Note: Not that an 800-word story needs a dedication, but this one must be for Dorinda, for putting it into my head via her amazing portrayal of PotentiallySuicidal!Kelly in her incredible "Wheat from Chaff'. And as always, for Leviathan, for getting me into this fandom.
It didn't escape Kelly that Scotty had never asked him what had been going through his mind when he stepped off that parapet. Which was just as well, because Kelly sure as hell wasn't ever volunteering the information.
'I've killed him. I'm going to join him.'
It would be damn embarrassing, for certain. It would be stupid. But, most of all, it would be true.
In the moment after he'd fired those bullets, he'd fully believed they'd hit their mark. Kelly could only guess, but he thought the trigger to break the conditioning had been the gunshots, apparently, because as soon as the clip was empty, reality had begun to filter in—except for the realization that Scotty was still alive.
And so, with the conviction that Alexander Scott was dead by his hand, Kelly had done the only logical thing.
The conditioning had passed, but the core of truth remained. He had been ready to kill the best and purest man he had ever known. Only blind luck had prevented it. And he knew in his heart of hearts that if any harm ever came to Scotty because of him, if Scotty lost his life because of something he, Kelly, had done, Kelly would be seeing him in the afterlife a few seconds later. Long enough to see him again, for an instant. Long enough to say, "I'm sorry," before they were whisked away to their separate destinations.
They'd deconditioned, debriefed and dissected him, but they didn't know that.
And no-one ever would.
It didn't escape Scotty that Kelly had been going to step off that parapet. It still chilled him when he thought what would have happened if some hunch hadn't prompted him to look around as Kelly was already taking that step into empty air. If he hadn't grabbed the trailing wrist quite fast enough.
It was understandable, he supposed; part of the conditioning. To make Kelly kill him and then himself. But part of him knew, with a sickening realization, without knowing how he knew, that that last step into empty air it hadn't all been conditioning. Hey, he tried to brace himself, if I'd been the one brainwashed into killing Kelly, I might want to off myself too, if I thought I'd succeeded… But then he broke off that train of thought, because it was too terrible to contemplate. And if it's too scary for you to even think about, how's it got to be for him? He lived it!
Scotty hoped Kelly understood the import of the fact that he, Kelly, had shot at Scotty and missed, quite deliberately, because his subconscious was humming along as it should be, underneath the brainwashing. Scotty'd been scared out there, but paradoxical as it seemed, not scared of Kelly, not really; what he'd felt most was an overwhelming regret, regret that this was happening, at the guilt Kelly would be feeling afterwards, at the thought that Kelly might hit his mark by accident, regret for what that would do to him, to both of them. But he'd meant it when he'd said that Kelly couldn't hurt him, not really hurt him. He knew it on a level too deep for analysis, which was why he'd reached for the gun without fear. He knew his Kelly.
But what disturbed Scotty was that Kelly didn't know himself. He genuinely thought himself capable of it. Kelly didn't get that although he'd been conditioned to gun his partner down, although he'd had him at point-blank range, although he'd been using both hands to steady his weapon, although he'd fired, more than once, he'd missed. That alone told Scotty everything he needed to know, even if he hadn't already known it: Kelly Robinson was incapable of hurting someone he loved.
What he was, though, was plenty capable of hurting himself. The conditioning had passed, but that hard cold core of truth remained. He had been ready to kill himself. Only blind luck had prevented it.
And that moment terrified Scotty as nothing had ever done. If he'd been an instant slower—if he'd misinterpreted that terrible step up—he knew in his heart of hearts that if—if Kelly had fallen, he would never have forgiven himself, that he'd have lived his life as a black, laughless hole of loneliness and regret. He would only have come back to life when he saw him again on the other side, much, much later, after the party was over. Long enough to say, 'I love you', before they went off on the next great adventure together.
They'd debriefed and dissected him, but there were some things he would never tell.
This was one.