I gazed at the striking, young woman before me. Her gun pointed square at my head and her blue eyes were nothing more than a blank stare at my face. She stood still as a statue in the Royal’s gardens.

She didn’t understand the consequences of killing me. She had been lied to just like every other existing person on this earth that dared to defy the will of Royal Houses. I know her not, but she was like the rest of the Rebellion. She too was stripped from her land and poisoned to believe the deeds of the Royal’s were for the greater good.

I had failed my mission to rescue these people from their fate. There was no one now to save us. Even still, I looked the woman in the eyes without an ounce of submission and held my head high.

I felt the defeat in my gut, but knew it was far too late to do anything more. The Royal’s had begun their schemes and ran turmoil throughout the rest of the world. There was nothing to be done.

I clenched my fist as the woman cocked the gun and put her finger on the trigger. Any moment now and I would be dead. Any moment and the I would never have to worry about this desolate and defiled world anymore. Any moment now and I would let the peace of death take me to a place where control and unrelenting evil of this life would cease. Whatever the afterlife shall be, surely it will be better than this one.

I smirked at the woman in front of me, even though I knew she couldn’t really understand what I meant by it. She was a stranger to me and yet I knew her all too well. I knew the way her eyes used to sparkle when the sun hit them just right. I knew her smile could brighten every room she walked in better than the light of a thousand stars. I knew the way her brown hair would fall over one shoulder when she was focused in the merriment of reading. I knew the way she bit her bottom lip when she was concentrated far too unyieldingly on specific difficulties. I knew the way her body relaxed when she would see me walk through the door of the foyer every morning after a long nights mission. And most of all, I knew the way she looked at me with longing and relief before she would whisper the words “I love you” just after I returned to her warmth and comfort from a deadly task the night before. A stranger to me now and yet not a stranger at all.

I felt the tears prick in the corners of my eyes, but none fell. If I had any dignity left as a man, I wouldn’t make a show of emotions here and spare my wife the torment of my feelings long kept at bay.

So my grin grows wider as I replay the moments when my wife was not drugged to be nothing more than a killer. When her love warmed my heart so fully that I never thought there was any room left for me to feel much more or when my soul met hers every time our hands made the slightest touch and my lungs ceased to breathe. I would die remembering the way her laughter made my entire being incandescently and irrevocably radiant in the pureness of blessed bliss.

She was all my world and yet it was rapidly fading out of my grasp as I dared another glance at her empty, blue eyes. I took a steadying breath and swallowed the emotion in my throat.

“Take your shot, stranger. You’ll only get one.” I told her, a smile still displayed upon my face.

She pulled the trigger and the body of a guard fell limp near by. I quickly glanced at the definitely dead guard bleeding out next to me and gaped at my wife, speechless.

I stuttered, “How-But you were-I don’t…” I trailed off.

She looked at me, determination causing her brows to narrow. “Run.” She commanded. That was all she said before all hell broke loose in the Gardens.