[Stargate: Fiction] "Painted Target" [Lorne/Parrish, G]
Title: Painted Target
Author: Ami Ven
Prompt: writerverse phase 21, challenge 27 heroes assemble (superhero genre)
Word Count: 1, 725
Rating: G
Original/Fandom: Stargate Atlantis (Avengers ‘verse!)
Pairings: Evan Lorne/David Parrish
Setting: prequel to Assemble
Summary: Parrish and Cadman are agents of the SGC sent to take out a Red Room operative codename The Artist - they make a different call.
Painted Target
Rumors of a Red Room agent operating on their own had been circulating for years before the SGC gathered enough real intelligence to plan a mission. And even then, it was more gaps than information - burglaries of impenetrable security systems, assassinations of untouchable targets, hearsay and whispers that couldn’t be proven.
Laura Cadman - agent of the SGC and explosives expert extraordinaire - was determined to prove them true.
“Targeter, report.”
“I think this one is a bust, Parrish,” she replied, from her perch in the rafters of an abandoned warehouse on the outskirts of Warsaw. “I don’t even see the guys who are supposed to be trafficking the stolen intel, let alone the Black Widow.”
“We don’t know for sure it’s a Widow,” said Agent David Parrish, senior SGC agent and Cadman’s handler. “The Red Room had quite a few programs in its day.”
“Well, it looks like we won’t find out today if-” Cadman broke off as she saw movement below. “Ooh, wait.”
“Targeter.”
“The deal is going down, Parrish,” she said. “Permission to engage?”
“Give it another minute, Targeter, our rogue operative might still show up. But we can’t let either of these guys leave with the intel.”
Cadman sent a double-click over her comm to acknowledge and settled in again. The two men - nondescript suits, eastern European accents, several goons each hiding around the building - stood and talked for a while, then suddenly pulled guns on each other. The goons came out of hiding and Cadman detonated the first of her previously-planted explosives.
She’d left several, some flash and some smoke, and in the flailing of disoriented organized criminals, she almost missed another person entering the warehouse.
“You’re a dude!” Cadman blurted, as she dodged a goon’s swing and planted a tiny concussive charge in his jacket pocket.
The extra person - clearly male, with close-cropped brownish hair and a black leather cat-suit - just grinned. “All my life,” he agreed, then tossed her a mocking salute. “Better luck next time, agent.”
“What…?” began Cadman, then saw the flash drive in his hand. “No, wait-”
Another goon attacked, cutting her off, and by the time she’d dealt with him, the mysterious Red Room operative was gone.
*
“C’mon, boss,” said a voice suddenly. “You’re getting a little obsessive.”
Parrish looked up from the reports spread over his desk to glare at Cadman. “You know how much I appreciate thoroughness,” he said, coolly.
“There’s thoroughness and then there’s obsessive,” she replied. “It’s been months since I ran into that guy. Is he even on the SGC’s radar right now?”
“He’s… a person of interest,” Parrish hedged, but Cadman just grinned.
“Interest, huh? Is that why you’ve got his picture on your desk?”
It wasn’t actually a picture - somehow, the operative had never been captured on camera - but a sketch based on Cadman’s eyewitness report.
“I’ve been keeping relevant case documents close by,” he said. “Although, at this point, we don’t have much. There have been a few partial records from about the right time, barely half-a-dozen mentions of an operative called The Artist. Hardly anything at all, by our standards.”
“Enough for your crush,” said Cadman, and only grinned more broadly when he scowled at her. “I’ll try to put a good word in for you, boss.”
*
“We have got to stop meeting like this,” said Cadman, rolling into a crouch beside the Red Room operative, both of them firing back at the group of AIM goons firing at them.
“I was beginning to think you liked me, Targeter,” he said.
“Sure I do, just not as much as my boss.” He was to her left, and she grinned. “Hey, do me a favor? Lean in and say ‘Hello, David’.”
“Targeter,” said Parrish, sharply, over her earwig, but the Artist leaned in.
“Hello, David,” he said.
Then, he rolled back out from their cover, taking out as many goons with his acrobatic hand-to-hand maneuvers as with his twin guns. Cadman blinked after him for a moment, then followed - and this time, she got to the metal briefcase of stolen documents first.
“No hard feelings?” she asked, gun trained on the Artist.
He smiled. “I don’t get mad, I get even.”
“I’m Laura, by the way,” said Cadman, as the sound of sirens grew louder outside. “David’s my boss.”
The Artist’s smile shifted, reaching his eyes. “You can call me Evan.”
*
“A kill order?” said Cadman. “That’s ridiculous!”
Director Weir frowned at her. “The Artist is a criminal, Agent Cadman. Despite the fact that he seems… friendly, he is still wanted by most of the governments in Europe and South America, and on very serious charges. This is the order.”
“Understood, director,” said Parrish, shuffling his notes into order.
“Good,” said Weir. “There’s a jet waiting for you in the hangar. Good luck.”
Parrish was quiet as they boarded the jet and ran the pre-flights, barely answering Cadman’s usual ramble of meaningless chatter as she steered them toward the Artist’s last-known coordinates. It was quiet for the two days after that, too, while Cadman kept watch from an abandoned building just outside the heart of Prague and Parrish kept up with intel from a dozen sources.
“Hey, boss,” said Cadman, finally breaking the silence - she’d run out of babble hours ago. “Got a possible.”
“Possible?” Parrish repeated. He was sitting in a café on the next street.
She frowned. “No, it’s definitely him, but he’s… just sitting there. I think he’s drawing.”
“Ah,” said Parrish.
“I have the shot,” said Cadman. The Artist was alone, sitting outside another café, a cup of coffee on the table beside him. “Just say the word.”
“No,” said Parrish.
Cadman’s finger came off the trigger of her sniper rifle before she’d even realized she’d done it. “Boss?”
“Pack up and come down here,” he told her. “We’re making contact.”
“That’s not the order, Parrish,” she said, even as she disassembled her rifle.
“No, it’s not,” he agreed. “Try not to spook him, Cadman.”
She sent him a double-click to acknowledge, and slung her rifle case over her shoulder. On one of the landings of the staircase, Cadman checked her hair in a cracked window - then shrugged and went outside anyway.
It was about an hour after lunch, so the café where the Artist sat was otherwise deserted. He didn’t look up as she approached, but as she came within arms’ reach, he set down his coffee cup.
“Hello,” he said. “Can I order you a cup?”
Cadman smiled. “Nah. I’m just here as a friendly face so you don’t take off when he shows up.”
She hadn’t needed to see him to know that Parrish had joined them, looking calm and unflappable as always. The Artist smiled, the genuine one he hadn’t used when Cadman walked up.
“Hello, David.”
Parrish took the seat opposite him. “Hello. Do you still prefer ‘Evan’?”
“That’s my name,” the Artist said. “And I like hearing you say it.”
“Oh, my god,” muttered Cadman. “If you two are going to flirt, I’m out of here.”
The Artist - Evan - finally looked at her again. “You’d leave us alone?” he asked, sounding confused.
“Okay, one,” she said, “Parrish is an agent as much as I am, just without the mind-blowing explosives expertise.”
“Cadman,” protested Parrish.
“And two, he’s had a crush on you pretty much since we first met. So, you should probably discuss that.”
“Cadman.”
“A crush?” asked Evan, but his smile still reflected in his blue eyes and if Cadman’s eyesight was good (and it was) he was also blushing, just a little.
Parrish cleared his throat - and he was blushing a bit, too. “Actually, Agent Cadman, what I want to discuss is all business.”
The Artist’s smile dimmed. “You were sent to kill me.”
“Yes,” said Parrish. “But we didn’t. Instead, I’d like to offer you a job.”
“A job?”
“It’s a pretty sweet gig at the SGC,” said Cadman. The window of the café had a low ledge, just big enough to sit on, and she hopped up onto it, swinging her feet. “Vacation days. Sick leave. Potlucks.”
As usual, Parrish ignored her. “You knew we were here,” he said, to Evan. “You thought we were here to kill you, and you didn’t run.”
“No,” Evan agreed, softly. “No, I didn’t, Agent Parrish.”
Parrish smiled. “You know, I liked it when you called me ‘David’.”
“Oh, god, flirting again!” complained Cadman.
*
Weir was waiting for them on the helicarrier deck, trench coat billowing out around her.
“Hello, director,” said Parrish, unflappable as ever. “I have a new employee application to submit.”
Cadman could see Weir’s hand twitching for her gun at the sight of the Artist - real name, Evan Lorne - walking calmly behind her two agents, but she blinked and took the sheaf of paperwork Parrish held out to her.
“You - you’re serious?” she demanded, the first time Cadman had heard her sound surprised. “You recruited the man we ordered you to kill?”
“We’re just that good, ma’am,” said Cadman, grinning.
“Madam Director?” said Evan. “I… Agent Parrish has told me about you, your organization. I’m willing to go through any tests or exams you might have, but I’d like to be a part of the SGC. To be part of something good.”
Weir stared at him for a long, tense moment. Then, she sighed. “Well, I let you talk me into recruiting Cadman.”
“Hey,” the explosives expert protested, but Parrish smiled.
“We won’t let you down, Elizabeth,” he promised.
*
“Artist, Targeter, report.”
Cadman, sitting in the beams of an abandoned building in the outskirts of Oslo, scowled even though he couldn’t see her. “Why does he get to go first?” she pouted.
“The alphabet,” said Parrish. “Report.”
“Three hostiles, all of them armed,” said Lorne. He was somewhere in the warehouse, too, but Cadman couldn’t see him, either. “But it looks like our intel was solid. Do we go in, boss?”
Cadman snorted. “You’re already sleeping with him, Evan, you don’t have to suck up anymore.”
“I don’t,” Lorne agreed cheerfully. “It’s just a bonus.”
“Remind me,” said Cadman, “Why did we recruit you again?”
“Because I’m so darn cute,” said Lorne, without missing a beat. “The word, boss?”
“Artist, Targeter, you have a go,” said Parrish, and his two agents set to work, in perfect cooperation.
THE END
Current Mood:
Busy
Author: Ami Ven
Prompt: writerverse phase 21, challenge 27 heroes assemble (superhero genre)
Word Count: 1, 725
Rating: G
Original/Fandom: Stargate Atlantis (Avengers ‘verse!)
Pairings: Evan Lorne/David Parrish
Setting: prequel to Assemble
Summary: Parrish and Cadman are agents of the SGC sent to take out a Red Room operative codename The Artist - they make a different call.
Painted Target
Rumors of a Red Room agent operating on their own had been circulating for years before the SGC gathered enough real intelligence to plan a mission. And even then, it was more gaps than information - burglaries of impenetrable security systems, assassinations of untouchable targets, hearsay and whispers that couldn’t be proven.
Laura Cadman - agent of the SGC and explosives expert extraordinaire - was determined to prove them true.
“Targeter, report.”
“I think this one is a bust, Parrish,” she replied, from her perch in the rafters of an abandoned warehouse on the outskirts of Warsaw. “I don’t even see the guys who are supposed to be trafficking the stolen intel, let alone the Black Widow.”
“We don’t know for sure it’s a Widow,” said Agent David Parrish, senior SGC agent and Cadman’s handler. “The Red Room had quite a few programs in its day.”
“Well, it looks like we won’t find out today if-” Cadman broke off as she saw movement below. “Ooh, wait.”
“Targeter.”
“The deal is going down, Parrish,” she said. “Permission to engage?”
“Give it another minute, Targeter, our rogue operative might still show up. But we can’t let either of these guys leave with the intel.”
Cadman sent a double-click over her comm to acknowledge and settled in again. The two men - nondescript suits, eastern European accents, several goons each hiding around the building - stood and talked for a while, then suddenly pulled guns on each other. The goons came out of hiding and Cadman detonated the first of her previously-planted explosives.
She’d left several, some flash and some smoke, and in the flailing of disoriented organized criminals, she almost missed another person entering the warehouse.
“You’re a dude!” Cadman blurted, as she dodged a goon’s swing and planted a tiny concussive charge in his jacket pocket.
The extra person - clearly male, with close-cropped brownish hair and a black leather cat-suit - just grinned. “All my life,” he agreed, then tossed her a mocking salute. “Better luck next time, agent.”
“What…?” began Cadman, then saw the flash drive in his hand. “No, wait-”
Another goon attacked, cutting her off, and by the time she’d dealt with him, the mysterious Red Room operative was gone.
*
“C’mon, boss,” said a voice suddenly. “You’re getting a little obsessive.”
Parrish looked up from the reports spread over his desk to glare at Cadman. “You know how much I appreciate thoroughness,” he said, coolly.
“There’s thoroughness and then there’s obsessive,” she replied. “It’s been months since I ran into that guy. Is he even on the SGC’s radar right now?”
“He’s… a person of interest,” Parrish hedged, but Cadman just grinned.
“Interest, huh? Is that why you’ve got his picture on your desk?”
It wasn’t actually a picture - somehow, the operative had never been captured on camera - but a sketch based on Cadman’s eyewitness report.
“I’ve been keeping relevant case documents close by,” he said. “Although, at this point, we don’t have much. There have been a few partial records from about the right time, barely half-a-dozen mentions of an operative called The Artist. Hardly anything at all, by our standards.”
“Enough for your crush,” said Cadman, and only grinned more broadly when he scowled at her. “I’ll try to put a good word in for you, boss.”
*
“We have got to stop meeting like this,” said Cadman, rolling into a crouch beside the Red Room operative, both of them firing back at the group of AIM goons firing at them.
“I was beginning to think you liked me, Targeter,” he said.
“Sure I do, just not as much as my boss.” He was to her left, and she grinned. “Hey, do me a favor? Lean in and say ‘Hello, David’.”
“Targeter,” said Parrish, sharply, over her earwig, but the Artist leaned in.
“Hello, David,” he said.
Then, he rolled back out from their cover, taking out as many goons with his acrobatic hand-to-hand maneuvers as with his twin guns. Cadman blinked after him for a moment, then followed - and this time, she got to the metal briefcase of stolen documents first.
“No hard feelings?” she asked, gun trained on the Artist.
He smiled. “I don’t get mad, I get even.”
“I’m Laura, by the way,” said Cadman, as the sound of sirens grew louder outside. “David’s my boss.”
The Artist’s smile shifted, reaching his eyes. “You can call me Evan.”
*
“A kill order?” said Cadman. “That’s ridiculous!”
Director Weir frowned at her. “The Artist is a criminal, Agent Cadman. Despite the fact that he seems… friendly, he is still wanted by most of the governments in Europe and South America, and on very serious charges. This is the order.”
“Understood, director,” said Parrish, shuffling his notes into order.
“Good,” said Weir. “There’s a jet waiting for you in the hangar. Good luck.”
Parrish was quiet as they boarded the jet and ran the pre-flights, barely answering Cadman’s usual ramble of meaningless chatter as she steered them toward the Artist’s last-known coordinates. It was quiet for the two days after that, too, while Cadman kept watch from an abandoned building just outside the heart of Prague and Parrish kept up with intel from a dozen sources.
“Hey, boss,” said Cadman, finally breaking the silence - she’d run out of babble hours ago. “Got a possible.”
“Possible?” Parrish repeated. He was sitting in a café on the next street.
She frowned. “No, it’s definitely him, but he’s… just sitting there. I think he’s drawing.”
“Ah,” said Parrish.
“I have the shot,” said Cadman. The Artist was alone, sitting outside another café, a cup of coffee on the table beside him. “Just say the word.”
“No,” said Parrish.
Cadman’s finger came off the trigger of her sniper rifle before she’d even realized she’d done it. “Boss?”
“Pack up and come down here,” he told her. “We’re making contact.”
“That’s not the order, Parrish,” she said, even as she disassembled her rifle.
“No, it’s not,” he agreed. “Try not to spook him, Cadman.”
She sent him a double-click to acknowledge, and slung her rifle case over her shoulder. On one of the landings of the staircase, Cadman checked her hair in a cracked window - then shrugged and went outside anyway.
It was about an hour after lunch, so the café where the Artist sat was otherwise deserted. He didn’t look up as she approached, but as she came within arms’ reach, he set down his coffee cup.
“Hello,” he said. “Can I order you a cup?”
Cadman smiled. “Nah. I’m just here as a friendly face so you don’t take off when he shows up.”
She hadn’t needed to see him to know that Parrish had joined them, looking calm and unflappable as always. The Artist smiled, the genuine one he hadn’t used when Cadman walked up.
“Hello, David.”
Parrish took the seat opposite him. “Hello. Do you still prefer ‘Evan’?”
“That’s my name,” the Artist said. “And I like hearing you say it.”
“Oh, my god,” muttered Cadman. “If you two are going to flirt, I’m out of here.”
The Artist - Evan - finally looked at her again. “You’d leave us alone?” he asked, sounding confused.
“Okay, one,” she said, “Parrish is an agent as much as I am, just without the mind-blowing explosives expertise.”
“Cadman,” protested Parrish.
“And two, he’s had a crush on you pretty much since we first met. So, you should probably discuss that.”
“Cadman.”
“A crush?” asked Evan, but his smile still reflected in his blue eyes and if Cadman’s eyesight was good (and it was) he was also blushing, just a little.
Parrish cleared his throat - and he was blushing a bit, too. “Actually, Agent Cadman, what I want to discuss is all business.”
The Artist’s smile dimmed. “You were sent to kill me.”
“Yes,” said Parrish. “But we didn’t. Instead, I’d like to offer you a job.”
“A job?”
“It’s a pretty sweet gig at the SGC,” said Cadman. The window of the café had a low ledge, just big enough to sit on, and she hopped up onto it, swinging her feet. “Vacation days. Sick leave. Potlucks.”
As usual, Parrish ignored her. “You knew we were here,” he said, to Evan. “You thought we were here to kill you, and you didn’t run.”
“No,” Evan agreed, softly. “No, I didn’t, Agent Parrish.”
Parrish smiled. “You know, I liked it when you called me ‘David’.”
“Oh, god, flirting again!” complained Cadman.
*
Weir was waiting for them on the helicarrier deck, trench coat billowing out around her.
“Hello, director,” said Parrish, unflappable as ever. “I have a new employee application to submit.”
Cadman could see Weir’s hand twitching for her gun at the sight of the Artist - real name, Evan Lorne - walking calmly behind her two agents, but she blinked and took the sheaf of paperwork Parrish held out to her.
“You - you’re serious?” she demanded, the first time Cadman had heard her sound surprised. “You recruited the man we ordered you to kill?”
“We’re just that good, ma’am,” said Cadman, grinning.
“Madam Director?” said Evan. “I… Agent Parrish has told me about you, your organization. I’m willing to go through any tests or exams you might have, but I’d like to be a part of the SGC. To be part of something good.”
Weir stared at him for a long, tense moment. Then, she sighed. “Well, I let you talk me into recruiting Cadman.”
“Hey,” the explosives expert protested, but Parrish smiled.
“We won’t let you down, Elizabeth,” he promised.
*
“Artist, Targeter, report.”
Cadman, sitting in the beams of an abandoned building in the outskirts of Oslo, scowled even though he couldn’t see her. “Why does he get to go first?” she pouted.
“The alphabet,” said Parrish. “Report.”
“Three hostiles, all of them armed,” said Lorne. He was somewhere in the warehouse, too, but Cadman couldn’t see him, either. “But it looks like our intel was solid. Do we go in, boss?”
Cadman snorted. “You’re already sleeping with him, Evan, you don’t have to suck up anymore.”
“I don’t,” Lorne agreed cheerfully. “It’s just a bonus.”
“Remind me,” said Cadman, “Why did we recruit you again?”
“Because I’m so darn cute,” said Lorne, without missing a beat. “The word, boss?”
“Artist, Targeter, you have a go,” said Parrish, and his two agents set to work, in perfect cooperation.
THE END
Current Mood:
Busy