I want to believe the dead are not lost to us.
--Fox Mulder, The Truth

He'll never tell her, but he hates it when she wakes him from his nightmares. She'd view it as a betrayal; he knows her well enough to know that. He knows himself well enough to know that she wouldn't necessarily be wrong. His ghosts have always had more power over him than the people walking through his waking life.

They've been coming to him every night, lately. It's better that way -- another thing he'll never tell her. When they become familiar, sometimes they aren't nightmares any longer. Sometimes they're simply dreams. Sometimes they're memories -- or dreams he wishes were memories.

Sometimes, for the space of a night, he'd swear to God they're real.

There are times, right before he's jerked into the world he's made by her voice calling his name, that he could swear he feels Stone's hand on his shoulder, smells Brenda's perfume, hears the strains of Lily's piano. He can feel the weight of his children in his arms, and he knows them by name.

In that time that isn't quite dreaming and isn't quite living, when they look at him with something almost like peace in their eyes, he can even convince himself that maybe his dead are trying to save him from himself. Because someone's got to be.

And, then she wakes him. Calls his name and holds him tight to her breast. His wife's flesh is warm against his skin, and her breath is hot against her cheek. He grips Carly tightly and knows she's real. It takes him a breath to remember her name even as her lips press softly against his neck -- one more thing she'll never know.

It's then, always, that he realizes none of them come to him in the night to save him. That the only one of them who tries to save him is the woman clinging to his neck. That what he wants most isn't someone who'll rescue him from his life, it's someone who'll let him live it.

He is a selfish man. He's never denied that. He knows what his life is, where it leads. He knows the price he pays and pays and pays again for the choices he made long ago. But, he's a selfish bastard, and he's willing to pay that price, always has been. Or -- he's willing to let them pay it for him. Which is what the price is, in the end.

The dead know that. They've paid it -- Adella and Lily and Brenda and his unborn children. They don't cling to him in the night and try to soothe him. They never promise him it's all gonna be okay. They know better.

In his dreams, he watches Lily step into the car, he sees Brenda standing alone in the rain, he hears his children take breaths they never formed in life, he smells the stink of hospitals and death that Stone wore like a fine perfume, he tastes the blood his mother shed in his name. And, he knows better.

Carly still believes that her love is enough to change him. She still believes that if she just holds him tight enough and turns herself inside out enough, if she just wants it enough, someday blood and souls won't be his stock in trade. Each time her lips meet his, he can taste the poison of hopes and dreams and expectations, and somewhere deep inside himself, he cringes away, knowing that what he really tastes is ashes and disappointment and things that died long ago.

He'll never tell her but he hates it when she wakes him from his nightmares. He betrays her every night, every time he closes his eyes and falls into sleep. He tells himself she'll never know, but he knows that's a lie. He knows one day, she'll join them, on the other side of night, one day he'll go to her willingly in the night, while some other warm body lays by his side and holds him firmly bound to earth. When she wakes him, her lips warm against his cheek, sometimes he can feel it coming. And he smiles.