Duty

“What other choice do I have?” she said quietly, calmly as she held the detonator.

The dust settled around them, frozen in time the sirens outside seemed to be rendered mute by her voice.

“Did my parents die for nothing?” she took a deep breath “I will carry out their will…their deaths must not be in vain” she spat on the ground with disgust “my life means nothing if I can’t avenge their deaths”.

She lowers her head “What will anything mean if I can’t do it?.....What will I mean?”

They both took deep breaths, the young girl with tears in her eyes held the detonator as if it was the only tether that held her to this world. The man stood shaking on the opposite side of the room he couldn’t find the will to speak within him only a dry rasp escaped his throat.

He thought of the pointlessness of it all, they had lost we had won why is she so intent on fighting for something that doesn’t exist anymore? He finally looked up and managed to summon up from deep within him the will to speak; he whispered “…But the war is over”

She looked up at him with fire and hatred I her eyes “Goddamnit!” she screamed hoarsely as saliva flew from her mouth catching the glints of the fires burning in the street outside the window as it traveled from her “Mine isn’t! Who said the war was over? The government? That killed my family in front of me? The government that hunted us down like dogs?” she screamed and her voice cracked with a hatred that made the man flinch with pain “My war never ended….I am carrying out the will of those who came before me”.

The man looked deeply into the girls eyes and took a hesitant step forward “This won’t solve anything…it won’t bring your parents..”

She snapped her head upwards and stared into the man with an intensity and darkness that rendered the man on the verge of sickness “Stop!...you don’t know anything!...Don’t you dare lecture me! It was your people that brought this on us! You did this! I am the end result of your 'pacification' this is what YOU made!”

She lowered her head once again and whispered “I have to finish this” slowly she raised her deep and beautiful brown eyes and screamed, “WHAT DOES ANY OF THIS MEAN IF I CAN’T FINISH WHAT THEY STARTED!” her hand tightened around the detonator and the man saw her fingers beginning to flex.

He screamed “Why do you have to live this way!...Why does it have to end like this?...What will this accomplish?” She looked at him calmly and without a pause said “This means that the cycle begins again and surely your people will avenge you and my people will thirst for vengeance again and we perpetuate this sad dance until there is no one left…If that is what it takes to avenge them….mom….dad….” she paused and choked back a sob a composed herself with the grim look of duty and whispered “Then I would do this again….and again…and again…until their blood is avenged and this curse is lifted from me”

She smiled with tears streaming from her eyes and a deep sadness issuing forth from her like a miasma filling the room with its cloying mist.

“But why me?” he asked. “Why call me here if you’re going to kill us both?”

She faltered and almost buckled under the question, she look one last time into the man’s eyes and said “I didn’t want to be alone anymore” the man once again flinched under the weight of this young girls words.

She looked to be only fourteen he thought how can this much pain be inside such a small and delicate frame. He pondered this quietly and began to speak but it was for naught.

The men outside never saw the blast coming they only saw light and then everything was darkness. One tale of revenge ends and another begins.