He gets her a book - it’s wrapped in plain brown craft paper, but the edges are neat and it’s tied with a string.  Her first name is written on it in a hand that isn’t his.  The string is smooth cotton.  She winds it around her fingers, red and white  and red and white.  She does her best not to rip the paper, even though it doesn’t have a pattern.  There’s a logo from a local grocery chain on the inside.  The book is used, the cover worn soft.  The Custom of the Country by Edith Wharton.  When she opens it, it has quiet annotations in the margin: a tidy hand, the words in pencil and gently smudged by the friction of the pages.  

“Thank you,” she says.  

It’s her birthday.  He doesn’t really mention it, just smiles in a way a little more meaningful than even his usual conspiratorial smirk, and takes her out to dinner at a place he knows she likes.  She’s grateful for it.  It’s her first birthday since her father died.  It’s her first birthday he won’t call.  She wants to think about that as little as possible.  But Mulder marks the day like a pebble falling into a lake: a ripple that fades into stillness almost as soon as it began, and she finds that she can breathe as the warmth of his attention washes over her.

+ + + +

The X-Files is closed before her first Father’s Day.  She meets up with Mulder at a museum in Baltimore.  They both pretend to be wandering aimlessly through the rooms.  He drops his pamphlet.  There’s a note scrawled under the map: what ho, apothecary.  She tries not to laugh, tries not to sob.  His shoulder brushes hers as he leaves.  She slips a piece of paper into the pocket of his coat.  

Who calls so loud? 

He’ll read it when he steps outside, in some café or bar, and he’ll smile.  That doesn’t fill the hole in her heart, but it’s something.  

She wonders if he calls his father.

+ + + +

There almost isn’t Christmas.  She’s gone for months, and then they’re in quarantine.  She almost wishes there hadn’t been Christmas.  Christmas is hard, with her father’s empty place at her parents’ table.  Her mother’s table.  But the priest is there - some other kind of father - and her brothers, and Missy.  Charlie made a special effort, she thinks, because she was nearly lost.  

Mulder doesn’t do much in the way of Christmas.  She knows that.  She longs for him anyway.  He’s a candle in the window of her soul, the promise of home through the cold.

She calls him after dinner from her mother’s phone, drowsy with wine on the couch, the receiver tucked warm between her cheek and her shoulder.  She knows she’s murmuring nonsense as Mulder regales her with the latest in Christmas conspiracy theories, something about Knights Templar and holy blood, something about calendars and pagan rituals and the way that faith endures.    

When she gets back to the office, there’s a gift on her desk.  It’s in a crisp paper bag.  She pulls out a crinkling wad of tissue paper with a Martha’s Vineyard sweatshirt in it.  She unfolds the fabric to find a lovely glass bowl, small enough to fit in the cup of her palm.

“The shop was out of bubble wrap,” he tells her.  

The bowl is greenish blue, or bluish green: the color of light through water on a calm day.

“It’s beautiful,” she tells him.

“They said you can keep your jewelry in it,” he offers.  “Or...paperclips.”

She smiles so she does laugh, so she doesn’t cry.

+ + + +

New Year’s is hardest of all.  Mulder invites her to the Lone Gunmen’s shindig, and shows up at her place when she politely refuses.  They watch the ball drop.  Mulder leans in and kisses her on the cheek.  His lips are warm.  They toast to a new year and a fresh start with a tiny bottle of champagne and then he leaves, giving her space.  She’s already fragile as an eggshell when they go to Minnesota, to the cold, to Pfaster.  

+ + + +

She will understand, years later, why a bride brings back her murdered groom.  She will understand the vacuum an absence leaves.  When she got her wisdom teeth out, she couldn’t stop sticking the tip of her tongue in the holes they left.  Grief is the strange new balance of pressure in her memory, like the way her ears won’t pop in a plane. Sometimes swallowing can banish it.  Sometimes the feeling lingers, painful, internal in a way that can’t be ignored.

Christmases will always be hard, but she has Mulder for most of them.  They have each other.

“You’re letting in cold air. Shut the door if you’re going to lurk.”

“Lurk? I’m not lurking. I’m ogling.”

“Oh, well, my apologies.”

“I see you have artfully arranged those bubbles into some kind of mermaid bra. Very demure, Scully, but it’s cramping my chosen verb.”

“Find a new verb, then. Visiting, perhaps. Accompanying. Leaving, even.”

“Massaging?”

“Possibly acceptable if you’re not packing an ulterior motive.”

“Not packing. Just glad to see you.”

“Ugh.”

“Here, lean back. What’s this one where my thumbs are?”

“Trapezius. Mmmmm, that’s good.”

“See? I’m helping. Scully, set the wine down bec– ooooorrr just knock it back like a frat boy.”

“”There’s more, it’s okay.”

“Are you sharing any?”

“No drinking on the job. Oooof, that’s really sore.”

“I’m not surprised. You’ve got a knot in it like a chick pea.”

“A chick pea?”

“A garbanzo, whatever. It’s a spherical beige legume native t–”

“Mulder. I know what a chick pea is; it was just an odd comparison.”

“Fine, you have a hideous lumpish deformity in your trapezius. You’ll probably be a hunchback by morning. I’ll start calling you Igor and you’ll be subject to my mad whims, fetching whatever dark materials I require.”

“A little to the left. That actually sounds a lot like my job now.”

“Probably just as corpsey, too.”

“That’s a comfort.”

“Hey, Scully?”

“Yeah?”

“Um. Nothing.”

“Okay.”

“Hey, Scully?”

“Yep?”

“Does your mom kn–”

“Probably, yes.”

“Okay.”

“Mulder?”

“Hmmm?”

“Down a little.”

"That good?"

“Perfect. And Mulder?”

“Yeah?”

“We only got one room left,” says the clerk at the counter, comfortable in her swivel chair.  She twists back and forth gently as she looks at them, wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with the mascot of the local state university branch, the kind of obscure campus everyone remembers only after snapping their fingers and shaking their heads.

Scully glances at Mulder.  He looks back, implacable to everyone but her.  But she can see the amusement in his eyes, the lift of his eyebrow measured in angstroms.  Well, they shared a room in Kansas.  They can share again.  At this point, the distinction between them seems artificial.  They’ve napped together on planes and in cars, closer quarters than a single motel room.  They’ve been trapped together in the belly of a fungus and huddled for warmth on a ship full of ghosts.  They’ll manage to negotiate a single bed.  Besides, this is the only place in town with any vacancies at all.  There’s some kind of agricultural event and the whole town is buzzing with farm types.

“We’ll take it,” she says sliding the Bureau’s credit card over the counter.  

“Oh, it’s kind of a themed room?” the clerk says.  She looks like she’s enjoying herself.  She probably doesn’t check in too many out-of-towners in Armani suits.  Scully knows they look stiff and ridiculous compared to all the people in Carhartt jackets and overalls.  She tries to imagine Mulder in a worn, sweat-stained baseball cap.  Somehow it’s a more extreme possibility than a lot of the things she’s seen.

“A themed room?” Mulder asks.

“Yeah,” the clerk says, swiping the card.  “I don’t want to spoil the surprise.”

Scully smiles tightly.  It’s probably what passes for a honeymoon suite in this place, a heart-shaped bed and lurid red wallpaper.  If she wakes up with her feet tangled in Mulder’s calves at the point of the heart, at least he won’t be sharing her pillow.  The clerk passes back the card along with the receipt and two keys.  She winks.

“Y’all enjoy your stay,” she says.  “We got a continental breakfast right here in the lobby starting at 5:30, everything baked right here in town.  Might even have some eggs if Bobby’s hens get inspired.”

“Thank you,” Scully says, sounding uncomfortable even to herself.  

The room is at the end of the row, at least: in Scully’s experience, fewer neighbors begets a better motel stay.  The number on the door is carved into a woodsy plaque.  Whoever owns this place does take pride in it.  Mulder opens the door, stares into the room, and pulls it shut again.  He looks at her, eyes dancing.

“Okay,” he says.  “Guess the theme.”

“Honeymoon suite,” she says wearily.  

“Now I know where your head’s at,” he teases, looking her up and down.  They’ve been dancing closer and closer to each other lately.  “But no.  At least, I don’t think so.”

“Mulder, I’m tired,” she says, and pushes open the door.

Bunk beds.  The room has bunk beds.  It’s clearly designed for parents who want their kids close, but not in the same room. There’s an adjoining door in the wall that’s she’s going to make sure is very securely locked, and a set of sturdy beds on the opposite side of the room.  The wall behind them is painted in something approaching a nautical scene: portholes and rivets.  It’s ironic in this decisively landlocked town.  The bottom bunk is slightly wider than the top one, so that the ladder slants up instead of being a straight climb.  The covers are shades of blue and white.  The pillowcases have waves on them.  There are cartoon fish stuck to the mirror.

Scully closes the door.  Mulder is trying not to laugh.  She shakes her head, opens the door, and hauls her suitcase into the room.  

“I call bottom,” Mulder says, easing past her and sprawling on the wide lower bunk.  

“I want the bottom,” Scully says.

“Too late, I called dibs,” Mulder tells her.  “It’s actually pretty comfortable.”

“You’re tall,” she says.  “You should take the top.”

“Because I’m accustomed to the rareified air at such altitudes?” he scoffs.  “You should take the top.  That ladder’s not scaled for my build.”

“I thought you had boyish agility,” Scully says.

“That only applies to trees, not ladders,” Mulder tells her.

“Thanks for clarifying,” she says, hands on her hips as she surveys the ladder.

“Buy me dinner and I may let you share my bunk,” he says, patting the mattress next to him.  She remembers their few days of playacting in the suburbs, their ersatz marriage.  

“That’s a full bed at best,” she says.  “Close quarters.”

“I don’t mind,” he tells her.

“The Bureau’s buying us dinner,” she reminds him.  “So unless you’re willing to share that bed with Skinner, you might be out of luck.”

“Romance is dead,” he says solemnly.

She thinks of the question she wants to ask him.  Is it better or worse that he can’t take things seriously?  Is it better or worse that he’s so much more than her closest friend?  He must see some change in her face, because he scrambles up.

“Just kidding, Scully,” he says.  “I’ll take the top if that’s what you want.”

“It’s okay,” she says.  “If you’re that afraid of heights, Mulder, all you have to do is tell me.”

“As a psychologist, I recognize and do not fall prey to your baiting,” he says. 

“If we find a place with pie, I’ll buy you a slice of pie for the bottom bunk,” she tells him. 

“Coconut cream?” he asks, sauntering up to her.  

“I can’t guarantee any particular flavor at this time,” she says, gazing up at him.  Maybe she’ll buy him pie and then let him crawl into bed next to her.  Mulder, in these situations, tries to be a gentlemen, but his protective instincts or some deeper yearning overwhelm his conscious carefulness.  She’s sure if she allows it, she’ll wake up with his arm thrown over her, his body pressed snugly against hers.  Maybe tonight is the night she lets that happen, instead of staring up into the darkness wondering what would happen if she let him in.

“If there’s no pie, I’ll let you wrestle me for it,” he offers.  “Or maybe we’ll both learn a lesson about the importance of sharing.”

“We’ll see,” she says, “but I have faith in pie.”

“Let’s see if your faith pays off,” he says, opening the door.  “Otherwise, you’ll be enjoying the view from the top deck.”

They bought the house in the spring.  Scully, at the time, had been dreaming of their son.  Mulder had only picked houses with two or more bedrooms in quiet deference to her longing.  But it was November now, and the ache in her heart had faded a little.  They’d spent the summer working on the house: painting the walls, retiling the bathrooms, powerwashing the siding, scrubbing the place within an inch of its life. They’d both learned to chop firewood and laid in a supply that seemed endless.  She was sure it wouldn’t last through December.  Nothing ever lasted as long as she hoped it would.    

After a lingering summer, it was finally fall.  The wind plastered red and yellow leaves to the white siding.  One morning they chopped carrots and potatoes and pearl onions.  Mulder seared the beef and Scully tipped all the vegetables into the slow cooker with broth.  She kneaded dough and set it to rise in the oven, the light on behind the shadowed glass.  They tugged on wool socks and laced up their hiking boots.  Scully pulled her hood over her hair against the drizzle and slipped her hand into Mulder’s to warm her fingers.  

“I love this,” she said, the words cloudy in the air.  She’d always been afraid of that before, she thought, that if she told him she loved him, it would linger between them, tangible.  She wasn’t afraid now.  Whatever she didn’t have, she had him, and they had the house, and they had built something solid between them, somewhere between the Southwest highways and the trail through the woods.

“Didn’t take you for a hiker,” he said, his mouth quirking.  

“I love this,” she said.  “I love us.  I love that there is an us.  I love that we can do things like walk in the woods without looking over our shoulders every five minutes.”  She took her hand out of his and spread her arms wide, encompassing the forest around them.  “I love that I know how to grout tile now instead of how to dismantle and clean my handgun.”  

“I bet you could still take apart a Sig Saeur,” Mulder said.  

She shrugged.  “It’s nice that my life doesn’t depend on it.”

“I know what you mean,” he said.  “I gotta say, I like knowing how to use an ax.”

“I like watching you use the ax,” she said, smiling at him.  

“Likewise,” he said.  “I like knowing you could still take me out.”  He prodded her bicep with the knuckles of one hand.  “You’re still packing heat.”

She rolled her eyes at him, but she couldn’t help smiling.  

“Apples,” he said suddenly, glancing past her.  

“Apples?”  She turned and there was a gnarled little tree dotted with apples like early Christmas decorations.  Mulder was already loping toward it, his footing steady even on the damp little of the forest floor.  He stretched up an arm and plucked a couple of apples.  He shook the rain off them and handed one to her.  She turned it over in her fingers.  A little pippin, slightly knobbly, the skin greenish gold and laced with brown.  She polished it on her sleeve and looked at Mulder.  He held up his apple like he was toasting her and then took a bite.  His teeth sank into it with a faint crunching noise.  

“Mm,” he said.  “Try it.”

She looked at it from all sides, considering her angle of attack, and bit into the side that seemed the least blemished.  The flesh of the apple was brightly tart, with a delicate sweetness that perfumed her mouth.  “Mm,” she agreed.  

They filled their pockets.  “They’ll only freeze if we leave them, Scully,” Mulder rationalized, stretching up to snag another.  

“I’m sure the squirrels would harvest them if we didn’t,” she said, but she stuffed them into her anorak anyway.  

She was shivering by the time they got back to the house, her hair twisting into tendrils in the damp.  She should have brought gloves.  It had been too long since she’d been in the woods.  The temperature was dropping fast.  There was snow in the forecast.  She hadn’t believed it before, but she did now.  The porch railings were hung with drops of rain already beginning to freeze.

“You know, this was the nicest trip to the forest we’ve ever had,” she said as she unloaded her pockets, the apples toppling across the table.  “No bugs.  No mothmen.  No werewolves.”

“When have we ever had werewolves?” he asked, his eyes crinkling.

“No shapeshifters,” she corrected.  “No skinwalkers.  No Jersey Devil.”

“I know Atlantic City isn’t exactly civilization, but it’s not the woods,” he teased.  She sighed and shivered, catching herself with a gasp.  

“Let’s build a fire,” Mulder said.  He pulled the blanket off the couch and wrapped it around her, pulling the hem over her hair and tucking the ends over her shoulders.  She looked at him with some reproach.

“Am I just supposed to stand here now that you’ve wrapped me up like a mummy?”

“You’re supposed to relax,” he said, and scooped her up.  She squeaked in surprise and then let herself go soft into the cradle of his arms.  “I never got to carry you over the threshold.  At least I can carry you to the couch.”

She curled up against the arm of the couch as he slipped on his coat again and went out to the porch to get the wood.  He let the logs clatter to the hearth and sets them in the fireplace, building a neat little fire in only  a few minutes.

“I didn’t know that was one of your skills,” she said, lazy in the warmth of her blanket and her love.

“I told you,” he said, “I was a Guide as a kid.  Spent all my summers building fires at camp.  Haven’t I ever built a fire for you?”

“You usually leave it to me,” she said.  “You’re always putting up a tent or lying helplessly on a log while I try to get the gunpowder out of a bullet or something.”

“Good thing I finally get a chance to show you my skills,” he said. 

“You always show me your skills,” she teased.  “But I do like this one.”  Warmth licks out of the fireplace, coloring her cheeks.  “Mmm.”  

“Glad I can satisfy you,” he said.

“You could always satisfy me,” she said.  

He rose, dusting his hands on his thighs, and came over to the couch, settling in beside her and slinging his arm around her.  They watched the flames.

“We did that, Scully,” he said.  “We cut that wood.”

“Keeps you warm twice,” she said.  “Isn’t that what they say?”

“That is what they say,” he told her.  

“This way is nicer,” she said, cuddling into his side and laying her head against his shoulder.

“I agree.”  His voice was a warm rumble under her cheek.

“Look what we’ve made,” she said.  

“We’ve done a good job,” he said.  

“It’ll be strange to go back to work,” she mused.  “But probably for the best.”

“There’s only so much wood you can chop,” Mulder said.  “You’re not a woodchuck.”

“And you’ll write your book,” Scully said.  

“A man of leisure,” he teased.  “While you’re saving children, I’ll be writing a tome that only professors and paranoid conspiracy theorists will keep on their shelves.”

“It takes all kinds,” she told him.  “You’ve saved the world plenty of times.  It’s about time the world knew.”

“We did it together,” he said.  “We’ve done it all together, Scully.”

“That’s my favorite part,” she said.  

She still smells smoke when her hair falls across her face.  It’s not real; Scully knows that.  She’s washed her hair several times in the days since the fire, with the lemon shampoo that covers even the lingering reek of formaldehyde.  She hasn’t been down to the office in days, though her finger slips automatically to the lowest button in the elevator before rising again.  It isn’t real, but she smells it nonetheless.  Mulder would understand - he probably catches the whiff of burned paper when he strips off his undershirt at night - but she can’t tell him.  Diana lingers between them like stale cigarette smoke; the choices Mulder made on the Gibson Praise case muddle the air between their temporary desks.  Scully can’t decide if the taint of nicotine or the slightly cloying smell of charred manila folders would be more appropriate.  

In the absence of the X-Files, they have been reassigned, as if the powers that be could repurpose them.  As if they hadn’t been forged in the basement long before the flames licked around the edges of their evidence.  Some swords can’t be beaten into ploughshares, not again.  How far did the higher-ups sift through their history before they hit on the terrorist task force as an appropriate venue?  Does someone, somewhere, in some smoke-hazy office, know that something’s going to happen, or is it just the general paranoia that undergirds American society?  Like the trees that turned out to be one enormous organism, like the fungi that interlace for acres underground, different threads of bigotry are woven through their society, the pretty pattern spoiled and snarled underneath.  Her life too has become irretrievably tangled, or at least her mother thinks so.  In ways, Scully is grateful that her mother can’t see the ugliness of all the other choices in her life.  Maggie Scully can still appreciate a landscape or a tapestry without imagining the brutish scurrying underneath.

Mulder is moody and standoffish, as if he has a right.  “They’re wasting our time, Scully,” he says as they deposit their bags at the airline desk.  

“Just consider you’re going back to your roots,” she tells him.  “Profiling used to be your thing.”

“Physics used to be yours,” he says.  “You using your degree, Doctor Scully?”

“Every time we get on a plane,” she says, gazing steadily up at him.  

“I guess that would make flying more fraught,” he says.  “You could always take something and pass out on my shoulder.  I’ll even let you drool on me.”  A peace offering, she sees in his eyes, but it doesn’t mean much when he doesn’t understand what he did to vex her.  The game was afoot.  Of course the dog didn’t bark in the night time.  Mulder had spent dark hours with Diana, years’ worth if the Lone Gunmen were to be trusted, and somehow that made all the years since they’d spent watching each other’s backs something he either trusted so much or valued so little that he was willing to abandon it.  

“I’ll consider it,” she says.  At least on a plane, strapped and wedged into his seat, he can’t ditch her in media res.  Unless aliens hijack them, she supposes, in which case, she’ll try to document the process so that she can present their findings to the world without looking foolish.  

They find their seats, window and middle, not an exit row.  Scully puts her newly issued coat in the aisle seat, folded so that the bright yellow FBI doesn’t show.  She’s been approached at airports for everything from directions to reports of pickpocketing.  She doesn’t want to spend the flight peered at and interrogated.  Fortunately, the door closes without anyone in the seat.  Mulder hands her his jacket as well.  She piles them together and weighs them down with the buckle of the seat belt.

“You’re mad at me,” he says as the flight attendant approaches with beverages.  Scully is lost in the relative merits of ginger ale (fizzy, too sweet, may give her a headache) versus coffee (caffeinated, acrid, may give her heartburn).  

“I’m not mad,” she says absently.

“Something’s wrong,” he says.  “Throw me a line here, Scully.  My profiling skills are rusty.”

“I’m frustrated,” she says and he groans quietly.

“You’re frustrated,” he repeats.  “That’s a mom thing to say.”

Grief flickers through her and she can see that he regrets his choice of words.  He bumps his shoulder gently against hers.  “Hey.  I didn’t mean it that way.”

“You were there for me through everything with Emily,” she says, looking him straight in the eye for what feels like the first time in months.  “You’ve been there for me through some of the most difficult moments in my life.  Sometimes lately it still feels like you shut me out of those same moments in your own life.”

He shifts in his seat.  “It’s not personal, Scully.”

“It’s not personal,” she says.  “Exactly.”

“What do you want me to do?” he asks, defensive.  “Cry on your shoulder?”

“You could have told me about your history with Diana,” she says.  “I went to see her in the hospital.  She’s expected to make a full recovery.”

“That’s not personal,” he says, avoiding her eyes.  “It’s the past.”

“The past doesn’t leave us, Mulder,” she says.  “Otherwise regression hypnosis wouldn’t be profitable or theraputic.”

He sighs.  “I don’t know what to say about it,” he tells her.  “I don’t know why I still trust her, but I owed her the benefit of the doubt.”

And not me?  She doesn’t ask the question, but it still drifts up between them, soundless as smoke.

“She’s important to me,” he says.  “She believes in the X-Files.  I believe in her commitment to the truth.  Sometimes we’ve all done things in the course of our investigations that seemed incongruous.”

Scully inclines her head in acknowledgement.  The drinks cart rattles closer.  Club soda, she decides.  Maybe the stinging freshness of the bubbles will clear the memory of smoke from her sinuses and the taste of Mulder’s mealymouthed half-apology from the back of her throat.  The flight attendant thinks they’re married.  Neither of them says anything as they accept their cups of ice and bags of peanuts.

“I didn’t know you wanted to be part of my misery,” Mulder says as Scully tips the last of her honey-roasted peanuts into her palm.  A small indulgence to offset her distaste for flying.

“Mulder, I couldn’t escape being part of your misery if I wanted to,” she says.  She crumples the empty bag onto her tray and licks the nuts out of her palm.  With her clean hand, she touches his forearm where he’s rolled up the sleeve of his dress shirt.  He gets hot on airplanes.  She can feel how cool her fingers are against his skin.  “For the record, I don’t want to.”

“Here I am, stuck in the middle with you,” he says blithely.  

“Some days, I feel stuck,” she says.  “Some days, I feel like Bonnie and Clyde.”

“I can’t recommend robbing banks, Scully,” he says.  “It’s not as much fun as it looks.  But I’m sure we can make our own fun in Dallas.”

“There’s fun in Dallas?” she asks skeptically.

“You’ll see,” he says with confidence.  “Don’t we always find a way?”

“Frequently the wrong way,” she says.

“I took the way less traveled by,” he tells her.  “It’s made all the difference.”

“I know it has,” she says, and leans back against the headrest.  The last of her club soda is fizzing in her plastic cup.  It sounds almost aggressive, the way the ice amplifies the popping of the bubbles.  But it tastes clean and fresh when she raises it to her lips.  All she can smell is the crispness of ice, a microclimate that will vanish, inevitably, as the water shifts states into a tepid liquid she won’t want to drink.  The only constant is change.  The ice doesn’t lose itself; the water retains the memory of what it was, and becomes ice when the conditions are met.  That’s comforting.  She’s heard the murmurs of ice queen around the bullpen before, but ice has structure and clarity that smoke doesn’t.  Ice remembers.  It can hold the evidence inside it of thousands of years, preserving a perfect record of how things used to be.  She becomes aware that she’s gazing into her cup and sets it down.  She hasn’t been sleeping well.  Her dreams are all hazy at the edges.

“You’re looking sleepy there, partner,” Mulder says in what he seems to believe is a Texas accent.  It’s no better than it was when they were chasing vampires in Cheney.  He pats his shoulder.  “I’m here if you need me.”

She lets herself lean against him.  For a moment, he tenses, but then his muscles ease under her head.  When she takes a deep breath, he smells like soap and heat.  

“We’re not going to a cowboy bar,” she tells him.

“You say that now, Scully.”  His arm rises and falls gently under her ear as he breathes.  “I bet you’ll be boot scoot boogieing with the rest of the Texans in no time.”

“I didn’t bring my cowboy boots,” she says.

“There’s your first mistake,” he tells her.  “You’ve got the wrong attitude about this trip.  I’ll show you.”

“Mulder, Florida Man is not a cryptid.”  Scully crossed her arms and leaned against the desk.  “Florida Man is a meme.  There is no actual Florida Man.” 

“Au contraire, Scully,” he countered, nodding along with his own logic in that way he had.  “There are many Florida Men.  There are Florida Men all over Florida, and perhaps even crossing state lines.”

“For illicit purposes?”  She raised an eyebrow.

Mulder shrugged, a twinkle in his eye.  “Who can say what the mysterious Florida Man wants?”

She sighed.  “Walk me through it.”

“First,” he counted on his fingers, “Florida Man is often glimpsed, but rarely documented.”

“I’d say that’s almost completely false,” she said, “but go on.”

“Is there a verifiable depiction of Florida Man?” he asked.  “Can you examine a photograph and determine whether it’s Florida Man or not?”

“With some reasonable degree of certainty, I could ascertain that whether it was a photograph of a man, and possibly whether or not he was in Florida,” she said.

“But you just agreed that Florida Man isn’t always in Florida,” Mulder said.  “The Floridian quality doesn’t disappear when he crosses into Georgia or Alabama.  In fact, Florida Man might be a woman, if the news is fit to print.”

“He might,” she allowed.  

“It’s 2018, Scully,” he said.  “Florida Man’s gender is a fluid unknown quantity.  How’s that for equality?”

“I’ve had better,” she said dryly.

“Second,” he continued, “Florida Man - Florida Human, if you will - does things that other people would find improbable if not outright impossible.”

“There are a number of plausible, quantifiable reasons for that,” Scully told him.  “Drugs and alcohol.  Heat exhaustion.  Spring break.”

“Not that kind of gone wild,” he said with a wink.  

“Mulder, most of Florida Man’s acts are criminal, not supernatural,” she pointed out.  “They’re notable for their absurdity.  Florida Man stands naked in the middle of the road throwing golf balls at passing cars.  Florida Man flings a stingray at a convenience store clerk.  Florida Man sees aliens.  He isn’t the one flying the ship.”

“I don’t think you understand Florida Man,” he said earnestly.

“I don’t think you understand memes,” she said.  “Can we stick to the moth men and the skunk apes and the sewer gators and whatever it was that tried to strangle you that time we went to meet Arthur Dales?”

“Sewer gators are real,” he said.  “Especially in Florida.”

“We can retire in Florida someday,” she said, reaching for his hand.  “You can become Florida Man.  We’ll write a field guide to modern cryptids and the internet will love you.  How’s that sound?”

“Don’t all the nuts roll down to Florida,” he said, and his grin was still the same, all these years later.

His memories are stained with light.  The edges of the shadows bleed blue and red.  His parents’ screams are a sickly yellow.  Samantha’s face glows pale, a moon about to wane, leaving him in the dark forever with no way home.  He can’t close his eyes and shut it away.  It’s his own personal theater of the mind, playing the least pleasant moments of his childhood, forever.

For this, he had his skull bored into, dowsing his own subconscious for the things he didn’t want to know anymore.  For this he had a needle slipped into his arm.  Another jab to the tender parts of him that are left.  Scully puts her hands around his face and she’s the only steady thing.  He’s floating away again, the way he did when he was a kid before he had a seizure.  Maybe Scully can anchor him.  

When his mother read him fairy tales, before Samantha was born, he imagined himself as the prince: heroic, charming, ready to save the day.  After she disappeared, he knew he was the cursed child instead.  His parents had offended some force beyond their understanding and he had been doomed from birth.  He has never been able to break that spell.  The ketamine seemed like the best chance.  The doctor promised he would remember.

He doesn’t remember the right things, only the wrong ones.  Maybe there aren’t any right things to remember, and his whole life is revealed as the poison apple it always was.  

Scully is always telling him not to be so open-minded and now he has opened his mind to the past, to the air, to things he doesn’t understand, to memories he can’t grasp, to a new set of possibilities.