-maladies of the body-

It was a powerful thing to discover she could cause pain.

She'd known it, maybe. It the back of her mind, mingled with all the other givens from training. She could get hurt, she could die, she could hurt others.

She could kill.

Pain was different. It wasn't hurt and it wasn't dead. It was in the middle somewhere, or not even related. You could shoot someone and hurt or kill them, but would they feel real pain? Gut-wrenching, heart-rending, vomit-inducing pain?

She was finding out.

His eyes glittered with the sense of betrayal. She recognized it, having seen it in the mirror one night months ago.

She was a traitor.

He believed it in, though. A phony cause, a lie created by liars.

The noble lie?

Her mouth twisted into a wry smile, looking at his dying body. His eyes, still defiant, still screaming why, fluttered closed. One last breath.

Pain.

She walked out the door, but she fed his fish first.

===

-ignorances of the mind-

She wasn't going to tell Scully everything she knew.

This was still a war, and they were still enemies.

Fox was probably dying. Scully probably knew it. Diana didn't need to say it.

She wondered, though. How much did Scully know?

She would ask, but that's not how the game was played. You never share information with your enemy.

She had questions. Why the rush? What was at stake? She would have asked if he hadn't lit a cigarette.

"Agent Scully is closing in on us."

She knew it. He didn't have to say it.

"Make sure she doesn't."

He let his hand graze her side as he walked out the door.

She choked on the thought that she wanted him to touch her more.

She put the book in an envelope and left it for Scully in the morning.

This was a war she no longer wanted to win.

And not long afterwards, bang bang.

Ignorance was bliss.

===

-passions of the body-

Black, low-cut, and tight. That's what he liked to see her wear.

She obliged so long as he left the prosthetic in the closet.

He liked her hair down and he liked to watch her undress. He had always been a voyeur and recently it had reached a fever pitch.

He liked to watch her slip her hand down her panties and tip her head back to moan. He would watch until she was close and make her stop; he liked the next bit best with his cock deep inside her.

Tonight he was gentle and kind, almost loving. She knew something was wrong.

He held on and his voice broke over her name when he came. He stayed above her and looked down at her, staring at her as if he wanted to say something.

He closed his eyes and she pushed him away. "Just do it, Alex. Don't let me get in the way of your job."

"Job. Right." He laughed drily. "I was thinking of it as penance."

"What's the difference? We sold our souls, we do as we're told."

"Come here, Diana."

She laid down next to him and he put his arm around her. His one arm.

She touched it. Kissed it. "Ever think that penance is a load of crap?"

"All the time." His fingers tangled in her hair.

"Do it quickly. I don't want to know."

"I didn't want this, Diana. But I have to survive."

"I would do the same, Alex. Just get it over with."

He didn't do it. Instead he fucked her again, and when she left in the middle of the night she felt worse than if he had pulled the trigger.

===

-seditions of the city-

He put the phone down and looked around the room.

"House Resolution 544 will require greater attention, gentlemen," he said, before taking another drag on his cigarette. "We will need to pressure Congressman Chambers further if we want to prevent tariffs on certain," here he paused, to attach gravity to his next words, "medicinal goods."

All that time in college spent protesting this congressional act or that presidential pardon, and it turned out that the decisions were made in rooms like these, and the outcomes determined by poisoned pens and a sharpshooter's careful aim.

She wished she'd known that before the sit-in her junior year.

She left the room and the cigarette-smoking man followed her. They walked out to the street in silence. She got to her car and he put a hand on her shoulder. She looked at him, beyond him.

"Hard to fathom, isn't it?" He stared at the cigarette in his hand for a moment before looking at her.

She shook her head, closed her eyes.

"We make their decisions, plot their moves, execute their enemies." He threw the cigarette on the ground. "It hasn't always been done this way. But now, with so many checks and balances, so much red tape....Diana, we have no choice. The world would not turn without
us."

After that, Diana never voted again.

She schemed.

===

-discords of families-

"You will have to leave him, of course."

Of course. Yes. It's for the best.

"It's for his protection, Diana. He must not know the truth. He is part of the plan."

To keep him safe. He can't know the truth.

She went home from that meeting red-faced from crying, and she could have sworn that Fox knew what was wrong the moment she stepped through the door.

"Diana, what...."

No, Fox, not now, please don't ask, let me lie down.

"Just a bad day, hormones or something. No big deal, Fox, I'm fine."

I'm fine. Everything's fine.

The world isn't on the fast track to destruction and you aren't somehow connected to all of it and I don't have to wake up one day and leave you or find you dead if I don't.

"I'm fine."

He held her awhile and made her sit down, brought her some tea and rubbed her feet.

Six months later she was gone, and there wasn't even time to leave him a note.

Six years later, she returned, and he was with someone else.

"I've done okay without you."

When the bullet entered her chest, she thought, so this is war. And oh, what it takes to make war.