Vol'kari Kurs'kaded: A Wolf's Shame

[harleykyn]

A failure. A horrifying mistake. Etched forever was her name, and his soul would eternally be her tombstone. For convictions had distorted, the disquiet of surrounding threats twisting and contorting them until they were warped into something monstrous, even if only for a moment A moment. A life that he would never be able to bring back. Abject horror gave way to broken sorrow and from it, a burning contrition that fully engulfed him. The moment forever burnt into him. A broken child’s face regarded by visors, cold and callous. Apathetic. A press of fear, a flash of anger. A torrent of feelings overlapping, spelt out with ease for him like pages of an open book. A family killed, a child taken, a new family formed, a child treated like a person, given a choice. A choice…

“Knife. Or gun. I respect your commitment…”

A child. Broken. Traumatised. Injured. Disarmed. Scared. Not some deranged killer. Not like them.

Not like him.

A single nod, devoid of compassion, empty of understanding, filled only with a frigid finality. A bolt left its chamber with a resounding crack. Smoke coiling quietly from a sniper’s barrel. Silence. A life returned to the force without question, without hesitation, without consideration. Quick and painless, or so he’d hoped. Brutal in its cruel efficiency. A pawn taken off of the board. A pawn. No. A person. A kid. A child.

“What are we, Volk?”

Mandalorians.

Mandalorians who take up the children from the field.

Not kill them. Not kill them.

“What were we entrusted with?”

“What were we entrusted with?”

“What were we entrusted with?”

Vol’kari shot upright from where he’d fallen asleep, with those words still ringing in his ears. A sheen of sweat dampened his forehead as each breath came in heavy, shuddering rasps. There was nothing to greet him except an empty darkness as an icy chill bled him of any warmth he’d had. How could he have lost sight of himself so utterly and so severely? To be blinded so much as to not see the face of a kid looking back at him. To sanction her execution with cold indifference, without even offering a chance.

“Don’t become so obsessed with saving your own that you twist your rationale to justify your actions.”

A warning he’d given to others countless times before. A warning he’d learnt by watching someone dear lose themselves as their fear of loss distorted their reality. Someone, Vol’kari swore to never emulate. A vow that now lay broken, scattered with the ash and bone of a life that should’ve never been taken.

Devastating grief tightened around his throat whilst shame choked at his heart. He would not run from it, he would not hide. No. Instead, he sat in the darkness and faced the claws and teeth of his demons. And he would remember. He would remember her face. He would remember what she thought and felt in those final moments.

He would remember Marisa.

[harleykyn]

Conscience fought with pragmatism, his soul a battlefield riddled with smoke and bone. A solitary war that felt like too much to face, a war with other’s views headlined in bold print for him to read. Opposing articles, each steeped in a unique blend of what has been taught, what has been learned, what has been experienced, and above all else, what has been valued. Over and over their words rang out across the broken and scarred field. In the end the decision rested with the lone wolf that stood in the center of it all, battered by detonations of shame from one direction and bullets drenched in protective fury from the other.

This war had always been inevitable. This choice.

A war of decision. A war between fire and ice. Between the warm fire of compassion, of reaching out a hand willing to offer a chance, to spare life and show that there is care beneath it all. And the icy chill of a final and decisive protection for those held most dear, their lives held above all else leaving all others to freeze in the cold. Opposing forces that had existed in harmony from a distance until it was no longer possible to keep them separated. Until a blade of ice pierced through compassion’s burning heart, veins of cold indifference suffocating until there had been nothing left but embers.

“…an enemy who would have done the same to us in our place.”

An enemy whose crosshairs had found purchase.

An enemy who sought the death of so many.

An enemy who would have done the same… who… might have done the same.

Would she have given them a chance?

Did it even matter what she would have done?

They need not be the same. One could still reach out. Provide a choice.

Provide just one chance.

“Everyone… deserves a chance…”

Sleep dissolved into contrite memories, and with it the searing guilt that spread through him like wildfire, its smoke suffocating him until Vol’kari sat up sharply with choking gasps. Breaths like sharpened glass burned through his throat and lungs. A luxury for him that Marisa was no longer afforded. What would she have done? Would she have spat in their faces? Or would she have taken his hand? The dead could not rise to answer. Time could not turn back to play different choices. There was only a single direction to go. Ever forward. Never back.

In darkness, surrounded by uncaring steel and restless demons, Vol’kari sat with the weight of what could have been. Questions to be left eternity unanswered and carried with him. Nothing could be done for Marisa, but everything could be done because of her. Bodies would trail behind him, but they would be the corpses of those who chose their fate, not have their fate chosen for them. All it took was a modicum of compassion and reaching out a hand. All it took was a breath of careful understanding of perspective and a quiet empathy.

All it took was one chance.

[harleykyn]

Perhaps there was some truth to time healing wounds, and plenty of time Vol’kari had to work through equal measures of grief and shame that’d descended upon his soul. And yet… something was missing, despite it all. Vol’kari, exhausted and wounded as he was, wanted nothing more than to be able to move beyond the battlefield that he’d been trapt within. To finally be able to look forward and promise that every step taken would be done to better himself, to never make that very same mistake again. But it was not such a simple task, to let grief lie when it’s serrated talons bore into him, still so fueled by the shame that lingered. In the end, there was nothing that could be done for Marisa. There were no clocks of which to turn back time. No forgiveness that could be asked for. No longer did he have the ability to affect her life. After all, she no longer had a life. No, he would have to find a way to make it up to himself, to find what would finally quell the disquiet that haunted him.

So much had already been faced, but there was yet one more that’d been avoided until Vol’kari could no longer outrun it. And in truth, he never could outrun it, for it was there within the corner of his eye at every turn. A looming truth that merely had the illusion of being avoidable, when in reality it had always been settled in front of him. There was no moving beyond this, not fully, until the final reality was faced. And so, in solemn solitude and silence, he finally turned to face what it was he’d been hiding from.

Cold. Alone. Burnt to a pile of ash and bone.

Abandoned to the elements. Given no rest. Perhaps it didn’t matter, in the end, what happened to the inert remains of those who once held a soul. And yet, in the end, it was truly all that remained of her. Her bones had been left to rot beneath the stars and her rifle taken as if it were some prize. In reality, there was no ability to truly know if that rifle meant anything to her, no knowing if she merely viewed it as a tool, or if it was something far more special. But it was all that he had. It was the only thing that he could return for some modicum of self-forgiveness.

In somber silence Marisa’s rifle was taken from Gal Yaim.

Back to where it all began for Vol’kari, he returned once more to the humid jungles of Alvorine. Time had done little to deteriorate his memory of what had been a battleground. Steps were easily retraced as they led to what had been the young sniper’s final perch. Perhaps it’d been a long shot to believe that her bones would still lie where they’d been abandoned, instead of carried away by the local wildlife. It was a reality that the grieving wolf had planned and steeled himself for. But that was not what ultimately awaited him, in the end.

A small grave marker sat in quiet memorial to the girl whose bones now laid beneath the surface, resting properly as they should have been. Shock mixed with sense of relief, but it was remorse that tore at his chest and brought him crashing down to his knees. They had returned for her, come looking for her, and found only what remained of her in the wake of the wolves. Behind his golden visor, emotion swelled and toppled over as silent tears trailed down his cheeks.

“There is so much I wish I could do… I wish I could say… forgiveness I wish I could ask you for.” Hoarse words were murmured with a heartbreaking sincerity and lined with a regret that he knew she would never be able to hear, but he spoke nevertheless. “But none of those options are available to me, and I’ve no one to blame for it but myself. I cannot change what I’ve done, only what I do going forward…”

There was still one final thing to be done as slowly, carefully, Vol’kari dug into the ground just before the disturbed dirt of the grave. With each press into the dirt of a small hand shovel, he began to allow himself to feel every shred of remorse that had embedded beneath the surface of his soul. He did not stop, even as his heart was gripped tightly by grief and his lungs were crushed by remorse with every thin breath. Until finally he laid Marisa’s rifle into the trench he’d dug and buried it alongside the young sniper.

“Ni ceta…” Vol’kari murmured with a deep bow of his head before he’d push to his feet and return home. There was little he could have done, so he did the only thing he could do. And now, he would move forward, carrying her ghost with him for the rest of his life so that he’d not fall into the same traps again.