[ WP ] You are the leader of the rebel faction , you finally come face to face with the leader of the group you 've been fighting against for so long . Before your final fight you take a moment to talk to them , your once best friend .

`` Are we really going to do this?'' Lee petitioned me. It had been ten years since I saw the man that stood in front of me, now more of a shadow of his former self than anything. But he knew that, I knew that, the whole damn world could see that. Lee was never subtle, especially in the later years when he chose *them* over his people. He was never good at being subtle. 
 
 I had led our people from the dirt since the beginning, Lee was always my second-in-command, the man I could trust with just about anything. He was my family as much he was my friend. And now, my last family was standing at the other end of my gun. 
 
 `` I think you know the answer to that,'' I said. Ten years of fighting, and for what? We lost so many, destroyed so much, and raided the city we once called our Capitol. Everything my people knew was changed, everything Lee's people knew was in ashes. We were starting over, humanity, as a whole, had one last chance. 
 
 `` Then pull the damn trigger.'' 
 
 The fighting had ended almost two weeks ago, when my forces stormed the last fortress of the Capitol police. Hundreds died in that final assault, hundreds more suffered by the hands of Lee's animals. All we ever wanted was for it to all end. Now it did, all I had to do was pull the trigger. 
 
 For two weeks, we tried to settle everything back to normal. Killing off dozens of political officials and military leaders, we started to eliminate the class system. People started doing what they were best at, and humanity was understanding what sacrifice meant. Lee, and everything about him, was the final piece of the old world. The final sacrifice that people needed to see, the final piece of the old world gone. 
 
 `` You never could do it.'' He said to me, and I felt myself drawn ten years into the past. The day he before he left me, when he told me that the world needed to stay the same; that change could only spell the end. `` You never had the stomach for the hard work, the dirty work, the work that *we* required us to do to keep everything in line!'' He shifted, trying to get out of the metal chains that kept him firmly on the ground, `` You could never see that what *we* were doing was necessary!'' 
 
 He was n't the first one to speak of the atrocities they were doing. But Lee was the first one to turn on his friends, his *family*, and join them. Lee was the first double-agent my people ever knew. I wanted him to be the last. I wanted it all to end. Not just the fighting, but the hate, the desire, the idea that one people were greater than another. I wanted the world to return to ash, so that everyone knew what humanity truly was. A piece of sand on the universal beach that kept trying to be a sandcastle. It had been I believed we were anything but that. 
 
 No once could see that. No one except Lee, when he turned on us, he knew what he was doing. But we had always agreed that one side needed to end. That humanity needed to return to balance again. People needed to learn about survival, about war and death and sacrifice; they needed to see that at the end of the day, we were just people. All of us, living in a world that needed, that craved balance. 
 
 Balance in humanity meant starting over. It meant getting a man inside, it meant letting my best friend be molded by the people we swore to destroy. Balance in humanity meant sacrifice. Even if they did n't know. 
 
 `` I'm not going to apologize.'' 
 
 `` I know. I'm not asking you to.'' 
 
 `` Then what are you waiting for?'' 
 
 `` I'm thinking about where it all went wrong.'' 
 
 He seemed to be taken back by my answer, `` When what went wrong?'' 
 
 I chuckled and pulled the hammer back on my magnum, `` When I started to see the world for what it was.'' 
 
 His eyes widened. 
 
 `` It's not you who needs to apologize,'' I aimed the gun at his chest, shutting my eyes for just a brief moment, `` it's me.'' I pulled the trigger and in an instant my last living *family* was dead. He was gone. But humanity still needed balance. They needed to start over. 
 
 I moved the smoking barrel of my magnum to my own temple, the people around me, generals and soldiers in a rebel army, still staring at his body. `` Balance means sacrifice.'' I pulled the trigger. 
 
 _____ 
 
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