Chapter Text
Nick smiled as he raised his hands skyward in a mock victorious gesture. He enjoyed morning runs, especially when his partner Ellie joined him. He knew he caught her off guard with his sprint finish but he savoured the view it gave him, as his partner rounded the corner to complete their 10km run. He sucked in deep breaths, a sobering reminder that he needed to start incorporating more sprint work into his running routine.
He watched his teammate’s steady pace, he could see the wry smile as she reacted to his antics. The next few minutes happened in slow motion for him, as he saw several black-clad men pile out of a nondescript van, like some bad action movie trope.
He wondered if Ellie had reacted to the terror in his face, or the fact one of the goons had laid an uninvited hand on her shoulder. Regardless, he watched in admiration, as she employed a deft hip throw to neutralise the first assailant, as his tumble led to a painful collision with the open van door. Before Nick had time to register his thought fully he found himself racing towards the fight, he needed to even the odds as his partner fought a pair of further attackers, the burlier of the two, pining her arms behind her back, clearly they were spooked by how easily she had dealt with the first assailant.
Nick promptly closed the distance between himself and the fracas. He watched as his normally demure partner landed a textbook head butt to the lead assailant, the man’s nose erupted with an ugly red splutter. Using the ricochet of her first strike, she drove her head back into the guy who had been keeping her arms pinioned behind her back. The attacker dropped her in shock and looked on with trepidation as Ellie turned to face him for the first time, her hands up in a casual fighting stance.
Nick reached broken-nose-guy, quickly keeping him immobilised in a choke hold. He had seen snippets of Ellie’s new fight-club moves from her training with Odette, but this was the first time he had seen it up close and personal. He felt the struggle subside beside him, two assailants had now been subdued, he turned to watch Ellie’s hand-to-hand combat with the coward who had previously attacked from behind her back.
He was too focused in admiring Ellie’s ninja moves that he hadn’t noticed the van driver inch over to the passenger-side door to get a clearer line of sight. He felt the soft thwack as a tranquilliser dart pierced his neck. Too late, he couldn’t control his own body as it slumped onto the ground bonelessly. He watched as Ellie turned from her own fight, to come to his aid, his reaction time too slow again to warn her, she was straying into the cross-hairs of the tranq. gun. He couldn’t help but mentally kick himself for not securing the scene before inserting himself into the fight. He could imagine Gibb’s disappointment in him for such a rookie mistake.
The last thing Nick saw was the same realisation in Ellie’s eyes, as her features were marred in a grimace of pain as the poison dart found its target. He felt the normally welcome warmth of her body, crumple onto his own useless form. He closed his eyes for a second, before realising too late he had no further energy to open them again. The black clad attackers collected their prey, keen to make their escape and bring their quarry to a secure location, their Boss was an inpatient man and would use any excuse to lash out at them for a job only half completed.