A post star one story Duel revisited Jenna vs Avon part 5.
Blake and Avon had split up.
"Nothing can be achieved without the accumulation of knowledge." Avon had proclaimed dryly, and with only a nod of agreed understanding from the casual curly rebel, they had agreed to split and search for their enemies in a randomised grid pattern, meeting up later on at an arranged rendezvous.
A way off, Travis was hacking dourly at the end of a long pole of yew, thinning it down to an even width while Jenna watched him with practical interest, meanwhile tying fletching's on a thin selection of arrows. They were working quickly and concisely, balancing out each other's skills, trying their best to be quicker and smarter at accumulating weaponry than their opponents.
"Now. You only have to get close to him Stannis. I'll do the rest, well?" Travis barked out shortly, his sullen voice harsh and bitter, and clearly uncomfortable about explaining he was worried for her "No unnecessary risks alright. Don't put yourself in to additional danger. I can capture Blake from there."
"Don't worry. I wasn't planning on it." Jenna replied ruefully, running a hand through her golden waves, clearly rather feeling the stress of the situation, then looking back at Travis. His grim dark features somehow settled her nerves.
"Good. I don't want that, Jenna." he told her clearly, voice dangerously pointed but his emotions walled in, unable to be got at.
"I know... but you do want Blake?" Jenna knew she was poking at an old would, but she had to know where she stood.
"Of course I do." the soldier snapped back vitriolically, his apprehension shortening his patience "I've waited a long time for that. And when I find him..."
"You'll use him to get Avon. You have to Travis. I don't believe you want to be trapped here anymore than I do." Jenna cut in practically, trying to let him see reason on his own, without too much interference from her. She hoped there was not too much obsession and hate between him and Blake that he could, without letting that pain take over his common sense.
The memories she had of trying to comfort the scarred man after horrific night terrors concerning the enigmatic rebel made her wonder how possible that would be, and how deep that pain cut into his fractured soul.
"I know I know! I can handle my own duty, Jenna. That's why I was always a good, officer. I did what was required of me." Travis spat back, his empty voice spleneticly savage, until his voice cracked, and she could see the dark shadows of ghosts that harrowed him in his remaining blue eye.
"I am aware of that. But I understand letting him go is going to be hard for you. You've been after revenge for a hell of a long time Travis. And I know what it's like. I wanted revenge for something too." The canny smuggler explained gently, a tenderness to her usually business-like manner.
"Jenna..." He began.
She took the machete gently from his battle worn fingers, stopping his work on the bow for a minute, and squeezed his flesh hand gently. A silent act of consolation.
"Did you ever kill him?" he asked suddenly, referring to the federation officer who'd killed her father.
"No. No I didn't" she replied with rue consideration.
"Why?" he asked, then more bitterly added "To scared?" his derisively goading words were crueller than he intended and the sharpness of her reply was understandable.
"Not quite." Jenna glared ironically
"By the time I got there, he was already dead. You killed him, Travis. that's why." Travis looked down at his hands, regretting his overly harsh words.
"I didn't know" Travis' dark voice issued bitterly.
"I didn't suppose that you did. I'd have been rather annoyed if you had." Jenna replied provocatively, her angelic voice both flirtatious and understanding.
"And you weren't?" he asked slowly, curious.
"No. I suppose I was anyway" she admitted after a moment. Travis' reply was harsh but understandable. The only way he'd ever known.
"Good, that's the way it should be."
"Not today though" the golden-haired woman reminded him pertinently, once more squeezing his tense calloused fingers, tossing her gold hair over her shoulder as she looked the dour scarred solder directly in the eye.
"No. I know. Do you trust me with that? With not killing Blake?" he tensed up but he didn't pull his hand away.
"Yes I do. You'll never trust me if I can't trust back in return. "
"I hope that's the right decision Jenna. I don't know how I'll react. If I'll have to kill him." Travis looked frustrated and vulnerable, his nerves turning him into a coiled spring, turning his head away so she could no longer look into his apprehensive blue eye. Wary distrust merging with sullen trepidation.
"I have. I'm more sure than you are I think." she admitted gently, more than anything she wanted to reassure him. A few moments later Travis picked up the machete wordlessly and continued with his task, and she continued with hers, but it was a comfortable silence and she was alright with that. Travis was not really one for words anyway.
Once the bow was finished, strung and there were enough arrows to make it worth their while, the two packed up and made off into the damp leafy undergrowth.
As they walked, she noticed that Travis didn't even seem to consider the knobbly roots underfoot and the uneven bracken rich ground. The bracken bit at her hands and the decaying leafy detritus stuck in clumps to her heeled pink boots, stretched out spider's webs occasionally getting caught in her golden hair. It was clear that Travis was more at home here than her, but she didn't complain. Instead, she tried to make conversation.
"It should be Blake carrying that. He always saw himself as a regular Robin Hood." She joked wryly
"Perhaps" echoed back Travis listlessly mirthless.
"Well, aren't you going to disagree with me?" she tried to cajole him, But Travis remained grim as ever. The soldier was clearly on edge about this plan.
"I'd rather just get this done Stannis. I don't like this." his blue eye was cold and the way he spoke made this statement seem like a clear understatement of the facts.
"I won't even have to talk to him Travis. What are you, my shadow?"
"Yes." he agreed although he knew it wasn't really what she wanted to hear.
"Bit tall for that aren't you." she joked gently, realising he was just as afraid of losing her as she was of him "Can't you trust fate just a little Travis." there was bitter dissatisfaction in his savagely disillusioned response and clearly visible were the painful shards of a fractured mentality in his haunted remaining eye.
"Why should I. It's a futile gesture, it just hurts you in the end, when it fails. Hope is meaningless." Tears pricked in saddened pity at Jenna's own eyes, but her warm tone was gently firm and certain beyond any possible shred of doubt.
"No... no it's not. And I have every intention of proving that to you so just you wait."
Travis' attention suddenly shifted, alert to his surroundings, and simply stated, stealthy as a slinking cat.
"I hear Blake."
Jenna was the first to step trepidatiously into the large clearing, her pink boots snagging in the brambles as she walked. Travis was watching her darkly from behind a screen of foliage, bow drawn and at the ready, making sure he had measured the distance in strides that she was walking, to make up for his lack of depth perception. She pushed down her nerves. Blake couldn't see that she was scared, or she could screw this whole thing up. She needn't have worried however. Blake walked in through the trees towards them and saw her, a genial grin grew over the unrufflable rebel's curly visage. He clearly thought she was on her own, and by the looks of it on her side.
" Blake?" she said cautiously, but he seemed to believe her innocence, striding over to her.
"Ah Jenna, I knew you couldn't be behind this. What happened?"
The arrow hit before Blake reached her, seconds before, and Blake fell on his knees, an arrow in his leg. She tried not to fell any guilt for the confused hurt look on the curly rebels charismatic features.
"Why Jenna?" he intoned in that same hurt confusion. Apparently, he couldn't fathom that she could make a life for herself somewhere else, and a good one. That's when any guilt left her, and she remembered the reasons she hadn't gone back.
"Everything you've bought down Blake. All the time you spent, caring for nothing but taking down the federation. Not even me, as far as I could tell. I didn't like the price" The spite was noticeable in her even voice, and a few breaths later Travis' scarred, iron edged figure dragged Blake roughly up from his knees and into the dark undergrowth.
Once they got back to the clearing, Travis dropped Blake's incapacitated form roughly to the ground with enough discare to take the wind out of the obstinate rebel, and making Blake cry out as it jarred his injured leg.
"Blake! How nice of you to stop by." Travis' voice was deceptively pleasant, and companionable. Jenna grimaced, knowing she'd have to separate them before long. Jenna knelt down beside Blake, aiming practically to tie the mule headed rebel's hands, but not to mess him around like Travis would probably have done.
"What do you want from me Travis." Blake replied, a stubborn dislike in his bored sounding voice.
"Bait." Travis replied, obviously enjoying his victory against his lifelong nemesis "Avon will come for you. And when he does, I can kill him. And then Jenna and I will be free of this place."
"What makes you think Avon will come for me." Countered Blake, a cheeky obstructive note to his hate filled voice.
"Do you take me for a fool Blake. Avon will come for you. He always does." Snapped back Travis with a growl
"And when he does, I think I might enjoy killing him. After leaving me on Star One I think I have that right."
"That is the difference that remains between us Travis. I don't believe anyone has the right to commit murder." Mulish blandness hid dislike of Travis, up to a point.
"How many men have you killed Blake. Blowing up federation facilities. Those men had families too. Was it murder when you killed my men, or blew a hole in my face. Your no different than me, Blake." Travis was shouting bitterly, his voice cracking under the pressure of his words, and the hatred he felt for Blake. Jenna stood up from where she knelt beside Blake, worried by the tone of Travis' voice, quickly putting herself between them and trying to reassure Travis with a gentle hand on his arm.
"I have to believe that I am, and, I won't let you use me to get to Avon." there was a disdainful smugness to the rebel's blind faith that Jenna found disgusted her.
"What choice do you have. You are our prisoner now." Travis countered from over Jenna's shoulder, his rough angered declaration embittered and tinged with the edges of mistrust, but Jenna stopped him striding forwards with a hand against his chest.
"There is always a choice Travis." Blake's smug tone as he stalked off managed to wind Jenna up until her patience snapped completely.
Jenna's tone was icy calm with an undercurrent of fiery threat, kneeling close beside Blake so their faces were almost touching, head tilted slightly.
"Yes, there is a choice isn't there. I think mine, might, just be a little easier than I thought it was. So if you ever talk to him like that again, you won't have to worry about waiting for him to kill you. I'll be the one emptying a blaster into your face, alright."
Jenna backed off, going over to Travis who was standing darkly vicious, facing the gnarled mossy bark of a thick tree trunk, his fist planted on it, trying not to snap and go back over to Blake.
"Travis hold it together alright. We'll be out of here soon." she told him tenderly but practical, trying not to consider that this situation could tip him over the edge. She pushed her worry back down forcefully inside her.
"Yes." he replied distantly, and Jenna gave his flesh hand a calming squeeze, before looking back over her shoulder critically at Blake. The man glared back at them, his eyes like steel yet also somewhat nonchalant.
More of Blake this time. Thank you for reading this. Also the man Jenna had wanted to kill was from the big finish audio's.