Kill Me Now or Forever Stay Your Hand

"Mitth'raw'nuruodo was still waiting, watching him silently. Doriana closed his hand around the grip of his blaster.. And paused. Mitth'raw'nuruodo, brilliant tactician. Equally brilliant strategist. A being who could take on Republic warships, nomadic pirates, and even Jedi, and win against them all. And Doriana was actually considering killing him? "What are you waiting for?" Kav broke impatiently into his thoughts. "You have him alone and unprotected. Shoot him!" ''Doriana smiled tightly; and with that, the underlying tension that had been nagging at him ever since his task force's destruction finally faded away. "Don't be absurd, Vicelord," he said. Pulling out the blaster, he leaned over and set it on an empty chair between him and Mitth'raw'nuruodo. "I would as soon shatter thousand-year-old crystal as kill a being such as this." Mitth'raw'nuruodo inclined his head, his eyes glittering. "So I was indeed right about you," he said."

- Outbound Flight by Timothy Zahn

Jack wants to kill Tom. Very, very, very much. Or he is firmly convinced that it is his duty. Often, both are true.

Tom is generally in some kind of superior position. He can be the boss, The Captain, etc. Or he can just be more powerful, as in a better swordsman. And he is at least heroic, if not The Hero.

Jack finds himself in a situation where he could kill Tom—either at all, or without reprisal. Usually, Tom knows that Jack wants to kill him and has set this up, although this can sometimes be hard to establish. Always, he is expressing some degree of trust in his safety with Jack, and always, Jack has not planned to kill him there.

They both get through it alive. Jack never tries to kill Tom. Though the exact degree of loyalty this inspires can vary widely. Generally indicates a moral improvement on Jack's part, all the way up to a full Heel Face Turn.

Compare Get It Over With, Sword Over Head.

Contrast Defeat Means Friendship, Fire-Forged Friends, Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal, Cooldown Hug and Villain's Dying Grace. Somewhat of an inverse of the Scorpion Dilemma. Contrast "Friend or Idol?" Decision. May forestall Klingon Promotion.

Anime & Manga

 * Toward the end of Witch Hunter Robin, the eponymous pyrokinetic (now on the run) pulls this on her former partner Amon after learning he was assigned to take her down.
 * Filia from Slayers Try does this with Jillas. When Jillas points a gun at her, she holds his hand with the gun and tells him to shoot. He's shocked and unable to do it, and eventually does a Heel Face Turn when she saves his life.
 * Kujibiki Unbalance: President uses a form of this to keep her ninja-Miko subordinate in line (both from the first time they meet to the very end when she's accused of "losing her way"), and she never need lift a finger to do it.
 * Thorfinn from Vinland Saga joins a group of vikings for the sole purpose of killing their leader, Askeladd. However, he refuses to kill Askeladd in anything besides an honorable duel.
 * from Bleach does this.
 * Sosuke Aizen has this sort of relationship with pretty much all of his minions. Especially
 * In Code Geass, Lelouch dared his fellow rebels, the Black Knights, to kill him when they questioned his leadership. They step back, in part because he also points out that they're completely screwed with out him acting as their strategist. One of them even comments that that must have taken an incredible amount of guts.
 * In Utawarerumono, After Hakouro completely defeats fellow Emperor and friend Kuya, he stands in front of her barely functional Humongous Mecha... and surrenders. If she kills him, she will have won the war she's practically lost, her country will flourish, and her people will no longer be persecuted. Kuya realizes she can't kill a friend in cold blood, and moreover, that cooperation is what she should have tried, rather than forced unification. Unfortunately, things go downhill from there rather quickly.
 * The manga versions of Vash and Wolfwood have a moment like this, where they're having a fairly friendly moment, Wolfwood stares a Vash's back and thinks, he's open, I could kill him right now; the motivation being that Vash is Knives' twin brother and if Knives by himself is a threat,  well... And he doesn't. And then Vash looks around at him, one of those really sad smiles he does, and Wolfwood sort of smiles and thinks Vash knew exactly what he was thinking. They're kind of messed-up for best friends.
 * In Gundam Seed, Lacus combines this with Full Name Ultimatum. It was probably Athrun's last chance to keep her as a fiancée despite their parents having now turned against an Arranged Marriage between them.
 * The manga versions of Vash and Wolfwood have a moment like this, where they're having a fairly friendly moment, Wolfwood stares a Vash's back and thinks, he's open, I could kill him right now; the motivation being that Vash is Knives' twin brother and if Knives by himself is a threat,  well... And he doesn't. And then Vash looks around at him, one of those really sad smiles he does, and Wolfwood sort of smiles and thinks Vash knew exactly what he was thinking. They're kind of messed-up for best friends.
 * In Gundam Seed, Lacus combines this with Full Name Ultimatum. It was probably Athrun's last chance to keep her as a fiancée despite their parents having now turned against an Arranged Marriage between them.

Films

 * Achilles to Briseis in the movie Troy with a knife to his neck. More like "kill me or have sex with me, your choice."
 * In The Princess Bride, when Inigo and Westley are dueling, and Westley defeats Inigo. Inigo kneels and says "Kill me quickly." Westley says "I would sooner smash a stained glass window than kill an artist such as yourself. But since I can't have you follow me either---" He then knocks Inigo unconscious with the side of his sword.
 * A nearly perfect example happens in the movie In Bruges when Harry Walters confronts his hitman Ken for not killing Ray. It's partially subverted in that Harry still shoots Ken in the leg.
 * Delivered by Mal in Serenity trying to talk down a psychotic River, only to be rapidly rescinded when she cocks the gun she's holding in reply.
 * Joker in Dark Knight confronts the newly emerged Two-Face and when threatened with a gun, presses his head to the muzzle. It works only because, but Joker actually approves of that.

Literature
"We don't have any more time to waste on these ridiculous fantasies. If you're going to shoot us, you'll have to do it In the Back."
 * In Christopher Stasheff's The Warlock In Spite of Himself, Rod Gallowglass has his servant Big Tom lower him from a roof so he can see something. Afterward, he tells him a story from Japan about an overlord, who had a subordinate who wanted to rebel: he invited the man into a garden and gave him his own sword to carry on the grounds he was old and tired, and they talked, and the subordinate was faithful for the rest of his life. Big Tom admits to being a spy, and is faithful for the rest of his life,.
 * In Lois McMaster Bujold's Shards of Honor, Aral Vorkosigan deals with a mutineer by giving him a gun and sitting down with his back to him.
 * "I told him I couldn't work with a man who made my shoulder blades itch, and this was the last chance I was going to give him for instant promotion." The man is badass.
 * In Dan Abnett's Gaunt's Ghosts novel Ghostmaker, Major Rawne and Gaunt are alone in the wintry wilderness. At one point, Rawne stands over him with a knife, ready to cut his throat; he hears Gaunt mutter in Bad Dreams (about, incidentally, the reason he wants Gaunt dead) and instead kills an ork sneaking up on them. Later, when Gaunt is about to slip into the sea of boiling hydrocarbons and drown, Rawne sacrifices his prized silver knife to afford Gaunt a hand-hold. Though he professes a desire to kill Gaunt later—even to Gaunt's own face—he never attempts it.
 * Unusually, Rawne had made an actual attempt to kill Gaunt earlier, on a battle field. Gaunt had knocked him unconscious and then, despite his own injuries, carried Rawne to safety.
 * Luke Skywalker and Mara Jade, whose final command from the Emperor was to kill Luke, in The Thrawn Trilogy.
 * In the X Wing Series, The Mole Lara Notsil gets Wedge Antilles in her sights, but The Power of Trust gets to her. Not only does she not kill him, she becomes the mask.
 * Outbound Flight: Kinman Doriana, an agent of Sidious, had come along to watch a Neimoidan with a Trade Federation fleet destroy Outbound Flight. This didn't work out so well, since Thrawn's tiny picket force utterly destroyed that fleet except for one command ship and took Doriana and the Neimoidan hostage. Thrawn also eventually killed the Jedi on Outbound Flight with Doriana's help (long story), and smacked around another alien force while he was at it, and the Neimoidan wanted to then kill Thrawn so no one would know what happened to Outbound Flight. And Doriana, realizing what all of that together means, doesn't...and eventually Thrawn joins the Empire.
 * Command Decision, another Star Wars EU story by Timothy Zahn, has a version of this. Thrawn's captain is infuriated by the tactics he's using and could mutiny with a general who wants to - but after some agonizing he doesn't, and Thrawn knew he wouldn't. That part of the scheme was to make this captain realize that he did trust Thrawn to know what he was doing.
 * While Bink and Chameleon in A Spell For Chameleon do not actually want to kill Trent, they certainly regard him as "Evil Magician Trent", mistrust him, and would cause his defeat if they could. Their Strange Bedfellows situation caused them to reevaluate him, but a particularly important event was when Trent handed Bink his sword, to keep guard, and went to sleep. Chameleon explicitly states that an evil man would not have trusted them.
 * In the Illuminatus trilogy, Hagbard Celine uses this as the climax of his program to convert people away from authoritarianism.
 * That is, he intimidates people with a loaded gun, and after awhile gives the gun to them, telling it's their turn now.
 * In Sandy Mitchell's The Traitor's Hand, how Ciaphas Cain got Beije to stop trying to arrest him. To be sure, he was wearing armor at the time, but he didn't know if it would save him.

""I hate what you've done to me, and one day I'll kill you for it." "But not today, Kage." "No, not today.""
 * In the Last Chancers books, Lieutenant Kage has expressed a desire to kill Colonel Schaeffer, including one to his face, and in fact has had several opportunities to do so. He always decides against it, and the Colonel always smirks at him afterwards. As for the admittance to his face?

"Blaine: I COMMAND YOU TO STOP OR I'LL KILL YOU ALL RIGHT HERE! Roland: Kill if you will, but command me nothing! You have forgotten the faces of those that made you! Now, either kill us or be silent and listen to me, Roland of Gilead, son of Steven, gunslinger, and lord of ancient lands! I have not come across all the miles and all the years to listen to your childish prating! Do you understand? Now you will listen to ME!"
 * Both the book and the musical of Les Misérables, between . No Heel Face Turn here -   commits suicide rather than live in a world where his enemy does the right thing, and he is in the wrong.
 * In the Cirque Du Freak novels, Mr. Crepsley gives Darren a chance to kill him when he lets him control his spider. It turns out that he had taken most of the poison out of the spider, meaning he was never in danger.
 * In Kitty and the Midnight Hour, after tells Kitty that he will never shoot her by accident, she walks up to him and tells him to do it if he intends to do it on purpose.
 * In Harry Potter and The Half Blood Prince, Dumbledore tests this way, knowing  . He doesn't believe that the character he tests has it in him to kill.
 * Richard in Richard III uses a slightly modified version of this on Lady Anne. "Take up the sword again, or take up me."
 * At the end of Brotherhood of the Rose CIA-trained assassin Saul is sneaking up on the hotel where his surrogate father, Diabolical Mastermind Elliot, is staying...only to find Elliot standing out in the open waiting for him, clearly exposed to his fire.
 * In Dune Messiah, the second Dune book, Duncan Idaho comes back to life with the help of magical Tleilaxu scientists who brainwash him to kill Paul-Muad'Dib. Paul knows this, and deliberately gives Idaho a chance near the end of the book to kill him.
 * In the sequel "God Emperor of Dune",
 * In a mild form, in Terry Pratchett's Making Money, Vetinari hands Moist a sword while questioning him. He observes afterward that Moist was more nervous while holding the sword than while Vetinari was.
 * In Jim Butcher's Dresden Files novel Small Favor, when Nicodemus points out to Harry that they don't trust him, Harry demands that Michael speak to him alone, and has him draw his sword. Whereupon Harry gets the sword to point at his throat and demands his trust. He convinces him sufficiently that Michael points out the evidence that his mind's been tampered with, and when Harry reacts, carefully tends him.
 * In Andre Norton's The Beast Master, Hosteen has to persuade an alien that a spaceship, landing in a forbidden area, is not a human ship but that of their enemies. He concludes by giving him a knife and telling it to drive it home if he doesn't believe him.
 * Used in Orson Scott Card's Ender in Exile. However, while Achilles Jr. does stop short of killing Ender, he does beat the shit out of him.
 * In Matt Farrer's Warhammer 40000 story "After Desh'ea" (in the Horus Heresy book Tales of Heresy), Kharn tells Angron that despite Angron's demand that he fight, he had given his word not to lift his hand to him, and if that means he dies, he dies. Angron is clearly moved by such devotion.
 * The Gunslinger by Stephen King: In a "Friend or Idol?" Decision, the Man in Black, who The Gunslinger has been pursuing for years in hopes of revenge for the destruction of his kingdom, shouts "Come now... or find me never!"
 * Wizard and Glass by Stephen King: In a Crowning Moment of Awesome, Roland, The Gunslinger has been on a lengthy tirade against the Spiteful AI, Blaine.


 * In The Last Temptation of Christ, Judas has sworn that he will kill the traitorous cross-maker Jesus and follows him to a monastery to do so when he leaves. When Jesus emerges from the monastery and begins fulfilling the role of the Messiah, the two have a depthy conversation about it and Judas instead becomes his surly but most devoted follower. Of course, Jesus knows who he must turn to when the time comes for someone to give him up to the Romans so that he can die and redeem the world. This has the added benefit of allowing Judas to keep from breaking his prior oath.
 * And it is Judas who comes to him during the eponymous temptation and confronts him for having shirked his duty to the world in favor of a simple life with a loving family and children.
 * The short short "Just Lather, That's All" by Hernando Téllez, in which a barber in Colombia during La Violencia has a leader of a guerilla group come to him for a shave, apparently not realizing he's an enemy, and vacillates between just doing his job and slashing the man's throat while he has him in the chair. He recalls all the people the captain has had murdered and mutilated and listens to him talk about what they plan to do to the ones they've recently captured, but ultimately decides he can't kill him and just finishes shaving him. The captain thanks him, pays him, and pauses before leaving to say, "They told me that you'd kill me. I came to find out. But killing isn't easy. You can take my word for it."

Live-Action TV

 * One episode of The X-Files used this trope: Fox Mulder manages to track down the Cigarette-Smoking Man in his home and pulls a gun on him. A short conversation in the style of the trope then follows with the result that the Man and the Mulder both wind up, well, alive.
 * In an episode of Heroes, Nathan Petrelli was going to assassinate Mr. Linderman (the season Big Bad). After pulling a gun on him, Linderman laughed and convinced Petrelli to join him. This wasn't a complete example, as Linderman made it quite clear that Petrelli would be killed immediately if he killed Linderman.
 * Another episode has some Secret Service agents trying to stop Peter, Claire and Nathan from getting to Sylar (who has disguised himself as Nathan). Claire steps in front of the guard with the gun and says "I can either tell you what's going on now, or I can tell you after you shoot me." Averted because thanks to her powers she wouldn't actually die if they shot her.
 * Kara Thrace tries this in season 4 of Battlestar Galactica Reimagined.
 * And in the previous season Adama does this with both Kara and Colonel Tigh, in order to shame them over their spreading malcontent after the events on New Caprica.
 * Even earlier, the Cylon who would come to be known as Athena inverts trope when, as a prisoner of the Colonials on Kobol, she is handed a chance to kill Adama and escape, but instead saves his life, proves she could have killed him right then if she wanted to, then hands her gun back to her captors.
 * In Touching Evil, Kreegan tries this with Keller, after allowing him to beat him up. It  depending on how much import you attribute to Keller's repeated
 * A Torchwood episode uses this where.
 * Garth Marenghi's Darkplace. Garth bares his chest to a trio of supernatural claymore-armed Scotsmen seeking revenge for Garth's discriminatory comments against the Scots. Deciding that he's shown "the courage of a highlander (Scottish person)" they present Garth with a kilt and bagpipes and let him live.
 * In the "Kill Straker!" episode of UFO, Colonel Foster has been given a subliminal command to kill his superior Commander Straker. Straker needs to be absolutely sure the command has been erased, so he orders the guards to lock them in the Shooting Gallery, then proceeds to take pot shots at Foster in order to provoke him, screaming "Kill! Kill!" when Foster finally picks up a gun to defend himself. Needless to say he doesn't. Afterwards when Foster protests that Straker was trying to kill him, Straker shoots out a row of tiny targets from the hip and says "I could have killed you at any time."
 * In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Buffy and Angel do this with each other after The Reveal about Angel's vampire nature in Season One. Angel gives Buffy a chance to shoot him with her crossbow; Buffy lays down the crossbow and bares her neck for him.
 * In the season 2 finale of Warehouse 13, Myka uses this tactic to talk down from her world-destroying plan.

Webcomics

 * In Order of the Stick prequel book "Start of Darkness", at the end, is an incredibly dark and tear-jerking version that involves  betting on, with the twist that  was never in any danger to begin with, but just wanted to make sure  would actually  for 's (or ) sake.

Western Animation

 * On The Venture Brothers, Sergeant Hatred uses this as a last ditch attempt to win Hank's respect and loyalty. Of course, Hank was simply being a typical rebellious teenager and had no interest in killing him, but that didn't stop Hatred from turning the scene into a full-blown, deadly serious melodramatic affair.

Real Life

 * Alexander the Great, when bedridden with illness, is said to have done something like this to a doctor whose loyalty he suspected. When warned that the doctor might try to poison his medicine he invited the doctor to his bedside. He then downed the medicine in one gulp and told the doctor that he didn't know anything about medicine, but he did know people and he knew that he would never betray him. The medicine was not poisoned, nor was any subsequent medicine.
 * Napoleon: "Here I am. Kill your Emperor, if you wish."
 * Not only that, he pretty much proceeded to do exactly the same thing with the entirety of France. Of course, he got pulverized in the subsequent war, but still.
 * Before Theodore Roosevelt became president, while he was away on a hunting trip, someone hired a man named Paddock to either scare him off his land or just shoot him off it. When Teddy came back and found out that Paddock had be hired to kill him, he personally went to Paddock's house and told him "I understand you have threatened to kill me on sight. I have come over to see when you want to begin the killing.” Obviously, the threats ended then and there.