Disclaimer: I own very little.
A/N: Character death. My first ever SS ficlet.
Perils of the Job
Virgil had never expected the superhero business to be safe. In fact, he knew very well it was risky. He'd had more than a few close calls himself, after all; he would have been a fool not to realize that it could, in fact, end badly.
He had accepted that. He'd had to, to stay sane. The only other option had been to give up, and he wasn't about to do that. Somehow, though, he had managed to ignore the fact that it might, in fact, not be him who got the short end of the stick.
Now, he had little choice but to accept it. After all, it seemed that the entire universe had chosen this exact moment to remind him rather rudely of that little detail.
It was his fault, of course. Not directly, perhaps -- he would have never fired a gun, for any reason, in any situation -- but indirectly, yes. His fault for not being there to help. His fault for not stopping the criminal before he could even draw the gun. His fault for ever getting them involved in this superhero mess to begin with.
It was all his fault for not being able to save Richie.
He couldn't do anything, now, not anything useful. He could merely sit there, holding the cooling hand in both of his own, desperately begging over and over that Richie wouldn't do this, wouldn't leave him alone.
He didn't know how to be alone, not really. Even when he had been by himself, he had never been truly alone. Richie had always been there.
Now Richie wouldn't be there, Richie would go away, and it would be all his fault because he hadn't been able to stop it.
He said this all aloud, whispering it just loud enough for Richie's ears to catch it, and he wanted Richie to say it wasn't so, that he was mistaken and shouldn't take it so seriously. He wanted Richie to smile and tell him what an idiot he was being, that neither of them was going to be alone because they had each other.
Richie, however, didn't say anything. He just lay there, quiet, unmoving.
As a hero, Virgil had accepted the fact he might not survive some mission. However, he had never accepted the fact he might survive some mission while Richie didn't. He'd never even thought of that as a possibility. It just wasn't supposed to work that way -- it wasn't supposed to hurt this much.
Virgil had never expected the superhero business to be safe. In fact, he knew very well it was risky. Even if he hadn't experienced it personally often enough, he had certainly read enough comic books to know this better than well.
The comic books had lied about one thing, though, Virgil realized as he desperately held onto a limp hand -- about one extremely important thing.
In real life, keeping your secret identity a secret from your enemies didn't necessarily keep your loved ones from dying.
