Hana

I walk.

The world around me is on fire. The house I left behind, the one I would have shared with Fred as the mayor's wife, burns. The houses on the street that were once home to the most privileged, influential people in Portland, which were once so lively and bustling with activity, now stand silent like mourners at a funeral, as if afraid to be the first to speak. The crows that roost in the swaying boughs of the maple trees caw to the skies and flutter the black shrouds of their wings in defiant buffet against the wind.

And I walk.

The shoes I would have worn to my wedding scuff loudly in the stillness of the afternoon, the satin stained with mud and soot. My carpeted aisle is the cracked concrete of the sidewalk, and I have long since stopped caring about the tattered hem of my dress that drags along the ground, its lace barely hanging on as it trails sadly behind like the drooping standard of a defeated army.

And I walk.

I lose track of the days as I wander about the city, trying to make sense of what has happened. I feel a sense of obligation, absurd as it may seem, toward the people who live here. While it never happened, I was within reach of becoming their first lady of sorts, and it's hard to dispel the sense of obligation that took months to build, which was shattered in an instant.

I skirt crowds of refugees who clambered in after the walls fell, their faces dirty, their hair matted, their clothing soiled. They gather in small groups around hastily built bonfires, they dine on buffets of torn-open cans scavenged from nearby houses, they doze in the shade of abandoned cars. They are filthy, homeless, desperate.

And yet, something amazing happens.

They laugh. They tell stories. They smile and embrace each other, both for camaraderie and for warmth.

And still, I walk.

I don't have the courage to approach them. I don't know what I'd say if I did.

I'm Hana. Hana Tate. Very nearly Hana Hargrove. I was about to marry Fred Hargrove, and he would have straightened this city out, he would have put an end to the Incidents and shut out the Invalids. He would have beat down your husbands, your wives, your children. He would have you arrested, beaten, thrown in the Crypts. He would have earned your fear, your hatred, and perhaps eventually your loyalty. But never your respect. And all the while I would have stood beside him and behind him, practicing my elegant wave and my perfect smile, creating a layer of elegance between the ruthless and the hopeless, to mitigate the suffering and the unrest. I was all that stood between you and him, and truth be told, had it ever come down to it, I would have stepped aside and watched you tear him down.

But I can't say that. I can't tell them that I was like them once, that I would have thrown out everything I was raised to believe in for the rush of adrenaline I felt whenever I looked at the man I thought I loved, the one who gave me the deliria. I can't say that ultimately, I decided it was far better to bet on being safe than on being happy, that I took the easy way out, that in the end, I was a coward. After all they've seen, all they've sacrificed, all they've lost, how could I possibly say that?

So I don't. I drift quietly in their midst, never quite breaching their invisible borders, never attempting to enter their ranks. I hear them chatter amongst themselves and I find I miss talking to another person, I miss the physical contact I've been denied for so long as I awaited my cure. I'd give anything for a hug, a hand to grasp mine, even the accidental brushing of arms between strangers as they pass on the street. They live in the filth and squalor I could have easily avoided had I only kept my head down and my mouth shut, and somehow I envy them the one thing they have that I haven't felt in a very long time: hope.

I've lost my way somehow, and the city I've spent my entire life in has become a stranger to me. And the only people around me could never understand the pain of a girl who once held the world in the palm of her hand at the cost of all they held dear and at one time would have obliterated them if she'd had the chance.

And so I walk.