Shades of Love

OZ belongs to HBO and Tom Fontana.

Nine characters. Nine drabbles. Nine ways to love.

---

Beecher has been looking for something even before he came to OZ. Before the sex he needed God, before God, violence, before violence, drugs. But nothing he sought or found could ever fill the gaping hole within himself, not sex or drugs or God.

Sometimes Beecher wonders if perhaps he has looked so hard for so long that he won't recognize the pieces missing from him if he ever finds them.

Now only Chris is here, with calloused hands and the devil's smile. He is all Beecher can have. Will have. Chris is very careful to make sure of that.

---

McManus knows he's a pretty shitty person. He loves to fuck women, but he doesn't love women. He loved Diane, and still does, but he still did a magnificent job fucking up that relationship.

The truth is that he loves his job more than anything. He believes in his job -that it is possible some small good will come out of this shit pit and the world will be that much safer for it.

A thousand riots, a thousand deaths could not change his mind. He needs this ideal to be true. This dream is all he has ever had.

---

Ryan O'Reily does what he has to. He has to protect his brother and his own ass, so he sells tits and make deals and sometimes even kills.

Most of all, he has to love Gloria. Even if he wanted to, he couldn't stop, because there are some things inside a man that nothing can control. God can't, or drugs or even this goddamn place.

Love isn't a choice; it's a fucking prison sentence. Ryan remains ensnared even as it kills him slowly from the inside. There are some things a man has to do. He does it for Gloria.

---

Alvarez once knew exactly what love was. It was tiny hands and a squalling red face. It lay in bottomless brown eyes and a soft pink smile.

Now all he sees are knives in the dark and bloody sockets where eyes once were. He hears screams, sometimes his, sometimes someone else's. He feels endless black space closing in on him, suffocating him. He knows emptiness.

Little pills take all that away. He feels solitude instead of emptiness, numbness instead of pain. Yet they blur the memories of his son; Alvarez doesn't know what'll be left when the memories are gone.

---

Keller knows that he fucks everything up. In that way, he's a lot like OZ. This fucking place, with its hopelessness and despair, seems to twist, to destroy, everything within it. It does it to the air, the people, their lives, their thoughts, their feelings.

Because the thing is...the thing is that Chris knows he loves Tobias. The thought of Toby's gaze, his touch, consumes everything else inside him. Yet all his feelings of tenderness, caring, protectiveness come out as something far more sinister. Lust, brutality, jealousy.

Keller loves Beecher. It's just that OZ, that he, twists everything. Even love.

---

Said does not choose an easy path in life. He chooses Allah over everything. He chooses God over sun-yellow hair and the scent of perfume. He chooses Allah over his own pride and self. When he realized that he had always loved himself more than God, he thanked God for breaking him and his pride.

But Allah the Magnificent is not easily understood.

Said cannot understand why he must kill and lie and break God's covenant to serve faithfully. Nevertheless, he chooses this path, just as God chooses him. He knows it will never be easy, but love never is.

---

Schillinger hates more things than he loves. He hates the drugged-up niggers, the dirty spics and the Jews. He hates the pussy liberal fucks with their college degrees and fucking self-righteousness, who can't understand that Schillinger and his people are all that stands between this great nation and complete destruction.

But more than anything, he hates Beecher. That little faggot humiliated him, took away his freedom, then killed his son.

Beecher will pay, so Schillinger very deliberately keeps his hatred focused on the man. This is just as well, since it keeps Schillinger from realizing how much he hates himself.

---

Agamemnon doesn't feel any guilt or remorse. He's never used drugs or killed anyone or even harmed anyone (unless you count that one time in high school when he stood up Miss Linda Roberts on a date to the movies). He doesn't do much of anything except dig.

Agamemnon loves to dig. He loves how the slow, steady scrick scricking from his shank eventually creates something so vast and encompassing. He loves how tunnels enclose him in such lovely darkness.

Nothing can compare to a tunnel. Nothing can compare to his hollow world filled with emptiness and nothing else.

---

Augustus savors the thought of freedom. If he closes his eyes, he can imagine a breeze in his hair and sunlight on his face. He can remember the feel of a woman, the sound of his footsteps and the taste of his own will.

But OZ has taught Augustus that wants and loves are sometimes better left alone. They become a prison in themselves, which no man, for all his tricks and schemes and ruthlessness, can escape.

Augustus knows how to do without many things. He finds the freedom hidden within the stale prison air. He finds freedom in himself.