There was a rush of people around him, sprinting to get someone and their yells filled the entire street, telling a man to "stop" and "surrender". It didn't take long for D'Artagnan to figure out that he needed to get out of the crossfire, but that was pretty much impossible now as he was surrounded by both police and criminals. He only managed to get out a "shit" before the criminals started shooting, aiming at him as though he was police. D'Artagnan fully expected to get shot in the chest, hell, he was prepared to die. But he didn't. Someone knocked him over, making him fall harshly to the ground and hit his head with a bang. The effect of hitting his head was instantaneous and he could feel himself losing consciousness.

"Shit", a muffled voice said, it honestly sounded like there were a thousand fireflies in his ears. "Can you hear me?"

D'Artagnan would have replied, he really would have, but he couldn't speak. Everything hurt and it felt like someone was holding a pillow to his head, preventing him from saying anything and suffocating him. D'Artagnan didn't stay conscious anymore, he simply couldn't.

"Let me see him", demanded Athos to the nurse at the front desk, who was staring at him with a hand on her hip.

"Unless you are family I can't allow you to visit him", the nurse replied, running a hand absentmindedly through her red hair.

"I'm police"

"I'm a nurse. Now that we've got our professions out of the way, I suggest you go back to the police station and do your job"

"I'm doing my job"

"By what? Harassing a nurse who is trying to look after her patient?"

"He was there in the crossfire, I need to know what he was doing there"

"It was a public street, he was perfectly entitled to be there, now go! Don't come back until tomorrow"

Admitting defeat, Athos walked away from the redheaded nurse with a loud sigh. This day really sucked. First they let their gang of drug dealers get away, then they almost caught them but then the stupid citizen had to get in the way of the crossfire. If Athos hadn't knocked him down. He shuddered. He didn't want to think about the citizen getting killed while he was on duty; it was his life ambition to keep scumbags off the street to protect citizens and he couldn't handle a citizen dying when it was his own case that put him in danger. As it was, Athos still needed to talk to him; while he was sure the young man hadn't intentionally waked into danger, he still had to make sure that he wasn't working for the drug dealers. He highly doubted that the young man was seeing as they drug dealers weren't afraid to fire at him.

Athos rubbed a hand over his tired face. This had been a long day and he couldn't wait to get home, drink some good wine and maybe catch up on some paper work he was so desperately hoping would disapear if he didn't even think about it. Of course he probably wouldn't get to go home until late, Treville would have his head for letting the gang get away again, but what was he suppose to do? He wanted to catch the gang peacefully without killing anyone and they had been so close as well... Athos shook his head. He was not going to think about this right now.

"Treville is pissed", Porthos said the moment he walked into the office and Athos honestly had half the mind to walk back out again and pretend he was busy doing something else. But of course he couldn't do that. He was Athos. He was tough and he did his job with dignity. Well, that was until he saw Treville storming out of his office towards him, red faced and looking extremely pissed off.

"You let them escape!", yelled Treville, standing not even a foot apart from Athos who felt like cowering in a corner.

"There was a civilian", Athos began as calmly as he could.

"ONE! CIVILIAN! That shouldn't have been an issue. You could have gotten him out of the way and continued your job, but NO!, you had to cease fire AND stop pursuit"

"Sir, I understand your anger"

"Oh?", remarked Treville, his eyebrow raised. Athos took a steadying breath, Treville only raised his right eyebrow when he was extremely pissed off. "9 months, Athos", he said in an eerily quiet voiced, "we've been tracking this gang of drug dealers for 9 months. We've had insiders and spy's and none of them could take them down and when we finally have a brilliant lead, you let them get away"

"Civilians come first".

"Yes, they do, but you could have managed to save him as well as take down the leader"

"I'm sorry, sir"

Treville studied Athos for a moment, making the latter feel very uncomfortable. "Just fix this mistake, okay?"

"Yes, sir".

Athos breathed a sigh of relief that moment his boss walked away; he knew he stuffed up and he didn't need to be reprimanded by his boss about it especially when he was going to do all he could in order to fix his mistake. Moving slowly, he sat down behind his desk and rubbed his face tiredly.

"Did you speak to the bloke?", came the voice of Aramis from the desk face him.

"No, the nurse wouldn't let me in to see him"

"Oh, just try again tomorrow", said Aramis reasonably and Athos bit his tongue. Aramis acted as if he had no cares in the world.

"Porthos", Athos called, "did you find anything out about the civilian?"

"Yep", Porthos threw down a file on his desk and started talking, "his name is D'Artagnan, twenty years old, moved from Lupiac, Gascony to come to college, which didn't work out too well according to his records. He was expelled for doing other peoples test for them. His mother died when he was thirteen from a house fire, and his father is in a coma after a car accident. He has a sister, thirty years old, but as far I know they haven't spoken in 5 years which is the amount of time his father has been in a coma. D'Artagnan works in George Coffee House and is currently a Barista. Kid has a hard life"

Athos blew out a puff of air, "Jeez, you could say that"

"Wouldn't be surprised if he was crazy", said Aramis and both Athos and Porthos rolled their eyes.

It wasn't like Athos asked to work late, it was just part of the job description. It was 12 in the morning and he couldn't help the yawn that escaped him as he looked at the papers on his desk again. Joe Jackson – leader of the gang, smuggled cocaine all over Europe. Bradley Jackson – brother of Joe Jackson, has been arrested in the past and shown remorse.

It occurred to Athos, once he finished reading the reports, that their best option was to target Bradley Jackson, arrest him, talk to him and put him under pressure until he finally cooperated enough to tell the police the location of his brother and his informants. It wasn't easy, but he would have to do it. As of right now it was the only thing he could think of that would help him.

"You guys should get out of here for the night", he said to Aramis and Porthos, the former falling asleep on his desk.

"What about you?", asked Porthos.

"I'll stay here for a litt..."

"Get up, I'll drive you home"

Athos did as he was told; just because he was really the boss of Porthos and Aramis in work, he wasn't particularly fond in going against whatever Porthos said once they had knocked off. The guy could squish him if he wanted to.

As soon as Athos walked up the stairs leading to his bedroom, fatigue claimed him and he happily fell into an exhausted sleep where he didn't dream about the shitty day he had. Not once. Nor did he dream about the young man whose life decidedly sucked.

This is something new I'm working on so please let me know if you enjoyed it :)