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“And one of them shot me.”
“They were bad men. So it would make sense to be glad they were dead.”
“I am.”
“And killing them was self-defense. They were both armed. Dad said the other one had a gun, too.”
“That’s right.”
“Most philosophers agree that killing in self-defense isn’t immoral. Not all, but a significant majority. The legal system has justifiable homicide, too. So you shouldn’t feel bad about it. But killing a human being is ... I don’t know. It should be significant. It should be monumental. Even if it was a bad life, it’s a life that’s stopped.”
Gia smiled. Maybe Bo didn’t realize it, but he hadn’t asked simply out of curiosity. He’d asked because he was struggling with being glad those men were dead and not understanding what that meant about him. They were having the same existential doubt, but she was the only one who’d killed anyone.
Who would Bo have grown up to be if the Horde had been outlaw during their formative years? Would his unique brain have been able to find a place to settle in a family that broke big laws regularly, who trafficked drugs and war, who killed? He’d grown up with a club that operated as law and sometimes levied harsh, violent penalties, but he knew little of that. He could be shielded from that part of his family because it didn’t affect his daily life.
She remembered her talk with Tasha at the clinic, her worries that the club’s response to Zelda’s attack would set them all on a one-way express back to their outlaw days. Now Gia wondered how Bo would handle that if Tasha was right. She could not imagine her kind, gentle, ethics-obsessed brother finding a way to make sense of the people he loved doing the kind of dark work Gia knew they’d done.
But she could imagine that knowledge breaking him.
“Hey,” she said, patting her makeshift overbed table with her hand to get his attention. “Don’t let your thoughts make circles about this.” When he was little, that was how he’d describe the overwhelming overthinking that usually led to a meltdown or shutdown, and they’d never stopped calling it that, just as they’d always called his shutdowns ‘hitting pause.’ “I’m feeling all the things you’re describing, too. It is significant to take a life. I feel that. I just don’t feel sorry those men are dead, and I don’t think I feel bad that I’m the one who killed them. Mostly I think I feel ... stressed out, because it was scary, really scary, and I’m still feeling that. I’m kinda feeling it more now than I was then.”
She was having nightmares, too, but they were weird. Usually her dreams were like movies, strongly narrative, with full video and audio, though their genre was often experimental cinema. But last night, she’d woken three times with a scream lodged behind her teeth and her heart racing like she’d run a 10K, and all she remembered was the feeling, the fear, and the certainty that she’d been dreaming about what had happened. No images or sounds at all.
“That’s trauma,” Bo said. “I’ve read a lot about trauma. Its greatest impact often happens after the danger has passed, when your brain is no longer sending survival signals to your body. When things are quiet again and you can think about what happened.”
Gia had read deeply about trauma, too, particularly PTSD. She wasn’t a psychologist, but psych theory was important to her research. In outlaw communities, PTSD was like lactose intolerance in the general population: far more people had it than would acknowledge it.
If she had PTSD over that scene, then she intended to be one of those who ignored it.
To her brother, she said, “Yeah. Now that things are quiet, I feel the fear I didn’t feel then.”
“I feel fear about it, too, and I wasn’t even there. I see you lying here, I see your leg, I think about what almost happened, and I feel so scared my stomach hurts. But you’re right here. You’re safe now. I don’t have to be afraid, and you don’t, either.”
Bo did something then that caught the breath in her throat. He leaned forward, picked up her hand, and set his cheek on her palm.
From the people he cared about, he would tolerate a touch, and sometimes, when he recognized the need for it in someone he really loved, he would offer a touch. But it was exceedingly rare that he wanted touch for himself, when that contact would offer him comfort.
“I love you, Gia,” he said, holding her hand in both of his, his cheek resting on her palm. “I don’t like it when you’re away, and I don’t know what life would be if you died.”
A swell of emotion filled Gia’s chest, stoppered by the breath lodged in her throat. Her eyes itched and blurred. She flexed her fingers, holding her brother in the only way she could.
“I love you, Bo. I’m here. I’m right here, and I’m okay.”
He sighed and sat up, dropping her hand unceremoniously. “Good. Do you want to watch television?”
Oh, how she loved him.
~oOo~
When Gia’s father returned home late that afternoon, Zaxx came with him. Gia was surprised, but pleased to see him.
Nothing huge had happened since they’d sat together on the sofa in his defiled living room, but that crisis seemed to have changed things between them. It was a reset, a return to the tiny seedling of a maybe-relationship that had sprouted between them in May, but with all that had happened in the intervening weeks part of their story now.
She hadn’t seen him since Dad had picked her up from his sofa late on Saturday morning and carried her to Mom’s SUV, but they’d texted fairly regularly. Not about relationship things, but still, it was nice to have a conversation going with him. He checked in to see how she was, and she checked in for updates about him and Zelda.
Zelda was doing impressively well. Not drowning in trauma or pain but doggedly determined to keep her head up and not let those bastards have more of her than they’d already taken.
Gia had grown deeply fond of her in only a couple days. She thought they vibed pretty similarly, personality-wise. Their present lives and future plans were quite different, but maybe if Zelda had had Gia’s opportunities, or if Gia had not, they might have ended up in similar places.
