Who: Leon Orcot and Henry Townshend What: Leon teaches Henry how to shoot When: May 8th 2021 Where: Local gun range Ratings/Warnings: Talk of guns and proper gun handling Status: Complete!
Leon didn’t especially like the idea of random, anonymous guns showing up at Henry’s place. He was pretty sure that after he did the ballistics test and after the results came back, he’d find that the gun was definitely used in a crime. Even if the results came back without any results didn’t mean that it hadn’t - their ballistics database was probably about as inclusive as their fingerprint registry.
But whether it had been used in a crime or not, Leon was determine to make sure that Henry knew how to use it. He wasn’t sure if he considered Henry a friend, per se - Leon didn’t really do friends, and he considered Veronica and Qrow friends enough for him - but he liked the guy and the last thing he wanted to do was to receive a text from Henry saying he’d accidentally shot himself.
Leon was a regular at the gun range. He liked to keep his skills sharp so that if he ever did get into an incident where he had to draw his gun on someone, he could hopefully get away without killing them. He had a memory of someone, a serial killer, posed over top of someone else, a butcher’s knife in their hand, ready to bring the knife down on their victim, and Leon shooting it clear out of their hand. That was the kind of skill he hoped to maintain.
It was kind of weird that he didn’t remember anything else about that particular case though. That seemed like something he should remember.
The guy at the front desk nodded to Leon as he came in, and Leon jerked a thumb toward Henry. “He’s with me,” he said, and the man waved them through without another comment. Leon gave a condensed tour of the premises, before he handed Henry a pair of noise cancelling earmuffs and headed out to the range.
Guns were not something Henry had grown up with. His grandparents were more the type to defend the idea of the 2nd Amendment than to actually have guns in their home. One of his grandfather’s friends had been a gun owner, though. Henry had seen the man’s gun collection a few times -- those occasions when he brought over his newest piece to show off to Grandpa -- but Henry had never touched any of them, much less fired them.
But when he picked up the pistol from his coffee table, it felt so familiar. He wasn’t afraid of it, it felt comfortable in his hand, and though he wasn’t a marksman by any means, he knew instantly how to use it, how many rounds it held and how to load it. It was then he’d quickly put the gun down and texted Leon.
Now he was at the gun range with Leon. The pistol safely away in a holster in his bag. It felt heavy in there, as though constantly reminding him of its presence. He followed Leon as the detective gave his tour and he paid close attention to the safety instructions provided, nodding his head.
Monsters, he used the gun to kill monsters, though, he was fairly sure there weren’t going to be any monsters at the range.
“Thanks for bringing me here,” Henry said as he and Leon stepped onto the range.
“Yeah, anytime,” Leon said. “I come here a lot, so it’s nice to bring someone along sometimes.” That, and making sure people didn’t shoot themselves was kind of part of his job.
“You ever been to one of these places before?”
Henry shook his head. “No,” he said. “I’ve never even been shooting. A friend of my grandfather owned some guns, but I wasn’t allowed to handle any of them. I guess I was too young.” Henry shrugged.
Finally Henry placed his gun on the table so that Leon could see it. “This is it,” he said, as if Leon wouldn’t have been able to figure that out for himself. “I think...maybe...you should look at it first before we start. Make sure it’s, you know, not going to explode in our hands when we pull the trigger?”
“Probably just thought it’d be a pain in the ass to teach you how to shoot,” Leon said, grinning. He’d seen some pretty young kids on the range, and while he approved, in theory, about teaching kids gun safety when they were young and drilling it into their moldable minds so they’d never forget it, “I’m pretty sure I’d rather shoot myself than teach some kid how to do it.”
Maybe teaching Chris would be okay. But that was just because Chris was objectively better than every other kid.
“Not a bad call,” Leon said. “Besides, learning how to disassemble and assemble your gun, and how to clean it is the kind of thing you’re going to need to know if you’re going to own a gun.” He grabbed a couple of chairs and placed them side by side, then sat down in one, showing Henry step by step how to take apart the gun, how to clean what needed to be cleaned, and then how to reassemble it. Once he was done, he slid the gun over to Henry. “Now you try,” he said.
Henry chuckled softly. Leon was probably right. Henry couldn’t imagine Gramps’s friend hauling him out to a gun range to teach him how to shoot. Plus, Gran would have given Gramps an earful about it if he had.
He watched carefully as Leon disassembled the gun, explaining the different parts as he did and how to clean it and how to inspect it. He was quiet through the lesson, nodding his head now and then to show he understood. It was a relief to know that the gun seemed to be in good condition (he was sure Leon would have said something if it wasn’t), though he’d already suspected as much. It didn’t hurt to be careful though, given what his memories had been so far.
When Leon slid the gun back to him and told him it was his turn to take it apart and put it back together, Henry hesitated before picking it up again. This was his gun, he should know it in and out.
It’s not my gun. It’s Joseph’s. I just found it.
Henry frowned. After a moment of glaring at the gun as though it had insulted him, he started taking it apart the way Leon had shown him just a few moments ago.
Leon nodded encouragingly as Henry took apart the gun. He was ready to correct Henry if it seemed like he did anything wrong, but it seemed to go smoothly. “It looks like it’s in pretty good shape,” Leon said after he was sure that Henry seemed to have the hang of it. “You’re going to want to clean it pretty regularly after you shoot it and keep it in good shape. Guns that aren’t cared for properly have a bad habit of going off unexpectedly.”
Henry nodded. He had no idea how long the gun had been hanging out in his apartment -- the other apartment of his memories -- before he’d found it under the credenza. At least two years since that was how long Henry had been there before things had gone all weird. He was no expert, but he was pretty sure stashing a gun under a piece of furniture was probably not caring for it properly.
But the gun seemed to be fine. Almost as though it had been left there for him. And Leon said it was in good condition and not likely to blow up in their hands when they pulled the trigger. That was good.
With the gun reassembled, Henry’s attention moved towards the shooting range itself, his eyes settling on the targets. In this other life he was remembering he used the gun to shoot things. Monsters.
His attention snapped back to Leon. “Teach me to shoot.”
Leon followed Henry to the shooting range, donning his hearing protection and indicating that Henry should do the same. He drew his own weapon.
“First thing you want to do is have a good grip,” Leon said, demonstrating his own two-handed grip. He lifted his gun to the target. “You want to keep your arms straight more or less straight, but you don’t want to lock your elbows. Just a slight bend in the elbow to help absorb the recoil.” He lowered the gun to the floor again, and gestured to the sights. “You want to line up the sights before you take your shot. You’ve got these two bumps here at the back, and then the one right at the front of the barrel? You want to make sure they’re all perfectly aligned - not only that the bump at the front of the barrel is between the two that are closest to you, but that the tops of all of them are in line too. You don’t want the far sight to be sitting above the lower ones.”
He raised the gun again. “Make sure your posture is right,” he said, giving Henry a moment to observe Leon’s posture. “Then you want to pull back the trigger nice and gentle. No need to yank it back or anything.” He demonstrated, three shots one after another, the first hitting the exact centre of the target and the next two nearly passing cleanly through the first hole.
Henry nodded when Leon instructed him how to use the gun’s sights to target. He nodded again as Leon demonstrated the correct posture to use. He expected the noise of Leon’s gun going off so close to him to surprise him and was surprised that it didn’t. What did surprise him was how clean Leon’s shot was. Henry hoped he didn’t expect him to do as well.
Then it was his turn. He lifted his gun and took the stance Leon had shown him. A weird feeling of deja vu swept over him, as though he’d done this before. Not shooting at a range, but actually taking aim with the gun. Some muscle memory took over, which altered his stance into a far less professional position than Leon had shown him, but both hands were on the gun and his elbows were still slightly bent. He knew the recoil of this gun and anticipated the crack when he pulled the trigger. All of it came to him as though he’d done it before.
His shots weren’t nearly as precise as Leon’s were -- all three were high and to the right -- but they clustered well.
When the range martial called All Quiet, Henry lowered his gun and looked at Leon. “How was that?” He asked.
Leon watched Henry, arms crossed. His posture maybe wasn’t what Leon had shown him, but it was good enough. About on par with most of the guys who shot a lot of guns but not for any reason related to their careers. Henry’s targeting wasn’t so bad either.
Once All Quiet was called, Leon removed his earmuffs and let them sit on his shoulders. “Pretty good,” he said, slapping Henry on the shoulder. “You sure you’ve never done this before?”
Henry pulled his earmuffs from his ears as well, letting the bright orange things rest around his neck snuggly. He looked from Leon to the gun in his hands before setting it down on the little shelf in front of him. He shook his head. “No,” he said. “I’ve never done this before.”
Then he looked up at Leon again. “But, that’s not really true, is it? I mean, in this other life I’m remembering, I have used a gun. This gun. It’s weird. Like, when I was shooting it, it felt as though I’d done it before, you know? Like I already knew what I was doing.” He grunted a small laugh. “Though, I don’t think I had any proper training in this other life, or whatever it was, either.”
Leon groaned once Henry mentioned this other life. Leon didn’t buy this ‘memories from another world’ thing. It didn’t make any damned sense, even if, when he thought about D, and D’s Pet Shop, really thought about it, it didn’t seem to fit in with anything else in his life.
Leon tried not to think very hard about D and his pet shop.
“Well, whether you learned from a dream or some past life or just natural-born talent, you don’t seem to have picked up any especially bad habits, so I guess we’ll consider that a win.” Maybe his posture could have used work, but it wasn’t like he was trying to shoot the wings off a fly at fifty paces or something. It was fine for what it was. “You wanna do a couple more rounds before we go grab a couple beers after? My treat.”
“Sorry,” Henry said when Leon groaned. He knew how much the other man hated talking about this other lives or other memories, or whatever they were. But they were hard for Henry to ignore, especially given how things had changed over the last few months. He saw ghosts all the time now. Well, not all the time -- he wasn’t seeing any now -- but it was regular enough that Henry just expected to see one or two wherever he went. What was unnerving these days was that the ghosts seemed as though they were noticing him now.
But he didn’t say any of this to Leon. Leon didn’t want to hear about it and the man was nice enough to inspect his gun and bring him out to the range to learn how to properly shoot it. It was reassuring to hear that not only was the gun in good condition, but that Henry himself wasn’t a bad shot. Though, his aim could use a little work.
Henry nodded at Leon’s offer. “Yeah,” he said. “Let’s do that.”