State of Grace: Bent (Michael)

by Irene Shafer

Title: State of Grace: Bent (Michael) (#3 in the series)
Author: Irene Shafer
Email: ibshafer@frontiernet.net

Rating: PG

Catagory: Michael and Maria

Disclaimers: the usual; I bow down to the “great” and powerful Katim's and company, by whose good graces I mangle these characters. . .
Summary: What followed after “Destiny’s” revelations; written in those first few weeks afterwards.

“If I fall along the way
pick me up and dust me off.
and if I get too tired to make it
be my breath so I can walk

If I need some other love
give me more than I can stand
and when my smile gets old and faded
wait around I'll smile again

shouldn't be so complicated
just hold me and then
just hold me again”
                -- Bent, Mad Season, Matchbox Twenty

* * * * * * *

‘Maybe because I love you too much. Goodbye.’

For once, would you please just listen to me?

Trust me on this one, OK? I’ve got a good view of what’s going on on the inside of my head. I know what I’m talking about and you do not want to know what’s happening in here. I mean it.

Nobody, Maria, nobody can get to me like you do. That can be a. . . a good thing.

I’m thinking right now that it can also be a bad thing. . . And I don’t want it to be.

OK?

After all these years of thinking I was this alien misfit, that I couldn’t do anything, I finally find out that I can. ‘Cept it isn’t something all warm and fuzzy like healing bullet wounds or tap-dancing through people’s dreams. No, when I finally find out what my Special Talent is it turns out that I kill people.

Great.

Just what I need. . .

Like I don’t have a hard enough time fitting in. . .

I’m thinking that this . . .this whatever it is, is something I can’t control. Maybe I’ll learn how.

But what if I don’t?

Do you get it, Maria? I killed a man today. And not the kind of ‘killed’ that Max and Isabel can fix. Dead ‘killed’.

What if one day you piss me off really good. Like giving me a hard time about, I dunno, something stupid like my hair, and I lose it. I’m not saying I’m gonna, but what if I do? And ‘poof’! Maria Gets a Big Charge. Film at 11.

Do you want that?

I sure as hell don’t.

Nobody. I mean, nobody has ever cared for me the way you do. Max and Izzy? They’re my family. Sometimes, I know, they’ve got that ‘we’re stuck with him, so we love him’ thing going on, and that’s cool. I know I can be a pain in the ass sometimes.

But, you?

You chose to love me.

Nobody’s ever done that before.

Kind of a glutton for punishement, aren’t you?

Yeah, yeah, I know. You’d be smacking me about now and giving me one of those frosty looks, but, see. . . how can I do this to you, how can I take a chance that I could do this do you, when you’re the first person on earth who loved me ‘cause they wanted to?

Shit, who loved me in spite of me. . .

I don’t know what’s gonna happen to us, to me, over the next few months, but three days on the run from Pierce and I’m burning up car engines with my freaking hand and sending government agents flying so hard across the room they break their necks. I’m guessing we’re not in for a walk in the park, you know?

Not exactly time for Good Michael. . .

I don’t know if there even is a Good Michael, anymore.

If it weren’t for what Max and Izzy’s mom said in the cave, I’d be planning to just cut out on my own. Get away from people. I’m too dangerous, Maria. I can’t trust myself around anyone. Who knows what I could do?

But the stuff we found out today. It’s big, Maria. I want to talk to you about it so bad, ‘cause it’s kind of scary shit and you have this way of taking the teeth out of things like that, but. . . but I can’t. I know you’re sitting at home, or maybe with Liz – I hope you’re with Liz, I know she’s feeling like shit right now, too – and you’re probably throwing darts at a picture of me. Or maybe you’ve got a little Michael voodoo doll with a pin stuck in its heart.

In fact, I know you do, ‘cause I’ve got this pain. . .

Look, Maria. This is how it has to be. You’ll get over me. Shouldn’t take you that long. Just think of all the crap I’ve put you through and add this last one to the top of the list.

And whether you believe it or not, I do love you. 

Sorry I waited until today to say it.

I just couldn’t let anything happen to you.

Maybe that’s bent, but it’s the truth.

I’m alone and that’s how it’s got to be.

fini