“And even though it all went wrong,
stand before the Lord of Song,
with nothing on my tongue but hallelujah”
She knew where they would take him and she could not let his shame be her glory. She had done what she needed to do for her country, now she would do what had to be done for his God: His good had eaten her down to skin and bones and she knew how to make it right. So bribing and winking her way through the hoops, she made arrangements for getting to him.
When she saw him, she felt her limbs turn to ice and she could not catch her breath. She had not anticipated what they would do to him once they had him. Emaciated and eyeless, he was strung up between two columns in the basement of the federal building, and through nausea and shame, she noted with satisfaction, the thin brown hair that was peeking up through his scalp. It was all the incentive she needed. No one would ever know how she had placed his hands on the foundations of the building, or how her hands on his are what gave her away.
She did not run to him in the last moments and throw her arms around him as the building fell. He did not tell her that he forgave her. He did not tell her to leave and save herself. She did not tell him that she was sorry and that she really did love him. There were no words between them when he brought the columns down. There were no words that could fix what had been done. He was finishing what he had started, and she was paying for her crimes. And they knew that. And somewhere far away, the God that watched it all knew it too. And it was credited to him as a cold and broken, hallelujah.
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