chapter seventy three

death and all his friends.season six, episode twenty four.

please refer back to the trigger warnings in the previous chapters

"."

He spit out her name as if it were poison on his tongue.

And perhaps it was, in a way. It certainly pained him to say it, though, not as much as it pained her to hear it spew from his lips like venom. He watched her closely, each of her minuscule movements accompanied by a pronounced tremble of his gun. Every time, it made her flinch more than the last, and he almost felt guilty. But she deservedit, didn't she? She to be at the mercy of his hands, because his wifehad been at the mercy of .

He could have shot her right then, no warning, not even a chance for her to choose her last words. He could have cocked the gun and pulled the trigger in quick succession, not allowing her so much as a hail mary or a prayer. He could have, but Gary much preferred to relish in it, instead. .

Cassie knew he wouldn't let her go peacefully.

She could feel it, the rage steaming from his ears, the hurt and the regret swimming behind his eyes. She could feel the anger radiating off of him as if a hot burst of energy were charging inside of his chest, patiently waiting for the right time to explode. She could feel his .

She opened her mouth to speak, only to close it mere seconds later. Because really, what could she possibly say that would make him change his mind? ! Both were objectively , but neither of them would work. Cassie knew better than to think that they would.

"This is about your wife."

Her voice was, shockingly enough to both herself the man pointing a gun at her head, entirely steady. It was a bit unnerving, in a way, because thatmeant she'd it. Accepted her untimely fate.

But Gary didn't want her to it, he wanted her to .

"You doctors, you... you ... you're all the ." His voice was strong, , everything she'd expect from an old white guy who had issues with his masculinity. She hadn't even saidanything about being a surgeon, and for half a second, she wondered if he'd practiced his little speech in the mirror that morning. "All of you people are , you... you let people and then call yourselves a . And ... you're no different than the rest of them."

He wasn't wrong.

In fact, Cassie was the exact as the rest of them. She was born, grew up, went to the same schools, learned the same things, took the same exams. She woke up that morning, went about her life as usual, and ended up stuck in a nightmare in which the people she loved, the people she cherished, the people she were bleeding out right in front of her.

They were the same, now, because of .

"And are?"

It was impulsive, and it was crass, but if Cassie was going to die, there wasn't a chance in she'd go out like a fucking .

Gary's eyes narrowed into slits, and she could see the way he latched onto the pistol even tighter. He couldn't believe her tone, her when was the one with the power. was the one she was supposed to be afraid of. She wasn't supposed to , she was supposed to .

"?"

"Did you know that in over ninety-five percent of mass shootings, the perpetrators are male?" As she cited off the statistics, it occurred to Cassie that perhaps should be considered a trauma response, as well.  "I mean, , most people don't choose to shoot up a hospital, so you get points for originality, but at the end of the day, over fifty percent of shooters are white, and seventy-four percent use handguns, like the one you're pointing at me right now. You say all the same, but you're no different."

He didn't respond, but he didn't put down the gun, either. Truthfully, she was shocked he didn't shoot her right then and there.

The longer Cassie stared down the barrel of the gun, the faster her chest heaved up and down, her weighted breath the only sound that either of the two could hear. Her face flushed, blood draining down into her heart, her eyes growing wider and wider each second he refused to respond. . It was something she'd been well acquainted with her entire life, but that she felt an immense supply of over the past few hours, now more than ever.

(Cassie wasn't afraid to die, but for some reason, her body was trying to make her that she was.)

"You don't know ," Gary spit out, looking her up and down as if the very sight of her disgusted him. "You're too young, you're a ."

"And yet, you're about to kill me."

When she said it out loud, something shifted.

It was funny, really, the way she didn't understand how much she wanted to live, until she no longer had the option to.

It all made sense, now. People's fear of death, their fear of the . Their fear of god, the fear that singlehandedly bound their arms behind their back and forced them into the submission of religion. The kids who screamed when they heard a monster in their closet, and their parents who were secretly scared too, but checked behind the doors anyway. The people begging for their lives, begging to see their loved ones again, their parents, their spouse, their child, not because they wanted to say goodbye, but because they .

.

When she left the office, she told Mark she'd come back to him. When George left for Iraq, he told the same thing, and then he . That pain, that suffering, that endless bout of grief that up and changed her entire world for the worse, was what Mark would feel if she didn't return. The heartbreak, the anguish, the never ending feeling that the world would be better off without him, everything felt when George died, just She would be the one who got killed, but would be the one who was dead inside.