| “So that’s it? They’re just going to cover it up?” Max asked furiously. “They already have covered it up. We got there too late.” Piper answered. “And there’s nothing we can do about it.” Piper sat next to Meg’s hospital bed. Although Max felt fine, the doctors insisted she spend a couple extra days at the hospital. Mulder and Scully stood at the foot of Max’s bed. “Do you think this is the end of it all?” Max questioned. “Well, the building was burned.” Scully replied. “Yeah, but there could be animals out there who still have this…drug inside them.” Max commented. “It’s possible.” Mulder said. “But I doubt that we’ll be finding any other dead bodies out there. As a precaution, though, I would stay away from the woods for a while.” “I don’t think I’ll be going back there for some time. Besides, I’m sure they’ll close it down and blame the fire on a thunderstorm or something.” Piper said. “Well, Max we hope you feel better. Take it easy for a while.” Scully said. “Yeah, we have to head back to Piper’s house and pack our things. Our plane leaves tonight.” Mulder explained. “Piper, Suzanne is going to be picking you up on her way home from work.” Scully said. “Okay.” Piper replied. “We’ll see you before you leave.” Mulder informed her. “Thank you for your help.” Max said. “I’m sure I’ll see you again.” “You can count on it.” Scully responded. She squeezed Max’s hand before following Mulder out of the room. “Well, that was an interesting few days.” Mulder said, after he had closed the door. “Yes, it was. But we’ve seen weirder.” Scully agreed as she and Mulder began walking down the hallway. “Yeah, who’s ever said our lives were dull?” Mulder asked, somewhat sarcastically. Scully paused before responding. “We need to get lives in order for them to be dull.” She finally said. “Well, we could liven them up a bit.” “Oh, and how could we do that?” “We could try that flirting thing.” “Nah…I do that enough as it is” “Oh really? And with whom may I ask?” “Just a jerk that I work with.” Scully responded. “I think you mean handsome jerk.” He corrected. “No, he’s just a jerk.” She replied. He playfully hit her in the arm. They both laughed as they left the hospital. Oh dear, I have a feeling that this is going to be an extremely long author’s note. Well, before I do anything I want to tell a story about how this story came about Usually summer is my greatest time to write. I finally get the free time I need to sit down and write without having anything else to do. Plus, for some reason, 12-3 AM tend to be the hours that I’m most inspired. Usually I only see those times either in the summer or during the school year when I’m attempting to do an essay for Mrs. Murray (but that’s another story and since this is going to be as long as it is, let’s just stick to this story. I’ll get to Murray another time.) Summer also has other benefits aside from staying up all night, typing. It’s a time for me (and other philes) to re-watch and analyze the season of the X-Files that preceded the summer. Unfortunately, for this summer, two things changed for me. The first was something that I have to blame on my sister because she’s the one who downloaded it for me. The AOL service AIM came into my life in the month of March. I continually spent all my waking hours in chat rooms and talking to my friends from school. While that isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it cut into my writing time tremendously. The second and most important thing that kept me from writing was the X-Files itself. The past season brought along some major changes in both my world as well as the X-File world. I’ve been dealing with these changes severely throughout the last few weeks. In the past, not only were we (as in us philes) forced to live without Mulder but at the same time, we were forced to live with a new face – Doggett. Now, upon learning that Robert Patrick was going to be on the X-Files “taking Mulder’s spot” (or rather taking Scully’s since she became the believer and he the skeptic), I was determined to hate him. I pre-judged him. He could never compare to the man that we all loved. He could never look so hot in a suit and tie, he could never carry on a relationship with Scully the way Mulder had, and he could never look so rested after spending the night on a small, black couch. But despite all these things, I got used to him and his undistinguishable, and quite annoying, accent and I even learned to like him. Then once we all settled into this new world, with this new face, a new bomb fell. Mulder was dead. It was something that philes had dreaded from the first time he had gone missing in the New Mexico desert back in season 2. It was something that no one thought Chris Carter would ever do. But he did it. We were forced to grieve his loss, watching Scully break down screaming for the man she loved and by watching his casket fall to the ground with Skinner and Scully hovering over it, sharing that brief moment of intimacy. So we all grieved, we all cried, and we all eventually went on with our lives. We accepted the truth – he was dead. But, of course philes not only live in the X-File world, but they also live in the real world. Everyone knew that David would be coming back for more episodes and that Mulder was not truly dead. But despite the knowledge of the real world, in the X-File world he was dead and you had to get on with your life, so we did. Just a short week later (or three months in the X-File world) Mulder was found to be alive and we were forced to accept that, as well. He was barely hanging onto life and we had to watch Scully sit by his bedside while watching Skinner make one of the hardest decisions of his career. Of course Skinner’s decision turned out to be the right one and it ended up saving Mulder’s life once more. Mulder and Scully’s first moment together after such a long absence brought back that spark that had been missing from previous episodes. So then it became okay again – shippers got their relationship back, Duchovny fans got their Mulder back, and people who had grown fond of Doggett (since I’m sure virtually no one actually “liked” him from the start) kept their Doggett. The last few episodes of the season made everyone happy, bringing back the man who people “loved to hate”, Krycek. The X-File cast was back together once again (although I’m sure some of us could have done with a little less Kersh). All was well in the X-File land. Even though Scully wasn’t actually on many cases, the Mulder/Scully relationship was there more than ever (can we say Lamaze class?) and Scully was as strong a woman as ever. The last episode brought on the best moment of all X-File history, the kiss. It was the perfect ending. But then, that was it. There was no cliff hanger to keep philes occupied with. The kiss may have been the perfect ending but it was the perfect series ending. And believe me, I’m not complaining that that’s how it ended and I’m quite happy that they’re coming back for another season, but there was nothing. It was unlike any previous finales. Usually the summer after a new season left you asking questions like is Mulder really dead, is the X-Files shut down, are there really aliens, what happened to Mulder’s sister? They’re all questions that have surfaced in philes minds more often than they can count. Never before had a season ended so…nicely. But the question now is where does that leave us? Going back to the real world, we know that David isn’t going to be coming back so how can they end it like that? But those are real life questions, not X-File questions. The only question left in the X-File world is, who is the father of Scully’s baby? We know that it most likely won’t be answered and it’s all within what the public things. Perhaps Scully herself doesn’t know. We had heard for quite some time that David wasn’t coming back but it wasn’t until recently that the news devastated me personally. At least if they killed him we would finally know that that was the end. (Then again, a lot of people come back from the dead in the land of X-Files but that’s besides the point) We’d cry and then get over it but it didn’t happen like that. I was left with nothing – no closure. I had an empty whole inside me that needed to be filled. And as much as the Mulder/Scully relationship made the show what it was, I realized that I could live without it and that I already had done so over the past year. And that put me in denial. I wouldn’t admit to myself that I could go on without Mulder and be content enough with Doggett. I wouldn’t admit that I actually liked him and his accent. I thought that admitting it would mean that I wasn’t an X-Phile. And if other philes feel that saying that makes you a non-phile, so be it. But I’ve dedicated four years of my life to this show and I don’t need anyone to tell me if I’m a phile or not because I know in my heart that I am. Anyway, through my denial and even through my period of admittance, I wouldn’t watch the X-Files. I hadn’t seen a single episode since the season finale (well, except for watching the kiss over and over again). |