Author's Note: No idea where this one came from and I wasn't planning on posting it until I was threatened...well, not threatened exactly, but she's just had surgery so this is for Ary :)
Rating: T for violence.
Disclaimer: Not mine, just borrowing.
Summary: He thought he knew who he was. He was wrong.
You Think You Know
He'd always known who he was.
He was his father's son: born to protect and serve. He was his mother's son: born to care, sometimes too much.
He played by the rules but lived by the maxim that they were for the guidance of wisemen and the obeyance of fools.
He fought for what was right. He enjoyed putting the bad guys behind bars.
He loved being a cop.
He loved the camaraderie, the adrenalin rush, the sense of being part of something that made a difference.
He was passionate about hockey and the Rangers in particular. Nights when they were playing and he was working he thanked the lord for cell phones and text update services and TIVO.
He enjoyed nights out with friends, playing pool, drinking Guinness and laughing.
He liked his food. As a boy he had spent hours with his mother in the kitchen learning to cook, ignoring the taunts of his older brother that 'only girls cook'. Now when he cooked it bought her to life again.
He was a fiercely loyal friend as Danny Messer knew only too well.
He loved the company of women; their smell, their laughter, their softness, their strength.
He'd been forced to take a human life but never when there was a choice and never without feeling a sense of horror, of disgust, of shame at having to be responsible for a life coming to a violent end.
He didn't believe in taking the law into his own hands. It might not be a perfect system but it was the one he'd sworn to uphold. He took that oath seriously.
But then things had turned on their head.
A normal day.
A case like a thousand other cases.
A trip to speak to a witness that had turned into a nightmare.
A .37 Magnum pointed at his head; someone with nothing to lose with their finger on the trigger.
Forced to stand and watch while a woman he cared deeply for was violated.
Impotent, useless, scared. Feelings that were subsumed by a rage that consumed him, wiping away all rational thought; that wiped away years of training and experience.
A rage that, when attention was distracted by the ripping of fabric and the revealing of curves, propelled him forward, uncaring of his safety.
A struggle.
A shot.
Another shot.
The gun was free and miraculously no-one was hit.
Now he was pointing the gun, the barrel almost resting against an uncaring forehead.
Now his finger was trembling on the trigger.
No threat any more, his adversary stood laughing at him. Laughing at her.
He nearly stopped himself.
She was huddled on the floor, arms wrapped around herself, rocking back and forth, silent in her anguish.
The laughter grew louder, ended by the deafening sound of the gun discharging and brains splattering against the wall.
He had thought he knew who he was.
But who was he now?
What was he now?
