Log:Why We Fight

Why We Fight

OOC Date: April 21, 2016
Location: Bacta Tank
Participants: Hex

The short story: Hex hangs out in a bacta tank, and despairs.

The long story:

They keep asking me if I remember my name.

My name... my name...

My name is Heksash'kuri.

The year is 1103 and Varian Send has brought us to Ryloth, to Kala'uun, we are hurt but we are free, the galaxy is brutal but it's ours now, and it's going to be better --

No, that isn't right.

They call me Hex Ashkuri here, it is easier for them to say.

I am on D'Qar, the year is 1108 and I am at the Resistance base. I am in the medical bay. I smell like blood and sick-sweet bacta, like sick-sweet charring of my own body. I am hurt. I don't know if I am free. They are talking about broken bones and infection and they're saying 'amputation' in quiet voices so I can't hear them. I can hear them. I pretend I can't. My other leg is already gone, my arm is gone, it feels like grief. Pieces of me are gone, pieces of me are left there forever, did they burn, did they - what did the Order do with them - did they burn me?

They burned me.

I close my eyes and it's fire. I smell the bacta and it's the warehouse again, those sickly-sweet bodies, the rotting, the flies.

They can't get away, they can't fight this, there is no escape.

I close my eyes and it's fire, me burning the bodies again, burning away what's left, trying to put them to rest, burning away the finger scratches, the desperation and fear, burning, burning, burning through my memory until it's me burning this time. Everything I have, everything I am, on fire, I have to get it off, I have to get away, away from the flames and into the shadow -

That shadow -

Black and red and the dead are all around us, but it's me he sees, he sees me, there is anger pouring out of him and into me, into all the cracks in my mind where I was ever weak or scared or wrong or foolish. I have no control, I have no defense. I can't get away, I can't fight this, there is no escape. I am back into the fire, I can smell myself dying while the Flametrooper laughs, and I have nothing, nothing, I have nothing but his fire until then he is nothing, - horror brushed aside by nightmare - and the shadow is back. Red and black. Red and black. That red-hot hum I'll never stop hearing. I hear it in my bones. I hear it cutting my bones. There is nothing I can do.

The bacta is all around me and I'm trapped, trapped like the bodies in the warehouse, trapped at the feet of the shadow, I can't get away, I can't fight this, there is no escape. We have no defense against this, it's a slaughter.

This is why we fight.

This is why we fight, but we can't win.

This is why we fight, and all of us are going to die.