Disclaimer: Being that this is called fanfiction, I do not own the characters or locale in question.

The pistol dangled haphazardly from his trigger finger. Great globs of angry red covered the ground around the still-twitching body, mingling with chunks of bone and a strange gray substance.

A member of the vanguard belched loudly, in an effort to keep down his gorge. The whole area radiated thick with a putrid smell.

Iosif kept his gaze trained on the horizon; light from the encroaching dawn cast a ruddy haze over the surrounding area, lending a surreal quality to the courtyard and all its present occupants.

"The body," he said, after a time. His accent was thick— cultured and foreign, like the road of luminous yellow brick. "Take it away."

The dictator was not a king, but a god— ironclad in all his pagan glory. Basking in the subservience of a nation broken under the weight of his own, heavy hand. Loyal to their dying breath, they toil away without protest. What does he care, for the countless lives he has damned?

Children quake as they're sent to the slaughter. Bred in fear, they have but one choice in life: do or die. To prostrate on bended knee before the man who has stolen their livelihood, or be wiped from the records entirely. It is a well-known fact that history is only ever written by the winners.

Population control, they called it. She saw it as a holy war. "If you're not for me, you're against me." Everyone's a sinner before the eyes of the Lord.

What a merciful man, then, to take charge of those lost sheep and bring them back into his fold. To feed them, to clothe them, to put a roof up over their heads. To give up one's soul for the sake of a pension; a trifle payment for His Majesty's favor.

This was to say nothing of the thousands who lay dying in their hospital beds. For what use was there in curing the sick? Not when there were soldiers waiting to be fed.

We regret to inform you that your daughter will not make it through the night.

And there isn't anything you can do about it, doctor?

I'm sorry, ma'am, but we're on a strict budget here. We can't break it for just anyone, you know. What would become of our paychecks? Why, we might be forced to forego our morning coffee, and that simply wouldn't do.