Fan Fiction: Geasa
Title: Geasa
Rating: PG
Summary: Ever wonder why Bailey joined the FBI? Here’s your answer.
A/N: The term “geasa” is a term used in fantasy literature. As defined by the “Changeling: The Dreaming” role players book, a geasa is “a quest or ban, and restricts or controls the individual in some way. Some geasa are created by an oath ... others are magically enforced. Once the geasa is laid it is extremely difficult to break. The only safe way to do so is fulfill the task required.”
A/N The Second: This is a fic I wanted to write for the "turning points" challenge but never got around to. Here it is now, better late than never.
As the bottle green forests of Vietnam melted away underneath the plane and Bailey Malone breathed a profound sigh of relief, he tried to force his too tense shoulders to relax. He was leaving Vietnam, leaving after two long years of recon missions, spying, scouting, and general skulking in the trees and underbrush. Two years of bad food, too little sleep, and an unrelieved tension that molded his entire body into whip-like tautness. Two years of watching his buddies blown away, or driven into high paranoia by fear and stress and homesickness. Out of the jungle once and for all, by the grace of God or rather, he admitted to himself, by the grace of shrapnel in his shoulder.
It was a fourteen hour flight home and Bailey slept fitfully. His dreams were shadowy and full of images that clung to the inside of his brain like sticky strands of spider webbing. He woke up covered in cooling sweat, his heart jack hammering. Looking around the inside of the plane full of wounded soldiers, all dozing under the pall of sedatives or their own exhaustion he wondered how many of them were dreaming the same dreams of hot breath on the back of their necks and the staccato tattoo of gunfire and flame.
Knowing he would get no more sleep, at least until his body shut down again from exhaustion, he rifled through the crates of food, water, and blankets the Red Cross had sent for the home-bound troops. Inside he found several magazines and American newspapers. He opened the paper and the newsprint swam in front of his eyes.
Newspaper. How long had it been since he’d read a newspaper? He got the news, of course, the troops all did. They knew of the major events from home-MLK’s assassination, Bobby Kennedy’s assassination, Nixon’s election as president. But the little things, the every day goings-on of his country, the new trends and music and food were things he had not been privy to. The newspaper in his hands contained more information about the place he’d be going back to than he’d ever dreamed. He opened it eagerly and stared hard at the date.
July 1970. Had he really been in the jungle for two years?
Troops were still pulling out of Vietnam. That was all over the papers, of course. That held no interest for Bailey- after all, he was part of that news. Nixon’s politics didn’t hold his interest either. But the other large item splashed across the front page did-- a murder trial in southern California. The headline read “Helter Skelter Motive in Slaying.”
Bailey read with interest about the man named Charles Manson, about his crimes, which were brutal, and his bizarre followers and their antics at the trial. He read the side bar on Helter Skelter, Manson’s twisted philosophy, and the goings-on of the trial. He scoured the paper for more information and came up empty.
Desperate to know more, morbidly, insanely curious, he looked around the plane for one of the Red Cross workers. They’d been home for the last two years, they would surely know something.
A man in his mid-forties sat in one of the jump seats in the side of the plane, right next to a crate of food and water. He, too, was reading the paper. Bailey moved across the aisle to sit next to him.
“Excuse me, do you know anything about this article?” Bailey asked, pointing to the article about Manson. “About the man in it, I mean? About the crime he committed?”
The man shook his head sadly. “Can’t live anywhere in the continental US and not know about it. Awful crime. Butchered a movie actress, eight months pregnant, killed her house guests. Killed another family down the street, some Italian family, I think, wrote on the walls in their blood.”
“That man?” Bailey shook his head, staring at the photo. “He doesn’t look strong enough to kill all those people.” In actuality the man looked like he couldn’t carry his own groceries to the car without keeling over- at least that was what the picture conveyed.
“Oh, it wasn’t him who did it,” the medic continued, laying down his paper and giving Bailey his full attention. “He didn’t lay a finger on ‘em. Got his ‘family’ to do it. That’s what he calls them. His family. Everyone else calls them followers, disciples. Got plenty of them, too.”
He shook his head and furrowed his brow. “People been acting real crazy since the trial started, people on the street outside the courthouse everyday, holding up signs, making noise, wanting to see him. He’s got crazy eyes.” The man shuddered. “Gives me the creeps. Can’t see how anyone would want to follow a man like that but I suppose they did. They sure killed those people for him. They sure liked his ideas and all.”
He looked at Bailey with a puzzled expression. “How do you think he managed that? Got all those people believing he’s some sort of guru or something? How does one man do that?” He frowned slightly. “Can’t even get my wife to listen to me, much less anyone else.”
Bailey didn’t answer, just drifted back to his seat and sat there in the semi-dark, thinking, wondering.
How did a man get so many people to do what he wanted? How did a man convince people to kill for him, to go to jail for him? What was he doing? How was he doing it? Was he drugging them? Was he nice to them? Cruel to them?
The questions bounced off the back and sides of his skull, keeping him awake in fevered contemplation.
Charles Manson. Genius? Mad fool? God? Man? Insane? He carved a swastika into his forehead using a white hot needle. How could any sane man do that? Unless he was a sane man trying to look insane. Expert manipulator, that was certain.
Bailey stared out the window at the horizon line. The sky was turning the shade of blue velvet and the stars were sprinkling slowly out into the sky. His shoulder throbbed- the worst of the shrapnel had been removed in the hospital in Vietnam but he’d have to wait for exploratory surgery at home in New York before all of the metal could be taken out and the damage fully repaired.
He got up and stretched, opened a bottle of water and settled back down with the magazines, where he began reading every article about Charles Manson that he could get his hands on.
***
The plane landed at Fort McPherson, Georgia at 6am. The men were ushered off the plane and into the sweltering southern heat, some limping on their own, others lifted off on stretchers, all dazed from the time change, the hours on the plane, and the growing knowledge that they were, finally, out of the jungle.
Bailey blinked at the growing light of dawn and slung his duffel bag over his uninjured shoulder, walking quickly toward the base where a phalanx of uniformed brass waited to welcome the men home. His mind wasn’t on the military and its debriefings and rules and regulations. He was thinking about a man, three thousand miles away in a jail cell, who had more power and influence, even over a small group of people, than Bailey would ever hope to have.
***
He would realize later in life- aided by the razor sharp probing of his mentor, Douglas Windam, and some eerily insightful prodding from Sam Waters- why he had joined with the Bureau so soon after his return to the States. It was not, as he publicly claimed, born of a desire to help the people who couldn’t help themselves (though interviewing the families of Manson’s victims when he was a trainee at Quantico helped re-enforce that desire). His real motive, the one that lay tucked deep in his subconscious was to gain back the power he felt he had lost from his years in Vietnam.
Ordered into the top branches of a tree to lie still and silent for hours, trained to drop down with the subtle dark power of a panther on any target that moved, Bailey had felt helpless, weak despite the power rifle with the night scope that he held in his hands. His orders were so explicit and so carefully crafted to leave no room for interpretation, that they bound him to the tree as effectively as a geasa in one of the Irish tales his mother told him as a child.
He’d spent two years in the jungle fighting for “the greater good,” the saccharin term the government used to justify policing the entire world, and he’d felt no sense of satisfaction in “fighting the good fight.” In fact, he found himself cursing the military every day that he was there, resentful of his pledge that held him in the jungle, fighting in the greasy sweaty darkness night after night in a war that might never end. He’d longed to go home. He’d longed to climb out from under mountains of orders.
He remembered the moment in the hospital after his shoulder surgery when he was reading one of the “quickie” paperback books that had been hastily published about the Manson murder spree and the trial. It was detailing the ways in which Manson controlled his followers and the how they exhibited their devotion to him during the trial.
He remembered staring out the window and wondering, for a moment, what it would be like to be a god in someone’s eyes, to be the source of power and inspiration in their universe. He remembered feeling, in that one reckless moment of self-loathing and anger, something akin to jealousy for Charles Manson, a man who was a god in the eyes of adoring followers, a man who had no rules and structures and regulations to hold him back, a man who had spent the last two years doing whatever he felt like while Bailey had been stuck in the jungle, tied to a rifle, and plagued by the buzz of death in his ears.
Then the moment passed and he was sickened. How dare he be envious of this twisted man and his evil lifestyle? How dare he think that Manson, serial killer, was akin to a god when in reality he wasn’t even worthy to spit polish Bailey’s shoes! Manson wasn’t a god! He wasn’t even human! He was a monster, a killer.
“Aren’t you a killer, too?” a small voice asked in the back chamber of his brain. “Didn’t you kill Vietcong and innocent civilians, all under orders, all in the dark with rifles and knives and bare hands? Are you any better than he is? Are you really that much different?”
With that voice slaloming in the back of his brain, Bailey stared out his window at the white hot August sun until his vision went white and the images of the jungle burned away from behind his retinas. He pressed the morphine pump and drifted into a painless sleep, and when he woke up his vision had cleared and his shoulder no longer ached.
***
Bailey left the hospital three days later and drove immediately to the FBI field office in Atlanta.
In a strong voice he asked to speak to the agent in charge of recruiting. Introduced to Douglas Windam, he was asked why he wanted to join the FBI.
“Sir, I want to contribute to the greater good. I want to make sure people are safe from the Charles Mansons of this world. I want to make sure people like him cannot hurt anyone ever again.”
Rating: PG
Summary: Ever wonder why Bailey joined the FBI? Here’s your answer.
A/N: The term “geasa” is a term used in fantasy literature. As defined by the “Changeling: The Dreaming” role players book, a geasa is “a quest or ban, and restricts or controls the individual in some way. Some geasa are created by an oath ... others are magically enforced. Once the geasa is laid it is extremely difficult to break. The only safe way to do so is fulfill the task required.”
A/N The Second: This is a fic I wanted to write for the "turning points" challenge but never got around to. Here it is now, better late than never.
As the bottle green forests of Vietnam melted away underneath the plane and Bailey Malone breathed a profound sigh of relief, he tried to force his too tense shoulders to relax. He was leaving Vietnam, leaving after two long years of recon missions, spying, scouting, and general skulking in the trees and underbrush. Two years of bad food, too little sleep, and an unrelieved tension that molded his entire body into whip-like tautness. Two years of watching his buddies blown away, or driven into high paranoia by fear and stress and homesickness. Out of the jungle once and for all, by the grace of God or rather, he admitted to himself, by the grace of shrapnel in his shoulder.
It was a fourteen hour flight home and Bailey slept fitfully. His dreams were shadowy and full of images that clung to the inside of his brain like sticky strands of spider webbing. He woke up covered in cooling sweat, his heart jack hammering. Looking around the inside of the plane full of wounded soldiers, all dozing under the pall of sedatives or their own exhaustion he wondered how many of them were dreaming the same dreams of hot breath on the back of their necks and the staccato tattoo of gunfire and flame.
Knowing he would get no more sleep, at least until his body shut down again from exhaustion, he rifled through the crates of food, water, and blankets the Red Cross had sent for the home-bound troops. Inside he found several magazines and American newspapers. He opened the paper and the newsprint swam in front of his eyes.
Newspaper. How long had it been since he’d read a newspaper? He got the news, of course, the troops all did. They knew of the major events from home-MLK’s assassination, Bobby Kennedy’s assassination, Nixon’s election as president. But the little things, the every day goings-on of his country, the new trends and music and food were things he had not been privy to. The newspaper in his hands contained more information about the place he’d be going back to than he’d ever dreamed. He opened it eagerly and stared hard at the date.
July 1970. Had he really been in the jungle for two years?
Troops were still pulling out of Vietnam. That was all over the papers, of course. That held no interest for Bailey- after all, he was part of that news. Nixon’s politics didn’t hold his interest either. But the other large item splashed across the front page did-- a murder trial in southern California. The headline read “Helter Skelter Motive in Slaying.”
Bailey read with interest about the man named Charles Manson, about his crimes, which were brutal, and his bizarre followers and their antics at the trial. He read the side bar on Helter Skelter, Manson’s twisted philosophy, and the goings-on of the trial. He scoured the paper for more information and came up empty.
Desperate to know more, morbidly, insanely curious, he looked around the plane for one of the Red Cross workers. They’d been home for the last two years, they would surely know something.
A man in his mid-forties sat in one of the jump seats in the side of the plane, right next to a crate of food and water. He, too, was reading the paper. Bailey moved across the aisle to sit next to him.
“Excuse me, do you know anything about this article?” Bailey asked, pointing to the article about Manson. “About the man in it, I mean? About the crime he committed?”
The man shook his head sadly. “Can’t live anywhere in the continental US and not know about it. Awful crime. Butchered a movie actress, eight months pregnant, killed her house guests. Killed another family down the street, some Italian family, I think, wrote on the walls in their blood.”
“That man?” Bailey shook his head, staring at the photo. “He doesn’t look strong enough to kill all those people.” In actuality the man looked like he couldn’t carry his own groceries to the car without keeling over- at least that was what the picture conveyed.
“Oh, it wasn’t him who did it,” the medic continued, laying down his paper and giving Bailey his full attention. “He didn’t lay a finger on ‘em. Got his ‘family’ to do it. That’s what he calls them. His family. Everyone else calls them followers, disciples. Got plenty of them, too.”
He shook his head and furrowed his brow. “People been acting real crazy since the trial started, people on the street outside the courthouse everyday, holding up signs, making noise, wanting to see him. He’s got crazy eyes.” The man shuddered. “Gives me the creeps. Can’t see how anyone would want to follow a man like that but I suppose they did. They sure killed those people for him. They sure liked his ideas and all.”
He looked at Bailey with a puzzled expression. “How do you think he managed that? Got all those people believing he’s some sort of guru or something? How does one man do that?” He frowned slightly. “Can’t even get my wife to listen to me, much less anyone else.”
Bailey didn’t answer, just drifted back to his seat and sat there in the semi-dark, thinking, wondering.
How did a man get so many people to do what he wanted? How did a man convince people to kill for him, to go to jail for him? What was he doing? How was he doing it? Was he drugging them? Was he nice to them? Cruel to them?
The questions bounced off the back and sides of his skull, keeping him awake in fevered contemplation.
Charles Manson. Genius? Mad fool? God? Man? Insane? He carved a swastika into his forehead using a white hot needle. How could any sane man do that? Unless he was a sane man trying to look insane. Expert manipulator, that was certain.
Bailey stared out the window at the horizon line. The sky was turning the shade of blue velvet and the stars were sprinkling slowly out into the sky. His shoulder throbbed- the worst of the shrapnel had been removed in the hospital in Vietnam but he’d have to wait for exploratory surgery at home in New York before all of the metal could be taken out and the damage fully repaired.
He got up and stretched, opened a bottle of water and settled back down with the magazines, where he began reading every article about Charles Manson that he could get his hands on.
***
The plane landed at Fort McPherson, Georgia at 6am. The men were ushered off the plane and into the sweltering southern heat, some limping on their own, others lifted off on stretchers, all dazed from the time change, the hours on the plane, and the growing knowledge that they were, finally, out of the jungle.
Bailey blinked at the growing light of dawn and slung his duffel bag over his uninjured shoulder, walking quickly toward the base where a phalanx of uniformed brass waited to welcome the men home. His mind wasn’t on the military and its debriefings and rules and regulations. He was thinking about a man, three thousand miles away in a jail cell, who had more power and influence, even over a small group of people, than Bailey would ever hope to have.
***
He would realize later in life- aided by the razor sharp probing of his mentor, Douglas Windam, and some eerily insightful prodding from Sam Waters- why he had joined with the Bureau so soon after his return to the States. It was not, as he publicly claimed, born of a desire to help the people who couldn’t help themselves (though interviewing the families of Manson’s victims when he was a trainee at Quantico helped re-enforce that desire). His real motive, the one that lay tucked deep in his subconscious was to gain back the power he felt he had lost from his years in Vietnam.
Ordered into the top branches of a tree to lie still and silent for hours, trained to drop down with the subtle dark power of a panther on any target that moved, Bailey had felt helpless, weak despite the power rifle with the night scope that he held in his hands. His orders were so explicit and so carefully crafted to leave no room for interpretation, that they bound him to the tree as effectively as a geasa in one of the Irish tales his mother told him as a child.
He’d spent two years in the jungle fighting for “the greater good,” the saccharin term the government used to justify policing the entire world, and he’d felt no sense of satisfaction in “fighting the good fight.” In fact, he found himself cursing the military every day that he was there, resentful of his pledge that held him in the jungle, fighting in the greasy sweaty darkness night after night in a war that might never end. He’d longed to go home. He’d longed to climb out from under mountains of orders.
He remembered the moment in the hospital after his shoulder surgery when he was reading one of the “quickie” paperback books that had been hastily published about the Manson murder spree and the trial. It was detailing the ways in which Manson controlled his followers and the how they exhibited their devotion to him during the trial.
He remembered staring out the window and wondering, for a moment, what it would be like to be a god in someone’s eyes, to be the source of power and inspiration in their universe. He remembered feeling, in that one reckless moment of self-loathing and anger, something akin to jealousy for Charles Manson, a man who was a god in the eyes of adoring followers, a man who had no rules and structures and regulations to hold him back, a man who had spent the last two years doing whatever he felt like while Bailey had been stuck in the jungle, tied to a rifle, and plagued by the buzz of death in his ears.
Then the moment passed and he was sickened. How dare he be envious of this twisted man and his evil lifestyle? How dare he think that Manson, serial killer, was akin to a god when in reality he wasn’t even worthy to spit polish Bailey’s shoes! Manson wasn’t a god! He wasn’t even human! He was a monster, a killer.
“Aren’t you a killer, too?” a small voice asked in the back chamber of his brain. “Didn’t you kill Vietcong and innocent civilians, all under orders, all in the dark with rifles and knives and bare hands? Are you any better than he is? Are you really that much different?”
With that voice slaloming in the back of his brain, Bailey stared out his window at the white hot August sun until his vision went white and the images of the jungle burned away from behind his retinas. He pressed the morphine pump and drifted into a painless sleep, and when he woke up his vision had cleared and his shoulder no longer ached.
***
Bailey left the hospital three days later and drove immediately to the FBI field office in Atlanta.
In a strong voice he asked to speak to the agent in charge of recruiting. Introduced to Douglas Windam, he was asked why he wanted to join the FBI.
“Sir, I want to contribute to the greater good. I want to make sure people are safe from the Charles Mansons of this world. I want to make sure people like him cannot hurt anyone ever again.”