"There will be time to murder and create,/ And time for all the works and days of hands/ That life and drop an question on your plate…In a minute there is time/ For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse." –T.S. Elliot
As a hero, it is not one's job to condemn. A hero, though on many accounts a higher authority on his or her own, is neither a judge nor jury. The job, if at all possible, calls for impartiality, and removal enough from the masses to maintain one's sanity in the onslaught of carnage without losing all feeling for those under one's protection. And this…this is never easy—not even for the Heart of the League.
As he watched Linda Park's lifeless hand fall in slow motion, the nameless addict—holding her asphyxiated corpse against him as if a shield—backed away, eyes shifting manically from one alley wall to the other. "I didn't mean it!" he keened desperately above some inaudible noise to a disembodiment of his own shame and withdrawal; "I didn't mean it! I didn't mean it! No," he cried, dropping her to the ground and ducking as if under attack from above, "no, NO!"
There was nothing else in that moment, and of him nothing remained—any oath of honor, any distance, any decency, was lost when a usual Tuesday night patrol and usual Tuesday night mugging took an ugly turn on this one not-so-usual, frankly irreplaceable woman.
Coming out of shock, Wallace's fists clenched ever so slowly as the criminal continued to scream profanity into the night, his eyes behind white lenses burning green fire as every particle of his being vibrated in outrage and stifled fury. This was not 'Wally' as anyone knew him, but an altered doppelganger of he whose undoubted character reflected the best of humanity.
"No."
Wallace's voice, deadly and uncharacteristically serious, broke on the word, tearing through the little control he had left, and with that, the fabled heart broke. Wallace screamed and, at speed to rival speed force, rained upon the attacker blow after painful blow, until, in seconds, the other man was no more than a shattered, unconscious, blood covered husk on the asphalt. Whether or not he clung to life was indiscernible.
And he didn't care, because she was gone.