glowblack,2,300Dark Shadows/glow
Ch. 9
Li was cleaning the table. He didn't know why. He hadn't told her to. It wasn't even really dirty.
"Wow," he said in mock amazement. "Do you cook too?"
"Yes," she replied, not pausing in her task.
"Tsk, tsk," he said, "It's too bad you won't be able to."
She looked up, puzzled.
"You know, since you're not allowed to use the knives or anything."
His words stung. She bit her lip and scrubbed harder at the tabletop.
He studied her for a second. "Don't you ever stick-up for youself?"
"What?"
"You'll let anyone walk all over you, do whatever they want. Why don't you ever stick-up for yourself?"
"Why should I?"
"That table ain't gettin' any cleaner," he said. She stopped scrubbing.
"If I held a gun to your head right now, if I was gonna shoot you, what woudl you do?"
"I don't see wh--"
"What would you do?" he repeated.
She thought back to that first night. The blade Riddick had held to her wrist.
"Nothing."
"Right," he said. "Now if I had that gun pressed to the forehead of someone else, anyone else, some person you had never seen before, what would you do?"
"I'd try to stop you," she said.
"Now why would you save some stranger and not yourself? Why would you stand there and let someone insult you to your face? And why, where there's no one around to even do that, would you purposely hurt yourself?"
It wasn't anger that seemed to motivate him now. It was something else. Something Li couldn't quite place.
"Not everyone's tears are water, Riddick," she said. "You know that."