Work Text:
You wake before the ever-dimming sun does. There is work to do. You wash out yesterday’s hairspray and scrub off your smudged makeup, only to step out of the shower to redo them all over again. The only time you are able to look yourself in the eye is when you are painting on the image you must uphold. There is work to do. You dress in your last set of identical clothes, a sharp dress shirt and a suit and slacks you ironed weeks ago.
This step is important and must come before anything else. You cannot let your work seep into your home.
You open your laptop on your crowded desk to check your email before you head out. It is a mixed bag of good news and reminders of the impending apocalypse resting on your shoulders. You reply to the good news and you start figuring out who would best solve the issues the project is facing. There is work to do. You pack your bag, slipping in a few granola bars because you know you will not find time to eat a proper meal, and you have no time now to prepare ahead.
You can feel the roll of the ocean beneath your feet. You have always been able to, ever since you were young and your parents saved up to catch a ferry for a four-day trip to Copenhagen. You were six years old, and no matter how big the ship was, you could always feel it moving beneath your feet, unsteady.
Now, it is a constant reminder of everything that can possibly go wrong. There will be no one to fill your shoes if you die this early—you are too good at handling the power you were given. Too good at turning desperation into fuel. You pray to God the ship doesn’t explode before the work is done. You have been praying more than you used to, lately. You don’t know if anyone is listening, but you know by now it’s best to cover your bases.
You have four meetings today. Three of them will be accompanied by the only levity you allow yourself to have. He is clumsy and smart and riddled with self-doubt. He makes you laugh. It is not why you keep him around, but it is a bonus.
(The sacrificial lambs always go easier when they do not know what will happen to them.)
You attend your meetings and in one fell swoop you wreck the world in order to save it. It is ugly, thankless work, and you know what awaits you once the power leaves your fingertips. But you love humanity too much to care.
You will take life in prison, torture, you will hand your name and image over to be turned into a metaphor for betrayal and destruction if only it means there is will be a world in thirty years with people who are alive enough to care about fostering that kind of hate.
But for now, the world moves when you ask it to, and there is work to do.
The research building explodes. The control you keep over your domain slips and it terrifies you, but it is for this reason that you built contingencies on contingencies. You cannot fail.
He is by your side when it happens. Seconds before there is fondness in his eyes as he asks what is your plan for the next twenty years? As though you have thought of anything other than jail or execution. As though he is saying, I want to know what you will be doing. If it will involve me. If you want to be friends once all this is over.
You look into the eyes of your lamb. You don’t know how to answer, and you will never get the chance to. There is work to do.
When the shockwave passes, you run towards the building and you hear him follow. Your scientists are dead. There is a sharp pang in your chest. You really did like them, even if you did not know them. You knew all along that it isn’t worth it to know people, especially the very ones you are sending to die. But you are human, and you cannot help but love them when you’ve seen them laughing and singing karaoke together.
And beneath all that sits a quiet dread that now, the sacrifice must begin much earlier than you intended it to. You bury these feelings as you shout orders to search the wreckage. He stands beside you until you tell him to leave. There is work to do.
You have three days. The choice has been made months ago. He tries to deny it. He tries to run. He is scared. It hurts to see him scared. You feel a little as though you’ve broken the lamb’s legs before going in for the kill. He cannot run. Nowhere is too far away for you to reach.
You make the decision for him. He screams and he begs and you try to make him understand, think of the people, think of your students. But he is too afraid. He dies afraid. You watch it happen. You made it happen.
You have work to do.
You take it upon yourself to pack his bags. His apartment is as full of life as he was. It settles then, when you find his gray blazer thrown over an old office chair, when you see the collection of taped up drawings from his students on his wall, when you find an unfinished knitting project on the couch, that you have murdered this man.
You pack his things. He kept stupid graphic tees at the bottom of his drawer and you place them into the bag. You spend more time than you should to pack items you think he’d like. In the end, the apartment looks less alive than when you started, infected with your influence. Scrapbook pieces of a full life now reside in a duffel bag, and it will be all he has to remind himself of the man he once was. Of the man he can never be again.
You sit on the edge of his bed after you finish zipping up the bag with bitter finality. You sob silently into your hands. You will allow yourself this, and you will not think of him again for twenty-six years. Better that than waste away thinking of the what-ifs.
You leave his apartment a little emptier.
You attend the launch—you have to. It's your project. You pray once more to a silent god that your sacrifice was enough to appease them. You don’t watch as the rocket rises into the clear blue sky. You sit with Mission Control and you listen in for any problems. You read your emails. You have work to do.