Daddy's Girl
Min stopped at her door and wondered how long these rooms would be left to her. Would the Vaakos try for the more prestigious suite? She put her hand to the door pad and was thankful she wasn't yet locked out. Riddick followed her in.
"Lock," she said. The rooms were dark but Min didn't call for lights, she only twitched up her lenses and moved silently through the apartment running a checklist through her mind: need it, don't need it, want it, don't want it, need it... Riddick stayed quiet and far enough behind her to not be a distraction. She could hear him picking up and putting down items but she ignored him.
"This is where you lived with him?"
Min was irritated by his intrusion. "Yes." Her tone did not invite further comment.
"For how long?" He had asked her this before and she was tempted to parrot her childish answer but she didn't want to play games with him.
"I was 11 or 12 when he found me on the breeder ship with my mother." She hoped that would end it. She was efficiently gathering objects she intended to keep with her. Riddick followed her into the bedroom where she dropped them onto the bed and moved to the closet.
"Twelve?" His voice was low and harsh and full of scorn. She just ignored him. "And you loved him?" It was less a question than an accusation.
Min stopped at a uniform that she brought to her face. Her throat was tight with suppressed emotion. "Of course," she rasped out, not following his train of thought and not really caring.
"Tears for a pedophile?" Riddick's voice was full of scorn.
Min caught her breath and rounded on him, tears in her eyes still un-spilled. "Ferrin means father in our language. Min means girl. He wouldn't use my real name in front of the 'Mongers. Everything was a pretense. Everything he did was to protect me!" She was exasperated; the man who picked up the subtleties of politics completely missed the subtleties of personal relationships? "And you," she was angry now, a feeling she hadn't let herself have yet. "You killed him." Her voice trailed off into a harsh whisper.
"I didn't kill him." Did his voice have a hint of sorrow in it? "He killed himself."
Something clicked for Min, his reaction to her saying to him, 'you keep what you kill,' she thought he was hiding something. She had meant to dig for it later, had distantly hoped it meant her father wasn't really dead but left behind on that hell planet. She hadn't let herself think on it then, it wasn't the 'now'.
'Now' she had to think on it, and come to terms with not just death but suicide. Her father had left her, abandon. And the 'now' included the knowledge that she couldn't leave the ship, she couldn't escape. Tiger, Tiger... Stop that! She wasn't going to go insane, she wasn't going to crack up. She was going to survive.
Damn it! Damn it! Damn it!
Min took a deep breath. She wasn't mad at Riddick, or even her father. She was deeply weary, maybe more tired than sad. She felt too dry for tears. She could cry... later...
"He kept me on this ship of death, I kept him in this life." She heard herself saying. "I guess he had to escape me first." Riddick, thankfully, didn't say anything. She wanted to say more, she wanted to talk about all the things she could never share with anyone else. But she was afraid that once started she'd never stop, like the tears.
She wanted to tell someone about how she had seen her mother again all those years ago, and how the cleansing had ruined her mind completely. That her mother had wanted to reveal Min's secret and her father's betrayal to the 'Mongers and Min had killed her. Min had survived.
She wanted to tell someone about the guilt her father had harbored for all the destruction he had caused, the pain and anger he had hidden from everyone but her. She wanted to say that she forgave her father for what he had done then and now. Min would survive.
She wanted to talk about what to do next, what her future might hold and how she might make it better, even though it wasn't the 'now' yet. She wanted to talk about how she will survive.
But they just stood silently in the dark together for a few minutes instead.
Min moved from the closet to the bed and gathered the few things she had dropped there. "This is all I need." She told him with a note of finality. "Let's go."
In the Lord Marshall's suite Min wandered the suite again, this time with her gadget. It looked like a puzzle cube with colored lights, but it was a fairly sophisticated device of her own design. And they did find cameras, but they seemed to all lead back to the bedroom. The previous Marshall had wanted personal surveillance. They were all turned off. Min breathed a sigh of relief.
Min avoided Riddick, she didn't want to talk, she wanted to clean up and sleep. He didn't seem to be the overly talkative type anyway. That suited her. He seemed to pick up on her mood and left the suite on some mission of his own. That suited Min too.
She took a shower and indulged in the crying she had been putting off all these long hours. She cried out every thing of all these long years and felt empty. She wondered briefly before she fell asleep in the old Marshall's oversized bed what she would fill up the rest of her life with.
End Part One