He didn't know what he was going to do.
He'd ignored the question "What happens now?" because it was still too wrapped up in fear and uncertainty. Julian had accepted that he was Theseus that horrible night, that his identity and that of Theseus were too intertwined to separate anymore.
But it still didn't answer the question.
Rebecca stood at his side telling him that his only option was to kill Kiera, tossing aside her act of mercy in the woods. But he remembered, he remembered too well…
He was on his knees in a puddle, staring down a gun barrel and at the terrible and wrathful harbinger of death, pleading desperately, hopeless for his life. He was hyperaware of everything – the cold water soaking through his jeans to freeze his leg. The chafing on his abused wrists from the handcuffs. The ache in his arms from the strain. His hair plastered to his wet face. The overwhelming terror that pulsed through him, overriding everything.
Kiera wasn't listening. She was going to kill him. Nobody was going to stop her, nobody cared to stop her.
He was going to die kneeling in the mud.
Out of nowhere, the other cop, Carlos Fonnegra, the one he had shot, came barreling through the trees, hands outstretched.
The cop he had shot, who had been denied justice, who should have been seeking vengeance, was imploring Kiera to stay her hand. Imploring her to spare Julian because it was the right thing to do.
He continued to beg Kiera, half out of his mind in terror. Undeterred, she continued her mantra that Julian had to die, that he would kill thousands.
As if he already had. As if it were written in stone.
Julian babbled promises as Carlos continued to beseech her in a low, calm voice. And finally, finally, she lowered the gun, and Carlos pulled Julian behind him as Julian, weak with relief and gratitude, babbled his thankfulness.
And so, as Julian stood at a crossroads, trying desperately to decide what to do with the woman who had tortured him, who had been ready to kill him, but ultimately had spared him, Rebecca's words rang in his head.
"Don't lose your nerve just because she lost hers."
But that wasn't true. Keira hadn't lost her nerve, she had made a conscious decision to show him mercy, and both of them knew that. And despite how satisfying it might feel, how good it might be for Rebecca's so-called 'cause', killing Kiera was not the right thing to do.
Kagame had tried to shape him into something. Kiera had known what that something was; he had seen it in her eyes. And it horrified her.
It horrified him.
That future, the one that came from following Kagame's plan, that came from murdering Kiera, was not one he wanted. Theseus was part of that future. But Theseus was also him, and he decided his own destiny. Theseus was what he decided to make him, part of the future that he chose.
But Rebecca was right about one thing. He was a leader now.
He was not that child shivering in the cold and the wet anymore. He had to show that to Kiera. He had to show that to his followers. (He had to show that to the world.) And he had to prove to Kiera – and to them – that sparing her life in return came not from cowardice but from choice.
He had a show to put on.