Two years on and the city still suffers under the weight from the siege. A long devestating affair that broke the spirit of its people. No one likes being homeless, no one likes being hungry, and no one likes dying. Especially not for some tosspot that lived through those five miserable years of war and sixteen months of siege in a castle. With luxury, with security, with water and with food.
From an outside’s perspective, it would be easy to understand why the horde of people crawling across the bridge would be make the effort to cross the killing field. It would be easy to understand why only a third of the guard was actually racking the bold on the outdated rifle. It would be easy to understand why both groups, on either side of an insurmountable chasm, are hesitant to act. It would be easy for anyone, should be easy for anyone, must be easy for anyone, other than me.
The cavalry officer who found herself defunct two weeks in. The infantry lieutenant knee deep in a year’s worth of blood and mud. The decorated commander fighting through soot, cobblestone, and bone, four months into a mind-breaking siege. The leader of the royal palace guards should understand.
She should understand that even if today’s group fails, tomorrow’s wont. I should understand that inevitably, only one rifle will be loaded and fired into the very crowd of people it once saved, the crowd that it once lead into a noble but unavoidable defeat. I should understand that I could let these people cross that chasm and handle the man whose hubris meant my grief and success. I should understand that I would be lauded as a hero in spite of my choices today. I should understand they would only be helping be, that I am one of them, that I should not be doing this.
Yet, the mechanical motion of memory guides my hand across a smooth bolt. The acrid smell of burning gunpowder leading my finger onto the trigger. The gentle swinging motion of my breath settling down as the barrel bears on the view of a familiar-foreign crowd. The loud unbearable thunderclap of an unforgiveable sin looking to brand my soul, mathcing the hundreds that I know for sure, and the thousands I don’t.
All I can do, is what I have done. I am a slave to my own path, taht inescapable path of fire and flames that lead me to be here todayl My own thoughts and beliefs are irrelevant, regardles of whether I want them to be. Everyone else would know what to do. Anyone else would stop.
There is a disconnect somewhere, I am not quite sure where. The haze of smoke and fire acting as a veil between my actions and my thoughts. Stopping me, from stopping me.
In the end, I accepted my fate a long time ago. In a different age, where war was fought between countries, and not their people and crown, where a horse meant something more than food, and where a person was more than an animal. In that brief moment where history settles on a single point, and lets itself be defined by the actions of a few, where history is decided by nothing more than a literal coin toss. That single instance of time where the world holds its breath and watches.
I accepted that I would die in that moment, even if I only realize that now. I accepted that my life was forfeit from that moment onwards…
But now it happens again. History has decided to settle on a single point again today, and it rests on a piece of star, with my hand only an inch away. Grasping at a candle shining so brightly that I can already feel it burning away my control.