Work Text:
He stood there, hand on the gun in his pocket. Veterinarian gun, with a silencer. Meant to put down pigs.
This would change everything. Everything.
He waited. The car pulled up.
He waited. Brian Thompson got out of the car.
He waited. Brian Thompson walked down the sidewalk.
He pulled the gun out of his pocket. He aimed.
And time froze.
He saw his younger sister, coughing up blood as his parents desperately tried to help her.
He saw his friend, lying on a surgery table, so close to death because he didn’t have the money to get checked earlier.
He saw his mother, still in the coffin, dead from a tumor that could have been treated.
He saw a kid on the street, curled under a flimsy blanket, next to a cup that read, “Help me with healthcare bills.”
He saw all the grieving kids he had met, all the angry ones, all the broken ones without parents or siblings or friends.
He saw his girlfriend, beautiful but suffering, never healed from the wounds she had suffered as a child.
He saw himself, surrounded by the ghosts of the people he had lost, the people that the world had lost, and the people who weren’t lost yet. If he made this shot. If he showed the world that there were people who would stand up.
He pulled the trigger.
Once. Deny.
Twice. Defend.
Thrice. Depose.
And ran.