68. Hero

It was as if time stood still for a moment. A hiccup. A frozen moment, a movie, paused. For the briefest of instances, Sam could see everything with absolute clarity. The counter. The woman behind it, just about to bring her hand to her face. Sam noticed how her mascara had run down her cheek. She had been crying, was still crying. Crybaby, Sam thought. She had time to think that, easily. Because time had stopped.

The tall man standing a little bit to the left was still wearing the ski mask. She could see his eyes, the reflection of the ceiling lamps in them. She couldn't see the rest of his face, wouldn't be able to tell the police what he looked like afterwards, when everything was over and the man had fled. She committed him to memory as he was standing there, holding the gun, his index finger tensing around the trigger, just about to shoot somebody to get the bank personnel to move, to give him the money, his money. The woman behind the counter had tried to explain to him that the money was locked away, that there was a time lock, that they couldn't get to it, but he just wouldn't, couldn't listen. He set an example.

In the weeks that followed the shooting, Sam tried to explain what it was that Danny did. She wanted them to know, wanted them to understand, desperately wanted them to appreciate the sacrifice he made. Because it had been a stupid way to go, there should have been no way for Danny to get shot. He could have gone intangible. No gun should ever have been able to take him down. Ghost weapons, yes. Ghosts, shooting at him, making him crash into buildings with a force that would have been fatal to a normal human being. Would have been fatal to Danny if he had been human at the time. His ghost form was virtually indestructible.

Even when he was human, he could use some of his powers. Go invisible. Shoot ghost rays. Go intangible. Those powers should have saved him. They didn't.

Because right behind him, standing in the line of fire, there was a man in a dark blue suit and wearing a ridiculous pink tie, an innocent bystander like the rest of them, standing frozen on the spot. In that fraction of a second, that fraction in which time had stopped, Danny had weighed his options. Sam had seen it in his eyes, first the terror, then the realization, and finally the acceptance. He couldn't go intangible. The man behind him would be hit. He'd take the bullet himself.

And he died.

Time started again. The man with the ski mask seemed to hesitate, stunned at what he had done. Danny hit the floor. Sam screamed, but she couldn't hear herself screaming. And when she rushed forward to Danny's side, knelt down next to him and placed her hands on his chest in a vain attempt to stop the bleeding, the robber fled. He took no money with him. The whole exercise had been pointless. A pointless shooting. A pointless death.

And when Sam cradled her best friend's head, called his name, tried to find life in those lifeless blue eyes, she knew the man that had been standing behind Danny would never know what he had done for him. And all the while she was screaming at the still form on the floor that he had been stupid, that he deserved to live, that he had had no right to leave her alone, why, why, why him and not the other guy, she knew he disagreed.

Because saving people was what he did. And nobody would know his true heroism.


Ew. That was all too depressing. I promise, something fluffy or at least not as dreary next time :)