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[jowls]

Leave prompts, you'll get nonsense.

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[jowls]

Hey Scully.

[rockitlike]

Yes, Mulder?

[jowls]

How do you feel about unconventional baby photos?

[rockitlike]

Depends. What's on your mind, from a scale of Kirlian to Anne Geddes?

[jowls]

I know the 90s are officially retro, as much as it pains me to admit it, but I refuse to go back to Anne Geddes.

Picture this: alien pod in the field. You lifting the baby out. We hide the photos until the kid's ten or so.

Bad taste?

[rockitlike]

I can't decide whether she'd be less or more inclined to believe that than most.

[jowls]

Only one way to find out.

[rockitlike]

Mulder, you're crazy.

[ been a while since she could break that one out. ]

[jowls]

I know, I take pills every morning.

[ it's kind of nice to hear, a whole new kind of coming home. ]

We can always do one of those pregnancy photos where you wear a bunch of gauzy stuff in front of a fan.

[rockitlike]

In ten or fifteen years that might be more embarrassing than the alien photos.

[jowls]

It could be worse. We could do one of those where you wear cowgirl boots and I have to both balance a ten-gallon hat and kiss your belly at the same time.

[rockitlike]

Weird internet rabbit hole or pregnancy-themed porno?

[jowls]

How dare you. Pregnancy-themed pornography has nothing on the deviance of mommy blogs.

[rockitlike]

I don't doubt you in the least.

[jowls]

I appreciate your recognition of my expertise.

[ Pity he's not an emoji man, an ironic 🤪 wouldn't go amiss. ]

[rockitlike]

There are lots of things you're good at.

I'm just not sure if photography is up there.

[jowls]

We'd hire a professional, of course.

Or we could just go to Sears and plop the kid on an indoor set. Does Sears still exist?

[rockitlike]

I think it does, but in kind of a ghost-town way. Better for spirit photography than regular photography.

Now and then we will have to take at least one presentable family portrait to send to Bill and Tara, you know.

[jowls]

We'll pretend to be normal, just for them.

[ a pause. ]

It feels weird, with just the one kid.

[rockitlike]

I know.

If nothing else I wish-- I want him to know.

[jowls]

I don't want it to look like we're a complete family without him. For him to show up as a repair guy, look at the photos on our walls, and decide we don't miss him.

If he comes home, I want him to know we want him there.

[rockitlike]

[ that cuts to the heart of it. If he's watching the phone, Mulder will see the her start and stop typing a couple of times, with long gaps between as she considers what she really wants to say.

There are pictures of William. Precious few, and though she thinks Mulder knows she has them, they've never spoken about it. Her, exhausted and beaming, holding their son shortly after getting him home. A couple from after Mulder left. One precious Polaroid from right before. She'd been insistent, at the time, and hasn't really been able to look at it since.

Nothing of all of them.

After a span of stopping and starting, when she finally replies, it's cryptic-- just a link. ]


https://www.npr.org/2015/03/18/393565096/25-years-after-art-heist-empty-frames-still-hang-in-bostons-gardner-museum

[jowls]

[ There are a dozen reasons why traditional family photos don't suit him, but all the opportunities they'd missed with their son loom large over everything else. Sure, posed photos where everyone wears the same outfit and smiles big cheesy grins in a field are for the kinds of people who put LIVE LAUGH LOVE signs in their kitchens. But the real problem is the lie of it: three smiling faces that don't tell the whole truth.

Ever since that day on the road, when William spoke to Scully, Mulder's thought about him. About who he could be, circling their life and waiting for a sign that he's welcome in it. There's no denying that William still loves his mother, still feels a connection with her; even if that connection doesn't exist for Mulder (and whose fault is that?), William might come home to Scully. He needs to know he can.

A long pause here, too, considering the options. The idea of the frames, waiting to be filled, is enticing. The way to translate it to their lives, to say there are holes here even if we're smiling, probably won't be normal enough for Tara and Bill, but they have to be used to that by now. If the alternative is recreating Superman's origin story... ]

Do you want one empty chair or two?

[ They can't forget Emily, even if she'll never come home. ]

[rockitlike]

[ Mulder doesn't need to know how she ducked into the bathroom for a quick cry. Emily-- somehow their daughter, even if Mulder had no hand in making her and she had only the most tenuous (but critical) connection herself.

A girl whose whole life was pain and violation and loss. Scully misses her terribly; not all the time, not with this intensity. ]

One, or we'll need a hundred more. It's the empty space that matters. Not the size of it.

[jowls]

[ Mulder can guess what the long silence means, and not solely because he knows her; he's sitting quietly someplace, not crying so much as staring into the middle distance and wondering how much Emily would look like Scully by now. How old would she be? He has to count back...twenty-four? Twenty-five? In a better world, she'd be a college graduate, pursuing some passion, coming home for holidays and making her mother proud.

(And him, too. When it was clear Scully wanted her, Mulder wanted her, too. But just as with William, it's hard not to think of Emily as Scully's little girl.) ]

I'll pose for as many normal photos as you want, as long as there's room for William and Emily in them.