By Jade Hawthorne
jade_hawthorne@yahoo.com
 

WEBSITE: www.geocities.com/jade_hawthorne
DISCLAIMER: Not mine, just borrowing.
SPOILERS: Season 8, post-This is Not Happening
CATEGORY: MSR, Angst
SUMMARY: She knows she's going through the motions.  She
just wonders when it will stop.

The Ghost of You

by Jade Hawthorne
 

She saw a man across the mall today that looked like
him.  She's been doing that lately, recognizing pieces
of him in strangers.  Tall figures in dark suits,
flashes of hazel eyes, low, husky voices carried on the
wind.

From a distance, this man was dangerously close to the
myth in her mind.  He carried himself with a swimmer's
grace, dressed impeccably in Armani.  She watched him
stride across the sidewalk, while she sat on the bench
where they used to eat lunch, her pulse quickening with
each step he took.

When he passed by, she pretended to focus on the article
in her journal, all the while keeping him in her
peripheral vision.  His lips were too thin, his eyes too
blue, his hair too meticulously styled.  As he stepped
out of sight, she began to breathe normally again,
inhaling slowly, closing her eyes and feeling foolish.

She tells herself that she's suffering from a mixture of
hormones and grief, a psychological cocktail with which
anyone would have trouble coping.   The feeling is not
dissimilar to being hung over, she notes---a sick nausea
accompanied by a deep inner dryness.  A desert in her
heart completely at odds with the life inside her.

She wonders when she'll learn to reconcile all these
contradictions in her mind.  Joy for the baby.  Unending
sadness for the loss of his father.  Happy memories of
shared jokes and adventures.  Remorse for all the mixed
signals, opportunities missed... all the time they
squandered pretending they were just friends.  For years
she's been accustomed to keeping her emotions at arm's
length.  Now they assault her with a force she's
woefully unprepared for.  Out of practice, out of synch.

Out of touch, she fears in her darker moments.

She saw him in Montana, all smoke and mist, a sudden
phantom beside an open window, just before they found
him in a nearby field.  He was gone before she could
touch him, but she felt him.  This is something she
knows.

And when she touched his cold and mangled body, she
willed herself to respond as she had so many times in
the past.

This is not happening.

She survived the funeral in a kind of dream state,
feeling his ghost whispering in her ear, clinging to the
image of him in her mind.  Intense, impossibly handsome,
droll and sarcastic.

***"Who'd have thought Langley owned a suit, Scully?"

"Ever seen Kersh *not* look pissed, Scully?"

"Hey Scully... make sure and tell the little guy my
funeral was packed."

"Scully?"***

She hasn't yet been able to turn in the key to his
apartment, telling everyone that she still needs to
finish going through his things.  She continues to pay
his rent each month and the landlord smiles sadly,
glancing at her growing stomach.

Taking one last look at the bright blue sky, she leaves
the bench and heads back to her office.  She walks
slower these days, and she's stopped tucking in her
shirts.  Sometimes she chooses not to wear mascara, if
only for the sheer futility of it.

It's nearly 1:30 by the time she opens the door of the
basement office.

"That you, Agent Scully?  Thought we were gonna go over
notes from yesterday's meeting..." John Doggett's voice
trails off when he catches sight of her.

"Running a little late," she says softly.  She knows her
face is pale and her eyes red, and she hates herself for
this weakness.

Doggett holds her gaze for a moment, his blue eyes
piercing.  "Umm...Dana?" he says.  "You sure you're all
right?  You need a minute?"

"I'm fine," she says, looking away.  She grabs her chair
and pulls it to his desk.

She takes a long drink from the water bottle on her
desk, looking upward at the pencils suspended in the
ceiling.  She shivers slightly, feeling Doggett's eyes
still on her.

"I said I'm fine," she says, a little more sharply than
she had intended.  "Do you have the notes ready?"

Doggett pauses for a moment before responding.  "Yes,
Agent Scully, I do."

"Let's get started, then."

She knows she's going through the motions.  She just
wonders when it will stop.
 

End

Feedback graciously received at jade_hawthorne@yahoo.com