Of course, some got away with it. I've met them and though they're old men now
they still have an air about them. As if they've never quite managed to get
themselves clean, to rid themselves of that odor. The stench of old blood and
the overpoweringly sweet smell of icy chemicals, of burning flesh and smoke and
papery white ashes.
I don't think that he much likes them either—just tolerates them for their
usefulness, their knowledge. Certainly, he never allowed himself to dwell on
just where and how they'd obtained that knowledge, that expertise.
The man I work for is a practical man. A eminately ruthless man.
A man who sets things in motion and then sits back in the shadows, from behind a
cloud of stinging smoke, as it all unfolds.
And I don't know how much of what's going on now is part of his plan, how much
blind chance, events and circumstances taken advantage of and tweaked here and
there to shape them, to mold them. To make them fit. Duane Barry, for instance.
Had he been set in motion, made to run for their pleasure and for the eventual
downfall of one man, or had they simply made use of him as a lucky tool suddenly
presented. Certainly, the man was paranoid, raving even, but he knew things too.
Knew enough to convince Mulder of the strength, the certainty, of his
experiences, his fears. Enough to get him to crack his own walls and talk of
Samantha—something born of shared sympathy and empathy among victims, I
believe, among the poor unfortunates that the rest of the world thinks a little
mad.
If only they knew.
In the end, though, Mulder had let them shoot Barry. Had let them take him down,
despite his own feelings on the matter, his feelings for the man. And Barry had
returned the favor by kidnapping Agent Scully, not that I would shed any tears
on her behalf.
I was only doing my job, of course, and I had told them that she was a threat,
that she made Mulder a threat. I had given them the proof they needed, knowing
all along that they would take action on it. Knowing the kind of action that
they usually took.
Knowing how much it would hurt Mulder, the man who had never stopped being her
partner.
The man I had seduced, if you could call it that. Something that I hadn't put in
any of the reports. I'm not a complete fool.
At least, not when it comes to most people.
We had passed in the halls a few times since that night, just a nod, a polite
word exchanged, nothing to give us away. Nothing to indicate to him what I felt
or thought and nothing in return for me. Not that I had expected anything
different. Well, most of the time anyway. Better to go on and to forget, easier
that way. Easier to spy on him and lie to him and betray him in the end, betray
his weaknesses.
Still, the look on his face as I had watched him emerge from Scully's apartment,
the slump of his shoulders, the sheen of his eyes, told me more than enough.
Worked to undo me, made me almost want to go to him. It had been amazingly
painful to watch, perhaps all the more so because I knew how much of a hand in
it I had had. That no small part was mine in making him feel that way.
In a way, it's a relief not to know where they are—Barry and his
captive—because that would make it all the worse. Fortunately, they haven't
bothered to tender me that information. But then, maybe, they don't really know
either since they've made pains to order me to relay everything that Mulder
knows or figures out. To watch him try to break the case. To get his partner
back. And, in a way, it's sick—to secretly use that brilliant mind against him,
to use him to keep one step ahead.
And Mulder must know that something is wrong, that something is suspect, because
there should have been no normal way that Duane Barry could have been able to
find out where Scully lived. I certainly don't know that answer to that one;
whether they had sicced him on her, told him where she was, or whether he had
somehow found her on his own. Found her by some strange use of that implant they
had removed from him, that Scully had still been in possession of.
For myself, well, I would back Mulder as I had been told to, no matter how
extreme his theories, but what did I know of aliens or abductions or whether
Mulder was, in fact, one of the most discerning men on the planet or simply the
most blindly obsessive, the most misled. It's late and tomorrow I have to go
back into work—go back to work—and try to walk the thin line between helping
him and not helping him. Between wanting him and fearing him and ignoring what
watching him makes me want to do, want to say. Without even the excuse of
drunkenness this time.
Though, perhaps, I could plead insanity. Could plead that others control my
actions, that I have no choice and no control over my life, that "they" could
come for me at any time, without there being a damn thing I could do about it.
It was true enough, though not in the same way that Duane Barry meant it, I
suppose. Well, not exactly anyway.
Still, would he feel some brand of sympathy for me, the same as he had for Duane
Barry, if I played it just right? Us against the world, paranoia all over. Would
he let it lead him to another moment or two in the darkness, of forgetfulness in
sin, of ecstatic pain. Let himself be washed away yet again, let me go with him.
I sincerely doubt that he told even his incomparable Agent Scully about that
one. That short, lovely little evening, just an hour or so really but who's
counting?
Me, that's who...
Counting and counting and still finding sleep eluding me like a madman on the
run. I can't seem to get there, to get him out of my mind, no matter that I've
already jacked myself off to the point of pain tonight. Thinking about him, of
course, as I did it, much as I know that's a mistake. Remembering how he had
done the same for me, to me, a man no doubt also wide awake right now, running
on nerves, worrying and thinking and wishing things were different. Not the same
things, of course; he would be thinking of Scully, of all his failures on her
behalf, of his guilt and his shame and what he would do if she were lost to him
for good.
He wouldn't be thinking of the man he'd been stuck with lately as her
"replacement," a man he didn't quite trust. A man who had gotten to him
anyway—at least, I imagined that I did, that I had—despite himself and that
finely honed sense of suspicion. That night had to have made him wonder. Hell,
he wondered about everything, everything from Bigfoot to the Bermuda Triangle,
but maybe it had been just a little too close for that. Maybe, he'd just decided
to blank it out instead, the fact that he'd slept with a man or, at the very
least, had fooled around rather heavily with one.
Strange how you can end up living with things you never suspected you could.
Things you would prefer to deny. Aspects of yourself. What you've done and
haven't done. The memory of extreme moments of pleasure, extreme moments of
pain. Both of them so close sometimes that it hardly matters to separate them,
one from the other; they can both hurt you, wind you up and take you down, run
you to earth. To the grave.
But who is running who here? The betrayer or the betrayed? The man who lives
only for the truth or the one who lives only a lie. I still want him—even more
than before, if truth be told and by all means let the truth be told for once as
it might be my only chance. I still want his look, his touch, the feel of his
skin against mine, the beat of his heart, the warmth of his breath. To hear the
sounds he made as I sent him over that final edge. To make those same sounds
myself as he turned the same trick on me.
A smart man. A quick man. Brilliant mind, sharper instincts. At least, most of
the time. He would be able to recall that night with near-perfect precision if
he wanted to, and maybe even if he didn't. And should I envy him that or pity
him? What would he do—what would move behind those hazel eyes—if I turned up
on his doorstep again. At one o'clock in the morning or at two or three. If I
stayed this time—if he would let me, if he would even want me—and found myself
waking up with him the next morning. Would we have shared that narrow leather
couch together somehow or the sparse comfort of the floor, find ourselves
tangled up in sheets and blankets and each other come the fragile light of day.
Or would he actually attempt to clear out that bedroom of his for me, for us.
Given enough time would he really come to trust me?
Trust me as much as he trusts Dana Scully, a woman who had once been his enemy
as well, who had been sent to spy on him and make reports on him and discredit
him and his life's work if she could. Though, somewhere, somehow, that had all
changed and she had grown to trust him—if not exactly believe the things he
believed—and he had grown reliant on her. Needful of her. Caring for her, even
at the risk of his own life, of his endless quest for the truth.
I doubt it would go the same for me, even if such a chance presented itself. I
doubt we have that much time. Another such miracle in the offing.
Not that I believe in miracles; I can't afford to. Not that I wouldn't like one
about now. Wouldn't like to hear a knock at my door. Wouldn't like to find a
certain man waiting none too patiently just outside, dark circles under his
eyes, but those same eyes bright with something more than sheer weariness. Hot
and desperate and demanding all at once. And as I paused there, just staring
back at him, just staring at him, he would push his way inside. Would turn and
close and lock the door again behind us and come back to me, slam me up against
the nearest wall and bruise me, bruise my mouth, my arms, everything he could
get to. Steal my breath away. Steal my soul...
Fuck, it's too damn late for this. Or too damn early. He doesn't know what he's
done to me, what I've done to him, what I'll end up doing to him yet if things
go on. Things that I have no choice about, have no say in, that's me—just
dancing to the strings. And it's not as if it isn't my own damn fault; I went
over there of my own accord, went over to him. I knocked on that door, made him
feel sympathy for me. Kissed him. Touched him. Allowed him—all but pleaded with
him—to touch me.
And walked out the door again and back to the life I really led, the one where
such things were impossible. Suicidal. Where there was nothing for me and never
would be.
I don't have much as it is—neither home nor name nor pride when it comes right
down to it. Just pretenses. Masks. Broken pieces of myself lost along ago, let
go like my family, my friends, my past loves and memory. Not that they're of
much use to me these days even if I wanted them anymore; a faceless man among
many, a tool, no need to know, no need to ask. Only a brief flicker and then I'm
gone. Gone as if I'd never been.
From nothing I come and to nothing I'll return. When my job is done. When the
objective is achieved. When the subject has been neutralized, eliminated,
destroyed.
The subject...
And why do I play so goddamned coy about it? Why do I use their words, their
verbal diversions, when I damn well know what it's come to mean, what he's
come to mean. At least to me. And maybe I'm not as lost as I thought I was, or
at least not so lost that he could not find me, or bits of me anyway. Enough to
make me remember. To make me regret.
To make this all the more painful.
Because I have to sleep, to get up in the morning, and face him over that
conference table, look into those desperate eyes, that drawn face. Knowing that
he would likely be there as well, the man who holds my strings, who yanks them
hard at times, softer at others, who strangles me into bleak submission either
way. No doubt, he'll be watching as well, betraying nothing, not even pleasure
that his plan was going so damn well. That Fox Mulder was falling apart before
his very eyes.
Worst thing is that, somehow, I've managed to get myself caught in the
middle—always the most dangerous place to be in any circumstance and I should
fucking know better—and all I can do now is play it out, do as I'm told and try
not to get myself or him killed in the process. I don't want to have to get on
the wrong end of a gun from him and I sure as hell don't want him to see me down
one either. Though, of the two choices, I don't know which I'd pick if it came
down to it. Existence is a seduction as much as a punishment; hard to let go of,
harder still sometimes to keep going.
I don't know what tomorrow will bring. Maybe, I don't want to. Whatever it is it
won't be pleasant. Not for me and not for him.
And it's my fault. No Nazi subterfuge for me. No denial of the fact that the
blood will never come off, nor the smell of ashes. Scully's blood. Mulder's
ashes. The ruins of something that once worked so well—too well—that had
worked against all the odds.
I don't believe. I doubt I ever really did. Not that it matters. I don't
matter. Not to the men who use me and not to those I've been used against and
certainly not to myself. Whoever and whatever I am, whatever they make me out to
be. The name that they give me. The game that they set in motion, pawns within
pawns. While it comes down to this in the end.
To being alone and forgotten and unforgiven. To being empty.
To letting others fill you up because it's better than having nothing at all.
Even if all they give you is a lie. Even if all they use you for is pain.
Still...
I can't sleep and I need to sleep; I need to appear young and fresh and hopeful
and helpful, and waiting around for a miracle—any kind of a miracle—is only an
exercise in futility. Much like Mulder's world right now I have to imagine. Much
like my own has been for a long time.
I don't envy him that, at least, though I do envy him much. I do wish things had
been different. I wish I wasn't who I was or he wasn't who he was or that I
could believe that if he ended up one night on my doorstep that it would all
turn out all right. That all the lies could just disappear. That nothing could
stand between us having what others seem capable of having, or hoping for at the
very least.
More than a moment. More than a night. A single breath and to be gone.
More than is possible.
And I can't deny that either. And it tastes like blood and paper-thin ashes,
like cold chemicals and burning flesh. Like hazel eyes and sweet skin and salt
and fierce subjugation. And, Mulder, don't you see, don't you know, won't you
believe, that by damning you in this I have damned myself. I can't imagine it
would make you feel any better right now to hear it. But I wish I could say it.
I wish things could have been different.
Duty
by Garnet
It's late, but I can't sleep. I was only doing my job, of course, but that's
never been a good excuse. Not even when it was new. Not even when the Nazis used
it after the war to try and excuse their actions, to sever themselves from all
responsibility for what they'd done.
