[i]Everything was happening too fast, it was too much for his brain to put together and too much for his mind to handle. It made him shift into a fight or flight set of mind and suddenly he wasn't so sure that he could flee without taking a bullet to the back and he wasn't in the mood to be shot today. The gun-toting-metal-encased man had come here too fast and Ash was reacting much too fast. Much faster than the redhead could have reacted in that situation, his bravery was sheer recklessness and it made a pit in Carson's stomach. The boy with the fire in his eyes as clearly as the fire in his veins was reckless but it was an admirable recklessness, it was much more than Carson could have conjured and that was admirable enough to him, it made him want to write about him, it made him very nervous. [b]His recklessness would undeniably be what ended him.[/b][/i]

There was a roaring, crumbling sound and everything seemed to tremble. It caught him so off guard that he tried to stumble back before Ash seemed to reveal another trick up his sleeve. The blonde girl was rocketed into Carson and he'd softened her fall by collapsing like a sack of rocks beneath her. He hadn't expected the concrete foundation to rise up through the floor like some sort of beast, he hadn't expected it to shoot the blonde girl off the ground like she weighed nothing and he hadn't expected the inevitable [b][i]bang.[/i][/b] 

Sharp and cutting through like a knife, the sound rattled his bones.

He knew what that sound meant logically but he couldn't bring himself to react to it quickly enough because it was so loud that his ears where screaming with backwash and his head was spinning. He reacted too slowly again, guiding Rose to her feet with a gentle push, his hands stabilizing her by gripping her shoulders lightly so that he could get up himself. When he was finally to his feet, he stepped away from Rose and backwards, overviewing the damage and nearly sputtering at the sight of Ash lying on the ground with a hole in his head. Just moments ago he'd been spitting off insults and rounding them up like a herd of sheep but now he looked so still that it made Carson sick to his stomach. 

[i]He was dead.[/i]

He'd never seen a dead body before but he found himself wishing that it would have stayed that way. Ash had been too full of life to be laying on the ground like nothing and now he felt somewhat hopeless because if Ash could be killed then any of them could be killed and this was unnervingly [i]real.[/i] He wanted to go home suddenly, he didn't want to go anywhere but back to his quiet mother and his volatile father. He wanted to go back to his green room, curl up on his bed and cry like an infant for a few traumatized hours. He wanted some time to process everything, his brain was whirling too much to make any decent decisions, he was usually quicker than this and he was usually good at mapping out plans but now he could only stare in dumbfounded amazement.

This was real and Ash was dead and there was still a gun in that man's hand.