Week Three Challenge: Write a set of 5 drabbles with the following prompts: midnight, endeavor, inheritance, disaster, horizon
Becoming (Mara, Nico, Corissa, Ronan, and Nadira Jade, approximately 10 ABY)
Midnight
It was the middle of the night when Mara crept out of bed and slipped downstairs.
Corissa was waiting in the living room. She lifted the blanket that was draped around her and Mara joined her on the couch just as Nico emerged from the kitchen with a huge bowl.
"Snacks," he declared, handing it over as he sat beside her and arranged the blanket around them, then turned on the holounit.
"Tradition," Corissa explained. "Don't tell Mom and Dad tomorrow; it's our secret."
And Mara settled in contentedly to watch a late night movie with her brother and sister.
Endeavor
"You just need to be taught," Luke had told her, the first time they had prepared a meal together and he'd—rather annoyingly—picked up on her self-doubt.
Mara hadn't believed him, not really. She knew so many varied things about so many varied subjects, yet every time she had tried to cook a meal, something had gone very wrong. Somehow cooking remained incomprehensible, a bewildering challenge with infinite pitfalls lying in wait.
And yet…this was a part of her lost life waiting to be reclaimed.
You just need to be taught, Mara told herself, and joined her mother in the kitchen.
Inheritance
Fixing things, on the other hand, had always come naturally.
As Emperor's Hand, Mara had been taught the basics of starship repair, but there had been no need for deeper knowledge. Her primary duties lay elsewhere, and all the Empire's vast resources were at her disposal, from the droids and mechanics of Imperial crews and bases to the funds to hire civilians when necessary—
—but when the post-Empire opportunity for a mechanic's job arose, she learned so quickly and well that she was soon repairing hyperdrives on her own.
Watching her father do the same work, she now understood why.
Disaster
Mara could never forget how badly her first encounter with her brother had gone, and how close she had come to losing everything because of that.
Which made it all the stranger how dear he had become to her.
In Nico she found a kindred spirit, someone whose thoughts she instinctively understood, with similarly deep emotions and equally deep reserve, and a sense of humor as dry as her own.
As their eyes met, silently laughing over Corissa's latest bout of indignation, Mara felt the friendship they should have had all along echo within the unbreakable bond they had now.
Horizon
With her little sister, Mara had always seen the possible.
They were so very different: Corissa was effervescent in a way that Mara could never replicate, let alone embody; she danced through life, sparkling and joyous and endearing, while Mara was quiet and methodical and forever vigilant.
But it had been Corissa's openhearted acceptance that first cracked Mara's reserve and then her heart, allowing her to dare to envision a future she'd never dreamed of.
It was only fitting that her first visit to the family she had once believed forever lost began with being wrapped in her sister's arms.