-:- Subject 13's Butler: -:-

Silent Bravado
.:A Subject 13's Butler side-story dedicated to ShadowGUN101:.

"There's been…a change."

Timothy's ears pricked, and he looked over at his currently assigned partner. Grell Sutcliff snapped his phone closed before stowing his phone away in his pocket. Resting his chin on his folded arms on the roof of the sleek black sedan, Timothy raised an eyebrow.

"Oh?"

The redheaded agent nodded. "Yup. The boss wants us to meet up with him in ten sharp – apparently Slingby and Humphries just came out of another interrogation with the duo from the Hospital that we apprehended in Manchester; apparently one of them finally leaked something."

This time, Timothy raised both eyebrows. "Oh?"

Grell sighed, already bored, and straightened his black blazer. "Let's go hear it from Will himself; he should be about the meet up point by now." He said, before getting into the passenger seat, and Timothy yawned and stretched before following suit, sliding in next to Grell and behind the wheel of the car. It was a nice enough car; clean, comfortable, and the engine purred to life with no effort or complaints. They made their way out of the back-alley parking lot that squatted between the high-rise buildings all around them, and exited out onto the street, merging seamlessly with the traffic. He snuck a glance at his partner – many thought Grell was a reckless driver – he was pretty reckless with everything else; field work, paper work, interpersonal relationships; why not add driving to that list as well? But he wasn't, truth be told. He was confidant, yes, and he was efficient. He didn't take unnecessary risks that could endanger other drivers or his passengers. Sure, he might complain about other drivers and their blind, senseless ways, but he never honked the horn at them. Timothy supposed that he should be grateful he'd been instructed to drive, however – Sutcliff had proved to be on a short tether recently, and who knew how that might change his driving attitude.

The dark haired agent cast his eyes over to his partner. Grell Sutcliff. It wasn't often that Timothy was partnered up with one of the less inconspicuous agents. Agent Clarke didn't stand out very much – in fact, he doubted he would be remembered by any of the higher up agents at all had they not made subtle glances at his ID badge. He knew he had a weird way of fading into the background – he couldn't help it. He was a good agent, but he was much better in the department of resources and planning. Hearing Grell sigh, Timothy looked over to see the redhead turn and gaze out the window boredly as Clarke drove. The man in the passenger seat had many secrets, Timothy knew – he'd seen the discreet phone calls Grell had stepped outside to make, away from the company of the other agents. He hadn't been as ridiculously flirty as he normally was recently, either. He'd become quite broody and withdrawn. Doesn't stop him from being an obnoxious prick at times Clarke smirked to himself. He didn't mind Grell; but it wasn't as if he'd have to put up with him for much longer – Agent Spears, the one everyone answered to, was making the final moves to cut off anyone but his most trusted agents from the workings and investigation of the Phantomhive case. Rumours of a double agent had been spreading like wildfire among the other agents, causing much unrest, and there was even word of special operatives being sent by the Dispatch's head, the one and only Lawrence Anderson, to investigate into the possibility of the double agent whilst Will and his five or so most trusted become closed off to continue the initial investigation without issue.

It wasn't as if this was news to Timothy – he'd known about it for a while now, before it had been announced to the other agents, in fact. Being unnoticeable, it made it easy for him to get lost in the background. So when he'd been at the water cooler with a few others, no one else had noticed or overheard the hushed conversation in the next room between Anderson and William. But Timothy had noticed – he'd listened, observed, and already processed the fact that neither he nor many of his other colleagues were going to be trusted until this case was resolved and the thirteen-year-old boy Ciel Phantomhive was in their custody. By the time he'd accepted this fact, all his other co-worker agents were all in an uproar after the announcement – the tension in the air around the workplace had been high, and the general atmosphere had become taut and uneasy ever since then. No one wanted to be blamed and accused of being a double agent. And likewise, they were just as quick to think of blaming others and pointing the finger at their co-workers to dispel any suspicion against them.

He found it ironic that no one suspected him; or, perhaps even more ironically, that he wasn't the double agent.

Still mulling it over, he pulled into a small side-street café; the rendezvous point. Sutcliff told him to sit tight, he'd go on and get the news from William – two's a couple but three's a crowd, the redhead said lightly, waving Timothy goodbye before flouncing away. He took a moment to take a deep breath once the car was silent again, and then he let out the breath in a long sigh, and fished out an old, worn and dog-eared paperback from the glove box. After all, Clarke reasoned, if he was going to have to wait on the return of one of Will's most trusted, he might as well have something to do.

-:-

When it happened, it happened quickly. So suddenly that Timothy didn't even realize what was going on until the second shot had been fired, and everything descended into chaos. People were screaming, tables and chairs were clattering to the ground in customers efforts to escape. Scrambling to undo his seatbelt, Timothy took a mere second to make sure he had his gun on him before stumbling out of the car.

What was happening? He glanced around, almost ran into by a frightened woman and her three terrified children. A shooting. Someone was shooting up the café. A robber? Just your everyday run of the mill criminal? His thoughts turned to Agent Sutcliff and Agent Spears. No. This was no coincidence – he forced his feet forwards, desperately trying to recall his training of a suddenly hostile situation. God, that had been a couple of years back now. He pulled his handgun from his holster and took a leap over a fallen white table, landing and springing back up again, looking left and right, hoping to see a flash of red hair or the flash of a reflection of light off a pair of glasses – there! Hunkered down behind a countertop, there was Grell and William – Grell holding a manila folder to his chest like his life depended on it. Timothy lunged forward, scooting behind a pillar and searching the café for the shooter. Or, he realized, shooters. More than one – a good six or seven in fact, all armed with assault rifles, letting loose several tens of rounds with every squeeze of the trigger, bullets spraying the walls and floors, peppering the countertops. Timothy took a glance back at his fellow agents; Will had pushed Grell down to the floor, protecting him, before lashing over the top of the counter, his own handgun drawn, and firing off several wild shots.

Timothy's eyes widened as three of the seven men went down, all of them hit in vital places – one went down gurgling with blood spraying from his trachea, another had caught the bullet straight in the chest, and the third man took the third bullet right in the head. Damn. William was an amazing shot. How the –

Glancing around, Timothy realized how Will had been able to shoot so accurately; behind the counter where the two agents were crouched, there was a long, tall mirror sitting against the cabinet directly in front of them, tilted just so that it reflected the positions of the shooters. However, there was a couple of large cracks now splintering the mirror, changing the reflection to show inaccurate positions. Will had had to take a wild chance and hope they hit roughly where they had been aimed to; Timothy supposed really that it counted more as luck, but he wasn't about to argue the toss. He couldn't just stand there an allow Sutcliff and Spears to be killed.

He gathered the last ounce he had left of his courage, for he was not the worlds bravest man, and he'd never really been in a real gunfight before, never once been wounded, and Timothy stepped out from behind the pillar, aimed, and fired. Once, twice, three times, each time switching targets and making his shots careful yet seemingly random. At his entrance, the shooters had barely noticed him, but now they were diving for cover, each of them now screaming in pain; every shot he'd made, he'd hit, surprisingly enough. Perhaps not fatal wounds, but they were all heavily injuries – arms, legs, shoulders; each bullet had found home somewhere that would hurt enough to give Grell and Will the time to move.

And move they did – the two scrambled up and darted out to him, dashing past him, Grell pausing for a moment to grab Timothy's arm and shake him from his stupor.

"Come on rookie, or we're leaving you behind!" the redhead urged, yanking Timothy along with him. Clarke was shaken from the daze, and managed to tear his eyes away from the screaming and yelling men now on the floor, clutching their wounds and bleeding all over the tiles. He had…he had done that? He skittered back, nearly slipping on the tiled floor as he spun around to follow his superiors as they made a dash through the fleeing crowds, still screaming and wailing, back to the car.

He went for the drivers seat, but Grell shoved him back. "Oh no, rookie – you're shakin' like a leaf. I'm driving." Spears was already in the passenger seat, but there was another gunshot going off somewhere in the café behind them just as Timothy went to the back seats door; a woman screamed, and another gunshot rang out – he was only dimly aware of the bang, as he found himself suddenly gazing numbly down at the patch of blossoming red on his shirt, the instant of impact shocking his body so he couldn't feel the pain. Grell was shrieking, the redheads hands were grabbing at his arms as he fell against the car, dragging him upright and yanking open the car door before shoving him haphazardly inside.

Someone was scrambling over the seats from the front into the back as the driver's door slammed and the engine revved; William was worming his way between the seats and sitting Timothy upright; Timothy could see the older agent's mouth moving, could see his hands pressing against the darkened, bloody patch of his shirt, but he could neither hear to feel what was being said and done. The pain had shocked his entire body into complete numbness – he didn't even feel is as Sutcliff drove swiftly through the traffic; taking sharp turns and yelling into the hands-free phone sliding around on the dashboard next to him. Outside was a blur. His head was beginning to spin dangerously, as if it were threatening to topple right off his shoulders – Timothy could hear his name being called, but his eyelids felt too heavy to lift. Just a moment…he'll be fine in a moment…

-:-

The hospital wing of the Dispatch Society was a cold and very clammy place to be waking up. It had pale blue walls matched by slightly paler curtains at the windows, and had tiled floors that resonated ones footfall throughout the halls. There was little decoration; little need for it, really. All the doctors on the staff had excellent credentials – it wasn't exactly a public hospital, after all, so there was no need to publicly display their various awards or certificates.

As deathly silent as the hospital wing was, there were a few things that could comfort it's occupants. Say, for instance, waking up to the concerned yet smiling face of an old friend. Not really an old friend, Timothy reasoned internally as he blinked himself awake; he knew exactly where he was and exactly who was sitting at his bedside, flipping through an old paperback, smiling to himself at some private joke. Timothy had worked with him several times before; before he'd been partnered with Grell for a couple of missions out into the field, he'd been partnered with this man down in another sector of the Dispatch; Field Intelligence and Resources. The gathering of information and turning it over to those in the Intel department; which meant collecting any and all pieces of information they could from anywhere – the public media, word on the street, surveillance; there were endless ways to collect information.

"Hey, you're finally awake!"

Timothy let his gaze drop from the ceiling to the face of his bedside companion. Ronald Knox was about his age, but still acted like a teenager trying to impress all the ladies down at the Reception and Weapons Offices.

"How long was I out?" he attempted to sit up, before forcing himself to relax; no, he was definitely not ready to move just yet, he noted, as pain lanced through his side. Knox whistled softly under his breath as he saw Timothy wince.

"You were unconscious for about three days; doctors were scared you're gonna go into a coma. But you were stabilized a few hours after they plucked the bullet from your gut, and they reckoned all they could do was wait for you to wake up."

"And they left you on guard duty?"

Knox snorted. "Chyeah right – I'm here because I volunteered to be. I'm just waiting til its time to clock out so I can meet up with Candice and Jennifer; we're going out for drinks with some of the others tonight – my last night out before Will comes down hard on us about the Phantomhive case." But his expression softened. "Hey, it gets me out of doing any real work for a while, and you get to wake up to a friendly face; ain't that thoughtful of me?"

Though he rolled his eyes, Timothy couldn't resist a smile. "Thank you for putting in so much effort." He sighed, and Ronald chuckled.

"Hey man, you shoulda been there when Spears and Sutcliff dragged you in – well, I mean, you were there but you were kinda unconscious and bleedin' everywhere. They looked terrified – Will shoutin' orders and Grell nearly in tears – it's been ages since we've lost one of our own…" Knox's voice quietened, and his eyes dropped to his hands. "I guess we'd kinda forgotten what having a death in the family is like. It was a real shock to see you so badly wounded."

"Family?" Timothy felt his eyes widen a little; he'd never quite considered the Dispatch to be his family. Sure, he worked here and poured just about every waking hour of his life into his work, but he didn't really have a family much outside the Dispatch. He had his parents, who were overseas travelling, and a younger sister going through college. That was it.

"Yeah, man," Knox's voice broke through his thoughts. "Think about it. We don't have much of social life outside of work because it's so consuming. We work for the better of humanity and such; not much time for much else when we're fighting crime and solving cases and stuff. All we really have is each other."

It was true. Timothy hadn't seen his little sister since last summer when she'd moved off to live with friends as she started studying in college. His parents had been overseas for two years now; he had numerous messages from them he'd never had time to respond to. Numerous invites from his little sister to catch up one weekend; numerous plans just like those that had been pushed further and further back, until they'd simply not happened at all – his little sister had really just stopped trying. Now he thought about it, the Dispatch was more of a family than he actually had anymore.

"I…I doubt anyone would notice me gone." He cleared his throat, knowing fully well that half the Dispatch agents didn't even know each other's names. There were so many agents, many of them spread over different Society's across the world, and the England Dispatch Society was but a single finger in proportion to the entire hand. A single, cut-off finger because of certain corrupt benefactors, but still a digit among many nonetheless, and still a recognized part. The English Dispatch had many agents, however, and Timothy was more or less a face in the crowd. He didn't stand out, not like Agents Spears, Sutcliff, Slingby, Knox or Humphries…these men had all made specific and significant contributions to the workings of the Dispatch. They stood out and were marked as respectable men who were role models to look up to. Everyone else…well, there was certainly a pecking order, but Timothy had never really found that anyone paid him much attention if he didn't say anything. He was just a pawn, blindly following orders.

Once again, Ronald coughed loudly, and Timothy realized that the blonde agent had been waving a hand in front of his face. "He-eey~! Earth to Clarke! Listen, man, a lot of us would notice if you'd died. You saved both William and Grell! That's huge! Everyone knows about how you took on the masked gunmen by yourself and gave them the opportunity to escape."

"And how incredibly stupid something like that is," came a voice from the doorway, and the two of them looked up to see William T Spears standing in the doorframe. "But you have my thanks, Clarke; and you have Agent Sutcliff's thanks as well. Had you not taken the initiative to move when you did, we would most likely have been killed and our top-secret information lost to us. We'd be at a huge disadvantage had we lost it; thanks to you, we did not."

Something akin to pride welled up inside Timothy. He hadn't considered the severity of his actions before; all he'd been able to think about was what pain he was in, and how all he'd been thinking when he'd gone into the café was how he had to find William and Grell. Make sure they were okay. The information hand-over had never even crossed his mind. Now here was straight-backed, stiff-upper-lipped William T Spears letting his hard frown soften to a more neutral expression, his mouth curling upwards a little in what appeared to be a tired yet genuine smile. A gratified smile. Timothy felt his cheeks colour a little, and glanced away – at the bedside table, where he noticed a splash of colour against the dull of the rest of the ward. Someone had left a large bouquet of flowers and a large, simple yet classy and sophisticated card signed by everyone in the Intel and Field departments. There was a tag on the flowers scrawled upon in red, cursive writing; Clarke smiled a little as he realized exactly who the flowers were from. There was only one man in the entire Dispatch who'd go all-out of a huge bouquet for another agent. A certain redhead.

"I…what will happen now?" Timothy found himself asking, uncertain of the current state of the Dispatch's affairs. William sighed and readjusted his glasses.

"You'll remain here until you recover fully; then you'll take four weeks leave, and rejoin us afterwards. You'll be moved down the Department of Resources and Planning on a more permanent basis; no reason to keep you in the field when you're perception and initiative could be put to excellent use preventing further risk of any deaths in the Dispatch."

In a round about way, Timothy knew, that was basically William saying he'd like it very much if Timothy worked on more strategic planning in a more bullet-free environment, so there wouldn't be a repeat of the episode three days ago. In an even more roundabout way, it was also William acknowledging his skills and his usefulness. Making sure he didn't feel as if he could be easily replaced in the field. Though the words were blunt, they were comforting.

"Thank you, sir." He weakly saluted to William, who shook his head with a sigh as Ronald chuckled next to him. The two agents excused themselves soon after, leaving Timothy alone with his thoughts. Recovery in the hospital wing from a bullet wound was normally two to three weeks. Then after that he'd have another month free. What on earth was he to do with himself in that time? He could go back to helping his uncle in the antiques watch shop down in Hyde Park, he supposed…

Or…his eyes wandered over to his phone, which sat patiently on the bedside next to the large vase that held the flowers from Grell. Reaching up, he managed to fumble the phone down into his lap without aggravating the wound in his side, which by now had been patched and wrapped up securely. He flipped open his phone, going through his contacts before calling a number.

After a few rings, he was met by the voice of a girl.

"Hey, it's you! I never hear from you anymore! Why don't you ever call? God Tim, you're so buried in your work, you promised me so many times we'd go out and catch up and stuff and you promised mum and dad you'd be around if ever I needed a hand with college and hey are you listening to me?!"

Timothy Clarke smiled at the sound of the peeved voice. "Hey sis. Something's come up at work…looks like I'll be getting a month off in a few weeks. How does catching up in two to three weeks sound? I'll buy you an ice-cream."

"Idiot!" huffed the teenage voice on the other end, but then it softened after a moment of consideration. "…double vanilla swirl from the place on the corner of Antoinette's?"

The hospital wing no longer seemed quite so cold with the sound of his little sister's voice in his ear.

"Whatever you like, sis. Whatever you like."

-:-

AfterNote:

There you go, ShadowGUN101! I hope you like it, I hope you think the ending is cute. I thought it was cute. Y'know. Gotta have some cuteness after having a near-death experience. And ice-cream. Ice-cream is a definite must for those who wanna get over the jitters of adrenaline and shizz.

One down, two more ficlets to go! Please review, yo!

- Mercy