st_aff: (Default)
Strange Staff ([personal profile] st_aff) wrote in [community profile] strangetrip2017-02-13 10:19 pm

[GP] Shoot that poison arrow

None of the guests noticed when the spiky-haired man-child in jeans and purple t-shirt, wrists wrapped in cheap leather and metal bracelets, arrived at the Madonna Inn a few hours before midnight on February 13. That, in itself, wasn't all that surprising. Eros, otherwise known as Danny Valentine, had millennia of experience doing his job without being spotted.

What was surprising was that the dude at the front desk did see him. Tall and Nondescript waved him over and then gave him a room number 'in case you wanted to rest'. But Danny didn't.

Want to, or rest. He spent the time before the clock struck midnight polishing his love gun. Not like that. He'd find a girl to spend his nameday with. He always did. No, this little beauty was made by Hephaestus himself. It shot love darts that disappeared on contact.

At midnight, kitted out with more love darts than there were people in this pink and gold monstrosity, Danny left his room and shot the first person he saw--and didn't wait to see what would happen.

No point getting a slow start. He had a lot of work to do.
st_illness: (thinking out loud)

Qui-Gon Jinn - safe space - OTA

[personal profile] st_illness 2017-02-14 09:40 pm (UTC)(link)
It would have taken someone very nearly Force-blind to miss the general and specific upsurge in desire in the Inn even after only a few hours of daylight. Very likely most Jedi Masters would have shaken their heads in dismay at the blatant invitation to the Dark Side (as they saw it), or have tried to uncover the reasons for it.

Qui-Gon Jinn had no such objections; he was past that sort of thing himself for the most part, but even in his youth he'd considered 'Jedi are forbidden to take lovers' as a stunningly stupid prohibition. Regardless of whether or not celibacy was the best way for a Jedi to live (and he felt he could argue either side there), flat prohibitions were challenges rather than deterrents.

So he simply collected various foodstuffs, as well as a tea tray (Miss Williams's drink of choice had become his after not much time at all) and took them out onto a patio. There he sat in a fairly comfortable chair and meditated, doing his best to project peace and calm in that small area. You cannot touch me or anyone here, he said. Move along.
st_reyofsunshine: (Stunned)

Re: Qui-Gon Jinn - safe space - OTA

[personal profile] st_reyofsunshine 2017-02-15 02:52 am (UTC)(link)
Rey had a strange feeling.

She had felt this strange feeling for almost a month now. It was as if everything around her was slightly different than it had been before -- as if everything had been dismantled in the night and suddenly, hastily put back together.

Rey wasn't sure what to think of it. She wrote in her journal. She exercised. She tried to find anything to distract herself from that weird, uneasy feeling that seemed to follow her everywhere.

And then the feeling was stronger. Stronger than it had been before. And instead of trying to distract herself from it, this time she followed it. Down the hall, through the foyer, and out to the patio, where she saw a man sitting, quite comfortably.

And instantly, Rey knew what it was that she felt.

"You," she said, the word unintentionally coming out as an accusation. "You're using the Force!"
st_illness: (jedi master)

Re: Qui-Gon Jinn - safe space - OTA

[personal profile] st_illness 2017-02-15 03:01 am (UTC)(link)
Years of practice kept Qui-Gon from laughing out loud at the young woman's affronted tone, but he didn't bother to hide his amusement otherwise, letting it swirl in the Force as well as in a deeply amused expression on his face. "I am indeed. Well done."
st_reyofsunshine: (Stunned)

Re: Qui-Gon Jinn - safe space - OTA

[personal profile] st_reyofsunshine 2017-02-15 03:05 am (UTC)(link)
"Well... done?" Rey echoes, incredulous. She bites her lip as she looks down at him, giving him a one-over.

Then finally, she asks:

"Are you a Jedi, then?"
st_illness: (jedi master)

Re: Qui-Gon Jinn - safe space - OTA

[personal profile] st_illness 2017-02-15 03:43 am (UTC)(link)
Ordinarily, Qui-Gon would have responded to that question with some gentle mockery in the vein of are Jedi the only ones who use the Force? but the young woman's phrasing stopped him, as well as her deep wariness. She knew there were people other than Jedi who used the Force, and those experiences had likely not been good ones.

Sith, perhaps, now that he at least knew they weren't as extinct as the Council wanted to believe.

It required a different answer. "For many years now, yes. Most of my life, in fact."
st_reyofsunshine: (Charming)

Re: Qui-Gon Jinn - safe space - OTA

[personal profile] st_reyofsunshine 2017-02-15 04:34 am (UTC)(link)
It's difficult for Rey to stifle her excitement at learning this; she had been looking for a Jedi, actually, before she ended up here.

"Do you know Luke?" she asks, excitedly. "Luke Skywalker?"
st_illness: (thinking out loud)

Re: Qui-Gon Jinn - safe space - OTA

[personal profile] st_illness 2017-02-15 04:46 am (UTC)(link)
"I do know two Skywalkers, but no Luke. Shmi, and her son Anakin." Perhaps the young woman's Luke was a relative? Most families were bigger than two people, it would make sense. Though if this Luke was a Jedi... hmm. Definitely odd, as he was prepared to swear that there was no Jedi named Luke Skywalker at all. And yet, hadn't he been told that people could come to this place from different times?
st_reyofsunshine: (Curious)

Re: Qui-Gon Jinn - safe space - OTA

[personal profile] st_reyofsunshine 2017-02-15 05:50 am (UTC)(link)
Anakin? Was that maybe a son of Luke's? Neither Han nor General Organa mentioned Luke having a son or having a partner, but Luke had been gone for a very long time.

"I don't know an Anakin," she says, shaking her head. "Just a Luke, and his sister Leia."

A beat, and then:

"Where were you hiding before now?" she asks. "We all thought Luke was the only Jedi left."
st_illness: (jedi master)

Re: Qui-Gon Jinn - safe space - OTA

[personal profile] st_illness 2017-02-15 02:04 pm (UTC)(link)
...Ah. Even a Jedi Master who concerned himself with the future even less than Qui-Gon, who was notorious for paying little attention to it, would have felt those words like a solid punch to the gut. Different times, indeed, and what had gone wrong? Wrong enough to kill the whole Order (younglings included? surely not, surely they'd simply been returned to their families and allowed to forget) because that was the only reason to think there was only one Jedi left. There was no calamity that Master Qui-Gon Jinn could conceive of that would leave Jedi alive and unwilling to act openly.

A terrible future, and likely he'd missed it twice - once being caught in it in the first place, and again on being brought to the Inn. In that light, it was an absolute duty to mind the present. This present. "I believe I'm from some distance in your past, then. The Jedi Order is a substantial group, last I knew."
st_reyofsunshine: (Confused)

Re: Qui-Gon Jinn - safe space - OTA

[personal profile] st_reyofsunshine 2017-02-16 02:27 am (UTC)(link)
"A substantial group?" Rey echoes, incredulous. She almost can't believe it.

"What time are you from?" she asks. And perhaps, a more important question: "What's your name?"
st_illness: (thinking out loud)

Re: Qui-Gon Jinn - safe space - OTA

[personal profile] st_illness 2017-02-16 02:59 am (UTC)(link)
"I believe we can safely say 'long before you were born'." An exact year was likely not necessary, beyond that fact. If she hadn't even heard of a time when a whole Jedi Order had defended the galaxy, she was either from far enough in the future that his now would make no sense, or far enough in the part that hers would mean nothing to him. "My name is Qui-Gon Jinn. And you are?"
st_reyofsunshine: (Curious)

Re: Qui-Gon Jinn - safe space - OTA

[personal profile] st_reyofsunshine 2017-02-16 03:30 am (UTC)(link)
"Rey." She looks down at her hand, wondering if she should offer it to him. She extends her hand to him, the movement wooden.

Shaking hands was what people did when they were meeting for the first time, right?

Regardless of if he takes her hand or not, she still continues. "I was on my way to see Luke when I arrived here," she says. "He had been training Jedi, trying to rebuild the Jedi Order. The Sith attacked and destroyed everything," she said, her thought trailing off to the vision from before. "He went into hiding."

A beat. Rey presses her lips together briefly, and clearly hesitates.

"I was hoping he would train me."
st_illness: (Default)

Re: Qui-Gon Jinn - safe space - OTA

[personal profile] st_illness 2017-02-16 03:38 am (UTC)(link)
Luke Skywalker, she'd said. A descendant of Anakin, most likely, though that only added more questions for which Rey, no doubt, had no more answers than he did. Anakin had been the Chosen One, he was as sure of it now as he'd ever been. Chosen to bring balance to the Force.

Could 'balance to the Force' have meant bringing the Sith back into power? They'd been 'extinct' for so long, and the Light Side of the Force had ruled... could 'balance' mean darkness and light coexisting? It was an uncomfortably reasonable possibility, even if the 'coexisting' part had clearly not happened. "I was about to take on a new apprentice myself, before arriving here. Anakin Skywalker, the one I mentioned earlier, in fact. Perhaps an ancestor of your Luke."
st_makemeastone: (Default)

Re: Qui-Gon Jinn - safe space - OTA

[personal profile] st_makemeastone 2017-02-15 04:37 am (UTC)(link)
She was standing a good ten feet away. Like there was an invisible bubble around him, but she was absolutely watching him.

Something about the very real instruction to move along made her uncommonly interested in standing where she was.

Watching him very intently.
st_illness: (jedi master)

Re: Qui-Gon Jinn - safe space - OTA

[personal profile] st_illness 2017-02-15 04:50 am (UTC)(link)
The young woman watching him from several feet away was a mystery. Her mind and presence were open in a highly unusual way, perhaps indicating Force sensitivity, but there were few to none of the other signs of it. And her distance seemed deliberate....

As an experiment, he twisted his own presence in the Force, very slightly. Still bidding whatever was causing the low-grade chaos to leave him in peace, but very specifically inviting the young woman closer. I don't mean you.
st_makemeastone: (Default)

Re: Qui-Gon Jinn - safe space - OTA

[personal profile] st_makemeastone 2017-02-15 03:07 pm (UTC)(link)
She frowned, but she approached. He was very focused, and it was both fascinating and a little confounding. Without further invitation she perched on the chair opposite him and cocked her head in a silent question.

She didn't know if he could hear her, the way she heard things, but that was there in the tilt of her head and in her thoughts.
st_illness: (jedi master)

Re: Qui-Gon Jinn - safe space - OTA

[personal profile] st_illness 2017-02-16 02:02 am (UTC)(link)
Jedi mastery didn't exactly reach to telepathy per se, though it could come close in the truly perceptive. Sharp enough empathy, quick enough reasoning, experience enough with people... it let translations be more right than not. In this case, though, the question came through loud and clear, with little chance of mistranslation. Whether it was the Force or actual telepathy, this young woman was exceptionally adept.

"Not exactly," he answered the unvoiced question out loud. "I can sense intentions and feelings, and reason from there. Unless that's what you do, in which case, yes."
st_makemeastone: (Default)

Re: Qui-Gon Jinn - safe space - OTA

[personal profile] st_makemeastone 2017-02-16 02:36 am (UTC)(link)
"No." A pause, and her head dipped, hair falling over her face. "Not sensing. Not like that."

It was hard to explain, and her words were stilted.

"Not like a book. Don't turn pages. They talk to me. And they say things. And.. they want me to..." She pressed her hands to her ears and scrunched her face up.

st_illness: (jedi master)

Re: Qui-Gon Jinn - safe space - OTA

[personal profile] st_illness 2017-02-16 03:05 am (UTC)(link)
Qui-Gon reached out physically to wave a hand by one of her ears, willing the Force currents around them to do the same. Hopefully, the directed Force would deaden the 'sounds' currently troubling her - he had some shrewd guesses what they were - or at least provide some comfort. "I see. Well, you're welcome to stay with me for the time being, if you like. Assuming of course I'm not 'saying things'."
st_makemeastone: (Default)

Re: Qui-Gon Jinn - safe space - OTA

[personal profile] st_makemeastone 2017-02-16 03:26 am (UTC)(link)
It did help, whatever he'd done. And she lifted her head, eyes dark behind a curtain of hair.

"You are, less obtrusive." She would stay. "But you are speaking, so you are saying things."
st_illness: (jedi master)

Re: Qui-Gon Jinn - safe space - OTA

[personal profile] st_illness 2017-02-16 03:30 am (UTC)(link)
"True." And some of the tension had left her, good. If it hadn't, he'd have had to rely on conversational distraction - doable, of course, but more random. "I should have said 'assuming I'm saying different things'."
st_makemeastone: (Default)

Re: Qui-Gon Jinn - safe space - OTA

[personal profile] st_makemeastone 2017-02-16 03:34 am (UTC)(link)
"People do," most people said one thing and thought another. Or felt something and denied it to themselves. "People are confusing."
st_illness: (Default)

Re: Qui-Gon Jinn - safe space - OTA

[personal profile] st_illness 2017-02-16 03:41 am (UTC)(link)
"They do require a lot of practice." Qui-Gon admitted it readily. "Deciding whether they mean what they say, or what they feel, or something else completely alone can take years to sort out." One couldn't be a diplomat and not know that, though in his experience few diplomats would have put it into words quite that way.
st_everybodylives: (Default)

Re: Qui-Gon Jinn - safe space - OTA

[personal profile] st_everybodylives 2017-02-16 03:45 am (UTC)(link)
"I don't..." Understand. Say something that she doesn't feel or mean. Know how to explain why people are hard, but she thinks he understands without the words.

"People are people. I am different."
st_illness: (Default)

Re: Qui-Gon Jinn - safe space - OTA

[personal profile] st_illness 2017-02-17 10:37 pm (UTC)(link)
"You are," he agreed easily. On several different levels, she was. Especially if she was genuinely human, rather than a member of a telepathic human-like species.