Unmasked
A few days later Min sat in the dark in the bowels of the flagship and tried not to think about all the things Riddick had just said to her. She tried not to think about all the things the five captains had told her. She tried not to think about her Ferrin. She tried not to let the voice in her head think for her.
I AM you; you are just the mask.
I am me! You are just the voice in MY head.
This is madness. This is what madness really was; fighting with yourself and losing.
This is growing up. Deal with all the things you don't want to hear, deal with the now and move on with your life. No revenge, no delusions of grandeur, no epic adventure to reclaim a dead planet and a dead race.
No! They were wrong about Ferrin.
Forgive him.
He saved me. He taught me to survive. He loved me!
He wasn't a hero. He didn't leave you to become a hero in his stead. Forgive him.
Min cried.
Riddick had said much the same thing to her after the captains left. Revenge was a waste of time, there was nothing to save, it was time to move on.
"You! You're planning on leaving, there's nothing here for you. So leave and let me do what I have to do!" She hissed at him, afraid her voice would break in front of him. What the captains said didn't matter; she could still build her mythology without them. She had Nor for her strength. She understood politics. She could wield this killing machine for a better purpose than religious ideology.
"If I thought you could build a new Fury," his voice was unreadable to her, "I would have let you even if it meant you destroyed the Elementals along the way. That would have been interesting."
"But now?" She challenged him, knowing what was coming but making him say it. Let him prove it. He wouldn't convince her, but let him try.
"It's pointless."
That was it?
"It's something!" She yelled back. It was something to hold onto, someplace to go, something to drive her. It was something other than facing the now.
Riddick cocked his head in that completely arrogant way that meant he thought he knew better than she did. He thought he knew what she was thinking. He thought he knew everything!
...And you think you're all grown up? You're acting more like a child now than...
No!
You don't need this mask to go on living with the truth.
No. It's not the truth.
Ferrin failed. Forgive him.
A few days after her recovery Riddick had simply called all the captains she had found to meet with him. He didn't tell her. She had come to his suite at his request only to face a new reality. She had no future mythos to build for herself. Riddick had decided to stay. And the captains...
The captains had been unimpressed to finally meet MinW'neta. Daughter of the Purifier? They called him Coward. They called him Betrayer. It couldn't be the truth.
Forgive him.
They knew about her father. They knew about the moles. He had warned them, the moles were to be allowed to catch only the Furyans they didn't trust, so the future insurrection would go smoothly. The Lord Marshal would be satisfied he had weeded out all Furyans and wouldn't look for their own moles. He wouldn't see it when the time came...
But the time never came.
Meanwhile Furyans died of attrition in the ranks. They shared in the destruction of more and more worlds, and word never came that it was time to rise up. The revolution never took place. He never called them to arms because the time was never right.
Now the five captains were all that was left. No soldier in the ranks lived to old age. No Furyan in the labs was worth waking out of stasis. There was nothing left but to live out their lives and die in the now.
No!
Forgive him, child, it's time to grow up and face facts. There is no mythology to build on.
Min cried in the dark.
'It's pointless.'
All Elementals were not to blame. Revenge was pointless. Riddick had laughed at her. All she would do is become what she hated, and create some other future Riddick who would kill her for her crimes.
Go live life in the now. Riddick wasn't leaving the ship rudderless to cause more destruction. Between the Elementals and the 'Mongers he would never live in peace unless he stayed. He had his own ideas about what to do with this tiger. Drop the mask.
But how?
Go find out...
How?
...go be Zemma.
End Part Two