A/N: violence and angst and psychoses, oh my! Keep up the reviews, please!

Don dropped the hammer, narrowly missing his foot, and stumbled back toward the kitchen, cursing all the way. Terry's CD had vastly improved his vocabulary, if nothing else. He pulled open the refrigerator, but couldn't figure out how to get the ice cubes out of their tray one-handed. In the end, he just held the whole tray over his hand. Youch! He shook off the headphones, letting them dangle on their cord, and flexed his hand. Better. He'd almost forgotten the bungled catch that had dislocated his thumb six years ago, but he remembered it really well now!

Never, in all his years of baseball, had Don been the top hitter on his team. There was always some 230-pound behemoth edging him out. Some years, there was a stringy little outfielder at the opposite end of the spectrum who kept him from being the fastest, too. What had made him good—almost good enough—was a knack he had for seeing the whole field at once. In college, his teammates had called it Eppes Instant Replay. He could parse out the confusing onslaught of sense information, separating sound a bat made connecting with the ball from the way that hit felt in your shoulders, using both to figure where the ball would go. That let him hit those confidence-building doubles and triples that cleared the bases for bigger guys. Occasionally, it let him beat Charlie at chess. He knew when to run, when to steal, when to stay the hell put. In high school, kids had called him Mama's Boy, which had enraged Charlie until Don explained it was a compliment, sort of: when the going got tough, he always ran home. Safe.

Standing at the table with the ice melting over his hand, Don had a flash of instant replay. Just as he'd swung the hammer, he'd moved his hand into its path. Only, in the slow-motion clarity of his mind's eye, it wasn't his hand that moved, it was the door beneath it. And the door had moved because that kid, Charlie's student, had jogged it gently with his foot. Had stood there with his schoolbooks and that humble student innocence and had been unable to resist causing just a little pain.

Again, a tiny movement in the corner of his vision. This time, Don knew enough to get out of the way, knew he'd left the front door open behind him, knew he did not want to be caught in the small, crowded kitchen. Back door, he thought. He thought, find Charlie. He was brought up short for just a second as the headphones, still attached to the CD player at his belt, caught in the ladder-backed kitchen chair. And in that second, something slammed into the side of his head and brought an end to all his thoughts.