I've had this story in me for a long LONG time. For now it's a one shot, but it has...possibilities... I needed a break from the Harry Potter universe, badly, so I wrote this little ficlet up. It's based in The X-Files Universe, and takes place exactly five years from the episode 'Jump The Shark' (You know..the one where those bastards at fox killed the Gunmen -still very very bitter about it-)

I wrote this for me, not for my fans -eye twitch- who, while they mean well, often drive me insane..

Don't get me wrong, it's the good kind of insane...

Anyways, it's dark, it's melancohly, and definatly not in my 'usual' writing style...I love it. If you don't you can go take a flying jump, 'cause I wrote this for me.

Denial

Five years...it's been five years...and I only found out today.

I was ready for this when I was sitting on the United Airlines flight here...

I was ready for this as I waited at the airport for my cab...

I was ready on the drive here...and I was ready as I entered the gates of Arlington.

Yet here I stand, looking at three plain, white, indistinct grave markers bearing the names of my brothers, and I find that I'm not ready at all.

Five years these headstones have stood here...five years...

Three rather ordinary bits of stone, I find on closer inspection...not flashy, not the least bit ostentatious... rather like the men themselves. I stand here staring, and I wonder, 'Is this really the end?'

It seems a dismal end, I think, as I stare at these three stone monuments jutting evenly out of the ground. So uniform in size and shape, identical to all those around them, so unlike the men who lie beneath them.

Five years...

Wretched...that's what it is. Positively wretched. Gray sky, gray clouds, gray grass, white stones. It shouldn't be this colorless...it shouldn't be so dull. The final resting place of these men should be inspiring...but instead it fills me with melancholy.

A crow cries out his mournful refrain and still I stand, staring...and now the rain has started.

Five years...

The world mourns not these men, they are unwept and unsung...as I suspect they shall remain. No-one will know of their great deeds...no-one will ever-

If I had been here..if I had been...

But I wasn't...

I should have been...I should-

I wasn't...

Five years...and the hour grows ever later...

The rain is falling heavier now...the gods are pitying me at last. Now I may weep openly and the downpour will cover it... I do these men a disservice with my weakness, but I have no strength left with which to hide my sorrow.

Five years...

My knees buckle and I land in the mud, crying like a child, enfolding my arms around myself...

They can't be gone...

I won't let it end this way...

It can't be over...

And it isn't...I don't know it yet...but it isn't.