3.23-25.15

"Death," Kuvira said quietly. "The hour of reckoning is finally upon us."

Baatar gritted his teeth, squeezing her hands in his and puling her down to his lap. "Stop talking about it, we've talked about nothing else since the sentence. Let me just remember you like this…"

"You're losing it," she said, her steely facade in place. "Hold it together, it's not the end of the world."

"Stop it." He pulled her more closely against him by the waist, taking her decorated hand in his spare. "My world as I know it is ending, and you know it too."

"Baatar—"

"I can't live like this," he said, interlacing their fingers. "I feel like I'm about to have a heart attack.. I got a second chance, why couldn't you?"

"Stop," she said, kissing him. "Please, stop... I can at least die happy if I know you'll move on."

"How can I, when the only person—"

"Promise me you'll move on," she pleaded, taking his face in her hands. "Promise me you'll continue to innovate, and engineer new projects, and—"

"What's the point?" he asked, his voice breaking despite his efforts. "Kuvira, after today you'll be gone…"

"You were alive before you ever knew me," she insisted, blinking back tears. "You have your family, you have your whole life ahead of you.. you were alive without me before, you can continue on without—"

"As far as I'm concerned my life really began at age nine," he said, shaking his head as he pinched the bridge of his nose. "What will I do…"

She let out a shuddery breath, kissing him to quiet them both. "Then I don't know what I can say."

"There's nothing anyone can say." Baatar punched the wall behind them, feeling the wood creak and the skin on his knuckles already beginning to bruise. "Damn it, I can't— how can I—" Without warning he turned to her again, his anguish briefly visible in his face before he hugged her tightly, lifting her onto the tips of her toes and his tears falling on her hair. "Kuvira…"

"It'll be all right," she said, her voice muffled and resigned. "I'm sorry I ruined our chance at happiness, this is all my fault. I love-"

"No," he said harshly, pulling back to look at her. "No, no it isn't. The trial.. the way they dismissed... I can't…"

"You don't have to watch," she said quietly when the guard came with the cuffs.

His grip only tightened. "As if I would let you go alone."

o0o

The execution went smoothly and quickly. He had been allowed to kiss her a final time before they administered the lethal injection, and he was assured that she wouldn't suffer.

They hadn't allowed him to hold her hand as the needle went in.

She had held his eyes with hers instead, trying to project a quiet confidence, but as the needle entered her arm he swore he could hear her gasp and could see the panic rising in her face as she involuntarily grasped for a life that was slipping through her fingers. The guards had to hold him back as her limbs first tensed and then went slack, as her eyes first darted over him frantically, trying to take in one last look before they were left unseeing forever. When she was pronounced dead, a strangled cry escaped Baatar's lips, and they were quick to escort him from the room before they readied the body for cremation. It helped a little. In a way, he was glad he didn't have to see her unmarked skin blister and blacken, or see her vibrant eyes, the color of the Zaofu grounds in the spring, close forever.

It didn't help much.

His family was sympathetic, but he knew was alone in his mourning. His siblings and father gave him space, reminding him that they were there should he need to talk, but his mother came to visit him at work only a week after Kuvira's death. He had been granted three days to grieve, but staying home with nothing but memories of her clouding his mind was more than he could bare, and he threw himself into the latest project for the spirit vine generator, drowning his misery in the downtown expansion.

"I thought…" Su said, her tone timid, "that perhaps you'd want this back." She pressed the engagement ring into his trembling palm, and stood waiting for a reply, her hands folded in front of her.

"Mother," he said tiredly, "please, get out."

"Sweetie, you haven't eaten," she said softly. "You aren't sleeping. Please, let us help you, we're a family—"

"My family will never be whole again." His fingers closed around the ring, and he turned back to the generator. "Just leave me alone."

Su's eyes welled up. "Baatar, I know you loved her—"

"Don't call me that, call me Junior, the way you always have," he said, his voice harsher than he'd expected it to be. "She was the only one who called me that…please, just leave me alone."

"Do you want me to get Opal? Or one of the twins?"

"No." He slid the ring into his pocket. "There's only one person I want right now, and you can't bring her to me."

"Sweetie—"

"Leave!" He turned on her, tears pricking at his eyes and his voice a ragged sob. "Just leave! Are you happy? Yes, we were wrong, yes, she deserved to be punished, but why did she have to be executed? This is what you wanted, isn't it? You tried to kill her twice. Why her, and not me? I was the vice president, I was as culpable. But no, I'm a Beifong so I get to live in a permanent hell without her. I wish it had been me—"

Su was crying openly, and when she opened her arms to him he didn't refuse. "Junior, I'm so sorry," she said between uneven breaths. "I'm so, so sorry... please, don't talk like this..."

"I'm sorry, Mom." He straightened up, giving her a final hug. "But I don't take any of it back."

Su left shortly afterward. Opal and the twins never came to visit.

Dusk fell when he reached for the cable, the power core hooked up to a network of wires and the beginnings of the purple glow already at its center. Baatar glanced from the generator to the spirit portal. The current seemed amplified by the rising waves of spiritual energy in the area, but he found himself apathetic to the risk of finishing the rewiring. The vines criss-crossed over one another like blood vessels, and he shuddered.

He couldn't shake the image of Kuvira sagging against her restraints as the lethal injection spread through her veins, stilling the rise and fall of her chest and sapping the spark of life from her eyes.

Time seemed to slow, and the wires blurred before his eyes. He could dimly feel a crackling energy in the final wire, and as a coldly rational voice in his head screamed for him to put it down, to step away, to wait until the ambient spirit energy levels were lower, he brought the wire to the metal fixture. Yes, there was a risk, he told himself, but did it really matter anymore?

A blinding flash of purple light filled his vision for the second and final time in his life. It was fitting; the republic gave no second chances.