No matter how selfless she tells herself she is, there is one thing that Paige understands more than anything else: survival. First and foremost, in any situation, her own survival. She can talk a big game when it comes to selfless sacrifice, but there is a line that she would never cross. It's a big, glaring, neon line that screams at her that she's a liar, a fake. She wants to say that she would die for her job, give her life for another's, but deep down, she knows her survival instinct is stronger than anything else in her body.
So when her vision turns black around the edges and her lungs burn and her eyes water, she reaches into her bag and she rips the straight razor across Toros's throat and chokes down the urge to vomit when the hot blood sprays across her neck and drips down her dress. She pushes him off her, off the couch, onto the floor to die like a worthless creature.
She stares at him as he instinctively brings his hands up to try to slow the stream of blood erupting from his artery. Futile, she knows. The cut, her cut is too deep. She locks eyes with him and lets her vision continue to blur with tears. It doesn't stop her from seeing the betrayal in his eyes. The last thing he sees is his killer.
She kneels over his body and she allows herself a moment to feel like a goddess of war, like a harbinger of death, clothed in blinding, bloodied white and brandishing a blade like a sword, just for a moment before the reality of what she's done sinks in.
She's still involuntarily gasping for her returning breath when they burst through the door. By the time they get to the room, their guns are all at their sides. She raises her eyes to them and pulls her body to her feet, her mind blissfully blank. She sniffles like a child and manages to keep the tears swimming around her eyes instead of down her cheeks. Not that it matters. It's not like Toros is alive to judge her for them. A choked sob escapes her lips.
"Paige," Briggs is the first to speak, voice eerily calm, just like the rest of her. She can recognize shock like she's been trained to do, and she knows beyond a doubt that her body and her mind are going into shock.
"Paige, drop the razor," Briggs holsters his weapon and Johnny follows suit. She notices Mike makes no move to put away his gun, finger still itching over the trigger guard. She lets the razor fall to the floor.
"Paige," Briggs steps toward her, his hands in front of him in submission, gentle on her shoulders as he turns her to walk to the kitchen. She wishes he would stop saying her name. She wishes he would call her what she is. A bitch. A liar. A killer. She wishes he would blame her like she blames him. And damn does she blame him. This whole mess is his fault, him and his secret plans that no one can dare know besides him.
He stands behind her and guides her hands under the warm tap water, a pump of foaming soap suddenly coating her hands. She wants to shrug off his presence, but she doesn't feel stable enough to stand on her own. She washes the blood from her hands and with them clean, the rest of the blood on her body feels like acid. No, her mind corrects, it's nothing like acid, like what she brought onto Colby in his death. She wonders if he's being so gentle out of guilt. She wonders how pathetic she looks if he's being so nice.
Or if he just has another plan in the mix. He does, she knows rationally, but she just wants to pretend everything is fine for just a fucking minute.
"Briggs, we gotta call this in." It's Mike's voice and goddammit why does he have to bring up the rules right now? She can't voice her protest for some reason, can't stop scrubbing under her fingernails where the blood no longer resides.
"Fuck off, Mike," Johnny sighs, exasperation surrounding his words like barbed wire.
She remembers it like she remembers a foggy childhood memory: Mike and Johnny were supposed to be her back-up. They were supposed to tail Toros. They were supposed to keep this from happening. But Briggs didn't trust them enough to tell them the whole plan. And Mike didn't trust Briggs enough to blindly follow. That's not who he is, and she shouldn't blame him for that.
Briggs says nothing, just keeps stroking his hands up and down her arms soothingly. He murmurs something in her ear, something important, she thinks, but for the life of her she can't focus on his words, can't hear anything except the gurgling of Toros taking his last breaths but she knows that isn't real. Everything is real and nothing feels real.
She doesn't know how long she's held her hands under the rush of the kitchen tap, but Briggs takes her hands in his and leads her to the towel. She's astonished when the white towel doesn't come away stained in blood.
Like everything else she touches.
"Paige—"
"Stop," she whispers, just barely above a breath. "Stop saying my name."
Briggs nods and his eyes bear into hers. He's always been the leader of this house, designated and undesignated, and he knows his agents better than they would necessarily want him to. There are no secrets in Graceland, after all.
"We need to get rid of the body," he says crassly, brash and brazen in his tone in an effort to keep her mind from whirling back down whatever abyss it's teetering on the edge of. Johnny takes a step back almost involuntarily and Mike lets out a curse. But she knows, she understands. She's been all-in since she burned the wrong fingers and got an agent burned in return.
She's stronger than Johnny and even Mike, and Briggs knows that. With Charlie and Jakes gone, she's the next most experienced agent, most hardened to the realities of the job. She wipes her eyes and allows her heart to gloss over with a coat of ice if only for a moment.
"When did we become executioners?" Johnny asks and there's nothing but resignation in his tone. But he will do it, Paige knows deep down, because he's always had her back.
She repeats that sentence to herself: Johnny has always had her back. Mike, though. She doesn't know about Mike. She doesn't know what to make of any of this. It wasn't supposed to happen like this.
"We're not. We're fucking federal agents and we need to call this in. This is not what we are here in Graceland for," Mike argues and Briggs clenches his fist as if to subside the desire to knock Mike out.
She holds her head up and meets Mike's eyes, calculating her like she's the criminal, and she knows it's not fair, nothing even in the realm of fairness, when she boldly states, "Maybe we should burn the body."
The strung-out, withdrawal-ridden Mike has nothing on this heartless, angry Mike when he returns the volley tonelessly, "I thought that method was reserved for the ones you failed."
She doesn't say anything else but she notices the alarm in his eyes that he let that thought escape his mouth. What else is there to say? She did what she had to do and the last person she should have to explain herself to is Mike. He's taking out his frustration with Briggs out on her, not that she doesn't deserve it. She deserves that and much worse.
"You have to stop trying save me, Mike," she had told him ages ago. Maybe he finally learned to do just that.
"No bodies are being burned," Briggs interrupts by holding up his hand and moving to stand between her and Mike, protecting her or maybe Mike, she can't be sure. "And no one is telling anyone. This stays internal. It will help solidify the mission to get Martun."
She can't quite wrap her head around how a dead body will help Briggs with Ari, and at this point she doesn't care.
"Briggs, we—"
"Mike, if you ever gave even the slightest of fucks about Paige, you will shut up and do what I tell you." Briggs has so much authority in his voice that the room suddenly feels different, stronger in a way.
Or maybe that's just what she is projecting onto the atoms floating around her head. What she wishes. She needs all the strength she can get, because right now it feels like everything is falling apart at break-neck speeds.
"Yes, sir," and it's the church choir Mike, the FBI trainee Mike, the green field agent Mike. The Mike that she trusts.
"Take her upstairs and make sure she cleans up. Stay there. No matter what you hear down here, do not come down those stairs," Briggs orders and she recognizes that most of that is for her own benefit. When she meets his eyes, she knows he isn't just trying to keep her together. He's trying to keep Mike from ruining her career, her life. Their livelihoods in Graceland.
Ruining his mission. It's always about the mission with Briggs.
She accepts it without question because her mind is too cluttered to question it. She nods her thanks instead and lets Mike brush his fingertips against her shoulder as they move toward the stairs.
She doesn't turn back until they're standing outside the shower.
"Mike?" Her voice sounds small, feeble. She hates it.
"Shh, Paige, let's just get you in the shower." He's said those words before, lifetimes ago with a much different outcome. She still doesn't turn around. She makes no motion to unzip her dress, so Mike gingerly reaches up and touches her neck first, as if he were asking permission to strip off her bloody garment.
She lets the dress hit the floor and she detects the change in his breath when he sees what she's wearing underneath. In that instant, he knows just how far she would have gone to solidify her cover with Toros. Her arms instinctively move to attempt to cover, but what part of her hasn't he seen?
Oh, right. The ugliest part. The ruthless killer. The survivor.
"Why did you leave?" She turns around and instantly Mike wishes she hadn't. He has no choice but to be honest with her, if for no other reason than his own shock at the expression on her face. Words can't describe the mix of anger and terror.
"I thought Briggs was going to kill Logan."
"This was about your distrust of Paul," she uses his first name on purpose, to humanize Briggs. He didn't bring them up to speed on his plan, and she blames him for that, hates him for it. But she hates Mike for not trusting him too. It's not logical, not rational, but she feels entitled to a bit of irrationality as she drips someone else's blood onto the bathroom tile.
"This was about keeping a Special Agent in Charge alive," he counters and there's some venom in his tone. He notices it and forces something akin to calm back into his expression.
She doesn't have anything to say to that and the blood she spilled is starting to dry on her skin. She strips off her lace undergarments and faces head on with Mike, who's making a valiant effort to maintain her modesty by looking everywhere but at her.
"I wish you'd had my back, Mike. I can take care of myself, but I needed you. We're not supposed to be executioners. That's what I became tonight."
She turns on the water to the hottest setting and steps in without another word to Mike. She watches the blood swirl down the drain and scrubs until her skin feels new. When she emerges in a cloud of steam, clean clothes are laid out on the counter.
He's sitting on her bed with his tactical vest and boots next to him and quickly stands when she enters the doorway. He looks sufficiently shamed now and she wonders if he had his ass handed to him by Briggs.
"Please, just go," Paige utters and it sounds pathetic even to her own ears. She wishes she could be with him, could ask him to stay, because God only knows how she doesn't want to be alone right now.
But she can't ask that of him, not when she's so conflicted over whose fault this is. She wants to laugh because sometimes no one can be faulted for these things. She's a federal agent and she should know that. She does know that.
She settles for stepping towards him and reaching her hand out. Truce. He takes it instantly and wraps his arms around her. The deep inhale he takes is shaky at best and it seems like he wants to be able to say something.
She pulls back and walks past Mike. She lets her towel drop, but this time, there's no hidden undertones. It feels like she's dropping the weight of the world, dropping her responsibilities. There's nothing romantic anymore.
"You aren't an executioner. You're a survivor," he says but it sounds rehearsed, almost false.
"A survivor," she repeats and crawls under her covers. She doesn't need him, doesn't want to need him, and he senses that. He's no longer welcome in her space. "Right."
She is a survivor, no matter the costs to others or herself.
She wonders how, or even if, she'll survive this.
Author's Note: Title from Some Nights by Fun.