Behind blue eyes

Staring at the screen before him blankly, fingers poised over the keys as if he were about to type, only to pull away. He did not have an answer for what had been going on with him for these past weeks. Something was very off, but beyond these walls, he really didn't have any sort of understanding. Yes, he had seen the occurrences in the news, but that didn't lead him to believe anything really out of the norm. The news liked to make things out of what they were not. To appeal to the viewer or reader in a means that allowed for garnering more of an audience. It was how they capitalized on money. It wasn't as if he started picking up The National Inquirer anytime recently.

Leaning back in his chair, he exhaled a deep breath. A pencil picked up just to tap against the wood of the desk. So many questions and no real answers. That sounded about right. Running with his luck, not just in life lately, but in work. Even with his own team, he wasn't particularly well liked. Michael wasn't the most personable of people, but he tried from time to time. A reason to be able to hold a conversation and not feel like a stranger in the room. To reach out to others, even if you didn't care for their thoughts or beliefs on things.

His lack for what the human capacity seemed to feel in being a normal, everyday human being, it was never something that helped him get further along in anything. A man behind a window, watching the world go moving along with or without him. A world that didn't actually care what had been happening to him, outside of their own wants and needs. Everyone was selfish, regardless of what they claimed. He was certain of it, that he knew this as a fact and had experienced it first hand.

Lips pursed, he leaned his own fist against his sharp jawline. With power came responsibility, but was it worth having? Not just the power in itself, but the responsibility? Could or would he use it to make the world a better place or would it be used simply for selfish reasons? Would the attempt at making things better really be deemed selfish? Everything became warped and jaded so easily. Would questioning this all even matter now? He had succumbed to it all, just in the attempt at performing his own scientific study. He had to know if he was right, if things were really playing out as they had seemed to be. Was he really controlling people with his own mere words?

There had been no control over it the first week that it had happened. A rush of annoyance boiling his own blood as he argued with his own supervisor. All that it took to change her mind, was some simple eye contact and a choice of words. Everything took another direction after that. It was as if the world were spinning on his own chosen axis. Was it right? Could he change that now? Probably not for both scenarios. His only response being that he didn't know, if he were ever such questioned over it.

The next time happening in a coffee shop. A simple enough accident, leaving him realizing that the couple were hanging off of his every word. Another cup of coffee was given and paid for, even where it had been his own fault. Not something he was all too ready to admit to, especially at the time, but that was another issue. A flaw in his own personality. His conscience playing on himself now, more than anything else. Hindsight was 20/20, after all.

Michael's own assistant and intern agreeing to stay late with him. It didn't seem quite so irregular, until they began doing everything step by step, as he made it out. Asking the assistant into the office, he began to question her, leaving the intern to be left to his own devices. Each of which, were still committing to every moment that Michael had first specified. Her honesty came out in not knowing what was going on but feeling the need to do as he said. Tempting fate, he asked her to begin to take off her clothes, but stopped her as she did. A motive first left at seeing how far this would go. It only took as long as three little buttons to send her out of the room and back to work. That and to forget about what had just happened. The last thing he needed was some issue to come forth later over it all. The risk of it all, showing its worth.

Getting up from his seat, he stood, looking around the room, his conscience weighing heavily upon him, yet still overruled. Few steps were needed to make it to the open door. The office was hardly anything worth gawking at. Not large by any means, other than beating out that of a cubicle some researcher might have gained. The room outside was fluttering full of moving people. Walking around as if it were simply another morning of work. The warm scent of fresh coffee filing the air and masking what lied behind new doors.

This was not another morning though. This was anything but. This was everyone putting their time in after working through the night. No one would be gaining any sort of special overtime for it because no one else knew what was going on outside of this room. Michael kept it that way, allowing himself to believe they were on the verge of a breakthrough and while those above him hadn't believed as strongly? Here he was forcing the issue and making it happen. No one could stop him now. He refused to believe it.

It was all wrong. What had gone wrong? What had he done? It was all a bad call. He had no proof left to pull, to try and show that he had been right all along. Aching hands washed over a tired face. There was so much to be lost here, not gained, if this didn't turn out. It was a gamble and all it did was leave him feeling the loss. Yes, he could go about creating more lies to surface, to fix what had been gone, but he would know. Add whatever accounting issue this turned into. If someone lost their job, that would be on him. Worse if it were more than one.

There was no sense to be had, if he went about trying to force everything to be the way it was now. There was only so much juggling he could do, regardless at what level. There was always someone on top or ahead of those sort of lies. A huge cover up? No, he couldn't handle all of that. It was too much. Sending everyone home, they all deserved it. He even did too, regardless of what he had just done to all of them. The movement was missed, the hustle and jabbering on by those that worked here, it was all missed. But that was no more. It had not really been there since he started this mess. He missed being surrounded by real people, by watching them move around him, having their own lives. He missed real interaction. People were people in all shapes and forms.

Michael needed more than the thoughts inside of his head. He needed what people do best. Converse and attempt to understand one another. To hear out views that were not like his own. To gain ideas and ideals from those, whether he agreed or not. There was so much to learn when not pretending to play a dictator to get things done. He needed to rely on more than himself here. Those people that had been out there working for his cause, regardless of their own wants and willingness? They had something to offer that was more than what they had been allowed and pushed to do.

He felt childish and thoughtless. Treating people the way that he had been treated in the past. Their minds had brought them here, not just simply their legs and whatever mode of transportation taken. Their longevity, strength, talents, and choices brought a direction that led to this. They were a group, not a one man army.

There was no wait on fate to try and change these factors, nor one to see how long it would take before someone was fired from all of this. Set to find an answer, he slammed his hand against the table, grabbed his own coat and headed out of the building. All of this could wait for another time, a day or so to give him the ability to learn from others. To try and right what wrongs were created here, as he had been lost in his own head. All of those rhetorical questions coming to light to work themselves in a means he was not appreciative of. This was real life and not a book. You could not simply solve all of life's problems by making people do what you wanted them to.

Tonight he would be more than a man behind glass watching through, as if the world were a mouse running through a maze. Tonight he would be more than a man that stared through glassy blue eyes, unfeeling and thoughtless to someone other than himself. There was nothing left to hide from here. He had done all of it to himself. Correcting it, that was all that mattered.

Talking to various people, great enough minds, big or small, he still felt like he was at his wits end. Nothing was coming through the way that he needed it to. Everything and everyone was back to feeling useless. Where did they ever get any of their information and why did they bother to breathe at night? Walking down the street, he felt as if a clock were ticking, racing him down the street. Each second going by causing his own stress levels to raise that much more, while it reached before him and would reach a deadline far before him. Each ticking tock was a laugh or a ridicule in his face for all the wrong he had created. The lies that he had created and caused for so many based on his own arrogance.

Their studies were supposed to be for people, to help people, to make the world a better place. It wasn't a setting for all of this, yet this is what it became. Arrogance and egos, people making money and the price that came with costs. Acting like this, he was starting to feel as if he were Martin Shkreli, trying to cause insanity and make actual profit outside of this. Michael wasn't that man though. There was money to be made in pharmaceuticals, that much was certain. But it was never in the way that big businesses and corporations liked to take the cake there. He wanted to fight and battle men like that. Not with fists, but with arguments and prove them wrong. This was supposed to be one of those times and all he found himself coming up with was more failure. Sure, Daraprim's price increase was supposed to be reduced after everything. It wasn't even what he was working on then. But the way that it was tossed about in media? Michael couldn't help but worry that would be how everything would end. In a blaze like that one. People looking into businesses and trying to see what happened, what went wrong, and what would be left of it all?

Each step ahead of him, it was that much more sure of his fate and the fate of things to come. Determination set forth in him, as his hands dug deep into his pockets. Head down as he stared ahead at the ground in thought. Ignoring the blur of wrinkled concrete that kept the color of something more pewter than anything. Memories of not wanting to step on a crack or else it should break your mother's back and other childish points surfaced only to be denied. Cars and people passing him, each in blurs of movement and light. Formulas and numbers were all that was left to see here. Cracks in time and how they may have changed in a moment due to one minor slip or misdirection. This wasn't like flipping the chemical formula of something like Naproxen and making it something quite deadly.

People had done well at staying out of his way. It wasn't exactly a busy street or a busy time of night. But it still came as a slight shock to his system when a shoulder bumped into his own. A nonexistent apology was thought, but never uttered. Passing it off, his head up, eyes soaking in his surroundings. It was as if a world was opened up before his eyes. This was exactly what he needed. To actually notice things and people. Rather than do it in the means he thought he should, this was where it counted. Standing there on the sidewalk, he just watched in awe of the life buzzing around him. Not because he hadn't ever seen it before, but it gave him a wealth of new ideas. New directions could be taken and unfold around him and in the lab.

The wealth of it, there was no way to write it down as fast as he needed to. Pulling his phone out, he began muttering words into it in what felt like a mile a minute. Words that wouldn't be understandable to most anyone that looked at him, as he turned on his heel and went back in the direction he came. He would beat that clock, he would, and there would only be a ticking tock of tears. A trail it could use to find its way back to whatever hole in hell it creeped out of. Michael was going to fix what he ruined. At the same time, it would still make him right. A win amongst it all. His own failure known only to him.

It was all more than a minute of life, but everything in him changed. There was a bounce in his step. The pressure in his chest relieved. Breathing no longer feeling restrained. A smirk lying on his lips and a look in his eyes that had a woman eyeing him over. No, there would be no time for any of that, he would pass her and just smile. He had work to do. It was what came first. Alone or not, after all of this time, he just realized what he had been missing for so long, taking away from himself purposely. It wasn't worth as much as he thought it had been. There would be no more windows to hide behind. No more glassy eyes to pretend he were doing the same with. He was more than just a man behind blue eyes.

credit
~laurel & ~hurst