Alpha Bravo Charlie Rating - G Category - V Spoilers - glancing reference to "Demons" and "One Son" Keywords - none Summary - a conversation in the hospital Archive - yes, with the usual provisos Disclaimer - they ain't mine Feedback - sure Alpha Bravo Charlie by Lee Burwasser Hospital. Had to be. The smell alone was, well, diagnostic. He debated opening his eyes while he listened to a newly-familiar male voice. "Dana, you are not responsible for what you cannot control. He ran his own head into the dragon's mouth. That we got him out alive was God's own miracle." Nope. Keep those eyes closed. Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Dana. "*You* got him out alive." "*We*, Dana. The whole team, including you. We couldn't have done our job if you hadn't done yours. *He* should be begging *your* forgiveness, for putting you through this hell. And it's not the first time, is it? I heard that 'Ditched again!' when you realised what happened. How can he expect you to back him up when he runs off and ditches you?" "You're starting to sound like Bill." "Bill is a jerk," the male voice conceded. "But even a jerk can be right sometimes. Dana, you wouldn't indulge a child the way your do him. Why indulge a grown man? You keep taking responsibility for him, he's just going to stay irresponsible." "I *would* indulge a traumatised child. And that's what he reverts to: a traumatised twelve-year-old." "Then he needs treatment." "Like a hole in the head." Ouch! Did she mean--? "The last thing he needs is to be drugged into docility." "Not every shrink uses drugs." "The second-last is someone deciding he's got multiple personalities because he's been abused." "Maybe he does. I sure wouldn't recognise the jerk we had to rescue for the guy you've hero-worshipped for half a decade." "Charlie, you've been on *one* case with us. You haven't seen enough of him to *have* an opinion." "I've seen people working and fighting together. And I have worked and fought with enough people that I fit into your team well enough to retrieve a captive. And I've seen other things, too." A scraping sound, as though of a chair pulled across the floor. "Do you remember the time I told you about the seaman who killed his wife?" "You said it was up my alley. He was all broken up about his terrible temper, but the M.E. found bruises in different stages of healing. That gave him the idea of X-raying the arms for signs of old fractures. Defensive wounds." "Yes. And then they brought in a psychologist to tell us about the facts and myths of wife beating. How it's no more about anger or jealousy than rape is about sex. How it's about control. How there's a cycle of violence: rising tension, battering, honeymoon period, and around again. How some women have learned to incite the battering to get it over with and get to the honeymoon period; the only control they have over their lives is *when* they get beaten. How physical batterers usually start with emotional abuse and escalate to actual beating. But they've found recently that really savvy abusers don't have to get physical; they control their partners through psychological abuse alone." "What's all this to do with us?" Thanks, partner, just what I was wondering. "When a man hurts you, then is all hearts and flowers, then hurts you again, which is more likely? Multiple personality, or the cycle of violence? Dana, the mark of a battered wife is that she has been trained to blame *herself* for what he does to her. Just as you were blaming yourself for what he brought on his own head." "It doesn't have to be either. It can be a man so obsessed with his quest that other people don't always register." "His partner, his backup in his quest, doesn't register?" "He trusts me." "He's got you trained. To give everything, from supporting fire to nursing, and ask for nothing back -- not even consideration. He's got it both ways, the freedom of a Lone Fox and the convenience of a Girl Friday. Is that your ambition, to be a convenience? A self-maintaining tool that can be dropped in the mud and left out in the rain, and will always get back to its place on the rack for the next time its owner reaches for it?" "My ambition is to finish what the Resistance started and bring down the rest of the Consortium. Then deal with the Resistance." "Then it's past time you paper-trained your partner." ===== ===== EXERCISE FOR THE READER: at one point, Charlie uses Mulder's favorite fallacy, but this time Scully catches it. Where does this happen, and what is the name of the fallacy? Uhm, I don't have to say, do I, that "Alpha Bravo Charlie Delta" is radio-speak for "A B C D"? ===== ===== Lee Burwasser *working stiff--don't blame me for policy*