Chapter Text
He didn’t gasp when his father’s body tumbled to the ground, face falling towards him. Guntram grabbed his hand, and he felt something crunch as he squeezed. The pain barely registered. Between the roar of the crowd, below the platform he knew his life was about to end on, baying for blood. For their heads.
“Corvus Crow and his family are traitors to the Republic!” the megaphone screeched.
The resounding scream was incoherent but he understood the meaning well enough.
“THEY MUST PAY!” The megaphone reader said, somehow even louder than before.
Was the platform moving or was it just his knees? Was he even here anymore or was this just a dying dream? Did he exist now? Was he going to exist five minutes from now?
He moved his head, or his head moved, unable to see the faces of the crowd anymore. They didn’t look like people. They had the same expressions on their faces as their hunting dogs did as they ripped into a deer left just for them, blood smearing their snouts, dyeing their grey fur rust, a fire in their eyes that had always made Wolfram feel just a bit uneasy even when he had a gun of his own in his hands.
He caught sight of his father’s face again. Corvus Crow had stopped twitching now, the back of his head cast across the back of the platform. Gallows, he supposed they were. That was a better name for it. Unstained wood except where his father’s blood, and bits of skull and skin and brain had broken against it.
His father’s mouth was open slackly, an expression he had never made in life, a pool of drool forming on the wood under his face, the blood at the entrance wound already beginning to oxidise, turning brown against his stark white skin and black hair. It was the most colour Wolfram thought he had ever seen on him.
That was what distracted him until he heard the shouting.
“NO MERCY! NO MERCY! NO MERCY! NO MERCY!” The crowd chanted, their words finally amalgamating into something he could understand.
“It was up to you!” the megaphone squealed with feedback. The announcer had the same attitude as a circus ringmaster. “Mercy or no mercy for the family of the traitor? And what was your answer?”
“NO MERCY!”
His mother made a sound that could have been a scream. He looked over at her and she looked at him, her eyes wider than any he had seen before, the pop of a blood vessel dying her left sclera red. She mouthed something at him. It might have been their names. It might have been something like I love you. He couldn’t understand it anymore.
A popping sound echoed in his ears and the screaming from his mother stopped. His mother collapsed next to his father. The crowd erupted as a shiver ran through her whole body, electric shocks coming to their end in her body with nowhere else to go.
He didn’t look away from the crowd this time. He kept staring onwards. His grandmother didn’t make a sound as they killed her. The only reason he knew that it had happened at all was the sound of a third body hitting the ground, the bloodlust in the eyes of the people, growing like a fungus. They were probably making more noise now but his brain had given up on processing it. If he was going to die seconds from now, then why would he waste it on them?
He could hear Guntram crying beside him though. They were twins, but he was the elder. He was supposed to take care of him, and keep him safe. He had helped him get up and taken him back to the house when the branch he’d tried to jump to hadn’t been strong enough to bear his weight. He had let him copy his homework and taken the fall for cheating. He was Corvus Crow’s eldest living child. It was what he was supposed to do.
His brother clutched at his hand again, the one Wolfram thought he might have broken. He held it tight right up until his grip went slack and he dropped to the ground with the rest of their family.
Wolfram’s pulse echoed in his ears, louder than the crowd, very nearly satisfied now, louder than the announcer, whom he thought was somewhere between excited and horrified in his tone, though he couldn’t make out the words. It was louder than the sound of Guntram’s blood dripping through the planks of wood, hitting each cobble with a sound Wolfram longed to hear. It was the last sound his brother would make.
Someone grabbed him, pulling him away from his brother, who was still warm, who would only be warm for a little longer, who would have nothing and no one when he grew cold, except for the bodies of five others around him.
He didn’t want to be taken from his family. He didn’t want to be pulled up there. He just wanted to be safe, with his family.
Safe, with family, echoed in his head. Safe, with family.
A hand shoved him to his knees, kicking out his legs from underneath him. Something went very wrong in his left knee, but that wasn’t going to matter anymore. No matter what he did, it wasn’t going to matter any more.
Safe, with family, he thought as he heard the pistol be loaded for the first time all day.
Safe, with family, as the announcer amped up the crowd like he were the main act at a concert, like he was the star of some sick play they were watching. Like this was all a performance.
Safe, with family, he thought, watching the eyes of the executioner, for the first time, step forward. Wolfram thought her hands might be shaking slightly. He couldn’t be sure.
Safe, with family, he thought, the cold metal of the gun pressed to his forehead, indenting his skin. No matter how badly her hands shook, which they were now, he could feel it, she wasn’t going to miss.
Safe, with family, he begged as she took a breath, and made eye contact with him, half cold, and half sorry.
Safe, with family, he wished as he fingers made their way to the trigger, and—
His body hit hard cobbles, his head hitting the ground with a thud. He wasn’t there anymore. Had it happened? Was it over now? Was this the Better Place? Was it the Worst Place? Had he earned that fate after all?
“Are you alright?” Someone touched him on the shoulder. “What’s your name? How did you get here?”
He looked up to see the pale face of a woman with long black hair and a crooked nose. Somewhere, in the back of his mind, he thought she might have looked familiar.