Fate's Case (a Castle Fan Fiction)

Letting Go, Moving On

Glass shattered, covering the ground and giving way for the bullet. Feeling myself fall, feeling arms fly around me, feeling a body on top of me, I smelled the blood in the air. My eyes were shut, my body frozen, and my head thought with extreme pace. Slowly, I checked myself. Opening one eye at a time, I began to realize that the only source of pain I felt was the pain of the impact I'd just felt. On my side, I found myself held to the ground by an all too familiar face.

His blond hair and light skin were practically replicated from my dream. He dawned a pair of dark blue jeans and a leather jacket over a white T-shirt, even in the middle of summer. The one thing he didn't have was a cane. I used only a single, quiet word to express my awe. "Sam?"

He didn't hear me, and stood, a gun pointed out the window as he scanned the roofs of the surrounding buildings. They must have been clear by now, since there were no more shots. Espo ran in and slid next to me. "Kris, Kris, are you hurt?"

"No, I'm fine. Max? Where's Max?" looking behind me, I saw a young boy standing the same state of shock I'd been in when my brother and father were shot. He didn't cry and he didn't hide; he simply stood and looked out the window. "Max, are you alright?"

He didn't move. I couldn't see anything on him that suggested he was hurt. There was no blood, no tears, nothing. I pulled myself up to stand and inch to him. He didn't say anything and simply looked out the window. "Is everyone alright?" The boy asked from the window as he replaced his gun in his pants.

Espo got suspicious almost immediately, "Who the hell are you? What the hell do you have a gun for? Are you even old enough to have that thing" I understood the tense words, honestly, but I just wanted to thank him for saving my life. I mean, he saved my life, which... could only make things worse in the long run.

I mean, this guy was planning on tormenting me for fifteen years. I can't imagine it would end here. Not so easily. No, this would only piss him off. God, damn it! Why could I have just been shot and killed? Why?! It would have kept a whole city from being on the list of targets he could use to hurt me!

"Look, dude, I think you're barking at the wrong guy. No offence, but I just saved your girl here and you didn't. Now, if you want to talk about this, I think we need to go somewhere a little more private. Because Julia, Max and I all have something in common and I don't think you want our faces in the news," the kid answered. He knew my name. What the hell was going on?

 I still smelled blood lingering in the air. Checking myself, I was fine. Esposito was untouched, Max was fine, and when I scanned Sam, he seemed fine. "Guys, do you smell that?"

"You mean the stink of this guy's story? Yeah, I smell it. It smells like coward and liar," Espo was offended simply because the kid saved me and he didn't. Pride wounded men in general were not happy guys. I swear, they think we over react, but the minute they aren't the hero their egos are damaged twenty fold.

The boy said, "No, she means the blood. I smell it too. No one hurt?" He checked us all, just as I had checked them, but oddly enough, he took a second look at me. When he stopped, he crept toward me, getting closer and closer. Within three long steps he was right next to me. That was when he did something even more odd. With his hands now planted on my hips, he spun me around and placed a hand on my back. My body tingled.

"Your back is really badly cut. Hang on a second, I'm going to lift your shirt to see if I can get a better look at the wound," he said as he eased his hand to hold my shirt and ease it up. As he lifted the cloth on my back the front of the shirt the front rolled too, and I could see the look on Esposito's reaction to the scars that seemed even more present through the fresh bruising. "It looks like glass caused this. How did you get glass in your back?"