Together

UTTER TRAINWRECK COMING YOUR WAY, HIDE IMMEDIATELY. Or, if you're brave, prepare to have your brain explode in lack of character development and Smooch Ex Machina.

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It wasn’t meant to be taken literally.

“Join me, John Shepherd,” Blake Blackheart told him, hanging over the glass floors of the very people he helped advance, the country he helped raise, all without reward. He was young and stupid. Generous in a corrupt world, bright and optimistic in an era opposed to enlightenment. Dumb, he knew. In retrospect, perhaps he hadn’t gotten any wiser. “We’re not different, you and I. We both wanted nothing more than to change the world, to make it a better place. But you can’t break concrete with soft words—you of all people should know that. The secrets in these computers, they speak no such softness. They will tear the ground apart. We can blow the whistle, together. It doesn’t have to end this way.”

John Shepherd scanned the room, staring at the images flashing on glass, the microchip in the villain’s hands. The government made him out as such an astounding figure, shrouded in robes of myth and legend. Blake felt his body tremble in front of the creature, the knight he’d long opposed, the angel he wanted to send falling down. His throat was hot with anger, his fists bulking with rage.

Tell me no. He licked his lips. Tell me no, you bastard, and just end this. Finish me already. It could only end in tragedy on his part, he knew. Even if he got the microchip in, Shepherd’s league probably cut off the connections from the satellites already. Or Shepherd himself would destroy it before it got to fully download. Something would happen, and it would’ve driven him back to a jail cell and gray PJ’s. Plot, Execute, Fail, and repeat until the end of time. They’d both be doing this until one managed to kill the other.

Shepherd turned to him then, a dull light ringing in his grey eyes. Blake recoiled, shielding himself for the signature ‘never’, a possible hero speech or an immediate take down, possibly both at the same time. He only said one word. One word, and it was all it took to break Blake down.

“Alright.”

Blake felt as if he’d been shot. Was he shot? Was that last part all just a hallucination from his dying mind? No, no. It couldn’t be. Shepherd was walking to him, right now, taking the microchip from his hand. He was—he was going to destroy it, right? That was it?

Looking at him one last time, Shepherd smiled, faintly. “I myself have never been fond of soft words,” He said, before entering the chip to the computer. “Though I do like whistles.”

…

He won.

Shepherd’s crew didn’t hold back the signal raining down on everyone’s phones, on all the glass screens, on all the radio waves as it smashed into the world like a hurricane. All the information Blake had gotten from blackmailing senators, spying the president, murdering innocent programmers was out, and it went out viral. For the first time since the two began their relentless battle, their bruised tango, he’d won. And he still felt like he’d lost something essential.

John Shepherd commended his actions publically, calling him a national hero (no, no, that wasn’t possible—Shepherd was the hero, not him) and the father of truth in the modern age. Publishers were flocking to his feet, begging for a book, a journal, an essay, anything to be published and be sold like hotcakes. He churned out three books in the course of two years, one of which he’d managed to sell the movie rights to. There was a substantial amount of criticism on how he got the information, but his actions paled in comparison to what the government was doing.

The newspapers loved him. The conservatives hated him. And the officials wanted his head.

Shepherd was dishonorably discharged from his place in the military, despite all he’d done in the past to prevent Blake from doing what he was doing now, and would never have a conversation with a respected officer again. He didn’t care. He came in one night, at the front door of the two story mansion Blake bought with the book money, a wheeled bag in one hand and a briefcase in another. He had a suit on. “I’ve been reading the papers lately,” He told him, with a smile on his face. “You know, they say if more heroes had bodyguards, they wouldn’t die as often as they did.”

But he was no heroes. He was Blake Blackheart. He was the man the world was supposed to hate, the merciless murderer, the Knight Templar, the crusader of a lost cause. And all of this—this attention he’d gotten didn’t understand that. He promptly denied Shepherd the potential job position, saying he could handle it fine on his own. But fate was insulted by his refusal, sending an army sniper on a tall building down the grocery store.

He woke up with two holes on his shoulders and two paper bags filled with flowers beside the IV pump. John Shepherd was lying on the empty hospital bed beside him, flipping the pages of 1984. “This was your inspiration, wasn’t it?” He started, without looking to check if he was awake. “That’s what the journalists say, at least. ‘We were living an Orwellian nightmare, and we didn’t even know it’. A bit pretentious, but nonetheless timeless.”

Blake scowled. “It was more the unethical human experimentation that worried me.” He replied. The atmosphere between the two was as viscous as tar. “Came to see if I died?”

Shepherd laughed. “Actually,” he sat back up, turning to Blake. “I’m here for my job.”

Blake Blackheart was released from the hospital ten days later, bringing a bodyguard back home. He prepared a half-furnished room for the man, and ignored him the best he could. Shepherd followed him wherever he went, like a lost puppy with a gun on his belt and a bulletproof vest. He wanted to kick the man away at first, until the second shooting, and the third, and the fourth. After that, he was more of a necessary annoyance than anything. Slowly, a peculiar comrade.

Then Blake became a human rights activist. It was a joke at first, something Shepherd and the press encouraged him to be, but it soon evolved into something serious. He was no longer Blake Blackheart, hacktivist, murderer and whistleblower—he was Blake B. Burke, reformed criminal against government secrecy, breaches of fundamental human rights and child abuse, advocating truth and mercy and toys. Somehow it made the government hate him more, and he was forced to wear a bulletproof vest himself, and Shepherd by his side day and night.

It was dream-like. It was surreal. And now, as he recalled it while sitting on his couch in front of the fireplace, absolutely intolerable.

Blake clutched at his fists, feeling the veins as the pumped out of his skin. “Bullshit,” He said, to nothing and everything, “This is all bullshit.” He stood up, pulling his blazer off his back and throwing it into the flames. The plastic motivational pins clasped onto it crackled under the heat, melting as the fabric turned to ash. “Bullshit,” He screamed at the flames, as if it had anything to do with his current state of mind.

“What’s bullshit, boss?” Shepherd reeled in from behind him, noticing the commotion. Blake turned to him, eyeing his next victim with death in his eyes.

“You,” He said, passing the couch as he charged at the taller blond man. “You’ve been bullshitting me since day one, haven’t you? How does it feel like to win? How does it feel like to have your mortal enemy all wound up and confused and pissed?” He laughed, venomously, pushing the other man roughly. “You think I’m stupid, don’t you? You think I buy these butterflies and flowers and all these—these lies? Well, guess what? I’m not buying any of it.”

Shepherd glared at him, perplexed. “Why would you say--”

“There’s something in it for you,” the dark haired, pale faced man said, shoving his face in the others’. “Someone’s paying you to do this, aren’t they? When I get comfortable with you around, I’m going to find a knife on my back, aren’t I? Isn’t that the plan, Shepherd? Isn’t it?”

John shook his head, grabbing him by the shoulders. “Blake, please--”

Blake gritted his teeth. His body trembled again, like the night everything changed, the computers flashing signs like omens. He was at rage again. He just didn’t know why. “Don’t do that,” He finally said, his voice cracking under the weight of his words. “Don’t act like we’re friends. Don’t fucking act like we never clutched at each other’s throats and prayed to God one of us would just die. Blackheart, Shepherd. Blackheart’s my name.”

The former soldier clenched his jaw. “That was a long time ago, Blake.”

Blake slapped his hands away, laughing bitterly at the man’s statement. “It wasn’t long enough to me,” He announced, gesturing to the room, the parlor he’d built for himself. “Look at all this, Shepherd. A cardboard mansion, the whole lot of it. A house of cards. And look at me,” He brought his hands down from his buttoned up shirt and his brown slacks. “I reek of charity money and orphanages. When did I ever wear white, Shepherd? Blackheart never wore white. He wore black shirts, black coats, white face and black bags under the eyes. When did I—whathave I become? Where did the public villain everyone loves to hate go?”

“Is that what you want to be?” Shepherd asked, astounded. “Aren’t you happy with how you’ve changed as a human being?”

“How could I be happy if I’ve never even been considered human?” Blake shouted back. He breathed in, quickly, letting his heart beat slow down. “How could I process any of this when I’ve always been treated like a punching bag? I’ve killed people, Shepherd. You don’t just go from being on the number one on a wanted list to an approval rating after that. I’m supposed to do time in prison, like all the others.”

“You have--”

“—But I haven’t paid for it,” Blake insisted, stubbornly. “I’ll never pay for it. You were the one who was supposed to be the hero. You were the one who was supposed to earn all this attention. I’m just a lousy crook. Back then, I thought I could defy that, but the more time you spend in this business the more you understand that image is everything. I was destined to fail. I was the foil that made you glimmer. I was the monster you were supposed to slay. And you—and you never did,” He stopped for a moment, glaring at the man. “You never gave me the chance to die the scoundrel I was born to play.”

Shepherd was quiet. A smirk edged precariously on his lips. “It took a few battles and couple of cuts, but I learnt quickly enough,” He said, coming in a little closer. “You never had the heart for that sort of thing.” He took a chance from the long quiet, bringing his lips to his. When they parted, Blake was trembling again—though it wasn’t out of rage. “Together, you said. It all depends on how you look at it, and I’m sure we both interpreted that word very differently,” He spoke, the smirk now evident on his face. “But I like my interpretation better.”