Going To Hell

You and I can rule the world.

Not from out in the open, of course, but then that's not really my style. We'd rule from the sidelines - you with your hard smile and bottle-red hair, me with my one arm and my pained smirk. It's just a handful of us now - just me and Fowley and the Smoking Man and a couple of others squirreled away. Your intelligence, sharp as a Bowie knife, could gut them with one flick of your wrist. With you by my side we can bring them to their knees.

But you'll never do it, will you?

You'll stay right where you are, letting him walk all over you and expect you to do little more than be a parrot for his half-assed ravings. You'll let him believe anyone but you - anyone who will stroke his ego, his beliefs and his cock with forked tongue.

I'm watching you now. I'm sitting here in a darkened room full of video and audio monitors, designed to watch you and a select few others 24/7. You're standing in the basement office which has been given back to you, watching him put his files back in his cabinets and his custom-designed chair at his desk and his pathetic newspaper clippings on his bulletin boards. Do you see a pattern here? HIS things. HIS things in HIS office.

Not yours.

Never will be, no matter how much you rationalize and tell yourself you are a partnership. You ceased to be a partnership when I watched you on camera, standing in that locker room and telling him that Fowley was a bitch. You're just another one of his things in his office.

I could give you an office. I could give you your own seat on a private plane designated for my use. I could have your name engraved on a plaque for the back of the seat, and a voice of authority and a warm place in my bed. Not that you'd ever take it.

And I could give you all the answers you could ever want.

You're not going to get them with him, you know. Whatever answers you try to find together, they will always be to his questions, not yours. You're going to have to be lying on a death bed somewhere, courtesy of however we've fucked you up THIS time before he'll listen to your questions and find your answers.

The dark side really isn't as dark as you think it is.

We could rule the world together, Dana. You could call me "Alexei" and I'd call you "Dana" and we'd be a genuine team. We'd bring whomever's left standing to their knees and only then could you get your answers, your goddamned JUSTICE. Because I hate to tell you this, babe, but your justice is sure as hell not going to come at his side.

I once told you that these men have no rules - that they make it up as they go along. Wouldn't you rather be the one making the rules instead of being subjected to them? You pretend to be the hunter, the angel on the white horse, but you'll always be Tonto, never the Lone Ranger.

You'll never be happy that way. You'll never find happiness in his bed, though you think you will. You've loved - or maybe just lusted after - him for so long that it's become routine. You don't even know why you think you love him anymore, do you? You think you'll never love me, or even LIKE me. Granted, I've never given you much of a reason. I'm a murderer, a liar, a coward - your three favorite words of condemnation for those who don't conform to your particular outdated view of humanity.

I won't lie to you. I am all those things. I've murdered before, and I'll do it again. I've killed the wrong people, later being grateful they weren't the right people. I've lied time and again, so often that the lies flow over my tongue like vodka. And I'm a coward, because I'm standing here telling you these things from the comfort of a closed-off, triple-bolted room.

Ah, but I know how to act. He doesn't. I know how to use those things to my advantage, to get my head out of my ass and DO things instead of railing against the fates like some goddamned Prometheus, always bound to my life even though I pretend that I can escape the chains and the fire lapping at my feet. I don't let my past consume me. I create my own future instead. Wouldn't you prefer to be an architect of the future instead of a harnessed relic of the past?

Wouldn't you rather be one who acts, instead of chained down with him? The fire burns your toes, doesn't it? But you know what, Dana? It's not your fire. It's his. You pretend it's yours, but you've just taken it from him and poured lighter fluid on his flame.

You love him but you hate him. And you hate yourself for loving him.

I could love you. Not the way you want to be loved, something from a girl's dreams, but as a woman. A fighter. A human being instead of an appendage. I've lost an appendage and I know that they are ultimately worth nothing. I prefer to create new wholes instead of taking on lesser ones. Don't let the plastic arm fool you - it's just a means to an end. Don't let yourself be the means to his end.

Come go to hell with me, Dana.

It's so easy, so very easy.

But you won't do it. You'll stand there watching the world go to hell around you... then you'll die along with the rest.

And I'll be the only one left standing.