- Eudaimonia POV -

I tilt forwards dizzily, watching Atlas as he smirks out toward the people. The light off the window reflects into my eyes, and I feel tears prick in the corner of them. What have I done?

All those, kids, all those people about to die, and I had just condemned them?

In all simplicity, I know it's wrong, but right then, I couldn't bring myself to care. What did this mean of me, now that I had ordered the massacre of innocent people, put down my hand at the round table, not to save other lives, but in the name of justice? What kind of justice was this, where it's not the wrongdoers suffering, but innocents caught in the crossfire . . . ?

Watching my equals at the table, the other leaders contemplating arrangements for the Declaration, I realize something.

I don't actually care that it's wrong. I've reached a new kind of perception, one where I'm so, so sick of doing what's right. What's right when it doesn't solve anything, doesn't help anyone, but simply protects the people who'd wreaked havoc in the first place?

Maybe this way it does more harm than good, but is that my concern anymore? All I've done to protect my people, and in the end it comes down to this. Not a perfect solution, nowhere near a perfect solution, but it is a solution. Perhaps the only one.

When I look up again, I can feel a smile crossing the corners of my lips. Atlas catches my eye, and I can see relief in his. He must have been watching me, noticing my dilemma, but if he agreed, not only agreed but had been one of the first supporters of this proposition, it must be right.

I trusted Atlas, I knew that more than anything else in the world, and in the end, even if I had made the wrong decision . . . I hadn't.

How could it be wrong, when he said it wasn't?