Mara Jade is SHIELD's ☕ Queen (marajade) wrote in thedoorway, @ 2015-03-17 11:32:00 |
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Entry tags: | mara jade, sam winchester |
RP Log; Mara Jade & Sam Winchester
Who: Mara Jade & Sam Winchester
When: 3/6 or thereabouts (?), a day or so after Veronica's disappearance.
Where: Sam Winchester's Apartment
What: Coffee and holding space.
Rating: S for Sad.
Status: COMPLETE.
It had been a strange day. Or 48 hours, or however long it had been. Sam had stopped paying attention to the clock. He hadn’t made it in to work. He hadn’t slept well either, except for dozing off a little bit the night after Veronica had disappeared. At the very least, he’d stayed lying down until he felt a little more energized, and sometimes that was all he could do. He had managed to leave the apartment, even though he hadn’t really expected to. Despite the reasons that he’d had to do it, which were very worrying, it had done him some good. For one thing, it had energized him to actually start packing. He started with Veronica’s stuff first. There was no reason for putting it off, not really, except to indulge his own denial. But he was trying to continue being honest with himself, and the fact was that she was gone. Even if she came back-- which she might well do very soon, and it might be even more painful than her disappearance-- she wasn’t going to be living here with him. And if she did come back soon, the very least he could do for her was give her things back. Clothes were easiest. He did the load of laundry that was waiting, and folded all of her clothes into boxes. It took him the better part of five hours, and the sun had been down for at least a couple of them by the time her closet was empty, and the boxes were stacked beside it. After that it seemed only logical to move into the living room for her shoes and jackets, and by then he’d hit his stride. It was the middle of the night or early in the morning by the time the living room was stripped of any sign of Veronica, and then he’d started packing his own stuff up too, just because it looked too strange for it to be sitting there on its own. By the time it was early morning, he was exhausted enough to curl up on the couch with Titan and fall asleep. He’d woken to the news that Mara was back in town, and he told her to come over. For most people he’d been putting off seeing them, spending time with them, until he was either ready to use their help to move or until he was back in the tower. By the time he’d gone through the whole process of packing and had his own space that didn’t feel so empty and yet full of echoes of Veronica being here, he figured he’d be ready to deal with being social to some degree. He wanted to see people, but the prospect also sounded exhausting. There were so many people who wanted to see him to make sure he was okay, and as much as he appreciated that, he needed to make sure he was okay himself first. And he figured he had dibs. But there were other people that had a prerogative to see him, if they wanted. Dean and Cas, whom he’d allowed over as much as they wanted, even when he didn’t need it-- and now Mara, who was also his family. Frankly, he almost felt that he needed to see her more than anyone else, because it was just the two of them now who’d been friends and family here for years, and a part of him was afraid that it was all coming to an end. That the tesseract had decided that they’d reached the limit of the time they were allowed here before they were sent back. Even if they were eventually brought back, that would mean an ending nevertheless. And he and Mara knew that better than anyone. He opened the door to find her on the other side, and immediately spread his arms for a hug. Quietly, with a small smile, he said, “Hey, Mara.” -- Mara didn't say anything, instead she simply stepped into his arms. Sam was so much taller than she was, but she was used to hugging people taller than she was and she just wrapped herself around him as much as she possibly could, drawing on the Force to embrace them both as well even though she knew Sam wouldn't be as sensitive to that as another Jedi would be. It was everything that she could give to him in that moment - all of herself- because more than any other person here he had been here since her beginning. They had arrived maybe weeks apart, and they had become fast friends, and they had dealt with losses from their world, and returns, and dark moments, and loves, and Mara wished with all of her being that she could erase this particular loss from Sam's life. He deserved happiness that was much longer lasting than what he'd been granted. The truth was that it had reminded her of the fact that she could disappear at any moment and while her life at home was nothing she dreaded -- in fact there were moments where there were pieces of it that she missed here -- it would mean her leaving and not remembering anything. It might mean leaving in the middle of a mission. She had almost died this month, Nick had been distracted. If she disappeared by his side, would he be safe? They were topics she had mostly avoided thinking on or talking about at all, and Veronica's disappearance combined as it was on the tail of her own injury, had simply forced the thoughts into the open. Not that she could really share them with Nick, and not that Nick had not thought of them she was certain. They both knew the relationship was not the most ideal of situations - but they had grown to love each other and for all she might tell him he ought to leave her in New York (and for all he maybe truly ought to do so) she knew he wouldn't leave her any more than she could choose to stay. When she finally pulled back she looked up at him with a sympathetic smile. She could tell from the room that there were boxes, that he'd been packing. Of course he wouldn't stay here and perhaps she could help him with that packing, if he needed it. Or they would sit and watch bad telly, or simply sit in silence if that was what he needed most. "How much did you sleep last night?" -- Sam definitely felt something, though he wasn’t entirely sure that it wasn’t just the relief and comfort of hugging Mara. He hadn’t really realized it, but he’d needed to see her; he needed someone who fully understood what all of this meant. Not just that it was awful to lose his wife, but how that would feel after more than two years together surviving the tesseract’s clutches. He suspected that, like him, she had glimpsed the larger perspective of what this might mean for them. That maybe time was running out. As much as he was hurting, he still wanted to stay. There was nothing better about his world than this one, even without Veronica here. He’d built his life around her, and she was the best thing about this place, by far. But she wasn’t the only thing, and even now, he preferred it here. He wasn’t ready for his time here to be done. There were many reasons for that, but one of the big ones was the woman currently hugging him. Sam had cared about a lot of people at home, but he’d never had friends that he was as close to as his friends here, and Mara in particular had become inextricable from his idea of family. He couldn’t imagine forgetting her any more than he could imagine forgetting Veronica. Well, he could imagine it. He just didn’t want to. So he held on tight, reassuring both of them, until she pulled back. In answer to her question, he gave a wry smile. “A few hours,” he said. “Not enough to catch me up on not sleeping the night before.” He’d already had a cup of coffee this morning, but he still looked exhausted. “What about you?” -- "A few hours," Mara returned with a slightly embarrassed shrug. She could have had far more sleep she knew, but she couldn't have slept. Well, at least not without drawing on the Force for a meditation, or a trance,or something that would have put her out. "I've been resting a lot recently," she said instead. And she'd had more time in healing trances than she cared to for a while. "So I spent most of the flight on work." It had been good to have something to focus in on which was something she suspected Sam might understand. She didn't really know what to tell Sam either, all that she knew was unlike anyone else in this reality Sam was the one she could be most emotionally open with. It was ironic perhaps that this was the case because there were so many secrets she didn't tell him, Nick's identity, what she was working on, where she was at any given time. Things that others in her life knew, but Sam had been told more about how she felt about any of them than probably anyone else. He wasn't in love with her like Luke Skywalker, but he loved her, and she didn't want to think about having to live without that support in her life. Before she stepped back completely she dropped her hand to his and squeezed it tight and then stepped in to the room fully so she could shut the apartment door. He'd made a fair amount of headway she could see. Yes, something to focus on, a task, an activity. Sam most certainly understood that as a way to work through everything. "Can I help with things?" She tilted her head at one of the half-filled boxes. -- Sam’s expression took on an extra glint of amusement. But a moment later he sobered and looked her over for any sign of her previous injury. “How’re you feeling?” he asked. “Healing up well?” It was easier to focus on other people than himself. But he wasn’t deflecting because he was avoiding addressing his own problems entirely. It was more that he wanted to process on his own, in private, because he had always held everything about his relationship close to his chest-- not in the way that Mara did, making it secret, but the details had always been his and Veronica’s alone. There was a certain amount that could be observed, especially at their wedding, and he didn’t mind that. But he hadn’t been in the habit of discussing too much about their relationship when she’d been here, and the same was true now. It wasn’t bottling up or pushing anything down, it was simply keeping it close, private. Now that Veronica wasn’t around to share the memory of their experiences and their hopes for the future, they belonged to him alone. He appreciated the support, though, in the form of his friends and family keeping him company and making sure that he didn’t feel too alone. He did need people around him, filling in the void of someone who’d been around for him all the time, even if it was in a different way. The amount of privacy he wanted had its limits; shutting everyone out wasn’t going to do him any good. If anything, he wanted to keep all of them closer, too. At her question, he shrugged and then shook his head. “It’s alright. I kind of want to do all of it myself. Move at my own speed.” It wasn’t that he would have minded anyone, especially someone he trusted as much as Mara, to touch his things or Veronica’s-- but each thing that needed to be packed had its own significance to him, and the idea of passing one over was more than he could bear. The process wouldn’t feel complete to him if some of it was done by someone else. “Do you want anything to eat? Or some coffee? Dean’s been keeping my fridge stocked.” -- "I am," Mara touched her abdomen lightly. "My partner's a good surgeon as it turns out, and a healing trance does wonders on bullets as well as blasters. So… I'm feeling almost normal these days. It probably would have been a few weeks out otherwise." She stepped into the room and across to the sofa and ran her fingers along the edge of it. She didn't know sometimes what to say about Nick. There were so many things she wanted to say at times. She could speak with Natasha and Jasper because they knew, but she couldn't talk to Sam about Nick's identity. And right now she didn't know what she wanted to say about what she was feeling altogether. It was too close to what Sam was actually going through. She turned around and nodded. "Maybe some coffee, or toast?" She tilted her head at him. "Something that's simple and I can come with you and help you fix it. I haven't really had much to eat. To a certain extent I've not really been that hungry." Mara stepped around the sofa and towards the kitchen. It would give her something to do, and the process of having activity was something that was incredibly useful to her right now. She needed the motion just like she'd needed being able to work through the information with the drive. "It's frustrating though, we were so close… and I made a bad call," she looked for some bread for the toaster. "And I got hurt, and we lost some leads." -- “Good,” Sam said, relieved to hear that she was doing better. He’d assumed she’d make it through, of course-- she was strong and capable and he knew she’d only work with people who were the same, but that didn’t stop him from worrying. It didn’t help that he had very little to distract him right now from worrying about the people around him, since that was serving as a distraction from his wife’s disappearance. He moved into the kitchen and started going through the motions of getting food together. There was a comfort in simple tasks, even if it was also an extra effort to do them. How Sam ate was often a direct reflection of how he felt; choosing healthy foods because he felt impure, indulging himself when he was happy and in love. Now he still felt human, if not precisely pure, but he was devastated by the sudden end to his marriage and even his favorite foods seemed lackluster and unappetizing. But he had to eat to live, and he still wanted to do that, so he kept up with it as best he could. “It happens to the best of us,” he said, pulling bread and coffee out of the cabinet and setting them on the counter. “You’ll find another lead. You’ll make it work.” -- Mara sincerely hoped that they would. She knew her personal worries weren't rational. But when she felt like she'd spent over a year proving that she could do things here, that she could understand this world, that she could help fight HYDRA, and be useful, that she could have Nick's back when he needed it most, to have herself come face to face with the sort of mistake a rookie would have made was beyond frustrating. It made her feel bad for having convinced Nick he could trust her, even though - without her he would have been likely working on his own. She didn't think there was anyone else that he could line-up to take her place. Natasha was working on other things. Sitwell, for all Mara didn't think there was a thing wrong with him, was away from Nick and with Natasha's team for probably good reasons - until they could prove HYDRA had left no permanent damage. And so he needed someone with him, and she was as good and as capable as any of them - just perhaps slightly less knowledgeable about this world. Although she was getting better, and her mistake hadn't been related to that… it had just been simple misjudgement. "It's just hard enough to find those leads sometimes," she shook her head and nodded to the coffee. "I can start that if you want?" Coffee she could do with her hands tied behind her back thanks to Jasper's guidance. "So it's really frustrating to have wasted one. More so I think because it gets all tangled up with my personal insecurities, you know? I'm not from here - my world is vastly different - and I've been trusted with… a lot. I've worked to earn that trust. And while intellectually I know that it's the sort of thing that happens, and that I can't beat myself up to much about it having done so - it's still been a challenging week." Although not as challenging as Sam's had been. "But you're right, I know you're right. I just hope it's sooner rather than later and we aren't set back too much." She nodded into the living room. "Are you headed back to the tower then?" -- “Be my guest,” Sam said, waving a hand in direction of the coffee maker. He took that as his cue to take charge of the toast, which was really simple enough. It took him about two seconds to stick it in the toaster oven and set it to toast, and then he leaned against the counter and looked at her. “You know-- no one is perfect. You were always going to make a mistake eventually. Showing how you bounce back and learn from it and do better might even earn you more trust. Then they’ll know that even if you make a mistake, you can still come back and get the job done.” He gave her a slight smile. “Sometimes trust, especially in our line of work, is more about being able to predict how a person will act under pressure than it is about simple faith in their ability to handle everything well.” At least, that was a part of why Sam and Dean worked. They couldn’t always trust each other to make the right call, but they knew what kind of call the other would make-- for better or worse. He gave her a slight smile. “Just get back in there and kick some ass, Mara. You can do it.” When she changed the subject, he looked in the direction of her nod. Taking a deep breath, he gave a nod of his own. “Yeah. I think it’s where I need to be. I’ve kind of missed it, and… staying here would be an exercise in denial and tormenting myself.” -- Mara nodded as she pulled out the coffee beans and began to work through the process of making coffee. She had learned how to make it in the safehouse with Jasper Sitwell, and it had been perhaps that process in beginning to build a trust that would ultimately define her life here. Yes, she had been offered the chance at the beginning - even at being brought into the safehouse in the first place - but from there little things had continued to grow it. And she had been given pieces of what Jasper knew - enough to warn Sam and through him prepare some others perhaps - and now Nick had taken her with him. He trusted her with so much information and with his life and she never wanted to let him down. But she knew that was somewhat unrealistic. No one could be perfect after all. And she could certainly kick some ass. She smiled at Sam's words and crossed to fill the coffee pot with water. "It may be easier to be back among the Tower residents again," she paused at the sink, pot filled "It's not precisely the lowest profile place to live, and I've been in and out of it myself ever since last summer, but i keep my place there, because there are times when it's nice to have the place to stay. And truthfully, not matter how at ease I may feel in this world - there is no place where I am surrounded by people who understand what it is like to be uprooted and to make a new life for themselves here - quite like those in the Tower." She stepped across and poured the water into the coffee maker, turning it on and then turning back around to face Sam. "And you won't be alone there. You've got friends." -- ‘Easier’ didn’t seem like the right term for it, but Sam didn’t correct her. There was nothing that would really and truly make this easier, but there were things that could help to make it bearable, at least some of the time. Having family and friends around was not the same thing as having a wife, a partner in every sense of the word. There was no one else who’d ever quite mastered the art of lightening his mood the way Veronica had, making him smile and laugh and feel genuinely better. She’d carried him through so many difficult times and made it so much easier to cope that he’d almost forgotten how hard it was when he was on his own. Even with his brother here, even with friends like Mara around. But it was still better with them around, because the only thing worse than being lonely was being totally alone. He was going to experience that in his future at home and never, ever wanted to live with it here. If there was anything that he’d learned about himself, it was that he needed to have people in his life for it to be worth living. That, and he needed to be a person who deserved to be alive, but Veronica had convinced him of that, at least. And he knew she wouldn’t want him to give up on himself now, no matter how hard it got. “Yeah,” he said, mustering a slight smile, but there was a grim edge to it. “I do still have people here. And… I want to spend as much time with them as I can. Especially if the tesseract’s starting to steal them away.” -- "Let's hope the tesseract isn't doing anything of the sort," Mara said, and there was an edge in her voice that she didn't really intend. As she watched the coffee dropping into the pot she realized that it was there, and she closed her eyes and bowed her head slightly pressing her fingers to her temples. "I'm sorry, Sam. I just - I think I've been thinking about what it could mean to N-my partner - if I just up and disappeared in the middle of something important." The tesseract had been very generous from her universe recently. Family, friends, only Luke's mother, and her own son were truly missing. But Mara had been here long enough to see times when there were this many people from home as well, and eventually they had all slipped away - leaving her alone and as the only one from home. And Sam had been there too, but this was different and she knew it. She knew just how precious the sort of partnership he'd had with Veronica was. It was so difficult to find that person who could help you through anything, who you could count on for anything, you could be partner and support, and could bring you a smile when you couldn't find one otherwise. She lifted her head and offered him a sad smile. "If the tesseract does have sentience, it's a cruel beast." -- Sam noticed the edge to her voice, and the slip of the tongue, but didn’t mention either one of them. Instead he said simply, “Yeah. I think… we can try to be as realistic about it as we can, but even if we managed to cover all our bases and left as little hanging as possible, there would still be something we missed. Or someone to miss us.” He could understand her concerns, even though he didn’t know her partner, even though he didn’t know the details of the work they were doing. He did know that it could cause all sorts of problems to be in the middle of a job like hers and suddenly be one person short. It could potentially cost her partner his life, certainly compromise his safety. Of course, assuming that her partner was equally as pragmatic and forward-thinking as she was, that had to be something he had considered. “Have you and your partner talked about that?” At her comment about the tesseract, he gave a wry smile. “Well, we knew that already, didn’t we?” -- Mara reached for two coffee cups and considered. Had she and Nick talked about it? Not really. She knew Nick was practical enough that it would have crossed his mind. In fact it was a problem that SHIELD dealt with so long as they were willing to employ and send out in the field refugees. It was the sort of thing that made her much more sympathetic to the sort of reluctance that she'd sensed from SHIELD in her early months of employment. But you couldn't have someone doing something and then simply have them disappear, and it was a possibility. Taking time to put them out into the field meant less likelihood to disappear - at least it seemed to be true that the longer you stayed, the more likely you were to stay. Although Veronica's disappearance proved a reminder that this was not always the case. "He is too practical and too good at what he does to have not considered it," Mara said simply. She knew it was the honest truth. Nick Fury had been the head of SHIELD. These questions would have come up in a much less personal way long, long before she had ever entered the picture. Back when they were determining whether or not they would hire refugees and offer them employment no doubt. Whether the personal bond they had formed would cloud his judgement… well, Mara would have quickly answered of course it wouldn't, but she knew it was more complicated than that. She took the cups, poured coffee and brought them both back to Sam, offering one to him with a small smile. If she could bring Veronica back for him, she would have in a heart-beat, but she'd have to settle for being there for him instead. "I know we've had this conversation a dozen times - about how nothing is certain even without a tesseract in the mix - and I can't quite decide if it's better or worse to have a tesseract to blame. But here, so long as we have friends, and we make friends, and we offer our heart and our support to people around us - there will be something to be missed when we leave, and someone to miss us. And I'd rather have it that way, to be honest, and as painful as it is in the moment - I know you would too." |