FicWad

She got there, her fingers gripping the wooden frame of the doorway as she saw Gerard standing about his little brother, his hand shaking as he pointed the gun. Mikey was groaning, his shirt slowly being covered with blood from what looked like a bullet wound in his shoulder. ‘’You fucking abandoner! I hate you!’’ Gerard screamed, glancing at Lauren. ‘’He left me. He left me alone and I had no one to turn to! Now he’ll know what it feels like!’’ he sniffed, wiping his nose with his hand.
Lauren almost screamed herself when Gerard took her arm in his hand, his hazel eyes seemed to pierce right through her heart, chilling her blood to ice. ‘’You can’t just leave him here!’’ Lauren hissed,
‘’I can do whatever the fuck I want. I’m the one with the gun, here, Sugar.’’,
‘’He’s your little brother. Older brothers protect their younger siblings.’’.
‘’Shut the fuck up and move.’’ Gerard spat.
‘’Gee…Call a hospital…Please…’’ Mikey gritted his teeth, arching his back at pain rushed through his veins. Gerard stared down at his brother for a few moments, before speaking;
‘’Tell me why you left.’’ His voice was radically softer; his eyes even seemed to sink in desperation, ‘’tell me why you left me alone with him!’’ he yelled suddenly, aiming the gun once again.
‘’Gerard! Don’t!’’ Lauren almost screamed, but tried to grip onto the situation.
‘’I didn’t know he was going to hurt you. I swear! Please, Gee, get me the hospital…’’ Mikey was losing a lot of blood. Lauren could see it, and her heart sank as she watched Mikey writhe in pain – yet could not do a thing about it.
‘’That’s not good enough! Tell me why you didn’t even tell mom about it – how you kept it all to yourself when you went back to her! I was a little kid, Mikey, little kids can’t defend themselves against grown men…I couldn’t stop him when he touched me…and when I cried and yelled your name he only hit me harder....’’ Gerard chocked, wiping the only tears he had let fall in years fall down.
‘’I…I didn’t know why…I was just a kid, too…’’ Mikey spoke up; he was trying to get up with his good arm, wincing in pain. Lauren cringed at the sight of all of the blood on the carpet, and over the man.
‘’That’s not good enough.’’ Gerard’s voice sounded like it a hollow shell – his eyes looked like ghosts of what they had been.
‘’Look, Gerard, Mikey will bleed to death if we don’t get him to a hospital soon. We can take him there, and then I’ll take you wherever you want…If…If you want to kill that guy who hurt you – I’ll take you...Just let me get Mikey to a hospital, please....’’ Lauren gripped Gerard’s arm as she said the words,
‘’You’ll help me kill him?’’ Gerard asked hopefully, as though Lauren was the one with the gun gripped in her hand, aiming it at him, and she was promising his freedom. Maybe she was, in a way.
‘’Yes, yes I will.’’ She nodded, and Gerard walked to Mikey, hooking Mikey’s arm around his neck, and helping him stand. He turned, pointing the gun to Lauren, even as she stood beside him,
‘’Come on. You have to open the car door for me to put him in there.’’ Gerard explained.

The hospital was deeper into the suburbs – a little general practice where gunshot wounds were probably not the most common of injuries. Gerard helped Lauren get Mikey out of the car, and then out into the practice. As the doctors and nurses frantically rushed Mikey into surgery to stop the bleeding and remove the bullet, Gerard led Lauren out from the practice, his eternal gun pressed into her ribs.
Once back in the car, Gerard began speaking; ‘’I bet you wanna know who we’re going to kill, right?’’ he asked.
‘’Who is he?’’ Lauren went along with what he said, trying to ignore the fact that they were running out of fuel. The Honda was good on fuel, but they would have to stop within the next twenty minutes.
‘’He’s my step father. He got with my mom after my dad left us. My mom used to leave me with him because he lived close to a school, and she would keep Mikey with her because he was younger – but he was smarter, still. It’s why he’s a doctor, I bet.’’ Gerard spoke as though he hadn’t just shot a bullet through Mikey’s shoulder – but like they were best friends, the closest brothers in the world.
‘’He hurt you?’’ Lauren pushed the conversation forward,
‘’It started as him just whipping me with his belt, stuff like that…and then he started touching me.’’ Gerard voice suddenly became like a dark thunder, ominously shifting in the horizon, not sure but terrifying in any case.
‘’We need fuel.’’ Lauren suddenly spat the words out, not wanting to feel sympathy for Gerard. After what he had done, he hardly deserved sympathetic thoughts – but she couldn’t help but feel for his younger self.
‘’We’ll stop at the next one.’’,
‘’What else happened?’’,
‘’He raped me. It was every few weeks, and then it turned into every few days. It went on for three years. The last time he ever did it, he made Mikey watch…’’ Gerard flinched at the memory, then carried on, ‘’then my mom sent me to live with my grandmother.’’.
‘’Did you like your grandmother?’’,
‘’I loved my grandma Elena. She taught me how to draw, how to sing. But I failed her. She knew I wasn’t alright in the head, but she still tried so fuckin’ hard…she left me everything when she died. But I didn’t think it was right. She was gone, and she’d left me her things – I wanted her, not the things she had owned. I wanted her to tell me that I wasn’t sick anymore...’’ Gerard trailed off for a few moments. ‘’There’s a gas station.’’ He finally pointed, and Lauren turned in, stopping next to one of the pumps.
‘’How are we going to do this?’’ she asked.
‘’You’re not. I am.’’ Gerard got out of the car, un-capping the fuel tank stopper, taking the fuel nozzle off of the holder and filling the car with petrol. Lauren watched him through the window, he waited until the tank was full, and then walked around to Lauren’s door. ‘’Get out. I need you to pay so we don’t have the cops tailing us.’’ He explained.
‘’Sure.’’ Lauren grabbed her purse from the glove compartment and let him lead her, wondering how much more she could take. She paid for the fuel, and let Gerard lead her once again. It was beginning to make her just want to run away from the hand he rested on the small of her back, and the ever-present gen he hid under the bulk of his leather jacket as he held it to her body.
She thought of the book she had once read – a murder mystery where the detectives had to make a profile of the killer and match it to the suspects that they had. She wondered what profile Gerard would have. They might say that his early abuse would have warped his mind. No – they would say that.
And what about killing his step-father – could she really do that? She was sure that Gerard would make sure she kept the promise, or he would kill her without remorse. The step-father sounded like he deserved it, in all honesty-
‘’What are you thinking about?’’ Gerard spoke up. Lauren had been driving towards the city for around ten minutes, lost in thought.
‘’Just…things....’’ she sighed, ‘’not anything you’d like to know.’’.
‘’You never told me why you left England.’’,
‘’Why do you want to know?’’,
‘’I wanna know everything about you – so I can make my choice on whether I’ll kill you or not. Tell me, Lauren, and I’ll stop pointing this gun at you. I know ya can be a good girl, so just tell me and I’ll tuck this gun away.’’ He leaned closer, ‘’tell me.’’ He hissed, his breath causing Lauren’s inky black hair to curl against her cheek.
‘’I-I moved because I hated my family. There. That’s why.’’ She tried to move away, but Gerard moved closer still,
‘’And why did you hate your family?’’ he drawled.
‘’Because I never loved them.’’ Lauren whispered, ‘’they hurt me, emotionally and physically. But I'm stronger than them, and I left them alone to live in their filth.’’ She held back the tears, knowing that she had already shed too many for the people who she was meant to trust the most. Gerard pulled away, and Lauren almost sighed with relief;
‘’You and me are alike, Sugar.’’ Gerard smirked softly, with a grim sort of amused look in his eyes.
‘’I’m not like you. I don’t kill people.’’ Lauren spoke through gritted teeth.
‘’Oh, but ya will. I promise.’’ His words echoed through her mind, long after they once again fell into silence.