Jolly?

The massive yautja had his back turned to her. She could define every muscle under his green and violet skin and especially his arms, fists fiercely clenched. Everything about him was tight and stiff, ready to fight, and not in a good way.

He didn't turn to face her. He didn't move in the slightest. She had done something wrong again, but she didn't know what. She frowned, trying at first to remember what she had done, before giving up and began debating with herself. Approaching him like this could be dangerous; it would likely just result in a fight, as it usually did.

But she was sick of him just ignoring her like this. She had questions, and whether he liked it or not, he was going to give her answers.

Setting her jaw, she stepped forward and grabbed his bicep, pulling him to face her. She knew she didn't have the strength to force him to do anything. He would turn only if he wanted.

"Dammit Jolly, look at me!"

It didn't take much convincing to get him to move and he turned.

Hannah gasped.

Blood was pouring from his throat, fountaining over his neck rings.

"What have you done to me?" he gargled. Hannah flinched back, snatching her arm back but he caught her wrist in his hand, tightly, painfully, almost breaking it as he took an unsteady step towards her.

"I didn't do this!" she cried.

"By your own... hand..."

Hannah shook her head, pulling back away from him, revolted, looking at the glowing green blood covering the front of his body, dripping off his loin cloth, then at her hand. A ceremonial dagger, painted green up to the hilt.

"No! No!" she cried, dropping the knife with a loud clatter, "I didn't! I didn't mean to! Jolly!"

Her friend stumbled forward again. She had the sense to keep pulling away from him, to run, but she tried to catch him as he fell, almost an instinctive reaction. The weight of his body caused her to collapse, and her back hit the ground, one hand on his shoulder, the other pinned to the ground, still clenched in his. His entire body covered her, she was so small compared to him. And he was heavy.

She winced and turned her face away as the blood from his throat poured onto her face, into her mouth. She spat and cried out again.

"Jolly! I'm sorry! I'm so sorry!"

She felt crushed by him as all strength lost his body. She couldn't breathe from the pressure. She tried to fight, to writhe out from under him, until she felt a gentle brush against her face. She stared wide-eyed at her friend as his tusks lightly caressed her, before closing over his bleeding mouth.

"It's alright, my friend," he breathed, his head slowly turning, lowering down to lay beside her, his tresses all falling off his shoulder and pooling on the ground, "I forgive you."

Hannah continued to stare. The light left his golden eyes and his mandibles slowly fell open. Breath evaded her. She wanted to scream but couldn't. She was stuck, trapped only with her mind's voice.

Jolly no! JOLLY NO!

A painful spasm awoke her. Her eyes opened for a brief moment before closing painfully against the light. She sighed.

Fucking. Alien. Medicine.

Hannah recognized the familiar taste of it in the back of her throat, but the pressure on her body was different. Grunting she turned her head, realizing quickly that she was completely horizontally inclined. She winced and opened her eyes slowly, blinking at a bright red light above her. Frowning, she lifted herself up, feeling sore and very stiff. She was unclothed, laying on a hard surface covered in a soft cloth.

Clearing her throat, she looked around at where she was, alone in a room, definitely yautja in design. Behind her, a machine was displaying several yautjan symbols that meant nothing to her. She shuddered, though she wasn't cold. She flipped her legs over the edge, sighing and rubbing her face and her eyes. Taking a deep breath that didn't burn at all.

Stopping, she took a deep breath. Other than being a tad too warm, the air was completely breathable. Where the hell was she?

Her bare feet touched the ground her hands idly sliding the cloth off the table she was laying on and tying it around her. There was a another table nearby that had her mask on it, and she got the idea that if she intended to leave the room, she would have to wear it. Looking around, the room was otherwise spartan, as was typically yautjan.

She looked down at herself and saw that the wounds she had received from Ret'pure-wu were more or less healed, and there were some straight-lined burns on her abdomen that she did not remember receiving from the bad blood at all.

The last thing she remembered was being found by Bhu'ja-zhu-ju'dha and him carrying her and Jar-hidda into his ship. And them laughing at each other.

Where was Jar-hidda?

It made sense that he would not be in the room with her, breathing a completely different air than she. He was likely in another room.

Putting her mask on her face, she moved to the door and touched it. There was a tone, and a shift in the air, before the door slid open. She found herself face-to-to face with a yautja she did not recognize, he wasn't armored, save a mesh suit, but the cloths he wore weren't casual either. She eyed him up and down before looking up into the eyes of his mask.

"Jar-hidda?" she asked simply and he nodded and rattled, clicking to tell her to follow and left down the hallway.

Hannah followed, looking around at the tunnel that they were in, before a door opened and forced her to squint her eyes. The sunlight was bright, and it took a moment for her eyes to adjust, before she was able to see a sprawling expanse of a city. She stared at it for a moment, having seen nothing like it before, but didn't get long to dwell as the yautja clicked for her to keep following. She glanced every now and then at the planet, wondering just how large this clan was, before she spotted ahead of them, a familiar green and purple yautja speaking to a white and yellow one.

Hannah abandoned her guide and ran over to where the two were. Jolly had new scars of his own, but looked to be healing better than she was. He caught her by her shoulder when she approached and gave her a once over, shaking her shoulder in an iron grip and releasing her.

"I thought you'd never wake up," he said teasingly and Hannah smacked the back of her hand against his stomach. He didn't even flinch.

"Good to see you awake Numyakuo'ide," said Bhu'ja-zhu-ju'dha and he also shook her shoulder. She reached up and touched his hand, a bit confused.

"Throat Cutter?" she asked.

"It's what they're calling you," the arbiter affirmed, retracting his hand and sitting back in his chair.

"Why? 'Hannah' isn't that difficult to say, even in yautja."

Bhu'ja-zhu-ju'dha clicked in amusement and reached for a bowl of liquid.

"Hannah is human," he explained, looking to her again and raising the bowl, as if in a toast, "you've proven to be something... else."

Hannah stared at the arbiter as he drank, before looking at Jar-hidda, who looked at her, then looked out over the city.

She remembered her nightmare, and frowned. She didn't dwell on it, as it was very obviously not real, and Jar-hidda was alive and safe, just as she was.

"We'll be here for a while, so you might as well get used to it."

Hannah's frown changed to one of annoyance and looked out at the city as well, remembering the state that the Kut'kuni was in. She understood why they were stuck.

"Are you getting a new ship?" she asked, "we've nothing to trade for it."

"I don't know yet," Jar-hidda answered, "Chul-yaun is seeing if it can be salvaged, if not, we can trade working pieces for something, maybe."

Possibly totaled. She looked at Jar-hidda, and could imagine what that possible future felt like. She hoped for his sake they would find some way to fix it.

She looked again at her friend. If the possible lose of his ship was affecting him at all, he was doing a very good job hiding it. Granted, he'd have to in the company they were in...

Hannah sighed, "is everything in it gone?" she asked, remembering her mother's gun, her bow, all the trophies.

"No," Jar-hidda said quickly, easing her mind, "our belongings have been relocated here, treated with the reverence they deserve," he rattled.

"Including your new trophy," Bhu'ja-zhu-ju'dha added, setting down his drink and reaching behind him, "there is something else, though."

He set down on the ground a small tube, which he opened. Inside was a carefully wrapped bundle, which he lifted up gently and held out to her. She looked at it, noting the care he was taking in treating it, then took it and unwrapped it.

Her chest tightened.

"Oh... Smaug...," the lizard had been put back together with staples, his eyes were sunken in. She ran her fingers gently across his spikes and sighed heavily, feeling her eyes burn, glad for the mask. After a moment she wrapped him back up again and looked at his tiny mummified body.

"I thought at first it was a creature you were keeping for food," Bhu'ja-zhu-ju'dha explained, "but Jar-hidda explained that it was something of a pet to you, and how it had died. He had nothing but fond words for it himself, so I returned to the planet and recovered him for you."

Hannah slowly sat down on the ground where the other yautja were, looking at Jar-hidda, who remained quiet, to Bhu'ja-zhu-ju'dha, who didn't scold or lecture her about attachments and how they were against the Path.

He simply looked at her with something like understanding. She nodded.

"Thank you," she said simply and sighed, looking down at the bundle before her. She didn't know what to do with Smaug's body, she wasn't sure it would be okay to bury him on this planet, giving him a yautjan funeral seemed out of the question as well.

Solemnly, she decided to keep him until she could cremate him. A warrior's funeral seemed right, maybe a little silly, but right.

"What...," she began, looking up at Jar-hidda, "what do we do now?"

"Rest," he answered casually with a click and Hannah was a bit stunned. She couldn't remember the last time that they simply 'rested.' There was always shipwork to do, training, cooking, hunting.

"Rest?" she responded, a bit incredulously. She laughed when he clicked at her in confusion, "I don't think you know the meaning of the word."

"Neither do you," Jar-hidda rumbled back with a yautjan grin.

Rest. After this whole time, years of wandering through space, trying to earn respect, being a pain in Jar-hidda's ass, being nearly killed countless of times, and fighting Ret'pure-wu nearly to the death, resting felt very odd. She predicted she would go stir-crazy in no time. She looked over to Bhu'ja-zhu-ju'dha who leveled his eyes on her.

"I don't know the meaning of it either," he offered, and Hannah stared at him for a bit, then laughed and looked down at Smaug, stroking his wrappings gently. Her smile slowly faded.

"What do we do after?" she asked and Jar-hidda rattled.

"The same," she looked at him, "new ship, old ship, I'm still clanless, you're still pyode amedha. We go out, hunt, gather what we need, trade for what we can't manage ourselves."

"Deal with your never-ending breeding requests."

Bhu'ja-zhu-ju'dha burst out laughing and Hannah looked at him, smirking.

Jar-hidda was less amused, "yes, that as well."

Hannah smiled, she got the answer she wanted: no matter what happened, what hell they went through or hardships they endured, who they met or who or what they lost, life would go on and they would move forward.

With her new life here among the hunters of men, something now in-between human and not, it was all she could really ask for.

She moved to sit closer to her friend.


And that concludes The Unforgotten! Thank you all so much for your patience through all of this, and all of your reviews and kind words! Guest reviewers as well! I wish there was a way for me to respond to you!

Thanks also again to Fire Redhead for letting me borrow her characters from her Hunter series for this story!

I'll be posting up the first chapters for the sequel soon, I hope to see you all there!