Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

She was made aware of the news well into the night.

2, maybe 3am, and Dinah is woken from her turbulent slumber by a phone call from a hospital. Hospitals never have good news, no matter how they try to sugarcoat things and make light of a situation; how they provide solutions to problems that crush lives just by existing, cancer, lupus, polio, AIDS, to name a few. She’d seen her fair share of the ugly. Ugly was a neutral term in her mind by now, nothing she ever saw was ugly anymore. There was nothing that could shock her.

Except this.

She was wound up in the morgue of a hospital near to where she was based. It wasn’t facilitated like she’d seen back home, nothing to stop diseases spreading through a place of such supposed sanity, to prevent innocent people dying in a waiting room because there weren’t enough staff to see to them in time. They’re run off their feet, she can tell that as she’s escorted through the trawls of trauma in the bay. She often flinches at doctors and nurses -- even patients, running past her, darting round corners and frightening her. Just because she had seen the ugly, doesn’t mean deep down she wasn’t still slightly afraid of it.

Her tears get the better of her when she’s left alone with the news.

Dinah wasn’t one for crying; never had been, but something about Ahmad Zubair’s belongings in a plastic bag sat upon a counter set her off immediately. It wasn’t much: a watch, a wedding ring, a photograph of his family. A small stuffed toy, a giraffe, clearly given to him by one of his children. They sit together in the bag, and the way they’re enclosed together in such a small space, these remnants of his life, of what it was- it’s hard to imagine anything bigger. It’s hard to see him as anything bigger than these items in a bag and it angers her.

He was dead. Murdered. Slaughtered, for what seemed like betrayal at that moment in time. Caught by those he was working with. Tortured by the men he had gained the trust of. And they completely took advantage.

She opens the plastic bag, wiping the fallen tears onto her sleeve, and retrieves the wedding band. Dinah fondles it in her fingers, looking at the Arabic engravings on the inside, which only built more tears in her eyes. The ring was a symbol of who he was, who he loved, who he fought for, who he died for. A family man, at most, more than a soldier, more than an agent, more than her partner. It always came first. Everything he did was for them, everytime he stepped into danger, he kissed his ring for good luck, for hope to make it home safely. And it failed him on the time he needed it most. It made her angry. So angry. In the best of times, anger fuelled her work. Anger took her mindset into overdrive and she worked, she fought the injustices and the misrepresentations and stood up for the right things and shamed the wrong.

And it felt like nothing but a ring, but it sparked everything within her to fight against the injustice done to him. It electrified her wires and fused them together in a mass circuit of fusion, of power and justice and determination, of hope. Hope that tomorrow would be a better day. That she’d avenge Zubair and assure his family that he didn’t die in vain.

And that she’d do it without crying, with his wedding band in her hand; for hope.

Chapter Text

When he first punched someone, he was a misunderstood twelve year old boy.

Twelve year old William, born into riches and everlasting privilege, there was nothing he could ever seem to do wrong. No matter how hard he tried, he’d never be punished. It was something he envied of other kids in his classes, something that angered him when he never got the blame for anything, never got a single bad mouthing professor on his case.

Something he’d labelled the Russo privilege.

Looking for trouble became one of his motives every day of his life; looking for ways to step out of line, reasons to punch people and reasons to make them feel smaller than him. The adrenaline pulsating through his veins was electric. He thrived. It felt good, it was promising. The power was what he’d always wanted. What he had, but didn’t know how to use. The first punch he threw only hit with such lasting impact because of the garments on his fingers. The ring, on his middle finger, with it’s huge golden pendant, and its fancy grip on his hand; it was a weapon.

Weapons were something Billy became very used to.

And he wore the ring every day since then to remind him of the darkness. The darkness that he unleashed with his fists and the evils that sprouted in his mind; the corruptness of childhood trauma sending him over the edge and onto the island of terror. Round and round he span til he was thrown off in a dizzy spell; and he landed in the water full of vengeance and anger.

And it was his Mother at the full front of the anger even when she’s the one that abandoned him. Realistically, that’s where the route of his anger would have started. So much anger filling such a small young boy as he stands on the doorstep of an orphanage with nothing but a shirt on his back, it was impossible to know where he stored it all. Where it all sat untouched in the first days of his time at the orphanage that he sat in silence.

As he grew, his anger only doubled in size with him. It evened out across his mind, his sudden maturity giving him the knowledge of what to do with it. How he could use it to his advantage. To siege power, to gain something from the family that stepped back into his life only when it suited them. For him to claim what belongs to him, to harness the evil inside of him and relish in its glory.

But even snakes have a soft underbelly; and at first Billy doubted himself. Slow and steady he slides across the ground in a silent effort to approach his target unannounced. And when his weapons are raised, his victim’s eyes full of terror and fear, he only lavished in it. Fed on it. Lapped it up like a dog.

And stuck a knife in where it would hurt. Where it would never hurt again.

Chapter Text

He wakes in a cold sweat, almost like routine.

The screams that escape his mouth are only mangled at best, the bad memories and visions of fear in his mind clawing at the one thing that saves him from his own destruction time and time again; his ability to scream aloud. It’s the one thing he sees as being able to save him from his nightmares, even when there’s nobody else in his apartment to hear it.

Curtis’ leg aches psychologically, the pain comes thudding back whenever he is awoken by the nightmares of how he lost it. As he sits upright in his bed, he feels for the blunt end of his leg, shutting his eyes as his breaths labour themselves. It’s soothing, sometimes, to remember that it’s there; well, lack of. Soothing to his PTSD to remind him that he’s been through it, he’s home, he’s okay. That he isn’t in Baghdad bleeding in the middle of dirt and soldier’s cries whilst he screams himself in pain. The mortification in his eyes when he looks down and doesn’t see the end of his leg. The shrill cry of purely hyperventilated breath that escaped his mouth as he’d lost a limb. An actual limb.

At the side of his bed, there is a chest of drawers. In the top is where he keeps his gun for safety, hidden under multiple layers of different sleeves for his prosthetic. In the corner, easy for him to reach, a small dented metal box. It rattles as he holds it, and he can’t tell whether it’s from his shaking hands or the contents inside moving about. The choice of a metal box was clever in hindsight, his shaking hands mid-PT attack cling heavy and hard, and the metal acts as a boundary. That way, the items inside that he treasures so dearly wouldn’t get damaged by his quaking body.

And he sees their faces as he opens it, and it soothes him a little.

His parents, smiles from ear to ear as they stand next to each other in the crinkled photograph Curtis picks up. It’s a wedding photo, so old and badly exposed against their dark skin. He couldn’t remember the year, forgot to write it on the back, and the developments in camera technology would have been kinder to them in this day and age. If they were still here.

Behind the photograph are the rings. The two wedding bands, and his Mother’s engagement ring. It wasn’t anything fancy, no glamorous jewel, no carrat of any number. It was just a ring, no different to the wedding band other than it had the tiniest of jewels engraved rather than one big one in the centre. They were never expensive people, never took anything for granted. And looking at the height of their wealth in the palm of his hand was somehow enough to calm him down.

They left him their rings when they got into the back of a cab and rode down the street never to be seen again. Said that he should sell them to get himself by, to use the money they created to get himself a place and keep himself alive. He looked at the rings in the metal box every night he slept on the street and yearned for a fire, a bed, something warm to eat; when it rained so hard he was close to hypothermia. He looked at the rings in the metal box before crossing the street to an open stall of a veteran sign up sheet. Scribbled his name down. And all the while he never sold the rings. He couldn’t part with the one thing that kept him going up until that very moment.

And he remembers the one thought in his head as he stood in front of the stall; at least in the army he’d have a roof over his head.

Chapter Text

She was at the point in her grief where she didn’t know whether to lie or to tell the truth. That yes, she was married, but no, her husband was no longer alive anymore.

Sarah had gotten used to waking up alone. Gotten used to rolling over in bed, outstretching her arm towards his empty side, and just for that minute, forgetting that he wasn’t there. That sheer moment of bliss just after waking up where everything is okay, everything is normal, and David just got out the bed for a minute. That he’ll be back, and they’ll lie next to each other and breathe each other in. A form of intimacy that she found comfort in, but was now gone. Because it wasn’t her reality, just some sick made up version in her mind where he was still alive and still with her. She was still in love and her children still had a father.

It wasn’t her reality. They were broken.

She reaches out across the bed as she rolls, and when she is not met with his arms pulling her towards him before encasing her in his frame, she sighs. She finds she can’t look at the emptiness beside her unless someone is laying there, Leo if she has a nightmare, Zach if the thunder is too loud and rattling the windows in his room. When it’s empty, and it’s David’s designated spot, her eyes avert themselves for as long as possible.

She forces herself out of bed on her side, never looking over her shoulder at the emptiness. Never letting her eyes flutter there for a second too long, a second is all it takes to drag the memories up from within her mind and for her to cry. Sarah busies herself with other things, almost anything really, so she doesn’t have to think about him. It works most of the time, but there are little aspects of him all over the house. Photographs that she daren’t take down- she would never. It would hurt more to see herself erasing him from her life, from the kids’ lives. Photographs can live. They can stay because that’s all they are; pictures in a frame. They can’t physically hurt her.

The one thing, though, that always throws her off is washing the dishes.

It’s the one thing she can put all of her energy into and distract herself. The one thing where she can focus on soapy water and trying to clean the one spot on the corner of a plate that just won’t budge because it’s been living in Zach’s room for the week. But somehow, he still gets to her. She never wears the rubber gloves, because she’s never really doing a full wash, just a small number of items. A cup, or a vase. After staring at the pile in front of her, she eyes the wedding band on her left hand.

It always catches her off guard, because it’s been sitting there absentmindedly for so long now. And she twists it on her finger whilst averting her eyes, because even though he’s gone, he’s not gone completely. Parts of him still live on, in their house, their kids, in that ring. And it becomes so precious to her. More precious than it ever had been before, because it finally holds something more than the bond of their marriage. It holds him. His memory, his being, his words, Sarah, go! Stay in the car, you hear me? Stay in the car.

Sarah takes it from her finger to wash up so it doesn’t slip under the soapy waters and fall into the garbage disposal. She was always having problems with that. And her one thing, the one distraction from the constant grief she was living in, was tainted. By the stupid ring.

(But she didn’t mind. Cause it wasn’t really stupid at all.)

Chapter Text

BREAKING: Federal Agent Sam Stein stabbed and killed in operation gone bust

As sad as it sounded, it was a regular thing.

The streets of New York were never safe. Karen knew that. Pretty much everyone who lived there knew that, it wasn’t uncommon. But somehow when something flashed across the local news, something that she registered absentmindedly unless it was about Frank, it always managed to have some affect on her. It always brought up the same memories, the same pain, the same deep pang in her chest as she realised that someone else out there had lost a family member and was going through what she did.

It was always Kevin.

No matter the person on the news, the body identified in a lake, the missing persons report on her desk when she arrived at the Bulletin; it always took her back to him. There was nothing that could completely fill the hole in her heart that he’d left. Seeing the parents, the families of the deceased filing a missing appeal on a TV screen only reignites the mental image she has of her own parents in the same position.

She wasn’t allowed to be there with them, which was what pissed her off most about the whole thing. Karen had to watch from a shitty TV as her parents broke down in front of a news anchor about the death of their baby boy. He was our son, they said, please, help us find the criminals that did this to him. And it just made her angrier. Because Kevin was their son, yes, but he was Karen’s brother, too. And everyone just kept forgetting that. Forgetting that she was part of the picture too, she felt something too, that the loss of Kevin took a toll on her too, a huge one.

And she remembers shouting, so loudly, just screaming over and over at them, what about me? What about me? He was my brother! He was my family, too!

But they didn’t listen. They never did.

It was a violent unhealthy mechanism, that every time a tragedy struck across all news outlets in New York, she reverted back to the one that crumbled her own world. But it wasn’t something that she could easily stop. In the end, her only way of coping was to keep something with her at all times, something to take the edge off when she couldn’t fully express it in public. For some, it might be alcohol, or pills, and at times, she feared herself slipping into those habits, too. But for Karen, it was a ring.

Nobody knew of it. But that’s how she liked it. And Karen is unable to place this ring in her memories— she couldn’t tell where it lived in her childhood. She didn’t know whose finger it sat on, whose calloused hands it touched. How many lives it touched when they shook hands.

But it was in Kevin’s belongings when they cleared out his room. And for Karen, that was all she needed. It was hers.

It was enough.

Chapter Text

His armour is tight on his chest, the usual.

Frank struggles to breathe on more than one occasion. Physically his breaths are short and ragged, full of rage and spit and they pierce the back of his throat with the malicious screams that escape. Within his head he’s trapped; he can’t breathe as his demons swirl in a never ending circle, taunting him and playing with his heartstrings, tugging and tugging, losing himself slowly. He’s in a constant battle of sustaining and losing, and he always falls in the end. The darkness always wins. His breath is always lagging just that slightly.

As tight as his armour can get, the chain around his neck keeps him centred, almost as a constant reminder.

More often than not, he yanks it from around his neck, pulling it from under his shirt and a bulletproof vest. When he’s bleeding and he’s on the edges of death, the metal shines in the light from a heaven not so far away. Is there a heaven? He sees the light. But it never takes him. He never lets it. Because the dog tags on the end of his chain keep him at home. The ring circled on the chain between them, Maria, keeps him home.

He clasps his bloody and calloused hands around it, squeezing it so tightly as though it’s the only thing that keeps his blood pumping, his heart going. It’s just a ring, he knows that, but his mind flashes so easily to her, and to Lisa, and Junior, and they’re with him in an instant, smiling, and they’re moving so fast that he can’t keep up. Frank can’t keep up because they’re slipping away.

And Maria smiles at him, always that same smile, the wind in her hair and the auburn sunset painted in the background of her untainted image. His heart, it aches, because she moves away from him too quickly, slips away just that bit faster than usual, and his hands glide past hers only briefly. And it kills him over and over.

And Lisa’s dancing across the grassy bank they’re parked on, she’s running along the edges with her arms outstretched like the ballerina she always wanted to be. She always moved so elegantly and smoothly for someone so small and with such bad balance, that Frank smiles and a chuckle escapes his lips. It’s a movie on constant loop, a cassette jammed in the camcorder.

And Junior, he never really liked football. Never took much of an interest other than to impress his friends in school; but he’s playing it, he’s always playing. He’d get Frank to play whenever he was home, just a kick about in the yard out back where it’d end in scuffed knees and bloody hands and Junior crying on the grass. And Frank puts his arm around him, pulling him closer toward him, listening to his pounding heart against his own. Pressing a kiss to his forehead. Ruffling his hair.

And he’s gone. They’re all gone.

Chapter Text

Sometimes he thinks that the machinery whirring in front of him is warmer than he is.

David is a cold soul, pretty much rotting away in the basement of a run down nuclear plant. The only interactions he has are with his computer screens, scouring the cameras all over the city, looking for something out of the ordinary, someone out of the ordinary. His fingers tap away at buttons at a miraculous speed, something he’d perfected in his line of work and his major increase of free time after his sudden demise. He’d type at the speed of light, having something upon the screen in mere seconds, if he needed it. The only thing that knew panic was the damn keyboard in front of him.

When he wasn’t at a computer, fingers flexing over a keyboard, they trembled in his presence and it scared him. Some of the things he uncovered, or people he exposed, or dodgy deals and exchanges he watched from camera feeds people didn’t know had been left on, scared him. He figured his trembling hands aftershock of that fear, it finally setting into his system. His mind flipping out and backing out of the completely idiotic plan he’d configured. He went through the exact same routine:

Back out? No, you can’t, you’ve been here for months already, why stop now?

Imminent death? The FBI or the CIA finding hackings into their elite systems?

Pull your head out of your ass, would you? Can’t. Won’t do it.

Why not?

Because of them.

And it hits him. They’re on the other sides of the screens, Sarah, Zach, and Leo, even his in-laws who pop by their house every once in a while to see how Sarah’s holding up or to bring the kids some extreme gift just for surviving the day without their father. For not letting their grief get to them too much. Even his own parents, who were estranged to his children, on civil terms with Sarah as they distanced after his death and they never really know what to say to each other, other than giving each other really, really long and emotional hugs. His kids are like strangers around them, staying mute and being polite in answering textbook questions, about school, about what they like to do of a weekend, dumb stuff that David just hated.

When he looks at his trembling hands, the one thing that reminds him of them is his wedding band. It sits on his finger absentmindedly, flying across the keyboard when his brain is working overtime, seeing everything he does. The wedding band that Sarah placed on his finger as she stood opposite him in a wedding chapel; the wedding band that Zach placed on his finger once and couldn’t get off without soaping his fingers and dropping it down the garbage disposal, only for Leo to fish it out of the pipes herself. He’d twist it on his finger and remind himself why he sat in the basement rooting through tonnes and tonnes of data and documents and bullshit.
For them. It was always for them.