(A/N: Just a short ficklet a wrote when I was feeling super stressed about school. Apparently, stress get's me in a rather morbid state…Anyway, I was thinking how Esmeralda would feel when she was sentenced to die for the second time, and if any last-minute realizations could have come with it. This is the result. It's not very long, but I hope you will enjoy it anyway.

As usual, super love-glomps to anyone who reviews, and enjoy!)

It was a bitter Parisian morning, no different for the hundreds of citizens who stood at their windows and gazed by their doors. For them, today just provided a routine performance at the gallows; but for the gypsy girl Esmeralda, today would be her last day on earth.

How could God be so cruel? She wondered for what seemed like the hundredths time in these past few weeks. Esmeralda's frame shook as a powerful solider bound her hands together, and pushed her towards la Place de Greve. What kind of God cages a wild bird, offers it freedom for a second only to ensnare it again just as it begins to hope? But, with death steadily approaching, Esmeralda could not reject this God. This God who brought her so much pain and suffering was the only one left to depend on. Who else would guard over her in her sleep? If she rejected him now, she could spend eternity teetering over the edge of hell. Slowly moving her way forward, she begged in her mind, Oh Lord, please be merciful. Do not reject me as the rest of the world has.

Was it really not so long ago that she was dancing in the streets, twirling to the tambourine, shining with childlike naivety? No, she could not be that same innocent girl. That girl wore the rainbow on her shoulders, yet she now only wore the rags of a criminal on death's row. Once again, Esmeralda had been stripped of all but her shift, her withered body apparent for all of Paris to see. But this time she felt no shame. Nothing else they could do to her could make her feel more helpless, or so she thought. Her raven hair, which used to swirl majestically around her as she danced, was now knotted, flat and devoid of life. Her once radiant light had been extinguished by the hand of fate.

Esmeralda continued to pray as she made her way to the gallows. She expected no salvation, only hope that God might take pity her and lead her to the gates of heaven. She tried to forget about the noose being wrapped around her neck, the loosening of the plank, the awful crack she had heard so many times before while watching a fellow gypsy serve his punishment…she had never once before thought that she could be in the same predicament as those men and women. "They were too slow," Clopin had told her, "but you, my swift gazelle, can never be caught." If that were so, why was her neck soon to be caught by the ropes' grip of death? Her heart flinched at the thought of her Clopin. She had seen his body, killed from the raid on Notre Dame, when she was escaping from the cathedral only the night before. Would she meet her guardian again at heaven's gate?

Suddenly, terror struck through the gypsy's entire body, as she heard a dreadful, piercing scream from behind her. She turned around and saw the figure of her old, decrepit mother sprawled on the street behind her. She gasped, then moaned with utter sorrow, when she noticed blood tricking from the back of her head onto the dirty street below. The mother who she had lost for sixteen years, who she had just been reunited with, was dead. She remembered how fiercely she had fought for her back in the cave, how she screamed, wailed, begged for the life of her daughter. How different her life would have been with her mother at her side! She began to sob and woefully pressed her bound hands to her face. God, shall you take everything I ever loved? Is my life not enough for you?

After a few moments, the solider beside her forced her forward. Esmeralda's tears began to fade, but her grief didn't. She didn't know how much more pain she could take. She almost longed for the peacefulness of death. Let God take her mortal soul before he could strike around arrow through her!

But God was showing no mercy today. He could strike her again before her last breath had been taken. But the arrow would disguise in the form of a miracle, and it would strike harder than any arrow thrown at the poor girl's frail being before.

As Esmeralda got closer and closer to the Place de Greve, she could she a crowd beginning to gather around the gallows. The citizens of Paris had emerged to watch the infamous gypsy witch finally be hung. A thousand eyes followed Esmeralda as she made her way through the crowd, and for the first time that day felt shame for her appearance. She knew how they were mocking her as well as scorning her. She wished she was deaf so she couldn't hear their bitter muttering; she wished she was blind so she could pretend those looming, judging eyes weren't real.

As she made her way up the stairs of the gallows, her miracle appeared. She shrieked when she saw him there, only a few feet away from her. Her shining sun, her only reason for living, had come to her at last. "Phoebus!" she cried with emotion. "My Phoebus!" God, you have shown pity at last!

But Phoebus did not run to her, embrace her, and carry her away to safety, as she always imagined he would. Instead, he stood there mutely, ignoring the various suspicious looks around him. His face remained disciplined and firm, and he did not look into Esmeralda's eyes. This can't be! She thought, surely he can recognize me now! "Phoebus! My love!" she cried out desperately, as the curious muttering around her got louder.

For the first time, Phoebus looked into Esmeralda's eyes, but there was no love in them. Just cruel, undying hatred, and Esmeralda trembled at the very sight of it. Could this be the man who promised his love to her not so long ago? It was as if a demon had taken control of her lover's body and replaced his heart a never-ending hole. "I would never touch gypsy witch like you," he spat, "much less love one". And with that, her knight in shining armor took the lady beside him by the arm, and without so much as a final glance, turned his back to her and walked away into the crowd.

That was it. Esmeralda's knees buckled, as she fell to the wooden stairs. She couldn't stand anymore. She couldn't move. She couldn't breathe. The man she was living for had just left her. Rejected her. Spat at her like she was a dog. She would have scrambled to the executioner and begged him to end her life there and then if she wasn't so drained and devoid of energy. She couldn't even cry. Her world was collapsing around her, piece by piece, and now there was nothing left to hold on to. God, what have I done to deserve this? What crime have I committed, with what sin did I do to offend you so?

The solider literally had to carry the girl up the stairs, and hold her upright to stand on the gallows. She turned her face towards the sky, and saw the towers of Notre Dame. In them, way off in the distance, she could see two figures. A man dressed in black, and another man, short and crooked. Though she could hardly tell who the other man was, she instantly recognized the hunchback.

Quasimodo.

After all this time, she had forgotten about him. But now, with Phoebus gone and herself at the mercy of the hangman's' noose, everything became clear. Her heart began to sink- not at the feel of the rope being placed around her neck, but at the sight of the poor creature who she had forsaken. There, at death's doorstep, Esmeralda felt guilt and pity for someone other than herself. What a fool she had been. What a vain, immature, fool she had been. When she was about to die, her knight in shining armor did not rescue her, but her Quasimodo did. When that wicked priest tried to rape her, Quasimodo was the one who pushed him away. Those other men had cursed her; only Quasimodo had loved her.

Yet what did she do? She kept away from him, not even showing gratitude for saving her life. She couldn't get past her foolish fear of ugliness to relieve the poor man of his loneness. She had even screamed at him when he couldn't bring back her idiotic Phoebus. Yet he had kept loving her, despite it all. He had taken so much abuse and pain for her, and was so devoted and loyal to the wretch who couldn't even look into his eyes. She was so blind to his ugliness, she couldn't even see.

Tears started to roll down her tender cheeks, as the rope was being tied to the gallows. To the rest of the crowd it seemed like she was mourning her own fate, when she was in reality mourning another's. God, now I know. I know what crime I'm paying punishment for. For making a man suffer whose only crime was loving me.

Would he cry when he found her body on the street, her neck broken and eyes glazed? Would he laugh and realize what a fool he had been, to waste his love on an ignorant girl like her? Or would he mourn her, take her severed body in her arms and cradle her as he never could have when he was alive? She wanted him to. She wanted that gruesome, disfigured man to hold the broken sparrow as if he was the only man on earth who loved it. For once, she wanted to be held by someone who loved her.

Her last words were whispered under her breath for no one but God alone to hear. Just before the floor beneath her disappeared along with the rest of the world around her, her words reached out to the man in tower, and up to heaven itself.

"Please forgive me."