Title: Cyclus
Summary: It isn't exactly the boredom that gets to David Rossi. Brief character study inspired by 8.02 'The Pact'.

It isn't exactly the boredom that gets to David Rossi.

Boredom is the excuse he offers, as it's not in his nature to lay bare his soul; boredom is the product of a lazy mind or unwelcome distraction. The intelligent mind can usually find a way to entertain itself when welcome distractions aren't available; unfortunately, it is there in which the problem resides.

Work is the kind of distraction he needs. Despite its nature, he loves it. It's worthwhile, it helps people. It's engaging, a challenge, something in which to sink his mental teeth, to fire up and exercise his neurons. To a lesser extent, his books and book tours and lectures, the distractions of retirement, had been the same; they had been an extension of work - but only that. It hadn't been enough, and eventually, it had driven him right back to the root of it all... and so, one could say that work is also the problem.

It's a never-ending cycle with a tendency to eat away at the soul. The job buries itself in the mind and makes a permanent home, and yet it's the only thing that alleviates the effects. Past horrors are forgotten only when present ones are invested in. And when Dave's mind has too little on which to latch - after a case, on the vacations he so loathes, even during the retirement he thought he wanted - he remembers.

The intelligent mind will always find ways to stay active when it has nothing in which to invest itself wholly. And the scarred mind will always have wounds that are fresh, too near the surface, no matter the healing effects of time.

And 'boredom' isn't really the word David would use to describe the result.