Timeless

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter 16

WARNING: Sex, just so you know . . . 

            "You did that," Fiona spoke quietly, almost to herself. "You do that. You kill people." She looked up from her tea, staring at Ri in, not horror or fear or disgust, but in curiosity.

            "I defend myself," Ri corrected. "I don't enjoy killing, and I don't kill just because I can. And if my hand is forced, I make sure that their death is as quick and painless as I can manage. But yes, I have killed, and what happened this morning, however gruesome, is not a new experience for me."

            "If you knew what was going to happen, why didn't you say something? Shaw called for someone to ask to spare him, why didn't you?"

"Because it wasn't my place. This was about the clan, and their losses, the crimes against them. For me to get in the middle of that, it wouldn't've been right."

"Wait, wait . . . when did you ever see someone beheaded?" Fiona was still in shock, slow to respond, and speaking and thinking, more or less, calmly. For now, anyway.

            "In Saudi Arabia. I was traveling, and the day I arrived, on the way to my lodgings, I passed an execution. Two gay men caught in bed together. They were gone before I could understand what was happening. It . . . shook me. A local friend, Arkaan Bangura, I call him Ark, he had to drag me out of the square. It was the first time since that summer that I'd felt . . . vulnerable, weak, like I couldn't protect myself. And that scared me more than anything else. When I was leaving, there was another execution; a handful of apostates, meaning people who had renounced their faith, i.e. Islam. I stayed and watched the whole thing through, just to prove to myself that I could.

"Ark was . . . furious with me, kept telling me that doing so would bring nothing but illness. Wabadhalik sawf tajlub almarad faqat," She repeated his words in Arabic. "I cried, almost threw up, and when it was over I realized that he had been right. It hadn't helped. That . . . experience, isn't something that can be helped; only processed. I've seen a couple more since then, but it never gets easier. You just get better, quicker, at processing and moving on. That's all you can do."

"You . . . you were in Saudi Arabia?" Fiona was flabbergasted.

"Yeah," Ri nodded. "You remember after what happened to me, Mom insisted that I get some form of help, talk to someone?" Fiona nodded. "Well, I found that help online, an anonymous blog where people could share their experiences. It was easier than those meetings she used to drag me too. I was truly anonymous, no one even had to know my gender if I didn't want them to. And something about writing instead of speaking, it made a difference.

"Anyway, a lot of the people I met were from all over the world. That's how I learned most of the languages I know. And after a while, a group of us got really close and decided to start communicating, actually communicating, like with video chats and the occasional letter. We became each other's sanctuary. Then Mom decided that the internet wasn't a viable form of therapy or counseling, and tried to make me stay in a hospital for a stint."

"She . . . did?" This seemed to shock Fiona more than anything else that had been said over the past several hours they'd been talking, not including the time Ri would take every once in a while to go check on Austin (who maintained that he had no use for her).

"She meant well," Ri defended their mother. "But you know her. When she decides something, she's right, and gods help you if you tell her otherwise."