The Professionals Circuit Archive - Leaving	    Leaving

 

by PR Zed 

 
 *(Written for the Drabble Day "line" challenge on the_safehouse
livejournal community: use the line "Have I ever broken a promise to you?
Have I ever once said I'd be somewhere and not shown up?" (Slaughtery,
25th Hour))*


 His worst nightmares were like this: Ray Doyle leaving CI5, leaving him.
Doyle dropping a letter on Cowley's desk and strolling out of HQ as if it
were any other day. No explanation, no goodbye.

 Or there would have been no goodbye, if Betty hadn't warned Bodie. Bodie
had run out of CI5's hallowed halls barely in time to catch Doyle's arm as
he stepped into a cab.

 "Ray."

 Green eyes turn toward him, shuttered and cold. "Let go, Bodie."

 "Not bloody likely. Not until you explain."

 "Nothing to explain."

 "Six years as partners, as friends, and I don't rate an explanation? I
don't even rate a goodbye?"

 "Goodbye, Bodie." Green eyes dismissed him and turned back to the cab.

 "You're not fucking leaving. Not like this." Bodie tried to pull Doyle
away from the waiting car. But he'd acted in anger, acted without
considering the speed, the temper, of his opponent. Before he could think,
Bodie was laying on his arse on the pavement, the taste of his own blood
on his tongue.

 The cab driver picked that moment to pull quickly away, wisely deciding
not to get mixed up in the affairs of crazy CI5 agents.

 Furious green eyes stared down at him. He could see Doyle's chest heaving
as he drew in quick, angry breaths. Oddly, Bodie felt his own anger
evaporate like a thin mist in a morning breeze. With the anger gone, he
could feel the loneliness that remained. The sadness.

 "Why, Ray?" he asked, not worrying about the naked emotion in his own
voice.

 Doyle shook his head mutely.

 "Was it me, Ray? Something I did? Something I didn't do?" Bodie
frantically searched his memory for some wrong committed, some sin
unforgiven.

 Doyle's head shook again.

 "Have I ever broken a promise to you? Have I ever once said I'd be
somewhere and not shown up?"

 "No, Bodie." Doyle's voice cracked on his name. "It's not you. It's ..."
Doyle stopped and clenched his eyes tightly shut. "It's too much blood.
Too much hate. Too much death." Green eyes opened again, drained of all
fury. In its place was a sorrow greater than any Bodie had ever seen in
those orbs.

 "Yesterday was ..." Doyle stopped and his eyes showed he had gone
somewhere else, and Bodie knew where: a place with dead hostages and dead
villains. A place where the smell of cordite merged with the stench of
spilled blood.

 "I've got to leave, Bodie." Doyle's voice had dropped to a whisper. "Got
to leave before it kills me." Doyle blinked several times, and then those
green eyes were looking down at Bodie, piercing him to the heart. "I've
got to leave before I watch it kill you."

 Bodie was back on his feet before he knew it, his arms enfolding the man
he suddenly knew meant his life.

 "You don't leave alone, you stupid bastard." Bodie pulled back and looked
into those green eyes now gone bright with tears. "We leave together." 

 -- THE END --

 *June 2005*

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