Title: The Loss
Author:  FoxfireX
Spoilers:  Not really
Disclaimers:  Not mine.   
Archive:  Wherever.

Where once was light, is only darkness.
Where once was truth remains only lies.
Where once I was whole, I am shattered.

 

 

Strange, don't you think, that one's very existance can be
so integrated with anothers.  So integrated that the loss of the other person leaves more than sadness, more that grief. The loss of the other person leaves only shards of a previous existance in it's wake. Is this how he felt, I wonder. During the months of my own absence, did he suffer as I do?  So long ago, did he love me then, depend on me then, as I do him now?  I have no answer. 

 

Mom told me in my hospital room how he clung to the
hope of my return, how it seemed to be his only link to sanity,

"He loves you, Dana", she said.  I'm not sure I believed her. Melissa once told me on a dark, rainy night, how he tortured himself for my condition after my return. 

 

 "He loves you, Dana", she said.  I don't think I believed. 

Now, I believe. I beleive becasue I have to.  Because the strength of that belief is all that I have to cling to.  All that keeps me sane.

 

How can I bear his absence?  Please, someone tell me how?

 

Days are bad.  I sit at his desk, feel his memory.  I work,
I interract.  I wonder how anyone could be fooled by this
thin veneer of normalcy I wear.  Maybe no one is.  Maybe
they all know that I'm held together with paper clips and
rubber bands.  That the life force is gone from me and this is all a charade.

 

Nights are worse.  I lie alone in my bed and I feel his
power.  The power he has held over me since that night so many years ago in Oregon, when he did nothing more than sit in a darkened motel room and confess his deepest secrets to me.  Such a small beginning, such a simple act of friendship.  Had we both known how that beginning would affect the rest of our lives, would we have changed it?

 

He told me once, in the deepest night that the injuries and
sufferings in my life were because of him. I was hurt to
hurt him.  They used me to control him, for they knew he
would do anything to protect me.  To save me. 

 

Tears shone in his eyes that night, as he asked my forgiveness for my abduction, my sister, my cancer, my sterility.  I held him close, my arms cradling his head.  I asked his forgiveness for being the instrument they used to manipulate him, for being the reason he gave up the proof he held in his hand time and again.

 

So much we have been through together.  So much pain,
so much suffering.  So much joy.  So much love. 

 

Together we faced it all. 

 

Now I face all things alone.

 

I know they talk about me.  I see their sympathetic stares.
I hear the pity in their voices when they ask how I am.
These same people who so often discarded him as a joke, a fool, now in his absence want to sustain me with stories
of his successes, his innate ability to read the criminal
mind.  I listen to them and I nod politely, while inside I'm
screaming.  They have no right to speak his name.  They have no right to commensurate with his loss. Skinner knows.  He understands my loss. He truly fears for my mental state, as he probably should.  He tends to hover
around me when I'm in Washington.  As if his presence will keep me tied to this plane until his return. 

 

He feels he owes it to Mulder to keep me intact, like he failed him once and has vowed not to do it again.  I appreciate his valor, but he does not have the power to keep me here. Only Mulder has that power.

 

My new....partner, the title seems foreign to my toungue.  He suspects that I am not right.  He won't pry, but I see it in his face.  He's wondering just how close Mulder and I were, and how his loss is affecting me.  A legitimate concern, considering I'm armed.  I won't injure myself, I can't, for obvious reasons.  Will I injure others when I break?  I would hope that amount of violence does not reside in me. I'm sure my partner does, too.

 

I sit alone in his apartment, as I often so.  I can smell
him here.  The scent of his soap, mixed with the cologne
he sometimes wears that mom gave him for Christmas, mixed with his own unique scent.  It's faint, now, but it's enough.

The amazing thing is that I don't cry anymore here. I suppose I'm beyond tears. Some pain is just too deep.  I slept here, once, right after he was taken.  Back when I could cry, I laid in his bed and sobbed myself to sleep.  I don't sleep here, anymore.  I just sit on his sofa, listen to the hum of the fish tank filter and remember.  This is my good memory spot. 

 

 I keep his apartment clean, rent paid, and fish alive for me.  It's a struggle sometimes to keep two apartments up.
But I cannot let this one go.  Just as i cannot let him go.
If I do, I fear it will be the end of me, and consequently
the end of the life I carry. So many unanswered questions run through my head. 

 

So many doubts that I am presented with.  But I believe.  I believe that no matter what he's done, he loves me still.  I
believe that  hurting me ,hurts him, and that whatever he's done, his intention was not to destroy me in the process.

Unfortunately it seems that my destruction will be an
inevitable side effect.  My loss is too great.  I'm losing
the battle with myself.

 

Someone please, tell me how I survive this?