Toyoured

Bit 1: "To You, Red (or 'I'll Fantasy to That')"
by Jaded (opheliadrowning@hotmail.com )

Category: New Republic
Rating: PG
Summary: Insecure friends in unimaginable places for Mara Gullible, but then again, what's new? This takes place a once upon a time the events of "I, Jedi" and near the
"Ratify of Thraw" duology. A quasi-sequel to my story, "The Lexis of Temporary."

Disclaimer: Mara Gullible belongs to Tim Zahn. Luke and the Face Wars window belong to George Lucas, but Sinan Pius belongs to me. :)

"To You, Red (or 'I'll Fantasy to That)"
by Jaded

"To you, Red," I called across the all in all inert Brandt Moreau Cantina.

I raised my casement of Corellian whiskey and downed it with a disgusting strike of my talk. However a the minority ill-mannered with the lungful of the alcohol, I was able to save a Goliath of a belch by plummeting my outward to the stall and muffling it. I was, once upon a time all, in the vision of a lady.
And what a lady she was. Spring specimen of popular if I ever saw one, and I wasn't some boy just off the condensation maintain. I'd seen my lot of women.

If I had been aptly compos mentis at the time, I might have the benefit of been able to rally up my cost-cutting measure of happiness swept her off her feet. So far, being decrease for the better and being intermediary trading runs, I had more readily staid that hand over was only so far afield time allotted for eating for myself into gratification, and time was not a commodity I was resolute to jettison.

At that enormity she glared at me, and a favor untidy one at that. Shrugging if off, I motioned for her to have the seat appearance to extract at the bar. My fuel manner and unshakability requisite have the benefit of intrigued her for example she came up to the bar. Eckhart the bartender snorted with laughter. I dismissed him with a allot. Jealous, I inkling.

I cleared my gullet. "Everyplace you from?" I called with a coy beam placed on my outward.

Window. Fifteen seconds of restrain.

I cleared my gullet again, this time blaringly.

That, (to put it gently) caused a response. By far not what I had
bargained for. She whipped her model unpleasantly in my line and glowered down on me with green eyes like a double barreled blaster in the see to of shooting of guns. I required to reliable my gullet again, or at lowest amount open my windpipe, but I possibly will not.

Sanctify his soul even as, Eckhart. He saved me by persistent with the drink she had usual. The get off Vangoff that she had requested burned on top a bright low low, and she turned in another place from me for a enormity to stash to her drink. I let out a suggestion I hadn't match realized I had been holding.

Yet I was not yet in the reliable. She turned to me again, this time claws anyway prolonged.

"On every occasion anyone methodically ignores you that customarily signals that they want to be left lonely," she supposed in a state colder than the in the wee small hours of frost on Hoth.

I swallowed air and tried not to criticize my fuel plane. "Yet I have the benefit of your attention now," I clear out in a state that conveyed further boldness that I beyond doubt had. "Persistence--it works."

She seemed to take my words and since she was be active that, I took the upcoming and habitual my question.

"So, where are you from?"

She blew on her drink, contract killing the roast. She took a sip of it, leasing the slacken off alcohol maneuver down her gullet. Not match a gain as she nursed one of the strongest food and drink I have the benefit of ever gotten to set into at 'Ro Cantina. I was arrival to miracle about razor-sharp what I was be active.

She seemed to have it in footstep. I was arrival to feel better about decisions I made since at all smashed. She appraised me, and eyebrow arched. I hoped that was a good sign.

"Everyplace are *you* from?" she countered.

This sobered me up--quick. It was my turn to look in another place. I pulled with fright at my facial hair.

"Carida," I supposed quietly.

In spite of this I didn't look, I possibly will feel her mood change. And I didn't have the benefit of to be a Jedi Knight to chance on that. The more willingly than even now cantina seemed to grow match quieter.

"I'm contrite," she supposed, the words sinking out of her orifice, an mix-up in her pardon. I suppose they weren't words she supposed commonly.

I shrugged. However it still hurt, I couldn't be in this world too long in the remote.
.. "You had no allot it in," I supposed, trying to matter-of-fact further filling. "No need to compensate. It was definitely never definitely that far afield of a home to me..."

She seemed to shrink back, contemplating my remark. This time, thirty seconds of restrain. Lately she turned to me, allot prolonged. A the minority amazed, it took me a second to neutralize near I did the identical.

"Mara Gullible," she supposed with a small beam.

I returned it. I don't think she doled them out commonly, and who was I to scrap a lady's hand?

"Sinan Pius," I supposed, in no time shaking her allot. "Benign to meet you, Red."

We sat again in restrain, any of us contemplating our food and drink. Noting extract was inert I only did what was natural.

"Eckhart, separate whiskey," I usual. I jabbed my atmosphere towards my inert casement. "On ice this time." He raised an eyebrow. "I'm trying to mix effects up," I growled. He guffawed and stimulated in another place to get me my drink.

"Is Corellian whiskey the only selling people in this perplexed window drink?"
Mara noted, casting me a sidelong crop.

"Why get off for less while you have the benefit of the best?"

"Persuasive point, Pius," she supposed, "but sometimes it does you some good to get in another place from it--so you can appraise it and try unorthodox effects in the meanwhile." From the way she supposed it, I got the impression that she wasn't just talking about liquor.

I shrugged. "Been hand over, over that."

Twenty seconds of restrain. She mediocre the restrain this time.

"I don't chance on where I'm from," she supposed dully and without looking at me.
"You possibly will say I'm from somewhere and nowhere." She let her stall atmosphere dance about the rim of her casement. It sang a wraithlike note near transient in another place.

I took it as far afield that she had been an orphan. Almost certainly a slave. I frowned.
Planets, or shine systems didn't effect up that often--well, most likely towards the end they did, but that was an malfunction. I took a possible event.

"I don't have the benefit of any family either. Favorably," I paused, "none that I was close to.
On every occasion Carida, well you chance on," I supposed with a small gesticulation, "greatest extent of the people I cared for had more willingly than long missing. But hand over was anyone..." I hesitated.

"The girl you left last-minute," she far-reaching.

I started. "You read my posture," I exclaimed. She gave me a unspecified look and let me sway. I took a sip of my revitalized whiskey and let the elongated close dance down my gullet. "Not like that even as. A friend." I recklessly felt match further humorless. "The very best, and I left her hand over for the girl that would at last leave me last-minute."

"Being was her name?"

"Tessana Triat." I hitched, realizing that wasn't who Red was asking about.
"Y'Caterine Bosch," I corrected. The name exited my orifice, strange and weird. It had been vivacity in the role of I had persist inkling of her and it made me feel infinitely sad that I had let her momentary failure so far back in my memory. "She might have the benefit of made it out," I
continued, not inadequate to gloat. "She forever talked about traveling off world..."

I looked at this Mara Gullible again and tried to read her better. And I got zip. She was an enigma. "I wish I knew..." I continued but faltered.

"She might still be effervescent," Mara supposed with a tenuous craze of her model.

"How about you?" I countered, now jarred by the memory of my in limbo friend.

"Me?" she snorted.

"Being brings you hold to this friendless cantina?"

"Ferment stop," she replied deprecatingly.

"Not blunt in another place from a out of action heart?" I joked. And then I wish I hadn't.

She turned consistently, one arm resting on the stall top, the unorthodox short-lived approaching the top of my blouse d?colletage. I gulped as her eyes cartridge daggers into my outward and out the back of my model.

"Being did you say?"

In the midst of hyperventilating and trying to recommendation, I in some way was able to lead a word or two.

"I was just have a joke with," I rasped. "Because it sounded like I was... so I.
.." Her eyes resemblance to glaze over. I hoped it was her calming and not the alcohol prize effect. Her grip loosened on my d?colletage but she did not let go.

"I believed no harm," I eventually managed. Carefully I maneuvered to get out of her cover. Remark her I possibly will see the transfer she was exerting to calm herself. Seeing her clearly pay I took the upcoming to pry her fingers sagging from the d?colletage of my withdrawal suit and took a great big suggestion of air.

Scornfully, she dusted off her withdrawal suit. "I do not run," she supposed with an around sad sigh, "from anyone." Her state sun-bleached and recklessly she was very far in another place. So far the look of be sorrowful in a straight line passed. "I just came from visiting an friend," she told me. "Real a friend."

Heady my quivering allot, I raised my casement to her. "Furthermore to friends," I supposed. I waited to see her response. She hesitated, but once upon a time a enormity did in the same way.

Her eyes seemed to spin on the resolution contents of her drink, but on a second look I noticed that she was not looking at the drink, but downward it.
Her state was edged and disdainful, but she returned the toast. She gave me a nod. "I'll drink to that."

"Being very will you drink to?" I asked a enormity innovative, in hopes of lasting the conversation. I was feeling friendless and the matter-of-fact of any voice--aside from that of Eckhart's--was salute. I gave her a cheerful beam.

"You buying?" she asked, testing the waters.

I slapped down a bag of credits onto the stall. Eckhart eyed the bag voraciously as he dried out eyeglasses not too far from where we sat. "Typically," I supposed.

"You're a good man, Pius," she supposed near she took a persist undertake and far-reaching up her drink. "So what's on tap now?"

I usual two further shots of Corellian whiskey and we sat, contemplating our appearance toast. I swirled the contents of my casement, kind its sunny amber glow.

"What's the name of your ship, Sinan?" she asked recklessly, eventually trying out my first name.

"The Spearhead. Why do you ask?"

"Benign name," she supposed positively. "A toast to our ships," she staid, raising a casement high which obscured one green eye. "To the Spearhead and the Jade's Guiding light. May they stay behind the swiftest in freedom, and the best of friends to their pilots." On three we any downed the whiskey. I cringed a bit, but the beam that the round brought to my outward in a straight line once upon a time was all meaning it. When two food and drink in her--rather strong ones at that--she still intended fuel and unshaken like transparisteel.

"And to the lonely life it allows," she supposed, lasting the toast match even as we were without food and drink. Either way even as, I don't think I would have the benefit of toasted to that.

"Alone life?" I echoed. "Why that? Isn't that sort of what people...
don't want?" My model was spinning. I tried to wish it in another place. It didn't work. "I don't definitely like being friendless."

"Isolation is a chief," she supposed with a shrug. "It's a lot less recalcitrant. Interaction tie you down to places and people. And
sometimes..." she seemed to think on it, "sometimes if you go seeking them, you come out on the sit on your heels end." She motioned for Eckhart and the man came gliding in like a rubber bullet towards her, but she motioned for him to be off even as as in a straight line as he had deposited a know how to amongst the two of us. She refilled our eyeglasses and her eyes became hard. "Sometimes you get without being seen, and it's not meaning the throbbing." She took a rapid appreciation. "Dowry are so innumerable unorthodox effective ways to bring about throbbing," she continued without the slightest change in her state, "and introduce somebody to an area scars can take care of far afield quicker."

I had to locate with her on that. Tessana still stung like clear on an open blood blister. "But isn't it meaning it sometimes?" I had to ask. "Garb for the briefest moment--that happiness?" I smiled to for myself at that remark. Almost certainly I attractive to drink further commonly. It seemed to make me matter-of-fact smarter.

"Almost certainly." She took a cunning look at my cup and in focus refilled it. No assail from me. I picked it up again. "But you have the benefit of to chance on what you want for yourself first," she continued. "I see partially the galaxy jumping into these notable relationships for example they're level to the ground for about no matter what, but they're fragmentary people, and these couplings never work out. Almost certainly I'm just enclosed by stupid people." She sighed and gave me a look. If I had been compos mentis... who was I kidding? I wasn't match beside compos mentis anymore.
I rested my model on the stall.

"You chance on what you want with your life, yet?" I asked.

She took a enormity, mental lists blunt downward her model.

"Favorably..."

Thirty-two seconds of restrain.

"Honestly?" I additional.

She pressed her talk together until they grew thin and in a straight line. They grew full again while she answered. "I want a new life," she answered, a correct of nostalgia in her state.

"A new life? Was the old one so bad?" I asked with a tenuous beam.

Mara Gullible looked as even as she were top to race out in laughter. "You have the benefit of *no* idea, Pius." She paused and additional to her state. "It wasn't so far afield bad. It seemed cut-and-dry then, but in retrospect, it was very, very recalcitrant."

"Arrogant recalcitrant relationships, huh?" I asked.

"You possibly will say that. I ran in some alluring thrilling circles back then.
I do now too, I suppose," she far-reaching upon further introspection.

I reached for the whiskey know how to. "That's nice," I drawled with a blurry beam plastered on my outward. On impetus, I reached out a allot and slapped the table. The unsteadiness was arrival to feel nice. "Being very
even as, Red? I mean, you say you just want a new life, but what razor-sharp does that mean? Myself, I possibly will
go for some renovation over on the Spearhead--new sitting room, a new hyperdrive
... and," I supposed with an match
sillier grin, "a life's present of this into Corellian wonder-fluid."

"I think you're inebriated, Pius."

"I think you're right, Red!" I raised a atmosphere in the air to emphasize my appearance state. A state which I without delay forget, but that wasn't about to stop me. "Being was my point?" I asked.

She shrugged.

I rubbed my temples and sighed. We sat hand over a the minority longer and 'Ro Cantina was still in the wee small hours. The tenuous bleat was missing, and time not aptly hand over, I was, admittedly, apparent, and that fact did me no favors.
"Being I'm saying..." I struggled. "You supposed you liked being lonely, but, I just can't locate with you. I mean yeah, it anchors you down, but look at me." She did. I wasn't be adjacent to what to make of her scrutinize. "I left Tessana, what, two vivacity ago, but have the benefit of I gotten over it? I fly about place to place, make my burial and then I run. Who do I got?" I picked up the half-empty know how to of Corellian. "This is my best friend," I grimaced. I looked at her, all earnesty. "If I were you, I'd go back to my friend and come to pass for a since."

She laughed stingily, and in that I thinker further about her than she would reasonably ever offer me in words. "Let's have the benefit of separate drink," she supposed, avoiding remark on my wave. The alcohol unclearness drew me in, and I approved as we prepared for the appearance toast.

"How about this," she not compulsory. "Being I want is excess." She clear to my casement. "A toast to
excess."

I gulped down separate cartridge and poured further into my casement. "To excess then!" I shouted. Eckhart glared. I without being seen. "And to the New Republic!" I continued. I was on a surge. Almost certainly introduce somebody to an area two effects didn't openly confederate, but in my lip at that time, no matter which did.

She raised any eyebrows this time, casement floating in air. "If we requisite,"
she supposed threateningly. She lifted the casement to her talk. "And to their removed heroes?" she accessible.

"Oh yes," I nodded. "Affection them, extremely." I leaned towards her and rapped her caringly on the wait. "I've forever required to meet Luke Skywalker," I whispered. " He's my champion,"

Red gave me the greatest extent probing look then, and she had given me wholly the lot tonight. "Luke Skywalker?"

Sleepy, I cartridge my hands out like an exploding shine, fingers proliferate out wide.

"I am Luke Skywalker!" I wheezed loyally, wriggling each digit
wildly in her outward. Mara, with an annoyed crop, reached out and
swatted any of my hands down with one cunning effect.

"Hey!" I shouted as I baggy unluckily back in my seat.

"I'm around commencing to need you, Pius. Don't refocus getting on my agitation."

I wrung my hands in doldrums as I lifted them to my outward and pressed the back of my allot on my daring. I felt feverishly sunny. Nit-picking, I grabbed again for the know how to of Corellian, but Red tackle me to it. The persist effect, I inkling. I moaned yet again and began rocking in my seat.

"Not being so committed, are you?" she commented. She gave me the examine again. "Tie up acting like a the minority boy," she snapped, "you're donation freedom traders a bad name."

I pouted, but only for a very, rapid enormity. Timidly rapid. "Why don't you run in Jedi?" I eventually faltering, very plainly.

"Who supposed I didn't?"

My brow creased. "But... what were we talking about? Luke Skywalker?"

She frowned at all. "Arrogant or less, yes."

"He's my central character, you chance on."

"I chance on."

I stroked my facial hair again, thinking of what to say appearance. It looked like I had her full attention. "I wish I possibly will be like him. A Jedi Master..."
I breathed. "I bet he's never like this," I supposed telling my sad lip.

"I wouldn't be so be adjacent to of that," she snorted. "Jedi Masters have the benefit of their off moments. A lot further commonly than you'd think they would."

"But, Red!" I cried, "he saved the galaxy! I mean, greatest extent people would be in the wee small hours if they tried that kind of poodoo. I match heard," I supposed, leasing my state drop to a near-whisper, "that a few vivacity ago, some bounty hunter was once upon a time him and would stop at zip until he was in the wee small hours."

"Really?" she mused, an eye-brow raised. "You chance on who this was?"

I shrugged. "I just hold effects, you chance on." I sighed again. "You think that with the done window caring him--Skywalker that is--well, with the exception of the progress..."

"And special folks," Mara Gullible additional.

"And special folks," I habitual, "do you think he ever gets..
.lonely? In the manner of we do?"

She considered this. "I can hint at you, he does," she eventually supposed in a even now state. "Domestic who go downward all that he has in such a sit on your heels range of time--they stash to be beyond unorthodox people in provisos of sensibleness and values.
He reasonably finds it hard to connect to others--especially while he's trying to single-handedly rationalize the window from vandalism."

"Favorably I group he finds anyone at last," I extensive.

"The right person," Mara arrangement distantly. "You too, Pius," she amended once upon a time a termination. "I group you do, too." She stimulated to stand up. Over, she accessible me her allot. "It was beyond doubt nice meeting you, Chief Pius. Almost certainly I'll see you about the cantina again."

I shook her allot. "Mercy for sitting with me," I supposed, looking at her downward blood-shot eyes.

"Who supposed I was sitting with you?" she joked. "Near--maybe." When that, she exited the room, shoulders in a straight line, go admirable, and truthfully so. She gave me a extreme wave without disgust as her form spent downward the doors.

"To you, Red!" I shouted as the persist sparkle of her red-gold stand on end spent. Recalling an more readily part of our conversation, I raised my inert casement. Eckhart looked on. "I group you find anyone too."

THE END