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[jowls]

Leave prompts, you'll get nonsense.

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[jowls]

Maybe I just want to see you with a raptor perched on your fist.

[rockitlike]

Do you know how big those birds are?

[jowls]

Simultaneously bigger than you'd think and smaller than you'd hope.

[rockitlike]

Too big to be a two-hander for me, even.

[jowls]

Then it'll just have to be an inexplicable American flag picture frame.
Maybe I can find one with a Bible verse painted on it.

[rockitlike]

Why would you put that in our home when you have to look at it too?

[jowls]

To be completely honest, I'd probably keep it just long enough to see the look on your face.

Now, the Roswell picture frame, that's going to be a family heirloom.

[rockitlike]

You're impossible.

[jowls]

You love it.

[rockitlike]

I do.

[jowls]

[ Give it another hour, and he'll have another photo for her - this one of the ugliest frame he could find at the thrift store sitting on a bookshelf, a photo of the two of them in it. ]

Couldn't find an American flag one.

[rockitlike]

[ It's awful, and for reasons she can't totally comprehend, she's so touched by it she can't breathe for a moment. They're keeping it forever. ]

We can do a pregnancy shoot if you really want to. No live animals, no pyrotechnics.

[jowls]

Do you want a pregnancy shoot?

[rockitlike]

For myself? No. I think they're silly and usually a little tacky.

But... would it be good to have that? So she grows up seeing us right now, like this-- waiting to meet her?

[jowls]

That's the thing: I don't really want one, either. If we're going to go that far, we might as well go get glamour shots done and call it a day.

We take pictures sometimes already. We could print them off the cloud.

[rockitlike]

I think I like that better.

I just want her to know how wanted she is.

[jowls]

We're going to tell her every single day.

Do people still make scrapbooks? I haven't seen any on mommy blogs.

[rockitlike]

I have no idea. Maybe you can bring it back, you're a trend-setter.

[jowls]

Seems like a lot of work for a few pages festooned with stickers. Maybe we'll go old-school and get a photo album.

[rockitlike]

Old school has always been our style.

I wish it could have been like this for William.

[jowls]

I do, too.

[ Is he ordering a tasteful-looking faux leather photo album off Amazon right now? Maybe. They should have a baby book, too, right? They need one of those little books where they write down every first experience.

He's also trying to decide just how much is too much in a text message. Not that he's ever been in the mood to self-censor, but he knows how deeply the wound runs for Scully. Why twist the knife? ]

Even when he was with us, I was never really a father to him.
I wish we could have had more time.

[rockitlike]

[ It's a deep wound, and and old one that never healed well. Maybe that's why she's the one picking at it now-- it doesn't feel right, carrying on trying to ignore it.

Maybe it's the first time she's felt they're strong enough to face it like this. ]

You hardly had time to get used to the idea.
I've spent so long wondering if I could have done something differently.

[jowls]

So have I.

[ Have they ever talked about that, how long he spent trying to see other possibilities? All the Monday-morning quarterbacking he'd tried to do, all the ways he'd tried to play things out differently in his mind. ]

I should have found a way to stay with you. We should have gone on the lam together.
If I could go back and do it again, I would never have left you.

[rockitlike]

I'm the one who told you to go.

Maybe it's foolish to think like this. We did the best we could, and it wasn't enough. Maybe it was never going to be enough.

I want to believe he knows we miss him. Is that foolish?

[jowls]

It's not like I listened to you before that.

[ There's a long pause, his own endless rounds of typing and then stopping, then typing, then stopping. A dozen things he starts to say and then erases. ]

I think that you and he have a connection beyond sharing DNA. And if he can feel even a fraction of what you feel every day, then he must know you love him, and that you want him to come home.