Damned Either Way
Title: Damned Either Way
Characters: Emile Danko
Rating: PG
Warnings: None
Word count: 650
Setting: Season 3, Turn and Face the Strange
Summary: Danko’s fear of getting too close battles with his fear of harm coming to the one he cares about too much
Notes: Written for terror_scifi fear fest, prompt: “Fear of People, General”.
It wasn’t really people he feared, but rather what happened when he was around them. If he got too close, revealed too much, let himself care … it always went bad. Horribly, terribly bad, in ways that had left him a shell of a man, a burned out husk that sometimes seemed animated solely by the desire for revenge. Other times, different but equally basic human urges would move him against his best interests. He hated those times. They left him feeling shaken and confused, questioning his sanity.
Emile Danko’s relationship with Alena had started off as shallow as any other that he’d had in the last ten years. He’d thought of her as disposable, just a way to sate his appetite. But she’d charmed her way into his heart with the innocence of a child. She saw the world as an understandable place filled with things that she was sure made sense if one was smart enough. She was a bit dim, but he loved her all the more for that. She was what he wanted the world to be like - safe in their ignorance, seeing him as a normal, almost clichéd working man. She believed his lies because any other possibility was simply too bizarre to be accepted.
He couldn’t accept what he’d seen - the weirdos, the deviants, the perversions of what-should-be - not in the deepest recesses of his heart could he conjure any tolerance for them. Oh, he could pretend, and he did, but these things were monsters. The world needed to be protected from them, so that people like Alena could live her life, carefree and happy. It let him rest easier, knowing that she didn’t know.
The cab pulled up at her house and he hurried out, giving the neighborhood a customary scan ingrained by long years of hunting and being hunted. Something was wrong. He could feel it, nagging at the back of his neck like the flipped up label on a cheap shirt. Over and over, his mind told him that Alena was in special danger, but it didn’t make any sense. He had a growing certainty that the real danger here was himself. His mere association was putting Alena at risk. If he truly loved her, and he did, then he needed to let her go.
That thought tore at the edge of his mind, unraveling it bit by bit like restless fingers pulling at a fringe of loose threads. He didn’t deserve her love and affection, not after all the things he’d done. He told himself that he’d be better off alone, but he knew as his hand rose to knock at her door that he wouldn’t be able to cut the tie. Not this time. He’d burned every bridge he’d ever been near, but this was too much. There was too much still human buried under the twisted, negotiable loyalty and convenient principles that filled his heart. He needed her banality after dealing with freaks of nature who could shoot laser beams out their eyes, or turn the air to chlorine gas. She was the only thing keeping him sane; yet he knew he was the only thing putting her in peril.
He knew he ought to walk away, precisely because he loved her. He ought to keep her safe, safe from what had happened to too many others he’d gotten close to in the now-distant past. He loathed his weakness, but knocked anyway. He had to see her. For a brief moment, he hoped she didn’t answer, wasn’t here (silly as that was, as it would only incite him to search for her). But then he heard her step across the floor as she came to answer the door. His heart sank, soared, and hammered in his chest all at once. His fear of what might happen to her rooted him to the spot. It would damn them both, he knew.