Redefining "Me" - 10.241

[James Prent]

The open air restaurant boasted some of the prettiest views from the city, a wide open shot at the vastness that was the ocean planet of Dac. In the distance one could just barely make out the tips of the Seascape Mountains, the Hawaka Islands. It was the lunch hour, so the tables were full of Mon Cal and a few humans and other aliens. The native Quarren tended to stay in the lower levels of the great floating city.

Tucked away from the harrowing vistas, near a wall and facing toward the smooth curves and domes of Foamwander City, sat James Prent. She was pushing her food around her plate with a single chopstick, the other fallen to the ground and forgotten. Byl was off on a short assignment near the border. She worried about him, more than a little, despite his talents and honed skills. No doubt he would be perfectly fine. She poked at a deep fried tentacle until it fell off the side of her plate to the table. Perfectly fine.

He was always going to be okay. But after months of living on Dac, getting used to her new normal after a year on the run, James felt more and more like she was standing above a huge black hole. She was being pulled into it, a little more each boring and same day. Spaghettification was no doubt next, hopefully a painless process of becoming...something else. A noodle was swirled around on her plate.

Who was James Prent? Surely she was more than just Byl Laprovik's girlfriend. After so much time devoted to helping him discover the truth about his past, and then keeping house for him in their small apartment while he went on missions... James was beginning to wonder if there was more to her than him.

[Adia Issoris]

Even though Dac was a major member of the Alliance, humans were far from the dominant species. Outside of a few key ports and tourist attractions, Dac was left to it's native sea life and primary species of Quarren and Mon Cal.

Dac was, among other things, a hub for Alliance Intelligence. After another bout in the Corporate Sector, Adia had been recalled to Dac for debrief and voluntary reassignment. She needed to choose to decide to go back into the field or do something else. Adia still had her formal uniform on, but opened the jacket to the gentle breeze. A holstered blaster was on one side, and a holstered metal cylinder on the other. She ran a single finger across the top of the yellow-bladed lightsaber while her eyes looked for a seat. There were plenty, as it was past the lunch rush. She walked to the edge, where the balcony offered an amazing view of the Hawaka Islands. As much as her eyes would welcome such a view, she felt a disquiet. Adia made a slow turn, and noticed the young human woman alone.

On her journey over to James, she was able to make some assessments. The first was that James was clearly lost in thought. The second was that she was very troubled by something. She looked like she lacked a sounding board. Well, Adia could use one herself.

"Is this seat available?" She offered a soft smile.

[James Prent]

James was so far down her derailed train of thought that she didn't notice she was being approached until the woman was right there and asking if she could sit. She sat up abruptly, the uniform engendering trust, while the lightsaber hilt at the woman's hip made her feel ill at ease.

"Uh, sure. I guess." Her lips quirked up in a quick smile that didn't touch her troubled eyes. James looked down and grimaced at the state of her plate, hiding the largest wayward bit of seafood on the table with a hastily dropped napkin.

[Adia Issoris]

"Thanks. It's pretty quiet up here today." Adia observed and took a seat. The pile of food on her tray dwarfed whatever James had mostly worked her way through.

"I'm Adia." She offered a hand that was a little too big for her body. It looked lean and strong, with long fingers and short cut nails. James hesitated.

"James." She shook Adia's hand uncertainly.

Adia retrieved her hand and set into her plate.

"What brings you to Dac?" Adia asked between bites. The debrief had been nearly an hour long after a half-days jump, and she was hungry.

[James Prent]

"Hmm?" James had been distracted by the amount of food on the woman, Adia's, plate. "Oh. I, uh, live here. For now anyway." She gestured vaguely. "Alliance stuff."

Another hesitation while Adia took another mouthful of food. James cleared her throat a little. "And yourself? Do you live here too?"

[Adia Issoris]

Adia shook her head just before taking another bite. She chewed thoughtfully. James wasn't a spook, or she was the best spook she'd ever met.

"I've just returned from assignment." She explained, her formal Coruscanti accent slowly slipped back from over a year of being in the Corporate Sector. Right now she sounded like a spacer that spent too much time in an Imperial port.

"So do you do the Alliance stuff?" Adia asked. James seemed to be ambiguous about her whole situation.

[James Prent]

"Yeah. I mean, no." James shook her head. "My partner, he's the one who does th' Alliance stuff." Her lips tightened momentarily. "I'm jus'... here." Wind blew across the patio from the sea, ruffling her short hair. She didn't turn to look at the view. Sometimes it still made her nauseous to look at all the open space.

She smiled, focusing on Adia. "Retuning from assignment, huh? Debriefing always takes forever." She looked down at her hands in her lap.

[Adia Issoris]

"It does. I think the longest debrief I was part of took a week." James winced sympathetically.

"If you ended up with someone in the field I suspect you've seen your share of things, too..." Adia trailed off when she was hit with a rush of familiarity. She had seen this woman before.

"Have you ever been to Cloud City?" She asked, obviously curious.

[James Prent]

"Y-yes," she said uncertainly. "I ...lived there a while." James looked to the side, trying to think of a suitable way to make her escape, before looking back at the woman across from her. She seemed so... nice. And she was with the Alliance. So of course you want to trust her and spill your guts like you just got scooped up out of a diner on Nar Shaddaa, she thought sarcastically.

"Have you been there? Beautiful place," she found herself saying, before she could stop the small talk from spilling out.

[Karin DeLumiar]

"There you are," a hand fell onto James' shoulder from behind. "You forget your appointment?"

Karin's face leaned into James' view. Tilted to deliberately obscure her face from Adia's vision, she gave James a conspiratorial wink.

[James Prent]

Caught between a prying stranger and a semi-familiar face, James jumped up like she'd been electrocuted. "Ah, right, I did. Didn't! Sorry." She looked at Adia, who seemed bemused, and added another "Sorry!" for good measure while Karin towed her away by her elbow. She'd barely had time to grab her satchel, and was still trying to get it slung across her body when they rounded a corner and were out of sight.

"What appointment am I forgetting? Oh," James realized, her cheeks flushing. "Right. There's no appointment. Thanks for that."

[Karin DeLumiar]

"No worries!" Karin said cheerfully. "I read you as uncomfortably nervous so I figured you could use an evac."

She eyed James with a concerned frown. "You are okay, right? I didn't screw up anything important back there?"

[James Prent]

"What? Oh, no. No. I mean, I don't think so, anyway." James looked back over her shoulder like she was going to see the red haired woman sitting there looking disappointed, but of course there was a building between them now. "I think I go through life being uncomfortably nervous though, maybe you should follow me around."

She looked at Karin teasingly, "You aren't following me around, are you?"

[Karin DeLumiar]

"Hah!" Karin waved a dismissive hand. "You're not that interesting."

Suddenly aware of her exact words, Karin facepalmed. "I didn't mean- ffffffff, sorry James. That just came out wrong."

Karin ran a hand down her face, hiding the worst of her embarrassed blush until she could recover. "So, no, I'm not following you," she said. "Pierce ships out tonight on assignment. I ship out tomorrow afternoon, so we're meeting in an hour-ish to kill the afternoon together. Last chance we'll get until who knows when."

She sighed. "How about you? What've you got going on today?"

[James Prent]

James laughed off Karin's comment, happy that at least she wasn't alone in her awkwardness, and shrugged. "Got nothin' on my plate today. Or any day, really." She smiled tightly. "So, uh, enjoy your day? I've had a lot of 'last chance' days with Byl. In the middle of the 'until who knows' part right now."

[Karin DeLumiar]

Wait. So James was a military guy's girl who did nothing? All day, everyday? Karin could just imagine how nuts the poor woman had to be.

"You're with the right girl to make a new flightplan," she said, plucking her private commlink from her belt. "Hey Pierce, 's me. I just ran into James Prent - seems she's bored out of her mind and could use a diversion and I plan to give her one. When you get free, meet me at the races."

"So, I was going to save this but," the comm replied in Pierce's voice. "When you get there, tell Gorial what a washout you are."

A washout? Karin's brow furrowed. "Those words exactly?"

"Yup."

"Copy that. See you soon, Spooky."

A long-suffering sigh came from the commlink before Karin switched it off with a grin. "He hates that nickname."

"So, I'm not gonna force you to have fun or anything," Karin continued, shoving her thumbs into her trouser pockets with a confident smile. "But I'm pretty sure I can offer you a better afternoon than what you had in mind. You game?"

[James Prent]

Oh, no, I have stuff to take care of. Important stuff.

I wouldn't want to impose.

It's laundry day, you know how it is.

James shoved down all the lame excuses and existential terror she felt at having to interact with people, and said, "Sure." She smiled, and then frowned lightly. "What races are we going to?"

[Karin DeLumiar]

Karin just smiled. "You'll see. C'mon, we'll take my speeder bike."

As she led James in the direction of the street parking where she'd left her bike, curiosity nudged her. "So who was that woman?" she asked. "The one you were eating lunch with, I mean."

[James Prent]

"Hmm? Oh. Adia?" James shrugged. "I don't know her." Something in the back of her head said yes you do, but it only made her frown as she tried to remember. Why had she asked about Cloud City?

They reached the speederbike, and James blurted, "She's a Jedi" as memory flooded forward of the red haired woman among the refugees she'd helped during the time they'd been on Bespin.

[Karin DeLumiar]

The news that she'd been feet from a Jedi was kiss on the mouth accompanied by a simultaneous sock to the gut. "What!?"

Karin held up a finger. "Just- just stay right there," she said, bolting back the way they came. She rounded the corner to the open air cafe and scanned the tables.

The dark-haired woman was nowhere in sight.

The kiss faded, but the gutpunch remained. Karin turned and trudged back to the speeder bike, most of the spring in her mood lost.

James was leaning against the bike with a questioning look. "Sorry," she apologized when she got close enough. "I kinda have a thing for Jedi."

"A thing?" James asked.

"I mean, didn't your parents ever tell you Jedi tales as a kid?" Karin asked, straddling her speeder bike backwards so she could face James while she spoke. "Mine sure did. I used to dream of being a Jedi Knight and single-handedly defeating the evil Emperor. 'Course, that was before I knew Emperor Palpatine was evil."

"Wishing I was a Jedi was one of the reasons I asked for assignment to the Wheel, back when that was a thing," she continued. "I used to sit and watch for Jedi to board the Whaladon. I never got to meet many of them. Hell, the only one who ever took notice of me was Hobby. But I never saw one that didn't care about everybody. They all made me believe."

She trailed off, her mind trying to attach a better description to how she felt. "You ever know someone who makes you feel like there is a real best future? Like happily-ever-after exists and that you can get there just by following their example? That's how I feel about the Jedi."

Karin set her elbows onto the bike's half-height seatback and cupped her face between her palms with a sad sigh. "I wish we had more of them."

Her eyes searched for James' and found them. "If I could give my life and undo Order 66," she said with simple, perfect conviction. "I'd do it in a skip."