Ryan Hardy

List your resolutions, and tell us how likely you are to keep them.

1. No alcoholic drinks
2. Take all my meds and follow doctors' orders
3. Exercise more
4. Try to be the man Mike believes I am

Pretty sure I've got the first three down. That last one... yeah, I dunno.

------
Muse: Ryan Hardy
Fandom: The Following
Written for charloft

His first kill, and he's angry but removed from it; holding the gun on his father's killer until the guy kills himself with the very drugs he stole the money to buy.

There are kills in the Bureau, but shooting the bad guy when they leave you no choice is just part of the job. More questionable when he's hunting Joe and his Followers the second time; not all of those are righteous kills.

It isn't until Giselle, knife thrust deep and her life's blood flowing over his hands, that he thinks he might finally understand the power Joe feels...

---------------
Muse: Ryan Hardy
Fandom: The Following
Word count: 100 exactly
Crossposted to DW at muserevival

Mike sees through some of them, especially small ones (first day they met and already he's covering for him with a mint), but bigger ones -- the ones he tells himself -- seem to be hidden better.

But there's still someone who sees through them. At times it scares him how well Joe knows him; how deeply into his twisted psyche the man can see.

He says it's Claire he loves, and they both know it hasn't been for years. He says death doesn't fuel him, but this is the most alive he's felt in a decade.

He can't lie to Joe.

---------------
Muse: Ryan Hardy
Fandom: The Following
Word count: 100 exactly
Crossposted to DW at muserevival

The problem with alcohol is that after a while, it just stops doing what he wants it to do. Instead of turning everything into a soft haze of oblivion, it brings things into a sharp, crystalline clarity that the usual clamor of conscious thought hides.

It's one of these times that it hits him like a fist to the gut, and he realizes exactly what Joe's up to. Hell, the man's practically told him in little words on at least three occasions already, and he's been too distracted by the rest of it to really notice.

Until now.

Playing their encounters back in his mind's eye, he realizes he should have known. Just like the first time they met when he should have suspected Joe from the start, he should have known. Joe's assertion that they would write this sequel together; the twisted smile on Joe's face as they dragged him out of the cell to set his broken fingers -- and especially the glee on Joe's face when he'd said he killed Rick Kester himself...

"You're not quite yet the man you need to be," Joe tells him. And he realizes now exactly what he means: Joe doesn't just want to break him. Joe wants to break and remake him, in his own twisted image.

Joe wants him to join him -- to become just like him and rule his twisted little empire of death at his side.

He shudders, forcing memories back down into their boxes, refusing to look his seventeen year old self in the eye. But every death -- every one he kills -- brings him a step closer to what Joe wants him to be.

And if he's going to be completely honest with himself (a practice he tries to avoid on most days), he can't deny a tiny bit of pleasure each time. Not that first one -- then he was... too scared and too hurt and too angry -- but the recent ones, yeah. But not pleasure at the actual act like Joe -- no, just relief and something close to happiness that another cult member is gone and won't be hurting anyone else. That's all it is.

It's just that Joe wants to twist it into something else -- something more.

Something sick.

He's terrified of what will happen if Joe ever learns about the lengths he's gone to to get information sometimes -- methods certainly not condoned by the FBI -- things that could be considered torture.

And it's netted results -- good intel they've been able to act on. Except that he really is worried that he's been resorting to those methods fairly frequently; a necessary evil for the sake of expediency. They can't wait for the slow methods to work... But he doesn't enjoy it. It's just-- anything to get the information they need to stop Joe and his cult. The ends justify the means.

Yeah.

He doesn't really know how to stop that progression, because it has been working so well. And he's a little scared that the only thing that might work is killing catching all of them.

What's going to be left of him by then?

---------------
Muse: Ryan Hardy
Fandom: The Following
Word count: 526 per WordPerfect
Crossposted at muserevival