Rest for the Wicked

Some time during the night Niome's near **** slumber was broken by the roar of nearing repulsors. She was too weak to face the men who spoke Huttese as if she weren't present, or perhaps deaf. Their intentions were grey, and apparently not pleasant. They knew she wasn't dead, and therefore the nubile bounty hunter was valuable. Niome managed a weak, dry croak as her pieces were stripped from her belt. She quickly faded from the realm of the awake soon after she was placed in the back of the speeder. While Niome's bodily trauma was lost in the black haze, she was left alone to mourn what she had lost. Her dreams weren't easy ones to sleep to.

Jarek Hawthorne towered over Niome. His sharp, bombardier eyes seeming piercing under the shade of his hat. He shook his head, "No, no not like that Niome, you grip with your pinky, ring, and middle. Don't draw with a finger on the the trigger. You only move to shoot midway through the motion." His voice was gruff, authoritative, and delivered without fricassee. Enough to make any eight year old girl cry, but not Niome. Him using her name was enough to soften the objective criticism. His harshness was nothing like she had been rescued from.

She asked calmly, with all the absent guile a child her age could muster, "Why?" He looked at her plainly for a moment, cold, perhaps judgemental. She though that he might strike her, but the blow did not come. The few seconds it took him to come up with a response were tense, years of **** conditioning perpetual malaise into the child now asking questions. He answered calmly however, almost comically, "Watch, I draw the blaster," He placed a hand on the grip protruding from its holster, "I go to draw, and BANG!" He shouted suddenly, pausing for a moment to emphasize where the barrel was pointed. He watched her carefully for understanding before he continued, asking an obvious question, "What happened?"

Niome watched him, lost for a moment in the moment. She knew then that she would be alright, she understood finally that in this man's eyes at least, she was good enough. She answered unsure, "You shot yourself in the foot?" Jarek nodded in confirmation, "Right, and if I shot myself in the foot at the start of a gunfight, what would happen?" "You would lose," Niome answered confidently. Jarek gave a grin that broke any notion of him possibly punishing her, "That's right, I'd lose. I could end up dead, or worse..." He paused, letting the gravity sink in for the child. Niome understood what he meant. He meant she could wind up dead, but she didn't quite understand what could be worse. She watched him attentively, waiting for more instruction, like a dog eagerly awaiting a ball to be tossed within reach just so it could be seized.

"Now, go through the motions again, grip with three fingers to draw, move your thumb, and trigger finger into position as you raise." Niome lifted the gun slowly, and BANG! Why was it loaded? Jarek held the hole in his chest eyes losing their sharpness. Why was the gun loaded? Did she kill him? Was she the reason Jarek Hawthorne was dead? Could she have acted differently? Was this what the galaxy wanted? Was she just to suffer? Was she just to cause...