Well, this cropped version of my Jaz scrawl turned out to be only 400 of the original 1,300 word-count, and I apologize for it, but I'm just not personally comfortable sharing the rest of it, not because of the risqué-ness of it, but because of why Jaz even agrees to it and such and such.
It's complicated, as some of my writing tends to be. I believe that a writer always has those story ideas that they have justified to themselves. The character's actions and reasons have been justified with their the writer's mind, but when they try and share it with others, it's almost impossible to impress this same reasoning upon them.
Onto the scrawl itself.
I have written Jaz before and I've always admired her character, because she always puts up a strong, confident, and almost cocky front while she pours her heart and soul into protecting the things that are most important to her.
The mission mentioned in the first two segments is one that is either a war-ender or a war-avoidance technique... thing. I've not really worked out which it is. This is also my second run of this idea, as this version was easier to do the 100-word segments with.
In the original idea, Jaz went alone on the mission, completed it, but got knocked on the noggin' hard enough to lose her memory. Haydn was a member of another country/city-state, and thus not always seen as being one of the good guys, but showed up later, after Jaz found her way home accidently, to see if she remembered him. (She didn't, but that's beside the point.)
The names mentioned in segment four-- Zack, Dan, Kano, Des, and May-- are the people that Jaz puts everything she has into protecting. Zack and Dan were here original team members, back when she was younger, but they left on a long mission without her and she, well, grew up. Kano and Des were a couple of younger soldiers underneath her, and May was her... I'd say best friend, but Haydn more suits that role. Girl friend, then.
Oh, actually, I just found a bit from the original storyline that I'll put in after the 4, 100 word segments, where Jaz and Haydn are talking shortly before she leaves on what she sees as a suicide mission. The style is a bit odd, just as a warning.
Jaz knew they would never see it coming. Masks were her skill, lies were her trade, and pain was something she’d learned to bury a long time ago.
Her teammates knew she was one of the best at deception, and that would work in her favor when she seemingly disappeared from their lives. They would believe, after she was branded a traitor, that she had been playing them the whole time.
Haydn would see through the cracks in her mask and know how leaving them destroyed her from the inside. The world would get her confident smirk and nothing more.
Whitecourt hadn’t intended for two of them to carry out this mission at first. And Jaz hadn’t wanted another to suffer the same fate she had accepted with only a moment’s deliberation.
I will give my life for these people.
But she and Whitecourt had agreed, upon further analysis of the information they had, that it would have to be a two man operation.
She’d spent two days poring over the files of other black-ops members, searching for a candidate. She had ruled out some due to attachments; families, wives, fiancées, anything of the sort. Women she ruled out altogether.
When she and Haydn had been assigned to work a month long operation together with no prior warning, Jaz pretended to not know how the idea had reached their superiors, all the while having been the one who chose him.
She couldn’t have anticipated how flawlessly they fell together, though.
Within a couple of weeks of working, eating, and sleeping in the same, closet-sized apartment, he was reading her mind as well as she had learned to know his.
The language with which they communicated was one all their own. Messages were sent between them by way of unconventional methods.
He was suited to Jaz in a way no one else had been before him.
Zack and Dan had always been protecting and shielding her, Kano and Des always looking for her guidance as their team leader and superior. May’s heart had been too innocent and naïve to comprehend how Jaz worked.
Haydn had used that first week they spent together to sort through her mannerisms, her habits, her priorities, just as she did to him, and the end result was one unexpected by both.
It felt like the first time she’d ever been on equal ground with her teammate.
Sorry if those are a bit disjointed... I was still working out what I wanted to write about when I scribbled them last night. Onto the original scrawl.
all i want is to not be left alone tonight. let me spend my last night on earth in the arms of the man i love and blast the consequences because i cannot do this. i can't do this, i can't leave you, i can't leave them, but i'm going to. i will. i took an oath. i will protect my family and my country.
you always have a choice. you don't have to do this.
don't do this to me, haydn. you promised. i promised. we don't get in the way of loyalties. we knew that from the beginning.
i can't let you walk away knowing that you're not going to come back.
i know. i know. but i have to.
no you don't. you don't have to do this, jaz.
i made a promise, to my people and my village. this could stop the war if we succeed, haydn. i'm not so selfish that i would condemn this country to another lifetime of war because i couldn't let go.
so, what, you wish we had never met?
i didn't say that. don't twist my words.
then what are you saying, jaz? are you just going to throw me away now?
never, haydn. i can't let go of everybody else, i can turn my back on my teammates and walk away without telling them goodbye, but i couldn't do that to you. i could have. i could've just gone on this mission and not have come back without ever seeing you, but i didn't. i didn't, haydn, and the proof is my standing before you now. do you get it? do you understand?
tell me, jaz.
i-- this is probably the loudest declaration of my feelings i will ever manage, haydn. because i love you enough to tell you goodbye and to have you know i'm doing it. nobody else, haydn. i told no one else goodbye. they all got a last day, none of them the wiser, and they won't see me again. they'll have that last day that i spent with them, but the knowledge that i didn't say goodbye. but i'm here to say goodbye to you, haydn. am i making any sense?
you are, jaz, don't worry.
i don't want to die, haydn. i don't want to go in there knowing i won't make it out to see you all again, but i'm going because i have to. i have to do this so that none of you have to sacrifice yourselves in the same way.
you don't have to say anything more, jaz. i've got it.
i need you to do one last thing for me.
what is it?
i need you to let me go, haydn. i have to leave in three hours and i don't want for you to try to stop me. let me say goodbye, haydn, then forget me. move on with your life, to someone else who can actually be with you.
no.
haydn--
no, jasmine, i won't, because i believe that you're good enough to come out of this alive. you can walk away from this mission alive, jaz, but only if you believe that you can.
Huh. So the mission was to stop a war. Fergot that bit.
That's about all I've got the moment, then. I did write more Breen/Garrett, but I'll hold that one in reserve until I either extend it or write another, earlier section to explain where things have jumped to.
Thank you once again for your time and I hope you found these little blips to be vaguely interested. Feedback tends to make my day, so don't be afraid to drop me a note, either here or on the OYAN forum to PenWielder62.
Ad astra per aspera.
To the stars, through difficulty.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Questions, comments, critiques?