When Plue Abernathy was twelve years old, her uncle told her that she would, one day, hold life and death in her hands.
Now, she is twenty-one, and a woman is in chains before her.
There must be hundreds of other people in room, on the side, watching her as she holds court. They are waiting, she knows, with bated breath, to see what she's going to do. She can feel their eyes on her as surely as she can feel the ceremonial cloak, draped over her shoulders; as surely as she can feel the tight grip of the bodysuit underneath her armour.
She wishes she knew what the eyes wanted from her. But all she knows is that they're there.
She has been the Supreme Commander of the Bulwark for less than a year.
-
Capital punishment has long been a part of the Bulwark's credo. Nobody approves whenever some idiots get themselves killed in a duel, but everybody approves when the organisation itself decides that you need to die. Apparently.
We're at war, she had once argued with her uncle. Surely we can't afford to lose anyone?
We're at war, her uncle had retorted. Sometimes, we can't afford to keep someone around.
They had gone back and forth on the matter for a while. Uncle Duke had been erstwhile and emphatic and solemn as he'd explained to her that ordering someone's death was never something that he did lightly, and Plue had hated it because she'd been fifteen, and as stubborn as she'd ever been.
When I'm commander, she'd ended the conversation by saying, I'm not going to kill anyone.
Uncle Duke had given her such a sad smile, then, and he had said to her:
I won't hold you to that.
-
Plue Abernathy is twenty-one, and her uncle is no longer here. She wishes he was, and she's glad that he isn't.
The woman in chains does not cower from her, which makes things easier. Plue can't bear the idea of someone begging her, pleading for their life- this person is all vitriol, and silent sneers, and self-assured-ness, even as she remains stuck fast in her chains.
"You little bitch!" she says, icily, standing tall and arcing her head up high like she's looking down on Plue. "You have no right to that throne. No right to look down on me!"
When Plue was days into her command, nobody would have dared speak to her that way. Not with her uncle's death so fresh in everybody's minds. Not while she was surrounded by so much security that she could barely breath. And not while they weren't sure what her reaction could be. Now, she is almost a year into her rule, and things are different. Some onlookers flinch back at the show the prisoner is putting on, but nobody is shocked. Nobody walks forward - nobody shuts the woman up, tries to stop her from digging her own grave any deeper.
Why would they? As far as they know, there's no grave even being dug.
-
When she was growing up, the best way that she found to defend herself was to not react. People at school would taunt her; make fun of her; try to get a rise out of her however they saw fit. (Of course, none of them knew what she was going to become, one day.) And, for a long time, Plue would take the bait, and get upset, and feed into her peers' little games. Give them exactly the scenes they wanted.
Eventually, she got smart. Retreated into herself, and stayed there, and didn't react to anything that was thrown at her. (Be they words or objects.) And, eventually, she became known as a recluse. It still wasn't a fun time, but it was a damn sight better than being treated like a circus animal.
The unfortunate thing that she has come to learn, in her months as the Supreme Commander of the Bulwark, is that not reacting to insults carries very different connotations in the halls of power than it did in the halls of education. Back then, it made her look like a lot of things. Strange. Weird. Zen. And it made people leave her alone.
Here and now, it makes her look weak. And in these halls, weakness is something to be exploited.
-
"Lilith Justine Langan," Plue says, doing her best to speak slowly and enunciate every word, "I accuse you of malice, and of cruelty. What do you say to this?"
Malice and cruelty are not this woman's charges. They aren't charges at all. Plue knows this well enough. But her words have the effect that she wants - the watching crowd, and the woman in chains, all stare at her. They have been taken by surprise.
The advisor standing by her side - a middle-aged, vacuous man - is also taken by surprise. "Supreme Commander-" he begins, but she holds up a hand to silence him. This is her show, now, and she knows what she wants to do, and she will see it through to its bitter end.
The woman in chains lets out an incredulous laugh. "You accuse me of- of what?"
"Malice and cruelty," repeats Plue. Then, again: "What do you say to this?"
The woman in chains sneers again. "Just what is it that you're accusing me of?"
This is the strange thing about people other than Plue: they never understand her. She says what she means, and she means what she says, and she doesn't lie. And yet, sometimes, she'll get looked at as though she's spoken some other language altogether.
"I accuse you," says Plue, slower this time, "of malice. And of cruelty-"
"I heard you the first time!" hisses the woman in chains. "That's not an accusation!" She stretches out her hands, drawing the room's attention. She rattles as she moves. "Are these the charges you've imprisoned me under?" With a grand turn, she gesticulates to all of the assembled onlookers, getting a full sweep of the room and posturing for them. She's on display, and she is trying to use it to her advantage. "My family have served your office for generations, and this is my reward? To be clapped in irons and get adjectives hurled at me?"
The room breaks out into dissatisfied muttering. Finally, a watching guard strides over to the woman in chains, and grabs at her, forcing her hands down and her head away from the crowd. (It was not one of Plue's Sentinels; all five of her loyal bodyguards remain, straight-backed, throughout the room, as they have been commanded.) By Plue's side, the advisor sends her a panicked look.
Plue's heart is beating out of her chest, but if there's one thing she knows how to do, it's to suppress her base reactions. So, she keeps quiet, and keeps her face even, and lets the noise die down.
Order eventually restores itself to the room. Then, finally, Plue speaks again.
"You require elaboration."
It isn't a question.
-
Plue knows her history. The Langan family have, indeed, served loyally for generations. They are not one of the oldest families pledged in allegiance to the office of Supreme Commander, and thus to the Abernathy name, but they are old enough to throw their weight around, and to be listened to. If a Langan speaks, it is deemed worth hearing.
Lilith Langan did not act out during her uncle's Command. At least, not in a way that Plue ever heard about. And yet, now that Plue has inherited the office, this woman has seen fit to...
Well. Plue isn't sure what to call it, really. She sent a messenger to the Langans' seat of power as a sign of respect, even though a comm would have been much less of a headache. And this woman's response had been to cut off the messenger's hands, and put out his tongue. Plue's attempt at courtesy had been met with... well, what could Plue call it? What, if not malice and cruelty?
Obviously, the woman had wanted to send Plue a message of her own. Perhaps it was an attempt to break her family away from the Bulwark outright; perhaps it was just some petty attempt to throw the Langan family's weight around, and display strength. Plue knows enough of her history to know that this isn't the first time that somebody powerful has abused someone 'lesser' for the sake of their own ego. But Plue doesn't care. All that had mattered to her, when she'd found out, was that this woman had forgone the wellbeing of a man in Plue's employ for the sake of petty political games.
She'd had her arrested immediately.
-
The woman in chains stares at Plue. She can't deny Plue's accusation. It's clear she doesn't understand what Plue is saying. But accepting and admitting it means letting Plue take control of the conversation back from her, and that obviously isn't something she wants to do, either. So she silently ums and ahs, eyes darting around the room.
Plue adjusts how she's sitting, leaning back and crossing one of her legs over the other. She has time. If this woman wants to make a fool out of herself, she's definitely not going to stop her.
"I..." the woman in chains eventually says. "Yes. It seems I do require some measure of elaboration." Her lip curls. "Are you going to moralise at me?"
She sounds disgusted by the thought. But then, Plue muses to herself as she leans forward in her throne again, that's fine by her. This woman disgusts HER, so it all evens out.
"When I inherited this position from my uncle," she says, still speaking slowly, so that even a child could understand her, "I reached out to my Commanders. The people who, as you say, have served my office for generations." She lifts her head. No longer is she just addressing the woman in chains; she's now talking to the whole room. "I reached out to them in good faith, and endeavoured to meet them with cordiality, and to acknowledge their service in the hopes that our relationships could continue without trouble. I did this on the understanding that my ascension was abrupt, because I know that nobody likes a sudden change." Now that she has emphasised the place from which she came, she turns her full attention back down to the woman in irons. "I sent you a messenger. An overture. Custom, for a new Supreme Commander." She lets some of her anger trickle into her voice. "And you mutilated him."
There's more muttering from the onlookers. Most of them probably know what she did already; rumour travels fast. But it's one thing to hear a story through rumour, and it's another thing to have it be confirmed to you by your leader.
"His hands. His TONGUE," Plue continues, tapping the arm of her throne. "You made sure that he could never deliver a message again." She grits her teeth as she remembers the wreck of a human being that had returned to her. She's done all she can. Medical treatment; payments; indefinite leave. But it won't give back what was taken from him. Nothing will for a long time. "You ruined a man's life, and, as far as I am aware, you did it to prove a point. Tell me: what words should I use to describe that, if not MALICIOUS and CRUEL?"
-
She hasn't lived this life for long, and she's sick of it.
Nobody says everything. Everybody wants something. They are expected to make shows of deference to her, and they do, except when they don't, and that's a statement in and of itself. She's expected to make shows of respect to them, and she does, only she doesn't really respect a lot of them and it probably shows in the motions she goes through, because she's never been good at anything that's even ADJACENT to lying.
There are people around her who, she thinks, are good people. At least, they mean well. They aren't judgemental. Maybe one day, she could even call them her friends. But there are also people who look down on her; people who don't respect her; people who think that because she's young, and new, and only her uncle's niece, that they don't have to listen to her. And when they think that...
Malice and cruelty. That's what she's really upset by. The fact that she's not being listened to worries her, from an objective standpoint. The fact that some of the people who are supposed to be working with her think that she's useless-weak-dumb-strange-worthless stings, but she can't hold it against them, because she thinks the same things about herself, a lot of the time. But what digs deep into the core of her person, and settles there, and BURNS, is when the people who don't listen to her are cruel about it. When they push at boundaries, and weaponize their malice, because they think that she won't do a thing about it.
Until now, they've gotten away with it, because Plue is young, and she's still new to her Command, and she's never been one to stand up for herself, anyway. But she's seen the way it's eaten at everyone else's confidence in her. They look at her, weathering the increasingly blatant insults without so much as a twitch of the eye, and they don't see a young woman who's making so much effort to keep herself in check. They just see a weakling.
She knows that she needs to do something. But she doesn't want to. The thought of coming down hard on someone for something they've done, no matter how tempting, doesn't sit right with her. Make an example of someone? Perform a show of strength? That's not the sort of Command she wants to have. She doesn't want to lead with a 'might makes right' philosophy. She doesn't want to let herself get dragged in to that kind of... of barbaric yawping. And she doesn't want to be the sort of person who gets desensitised to cruelty. If she starts cracking down on people... she's worried about what kind of slippery slope she could end up going down. She pictures herself, decades down the line, snapping her fingers and getting groups of people dragged to the execution chambers. It's a sobering thought. It's not who she wants to be.
And then, Lilith Langan sends her messenger back to her, with his hands cut off and his tongue put out, and Plue knows that she has to do SOMETHING.
-
Direct confrontation is obviously not something that Lilith Langan is accustomed to. She probably wasn't expecting it from anyone, least of all Plue. Her eyes widen, and she doesn't say anything, and all Plue can do is sit there and cruelly wonder if this woman is really as stupid as she's coming across. What did she THINK was going to happen?
"If you are interested in the other accusations against you," Plue continues, "I am happy to convey them to the Assembly." She leans forwards. "You are accused of misappropriate conduct, and irreverence, in your behaviour towards me, your Supreme Commander. The message and messenger were mine, and such disrespect to my office is intolerable. You are also accused of bodily harm and mutilation-"
"I object!" blurts out Lilith Langan.
Plue raises an eyebrow. Is she going to try and pretend that she DIDN'T do what she did at all? She has to admit, she hadn't accounted for such a blatant lie.
Thankfully, that's not quite what the disgraced commander does. Instead, she inadvertedly adds more fuel to the fire. "There were others involved - men - they were the ones who did that to the messenger." Her eyes are still wide. Maybe the magnitude of what she's done is beginning to dawn on her. "I didn't do it."
Plue raps her fingers across the armrest of her throne. "On the contrary," she declares. "It was done on your orders."
Lilith Langan sneers, again, at her. She doesn't know what to do, and so she falls back on trying to look down on the person she considers a threat. (Plue, in this case.) "Are you telling me," she says, "that you can't separate an action from its source? Would you try every one of your Commanders for the crimes that their soldiers commit?"
"If those crimes were committed on their orders," Plue says, "then yes, I would." It feels like such an obvious answer, from where she's sitting. Why don't any of these people understand? "If you hadn't given them the order, the men that you speak of wouldn't have committed the crime. But if they hadn't done what you asked, you would have found someone else to do it. The initiative was yours. The crime is yours." She lets herself glare at the woman chained in front of her. "If you're going to pull a stunt like this, the least you can do is own it. Don't try and hide behind other people once you've caught my attention."
Lilith Langan has nothing immediate to say, and so Plue continues.
"As I was saying. You are accused of misappropriate conduct. You are accused of mutilation and bodily harm. You are also accused of violating the sanctity of messengers." When the crowd begins to mutter at her final words, Plue raises her voice and addresses them all. "It's fallen out of public knowledge over time, of course, now that we can communicate digitally. But, I assure you all, there's still a high price to pay for... shooting the messenger, as it were."
She looked back down at Lilith Langan. Makes eye contact with this woman, who has so handily dug her own grave.
"From my position as Supreme Commander, I can see now that you will never hold respect for me, and for my office. My office, which is so sacrosanct. My office, which is the tip of the spear that is our Bulwark. If the way that you so awfully rejected my gesture wasn't enough, your..." she gestures, dismissively, playing the part of cold ruler and not liking how naturally it feels like it's coming to her. "PERFORMANCE today," she eventually says, "has made that abundantly clear."
For the first time, Lilith Langan looks ashamed.
Plue hardens her heart. As far as she is concerned (as far as she MUST be concerned, now), it is too little, too late.
"And as a human," continues Plue, once again going off-script and watching the ripples of confusion spread out around the room, "I cannot abide the horrific acts that you ordered carried out on another person. Not the acts, and not the reasoning behind them." She fixes her eyebrows in place; a purposeful, challenging glare. "I fundamentally disagree with your concepts of basic decency, and your interpretation of our social contract. Even under siege as we are, and even suffering as we are, we are not-" she gestures at the woman in chains- "THIS. We are more. We are better." Her gaze roves across the assembled crowd. "I would have us be better than this."
Maybe she should just leave it here. There's definitely a part of her that WANTS to. And wouldn't that be wonderful? She stands up, gives a speech that's half public shaming, half motivational talk, and convinces everyone to just get along?
Gods. She really wishes that she could go that route.
The thing is, she knows better. This whole government, this whole setup... every person in this room, as far as she's concerned, is waiting for her to do more than that. Because if she doesn't... well. What's she done, other than stand up and bare her teeth a little? What's she done other than pretend to have any bite?
It won't change anything. Even if Lilith Langan learns from this, there's going to be some other idiot who's going to try and push things, and is going to hurt someone else to do it.
No, Plue resolves. She clenches her fists. No. She's stopping this here. She's going to cut this off at the head.
Literally.
"I would have us be better than this," she said, again. Repetition. Emphasis. "And I will not tolerate anything like this happening, ever again." She narrows her eyes, and glares directly at the prisoner before her.
All of you, she thinks, making a game out of people's lives. Trying to make yourself big. Trying to see how much you could get away with. Trying to find my limit.
Well, guess what?
You've found it.
A silence has descended upon the room like a blanket of snow. Everyone is staring at her. Waiting for her, and for what she is going to say next.
It is almost a year since she assumed the office of Supreme Commander of the Bulwark. Today is the first time that an entire room full of people has given her their full attention.
"That man." says Plue, slowly. "The one you had mutilated. Tortured, effectively. He could have died, you know." She almost doesn't want to watch as the prisoner gets more and more uncomfortable under her stare. "His injuries weren't clean. The things that you had ordered done to him... they weren't done very well."
Still, nobody speaks.
"If he really had died," Plue muses, out loud, "I don't think you would have cared all that much."
Lilith Langan stretches her hands out to her.
"He- he wouldn't have died," she says. Halting. Unsure. It feels like a role reversal. "I wouldn't have- I would have cared."
Plue raises her head. She is very much looking down on the prisoner, now.
"Of course you care now," she says, cooly. "I am holding you to account."
She pauses. This is not because she relishes the theatrics. This is because she is hesitating, again.
She holds lives in her hands. This is the first time that she is going to let one slip through on purpose.
It is just, and it will set a precedent, and it is an astute manoeuvre, and it is assuredly deserved.
It also feels like a betrayal.
"Lilith Langan," she says, slowly and clearly, "I find you guilty of misappropriate conduct, bodily harm and mutilation, violation of the sanctity of messengers, and the utmost disrespect of the office of Supreme Commander of the Bulwark." She rises from her throne, standing up and lording over the room as she delivers her verdict. "I strip you of all rank and station. You are no longer any Commander of mine. Your titles, lands, and fortunes are forfeit."
There is panicked muttering from the assembled crowd. The prisoner just stares, her face the picture of horror. Obviously, nobody expected her to hand out a sentence like that. (Cynically, she wonders if they expected her to hand out a sentence at ALL.)
"I also find you guilty," she says, cutting the chatter in the room like she's sliced through it with a weapon, "of malice and cruelty." She forces herself to look down at Lilith Langan, and harden her heart. "I sentence you to die."
Uproar.
-
Plue was nineteen years old, and older and wiser and had seen so much more of the world, when she'd brought up execution again with her Uncle Duke. What are the circumstances for doing something like that, she had asked.
Her beloved uncle had sighed, then, and hung his head in that hangdog fashion. At the time, Plue had thought that his mood had been brought down by the nature of the question.
(With hindsight, Plue recognised the reaction as an instance where Uncle Duke had foreseen her reaction to the darker side of being the Supreme Commander of the Bulwark, and had resolved to obfuscate the details; to say what he felt comfortable with at the time, with intent to tell her all about it some later time, once he was certain that she had the wherewithal to understand it.
Except then, he had died when Plue was barely twenty, and Plue had become Supreme Commander, and had found it all out for herself anyway.
She doesn't love him any less for his evasion. But some days, she likes him less for it.)
He had hung his head, and he'd told her, halting, that, well, normally, to warrant execution, someone needed to have done something for which no other punishment was sufficient.
She had asked him what kind of things, and he had said, well, he always tried to judge it on a case-by-case basis, but killing without good reason and showing no remorse, or planning to kill again, was probably a pretty good reason. Maybe also putting lives at risk for selfish reasons. Or even, he'd said, undermining the Supreme Commander, and the chain of command within the Bulwark.
It had all sounded quite reasonable to Plue at the time, and she'd nodded.
But then Uncle Duke had looked at her with a look in his eyes that Plue did not then (but did on reflection) recognise as haggard, and he had told her that it was never easy to put someone to death. Then, he'd told her that he didn't want it to be easy, because he didn't want to get used to it; then, he had asked her if she understood.
She had understood, and she'd nodded to tell him as such, but he'd never told her what trick he used to not get used to deciding the fate of someone's life.
If there was even a trick at all.
-
The crowd is a wave of noise. Lilith Langan is as still as a statue. While they have the time, Plue's advisor leans in again to address her. For all that she finds him annoying, she feels for him, now. She did not exactly warn him about this.
"Supreme Commander," he urgently whispers to her, "I understand that a severe sentence may, perhaps, be required, but such a decision shouldn't be made in haste-"
"It isn't," she responds, because it's the truth, and the truth always falls so easily from her lips, whether anyone likes it or not. Whether SHE likes it or not. "I understand that this is a surprise, but I have thought this through."
Her advisor is not deterred. Not even as she grips the armrests of her throne, preparing to rise.
"There is no precedent for this," he (correctly) points out. "No Commander has ever been put to death. Not in the history of the Bulwark."
"But there is no specific rule against it." There isn't. She isn't so reckless as to attempt a manoeuvre like this without doing her homework. She may make the laws of the land, if she sees fit, but nobody will be able to accuse her of breaking them. Not if she has anything to say about it.
Her advisor nods. His voice, urgently whispered into her ear, rattles down her spine like a bony finger, and she fights the urge to crease her neck and tilt her head.
"No rule, no. But convention is not on your side. Precedence, Supreme Commander, is not on your side."
Growing impatient, Plue raps her fingers against the armrest of her throne. The metal tips of her gauntlet ring out against the stone, echoing throughout the chamber and bringing the discourse to rest, even as she continues her own whispered conversation.
"Somehow," she ripostes, "I don't think there's a good precedent for getting away with calling the Supreme Commander a bitch to her face during your trial."
Her advisor is breaking. Still facing the room, she does not see him, but she senses him. Senses the way that he falters. So often, she finds it frustrating that her title holds people back by the scruff, and seizes their tongues, but today? Today, it is very helpful.
"...Her seat of power-" he brings up, but she knows the argument he is going to make before it even leaves his mouth.
"She has heirs." That's one more thing she knows for a fact.
There will be no power vacuum. Of that, she is as certain as she can be.
By her side, she feels her advisor nod. He has accepted her decision, and she can't pretend that it isn't a relief. "They will resent you," he cautions, all the same.
"I'm not going to penalise them in any way beyond this," she tells him, finally standing up. As the room approaches silence, she lowers her voice to a whisper of a hush. "This is Lilith's crime. Not her family's. They can resent me all they want, but I won't give them any good reason to act on that resentment."
With a final mutter of "Supreme Commander," her advisor is gone, stepped backwards and to the side, ceding the spotlight to her.
Her, and Lilith.
Of the two of them, Plue thinks that she is the one doing a much better job of keeping her composure.
Then again, she HAS just sentenced Lilith to death. She can't exactly blame the other woman for pitching a fit about it.
"...to die?" Lilith Langan finally echoes, like she needs to hear the words from her own mouth before she can perceive them; like her voice is the authority, even now, and it must decree the truth before she will accept it as such.
"To die," repeats Plue, hoping that she sounds bolstering and authoritive, and not afraid and upset. "What you have done is unacceptable. There is no other recourse."
Normally, Plue includes a lot of clarifiers in her speech. Lots of 'I believe', and 'I understand that', and so on. But she has learnt not to use such things when speaking in her capacity as Supreme Commander of the Bulwark. Her word is law, and has to sound like it.
"But- but- but-" stammers Langan, clearly still trying to come to terms with her sentence. How severe it must feel, for any person. How severe it must feel especially, for a person who was probably sure that they weren't going to receive anything more than a slap on the wrist. "But you can't!" she finally says, and Plue almost has to laugh.
"I very much can." She steps away from her throne, ascending down the slight stairs that surround it. Lowering herself from her metaphorical ivory tower, although she is still high enough to look down upon the prisoner.
"You can't- you can't AFFORD to kill me." Lilith Langan is entering the throes of full-blown panic, now, and, for someone as susceptible to the emotions of others that Plue is, it's dangerous territory.
But that is, she thinks, one of the many differences between herself, and Lilith Langan.
She has been far more scared than this.
"After what you've done," she says, coolly, "I can't afford to keep you."
She makes a gesture with her hand, and her five Sentinels (her guard of honour, the greatest women and greatest warriors that the Bulwark has to offer at any given time, sworn to her own personal service and protection until such a time that she might release them from their vows) begin to move. They were stationed amidst the guards, throughout the room, and they hadn't drawn much attention to themselves between the spectacle that Lilith made of herself and Plue's own showboating. But now, they move, and now, they are seen.
There is no hesitation, on their part. No surprise.
They, alone, are the ones that she had confided in ahead of time.
-
"Do you think you ever could?"
It is a pleasantly warm evening, right at the start of the dry season. Plue and Dante (Aaron, at this moment in time) are eighteen, and they are lying in bed together. Normally, Plue doesn't have much time for existential back-and-forth when she's supposed to be trying to sleep. Today, she has made an exception, so she shuffles on her back and stares up at the ceiling, considering the question.
"Could I kill someone?" she half-echoes, pondering.
"Yeah." By her side, Aaron fidgets. He probably felt her moving, and then unconsciously decided to do the same thing. There's a lot of that sort of thing, between them. Unspoken solidarity.
Plue lets out a small, contemplative hum.
"Depends on the context," she eventually says.
Because of the angle, and because it's dark, she can't see Aaron rolling his eyes; still, she knows that he's doing it.
"That's your answer for everything," he complains.
Now, Plue huffs, feeling defensive. "That's because it's true!" she protests. She likes to think that she has strong scruples, but she's also too wary of generalisations to make a lot of definitive statements. It means that there's weight to her words, but it also means that she doesn't always jive with questions like this one.
Could you ever kill someone? Well, she wasn't about to take out her sword and go on a murdering spree anytime soon! But, then again... she had a sword.
"I suppose..." she amends, still thinking hard. She will never give such a question anything but the most earnest consideration. "If I had to, I probably could."
"If you had to," echoes Aaron, and Plue can tell that he isn't really satisfied with THAT answer, either. "Y'know," he adds, "you can just admit you don't like the idea."
"I'm not being evasive," Plue protests. Aaron isn't wrong, in the sense that she doesn't really revel in the idea. But that's not why her answers are what they are.
She rubs her fingers together, and tries to think of how to put what she wants to say into words.
"If I had to..." she murmurs again, not understanding herself. (and isn't THAT a familiar feeling?) When did she have to? When WOULD she have to? What constitutes necessity, in this hypothetical?
She pictures her sword in her hands. Pictures herself, running someone through with it. Twisting it in their chest. Watching the light in their eyes go out.
"I don't think... I mean... I don't know if I could," she admits. "I don't... I really don't think I could." To hold a life in her hands, and to extinguish it... how could she do that, when life was the only thing that anyone had? How could she take that away from someone? How could she make that kind of irrevocable call?
-
Traditionally, when the Supreme Commander sentences a person to death, the deed is carried out by an executioner. A specialist, with a role designating them as such. But in Plue's Bulwark, no such person exists. The Bulwark's last executioner was killed in the attack on the Cube, and Plue hasn't replaced them.
If it is deemed appropriate by a Supreme Commander, one of their Sentinels may also put someone to death. But her Sentinels know their duty, now; she asks nothing of the sort of them, and they do not volunteer themselves. Instead, two of them move to flank her as another two move forward, wordless and efficient like a river, to grab Lilith Langan. One at each arm; a twisted honour guard of her own.
Lilith writhes in their grasp, but she is not a strong woman, and she is helpless as Plue's Sentinels march her, still in chains, away from the centre of the room and off to the side. Close enough to the crowd that her terrified gazes to them probably meet their eyes, but not so close that anyone can easily leap past the barrier and intervene.
The last Sentinel has disappeared, but that isn't a worry. She has a unique role amongst them, and she will return soon.
"You can't do this!" Lilith calls out again.
Plue ignores her. There is nothing more to be gained from their exchange, and it will risk upsetting one of them. Or both of them. (Not that Lilith isn't very upset already.)
The clanking of heavy bootsteps heralds the return of her final Sentinel. The woman's name is Penelope, and she is the most experienced of Plue's honour guard by a wide margin. In her arms, she hefts a great block of wood, with a divot in the centre for a head to rest in. Without fanfare, she lays it to rest in the middle of the room, where Lilith Langan has just been standing and braying.
When Lilith sees it, of course, her struggles intensify. She knows what it means, just as almost everyone else here surely does.
Plue clears the last of her steps around the throne, and plants herself on the same tiles as everyone else. This is another break from tradition; typically, if a Supreme Commander is to watch an execution at all, they do so from their throne. At least, that is how she understands it to have been, historically.
But she is not a spectator. She cannot let herself think to be one, and what she will do next will ensure that she never loses her perspective.
Penelope approaches her, now. From her waist, the last Sentinel draws a sword out of its scabbard. It sings with its release, eager to taste iron and soul, and the noise echoes around the room like an omen.
Plue approaches. Underneath the Sentinel's ceremonial helmet, she spies Penelope's visage. Perhaps the oldest friendly face she has left in her life, it wears no expression at all as the veteran warrior holds the blade out in her arms. As Plue closes the distance; as she grasps the hilt; as she lifts the burden from her bodyguard and takes it into her own hands.
There is something, Plue thinks, ineffable in Penelope's eyes. But it is only for an instant before the Sentinel is nodding deferentially and stepping off to the side. Not leaving, of course, but leaving Plue's field of vision, and in this moment, that is close enough in Plue's mind. The room has narrowed itself, honing in from a massive spread of noise and faces to something that feels outright claustrophobic. The crowd is a mass of dark visual noise. The sentinels behind her are presences that are felt like open windows in an empty house.
She adjusts her grip on the sword. The hilt is gilded, gold and black, elegant in aesthetic but simple in design. The blade is light enough that it could be wielded in one hand, if necessary. The weapon is sharp, and well-kept, and slides into her grip as easily if it were an extension of her own limb.
This is not the traditional executioner's tool. And this is not some ceremonial piece that she had dug out of an armoury to fulfil her needs. This is her own blade, forged for her at her late Uncle's behest. She grew up with it, trained with it, and came into herself with it attached to her hip.
And now, she is going to use it to separate a noncombatant's head from her neck.
"You can't do this!" Lilith Langan is still protesting. The Sentinels are now dragging her back into the centre of the room; towards the block. "You can't do this!"
It would be a lot easier, she agrees internally, to let someone else to it. To give the order, and perhaps to see it done, then to do it with her own two hands, and her own beloved sword.
That is why it must be her that does it.
-
Aaron doesn't seem to get it. "But you said that you could," he points out. "Y'know, if you had to? So can you, or not?"
It's not that simple. But it is to him, and that's something that has always defined him, to her. The way he cuts through ambiguity with clarity, utterly confident in himself and the world that he lives in. It's something that she tries not to be reliant on, because she knows that the world isn't really like the way that he sees it, but... it's difficult. Not least because she loves him.
"It's a yes-no question," he re-emphasises, and she wants to kiss him and smack him at the same time. "C'mon. Pretend you're blind."
"What?"
"You're justice, you're blind. That's how the saying goes, right? You're blind justice, and- and there's someone who's gotta die, and you know they've gotta die."
"How do I-"
"You just know. They just do. Can you do it, or not?"
"It can't be that simple."
"It is-"
"It's not that it IS," she almost yells, before remembering the whole volume control thing. "It's... it CAN'T be."
Aaron is silent. Plue stares up at the ceiling, as though she can see it in a pitch-black room. "Leading the Bulwark..." she falters. How is she ever supposed to describe the duty that she was born for, and yet chose to take upon herself? The duty that also affects every living human being in Erde?
"It'll be a lot." Mercifully, Aaron is there to prompt her thoughts to their conclusions.
She nods, hearing the crinkle of the pillow underneath her own head.
"It'll be EVERYTHING," she agrees. Amends. "And... and death is part of everything. I'm going to be affecting people's lives. At some point, that probably includes whether they... whether they keep living or not."
When Plue Abernathy was twelve years old, her uncle told her that she would, one day, hold life and death in her hands.
Now, she is eighteen, and she is anxiously clasping those hands together, already feeling the blood on them.
"I don't think it's going to be about whether I could kill someone or not," she admits. "I don't... I think it's more like, WOULD I kill someone or not?"
"Aaah." She still isn't sure if she's coming across sensibly, but Aaron, at least, seems to understand it. "So, then..." he asks her. "Would you? Kill someone?"
-
Lilith Langan's protests are getting boring.
This is the instinct that Plue was terrified of (one of them, at least), and so she forced herself to look. To listen. To watch, as the woman being forced down onto the block enters more and more of a frenzy. As Plue closes the distance, sword in hand.
"House-! House Langan!" She squirms, frantically, and the Sentinels pinning her in place tighten their grip. Plue wonders, for a moment, if she ought to regret making them culpable in this. "They will remember this! They will not forget!"
"I should hope not," Plue responds, truthfully. It's a silly argument. Why would she want them to forget this? SHE certainly never will.
But then, she remembers that resigned herself to not responding to Lilith anymore, and so she clamps her mouth shut. Her lips suddenly feel dry. When she runs her tongue over them, it pokes at the minute divot of her scar, out of habit.
She takes one more step, and now she is standing above the chopping block. There are no more steps for her to take.
"You can't do this!" Lilith is screaming, now. "Don't kill me! Don't kill me!"
Plue flexes her sword arm. Brings her blade up into the air. She's stalling, she knows, as she regards her own reflection in the metal, and tries to get herself to stop. Dragging things out won't do anyone any good.
But it's such a struggle to take that final step.
She looks down at Lilith. She can see tears in the other woman's eyes. Anger? Fear? Both?
"It isn't FAIR!" Lilith whines. Her hair, shaken loose from its bindings, flops around her head and neck like it's trying to protect her.
And something inside Plue's gut wrenches.
Neither, Plue thinks, finally feeling the rage that she's gotten so good at suppressing roar up inside of her like a tsunami, was what you did to MY fucking messenger.
The sight of this woman, prostrate and pleading before her, should have made her feel merciful. As least, she'd assumed that it would. But instead, it just makes her angry. A woman, who thought so little of life that she was willing to ruin and risk the lives of others for some stupid political posturing, is now grossly begging for her own. It's disgusting. The hypocrisy of it burns in the back of Plue's throat. It burns her veins, and her blood.
It burns her eyes, too. The nightmarish visage of the tortured messenger appears before her, in a flash. And suddenly, she is grinding her teeth against one another.
She will not say anything. And she will not give in to her own base anger.
There is a noise from the crowd. A voice, although she can't make out the words over the sound of her own heartbeat, a steady thump-thump in her ears that's started to drown everything else out.
Then, another voice. And then, another. Plue stands, motionless, listening to what they're saying, and feels her heart drop.
She'd been afraid that this was pushing things too far. That the representatives of these noble houses and powerful factions would try to argue against her; protest for Lilith Langan's life. That she would cross the threshold from recluse to unstable tyrant.
But they are not cheering for Lilith. They are jeering her. And they are cheering for PLUE. Plue, halfway through taking off her cloak so as to not get a non-combatant's blood on it. Plue, with a sword in her hand, standing over one of her own. Plue, who is about to let a life slip through her fingers. On purpose.
And they are cheering for her to do it.
"Kill her!"
"Kill her!"
"Off with her head!"
On the block, Lilith slumps. Plue doesn't look at her face, and that's on purpose. Doesn't want to see her realise that the gallery has turned on her, and that when she dies, it will be to cheers.
She focuses on herself. Finishes discarding her cloak, letting one of her Sentinels take it from her outstretched hand. Adjusts her stance. Adjusts her grip. Breaths.
She is holding the sword just above Lilith's head, ready to raise it, and then bring it back down. The blade kisses the peach fuzz on the back of Lilith's neck, and Plue sees a shudder wrack the woman's body.
"Please."
The word stops Plue dead in her tracks.
"Please," says Lilith again, who is now definitely crying. "Please don't kill me."
Please.
A flutter of a wing of a heartbeat.
They always call "please" the magic word. Here and now, it seems to stop time.
Plue's rage threatens to break. Her red clouds have always been so short-lived, and she has always felt things more intensely than anyone who's ever known her has given her credit before. She doesn't have a heart of stone, and when she realises the facts of her situation, they give her pause. She is holding her sword to the neck of a begging, helpless woman who is afraid to die.
A begging helpless woman who MUST die.
Must.
Such a strong word. Such an absolute. How did she let herself get here? Get cornered, like this? Let the walls close in on her, further and further, until she was using terms such as 'must' as though they were not extreme?
The sword is in her hand, and the woman is on the floor. The crowd would see her die. The crowd would tear her to pieces, metaphorically, if she showed clemency now.
The crowd.
Since when did Plue Abernathy care about what other people thought?
As she stands in the centre of this great ceremonial chamber, surrounded by hundreds of slack-jawed people who've doubted and maligned her and are now cheering for her, surrounded by guards allowed no interjection or thought of their own, flanked by the most loyal and brave warriors that she's ever known who are now accomplices to her murder-
It's like she's watching herself. A circle within circles. Trapped by convention. Breaking it in a horrific way; breaking it because every alternative is worse. Because she will not sit and flick her wrist and kill someone that way, and because she will not sit and idle and let the people underneath her make playthings of the people under THEM. Because Lilith Langan was a stupid, selfish, thoughtless tyrant, and nobody ever taught her the value of another person's life, and now she's about to lose hers. Plue is about to TAKE it from her.
There is so much to be angry at. There is also so much to turn away from. And there is much to forgive, too. It is the most difficult choice of her life thus far, and it is also no real choice at all.
Plue Abernathy does not like her anger. She doesn't like the things that it does to her; the person that it makes her into. Anger, to her, is like barbed wire, forced underneath her skin, ripping at her from within every time she tries to move. It snags on everything around her, pulling her apart from the inside as it unspools on the smallest of hairpin triggers. And it demands that she lash out. That she externalises her own hurt.
And yet, her anger is the bravest part of her. By a wide margin. It fuels her agency. It manifests itself into her advocacy. And it understands necessity.
As Plue feels herself drowning into the white noise of the world, and its million different tangles and snags, she chooses her anger. Clasps rage in her shaking palms, and thrusts fury into her chest like a dagger.
It floods her veins. It swells her muscles. It guides her hand.
-
Sometimes, when Plue is feeling whimsical, she thinks of people in colours. The flares of personality, the swells of emotion, have always burned so bright to her. That, and it's just fun.
Dante, as Aaron, was always orange. He'd told her that it was his favourite colour, some time when they'd both been young, and ever since then, she'd seen everything around him bask in it. Bright, vibrant, yellow-orange. He's still orange as Dante, she thinks, but his shadows now burn purple.
Her uncle was always silver. A shining, stalwart light; one who dared to shine, even when the dark promised safety against the isfet's burning, all-consuming white. Silver like the armour he wore when he died. Silver, silver, silver, bled into scores of crimson and bone. Whenever she thinks of him, now, it's like a curtain being drawn, melting into her vision. Always the same story, and the same ending. The same shade of red.
She, in her mind, is blue. She likes blue. Blue can be bright, and it can be deep, and dark, and soothing. On the good days, her blue is like a lance that she can point ahead of her; on the bad days, it is a blanket that she wraps herself in. A cloak. A blade that removes her from the heaving mass of creation, like a cutout, and then cradles her until she trusts the world again.
-
She brings the blade down. The impact batters her wrists. The crowd cheers.
She isn't sure what shade of blue this is supposed to be.
-
"I guess..."
"You guess?"
"I just- 'wouldn't doesn't feel like is the correct word, either."
Plue is still struggling. Aaron is still trying, really quite valiantly, to be patient.
"I guess..." she says again, still staring into the dark ambiguity of what her future may hold. "I guess it's more that I don't think... I mean, I'm not so sure that I'll have a choice, if that makes sense?"
Aaron grunts. "That's fatalistic."
"That's realistic, you mean."
"Whatever."
Plue scoffs, because she's right, and she knows it, and she's finally figuring something of herself out.
"No, it's- no. Listen. It's not about my own capability as a person to take a life, it's about... I'm going to have to make that call when I'm Supreme Commander. It is what it is. That's... part of the job."
"But it doesn't have to be," protests Aaron, "not if it's you doing it," but Plue is shaking her head.
"Could I ever kill someone?" she harkens back to the question that'd set their whole conversation off. "I don't know. Probably not consciously."
Aaron thumps the bed with a laugh.
"See, now- now you're makin' it sound like the spirit of being Supreme Commander is gonna possess you."
Plue snorts, and moves to tickle Aaron's sides.
"Oooh." She makes ghost noises while she does it. "Ooooh."
It's a bad plan, because HE then tries to tickle her back, and she's a LOT more ticklish than him. She laughs, and squeals, and tries to escape his grasp, and for a while, their conversation and its macabre topic are forgotten as they awkwardly squirm on top of one another and make an absolute mess of the bed. But, eventually, when the laughter has died back down and the duvet is back over them, Plue's thoughts (always so prone to getting fixated) go back to that mortal question.
Could... she... kill someone?
-
The head hits the ground with a dull thunk. It's reflex to wince as it falls face-first, though Plue suppresses the urge.
The blood that pools on the ground does not spray from the neck all at once, like a blown valve; it spurts out in macabre bursts, one after the other. Pump. Pump. Pump. It's Lilith Langan's heartbeat, as her body recognises that something destructive has happened but has no recourse other than to send blood up through the ruined arteries and veins of her neck.
There is a noise of approval from the crowd, but Plue can sense the shock they are emitting, too. She wonders, idly, how many of them have seen this much blood before. How many of them have seen a dead body, before.
She thinks of her uncle. Of the old Supreme Commander. Of the way his chest had been caved in, and how his ornate silver chestplate had been hidden underneath the gaping maw of red gore and broken ribs that his torso had been turned into. Of the way his body had seized as it had fought to live. Of the way his eyes had met hers before the life had drained out of them completely.
She has to thank her uncle, and his killer, for one thing: they set her tolerance for horror very, very high. It means that she doesn't recoil at the sight of Lilith Langan's body twitching and bleeding all over the ornate ground and the already-stained block. She does not close her eyes, or avert her gaze from the horror. She doesn't even need to blink. All she does it take a measured step back, and flick her sword to wash off as much of the blood as possible.
By her side, Penelope stands waiting to receive the blade. To take it away, and clean it up.
But Plue can't let it go. She has the thought, and the feeling that she OUGHT to, but her fingers don't let go. For a decision, it feels passive, like a fact of nature.
Instead, she forces herself to grip her sword harder. Forces her fingers to press into the hilt until she can feel indents forming on her flesh, beneath her bodysuit. Then, she forces herself to stare at the body. Watch it seize. Watch the blood splatter. Watch the head roll onto its side, baring the death-mask of her Commander Langan.
She feels the memory burning itself into her mind like a brand, and she forced herself to keep looking. To keep absorbing every detail. The smell of iron in the air; the ringing of steel throughout the room; the sight of Lilith's rattling tongue, flopping out from behind a set of pristine teeth.
She raises her sword. Points it at no person in particular, but instead at the room in general.
"I will not be undermined," she declares. "The office of Supreme Commander will not be disregarded."
This is her recourse. The trick to keep her suspended above complacency. One that her uncle never taught her. One that he never even thought of.
"I will not tolerate cruelty. I will not tolerate cowardice."
If she is to let a life fall away from her hands, it will not be, as precedence has dictated, been a passive action. There will be no ordering a person's death, and then putting the matter out of one's mind. Not for her.
"And to any person who holds the life of another in their hand," she says, "I will not tolerate you taking it lightly."
-
Justice is Blind.
That is the saying she had always heard. That she grew up on, and internalised.
But what does it mean?
She'd always assumed that the modern interpretation was the only one that had ever existed. That justice was blind because justice was impartial, and that it was applied without regard to personhood, or creed, or power, or status.
But Plue Abernathy was always a reader. And, when she was twenty years old (weeks away from assuming the mantle of Supreme Commander, and blissfully ignorant of the fact), she discovered that the iconography of a blind anthropomorphisation of justice first appeared in satirical woodcuts; blinded by fools so that the truth could be hidden away.
It hadn't sat right with her, and she'd meant to ask her uncle about it.
And then, of course, she had missed the opportunity.
And then, of course, she'd had more important things to worry about.
-
Plue holds her sword up to her face. The blade points to the sky. She examines the blood, and the way it delves into the grooves of the metalwork.
She should clean it. She WILL clean it, because it won't do her any good to let her blade be blunted. But not now. Not yet.
The blade glimmers in the light. The glare half-blinds her. It makes her blink.
Justice is blind. Justice is blind. Justice is blind.
With her free hand, she takes the cloak back from the Sentinel holding it, and stalks back up the stairs to her throne. Turns around. Eases herself back into the seat, and leans the tip of her sword into the floor. A drop of Lilith Langan's blood stains the dais, and she thinks that perhaps she will let it do so.
Eyes are on her. All eyes are on her. When are they not on her?
She doesn't know what they're thinking, but she doesn't let it bother her. She never has.
First, there are the necessary formalities.
"The trail of Commander Lilith Langan is at an end," she says, loudly. "Her heirs will inherit her holdings. The Langan line shall remain loyal to me, as I do to them." This is the true power of her position: to proclaim. To make things true, as she says them. Any relative of Lilith's who tries to use this as pretext to take action, any scavenger who hopes to scoop up the Langan titles and inheritance for themselves; they now risk going against Plue, openly.
"If you were perturbed by today's events," continues Plue, "then I offer you my sympathy. Death is unsettling, whether or not it is due." She flexes her grip on her sword. "The fortitude of our armies, fighting even now against the isfet on every front, should not be forgotten. The strength that every person from every walk of life has, to face and contend with it, should not be disregarded."
It's almost too daring to say, to these people. Too saccharine. But in this moment, she thinks that she just might able to get away with it.
There is no time for self-satisfaction, though. Not when she feels the dead fingers of Lilith Langan draping themselves over her shoulders, and around her neck. They nestle their way into their new position, drifting across Plue's windpipe so that she feels just the barest shiver of corpse-cold touch. There, she knows, they will linger for the rest of her days.
Every day, she breathes in ghosts. And now, she has collected one of her own making.
"And know this, all of you," she musters the strength to say. One final proclamation. One more statement of intent.
Because this is the truth:
Plue Abernathy, Supreme Commander of the Bulwark, is the ruler of all known space. She is the arbiter of humankind. Every person currently living, every member of her species, falls under her jurisdiction.
And this is also the truth:
"Justice, by tradition, is blind. But mine is targeted. And mine does not look away."
She will never let herself forget the weight of a single human life.