The Last Justification

Nobody believed in me. That was their first mistake.

Their second was believing in him.

The war hero. They worshipped him. The man they said would remake everything. Radically. Permanently. They hung one every word he spoke, as if he alone could drag this fractured nation into some new, shining future. They never stopped to ask who could be destroyed in this process.

Someone had to act. Someone had to see the danger for what it was. If no one else would carry the burden, then it had to be me.

My leg screams every time my foot hits the ground. Something is wrong with it – I knew that as soon as I landed from my jump.

What if I was wrong? I dismissed that thought immediately. Wrong men hesitate. Wrong men falter. I am not wrong.

Stopping means they catch me. And I can’t be caught. Not here. Not ever.

Branches whip my face as I push through the woods. I must hurry.

I thought it would feel bigger. That’s the confusing part. I keep looping the scene in my head. I thought there would be something. Applause. Awe. Relief. Something that showed me that I had done the right thing.

But that never happened.

Instead, everyone was looking at him, as if I were invisible. Like, I didn’t matter.

Don’t they understand what I saved them from? Who I saved them from?

A root catches my foot, and I go down hard. Pain shoots up my leg so fast my vision flashes while I bite my lip. I swallow the pain and keep moving anyway.

I must keep moving.

The safehouse isn’t too far away. It’s not just my only hope. It’s my survival.

Somewhere behind me, I hear voices. Or maybe I’m imagining it. I have not slept in over 24 hours, and I’ve been on the run ever since I did it. But it all means the same. They’re coming.

A laugh slips out of me before I can stop it. How cruel this is. I’m the one running for my life. The one injured. The one that everyone thinks of as a monster.

But what about him?

What about what he wanted to do to this country? To our culture? To our way of living? He was going to tear it apart and call it “progress.” Call it justice.

I had to do it. I keep telling myself that as I run. If I keep telling myself that, then it must be true.

The ends justify the means.

It must.

My leg is failing me now. Every step feels like it’s trying to tear itself away from the rest of me. The pain is loud, louder than the reason why I did what I had to do.

I can’t let it be louder. If the pain wins, then doubt wins. And doubt is the enemy I can’t face.

The trees blur at the edges. My breath is too fast, too shallow. I try to slow it, but my body is no longer listening. It’s acting on its own, panicked, frantic, stupid. I want to scream at it to behave. To remember the mission. To remember the cause.

Suddenly, the ground tilts under me, and I’m on my knees.

I press my palm into the dirt, trying to push myself back up, but my arm trembles as if it belongs to someone else. My vision pulses. Black. Then light. Then black again.

I tell myself to get up.

I tell myself I must.

I tell myself this is bigger than me.

But exhaustion creeps in, forcing me to stay on my knees.

I take a breath in and force it out hard. I need to focus. The safehouse. I just need to reach the safehouse. Once I’m there, everything will make sense again. I get to save this country. I will be remembered as the war hero, not him.

They have to understand why I did it.

Somewhere behind me, the voices rise again. Not imagined this time. Not distant. Not fading.

Close. They are closing in on me.

My heart lurches. I try to crawl forward, dragging my useless leg behind me, but the forest spins and the earth feels soft. I lower my head for just a moment. Just long enough to breathe. Just long enough to gather myself.

But the moment stretches.

And stretches.

And then it breaks.

The world slips away.

**

Sound fills my ear before anything else.

Not clearly. Not all at once. Just pieces.

Boots. Branches snapping. Someone calling out. Another answering.

I try to open my eyes, but they feel glued shut. My body is heavy, pinned by exhaustion and pain.

I tell myself to move. To run. To fight. To do anything.

Nothing happens. My body has failed me.

I tell myself not to panic. Panic is for men who don’t understand their purpose. Panic is for men who regret. I don’t regret. I can’t. If I regret, then everything I worked so hard for will collapse under its own weight. I refuse to let them happen.

I saved them.

I saved them all.

Why can’t they see that?

The voices are closer now. Too close. They’re threading through the trees, weaving around me, tightening like a net.

I try to swallow, but my throat is dry. My mind scrambles for justification, for purpose, for the fire that carried me this far.

But all I find is the echo of what I’ve done.

And then – through the trees, through the loud ringing in my ears— I hear it:

“…the man who shot President Lincoln…”

The words hit harder than the fall. They don’t say my name, but they don’t have to. The truth is already out there, running faster than I ever could.

I try to move, to drag myself forward, to reclaim even an inch of the story I thought I controlled. But my body stays still. Heavy. Betraying me.

And history—my history— is no longer mine to shape.