Chasm

You called me 'love', and my heart stopped.

Then you turned over in your sleep and I could breathe again.

In sleep you look so peaceful. No anger. No pain. Just calm, child-like innocence, with a smile to match.

I'm responsible for that smile.

Again I lose the rhythm of my fingers and begin to fumble with my buttons. Concentrate, concentrate.

There isn't much time.

While pulling on my skirt, I encounter an abrasion, a raised line of skin where your teeth tried to brand me.

I wonder why you bother. It's not like this is the first intrusion I have known, even with you. Your lips are just another brand, one more mark of ownership on flesh that has known a thousand others. And yet in the dark you reach out your arms to me and call me love, your darling girl, as though we are young and innocent, as though this is the beginning of our lives and not the end.

Love. You called me love, as if my body has never been taken or used hundreds of ways, thousands of times, more times than you can imagine, its fruits harvested and sold in a goblin market for the highest bidder. These things I vaguely remember, even when you lean over me and whisper hotly that I am to think of you, only of you, I remember the men, so many of them, all gloating over my skin. 'How perfect,' they said while slicing it apart, murmuring about recessive phenotypes and the need for cross protection like I was a breeder cow, no like I was so much meat and they the butchers calling to customers to come and buy. 'Look here, this is lean but tender, soft and tasty, perfect to cook that special dish' only the dish was my family the one we can never have and damn now I am crying.

Why do I bother? When somewhere inside me I can remember a time that I was whole and that is fine and that is good and I do not need to be torn apart again by your words and your voice and your hands and lips and mouth on mine. I can live encased in memory and do what I must to survive, to work for the day when I can finally die, when I have my revenge on those who did this to me, to us except there isn't an us and there never was.

You mumble again and I realize that you are still sleeping. You fell asleep in my arms; you who trust no one and who would kill at the slightest provocation, fell asleep next to me even though you know who I am and what I have done.

Why?

Why kiss me when all I issued you was a challenge? I asked if you really thought you could beat these men who are twice your age and command resources that you could never dream of and you took it as an invitation to kiss me.

Why do you confuse me like this? I could think of you as another assignment, just one more body to notch on my gun, but you persist on kissing me like I am something rare and precious. Even in your hunger you waited for me, tried to satisfy me, came undone in my arms as you waited for my fulfilment. Why must you be vulnerable to me?

For a while I tried to lose myself in you, to think only of your scent and your taste and the weight of you and forget the chasm between us. But even as you cried for me and crushed me close, I could hear the boy breathing in the next room, another reminder that I am not here by choice, perhaps would not even have come if I was free to choose.

For a while I was carried along by your passion and your strength and I didn't have to think of what I am supposed to do here, even though sex was part of the program, anticipated and allowed for by my masters. But again you changed the rules with your lips on mine, speaking my name like a prayer, but you don't believe in God so whom did you cry out to?

Waves crashing over me and I heard you call me love.

What do I know of love?

What do you?

You flip the world a finger and kill without hesitation. I've seen the pleasure in your eyes as you watch your victims beg for their lives, their families. I have traced your lips with my fingers and I know how exquisite they feel, but I have also seen them smirk as you pull the trigger, cutting short confessions and prayers in a shower of red. You lie and cheat and steal and refuse to consider any greater goal than yourself. Only you, my tainted Lucifer, only you could do all you do, unrepentant and still daring to call upon love as if you had either the right to expect it or the capacity to give it to me.

You told me the first time we fucked, that that was all it was and it could never be anymore, that this was just another way of getting back at the man who has kept you on a leash for so many years. I accepted it, this personal revenge because it was mine too.

But then you started calling me 'love'. Darling dear. Little girl.

I wondered why the words bothered me. Then I put them aside as just another invasion, another way to get to me, not the first, not the last. If you hadn't begun falling asleep in my arms, I would have done as I was supposed to and killed you in the end.

Instead, I bargained for your life.

Not a hopeless romantic impulse, but cold necessity. I knew that the leaders were close to guessing the truth about us, I also know that the best defence is a good offence. So I pretended it was a covert operation to gain your trust, a master stroke of genius from the thwarted lonely old man who smokes cigarettes and calls himself my master. He tasted of death and fear the night I tried to convince him of my sincerity, the night I played the part of the devoted submissive slave unable to resist temptation, but needing to escape its consequences. The role that he expected me to take, simply because he could understand and deal with it.

I will do what I must to survive, just as I have always done.

When you saw me, did you really think I had come to join you? That I would give up the chance to avenge myself and gain an honourable death for your absurd daydream that we can build a life together? Where? Among the wreckage of spaceships and lives that we destroyed singly or together? What right have we of all people to desire a happy ending, with sunset kisses over a picket fences and dogs running in the backyard? You were taught better than that, my love, much better than that.

There's the word again. Now you've got me thinking it and using it. Stay out of my mind, damn you, stop invading my senses and filling my dreams. Stop trying to make me believe, because I don't I can't and I won't. Not in you. Not in me. Not, especially not in love.

I can do this. It's easy. I've done it before. Post coitus, men are weak and silly. Lift the gun, point and pull the trigger and it's done, another red stain on the sheets to overlap the one in my memory, only this time it's not my blood and not my pain.

I should do this. It'll push me one step up the hierarchy and get rid of any lingering doubts they might have about my loyalty.

But you called out for me in your dreams. You spoke my name and reached for my body. You called me love.

And for the sake of one word I'll let you live. For now.

I move fast to avoid thinking, quietly to avoid disturbing you.

We are far away from the docks by the time I anticipate you will wake. Dmitri moans through his sewn up mouth and I have to stop and dribble water on his lips. Even I who have shed no tears for a decade, I am horrified at what you have done to this teenager for no crime but that he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. It is a harsh world we live in, but a merciful death is a better way of guaranteeing silence than stitching up his lips.

And after willingly mutilating a boy half your age, you can turn to me and speak of love. Show me with hands and lips and mouth that you mean what you say. And then prove your trust by holding my body close against yours before falling fast asleep.

Stupid, stupid Alex for trusting me.

Stupid, stupid Marita for letting him live.

And for what reason, Covarrubias? For a word spoken in the dark and a hand outstretched to touch mine.

This time I'll be lucky to get away with my sanity intact.

Love.

Huh.

You always *were* a liar, Alex Krycek.

But so am I.

So am I.