Hovsep held his head in his scarred hands. He shouldn’t care. He should tell himself that these kids deserved it. He would have done that a long time ago, before he met Elia.
He heard her voice now. Filling his head with her trembling pain, her trembling
darkness.
I never meant to hurt them. But they had hurt her. Their words had cut into tender
heart and bleeding flesh, but she never struck back. It hurt her even more to see them in pain. To see Hovsep in pain.
Why didn’t you save yourself, Elia? Why did you have to be so good?
He remembered the prisoners’ faces.
They wouldn’t give up, but neither would the captors. It would be answers or death, and no answers would come.
The old Hovsep would have let them die.
The old Hovsep wouldn’t give an inch,
wouldn’t care any more, but not the new Hovsep, not Elia.
His right arm trembled as he drew out his phone, and his index finger shook even harder as he typed in a number he hadn’t called in months. Then he said those words he always hated to say.
“I need your help.”
Nihilistic Porcupine 