Not guilty. Not guilty. Not guilty. As every verdict is read out Raju’s breathing comes faster and deeper. After one, his jaw clenches. After another, his hands clench into fists. Not guilty. Not guilty. Not guilty.
Not guilty.
Every single one.
What was it he’d said? Why are we pretending to be a community at all if each time one of us has a bad feeling, we're going to allow them these abominations without any consequence? That’s what he’d said. And he’d been assured there was an ideal outcome — labour, enforced rebuilding, something. Something.
The tension’s been building in him since before he’d stepped inside the Hall today. It’s a wonder nothing’s caught on fire yet. The fireplace, a couple times, has acquired a second, oddly flickering, oddly shifting flame behind it, but now—
He’s pacing in front of Francis. He hasn’t thought about tending to himself, too busy watching the battered body of the man beside him now to make sure he really wasn’t about to die, and his nails have grown too long. They dig into his palms. He knows the feeling now, the fire building inside him, even if it sometimes takes him a while to realise that it’s there. He closes his eyes. His breaths don’t lighten at all, but they lengthen. When he opens them up again he sees the people standing up there, the people between him and the accused who are practically handing them the weapons to do all of it again—
Deep breaths. Hard breaths. His mind coats itself in a heavy quiet, everything that wants to fill it heaving at the walls in the same way his chest is heaving for breath. The wall beside him begins to smoke. So does the floor beneath his feet. He turns to Francis, puts a very gentle hand on the uninjured side of his back.
“Come on.” He can’t leave without him. Not even for a moment, with a single member of this useless— “We need to go home.”
post-june event town meeting
Not guilty.
Every single one.
What was it he’d said? Why are we pretending to be a community at all if each time one of us has a bad feeling, we're going to allow them these abominations without any consequence? That’s what he’d said. And he’d been assured there was an ideal outcome — labour, enforced rebuilding, something. Something.
The tension’s been building in him since before he’d stepped inside the Hall today. It’s a wonder nothing’s caught on fire yet. The fireplace, a couple times, has acquired a second, oddly flickering, oddly shifting flame behind it, but now—
He’s pacing in front of Francis. He hasn’t thought about tending to himself, too busy watching the battered body of the man beside him now to make sure he really wasn’t about to die, and his nails have grown too long. They dig into his palms. He knows the feeling now, the fire building inside him, even if it sometimes takes him a while to realise that it’s there. He closes his eyes. His breaths don’t lighten at all, but they lengthen. When he opens them up again he sees the people standing up there, the people between him and the accused who are practically handing them the weapons to do all of it again—
Deep breaths. Hard breaths. His mind coats itself in a heavy quiet, everything that wants to fill it heaving at the walls in the same way his chest is heaving for breath. The wall beside him begins to smoke. So does the floor beneath his feet. He turns to Francis, puts a very gentle hand on the uninjured side of his back.
“Come on.” He can’t leave without him. Not even for a moment, with a single member of this useless— “We need to go home.”