Title: bleeding out

Author: A. X. Zanier

Status: Complete (17k+ words)

Rating: R (Language, violence, sexual situations, the usual)

Fandom: The Invisible Man (SciFi, 2000)

Disclaimer: a) The characters and basic story ideas of The Invisible Man are the property of others including, but not limited to Matt Greenberg, Studios USA, Stu Segall Productions and NBC Universal. Any additional characters or story ideas are mine. I make no money from this intellectual exercise. c) This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any opinions or views expressed herein do not necessarily reflect those of the author and are used for storytelling purposes only.

Sequel/Series: The Invisible Man

Spoilers: Probably. Does it really matter after all these years?

...

bleeding out

...

"A bad beginning makes a bad ending."

Not just in books or movies or TV shows, but out in the real world. Or in the slightly unreal world I lived in.

And this beginning? Bad would have been several steps up.

My fault. It's all my fault.

...

One of the last things my brother said to me as we ran down that hall knowing that around any corner could be a madman with a gun. This time though the fault was indeed mine.

I pushed off the wall to pace the darkened hallway buried in the bowels of the Agency, smelling the harsh acrid scent the smoke had left on my clothes. As I stalked the worn and cracked linoleum, I ran my hands through my hair in frustration, ignoring the detritus I could feel on my skin, not caring that my careful coiffure had been ruined.

Stupid, idiotic, over protective partner.

The meet the Official had sent us to break up had been anything but little. The pair of stooges we'd planned to arrest had turned out to be a dozen heavily armed men who wanted no part of coming in quietly or easily. Even with the element of surprise on our side, we'd been woefully outnumbered.

Apparently, one of the weapons on sale was of the type that went boom and caused other things to burn with exceeding profligacy and, of course, the warehouse had been home to boxes and boxes of knock off designer products from Levis to Michael Kors handbags, all of which burned with a petrochemical enthusiasm that scared the shit out of me. Luckily, sort of, the fire had started between the bad guys and the only available exit, which meant they had been as trapped as us.

Hobbes had called for backup, which would be coming one way or another, given smoke from the fire could probably been seen for miles. Since the fire department would not be able to handle heavy weapons fire, we'd decided to do everything we could to thin the herd before too many people got hurt.

I sighed heavily, pausing in the darkened end of the hall, part of me wanting to punch the wall until my knuckles broke, the rest wanting to slide down it to sit on the floor and hide my head in my arms and never come up again.

In my indecision the memories slithered right back in, forcing me to go over, yet again, the events that had played out this afternoon. Hobbes, the stupid fool, had managed to score the high ground, while I did my best to not get shot. He'd worked his way up into the catwalks dangling from the roof and make his way to where he could see the group from above. I'd gotten turned around thanks the smoke and trying to keep my ass in one piece, which I had managed to do pretty well, but I'd planned to backup my partner on his play.

He, well, Hobbes sent me off into some random corner of the building, only I didn't realize it until the gunfire started behind me. By the time I arrived back where I had started, their numbers had been cut in half and Hobbes wasn't talking to me over the comms. Angry as hell, I waded in and took out the few that remained mobile, then went to find my partner.

He'd taken two bullets, one in his upper chest and the other to his left thigh. I'd gotten him down from the catwalk, him bitching and moaning he was fine the entire way even though I knew he wasn't.

Then the cavalry arrived. Too late to do anything more than mop up the mess that wouldn't have happened if we'd had proper back up from the get go.

I came back to myself sitting on the floor a few yards down from the lab door my partner was hopefully getting patched up behind. It wasn't my fault he'd been hurt and yet… yet it was all my fault. I must've screwed up somewhere along the way to end up so far out of the action…

"Shit," I muttered, hating Bobby for a long moment. Stupid idiot had probably done it on purpose just to get me outta harms way before the bullets started flying for real. Not that I wanted to get shot, mind you, but I'd improved over the years and was passable when aiming for the torso. No, I'd never be a sniper like Hobbes or Monroe, but I could hit a target well enough when needed. Just didn't need it very often what with the Quicksilver and all.

I could only wonder if Hobbes hadn't trusted me to do the damn job or if he was simply protecting the Agency's investment once again. An ongoing issue between the two of us. I might not have chosen this life for myself, but since that toxin leash had been removed, I'd done it to the best of my ability. Well, mostly. I still refused to do scut work or crap jobs, but those I worked, I worked.

Yeah, I guess I grew up, if only a tiny bit, somewhere along the way. But not enough, apparently. Which is why I currently felt like crap. I had seriously failed today and Hobbesy had paid the price for it.

And he shouldn't have.

I should have been there to back him up and wasn't.

"Darien?"

I raised my head to see Claire standing over me, concerned.

I rubbed my eyes, finding my cheeks damp with tears I hadn't realized I'd shed. "Can I see him?"

She shook her pretty blonde head. "He'll be out for a while yet, but he will be fine. Neither injury was life threatening."

"How bad?"

She clasped both hands before her. "Bad enough. Blood loss of course. A through and through to his leg, but fairly minor for that. His shoulder…" she trailed off, tipping her head slightly, eyes narrowing as she looked me over.

"Keep, just tell me," I request feeling suddenly exhausted.

"Cracked scapula. It'll take some time to heal. Maybe some muscle damage. He'll need some physical therapy in order to achieve a full recovery." She looked like she wanted to say more, but instead her eyes went wide. "Darien, you're bleeding."

"Huh?" I glanced down at my side, where a bullet had gone screaming past at some point during the final fight and had gone unnoticed until this moment ruining my pretty green shirt well beyond salvaging. A puddle had begun to form on the floor next to me, which meant I had been sitting there ruminating over the events of the day for longer than I realized. "Oh, that would be why my side aches, I guess.."

She seemed momentarily confused by my lack of concern. "Darien, are you all right?"

No, I wasn't.

I was tired.

So, very tired.

Tired of being used. Tired of being mislead. Tired of taking down bad guy A only to have B through J surge in to fill the hole left behind. Tired of banging my head against a wall.

Just god damned tired of it all.

This job, the job I had learned to love no matter how bad the fit had been at first, had stopped being fun a long while ago, but I'd only just now realized it.

I forced myself upright, back snug against the wall as I slid upwards until I had achieved some vague form of vertical and looked down upon my Keeper. "Fine, Keep."

She set a gentle hand on my arm. "No, you're not," she argued and though she was right I didn't agree. Now was not the time to tell her I wanted out, it might force her to do something she really'd rather not - like remove the gland from my skull and not coincidentally leave nothing of me left behind but a cooling husk.

I already knew that getting out of life here at the Agency would require giving the Official back his property.

And while I would prefer to not go out on my shield, if the situation were right, I'd probably do it. Thanks to that stupid good-guy streak I'd acquired somewhere along the way.

All of which could wait for another day. My main concern right now could only be for my partner who looked to have a long road ahead of him before he could return to the job he loved. My Keeper, however, had her own set of worries and it would appear they all involved me based on the sharp look she had aimed my way.

"What?" I grumbled, not wanting to play word games with her right now.

She placed her fisted hands on her sides and huffed at me. "I need to patch you up. " She waved at the blood trail I'd unwittingly left up and down the hallway. "To the Keep with -"

"Oh, there you are," Eberts interrupted as he came around the far end of the hallway moving faster than I've ever seen.

"- you," the Keeper finished, head twisting about to shoot a glare at the office lackey for interrupting her.

Eberts's eyes widened as he spotted the blood I'd left lying around. "Darien, you appear to be bleeding… everywhere," he stammered out.

I could quite literally see the blood drain from his face and some twisted part of me enjoyed it. I shrugged at him. "Not as much as Hobbes, who might never work again."

I hadn't realized there was a shade beyond white, but the geek managed to achieve it remarkably quickly. He looked to Claire, who seemed to decide to go along with the exaggeration game I had started.

"He'll be on light duty for months, at least. He will need detailed and specific physical therapy and the Agency will be covering all of it."

Eberts swallowed hard. "Of course, doctor, he was injured in the line of duty after all. Right now, however, I need your assistance with one of the prisoners."

"Since when do prisoner's injuries take precedence over our agent's?" Claire asked, a steely edge to her voice that boded ill for Eberts if he did not have a good answer.

"They don't," he asserted. "All the non-life-threatening injuries received to those we have in custody have been taken care of by your assistant."

"Then what could you possibly need me for?" she sounded exasperated at this point and I couldn't blame her.

"I need you to verify the identity of one of the men we captured," Eberts explained, as if that would enough to prevent us for going for his throat in irritation.

"And who does he claim to be?" I questioned, wondering how one man could be important enough to pull the Keeper away from her care and feeding of the Agency's only invisible man.

"Arnaud de Fehrn."

I blinked. I… we… the Agency had been looking for him ever since he'd escaped after blowing his way out of the basement cage and limping his way out the front door and the country near as we'd been able to discover. He'd neither been seen nor heard from since in anything other than rumors. "What?"

Eberts turned to me with no little terror in his eyes. "The man we have in the padded room claims to be Arnaud de Fehrn," he repeated as if I were a small child or hard of hearing.

Arnaud. Here and the cause of my partners injuries. And I'd just been thinking about my brother's almost last words to me. The taste of irony lay heavy on my tongue.

Without a word I pushed past Eberts, ignoring my Keeper's shouted "Darien, stop," and ran down the halls to the padded room.

Two of the better agents, Simmons and Franklin, stood outside the door, both staring at me from the moment I turned the corner at a near full run. I can imagine the figure I presented, bloodied, smoke smeared, hair wild and coated in ash, and my eyes probably red and raw from the smoke, streaks down both cheeks from the tears I'd been shedding not long before, while waiting to hear if my partner would even survive his injuries.

"Fawkes," Franklin choked out as I approached, slowing my steps only slightly, "we have orders to keep everyone out till the Keeper has-"

"If you prefer being knocked out first, that's fine with me, but I will be going in there one way or another."

Simmons considered me for a long moment and then stepped aside while his partner shot him an irritated glare.

He just shrugged. "Heard Hobbes was hurt pretty bad. I'd want my pound of flesh," he waved in my direction, "and if it is Arnaud the Agency gets the payday dead or alive."

I snorted in amusement at the agent's mercenary reaction, though I didn't give a flying fuck about the monetary reward in this case. I just wanted that pound of flesh he'd mentioned. I wanted it personal and no little bloody.

Franklin sighed heavily, but moved away from the door as well, looking anywhere but at me.

I took that to be tacit agreement if nothing else and stepped between them to open the door.

I knew the moment the guy turned around he could not be Arnaud.

I ignored the disappointment I felt. I mean knew the chance that it could actually, truly, and for real be Arnaud was slim to none. But hope, one tiny, frustrating, spark of hope, had been there inside me and it had driven me to dash down the darkened hallways of the Agency like the madman I used to be to charge into this room and face the man who had killed my brother and sent me on the path I currently strode down. I still had plans in my head, dreams and goals that involved my hands and Arnaud's throat and him dying before my eyes. Every time I had that nightmare that ended with Kevin's death I brought those plans back out looked them over again, making changes and adjustments that varied with my mood, but they always ended with that light leaving the eyes of the one man on this planet I truly hated.

I sucked in a breath as he stared at me from the far side of the room, eyes wide in surprise. Granted, I probably looked like hell on a bad day, but it couldn't be that bad, could it?

I strolled forward, trying to take a casual stance, and glanced at myself in the two-way mirror. Okay, so maybe hell on a bad day was too mild a description for how I looked. Even I was impressed with how shitty I appeared right now. Little wonder everyone's eyes bugged out when they saw me coming towards them.

"So who are you?"

He sighed heavily, running a bruised hand through his hair. "You people are surprisingly hard of hearing. My name is Arnaud De Fehrn, de Thiel, or if you prefer the Phone or any of a half dozen others. Why is it so very important to all of you."

"You are not Arnaud," I stated, anger making my heart pound in my chest, not enough to Quicksilver, but more than enough to make me wish it could still affect me, the toxin it once contained giving me an excuse to lash out and wipe that snarky look right off our mystery man's oh-so-pretty face. I glanced down at my right wrist at the snake, just a simple tattoo now, the tiny LEDs and microchips that had provided the red and green colors long since removed. The scar had long since faded. The Quicksilver Madness was nothing but a memory that I, mostly, kept from haunting me.

I didn't always succeed.

Stupid subconscious.

Right now I kinda wished for the excuse of Madness.

He just rolled his eyes. "That's what you and all your ass-hat buddies keep saying, but, whether or not you believe me, I am-"

I didn't remember moving, but I found myself with my hands twisted into the collar of his shirt, his body pressed firmly into the wall. I had apparently used enough force to ring his bell even with the padding to protect him. "You are not Arnaud," I growled. I watched the dazed look in his eyes turn to fear. "Arnaud killed my brother. Do you really think I'd forget the face of the bastard who did that?"

He stared at me with eyes so wide the whites could easily be seen around them, then he swallowed hard and I could see on his face that he knew the lie hadn't been bought this time. That I did indeed know the truth.

"Wha… What agency is this?"

I blinked at the seeming nonsensical question, then smiled dangerously. "Just The Agency."

He paled and if anything, his eyes got wider. "Oh shit," he muttered much to my amusement.

"So, where is Arnaud?"