Last Chance

“Stop,” she pushed off the hands that gently cupped her face.

“Why are you acting like this, Fel?” 

“Because you're being crazy,” she threw her hands up, eyes wide.

“I am not being crazy. I love you, you love me, it’s worth–”

“Shut up. Shut up, do you want to get us killed?” Felicity hissed, stepping toward him as her gaze swiveled around, searching for anyone who may have overheard them. No one was around, she knew that. They were miles from the Federation border and civilization with nothing but trees, grass, and blue sky. When Connor had asked her to go for a walk, she thought it would be a final homage to their childhood as she took this next step. Instead, he was standing here in an open field trying to convince her to commit treason.

“We can run. I’ve heard of societies outside of the Federation. There are no assigned partners. They live as they want, do what they want. They have as many kids as they want or don’t have any. They get to choose how they live.”

“They live in chaos with no order. That’s not a society, that’s anarchy. And when they get caught, they’ll be killed,” she paused, lowering her voice, “In fact, they’ll be lucky if the Federation just kills them. You’ve heard the stories. For God’s sake, your father is a Federation soldier. He’s probably tortured some of the people they’ve found.”

A muscle in his jaw feathered, but his gaze was still soft, searching her face for any cracks. She would not let it show how close he was to breaking her, to getting through those walls. If he just took her hand and ran she would follow, perhaps she wouldn’t even resist. He was right. She was stupid and weak and she loved him, she did. She probably had for years. But love had no place in the Federation. 

“Why can’t we do what we want? Live how we want? Is it not crazy to you how much control they have over us? The job we work for the entirety of our lives, the one we share a bed with, how many children we have, where we live, what home we live in?” Connor ran a hand through his hair and began pacing. The tall grass brushed just below his hips, shushing when it rubbed up against his jeans.

Felicity let her head drop back to look up at the cloudless blue sky until her vision spotted. The only sounds were his soft footsteps and the breeze that whispered through the grass. 

Connor and Felicity made this hike a few times a week ever since they were children. They felt rebellious when they started making the trek to the open field just outside of the boundary line. Technically it was illegal, though the rule wasn’t enforced. 

As teenagers, they would steal a bottle of liquor from one of their parents and pass it back and forth as they ran to the meadow under the cover of night. Connor would always remember a blanket. They would put it down and lay under the stars. When Felicity was drunk enough she would lay her cheek against his chest and listen to the way his breath stuttered at the contact, the way his heartbeat sped up with her touch. 

“We can’t just do what we want,” she let out a long breath. “Do you know the chaos the world we descend into if everyone just did what they wanted? Nothing would get done.”

“There was a time when people had that choice,” he paused his pacing staring at the ground. “When people could do what they wanted.” He kicked a rock sending it skittering through the meadow, its path only visible from the ripples of the grass.

“And the world almost ended,” Felicity shook her head making to turn around and walk back home. “It was chaos, Connor. Society almost collapsed. The Federation brought order, brought humanity back from the brink. If we break that order,” Felicity breathed out, not even knowing how to finish the sentence. “There is a reason for all of this.”

“What if they lied? What if the history they feed us is wrong?” Connor’s voice was measured, testing the words.

A soft whirring in the distance caught her attention.

“Shit,” Connor grabbed her hand and broke into a run towards the tree line a couple hundred yards away.

To her left, she saw the Federation aircraft, just a speck but slowly it was growing larger. It would be over them in seconds. Most likely it was just a routine patrol, though they’d never seen Federation aircraft patrolling the meadow. Perhaps there was a security threat. That happened sometimes, the Federation took a bit more liberty of patrolling and looking into people's lives if a threat to the people was more prevalent. They never shared a lot of details about the threats. They didn’t want to cause panic, but the increased measures were always for a good reason.

“We’re not going to make it,” she panted as Connor dragged her through the tall grass, the forest still too far off. Her chest was tight. If she wasn’t running she’d be trembling. The aircraft was growing larger by the second. What would happen if they were caught? What punishment would be inflicted on them? Would they believe they just came out to the meadow for a walk? Felicity did not care to find out. 

“Drop.”

It was all the warning she was given before Connor shoved her forward and she stumbled, dropping down onto her stomach. She absorbed some of the blow through her hands and knees when they hit the dirt. A heavy weight pressed against her back, Connor’s arms bracketing her body. His heart pounded just behind her head, his chest rising and falling rapidly. The scent of wet earth and sweet grass filled her airways, mingling with Connor’s clean laundry and bergamot scent.

The weight of his body pressed against hers was soothing. What would it be like to fall asleep next to him every night? To wake up to his arm wrapped around her, his chest pressed against her back like it was right now?

“Are you okay?” His words brushed the shell of her ear, whispered as if the aircraft miles above might catch his words if he spoke too loud. “Am I hurting you?”

The whirring overhead grew louder and Connor tensed. The grass around them swayed and bent. Could they see his body through the tall grass, their path where they had just run?

“I’m fine.” But she wasn’t. She wasn’t fine. In that moment she should have been terrified. And she was but of the wrong thing. 

Connor’s stint of rebellion against the Federation started about a year ago. Personal research on some historical inconsistencies he had found from Federation material sent him on this tirade. He started talking about how it was crazy how the Federation had so much control of people’s lives, how people should have free will to make their own choices, and so forth. He only spiraled deeper into it as time went on.

Before that, he had never questioned the way things were, the way that the Federation ran the country. His father worked in the military after all. The world made sense the way it was. There was no need to question anything. Why turn things upside down when the world was in order? Why tear down a system that was serving them? 

At ten years old everyone took a test. It took the whole school day. It was partially a written test with a portion that tested intelligence, another for personality, another a person’s instinct, and so forth. The other part was done with a mix of bodily samples taken, blood, saliva, urine. The tests and samples were taken back to a Federation lab where they were used to determine a person’s life path, including the career plan they would follow after graduation at eighteen. 

Felicity had been assigned to accounting. This required an additional two more years of school after the primary grades, which she had finished a few months ago. After graduation, she had then been assigned to a large company where she would stay until retirement at sixty-five. She liked her job well enough. At ten years old she knew what she would be, where she would be working. It was nice, the job security and routine of it all. 

Connor had been assigned to medical school. He had two years left before he would be a cardiologist. His parents were so proud when he got his career plan. His mother was a nurse at the local hospital with Felicity’s mother, the same hospital he was assigned to upon completion of school. Connor had been devastated. The day he got the results they walked to the meadow in silence. He had wanted to be a teacher and was terrified of blood. He had cried for an hour until he exhausted himself, falling asleep in the grass, his salty cheek pressed against her thigh as she ran a hand gently through his hair. 

The test was also used to determine who one would marry, how many children they would have, where they would live. Apparently, the test also revealed how long a person lived, but the Federation never released that. 

Career paths were assigned directly after the test, but the rest of the information was dispersed throughout a person’s life at predetermined intervals. 

Felicity had received notice that she would be marrying Daniel Gardener about a year ago. They had met before, went to the same school growing up. They had not spoken much before being assigned to each other.

Connor had received notice a few months ago that he would be marrying Julie Lettin. She lived a town over, where she was a school teacher. He had not known she existed before he got his notice. They had had a few meetings with one another. Felicity had met Julie at the time they were together. She tried to ignore how her chest hurt seeing how pretty and kind Julie was. Julie would be good for Connor. That was all that mattered. The Federation matched them for a reason, just like they matched her and Daniel for a reason. 

Daniel was nice and respected Felicity. He was an engineer for the government, designing facilities and roadways. She enjoyed being around him enough that they could make a life together work. They would make a life together work. They had to.

Childbirth assignments would come later, about nine months before the child was to be had. Some never received a child assignment. Others received multiple. It all depended on the test, what the Federation found in your genetic information and mind.

“They’re gone,” the pressure eased off her back as Connor climbed to his feet, glancing around at the sky before bending down to help Felicity up. 

She missed the weight of him as soon as it was gone. She batted the thought away. Adultery was illegal in the federation. There was no point in exploring other options, not when the only one that mattered was your assigned partner. The consequences of even keeping things purely physical were far too large a risk.

Misty Carpenter had formed some sort of relationship with a boy when they were still in school, perhaps fifteen or sixteen years old. It was never revealed who, but Felicity remembered walking into the bathroom during third hour and Misty had been crying about how she hadn’t got her period that month. That was the last day Misty had been at school. Her parents lived down the street from Felicity’s, had always been friendly, but after that day they were only seen going and coming from work or errands. They didn’t talk to anyone, didn’t go to neighborhood gatherings or dinner parties. Everyone thought her parents perhaps pulled her out, but nobody ever saw Misty again.

“That was weird,” Felicity dusted the dirt off her pants. “Did your father say anything about a security threat?” 

“They’re not security threats, Fel, it’s about asserting power. Every time that’s all it is,” Connor grumbled.

“The Federation doesn’t want to hurt us. I don’t know why you can’t understand us. They want the best for people, they want the best for society. That’s all it is.”

“Why do you just accept that? Why can’t you understand that maybe some people are out for power? That they want control and don’t actually care about you?” Connor took a step toward her, his tone turning sharp.

“Don’t patronize me. Don’t you dare,” she jabbed a finger into his chest. “Is it so wrong to be okay with the way things are?”

“So what, you’re just going to marry Daniel tomorrow? I’ll marry Julie in a few months and we’ll shove down these feelings and pop out our designated amount of children and pretend we’re happy with the lives we were assigned. We’ll fall asleep beside people we don’t love and work jobs we were assigned to and live in houses we didn’t choose.”

“Julie is a nice girl,” Felicity started.

“She’s not you,” Connor’s voice broke as he stepped forward to cup her face, his own the picture of beautiful devastation. “I love you. I want you. I will never be happy living a life I don’t get to choose. Why can’t you understand that?”

“I am marrying Daniel tomorrow,” Felicity tried to hide the way her voice wavered, the way tears were brimming, so close to spilling over. Bringing her hands up to cover his, she pulled them off her face and stepped back. “You are my best friend. I will always love you. But love like you want doesn’t exist Connor. It can’t exist.”

A tear slipped down his cheek. Before she could move to wipe it he had already batted it off and turned his face away from her blinking.

“I hope you’ll be there. Tomorrow. I want you there. I want you in my life still, you have to understand that,” Felicity was pleading with him now. No, she was pleading with herself. To believe she could spend the rest of her life with someone who was not Connor. That she could share a bed with someone, raise kids with someone, cry with someone, laugh with someone, lean on someone that wasn’t Connor. 

But she could. She had to. The Federation knew best. They paired her with Daniel for a reason. They paired her with Daniel because they were compatible, because they made sense. Marriages were supposed to be sensible. Love was far too volatile to base something so important. 

“Last chance, Fel,” his breath shuttered. “Run with me.”

“Connor,” she shook her head. 

“I can’t watch you walk into the arms of another man. I can’t watch you promise your life to someone else,” his tears were flowing now. She couldn’t help but wrap her arms around him, hold him tight, and feel his body shudder against hers. His tears dampened her shoulder while hers dampened his chest. “You can’t ask me to do that. It’s not fair.”

“It’s safe though. It’s how we survive.”

“I don’t want to be safe, I don’t want to survive. I want to live,” Connor murmured into her hair, “I want you.”

For a while, they stood there holding each other. Perhaps time could freeze and they could stay just like that forever. They could stay in each other’s arms in their meadow two miles out from everything, in a limbo where nothing mattered except the heartbeat she knew as well as her own, the breath that ruffled her hair.

But that could not happen. The world was moving around them, time could not be stopped. Their futures could not be held to satiate a fantasy they had concocted among the grass. So she shattered it, took a hammer to the crystal, and smashed it to pieces even though the shards cut into her palm with every blow. She shattered it with four words.

“You can’t have me,” she pulled away and stared into his stormy, red-rimmed grey eyes with a hard resolve. 

“Last chance, Fel,” he breathed, chin quivering slightly. His lips curved into a sad smile, “I love you.”

“There’s no room for love here, Connor. I am marrying Daniel tomorrow,” her words came out stronger than she felt.

He blinked, reeling as if she just slapped him. Biting his lower lip, he nodded.

“Let’s walk home,” she held out her hand but he shook his head.

“I need,” he just shook his head taking a step back.

Heat prickled behind her eyes, but she wouldn’t let the tears fall. He needed space to accept this. She would give it to him. He would understand eventually.

She walked back. Back to her parent's house, where she would live for her last night before Daniel and she moved into a three-bedroom home a few streets over. To last-minute touches on the floral centerpieces. To an email she needed to answer from her boss before she took a few days off to recover from the wedding. To a small gift basket left on the porch from Daniel with chocolates, a white robe, and slippers, with a note about how he wanted her to be comfortable the last night as his fiance, even if he could not be there, traditions and all.

To wondering how often she would see Connor when they no longer lived across the street from each other. To wondering if Julie would become his person instead of her. To wondering what it would feel like to fall asleep next to him every night and wake up in his arms every morning. To wondering what would have happened if she had taken his hand that afternoon and ran. To wondering what it would be like to accept his love.

Connor didn’t follow.