Page 9 of Beckon

“Fuuuuuucccccckkkk. Can nothing go my way? Just fucking once?” Chandler mentioned the apology, but he didn’t explain his need to look at her. See that soft nature she possessed, as evidenced by the note.

He felt compelled to let her know that the things she did mattered. Even if it was too late for him, he wouldn’t let his drunken tongue be the thing she took away for her thoughtfulness.

A mission.

TATE: I won’t give it to you, but I will trade. Give me a month. A month of all the hippie bullshit, as you call it. Sit around the circle with me and talk about your feelings or just listen and I’ll tell you her name. Hell, I’ll pay for the “ride” even. An apology a month from now will still hold meaning.

TATE: Especially since it means you’ll be around to give it.

Anger was swiftly taking over, until it wasn’t. Tate was right, he couldn’t count on being around from month to month. Hell, day to day was iffy. Chandler had become more familiar with the taste of his own gun more than any other flavor. Each time it was between his lips, it tasted more and more like salvation and less like damnation and that scared the shit out of him.

Powerless.

He felt so powerless. Powerless when Wilson died, and he was powerless still against the screams that echoed in his soul.

Sitting around a bunch of people who were grieving wasn’t going to give him his power back, but it would buy him time to find her. It was a mission and that’s what he needed.

Hell, he called brushing his teeth and showering some days a mission just so he could make it through. He knew as long as he had an open mission, he wouldn’t eat a bullet.

Truth be told, Tate was the only reason he was still breathing air and taking up space on the planet. Chandler didn’t want his friend to feel the sting of failure. Failure to save him.That is not a feeling I would wish on anyone.

Maybe this mission is exactly what they both needed.

Chandler would either make it back from the edge or Tate would see he was too far gone. Either way, there was some closure to be had. Two missions would pull his mind from the quiet the bottle offered the last month

CHANDLER: Fine. But after a month, you agree to let go. Stop trying to save me and live your life.

The dots didn’t dance. Chandler stared at the phone for what felt like forever. Then they jumped and one word popped up.

TATE: DEAL

His friend’s agreement caught him off guard. It was what he wanted. What he’d been working toward since he’d learned the devastating truth behind their last assignment.

Brady took that information into parts unknown with him, and Chandler would take it to his grave. Tate was in a better place, had worked his ass off to get there, and Chandler would be damned if he’d rip that from him.

Staring at the word on the screen, it blurred.

Tears?

As they stung his eyes, he was transported away.

He was in that goddamned hovel. Wilson was bloodied, the child was screaming, the wife was wailing, and he’d just killed a man.

Taking a life was never supposed to be easy, he never expected it to be. But the shit that Brady showed him? That was just a whole different level of fucked up.

The knowledge was slowly killing Chandler. Not that it mattered much in the end, the image of Wilson’s brutal death and that little girl’s screams would never dull. He’d done that. He sent Wilson in first, and he shot the man in front of his family. Truth be damned. It had happened, period.

It also played on repeat in his brain. Night after night and day after day.

Sitting around in a circle with a bunch of people suffering like him hadn’t changed those facts. It hadn’t made the screams silent or dulled the brightness of the blood. The barrel of his Glock tasted the same.

Tate was convinced it helped. Or at least he had been convinced it had helped Chandler until a month ago.

If he were honest with himself, it had been. Chandler had taken back most of his power and the nightmares had come less and less often. His life had gotten pretty much back to normal.

After Brady came by and dropped his bombshell and then disappeared, Chandler quit his group, therapist, and friends.

He’d quit life.

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