revivalproject | (Network & Log) somebody to lean on

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(Network & Log) somebody to lean on - forward-dated

[the video feed cuts in to show Clarice, freshly showered, wet hair pulled back, dressed in the silk pajamas she arrived in - because she needed a little comfort, a little piece of home. she's got a cup of tea cradled in her hands, and while she still looks a little tired, her eyes are clear and present]

Hey, everybody. I think I've met most of you by now, if only by seein' you at the community meeting a month or so ago, but if you don't recall, my name's Clarice Starling. I know we've all been through a lot the last few weeks, and this isn't a place to point fingers or blow off steam... I just want to let you all know that I used to work with victims of violent crime, so I now a thing or two about lending an ear after people've been through trauma. If you feel comfortable with coming to talk, my door's open. I'm two floors down from the Deep End, the one with the metal star hangin' on the door. I'll be happy to take the time.

☆ ★ ☆ ★ ☆ ★ ☆

WHO: Clarice Starling & You
WHERE: Clarice's room (or anywhere else you might want to meet up)
WHAT: Talking out the aftermath of Bill-E-tropolis
WHEN: The week after they all return to Temba
WARNINGS: Discussion of trauma, flavors vary! Please label your top levels for folks.

A: Clarice's Room
The metal star on the door Clarice mentioned is a decoration she picked up on Coruscant - made of some sort of light, fine alloy that shines green like light underwater at the right angle. She hasn't done much else to make the little run-down hotel room hers yet, save for set up a bundle of blankets and pillows in one corner to sleep on, and put in hooks to hang her clothing on the wall. A few pads of paper sit next to the bundle, and there are a few extra pillows for company to sit on. She's already sketched a few things: vistas from Coruscant, a few rough portraits of familiar faces from home, before they're too lost to memory. She's no Da Vinci, but they're passable enough.

When the door opens, she's sitting on her makeshift bed, one of the pads in her lap, making herself a list of the tasks she wants to catch up on. At the sight of a familiar face, she smiles.

"Hey, come on in."

B: Dealer's Choice
(Start your own TL if you want, she's flexible.)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

One thing Ezra is going to miss is all the different kinds of clothing he'd had as a high school student. Also some of the food. But partly the clothing.

He shows up at Clarice's door in his bright, study work clothing and his cloak, and a tentative smile.

"So, how'd that compare to what you're used to, back home?" he opens with.

"Ezra," she says happily, getting up from her cot and abandoning her pad and pencil to come and greet him with a hug. "It was ... some of it was very much the same, and some of it was completely different. The architecture, the politics, the cars... that was all familiar. Adding the superpowers into the mix was most of what made it weird in retrospect. What'd you think of ... well, one version of Earth?"

Hey, he's not turning down a hug. He hugs back just as warmly before he pulls away to talk.

"I really liked some of the food, and clothing. And buildings! You saw Coruscant; buildings that are designed to look nice exist in my galaxy but particularly on the Outer Rim where there aren't always a lot of spare resources, uh, form follows function a lot?" he muses.

"I wasn't really paying attention to the politics, but I guess you would have been, being in law enforcement."

"They were pretty damn hard to avoid," she chuckled. "Between that and my life at home, I've had enough of them for a lifetime, thanks. What was your favorite food? Maybe I can try to come up with something close at the diner, now that we've got more staples and things to work with..."

"I have to pick one?" Ezra shoots back, grinning. "I'm gonna miss pizza, but cheese is-"

He makes a face. Yes, they have milk, but cheese is a whole other thing he hasn't attempted yet. "Uh, this is gonna sound random, but actually isn't, because of the cobbled together family history Billy's magic gave me. Know any Japanese dishes? Seems like some of those should be relatively easy to approximate with the stuff we have."

"Pizza is at the top of my to-do list, trust me." She gave him a knowing grin. "Between Kyle and Tommy alone, I think I might win the Nobel Peace Prize if I pull that off. Never mind that I miss it myself. That and macaroni and cheese are just comfort food staples."

She glanced down, over at the list she was making for herself. "Japanese, huh? The basics of it, sure. Finding things to approximate the sauces is gonna be the hardest part, especially soy. But we gotta get that right, the umami flavor is what makes Japanese what it is. ... Know if anyone here's ever caught any fish? Fish is a good place to start."

"Hmm, a lot of the fish and shell shellfish anyone's bothered to make notes about so far are toxic or venomous, I think." He takes out his comm to fiddle with the network, briefly.

"Yeah, doesn't look like anyone's found anything edible yet. Bummer. Maybe a version of Tempura with vegetables and tubers?"

"Now that I can do," she nodded vigorously. "As for the fish, there might be some sort of preparation that could make it safe, but I'd hate to be wrong. So we'll table that idea for now."

She leaned over, watching him. "Is that a list of everything we've found? Can you send me that? Or is it up somewhere for everyone?"

"It's public on the network." He took a moment to walk her through the steps of where to find the flora and fauna lists. While he did so, he mentally dithered, because well, he did come by to say hey and shoot hey breeze, but he didn't just come by to do that.

"If it's still ok if I want to talk to you about...feelings stuff?" he started off, tentatively. "I wouldn't say the last month has been traumatic. Most of it was probably the safest I've been since I was seven. I had a nice home, and a good school, and a brother who loved me more than anything. But I remembered this life the entire time, and that was...complicated. Emotionally."

Edited (missing word) 2021-06-13 13:26 (UTC)

"Of course it is, darlin'. I am so sorry I got us off track." She put her comm device away after marking the lists for later reference, and gave him her full attention.

"Oh, God, you had both lives in your head at once. Like a palimpsest." She bites her lower lip. "I had ... little brief flashes of that, and even that was disturbing enough ... I'm sorry, Ezra. You must've been so conflicted."

He waved away her apology, and shook his head.

"It wouldn't bother me so much except my brother Ben was really Obi-wan and he was...happy," he told her, voice dropping lower.

"Oh," she said slowly, stretching it out a bit so he could hear the sympathy in it. She knew how much it had hurt him to leave Coruscant behind, to know it was the last time he would ever see that sacred place and so many fellow Jedi. He'd told her a bit of his history, and Ezra had filled in some of it by telling her about the treacheries of the Empire.

"Do you think ... perhaps you could find some semblance of that brotherly connection, here? Building the Temple together? If I know Obi-Wan he's probably been meditating on all this to the point of excess, trying to sort himself out..."

"He is," Ezra agrees wryly. "And right now I'm leaving him to do that, although when he was Ben and I was trying to explain what was actually going on, right near the end, I told him we were gonna have a talk when it was all over, and at the time he - or Ben, I guess - agreed, and I plan on trying to hold him to it eventually."

After a beat, he adds, "We decided we wanted to call each other family before we even left Coruscant. I'm not worried he's...gonna flip to cold on me or anything."

"He'll probably come out the other end with something about this all sorted out, and remember to honor it." Clarice nodded slowly. "He seemed pretty wise during the time I spent with him. But he deserves to be happy, and I'm glad that at least some of that followed him back here."

She laid a hand on Ezra's shoulder with a smile that slowly turned impish. "Besides. We can always just put him and Padme in a room together sometime and see what happens."

Unfortunately, that made his expression cloud even more.

"Maybe someday. They're both - well, they're both grieving someone they loved very much, and who let them down horribly." He hesitated and added, "The last person Obi-wan called his brother, actually. And I'm not sure that he doesn't believe that was...a moment of weakness on his part."

He bit his lip. "Jedi are allowed to love. Even in the Order they had families of sorts. We have all the feelings anyone else does, but we have to be careful on how we act on them. We're not as powerful as Billy is, but we're still more powerful than most."

"Oh," she said softly, as the weight of what he was saying settled around her shoulders. "I understand what you mean. In the FBI ... we don't have the same powers the Jedi do, but we have the same edict and duty to protect people and keep a balance. I had an instructor, John Brigham, who taught me a great deal. Not just about firearms, like he was assigned to, but about how the culture of things worked in the Bureau. About what sort of person could endure the burdens of it best. Probably a lot like Obi-Wan is doing for you, really. I was young, and, yes -" she bobbled her head a bit, flashing him a self-deprecating smile. "-I thought he was cute. My roommate and I used to moon over him a bit. But we knew that was a Bad Idea, capital B, capital I, and I'm glad I didn't do anything stupid. John ended up being one of my best friends in the Bureau. Maybe we could've been more, but we'd never know, because ... we had to keep that professionality."

As she spoke, her gaze strayed to the pistol laying on the crate she'd been using as a dresser. It was unloaded, the magazine out, and she'd assembled a rudimentary cleaning kit: a sure sign that it was a piece she treated with great care. If Ezra had been around weapons, he might be able to tell it had seen more wear than Clarice could have given it on her own.

Ezra broke into a relieved smile, that Clarice seemed to understand. Not everyone would, he didn't think, or they'd at least think would think it sounded like a sad way to live.

He follows her gaze. "You left the Bureau eventually, right? That didn't change anything about how things stood between you?"

"Well ... no," she sighed. "Something else did. I don't mind sharing the story, but I'd have to warn you, it's not a happy one. Part of what started my leavin', actually."

"He died," Ezra concludes, voice very soft. It's a guess, but...it fits the general shape of her emotions.

"I'm sorry. You don't have to talk about it, if you don't want to."

"No, it's fine." She shook her head. She was past the anger and the grief of it, and only the hard, smooth nugget of truth at the heart of it remained. It had taken her years to smooth off the rough edges of the memories until she could hold them without getting cut, but she trusted Ezra: he had been solid, earnest, and kind since the day she'd met him on the First Breath.

"The government of the town the FBI is headquartered in - the nation's capital, actually, sort of like Coruscant was the capital of the Inner Rim - had some folks that, well like any government, were more corrupt than most. One of them, the mayor - which is like a marshall, I guess, for you? - had a drug conviction on his plate. So he had the FBI team up with the DEA, which is the Drug Enforcement Administration - to try and find the folks who were making and distributing drugs in his area. John and I were the ones chosen to work the bust: that's what we call it. You wait in a large paneled, unmarked van - about the size of one of those shuttles?" She gestured with her hands. "And when you see what you're looking for, you 'bust' out of the van and arrest the folks responsible."

She pursed her lips, remembering the way it had all started: trying to catch a nap in the back of the van, her head back against the wall, sitting as close as possible to the dry ice they'd placed for coolant. The smell of the men's sweat thick in the small space, the way they'd been so skeptical of her presence until Brigham had vouched for her, then yielded to her expertise.

"The DEA guys were all hot-headed, more used to going in hot than waiting to see what was going to happen. They were all about making the arrest, getting the glory and the front page news, you know? But John and I had dealt with the woman in charge of the drug ring before. She was dangerous - to the point that she'd hide infected drug needles in her braids. Not someone to go in hot with."

Ezra listened quietly. "More people who got caught up in power, and forgot they were supposed to be helping people," he concluded.

"Exactly." A quiet fury turned the single word to lead. "We brought the van over to a fish market, where we knew she had - we called it a 'lab', the place where they made the drugs, but it was more of an abandoned warehouse. It was early in the morning, so the market was busy: lots of people bringing in what they'd caught, people looking to buy. We'd hoped that would keep the woman - her name was Evelda - from starting any trouble. She came out with two bodyguards and her baby strapped in a sling across her chest."

Her voice hitched in her throat a little at that, but she had enough distance from it at this point that it was easier to tell. "Then I saw a great big long, low car pull up with some more of her men in it, armed. I tried to tell everyone in the van it was a bad idea to start anything until we had backup. John agreed." She closed her eyes. "The head of the DEA called it anyway and they all busted out of the back of that van like their asses were covered in ants. They opened fire. Evelda had been hiding a machine gun underneath the sling, used her own baby as a weapon blind, and fired back. So did the guys in the low-rider. It was ... to understate it, a mess."

"That sounds a lot like how the Empire operates. I mean, the DEA part of your team, as much as I hate to say it," Ezra says cautiously.

"No, you're not wrong. The system has a lot of flaws, and letting people behave like that is the biggest one. ... The one that got John shot down."

She sighed. Ezra had probably seen it coming, but somehow at the time, she hadn't. She'd thought he was invincible: one of the ones who had been a constant presence in her life. It was silly, infantile: even more so when she'd already lost her own father to the perils of law enforcement so many years ago. That day in the fish market had been her final lesson to never take anyone's presence for granted.

"The firefight kept going - they got in the car, and tried to run. John got up, bless his heart, he got to his feet and got right in front of them, tried to shoot the driver and stop it. ... He missed. The car caught him, threw him - but going for him, they ran straight into another car. I managed to get through, to Evelda. In the end, I had to kill her. I managed to do it without hurting the baby, but ... it was a complete disaster. And that idiot, Bolton ... the hothead ... he dared to try to pin it all on me."

((OOC: Had to rewatch this clip to make sure I got it straight. If you're interested in seeing some canon.))

Ezra nods, slow and solemn. "Just your word against his, and you took the killing shot once everything blew up, so..."

(Network & Log) somebody to lean on - forward-dated

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cw: drug mention

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cw: gun violence/child endangerment

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