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1. Offer everything you have to give, and when you have offered everything, offer more. There is no limit on the fury you pull out of your insides like a daisy-chain, linked together with the bruising left by memories you still can’t quite wrap your fingers around. Offer them everything and anything, throw them off your trail and bare your heart and soul and when they ask you if you’re afraid, laugh. Know why they ask that question. Know why it doesn’t matter. Know it because they don’t and because you have travelled to lands where they cannot follow you, too lost inside their own tangled web of deceit to comprehend the truth when it is the only weapon left that matters. Offer them what they ask for and what they don’t, and know that the time for fear has long passed. That fear is locked inside you, like a secret, like a lie, and know the worst thing of all: you couldn’t get it back, even if you tried. And, oh, how you have.
2. Let your name fall from her lips like a benediction, like a prayer, a command you can’t help to start to answer and only tell her little lies. Tell her you’re okay. Tell her none of you is hurting. Tell her that you believe you’ll make it through this alive, that you deserve her, that you didn’t bring this on yourself, somehow, even if you’re not quite sure how, or when, or why. Kiss her only when she asks you to and only exactly the way she likes it, and don’t even let yourself feel lucky. You’re not a lucky man but a man punching far above his weight class, and never remind her. Be selfish, just this once. (Or twice. Or three times.) Let her love you because she wants to and because you of all people will never have the mandate on telling Dana Scully what she wants. Love her because you can do nothing else, and let it burn you, because when you get things you don’t deserve the least they should do is hurt.
3. Pretend that you don’t know the truth. Pretend you aren’t angry. Pretend you aren’t always angry, that you only switch it off for the slow surety of her smile and the slip of her hand inside yours in the dark. Pretend because the pretence is the point, because it might never keep you sane but it might keep you alive, just one more time. Pretend that the fight won’t kill you and that you have never hoped that it will. Pretend because it’s what you’re good at and if she catches you know it was always meant to be this way, and try not to let it sting that she sees through you so easily, even when you don’t want her to, even when you pray to a God you don’t believe in that she won’t. Pretend until it makes you puke and keep pushing, because if you don’t, if you can’t, it will have all been for nothing, and there is a scar on the back of her neck and you can’t make that be worthless, not now or ever. Pretend and do not pray and do not hope and believe and believe and believe, because it’s what you’re best at, after all.
4. Pretend she never saw you snap. Pretend that when you pressed the forced gun against your temple, the idea of pulling the trigger wasn’t almost a relief. Pretend that the ease with which you’d die for her frightens you, because you know it ought to, because you academically understand ‘ought’ in a thousand different contexts but you can never quite seem to apply it to her. Pretend you’ve never pressed a gun against your temple. Pretend that the first time, in a lonely dark room a long way from here, that it wasn’t loaded. Keep pretending, because you’ve told her so many things, but it’s time to be brave, and to protect her, not from them, but from you. Pretend and keep pretending, and maybe your fingers will never itch again for a gun. Pretend because she needs you and that matters more than selfishness. Pretend and let the pretence subsume you, and, for once, let go of something and don’t look back.
5. Offer her your heart. Offer her to the deepest, darkest, most repulsive recesses of yourself, and let her pull you up into the light. Trust that she won’t let go; trust that you will if that’s what it takes to save her. Offer her nothing but the truth because it’s all you will ever have to offer, and when it isn’t enough, because that’s how this story, you know, will end-- when it isn’t enough, recognise your own truths, and keep fighting, because that, too, is all you will ever have to give.
6. Only let it hurt you when you can afford it; always, and never. Look at your blood dripping from your nose in your kitchen sink and do not let yourself regret, because it won’t stop your blood from swirling red and it won’t bring your sister back, because that’s not how it works. If you know anything, you know this. Dig bullets out of your skin with your bare hands and take the bruises and the beatings and the fear, and pay your price, and keep paying. Try not to die, or, at least, not yet, and let it hurt, but only when you’ve already turned out the light.
7. The truth is out there. Keep saying it. Close the loop; never stop pushing; make it real.
8. Realize that her love can’t save you. Realize it now, now and every day, because you owe her this much and you owe her even more than that. Don’t say the words that would shatter your world and never expect her to say them first. (Or second.) Know that what made you made you years ago, that the rack already snapped you and no amount of band-aids can bring what is broken back. Do not expect her to save you, because no one can. Never blame her for it, because you’re not sure you’d let her save you, if you could. Cherish your scars and hide them from her in equal measure, and swallow hard, know that you can never sink so low that you can’t sink lower.
9. Use every name they call you, every lunch you eat alone, every black mark on your record and every time you trail mocking laughter down the Hoover Building halls. Use it because if you don’t it’s all for nothing, and because if you don’t learn from this you won’t learn at all. Use it and learn and build armour out of your slow, smart-ass smile and never let it hurt you, because this is a war you’re waging, and in this war you only take the damage that you show.
10. Practice what you preach until it kills you. (Or something close.) Don’t expect friends and expect lots of enemies, and never be disappointed when you are, inevitably, correct. Get used to never being right on paper and always being right when it counts, or it would, if proof on paper wasn’t what you wanted. Believe and lie in equal measure, watch their world almost burn a hundred times. Let your life fall in the ashes of their lies and let bitterness become an old, familiar friend. Practice what you preach until your wrists are cuffed and your mouth is bleeding, and even then, know that there is no such thing as too far, too long, too much or too little to lose.
11. Don’t kiss her. Don’t kiss anyone. Remember the kiss of a scalpel in your chest without anaesthetic and the scars you wish you could forget. Don’t want for what you can’t have and try not to need too much, from anyone, and when you fail, don’t hate yourself too much, or more than usual, whichever works out less.
12. Pretend, when she needs you to, that you aren’t crazy. Get better at it until it’s almost flawless, but never quite lose the ‘almost’, because you know what you are, and there’ll never be a better word for it than ‘crazy.’ Hold yourself together until you split at the seams, and let the shame of it wash over you, the shame and the guilt and the pain. Wonder what you’d be like if the circle never closed, if you’d remembered the trauma and it never became a trauma at all. Wonder what makes you a believer, and then wonder if it’s worth wondering, seeing as how you’ll never know. Wave at sanity as it passes by and try not to regret it too much-- because, after all, she needs you to pretend, but almost never, in time.
13. Pretend that you won’t die for her. Pretend that you don’t know that you will, and, above all, pretend that when you do, you’ll even mind.
14. Pretend that this is a war that you’re going to win. Pretend that you never have dreams that make you wake up screaming and that you haven’t touched the bare skin of another person in more than a decade without flashing to blood on your palms, and it’s your own. Pretend that there is a way out of this, if you wanted it, that you’re anything other than doomed and lost and crazy, and that if you were given a way out, you’d take it. You’re a G-Man. You’re a genius. When you dared the terrorists to kill you, you didn’t pray just a little that they would. There is a truth. You’re going to find it. Just you wait and see.
15. Try to stop waking up with your mouth already closing around her name.