Title: Five Stages
Author: Livia Balaban
Feedback: liviabalaban@hotmail.com
Website: http://go.to/inkspot
Rating: PG-13 for some harsh language
Classification: V, A
Content: SA, Mild ST.
Spoilers: Everything up through "Requiem"
(which makes that MSR label pretty much a priori...)
Distribution: Sure, just lemme know where.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Thanks to: Fialka, Marasmus, M. Sebasky, Ropobop, Alicia, and Cofax. You
guys may not agree, but you all rock the house. YesVirginia, I'm grateful.
Summary: No one is immune to the effects of loss.
Five Stages
by Livia Balaban
Denial slips past her defenses and blessedly separates her from the pain of
her new reality.
She was supposed to be the one they wanted. She had the implant, she had
the history.
Not him. Not now.
She wakes up, when she does manage to fall asleep, convinced he will come
through the door, just walk right in, uninvited, and sit down beside her as
he always has. Why would he wait for an invitation when he knows he's
welcome?
She has gone back to work, but cannot seem to make any headway on cases. In
the stillness of his office, she asks aloud for clarification on a case note
or background on a phenomenon that falls within his range of expertise. He
doesn't answer. She is often surprised by this.
She still says "we" in her meetings with Skinner. It's only fair - the
department is Mulder's. She is not a permanent department head. It is just
temporary, until he comes back.
She feeds his fish every day. She stays for a while and sits on his couch,
because he might go to his apartment first.
She feels for her cross so many times each day, she has worn a patch of skin
red and dry where it used to lie.
She throws away a bag of stale sunflower seeds and replaces it with a fresh
bag. He will want them when he returns. She fills his refrigerator with
fresh food, and throws away what's too old. She takes the garbage to the
chute. He won't want to come back to a bag of rotting vegetables.
She did his laundry a couple of days ago, so there is nothing left to clean.
Nothing dirty left to wash. No surface left to scrub or polish, no
cluttered surfaces to clear.
She watches his old movies some nights when she can't sleep. She throws
away his junk mail. She leaves his personal mail in a pile on the hall
stand. She pays his bills.
She sees tall, dark-haired men in crowds and always turns for a longer look.
She sleeps, when she can manage to drop off, with one hand on her cell
phone.
She speaks of him in the present tense.
He's not gone...he's just not back yet.
Anger flares within her, without provocation, without warning. It burns
away the fear.
She is grateful. She wouldn't want him there right now anyway.
She couldn't take one more moment of that inane, self-important "I know
what's good for you, little lady" bullshit.
And that's what it is: Bullshit.
He's just one more male, convinced that her safety and happiness will be
determined by his brilliant decision-making. One more great big man-beast,
taking possession of her.
The tenderness does not forgive it. It's utterly irrelevant that he thinks
his love for her is real.
All the tenderness is a sham. Andrea Dworkin wrote, "Seduction is often
difficult to distinguish from rape. In seduction, the rapist often bothers
to buy a bottle of wine." She is tempted to agree. Seducer, possessor,
what's the goddamned difference?
"The personal costs are too high," he'd proclaimed. She bristles at his
absentee wisdom.
Little Scully can't reach the pedals, Little Scully needs to be protected
from big, bad criminals, Little Scully needs to be rescued by some
self-appointed crusader.
She is sick to the teeth of all of it.
She is sick of the condescending stares of rural sheriffs, of the
expressions of pity she sees on the face of every agent she passes in the
halls, of losing everything that matters to her, as if all of it had been
planned ahead of time, methodically eliminating every single thing that
bound her to everything and everyone outside *this* life, to hone her into
some grand instrument of justice. She is fucking sick of it.
It is more than any person should have to take in one lifetime. It is too
much.
Those monsters who took her sister and her unborn children hadn't taken
nearly enough yet. They gave her fucking cancer and the only child she
thought she would ever have only to watch the little girl die.
She fumes.
They interrupted one of the only honest and genuinely tender moments she's
had with her partner, in order give her some horrible mutant virus and ship
her off to the South fucking Pole.
She thinks about what else They have ripped from her life. They have taken
over her free will and sent her out to be incinerated. They tried to kill
her partner. Once, twice, three times. She still seethes that they let him
rot in a hospital bed and performed experimental brain surgery on him and
left him to die.
And still it was not enough. Fate decided to take a hand in the destruction
of her life, and carried out the job with skill, killing her friend on her
birthday, and directing the same psycho who tried to kill her five years ago
to break into her home and try it again. Now she curses the fear that grips
her each time she runs a bath.
She misses her father. She misses her sister. She misses Pendrell. She
misses Queequeg. This stupid life had to take an innocent little dog.
Now she wonders what is next. This baby. This goddamned perfect little
gestating miracle baby, tangible proof of their love, at infinitum, ad
nauseam. She is fucking tired of thinking about the imbalance in her life.
She cries out from the hurt.
She is teetering between raging fury and painful emptiness, but now all she
can think to do is to blame him.
He took the necklace from her. He knew he wasn't coming back.
She just wants it over already. She wants to go back to her life and do
some work, instead of enduring the intolerable pity of others.
It is Mulder's goddamned fault. He had fucking well better make it up to
her.
Bargaining begins without her conscious decision to allow it. She simply
finds herself willing to make any trade, without reservation, to reverse the
course of what has occurred.
She knows she did something to deserve this. Perhaps it was her
selfishness.
She has dropped heavily onto the kneeler, holding herself upright against
the hard wood before her, asking for guidance, begging for forgiveness. She
is guilty of the sin of avarice.
She wanted Mulder. She had him, and it was good.
She wanted some interesting cases. She got them, and they were fun to work.
She wanted a child of her own. A child conceived in love, and she got that
too.
She was too selfish. That is why this has happened. She asked for too
much.
She will do anything, she tells God, anything to make this right. She wants
to know what to do. She wants to believe she has been a just person, but
punishment like this does not come undeserved. All this punishment must
mean something. Some sin she has overlooked, something she refuses to
acknowledge out of blindness or pride.
She begs God to guide her to understand what she can do to repair this
damage.
She wants to be shown how to be a better person, to deserve the gifts she
has been given. She will do as He asks. She is a faithful person, and
despite all that has happened to her and Mulder and her family, she has
never truly lost her faith in Him. It has taken different forms over the
years, but she always returns to Him.
For a while she abandoned God, thinking all she could believe in was one
solitary, driven man. Maybe this was her transgression. She wonders if she
promises to keep her eyes on Him, and remember that Mulder is only a man,
will He return him? If she spends her days protecting the innocent and her
nights deep in the study of the sacrifice of His only Son, will He accept
her act of contrition?
She will gladly suffer what He feels she deserves. She will do it because
she believes in the balance of the divine. She will outweigh her selfish
actions with selfless ones. She wants to be shown.
She will do anything.
Depression drains her, systematically eradicating her determination to find
a way out of the despair. There is no way out.
The phone is ringing again, but she glances over at the caller ID display
and ignores the invasive trilling. It's Skinner. She lets the machine pick
it up.
"This is Fox Mulder. Please leave a message." His disembodied voice is a
knife.
She rests one hand on her belly and waits for a sign that she has made a
fair trade. One life for another. Just one kick. It's too soon.
It's absurdly unfair.
She stays here most nights, now. She surrounds herself with his scent,
anything to feel connected to him. She sleeps in his bed, she wears his
shirts, she wraps herself in his towels after she bathes in his tub.
She gnaws on his seeds while she watches his movies or reads his books. She
touches his pictures, she embraces his cushions, she lies prone on the rug
on his living room floor, pressing her cheek to the rough fibers, waiting.
She doesn't have the strength to do more than this now.
She should be eating more, but she cannot bear the sight of food. She
should be sleeping, but she cannot close her eyes. When she does he is
there, voiceless, sightless, and she doesn't exist to his reaching hands.
They go right through her.
She opened the safe deposit box as instructed so many years ago, and
withdrew enough money to pay his rent this month and next. She saw the fake
passports he left there, two for him, two for her. George and Grace Burns.
Aron and Marie Presley. His plan to keep them safe. Married in fiction.
She turns on the ceiling fan and lies on his bed, recalling with fading
assurance the warmth of his hands, the urgency of his breathing, the
delicious weight of his body.
Her dreams change. He appears to her, warm and flesh and real in his bed,
and when he touches her belly it smoothes away to its former shape. His
touch thrills her, as it always has, but she knows it is a selfish trade.
When she is sated and he is gone, she awakes to find the burden in her womb
has returned.
She feels heavy, difficult to budge, yet somehow also empty and impossibly
light. She could be anchored here by his weight, if he were to lie on her,
pressing her back into the world, protecting her from the one strong wind
that will blow her away.
She should be gaining weight. She is not. The doctor wanted to put her on
an IV, and with her last burst of strength she told him to fuck off.
She toys with the idea of leaving a video diary of these dark days for him,
but what would anyone gain from witnessing her hours of mute paralysis? She
can barely concentrate enough to read a single paragraph in a book or trade
magazine. She couldn't possibly muster the strength to look into that
camera lens and tell him what's happening.
This is what's happening: Nothing is happening. The world is standing
still. Nothing exists outside these walls, nothing is moving outside his
door, nothing is living outside these windows. The world is dead, dying,
and she thinks it's sad that the world doesn't know this.
She doesn't bother to ponder the impossibility of it. It washes over her.
She sits.
Skinner told her that the man who called himself CGB Spender was dead. She
knew it made no difference. He never had the power to stop invasion, only
to protect his own miserable ass. In response, she told Skinner to leave
her alone. He pressed the issue, and she told him to fuck off, too, before
she slammed down the phone. The sun has risen and set twice since then, and
she has barely left this spot.
Someone is knocking on the door. She closes her eyes. She doesn't have the
will to rise.
Acceptance arrives without fanfare, accompanied only by the steady
beep-beep-beep of the heart monitor, and the cool softness of her mother's
hand.
Maybe it took this last hospitalization to wake her up. She nearly killed
her own baby with neglect. Another day or two and they both might have
fallen victim to dehydration and malnutrition.
At the time, she was furious with Skinner for breaking into Mulder's
apartment and taking her out in an ambulance. All she could think of was
the splintered wood of Mulder's door frame, and that they would have to fix
it. It wouldn't be his door anymore, because something would be different
about it.
She couldn't bear the thought that anything would change in his absence, or
that harm could come to anything of his.
It took the expression of horror on her mother's face to remind her that the
life inside her is his as well, and she has been harming it.
Her mother will not let her look in the mirror, for fear that she will lapse
into another depression if she sees how badly she is doing. She takes the
mirror from her mother's hand and examines her reflection anyway. She looks
dreadful. She is rail-thin, with dark hollows beneath her eyes and spidery
veins showing through her normally lustrous skin. It is not lustrous now.
It is nearly transparent.
She does not understand where those swirling, black emotions came from. She
has always been able to handle any hardship with grace and assurance. She
separates herself from it for a while, and then she is fine. But nothing
has cut her this deeply before.
She thinks she's not so fine right now. And Skinner - she has treated him
horribly. He has been nothing but concerned and supportive, and she has
rewarded him with abuse. It is not his fault. She must apologize to him.
She must apologize to her mother for frightening her so badly.
She must apologize to the baby, for nearly failing her...him...she supposes
she will find out soon.
She must apologize to God for losing her faith again.
She must apologize to herself. She has been very hard on herself these past
few months, and she thinks she has had enough of that.
She resolves to both sleep and eat. She will exercise and take her
vitamins. She will catch up and get back to work for as long as she can.
She will go back to bothering Skinner and the Gunmen to help her continue
her search for Mulder.
Mulder. She hasn't said or thought his name in days. She used to avoid it
because of the pain. Now the pain isn't as sharp. She remembers his smile
and the warmth of his eyes, and the love in his expression. She remembers
the teasing tone of his voice and the tender touch of his hands. She
remembers his brief bursts of disrespect and mocking, and the goofy, boyish
ways in which he would try to make it up to her. She remembers him, and it
doesn't hurt quite as much. She can breathe again.
She misses him, and she still does cry sometimes. Her mother blames it on
the hormones, but she has done some reading on the subject of grief, and now
believes it's all right to miss him enough to weep.
But it is also acceptable to move on, to continue living. She has put
herself on hold all these months because she did not want to move forward
without him. This child is a reminder that she cannot do such a stupid,
selfish thing. The baby will come, and time will move, and the world will
continue its motion.
She must learn to do the same, and after all this time, she thinks she
understands that it is not just okay to do so, it is necessary. He will
want her healthy and content if he returns.
She still prays, and she still hopes, but she does not make any more
ridiculous bargains.
She still cries, and she still feels rage, but it is tempered now with the
understanding that she still has much to accomplish.
The world is alive, and she vows to breathe life into it every day. She
believes that perhaps her faith alone can sustain it.
Two months ago, if he had returned, she would have bounded into his arms and
drenched him with hysterical tears of relief. Last week, she would have
looked up in shock and wept silently, waiting for him to come to her with
soft assurances that he was indeed home. Today, should he walk through the
door to her room, she would smile and hold out her hand to him.
She will begin that video diary when she is released from the hospital. He
will want to know what he has missed.
She remembers Tara's tales of two-year waiting lists for good preschools.
She will begin her research this afternoon.
She will call Frohike and ask him to tend to Mulder's apartment. His mail
needs to be picked up, his fish need feeding, the linens need changing. His
door needs to be repaired. Others can be trusted to perform these tasks.
She needs to take care of herself for a while.
====
End.
Notes: Thanks to Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross for her theorizing on the human
handling of grief. A caveat: Your mileage may vary.
(
geocities.com/txfssgfic)