Just as Williams life had been the picture of normal, his parents, his real parents, almost 2000 miles away, had become domestic in a way they had never imagined possible considering their past. Sometimes they felt their years in the FBI might never have happened, it might all just have been a very strange dream.

Some mornings Scully woke up early and took a jog and watched the sun come up over the mountains. She'd come home to find Mulder still sleeping and climb into bed beside him still fully dressed. Even after all these years together it was just nice to be close to him.

Other days she would stay in bed late until the sun was fully up and listen to Mulder move about their house fixing coffee and whistling, knowing his movements by heart. On these quiet days she sometimes thought how strange it was to be here, how after everything they'd been through that they now spent their mornings drinking coffee and their nights watching the stars on their porch. That she came home from work to the little house where they lived together, to his kisses. No monsters darkened their doorways, they never even fought anymore. He would rake the leaves in the fall and she planted sunflowers (though he thought this was a waste of seeds) in the garden come summer. The seasons passed quietly here.

On this morning however she woke up alone to a still house, reaching for him beside her and coming up cold. For just a moment she was a person she barely recognized, young and alone and full of strange longings. But her eyes flew open and she saw their familiar room, sunlight pouring in the window.

Wrapping herself in a bathrobe, she wandered into the hall.

Mulder wasn't in the kitchen, the only sound was the quiet hum of the dishwasher and the dripping faucet Mulder kept saying he would fix, even though he had never been particularly skilled at such domestic tasks. Nor was he in the living room, just the shelves of books and the soft glow of this fish tank.

Scully sighed and pushed open the door to the study. The walls were still littered with newspaper articles, but they were yellow and fading, and most of the pencils had fallen from the ceiling. Mulder came here now to write, and often Scully came home to the sound of furious typing. Today his hands were still on the keyboard and he stared at the screen with a peculiar expression on his face, one she couldn't read despite how well she knew him.

"Mulder?"

"A girl was taken Scully," he spun in his chair. "Fourteen years old, in a little town outside Cheyenne."

"What are you saying Mulder?" This reenactment of their old routine almost would have been funny if the look on his face hadn't been so strange.

"I'm not sure, I mean, there are no clues, no history of abductions, the police are stumped but Scully that's not why I'm interested"

"Then what?"

Mulder opened the minimized web browser to show a local news article. "This is the missing girl, here see, Clarissa Lambert" he indicated a pretty blond girl in a cheer uniform, standing in front of the football team.

"Mhmm," said Scully. "And?"

Mulder took her hand, his eyes bright, he pointed to a football player who was familiar and yet a stranger all at once.

"Oh my god," Scully said, gasping.

Mulder nodded. "It's him."