Movies always painted these kinds of things in slow motion.

The camera rolls, and there's the scene.  A skirmish, a battle against good versus evil.  Something epic, something definitive, the heroes against the villains.  Except real life doesn't always go that way.  It's not one thing, not a motif played out inside of two hours on a big screen, not seven different stories in thousands of variations.  It's not a campaign in pixels or figurines with a roll of dice to determine the outcome or a series of buttons pushed at just the right time in just the right way.  It's random.  It's bad luck, the wrong place at the wrong time and you can't pause or save and there are no do-overs if you screw it up the first time.

Nolan wasn't a superhero.  Nothing about him was super, or special, he was just some guy who'd made friends with a phoenix when he was a kid and still somehow got to skip the mythological coming of age fantasy arc.  He lived a normal life with his not-quite-normal best friend and that was it.  Go to school, screw around all summer.  Go to college.  Make dumb low-budget movies and film his friend's ridiculous show.  Try to figure his life out.

Except they're out one night, and literally everything goes to hell.

They're on their way home after a night out, something to relax after a long-ass week.  No big deal, except these guys come out of the shadows, demanding their wallets and whatever else they've got before they can do anything, and they move towards Charlie, and he catches a glimmer in one of their hands and he knows things are bad.  Really bad.  Like, Batman's parents in a dark alley kind of bad.

It's stupid.  He knows that the second he starts moving, repeats it like a mantra in his head as he takes a step, then another one, when he sees the gun come out.  He's not a hero.  He's not anything more than some dumb human, but he still steps out in front of it, stands between the scary guy with the gun and Charlie like he's some action hero instead of just him, like he's fucking bulletproof or something.

And then the gun goes off.  It's not quite the slow motion progression of the movies, both an eternity and a moment all at once, and all the time he's really got is to shout "Don't" at the guy, like it's going to change his mind, and then he's falling, and he can't breathe, and everything fucking hurts.



AFTER

He wakes up in the hospital, and it feels like he's Rip van Winkle.  He's still exhausted, but he's got no clue what's going on, he just looks around and it's hospital white and beeping machines and wires and tubes and crap on the table next to the bed, like somebody's been there a lot.  He hears the gory details that fill in the gaps between his greatest show of stupidity yet and now, hears they expect him to stick around a few more days at least, until they're sure he's not going to keel over the minute he gets home, but they're the longest days he's ever had in his life, he's pretty sure.  Lots of lying around, lots of trying to be entertained.  Lots of sleeping and terrible food.  Lots of trying to kick Charlie out of the room so she can sleep somewhere that's not a chair that doesn't look all that comfortable.

But hey, he's breathing!  Even if it hurts like hell.  It's a pretty awesome thing, considering.

Over the years, the camping trips had gotten to be something of a tradition.  A yearly thing.  This time, it was the last one before things changed, for better or worse, before they left the routine and expected for newer and different.  For the grand mystery that was College, and who knew what came after that.

The trip had been going well, exactly as expected, more or less.  The trees were great, as trees went, the weather was good, everything was going just fine.

One minute they were screwing around getting camp set up, the next he turned to look and her hand was covered in blood.

Shit.

He took a couple steps closer, then stopped to stare at her, disgust, shock, and worry warring in his expression.

"Crap.  Crap, crap, crap.  Please tell me that's not as bad as it looks."