Bread Crumbs

[Razelle Breuner]

Razelle didn't believe in altruism. Except for Fable, who seemed to be a genuinely sweet girl. She hadn't yet determined whether or not that was because she was too dim to have her own ulterior motives.

Deep breath, Raz. You can do this.

"I wasn't born like most people were. I was created in a lab with about three dozen perfect copies of myself. Standard 'murder down to one' lab testing scheme," Starting at the very beginning. Raz resolved to leave out some minor details, like names. And locations. And dates. "Conditioning a kid to be a soldier from birth tends to backfire. This one backfired big time, though I didn't do it. One of the older 'subjects' came back and cleaned out all of the labcoats who were poking at me. I ran away."

That was a summary. Of course it was a summary. Razelle's face was impassive, as per normal. She'd done this twice before, after all. Despite what Colleen thought, no, it did not help to "get it off of her chest." All it did was bring up bad memories that she didn't really feel like reliving. Again. "I wandered in the snow for a while. Eventually got picked up by a relatively low-tech warrior clan. Treated as one of their own. They never judged, never asked any questions I didn't want to answer. I probably would have been long dead after a happy, relatively uneventful life if I had just stayed on that damn planet."

But she hadn't. She had felt a need to be elsewhere, to do other things. Something more exciting. "An Imperial recruiter - old Empire, not the one you hear about - showed up one day. I signed on. They lied about my age and manufactured an identity for me. 'Razelle Ursula Breuner, age seventeen.'" A snort escaped her nose, a humorless snicker from the back of her throat. "I was not seventeen. But that hardly mattered. I was born to be a soldier. I joined to be a soldier."

 

[Fable Merrill]

Fable raised her eyebrows, then offered a wary smile, putting a hand on Razelle's shoulder. This, she could understand. This was a thing she had grappled with, too. While there was no doubt someone in the Galaxy better suited to discussing the old clone blues with Razelle, Fable was right here, right now, and ready to share. Empathy.

"I was cloned from a Force adept." She explained quietly. Although, Fabula was 'adept' in the way that Palpatine was 'shifty'. "There were hundreds of us, grown in batches, raised in Ysalmari fields. But, like... cloning somebody strong in the force usually makes the 'result' insane, or sick or both." Fable frowned down into the infinite depths of an infinite city. "They kept playing lottery until I became the closest thing to viable they'd made yet. They got rid of all the other girls. I still have nightmares about them. But that's where my name comes from - the technicians thought that my donor was too strong or unstable to create a stable clone from. Sometimes, I worry that they were right."

Fable shrugged helplessly. "They mostly made me to see if they could, do they filled my head with all sorts of combat stuff and had me bodyguard the woman who ran the whole project. She had me model clothes, and then she got killed."

 

[Razelle Breuner]

Yeah, Raz probably should have guessed that from the point of "identity issues." Ah well. That was some pretty impressive common ground, but considering the kind of weird crap that tended to conspire around Fable, it was only a matter of time before she found another gene-baby to talk with. And honestly, that was where their similarities ended. Raz didn't flinch when she was touched. She didn't even seem to notice.

Instead, she just kept talking. "Initial training, boot camp and that stuff...that was easy. I was made to soldier. I love it. Say what you will about flying the bird to destiny or whatever. I enjoy what I was created to enjoy. I like marching, and orders, and guns, and crappy, tasteless hard rations, and hanging out in a dark ditch with four other people, huddled around a lamp and scared for our lives because what if a sniper finds us?" The camaraderie. The clarity of purpose. The adrenaline rush that came with each and every firefight. It was glorious. She missed every second of it.

"So when I was recruited to soldier, I excelled at it. That's not me bragging, that is fact. No big surprise when I was scouted for specialist training. Scout troopers. Stormcommandos. Shadow Stromtroopers. One after another, they threw me challenges, and I knocked them down. Perfect match. Perfect soldier." A little smile crept to Razelle's lips. These were the warm memories. The ones she enjoyed. Not unlike a Jango trooper, her calling was under plastoid armor with a longrifle, dying in a trench. That was her paradise.

Downslide. "Shadow Stormtroopers are a black ops program. If you haven't heard of them, there's good reason for that. They're barely a whisper. We handled stealth insertions, espionage, assassination...the dirty stuff that not even stormcommandos could be trusted with. We were like the private soldiers of Imperial Intelligence." That smile that Raz always seemed to have, the half-smirk like she knew something, or was almost enjoying herself? It had died a quiet death somewhere along the line of the word intelligence. "Naturally, I got scouted again. Exemplary soldier, obedient, talented, high success rate, a dozen missions, and best of all no non-military attachments. Imperial Intelligence wanted me bad, and I was reassed to agent initiation around the time I would have 'legally' been twenty."

 

[Fable Merrill]

"I guess I should have figured that out. You move like a ghost and look for weapons on everyone." Fable mused quietly, furrowing her brow. Yeah, the hints were all there, from combat ability to weapon preference to her efficient fighting style. All things Fable should have noticed. All things that she, in her infinite stupidity, hadn't thought much about. Razelle was good at fighting, and that was the end of considering Razelle's combat ability as something important. Stupid, stupid girl - fighting things is all you're good at, and it never occurred to you that you were shacked up with a black ops master?!

Okay. Calm down. It doesn't matter. Fable couldn't have cared about Razelle's political history if she tried, and in the grand scheme of things, she didn't much care that the Blonde had made a career of being involved in sketchy hit-mark groups across time and space. She hadn't invited Razelle into her life because of her openness about her life, she'd invited her because they'd both needed a friend and enjoyed bumping uglies. Besides. Fable could understand enjoying the dirty work you'd almost literally been made to do - she spent her career beating the tar out of people, getting the tar beaten out of her, and usually in embarrassingly skimpy outfits to boot. No. This wasn't something Razelle was obligated to share with her at any point, as it hadn't had any impact upon their relationship in the slightest. It might, moving forward, but Fable still wasn't sure exactly where they stood.

She would mull it over later, setting the slow and inefficient machinery of her mind to work at puzzling out what came next and how to phrase it. For now, Razelle was in biography mode. Fable folded her arms on the railing, leaned over, and gave her partner her full attention. Razelle, she felt, needed it. Moreover, Fable felt she deserved it.

 

[Razelle Breuner]

Okay, as dull as her humor was at the moment, Razelle still couldn't help but smile. "Like a ghost?" She shook her head and turned to face Fable. "Kitten, I feel like I'm screaming at the top of my lungs half the time just so you can keep up." Nodding shortly to the restaurant behind them, the echo turned and leaned her back against the rail instead of her stomach. "See that? You look at that and you see a bunch of people sitting at tables, enjoying food and each others' company. Maybe you see someone with a conceal/carry, or a guy whose spine is erect enough to be ex-military."

Raz thumbed her nose with one hand as the other braced herself properly against the guardrail. "I see two guys moving out the side door through the waste corridor with a large bag. Could be meat. Probably a dead body. The receptionist at the door is scanning people moving through with her eyes, a little too shifty. She's got a blaster beneath her counter, and she fingers it whenever she sees someone thuggish walk through the door. The sign's in Huttese, and there's a section for discrete dinners." Shrugging, Raz leaned back and let her other hand match bracing on her right...right next to her blaster and knife, if necessary. "This 'diner' is a cover for a Hutt operation. The receptionist might be nice, the food might be great, but it's still rotten on the inside."

With a quick nod to one of the people on the street, Razelle continued. "That man there has a knife in his right boot, meaning he's probably right-handed. His stride is too even for a civilian. Martial arts, sure, but what kind? Smooth would mean Echani, stiff would probably mean Teräs Käsi. The Quarren twins over there? One's carrying what looks like a full set of audio recording equipment, but the uplinks are in the wrong place. Assemble it with your mind. Collapsible blaster sniper rifle. The other one has two hold-out blasters under his vest, and probably some poison in his belt. Assassins."

Raz turned back to Fable with a weak smile. It was like she was looking affectionately at a blind person, or a blissfully ignorant child. No matter how many dirty bars she'd punched people in, Fable was still innocent to Razelle's perception of the world. Pure. Untainted. "I learned a lot of this in Imperial Intelligence. Assessing a situation quickly. Making guesses based on immediately relevant information. It may not always be accurate, but it keeps you alive more often than you might expect."

 

[Fable Merrill]

Fable followed as she was indicated, sizing up each scenario and person as Razelle effortlessly described motivation, armament and orders. She could only maybe see half of the weaponry and would have completely missed the sketchy things - Aside from the sign in Huttese. She was somewhat used to exclusive areas, what she did wasn't always legal. She fought down the brief and weak urge to answer the scan with one of her own, but knew there wasn't much point of it: Razelle saw more than she did and judged on more metrics. Fable likely would have just been pointing at people and explaining that she was capable of kicking their ass if need be.

Razelle might make herself louder so Fable could keep up, but Fable was deliberately slow and gentle, just in case. There was clumsy, and there was 'destroying things when you bump into them', and Fable was both. Not nearly as much the latter as her mom, but getting there, step by step. But she couldn't think of a tactful way to describe the action, so she didn't. There wasn't any need to.

But she did need to address that look, and she'd been putting it off for weeks. Gulp. One might have hoped a stupid girl would just be thankful for what she was given, and ordinarily, Fable would have been. Should have been. Force, just keep your mouth shut, idiot.

"I worry that you don't respect me." Fable eventually admitted meekly, twining her fingers, leaning over the railing. "I like you a lot, Razelle. And I... honestly don't care what you used to do, or that you know how to kill everybody in the room. I understand that, even." She glanced over at the blonde, then reluctantly downward. "I think we've got a good thing and... I'd like it to be serious? Or... official, whatever. But I can't - I won't ask, because of that feeling. Like you're just humoring me, you know? Like I'm some clueless toy."

 

[Razelle Breuner]

"I know," she had said. "I don't care," she had said. Little Fable. Precious little Fable. Well...maybe not so little. She was taller than Razelle, stronger, tougher, and not, as Raz had feared shortly before, insufficient in some way. Maybe not the sharpest vibroblade on the rack, but this was a woman. Full-grown and mostly functional. Another smile, this time a bit warmer. "There are times I worry that the only reason you're so attached to me is because I showed interest. That you're riding high on the 'you're my first' drug."

She still had half a story to tell, but thank the gods Fable had moved the topic to something less uncomfortable. This, Raz could deal with. This, Raz could acclimate to. "So let's talk. About how I could respect you more. About how you're just a clueless toy, and about how I'm just a fling, and also potentially a criminal psychopath." That was a bit of a turnaround. The downside of being taught aggressive empathy was that she tended to be...well, aggressive.

Okay, fine. She needed to reel it back a little. Standing properly, Razelle moved behind the mopey girl beside her and wrapped her arms around her waist. "More importantly, how do you think we might fix that? Two-way street. I can't promise that I'm going to be a reliable girlfriend, or even not-horrible, but if you want me to try anyway, then it's going to be an 'us' change, not a 'me' change."

 

[Fable Merrill]

Fable closed her eyes and resisted the POWERFUL reflex to offer a noncommittal shrug, a silent plea to return to the status quo. The familiar and comfortable, categories that were shockingly lacking in her life. "I fight in my underwear to pay the bills." She reminded Razelle quietly. Even if she'd first loaned her body to the blonde, it wasn't as though Fable was entirely unfamiliar with sexuality before Razelle's debut. And she was far from a stranger when it came to people showing interest.

Right. Curb the introspection, Fable. Nobody cares, and you're just stewing over things all established at this point. Razelle's and around her caused a slight crisis of 'what do I do with my hands', but considering Razelle was behind her, there wasn't much she could do with her hands. "I don't know." Fable admitted, completely honest. "I've never been in this situation before. But, I'm on your side, you know? I wanna help you do things, but it's hard when you can't trust me."

The clone glanced over her shoulder and offered a weak smile. "I might not be able to identify all the guns in that restaurant down there, but I bet I could rip the place apart and still walk away from it." She pointed out quietly. "Being able to win a straight fight doesn't mean much to the cloak-and-blaster crowd, I know. But I was raised by Mandalorians - I only fight fair because it pays more in my line of work."

She was nearing the danger of using up all her allotted words for an entire month. "I just don't like killing for money, is all. It feels irresponsible. That's why I don't carry my clan name, and why I wound up in the hospital today." A couple years ago, Fable would have likely ripped throats out in a blind fury, and come to her senses atop a pile of ruined corpses - People that didn't need to die. And before the horrific events of the Nether, it wouldn't have bothered her one bit. "...I've seen what the afterlife is like. I've been there." Fable explained darkly. "No matter how much someone is worth, what they've done, they don't deserve an eternity of that. Nobody does."

Fable glanced ever her shoulder at Razelle. "I would love to work with you. What I'm doing is demeaning, no matter how much it pays." Or, she added silently, how fun it is. "But I need you to understand that I'll go to any lengths to avoid killing someone. And if you casually take lives on the job... I'll still love you, but I can't work with you."

Oh wait what word did you use? Clumsiest deflection ABY, meet Freudian slip.

 

[Razelle Breuner]

Raz was vaguely aware that Fable had said something apart from the last few words that came out of her mouth. Specifically one of them. The word "love" was...difficult for her to grasp. Every time she loved someone, she wound up hurting them. A lot. She had killed Jared, abandoned Pru...who knew what she'd do to Fable if she decided that she loved her? Could she even bare to risk that?

Introspection is not conversation. Conversation is needed to keep relationship functioning. Relationship is necessary to prevent slide into paranoid sociopathy. Opening her mouth, Razelle decided to speak first and think never. "I don't need you to work alongside me. I need you to work with me." That made no sense. Explain. "I can work alone. I prefer it, honestly. If I have to take anyone with me, I've got some half-blind sloth with cymbals strapped to its legs to protect on top of myself. It's more dangerous for everyone involved."

She rested her chin on Fable's shoulder, nuzzling her head into one cheek. "But I need you to accept that I'm not always going to do things that you agree with. I do what I do because that's what I know. It's what I'll always do, because it's what I've always done. I can respect your beliefs, Kitten, but I'm not going to be able to share them."

 

[Fable Merrill]

"I know." Fable promised. After all, hadn't she just said as much, herself? Maybe your insane babbling was too much to sift through, idiot. Be more concise and clear instead of flapping your idiot mouth. Or better yet, just not talk. Leave taking to people with opinions and thoughts worth communicating. Fable took a small breath, leaned her cheek into Razelle's head, and gathered her scattered opinions.

"We'll figure out out together." Fable decided with something like confidence, pulling Razelle's arms a little higher around her waist. "You're pretty at home on the Pilgrim, already. I think we should get you a dresser, though." Put off introducing her to the moms, though - Fable was pretty sure she could bring home a deformed Toydarian and they'd be supportive, but she wasn't sure if Razelle was ready for that particular brand of intense.

 

[Razelle Breuner]

Well. Touching moment over. Talking shop time. Oooor...instead, Razelle could give her a different little present. Drawing back her head a bit, she breathed softly on Fable's neck for a moment, then assaulted it with loud, comedic nomming noises. Growls and ferocity and savagery, it was! Think of the children! THE CHILDREN!! And absolutely don't think of the fact that Fable had just casually dropped the L word in the middle of an intense conversation.

"Well, while we're talking about things that I need," she responded after her feeding frenzy had ceased, "How about we look for that couch I mentioned last night. The cuddle couch. Big, way too fluffy, sweat-resistant, enough to fit two adults in whatever kind of position we might wind up in. I think that'll enhance our movie nights tremendously." And also give Raz a slightly more comfortable place to sleep if she wound up upsetting Fable, considering there wasn't really a "doghouse" on her ship.

Also...well, she'd talk about the armory idea later. Maybe add it into the cargo hold, if they could find a place for it. "Aaand I think we still need to go see your friends. Might not object to watching you fight later this evening, either." Or joining her as a surprise contender. She'd done far worse than put on sexually exploitative costumes and beat the crap out of other women for money.