Reed

It's done.

I can't believe how much it hurts. I can't understand how I can feel this much pain and not keel over with cardiac arrest. I think I'll despise myself forever for how easily the words came to me, how casually brutal I sounded as I thrust the knife in and twisted it in the heart of someone I … care for.

…Love.

I wanted it to work; God only knows how much I wanted it to. But God and I were never on better than nodding terms with each other, and I sold my soul elsewhere long ago. I'm not Malcolm Reed, I'm Section Operative Jaguar, and I think of that man's soiled hands on Hoshi's flawless flesh and recoil as if from the blackest blasphemy.

I should never have even tried, never have deluded myself I could deserve her. Or Trip, indeed.

The past holds us all to ransom in the end. Thanks to mine, all I've done is inflict pain on them. They wasted their affection on a man who wasn't what they thought him, who couldn't maintain the fiction of his decency.

I lean forward on the jetty. Maybe that would be some expiation. My better half even believes I wouldn't struggle, though at a guess the reality is that I'd thrash about and screech like a teenage girl the instant my arse hit the water.

There again, maybe not. Knowing my luck, I'd hurl myself in and find the lake's silted up and I'm sitting in about three feet of mud and looking like a total prick. I could face death by drowning, but not that degree of anticlimax.

So.

At least Trip and Hoshi are out of it, and can keep at least some of their illusions about me. They'll rail against me, no doubt, and hurt for a while, but at least they don't have to know what a narrow escape they've had. My own pain I accept as payment due for my utter folly in that damned club; I knew Trip was finding it as hard to maintain the pretence of mere friendship as I was, and I couldn't resist the temptation to tease him a little. So much for my supposed good sense. Now we'll all pay the price for my stupidity.

As for how we'll cope back aboard Enterprise, that remains to be seen. There's a good chance I won't even return to Enterprise at all, depending on the outcome of my latest little service for the Section. If my cover's blown it'll be the end of my term on board ship. I shall quietly vanish, sinking back into the stinking swamp that was my life as a hired killer, a liar, and indeed – when necessary – a whore.

I shut my eyes, trying not to think about what I'm going to have to endure tonight. Time was when I could have done anything that was necessary without turning a hair, but I've changed, and only now when I'm on the brink of losing it all do I know how much; without intending to, and almost without knowing, I've changed more than I would have believed possible. To have to reverse all that – to have to crawl back into the slime from which I emerged, with the stench of my own corruption filling my nostrils…

Oddly, I find myself thinking of Pard. It's been a while since she crossed my thoughts, but now that the pain of her death has faded, the memory of her acceptance is a comfort of sorts. She wasn't the type to try to view things through a rosy filter; she knew as well as I did, in the dark hidden places of our souls, that most of the missions we carried out were dirty and many of the things we did were indefensible. Sometimes, afterwards, when we were alone, she'd angle her head towards me … just like this… and I'd lick her gently, just alongside the eye, and then she'd lick my nose, and though everything was still just as shitty, we knew the two of us were in it together.

She died. A tiny, cowardly part of me was even selfishly glad she died before she could learn that I was leaving, but by far the greatest part was more stricken by her death than I could let myself admit. Even now I wish she was still out there somewhere. Hating me, perhaps, but alive and happy in our kick-ass team. I was proud to be in it, even though I finally realized it wasn't the life I wanted. That was waiting for me on board Enterprise.

I won't go back, even if the Section offers me the chance. You can't turn back the clock. There are plenty of assignments that call for an operative willing to work alone, and if this means I leave Enterprise it won't matter to me where I go or what I do. Or, indeed, how long I live – an attitude that will probably have its uses for my old masters, who occasionally require missions carried out where the volunteer doesn't pack a return ticket in his hand-luggage.

"Come visit me tonight, Pard," I say aloud, and have to pause a moment to still the shameful quaver in my voice. "If you … if you're out there and you feel like it. I've got to …" Another breath. I put my hands to my face, so that my next words emerge muffled. "I've got to get through this. And I don't know how I'm going to do it."

I know, of course, roughly what's on the menu. Once he'd got started, Cousin Carl launched into a diatribe he must have been storing up for months, if not years; if he'd been able to control himself it would have been bad enough, but within minutes it deteriorated into a sick rant that left me wondering what the hell these people from Terra Prime would ever do if they actually got into power. Real power, I mean; not the temporary power he'll have over me tonight, though the thought of that is enough to make me shudder.

I managed to extrapolate enough from the tirade to know that he's taking it upon himself to exorcise me. I can guess what that means, and 'bell, book and candle' may be the start of it, but I'm pretty sure they won't be the end of it. When he got to the part about Captain Archer being the Antichrist it was all I could do not to laugh in his face, but the situation really wasn't all that amusing. People actually believe this drivel. I'm pretty sure even Cousin Carl believes it, and if he does, that gives him justification for doing anything, absolutely anything, to 'protect humanity' from the evil machinations of Starfleet, whose ultimate purpose is the destruction of humanity itself.

Yes. Presumably we set it up with the Xindi to murder seven million people … though come to think of it, I'm sure we could have done a better job if we'd really set our minds to it. As destructive as the beam was, it missed the majority of the most densely populated areas in Florida, which suffered the worst of its onslaught. If it had gone through Miami's metropolitan area, for instance, that alone would have accounted for six million in itself. Bloody hell, we definitely got careless there.

I didn't bother pointing out any of these facts to Cousin Carl. I didn't bother saying anything at all. I've always found that the best way to get information is just to listen, and so I listened, concentrating hard on producing the appropriate facial expressions for the moment. If he'd known me in the slightest, or indeed had an iota of attention to spare from his insane flights of fancy, he'd probably have twigged within the first five minutes that I was playing him like a trout. As it was, he seemed to find my beautifully simulated expressions of guilt and horror no more than his due, and swallowed the performance hook, line and sinker.

It's vital that I don't allow myself to forget Viper's warning that he's an ex-Federal agent, and therefore not the complete fool he appears. He undoubtedly doesn't know about Section 31, much less that I'm an ex-operative myself, but he won't underestimate my capacity to behave in a way he'd genuinely perceive as underhanded in the effort to protect myself from my well-earned grisly fate. He'll check me for weapons before he starts. Presumably he'll also immobilise me in some way, and I rather doubt if he'll pin all his faith on a pentacle on the floor to do the job.

Honestly. If it wasn't so damned serious I could burst my guts laughing at the thought that I, Lieutenant Malcolm Reed, the Head of Security aboard Starfleet's flagship, am to be exorcised tonight. What my father would make of that I don't know. I suppose I should be grateful Trip will never find out, because I'd guarantee I'd never hear the end of it. God, it's enough to make even T'Pol guffaw.

Maybe the entire idea has me teetering towards hysteria, because I have the distinct feeling of a shoulder pressing against mine. How Pard would laugh, if she knew. Maybe thinking of that will help me get through tonight; maybe it's she who's helped me to see the funny side. I dare say I won't see it for long, but seeing it at all is something – something to hold through the fear and the darkness.

When I come back to myself the rain is ending. The clouds are breaking up. Off to my right, above the trees, I can actually glimpse a shard of blue sky, and it feels like hope. Hope that I may get through this with – something of myself still intact, unviolated.

As for the other things I dreamed of, the dream is over. Hoshi and Trip have each other. That's enough, that's the way things should be. With luck, they won't miss me for long.

And me? I'll do what I always have done.

I'll manage.

Somehow.


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