Yesterday was thirty years ago. Five ways this could have gone differently, plus one. Looper fanfic.
Fic a day 8
5. fragile things
Cid is six and he's not supposed to climb his furniture. He knows this, brilliant kid that he is, but he's bored and his mom is napping and the appeal of multiplication blocks is limited when he knows all the answers.
There is a model ship, an old sailing ship made of wood on the top shelf of his bookcase and he's convinced it's all he needs today.
He reaching for the ship when his weight brings down the bookshelf, pinning him. Crushing him. His screams fail to wake his mother and his dies, there, on the floor of his bedroom.
(At the burial, the woman he knew as Aunt Sarah will slap her sister and move his coffin into the grave without touching it.)
4. here be monsters
The shockwave throws Joe's truck off the road and he's wearing his seatbelt like a goddamn idiot, tangled up in the car and the shot that kills Sarah is louder then it should be in an empty field.
Cid's screams are louder still and he throw the older Joe in the air to Joe's feet and he doesn't hesitate this time unloading the blunderbuss into his face. Cid comes when he calls and between the two of them they bury Sarah in the fields outside his farm.
Taking the city's not hard when they've already burned through the gat men and the loopers on the way to this and it's the only way he can think of to protect Cid. He takes more and more each year expanding his control and their safety each year. Eventually his men call Cid the Rainmaker and Joe doesn't even flinch.
3. once more with feeling
Joe sleeps undisturbed the night Seth should have closed his loop. But he goes to the club the next day to catch and they're talking about him. About running and how fucking stupid it is.
So he's got no reason to hesitate when man with his hands unbound pops into existence in a field in Kansas. He has no reason to doubt the organization that saved him so his hands are steady on the gun when he appears three minutes late. With a blunderbuss there's no missing, not at that close of range even with the man charging him.
And then.
There's a gold payday and twenty-five brutal unrelenting years and pocket watch with her face in it before her.
And then there's after her and he understands now what he tried to do. And he'll do it again.
This time he'll do it right.
2. sharpshooter
Abe is the one who finds him and puts a gun in his hand but there are others in the organization who are happy to teach a eager kid a few tricks. Joe's no crack shot but he's not bad with a gat, better than Kid Blue for sure.
So he lines up the shot, and breathes before he kills himself from across the field. The body drops, Sarah takes off after Cid and he fishes out the pocket watch because he wants to know what the woman he, old him, fought for looks like. The side where her picture was is blank.
And the future is not quite what it used to be.
1. good men
Jessie was not a good man. But he was one of the better ones in Joe's organization one of the very few Joe genuinely liked and his brains are splattered across the wall of Sarah's living room. Forgive him for being a bit hysterical. Cid is a good kid but christ he can splatter a man into blood and meat and Joe is right in his decision to put a bullet in the kid.
And Sarah has the right to her decision to kill him.
0. it goes like this
Joe shoots a bullet and Sara is suddenly wealthy. Cid earns his scars.