The Last Atonian

Chapter 21:

"I don't understand," Don said, shaking his handsome head back and forth in confusion. "Why would you become one of them? The things they did to you—"

"I did it because people already thought of me as a murderer," Veerna replied, shrugging. "Why not cement it in their minds? The Federation wanted to take me in for murder. My own planet was going to try me for treason. Terrorism. You name it, they pinned it on me. Whether or not I did it was beside the point. In the end, I became what they already thought of me as. It was my only way of surviving."

"Sometimes, survival isn't worth it if it costs you everything you believe to be right," Don said softly.

Veerna's temper flared. "Do you think I'm proud of what I did? Of what I became? There was nothing left for me. I was nothing but a child. What did you want me to do? Put a bullet in my head? That's what you're supposed to tell me not to do, isn't it? Yet for a time, that's all I wanted to do. My cousin, the only one I felt like I could rely on, hated me. My family was decimated. For years, I thought Leem was dead. And when I learned she wasn't, it was too late to fix the mistakes I'd made."

Xander scratched his cheek idly. "What I don't get is why you risked so much for us," he said. "We're Federation flunkies, as you so eloquently put it. Yet you've risked your life for us numerous times, and even pulled our fat out of the fire when nobody else could've."

Veerna felt awkward, for some bizarre reason. "I just ... I just felt like I needed to," she admitted, dragging her fingers over the back of her hand. Anything to avoid the curious expressions on the others' faces. "It was more of a decision I made after Sareen shot you."

"Sareen shot him?" Leem repeated in a disbelieving voice. "I can't understand that!"

"Just as I am not the child I was when I left Vold, neither is she the child she was," Veerna answered. "We've both changed. What I did made Sareen bitter. She wants me dead more than she cares to admit to anyone. Shooting Xander was just her way to try and do that."

"What was your intention, then?" Leem asked, a look of frustration passing over her face. "Why did you come back here? If you're a different person than you were before. Surely a pitiless space pirate would have little reason to come back and fraternize with her old family. Obviously I mean nothing to you, and you think very little of me if you believe that I'll hate you because of what you did."

"What I did?" Veerna cried. "It's what I've done multiple times! What I've done countless times, and what I continue to do! I don't deserve your care and love, Leem. I never should have come back here! I don't deserve the people practically worshipping me, bowing when I walk past. I massacred their friends and family!"

"Don't you understand?" Leem yelled back. The others stepped back, looking uncomfortably as if they'd stepped into the midst of a family argument—which she supposed they had. "I don't care! You didn't intend to do it. You should have stayed. I would have helped you, don't you understand that?"

Veerna shook her head. "I don't deserve help."

Leem scowled. "Then why did you come back?!"

"Because they needed it!" Veerna pointed furiously at the others. "Because Captain Chris Chase came to rescue me and ended up in cryogenic freeze because I trusted the wrong person. Is that really any reason for me to deserve for anyone to help me?"

Leem smiled slightly. "Don't you see? It's the guilt that makes you normal. The guilt that makes it so you deserve my help. You're family, Veerna. Do you really think I'd leave you out in the cold?"