Mara Jade

willkickass @ 2008-11-17T00:24:00

2008-11-17T05:24:05Z

She's really not sure what she did wrong. She knows she must look like an idiot, standing in the middle of the walkway, shimmersilk dress hanging off her shoulders, hair swept up in an intricate bun, mouth open in a gape, but she cannot bring herself to move just yet.

It shouldn't bother her, that Lord Vader said those things, acted that way. He doesn't like her, he's not going to like her. He sees her as a threat, someone trying to usurp him and take his place next to the Emperor. That's ridiculous and she knows it and he should know it yet he treats her horribly anyway.

Finally, Mara Jade steps to the side, letting the crowds walk by her in the main hall of the Imperial Palace. Her cheeks feel suspiciously wet and she wipes her fingers across them, looking at the glistening tears on her fingertips. What the kriff? He made her cry. The bastard made her cry. She hadn't cried since she was a child and here she was eighteen years old and upset over something some man in a metal suit said to her.

She presses her fingers to her mouth as she collects herself, before holding her head high and walking down the hall. She just has to get to the end of the hall, to the private turbolift before anyone sees her and tries to help her. She looks every bit the wilting flower right now and she feels like it too. This is no good.

Mara presses her palm against the keypad, pulling away after it chimes and the turbolift doors swoosh open. She steps on, presses her code and the floor she wants and leans heavily against the wall. She can't even remember what Vader said to her, just the biting tone in which he said it.

Her feelings on Lord Vader were always conflicted. She never knew what she craved most from him, attention in a positive fashion or just to annoy him to the point of biting remarks. The latter happened more easily than the former, though she had managed a few times when she was younger, to receive affectionate head pats. They grew more and more infrequent as she grew older and more into her role as Emperor's Hand.

It hurt. She had trusted him when she was younger, to be the kinder one, to pat her head, hand her something off a shelf that was too high, tell Tarkin she was with Vader the entire time and could not have destroyed Tarkin's office. And now the idiot was afraid she was stealing power and she just...simply wasn't.

The turbolift stops early and the door opens and of course Vader steps on, no doubt to go back to his room from where ever he was just now. She steps back to make room for him, her fingers fisted in her dress, her cheeks still glistening suspiciously. She stares ahead, straight ahead and counts the number of times he breathes.

They stop at her floor and she gathers her skirts to step off, head held high when sudden he raises his hand and lightly pats her on the head, the shoulder. Tears fill her eyes again as she blinks up at him and swallows hard. He says nothing, just nods to her before letting his hand fall.

She all but runs to her room, desperate to make it there before losing it completely.

Perhaps someone spiked the tea, it would explain all of this ridiculous emotion.

# 190

2007-08-05T18:24:26Z

You've temporarily turned into a child -- what do you do?

Mara Jade wanders her room in the Imperial Palace, her small, chubby fingers reaching out to caress the silk dresses in the closet that is her's, even though she's much to small to wear them. Red-gold curls fall into her eyes as she picks up the skirts of the dress she's wearing and hurries out into the hall.

These passageways are familiar to her, because she's wandered them since she could walk, albeit with a nanny close by all times before. At four years old, Mara Jade knows the palace better than most people who have worked there for years. She knows every nook and every cranny and every sound and every face. Every sound like--

That one. The sound of Lord Vader's breathing apparatus. The one that has given her nightmares for years. She gasps, and ducks behind a statue of some random person. He walks down the hall, and hesitates as he nears the statue. Mara's eyes widen and she holds her breath carefully.

He stops and looks around for a moment. Mara prays that he won't look here, that he won't bother her. She's terrified of him at this point in her life. His towering black form, and the sounds of his breathing. She knows that she shouldn't be scared of him (because really, she is eighteen, and some how she just got...turned back into a child and it's terribly odd isn't it? But Vader doesn't scare her now as an adult, he just bothers her.) but her heart still seizes as he leans a little closer to the statue.

She bites down on her lip with her teeth for the achingly long moment before he finally turns on his heel and walks out of the passageway. She breathes a sigh of relief and slips out from behind the statue. Now what to do? When she was really four, she'd play in her room till something was needed of her...and sometimes she'd sneak into some high official's room and poke around. Tarkin had always been her favourite to mess with.

But he's dead now, and she's bored.

She shrugs and toddles off down the hall (the opposite way that Vader went). She'll find someone's room to fiddle with, and if not that, she can always go and get crayons and colour on the Palace walls. They'd never blame Mara now!

Words: 400

#189

2007-07-30T19:30:38Z

If you could read my mind right now… Talk about a conversation when what you said was not what you were thinking.</font>

While I never tell anyone anything I'm ever thinking, I have to say it happens most often with Lord Vader...it happened the other day, even.It's always the same, the simple, polite:

"Lord Vader." And his reply with "Emperor's Hand."

At least I call him by what everyone else calls him...no one but the Emperor knows what his real name is, I'm sure, but I wasn't born "Emperor's Hand," and one day, I will get him to call me Mara. At least Jade. And he's always so cold to me, like he's mad at me for something.

Perhaps I am being a petulant child in this situation, but I would really like to know what I've done to him. If he seriously thinks that I am competition for...I don't know, the Emperor's affections or something, he's seriously delusional! We both serve our purpose, and our purpose is to serve the Empire and above all, our leader.

These things constantly run through my head while we speak.If we speak. It's usually a few terse words like, "May I help you," or"What do you want, Hand?" It's absolutely pointless. I don't think it even constitutes as a conversation, it constitutes as two people talking at each other, not with.

Of course, I'll never actually tell Lord Vader what I'm thinking, so thinking it is probably pointless.

Muse: Mara Jade
Fandom: Star Wars
Words: 229