TITLE: The Ghost of You AUTHOR: 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