Archelaus
Episode Two, Season One: Archelaus (2)
Writer: Samantha Wil
Series Index
“Archelaus”
There’s a universal theory that heroes die young and become legends or live long enough to become the villain of the story. A hero does not star in a legend as merely a human who crosses through the veils of darkness to slay the evils of the world with only faith and courage on their side. No, heroes are bestowed a gift of great power at birth, or perhaps even conception, that enables them to conquer the demiurgic forces. All heroes are thrown outward to the malignant spheres to touch the darkness, to engulf themselves into its snarled hold. It cannot be helped nor stopped. The trusty hero begins to understand that he doesn’t just battle the obscurity of the world but also battles himself. Thus, they will die along with their prey or they will become the very thing that they have hunted.
Perhaps, not all tragic hero legends have to end that way. Maybe all the hero needs is their other portion in life, their soul mate. She is the gem while he is the rough. She balances him out, tips the scales back to even when his arrogance raises to a perilous level. She is his constant, his touchstone. She keeps him honest, true, and just. With them together, the puzzle can be complete and the dangers waned into mythic proportions.
Before a hero’s outcome can be determined, the call to adventure must be marked by a herald. A rite of passage etched in stone as a new dawn awakens. The familiarities of past life seem to be swept under the rug as the time to pass through new thresholds presents itself.
William stood there just staring at Gibson Praise. Super Soldiers. Now that they had a name, they seemed even more powerful and more real than before. In fact, just the name itself made an arctic chill run down Will’s spine. Perhaps, what was more unsettling was that this man, Gibson Praise, worked with Fox Mulder and Dana Scully. The names immediately clinched at his chest, made it hard for him to breathe let alone think straight.
“F-Fox Mulder and Dana Scully?” questioned Will.
“They didn’t want to give you up. Scully knew it was the only way to protect you.”
It was too much. It was all too damn much. Will had been searching for his parents since he was eleven years old with some wild fantasy that they would be able to sweep away the dark cobwebs of his life. He yearned for them for years to secure their arms around his shoulders and tell him exactly what he wanted to hear - that he wasn’t crazy and didn’t need psychologist after psychologist. He needed them to tell him that monsters and aliens existed.
“Where are they?” the words slipped out of Will’s lips as though he were a frightened child.
“I can’t tell you that.”
“You can’t tell me or you won’t?” he demanded.
His muscles shuddered beneath his skin. He couldn’t control his shaking for the life of him. Every being of his body felt weak, downtrodden. The newest revelation of who his parents were was the biggest news he’d heard in a long time.
“They want to see you, William, but they’re afraid that it might make matters worse for you.”
“They’re my parents!” his voice vibrated in the dead of the night.
Everything seemed to have been turned upside and he felt dizzy as though he’d just got off the Round Up or some other nauseating spin ride at some county fair. It felt like waves of anxiety, incredibility, and relief all washed over him at once. He couldn’t separate his feelings, couldn’t pinpoint one as true.
“I’ll tell them you’re okay,” Praise said steadily as he took a few steps backwards.
“The hell you will!”
Rushing forward, Will’s hand shot out and gripped the older man by the elbow. He wasn’t letting Praise get away without telling him where his parents were - his parents who held all the answers to his screwed up life. Names weren’t enough. He needed faces, voices, and personalities to go along with the insignificant etymology of their Christian names.
“I’ll tell them you want to see them,” Praise spoke calmly as he wrenched his arm from Will’s grasp.
“Not good enough.”
Will’s jaw clenched tightly. Everything seemed to be slipping away from his grasp. The truth has never been so tangible before. He could nearly taste the small victory. Except this man wasn’t budging, and Will slowly allowed his deep seeded doubts to fill his already fogged mind. His mind was a million miles away for only seconds. When he looked up to plead with Praise one last time, he had disappeared as though into thin air.
-
FBI Headquarters
November 18, 2030
Brody sat tensely behind Will’s desk in the basement office of the FBI. The chair swiveled from side to side for the past hour and a half. For some reason, Brody expected Will to be a man who was always on time, impeccable, never late. Except, he was more than just a little late that Monday morning. He was officially fashionably late to work. When the two hour mark rolled around, Will stumbled through the door to the office looking worse for wear. The playful tease on the top of her tongue was swallowed back after taking one look at her partner. Dark smudges resided under bloodshot eyes. The familiar stubble graced hollowed cheeks and made his pale skin illuminate in the fluorescent lighting.
“Up,” Will rasped out.
Brody jumped from the chair and stepped aside to allow Will access to his desk. Immediately, he booted up the computer and started to type away with lightning fast fingers.
“I finished the report on our missing John Doe and flying mystery man,” commented Brody.
“Good for you, Agent Brody,” Will spoke dryly. “If you’re looking for a pat on the back, don’t expect one.”
She faltered slightly at the harsh words. She had spent her entire Sunday coming up with a report to file that respected the X-Files at hand but didn’t make either of them appear to be crazy loons in need of a straightjacket. She had spent agonizing hours drafting a report that would have taken her an hour tops in the past.
“Don’t you want to read it?” she inquired.
“I trust that you put in the report what you wanted to, Agent Brody.”
The words held a bitter tone to them. He was acting like he was when they first met - uninterested and cold. Somewhere during their first case, Will had warmed up to her, told her about his dark past pains and tribulations. It seemed like all of that had been washed out the window and replaced with curtness.
“You know, Agent Van de Kamp, I don’t know what to make of you,” she said in a cool tone. Will merely just grunted. “One minute you’re cold and the next you’re hot. One second I think you might actually respect the fact that we have to work together and then the next you’re acting as though I’m the bubonic plague. I’m trying to decide whether you’re a Harvey Dent or if you simply have dissociative identity disorder.”
He glanced up at her, his nose wrinkled slightly at the comparisons. Comprehension crossed his face, however, as he gave her a weak smile as though to apologize. He looked as though he were just barely hanging on. Honestly, he looked like hell warmed over.
“I don’t flip a coin to decide whether someone lives or dies nor do I suffer from a psychological disorder,” he said halfheartedly.
“I just meant that you… change so easily. One minute you’re a perfectly decent guy and the next its like this switch flips and you’re…” she trailed off.
“I met an informant last night,” he spoke softly. “He claimed to work with my biological parents but he wouldn’t tell me anything about them except for their names.”
“So you’re looking them up now?”
“Yeah, except their files are locked. I don’t have clearance to view them.”
Brody ran through her list of FBI contacts that she had who might have clearance to access the files. One named popped out in her mind. Cullen Faraday had been her first partner when she entered the violent crime unit. He’d been a senior member of the team and somehow round up with a rookie as a partner. Their partnership was brief, but he had always made a point to keep in contact with her as well as invite her to investigate the bigger cases.
“I might know someone,” she told him.
“Do you trust him?”
A hopeful gleam shone brightly in Will’s eyes as a wide grin broke across his pallid face. Cullen was never one to follow direct protocol when he could help it. If he could cut corners to save a life, he would damn well do it. He was so widely liked that he was never ratted out.
“I do. His name’s Cullen Faraday.”
“Cullen Faraday? Isn’t he next to run VCU when Glockner retires?” he questioned with a deep frown.
“Yeah, we were… partners. I’m sure you already knew that when you read my file.”
“Yeah, well, it said you worked with him before, but anyone who has ever worked VCU has worked with Faraday. I mean, he’s a freakin’ social butterfly.”
Brody frowned. Will seemed dubious about the fact that Cullen would help him. Except, Cullen would give his right arm to help anyone he could. He’d easily risk his life for a fellow agent, for a complete stranger.
“Do you not like Cullen?”
“I never said I didn’t like the guy. He’s a nice guy, friendly, and eerily uppity for someone who works on violent crimes. I just don’t think he’d do me any favors.”
“Why?” she pressed.
“Faraday and I… we had this huge fight when I first entered the bureau. I thought we should have done something one way, he thought the other way. He was pissed that some second year rookie was telling him he was flat out wrong. We actually fought in the conference room in front of the whole team. He wrote a report about how I was insubordinate, not a team player, and should be considered to be a paper pusher. I mean, he grazed over the whole fact that his plan backfired and killed several people while mine would have saved more lives. You know, no biggie, right?” he said sardonically. “So, I transferred out of VCU because the guy was a dick with a capital ‘D’. Went into criminal investigation as a profiler and never got a Christmas card from the guy.”
Crossing her arms over her chest, Brody studied Will’s face carefully. Faraday was a good agent and a damn fine guy, but he was as stubborn as a mule. She could see the fight unfold in her mind and it wasn’t a pretty picture.
“I’ll tell him it’s for me. I won’t even mention your name.”
“He knows you work with me, Brody,” Will sighed.
“Would you trust me?”
The four letter sentence made Will cringe. He spun the chair away from her, focusing on the computer screen in front of him. The screen read “Dana Scully - Classified”. It glared up at Will, taunting him. Tearing his eyes away from the screen, he picked up the phone and handed it to Brody.
“Go for it, Brody.”
Taking the phone, she dialed the FBI switchboard and asked for Cullen’s extension. She started to pace the room, the words formulating in her mind. Somehow, she felt as though she were betraying Cullen’s trust in some twisted fashion.
“Faraday,” a familiar voice answered.
“Cullen, hey, it’s Riley Brody.”
“Riley, hello! How have you been?”
“I’ve been great. I just got reassigned.”
Brody turned around and looked at Will. She gave him a soft smile to let him know everything is going good. He fidgeted in his chair as though he didn’t believe that she could pull this off, get the information that he desperately craved.
“I heard. I’m sorry to hear you’re working with Van de Kamp. He’s very difficult to get along with. I hope he’s not giving you too much trouble.”
“Oh, it’s not so bad so far. Uh, look, Cullen, I called for a favor.”
“Name it and I will try to help out the best way I can.”
“I was looking for two files in the FBI database, but they’re classified. I was hoping perhaps you had clearance.”
“I can try. What are the names?”
“Fox Mulder and Dana Scully.”
Fingers typing on a keyboard could be heard through the phone. Brody gave Will a thumb’s up to tell him everything was fine. He leaned back in his chair. The drawer to his desk was wrenched open and a bag of sunflower seeds were pulled out. He immediately started to munch on the seeds.
“Yeah, I got access to them. What do you say we go out for dinner, we’ll catch up, and I’ll give you a copy of the files?”
“Dinner?”
Will raised his eyebrows in disbelief, his piercing green eyes staring intently at her face. His mouth hung open, a seed resting on the tip of his tongue. As though he suddenly realized that he was staring, he quickly crunched down on the seed.
“Yeah, I’ll give you what I can of the files. There are some parts that I can’t access though. They need higher clearance, but I got this gist of Mulder and Scully for you though. So, what do you say, Rye?”
“Uh, sure. There’s a new Chinese place that just opened up in Georgetown. I’ll meet you there around seven?”
“I’ll see you then.”
Brody hung up the phone and placed it back in its cradle. Will looked at up her with a goofy grin painted across his face. The whole situation seemed beyond amusing to him.
“Why do I feel like I’m your pimp?”
“I’ll drop by your place after dinner, alright?”
-
Arlington, Virginia
9:45 P.M
Will sat on the floor of his apartment with an old movie from the 1960’s playing on the television. In his hand was an old tennis ball. Leaning up against his couch, he bounced the ball on the floor so that it would hit the wall and then glide back to him. He’d been waiting for Brody to arrive at his place for over an hour. Honestly, how long could dinner actually take?
“Afraid this tea’s pathetic,” the man in the movie commented. “Must have used these wretched leaves about twenty times. It’s not that I mind so much. Tea without milk is so uncivilized.”
After what seemed like an eternity, there was a soft knock at Will’s front door. Lowering the volume on the television to a dull hum, Will quickly made his way to the door. He glanced through the peephole to make sure it was his partner before jerking the door open.
“How was your date?” questioned Will.
“It wasn’t a date,” she said with a smile. “Don’t you remember, Mister Van de Kamp, you sold me for the night to entertain a man just to get some files for you.”
“Touché.”
A deep chuckle escaped Will’s lips as he stepped aside to allow her entrance into his apartment. The place was a mess littered with dirty socks, discarded sports balls, and stinky sneakers. He kicked his dirtied tennis shoes under the bookshelf littered with texts on Jung, Freud, Skinner, Piaget, Erikson, and Pavlov to name a few. Will liked to call it his psychology corner.
“Cullen didn’t have access to all of the files under their dossiers. There were a select few that were locked even to him. Among them was Fox Mulder’s criminal record to name one.”
“He had a criminal record?”
“Apparently,” she said tenderly. “Will, did you know they were FBI agents?”
That bit of information made Will falter. He knew next to nothing of his parents. To know they were FBI agents made Will feel a deep connection with them. It felt as though he was led to the FBI unconsciously because it was in his blood.
“You read their files?”
“No, but Cullen browsed through them. Will, he thinks I wanted these files because… because they worked on the X-Files division together.”
Will could hear his heart pounding in his ears. Shakily, he stepped forward and snatched the files from Brody’s waiting hands. Cracking open the first file, he saw a picture of a beautiful redhead with bright blue eyes gazing up at him. A lump caught in his throat. His mother. She was so different than his adoptive mother. Tossing the file onto the coffee table, he quickly opened up the other file. A dark-haired man stared up at him with an intensity that Will had never seen before. Sinking onto the floor, he saw so much of himself in Fox Mulder that it was down right creepy.
“Will…”
He snapped his attention up at Brody to see her lingering by the couch with a compassionate expression written clearly across her face. Suddenly, he tasted bitter tears in the corner of his mouth. He could hear his heavy breathing clearly in the nearly quiet room.
“I look just like my father…” he trailed off as he held up the file for Brody to take.
She took it without hesitation. Her eyes glanced between the picture of Fox Mulder to her partner on the floor. She motioned at the file, silently asking for permission to read. He nodded numbly as her eyes snapped to the dossier and started to read its contents. Turning to the table, he grabbed his mother’s dossier and emerged himself into her life story as a promising medical doctor turned FBI agent.
Somewhere during the night, Will and Brody wound up on his couch as they looked over the thick files together. Around two in the morning, Will felt Brody snag next to him, her head resting comfortably on his shoulder. His mother’s file slipped from her fingers and landed on the floor. Will turned back to the file on his father and allowed Brody to sleep.
He never finished his father’s file because he had dozed off sometime between a brief description of his father’s disappearance, where most of the contents were classified, to the termination of his FBI career. The next thing he knew, it was morning. The television was still on the classic movie channel, but Brody was nowhere to be found. Standing up, most of Will’s muscles cracked in protest as the toilet flushed down the hallway. Soon, Brody appeared in the living room with her clothes twisted on her frame and hair pulled back in a messy pigtail.
“’Morning,” she said awkwardly.
“Coffee?”
A smile broke out on her face as she nodded. He motioned her to follow him into his sparse kitchen. He wasn’t a cook; therefore, he didn’t have a lot of cooking equipment. His cupboards were bare as well aside from some Ramen noodles, coffee grounds, and bagels.
“Uh, you want a bagel? I only have plain but I got some cream cheese in the fridge.”
“Sure, that sounds… great, Will.”
After setting up the coffee machine, he plopped two bagels into the toaster before making his way to his fridge. The inside was depressing, and he hoped that Brody hadn’t seen anything. There was cream cheese, a case of beer, some expired milk, and a couple pieces of left over pizza.
“So, uh, I was thinking about looking for family members today,” Will tried to sound nonchalant as he grabbed the cream cheese. “Maybe I have a biological grandfather or something who lives close by.”
“Do you want me to come with you? For moral support, you know?”
Will glanced up at his partner who had settled herself at the small island in the middle of the kitchen. Her elbows were propped up on the surface, her face soft and compliant. He didn’t want to go on his own to meet his biological relatives. It would awkward and just plain weird; however, he didn’t have anyone else to turn to. His adoptive parents lived on the other side of the country, he alienated all of his friends and he had lost the respect of everyone at the bureau. Then there was Brody, eager and willing to walk into a strange situation with him when they had just met days before. There was some level of trust he felt towards her, but he quickly tried to push that aside. She was sent to destroy him, so he had to keep her at arms length.
“You don’t have to,” he spoke slowly as the bagels popped up.
“I don’t mind, Will. I mean, I would just be at the office all by myself today then with nothing to do. Plus, I think you’ll need some moral support.”
“If you insist…”
-
Winchester, Virginia
Will pulled into the driveway of a white-picket fenced house with a giant porch on the front. His gut twisted inside of him, his left leg bouncing on the car mat. Shifting the transmission into park, Will twisted the key to cut the engine. He glanced over at Brody briefly just waiting for her to tell him it was the wrong house or to comment that it was all a bad idea.
“Well?” she questioned instead.
“So… Margaret Scully really lives here?”
“According to the phone book she does.” She gave him an encouraging smile. “Come on, Will.”
Brody was the first to exit the car. He watched her make her way up the driveway and onto the front porch. She looked back at him, her hands on her hips. Brushing his hair to the right, he hauled his tall frame out of the sedan and made his way up to the porch. Reaching out a shaky hand, he pressed the doorbell and waited anxiously.
The door opened to reveal a fragile looking elderly woman who appeared to be in her nineties. Her blue eyes squinted behind her glasses as she looked up at the newcomers in her doorway. Brody smiled warmly as she reached into her jacket pocket to produce her badge. She introduced herself as Riley Brody and gestured towards Will. His name caught in his throat and he didn’t know if he should say his name was William Van de Kamp or William Mulder.
“Oh my gosh,” Mrs. Scully whispered. “You look just like Fox…”
The breath he was holding escaped his lips as he offered a weak smile to his maternal grandmother. He stood there dumbly on the porch, not quite knowing what to do when Mrs. Scully stepped forward and pulled him with all her might into a warm embrace. She buried her face into her shoulder, her hands clenching the back of his blazer tightly.
“I thought I’d never see you again,” she murmured against him.
Hesitantly, he wrapped his arms around the frail woman’s body. He buried his face into her salt and pepper hair as he glanced over at Brody to see tears in her eyes. A chuckle and smartass remark about her being a typical girl caught in his throat.
“Come inside.”
Mrs. Scully pulled away but kept a hand on Will’s arm. The hand ran down his limb and clenched his fingers lightly before tugging him along behind her. Brody followed the two and snapped the door shut behind her. Will followed his biological grandmother into the living room, his eyes scanning the array of pictures that littered the fireplace and end tables.
“Let me go put on some tea,” Mrs. Scully said fondly. “Make yourselves at home.”
Brody sat down on the couch while Will walked around the room to take in the family pictures. The fireplace was covered with pictures of what Will assumed was his mother’s childhood. The pictures were old, yellowed slightly around the edges. Two boys and two girls - he immediately picked out his mother with the cropped red hair and tomboyish stance. His insides seemed to swell with excitement. He had at least one aunt, two uncles, and who knew how any cousins to go along with his grandmother.
“Will,” Brody whispered.
Turning around, his gaze landed onto his partner who was holding a picture in her hands. She held it out to him with a sad smile. Stepping forward, he accepted the frame and looked down. He recognized Dana Scully and Fox Mulder right away. They were standing in front of each other. She was gazing up at him with love shining in her features. He was looking down at a small bundle of blankets in his arms - a baby, him. His father held his son awkwardly in his arms as though he didn’t know whether or not he was doing it right. A boyish grin was plastered across his face as he gazed down at the baby boy.
Will couldn’t understand how they looked so happy in that moment but give him up for adoption less than a year later. What happened for them to toss their only son aside, to hand him over to the welcoming arms of strangers? He loved his adoptive parents, but there had always been something missing in his life ever since he found out that he was adopted.
“Your parents loved you so much,” Mrs. Scully said softly as she reappeared with a tray in hand. “Dana called you her little miracle.”
“Why did they give me up?” whispered Will as he tore his eyes away from the picture.
“Dana wasn’t much for communication. I think that the only person she really talked to was Fox.” Mrs. Scully sighed as she sat the tray down on the coffee table. “Dana said you were in danger, that there were men who wanted to harm you. She said she couldn’t protect you by herself and that you would be safer where nobody knew who you were. She said it was the only way you could have a normal childhood, a normal life.”
“‘By herself’? Where was my father?”
“Not long after you were born, Fox just disappeared one night. Dana said he was in danger, that he was putting you in danger. He was gone for about a year before he wound up in the area again. This was after Dana gave you up. Dana came and visited me, told me that Fox had been convicted of murder and was sentenced to death. She said he was innocent, that the supposed victim wasn’t even dead. They’re trying to bury us, Mom, she said. She told me that she and some others were going to break Fox out of prison and they were going to run away together. I didn’t hear from either of them for about a year and a half. Then, Dana and Fox came to Virginia. She was working at a Christian hospital as a surgeon and Fox was in hiding. She asked me to watch him while she was at work, make sure he was okay. Dana was concerned about the long-term effects of isolation and his obvious depression. So I went to their house almost every day. A few years later, Dana was cornered by the FBI asking her to get Fox to help them on a case dealing with a missing agent. They let bygones be bygones. So when Dana was at work, Fox and I used to go out and run errands together.”
She stopped, a small chuckle escaping her lips. Sinking down into the nearest chair, Mrs. Scully closed her eyes and seemed as though she were trying to relive the bittersweet memories.
“I remember Fox and I went grocery shopping one day. We saw a little boy who would have been your age at the time. Eight or nine, I think. He was a tall boy for his age with dark hair and eyes. I knew Fox was thinking the same thing as I was - that you would have looked like him. I asked Fox what he was thinking, and I’ll never forget what he said to me. He said something along the lines of, I’m thinking why I even bother getting up in the morning anymore, Maggie. They’ve taken everything from me: my sister, my father, my mother, my son, my life. All I have left is Scully, and I’m not even sure her heart is in it anymore.” Mrs. Scully forced a small, sad smile. “A few years later, they just vanished. They come and visit once a year, send letters every couple of months.”
Will sat down on the couch, his knees too weak to hold his weight any longer. The picture of him and his parents was clenched tightly in his hands. His knuckles were slowly turning white, but he was too numb to feel anything.
“Dana was barren,” she said suddenly. “She wanted nothing more than a child. When she was pregnant, she confided in me. She said that she had tried treatments to get herself pregnant, that Fox had been the sperm donor. It didn’t work, and she had been devastated at the time. She found it ironic that you were somehow conceived naturally.”
His head snapped up to look at his grandmother, disbelief slowly being written across his face. All the information was just too much to process.
“Why did they leave?” questioned Will softly. “They made a life together and then they just… vanished you said.”
“I don’t know. Dana and Fox never talk about it. In fact, they never talk about anything important.”
“Were they married?”
“No, they never got married. They knew each other for over thirty years, had been lovers for almost the entire time, but the idea of marriage never seemed to cross their minds. After awhile, they wore bands so they wouldn’t draw attention but they never got a marriage certificate or anything of the sort.” A smile crossed her face. “I asked Fox once why they never tied the knot, made it official. He just laughed and said marriage ruins relationships.”
For the first time since Mrs. Scully started talking about his parents, Will realized that Brody was sitting on the other end of the couch. Glimpsing over at her, he saw her looking empathetically at his biological grandmother. A part of him didn’t want Brody to know his deep, dark secrets. He didn’t want her to know anything about his family. So he used every fiber of his being to stand up and shoot his grandmother an apologetic glance.
“I, uh, thank you,” he stumbled. “I - we gotta get back to D.C. I hope I can talk to you again… soon.”
“How about this weekend? If you don’t want to drive all the way out here, I’ll come to you. We’ll go to dinner and just chat.” Mrs. Scully stood up. “I mean, if you work at the FBI, then you have a good hour and a half drive.”
“Yeah, it is. I live in Arlington,” Will commented as he scribbled his address onto a napkin on the table.
“Fox lived in Arlington,” she replied distantly.
Will looked up at his grandmother, the pen poised over the napkin. He briefly wondered if he lived in the same apartment building but quickly pushed that thought aside. There was no possible way.
“Sounds great. Here’s my address. I’ll see you this weekend.”
Mrs. Scully took the napkin in her hands. Stepping forward, she stood up on her toes to plant a kiss on Will’s cheek. She pulled back, a smile gracing her features. She bid both Will and Brody goodbye.
-
Alexandria, Virginia
The drive back towards D.C. had been quiet to say the least. Will had seemingly been trapped inside his own mind. Brody sat in the passenger’s seat, allowing her partner the silence that he craved. When he pulled up in front of her apartment building, she turned to him with no words. She didn’t know what to say to him.
“Thanks for coming with me,” he said hoarsely.
“Anytime, Partner,” she replied with a grin.
Making her way into her building, her mind couldn’t help but be fixated on Will and his past. The X-Files held little interest to her before. It was merely a waste dump for UFO nuts and telltales of monsters. Except hearing about Will’s biological parents and their struggles, the X-Files held a new sense of respect for her.
Opening the door to her apartment, she noted the lamp on next to the couch. Sitting there was her big sister. A book was open, her eyes reading the contents.
“Did you break into my apartment, Blake?” questioned Brody as she shut the door.
“Mom gave me the spare key. She wanted me to check to make sure you weren’t dead,” she replied aloofly without taking her eyes off the white pages.
“Why would I be dead?”
“You missed Sunday brunch and didn’t call. You know how Mom jumps to the worst case scenario.”
The book snapped shut as Brody groaned. Every Sunday, the three Brody women would go out to brunch to catch up. When one couldn’t make it, a call would always be made. Brody had been so wrapped up in her stupid report about the missing John Doe and the talk of alien-human hybrids that brunch slipped through her mind.
“A call wouldn’t have sufficed?”
“Nah, I would much rather just hang out in your lovely apartment all night waiting for you after I spent all day at the hospital,” Blake replied sarcastically. “Mom wanted me to see with my own two eyes that my little sister didn’t have a scratch on her.”
“Mom’s paranoid,” Brody whispered as she shrugged off her jacket.
“Lemme guess. Your new partner is gorgeous and you wanna get all hot and bothered with him.” A smirk graced Blake’s features.
“Is that all you ever think about? Sex and boys?”
“Ouch, Rye, where’d your sense of humor go?”
Brody sighed and shot her sister a rueful look. She knew what was coming, knew exactly what Blake wanted to know - every single detail about Will. It had happened before with all of Brody’s other partners. Blake would want to know everything about them and meet them. It was as though her sister was obsessed with the idea of knowing every aspect of everyone’s life.
“I’m sorry. It’s just… I’m stressed,” Brody said softly.
“I talked to Finn-”
“You what?”
Finn Ryder worked in the Behavioral Analysis Unit at the FBI. They had become quick friends when she joined the bureau and had found themselves stumbling halfheartedly into a disastrous relationship. Of course, Blake had to stick her nose in her sister’s romantic exploits as well.
“He said this guy you work with,” Blake continued with annoyance lacing her words, “is dingo ate my baby crazy. His words, not mine.”
“Will is not crazy!” she objected. “Now, Finn, on the other hand, is just meddling like someone else I know!”
“Excuse me for giving a damn about your life,” Blake snapped. “Look at you. You like dingo boy, don’t you? I mean, come on, Rye, you gotta admit that you get attached to people way too easily.”
“Will is my partner and I respect him,” she defended. “He’s not crazy. He’s just…”
… Broken would have been her word choice, but she knew that Blake wouldn’t understand the concept. Her big sister was naïve when it came to people being emotionally broken. The concept was foreign to her.
“Intense,” she decided to say.
“Rye-”
Before Blake could finish, there was a knock at the front door. Holding up a hand to tell Blake to hold her thought, Brody went to the door and looked through the peephole. Two middle-aged people stood outside - a man and a woman. Brody didn’t recognize them but assumed they were a couple in the building complex, so she opened the door.
“Can I help you?”
The man rushed forward, knocking Brody to the ground and rolling her onto her stomach. Blake screeched and the woman intruder told her to be quiet. Brody tried to buck the guy off her but was failing miserably. His calloused hand grabbed the collar of her shirt and pushed it down to reveal her neck. A finger trailed across the base of her smooth skin before the weight was lifted off her back.
“Check the other one,” the guy demanded.
Brody twisted to face her sister, telling her to let them check. The brunette woman walked towards Blake with a gun out and proceeded to check the back of her neck. Once satisfied nothing was there, she stashed the gun away.
“I thought Will and I came to an understanding that I was human and all,” Brody commented dryly as she stood up.
“You gotta be kidding me!” Blake exclaimed. “They’re with dingo boy?”
“Blake, please, just leave.”
“I can’t leave you alone with them!” she protested.
“Blake, leave. Now.”
Her sister reluctantly grabbed her coat from the couch and slowly made her way to the front door. Snapping it shut behind her, Brody rushed over and locked the door. She then turned around to face the man and woman who invaded her home and nearly assaulted her.
“William didn’t send us,” the woman said carefully. “My name is Monica Reyes and this is John Doggett. We are friends of Dana Scully and Fox Mulder.”
“Oh my God,” Brody sighed. “When does the plot ever not thicken?”
“We had to check to make sure you weren’t one of them,” Doggett said calmly, “for William’s sake.”
“Yeah, well, Will already gave my neck the pat down.”
“He did?” Reyes questioned slightly surprised. “He knows more than we thought.”
Brody ran a tired hand over her face. The last thing she wanted was to have a cryptic conversation about alien-human hybrids and government conspiracies. The thing that bugged her the most was that these two didn’t just go to Will. They had to come to her for reasons she couldn’t even begin to comprehend.
“Will lives in Arlington,” Brody supplied.
“We know,” Reyes replied. “We’ve been watching out for him for Dana and Mulder.”
“Let me guess, he doesn’t know you two exist?”
“Dana didn’t want us contacting him. She thought he would be safer without knowing too much.”
“But when we heard he got a new partner, we had to check you out,” Doggett finished. “Plus, he’s been getting too involved with the Super Soldiers for anyone’s liking.”
“Super Soldiers?” questioned Brody. “Okay, Unsolved Mysteries, I really don’t think that you should be telling me any of this. The one person who needs you, the one person you should go to, is Will.”
“He needs you, Agent Brody,” Reyes stated in a serious tone. “These men asking you to spy on him, to destroy his work on the X-Files, they are all conspirators in something so big that nobody outside of their circle can fully understand.”
“I think you need to leave,” whispered Brody.
Unwillingly, Reyes and Doggett made their exit. Once the strangers were out of her apartment, Brody leaned up against the door. Thoughts of conspiracies clouded her mind. She couldn’t even think straight. She knew she didn’t want this to be her life - a life filled with shadowy informants who only planted more doubt in her mind. Except, the very prospect of honor made her hesitant of asking for a transfer. At an early age, her father had instilled onto her two principles that now ruled her life: always tell the truth even if it hurts and never do anything that would be disrespectful to herself or others. By keeping true to those values, she would have enough honor to hold her head up high.
Notes - Some of you may have noticed this series is heavily influenced by Joseph Campbell's "A Hero with a Thousand Faces". I immediately saw the connections of William being a tragic hero six years before when he developed his supernatural powers. That is the primitive step in any tragic hero. Therefore, the series will follow in Campbell's tragic hero plotline since his book has been inspirational to so many authors before me.
Next Sunday - Faust: A small town suddenly starts to thrive while its inhabitants start to drop like lambs to the slaughter
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