Laira sat waiting, thinking over all that had happened since the starfighters had first left the hangar aboard the Scarlet Destiny days ago. The fight in the air, she had hesitated, hoping that the Dominion had good men and women within it that would recognize the treachery of a few and put a stop to it. The redhead had desperately wanted the attack to be quashed by the Dominion but it had not, the others had simply joined in on the ambush and killed her pilots while she sat back hoping.
Then in the jungle, she had been accosted by more evil, and it was simple then to do the deed. She had pulled the trigger there without worry or trouble. She had given them their chance to show mercy and be kind, and to them she was a monster no matter how she looked or acted. Laira called that evil in her mind, cruel and dispassionate. Then they had fought at the starfighter, waiting for rescue that never came. The six of the survivors had slain dozens of the Dominion militiamen in the jungles, and the whole time Laira knew she was in the right. She knew where she stood and that those men represented darkness in a manner that required they be stopped.
Then she had fought the Jedi Knight, Keth Hammer they had called him. He spurred the militia into a frenzy with his mere presence, drove them mad with bloodlust and hatred, Laira had been so sure of their evil. So sure she needed to do something that the Force itself had pushed her to action against the militia, lightsaber blazing. Acting on instinct alone, she had fought them, cut them down with her burning brand. Without thought or concern Laira had killed them, knowing she was right to do so. She fought the corrupted Jedi Knight personally, and her instincts had driven her. No conscious thought, no strategy, no tactics. She had just fought for what she knew to be just and knew that he must die so that she could live. And in the end she had won, wounded by a superior warrior, but she had lived and he had died.
And then he had rejoined the Force, leaving just a pile of armor and robes. At the time, she hadn’t understood what it entailed, she was hurting she was mourning her friend Cix and comforting her other friends, so concerned with what they thought of her. It had occurred to Laira until she had been left alone with her thoughts in the Bacta tank that she realized what had happened to him. Keth Hammer had been summoned back to the afterlife by the Force in the same manner as the legendary fallen Jedi like Obi-Wan Kenobi, Luke Skywalker, Yoda, Wolf Sazen, and Mara Jade. It was then she had realized that she would not be the hero when that story was told, but little more than a murderer with Force powers who killed the hero right at the climax of the tragedy. That the instincts that had driven her during their battle had not been those of a Jedi, a hero, or a saviour, but those of a killer.
The bloodlust and hatred she had seen in the Dominion had been her own, burning behind grey eyes, while they had been emboldened by the courage and honor of a Jedi Knight who represented everything the Force deemed to be good and just. Even as the upper most echelons of that government was evil and needed to be removed to protect the innocent, she was just a killer driven by her own evil desires.
It had worried her before, on Torolis and Bastion she had killed without even realizing she had done so until after it was over. She had stood over their bodies, and others had assured her they deserved to die, and that she had only done what was necessary. Deep down she had known that was not what made her take their lives. That scientist was callous with the lives of his subjects, cruel even, so that made it okay when she stabbed him to death, lost in a rage. That doctor was serving the sith, helping their experiments on people. He would have turned her in and so it wasn't so bad when she injected him with all those drugs and waited for him to die. It was so easy to kill pilots in a starfighter, she hardly thought of them as people, and yet she had so many stripes on the wings of her X-Wing that represented all the lives she had ended and so many marks on the cockpit that represented the lives she had lead to their deaths. Sometimes she even bragged about those stripes to other pilots, comparing her own litany of death to theirs like a badge of honor.
No, Laira was a killer that fooled others into thinking she was not but she could not fool herself. Her father had been a killer as well, it ran in her veins, and he had been unable to conquer it. So he had hung up his sword and put down that life because he had known what she knew. The haunting emptiness she felt in her stomach, the deep dark pit in her chest would never stop while she held the lives of others in her hands.
At least, not while she held onto that darkness within herself.
She couldn’t be queen, she couldn’t lead Alderaan, much less the Resistance. Her father had surrendered to his nature and given up his life as a warrior, but that wasn’t an option for Laira. She had to fight it, she had to conquer her evil nature if she was ever going to be a leader worthy of the title. It was unfortunate she didn't have any idea how to go about doing that.
Leo exited the room, saying a simple ‘hi’ and taking the seat beside Laira while the waited. The pair sat in silence, awaiting the Commander to finish with what she was doing and invite them into the office. Maybe she’d come out to see them herself. Laira’s grey eyes turned upon her friend, Leo who sat calmly beside her while they waited on Tegaea, he was unbothered by the killing because there was no deathlust or murderous intent in his ways. Leo was driven only by duty and loyalty to his friends and there was honor in him where there was darkness in Laira. She envied him for that, but she also knew his sorrow and loneliness. That without his closest friend he was lost, and that he’d be leaving the Resistance and all the people had had known for his life to trudge out on his own and find his own path. “You should come with me.” The words left her mouth before she could catch herself.
Leo’s bright blue eyes turned upon her, brow furrowed quizzically. Confusion crossed his features. “What do you mean?”
“You said you’d be leaving the Resistance. You should come with me after you do. I have a ship you know, I could use a co-pilot.” A cramped vessel, but a ship nonetheless. A little beskar monstrosity that desperately needed an update and overhaul. Maybe she’d sell it for scraps and buy a new one.
“I, uh...” Leo stammered, his eyes searching Laira’s face for any hint of her intent, “I don’t know.”
It occured to Laira that part of her desire for him to join her on her adventures was based in selfishness, that with him present perhaps his honorable presence would help dampen her inner evil that she was battling. Another part was simple attraction. He was tall, handsome, muscular, but she could find that in a billion men. He was also somewhat submissive, kind-hearted, and well he was sweet to her. He had been enamoured by her flirty nature and responded so awkwardly, taking him weeks to build up the courage to say anything to her and then longer to acknowledge he was attracted to her even as she teased him and made it obvious she knew that he was. And then, rather than try to impress her with feats of power or skill, but by poetry and making her little gifts and she had continued to tease him because that's what she liked in men.
She examined her own intentions while looking at him with a cocked eyebrow, “Why not?” They were friends, and she didn’t want him to be truly alone. Even if they simply remained friends she’d like to know he was happy, healthy, and sane. Perhaps her offer was sincere, and the selfish parts were only simple side affects of her desire to see her friends well.
“Well, I don’t know. It’d look weird, people might talk about you.”
“So? Would it help if what they said were true, or would it be better if it was made up?” Laira grinned coyly as she spoke.
“Now what does that mean?”
“I don’t care what people would say. People have been saying things about me since I was in finishing school, it’s never stopped me from doing whatever I wanted to. Come up with a better reason why not. Like, you don’t want to or you need to be alone to find yourself. At least those would be your own choice not someone else’s.”
Leo turned away, stammering as he did so. “What if I wasn’t able to just be a copilot?”
“I don’t do ultimatums Leo. Yes, I’d like to date and see if there is anything between us. But I’m not going to agree to that if that’s the only reason you’d come with me. Those are separate decisions and they aren't contingent on each other, you can say no to one and yes to the other. So?”
He swallowed, bright blue eyes looking down at his hands. At some point his leg had begun bouncing up and down, fidgeting as she spoke. He seemed about to say something when Firana Marux left Tegaea’s office, summoning the redhead. Leo used the interruption as an excuse to leave quietly, offering the diplomat a quick smile and acknowledgement as he went. Laira smiled at the diplomat and stood. “I believe it. I’ve heard some of the talk about what she did and I’m not surprised. I had the opportunity to hunt with her a few times, Krayt Dragons, Leviathans, and other such things and she’s always been that way.” Elpsis was another one who was an actual hero. Laira was just sometimes praised as one because she had them all fooled, but Elpsis, when she saw people dying on the beach at Manaan she lept into action to save as many as she could. When Laira had been swallowed by the krayt dragon, Elpsis had did all she could to save her and succeeded. It wasn’t a surprise at all that she had held the line and bought the Firemane team time to escape when they had been ambushed, because she was a hero at heart. Selfless when the time came.
<She’s not a murderer like me.>
Laira entered the office, doing her best to hide her troubles and offer a smile at the elder redhead. Tegaea spoke quickly about the task at hand, and Laira’s heart jumped at the prospect of getting to rescue Elpsis for once, repay her witch friend for all she had done. But the looming emptiness choked it back down into place. What if the worst had occurred and Elpsis was dead, or killed when the team arrived? What if Laira fell to her rage and bloodlust then and there and everyone saw she was just a killer acting like a hero? “Nothing would make me happier than to rescue Elpsis from the Dominion, but, I need to stay with my people and they’d be best served fighting with the Republican Guard here,” she pointed to a place on the map the Rebels had marked for her. It was a fortified bunker built into a small hill that controlled one of the main roads into Nexus City from the jungle side. The Republican Guard called it a fortress, but the scans of it weren’t as bad as they made it sound. “With some Firemane support on the ground, we can assist the Republican Guard in taking the road and cutting off the Dominion from their south-eastern territories.”
[member="Elpsis Kerrigan-Alcori"]
[member="Tegaea Alcori"]