TW: Mention of child sexual abuse and suicide

“I thought naga were all about their nests, like we are with pandemoniums.”  She looked at me curiously.  “You seem…different.”

“It had more to do with my nest, specifically,” I answered slowly.  I wasn’t even sure why I was willing to talk with her about this, except she probably would understand better the complications of coming from a supernatural community that valued fighting – and wouldn’t care about what I’d done in the process.

“I was the youngest of three brothers.  We grew up being taught to fight, of course, but there was this time, when I was still pretty small, that my middle brother started acting weird.  Withdrawn, or sometimes he’d just burst out angrily about something.  It was odd.  But finally he came and talked to us and our parents, admitting that one of the instructors had sexually abused him.”  I sighed with pain at the memory.  “I was too young to fully understand what he meant, but I did get that he was saying someone hurt him, but our parents and oldest brother…they just didn’t seem to care.  They told him to toughen up, or to fight back, or whatever.  I don’t remember exactly, I just remember seeing my brother’s face filled with dismay when he realized his family wouldn’t help him.”  I paused, the grief filling me.  “He killed himself a few days later.  Our nest was small enough, we didn’t have our own school, so he deliberately did it at the human school, with a note indicting that training instructor, to try to get the humans involved or the police or something – to get anyone involved to stop the guy.  They did investigate, but the awful thing was the nest just swept it all under the rug.  There were a few police officers who were supernaturals and they just accepted it as a naga thing and never really looked into it past what the nest officials said.  And the worst thing?  My oldest brother, when he heard, I remember his first comment was that our brother was weak.  That he wouldn’t have committed suicide if he wasn’t too weak to handle it.”

I clenched my hands into fists, still filled with anger at those words.  “I was too young to do much at the time, but I still started my plan then.  I trained in every way I could, but secretly.  I had a friend in on my plan, who’d been friends with my brother who died, and she helped me, sparring with me, coming up with new ideas, everything she could.  Publically, I tried to be mediocre.  I was okay in fights, but not great – that kind of thing.  Secretly, I was learning every form of martial art I could, studying strategies, even studying that specific guy’s fighting techniques.  So when I was finally old enough to feel confident about being able to face him, I started calling him out on what he did to my brother, publically.  He was annoyed, but there wasn’t much he could do about it.  Finally, I challenged him to a Score Match.  Usually, they’re just to basically solidify your standing in the nest.  They’re usually not fatal, but it’s allowed.  It’s within the match’s parameters for someone to die.  I told him if he didn’t accept the match, I would keep hounding him about my brother until one or the other of us died, but if he won, I would shut up.  He figured he’d win, of course, because I was supposedly just okay in combat while he was a training instructor and knew a lot about combat, and he really wanted me to shut up.  So he agreed.”

I smiled, really darkly now.  This was the only relief to my grief over my brother.  “I killed him.  Finally.  I even made a statement to the spectators that finally, after all these years, my brother had justice.  They all knew what he did, not just to my brother, either, but they never stopped him, never prevented him from being around other young naga.  I was so sick of my whole nest, after everything that happened – I just left.  I wanted nothing to do with my family or nest ever again, after that.  I only stayed to wait until I was able to avenge my brother, but after that, I just wanted free.”

I shrugged after a short pause.  “I know not all naga nests are like that.  Probably a lot of them would have done something about that, because they were letting a predator into their nest and just leaving it there, which is not how naga nests should act, but my years with my nest kind of soured me on naga generally.  I spent most of my years with my nest secretly training, knowing almost all the naga around me just didn’t care about what happened to my brother.  I was never close to any of them after his death, other than his friend, Kaya.  She stayed when I left, because she was involved with someone by then, and I never quite understood why she was okay staying in that place, but that was her decision.  I, however, just didn’t want the bother of trying to get into another nest and then maybe finding out it was rotten on the inside, too.”

“So you turned to protecting kids,” she said quietly, as if putting the pieces together.

“Kind of.  Yeah.  That was my plan, originally, I wanted to make sure other kids were safe from people like that instructor.  I figured protecting kids, well, they’re innocent, right?  That should be a good plan.  I didn’t realize until I got into it that most of the kids who needed protection were rich brats who weren’t exactly fun to be around.  I kind of lucked out when I found the job taking care of Ambrose.  He’s a good kid.  Well, man, now.”

“You still see him?”  She seemed surprised.  “That’s a long time to keep in contact with someone you were taking care of.  Or do you still protect him?”

I shook my head.  “No, we just recently ran into each other again, actually – first time since that day.  But he wants to be friends again, which means I have to figure out stuff in my life to make that happen.”

“The bad kind of stuff?”  She raised an eyebrow.  “Or just…normal stuff?”

“About…35ish years ago, I think?  I was working as a mercenary,” I explained.  “I hired out to this gang.  It was supposed to be gang-on-gang violence only, and I was very specific when contracting with them that I wasn’t going to be involved in anything against kids or non-combatants.  Period.  No exceptions.  At first it was fine, but we were ramping up to this big plan they had to make the other gang give in.  I get there on the big day, and there’s this group of women and kids just huddled in the warehouse, crying and looking terrified.  Turns out, the big plan was to kidnap most of the other gang members’ family members – kids, wives, and girlfriends, in particular, and use them to force the other gang to surrender.  I just kind of looked at them for a moment, then at the guy who hired me, and he just gave me this smirk and went ‘this won’t be a problem, right?’”  I rolled my eyes.  Yeah, like just assuming things would be fine would negate my whole contract.  The guy had probably assumed that since they were that far into the plan, I wouldn’t dare turn on him or walk out, but he was wrong about that.  “I said ‘no, of course not,’ and then I killed him and the rest of the gang members in the warehouse.  They’d set up the location as a good place to be able to hold off the opposing gang if necessary, so it was actually pretty well set up to hold them off until the opposing gang showed up to get their families.  The gang that hired me was not happy that I’d turned on them and pretty mad that I’d ruined all their plans and basically put them in the hot seat, instead, since their big plan was a washout and they lost several people.  I didn’t actually join the other gang – though they offered when they found out what I’d done – just walked away from the whole affair, planning on that being the end of it.”

“And it wasn’t?”  She guessed.

I nodded.  “Some of the human members of the gang came after me for a few years, but they weren’t the problem.  The problem was these three supernatural members, a shifter, a nightwing, and a centaur.  They’ve kept hunting me since then.  Or they did, for about 15 years, until I changed my name and kind of disappeared into this city.  It’s been about 20 years since I moved here and they haven’t found me.  I’ve tried to keep tabs on them, see if they were looking into me.  I even paid a techno vampire to basically alert me if they ever looked for me online, more than just a basic search, at least.  It pings every now and then, like they’re still keeping a lookout for me, but they’re not actively searching.”

I leaned forward to rest my forearms on my legs.  “Thing is, I can’t risk letting Ambrose come around me if they’re still after me, minimal effort on their part or no.  If they knew for a moment that I had someone I genuinely cared about in my life, they’d love to take out their revenge on him.  They’d see it as getting even for what I did, even if I still see the whole thing as that gang’s fault to begin with – I was clear on what my limits were, and they just ignored them.  But that’s irrelevant to these three.  I tried talking to them once, but they wouldn’t listen to reason, so now…looks like I’m going to need to turn the tables and start hunting them down for a chance.  Kill them, if I have to, to make sure they’ll finally drop this.”

She didn’t seem surprised at that plan.  “You think you can take all three of them on your own?”

I considered that.  “Honestly?  No.  Not anymore.  But hopefully I can weed them out a bit, get them alone if I can.”

“That’s kind of a shame,” she murmured.  “I admit, I admired you.  Before you, I hadn’t seen anyone, even a naga, being willing to take on two demons at once without batting an eye.  I know it didn’t turn out so well for you, and honestly, I kind of feel bad about that.”

“Don’t.  You were just doing your job.”

She sighed deeply.  “Maybe.  But…I don’t think I’d have been doing the job if I knew all the details.  I wasn’t quite as strict as you about no kids, obviously.  I was okay with kidnapping them, holding them for ransom, that sort of thing – just no actual violence against the kids themselves, okay?  I was young back then, I didn’t think about the possibility of the mental effects of being kidnapped, so to me, I sort of saw it as no harm, no foul if the kid was safely returned without physical damage.  Not sure I’d say the same today, but that was my philosophy back then.

“Then while I was in recovery, one of my bosses, well…he was mad about the whole thing.  Really mad about the whole thing.  He kept ranting to anyone and everyone and in the process I got the full picture of what he planned.  He wanted to kidnap your kid and keep him.  Not simply hold him for ransom, but keep him, torture him, and by that means force his dad to keep paying out endlessly.  He figured he couldn’t just grab a high-profile guy and not have that looked into by every law enforcement agency in the country, but a random kidnapping where they maybe never find the kid again?  Sometimes that happens.  I don’t know if he thought about it long-term, like why the diamond guy wouldn’t go to the police eventually or someone figure out that he was making regular payments.  Anyway, that boss also had the idea that eventually your kid might be able to make diamonds, too, so he figured it was a win-win sort of situation.  But it all relied on basically torturing a kid for years and never giving him back.”

Well then.  I’d been right in my guess that there was more to it than a simple kidnapping.  I hadn’t particularly considered that result, but I was extra glad now that Ambrose never fell into their hands.

“I kind of…wasn’t so thrilled about his plan,” she admitted wryly.  “And he was of course intending to try again, so I just sort of…ended that whole line of thought.  Thankfully the next boss thought the diamond guy was too risky and decided to leave your kid alone, so they eventually forgot all about it, but I know that feeling of being blindsided by the intentions of your employer and turning on them.”

She’d actually been through a very similar experience, then.  Huh.

“But I think it’s unfortunate that what I did back then – and what Greg did – hurt you that much.  Sounds like you’ve still been able to do some of what you used to, which I guess is good, but I wish now I hadn’t ever done that.  I liked the idea of a naga fearless enough to take on two demons, I kinda regret that I messed that up with my own hands.”  She did look genuinely regretful.

“I knew the consequences,” I said slowly.  “When I engaged both of you.  I was pretty sure what the outcome would be.  Maybe I wasn’t fearless so much as just accepting the consequences.”

“Maybe,” she allowed.  “I still kinda regret my involvement.”

“It’s the past,” I pointed out.  “Not much we can do about it now.”

“Yeah, I suppose.”  She was quiet for a bit.  “So what do you do now?”

“Bartending, currently.  I was trying for careers that they wouldn’t think to look for me.”  I rolled my eyes.  “Not the world’s most enjoyable career, at least not for me.  I’m not cut out for a customer service job.”

“I had a service job I enjoyed, but I was hired to be part of a haunted house thing – scaring people.”  She grinned darkly.  “That was fun, scaring people and getting paid for it.  But yeah, customer service isn’t my thing, either.”

“What do you do, then?”  I was kind of curious.  She, like me, couldn’t really engage in the physical jobs we were accustomed to, though by now, we should both have gotten some idea of alternative careers.

“I teach.  Not at a school, no,” she shuddered at the idea, “boxing.  I own a boxing gym and teach people.  Humans are a little doubtful at first, getting coached by a woman who uses a cane and can’t show them how personally, but they learn.  They learn that they improve a lot under me and some of them have gone on to win some pretty big titles.  Sometimes I get supernaturals in there, too, and they know what I am and some of them are pretty keen on being taught by a demon, actually.  It’s not quite as satisfying as doing it myself, but it’s pretty close, and it’s nice to see people get better with my teaching.  It’s really nice to see someone who couldn’t hold a proper punch manage to knock out his first opponent in the ring.”  She smiled.  “Yeah, that’s a fun thing.”

I honestly had never thought about teaching any form of combat, but maybe that would be a potential career option.  At some point.