TM prompt #195, Heroes and Villains
Abigail invited me over to her house last night for dinner and a relaxing evening. We try to that every few weeks as long as work is not too strenuous. Sometimes at the end of the day it is all I can do to drive home and walk up the stairs. This past week has been light, our schedule as close to normal as it ever gets. Abby made Indian food, a specialty of hers. Sometimes on our dinner nights the others join us. If Tony comes we watch a movie. When it's the two of us and Jethro the evening usually includes a bottle of wine and hours of conversation about a wealth of subjects. Sometimes there are four of us and we play poker. Last night, being the two of us, we spent the time after dinner with a bowl of popcorn and the telly. It was Abby's turn to choose the show, and she decided to pick up where we had left off with Buffy some weeks ago. Yes, I watch a show called Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Abby teased me to watch it once, and I made a deal with her that she had to watch one of my favorite shows in exchange. As it turned out I rather enjoyed it. Very mythical, with story arcs that Joseph Campbell would be proud of. And there's always something to make me stop and think. In this particular episode it was a quote from the end, spoken by my favorite character:
The good guys are always stalwart and true, the bad guys are easily distinguished by their pointy horns or black hats, and, uh, we always defeat them and save the day. No one ever dies, and everybody lives happily ever after.
It was spoken, I'm sure you can guess, with complete irony. Even in the fictional world of Sunnydale things are not so black and white. In the real world they are even less so. There are no absolutes, know one to point to and say "they are the quintessence of evil" or "that man is purely good." Even a bastard like Ari protected his little sister. Even a hero like... well no, I don't think I'll mentions the foibles of those around me at the moment. Suffice if to say that not even Leroy Jetho Gibbs is without a few failings.
I meet heroes everyday. Some I work with, and they put their lives on the line everyday for truth and justice. Too many of them I don't meet until they are on my table. The villains are harder to see. They play in the shadows, act in the moments when people are weak. I can't always call one who does evil a villain. Mikel Mowers, for all that he almost ruined Abby's life, was a broken man not a villain. Janice set fire to a corpse and lied about it, but I can't call her evil.
I wish it was easier. Maybe that's why I stay down here in autopsy with the dead, giving answers to Jethro and his team instead of seeking the villains directly. They are more suited to the role of heroes. Will Rogers said once "We can't all be heroes because somebody has to sit on the curb and clap as they go by." Jethro, Tony, Ziva, McGee, and the others deserve far more applause than they will ever receive.