Title: First Kill
Pairing/Characters: Gideon, Matt's mum, Matt Anderson
Genre: Little angst, family.
Rating: Fine for all me thinks.
Summary: Matt is missing.
A/N: A one shot now part of my Past/Present/Future 'verse.
“Where is he?! Where is he?”
Her high pitched voice was so anguished and scared that it was close to breaking. She was running through the people, falling to her knees before each child and grabbing their faces to see who they were.
“He’s not with you?!” He asked.
“He’s with you! He’s always with you!” She screamed. “Oh god! Please don’t tell me he's up there! Oh god! MATTHEW!”
Gideon watched as his wife ran to towards the ladder. She tried to climb up it but several of the others kept her down, pulling her back, trying to calm her. He rushed over himself and looked up towards the surface. Up there, a terrible storm was raging and the predators were in the midst of their mating season. It was a terrible time to be on the surface.
It was even more so if you were a seven year old boy.
“I have to get him.” He said.
“No sir!” said a young soldier next to him. “I cannot allow you to open that hatch…not when others are at risk.”
“My SON is up there!” he bellowed as he ripped his wife from the other's arms and wrapped her tightly in his own. He heard her praying, her words murmured over and over against his chest, broken with sobs. “We can’t just stay here!”
“I’m sorry, sir! We can’t.”
“Then you’ve killed him!”
Gideon felt the tears fall down his face as his wife’s screams went beyond hysterical and they collapsed the floor. He didn’t realise how long they stayed there or how long the storm lasted but as soon as the all clear came, they didn’t stay. They followed the soldiers for they had to know what happened to their son.
The desolate remains of what had once been Enniskillen seemed more ravaged than before, but as they cautiously scanned for predators, there was no sign of any living thing. Not even a seven year old boy.
“How could he have been left behind…how could we have been so stupid?!” she whispered to him as the soldiers scouted the area with their weapons. Gideon didn’t know the answer, but he wished he had carried Matt down the hatch himself, he wished he hadn’t let go of his hand.
Then the couple were signalled urgently, over to a small out cropping. Gideon and his wife rushed over and all the worry vanished from their bodies when they saw the two soldiers pulling out the barely conscious-but breathing-boy.
Gideon watched in astonishment at the sight of his son as he was handed over to his mother. The child felt her presence and snuggled deep into her embrace, but kept a tighter hold on the knife in his hand.
Matthew Anderson was covered in dirt, grime, puss and blood. On the ground, mere inches from where they had found him, was the dead body of a predator.
"I got 'im da..." his weak little voice murmured. "I got 'im."
A first kill at such a young age; Gideon felt hope swell in his chest, as they took his son back underground, for Matthew could be the one to save the entire world.