The Eleventh Hour - A Criminal Intent drabble
Title: The Eleventh Hour
Flavor: Criminal Intent
Rating: K+
Notes: I started writing this for the 'Choice/Choose' Challenge over at lawandorder100 but I couldnt' quite keep it below 100 words.
“Captain Ross, we don't have much time- you have to decide now.”
“ I know. It's just - a lot to take in.”
“ I understand sir, but we don't have much-”
A glare from Ross stifles the young marshal and the room falls silent, save for the sound of both men breathing. The marshal looks away, and Ross sighs and stands, rubbing a hand over his face tiredly.
Two hours ago someone had tried to kill him. Two bullets to the chest, dumped in an abandoned construction site, they probably would have succeeded if not for the surveillance the F.B.I had had on him. His chest still hurts, and he's been assured that once he's made his decision that he'll get proper medical care, regardless of what he's decided, but he can't quite think that far ahead, because there's still the decision that he has to make, the one that will change someone elses life forever.
He can't quite imagine it - leaving New York forever, leaving the city that has been his home for as long as he can remember, leaving everyone he's ever known behind, leaving his very identity to become someone else - but for himself, he's already decided.
He knows that if he stays in New York, he's going to die, eventually. He also knows that his very presence would put his kids in danger, put all of his loved ones at risk, and he can't allow that to happen.
So, his decision has already been made, but now, its up to him to decide to bring someone else into this, to bring someone else into this nightmare.
To bring him into it.
“ Sir-” The marshal has walked over again, and he's standing barely inches away, all nervous energy and twitchy excitement, and Danny really has to wonder how long the kid has been doing this. “ Captain Ross, we have to go. Have you decided yet?”
Silence; he doesn't know what to say, for a moment, and he glances out the window, watches the lights flicker and glow across the city, and he knows that somewhere out there, his 'killer' is walking around free, and that in a few hours, his 'death' will be announced and it will be too late to go back.
He turns back. “ Call him.”
-/-/-/-/-/-/-
An hour later, he's in the hospital, checked in under another name, not his new name, just a temporary one until they get to Arizona, and even though you'd think that it would be enough, being someone else instead of yourself, its apparently wasn't, and Danny can see the Marshal Services stationed outside of his private room, bristling with concealed weapons as they guard him against a threat that thinks he's dead.
In the chair next to his bed, Zach is strangely silent, and Danny doesn't know what to do, what to say, so he just squeezes the other mans hand.
Zach squeezes back, and Danny can see the shadows of a smile on his face, and he's reassured, at least for now, that he made the right choice.