A Life For A Life, a matched fanfic

A Life For A Life

By Laura Schiller

Based on: The Matched Trilogy

Vance Roberts – formerly known as Officer Roberts – was a tall, powerful-looking man, the result of several generations of perfect Matching. His golden hair was receding, and had mostly faded to gray, but his square jaw and keen blue eyes still made him handsome. He stood in his khaki Society soldier's fatigues, stripped of all insignia of his rank, with both hands braced on the barrier of the defendant's box like an athlete about to leap over them. Ky, sitting with the spectators, felt nauseous at the sight.

"How do you justify your actions after the war ended?" asked the judge.

"The Aberrations and Anomalies were a threat." Roberts' deep voice rang out across the courtroom. "By having them eliminated, I was acting in Society's best interests."

The judge, a gray-haired woman in Rising uniform, pressed her mouth into a thin line and looked down at her folded hands. Hissing whispers travelled around the room, a current of barely suppressed fury. Ky's hands clenched into fists. They were clean now, but he still remembered them cold from touching corpses and black with gunpowder.

"I call upon Ky Markham as a witness," said the judge.

Ky froze. He had known this was coming, but his body still felt coated in lead. Slowly, he pulled himself to his feet, walked down through the tiered rows of spectators, reached the witness stand, and tried not to feel trapped by the wooden barrier shutting him in. When the judge asked him to swear to "tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth", his voice cracked in mid-sentence.

He felt the pressure of too many pairs of eyes on him – curious eyes, indifferent eyes, sympathetic eyes, and worst of all, the contemptuous blue eyes of Roberts in the opposite box.

Then the questions began.

Like in the stone villages, both people at a trial in the new regime – or in this case, a person and the state – had the right to a speaker, someone to "stand with them" as Anna had expressed it. Unlike Roberts' speaker, a woman who was visibly uncomfortble with the role, the speaker for the state was young and full of energy. His name was Lon Sewell and Ky remembered him from hiking classes in Oria. Even then, he had been argumentative, asking the questions everyone else was afraid to ask. His long nose, frizzy brown curls and squeaky voice were unexpectedly welcome in this sea of strangers.

"What was your status in the Society?"

"Aberration."

"Who caused it?"

"My father."

"How?"

"He was in the Rising. He led meetings in our village, talking about overthrowing the Society. Until they destroyed our village, and everyone was killed except for me."

"Were you in the decoy villages?"

"I was."

"How did you get there?"

Ky talked until he was hoarse. He did his best to ignore the gasps, the murmurs of horror and pity, and the stony expression of the defendant opposite. He talked about his adoption by the Markhams, his love for Cassia and the secret relationship that led to him being sent away. He talked about the thirst, the useless weapons, the firings, the notched boots, the thirteen-year-old children arriving on his next-to-last day, the boy in the training camp who talked back to the Officer and was deprived of water until he died.

Then he talked about Vick, who had helped him bury their dead comrades, and it was a bitter satisfaction to him to see Roberts flinch and turn pale.

"Your Honor, I object," said Roberts. "This man is an Aberration. His father broke the law and so did he. Why should we trust anything he says?"

"The laws have changed since then, Mr. Roberts." The judge's warm voice took on a hint of a chill. "For the better, we hope. Objection overruled."

Roberts scoffed.

"Mr. Markham." Lon glanced around the crowd, ran his hand through his nest of curls, and turned back on his heel to look at Ky. "Did you agree with your father's political leanings?"

Ky's face was hot. He had found it a challenge even to speak to Cassia about this. He hadn't told her about the trial, afraid that if she came with him, he could not trust himself to stay strong. Now he was expected to expose his deepest secrets in a situation like this?

He knew the game Lon was playing, though. If stirring up sympathy for him in the hearts of the judge and jury would win this case and get Roberts punished, he would just have to play along.

"No," he answered. "I didn't. Back then, I just wanted to fit in."

"Back then, you say. And later?"

"Later … " He cleared his throat. "When Vick and Eli and I ran out into the canyon, all I thought about was escape. But Vick taught me differently. He was a leader. He kept the boys in the camp from tearing each other apart."

Roberts raised his head.

"Vick told me I had the potential to lead, too, like my father. But I ignored him. Instead of taking charge of the group like he wanted me to, I let him look after himself. He went out fishing in an exposed part of the canyon without telling me … and that's when the Society airship shot him down."

Don't cry, he ordered himself, blinking hard. Not now, not here. He would tell Cassia everything when he came home, and have his breakdown in the shelter of her arms. But for now, he had to be strong, could not betray the slightest hint of weakness.

Lon glanced away, but not before Ky saw the grief in his sharp brown eyes. He wondered whether Lon had lost someone too. Between orchestrated mass murder, revolution and the Plague, it would be surprising if he hadn't.

Roberts, meanwhile, had turned white as port paper. His knuckles gripped the barrier like a lifeline.

"Did … did you say fishing?" he rasped.

"Yes." Ky's words rang hollow, without any of the triumph he'd expected. "He was fishing for rainbow trout. They were a symbol to him. But the airship didn't just kill him, they poisoned the stream. Eli and I tried to reverse the damage, but I don't believe any of the fish survived."

"Rainbow trout … " Roberts shook his head. "All those stories I told him … it can't be true, it can't, there's no way … " He dragged his hands over his face, like a dirty man scrubbing himself with hot water. When he took them away, his eyes were wild.

"He's lying," he snarled, throwing out his arms to address the entire courtroom. "Whoever this man is, he's a filthy liar. I was on that airship, do you understand? I volunteered. Byrd and I were the only pilots who could navigate those canyons, and Byrd didn't have the nerve!"

There was an uproar, especially among the Rising members of the crowd, easily visible by their black clothing. James Byrd was the Pilot of the Rising, and Ky guessed that his problem had not been a lack of nerve, but an excess of conscience.

"I did my duty, that was all," Roberts went on, his voice rising to a thundering roar. "I'm a soldier, not a murderer! I didn't see that man down there until the spheres were already dropped, get it? I don't know who he was, didn't recognize him. Don't tell me it was my son, don't even dare! You think I wouldn't know my own son?"

This time, he really did vault over the barrier, charging toward Ky like a wild animal. The guards did not wait for the judge's order to restrain him; it took three of them to wrestle him into a pair of handlocks, all while the spectators shouted insults, the judge pounded her gavel in an attempt to restore order, and Ky wondered if this was a nightmare and, if so, when he would wake up.

As soon as the box was shut again, all the fight seemed to drain out of Vance Roberts. He collapsed into his chair like a sandcastle in the tide, raising his locked hands to scrub his face. He looked as if the river would wash him away.

"He broke the law," he murmured, more to himself than to anyone around him. "Contracting with that girl was against the law. What was I supposed to do, reward him? I had no choice in the matter, don't you see? I had no choice … "

His own tears silenced him, more effectively than any words from the judge.

Ky listened numbly as the two speakers came forward: first Roberts' speaker, dispassionately asking for leniency because of the defendant's lifelong conditioning from the Society he had served. Then came Lon, loud and defiant, every curl on his head seeming to crackle with electricity as he paced back and forth.

"We've all been conditioned by Society," he said. "Except, of course, those of us who grew up on the farms. That's a reason, but it's not an excuse. Most of us still managed to grow a conscience, didn't we? One that tells us killing children and poisoning rivers is wrong, no matter who does it and why?"

Ky, dismissed from the witness box and back in his seat, nodded silently along. But the rage that had sustained him throughout the trial was somehow missing, drained away as thoroughly as that sandcastle he had imagined.

Vance Roberts in mourning, he found, bore far too much resemblance to his son.

The twelve jury members withdrew into the next room to cast their votes, then filed back in with grave, impassive faces after what felt like hours of silent waiting. One of them whispered something to the judge, who nodded and brought down her gavel once more.

"By the power vested in me by the Province of Camas," said the judge, "I present you with two choices: to live your life out in a work camp … or to take a blue pill."

Roberts bowed his head.

"There was a strong call to have you executed," she added, with a wry twist of her mouth. "But 'an eye for an eye' isn't the principle that our new leaders intend us to follow. You can still be useful to your country if you wish to. You can still turn your life around."

Ky knew before Roberts opened his mouth what the man's choice would be. In his place, he'd have done the same thing.

"I'll take the pill," said Roberts.

"Very well," said the judge. "Dismissed."

A final clack of the gavel echoed across the room.

Roberts looked much smaller than before as two guards unlocked the defendant's box and led him away by his locked arms. Ky remembered how cold those handlocks were, how they cut into the wrists if you didn't move carefully.

He surprised himself by the hope that sprang up inside his heart, a hope that Hunter and Anna would have called a prayer. This was another thing he would tell Cassia when he came home; he had the feeling she would understand it better than he did.

I hope, he thought, that Vick found peace, wherever he is … and that this man will find it too.