A/N: This is the one-shot I promised previously. Enjoy, and keep a tissue box nearby. We'll see if I can make this into a two-shot. I'm still deciding. The first part is actually how I feel, so imagine the narrator's voice saying this as you read.

Music: 'When You're Gone' by Avril Lavigne

Beyond the Bullet

Part One

It's pitiful when young lives were cut so dramatically, and snuffed out like a once burning candle. Death itself is tragic, but when it happens to a young life, it makes you wonder. It makes you wonder a lot. It makes you wonder what happened to lead out to the person's death, and what would be the motive for a heinous crime such as murder? That would lie in the psyche of the perpetrator, now wouldn't it?

Death is sudden, and you never know when it takes to take a life, young or old. Young lives lost are the ones everyone feels deeply. Sure, when Old Grandpa Jim dies peacefully at the age of about a century, you cry, because naturally that's what the body is programmed to do. Not only that, but Grandpa Jim has lived his entire life out already…

When young lives end, it makes you wonder from the victim's shoes. What dreams and aspirations did they have? What were their life's ambitions? That would be another mystery taken to the grave.

All their dreams become snuffed out, and you feel powerless to do anything, so you do the one the thing you can do.

All you can do is cry

This is the power of one bullet…

--

She had tried to save him.

The doctor had tried to save him. He was so young with his whole life ahead of him.

She knew because she was a mother of two, a teenage son of just thirteen starting to hit puberty and a little girl of about a year old, just beginning to say things which the parents and brother hoped to be her first word.

Hell, she tried to save her all of her patients, but as the tears ran down her cheeks, she couldn't help but cry because this patient hit home for her. She had been there, his birth, his shots, his first bout of the chicken pox (he and her son had caught them together), and recently a broken arm.

"Clear!"

"His blood pressure is dropping fast, Dr. Matthews…" a nurse said, as the doctor rubbed the two defibrillators together, charging them. She pressed them to the teenager's chest.

"Clear!"

She was tired, but her eyes determined. She would save him. She had to.

"Please Chris, don't die…please. You can't…" she pleaded to the limp boy in the bed. "Clear!"

"Dr. Matthews, Dr. Reese ran neurological tests on the patient prior. There's no brain activity," a nurse named, Charlene said to the doctor quietly. The tears formed around the doctor's eyes, as the monitor showed a flat green line, and a prolonged beeping noise that never seemed to end.

Quinn's tests didn't lie. From the age of thirteen, she knew that. She sighed sadly, her voice shaking.

"Call the time of death…" she instructed, as a tear rolled out of her eyes…

A knock brought Zoey back to reality as she played with her stethoscope, her brown eyes teary and sad.

"Zoey…" her husband said, and hugged her tightly. She quietly sobbed.

"I tried to save him, Chase. I tried to save him…"

Chase soothed her, feeling a bit teary himself. He swallowed a giant lump forming his throat.

"I know. I know you did…"

Zoey pulled away, sniffling and wiped at her eyes, "Where are Ellie and Jake?"

"Logan has Ellie right now. Jake is waiting for us at home. He knew something happened at school but he doesn't know because he's been upstairs doing homework…" Chase explained. He sighed, running a hand through his hair. "…he'll be so crushed when he finds out."

"How are we going to tell him?"

"Don't worry. We'll tell him together…" Chase reassured, although a great apprehensiveness was evident on his face.

--

Lola and Michael had been waiting.

All this waiting would make them crazy, and if not anything else.

How could this have happened? Chris was the joy of their lives, the one reason for their living. Despite his attempts to become a teenager, he was still the same baby they brought home from the hospital thirteen years ago.

Lola and Michael saw Zoey and Chase walk up to them, and the pair rushed up to them, desperate for answers. Zoey could only stare at the ground, as sobs racked her body. Chase supported his distraught wife.

"Zoey, please…" Michael pleaded softly. He let out a shaky breath. "We just need to know if Chris is going to recover."

"Zoey, please…" Lola sobbed. "You're a mother too. If anything happened to Jake or Ellie, I'd tell you, so please… Is Chris going to be okay?"

"I'm so sorry…" the blonde sobbed, shaking her head. "I tried… believe me, I tried…"

"Why are you talking in past tense?" Lola screamed, as fear rose in her chest. Zoey looked up meet Lola's heartbroken eyes, and Michael's pained expression.

"Chris…is gone… The bleeding was too much. There was no brain activity. I feel like a failure…" she answered, sobbing. "Chris passed away…"

Lola's heart broke. The moment her heart broke could be caught. Her baby. Her only son was gone.

Not Christopher.

She refused to believe that.

Not her baby…

"NO! NO! Chris isn't dead! No…" she collapsed onto the waiting room floor in a fit of sobs, in Chase's arms. Michael looked into the room where his son lay there. He was so still, so pale. Michael wanted nothing more than to switch places with his son. He wanted to make all of the pain he had endured go away, and just absorb it.

Just take everything in, and feel what Christopher was feeling.

Questions zoomed through his mind. What the hell made Christopher a target? Why would they lure him to the most secluded area in the school, and shoot him point blank in the chest, piercing his aorta?

It didn't matter, but Chris wasn't coming back.

"Michael…"

There was Quinn, and the tears rolled out of her brown eyes.

"I lost my son, Quinn. I lost him…" he said over and over as he tried to be strong. It just hurt. It hurt too damn much. Quinn wrapped her arms around her arms around him. She was a mother and now that her daughter Jackie was fourteen, Quinn couldn't help but be scared. Logan and Quinn were the proud parents of two daughters, Jackie, and thirteen-year-old, Savannah.

"It's okay, Michael," she said, gently. "Let it out…"

Fact of the matter was his son was murdered.

"I'll kill the bastards who did this…" Michael said, his voice pained and riddled with hurt. "I'll kill them…"

It was then that his eyes filled up with tears, and a solitary one rolled down his cheek…

--

Savannah Reese was a typical girl of thirteen. A typical girl of thirteen that hated having her things moved around, and her possessions moved from the original spot. Today would have been a typical day if she had gone to school. She had a dentist appointment to fill in a cavity. As she got the filling, Savannah screamed bloody murder.

"Jaacckkiiee! How many times have I told you not to touch my stuff?" she yelled angrily, as she bounded down the hall. Jacqueline Reese was Savannah's older sister, only by a year. The girls were both smart, but competitive with each other, especially when it came to grades. Jackie had a 4.5 GPA because of her AP class, while Savannah came out on top with a GPA of 4.7. She took Advanced Placement classes as well. Jackie was too busy playing with Ellie to care. "Jackie!"

"What?" the fourteen-year-old retorted in a harsh whisper. She pointed to Ellie, who was starting to fall asleep on her bed, her green eyes usually curious, now tired. "Can't you see I'm busy?"

"Doesn't mean you can go into my closet whenever you don't have something that doesn't match!" Savannah half yelled, and half whispered at the same time.

Ellie let out a little yawn, before she snuggled into Jackie's pillow, and within thirty seconds she was asleep. Savannah angrily gestured to the shirt she found at the bottom of her closet when it was neatly folded this morning.

"If you don't mind, I have work to do, okay? Go find Daddy and cry over your shirt to him. It just so happens to go with my shoes, so deal…" Jackie vaguely explained and closed the door. It was clear that Jackie was more Logan than Quinn. "Goodnight, baby sister…"

"Oh, for fuck's sake…" the younger sibling muttered under her breath. She sighed angrily, and stomped over to Logan's study, but when she walked in, her anger ebbed for her sister's condescending attitude, and soon she was concerned. Savannah found Logan staring out the window, in total silence. Both of his daughters knew this. She tentatively walked in, waving a hand in her dad's face. "Yoo-hoo, anyone home?"

"Oh, hey Savannah. Just the person I've been waiting to see…"

"Whatever it is, it's all Jackie's fault. She did it. I saw her do it!"

"Wait, what?" he asked, confused. "…no. You're not in trouble. Something happened, okay? Zoey, Chase, Lola, Michael and your mother are at the hospital."

"Well, did Mom call you? And why's everyone down there?" she questioned, slightly panicked. "What happened?"

Silence.

He was trying to run this, over and over in his head, and something wouldn't allow him to process it.

"Dad, you're scaring me! Tell me!" Savannah pleaded. Okay, process of elimination started to kick in. Savannah knew Jake wasn't in school today either, so… Chris! She was almost afraid to ask. "Daddy, did something happen to Chris today?"

Savannah, Jake, Christopher were all best friends, growing up as babies because they were born within months of each other. Savannah was the logical fashionista, Jake was the typical boy-next-door who was likeable to everyone he met (with bad hand-eye co-ordination but was a freakishly talented pitcher, striking majority of the batters), and Christopher was the goof, the comedian, the one they could go to for a good laugh.

…and there was Savannah's budding crush on Jake. Savannah liked Jake because he was sweet, and also his personality but she knew he didn't like her back, so she made up her mind to play it off, but secretly crush on him from afar.

"Yeah," he answered, meeting his daughter's eyes. He sighed. "…there was a shooting at your school."

Shooting?

"What?" Savannah questioned, her eyes becoming worried and confused with every passing minute. "I don't get it. A shooting? As in someone bringing a gun to school and shooting up to the place?"

"Exactly, and someone died because of it…"

Savannah's head filled with the possibilities who could have died, when she knew so many people at her school. Sure, there were rivalries but she wouldn't even wish death on her own enemy.

She found herself tearing up, as if her subconscious already knew who the victim was…

"Who died?" she forced herself to ask.

"Sweetie, I'm so sorry," Logan said, genuinely concerned and apologetic. He knew if something like that were to happen to him, he would be a wreck.

"Why are you apologizing? Tell me… who died?" she questioned, as tears formed around the corners of her eyes. The name Logan said made Savannah's heart stop for what seemed like forever…

"Chris…"

A/N: I've decided to make this a two-shot because it'll be too long as a one-shot. I hope it was to your liking. For Part Two, I'll include a couple flashbacks of Christopher's life, and we also get to meet Chase and Zoey's son, Jake. As mentioned, I'll go away at the end of the month, so I'll try to get the second and last part up when exams ease up. Review: Like A Chameleon, Letters To You, and Things I Will Not Do when you're done reviewing this.

I worked hard on this, so please tell me my work is not in vain.

Excuse any grammatical and spelling error you might see. I'm sleepy.

Review!

Later days,

-Erika

PS. I'm also thinking of a Rebecca/Vince Blake one-shot. Should I do it? I don't if it's just me, but I can so picture them together. Rebecca hates Zoey, Vince hates Chase… get it?

Tell me if I should write it. The title is called Mutual Hate. Look out for that sometime later.