Another story written on the ATeam Storyboard. This started with a phrase that I couldn't get out of my head until the rest led itself.
Title: The Truth About Secrets
Author: Mae
Summary: "I don't wanna be a secret weapon. I want to be an exposed
weapon!"
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Spoilers for 'Showdown' as well as a few other episodes.
Angst. There is a slight mention of abortion.
Special thank you to Leia for helping me with this story.
**********
I don't want to be a secret weapon.
It's not about fame. . .well, it's not mostly about fame. My name in
the newspaper would be nice, but that's not the only reason.
I just don't like being a secret.
I hate secrets and I want to get rid of them all.
But I can't. Secrets have been so intertwined in my life that I
can't separate the person from the secrets.
My first secret started when I was young.
****
"Don't say a word," my dad demanded from me. His hands that held my
head were still covered with my mother's blood. "Don't you dare say
a word."
Mom was so still and I was scared, but I was told to listen to my
parents. I never said a word.
It was dad that couldn't keep his own secret. He went away and he
left me in the silence of his words. They said the experience of
witnessing such a violent death made me mute. They said words
like "traumatic stress" and they put me through many different types
of tests I didn't understand. I wanted to say that life is what it
is. Ink is ink, not a butterfly. I am a son and sons do what their
parents tell them to do.
But I didn't say anything.
Years of silence must have changed something in me. Friends and
family were telling me things that were never told before. My
friend, Sam, told me about the time he stole five dollars from his
mother's purse. Uncle Mike told me about his dark experiences with
drugs. Little secrets, big secrets. They were secrets that could
only be trusted to someone who would never say a word.
It was a trust that both thrilled and frightened me.
****
When I was ten years old, dad sent me a letter from jail. Grandpa
ripped the letter from my hands before I could even open it and
ordered me to my room to do homework. I was mad at him. It was my
letter and I had the right to know what my dad wanted to say to me.
In a move of defiance, I planted myself at the kitchen table as
Grandpa read my letter.
I expected him to yell once he noticed my presence. I expected
shouts and screams and, yes, even a spanking.
Grandpa cried.
I never knew Grandpa had secrets of his own.
"I'm scared for you, HM," he said. "You have such potential to do
great things. You can be whatever you want to be. Anyone that looks
at you can see that. This man-" In anger, Grandpa ripped up the
letter. "-and men like him see that too. I'm scared for you because
when Grandma and I are gone, they'll be no one to speak for you."
I am a son, but I am also a grandson to a good man and good men
shouldn't cry. For him, I decided to make the effort to talk again.
The process wasn't instantaneous, but the words began to come out
again. It was as if those words that I was supposed to say were
hidden inside me and rushed out of me like a stream.
I spoke the silence away, but that never stopped people from hiding
their secrets inside of me.
****
"I'm pregnant," Annie whispered to me behind the apple tree. These
were words I didn't want to hear as a seventeen year old with no
clue about being a father. They were said though and I was willing,
if not able, to accept the idea on what it would be like to raise a
new life.
I didn't know that Annie wanted to keep her secret a secret and
there's only one way to keep baby quiet.
From time to time, I would think about my unborn child and what he
would have been like if he had the chance to live to his potential.
I imagined the laughter, the joy and, yes, even the pain. I
envisioned myself teaching him how to tie his shoes, pushing him on
his bike after I take off his training wheels, telling him the
secrets about women.
He would giggle like crazy when I swung him around, pretending he
was an airplane. "Again!" he'd say when I stop and even though I was
dizzy from going around in circles, I'd do it again only to hear him
laugh.
After a while, my imagination depresses me. It's a happy, carefree
life in my mind, but given the choice between my imagined life and
the life I have now, I wouldn't know which one to choose.
Despite the depression these thoughts bring me, I still remember and
imagine my life with him. I do it for him because death before life
is bad enough, but to never exist at all, even in someone's mind,
just seems unacceptable.
****
Billy came to me after my twenty-fourth birthday. I was lonely at
the VA and the friends who once spoke for me were in Fort Bragg
serving time for a crime they were ordered to commit. Billy bounded
up to me like the two of us had been friends for years. Maybe we
had. That's the problem with intermittent memory loss; I'd forget my
friends as much as I'd forget everything else.
Billy wasn't always invisible. He was once a normal dog that loved
any ounce of affection given to him. How was I to know the dangers
of telling him my secrets? At the time, I thought he was the perfect
fellow to share that burden I've held for so long. It wasn't like he
was going to say anything.
I told him everything. I told him about being a son and being a
father and never being both. Sometimes, in the dark corners of my
room, I would whisper to him the secrets of death with a promise to
tell him the secrets of life. I hadn't found it yet, but I would.
The more time I spent with Billy, the more people would stare and
whisper. I didn't think too much about this at first; I was
considered crazy anyway so the stares and whispers were common to
me.
One day, I overheard a nurse tell a visitor all about my 'invisible'
dog and my whole world came apart.
Secrets don't kill or destroy. They don't have the mechanical
properties to do that.
Secrets make you disappear.
I should have known. Experience taught me that.
Secrets and truth. The truth about secrets.
Billy was once a normal dog who loved affection. I filled him up
with my secrets and made him invisible. It was my thoughts of him
that were probably the only thing keeping him from disappearing
altogether. Billy, who is a friendly and caring dog, now had only me
for company- the man who made him disappear in the first place. It
made me want to cry.
Good men shouldn't cry.
Good dogs should be alive.
For him, I cried.
****
I am thirty-six years old and yet I am still the ten-year-old boy
that my grandfather once said had potential to do great things. My
dad and other men had seen it. All I see is a crazy man who once saw
his mother die and his grandpa cry; a man that could materialize
life and make it disappear. A man on the edge of fading away like so
many before him.
There is only one thing that prevents me from disappearing
altogether.
Well, three things actually.
When the ground becomes too hard and the sky too soft and I am about
to give in to all those deep, dark secrets—
"Murdock!"
--I am back in the van. BA is trying to drive and watch me at the
same time. Hannibal and Face don't have to drive, so they simply
watch me.
"Murdock, we need you here with us," Hannibal states, aggravated but
worried as well. "You're going to have to back us up on this
mission."
I almost laugh. "Well that's silly, Hannibal. I thought the point of
this mission was to move forward, not back."
"Shut up, Fool," came the terse reply in the driver's seat. "We need
back up, not this crazy man."
"Relax, BA. He'll pull through for us. He always does."
"You got that right. I am going to back you guys up." I decide to
reiterate my point by looking behind my seat and pretend I'm backing
up a truck, sounds and all. "I will be the best backer upper there
is. I will back up so much, we'll be moving forward, just like we're
supposed to."
"Just watch our backs, Murdock."
"Ah," Face speaks up. "I wouldn't mention 'watching backs' when he's
like this, Hannibal. He'll do it literally."
I smile.
I will back up, watch backs, and be what I have the potential to be.
I will do it all because, for some crazy reason, they need me as
much as I need them. Sometimes, they'll even need to trust me with
their lives.
Good men shouldn't die.
I practice controlling my invisibility, hoping that I can use this
disadvantage to my advantage. In the end, I know that no matter what
I do, the secrets will one day overcome. They will take me over and
there will be nothing left of me except wind and air.
For now, I'll remain their secret weapon.
For them.