returnjourneylogs | (no subject)

Passengers: William & Claire + potential guests?? (if your char would be in the vicinity, feel free to start a new thread with either one of them)
Location: The Mysterious and Sexy Warden Command
Date: May 15th
Summary: Drinking on the job.
Warnings: William is a mean drunk (I know, crazy)

The theater in warden command is black, save for the light leaking from the imperfectly closed minibar—enough to trace the outline of each seat, reveal a dark shape occupying the end of the row. William hasn't been drunk in who knows how long—since he was a fucking pirate, maybe, and the world a rolling deck—but he's methodical about it, taking slow, regular pulls from the whiskey bottle.

He's read the file by now. CommLink balanced on his leg, he flicks the words up and down the screen. He's not so far gone he can't make out the names: Sylvia, Hunter, Jeane Jeane Jeane. He wonders—all he'll ever be able to do—what Harry thought when he was served up William's family, whether he was surprised or appalled or just didn't care. He thinks of inmates on the Barge, how willing some of them had been to wring every drop of tragedy from their lives.

He takes another drink and starts over. He'll stop when the words blur.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

After a second of borderline mutinous eye contact, William takes a swallow, mouth pulling in a grimace at the sweetness. He can almost feel it sinking into his teeth. “Not for me,” he says, passing the glass back a little too quickly—but it's neutral, his suspicion that the stranger had mixed up an alcohol-free cocktail in a bid to pump William for information laid to rest.

He stares blankly at the answer, though it's not long before his mind begins to roil with implications. “Who's Yavin?” he asks, a note of pre-emptory regret in his voice. He better not have just asked this guy to share the good word about his fucking savior.

"Not a who, but a what. A place where there was a battle and the Empire, which had stood for a little over twenty years, it fell." He takes the drink back, sips from it, and then ruefully continues.

"Calendars are a mess. The Empire reset it to zero, then the Battle of Yavin did it again."

William drinks as well—to get the cloying aftertaste out of his mouth, frankly. His scrutiny doesn't let up, but shifts from mistrust to something involuntary, compulsive. “Short empire,” he observes, flippant. The details slow to wash back over him—the man's dead aunt, his black clothes and the tone of his voice.

“But I bet it didn't feel that way.”

"No, it'd been there all my life, even if they didn't care about the dirtball I grew up on." Luke is uncomfortably aware that the start of the new Imperial calendar aligned with his birthday.

"But, even before that, the Senate-That-Was, they couldn't be bothered with Tatooine. We weren't a part of it, and their rules were useless in Hutt space."