The Best Part of Me

“He still alive?” Gabriel asked quietly.

Keith pressed two fingers to Chase’s throat. Chase didn’t even flinch, and Gabriel was worried he’d gone catatonic.

“He’s barely breathing,” Keith said.

“What happened?” Gabriel leaned down, tried to meet Chase’s gaze. It was impolite to go prowling into someone else’s mind uninvited, and besides, Chase was mundane.

“She’s gone,” Chase said faintly.

“She who?” Keith fished in his pocket, ostensibly for a penlight to shine in Chase’s eyes, but Gabriel batted his hand aside.

“Asia,” Chase said.

Gabriel blinked. “Where did she go?” He glanced at Keith, and he knew they were both thinking the impossible had somehow become possible. Hagalaz had them on the run, scrambling like rats for the nearest holes to the sewer. There’d been fire and crossfire and Asia had ordered it, every man for himself.

“I woke up and all of her things were gone,” Chase said. “Everything. Her keys, the receipts and change from when we ordered take-out last night. It’s all gone. It’s like she wasn’t even here.”

Gabriel felt something tighten in his chest. He hadn’t known about Asia and Chase. None of them had. That it still hurt, after all these years, to find out that she’d given her affection to someone else, was pretty pathetic, but it hurt all the same. Keith looked equally grim at the notion. That Asia had come to Chase in the aftermath of all that happened had to mean something. Didn’t it?

Gabriel shot straight across the Web to speak to Keith. I wonder which hurts more, thinking that she died or knowing that she walked away voluntarily.

In our case, we got hit with both – first one, then t’other, Keith said.

“Chase,” he said aloud, “pack up your essentials and run. We come bearing orders from Tops. Deep cover.”

“How long?”

“Till he says otherwise,” Gabriel said.

Chase blinked and shook his head, stood up, but he still looked dazed. “Fine. Where are you going?”

“Deep cover,” Keith said. “Unless we run into each other by accident, it’ll be as if you never knew us.”

“Fine. Just let me get my –”

A knock at the door startled them. Chase reached for his gun before he answered. His sharp intake of breath was all Gabriel needed to know about who was on the doorstep.

“You came back.” Chase’s voice choked on the last word.

“Not permanently.” Asia sounded perfectly calm. “I’m here for my team, actually.”

“But we’re splitting up,” Keith said, and he sounded angry.

“Not us. Just him,” Asia said, and Gabriel felt the viciousness of her smooth words like a punch to the gut.

“Me alone? Why? What am I supposed to do...?”

When the best part of me was always you, Gabriel thought, and Keith nodded his assent. Asia had a way of taking the best of a man turning into the worst – the best of the worst.

From each of them she had taken love and turned it into murder.

(499 words)

(Break Even by The Script)