station72 | young woman shouts at cloud. [closed]

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young woman shouts at cloud. [closed]

CHARACTERS: MJ

wrackful.
WHERE: Bearings.
WHEN: 4am of d41.
SUMMARY: Elnath continues its campaign for 'best personality'.
WARNINGS: hurt feelings.

Mara Jade is exhausted.

She's suffered worse, of course. She's made it longer without sleep. She's survived worse conditions, and much longer. She refuses to let this break her.

But that doesn't mean it isn't a strain; while she hasn't overextended herself, she's getting close. Being part of two major operations, and having a keen-- borderline obsessive-- eye for detail and pre-planning, will do that to you. She's checked and rechecked the plans, scouted the locations in advance, made sure to check the personnel rosters, get floorplans...

Now, she needs to rest. But rest doesn't come, only nervous habits and anxiety. What if she never gets out of here? What if this pathetic dead end is the rest of her life? Will she eventually be hollowed out like that horrible Cathaway woman, to become an empty vessel for someone else's desires? She thinks of Joruus C'Baoth, a man she usually tries to erase from her thoughts completely. Did she escape him just to replace him with another master?

Mara refuses to let that thought settle in. She finds a quiet place in the bearings, where the open window lets the moon shine in. The city is beautiful by night.

No one is awake at this hour, or if they are, they're out enjoying the nightlife. It's safe to meditate in the living room, bathed in the comforting darkness.

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[There's one ribbon from the festival still tied around Murphy's wrist. He toys with it idly as he walks through the Bearings, freshly returned from the street, the smells of the city - alcohol, smoke from fireworks, the flavoured vapours some of the locals inhale in the clubs - still clinging to his clothes. It isn't a surprise to find the Bearings basically empty, even if that isn't specifically why he stayed out so long. It's more about waiting until tiredness - real tiredness - starts dragging at the edges of his mind. He knows, then, he has more chance of sleeping through. No nightmares.

He isn't ready to sleep just yet, though. He'd tried so much food at the festival that it's probably strange that he's hungry, but maybe it's just the novelty of having food available. He heads for the kitchen, waving the lights on in the living room as he crosses and--

Pauses. Takes the scene in. It's an unfortunate reminder of Jaha, honestly, except at least he'd had ALIE in his head to excuse it. Unless Mara's communing with her symbiote, she has no reason other than her pre-existing weirdness.]

My bad.

[He says, about the lights, but doesn't turn them off. Just resumes on his path to the kitchen area and the fridge.]

[Mara is thinking of darkness. When she was younger, the Emperor had set a test for her. It was to make sure she could function on her own, with little food and less sleep, few resources and no encouragement. The Emperor had several labyrinths built-- or maybe they were already there-- beneath the palace, all black and winding through the rocky basements. He'd throw prisoners down there to rot, or watch beasts fight for his amusement, and once he sent Mara down to see how she'd escape.]

[If you fail me, he'd said, you will live alone in the darkness forever.]

[And then he'd shut the door, and left her there. The memory swirls in her mind, and she wonders what brought it to the forefront after so many years. Ren's betrayal? No, something more simple. The fear surging at her back, the fear of failure, the fear of being lost here forever, left here forever, forgotten by everyone who knows her.]

[She hears Murphy's voice, and snaps her head around. Her walls weren't up at all, and the memory fizzes in her mind instead of dissipating. She works quickly to get the thing properly hidden, to get some space to herself. She can't let them see-... her. She can't let them see her.]

[She stares daggers into Murphy's back, waiting for any reaction, wondering if he saw anything at all.]

[It's got to be something like when you're told not to think about white bears, Murphy thinks. He hadn't been picking up anything from her except the general low level of her continued existence, linked into him, until suddenly she's scrabbling to hide, desperate to make sure he didn't see. All she does is shove everything right at him.

Don't think about white bears and suddenly it's all you can think of.

He isn't ready for it. Truthfully he's never ready for it, the connections between all of them, tends to only manage real control once he's already stumbled into a mess. The weight of it hits him like a physical blow, jolts him mid-step, sets him leaning in against the kitchen island instead of walking past it. Not that he can tell. For a moment there's nothing except darkness, loneliness, and fear. Deep fear, yawning like a chasm at his back, threatening to cover him, swallow him whole.

Except it's not him. A place he's never been, a voice he's never heard. It's Mara. But even as that realisation starts to rise, the chords are struck, the same reverberations that seem to happen to him every damn he catches too much off someone else's mind. He's never been where Mara had been, but he's felt something close, and it reflects back at her: the bunker, 86 days trapped, the frenzy of trying to keep his sanity. The dawning certainty of starvation. Of dying there, no one ever knowing or caring. Alone.

He can't stop it. It's done before he's even managed to pull his mind back to the present enough to try. He stares at the counter for a long moment, trying to put himself back together, vulnerability and frustration crackling through his skin like hackles rising. But it's the fear that's worse, failing to clear, sinking down to curdle cold knots in his stomach instead. He suddenly feels even more tired than before. Too tired to pretend that hadn't happened.

He turns to face her slowly, mouth tugging into a grim, flat smile.]

Well, I guess I'm not hungry anymore.

[Her walls slowly crumble as the shame and embarrassment eke out. None of it shows on her face. It's a mask, strained but expressionless.]

[She doesn't know what to say in the face of such shame. Is this a defeat? Will she admit such a defeat in the face of this boy? And- why is such a defeat shameful, in front of him? Mara has always prided herself on ruthless efficiency. A loss in front of this boy who isn't even, truly, her enemy... that's hardly worth mentioning.]

[But it hurts her pride, and that's all she has left, especially here.]

[Her words are bitter when she speaks, but they're always bitter. A concession to her loss, she allows herself to sound tired.] If what you saw was bad enough to spoil the appetite of a teenager, I might have just solved world hunger.

[She doesn't want to talk about it, but she wants to talk about it, but she doesn't. No one but her and the Emperor ever knew any of the details of her childhood. It marks Murphy as special, tainted, valuable, guilty.]

Keep it to yourself, and I'll return the favor.

[It isn't really about what he saw. It's about what he felt, hers and his, the ugly edges of both knotting together into a shape he can't swallow down and ignore.

Besides, he's used to ignoring his appetite.]

Yeah, you can keep the favour.

[He leans back against the counter, hands tucking into his pockets. He doesn't care if she tells anyone, and her shame finds no reflection in him, not for this. Given his track record, he'll inevitably leak it at someone else eventually.]

What would I tell them anyway? That you're scared? [Were and are, both interlocking, that memory drawn to the surface of her mind for a reason. He shrugs.] Scared is smart.

That was my training. It- I was trained by someone who... [Who doesn't matter here. But he does, and he doesn't, and she isn't sure how she feels about that still. It's who she is, and it could get her in serious trouble back home, but here...?] You could tell them all sorts of things, if you knew what it meant.

[Which is her way of relenting. Murphy has made it clear he won't be ordered around, and while she respects that, it leaves her no room to maneuver. She's not sure how to proceed with someone implacable.]

Scared is- [She grits her teeth.] You'd be implying you're scared, then.

[He doesn't tell her that her training looks a lot like bullshit, whoever did it to her belonging somewhere on the same level of hell as Thelonius Jaha. Maybe lower. Had she been told it was for her own good? For the good of everyone? Had she really cared about whatever failing meant, or was she just a scared kid, forced to do what she had to?

He doesn't know if he wants to ask. He doesn't know if she'd really be able to answer him. The connection between them feels rough, like it's growing splinters and spikes from her shame, wounded pride, unwillingness to really admit what's behind that. But he can still feel it. Fear. Loneliness.

She sets her jaw and he looks away. It always makes it a little easier.]

I was born in space. Earth-- [She isn't going to know what that means. He amends:] Our planet, it had a ton of bombs dropped on it ninety-seven years ago. It was supposed to be a nuclear wasteland, and we were going to keep living on the Ark until it wasn't. Our grandkids, great-grandkids, whatever. We weren't ever supposed to see the ground.

Only it turned out they got it wrong, and we didn't have enough air to last that long. So they took us - criminal kids, wastes of resources anyway - and dropped us down there to test it, see if it was survivable. That was four, five months ago.

[Maybe more, maybe less. He isn't sure. The days in the bunker had been easy, necessary to count, but outside? A calendar hadn't exactly been top priority. Either way, he looks back, meets her eyes. Steady.]

I guess that's how long it takes to get used to being scared all the time.

[Like an anchor, a weight carried in the chest, down the spine. You didn't have to show it, you didn't have to cave to it or let it run you, but if you weren't scared, you were stupid. You were dead. And nothing since he woke up with the symbiote in his head has made that any different.]

[She's met John Murphy with spite and anger, prickling with fear and impatience, and he's greeted her now with... a willingness to be vulnerable, offering up free information without asking for anything in return. Information, the precious past, something Mara has only shared a precious few times in her life, under very specific circumstances.]

[What's Mara's excuse?]

You... [She squares herself. She's Mara Jade. Emperor's Hand. The ultimate predator. Will she let a boy outdo her?] You're no waste of resources. You may be better suited for this environment than I am.

[Because usefulness is measured by ability to complete the mission. Mara doesn't question it.]

I was taken to the Emperor when I was young. He trained me to be his servant. He was the only one who knew I existed. He died five years ago. I... [No, she won't back down. She won't let herself.] I had nothing. I rebuilt everything from the ground up. And now I'm... here.

[The corner of Murphy's mouth tugs, bitter, as she says he's more well suited to this. It's a twisted kind of compliment. For all that he holds himself on being a survivor, he isn't blind to how far outside normal that puts him. How far it had pushed any of them. He has the thought that maybe this means she'll actually listen to him now, but bites down on the temptation to ask. She's struggling with telling him the context for the memory of 'training' he'd seen. It isn't the time to take any snipes at her, easy as they might be.]

That's screwed up.

[Understatement, but he doesn't say it facetiously. It's sympathy in his tone instead, curbed as it might be by his usual manner, his choice in words. Soft heart to hearts won't ever be something he'll willingly fall into, but understanding comes all too easily to him, these days.]

Sorry.

[She deserves it, he thinks. Maybe it's the memory of that fear and lonelieness still rattling in his head, or the threads of brood binding their minds together, or just the fact that no one should have to go through that, being crafted against their will, isolated, controlled. He'd died, she'd said, this Emperor, and Murphy can't help but wonder how. If she'd wanted it. If she'd wanted to kill him.

He would have.

He looks away, one hand lifting, rubbing over his nose.]

So you think you're back at zero again.

[She looks up at him, muted confusion on her face. No one has ever expressed sympathy over her past before. Horror, maybe, or anger, but not sympathy. She always counted it an honor, not a weakness. Murphy's reaction confuses her, and curdles a strange feeling of warmth in her chest, one she doesn't recognize. She tries to ignore it.]

That doesn't matter. [She doesn't want to answer, because it won't end well for either of them, because it lingers on her and how to help her and she doesn't want help. She wants answers.] I've gotten myself out of zero before. But as you've just shown, [She raises a hand to gesture to the bearings entire,] just trying to get myself out doesn't work, here.

Yeah, because we aren't at zero. Zero is alone.

[He doesn't really want to be saying this. It sounds like Clarke, like Bellamy, enough to make part of him want to roll his eyes at the words coming out of his own mouth. But he knows it's true. People die alone. They survive together.]

Maybe if you stopped acting like you're the only one, people would stop fighting you.

[He knows it isn't just him. He's seen how the rest of the Nest have been reacting to her.]

[Receiving advice from him is humiliating, but strangely she thinks it would be worse if it were anyone but him. With him, at least, she knows they have the same goals.]

If that's the case, then this is the first time I've never not been zero. You're aware that's what you're saying?

[It comes out sharper than she intended, and she shakes her head, wondering if it can be taken back. No, it can't. It never can.] I don't- no. No, the Emperor taught me many things, but I never needed to learn how to work in a group. I can advise you.

[It's the best she can do, for now. Imagining a world where she isn't the only one is too distant a hope, because she knows the truth. Allies will turn on you given half a chance. She can't trust half the people here.]

[No, he hadn't known that was what he was saying, but it wouldn't be the first time he's cut deeper than he intended to. But he doesn't know if he would have avoided that one, if he'd known it was there.]

What, he's been dead for five years and you're still only doing what he taught you?

[Five years, a life she wants to get back to. Murphy doubts this is the first time she's been calling herself alone when she wasn't.]

You don't get it. [She spits the words out like they're bitter. He doesn't understand, she said more than she ever wanted, and he doesn't understand. No one can, not really, not unless they've lived it. In that, she'll always be alone.]

[But no, she might not be. Maybe that's what the Force is trying to tell her. She needs to be brave like Murphy, yes, but she also needs to start using what resources she has, instead of fearing them and loving her privacy and secrecy.]

[She focuses on the feelings of her life for twenty-two years. It's not a specific memory, it's an idea, an endless feeling that lasted constantly. The hum in the back of her mind, the concrete knowledge that her mind was connected to the Emperor's, and his to hers. The feeling of being able to reach out to him at any time, to share anything with him completely. The knowledge that he was the only person who knew her, her name and her existence and the importance of her. The only person who valued her, and he was with her always.]

[In the end, his voice leaks through, echoed through the ripples in the Force: What will you do now, Mara Jade?]

[Maybe he doesn't get it, but it seems simple enough to him. If you're loose of the collar, you don't have to act like you're chained anymore. But she starts pushing through their connection again before he can just shrug and concede it. There's the thought to say something about getting some warning first, dry, not sharp - the soft flood of what she shows him sweeps it aside, drowns it and the present moment out.

The sense of connection chimes a chord, tugs on an ache somewhere in Murphy that bleeds the same for this, the Nest. The feeling of unconditional acceptance he's lost, too many times, and he can understand. He thinks he can.

But then the rest comes.

Anger lights. Like an ember crystallized over in a bitter, icy shell, suddenly finding fuel again. Each drip of feeling that she shares, of this man being the only one who knew her, knew she existed, said he valued her. A cage of isolation, control meted out through fear and that feeling of belonging. It feeds and feeds until the flames are roiling, white hot and liquid in Murphy's skin. That voice seeps through and Murphy pushes Mara back from the surging burn, the demand for outlet coming the same way it always had: a fight, a fire, blood spilt, death.

He doesn't want to hit her. She isn't the target.]

You should have killed him.

[There's hatred in his eyes, but they're glossy, wet. He doesn't notice.]

[There's anger in his heart, and it confuses her. She'd been angry for herself, of course, but no one's ever been angry for her. She stares at him as though through a viewscreen, watching a holo of a far off actor in a forgotten play. Why does he care?]

[Predictably, staring doesn't get her any answers.]

I wasn't the only one. In the end, it was someone else in his inner circle. The Emperor liked to cut off his body parts and replace them with machinery.

[Why is she telling him this? The same reason why he cares: she doesn't know. Maybe she never will.]

I only realized a month ago. [She breathes.] That I should have killed him. [It doesn't matter. It matters. She feels vulnerable, and has to fight not to bring her haunches up, to strike out and protect herself at all costs. Needing something to sink her teeth into, she turns on herself.] So you have the edge on me for mental clarity.

[He hates this, being this angry, how it feels. It'll burn out eventually, or he'll choke it down, or maybe he'll have to go back out, see if the digitally censored violence of one of those Bout It Out games would be enough to leech it off.

Right now it just churns sickly in his bones, looking for an outlet it couldn't have, even if Mara's Emperor was still alive. That would be her vengeance. This anger was born from her experiences, but that wouldn't give Murphy any right. He has to look away from her, lift one hand to hastily rub the wetness away from his eyes.]

Means you can learn, at least.

[Even if it had taken her five years to realise something that felt, to him, like a basic fact. She'd still realised it. And that meant she was wrong, saying she couldn't do something because he'd never taught her how.]

Be more than what he made you be.

[Anger on others' behalf is an unusual thing; no one's ever been angry for her sake. When Mara is angry for others, it's because they've suffered an injustice, something fundamental has failed them, tripped them up, knocked them down. Is that- The realization dawns on her like a sunburst. He thinks what was done to her was wrong. She wants to explain-- he hurt her, lied to her, but that was him. He wasn't what he seemed. But it wasn't all... what? Her beginnings don't have endings. The thoughts start, arguments spinning in the air only to fall, pointless before they even reach her lips.]

[It never occurred to her that she could be more than the Emperor's Hand.]

I will be. [She sits up a little straighter, shoulders a little more steady. Her eyes are cool, but not, for once, with judgement or loathing. This is an idea she can keep, can use. A new hope to bolster her for the future.]

[He's saved her. She wonders if he knows it.]

What about you? What will you do now?

[She's probably talking about further than the immediate, same as for her, but it's been enough already treading through her memories, digging up his own past. He doesn't have an answer past the same goals as her: find a way out of this, get back home. Survive. And that always tended to come day by day.

His mouth tugs down at the corners, hands shoving back into his pockets as he pushes away from the counter.]

Well, I was going to sleep, but your bedtime stories suck. No offence.

[He's still angry, and still tired. Maybe he'll need to find a fight, or maybe just a walk would be enough for the latter to overcome the former. Either way, he's moving to head back out of the Bearings.]

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young woman shouts at cloud. [closed]

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