As Myuran Sukumaran and his family gathered on Tuesday morning in a small courtyard in Bali's Kerobokan prison, an awful realisation was enveloping them.

Almost 10 years after Sukumaran was arrested on his 24th birthday for drug smuggling, his journey from selfish criminality, angry denial and then transformation into a man to be proud of seemed to be at its end.

"We were all standing around barely talking," recalls Chinthu Sukumaran, Myuran's younger brother, his voice shaking with emotion.

"We were trying to tell each other there was still hope but it just felt like we were lying to each other."

The previous day, Bali's prosecutor had revealed plans were well advanced to move Sukumaran and his fellow death row inmate Andrew Chan to Nusakambangan, the island in Central Java where the pair would be taken to a clearing in the jungle, trussed to a wooden stake and shot dead.

A move on Tuesday was "unlikely" but the men might be transferred on Wednesday, a spokesman for the prosecutor had said. It would "definitely happen this week".

Once on Nusakambangan, the conventional wisdom held, there could be no reprieve for the two Australians.

As members of the family wept, Myuran moved around, comforting them. Others in the Sukumaran clan busied themselves, collecting Myuran's treasured art books and canvases.

"He was trying to be strong," Chinthu says. "It was very difficult. For him to stay strong at a time like that, he really didn't need people crying around him."

This unimaginable anguish was suddenly interrupted just before noon when news filtered through that the transfer had been delayed.

It later emerged that Indonesian authorities had had plans in place to move them at midnight. It was - almost to the minute - an 11th-hour reprieve.

"Myuran smiled. He talked. He got back to his painting," Chinthu says. "We had something to eat. Myuran said he could actually taste the food. That hadn't happened for a long time."

And for the first time in weeks, Chinthu's brother slept deeply that night. For once, the sound of a gate banging in the wind, or a yelp from a fellow inmate, didn't make him awaken with sudden, adrenalin-fuelled dread.

Despite the reprieve, the men, their families and lawyers are under no illusions that the outlook is anything but grim.

The prospect that a prison guard will knock on the cell doors of Sukumaran and Chan, shackle their hands and feet and whisk them away to Nusakambangan remains all too real.

Indonesia's Attorney-General HM Prasetyo told Fairfax Media on Tuesday that the postponement of the transfer did not mean a delay in their executions.

Even so, he conceded he did not have a date for their appointment with a firing squad.

Moreover, one of the main arguments posited by Indonesia for the delay - that Nusakambangan was not ready for them, that isolation cells needed to be prepared and execution fields cleared  - was disputed by the official who runs the prison complex.

And three other foreigners on the list of 11 death row convicts slated to be killed have been given strong indications that they will be allowed to pursue legal appeals or - in the case of Brazilian Rodrigo Gularte -  assessed to see if they are mentally ill and therefore unable to be executed under Indonesian law.

These are all small but positive signs that the headlong rush to execute Chan and Sukumaran has eased a little.

The delay, if nothing else, is a welcome relief from a torment that had been closing in at a frightening pace..

And it's a chance to redouble legal and diplomatic efforts to forestall the executions and convince Indonesia to grant clemency to the two heroin smugglers whose remarkable rehabilitation has long earned them admiration among Kerobokan's guards and inmates and is now, finally, resonating with their fellow Australians.

"We are grateful that we have this time. We are trying as best we can to use this time constructively," says Michael O'Connell, SC, one of a team of lawyers who have taken on the case of Chan and Sukumaran pro bono.

The immediate task is to pursue two legal appeals. The first, to be heard by the state administrative court on Tuesday, is a direct challenge to the refusal of Indonesia's president Joko Widodo - universally known as Jokowi - to grant clemency to the pair.

Indonesian law requires that Jokowi's decision be made "after thoroughly considering the clemency application".

As revealed by Fairfax Media this week, Jokowi made his decision to reject the petition for mercy without the documentation that was lodged with his predecessor Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, much of it outlining the transformation of the men behind bars.

He acted upon little more than a list of 64 drug offenders on death row, making a blanket decision that they all must be killed.

There is also a separate bid for Indonesia's judicial commission to examine allegations that the judges who first handed Chan and Sukumaran the death penalty had asked for bribes in exchange for a lighter sentence.

The commission has asked for more "technical" information but there is cautious optimism it will at least thoroughly investigate the claims.

Overarching the legal actions though is another, critical consideration.

Can Jokowi and his government be persuaded to reconsider their hard-line stance on the executions? Is there a way there can be some kind of backdown that allows the Indonesian president to save face?

To achieve this requires extraordinary diplomacy, and a favourable turn in the domestic political climate.

Jokowi has declared that Indonesia is gripped by a drugs emergency that threatens to lay waste to a generation. He and his ministers constantly refer to statistics of dubious merit that the country has 4.5 million addicts and 50 people die each day from drugs.

His remedy for the "crisis" is simple - execute drug traffickers.

A quintessential political outsider with a reputation for personal integrity and decisiveness, it has been a difficult first few months in office for Jokowi.

He is battling the hostility of the old elites who continue to dominate the parliament and has been excoriated for mishandling of a bitter feud between the notoriously graft-ridden police and the country's anti-corruption commission.

"With a poor political base of his own, Jokowi needs to be popular to survive," says Endy Bayuni, senior editor at the Jakarta Post.

"To get public support, declaring a war on drugs was the easiest way ... I was surprised when he suddenly declared a war against drugs. It was hardly mentioned at all in the election campaign. My opinion is he was using this to shore up his authority."

Few doubt that Jokowi is sincere in his efforts to tackle the scourge of drugs, but there is little doubt he is milking it.

David McRae, of the Lowy Institute, recounts an incident at the opening of a mosque in Kalimantan last month, just two days after the first group of drug offenders were executed, where Jokowi made an address that resembled a campaign stump speech.

"Just imagine, 18,000 dying each year, every day 50 people. So the other day six people were executed. Everyone agrees, right?" Jokowi said.

"Agree," was the response from the crowd.

"I'm sure everyone agrees," Jokowi replied.

There is little doubt that Jokowi's hard-line stance is popular and it is against this backdrop that Australia is making its diplomatic entreaties.

After months of working largely behind the scenes, the Australian government has ratcheted up the rhetoric in the past week.

First came Foreign Minister Julie Bishop's observation that Australians might reconsider their holiday plans if the executions took place, comments that gave momentum to a "Boycott Bali" campaign.

This rankled Indonesians: why punish a peaceful Hindu island for a law that is applied nationwide? There was an inevitable backlash with many claiming  fewer yobbo Aussies would be no great loss. Others posted idyllic photos of Bali on Twitter to point out what Australians were missing out on.

The I Stand for Mercy campaign also failed to gain traction in Indonesia. For one, there were no Indonesian voices in the campaign. "It doesn't resonate well," says Jakarta-based international relations expert Pierre Marthinus. "If it had been a collaboration between Indonesia and Australia it would have sent a much more powerful message."

Then Prime Minister Tony Abbott raised the $1 billion in aid that Australia gave Indonesia in the aftermath of the 2004 tsunami that killed more than 200,000 people, saying Indonesia should "reciprocate" by sparing Chan and Sukumaran.

Marthinus believes Abbott has "jumped the shark" with the comments.

It was like "looking into the eye of a child who lost their parents and saying: 'You know what? We gave you money, now we want something in return'."

Australia is not the only country to make its displeasure known. The French, Philippines and Brazilian governments have been protesting about the pending executions of their citizens. The European Union and the United Nations have also very publicly urged Jokowi to reconsider.

"It was a big story but now it's bigger story and it's about foreign actions and how Jokowi will respond to international pressure," Bayuni says.

"This is unfortunate because it becomes a debate about foreign intervention, not a debate about the death penalty or the case of the two Australians."

Yohanes Sulaiman, a lecturer in international relations at the Indonesia Defence University, said foreign pressure puts the Indonesian president in a predicament.

"The last thing Jokowi wants to have is the image of him kowtowing to foreign governments," he told Deutsche Welle.

"The opposition and the media would have a field day condemning the government and that also runs counter to the image that Jokowi wants to cultivate, which is the image of him as a decisive leader."

Even so, it would be wrong to suggest that the international agitation over the executions has had no beneficial impact whatsoever.

Tim Lindsey, a professor of Asian law at Melbourne University, believes the highlighting of the "blatant double standard" of Indonesia's stance over the death penalty - fighting for the lives of its citizens on death row overseas while proceeding with executions in Indonesia - is gaining traction, especially in elite circles.

Last year Indonesia paid $2.1 million in "blood money" to stop the beheading of a maid who was sentenced to death in Saudi Arabia for murdering her employer's wife and stealing money.

There are some 230 Indonesians on death row abroad and, if future attempts to save vulnerable Indonesians fail due to the hypocrisy of Indonesia's policies, the local backlash could be severe.

To pull away from the executions, Tobias Basuki, of Jakarta's Centre for Strategic and International Studies, says Jokowi will likely need something "tangible".

On that score, Bayuni says a significant contribution to assisting Indonesia's battle against drugs could be helpful.

"This movement towards executions for drug offenders is ultimately about fighting drug abuse," he says.

Indeed, Fairfax Media understands that Australia has been workshopping ideas with interlocutors in Jakarta about new measures to fund drug rehabilitation projects in Indonesia.

Ultimately, the best hope for Chan and Sukumaran is time itself. If the executions can be delayed for a few months, the political heat in Indonesia could subside.

As Sulaiman points out, Jokowi "could use the oldest trick in the book -  just do nothing and people will forget about it".

Indonesian human rights groups are preparing an appeal to Indonesia's constitutional court about the validity of the death penalty.

A previous petition to the court was rebuffed but its decision ordered the government to review its capital punishment regime and urged that death row inmates be given 10 years to repent and rehabilitate to earn a permanent stay of execution.

Its recommendations have not been acted upon, and the human rights groups believe they have fresh grounds for a challenge.

"The petition is complex. There is not much time and a lot work to do [to get the legal case in order to submit it]," Bayuni says. "But, if it goes before the court, there should be a moratorium on executions while it is being considered.

"For me, that's the only way to get a stay of execution."

For the Sukumarans and the Chans, there is only gut-wrenching, agonising uncertainty. The diplomacy, the political intrigue, the strategies - and the critiques of strategies - are overwhelming and hard to navigate.

In the end, it boils down to one simple and profound plea.

"We just want mercy," Chinthu says.