Curtwen One-Shots

New Beginning

Curt stood at the bottom of a stairway, staring up at the man he once knew, the man that was his partner for years, the man he no longer recognized.

He remembered the days when he didn't have to care about every little thing that he did, where he and Owen would make it out of every mission alive. Even if a mission went wrong and Cynthia yelled at Curt for hours, he was still glad he and Owen had survived.

And then that day came, where everything was his fault. He knew he should have followed Owen's advice to not drop that banana peel, or not knock down that important guard rail. He saw that look in Owen's eye as he fell, but there was nothing Curt could do.

If he tried to reach down, he might have fallen as well. He couldn't run all the way back down those stairs when the building was about to be destroyed and there were enemy operatives all around him, just to see if someone who could not possibly have survived that fall could still be alive.

All that didn't stop Curt from blaming himself, and Owen from blaming Curt. They both knew with certainty it was all his fault, that Curt had left his friend and mourned for four years when he should have moved on.

Owen had sure moved on. He didn't care about Curt in any good way, and that is what he told himself as he stood above Curt, gun pointed straight at his head. He had waited for so long to find, torture, and kill Curt. He had already done two of those, and now was the perfect opportunity to finally get revenge and murder what was once his friend.

He told himself all this, yet he faltered. He hesitated, and his hand shook. He could not bring himself to fire the gun, and finally get the revenge he had wanted for four long years in isolation.

As Curt talked about 'the feelings they once had,' something that made Owen lower his gun slightly, he remembered once again what he was here for. He drew the gun back up to his old friend's head and prepared to take the shot. But once again, he hesitated.

Curt took this as a perfect opportunity to shoot the gun out of his hands. Owen knew this was happening, and knew he could easily stop it, but he didn't. He stood and watched, unarmed, as Curt stepped toward him with his gun in hand. Owen could predict what would happen next. Curt would shoot him, and Owen would finally need dead.

Not wanting his last thoughts to be of Curt, Owen instead thought of Chimera. They had taken him in, told him things about Curt he could not believe. At first he assumed they were lies, but over time he trusted them more and more, and they trusted him. Those things they told him were, in fact, lies. 

He found out they had been lying to him, but it was too late to go back. He was already close to the top and could not afford to leave them. How badly he wanted to leave them, to become a spy again, to be with his partner again. So Owen started to be the one telling lies. He told lies about what he thought, who he knew, what he knew, the people he hated, and the people he once and still loved.

Like Curt. Owen didn't mean to, but he found his thoughts drifting back to Curt again. He sighed as his former partner once again drew closer, gun almost touching Owen's head at this point.

"Killing me won't take the system offline, so what are you doing?" Owen waited for the answer he knew would come. He waited for Curt to say 'Taking your advice,' but he didn't. He didn't say anything like that.

Instead, Curt dropped his gun. Owen let out a breath, but it wasn't relief. He was looking forward to finally dying and being able to escape all the madness, all the intrusive thoughts, all the memories of the pleading and screaming of innocent people that he killed mercilessly. He wanted all that to end.

So of course he was enraged when Curt put down his arm and stepped away from him. "You're right," Curt said unexpectedly. "I don't know why I would want to kill you. You're no use to anyone dead, especially me."