Taking my lead from , I have decided to post my entry for the Who Are You? Challenge. It's certainly one of the more emotionally charged pieces I've written, so I hope you like it, even if the actual plot might not be to everyone's taste.
"Colonel, you have your orders. Tonight, you are to eliminate Chuck Bartowski," said Beckman coldly. Casey could see the lack of emotion in her eyes, and he wondered just what made someone so cold as to be able to order the death of another human without batting an eyelid. It was different, doing it yourself. You could almost make a peace with it, and accept it. Casey had been forced to order the death of someone only once before in his life, and it haunted him for years. The bonsai trees helped calm him. It just went to show that you never know what can help.
"Yes ma'am," answered Casey stoically, although Beckman could sense some reluctance in his voice. She knew Walker was compromised; it was one of the main reasons Casey was being ordered to carry this out. What she didn't know was that Bartowski had apparently wormed his way under the skin of his coldest handler.
Beckman disconnected the screen and Casey slowly moved to the section of Castle that held his "execution" weapons; weapons he used that held a certain sentimentality for him, and were reserved only for kills that Casey felt deserved some personal feeling involved, rather than a completely detached shot.
It was only a short drive to the apartment complex that would house Chuck Bartowski for only a scant few more minutes. Casey had checked his favourite pistol at Castle and was now in his Crown Victoria, looking for all the world like a typical Buy More salesman driving home after a hard shift. In reality, the stress pushing on Casey's shoulders was much heavier than that of a salesman wondering how he was going to move the next electronic gadget tomorrow.
The Crown Vic pulled up ominously, parked in the low light of a barely working streetlight, which cast a dull shadow, yet left Casey's departure from the vehicle wreathed in a swirling darkness, the cool metallic glint of his weapon shining slightly as Casey held it in readiness.
The window was open. It always was. It hadn't mattered thus far as the handler could protect the asset from enemies that didn't know that nuance of his home security. But now it was the handler that was hunting the asset, and he knew everything about his prey.
Casey stepped silently through the portal that would now be the downfall of his asset. One weakness in a home's security and the enemy was through. He could hear the clinking of wine glasses in the living room, and wondered just what was going on. The asset's sister and husband were away for the week, leaving just Bartowski and...
Walker, Casey thought grimly. No way was this going to be a clean in-and-out kill now. She was protective of her asset in so many more ways than Casey could ever dream of. She was compromised; everybody could see that from Beckman to the guy who sold coffee outside the Langley headquarters of the CIA. Yet now that compromise was going to make his task incredibly difficult, rather than being, as Beckman had once put it, "an asset to the asset". Casey was now forced to improvise his original plan to make it look like a suicide; it would be impossible to pull that off without being forced to eliminate his partner in the process.
Casey crept silently through his asset's bedroom, the moonlight giving a sombre mood to what would surely be a place of death shortly. The Intersect was online and working perfectly, and the government couldn't afford to leave two of their best agents to protect a civilian, but they couldn't afford to leave all of their secrets unprotected. That meant Casey was being called upon once more to do what he did best.
The hall was dark, unlit save for the light floating from the candles presumably set up by Bartowski in one of his endless endeavours to win the heart of his CIA handler. Walker had been kept in the dark about the inevitable end to this assignment right from the start, so for all the two occupants of the living room knew, this was simply a long goodbye before Walker ended up quelling some revolution in a far away country.
He rounded the bend slowly, gun at the ready, suppressor in place. First into his sight came Walker's blonde head, sitting with her back to him as she laughed at one of Bartowski's inane jokes. Sitting across from her was the target himself, a large smile on his face as if he were the happiest man in the world at that point.
Casey's pistol came up, hands unwavering, and he sighted on his one-time asset. He was about to pull the trigger when he thought he saw the unmistakeable glint of a diamond on Walker's finger. It was only a trick of the light, but it caused him to check his trigger finger. Can I really do this? Casey asked himself, before steeling himself once more. That second's hesitation was his undoing.
He took a step forward to align himself better with his target and to cause as much collateral damage as possible from his explosive-tipped round. Just as he took that step there was a creak from the floorboards below him. He looked down at the treacherous floor and looked up just in time to see Walker spring up from her chair, a look of shock and betrayal on her face.
That look turned to rage in an instant, and Casey barely ducked in time to avoid the knife she had sent spiralling at him.
"Walker," he said firmly. "I have orders! You didn't think they were going to let him walk away from this?"
"I can protect him!" Sarah protested.
"How? You'll be in a different country by this time next week!" he shouted back at his partner.
"Casey, I'm staying!"
At this Chuck's head shot in Sarah's direction. Obviously she hadn't gotten round to telling him yet.
"You're...staying?" Chuck stammered out. "But what about your reassignment?"
"I can't leave you. Not now," said Sarah, looking back in Chuck's direction.
"Walker, I have to finish my assignment," Casey said, begging for understanding.
"You can let him live, we can run. I'll keep him safe," pleaded Sarah.
"Sarah, I'm sorry," said Casey softly before turning his gun back to Chuck and pulling the trigger.
An ear splitting scream pierced the air as Sarah heard the slight cough of Casey's suppressed weapon, and she saw the explosion of red that bloomed across Chuck's chest. Chuck looked down in shock, before collapsing to the table that had been a romantic setting not five minutes earlier.
Sarah was at his side in barely a second, cradling his head and whispering into his ear, begging him not to leave her. Chuck's breathing was shallow, but there was still a pulse. His shirt was drenched in the coppery red source of life, and his skin was pallid as it drained out of him.
Unable to witness the heartbreak going on in front of him, Casey turned to leave the destruction he had just wrought on the lives of two people, but before he left this assignment in the worst way possible, he turned back to Sarah.
"I truly am sorry, but I had orders," he said in barely a whisper. If Sarah heard she didn't respond, but only continued to hold Chuck's head, which was steadily getting paler as he fought to hold onto life for as long as possible.
"Sarah, I'm gone," Chuck said hoarsely.
"No, no you're not," Sarah answered in a soft voice, "not now, not when we're just getting started together."
"I am," Chuck protested weakly. "You know it. Just promise me one thing."
"Anything," she responded through the tears that were now beginning to choke her.
"Find someone who can make you happy," said Chuck in an even weaker voice, as if those words in themselves were a struggle.
"I don't want someone else," sobbed Sarah. "I need you. Don't leave me. Please."
"Sarah, please," begged Chuck. "Promise me you'll find a way to be happy."
"Okay," Sarah sniffed, the word difficult to make out because of the tears still streaming down her face as she held Chuck's broken body.
"I've always loved you Sarah," whispered Chuck, before finally giving up to the onslaught of blackness. Sarah saw Chuck's pupils fix and dilate and she knew he was gone. Sarah's tears showed no sign of stopping as she thought of what might have been but for a bullet from the one person other than Chuck she had come to trust. Their children came to her mind, brown haired and blue eyed. Maybe they'd have had the curls of their father.
Now that was never going to happen. Sarah's one and only was lying in her arms and growing colder by the second, but she had to try. She wasn't going to break a promise to Chuck, but all she had to hope for was locked inside the man whose blood stained the pristine floor. The pistol holstered at her thigh was looking like a tempting prospect, a way to end the terrible pain that was tearing at her every second since Chuck's pulse had slowed and finally stopped.
Every whispered "I love you" that she said into a cold ear made her cry more, but she couldn't stop. He deserved to know, and even though all logic said it was too late, Sarah wanted to believe he was still there, somewhere, and she wanted to make up for lost opportunities. Every time she had held her tongue, every time she had worried about being compromised, every missed chance to show Chuck how she felt. They all welled up within her and forced their way out in the greatest outpouring of emotion Sarah had ever experienced.
Her family had vanished in the time it had taken for an NSA bullet to make its way from barrel to flesh. The children were gone, and the idyllic lifestyle with the only man she wanted to enjoy it with had been taken from her. They were nothing more than wisps of possibility all flowing away from her and the body she still cradled as if it were a living, breathing person.
She barely had time for a thought for Ellie and how she would react to finding out her brother was gone, so focused was she on her own pain. Nothing was going to sooth it; she would live with it every moment of every day. Most of, if not all of her heart had ceased to beat when Chuck's had stopped, and she never wanted to stop feeling the pain, and by association, forget him, unless it meant she was with Chuck again.
As the red sun came up, the living room that was still home to a corpse and a broken woman was still wreathed in shadow due to the drawn curtains. Sarah had cried herself out hours before, but she still cradled Chuck's lifeless body as if it were her only comfort. She wasn't ready to be torn from him. And the person that had ripped him from her was now at the forefront of her mind.
John Casey was going to pay for what he had done to them.