Harpies

Dear Diary:

I have always tried to pride myself on being a gentleman, particularly to women. Even when I was at my worst, I never brutalized anyone that didn't deserve it because while a little psychological suspense is one thing, prolonged torture is quite another and I've been through enough of it to have developed a well defined distaste for it. Brutality is easy, an almost default setting of our primal nature, but it takes real effort and genius to construct an intellectually stimulating game of cat and mouse. But for all the bad rap that men garner for our tendency to violence, I believe that no one said it better than the Bard himself that Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. While men will explode in a rage and perpetrate some of the most incredible acts of atrocity, we tend to burn hot but fast and we are soon spent. Women will slowly smolder for years, silently seething and let me tell you that once the spark ignites the flame, there is no putting it out. Ever.

I am of course, referring to Claire. My path has crossed many women before her, but even with their incomprehensible idiosyncrasies (which I have since wisely learned to never mention out loud) I was largely able to navigate the at times choppy waters of vastly differing gender perspectives. Unlike some of my more chauvinistic counterparts, I don't view one approach or the other as inherently good or bad, and I have even managed to learn a thing or two from my female colleagues. Regrettably, it was usually things like how to appear as though I was harmless or in love through various facial expressions and tone of voice in order to get what I wanted, but I was paying attention to the overall message. While I can and have taken by force what I wanted, I have learned that cooperative negotiation works as well if not better in some circumstances- a classically feminine trait. People often accuse me of being a scheming manipulator, but if I am guilty, women are the grand masters of the dark art and all I know I learned from them.

If one required evidence, they need look no further than Angela as a shining example of connivery of stunning magnitude. I still shake my head in wonder at her gall sometimes. And if anyone needed convincing of my superhuman sense of restraint, they need only consider the fact that I haven't killed her for her invasive and shameless exploitation of my need for a mother's love. She doesn't even love her own biological children let alone me, Virginia tried and failed in her own fundamentally flawed way, and my biological mother? Well, I'll never know for sure but even though I don't really remember much about her, I do have a lingering sense that she thought I was something special- in a good way. After all, she did lose her life because she refused to leave me behind. That I do remember in stunning clarity considering I was a preschooler at the time who's vision was poor enough to warrant having to wear glasses. I guess I was prematurely cerebral or precociously dorky depending on how you look at it. Whatever the case may be, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that watching your mom bleed in a parking lot is not a good thing for a young kid to witness and I do find myself wondering what she was like. She had to be something truly special to live with Samson, that's for sure, but like father like son and that has me worried for my own future.

I'm not so concerned that I would kill anyone that close to me out of sheer spite the way he did, and I certainly wouldn't entertain the thought of doing it in front of my child if I ever had one. Granted I didn't spend a lot of time around him, but it was long enough to realize that we differed significantly in our respective abilities. I may have inherited my IA and therefore my hunger from him, but that's where the similarities apparently end. Somewhere around the time he pinned me to the wall with arrows through the shoulders in an absurdly futile and desperate attempt to take my healing ability, it became clear to me that he operated on an almost reflexive plane of existence rather than carefully planning his attack the way that I do. It should have been blatantly clear to him the moment he watched my hand heal that he couldn't kill me or control me the way he might have done to my mother, yet he blindly lashed out and it was all too easy for me to escape with a little theatrical acting much like waving a bright red cape in front of a charging bull only to sidestep with flair at the last possible second. He didn't even know his own power well enough to know that it wasn't working and I found that almost even more pathetic than his sickness. What my mother may have ever seen in him, I will never know. Maybe he had some kind of mind control over her or something, but even that adds just yet another layer of wretchedness to his existence that he would have to force another to be with him against her will. It's akin to rape in my book. Although I could have, I've never forced a woman to be with me in any capacity and I never will. Sure being lonely as I was while I was Gabriel the watchmaker sucked, but my conscience was clear. The thought of dragging some poor woman into a dark alley to satisfy my own desires was just about as far from my mind as you can get and even now, the very notion sickens me.

Yes, I have been guilty of playing romantic opossum in order to get what I wanted, but let's look at the evidence. Exhibit #1: Elle- while not exactly the first time I've ever kissed a girl, she was perhaps more special to me for reasons that border on nostalgia. I didn't know at the time that her timing was no accident, but to me she came at just the right moment to save me from myself like the cherub she appeared to be. She caught me at my most vulnerable, at a moment when I didn't really want to die but knew it was probably for the greater good. Tragic, but necessary. She offered me hope, made me feel as though she still respected me in the morning so to speak. She even brought me peach pie. I'm not even going to pretend that I'm above fulfilling the old stereotype of there being a direct superhighway between my stomach and my heart. It really was a stroke of brilliance on Bennet's part- he knew exactly what he was doing. Offer me a slice of homemade peach pie and it's just as good as a valentine not to mention the sexual connotation, but that's an entirely different topic. Suffice it to say that you would notice that my smile would hold a little something more than strict gratitude. But at the end of the day, I was just a science fair project to her: an assignment that was probably the worst few days of her life to have to feign interest in a quiet nerd. I wanted so badly to believe it was true, but even then I detected the disingenuous smile that betrayed her. She got what was due her for her troubles.

Candice Wilmer was something else entirely. I was a project to her as well, but of a different sort. I think she rather liked the idea of playing house with me and she probably wished that I was more like the watchmaker she read about in my file. For a time I traded tuna fish sandwiches for scrambled eggs while she relished her role as nursemaid, but I had other plans. I was in a lot of pain at the time from all the surgeries I supposedly underwent, but I clearly remember being angry that I lost my abilities and confused as to where I was or why I was left in the care of someone who by all accounts had absolutely no medical training. It was hot, I was irritated, and she had the audacity to come on to me. She tried pique my interest with all manner of permutations, but the very idea that I would want to have sex with myself was breathtaking because in some form we all do- it's called masturbation and I don't need a stunt double for that. She was so filled with self-loathing and lacking in confidence that I actually did her a favor if you ask me.

Janice Parkman was a technicality. Believe me when I say that if it were just me, it would have been just about as much fun as Bingo night at the local retirement home, but it wasn't just me and that was the whole point. I did it solely to torture Matt for refusing to reunite me with my body and it worked perfectly. What could drive a man more insane than his wife not only sleeping with another man and enjoying it far more, and not being able to do anything about it? What was he going to do, kill himself to get back at me? As far as Janice was concerned, she never knew it was me and assumed her husband had suddenly brushed up on his technique, I guess. No harm, no foul. She was moaning alright, but it was all good.

I have only really used two women that didn't in some way deserve it be it directly or indirectly. Maya was one. She, like Candice, saw me for a wounded pigeon, a helpless, docile puppy who just needed some TLC. I did, but the difference was Maya did it out of genuine concern and humanitarian rationale while Candice did it because her puppet master told her to. Maybe there was an extra element of kink for her as well, but Maya didn't expect anything in return. Even if I hadn't told her that I knew Suresh, I think she would have helped me anyway because she thought it was the right thing to do. If I'm honest with myself, it was entirely my fault that things went as far as they did between us. I outright seduced her on purpose, killed her brother, and then her. I'll admit that I fully intended to rid myself of her bothersome twin because he was mucking up my plans, but I never planned on killing her. My original inclination was to ditch her once we got back to New York, but things didn't end up that way. I know that I can be incredibly persuasive at times, but really? I don't have the power of suggestion like Eden did, she could have seen me for what I was at any time, but she was blinded by her own perception of me as angelic and beyond reproach.

And then there was Claire. One could question my view of myself as a gentleman in that particular situation, but I was. I could have really terrorized her, made her beg for me to end it all (as if I could), but I didn't. I spoke softly and calmly to convey the certitude and inevitability of it all. I didn't want to hurt her, but I was going to get her ability one way or the other, there was no denying that. This may also come as a complete shock to those who despise me, but I allowed her to stab me in the chest with the knife. I saw it coming and I could have easily deflected it with my telekinesis, but I let her do it anyway. Why? To make her feel as though she still maintained some small measure of control, that although she knew what was in store that she could make me hurt too, that she could force me to share her fear and pain. It was a gamble and something of a race against the clock because with each tick, each drop of blood that spilled down my chest, each weakened heartbeat I came that much closer to death, yet I made myself go slow so as not to make it any worse on her than I had to. She may never know it, but I really was trying to be cognizant of her plight despite the urgency of my own. We have had several runs-ins since that time, me saving her life, her stabbing me in the eye with a pen, but through it all I have tried to keep something of a distance out of respect. The only time I may have breached the divide was briefly at the Stanton when I used Doyle's puppet power to control her like the petulant doll she was. Even then, I only wanted for her to hear me out. I had no intention of actually making her do anything she didn't want other than share a glass of wine.

The Stanton left me realizing that after all we have been through, Claire's hate for me runs deep and fast. Some will be hard to convince of my sincerity and others I could care less about, but the reality is that I will be stuck with both she and Peter for a very long time to come and I have to wonder exactly just how much of eternity she will spend glaring at me in contempt. At some point she has to forgive me, if I deserve such a thing, because ever her rage can't last forever.