#the garleans

(@sea-wolf-coast-to-coast once more!)

The bounty hunter loomed in the darkness, chains rattled against the gate now closed behind her - and she weighed her odds in a fight.

Not good. He was a Highlander, and fully clad in heavy armor - with a blade longer than she was tall. No, violence wouldn’t solve this problem.

“You look like you’ve got this coming.”

He’d been spouting bullshit, but this was her in: he clearly looked down on her. Saw himself as some arbiter of justice. She would take that from him...and strip him of his armor with naught but words.

“Look like I have this coming? Is it my clothes, or is it because I’m Ala Mhigan? Just another desert-dweller. Just another refugee. Clearly, I must deserve to beaten in a dark alley by a man many times my size.”

His response offered up that he, too, was Ala Mhigan. Fuel for the flames of her twisted game. 

“You, too, then? Do you make it a habit of beating up defenseless women barely a quarter of your size in back alleys?” She was far from defenseless - but he didn’t know that. With how little she wore, few guessed how cleverly her sheaths were sewn into her skirt, and jacket. “Will you put me on my knees, and sing the Garlean anthem, as you beat me?”

That stopped him. She’d turned the tables on his ‘justice’ - and popped her box of painful memories right back open.

They hadn’t stopped tormenting her since that day.

Damn him.

It was his fault this was happening. She’d been content to leave the past in the past - where it belonged. But it had spiraled. His accusation that he hadn’t seen her on the ‘front lines’ had torn the scar wide open, and how it gushed.

“Maybe your people were pure enough to pass? Do you know what they called us? Beastmean. And ‘front lines’? Are you fucking kidding me? The front lines are a lot closer to home when you’re a woman, I’m afraid. Especially when you’re one they don’t even consider a ‘savage’ as much as they consider you a beast. I wasn’t wearing a uniform, but I paid my dues.”

By the time that bladed little tongue had stopped moving, he’d all but choked on guilt, re-lived his own painful past...and her bounty would go uncollected.