Chapter Text
Refiner's Fire
by: SheilaVR
Category(s): Post-Ep
Rating: TEEN
Disclaimer: This is an original short story spawned by the imagination of SheilaVR, based upon the creation of Aaron Sorkin, with the obligatory nod to Warner Brothers Television and NBC. No copyright infringement is actually intended, but no threat of same will stop me from fantasizing about "The West Wing" anyway...
Summary: A frame-by-frame analysis of the last thirty seconds of the first season finale.
Authors Notes: This plotline has no bearing on Mr. Sorkin's avowed intent to flashback to the Bartlet presidential campaign at the start of the new season.
Warning:I refuse to glorify violence, even in fiction. I will never comprehend how any person could willingly hurt another. However, violence does exist, and by its very nature it is dramatic. What follows is a coolly realistic interpretation of events, based primarily upon a frame-by-frame analysis of the last thirty seconds of the first season finale.
PUNCTUATION NOTES:
~ Time Index ~ = header.
*Emphasis* = bold or italicized text.
<Idea> = a person's silent thoughts.
// Caption // = scenes remembered from the finale.
*****
~ TIME INDEX: 00:00:01 ~
Nothing focuses your thoughts like a gunshot - especially when you're in the presence of the President of the United States. What the single shout of warning failed to achieve by sheer lack of volume over the cheering crowds, exploding powder accomplished at once. And in a single heartbeat the entire exterior of the Newseum in Rosslyn, Virginia on this warm summer evening metamorphosed sickeningly from a political pep rally into a civilian war zone.
Your first overpowering instinct is flight: to put as much distance as possible as *fast* as possible between you and the perceived threat, regardless of barriers or people in your way. It may occur to you at some point, though, that movement attracts attention. The next compulsion is to hide, to take cover *anywhere*... if panic doesn't completely blind you to the nearest source of shelter. And then, hopefully, you get hold of your nerves and drop, freeze wherever you are, and pray the shooters miss - knowing all too hideously well that they might *not* miss. That in the very next instant one of those tiny speeding missiles might deliver appalling pain... or brutal death.
And the passage of time takes on a whole new meaning, each moment lasting half an eternity where thoughts race out of control and motion struggles to keep up - without success.
*"WHO'S BEEN HIT?"*
That simple phrase echoed repeatedly through the air, the radio wires and every conscious mind. And while you wait to learn whether you yourself are still among the living, you become excruciatingly conscious of your hammering pulse, the uneven breaths that scald your lungs, and the constant roar of terror both around you and within. When the silence finally registers, it is profound - and vulnerable; and you don't dare do anything to disturb it and set off the violence all over again.
You just hold absolutely still - and wish with all your might that you could rewind the world back to that blissful happiness before your sanity fell apart... or better still, fast-forward to the point where the terror is finally gone and you actually dare to live again.
*****
~ TIME INDEX: 00:00:32 ~
It really was quite astonishing how much action could be compacted into so few ticks of a clock. Bodyguards had to be trained to react instantly, to throw off the surprise and concentrate on their specific tasks, whether it was protecting people or shooting at people. Eventually, though, there came one liquid moment when the smoke cleared, and they could pause and evaluate just how successful they'd been.
The line of public fences, once packed several bodies deep, was all but deserted, most of those spectators still running from the scene. However, enough remained behind, either huddled in moaning stupefaction or sprawled motionless across the hard ground, to perfectly round out this overall battlefield image.
Then, to the exquisite anguish of the privileged few, came the single worst message possible over a Secret Service channel.
*"LAUREATE'S DOWN!"*
Their Nobel Prize-winning Chief Executive had fallen before his assassins.
Gina Toscano almost screamed right then, as her professional training had not permitted throughout the hail of bullets on all sides. She squeezed her eyes shut, clenched her teeth tight, and flattened herself even more over the President's daughter. If only she'd reacted faster, trusted herself more, noticed that unsmiling youth sooner!
// He looked right at her, silent, eyes cold, so out of place among the cheering throngs... and then he looked over her head at someone else... //
That had told her everything, and she'd given the alarm at once - but too late to do one person at ground level any good.
<I failed. Dear God in heaven, I failed them all!>
The frenzy was over, the street eerily still, the sirens just starting to wail. How many seconds had elapsed? How many bullets had been fired? And most important, how many bullets did the killers have left? Their two handguns would hold from eight to fourteen rounds each, depending on the models; any count, however, had been totally obscured by Secret Service agents returning fire from both the street and the rooftops.
Yes, the shooting had finally ceased; it only persisted in her brain. Which meant that the enemy force had been eliminated. They'd been indistinct yet visible in their dimly-lit third-story window, the blooms of flame around their hands horribly self-evident. Whatever aim they had, whether they hit their intended victims or just fired randomly into the sea of business suits below, the SSA would not have halted their own retaliation unless absolutely certain there was no further threat.
Blessedly, the next message that crackled in her ear confirmed this: *"Bird's-eye Four here. Both enemy targets neutralized."* The sniper team perched high across the street had binoculars and an unimpeded view into that upper room.
<BOTH?!>
Gina yanked around. What about the third guy, the punk in the crowd?
Wait - no one else knew about him!
She raised her right hand at once and shouted into the tiny sleeve transmitter, "There's a third one! Ground level!"
<And no one can identify him - except me!>
So Special Agent Gina Toscano made one of those split-instant decisions she'd hoped never to face. It went against SOP, but she had to choose between a bad option and a worse one -
"Zoey, are you all right?"
The youngest daughter of the President twisted to look up at her, eyes staring from the depths of horror.
"My father - "
Gina checked, flashing back to the sick memory of a broadcast that only the Secret Service had heard.
<I can't... > In that endless, soul-rending moment she just could not bring herself to admit the truth, could not tell this nineteen-year-old girl that her father, that the leader of the free world, had been...
At least Zoey herself appeared uninjured - aside from the shock - after being jammed against the limo's tire. No sign of blood or pain. <Looks like I did SOMETHING right... >
Gina gripped her hard by both shoulders, trying to instill some modicum of stability. "Zoey, stay right here and *don't move.* Got it?"
Ashen and shaking, her protectee somehow managed a jerky nod. She was still too stunned to draw any inference from the lack of a direct answer to that all-important question.
"Good. I'll be right back." <If I possibly can... >
Time to really do her job. Gina leaped up, abandoning her shelter and her charge. Stepping into no man's land.
"Someone take Bookbag!" she ordered at large, raising her weapon to the ready. The full-sized automatic pistol looked huge in her petite hand, but a glance would assure any observer that she knew how to handle it.
If it were just a matter of the accomplice getting away, she would have permitted that gladly rather than leave Zoey alone now. But, when balanced against the damage an unknown and dedicated killer-at-large in close proximity could do to all of them -
Gina rushed towards the spot where he had stood just back of the fence; the fence that had since been overturned by the stampeding crowd. Forced herself to ignore the slow reawakening of motion around her, the whimpers of suffering, the bodies littered almost underfoot...
<There - >
He stood some ten yards away, half-hidden by a trash can and a lamp-post. The baseball cap gone, his shaved skull like a bulletin board of affiliation. Watching, as silently and impassively as before. Now holding a pistol of his own.
Waiting to shoot at whoever survived the barrage from above, just when they began to believe themselves safe.
He wasn't merely the assassins' supporter in the crowd; he was their back-up plan.
And he saw her even as she saw him.
Ten yards back, a dark head rose above the limo's hood against all instructions, a frantic face searched the field of slaughter, and a desperate cry pierced the night air:
*"DAD!"*
It could not be anyone else. And it told *everyone* exactly where Zoey Bartlet was.
The hit had failed; the last of the skinhead assault squad prepared to finish it.
And right then Gina *knew*, without one iota of doubt, that she herself was about to die. He would kill her; he was simply too close to miss. And then he'd go on, aiming for his self-appointed enemy and anyone else that happened to get in his way.
But she honestly did not care what happened to her - not so long as she stopped him first. She had to destroy his threat, had to correct the mistake she'd made so many lifetimes ago.
Their respective weapons went off in unison.
*****
~ TIME INDEX: 00:01:16 ~
Zoey almost jumped out of her skin when those two shots, the very last shots of the evening, rang out together. Gasping, she whirled in all directions, oblivious to the fact that this move lifted her into full public view. Conscious only of the frantic trip-hammer inside her chest, as loud as any gunfire... and the numbing terror of being utterly alone.
<Why?>
She never gave a thought to the position her father held: a position that made fame and risk necessary, a position that influenced the entire world. He was one of the two all-important foundations to her existence. And he'd been standing right over there -
That spot was now vacant, save for the stretch of security fencing... and a still form lying like a broken puppet on the ground.
Couldn't be her dad. Her brain registered somehow on the casual attire, so different from what she remembered him last wearing, just in time to head off another scream.
<Why?>
Gina, her constant companion and defender for so long, had suddenly taken off with no explanation at all -
Another human shape lay facedown and motionless on her left, mere feet away. So close.
Couldn't be Gina. This was a man.
<Why why why... >
And Charlie Young, the source of the greatest happiness in her life right now, was no longer beside her -
Suddenly Zoey felt herself solidify. Then, as though manipulated by an exterior force over which she had no control, her head rotated a slow ninety degrees back to port.
<No - >
The sight of an inanimate body where life should be is horrible enough in itself. What made this moment a thousand times worse was the realization - belated - that she had known this particular victim all along.
// He stood frozen, staring straight into the first shots, before Gina knocked him over from behind even as she dragged Zoey down... //
"Charlie... "
She felt someone catch her arm as though to hold her back, but she wrenched wildly out of that grasp and sprang to her boyfriend's side.
*****