"Unsteady"
Mystic25
Something I needed to write after watching "Jason Bourne" and seeing that final scene between Jason and Nicky Parsons. MAJOR SPOLIERS from the movie.
Rating: T for language and imagery.
A/N: I did my best to be as accurate with the details as possible, if I missed anything, or something isn't right, it was not intentional. Also, anything in either italicized brackets [like this] or whole paragraphs written in italics, are flashbacks.
xxxxXxxx
"Mother, I know, that you're tired of being alone,
Dad I know you're tryin', to fight when you feel like flyin'"
~X Ambassadors "Unsteady"
-o-o-o-
"It was difficult for me, with you."
~"Nicky Parsons"
"The Bourne Ultimatum"
xxxxXxxxx
New York City
2015
A monarch butterfly flew out from an outcropping of trees, winding golden orange and black over a landscape gone neon green from the contrasting gray overcast sky above it.
He watched it travel over the expanse of manicured grass, until it landed with vellum thin wings on a rectangular granite marker erected at the foot of a freshly dug hole vivisected into the ground in a perfect rectangle.
A foot back from the plot and the marker stood three rows of white foldable chairs.
The gathering was small: 20 people, a mix of men and women in varying shades of black suits, black or gray dresses. Three men stood behind the last row of chairs, their suits all the same shade charcoal gray that was shade above black. Their arms hung at their side except for one man resting one hand on the shoulder of a woman with dark auburn hair in a sleeveless black slip dress. Her eyes were downcast towards her hands that were clenched in her lap.
In the front row of chairs were only three people: two girls no older than 19 with ash blonde hair sitting on either side woman in a black linen dress with long sleeves and an A-line skirt. Her platinum blonde hair was pinned up into a small hat with a loose black veil hanging midway over her eyes. Her hands were outstretched into the laps of the two girls, clutching her hands tightly.
The coffin in front of the burial blot was a polished dark mahogany with gleaming brass handles. The lid was covered with three dozen blood red roses with baby's breath scattered around the blooms like fallen snow.
A priest stood in front of the coffin and the crowd, his suit black, the peaking of his white collar the only bit of color to his clothing. He spoke in a somber voice reserved for those that were too young to be eulogized. He spoke of a list of accomplishments, praising the life once lived that they were burying, and the woman in front row broke down and cried with ugly, unrestrained sobs that rocked her body forward. The two girls held onto her hands, tears silently moving down their faces that they didn't wipe away so they could keep holding onto the woman's hands.
The priest words stopped. He looked out over the crowd, to the woman in the front row, the girls, like the full realization came to him then that there was nothing he could say that would stop their pain.
"I wish my words could offer more comfort-" the priest was young, a square jaw and brown hair cropped so short that hugged the curve of his head. He looked up and away to the oak trees wearing leaves of late summer green, to the gray sky, trying to see something, maybe the god he prayed too. "But I know that nothing I say will take shock away from such a tragedy," His eyes fell back to earth and onto the woman in the A line skirt. "Nicolette, Nicky- she was, awoman of great compassion, intelligence, and courage."
He saw the personal connection in the priest's eyes as she spoke. His age appeared almost identical to hers, their connection was most likely traced back high school debate teams or Ivy League college classes. Everything that existed before a falling off the grid, before jumping from existence to existence just to stay alive.
"-she took her compassion overseas, braving unforeseen dangers to help those less fortunate-"
[ The voices of hundreds of people echoed in chaotic chants down over 200 feet below them.
The motorcycle body screeched and bumped as he wound it down a zigzag of concrete steps. "Hang on!" he pumped the throttle under the handle, keeping the bike at a fast enough pace to counter the jerks the wheels made on the stairs, driving in almost a 45-degree slant straight down.
Her arms locked tighter around him to keep herself from being thrown off.
When the last set of stairs came into view he popped the front wheel up enough so that it would clear them without getting caught and flipping them over. The motorcycle landing with a teeth rattling bang back onto a side street.
The street was lined cars parked on either side of the back end of buildings, and it was deserted having been barricaded off by the Athens police department. There was barely any sound, the noises of the protestors on the street masked by buildings. There was no diversion, it was too exposed. "Stay low!" He pushed the bike's speed to its maximum limit.
There came a quick whizzed burst from up high, a muted scream that wasn't his own behind him. She fell forward into him, then her arms jerked off his body and she toppled backwards onto the street with hard thuds just as he saw the tailgate of dark car ahead of him. He was going too fast to stop or turn, the motorcycle's front wheel hit the back bumper of the car, throwing him up over the rear window in a sideways slant then down into a twisted roll onto the road, smashing his head onto the ground. His vision turned hot white, blacking him out a second later.
He came back to consciousness on his back with a cough from the thick haziness of smoke that had enveloped the air; a high pitched ringing screaming in his ears. He flipped onto his stomach with a grunt, and crawled towards the back bumper of the car "Nicky! -"
A gasped, choking sound came from behind the parked car, He kept low, moving in a slide over shards of glass and broken rubber that gouged holes into his jacket. The gasping grew louder, the street illuminated in a hazy smoked filled orange from the fires.]
"No risk was too great or too substantial for those she cared about-and who, in turn cared about her-"
[ She was flung on her back. Her legs and arms were splayed out in front of her, her breath choking her body in convulsions, blood pooling out from her back and onto the road.
"Don't move!" he watched her breath gag her, her eyes glazed over in agonizing pain, silent screams pouring out of her mouth.
"Nicky," he crawled towards her, "just hang on-I'm going to pull you to cover-"
She shook her head violently. "D-don't-!" her body convulsed on pain, face tight in agony- "Go!" ]
"I know her family expresses their gratefulness to the those in our government who helped recover her in Greece. Without their help, I fear that she would have been lost to us and would never be returned to those who loved her-"
xxxxXxxx
Patras, Greece
One Year Ago
The breeze was salty with a spray of cold fall air over the gulf. The sun hung low, coating the sky orange with red tinged edges. Patras was not as populated as Athens, but the lights of the city were 160,000 strong and it throbbed with a night life that foreign tourists craved and locals frequented.
Music seemed to pour out of every building, spilling onto the streets and rising up into the sky lit with stars and city lights. Countless people wandered out of the city He saw them from two stories up, shapes and colors moving through the streets, the smell of food and alcohol traveling up through the opened window of the tiny wrought iron balcony. He watched and listened, keeping his expression casual, arms resting on the balcony railing.
"What did you come here for?"
He smelled her before he heard or saw her, a spicy, pungent, vanilla that plugged up the sinuses, making it hard for police dogs to track her scent.
He turned and she was standing inside the one room apartment, next to a rust colored paisley sleeper sofa.
"I needed to see you." She stepped out into the small amount of light that the window created. She was dressed in a dark green canvas jacket and jeans. She had stopped dying her hair, and it had grown out long, hanging in loose blonde curls over her shoulders.
He stepped out of the balcony with a squeak of the iron and back inside the apartment that was dark save for what light came through the opened window. "If anybody saw you-"
"I was careful," she cut in. "I waited until the streets were packed before I even came into the city, changed clothes at the train station-"
She had gotten thinner, her face was a row of angles, her eyes sharper, more recessed into her head, her expression aged, harder.
He analyzed her remark for half a second. "What about CCTV? There are over a dozen cameras at any given point of entry into Patras-"
"I was careful, Jason." His name hung between them like a thread in the darkened room, holding them in place.
"You went on the run to disassociate yourself from me. If they manage to trace me here, they trace you here. You need to leave-"
"I had to make sure you were alive," Nicky stepped over to him in brown boots covered with dirt and mud from the roads. "None of this has a point if you're dead-"
He grabbed the crux of her elbow, pulling her backwards towards a rusted out stove and a sink with exposed pipes. He went back to the window by the balcony and shut green Fatima shutters. He flipped on a light switch, illuminating the small living space in the shadowed light of a string of naked bulbs that hung from the ceiling.
She flexed her elbow to alleviate some of the pain his movement had caused, feeling the canvas of her jacket stick together. She turned her arm over, seeing a dark red colored stain. She felt along her arm, but found now hole or tear in her clothes, or any pain. She raised her eyes, as he walked back towards her and saw a blood sodden wrapping of bandages around his palm, a trail of red blood dripping down his fingers.
He walked back towards her like it was a tactical procedure. "You need to leave – now!"
"You're bleeding-" She indicated the soaked bandage on his hand.
"Are you listening to me?" he ignored her statement. "The only point of all of this is that you run, you stay alive-"
She reached out and grabbed his hand, unrolling the bandage; the fabric turned a sticky black the closer down she got to his skin. A diagonal slash spanned the length of his palm, jagged and going down over half the depth of his hand. There was a line of wide stitches done in black sewing thread, but it had broken open, and the wound had deheased, splitting it wide down the middle with red eviscerated flesh.
She turned his hand with her palm to get a better look, and when she did a welling of blood pooled out. "This is a knife wound-" She raised her eyes to his. "How did this happen?"
" You're not entrenching yourself in this-" he diverted her inquiry a second time.
"I gave up everything when you told me to run, I cut ties with everyone I know, my friends - I haven't spoken with my family in over six years, they don't even know I'm alive, I never stay in one location for more than two days. I'm already entrenched in this, Jason," she flicked her eyes back down to his hand, "This needs to be cleaned out and resewn or it will get infected-" She closed his hand into a fist to generate pressure to stop the bleeding. She turned and looted around in the chipped kitchen cabinets that were behind her, opening them to bare lined interiors with a few stray rat droppings and dark water stains, until she came to one that held a bottle of rubbing alcohol, a green packaged field dressing, and a small travel sewing kit. She pulled out these items, setting them down a long white Formica countertop island, opening the dressing package with her teeth.
She shed her jacket, revealing a thin long sleeved light blue shirt. She set the jacket on the counter top; the movement of her arm raised the hem of her shirt up, and under the thin layer of fabric, the black butt of a Taurus handgun was pressed at her back, just above the hemline of her jeans.
She pulled the lid of the thin sewing kit with a snap of plastic, threading a needle with black thread before dousing it with a stream of rubbing alcohol. She ripped off a section of cloth bandage. "Open your hand."
He complied with her request silently, a small collection of blood not staining his palm.
She grabbed his wrist and used the piece of bandage to clear away the blood; then poured almost the remaining bottle of rubbing alcohol onto his hand, sending it to dribble pink tinged at their feet on the linoleum floor. She wiped off the excess with the bandage. "Every action I've done is to expose the operation for what they did to you, what they did to all the others," She pressed the torn places of the cut on his palm together with her thumb and forefinger. Her eyes flicked up to his, but he didn't say anything. She picked up the needle and thread and poised it over his hand before plunging the tip of the needle into the top edge of his wound, pulling it out the other side. His breath blew against her ear off near her ear, but he gave no indication of pain. She continued moving the needle in and out of his hand in quick motions with 'rshing' noises of the black thread, pulling the wound back together in a line of black x'd threaded rows. "I was a part of something that exploited and wielded human life like it was a weapon. I have to be a part of what stops it-" She double knotted the end of the thread and off the end with tiny, orange handled scissors. She picked up the remaining field bandage, unrolling it.
"I told you, you can't be a part of this-" He took the bandage from her and began wrapping it end over end on his hand. hiding the stitched wound from view. "Not anymore."
She plunged her hand underneath the neckline of her shirt, exposing the top of a black laced bra. She pulled at the seam of one of the cups with both hands until it ripped open, exposing the thin padding underneath. She reached inside with three fingers pulling something out of the fabric.
"It's all here," She held out an encrypted black micro USB drive in front of him. "Everything I've gotten so far about you, what they did to you when you first joined the program-" She grabbed his wrist and flipped it over, dropping the USB into his bandaged hand.
He stared down at the drive she had given him, moving his thumb across the hard plastic. "Where did you get this?"
"I have a contact in Germany, Christian Dassault, he's been helping me hack into the CIA files: Tredstone, Black Briar all of it- Once I hack the rest of the information, I'm going to go public-"
"Christian Dassault is a mercenary-" His eyes raised, his gaze hard on her. "He only has loyalty to himself and the underground world that he runs-"
"I've already checked him out. He's crooked Jason, but he's one of the only people in the world who can gain access to the files I need, that makes him important enough to be worth the risk."
"He's exploiting you; he's taking your hell bent desire and twisting it to meet his objectives. He's going to do nothing but get you killed!"
"I'm not afraid of dying," her gaze was steady, her voice hard set in a realization that she seemed to just come to herself. "Not anymore."
He closed his hand around the USB drive, and leant over her, pulling the gun out from the waistband of her jeans. "Then why do you have this?" he held the Taurus out flat in his hand, holding it out to her, watching her reaction at seeing her gun brought out in front of her. "Once they figure out who hacked into their files, they will come after you with an Assest assentation and they will make it as bloody as possible-"
"Scaring me off isn't going to work! I've already made up my mind-I'm not the same college student they recruited out of the dorms at Columbia. Everything I've seen, I can't just close my eyes and watch it happen anymore!-" she broke off with short cry when he grabbed her arm and pushed against the wall next to a white mini fridge; her back hit the plaster with a loud thud. He pinned her with a bent elbow against her collar bone, the arm holding her gun, hanging loose at his side.
"You need to be scared!" He drew inches closer to her, close enough that the spiced vanilla she wore stung his eyes and throat, close enough so that her heavy, shocked, breathing blew in puffs against his face. "I'm describing the reality of what will happen if you leak this information, I'm reminding you where you ran from, who you are! -"
"And so am I!" her yell echoed traveled around the room, the base beat on the other side the wall became quieter, like it had been turned down to listen to them.
He turned around when he heard the silence, pressing a hand over her mouth simultaneously, darting his head around the apartment.
The vibrations of music on the other side of the wall had completely stopped. From less than 20 feet down the hall, a door opened, the sound of footsteps echoed on the hallway floor towards them. Someone pounded on the door with a hard rapping knock, rattling the wood.
He lowered his hand off her hand off his mouth, and released his arm, gesturing slightly with his head towards the door.
She turned behind her and flipped off the light switch that was in the wall, plunging the room back into darkness as the knocking grew louder, and a voice called out to them in a string of angry Greek.
She pulled an elastic hair tie out of her jeans pocket and walked slowly to the door, tying her hair up high on her head, tucking stray blonde curls behind her ears.
Behind her, he pocketed the USB and cocked the gun in his hand, moving to a position behind the door just as she reached it.
She kept the chain guard latched, pulling the door open the two or so inches it allowed. From behind the door, he pressed the barrel of the gun in the crack made from where the hinges connected it to the wall.
A man with dark curled black hair, in jeans and a flannel shirt rolled up at the elbows stared at her from a dimly lit hallway.
"What the hell are you doing?" his words were an irritated, angry string of Greek. "I can hear you above the fucking crowd!" he waved to the right behind him, gesturing to the noise outside permeating through the walls.
"Sorry," her Greek was spoken in a higher voice. She kept back about half a foot from the door, so that her features were half hidden in the shadow. "I just came to visit my boyfriend, we were - talking," she deliberately stalled out her last word and lowered her eyes, as if she had just been caught doing something embarrassing.
She swept her gaze from down towards the carpet and up in a half circle to where Jason was standing right behind the door, muzzle of her gun pressed right against the wood, holding her gaze.
The man in front of her noticed what she was doing, and turned his head in inquiry. The door jiggled briefly for a moment; the tension from the chain latch was released, and the door opened wider.
Jason stood behind her, one arm reaching behind her to rest against the half opened door, staring out at the man, a look of guilt on his face too, "Sorry my friend," he kept his grip on the doorway high, concealing the gun behind the wood. "You know how women act when they are glad to see you," laughter coated his words as he said this in Greek, like he and the stranger were sharing a joke.
The man locked eyes with him, then his gaze caught on his other arm, and the hand wrapped in the field bandage. "What the hell happened to you?"
Jason raised his arm and looked down at his hand like he had forgotten about the bandage. He laughed again, low and dry, like he was half embarrassed, but also half pleased. "She likes to experiment, he turned towards Nicky with a wide reaching grin. "Don't you baby?" He lowered his arm down from the door, down to her lower back, sliding her gun back into her jeans.
She pushed back the door a little and reached behind her, pulling the hem of her shirt over the butt of the gun, resting her hands on his arm, never taking her eyes the man at the door.
The man raised his eyebrows at their movements. "With a body like hers-" his eyes roamed up her slowly and meticulously, "I don't blame you," a slow spreading smile crossed his face, and he reached out and slapped Jason on the shoulder. "Just keep it down, I'm trying to entertain." He laughed, deep and low, and turned back down the hallway.
Jason watched the man until he disappeared back through the door of his own apartment before shutting the door and locking it with the rusted deadbolt and the chain guard.
The noise of the crowd on the street was muffled by the closed shutters, but it had grown obviously louder behind the closed wood, like a barely contained animal in a cage.
Nicky walked to the window that overlooked the fire escape, opening the shutters wide; a wall of sound came pouring inside. The outside wall beside her began to vibrate with base thumping music again.
She flipped the string of celling lights off, returning the room to the half-darkness, walking back towards Jason, her brown eyes seeking his expression. "The files I have so far, they contain information about the initiation process into Treadstone. The use of water shock torture, sleep deprivation, high doses of barbiturates to make the Assets' mind pliable enough to handle the intensity of the training -" she stopped talking and watched him, gauging him, the way he stood, the shift in his expression as she told him this information. "It's everything they did to make you what you are, everything you've done as a result of their methods-"
"What I've done is my responsibility alone," He said it like he had long ago condemned himself to die under the weight of his past. Every time he closed his eyes he saw them, bloody expressionless faces, splayed out limbs, waterlogged bodies from being drowned after fatal shots to the head. "Not them, not their methods, it's on me-"
"No, it's not- They brainwashed you into becoming a killer!-"
"I volunteered; they didn't put a gun in my hand and make me squeeze the trigger."
"They did everything but do that!-" Even in the dark she saw his expression switch to complete self-detrimental disbelief. She had only seen him three times in the seven years since she had fell of the grid and gone underground. Each time in a different location. Before this had been in a busy street in Glasgow, the first time, a Shinto Shrine outside the Golden Palace in Kyoto. But the one thing that remained the same was the permanent guilt on his face, the fierce self-hate for the past decade of his life. The knife wound on his hand- he was a trained assassin; he could not be hurt so simply. He had gotten himself hurt on purpose, a form of punishment for his past. "You volunteered for something you didn't understand!"
"That's a cop out! What I did, I did consciously, placing the blame on them won't not change what I've done by my own hand!" he moved away from the door and back into the small area of space sectioned off by the couch, the noise of the crowd below half swallowing his words. He turned to face the light of the city, listening to the deafening sound.
She walked towards him, stopping on his left side, watching him watch the people below. "I was at Tredstone for three years, I stood behind a two-way mirror, watching them strip men down to bloody bones so they could fill them with propaganda. I watched their torture and took notes, analyzing if they were successful. The day they brought you in, I had been assigned another Assest. They pulled me away- they liked me; I was good at my job so they wanted me to observe your initial prep; they said you were different. None of the other Assets were even operational yet, they all had aberrations in their training: headaches, intracranial bleeds, psychosis from the torture, over half of them didn't survive. But, you came out of it, survived all the training, you were their first successful agent." her expression wavered, like a trail of wafting smoke "They didn't know that I knew you from before- I never let it show, they didn't know that we were-"
He turned away from the crowd and stared at her. "Whatever you and I were is a past life-" he cut into her words like a sharpened blade against paper.
"But it's not-" she stared back at him. "It doesn't have to be," something broke just on the edge of her expression "What they did to you, it was-I've never forgiven myself for my part in it-"
"Listen to me! -" He grabbed her elbow again. "Do not tell me. Somehow, someway it will leak back to them and they will use it as weapon against you."
"They've already used you against me, I told you, I'm not afraid of them anymore! -"
"Don't you understand?!- Whoever I am, whatever I am to you, it is not worth your life-"
"You don't remember my life, but I remember yours!" Her eyes found his in the dark. "I remember your life, Jason, who you were before you were this! And I can't just ignore it; I owe you that!"
"What I am to you doesn't and can't exist anymore!"
She pulled back like she had been punched hard across the face. She blinked and when she opened her eyes again, her gaze had liquefied, shining off the lights of the city below. She swallowed a rise of emotions; breathing in the stale smell of the room with a long breath; staring him down, watching as he did the same.
She closed the two step distance between them, setting a hand on his arm, wrapping her fingers around his wrist. Her grip was strong, but not hard, and a second later she drew forward, and her mouth was on his in a kiss that was blackened out by the darkness of the room.
She pulled back after a handful of seconds, her expression hanging between the past and the present, her breath fast.
He watched her, expression caught where hers was. There was a brief moment where something in his gaze shifted, a moment of need, before a veil dropped back over his eyes.
She released her grip on his wrist slowly; her gaze lingering on his face, but she did not touch him again. She walked back to the small counter top, picking up her coat, and sliding it back on her body. "Read the files; I'll find you when I have the rest-" She walked past the couch, past him, and towards the door.
"Nicky-" He reached out and gripped her wrist, stopping her movement.
She turned, seeing him half cloaked in darkness, feeling light pressure of his hand.
"Be careful."
She looked at him one second more. "Goodnight, Jason," She moved forward and he let go of her wrist at the same time; leaving through the door, amidst the chanting crowd below.
xxxxXxxx
"To bury someone who still had so much to give-" The priests voice shook over unmasking his professionalism for a split second, staring at the shiny casket adored with so many blood red flowers. "It is the purest definition of senselessness."
[ The noise of the rioters grew louder from not too far off, like they were going to jump the police barricade
She stared right at him, eyes clouded and red from smoke and pain.
He watched as she continued to shudder for air, the blood at her back flowing faster with the erratic beats of her heart. He pulled forward on his elbows, "I'm coming-"
She looked at him one last time, choking for air that was no longer there. She raised one of her hands, throwing something towards him that hit the road with the tinkling sound of metal. A whizzed bang tore across the air, blowing into her hair, hitting her point blank in the back of the head, the force flipping her onto her side on the broken road.]
"She was a truly remarkable humanitarian- She was a truly remarkable human."
[Her body was twisted, legs and arms were sprawled out in front of her. Blood trailed a dark red into her loose blonde hair; a winding shine of tear tracks trailed out of her still opened eyes.
He stopped moving.
No other noises came to his ears, not for a long time.
He started crawling forward again in a fast crawl on his elbows, grabbing the object she had thrown at him- a locker key with a black plastic head. He closed the key into his fist and kept moving, the asphalt of the road scraping and searing hot pain across his sternum and down his ribs. He felt something jagged scrape into his palm from the road, leaking a trail of blood as he pulled forward.
He reached her still figure. He moved his hands down her body, rapidly but thoroughly. In the pocket of her jeans he found a passport in the name of "Sara Brown" A traveler's wallet was hidden inside an interior pocket of her jacket. He stashed the passport into his bloody jacket, flipping into the black leather of the wallet, finding a handful of colorful Euros, credit cards under three different aliases. Stashed behind the last one was an expired New York driver's license bearing her real name:
'Nicolette Parsons.'
He knew it wasn't accidental that it was in there, she did not survive living eight years on the run by being this careless.]
"It is times like these where we rely on the strength of our Lord the most," The priest's eyes moved over the crowd of mourners, their pain merging together in the still air. "To make sense of what we cannot- I knew Nicky when we were both young idealists, finding our footing in the new world that had just opened up to us. Since then I've heard rumors of the great things she has done abroad, the lives she saved-"
[He removed the license and slid it into one of the front pocket of her jeans. He raised a hand up to her face, closing her eyes with his palm, smudging the tear tracks on her face. His breath left his body in a rush. "I'm sorry-"
The wail of the police sirens came from somewhere not too far off from the blocked off street, the thudding rotors of a helicopter thumping overhead became one of the noises in the night.
Police in white helmets and full Kevlar riot gear broke into the empty street. Once there, they found their stolen motorcycle in a heap on its side and woman down, a small puddle of blood remaining that did not belong to her spilt beside her on the road.]
"Were she here, she would not want us to morn her forever. To do so would dishonor her memory; we must carry on for her tomorrow in her absence. But right now, it is today, and she is gone, and the pain of this must be felt, for not doing so will also dishonor her memory, the love that she deserved," he paused and the silence throbbed in his throat like a wound. "Let us pray-" He lowered his head, and the gathering repeated his gesture in a chain reaction.
"In company with Christ, who died and now lives, may they rejoice in Your kingdom- Amen."
The murmur of 'amen' echoed through the crowd, whispered from Nicky's mother in the front row, her remaining daughters gripping tight to her hand, the younger of the girls sobbing into her mother's lap.
The priest walked over the grass over to the family, helping Nicky's mother to stand, placing a gentle hand on her shoulder.
"She is with God now," his words felt hollow, empty. He had not seen Nicky since their sophomore year at Columbia, when their ways had split after he had been accepted as an upperclassman into the Union Theological Seminary. He heard she had chosen to study abroad in Paris, had and had volunteered for Amnesty International while there. He never expected anything less, she had been highly intelligent, highly compassionate, destined for something more. Her contact back home had been sparse, but knew from his time in the overseas mission field how hard it could be to keep in touch when your work was all consuming, so he did not think about it too often. But, last week the Bishop had told him of a frantic call received from Nicky's mother. She had received news from the American Embassy in Athens about how Nicky's body had been recovered from amidst the mass rioting and protests in front of the Parliament building. The said she had been shot in a cross fire between protestors and Greek Police, dying on the scene. Two days later, the State Department flew her body home. He had been there with her mother to meet the transport plane; the sight of uniformed soldiers carrying her out had almost dropped him to his knees. She was 33, she was full of life, she was – she was not supposed to die.
He moved through the crowd of Nicky's family and friends. Some were from their days at Columbia, who looked just as dazed and shocked as him, remembering their days of drinking coffee at midnight, discussing Kant, or binging on DVD rentals after exam week. They were young enough to attend each other's weddings, baby showers, baptisms - not something like this.
"Peter-" one of his former classmates addressed him informally, her eyes red. "I-" she raised a hand to wipe at the tears that pooled down her cheeks, a delicate gold bracelet on her wrist made of hammered golden leaves tickled from the movement. "I still can't believe this-" she sniffed, the wind picking up and blowing her auburn hair off of her shoulders. "Do you know how it happened? -" she sounded almost afraid of what his response would be.
The priest, Peter, shook his head. "All I know is last week, her mother received a call from the American Embassy in Greece, they said that she had been caught in the crossfire of rioters-"
"Greece?" A male voice came from behind the woman, one of the three men who had been standing up during the service. "Last any of us heard, Nicky was in Paris, what the hell was she even doing there?" His voice was frustrated, but when the woman set a hand on his arm, his stance deflated some, until he was no longer angry, just defeated.
Peter set a hand on the other man's shoulder. "Believe me, I wish I knew." He did his best to do the job that had been ordained to him by the Archdiocese of New York, to offer the comfort and love of Christ and the church in times of great sorrow, while the entire time it felt like a dagger was slow shredding apart his heart from the inside out.
"Who is that? -" The woman's voice raised their heads up. She pointed out towards where coffin lay suspended over the open, newly dug grave. The crowd of mourners had moved together, talking, sharing stories, pain, or simply holding each other.
A lone figure remained by the coffin: a man in a black, single breasted trench coat, his head lowered so that his face was obscured in the high piled blooms of the roses. He stood perfectly still, the breeze moving through the lapels of his coat.
The woman's male companion looked up, watching the same man. "I don't know-"
Peter turned and moved back through the crowd of mourners, watching, as he walked, the man set something on top of the coffin with a black leather gloved hand. He did not recognize this man either, but he did not call out, not wanting to break into such a solitary moment.
The man held himself erect, almost soldier tall, but Peter watched as the man's head dipped lower, and his hand lingered on the coffin.
Peter finally reached shorn grass in front of the chairs, but when he walked over to the coffin, the man was gone. He turned looking left and right, but saw no trace of him. He scanned the crowd, trying to look for the black trench coat he wore, but he realized that it was futile, the gathering was full of people in black suits and black coats. Confusion clouded over his expression at who the man was, how he knew Nicky. He turned back to the coffin, seeing something white admit the red blooms of the roses.
He reached out and plucked the object up, holding in his hand, a small bundle of spicy scented bourbon vanilla flowers with fully opened petals. The flowers were bound together at their thin stems by a thinly rolled strip of white paper. He uncurled the paper from the flowers, finding writing on it, two words in a blocky handwritten script:
"Goodnight Nicky."
xxxXxxx
End
After rewatching the movie a second time, I realized the almost (in my opinion) intimate way Jason spoke to Nicky in Athens. He did not berate her, or tell her she didn't need to be there, he looked at her and said: "what's wrong?" I wanted to try to flesh out the reasoning behind it because it seemed like somewhere in their eight years on the run, something deeper had been established. I did not show exactly what that was because I felt labeling what they were to each other would take away from the meaning of who they were to each other.
Again, if there are any movie facts that are wrong (or other facts, because lord knows, I'm not a cop, or a CIA agent) it was not intentional.
Thanks,
Mystic