Applegate

Gavrilo Princip sits in the café, reliving those five seconds over and over again. The blast of the bomb, the assumption of success in killing that bastard Ferdinand . . . and Ferdinand's car barreling past, with the Austrian heir and his wife as alive as can be, clinging to each other as Princip, stupid Princip, stands gaping and lets them fly past without so much as raising his pistol.

In his mind, a hundred times, he does it different. He throws his bomb, he fires his gun. The car explodes, the blood sprays, and Princip whoops with triumph before he swallows his cyanide. Better to die in the knowledge that the coming war will break Austria-Hungary to pieces than to live, here, in this café, having failed Serbia and the Slavic people.

He's not even halfway through his first drink when he says it, fierce but quiet.

"I would sell my soul for another shot at that bastard!"

He must not have been as quiet as he'd thought, because the man sitting next to him

(was there a man there a moment ago?)

turns to him and smiles.

"Would you now," he says.

**********

Not a single member of the Archduke's staff, or anyone in the decades to come, will ever quite be able to piece together what happens next.

("We have troops nearby, surely they could escort -"

"Oh, no no no, they'll be in fatigues! We can't have our heir apparent escorted by troops not in full dress uniform."

". . . no, I - suppose . . .")

("If we have guards on both sides of the car -"

"But the attack only came from one side, surely that's overdoing it a bit."

" . . . yes, I - one man should be enough . . .")

("We'll certainly change the route. We can't have our moves being anticipated."

"Wonderful idea. Don't you worry about a thing, I'll go tell the first car myself."

". . . yes, thank you . . .")

**********

The first car takes the turn it isn't supposed to take. Ferdinand's driver, acting on instinct, follows the car instead of proceeding straight down the road as ordered.

**********

"Just you wait until it's time - of course you'll know. Then go on outside and let your pistol do the rest."

Princip waits. And when it's time, Princip goes.

Outside the café, frantically trying to turn around and get back onto the road it just turned off, is that car, the one he's watched pass him by a thousand times since he first sat down.

Princip closes his eyes. The gun aims, and fires twice.

Fifteen minutes later

("Sophie, Sophie! Don't die! Live for our children!")

the Archduke and Duchess

("Is the pain very bad, sir?"

"It is nothing . . . it is nothing . . . it is nothing . . . it is nothing . . . it is nothing . . . it is nothing . . . it is . . .")

are dead.

Men swarm around the car, around the bodies, around Princip.

No one sees the man leaning back against the café, hat held to his chest in a parody of respect as he watches the couple die. He keeps watching as Princip is arrested, as the bodies are collected in stunned, mournful silence. Every last person there knows what this means. Austria-Hungary, already eager for a chance to come down hard on Serbia, will not tolerate the assassination of its future emperor. It will strike, and when it does, an impossible web of alliances will tighten into a stranglehold on all of Europe, and the consequences will spill across the seas.

The first World War, Applegate thinks, is going to be a Hell of a thing. It would have happened eventually anyway, one way or another, but this way - thanks to Gavrilo Princip and the deal that gave Applegate a little extra power over the situation - Applegate is going to have a front row seat for all of it.

He can't wait.

Laughing, Applegate places his hat on his head and turns to walk back into the café.



[OOC: I would claim not to be making any of this up, but that's not quite true. First, I did embellish and streamline things for the sake of the post. Second, accounts of the assassination are varied, from different eyewitnesses with different agendas, and it is true that to this day, historians cannot pinpoint a definitive version of events. That the day consisted of several remarkable coincidences and plenty of bad decisions is agreed to be true; Archduke Franz Ferdinand nearly escaped his assassination so many times that it's amazing he managed to die at all. His words to his wife, and repetition of "it is nothing" are, according to Austrian Count Harrach, the Archduke's last words. Check out the Wiki article for as good an account as any, from what I can tell, of the assassination that changed the face of Europe forever.

. . . oh, and third: Gavrilo Princip probably did not sell his soul. Probably.]