Discovered in a Christmas Card - 25th December - On My Honour by Slantedlight
This is a wee story I wrote recently for franciskerst - I hope she received it safely, and won't mind me sharing it now with other people!
On My Honour
by Slantedlight
post-Need to Know
Night came late in July, but it was well and truly dark by the time Cowley had finished his paperwork on Manton and found his way home. He closed the door to his flat, set the security locks, and suddenly, wearily, found himself leaning back against it, briefcase still held in one hand, as if to keep the world barricaded outside. The hallway in front of him stretched off into shadows, lit only by the streetlight that poured its dim glow through the half moon of the windowpane above the door, blurred and softened by the patterned glass. He reached out his free hand and flicked on the hall light.
That was better.
He didn’t mind the night, not at all, but after a day like today - aye, after too many days like today, although it wasn’t in every one that he shot a man in the back - he found he wanted some light.
Fred Manton had cost the lives of a dozen good agents over the years, agents they’d thought safe, agents who’d thought themselves safe. Men - aye, and women too - whose last moments had not been in the arms of friends or loved ones, or even concerned strangers, but in a flood of betrayal and fear and the disappointment of life. Oh yes, Manton had deserved death alright, and not the mercy of being shot in the back, either.
The trouble was, that wasn’t why he had done it.
Move yourself, man.
His leg ached with the day, though not as it had once done, a sign of the times he often thought, of his times, his long times, aging as everyone did. Coming to an end, one of these days.
But not today.
Ignoring his leg, Cowley dropped his briefcase long enough to take off his coat, and then took it through the glaring hallway light to the sitting room, shutting that door behind him too, against draught, and perhaps against shadows.
The shadow of Manton - and of another man.
Ach, if he was going to dwell on things, he might as well do it properly and be done with it. He loosened his tie with one hand, finally stowing his briefcase - full of secrets and operations and manipulations - away under the coffee table, and went to pour himself a drink.
His last whisky had been drunk to fill the hollow that had lodged deep inside after he’d shot Manton, this one… He thought a moment, settling himself in the armchair by the fireplace, then leaning forward to move the guard, to set light to the twist of newspaper that would burn and consume the kindling and coal and all. It wasn’t a cold night, but the idea of a fire comforted him, in its way. The paper caught, flames rushing down its length, away, out of sight, beneath the dry sticks and the pile of dark glowering coal, doing their job.
Aye. This one was for men doing their job. He sipped the whisky - aged, and peaty with northern fires and smoke - and let his own flames lick at memories.
Peter - his Peter… They’d been partners of one sort or another since they were young, in mischief up to their eyes. It had been Peter’s idea to join the Brigade in Spain, and he’d not thought twice about going with him, of course he hadn’t. Wet behind the ears, both of them, barely old enough to look like the men they were pretending to be. There’d been that weekend in Paris, their “holiday”, they’d said, and then a train to the Spanish border, and then they were there, and it had started.
Well, and that had been the start of his whole life, he knew now, fighting because he had to, because you couldn’t let men like Franco win. Because it was what he believed, what they’d believed, he and Peter. The nights they’d spent, talking until the wee hours, righting wrongs and dreaming dreams.
Except that Franco had won, of course, and there’d been bigger wars, and more distant wars, and they’d inched their way up the ranks, and Peter always there somewhere. They’d always managed to meet up at this place or that; they’d taken this lass dancing, that lass courting, but at the end of it all, there had always been the two of them, Peter and George.
Until there wasn’t.
The pain of that empty space still ached, the old phantom pain, worse always than the bullet in his leg. He’d not been there that time, he’d not had even a chance to do something, to save Peter, to come bounding to the rescue and get them both away and safe, as they each done, so many times before.
Peter had been alone with Fred Manton, and that was how he had died.
Cowley closed his eyes for a minute, the warmth of the fire drained to nothing in the face of this. His Peter, his poor Peter…
He thought that Manton knew, at the end, knew that Cowley finally understood what he’d done. He’d long known it was the same traitor who’d killed them all, all those bright and shining agents, and his Peter too, but he’d not known until now that it was Manton. He thought that Manton had seen it in his eyes, and known what might be waiting for him in that somewhere quiet in the country.
And so he’d shot him, while he was running, in the back.
Because he couldn’t have done it, of course, couldn’t have made himself into a Manton, not even for Peter, and he didn’t know whether to curse himself for it, or be grateful. Would Peter understand? Perhaps the man he might have aged to would have understood, but what about the man to whom he’d owed vengeance, that younger soldier, so true?
He thought that Bodie might understand, if he knew. “On my honour,” Cowley had said, and Bodie had looked at him. “Always thought you had a lot of that, sir.” Bodie’d been in service himself of course - oh, they all were, Bodie and Doyle and the lot of them, but Bodie had seen the kind of service that war made of people. It wasn’t the same as the war they fought here on the streets. For all it was a war, it wasn’t the bloody streets of Spain or the strange fields of Korea or the harsh light of the desert, foreign fields, that made men do things that should have been foreign to them. Places you couldn’t pretend you had a right to be, to belong. Places that weren’t your own world, where even Mother Nature let you know it, took the side against you, and loneliness became something new and tainted, and to be fought just as hard as any enemy.
Yes, Bodie knew that alright, Cowley saw it in his eyes, in the way he pretended the world was a joke they should all be laughing at, in those flashes of moments when he had to stop pretending.
And Manton - would Bodie still think of him with honour, if he knew why Cowley had shot Manton in the back? More so perhaps than without knowing, but it was not something that could be explained, not to someone as vital as Bodie. If Bodie knew that it had never been Annie Irvine that was the great love of his life, that she had come a poor second to Peter - to a man - then Cowley would never hear such words from him again.
He took another sip of his whisky, a harder sip.
Go on, man, face it all while you’re sitting here, and then when you’re done you can open that briefcase and get on with life again, the life left to you, the life you chose.
If there had been anyone after Peter and Annie, then it might have been Bodie. He’d long recognised the spark that lit in his heart when Bodie entered the room, his own desire to laugh in the face of Bodie’s irreverence. Aye, you could take the world too seriously, and sometimes he did, reality blurring with the need to kow-tow to this or that minister or politico. Peter would have told him so. Bodie told him so, without a word to him, just by being there, and so sometimes he let a smile touch his lips, when Bodie’s sheer exuberance for life meant he could do nothing else.
He saw his old idealism and hope and ruthlessness reflected in Ray Doyle, but he saw what he’d loved in Peter reflected in Bodie.
The flames guttered and spat around the coal, shadows and light, present and past, and he thought about Peter, and he thought about Bodie. The whisky burned a soft fire through him, settled him, and the world around him. There was no point in regrets, not for then, not for now, and at last he took a breath, let himself focus again on this night, the end of this day. He’d have something to eat, and he’d take himself to bed, and the briefcase could wait until morning.
In the quiet of the night, in the hours after midnight, his doorbell rang.
Now, who the devil…? He frowned, pushed himself from the chair with a wince, as his leg protested. At this time of night it was almost bound to be the devil, so his slid his Smith and Wesson into his jacket pocket, kept a careful hold on it, and ventured back along the hallway, ordinary now.
He slid the brass cover from the spy hole, peered into the night, and with another frown he opened the door.
“Bodie?” Ah well, he’d had his few moments of peace, and now it was back to the real world. If his agents came calling there was usually some crisis to be dealt with. “What’s wrong, man?”
“Evening, sir” Can I come in?”
“Aye, you’d better.” He closed the door behind them both, gestured down the hall to his sitting room. “Where’s your other half?”
“What, Ray? Tucked up in bed by now, I should think.”
Aye, it was that late. “It’s a private matter, then?”
“Well…” Bodie looked uncharacteristically shy for a moment. Not coy, Cowley thought with interest, as only Bodie could be when he wanted something, definitely shy. The moment was gone as fast as it had arrived, but he’d seen it, he’d stake his life on it.
“You’d better have a drink, then,” he suggested, before Bodie could continue. “You can get me one at the same time.” He glanced at the carriage clock on the mantelpiece. “I was about to make myself a sandwich - I suppose you’ll have one.” If he didn’t eat now, he’d no doubt miss out altogether, and he suspected he’d need the energy if Bodie had a problem. And of course it might make it easier for the man to speak. Without waiting for a nod, he stepped towards the door, and down to the kitchen, giving his bad leg a quick slap as he went. It had stiffened up after the day, and his self-indulgent pause by the fire. He should have eaten first too, his doctor would not have been impressed.
To his surprise, he heard footsteps in the hallway before he’d so much as sliced the bread, and Bodie appeared in the doorway, a glass in either hand. Cowley looked up at him for a moment, Bodie’s eyes skidding away as he did it, kept his counsel.
The silence stretched between them, not uncomfortably, and he busied himself with butter and tomatoes and then cheese for one of the sandwiches, because Bodie was a younger man than he was.
“I was thinking about Krivas,” Bodie said at last, and that did surprise him, because Krivas had long been taken care of, Bodie’s demons there - Cowley had thought - put to rest.
Silence stretched again, and this time Cowley stopped what he was doing, looked up at his agent, his contradictory agent. There was little light in Bodie now, he was a dark presence in the ordinary electric yellow night.
“Go on,” he said gently, because somehow he couldn’t help himself. He knew Bodie’s front very well indeed, knew too that sometimes he needed the gentleness, whether he recognised that in himself or not.
“Well… Was thinking about how strongly I felt about him, at the end.” Bodie shook his head. “He was as big a bastard as anyone I’ve met, but he took something from me…”
Cowley looked back down at the sandwiches, cutting them into halves, reaching to the cupboard for plates, letting Bodie speak.
“Thing is - I wanted to kill him, for what he took.” Bodie took a gulp at his whisky, so that Cowley heard him, almost felt it burning courage into him. “Thing is…”
It was strange, Cowley thought later, the way life gave you moments, those moments when you suddenly knew who someone was, and that it was alright, and that your world was just about to open up again. Not so strange the way your heart clenched just as they arrived, and then released you back into that world.
“The thing is - I wanted to kill him, bad. You knew it was wrong, doing it that way. If he’d died another way, in the chase… But beating Krivas to death - well, it wouldn’t help her - only me.” Bodie paused a moment. “She wouldn’t have liked it.”
Aye, a world that was lighter suddenly, and full of days stretching ahead, and sunshine in them, and laughter.
“Thing is, sir… Well, I thought maybe you could use some company tonight.” Bodie looked up then, and this time their eyes met, and caught, and they both looked long and hard into the past and the future, and then Cowley picked up the plates and led the way, and Bodie followed him back to the sitting room, and the night wore away as they talked, and the fire died into morning, and all was comfort and a kind of joy.
o0o
Title: On My Honour
Author: Slantedlight
Slash or Gen: Slash - B/C
Archive at ProsLib/Circuit: Certainly!
Disclaimer: Bodie, Cowley, Doyle and the CI5 universe belong to their original creators, and I'm just writing them because they're wonderful. *g*
Notes: Originally written for FrancisKerst, whose request is always Cowley/Bodie!
On My Honour
by Slantedlight
post-Need to Know
Night came late in July, but it was well and truly dark by the time Cowley had finished his paperwork on Manton and found his way home. He closed the door to his flat, set the security locks, and suddenly, wearily, found himself leaning back against it, briefcase still held in one hand, as if to keep the world barricaded outside. The hallway in front of him stretched off into shadows, lit only by the streetlight that poured its dim glow through the half moon of the windowpane above the door, blurred and softened by the patterned glass. He reached out his free hand and flicked on the hall light.
That was better.
He didn’t mind the night, not at all, but after a day like today - aye, after too many days like today, although it wasn’t in every one that he shot a man in the back - he found he wanted some light.
Fred Manton had cost the lives of a dozen good agents over the years, agents they’d thought safe, agents who’d thought themselves safe. Men - aye, and women too - whose last moments had not been in the arms of friends or loved ones, or even concerned strangers, but in a flood of betrayal and fear and the disappointment of life. Oh yes, Manton had deserved death alright, and not the mercy of being shot in the back, either.
The trouble was, that wasn’t why he had done it.
Move yourself, man.
His leg ached with the day, though not as it had once done, a sign of the times he often thought, of his times, his long times, aging as everyone did. Coming to an end, one of these days.
But not today.
Ignoring his leg, Cowley dropped his briefcase long enough to take off his coat, and then took it through the glaring hallway light to the sitting room, shutting that door behind him too, against draught, and perhaps against shadows.
The shadow of Manton - and of another man.
Ach, if he was going to dwell on things, he might as well do it properly and be done with it. He loosened his tie with one hand, finally stowing his briefcase - full of secrets and operations and manipulations - away under the coffee table, and went to pour himself a drink.
His last whisky had been drunk to fill the hollow that had lodged deep inside after he’d shot Manton, this one… He thought a moment, settling himself in the armchair by the fireplace, then leaning forward to move the guard, to set light to the twist of newspaper that would burn and consume the kindling and coal and all. It wasn’t a cold night, but the idea of a fire comforted him, in its way. The paper caught, flames rushing down its length, away, out of sight, beneath the dry sticks and the pile of dark glowering coal, doing their job.
Aye. This one was for men doing their job. He sipped the whisky - aged, and peaty with northern fires and smoke - and let his own flames lick at memories.
Peter - his Peter… They’d been partners of one sort or another since they were young, in mischief up to their eyes. It had been Peter’s idea to join the Brigade in Spain, and he’d not thought twice about going with him, of course he hadn’t. Wet behind the ears, both of them, barely old enough to look like the men they were pretending to be. There’d been that weekend in Paris, their “holiday”, they’d said, and then a train to the Spanish border, and then they were there, and it had started.
Well, and that had been the start of his whole life, he knew now, fighting because he had to, because you couldn’t let men like Franco win. Because it was what he believed, what they’d believed, he and Peter. The nights they’d spent, talking until the wee hours, righting wrongs and dreaming dreams.
Except that Franco had won, of course, and there’d been bigger wars, and more distant wars, and they’d inched their way up the ranks, and Peter always there somewhere. They’d always managed to meet up at this place or that; they’d taken this lass dancing, that lass courting, but at the end of it all, there had always been the two of them, Peter and George.
Until there wasn’t.
The pain of that empty space still ached, the old phantom pain, worse always than the bullet in his leg. He’d not been there that time, he’d not had even a chance to do something, to save Peter, to come bounding to the rescue and get them both away and safe, as they each done, so many times before.
Peter had been alone with Fred Manton, and that was how he had died.
Cowley closed his eyes for a minute, the warmth of the fire drained to nothing in the face of this. His Peter, his poor Peter…
He thought that Manton knew, at the end, knew that Cowley finally understood what he’d done. He’d long known it was the same traitor who’d killed them all, all those bright and shining agents, and his Peter too, but he’d not known until now that it was Manton. He thought that Manton had seen it in his eyes, and known what might be waiting for him in that somewhere quiet in the country.
And so he’d shot him, while he was running, in the back.
Because he couldn’t have done it, of course, couldn’t have made himself into a Manton, not even for Peter, and he didn’t know whether to curse himself for it, or be grateful. Would Peter understand? Perhaps the man he might have aged to would have understood, but what about the man to whom he’d owed vengeance, that younger soldier, so true?
He thought that Bodie might understand, if he knew. “On my honour,” Cowley had said, and Bodie had looked at him. “Always thought you had a lot of that, sir.” Bodie’d been in service himself of course - oh, they all were, Bodie and Doyle and the lot of them, but Bodie had seen the kind of service that war made of people. It wasn’t the same as the war they fought here on the streets. For all it was a war, it wasn’t the bloody streets of Spain or the strange fields of Korea or the harsh light of the desert, foreign fields, that made men do things that should have been foreign to them. Places you couldn’t pretend you had a right to be, to belong. Places that weren’t your own world, where even Mother Nature let you know it, took the side against you, and loneliness became something new and tainted, and to be fought just as hard as any enemy.
Yes, Bodie knew that alright, Cowley saw it in his eyes, in the way he pretended the world was a joke they should all be laughing at, in those flashes of moments when he had to stop pretending.
And Manton - would Bodie still think of him with honour, if he knew why Cowley had shot Manton in the back? More so perhaps than without knowing, but it was not something that could be explained, not to someone as vital as Bodie. If Bodie knew that it had never been Annie Irvine that was the great love of his life, that she had come a poor second to Peter - to a man - then Cowley would never hear such words from him again.
He took another sip of his whisky, a harder sip.
Go on, man, face it all while you’re sitting here, and then when you’re done you can open that briefcase and get on with life again, the life left to you, the life you chose.
If there had been anyone after Peter and Annie, then it might have been Bodie. He’d long recognised the spark that lit in his heart when Bodie entered the room, his own desire to laugh in the face of Bodie’s irreverence. Aye, you could take the world too seriously, and sometimes he did, reality blurring with the need to kow-tow to this or that minister or politico. Peter would have told him so. Bodie told him so, without a word to him, just by being there, and so sometimes he let a smile touch his lips, when Bodie’s sheer exuberance for life meant he could do nothing else.
He saw his old idealism and hope and ruthlessness reflected in Ray Doyle, but he saw what he’d loved in Peter reflected in Bodie.
The flames guttered and spat around the coal, shadows and light, present and past, and he thought about Peter, and he thought about Bodie. The whisky burned a soft fire through him, settled him, and the world around him. There was no point in regrets, not for then, not for now, and at last he took a breath, let himself focus again on this night, the end of this day. He’d have something to eat, and he’d take himself to bed, and the briefcase could wait until morning.
In the quiet of the night, in the hours after midnight, his doorbell rang.
Now, who the devil…? He frowned, pushed himself from the chair with a wince, as his leg protested. At this time of night it was almost bound to be the devil, so his slid his Smith and Wesson into his jacket pocket, kept a careful hold on it, and ventured back along the hallway, ordinary now.
He slid the brass cover from the spy hole, peered into the night, and with another frown he opened the door.
“Bodie?” Ah well, he’d had his few moments of peace, and now it was back to the real world. If his agents came calling there was usually some crisis to be dealt with. “What’s wrong, man?”
“Evening, sir” Can I come in?”
“Aye, you’d better.” He closed the door behind them both, gestured down the hall to his sitting room. “Where’s your other half?”
“What, Ray? Tucked up in bed by now, I should think.”
Aye, it was that late. “It’s a private matter, then?”
“Well…” Bodie looked uncharacteristically shy for a moment. Not coy, Cowley thought with interest, as only Bodie could be when he wanted something, definitely shy. The moment was gone as fast as it had arrived, but he’d seen it, he’d stake his life on it.
“You’d better have a drink, then,” he suggested, before Bodie could continue. “You can get me one at the same time.” He glanced at the carriage clock on the mantelpiece. “I was about to make myself a sandwich - I suppose you’ll have one.” If he didn’t eat now, he’d no doubt miss out altogether, and he suspected he’d need the energy if Bodie had a problem. And of course it might make it easier for the man to speak. Without waiting for a nod, he stepped towards the door, and down to the kitchen, giving his bad leg a quick slap as he went. It had stiffened up after the day, and his self-indulgent pause by the fire. He should have eaten first too, his doctor would not have been impressed.
To his surprise, he heard footsteps in the hallway before he’d so much as sliced the bread, and Bodie appeared in the doorway, a glass in either hand. Cowley looked up at him for a moment, Bodie’s eyes skidding away as he did it, kept his counsel.
The silence stretched between them, not uncomfortably, and he busied himself with butter and tomatoes and then cheese for one of the sandwiches, because Bodie was a younger man than he was.
“I was thinking about Krivas,” Bodie said at last, and that did surprise him, because Krivas had long been taken care of, Bodie’s demons there - Cowley had thought - put to rest.
Silence stretched again, and this time Cowley stopped what he was doing, looked up at his agent, his contradictory agent. There was little light in Bodie now, he was a dark presence in the ordinary electric yellow night.
“Go on,” he said gently, because somehow he couldn’t help himself. He knew Bodie’s front very well indeed, knew too that sometimes he needed the gentleness, whether he recognised that in himself or not.
“Well… Was thinking about how strongly I felt about him, at the end.” Bodie shook his head. “He was as big a bastard as anyone I’ve met, but he took something from me…”
Cowley looked back down at the sandwiches, cutting them into halves, reaching to the cupboard for plates, letting Bodie speak.
“Thing is - I wanted to kill him, for what he took.” Bodie took a gulp at his whisky, so that Cowley heard him, almost felt it burning courage into him. “Thing is…”
It was strange, Cowley thought later, the way life gave you moments, those moments when you suddenly knew who someone was, and that it was alright, and that your world was just about to open up again. Not so strange the way your heart clenched just as they arrived, and then released you back into that world.
“The thing is - I wanted to kill him, bad. You knew it was wrong, doing it that way. If he’d died another way, in the chase… But beating Krivas to death - well, it wouldn’t help her - only me.” Bodie paused a moment. “She wouldn’t have liked it.”
Aye, a world that was lighter suddenly, and full of days stretching ahead, and sunshine in them, and laughter.
“Thing is, sir… Well, I thought maybe you could use some company tonight.” Bodie looked up then, and this time their eyes met, and caught, and they both looked long and hard into the past and the future, and then Cowley picked up the plates and led the way, and Bodie followed him back to the sitting room, and the night wore away as they talked, and the fire died into morning, and all was comfort and a kind of joy.
o0o
Title: On My Honour
Author: Slantedlight
Slash or Gen: Slash - B/C
Archive at ProsLib/Circuit: Certainly!
Disclaimer: Bodie, Cowley, Doyle and the CI5 universe belong to their original creators, and I'm just writing them because they're wonderful. *g*
Notes: Originally written for FrancisKerst, whose request is always Cowley/Bodie!