Mara Jade is SHIELD's ☕ Queen (marajade) wrote in thedoorway, @ 2013-01-10 21:42:00 |
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If she'd been smart Mara knew she would have made her way back to her apartment and simply have gone to bed, but patience with all of the changes having run out she was finding herself edgy and restless and the idea of returning to the room and pacing the floor or staring out of the window into a city that was just far enough away from Coruscant to be unnerving simply didn't appeal to her. Tonight she found herself in a corner at Sam's with a selection of alcoholic beverages in front of her. She was still working on uncovering which particular beverage she preferred, and tonight was as good a night as any to test several, she'd decided. Mara liked to claim she was adaptable, and when push came to shove, she was. In her twenty-six years she'd been thrown a lot of rubbish and somehow she'd always managed to come out of the other side surviving, if not always thriving. Recently, though, she'd found herself feeling better about her life than she had for a long time. Recently being until a little over a month ago when she'd ended up here. But one step through a Tesseract and out the other side. She'd landed cautiously, she'd reached out to the people she did know, and she'd begun to carve out a place for herself, but she had to admit to herself that she was feeling the exhaustion of not having a place once again. It was the same irritable feeling she'd felt after Emperor Palpantine's death, before she'd begun working for Karrde's organization, minus only the ever present voice of the Emperor commanding her to kill Luke Skywalker, but with the extra addition of having all the people that she knew show up not knowing her, topped with the cherry of a zinger that she had a son with Skywalker. The logical part of her mind told her that it was reasonable to be edgy and irritable, but the part that usually demanded more was responding that she was better than getting emotionally caught up in everything. Skywalker had been annoyingly accurate in suggesting she was dwelling. She was; and the fact that he was a teenager and still managed to call her out on it had not improved her mood at all. Mara took a sip of the beer in front of her, considering the taste and then looking at the small piece of paper stuck to the table in front of where the glass had been. None of them were full, all of them had labels with what they were stuck to the table in front of them. This seemed to be Guinness, which meant very little to her but this was as good as anything she'd had thus far. She'd had a good day at least, with the opportunity to learn a bit about the programming languages and networks of this universe. A real lightsaber duel with Jaina had helped as well. In fact, while Mara wouldn't have anticipated it, she'd already appreciated having Jaina around. It was easy for her to see why the two might have been paired as Master and apprentice in Jaina's time. She had easily felt a camaraderie with the other woman and perhaps it was that as much as anything that had made her realise how bitterly homesick she was. She missed Karrde, and Aves, and Ghent and others on the Wild Karrde. Ironically she even missed people that were here. She found herself feeling wrong-footed every time she began a conversation and it was frustrating, and ultimately more exhausting than she gave it credit for. So she'd ended up being brusque with Luke and she found herself returning to a feeling she'd thought she'd finally ousted for good when she'd joined Karrde's people: loneliness. She tried the next mug over and wrinkled up her nose at it. After a second sip she pushed the mug back, still mostly full. This one would definitely not go on a repeat purchase. It wasn't as if she had no friends, she reminded herself as she fingered the small paper that belonged to the rejected drink. She'd enjoyed a conversation with Anakin Skywalker. Sam had been interested in her thoughts, and ultimately she'd come to appreciate their conversations, and now there was Jaina. There had been at least a few moments where she'd almost forgotten Luke wasn't the Luke she knew and perhaps she and Leia could speak more in the future. Perhaps she'd also make friends within the SHIELD training as she continued with that - it seemed like a possibility at least. It would get better, she told herself as she reached for the original pint and took a sip of that. It always got better, and she was beginning to have a few people she felt somewhat comfortable letting her hair down around, and that was worth a lot. Perhaps ultimately Luke would even be among them. In the meantime one night of drinking - not so much she wouldn't be able to do her SHIELD training in the morning - might be exactly what she needed. |