Disclaimer: Spoilers only for Time Stands Still. Gets kinda gory, as well, but in my opinion, not overly or overtly so.
A/N: I began writing this story after a few viewings of Time Stands Still, when I came to realize that something went terribly unsaid in the episode. This story itself sort of toys with an minor idea I'm not really sure anyone will get it. Hell, I don't effing get it. But without further explanation of the story, yeah, this is another one of those fics I'm not sure I like, because it comes outta absolutely nowhere and I don't intend to every really finish and/or post it. But then I get to wondering if anyone would like it, and my optimism gets the best of me. So um, prove my efforts not wasted? Right. Onto the story.
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I felt my knees go weak and buckle beneath me. I reached to Toby on my left because I couldn't stand, or because if I didn't hold onto something, I thought I would fall right through the earth and never stop falling. I had never sobbed so loud, I had never breathed so heavy. I felt like if I didn't breathe that heavy, I would stop completely. I suddenly felt light-headed. I struggled to remain on my feet, grasping onto Toby beside me. He was silent. Fear had dripped from every pore since we saw people running for the door, but we continued making it, long after the deafening shot had sounded. It drained us of every other emotion. All we wanted was to stand there and for this all to have never happened. To blink and wake up in our warm, comfortable beds, lying serenely in the dawn's filtered sunlight. All I could think was, I could've avoided this, all I had to do was walk a different path.
I glanced at Toby. His eyes were closed. It was unbearably unfitting. The scene was right in front of us and we couldn't bear it, we couldn't even look. Reality was literally in front of our eyes, and we could do nothing more than stand there and try not to fall under its pressure, avoid shifting our eyes in that direction at all costs. I was so beyond the tears that had begun to form when the gun was pointed at me. Tears were for mourning and sadness. I was afraid. I was terrified. I was paralyzed. Even these teardrops were stuck in their places.
There was barely a time when I considered Toby a good friend of mine. He was always just there, JT's sidekick, someone who hung around. He was always just there. But at this point, he was all there was in the world. I was drowning slowly in this trauma, and I inevitably would, but without him, there was no hope of salvation. I clung to him helplessly.
"Emma?" I squeezed my eyelids shut tightly. My name in this moment was something distant and foreign. I felt nameless. Like the world around me was waiting to implode into something new, and we stood there, awaiting its arrival in commemorative silence. "Emma, Toby?" You can't make me look, I don't want to see it--it, whatever it may be. I heard someone struggling across the floor. It was too much. I didn't want to know. My eyes flickered open involuntarily and there was Sean, sitting on the floor, leaning against the locker, his chest heaving up and down slowly. The pained look on his face, his hand clutching his arm. There was red. Smeared from his hand. All over his arm. All over his hand. All over his shirt. My eyes suddenly jumped to everywhere there was red. From the stains on Sean's shirt to the pool on the linoleum floor to... Rick.
His body lay there. A couple feet away from Sean. His crisp collared shirt, stained with deep red blood and opaque yellow paint. His wet hair dangling across his face. His glasses, broken. His face... oh, God. God. I choked on my own breath. His face was frozen. His face was stuck in a position of shock and guilt and horror and nothingness. His skin was already drained of its color, of the vibrancy of the moment just a few hours ago, his moment of glory finally arriving after months of torture. Between him and Sean lay the gun. It looked unbearably innocent when it wasn't in the hands of a murderer, when it was what it was and nothing more. When it wasn't what had cost him his life.
I fell to the floor as the tears fell, too. Only a few hours before this he had kissed me. He was alive and well and distraught but I could've handled things differently. This didn't have to happen. This didn't happen. This was a dream, a nightmare, and I would wake up and be haunted by it for the rest of the day, but it certainly was not reality and I would be over it by tomorrow. Maybe I would forget this dream entirely. I don't remember if I sobbed loudly or whether I cried to myself, but I remember my face feeling soaked, saturated in warm salt-water. I didn't cry for Toby, or for Sean, or for myself. I didn't cry for Rick. I cried for the reality. From newspaper headlines I could read in my head, to the terrified faces of kids who would have to walk these hallways again someday. Life would go on, but somehow, in this moment, I wasn't sure I wanted it to.