[Sniper's Touch] Everybody Hurts (closed)

“Well,” he whispers back, “depends on the secret, like I'm gonna tell if its hurting the clan, ya know that, otherwise only the spirits will know.”

Nex had, like most Sundowners, a complex understanding of keeping secrets, ranging from 'I'll die before, I tell this to anyone,' to 'nobody will ever know, except for everyone I even remotely trust and am social with,' those small town rumors had to come from somewhere after all.

“Now spill yar gizzard.”

That wasn't really a promise, exactly, but it's good enough for Trex, who really wants to share what she has in mind. She puts her mandibles up to his earbud and whispers, "What would you say if I said I think maybe I want to go for pilot training?"

The trick there, of course, is that civilian pilot training is expensive and difficult to find. There's a free option, of course, but it comes with the chains of the Turian Hierarchy.

His eyes are wide, as he smiles, then returns does begins to whisper back in the same fashion, “cool, that'll mean that the clan can travel to all to good places whenever they need, and for cheap.”

He stops for a second, considering the problem of actually having a ship to use but that's quickly solved.

“Well once ya get a ship. I bet if everyone puts in some money ya could get a cheap on for like ... eh well I don't know how much does a ship cost, maybe they have cheap ones on Omega, I hear you can get anything there for cheap.” The practicality of where Trex would learn to fly hasn't even entered the man's mind.

"Whoa there hot shot, ships are expensive anywhere, and I think Vindi would kill me if I went to Omega and posted up an ad "will shoot your enemies for a ship". First you have to learn to fly it. I've been taking ground school lessons with Mr. Harrad. That's where you learn how ships work, and all the air laws, and how to predict meteorology and flight conditions, and navigation and stuff." She watches him to see if he recognizes Harrad's name.

“Well, maybe, we could like 'borrow' one, I mean if we took a ship from pirates nobody would be angry... except for the pirates, but ya can just shoot them 'cause they're pirates.” Nex was quiet oblivious to the moral quandary that 'stealing from a thief' entailed; indeed he genuinely thought the solutions was obvious, elegant and fair.

“Harrad, is like the bootlicker, who's made kin? People said that we can trust him so I guess it's alright that he shares his skills, you could teach others afterwards. But I don't think you should tell him where you'll get the ship of, hierarchy goons have a strange sense of justice.”

Trex rolls her eyes, impatient. "What I'm telling you is I can get the Hierarchy to teach me to fly. The way Sicaria got them to teach her about explosives. You join up, play the good soldier and they give you shit."

Spirits, this is hard. She keeps waffling on her sincerety. She'll have to ask Kayana if it's okay to rook an organized military for everything they've got, or if she's crazy to sign on the line at all.

Nex says nothing for a couple of seconds, mouth ajar, mandibles slack, pupil dilated, while his brain is trying to process what Trex has just said. Making sure he heard right, making sure he understood what she just said, that there was no way he had misheard it.

When he finally does react its by laughter. it begins with a snicker as he makes some distance from her, “ya... ya...” he tries to say as the laughter intensifies, it's not a happy laughter. “...of course everyone else is joining...” he was laughing harder and harder, even as tears welled up and streamed along his face, “... so why wouldn't ya, why shouldn't I hells we can all go...” he was clearly undergoing some kind of hysterical episode. Until he started to blabber incoherently and fell over, mewing for a second while in a fetal position before losing consciousness.

At first Trex is taken aback, but when he actually passes out she starts to shriek, raising a hue and cry and finally getting the attention of the elderly field medic who traded in his real name to answer to "Doc" long before Trex was born.

*

When Nex comes around, he's lying in a cot, surrounded by soft blankets and worn, but clean, pillows. Beside him, a slight figure squats on a stool, assault rifle resting across her lap.

For all that Trex is glad that her "grounded from weaponry" period has ended early, she hadn't imagined it would be so she could sit vigil for Nex. Doc wouldn't tell her a thing about what was wrong with him, only that she mustn't disturb him and let him rest. She's been hesitant to even touch him, so instead she grabs that rifle, and guards the shit out of him.

Had she brought this on with her stupid comment?

One moment Nex as fast asleep the next his eyes flickered open, groaning softly it felt like his brain was trying to escape from head. He blinked at the figure next to him. There was a second and another sigh.

“so, am I your prisoner now?” He asked flatly, “a gift for your new masters.” He wasn't even angry, not really, just tired.

“don't know if I'm worth much, maybe you'll get a paintjob for your new ship or something.”

"What?" Trex isn't sure she's hearing him correctly; and this isn't what she wants to hear, this babbling nonsense. "You're not a prisoner, and I don't have any masters, not since Quatra anyway. Look, I didn't sign anything, I didn't join up, I was just sorta kinda wondering if I could do what Sicaria did, to pay for my flying lessons. Nothing's decided so you don't have to be all weird about it."

She bites her lip. "I guess your vote is no, right?"

“Weird? WEIRD? I'm not the one who's thinking of joining the Hierarchy!” He shrugs, “the idea that you're even considering this... it's not even like they are putting a gun against your head or anything.”

“Don't come crying to me if ya get brainwashed.”

He stays silent for a while until he finally shrugs, “ya know what, I... I'm done caring, about you, about the sundowners, about the Hall, about Solregit, about the whole fucking thing. I should have left the Heartstone where I found it and ... and just go in what's left the jungle and disappeared. This world has changed too much for the likes of me.”

"The problem with going off into the jungle is that sooner or later someone finds you. Like Sicaria." She sets down the rifle; standing vigil is intended to reassure him he's safe against outside threats, not make him think he's her prisoner. "Or something eats you, I guess."

There was a time Trex would have said that if Nex had been courting her she'd never have considered it; that going to boot is the path of a young, single turian, not a Sundowner matron. She's matured too much to say it now, even if she does, ever so briefly, think it.

"What happened? Doc won't talk to me."

“Well people want to find Sica, I don't have a contract on my head or whatever. And if something eats me, well the law of the jungle applies to all.” He looks away, not wanting to see her for a moment.

“I don't know, it was too much, ya know, like everyone I know is dead or sold out. So I come back here, 'cause this place feels like home and then the first thing you do is talk about joining the Hierarchy. And fuck I got those headaches again like the last time I was here.”

“This place is just way too big for me.”

Trex thought she was ready for this, but she feels crushed again. "Not staying, huh. Well...I'm glad to see you again...and I'd...I'd like if you stayed, but if it makes you hurt here, then...I could probably find out where Sica's farm colony is. You could work here, get some money for your ticket. She's not young, she can't farm that land forever and her granddaughter's not going to be grown for another fifty some years."

“I... I just don't know,” he said quietly, “like a few years ago things were so simple, so clear cut, I... had a future, it wasn't much. I would fight, have kids, slow down, maybe settle down and have my own kids like those I would raise myself with my wife, and I probably would end-up a fisher or dead.” He closes his eyes, “That drell friend of yours would say it wasn't much of a future, and ya know, I might give her that, compared to what I see other people do it's rather... simple but I had it, it was my future.”

“Than the ceasefire comes and the war and all that stuff, and I know I shouldn't complain, 'cause things could have gone a lot worse, but I lost my future. Ya get? I no longer know what I want, what I can get, the most that I know is what I don't want.”

There was a deep sigh, as he pitifully tried to chuckle.

“I'm tired of it all, tired of trying to go against the current, and I'm afraid 'cause that is pretty much the only thing that I know how to do, I don't know what I would become if I stopped holding my ground.”