Warning: This piece contains reference to relationships of a m/m nature. [Although, by looking at the rating, you should be able to tell exactly the amount of (non)explicity.] However, if you feel you can't handle the concept, there are plenty of other fics around here which you may find more to your liking.
Written previous to the airing of Phase One.'
Thanks go out to Jen and Bounce, who reassured me and said I needed to post this, and stopped it from dropping into the void that my hard drive has become. Jennifer-Oksana for being kind enough to agree to run a beta, and help shape it up, even when it changed from a second person POV. I own nothing. If you can keep up with the show, you probably don't need me to tell you that.
Archival: My site ( www.doyourthing.org/cherry ), list archives. All others, please ask.
There are points in life where things are reduced down to their most elemental levels.
*
Elementals of Taipei
1/1
*
His posture is stiff, his mouth is set, and his eyes are glass, and I wonder who taught him to guard himself so close.
Then comes the realisation that it was probably me.
The idea hurts.
It shouldn't -- I should be grateful; I should be glad. This mask -- this pretending, this restraint -- will help protect him from the life he's been thrust into. I should offer up my thanks. It shouldn't twist and tear something inside.
He doesn't ask for a declaration that all it ever was was nothing. He makes no move to stop me from walking out of the door. Instead he just stands there in the early morning light, leaning against the counter with his hands in his pockets. His face is inscrutable, and those flickering blue eyes still and bright, reflecting the sun. The breeze coming in through the open windows is nippy and he is barefoot on the tiles. There are goose bumps up my arms, but if he is cold he does not show it. There's a suspicion that he's not -- his skin is always warm against my hands, running to feverish. I think at times that I chill him.
I don't know which is worse - If he does not ask because he himself does not care, or because he knows differently and he is silent nonetheless.
I know one thing for sure, though. When I walk out of that door, none of this will have happened. I will walk through the door, scan the area for surveillance as I casually sort through the mail, and back the car out of the freshly-paved driveway, pretending that I don't see his shadow through the living room blinds. I will pretend that my eyes don't cross his shadow so that I don't have to think of him putting himself into silhouette. It is dangerous, because you can't see through a curtain or a screen and an image is nothing but a target, but he has never learned that caution. I learned it through a father's funeral and shots in the dark, the wind from a bullet teasing my skin. I have trained him -- though I should't have -- because I can't stand the thought of someone crashing through that window, following his shadow, and tying him bodily to another metal chair.
The only movement in the hall is the gentle fluttering of the drapes, and I can't manage to drag myself away from the image of his mouth forced open, head back, trashing as blood trails from a split lip. There is something almost more painful in the imagination, because I've seen the darkest places people end up. There's something in the imagination of his pain that (somewhere) I realize must be worse than the reality.
His mind is bright in his eyes, and I know what he thinks. That I am already gone, that I was never really here. I will leave, and he thinks that it is for nothing but an empty warehouse and chain link cages. A lingering touch of the hand as files are exchanged, pauses that grow and grow behind a cricket serenade. Haltering tales of family and abandonment, disillusions and things that I will never tell him because I want to spare him. That I wish to spare him, though it is already too late. He's been the places I never wanted him to be, and he's seen the things I took this job to keep him (and others like him) from seeing.
He doesn't see that behind the grey and the clandestine there are things that hover unsaid; Sark and Sloane, the actions she needs to take but cannot; Marshall and Dixon, these people I could teach the truth but will not. Her mother and my father, grey matter in the barrel of a gun. For her, there will always be Project Christmas and a father's betrayal, and a voice whispering in her ear, asking her if any of this at all was ever her choice.
All of these things are to him no more than what falls between the lines; the elaborate pictures he has created in his mind are formed only from the things that have been said and repeated, the gaps in the things Sydney has not said. He is a writer and he has scrawled himself a bedtime story, filling in the nasty bits and small pieces until the tapestry flutters behind his eyes, resplendent in all its gory glory even in the dark of night. Will can't see that behind the hungry looks and the motions of comfort that are never made, there will always be a mother and a father and time when there was a need for dental records.
He has always been intense -- relentless, loyal, latched on so tight to those he chooses. He was simmering with need for truth, and to assuage his friend's hurt at the death of someone she loved, and the only thing that could shake him was the thought of harm coming to those he was fighting for. His belief in justice was absolute, and he was determined and honing in on the truth.
He knew the good guys from the bad and right from wrong.
Since Taipei, he has been burning. It may have been the fear, the waiting, that set him off. Silences in the plane, the imaginings of what was to come, the building of the nightmares he knew were coming. It may have been the searing and the slipping as he lost a part of himself, the pain shooting through his jaw and his fingers and lighting up his fingers and nerve endings. The spark may have been the swing of his arm and the plunge of a needle and a laugh tearing itself from his chest.
He is running hot and fast -- he has lost everything and he needs more. Everything behind him is ash and char and burned out dreams, and he is racing before the wind, searching for something, anything else to fuel himself. He has been lying to everyone he loves, betraying his loyalty to them for his love for them. He has been keeping secrets and settling for clearance, though he has been trained to seek out and spread the truth. He has thrown away everything he has worked for to be forced into something that he cannot escape if he should ever so choose, yet is not a part of. He has been disillusioned about those closest to him, whom he trusted the most. He is to be coddled, and he is to be protected, and I am as guilty of this as anyone. I know it, but I can't help myself.
He now has a job -- which he cannot tell anyone of. He now works as a part of this world -- yet he is forced behind a desk, stationary. Knowing but not acting, and he cannot stand to be still. The press of keys beneath his fingers as words pour out is one thing -- the crunch of gravel beneath his feet, questions and suspicions forming intricate webs, the moments of realisation and the sheer joy of the finding, these are other things all together; the final click of the truth is sweet, but what makes it so is more than just the knowing.
I've taught him to fight, because the tapestry I have built myself is just as ugly, and I can't stand the thought of his face forced to the ground, grass scratching his cheek and the scent of earth stealing up his nose with each harsh breath, rocks digging into his skin and the barrel of a gun to his head; or a cold knife tracing slow and deliberate lines against his ribs. When he kisses me, I can almost feel the difference between his real teeth and those that were replaced.
He has been burning but he is running out of fuel and there is always, always, the fear that he will eat himself up with it. He writes with it and it is in his stride, and it flickers behind his eyes; there is fire in his gestures and the way he holds his head, and I can't find where the burning ends and he begins. I don't know the line anymore, where I can cease to care; where he does. He is still idealistic and eager and passionate, and he is so firm in his belief that good will win out. I wish I had his drive and his curiosity, but I am afraid I have become jaded -- weary of rules and regulations, of the means I see and the ends I don't, of lesser evils and the greater good, and of watching the bad guys win and the good guys get drawn into this fight.
He is so much older and so much younger than I ever remember being, or than I'll ever be.
Since Taipei, everything has been ice. I am cold, and left to fight the impulse to blow air between my hands when the sun is high and bright. I remember always -- just below the surface -- running. It is slow motion and every time it repeats I move more slowly and the water (but it was not water, not really -- I know that now and think I almost knew it then by the way it crawled along floor and walls and skin and ceiling) crashes faster behind me. It nips at my heels as I run, black spray making the floor slick beneath two pairs of frantic pounding feet.
There is a memory of the (bullets) beads of (ice) water -- no, no ice; must be water, must be water;-- that kicked up and scarred and thrashed: nicking the back of my neck and hands and trickling through my hair to my scalp. Tiny fingers melding into a wall of chains that forced me up against the metal door. I can still feel the shadows of those first pellets against my skin, though I was surrounded and smothered, kicking and drifting, and it should have all felt the same. The door, the cold, they freeze -- froze -- the (ice) water against my skin and I was almost glad for the insulation, for the protection they offered from the not-water than slithers all around me.
There is a memory of drowning. There is always Sydney's face through the window. Sometimes she pounds at the glass, screaming words I can't hear. Sometimes, she turns and walks away. Sometimes, there is a splatter of blood and she falls, and behind her, through the red glow, I see a single figure cuffed to a chair. The shot is muffled by the door and the water, and it is the sound of ice settling. I cannot reach them, and I cannot leave, and when I look up it is not the ceiling that traps me -- not a ceiling with tiles and a vent and slots for a screwdriver; not something I can use the tools at my disposal to beat, oh no, oh no -- but a vast sheet of ice, dull and rough and radiating down waves of cold.
I remember feeling -- (nothing, numb, naught) -- shock, watching drops of blood seep from beneath my finger nails. There was something reassuring about the fact that it wasn't ice water that crept down my skin. There was something hypnotising about watching the red drift into chains and mingle slowly with the water in the sink until even by straining my eyes, I couldn't see it. I wanted to laugh, but the ice blocked it in, and there was moment of falling backwards into vertigo and I wondered if maybe the sink was bleeding into me.
There is always the thought, running through my mind, that I can't really bleed any more. I can't hurt any more, whether because I've felt it all or I'm living with it all, or because there's still water and ice running in my veins. I'm drawn to the fire by the memory of warmth and a little, hysterical voice singing that it can't hurt me any more. I need his warmth and I can't allow that. I can't take the chance that I'll make him as cold as I am myself, that in warming up I will somehow suck that life from him, be the final burden that puts him out. I can't betray him any more to his best friend, and I can't betray his best friend to him.
I need to walk out that door -- I need to leave the rationalisations because I already know the reasons -- and I need to walk out that door. I can read it, behind the glass in his eyes and the sun reflecting off of it. The thought that maybe it is only a reflection of a reflection -- his eyes bounce back what I see when I look at him -- it scares me. His face is not impassive, and for that I am thankful. How much easier this all would be on him if he didn't care, if I'd managed to teach him that much control.
It is selfish, but I revel in it. I'm living in the hurt in his eyes, because it is something to feel, something that's real and solid and not as personal as the pain caused by the thought of watching his last, sputtering flame flicker out.
He still doesn't ask me to tell him that this means nothing. He doesn't ask for a declaration or a good-bye. He thinks that I am running to longing glances and lingering touches at clandestine rendezvous. He thinks I am running to someone else, when I am forcing myself to walk away from him.
Sydney is everything I've ever wanted. She's the strength I wish I could maintain while still caring. She's the drive that I've lost. She's smart, she's strong, and she has starlight smiles. She's a survivor. She's survived betrayal and deceit and the crumbling of her world around herself. She can start to forgive her mother, and I wish I was that strong.
She can forgive -- but I only wish I was that strong -- so between the two of us there will always hang my father. She's stability, purpose, and when my hands brush hers over file folders and tech, her skin does not burn. I think that if I kissed her, she would match me, and my lips would not be cold against hers. She's everything I've ever wanted and could never have.
Will is everything I've never wanted. He's loyalty and he's normalcy and he has as true a purpose as anyone I've ever met. His idealism gets in the way because he can't stand the idea of sacrificing something, someone small, for the greater good. He believes in people in a way I never could -- never again -- because I've seen the darker side. He's seen the darker side, too, but he hasn't seen it all.
I wonder when he'll reach the point that he'll lose that idealism. I pray for that day, because it will save him from so much pain. I pray that moment, that one, final realisation, will never come, because I need someone who's that true and that sure. His hands burn against my back and my neck and my face, and he has left his fingerprints melted into my skin. He's everything I've never wanted and he might just be everything I need.
If he was nothing, if this was nothing, I wouldn't be out that door. If he didn't make me want everything that I can't afford to have. If he didn't make me want to be everything that I can't afford to be. Maybe he knows that. Maybe he knows that and he can't say anything, because he knows the rest, too. Maybe this is going to kill something inside him. Maybe with leaving I am taking away one more thing that needs the burning, and I am giving him one less thing for which to find tinder.
Maybe it is, and maybe I know that, and I have to do this not only to protect myself, but to protect him as well. Maybe he will burn the less, but it will leave him a period of grace.
I'll have a file for you later today, I tell him, and the words are cold in my mouth. He nods, a barely perceptible tilt of his chin. His neck is straight and proud and his body is still.
I'll want it pushed up to the top of your stack, I say, and he nods again. His lips are tight and his eyes reflect only the morning sun back at me. My hands are hidden beneath my coat because they have always betrayed me.
I'll be there, he says. His voice is low and does not catch.
Three o-clock.
I'll see you there. He inclines his head as I leave; the early morning light kicks up off of the red tiles and his hair and his skin burn. He does not say good-bye, and neither do I. Swallowing the words I want to say cuts something up inside, but I'm already numb to them. They scar and scratch the ice, but they cannot penetrate it, and I wonder if they would be consumed in his flames if they did. I don't speak as I leave. The lie echoes with hollow footsteps down the hall. I'll be there, and he'll be there, but I won't see him and he won't see me.
He shuts the door behind me as I leave, and I pretend that the murmur of traffic and the wind through palm leaves and ferns rises above the noise. I pretend that the breeze is not cold; and that I can bask in the bright blue sky and its reflection off the pavement. I pretend with my head held high to the sun that the final click of the latch is not the sound of ice-covered branches breaking.