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[jowls]

Leave prompts, you'll get nonsense.

Comments

[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.

[rockitlike]

There's always room

I have some pictures. Not many.

[ William's are unremarkable, if few and precious. The ones of Emily are technically stolen evidence; she doesn't feel any guilt about it, and she imagines Detective Kresge doesn't, either. ]

Maybe we're ready to put them up.

She should grow up knowing her siblings however she can.

[jowls]

[ Is he ditching whatever he was doing to do but picture frames? Look, no one can tell this man what to do. ]

What do we tell her?

[rockitlike]

I wish I knew.

That she had a sister who died, and we miss her so much? That she has a brother who can't be here, and we hope someday he can come home?

Fox, there's so much we have to teach her, I don't know how to do it without scaring her.

[jowls]

I don't, either. She has the best chance of any of us of having a normal life.

I don't want to screw it up, Dana. I want her to have everything.

[ time to pull over to the side of the road and maybe also cry. it's fine. everything's fine. ]

[rockitlike]

We're not going to screw it up.

I have faith in us. All of us.

[jowls]

One of us should.

[rockitlike]

Some of it is going to be hard. But it's everything I want, now. I wouldn't change any of it.

Maybe the fluke worm thing.

[jowls]

The fluke worm was bad enough that I think we should nuke every fluke worm on the planet. The ecological damage can't be worse than what we have now.

[ hm. ]

I still can't believe we're here.
It was all worth it.

[rockitlike]

I know. I meant it-- I wouldn't change anything. I think we needed all of it.

And it makes us uniquely suited to tell her all the things she'll need to know, growing up with us for parents.

[jowls]

"Yes, honey, real aliens. But don't be afraid - Mommy and Daddy kicked their asses back to deep space. Probably."

[rockitlike]

We'll have to be careful to vet anything she tries to bring for show and tell. The last thing we need is to leak classified data to kindergarteners.