Guns N' Gold

TW: Mention of child death, self-harm

Ouro had been sitting alone in his apartment, when a memory surfaced. It was an ordinary one, one he had many a time. He’s sitting with his son on the porch with a pumpkin between his knees, asking questions about Hallow's End while making a complete mess of the carving. Ouro could picture every detail of it with perfect clarity. The porch, the pumpkins, the grin on the kid's face whenever he said something clever, and the laughter that followed…

…The laughter. He tried to remember what the voice behind that laughter sounded like. Nothing came.

At first, he wasn't concerned. Memories faded, that was a normal part of life. After all, he had survived a bullet to the head and there were entire chunks of his life that existed only as fragments now. Surely the voice would come back if he focused hard enough. He closed his eyes and tried again, replaying the scene over and over.

Still nothing.

The smile and the expressions were all still there, even the words themselves were there. He knew exactly what his son had said that evening. He remembered every joke and every eye roll. Yet the sound of his voice had vanished completely, as though someone had reached into his skull and plucked it out.

By the time the sun had begun to set, Ouro found himself standing at the gun range. He hadn't consciously decided to come here, his body had simply brought him. The range had always been one of the few places where his mind quieted down. Shooting required focus and control. It demanded enough attention from him that there was little room left for anything else.

But today, the memory followed him. The range was nearly empty, aside from a handful of distant shooters. Ouro barely noticed them. He loaded a magazine, inserted it into the pistol, and stepped up to the firing line. The target hung motionless in the distance. 

He fired. The crack of the gun echoed through the range. Then he fired again. And again. And again.

Years of experience ensured that the bullets struck center mass with consistency. But Ouro wasn't paying attention to the target itself, his thoughts kept drifting back to the same realization. Every few moments he would try once more to remember.

What did his son sound like when he laughed? Nothing. The pistol fired again. What did his voice sound like when he was excited? Nothing. Another shot. What did he sound like when he called him "Dad"? Nothing.

The magazine emptied and Ouro reloaded without looking. The motions were automatic as muscle memory took over while his mind remained trapped elsewhere. Soon brass casings littered the ground around his boots, and the center of the target had become little more than a ragged hole.

He knew that the frustration should have become sadness. A normal person would have been devastated. They would have broken down at the realization that one of the last pieces of their dead child had slipped away forever. Ouro understood this, the same way he understood how grief was supposed to work.

The problem was that he couldn't feel it. The bullet that had nearly killed him all those years ago had taken more than flesh and bone, it had also hollowed something out inside him. The emotions were still there, but they felt distant and unreachable. He knew he loved his son, and he knew losing him had destroyed him.

Yet now, standing there with a pistol in his hand, all he felt was…nothing. He hated that. He hated that the voice was gone, he hated that he couldn't seem to mourn it properly. Most of all, he hated that he was aware of exactly how wrong that was and still couldn't change it.

The gunfire grew faster and the target disappeared beneath another barrage of rounds. Each trigger pull sent a sharp recoil into his palms. The slide cycled back and forth relentlessly while the smell of burnt powder thickened the air around him.

Still, it wasn't enough. The frustration and the emptiness remained, but the voice remained absent. Hours passed and people came and went. Targets were replaced and the pile of spent brass around Ouro's feet continued to grow. At some point his wrists began to ache from the repetition, but he ignored it. The physical discomfort was preferable to sitting alone with his thoughts.

Eventually the slide locked back once more and silence settled over the lane. Ouro stood motionless, staring downrange. The target was ruined beyond recognition. He couldn't remember how many magazines he had gone through. His gaze lowered to the pistol in his hand. The barrel shimmered faintly from repeated use. Even from where he stood, he could see the distortion of the air around the metal.

For several seconds he simply stared at it, then he turned the weapon sideways and touched the barrel to the inside of his wrist. The burn was immediate. The sharp pain shot through his arm and his muscles tightened instinctively, but he didn't pull away. Instead, he held the metal there and watched as the skin reddened beneath it.

At last, there was a reaction. Not grief, not sorrow. Not the devastation he should have felt after losing another piece of his son. Just pain.

The heat sunk deeper into his skin, and for a brief moment it cut through the numbness that had followed him for years. Pain was simple. Unlike memory, loss, and all the things broken inside him, pain was something he could still understand.

When he finally lowered the pistol, an angry burn marked his wrist. Ouro stared at it for a long time before letting out a short, humorless laugh. The sound carried no amusement whatsoever. It was simply the only response he had left.

His son's voice was gone. The range couldn't bring it back. The hundreds of rounds he had fired couldn't bring it back. And standing there beneath the fluorescent lights, surrounded by empty casings and shredded paper, Ouro found himself wondering if there would eventually come a day when even his son's face disappeared too.

TW: Drug use, blood, death, violence, guns

The Right-Hand Man Silvermoon City – October 31st

He had told himself not to do this again, not this year, but the thing about anniversaries was that they remembered you even when you tried to forget them. By sundown, Ouro An’dar was already halfway gone. A few crushed lines of dust burned his throat and senses like frost and fire combined, and in turn the world had shifted into that strange, quiet clarity that only came before disaster. 

He could still hear his boy sometimes, his laughter echoing in the back of his skull like a broken recording. Some nights it was that sound that woke him, but other nights, it was the deafening silence. He didn’t mark the years anymore, just the night that it happened. The Hallow’s End Massacre. The night his world collapsed beneath gunfire and screaming, the night his son’s small voice went silent forever. Time hadn’t dulled it. If anything, it had sharpened the edges and honed them into something cruel. Every October 31st wasn’t a date on the calendar, it was a wound reopening. Ouro believed the pain could only be erased by blood, by personally killing every person who had been responsible for that night.

The Right-Hand Man was still alive, still waiting to be crossed off his list. Ouro had confirmed it three weeks ago, a lucky whisper through a contact in Murder Row. One of the men who had stormed his house that night, who had put a bullet in him and another dozen into the rest of his family. A man who had walked away then, but not tonight.

The underground club where he knew the man to be was built beneath an old shop in Augur’s Row. Hallow’s End decorations hung from the ceiling in the form of black silks and enchanted lanterns shaped like skulls and pumpkins. The bass pounded through the floor, rattling bones, drowning out voices, and syncing everything to a single, relentless pulse.

Ouro crossed the threshold as if slipping into another world, his coat hiding the weight of his weapons: twin pistols at his ribs, a blade in the boot, and another up his sleeve. He wasn’t there to talk or to dance. The dust made the colors breathe, and everything swam in and out of focus. He had done this dance before, hunting through crowds while high enough to forget his name, but tonight was different. Tonight, the air itself felt like it was closing in.

He found the man easily sitting in the VIP alcove, surrounded by people who didn’t matter. Older now, hair going gray at the temples, but still smug, and still that same cold smile. The kind of smile that said he thought the world had forgotten what he did. Ouro watched him for a long time. Long enough for the drink in his hand to go warm, long enough for the pain in his head to become real again, a phantom pain where the old bullet wound had healed.

Then the man eventually rose, weaving through the crowd toward the back hallway. Ouro followed slowly, trying to look like a man too drunk to be dangerous, but the dust betrayed him. Every sound was too bright, every movement too blurred. His boots struck the floor like thunder in his own ears, and the back corridor stretched too long while strobing neon distorted his already hazy gaze.

Halfway down, the man stopped. He didn't turn, just spoke over his shoulder. “You’ve been following me for three minutes, An’dar.” The voice was amused, teasing almost.

Ouro froze, his pulse quickening against his ribs.

The man turned then, eyes glinting under the intense light. “I thought you died. Guess I was wrong.”

Ouro’s hand twitched toward his gun, but the other man moved first. A flash of motion, the strike was brutal and practiced. His palm cracked Ouro’s wrist, sending the pistol spinning down the corridor. The silenced shot came a heartbeat later. Ouro felt the impact first, then serious blooming pain in his side that took his breath followed soon after. He staggered backwards, the wall holding him up while the music from the club pulsed on the other side.

The Right-Hand Man calmly and confidently advanced. “Should’ve left it alone, An’dar. You think this ends well for you?”

Ouro’s laugh was hoarse. “I’m not thinking about me.”

He moved with the kind of precision that only comes from old training and desperation. His knife cleared his sleeve while his other hand gripped the man’s shoulder, cleanly slicing the blade across his throat in one smooth arc. A brief, gurgling gasp followed, swallowed by the bass rumbling through the walls.

The man collapsed forward, his eyes wide and mouth opening and closing without sound. Ouro held him upright, staring into glossy eyes until life left them and the body went still. Then he let him slide down the wall, leaving a dark smear all the way to the floor. For a moment, he just stood there, breathing hard, blood soaking through his shirt, the dust making everything shimmer. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, leaving a streak of red across his cheek.

When he stumbled back into the main room, no one looked twice. It was Hallow’s End, everyone was painted in blood and laughing behind masks. He pushed through the dancers, his steps heavy as he pressed a hand to the gunshot wound on his side. When he found the alley exit, the cooler air outside hit him like a slap. He leaned against the brick wall, gasping and trying to steady himself. The dust was burning out now, leaving behind only pain and a deep, shaking emptiness.

He fumbled for his comm, sending off a message with his location to the one person, the only person, that would come: Xylaes. His comm clattered to one side as he looked at his blood-covered hands. Somewhere deep in the haze, he thought about his son’s face, but couldn’t remember the sound of his voice anymore. That was the worst part. The pain in his side flared hot, and then dulled again. He let his head rest against the wall as the city lights blurred into streaks of gold and crimson. Maybe, for the first time in years, he could let himself rest.