6. Man on the Street: alternate reality
There's blood on the carpet. None of it's hers. Then again, the man in black had almost bled out from a gunshot wound to the chest - - his hair turning a darker shade of red as he lay in the gore - - so some staining is to be expected. Mellie had light scratches only, bad rug burn on her knees though. She died a few feet away, in front of the fireplace. Hands sprawled at her side. His borrowed dress shirt bunched around her waist, where that thing had lifted it, so he could try to...
Her head had been tilted toward the door. When he sprinted through the entrance, the first thing he saw was her face, her eyes a deep, sea blue. Had a split second to wonder why she wasn't screaming, didn't seem afraid. Then the reason for her silence and that unfocused stare hit him. Putting two bullets into the intruder still on top of her? That just seemed like the logical thing to do.
Weeks later, when he's still a kaleidoscope of bruises, after days of interrogation (he took a perverse pleasure in watching Hearn tremble whenever he drew near), after the raid of an underground complex located in the middle of the frickin' city (how did they ever hide something so big right under their noses?), after scientists pour over a chair and computers (names. locations. handlers. actives. an attic), he finally watches a blue light and software make a doll named Echo into a girl called Caroline. She is stunning and grateful in a way he might have really appreciated, before. He could care less now. Steps out of her embrace and walks away. Doesn't look back.
See, there's a permanent stain in his wooden floor and an empty apartment that will never smell of Italian and a picture of the active known as November clipped to one of the many files on his desk. When he throws that down on the steel table separating him from Adelle Dewitt, this twisted, proper, British mastermind, something tightens around her eyes. It wasn't meant to happen this way, she states. Not we needed her, took her, changed her, because of you.
The omission is a small kindness, which cannot erase police tape stretched across a shattered doorframe or the chalk outline etched on his floor. He's a trained FBI agent not good or fast enough to save her so when he walks through the scene of the crime that'll never be home again, it's easy to piece together the attack. The books out of place (surprised by the entrance, thrown into the wall), newspapers on the ground (knocked over the stool), mess in the kitchen (slammed into the counter top), cushions askew (hurled over the couch), the rug pulled back...
I need her killed and it can't be clean.
...and he stops, because the thought of her crawling for help makes him feel physically ill. Paul can't bring himself to go into the bedroom, with his unmade bed, where she was teasing, and warm and beautiful beneath him. Instead, he slides down the wall, knees to his chest. Stares too hard, until tears make everything blurry, at the broken pieces of his hands-free phone (ripped from her fingers, pitched against the wall after she reached to dial 911). Thinks of the low tone of Adelle's voice, describing the stranger he might have loved… and the call that never came.