Private Conversations by Christy
Written for Eodrakken Quicksilver
When Marita was seventeen years old she had fallen in love. Through the worst betrayals, illnesses, affairs and death she had remained in love with Alex Krycek and he with her. She expected very few people to understand this, least of all Jeffrey Spender, who had first seen them at the only point in Marita’s life when she had fervently wished she had put her trust and love in someone else. But Jeffrey Spender was also the only person who had ever heard Marita cry over Alex and he understood things better then she thought.
Jeffrey had never been in love, having given that up with countless other rites of passage in order to be the son his mother needed him to be. He understood love though and appreciated the fact that he lived in a world where people could and would put their trust and faith in the hands of those they shared no blood line with. In the beginnings of his friendship with Marita after reconnecting at Fox Mulder’s trial there were moments when he thought she might be that person for him.
She had tried to kiss him once, probably to prove to him and likely to herself that she accepted how he looked. He had stopped her before their lips could touch and after that she was careful to not let her hand so much as brush against his own. He thought of explaining to her that he would not let her or anyone accept how he looked because he would not let anyone accept what had been done to him but like so much that passed between them he never found the words to tell her.
In spite of all they left unsaid, the conversation they shared was the basis of a relationship that became as intimate as either was capable of. It always began with a phone call, always from her, and though weeks would often go between meetings, Jeffrey would find himself at the diner they met at often enough to keep from missing her. Marita would always arrive first and would choose a booth hidden in the back, out of courtesy to him. They would sit there for hours, barely eating but drinking endless cups of coffee, and filling the space between them with everything from talk of the mundane to hushed, guarded talk about the looming events that neither could escape. Finally the talk would die and they would be left with nothing but the unspeakable hanging between them. She would stand up first and they would depart with a whispered goodbye. Once he had been overwhelmed with the desire to hug her and when he reached for her she gripped him back as if she had been starving for the feel of arms around her.
Two months after the hug she called him in the middle of the night, sounding slightly drunk and very hysterical. She spoke for three hours straight about Alex Krycek and every good, bad and indifferent thing he had ever done to her and for her. He sat there in perfect, sympathetic silence, unable to get the mental image of her sitting alone in her darkened apartment, unable to escape the ghost of a man she would never be able to stop loving. They didn’t meet in the diner that night and it would be almost a year before he heard from her again.
The longer they went without talking, the more he would think of her. After three months of no contact he searched for her phone number, only to realize she had never given it to him. Two months after that he resigned himself to the worst. It occurred to him that there were countless people searching for them both and if she had been caught it was only a matter of time before he too would likely slip silently out of the world. The nightmares that had plagued him since the day his life as an FBI agent ended became even more horrific and he would lie awake at night, fighting off sleep with thoughts of her and what it might have been like if he had never stopped the kiss between them. His fuzzy memory of the moment when their lips had almost met became his shield against the nameless forces that seemed to lurk in every shadow.
The next time they met she didn’t call first but showed up at his apartment looking healthy and the closest to happy he had ever seen her. She embraced him and kissed him and he didn’t even think to stop either action. She had found a storage locker of things that Alex had hidden from everyone and using the resources had started to build up enough information and contacts to match those of the shadowy organization they had once worked for. He could see her happiness at rejoining the fight she had spent most of her adult life entangled with and for the first time since he had woken up to find himself strapped to a hospital bed he felt like he was involved in a battle that he could win. Even more inspiring to him was that he knew there was someone he could and would put his faith and trust in. It was no question that he loved her and for the first time since Samantha and his mother there was someone to fight for and for the first time ever there was someone he could fight with.
They talked for hours and when their voices were hoarse from talking they sat in the dark of his apartment. She took his hand and with her free hand she stroked the side of his face. She kissed each scarred cheek and touched her forehead to his. She never flinched or shut her eyes and they fell asleep that night surrounded with feelings of hope and love that had almost become more alien to them then the forces they had renewed their battle against.
