Honored

Chapter 10: The City's Soul (Part 1 - Part 4)

Part 1

Time wore on like an old blanket still keeping out the cold. While it marched forward bravely battling my heart, I let it beat against me, as I stayed curled up on the floor.

"Liv, you have to eat." Daniel was kneeling next to me with a bowl of thin soup that looked to be nothing but flavored water. "It's not much I know, but it's better than nothing. One of my men brought it."

The floor clutched at me as I struggled into a sitting position. My face felt frozen from the caked on salt across my cheeks.

The bowl was rough and prickled like tree bark against my fingers. The thick liquid was hot, too hot, but I let the burning sensation linger and numb away the sense of taste. I didn't deserve small pleasures such as taste. The memory of the bitter bread I ate just before Henry's death was the only taste I deserved. Swallowing felt like tree sap in my mouth, but I forced the liquid down.

I looked up at Daniel who was biting his bottom lip as he watched me, "I've caused so many to die. My own father. A dishonored friend of mine named Annie. A person I knew outside the wall called Fire. The two guards Bryan and Kyle. Now Henry. They've all died because of me and some thought that I know better and I can lead people to some great future."

"You can lead us! You have a gift of being able to convince people to see things your way. You've been into the Wall and past it to a place we can't even imagine!" Daniel was yelling at me, and I realized his own eyes were red. He looked down at the floor, and his voice became quieter, "Henry saw you had potential to change things. He thought you were the most important piece in our puzzle to fight back against the system."

"I'm not sure. I'm useless in a fight. I'm a figurehead who can't protect others." What good was I to a rebellion? Famous figures that lead rebellions that the Wall taught me about all knew how to fight and lead battles.

"You don't have to be good at fighting to be useful. Those of us who are good at it can fight, and you can provide the reason for us to fight." He sounded so certain and sure of himself.

I shook my head, "Leaders of rebellions in the past fought battles. They knew how to fight. They were men who knew what they were doing. I have no idea -"

"You do though. You have thoughts on strategies and what we should be doing. You know the cost of battle. Each person we lose is a person dear to someone else. We have to win, or every single person on our side is dead." He paused, looking at me with a pensive expression, and then he added, "If we lose, Dan is dead."

He was right. I had to keep functioning. I had to keep going if not for myself, for Dan. I had dragged him into this, and if I couldn't keep going he would die in the forsaken city under the fake pink sky.

I took a deep breath and forced myself to take another sip of the soup. I couldn't taste it at all.

"I - I question it as well." Daniel was standing, looking toward the door away from me, "Why wasn't I the one near the door. I should have taken that bullet. Henry was so much more important to our cause. He was the one the soldiers loved. He had a family. A wife. Children. I'm just a lonely bachelor living my days in bitter hatred of the place I live listening to the tails of old bitter men."

"Why do you hate this city? Henry didn't really seem to hate it, and seemed to run on idealism, but you speak as if you hold a grudge."

Daniel turned back toward me and closed his eyes. "I fell in love with the wrong person. She was an Undesirable. She brought me into the tunnels and told me stories about how her caste was the one that built this city. She was struggling to get food each day. Her father was crippled from an accident in the stacks, and her mother had died in that same accident. Three younger siblings. They all worked to bring enough food in to feed them and their father. I stopped being able to see her as much as she worked more and more hours. I'd asked her to marry me, I could take her out of caste. She refused. Who would look after her father and siblings if she married me? I promised to wait. Swore I could wait forever."