************************************************************************** This author's e-mail address has changed to: damienma@netroenterprises.com ************************************************************************** From: Jori Date: Tue, 01 Sep 1998 21:06:05 GMT Subject: NEW MADNESS TITLE: Madness AUTHOR: Jori CATEGORY: angsty vignette SUMMARY: Mulder thinks back on the years since he spoke to his old partner as he is assigned a new one RATING: PG DISCLAIMER: They all belong to CC, 1013 and FOX AUTHOR'S NOTES: At the end I have finally descended into the madness I have always know one day would come. I am driven there not by little green men always beyond my reach. The unfathomable monsters I'm discovering are amongst us are not pushing me there, either. My descent is created neither by truths, nor by lies and deceptions. This particular madness is created by one woman. One woman and one good-bye. Now I spend my days in my basement office trying to find something, but am hopelessly unsure of what. Someone to save me, perhaps? But now they are assigning me a new partner. Another woman, and it is bringing back so many memories. I will not let his one get as close as the last. I will not need this one. I will not make it easy for her. No, I will make it downright difficult to get near me. I've been down here on my own now for awhile. I'm used to it. I don't doubt myself and my beliefs. No one questions me. But they want to know what's going on down here. What dirty little secrets I'm getting too close to. ************************************************************* "I can't do this anymore." Those words still echo through my head after all this time. Her eyes filled with tears. I remember I tried to catch one lonely tear that escaped down her cheek. I wanted it. Needed it. Just like I wanted and needed her. "What do you want from me?" That was what I said back to her. Not "I love you," or "Stay." I could never make her stay. She could never make me stay. "What do you want from me?" A father? A brother? A lover? What? A believer? A partner? A sinner begging for your forgiveness? What did she want me to be? She sat up in my bed with those tears in her eyes. "I-just-can't-do-this-anymore," echoes through my life still. I never saw her again. Transfers and reassignments. Broken promises and broken hearts. For days after she got out of the bed, got dressed and slammed the door, I did not move. I couldn't leave the bed. If I could have figured out how to stop having to even get up to use the bathroom, I would have. I just wanted to stay in that bed. The bed she left me from. I pulled all the blankets over my head. I had become a Meat Loaf song. I was worse than pitiful. I clung to her pillow for nights. Her scent was still present on it. Then that faded. I didn't know what was worse. The loss of her, or the loss of any trace of her. After her scent was gone, after I could finally get to my feet, I never returned to that bed. Without her, it didn't make a difference. My work was all I had now that she was gone. I would have to do it alone. She started this with me, and now she is gone. No one believed in me now. Someday, they would assign another partner to me. Someone who would fight me in every way. That's what they wanted. Not someone who believed in me and or trusted me, like she had learned to do. The nights were still lonely. Even now. Shadows would play across the walls, reminding me that the world still moved out there. The days I could fill with work, but the nights? What could I fill them with? More work? There was so much to be done, so much to discover, but without her help? Could I do it? Everything in the place I call home was just as she had left it. I still bought the same brand of shampoo she left here. The same detergent, the same soap. Sometimes it smelled as if she was still here and it made me happy. Then I would realize it is only a world I had created and she was far away. I had no friends. I had no partner. My search for those unobtainable truths came to the forefront of my life. I once managed to make it three whole days without speaking to a single soul. My voice cracked when I finally did speak. "Coffee?" "Yes, please," creaked out of me. Call her. Call her. Call her. It rang through my head so many times. No, not yet. Maybe not ever. So much time has gone by already. But not enough time. Someday I would call her. When the day came that I could hear her voice without my heart shattering and without tears welling up into my eyes, that is when I would call her. She was so far away, and I was still here. I found myself at the places we went to together. Nothing in them seemed to have changed but me. I was now one. I was now one against what I was discovering to be so many. I pretended I was happy when I needed to. No one knew how it still hurt. My world of make believe has become too real. "I just can't do this anymore." Do what? Follow me down paths unknown? Live with me? Love me? Save me? How did she push me into this madness of needing someone so much that now I wanted no one? I didn't want to get close again. I had been betrayed too many times now. I had tried to re-create my life, but it was always missing the key piece: her. I would go where we used to go together . I would do the work we had started. But she was still missing. Someone once told me that if you could go a whole day without thinking of the person who broke your heart, you're doing great. So much time has now gone by that I could make it days without thinking of her. ************************************************************** Knock, knock. Knock, knock. "Sorry, nobody down here but the FBI's most unwanted." I turn around. "Agent Mulder," she smiles at me. "I'm Dana Scully. I've been assigned to work with you." She reaches our her hand to me. Maybe I can be saved. The End AUTHOR'S NOTES: I might have played a little with the Diana Fowley time line, but I wanted the woman to seem like a heartless soul for leaving poor Mulder feel like a Meat Loaf song. No one deserves to feel like a Meat Loaf song. Transfers and reassignments. Broken promises and broken hearts. Wouldn't this be a terrific title for badfic?