Title: The Last
Rating: PG-13 -language
Summary: Ryan learns the disturbing truth that even heroes fail.
Disclaimer: I don't own anything.
Notes: Fairly heavy on film/book/play references, but you don't necessarily have to know anything about those for the fic to work, thought it's an added bonus if you do. ;)
The Last
His hero.
A man that walks tall and is proud of what he does. Proud that the money in his pocket is earned by sweat in hot courtrooms, late nights scouring over paperwork in a dank office and weekend visits to scared, teenage boys -like him.
There is a little Atticus Finch in this man's blood. Or so Ryan had thought.
He doesn't work for The Man, he works for Everyman.
He is the last clean public defender. The last of a dying breed immune to the seduction of power and money. He has battled it for fifteen years.
And now he's a sellout. A suit. A money-hungry, social climbing stud just because Jimmy Cooper dared to threaten his ability to take care of his family. Hell, call it what it is, Sandy Cohen's pride was struck and he didn't like being called a pussy. A leech. A bloody, kept man.
So he wants to be the breadwinner. He wants to enter the rat-race and scurry his way up the corporate ladder. It seems prestigious and exciting, but he has yet to see the look on Ryan's face.
The once proud, wide eyes are dull and a little weary. Betrayal is his entrée in a feast of hurt.
Sandy can mince words all he likes, but there is no proper way to say he has adapted. He has become a creature of habit. A man so accustomed to hypocrisy, he believes it.
He's even worse than the nouveau riche trying to play their part, because he already knows the proper decorum and he's spent his whole life in Newport trying to denounce the sanctimonious bullshit people throw around. And now he truly is one of them.
This hero, this man that took him in and still has principles and morals, has just signed a deal like Faust and hardly bats an eyelash.
And now Ryan fears that if a man like Sandy can be taken in by the devil, surely he could too.
Sandy was his hero.
Ryan knows now even heroes fail.
end.