I am a better man than my father.
I have to be. I will be. One day.
Dead and rottin' in the ground for years, but he's still here, watching me and whisperin' and living in my blood. I'm so much more like him than I want to be. Every thought, every action, all him, a ghost inside me. I'm always second guessin' myself because of it. Can never be too careful about a thing like that. If things had gone differently I'd be him, I know. She tells me I'm crazy and I'm just plain old dead wrong, but I can see my life the way it would have been regardless.
I'm always on the edge of goin' down.
I wish it wasn't an option anymore.
.
.
"What?"
She smiles at him, long dark hair sweeping over slender but strong shoulders, dark eyes, high cheekbones. Jesus Christ those lips. She's goddamned beautiful, but she doesn't really care. That makes her even more beautiful somehow.
She smiles at him and he thinks how much he'd like to kiss that beautiful mouth. She'd probably punch him square in the face, but he likes to think it'd be worth the broken nose.
It would be.
She smiles at him and he smiles at her and for the life of him he can't remember what it is he said to her in the first place.
She's strong and intelligent. She knows better. She is better. Better than him. Untouchable.
She's more sensitive than she knows, weaker in that way. Or maybe she does know. She's maybe the one that holds onto things even more than him, hurts because of it more, the one that remembers even better. She hides behind force and strength and walls, like how he hides behind geniality and passive indifference. But he knows her too well. And she knows him too well.
He doesn't know many people well. There's not many people who he likes, either, and there's not many people who like him. She's the only one that means the world to him, maybe ever for the rest of his life. It doesn't terrify him like it used to, loving one person forever. There's that chance that they don't give a shit about you, the same way, or not at all. There's a chance they'll disappear. Everything disappears, comes and goes. Part of his job, part of being a cop. Or whatever in-between hybrid he was now. People leave because they can't handle it and what you have to become to catch bad people and make them go away. People leave because they catch a bullet between the eyes. People just plain leave.
But it doesn't matter because he loves her anyhow. It can't be helped.
He goes through women. It's not like he didn't like any of them. He does. He did. But they were there and he was there and this is different. This one's different.
He's in love with every thing she says and every thing she does. The very whole that is her. That makes him altogether weaker and stronger somehow. He'd die before he told her and she doesn't seem to have the balls enough to admit it either, so he'll settle for both of them dancing around each other for the rest of forever. Just as long as he can be in her light, catching those waves that come off her.
.
.
You see the flash before you hear the sound of it. Or feel it. The smell, the gunpowder filling the air. The heat. You have to be fast but you know that sometimes you're not fast enough.
I used to able to see the face and know the name of every one person I ever killed or put away. I'd make a note of it. Always. You shouldn't forget a thing like that, but it's not hard when you have the kind of memory that won't let things go. Won't give things up. Every little thing that happens, it lives in me, in my head, in my goddamn bones. I wish I could just shake things off. I guess I'm not good enough to do a thing like that. Maybe I don't want to be that kind of good enough, anyway, the one that always lets things go.
But this job is different, these people are different than the old ones, different from a lot of things. The ones I kill now. Faceless and nameless. They disappear, forgotten. How many have there been so far? I can't even count. Maybe it's better that way. Or maybe it isn't. Hell, I don't know.
It still never sits right. If it ever did I'd be fucked, I know. I'd be them. I'd be him. I don't wanna forget. I can't afford to. The only thing that makes me different from them is rememberin' what I'd be, what I could be, given the chance.
I have to be better than all of this.
I don't think I'm good enough to, even if she thinks differently.
.
.
He digs the bullet out, the sharp pain almost instantaneous, the dull ache following long after. Too long. He learned to do this from his countless times undercover. Once he had to do it in front of a group of drug dealers that he was supposed to be one of and pretend like it didn't hurt like a bitch. It did hurt, one of the worst ever, before he got recruited to work with these people anyhow, but he managed to pull it off without breaking a sweat. Without a breath, without blinking. At the time he was oddly proud of that for some reason. Now it just seems stupid.
It doesn't get easier but he's learning to pretend it does.
He's playing catchup with everything and everyone else. A victim of displacement, a victim of the past. Of victim of himself.
He twists his arm around to look at it, more sharp pain, and it's bruised purple and some kind of red-violet and it's bleeding like a motherfucker but he doesn't really notice. He wraps it in something and pulls it tight with his teeth.
She's against the wall bleeding worse than him, sweat and blood and watching him through half open eyes.
"Did I..." she mumbles like she's talking through a dream. A sort of sigh leaves parted lips. "Did I fall asleep on your couch again?"
"Nothing new."
"You're not real..."
"Shhh." He puts a finger to her lips. Dry and stained red. His face near hers, so close. Probably too close. His lips on the other side of his finger. He can taste her blood now.
"You're not real," she says again. More forceful this time. She doesn't sound particularly happy to see him now. "I'm hallucinating, right?"
"'Course you are, Fern."
Her eyes open all the way and her mind reaches and grasps. She finds the right memory, the current, the now. She realizes what had just happened, remembers the gunfire. She looks pissed all of a sudden. Shit.
"You better not be real. Because if it turns out you came back for me or hung around and never left at all and you die because of me, I'm gonna kill you myself."
He smiles. Goddamit, he tires not to but he can't help it. "Then how am I gonna get you out of here?"
"You can't die with me. Not with me and not for me."
"Good thing I don't plan on either of us dying then."
"I'm serious."
"There's no one else currently alive or dead that I'd rather die for."
He knows that she knows it's true but her expression changes and she looks sad all the same. She doesn't say anything for a long time as he works on her, gets her bullets out. There's two stuck in her, one through and through, none of them particularly life threatening. At least he thinks. She's good at dodging. But not good enough. No one's invincible. She's lost a lot of blood and he has to get her out and she's in and out of consciousness and he can't exist without her anymore than she can exist without him.
It'd be like getting rid of your liver or something.
"Besides," he says, "you'd do the same for me."
She smiles. Beautiful. "In a heartbeat."
"Good. Then I'm not wasting my time."
He scoops her up off the ground after wrapping her up and making the blood stop somewhat and carries her out.
.
.
I want to be better than him.
If I'm not... Hell, I don't want to think about that anymore. You think it wouldn't be hard to be better than someone who's worse than dirt, but it is. It's hard to go against what's in you, your nature. It's hard to be better than what you were supposed to be.
That dark. That accumulation of all that ever was him and the worst parts of me.
But she's better than me, so maybe it doesn't matter what I am anymore. She's like an extension of me somehow. Just being near her makes me better. Like osmosis or something or other.
I wanna forget this. I'd rather be surfin' anyway. I want to be somewhere else sometimes. And sometimes I don't ever want to come back and deal with it. Deal with me. I wanna be on the waves, on top of 'em. Flying.
That feeling.
Up high, water curling and grabbing and touchin' your feet, pulling at your legs. Floating. Untouchable.
I'd rather be surfing.
.
.
He's lagging now, feeling the burn on his arm. The strain. Almost unbearable. He's tired but he keeps going. She's heavier all of a sudden.
There's a flash. He sees it in the reflection of one of the riveted metal walls but he's too late. His reaction is slowed. His mind is dulled. The pop sound isn't even that loud. He feels it pierce through the leather of his jacket, through his shirt, through his skin. He swears he can even feel it cut through his blood like it was made of jelly. He buckles. His damned legs buckle and become useless and he feels himself lurch forward with her. Her weight pulling him down.
"See what it does to you? When you don't pay attention?" he asks himself.
"So if you get her killed here you can at least know it was because you're a fucking idiot before they have a bullet make friends with your frontal lobe."
He manages to fall on his knees, taking the brunt of it on himself rather than using her like an impact cushion. She doesn't seem all too conscious, anyway, but he's certain she wouldn't appreciate being crushed under him. He's bent over her. Blond hair mixing with brown and blood mixing with blood.
He wants to lay down. He wants to go to sleep. He wants to be anywhere but here.
He's lost too many people already. Too many partners. Too many friends.
He's reaching as quickly as he can to get the gun that's shoved into the back of his jeans. Just past the waistband. It's sticking the hell out. Must be. It's like slow motion. He can't move as fast he wants. When he's reaching and grabbing he's coming up empty. Nothing there but fabric. He's hurting and his bullet wounds are on fire. He considers trying to run with her but he'd never make it in time. Not dragging her. He considers searching for her gun but he knows hers is empty. He considers praying but he doesn't believe in God and at the end he always figured he suddenly would but he still doesn't.
He grabs whatever's near him. Fingers wrapped around a metal...something. Smooth and cold. A pipe. He turns and throws it and it hits someone because there's a wail of pain but his own body, his entire left side, flares up like a firecracker. But pain's better than being dead.
He's grabbing at her, fumbling, trying to pick her back up but there's more of them then he remembered there being and they're firing and they're hitting close to home. He feels a hand on his side. More pain. She has his gun and is firing through the space between their bodies.
A half smile. "I could've used that a second a go."
"Ya snooze ya lose, buddy."
He picks her back up. She's still firing and he can feel each bullet's heat as it passes him and he can't hear anymore suddenly.
.
.
Sometimes you get a papercut and you leave it alone because it's just a damned papercut. You're doing other stuff and busy with more important things and you just don't want to think about it. Sometimes the papercut just sort of festers. It gets infected and it festers. And then there you are, wonderin' how the hell a little papercut turned into this big, festering clusterfuck.
Sometimes I want to be able to look back on something fondly. I can't do that with my childhood because those fine memories consist of me being beaten to an inch of my life on too-many-than-it-should-of-been occasions. I guess one's too many. Doesn't really matter now. Shooting your farther in order to get a break from being black and blue isn't normal. For a long time I thought it was. As a kid, being beaten, I mean. I thought it was just somethin' you have to go through in order to grow up. Be a man. A lot of kids I knew back then had fathers that beat the shit outta them when they did something stupid. So I tried to justify it. Tried to make it be that reason. Problem is things can't fit where they have no business being. And my father just did it for shits and giggles.
There's a look someone gets in their eyes when you know they want you dead. Hard to explain if you've never seen it. Something changes. In the air. In their body. In their eyes. It's the eyes. When you see it you just know. Some part of you knows, even if you're not conscious of it. It terrifies you to the core.
My father wanted me dead so I shot him.
He didn't die. He died later, Hetty told me, years later. I wish he'd died that day and I wish I was the one who killed him. So it just sort of festers. All that he was. What I couldn't do. What I want to do now. What I'll never be able to do. Festerin' inside of me.
I need something to look back on fondly.
.
.
"Don't let go."
"Okay."
"I'll fall."
"I know."
"I'm slipping."
The blood's slick and he feels her body sliding away from his fingers for just a moment. They clamp down tighter. Fingernails digging into fabric and skin and blood. He readjusts and continues on.
"You complain too much."
"Were you hit? Jesus. You were, weren't you, Deeks?"
"I don't feel a thing. I'm just that awesome."
The gun's clicking. It's empty. He can feel the cold metal as she slides it back where she found it. Snugly in past the waistband.
"Put me down."
"No. You'll slow us up."
"You're barely moving as it is. Put me down."
He doesn't want to. Ever. But he's losing too much blood and her added weight is making it worse and he's beginning to think they hit something important inside of him. Better not be the liver.
She doesn't look too good. Health wise. But he considers the fact that he probably doesn't either. She's hunched over for a minute, holding herself in a place he knows she was hit earlier. Then she's upright and grabbing at his jacket and pushing it back and making a face that's heartbreaking.
She's whispering something over and over again.
He thinks it might be "no".
Jesus she is beautiful.
She looks around. Dark hair stuck to her face by sweat and blood. Whatever it is she's considering she reconsiders and wraps her arms around him as hard as she can instead. Hands under his jacket. Under his shirt. Fingernails in skin. Warmth. It's a weird sort of comfort and he just stands there and breathes her in. Sits there. He's sitting, slumped down against a wall. He hadn't realized.
"What are you doing? Why are you doing that? Don't do that."
But she doesn't listen and he hears her sniff, just breathe in quickly, every so often.
"Okay. Alright," she tells herself.
He smiles. "If you wanna kiss me now that's okay with me."
She smiles too. "Shut up, Deeks."
"Yes ma'am."
"Take a minute and get up. You have to get up."
He thinks she must be joking. Her face says otherwise. "I can't."
"Yes you can. Just try, okay?"
"They're on their way. Help. They knew where we were. Where we went. I mean, they sent us here. So."
"So. So what?"
"So go out and find them and then you can lead them back to me. No sense in both of us..."
"I'm not leaving you here."
"I'm not going with you."
"Deeks, I swear to God. I swear..."
"I mean, I want to, but I can't get up and..."
"I'll kill you myself if you don't..."
"I'm gushing blood out like a goddamned fountain. I can't get up."
"Deeks."
"Hypocrite."
She thinks again for a minute, like she didn't even hear him. He wonders if they're being watched or if they've given up and left. He doubts they gave up and left. Maybe they lost them in the shuffle.
She leans in. Her nose against his. "Do you want me to die here with you? Because I'm not leaving you here and that's what's gonna happen if you don't get up."
He shakes his head. Of course not.
"Then get the hell up."
.
.
I look fondly on her. From the first moment I saw her. Not in the past but now. The past's not important anymore and I should remember that more, but I always forget the things I shouldn't. I always forget.
The way she stands there and watches me. The way she pretends she doesn't care when I pretend I don't care. The way she touches me and laughs and how the fabric of her shirt clings to her body. The way she moves. The way she speaks. The way she thinks. I love the way she is.
I'd tell her but I swear to God she already knows.
Sometimes I think she knows, anyway.
.
.
She's dragging him by the end. He's leaning on her smaller frame and she's struggling and he's barely aware. But he knows she's there so he doesn't mind as much. She's cursing and fumbling and crying and practically on the verge. On the verge of something.
God help the idiot who gets in her way now.
Then they're outside and the bright light of morning is burning like his entire body but in a better way. Something simpler and purer and better than all of this.
He looks up at the sky.
Blue on blue.
It's cloudless and warm and the sun's burning his eyes, but he doesn't want to look away. Maybe just to find her face. But he can't so he doesn't so he watches the sky instead.
There's people screaming suddenly.
She's saying something about NCIS and being an agent and someone's dying and someone give her a fucking phone.
He knows he's not dying because he's just too damned awesome to die. He wants to remind her of that but he forgets how to speak. There's this strange sort of buzzing. A buzzing in his head. Something wanting to come out. He wants it to stop, but it just gets louder. He's burning up. He's on fire, he must be. He thinks she's talking to him, softly, whispering in his ear. He thinks she says she loves him. He knows he won't ever let her live that one down.
She's holding his head as it sits in her lap. Fingers tangled in blond hair. Her other hand pressing down as hard as she can on his bullet wound. It must've come through the other side of him. Better than being stuck inside. He thinks. But he can't remember which is worse so he just lays there bleeding.
He hears a siren.
He smiles to himself.
She'll say he was just hallucinating and that she never said it. But he'll always know better.
.
.
I want to be a better man than my father.
I want to be better. Like her.
I want to be somewhere. Somewhere on the ocean. Flying over water.
I want.
I know better.
She makes me reconsider. She'll do it forever.
But I know better.