This story takes place in a time that intermingles past, present and future. The year is 3045. Humanity has slipped back into a dark age. Natural resources are almost exhausted, and monarchs have become increasingly more popular. The Americas are nearly barren—because, let's face it, at the end of the world, us Americans are screwed. Technology is a dead concept. Basically, it's the 1100's all over again. Which would be pretty damn cool in my opinion, though it'll probably never happen.

So, enjoy.

"the first casualty in wartime is truth…"

anonymous

Struck By Subtlety

I stood on my tiptoes on the platform, the noose around my neck already tight—a promise of what was to come. I wondered if I'd be like most and my neck would snap, and I would gasp before dying. Or would I hang there, twitching, trying to get air into my lungs, knowing it was a fruitless effort? Would I see the faces of the people I'd died for and think 'was it worth your life, little one?'. Or would I be noble and accept my fate? Close my eyes and die a respectable death with only twenty one years of life to reminisce about in purgatory…

"Perhaps we should just behead her?"

Yes. A beheading. Take my head off with that axe and save me the pain of options. A clean cut and my life would be over. No alternatives.

"No, too messy to clean up. And the executioner likes to complain about the blood spatter quite a bit."

Q was enjoying my pain, making his voice loud enough for me to hear. His anonymous companion seemed to catch on, and offered more options—all of them getting more gruesome by the moment.

"Well, carry on with it then."

Q appeared before me, his handsome face the last thing I knew I'd see in this life, "what a waste," he muttered, twirling a lock of my hair between his fingers, "any last words, angel?"

"Yeah," I choked, chortling shortly, "fuck you."

"Hmm," he stepped back from me, smiling.

"Sir!" a shout from the crowd drew Q's attention, and he spun, watching the young guard dressed in black proceed through the onlookers. His eyes darkened, and he frowned. When the boy reached the platform, he grasped his stomach, bending over.

"What is it?" Q growled, "I'm in the middle of something."

"You mustn't kill her!" my heart fluttered, and suddenly there was no noise in the square, only the blissful sound of the young boy's voice, "She's to be questioned," he locked eyes with the muscle man, "intensely."

Q raised his eyebrows at the last word, a sick, twisted smile creeping upon his face. In those few seconds—where he stared at me and I, back at him—I was scared. Death seemed like a simple task compared to the torture I saw planned in Q's onyx eyes. I suddenly regretted uttering what were meant to be my last words.

"Perfect."

My cell was cold. And dark. And wet.

I wondered if all dungeons were so cliché, but the thought passed from my mind as I heard the jingle of keys in the hallway. Every other prisoner clutched their prison bars, their agonizing screams piercing my heart. Some begged for death while others pleaded for their lives. Most, I knew, had committed petty crimes. Some hadn't committed any crimes at all but fighting for the rights they were meant to have at birth.

The keys were attached to a man-beast with an intricate scar across his left eye resembling barbed wire. He looked at me with his good, blue eye, and the corner of his mouth that was not ruined lifted into a grotesque smile. I pressed my breasts to the pole, clutching it as he entered my cell.

"It's time for your questioning," even his voice sounded mangled as he addressed me, "They're waiting for you."

That's nice.

He pulled me up by my arms, nearly ripping my hands from the wrists. I glared at him as he dragged me from the cell, leading me up a pair of winding stairs—and towards my persecution.

"You've caused an uproar, you know," the man growled out, his Irish lilt an inconsequential comfort. He sounded like a man of the rebellion—like Charlie—though I knew he was far from being a part of the resistance. "The Insurgence has seen it fit to storm the Congressman Dulcate's castle in Cantwell."

He frowned down at me—or perhaps that was his normal expression, "But I s'ppose your happy to hear that."

I smirked, staying quiet.

He jerked me forward as we reached the tower, pushing me into a room lit only by candles. Electricity was becoming scant—and I mourned the loss of simple technology. No television, no computers—no refrigerators. Humanity was slipping.

"Ah," Q leaned by the only window that was boarded shut, a man on his left, and one of more importance standing farthest from me—shrouded in shadow. I stiffened as the guard bowed once to his superiors and then excused himself, closing and locking the door behind him as he made his way back to the prison cells, "didn't I tell you she was a pretty little thing?"

I scowled at Q, watching with sharp eyes as his glance darted to the mystery man in the corner and then back to me. His irises were not black as they usually were. No, today they were burgundy—a hollow claret. I'd never seen a man with such eyes.

He took several steps toward me, looking at my hands with disdain, "I told that fool to chain you."

I shrugged, keeping my face stoic, "Must've forgotten."

I saw the man in the corner shift, and I wondered if he was smiling by the way the candlelight caught his uplifted cheek. His eyes, bright as topaz, shone through the misty darkness, and I was momentarily entrance by their brightness. Q's hand descended onto my shoulder, and he steered me towards a chair in the center of the room.

"Let's not waste time, eh?" he chortled, and my lip curled.

"You murdered the Congressman, Isabella. Why?"

The question came from the lesser man, the one I could clearly see. His blond hair waved softly over his green eyes, but he was hardly a vision. His nose had been broken many times, and the corner of his top lip was burned badly, putting a permanent pinch on his mouth.

"He was killing innocent slaves," I offered with no smile, no frown, "he needed to be stopped."

Q shook his head, "No. Charles wouldn't kill him for that," he grasped my chin in his stone-cold grasp, "Tell me why."

"I told you," I whispered, trying to wrestle his hands away with my spindly fingers, "he was killing without cause."

"Fine," Q nearly threw me away from him, almost breaking his impassive façade, and I rubbed my sore jaw, "tell me something else. Who are you Isabella?""Exactly who it says in my file," I spat, crossing my arms over my chest. Something about my obstinacy angered him, and he took one of my arms into his more than capable hands. I felt the blow before I even saw it, and felt another follow immediately after. His hand remained on my cheek, cradling it as my head spun. I could see stars before my vision, and my mind swam through a thick fog.

"We captured Charles' wife early this morning," Q told me, searching my eyes for any sort of reaction. He lowered his frozen mouth to my ear, "and her filthy blood spilled out onto the dirt in an act of retribution for Mr. Hathaway."

Eyes wide, my world faded away, and I had to bite my lip to keep from screaming. I could feel my stomach drop into my toes, my heart follow as if tethered to an invisible string. It felt as if he'd hit me in the chest, crushed my lungs, squeezed my gut until it exploded.

Tears stung at the corner of my eyes and I lowered my head until the feeling passed. My mother, my poor, harebrained Renee. Dead as if it were merely some daydream.

"This hurts you," Q murmured, his lips still moving against my ear, "I can smell the salt of your tears, hear the fast thrumming of your heart."

"It obviously affects her more than it should. She knows Charles. Well."

It was the first time I heard him speak, and I raised my eyes to the handsome stranger in the corner. The tears morphed my vision, but I could see half his face now, beauty personified.

"No I don't," I muttered uselessly. I might as well have said 'he's not my father, not at all'.

Q looked down at me, and then smiled, and no smile had ever sent chills down my back the way his did. Again, he could read the emotion in my eyes, and his hand moved down the curve of my neck, curling around my throat. He pressed his thumb into my jugular, lessening my air.

"What is he to you?"

I stared up at him, my eyes cold, hard, immovable, "Nothing but a leader."

Q growled—a feral sound of impatience. I could feel his hand crushing my neck, before I was released, coughing and spluttering. The man in the corner had appeared next to Q, prying the older man's digits from my skin. There would be bruises there in the morning. If I lived until morning.

"She won't talk," his gold eyes roamed over my face, coming to rest on my neck. I let my fingers rub the sore spots as I looked at the both of them, speaking so quietly I couldn't hear. Their lips were moving at light speed, and it was hard even to make out the murmurings.

"Take her back to her cell," Q finally snarled, motioning to the minion who was pressed back against the wall, his face more pale than when I had glimpsed him last. He strode forward, taking me by the arm, and dragged me towards the door. Was he as eager to get out of the room as I was?

The golden-eyed man and Q were still locked in intense conversation as the armor-clad guard slammed the door shut.

"Come on, girl, can't you walk any faster?"

I dug my bare feet into the cement of the prison, stalling to see if I could find a way out of here. All of the windows we passed were both boarded and barred shut, and even the light could hardly find an entrance. The floor of my cell was pure cobble, so tunneling wouldn't be plausible either. I tried hard to accept that I'd never see the sun again, or the trees, or the green, green hills that seemed to stretch on for years back home.

Charlie's eyes, ones that so resembled my own, flashed before my eyes—just another thing I'd never see again. The warmth, the fierce determination, the years and years of experience embedded deep within them. My father, the leader of this everlasting rebellion—would he live to see the outcome of his struggles?

I hoped only I'd die in here, being questioned until the truth of my identity and my purpose was brought to fruition—which, as long as I remained sane, would never happen.

"There," the guard sneered as he shoved me forcefully back into my holding, his sick smile cut into pieces by the bars, "now don't you move," he mocked.

My lip curled, "Oh, I'll try my hardest."

My eyes wandered around the cell, watching as slime collected around the junctions of wall and ceiling. I could hear rats scurrying though there were none currently in sight. It wasn't that I had lived any better in the place I called home—but it was mine. My rats, my slime, my rain pouring through the ceiling during a storm. Something about familiarity made it all well and good.

Did they call this homesickness?

It gnawed at my belly, and I suddenly missed everything—from my father's best friend who had no left eye, and my mother… Beautiful Renee with smudges of dirt on her nose, and sticks in her hair, and her dress wet up to the knee from wading into the surf. My throat constricted at the thought of her. Would I truly never smell her scent again? Would she never hug me, laugh with me, tease me about the boys?

I thought of her smile, and her deep, wise eyes…

And in the darkness of my prison, I let myself cry for her.

"Get up."

My eyes opened to the bleary light of morning as it shot through a crack in the window boards. Someone was poking my backside with the toe of their shoe, and I groaned as they hit my tailbone.

"Watch it," I growled, my voice dry and scratchy. I'd cried myself to sleep last night as I tried to hold on to the last rays of the moon, and my face displayed my torment. Sticky, blotchy, utterly unattractive, I was sure.

"Sorry, Princess," my eyes snapped completely open, and they shot immediately to the mangled guard above me, terrified. He looked down at me with a tempered revulsion, and I felt my stomach clench painfully, as if it were about to empty all of its contents.

"What?" I breathed, wiping the sleep from my face, "what did you call me?"

"You heard him."

I didn't have to look to know it would be Q in the doorway, half shadowed, but wholly satisfied. I wondered, in the moment before I was snatched up by the guard, who it was who'd told him. Perhaps the man upstairs? Did he know more than he had let on the chamber this afternoon?

"Well, come, darling, you shouldn't be down here in a prison cell," Q chastised, earning a harsh growl from me as the guard dragged me past. What would this mean? I closed my eyes as I thought of Charlie. Surely they would use me against him, and he would come for love of his daughter, and he would die for love of his country, for belief in his efforts. I doubt he'd even make it past the gates to this unknown town before he was gunned down.

Would they even let him see me alive, whole before they stopped his heart?

"How did you know?" I asked quietly as Q proceeded before me up a set of wide stairs, his gait elegant and graceful. He moved like water, like a stag.

"Not everyone is immune to questioning, Bella," he spat my name as if it were some curse, "actually, there was hardly any questions posed before the bastard spilled his deepest and darkest to us."

"Who?" I barely gasped, my mind scouring names and faces of all our soldiers, trying to spot any weaknesses now, when I could look back on them without the heat of a battle on our tails, "who was it?"

"He called himself Aeron," Q chuckled softly, "that is, before he took an unfortunate dive out of the tower window."

Some small part of me was glad to hear he'd died, while the other part was unsettled by the loss. He'd betrayed us, but then, wouldn't anyone if they thought they could win their life back? Not me, I reminded myself, but perhaps that's because Charlie is my father?

We walked a little further, towards a white door with blue trimming—and stopped. The guard turned to me, an intricate set of handcuffs held out in front of him.

"Go on," Q motioned to me, "can't have her assassinating the Royal Family."

I looked up, eyes wide and incredulous, "Were in Dumain?"

"Bristol, actually," Q said, smug as the clink of metal against metal reached his ears, "the castle in Bristol."

I pinched my lips, "And what do you plan to do with me?"

"That," Q whistled lowly, taking my chin between his forefinger and thumb, "is for the King to decide."

I walked before everyone—my public shame.

Nobles and royals alike peered at me from over their glasses of wine and those tiny little quiches. The ladies whispered excitedly, their husbands and other male cohorts merely staring at me with interest. I silently sentenced Q to one thousand lifetimes in hell for this form of public mortification.

At the end of the hall, he opened another door, ushering me into a separate room where a family sat that I knew only from photographs and legend. The Royal Family, or House Volturi as we rebels liked to call them. Though it said so on paper, they were no kings of ours.

Q bowed before them and I looked away in disgust, locking eyes with a daughter of the House. She was blond and intense, and when she glimpsed me glaring, she wound her arm around her obvious lover, looking down at her expensive shoes.

"Charles' daughter, My Lords," Q smiled back at me, "Miss Isabella Swan—former heir to the throne."

already stubborn skin thickens

In a valiant attempt to understand

So understand

There's no stopping me

I mentioned Bella lived in the slums from her description of her home—she does. But then, why is she royalty? If you read carefully, it says this war has been going on for twenty years, which means she knew one year of castle-life before she and her family were dethroned. And where's Eddie, you might also ask. Be patient my little fan girls. I think this is the best I've ever written Edward, and you will see him soon.

And yes, vampires exist here, if you haven't already noticed them. But like in Twilight, they're undercover and scattered.