Thank you to everyone for sticking with this story! I am so appreciative of everyone who reads it! Huge thank you to my betas admiralty and MonikaFileFan.

After clearing the space as much as they could, the upstairs hallway closet now filled to the brim with twenty years of memories, they decided to have a quick lunch before heading to a furniture store in College Park. Apparently they'd gone here a few months ago to get a new dining room table and it was about an hour away - a small price to pay for the seclusion of their home.

Mulder asked if he could drive being it had been her burden since this amnesia thing had taken over their lives, and despite some initial reservations, she ultimately relented. He'd always liked the act of driving, he'd probably driven them over a million miles all across America, Scully riding shotgun at his side. It was calming to him, mindlessly methodical, and that's what he needed now.

Ever since they started working on the nursery, he'd had a nagging wish at the back of his mind that he hadn't known how to vocalize. It was just another side effect of feeling displaced within his own life. Things he should be able to talk about with ease got caught in his throat out of a fear of saying the wrong thing. It was a ridiculous notion, this was Scully after all, but he didn't want to add any more undue stress to her pregnancy and with the situation they were already in, avoiding that felt like dancing around landmines.

"Mulder," Scully's voice prompted. He turned his head and saw she was looking at him with furrowed brows.

"Scully," he replied, jovially matching her tone.

"You okay?" she asked, a sweet upward lilt in her voice.

"Yeah, just thinking," he replied, stroking the worn material of the steering wheel with his thumb.

"I know it bothers you, but all cars have GPS in them now. And I promise the assisted parking really is convenient downtown-" she explained, assuming his behavior was in part due to his earlier apprehension at the technology of the car.

"No, no, it's not that," he chuckled.

"Then it is something?" she prodded.

"Um," he started, sitting up a little higher in his seat. "I was just wondering if we had a theme?"

"For the nursery?" she asked, surprise evident in her tone. "You had me worried there. You were being too quiet. I'm not used to that," she added with a chuckle.

"Sorry," he laughed with her.

"We haven't actually talked about that. I guess I've been so caught up in worrying that I haven't really thought about anything like that yet."

His fingers had been burning to touch her and it took him a moment to remember he could. He took one hand from the steering wheel and moved it towards her lap, interlocking his fingers with her smaller, delicate ones. "You said the tests were all good, right?" he asked, waiting for her nod of affirmation before continuing. "Exactly. You said it yourself, you deserve to enjoy this pregnancy. You're here, I'm here, let's enjoy this."

She raised their joined hands to her lips and kissed the back of his hand before returning them to her lap. "Did you bring this up because you have an idea?" she asked. He chuckled lightly and he felt her nudge him with her elbow. "What?" she prompted with a giggle.

He'd been thinking about it since they started clearing out the room, but even though it was his child growing inside her, the fear of overstepping still lingered in him. "You're going to think it's silly," he replied with a knowing smirk.

"Probably, but tell me," she teased good-naturedly.

"What if we did an outer space theme? We could maybe even get those little glow in the dark stars that you tape to the walls and-what?" he stammered, smiling in confusion when he caught her beaming at him.

"I love it," she mused.

"You do?" he replied. "I don't think I've ever convinced you about something so quickly in my entire life."

"I think it's sweet. Fitting," she quipped, taking the swatches from him and running her fingers over them. "Would it be our child if they didn't spend their time staring into the stars?"

"You have a point there," he murmured in agreement, his smile threatening to take up permanent residency on his face.

"Were you nervous to tell me that?" she asked. "Since when have you been shy about telling me something I might disagree with?"

"I guess I just feel a little out of my element. I just want to give our kid the best life possible, I don't want to make any mistakes. All these decisions feel so permanent," he explained, merging from the highway onto the College Park exit.

As he looked over his shoulder to make sure no one was coming, he caught her beaming at him and laughed, "What?"

"You're going to be a great Dad," she mused with a smirk.

"If I can be half as good as a dad as you will be as a mom, I'll count myself lucky," he replied.

The conversation halted there as the navigation started to tell him where to go. As skeptical as he was about "Siri" and "Google Maps," he had to admit, this was pretty useful. He wished he could ask the Gunmen what they thought. Would they even be able to drive if they were alive? Or would they be too scared that the companies were tracking their whereabouts and mapping out their lives?

He felt another twinge of poignant sentimentality and tried to suppress it; he couldn't spend all his time missing the past at the expense of the future he had sitting next to him.

The place Scully took them to was a huge gymnasium filled with diorama living spaces. What appeared to be five floors, row-upon-row of everything you'd ever imagined possible. It was weird, but the meatballs were good.

"I didn't realize this many colors even existed," Mulder murmured in awe, taking in the rows and rows of paint swatches.

"This is a bit overwhelming," she replied, scanning the various squares with a furrowed brow. His gaze fell to her hand idly rubbing her stomach and he felt the swell of pride blossom in his chest like he did every time he caught her being motherly.

When his gaze returned to her face, he caught her brows furrow momentarily before licking her lips and taking a big breath. She looked a little nostalgic, but instead of wondering why, he decided to be upfront and ask. "Is there something else you're thinking about?" he asked innocently.

"When you were gone during the beginning of my first pregnancy, I put off doing anything to prepare for the baby. It didn't feel right doing it without you," she explained, lifting her head to meet his eye. "Eventually my mom couldn't handle the stress of my procrastination and she helped me paint the room and she brought over some stuff," she explained with a smile. Her direct honesty took him a little off guard, but he made sure not to let it show, just eager she was being so open. Every reminder of what Scully went through during the pregnancy of their first child made his heart ache for her.

"She'd keep asking me what I wanted and I kept saying I wasn't sure, because I wanted it to be something you'd like, but I didn't know what that was and I-I just," she stammered, letting out a low breath before continuing. "It ended up being this awful conglomeration of things that simply didn't fit together; animals, an airplane, clowns. No rhyme or reason. I didn't feel attached to any of it," she shrugged. Part of him was curious if she'd ever said any of this out loud before from the way she was having a hard time finding the right words, but it was evident this was something she wanted to tell him.

"But then one day I saw a mobile of stars and it was perfect. I hung it up as soon as I got home. I was too busy being happy you were back to ask if you liked the nursery decor, but hearing you suggest the outer space theme in the car… that was all I'd wanted to know for so long and hearing you say it now was so validating," she explained, her last statement coming out like a grateful sigh.

"Years before, you'd told me that you always thought souls resided in starlight. And when you were gone, every time I put William down, I imagined your soul in one of those little plastic stars, looking down on him," she shrugged. "I think I'm getting a little sappy for IKEA," she laughed, blinking rapidly to suppress the burgeoning tears.

She hadn't seemed sad throughout any of the speech, but his heart still went out to the poor Scully from all those years ago. "I wish I could've been there," he admitted.

She placed a hand on his cheek and stroked his jaw lightly. "You are now," she replied sweetly. Placing an idle hand on her stomach and shifting her weight from one foot to another she randomly asked: "Do you want to know something spooky?"

"Naturally," he replied with a smirk.

"A few months ago we got to see Will-Jackson's, room, and he's done it as an outer space theme, including a telescope and planets decorating his walls. Kismet," she laughed.

With a smile, he cocked his brow at her and leaned in conspiratorially. "Now that's spooky," he murmured.

"You're telling me," she chuckled. "But back to the matter at hand - Twilight blue or nautical nighttime?" she asked, holding two swatches on either side of her head.

Mulder felt a smile tug across his mouth as he pointed to the darker shade, "Nautical night time obviously, Starbuck."

XXXXXXXX

He could definitively say that, for most of his life, he'd never had a night time routine. Before he'd woken up in bed next to Scully a week ago, he'd been accustomed to coming home after whatever he'd entertained himself doing that evening before maybe watching tv, maybe jacking off, or maybe passing out: usually dependent on if the Knicks were playing, how his day with Scully had gone, or if he'd been investigating leads respectively.

But now it was an unspoken tradition that when they got home from whatever they were doing, Scully would go upstairs and bathe, grade, or whatever she needed to get done while he cooked and/or laid around and watched TV. They'd stopped and eaten at Chilis before coming home from IKEA, so he had the evening to do whatever he wanted until Scully joined him. He needed to remember to ask Scully what it was he usually did, because as of late he felt a little stir crazy, like a puppy waiting for their master to come home. He wanted to give her space to breathe and give her some alone time, and he knew he had plenty to look around and do to find out more about his past - but ultimately all he wanted to do was hang around his beautiful, pregnant wife.

Instead of going up and distracting her, he looked around and tried to find something to occupy himself with. It impressed him how much the space of their home was such a combination of the both of them. He could see things here and there he recognized from his apartment or hers, even the new things looked like they had influences of them both. He'd be lying if he said the simplicity of seeing their stuff together didn't thrill him. It was the same warmth in his chest that he felt when he saw their clothes together in the closet or her toothbrush next to his. Somehow the stars aligned to make him the luckiest sonuvabitch on the planet and he could barely believe it.

Mulder was pulled out of his reverie by the growingly familiar ding of his phone going off. Pulling it out of his pocket, he saw it was one of those instant emails Scully had tried to tell him about.

John Doggett

Hey Mulder,

Mon and I are in town for a few days and she wanted me 2 ask you if u or Scully need anything 4 baby? TTYL LOL

Doggett

Mulder felt his brows furrow in confusion. He couldn't remember ever knowing anyone named John Doggett, yet this person seemed to know him well enough to send something like this.

Before he could think about it anymore, another ding went off and his attention went back to the screen.

Mulder,

IDK y it said LOL. Dam phone!

Doggett

Mulder wondered to himself if this Doggett person ever made sense or if it was just a communication error. Walking towards the stairs he called out, "Scully! Do I know someone named Doggett?" Then, as an afterthought, added, "And what does LOL mean?"

"What?" he heard her call back in a muffled reply.

A little louder this time, he yelled, "What is LOL and who is Doggett?"

His cries were answered by Scully walking towards the landing of the staircase wrapped in her fluffy bathrobe, rubbing lotion on her arms. "Mulder, what have I told you about yelling for me when I'm in a different room?" she sighed with an amused look on her face.

"I'm not sure. I can't remember," he deadpanned.

She rolled her eyes with a smirk and repeated, "What were you asking me?"

"Who is John Doggett?" he asked.

"He took over for you for a little bit when you couldn't be on the X-Files," she answered with a smile.

Mulder inadvertently felt a grimace take residence on his face and it was apparently obvious. "Be nice. You had your hesitancies then too, but he did really strong work, saved my ass and yours more than once, and he's always been a great friend to us."

"And Mon?" he asked.

"His wife. She also worked on the X-Files while you were in hiding, though they weren't married at the time. She actually delivered our first child, believe it or not. You both are quite similar in your eccentricities," she explained.

"Me? Eccentric?" he asked in mock affront.

Scully shook her head as if to say incorrigible before asking, "Why do you ask?"

"I got a message from them asking if we need anything for the baby," he explained.

"Oh, are they in town?" she smiled, brushing a strand of hair behind her ear.

"Yeah for the next few days."

"We should invite them to dinner," she beamed.

If Mulder hadn't felt like he was in a new world before, he did now: Talking to a getting-ready-for-bed-Scully about old friends from the bureau and making dinner plans with them. He could have never imagined this type of domestic intimacy would ever be a part of his life. "I'd like to meet them," he smiled back at her.

"And luckily for you, a case of amnesia doesn't even come close to the weirdest medical phenomena you've exhibited around them," she laughed. "I'll text Monica myself and set things up."

She was just about to turn around when he stopped her. "Wait, what's LOL mean?" he asked, sounding it out phonetically like "l-oh-ll."

"Um, what?"

"Or IDK," he asked. Ih-de-ck.

"Is this another language you're speaking to me?" she chuffed in laughter. "You know I haven't watched Star Trek."

"First of all, that should have been a clause in our marriage vows. Second, he sent me the message 'IDK y it said LOL. Dam phone!'," he read monotonously.

"Oh," she exclaimed. "I.D.K. and L.O.L., they're abbreviations."

"For what?"

"I don't know and laugh out loud," she replied.

"Laugh out loud?" he repeated. "Why not just say 'that was funny' or 'that made me laugh'?"

"It's supposed to be shorter."

"Then why not just say haha?" he clarified.

"These are all good questions, but sadly I know none of the answers. If it brings you any comfort, you've never said LOL," she teased.

"It does, .," he drew out with a smirk.

She shook her head good naturedly before turning around and walking back to the bathroom, leaving him to his own devices. He walked over to their couch and plopped down, returning to the photo album section on the phone so he could look at it again, hoping something may jog his memory.

He scrolled at random, stopping only when he found a photo of him leaning forward with his face near a disgusting pink blobby-looking creature, smiling humorously at the camera. "Ew," he muttered to himself.

Randomly going farther down, he found a few pictures dated May 19th, 2018. One picture was a pixelated photo taken of a laptop screen. Zooming in, he could make out that it was a confirmation email regarding a marriage certificate going through for Fox Mulder and Dana Scully. The next photos were of them smiling on the porch. Scully showing off her adorned ring finger with a blissful smile, one so palpable he felt his own mouth smiling in reflex. He'd seen a photo of this day in the hallway and he hadn't even put it together. May 19th, 2018. He looked down at his own hand and saw the gold band glinting in the light. Again, luckiest sonuvabitch.

He continued scrolling a bit, and much like before, his biggest takeaway was that he'd primarily taken photos of Scully and sometimes them together. He was just about to put the phone away when something caught his eye. Scully loading a bunch of boxes into the back of their cars. He didn't recognize the building behind them, but he saw all the boxes were labelled U-Haul. Who was moving?

The top of the screen told them they were from March 15th, 2018 - earlier this year. He went to the next series of photos and was even further confused to see they'd driven to their house. The next photo showed them unpacking the boxes. Unpacking Scully's stuff. His confusion about their relationship before rejoining the X-Files just continued to grow. He looked around and could see dust littering some of Scully's old furniture, it had most certainly been here for longer than a few months. Yet, in the boxes were several knickknacks he knew meant a lot to her. A bible her dad had gotten her as a kid, photos of her family, things she wouldn't just leave at some random place.

What the fuck?

He knew when she came down, she was going to ask if he had any questions he wanted to ask her, but he didn't even know how to frame what he was most curious about. Did we stop living together? Did something go wrong? Why did we wait so long to get married?

He turned off the phone and put it in his pocket before he let his head fall back onto the couch, dragging his hands across his face as if he could wipe away the confusion. It seemed an unfortunate long-running theme for him, these enigmatic questions regarding his life. What happened to Samantha? What happened with the relationship with Scully?

Samantha.

He felt a twinge of guilt pluck at the strings of his heart as he sat back up, his eyes resting on a photo of Samantha he'd noticed on the mantelpiece earlier. He'd been so focused on adjusting to his new life that he'd neglected the biggest question of his old one. He wasn't sure what it said about him that he'd neglected asking about Samantha for so long. Maybe he was scared to hear the truth, maybe it was worse than he'd guessed.

He'd been so lost in thought that he hadn't heard Scully descend the stairs and walk over to him until he felt her weight dip the couch cushion next to him, her bath-warmed skin heating up his side. But then again, Scully always had that effect on him. "You okay? You looked pretty lost in thought," she murmured kindly, nudging his foot with her own.

"Samantha," he answered honestly.

She nodded slowly. Her hands flitted to her stomach and she just held them gently in place while rubbing her night shirt with her thumbs - the reminder of a missing child making her instinctively protective of her own. "You're ready?" she asked softly, not conveying any of her answer in her gaze.

In all honesty, he didn't even know what type of reaction he should be looking for. Is there possibly a good outcome? He didn't even know how to wrap his mind around the concept of a happy ending where Samantha was involved. All he knew how to steel himself for was the more likely solutions: she was either dead or they never found the answer. It felt wrong hoping for either.

He took a shaky breath as he felt his palms grow slick. His life's mission. The culmination of everything he'd worked towards for thirty seven years of his life was about to be answered. Scully must've sensed his anxiety because she slipped her hand underneath his own, giving him a reassuring squeeze. His constant lifeline in a sea of uncertainty.

"I need to know. Did we ever find her?" he asked, the words coming out like a whisper as if the sentiment was too heavy to be voiced.

There was a small moment of silence where everything felt like it was overwhelmingly vivid. He could hear the cicadas singing outside and the sounds of the old house creaking and adjusting, he could see Scully's chest rise as she took a lungful of air that would inevitably become the words he was terrified to hear, and he could feel his heart pounding against his rib cage like a morbid metronome counting down the inevitable. This could very well be the last moment of his life he spent wondering what happened to Samantha Ann Mulder.

"It's hard," Scully sighed. "To try and summarize everything we went through. We spent years searching, being led in the wrong direction, misinformed to fit narratives others wanted us to be in. I fear any way I say it will seem like a trite oversimplification."

"Take your time," he murmured, rubbing his thumb over the soft skin of her hand.

"I'll tell you about the night we learned the truth. The real truth," she began. "It was 2000, we'd been working on the case of a missing girl, Amber. It was a hard case, you always had a tender spot for missing little girls, but… during this case your mother died," she paused, her tongue darting to the side of her mouth as she looked down. "I'm sorry I was vague earlier."

"How did she die?" he asked, squeezing her hand and hoping it would encourage her to look at him.

It worked, and he was met with big, blue eyes brimming with sorrow. Sorrow for him. "She killed herself, Mulder."

It was something he most certainly hadn't expected to hear. She'd lived through the abduction of her only girl, the murder of her ex-husband, what could be worse? "When she found out about Sam?" he asked timidly.

"No, no," she replied, shaking her head before biting her lips nervously. "When we were out of town, she'd done it. She had an awful, disfiguring illness that she didn't want to live with."

He didn't know what to say to that, so he just tried to digest it, nodding lightly. He'd already presumed his mother had likely passed by now, but hearing that it had only taken place in 2000 and by her own hand made the pain more acute.

"She'd left you a message that said 'So much that I've left unsaid for reasons I hope one day you'll understand'," Scully repeated, the words apparently burned into her memory.

"What does that mean?" he asked. Did she know something more about Samantha?

"I think she was trying to tell you to stop looking for your sister," she stated softly.

Mulder stared at the rug on the floor contemplatively. He didn't understand what any of this meant and he could see why Scully was anxious to tell him. "You said it was in the middle of a case?" he prompted, hoping that if she continued maybe it would all fall into place and he'd understand.

She nodded. "Yes. While working on it we encountered a man named Harold, a self proclaimed psychic who claimed he was getting strong hits off this case."

"Did he?" Mulder asked.

Scully chuckled lightly, as if she was anticipating him to say that. "You wanted to believe so, but at that point in time you'd expressed to me that you wanted this all to be done. The case, the search for your sister. You just wanted closure."

She raised their joined hands to her mouth and pressed a soft kiss to his knuckles before continuing. "Harold believed that 'walk-ins' had come to save Amber, and various other children from suffering horrible fates. Taking their souls and turning them into starlight where they could live eternally. It turned out he had a son who had disappeared and that was coincidentally when he started having these 'premonitions'." She paused for a moment before adding, "He reminded me of you."

"How so?" he prompted.

"He was so determined to believe his son was out there. So driven by his beliefs and convictions to find him, that he was blinded by his mission. He didn't care that people called him crazy or that no one believed what he was saying, because he needed to cling onto that hope in order to survive," Scully explained.

"Anyhow, your sister's case started to become more entwined as Harold got closer. He claimed he had visions of your mother, and I think you believed him. We ended up finding out that Samantha had been taken to an army base to live for a while. We found a diary of hers where she wrote that she'd been taken and experimented on multiple times."

"Did she say anything about her past?" he asked hopefully.

"She said she couldn't remember much. Glimpses of things every now and then. But she was sure she had an older brother who used to tease her, and she wished she could see him again," Scully explained, a tear falling down her own cheek as one hotly slid down his.

"Ultimately she escaped and went to a hospital," she stated. He felt that painful sense of timid hope burgeoning in his chest and he tried to suppress it with all his might. If she were alive, Scully would have started with that.

"We went to talk to the admission nurse, and you asked me to talk to her while you stayed behind. She said she remembered Samantha, that she was brought in by a deputy and was terrified, that she would only let the nurse touch her. Apparently the nurse had a vision of Samantha dead for a split moment while she'd gone to check on her, but then she was fine - just like Amber's parents had. Some men came to get Samantha, but she'd vanished from thin air out of a locked room."

He was about to ask if that was all they knew when she continued, "When I turned around to tell you, you were gone."

"Gone?" he repeated.

"You came out of the nearby woods saying that it was the end of the road. That they were all dead. Harold's son, Amber, your sister. You said you were free, and you'd never looked moreso," she whispered.

"What happened?" he asked.

"You told me later that an apparition of a boy led you to a clearing where you saw the spirits of all the dead children we'd exhumed on the case. You said Samantha was with them," she explained softly.

"Did you believe me?" he asked, knowing even now, as a believer, this sounded so surreal. He couldn't imagine what Scully's perception of it was.

"Well," she began with a sigh. "While you were with Harold, I was doing some research of my own. Your mother had burned some documents ordering that the search for Samantha stop."

"Why would she do that?"

"Um, the smoking man came to my apartment a bit later and told me he was the one that called it off. He said they didn't need to look anymore since they knew she was dead," Scully admitted softly.

He felt a familiar burn of rage surge through his veins. Of course. Of course he would have something to do with it. That and the thought of that bastard in Scully's space made his blood boil. "How did I react to that bit of information?"

"Much like how I can tell you're reacting now: indignant he's so intertwined in your life. Pissed he was anywhere near me." The last part was said with a small smile and he was yet again amazed at just how well she knew him. There were no secrets between them and it made him feel whole.

"I accepted that part of my life coming to an end then? I found comfort in knowing she didn't suffer for too long?" he asked, tracing the blue veins of her hand with his thumb.

"I think it was the perfect combination of you coming to a point in your life where you didn't want to spend it all on this mission anymore. Seeing Harold's desperation, what happened to your mother, and you even told me that you were starting to think a life with me felt like an actual possibility more than a dream. You were ready for it to happen - at the perfect emotional state for it. Which is why I'm a little nervous now," she prompted, watching his face intently.

"What did Harold say when I told him his son was dead?" he asked.

"He freaked out, saying you were wrong. That you were lying. You tried to comfort him and it was… poignant… hearing you talk to him. It's like whatever you had gone through in that clearing had changed you. When you talked to that man, it was as if you were talking to a younger version of yourself. You were offering comfort to someone you empathized with on an intimate level."

From his perspective, he couldn't imagine learning this back in the day and then going to an empty apartment. What followed a revelation like that for a man who felt like his life was his work? Would he be able to work on the X-Files, trying to find the extraordinary with the knowledge that all monsters are merely men nagging him in the back of his mind? All questions seemed to lead to the thoughts of a purposeless man.

But he couldn't relate to that now, because Scully gave his life purpose. Nothing he did then could ever have been fruitless if the reward he reaped was the life he currently had in front of him.

His wife was sitting with him, soothing their unborn child, in their shared home while looking at him with so much love it felt palpable in the air. "Are you okay?" she gently asked, tilting her head while trying to read him.

He opened up his arms to her and was thrilled when she crawled over to him and nuzzled into his side, throwing her legs over his lap. He placed some sweet kisses to her temple, feeling her pulse steady on his lips before resting his cheek on her head.

"She was dead the whole time," he murmured.

"I'm so sorry," she replied with sorrow in her voice.

He looked out the curtains of the living room window, and from there, he could see hundreds of stars littering the blanket of dark sky staring back at them.

Samantha Mulder

Melissa Scully

Teena Mulder

Margaret Scully

Frohike

Langly

Byers

"Thank you for telling me."

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