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Some thoughts of Bodie's during the sleeping bag scene in Mixed Doubles.

Faith and Reasons

"No, you gotta have another reason. You gotta have a better reason than that."

He can't believe I'm that mercenary. Of course he can't.

He might be right. Maybe I like wearing a white hat—well, a light grey hat, anyway. Maybe I like it better than the money, even. I could tell Ray I do—he'd like that—but I won't, because what he's wrong about is that it changes anything.

He ought to know better, by now. After years of last week's terrorists blurring into this week's mobsters, until all you can remember is which direction they pointed their guns, he ought to know. It's actions that touch the world, that send out consequences like ripples on water. Motives never come close.

You can't explain that to Doyle, though. He may not read the lesson like Cowley does, but he's a believer, too, in the ways that matter. He thinks someone out there's keeping score, awarding points for noble intentions. He thinks that if I shoot someone tomorrow, the world will be different depending on whether I did it for money or for justice.

But the reality is, Parsali will be just as safe protected by a mercenary as by an idealist, and whatever my reason, the man I shoot will be just as dead.



Notes:

Many thanks to byslantedlight for her beta reading and kind encouragement.

I posted this fic on AO3 in January, but I have been reflecting lately on the value of redundancy in preserving fan works, so I decided to post it here as well.

This was my first ever fanfic. I'd been a reader of fan fiction for more than ten years, but I'd never written any until I began work on this piece in November of last year. After watching the episode Mixed Doubles, I thought to myself, "I bet someone has written a fic about whether Bodie is lying, and if so, why." I couldn't find that fic, though, so I decided to try writing it. This is the result (even if it doesn't quite answer the original questions).
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