VULNERABILITY

By LadySenju

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As Grand Jedi Master, most assume Luke Skywalker isn't particularly vulnerable to anything. That is quite a stretch from the truth - his sister and brother-in-law can certainly vouch for it. Those who do, would tell you it is his love for the galaxy's welfare. They are only partly right. Saving everyone is a vulnerability of his, more often than not - just not his greatest one.

Luke's greatest vulnerability is a headstrong, relentless firework who entered his life in a crash (for which his masterful piloting to this day holds blame, not the distraction of said firework trying to blast him out of Myrkr). His greatest vulnerability is a woman named Mara Jade.

It's not one he minds having. Not usually.

At times though, when they train for eternity in the temple courtyards, her cloak flutters open and he catches a perfect gleam of her skin. He sees the smooth, delicate slant of her neck and fights the desire to reach out and touch it, to caress it softly with his rough, calloused palm, to run trembling fingers against her flesh. At times, the desire is so powerful he has to grip his lightsaber with both hands to suppress it.

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When the temperature is muggy, their cloaks are off. He watches the taupe leather hugging her body tightly, accentuating her curves as she swivels and flexes like a nexu taunting prey.

He longs to run his hands across it. He longs for it like a rancor starves for meat, like the iceworld Hoth longs for sun. And he envies the little band of Padawans caught in her spring, shackles to his treasonous limbs coiling around their Master until there isn't a pocket of air between them, their bodies pressed closer together than the leather sticking to her skin…-

"Uncle Luke?"

Shackles, too, to undisciplined thoughts, for which he is (quite considerably) thankful.

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Sometimes Mara's presence is so mesmerizing that Luke wonders how he can breathe. Sometimes, for a frozen heartbeat or two, he even forgets the Force is there.

Like when she yells down his eardrum in the middle of crowded spaceport because he's the most graul-brained, infuriating excuse for a Master she's ever had the misfortune of meeting and she's (again) had to come all this way to save his sorry ass. He can only thank the Force for their survival, before his brain dissolves like flesh under blaster fire with her enticing voice left bounding around in his apparently empty skull.

That steely, no-nonsense will of hers that demeans the hell out of him at times… he can't help but admire it profoundly.

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He'd be pleased for her, he really would, if she wasn't tearing his heart out and hauling it right of Coruscant with her. As she stares up at him with those blazing, emerald eyes - eyes that so reverently bore into his soul - and half-whispers, half-goads that he induce her as to why she should stay, the words slip from a traitorous tongue he bites to the point of bleeding.

"You could always marry me, Mara, if that's reason enough for you."

The blaze in her eyes transfigures to shock and he chews his tongue so hard that he can taste metal as she seemingly struggles for breath, overwhelmed at the sudden madness that she might just say yes.

Madness. Definitely madness.

"I don't think even you are that desperate, Skywalker." And she turns on her heel, leaving him gazing after her while she streaks down the corridor with his ruptured heart in tow.

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Not that desperate. If only she knew how erroneous that statement was. How desperation consumes him every day. How he is imprisoned, plagued, saturated by it.

It surfaces, for a moment, at the clash of hungry lips, bodies crushed together, restless hands dipping and trailing from necks to waists.

But only for a moment, before Luke jerks away at the sudden need for air and an all too familiar hollowness settles in. With dowy eyes blinking back at him under a mane of golden hair - all but the fiery, jade-eyed bloodnut he'd so acutely envisioned in his mind - he feels as though he's been doused in ice.

Not that desperate is a far stretch from the imagination indeed.

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Gone.

Gone, killed, murdered. Made one with the Force.

Jem Ysanna is gone.

And the taint in his blood only thickens as the last residue of body fades from the pyre, before small hands encircle him in a warmth repelled by his sorrows.

He breaks down in his sister's arms, wetting her soft, sheltering hair with strangled weeps.

He weeps for what feels an eternity, because Jem died saving him. Because the galaxy lost a kind, virtuous woman who didn't deserve to be taken like that. And because as the blade had shred through her body all he'd been able to think of was how it hadn't been a doughty Jedi/smuggler redhead Force-alone-knows where and he despises himself for it.

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They don't talk about it. They know it is a trial he must deal with on guidance of the Force alone. (Besides, no Jedi would dare joggle the fragile state of their Republic because the Order's leader was suffering dark-side impulses.)

This time though, Luke doesn't think he can.

When he meditates on the Force, when he immerses himself most fixedly in its inner counsel, he is met with the fierce, emerald gaze that haunts his dreams and those vibrant, fiery locks he so terribly longs to stroke.

Then all too soon, he is on the floor of his study gasping for air, trembling like a winter-sheered bantha. And he wonders if - when - the Force will bring her back to him, and whether he is even more vulnerable to the absence of her presence than when she is there.

What he wouldn't give to hold her in his arms, just once.

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Mara isn't your average Jedi. Luke knows that better than most.

After almost being ripped to shreds by two Dathomirian Sith Lords alongside a Grand Master hesitant in exerting Force potential for fear of yielding to darkness, your average Jedi would be inciting tender words of comfort.

Mara is yelling at him.

Blood gushing from her abdomen, she chastises him with ever-flowing strength, berates him for all those wasted, desolate months of isolation, how reckless and selfish and idiotic he's been. She knows, of course, she's been there. So he doesn't budge. He takes it all with a tight grimace, eyes squeezed shut in preparation for the flood.

But he doesn't despair. He doesn't crumble. Instead, he feels… resolved. And by the time she is finished all he can think is how frighteningly quickly he was able to find his resolve with her there. How fructuous her words are to his beaten soul.

When did he become so vulnerable? So… weak?

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Mara storms ahead, and in a perfect universe would have continued down the ravine. But her wounds decide in that moment to reaffirm themselves and with buckling knees she grips the cliff-edge for support.

Luke steps forward cautiously, relieved when she accepts his arm. But dammit, he'd been scared. With her beaten down when he could have prevented it - a Sith Lord had tried to run his saberstaff through her and almost ended her life before him - he is engulfed with raging guilt and their far-from-perfect universe has them both shrinking to their knees.

Pressing his face into her tangled hair, every warm rasp of breath on his neck an assurance that she is still very much alive, he can't help but smile to himself.

When it comes to Mara Jade, he's always been weak. It's one of the reasons he admires her so damn much.

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"Are you concentrating at all, Skywalker?"

Of course he is. She commands it.

Gods, how he wants to pull her down on top of him, hug her, kiss her, breathe in every trace of her being as she lies wrapped in his embrace. And when she stands over him, goading him with that adorable, mesmerizing smirk, it makes him want to… want to…

It makes him want to do things very inappropriate for the sunlit temple courtyard with their little Padawans running around. But the Padawan-invaded courtyard is exactly where they are, so he steers her lightsaber away from his chest and forces himself to his feet again.

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That archaic, cerulean lightsaber that had once belonged to his father… he'd given it to her so long ago now. It kindles a thousand memories each time it connects with his own.

A treasure, it warms him to think, that had journeyed with her everywhere she went. A part of him she'd carried closer to her all these years, like his heart.

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Luke wonders, as her husky laugh mingles with the little giggles from her lap, how breathtakingly beautiful Mara would look carrying his child. He marvels at the thought, watching his youngest nephew snuggled at her side, her slender fingers running absently through the boy's golden locks while she listens to the twins' ramblings about giant mynocks and trips to Corellia.

Twins… The chances are high that he - they - could possibly have twins too, and his mind swims with the image of Mara's slender, curvy figure so… inimitably suited to it. Of her resting in his arms while he caresses her stomach swollen with the two little lives they'd created together…

"...so what's the verdict?"

"Perfect," he whispers absently before his reverie is crushed and he is met with the chocolate brown eyes of his sister. "Can we have dessert then, Uncle Luke?"

Luke follows his niece to the kitchen, exhilaration eating at his chest.

At least his jubilant fantasies can continue somewhat surrealy until Han and Leia pick up the kids. He has plenty of time to get lost in more intoxicating ones later.

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"Being a Jedi suits you."

"And smuggler chief doesn't?"

Of course it does. Smuggler, pilot, slicer, wife, mother… There isn't a function in the entire galaxy that Mara isn't suited to master. She could become a scavenger tomorrow and and she's still be just as noble and dignified and awe-inspiring in Luke's eyes.

He almost voices it. Almost. He almost tells her that his clumsy proposal (if one could call it that) from months ago still stands. And gods, how he almost pins her to the wall and kisses her breathless right there, to show her what his words fail to tell, just how much he wants… needs her to stay.

He physically fights to keep his arms at his sides. The last thing he wants to do is scare her into leaving for good.

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"You love her."

No, not her. Not Macey. The thought almost escapes him, if for no other reason than he is stunned. Luke swallows, pushing down the guilt. Dammit, why does he feel like some whimsical lecher caught cheating on his girlfriend? He thought he was past this ridiculous hankering over someone who'd once again vacated his life, Force knows how many parsecs away.

"It's a Skywalker thing after all, falling for smugglers."

Smugglers. No, of course Leia hadn't meant his latest failed romance. She smiles at him, that warm, contagious smile that assures even the most ravaged conscience that everything in the galaxy will be alright.

But with Mara gone, how could it? "At least your smuggler stayed."

"He did," Leia shrugs, "Eventually. Though I don't think you've had enough almost-death affairs to make that conclusion yet."

Despite the sunken hole in his chest, Luke finds himself smiling back.

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The Kauron asteroid field isn't near as vast as the one above Hoth's atmosphere, but a self-destructing base has to count for something.

Picking up R2's call, Luke sends a sardonic thought of amusement toward his sister, a feeling that vanishes instantly when Mara's voice rings through his commlink and his resurrected pulse loudly pounds along with it. "Are you in trouble again, Skywalker?"

Luke decides that if he inadvertently went deaf in that moment with her voice being the last thing he ever heard, he would still die the luckiest man in the galaxy.

He supposes he really should be heeding her directions though. He'd be a far luckier man if he lived to see her again.

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"So. Do you want to get off me? Or were you just getting comfortable?"

Luke wouldn't call it comfortable, awakening from a Jedi trance to find himself straddling her slim, sweaty frame beneath him on the deck of the Starry Ice. And as if to mockingly escalate his discomfort, a trickle of perspiration draws his gaze to the dip of her throat and he is hit with the formidable urge to press his tongue to it.

Perhaps he would have, if that admirable spirit of hers he adores so much hadn't so greatly overwhelmed him yet again.

Torn between the desire to kiss the life out of her or chide her for risking her life like that to cushion his plummet, he settles for an embarrassed whisper of thanks, almost missing her amusement as he scrambles to his feet.

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The vision hits him like cutting ice.

A crumbling canyon, the sound of rushing water… and her pale, unconscious form floating on its surface. He gasps breathlessly for several seconds, fighting down vomit, and for a selfish, terrifying moment wishes he'd never looked into the Force. But then…

Luke wrestles the growing blackness with hollered breaths, brain scouring frantically for planets with canyons, trying desperately to envision them without Mara's lifeless form buoyed in the water below. This can't happen… It can't…

He punches the coordinates and makes the jump to lightspeed so abruptly that R2 blows a circuit in its wake.

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Despite his record exceeding twice the remainder of the Order's aggregate, Luke has never considered himself an exceptionally proficient rescuer. Not when Mara comes to being the rescuee.

She gazes up at him, hair tousled, pale skin speckled with grime and dry blood, with the most fervid, unrelenting expression he's ever known her to wear.

Or perhaps it is because he'd been so worried and unable to think straight during the flight here that he'd somehow forgotten that resolve of hers that puts the galaxy to shame. Either way, she has never looked as astoundingly breathtaking as in that moment.

"You look beautiful."

"You look terrible." She smirks at him, eyes trailing critically over his punctured jumpsuit. "Did you cross half the planet or something?"

Probably. But he'd cross Nihaun again and a hundred times over if that's what it took to find her.

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They connect. Like one mind, one spirit, lightsabers leaping to meet each fiery bolt of death, submersed in complete guidance of the Force.

Luke's attention is so locked on surviving, on getting Mara out of here alive, there seems nothing able to penetrate into his - their - consciousness. Not the rest of the chamber, not the sentinel dimly visible behind the dazzling glare of blaster bolts coming at them, not even his own body.

And in the depth of his mental rapport, he suddenly and totally knows Mara Jade, the most exhilarating, delightful sensation he has ever relished in. And he wants it - wants her - so, so desperately, all the remaining days of his life.

Knowing that even as her soul lays open before his eyes, so also his heart and spirit are open before hers. He is as vulnerable, and wholly at peace, as ever.

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Mara's expression is the amused smirk he can feel in her Force-presence, despite the seriousness of their impending aqueous doom. Of course, even then, she doesn't let him away with just calling their connection 'special.'

Gazing into the blazing, emerald eyes he loves more than anything in the galaxy, Luke takes a tremulous breath, and asks her to marry him.

"You mean if we get out of here alive?"

"I mean regardless."

Under normal circumstance, he knows, Mara would have considered herself honor-bound to make him sweat. But not with ravenous water moments from engulfing them. Casting aside their surroundings as she breathes an unswervable 'yes,' he takes her in his arms and kisses her, the enrapturing feel of her lips against his overwhelming all thoughts of (Force-willing) their escape.

She is his vulnerability after all.

She'll always be his vulnerability.

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