Songbirds announced the arrival of the morning of the 13th, and their over-chipper tweeting set Logan's teeth grinding. He charged four batteries of red before he'd even made his way outside of the shack, but standing there in the fresh and dewy morning air, head newly leveled, he felt a return of calm control.

Today was a day of walking, and of hard labor. Batteries were heavy, and while he could manage that weight for short bursts, the distance he had to travel was significant. That was why he set to it without any further delay—better to try with the echoes of sunrise still splayed across the sky, rather than wait for the approach of the heat of midday.

His first priority was getting the boxes as far from the warehouses as he could: he carried a box for about 5 minutes, set it down, and then doubled back to retrieve the second. He'd then march onwards with the second for another 5 minutes, set it down, retrieve the first, and on and on the morning wound. With arms trembling and shirt soaked with sweat, he finally found the tree he remembered.

He set the boxes against it and collapsed to a seated position against the tree, breathing heavily. After a few minutes of recovery, he set to arranging their position as close to his memory as he could. Once satisfied with their arrangement, he opened the lid and stared inside, remembering the extra item in the gift that would catalyze planning and drafting to actual action and commitment: Dad's revolver.

He still had it tucked to his waistband, and his first thought was that he could simply place the one he wore into the box. He quickly shrugged the idea off: the puzzle pieces didn't fit together that way. If he placed his into the box, then the revolver he received that night was never Dad's revolver at all—and yet it looked and felt just like it, so that made no sense. No, for the revolver to have any continuity, he understood now that he would have to be the one to retrieve it himself from Dad. Logan swallowed, grasping the implications of that statement.

Logan-of-the-past would leave his home with a bloodied nose, having just endured the abuses of his father. Dad had his revolver then. When that Logan got to the tree in the dark of the night, finding the box of batteries, Dad's revolver was already there, waiting for him. The timeline got fuzzy, but present-Logan did have the Time Watch. He had an idea for how to make it all fit together.

Night fell for the 13th of July, and Logan watched from the embracing dark as his past self returned home from the general store robbery and successful retcon operation afterward. He would be inside for a few hours more.

Eventually came the shouting, the clattering, and a single shattering note as tonight's fight unfurled… it was a scotch glass thrown across the living room. Past-Logan retreated to his bedroom to begin his writings. Present Logan waited, trembling with anticipation.

At long last, he saw it: his past self slipped out into the dark, flashlight in hand. He was headed into the woods to unwrap the gift that Logan had recently left, though that gift was not yet complete. The final piece waited for him just inside.

As present-Logan drew nearer and nearer to the door, it seemed to grow larger and larger before him… here was his childhood home. Within that door, he would find the towering pillar of authority that had loomed over him his entire life. Dad was a cruel man, but he was also family. A quick withdrawal from the Empathizer and Logan could hardly remember why that thought had slowed him down. Dad was an obstacle, the continuity of the revolver was a problem, and tonight's act was the solution.

He pushed open the door and stepped inside. It didn't take long to find Dad—drunk, just as he remembered, and pouring himself another glass of gin.

"Didn't I tell you to stay out of my sight?" Dad slurred, frowning with confusion as he noted Logan's suddenly different wardrobe.

Logan, as part of deep-rooted instinct, wanted to shrink back and away, retreat to his bedroom or garage or anywhere to avoid that furious gaze… but that was the reflex of the weaker Logan that was, not the strong Logan of the present.

He reached for his waistband and pulled the revolver, pointing it at Dad. His father's eyes bulged in confusion, in rage, and his hands crept towards his own holster, feeling the weight still tucked there.

"I don't understand," Dad slurred, staring at the weapon. "That's my gun. I know my gun."

"You don't even know your own son," Logan said, stepping in close to pull the weapon from his father's holster. Dad didn't stop him. Logan tucked the extra, second revolver into his waistband, and then he gestured forward. "To the garage… we're going for a drive, now."

He led his father through the house, gun held to his back. He expected his father to fight him off, or at least maybe play the tough guy, grumbling about the dangers he'd faced in Cambodia or the times he shrugged off the threat of death like it had been dandruff brushed from his shoulders. Instead Dad walked meekly to the car and got into the driver's seat—not so commanding once separated from his gun. In the rear-view mirror, Logan could see his wet eyes still bulging and intense.

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From inside the house, a call sounded: "Logan, are you sure about this?" His mother's voice, a detail he'd overlooked in tunnel vision. It was clear that she knew what he was up to. She'd likely overheard or somehow saw the confrontation. Her question didn't have disapproval in it, not even a pleading note to stop him… Dad was no kinder to his wife than he was to his son. Logan decided she was probably unsure of whether she wanted him to do it or not.

All things considered, she should be there in the car with them—fewer loose ends was certainly safer—but Logan couldn't go get her without letting Dad get away. You can't chase someone down while holding another at gunpoint…

And so, thinking again of the two empty chambers in the revolver—knowing things would work out because they already had worked out—Logan took a calculated risk: "I'll be back in a half hour at most… don't be here when I return," he called to the inside of the house. "Go stay with your sister for a week, maybe two. Wait for things to calm down."

Inside, his mother took several seconds to respond. "I love you," she said quietly. As Logan felt no love in return, he called nothing back, merely nodding to his father to put the car in gear.

Through the winding streets of Boone they drove, Logan watching the orange shadows cast by the streetlights dance across the car's interior. "Left," he told Dad, directing the two onto a rocky, gravely road that traced the perimeter around a lake, glistening smooth and black in the midnight light.

"You know why I keep that gun so well oiled?" Dad finally asked.

Logan shook his head, knowing that at long last they came to the part where he would beg for his life or make his desperate attempt to escape. Logan was unworried, as he knew he would have the weapon in the end, and so he indulged it. "Why?"

"In Cambodia, after clearing a nest, we'd sometimes take prisoners of enemy combatants… make em play a little Russian roulette for our amusement. You know how that game works?"

Logan nodded uneasily, his shell of calm momentarily rattled. His father watched in the rear-view mirror.

"You watch so many people play it, and you start to wonder what it's like. You've known it wasn't easy for me to come back from war," Dad said. "The shit that happened to us… the shit that we did… still gets my heart racing to think about it, still brings the nightmares most nights."

"Park here but leave the engine on," Logan instructed, and Dad did.

"So many of my pals died, fighting for the American dream… turns out, that's being stuck in this dead-end smalltown nowhere for the rest of my life with a wife and kid that hate me, no prospects, no future, rotting away day by day."

Logan wanted to interject—shout that it was his Dad's own fault everyone hated him—but he pulled away the pitiable emotions with another hiss from the Empathizer.

Dad continued. "You know, on your second birthday, I'd finally had enough. I locked myself in my study with a bottle and the revolver, and I stared down the barrel—that's how I knew it when you had it aimed at me, I know the inside of that barrel like nothing else—and I loaded a single bullet, just one. Decided I'd ask God if he was done with me, if I could just be done with it all already. I spun the chamber, as one does, thinking on those poor babbling locals we'd had play roulette for our kicks, and then I put the barrel down my own throat."

Logan felt a deep chill that penetrated even the neutrality left from the Empathizer, realizing how he was truly this pathetic man's son. Trembling, he again used the device on himself, though it took another three batteries to withdraw all of the pitiful emotions.

"I pull the trigger, the gun clicks, but nothing happens. I'm crying, I think that God decided to save me, but then I notice the bullet's spot in the revolver. It had been waiting there, ready to pound its way through my head, but the hammer had caught on some rust. A misfire."

Dad looked up to Logan in the rear-view mirror again, holding his gaze now.

"Yet another fuckup—my life's a real parade of those. From that day on, I kept that gun oiled and cleaned because I was hoping I'd eventually have the guts to try again. And, if I did, I'd want that shot to finally send home. But it's hard to do it a second time, you know? Hard to shake the feeling that you survived because you were meant to—or because you were damned to."

That was a feeling with which Logan could sympathize, and Logan at last understood that his father wouldn't be making any desperate plays to survive, wouldn't even beg for his life… a part of him had been long courting this moment, and in Dad's eyes there was almost a relief that it was here.

Dad sniffled, pausing for a while to collect his thoughts. "In the army, we used to say a man was made by the way that he went… Will you tell Lisa—"

Logan fired the weapon once, twice, and a third shot besides. There was no catharsis, no relief, not even so much as an internal stirring of guilt at having killed his own father, monster though he was, as such reactions would have required feeling. Logan felt nothing, emotional palette freshly cleansed with the Empathizer's soft touch. He then stepped out of the car and opened the driver's door, wedging his dad's leg against the gas pedal. The engine revved. He then leaned over Dad as he gasped his final ragged breaths, and Logan switched the car into drive.

The car lurched forwards and bumped its way across the grass, sliding into the black waters of the lake. Logan watched it sink, breathing heavily, standing alone in the dark until he could see no more ripples, no more bubbles rising to the surface. He brushed his hands on his pants, felt the weight of the second revolver in his belt, and he began to set the proper time on the Time Watch. He would have to flash back to a few hours prior and deliver the weapon into the box he'd set out this morning before his past-self opened it around now.

Once that was settled, he would go off to the woods, preparing for the tasks of the days ahead.