"Through a glass, darkly" by Pellinor RATING: PG CLASSIFICATION: A S SUMMARY: As he awaits his victim, a gunman is driven towards insanity by "memories" that don't appear to be his own. ____ DISCLAIMER: The X-Files and its characters are the property of Chris Carter, 1013 Productions and Fox, and I torture them without permission but with no mercenary intent. FEEDBACK: Yes please. And to all those people who now think I'm evil incarnate for my refusal to write a sequel to "Cry in the dark" (no, this isn't one) - this time, while _I_ think this story stands by itself, I _can_ see a way to a sequel, if people want one. ********** The visions were strong that night - pictures clawing at his mind, searing his vision, choking his breath, his thoughts, his life. "No!" He couldn't speak aloud, although all his being wanted to scream his protest at the treacherous images that refused to leave him a minute free from their lies. "Leave me alone!" A silent hiss through gritted teeth, one hand clamped to his temple, fingers and thumb digging into the sides of his head until the muscles trembled and the pain lanced from his fingertips. "Go away!" Whisper, whisper.... Never speak. Mustn't speak, mustn't scream, mustn't shout. Silence, although every second of silence is a throbbing agony. Silence.... Dark room, dark night, dark life. The shiny feel of a gun in his hand, damp now with the sweat of his aching fingers. A gun. A bullet, ripping out of the dark, tearing a life away in a welter of red, a face twisting in pain. And _he_ would be the one... My fault. Death. Blood. Death.... My fault. Why was that feeling so familiar? But it _had_ to be. A life for a life. A death for a life. That was the price. Someone would die, but he would be free. Free.... Hiding in the shadows, silently waiting. Soon.... Blood. Death. Pain. No! Don't think of that. Quick. Say it quickly. Don't think of.... of _that_. Say it quickly, so the words don't have time to reach the mind. Say it.... Hiding in the shadows, silently waiting. Soon.... Soon the door would open and they would come in and he would point his gun at their head and pull the trigger and the person would fall to the ground dead and he'd be free. Simple. But the visions were blinding now, filling his world like the flash of a camera, a series of dazzling photographs. Flash. Crouching in another dark room, alone and terrified, blood on his hands. Someone was dead - a man - an older man - someone close and yet not close. Blood on his hands as he held the phone, as he dialled the number, his fingers pressing the buttons as if that number was the most familiar thing in his life. He was scared, grief-stricken, sick, but there was still hope. _She_ would answer the phone. _She_ would know what to do. _She_ would help him. Who? "Go away! Leave me alone! I don't know you!" He was rocking to and fro in the dark now - _this_ dark, not the treacherous dark of the visions. The gun had slipped from his hand, and his arms were wrapped around his knees, holding himself together as the pictures assailed him. "Go away! It's not...." Flash. An empty room full of people. Camera flashes, red lights pulsing on the street, men asking questions, taking samples, doing.... nothing. Empty, empty room. She was gone. Blood on the glass of the coffee table, a battered phone on the floor, her message ringing in his ears. And blood on his hands again. Always blood on his hands. "No!" He ran his trembling hands across his face, half-expecting to feel the moist stickiness of blood, but they were clean. But soon.... Flash. Sitting in the dark, a gun in his hands, despair and hatred in his heart. The hands of the clock crawled round - a minute, a second, an eternity. The gun on the table, his eyes on the door, waiting.... Soon _they_ would come, the people who'd killed her. They would come, but he'd be waiting and then they'd pay for what they'd done. And then....? He was as much to blame as.... "No!" He leant back hard, letting the pain jolt through his skull as it hit the wall again and again, trying to force the lies from his mind. "It's not true! It's not true! It's not me!" But who are you? "I'm.... I'm...." He frowned, tears of concentration running down his cheeks. Why did he have to fight so hard to get the true memories when the lies came so readily? Who am I? "I'm...." "Your name is George Davies." He sighed, feeling the relief wash through him as that voice, the true voice of his memory, spoke to him across the weeks, taking him back to that day the nightmare had started. "Your name is George Davies." Her voice had trembled and her eyes had been red-rimmed with crying. "You don't remember?" "I.... " His voice had been hoarse, strangled by the rising panic he'd felt as he'd groped in his memory and found nothing but a dark empty room full of terror. "I don't remember anything!" "It's okay, honey." She'd reached over and stroked his face, a strand of her long dark hair brushing across his face. "You've had a nasty accident, but the doctor says you'll probably remember soon. I'll look after you." He'd tried to smile then, but inside the terror was holding him by the throat and squeezing until he felt dizzy. "It's wrong, it's wrong, it's wrong!" He'd bit his lip until the blood welled out, desperate to stop the words from escaping, to stop himself from flinching from his wife's touch. But it _had_ felt wrong. It _still_ felt wrong, even now he'd seen the proof, even now he knew that the doubts - everything he'd been feeling - were the treacherous lies of madness. Opening his eyes in the hospital bed, looking up at the white ceiling, hearing the gentle pulsing of the monitors, feeling the needles in his arm, he'd slowly turned his head to the side, trying to focus, expecting to see.... who? He hadn't known, he didn't know - but _not_ her. That woman - his wife - she'd just felt.... wrong. Her hair on his cheek, dark, curly, smelling of peaches.... Wrong. Another colour, another smell.... Her hand on his brow, pushing back a lock of hair from falling into his eyes.... Wrong. Someone else.... Her lips on his lips, a lingering kiss as she prepared to leave.... Wrong. _No-one_.... Wrong. All wrong. But he hadn't known then what he knew now - hadn't seen the wrongness for what it was. Then, he'd still clung to the illusion that he was sane. And so he'd screwed his eyes tight shut, clenched his fists until the muscles ached, and hoped, wished, prayed that the nightmare would end. "I'm George Davies!" he'd shouted, over and over, willing the unfamiliar syllables to suddenly click into place and seem right, watching the nurses' faces turn from understanding to irritation to pity. "I _am_ George Davies?" And then he'd taken to grabbing the nurses by the hand, feeling them stiffen with uneasy wariness, pleading with them to set the doubts at bay. "I am, I am, I am." The words muttered like a statement of faith, his constant companion over the past few weeks, repeated day and night from that first evening to this dark night now. "I _am_ George Davies." But it had never felt more wrong than it did now. "Of course you are. Why would we lie to you?" Another voice from his memory now, taking him back to that second morning in the hospital when his throat had been raw from a night of terror. His wife - _Linda_, he reminded himself, although he could never say the name without it catching in his throat with the unfamiliarity of it - his wife had returned, but this time had brought with her a man - a middle-aged man who brought the smell of smoke in with his clothes and who spoke as if there were untold volumes of meaning behind his words. "You're in the best possible hands here," he'd said, his fingers twitching as if they wanted to hold onto a cigarette. "We were talking to the doctors and they say you'll be free to go home in a few days, just as long as you keep taking the medicine." And then his eyes had flashed a warning, and he'd known that the nurse had told him what had happened earlier - how he'd screamed and fought, still more than half lost in a nightmare, and had refused to let them inject him, insisting that they would make him forget. "Home?" he'd managed to stammer, wondering why this man made the sweat come out on his brow in little cold prickles of dread. Was this man his father? Flash. Cold, distant, the smell of whisky and cigarette smoke. Arms raised to embrace, but meeting only a formal handshake, their hands touching briefly but their hearts driven thousands of miles apart by the weight of over twenty years. "I'm sorry, Dad." The words from the vision were louder and more insistent than the words of the people who'd spoken to him, shaken him, tried to recall him to reality. Tears on his cheeks, his voice cracking. "I'm sorry...." And that had been the first - the first of the lying visions that haunted him with picture of people that had never existed, words that had never been spoken. It had been a needle that had stopped it, then. A cold needle, stabbing into his arm, spreading the drug through his veins, driving him into a safe sleep of forgetfulness where he'd been lulled by the urgent whispered words that had hissed around him. ".... remember.... he is...." That had been his wife, her voice distorted, though whether by tears or by the pulsing waves of drowsiness that washed over his senses, he couldn't tell. "Don't worry....." The man with the smoke-hardened voice. ".... drugs.... remember.... everything.... right." Everything.... right. Everything would be all right. Everything would be okay. And so he'd been able to relax, to take a deep breath and let the darkness claim him. It would all be okay..... But it hadn't been. "Oh God!" he groaned, resting his head on his bent knees, feeling the darkness wrap itself around him. He was curled in a corner, hiding in the dark, hiding from himself as much as from the person he had to.... to.... Flash. Blood on the doorstep, a torrent of red around the dying face. She lay on her back, on her front, on her side.... Flash, flash, flash - changing images, flickering in ever more terrifying imaginings, as if this was a scene he'd never seen but had heard about, had visualised in a thousand painful ways. Dying on the threshold, a bullet in the brain, killed by someone who'd hidden in the darkness, waiting for.... "She died for me." That voice again - the voice which haunted all his visions. Eyes red with crying, hair shining in the sterile room as she stared at an empty bed, her body fragile yet determined as he pulled her close and comforted her. Blood on the threshold, blood on his hands.... "No!" It took all his strength not to cry out, not to shatter the silence with the force of his torment. He _had_ to let it out, but not by shouting - not that. Instead he let his fingernails shout his anguish, digging into his palms until the blood trickled down to his wrists, warm and sticky. Blood on his hands.... He'd dreamed of blood that night in the hospital, the painful vision slicing through the soothing sleep that the drugs and the man's words had enveloped him in. Blood in his sleep, blood in his waking visions.... Blood.... and that aching terrifying feeling that everything was wrong. "Were you dreaming?" The man again, his lined face a mask of concern although his eyes had been unreadable. "I... I...." But he'd been without words to express the horror that had still clung to him from the dream. "Everything will be all right." The man's mouth had curled upwards in a ghost of a smile. "We'll take care of you." But the man's words had faded in and out of his hearing, his face flickering and changing and becoming the same but different - a face calmly smoking as someone pointed a gun at it, smiling with the knowledge that the gunman was too weak to kill him. "You gave us quite a fright," the man had continued, his voice velvety, his eyes like flint. "We won't let you.... slip away like that again. We'll keep you safe." And then the man had smiled, his smile shattering the image of the gun into a thousand pieces, leaving him wondering why he was so ungrateful as to imagine someone trying to kill this man, why he was so treacherous as to shudder at his proximity. "Who.... who are you?" he'd stammered, desperate to hear the true facts of his life, hoping they would drive away the visions. "I'm a friend of the family," the man had smiled. "And," he continued after a pause, "your boss." "My boss?" _That_ hadn't seemed right. "What.... what do I do?" Talk to me, tell me, explain.... His mind had been reeling in panic, suddenly desperate to know everything. Learn the facts, know the truth and something - _something_ - would seem familiar, would prompt his memory and end this nightmare. "National Security." The man had straightened his back, raised his head, his face etched with pride and certainty. "You work for me, and _we_ work for the country." "When can I go back?" He'd felt suddenly desperate to go to work, desperate to do something - _anything_ - that would make him feel useful. Lying in bed, dependent on others for life, sustenance, even his name, was a nightmare of impotence. The man had tilted his head to one side, considering. "Well, until your memory's back, there's little you can do. But there are a few things - one thing in particular...." And then he'd smiled a smile that had sent chills running up and down his spine, although he'd known it was wrong to fear this man - his boss, his old friend. Wrong.... But _this_ is wrong! He was back in the dark room again, back in the present, the gun on the floor beside him as he screwed his eyes shut against the visions, tried to shut his ears to the little voice whispering in his ear. "Go away!" Fresh blood trickled on the drying blood on his hands, but this time it was not enough and he spoke aloud, hearing his voice as a clamour in the silence of the apartment - a silence that would soon be a pall for the dead. "This is right_!" He banged his head on the wall again, trying to drive out the voices - voices which shouted and nagged and cajoled, telling him that this was wrong, that the man was wrong, that his promise was not to be trusted. "It's _right_! And then I can be free!" When had it started, the road that had led him to this dark place? That first time in the hospital, when they'd drugged him, the first of many times, trying to help him drive away the visions? No, not then - for after that, for days after that, the man had still spoken as if he was sane, as if he'd get better, as if everything would be all right.... as if there was still hope. No, it was after that, days after that, that their manner had changed when they'd looked at him, when they'd stopped talking about "when" he got his memory back and had talked about "if". He'd been home by then. Home - soft carpets, warm walls, a wife, a cat.... no children. Pictures on the mantelpiece - himself, her.... separate but never together. Warm house, but.... empty.... cold..... a terrifying empty cavern devoid of memory and life. The day he'd been discharged from the hospital had been the last time his wife had smiled. "Come on, honey." His wife's unfamiliar presence at his side, supporting him as he climbed from the car. She'd still felt wrong - taller than she should be, smelling wrong. "I've asked some friends round to welcome you home." Leaning heavily on her arm, he'd taken a step forward, then another - slowly, shakily. Someone opened the door and he'd stepped inside, feeling his heart pound, feeling the terror course through his veins, feeling as if he was stepping into a prison rather than his own home. "Welcome home!" A chorus of dark voices, a ring of faces, staring.... Staring.... Flash. Dark suits, eyes of steel, voices harsh with the chill of death. Alone at the end of a long long table, his eyes still itching, his throat raw from.... what? "You've gone too far this time. We're closing you down." A smile of pity from the man who spoke, but the other men, staring from the shadows, had smiled, and their faces were the same as..... "No! You can't! Leave me alone!" He hadn't known that he'd shouted aloud until he felt his wife's hands on his shoulders, shaking him back to reality. "It's okay, honey. It's just our friends coming to welcome you home. I'm sorry." These last words had been addressed to the room at large. "It's too soon. He's still very sick. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have invited you." And she'd tried to smile her apologies, and the men had tried to smile their acceptance, strange smiles on their lips as their eyes had looked at him as sharp as knives. But after they'd gone she'd sighed sadly, wearily, and had seemed reluctant to touch him. "I must remember. I must!" he'd said to himself over and over, seeing her face turned away, hearing the impatience in her voice. But he hadn't. Instead, the nightmare had started to engulf his every waking moment. Hours, days, weeks.... Sinking further and further into.... what? Insanity? He hadn't dared to voice that thought, but slowly, relentlessly, the visions had overwhelmed him until at last there was no other option. Opening the refrigerator, reaching for an iced tea.... Flash. A dark street. A car. And _her_ - the woman, her hair burning like a brand in the darkness, her eyes full of sincerity, friendship and.... "I don't know you!" he'd shouted, dropping the bottle, feeling the glass cut into his bare foot but not caring. "Go away! I don't know you!" That had been the first time he'd seen her. Since then the woman - the devil with the fiery hair - had tormented him, forever in his visions, trying to drag him into the quagmire of insanity. Smiling, crying, shouting, frowning - he'd seen her in every form, use every wile to drag him down. And he'd been powerless to resist. Waking up, wincing from the pain which had taken weeks to go away.... Flash. Her face bending over him, her lips moving in words he couldn't quite focus on, not just yet. His shoulder hurt, his mouth was dry - but she was offering him water, she would make everything better. Always there for him, looking after him, even though he didn't deserve it.... "Go away!" Looking after him. Making everything better. That's what she wanted him to think, but he hadn't been taken in - he'd known it was just the voice of a deceiver trying to distract him from the truth. Oh, he'd asked his wife, described the woman and asked if this was some memory trying to emerge, but she'd frowned, her face full of hurt. "You married me at 20, while we were still students," she'd said, showing him the documentation to prove it, "and you haven't spent a night away from home in all our married life, apart from those few days in the hospital. There's no way all those so-called "memories" could be true." But that hadn't kept them away. Soon he'd dreaded every waking moment, dreaded every minute of sleep, knowing that the visions could come at any moment, prompted by any false trigger. He'd scarcely dared to look, to listen, to smell, knowing that the slightest thing could lead to a terrifying descent into the nightmare. It had come to a head a few days ago now. November 27th. He'd woken up, looked at the calendar, and then.... "No! No!" He had no idea how often he'd screamed that word, but at last his voice had given up, all the sound scraped from it by the force of his terror. A girl, her face twisted with screaming, calling out a name.... whose name? Why had it filled him with such horror? She wasn't calling for _him_. This was nothing to do with him. "Leave her alone! Take me instead!" Someone had come in, their footsteps like a death knell on the wooden floor, and he'd run to them, pounding at them, tears flowing down his face as he'd begged and begged.... And then something had stabbed into his arm and everything had gone dark "I can't take this any more." The first thing he'd seen as he'd drifted towards consciousness was his wife's eyes, red with weeping. "Wha... what?" His own voice had been like a little rustle of paper, lost in the pounding in his head. "What happened?" It had always been like that after the drugs. The visions that had seemed to real, so insistent, faded to a vague shadow of memory. It was only now, now that he sat in the dark and waited, that the full memories of those terrifying experiences were coming back to him. "I can't," his wife had repeated. "God knows that I've tried, but you need more help than I can give you. I've called.... someone. They'll take you away to somewhere they can look after you and make you better." "No!" he'd croaked, all the sound he could muster with his raw throat. "I'm not crazy!" But his wife had only shaken her head sadly, tears trickling down her cheeks, and he'd known that she was right. "Can I talk to him?" A voice from the shadows, the smell of smoke in the air. And that was when it had happened - the deal - the promise - the chance of freedom. It was then that all the threads were brought together, drawing him inexorably to this room, this night, this.... death. "Listen! Think! Remember!" he urged himself, feeling his mind begin to stray. "Remember why you're here. Remember why this is right." Remember.... "She's right, you know." Smoke in his throat, choking him, making him want to scream. "I was here. I saw everything. And don't forget everyone who saw what happened when you came home. They'll back her up as well." He'd shut his eyes, wishing he could die, wondering if life had always been this.... nightmare. Had he ever been happy? Maybe this was nothing - maybe his memory had gone because he'd blanked out an even greater trauma. Maybe forgetting was best. But if that was so, then what was there to live for? "She's taken a lover," the man continued, relentlessly. "She has.... connections. If she has you committed, she'll make sure you never get out. You'll be in there for life." Then he'd paused, taking a deep breath of smoke, surveying him through eyes of steel. It was only then that he'd realised that the terror he'd felt earlier had been nothing. Blood had run down his chin and his palms, but he'd had no voice left to scream with. "But...." The word, hanging like a sword over his head, promising.... threatening.... what? "But...." The cigarette had twisted firmly in the ash tray - a cruel movement, like gouging a man's eyes out. "But... There's something you can do for me." A sudden smile, like a grinning death's head. "And if you do...." The tension had pulsed in the room, the blood pounding in his ears. A long, long silence of terrible suspense as a flame flared briefly then died. "If you do...." A breath of smoke from the new cigarette. "I will make sure that doesn't happen. I have.... contacts too. I promise you, you will be well taken care of, and.... well, perhaps we'll get what we've always wanted." "What?" No sounds had come out as he'd mouthed the question through his bleeding lips. "What do you want me to do?" Anything. Anything to end this nightmare. Anything.... "Kill someone." Anything? To get his memory back, to put a rest to the visions. Anything? "No!" How had it been possible that there was any fresh horror he could feel? The man had raised his hand, urging silence. "Let me explain. This person is a traitor. They've been working to undermine the country. They.... If they were arrested they should be sentenced to death anyway, but it would cost the people hundreds of thousands of dollars to try them, and if they managed to hire a good lawyer...." His face had twisted with hatred, letting the sentence hang. "But.... murder?" He'd not been so desperate yet that his stomach hadn't churned at the thought of killing someone in cold blood. "Not murder. Justice." The man had said. "Look at the suffering people like this have caused." Then he'd opened a briefcase, pulling out sheaves and sheaves of photographs. A man, body charred so it was scarcely human, lying next to a bombed train. Another man, seen from a distance, face unrecognisable, dead on a bridge as someone bent over him. Several soldiers, hideously burned, lying dead in an emergency room as the doctor looked at them in despair.... And more.... Lots more.... Deaths, each one more hideous than the last. "These people were all working for National Security," the man had continued, although his face had floated in and out of focus as the dead and pain and blood had flashed in visions before his eyes. "But this person and their associates caused all this by their actions." Death... Flash. A bridge at night. Cold, tense, breath condensing into little drops of moisture in the crisp air. And a woman.... who? Not the woman from his visions, though he sensed she was there somewhere too, but another woman, with long brown hair and a strange expression on her face, as if she knew what was going to happen and had accepted it. But a man was holding death at her throat, his eyes sharp as a knife. She was going to die. She was going to die, and his grief filled the whole night, rising up and catching him by the throat, choking the life from him. "No!" Oh God, oh God! Grief... bereavement. Seeing a loved one ripped from life. Seeing death. How many of the people in the photographs had left loved ones behind? How many lives had been torn apart by these.... monsters? Oh God, oh God! Make it go away, Make these pictures go away. I want them to go, and I want to kill the person who's done all this. I want.... "Yes!" Suddenly the visions fell away and he was deadly serious, clear-minded and earnest. "I'll do it." And the man had smiled. "It's right! It's right!" he repeated now, trying to drag those pictures back into his mind, trying to remember the hatred that had flowered then, leading him to this room. "I _must_ kill him, then it will be okay." But it didn't seem right at all, and the visions crowded in so close that he couldn't think, couldn't breathe. Flash. Smiling in a hospital bed, a gold cross hanging from her fingers.... Flash. Taking him in her arms as he cried for someone else, some other place, his body bruised and his heart full of guilt and despair.... Flash. Sitting there, proud and defiant, parrying accusations with lies, covering for him, saving him.... Footsteps in the hall, clicking of heels... He reached for the gun, scarcely able to keep his hand steady, knowing that he _had_ to. Kill the person - kill him and then go free. Drive a bullet through the visions that had deprived him of hope, of happiness.... of sanity. Keep calm, keep calm, keep calm.... Flash.... "No! Not now! Not ever! Not now!" His left hand curled into claws, raking down his cheek, drawing blood, using pain to drive away the vision, to drag him back to the present. A key in the lock. Metallic rattle, every noise drawn out into an eternity of waiting. Soon. Soon.... A few seconds, and they'd be dead and he'd be free. Blood. Blood on his cheek. Blood on his chin. Blood on his hands. Blood.... Light, slanting across the dark as the door opened a crack, then further, more and more, until.... Raise the gun, breathe deeply to stop the shaking.... Think! Think! Aim! Just a few seconds... A footstep on the floor, echoing in his head. Step.... Step.... . Soon. Just a step more.... into the light. Silhouette against the light of the hallway, hand about to reach for the light but cut down just too soon. Come on! Come on! Just one step more? Why did he pause? What could he sense? Step.... And then he saw him. Not _him_ after all. Red hair shining in the light from the hall, shoulders sagging with defeat and despair, breath catching in her throat as if tears had been her constant companion for weeks. _Her_ The devil from his visions, come to claim him, come to drag from him the last vestiges of sanity. _Her_ "No!" The gun fell from his hand with a crash as he shut his eyes against the sudden light, curling up into a little ball to hide from.... Little. Make myself little. She won't see me. She'll leave me alone. Then I can be safe. She spoke - a word, a name? But words meant nothing now - words only spoke in visions to deceive. Words were nothing. There was nothing..... A hand on his shoulder, shaking him. A hand on his forehead, stroking him. A hand on his body, pulling him.... And all the while warm wetness was falling on his face, dripping, dripping..... If I open my eyes she won't be there.... If I open my eyes she won't be there.... If I open my eyes she won't be there.... Eyes wrenched open, slowly, slowly, blinking in the light. But her face was still there, and she was smiling, even though the tears were falling as if they'd never stop. **********