Work Text:
Gone
by Jaye Daver (Jayed)
Soon-to-be Ex-ATF-Agent Christopher Larabee was in Orin Travis’s office, staring down at the table in front of him. He’d seen the tape himself, first in shock and disbelief on the television in Vin’s hospital room and then again, in a kind of dawning horror, in his own living room. He’d next seen it in the conference room at ATF Headquarters, and it was now replaying endlessly in his own head. Vin had been shot, and Ezra … He couldn’t really recall exactly why he’d thought it was Ezra’s fault. Watching himself slug the man he now knew to have been seriously injured…and watching as he and the rest of the Team walked away and left the injured man…well. There wasn’t anything that Travis, or anyone for that matter, could say that would be worse than Chris had been saying in his own mind. He’d failed. He’d failed Ezra. He’d failed the team. He’d failed Travis. He’d failed himself. As much as he damned the reporter for the film, he knew he owed that same man for the fact that Ezra hadn’t died alone and abandoned on that filthy sidewalk.
Orin Travis himself was in a kind of shock. As Leader of Team Seven, Chris had contacted him immediately after the events in question to inform him about Vin’s injury, but he had not, of course, mentioned Ezra’s. To the shame of the entire ATF organization, it had taken that same reporter who had called 911 to call and bring the other agent’s injuries to his attention, and it had been the television that told him why. Now, with Chris Larabee in his office, looking wan and guilty, he could only say some rather difficult words. “I’ll need your badge and your gun. You and everyone on Team Seven are suspended pending a full investigation. I am warning you now not to talk about this with your former teammates.”
That brought Chris’s head up quickly. Former teammates?
Seeing Larabee’s expression, Travis nodded. “You don’t think that you can return as Team Leader, do you? You don’t think those men can continue to work as team members, do you?” Suddenly, Travis realized that Chris still wasn’t really thinking clearly, hadn’t actually followed this through. “No leader who could do what you did to someone under your command deserves a command, Chris. The fact that Ezra was injured only compounds the offense. You should never have hit him under any circumstances.“ The words were spoken more gently than Travis intended as he watched Chris grow ever paler. “Your other men allowed you to injure their supposed teammate and then they, too, abandoned him, even when it was apparent that he was not getting up and therefore, at the least, might be injured.” He paused and added “Yes, even Vin. His injury was not so severe that he couldn’t have at least spoken in Ezra’s defense or asked for someone to help him.”
He sighed. “Chris,” he waited until the other man looked at him, “There will be a trial. Don’t leave town, and, if you agree to turn yourself in when it’s time, I won’t hold you or send a car.”
Larabee nodded. He should have expected as much. He had been caught on tape ruthlessly attacking a man with a serious bullet wound. The tape made it clear that the other man had not instigated the encounter nor had he been in any condition to defend himself or fight back. He suspected he would be lucky to avoid attempted murder charges, however difficult they would be to make stick. He was guilty of assault and causing grievous bodily harm. He was guilty of dereliction of duty. He was guilty of the worst kind of betrayal, not only in relation to Ezra, but to all of Team Seven. Mostly, however, to Ezra…
The others had their own briefer meetings with Travis. Josiah Sanchez had already written up a formal letter of resignation. He was the one who had always called Ezra “son,” but when the other man actually needed him to act paternally, and a friend and a teammate, he had instead abandoned him and walked away with the others. He knew that he couldn’t work for the ATF anymore, couldn’t put himself in the position of denying or letting down another teammate.
Buck Wilmington was facing his own demons. He had protected and defended Larabee for so long that he had forgotten how to go against him. He had forgotten that his primary responsibility was not to Chris personally, but to the ATF, to his team, and to the job. He had gotten so used to accepting whatever Larabee did as normal that he hadn’t made any attempt to see things from any other point-of-view. Hell, he wondered if Chris had pulled a gun and shot Ezra if he would stood by as quietly. In the damning quiet of his own mind, he finally acknowledged that he probably would have. He had allowed his relationship with Chris to become so co-dependent and downright twisted that …well, except for possibly JD…he hadn’t really considered the thoughts and feelings of his other co-workers when there was any possibility of a contradiction with Chris. Hell, he’d been Team Seven’s Second-in-Command, and it had been his job to balance Chris, not let him do whatever he pleased.
Vin had been released after an overnight stay in the hospital. He’d asked the others to leave--after the six stunned men had seen the film for the first time on the local newscast--even Chris, and, stunned, they all, including Chris, had agreed. His mind kept returning to the moment when Chris had swung on Ezra. He had known that Ezra wasn’t at fault for his injury, but he hadn’t spoken up. He hadn’t tried to stop Chris nor had he stopped to see if Ezra was alright when the other man stayed on the ground. He wanted to blame the pain of his arm or a state of shock, but he knew that he couldn’t hide behind physiology when it had nothing to do with anything. Instead, he was forced to accept that he had been happy to have yet more evidence of his importance to Larabee and the team, even though it had come at the expense of another member of the team, a man he supposedly considered a friend. How petty was he?
JD recorded the incident during one of its many reruns in the national media and played it over and over, analyzing the scene and trying to understand his own motivations and expectations. He remembered laughing, laughing!, when Ezra had bounced off the wall and hit the ground, and although he knew that that had mostly been embarrassment and astonishment, he was deeply ashamed of himself. He was beginning to suspect that his hero worship of Chris, who had done this, and of Buck, who had not stopped it, had made the situation, however briefly, somehow acceptable. It wasn’t the first time that Chris had become irrationally angry with Ezra nor was it the first time when JD, again in late acknowledgement, had stood by and allowed it to happen. Sighing, he’d had to accept that he made a great subordinate, but a terrible teammate. Perhaps it was time to limit himself to working with machines and not people. A broken machine could be fixed. A broken person? A broken team? Not so much.
Nathan was furious. When he first saw the film, unlike the others, he had not felt guilty; he’d assumed the absolute worst as he was now forced to acknowledge he always had. To his utter mortification, he’d actually immediately assumed that Ezra was somehow directly responsible for the film and the release of the story, never stopping to take a moment and consider the actual content of that story. He’d found out Ezra’s hospital room number and stormed out of Vin’s room to find that Southern scumbag and give him what for. Instead, he’d found a room in the middle of a Code Blue. Finally, finally, Nathan had a bit of an epiphany. His mind showed him a replay of all his interactions with Ezra P. Standish. He could hardly accept the fact that he had stormed in the Intensive Care Unit to attack a man who had already barely survived two attacks that very day. He was furious, yes, but at long last he was finally furious with the right person: himself.
Ezra’s mother, Maude, heard about the situation from friends back in the States. She was on a yacht off Crete at the time. Half in concern for her injured son, and half in anticipation of some lovely lawsuits, she was on a plane to Denver just about twenty four hours after the incident. Arriving at the hospital, lawyer in tow, she allowed the lawyer to run interference with all the ATF officials and reporters hovering around the hospital grounds and hallways. Partly in show and partly in true concern, she took up a vigil in the seat by her pale son’s bed, patting his hand and thinking.
Ezra remained unconscious for two days, unaware of the storms raging around him. When he returned to consciousness, he spent much of the next few weeks alternately recovering and dealing with embarrassed and apologetic ATF officials, persistent members of media, and his increasingly, if predictably, infuriating parent. He finally dealt with all three through the auspices of his own lawyer. He accepted a generous payout to avoid a civil suit with the ATF, the sum was enough to allow him to lay low for a while so that he could consider his next options. He obtained
a blanket injunction requiring the media to stay away from him and to allow him his privacy. Furthermore, he had his lawyer inform his mother’s lawyer that there was no money that would trickle her way; as he suspected would happen, she took her injured dignity and went back to the yacht.
Josiah and Nathan wrote him two very different apologetic letters which he received while he was still in the hospital. He sent them each single line replies, thanking them for taking the time to write to him. He spoke briefly on the phone with a clearly confused JD and accepted the young man’s apology for following his leaders rather than doing what he’d known was right. He spent a few quiet moments with Vin, recognizing that Vin had been the most distracted on the day in question and that Vin had been the closest to a friend he’d had on the Team. Ultimately, however, neither really had much to say. Buck tried to visit, but almost the first thing he did was bring up all the stress Larabee had been under, and Ezra had stopped him and asked him to leave. Recognizing that he’d likely blown his one real chance, Buck reluctantly turned to go, with a sincere “I am sorry, Ezra,” and a last look good-bye. Chris never contacted him, but Orin Travis, who had overseen Larabee’s plea bargain—no jail time, anger management classes, and some serious community service hours—let Ezra know that the other man really did regret his actions.
Two years later, a honeymooning JD actually ran into Ezra in Vegas. Standish was the security chief for one of the new hotels, and he was clearly in his element. A few minutes of small talk, a brief nod to the new Mrs., and the two parted, old acquaintances who really had nothing in common, and, sadly, probably never had.
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