Red-handed

 

‘Sometimes, when I open my eyes, I see something different, something new.

 

'But sometimes I don’t. Sometimes all I see is the cold hard cell closing in on me. I’m never oblivious to the fact I got caught, Sean can’t help but remind me everyday, he doesn’t mean to, but every time I see his face, all I  see is the look he gave me a month ago. My vision just fills up with his panic-stricken expression, it blocks out anything, everything. I could never tell him, confront him, I can barely talk to him now, not that wants to talk to me.’ I sighed looking down at my lap, twiddling my thumbs as the saying goes.

 

‘Do you wish you could talk to him?’ His weary eyes came to rest on my own weary face before he shuffled through the papers I presumed he pulled out of file.

 

I stared at the wall behind him, finding fascinating patterns in the peeling paint. ‘I just wish things were back to how they were, before his parents died.’

 

He turned to see what I was gazing at, his eyebrows knotting together when he saw nothing but his boring wall. ‘But you said that could never happen, why is that?’

 

My eyes focused on him, taking in the coffee stain on his shirt and the grease in his hair. ‘It can never be the same again.’

 

‘Why can’t it be the same?’ he kept the same emotionless tone all the way through the conversation, I’ll give him that.

 

I clamped my sore fists down on the desk separating us. ‘His parents are dead!’

 

He flinched at the loud noise but he didn’t deter ‘And why does that matter?’

 

I stood up, clenching my fists once again ‘I BLEW THEM UP OKAY? I set off that bomb, I didn’t know they were going to be there, but they were.’ I regretted saying it straight away, I sighed and sat down, rubbing my temple ‘He blames me, the police blame me, heck, even I blame me. But I blew up that house to save millions of lives,’ I pulled my face up to stare him straight in the eye ‘and I don’t regret it.’

 

He looked startled, if not miffed. ‘You think yourself quite the hero?’ he asked cocking an eyebrow.

 

‘I am a hero. The only one proud enough to admit it.’