Title: If The Death Ray Worked
Rating: PG-13
Characters/Pairing: Penny, Captain Hammer, Dr. Horrible
Word Count: 621
Warnings: Character Death
Summary: The Death Ray didn't break when Dr. Horrible dropped it, and now he's facing a gun-wielding arch-nemesis...
A/N: This was written for Round 1/Challenge 2 of jossverse_las  The fic actually got the most votes for this challenge... *grins* . I'm also using it for my fanfic100 prompt 082. If.


It’s Billy, she realises, shock pooling in her stomach. Billy is Dr. Horrible. It’s Billy who is currently squirming under Captain Hammer’s black boot, with a gun pointed straight at his head.

Captain Hammer smirks. “I don’t have time for your warnings. Give my regards to Saint Peter… or whoever has his job, but in Hell.”

Penny opens her mouth to call out, to stop him, but it’s too late. Captain Hammer pulls the trigger, and a blast of red electricity explodes from the muzzle of the gun, hitting Billy square in the chest.

She walks slowly forward in the silence that follows, dread pooling in her stomach. Captain Hammer grins at her, all charm and smugness, but she barely sees him; her eyes trained on the white-coated figure sprawled on the floor. The white-coated figure that, even from the other side of the room, she can see is lying too still.

She can’t understand how she didn’t see it before, how she couldn’t see her shy Billy-buddy buried beneath the anger and pain. But the lab coat held him up; made him walk tall and proud. The goggles shadowed his eyes; the gloves disguising his soft, cautious touch.

And now he was so clearly, so tragically, Billy; Billy, looking for all the world like a child playing dress-up, dwarfed by over-sized boots and a loose-fitting lab coat.

“Well? Aren’t you going to give your heroic boyfriend a kiss?” Captain Hammer drawls, shooting a smarmy grin at the surrounding press.

Penny shakes her head and doesn‘t say a word.

Captain Hammer frowns. “C’mon, Penny,” he wheedles. “Are you scared? You don’t need to be. You’re safe now.”

“You killed him,” she whispers.

“He was evil,” Captain Hammer states, as if that’s explanation enough. As if that explains anything at all.

“He wasn’t… He didn’t deserve this.” She can feel tears pricking her eyes, and she’s not sure if it’s due to shock, or grief, or horror. Probably some combination of all three.

Captain Hammer sighs irritably. “You didn’t know him, Penny. He had you fooled with his little laundry-buddy routine…”

Penny’s head snaps up. “You knew he was Billy?” she says, all but spitting the words out, and now there’s another emotion swirled into the mixture: anger.

Captain Hammer tries to backtrack, but it’s too late. “He was Dr. Horrible, Penny,” he whines, like a dog seeking approval.

“He was Billy to me!” she screams back, her words echoing around the room, and in the silence that follows all she can hear is her own ragged breathing and the thumping of her heart.

She turns away from Captain Hammer and kneels beside Billy. “I’m so sorry,” she whispers. She leans over and kisses him gently on the cheek before walking out the room without a backwards glance.

--

She goes to the funeral. There’s hardly anyone there - just a dark-haired man in wet clothes, twin girls, a few others that seem to not want to be seen. The damp man says a few words, but it’s about Dr. Horrible, not Billy. Penny tunes him out and thinks instead about the Billy she knew.

She waits until everyone else has gone before she walks over to the grave. She sits cross-legged on the grass and pulls two frozen yoghurt containers out of her bag. The yoghurts have long since melted, but that’s not the point. She eats hers, wondering yet again why anyone thought that sporks were a good idea for yogurt, and leaves Billy’s next to his headstone.

She stays there until the sun sets. As dusk sets in she stands, brushing her fingertips over the cold stone. “Goodbye, Billy buddy,” she whispers, turning to start the lonely walk home.