A Good Man Once
"Our prime purpose in this life is to help others. And if you can't help them, at least don't hurt them." - Dalai Lama
He's not a selfless man. Oh, he tells himself he'd risk his life for his friends - and he even might - the truth is he wants to live, desperately, hungrily. There was a time when he'd have clawed his way through the bodies of everyone around him just to walk again, and even now, he doesn't truly feel guilt for the Quinn Mallory walled up and splintered inside him.
He doesn't feel guilt, he tells the doctor when the shaking starts, and all attempts to explain it as psychical come up dry. He didn't do this. It wasn't intentional. He didn't steal another man's life. Quinn Mallory would never blame him. The doctor's eyes are weary, another refugee who's seen too much. Her fingers tap lightly away from her palm, a steady rhythm he doubts she knows she's doing. A pianist, perhaps, in another world, but there is nothing left in her heart for music in this one. He wonders who she lost to the Kromaggs - everyone lost someone.
He's made enough restitution by comforting Amanda Mallory, he tells the doctor, and himself. Inwardly, something whispers that it wasn't enough at all, and he imagines it's the other Quinn Mallory, tangled and twisted through his genes, scratching at his conscience.
He goes to a different doctor, this time, and, asks, tone strangely light, if it's still possible to separate them. There's some tests, and finally, an affirmation, but nothing has changed, of course. They're conjoined, after all, bound up in each other, sharing vital organs, essential parts. They can cut Quinn Mallory out, divide them. They can save that one, at the expense of him.
Quinn Mallory, the other one, wouldn't want it, he's been told. But he thinks there's enough of that one in himself that he can guess that deep down, all ethics aside, he would want it more than anything, that some part of him, trapped and cornered, is still hoping, waiting for this one to make the decision.
He doesn't talk about it to the others. Rembrandt left, of course, and whether he succeeded or not hardly matters because he never came back. Diana went off on her own, trying to create a life for herself in this earth. And Maggie stayed, out of...love, he decides finally, some misguided hope that something of Quinn Mallory will surface someday, flicker across his face, or leech out of his soul. Something recognizable as the man she loved.
He tries for a while, lying, pretending, even as he bites into a food he's always disliked, but the other Quinn loved, or having a memory of a childhood that wasn't his. It's Maggie in the end that makes him decide, when he sees a sad look in her eyes that is quickly doused, a smile replacing it before she thinks he noticed.
Maggie has lost enough, so he gives her this. He lets them cut Quinn out.
He doesn't tell her what he's planning to do, no goodbyes, nothing to even make her suspicious, and he's glad in a way that she won't know until it's over, when Quinn Mallory comes back to her. He thinks she'll mourn, at first, perhaps, a little, but not much, because the other one will be there to comfort her, to help her forget. He doesn't spend the last day in regret, or even hedonism, but he walks a little more quickly than he needs to, savoring the feeling of walking, of moving unaided. He thinks he's had a good life, more adventure than he'd dreamed of.
He lives a minute, not quite, after the separation, long enough to see Quinn Mallory, the other one, sit up, and turn to stare at him, with an expression half sorrow, half shock.
And then there's nothing.