When she tells her four companions this, the three of them who’ve been with her from before the rest of them died all get upset, more than they’ve been around her, beg her to reconsider, to please not leave them, to not abandon them, that they couldn’t do this without her. Khajee, who joined them only a few days ago, is just standing there with her arms folded, looking at Nakia as if to say I never trusted you anyway. Maybe she didn’t.
When they’ve made all their arguments, she quiets them with a gentle word. Pakpao and Suree are both in tears.
“I know this is the scariest part,” she says to them gently, making sure to smile. “Going on without the woman’s who’s been doing this all her life. But I’ve taught you everything you need to know, and we getting into the part of this you have to do yourselves. Remember what I said to you earlier. They find out my involvement, and that man will never face justice from any source at all; they’ll all believe our evidence was fabricated with Wakandan technology, and that this was all to blame on evil foreign influence.” And while the former’s something she didn’t have to worry about in the past, the latter’s the reason she has to stay in the shadows even now.
Of course, this was supposed to be her last mission. It may still end up being so, though Nakia doesn’t know what she’s going to do if she can’t even do this anymore.
“Well, of course we needed your help,” says Phueng.
“Which is why I helped you. But there’s a point you would have *had* to let go of me completely, and we weren’t far from it. And the things I’ve heard the four of you talk about doing…well, I am sorry I can’t stay to give you more advice, but if you’re thinking about taking down more than just Lakshay Dara, that would be all I could give you.”
“All you would be willing to give us, you mean,” retorts Khajee. “You could do more. You could take out both that horrible man who’s about to walk into the Government House and the even worse man who’s the only one likely to then force him out. Instead, this will probably just end with Dara sent home, a convenient foreign scapegoat for them, and nothing in this place changing at all, except when it does for the worse.” Sixteen years old, and Nakia thinks she’d be the smartest of these four women, if she just paused to think a little longer a little more often.
But her words are taking with the three older woman, with Pakpao even saying her response for her, “Maybe it doesn’t have to be that bad. Maybe we still have a chance, even without you, at least against the officials connected to Dara.”
“That’s a good place for you to go from,” Nakia tells her. “Remember, you can’t force people to be freed from someone they don’t think they want to be freed from. That always ends badly. But if Thailand falls victim to a tyrant the people genuinely hate, well, that’s when you should remember what I’ve spent the past week talking about.” She started, in fact, when Thailand’s new political crisis started to take visible form, and she realized these women might want to do far more than they were aiming for back when Nakia first met them. But Nakia’s never overthrown governments herself, and she definitely can’t risk it now.
She turns directly to Pheung, and says, “I do hope you find your sister.” Even if the odds are long, especially when she might have just died with the masses, and they would likely never have that confirmed if she did.
“Thank you,” she says, doubtful as she sounds, and she manages a smile back; Pakpao and Suree follow suit. “I suppose we can’t ask what you’ll be doing, exactly, but good luck to you.”
“While you should not, it is not impossible you may benefit from the results, but I can make no promises.” She can’t stay here in Thailand past tonight, but when Wakanda won’t be in position to pick her up for at least a week and probably longer, she’ll probably take the long way home. Though India, maybe. Definitely through Tanzania, to see if that wily-faced woman who claimed to be from the Chaste was telling the truth. Though she won’t dare stay there that long either.
Maybe there’ll even be time for the grief that would rip her apart if she let herself feel it. There hasn’t been so far. There rarely has been such time for her.