Time wore on like an old blanket still keeping out the cold. While it marched forward bravely battling my heart, I let it beat against me, as I stayed curled up on the floor.

“Liv, you have to eat.” Daniel was kneeling next to me with a bowl of thin soup that looked to be nothing but flavored water. “It’s not much I know, but it’s better than nothing. One of my men brought it.”

The floor clutched at me as I struggled into a sitting position. My face felt frozen from the caked on salt across my cheeks.

The bowl was rough and prickled like tree bark against my fingers. The thick liquid was hot, too hot, but I let the burning sensation linger and numb away the sense of taste. I didn’t deserve small pleasures such as taste. The memory of the bitter bread I ate just before Henry’s death was the only taste I deserved. Swallowing felt like tree sap in my mouth, but I forced the liquid down.

I looked up at Daniel who was biting his bottom lip as he watched me, “I’ve caused so many to die. My own father. A dishonored friend of mine named Annie. A person I knew outside the wall called Fire. The two guards Bryan and Kyle. Now Henry. They’ve all died because of me and some thought that I know better and I can lead people to some great future.”

“You can lead us! You have a gift of being able to convince people to see things your way. You’ve been into the Wall and past it to a place we can’t even imagine!” Daniel was yelling at me, and I realized his own eyes were red. He looked down at the floor, and his voice became quieter, “Henry saw you had potential to change things. He thought you were the most important piece in our puzzle to fight back against the system.”

“I’m not sure. I’m useless in a fight. I’m a figurehead who can’t protect others.” What good was I to a rebellion? Famous figures that lead rebellions that the Wall taught me about all knew how to fight and lead battles.

“You don’t have to be good at fighting to be useful. Those of us who are good at it can fight, and you can provide the reason for us to fight.” He sounded so certain and sure of himself.

I shook my head, “Leaders of rebellions in the past fought battles. They knew how to fight. They were men who knew what they were doing. I have no idea -”

“You do though. You have thoughts on strategies and what we should be doing. You know the cost of battle. Each person we lose is a person dear to someone else. We have to win, or every single person on our side is dead.” He paused, looking at me with a pensive expression, and then he added, “If we lose, Dan is dead.”

He was right. I had to keep functioning. I had to keep going if not for myself, for Dan. I had dragged him into this, and if I couldn’t keep going he would die in the forsaken city under the fake pink sky.

I took a deep breath and forced myself to take another sip of the soup. I couldn’t taste it at all.

“I - I question it as well.” Daniel was standing, looking toward the door away from me, “Why wasn’t I the one near the door. I should have taken that bullet. Henry was so much more important to our cause. He was the one the soldiers loved. He had a family. A wife. Children. I’m just a lonely bachelor living my days in bitter hatred of the place I live listening to the tails of old bitter men.”

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

“Why do you hate this city? Henry didn’t really seem to hate it, and seemed to run on idealism, but you speak as if you hold a grudge.”

Daniel turned back toward me and closed his eyes. “I fell in love with the wrong person. She was an Undesirable. She brought me into the tunnels and told me stories about how her caste was the one that built this city. She was struggling to get food each day. Her father was crippled from an accident in the stacks, and her mother had died in that same accident. Three younger siblings. They all worked to bring enough food in to feed them and their father. I stopped being able to see her as much as she worked more and more hours. I’d asked her to marry me, I could take her out of caste. She refused. Who would look after her father and siblings if she married me? I promised to wait. Swore I could wait forever.”

He stopped, and looked down at his empty hands.

“What happened? You said she was an Undesirable, so is she not still now?”

“I thought we had forever.” His eyes opened and I could see the red streaks through his eyes from his recent tears, and the glistening of new tears. “I’m not quite sure what happened. One day I went to meet her after my shift, but her home was empty. One of the Undesirables in my unit told me that they’d been Dishonored. Whole family taken away.”

I didn’t know what to do or say, so I sat there, watching as he looked up at the ceiling and ground his teeth.

“I fight for her. I want to go into exile with her and her family.”

I looked down and away, unable to look at the passion I saw in his tight lipped grimace. “It’s a hard journey into exile. 4 days in the wasteland before you reach the village. Water and food run low. In the village, it’s an unforgiving life with many ways to die. Raiders attack to steal children, diseases cause many lives to be cut short. Many children don’t live to become adults.” I looked back up at him, “Do you want that life?”

He nodded, his jaw clenched. “I thought about doing something to get myself Dishonored to be with her before you showed up. This life I have now is not the one I want.”

So this was his real reason for fighting. He wasn’t just quietly following Henry, whose name in my thoughts felt like the bitter bread in my throat that ate right before he died.

Was Henry idealistic because he was fighting for Daniel? Or was I reading too much into this and this was not why Henry chose to rebel. I would never know since Henry was dead.

Daniel went to sit on the opposite side of the room, his eyes staring at a spot on the wall that had nothing on it. What was he thinking about? Was he questioning himself over why Henry died instead of him? He was right to question that. We needed Henry, and without him we were directionless. I might have some ideas, but I wasn’t trained in fighting the way - we still had Dan! Dan might have had a different strategy than Henry, and we might be pivoting the way we fought, but he was trained to fight. The village constantly was defending against the raiders. Dan would have good strategies.

“We need to get in touch with Dan. He will have an idea of what to do now.” My words broke through Daniel’s reverie and he slowly looked over at me.

He shrugged, “Maybe.” And then his eyes looked away.

If I hadn’t been there, would he have taken Henry through the trapdoor instead of leaving him?

A single knock rang out on the wall, and then a section of wall opened to reveal the door’s location.

“Garen!” Daniel’s voice sounded excited. “How did the planned movement go? Were we more successful there than at hiding?

Garen shook his head, and I felt like a snake was trying to eat my stomach.

“We’re holding a small space around a warehouse near the Wall, but our retreat turned into more of a route. They started hitting us from all sides right before the planned retreat.” He turned and looked directly at me. “The man from beyond the Wall, Dan, he was injured badly. He demanded we take him to the Wall, which we did, but it didn’t look good. No one survives injuries like that.”