Disclaimer: I do not own Human Target, no matter how many coins i drop in public fountains.
The office was silent that afternoon, a bored silence that usually cursed them when Ames was no where to be found and there was no current case, but some how the 4/5 of the team toiled through it. Winston was completing some paperwork that had accumulated on his desk since the last case and Guerrero was hacking into some nameless company, Chance was doing Tai Chi, and Ilsa was researching, much to the embarrassment of her co-workers 'legal loopholes on breaking into houses' after the last case miss-hap.
A ding arose from the elevator and Ames walked out. Winston poked his head out of the office and frowned at her timing. But it was not him that confronted her about her late arrivals, it was Mrs. Pucci. Heels clicking with a stern determination that brought him back to the days of divorce and a steaming mad ex-wife.
"Miss Ames," she called as she went to meet the youngest team member in the hallway, Ames' head hung low but snapped up at the sound of clicking heels and a stoic expression crossed her face that Winston could only categorize as very 'un-Ames-like'.
"I understand that there is no current case, but that is no excuse for this amount of tardiness so please, give me one reason that you couldn't have come in here at the reasonable hour?"Ames looked down at her hands and clicked her dark purple thumb nails together as Mrs. Pucci waited impatiently for an answer. Her manicured hands at her hips where her very expensive blouse met her very expensive pencil skirt.
Winston stood up taking in the image of ames, something was wrong. Was it the lack of a snappy comebacks, or that she looked extremely disheveled, or maybe the fact that Ames wasn't grinning? no, the one dead giveaway were the tears that were falling from curtain of long brown locks, falling helplessly to their demise on the dark concrete floor, much to the protest of Ames who had convinced herself she could do this without crying.
"I was at the hospital." She stated blankly in a shaky breath and the rest of the team came to join her while Ilsa began to panic over the well being of the young woman.
"My god, I-I'm sorry, are you alright?" The soft padding of feet coming towards the two women was the only sound in the room and Ames began to sniffle losing what little control she had left over her emotions. She shook her head in reply and Winston reached out to put a comforting hand on her shoulder, reminding her of how much she could truly trust the team that had taken her in from a life of theft.
"What happened Ames?" Winston asked in a gentle tone that he had used so many times before in police investigations when he was consoling the family of shooting victims. The once cocky woman looked up to meet his dark eyes, hers filled to the brim with tears that could not stop spilling over. She tried to find a voice for what had just occurred, and to be able to do it with what little scrap of dignity she had left. She bit her bottom lip just slightly. Wanting so badly for that entire day to be a terrible nightmare that she could escape and go back to reality, but this was reality. She opened her mouth to say the words that she could never take back, the words that she could barely force herself to think, the words that she could not stand, the words
"Brody's dead."
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