Even though my father was a sick, twisted psychopath that deserved nothing—I still cried every time I saw the picture. It was taken god knows how many years ago, when he was still holding down a steady job and could afford his meds. Before the housing crash came, and he lost his job in the dazzling world of real estate and became a thief and a killer.

I was young; maybe six or seven, and we had gone to the park to fly kites in the windy September afternoon. He had bought us ice cream cones from passing truck, and as we sat on a bench covered in pigeon shit and who knows what else, he had asked a passerby to take a photo.

It was one of the happiest days of my life, and I had smiled in all my gap toothed glory, hugging my dad.

My peaceful, hair-thinning, ice cream loving, couldn't-kill-a-goddamn-fly dad.

Four months later he was learning to break into houses and wield a knife.

Sometimes I felt like if you looked up 'daddy issues' on Urban Dictionary, there should be pictures of yours truly smack in the definition.

The picture rotated between the place of honor on my bedside table, or the trash can. But I always fished it out from where I had thrown it in my frequent bouts of temper tantrums. But could you blame me? I was dealing with some X-men crosses over to the Bible shit right now, and thinking of my father didn't really help me relax.

I wanted to go back and fix this mess. Fifteen people had been killed, and twenty more had been so hurt by my father that they had either succumbed to the physical wounds or killed themselves due to the emotional agony he had wrought. Not to mention their families, who mourned. The mothers who sent me tear-stained letters of hate. The fathers who glared at me with tears running down their bearded cheeks. When we had stolen the money, why did we never consider the people who earned it, who worked for it?

Because we were selfish little shits—too preoccupied with our troubles, with the fact that we suddenly didn't have a house or a car when there were people out there far worse off. I didn't know why I was feeling so strongly about this, when I couldn't change the past and I really needed to worry about my future, but somehow I was going to fix it.

In the words of Batman—if you kill one murderer, the number of killers in the world remains the same.

But in the words of that one hot, murderous sidekick? Well, if you kill five hundred murderers, then the number of killers in the world has just dropped to four hundred ninety nine less convicts, you overbearing dick!

Besides, I had already killed two people. Two good people who didn't deserve to die (although the second one could be debated). I suppose I felt like I should do some good to help even out the scales of my actions that Anubis was gonna weigh at the end of my life (my definition of good is different from everyone else's). I didn't want it to tip all the way down to garbage of the underworld, go to hell evil. I just wanted a chance to prove that I wasn't complete shit, and that the apple could get up and move away from the tree. I didn't plan to go back in time and stand here now, with a gun pointed at my father's chest and my finger resting on the trigger.

I had started on a little side project—you know, nothing serious—which I had kinda nicknamed ROBIN HOOD (I wanted it to stand for something cool, you know, like SHIELD... but I got nothing). You know, the thief that stole from the rich and gave to poor? That was me, but I was gonna take out the trash of this earth and give it to Satan or whatever entity for evil and the afterlife you believed in. By trash I meant murderers. Rapists. Drug dealers who sold to children and teenagers.

I had done well, and the other worthless pieces of scum had laid low. I had relaxed, dropped by the bar to have a drink and to think about how killing more people kinda helped solve my internal turmoil about my other problems and how I was seriously fucked up.

Then my stomach whirled and my vision blurred (not from the alcohol), and I ended up here. In the photo.

Reflexes, instinct, and a downright distrust of people in general made my first action to be whipping out the pistol I always carried, always loaded.

But when I laid eyes on my father and six year old me clutching onto his arm, my first thought was that he looked really, really scared.

My second was to squeeze the trigger and blow his fucking brains out.

I didn't know where I was, but it felt like that perfect day. I could feel the wind blowing through my hair, and almost taste strawberry ice cream.

After what I had seen, time travel didn't seem so impossible.

I could worry about the how later, because here was the now. I had a gun in my hand, and trash in front of the barrel.

The garbage that messed up my entire childhood by deciding breaking, entering, and killing was a good career path. 

Still I hesitated.

Why did I hesitate? 

Did I still love him? The dad that left me with nothing but scars and tipped me over to the dark side, the dad who got an easy way out (in my opinion), the dad who was too busy stealing more money when we already had enough to pay off our debts? I still loved my father. 

He took that moment to speak. "Please," He begged. Pathetic. "Spare my daughter. She's so young, I'll give you whatever you want. Money?" He fumbled with his wallet and handed it out to me. "I don't have a lot, but take it. Take it, and we'll never call the police or nothing. Just let us go."

I stared at his outstretched hand. Numb. I had forgot that there was a time when he had loved me. 

Is that sad or what? 

I had been hating the monster he had turned into that I'd never remembered his good side. I'd never let myself remember. It felt like a crime to—to love the man that had destroyed so many other loved ones. 

And now here he was, helpless, and I felt time stand still. The right thing to do was to kill him.

Then I looked into my father's innocent eyes and for the first time in a long time—I didn't see a monster.

He wasn't a monster—yet.

So many possibilities, so many choices to determine where my father would end up. Strapped to the electric chair or taking my picture before Prom. Rotting in a jail cell or having dinner with me. 

So many choices—but they were not for me to make. It was up to him, even if I already knew the destructive path he would choose.

Still, it wasn't my call.

I put down my gun, and I closed my eyes, and I stood up in the same shitty bar I had been before.

I wobbled on my heels, but it wasn't the alcohol. 

I looked down at my fingers, still clutching my pistol in a death grip.

I went home, and threw ROBIN HOOD in the garbage. It wasn't up to me to play God and kill the bad guys—even if they shitted all over the world and crapped up the cities and the country and the sea, because if I killed them—I would forever be faced with my father's desperate eyes.

I loved monsters—and I couldn't kill what I loved. No matter how much I knew I should. That was the crappy excuse I gave myself, when the plain truth was that I destroyed what I loved on an almost daily basis. 

I blamed the whole episode on the alcohol when I woke up in the morning.

It was easier to pretend I had been drunk and imagined the whole thing that to fantasize what would have happened if I had pulled the trigger. Get him to a psychiatrist who could psychoanalyze him and somehow fix him. 

But I had the feeling that no matter what I had done, it would've been up to him in the end. 

And the part I was really afraid of—tucked deep down in the locked up box of my utmost secret feelings— was when he would choose the money and the drugs over me. 

So I didn't give him the choice. 

written for Hannah Sue's Contest #19: Looking Back

a One Shot of The Heart Eater, found on my profile.