A/N: inspired by the show Scandal
This was meant to be posted eight hours ago but an oddly long nap got in the way. Technically it was meant to be posted a week ago but never mind that. Read on and review.
5 mouths before
Albuquerque
17:10
Air was humid with the odd breeze every few hours. Gaurd duty was tedious.
Chris was on guard duty.
Now, one might ask why-why was the Stanford alumni with more then enough brains and athletics to spare being wasted on gaurd duty?
He was one out of hundreds of others posted behind the fence. The thing was, Chris wasn't like everybody else.
He was smarter.
He was faster.
He was nieve.
Yet he was a pawn.
Chris was just a pawn.
He didn't get medals or anything in return. He was just there.
But he knew so much. He'd heard of soliders on suicide missions, unknowingly marching to their death and he thanked the gods above that he wasn't one of them. But inside, truly, he wished he was.
Though he was, in away, one of them all the same. Weren't they all pawns to some higher force?
Chris didn't know that though. Through all the multiplication and physics stuffed into his tiny little brain Chris thought that those suicide soldiers were free.
They were of higher rank.
They could speak on level with the almighty Sargent.
They were everything that Chris wanted to be.
The answer is yes for future reference. Yes Chris was foolish and yes. All men are pawns to the whims of those above.
There is no escape.
But Chris had to try.
Luke offered an oppertunity. He gave a way out and Chris was sick of being a pawn. He didn't want to just be unrecognized and expendable. He wanted to matter.
He wanted to be pivotal.
Luke looked at Chris and there wasn't even a hesitation before the army private took his hand. "I'm in."
Luke smiled. "Good."
...
6 months later
Unknown location
00:15 hours
"Do you know where you were?" The girl questioned.
In. Out.
"No." Chris dead panned and she smirked.
In. Out.
"Oh, good. Let's make this fun." A fist came flying at his face. "Four months ago you were part of operation SoM, and five months ago you were recruited off an army training base in Albuquerque by terrorist Luke Castilian. True or false?"
She didn't give him time to answer before a knife punctured his arm. Not deep enough to kill, only a cut.
Regardless, a scream broke out in his lungs. But no words came, only pain.
In. Out.
"This is the Junkyard of the Gods kid, there is no fun."
The white walls of the interrogation room were clean. So bright and white it hurt to look. Chris stared at his hands. Where else could he look?
Certainly not at the woman. She was probably smiling and Chis didn't want to see her perfect teeth dashing because of him. Because he was hurt. Because she was a psychopath.
"I know it's true Chris. You don't have to answer and lying would end badly for you."
In. Out.
She grabbed his chin and brought him to her eyes. Tearing his view of his hands and replacing it with her beautiful face. There was a flash of red in her glare before everything mellowed out.
Smiling again she didn't remove her hand or lessen the pressure on his jaw.
Chris wished the mad woman would stop looking at him with her eerie gray eyes.
In. Out.
He breathed.
No. He screamed in his head. He wanted to yell out loud but he couldn't.
He shouldn't have opened his mouth.
But he did.
If only just a moment to breath but it happened.
In. Out.
Chris was going insane.
In. Out.
If given the opertunitey he was sure the wench would easily shove a python down his thoat for kicks.
She'd even laugh as the python ate him from the inside out.
"Why am I here?"
"Dunno but I'm here because we know everything you know and we want you."
"What?" Chris splurged. Blood seemed to build up in his mouth.
In. Out.
It pooled by his tongue and he spat it out. It stained red on the perfect white floor. The first flaw on the polished surface was blood. His blood.
In. Out.
The woman looked indifferent.
In. Out.
Streaming blood with blurry vision, he must have been dreaming. "You want me?"
In. Out.
The woman straightened up. "Yes. Essentially. And all you have to say is yes. This or die." She eyed him again.
The psychopath in her was gone but the woman was still there.
In. Out.
"Listen to me carefully, I know you inside and out. You don't want to just disappear one day as if you never existed." She smiled again. The Psychopath switch was once again flipped on. LI can do that. What about your fiancé and daughter? You don't want them to die. So say yes."
She spat out the last three words with some much venom, Chris could almost feel her spit stinging his cheek. She wasn't laughing but the gray eyes were still dancing with some perverse joy.
Still stormy.
"Yes."
Chris regretted it instantly.
Gray-eyes smiled and her laugh returned. "Good."
...
Five hours after consent
Location codename: Olympus
5:16
Stepping into the blinding white building, Chris had to cover his eyes. All surfaces were completely white. Cubicle office spaces were tightly packed and Chris was lead of one of the hundred dozen identical desks.
In. Out.
It wasn't much better then the interrogation room.
In. Out.
A single file was on the table which Chris opened.
A single name in typewriter red stood out against the otherwise blank sheet.
Printed neatly in red ink were two words.
'Zoë Nightshade'
That was it. No other information, just a name.
A head popped up from over the next cubicle.
She was pretty in a rough way. Hair scraped back behind a headband with blood, that Chris doubted belonged to her, smeared on her forehead.
"Hey partner. Who'd we get?"
"Huh?" Was the only thing Chris could manage.
...
"So we're arms for hire?" Chris asked again as Clarisse gave him a light push. She laughed.
Chris, at that time thought that Olympus was something great.
Something to be proud of.
Proud to be part of.
It was his haven. Where he'd escaped from normality; it made him different.
At that time, he still thought different was a good thing.
He would learn later Otherwise.
Sighing but still smiling, Clarisse rubbed her temple. "How many times! We're a branch of the government that deals with the more messy issues. And at times we lend out our services."
"That's a yeah then?" Chris tried, sitting attop the cubical wall that separated them.
"No."
"What? But you just-"
Chris smiled and laughed at her but not before her expression changed. for that matter the entire atmosphere in the large room changed. She roughly pulled him down and a single word was whispered throughout. "Zeus."
"What?" But Chris saw.
An imposing man, almost seven feet tall, towered over them. He glared down upon Chris as if he had just insulted him, but didn't act. Instead he turned to Clarisse. "You're father wants a successful mission. Grant him so."
For some reason Clarisse's mouth pursed and she began to subtly shake.
Chris was surprised to find himself shaking too.
That man had complete and utter control over their lives. Chris would learn so later.
Though at the moment all Chris knew was confusion. He was an Olympus agent. The status alone gave him priority and command over almost anyone. Why was one man in control over them?
In. Out.
Though, when he did it would be too late.
In. Out.
...
one day later
Denver
12:45
"It's easy." Clarisse announced. She slung her AtlasSky over her shoulder, fit on the silencer and took a shot.
Zoë Nightshade didn't even have a chance. She crumpled to the ground dead.
In. Out.
From their vantage point atop a building, Chris could still see the heavy river of blood the hemorrhaged from the head wound. It was quick and it was easy but there was still that image.
In. Out.
The blood streaming onto the concrete as passer us screamed and ducked. They expected another shot, but no, it would never come.
Like Chris, they were safe until it was their name in the red ink.
Unlike Chris, they were pawns. Pigs who obediently line up until slaughter. They know it was coming but they refuse to act. Chris was now the butcher. He was a bishop. He had his wish. he was now monumental. Pivotal. But did he like it?
Did he regret it?
Was being a pawn somehow better than a bishop?
...
four hours after
Denver, Assime Motel
04:46
Chris watched Clarisse clean out her gun. She looked calm. She looked collected. She looked like everything he wished he could be.
"How do you do it?" He asked after a while and she turned to face him
She really was pretty, with brown eyes and hair hat fell around her shoulders. Though there was a coldness in her eyes.
"Stupid question, right." he murmured and turned away.
Did the same but she also answered him. "No, it's not." she whispered. Chris almost thought he'd imagined it but a part of him knew, or wanted to know that it was true. That perhaps, with a sliver of hope Clarisse saw the truth too.
What they just did was wrong.
But Chris was in no position to stop.
...
Two years later
New Orleans, Louisiana
13:44
Two figures shot up from behind a building to behind the one across the street. They nimbly climbed a safety ladder to the roof.
On the right was a boy and the left a girl. It was the boy that pulled out his gun. The girl watched as he set it up and took the shot. The boy didn't bother attaching the silencer.
One gun shot rang through the empty street.
One body fell to the ground in the mist of talking out his trash.
Two people disappeared into the shadows.
...
Seven months later
in behind the Empire State Building, New York
23:54
Chris watched impassively as Zeus, himself, deliver the news.
"We have a trator and your job is to kill her."
Chris nodded.
"My advisers thought you couldn't do it-I think different."
Chris nodded again.
"You have a week."
This time Chris stayed silent, unmoving as Zeus placed a slip of paper on the ground.
Soon on as he had appeared he was gone and Chris ran to the paper. He flipped it over, daring it to say something else. It was true.
'Clarisse La Rue'
Something inside Chris broke.
Balling up the paper, Chris walked off into the night. His shadow long behind him, walking off toward the east.
...
thirty minuets later
Upper East Side, New York
00:14
She was waiting for him. Tired and exhausted but still alive. "Don't you realize what we're doing?" She asked, breaking the silence.
Chris didn't respond. Inside, he was trembling.
For years they'd talked about starting fresh. Once all the junk with Olympus was cleared up they'd both run away to his vary apartment. They'd start a life together. Clarisse had gone and ruined that plan.
"I know you thought that plan would work." She said, answering his unsaid thoughts. "I did too for a bit but no one ever escapes Olympus. Once we said yes we were bound for life."
Chris brought his old glock up, clicked the safety off, and took aim.
In. Out.
Clarisse brought her own up. "I love you." She confessed with a short laugh.
In. Out.
I love you too.
Two shots penetrated the air and like so many people before them, Clarisse and Chris fell with perfect bullets in their hearts.
Each shot by their love, there was no way else for this story to end.
They were two in thousands. Olympus lives on.
You could be next.
...
Percy Jackson, new recruit, looked to his gray eyed, slightly manatical partner and smirked. "Look at this file. Stupid."
The woman just nodded.
"Both dead with one bullet wound to the chest, severed vital organs." He read aloud.
"If that was me I would have known she was going to shoot back. He could have dodged." Percy reasoned, trying to get a response.
Gray-eyes looked impassive but she agreed. Both promising agents, she herself, had recruited them.
Both, though, had fallen for each other.
In other words, they had fallen in love to their deaths.
Annabeth was smart. She wouldn't make the same mistake.
The cycle starts again.