Author’s Note: Um… I made myself cry. I did. Not sure why…

“You’re not supposed to make demands.”

“True. None of you listen to me at all. Still, I think it most unfair that you will not even broadcast my trial to me. I know what its outcome will be, that has never been in debate, but I should like to hear what is to be said about me. I do not know that I will care for anything I hear, and I understand why you are not giving me an actual trial, but I do not think that it is right that I cannot listen to any of it.” Tynan looked out at the guard, almost wishing that the matron was there. She did not want to listen any more than this man did, but he knew that she heard more of what he said than the guards did. They did not listen at all. She heard but overcame his objections with prejudice. They just ignored him.

“You’re gonna die. Who cares about the rest of it?”

“I do. If it was you, if you’d failed to guard me properly and been accused of treason, if they had already decreed that you’d die, but you got a trial anyway, wouldn’t you want to know what they were saying?”

“Shut up, Monster.”

He shook his head. “My name is Tynan. I heard the other one call you by your name, but if you insist on calling me monster, I’ll call you Ignorant Prejudiced Lesser Lifeform, since that seems to fit you. Guard would be inaccurate. It lacks the necessary description of your attitude toward me.”

“I can turn up the pain if you want. You seem to be asking for it.”

“I am not, but once again, you prove yourself ignorant and hateful.” Tynan turned away from the door, looking at the walls. He did not think it was too much to ask that they show him the trial. He knew they would not let him attend, and yes, he knew the outcome, but he should still be able to see it. That would be a right extended to any other criminal, no matter how abhorrent, and it was not fair—no, it was not just—that he would not even be given that much. He knew they considered him a monster, but other murderers got to see their own trials—they were able to attend them. This was yet another example of how far from their own standards they had fallen.

Tynan sighed. He had only a few hours left, and he knew that watching his trial was not the best way to spend them, but he could not bear this cell. If he could not be free, if he could not see Luna again or speak to her or give her any kind of message, then he could at least have his trial, couldn’t he? He deserved to have that much, didn’t he?

No, this was not about what he deserved, not about what he wanted. He could not get either from them. He was nothing to them, and that would not change. He was all too aware of that by now. He leaned against the wall, sitting down again.

People aren’t gone when we remember them. We still have memories.

Luna, again, as always. He’d rather hear her voice, but there she was all the same. She was right. He understood it now. Even here, even at the end, she was still teaching him, and he should have known that would happen.

We can create things. You can, too. Memories, Tynan. We make memories all the time, and we’ll make an eternity full of them for you to look back on and remember and enjoy all over again. Memories matter. They let us hold onto the things we love.

He’d missed the point then, taking her words too literally, too caught up in the limitations of his facsimile, thinking that he could not hold onto anything. He could not touch anything, that was true, but her words at last made sense to him.

Memories aren’t something you hold in your hand. They’re what you hold in your heart.

He didn’t have a heart. He knew that. Still, he could remember her, and he did, and he would, right until it was all over.