Title: Certifiably Normal (Lux)
Author: Shawne
E-Mail:
shawne@shawnex.freeservers.com
URL:
http://www.shawnex.freeservers.com
Spoilers: post-ep Bad Blood
Rating: PG
Classification: VRH
Keywords: M/S UST, DAL
Archive: Yes to Gossamer, Ephemeral, Spookys (17K). Anyone I haven't
heard from before, would it be too much to ask that you drop me a
line? <g>
Disclaimers: I'm just borrowing Mulder's brain for a paragraph or
sixty. He can have it back... if another fanfic author doesn't want it
next. ;)
Summary: 'You make me see, make me *do* things, Scully. You make me do
a lot of things I would never consider doing otherwise.'

Author's Notes: Third installment in an extremely slow-going series
<eg> of journal entries, written by Mulder and addressed to Scully.
You don't have to have read the first two stories to understand this
one, but if you want to take a look at them, "Not That Different" and
"Touched By Darkness" are both available on my website. I have since
named the series Lux (Latin for 'light'), and I hope to expand on it
once time and my Muses permit.

You do *not* wanna know how long this took to get off my computer and
onto the web. It's just scary, and wrong, and more than a little
disturbing. I'll prattle on more at the end of the fic, if you...um,
*really* want to find out what went wrong. <g> In the meantime,
enormous thanks to Dreamshaper, who was patient, encouraging, and most
importantly, Not Scared Away.

=======================================================

Scully--

 You make me see things.

 I swear you do. Around other people, I don't get sudden and complete
hallucinations. I don't see things that aren't there, and I don't see
them so clearly that I can't doubt they're anything but reality.

 If you're wondering where all this came from, let me make it clear
that I'm writing to you now after our little trip to Chaney, Texas.
That's about where I started to lose my mind and go a bit delusional,
imagining all kinds of impossible...

 Hang on a minute.

 If you think I'm going to admit that I didn't see Ronnie Strickland
jumping at you like a "flying squirrel" of some sort (those are your
words, Scully, not mine), skip the next paragraph or two. *That* I
most definitely saw.

 What I'm pretty sure I didn't see at the time (but seriously
I'm-not-kidding-here thought I did), was the buck teeth on that
cowboy sheriff you were salivating over. In retrospect, you were right
about that. Our return trip was enough for me to notice that Sheriff
Hartwell was... that he was... all right, I admit it.

 Sheriff Hartwell was orthodontically unchallenged.

 Happy now?

 But that's not the point I'm trying to put across. Frankly, I really,
really thought, at the time, that he had spectacularly huge front
teeth. Or at the very least... a slight over bite.

 He didn't, as I later discovered to my secret chagrin. But it was one
hell of a convincing hallucination.

 So I've been trying to figure out what it means, Scully. Why I see
things around you, things that pass themselves off as reality in my
eyes and to my mind... and yet, they're things that simply don't
exist.

 You make me see, make me do things, Scully. You make me do a lot of
things I would never consider doing otherwise.

 Before you protest, let me say that that isn't necessarily a bad
thing. And before you give up on me as a lost cause and tell me I've
lost every one of my marbles (even the ones that are already cracked),
I'll try to explain what I mean.

 I'm not going to pretend I'm not a... weird person, Scully. I know
I'm someone a lot of people aren't comfortable around, someone who's
the topic of watercooler conversations. I've overheard a few of those
in my day, classics such as "That guy down in the basement
investigating aliens - why's he investigating his own kind?" and
"Agent Mulder's a lot like Elvis... no one's quite sure if he's dead
or alive."

 Oh, ha ha ha.

 Frankly, Scully, that doesn't affect me much. I know I seem...
eccentric to others. Hell, I practically live in the darkness of my
basement office. I'm always eating sunflower seeds, I talk about
aliens and conspiracy and goat-sucker crap...

 Fox William Mulder, poster boy for the extremely abnormal.

 But I have to admit... I like it that way.

 Do I sound too defensive? Reading back over what I just wrote... I
sound decidely sarcastic and embittered. I really don't mind, you
know, when people point and whisper in the hallways. I don't give a
shit when they look at me and shake their heads pityingly, saying in
low mock-concerned voices, "That poor man has soooo many social
problems." I get that a lot.

 To use a cliche, I've been getting that ever since I stopped marching
to the beat of a universal drummer. In a way, it makes me feel good.
I'm not one of the crowd, I'm different, I stand out.

 I never used to care, Scully, what others thought. And even now, my
general opinion of those who have opinions of me... it's an apathetic
one. They can think what they damn well like, just as long as they
don't get in my way, and don't try to rein me in.

 To come to the point - and yes, I do have one, though it's been long
in the making - one of the other things you make me do, Scully, is to
actually care what others think. You make me see myself as the rest of
the world sees me - a crackpot living on some kind of crazed internal
fire, fighting a quest for a sister who is more likely to be dead than
abducted.

 And you make me realise that this isn't the person I should be, or
could have been.

 I should take fewer risks, ditch you less often, give you all my
strength... the way you give me so much of yours. I shouldn't make you
worry, because that hurts you, and I've already hurt you way too much.

 I could have been more grounded mentally, emotionally... less set in
my ways and reluctant to change, even for you.

 Because of you, Scully, I actually see myself as others see me. And
sometimes, all I can see is how my life affected yours, affected how
people see you. Your family doesn't approve of me (I'm not going to
name people here, but the phrase Total B.S. does come to mind), your
friends think you've lost your mind staying by my side (actually, *do*
you have friends anymore?), your colleagues pity you for getting a bum
assignment for five years.

 The list just goes on and on.

 And because you make me see all this, Scully, you also make me want
to change it, even though I know I can't. I know that my life needs to
be lived the way it always has been. Too often lonely, focused,
searching for a truth that, at times, only I can see. As much as I'd
like to change for you, to become the perfect man, the guy you dreamed
of as a child... I can't. I'm me, and you're stuck with me.

 I'd like to be more open, though. To just be able to say the three
simple words I can write so easily. To wake up in the morning and say
"I love you", to go to sleep at night with you knowing that, to be
able to say it to you at any time... just because I felt like it.

 And it might be nice to loosen up a little sometimes, to be able to
enjoy the world without fearing it might collapse in on me when I'm
not looking.

 On a related note, I've already established that I'm an odd guy. That
also means I live an odd life, one which I gleefully loaned you five
years ago, and one you're still paying regular installments to share
with me.

 I like it, my life. The challenges I face at work, the crazy sleeping
hours, the conspiracy-charged days and the Scully-infused nights. Like
the strange person that I am, I actually like living in my own
secluded world. It's mine, it's private, and if I'm really lucky,
there are only two people in it... you, and me.

 But you make me want to do things that are contrary to my every
natural impulse and inclination, Scully. To change my life no matter
how much I feel it fits me. I'm a loner, a maverick, the black sheep
in the white flock. And yet you make me want to jump into the nearest
vat of white dye and scream to everyone who cares to hear, "Fox Mulder
is now certifiably normal!!" (Well, that probably isn't the *best* way
to prove any sort of normalcy, but I trust you get my point.)

 I know you want, need, deserve a normal life, Scully. Unlike me,
you never intended to lose yourself in a web of darkness and deceit.
You didn't know what you were getting in on when you first met me. And
in a lot of ways, you didn't have a choice about that. You never did.

 From what little I care to remember of our first few months working
together... you had a social life. There were appointments, dinner
dates, lunches with colleagues from Quantico. You smiled a lot more,
and when people in the halls of the F.B.I. building greeted you
cheerily, you greeted them right back. You had a comfortable circle of
friends, and a family you loved. The most outrageous thing you had
done was turn away from a career in medicine.

 But even after that, you got back into the swing of things, and made
your life normal again.

 Unfortunately, I met you, took your life from your hands, and
returned it mangled and unfamiliar. I took away your normal life,
Scully, even as you brought just a bit of normalcy into mine.

 So... (yet another point that's been long in the making!) when I'm
around you, Scully, I sometimes have the wildest daydreams. I imagine
us quitting the F.B.I., and settling in as a happy couple in some
suburban neighbourhood, growing old and grey together. You'll be a
practising, successful doctor, and me? Hell, maybe I'll be a dutiful
househusband, doing the occasional criminal profile for the local PD.
That way, I can be at home waiting for you everyday, to kiss the
exhaustion off your face. And I could tell you all about the
adventures I had with our beautiful, normal children, and watch you
smile as they told you their stories about school and the backyard and
how Daddy couldn't make the mac and cheese the way you do.

 OK, that obviously isn't a wild daydream in anyone's book but mine.
The point is that it's a life I can't have with you, and it's a life
you'll never have now that you're with me. What amazes me is that...
when I'm with you, I actually want something like that. A life in
which my biggest concerns are tuition bills for college, and making
less money than my more intelligent wife. A life of balancing
checkbooks, baking cookies, and sleeping outdoors in hammocks would be
considered adventure.

 It's something I never wanted, Scully. Ever. Even as a child, the
kind of domestic life I envisioned for myself was more Tarzan and Jane
than Rob and Laura Petrie. Trying to imagine myself living such a
staid and boring life with anyone but you would just about induce
natural death by asphyxiation.

 I think you understand what I mean, though. Don't you, Scully?

 Basically, you make me wish I could be someone I'm not. You make me
imagine what it might be like to be a normal person, one who isn't
haunted by a past that still casts a long shadow over his future.

 I stopped believing in a lot of things before I met you, Scully.

 You walked into my office thirty-two years after I was born. That's a
pretty big number, thirty-two. It gave me more than enough time to get
disillusioned with the world I was living in... and I lost more
beliefs, ideals, hopes and dreams than I care to count. I only clung
on to two, perhaps foolishly. I clung on to the possibility that Sam
might still be alive, and that the truth would one day prevail.

 Otherwise, I was a pretty cynical man when I first met you. After
three remarkably rotten decades on this earth, my personal field of
vision and ambition had been narrowed down to Sam, and the truth.
Nothing else seemed to be a worthwhile pursuit; no other dreams needed
to be chased.

 Cue the drumroll for dramatic effect, and you must have realised by
now that you, once again, changed that. You made me see things I'd
lost sight of, Scully. You made me believe that beauty could exist
uncorrupted, that children could survive into adulthood untainted,
that love was exactly what romance novels made it out to be.

 I spent nearly twenty years of my life finding shadows in the stars,
Scully. Whenever I looked up into the ebony canvas of night sky, I
didn't see pinpoints of hope and light. I saw fear and anxiety and
sleeplessness. A shroud above all of us, waiting to close in, the
twinkling stars cruel reminders of the darkness that would sooner or
later eclipse us all.

 Now, I seek out the stars hidden in shadows, the stars which you
taught me to look for.

 You make me believe in magic, Scully, because touching you lifts me
about six feet off the ground, and looking into your eyes is like
disappearing into the safest place in the world.

 You make me think true love exists, because I still have you with me,
no matter how painful and battle-ravaged our lives might get.

 And you make me believe in hope, because your continuing faith in me
and our quest means that some good must eventually come of it. No
matter how many times I've disappointed you, Scully, you give me your
trust.

 Because of that, I find hope for myself, for you, for everyone who
doesn't know what we're fighting for. *Who* we're fighting for.

 Because of you, I'm allowing myself to be idealistic, Scully. I was
becoming disillusioned, even with my quest. How often can a man think
he has found the truth, have it taken away from him and hidden in
lies, before he starts to lose faith? You make me believe in the
existence of the truth I'm looking for, even though I might never come
into physical contact with it, and thus never gain proof of it. It has
to be there, somewhere... if nothing else, it has to be there because
I believe it's there.

 You make me want to believe in even the silly things, Scully... to
want to relive them all. I want to wait up for Santa with you,
straining to hear bells and reindeer hooves on the roof. I want to go
looking for colourful Easter eggs in the garden, and try to find the
tracks of the elusive Easter bunny. As long as I get to do it with
you, I don't mind looking like a fool. It would be nice to be a child
again.

 Glancing over what I've written, I realise I have another case to
make about the things you make me do, Scully. I'm typically a sensible
kind of man, given to the usual fallibilities of my gender. I forget
birthdays, I get loud and rowdy and enthusiastic about mindless
contact sports, I get insensitive and completely thick-headed at the
most inopportune times of the month. Usually just as the female I'm
most concerned with hits the peak of PMS. I enjoy my... collection of
video tapes (I'm not going to insult your intelligence by pretending
you don't know what they are), and I don't give much consideration to
romance and candlelight dinners and moonlit walks by the beach.

 I do try to be sensitive, Scully... don't get me wrong. Sometimes,
I even try for romantic. But that doesn't mean I go for schmaltz and
the kind of fluffy, weepy chick-generated concepts regarding romance
in our generation. None of that two-lives-bound-by-fate kind of crap,
or match-made-in-heaven rubbish. I believed, quite simply, that a
woman either fit... or she didn't.

 That is, until I met you. (Felt that one coming, didn't you?)

 You make me want to live in cliches, Scully. You make me want to beg
for the chance to do terrifyingly romantic things, things I've never
done for another woman and would normally never want to do. The
things I'd outrun the hounds of Hell to avoid doing.

 Disgustingly enough, Scully, I want to wine you and dine you and
whisper sweet nothings to you under the moonlight. Sitting on the
beach, listening to the lapping waves, watching gold and silver
fireflies dart through the water before us. I want to hold your hand,
and feel sparks and see fireworks and hear violins. I want to kiss you
under the mistletoe, serenade you at night, shower you with cheesy
little gifts like perfume and soft toy hearts with "Be My Valentine"
scrawled across them in loopy feminine cursive writing. I want to
saddle up and ride off into the sunset with you, leaving the world
behind, living happily ever after.

 Seriously... Scully, you make me think of things, and do things, I
normally wouldn't think of or do. You make me believe in shattered
dreams, and you make me hopeful for whatever lies ahead. You make me a
person I'm not, a person I ordinarily can't be.

 And I wouldn't, couldn't, want it any other way.

 I think I'm still whooped up on chloral hydrate. How long do the
effects of that drug last, Scully? It's been a few days now, so I
guess it can't be that. I'm most likely just hooked on you, and that's
why I'm so high today.

 I'm almost afraid to go back and read this entry, so I don't think I
will. Not tonight, anyway. I'm sure I won't be disappointed by how
insane it sounds when I read it tomorrow.

 Who knows? I might burn it.

 Well, Scully, I'm tired (surprise, surprise!) -- I guess all this
soul-searching and heart-pouring takes a lot out of the perpetually
drugged. I'll have to say good night. I hope you're sleeping now. You
should be sleeping now; it's late. If you are, sleep well. Sleep
sweetly, and try not to worry. You'll make me dream of you tonight,
and I'll be thinking of you like always.

I love you,
Mulder


=======================================================

Even More Random Mumblings: I finished writing the first version of
this story five months ago. It was sent on a few initial reading
rounds (thanks to Scarlet and Finn for the kind comments, even then).
A month later, it knocked on Dreamshaper's electronic door, and it
hasn't left her house since. <snicker> She's been working on it on and
off ever since we met in November, and her constant grumbling along
the lines of "What do you mean you've got nothing to post, damn you?
Post journalfic!" must have finally hit home. <vbeg>

This fic has been toyed with, messed with, stressed over so many
times, I'm just going to let it go wild. Run, into the jungle of XFic
with you! Propagate, live long, and yield many sequels! Bring me much
feedback, glorious little monkey child!

Uh.... can you tell it's been a while since I've posted? <g> I
apologise to anyone (*is* there anyone?) who's been waiting for a
third installment. And I'd love to hear from anyone who's made it to
the end, and still thinks I'm normal enough to risk writing to --
feedback, as usual, nourishes the soul at
shawne@shawnex.freeservers.com.

Thanks for reading! :)

Added February 11, 2000