Do You Think

Do you think I asked for this?

Do you think that I laid on my back in green grassy meadows as a boy, watching fluffy white clouds drift across the sky and saying to myself, "I want to be a murderer when I grow up"? Do you imagine me knifing my teddy bear and shooting a BB gun at my pet hamster and tormenting stray animals for fun? Is this your vision of my youth?

Do you think I got those straight A's in college by cheating on tests and blackmailing my professors? Do you think I spent my time in quantico plotting and scheming how to undermine the system I'd worked so hard to be a part of?

Do you think I planned things this way???

Do you believe that I sought out Cancerman and begged him enthusiastically for someone to betray? And do you think I worked with you for those months without seeing the man who you were, regretting the things I was bound to do?

That's not how it was at all.

I thought I was being a patriot, a hero in the shadows, fighting corruption and strengthening the system from within, and by the time I learned otherwise it was too late. By the time I learned otherwise, I was committed, I was compromised, my fate was sealed.

Now I'll never know what it's like to be a hero. I'll never use the criminal science degree I worked so hard for. I'll never hold any sort of normal job, never walk down a street without looking back over my shoulder, never sleep without nightmares.

But what bothers me most is that I'll never know what it's like to be your partner. To be your friend. To stand beside you, work with you, having earned your respect and your liking. I'll never know what we could have been, if it had all been real.

At first you looked at me like I was a nuisance - but then I began to see kindness in your eyes, and the beginnings of acceptance, and if it had all been real, I might have someday seen so much more ...

Now all I see is fury and contempt as you chase me, as you punch me, as you attempt to drag me in for prosecution by the very system I'd once hoped to be a part of, and behind closed eyelids I see myself as a child with my toy badge playing policeman and wonder how the hell it all come to this.

I know there's no way for me to ever make this right. I can't turn back the clock and erase what I've done. Still, I keep searching for evidence, for something I can take back to you that will say, Look, I'm not evil, I'm not hateful, give me another chance. A futile hope, because you'll never forgive, and why should you? But it's the one thing that keeps me going - that hope of someday seeing again the faintest spark of warmth in your eyes.

That hope of proving that I'm not rotten all through, that I'm not a rat, that I'm just ... someone who did the best he could, and screwed it all up royally. The hope that someday you, who understands everyone else in the world, will someday understand me.

It would surprise you to know that, wouldn't it? Did you think I do the things I do without guilt, or shame, or remorse? Without hurting inside from knowing that I've forever lost the one person who could have mattered?

Well, that's not how it is at all ...