The choices of one shape the futures of all.
Skywalker had estimated an hour until local night, and in that hour, he put Mara through a rigorous set of exercises intended to draw out her half-remembered Jedi training under the Emperor, and then to go beyond it. Mara had broken out in a sweat by the time the last rays of light faded off in the distance and Skywalker at last called a halt.
Mara sat down with her back to a log and took a sip from her canteen. Skywalker sat down beside her. It annoyed her that he placed himself just far enough away that she couldn't reasonably complain he was sitting too close.
"You push yourself hard," he said conversationally.
"The Emperor taught me always to push myself," Mara said. "I've back-slid quite a bit these last few years."
YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER.
There it was again. The Emperor's dying command to her, like the specter of his hand on her shoulder, insistently prompting her to take his vengeance.
"You must have been a formidable agent."
She wanted to hate him for saying that, but there was no condescension in his voice, no flattery, not even compliment. He was merely stating a fact.
"I was," Mara acknowledged, striving for an equally matter-of-fact tone. She didn't quite succeed.
"You certainly put on an impressive show on Poln Major."
Mara felt as if a loading crate had dropped on her head. Dammit. She'd hoped he'd never work out that particular bit of history. A foolish hope, really. Skywalker and his sister were too perceptive by half. "When did you figure that out?" she said, putting as much contemptuous sarcasm into her voice as she could manage.
"Our second night on Myrkr," he said placidly, apparently oblivious to Mara's agitation. Where was his vaunted Jedi sensitivity now? "I kept picturing your face, only younger, and then I remembered where else I'd heard about a lightsaber-wielding Imperial agent who wasn't Darth Vader. After that, it all fell into place."
Despite the stab of pain her memories of Poln invariably conjured up now, Mara was curious. "That long ago? And you never mentioned it before?"
She couldn't see him very well in the darkness, but she thought she detected a shrug. "You didn't seem like you would be very receptive to having this conversation while we were on Myrkr. After that, well, the next time we spent together was on our way to rescue Karrde from the Chimaera; it didn't feel like the right time to dig up old history."
Once again, curiosity got the best of Mara. "So what's changed since then? Why does now seem like a better time than before?"
"I don't know," he said. "It just felt like the right time to bring it up."
"Do you base all your decisions off of what the Force tells you?"
She'd meant it as a rhetorical question, but the pause that followed, and Skywalker's answer when it eventually came, indicated he was giving it serious consideration. "Interesting question. I suppose you could say so, at least, from a certain point of view."
"Never mind," Mara said. "Do Solo and the others know?"
"Shouldn't think so. They were more concerned with alien weapons caches and sabotaging orbital defense stations at the time. And anyway, I was the only one who actually got a look at you."
She flinched again at the memory.
"I never got a chance to thank you for saving my life."
Mara wanted to get angry, but instead she had to fight back tears as the old recriminations washed over her again. She had saved his life, from a group of mercenaries who'd been holding the local governor's wife and daughter captive.
She'd thrown him her holdout blaster when it looked like she wouldn't make it to the governor's family before Stelikag's killers reached them. It had been a pragmatic move at the time, but even that much she bitterly regretted in hindsight … better to have left the governor's family to die, better to let the whole Poln System—the entire sector—fall into the hands of an alien warlord than to help the man who would go on to destroy the Emperor.
But there had been worse. So much worse. After she'd gotten Governor Ferrouz's wife and daughter out of the control cabin and on their way to safety, she'd stopped to cut open three barrels of flammable liquid which Skywalker had promptly set ablaze with Mara's holdout blaster. If not for Mara's intervention, Stelikag and his mercenaries would have cut Skywalker to pieces, and her Empire would've been preserved.
And that time, Mara didn't even have the excuse of pragmatic necessity to soothe herself, cold consolation though it was. By that point, Mara and the governor's family were well out of danger—Skywalker had served his purpose in helping Mara rescue them, he was of no more use to her. But Mara had saved him anyway, an act of pure compassion from one sentient being to another. And her reward for that compassion had been to see her universe torn apart.
Worse than her failure to kill him at Jabba's, the memory of saving Skywalker's life on Poln Major gnawed at Mara like a carrion bird worrying a corpse. If only she had known what unbearable anguish he would cause her, she would have left him there to die. No, she would have burned him down herself.
Hardly a day went by when those memories of Poln Major failed to resurface, baleful recriminations for perhaps her greatest failure. The fact that Mara couldn't have possibly known at the time the damage Skywalker would go on to cause provided no comfort. If only, somehow, she had known.
Mara squelched the rising tide of despair, as she had so many times in the past. The Emperor was dead, and his Empire with him; her time as the Emperor's Hand was well and truly over. Nothing she could do now would bring them back. All that she could do was kill the man who had taken them all away from her.
YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER.
Mara shook her head violently. No. My choice, not yours. My choice, not yours.
"Mara?"
Belatedly, Mara realized that she'd never replied to Skywalker's comment. "I didn't know who you were, back then."
"You still saved my life."
Mara bit back a bitter retort. "Well, you've thanked me now. And while we're at it, I suppose I owe you my thanks for saving me back at the Katana. Well, thank you. There, that's that sorted out."
"Just like that?" He sounded amused.
"Just like that," Mara said. "And if you're smart, that's where you'll leave it, Skywalker. Of all the possible outcomes this conversation can have, this is the one that's most to your benefit."
"Maybe it's not my benefit I'm thinking of."
YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER.
Mara stood up, she could handle this. She mustered enough mental clarity to fire one last salvo, "Well you should be, if you intend to stay alive." She made a point of noisily brushing loose leaves and twigs off the seat and legs of her pants to cut off any response he might have made. "We'd better get back to camp."
Luke followed Mara's progress through the Wayland underbrush by the sounds she made as she navigated her way back to their encampment. For a long minute, he remained sitting against the log, contemplating their conversation.
He'd expected bringing up memories of Poln Major would upset her, and the jolt of grief he'd sensed from her when he mentioned their previous encounter had confirmed his suspicions. Her mind was in turmoil now—he could feel that, too—and she was in great pain.
Luke still wasn't sure what had prompted him to open those old wounds for her, but he felt a strong sense that it was the right thing to do.
Perhaps, like renewing her Jedi training, it had something to do with his vague, half-felt premonitions about an upcoming confrontation with the insane Jedi Master Joruus C'baoth. Luke was sure the Force had a purpose for Mara beyond either his or her present comprehension, and he was merely an instrument of that purpose. Perhaps tonight's conversation had been a part of that.
He hoped it was. He was pretty sure by this point that Mara would not try to kill him, despite her protestations. Indeed, her protestations were sounding more and more like bluster to fool herself as much as anyone else.
Still, Luke felt an uneasy prickle in the hairs along the back of his neck. He'd been wrong about people before, and if he was wrong about Mara now, the consequences would be unpleasant to say the least.
Ben would tell me to trust in the Force, Luke reflected. It was probably good advice. It was too late to second-guess himself now; the best he could do was trust in the Force, trust that he'd made the right choice. One way or another, he felt certain the answer would be revealed to him soon enough.