Her heartbeat returned, fast like a running river. She breathed in sharply. The hall seemed to slip away. Now, just her and her nan sat at a table in the middle of a black void. 

“I, uh, yeah.” There was no reason to lie here. At most, her nan would be disappointed or mildly annoyed, but she’d understand. “Yeah, I have.”

“Hm,” Rosemarie chuckled, “thought so. You always scurry off down there.”

“Not sure why,” she added, “it’s a shithole down there.”

“Well, yeah, but it gets me away from mum.” Her nan nodded. Lillia steadied her breathing. It was time. No more delaying. She closed and opened her eyes, drawing them up to meet her nan’s. “I found some stuff.”

“Like?” Rosemarie’s eyebrow perked up, stretching the wrinkled skin. 

“Well I…” Lillia paused. What first? Should she ask about the gun or the journal? She looked around for a clock and came back unsuccessful. Regardless, Lillia was aware of the time limit. “I found a book.”

“A book?”

“Yeah, that’s what I said.”

“What type of book?” Her nan smirked. She knew exactly what Lillia meant, but feigned ignorance, though Lillia couldn’t tell why.

Lillia coughed. “It was a journal, I think, though most of the pages were unreadable.”

“Oh, god, you weren't supposed to see that,” Rosemarie narrowed her eyes. “Were you not told about going through other people’s stuff without permission?”

Lillia immediately jumped on the defensive. “I didn’t find it intentionally! I smacked my head on a box and it fell out of it!”

“How convenient,” her nan muttered.

“It’s the truth!”

Rosemarie sighed. “No matter. You’ve likely read it now. Was it a fun read?”

“Um…” Lillia thought about how to phrase it. “No. It was quite sad actually.”

Her nan grunted, as if offended.

“I know mother says it a lot, and I didn’t fully believe her before, but after reading your journal … you weren’t there for her, were you?” 

Rosemarie’s face dropped, colour slowly slithering away. She flexed her fingers on the table, in time with her breaths. Her head hung, thin blue-ish grey strands of hair hung in front of her face. Lillia gulped, thinking of a way to take her words back. Her nan spoke before she had a chance to apologise.

“Yeah, I wasn’t.”

Not a single emotion lingered in her voice. It was a grumbling wheeze. Defeated. Guilty.

Lillia quickly responded. “Don’t—look I’m sure you tried, right? You said in the journal you tried. That’s enough—”

“NO,” her voice bellowed, echoing around the hall. Heads turned, but quickly vanished again. “It was not enough. To just try, when the life of someone else is in your hands — you can’t try, listen to me Lillia, you can not try. You have to do. You have to put your heart and soul into whatever it is and do it.”

She looked up from behind the curtain of hair. “I was a terrible mother.”

“But…” Lillia couldn’t speak. A hole of emptiness pierced straight through her. To hear the person she looked up to admit they were terrible, it shattered her heart into pieces. But a tiny portion held on. She wasn’t going to give up on her nan, not after everything. Lillia composed herself.

“You’re a great grandmother, though! I want to be like you!”

“Lillia…”

She ignored her. “I’ve heard about what you spent your time doing, I’ve read about it. You were trying to make the world a better place to live in!” Lillia felt her throat burn. “What sort of terrible mother would want the world to be better for her daughter? Surely that’s what a good, caring mother would want.”

“Lillia.” Rosemarie’s voice turned stern. “You do not want to be like me. I’m—”

“Fine!” Lillia slammed her hands on the table. “Then I’ll be better!”

Her nan hesitated. She gazed at Lillia with wonder.

“I’m tired of living in this shit world.” Flames sparked in her eyes. “Tell me, what did you do? When you stood up against everyone and declared that you’d make it better, what did you do? How did you do that?”

Rosemarie sighed. “Lillia, dear, there’s no glory in what I did. Nothing to celebrate.” She took a large gulp of her drink. “I wasted the time I should’ve spent with Emma — your mother — fighting for a cause that never went anywhere. We failed.”

Lillia’s mood hit a brick wall. The burning fire inside got claustrophobic. She can’t regret it, can she? Fighting for a better world, surely that’s the least regrettable thing one can do?

“How did you fail?” she asked impatiently, “why was that time wasted? You were doing the right thing!”

“Maybe, but it was still ultimately wasted.”

“Tell me then! How!”

“You’re so eager! So eager for information you don’t want to know.” her nan snapped. She took a deep breath and raised her head. “Are you sure you want me to explain?”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

Rosemarie grunted, almost amused. “Because you seem to have me figured out a hero. In your head, I went on a grand campaign to rid the world of evil,” she spoke softly. “In reality, it was none of those things.”

Lillia relaxed her arms and shoulders. She cracked her neck and leant back in the cheap plastic chair. Maybe she didn’t want to know. Part of her brain told her to drop the subject. It would be better to keep the idealised version of things, rather than the gritty reality. Would it, though? She calmed her thoughts, slowly extinguishing any remaining flames.

“Then, tell me, what happened?”

Her nan sighed. Then smiled. “You've always been a curious child, haven’t you?”

“I’m not a child anymore.”

Rosemarie nodded. “Sadly so.”

She finished the last of the tea. Lillia waited in silence, patiently. She could hear each gulp her nan took. Rosemarie placed the cup back on the table. The slight thud signalling the start of the tale.

 “We all waited for the revolution to happen, we were sure it was coming, it was what we all wanted and it had been a long time coming.” There was a hint of nostalgia in her voice. Lillia recognised a nostalgic feeling in herself. The way her nan spoke, clear and confident, no longer wheezing, it reminded Lillia of when she’d read her bedtime stories.

Her nan continued. 

“I’d been wishing for a revolution since my teen years; finally standing up to the tyrannical government. Of course, back then it wasn’t as bad as now, surprisingly. We mainly protested against the removal of rights and things like that. Protests were legal back then, too. I went to many.” A flush of pride came over her wrinkled face. If she could see inside her mind, Lillia had no doubt she would see beautiful scenes of people helping one another, maybe even some of her nan’s old friends.

“But,” her nan cleared her throat, “most of my fellow protestors were in agreement: things have the potential to go rapidly downhill, and our protests are being ignored — they weren’t as effective as before — so, an idea was born.”

Lillia listened, allowing her nan time to think and speak. She enjoyed listening to her nan speak, she could sense the pride and joyfulness oozing from her words. That, sadly, also meant she could feel the sadness and regret. Lillia tried to avoid focusing on those emotions.

“Now, this is a simplification, but the idea was basically this: overthrow the government by any means necessary.” She paused, sighing. “Any means necessary. Ha.”

Lillia crept into the silence. “So, like, killing people?”

Her nan nodded grimly. “Yes, that is one mean, one way. It was a good way too. We all agreed it was better that they die than live to torture the world.”

She looked at Lillia. “This is the important part. We all agreed to succeed by any means necessary, but none of us truly meant it. None of our hearts and souls were dedicated to it.” 

Her voice turned from a calming bedtime story to bitter frustration.  

“I accepted that. I accepted that people would have to die, but, surely, it wouldn’t be me who took the first shot.” Rosemarie chuckled, her face dropping into a sour smile. “Funny thing is, it turns out everyone had that thought, everyone was thinking someone else will take the first step, no way will it be me. So the revolution never happened.” 

“Oh,” Lillia replied.

“Disappointed?”

“No-no! It’s just mum calls you a terrorist. I thought, sillily it seems, that there was a revolution.”

“No,” her nan reassured her, “it’s not silly to think that. The news turned some of the protests, the ones that got violent, into a full scale revolution that never actually happened. It’s not your fault for believing that.”

“Right.” Lillia bobbed her head. “But there was some violence, then?”

“Well, of course,” her nan mocked, “there’s violence all around, everyday. But it wasn’t us who started that violence.”

“Yeah,” Lillia responded. A risky question popped into her head. She wasn’t sure if it was too far. No, she’s explaining. It’s an obvious question anyway. 

Lillia glanced to the side. “Did you want there to be violence?”

“What do you mean?”

“Like, did you want to hurt them — the powerful?”

“Ah,” Rosemarie sighed, still smiling to offset the negative atmosphere. “Well, I guess so. Yeah. I did want it.”

Lillia’s eyes shot back to her nan. “Really?”

She scoffed. “Really? Of course I wanted the revolution. I wanted to hurt them so badly.” Rosemarie’s eyes gazed to nothing, she had retreated into her mind. Fantasising. 

“Oh, just waltz into the oil bosses’, the prime minister's — whoever’s office, pull out a gun and squeeze the trigger! It would have made me feel so … happy.” She snapped back to reality, the high plummeting to a sorrowful lol. “It’s horrible, I know, but that’s the truth. I’d have been happy to watch another fellow human being die.”

“They’re not our friends, though, they’re monsters!” Lillia protested, “it’s not that horrible considering what they’ve done!”

“Oh, the naivety of a child.” Her nan smiled fakely at her, water building in her eyes. “Maybe so. But to do something like that … it would rob you of all your humanity.”  

“So I didn't. No one did. In the end, we waited ourselves to boredom and everyone gave up. We stopped fuelling the fire, so to speak, so it inevitably died.”

 A tear fell from her cheek. “And now look where we are.”

The remainder of Lillia’s heart cracked. Her nan blames herself for everything. The poverty, the struggle to live, every problem with the world, she feels responsible for. Lillia’s lip quivered. Her limbs shoot subtly. It took all her willpower to contain the anger. No. Rage. None of this was her nan’s fault. It should never have been possible for anyone to have to live like they have. But Rosemarie was convinced. Perhaps her nan wasn’t who Lillia assumed her to be — she did ignore her own daughter to play hero of the world, which she never even did. But despite that, not a single thing inside her hated her nan. All she felt was a growing emptiness, and the fires of rage.

“I don't know why I didn't in the end,” Rosemarie interjected.  She shook her head. “I'm not sure what, but something stopped me. And now I am left to wonder. Should I have done it? The world would have taken a completely different path, and all I had to do was sacrifice my humanity. Lillia.” She looked up. Her face vibrated, her eyes a watery mess. “Should I have done it?”

“Huh?” Lillia didn’t know how to respond. The complexity of the conversation was beyond her. She stumbled some words out her mouth. “I—I, um, I’m not sure—”

“What would you have done?”