Chapter Text
Rebellio writhes on the floor. A mess of threads spreads crimson like the rivers of blood leaving his skin.
It won’t be long now. Slash and bullet and electrocution, iX does not hold back on his enemies. And still, iX surveys him with pity. With sympathy.
“I hope you find freedom in the afterlife,” iX says. He kneels next to the broken body of Rebellio, and clutches his hands in short prayer.
“A religious man, are you? A rarity these days.” A rarity frowned upon by Sumeragi, who only hail science. Praying is for dying Minos. It brings him comfort that iX is free to practice faith.
Said man rises after finishing his prayer. He turns to leave, but Rebellio can’t let go. Not yet. He wants to die on his own terms.
“Please, talk with me a little more.” It amazes him that his vocal cords still obey. A thousand ringing pains cloud his mind and his throat is parched yet blubbering with liquid life leacking out between his teeth. Even through the haze creeping in, Rebellio sees iX stop. “I don’t want to die here. Not in a cell like this.”
Where he spent so much of his life. No trial, barely a charge. Nothing but an electronic face deducing guilty out of zeros and ones. What a world this is.
And what a man iX is. A Mino, despite equipment. An avenger, a saviour to some, Rebellio’s doom and a last grace. “Should I carry you outside? Or end it now, if you prefer.”
“No, thank you. Let me see the sun one last time.”
His bones splinter further in his ribcage when iX lifts him off the abandoned ground. So strong for someone that small. He looks so young and feels so old.
And still. And still Rebellio can’t stop blabbering because this is his last chance. Be it from solitary confinement or his inate nature, Rebellio loves to talk. “I used to be a craftsman.”
iX indulges him. “What sort?”
“I’d make anything, as long as I could make it with thread.” The grey walls pass them by. When Rebellio planned this trap, he hoped they’d be symbolic. One last stint in a cell and he would see his family again. Be free again.
But no one is free in this world. Rebellio isn’t free. His warden isn’t free. iX isn’t either.
“I made all sorts of things with my Septima. Clothes, dolls, ropes. One day, though, I gave a little doll a scissor and it cut as well as steel.” Rebellio does not bedruge iX for being the one to live. He didn’t want to kill iX in the first place. iX only defended himself, no choice involved.
“The wrong crowd noticed your talent.” Sunlight shrouds iX’s face in shadow. How beautiful, despite the ever murky skies, to feel the sun’s warmth on his skin for the first time in so long.”
He breathes in until it hurts, until he coughs up another splatter.
“There is a reason I can build guns and guillotines.” His thread clumps between his fingers and his hair, where iX ripped it apart. “Illegal weapon trade is what Sumeragi caught me for. How else was I supposed to support my family? So many jobs are automated these days. Sumeragi controls every market. What else can someone crafting by hand do? What other choice did I have?
First I make them a knife, or a gun. Suddenly I make more and more, and when I won’t keep up, they take my family. Suddenly I’m not just making guns anymore, I’m on the front lines and there’s soldiers breathing down my neck and then I’m in prison, my family is in another prison, this world is in prison! You’re imprisoned, too. Just in a less literal way then I.”
iX remains stoic in his task. It must not suprise him. The way he deposits Rebellio on the grass is neither tender nor cruel. An automated action. How many corpses has he seen, Rebellio wonders. How many graves has iX dug?
Dust and grime now stain Rebellio’s uniform green and grey, though he does not care. If he had woven it himself, then perhaps.
Static creeps further across his vision. Quick now, or else freedom runs. IX chose his clothes wisely. He can’t see the blood on red and black gloves.
“Can you give me my thread?” Words come harder. Rebellio spits into the grass. It does not help. “I want to die on my own terms, not how the warden decided I should. She said my sentence would be lightened, how funny. Didn’t she rush my execution instead?”
With an ever-neutral efficiency, iX unwraps the thread around him and hands it to Rebellio. Not enough to attack, of course, though iX faces no danger. iX won. IX has his weapons and nary a scratchm while Rebellio knows his time is up.
He takes his thread and pulls it taut and admires the sheen edge in the open air. Behind him, iX steps away and away and leaves Rebellio to-, not his fate. Not his fate, or else it is predetermined, but his choice. His final decision.
All he sees anymore is red, red like iX’s armor, red like his thread, red like his blood.
Mercy and faith are meager comforts. But they are comforts Rebellio chooses to keep.
Sumeragi doesn’t behead its prisoners.
In his last moments, Rebellio thinks,
“Is it really freedom if I die either way?"
At least Rebellio gets to decide his executioner.
Copen wishes he’d chosen this outcome. He wishes that he could choose anything at all.