From: XWriter42 Date: 22 Nov 2000 05:19:12 GMT Subject: NEW: Being Fox Mulder Being Fox Mulder by XWriter I never wanted to be Fox Mulder. Didn't want his job or his files. Didn't want to fall in love with the unknown, with things that exist outside the realm of science or logic. I never wanted to be the one down in the basement office, the one snickered about during lunch or stakeouts. I didn't want to be the one who was hauled into the director's office and reamed out. I sit in his desk chair, walk the floors he did, look at the photographs that fascinated him. It's all him, everywhere I go, I'm surrounded. I never wanted this. None of this was in my plan, but it all came to pass. This was not the job I wanted, nor the partner I envisioned having it with. My life had traveled the same track for seven years. In one moment, it was jolted out of that track and onto another, one less certain. I'm still not sure if I like this new role I find myself in. Every day brings new questions, new challenges. With my training, I'd thought it would be easy to shift gears. Searching for Mulder was not the gear I expected to find myself in. My mother told me it's these very expected things that make life so rewarding. The excitement lies in not knowing where each day will take you. Do I want to wake up to another unfamiliar hotel room? Worse for that hotel room to become familiar. Catch 22? I thrive on challenges, there is no doubt of that. I enjoy them. I couldn't stand it if my life were the same from day to day. Perhaps that is why I entered this field to begin with. The search for Mulder will never grow old, I can see that already. He will always be keeping me on my toes, whether near or far. Surely some day, he will come back, to claim the things that are his. His files. His office. His-- And that is where my train of thought falters. The future is uncertain, more uncertain than it ever has been. In the dark of night, everything is uncertain, vague and shapeless like images seen out the car window as a child. I remember my mother driving--was it through Iowa?--and thinking I saw buffalo out in the dark, lumbering shadow, dark moving against dark. Squinting didn't help then and it doesn't help now, only makes colors burst against the dark, colors that don't lead to an exit or a clue. I never wanted this uncertainty, to be one of those imagined buffalo against the nightscape. But here I am, reaching a hand into the dark, trying to find something that will ground me, that will reassure me that I am not Mulder. My hand slides over her warm skin. She rocks backward, turns in my arms slowly and kisses the base of my throat. And when she whispers, I know that I am not Mulder. "John." THE END