Originally written for 5/5/2012 Bones Bird's Facebook Fanfiction Drabble Challenge.
To Hurt Is To Live
I hurt myself today
To see I still feel
I focused on the pain
The only thing that's real
- Johnny Cash, Hurt
The putrid smell of death teased her nostrils. To an outsider they would not have known, but the smell was there, lurking under the sanitary smell of cleaning chemicals. She would never grow accustomed to it; if she could have, she would have during her time with the Bureau. Her stomach rolled and the wave of nausea had close become an eruption of vomit. She was overreacting, she thought. It was not as if she were close to the decomposing flesh.
No, the body, the vessel of a soul, had been moved last night, the early hours of morning. She had heard them whispering, before they had closed her door. Without overhearing the whispers of the gossipmongers, she still would have known that someone had died. It was procedure to close every resident's door upon the passing of one. Each time someone died, she wondered would she be the next. Would she be the next to die alone?
She had called this forsaken place home, for close to seven years. It depressed her to call this home, her home. It upset her that the once proud, strong, and independent woman that she had been was now a depressed, frail, and needy shell of what she used to be. She had become a contradiction. Her body was frail, but her mind was as strong as ever. She knew she was being unreasonable, too hard on herself, and only hurting both her feelings and mentality, but she could not help what she felt. That was the objective was it not, to feel, because if one felt, that meant one was alive?
The only time when she felt like herself, who she used to be, was when he would visit her. He was consistent, visiting her each week at the same time on the same day. She looked forward to his visits, but once he left the painful reality sunk in. He had moved on with his life without her, yet she knew that each Saturday at three-fifteen, from the time of their greeting, they each would transport the other back to memories of a time that was free of pain, free of complications, free of regrets.
At four-thirty, every Saturday, she could not deny that the only thing that was real between them was a love that had long since died, and resurrected once a week, only because without it, she had nothing to live for, he and his new family knew it.
It hurt to see that he had moved on, but she was glad that he was not alone.
After all, the pain was proof that she still lived.