Work Text:
Title: - Watershed.
Author: - Katt.
E-mail: - kattanon@hotmail.com
Rating: - PG.
Feedback: - Like it or loathe it let me know.
Archive: - Archived at the Shield Fanfiction Archive.
Disclaimers: - I don't any of the characters if The Shield, they all belong to Shawn Ryan and FX. The song "Letting Go" is performed by Gabrielle, and was written by Gabrielle, Richard "Biff" Stannard, and Julian Gallagher.
Watershed.
"I'm letting go,
Cause I let you take over,
My heart, my soul,
Thought we were forever,
Every day I find a way to cope,
All my obsessions, all my pain, I'm letting them go...
Now I'm letting go,
Of all the memories,
All the pain you caused,
You were haunting me,
Cause I been missing you,
And I been loving you,
For far too long..."
This was right, Dutch knew that, but it didn't make it any easier. He still felt like a failure, like he was giving up on the most important thing in his life. However, he had also come to realize that he had to be realistic, he couldn't live in the past, and he couldn't build his life around a hope, a dream. It was time to face facts - Lucy was gone. She had a new life, a family, she was happy, and she wasn't gonna be coming back. She'd moved on and made a new life for herself, and now it was time for him to do the same, way past time if he was honest with himself.
It wasn't the first time he'd had to leave the past behind him. It wasn't the first time he'd had to bury a soul shattering pain and move on. He'd done it once before when he'd left behind everything, and everybody, he'd ever known and moved here to Los Angeles. He'd managed to pull himself together then, and build himself a new life, and he was sure he could do it again.
He had to because he knew he couldn't go on the way he had been going. The black depression that had been lurking on the edge of his mind, threatening to rush in and consume him, frightened him. Dutch knew that if he set out down that path he'd eventually destroy himself. Whether it would be through alcohol, or sticking his police issue handgun in his mouth, the outcome would be the same.
"My peace of mind,
Is what matters,
I can make it happen,
To live my life,
I must try,
To leave the past behind...
There's nothing left of us for me to hold,
Now the time is right, I've got, I've got to move on...
Because I'm, I'm letting go,
Of all those memories,
All the pain you caused,
You were haunting me,
Cause I been missing you,
And I been loving you,
For far too long,
You should know I'm,
I'm letting go,
Of all the tears you caused,
All the pain I felt,
Every time that you were near,
Cause I been missing you,
And I been holding on,
For far too long..."
So here he was putting his past, his marriage, into a cardboard box, ready to hide it away in the attic. Photo albums, photos from the walls, their wedding video, video's taken on holidays and days out were all packed away. Even the silly little things that he'd kept, the things that Lucy used to laugh at him for keeping. The ticket stubs from their first date to the cinema, the cork from the bottle of Champaign they'd used to toast their engagement at that fancy French restaurant that had cost him a weeks wages to eat at, the rose he'd worn in his buttonhole when they'd married, dried and pressed flat between the leaves of their wedding album. Lucy had called him a "pack-rat" for keeping all these things, she'd said he was too sentimental. She'd never understood that these things were precious to him. They were the tangible reminders of the best, the happiest times, of his life. She didn't understand that he'd never had a past that he'd wanted to remember before. He'd spent most of his adult life trying to forget his past, his childhood, and so now that he'd had memories that he could cherish he'd wanted to hold onto them.
Maybe that had been part of the problem between them, he'd had too many secrets, and Lucy had never tried to see past the superficial surfaces of things. Dutch stopped himself before he set out on another analysis of where their marriage had gone wrong. God knows he'd spent far too many sleepless nights doing that exact same thing, and all he'd gotten himself was more heart-ache and confusion. This was supposed to be the watershed of his new life, not another moping session.
"I've wasted time,
But I've found my freedom,
Now that it's mine,
It's time, time to be leaving...
All my panic, all my fears: I let them go,
No more excuses, no more tears: I'm in control...
Because I'm, I'm letting go,
Of all those memories,
All the pain you caused,
You were haunting me,
Cause I been missing you,
And I been loving you,
For far too long,
You got to know I'm,
I'm letting go,
Of all the tears you caused,
All the pain I felt,
Every time that you got near,
I been missing you,
And I been holding on,
For far too long..."
Dutch let out a deep breath, and gazed down at the nearly full box. He was discarding one of his personas, one of the ways he defined himself, he was no longer "Lucy's husband", that person was being packed away. Try as he might to suppress it, he felt the all far too familiar prickling of fear move through him. He hated to admit it, but he was afraid of being alone. He should find he could ease into the mantle of loneliness like an old habit re-discovered. Hadn't he spent most of his life with a deep, empty space inside him? An only child, unsure around other people, painfully shy, he'd embraced his loneliness and wrapped it around himself like an invisible wall. Lucy had broken that wall down. She'd filled that empty space inside him with her presence, and when she'd gone she'd ripped open that yawning chasm inside him again. He found that whereas once he'd worn his loneliness like a shield, now it smothered, and choked him. He wasn't comfortable in his own company anymore. He was going to have to re-learn solitude.
However, it wasn't only being alone now that Dutch feared. He was terrified that he'd always be alone. The two people he'd trusted most in his life had betrayed him. Another early lesson that he'd learnt was that no one could be trusted. If you trusted people you only gave them ammunition to hurt you with later on. Once again Lucy had blown into his life like a whirlwind and snatched away all his carefully constructed safeguards. He'd given her his trust, completely and absolutely, and he'd found himself reaching out to other people as well, people like his good friend, and ultimately his wife's lover, Jack. What a fool he'd been. He should have kept faith with all those life-lessons that had been beaten, and yelled, and worse, into him as a kid.
However, Dutch didn't want to feel that way. He wanted to trust again, to love again, to share his life with someone again. His marriage to Lucy had shown him how life could be, how it should be, and he didn't want to become bitter and twisted and unhappy. It would be so easy to run back to the Dutch Wagenbach he used to be, and become that person again.
That was why he was doing all this. He was packing away his past, not running back to it. He was going to move on, as the person he was now, not revert back to the person he had been. Dutch never did things by half, so that was why he was packing all these things away, and it was why he was starting a new job tomorrow. Farmington, a new precinct, new colleagues, new challenges, just what he needed. So with a look of determination Dutch broke his final link to his past --- he pulled the gold wedding band from his finger and placed it carefully into the box, and closed it.
Getting up he lifted up the box and prepared to take it up to the attic. Then he'd have a bath and go to bed early. It was his first day tomorrow and he wanted to make a good impression. He wanted to make sure that he'd be there right on the dot of nine, it wouldn't look good if he was late.
"You got to know I'm letting go,
Of the pain you caused,
Cause I been loving you,
I've been missing you,
For far too long..."