Title: Iteration
Fandom: Star Wars Expanded Universe
Characters: Mara Jade, Talon Karrde, Luke Skywalker, Aves, Wedge Antilles, Garm Bel Iblis, Han Solo, Thrawn, Pellaeon, Original Characters
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Oh, warnings for pretty much every last damned thing - major character death(s), language, violence, het, slash, threesomes, abuse of chaos theory by a non-mathematician, and probably a few other things I've forgotten.
Notes: After nearly ten years of on-and-off tinkering, I finally just stripped this thing down to the studs and essentially started over. So if you read the first few parts of this on FFN, lo these many years ago, this is all new and revamped – albeit based on the same basic concept.
Summary: An alternate universe in which loose lips sink ships, Thrawn has a very good day, Wedge Antilles has a very bad day, popular characters die, popular pairings get twisted beyond all recognition, unpopular pairings happen, slash happens, minor characters develop actual personalities, the galaxy does not get saved for once and Talon Karrde has a lot to be upset about. (AU starting sometime during Dark Force Rising, if not before.)
Iteration
"Where were you anyway? Your last message said you'd be back three days ago."
"That was before I got stuck on-" Luke broke off, eyeing the people beginning to wander through the corridor. "I'll tell you later," he amended.
-Timothy Zahn, The Last Command
"A tiny imprecision in the initial conditions will grow at an enormous rate. Two nearly indistinguishable sets of initial conditions for the same system will result in two final situations that differ greatly from each other."
- Chaos Theory and Fractals
1. Shift
Maybe, just maybe, Karrde was right about her, after all.
She was lost, had been since she could remember. There wasn't much chance of saving her, of salvaging anything of value when this was all over.
He was looking at her, though, in the low eerie light of that place, the air heavy with thousands of quiet breaths, like maybe he wanted to try.
"I'm a bad bet," she said softly, and he reacted in that way of his, never showing much, never wanting to be seen as weak or surprised or even really human. He'd called her cold once and she'd called him a hypocrite, and they were both right. She knew him well enough, though, to interpret that little twitch of his head, the not-quite raise of an eyebrow. She'd managed to surprise him. She moved closer, so they were shoulder to shoulder, looking down into the cavern and its endless rows of tiny circles within circles – forever and forever and forever.
"I'm a bad bet," she said again, "and I'm sorry."
"Mara..." he began and faltered, looking, for the first time since she'd known him, at a loss for words.
She'd needed something, someone, to hang onto. She thought he'd be the safe choice, that there would be less danger of any serious entanglement. She'd used him, body and breath, to keep herself grounded, to keep from spinning off into the void, and he'd pretended not to mind. She owed him for that. She owed him for a lot of things, truth be told – and if there was ever a time for truth-telling it was now. He'd saved her life, though she'd repaid him for that several times over. He'd given her a home and power and a purpose – and he was right about her, he'd filled a void, one that she hadn't really wanted to admit to.
"What are we going to do?" Karrde said. It was her turn to be surprised, until she realized that he was speaking, not to her, but over her shoulder to where Luke had reappeared from the shadows.
"He's down there somewhere, and I can't get Han or Lando on the comm." Luke grimaced, flexing his fingers and looking down at the cavern as well, searching maybe for C'baoth's presence among the thousands of clones. Mara shivered. She couldn't sense much herself, but what she could feel was unpleasant, fractured, unnatural.
"So no idea then? No cunning Jedi plan?" Karrde was back to his usual form, the moment for honesty gone. They probably wouldn't get another chance.
"I don't suppose you have a way out of this up your sleeve? No? Then shut up and let me think."
The bickering was, she knew, mostly for show. They were both rattled, something that, before now, she would have laid even odds she'd never see. They'd retreated up here to hide, to regroup – only the rest of the group had yet to materialize. She still wasn't much good at sensing individual emotions, but she could feel a general buzz of worry – from Luke, for his sister, her husband, his friends; from Karrde, for his people and, rather appropriately, for himself – and, worryingly, from both of them for her. The strength of it was almost more than she could take. She stepped back, away from them both, closed her eyes and tried to concentrate on breathing.
"Are you all right?" Luke asked, coming over and putting a hand on the back of her neck. The touch was intimate, too familiar. She just barely resisted reflex, the urge to cringe, to shake him off. Every time he looked at her she felt it – this alien thing, hers but not hers. She recognized it for what is was now, mostly, was able to untangle it from the other things she felt when he looked at her. Hope – it was mostly hope underneath the rage and resentment that was only a little bit her own. There were other things there, too, unformed and dangerous, but she didn't have the luxury of looking at them too closely.
Maybe it was better that way, for all of them.
"I know this is hard," he was saying. "It's hard for me, too..." He touched her again, and she saw it in a sudden flash – a future where Luke killed C'baoth with his own hands, and it all went horribly, horribly wrong. She'd never been all that inclined toward visions while waking (dreams, of course, were a different story), not even with the Emperor's guidance, so it took her a moment to recognize it for what it was: a possible future, a likely one – unless she did something to stop it.
So, she decided, she'd just have to stop it. It was better than hiding up here, at any rate.
She ran through the possible options, quickly discarding most of them. Her breathing must have changed, or the tension in her shoulders, or the tilt of her head, or any one of a thousand tiny intimate things that gave her away.
"What is it?" Karrde asked.
"Nothing. I just-"
"Felt something?" Luke was still by her side, standing too close to her, and again she had to suppress that not-hers urge to flinch away. Instead, she shifted her weight forward, gauging the distance, took a breath and tried to steady herself. "It's all right," he said, his hand gentle on her wrist, mistaking her hesitation for fear. He should have known better, should have been able to tell what was really going on in her mind. She looked at him again, trying to read what was happening beneath the surface, but it was too hard find the thread of his thoughts in all the background noise and sensation. Maybe she was closed off to him the same way here.
Karrde, though, knew her well enough to guess what she was really about to do. He was watching her with this look on his face that… No, definitely not the safer choice. Her throat closed abruptly, and she had to look away from him.
"It's all right," Luke said again.
It's not, she thought. It's not, but it will be.
When she looked up again, Karrde was still watching her, shaking his head just fractionally, speaking volumes without saying a word.
Don't do this. You don't have to do this.
He was wrong – he didn't like being wrong; she was going to miss that about him – she had to do it. It was why she'd been brought here – it was fate, destiny, whatever you wanted to call it. It was the whole point. After everything she'd done, had been used to do, it was the only ending she could imagine.
Luke looked from one to the other of them, catching on belatedly. "Wait a minute..."
"It is all right," she said, looking him in the eye. Oh, speaking of danger... Maybe it would have gone that way with either of them, or both, no matter what. Maybe it already had. "It's all right, and I think it's the only way..."
"What is?" Now he was just being deliberately slow, playing for time to change her mind.
"This," she said, "and you know it."
She pushed away from him, abruptly, jumping the balcony railing and pausing there for just a fraction of a second. The cavern fell away below her and she could feel in that moment exactly where C'baoth was, down there in the darkness and the din.
She let go.
They both reached for her, two pairs of hands trying to keep her there, to hold her back, but it was too late. She stepped forward into nothingness, closed her eyes, and let the darkness take her.