The Swing of the Pendulum
By Severina

Michael is a pacifist.

He has always been the peacemaker. You let them take advantage of you, his mother said, referring to his brothers, or his exes, or his bosses, all in equal measure. The thing that she didn't understand is that a person can't be taken advantage of without his consent. Michael never feels manipulated or exploited. He is a natural mediator. Michael wants a smooth road. Michael wants everyone to live together in harmony. Michael believes in the vision of a world without flags, without borders. Michael believes in peace.

He stands, lips pressed together, while Julia rages that he will never be good enough, strong enough. He will never make enough money. He will never rise above the menial jobs that he wanders through, unsettled and unsatisfied, year after year. He watches as she flings clothes into a suitcase. Brown suitcase, one of the set she'd bought last year, when he'd got the promotion at Tastee Freeze and they thought maybe, just maybe, they'd have enough to go on a real vacation.

Michael remembers that it was he who wanted the brown. And thinks that it matches the beige walls, the taupe carpet. It matches him. Julia is all bright colours and bold shades. Cherry nails that slash the air as she moves. Crimson lips that bite.

He wonders how they ever fit.

When she spits out the final insult, when she tells him about the affair, he can only close his eyes and clench his fists, and breathe deep, and think that it's not a surprise. Not a surprise at all.

Mary drops the boys off every Wednesday, and alternate weekends. At first it was difficult getting the time off work -- Saturdays are the busiest sales day at Best Buy, and he works on commission. But he has an understanding boss. And he puts in double time on his other shifts, and he's the best salesman they've got. It all works out. He watches the boys, filled with exuberance, as they run into the boxy living room. These weekends are when he is happiest.

Mary gestures with her chin toward the shaded porch, and he reluctantly leaves the boys roughhousing inside to talk with her. David is being picked on at school, it seems, and somehow in the gospel according to Mary, this is Michael's fault. Michael must teach David how to defend himself. Some basic boxing moves. He can't keep turning the other cheek. There are times when violence is necessary.

Michael listens and nods, and waves as Mary drives off in her new Subaru.

That weekend, he and the boys use his grandmother's tablecloth and the pillows from the sofa to make a fort. He teaches them love and respect and tolerance. The boys never laugh so much as when they're with him.

He blinks his way through a shower -- 7am comes far too early the older he gets. He shaves and shrugs into a pair of brown slacks and a white shirt, nothing fancy, just another Thursday at work. Big sale coming up on the weekend. When he first hears the commotion outside, he doesn't give it a second thought. Danvers just getting home from his evening bender, again, and Mrs. D threatening to slap him into next week, and how will they pay the rent if he keeps this up, and if you're going to throw our money away at cards at least learn how to win. Michael doesn't have to hear the words to know the chorus and verse.

The scream is what brings him outside, to his scrubby postage stamp yard, shirt still partially untucked, toast still in hand.

Mrs. D lying half on the grass, half on the payment. Blood streaming from her neck, blood running into the cracks in the cement, blood staining the frayed collar of her yellow housecoat, blood, too much blood. Danvers crouched on top of her. Danvers… Christ. Michael blinks, scrubs his hand over his eyes.

A snarl, a fucking snarl, and then Danvers is rushing at him, moving with unnatural speed, Danvers with his arthritis and his bum leg, and Michael falls backward into the withered shrubs, over the tiny fence that separates the yards. Feels something in his back wrench as he hits the ground hard, rolls and crouches, adrenalin firing muscles that haven't been exercised in months, years. He snatches up the tire iron and spins in time to see Danvers leap the hedge, and he swings.

His neighbour falls backward, stunned. And Michael raises his head to yell for help, to scream to the fucking rooftops, and sees.

He hefts the tire iron firmly in his grip, and runs. He'll do what he has to do to survive. Michael is a pacifist, but he knows. These things are not human.

He doesn't like guns, but in this new world order, he'll use them.

He watches the truck twisting through the parking lot, hears the rapid spark of gunfire, and knows it's only a matter of time before the driver runs out of ammunition. Hits a median or one of the concrete abutments and overturns the truck. Any of a hundred scenarios that can only end in disaster.

He thinks he can talk CJ down, and if CJ is on his side then Bart will clearly follow. But things spiral quickly out of control, and Ana…

"I said, get the fucking gun out of my face!"

Ana.

"Well, you've got quite the mouth on you," CJ says.

"Maybe somebody should teach her how to use it," Bart says.

Michael moves on instinct, riding the sudden flare of rage shooting through him, not thinking about the gun, not thinking about the desperate people in the truck, not thinking of anything but shutting Bart's mouth, his lewd disgusting mouth, kid barely out of diapers and he thinks he can talk to someone, to a woman, to Ana, like that.

Michael is a pacifist. But as the shock of the punch echoes up his arm, as the gun is twisted out of Bart's hand, as the two security guards are overpowered, he is left with the knowledge that his long held moral compass is now slightly skewed.

He can live with that.

Then Kenneth and Terry are escorting CJ and Bart to a holding cell, and Andre and Luda are leaving the rescue plan up to him, and Ana… Ana just looks at him. The world has gone to hell in a handcart and yet he feels a lurch in his gut when she looks at him, and he thinks that maybe everything will be all right. Somehow.