I would stand in line for this, there’s always room in life for this.
TITLE: Starting Line
FANDOM: Bourne Identity/Supremacy/Ultimatum
CHARACTERS: Jason Bourne
RATING: Pre-Teen [Passing reference to death, dead characters, guns, shooting.]
SUMMARY: There’s a fine, fine line between beginnings and endings.
AUTHOR’S NOTES: For the lovely Mercedes, who fangirls the Bourne movies like WHOA, and is celebrating a special day today. My gift for her? This ficlet. Happy birthday, bb.
A body lies motionless in the East River, a bullet embedded in its shoulder; an untimely end for an anonymous figure.
The whole setup sounds like something straight out of a novel with pretentions at hard-boiled noir. If it’s the beginning or the end is unclear - such stories have no qualms about using dead bodies at either end.
Look at what they make you give.
All is not as it seems though. The stranger’s eyes flicker open, and he swims a little ways down the river before kicking his way to the surface. As he draws his next (first) breath, the barest ghost of a smile pulls at his mouth. The expression looks out of place on his face, like his features are experimenting with something foreign or otherwise unfamiliar. It settles into place, looking almost at home for a moment before it disappearing just as quickly. The stranger pulls himself up and out of the water, and shakes himself off before gingerly touching at a shoulder that looks to have only been grazed, if touched at all, by the bullet.
Were this any other story, this likely would be the end. The hero will disappear in to the night, soldiering on, quietly wearing his sacrifices like battle scars, and the words ‘the end’ will show us that our tale has finished.
While our hero will walk off in to the dark, his sacrifices marking him alone and apart from everyone else, we have yet to see the last of him. We have yet to reach the comfort of true closure - he has yet to reach it.
Look at what they make you give.
The fact of the matter is that tacking the words ‘the end’ here would be the grandest of disservices. Questions have been answered, but conclusion remains outside our grasp. There is still more for him to do. We have been witness to but a chapter of his story, only reached a place where it is safe enough to put the story down for now.
Perhaps the comparison to a novel is more apt than one might have originally imagined.
Look at what they make you give.
He’s given much to this omnipresent ‘they’, this stranger from the water. His memories. Nearly his life a few times. Her.
Something on the left side of his chest aches at this last wisp of a thought, but it is a vicious, absent, hollow hurt that he likes to believe he is growing more adept at ignoring. If he is right about this is a debate he is in no position to have. He tells himself that even though she wouldn’t have liked any of this, she would have understood.
Right now though, he has things to attend to. Wheels have been set in motion to ensure that those who did the taking will pay and that things will finally be made right.
It’s time to begin.