Mara Jade is SHIELD's ☕ Queen (marajade) wrote in thedoorway, @ 2015-01-06 21:32:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | !network post, mara jade, nick fury (mcu) |
RP Log; Nick Fury & Mara Jade
Who: Mara Jade & Nick Fury
When: 3 January 2015
Where: Somewhere near Paris (probably)
What: Nick Fury is full of surprises.
Rating: Low
Status: COMPLETE.
The bed took up most of the room, as might be expected in a plane. But this particular plane had been transportation, base of operations - home - since July, and the room had enough room left over for a pair of chairs, a small desk, and built in closet spaces along one wall. At some point along the way Mara Jade had laid her stake of claim to pieces of that room -- her closet, a throw pillow on the bed, the ridiculous snowflake lights she'd strung up above the bed - at least partially to see what Nick would say about them - but partially it had been a reminder to herself that she could do so. She had a place on this plane; she had a place in this room. It had been months since they had danced in Paris, France. In between rescue missions and pulling people out to safety (and the unfortunately too many they hadn't been able to save) Mara Jade had somehow managed to talk Nick Fury into a night outside of the shadows on a dance floor in Paris, and it had been a glorious and surprisingly relaxed few hours for so long as it had lasted. He had teased her about the cost and she had teased him back about if you added up all the months they had been together and the dates he'd taken her on, it was quite reasonable really. But the fact that she'd been able to convince him of it at all had been - somewhat unexpected, but something she'd delighted in. Mara Jade was competent and focused and she knew that the world needed Nick Fury's skills and that he and the world both needed her skills. His dedication to that greater purpose was one of the many things she admired in him. She had a fair idea of what was at stake with HYDRA. She'd seen too many agents not pulled out in time, and too few found and brought back to SHIELD. Mara could and had chosen to dedicate herself to this greater cause, and to put it first in almost every way and she would be loyal to Nick, to SHIELD, to protecting the people of this world even though they were not her own - there were some who were her own and they were enough. But she was not entirely selfless, she never had been, and sometimes sometimes she just wanted this man to herself for an evening. So often she'd felt like it was her pushing for such, but recently he'd surprised her. Taking her home to meet his mother, holding her close when she'd had to be face-to-face with her future murderer - and be the calm one whilst doing so - and tonight: Dancing in Paris a second utterly unanticipated time. She stepped into the bedroom, slid out of the silver stilettos, and lifted them with a finger looped under the heel straps to put into the closet. It left her much shorter than the man who had entered the room after her, but it had been many days since she'd spent so much time in stilettos gathering information for the Emperor at an Imperial Palace ball and her feet were telling her so. Mara turned back around and gave Nick a thoughtful smile, her eyes finding his face and searching his eye as she considered the nights events. It had been out of nowhere, utterly out of the blue so far as she could tell, but - "You have the best surprises sometimes," she spoke softly as she took a step to close the gap between them. “I’ve been told surprises are one of my strong points.” Nick didn’t even bother trying to hide the bit of a smile that curled up. He reached out to brush his hand lightly against her cheek, drawing her in because really who were they trying to fool now with distance? Granted surprising a Jedi was a bit more complicated than the average person but Nick Fury had also been told that complicated was something that he did well. And if that didn’t have Mara Jade written all over it Nick wasn’t sure what he would use to describe her. His life was one making predictions on the unpredictable. Relationships were carefully calculated out and measured for their worth in the situation. Nick created order from chaos and thrived in it where near anyone else would have died some twenty years ago. And then he ended up with a complication that was all red hair and heart. It had happened before. The scruffy young mercenary with a trick shot that wasn’t just out for money. The dark young Russian who was more than her programming and lies. Each of his handpicked team had been groomed because they started as a complication, that spark of potential to be something great and heroic that Nick Fury saw in far too few people. It was a special kind of loyalty that Nick bred, the kind of loyalty that usually allowed the room for sacrifice for the greater good. Somehow this frustrating woman had ended up as one of those exceptions. He’d already made the sacrifice once when HYDRA and Pierce raised their heads. And instead of cutting it off, Nick had dragged Jade right back into this for some foolish reason. There had been opportunities and instead he took her to Paris, he let those annoying little lights stay up, he arranged their mission so she could go be at some wedding. And she was loyal. Nick knew that look, it was a look that led to death more often than he would like to admit. Too many names had ended up on SHIELD’s wall with that look. Somehow Jade had managed to keep hers off it, despite lack of trying. And he kept putting her back because along the line he knew that look meant his back would be covered. He brought her into a kiss, smiling softly against her lips. This was about as close to a normal romance as someone like Nick Fury was going to get. “And I’ve got another one. Just close your eyes and face the mirror.” Mara's hands rested easily on Nick's chest as she accepted the kiss, a smile of her own echoing his as she closed her eyes and leaned into him. Occasionally she wondered if she had come to depend upon him too much. Nick Fury felt solid under her touch, but he had disappeared on her before. Then again in a world where a blue box delivered and pulled away with its impossible to interpret whims disappearance was a given. A blue box might prove an easy scapegoat for the hurt and anger people felt when their friends and loved ones were taken away, but the truth was life was full of such unrest, tesseract or no. Life was full of the Force. And the Force did not offer the control one might hope for - not without pulling from sources that would leave you broken. Given such considerations Mara would take the unpredictable in any reality. At his words, her eyes came open and she looked up at him curiously, an eyebrow raised as she teased. "Haven't you reached your quota for the evening?" But she did as requested, turning to face the mirror, and glancing into it to meet Nick's gaze for a moment before she closed her eyes. She could try to determine what he was up to, but instead she stood still and embraced not knowing. "If you're putting reindeer lights up I'm not taking responsibility for them," she added. There was an edge to her words that hung between teasing and giddy and perhaps she wasn't trying to determine what he was up to because she was afraid to imagine possibilities. The wrong hope could only lead to disappointment and what the two of them had carved out in this plane was undeniably complicated as it was. “If you think I’m going to put up reindeer lights you must have had too much wine with dinner.” Nick answered in an amused rumble as he pressed a soft kiss against her temple. Why he kept the silly lights up was every bit of the reason why they were here right now. The world had entirely changed in this past year whether Nick wanted it to or not. Which was the way it went. The world changed, people didn’t. Except maybe there was a little change in Nick Fury left, something that could catch even him by surprise. Every so often there had to be a decision that was made just because it felt right. There would be consequences but consequences weren’t always a bad thing. His most loyal were built from consequences and he would make those choices again every time. Reaching into his pocket he pulled out the the weight that had been dragging him down almost all evening. The chain was so light, the tags on the end worn with age. Hell no matter what the condition, 40 years was a hell of a long time to keep something. The age showed as did the care of keeping them together. Nick watched Mara in the mirror. While most people saw just how similar she looked to Natasha, Nick saw the differences. Once you noticed them the two couldn’t be more different. And it was that woman that he looped the chain around gently, letting the weight of the metal fall lightly against her chest. “All right, you can look now.” he murmured against her ear, resting his hands on her shoulders as he watched. "Not enough to make a Jedi tipsy," Mara said softly a smile crossing her lips in return. She kept her eyes closed, the cool feel of a metal chain - jewelry? - against her bare neck, then something heavier against her chest. But she wouldn't have pegged Nick as a jewelry type... Too obvious. Nick was all about subtleties and understatement; Sometimes to Mara's chagrin as she tried to sort through exactly what it was the two of them shared. She took a lot on faith and intuition, but then the entire adventure could be traced back to a moment when she'd been asked to perform a task amounting to treason and she'd acted based on nothing more than the sense it was what she needed to do. She opened her eyes and glanced down. It took an instant for her to realize what he'd looped around her neck, and another one for her to ask why. Her fingers moved to the tags, lifting the thin, obviously worn metal for closer inspection. She ran a finger over the name engraved into the tag: Fury, Nicholas J. Whatever she might have anticipated these would not have been among them. Nick held his past so tightly and sometimes Mara still wasn't certain how much of what she knew was truth and how much was partial truths and how much was outright lie, but these were a piece of that past and he'd just slid it around her neck - apparently gifted it to her to hold onto. Her throat felt suddenly tight and she realized she didn't know what to say. Nothing she could think of felt quite right and she ran her finger across the name again, lifting her eyes from the tag to meet Nick's gaze in the mirror realizing as she did so that it wasn't quite as clear as it ought to have been. "Nick, I -" she stopped, swallowed and attempted again. "You … but I... don't understand?" There were a million stories Nick could tell her about what she held in her hand. Some of them were even close to the truth. When SHIELD had burned down so had Nick Fury. He was a ghost, his past erased and much of it lost. Stories were told by people who wanted to make him into some kind of figure, good or bad. It didn’t matter if they knew he was alive or not there would always be stories. This small bit of metal had been with him each time the world burned down around him. It had been with him from the beginning. Squeezing her shoulders gently, he matched her gaze in the mirror as she tried to put all of this together. Nick could very easily be a man of words. In fact words were his trade and he used them as a brutal weapon in his life. Lying was as easy as breathing. Which meant in Nick’s mind the only real truth was in what a man did not in what they said. When someone said hail HYDRA but then built in the back door to cripple their system, which one mattered more? Action showed the core of a person better than any speech. “It’s faith, Jade.” he answered simply. Faith in her, faith in whatever was going on, faith that somehow he could give this one piece of his past over and it wouldn’t come back to bite him in the ass too badly. She looked back down at the tags she still held, her vision had blurred enough she could no longer make out the name, the number, the little pieces of truth engraved in them. She was staring at them through tears and frustrated at herself for the momentary weakness. But it had been a year of challenges, goodbyes, hellos, losing and re-finding that which had been lost, a year for faith truly and at times it had been the only thing she'd had to hold onto. She turned around and threw her arms around his neck, burying her face against his chest, not just to hide the tears that had crept up unwanted and unbidden, but to bury words against him, words she'd practically sworn she wouldn't say to him, but she hadn't expected this any more than she had expected the emotion behind those words: "I love you, Nick, and I don't need to hear it back, but I want you to know, you impossible, infuriating man, that I love you and I'll take care of these and you, and this -" she drew in a breath to try to halt the babbling - she hated babbling. "Us." Nick’s arms went around her in sync with her about face. Emotions were something the both of them kept close, they were dangerous and a weakness that others could exploit. Both of them had learned that lesson the hard way. And yet it seemed they brought it out in each other despite that. So as Mara answered an unspoken call, Nick held her against him, hand up and down her back in comfort that he rarely offered. This was exactly what they had wanted to avoid. Mothers warned their girls not to fall in love with Nick Fury. Granted that was a smooth talking sixteen year old. It probably was still true now. But here they were and there wasn’t much to be done about it. “I know you will.” And that was as close as anything else he could say. Mara left her face buried against his chest, arms around his neck, hands clasped behind it, unmoving as she tried to regain her equilibrium. There were few people that she let so close and somehow it inevitably seemed that those who did, did so without her intending for them to do so. Simple, casual, uncomplicated companionship, the rules the two of them had laid out seemed ludicrous in the aftermath of the year. Despite her every intention Nick Fury had crept into her heart, and she'd followed him beyond what had been required of her as a SHIELD agent, and here they were. She listened to his heart beat, and breathed in and out calmly, focused, reestablishing some semblance of the control she typically exuded and as she did so she realized that for the first time she could remember with Nick, baring so much of herself had not left her feeling vulnerable, just - oddly, impossibly strengthened. Mara lifted her head from his chest and looked up at him, pulling her hands from behind his neck to instead cup his jawline. When she spoke, the words were soft, but even: "Thank you." Nick had never been all that great with rules in general. One could say that he had built his entire career from bending or breaking rules when it came to what he thought was right. Was this right? He really didn’t know. Still whatever this was it wasn’t worth pushing away, not quite yet. And despite the lies, the distance, Nick did keep a tight hold on the few things in life that truly mattered. Maybe Mara Jade had found a way onto that list. Right now she was warm and content in his arms and he was ready to keep it that way for the time being. “Better than reindeer lights?” he asked, cheeky with his half smile. Her smile was generous and instantaneous at his comment and she couldn't help but laugh fondly. "So much better than reindeer lights. I really think the snowflakes and reindeer would have competed with each other in a not so brilliant way." Perhaps she'd consider taking the snowflakes down this week. It was after Christmas… or perhaps not. As ludicrous as they were she kind of liked them adding an element of homey to what was otherwise a fairly utilitarian quarter. Mara's hands were still on his jaw she pushed up on her toes to give him a kiss before dropping back and sliding her hands down to his chest and looking up with a smirk. "Do you have any further surprises for me tonight, Nick Fury? Or are you ready for your next mission?" Raising an eyebrow, Nick traced a finger along the chain on her neck now. It was strange to see it on someone else but at the same time she made it look like it belong there. Half of a thought was tucked away for later, would it disappear if she did? One more link to the past gone along with her. But to be fair the tesseract was no more forgiving than their day to day lives were. “I’ll think of something.” His reply was warm as he leaned in to chase the smirk from her face. “I think I can handle any mission you’ve got, Jade.” |