It was hard not to look surprised at that. Did he remember him from that single conversation—that one moment of reassurance so many years ago? Everyone who knew Max, even only in passing, liked him. Iruka understood why from day one. He wondered if it was fate that led him to be the one to find him in what was now considered a very impossible manhunt, but he left it to question later.
“Yes, sir,” he replied, smiling a little in spite of himself. “So I’ve been told.”
The officers’ manual was thick and heavy with regulations, laws and codes of conduct, and Iruka had memorized them well enough to become a part-time instructor at the academy, himself. He knew the rules. He knew what was expected of him. His stellar record showed him to be a proficient officer, and he knew it. But maybe his proficiency was better attributed to his soul than to his brains; maybe he’d done as well as he had because he’d listened to his instinct when it yelled in his ear, and to his intuition when it whispered things he couldn’t ever prove with facts. It was speaking to him now, just as it had been ever since it crept up on him when the news of Max’s arrest came in.
So, what if he’d killed them? What if he killed those that killed his wife and child? The people who’d dare to lay a hand on a child the way they did were those Iruka considered less human and more animal—less so, if one considered animals as God’s creatures to be loved and respected as all His things were to be. People like them didn’t deserve the life they were given. People like them were the reason people like him existed—people meant to protect others from the harm they’d inevitably cause someday or another. What of it? said a whisper in his mind. Max did what he had to do to avenge his family, and Iruka would be lying if he said he didn’t understand what the urge to do that was like, or the way it creeped around one’s mind like an unshakable spider, crawling into the nooks and crannies too deep for one to dig it out.
It still came to him every now again, creeping along the walls of his subconsciousness enough to appear in his dreams. When he was thirteen, he promised his parents he’d find who killed them with all the vigour of someone angry beyond his years. He told it to their graves quietly, and let the promise sink into the dirt and grass beneath his feet before he left. He hadn’t forgotten it.
“I’d rather not. Use it, I mean. I don’t want to. Not on you, sir.”
Despite the flashlight beaming into his eyes, robbing him of nearly all of his night vision, he could vaguely see the other’s lips tug into a bit of a smile. Apparently, the kid was still as bushy-tailed as before, though experience edged his tone and body language, brought a bit of a slump to his shoulders. This man was more guided by his heart than his head when it came to his work in the field, because only those kinds of cops really could know how to help children out. Good on him, but Max knew it would be a long shot to try to play up the other’s empathetic instincts. Or more that he didn’t have the energy to try, not anymore. It was what it was, and if he landed his ass back in prison, so be it. He was an adult that had to own up to his own actions and responsibilities but--
CHRIST, when he held their BODIES in his arms, that was when any semblance of control had left him. Those words others may have preached about practicing forgiveness instead of revenger were MEANINGLESS. Had those people ever lost the only things that really mattered in their lives, watched them die, killed merely out of entertainment and spite?
And constantly, constantly, it caught up to him day and night, every waking moment. If he wasn’t on the run from the police he formerly was with, then it was from the voices murmuring and shouting, the rage that he had faced. He didn’t want to ever become like that again.
But despite how he ran, here he was, caught. He didn’t question as to whether the other knew his pain or not, whether he thought he was a monster or a hero, because what did it matter? What mattered was the gun aimed at him, even if the man said he’d rather not. Quiet for a long moment, gaze steadily drilling into the other, his form was steady, unafraid.
“Hm.” Then let’s get to it.
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