from: darkstar (clone347@aol.com)
subject: angst, marita/krycek relationship/character death
title:where broken angels lie
author: darkstar
spoilers: patient x/one son
rating: pg-13
classification: angst/character death/post one-son
disclaimer: alas, alas these characters belong to his supreme X-ness
                  Chris Carter, and all those under-genuises at 1013. Keep
                  the laywers away, FOX! Be warned that I *have* laid
                  land mines and am not afraid to use them. 
summary: which is worse, sacrifice or revenge, and in the end
               do we really have a choice?

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 
where broken angels lie 1/2
darkstar
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -


The mind is all; we kiss everything.
We say we love, it's the skin we're in.
  You're a retrograde, a vacancy.
  You're the one I love
  You're the hate in me.

- Monkey
  Bush

    
     A man has no reflection at the bottom of a shot of vodka. I
like that. That I don't have to see who.....or what.....I am, all the
things I've become. I hate mirrors. Maybe because every time I
look myself in the eye, I see the ghosts of a hundred dead men
staring back. I used to know them all by name. I should. After all
I'm the reason they're ghosts. By now it's just too many to 
remember. 

     I do know one of the names.
     Alex Krycek. Shot dead by life.

     So we sit here, my ghosts and I, drinking ourselves into the
netherworld awaiting us inside the dungeons of my mind. I can see
it all so clearly, through the transparent liquor and the transparent
bottom of the glass. It's like looking at the world without all the
gilded masks and silken bandanges.

     I see morning. Such a soft, innocent morning, rather like a 
newborn child that has been abandoned on my doorstep. A child
I have slain. Her blood coats this world I've created, until the sky
is the color of burning. A black hole sun dominates the 
horizon whose invisible fingers seek to pull all into his grasp. One
by one, soul by soul, we are all slipping into the abyss. 

     I glance down at the vodka bottle beside me. Some of us fall
faster than others. But in the end, it doesn't matter because all 
inevitably fall. Even the best of men....*especially* the best of men.
I hate waking up to this life that is not a life, merely a game to
see who can kill the most and die the slowest. Death, however, 
is not a spectral figure on a white horse but a roomful of polite old
men who turn brides into widows and smile while children die.

     (I've killed children.....shot them in the head like they were stray
dogs just because their parents knew too much, and believe me, 
there's not enough vodka in all of Mother Russia herself to cleanse
the blood from your hands, from your eyes....)

     Once upon a time I scoffed at such things as Fate and Destiny,
but now I welcome their existence. I couldn't have chosen this 
life- no, this *existence*- for myself. I burn in the hellish world of
half-buried memories and familiar ghosts every time I close my eyes
only to slip into a far more barren nightmare when I open them in
the morning. To find myself alone. Always, alone, unless I paid her
by the hour or am assigned to kill her before she wakes up. 

     Time for another drink. Good Russian vodka is a beautiful thing.
It sears your nerves and cauterizes your soul until all you feel is
the best kind of novacaine. When I'm drunk I don't have to 
remember that bright young man who signed onto the big boy's
world of faceless identities, traceless guns, and endless lies along with
all the other shining young men. One who drew certain lines in the
sand and made himself swear never to cross them. No short years
and endless days later, those lines are so far behind me that I doubt
they ever existed. Regret.....no, regret was never an option. Not 
even when I had a soul. I ripped that from me so long ago, tossed it
out with the rest of the garbage commonly called human emotions.
I couldn't stand the stench of decaying ideals any longer.

      Did I mention it was snowing today? Tiny white flakes that 
look to me like feathers plucked from the wings of angels. I am
going to visit an angel. A fallen angel, perhaps, but not quite 
the demon I am. Call me a regular card-carrying, certified child of
Lucifer himself if you will, but I never swore allegiance to his cause.
Or agreed to sacrifice for it.

     Not my life. And not the life of those I love.

     Love. What a concept. My lips twist in a raw and bitter smile as
I meet another swallow of liquor head on, embracing the trail of
fire it burns deep into my gut. I wouldn't know the meaning of the
word. I never even knew I was capable of it until I met....*her...
....but she.... 
I shove the thoughts away. The white godess Love is the
tyrant that now demands the blood of angels for her wine. Or am
I getting that confused with Our Lady Hate? Ah, but wouldn't it
be easy to succumb to the temptation to get completely, utterly,
wasted. To forget there ever was a "mission" and drink until I
just don't care anymore. It's supposed to be so easy for me, the not
caring. I am ice and steel no matter what you want to do to me, but
the slightest whisper of the way she breathed my name does more
than thaw me. It burns me alive on the stake of my own memory.
And what a slow death it has turned out to be.

     In fact the vodka hasn't dulled that ache yet, and I doubt it
will ever be able to relieve the searing pain over the place where they
used to spread rumors I had a heart.. Contrary to popular opinion, 
it's still there. I'll admit it's not much to look at- rotted black and 
mangled beyond recognition in the few places it hasn't hardened to 
total stone- but it belongs to me. I can say that about so very few 
things. My loyalties, if I ever owned them at all, are sold out quite 
regularly to the highest bidder. My conscience went for far, far less. 
When it came to my heart, things were different. I kept it frozen 
solid hoping, the tiniest bit, that someday I would have good 
reason to revive it. Ha. I should have known better. Now the time 
has come to surgically remove that cancer, that last shred of weak 
humanity within me. Other than the gun I sleep with, my heart is all 
I've ever considered my own.

     (Fitting irony that is is the gun I cherish and the heart I tear away.)

     My gaze staggers across the table to fall on my watch. 7:35 AM.
A little early for a liquor buzz. In exactly one hour and twenty five
minutes I have a very important appointment to keep. You could 
call it the only meaningful thing in my rather meaning*less* life. I have
longed for this day and dreaded it since I first opened my eyes to
see it as inevitable. Ask me where I'm going? Where else would you
find fallen angels with scarlet wings, scarlet lips, and judas kisses? 
     Today I'm going to Hell.

     The demon overlords who run it don't exactly call it that, of
course. The walls aren't made of black gothic iron but of the most
unimaginative kind of plain metal and plaster. It smells of antiseptic
and chemicals rather than sulfure and smoke. The screaming of the
condemned is muffled by drug-induced hazes of contentment 
until they don't even realize that they are being dissected body and
soul to feed the lust of their masters. All they live for is another
shot of synthetic A-ok. I travel frequently through those vortexs of
despair but today I'm not going on any kind of "company 
business". Let's call it personal affairs instead of out and out 
rebellion. *That* seems to get my superiors into a fluster until they
renew that pesky death warrant hanging over my head like Satan's
personal pitchfork.

     (The one they brandish to remind me of the consequences should
I even dream of betraying them again. They think it can make me
fear them. Idiots. As if they have ever seen anything even resembling
fear in my eyes. Because if I wanted to, I could crush any of them
as easily as I destroy their hapless victims. So who truly fears who....
the caged animal or the men who lock him up?)

     Fear is an old friend of mine. I see it surface in a large percentage
of the people I deal with, watch it flicker in their eyes like icy fire
when I pass. I can even smell it on their breath like soured liquor 
when I talk to them. Fear. Just one of many side effects that come
alone with my hard-won position as unchalleged deadliest of all the
silent deadly men. The ones who harvest souls without mercy and
without fail. We are the teeth of the withered old men who try in
vain to hide their bloody hands inside their perfectly tailored 
Armani suits. Even they pretend otherwise, each of those little tin
gods knows that to be true deep within the chasm left by their souls.

     That fear has a use- as does everything I associate myself with. It
inspires almost everyone under my (growing) command to take 
*any* order from me without *any* questions. Almost. The doctors
and scientists are a stubborn and uncooperative bunch. They like
to skulk behind the shields of their research, flaunting their 
invincibility since they are the ones to actually carry out the work,
as they put it. To a great extent they are right. A pity, because 
theyre the only type of scum I loathe half as much as the whited
sepluchres I report to once a month. And they tend to get fussy
when you disturb one of their patients. 

     (As if they ever care about their toys past what they can take
from them and how quickly they can read the lab results on it. 
All they live for the the ravaging of spirits in the blessed name of
Science. Then when it's all over, they don't even take the time to
name the dead when they bury them. If....they even bother....)

     I finger the grip on my gun. It is quite a beautiful weapon, sleek
and black and best of all completely untraceable. The clip is fully
loaded with only the finest hollow point bullets, designed to explode
within the targe, ensuring the kill. Messy, yes. But effective too, and
today no one's going for neat and clean. 

     If any of them know what is healthy for the "work" they won't
attempt to stop me. Not today. Although I must say I hope they 
will try. It's been far too long since I've killed one of their perverse
breed, and at the time it held none of the.....personal satisfaction.....
the death of these particular monster would bring. I won't say I 
hate them. Out loud I won't say it, because hate is pretty high on the
list of forbidden emotions. It distracts from the almighty Mission.
     Unless of course, it is the reason for the mission. Like today.
     And the fires of Hades herself could not burn hotter in my chest.

     Because I know, for the first time, exactly what they did to her.
I had to steal the reports that told me in cold, detached words how 
they've been torturing the only human being I've ever entertained
the thought of loving.

      They started with the vaccination experiments, trying to cure
the black oil within her not for her benefit but for their glory. To
that end, they wracked her body with a host of specially designed
drugs with side effects that rivaled the disease itself. They even 
found a cure, but oh they were just getting started. Next they cut 
out pieces of her brain -while she was wide awake to scream for
relief she never got- to make sure she never spread their secrets again.
That last, final step in the process was to ship her off to a 
harvesting facility to remove every last bit of her blood's DNA 
coding- which now contains the blueprints for future vaccination 
research. She's there now, as they kill her little by little, drop by 
drop. 

     But they didn't want me to know about it. That kind of reading
might not inspire me to new heights of loyalty. Especially when I 
look beyond the words to figure out what they use her for between 
the experiments. The end result, you can be assured, is *not* that I 
end up too terribly thrilled to go out and smile while I kill for them.

     (The killing isn't so bad by the pay is lousy and there's the 
constant risk of getting cancer via second hand smoke from my 
CEO)

     It does, however, have a sole redeeming quality that dissuades me 
from seeking a more lucrative position elsewhere, as I once did. In
a word? P-o-w-e-r. The best kind. I am guaranteed a winning stake
in a bleak but inevitable future, whether the Syndicate itself wins or
loses. And, as the plan goes, that power will let me find my harlot
angel in one of Their most jealously guarded laboratories- one that
I'm not even supposed to know exists- even without proper 
clearance. Once they figure out that I don't have it, of course, they
party's over.

     But not, I swear on everything I was, before I fulfill my mission.
One of my own choosing, not handed to me in a manilla folder 
with writing the color of dried blood. You see, they stole from me
one last thing I called mine once. Hope. Hope in the form of a 
woman who stumbled fatally trying to walk in my footsteps.

     She. Was. Mine.

     Not *theirs*. Not even *ours*. She belonged solely to me as 
much as my dreams were wrapped in her. Dreams of breaking
our collective chain and disappearing forever. Only me and her and
no one or nothing else. I watched, helpless, as those hopes died 
violently when they forced her to betray me, betray....us.....
     Which is why, in one hour and fifteen minutes, I am going to
set her free.

     Not out of pity. Not out of love. I can't give her those things,
though I remember a time when I thought I could. Even now,
when I lie in the dark alone with days gone by, I still wish I believed
that. But I don't. And when I go to her today it will not be noble
and it will not be beautiful. This is nothing but revenge against
the men who did this to me. 
     Pure, simply, revenge.


     If only it were that easy. If only I remembered 
nothing but her betrayal and the loss and pain that felt like my soul
was being cut out all over again. It's not that I've forgotten those
things, only that with them come the memories of other moments
neither harsh nor ugly, floating like lost specks of light in
a sea of darkness. Moments like the first time I saw her. As if I
could ever forget....

     /The thick smoke smothering the back room of some swanky
nightclub in Rome that was beginning to annoy me. I wanted to
get the mission on and get it done with. They said I needed a 
partner for that one. I said give me a gun and three hours and I'd
show them how much I need help. But rank was pulled so there
I sat, trying not to cough by moistening my throat with a vodka 
tonic. The nightclub itself was a front for their operations
in that part of Italy- as fancy as anything the Godfather ever 
visited. In America, the Syndicate might perfer some semblance
of tact, but let me remind you that the Mafia was born in Italy and
old traditions die hard. 

     I looked up from a last minute inspection of my weapon to
hear the sound of footsteps at the door. The earth froze. She 
walked with a unconscious slowness, like she was some kind of
goddess deigning to grace us with her presence for a few moments.
Her dress was black satin and clung to her body like it was painted
on.
     I'm supposed to be a professional so I won't admit to staring.

     The American agent with her said her name was Marita and she
would be working with me that night. Our task was simple. One
of our agents planned on defecting along with everything he knew 
about our operations. She was the prettily wrapped bait, and I 
was the unpleasant surprise waiting for him after he took it. It
was no easy assignment. He would be paranoid to the extreme,
aside from being trained to watch for traps like the one we were
laying for him, and wouldn't even think twice about shooting her if 
he caught on. To top it all off, she was a rookie.

          On our way out of the door, one of the Italian agents 
remarked that it was a good thing she was new, since it'd be a pity 
to waste someone with more experience. I smiled. And told him if 
he considered life so cheap then maybe he wouldn't mind giving up 
his. He shut up. Quickly. I still don't know why I defended her like
that. It wasn't in my nature, to say the least. Maybe it was the look
I had seen on her face. Scared.....vulnerable.....even innocent in the
tiniest way. I had never seen that look on an operative before. I
have never seen it again.

     Once we got to the destination- another nightclub across town
where intel had pinpointed the Target. At least there I had an 
excuse for never taking my eyes off her. I was to keep surveillance
until she made the catch, so to speak. There was no small amount
of doubt among us that she could actually do it, and as I sat at the
bar watching her approach his table, I shared in those doubts.
She looked too soft, too fragile for this kind of work. 

     Then it happened. She didn't change.....she *transformed*.  The 
shy angel vanished and something entirely posessed her from the
very core of her being. Before I could finish one drink, she had him
on the dance floor and willing to do anything she so much as hinted
at. Believe me, she did more than play her part. She f-l-o-w-e-d 
around him like liquid energy, one second demure and the next
seductive. The silver light from the mirrorball slid over her skin 
to melt into her dress and her hair. For a few moments I was 
actually jealous of a man I knew was being led to his death. I 
remember wondering if it might not be worth it for just one dance
like that.

     But soon enough the music stopped and her adoring worshipper 
followed her into an alley behind the club where I shot him 
between the eyes. I don't know if it was inexperience or if she
didn't have enough time to move, but somehow she stood too 
close. Blood sprayed from his body to splatter hers. At first I 
thought she was going to throw up or burst into tears. Again, I was 
surprised when she did neither. She merely wiped the gore away 
from her eyes, congratulated me on the accuracy of my shot, and 
asked me where we were going to dispose of the body.

     That was when I, quite literally, *fell* into love with her because 
to this day I believe she pushed me. With nothing more than her
eyes./ 

     The vision fades and reality slams into me like a huge steel
fist to the gut. Why is the vodka suddenly gone? A surge of anger
rides my veins like chained lightning and I hurl the empty bottle 
across the room to shatter against the wall into a million glittering
shards. I hear the crash of breaking glass like it was the screaming of
her soul as they raped it and suddenly I am seeing our future in the
fragments littering the floor. Broken pieces of humanity left in
so many pieces it is impossible to ever be what we once were.

      Never.....Such a long, lonely time.

      I whisper a curse and pick up my gun, sliding it into my holster
before putting on my overcoat. Duty calls, beckoning me in her 
irresistible voice and I am powerless to refuse. 
     But it is still revenge. Never love. Never mercy.

     Yeah, sure, I believe that.

* * *

     One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six.....
     What comes next? I forget. At least the mystery gives me 
something to think about that doesn't fit into the category of
rational thought. Not that anything does, not anymore.

     One. Two. Three. Four. Five.....
     They took logic away from me the same time they took 
everything else. Time doesn't exist around my world. It stagnates, 
freezes, and binds me in still motion along with it. It stopped the 
first time I felt a needle sink into my bare flesh and it has never 
started again.

     One. Two. Three. Four....
     Light the sky on fire, consume the moon, devour space and all
that would remain is white. Ugly, corrupted, hateful white. I despise
the color. Brides wear it because they say it's pure but I'm bathed in
it daily because I'm not. No, my shade of white is harsh and cruel.
White lights blind me while they torture me each day with a new
kind of needle, a fresh drug, a different test. White walls laugh at
me when I cry or scream. White....like numb.....which I only wish
I could be. 

     One. Two. Three....
     My eyes rest in quiet contemplation of the heavy leather straps
binding my bird-like wrists to a bed. They got me a brand new
pair, thicker since I chewed through the last after an especially
painful experiment. They beat me too. Beat me and....other things....
then doped me up on heroine until I didn't care but at least I 
showed them. Proved I could still do the unexpected. You always
do that. The things they'd never dream you would do.....

     One. Two....
     HE taught me that, the man I never loved but dream of with
every waking moment. I would say every *day* but there are no days
here. Or nights. Only an eternal web of *white* that holds me
fast while the spiders feed off my blood ever so slowly until one 
day I will finally be all dried up and die. Oh but I want to die. Rest
in peace so they say, and more than anything I want one breath of
that.

     One.....
     One....
     My name is Marita...and....and I don't know what comes next.....
the numbers are gone, vanished back into the shadows of my 
diseased mind. But I know my name. I know I had a past. I 
know.....I know.....
     Even if I cannot find it.

     The demons inside my mind spin drunken cartwheels over
each other as I push against the iron gates locking coherent 
memories away from me. We have lots of demons here, all kinds
really, but they masquerade as humans in white labcoats or scrubs.
White again.....did you know it was also the color of angels? Irony
lives though the earth may perish. I used to dream of angels but 
then sleeping with devils and their spawn is no way to earn your
wings. All I ever wanted to do was survive. They promised me that 
if I was a good little girl and did everything they told me to, they
wouldn't hurt me.

     That was nothing more than a bitter lie from the start, even
before they sent me to rot in this end of ends. They hurt my soul
when they forced me to tell lies and kill simply because my body
could get me places even they couldn't gain access to. But they
didn't stop there. They hurt me in other ways too, after the 
missions were over and I only wanted to go home and forget.....
only forget....but that was never what happened. Instead I had to 
smile a smile that tasted like arsenic on my lips while the 
Smoking Man- my direct superior- and others of his kind took 
"full advantage" of my "abilities." It never mattered what I really 
wanted. They had the power, and if the only thing I had to win 
some of it for myself with *was* myself, the smiles had to keep on 
coming no matter how much I wanted to scream.
      I did scream, though, if only into the recesses of my mind 
while I died ever so quietly inside.

     So when I was introduced to a dark haired man with darker
energy and a slight Russian flavor to his voice by the name of 
Alex Krycek, I connected him with the rest and feared him as such. 
I didn't need to be afraid, not of him. Strange because everyone else
seemed to be, even the Smoking Man, just a little. He had such a 
wild unpredictability about him, one that gave credence to the 
whispers that he was one of the very few men living who had 
double crossed the Syndicate and remained a "man living". 

     I can only remember pieces of my so-called past, but the more
they strip my mind, the more the memories of our first mission
together remain sure. We worked surprisingly well together. I wore
a tight black dress while I seduced some unknowing operative into
the alley, and he wore black gloves when he shot the man in the 
head. We dumped the body in a river and went to a safe house 
to await our debrief instructions. I expected him to make the same
demands of me everyone else did. He didn't. Instead we sat and I
got my first taste of vodka while we.....talked.....

     "Who gave you those bruises?" 

     His voice was quiet, oddy thoughtful, as his fingertips brushed
my arm just above my elbow. I stiffened at his touch, pulling away
and staring down into half-full glass. 

     "What bruises?"

     "The ones on your left arm. The makeup did a good job of 
hiding them, but it's wearing off and I want to know who put them there." 
Why he asked, I didn't know. I didn't care. Everything that was common 
sense screamed for me not to tell him the truth, because I always lied to 
Them when I could. I broke one of my only rules when I said 

     "A man."

     "What man?"

     "He smokes cigarettes and controls my life." The freak had 
stood by smiling while his goons had "taught me my place" after
some sort of infraction, real or imagined I could never tell. He
never did like to get his hands dirty. Krycek listened calmly, the 
muscles in his jaw twitching  slightly, until I was finished. Then he 
picked up my glass, draining it in one gulp (a feat which amazed me 
because I thought the stuff was fire in liquid form) and didn't speak 
until he'd put it down again.

     "You shouldn't let him do that. Or anyone else. You deserve
better.....why do you let him?"

     Let him. Now that made me mad. I shouted right in his face 
that how could he understand because they didn't do that kind of
thing to him, and the choice wasn't mine to make anyway. He stared 
me right back with eyes that must have been born in the heart of a 
supernova and asked me in that same calm voice if I wanted to 
learn how to make my own choices. How to control the men who 
controlled me.

     I made my first choice.
     I said yes.

     That was an eternal three years ago. When we both were foolish
enough to believe we had a chance at life, at freedom, at each 
other. At first it was so beautiful, so much like heaven to share my
heavy fate with another. We did all we could to keep it a secret
from our controllers, meeting only when we went on assignment
together, which was more frequent than not. As I said, we worked
well. It wasn't all hot and heavy passion, though. Sometimes we
did nothing more than talk over a bottle of vodka, like we did that
first night. 

     (I found out how he lost his arm but he never told me in words
how he lost his soul. I only know that he believed he found part of
it somewhere inside me. Where, I'll never know.)

     Other nights we did nothing but sit and feel what it was like
to be near one another. Of all those crystal moments, the most
treasured were right we parted ways for who knew how long.
When we each silently wondered if this was the last time we'd 
see each other...feel....each other. We always chose to believe that
we *would* meet again, that the inevitable would be stayed by 
the power of our need alone. The same words were exchanged
each time.

     ("Are you going to forget me," I'd ask, "When they try and
erase me from your mind are you going to forget?"
     "I love you." he would reply. "I don't know how to forget it.")
     At times he sounded more regretful that he could not than that
he was leaving. But we never said goodbye. Goodbye meant we 
would never meet again. That it was over.
 
    In time our secret got out, but we tried to ignore it. I 
never mentioned to him the cost of our relationship. Never
told him what they did to me during the weeks or months when
he was gone and I had to return from missions alone to something
neither human nor gentle. But that secret was discovered as well,
one rainy night in September when we were in debrief after a
joint assignment.

     The Smoking Man decided I should stay long enough for a
more *personal* report. Alex was in the next room......he heard my
scream. Two heartbeats later he was coming through the door,
pulling the monster away from me and proceeding to beat the fear
of God into him. I think he would have killed him, if those 
security men hadn't closed in.

     Oh God, it was awful. The Smoking Man made me watch it
too. Alex was one of their best fighters. He took two of them
down- one of those two permanently- before they beat him to
the ground. And hit him. Again. Again. Again. I can still hear the
sickening dull thud of boots against fleesh. The Smoking Man 
laid his hands on my shoulders and asked me how long I was going
to let that go on before I cooperated.

     No, there was not a choice that time. I bowed my head and 
followed him out of the room like any obedient slave, trying to
ignore the crushed look in Alex's eyes. I knew he had put himself
on the line for me. I also knew he didn't do that for anyone. 
And in the moment our eyes tangled, I realized for the first
time that we could never be what we were meant to. Not in the life
we lived.

      Memory lane is a barren wasteland for me. I have no idea
why he's been on my mind more today than any other. Why 
the memories fade in and out with relative ease. I did have a dream
last night, an actual dream instead of the nightmares filling my 
brain when the lights go out. I dreamed that freedom would come
to me today, and that he would be the one to bring it.

     Dreams are but demented children of an idle brain. 

     Krycek may have been "Alex" to me once, but we are dead to
each other. As dead as I am. As dead as he is. He had his chance
to rescue me, when all he had to do was look the other way and
I could be free, but he left. Left me standing alone in hell. I hate
him for that.

      I say that with conviction, maybe to convince myself that
there is really no chance left for us. It is easy to hope. And I am
afraid of that, afraid to fall when those hopes are betrayed yet 
again. Perhaps in a way he did give me freedom today. Freedom in
the memories that usually run from me.
     The only kind, I fear, I will ever know.

     The time to think has been stolen from me. The door is opening
and the monsters are back and it's going to hurt again. I press
my body against the scraggly pillow behind me, despite the way
it stinks of disinfectants and try not to start crying as my 
muscles tense along my back. Despite my best efforts, I flinch
away as the door swings fully open and the unmistakable sound of
combat boots on tile announces my visitor's presence. My eyes
are squeezed tightly shut as I wait in chaotic darkness for rough
voices and rougher hands to drag me back into another penance
session. Back to Purgatory to suffer for the crimes I have done.
For the momentary silence to be shattered by screams I honestly
don't know how to hold inside.

     (I never did like pain.....that's why I surrendered my life to 
them in the first place......I can't stand......and here I am drowning
in it.....)

     Nothing is happening. It takes a frozen heartbeat for me
to figure out that my guest is alone and unmoving. A scientst? I 
shudder. Not that.....again.....please. Whoever it is, he's staring 
at me. It is a he, I'm certain. I can feel it in his eyes even though I 
can't see them, feel my skin start to burn under an intensity so 
much like.....No. It's not. It can't be. He never came for me though 
I used to believe and pray that he would. 

     But who else stared at me like he did, as if I were the ocean and
he was begging permission to drown in me?

     "Rita."
     Oh. 
     His voice. 

     Even if someone could capture his stare, they could never
mimic the paradox of rough softness in the way he says my
name. Not Marita or Miss Covarrubias. Just Rita.....

     My eyes fly open to see my judas lover standing at the
foot of my bed, perfectly unmarred and unemotional. I 
have hated him so many times in the past months. I hate him and I 
hate him, but nevertheless he takes my breath away. I am forced to 
remind my heart that beating is not an option as my cracked lips 
open in a dry whisper of his name.

     "Alex."

     So at last he's come. I thought I dreamed of this, but now 
I look into his eyes to see things which I have never named.
Almost pity, not quite mercy, a tinge of bitter hate, all 
wrapped in the dead emeralds that are his eyes. 

     Something that turns me cold.

CONTINUED IN PART 2