Inexplicable

by little cat feet

Rated: PG

Summary: You know that cure Mulder found for Scully's
cancer?  Well in this story, it didn't work.

Archive:  feel free

Feedback: no, but thank you very much anyway

Kudos to my beta Goddess

Website: http://www.geocities.com/littlecatfeet1013





Inexplicable

by: little cat feet


I see him there often.  A tall man, dark, with a haunted 
expression, his hair hanging slightly in his eyes, his hands, 
after they drop the flowers he carries onto her grave, clenched 
with what must be anger or grief or both, but is always extreme.

I know about the grief and anger and pain of loss, but over the 
past six months since I buried my husband, mine has diminished.  
It's still very real, but I can live with it now.  

I see by his face that he is not living with it.

He talks to her.  I hear his words so clearly on the evening 
breeze, and they tear at my soul.  Two people I never knew can 
make me cry more than all the sad movies I've ever seen.  But 
it's because this is no movie.  This is real, and the agony in 
his eyes is heartbreaking.

I crept over to the headstone once, after he'd left. It had a 
name, Dana Katherine Scully, and the date of her birth and death. 
 Nothing more.  Nothing to indicate the extreme pain of this man 
she left behind.  Was she his wife?  He doesn't wear a wedding 
ring, but that means nothing nowadays.  

He needs no ring, and I can tell; even if they weren't married, 
she was his other half.  He is lost without her, it's obvious 
even to me, a stranger.  

Listen to his words--they'll make you cry, too:

"It's been two years.  

"This is not the anniversary I wanted to celebrate with
you.

"The hardest part is getting through that last month.  I know it 
should be the very day you passed, but the deep depression starts 
several weeks before, and lasts for a long time afterwards.  
Maybe this year, it will have a shorter duration, and shorter the 
year after that, and maybe eventually I'll learn how to enjoy 
living again.  But living without you...it sucks, Scully.

"Our friends know what is happening to me, and they seem to back 
off.  I don't particularly *want* them to back off, but they do. 
In fact, there are moments when I need them, just need a voice, a 
listening ear, and the understanding of someone who was there 
with us when you left.  

"Have you noticed I don't use the "D" word?  For some reason I 
can't, in reference to you.  You have passed, moved on, left me, 
but never, never have you done that thing which shall not be 
mentioned.

"You couldn't, anyway.  I still feel your presence far too much 
for that to be the truth.

"But oh, how I wish you could talk to me.  Especially now.  Here 
I am, a grown man, sitting at a graveside and apparently talking 
to thin air.  There's a family across the way, visiting Grandpa, 
no doubt, and their youngest child keeps staring at me.  I'm sure 
he thinks I'm nuts.  I probably look like a bum--I haven't slept 
or eaten or even changed clothes or showered in a couple of days. 
If he started to walk toward me, his mother would probably gently 
pull him back to her side.  His father would look at me 
suspiciously, wondering if I had some sort of evil intention 
toward his son.

"He'd laugh if he knew the only person I ever intended to harm 
was myself.  I can't express how much I'd like to put my weapon 
in my mouth and end it all, but I can't do that to you, Scully.  
I owe you far too much.

"One day, I'll stop them.  I swear it to you.  I swear it on my 
father's grave, on your sister's grave, and on yours.  I'll water 
this hallowed ground with my tears for now, but one day, and 
soon, Scully, I promise you, it will be with the blood of those 
responsible for putting you there.

"Goodbye, sweet woman.  Goodbye.  I say it over and over again to 
you, but I can't leave you.  I'll never be able to leave you.

"One day I'll join you, and I'll be glad to do so, but not yet.

"Not yet."

He's leaving now, and something in me wants to talk to him, touch 
his arm, tell him it gets easier--but I heard what he said.  Two 
years, it's been since he lost her.  

For him, I have a suspicion it doesn't get easier.  Maybe it 
never will.

How many wounded souls walk this graveyard with just such a 
feeling?  Am I one of the lucky ones, who can grieve and move on?

Or is he a special case, lost in the madness that comes when you 
have to give up the one that is your reason for living?

I know that madness.  I've been there.  But I did escape, as do 
most of us.

Will he?




********************
The fog comes
on little cat feet.

It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.

--Carl Sandburg
********************