The Eastern Rebellion proudly presents the Cinematic Experience of A Lifetime: "One Heart, One Nation"

"Oh God, should we have made a bigger fuss over this? I mean technically, it is us." Brandon grins, leaning over to whisper.

I rolled my eyes. "Like anybody actually cared what we thought about this. Also, don't you think it's a little late now?" I raised an eyebrow at Brandon, and he chuckled, leaning heavily on his cane.

Credo waves at us frantically from the entrance of the cinema. 

"A traitor, spy, and half the rebel army walks into a theatre," Brandon murmurs. "Sounds like the beginning of a joke." 

"We are the joke," I reply darkly, striding past Credo into the darkness. 

Credo is the rebellion's propaganda rat, and I used to respect him, I remember bitterly, taking my seat at the very front.

That was before he dedicated the last eight months to producing and filming what he calls his "masterpiece".

A master piece of shit, if you ask me. But no one did, and after some vague arguments about morale, the film got made.

The cinema is filling up with others now, generals, medal-wearing soldiers. It's almost like a strategy meeting instead of a public embarrassment.

I turn to Brandon to make a comment on it but stop. Brandon's a better sport than I am because he's patiently listening to Credo's explanations about lighting choices and symbolism.

Credo gleefully meets my eyes, and it's a real challenge not to smile back. I helped this man write some of our catchier propaganda. Like the now well-known Emperor has no clothes and no army poster line. 

It was all very funny until he decided to make a movie about Brandon and me.

I get it. We're important to the rebellion, both of us integral to planning and executing countless missions. Brandon's a famous traitor turned operative, and my codename is attached to many successful missions. 

The people behind us suddenly start clapping, and Brandon, Credo, and I turn in our seats. It's them.

Evidently, Brandon and I weren't good-looking enough to play ourselves in a propaganda film about us. And based on the audience's reaction, it was a good call.

The actress who plays me bats her gigantic eyes, the green a very different colour from my brown. She waves as she enters, her hair is glossy, and somehow her starved rebel figure is more attractive than desperate like mine. 

But I still got lucky, compared to Brandon. Nobody could mistake me for the blonde bombshell gliding down the aisle. On the other hand, Brandon's actor looks like Brandon on steroids after very tasteful plastic surgery. 

Very muscular. Someone told me the actor's an engine room mechanic, but you wouldn't know it. He's tall, with light blonde hair, and has this weird cheekbone situation that's sort of turning me straight.

Everyone finally settles down, and I shoot my commanding officer, Commander Matthews, a glare. Not once has the man so much as smiled for some death-defying, cause-saving feat I pulled off. But I saw him clapping for my stand-in.

The godawful movie finally begins, and I can see Credo shaking with excitement.

Oh, God. The actress playing me saunters into Commander Matthews' (who got to play himself) office, wearing non-uniform heels. Brandon ducks his head, and I know he's laughing.

"You called for me, Commander?" The actress purrs, draping herself over a chair, her eyes sultry.

She looks fantastic as she gets details of the upcoming mission to rescue a traitor (Brandon) back from enemy lines.

Her makeup is impeccable and I squirm in my seat. Fine, I could've chosen to wear makeup in everyday life too. But firstly, the other troops would have mocked me if I did. And b) during missions I tend to be just a little more worried about actually surviving, as opposed to spending time perfecting my smoky eyeshadow.

"You are the only one who can pull this off, Soldier. You are the great hope of this nation. We need that traitor to cripple the Emperor, so this mission is the most important one." Commander Matthews' delivery is horribly monotonous, but who cares?

All our eyes are back on my actress as she laughs at jokes some soldier makes, blushes at compliments, and enters the hangar bay.

I flew my own planes, but what a silly thing to keep accurate. Instead, there's some geeky, staring sidekick who flies it for me. I mean, her.

Brandon's shaking with uncontrollable laughter, and it takes everything I have not to punch him.

We crash land behind enemy lines, which is accurate, even if my hair prettily blowing in the wind of the explosion isn't.

Cheeky sidekick dies? I don't even know, but fake me sneaks into the Capital, flirting with random soldiers to find out where the traitor is being held.

Not what happened. We knew exactly where he was: Stethenburg Prison. Fake me does a lot of maneuvering and sneaking around, while I had simply knocked out a guard and stole his uniform.

Okay, not simple, but it's more simple than assembling the heist crew of pickpockets and other rebels the actress is doing now.

While the on-screen moron does her thing, I had broken into the prison and faked instructions to get Brandon executed. As the guards took him out of his heavily guarded cell, I killed them. Then Brandon and I had to hide out in the city, almost getting caught a hundred times as we tried to escape.

The actress has broken into the prison at this point, and the crew gets picked off one by one. Except for the handsome, tragic, dark-haired thief who'd joined the mission.

He stays by her side. Ew. I hope my girlfriend isn't watching this because that's not something I want to explain.

The on-screen idiots finally get to Brandon's cell and there's this weird...moment. Where my actress and Brandon's stupidly hot actor lock eyes.

Real Brandon and I share horrified, deeply uncomfortable looks, trying to get more space between us.

"What took you so long?" Brandon's actor is covered in random dirt, with no chains on him. He sounds normal. 

That's disgusting. I glance at Brandon's stiff jaw. Brandon had been tortured to an inch of his life, his muscles rendered pretty useless from months of imprisonment. It was my first real taste of what the Emperor would do if we got caught. 

"Better late than never." The actress playing me winks, and after a little more nonsensical banter, the actors trigger an explosion, and the thief, the actress playing me, and the actor playing Brandon escape.

Brandon's just staring into the screen, and that doubles my irritation. Everything in this film; from the patriotic dialogue to the perfect events makes the glaring, ugly reality that much more real. 

After scene after scene of fake Brandon and fictional thief snapping at each other, I knew something and was coming when the actress and thief had a talk alone. Credo could barely contain himself as my actress tearfully told the dark-haired thief that she couldn't choose him.

And to add insult to injury, she and fake Brandon start kissing.

Embarrassment is a devastatingly long-lasting and slow poison. Brandon's dating a nurse named Eve, with a huge bubbly laugh. I'm secretly dating a very hot hydroponics engineer named Farnaz. Neither of us is in any way, shape, or form dating the other.

Watching the screen makes every moment between us weird. All my jokes, all his mocking insulting changes into weird, adult flirty banter. 

It's also odd to see us having so much fun taking down the Emperor when our actual journey was full of horror and pain.

Brandon was recovering from torture, and so I had to be the one to sneak us onto a supply train. That turned out to be carrying hundreds of bodies.

We still have no idea where they come from or who they were, but the memory still makes me sick. A guard, a psychotic one who spent his time dissecting the bodies, caught us, and I had to kill him and bury him in a pile of rotting bodies.

After just barely escaping the Capital we had to wait days before border troops were distracted by a distracting invasion by our allies to the south.

Then finally, we got Brandon to the rebel base. And half-dead, he'd explained the mechanics of the Emperor's weapons, some plans he remembered, and the identities of key players behind the scenes.

This movie showed none of why Brandon and I were important. 

Brandon's background as a chief engineer and cousin to the Emperor was ignored. My training as a soldier and spy was set aside to showcase the actress' assets.

Part of me understood, we needed hope and light in this film, not images of Brandon's scars and my nightmares of being murdered by eerily smiling guards on trains full of dead people.

But this showed so little. And then, with a little flag-waving and an emotional reunion with Commander Matthews it ended. A distorted, fantastical, and shallow depiction of our story.

Brandon looked pale when the lights clicked back on, and he didn't bother turning when the actor and actress stood and took a bow.

"That was the stupidest shit I've ever seen. Were they advertising the rebellion, or how nice the Emperor's prisons are?" I said, trying to snap him out of it. 

Brandon looked at me, a little lost for a second, before smiling. "That reminds me, what did take you so long in getting me out of that luxury resort?" 

I gaped at him, then tossed back my hair. "Better late than never." 

"You're awful." Brandon sputtered. 

"I know, all this was a ploy to get a movie made about me," I shouted into his ear.

We cackled with laughter, the noise safely lost under the clamour of the people around us.