Survive

Cold gray light filters in through the uncurtained window and falls across the face of a young man lying in a hospital bed. Several days worth of stubble shadow his sallow face and his features wear an expression of pain even in sleep. Thick white gauze surrounds the place where his left arm should be, and a single IV in his remaining arm delivers saline and a common inexpensive pain reliever that leaves him feeling sleepy and stupid.

The pale winter light in his eyes is not enough to wake him, but the nightmare is. They come for him again and again in his sleep.

Mulder, The Smoker, Scully, Skinner, his father, Cardinal. All the ones he's betrayed or been betrayed by. All wielding knives. All wanting to carve off another little piece of himself.

He awakens with a gasp and takes in his surroundings. It doesn't take him long to comprehend where he is. This is not the first time he's awakened to this scene, this waking nightmare, but the dream and the pain medicine leave him vulnerable today.

He feels the pressure building in his chest and throat, feels salty tears stinging at the corners of his eyes. He swallows hard, struggling against what he fears will be an overwhelming and embarrassing show of emotion. But this loss is too great even for his typical stoicism to bear.

So many losses. This is merely the most visible of all of his wounds.

He feels another wave of grief building and this time he lets it crest and break over him and carry him away. He lets the tears come. Tears for his lost arm ... for his lost innocence.

"Oh god no please," he moans. Denying it all. Denying in his mind what his body knows to be undeniably true.

"Pleasepleaseplease."

Hot tears flow over his cheeks and throat. They soak into the collar of his flimsy hospital gown and cool.

"Pleaseno."

The curious stares of his few fellow patients are enough to bring him back to himself. He scrubs at his eyes with the palm of his right hand -- only hand -- and fights off another wave of tears.

He stares defiantly at the other men in this dirty over-crowded hospital ward allocated to the city's homeless or indigent. Even wounded, he can project a cold-hardened-killer expression that causes the other men, each of them dangerous in their own right, to look away.

He turns to stare out of the window at the barren trees, icy streets and magnificent architecture of St. Petersburg. He sees none of it.

'I can take this,' he thinks to himself. Just as he has taken every other tragedy life has handed him.

He is more determined than ever before.

To live. To regain his body's strength. And then to fight for what he wants, what he thinks he has a right to have.

He will do whatever he has to do...

...to survive.

If you know the Highlander quote that inspired this story, you get 2 points!