White fluffy clouds, those were the first things that Deputy Turner noticed as he and a group of Terries drove through the snowy plains far to the south of Silver Lake. Turner wore his Deputy attire while the Terries opted for whitish fatigues. Turner and Lieutenant Agendum sat in the cab while the group of eleven other Terries road in the bed of Turner’s pick up truck. The radio buzzed with activity as reports were coming in from Pegasi that were scouting ahead at the compound, though Agendum was the only one that was paying attention. The engine rumbled across the landscape as the Deputy kept his eyes fixed on the horizon, though his mind was far back in Silver Lake… More specifically, his home.

Sam hadn’t been keen to let him leave that morning, she didn’t want to see him get hurt… Ultimately though, Turner had been able to convince her that he would be safe and that she didn’t need to worry. Despite that, as he was leaving he recalled hearing her start reciting Saint Michael's prayer. Considering how Sam wasn’t the religious sort it meant a lot to Turner. As time wore on Turner started to recognize the various landmarks that he and Mourning had passed the day before.

“You guys ready?” Turner asked as he gripped the wheel a bit tighter, Agendum looked over at him with a nod. The Terries had come strapped like a SWAT team with all the trimmings, it seemed that they had a bit of experience in situations like this. Honestly, that made Turner feel a lot better. This was his first time on any sort of big drug bust, however with the support of the Terries he was pretty sure he’d come out okay.

“Stop at the base of this hill here.” Agendum said, Turner nodded and came to a halt at the base of the hill that he and Mourning had crawled up the day before. “Alright, speed is going to be key here. The faster we move in the less time they have to muster a defense. You think you can get us in there quickly with your truck or should we go on hoof?”

“I can get you in no problem.” Turner said with a nod while taking his rifle from the gun rack behind him and resting it in the well of the center seat. “The second team is gonna be coming in from the other side of the compound, right?” Agendum nodded. “Gonna be wearing the same kit as you?”

“More or less. Don’t worry, these things usually get resolved without any shots fired…” The stallion said reassuringly, Turner had to admit the Lieutenant was less of a nuisance now that he had come through for Evergreen County on more than one occasion. “When I give the word roll in with lights and sirens.” Turner adjusted his cap and took a couple deep breaths to steady his nerves, his eyes focussing on the rosary hanging from the rear view mirror. The Lieutenant picked up the radio and spoke quickly. “Team One in position.”

”Roger that, Team One. Team Two is in position. Ready on your go ahead, how copy?” A stallions voice replied from the other end of the call.

“Copy Team Two, should be pretty easy to spot the signal.” Agendum said before he looked over at Turner and nodded his head. “Hit it, Deputy.” Turner put the truck into drive before he flicked on the light bars.

The engine roared as the man floored the gas pedal and tore up the side of the hill, when the vehicle crested the hilltop he hit the sirens. At the base of the hill Turner could see the ponies in the compound freeze for a second before they started running in different directions. On a hill on the opposite side of the structure Turner could see Team Two moving down the hill on hoof. Meanwhile Turner rolled down the hill at a decent clip, the truck skidded to a stop sideways near the warehouse portion of the complex. Within a couple seconds the sirens were cut off and the stallions in the back of the truck had dismounted, Agendum and Turner each opened their doors and hopped out as well.

Turner grabbed his spellrifle and racked it five times, then took up a position around the front of the truck behind the engine block. Agendum moved with his team into the compound while the pegasi that had been circling overhead descended and began locking down all avenues of escape, Turner was among those that would be keeping the area secure from escape as well. Inside the warehouse he heard several bangs, it appeared that they weren’t going to go quietly, which made the Deputy’s heart start racing even faster. He rested his rifle on the hood of the truck, the heat from the engine burning his hand slightly through the metal.

An earth pony ran out of one of the buildings, he was light blue with a lemon yellow mane. The stallion was wearing a hooded jacket and other warm clothes, but more importantly carrying a compact automatic Spellgun. Turner took aim as the earth pony started running towards the truck, the Deputy gulped and took a deep breath as the stallion caught sight of him and started to raise the weapon.

“Sheriff’s Department! Drop your weapon!” Turner shouted loudly, his heart pounding loudly in his ears. “Drop it now!” The stallion didn’t drop it though, Turner felt chills down his spine as the barrel of the spellgun became fully level. In that instant many things ran through his mind, growing up in Wyoming, his first days in Equestria, his first day as a Deputy… Most importantly he recalled the feeling of Sam’s arms around him, her smiling face. He was going home to her, no matter what. His finger moved onto the trigger, he took a deep breath, and prayed he hadn’t waited too long.

The crack of the spell rifle cut through the air like a thunderbolt, the recoil came back and hit Turner in the shoulder with all the same force it usually did. Years of practicing his aim, hunting and training, it had all been so fluid. He was relieved for a moment, in that split instant he knew he had gotten his shot off. On reflex his eyes moved to the target, only this time it wasn’t a tin can, or a deer, or even an elk. The stallion holding the weapon was standing upright still, looking down at his own chest before looking back up at Turner with a surprised expression…

The stallion’s weapon barked out its own loud retort as he crumpled to the ground like a sack of potatoes, he held the trigger down the entire time and went down shooting. Turner watched blood ooze from the wound in the stallion’s chest, steaming in the cold winter air as the earth pony gasped for air. For several seconds Turner wasn’t sure what was happening, his body moving from memory of every training scenario that Long Wire had made him memorize before deputizing him. Firstly, he left his rifle behind the truck and drew the more compact sidearm from his gun belt. With it pointed towards the ground he moved out from around the truck, then towards the downed suspect.

Turner kicked the stallion’s weapon away before rolling the bleeding pony onto his stomach and quickly cuffing him so he couldn’t move. The Deputy was just that, a Deputy. Not a doctor, not a paramedic, for all he knew the suspect still could’ve posed a threat to himself or other officers. As he looked around him he saw that the Terries were leading a group of ponies out in cuffs of their own, the gunfire had subsided. Only after a couple pegasi moved in to help him secure the suspect did Turner snap back to his senses.

“Oh god… Fuck.. What did I do?” Turner asked as he looked up at the sky, noting the arrival of a couple medical chariots that had been on standby. In a blur of activity they landed and moved towards the stallion, but after a couple seconds of checking they merely shook their heads. He read their lips, he didn’t hear what they were saying… In fact, all he could really hear was a ringing in his ears. The man holstered his weapon and wiped his forehead, temporarily removing his hat to run a hand over his hair. As he was starting to put it back on he noticed something… off about it.

There was a pair of holes near the top of the hat, just an inch or so where his head normally rested. The Deputy quietly put his finger through one hole, then the other, before holding it up and looking through the first one. They were in a straight line, which was odd… It clicked in his head how they got there a second later, he had come inches from getting domed by one of the stallion’s sprayed shots. That revelation prompted Turner to quietly walk back to his truck and sit slumped against the front wheel, the cold snow greeting him as he did so. His eyes looked back at the stallion who was now being uncuffed and examined more in depth.

“What did I do?” He asked himself again as he looked back at the holes in his hat. “God… I told him to drop it… Why didn’t he drop it?” Conflicting emotions ran through Turner’s mind at that point, on the one hand… He had just killed someone, on the other, that someone had almost killed him. The first thing that hit him was anger, the man pushed himself up off the ground again as the body was carted away. “Damn idiot forced my hand. Stupid mother fucker!”

He kicked a bit of snow before turning and punching the side of his truck, only to immediately regret that decision as pain throbbed up his arm. The anger wasn’t particularly directed at anything, he was just angry in general. Turner rubbed his throbbing knuckles with his uninjured hand while taking sharp gasps of pain, at least he had something else to focus on besides the maelstrom of conflicting emotions and realizations raging in his head…

Things were going well for Sam as she quietly looked over her latest portfolio of reports, there had been some minor hits in the wake of the recent steel shortage but all in all she had come out of the financial turmoil relatively unscathed. The woman was sitting at the dining room table with a cup of warm tea steaming beside her, her foot tapped rapidly on the floor and her eyes continued to glance towards the clock. It was nearing six o’clock, Turner was due home soon. Her eyes went back to the page in her portfolio, she had to have read it at least a dozen times, but the words just didn’t stick with her. Her eyes flicked back to the clock time and time again, her foot tapping audibly through the room.

She adjusted her sweater, it was a little warm and scratchy but it did it’s job in keeping the chill at bay. Even with the fire burning in the fireplace she still felt like the air was cold, her entire being was chilled to the bone. The second’s hand on the clock ticked loudly with each passing second, each second that she was alone in the home with no idea as to what was happening in the outside world. Sam let out a loud yelp of surprise when she heard the familiar sound of ‘Battle Cry of Freedom’ from her cellphone, one of the many songs that Turner had taken to playing recently. Whether it was nostalgia for a time long past or just that he didn’t know many contemporary pieces, it was still a sound Sam welcomed. Then more than ever.

“Paige?” She said almost as soon as she had picked up the phone and put it up against her ear.

“I’m here, Sam…” Turner’s voice replied, though he sounded obviously stressed. “I couldn’t call earlier, some protocols had to be followed before hand.” Sam let out a sigh of relief and rubbed her forehead, just hearing his voice was enough to lift the stress off of her shoulders. “I’ll be home in about twenty minutes.”

“Okay…” Sam said while standing up and walking towards the couch to take a seat. “Are you holding up okay? You sound… Off.”

“I… I… There’s… I just want to get home, Sam… I’ll tell you everything once I’m home. I gotta hang up though, cause I’m driving, y’know?” Turner’s tone of voice was strange, like he was far more distant than ever before. Sam could tell that something had to have happened, she just couldn’t place what.

“Okay, just get home safe. I love you...” Sam said with a nod, she waited until she heard the tell tale click of Turner hanging up on his end before she put down her phone. She sat there watching the fireplace as it crackled and popped before she stood up and walked closer. She grabbed a couple pieces of firewood and put them in, boosting the heat and ensuring the house wouldn’t get too cold. When she sat back down on the couch she began to think on what could’ve happened, it consumed the woman’s thoughts up until she heard the sound of Turner’s truck rolling past the house and towards the barn. This was followed by crunching snow outside and the thud of boots trudging up the back porch.

Sam turned to face the door as Turner opened it and stepped inside, his hat in one hand and his rifle in the other. He leaned the rifle against the wall by door and hung up his coat, the look on his face was unlike anything Sam had seen before. The Deputy walked over to the couch, before wordlessly sitting down and placing his hat on the coffee table. Sam quietly examined it for a moment, then came to the same conclusion as to what happened as Turner had when he’d first noticed the holes himself.

“Are those…?” Sam asked as she pointed to the hat, Turner only nodded. “Did… Did any of them hit you?” The man shook his head and leaned back in his seat, bringing a hand to his face and rubbing his eyes. “Is that what’s bothering you?” Deciphering the various nuances of Turner’s body language was something that Sam had become quite adept at, he was obviously agitated… When he shook his head at her last question she was somewhat surprised, what could be worse than getting shot at?

“We… We raided the drug den, just as planned…” Turner said quietly, his voice heavy with emotion as he unbuttoned his shirt collar. “I was supposed to watch the perimeter, make sure no one got out… Which I did, just as planned.” Sam could tell he was building up to something, the emotion in his voice was getting harder and harder to hide. “Sam… This pony, couldn’t be more than eighteen or nineteen, basically a kid... He came out of this building towards me. He was holding an automatic, same one what put the hole in my cap there…” Turner gestured to the hat before he looked at the floor, his voice cracked as he wiped his eyes quickly. “He raised it at me, Sam… I told him to drop it, I did… He just kept comin’ at me.” Sam saw something she hadn’t really seen Turner do often, he was wiping tears away from his eyes. “I… I… I did what I was trained to do. I took aim at this kid… Pulled the trigger…”

Sam sat there somewhat dumbstruck as she took in the words he was saying, something she had never prayed she would ever hear in her entire life. What hit her hardest was seeing what it had done to Turner, Sam couldn’t say she knew what the family of the dead stallion looked like, but if it was half as destroyed as the Deputy beside her she couldn’t imagine what it felt like.

“He just stared at me, like he didn’t believe it… Then he goes down shooting, gives me that.” Turner gestured to the holes in his hat. “I told him to drop it… I told him… I keep playing it over and over in my head…” The man wiped his eyes as he started to sob. “Why…? Why didn’t he drop it?”

Sam quietly leaned over and pulled Turner into a tight embrace, feeling him sob against her shoulder was a sensation she hoped never to feel again. All the while, she was thinking about what to do. On Earth, she likely would’ve been part of some protest march against Turner, but now… Now she was on the other side of the wire. Sam quietly shook her head, kicking herself for even thinking about such things at that time. She didn’t know what she should do, so she did all she could to help Turner. For hours the two of them sat on the couch, the fire slowly dying down to embers as night replaced the twilight of day outside.

“Paige…” Sam finally spoke up, Turner nodded quietly as he rubbed his eyes and looked over at her from his position on the couch. “I love you, no matter what. You’re home… Safe. Alive.” She sat up a bit more and hugged him again. “I don’t know how to help, or if I even can help… But if you need anything, I’m here…”

“I know, Sam…” Turner said tiredly, his expression somewhat sunken as he looked at the floor. “This… This is something that I just… Need time to process.” The man looked over at her with an uncertain expression. “Sheriff Long Wire gave me a month off, but… I’m not sure what I’ll do after that.”

“We can cross that bridge when we come to it, but for now… Maybe take things day to day?” Sam suggested, Turner nodded softly and looked back at the floor. “Why don’t you go head to bed, okay? I’ll be in soon.” The Deputy nodded quietly and stood up, he undid his gun belt and rested it on the coffee table beside his hat before quietly kissing Sam on the cheek and wordlessly making his way to the master bedroom.

Sam quietly sat there, minutes ticking by as she came to terms with what she’d heard herself. It was odd, she was more upset at that Turner was so distressed than she was at the prospect of what had brought that distress on in the first place. As the woman stood from the couch and looked at the glowing embers in the fireplace, after a couple moments she looked down at Turner’s gun belt. Cautiously she reached down and removed his sidearm from his holster, then walked over to his rifle and grabbed that as well. The woman quietly walked to the bedroom with both weapons in hand, Turner was already laying under the covers and facing away from the door when Sam walked in.

Carefully she took both weapons and secured them in the gun safe that they’d recently purchased after moving in. Her eyes looked nervously over at Turner, afterwards she locked the safe and input a new combination… One the Deputy didn’t know. She wasn’t afraid of him by any means, on the contrary she did this for his own protection. Honestly, in the wake of what she had seen… Sam was afraid that her beloved mountain of a man would try to hurt himself, or worse… She wasn’t about to let that happen.

With that, Sam quietly made her way to the bed and crawled in beside Turner. She put an arm around his waist and hugged him tightly, it was easy to tell he was still awake. What he would do in the coming month was a mystery to the two of them, but Sam was determined to help Turner ride things out… Just as he was determined to make her happy. She wanted to stay up all night, but against her efforts she ended up slipping into sleep.

Turner rolled onto his back as he stared up at the ceiling of the room, the events that had followed the raid still playing out in his mind. There had been at least four Terries that had seen the shooting play out, all of them agreed that he made the right call. Sheriff Long Wire had been pretty convinced that there didn’t need to be much more investigation beyond that… Considering the holes in Turner’s hat, he took it on faith that things were above board.

Turner didn’t doubt his decision either, if he had waited an instant longer he could’ve very well not been the one to tell Sam what had happened. That’s what he kept telling himself anyway, but despite all that he couldn’t get the image of that stallion hitting the ground like a sack of cement out of his head. He knew that image would stay with him for the rest of his life, but Turner had to move on. That much was clear. So, he would spend the next month getting his shit together, and then… Then he’d get right back on the horse, so to speak. Of course, that was easier said than done... For the moment, all he could do was try to wrestle his conscience into submission so that he could get some sleep.

Author's Note

A brief note: You may notice I reference a lot of songs from the Civil War, Folk songs, and songs from the early 1920s occasionally. That's mainly because they're in the public domain, I figured I'd clear that up.