She is a force of nature, something not to be trifled with- she is a hurricane, a whirlwind, a twister, a sandstorm raging across the desert, a lava flow inexorably surging forward, a wildfire of gold and red and orange and heat tearing across an open plain, heedless of anything which she comes across, anything that dares step between her and her goal. She burns, and she burns bright, enveloping a select few in her warmth and engulfing the rest of the worlds in a blaze. Such fires cannot be controlled, cannot be contained- perhaps, just for a short time, there is the illusion of submission, something to trick whomever is foolish enough to set foot in her path, but then it is only a matter of who blinks first, of who lasts longer, and such fires never burn out.

And the Force is a part of that strength, yes- eternal, all that has passed and all that can ever come to pass, but the fire is integral to her character, her being, her essence- she is the fire, and the Force flows through her. Even cut off from it for fifteen long, long years, she has not faded. Diminished to embers, yes, but she is not broken. All an ember needs is a gust of wind at the right time, a splash of fuel-

The Troopers who guard her cell, a tiny room five paces wide and five paces long and a low ceiling she can jump up and touch if she is so inclined, located at the end of a dim hallway on a base orbiting an uninhabitable planet somewhere far away, where no one thinks to look- they whisper of treason. She takes interests in their words without moving. She rarely moves, has not moved in quite some time- why he even bothers keeping her alive, she does not know, but she is alive, and there has to be a reason for that. Still, she gives them nothing. She has never given anything, and she does not move, and her guards, in turn, become complacent. There was a time when none of them would dare speak where she could hear them, a time when she was guarded because they were afraid of her.

Then she was guarded because she was important, possible leverage against her captors' enemies, against her family-- and now she is guarded because no one has told them to stop.

They whisper of treason, of a rebel Trooper, a traitor. She listens to the whispers and holds them close to her, tucks them around the dim embers they have never been able to stamp out and feeds the flame. A Trooper defecting means that something is happening, or something has already happened. Troopers never defect. Troopers aren't programmed to defect.

Something is happening.

The whispers grow into murmurs, and murmurs into low conversation, and conversation into horrified oaths. Starkiller has been destroyed, whatever that means- though the name sounds ominous, and her mind flashes back to thirty years ago, standing at the Emperor's side-

Millions dead, the Troopers say. Millions of Troopers, just like them. It's easier to think of the Troopers as mindless, trained from birth to follow orders and nothing else, but a Trooper has defected.

Millions of lives.

And one Trooper, a new one, who pushes a tray with a bowl of brownish water and an S-Ration into her cell- the Trooper's hands are shaking. Something drops into the bowl, and they don't notice, and they leave, and the door locks itself behind them as it always does. She dips her fingers into the murk and pulls out a keycard, and her eyes go wide, and-

-she gives them nothing. She slides the keycard under the single pillow she has, now flat and lumpy from more than a decade of use, and obediently eats what has been presented to her, because that is what she is expected to do.

A different guard brings her food the next day. She can hear them talking to another outside her cell, not even trying to keep quiet anymore- TN-5987 shot herself, lost the keys to the kriffing door and didn't want to face decommission-

Maybe she regrets it. Another life lost before it could be saved. But maybe she doesn't.

She doesn't think about it.

She eats her ration. She sleeps. She eats her ration. She sleeps. She waits until the single guard who works the twilight shift brings her dinner (brownish water and another S-Ration), and she kicks their legs out from under them and grabs them and hits their head against the chair bolted to the floor above the hole for the 'fresher until they stop moving.

She eats her ration and drinks her water and takes up the keycard and walks away.

Guarded because no one has ever told them to stop guarding her. It's easy to walk out, disturbingly easy- she thinks maybe they're letting her, that this is a test or a trap, but the Troopers still march patrols and she keeps moving and nothing happens.

Then again, three men and a pair of droids and a Wookie once sneaked on board an Imperial Star Destroyer to rescue a Princess, and they made it out all right.

Her plan- what little of it there is, though she spent most of the night thinking about it, ever since she got the keycard- is to steal the closest fighter and speed away. It's almost what she does, until she sees a familiar ship docked in between some TIE fighters and a Lambda-class shuttle, stripped of its old paint and marked with an insignia belonging to her former captors- her ship.

Her ship. It's a custom design; she can pick it out of a million others with ease. She knows her ship better than she knows herself, and there are no tracking devices hidden away- no large ones, nothing immediately obvious, at any rate. Small trackers have a correspondingly small range, so if she can get away, she'll have time to do a more thorough search.

Alarms sound out behind her as she flies into open space. Alarms disappear as the stars blur and twist in the viewscreen and she leaves the small base and its uninhabited system light years behind her.

It's too easy, it's too easy, and she knows that it's too easy- she doesn't get by on flukes, on luck, on chance, and the Force gives and takes away in equal measure. She can't make herself believe that it was an accident that the Trooper dropped the keycard into her water and didn't notice. She can't believe she sneaked out of a base while attracting as little attention as she just did.

But the past fifteen years have been anything but easy. Fifteen years cut off from the Force. Fifteen years since she has seen her family. Fifteen years since her nephew fell to the Dark, since she nearly died in confronting him. Fifteen years since she has held her daughter. Fifteen years in captivity.

Mara Jade Skywalker stands from the pilot's seat and double checks the nav to make sure the course she's plotted will successfully throw off any tail she may have, or at least give them a bit of trouble finding her. Then she turns and walks back through the hallways of the Jade Sabre, running her fingers along the familiar walls and walking familiar paths back and forth. She can almost hear her daughters laughter echoing back to her ears.

"But I deserve easy," she says to the empty air. "Just this once."

The problem is actually finding her husband and her daughter again. Wherever this generation's Rebellion is hiding won't be common knowledge, not with the First Order having risen from the ashes of the Empire and the Knights filling the power void the Emperor and his Hands had left behind. Still, it's the Rebellion she needs to find if she wants to find Luke. Her husband is bright in the Force, but his presence is quiet, much like he himself is, and he'll be careful to hide himself with a new Sith Order on the rise- or already risen, she doesn't know, she's been away so long.

And she has a kriffing inhibitor collared around her neck. It wouldn't matter if he was projecting so loudly that even beings who aren't Force-sensitive could hear him. She has no way of telling.

So her first mission is to get this blasted thing off of her and see if she can melt it down. She'll use it to make new parts for a blaster that she stole and smile as she shoots whomever corrupted her nephew in the head.

(she knows, rationally, that something will need to be done about Kylo Ren, the man who almost killed her, but that's a topic she has dwelt on for fifteen long years, and she wants something else to think about; Ren's actions are not excused, but he was just a child before the Sith found him)

Her second mission is to find the Rebellion's base, or one of their bases if they've organized themselves enough to have more than one, though she doubts it. It's clear enough, as she flips through propaganda piece after propaganda piece on the holochannels, that the First Order and the Sith have taken over completely. She can't imagine that the Organas will be anywhere but in the heart of the fight against it, and Luke is never far from his sister.

Rey is going to be twenty soon, if the ship's chronometer is accurate. Her little girl is going to be twenty.

The Jade Sabre has been stripped of almost everything useful. Though the ship has been painted in First Order colors and given what she assumes must be their insignia, Mara has the suspicion they were going to refurbish the ship into something for themselves but never got around to finishing the job. It doesn't look like it's been piloted in quite some time.

Her holos are all gone. The drawings Rey and Ben had made for her are gone.

Organa - Luke's sister, Organa, not her husband - was the only one of their rather odd family to have had a normal childhood, though even hers was somewhat skewed by her early entry to politics and her high status and the shadow of the Empire. Luke grew up knowing nothing but hard work under Tatooine's twin suns and the daily ramifications of being the free-born son of a slave; Organa (the husband, this time) was a street urchin from the slums of Corellia; Mara herself was trained by the Emperor for as long as she can remember, which is about as far from a normal childhood as anyone can get. She remembers how much Rey loved visiting her aunt and uncle, because her uncle would let her "help" make repairs to the Falcon and her cousin was, according to Rey, the most wonderful person ever to grace the galaxy- and her aunt would take her places, to parks or carnivals or holofilms, and her aunt would sit down with her and Ben and color with them. Rey always came back from her visits with drawings for Luke to hang in the classrooms or for Mara to put in her ship.

She looks down at her stolen blaster and decides she's going to need something bigger. This one won't be enough to shoot all the people she's intending to shoot.

Revenge is not the way of the Jedi, she can almost hear Luke saying- revenge, no, but justice, on the other hand...

There's a benefit to not fitting any definition of "normal," however- she's a smuggler, and a Jedi, and a former Imperial, and she knows a lot of people who will do almost anything on the down-low for the right amount of credits.

Like removing a Force inhibitor. Or finding the location of a secret base.

She stops by the Hosnian system first, to see if the First Order has taken the base of the Second Galactic Republic like the Empire took over Coruscant, and the Jade Sabre leaves hyperspace and finds a massive field of rubble slowly orbiting around the system's star.

Mara doesn't throw up, or cry, or swear. She stares, for a very long time, and bows her head.

She's grateful for the inhibitor collared to her neck- the Force echoes of billions upon billions of lives snuffed out are all around her, and she can't hear a single one of them.

Starkiller, she remembers hearing the Troopers say.

Death Star, she remembers hearing the Emperor say.

Fifteen years ago, she couldn't find her daughter or her husband. All around her, the lives of the Jedi trainees were being snuffed out one by one by one, and her nephew burned of pain and anger and Dark in the Force.

She reached out long enough to confirm that Luke and Rey were near each other, only to find that they weren't- that Rey was on the opposite side of the Temple from him, and that Ben- that Kylo Ren was near her, and that Rey was terrified.

And she ran.

She found Ren in one of the training rooms, alone, and Rey's presence in the Force growing more distant the further away she ran. He stood with his arms loosely at his sides, hood pulled up to hide his face in shadow. He turned to look at her.

"I wish you hadn't found me," he said, and he sounded almost regretful.

"Did you hurt my daughter?" she asked him, blue saber flaring into existence in her hand. The light was enough to glint off his eyes, black and empty, though they filled with something like greed at the sight of the weapon in her hand, that which was once Anakin Skywalker's. That which was once Darth Vader's.

"No," he said.

"Then I'll kill you quickly."

She wouldn't, though, because she knew what it was like to be Dark and come back, and Luke had seen the change happen in his own father, and Leia would never forgive them if they killed her son. She would understand why it was necessary, perhaps, but she would never forgive them.

And the saber had swung toward her, and she hadn't blocked fast enough, and the last thing she heard was Luke's agonized cry before the world fell into flames.

Fifteen years ago, she had woken up with an inhibitor around her neck and a scar across her side that made every breath feel like smoke and fire, and she had known nothing else.

Having the inhibitor gone is... indescribable. She doesn't have the words to explain what it's like to lose the Force for so long and then have it back again. She nearly passes out from the feeling, and she maybe almost cries, and she comes close to throwing up. It's kind of like the cliche of losing a part of herself and finding it again, but even that doesn't quite do it justice.

Mara leaves the backwater planet behind her, her pockets rattling pleasingly with credit chips, the Jade Sabre sloppily painted over to hide its First Order markings. The procedure to remove the inhibitor had been far too expensive to take place in a building that looked like the inside of a Hutt's 'fresher, but she's always been good at sabaac, and she has plenty of credits left over even after paying.

The inhibitor, warped metal and bloody where it had dug into her skin, sits in the copilot's chair, next to a new blaster. She'll be making new parts as soon as she gets the chance.

Mara finds Maz Kanata about a dozen systems from where the elderly alien is supposed to be, grumbling as she goes about restarting her old watering hole. Mara found that mostly demolished, the great stone ruins collapsed in on themselves, signs of a battle having taken place not long ago. A few standard months, give or take.

"Don't give me any of that bantha fodder about seeing the same eyes in different people, Maz," is the first thing she says.

Maz's face shifts from wary confusion to shock to grateful relief, and she hobbles up onto a table so give Mara a hug. She waits it out- she's never been fully comfortable with people touching her, generally only people she knows well, and fifteen years of next to no contact-

"It's good to see you, child," Maz says, still hugging her. "Were those First Order bastards hiding you from us all?"

"Who else?"

"Luke was certain that Ren had murdered you..." Maz steps back, finally, and Mara draws the Force around her like a protective shield, taking comfort in its presence after it being missing for so long. "Is Luke who you're looking for?"

Maz's new place isn't even finished being renovated, and the construction droids have departed for the night so Maz can get some sleep without their noise in the background. She likes to supervise things, Mara knows. It's just the two of them right now, standing in a room half open to the sky above, no form of sentient life for miles. Still, Mara hesitates before speaking.

"I'm looking for the Rebellion base. Organa will be in the thick of things, I know that much, and you know Han, and Luke is never far from his sister. I can find one of them, I can find Luke."

Maz nods, seeing her logic, and then stops abruptly- frowns, and looks at Mara, and Mara definitely does not like the pity in her eyes. That pity does not bode well for whatever is going to come next.

"How much do you know of what's happened, Mara?"

Mara does not like the pity she sees.

"The Hosnian system is gone. The First Order is being run by a group of Sith. There is a Rebellion, I've heard the rumors about it, but the First Order is everywhere." For the first moment since her escape, she allows just a moment of panic, concern, worry- has someone died? Either of the Organas, or- or Luke- or if something happened to Rey- "Tell me what I'm missing, Maz, and then point me in the direction of the Rebellion."

Maz pats her shoulder and sits down on top of the table, gesturing for Mara to take a chair. "They're going by the Resistance now, but the idea is the same. Han and Leia split some time after the massacre at the Temple, I talked him into going back, but Force only knows if he's stayed. Luke... left, Mara. He stopped by here with Rey, fifteen years ago, and gave me his father's old lightsaber- your saber- and said he was leaving for a planet on the Outer Rim where Rey would be safe."

So- not good, but her daughter is alive, and her husband is alive, even if they aren't as close to the Rebellion- Resistance-- as she initially thought they would be-

Maz can't contact the base directly. She explains what had happened on Takodana, and how the First Order has been shooting anyone and everyone with even the vaguest of connections to the Resistance. Maz has ducked out from their line of fire for now, but communication with the base, even on an encrypted channel, is far too risky. She explains that Luke left a map, should anyone ever need him, but there was always a key piece to it that was missing -– Mara has to scoff and roll her eyes at that; her husband has always had a flair for the dramatic and obscure, and it's enough to make her want to slap him sometimes. She also loves him for it.

She mentions how Han came to her one day with a runaway and a girl with the Force and part of the map to Luke -– a girl with the Force named Rey, brown hair and her mother's eyes, Mara's eyes, a girl who knew nothing of her family or her past- and that is what the pity is for, Mara knows. Maz doesn't know for sure if that Rey is their Rey, but she can't be anybody else. And Mara can't think of a situation that would separate Luke from their daughter like that, not one that makes sense with the rest of the scraps of information she has, with the rest of the story Maz is telling.

But there has to be an answer, and now she has all the more reason to find home again -– as if she didn't have enough before.

Maz tells Mara the coordinates, given to her by a pilot stopping through in case she ever needs a place to run to. Mara thanks her and stands to leave.

"Mara Jade." Maz is looking at her with those ancient brown eyes. "Mara Jade Skywalker. Tread carefully, child."

That's all she has to say, apparently, and the whole conversation leaves Mara unsettled. But she has not gotten this far by being reckless, and she will -– carefully, yes, if she must -– find her way back to her family again. She spent a long time being alone, and a long time learning how not to be. She's not giving them up. She's not giving up on them.

Do you ever just... forget how much you love a character until you start writing them again? I love Mara. I forgot how much I love Mara.

As is obvious, I'm borrowing a bit from the EU just by using her character. The Jade Sabre was the second ship she owned - a wedding present designed and built for her by Luke. Interactions between Mara and Luke from the EU (in this 'verse) occurred pre-TFA, which offers an explanation for how Luke's first saber showed up again with Maz despite being lost at Cloud City and how she and Luke met.

As always, thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoyed. Next chapter should be up tomorrow.