A/N: So Marie Antoinette was executed on October 16, 1793. And because I missed that day entirely, here's a little something I wrote as a request from a dear friend of mine.
October 16, 1793
Charles-Henri Sanson
He still remembers the weight of the queen's foot on his moments before he was to behead her. She apologized, assuring him that she did not mean to do it. At that moment, he wondered if this was also her confessing to the crimes of which she had been accused of. Even though his heart told him that it wasn't.
Remembers the smooth handle of the blade he used to sever the rope of the guillotine, the sound it made as it plummeted down and silenced the queen forever. Remembers picking up the now deceased monarch's head and holding it up for the entirety of France to see, remembers their frenzied cheers for the fall of Madame Deficit.
It brings him no joy to know now that the life he had taken had not once been guilty.
Chevalier d'Eon
Tears welled up in the knight's eyes as she remembers her unheard pleas to the English council to allow her to return to France. Her country was in the middle of a bloody revolution and her monarch needed her. The wife of the man that had allowed her to live as she was now.
How they denied her, giving her looks of disgust, at the black dress she was now known to wear, and sent her back home, someone always keeping watch to ensure that she would never be able to return.
She wishes now that she had never chosen to accept her exile to England.
Marie Antoinette
Her hands smelled like ink, as she had just finished writing her final letter to her sister. She could only pray to God that it would reach her safely. One of her jailers tells her it is time, and she nods solemnly, standing up to go wash her hands for the final time.
Even if she's to see Death today, she would do so with dignity and clean hands. And as she's escorted down the halls to the wagon that will take her to Him, her freshly washed hands bound tightly behind her back, one of her escorts asks her if she's losing her resolve.
She turns to face them, and quietly answers. "Courage? I have shown it for years; think you I shall lose it at the moment when my sufferings are to end?"
The rest of the ride is silent, as is the square where the contraption that will take her head is placed. With a deep breath, the Queen climbs the steps, and inclines her head to the man that will be her killer in greeting.
Her last words are an apology, and nothing more.
And now, even when she meets him again in Chaldea, she smiles at him, and tells him time and time again, that she would go through all that again if it meant being with the people who had known her in life.