A struggling silence. He wanted to ask and desperately, desperately did not want to ask. In the end blessed ignorance won out, with an audible exhale. He would hang onto it, for now. He needed this more than he needed to be correct, and he'd find some sort of excruciating backup loophole in the meantime, before he risked finding out he was wrong.
He started shaking, then, not just his hands but all over, trembling from head to toe at the realization that that one fragile thing was all that stood between him and something enormous, far too big for him to stand up against let alone defeat. It was not nearly enough. He wanted to sleep and not wake up. An elevator underground, a sudden sense of defeat. Taste of a gun in his mouth, in a parking lot somewhere a lifetime away.
He thought of Tuesday, and for once it wasn't enough to bolster him, to make him stumble up and shoulder the yoke once more. For the first time since she'd been old enough to look at him and smile for him he thought of Tuesday and what he felt was resentment.
She wasn't enough either, and the realization of it shook him right down to the ground, and across from H's desk he jerked against some invisible leash, almost a convulsion, of sudden terror and exhaustion and the thought of every unspoken promise he'd made to America that in that moment he broke.
"I see," he said hysterically, "that you decided against honoring my last request."
Reply
