Author's Note: Its been a while since I got back into the writing game. I need to know if this is any good, so if you decide you like it, let me know (by clicking that review button). If you decide you don't like it, do me a huge favour and hit the review button as well.

Thisnis set almost two years after the events of Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens, and it will contain SPOILERS. If you have not already familiarised yourself with the events of the film, please do so before reading this story. I mean, it really is a great film, why haven't you seen it yet?

I own nothing that is rrecognised as created by George Lucas or JJ Abrams. Just the OC's. And the plot.

Enjoy!

Helix exhaled slowly before releasing the arrow. It thudded into the tree, close to the centre of the red target that had been painted on the trunk. She relaxed, lowering the bow, and smiled. Even Keslin wouldn't be able to deny she was improving.

Collecting the shoulder quiver and her spare arrows, she walked to the tree and pulled the arrows she had fired from the trunk. The sky would be darkening soon; it was time for her to return home. Carefully, she slid down the damp slope of the mountain, jumping the last few feet to the valley floor. Once, a creek had run through this part of the forest but time had diverted it to the the nearby lake.

"Cutting it close, aren't we?"

Helix spun around, throwing a knife so fast she hadn't entirely been aware of grabbing it. The young man leaned to his left and the blade missed his messy dark hair by a few inches, sailing past him and thudding into the tree he had been leaning against. He looked at the small knife, then at Helix, arching an eyebrow. "You've been practising?"

"It's more than you've been doing," she replied. He pulled the knife out of the tree with apparent difficulty, before jumping down from his perch on the exposed roots and holding it out for her to take.

"You know very well that I practise other things, sister," Loren told her softly. She snatched the small knife from his hand and muttered irritably as she turned away.

"I don't know why you insist on following it," she told him as he fell into step beside her, "It's all a bunch of fairy tales, Legends and myths,"

"You know that's not true," Loren told her. Helix stopped, glaring at him as he cut in front of her, "The proof is all around you - I don't understand why you refuse to see it."

"Let's not get into an argument over this," she told him, stepping around him and pushing aside what looked like a leafy canopy and ducking beneath it. Loren sighed heavily, following her inside.

Their brother, Azros, was seated at the small table, his grey eyes staring vacantly into space as the light on his forehead band blinked rapidly. Helix dumped her bow and quiver on the table loudly, and his eyes swivelled to see her. He grinned brightly, reaching up behind his ear and detaching a small cable from the cyborg implant. He wasn't truly their brother, but they had been raised by the same man and considered Azros as close as any blood.

"Progress?" He asked, spotting the bow. Loren ignored him, moving past into the rear of the cave that served as their home.

Helix grinned. "Like never before. Four out of five in the inner circle, one in the core ring.

"That's great to hear!" Azros grinned, stowing the cable in his pocket, "Keslin went out, so I was downloading more information about starfighters. D'you know the Empire banned the manufacture of the Delta 7B Aethersprite Interceptor after it came into power? It was called the Jedi starfighter because mostly Jedi used it during the Clone Wars,"

"That's cool " Helix told him, shrugging off her jacket and draping it over a chair, "Where's Keslin?"

"We saw a cruiser land; he went out to scout,"

"That's supposed to be my job!"

Azros shrugged. "You weren't around, and he didn't want to wait. He won't be long,"

"That's not what I'm annoyed at," Helix slumped in a chair, spotting a small data pod, "What's that for?"

"No idea, just found it, " he shrugged, "It's a bunch of architecture designs for what looks like a space station."

"Can I see?"

"Projection lens isn't working," Azros replied, "I told him weeks ago it was faltering."

"The projection lens isn't necessary," Loren told him irritably, "We needed that deal so we could fix the generator, unless you want to live in darkness,"

"We've done it before," Helix told him, turning her head. Loren folded his arms in a defensive stance. "Just leave him alone."

"He's left me alone since I was six," Azros muttered, and Helix rounded on him, raising a hand.

"Don't you start, either!" she shook her head sitting down again, "Can't you two give it a rest? At least act like adults,"

Loren muttered something.

"What was that?" she asked.

"Nothing," he replied, turning away from his younger sister. Helix knew he hated when she told him off, but he needed to accept that this was how things would be. To see him single out Azros for his implant hurt her. She knew he was angry about what had happened but it was in the past and nothing could be done, now.

Helix liked the implant. They couldn't afford the correct casing so it was mostly exposed wires and data chips built into the metal joiner, resting just abive his right ear. A thin metal band stretched halfway across his forehead with an indicator light that glowed blue and two small lenses, one of which could be flipped down to cover his right eye and enhance vision.

He could have had a C-48 fitted, but the only time they ever discussed it, Keslin had said that it was decided he'd be better off with the C-72. It was larger and had more parts that were difficult to replace, but Azros had proven each of the additional features useful to them. From his left, however, the implant wasn't visible and he looked like a normal human male. His hair was jet black, shaved short around the implant but grown out everywhere else. He had a habit of running his fingers through it, pushing it back, and it seemed to be perpetually swept upwards. His eyes had once been a dark brown, but they had gradually turned grey due to the circuitry inside his brain. His skin, once a darker tan colour, had also been turned pale. He rarely went outside anyway, venturing only as far as the lake whenever he did leave.

Helix liked it. He had projected images of other people with implants, and she had decided that of them all, Azros had retained the most human appearance - many of them had shaved their heads or gotten band implants, which wrapped around the head. In comparison, his was smaller and more... She had never been able to find the right would to describe it.

"I suppose if there's traders, dinner will be whatever they cook up," Helix remarked. Off-workders always had the better food, and Azros spent most of his spare time fixing up small pieces of machinery that they could trade for other things. They never starved - between Keslin's adeot handling of a blast, Helix's skill wih a knife, spear, and bow, and Loren's knowledge of edible flora, they always had plenty of meat and berries. Sometimes, however, it would feel to Helix like her stomach was clenching painfully.

"There was that little fur-runner that needed skinning," Azros told her, "And I think he brought back one of those huge birds; it might be hanging out the back,"

"I'll go skin it, then," Helix said, grabbing her larger knife. Loren didn't have the stomach to kill, had always been the one who scavenged parts for Azros and foraged berries and fruits. He also spent most of his time hiding further up the side of one of the nearby mountains, "practicing".

Helix tried not to think about what he was practicing up there, but he tried to talk to her about it regularly.

She heard muffled footsteps, trying to match her own, an she skipped a step, changing her walking rhythm. Sure enough, she was being followed.

" Loren, I know you're there,"

He grinned as he jogged to catch up with her. "See? You still use it."

Helix rolled her eyes. "No, I heard other footsteps following and knew that Azros wouldn't sneak along behind me like you do,"

Loren's smile disappeared, and he sighed, digging his hands into his pockets. "I don't sneak," he muttered bitterly, "I track,"

"No, what I do is tracking. You sneak,"

He shook his head, "Let's not argue over this."

"Fine by me,"

Helix paused at a large stake in the ground, grabbing the dead body of a small fox-like creature and slinging it over her shoulder. Keslin had killed it that morning, but apparently hadn't had the time to skin and carve it.

The track to the side of the lake was only short, and she settled on a rock, her feet in the water. She was wearing old clothes already, so she wasn't too fussed about getting herself dirty.

"I will never understand how you can do that," Loren remarked, standing a few metres back as she slit the skin down the creature's back, "Don't you ever think of the life it used to have?"

"Yes," Helix replied, "But then I remember that when I die, my bones will become dust and my body will feed new life, and so I make sure my hunted never suffers too long,"

"Even a second of suffering is too much," he argued, "It never did anything to you,"

"Neither did the plants but you insist on ripping away the fruits of their labour and devouring those," Helix pointed out.

"Plants are different; they have no emotions,"

"Says who? Those flowers in our old garden always turned to face the sun, do you really think they had no feelings? They felt the sun,"

"But I didn't eat those,"

Helix rolled her eyes, glancing back at him as she peeled the skin away. "You don't eat the meat and we have never forced you to. We accept that you don't eat meat, why can't you accept that we do?"

"It's murder,"

"It's survival!"

Helix hated when he began ranting at her about the lives' of creatures. She didn't enjoy killing, but she knew that it was necessary for her to do it, in order to stay alive. At least she did her own hunting and killing, and made it as quick and painless for her hunted as possible. She had seen traders stand over a wounded animal, shocking it with energy beams before finally killing it - that was something she wouldn't tolerate. The only time she had really interacted with traders herself had been when they'd done that - she had attacked them in her rage, full of empathy for the poor creature.

Keslin had forced her to peel tubers for a week.

"Have you thought about my offer?" Loren asked, breaking the silence and interrupting Helix's thoughts. She glanced back at him.

"I almost did, once. Don't you remember?"

"Keslin was beside himself with anger and worry. How could I forget?"

Helix pulled out the useless inner organs of the creature, letting them fall into the lake waters. "I changed my mind, though,"

"You never told me why,"

Helix hesitated, remembering the event. The girl's face, no older than herself, the brilliance of the man's red lightsaber as he turned it upon her, the way the girl had collapsed to the ground, dead in a second from a single touch.

Helix shivered, bringing herself back to the here-and-now, to feel a familiar pressure on her mind b

"Get out of my head!" she screamed, throwing the carcass at Loren. He flinched away from it at the same time she threw her wall up, and he was knocked off-balance, slipping in the muddy bank and falling on his rump.

"Helix! Dont-"

It was too late to entreat to her. She had already turned, shedding her bloodstained jacket and diving into the waters of the lake. She could have run for the shore but Loren had the longer legs, could have easily caught up with her and tried to make her forget everything.

Helix dived under the water, holding her breath and swimming towards the safest place she knew, leaving her brother on the shore, unable to sense anything more from her but her fear.