So It Seems I'm Not Breathing
He stood there, with a gun in his hands and a black cloud over his head. His breath went in and out of his mouth, his humanity slowly floating away from his body, only to go back inside. A bad joke. That was what it was. All of it. The steel burned his hand, waiting for the moment, the one. The only. His finger, cramped up on the trigger, was compulsively moving, apparently not knowing what to do. He was waiting in the shadows, waiting for the one. For him.
"Well, I've got to go. Another meeting in a couple of minutes."
It was a joke, akin to the ones his brothers pulled on him every day in college. This was real life. And no amount of concern, no amount of love, no amount of daydreaming, could change the fact that it was true, a fact. Just as the blood flows in your body, or just as you know that, at the end of your life, no matter what, you will die. Just a fact.
A sound reverberated on the cement walls on which he had taken stand for so many times this past hours. It pierced through his soul, a flaming ball of hate and disgust washing over him. Then, nothing.
"Someone, call 911!"
He twitched, his mouth beginning to form a smirk that would have seemed so out of place on his face, if only someone had been with him. But he was alone, for the first time. No one in his ear, listening to everything he said, and all those sounds swirling in his head. His first solo operation. And it was a success. Mission accomplished.
He slowly walked away, out of the light, into the darkness of the night.
He couldn't do it.
"Chuck."
He had thought that, when he had to get up this morning, the sheer act of looking at himself in the morning would have been too much, a burden for his conscience. But, as he looked in the reflective surface, his image blurred by the steam of the hot shower, he saw a stoic face. None of the emotions he would have thought he would see, not one ounce of what he thought it would feel like. Only dark orbs and emptiness.
It scared him.
"Let me in." Her delicate voice was, as he had learned over the years, his demise.
He opened the door, and looked at the small blonde before him. He tilted his head down to be able to look her in the eye. It was then that he saw her red-rimmed eyes and the dark circles under them. It was so rare to see her that vulnerable these days.
"You're ok?" Her voice broke down a little.
"Well, not as bad as you are… I think."
A small hand reached out to him. He dodged it by taking a step back.
"Sarah…"
"You… did you…"
Her mouth opened and closed, all at once. Her eyes darted to the side of the room, as though she didn't want to look right in his eyes. Like she was afraid of what she was going to find.
"I'm still the same as last night, Sarah. I carried out the mission, the Intersect flashed the guy, Guilian Berteloni, third in command of the Italian mafia of Chicago. Trying to make a deal with the Ring. 0,05 mm in the heart. Didn't know what hit him." His eyes glazed over as he remembered what he had done. He knew something had changed, at the moment he had pulled the trigger.
He just didn't know what.
"I'm still the same guy as last night. The Nerd Herder, Stanford drop-out."
It was sad how repeating the same words didn't seem to make them true, all of a sudden.
"That's what scares me Chuck."
Her blond hair was mesmerizing, he decided at that moment. She walked up to him and put her hand on his arm.
"If only you hadn't… all this spy thing, you know? It affects people, like you and me. Sometimes for good, sometimes for bad. You're not ready Chuck!"
Her eyes were blazing with unreleased anger. They had never seemed more alive than now. Funny how, the more the light in his eyes dimmed, the more hers became more vibrant.
"Do too!"
"Do not"
"Do…"
"Do you realize we're acting like children here?"
"I…"
"I don't want to lose you Chuck. Don't lose yourself in all of this. You know, all those things that make you…you."
"What did you want?" His voice was the reflect of his soul at that moment: empty and cold, just like the way he killed another human being the night before. Ruthless.
"I'm going."
She went out of the apartment and, as he watched her hop into her Mustang, her sleeve on her face, he realized that he hadn't run after her.
That night, when he went to bed, he rested on his back all night and watched the ceiling. He couldn't sleep, not after what he had done. The sound of the bullet, cutting through the smoky air and, afterwards, the skin, flesh and blood of his target, haunted him like demons roamed around the Mouth of Hell. For the first night in long, he prayed. He prayed for the force to overcome this hell. But he didn't pray for any other thing. Because he knew no one could help him.
He still felt his hands on the trigger.
He had become a pale copy of his own self. Does memory suffice to live a life?
Casey had asked him to make the choice between love and love of his country. Not to make the same mistake he did so many years ago. He wanted to say love, so badly, but his actions had spoken for themselves.
He choked on thin air.
He had become the man she had longed for so long.
But not the man she loved.
Summary
It was a joke, akin to the ones his brothers pulled on him every day in college. This was real life. And no amount of concern, no amount of love, no amount of daydreaming, could change the fact that it was true, a fact.