PREFACE
-Notes added 01/28/2011-

What is a gun? The answer seems simple. A hollow metal tube and a handle, it contains projectiles that will strike out once employed. There are a thousand and one different ways to describe one. You could wax poetic over free will and self-determination, or sing the dirges of the billions who've died under one. It can be an implement of justice or a harbinger of doom, sometimes both at the same time.

What it boils down to, however, is simple. The gun is an expression of will, it is an agent to administering the wielder's will, and a tool. It can be used to protect or coerce, control or free, but it is never anything more than the one who employs it.

It is a tool to project violence.

Robert Heinlein said in his novel "Starship Troopers": "Anyone who clings to the historically untrue-and-thoroughly immoral doctrine that violence never solves anything I would advise to conjure up the ghosts of Napoleon Bonaparte and the Duke of Wellington and let them debate it. The ghost of Hitler would referee. Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor; and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst."

French king Louis XIV famously had engraved the Latin phrase "ultima ratio regum" on several cannons during his reign. The phrase translates into English as "the last argument of kings".

In the end of all things, when the gun comes out, nothing remains the same. In our societies the gun is the ultimate escalation, and for the common man there can be no greater argument.

To bring things around to Eureka, town sheriff Jack Carter hardly ever has to use his gun to solve problems, because the gun really is the ultimate solution. In most cases and with the support of his friends and fellows, he can handle the issue of the week through discussion, or an exhibition of personal bravery, or sometimes just plain dumb luck. Sometimes though, there's no other choice, even in America's smartest little town.

When he must use his gun, will things change forever? Can he, or anyone else, ever go home again?

Rating: M (for content, specifically violence and language, and for adult situations involving violation of victims to various degrees.)
Chronology: Post season 4, episode 9 "I'll Be Seeing You." Spoilers throughout. "O Little Town" is assumed to be a fable.
Full tags: Dark, Death, Angst, Hurt/Comfort.

THE WAY OF THE GUN
Chapter 1

Sheriff Jack Carter

I love comic books. In comic books you can bring the dead back to life, given the right circumstances. Good God, how I wish my life were one sometimes.

"Pilar, honey." I pleaded, "Put down the gun!" My own gun was out of the holster now, remembered reflexes and endless training keeping it ready, but clear of any immediate targets. A two-handed grip, both arms taut but not locked, aiming slightly to the side, legs balanced and unlocked, strong side slightly forward. Just the way they train you to be ready to kill someone.

Once, back before I'd traded the marshal's badge for the sheriff's, I'd had to track a perpetrator down to Oklahoma. Among other things he was a PCP addict and generally a real mean son of a bitch. He'd taken to beating people with any handy implement while in his drug fueled rages and taking what he wanted, in one case it was just a pack of cigarettes. That he was also an escapee and a multiple-state offender meant that it was me on his trail, not the local Barney Fife. I just never expected to have to do the same thing in Eureka.

The girl glared at me with a dazed and manic expression. She was a mere slip of a little thing. Tall, to be sure, but slender and normally very pretty. Now, her usually styled soft brown hair was in disarray, knotted and tangled. Her makeup, usually carefully attended to, was smeared and mussed, and clear tear tracks were visible through its ruin. Beyond that, it was obvious she was under some form of influence, that she was holding Tom Baxter's throat with one claw-like hand at the end of an arm with a visibly dislocated shoulder and not screaming in agony…

Where the hell had she gotten a gun?

Said gun, heavy and black and looking two sizes too large for her slender hands, was stuck underneath Doctor Tom Baxter's chin. If it went off right now he'd loose half his face. Just like Oklahoma…

Russel Klein had been the perp's name. Why I remembered it so well just at that moment I'll never be able to tell, it was just there. Some part of my brain pulling up the relevant facts. Height 6'3", 270 lbs. Prison gang member, multiple life sentences. One of those assholes that wants to be a soldier for all the wrong reasons, so he becomes a soldier of another sort. Dead mom, unknown dad, dead sister. He'd killed his own wife.

It had been dark, just around twilight then, and I'd found him at an old house that had once belonged to his deceased mother, that he'd lived in as a kid. A U.S. Marshal's job, especially one in the Investigations Operations division, is to track and apprehend fugitives either with teams of other marshals or at the head of a local task force. I'd been good at the job, but it's one that grinds you down. The chances that Klein would be there had been slim to none. Yeah, right.

The altercation had gone from bad to worse and it'd taken half a clip to put him down. He'd surprised me, not the first time that had happened, but thankfully not the last. The house had been dark and quiet, and the large man suddenly looming up with a blood encrusted baseball bat had been a shock. That was the only other time in my life I'd seen eyes like Pilar's. Not even the crazy glares during that whole anger-ray-thing had approached this.

We were standing in the living room of Doctor Baxter's house, and I had arrived too late. The sadly deflated forms of his dead wife and daughter, one of Pilar's classmates, lay in the room. The lights were crazy, with the reading lamp by the easy chair the pair stood by having been knocked to the floor. Other lights in the living room were enough to let me see faces. Baxter was in shock.

He was a tall man, himself. Spare framed and thin, but fit. His dark brown hair was trimmed short, as usual. I couldn't see his eyes because he had them closed and his mouth moved just a little, as if he were praying or quietly pleading. Normally you'd look at the man and use words like aloof and cold fish, or driven and self-centered. Tonight he just looked scared half to death. A generally loveless man suddenly realizing he loves his life a great deal more than he thought he did.

I desperately prayed for someone, anyone, to respond to the call! But my deputy, Andy, was still en route. Jo Lupo, head of security for Global Dynamics, was even farther away. The Baxter home is one of those on the outside of town, out of the urbanized center with neighbors no closer than a quarter mile each. No help would come in time, I could feel it.

She looked me dead in the eyes, and the manic grimace faltered. For a brief moment the assertive but somewhat clumsy girl who'd been my daughter's companion for nearly three years, and frequent guest at my own dinner table, was back. Her eyes tracked to the gun in her hand, shell-shocked, and her mouth quirked, as though she had seven or eight things to say and none of them would come out. "What... what am I..." was all that came out. She blinked several times and her jaw worked as if her face were unfamiliar.

"Pilar," I said, trying to sound as calming as I could, taking one hand off my gun to hold up in a palm-forward 'stop' gesture. "Pilar, put down the gun! You don't want to do this. Just put it down and we can figure out-"

"No!" she screamed, the manic rage pouring back, filling her like some insane energy, as though there was a physical difference between the girl I knew and whatever this was. "No! You'll ruin everything!" she seethed, her voice a rough growl.

There's a point, when you're looking someone in the eye, when your trained well enough, when you've done this shit before, that you know that the decision has been made. Talking is done, action has to happen. The key in any situation like this one is to be ready to take action in a heartbeat or less, yourself. Jo's fond of quoting one of her old sensei about that seven heartbeats bushido crap, but it's bluster. In reality you have to be able to commit with a split second, because otherwise someone else may die.

Don't get me wrong, Jo's amazing at what she does. She's the quintessential tough chick. Rock hard and ice cold when the action is on, but being a cop is different from being a soldier.

Pilar's eyes hardened and she ground against Baxter like this was some perverse sex act. Then she stiffened and relaxed briefly and whispered in his ear "Fuck you!".

His eyes suddenly snapped open, the look of quiet, closed fear he'd held replaced suddenly with utter shock and disbelief. Her gun arm tensed. The signal! The moment of truth. Reflexes... God damn reflexes...

They train you how to kill, but call it saving lives. They teach you how to stand, how to pull the trigger, how to be ready, but they don't teach you about how to deal with what you've done. No one can. You have to learn that one yourself.

My gun roared.

Tom Baxter stood still, still frozen in horrified shock, splattered liberally in blood. Urine flow stained his gray work trousers, its odor lost in the overpowering burning smolder of cordite.

Pilar Alexandria Graham's corpse lay stretched out on the ground, nerve reactions twitching the body, a hole from a .40 caliber hollow-point round beneath her right eye, and very little of the back of her head remaining.

Blood and... other things... were all over that side of the room.

My God...

Disclaimer: I do not own Eureka or any of the characters or situations, I'm just playing around in their universe for fun and an educational experience.

Author's Notes: Having finished the story last night, I've decided to run back through and edit some things to clean up issues for potential readers and myself. I've had a number of situations with dropped names and wrong words, so I'm getting to these as I can. There are 20 chapters and I don't reveal everything relevant in one chapter all in that chapter, so if you're confused later on or at a later date, the answer is hinted at probably a chapter or a few ahead of where you're reading. Thank you for reading and please review if you haven't already.

-Edited 01/29/2011