Work Text:
When it's all over, when the bad guys are gone and Maggie's sitting on the foot of an ambulance, wincing as a paramedic wipes the blood from her side, Maggie will reflect on the fucked-up-ness of it all. On just how a nine-year-old knows how to act in a hostage situation, who to watch, how to take nonverbal combat cues from a veteran FBI agent. It's astonishing, amazing, impressive.
It's also heartbreaking.
And then Maggie will close her eyes, and take a deep breath, and she will resolve to be thankful that she was there.
--
It was supposed to be simple.
It was Maggie's day off. Isobel was busy in the courtroom and Claire needed to be watched. Maggie had given her testimony the previous day, so she'd offered. It was easy. Isobel's daughter was one of the sweetest kids she'd ever met, after all, it would be a delight to spend time with her.
So they'd met at the courthouse, and Claire had taken Maggie's hand, and they'd walked a few blocks north to get ice cream before a walk in the park. Easy. Spend a few hours with Isobel's daughter during the day, and—hopefully—a few hours with Isobel later that night.
(Go out for drinks, bask in her company, and fail to suppress the fantasies of kissing her.)
But they'd passed a jewelry store as they walked, and Claire had seen something shiny in the window and wanted to go take a look, and Maggie acquiesced. What was the harm? They had time to spare, and Claire's curiosity was always something she was willing to indulge.
They go inside, and the nine-year-old genius kicks up a conversation with a bemused attendant about synthetically layered rutilated rubies—whatever that means—and Maggie amuses herself wandering around the store, wondering what sort of necklace Isobel might wear.
...Not that she was considering getting one, or anything.
There's a few other customers milling around, caught in the net of the Saturday shopping spree, and an attendant waiting patiently by the door to snag the next hapless soul to wander in. He can't be more than twenty, just a kid barely in college. He reminds her of Amira. That's why when he deviates from the usual sales script, despite his voice being politely quiet, Maggie notices immediately.
"Hi, welcome to—Ah, uhhh, um." His throat bobs nervously, his eyes fixed on the Glock pressed against his chest.
Not good.
She starts to sidle towards the exit, keeping her posture relaxed and unthreatening—
One of the two men who'd just come in turns and locks the door behind them. His partner, whose gun is still pressed to the terrified kid's chest, clears his throat. He's pulled a second one from his pockets. "This is a stick-up," he announces, now catching the attention of everyone in the store. Maggie freezes, knowing the brief window for intervention has closed, and carefully pulls her shirt loose from her jeans to cover the gun at her hip.
Too many bystanders, now. Too many civilians. The safest move is to let them take what they came for, memorize their faces, and hunt them down later.
Or, actually, face, singular. The robber who'd closed the door is masked...but the one with the guns isn't. That's a little worrying.
(Also, who calls it a stick-up?)
(Does he think this is a game?)
"Everybody freeze," announces the one with the guns. He gestures lazily at the room before him with his second pistol; someone yelps and drops to the ground.
This seems to please the bastard. "Or you all die," he finishes, and grins with all his teeth.
Maggie grits her own and locks her jaw, knowing a monster when she sees one.
Oh, God, Claire. She needs to get to Claire. Maggie scans the store, pulse rising, trying not to hyperventilate when she doesn't see her. Relax, she tells herself. The girl's a genius, she's probably taken cover, look again.
There! Maggie stifles a sigh of relief when she spots the tip of a red Converse sneaker, peeking out from cover. That has to be Claire. She's hiding behind the counter, clever girl, except...
Fuck. It's the counter with a cash register on it.
The masked gunman (Mask, her brain helpfully supplies) walks the attendant to a display case and orders him to open it, which the poor kid does, clearly trying not to cry. Once it's open, Mask gives the attendant a duffel bag and orders him to empty the display cases of their wares, while he begins scooping from the one that's already open. The kid hurries to the task, relief obvious in his frame at putting distance between himself and the robbers. That's when the maskless one starts walking, clearly headed for the register, and something moves in the corner of Maggie's eye.
It happens in slow motion. One of the customers lifts a pistol—idiot!—aimed at the robber, and Maggie can't fucking get there fast enough, and—
Gunshot.
The customer's aim is shit, he doesn't even graze them. But the maskless gunman's aim is not, and in a quarter of a second the customer is dead.
Someone screams, and now Mask's gun is out, and he's shouting "Shut up!" in a voice tinged with panic. The screaming stops, though someone still sobs, and this isn't enough for the robber. "Everyone shut up or I'll shoot you!"
He's losing control. Maggie's hand goes to her hip, but someone else shouts first.
"HEY!"
It's loud, interrupting both Mask's nonsensical yelling and someone's shaking sobs. Everyone in the store turns as one to see where the shout had come from—
Maggie goes very, very still.
He has Claire. He has Claire, this fucking monster, lips curled in an ugly snarl. "Shut up or I'll shoot the girl," he says, and the barrel of his Glock presses harder into her temple. Hard enough that it's already starting to bruise.
Maggie sees red.
--
Maggie has stared down the barrel of a gun more times than she knows how to count.
To say she's used to danger would be an understatement. "Used to danger" implies that it's passive, apathetic, mundane enough to be ignored.
Maggie hunts danger.
She's self-aware enough to know that she has a tendency toward putting herself in the line of fire, pushing to the frontline and leveling the first shot. It's...definitely not a healthy outlook, but these days guns are barely a source of fear, her instinct barely a whisper of dangerdangerdanger prickling at the back of her neck. She's far more unnerved when a suspect comes at her with a knife.
But when the gun is trained on someone else, Maggie's instincts scream.
--
Maggie had crouched to try and inch closer to Claire. Now she stands, slow and steady, and makes eye contact with her enemy. His nostrils flare, a microscopic twitch, and Maggie knows she wears a predator's cold stare.
"Let the girl go," she says, low and flat and dangerous. She's not yelling by any means, and yet the words are enough to draw the attention of every single person in the store.
Silence falls, just for a moment.
The attendant has stopped filling his bag, wide-eyed. A hyperventilating customer holds their breath. Even Mask pauses in ransacking the display case. Maggie notices all of this, distantly, and files it away as unimportant. She only has eyes for one thing.
The maskless robber sneers. "Or what?"
He affects a carefree, almost bored tone to his words. It's very convincing. But Maggie is watching with unblinking eyes, and when his fingers pale as he tightens his grip around his gun, she knows she's unnerved him.
Good, she thinks through the rage thrumming in her veins.
He'll die afraid.
--
The first time Maggie babysat Claire for Isobel, she fell on her ass.
She'd been told the kid was a genius. She would not, however, realize what that meant until two weeks later, when she realized she'd been had.
The girl had been eight at the time, but she spoke with the diction and surety of a teenager. She had the sly mischief of one, too; the clever little minx had tricked Maggie into teaching her self-defense within fifteen minutes of Isobel leaving the house.
It wasn't easy. What Maggie knew was largely intended for adults; with Claire, they had to get a little clever. She'd been demonstrating to Claire how to rock her weight behind a punch when the girl suddenly snapped upright, announcing, "I have an idea."
The idea was to use the element of surprise. Claire wasn't heavy enough or strong enough to throw an especially effective punch, so she needed to do something an attacker wouldn't expect.
She might not be heavy enough to throw a punch, but she was still sixty pounds of kid, and someone who wasn't expecting to suddenly support all that weight could be easily thrown off-balance.
When Maggie stumbled and fell as Claire abruptly went limp and rolled all her weight in one direction, the girl slipped from her grasp and scrambled away.
It only took a half-second before she popped back up, looked Maggie in the eyes, and beamed.
--
The robber's eyes narrow as he and Maggie watch each other.
Claire is still and silent beneath his gun, shallow breaths hindered by the arm locked around her neck. Her eyes are filled with tears, but they're open, and so when Maggie's gaze flickers down to meet hers, Claire gives the tiniest of nods.
She goes limp, suddenly dead weight against his folded arm, and it's enough to make him stumble forward, the gun shifting away from her head. His grip loosens, and Claire hits the ground at lightning speed while Maggie pulls her gun.
"EVERYBODY DOWN," Maggie roars, and fires at the bastard just as he's starting to recover.
A bullet replaces his left eye, and takes the back of his skull with it.
His finger twitches as he dies, his gun fires, and the bullet ricochets off the floor to slice along Maggie's hip and bury itself in the display case behind her.
She doesn't feel it.
When Maggie whips to face the other, still-masked robber, she finds him with his gun raised and pointed directly at her. But his hands are shaking, and his chest heaves with shallow breaths, and he hasn't pulled the trigger.
…Also, the safety's still on.
That helps pull Maggie back to reality. The dead man on the floor was in his forties, but this has to be a kid. A scared one, inexperienced with a firearm.
Maggie meets his eyes through the mask. She keeps her gun pointed at the ground, ready but not an immediate threat. "Your partner is dead," Maggie says, bland and toneless. A statement of fact. "Do you want to be?"
Under the hem of his ski mask, his Adam's apple bobs once. Twice. Dry swallows to match an unsteady heartbeat.
A siren whoops in the distance.
The gun clatters to the floor, and the robber books it.
--
It's funny how the years at her job have given her the ability to tone-switch in an instant. It's a necessary talent in the field, to be able to react at a moment's notice; a situation could go from safe to dangerous in a fraction of a second. Shock, fear, pain—these are all compartmentalized in seconds, and Bureau-trained instinct demands Maggie take control of the scene.
Keep moving, barks the Quantico instructor in her head. Keep moving!
As soon as the door has swung shut behind the fleeing robber, Maggie pulls out her badge. "FBI. Everybody stay exactly where you are. Is anybody hurt?"
Head-shaking all around the room.
"Good. Nobody move, don't touch anything." Maggie holsters her gun, moves to pull out her phone—
"Maggie," whimpers a small voice, and Maggie turns to face it. Claire, the poor girl, has pulled herself up from the floor and moved away from the body of her assailant. There's tears in her eyes still, and she looks scared, but not for herself. "You're bleeding."
Maggie glances down at her blue button-up, now stained a deep crimson from the waist down, and abruptly realizes the phone she's just pulled out of her pocket is covered in blood.
Her Bureau-trained hindbrain, still on full alert, tells her she has about a minute before the adrenaline wears off and she feels the pain in full. No time to waste.
"Don't worry about it," she tells Claire and everybody else in the room, which does absolutely nothing to stop anyone from worrying about it. But Claire watches quietly as Maggie wipes her phone on her pants and calls OA, who picks up immediately, bless him. "Hey, I got shot."
His voice is tinny over the phone's speakers. "You WHAT—"
Maggie hangs up.
That solves taking control of the scene; if anyone can match her control freak, it's OA. Next call. The sirens in the distance are getting louder by the second, and her side is beginning to throb; she's going to crash soon.
Thankfully, the Bureau dispatcher picks up immediately. Maggie wastes no time. "Special Agent Maggie Bell, I need canvassing and medical at, uh…" She glances over at the store attendant. "What's the name of this place?"
"…Desmond Jewelers," he offers, wide-eyed. Maggie gives him a thumbs-up in thanks.
"Units and medical at Desmond Jewelers in the financial district. Two DOAs, one injured. One suspect fleeing on foot, last seen headed west in a black ski mask and dark clothing carrying a blue Nike duffel bag. White male, five-nine or so, average build. Notify SAC Castille and Agent Zidan ASAP, please." Maggie hangs up. The blue-and-red is visible just down the street now, the sirens piercing. Everyone in the store turns to look at the ambulances and police units pulling up—except Maggie.
The adrenaline-fueled, tightly-wound control has fled. Reality has caught up with her once again, and it announces itself with fire scraped along her hipbone.
Maggie carefully lowers herself to the floor, wincing as the movement pulls at her wound. But the pain is meaningless, because when she opens her arms, Claire barrels right in.
Maggie wraps an arm around her back, pulling Claire into her uninjured side. "It's alright," she murmurs, rubbing soothing circles into the girl's back. "You're safe. It's okay."
God, this poor kid, far too well-acquainted with procedure. She'd just been sitting on the floor, watching Maggie in silence, waiting for her turn. It was polite, helpful.
It was heartbreaking.
Maggie takes a steadying breath. The sirens, the crunch of broken glass beneath heavy police footsteps, the sniffling of a nearby witness—it all fades away. The world shrinks to a pinpoint. Nothing matters to Maggie except the nine-year-old who's seen too much, and is only now, finally, allowing herself to cry.
"I want Mama," Claire whimpers, her voice muffled by Maggie's shoulder. Her shirt's wet all over now: one side soaked in blood, the other in tears.
"She'll be here soon," Maggie promises, soft and soothing, and breathes through the waves of pain rippling across her side. "She'll be here soon."