Work Text:
What do you want to be when you grow up?”
He’s five years old, playing in the backyard while his momma watches from the porch.
“A knight,” he tells her raising the toy wooden sword above his head, “I get to ride a horse and fight dragons and save the princess!”
His momma laughs with a smile and tells him that no matter what she knows he’ll make her proud.
--
Dodge left, block a strike aimed at his head, goon number three has more skill than the first two. His hair cut says ex British paratrooper. His stance shows a recently injured right knee.
Elliot breaks the barely healed tendons with one solid kick. The man cries out and drops his guard. His neck snaps and Elliot is on to goon number four before the body hits the ground.
--
What do you want to be when you grow up?
He’s ten years, exploring the backwoods with big sister. He shrugs, “Dunno, maybe I’ll train horses like Aimee’s daddy.”
She ruffles his hair and he scowls but still beams when she says “Whatever you do I’m sure you’ll make momma proud.”
--
The trail of bodies in his wake grows longer with every job he takes for Damien Moreau. He tells himself he’s numb to it. That the lives taken and lives destroyed by him don’t matter. He wonders how long it’ll take before he starts believing it.
--
What do you want to be when you grow up?
He’s seventeen and angry, shouting at his father from across the kitchen. The enlistment papers that he’d hidden under his mattress strewn haphazardly across the table. He yells that Ma would have understood, would have been proud of him.
He leaves that night.
He doesn’t come back.
--
His last job for Moreau, though he doesn’t know it’s the last, is supposed to be easy. The Colonel is in Prague for two days supporting a cause Moreau opposes so his pet monster has been given a kill order.
Except the Colonel isn’t alone like he’s supposed to be.
And Damien knew. H e had to have known because he always knows.
Elliot has one rule. One condition for working for Moreau.
No kids.
The Colonel’s daughter sees her father die. Elliot knows he’ll never stop hearing her screams.
He drowns in the weight of his sins hunched in a back alley with the blood still dripping from his hands. He prays for the first time in years that heaven isn’t what they think it is, that his Momma can’t see what he’s become.