Title: For Once
Summary: The scattered thoughts and worries of a nearly broken man.
Pairing: None. Ecklie-centric gen fic.
Rating: PG-13 for language
A/N: Thanks for the beta go to Kelly, because she owns like that.
Conrad Ecklie wasn't evil incarnate and he didn't kick puppies on his way home from work. He knew that most of his co-workers merely tolerated him, some less civilly than others. Most of the time, it didn't bother him much. He hadn't exactly tried to make friends; he knew he'd been an asshole. It had been on purpose - if you didn't get close to anyone, they couldn't hurt you.
Lately, however, it wasn't satisfying anymore. Career climbing just didn't hold the same appeal as it used to. Ever since the buried-alive incident with Nick, he'd begun to regard authority with a more jaundiced eye. No longer did he blindly seek approval from his twisted father-figure; he'd discovered that it was just as disappointing as his real father had been.
He realized that the ass-kissing was his own passive-aggressive way to gain admiration from those usually admired. Subconsciously, he thought it might replace all the nights he'd spent locked in his room because he was afraid of breathing the wrong way and upsetting dear old dad. Indeed, all he'd merely been doing was substituting one overbearing and ineffective form of authority for another. He was a scientist at heart, so why didn't he know better? If you don't change the variables, you're going to get the same result.
At his core, Ecklie was weary. He was tired of playing politics and sucking up and being an ass to anyone who could have possibly been a friend. He was sick of the games, the power-plays, and all the bullshit. For probably the first time in his life, Conrad Ecklie wanted some honesty. He wanted something real.
The problem lay with the fact that he didn't think he really deserved it. He wasn't the kindest or most generous person by any means - what right did he have to request happiness? The key rested in the knowledge that this was his father, still in his head, reminding him that he just wasn't any good. Those were the reminders that fed the politics, the bullshit. A cruel, nearly impossible-to-stop cycle.
He wondered why it had taken an act so depraved as the kidnapping and subsequent live-burial of someone, despite the animosity between them, he considered one of his own people. Was he too late? Was forty-eight not an early enough age to start to turn one's life around, and was he doomed to spend the rest of his days miserable and alone?
He was sure most people thought so. He probably had at some point. But he felt a bit like Ebenezer Scrooge on Christmas morning, after the spirits had come and shown him the light. Did he dare not heed their warning?
He didn't, he decided. That would be allowing his deceased - and hopefully decaying - father another victory. Maybe accepting the fact that he did deserve some happiness was the first step in finally expunging the memories and reminders of a man whom he'd long since been resigned to think of as indelible.
However, it wasn't really the first step, was it? It was actually the second. The first step had been realizing that, in general, authority pretty much, for lack of a better word, sucked. At least he was on the right path. That, he reflected, was the beginning. And where else to start besides the beginning?
And for once, when he turned off his light, preparing for sleep, his father's memory wasn't there to call him a failure. Optimistically, maybe this meant he was getting better. Cynically, perhaps this merely meant that this was the first time he hadn't been one.
Only time would tell which proved to be correct.
-End