jowls | open post.

Something about the phrasing feels funny, but she's not going to look the gift horse of room and board and help righting the timeline in the mouth. She nods, and watches him rise and go, and she takes a shaky breath to center herself.

She finishes her water, and goes to talk to Skinner, who to his credit is apparently absorbed in reading something on his computer-phone and doesn't look like he's been eavesdropping at all. He gives her a sympathetic, sad smile and she bites her tongue on asking what the hell happened. Mulder won't tell her, she guesses, because of the sanctity of the timeline; Skinner won't tell her because it's not his business and he wishes he doesn't know, though she can tell by the set of his jaw that he does.

After she gives him the rundown, she pauses-- a careful quiet moment for him to interject if there's something she needs to know-- some reason she should stay closer to the city, or some sense of where he's taking her, or anything. But all Skinner does is nod, and lean back from the table to fish a business card out of his pocket to scrawl his cell number on the back of it. Not that she's got a phone to use for it, but better to have it than not.

Thanking him, she offers a smile that she hopes looks more optimistic than she feels, and goes back to stand beside their abandoned booth. For whatever reason, Mulder doesn't seem inclined to deal with Skinner; she's not going to press it. She tries to keep the faint smile going as he finally returns.

"Ready?"

It takes a while, but eventually Mulder comes back with a plastic bag of food in each hand. One warm, one cold. The smile he gives her is a similar kind of half-assed as hers; neither of them is completely happy about the situation, but at least they're in it together.

He'd rather not count back just how long it's been since that was the case.

"Yeah." He throws a twenty on the table, which is one hell of a lot more gratitude than he normally shows waiters of any kind. Seeing Scully again has a value beyond the usual meritocratic approach he has to the service industry. "Let's get out of here."

He gives Skinner a nod, and Skinner nods back - and at some point, maybe they'll talk. But both men know that won't be today.

Outside, he brings Scully to a big, beautiful gas guzzler of an SUV, something he got for adventures out in the sticks and the occasional need to haul stuff around. He'd had an idea, at some point, that he and Scully would pull out the seats, go "camping," and sleep in the back like a couple of teens living out of a van. It didn't happen, but it had sounded great at one point.

Right now, all the seats are in, and he opens the passenger side door for Scully. The food gets set at her feet, and he goes around to the other side to get in. "We're going to take the scenic way back. Just in case."

From her perspective it seems like an incredible tip-- though in fairness she hasn't adjusted to what things cost, barely looked at the menu. She doesn't have much of an appetite-- rarely does these days, even less so when she's running on time-travel stress. Go figure.

He doesn't seem to be fully at odds with Skinner; they're civil, just distant. She shrugs it off for the moment and trails after, to a vehicle that might as well be a Mack Truck. Dana Scully, fresh from the age of wall-to-wall Ford Tauruses, raises an eyebrow. It's huge. She manages to clamber up into it and clicks her seatbelt, looking out at a neighborhood that ought to be familiar and isn't.

"Do I get to know where we're going? I didn't think to bring a blindfold."

What the hell happened to them-- to him?

SUVs have become so common that it doesn't even occur to him that it'd seem weird. Definitely a change from his old station wagon, but the MPG isn't that bad, and the ability to haul things still has a certain appeal. Maybe someday.

"I'll allow it," he says, and there's a little of his old humor in the comment. "But I'm swearing you to secrecy. The less the Bureau knows about my whereabouts, the happier we all are."

When they drive right past his old building without slowing, that'll be the nail in the coffin: this is a new Mulder. They're heading away from D.C., out toward the country.

"I'm not sure who I'd be telling anyway," she murmurs. Skinner, but Skinner doesn't seem to want to know any more than Mulder wants him to know, so that feels like a bust. She keeps gazing out the window, if only to create some semblance of familiarity. Miles and miles of road while Mulder drives. Just like the old days, except nothing like the old days.

"I have to admit I was surprised when Skinner told me you weren't with the Bureau. I guess I expected to find you in the office, even now." She shoots him a small smile, oddly shy, not that he can see. Maybe he can hear it. "But I guess... it's been so long."

Maybe it's natural that he'd move on. The thought doesn't sit right; not when she's fresh off his ketamine adventure, another desperate move to try and find the truth.

"You can love the FBI," he says, glancing over at her just before he turns onto the highway, "but the FBI won't love you back. After -"

Not so fast, Fox. There are things she can know about the future, like the fact that nobody uses dial-up anymore and sushi's available in every grocery store. But we were on the run from the feds for years is another story. Every iteration of time travel ever conceived of by man has assumed that a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing, and the reasoning certainly checks out.

Part of him wants to confide in her, try and steer them both toward a better ending - but if he's going to do that, he's going to have to do it carefully. A hungry drive home isn't the way to get either of them where they need to be.

"After everything," he continues, letting the word encompass the last fifteen years broadly, "there was no reason to get back in the saddle."

If he hasn't got an easy answer on how to get her home, there's going to have to be some contamination of the timeline. His big car and his mysterious house and the menu at a restaurant that doesn't exist yet. She'll try her best not to ask for stock tips or look up lotto numbers. She's biting her tongue, knowing she can't ask how she'll live this long.

"I can't say I understand, obviously. But... I can imagine." Kind of. It's not as though it's easy work; they've both lost a lot already, in 1997. It doesn't take much to imagine things only get harder from there on out, in spite of whatever wins they have.

"But-- Skinner didn't have a number for you. Why did you end up calling him?"

"You were reported on. Mysterious woman appears out of thin air in Washington, D.C." There's a teasing note to his voice. This, at least, is easy to explain. The technology might be new, but the concept isn't. "I got a Google alert - a notification that there was an article, relevant to my interests. When I saw your picture, I knew."

He can't remember off the top of his head just when Google became the powerhouse it is now, but he's pretty sure it's post-1997. Incredible to think there was a time when they asked Jeeves instead.

It makes her laugh, genuinely; the easiest she's felt since one step in Rhode Island turned into another outside the Hoover. Seventeen years or not, she knows him well enough to imagine the kind of outlet that would carry an article like that.

"Fitting," she murmurs. There are no X-Files now, maybe, but close enough. "I didn't see anyone taking pictures."

Weird place for it, but D.C. is full of tourists. At least, it used to be.

"I'm glad you saw it."

"You were a little distracted at the time." But there's something like a smile as he adds, "Me, too."

This whole ride, he's been checking for tails, but there aren't any likely looking vehicles. He ends up taking the direct route home, and if it turns out he's been tracked, he'll deal with it later. It's a pretty nice drive, increasingly rural as they go along. The weather's good, and the trees and fields are pretty; she'll appreciate it, he thinks. Hopes. He wants her to like the drive more than he realized he would, and to like the outside of the house. Once they get inside, he doubts she'll be impressed.

"This is the place," he says, as they pull up to a little house out in the middle of nowhere. With past-Scully next to him, he can see why the now-Scully ran: the lawn's overgrown, the house itself unremarkable. The setting sun sets it off a little, but all the shades are drawn, and the outside could use painting. "Chez Mulder."

She couldn't have anticipated any of this; the distance, both physical and metaphorical, from his life's work. Mulder seems like a city creature to her-- what it means that he's changed so much, she can't guess.

It's not unpleasant, the ride. Maybe it's unfair of her to imagine he'd be unhappy in the country; he's more worldly than their basement.

And then the house... it's a house. Not grand or imposing, but it strikes her as a lot of house for a man who sleeps on his couch when he's not living out of motels. Certainly something has changed. It's a little rough around the edges, but not run down. It looks comfortable, which-- in spite of everything-- does fit.

"It's nice," she says, because that's what you say, but she means it. It's rural. It's big. She realizes far too late that she'd normally worry about him trying to give her a bed and take the couch, but with Mulder that might mean taking the couch and leaving him the floor.

"Can I ask-- have you been here long?"

He's caught up short by the question, though he supposes he shouldn't be. It's only natural to wonder why he's here and not in Alexandria, isn't it? He spent so many years in the apartment on Hegal Place, all the time in which this Scully has known him. But going back to the beginning of his tenure here means remembering buying it with Scully. And all those memories, it turns out, still rub raw.

"I have," he says, after a moment, his eyes on his hands as he unbuckles his seatbelt like it's the most interesting thing he's ever seen. "Several years now."

Half of her isn't sure why she needs to know. She shouldn't be prying in the future-- his past-- but it's impossible not to be curious, to build theories. Several years means he didn't buy it as a fixer-upper last week, but also-- probably-- that he's been maintaining it well enough, which given how remote it is and how fanatic he seems to be about privacy, means it's likely all his hands. From that perspective, it doesn't look so bad at all, at least not from the outside.

She grabs their bags of food to give herself something to do. It smells good-- she might actually manage to eat something-- maybe the remoteness of Mulder's future isn't such a bad thing. Less distraction might help her take better care of herself.

It can wait a day or two, maybe-- figuring out what to do about her sickness, here and now. Not ideal, but in the face of a broken timeline, it seems like a smaller concern somehow. And in the most immediate sense she's just glad to get out of this enormous car without twisting her ankle.

She stands by the side of it, feeling out of place, waiting for him to go first and open up the door. At home, Mulder's apartment feels somehow like an extension of their office; a place she has business being. It's odd to feel like an uninvited guest.

Inside, things are a little rougher. It's dim, light glowing through the drawn shades. Dishes sit unwashed in the sink, in a kitchen that otherwise looks like it doesn't get much use. It's been...a couple of days? No, probably a week, he's pretty sure it's been a week. He's starting to run out of dishes.

One corner of the living room is piled high with stuff that looks suspiciously like it came from the office. Newspaper clippings and photos aren't limited to that corner, though; they run along all the walls, the entire living room, the stairway up to the second floor. Where other people have family photos, Mulder only has Bigfoot sightings. It's no longer his old leather couch in the living room, but the replacement has a generic look, like it was bought without much thought. Despite the fact that there's an entire upstairs, there's a rumpled blanket and pillow on the cushions.

Only walking in with Scully does he realize that the air's a little stale in here. He flicks on a light, hoping it has the same scatterbrained charm that his old apartment did, and goes to open a window. "It's nothing fancy, but there's a guest room. Well - an office. I'll take that. And maybe we'll cruise Netflix for something to watch tonight."

The kitchen table is small, but there are multiple chairs, and once he piles up his unopened mail and moves it to a kitchen counter, there's room for them to sit down and eat.

It's not so bad. Honestly, it's not-- she's familiar with his brand of clutter; the clippings are almost comforting. It feels safer than a bland hotel room she can't afford, for sure. It's a little more cluttered, a little less fresh, but by and large it feels like his apartment spilled into a bigger container.

(On the other hand... the state of his apartment was never reflective of a particularly healthy work/life balance; and now, she has no idea what work means for him.... so who knows. She probably shouldn't know. She's worried, but then, she's always worried about him.)

Without a better plan, she unpacks their meals, smiling to herself at the second portion of steak, but putting the salad out for herself. At least to start.

She looks at the drawers, tries the one that seems likeliest, and finds flatware on her first try.

He sees her grab the silverware and can't help but smile. Everything's still arranged the way she likes it, even though Scully's never been much of a cook. When they moved in, he didn't have strong preferences on where to put things like utensils, and she did, and there's never been reason to change.

You belong here, he knows better than to say. Instead, he goes through the house mentally, trying to remember if there's anything out that suggests her presence. He can't come up with anything, though (in great part because he's forgotten the old boxes of tampons and pads under the bathroom sink). Scully took her stuff with her when she left, the things they bought together won't be recognizable - and even if most of the house is arranged like her old apartment, not his, that's not going to be all that noticeable to this Scully.

There aren't even photos of them out, only pictures of Samantha and old prints and posters from life before going on the run. His only picture of William is in his wallet, and he doubts she's going to dig through that.

He sits down in front of his takeout box of steak and reaches for a fork. "Anything else I should know about your sudden appearance? I only got the outside view, from The East-Coast Extraterrestrial Extravaganza."

"How embarrassing," she murmurs, though she's more amused than actually annoyed. It couldn't even be decent paparazzi capturing her temporal misadventures?

"I'm not sure there's much to tell." She takes a bite of salad, mulling it over. She's thought back on it more than once, but she can't pull out much more detail from the chaos. "I was trying to find you-- there was.... You'd been dosed with ketamine and I wasn't sure where you were, but before I could go to find you I was outside the Hoover. It was just like... the world changed in between one step and the next, around me. I couldn't believe it. I didn't realize it wasn't the same day-- my phone wouldn't work-- and when I started toward the avenue I ran into Skinner."

She pauses, not sure what to say. It seems rude to point out how much older their boss is-- since so is Mulder-- but it was the first indicator of exactly how wrong everything was.

"He told me when it is, and... nothing made more sense, so I went with him. We talked, he tried to call my older self, and when it became clear things weren't getting fixed immediately booked a room for me so I'd have somewhere safe and private. That about catches you up."

It really isn't much more than he got from the newspaper, but hearing it coming from Scully still feels worthwhile. How it felt for her, what happened after witnesses lost sight of her - and most importantly, just the cadence of her voice, the sweet familiarity of hearing her lay out facts - it all helps.

"A timeslip," he says, cutting off a bite of steak. "Since we can't find your counterpart, let's assume she's in 1997 right now."

The alternative - that the other Scully is truly missing, impossible to find, someplace neither of them can reach - is more than Mulder can bear.

"I'll keep an eye on the dark web, see if anything interesting pops up. I'm not convinced that we'd find any evidence in front of the Hoover Building - the area's too busy, and it's been too long." It's concerning, truthfully. He's at loose ends, unsure how to even begin investigating this. His ability to access government files is greatly reduced these days, his hacking skills nowhere near the level necessary to get into anything especially valuable. "For now, we're going to have to play this by ear. If someone specific is responsible for this, they'll come out of the shadows eventually. They wanted you for something, or they wanted to use you to get to me. And if it's...nothing. A freak experience? We'll look for similar cases."

"Both time and space, and... alarmingly well-timed," she muses, poking at lettuce. Actually she's got more of an appetite than usual, which is probably a good sign if anything. She eats while she considers the options, listens to his take on it. Somehow having Mulder on the case-- even if he's not the Mulder she knows-- makes it feel like they're closer to answers, even if nothing's changed.

"We had a case a couple of months ago-- Jason Nichols? involving time travel. I don't see many similarities, but... it's the closest I had to a lead." She frowns. The question of why seems more important than the how, at least to her.

"Is there anything I should know about? Reasons someone might be trying to get to you, now?"

He's silent, letting the food be an excuse for failing to reply right away. Look, Scully, he's being polite rather than shoving broccoli into his mouth as he talks. It's more a delaying tactic than anything else, though, because he can't think of anything that would actually merit people's interest. They've been off the lam for years, even if he's done his best to stay out of the Bureau's eye as well. Hell, it's been more than five years since their last real case. What he's done since then doesn't amount to much.

It's stunningly clear, in that moment, why Scully left in the first place. He's had nothing to offer the world in years. For all he's tried, he's gotten nowhere.

"Nothing I can think of," is what he eventually says, trying to keep a sense of the morose out of it. But even if he succeeds there, he can't help a bitter addition. "To tell you the truth, Scully, I don't know why they'd try to go through you to get to me, anyway. I haven't seen you in...close to a year? If not for the news article, I wouldn't have known you were gone."

Part of her has been expecting that-- based on his not having her address, on the way Skinner carefully avoided talking about anything-- but having it out plain makes her visibly startle. A year feels like an impossible time to be apart from Mulder, especially right now-- when she knows how worried he is about her, like if he turns away too long she might vanish.

And... it makes some sense, somehow. The lingering sadness around him, the way he keeps looking at her and not looking at her. What happened, she wants to ask; she's not sure she's more afraid of him answering or not answering. So she doesn't ask. Bites her tongue to keep for apologizing, when she doesn't know what it's for, whether she's even the one who needs to.

"Maybe there are others," she says finally. It feels like a cop-out, the idea that this could be some widespread, accidental phenomenon. Not when she ran into Skinner two minutes after arriving outside her office. It all feels too planned. But it's the safer theory, for now.

"I'm guessing you haven't seen a spike in time travelers lately?" The humor she tries to put into it goes missing, stuck on the lump she's pretending isn't in her throat.

She looks disappointed, and he can't blame her. Tell him back in the 90s that there'd come a time when Scully wouldn't even want to look at him, and he'd have laughed. Insist on it, and he'd have been angry - upset even. He wants so badly to reach across the table and touch her, to reassure her, but remembering how to be around her is harder than it sounds. Scully being here has to mean being here without any expectation on his part, and if he betrays the real depth of their relationship, that'll shift in an instant.

"You could be the first," he says, matching her tone only insofar as he, too, can't quite make himself sound like he's joking. "We'll watch out for more. And until then - Scully, I want you to know that you can stay as long as you want. You're not...unwelcome here. Mi casa es su casa."

Quite literally, in fact. He's never made any effort to try and buy her out. The idea of it means she's never coming back, really never coming back, and Mulder's pretty sure he might as well throw himself off the roof at that point. What the hell's the point of him when they aren't a team?

Mostly, she just can't wrap her mind around what could possibly have happened-- what could cause such a rift. And recent, too, evidently; he says it's been a year but a year is nothing when it's one of seventeen. No wonder he's so palpably uncomfortable around her.

(If anything, it's the pulling back that will let it slip. Their relationship is already deep enough in '97 that she wouldn't second-guess his touching her hand; the distance will seem stranger than anything else could.)

"I-- thanks," she says, her shoulders dropping a little as she forces some of the tension out of herself. "I mean it. It's-- I'm really glad, Mulder. I wouldn't want to try and figure this out without you, or with anyone else."

After all-- they are a team, still.

"I'd be insulted if you tried," and this time, he's able to summon up some amusement. The smile doesn't chase the sadness out of his eyes, but this much is true: When Scully's in trouble, he'll drop everything to help. Doesn't matter what's happening or how little she wants to see him. There's no one in the world who matters the way she does to him. "Until then, you can get a taste of the future."

Streaming television. Jackass presidents. Drone warfare. And maybe he'll show her around the yard. Actually - they can start with that, getting her familiar with the place. He'll give her the real bed, after he's changed the sheets, and he'll sleep on the fold-out in the office.

It doesn't banish the shadows, but he brightens up a little. Besides-- it's not as though he's light-hearted at home. It's not totally unfamiliar. (And again, she's the problem, weighing him down.)

"I'm a little disappointed on that front," she muses, crunching a crouton. "No flying cars? What have we even been doing?"

Small talk and jokes feel cowardly, but she can't ask him to explain. And she needs to feel... something approaching normal. Takeout and TV on a well-broken-in couch; she'll try not to think too hard about where Dana Scully might be, or might be meant to be. Off somewhere in Maryland, on her own.

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