Author's note: See Chapter 1 for disclaimers...I'm still just playing :).
Well, it seems I cannot leave Eliot and his guns alone. Here is another short one. And, also, a quick shout out for Twilight Dusk's "I'm Just Sayin'" collection: number 29 has an awesome take on the 'Eliot doesn't like guns' theme - if you haven't already, go and read it! (and the other 28 stories in the collection: it's like climbing inside a character's head during key moments in some of the episodes)
See you next time!
"I heard you'd gone soft." – The Big Bang Job
Eliot doesn't even bother rolling his eyes at Chapman's statement.
Soft. And that was just about the gun thing. A small voice at the back of Eliot's mind wonders what Chapman would say if he knew about the not-killing-people thing.
Not that he cares, of course.
Even before Eliot had walked away from Moreau and stopped accepting lethal assignments, he and Chapman had failed to see eye-to-eye on how jobs should be done.
Chapman liked a big bang and a high body count. He would hang around, watching the drama of the emergency response to the carnage he had caused unfold, waiting for the television cameras to follow. Sometimes he would even get in on the action, staying just close enough to get covered in the dust from an explosion or grazed by a 'stray' bullet in a drive-by, or joining other bystanders pulling victims from the wreckage, and then being interviewed as an eyewitness. Or he would peel away from the scene at top speed, tires squealing, pushing the adrenalin high of a completed job up a notch as he raced through city streets. He claimed the publicity this garnered, the reputation of being willing to take out everyone and anything to get his target, was key to the intimidation Moreau's name invoked.
Eliot thought this was grandstanding that did a poor job of justifying Chapman's addiction to the adrenalin high.
He favoured precision over media coverage. Most of the world never heard about his exploits, but the people who needed to know who he was did – and they knew that when they hired him, the job would be done efficiently, on time, and with no 'surprises' that might come back to haunt them. Alternatively, they knew when he appeared in front of them unsummoned that this was it, and he was there for them, no mistakes, no appeals, and no collateral damage.
Chapman couldn't understand how all this ghosting around in the dark garnered Eliot Spencer a reputation that had grown men with their own lists of unsavoury accomplishments behind them shaking in their boots. Or expensive Italian loafers, as the case may be.
Back in the day, when occasion had called for Eliot and Chapman to collaborate on a job, this had been a point of hot contention. Eliot's plans had always carried the day – veto power being one of the perks of being Moreau's right-hand man – and he tried to be the one driving when exit time came.
But now, as he slides out of Atherton's car and back into Chapman's, Eliot is grateful for Chapman's preference for more remote means of assassination and execution: Even with Atherton's cooperation – and two hours of coaching from Sophie the night before on the proper performance of a death scene – he doesn't think they could have sold the scene had Chapman been more familiar with the up-close-and-personal methods of killing...had known, for example, how the body jerks and shudders, desperately seeking oxygen as your inner elbow crushes down on the trachea and your forearm squeezes tight on the carotid; or the distinctive, instant nerveless of a man's body as you snap his neck, the final breath hissing past his lips as the diaphragm and intercostal muscles relax, deflating his lungs.
Soft, Eliot thinks again. Chapman has no idea. Maintaining your sangfroid as a blast levels a building or as your finger squeezes a trigger to send a bullet into a target, no matter how close, is nothing compared to keeping that cool objectivity when you literally hold a man's life in your hands, and are feeling it beat, breathe, tremble, and sweat within them. And, in turn, ending it in that latter scenario can be nothing next to sparing it – to trusting yourself to find just that right level of incapacitation to avoid permanent damage while still enabling a clean getaway for yourself and your team. Not to mention living with the risk that you have misjudged it and that, someday, somebody is going to make you or someone you care about pay for that mistake. No. Strange as it may sound, Chapman is far to squeamish for that.
Not Moreau, though, Eliot thinks as he eyes the glove box where the gun he was 'supposed' to use for this job sits. Moreau knows full well the delicate torture of suspense, of showing what he knows about you without revealing how he intends to use it. Eliot doesn't doubt for a second that Moreau's instructions specified the gun, but he knows the real message had nothing to do with the method by which he took care of Atherton. Rather, it was Moreau toying with him, pushing his buttons, and reminding him that, while their history might buy Eliot an opportunity to broker a deal, there was no reservoir of trust to draw on, and that punishment for any breach of their agreement would be exacted in a uniquely personal manner.
I do know you, Moreau's words at the pool echo ominously in Eliot's head.
He hopes that the next gun Moreau places in his hands will be as easy to put down.
This End (as opposed to The End :D).