All right folks, this is my first take in a fanfic, actually in fiction at all. Please take note that English is not my first language, so the inevitable grammar/spelling mistakes should be blamed on my teachers! (yeah right!)

Tell me what you think!

I've 'borrowed' the Title from Bruce Springsteen, a song that only he owns!

As with everything: don't own them, no infringements intended.

Souls of the Departed Part 1/?

by JerseyGirl

Daylight was fading, it was early October afternoon, when night took over every day a little earlier. She stood there, statue-like, silent, in her own backyard, in the already cold and wet grass.

She was cold but not for the external forces of nature, but for the coldness inside her, creeping down her body, from head downwards, inspired by the view her eyes took in, sending the message down right into her soul. She looked up at her porch, the very porch she found her then lover, Thomas – God has it really been more than three years? – dead. Shot, point blank in the head.

Cold, she felt cold, numb and empty. Looking up there, lost in thought. Thought about him, about what could have been and never will be. She had loved him, and he had loved her. It was all that counted, well back then anyway. But love was not enough, their love was not enough – no, not theirs, hers. Her love could not save him, quite to the contrary. Her love for his life. That's what it really had been.

It became dark quickly, the tall woman stood there nevertheless. She was a beautiful woman, and she knew that. She was that kind of woman that made men turn around, whistle and drool. Eyeing her, made men brave in bars – only to the point until they got to look into her steel-blue eyes. When she was in the mood, that look could freeze lava, it would make one shiver even if in mid-summer Louisiana.

But it was Thomas, that had made her feel really beautiful. Not just outside, but inside as well. It was in his arms, that she began to hope that she not just looked like her mother, but she WAS like her mother.

More than three years have passed since she last was in his arms and God did she miss him, miss waking up in his arms, feeling beautiful.

Only two men made her feel that way.

For the longest time she thought the other was her father, but she was merely deceiving herself. (That biologically he was not her father did not matter to her in this regard) Deceiving to an almost self-destructing level. How she had wanted that other to be her father.

In all honesty, now she could face it, he had never made her feel that way. He may had commented her on her looks, and she even was sure he was somehow proud that she looked just like her mother, but he never WANTED her to be like her mother, that one was for sure. For her safety or his, was still a gnawing question.

The very man she loved as her father all her life, she craved attention from, she would have done anything for – and she did anything for him, going even so far as killing, and risking her own life more than once – would never grant her her biggest wish: becoming the woman her mother would have wanted her to become, would have been proud of.

No, the other man who made her feel so much better, so much more beautiful and so much more worth being her mothers' daughter, was her very enemy. Well not really her enemy, her prey. An enemy would be someone you hate. And she did not hate him. She may loath him at times, be angry at him beyond reason and curse him in a ways that would make grown men blush, but she did not hate him.

She chased him, he was her prey, she was his huntress, that was their fate. Did she have a choice in that matter, as he so frequently claims? She did not think so, that fate was sealed a long time ago, for both of them. At a time when choice was not an option, at least not for her. Her father had told her so.

For him neither. Why else would he stay there thirty years and not escape sooner. He could have - he should have.

She knew he was that other person. She had known him almost all her life. They had met at the Centre, both so young, so incredibly young. Both were children of their environment, and it was not a healthy environment. They found solace in each other's presence, found friendship in a place that did not know about the concept of friendship.

She remembered their first kiss, she remembered how he had consoled her after Faith had died, took her into his arms and gave her hope against hope. But what she remembered most was how he looked at her. The look of admiration, awe, regret, sympathy, the look of love in such a pure childish innocent way, but still, the look of love.

He still gave her that look at times, she had seen it. She had recognized it, and she still felt rewarded in a way by it. Rewarded, for she knew, that he still admired her beauty, her stubbornness, her ability to adapt, to survive, he admired her strength. And she drew that very strength out of that look more than out of everything else in her life.

And now after almost six years, of chasing, maybe it was time for her also to choose.

Not because of him, though. She was tired of chasing, of fighting, of schlepping across the country and never getting anywhere. Not for him. For her and her only.

She had dreamed about leaving many times.

Is a dream a lie when it won't come true?

By God, she has had her fill of lies. So many lies they would last three lifes!

It was now complete dark in her backyard. Finally she moved. One step after the other, up the three steps to the backdoor. With a longing sigh, she took one more look to her left. The spot where she found Thomas with the small crimson-red spot on his temple.

Has it been really more than three years? – `Well', she thought, `I guess it is time to choose.'

TBC...