31 Day Writing Challenge: Day 4 - 'Candy Wrapper'.

"He wouldn't look at me. His eyes fixed straight ahead, like he was determined not to look anywhere else. My eyes were watching his hands and the sweet wrapper they were manipulating. He was fidgeting. Avery fidgeting was never a good sign. It meant he was anxious. His refusal to look at me or down at his hands, meant he was guilty. Of what I didn't know.

I watched him twist the fluorescent pink plastic square until I was sure it would tear, before untwisting and flattening it out. The process was repeated with the wrapper being twisted in the opposite direction. Again and again, twisting and untwisting, over and over. The sweet that once belonged to the wrapper rattled against his teeth. He didn't want to talk, was avoiding saying anything. It was the only reason he ever sucked on sweets. 

Whatever it was he was avoiding saying, he'd better get over the hesitation and quick. Our friends were dead, crucial people to our team, to our cause, were gone. And it was my responsibility, as leader, to round up those left; to find a way for us to fight back, to survive. 

Suddenly, Avery stopped fidgeting, he was so still I wasn't sure he was even breathing. I looked at his profile: at my mother's nose and my father's chin, and waited, for an explanation, for him to say or do something.

Then he looked at me. Unblinking. And I knew. Whether it was because I knew him almost as well as I knew myself or because of our supposed 'special connection', I knew without him saying a single word. I knew what he had done, what he had been made to do. I knew what he had caused.

We sat there, looking into each other's eyes. Neither of us needed to say anything. I knew what he had done, knew it wasn't really his fault and knew that that fact didn't matter. We both knew what I'd have to do now. Everything that needed to be said was communicated wordlessly. 

I stood up and walked away, without a word or looking back. I walked out of the room, pausing briefly in  front of the guard just outside the doorway.

"They've got to him." The guard responded with a curt nod. 

I strode off, away from the room, away what I had just ordered. My head held high, my stride sure, projecting all the strength and level-mindedness that I didn't feel.

Then I heard the gun shot. It was done. My blood ran cold but my stride and stoic expression didn't falter. I was a leader, that's what I had to be, I didn't have the luxury of being anyone's sister, of being able to crumble and grieve. 

Do you think I wouldn't have saved him if I could have? They had his mind. He was lost already. I was responsibly for the lives of many, I couldn't give Avery special treatment because of something as inconsequential as DNA. 

Yes, I was cold. Yes, I ordered the execution of one of my own team. I made a tough call, the toughest call I have ever had to make. But I did what we all know I had to do.

If this tribunal feels that my actions deserve further consequences and punishment than grief, guilt and the loss of my beloved twin brother, I accept their decision and my sentencing." 

Aoife stood in the stand, her posture and mask the same as when she walked away from Avery for the last time: strong, sure, with her head held high and jaw set. She would not break.