Shadow
by Broken Angel
lost_angel4@hotmail.com




The cold anemic light of the streetlamp illuminates the pale sidewalk in
front of me, and casts ink-black shadows over the figure crumpled on the
pavement.

He is deathly still, limp and structureless, one hand flung out from his
body, the long fingers curled and unmoving.

I walk to his side and look down at him.  His head is tilted back, his
eyelids closed, the darkness of his lashes and mouth and hair spilling over
the paleness of his skin.  The smooth elegance of his neck is distinguished
by the complete absence of pulse.

I drop to my knees beside him, my eyes drawn to the sticky mess that used to
be his chest, muscles and ribcage blown into a dark, viscous pool that
stinks of blood and death, spreading out over the moon-pale sidewalk like
the wings of an angel.

I put my hand out and brush a strand of his hair back out of his face.  His
flesh is cold and stiff, the warmth of animation vanished from his body.  I
run a finger over his mouth, the chapped softness of his lips chilled by the
void of eternity.

If he were not so cold, I could look only at his face and believe he was
sleeping.

The shotgun blast that ripped away his chest destroyed the remnants of my
soul as well, the sharp splinters of conscience that remained hidden and
stabbing deep within me.  When his eyelids fluttered closed for the final
time, those shards of humanity dissolved as if they had never been.

The absolute emptiness in my soul leaves me unable to mourn, unable to
grieve for him.

But I can avenge him.

I lower my face and kiss his lips once, softly.  Straightening, I look
around me at the empty street, buildings staring hollow-eyed at the dead man
at my feet.  The city is grieving, mourning for the quixotic, obsessed
spirit that no longer dwells in the lean, broken body.

I close my eyes briefly, and when I open them again, nothing has changed. He
still lies dead on the ground, and the coldness of vengeance still burns in
my chest.  Without a backward glance, I turn on my heel and walk away.

They will find him, and there will be tears, and investigations that will
turn up nothing but killers who have all died in a series of violent and
painful deaths.

Scully will grieve, Skinner will swear and hit the wall in his office, and
that cancerous, nicotine-stained bastard will smoke a few more cigarettes
while re-setting some of the strands of his delicate spiderweb of plans.

And I... I will do the only thing I can.  I will exact a bloody vengeance
for his pain that shall never be forgotten.

I do not dwell in the daylight hours, can not testify against the man who
ended his life - after all, I am a creature of darkness, cold and vicious,
prepared to kill.  But I think he'd understand.  I think he will forgive me.

Only two lives have ever meant anything to me - his, and my own.  With the
loss of the one, there is no point in preserving the other.  I am only his
shadow after all, an empty, formless shape of darkness.

He was the solid form that gave me life.

Without him, I can merely take my hollow vengeance, deaths falling too late
to save the only thing in my life that was ever worth anything.  His quest,
the pure, untainted goodness of his obsession, gave me meaning.  If I could
preserve his life, I could preserve a part of my soul.

I close my hand around the grip of my pistol, feeling the feral smile that
twists my mouth upwards.  It's not enough to destroy his killers.  After
all, this beautiful man should have lived in sunlight, should have been
happy.  Instead, he lived in the half-light of a conspiracy that doomed him
from his birth, lived in the shadows that should have been my realm, with no
choice in the matter.

They will pay.  All of them.  That cold, cancerous bastard who gave him
life, the gathering of evil old men who twisted his emotions and needs to
suit their purpose - I will settle all of their accounts for him, wring from
their bodies the pain that he could not bring himself to ask for.

And then... and then, there will be one more account to settle.  My own.
Because I have betrayed him too, have allowed him to be mocked, hurt,
laughed at by those who didn't know any better.  Now that he is gone, when
all debts have been paid to his memory, I will pay my own.

What good can a shadow do, after all?


End