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“And now for our next order of business. Bring her in.”
Nick’s mouth turns to sand as the other men next to him sit up straighter in their seats, hungry with excitement. They’ve been waiting for this. Nick wishes he could get up and run, but his feet feel like they’re glued to the floor. He’s paralyzed, unable to move no matter how hard he tries, as two Guardians bring her in.
June. Wearing a red jumpsuit, handcuffs, and a leather mask over her mouth. She has a black eye. There are cuts on her face. Yellow and purple bruises mark the fair skin on her arms and around her neck. He wants to vomit. And worse yet, he still can’t move or speak, and it feels like the harder he tries, the more impossible it becomes. His mind is a prisoner to his body as it tries to get his hands, his voice, his legs, anything, to cooperate. Her eyes flick over to him and his heart pounds.
I’m sorry, he thinks, hoping somehow she can hear him. I’m so sorry. I tried to stop this. I tried. If I could get you out of this now I would.
Next to him, Putnam begins reading the charges against her. But he doesn’t hear them. They’re all bullshit anyway, just like this whole production. Everyone in the room knows how this will end. The room fades away around him, and all he can see is her, staring straight ahead, unblinking. Even now, she’s still trying not to show any weakness. He doesn’t know how she does it, but she’d always been stronger than he was.
There’s no trial. Her punishment is handed down just after the charges are finished being read. Hanging, to be carried out immediately. Nick’s hands grip the arms of his chair so hard his knuckles turn white, and he’s surprised the wood doesn’t splinter under his grip. He’d fought so hard, done everything to avoid this outcome and now it’s happening. His worst nightmare breathed into reality.
June’s eyes dart over to him one last time as the hearing draws to a close and the same two Guardians that had led her into the room grab her by the arms again, pulling her back towards the door and away from him. This time though, the resolve he’d seen in her eyes before is gone and reality has set in. Tears well in her eyes, wild with fear, begging him to stop it. To help her. Nick opens his mouth to speak, to yell at the Guardians to stop, but his vocal cords still don’t work. He wills his legs to stand again, but they won’t either. He’s useless. Powerless.
And then she’s gone. It’s over. He can’t imagine anything worse happening.
But then a terrified Martha walks in with a baby on her hip.
Holly.
“And now for the matter of baby Nichole,” Putnam begins next to Nick, shuffling his papers, as Nick’s world goes black at the edges again. He can barely breathe now, all the air sucked out of the room as he looks at his baby girl, back in this hellhole. He gasps for a breath that won’t come.
“We will be returning her to the care of Commander and Mrs. Waterford,” he says proudly. “We are so happy to welcome her back to her righteous home.”
And then out of the side of his eye, Nick sees them. The Commander and Serena, positively beaming as his daughter is placed in her arms. Where had they come from?
He closes his eyes as Holly starts to wail in Serena’s arms, his heart shattering into a million pieces as they disappear out of the room with her too, her little sobs echoing in his head.
And then it’s over. He has nothing anymore. His family, stolen away by this place, just like everything else good in his life.
Nick’s eyes spring open as he sits bolt upright in bed, his black undershirt soaked through with sweat, the blankets of his bed tangled around his legs and hanging askew off the bed. He swallows hard, taking deep breaths as he tries to calm his still thudding heart.
It was a nightmare. Just a nightmare.
He sits still for a moment, trying to gather himself and his thoughts before he glances over at bright red numbers on his bedside clock. 11:34 PM. He knows sleep won’t be coming again anytime soon, so he rubs his eyes before freeing his legs from the confines of the bedsheets and climbing out of the bed that isn’t his, inside of a house that doesn’t belong to him either.
When he first moved in, he used to wonder about the people who lived here before. A family, probably, driven away from their home to another country or worse. The space is modest, compared to some of the homes that belong to the other Commanders, but it’s still too big for just him, and he hates it. He’d have much preferred a room like the one he had over the garage at the Waterfords, or even barracks, but optics are important in Gilead, so he’d been forced into a house that’s too big, too empty, too lifeless to ever feel like a home. Especially on a night like tonight.
Slowly, he pads down the hallway into his bathroom, not bothering to turn on a light as he heads to the sink to splash his face with water, hoping to clear the cobwebs of sleep and the last remnants of his nightmare from his brain. His hands grip the edges of the porcelain as the water runs into the sink and he lets his mind wander.
He’s not surprised he’d had a nightmare. The council had learned today that June had made it to Canada. It had taken every ounce of his self-control to contain the flood of emotions rushing through him at the news, especially as the murmurs of bitch and whore sounded around him from the other Commanders. June was free, reunited with their daughter. His family was finally safe, out of the reach of Gilead. They could say whatever they wanted. That was all that mattered.
And then the surveillance pictures started making their way down the table and his stomach dropped to his feet.
He’d known Gilead had spies in Canada. And for a moment, he’d been furious at himself for not thinking that they’d use them for this . But then the pictures made it to him, and his heart had nearly shattered on the spot. June, standing outside, her black puffy coat a stark contrast to the white snow surrounding her. The smile on her face was bright and wide, unlike anything he’d ever seen in Gilead, as she looked at their daughter, resting against her hip wearing a pink snowsuit.
His emotions cycled through him like a whirlwind as he flipped through image after image of June and Holly in the snow, never able to stick to just one feeling for more than a few seconds. There was relief at the confirmation that they’d found each other and they were safe and happy. Anger that Gilead was still targeting his family. Terror at how quickly they’d found them. And encompassing all of it was an overwhelming sense of helplessness because they were so far away, and there was nothing he could do to help them.
The day had ended with no plan other than to continue monitoring the situation, which he had actually been grateful for. It wasn’t much, but it would at least give him time to gather his thoughts, maybe formulate a plan to get word out to June somehow that she was being targeted.
What ended up being most valuable, however, was his seat at the end of the table. Because there was no one left to see the pictures after him, he’d been able to discreetly slip one into a folder before the council adjourned for the day. No one would ever know it was missing, but it was a treasure more precious to him than gold.
And that’s where he finds himself drawn now. He shuts off the still running tap and makes his way towards his home office, where he keeps all of his work. He hates his office, it always feels too much like the physical manifestation of Gilead in his space, so he avoids it as much as possible. But he’d left the picture mixed among the papers where he’d slipped it that afternoon, and now he can’t stand to leave it in this room, stuck between reports about casualties and war. He needs it to be with him. He rescues the picture from its hiding place and then exits the room just as quickly as he’d entered it, not wanting to spend a second longer in the stuffy room than he has to.
Still desperate for an escape, he gathers his cigarettes and makes his way out to his back porch, the picture still in his hand. The cold night air invigorates him and soothes his nerves, but he only truly feels relief when he takes his first drag on the cigarette. His eyes close as the rush of nicotine dulls the sharp edges of worry in his mind and allows him a moment of peace. He exhales the smoke and his eyes flutter open, his gaze landing on the picture of his family, illuminated by the full moon.
He swallows hard as he brushes his thumb over the picture, before looking off into the distance of the night. As he takes note of the stars, twinkling against the inky black sky, he realizes he’s looking north.
North. Where June and Holly are. Probably sleeping under the same stars he sits under now.
He takes another drag on his cigarette as he lets that thought settle in his mind and a peaceful calm settles over him. Even from hundreds of miles away, they still share the same moon and stars. Maybe they’re all actually closer than he thinks. Maybe he’s not so helpless.
“I love you,” he whispers, his message carried away into the midnight air.
Maybe there’s still hope for them after all.