Chapter 1: The Execution
Trigger warning for major character death.
The platform was wooden. Somehow, this was the one thing that stood out to her. In this world of metal and glass and cement, this platform, of all things, was wooden. She nearly laughed.
A gentle rustle filled the air. Thousands upon thousands of people, shifting, whispering, each soft sound adding up into a shifting susurrus, echoing off the walls of the domed stadium. They couldn’t see her, not yet, but they knew she was there, and they were waiting.
He’d had her dressed with care for this event, in a soft white gown that danced around her legs like a cloud and folded around her shoulders like a python.
They led her to the foot of the stairs and turned to watch her. She nodded to them, and set her foot on the first step.
The polished wood felt warm under her bare feet, though that was impossible with the air conditioning. It felt that way though. Warm and alive. She wanted to pause for a moment, to savor it, but they were watching her from behind. She raised her head and went on, ascending unhurriedly.
There weren’t as many steps as one would expect, given the height of the platform, not were they very high. A trick of the light, perhaps, or perhaps it had been intended that way. She reached the last few, and her ascension was visible to those standing above, though not yet to those below. Still, his reaction to her appearance was visible, a sudden attentiveness that alerted the onlookers to her arrival. The whispers grew and grew until the noise was almost too great for the stadium to hold, and then she moved to the edge of the platform and looked down on them and the noise abated to near silence. They watched and she watched them until he grew impatient and made a curt gesture. She threw a grin at the crowd below and turned away, approaching the post, before his pets could draw her there.
She leaned back against it, crossing her wrists behind it and smiled up at him as they bound her to it. He stared back, as bland and unequivocal as ever.
The platform was wooden. Somehow, this was the one thing that stood out to her. In this world of metal and glass and cement, this platform, of all things, was wooden. She nearly laughed.
A gentle rustle filled the air. Thousands upon thousands of people, shifting, whispering, each soft sound adding up into a shifting susurrus, echoing off the walls of the domed stadium. They couldn’t see her, not yet, but they knew she was there, and they were waiting.
He’d had her dressed with care for this event, in a soft white gown that danced around her legs like a cloud and folded around her shoulders like a python.
They led her to the foot of the stairs and turned to watch her. She nodded to them, and set her foot on the first step.
The polished wood felt warm under her bare feet, though that was impossible with the air conditioning. It felt that way though. Warm and alive. She wanted to pause for a moment, to savor it, but they were watching her from behind. She raised her head and went on, ascending unhurriedly.
There weren’t as many steps as one would expect, given the height of the platform, not were they very high. A trick of the light, perhaps, or perhaps it had been intended that way. She reached the last few, and her ascension was visible to those standing above, though not yet to those below. Still, his reaction to her appearance was visible, a sudden attentiveness that alerted the onlookers to her arrival. The whispers grew and grew until the noise was almost too great for the stadium to hold, and then she moved to the edge of the platform and looked down on them and the noise abated to near silence. They watched and she watched them until he grew impatient and made a curt gesture. She threw a grin at the crowd below and turned away, approaching the post, before his pets could draw her there.
She leaned back against it, crossing her wrists behind it and smiled up at him as they bound her to it. He stared back, as bland and unequivocal as ever.
They didn’t offer her a blindfold, not would she have accepted if they had. Her death was hers to know and hers to witness. She saw no reason to close her eyes.
They finished their job and stepped back; she didn’t bother testing the knots. She knew they would leave no room for leeway. She simply leaned back and smiled on.
That, for some reason, seemed the tipping point. The noise began to rise again, some beginning to wail and cry at the sight of her calm, provocative smile, broadcasted to all the world, and on the broad screen TV above her head. The Kiss-Cam, she remembered it being called, sometime in those old days when they would come to watch the game and their biggest problem was graduating from university. Those days were long gone though. Now it was simply convenient.
She locked eyes with him, and they watched each other, long-time opponents meeting face to face for the first time. She watched him and wondered whether, in another world, they might have been friends.
He raised his hand, slowly, and the man behind him reacted, watching him with fanatical eyes, even as he shouted for the gunmen to ready. A moment passed, and as he dropped his hand, they fired.
The bullets ripped through her with the intensity of over a decade’s worth of frustration and war, and she quickly realized that it was not going to end with the traditional one bullet each. No, they kept firing, tearing her body apart and ensuring that she would never be able to miraculously rise from the dead again. She raised her head again, laboriously, the one part of her body left untouched, even as the perfect white dress was tainted with new trails of red with every passing moment and looked at him again. Then she turned her head and buried her mouth in the wound on her shoulder. Then she looked up again and, without breaking eye contact, she pursed her bloody lips and blew him a kiss, knowing that her comrades, a million miles away would see her and would know that her death wasn’t the end. That their rebellion would go on without her, that he’d already lost, even if he didn’t know it and that she was fiercely, impossibly proud of them.
She felt herself beginning to sag in her bindings, and used the last of her strength to keep her eyes on him. She wouldn’t look away, not even in her last moments and she knew that their mutual respect for each other as their only true opponents, would keep him from looking away too.
In another world, she thought, we might have been friends, and as she finally began to close her eyes she went on. But this is not that world.
Fifteen years later, her body is recovered and buried in a quiet ceremony open only to those people who once had the right to stand beside her, and an old man near buried himself in chains. The gravestone is carved with a winged crown and the words
“I regret nothing.
I repent of nothing.”.
