Disclaimer—Characters belong to Josh Schwartz and Chris Fedak. No copyright intended. Any similarities to events or persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
Author's Notes—In a dark place this Thursday. Thanks so much to the mighty and wonderful Goddess for the beta.
Spoilers—General Casey knowledge, Pilot through late season 3.
Identity—He was this new thing. A government agent. Trained, shaped, molded, made. A killing machine.
He looked at the dark liquid in the glass in front of him.
It wasn't supposed to be like this. That wasn't supposed to be his lifeline. She was supposed to have that job.
But, he didn't have the option, not anymore. He wasn't given a choice. He was tossed in, head first. He was pushed, shoved. He wasn't sure it was a place he wanted to be, not without her.
He felt oddly serpentine, a thought that made his blood run cold. He felt like, when he'd shed the skin, he'd become this new thing. It was confusing, different, and he didn't like it.
Deep down, though, it didn't matter. What was done was done. What was dead was supposed to stay dead.
But, how could someone do that? How could they abandon their history, their baggage, their wounds? It was supposed to be like turning off a switch. Everything he'd ever been, everything he'd ever done, he was supposed to drop it all.
He couldn't. He didn't want to. He tried to cling to it, to some vestige that was left, some fraction of a memory, some ghost of a chance.
How could he be John when he still felt like Alex?
How could he be Casey when Coburn blood pumped in his veins?
Had it been worth it? Getting what he wanted but losing what he needed? At the time, he'd felt like it was the other way around. When the option presented itself, he felt like he needed to be there, he had a higher purpose, a true calling. He'd jumped at the chance to be all he could be. But, for what? To be dead to anyone he'd ever known, to everyone he'd ever loved.
In the ensuing hours, days, weeks, even months, he questioned that logic. Doubt seeped in. It didn't matter how he excelled at his training. It didn't matter how his commanding officers praised his natural-born abilities, his talents. A darkness was building.
He did well at keeping it locked away, hidden inside. He absorbed it, hiding it even from himself.
It was like a dark tide within him, ebbing and flowing with each kill, with each mission. Some nights were worse than others, when he'd go through a half a bottle, three quarters of one. Some nights, he'd pour the glass but it would never pass his lips.
He struggled.
Wasn't it supposed to be easier? Wasn't it supposed to be better?
Little by little, day by day, the memories started to fade.
He forgot the way her eyes would scrunch up when he made some crass comment designed to get a rise out of her. He forgot the way she tucked her hair behind her ear, the way she used to sneak her hand into his when he was least expecting it, the way she wormed her way into his heart in the first place.
He forgot the particular shade of her eyes. The color of her laughter. The spark of her touch.
It didn't matter how much Johnnie Walker he drank, or how much he avoided, there was no way to bring her back, to bring back his Kathleen.
Because, she wasn't his anymore. He wasn't even him.
He was this new thing.
A government agent. Trained, shaped, molded, made. A killing machine.
He slammed back the whiskey, feeling the burn. It did little to settle his nerves, to ease his tensions. He didn't get a buzz from it. He'd built up a tolerance already.
It would be years before he'd forgive himself for what he did to her.
Years before he'd allow himself to think that happiness might be in the cards for him somewhere, when the cosmos aligned just perfectly.
When he'd seen her in a flower shop in Rome.
It was cheesy, corny, but he felt like music played, like lights came on, like there was something on the horizon that wasn't another bullet, that wasn't another mission, that wasn't another death.
He allowed himself to read into the situation. He shouldn't have, but he hadn't been able to control it. It was metaphorical, he convinced himself. That romance could bloom, even in the coldest of places, within his closed-off heart.
He'd cultivated it, stoked it. He'd courted her, he'd loved her, from Italy to Chechnya. He'd convinced himself she was everything he'd ever want or need. Clever, smart and brave. Sexy, soft and warm.
It was then when he'd really, truly, fully become John Casey. He finally felt like he'd completely gotten rid of Alex Coburn, that the young idealist was finally dead. That from the ashes had risen the possibility for happiness at long last.
The blast that rocked the square turned his world upside down again.
It still hadn't been his choice. It was some cruel twist of fate. Probably some kind of karmic payback.
Kathleen's Alex died in an explosion.
John's Ilsa died in one, too.
From the rubble, he built a wall. Not just a fort, but a fortress. Impenetrable walls, unbeatable defenses. He would never, ever, leave himself vulnerable to that kind of attack again.
He heard the whispers around the Beltway when he got home from Grozny. That he'd lost his edge, that he'd gone round the bend. That he'd washed out, been used up. They'd slammed against the glued-together shattered pieces of concrete and re-bar but they'd just slide to the ground. He protected himself too well this time. Nothing said bothered him, nothing said got to him.
He became some sort of boogeyman at the NSA. He didn't mind so much. It kept everyone at arm's length.
Until he'd been assigned to Burbank.
He imagined it would be an easy extraction. One day, maybe two tops. He'd followed blondie around. She wound up leading him right to his mark, a geeky kid standing entirely too tall, being entirely too wiry.
He never would've imagined spending years there, protecting the dweeb instead of shoving him in a bunker in some undisclosed location somewhere before heading off on another mission, another killing.
It wasn't that he was bloodthirsty. He'd never been that kind of a man, a murderer. It was just he preferred the missions where he didn't have to stay in any one place too long, where he didn't make attachments, entanglements of any sort.
The longer he wore the putrid green, the longer he lived across the courtyard from a mildly dysfunctional yet loving family, the more he started thinking about what he'd left behind, what he'd given up. The more he felt the walls surrounding him, protecting him, shoring him up, start to crumble.
It started out as strange tinglings, odd twinges. Pangs, really. He'd neglected those emotions for so long that he didn't realize what they were at first. They added to his awkwardness, to his stunted ability to relate to any of them.
From time to time, they made him too willing to be friendly, or too willing to slam doors. He struggled against the will to live and the feeling that he should retreat from the field.
He developed a kind of kinship and understanding with Walker. She wasn't blondie anymore, or a skirt. She was his partner. And he hadn't really had one of those. Ever. He'd always been so stalwart, so alone. It had taken time and effort to learn how to depend on someone, and he came to depend on her and to be depended on by her.
The geek was still a geek but he was less like an annoying little brother and more like an equal. It was an eventual thing, a gradual thing, much like the trust he built with Walker.
He even learned how to tolerate the slackers at the Buy More. Most of them, anyway.
His defenses crumbled entirely when Ilsa showed back up. While it wasn't necessarily unusual given his line of work, that someone could be dead one minute and living the next, he hadn't expected to come face to face with her, not like that. Not seeing her, beautiful, standing there...
It was like living through another explosion. The old wounds reopened. The pain was excruciating. He felt like he'd been spun around, like he'd been thrown out of an airplane without a parachute. He wasn't sure which way was up or what was right and what wasn't.
While it had allowed him some semblance of closure, it had served another purpose. It was a strange re-building of the walls surrounding him.
The newer walls were more carefully constructed. There were fewer cracks. It wasn't some slip-shod job. It was built taller, stronger, better.
Until, that is, his life had come full circle. Until he was faced with the skeletons in Alex Coburn's closet, until he had to battle the demons from a life he'd avoided for twenty years.
He should've asked them for help. He should've included them in his plans, in his initial thoughts, his decisions. It wasn't that he didn't trust them, it was that he wasn't sure they'd back him, when he'd tell them that he needed to to it.
He'd never done anything so reckless before, so stupid. He'd never disobeyed a direct order. He'd never committed treason.
It was that same sensation of being pushed, of being shoved. And it was given by the same man who had done it in the first place. Keller. Keller had ended Alex Coburn's life and seemed hellbent on ending John Casey's for good measure.
While he'd walked willingly into the mission, he'd had good reasons. He'd been so sure, so certain that, when the truth came out, he'd be exonerated. Besides, he'd never really turn anything over to an enemy of the state. He was just doing what he did best, what the government taught him to do, how to gain leverage, how to force an issue. If stealing the pill meant he got to save Kathleen, then he'd do it again.
What he hadn't been prepared for, however, was the look in her eyes. As he reacquainted himself with the hue and shape, as he remembered the way her skin felt beneath his touch, she looked at him like a stranger.
He wasn't Alex anymore anyway. Hadn't been for a good, long while.
There was a new Alex. A younger Alex.
A little girl Alex.
When had his life gotten so out of control? For a man who prided himself on knowing everything about a situation, about ensuring results, he found himself lost.
Without a career, without a purpose, without an existence.
He felt restless, but he didn't want to go anywhere. The darkness permeated him. He couldn't shove it into the recesses of his heart, into the corners of his soul. He was filled with it. It was all consuming. It was overpowering.
It turned him into another thing entirely again.
It turned him into a mindless drone, another retail slacker.
He clung to the Buy More. It wasn't a life-raft so much as it was something that was mildly familiar. He tried not to think about what a sad state of affairs it was, when he found the drudgery of pushing toaster ovens comforting.
He accepted it, the change from super spy to civilian. There was nothing else he could do. He'd set the events into motion that had led him to that place. He'd said yes to Keller of his own free will. While he didn't realize that saying yes to Keller meant saying no to Kathleen, that saying yes to Keller would mean saying no to Ilsa, or whatever her name really was, that saying yes to Keller meant never knowing his daughter... there was nothing he could do about that. There was no time machine, no magic wand. There was no way to undo the damage that had been done.
It wasn't for lack of trying. He tried to take control of his life, to make the changes for himself. He pestered Beckman, and he knew it was pestering. The only solace he took was the fact that she hadn't changed the access codes, the communication channels. If she'd wanted him to leave her alone, she could've easily blocked him.
But, she didn't. And so he tried and tried again.
When the opportunity arose, when Chuck needed his help, he answered the call. Career or no career, he felt honor-bound to assist. And it worked. Not only did they save the day but he'd gotten his job back.
Reinstatement.
It was an odd thing for a man who'd had two names and a dozen aliases.
Getting his gun back, his badge, he felt like he was able to return to his true identity. He might not have been born John Casey, but that was the man who'd developed a certain reputation, a certain set of skills. Casey, the skilled assassin. Casey, the brute-force strength. Casey, the game theorist. Casey, the honorable Marine.
He just never would've imagined, when he said yes to Keller, that his first kill would've been Alex Coburn.
End.