Deny Fear

She coughed five times before getting on her feet and checking out the library in search for the named book.

"Are you alright ?" Abe asked as he sat in his chair , watching her with his large eyes.

"Oh yes..." She smiled then coughed again " Dunno where I put that bloody book..." She muttered.

Abe relaxed in his chair . Well , not for real , but he didn't want to throw her in some other enraged fit like last time he spoke out to her.She had a gift of being calm on the outside and jerking you off with some comment that would make you shut up and hate her.

So here they were, in the large office, Victorian-like arranged , with its walls covered with books , piles of folders on the table , on the desk and in small stashes on the floor.So here she was on her toes to reach a shelf beyond her own height , wearing a black cotton turtleneck that fit on her proeminent breasts where always laid in perfect harmony the golden celtic cross that hung from a silver chain,that matched th leather belt that holding her black pants,tucked in black army-like boots.And here he was, thinking that , if they would be the same size,she and Hellboy could easily share wardrobe.

And here he was,keeping his hands in his lap,in quiet wait,fixating her back , the way the hair was cut short on the back of her head , how she switched movements , making her bones move in a full figured body he knew she hated because it did not fit Cosmopolitan standards.

The room made him sick as the air was hard to breathe ,heavy filled with cigarette smoke , but he enetered anyway , because it was hard to speak to her through the water tank that also lead to this office,occupying the wall next to her desk,when she repeatedly ignored him.Now he'd used the motive of this book he couldn't find anywhere but in her library.Not true but...

She'd been nice as she was , sometimes snappy, as she was , too quiet or too loud , as she was, and agreed to recieve him , despite of all the paperwork she had to do.

She reached for the book with her left hand , between her fingers the cigarette consuming itself ,crowned by long fingernails,covered in a see-through colour that matched the cigarette smoke.

She handed him the book with the same hand , looking straight into his eyes , smiling to him.

"Thank you." He said and got up to leave.

"Uh...would you like some ...tea ? Or any other type of liquid ?" She asked as he was near the door.

Was this an attempt to ger over their discussion ?

He turned to see her standing with the tank behind her , covered in blue-ish light coming from it , giving her some sort of ethereal halo.

He would of loved to stay.Loved to.But the air was hard to breathe. She smoked herself sick because she felt like it and purpously to make him feel sick too because she knew he couldn't breathe properly in such air and now she felt sorry for it. He knew that and he would of loved to stay.

" No , thank you.I must finish some research , then get myself to read this book."He replied , signaling to the the book she'd just given to him.

" Oh...well...if any other time you need more steampunk literature,let me know " She replied with a smile that turned into a cough.

"I will.A good day." Was all he could say and exited the room.

Abe walked down the halls in silence , slowly , saluting various people and agents he met on the way , as the book hanged heavy on his arm. " Morlock Night" 1979,by Tim Powers, at the beggining of the steapunk literature...he knew it already , he'd read it and knew it passage by passage.But it was the first title that came into his mind, the first good excuse he could think of.

As he reached his own room, he took a deep breath before removing his suit and held it as he put the book on a chair then jumped in his water tank.As he got deeper, he crouched on the cemented floor, listening to the water and to his own heartbeats.

He could go , take a swim through this water channel , installed especially for him and the various experiments he sometimes attended to or conducted for the Department,to see who is in the other offices, or up to her office and see how she is.

He was ashamed to admit to anyone , even to himself, he was , mostly , spying.

Sometimes,he'd just find times when she would be sleeping , on the couch , and watch her until he would notice the first sign of awakening and disappear in a flash.

Other times,she'd stay on the floor , with her back at the tank and do her work with the ever present cigarette to her side. He'd watch her then also.

Sometimes she was sent to brief him on a mission and he'd hide inside his tank in a dark corner,and she'd glue herself to the glass and search for him with her eyes.From that dark corner he'd look straight at her without her knwoledge.

Dark eyes , covered with blue contacs , because her eyesight was terrible.Contacts cannot fully cover your natural colour , thus , her eyes, besides from looking even bigger,had an odd colour variation,and they looked fish -like.He'd watch them with his own large eyes until he'd either come out, either she would leave,probably thinking he was not there.

He'd watched her adolescent crazes and he'd experienced her developing into a young woman.Saved by a demon-child by hellboy in a fight 10 years before,the child she was back then fought restlessly and ran after Hellboy , grabbing his trenchcoat , and demanded attention until she was accepted to work for the department " as anything , even wiping the floors " as she said herself,for those who had saved her.

Considering her personal life had "14253647589285 issues" , as she once wrote in her personal folder she handed to a guardian offcier, issues she never spoke of , she spent most of her time in the Department's rooms , arranging files and doing various chores,even taking care of Hellboy's tomcats , which she really liked to anyway.Everybody knew her in the Department and trusted her , and some others thought she was a good for nothing. She'd spit balls of intelligence in spontaneous moments and catch any knowledge like a sponge as well as she could prove to be downright stupid at other times.

They called her 'kid' even though she was not one in years anymore,and they all had a piece of her,from Hellboy,John or Liz to the various FBI agents ending with Hellboy's cats.Buy coffee and cigars,arrange the files,copy the files,buy catfood.She was there.

But Abe , selfishly , in his mind , claimed her as his own.

Only if she was an amphibian.Only if she was more like Liz.Only if she was smarter.Taller.Skinnier.Happier.More efficient.But she wasn't.

And he liked her just like that.

He sprung up,circled the tank a few times then started to swim up the channels that connected the various tanks in the various offices of the department or meeting rooms.

He'll have to ask again , later , his suit to be sterilyzed,he could feel the smoke all across his skin, he liked to keep a trace of it on himself,but he'd sooner or later choke if the breathing valves of the suit were not cleaned.He'd choke just like her.

When he got the problem up , a week ago , they fought , first time he ever had someone scream at him like that and be unable to reason with it.

If she would give up smoking , she 'd be fine,but he just recently realized the girl was killing herself consciously,and , despite his knowledge, human suicide , in all its ways , faster or slower, was something he could not comperhend.

He could mention it to Hellboy.But he'd make a mess.To Liz, but the two were not that close to open such a subject Abe knew it was delicate,neither was she close to John.Actually the only ones with whom she spent time with was himself and Red's tomcats.

Abe knew all her façades,even the ones she never mentioned and could not get any out in the open because he was puzzled and he could not find nor the end nor the beggining.She'd stub cigarettes in her left palm , that's why she always held it in a fist and wore long sleeved blouses that reached her knuckes.Sometimes, calm as she was in her so called offcie, she would suddenlly errupt in fits of rage and trash everything , cry for hours in her fists , then clean everything up like nothing had happened as he'd spy all these actions from a drak corner or when the lights were not on to illuminate the tanks.

But he was puzzled by such reactions, such self-induced pains.Puzzled and fascinated, and he did not know wether he was doing the right thing or being downright cruel.

He turned right on a dark tunnel leading , yes , to her office, as the lights were shutting down,but he didn't need them anyway , they were for the ones beyond the glass.

Abe knew her hands were always cold and she rocked herself away from tears sometimes.He never knew why though,nor why tears came out,what was the preocess.He knew the anatomical data , yes , but he could never understand what exactly was that triggered them.

When he analyzed himself a long time ago ,he realized that what he felt could be ,nevertheless, related with what it was called 'love'.And at that discovery , he was again puzzled of everything that came with it.He'd suddnely started to hurt. For her as well as for himself.To be aware of his own condition as a creature resembling something, but neither human nor animal,and of her own condition as human , puzzled by her own existence.

Abe asked her once what was love to her.

"Imposible." She replied back then , coughed once, then sucked the smoke in her lungs , as they conversated, he , leaning on the glass in his tank , she, on a chair in front of it.

"Why ?" he then asked.

"Because it's just a dream." She smiled " And a fish's dreams should stay in the sea.Otherwise he'd choke."

And he was hurt.

She meant nothing of that , neither reffered to him , but he reffered to himself in his mind , and this reply circled his mind up to this day.

Many things in his carefully built world were falling apart , and the only thing he could think of was to be kept in her arms as his world ended.

When he entered the tank in her room , the lights in the tank were off, and he could easily watch what was going on in the room , as he heard the familiar cough.

This time though , she was in front of the tank , watching it with attention .He stopped in the middle and stood motionless , looking at her fish-like eyes.In that moment , she moved closer and tapped the glass with her nails , from which hung her death , the cigarette , burning at 700 degrees Celsius.Did she knew this piece of info... ?

In a second , she pressed her palms on the glass , in a violent gesture that made him jump ,and she frowned but not in anger , but with a note of despair , looking in the black abyss of the tank.Let her forehead on the glass, as it caressed her skin , her temples , her hair moving as if she was a cat under the touch of its owner.

"When the room is dim-lit you can see the shapes in the water." She said " I know you're there."

He did nothing suddenlly scared at this revelation.

"Abe..." She pleaded with demanding eyes fixating his shape in the water

Being discovered now , it would of been more embarassiong for him to run away so he got closer and his face suddenlly appeared close to the glass, as he put his blue palms on it like he would of touched hers.

"What 's wrong ?" he managed to say as he revelaed himself.

"Everything..." She replied, looking at him , half smiling.

"Do you wish to speak ?"

"No." She replied calmly , still looking at his face , into his eyes.She then closed her own and pressed her lips on the glass,right at the level his lips were, and he felt his heart skip a beat , but not enough for him to realize what it means , as she jumped back violently, grabbed her jacket from the chair and left the room running , slamming the door , leaving him in the darkness , perplexed and alone.

Two days alter , he recieved her personal info , her records and the records and notes of the guardian who observed her without her knowledge, at the news of her suicide a day earlier.He read everything carefully , in full silence as John was turning the pages and arranging the photos for him to see clearly.

He smiled and thanked him when he finished and asked to be left alone.

That night he curled up in the darkest tank he could find as he aknowledged now what humans could do to eachother and his mind started to link psychology books, terms and experiments that answered to his questions but did not measure up to explain the feelings , hers and his own . He understood much more about human nature as he calculated it with his own feelings and he knew now what 'tears' meant , and he would of liked to be capable to cry too , because he learned that the world could end in a million other ways , that not all fish eyes were the same , but they could feel and see the same , and that he could of rocked her to sleep as both their worlds ended.