Summary: “…if anyone in the wide world had a reason to be angry it was me.” A WHB (what happened before) for the episode “The Stranger”. Leduque’s POV.

Rating: T (for language)

Word Count: 600

 

New Orleans, Louisiana, 1839

 

With a curse, I threw the dinner tray as hard as I could, but even the sound of shattering dishes and the splattering of food hitting the wall did little to assuage the anger roiling inside of me. It was a living, breathing thing, my rage. It clawed its way deep into my being, gripping my heart in a vice, refusing to be dislodged or placated. After all, if anyone in the wide world had a reason to be angry it was me.

 

They had let him go. After all that that man had done to the victim, to me, they had just let him go. It was…it was….

 

The word unacceptable didn’t even scratch the surface, but it would have to do. I had put my trust in the justice system, something I’d believed in wholeheartedly ever since I was a young boy, and for the first time in my life I watched it fail. It had failed the victim. It had failed the great city of New Orleans. And worst of all, it had failed me.

 

“I’m sorry, Charles, but the evidence all points to self-defense on his side. We had to let him go,” Captain Benoit had tried to explain when he had visited me in my sickroom earlier in the day. But it wasn’t enough. It would never be enough, not for me. The bastard shot me, an officer of the law, and had gotten away with murder. He hadn’t even received a slap on the wrist for his actions.

 

That wasn’t justice. No, from all that I’d heard about the man he had deep pockets. He must have payed off the judge, it was the only thing that made sense. So, he may have killed Simon La Roche in a fair fight – by all accounts La Roche was a well-known blackmailer and would have come to a bad end eventually anyway – but shooting me?

 

I reached for the closest thing to hand on the bedside table, intent on throwing it as well, but stopped short when I realized just what it was that I held. It was a bullet. Not just any bullet though, it was the one that he had shot me with.

 

The one the doctor pulled from my mangled knee.

 

The one that had crippled me for life.

 

I rolled the cool piece of metal around on my palm and felt my anger cool the slightest bit. Leaning back against the pillows, I sucked in a breath as my injured leg throbbed. Even laudanum couldn’t block all of the pain from my wound.

 

The doctor said I would never walk again. Well, I would show him. I would do it. I would do it if only to get a bit of my own back.

 

Maybe I couldn’t change the past, but I could learn from it and move forward. I was wiser now. The rose colored glasses I’d seen the law through had been shattered – much like my kneecap.

 

I would not forget him though, the man who got away. Oh, no, I would not forget him. I would find him. No matter what I had to do or how long it took, I would find him. I would find him and bring him to justice. And no amount of money in the world would keep him from paying for his crimes.

 

“I will remember you, Ben Cartwright,” I vowed under my breath as I clenched the bullet in my fist, “I will remember you and you will rue the day you ever messed with Charles Leduque.”

 

~ Finis

Tags: Charles Leduque, revenge, Ben Cartwright