if I even think about blinking or moving, even a millimeter, I don’t know what’s going to happen. I’m conflicted, being dragged in so many different directions all at once by my emotions that I can’t decipher what I’m thinking or feeling right now. The pain in his voice upsets me. The fact that he won’t see things my way angers me. And the beauty of his sentiment makes my heart feel swollen and bruised. Almost guilty somehow. How can I be mad at him, or hold his actions against him, when he goes and says something like that?
He means every single word. There are no closed doors with him. Those crystal clear blue eyes of his allow me to see directly into his soul, and I know he’s telling the truth.
“You can be mad at me all you like. And yes, you can go whenever you like, Sophia. I won’t ever try and stop you from leaving here if that’s what you truly want. But I want you to listen to me, and I want you to really listen to what I’m about to say, okay? Can you do that?”
I feel like being stubborn and denying him his request, but when I look at him I can see how earnestly he’s asking. He’s not trying to be a dick; he’s not trying to make me angry. It’s hard to say no to the man when he’s looking at you the way he’s looking at me right now.
“Fine. Say what you want to say. I’ll listen. Properly, I swear.”
Jamie nods. Spinning his scotch glass around and around on the bar in front of him, he stares at the liquid inside, apparently trying to construct what he wants to tell me in his head before he allows himself to say it out loud. After a long, drawn out minute, his gaze returns to me.
“There was an English guy in Afghanistan. He was a member of the Royal Marines but the British government loaned him to us as an informant. He’d been taken prisoner by a group of rebels after his unit’s transport hit and IED and killed everyone but him. For nearly two years the rebels kept him hostage in a cave system, giving him just enough food and water so that he could survive. They would torture him every day. They wanted to know everything he knew. They would pull his fingers and his toenails out one by one. They would pull his teeth out too, whenever he wouldn’t give them information they wanted. This guy, Andrew, he held out for months. He took the pain and the torment, and he let them take his fingernails and his teeth, until the people who were holding him captive realized they weren’t going to get anything out of him.
“Now, that was a really bad position to be in for Andrew. The only reason they were keeping him alive was because he was worth something. If he wasn’t valuable to them alive in any way, he sure as hell would be valuable to them dead. See they don’t just kill people in the shadows. They want the world to see. They gather their friends. They gather the world’s media. They make us watch on television as they force their prisoners to tell lies about their countries, and then they make us watch as they cut off their heads and burn their bodies in cages.
“Andrew nearly died that way. They sat him down in front of a camera and they told him what they wanted him to say, otherwise they were going to have their friends in England track down his wife and two small kids, and they were gonna have them murdered in their beds. You always think you won’t cave, that nothing they can do or say to you will make you give in and repeat the hatred they want to spread, but when they threaten your loved ones…” Jamie looks pained. He flinches a little, small creases forming between his eyebrows. “So Andrew sat down and said what they wanted him to say, and they filmed it. The bastards restrained him while they tried to slit his throat from behind, so the camera could see. They almost finished the job. Andrew had a scar that ran from his left ear too his Adam’s apple, but that’s where it stopped. Miraculously one of our units launched an assault on the caves.
He means every single word. There are no closed doors with him. Those crystal clear blue eyes of his allow me to see directly into his soul, and I know he’s telling the truth.
“You can be mad at me all you like. And yes, you can go whenever you like, Sophia. I won’t ever try and stop you from leaving here if that’s what you truly want. But I want you to listen to me, and I want you to really listen to what I’m about to say, okay? Can you do that?”
I feel like being stubborn and denying him his request, but when I look at him I can see how earnestly he’s asking. He’s not trying to be a dick; he’s not trying to make me angry. It’s hard to say no to the man when he’s looking at you the way he’s looking at me right now.
“Fine. Say what you want to say. I’ll listen. Properly, I swear.”
Jamie nods. Spinning his scotch glass around and around on the bar in front of him, he stares at the liquid inside, apparently trying to construct what he wants to tell me in his head before he allows himself to say it out loud. After a long, drawn out minute, his gaze returns to me.
“There was an English guy in Afghanistan. He was a member of the Royal Marines but the British government loaned him to us as an informant. He’d been taken prisoner by a group of rebels after his unit’s transport hit and IED and killed everyone but him. For nearly two years the rebels kept him hostage in a cave system, giving him just enough food and water so that he could survive. They would torture him every day. They wanted to know everything he knew. They would pull his fingers and his toenails out one by one. They would pull his teeth out too, whenever he wouldn’t give them information they wanted. This guy, Andrew, he held out for months. He took the pain and the torment, and he let them take his fingernails and his teeth, until the people who were holding him captive realized they weren’t going to get anything out of him.
“Now, that was a really bad position to be in for Andrew. The only reason they were keeping him alive was because he was worth something. If he wasn’t valuable to them alive in any way, he sure as hell would be valuable to them dead. See they don’t just kill people in the shadows. They want the world to see. They gather their friends. They gather the world’s media. They make us watch on television as they force their prisoners to tell lies about their countries, and then they make us watch as they cut off their heads and burn their bodies in cages.
“Andrew nearly died that way. They sat him down in front of a camera and they told him what they wanted him to say, otherwise they were going to have their friends in England track down his wife and two small kids, and they were gonna have them murdered in their beds. You always think you won’t cave, that nothing they can do or say to you will make you give in and repeat the hatred they want to spread, but when they threaten your loved ones…” Jamie looks pained. He flinches a little, small creases forming between his eyebrows. “So Andrew sat down and said what they wanted him to say, and they filmed it. The bastards restrained him while they tried to slit his throat from behind, so the camera could see. They almost finished the job. Andrew had a scar that ran from his left ear too his Adam’s apple, but that’s where it stopped. Miraculously one of our units launched an assault on the caves.
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