Whose Lives he Saved by Slantedlight
I wrote this a week ago, as a kind of breath taken in between the madness of Job 1 and Job 2, in a comment to a post of pictures by macklingirl, and now I'm on proper holiday, I am finally getting around to posting it here! Thank you, macklingirl!
Before I do, I have a question... *g* I post my stories here, and I eventually post them to A03. I used to post them first to the_safehouse, but I got out of the habit of doing that at one point, and have somehow never started again. It would make sense to do it, to help keep the comm alive a bit, but... is that too much? It might then pop up in some people's flists three times, and...? But - maybe it would be nice to make an effort to revive the comm a bit...?
What do you think?
And now the main show - a tiny wee Pros story, that's unusually a bit of a Murphy story, cos that was how Macklingirl wrote it to start with... *g**
Whose Lives He Saved
by Slantedlight
He found them bound and gagged, in the furthest back corner of an ancient coal cellar whose door was almost obscured by the wreck of the rooms above. They'd been thrown together, so that they lay close and tangled, Bodie on his back and Doyle's head somehow tucked into Bodie's armpit, the rest of him pressed along Bodie's side, like children curled together at night.
"Like being stuck inside 'is laundry bag," Doyle said later, "Only more fragrant." Bodie raised a disdainful eyebrow at him, and they ambled out of the break room shoulder to shoulder, deliberately casual in the face of a bellow from Cowley's office. Murphy watched them leave, his own eyebrows set carefully low.
He watched them.
Collinson had been paid an arm and a leg for them, and it was only because the men he'd picked to do the dirty work turned out to be no more than amateurs with pretensions that Bodie and Doyle were still alive. Greedy amateurs with pretensions, who'd somehow had the idea that Cowley might pay as much again as Collinson had in ransom money to get his agents back.
Cowley did not pay ransom money.
Murphy could not get it out of his head that Bodie and Doyle knew this.
He saw again and again, in the dark of the night, the clatter of the men ahead of him down the cellar stairs, their last desperate dash, and then the blood that had spattered from the men's bodies, the way their guns had fallen, the photographs of Bodie and Doyle, Cowley's top men, both taken unaware, unknowing, that had fluttered, bloodstained, from the men's fingers.
And Murphy could not get it out of his head that in the silence of the moments after, in the split-second held-breath instant when the shots were still echoing around the cellar walls, bound and gagged as they were on the cellar floor, Bodie and Doyle had turned only to each other, and all they had done was look.
It seared the air between them, that look, and caught in the blaze of it, all Murphy could think was What if I'd missed? What if he'd missed one of the men, if his shot hadn't been clean, had been too late, if his Walther had misfired the second bullet?
What if one of them had closed their eyes then, and never opened them again?
In the dark of the night, his own eyes open wide, Murphy thought about the lives he'd saved, thought about ransom money. He thought about working solo, and playing darts with the lads, and whether he'd ask Janine out on a second date, a pretty, pleasant sort of girl, whose looks held nothing more fiery than warmth.
He thought he would, and the thought lulled him, at last, to sleep.
Before I do, I have a question... *g* I post my stories here, and I eventually post them to A03. I used to post them first to the_safehouse, but I got out of the habit of doing that at one point, and have somehow never started again. It would make sense to do it, to help keep the comm alive a bit, but... is that too much? It might then pop up in some people's flists three times, and...? But - maybe it would be nice to make an effort to revive the comm a bit...?
What do you think?
And now the main show - a tiny wee Pros story, that's unusually a bit of a Murphy story, cos that was how Macklingirl wrote it to start with... *g**
Whose Lives He Saved
by Slantedlight
He found them bound and gagged, in the furthest back corner of an ancient coal cellar whose door was almost obscured by the wreck of the rooms above. They'd been thrown together, so that they lay close and tangled, Bodie on his back and Doyle's head somehow tucked into Bodie's armpit, the rest of him pressed along Bodie's side, like children curled together at night.
"Like being stuck inside 'is laundry bag," Doyle said later, "Only more fragrant." Bodie raised a disdainful eyebrow at him, and they ambled out of the break room shoulder to shoulder, deliberately casual in the face of a bellow from Cowley's office. Murphy watched them leave, his own eyebrows set carefully low.
He watched them.
Collinson had been paid an arm and a leg for them, and it was only because the men he'd picked to do the dirty work turned out to be no more than amateurs with pretensions that Bodie and Doyle were still alive. Greedy amateurs with pretensions, who'd somehow had the idea that Cowley might pay as much again as Collinson had in ransom money to get his agents back.
Cowley did not pay ransom money.
Murphy could not get it out of his head that Bodie and Doyle knew this.
He saw again and again, in the dark of the night, the clatter of the men ahead of him down the cellar stairs, their last desperate dash, and then the blood that had spattered from the men's bodies, the way their guns had fallen, the photographs of Bodie and Doyle, Cowley's top men, both taken unaware, unknowing, that had fluttered, bloodstained, from the men's fingers.
And Murphy could not get it out of his head that in the silence of the moments after, in the split-second held-breath instant when the shots were still echoing around the cellar walls, bound and gagged as they were on the cellar floor, Bodie and Doyle had turned only to each other, and all they had done was look.
It seared the air between them, that look, and caught in the blaze of it, all Murphy could think was What if I'd missed? What if he'd missed one of the men, if his shot hadn't been clean, had been too late, if his Walther had misfired the second bullet?
What if one of them had closed their eyes then, and never opened them again?
In the dark of the night, his own eyes open wide, Murphy thought about the lives he'd saved, thought about ransom money. He thought about working solo, and playing darts with the lads, and whether he'd ask Janine out on a second date, a pretty, pleasant sort of girl, whose looks held nothing more fiery than warmth.
He thought he would, and the thought lulled him, at last, to sleep.