Title: Free Verse Written by: Maraschino Feedback to: maraschino@ibm.net Distribution Statement: Do not archive. Do not post on atxc or any other newsgroups. Disclaimer: Fox Mulder and Dana Scully and Margaret Scully and all the references to past episodes are being used without permission, and are the property of Fox Network and Ten-Thirteen Productions. No infringement is intended, and no money is being made. Rating: PG Classification: VA Summary: A tired female agent contemplates her partner's apparent suicide once arriving at her apartment. Spoilers: Gethsemane with references to The Erlenmeyer Flask, Squeeze, and War of the Coprophages. **** Free Verse Written by: Maraschino Feedback to: maraschino@ibm.net **** Her apartment has always been quiet. Furnished adequately. The green, pin-striped couch matches the color-coordinated wall paper which meets the simple, but elegant hardwood floor which carries the glazed vase on top of the recently Pledge-d coffee table which came as a bonus along with the couch. It should not be confused with peace. Comfort. For the literary inclined, the words mean the same, but have different connotations. *Connotations*. An implication. A suggestion. Like when her mother -- the limp black dress having been worn so many times all ready -- had wiped her daughter's tears with the sand paper Kleenexes. Had huddled beside her beneath the guised refuge of monotonous umbrellas, and said that she was skinny. She could have said slim, slender... those were compliments. She should have just said gaunt, emaciated, haggard... Tired. Exhausted. She stands at the doorway and stares into the nether region which lays in between the couch and the far wall. She lets the briefcase fall through her fingers onto the floor with a dull thud. Toes the high heels off which have caused her toes to numb, and her calves to burn. So tired. Closes her eyes for one moment -- allows herself a brief respite in the darkness, watches the show of blues and greens that dance underneath her eyelids. Tilts her head to the side and then down towards floor -- a feeble attempt to get the stiffness and the constant, resonating pulse in her back to ease. In the nothingness of her apartment, she can hear the blood rushing through her ears, traveling behind her eyes, passing ever so subtly by the optic and auditory nerves, so that every reluctant beat her heart makes is felt, and heard, and magnified. With eyes closed, she starts to finger the buttons on her jacket and when finished, it falls alongside her briefcase. Giving a cape to the leather rectangular prism, a twisted super hero look that would allow it to fly if it wanted to. She chastises herself. The corners of her lips which have started to rise, fall -- her wan skin once again pulled tight over portruding cheek bones. A super hero. Only her partner could come up with a thought like that. She fingers the holster, pulls it up and out with the left, fingers the stitching on the leather with the right. She pulls out the metal casing and flips the switch, takes out the lead pellets, and then lets the three pieces fall alongside her caped briefcase. The super hero has now been armed. She doesn't want to bend over to roll down her panty hose. Instead, she untucks the blouse, undoes the buckle in her pants and accepts passively when a familiar trickle starts to fall. Hardwood is easy to clean. The blouse was old anyways. Her super hero is bleeding. *Connotations*, Dana. A super hero? A martyr? A man. She looks around the apartment, blouse untucked, pants undone, and remembers that she was laying just in *there*, between the goose down duvet and the ergonomically correct Sealy mattress, when he told her they were to be separated. Kept the Avon peach bubble bath just over in *there* when Eugene Victor -- liver compulsion, silly putty appendages and all -- was handcuffed to *that* porcelain, claw-footed bathtub. Was sitting just over *there* with the Caesar salad, complete in all its heart-wiseness with the croutons direct from their Tupperware home, when he called and she explained the intricacies of anaphylactic shock. She felt the tears starting to intermingle with the blood -- a cocktail her tongue was now used to. An opportunity to wax poetic, perhaps? Put to use Dr. Hindsgaul's English 101 class -- metaphors, juxtaposition, symbolism and all. Angry, red scabs; dark droplets; frothy, fiery-red geysers from her nose, from his leg, from her chin, from his forehead.... A price. More specifically, the price exacted from *them* -- from him, from her. From a past littered in bodies and shadows. In running and dealing. Ending here, with a truth so convoluted, so wrapped in gray -- a precipice overlooking fact versus fiction. A burning sting, a reluctant trickle, a myriad of tears shed at a hospital, surrounded by yellow crime tape, over a dead corpse... A gesture. A silent, almost inconsequential volume of saline that they were permitted to shed when traveling to the hell of the Arctic. Consumed in the fervor of persuing cold blooded killers -- whether of earthly or non-earthly origin. Something that exacted less a price -- something that couldn't be recorded, or transcribed. Something that could be done quietly, in private -- in the darkness and seclusion of a never-ending night, in the garish fluorescence of a hospital room -- something that no one could take away... It passes through her lips. Her tongue touches the roof of her mouth as she whispers his name. He is an inquiry, a stamp, an official government seal. An American flag over a casket. An office full of folders, now covered in plastic. A framed picture, a silent vigil for twenty three years. No more. Such a pretty suit, Dana. Numb. That jacket is starting to hang from you shoulders, Dana. Nothing. Oh, Dana... blood on your jacket. I don't know if the dry cleaners will be able to remove the stain. She refuses to believe it's over. She refuses to believe that she will have to fight whatever is left to fight, all alone. She refuses to believe that her partner is that much of a coward -- will not believe that *that* mass of blood and tissue in all its gory glory is his. He will come back. He *has* to come back. Her gaze falls back to the briefcase. The bleeding briefcase with its gun and its cape, standing defiantly -- stoically -- on her hardwood floor. Only her partner could come up with it, indeed. She picks up the leather rectangular prism, ignoring the protests from her back. Walks past the couch on top of the hardwood floor, past the kitchen with its croutons and romaine lettuce, past the bathroom in all its Avon glory, into her room with the duvet and the Sealy. Sets her super hero down. Not martyr. No more connotations. Not anymore. Because super heroes never die. **** FINIS ****