Monday rolls around, and they meet at a diner in Falls Church - the kind of place where they can roll up, maybe eat, maybe just drink some coffee and awkwardly walk away from each other after ten minutes. Under other circumstances, he'd propose something more interesting, like a Bolivian restaurant he read about a few weeks ago, but those circumstances would have to be very different. "Scully definitely wants to spend an hour with me, munching salteñas and shooting the shit," maybe - and he just can't trust that that's the case.

Not that the situation's all her fault. Mulder knows he's no angel here - but even after a year and some change, he still feels like the wronged party more often than not. If he drove her away, she still chose to go. If he's no longer upset about it all the time, he hasn't entirely shaken the refrain that marked every step for a while after it all went down: Scully left, even Scully left, who the hell is going to stick around if even Scully left.

But he's doing better. Sort of. And he's determined to look like he's doing great for this particular tête-à-tête. He hasn't bothered to put on a suit, but he's grabbed a sweater-jeans combo he knows looks good with his leather jacket, and he's sitting in a booth with her mail and a mug of coffee like everything's fine. Look how normal he is, with his manilla envelope of unopened letters and his smartphone opened to a subreddit he's definitely not arguing on.