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1. A month before Fox Mulder leaves the familiarity of Martha’s Vineyard for Oxford, his father sits him down for a discussion. Well, his father and the man he was raised by. It is during this very conversation that he learns that the two are not one and the same.
He’d been getting too curious, his penchant for tugging at loose ends fueled by his sister’s disappearance only growing. So Spender had sat his colleague down and pitched him an idea: tell the boy the truth and make sure he’s on the right side. Fox is a bright boy, he’d argued, he could be an asset instead of a liability.
Fox listens to them both, these two men in black with lines of hard decisions etched into their faces much too early. They tell him that his sister’s disappearance was a tragic necessity, which of course it was, to them. They tell him about the virus, about the life elsewhere that is encroaching on their planet and what exactly is being done about it. His father, the man who raised him, pats his knee and tells him he’s proud of him for taking this all like an adult, and that he’s going to be such a big help to their cause, that he can distinguish himself among the ranks of the Syndicate.
(They tell him he was lucky it was Samantha and not him. He says nothing, but bites the inside of his cheek sharply and tastes iron.)
The screened-in porch becomes cloudy with cigarette smoke as the afternoon wears on. His father, who hadn’t raised him, holds out a cigarette with his slim fingers. Fox Mulder takes it and savors the burn and sweet taste of tobacco as he draws in his first breath as a new man.
2. Eighteen-year-old Mulder goes away to Oxford feeling like the whole thing is somewhat of a formality. After all, now that he knows what cause is waiting for him back in the States, what point is there pretending to aim for anything else?
Twenty-two-year-old Mulder steps foot into Dulles International Airport with a modified worldview. He sends his trunk containing all of his worldly possessions to a hotel and makes a beeline for the State Department.
Four weeks later, Mulder steps foot into a dimly-lit office-his new office- at the CIA headquarters. His desk is empty save for a bottle of scotch and a fresh pack of Morley's, gifts from the men that put him on this path. He indulges in both that evening and unearths stacks of records and files that he now has access to, everything from Roswell to the Philadelphia Experiment to remote viewing. Project Bluebook takes him hours and hours and he savors every one of him.
And that’s how it goes for a while. He enjoys the perks of a day job where any information he could desire is available to him and does what is asked of him by his fathers. He gets good at becoming nobody when he must and becoming terrifying when there are no other options.
What Mulder doesn’t quite understand is why he feels compelled to display a framed picture of Samantha on his desk. Everyday she smiles at him, frozen in time as her body decays somewhere else.
When he can no longer bear to look at it, he turns the picture over and lets it gather dust that way.
3. What Mulder Sr. and Spender hadn’t accounted for was a shrewd FBI pathologist who put autopsy notes together like puzzle pieces. Special Agent Dana Scully keeps a record of mysterious deaths that she tells no one about. She’d learned to keep them a secret months ago after dropping a report on her superior’s desk and subsequently being called in for a disciplinary hearing for nothing in particular. It was made very clear to her then that while she worked for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, a certain kind of crime ought to be passed over.
Fine. She can’t investigate these crimes in the typical sense. That doesn’t mean she can’t investigate them at all.
Mulder notices her before the others do.
He waits as long as he can, monitors her research through discrete channels. When she gets too close to putting herself in the way of any real harm, he follows her into a parking garage intending to intimidate her so she doesn’t get killed by his peers. But she sees him first.
Stop right where you are, she shouts, turning on her heel and pointing her gun at him where he hides, I know you’ve been sent to spy on me. Now tell me who the hell you are.
The fear and desperation in her voice shake him.
She has nothing to gain from this other than bringing others to justice and her life to lose. It’s a type of bravery he might’ve had- should’ve had- all those years ago. Looking her in the eye, he knows that no intimidation tactic or threat will throw her off the quest she’s on for the truth.
Mulder throws his cigarette down and stomps it into a neat pile of ash before slowly putting his hands up.
My name is Fox Mulder. Maybe we can come to some kind of arrangement.
He knows better than anyone that there are eyes everywhere, so after some convincing, Mulder leads Scully down to the basement of the Hoover Building where he feels confident they won’t be watched.
There’s not a lot he can tell her, although Mulder is fairly sure that Scully won’t go blabbing about whatever he does say. But knowledge is potent in this world, and doling out too much at once could put a target on her back. He already feels the weight of his target making his spine creak as he whispers secrets to her in the dark between two filing cabinets.
He lets her have a ten minute start before he leaves the basement. It takes nearly that long for his heart rate to return to normal, anyways.
In her research, Scully comes across old cases with strange origins, many unsolved. Her reputation at the Bureau is a double-edged sword, for it allows her to pull enough strings to open the x-files but then plummets once word gets around that she’s investigating aliens. Her work is supported by paperwork signed with forged signatures from Mulder.
4. Mulder has some of the answers, but not all of them. He’s never been stupid enough to think that his father, his real father, would tell him everything. He does, however, have an entry into the workings of the Syndicate. And that’s a start.
(With a flick of his red pen, Scully’s name disappears from the list of impending abductions overnight.)
They find different places to meet and exchange information across town. She calls him paranoid, but the tension in her voice suggests that driving forty-five minutes out of DC puts her at ease as much as it does him.
In the middle of the night, when they tire of talking business, Mulder and Scully sit on a bench and look out at the Chesapeake Bay. She tells him about her father, a Navy Captain, which he’d already known about from his research into her life when he was strictly tracking her. But what he learns is how disillusioned Scully’s become with it all, how the girl who believed in a good country and the justness of the people running it has died. In her place sits Agent Scully, a woman who feels so jaded and scared sometimes that she’s not even sure she can trust herself.
He tells her about Samantha that night, not intending to buy pity. She reaches for his hand, anyways.
5. Careful, son, his father who had not raised him-but created him in his own image-says, his papery hands pushing Mulder against the expensive walls of his office. Stale cigarette breath fills his nostrils and makes his mouth twist in disgust.
Those who stray too far will find that all of their hard work has been for nothing. Remember who you’re working for.
That confrontation alone leaves Mulder uneasy and unsure what to do. But then Scully calls him two days later, her voice sharp but fraying on the edge of panic. He makes it to Georgetown in record time and finds one of his associates, Krycek, bleeding out from a gunshot wound to the head on Scully’s nice entryway rug.
It was him or me, Scully says, more for her benefit than Mulder’s.
They escape at three-thirty in the morning when the world is heavy and still. Scully swallows thickly and closes her apartment door for the final time. This is harder for her than it is for Mulder, who for all his connectedness in this city, feels like he’s not leaving much behind.
The sun rises as they’re getting gas somewhere in the South. Mulder pushes his sunglasses up his nose and looks at his companion who sleeps fitfully in the passenger seat of a lightly stolen car. Between the two of them they have four packed bags of clothes and essentials, a decent amount of cash, and each other. And that’s a start.