********

I love my job. Really, I do. It provides so many different kinds of thrill that when I need a distraction, on a stakeout or doing paperwork, I like to list them in my head; but I have never managed to capture them all. Each one has its own distinctive qualities, leaves its own unique flavour at the back of my throat. There's the thrill of the chase, which is mental as much as physical; the thrill of finding the last piece of the puzzle and seeing how it all fits together; the thrill of packing my overnight bag for another stay in another small- town motel for another case, never knowing whether it's going to be a total bust or the answer to my prayers.

And I get to meet such *interesting* people.

No, really, I mean that. I'm not being sarcastic. Working on the X-files gives me the chance to see events and phenomena and facets of the human psyche that most people never even dream of. Not all of them are pleasant. Some of them are so strange and horrifying that to even acknowledge their existence is painful.

So sometimes I don't.

Sometimes, when the horrors are ganging up on me, it makes the universe so much easier to deal with if I can just make them ordinary. No matter how much twisting it requires. And don't judge me, don't you *dare* slap a label on me like "skeptic" or "blind" or "coward" until you've looked the Devil in the face six or seven times. *Then* we can talk.

Preferably over something alcoholic.

I am a coward, though. Don't get me wrong; I don't put my hands over my eyes at horror movies or faint at the sight of blood. I've faced down killers without flinching. I've seen _The Exorcist_ five times. I've cut up more dead bodies than I've kissed live ones. (And isn't *that* just the story of my life?) That's one of the wonderful things about being an FBI agent: you get to *look* brave, even if you have a habit of running away from what you want the most because it scares the shit out of you.

Yeah, I said it. God should strike me down, but I said it.

I want her.

And that terrifies me.

Not that I feel attracted to her. A body is a body, after all, and hers is a very fine one; lean, well-proportioned, good muscle tone. I've been attracted to women before. I've acted on that attraction.

How much easier it would be if that was what scared me...

But that's the problem, isn't it? That's *not* what scares me.

I remember the way she looked when I was about to leave. I had seen her naked before; that was no shock, though the way the sunlight brought out the warm tones of her skin and made rainbows of the droplets of water that clung to her.... well, let's just say it didn't change her appearance for the worse.

Oh, but her *eyes* --

So big and wide and full of something a little like shock and a lot like pain. I felt my heart lurch, then. Looking into her eyes felt an awful lot like standing on the edge of a cliff, wondering if you have the courage to jump or the courage not to jump. Wondering (with that odd detachment that terror brings) which choice is the right one.

That's part of it.

I never meant to hurt her. I never wanted anything more than a little scrap of *something* to satisfy a purely animal longing. I didn't mean to take or leave anything but memories.

Instead I left behind a leather jacket, a Zippo lighter, and... pain. I don't think it's vanity to say that I hurt her by leaving that way. I know what I saw in those eyes, I know only too well.

She wanted me to stay -- and dear God, if she'd only asked me to, if she'd only said "Don't go!", I wouldn't, *couldn't*, have left her. No matter what it took, no matter what I had to sacrifice, if she had spoken to me with need and desire as much in her voice as her words, she would have bound me to her for as long as she wanted me in her life.

That's another part of it.

Need is a terrible thing, especially that raw emotional need that you can't shake off and can't define either. It's not like needing air, or food, or water; those are just biological imperatives shared by the whole human race and most of the animal kingdom. No, emotional need is more like an addiction. It hurts when you don't get your fix. When you're in withdrawal nothing else matters. And it's your own damn fault for getting into the damn situation in the first place.

Take Mulder, for instance. I love Mulder, more than is comfortable sometimes; love his wit and his sharp mind and his relentlessness and his absolute refusal to anything the way everyone else does. And those are just the obvious things to love about him: the things I can tell people about when they ask. But the truth is, I love *him*, and that means I love everything about him, even his craziness and the way he drives me nuts.

I don't know how it happened. I only know that one day I realised he had taken up residence in my heart, disregarding all the signs saying "Do Not Enter", "Condemned Building" and "Here Be Monsters". I could have evicted him, but that would have left him homeless and me alone -- and that suddenly didn't seem like such a good thing.

After that, it just got worse. From knowing that I loved him, to knowing that I would do things for him that I wouldn't do for anyone else, to knowing, finally, that I *needed* him. Only when he "died" and I walked around for days with what felt like a gaping hole in my chest -- and how was it no one else saw that my heart had been removed? -- only then could I admit to myself that Mulder was my fifth food group.

And for that, I came very close to hating him.

And that's why I ran from Flipper. I hate, *hate* the idea of needing someone. Anyone. For as long as I can remember I've been standing on my own two feet and trying as hard as I can to forget that the road beneath them was built by others' hands. Is it the fear of being cut off, deprived of my fix? Or the awful power it gives to the one I need? Or the memory of loss -- my father, loving me dearly and being loved in return, but pulling back from me, more and more distant the more I looked like a woman and the less like a boy?

Whatever. I'm no shrink. I just know that... well, that need *hurts*. That it scares me. And that I have never really faced that fear, which makes me a big fat coward no matter how many times I've faced death.

And I... I need to see her again. If not to repeat what I did -- what *we* did -- then at least to speak to her, explain why I left, maybe even apologize -- though most likely she'd spit in my face if I tried, and quite right too.

I've thought about her. I've thought about going back to that tiny apartment, just to look, not to visit. Just to see if she still lives there. And as soon as I think thoughts like that, I squash them down, because, honestly, how pathetic can you get? Mooning round her building like a lovesick teenager? But the part of me that does the squashing is the part that's soluble in alcohol. And this bottle of wine is very nearly finished.

I could go there, and speak to her, right now -- except that right now I can hardly stand. Bad idea to leave the house, then.

I don't think about her much, all the same. Well, I've been dying of nasopharyngeal cancer, haven't I? And chasing conspiracies and monsters and murderers and God only knows what else. I have definitely had more important things to think about.

But every once in a while, I see a dark-haired woman in a leather jacket; and my heart pounds and my palms itch and I can taste her in my mouth and I need to touch her so badly I think my skin will jump off my skeleton and run after her.

Of course, it's never her.

I need to touch her again, and that's part of it, part of what scares me; because I've never wanted any woman twice. My hunt was always for the act itself and never for a person. I couldn't satisfy this craving by prowling the bars again, even if I hadn't trashed my hunting gear. I don't want Cunt. I want *her*.

I want her...

I want her to touch me again.

In vino veritas. If I wasn't drunk as the proverbial skunk, I'd never admit that, even to myself. As soon as I'm sober I'll pretend I never did.

I want her to touch me again. I want her to lay me bare again, strip me of all my defenses, all my masks and lies and all the walls I've built around my heart. I want her to make me weak at the knees. I want to climb inside her skin and let her do the same to me.

I want to stand before her, naked and vulnerable, and offer her everything I have to give.

I need her, and that scares me; but I *want* to need her, and that's the worst part of all.

I'm out of wine now. Time to go to bed. I'll hate myself in the morning, for this little honesty session as much as for the hangover; but it's necessary.

I'm never going to see her again. For the sake of my career and my self-respect, I need to pretend that none of this bothers me, that that sunny morning in Flipper's apartment never happened. That Danny really *is* dead.

But for the sake of my sanity, I need to remember -- just once in a while -- that I *am*, in fact, pretending.

Or else the mask might become my skin.

I might stop wanting her altogether.

And the prospect of that scares me more than wanting her ever could.

[end]

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Kathrine F.