Mara Jade is SHIELD's ☕ Queen (marajade) wrote in thedoorway, @ 2015-09-22 10:36:00 |
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Entry tags: | !log, mara jade, sam winchester |
Who: Sam Winchester & Mara Jade
When: Friday evening, August 14 (way backdated cause IDK life)
Where: B Flat in TriBeCa.
What: Two friends, a familiar bar, and some conversations.
Rating: Low
Status: COMPLETE-ish.
The thing about life in one place was that you did tend to have ups and downs. Life as a general rule didn't sort itself into one nice place and stay there forever, no matter how much you might like that to be the case, it tended to be disrupted - it was unrest. And while Mara occasionally would like certain aspects of her life to be more certain, she did thrive on the changes and challenges and she always had. Thankfully in this world she'd been granted some stability and while it wasn't something she took for granted, it was something she was grateful for. Nick, Jasper, Luke, and Sam - they had all been there for her throughout the past year… longer than in some cases - and that had given her the ability to take on the other challenges. Tonight she found herself once again in the B flat looking for Sam Winchester. The first time they had met in the bar she'd been meeting here to try to warn him that something was going to go down. It was a difficult warning to give considering she hadn't had any idea what or when. She'd only known that it was coming, and that it might affect the Tower and the people there. And it had… not as much as it had affected the SHIELD agents on the ground - but it had certainly affected Potts Tower. This time she wasn't here for anything so secretive. There were no conspiracies. There were fewer secrets even. With Nick being officially alive for SHIELD, she was no longer holding that particular secret so tightly even if she were not making their relationship so public. Of course, just because there were no warnings to be granted didn't mean things were perfectly at ease. There was a lot of public unrest towards the Avengers, which meant that being Natasha Romanoff's face twin had put her as the subject of some nasty looks of recent. So Mara had shifted her style enough to slide a newsboy style cap over hair braided into two long braids hanging down behind her back. The jeans, boots, button-up shirt, and vest, looked very little like anything Natasha Romanoff had been publicly seen wearing and the braids gave her an almost youthful appearance - youthful enough that she was carded, and she pulled out her identification for the bartender as she waited for him to pour her a draft brew and she glanced over her shoulder for Sam. -- Piecing his life back together from the clues he’d found in his room and elsewhere had proved to be a very interesting exercise. Sam had been amused to find, when he awoke with all of his memories returned to him, that he’d managed to get a fairly accurate idea of his identity by the end of it. Not much of a surprise, really, especially when his whole life was documented on DVD and on the internet, although that had caused its own source of confusion, too. He probably would have mused over that for a lot longer if not for Dean’s reappearance. It was interesting timing for his brother to return, with Sam feeling strangely like his life here had started anew, after having been wiped to a blank slate. As he’d tried to catch his brother up on his life here, he’d felt somewhat distanced from everything that he’d experienced in the last few years, particularly from everything that had ended and everyone that was gone. It almost would have been easier if he’d actually started all over again, just as Dean had. Except there were a few things that he would have regretted missing. Mara was one of them. He was hoping that reconnecting with her would help him feel a little more grounded. That was usually an effect she had on him. He was a little surprised when he entered the bar and didn’t spot her right away. Normally she was punctual, even early, and normally he was the same, but he’d ended up leaving the station a few minutes late to finish up a bit of paperwork. He moved a little bit further inside and scanned the place more carefully; she had used this place for secretive purposes before, and it was possible she was being more subtle than he expected, and he’d missed it. He had overlooked the redhead at the bar because of the unfamiliar braids and hat, but when she glanced back, he was startled to recognize her face. A moment later a smile appeared on his face and he joined her, leaning against the bar beside her. “Hey,” he said, giving her a one-armed hug. “Long time no see. But that’s kind of how it goes these days, isn’t it?” -- "It does seem to go that way," Mara returned the hug with warmth and familial affection. Sam was the brother that she'd never had in her life at home, and he was one of the amazing things about this place that she sincerely hoped would never go away. When she thought back to the two slightly suspicious people who had tried to make sense of why they were brought here and what they were meant to be doing here and whether or not someone in the government knew more about it than they were saying she couldn't help but feel a warm nostalgia. Somehow from that conversation had grown a particularly powerful relationship - the type that had become the sort she would trust with anything. Sam knew better than anyone everything that had happened to her in the time she was here, and because of that he served to provide her with a perspective on that life that she couldn't find elsewhere despite having others who were close and trustworthy. And his family and his friends had come and gone so many time, that she suspected she was in a similar place. You could trust someone, but the nature of the tesseract meant they might not understand what had come before because they literally had not lived it. Or had forgotten living it. "I'm hoping that I'll be back around New York a bit more frequently though, and you can guarantee that if I am, I'll show up at your apartment and enjoy the pets that my current life doesn't really allow me to indulge in," she gave him a quick grin. "It's really good to see you, Sam. How have you been? I saw your brother came back." -- Sam smiled at that. He was glad to hear she might be around the city more often, although he knew better than to truly trust it. Not because he thought Mara was lying to him, but because he knew that no matter how much she might want to be around here more, when push came to shove, she would go wherever she was most needed. They were both that way. It just happened that Sam had chosen to join the NYPD in defending the city, while Mara had joined SHIELD to protect the world. He respected her choices, he really did, and under plenty of other circumstances he might have joined her. But saving the world through working for the government had never really been his style, and he had been carrying the world on his shoulders for a long time. Learning how to give up that burden, at least until his services were really needed, had been a difficult thing to do, but he had managed it. Mostly. And a lot of the reason why he could do it was because people like Mara were still on the front lines, doing it for him. It meant he could relinquish responsibility until she asked for his help, and he knew that she would. “That’d be nice,” he said, grinning back at her. “Then I can come over and bother you more often.” He slid money across the bar to pay for a beer, and then looked back at her. “Dean’s here, yeah. Right on schedule, I think. And he’s fine, no Mark on him or anything, so… I’m good.” -- Mara gave a relieved nod. She knew how difficult it had been the last time to figure out how to help Dean with the mark on him. And many of the people who had helped last time were no longer here. She'd been out of town herself, but she knew that a large number of those in the tower who had since been returned to their homes had been on the ground helping Sam with magic and other things that Mara hadn't been able to manage. It was difficult at times not having the freedom to be where she wanted to be, but it was generally worth it and she knew that Sam - well, all of her friends - understood that need. Many of them had done it themselves at home, if they didn't do it here. Still, it was good that it wasn't an issue this time around. It was difficult enough to do introductions and reintroductions and explanations and re-explanations when one didn't have to worry about the life of the person in front of you in anyway. To have Dean back and to not have that worry over him, was probably a relief. "Is he from about the same time as you, or is he from a later time? Earlier time?" She raised an eyebrow and lifted the drink to her lips. -- Sam gave a wry smile. “That depends what time you consider me ‘from’, these days,” he said, slightly amused. “We’re about the right ages in relation to each other, which means he’s physically from further on than I am… but I have a lot more memories than he does.” He grabbed his drink when the bartender gave it to him, and shrugged. “But that’s nothing I can’t handle. Do you want to get a table?” -- "Let's do," Mara agreed standing to her feet and laughing lightly at Sam's explanation. When you had three years under your belt in an alternate universe as both of them very nearly did, the question of timelines could be an interesting one - particularly if you'd read or watched your own futures in the works here, or had any additional memories. She led the way over to a booth in the corner so the two of them could speak, have a pretty clear view of the room, and be mostly apart from where others were currently sitting. It was less purposeful and more instinct and the habit of wanting to be able to scope the room. But it was one of the reasons she liked the B Flat - it had good atmosphere and the opportunity to speak without being easily overheard. "It's good you don't have to deal with the mark though," she said as she slid into the booth. "I know that was an ordeal the last time around and that you'd be starting over from scratch as most of those involved in it aren't here." One of the difficulties of never knowing when people would show up from was that you never knew exactly what you were going to be dealing with. There was the possibility that her nephew might show up once again and that he might be from that time - it wasn't something Mara particularly liked to think about. But it was the reason why she read. While she didn't necessarily want to know every detail of her life and those that she knew, the fact remained that having that knowledge meant that she was better prepared to deal with situations if they came up. Mara's story was mostly closed from the perspectives of the books written about her at home and there was a blessing and a curse in that. Sam had adopted a similar philosophy regarding his own show, she knew - only his situation had the challenge of the material was still being written. But that similarity in response was perhaps part of why and how they had become such fast friends. Whatever the reason - she was grateful for that friendship. |