“Yes, you. But why did you kill your friends?”
“I don’t know. Maybe I was not afraid anymore. No, it wasn’t that. I was afraid.” He had been terrified of pain and death-he had been terrified through every minute, except for the minutes he couldn’t seem to recall. You couldn’t call that bravery. It must be something else, something to do with forgiveness, with loving her. No, not loving her, he knew he did not love her. Shame and sorrow and a strange, bitter longing, those had been his feelings. Not love.
“Mother of God,” he said, and choked. His lungs were filling. “Even dying, it is hard to be honest.” The thought made him laugh, and he inhaled fluid. Blood, he supposed.
It was not bravery and it was not love. He had pitied her and he had been sorry-but it wasn’t that either. Not pity. “There were two sides,” he said, and started to drown.
“Don’t talk. I am going for help.” Something tightened around his leg, and the woman closed his hand around the knot she had tied. A tourniquet. She got up, and the sense of her moving away was unbearable.
“Two sides,” he tried to say, but it came out in a gargle. The woman-what was her name? — Lorca did not hear. Had she really gone away? Victor raised his free hand to his face and felt around. His skin was slick with blood, his hair sticky. Blood spread away from him in a black pool. Could all that blood really be his? His grip loosened on the tourniquet. The pool was spreading farther, he could see the tangle of branches reflected in his blood. The tourniquet slipped from his fingers. Let all his blood flow out. Let it all flow out and into the earth. Take it, he wanted to say. Take every drop of blood I have. There was not enough blood in the world to make up for the wrongs he had done.
Two sides, he wanted to say. There had been two sides. And, he wanted to tell her, if there were going to be two sides in this world-two sides in any matter, even if it involved bullets and pain and every chance of getting slaughtered-he had wanted, wanted all along, to be on hers.
