Title: Dark

Author: Caroline Corken

Fandom: Oz

Rating: R for language

Pairing: Beecher/Keller, Beecher/Vern Schillinger mentioned

Status: Complete

Archive: Yes to WWOMB. Everywhere else is fine to, just let me know about it.

Disclaimers: Not mine and never will be. And from what I've seen, Chris Keller owns Toby Beecher heart, mind and soul.

Note: Slight mention of rape and child murder.

Summary: Tobias Beecher reflects on the whys of the mistakes he's made in his life.

Author's notes: I've been absent for a while now, mainly due to some SOB breaking into my house and stealing my computer. My first Oz fic, so please, be kind and probably prepared for the characters being a little off. This story is for Louise because she kept talking about some B/K pairing I had no clue about, so she had no choice but to send me the tapes...

Dark
by Caroline Corken

All the torment, all the humiliation and pain and fear and *outrage* he'd felt. had just one day been too much to bare. Too much and all the time and even the sanest man would break in half..

God! Outside, outside had been better, where the air could rub your face raw, where the clouds could open up and soak you as you actually *hurried* to get to work instead of just this one time, just this fucking *one* time exposing yourself to every single sensation you were capable of and just *feeling* it. The chill of the rain hitting you.finding some sort of exhilaration in it simply because you were *alive*! Christ! When had he ever done anything simply because.

Looking up at the ceiling of his cell, Tobias couldn't remember the last time, in the real world, when he'd simply enjoyed being alive and all that it had to offer.

The birth of his kids were the only thing he could actually pin down to the sort of sensation he was grasping for. When they'd been born he'd vowed to protect them from every dark corner the world had to offer.

Instead, now, he lived there himself, while his surviving son and daughter were growing up in a world he was no longer a part of. Where the kind of blight that had reached out and taken their brother, his son... could stalk and hurt and inflict and go unchecked in their life because he *wasn't* there.

He sighed, rolling over on his bunk to look at the mirror on the wall.

He'd never been more afraid in his life when he'd walked through those gates and found himself in this man-made concrete and glass version of hell. Knowing as he'd stood in front of that Judge that he was a walking dead man as soon as she'd pronounced her sentence.

You see, he knew he was weak. Even now, after all that had happened, he still knew that.

Back then though, it had been a different weakness. One born of a comfortable life with rich parents, giving him everything he'd ever needed and he didn't just mean the money.

While he was growing up he'd heard other kids bad mouth their folks. Cursing them for every little thing that wasn't allowed. Shaded, hollow looks of children who had already been introduced to the darkness the world had to offer through the back of their mother's hand, or the closed fist of their father. Or so much more worse and so easy, so very easy to ignore.

Yet he'd been happy. Safe in their old house, cut off from the realities of a world that could rise up and tear you to shreds simply for not paying attention.

God he'd been such a fool. To think that he could go through life untouched by it in any real sense of the word.

Sure, he'd been a lawyer, but not a criminal one. Even then he'd managed to avoid that darkness, excepting his mothers words of wisdom when he'd timidly suggested to her that criminal law might be what he wanted to do with his life.

Once upon a time it had been easy to dull all the parts of himself that knew he was missing out. All those pieces that needed to know what the world was really like so he could survive it intact, reaching for the bottle simply because it was easier than just going out there and getting a real life.

Because he had had it all. Safe and comfortable and it was perfect and pure and clean and just not.this. Not Oz.

And in a drunken haze he'd killed an innocent little girl and had been forcibly introduced to the real world.

That was why he'd taken and taken and kept on taking all the abuse Vern had in him to dish out. Why it had been easier to resort back to simply dulling it down with the drug of choice. It was his punishment for being so fucking blind. He deserved it.

Maybe if he'd opened his eyes, looked into the darkness and accepted it out there in the real world, he wouldn't have needed to block out all the resentment he felt.

Of course, Oz changed all that. Showed him the error of his ways.

It was the light that was scarce in here. Little pools shining brightly and only for a moment in the dark, giving those lucky enough to see it a little of that God damn fucking hope before it was just gone. But not forgotten.

Then again, maybe that was just a trick of the dark.

So he'd snapped. Finally ready to face all the shit that had happened and was capable of happening in his life. He'd stopped being Vern's fucking little Prag. Grew himself a set of balls and found he had an edge all of his own. Crazy Beecher. He'll suck you off, but be ready to loose whatever you put in that little cock-sucker's mouth. Live dangerously.

The dark came to be a comfort to him. It stopped him from seeing all the good stuff, allowed him to survive, surrounded him and kept him real. Prepared. Alive.

He just wasn't prepared for it when it walked into his pod and fell in love with him.

Love. Who the *fuck* would have thought it?

Of course, being Oz, it just couldn't be simple or wonderful or all those other things people hope for in the real world. Chris Keller had come in and fucked him over big time. Breaking his fucking heart, the one thing he was sure had stopped beating the moment Vern Schillinger had stuck his dick up his ass and branded him all his very own.

Chris Keller.darker than any man had a right to be inside. In ways he was sure he would never be truly able to understand. Exposed and hungry for him, Vern's little ex-Prag, probably even more so after he'd broken both of Beecher's arms and legs.

Yet he could still.fucking.*love* the bastard.

That was the one thing he hadn't expected. That love was actually capable of trawling down through the mire, the hard, unsure, dirty places that was Oz.

But maybe the dark had it's own brand of love. 'Cause it wasn't like anything he'd ever felt for Gen. With Chris it was all passion and heat and 'Oh God!' and 'fuck yeah, like that, like that' and 'Harder, harder!' A desperate need and mutual dependence, a life turned upside down on a new and completely undiscovered basic human need to be able to be able to give up some of that semblance of control he'd thought he'd had in the real world. Made all the harder by so much to forgive.

But he had. He still wasn't sure why. Maybe because he was stronger now. Was capable of seeing that what he needed and what Chris needed where part and parcel of the same thing. To be able to throw this cloak of despair around themselves and make their own little world; someplace that had a feeble little light all of it's own, despite the darkness in the both of them.

Because the dark was all they really had in here. In Oz. Despite the light. And now, lying in each other's arms, it was all either of them ever really wanted.

The End.