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[jowls]

Leave prompts, you'll get nonsense.

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[rockitlike]

The gas station wine and cheese was the best I could do- it felt so forward at the time.

[jowls]

I thought you were just trying to get me to eat something.

[rockitlike]

I *was* trying to get you to eat something.

[jowls]

[ somewhere in a craft store, he's laughing louder than is strictly appropriate. ]

Just think what would have happened if you'd told me.

[rockitlike]

You'd never know what an awful singing voice I have, and I'd have spent a lot less on batteries.

[jowls]

I would have found out eventually.

Sounds like that would have been a lot more fun than a hole in the woods.

[rockitlike]

Most things would be more fun than a hole in the woods.

You've been worth the wait.

[jowls]

So have you.

[rockitlike]

So where did we land on flying saucer photos?

[jowls]

I'm in if you are.

[rockitlike]

Someday, it'll make a good story.

[jowls]

We can try out a few other narratives and figure out which one photographs best, while we're at it. Found in a fairy ring. Came down a river in a basket. Left on our doorstep.

[rockitlike]

Get her used to weighing contradictory evidence early. I like it.

[jowls]

Our little skeptic.
Like mother, like daughter.

[rockitlike]

Hellbent on solving cosmic mysteries, just like her father.

[jowls]

What if she finds cosmic mysteries boring?

[rockitlike]

Well, I'll be surprised.

But I think that's true no matter what. And it doesn't change the fact that you're a big part of her.

[jowls]

Maybe she'll like baseball.

[ a pause, maybe to buy some picture frames, maybe because he's deciding whether it's worthwhile to say anything more. ]

It still doesn't feel real.
I keep thinking someone's going to take all this away.

[rockitlike]

I know. I get nervous, too.

But I trust us.

[jowls]

[ There's a long pause, like close to an hour. But eventually, the reply is a shot of their bedspread - smooth only because Scully made the bed that morning, no doubt - and an array of photos of William in minimalist black frames. He's put everything he could find in a frame, aside from the tiny picture he keeps in his wallet; that one's staying with him until William comes back. ]

[rockitlike]

[ The flip side of their extraordinary experiences is that deeply mundane things become remarkable. All the things that have never lined up before-- a home to share, the bravery to talk about what they've lost, the photographs, the hope for a future-- are falling into place. ]

They look great.

[ She'll bring out the rest, when she gets home-- the other few of William, the one of Mulder holding their son; the Sims' photographs of Emily; the one, small picture she'd kept of the little girl's grave. ]

Thank you for doing it.

[jowls]

[ He's not entirely sure how he feels, but not for any good reason - just a nagging instinct, are we turning our house into a mausoleum? He doesn't want the kid to grow up surrounded by ghosts, living in the shadows of people she'll never know. But what's the alternative? Not knowing them at all.

And she has to know William and Emily. Her grandparents. Samantha. ]

I got some extras, too.

For other old photos, or new ones.

[rockitlike]

[ Whatever they call her, their daughter will be in part a Scully; being surrounded by ghosts is pretty much a given. It is, she thinks, the best way through a difficult problem. Better to stick to the facts, even when they're hard ones, than to hide the broken branches of the family tree. ]

Tasteful, matching frames might be the strangest part of all of this for us.

[jowls]

[ The strange thing about fatherhood, now that he can experience it as anything besides the random strike of a lightning bolt, is the way it calls to mind everything rotten about his own youth. What they're doing isn't what his father would have done - or his mother, for that matter. And maybe that's where that instinctive worry comes from, their insistence on repressing talk of his sister, rather than letting her loss live in the open. What if they were right? What if he screws up the only kid they have left?

(What if there is no right, and he's going to screw the kid up either way?) ]

I can get something tacky to clash with the rest of them.
Maybe an American flag printed one? I bet they have those at the dollar store.

[rockitlike]

I don't have an emoji for a full-body shudder.