You're Not Her

[Razelle Breuner]

CORNER OF "NO" AND "WHERE"
Vendaxa, Local Time 0900

Dropping Walker off with Fable had been a pretty good idea. It left Razelle all to herself on the Rime, which meant she could go basically wherever she wanted. Do whatever she wanted. Not having to babysit a self-destructive charlatan or a borderline mentally deficient violence golem was a liberating feeling, largely because it had become rather uncommon recently. About twenty minutes after she'd dumped Walker off on the Wheel, given him a description and general location of Fable, and burned figurative rubber getting the hell out of there, she'd already figured out where she was going to go and what she was going to do with her brand spankin' new time off.

It had been a very, very long time since Raz had been hunting. Not since... Midvinter, actually. She gave an almost depressed sigh and shook her head as she spun down her GX1's engines. She wondered idly if she still remembered how it even worked. Big game hunting was mostly preparation, if she recalled correctly. An acklay, for instance, couldn't hide or run. It was an apex predator - it had never needed to evolve the capacity for "flight" when it could just double down into "fight." This meant that the success of this little expedition would be decided before she walked out the door. What did she know about acklays?

Well...what the holo-net told her, mostly. Infrared vision, so the Albatross would be useless here. Its exoskeleton was pretty rugged, probably enough to blunt small arms fire...but she rather doubted acklay chitin could hold up to a charric maser. Service rifle would be fine here. Its engagement range was perfectly safe, though she didn't want to consider what might happen if she one of them got within about fifty meters. Basic survival gear, utility belt, databracer for emergencies...

Eventually, the outlaw had everything she thought she'd need. Razelle Breuner walked down the boarding ramp of her poodooty little ship and onto the rolling, wild plains and coastal lowlands of the portion of Vendaxa she'd decided touch down on. It was just like all the other places on Vendaxa, in that no one was there, would be there, or possibly had been there. Perfect for a little silent communion.

 

[Scherezade deWinter]

Hunting. It had been so long since Scherezade had last done so, gone out into the wild with nothing but a few weapons and herself, and made sure she got food. It had initially begun as a way of survival; with no income (that she knew of) and a body that demanded copious amounts of meat for food, she'd taken to regularly hunting on Ryloth during the first months of her existence outside of the pebble. It wasn't until they had betrayed her and broken her almost beyond repair that she could no longer do that, could no longer eat or sleep, that she had stopped.

And then she had killed herself. Sort of. She'd tried to. She failed. Instead of dying, Scherezade had been transported to the space between dimensions, where time was even less stable than within the Darkness. She'd been there for eight or nine months before they brought her out, but for her, it had been years once again. It was sort of amazing, how she'd managed to screw up so badly that in her year and some out of the pebble, she'd endured about a decade or so of torture and imprisonment.

Back to now. After coming back, Scherezade had spent months in growing a body for her sister, getting her sister into it, pretending to be her sister… Seriously, the whole thing is sort of worse than a space opera and you had to be there for most of it to get anything remotely resembling sense, but let's just say it was long, it was drawn out, it was bad, and so her Scherezade was, planning to hunt for food, because it was something she actually loved doing even now that she wasn't dirt poor anymore, and because after all the drama, she needed something like this.

And Vendraxa was perfect hunting ground, now that Ryloth was no longer a viable option.

Which was exactly why Scherezade had spent a day and a half trailing a very specific acklay. It wasn't because he did anything to her, no. He was simply the first one she saw on this specific planet. On Geonosis, they were much more common, or at least that was how it felt to the Sithling. Ether way, she wanted it. Badly. Acklay soup was practically a luxury dish on Geonois, so why not fill her ship with it? And those claws… She could probably crat something nifty out of those damned claws. Maybe a few new skirts from its leather. It was amazing how she still thought in terms of self-sufficiency when she could now basically go buy a little moon somewhere.

She managed for the acklay to not spot her… For a while. But then it did, and naturally, a fight erupted. Scherezade had always been a quick fighter; and it seemed now that it was mostly her speed that was keeping her safe and intact, for she moved faster than it did, yet as she'd been careless enough to leave her lightsabers on the ship, her little knives barely scratched the acklay's surface.

But that was all right.

Because once she was tired of fighting it, Scherezade did the next best thing.

Sheleaped frm her place on the ground, flicking through the air, and landed right on ugly's back. Not wasting anytime, she grabbed the bit of the acklay's head that poked in the back, and now had fll control over where it was going and what it was doing.

"I'm queen of the castle, I'm queen of the castle," Scherezade sang to herself as she rode the acklay, getting it to move forward.

It was going to be a non-traumatic day.

AWESOME!


[member="Razelle Breuner"]

 

[Razelle Breuner]

Quiet.

With every step, the only sound in Raz's ears was that of her boots rustling through grass. Wet, healthy grass, which made it even quieter. The smell of dew and air blowing in from the ocean, the glitter of the late-morning sun refracting off of the waves... this was a perfect freaking day, right here. Zero stress, excepting the part where she was hunting animals that could feasibly be used as anti-tank weapons. Clarity of purpose. Simplicity of action. This was what she'd needed. That, and a few months of doing basically nothing but relaxing.

Gods, when had her life become so... stressful? When had she become so high-strung? From the moment she'd woken up on a medical bed on Kamino, she'd been constantly looking for something wrong. Something that would justify every fear she'd built up in the harrowed corners of her mind. Domino was testing her. Black Sun was part of that same grand manipulation. Fable's foolishness was an act. The Galactic Alliance was setting her up for a fall. The FISB couldn't be trusted.

...Okay, to be fair, that last one was completely valid.

She'd spent the better part of a decade on the run from nothing, jumping at shadows and hiding from thoughts. Yes, the galaxy was dangerous and yes, she absolutely had three MIA records for three different government bodies across the universe. But at what point had it become more important to fear and distrust everything she saw that it was to simply do what she wanted to do? Live how she wanted to live? That settled it. When she was done with this little hunt, and done hauling the carcass of some massive crab-lizard-bug-thing off to someone who'd pay for it, she'd head back to her girls on the Wheel. She owed them an omelette.

The roar of a horrible beast woke Razelle from possibly the healthiest mental state she'd been in in ten years. It was followed by... singing? Raz trained her rangefinder on the horizon nearest the sound, setting her BR-212 to burst fire. Single-shot wouldn't do much against these beasties. She laid prone on her stomach and rested the rifle on a grassy hill, then looked for what had made the-

"Wh-..." Blink. Swallow. Breathe.

[member="Scherezade deWinter"]

 

[Scherezade deWinter]

Scherezade was having the time of her life. The dumb beast tries to resist her at every turn, but she was already making huge advancements by making it hurt. Animals knew what pain meant and she was delivering it in the truck load, sending Force Sparks into its body, giving it shocks that, while not really being harmful, could her like motherkrakkers.

She'd been on the acklay's back for… Ten minutes? Twenty? You could never tell the correct passage of time when you were having fun. The onlything that would've made it better was if Ger-

Nope.

Not thinking that. Today was meant to be a non-traumatic day. She had a beast to ride and then to kill and eat, and she was sort of sure she was managing to take the both of them towards her ship. Essentially, the acklay had become a mobile happy meal. What more could a girl ask for?

Well, to be frank, there were a lot of mores that the girl could ask for, but she definitely wasn't asking for, was a distraction, and a distraction was exactly what she got.

Scherezade's face shot into the distance, to the direction from which she could feel a presence that was… Familiar? No, not recently familiar. But knew that presence. Where? What? Why? Wh-

Yeah, distraction.

The next moment, Scherezade was on the ground, the sharp claws of the alckay making their way towards her torso.

[member="Razelle Breuner"]

 

[Razelle Breuner]

Three maser bolts screeched through the air, impacting the side of a big, scaly monster's neck.

Razelle blinked and looked down to see her muzzle smoking. She didn't remember firing. Narrowing her eyes, she looked downscope again. The acklay was looking in her direction and screeching defiantly. Razelle took a half-second to aim, then sent a second burst directly into the center of its chest. Right near the lungs it was presently using to roar at her. As it recoiled from the raw physical impact of maser rounds, her rifle's report echoed three more times. Melting chitin was poor defense, and as the first cracked the shell, the second and third scorched its insides, searing blood and burning flesh.

Raz stood, shouldered her rifle, and switched it to single shot. Her walk down the hill was steady and trained. Huge and dangerous and awful it might have been, but now it was wounded. Every time the beast tried to move, she shot it again, each time aiming for its mouth. The first time she hit inside that gaping maw, its screech went up a few octaves, as the air that was leaking from its lungs. Two more shots hammered into the gap in its chest armor, and the acklay collapsed into a lump of scales and chitin on the ground.

She'd done what she wanted to do. She still had to do what she needed to do. Razelle's stance remained squared up against the girl on the ground. Her rifle remained trained on her. Her mind was...intense. No words. Lots of emotions. Practically the full spectrum. When she got close enough to see the girl on the ground, she stopped maybe two meters away and flicked her rifle to full-auto. Finger on the trigger.

"Show me your eyes," she heard herself say. Her voice was gravely. Possibly even wavering. "Now."

[member="Scherezade deWinter"]

 

[Scherezade deWinter]

Things happened faster than Scherezade could react to them. She was still on the ground, but the acklay was getting shot. Was that from the same presence she'd sensed half a heart-beat ago? There was no time to check. As the acklay continued getting shot, Scherezade crawled backwards until she was in the clear enough to stand. Maybe the acklay wanted a bite of her thick butt, maybe not, but every time it as much as openly breathed, it got shot again.

And then it dropped. Scherezade was almost sure she felt the ground slightly quake in response to that, but it didn't matter anymore. Someone else had shot her beast but she couldn't even be sad about it because at least that first attack would've ended in her stomach if that someone hadn't, and since Scherezade knew by now how stupidly painful getting speared in the stomach or chest was, she could only be left to assume that an acklay claw there would hurt even more.

And now that same presence that she had sensed earlier, it was close. Very close. Scherzade almost turned around before she heard the voice demanding her to see her eyes.

What?

She was going to turn around and thank the person anyway, but right now, she was having her own set of flashbacks. Mostly, of Coruscant, where all she was doing what eating lunch when the Jedi barged in, that Kamon Vondiranach, and decided to execute her just because of her blood line. This lady's tone… Was not very different from what his had been that day. A day that ended up with a lightsaber through Scherezade's heart. And even now, no one was sure if she'd actually died, or was just super close to dying.

Slowly, Schereade turned.

The chamber in the Forbidden Temple looked like nothing in a place called Forbidden. There were baby pinks and blues all around them, and cut outs of bunnies. Scherezade was in her crib, together with Brayden, and both Nessarose and Diomedes were hovering over them, smiling. There were a lot of smiles back then.

And there were other people too. The smiles weren't just from their parents. Scherezade remembered. There was the woman who no eyes, and the weird man with the pale skin and white hair, and… And another one that was a lot near mom. A woman with blonde hair. And they always spoke words that baby-Schereade didn't understand, but she remembered… She remembered… What did her father always call her?

"Raspberry?" Scherezade asked, glowing green eyes wide with amazement.

[member="Razelle Breuner"]

 

[Razelle Breuner]

Snap.

Razelle's eyes went wide. At once watery and panicked, enraged and heartbroken, she bared down on the girl on the ground. Her voice was roughly as stable. She felt like she should be shrieking, but her tone was low and crackling. Every word of response she spat out like poison. "No. No, you don't get to do this to me." Once again, her eyes narrowed. This time all of the moister accumulated at the edges, threatening to cloud her vision. No matter how cloudy it got, though, she could still see Nessa's perfect, gorgeous, big 'ol eyes staring up at her.

Her finger tightened on the trigger again. This girl was definitely going to be one of those godsdamned Sith. Her mind was vulnerable like this, and she knew it. She needed to calm down, get ahold of her thoughts. Center herself on a goal. Of course, all of that rhetoric was nice and everything, but it was another thing entirely to convince herself to actually do it. Instead, she heard herself continue to spill personal information and emotional torque without ceasing.

"My life makes sense again. I did that. Alone, because that's the only way I can get anything done." If she was hysterical - which wasn't an inaccurate word for her right now - it was the quietest, most intense and focused hysteria she'd ever experienced. "You don't get to show up out of nowhere and take over my life again. You don't get to make me trust you again then leave me for freaking dead."

She was getting loud again. She leveled the barrel at the girl's forehead. "You don't get to call me that. No one calls me that."

[member="Scherezade deWinter"]

 

[Scherezade deWinter]

Scherezade was immediately taken back from how Raspberry talked to her. Why was her tone so vile? What was it Scherezade wasn't going to get to do? None of this met sense. Scherezade and Raspberry had never actually met, not with both of them being adults. But how was Raspberry even alive at all, after all these years? She couldn't sense the Force about her and-

Scherezade paused, and inhaled. A clone. That was how. Not a Force User. She knew the scent well by now; that smell that was human but not human at the same time, like a copy with which a small detail was altered. But hen how? Who paid for it? Scherezade knew next to nothing about Raspberry's life. Did she have the financial means? Had her mother paid for it? Had someone else kidnapped her and done that to her?

But then… Raspberry was speaking. Scherezade kept looking at her, eyes gazing intently.

Raspberry was… Not screaming. But that meant nothing about safety. Scherezade was a deWinter through and through – when they spoke like that, calmly, coldly, lowly… It was the dangerous cold, the deadly cold, the ice that could destroy a person. It was not safe.

And then there was a gun aimed at her forehead.

"I never took your life over," she said carefully, raising her arms so that Raspberry would see she wasn't about to attack her in any way, knives dropping to the grass, "I did not leave you for dead. And I don't know what your real name actually is. That's just what I remember dad calling you all the time."

Biting her lower lip, Scherezade pouted. Was this an example? Was this how she'd be treated if she tried to go back to Endelaan, the promised home, a place from which she was currently entirely barred? One person, one person was one thing, but if that happened with the whole population, the people of the Forbidden Temple kicking her out and letting her fall flat on her face…

"My name is Scherezade," she said carefully, "you held me when I was a baby. I remember you. You also held my twin brother, Brayden. It's been over seven hundred years since we were both on Endelaan together."

[member="Razelle Breuner"]

 

[Razelle Breuner]

Once again, Raz froze. Her mind hit a segfault. Her expressions were everywhere, toeing the entire spectrum of confusion, but her grip was still firm on that rifle. It took her several seconds to find her voice again. "The kid..." Her words trailed off, as if her mind was somewhere far away. Nessa'd only ever had eyes for Dio. No matter how many times Raz saved her life, or built monuments to her name, or hospitalized herself for her, Nessa never took her eyes off that man. She would've hated him if he hadn't been so damn charming. She remembered the two of them eloping off to screw five, maybe ten meters away from her several times.

Then Kamino. Then nothing.

For the first time since she approached, her finger went a little limp. "...and I..." She. The real Raz. Not you. Her expression went livid for a second, then relaxed. She took a deep breath and lowered her rifle. This kid was a deWinter. They were always dangerous. They were also awful fighters, and it wouldn't be difficult to defend herself if this little dunce decided to start something. Safety on.

"Sorry," came a response that sounded suspiciously like her own voice. Which was weird, because there was nothing to apologize for. Clear stressor. Appropriate response. New information changed the situation, and she adapted. Nothing to apologize for. She hadn't almost killed someone for their (admittedly strong) resemblance to...someone important. The blonde lowered her rifle and took a crouch on the ground, emotionally and mentally exhausted.

After a moment, she continued. "It's Razelle." She paused a moment, then sneered at the ground. "I mattered so much she forgot to tell her kids about me."

[member="Scherezade deWinter"]

 

[Scherezade deWinter]

The kid. Yes. Yes! Scherezade nodded enthusiastically, not even bothering to nitpick that it was one of the kids. As long as that calmed Raspberry down, she could phrase it however she wanted to.

And she… Scherezade looked at her, remaining silent, hoping there would be a continuation to those words. And she what? What was Raspberry going to say? No, not that apology, apologies had never done Scherezade and good. They always came too late and they never fixed what came before them, but there wasn't anything here to fix, really? So sure, Raspberry had held a gun to her head for a wee bit there, but what else could you expect? It was something that happened so often to Scherezade that it didn't really leave a lingering effect on her anymore.

"Razelle," Scherezade repeated, and smiled warmly. Razelle, Raspberry, it didn't matter. If Razelle wanted to be called by her real name, assuming that was it, she'd get called it. No biggie. But Raspberry was a much cuter name.

The sneer had not gone unnoticed though.

"You mattered enough to be around when I was a baby," she said carefully, "and then I was imprisoned inside the Darkness for over seven hundred years. I came out only a year and some ago, and I haven't seen or talked mom or dad or even Brayden since I was a baby on Endelaan."

It was true enough. Madalena got to see Brayden. Scherezade had not. And she did see Nessarose, for about twenty seconds, but that was again that whole nitpicking thing that people didn't care for and wouldn't really count. So she didn't add that. Perhaps, if Raspberry Razelle would give her some more wiggle room, they could talk about it later.

"So…" Scherezade said, hand going to her hair as the other relaxed, "I never thought I'd actually meet someone from Endelaan. I was going to use the acklay's meat… Are you hungry? We can sit here and... I don't know, talk?" She smiled, "I remember you being a whole lot bigger."

[member="Razelle Breuner"]

 

[Razelle Breuner]

Post-emotional stress, Razelle was left feeling nothing but numb. There was probably something to do here. Something to say. Whatever it was, though, she couldn't think of it. In fact, thoughts were difficult at the moment. A hundred different things had started whipping around in her head. The predominant one, of course, was that this basically proved that she was a lab rat in the longest, most elaborate experiment ever devised. How could she not be, at this point? Domino first, then some idiot too dumb to be dangerous, then some idiot that reminded her of herself, and now just the spitting freaking image of the woman who had torn her life apart, turned it around, gave it meaning, and then shattered it into a trillion pieces.

Refurbished and reforged, Razelle thought herself strong enough to handle this sort of thing. Judging from how long she'd been staring at the ground, she wasn't. She caught herself and looked up instead, directly at... Sherizoddy? Sounded like some weird kind of lizard. No matter how weird the names these deWinters insisted on having, though, she was still her mother.

...daughter. Her mother's daughter.

Razelle's face was flat. She regarded the girl in front of her with the same measure of respect and caution a beaten dog might give a hand full of food. It was a while before she finally spoke again. "You look just like her." Once again, her voice trailed off. She blinked and shook the dust out of her brain, then tried again. "If we're going to talk we need to get somewhere safe. Or at least safer than this." One hand indicated to the smoking corpse of a local predator.

[member="Scherezade deWinter"]

 

[Scherezade deWinter]

More silence. No. More awkward silence. Scherezade bit her lip again, not sure of what to do or what to say. If her sister had been there, she'd have known. Madalena was practically built for these sort of things. But Scherezade? She was still going through the clumsy stages in pretty much anything that didn't involve a sharp blade.

So when Raspberry Razelle stared at the ground, it didn't take long before Scherezade was as well, feet somewhat shuffled close to each other. Part of her wanted to reach forward and poke Razelle's mind, make sure everything was all right in there, but she didn't dare to. For one, she wasn't sure she could actually do it without accidently turning Razelle's brain to mush. To pull a trick like that on a useless guard that didn't have much brain to begin with was one thing, but to do it on someone in clear mental and emotional turmoil was entirely a different thing. And second… Some people, even when they were not Force Users themselves, could feel something happening when someone poked their minds. And if Razelle worked with her mother… Odds were, she was in that category, and the last thing Scherezade wanted to do was piss her off.

So she stayed quiet. At least until Razelle broke the silence.

Scherezade nodded when Razelle pointed out she looked just like her mother. She'd heard it before. It was a shame that this was more or less where the inheritance from her stopped. Scherezade knew how charming her mother was, how much a people person she'd been. Her mother, if stories were true, could walk into a room and smile and everybody would be madly in love with her. When Scherezade entered a room she was mostly ignored, or just mocked in a not very discreet way. Her mother had been loved by all, when Scherezade was loved by none.

She would have preferred to look less like her mother but have more of her abilities.

As Razelle pointed out they needed a safer place, Scherezade nodded and turned around, walking to the carcass. She punched it a few times in the right spots, slowly folding him up into a semi-neat pile with just the neck and the head sticking out. Her arm closed around the neck and she began to walk, dragging the gigantic beast with her with no visible effort.

"I don't think you'd feel safe on my ship, or show me yours," Scherezade said, "so let's drag this puppy a little bit. There was a predator-less area about a mile back, we can light a fire there and get this thing to cook."

[member="Razelle Breuner"]

 

[Razelle Breuner]

Right. Do things. Stand. Salute. Soldier on. You're made of sterner stuff than this, Razelle. If being resurrected with a chemically imbalanced brain, having a bounty put on your head by your ex, being part and parcel to the decline of three different major governing bodies, joining a reich, and having an explosive chip installed into your spinal column couldn't break her, seeing the spitting image of the woman who had both created and ruined her life wouldn't do any worse. She reasoned this even as she gave the most broken nod one could imagine.

"Right. Grab just enough for us to eat." As she stood, the blonde reached down behind her waist and pulled out a sturdy combat knife. Placing it between the joint segments of one large, meaty claw, she twisted the leg and tore out the serrated portion of her knife in the same motion. There was a quick, wet crunch, and she looked at the leg only for a moment before holding it over her shoulder like a piece of lumber. "Leave the rest. The smell will draw away whatever else is around here."

It took her several seconds to process that Ness- ...Scherezade had just whacked around a massive crustacean corpse like it was a bunch of sticks. She took note of that...as well as a couple of other things. Specifically, the part where Scherezade actually cared what was going on in Raz's head. The beginnings of a little smile started to cross her face. "Lead on."

[member="Scherezade deWinter"]

 

[Scherezade deWinter]

Just enough for them to eat. And then a single leg. Against her better judgement, Scherezade laughed, and then proceeded to grab another leg, simply yanking it out of its socket, repeating the same with a second leg. One leg was not going to be enough for her; she trained like a beast and her body demanded a lot of food to not lose its shape. And just for good measure, she pulled the head out of its place as well. Acklay goop was running all over her, but she didn't seem to mind. What was a predator's blood to a Blood Hound, anyway? Not to mention, there were more than enough ways for her to protect the camp later if it really turned into an actual concern.

"I can kill whatever comes after us if it comes to that," she shrugged innocently as the two began to walk, "if I don't get distracted riding it first, anyway. I never did thank you for blowing this things' brains out. Thanks."

Chewing on her lip again, Scherezade thought of something she could say to fill the silence. It was a good few minutes before she came up with anything though.

"I like your knife," were the words that came out of her mouth, and they sounded every bit as genuine as they were – which is to say, truly so. "I like blades, in general. I've got an entire wall dedicated to various kinds on my ship." And now it sounded weird. Why would someone dedicate walls on ships? "I live on my ship," she explained. Well. Now that sounded weirded. "I don't have anywhere else." And now it just sounded sad.

Scherezade hmpf'd. She definitely wasn't good at that small talk thing.

[member="Razelle Breuner"]

 

[Razelle Breuner]

Well, that was a change of pace. The last few deWinters (and Cavataios, for that matter) Razelle had come into contact with had all been very delicate...if a little gross at times. She didn't need to count how many times Nessa had bathed in blood in both the figurative and literal sense. Lots of things seemed different with Nessa 2.0, though. For instance, this newer model was far more physical. She did things, which was normally the province of Raz. It was even a little cute how she claimed she was the one who would defend them from nasties. Oh, how they grew up so...okay, kinda slow, actually, but it was visible.

"Lungs," Raz corrected quietly. "Blew out its lungs. Brain's too small to target reliably on a pre-sapient." The grim conversation continued to knives, living conditions, justifications for living conditions... Gods. This was Fable. This was just Fable.

Raz wiped her knife clean on her cargo pants and replaced it in its sheath. "Everyone needs a hobby." ...Aaaand that might explain why she was so stressed all the time. No hobbies. Babysitting didn't count. She needed to figure out a way to unwind. The tension-and-release cycle of her life was all tension and no release. It was exhausting. That was probably why she was on the verge of collapse all the time. "My friend does poledancing." Oh god. Why had she made the mental connection to Fable earlier? Augh begone from mine thoughts, overinflated war-bimbo!

Following without complaint, Raz only stopped and set her dismembered limb down when Ne- Scherezade did.

[member="Scherezade deWinter"]

 

[Scherezade deWinter]

"Lungs," Scherezade repeated with a little shy smile. She was sure she'd seen a head wound too, but maybe she'd been mistaken. Not that it mattered. Dead was dead, and that was the important part of all of it. "I was planning on pulling its head off when I got tired of riding the thing," she said, trying to explain what she'd been doing on top of it at all. "Or checking if it'd pull its own head off when it got angry enough at me. I'm not sure. But it was fun. There's something… That feels free, on top of a beast's back like that."

And most importantly, it didn't remind her of other things she'd done to feel free with a certain Lupine. So no jumping off roofs, no checking how high you can take a speeder, no drinking competitions… None of that. Nope. Maybe?

Hobbies. Right. Scherezade had those. Meat preserving. Weapon making. Blueprints of doom. Those totally counted. Wait, poledancing?

It was a mercy that they reached the area Scherezade had spoken about earlier before the silence at poledancing became too loud. "My aunt owns a brothel franchise," she said, breaking it in the stupidest way.

Wood. They needed wood for the fire. Scherezade quickly grabbed some branches off the ground, testing them to make sure they were sufficiently dry. The last thing they needed was to just smoke wood. A few branches that were still attached to trees did get broken though, and within a few minutes, Scherezade had constructed a spit for the women to hang their meet on.

Fire was simpler. She had a lighter.

Sitting down, Scherezade grabbed the meat and began to work with her knives on it, separating the leather from the muscles and scrubbing away some of the nasty insides that had clung to it.

"So…" she mumbled as her hands worked the meat, trying to find something to say. "Uhm…" she tried again. Nope. "Look, I really suck with all this small talk business stuff. And I have like, a million questions about Endelaan and what happened to and with you. And I don't know if you have questions for me. And I don't know how clean you like your meat, and what degree of done you prefer it."

[member="Razelle Breuner"]

 

[Razelle Breuner]

It was clear that little...not-Nessa was planning on doing this whole firepit thing on her own. Razelle was not one to be waited on, and shook her head, grabbing all of the shelled nonsense they'd dragged with them. "We pull our weight," she stated simply. "Not gonna have you waiting on me." With a quick flick of her knife, she jabbed it against the inside of one of the legs until she heard a crack, then flipped it over and started cracking her way through the shell one wrenching knife motion at a time. "I'll shell it. Cooking removes most of the danger from bacteria. Don't eat anything raw if you can keep from it. Blood parasites."

Sitting down by the growing pile of firewood, Raz worked at making their catch a little more edible. She wasn't surprised that Scherezade would have questions. She was just worried how many answers she'd be able to give. Still, it'd be good to talk about it. She needed to talk about it, frankly. Whether or not they thought they could listen, no one since Domino would have been able to understand. Things were...difficult with deWinters. Always so freaking difficult.

"I'm alright. Go ahead." She gave a difficult look to Scherezade, eyebrows tilted, either pain or pity. "I don't have anything to hide. Not anymore." Not the most inspiring of input, of course. Raz forgave herself without thinking too hard about it. This whole damn situation was unfair, and it was just the latest and least unfair of all the crap she'd gone through for a decade or more. Not to mention, apparently, dying for this blasted idiot.

...Mother. This blasted idiot's mother.

[member="Scherezade deWinter"]

 

[Scherezade deWinter]

Scherezade almost pointed out that she knew how this cooking thing worked when you hunted your meat, but Raspberry Razelle seemed so keen on explaining it to her as though it was her first time that she just let it go. Since the fire and the spit were done though, there was little left to do for Scherezade other than sit by Raz, stealing a few pieces of meet occasionally. The spit would take time. Until then Scherezade pulled a blade as long as her arm from her boot, and carefully placed some thinly sliced patches of meet on it, holding it above the fire. The sizzling didn't take long to start.

The difficult look, she did not understand. Not much she could do but avert her gaze for the moment. Why was Raz giving her that look? As far as she knew, Scherezade had done nothing wrong to her. In all the memories she held in which Raz appeared… Oh. Had something bad happened that she simply didn't know about?

Pulling the meat out, the strips were done and cooked through. They'd be able to eat them while they waited for the main course now.

"What the krak happened?" Scherezade asked. There had been so many other questions she could've started with, smaller ones, pointed ones, ones that would slowly build into a big and huge story that would say it. But somehow… No. That was the main question she had. Alongside with, "I don't suppose you know where my father is?" and "Why were you hiding? What happened to you? Have you been re-cloning yourself all this time or are you just recently returned? Have you tried to go to Endelaan since?"

[member="Razelle Breuner"]

 

[Razelle Breuner]

Ah. Right. Child. Give them an inch and they'll ask why it's called an inch. Raz actually chuckled, albeit briefly, and tried to put her thoughts in order. "Well aren't you an eager little pup?" There were a few bits of that that she could answer, but it was all just a jumbled mess. There was a way to fix it. Make it easier to process, easier to find answers she knew. "Alright, so this is probably going to go easier if I give you a little...background, I guess."

Scherezade's hands were empty, so Razelle reached down for another leg and passed it over. "Here. Something to do."

Deep breath. Raz closed her eyes. "At one point, we paid a visit to Kamino. I backed myself up there. This was apparently centuries ago. So anything that happened after that, I don't know." She winced a little at the thought of cloning herself constantly, but moreso at the knowledge that she couldn't refute that possibility. "One of us, Domino, survived. Woke up. She pulled some strings and got a replacement." Opening her eyes, she stared at Scherezade and raised her hands to indicate to all of herself. "Good as new. 'Cept I seem to be a little..." The blonde tapped the side of her head with one finger.

"Haven't had any contact with anyone but Dee since then, and...well..." Don't bring up the bounty. Do not bring up the bounty. "...We didn't part on the best of terms."

[member="Scherezade deWinter"]

 

[Scherezade deWinter]

Eager pup. It sounded like an attempt at a term of endearment, so Scherezade didn't consider biting Raz's head off for it. A leg was passed into her hands, and Scherezade set to work on it immediately. Her fingers moved with a natural rhythm that usually belonged to those who had done so for most of their lives. It was almost sad to think that this was indeed the case; her life had simply been a very short one, thus. And a very bad one.

Scherezade snorted when Kamino was mentioned. She'd just literally spent months going between that dreadful planet and the rest of the 'verse while doing missions as she pretended to be Madalena. She held no love for the planet and its deep and dangerous waters, but she'd needed its facilities to grow a body for her sister.

"Domino," Scherezade repeated the name, and closed her eyes. Yes. She remembered now. Another one that was sometimes there; a blue twi'lek. But that was all she remembered of her.

"Why did that turn you crazy?" Scherezade asked, looking at Razelle now, the glow of her eyes focused solely on her, the meat in her hands almost forgotten. If something had happened to Raz… Could that mean… No. Madalena seemed fine. There was no crazy in her. She was… Terrifyingly normal, on most aspects.

"And what happened before Kamino?" she added, perhaps a bit too soon.

[member="Razelle Breuner"]