Title: Fragmented
Author: Vesper (Regina)
E-mail: vespertanmer@yahoo.com
Warning: dark themes
Category: Angst, Drama
Keywords: Jimmy Bond, Yves Adele Harlow
Spoilers: My story, "Name."
Summary: There's no place like home.
Disclaimer: The Lone Gunmen owned by 20th Century Fox.
Archival: Permission to AAJY (Archive Central). All others please
link to my website.
Notes: Part of what would be a larger story if I ever felt
inclined to write it.

o-o

She fumbles the key at the lock, failing to unlock the door and
tries to ignore her trembling hands and the way her keys clatter
against each other, the sound louder to her than breaking glass.
It's two a.m. and he'll be asleep. She doesn't want to wake him.
She almost drops the keys and the familiar sick feeling she's been
living with the past three months claws deeper in her stomach.
She draws a sharp breath and almost chokes on the air.

(Sometimes she thinks he can smell the fear on her.)

She'll break apart if she doesn't get inside, she'll break
apart and he won't be able to put her back together again. She
tries again, gets the key inside, finds a sliver of strength, of
relief in the simple action. She rests her head against the door,
feeling its cool painted surface against her skin. She closes her
eyes, breathes with measured breaths. Just a moment, just one
second before she goes inside and she'll be all right, as good as
she'll ever be.

(He'll touch her, but that won't make it all better. Not
ever.)

This is a different war, one of lies and preemptive strikes,
where knowledge is power and ignorance is no excuse. There's so
much she never tells him. Too much to explain, too much for him
to hear. He has before and he knows what she has to do and how
much it costs her. She's no better than her father, no better
than the men he helped.

("It's not like that, Yves. You know it's not.")

She does it because she knows he can't, because she wants her
daughter to live, because the date grows closer every second. She
does it because when the day comes she wants to stand and say she
fought and when she dies she wants to do it watching the life
drain from the enemy.

She turns the key and ducks inside. There's a lamp burning on
a table in the hall, diffused light soft enough not to be seen
from outside. She switches it off.

She walks through the house, stepping carefully. She stops at
a door, which stands ajar, and looks in. The light of the moon
falls across the rounded cheeks of a little girl with long dark
curls poking out from the blanket. Yves goes inside, leaves a kiss
on a cool cheek, pulls the blanket closer around Esther. Yves
wants to wake her, to hold her close and whisper her love into her
little girl's hair but goes, closing the door, leaving it where it
was.

(Tomorrow she'll be gone again.)

She moves down the hall, to where Jimmy is asleep, inside their
bedroom, the covers over his head, Yves shucks her clothes,
stripping down to her underwear. She crawls in beside him and
when he mumbles her name, she whispers, "Yes, Jimmy."

"What happened?"

(There's blood on her hands.)

"I came home. Go back to sleep, Jimmy."

He does. She only knows she's asleep when she begins to dream.

End.