What You Wanted, a matched fanfic

What You Wanted

By Laura Schiller

Based on the Matched Trilogy

Author's Note: Officer Roberts is my OC version of Vick's father. The mention of his trial refers to my story "A Life For A Life". Much as I love the Matched trilogy, I felt there should have been some form of personal justice for all the impersonal evil done in this story. The Society's leaders, whoever they are, seem to have gotten away with mass murder. Does that seem right to you?

When the Pilot told me who it was Ky managed to fly in on his latest rescue mission, a cold sweat broke out along my spine. She still frightened me; I didn't know why, since there could be nothing more helpless than a Plague patient, but she did. Nevertheless, I knew I had to talk to her. I asked the medics to call me in the moment she was conscious, even though Ky touched my hand with concern and the Pilot eyed me as if he thought I might explode. There was an answer I wanted from this woman, whatever the cost. Whatever it was her cold, calculating mind decided to tell me.

As I approach her bed, though, she is not what I expected. At first glance, I cannot tell her apart from the hundreds of other patients in their clear plastic cells. Green scrubs, wan face, arm hooked up to the line, body huddled in the narrow cot. Coming closer, I still barely recognize her. She is so thin. Her silver-streaked blond hair has turned white as the ash of the farmers' bodies in the Carving. Her green eyes glitter at me with undiminished pride, but they are set too deep in the hollows of her face.

"Hello, Cassia," she rasps, her voice rough with disuse.

I can't call her Official Standler anymore. What was the name tag on her uniform back then? "Hello, Irene."

"Are you happy now?" She waves one bony hand around the confines of her cell.

Yes. No. I am happy now, but not about seeing her like this. Back in Mapletree Borough, when I hated her so much for playing her games with Ky and me, I sometimes thought I would have enjoyed seeing her suffer. But I've seen too much real suffering since then.

"What happened to you?" I want to ask it neutrally, but my voice comes out hushed with pity.

"Your fine friends in the Rising happened to me." Her face twists with a venom she would never have allowed herself in the days when she worked for the Matching Department. Back then, she made an effort to keep up the pretense of civility; now she's a cornered animal, and accordingly, she lashes out.

"My contacts assured me the transition would be smooth, but they didn't count on that so-called Pilot and his Aberration followers. They locked me in a cell in Central City Hall, and by the time I came down with the mutated plague, there was no one left to find me. Is that your idea of a great leader, Cassia? Is this what you wanted?"

"You're here now, aren't you?" I retort, my sympathy falling as her vitriol rises. "He did remember you."

"In his own good time, I assure you."

I roll my eyes at her, ready to say something just as sharp – do you know you have Ky Markham to thank for your life? How does it feel to be saved by someone you tried to destroy? – when I'm distracted by what she said earlier sinking in. Her contacts? The transition? If what Oker said is true and the Rising and Society have become interchangeable, then why did the Pilot take such drastic measures against one Official?

I gasp.

"Were you the old leader? The one they told me didn't exist?"

I was taught in school that every ten years, all the department committees meet to elect a secret leader. One who has the last word on every decision, who takes on the burdens of power without any of its rewards. This way, he or she is less likely to be distracted or led astray by public opinion, and rules purely for the sake of justice. Later, I was told there never was a leader, that the committees shared their power among each other. But that struck me as far too inefficient a way for the Society to run, and it seems I was right.

A secret leader. Now that I've seen Endstone and the awe-inspiring trust of its voting system, the idea makes me shiver. A secret leader might order any amount of atrocities to be committed, and no one would try to stop her because nobody would know. Nobody did know, until the Pilot put a stop to it. Until Xander, Ky and I joined together to heal what she tried to destroy.

She tilts her ashy head at me in disdain. "Of course I am. Did you really think a simple sorter from the Matching Department would have the power to interfere in military matters?"

"Military matters. Is that what you call sending the Plague down the rivers? The mass murder of the Anomalies and Aberrations?"

"Why, Cassia, you give me too much credit. A certain Officer Roberts managed most of that." She smiles icily. "I found him most useful, especially in the light of evidence for a plea bargain. I hear he was sentenced to death recently."

Officer Roberts? Could he be related to Ky's friend Vick who died by the poisoned river? It's a common name, but Ky did say that Vick was the son of a high-ranking army officer. If this is the same man, the irony of it all is enough to turn my stomach.

"Prisoner's dilemma," I mutter.

"That's right." There's not a trace of remorse on her face. "He drew the odd card. It happens."

"And you don't even care." It's not a question. "You're … " Evil. Heartless. Inhuman. Dramatic words, words we never used in the Society, but still not enough to plumb the depths of what this woman is.

"I am what I was trained to be." My Official staggers to her feet, ill-fitting scrubs billowing around her skinny body, by some miracle still managing to look regal. She looks down her nose at me through the glass of her cell. Her eyes are hard as pebbles. "In thirty years, you would have been just the same."

For a moment, I actually see what she means. I see myself in her: her stubbornness, her unshakeable faith in her beliefs, the way she can see the world in terms of patterns, statistics, currents of impersonal change. I was trained that way too, ever since childhood: taught to guard my words within range of the port, never to enter another person's house or share food, never to ask too many questions about their vocation, never to ask why people disappeared. Detachment. Obedience. Secrets. Control.

I had Grandfather to keep me human in spite of it all, my parents to love me, Xander and Ky and Indie to help me break free. Whom did Irene Standler have when she was my age?

That, however, is where the analogy breaks down. I can picture her being like me when she was younger, but Society or no, I cannot picture growing into her.

"Maybe I would have," I tell her steadily, "But I won't. My choices aren't yours. I will never be like you."

I finally understand why I was always so afraid of her, at the same time as I know that there is no more reason to fear.

"You've got that right," says my Official in a dry, weary voice, lowering her gaze as she leans on the plastic wall for support. But before she does, I could swear I see something flicker in those green eyes of hers, something that is neither pride nor malice. For just a moment, she reminds me of Xander, standing with his hands tied at the trial in Endstone. Defeated. Ashamed.

Could it be that part of her, even just a small part, wishes she were me? Is there a choice she's thinking of, a path she left untravelled when she was young, that could have left her holding on to the humanity she has lost? I want very much to ask her, but I know she'd never tell. Let her keep her stories. They are the last shreds of dignity she has left, and no one should be forced to give those up.

How do I end this? Optimal results would sound like a cruel joke to her; the same for I hope you feel better soon. She's going to prison as soon as she recovers. A reduced sentence, thanks to Officer Roberts, but not a short one all the same. Thinking of Officer Roberts, though, leads me to Vick and the Carving, and the paranoid fears I had there that my Official was watching. If I don't ask now, I never will.

"Irene," I ask, "What was the final predicted outcome?"

She leans back her head and laughs bitterly. "I knew you were going to ask that."

I fold my arms.

"You know what it was as well as I do."

She's right. I do.

The Officers who took me from the work camp did a good job of pretending to be careless, but I knew that's not the Society way. I was supposed to be on that airship. She was afraid of what I might do after losing Ky. I understand that; I was a little afraid of myself sometimes, back then. So she tried to stop me - permanently - before I could do something drastic. Sometimes, as my father said after burning that cache of books, it's more efficient to destroy.

"You sent me to die," I say. "But I didn't." And I can't resist one final jab: "Disappointed?"

Very, I expect her to say. But then she surprises me one last time by slowly, painfully, shaking her head.

I might have guessed. I was, after all, such an interesting test subject. And more than that – she and I, who both used to pride ourselves so much on our ability to predict people, have never really succeeded in predicting each other. No wonder we were adversaries. No wonder she's so bitter that I won. And no wonder, despite everything, she respects me enough to be glad that I survived.

"Well … goodbye, then," I tell her, with the sort of polite nod I might have given her when she was my Official.

"Where are you going?" she calls after me as I turn to leave.

"To vote in the election." The unfamiliar words tingle like spices on my tongue. I check my watch. If I don't leave soon, I might be late meeting Ky.

"Elections, is it? If you think that will fix everything, you're sorely mistaken."

"I know." Her cynicism doesn't faze me. I look her squarely in the face. "But you know what else? If voting is the way to make sure no one like you ever comes to power again, you can be sure I'll do it. For all our sakes."

And for the first time in our brief row of encounters, I am the one who walks away with the last word.