It seemed appropriate that Shawn's watch had stopped - after all, time should be stopping right now. He had no use for time, he didn't want it to move...

Shawn wished that time would just stop so he could think, because he couldn't do so with it still moving, not when he had none. If only time was a currency: then he would be able to give up everything right now, sell his soul just to get a little more, because he knew if he had just five more seconds he could figure a way out of this.

But he didn't, and a stopped watch didn't mean a frozen world, and Shawn had to do something.

"Wait!" he shouted, and jumped out of his hiding spot. "Wait! Don't shoot!"

A gun swung around to aim at his chest, swiftly followed by an evil grin, and Shawn swallowed hard, for once truly scared.

But he wasn't scared because of the gun pointed at him; no, he was terrified because Gus was still just standing there like some kind of idiot, and now he really had no time because Gus was supposed to run but he wasn't, and if Shawn didn't do something now they'd both die, and that wouldn't help anyone.

He started babbling something - even he wasn't sure what - wildly motioning to the exit with his eyes. His attempts to buy some time - I swear I'll sell my soul, my life, anything, but get out now Gus, please! - didn't seem to be working because the man wielding the gun was smirking and Gus still wasn't moving, and there wasn't anyone about to come and save them and everything was spinning out of control, he hadn't known this would happen when he'd come here...

Then there was a crack and Shawn felt something blast through his gut, ripping a violent hole straight through him, what had to be a mortal wound because how could he survive this, seeing Gus collapsing to the ground in front of him, blood pouring out of a hole in his chest, way too close to the heart for comfort, and the damned man with the gun was still smirking.

"Ready to tell me what you're doing here, then, or should I just finish him off?"

Shawn couldn't breathe, and maybe time had stopped, at just the worst possible moment, because he was staring at Gus and nothing was moving, and he couldn't hear or see anything but his best friend - his brother - bleeding in front of his eyes because he hadn't done the right thing, and the bastard in front of him knew Shawn cared.

"Hey! Snap out of it, I don't have much time left before I gotta go." The man checked his watch. "Five minutes at the most. So tell me, what were you two doing in here?"

Shawn's eyes snapped back up and he would have moved, he would have gone and tackled the bastard, but his vision was blurring and he couldn't seem to move anything and -

"We just wanted to look around, please..."

"No, you're that psychic, aren't you? The one that works with the police?"

Shawn mutely shook his head, blinking the wetness out of his eyes - he was going into shock, he could tell by the numbness spreading throughout his body and the urge to just let the man with the gun do what he wanted, because none of this was real anyway... but it was, and Gus didn't have time for Shawn to be weak, so - he did tackle the man, a move which took them both by surprise because honestly, how stupid was he, to tackle someone who had a gun?

The gun went off again, but Shawn didn't care, and he wrenched it loose from the other's fingers, spinning it around into his own hands and firing it himself, right into that bastard's surprised face - something which would horrify him any other day (he'd just taken a life) but right now he had no time for his own feelings because Gus was still bleeding and god damn it, where was a fucking phone?

Bloody, trembling fingers pressed four buttons - 9-1-1-SEND - and then Shawn started talking fast into the receiver, even before it was picked up, and he was soon yelling at the woman on the phone for being too damn slow and it was only when the phone fell from his hand and the world rushed dizzily around him that he remembered he'd been shot too.

But Shawn ignored the bloody hole in his middle, trying to crawl across the suddenly impossibly long stretch of floor to Gus' body, even as everything lost its cohesiveness and twisted and his insides caught fire in protest and was that his head hitting the concrete floor?

He thought he heard sirens and he hoped that it wasn't a delusion because Gus had maybe five minutes of life left in him if they were lucky, and Shawn himself not much more than that, and they both needed more time, and if only his stupid watch had been working, this would never have happened because he'd have known the guy was about to come by, but of course he'd noticed too late, and now there wasn't even the time to be mad at himself because he wasn't sure he remembered why he was mad...

Were those sirens? Why were there sirens?