In Time Gone By...

~ 4 ~

Why couldn't the past stay where it belonged?

It wasn't every night, but it was often enough...those experiences...those images, all that had happened... It wouldn't leave her...would it ever?

They hadn't been at the location long. 

They had landed a few hours before they were to meet their fellow fighters, in the far outskirts of the city as to not attract attention, between towering fir trees and vines that draped between the branches. She and her partner discussed directions and distances as they left their ship, heavy drops falling with loud cracks against her hooded poncho; they soon dripped from her hair that she couldn't keep sheltered for long. 

The journey ahead was about half a day seeing as they couldn't land directly in the city through those same thick trees and darkness leant by the canopy of leaves that rustled tall above them. A chill wind set in amongst the downpour, turning the spongy ground into thick mud that caked her boots. Despite the rain, the air was still heavy, crushing almost, impenetrable by even the lashing streaks of cold water. 

"Alright..." she muttered, scrolling through the datapad in her hand that was becoming difficult to control. Elliott looked over her shoulder, his hair dripping more water onto the tablet. "Head south...which is that way." 

"And we meet them there." 

"They have a safehouse...we should be good. Just need to keep moving, stay low." 

"I love it when you talk missions." he said and she snorted a little. 

"Hardly." she laughed as he brushed aside the wisps of hair that escaped her braid, stuck to her face. "Shall we get going?" 

"Wait..." He quickly kissed her, a blush creeping up her cheeks before he set off in the direction she had mentioned. "Now we can get going." 

"Okay..." She watched him go for a few steps while he looked up at the sky then his own datapad like he was...waiting for something? But she soon followed after him, just about to grab onto his arm when- 

She was stopped in her tracks, knocked off her feet almost, by the first of many planet shattering explosions that rippled through the surface, their ship bursting into flames alongside it. Covering her eyes from the mirage of heat in even in this weather, she looked up for some kind of answers only to be greeted by the whooshing of a Resistance X-Wing overhead that aimed further shots at her surrounding area, throwing her back into a tree. 

Elliot was no where to be found when she managed to sit up in a painful confusion, her back only just strong enough. The pain was...unbearable. 

Though that was far from her only injury: her back was stiff, barely responsive, ears ringing so now only the echoes of the following explosions remained, swimming in her head. A few ribs were surely damaged or even broken. But she couldn't get up and run...from her own. The strain was impossible to battle. Hopeless confusion and betrayal began to set in...

Eventually, somehow, she managed to sit up a little, her focus dazed and dizzy, looking through haze and ash and fire for any sign of her partner. "Elliott..." she murmured to begin with, trying to take some pained breaths of air. "Elliott...! Elliott, are you...where...where are you!"

She attempted to crawl, to shuffle away somehow, force herself to move in whatever excruciating way possible. The crushing weight of exhaustion was overwhelming and beginning to overcome her. 

She could hardly move...she couldn't escape, help herself or Elliott whom she continued to cry out for through streams of burning tears, lying in a heap of shattered branches and ash turned sludge from the downpour that seeped into her very bones. The area around her was smoking, near rubble, any scrap of the lush trees now burned out and replaced with blackened dust, singed treetops and the stench of scorched flesh.