"Your resolve never wavered before! What is wrong with you, Tristan? When did you turn into such a coward?" The young woman's eyes burned as she stared down the man standing before her on the street. The walls of the abandoned buildings all around them were covered in graffiti, though it was barely visible in the dimness of twilight. The streets of the slums where they stood were grimy and plastered with dirt. Only the poorest of the poor lived there. Or the most desperate of criminals.
"It's not that simple, Eva," he murmured slowly, his blue-gray eyes fixed on the cracked cement of the sidewalk. His hair was getting on the long side, something that for once he was grateful for, as the length of his black bangs helped hide the flush in his normally fair cheek.
"You're so unreliable. I should've known this would happen." A slight breeze teased Eva's mid-back-length, light red-brown hair. "It's only the two of us. I thought you were the one I was looking for. That you'd be able to help me pull this off."
"It's not... that simple."
Eva's fist clenched beneath her heavy trench coat, betraying her anger. "You know where to find me. I'm going whether you do or not, just like the plan."
"You'll die." He didn't sound like he was trying to convince her to turn back. He was simply stating a fact.
"Then I'll die with the satisfaction of knowing I did right." She paused for a moment, then turned to walk away. "If your mind is set against it, fine. Just don't bother coming home tonight." She stormed down the street and left her companion alone in the growing darkness.
He turned and slowly walked the other way. "It's still not that simple."
Tristan shut the door of the fifth-floor apartment quietly behind him and laid his keys on the chipped kitchen counter that so obtrusively protruded into the entryway. The kitchen and living room were cramped together, and he hardly had to take five steps in to reach the door to the bedroom. He grasped for the handle, but stopped himself. He stood there, thinking, with his hand positioned just an inch away from the knob.
How would Eva react? She'd told him not to come home unless he changed his mind. He still hadn't... at least not completely. It wasn't an easy choice to make. Tristan smiled to himself as he remembered the day he proposed to that woman. She almost bit his head off. Proposals were old-fashioned, she said. Legal marriage didn't even exist anymore, that was so twenty-first century, and on, and on. Just when he'd given up hope and begun to turn away, she'd flung herself into his arms and kissed him.
Now she was probably asleep on the bed, dreaming fitfully of the following day and hoping he would change his mind. They met and fell in love because of these missions, after all. They never bothered him before. This was the big one, the "war to end all wars," so to speak, as if any of the thirteen World Wars had done that. If they could pull this one off, they could live again. Move out of the slums. Get into some respectable business. Have a family. If they could pull it off. It was different this time, Tristan reminded himself. It was different, but she was not.
The rusty knob creaked in Tristan's hand as he tried to open the door slowly. He prayed the noise would not wake Eva. Confronting her again was the last thing he needed. He might fold this time.
He hadn't needed to worry about rousing her. She sat on the bed wide awake, staring at the door. Tristan hadn't noticed her yet when she turned on the light and glared at him. Then he turned his head. He bit his lip and said nothing. He glided silently over to the drawers and pulled out a blanket. She watched him walk back to the door to leave.
"You still won't do it?"
He said nothing, but took another step. Then he felt her fingers close gently around his arm. "Why, Tristan?" He glanced down at her. Her eyes were pleading. "Why?"
"I don't think he's the one we should be after," Tristan began.
"He's the head. Of course he's the one we should be after," protested Eva.
"What makes you think he's not just a puppet?"
"I don't care if he is. Kill the marionette, and we force the puppeteer to come down where we can see him."
"That's all we ever do, Eva. Kill. Do you like living like this?"
"Like it!" Eva snorted indignantly. She motioned around the room. "Do you like living in this run-down hovel, watching people suffering and dying every day in these slums because our leaders only care about making their rich benefactors happy? Do you like the smell of death and decay we live and breathe in? Do you like how the people who've pleased the government take slum children for slaves so they can pretend they're helping the poor, ignorant under-dwellers and feel good about themselves? Do you like the way this place is?"
"Do you like killing to change it?" Tristan countered.
"It's the only power we have."
"How pathetic."
"I don't get it, Tristan," Eva sighed. "It never bothered you before. When we met, you were as zealous a revolutionary as any of them--even more so, because you weren't afraid to put your own life on the line to carry out your ideas. Why are you so afraid to kill this one man?"
Tristan hesitated, but began, asking, "What do you know about him?"
"His name is Titus Lindall. He's thirty years old, and the newly 'elected' representative of the Europe Nation. Supposedly grew up in the slums and 'cares for the little people.' He's really a tax-siphoning dictator with a panel of aides made up almost entirely of bastards we've failed to draw out and kill in the past."
The two voices were both silent for a few moments before Tristan began. "His name is Titus Levinger. He's twenty-five years old and has been forced to be the face of the hated government in exchange for the safety of his only living family, his twin brother whom he hasn't seen in three years. He grew up in the slums until he was taken away to be some rich man's slave boy at the age of thirteen, and honestly cares about us more than you know. His panel of aides are the people who really control policy and he's just forced to go along with it."
"Levinger?"
Tristan turned around to look Eva in the eyes. He rested his hands on her shoulders. "That man is my brother."
It's not like he didn't know what had to be done. The aides controlling Titus's strings only showed up when they chose a new puppet or announced the death of an old one. Killing him would force them to come out on the very day of his death to where Tristan could reach them. Otherwise his brother would be forced to do their bidding until he outlived his usefulness, and then they'd kill him themselves. In the meantime he would be theirs absolutely, and so would the entire continent of Europe. It's not like Tristan didn't understand. It's not like understanding made it any easier.
He never slept that night. Eva curled her arms around him and rested her head against his chest, breathing steadily beside him the whole time. He never moved. He never closed his eyes. He just lay there, all night, breathing in, breathing out, staring with blank eyes at the bumpy ceiling, counting the seconds pass him by. Chanting to himself over and over again, I'm sorry, Titus. This is all I can do. This is what I have to do. Forgive me.
Forgive me.
The first light of morning streaked in through the broken window. Tristan rose and left the room.
Eva emerged behind him hours later. She found him sitting on the couch with bags under his eyes and a cigarette in his hand. He didn't move, even when she frowned at the sight of all the butts in the ashtray. She sighed and padded to the kitchen.
"Here." She held a glass of water in front of her lover's face.
He didn't look up at her. He didn't take it. He didn't move.
She sighed and put it down on the coffee table. Still he sat there motionless, his cigarette burning away in his hand and never once touched to his lips. Eva glanced up at the clock. It was almost ten.
The grandfather clock in the hall outside their apartment chimed out the hour. Tristan smothered his cigarette in the ashtray and stood. "We go."
Forgive me.
"The parade starts at noon. We have to eliminate him before then, so that the aides will come out for the event to announce his decease. Can't let the target know we're coming."
"He knows, Eva. He knows."
"That will make things more difficult."
"No." Tristan let out a sigh. "It will make things much easier."
One would think security would be through the roof. But it wasn't. That was, of course, suspicious, but Tristan didn't seem alarmed about it. There were very few guards in between him and Titus Lindall. That was just fine--the fewer bullets used, the better. His steps echoed in the halls as he ran through them. Eva was somewhere far behind. She couldn't keep up with his feverish pace. It was so easy to find the man he sought. That man even came out to meet his would-be assassin. Tristan felt sick. The room was twisting around him, ready to swallow him up. Time itself seemed to stand still. It was surreal.
And yet it was so painfully not.
Everything blurred together until the moment they met again, face-to-face. Two brothers who hadn't seen each other in years. Two seconds spent staring without a word. Two brothers, two sides, two guns. Two lives so easy to end.
Tristan was the first to raise his weapon. Titus obviously had his but chose not to even take it in his hand. "Damn it, Titus," Tristan swore, his lip quivering, "do you have to make this so hard for me?"
"Shoot, brother."
"Come away with me!"
"I can't. Shoot."
"I'll free you!"
"The only freedom for me is in your bullet, Tristan. Shoot."
Still he hesitated.
"For the sake of your country, shoot. For the sake of your slums, shoot. For the sake of your future, shoot. For the sake of your condemned brother--shoot!"
The hollow bang reverberated around the walls of the hall. The moment he pulled the trigger, his brother dropped, and Tristan flung himself down to his brother's side. "Shit!"
Titus' eyes were glazing over. He tried to focus on his brother but could not.
"Damn it, Titus! Why'd you make me do that? Why did I have to be the one to pull the trigger?" Tears poured down his face and he clutched at Titus' shirt in desperation. "You can't leave me, brother! You just can't!"
Titus smiled a little, even through the pain that was fading fast along with the sight and sound of his twin. "I'm sorry I made you do that, brother," he murmured. "I never had the courage to do it myself." He tried to smile. "Thank you."
Forgive me.
"Thank me! Don't! Don't say that! Oh God, what have I done?"
Forgive me.
"Titus! Titus? Brother! No!"
Forgive me.
"What have I done?"
Forgive me.
Tristan's eyes rested on the gun. Eva's hurried steps echoed nearer and nearer behind him.
Forgive me.
A second bang sounded throughout the hall. He fell next to the one he killed, gazing with blurring vision into the other's lifeless eyes and managing to smile ever so slightly.
Forgive me, Titus. Forgive me, Eva. Forgive me. It was all I could do. It was what I had to do.
Eva dropped to her knees in front of him and let her tears flow freely down her
face. "You idiot," she sobbed. "Who told you the gun was forgiveness?"
