to light that the reason Mulder refused to get rid of the couch was that it was the first place he and Scully ever “did the deed.” Now their poor children could never unknow it. (Emily was alive and on the scene by the time any deed doing had happened, of course, which, in her opinion, made it far worse. She can’t really remember her dad’s sad Alexandria bachelor apartment, but there’s a picture of her in it, sitting happily on Mulder’s knee on that very same couch. Whether it was taken before or after the couch was besmirched remains unclear to her. Why couldn’t her parents have been relatively normal people who got together before they started to raise a whole-ass child together and also why couldn’t they have had the decency to limit their sexual activities to beds? She loves them both very, very much, but she has come to resent this particular couch and the suspicion it makes her feel towards all of the house’s other surfaces.)
“What were you even doing down here?” Emily wrinkles her nose. It’s not that it smells bad in here, it’s just that it looks like it should.
Will sighs. “I was looking for a book.”
His sister lifts her brows. Will is not exactly known for being a voracious reader, nor for sharing tastes with their dad.
“You remember that one book of creepy folktales about like… cryptids and stuff? That Dad used to read us when we were too young and Mom would find out and scold him but we could always tell she was trying not to smile?”
“You were too young, I was like 13.” She smiles. “But yeah. I was old enough that it should have felt uncool to let him read to me, but it was fun because you both got so into it. And because Mom pretended to hate it.”
“Exactly!” Will turns to the bookshelf. “Since getting back here, I’ve been feeling nostalgic, so I started looking for that book. But I couldn’t remember the name, and then I saw this one.” He lays his finger on a wide, old-looking gilt-edged volume that’s titled Spooky Tales from the Beyond. “I didn’t remember it looking like this, but it was close enough that I was curious. And when I tried to look at it…”
As Will pulls the book out from the shelf, there’s a faint click. The book only comes out about halfway, but the entire bookcase creaks and swings forward.
“No way!” Emily’s hand flies to cover her open mouth. “Dad has a secret door?”
“Yeah. Which is pretty on the nose, honestly, but.” Will blows out a breath, presses his lips together, and turns the flashlight on his iPhone on. “It’s… concerning, in here.” He pushes into the dark space behind the bookcase and fumbles around until he finds the pull-chain to the light. Emily steps in behind him, her eyes wide as she takes in the hidden room.
It’s at least as big as the den itself. Other than the dim bare bulb above them, there appear to be some old-school desk lamps scattered around, currently turned off. A poster of a UFO that says, “I WANT TO BELIEVE” holds pride of place above a battered, coffee cup-ringed oak desk. The drop ceiling is inexplicably riddled with pencils. There are a couple of rolling desk chairs, one of which has been duct-taped where its pleather seat has cracked open.
Emily glances at the walls, which are completely covered in corkboard. Every square inch of the corkboard is, in turn, thickly patinaed with what can only be described as a Murder Wall.
“Jesus,” she says, taking in the push pins and yarn connections and photographs, a number of them depicting what certainly look like crime scenes. “Is Dad trying to catch a serial killer?” She pauses, grimacing at some particularly gruesome photos. “Is Dad a serial killer??”
“It does beg the question,” Will replies darkly.
Emily trails a finger along the papers on the desk, then leans over one. “Wait. Will.” She examines the paper, squinting. “This is Mom’s writing,” she says. “And you know how she used to do forensic pathology stuff, forever ago.”
They exchange a look of abject sibling horror, the kind of laden look that can accomplish more than an entire conversation between two people who didn’t grow up together ever could. To imagine Dad hidden away in a secret basement bunker monomaniacally wrapping the walls in color-coded yarn is troubling, certainly, but at least it’s on brand. To imagine Mom not only consenting to enter such a space but actively participating in it sends a simultaneous chill down both of their spines.
Once their mother has been invoked, though, they can see her everywhere. One of her favorite cardigans is draped carefully over the untaped desk chair. There’s a very organized-looking stack of papers on a hard-won clear corner of the chaotic desk. A pair of her old slippers — not her current pair but a well-weathered pair from a few years ago — are tucked under the desk. And in one corner, there’s a filing cabinet with her neat handwriting on all of the labels. Worst of all, they can clearly see some of the embarrassing post-it notes their parents leave for each other, the ones with the flirty little back-and-forth jokes and quippy love notes on them. It’s bad enough to find them in the bathroom whenever they visit, but it’s far worse to find them on the Murder Wall, stuck absently amidst all the gore.
Will reads one and recoils. Emily moves to read it as well, assuming it’s a new piece of shocking evidence, but Will holds her off. “Save yourself,” he begs her, and pretends to gag. “It’s one of the horny ones, I fear.”
Emily presses her palm into her forehead and closes her eyes, then looks at Will. “Are our parents secretly murderers?” She runs both of her hands up over her temples as she stares at him.
“Or possibly worse, do our parents have a true crime podcast?” Will’s attempt at lightening the mood falls flat, and he and Emily just look at each other for a long beat, neither one knowing what comes next.
There’s a creak behind them and they both turn.
Their mom and dad loom in the doorway to the secret room. Their mom’s hair has gone from a vibrant copper to a paler, almost peachy ginger as the years have passed. Her hair, her chunky black glasses, and her excellent bone structure have combined to enhance her easy, natural elegance as she ages. Mulder has his arm slung around Scully’s waist, and she’s tucked herself right into him, the way she always does. Scully’s lips are pressed together, sucked into her mouth as she’s prone to do in mildly tense situations, but her eyes have the tiniest spark of amusement in them. Mulder looks down at her, flush with what can only be parental pride and the anticipation of an imminent opportunity to infodump. His crow’s feet all crinkle as he says, “Well, we knew this day would come, honey. They grow up so fast.”
Scully only shakes her head up at him, not unfondly, and sighs. “I’ll get the NDAs.”
“When my card declines in therapy,” Will says with a loud sigh, glancing up mid-signature, “they’re going to pull out the NDA my mother made me sign.”
“Don’t be such a drama llama.” Mulder has always been tickled by the slang the kids drag home, or whatever little he manages to scrape up and then usually misapply from pop culture and the internet. The ones that strike his fancy, he never lets go of, to everyone else’s general chagrin.
Scully rolls her eyes, though at her son or at her husband, only she knows. “It’s for your own protection, William. And to emphasize how incredibly serious all of this is.”
Emily is squinting at her own NDA, reading it line by line with the thoroughness instilled in her by her mother. “There’s a lot in here. I thought NDAs were mainly for sleeping with celebrities.”
Scully levels a long hard look at her. “Have you signed an NDA before, Emily?” It’s her Inquisition Voice, thankfully not heard often since high school, but still disturbingly effective considering Emily will turn 30 this year and is married with a child.
Emily snorts. “Mom! Nooo. No no no no no. I just read a lot of One Direction fanfic on tumblr in my formative years.”
“Checks out.” Will cackles, then, when his mother’s severe eyes cut to him, attempts to turn it into a cough.
“I’m pretty sure some of those were words,” Mulder says, blithe in the face of his ignorance.
“Besides,” Emily says airily, signing her name on the line, “if I had, I wouldn’t be able to tell you about it.”
Scully simply blinks.
They can all agree that when it comes to family, there are some things it’s better not to know.
“Tell me why,” Will says, holding up his signed NDA, “I shouldn’t just rip this up.” He really does have stage presence, even when the stage is only their kitchen table.
Mulder rubs his hands together, like he’s been anticipating this for their entire lives, and grins. “Because what we’re about to share with you is information so classified that even today only a fraction of the staff of the Federal Bureau of Investigation has access to it.”
Scully inhales sharply and shoots him one of her patented Really, Mulder? looks, but it definitely gets the kids’ attention.
Will and Emily exchange a glance and pass in their signed NDAs.
All cradling cups of green tea, the Scully-Mulders hold a family meeting at the kitchen table for the first time in at least seven years.
“Wait,” Emily says, after the fundamentals have been laid out. “I thought Dad did some boring government job before he taught at Georgetown. And that Mom switched from forensic pathology to internal medicine.”
“I did,” Mulder says, “and your mother did, although I think you invented the ‘boring’ part on your own. All of our credentials are real. But we also logged a lot of years with the FBI, and we spent most of our time back at the Bureau working as field agents on —“
“Anomalous cases,” their mother cuts in, because who knows how their father would describe it.
“Called The X-Files.”
“You always told us you used to be ‘government workers.’” Emily carves out the quotation marks with her hands. She’s inherited the Inquistion Voice, it turns out.
Her mother gives the tiniest of shrugs and doesn’t meet her eyes. “We were.”
“Well yes, technically, but you definitely said it in a way that implied something oppressively mundane. And you’re telling us that the whole time you were, what? Chasing aliens? Hunting vampires?? For the FBI???”
“We’ve only dealt with vampires a handful of times,” Mulder says patiently, evidently comfortable with a lifestyle where that’s a reasonable sentence. “But yes: extraterrestrial life, cryptids, unknown lifeforms, abductions, anything seemingly paranormal or unexplainable, telekinesis, spontaneous human combustion” — his natural ebullience builds with each phenomenon he names, and he only gets louder and more animated as he goes on — “poltergeists, previously undiscovered pathologies and viruses, occult cases, sentient computers, secret programs, humanoid worms in the sewer system—”
“Mulder.” Scully wields her time-honored side eye at him, silently begging him to bring it back around.
“And so on and so forth!” He claps his hands together with a sort of cheerful finality. “Everything that couldn’t be readily explained with conventional approaches and methods, anything that was being covered up. We pulled back as much as we could once we had you, Em, once you were out of the hospital and with us. We shifted gears and tried to take only the really critical cases but.” He spreads his hands wide in front of himself. “It was impossible for me to completely walk away from it, and I kept dragging Scully along with me.”
Scully huffs out an impatient breath. “Honestly, Mulder. You didn’t drag me anywhere. As if I’ve ever in my life gone anywhere except exactly where I want to be.” She rests her hand on his thigh, and he immediately takes her hand and squeezes it.
Emily smiles. Surnames are her parents’ oldest love language.
“Eventually,” their dad continues, “we were able to wrap up some… enormous, complicated cases I can’t really speak to except to say they were connected to massive government conspiracy. Even the NDA has its limits. Anyway, when those wound down, I started teaching at the university and your mother went into internal medicine, both of us on a part-time basis. We worked it out with the FBI to go freelance on the X-Files with the rest of our time and only take on isolated regional cases, sometimes occasionally consult on bigger stuff if it was important enough. And that’s where the basement office 2.0 came into play. We’re both above the Bureau’s mandatory retirement age, now, but we still investigate on our own. Nothing too wild, just a case or two a month, for fun.”
“Wait,” Will says slowly. “Is this why you always had so many random, urgent, unexplainable business trips at the same time as each other when we were kids?”
“Oh my god.” Emily’s eyes glaze as she experiences galaxy brain. Dozens of impromptu sleepovers at Grandma Maggie’s or Aunt Ellen’s gain new context. “That time you were both twenty minutes late to my dance recital! And I was so mad because you got there just barely in time for my solo.”
Mulder nods, attempting to remain grave but also clearly enjoying the hell out of this. “Sorry, honey, that was a close one. Your mother was elbows deep in an Ozark Howler earlier that day.”
Scully clears her throat and pushes her glasses up the bridge of her nose. “Autopsy,” she clarifies, as if there were any other plausible reason she might have been halfway inside of whatever an Ozark Howler was.
Emily, who shares her mother’s pragmatism and love of logic and inquiry enough that she became a high school biology teacher, stares into the depths of her mug, pondering the best approach. “And you believe in all of this?” she asks her mom, being careful to keep her voice neutral.
Her mom lifts her hands and spreads them in front of her: who’s to say? “I don’t believe in all of anything,” she says, fidgeting with her cross pendant. “But I do believe in the scientific method, and I know that most of the research-backed knowledge we possess today was at one point not understandable, to the point of seeming like magic, miracle, or myth. I go into every single case focused only on the facts and the evidence. I don’t take for granted that anything is true. But I trust the scientific process, which can be surprisingly messy, and I trust your father. And what is true is that after decades of doing this work, I’ve seen a number of things firsthand that I would never have thought possible, previously.”
Emily nods. “It’s a lot to process. But I respect that.”
Scully pauses, several emotions at war on her face. “Em. Willy-boy. We wanted to tell you sooner than this, so badly, but everything was classified to such a high degree that we just couldn’t, legally. And when you were children… we felt the priority was making things as stable for you both as we could.” She closes her eyes, looking a bit pinched and pained, and Mulder’s arm wraps around her to squeeze her shoulder. “We had contingency plans, for if you found out, then or now. Hence the NDAs. I’m really, truly sorry that we’re only telling you the whole story now. We tried to thread as much truth through everything as was possible while still honoring confidentiality and keeping you both safe.”
Emily takes a deep breath, blinking hard. “What you told me when I was a teenager. About where I come from. Was that true?”
Scully hesitates. “It’s true, like I told you, that before your conception, I was kidnapped,” she says, “with gaps in my memory, and that I didn’t know you existed until you were four years old. It’s true that I’m your biological mother, and that the evidence suggests that you were created with ova extracted from my uterus when I was abducted. And I told you everything I know about the adoptive parents you were with before we met you.”
She pauses for a moment and inhales, seeming to gird herself. Her eyes cut over to Mulder, who squeezes her hand to show his support. Emily watches her mom’s pensive face and tries to remember to breathe.
“But it’s also true that all of it was tangled up in a secret government program, one that we learned was attempting to… augment human test subjects with extraterrestrial DNA in order to weaponize them. It’s part of why you were so sick, when you were little. We were able to create an antidote, and ultimately we got the program exposed and shut down.” Scully rubs at her eyes, and Mulder pulls her half into his lap, holding her as close as he can manage. “I know that that’s… shocking. A lot to take in. We can get into the details,” she says quietly, “on another day. But I need you to know, Em. Everything else I told you then is 100% true. You were always so wanted, by me and by your father.” She casts Mulder a watery smile, then turns it on Emily and Will. “You’re both our miracle babies.”
She holds out both of her hands. Emily takes one and Will takes the other. Mulder stretches his free hand out to grip Emily’s arm, his eyes wet and brimming over. There isn’t a dry eye at the table. Eventually Emily draws back and blinks away her tears.
“I… I’m probably going to have a lot of questions, Mom. When all of this sinks in. But, I love you too. And to be honest, I don’t know when the right time would have been to tell us that you were ghost-hunting federal agents. I know you weren’t allowed to share it and I’m not mad that you didn’t before now.”
“It wasn’t usually ghosts.” Her dad is clearly eager to talk shop. “Only sometimes. And even then, ‘ghosts’ as a category is reductive—”
“I always thought,” Will mused, “that Dad just liked all that stuff in a normal way.”
“Me? Normal?” Mulder clutches his heart. “You wound me.”
Scully grins and snorts, and Mulder turns to look at her with the world’s most affectionate smirk playing over his lips. The sheer degree of their love for each other could be mildly distressing for their children sometimes, especially back when they had been teens or whenever it manifested in sex couches and horny post-it notes, but honestly, it was also pretty great.
Will rubs his hand over his chin, considering. “I meant more like a… speculative-conversations-about-Mothman way. A get-high-and-riff-about-aliens-while-listening-to-Radiohead way.”
“Nothing’s ever been that casual for me, unfortunately.” There’s still good humor in Mulder’s voice, but he’s starting to sound exhausted enough that his charm is no longer fully masking all of the ways in which he looks his age. Scully takes his hand in hers and rubs her thumb over it reassuringly. It revives him enough that he steers them back into a joke. “Your mother on the other hand…” He waggles his eyebrows and lifts an imaginary joint to his lips.
“Moooooom,” Will says, salaciously. “Tell us about your personal relationship with ✨cannabis✨!”
Emily can practically hear the sparkle emojis.
Scully bites back a grin. “That’s beyond the scope of the NDA, I’m afraid, so I take the fifth.”
Their mom pushes back from the table and stands up. Will looks beseechingly at Emily.
“Oh come on, Mom,” she tries. “We’re all adults now. It’s legal most places. You can tell us.” Emily’s smiling wide, surprised but not shocked. Below the very dignified exterior, her mom has always had hidden depths and an impressive rebellious streak.
But Scully simply shakes her head, grinning wickedly, and washes her teacup. “Security culture,” she says, flashing her brows.
Mulder hops up. “Don’t hold out on them, Scullayyyyy,” he calls as he slinks over to her, stepping behind her at the sink and wrapping her up in his arms. “Spill the tea!” — Will winces at that but his dad is only emboldened — “The kids deserve the truth.”
Scully giggles as he rocks her back and forth, then she turns in his arms to kiss him. No sooner has she pulled back than she’s whipping him across the butt with her dish towel, locker room style, and he’s seeking retribution.
“Groooossss,” Emily hollers, using her hands around her mouth to amplify her voice, like she’s twelve again. But she and Will are both grinning.
Their parents eventually return to the table, still panting and laughing. The tea that’s left has gone cold. The conversation turns to logistics.
“Which one of you is picking Sam up tomorrow?” Emily asks. Her parents very generously provide free childcare two days a week.
“We both are,” Scully says, smiling softly at Mulder.
He nods and his whole face lights up. “We’re gonna make a whole day of it.” Though he’s almost bashful about it at times, Mulder loves being a grandpa. On the day Sam was born, when Emily had motioned him over to see the name she had written on the birth certificate, he had openly wept. When Emily watches him play with baby Sam on the living room floor, making ridiculous faces just to make her giggle, it feels like nature is healing.
“How long are you here this time?” Emily asks her brother.
Will sighs. “At least a month. I’ve got some auditions in New York in the next couple of weeks, though, so it just depends how they go.”
“Well, break all the legs! But don’t be a stranger,” Emily says. “We should do at least a couple family dinners while you’re here. Come see your niece!”
Emily has to leave to get back to Samantha, so they all migrate to the mudroom to see her off. Her mom hugs her close for a beat longer than she usually does, and Emily squeezes back just as hard. Her dad pulls her under his chin and pats her shoulder a few times.
He’s a very sweet man, at the end of the day, and Emily is deeply relieved that he’s not a serial killer, even if he does have a Murder Wall.
Will steps out the back door with her, and they walk far enough into the yard together that they’re out of earshot of their parents.
“Em.” He shoves his hands in his pockets, looks down at his feet. “Do you think it’s all real?”
Emily considers. “Have you ever known Mom to tolerate a single ounce of bullshit?”
Will sits with it. “No. Definitely not.”
“If it were just Dad,” Emily says, “I’d believe that he believes it, you know? But because it’s also Mom, and because of how she explained her perspective on it, I think I do believe that most of it is true.”
“Yeah, me too.” Will nods. “Is it just me or did it seem like he kind of wanted us to find out?”
She laughs. “Oh, definitely. Are you kidding? He’s never going to shut up about it. You’re going to be hearing about cryptids all month long.”
Will snorts, but then his smile wavers. “Do you think she wanted us to find out?”
Emily sighs. “I think Mom’s glad we know now. Or not glad, exactly, more like relieved, I guess? But where I think Dad was mainly excited to finally share it all with us, I think it sort of… hurt Mom, not to tell us? But also hurts her now, to know that knowing it might hurt us?”
Will considers this, his eyes sad. “Yeah, that, uh. That seems right.”
“Be nice to them.” Emily claps a hand on his shoulder.
“Rude,” Will scoffs. “When am I not nice?” But he’s known for his caustic wit within what is already possibly the most sarcastic family in North America, so they both chuckle.
“I just mean,” Emily continues, when the mood between them sobers again, “I think they’ve been through more than we know. I get the sense that they… they did a lot to protect us, I think. Shielded us from stuff. It’s a testament to how good of a job they did that we never even knew.”
When she looks back at her brother, his eyes are soft.
“Are you going to be okay?” Will asks, with total sincerity. She knows what he means — the adoption stuff.
“I am not exactly ready to process the phrase ‘extraterrestrial DNA’,” Emily says, “but yeah. I’ll be okay. Mom and I will get lunch soon and… we’ll get there, you know? I know that they got me out of a shitty situation, like actually saved my life, and I know they both love me. I’ll definitely need to set up some extra sessions with my therapist and have to figure out how to talk about it while skirting the NDA but… I’m okay, I promise. For real.”
“For real for real?”
“For real for real.”
She holds out her hand and she and Will perform their elaborate secret sibling handshake. On the last part, he pulls her into a hug. “I’ll come see you and Sam this week, I promise.”
Emily smiles. “Okay, good.”
They both turn and look back at the kitchen window, where their mom is framed washing the rest of the teacups. Their dad, probably on drying duty, stands behind her and smirks, whispering something in her ear that makes her laugh and throw soap suds at him. He grins, and then he pulls her hair to the side so he can kiss her neck.
“You’d better get back in there,” Emily says, “before they forget you’re home and start doing it on the kitchen counter.”
“Ew, Emily, nooo.” Will grimaces at her. “Why would you manifest that?” But they both can’t help but smile as their mom bursts into laughter again, presumably at something goofy their dad just said.
They watch their parents through the window for another moment. Scully and Mulder are both beaming. Mulder spins her around and then dips her back and kisses her like it’s their honeymoon.
“You know…” Will’s voice is reticent, a little pained. “Every time I’ve said that they’re the worst, I’ve actually meant —”
Emily nods. “I know. Me too. They’re really kind of the best, huh?”
They both look back at the window, where their parents are still grinning at each other like idiots.
Will smiles at his sister. “They really are.”