A/N: So this just sort of happened. In about 15 minutes. I just went with it, and I'm happy with it. Let me know what you think!
Set vaguely pre-series.
Disclaimer: Do you really think it belongs to me? Seriously?
You never tell anyone, but it's these moments that scare you the most.
When you're hunting, you don't have time to think. You just do. Run, shoot, grapple, kill, bleed. Die, someday.
Die, today. Maybe. That's why you hate these moments. Because right now—before the hunt, the adrenaline, the transformation of fear into fierceness—right now, you're alright. You're safe.
They're safe.
And you've got time to think. Time to wonder what it would be like to stay, here. Anywhere. To put away the guns after you've cleaned them, to drive away from the horror and the unknown.
These moments, in this before, you look at them and wonder if this is it. If this is the last time. For you— or worse—for them.
You can't think like that. It's that fatal self-doubt that gets people killed, and you know this. Dad taught it to you, all that trust-your-gut crap, just like he taught you how to load a gun and throw a knife and lie to the police.
Dad taught you just about everything you know.
Except how to take care of Sammy.
You taught yourself that. You're still teaching yourself, inch-by-inch, lessons as careful and complete as a well-poured saltline. Dad gave you that responsibility, and you took it without asking. You didn't know how to ask, then, when he gave it—when he dumped Sammy in your arms and you ran through the fire (but not through the pain—you didn't make it out of the pain). You were only four. You didn't know you could ask questions.
Maybe you still can't.
But you don't need to. You know what your responsibility is, and you've taught yourself the whens and whys and hows of that so that there won't be a mistake.
But that's why you hate these moments. Because these moments are stranded in the terrible before. Before the mistakes you're not sure if you'll make yet.
Because this is when you remember, that someday, some place, on the other side of these moments—
You might fail.
He might fall.
So you hold onto that fatal self-doubt, and you almost don't care if it kills you, like Dad said it would.
Better you than Sammy.