Knock The Smile Off My Face (The Bends Remix)
"my baby's got the bends
"we don't have any real friends"
--Radiohead, "The Bends"
So when you wake up from a bad dream, or any dream, you either feel like your heart is crushing your lungs or else your abs hurt from pulling you out of a state near death to a gasping, sitting position. And if your entire life is spent in a constant state of waking, a constant state of discovery, you learn new things that make your heart swell or your abs hurt every single day.
How could he ever have been angry at Sydney? This table was shiny, black. How could he have hated her or anything more than he hated this room, this CIA officer. The one who was speaking to him in half-pleading, half-demanding tones, explaining to him what the world looks like right after your perspective's been shifted.
Marcus wasn't stupid. He got that and the officer was a fool if he thought otherwise. He wanted to sit down and take his good goddamn time thinking about this, about how the world looked and how your body felt when you were pulled out of the deeps up to the surface. He wasn't going to be rushed.
Oh, they were nice enough here, sure. They even let him go to the bathroom, and thank you Massa for it. But they were there to test his intentions, to find out if trusting him was safe. He didn't know if he was going to be safe or locked up for the rest of his life, and he rather resented other people trying to probe his goddamn mind to determine the threat he posed to them.
And then, a few hours later, he got to decide whether he liked the little one-room apartment they'd set up, and he hoped to God he did if they didn't trust him. He knew he liked it better than the room with the officer. At least Marshall was here, a friendly face, and he did not have to ask anyone for permission to pee.
He looked at the cell toilet and rather missed his bathroom at home. He looked at Marshall, and rather missed Diane. Diane, who just thought he was late from a business trip. Diane, who may very well pick up the phone and hear a CIA agent tell her he was being held for treason.
He missed Diane's trust so badly it burned. To have a wife that you could call just to say "I love you" and then come home late from a business trip and know that she'd not even suspect you of sneaking around with another woman, let alone sneaking around with the whole damn country. He could taste her absence in his throat, and wondered why he'd spent the last few years of his life being betrayed by a white woman who didn't even tell him what was what until things got to the crux.
But then, she did tell him. Him, and no one else. Sydney hadn't trusted Marshall; she had trusted her foxhole friend, the one with whom she had been in the thick of it. She had watched his back. She had blown her cover just to call for help for him.
Then why wasn't he good enough to know the fucking truth?
The day he had pulled up the Alliance data, that little whine constant deceit sounded in his solar plexus had swelled to a scream, and the scream was what woke him up. Not Diane kissing his cheek. Not the scent of coffee. Not even Diane swatting at the alarm, telling it to just shut up already, asshole, or the kids climbing into bed with them and clamoring for pancakes and turkey bacon and cinnamon rolls. And the wet that he is emerging from is suddenly all over his face, and collar, and he turns into his pillow because he'll be damned if he'll let their surveillance cameras watch him cry; it's bad enough that they get to watch him piss.
Marshall is babbling, even more nervously than usual; his face is wet also, but from sweat, not tears, and then one word breaks through, and the word is Sydney.
Dixon rubs his face against the scratchy cotton-poly blend and turns to Marshall. "What?"
"I was saying that everything's gonna be fine, right? Because Sydney is taking care of us, and she's always taken good care of you--well, I presume, I mean, it's not like you ever came back from a mission dead, ha ha, not that that's anything to joke about, right, but Sydney. She's one of the good guys, right?"
"I fucking hope so." The curse is just another word. Nothing else.
"I, I think she will be. I mean, we were helping her, by, uhm, not bringing her back from a mission dead or anything, I mean, you were doing more than the rest of us, all I could do is maintain the, uh, surveillance link, or cameras, or whatever, but you, you brought her back alive the whole time, so, so, it's like, really, it's like we were backing her up so the CIA could use us, was using all of us, to bring, uh, to bring down the Alliance, and--yeah."
Marshall is not used to having all the time to speak that he wants. Dixon looks at him.
"She'll, she'll take care of us, I really think, I mean, she wouldn't let us down, and--you know, you've got that whole 'He's Not Heavy, He's My Brother' thing going on with her, only in her case, it might be, like, 'She's Not Heavy, She's My Very Skinny Sister,' or something like that, but I, I don't really like the Hollies, I mean, that one song's okay, but I generally like heavier stuff...ha, heavy, not heavy...right, but they'll believe her, right, Dixon? I mean, we're innocent, right? She can do it, I mean, she can make them believe us."
Marshall's open, trusting face hangs there, so like Diane's in its expression and so different in color and bone structure and eye pigment, and Dixon's not about to have some goddamned we are all a rainbow of people experience, but he knows that trusting the people you work with is essential when you have to lie to everyone else, and Marshall's faith in Sydney, his own faith in her, and Diane's faith in him, in Dixon, all bring forth twin desires: to slay the Alliance, and to tell his wife everything.
"They're gonna ask us questions, Dixon. We're gonna tell them everything, right? Hey, do you think we'll get jobs here? Because I know my office, if I get an office, I mean, it might be a cardboard box in the subbasement, and I don't know if they took my inflatable chair, but--"
"You bet your ass, Marshall. We're gonna tell them everything."