Even Heroes Have the Right to Bleed
Chapter One
Before it ever happened, he knew he would feel guilty. He felt the guilt preemptively, but even through the sick feeling of it gnawing at him, he did it anyway.
It was a simple matter of timing. When you come home from a rollercoaster day that consisted of adrenaline rushes so intense they left him both nauseated and exhilarated at the highest points, and at the lowest points an anxiety so sharp he sometimes forgot to breathe until he became lightheaded – after days like that, all he wanted to do was sprawl on his couch with a beer and whatever sport happened to be in season. At most, he might go to Charlie's house to wind down – mooching off his brother's beer and capitalizing on his technical "guest" status to hijack the remote control. He might, after his brother was long asleep, discuss with his dad a few rough-sketch, lie-about-the-details explanations about why his hands were still trembling just enough to be noticeable, why he had barely been able to choke down two bites of the pizza they had saved for him. But that was all he was capable of, on his most communicative of days.
The last thing he wanted to do after most days of work, and especially most days of work lately, was come home to rehash the whole situation with Liz. After an old girlfriend was brutally murdered and numerous people outright said to him what he had already suspected – that he had as good as killed her – all he wanted was a little comfort. He wanted her to tell him that Charlie's math was right, it wasn't his fault, that he was a good agent and he didn't screw up as bad as he thought he might have. The last thing he wanted to do was go through an interrogation that would have been more appropriate had he been handcuffed on the other side of that mirrored glass than it was when he was sitting shirtless on the edge of his bed, having been caught in a barrage of accusatory questions on his way to wash away the sweat of a hard day.
The problem, he mused, was actually quite simple. The job was too intense. And though no one wanted to admit it, the job made it almost impossible to maintain a real relationship. Because at the end of the day, for civilians, he had to lie and say it was all okay. Charlie and his dad were the closest he came to honesty, and Charlie didn't know the half of it and his dad knew even less. But to be in a relationship, one has to be honest, or so his shrink continued to insist. So by way of ruling out civilians, it would seem the best option would be another agent. But the problem there, one that he wanted to kick his own ass for not predicting, was that Liz was just as stressed and just as pained as he was at the end of the day. At the end of the day, she was upset that she found out about his dinner with an ex this way, and that would be enough to deal with if it wasn't for the fact that this particular ex was dead, and that this wasn't the first time this had happened and he was already starting to wonder if he wasn't the kiss of death, literally, and he simply wasn't able to explain anything to her satisfaction because in his head all the accusations, doubts, and the grief were swirling and it was all he could do just to say "I'm sorry." And the worst part of it all – and this anyone would have told him if he had listened, but of course, he's the boss, so he doesn't have to listen to anyone – the worst part is that he is still her boss and she has to respect and trust him, and so when it gets down to it, he has to let her lean on him and he can't lean back. Because if he were to tell her that he's scared sometimes, that sometimes he isn't certain, and that those thoughts keep him up at night because he is sure someday his uncertainty will cost someone their life, if he were to tell her any of it, she would question his leadership from that moment on. In every order he gave her, she would recognize the fear. So he couldn't tell her.
Don had realized all of this quite a while ago. Sometime between the death of the first ex and the second, he had realized this was simply too much. It was too much baggage between too few people, and he wasn't strong enough to carry all of it. And he tried to tell her. He really did. It was just that no matter how much he prepared himself, rehearsed what he was going to say, he got three words in before his words were muffled and cut off as she kissed him roughly. And he knew where it was going, and he knew why, and he knew he would feel guilty and he let it happen anyway. She'd start to unbutton his shirt, so fast she sometimes accidentally removed them, she'd wrestle with his belt buckle, and she'd pull off her own clothes. And they'd have sex, the kind of sex borne from two people needing to quiet the demons, to exhaust their bodies so thoroughly that they could do nothing after but collapse into dreamless sleep, muscles wrought with remaining tension.
And that's exactly what Liz did. But when it was all over, Don would lie awake, thoughts louder than ever, the guilt itching beneath his skin, until he would finally get up. Lying next to her felt wrong. It felt like leading her on, although he supposed not sleeping next to her without her knowledge was a lot less like leading her on than having sex with her when he was trying to break up with her. But he was working on that, and this at least he could help right now. And he would pace about the room, body aching with exhaustion, thoughts on repeat as he kept interrupting himself with the same old ideas because at this point he was too tired to even complete a thought. There was only one whole thought, and it kept coming back, over and over again: I can't do this.
By the time he actually broke up with her, this had been going on for weeks. And when he actually finally said those words, it was easier than he expected. She left. There was no talk, no tears, no begging or pleading. Perfectly civil, perfectly calm. Yet he lay awake that night, alone in his dark apartment, going over it all in his head, dreading the next day, wondering why she didn't ask why, wondering how long she had known this was coming and kept putting it off anyway. By the time he fell asleep, it was five thirty in the morning, and his alarm went off at six. At which point he dragged himself out of bed, showered, skipped breakfast and drove to work.
Everyone kept asking if he was okay. It makes him think, once again, that this is the price of being the boss, of being the man, because just once he'd like to say "No, I'm not okay. I haven't slept through the night in over a month, I keep forgetting to eat and sometimes I just want to choose a direction and drive until the road ends or until I'm so far away that I can't remember where I came from." But being the boss means you can't say anything like that. So he deflected and told them to do their jobs and he went on with his.