Eddie Munson - A Collection of One-Shots!

019. I Didn't Run This Time.

"You RAN from me!" She cried.

"You ran away, you left me there to die!" She shouted, angry and confused.

"NO! NO! I didn't leave you there to die!" I argued back, my voice raised.

"What did you do then huh?! It looked to me like you ran away and you didn't come back! You didn't come back for me!" She asked, a deep furrow in her brow.

"I ALREADY THOUGHT HE'D KILLED YOU! Your eyes! I saw blood.... They were white! You were limp and I thought he'd killed you right before my eyes! I couldn't STAY there. I couldn't PROCESS that!" I roared.

"Don't fucking lie to me!" She spat.

"Okay! Okay! I was scared. Terrified! I didn't want to see him kill you, so I ran. You happy?!" I asked, exasperated.

"Did you just say am I happy?!" She asked.

"I didn't mean it like that!" I said.

"Enlighten me on the context then because I'm struggling to understand anything that comes out of your mouth!" She replied.

"You wanted me to admit that I was terrified that I ran? I ran, because I wasn't strong enough to protect you? Because I was too scared to try and reach you? You wanted me to admit that and I just did! I'm not proud of that! I'm a coward, and I'm struggling to make my peace with it. I'm a coward. I'm not a hero. I'm not built to be one. But I make a damn good coward apparently. You think I'm proud to stand here and admit that I couldn't see him murder you before my eyes, that I couldn't stay or try to stop him?!" I asked.

"Take a good look at what he did to me, Eddie. Take a good look, and then leave." She demanded.

She roughly pulled her hooded sweatshirt over her head, and in a flash she'd tugged her sweat pants down her legs and invited me to look. Her eyes were filled with anger, but her face was creased with pain and her bottom lip was trembling.

There was a fierce scar around her neck, and she was littered with healing cuts and fresh, white scars.

"You know what the worst part of this truly is?" She asked me, as my chest heaved with sadness.

I was distraught, despite there being no tears.
I was disappointed, sad and angry at myself.

And she was angry at me too, which just made me hate myself.

"What?" I asked, as she leaned down to pick her discarded clothes from off the floor around her feet.

"If this had been the other way around, I'd have tried to save you. And when you think about it, I actually did, more than once. I saved you from the bat storm, I got you out of there so you're Uncle didn't have to bury you. I hid you from the cops. And when the one time came where I needed you, you weren't there. You bailed on me." She said, her voice breaking at the end of her statement.

Her voice broke at the exact same time my heart did, hearing the hurt I'd caused.

"You've always looked after me. In a way that I've never quite been able to look after you in return. I bailed on you, like my parents bailed on me. Apple never rots far from the tree, sweetheart." I said, ultimately being self deprecating.

I'd tried to say it with a hint of lightheartedness, in true Eddie style and because I had always been unable to handle a serious conversation.

And it had been received as I'd expected.
She clutched her clothes to her chest, covering herself with them, her eyes burning holes in my face.