antebellum [t. riddle]

lxxiii

easter, april 1945

at times, sicaria wondered if macusa really did have the will of the people at the heart of its decisions.

their actions in the past, especially in regards to grindelwald, had always been subject to some criticism from every direction, but sicaria's view of their reaction in the fallout of his most recent rampage was almost uncharacteristically incompetent. things were frantic. the papers were a mess. press conferences looked unprepared and opaque. picquery hadn't even been seen in public until hours after it had all ended. conspiracy theories thinly disguised as editorials or 'just asking questions' were making the rounds again. everything was just in shambles.

they hadn't even released an official casualty count yet. she just had to take dumbledore's information as truth.

sicaria had always viewed her position as, at the very least, advancing the placement of oppressed parties in magical society, but situations like this made her truly wonder if all her suffering really had been for nothing.

everything was just so undisciplined.

there was no plan. after all this time, there was still nothing in place to regain control. there was damage control, and harm reduction, but nothing that actually addressed the immediate problem, and nothing that would ensure there wouldn't be a next time. it was like the higher-ups never learned their lesson, or that they hadn't reached the number of deaths that would determine if this was the point where they'd say that enough was enough.

picquery was trying her best; sicaria hated her, but she was. sure, she was holier-than-thou and moralizing, but she was also as good a leader as one could be when all of her subordinates were either incompetent, corrupt, or too power-hungry to do what was really in the interest of the nation. like a brilliant captain on an exceptionally shitty team. they wanted the small victories that made them heroes, not the hard losses that come with genuine progress.

in sicaria's eyes, picquery suffered from the same grandiose narcissism that dumbledore did, in that they sought power only under the guise that they were the only ones with the ability to solve the problems of the magical world. they were the only two with the intellect or the ability to make the hard decisions they frequently did. they were the chosen ones, both gifted and cursed with cruel understanding of the sacrifices needed to win a war against this kind of brutality.

sicaria thought that perhaps she was cursed with that same knowledge, but not gifted with the power that was supposed to come with it. she was smart enough to understand that however morally reprehensible her role in this war was, it was a necessity. there would always be people who needed to do this job; to do all the illegal things they couldn't do above board. the things that were necessary to win. she just wished it didn't have to be her.

the truth was that good didn't always prevail because of some archaic, ambiguous divine intervention that always stopped evil from taking over. picquery knew that. dumbledore knew that. grindelwald knew that.

sicaria knew it too.

she thought that perhaps eileen understood it at a surface level. sicaria did not get the impression that vota was doing all of these horrible things so that she could accumulate more power to make meaningful change. it seemed more to her like eileen was a chaser and a climber, using atrocities in order to increase her personal standing.

motive, really, was what set apart picquery and eileen. means was what set apart dumbledore and picquery.

that, in sicaria's mind, was what defined the way dumbledore used her. she was locked away, and he could sulk and sympathize with her all he wanted to, because he didn't have the key to free her either. it was easy for him to say what they did to her was despicable when he had no means of stopping it. she just wondered if in a world where he could free her and lose her usefulness, if he would.