AU ficlet for the end of The Truth because William should have been there with them.
This was meant to be written for the X-Files Bingo. Then everything went to hell, and I didn't finish it in time. I've decided to finish it and put it out in the world as it is.
Tagging @today-in-fic
~
The rain patters against the roof outside, but inside, it’s quiet. Mulder barely dares to breathe too loudly, to move too quickly, to make a single mistake. He’s made too many of those already. His hand is on his son’s stomach, rising and falling with the boy’s even breathing. It’s everything he’s dreamed about these last couple of months. What kept him going.
When he closed his eyes at night, he pictured Scully and their son, just doing everyday life things. All the things he was missing. He pictured them smiling, just living. And that’s what kept him alive, too. Hoping that one day he could return, be with them again.
His son has grown into a solid form, bigger than Mulder expected. When he left, when William was only a few days old, he felt light in his hands, but took up all the room in his heart. His reddish tuft has turned a darker shade, as have his eyes. The ghost of Scully’s features is there on the boy’s face. As well as his own. They’ve always been a perfect team, working well together. Their son, however, is their masterpiece.
The bed dips and Mulder lifts his eyes from his son. Scully is smiling at him. Soft and gentle, tired but happy. Her hair is still wet, her complexion rosy from the hot water. The white fluffy robe almost swallows her. She doesn’t seem to mind. She scoots closer, on the other side of William, who sleeps through it all. Mulder watches him, curious to see if the boy wakes.
“He’s a deep sleeper,” Scully says, reading his thoughts.
“Wonder who he gets that from.” He smiles at her, and her answering smile is a balm on his beaten soul.
“He gets his appetite from you,” she says, her fingers tracing his, careful not to disturb their son. “He’ll be awake before you know it.”
“I can’t wait to get to know him,” he whispers, the words feeling heavy on his tongue. His son doesn’t remember him. When he opens his eyes to look at him, he’ll see nothing but a stranger. For Mulder, holding him when he was a few days old, it meant the world. He missed everything in between then and now. How can he ever make up for it?
“You will,” Scully says. The voice of reason, the sound of hope.
But is there hope for them? For any of them? With what he found out, the future has an expiration date. The date’s set and he can’t do anything about it. Neither of them can. He looks at his son, sleeping peacefully. Unaware of what’s happening around him. He lives in certainty that his parents will keep him safe. Mulder promises it, manifests it. They will keep William safe. His eyes find Scully’s. There’s no resentment; she did all of this on her own. She kept going. Maybe, he thinks. Maybe there is a sliver of hope when she’s by his side.
“What are you thinking?” she asks him in a soft voice. He’s not ready to voice it yet. His fears, his hopes. No matter how much she deserves to hear both.
“I’m thinking… I’m thinking about the last time we sat like this. When our journey started.”
“You told me about Samantha.” Scully puts a hand over his and he’s back there in that hotel room, nine years ago.
“You thought I was crazy.”
“I still think you’re crazy.” She smiles at him, and he laughs.
“Did you think we’d…,” he trails off. Of course she didn’t think this is where they’d end up. Him on the run from the government. Her by his side. Their son, too. Mulder touches the boy’s hand, needing to assure himself that he’s real.
“Did I think we’d be here?” Scully asks softly. “I couldn’t have imagined any of it, Mulder.” He nods at her. “But I’ve told you before,” she says, touching his cheek. “I wouldn’t change a single day. And I’m not giving up. We’re not giving up.” She emphasizes the we.
“You and me, huh?” He grins. “And William. This is all I want, Scully. All we have is each other. I don’t care if we… I won’t give up. I can promise you that. You and Will. But all I want is for us to have a life. Together.”
“Then we want the same thing.” He reaches over, touches her lip. She kisses his thumb without taking her eyes off of his. The determination in her expression fuels him. His spirit. She’s the love of his life, the reason he keeps going. A smile cracks over her face, like the sun breaking through clouds.
“I love you,” he whispers.
“Good,” she replies. “Because I love you too. But we need to sleep if we want to save the world.”
He won’t remind her that she’s already saved the world. His, anyway. Instead, he just nods. Careful not to wake William, he scoots closer, wrapping his arm around the two people who make up his whole cosmos. He hears her sigh and tightens his hold on her. Tomorrow they will have to make a plan. They don’t know where they’re going yet. They don’t know how it will work. If it will. But there will be a tomorrow.
“Maybe there’s hope,” he says, looking at her. The words finally slipping from his lips.
“I know there is,” she replies after a beat. He watches her, soaks up as much of this moment as he can. Exhaustion tugs at him, and before he knows it, his eyes drift closed. He falls asleep with a newfound confidence that they can save the world after all.
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Agent Harrison is just a fangirl of the earlier seasons of the x-files and a fangirl of Scully and Mulder specifically. Like: "If Agent Mulder were here he'd keep going", yeahh absolutely he would. She knows it, we know it, they know it. Everybody knows it and we're just being reminded of his absence.
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tbh my biggest txf fandom pet peeve is how often people tell new fans where to stop watching or when the show "gets bad" as if its totally objective. not only will it maybe make fans miss something they would personally enjoy but it also just doesnt make you super excited to... actually wanna watch when people are saying you WILL eventually hate it, whether they say its just the revival seasons or everything after season 4.
like why am I seeing people who are like 2 seasons in being told to skip iwtb? just let them watch it and decide for themself if it sucks or not. 😭
If a new viewer goes to the trouble to seek out an older show -- one with 218 episodes plus 2 feature films -- for gods sake don't discourage them! Encourage them to watch the whole thing, including when to watch the movies, and let them make up their own minds.
If I had listened to a bunch of folks on the subreddit, I would've passed on the revival altogether. But I watched it anyway, and now Revival MSR is so dear to me.💖
one of the hardest things to learn as a depressed former Gifted Kid™ is that half-assed is better than nothing. take the 50%, 40%, even 20% job. scrubbing your face is better than not taking a shower at all. picking up your clothes is better than never cleaning. nibbling on some bread is better than starving.
DO THINGS HALFWAY. NOW YOU’RE 100% BETTER OFF THAN YOU WERE BEFORE.
One of my college professors used to say “anything worth doing is worth doing poorly.” I didn’t understand that for years because I didn’t do anything poorly, I couldn’t do anything poorly, I had to Do Everything Perfectly.
But brushing your teeth for 30 seconds is better than not brushing them at all when that 2 minutes seems exhausting. Doing ten minutes of yoga is better than 10 minutes of sitting when 30 minutes of cardio sounds impossible. Changing my clothes is good when a whole shower is impossible. Standing on the porch for a few minutes is worth it after being in the house for three straight days because I don’t have the energy to go anywhere.
Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly… because doing it poorly is better than not doing it.
You must understand that perfectionism isn’t striving for excellence, it’s a crippling fear of being flawed and therefore worth abandonment or punishment. It’s a kind of psychological avoidance. You’re avoiding fear and failure , not embracing the thing you want to do bc if it was about the thing you want to do you’d be fine with partial victory.
HEY. OKAY. SO. I went off in the groupchat this morning a little and I think I want to say this in public to ALL of my fellow Fandom Elders.
I have been a fangirl online for thirty years now, and YOU KNOW WHAT? I'm tired of my peers apologetically calling themselves ancient grandma fandom mummy hags!
It's not weird that we are here! There are SO MANY OF US! We're not outliers, we're not oddballs. We are occupying a space we CREATED and we are still fucking here, having fun with all our younger online friends, which is COOL AND GOOD and NOT EMBARRASSING ACTUALLY. It's fucking rad.
Look. We *built* online fandom, comrades! We built it with Angelfire and Geocities and the fucking telephone cables we unhooked from our phones to plug into our enormous, boxy desktop computers to suffer through glacial download speeds that today's children can't even fathom. I think we should all agree to stop apologizing for being here when this is our fucking house.
An excellent sentiment (not mine):
To all of my beloved young friends - remember this when you get older. You don't need to grow out of fandom. Who the fuck cares if it's cringe? Childlike joy is something to CELEBRATE, NOT SOMETHING TO BURY AND HIDE!
Fandom costs no money! Fandom doesn't require gas mileage or plane tickets! Fandom promotes human connections! The world is cold and miserable and full of pain. Don't fucking give up simple things that fill your heart with joy just because you feel like you should now that you have arbitrarily grown 'too old' to enjoy them.
you know what, as someone who wrote kirk/spock with ballpoint pen in her spiral notebook and later was a MSR on listserv, i will ABSOLUTELY accept "fandom upperclassmen" over fandom grandma, since i'm not even anyone's MOM except the cat. (also it makes me think of x-men first class and i like the idea of being sir patrick or sir ian)
You know what, I'm okay with "fandom elder." I am an elder. I found fandom in the mid-/late 90s -- MSR on alt.tv.x-files.creative, Ephemeral, and Gossamer. My first website was on Angelfire, next was on Geocities, Tripod after that I think. I was around for the Shipping Wars (Shippers vs. Noromos) and the No Mulder No Watch folks after season 7.
I'm Generation Jones, a term I found on Reddit. Late Boomer/early GenX. I'm 3 years older than David Duchovny, 4 years younger than Anthony Stewart Head. I was an active fic writer 1999-2005, then Life Happened.
In 2024 I was back home, stagnating creatively. My elderly dad was living with me, diagnosed with dementia and declining. I was balancing a full-time job, taking care of Dad (with some help from my self-employed sisters), sinking deeper into a decade-long chronic depression. I started watching The X-Files again in the evenings when Dad would start to sundown, and good lord, did that show still ROCK. I started watching more, found the X-Files and X-Files Fanfic subreddits, found out about Tumblr, and most importantly started feeling like I wanted to write again.
Dad died in April 2025. I posted my first new story in 20 years three months later. I posted all my old fics to AO3 and I'm still writing new stuff -- will be posting a new fic hopefully next week.
I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say that fandom -- specifically THIS fandom, The X-Files fandom -- saved my life.
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It has been literally years since I've done a collaboration project with a fellow X-Phile creator, and so I'm grateful I had the opportunity to do so with fan-writer @xfnessy for one of her stories.
Nessy, thank you for the opportunity to work with you and thank you for the endless patience over the many months it took for me to complete this project.
[ Full drawing on AO3 ]
Read "She Comes First" on AO3 here! Please make sure to comment and support Nessy's lovely work!!
I look at pictures of Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny. Tumblr responds by showing me pictures of random naked people.
Dudes. I'm ace. Aegosexual, actually. Just because I like looking at certain people doesn't mean I like looking at some rando posing in front of their bathroom mirror.
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I love all of these little stories, but there's a special place in my heart for the ones like this, that are done in a different format. Awesome, inventive. 💖
Today’s the day, fam: the unveiling of the 2026 MSR Bingo Challenge Card!
For a plain text version of the bingo card: MSR Bingo Challenge 2026
HOW TO PLAY
Simply pick a row, column, or diagonal line on the board and write stories for those squares.
You can write several short pieces or one longer story that combines multiple prompts.
The bingo element is meant as a fun challenge, but if you don’t want to write a fic with several prompts (or don’t have the time), no worries. Pick however many squares you’d like, in whatever combination suits your fancy!
*** I Want to Believe (Free Space): This is your chance to personalize the board! Maybe you want to include some domestic bliss in the Unremarkable House, explore an AU, or include a prompt not on the card. Do with it as you like! ***
POSTING:
Post finished fics to the AO3 Collection (please read through the Rules before posting).
Authors are encouraged to share their fics when they post to AO3 on their socials!
Fic submissions will remain open indefinitely, but to be included in the official Challenge Master Fic List post on the socials, your stories must be submitted to the AO3 collection by Sunday, 6/28.
Questions? Message me.
Happy writing!
