"I don't believe it," he murmured, still reading. "Mara, he found it. He found it."
"Wonderful. Found what?"
"What else?" Luke looked up at her. "Thrawn's copy of the Caamas Document."
- Vision of the Future by Timothy Zahn, Chapter 42
Mara stared at him, eyes wide in disbelief. "The Caamas Document? No. You're kidding."
"Come and take a look for yourself."
She left the pilot's chair and crossed to the droid alcove, falling to her knees beside Luke. "Is it complete?"
"Near as I can tell. I'm sure the NRI will put its best slicers on it before they pronounce it authentic, but…." He smiled at her, elation radiating freely. "This should stop new conflicts from breaking out."
"And here I thought my best contribution to the continued existence of the New Republic was crashing my ship." She laughed, partly because Luke was so happy and his joy poured across their new bond. But mostly because nothing less than finding the document that would save the New Republic from self-destructing could be the fitting conclusion to what had been the most strange, frustrating, terrifying, amazing, wonderful three weeks of her life.
"Wonderful, yes," Luke murmured, picking up her thought. She looked down and realized she'd laced her fingers with his. How did that happen? Yes, this new awareness, this new…thing…was wonderful, but-
His finger lifted her chin. And his lips closed over hers.
The tiny portion of her mind that wasn't fully occupied with kissing him back and feeling his emotions – her emotions – their emotions flow through their Force bond, was left to wonder at how natural it felt. How right. If anyone had told her, when she and the crew of the Starry Ice rescued Luke from the Cavirlhu pirate base, that a month later she would be wrapped tight in his arms without any hesitation, any embarrassment, any awkwardness at all – she would have taken the speaker's head off. Literally.
But that was then, this was now, and….
All semblance of conscious thought fled as the kiss deepened – her initiative, his, she didn't know and truthfully didn't care. His hands tangled in her still damp hair as she rose on her knees to fit herself more closely against his chest.
But just as her fingers were reaching for the top fastener of his jumpsuit, Luke abruptly pulled away.
She blinked, trying to regain equilibrium. "Is this payback for earlier? Because as much as I was enjoying it, I really didn't want to survive the clone chamber only to die of hypothermia—"
"Mara." His fingers were still intertwined in her hair, but now they were gently exploring her scalp. "What happened to your head?" He lingered in one area, pressed softly.
"Ow." She raised her hand to meet his, and discovered a lump the size of a Coruscant game fowl egg. "I don't know. Must have hit it somewhere along the way. Perhaps when I was in the hibernation trance."
He undid the clasp that held what remained of her braid, the better to part her hair so he could see the area surrounding her injury. "You're bleeding," he said. His voice was calm, but underneath Mara caught a current of swirling emotions. He was reliving the trepidation he felt when he first spied her floating in the pool of water after they escaped the cloning chamber. Floating just like his vision. And he feared that she had, indeed, hit her head during their escape and died—
"But I didn't die." Her hand found his and closed over his fingers, stilling their careful exploration of her wound. She caught his gaze, held it steady with hers. "I meant what I said earlier. If this-," she waved her free hand back and forth between them, "-is going to work-"
"Relationship, Mara. The word you're searching for is relationship. You can say it. I have faith in you." His gaze remained locked on hers, but a corner of his mouth twitched upward.
She rolled her eyes, but the gesture was free of its usual animosity. "Fine. Relationship," she drew out the word. "If it's going to work, you have to move past this fear of harming the other person. Harming me in particular. Besides," she said, throwing him a lop-sided smirk, "you, of all people, know that my skull is plenty thick."
"Point taken." He picked up her hand, bringing her palm to his lips for a light kiss. "Thick skull."
She laughed, even as an odd thrill traveled from her scalp to her toes at the feel of his lips against her skin. "That wasn't precisely my point, but it will…." A hole in the left shoulder of his jumpsuit, its edges charred and darkly stained, caught her gaze. She cautiously pushed the cloth aside to reveal a nasty, angry-looking wound underneath. To her eyes, it almost rivaled the direct blast she had taken from a Chiss charric. The direct blast that put her in a healing trance for five days. "Is this from the sentinel droid?" she asked. "The bolt I didn't deflect in time?" Worry for him and anger at herself chased each other through her mind.
"It's nothing." He shrugged.
"You don't know that. Even if the burn isn't bothering you, Force only knows what was in that lake water. There could be parasites, infectious agents, a hundred alien diseases-" She stopped her list when a wide grin lit up his face. "What?"
"Not so easy to avoid concern, is it?"
She narrowed her gaze at him. "Please note I am not refusing to enter into a-," she started to wave her hand, realized what she was doing, and dropped it to her side, "-relationship out of fear of hurting the other person."
"Neither am I," he pointed out in all complete honesty. "I'm all the way in. So get used to the worry for your well-being, Mara. Comes with the-," and he waved his hand between them, "-territory."
She opened her mouth to retort, took another look at the blaster wound on his shoulder, and thought better of it. "If I say fine, you can continue your overprotective ways with minimal - minimal, not zero - objection from me, will you go into a healing trance and take care of that?"
"I thought the goal was to avoid unnecessary use of the Force?" He continued to grin. Even without the bond she could tell he was enjoying this.
As was she, to be truthful.
"It's not unnecessary if it saves you weeks in a medbay thanks to an alien infection no one knows how to cure," she said tartly.
"Another good point." His thumb traced abstract patterns on her palm, causing shivers to dance up and down her spine. Shivers that were, on the whole, rather pleasant and not unwelcome. "How long until we get to our first destination?" he asked.
She checked her chrono. "We should be dropping out of hyperspace right about…now." A soft alarm began to chime from the flight deck, punctuating her words. "I programmed a short jump first, in case Parck and Fel were able to record our vector. You might want to man the weapons system, on the off chance this ship has a tracking system and they have friends ready and waiting for us."
She started to rise, wincing slightly as stiff muscles protested their stay on a cold metal surface. Luke sprung to his feet first and helped pull her upright. "Anything other than a bump on the head I should know about?" he asked, running his gaze over her jumpsuit, seeking new rips and tears.
She shook her head. "Just some soreness. Nothing time won't heal." She raised an eyebrow, cutting off his next suggestion. "One of us needs to stay alert in case anything happens with the ship. Neither of us is familiar with this alien technology, after all. Besides," and she smiled, the first open, joyous smile she'd given anyone in a long time, "It's my turn to wake you up."
