Summary: Each day takes its toll.

Rating: PG 13

Disclaimer: Mine would be happier.

Feedback: is smothered in love from me

Authors note: This is a companion piece to "Though I'm far away" but it isn't necessary to have read that one. It's another experiment in style for me, so again it isn't like my 'usual' stories.

*~*~*~*

You tell yourself you do it so the system will work. As you leave the court, deliberately avoiding the condemning eyes of yet another mother whose daughter has lost her innocence too soon, a victim you've just helped to further destroy with your insinuation and misplaced blame, you remind yourself the system wouldn't work without people like you. The dirtier your actions, the more noble the system becomes, until even you don't buy it anymore. But what else can you do?

This is your life. You're good at it. You're respected, not by many, but by those who know your world, by those whose opinions you, in turn, value. So what you feel you've ended up so far off where you'd always dreamed you'd be. Those were the dreams of a naive idealistic boy. Someone who truly didn't know what he was getting himself into. If you could meet him now you could tell him a few things that would have him cowering in fright.

Remembering him you can see the disappointment you'd be in his eyes. Sure you've got the success he craved but your life is now a daily struggle to live with the burden it carries. Would he think you are weak for struggling or would he recognize it's the inevitable end result of what you do for a living? You can sum your life up in three words; you destroy people.

Under the guise of protecting a system, concealed in your claim to protect the innocent, you destroy. Day after day you defend the guilty, and systematically sabotage the victims. Your integrity, your dedication, your stubborn refusal to recognize or allow morality to guide you are necessary for the job but subvert your sense of unity with your fellow man. They make you harsh, they make you embittered and they make you pull away from all you love for fear of tainting them too.

You've been asked over and over again how you can do this job and each time your answer becomes harder to give. Belief no longer resides in your words. Empty platitudes are the tenet you live by. A life you're now trapped in, afraid to let it continue but terrified of its end. Status quo seems as good a reason as any to get out of bed each morning but doesn't make it easier to look yourself in the mirror at the end of the day.

You find yourself at your apartment door with little knowledge of the journey home. Just another aspect of your life your deliberate blinders have chosen to ignore. You open the door and are greeted by the scent of perfume and baby powder. The fragrance assaults the nerves left raw by your day. It should comfort you but it doesn't, not today. Today you resent it. It reminds you of all you fear. The lives you can ruin, the pain you can cause and the agony of a loss that feels inevitable on days like today.

You should have known better than to open your heart. You should have known in doing so you weakened it, made it fragile and made it possible for another to shatter your soul. One day she'll look at you and see you for who you really are. One day she'll leave and you'll just be left with reminders of what you've lost. Standing here now it feels like it's about to happen and you wish you'd had the foresight to get out before she became the air by which you breath.

You're angered by the signs of her presence, you're angered by your anger, and consumed in fury you long for the long gone days of solitude. The days when the aroma that greeted you at the door was musty air, stale pizza and beer. The days when you could come home and no longer need to be strong. When your emotion wasn't tempered by the need to disguise yourself from another.

You long for the bachelor days when your home was yours. When you could safely assume the toilet seat would be up. When having reached out after rinsing your face your hand was guaranteed to encounter a towel, albeit the same towel that had been hanging there since you moved in, a mouldy, discoloured, bacteria breeding, threadbare rag but it was yours and didn't have to share hanging space with some flimsy concoction of nylon and lycra. An item you dream of removing from her delicious body with your teeth but when you find it drying on the towel rack it taunts you with another lost opportunity.

You look at what was your apartment, but which has somehow become a family home, and feel stifled. Gone are the days when you could come here to wallow and regret and lash out and not have to see fear staring back at you from their faces. You long for the time when you could come home and take your frustrations out on the walls, the furniture, or that god awful vase your aunt sent as a wedding present.

Except you wouldn't have the vase because you wouldn't be married and ... and as much as you want to be alone right now you don't ever want to be without her. You need her so much, you love her, you love them but they deserve more than you. They don't belong here with you. This world shouldn't be theirs. They should be surrounded by joy and beauty, safe and secure. An ideal life with an ideal ...

You don't realise you're holding the vase until you hear her say "Throw it ... eighteen months is long enough to have something that ugly in sight. If she ever asks we'll blame the baby."

You feel a smile fighting for life as you turn and get lost in her eyes. As comforting as the fact she knows you so well is, it's frightening too. How deep inside can she see? You're tempted to do as she says, by god you're tempted to let it all out in the glorious crash of plaster and glass, but you don't. The thought of a sliver of your anger making its way into precious fingers and knees as your son explores his world stops you. You'll protect him as long as you are able, knowing it won't ever be long enough. You fear the day when your actions will cause him harm, knowing with each day that passes it draws nearer. That dreaded day when he looks at you with reproachful eyes and disappointment, when he realises who his father is.

The fight leaves your body as her gentle arms find their way around your neck and lower your head to its home. "You're a good man Bobby" you hear whispered over and over as delicate fingers re-weave the remnants of your soul. You can believe it when she tells you it's true. You bury your face in her body. Your breath whispers over her skin that you can't keep doing this. Her fingers answer 'then don't' but you know that you will. In her you'll find your strength and tomorrow you'll again be that man you've come to despise. You'll do it because you have a family, you have people who love and adore you and you're afraid to change who you are now. You're afraid if you're not that man then you're no one and you'd rather be him and with them, then no one and alone.