Second Chance
(Tag to Season 1, Episode 12: "Christopher Chance")
Chance was between jobs at the moment, so he took advantage of the lull for a couple days' "mini-vacation." Guerro had suggested he go "find himself," and Winston had told him to "Have a good time." He intended to do both, starting with the "finiding himself" part.
To do that, he had to go back to the beginning. Not the beginning of the life in which he had been known as "Junior," but the beginning of the life in which he had become "Christopher Chance.
And that had led him here, to this cemetery, to this grave.
Except for the tending of the grass, the earth was undisturbed, peaceful. As it should be. The knowledge was reassuring. The body buried beneath where he was standing deserved peace.
Chance knelt before the headstone and removed from the vase the old, dead remains of the flowers he had left the last time he had been there, and replaced them with the freshly cut flowers he had brought with him. Oddly, it was the flowers, not the grave, that reminded him of his own mortality, but in his profession, that was something he was better off not thinking about. Annoyed, Chance threw the old flowers aside.
He ran his hand over the name etched into the tombstone: Katherine Walters. Katherine had been the catalyst for his metamorphosis into Christopher Chance. Katherine had been that one thing he had never encountered in his old life: an innocent. She was sweet and unspoiled, but because she had tried to help a dying man and heard his last words, someone had wanted her dead, and Chance had been hired to make sure that happened.
But in that instance, Chance had done something he had never, ever done before in his old life; he had questioned his orders. And when there was no satisfactory answer to those questions, he had out and out disobeyed his orders. In an instant, he had transformed from assassin to bodyguard.
The transormation had cost him everything: his job, his "family" – albeit a family of assassins – his "friends"… Everything. But losing them had been like losing a weight.
Still, he had been left with nothing. It took Christopher Chance – the first Christopher Chance, that was – to give his life something new, that he'd only been able to receive when he'd let go of everything else: meaning.
The "first" Christopher Chance hadn't actually been the first to bear that name, more like the fourth or fifth – maybe even the tenth or eleventh, or for all Chance knew, the fiftieth or sixtieth. But Chance hadn't known any of the others; he'd known only the one. So as far as Chance was concerned, he himself was only the second Christopher Chance.
The first Christopher Chance had not only filled the void by giving Chance's life meaning and purpose, but had also taught Chance a thing or two aboumat being a bodyguard: "Never let your subject out of your sight," was the first thing. Well, after Katherine, Chance had never made that mistake again. There were some other lessons as well, including what it ultimately meant to be a bodyguard. Christopher Chance the First had taken a knife in the chest to protect Christopher Chance the Second, and now the old man was dead.
Dead and buried.
Yet even in death, Christopher Chance the First was still protecting his charge.
A man who had lived under an assumed name was now buried under an assumed name, but the name was not any name he had ever used in life.
If anyone ever bothered to dig up the grave and look inside the coffin, they would know in an instant that the grave was incorrectly marked. But there was no reason to dig it up.
Everyone thought that Katherine Walters was dead. Baptiste thought he had killed her, and so Baptiste's handlers all thought she was dead, too. No one had any reason to suspect there was anyone buried in the grave but Katherine.
The book was there, too. The damn book which had almost cost Katherine her life was safely nestled in the arms of her bodyguard's corpse, six feet under the surface of the earth, marked by a false headstone. Chance had taken the book out of the suitcase and stuffed it in his inside jacket pocket. Then, when Christopher Chance the First had driven the forklift loader between Baptiste with his gun and Christopher Chance the Second, giving Chance the opportunity he needed to escape, Chance threw the book into the cab of the forklift before disappearing around a cargo container. The way Chance had "protected" the damn suitcase, Baptiste thought the book was still inside when it went into the water. Later, it had been no mean feat to retrieve the damn suitcase, either. Better to let Baptiste and his handlers think the book and suitcase were lost, than to know the book had never been lost at all.
And if anyone ever caught Chance visiting the grave, they would simply assume that the fond half-smile he wore was for Katherine, not for his mentor and predecessor Christopher Chance the First.
Christopher Chance the Second pressed his fingertips to his mouth and ran his fingers over the name etched on the tombstone. He had no idea what Christopher Chance the First's real name was. Perhaps the man himself had never known. But if you needed a name to be buried under, "Katherine Walters" was as good a name as any. Better, in fac, because it protected someone who was worth protecting.
Katherine Walters was dead.
Long live Katherine Walters.