A Hunter's Curiosity

[Verana]

No shoulder-holding then. Vera withdrew her hand as it was torn away from Naya’s shoulder and let it grab at the strap to her rifle. The other girl was upset, rightfully so, but this anger would get her nowhere. Vera took a step back as the shouting began. Part of her wanted to shout right back, but whether through virtue of her training or simply having the patience and understanding for it she didn’t. In fact not much of a single word parted Vera’s lips as she stood still, remained steadfast in her decision.

“I can’t.” She said once more defying what seemed like an order barked in fury. “It’s too heavy for me. It’s a collapsed building, Naya.”

Vera shook her head and offered yet another frown.

“Did you know this person?”

 

[Naya Everos]

Did she know him? Did she know him?

She shook, the question so utterly stupid, Naya wanted to collapse a building on top Vera too. "Yes you can," she snapped, vehemence in her tone. "Don't think I don't know what you force users can do- what you have done!" She stepped forward, every repressed bite of pain she had felt walking to this very spot spitting out of her. It didn't matter that Vera didn't do this. She wasn't fixing it. She wasn't helping.

"What's the point of you if you won't get him out, why are you even here?" Her yells echoed off the trees, her spear raised and jabbed forward with each accusation. "You promised me you would- you promised!" She chucked the spear the pointed tip embedding into the ground at Vera's feet and vibrating there. Naya panted, each pain breath catching hoarsely as she glared. Tears fell free down her face. She glared harder.

 

[Verana]

Vera stepped back from the spear as it came flying towards her feet. That patient frown, the one that Vera struggled to keep going turned sour, turned indignant at the screams of this heartbroken girl’s flood of emotion. This was far beyond Vera, this was far beyond Naya too. This was a whole week’s worth of work, maybe two weeks, and that was with at least ten more people involved.

The spear in the ground tore from the soil and flew back behind Vera in an arch as the shadows around her eyes seemed to grow darker for each word that was thrown at her. It was a maelstorm of everything she knew that Naya had held back on the way to this place. It was reaching the point where it wouldn’t have mattered whether or not Vera was able to help.

“I signed up for rescuing survivors!” She yelled back. “We’re two people, two kids, and this is enough work for a farking platoon of soldiers. Get it through your farking head that we can’t do this just the two of us, and that no matter how much I would try, and try, and try to lift this debris off of him, we wouldn’t get very far at all before I was spent.”

Vera’s felt her throat tear, the frustration causing her no less anguish than it did for Naya.

“So quit using me as your farking scapegoat. That man is burnt to a crisp because of the tyranny of your own people, your own neighbors from around here. If you want to give this place a proper farewell and a burial you are going to need more farking people than just me!”

Her finger pointed back towards the greater settlement as she began to step even further away.

“If you don’t want my help, I can fark off.” Vera said, continuing her pace backwards. “But don’t go expecting me to perform some form of farking miracle that I can’t perform.”

 

[Naya Everos]

Naya quaked, practically vibrating in place her whole body shook. She couldn't process this. She couldn't handle it. She couldn't Vera was suppose to help, not make it worse. But what else did she expect from a jedi? The vicious voice inside her head concluded.

"Fine then, go!" She barked, pointing out her hand as she did so. "Leave, fuck off! I don't need you. We don't need you. Leave us alone." The last word was punctuated by a sudden burst of the force off her, the power so strong it even caught and upended rubble. No doubt a smaller human body would find itself set back with it, and tossed disconcertingly far to boot. Her anger was cut short by a panicked squeak, present enough this time to process exactly who had done that.

Her hand only shook hard, the girl snatching back into her chest in horror.

 

[Verana]

This anger wasn’t becoming of her, Vera knew that. Especially not the thoughts running rampant across her mind as she tried to find ways to push Naya further into the ground and assert just exactly how dumb this was. It was like the masters said with the intoxication and the smaller sips that pushed you down a road you never quite knew you had gone down before it was too late. This wasn’t far too late, at least not in the same regards, but it was still late nonetheless and the damage had been done.

Vera turned spun on her heel and began to head in the other direction. If she wasn’t wanted, if she was going to be disrespected and yelled at over something that was beyond her abilities, then what was the point? Her hand wrapped tight around the straps to her rifle and with the roll of her eyes she began to head away.

At least for that one step. There was a shot of something fierce circling around her, a warning in the force. Yet no sooner than it hit her the effect was felt and Vera found herself flung head first onto the ground. Her rifle displaced, her cheek smeared with dirt. As she pushed herself off the ground she felt her hands curl up into balls, her teeth grit. She tried not to look. Naya had made it very clear where they stood.

Yet…

Vera’s shoulders sank as she pulled the rifle back into her hands.

“Look, I can’t help you here, and you don’t want me to.” Her voice rasped up as she spoke. “But I know how to get that under control. Most Jedi or even— … I can’t believe I am saying this… —Sith, they do.”

Vera flung her rifle over her shoulder and began to drag her hand across her face to wipe the grime off. Her eyes set for the sky before she closed them again with yet another long sigh. She opened them once more to give Naya the one last chance for help, the only kind of help that Vera could offer herself.

“At the very least I could help you to one of the other villages. You could find more help there. For...” She said and let her hand circle around in the air. “This.”

 

[Naya Everos]

Naya remained frozen, caught up in the hole of anger and pride she dug into. She didn't want jedi help. That was exactly what she had asked for before and Vera brought her all this way just to refuse it. It was one thing altogether to accept help to dig up her father, it was another to agree to be trained as the very thing her people hated.

But she didn't have a choice, did she? The stories always said it was a quick slope from helping to destruction. No one can resist the allure of the powers, once they taste it...

For the first time since the raid, she worried about her own future. It was a strange thought to have right after the death of your whole world-- that you were own the same path to do this to someone else. Murder. Destruction. Taking what isn't yours. She felt destined for it now, where only this morning she felt like she had no future at all.


She well preferred this morning's outlook on life. She hated Vera too for making her aware of it.

She shook her head, stepping back, her voice wobbling in despair. "I won't become like you," she resisted. What needed to happen dawned on her in an instant. It filled her with a surprising sense of calm, a part of her realizing she had been skirting this solution all along. But it was a solution. And it made perfect sense. All her turmoil melted away to it, her shaking dying off. She turned to face the remains of her father, tears falling form her in a steady stream.

"I wasn't meant to survive. Everyone else is dead. I should be dead too." She fell to her knees and dug her fingers into the ash, staring at it uncomprehendingly. Just because you accept it doesn't mean you have the guts to do it. So how?

 

[Verana]

The choice whether to go or not, that was on Naya’s shoulders. As much as the remark about not wanting to be like Vera caused a visible reaction, it didn’t go anywhere. Not so much because Vera didn’t want to react but because she had to keep telling herself that it wasn’t what she had been tutored to do. To act on emotion was after all not the path she wanted to go down. Didn’t lead anywhere worthwhile, never had from what she had seen for herself. The destruction and misery caused by grown men and women was after all the very reason that she stuck to the woods and the animals therein.

“Then don’t. I am certainly not the perfect Jedi or human-being, I am only myself.” Vera said and flung the rifle back over her shoulder and put it on the ground before she approached the hut again. Naya was free to complain all that she wanted, but there was clearly something inside of it that she cared for.

“Survival doesn’t work like that.” She said as Naya began to trail down the idea that she shouldn’t be alive. Vera glanced through the doorway to the home and the burned body within. “You should be alive because you are alive.” The girl said and turned to look at someone who undoubtedly wished that she was gone already. “And I am sorry that you have lost your people, but dying now won’t change a thing. The last memory of your people live on through you and the others who might have escaped.”

“Given the chance that some might have, isn’t it worth trying to find out? Maybe in one of the surrounding villages, Naya? You clearly don’t want my help, but maybe they could need yours.”

 

[Naya Everos]

Naya perked, the thought unconsidered by her until this moment. "You think... some got out?" She turned, looking around her as if their faces would emerge from the trees. It would make sense. The raiders weren't gods, they weren't infallible and this was her people's natural enviroment. Of course some could have slipped away and out run this. Of course.

She stood up, turning to face the trees now, a sense of hope and determination in her sharpening gaze. "Can you feel them out there? Like you feel the dead-- do you know where they are?" All she wanted to do was help. To fix something. Whether Vera recognized it or not, she had given the girl exactly what she had needed in that moment.

 

[Verana]

“I mean, it’s a possibility.” Vera said and scratched the back of her head. In reality there was a chance that they were indeed all dead, but Naya seemed to have found strength in the idea that she wasn’t alone though. “Can’t feel them, but it’s also been at least a day or two since this happened. Those that made it out have probably made it far away from here by now.”

“So, I guess we just need to find their tracks.”

Easy enough, right? It had just been a few days. The winds and the wetness in the air… Vera kept her fingers crossed for a trace at the very least.

“Which direction would people head from here?”