Title: Past Tense
Author: Catch22Girl
Disclaimer: Not mine, belong to everyone involved in 24 and FOX television.
Summary: Only thing they still are is dead. Kate Morgan POV. Post Day Nine.
On TV they're announcing the death to the world.
"President James Heller's daughter and advisor…"
Yesterday, Kate knew her from photographs and charity work that sometimes made the news.
Today, she knows her from the blood under her fingernails and the sound of her last breath.
Adam and Audrey were two people who never met but will be forever connected in her memory. They were. Not are. In a carefully worded after-action report that she spent all night writing, she referred to her by her full name. Adam was a former CIA agent, not her husband, not the man she loved. Jordan was only a colleague not someone who flirted with her and was always on her side.
Yesterday morning she was worried about her career, about her place in the system, about proving herself to a man who was a traitor. Navarro is an is, he gets to be an is. Adam and Audrey and Jordan are still a was.
Always will be a was, a were, only thing they still are is dead.
Erik runs the station now. Names that were only ink yesterday are now flesh and blood and missing. Chloe and Jack have disappeared. Letting them slip back into the shadows is the least she can do.
Jordan didn't die for her but his death is still her fault, her blindness that kept her from seeing the danger in front of her. And Audrey. She replays it in her head, a second earlier, a few more agents, time to do a thorough recon or even just bringing a fucking vest for the First Daughter. Any small choice could have led to a different outcome. Rushed rescue mission that ended in failure.
"There's always a second shooter," she hears in her head from the academy. Securing an area 101. Adam would have remembered. He would have gone to the perimeter while she stayed with Audrey. She wouldn't have been with strangers on a secret mission trying to do one good thing. If Adam had been there –
She can't go back and save him. Her lack of trust and faith in him was enough to push him over the edge. He told her about his teenage depression, about an attempt when he was 16, but those were stories about the past and not the present. Adam Morgan was brave and strong and confident.
Not that night, her conscience whispers again, forcing her back to the room, to his red-rimmed eyes and the way he was unable to look at her before she left. What she remembers now is the sound of papers hitting the floor, her last glance of him before she turned the corner.
For months she was furious at his memory. Anger was good. Kept her focused. He betrayed her. He left her to deal with the clean up. He ruined her life and career. He was a coward who couldn't face the consequences of his own actions. Today, the truth made it immeasurably worse.
Now, without the resentment all she can feel is the loss. Maybe that's what happened in the park, she told Audrey she didn't know if Jack was okay, and it reminded her of her husband, of the few times they were separated. A second of mourning, jangled nerves from electrocution, a still present desire for revenge, the weight of the last few months or a simple mistake.
Doesn't matter what happened only that it did.