Folding each item of clothing onto his bed in the Swift Compound, Travis felt a strange sense of peace fall over him.
Maybe it was because he knew this time tomorrow nothing would matter anymore.
The chances were he would be dead.
Or maybe it was because he knew in that moment of death the weight of all his sins would be finally be lifted from his shoulders.
His life had not been a 'normal' life in any meaning of the word. Born to a logical, hardworking professor and an English artist that struggled with a debilating form of Bipolar Disorder, his early years were a battle between order, discipline and complete and utter chaos.
His mother's refusal to medicate had seen her removed from the family home time and time again and in Travis' young mind each time had been more dramatic and more traumatic than the last.
Her eventual sucide when he was 15 had left him wounded in a way he could never have imagined, haunted by the massive relief he felt at her finally going and knowing she would never be coming back.
Folding up his old khaki army t-shirt he couldn't help but think back to the last morning he saw Taylor before he had left.
Her hair lying wild all around her, this very t shirt the only item of clothing she had worn. She had looked so beautiful, so peaceful, the way she should have looked every second of her life if men and vengeance and death hadn't infiltrated every corner of it.
He imagined for a brief second what life would have been like if he and Taylor had met under different circumstances, if they hadn't been broken peices of the people they had been supposed to be. If they had met when they were whole and their spirits free of the trauma that weighed them down.
Would they have fallen in love at first sight?
Would they have dated happily, going to dinner and long walks?
Would they have made love slowly, lazily, no fear of being caught, no deviant games in his mind?
Heaving in a sigh he placed the clothing into a cardboard box, sealed it with brown tape and scrawled donations on the top knowing he wouldn't be needing clothes again.
They wanted him to work for them... Which meant kill for them and there was no way he could become a human killing machine again. One time was enough.
His mind flashed back to the days he spent in Iraq, the non stop sound of gunfire, the constant adrenaline. The fear every single day that it would be their last. No human body or human mind is made to withstand that amount of pressure and as it was many didn't, as with his mother many of his friends had succomed to suicide, their minds bending and then breaking under the strain of army life.
Travis had used all the order and discipline he had learned from his father and toughened himself to withstand anything he saw, heard or felt. Turning himself into a machine in an attempt to just survive. Even to the point where he saw some of his friends blown apart, human bodies raising to the sky and then their body parts falling as rain he had gone about the clean up apparently unaffected.
That toughness was the reason Portugal came calling, the reason he was fluent in the language
What happened there wasn't supposed to happen, it shouldn't have happened but money and power had been too strong of a pull for Travis to ignore. He'd chased it and in the process lost sight of the reason he was there.
Noa's death had been his fault, as had Dana's, he couldn't deny it but there was no way he was going to be responsible for Taylors death.
Taking a gun from the table he placed it in the holster before picking up the knife and sliding it into the side of his boot.
History would not be repeating it's self.
He gazed at his face in the mirror, his hair styled perfectly, his eyes hard and his jaw set.
His black vest was fastened over his black shirt and his black jeans ended just where his Chelsea boots began.
"Travis Kelce reporting for duty, sir" he stated firmly to his reflection and saluting before reaching down and picking up the picture of a very battered and fragile looking Taylor"Don't you worry baby girl, I'm coming to get you"
