Nothing was solved when the fight was over, but nothing mattered.
-- Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club
Some days she envies the victims, mostly because it's so much easier to leave than to be the one left behind. Exit stage left and leave the others fumbling for their lines. People say she's fluid in how she's bounced around all her life, first as a child and then with the Bureau, but she's never had the ability to completely shake off her past. She can pack her emotions into as many neatly labeled boxes as she likes, but the boxes are still there in the corner. They pile up until it's necessary to open them. She can't just ignore the truth of what she feels, what makes her human.
The dead can.
The dead, the lost souls, the milk carton girls, they can ignore it all. Because bodies don't love anymore. They don't get hurt.
What's a body, anyway? She tells herself every day that it's only muscle and sinew, blood and bone. But what about the boxes? Where do they go? The sum of a life – how does she make that tangible?
It's just another body, one of hundreds she's seen. When the autopsy is finished and the case is over, it'll probably go into a pine box.
Those other boxes will be lost. Thrown away.
Where?
//
He's been better, actually. Distant as always. His sentences are clipped and tight with restraint. But there's more life there now. He has a purpose, an end, a goal, which makes him more than just a drowning man flailing out for any kind of lifeline. In some ways he's even healthier than before: at least he's going somewhere instead of wandering endlessly in an endless loop of misery.
His obsession makes it easier for her to get closer. She drives him home some days or drops coffee by his office. Constant longing disguised as constant vigilance. The case is always at the back of her mind now, and not just because of his involvement. Somehow she thinks that if she can get Foyet and bring Jack back, he'd see her as something else. It will never happen, but it's a nice fantasy, so she wraps herself in it. She rehearses in her sleep how she would tell him. Sometimes the dream breaks down and they fuck right there, in his office, or maybe a conference room, but sometimes she sleeps long enough to reunite him with Jack and she sees the bliss on his face. It's nice to pour herself into the family mold like that. Open the plaster and out she emerges, beautiful, a new self. Instantly loved because she gave him the one thing he wanted.
A nice dream, yet she wakes up tangled in the sheets with fear.
The feminist in her screams that she doesn't need him in order to be happy.
Why is she so miserable, then?
//
It helps to think of mundane things. Paperwork. How she had to stop twice on her last run to check behind her for anyone following because she's so goddamn paranoid. The right speaker in her car that's started making weird noises. Sometimes she makes grocery lists in her head. Margarine. I've got to buy margarine.
She pictures herself walking through the grocery store, not really talking to any of the employees or other shoppers, just going straight to the shelves and choosing the items she wants, keeping her head down, walking through the store unobtrusively. She doesn't want to intrude. It's easier to be invisible. She'll do what she came to do and then leave.
Better not to push too hard, really. Easier that way.
Lonely, though.
//
It's hard to love from a distance, it really is. She's like a kid in a candy shop who isn't allowed to touch anything, much less buy it. But she's trained herself to break eye contact after a few seconds or to keep walking to her desk after greeting him in the morning. They don't talk about anything too uncomfortable. Keep it work-related. Nothing about Jack, or what happened at his apartment that night with Foyet, or how they made love over and over again in her mind last night. They're all just fine, after all. Right? Right?
The need to reassure her mind is ceaseless. He's still here; he made it through another night.
//
They all go to the bar after work some days, and it's nice to have some semblance of normality. She gets asked out a couple of times. It's tempting to say yes, just so she won't be alone for the night, but she turns them down because it means accepting, even in the slightest, that being with him isn't possible.
He doesn't joke like he used to. Sure, he'll sit in the corner and nurse his beer and carry on a conversation, but the lightheartedness is gone. And really, what did she expect? Absolute jollity? She's being ridiculous.
She lets him out at the entrance to Quantico before she parks and goes into the building herself in the morning, mostly because she likes to sit and listen to her mix tapes like a high school kid in the school parking lot. Humming Belle & Sebastian or Regina Spektor takes the edge off a little. The sharpness of seeing him there-but-not-really-there is dulled. Stupidly, she's starting to structure her days around making it easier to be near him: go into Quantico, do her work, keep her head down when he walks through the bullpen, break for lunch and coffee with JJ or Garcia, drive home and burn the frustration off in her late-night insomniac runs that she knows she shouldn't be taking. Wash, rinse, repeat.
She catches up on her reading because she doesn't know what else to do with the hours between her late runs and the alarm clock going off at five. She powers through Crime and Punishment like she was never able to do in college. For the first time in years, she picks up the complete Shakespeare anthology that her father gave her as a college graduation gift. There are notes in the margins, even. The shrinks are always telling them to write everything down, so she fills up a Moleskine with random scribbles: Today I removed my nail polish. Maybe on Thursday I'll paint my nails purple because I want to wear that eggplant sweater.
It's a meaningless existence, and it's all hers. Nobody to share it with, because that's how she says she wants it.
//
The pile of boxes, it's growing larger.
//
This is your life, and it's ending one minute at a time.
-- Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club
Companion piece to Poseidon. I hope you enjoy it. Please read and review!
mysticlake