Author's disclaimer: If I owned them, I wouldn't need to write this, now would I? The entertainment would be 100% visual. ;) Also, Jewel owns the song 'Foolish Games.' I just heard it, and the plot bunnies started bonking away without a by-your-leave.

Explanations: This is a short (as in really short) piece that I wrote in about five minutes. I wanted to see if I could capture the feelings of anger and hopeless despair that I felt coming from the music, and, as I am Sentinel-crazed, I based it on a TS character... Carolyn. Actually, I've often wondered what it was that caused her to say that she 'got more out of her toaster' than she did out of Jim. Was he really that emotionally closed in? I'm not even sure if the events in this snippet are cannon, and, for once, I don't really care. This piece is more for me than anything else, as well as anyone out there who has had an uncommunicative spouse or father and knows what it's like to always try to talk to walls. It hurts a lot when the person that you love can't show you love back. And so, without further ado, my small poetic character sketch.

"You took your coat off and stood in the rain
You were always crazy like that.
And I watched from my window
I always felt I was outside
Looking in on you."

I used to watch you long before you ever knew who I was. You fascinated me, you with your easy grace and deep blue eyes. I would watch you when you weren't paying attention, marveling at the grace with which you moved your hands or flipped the pages of a book, as if each gesture was a dance to some sort of symphony that I was unable to hear. You had something that none of the others had, and I felt myself drawn to you inexplicably, like a moth to a bright, burning flame. Sometimes, in the darkness of my fancy, I would imagine what it would be like to be with you, to talk to you and hear those words that danced behind your eyes and made them shine so beautifully. I knew that you were deep and passionate and more than anything that I had ever seen before. God, how I wanted to know you.

"You're always the mysterious one
With dark eyes and careless hair
You were fashionably sensitive
But too cool to care"

I was delighted when I finally got to know you better, and I hid my frustration at how slow our relationship was developing, consoling myself with the thought that it was best to wait. I knew that you would open up to me eventually and drop the mystery that you wore like a mask or a shield, keeping the world away. You'd let me in when you came to trust me in time, and I held this tightly to me like a cherished dream as each day passed with you becoming no more communicative than the first. I couldn't help but wonder who had bruised your trust so badly that you couldn't bring yourself to be open with me, even as I began to tell you things that I had told no other person on this earth. I opened my soul and heart to you, knowing that, in time, you would do the same for me. As time passed, drawing you out of your shell became a pastime, a hobby of mine, and I delighted in each minuscule jewel of your soul that you gave me as if it were a King's ransom.

"And you stood in my doorway
with nothing to say
beside some comment on the weather"

When we got married, I knew that it was only a matter of time before the trickle of information became a rush of sensibility and affection, and I waited, open-handed and eager for your confessions. Time began to pass, and still you remained tight within your shell, denying me access to what it was to be you. I tried to be understanding and gentle, tried to be the model wife that I knew I should always be, but it gets hard to play happy when you continually shut me out. Your back became a veritable mountain that I could not scale, and when I looked in your eyes, I could no longer see anything but my own strained face peering back.

"In case you failed to notice
In case you failed to see
this is my heart, bleeding before you
this is me down on my knees"

Can you really blame me for my anger? I had wasted so many dreams and heart-ache upon you in the futile hope that you could in turn just love me back. Oh, you said the words, but words are empty when they have nothing behind them. Words are spoken and words are broken, but it wasn't your words that I needed. No, nor your protection, even though it always stirred my heart that you at least cared that much. I needed something deeper than you were willing to give, and pain began to bleed into bitterness as I tried to attract your attention in any way that I could. But you weren't listening. Did you ever listen to me?

"and these foolish games
are tearing me apart
and your thoughtless words
are tearing me apart
they're tearing me apart."

God, it killed me when I finally realized that I couldn't take it anymore. I was so tired of striving and waiting and begging-- I was just so damn tired. You exhausted me with your strong silence and aloof love so much that in time my own resources had dried up. I couldn't love you anymore because all my love had gone into trying to blaze some connection with you that never came to pass. There just wasn't anything left to live on, Jim, and when I realized this, I couldn't even cry. My tears had long ago dried up with my hope.

"Well excuse me
if I mistaken you for somebody else
somebody who gave a damn
somebody more like myself"

It hurts me so much when I realize that you couldn't bear to let me see who you are, but you could be open with another so easily. I look at him and wonder what he has that I did not, what he says that I never said. Does he love you the way that I did, Jim? Does he wait patiently for you to open up to him and share the secrets of your soul as if they were the jewels of immortality? At first I wanted to warn him, to tell him that loving you was an exercise in grieving and futility, because you could never bring yourself to love him back. I almost did tell him, but then your eyes.... Jim, you never looked at me with that look in your eyes. Like I was something that you had to have, something that you needed so desperately.

Why did'nt you ever look at me that way, Jim?

And I realize that somehow he has succeeded where I had failed-- he has opened you and your heart to his inspection, and the two of you live in a symbiotic sharing of love, one heart feeding off of the other.

Why Blair, Jim? Why him and not me? What did he give you that I didn't, what sacrifices has he made that I had not labored a thousand times over? I let myself become beaten and broken against the harsh stone of your emotional walls and screamed myself hoarse for you to look at me, but you never, ever did. You never did.

"and these foolish games are tearing me, tearing me, you're tearing me apart and you thoughtless words are breaking my heart you're breaking my heart"

I'll never know what it is that makes you happy or makes you scream. I'll never know the demons and heroes of your past and present nightmare. I'll never know-- I gave up so long before and instead found a life far away from the hurtful walls of your soul.

I've been broken on you before.

Never again.

Please, God, never again.