Title: Privileges
Author: ScullyAsTrinity
Rating: PG
Category: Drama/Angst
Summary: That the gleam in her eyes would be extinguished, regardless of how much passion she had for the job. It was... what it was.
Spoilers: The White House, Pro AM
Thanks: Matthew, you're an amazing person. Someone who, lately, has dealt with this block expertly. Showering me with compliments and not caring if you hurt my feelings telling me if something sucked. You're fabulous and amazing and I love you. :-D
---
The colors came, but strangely enough, she couldn't quite place them. There was no category for the bright siege that began behind her closed lids. At one point, they could have been called red, orange, blinding, blinding white.
Not anymore. They were violent, there, in her head. And they all screamed at her, at once.
Tired eyes, once bright with youth and the prospect of making a difference, stared at the television screen before her. Her ears only processing scant bits of the breaking newscast. "Once again, Zoey Bartlet, the youngest daughter of President Josiah Bartlet, has been kidnapped. In conjunction with this event. I'm getting word that..."
The news networks were not releasing details yet, but she could see Molly's shoes. One look, and she knew as certainly as if it were Molly's face, with the lopsided grin. Those could have just as easily been her shoes, peeking out from under the standard crisp white, on CNN, as the wasted death of the agent took a backseat to the President's daughter; the world not knowing that it was a privilege to have that bullet lodged in her chest.
Her co-workers, flushing with pride, they'd feel the stab of pity. "Poor, poor Gina."
It was Molly's name that had set off the incessant buzzing in her ears, tuning out the ambient noise around her. Eyes forward, the colors came then, slamming against the front of her skull. True, she'd only met the girl a few times, and hadn't had the heart to tell her that the thrill wore off.
That the gleam in her eyes would be extinguished, regardless of how much passion she had for the job. It was... what it was.
---
"It's three o'clock, sir." Special Agent Gina Tuscano knocked on Special Agent Ron Butterfield's door, hesitantly popping her head inside. It never failed to amaze her that such a spartan man could decorate a room so well. Commendations, photographs, mounted medals. And amongst it all the proud scatterings of a father: children's drawings and the mug that proclaimed the man to be 'The Greatest Dad In The World!'
Hands behind her back, as she always was when speaking to the man, she walked in briskly, closing the door behind her with reverence. Gina wasn't quite sure why, but she felt it disrespectful to disrupt the peace of his sanctuary.
"Gina! What can I do for you?" His weak attempt at enthusiasm didn't go unnoticed, and she grinned in reply, appreciating his imposter happiness. She sat down, as was accustomed, in the uncomfortable chair in front of his desk.
Regulation size, it had always felt far too large for her, as if she was swimming in it, being scrutinized with every move she made. Sitting in that chair, in front of Ron Butterfield, she'd always felt as if there was a spotlight shining down upon her, people waiting in the wings to criticize.
"I have a matter to discuss with you sir." Ringing her hands in her laps, the movements became slick with sweat. This moment making her more nervous than seating herself in the very same chair on her very first day had done. For some reason or another, in some way, she was letting him down. It had always been her goal to make him proud, since he had, after all, hand chosen for her for Zoey's detail.
Ron didn't bother with speech, simply prompted her with his penetrating gaze, and she continued. "I believe it's time that you begin VTD-ing new candidates for Bookbag's detail." She left it at that, waiting for his reaction.
Butterfield's face held, no emotion passing over the hardened features. A slight nod was his only reaction. Again, her hands were twisted in her lap, just to give herself something to do. Mind screaming out at her to run, to just put up with everything, Gina held her ground, waiting for the man to speak.
"Why's this?" One of the first things that Gina had found odd about the man she glorified was his unbidden lack of proper grammar. Tight laced, yes. Tight lidded, certainly. Close reign of vocabulary? Far from it; he was colloquial, and that, to her surprise, was the first thing that she'd found put her at ease with him.
Her admission was silly, and it was sad. It was exactly what she didn't want to happen, it was what wasn't supposed to happen. "I'm too close to the subject, sir. I'm too intimate with her, and her friends. Her boyfriend..." Gina trailed off, words stolen from her when Ron rustled the papers on his desk.
"In part, Gina... this is my fault. You should have been rotated out after Rossalyn. Not because you handled the situation improperly, quite the contrary. You were admirable under the circumstances. Brought quite a bit of praise to the Bureau. It was the stress." Eyes flitted to hers, to ground her in the meaning of his words, before he continued.
"But I suppose I should take the blame for all of that. Chalk it up to trusting. The amount of trust I placed in you." It was then, when his hands went for a pen and pulled back as if burned, that she knew. He wasn't looking for a paper, he was purposefully avoiding her eyes.
Voice shifting back into full supervisor mode, he cleared his throat and stared her down. "You'll be taken off before Paris." There was no room for discussion. She nodded and thanked him, leaving the office.
Only after a moment did she realize that she'd shut the door rather forcefully, severing any truths she had built around her occupation. It made her want to cry and shout 'freedom' at the same time. Refreshed, renewed.... crushed under the solidarity of her resignation.
She left the office; the halls that danced with constant 'official' activity, to spend her last days with the woman she had regrettably come to call a friend and not a charge.
---
Three months removed from her resignation she stood in the Federal Building, startlingly erect in front of a barrage of televisions sparking with untold amounts of media coverage. They all said the same thing, the same thing that kept ping-ponging around her head.
'Molly O'Connor is dead. Zoey Bartlet has been kidnapped. Molly O'Connor is dead.' Dead.
Three months prior it would have been her brains spilled all over the unforgiving back alleys of D.C. Like vomit from the fools who were quite probably still gyrating inside that club, no idea of happenings around them. No idea of the scope. No idea that her death was nothing compared to what was happening without her.
And she'd scream, wherever she'd be after that bullet cut through her brain tissue, 'Stop looking at me! Look out there! Look for her!"
Three months ago, she's be splayed there, some anonymous agent finding her, checking her pulse out of procedure, hands doused with her blood, not possibly knowing how frightened she'd been of that exact scenario happening to her, rending her wholly unable to protect Zoey.
Hollow, that's exactly how she felt. Hollow... and lucky. And she hated herself for feeling so. That cold metal would have found a warm and welcoming home in her chest, too.
And like a childhood memory ingrained, burned into her skull through years of reminiscing, a fraction of an impromptu conversation from years before sluiced back into her conscious thought.
A cruel mockery of a smile passed across her thin lips.
"You're looking at the girl whose job it is to jump in front of a bullet. I like it when she stays in the dorm and watches videos."