We Will Not Bend

Now, June… you must understand—things here are… different.

Order is maintained. Stability, you see.

It is not—ideal—but it is… how the world works.

Different… you call it different

Like that makes it right somehow

Like chains are just a custom

One learns to live with now

It is not chains, precisely—more an… arrangement.

Protections, in exchange for—well—cooperation.

You’ve only just arrived. You haven’t seen enough.

I have seen enough to know

No one here stands tall

Eyes that never meet your own

Voices trained to fall

They are alive, June. That matters.

You speak as though defiance carries no cost.

You do not know what happens to those who resist.

And you do? And you accept it?

This quiet, careful breath?

A life where fear decides each step

Is just a slower death

You think I accept it?

You think this is a choice I made lightly?

This is survival.

The man I met in England

Would not bow his head

He spoke of right and wrong as lines

No fear could ever shred

So where is he, my Richard?

Where did that man go?

How can the heart I gave myself

Now tell me this is so?

That man… had never seen a dragon take a city.

Had never watched fire decide who lives and who—

(he stops)

You are asking for a courage that costs… everything.

Then what is left if we don’t try?

What do we become?

If we accept their rule as truth

Then haven’t they already won?

You don’t understand the weight of it…

Then help me understand it

Don’t ask me to agree

There’s nothing in this broken world

That justifies the knee

It is not so simple—

It is that simple—

There are lives at stake—

Then let them live awake—

June…

I did not cross an ocean

To learn to live in fear

If this is what the world has become

Then we do not belong here

Or we change it.

(spoken, unsteady)

Change it… yes, well—

A noble sentiment, certainly—

Stirring, even—

(he paces, voice faltering)

But noble sentiments do not stop fire from falling out of the sky…

They do not—

(he stops himself)

(softer, slipping into rhythm)

I remember… England in the spring…

Fields untouched by flame

I remember swearing to myself

No man should live in shame

(half-spoken, half-sung)

Strange… the things a man forgets

When fear becomes his guide…

(fully sung now, quiet but growing)

I called it “keeping people safe”

But I was learning how to hide

(he looks at her)

And somewhere in the silence

I let that promise bend