It's hard to believe in retrospect that they tried so hard to hide things-- or maybe more aptly, that they ever imagined it could work. For so long they'd tried to stay apart so they wouldn't be a liability to one another-- but it's not as though their partnership was ever superficial. Her abduction had been proof of that.

He is, after all, the last Mulder. Even if he's not attached to the name, she's attached enough to him that she wouldn't mind it.

"It doesn't hyphenate very well," she muses. Of course she isn't going to change her name-- it would be terribly impractical, professionally, and after all he's spent decades calling her Scully. They can't both call each other Mulder.

"Either way it's going to confuse people."