"Too Many Maybes"
By Midnight Caller
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Everything up through 'Victory for Humanity'
Summary: Post-VfH vignette (J/S)
A/N: Thank you, M, for reading this at 4:30 in the morning and telling me it was at least in English. *G* You rock.
*****
It'd be so much easier if she wouldn't ask about my family. It only reminds me of how hard I'm trying to step away. It'd be so much easier to just keep my two separate lives just that – separate. That way I could lie next to my wife at night without my thoughts drifting to somewhere farther away, to someone farther away. It'd be so much easier if I could really just believe that it was over, but then I see her and ...
It'd be so much easier if she didn't care, if she didn't wear that perfume, or that shade of lipstick. It'd be so much easier if I didn't have to see her every day, didn't have to stand so close and know that every thought passing through my mind has nothing to do with the people I have waiting for me at home. But since when have I ever wanted things to be easy?
My life would be so less complicated if she didn't still catch my eyes with her own. They're like wonderfully deep pools, filled with something I still haven't been able to define, but to which I am drawn nonetheless. I've never wanted things to be easy. That's why what happened... happened. And that's why I allow myself to gaze back at her the way she gazes at me. This morning I woke up with Marie, and ten hours later I'm letting myself stare at Samantha, knowing what will happen, knowing that I can't help but remember, but not sure that I don't want to. Not when she smiles at me like that. God, she's beautiful. I drown in the deep mysteries of her eyes, and realize that I don't know everything about her, but I know what sound she makes if you kiss that spot right below her ear. I know what her hair smells like, and how it feels against my cheeks. I know the texture of her lips, how her arms feel wrapped around me, and the way she breathes in and out when she sleeps.
It'd be so much easier if I could only make one of my lives disappear, because I know that I can't make the choice myself. If I leave her, I get my children, and the approval of the woman I fell in love with all those years ago. The one I promised my life to in a marriage vow. I get my family.
If I leave them, I get her. It seems like it should be an easy choice: family or mistress. But every time she walks in my office it gets harder and harder to push one of them aside. It'd be so much easier if I could just let go somehow. But since when have I ever wanted things to be easy?
One choice tonight would have been easy. The choice we had made before, several times, with just a look or a turning up of lips. Somehow we both always just knew.
"It's a good thing."
My life would have been far too simple if your mother had never found you.
"Yeah."
I almost make the simpler choice; I see the familiar sparkle in her eyes and I can feel the heat rising off my skin. It would be so easy for me to just fall into her eyes again, into her arms, into the routine that should have never become routine. Making the choice is easy, but the results are anything but easy. Before I can convince myself that it's worth it, I look away briefly.
"I've got to, uh ... pack up."
It'd be so much less complicated if she didn't look at me like that. I wish I didn't have to choose.
"Right. Me too."
"Goodnight."
Maybe neither choice is the easier choice. They both seem to break my heart somehow.
"Goodnight."
It'd be so much easier if I could just learn to let her go.
I think we're all looking for something in this world. Keys. A lost pet. Another person. I'd like to believe that I'm always looking for myself, since that seems to be what we're put on this earth to do, but I'd really like to think that someone else is doing that for me. We all want to feel needed. We all need to feel wanted. Otherwise my job wouldn't exist. We bring lives back together so everyone can feel needed and wanted again. I suppose that's the FBI's victory for humanity.
Mr. Abrams has his victory pretty much every time he walks through the doors to that school. He wins every time he steps in that classroom and the kids huddle around to watch, to learn, to be saved, to be found. That's what teachers do – well, the good ones, anyway.
On a smaller scale, my mom had her victory the day she found me at that bus depot nearly 15 years ago. Seems like a lifetime ago, but it wasn't. She found me, and now I do the same for others. A victory.
I still wait for mine, my victory for humanity. I suppose that's why I joined the FBI, so that scared girls running from their lives would always have someone to look for them. We've had enough cases where I guess I should feel like I've had at least a partial victory, but yet I know that's not true, at least not for me. Maybe that's why I always get home and feel that same sick emptiness night after night; I'm still waiting for someone to find me. I hope someone is looking.
My mom could only find me once, though. Maybe it wasn't as dramatic as running away to a bus station, but a few years later I ran away from that too-small town with the fields of wheat and the picket fences, ran away from the prying eyes and the gossip, leaving it far behind me, and somehow I ended up in here.
"Just having someone look for me. That was enough to keep me from trying it again."
There was a time not too long ago when I thought someone had found me again. I didn't think I was that lost when he found me, but then I realized how badly I needed to be wanted. How much I wanted to be needed.
"It's a good thing."
Maybe in searching for ourselves we had somehow found each other. Was that the way it was supposed to work, though?
"Yeah."
Maybe we were never supposed to find each other. Maybe I was never supposed to be found that day 15 years ago. I would have gotten on that next bus to ... wherever ... and who knows where I would have ended up. Maybe I would have found him before she did. Maybe he would have found me.
"I've got to, uh ... pack up."
"Right. Me too."
Maybe we both would have stayed lost forever. At least that way I wouldn't have to realize that he's probably not looking for me anymore. I would never even know who he was. It's hard to miss what you've never had.
"Goodnight."
"Goodnight."
Too many maybes. Too many maybes, and not enough victories. That's why I had to stick her picture up on that board. Maybe I'm not the one who will find her, but she should know that someone out there wants to. It might just be enough to change her life. Maybe that can be my victory.
(fin.)