Disclaimer: Don't own Mason, he's owned by Fox and Real Time Productions. And all you need is one look at my bank account to know I'm not making money off this.
Author's Notes: Reply to a drabble drabble challenge given to me by a friend. Her challenge was to write George's last few minutes, from his POV. Originally posted on the Livejournal "fanfic100" community, for the "24 - General Series" category. The prompt was "Ends".
He glances out the window as he feels the vibration in the floor from Jack shifting his weight and jumping out of the cargo door. The blinking of the light on the plane's wing blinds him momentarily, but soon enough he can see the red-and-white bloom of the parachute, a couple hundred feet below him and far aft.
George takes a deep breath trying to steady himself, steady his shaking hands and twitching muscles. He's not sure whether it's nerves or the radiation poisoning that's eating away at him from the inside that's causing the shakiness though. He's alone. No backup. If he doesn't find a way to do this, if he doesn't hold on, he'll kill millions of people when he goes because there's no longer any chance that he isn't going to die. As if the bleeding sores, the constant pain would let him forget it.
He glances at the clock, the air rushing in the open cargo door drowning out the sound of the small, digital clock's beeping. He can still hear it in his mind though, that steady beeping, like a heart monitor. And like a heart monitor, when those numbers hit zero, he'll flatline, the nuke will gone off. He'll be gone in more than one sense of the word--at ground zero he'll have vaporized, not even any ashes for his family to keep. Broken down into his component atomic strucures: oxygen, hydrogen, carbon.
There's some metaphor there about returning to the elements that he should probably try and find some comfort in, but fuck it, he's not the sappy, hippie-dippy type. He's having a hard enough time trying to get through this by thinking of what he's doing for his country, for the people whose lives he's saving. It helps, yeah, but only a little, considering it was his own cowardice, his own self-centredness that got him here in the first place. He'd tried to run, ignore his duty and get the fuck out of Dodge, leaving everyone else to die with the bomb. Now the only person who's going to die because of it is him.
But I'm not going alone, am I? I'm taking you with me, you bitch, taking you down so you can't hurt anyone else. You've killed me and now I'm going to make sure you don't get to do what you were made for: killing innocent people.
He glances at the clock: one minute, thirty-three seconds. Time to end the threat to the city, end his life on his own terms. He feels like he should have a cowboy hat on, hollering as he drops to earth like Slim Pickens in Dr. Strangelove, like the cowboys riding off into the sunset he used to watch with wide-eyed wonder on TV as a kid. Except even the bleak humour he's been using to get through this day so far doesn't quite stretch far enough for that.
One minute, thirty seconds; a moment's hesitation, a moment's denial before he turns the handles, pushing the stick forward, the nose of the plane dipping. Time to take this fucker into a dive and light up the sky, create a false sunrise over the desert at eleven at night. Go out in a blaze of glory.
One minute...
He can't hear the beeping of the clock over the rattling of the fuselage, but he doesn't take his eyes off the clock, watching the seconds of his life tick away; easier than watching the ground rusing toward him.
Thirty seconds...
Figures that for someone who'd only taken the job because of the higher pay scale, who'd always thought of his career first, that he's finally doing something right. He's taken so much, and now he's giving everyone in Los Angeles one gift. Life.
Ten seconds...
Yippee-ki-yay.