Joy Paxton: your snarky little Yoda (trynot) wrote in thereincarnates, @ 2010-10-08 13:06:00 |
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Current mood: | crushed |
Current music: | Skillet: Falling Inside the Black |
WHO: Joy Paxon/Yoda
WHAT: Narrative
WHEN: Friday, 10/8
WHERE: Her parents' place, Minneapolis
Joy had felt everything. Yoda was such a constant presence that she knew each time CORE snuffed out a life, whether it was one or many, whether it was a fellow Jedi or not. She'd felt them die. She'd felt them turn. She'd felt them slip and fall. She knew, and she felt each loss for what it was; something precious that could never be replaced. It had worn her, drained her, weighted her down until it was all she could do just to drag herself through another day. She build a defense of sarcasm around herself, cracked jokes to deaden the pain, to keep the world at a distance--and in the end it she had accomplished her goal. She'd gone numb. She'd pushed everyone away.
As a caretaker, she was professionally detached. As a friend, she was fickle at best. As a student, she slid by on autopilot. She might as well have been a zombie. Seeking out the attention of Ted Holloway, even negative attention, had become like a drug. A shot of adrenaline. She knew it was a slippery slope, a balancing act on a razor's edge, but she could feel. She could feel alive, she could feel that glimmer of self left inside of the people she had once called friends. And she had hoped.
She'd known that Abby was gone even before Julian had sent her the warning, and she hated herself for that last, petty argument. So what if the public dispute meant that maybe the Evil Empire would think she was no longer part of the Rebel Alliance? She'd disappointed her friend, and now she'd never get a chance to make things right. She could only hope that Abby could sense her true feelings from wherever she was in the Force--and that she could forgive her.
She'd sent a message to her brother, and received no answer yet. She'd reached out in the Force to Nate only to be blinded with nothingness. By that time, she was already so hungover from trying to drown her sorrows that even drinking herself into a temporary coma held no appeal. A hangover may have awakened the old Master, but it certainly did nothing to get rid of him--and besides, she drank so little since her 21st birthday that she'd probably be sick after just a couple of shots. There was a bottle of sleeping pills on her dresser, that she'd been using lately, just to get herself to sleep through the night and be semi-functional the next day, or at least that's what she told herself. She toyed with the bottle, feeling herself sinking deeper into despair, but the thought of actually swallowing all those pills made her sick to her stomach--and she ran to the bathroom, emptying herself of whatever was left inside.
She flushed the pills along with it, and brushed her teeth, then she took a long shower--focusing only on the sting of the water, first steaming hot, then ice cold. She worked out all the tangles from her hair, plaiting it in one, long, yellow tail down her back. She dressed in layers, as befitting October in Minnesota--noting that the day was ironically sunny and warm as she went outside to the back yard and just sat there, staring into space. The final frontier....