Happy Endings
by analise
 
Email:analise@2cowherd.net 
Web: www.rhino.com/analise 
Archive: Yes, just let me know where 
Category:V,A,UST 
Rating:G
 
Disclaimer:These characters belong to Chris Carter and 1013. No
disrespect intended.
 
Note: Angst ahead!
 
 
 
 
 
My grandfather was a great big man...wide shoulders and thick brawny
arms even in his old age, a shiny bald head that gave him a fearsome
mien and that masked the fact that he had the softest heart of anyone
I've ever known. I remember that I loved his strength, his
compassion, the incredible presence that he would wear about him like
a warm blanket. As a child I would live for the moments when I could
climb into his lap and drink in his ambient strength, listen to the
rumble of his deep voice and feel safe in the circle of his arms.
 
All the way up to the very end he was as sharp as a tack..still lucid
and full of the quietly blazing intensity of his personality...even as
the cancer ate him away where he lay. I remember that when my sister
and I were little..and even when we were older, he would tell us
stories.
 
He told the most incredible tales in that granite voice of
his..stories both fantastical and real. Stories that he always said
were true. We were just children and we believed him..our belief gave
those stories influence and power over our lives..over his own words.
As we would listen, rapt with wonder, the strength in his voice would
grow..the weight of the things he spoke of would expand and pull at
us..tugging like the tide, drawing us in.
 
I can recall every last one of my grandfather's stories. Every last
one. But all of them, the horror tales of the long-ago Vietnam
war...the intricate weavings of the power circles at the FBI ..the
sweet vignettes of the clever courtship of my grandmother ..all of
them had happy endings. It was why we felt so good listening to him
spin a story for us..we had faith that, in his world, Justice
Prevailed and the Good Guys Won.
 
There was one, though...that was different from all the others.
 
He only told it once.
 
In my teens he'd moved to upstate New York..to spend his retirement in
a house that sat on the edge of a beautiful lake. My parents would
take Tina and I up there to visit with him over the summer, and it was
there that I met my first boyfriend. After several months in which I
drowned in the early, heady emotions that young love can spawn, he
broke up with me and I was devastated in the way that only a teenager
can be.
 
I had gone, weeping, to my grandfather and he had pulled me into his
lap..all the gawky curves and 14 year old limbs of me..and he had told
me, only me, a story I had never heard before.
 
"You remember.." he said slowly, and even now I can hear the slow
reluctant cadence of his heavy words, "..how I told you that I once
worked for the FBI?" he asked. I nodded, sniffling, into his
shirt..letting the odor of his unique musky grandpa-smell calm me.
"This was before I met your Grandmother. There were two people who
worked for me back then..a man and a woman. I've never told you of
them before..so pay attention. I will not speak of them again."
 
That made me sit up a little straighter, the promise of something new,
perhaps something special. I remained silent, waiting.
 
"Let me tell you something about these two people first, Honey. They 
were the best team who ever worked in the Bureau. Together, there was 
almost nothing that they couldn't do. Together, they were stronger, 
better, smarter. Together, they were whole in a way that they never 
seemed to manage on their own...even though they were both brave, 
intelligent, independant people. They shared a bond unlike anything I 
have ever seen in all my years on this earth. They truly, honestly, 
deep-down, loved each other in a way that very few can claim in this 
world." 
 
He smiled down at me, his eyes more than a little distant 
and I could tell that he wasn't seeing me.
 
"For years they worked in tandem, moving as one..suffering alone even
though they always had each other. They never let the walls between
them down fully, except in the ways that really counted. They were
always there when they needed each other, each one would move
mountains to stay together.. but they'd never..really touched..never
became more than just friends." he said softly.
 
I frowned.
 
"Then how'd you know they loved each other so much Grandpa?" I
challenged, not certain I liked this story. I could already see it
wasn't like any of the others.
 
"You could tell just by being in the room with them..watching them in
hallways, working on a case together. " He smiled down at me. "They
would move as one sometimes, shadow each other without speaking..but
they never reached out past those barriers. They were afraid, you
see." he explained to me. I must have let my frustration show, because
his face showed a touch of wry amusement.
 
"They were afraid of what they might lose if they took even one tiny
chance. Two of the bravest, most intelligent people I ever knew and
they were terrified of exposing even a sliver of their feelings for
each other. I think they both knew what they would gain from making
that step. They were afraid of making themselves vulnerable to the
kind of pain they knew they would experience if they failed."
 
He sighed and went on. 
 
"..Because Jenn, if their partnership ever dissolved.. they would not 
have been able to exist separately. They refused to risk it..even 
with what they were to each other shining as brightly as the sun 
itself, they refused. "
 
He looked up and away from me, out the window to where the afternoon
light played idylly with the fractured facets of a flock of
geese reflecting off the lake's surface. He was silent for a long
moment until I tugged on his shirt to get his attention.
 
"So what happened? Did they ever tell each other? Did they get married
and live happily ever after?" I needed to know.
 
The silence stretched even further and I briefly wondered if that was
it, if that was all there was.
 
"I remember the day," he said finally. "It was raining out, really
raining. The edge of a massive weather system was moving along the
coast tearing up everything in its path. It was a Saturday and I was
at home. The wind and the water were just beating and howling at the
windows and it seemed like the perfect day to stay in and finish up
some chores I'd been putting off." He'd frowned briefly as if he was
trying to remember just what those chores were. "I got a call from the
police in the afternoon. There had been an accident." He shook his
head. "I can't remember what he told me..I don't even remember how I
got there, but I found myself on the side of the D.C. Beltway staring
at what used to be a Crown Victoria wrapped around a tree. "
 
"What's a Crown Victoria?" I asked.
 
"It was the kind of car that the FBI gave its agents to use."
 
His face was stone to match the gravel of his words. I'd never seen
him this way before.
 
"The side of it was decorated in long ravaged strips..showing streaks
of black paint that did not match the tan of the car. The eyewitnesses
confirmed that a black sedan had forced them off the road..that he..he
had struggled to keep the Victoria on the shoulder, but had lost
control and smashed into a tree at over 60 miles an hour."
 
"Did they... die?" I asked, slightly stricken by how old my 
grandfather suddenly looked.
 
"There were paramedics all around the car ..and several firemen
bearing the Jaws of Life. I knew that at least one of them was still
alive. I remember freezing in the pouring rain, feeling water coursing
down my collar..unable to move, to go down and see. *Terrified* to go 
down and see.."
 
"Why were you so scared?" something made me whisper, my hand now 
clutching at his.
 
He only looked down at me and smoothed my hair away from my now-dry
cheeks
 
"Terrified that only one of them would be alive. I knew, you see, if
one should leave the other behind..it would be worse than hell for the
survivor. Condemned to a half-life..a shadow of the whole person they
made together."
 
"But I made myself move. The rain was falling harder,and I remember 
clearly the little rivers of water that were rushing off the shoulder 
of the freeway and pooling underneath the wreckage of the car. I 
remember the odd red glow that the taillights cast over that growing 
lake..thinking it looked like blood."
 
His voice was so soft and distant, I had to lean up against him,
pressing into his warmth.
 
"It was him. He was the one who still clung to life..his chest crushed
by a steering column that seemed determined to curl back into the car.
I can still see her beautiful eyes, wide and blue..sightless..looking 
right at him empty of the fire that would light her gaze every time 
she looked at him, whispered to him, laughed with him. He was gazing 
back into those vacant eyes, tears mixing with the blood on his face, 
and his mouth was moving..his lips mouthing words..I would never have 
caught it if I hadn't been looking right at him. They were trying to 
peel the car away from his mangled body, but I managed to push to his 
side. He didn't look at me, I'm sure he never knew I was there..only 
her...It was always that way with them.
 
"I saw that their hands were joined, his thumb stroking across the
back of her knuckles over and over again. He was still speaking and
I..I wanted to hear it, I wanted to give what he was saying to her
strength and reality..I wanted to make it real at the last. I pushed
aside one of the paramedics, shoved the man down into the mud..leaning
forward, over him..."
 
"What was it Grandpa? What was he saying?" I was whispering, feeling
shaky and sick from the look on my strong grandfather's face..from the
single tear that was sliding unnoticed down his cheek. I had never 
seen him cry.
 
"I ..don't know. He..he died just then. Before I could hear. He simply
stopped breathing, and I stood there in the pouring rain, watching
them lying there..both their eyes wide open ..staring sightlessly at
each other, hands joined."
 
He looked down at me then, really seeing me for the first time since
he'd started telling his story.
 
"I like to think that they both always knew, that they said the words
to each other every day in ways that others could never hear."
 
He gave me a little hug.
 
"That's what I like to think." And then he sighed, a sound that seemed
to come from his soul.
 
"But ..I know that they could have had more. I *know*. More than most
people could ever dream of in any lifetime if they had taken that
chance. If they had let each other all the way in." One swipe of his
big hand and the tear had vanished like it had never been.
 
"I resigned not long after that day." he said, his voice regaining its
strength. "Somehow the Bureau..the world seemed to be a far grayer
place than I'd thought it was." He chuckled sadly then. "See, I'd
always figured that they would win. It would be like spitting in the
face of everything that was wrong by showing the world what real 
happiness was. But they were alone..always so alone..even with each 
other. Each believing they didn't deserve that happiness. And because 
of that..they lost everything."
 
"They were wrong. Never let fear stop you from taking what you really
want, Jenn." he said to me that day.
 
Years and years after my grandfather's death I still think of those
two people. Grandfather didn't tell me their names. I didn't ask. He
never brought them up again and I didn't want him to. The tragedy was
too much for him, and his own grief over it gave it a weight that
seemed to have the ability to crush me.
 
I recall that I had gone and found Charlie after that story and we had
gotten back together for a brief time before we drifted apart
naturally after the summer break was over.
 
When I got married much later and had my own kids, I told that story
again, just once..to my youngest daughter the time she was stood up on
her Prom night.
 
Did the story of the two lovers who never loved touch her? I don't 
know. But as I spoke the words as I remembered them from my 
grandfather's lips, I fancied that I could see them. That faceless 
pair who had had the love of a lifetime and had been too afraid of it 
to risk it.
 
Were they together now, wherever they were? For my grandfather's sake,
I hoped so. And for mine and my daughter's. There is something in us
that longs for a happy ending. 
 
We want the world to be a place where lovers fight and suffer and 
struggle, but in the end walk into the sunset hand in hand. Justice 
triumphs and Goodness wins. I know that my Grandfather wished for 
that world. That vision died for him the day that the nameless lovers 
did.
 
I want that world too.
 
I think we all do.
 
 
END