灰色の暗い暈し
A Darker Shade of Gray
-Many years earlier-
The term 'dichotomous' might have been a good word to describe the room, though the distinctions between where one side started and the other ended weren't exactly obvious.
One side of the room was organized neatly enough, making at least an effort to efficiently use of the abbreviated space. It was an ambitious endeavor, since the available areas were being contested between technology, cosmetic products, reference materials and manuals, highly stylized and cute caricatures, small hand-tools, and other items that further blended the girl/geek mixture. The scene was completed by Rachelle Cooney, sitting on her bed with a notebook computer on her lap, trying to distract herself with it by any and all means available.
The other side of the room was very, very cluttered. It wasn't especially dirty though, even if the wastebasket desperately needed emptying, and the laundry hamper needed just as desperately to be run through the wash. What stood out more was the scattered, unfocused, eclectic collection of odds, ends, and knickknacks, which were as widely varied as could be imagined, ranging from a lonely concert poster, to a half-finished puzzle cube, to a few neglected paper-bound novels among several other items. Completing the ensemble was a dead-asleep Richard Cooney, who lay sprawled out on his bed, still fully dressed in the typical street clothes of a Corneria City teenager.
Rachelle was worried for him. He barely got any sleep these days, and when he did, it was something like he was now, just randomly collapsed onto the nearest softish surface for hours and hours. He'd been on and off for the better part of two weeks, after the breakup–
No.
To call what that slut did to Rick a "breakup" would've legitimized it. It wasn't a relationship, it never was, it was nothing but a sham. The damned whore had toyed with Rick from the start, preying on his loneliness, his gullibility, his need for someone. Rachelle had tried to show him the mistake he was making by falling for her, by letting that tart tug on him like a marionette puppet, but he wouldn't have any of it, so enamored he was by her phony charms.
And just when Rick thought he'd found "the one," she pulled the rug right out from under him.
It destroyed him, completely and utterly, crushing him into a dull and depressed emotionless lump. She missed the old Rick: the one who could come up with all the funny jokes, and bring a precision punch-line just when and where it was needed. He could lighten even the darkest moods, not just with comedy. With all the things going on in this family now, Rachelle could've used some of that... whatever it was he did.
The door to the apartment opened, and someone staggered inside.
That was probably Dad, finally back from wherever he had gone this evening. He had been spending so much time away from home since he was laid-off from the shop, it was rare when everyone was together and coherent enough to speak to each other.
Part of Rachelle wanted to go out and meet him, but Mom was already there, and she could hear the conversation through the walls as clear as a bell.
"Any luck?" she heard Mom ask.
There was no answer.
"Tom..."
"No." Dad finally grunted back.
"Well, maybe you'll do better next time–"
"Don't you get it, Angie?" Dad cut her off, "We're finished, done, screwed. We will have nothing!"
"No. You can't think like that, Tom." mom said, trying to calm him down, "We need to be strong, we need to pull through this, for the kids."
"Do we? Do we?" Though Rachelle wasn't able to see what was going on, in her head she could see dad: so desperate, so hopeless, so jaded. "Am I supposed to be their shining example, so I can coddle them, tell them it's going to be okay? Well, take a look: it's nothing but lies and wishful thinking to make them think there's something worthwhile in the end. I'm not going to lie for them, not anymore. There's nothing waiting for them, nothing!"
This wasn't him. This wasn't dad. This wasn't the plucky tinker she'd always remembered him as. This was someone that had never existed before: someone angry, frustrated. It was like the engine of Life had been stalled, undermined by a faulty component, broken, and he didn't have the tools needed to fix it.
"You wouldn't be talking like this without the drink." Mom protested. She could tell her husband was keeping something. That prying, prodding voice of hers –subtle as a sledgehammer– couldn't lie.
"No, Angie, I wouldn't. I can think clearer like this, better in-fact, and I'm not afraid to lay it out like it is." Thomas Cooney, "We're born, we live in a craped out world we can't do anything about, and we die: end of story!"
The pictures Rachelle developed in her head, the image of a man who could say things like that, were nothing short of frighting. She wanted nothing more than to not hear any of this, to just sink away into nothingness for a while.
"Tom, you need to stop this." Mom commanded, "It's not helping anyone."
"And no one's been helping us... no one." Dad said through a ghostly sigh. Rachelle could barely hear his words now, so hushed, so defeated. "I'm going out."
"You're going out drinking: not tonight, not anymore." Mom must've had her arms crossed, foot tapping, eyes piercing Dad with that unmistakable 'you're not getting off the hook' gaze that Rick and Rachelle had been subject to far too often before.
"Dammit, I'm already perfectly buzzed as it is!" Dad snapped back, "Why would I need to get any drunker, huh? Any more and I wouldn't think or walk straight."
"But you're not thinking straight!" Mom pointed out, and let out a long sigh before asking, "Why did you bother coming back at all?"
"I..."
Say you wanted to see the kids today. Say you missed them, and Mom too. Say how much you care, that you didn't mean those horrible things you said. Rachelle could hear that wavering, uncertain longing in his voice, he couldn't hide it, but Thomas Cooney couldn't find it in him to say those words.
"I gotta go meet someone."
"This late?" Mom asked, confused, quietly startled, "Who exactly are you meeting, Tom?"
"I can fix us, I can make it all work again, good as new." Dad assured, trying to convince himself as much as Mom, "But I need you to trust me. I need you not to worry."
"Just, promise you'll come back." she implored, holding Dad back just a while longer, "Can you do that?"
There was a pause; nobody said anything, and it didn't sound like they were doing anything either. They were probably looking at each other; Mom with that sad but stern, concerned look to match her words, and Dad replying with a little nod, accepting the burden.
"Where else do I got left to go?"
The door opened, followed by diminishing footsteps, and when the door closed, he was gone.
Mom broke down into a quiet convulsion of little sobs, barely heard by Rachelle. These too went away, as Mom carried herself off to the room she and Dad used.
Where was he going? What was he up to? Was he doing something dangerous? Would they see him again? What would that mean for the rest of us?
No. He'll be back. He's got to come back.
Rachelle shook those thoughts out of her head, and only just realized that she was trembling, that her breath was coming in and out as quiet shuddering gasps, that a cold liquid had spilled from her eyes.
This wasn't her; she wasn't one to vent, or to emote, or to need someone to cling to. She'd gotten this far in life as "that weird girl" with no more trouble than she couldn't handle. The Cooneys were never a large family, but they were strong, independent, and stuck together like glue. But she couldn't do this all by herself, not this time, not while Dad wasn't Dad, Mom wasn't Mom, Rick wasn't Rick, and she wasn't Rachelle. She found herself desperately wishing for someone to be there for her, someone who could remind her that the world wasn't as crapped out a place as it seemed.
But, there was someone there, reminding Rachelle of his presence with a little snore.
Rick was still laying there on his back, legs and striped tail spilling off the bed, and his feet landing squarely on the floor. Rachelle so envied him at that moment, he who'd slept so blissfully ignorant to the bitter exchange between the parents, happily oblivious in the realm of his dreams. It almost made her jealous.
She got up, and moved across the small bedroom to him, watching him: the rise and fall of his slow steady breathing, the little twitches from his dreams. That wasn't enough, she needed more just to see him and hear him, she'd always seen him and heard him, she needed to feel him.
Rachelle knelt down right in front of her brother, careful not to wake him, and very gently laid her head on Rick's stomach, where his t-shirt had pulled up a little and exposed a couple inches of his bare fur. Then she simply listened: to his breathing, to his pulse, to the odd little gurgly noises his body made; all the components and inner mechanisms of life itself. Somehow, it calmed her to hear all that, like listening to the constant, reassuring thrum of an engine. The rhythm of life will go on, and keep right on functioning–
Then, as she lay there with her brother, she felt something press against her chest. She drew back away from Rick, and saw the unmistakable lust-lump in his pants. He must've been having one of those dreams. But actually, it looked more than a little uncomfortable for him, having it all jammed in there. Did it feel as awkward for him as it looked?
The solution seemed simple enough, and he looked like he needed it anyway– wait– time out. What the hell was she thinking? It's not her business to think about her brother's hardware, her own flesh-and-blood. That's for him: him alone and his...
His bitch-poor excuse of a girlfriend? No. He didn't have anyone.
Rachelle Cooney was sick and tired of the world sucking.
She was tired of the job and money troubles that plagued Dad, the endless worrying and stress Mom endured for it, and the manipulative bitch who destroyed Rick for no other reason than because she could. If only she could make the world not suck, even it was only for a moment or two, even if it was only the illusion of not sucking–
Rachelle found herself still staring at the sleeping form of her brother, and suddenly the thought of his masculine hardware didn't seem all that immoral by comparison. Who else was going to give half a damn for him if not her? Who else would've been there when the infatuation collapsed around him? Who else is going to guide him out of the hell he found himself in? You know what: screw society! If she could make Rick feel some tiny shred of good in this crapsack of a world, than why the hell shouldn't she? The body's nerves could care less what triggers them, and the brain could always sort it out later.
With this invigorated determination, Rachelle reached down to her sleeping brother's pants and undid the font fly of the jeans he was wearing, opening him up one layer at a time. Once the front of his pants were open, there was no ignoring the very clear outline formed by his rod, pressing against and stretching the fabric of his boxer-brief shorts.
One more layer to go.
She reached into the elastic strap of his boxer-briefs, and–
"Mrrph..."
Rick stirred from his sleep. His weary eyes crept open, wandered around in that aimless, listless way they often do when one is disturbed from their sleep. He might've even had a chance at slipping back into sleep had he not discovered the scene occurring at his lower reaches.
Everything stopped.
Rick found his fly busted wide open, and a familiar hand reaching down into his trunks. There was his sister, Rachelle, down between his legs, looking back with eyes open so wide they were threatening to burst out of their sockets. The expression 'caught with a hand in the cookie jar' did not even come close to comparing the to the wide-eyed, frozen, petrified shock that had taken her.
In this immobile state, Rachelle waited for the reaction: a screamed 'what the hell!,' flinching away, a string of questions, a cluster of F-bombs, storming out of the room, all of the above, something... anything... but no. All Rick did was sit there with a totally blank, dropped-jaw stare of complete and utter confusion.
Things remained thusly for some time. Neither Rick or Rachelle seemed to blink or breathe or anything while it lasted. It could've been a few seconds that felt like a few minutes, or a few minutes that felt like a few hours; time does funny things like that in these situations.
However long it was, Rick finally inhaled a long breath, sat up, and rested his scrambled head in his hands with an equally slow exhalation. That's when Rachelle removed her hand from his boxer-briefs as he moved, and sat down next to him.
She wanted to start from the beginning and explain how she reached the point where she was groping him. She wanted to answer any of the seven-thousand plus questions he must've had. She wanted to just say nothing at all. She wanted to leave him alone to deal with on his own. She wanted to stay right there and work it out with him. She wanted to apologize profusely for what she did. She wanted to say that she didn't regret it one bit and would do it again. More than anything, she wanted some kind of actual response from him that she could work with, anything at all besides the blank, emotionless silence.
"Rick, I... I–"
Her stammering was cut off when another set of lips locked against her own, when Rick pulled her into him. Though surprised, she didn't fight it, nor that which came after.
\
/
Rick needed time to think, to be alone for a bit after everything that'd happened. So he walked through the ship, through the dim corridors of Cerberus. It was quiet, and cold, with only the sounds of his own echoing footsteps and the quiet hum of some piece of equipment here and there to fill the silence. It was just him and his thoughts out here.
He was soon reminded though why being alone with his thoughts wasn't always the best option.
Did you and she ever– ?
"That dumb punk sure cut you deep, didn't he?"
Right next to Rick was another Rick, an exact copy of himself. While Rick was calm, controlled, and precise as he walked, the other Rick was free, uninhibited, shameless, and just wouldn't leave him alone.
Rick's thoughts had strong opinions of their own, which would manifest themselves as a fake duplicate of himself –a doppelgänger was what these hallucinations were called– and furthermore, his thoughts had a tendency for snarky backtalk.
"And what exactly is so 'fake' about me?" his duplicate asked, indignant, "I'm just as real as all those other thoughts swirling around in your head up there. And besides, you never talk to anyone else about your issues, ever, so you may as well bounce them off me. I won't judge." after a second, he added, "Not too harshly, anyway."
In his entire career in Intelligence, no one had ever pushed him as close to the edge as Wiley had, not even Osprey Caldwell. They were two completely different situations–
"But were they all that different? It was more like an inversion, only you were the one in power this time."
He had the situation under control. Wiley was only taunting him, trying to get a rise out of him, to distract him. Rick was just going to leave and give him time to cool off, nothing more, but he should've expected he'd try something desperate. He could respect being played for a fool, it certainly wasn't the first time someone had tried to manipulate him, nor would it likely be the last, but that wasn't what troubled him.
"Then what did trouble you?"
He... became someone else when he fought back, when he deceived him, when he sealed off that airlock, and when he literally sucked the life out of Wiley. There was a moment then when he was perfectly content to let him die, to dispose of him for good, to make him suffer.
"It felt good, didn't it? Having the power over someone's life and death at your fingertips?"
"That wasn't me." Rick reiterated, finally giving a verbal answer.
"Are you kidding? That was absolutely you; you just never had the balls to let it out that way before."
"I overreacted."
"To what? The implication that you might've done the sex thing?" the doppelgänger scoffed, "Come on, people screw each other all the time, why should it be so special when you do it?"
"She's my sister!" Rick snapped back.
"... and?" the doppelgänger wasn't fazed in the slightest, "You don't regret having done it, do you?"
"It's in the past; long past." Rick moved forward, eyes front, trying to focus on where he was going instead of that incessant voice that wouldn't leave him well enough alone.
"That may be true, but past or no it seems to be cropping up here and now, so much so that even a dumb punk can get a rise out of you from it. That's not good form, you know."
"That wasn't the point!" Rick insisted, "He's a captive asset: someone who doesn't have the right to ask those kind of questions about me and get a straight answer. I'm the one who needed information, he's the one who had it. Critical information is supposed to go from the asset to the agent, from him to me, not the other way around. I tried the nice guy approach, and he treated it like a joke, like... like..."
"Like a game, my good man. Like a game." Rick's duplicate filled in with a knowing smirk, "You were bluffing, and he called you on your bluff. But you turned out to have an incredible ace up your sleeve, even if you didn't know it at the time."
The doppelgänger stepped in front of Rick, walking backward as Cooney continued forward. It didn't matter where he went, he'd only run into his thoughts again, and he was certain what they'd say next.
"When the dumb punk struck that precious little nerve of yours, it pushed you into a very dark place: into that unforgivable realm where serial killers, and psychopaths, and other complete monsters live and thrive. Down there, you can cast off your morals, your rules, and your other self-imposed limitations, letting you zero in and focus on your goal like a laser, and you let nothing stand in your way. Better yet, you can come back from that dark place when your work there is done: you can control it."
As a part of this agency, if you have to lie, cheat, steal, or otherwise disregard the established laws and morals for an operation, you're expected to do so. If you have to liaise and cooperate with individuals or institutions known to be corrupt, malevolent or otherwise twisted, you're expected to do so. If you have to completely destroy another person's life in order to keep a vital operation active, you are expected to do exactly that.
"You didn't go into Intelligence to play nice, Rick. You joined up because you know how to play dirty, because this is you, and you wouldn't want it any other way."
"I joined because I chose to." Rick said bluntly.
"Exactly!"
The duplicate waited cheerfully for Rick to say something else, but he didn't. As uncomfortable as it was to admit, even to his hallucinated doppelgänger, there was truth in what his manifested thoughts were telling him.
"Would you have killed him?" the duplicate asked out of nowhere.
"I needed information."
"Yeah, but if you didn't–"
"Then I wouldn't need to speak with him, and I wouldn't have been in that position in the first place."
"Now you're just dodging the question."
"I don't deal in hypothetical situations, only viable scenarios."
"Okay, that's a blatant lie and you know it."
"It's what I do." Rick answered with a smirk of his own, to which the doppelgänger rolled his eyes.
"Very funny." he drawled with a healthy dose of sarcasm.
"What can I say? I have my moments." he said with a shrug.
Rick soon made his way back to Cerberus's med-bay, where Wiley lay fast asleep on one of the beds. He specifically asked to be administered tranquilizers after the interview so he'd be able to sleep when it was over. The interview was... rough on him, rougher than there was any right to expect. Apparently the psychic shenanigans of Cerinian voodoo, real or imagined, were far more potent than they'd been given credit for. This alone easily made it the most bizarre case Rick had ever worked on, and likely one of the most bizarre cases LCI has ever worked on.
The hallucinated duplicate walked over and looked the pale slumbering wolf up and down, asking, "So, what do you plan to do with him when this is all over?"
"I don't know." Rick answered, focused on other things, "I'll figure that out when it is over."
With little else to do, he booted up a notebook computer that'd been left here, opened a word-processor, and started work on the standard LCI operations report.
[Operation: "Plowshare"]
[Report#: 6]
[Agent: Cooney, Richard, T.]
There are some things that simply did not go into these reports. The little stints with his chronic hallucinated duplicate was one such thing, and so were the emotions he felt during the whole thing: the anger, the outrage, the little hints of shame. The op reports are strictly information and procedure: what happened, and what did you find out? Administration wasn't interested in the nebulous, wishy-washy realm of feelings and subjective experiences, at least not in the raw paperwork. If they wanted to know about these things, they'd ask personally, and almost always in a face-to-face situation.
[This is an account of the sequence of events occurring aboard the privateer vessel Cerberus following the evacuation of refugees and some crew, and prior to the arrival of the vessel Schwarzwind. This account is transcribed according to the testimony of an eyewitness...]
-To Be Continued-
Author Note:
Well, that was something.
I'm trying to think of something more to say, but I'm coming up blank. I do thank all of you who've read, and reviewed. As always, your feedback is most welcome.
Take care!
