Disclaimer: Not mine. Takes place after Mercy.
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"What if it was your daughter? What would you do?"It was swimming around his head, had been all night. He could picture them standing on the courthouse steps, him congratulating her and her feeling like crap about convicting the mother. The case had started to bother him immediately after he head the child had Tay-Sachs. He knew what Tay-Sachs did, knew the suffering that entailed. When he was about seven, a family down the street had a baby and by the time he was ten, it was dead. His mother had made him walk down and offer his condolences, though he hadn't even really known the child. He still remembered the baby things strewn about the house, the mother was completely numb, no tears, nothing. Just blank. At the time, he had thought it strange, shouldn't she be crying? But she wasn't, she was just a quiet, small, numb woman who had no idea what she was going to do with herself. He hadn't known all that until much later, when he found it in someone he loved and cared about. The same numbness that never really made any sense, no matter what age you experienced it at.
Course, it would have been nice if someone could have explained the whole matter when he was ten, even if it might have been beyond his comprehension.
Killing a child, a defenseless, innocent child was always wrong in his book. He didn't care if the child was suffering, they couldn't speak for themselves. If an adult chose to kill himself, well, all right, he could think it through and knew he had options if he so chose. But killing a child to save them the suffering... they didn't know the options. They couldn't really think it through. He doubted they even understood it. He wasn't sure he understood it sometimes.
Then, when he had congratulated the counselor on her win, she had insisted it wasn't right. She had turned the mother into a whore, thus winning her case. But she argued her case well, presented the facts, persuaded the jury to convict the mother who was trying to save her daughter excruciating future pain, or at least that's what her defense was. It was won fairly and justice had been served. Then she had asked him that question. "What if it was your daughter? What would you have done?" He had stared at her a moment, knowing full well what his answer would be and knowing that it would be proving her point. Knowing that he would most likely do everything in his power to stop his child's suffering. After all, what parent can bear to see their child in such pain? Certainly any parent with a heart would feel their child's pain. It was part of being a parent. You saved your child from as much hurt and evil as possible, mentally and physically. If you couldn't take away their pain, and had to witness it, a little piece of you died. Even without being a parent, he knew that much. You took your child's suffering upon yourself. End of story.
"What would you have done?"
"Whatever I could."
