From: Wolvrine37 Date: 2 Jan 1999 22:37:49 GMT Subject: NEW Seeking the Truth (Post Drmlnd) (1/1) MarkSt Seeking the Truth (1/1) By MarkSt Mulder and Scully are not mine. I wish they were. They belong to 1013. Post Dreamland Fic Rating: PG Feedback: Yeah sure love to hear it.... Wolvrine37@aol.com "OK, this is definitely not a normal life!" I wander back over to the couch and collapse into it, stunned and surprised at what I've just seen. There has got to be a rational explanation for this. I chuckle inwardly. *That's a good one. Me, looking for a rational explanation?* Scully would love that. I can imagine her now, giving me a sarcastic dig. . ."Mulder, if I told you they spotted Bigfoot in the restroom, you'd be running down there like you had just finished your fourth cup of coffee." I bite my lower lip and reach down to grab the bottled water sitting on the table in front of me and take a drink, trying to make sense of the impossible. *After all, how hard can that be? I only do it everyday of my life.* What the hell happened here? This can't be real. I glance around my living room casually cataloguing everything I see. The fish, the couch, the carpet. . . oh God, there's a new carpet too. An area rug? I look at it warily, then slowly reach down to touch it, as if feeling it will somehow make it more tangible in my mind. *Hmmm, it feels good . . . looks good too.* Well, however it got here, I should have gotten one like it a long time ago. *Settling down. Wanting a normal life?* Her words have been playing over and over in my mind ever since we got back. Jesus, what was I thinking? Was I thinking at all? The first real conversation we have had since I told her how I felt at the hospital and I blew off everything she said. I was so focused on meeting my source, so intent on discovering the truth, that I wasn't paying attention to the obvious truth sitting right next to me. *Maybe, she's right.* The last few weeks have been bizarre: nearly drowning, traveling back in time to a ghost ship, encountering a group of government agents in the middle of the Nevada desert. It would have been so easy, so incredibly simple for them to kill us right there. No one would have ever known. No evidence, no clues. We would have just vanished. Like an abductee. I laugh to myself, there's poetic irony, *Spooky Mulder ends up becoming his own X-file.* Except that they would have killed Scully too. All these years I've been dragging her around the country, traipsing from one spot to another in search of bits and pieces of this puzzle I've been trying to solve. She could been killed so easily. I'm not sure why but that idea bothers me more now than it ever did. I take another quick gulp of water and . . . wait a minute, I don't remember buying any bottled water. In fact, I can't even remember the last time I bought groceries. I look at the bottle in my hand. "Evian"? Now, I'm really getting worried. I get up and walk toward the kitchen, afraid of what I might find there. Slowly, I approach the refrigerator, my hand tentatively reaching for the door. With a quick pull, I yank it open and . . . Oh ... my ... god ... It's full of food! This whole thing keeps getting stranger and stranger. That just leaves one more place to re-examine, the room where it all began. I return to the bedroom to look at the bed, the sheets, the mirror. *Well, this is definitely not my normal bedroom!* *This is beyond normal.* *Paranormal.* And yet, somehow, it's familiar too. A cold chill runs down my spine, the same strange sensation I got when those men stopped us in the Nevada desert. Could that have something to do with it? Sure, that's it. After all the fine work I've done advancing the cause of the MIBs and agenda of the conspiracy, they've decided to reward my years of effort with a stylish new bedroom set. Sighing, I lie down on the bed . . . and it starts moving. A waterbed? This is definitely going to take some getting used to. Glancing up at my reflection in the mirror and then around the room, I'm amazed how much space there is. Everything that was in here -- the boxes of files, background data, equipment, the porno magazines -- is all gone. And you know what the really frightening thing is? Besides the waterbed, that is. I don't miss any of it. Even the magazines. Why is that? My life, pathetic as it may be, was wrapped up in the items in this room. Now that they're gone, I don't feel a thing. For a long time, I used them because I was afraid to get close to you, Scully. With everything that happened in the past with Phoebe, with Diana, I didn't want to get close to anyone. It was my safety valve to prevent being distracted from my work. An imaginary lover to take the place of a real one. Then I used them because I was afraid to get close to anyone else. I guess it was my way of staying faithful to you. But now, I'm glad they are gone. They've become a joke now and a bad one at that. But you, Scully, you're here, you are still in my life. I close my eyes briefly to savor that fact. After all that's happened recently, after all we've seen and experienced, you're still here. I've been so busy seeking one truth that I've been avoiding another: that the reality of you is greater than any fantasy could ever be. I love you, Scully. I have for years. I was just too afraid to admit the truth I've known all along. And I know you love you me too. You tell me every moment we're together, in every look, every whisper. With you, your actions have always said more than your words. Sometimes, though, words are necessary. I hear the phone ring in the living room. It's her. I can feel her presence just as clearly as if she were lying next to me right now. I bolt to the door knocking over a lamp in the process . . .a new lamp? Breathless, I answer the phone. "Hello, Scully." "Mulder? How did you know it was me?" "Some things you just know, Scully," I softly answer. "Some, you just know."