Games of Chance

Forty Three

Death row. 

There were a lot of places Ravenna had imagined being after the UN conference. This was not one of them. The trial had been less than stressful - with a dozen counts of brutal murder, kidnapping charges, terrorism, and attempted theft of the most powerful object in the world, there was no question as to what her sentence would be. But now that she was actually here...

There was something awfully surreal about knowing that you only had a few hours left to live. Ravenna felt like she should cry and scream at the injustice she had suffered, but her empty heart had no more tears left to shed. After a lifetime of suffering and betrayal, she should've expected Juliana to stab her in the back. In fact, it was unreasonable for her to expect anything else. Still, she had been too foolish, too naive, to see the inevitable coming. She'd seen what she wanted to see instead of what was. 

She had been hopeless before, but Juliana had made her something worse than that. She had given her hope, and then snatched it away. 

"You want to talk?" Roy's voice came promptly from the cell next to hers, almost as if he sensed her inner turmoil. She could barely see his bruised face through the bars from her position curled up on the cold metal floor. Metal, like her. Perhaps the King had been right, and this was where she belonged. Rotting in prison with the rest of Arcana's scum. 

"No. I don't want talk. Just tell me what the plan is. How do we get out of here?" 

Roy let out a deep sigh, resting his head against the bars that separated them. Ravenna had only ever seen him wear his Obsidian Hunter outfit, the long, gray trench coat he wore as the Eagle, or an expensive suit. It seemed wrong, almost degrading to see him in a faded, oversized prison uniform, his usually intense gaze replaced with an unprecedented emptiness. 

"There's no plan, Rave." 

"What do you mean, there's no plan?" Ravenna hissed loudly. "You're kidding me. You know Arcana like the back of your hand. What's the loophole? What's the secret?" 

"I'm sorry, Rave. You may be in denial, but we are going to die today. There is nothing I can do about that. I wish things had ended differently, too, but... they didn't. And they won't. The world isn't kind to people like us- you already know that. We knew what we were signing up for." 

"Knowing is different from experiencing," Ravenna muttered softly, the reality of the situation just beginning to hit her. 

There was a long pause, probably as Roy figured out how to respond to this. "This is the most trite thing I could possibly say right now, but... I love you, you know. When I first met you, I wanted to use you to prove myself. To show the world how I could make a warrior out of a nobody. But you proved me wrong. You weren't a nobody, and I was foolish to think I had anything to do with what you've become. What we've started... it doesn't end here. You heard Juliana's speech- she's declassifying the Order, ending an era of secrecy. We won, Rave. We did it." 

"No," Ravenna shook her head, hot tears finally making their way down her cheek. "If we won, we'd be on the cusp of a new world. A world where knives are for cooking, not killing. Where there's always plenty to eat, and a place to call home. Where our kids will never have to worry about being shunned for their differences. We were going to change everything, Roy. Juliana's made a minor policy modification! How could you call that a substitute for what we were going to accomplish with the Box!?" 

"Rave... think of all the soldiers who've ever died in all the revolutions there have ever been. All those people who never saw the freedoms they were fighting for become reality. Their fight is not invalidated. History may remember those who finish wars, but equally important are those who start them. We have started a war, Ravenna. And if I know anything about human nature, someone will come along to finish it."