How barren the vineyard must be

[Ylanne]

Whatever kind of reinforced glass pane fit the small window in the cell was smudged beyond recognition, blurring everything otherwise visible on the other side of it. A few of the trees lining the parking lot swayed gently with the breeze, the winds rippling through leaves and branches in bunches, moving so fluidly the old woman could almost smell the crisp autumn air over the stale, recirculated air pumped through the aging HVAC system in the cellblock. The time for dinner had come and gone already, and after the nasty fall Drulović had taken on the way back from lunch, she'd decided not to risk the walk again in the evening. Her stomach growled in complaint but she'd long ago learned to ignore it. Nearly nine decades ago, really. Throughout the day, time had passed marked by the guards calling for count and the cars heading in and out of what she surmised was the employee side of the lot for shift changes first at seven in the morning and then again at three in the afternoon. Today, the prosecutor had not come, nor had any of what few friends she still had. By now, it was unlikely that any of the guards might come for her but for the last count of the night, and so she lay atop the mattress, unmoving, watching the lot from the corners of her eyes, unable to keep her thoughts from wandering back to the fiery, aching pain settled in her knees and hips and radiating lines of agony through joints, bones, and ligaments outward from there. Even lying still did not make that pain disappear. Her fingers, what remained of them, slowly curled with the tension beside her. The shadows lengthened, grew spindly, and suddenly the cell was filled with bright orange hued light - the last cry before the sun would sleep that night. A long, official-looking sedan pulled into the lot, then, and the old woman caught sight of the familiar Parliamentary seal emblazoned on the side. Perhaps she would not spend the night alone.

[nemo]

The door opened - a polished black shoe touched the pavement - and the Honorable Rubano Malijin stepped into the open air, buttoning the lapel of his tailored three-piece suit. There was no mistaking him - the broad shoulders, the handsome, stoic visage. Twenty years had done little to diminish his profile, it seemed: streaks of grey in his hair, some wrinkling around his eyes and the edges of his mouth. He held himself with all the dignity and authority of his station, wielding the powers of his office with no less visible command than when he had first assumed them.

Watching him from her cell, Drulovic might have noticed Rubano scan the prison complex - his face shifting across the many rows of windows and re-enforced glass panes. He searched the blurred mosaics of steel-framed glass, stopping at last as his eyes fell upon Drulovic’s cell.

It was impossible to tell how he knew which was Drulovic’s - there appeared no way to look into the windows from the outside. Gazing up at Drulovic from the street, the former TIB Director might have seen the beginnings of a smile spread over his jaw...

...several prison officials came to greet him in the street, and Rubano quickly assumed the mask. Handshakes and laughter. Polite greetings and routine civilities. He was ushered inside a moment later.

Not long after, Drulovic’s door opened and two armed guards entered her room.

“Visitor.”

[Ylanne]

The old woman remembered Malijin well. Of course, she'd also seen him in court twice in the last month since she'd arrived at TDC Wrentham from North Bautista Medical Center, along with her other colleagues, allies and one-time foes alike, all sitting together in that first row behind the defendant's table, facing charges together and yet apart. They had not spoken then. It would have been too difficult for the old woman, anyway. There were three of the defendants now outside Wrentham's walls. Malijin already released while most of the others were yet detained - Drulović had little doubt as to how or why, by now - and two of her own staff, too. Ahmad would never have survived prison. Titon, though, she might have relished in it. But now... Malijin had returned. She caught his glance up to her window. He had come for her. And as suddenly as the sunset had burst into the cell, it faded to muted lavender slowly greying. The shadows on the guards' faces, when they appeared, were less sharp and dark than shapeless and listless.

Drulović's gaze slid over to them - she did not recognize either of this pair. She gripped the edge of the bed tightly, jaw tight and agonizing as she pushed herself upward and shifted her legs to the side, every movement its own minor battle. Her bones screamed inside as she stood, what should have taken only a few seconds instead measured in minutes.

The procedure was the same. Because pretrial detainees were all classified as maximum security, protocol required that guards subject any inmate to a strip search before and after receiving any visitor, and escort them to visitation shackled at the wrists and ankles. Usually, this took between five and ten minutes per inmate. For the old woman, who fumbled with the buttons on her shirt, and shook if left standing too long, it was closer to twenty-five. There were to be no special dispensations in consideration of her former rank or title.

The visitation rooms, cubicles more like, where Drulović had received her friends, were all ordered along rows, with windows for walls on all sides, creating the effect of a massive fishbowl. The rooms where she'd met with the prosecutor, euphemistically labeled "meeting rooms," were enclosed, against the back wall, with only small windows to the outside instead. Visitors always arrived first. Once the guards decided they were ready, they would bring the inmate inside next.

Drulović had to lean on one of her escorts, holding his arm to keep from stumbling and falling, her own knees in open revolt. Her forehead glistened with sweat as she focused on each step, careful not to trip from injury or leg irons. She was noticeably thinner than she'd been even two months ago at a routine Parliamentary inquiry, the short sleeves of her grey uniform shirt leaving the old and new scars alike exposed under the fluorescent light. Age had not been kind to her.

[nemo]

Rubano awaited her in the visitation room. His expression was all niceties and pity as Drulovic was led into the cubicle and offered a chair.

"Madame," he smiled, "it has been too long."

When the guards had left, a silence settled between them. Rubano said nothing. He stood, hands in pocket, staring almost unblinkingly at Drulovic, making occasional glances at her fingers. He was taking it in - but it was impossible to tell whether he was relishing her pain or musing over her losses.

"I understand you are in a great deal of pain," he said at last. "I hope your stay here has not been too... uncomfortable."

His brows knit. "This is strange. I expected to feel so elated, seeing you like this." A small chuckle. "...but now that you're in front of me, I just feel..."

His voice trailed. His mannerisms resonated with neither pity, kindness, nor outright malice or condescension. In his decades as one of Terra's most premier politicians, Rubano had rubbed elbows with all sorts of powerful people - and Arianne Drulovic had been the most powerful of all. Seeing her in her present state - unable to even stand without agony - was difficult to digest.

[Ylanne]

When at last she could sit, some of the pain in her knees eased, but the dull ache in her hip only intensified, the hairline fractures impossible to treat or satisfy. And the aspirin they'd been giving her each morning hardly made any difference at all. Drulović noted the guards' retreat with affected disinterest. A departure from protocol, as they'd always stationed someone to surveill what conversations she'd had with other visitors before. The old woman, too, watched Rubano carefully, her gaze never flinching or shying from his. She turned her right hand palm upward, the metal clinking softly with the motion, the uneven knotting down where Andrade had cleaved fingers from hand now plainly visible. "Quite ugly, the amputations, don't you think?" she said with a sigh, her tone betraying nothing but weariness she didn't care to hide. In the harsh light of the visitation area - oddly devoid of any other living souls - Rubano could see the fresh, thick scarring on the side of Drulović's head, ridges disappearing into her coarse hairline, where her ear was now missing. Her own former agent, the one responsible, he'd meant to hurt her. He'd known which of her hands still had functioning nerve endings. He'd chosen deliberately. The old woman suspected Rubano had too. She did not blink as she looked at him.

The juxtaposition of the two played out in stark contrast - Rubano strong and dignified, polished and elegant as always, and standing, towering over Drulović, whose frailties had marked her gait and posture for decades, and now seemed inescapable, indelibly marked on her body. She'd always dressed in worn, thin clothes, the same jackets and scarves for years, and the uniform that hung precariously about her was only different in its institutional nature. "I don't suppose you came here for polite company at dusk," she said, heavy-lidded eyes finally moving away from him, as if bored already of his presence. Nor did she suppose he was there on official business either. "A shame, truly."

[nemo]

"Disappointed." Rubano snapped his fingers and smiled. He seemed pleased with himself. "That's the word I was looking for. Disappointed." He looked horrified. "But not in you, madame. Never in you. I'm disappointed in..." He gestured around - the cramped room. The pale lights. Her mangled fingers and eggcracked skull. "...this. All of this. It's so disgustingly unworthy of you. Of us both." A handsome grin. "Wouldn't you agree?"

He walked around her with long, slow steps - his broad shadow shading her in meter to his footsteps. "Decades of dedicated work. Unnumbered acts of selflessness. You saved our planet countless times, practically ran the TNG, and all for what? To have your story end here?" He shook his head. "Shriveled and half-crippled. Disgraced, abandoned and made an enemy of the very people she saved from annihilation time and time again."

He stood in front of her, looking down. "You deserved a better ending, madame. I wish I could've given you the death you deserve. A hero's death. A warrior's death." There was genuine pity and regret in his voice.

[Ylanne]

The dingy plastic table beside them both offered little barrier between the two. The old woman watched Rubano with affected disinterest as he paced, leaning back into her chair and eyes flicking upward, expression drawn. "I'd settle for a good, old-fashioned hanging right about now," she said, half shrugging. "Dawn or dusk, it makes little difference." She curled her remaining fingers on the right hand somewhat, the scars still quite fresh and mottled bruising running along the wounds from injuries Andrade had inflicted. Her gaze turned from Rubano back to her hand, which trembled ever so slightly, in rebellion. "We match each other now, almost, you know, Mr. Drulović and I," said the old woman, almost pensive. "You had wanted to strike fear into him, I suppose. The man who did this," she said, sliding her hand ever so slightly over the table's surface to indicate the absent fingers, "I'm afraid it wasn't fear or cowering that he wanted from me as much as he wanted my pain. He would have killed me, too, but from how it seemed from the start, well, it would have been a foolishly messy kill. Better to make it simple, quick, and certain." She stared up unblinking at Rubano. Decades of training and ops and she knew by merely looking at him several ways a man like him could die, a woman like her could do it, even in as sparse a room as this. But pain snaked along her limbs and through her jaw, evident with each word she spoke. She remained, on the whole, quite still.

"I rather suspect that's not why you're here, though, Mr. Malijin," she said. In the harsh light, her pendant, the old one of Saint Sava, gleamed where it hung from her neck. "Do you have some official business, then, or only your tiresome speech-making? I'll confess I'm a terrible audience." What little light from the outdoors filtered in now was muted and soft, fading to blues and grays. It was swallowed almost entirely by the fluorescents above them.

[nemo]

Rubano chuckled. "Your former husband possessed an extraordinarily strong will. The two of you are similar, in that capacity." He turned to her. "But I see that I am monologuing. You're quite right. Let's get to the point." His eyes found the glittering pendant of Saint Sava; a slight sneer curled the edges of his lips.

"Terra is changing, madame," he continued, "such is the nature of our world. Chaos seems as intrinsic to its identity as air and earth and water. The TNG, for a time, imbued this good earth with a sense of balance and order. It protected her. Made safe her cities. Fought off the ever-encroaching galactic empires and strove to create a world modeled in the fashion of the old way. A Republic." A short laugh. "But that time may soon be ending. The republic, as you know, is failing. The gods and titans who stood watch over her are now..." He looked at her and smiled. "...shall we say, 'less than healthy'. New administrations bureaucracize our government into deeper and deeper levels of ineptitude - pandering to the weak, gutting our defenses and resources even as vultures swarm overhead. The future looks grim, madame, very grim for the nation you and I have sacrificed so much for."

A flash of black and red in his eyes. "But I can save her, Drulovic. I can save the world I love - the world we both love. And you. You can help me do it."

[Ylanne]

Drulović's chin jutted upward for a moment, the tension along her jawline and the frigidity in her eyes offering only contempt. "You seek to save Terra?" The old woman laughed, slapping her palm on the table, where her handcuffs clanged, echoing oddly against the plexiglass walls. "The conniving, petulant child, the careerist politician who's already schemed and plotted and failed before to take Mr. Cranford's place and Mr. Galdámez's place after, you will somehow save our homeworld? How very nice for you." She shook her head, withdrawing her hand to place it on her lap, and turned her face away from Rubano. She looked through the walls down the warren of cubicles filling the empty visitation room, noting that none of the cameras were active, none of the guards had returned. "Once, our Terra boasted entire leagues of heroes and questers to defend her and fight for her sovereignty. The vineyard of our prosperity enjoyed abundance at each harvest. How barren now that vineyard must be. You'll find no ally in me in whatever devilry you have now in mind, Mr. Malijin."

[nemo]

Rubano's smile faltered as Drulovic began to laugh, but he remained composed in the face of her ridicule. "I make no pretensions. I am not a 'hero'. Not a 'champion'. There are things I want. If someone gets in the way, I remove them. I've done many terrible things in the pursuit of a higher goal." A toothy grin. "A sentiment I am sure you can understand, madame."

The grin didn't last, quickly dissolving into a frown. A twinge of anger entered his voice. "You would what - take the high ground? Snub my offer under some pretense of petty morality? You are not so naive to believe yourself. For all your dignity, all your outward displays of compassion and kindness, you are every bit as cold and ruthless as I am." He glared, unblinking. "We are the same, Drulovic. Are the innocent men and women you've murdered in the name of your ideals any less heinous than what I've done? Are the lives you've taken, the children you've murdered, any more justified than what I did to your husband?" A low, feral growl. "Of course not. You may hate yourself for it. You may even regret what you did. But you would do it again. And again. And again. And so would I."

He stooped, now eye-level with her. "The knights are gone from Avalon. There are no heroes left. There is only me. And while you may be assured that I am self-interested in this ordeal, you may be further assured that, for whatever you may think of me, I love this planet and I can save it. And you-" He shook his head. "You know you've murdered more to save less."

[Ylanne]

"I know well what I have done in this life already," said Drulović, looking again at Rubano, her gaze steady, her expression once again impassive. "Would that you might suffer but a mere fraction of what hells torment me when I dare close my eyes, to hear the screaming and pleading, the shattered glass, the gunfire, the rockets, the collapsing walls; to see flesh peeled from bone, homes left as rubble and ashes, and blood run like rivers; and to know that nothing you have ever done since, no charity, no penance, no offering, might erase even the most minuscule part of it, and that no matter how you may be lauded by some for what pyrrhic victory you've won in blood, you'll never escape what terrors you've wrought on those others. The victims, for we must be truthful in our account, here, they'll never again live without that trauma swallowing up their every breath. I know it well." The old woman stared at him, her gaze raking his face. "Of course I am no hero. What a terrible illusion that would be. What a terrible fate." She shook her head. The harsh light was beginning to ache. Every part of this place deadened the air around it. No one was meant to live here. But of course, no one really lived in the prisons where they'd send people after trial either. Prison was a slow kind of death.

"But you? While yet the churlish miscreant, you somehow fancy yourself some great patriot, come to offer salvation and hope at world's end? I've read more interesting novels in my time; I know how those stories end. I'm afraid you're no more a patriot or savior than I am some hero or champion or pinnacle of virtue. We are the same in that one thing only, perhaps, in what we have done, in our shared crimes. Certainly not in who we've chosen to be." Drulović felt pain run along her jaw and shoulders the more she spoke, and it showed in the hollows of her cheeks. "Besides, Mr. Malijin, I can't even begin to imagine what you now believe it is from which you must save our Terra, or why you wish to use an old woman in your designs in so crass a manner - and frankly, I don't care too much to know. I'm afraid I can offer no help or succor for you and your ilk."

[nemo]

Rubano fell silent. He matched her gaze, his dark eyes cold and unblinking. Finally, he rose - buttoning the lapel of his suit.

"Who we've chosen to be," he echoed, mused, and nodded. "Very well, madame. Hear this, then. I choose to act. I choose to restore the republic I helped build and the planet I love. I choose to be myself - to be nothing other than what I am, to make no compromises in the pursuit of what I want." His upper lip twitched. "But you? What choices do you have left, madame? What could you possibly give that they haven't already taken from you? When I leave this room, I will be Rubano Malijin. I will be one of the most powerful men on the planet. I will be in a position to correct the ailing course of this nation even without your help. And you-" He nearly sneered. "-you will only be a broken, crippled old woman who has wanted to die for a very, very long time."

He seemed poised to leave.

[Ylanne]

One of the lights overhead flickered, almost as if its instability could make their shadows shiver, their reflections shake. Drulović smiled, wan and sad. "I'd been broken and crippled long before I became old, you know." She shrugged lightly. "It's funny, I think, that you imagine me somehow yet living. The line of those eager for my head is likely long enough to circle the city twice or more by now, I suppose. It's a shame they'll have to wait." She tilted her head slightly to the side, turned her gaze away from Rubano, though she did not retreat from him. She remained still, a fixture, rooted. "I'm afraid, Mr. Malijin, that you'll find only ruin awaiting you." What little she could see through the few windows far removed from their cubicle offered a deep and heavy dusk enveloping the sky and what clouds lingered in it, almost indiscernible. Shapeless masses. No smog here. "Whatever it was we once dreamed Terra might be, well, that dream has long since died. There'll be no miraculous resurrection, only some worse taint. Of course I'll disappear to nothing. I've known it since I suffered at Lipljan. One day, you too might learn it."

[nemo]

“Such nihilism,” Rubano smirked. “It doesn’t suit you, madame. Or perhaps, rather, it suits you too well. There must be very few comforts still available to you, but I hope you will be able to find a modicum of peace before the government you sacrificed everything for tears you to pieces.”

He straightened his tie. “If that will be all, madame, I will take my leave. I do not think we shall ever meet again.”

[Ylanne]

"Perhaps once our souls have departed this wicked earth," said Drulović, her eyes, though heavy with pain, steady and meeting his. "While our bodies become but dust, and what remains of us suffers in some hell. Yes, I'm sure we'll meet again then." She watched the senior parliamentarian's affected grace and elegance, suggesting a refined manner even under the harsh lighting and crude, austere construction of the space. His finery and strength accentuated by the juxtaposition with her battered body, coarse and uncombed hair, the uniform she wore. He would have his palatial retreat and exquisite fêtes to entertain him. Her own tea was missing now. There were no warm hearths for her with soft, glowing fires, no aging bookcases carrying the weight of centuries of stories waiting for her between well-loved covers, no family pictures hung for company on the walls, no solace, no kinship, no salvation. But she'd long since lost those comforts - it had been years since they'd departed from her. "As for me, well. I'd like to be home. But home is nowhere now." She meant it for him as well.