Burned At Your Altar - Thespis
Category: Vignette | Rating: PG | Spoilers: Alone
Summary: After an argument ensues when he explains
what happened on his partner's day off, Doggett
discovers in the aftermath that there is a limit to
all things.
Author's Note: Listening to these two songs over and
over has messed with my brain. I apologize if I
misquote their lyrics since they've confused me to
death. Standard disclaimers/instructions apply.
Under the stars each night
I wonder if stairs go there
I'm lonely driving behind the wheel
Can't get nowhere
I can't seem to get it right
Is there a place?
And under the stars tonight
I wonder if someone cares
I'm lonely that's the way I feel
Can't feel no stairs
There is a place...
- Frank Black, "Man of Steel"
She looks down over the side of the Hoover Building
at the D.C. night below, feeling the icy touch of the
cold wind and the lonely symphony of her heart beating
in her chest. She feels different without him,
ostracized, missing a part of herself as if she is now
possessed of a gaping entrance wound made by a rocket
launcher. She looks down at her hands, a useless
gesture, and she can find no words for herself. No one
gets there alone, they say. But no one said what
happens when you get there, what happens after you've
been standing there. She stands there even though her
work day is over because there is no reason to go
home. Because she cannot believe him and in turn she
can't believe herself. The impossibility of us, she
thinks, the impossibility of life.
She can hear him coming, not by any trick of hearing
but by the tingle at the base of her skull that could
always detect him from a mile away, the sensation of
calm that now drapes over her like a web of her own
creation. And she turns to face him, a frozen shade in
her decisiveness and the dead flicker in her eyes, not
being able to find any words for him, either. She is
not possessed of anything other than simply being and
she can only look at him and know this is the man that
is her world, and that her world is falling out of
orbit faster than the Mir space station on a really,
truly, horrible day. She can only look into his eyes
and see mirrors that reflect who she really is, and
realize that mirrors can be deceptive, anyway.
"I'm sorry," he says.
His voice is possessed of the symphony she knows it
to be, this time driven by an undercurrent of
acceptance and loneliness and cognizance and loyalty
that has been sharpened over seven years, the wounded
pride, the wounded human being that comes from the cut
of this razorblade and the burning, searing pain that
she can feel inside herself. Two words. No more than
necessary. In a strategy all about the extra mile, he
allows himself only what he needs, holding back, at
least for now, all that he wants.
"I know," she says.
She matches him expenditure for expenditure,
undercurrent for undercurrent, risking the exposure of
part of herself she thought had slipped away under his
careful ministrations. It is barely there, but she
knows that it is, the hint of a younger, more
untested, more unforged ex-Baltimore homicide
detective who didn't know where she was going, who was
running and she didn't know where, who didn't know
about the man she met. She didn't know him but by
chance, by being thrown together with him and looking
at him, into his eyes, and knowing he was something
different. In coming from a world all about darkness,
she saw in his eyes and his welcome smile and the way
he handled her, that first day and every day
thereafter, a ray of Edenic light.
"Can we talk about this?" he offers.
He knows what she is feeling, the memory she
remembers, because it is imprinted in his mind as well
as hers. He knew that he would be assigned a partner
in due time, but he hadn't expected it to be the woman
who walked into his life that day and who will never
walk out. She was inherently confident, her
intelligence no secret, and there was something about
her that made him know that this particular
arrangement was not in any way destined to hurt him,
but only to help him. Help him so much that he knows
what she wants to say, but will not allow herself to
say.
"Yeah," she says.
These are the motions, those which they go through
maybe once or twice a year if they are unlucky. These
are the words of partners who for once have met at a
crossroads and gone separate directions. These are the
actions of two people who truly want to forgive each
other and hold each other and say that everything is
okay but who cannot do so because they are who they
are. These are the battles that they pretend to fight
to assuage their intelligences, even when their hearts
break, crying for each other's forgiveness and
everything they give to each other. This is the war,
on this night, that is a lost war and no one cares.
The war that began, as every time, by accident.
He had said one thing, she had said another. He had
called her on it, she had called him on something
else. And by that time they had grown to pointing out
all the problems of those strategies until their
confidences, their thinking minds, were simply torn
apart by the friction. A simple verbal disagreement
which escalated. No punches were thrown, except the
phantom ones to the gut which they can feel even when
they try to play past the pain.
"You deserve better than this," he insists, hanging
back while there is still tension. "You could get the
transfer out any time you asked. You should get out of
here. This place takes over your life, your mind, your
dreams, the way you think, the way you act, it owns
you. Herman Stites, you saw what he did to Harrison.
Reptile men and antivenin treatments and wayward
gunshots and all those screwups out there that
happened that day, any day ... You're better than all of
this. Don't do this to yourself."
"It's not that way," she insists back. "All those
things you talk about ... My mother and my sister and
upstairs and the whispers in hallways, they did those
things to me. No X-File has ever done what everything
else already did. I've been through all this before.
I'm still standing here and I won't walk away. My
getting here's got ulterior motives. I know that. But
my being here is my choice."
"I..." he begins, closing some but not all of the
distance between them; she is barely out of arm's
reach. "I didn't want you to risk yourself. Not for
something like this."
"I wanted to," she says after a heartbeat. "You know
I would, because I have to."
"You never have to," he says, doesn't wait, then
again, his voice quieter, out of respect and other
emotions he cannot easily classify this moment. "You
never have to."
"Yes, I do." She looks up, into his eyes, holding his
gaze. "I know I do."
He reaches for her hand and his fingers close over
hers. "I'd never ask you to."
"You'd never have to," she assures him.
A small smile crosses his face. What have I done,
what past life have I lived, in order to deserve to be
so blessed? he wonders. Why am I so honored so as to
have this woman, this paragon of all I want and need
in someone else, my partner, my best friend, why am I
so lucky to have her follow me anywhere?
"I'm sorry," he says again, needlessly.
"So am I," she replies, briefly looking down, away.
He doesn't let go of her hand - he couldn't bear it,
not this moment, not when there is unbearable space
between them - but he reaches over with his other hand
and brings her head back to where it was. She should
never look down, she should never feel she has to, he
thinks. He adjusts her heaD so they make eye contact
again, and she smiles at the gesture, her eyes
shimmering in the light of the D.C. evening. He puts
his arms around her, invites her into an embrace that
she accepts. Her head rests on his shoulder, tucked
against his neck, listening to his heart beat,
inhaling the air and his cologne, watching the stars
past him, and he holds her against him, not too tight
but never weakly, feeling all of her muscles relax. He
listens to her exhale a breath he knows she's been
holding, and without knowing it he lets out one of his
own. Expressions of relief cross their faces but they
don't see them, and they don't have to.
There is silence for a moment, the only sound two
hearts beating in almost unison, the way it should be,
he reflects.
"What time is it?" she asks him.
He checks his watch. "Ten-thirty."
"Later than I thought," she admits, almost
sheepishly. He smiles. Everything is usually later
than she thinks. She is usually later than she thinks.
It has become a fixture in her life. She is a fixture
in his. "No surprise," he says, daring to venture a
joke, waiting to see if he's fucked the whole thing up
again. She laughs dryly and his fear dissipates. Only
after another moment do they pull apart.
"I left my backpack in the office," she tells him.
He nods. "My stuff's still there," he says, but he
doesn't want to leave this moment. To leave this roof
might concede the moment, might break this fragile
reconciliation. "It'll wait," he says to her.
She smiles. He has never seen a more beautiful smile.
"Come here," she offers, starting towards the edge of
the roof, the spot where he first found her, tense and
quiet. "I want to show you something."
He moves with her to the edge, looking down on the
D.C. streets and traffic below, the conflagration of
lights, yellow, red, white, and other colors, lights
of vehicles and buildings and traffic poles and neon
signs on the street below. A tapestry of small suns of
various shades, flaring up, flickering, dying out,
rising again, making a fascinating image. Much like
those who observe it. "It's beautiful, isn't it?" she
says quietly, taking her eyes off the road to look at
him. He looks down a moment longer, then meets her
eyes and nods. "The one bright moment of the day," he
quips with cognizance.
"I don't know what I was thinking," she says
absently.
"You were thinking what you have every right to," he
says immediately, trying to erase any further doubt,
put this night's battle at peace. "Don't ever think
you weren't."
"I can't help it," she admits with a smirk. "Some
days," she continues, looking back toward the
stairwell for a moment, "I just want to put my head in
my hands and say 'This is not happening. This is not
happening.' But I know it is."
They sit on the edge of the roof, on the railing,
nothing but air between them and certain death, and
they realize they really don't care.
His eyes flash with knowledge. Of an earlier time,
when he was in her place. Of an earlier moment, when
all he wanted was her and he couldn't have her. "This
is happening," he says, "It's all I want. It's all
I've ever wanted."
"Chasing down aliens mistaken for the Second Coming?"
He laughs at the absurdity. "That's not what I'm
talking about," he says through the laughter. "I was
talking about my partner."
She smiles again. "I can't believe you stayed with me
this long."
"I couldn't see any of this without you."
"What about them?" she asks of him. "You've worked
with them almost three years now. They're just as good
as I am. They're better, even."
"They're very good, but there's no one else," he
says, sounding almost like Charlie Cass from a
Clifford Odets play he likes and can't remember the
name of.
"Stop with the B.S.," she insists.
"It's not B.S.," he says firmly.
More silence.
"You want to go grab a drink?"
"I don't think I'm in the mood tonight," she says.
"What are you in the mood for?"
"Peace and quiet," she says, glancing at him then,
"and the eleven p.m. SportsCenter."
He smiles knowingly. "Want company?"
"Always."
He offers his hand like the gentleman he is, and she
takes it with the firm hold of a partner as they
stand. He glances to the door as she takes one last
look at the stars, but they don't make any particular
motion. Instead, he watches the smile come to her face
as she observes the pattern below them, and then he
reaches out for her one more time, resting his head on
the top of hers, looking out at the world around them,
feeling time stop and settle. There is no other
moment, no other concern, he decides. This is a time
when all he needs to do is just to be. This is a
moment he wouldn't mind capturing for the rest of his
life. These moments which remind him, personal hell
and aliens and upstairs B.S. aside, that he is still
alive. And that this life may not be perfect the way
it is, but that there are pieces of heaven in it,
things that make life worth living at any cost.
It is not that this fight is over. They will sit
wherever they end up and discuss it, getting
technical, possibly pointed, until they reach an
agreement, a consensus. They will remember it and they
will work around it until in a day or two it no longer
matters. But it is that every argument they've ever
had provides the smallest window into reminding them
that while they're different, they are still together,
and that that difference is important to them. It is
as important to them as anything else in their lives,
because they are important to each other. And perhaps
a few heated words don't hurt if it helps them to
remember that which they can't forget.
"Are you ready?" his partner asks of him.
"Maybe we'll wait a couple more minutes," John
Doggett says to the night.
Chances are I'll see you
Somewhere in my dreams tonight
Chances are I'll hold you
And I'll offer all I have
I've always wanted to stay with you
And see you in the morning light
And I'll wait with you
Till the night...
- Vonda Shepard and Robert Downey Jr., "Chances Are"
END
=====
"Oh, for God's sake, please be somebody else."
- Lewis Black
Natalie: Two guys have ascended 5 miles into the sky. They walked up a wall of ice and are preparing to knock on the door of heaven itself. There's really no end to what we can do. You know what the trick is?
Dan: What?
Natalie: Get in the game!
- "The Quality of Mercy at 29K", "Sports Night"
Category: Vignette | Rating: PG | Spoilers: Alone
Summary: After an argument ensues when he explains
what happened on his partner's day off, Doggett
discovers in the aftermath that there is a limit to
all things.
Author's Note: Listening to these two songs over and
over has messed with my brain. I apologize if I
misquote their lyrics since they've confused me to
death. Standard disclaimers/instructions apply.
Under the stars each night
I wonder if stairs go there
I'm lonely driving behind the wheel
Can't get nowhere
I can't seem to get it right
Is there a place?
And under the stars tonight
I wonder if someone cares
I'm lonely that's the way I feel
Can't feel no stairs
There is a place...
- Frank Black, "Man of Steel"
She looks down over the side of the Hoover Building
at the D.C. night below, feeling the icy touch of the
cold wind and the lonely symphony of her heart beating
in her chest. She feels different without him,
ostracized, missing a part of herself as if she is now
possessed of a gaping entrance wound made by a rocket
launcher. She looks down at her hands, a useless
gesture, and she can find no words for herself. No one
gets there alone, they say. But no one said what
happens when you get there, what happens after you've
been standing there. She stands there even though her
work day is over because there is no reason to go
home. Because she cannot believe him and in turn she
can't believe herself. The impossibility of us, she
thinks, the impossibility of life.
She can hear him coming, not by any trick of hearing
but by the tingle at the base of her skull that could
always detect him from a mile away, the sensation of
calm that now drapes over her like a web of her own
creation. And she turns to face him, a frozen shade in
her decisiveness and the dead flicker in her eyes, not
being able to find any words for him, either. She is
not possessed of anything other than simply being and
she can only look at him and know this is the man that
is her world, and that her world is falling out of
orbit faster than the Mir space station on a really,
truly, horrible day. She can only look into his eyes
and see mirrors that reflect who she really is, and
realize that mirrors can be deceptive, anyway.
"I'm sorry," he says.
His voice is possessed of the symphony she knows it
to be, this time driven by an undercurrent of
acceptance and loneliness and cognizance and loyalty
that has been sharpened over seven years, the wounded
pride, the wounded human being that comes from the cut
of this razorblade and the burning, searing pain that
she can feel inside herself. Two words. No more than
necessary. In a strategy all about the extra mile, he
allows himself only what he needs, holding back, at
least for now, all that he wants.
"I know," she says.
She matches him expenditure for expenditure,
undercurrent for undercurrent, risking the exposure of
part of herself she thought had slipped away under his
careful ministrations. It is barely there, but she
knows that it is, the hint of a younger, more
untested, more unforged ex-Baltimore homicide
detective who didn't know where she was going, who was
running and she didn't know where, who didn't know
about the man she met. She didn't know him but by
chance, by being thrown together with him and looking
at him, into his eyes, and knowing he was something
different. In coming from a world all about darkness,
she saw in his eyes and his welcome smile and the way
he handled her, that first day and every day
thereafter, a ray of Edenic light.
"Can we talk about this?" he offers.
He knows what she is feeling, the memory she
remembers, because it is imprinted in his mind as well
as hers. He knew that he would be assigned a partner
in due time, but he hadn't expected it to be the woman
who walked into his life that day and who will never
walk out. She was inherently confident, her
intelligence no secret, and there was something about
her that made him know that this particular
arrangement was not in any way destined to hurt him,
but only to help him. Help him so much that he knows
what she wants to say, but will not allow herself to
say.
"Yeah," she says.
These are the motions, those which they go through
maybe once or twice a year if they are unlucky. These
are the words of partners who for once have met at a
crossroads and gone separate directions. These are the
actions of two people who truly want to forgive each
other and hold each other and say that everything is
okay but who cannot do so because they are who they
are. These are the battles that they pretend to fight
to assuage their intelligences, even when their hearts
break, crying for each other's forgiveness and
everything they give to each other. This is the war,
on this night, that is a lost war and no one cares.
The war that began, as every time, by accident.
He had said one thing, she had said another. He had
called her on it, she had called him on something
else. And by that time they had grown to pointing out
all the problems of those strategies until their
confidences, their thinking minds, were simply torn
apart by the friction. A simple verbal disagreement
which escalated. No punches were thrown, except the
phantom ones to the gut which they can feel even when
they try to play past the pain.
"You deserve better than this," he insists, hanging
back while there is still tension. "You could get the
transfer out any time you asked. You should get out of
here. This place takes over your life, your mind, your
dreams, the way you think, the way you act, it owns
you. Herman Stites, you saw what he did to Harrison.
Reptile men and antivenin treatments and wayward
gunshots and all those screwups out there that
happened that day, any day ... You're better than all of
this. Don't do this to yourself."
"It's not that way," she insists back. "All those
things you talk about ... My mother and my sister and
upstairs and the whispers in hallways, they did those
things to me. No X-File has ever done what everything
else already did. I've been through all this before.
I'm still standing here and I won't walk away. My
getting here's got ulterior motives. I know that. But
my being here is my choice."
"I..." he begins, closing some but not all of the
distance between them; she is barely out of arm's
reach. "I didn't want you to risk yourself. Not for
something like this."
"I wanted to," she says after a heartbeat. "You know
I would, because I have to."
"You never have to," he says, doesn't wait, then
again, his voice quieter, out of respect and other
emotions he cannot easily classify this moment. "You
never have to."
"Yes, I do." She looks up, into his eyes, holding his
gaze. "I know I do."
He reaches for her hand and his fingers close over
hers. "I'd never ask you to."
"You'd never have to," she assures him.
A small smile crosses his face. What have I done,
what past life have I lived, in order to deserve to be
so blessed? he wonders. Why am I so honored so as to
have this woman, this paragon of all I want and need
in someone else, my partner, my best friend, why am I
so lucky to have her follow me anywhere?
"I'm sorry," he says again, needlessly.
"So am I," she replies, briefly looking down, away.
He doesn't let go of her hand - he couldn't bear it,
not this moment, not when there is unbearable space
between them - but he reaches over with his other hand
and brings her head back to where it was. She should
never look down, she should never feel she has to, he
thinks. He adjusts her heaD so they make eye contact
again, and she smiles at the gesture, her eyes
shimmering in the light of the D.C. evening. He puts
his arms around her, invites her into an embrace that
she accepts. Her head rests on his shoulder, tucked
against his neck, listening to his heart beat,
inhaling the air and his cologne, watching the stars
past him, and he holds her against him, not too tight
but never weakly, feeling all of her muscles relax. He
listens to her exhale a breath he knows she's been
holding, and without knowing it he lets out one of his
own. Expressions of relief cross their faces but they
don't see them, and they don't have to.
There is silence for a moment, the only sound two
hearts beating in almost unison, the way it should be,
he reflects.
"What time is it?" she asks him.
He checks his watch. "Ten-thirty."
"Later than I thought," she admits, almost
sheepishly. He smiles. Everything is usually later
than she thinks. She is usually later than she thinks.
It has become a fixture in her life. She is a fixture
in his. "No surprise," he says, daring to venture a
joke, waiting to see if he's fucked the whole thing up
again. She laughs dryly and his fear dissipates. Only
after another moment do they pull apart.
"I left my backpack in the office," she tells him.
He nods. "My stuff's still there," he says, but he
doesn't want to leave this moment. To leave this roof
might concede the moment, might break this fragile
reconciliation. "It'll wait," he says to her.
She smiles. He has never seen a more beautiful smile.
"Come here," she offers, starting towards the edge of
the roof, the spot where he first found her, tense and
quiet. "I want to show you something."
He moves with her to the edge, looking down on the
D.C. streets and traffic below, the conflagration of
lights, yellow, red, white, and other colors, lights
of vehicles and buildings and traffic poles and neon
signs on the street below. A tapestry of small suns of
various shades, flaring up, flickering, dying out,
rising again, making a fascinating image. Much like
those who observe it. "It's beautiful, isn't it?" she
says quietly, taking her eyes off the road to look at
him. He looks down a moment longer, then meets her
eyes and nods. "The one bright moment of the day," he
quips with cognizance.
"I don't know what I was thinking," she says
absently.
"You were thinking what you have every right to," he
says immediately, trying to erase any further doubt,
put this night's battle at peace. "Don't ever think
you weren't."
"I can't help it," she admits with a smirk. "Some
days," she continues, looking back toward the
stairwell for a moment, "I just want to put my head in
my hands and say 'This is not happening. This is not
happening.' But I know it is."
They sit on the edge of the roof, on the railing,
nothing but air between them and certain death, and
they realize they really don't care.
His eyes flash with knowledge. Of an earlier time,
when he was in her place. Of an earlier moment, when
all he wanted was her and he couldn't have her. "This
is happening," he says, "It's all I want. It's all
I've ever wanted."
"Chasing down aliens mistaken for the Second Coming?"
He laughs at the absurdity. "That's not what I'm
talking about," he says through the laughter. "I was
talking about my partner."
She smiles again. "I can't believe you stayed with me
this long."
"I couldn't see any of this without you."
"What about them?" she asks of him. "You've worked
with them almost three years now. They're just as good
as I am. They're better, even."
"They're very good, but there's no one else," he
says, sounding almost like Charlie Cass from a
Clifford Odets play he likes and can't remember the
name of.
"Stop with the B.S.," she insists.
"It's not B.S.," he says firmly.
More silence.
"You want to go grab a drink?"
"I don't think I'm in the mood tonight," she says.
"What are you in the mood for?"
"Peace and quiet," she says, glancing at him then,
"and the eleven p.m. SportsCenter."
He smiles knowingly. "Want company?"
"Always."
He offers his hand like the gentleman he is, and she
takes it with the firm hold of a partner as they
stand. He glances to the door as she takes one last
look at the stars, but they don't make any particular
motion. Instead, he watches the smile come to her face
as she observes the pattern below them, and then he
reaches out for her one more time, resting his head on
the top of hers, looking out at the world around them,
feeling time stop and settle. There is no other
moment, no other concern, he decides. This is a time
when all he needs to do is just to be. This is a
moment he wouldn't mind capturing for the rest of his
life. These moments which remind him, personal hell
and aliens and upstairs B.S. aside, that he is still
alive. And that this life may not be perfect the way
it is, but that there are pieces of heaven in it,
things that make life worth living at any cost.
It is not that this fight is over. They will sit
wherever they end up and discuss it, getting
technical, possibly pointed, until they reach an
agreement, a consensus. They will remember it and they
will work around it until in a day or two it no longer
matters. But it is that every argument they've ever
had provides the smallest window into reminding them
that while they're different, they are still together,
and that that difference is important to them. It is
as important to them as anything else in their lives,
because they are important to each other. And perhaps
a few heated words don't hurt if it helps them to
remember that which they can't forget.
"Are you ready?" his partner asks of him.
"Maybe we'll wait a couple more minutes," John
Doggett says to the night.
Chances are I'll see you
Somewhere in my dreams tonight
Chances are I'll hold you
And I'll offer all I have
I've always wanted to stay with you
And see you in the morning light
And I'll wait with you
Till the night...
- Vonda Shepard and Robert Downey Jr., "Chances Are"
END
=====
"Oh, for God's sake, please be somebody else."
- Lewis Black
Natalie: Two guys have ascended 5 miles into the sky. They walked up a wall of ice and are preparing to knock on the door of heaven itself. There's really no end to what we can do. You know what the trick is?
Dan: What?
Natalie: Get in the game!
- "The Quality of Mercy at 29K", "Sports Night"