CCL FIC: A Season For Change (Human Target - Chance/Guerrero - FRT - 1/1)
Title: A Season For Change
Author: Sam
Fandom: Human Target
Pairing: Chance/Guerrero
Rating: Pre-slash, angst
---
Disclaimers: Not mine, no money made.
---
Summary: Months after their confrontation over Katherine, Guerrero broods alone on Christmas. (Set before the pilot episode.)
---
The knife in his hands was more than sharp, as were the ones already cleaned, edged, and set off to his left.
The building was clear, as was the block; the men, women, and children around no threat to him, but more than workable as human shields or ready diversions should he need to make a quick getaway. Though he was beginning to feel an annoying twinge of what could only be conscience at the thought of using innocent civilians as acceptable canon fodder.
Damn Junior and his soft-hearted influence. But then, who'da thought Junior would have been the one to start having a crisis of conscience? Not him. And surely not the Old Man, or he wouldn't have sent Guerrero in after him in the first place. Or he wouldn't have if he had taken Junior's defection at all seriously.
At least, Guerrero didn't think he would have. Though on second thought, knowing the Old Man, he probably would have; testing Junior's loyalties maybe. Testing his for sure.
Junior had beaten him.
Then he had let him live.
Putting down the knife with a sigh, Guerrero picked up the first in a twin set of stilettos. He still had no idea what to do about that. It meant Junior could have killed him easily and had chosen not to.
They way he saw it, it meant he had been as good as dead and was now living on borrowed time.
Would he have done the same? Let Junior go? Or would he have killed his best friend and then gone into the bedroom and finished the job? Killed the girl that had shown Junior another way? Maybe a better one?
He honestly didn't know. And that was a problem.
You didn't get far in this business if you didn't know who you were. Strengths, weaknesses...your liabilities.
Your limits.
Guerrero had thought he had known who he was and what he had been willing to do when he eased open the door to the cabin, knowing the only way to the mark was through his best friend.
And then Junior had defied him, defeated him, and held his own gun pointed down on his chest while he had looked up at the man and felt the familiar pride in his sometimes protégé's skills even as he shunted the fear aside and prepared himself to feel the bullet that would end his life. He had actually taken comfort in that it would have been Junior that took him out and not some random player he didn't know. But Junior had let him live.
Months later he still didn't know what to do about that. Junior had even taken another name, Christopher Chance - a name both despised and feared by the Old Man; had taken the former Chance's warehouse home and set up shop with a retired cop and the girl's puppy, living in a city that was bound to be a constant reminder.
Of Katherine's subsequent death at the hands of Baptiste, of Chance's failure.
Of Guerrero's betrayal.
When he had woken in that cabin, he had taken off, leaving Baptiste to follow Junior alone. He wouldn't help Baptiste - he couldn't, not and adhere to his own personal code of honor - but he couldn't help Junior, either. Not until he had had himself figured out.
If a job wasn't necessarily just a job, where did that leave him? The Old Man wouldn't let him pick and choose, he knew that, and he couldn't buck the system alone. He *could* stay out on his own, keeping his head down, staying under the radar like he had been. But while he enjoyed his time alone, he had grown accustomed to working with others; to working with Junior. With *Chance*.
If he were honest, he missed the friendship he had thrown away.
*Which is probably why you're hiding out in the ass-end of nowhere, dude,* he told himself wryly. *Sitting here, sharpening assassins knives with noone to take out your frustrations on...*
"Talkin' about yourself in the third person...yeah, not cool."
A knock on the door where there should be none had his head up and assessing the apartment, the other blade in his hand even as he eased his way across the floor. Noone should be here; he had broken from the Old Man and told noone where he had ended up, not even -
"I know you're in there," the familiar voice grinned behind the reinforced door. "Guerrero....come on, don't tell me you're not going to let me in. I've come such a long way..."
Yeah, halfway across a whole city all because Guerrero didn't like the idea of Chance being hunted by the Old Man without him around to watch his back.
Taking a deep breath, he made a decision and transferred the one knife to the other hand, opening the door. It wasn't like he didn't owe him.
Standing outside with a bottle of Jack wrapped with a red ribbon, Junior smiled down on him a moment before asking, "Well? You going to let me in or am I drinking this alone tonight? It *is* Christmas Eve, you know."
No he didn't know, or he hadn't been paying much attention to anything that wasn't either defense, covering his backtrail, or the brooding of his circling thoughts.
The moment stretched on as he weighed his options, run or stay, before he finally sighed and opened the door wide, inviting the younger man inside. "Might as well. I wasn't doing anything anyway."
Stepping inside while he shot the various bolts back home, Guerrero caught the glance that flickered over the wide assortment of weapons he had out for cleaning. The couple of glocks laid out on the bed, pieces scattered and waiting to be reassembled, the half dozen or so knives gleaming in the lamplight over the kitchen table. The sniper rifle with scope he had been readjusting after a freelance job.
Other than a knowing look from those pale blue eyes, all he said was, "Cozy."
"Yeah." Crappy one bedroom rat trap in the Tenderloin...yeah cozy didn't begin to cover it.
He realized the knives were gone (tossed onto the bed beside the glocks) and that his hands were in his pockets - old nervous habit - and he took them out, feeling a bit silly and a lot self-conscious with them hanging useless by his sides. Remembering the last time they had stood in a room together, Junior had held a gun on him...until Guerrero had taken it away and Chance had later returned the favor.
The hand on his shoulder surprised him as did the clear worry in the blue eyes peering down on him. "How are you?"
Yeah, how to answer that without giving everything away. "Me? Great, man; just awesome. You?"
"Liar."
So much for that then.
Favoring Junior with a belligerent eye, he snorted, "And?" And then, because he really would rather get to the drinking and skip the heart to heart altogether, he sighed, getting right to the point. "Chance why are you here?"
"So you know about that, huh?"
Another look, because if anyone should know better it was Junior. "Of course I do. An explosion that big from the Old Man, dude I wanna know why. Not to mention where to land. So?"
"So?"
"Why, Junior?"
A whole wealth of conversation in that one question. Why go awol in the first place, why Katherine, why Christopher Chance? Why suddenly go from being one of the best hitmen in the business to saving the same people they would have been taking out a year ago?
A sigh and Chance was sitting on the end of his little bed. Guerrero took the bottle he offered, placing it on the little half counter behind him while Chance used the now free hand to rake his fingers back through his hair, making the short, dark blond strands stand on end.
"I don't know," he admitted, and when he looked up, meeting his eyes, Guerrero knew it was only the truth. "Any of it. Maybe it was time, maybe I had had enough killing; maybe it just wasn't me to begin with, I don't know."
Painful, but necessary, Guerrero braced for the answer as he made himself ask, "Maybe it was Katherine?"
To his surprise Chance sighed again, a slight shake of his head saying something had changed. "Maybe. But I'm not so sure anymore. I mean I liked her," Chance admitted. "She was sweet and sincere and she didn't deserve being a target of inconvenience. She was a good person, her only crime being in the wrong place at the wrong time."
"It happens, Junior." Guerrero shrugged. "A job - "
"Is just a job, I know," the other man winced, the taste of something bitter in his mouth. "It shouldn't be. It..." He sighed and shook his head. "It just shouldn't be."
Taking in the bent shoulders along with the general air of troubled introspection, Guerrero had to admit maybe it shouldn't be. At least not every time. That one thought alone told him that Junior was right to have gotten out when he had. So was he for even considering Junior might be right.
Still didn't tell him where he should go from here. Or why Chance was bribing him with a very ordinary bottle of whiskey for the privilege of this little late night reunion.
"But now you're thinking she wasn't the one, that it?"
Again the blue eyes met his and Guerrero had to fight back the urge to swallow at the intensity of emotion being leveled at him this time. There was too much in there to be sure he wasn't seeing what he thought he might be just because he wanted to.
"I miss her, Guerrero," Chance told him, "But I'm not broken from missing her. I failed her, and I have to pay for that, along with Baptiste, but Katherine...she didn't put those doubts in my head; she just made me realize they were already there."
"So you left."
"So I left. Settled into the warehouse, kept Carmine, started figuring out a way to help people with Winston and the files Chance left behind."
"Carmine?"
"Her dog. Winston was the cop on Katherine's case."
"Dude, I know who Winston is."
For the first time since gracing his door, an honest smile reached his eyes, Chance deadpanning, "Well you never know; might be getting rusty out there all on your own."
"Uh huh."
"Join us?" It wasn't quite the surprise it should have been when Chance offered, puppy dog eyes in full force. "We could use another set of hands around the office."
Taking a breath, he steadied himself, not wanting Chance to know how much the offer rattled him. Already off-balance, looking for a place in his post-Old Man world, Guerrero wasn't sure this was a good idea. He shouldn't be in the same city in the first place; too easy for the others to track them down with him and Chance so close together.
Though it would let him keep a better eye on the man, and this cop to boot. Though if he stayed he was definitely getting a better apartment.
Instead of answering right away he raised an eyebrow over his glasses and said only, "You have a office?"
"I...have an open warehouse with office space in it," Chance deferred with a sheepish grin. "Winston has an actual office, you know, with files. We've found it's better if he keeps the paperwork."
"Yeah I'll bet." Chance had always hated the wrap up red tape. So had he.
"You could have an office," Chance teased. "You know, if you want."
But he waved the offer away, knowing he had already accepted the job, if only on a part-time basis; might as well stop fighting it. Maybe as a consultant. "Nah. Not my thing."
Because Guerrero didn't *believe* in red tape.
They traded dry looks. "I remember. So?"
"So?" Guerrero drew out. Just because he was going to join him in the good Samaritan work didn't mean he wasn't going to give Junior a hard time about it. Starting now. Throwing Chance an innocent glance, he said only, "So what?"
Only Chance didn't take the bait, snorting and returning innocence for knowledge as he rose to join him at the counter. "So I say we seal the deal the right way, by getting rip roaring drunk and regretting it in the morning, what do you say?"
Taking a moment to let it all sink in, he admitted it didn't feel as awkward as it probably should. Maybe a job was still a job after all. Though he figured it was probably just that working with Chance was still all too familiar, so maybe that much hadn't changed.
Better to do it way off the books, though. Just in case.
"I say there should be a couple of glasses in the cabinet somewhere, what are you waiting for." Guerrero told him, making short work of the seal on the bottle. "And you're sleeping on the couch."
Glancing around the one room crash pad, Chance pointed out. "You don't have a couch."
"Exactly."
End