Chapter Text
The thing about it was that it felt so very right. Yes, sure, okay, killing people wasn’t supposed to feel right, but it did, it always did. It felt good, it felt natural. The weight of the gun in his hand was soothing, the cool feel of the metal was like home. It was safe.
It wasn’t about the power, and it certainly had nothing to do with getting attention. The less he had of that the better. No, no it wasn’t that he felt he was any better than the people he shot. He was, after all, a killer just like they were. He didn’t consider himself a vigilante, he couldn't really, seeing as vigilantes weren't generally sponsored. He wasn’t justice, or vengeance, or good, or bad, he just was. He was the man who felt good with his gun in his hand and his bullet in another man’s head. And he was good at it--had been, for a very long time.
The first time he’d held a gun he was eleven years old, the first bullet he’d fired had earned him his first corpse. He’d never felt so calm in all his life.
But, he also loved the rush of saving a life. It was different than the cool, collected relief of bagging a killer. Saving someone, massaging their heart back to life, removing the shrapnel from their torso, stitching up the jagged wounds of combat, that was different. It was a challenge.
Sure, killing people felt right, it dampened the nightmares and brought on calm, but killing was easy. Saving a life: that was hard. Putting a person back together was terrifyingly difficult and if he emerged from the surgery successful it brought on a surge of pride and adrenaline and the feeling that maybe, just maybe, he’d done something good, he’d done something right.
He’d been fifteen the first time he saved a life. A man in some restaurant had been choking on a rare bit of steak and he’d run across the restaurant floor, knocking over a waiter, and reached the man in time to perform the Heimlich maneuver. He never even learned the man’s name, but he remembered the high of saving a life.
Perhaps that was how he wound up both a captain and a doctor in the army.
The army had been incredible. He’d have stayed forever if they’d let him. Sometimes days or weeks dragged on with the sort of eerie, boring quiet that could drive a man mad. Then, all at once, it would be a torrent of energy. Men would be shouting, shooting, crying, running, ducking, weaving, lost in the chaos of battle. There he found euphoria. There he could kill a man while saving another’s life and there was nothing, nothing like that feeling, there were no words to describe it.
It was perfect.
And then it was gone.
Two bullets. That’s all it had taken. One bullet that tore through his shoulder, another that grazed his knee. Then the infection had set in. Between the fever and his brain he’d gotten all mixed up, now all he had was a limp and a trembling hand.
Sometimes.
Sometimes they went away.
Like when he pulled his Sig out of the drawer and held it to his temple. Then he was steady. Then he didn’t hurt. More often he did it not with the intention to kill himself, but just to feel the calm. The steadiness. He started carrying the gun everywhere, tucked behind him, under his jumper.
That’s when the killing started.
Well, started was probably the wrong word. He’d killed at eleven in self-defense, he’d killed in the army under orders, but now? Now he killed because he wanted to.
It started with a man in the news. He’d been kidnapping and killing young men. One night, by chance, he’d seen him. He’d caught him in the act--so he’d shot him. Then he saved the young man.
It felt amazing.
Suddenly, he read every newspaper published in London. He sought them out, he hunted. Not every night, not even every week, but it was like an addiction. The withdrawals were the slow creep of the tremor returning to his hand, the ache to his shoulder, the limp to his knee, the nightmares to his sleep. Then he’d go out again, then he’d be calm again, at least for a little while.
After his third hunt he was approached by a man, someone willing to assist him, to cover his trail, at least to a certain extent. In exchange he had to take the occasional 'assignment', but the man knew his tastes and catered to them. Though he'd only asked for assistance three times thus far, he was generous with ammunition, weaponry, and medical supplies. The man had offered money, but it felt wrong, dirty even. He supposed there was some humor in that.
Free to continue his hunts unhindered, he started to feel human again. He felt alive.
He got a job at a clinic.
It was only part time and it was far from the exhilarating call of the surgeon’s table, but he brought down the fevers of children and healed the aches of the elderly and soothed the pains of the young and he felt like he was doing good. At night, he hunted, and it felt right.
Then he shot the cabbie.
It had been a beautiful shot. Clean to the head, through two windows, just in time too; it was so obvious both pills were deadly. He left the scene quickly, not waiting around for the Yard or the reporters. He’d felt calm, steady, relaxed. He walked without a limp. His hand was like a rock. He slept like the dead.
Two days later he found a short article in the paper. The police were looking for information about a possible vigilante. He sighed, he should probably get a new gun. Maybe several. At least the ballistics would be harder to track then. Honestly, it was surprising it had taken this long, he’d been at it for nearly a year. Even with his sponsor, people would begin to notice a pattern after a while.
He set the newspaper aside and noted the stack of bills he’d been shoving aside. He was being evicted.
He was supposed to have coffee with Mike today, maybe he’d know someone in need of a flat mate--or of a better paying position at the hospital.