Did I still love Josh? The question seemed important, but somehow I wasn't sure I could face it right now. The protective numbness that had enveloped me when I saw the NCIC sheet was fading away; the pain was just beginning.

Josh had lied to me. He had lied to me from the start. He had hurt me, and deceived me, isolated me and treated me so badly that I had lost the ability to judge truth from lies, lost all ability to resist his abuse.

But did I still love him?

Yes.

I still believed -- I had to believe -- that the childhood abuse he had described was true. Knowing that he was a convicted felon only made it easier for me to believe it.

But whatever the reason Josh was what he was, it didn't matter. It didn't change the fact that I could not go on sharing my life with the person that childhood had produced.

I knew I should say something to Mulder, but I didn't know what. My life was coming apart, and I knew he would be there to put me back together -- I knew that with a sureness that could not be shaken -- but I also knew that it would be a while before I could bring myself to admit how badly I had messed things up.

I couldn't ask for his love right now, or his friendship, or Daniel's. I needed to be alone.

But there was something that still puzzled me.

"Mulder, why did you bring Daniel with you when you came to pick me up?" I asked.

"Because Daniel assisted you in that autopsy," he said, with an almost apologetic half-smile, "which means that he's a witness."

"He was going with us?" I asked.

"He was," Mulder said, nodding. "And he still will, when you're well enough to go."

"I'm going eventually, I suppose," I said, and then I laughed -- a little hysterically, I think. "But I really don't think I ever want to see Miami again. Do you, Mulder?"

I had started out laughing, but now I was beginning to cry. "Do you want to go back to Miami, Mulder?" I said, my voice breaking. I felt dizzy; I turned my head away, hoping Mulder would leave, but of course he wouldn't. I heard the bed rail lowering and then I felt Mulder's arms around me, supporting me.

"Just breathe, Scully," he said, half sitting on the bed next to me. "It'll pass in a moment."

"I'm the doctor, Mulder," I said, but my voice sounded distant in my own ears, and I knew I was near fainting.

"You're the doctor," he said, and he pulled me closer. "But I'm the psychologist, and I reserve the right to comment on emotional reactions to stress."

He was trying to cheer me up, and I wanted him to, but we both knew it wasn't going to work. Not yet, anyway. In time, after I could feel again, after I had cried and raged and burned with shame and learned to ...

Learned to live alone.

The roaring in my ears was quieting down now, and my vision was clear. I knew the fainting spell was over, and I lifted my head and -- without thinking -- laid it on Mulder's shoulder.

Which, really, was the only place I ever wanted it to be, right from the start.

He didn't say anything, just tightened his hold on me as the last of the icy numbness melted away and I began to sob like a little girl.

~~~~~~~~~~

Josh, to no one's surprise -- not even mine, really -- was arrested two days later in Maryland, trying to buy Lortab with a prescription he'd forged on my prescription pad. Pharmacists are pretty good at spotting fakes, and this time was no exception.

I hadn't even thought that he might steal my pad, but as I said, I wasn't surprised to learn that it was gone. And of course, he had my service weapon in his possession, which added a robbery charge and a possession-by-a-felon firearms charge to all his other troubles.

Josh was looking at some hard federal time. I wanted to weep when I realized that, but I could not have told you whether it was from relief or sadness.

I couldn't tell you now.

When I was released from the hospital the next day, I went home with Daniel.

I told Mulder that it was because Daniel would be better able to care for me, and that was true as far as it went, but the real truth was that I still couldn't quite bring myself to face Mulder alone. I still had too much guilt, too many bad feelings left, and too much anger -- and I didn't want to make him the victim of any of that. With him, I could let go and let it all out, but I don't want to.

He doesn't deserve it.

But I know that I will go and stay with him someday soon, when I can be with him without hurting him, and that being with him will be as lovely, warm and comforting as ever -- and that I will still be just a little bit sad.

I am not sure the sadness will ever really leave me now.

Yet from the moment I stepped into Daniel's apartment, my heart felt lighter, and I felt secure and calm, in a way I'd almost forgotten I could feel.

For the next several weeks, until I could use my hand again, it was going to be just the three of us, just our little circle, the circle that had been so strong and embracing until the night Josh had lied and deceived his way into my life.

As I settled in with Daniel, I let myself feel again the power of that circle, let myself relax and allow him to care for me and love me and protect me in a way I never thought I would allow again from any man.

But as I have said before, I knew that I was safe with Daniel -- and with his love for me, real love, even if it was, in the beginning, founded in the love that Daniel and I both had for the same man.

I have never loved anyone the way I love Mulder; I know, with absolute certainty, that I never will. Nor, I think, will he ever love anyone the way he loves me.

His love for Daniel is different. That is the love of lovers, a conjugal love; Daniel is the love of Mulder's life, without question, but there is a corner in Mulder's soul that is mine, forever and always.

But Daniel -- my sweet, wonderful Daniel -- who had every right in the world to resent me, instead accepted me and made room for me in their lives almost from the start of their relationship.

Josh, on the other hand, systematically cut me off from anyone else who might want, need or deserve any of my love. Even my own mother.

It wasn't jealousy, although it may have masqueraded as that -- it was isolation. On Mulder's advice, I joined a support group for battered women, where I came gradually to understand what had happened -- that Josh had kept me, as much as possible, from contact with anyone who might have helped me see what was happening to me.

He couldn't keep me away from Mulder, of course, but he did all he could to damage the relationship, to try to kill the trust I had in Mulder, so that when Mulder tried to warn me, I wouldn't listen.

Mulder hadn't held it against me. Neither had my mom, or Daniel.

They all love me better than I deserve.

For the first three nights that I was at Daniel's, I slept on the couch and Daniel slept in the bed -- over Daniel's protests, but he's 6-foot-3, as I said, and he can't sleep as comfortably on a sofa as I can.

On the fourth night, Mulder came over, and stayed the night with Daniel. It felt very much like old times, and if things weren't back to normal, I at least had hope now that they soon would be.

We all had breakfast together the next morning, and Mulder sat and talked to me while Daniel showered and shaved, and kissed me tenderly when he left.

Of course, he kissed Daniel, too -- and for once, I didn't pretend that I wasn't watching.

The next night, I woke up in the grip of a nightmare, shrieking and flailing my arms around, and then Daniel was there with me, calming me, holding me, bringing me a glass of water.

When I woke up again later that same night, shivering with fright, I didn't even think twice -- I crept into Daniel's bedroom, crawled under the covers and curled up in his arms.

We didn't talk about it; there didn't really seem to be any need. By tacit agreement, for the rest of the time I was there, I slept with Daniel -- unless, of course, Mulder was there.

And if he was there, well, I stayed in the apartment, on the couch. If I felt like watching television, I watched, but I didn't flip on the tube just to drown out the sounds from the bedroom, and I didn't go for walks I didn't want to take, either.

You see, one truth I have taken away from this whole horrible mess -- one thing I hadn't wanted to face before -- is that it wasn't just a lack of heterosexual relations that drove me into Josh's arms, or into the arms of so many strangers before him.

It also wasn't just the constant physical stimulation of being held and touched and kissed by my sweet boys. It's also not just because they are gorgeous hunks and I could easily imagine myself with either of them, although that's part of it.

It's that what they do when they make love -- what I see, and what I imagine -- seriously turns me on.

It has ever since the beginning.

That shouldn't have surprised me: Heterosexual men are notoriously fond of pornography featuring female/female relations. I just never thought of it working the other way.

And I never thought that Mulder knew how I felt.

But he does know, and he is not bothered by it. I don't know how I know that; I only know that our ability to communicate without words has returned to us, and that he knows, and that he understands.

It was only when I realized and accepted how I felt that I truly began to understand what had happened to me, and what I needed to do to regain my self-esteem and my emotional balance.

I began to stay home at night, comfortable and happy with myself as I had been before.

Because now that I knew what I was really feeling, now that I'd quit feeling like some kind of pervert, I felt much less driven to prove that I was still heterosexual by going out and screwing the first stranger I could find who looked like Mulder.

Or -- more and more often -- the first stranger who looked like Daniel.

Now, I stay with them, and I don't worry about what it means.

And yet ... I am still, in the end, alone.

And I still love Josh, and I still miss him. As crazy as it seems, I still cry some nights because he is not there.

You see, in spite of all the pain, there really were good times. There were times when he made me laugh, and there were times when he touched my heart.

There were times when I was tired and needy and he took care of me.

I know he didn't always do it for the reasons that I had hoped; his motive, ultimately, was to make me so dependent on him that I would never leave him, to control me in a way that guaranteed I would always be around.

It might have worked, too, had it not been for the love of two good men.

After three weeks, Daniel took me back to the hand specialist, who examined my hand with great pleasure and pronounced my recovery "spectacular." He ordered physical therapy -- I almost laughed at that -- but said he saw no reason I couldn't go back to performing autopsies as well as I ever had.

Of course, the scars are still there ... and always will be.

We are going to Miami next week to testify before the grand jury -- Mulder, Daniel and I. I am almost looking forward to it.

The week after that, I have to give testimony in a preliminary hearing against Josh. It will be the first time I have seen him since that last, horrible battle.

I will have to face him, and whether he is angry or he is hurt, whether he is defiant or apologetic, it will hurt. He will be "jail pale," and frightened, I know, because the word will get out, if it hasn't already, that he was once a cop, and then he will have to spend his jail time in protective isolation.

Which, I suppose, is what he thought he was giving me -- protective isolation.

It will hurt, seeing him that way. But I will get through it. I will testify to all of it, and Josh will be bound over to a grand jury and eventually convicted and sent away to a federal penitentiary for a long, long time.

And that will hurt even more.

But whatever happens, however much it hurts, there is one thing I know, now, with a certainty born of hard, painful experience.

My boys will be there with me.

And I will not be alone.

End "The Fifth Side of the Triangle" (10/10) by Susan Jameson
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