in the sea
Summary: A child abandoned on a desert planet is picked up by a Jedi Master. Luke, Mara, Leia, Han, others. AU. (About orphans and twins, parents and children, about beginnings and endings and redemption. In short, about family – and crazy clones, lost documents and the completely unnecessary romance everybody has not been waiting for.) Complete in six chapters.
Warning: AU. Can't say that often enough, I guess.
Set: story-unrelated.
Disclaimer: Standards apply. Also, regarding Jakku – I'm so sorry! I just couldn't help it… (insert grinning, (not-)guilty-looking smiley.)
Prologue/The Orphan
The Dune Sea was magnificent.
Golden, endless sand. Hot sun. Dunes that seemed to shift whenever the eye was not on them, and that seemed unmovable like rock when looking at them straight. The air was hot and dry, difficult to breathe in and painfully familiar. The barren plain was desolate, burnt and endless, and yet she knew it held more. Life simply was that way: small oases hidden in the depth of dead land like miracles. And the Force was everywhere around her.
Mara had not asked why they had come to Tatooine.
It was strange: she never had held back her questions before. As her master had never tired of teasing, for a wild child picked up on a planet more backwater than any backwater planet could dream of being, Mara had had a lot of questions. And she had voiced them without hesitation. Some of them, it seemed, nobody would ever be able to answer. Questions like who were her parents, or what her name was. Had she been given a name, at all? She could not remember anything from her past: neither her parents,nor where they had lived, or whom they had been. Sometimes she suspected they had been smugglers (or, really, even worse criminals) who had abandoned her when they could not be bothered with her anymore. Or perhaps they had been honest spacers (did something like that even exist?) who had been forced to leave her behind but had had every intention on coming back for her again. But really, who gave up his own kid just like that? And on a desert planet like Jakku, of all?
But this time she had not asked; simply followed.
Maybe she had lost her ability to ask questions in the past years; or she had simply misplaced it. Maybe it had been a part of growing up. So much she had lost, and now this part of her was missing, as well. Sometimes she could not recognize the face that looked at her from the mirror. She looked nothing like the person she had once been. Change, a familiar voice whispered in her head. Human beings are subject to change, Mara. People change. Hearts do, too. It is nothing to fear. She pushed aside the voice almost violently. This was not the time.
Maybe, though, she had simply not asked because she had already known the answer.
Had known it all along.
The Dune Sea was beautiful.
It was dangerous, too.
The orphan's life began when she met a Jedi Master. Of course, she did not know he was a Jedi Master at the time she attempted to steal from him.
Desert planets were no easy places to live in. Not that the orphan had known that. She only knew that she was smaller, younger and weaker than all the other scavengers, and that she only was able to pick what they left as worthless. There was nothing much to make from the scraps the others left, so she had learned to fend for herself by picking pockets. Not always an easy task, given the fact that beings who came to Jakku either had lost everything already or had not much to begin with and, consequently, were weary of those like her. But she managed.
Somehow.
At first, she had not wanted to steal. Strange, that, despite having nobody to teach her she had her own pride, her own codex. She had no parents to teach her about justice and life, but somehow she learned either way. She hated stealing – even from the rich, even from the ones who deserved to have their pockets lightened by the small hands of beings that had nothing when they had too much and were so blind. But then, there were days she was close to starving, when the scavenged scraps she managed to find were worth close to nothing and the junk dealers laughed at her and refused to buy. Days when the combination of desert sun and hunger was so bad she just wanted to collapse in the shadows and never get up. On those days, she did not care much for her pride.
The day she met him was one of those days.
The man wore a robe of the color of the sand dunes, his hood pulled over his head. He looked like any other man trying to disappear in the masses of the lost that came to the junkyard that was called Niima Outpost. At first glance, he was nothing much. But his gait was different – slow, thoughtful, and, at the same time, full of paradoxical energy. He moved like someone who knew he had to conceal himself and managed to do so, but who could not, for whatever reason, lower his head enough to seem like the jaded man he tried to incorporate. It was, she thought, either because he was too arrogant to stoop low enough to pretend being a lesser man than he was. Or, the other possibility: he had been less once, a scavenger, perhaps, and never again wanted to be. Not that many would have noticed. His shoulders were stooped, but to the orphan, he looked neither old nor bent. His attention was turned to the front, persistently, and still she had the strange sensation that he was watching his surroundings carefully. On any other day, she would not have come near him. Her instincts were infallible when it came to other beings, and something about this man scared her. But she was so hungry her head was spinning, and, afraid to miss the only opportunity available to her, she moved. It was a mistake.
The mistake saved her life.
Lightning-quick, the man grabbed the little spunk that had attempted to pickpocket him on the only settlement on the planet that was in possession of official grid coordinates. Jakku was one of those planets in the Western Reaches of the Inner Rim that were officially mapped but, due to its overall disconnection from the holonet, was a pitfall for beings – and things – that had been lost and or did not want to be found. Of course, the orphan did not know about that, as little as she knew the man she was trying to steal from had come for exactly that reason. She was fast, despite her tiny stature, her scrawny limbs and her bone-gnawing hunger. The stranger was faster. He moved like lightning, caught her hand in his with barely concealed strength, and she panicked. She had stolen from fast, strong men before, but usually they did not notice her until it was too late. Although she had made herself small and uninteresting, this man had caught her, and she froze for a heartbeat under the scrutiny of eyes hidden under the shadows of the sand-colored hood. The hand around her wrist was strong and relentless. After her first second of frozen fear, she started trashing and fighting but pulling her hand back was impossible. She was terrified, feeling the man's mind focus on her with the sharpness of a desert falcon. The trusty, old staff she could not remember not being with her came up in a much-practiced move, weaving a pattern that, with most beings, would have ended with a painful hit between said person's legs, the place most people were vulnerable, but the man simply caught it with his other hand and took it from her as if she was nothing. Screaming in fury – and knowing nobody would care, not here, not when it was clear what she was and what had happened – she bit and scratched and scratched and bit the man, but he only held her at arm's length, looking down at her. And then she tried to push him, the way she had sometimes done with the bullies that were determined to make her life a living hell. Other than the bullies, though, the man did not stumble back; propelled by some kind of invisible force. He did not even budge when others had dropped in surprise, and the girl's stunned mind careened to a screeching halt. Suddenly, she was frozen, immovable, and could only glare at him.
"Well, well. A Force-sensitive child hidden away in a dead end of the galaxy. On a desert planet, of all."
The man felt amused. Wistful, too, and a little bit surprised. He let go of her hand.
"What is your name, child?"
The orphan did not stay to answer his question. The second he released her she bolted to her feet again, nimble like a gnaw-jaw, and ran.
She had not expected him to follow.
The orphan girl had no knowledge of space battles, of Empires lost and Rebellions successful.
She knew the worth of scavenged goods, and of things that were there and could be used no matter what their history. A broken-down machine was something she could try to sell. Sand-dusted metal scraps were something that might provide her with enough freeze-dried ration packs to feed her for a month, or only for a few days. Cannibalized, empty hulls of vehicles, whatever their purpose might have been once upon a time, were places to hide in – and abandoned places could be hide-outs for her.
The man recognized her home instantly as a broken-down, sand-drowned, Imperial AT-AT walker. To the orphan girl, it was her hideaway.
He came to her the first time the same day she tried to steal from him. If she had not been so hungry – so weak and desperate – she would have noticed him following her, and, if he, somehow, would have managed, she would not have stayed where she was. But again, hunger and something more overrode her instincts to bolt. He carefully deposited the rations – freeze-dried, too, but oh so different from the usual mush she knew! The girl watched the man's hands, worn and calloused, prepare the pulp in a bowl he somehow drew from the depths of his cloak, from the safe distance of her cave. Wary, suspicious, but the man made no attempt to move closer, did not even look at her. When he was finished, he divided the piece of bread he had brought, took a part and moved away into a safe distance where he sat, his back to her, and started chewing on the bread.
The girl watched him, suspicious.
But he did not move away, made no attempts to turn around and look at her. And her hunger was so great it overrode her instincts. She darted outside, grabbed the bowl and bolted back to safety. After reassuring herself that he still was far away, she scarfed down the food.
It was good.
She had it finished in a few minutes, and only then turned to look at him, suspicious. She caught him looking into her direction: there was a smile crinkling the skin around the corner of his eyes. He radiated warmth, and kindness. The girl could detect no threat in his presence, but she remained careful.
"Would you like some more?" He asked, holding up another bag. "But you have to eat slowly, otherwise you'll ruin your stomach."
She darted outside, drawn by the promise of the ration pack, and dropped the bowl where he had left it, then fled again.
Carefully, slowly, he stood up and prepared the food: calm, methodical. He left it again, seated himself in a safe distance. The girl picked up the food and ate, glancing at him from the corner of her eyes. He was not old but not young, either, with dark, sand-colored hair and stubble on his cheeks. His eyes were blue like the sky over the desert. When he caught her looking, he smiled.
It was the first memory of the stranger she would keep in her heart forever: the way he smiled at her, calm and without any pretense. That, and that the food tasted good.
He came back the following day, and the day after that.
The girl made sure not to be there the whole time. It was still possible that he just wanted something from her. In her experience, everyone – the bullies, the junk-collectors, the resellers and the scavengers – wanted something from her. But her instincts, infallible when it came to danger, failed her this time. On the third day she woke up, feeling warm and cozy, in the middle of the freezing desert night, and realized she was lying under a thin blanket that, nevertheless, kept her warmer than anything she had ever possessed. He usually left her food, and, another time, some pieces of clothing to replace her dusty, torn and worn ones. He never moved too close to her, for which she was thankful. And he talked to her. First about little things – about her staff, and her work, and about things he had seen out in the desert that might come in handy for her. When he talked about a speeder, she listened, attentively, and came to the conclusion that he must have been a mechanic at some time in his life because he knew as much about mechanics as she knew, and plenty more. She had wanted to build her own trawler for some time now; the moons knew there were enough scrap parts around here, but she lacked the strength. It was interesting, listening to the man. He told her things, about deserts and space and people. It was interesting enough that she did not even notice when she began answering his careful questions.
Perhaps the greatest gift he could have made her, and the one thing, in retrospect, that finally made her trust him: he gave her a name.
But not at first.
First, on the sixth night, he told her about the Force.
About a mythical power all around her, in every plant and stone, in every living being. He told her about the people that were sensitive to its power, and how they could feel it – use it, even – almost by instinct. That there were people who trained others in the use of the Force. And that her instincts were part of the Force, too: that she was Force-sensitive, and would be able to use it even more if she agreed to be trained by a Jedi.
The Jedi.
She had heard of them, but they had been a myth, nothing more. Jedi did not come to Jakku.
"I am a Jedi Master," he told her, gently, and the wry smile playing around his lips she recognized as a mixture of regret and sadness. "Can you feel the Force around you? You could learn to use it. I could teach you, if you wanted. But I will not force you. There are many like you, whose potential is there but unharvested, and I will never try to change your mind about it."
She looked at him. "Will you take me with you?"
They had never spoken about it, but he would not remain on Jakku. It had been clear to her from the beginning.
"Yes, if you wish so. I could also bring you to a place where you could take a shuttle to Coruscant. We are few Jedi left, so any addition is welcome there."
"I…" She hesitated. "What if I wanted to go with you?"
"Then you would come with me, and I would teach you." Another one of his wry smiles. "I am sure some people would appreciate the irony."
She said nothing to that, torn. The scratches on the wall – many, so many of them – seemed to taunt her. He felt her hesitation, even if he did not know the reason for it.
"You do not have to decide right now. I will wait another three nights. Then, you can give me your answer. If you wish to remain on Jakku, I will also give you every help I can. I might not be here myself, but I have ways. You do not have to come with me in order to have a better life."
Her surprise was palpable.
"You are surprised," he told her, gently. "Don't be. You've been let down so many times. I promise, I won't do the same to you. I'm not perfect in any way, but I do keep my promises."
That night, she heard him talk for the first time.
He must have thought she was asleep, but she caught him whispering into the desert night. There was no other there than the two of them, she knew, but he was not talking to her.
"She does remind one of someone, doesn't she?"
The girl listened, holding her breath, but there was no answer. The man cocked his head, as if hearing something on the wind.
"It's only a little thing, but it's something I can do. I know you understand."
And then, as if he had felt her, tense and awake in the bunk at the other side of her cave, he turned around and looked at her. He was framed by moonlight, and she could not see his face. But it did not scare her.
"You are awake, little one? Don't worry, I'm not going anywhere. Sleep."
His voice was warm and soothing. The orphan girl buried herself in her pile of blankets again and, despite his promise, kept her eyes on him until she could not keep them open any longer. The man just sat there, leaning against the wall of her place, keeping watch. Maybe he continued his whispered conversation, maybe he did not. She did not know whom he was talking to, but, for the first time since she could remember, she felt safe.
The next day, she told him she wanted to go with him.
"Are you sure?"
She nodded.
"You haven't even asked where I am heading to."
"Does it matter?"
He laughed; a warm, short sound she felt deep down in her stomach. "Not really, I suppose." And suddenly, he felt sad. She did not want him to feel sad.
"Wait here," she said and jumped up, storming into her home and tearing back. "Look."
At the sight of her treasure, he laughed in delight at the sight of the two round corpuses, the wheedling sound and the twinkling lights. "What a beautiful little one you are!"
"His name is BB-8," she said, proudly. "He's my friend."
The small robot beeped merrily.
"I am getting two copilots, then," the man said. "Artoo will be delighted. Will you tell me your name, little one?"
The orphan withdrew immediately, shrinking into herself. There were people who had called her. But none of the terms they had used were a name she wanted to keep, much less wanted the man to know. He must have read the truth from her face, or from her emotions. Or maybe he simply knew. Similar people reached out to each other, did they not?
It was not clear what he felt in regard to her namelessness. He hid his emotions, and she was not yet able to read stray emotions, untrained as she was. Still, the mix of sadness and anger in his eyes was unmistakable.
"What must your parents have thought-"
He caught himself when she flinched, again, and simply stared onto her dirty feet blindly, clutching BB-8 to her chest. The man took a deep breath, mumbling something into the collar of his sand-colored tunic. The air around them cleared, as quickly as it had become oppressing. He knelt down next to her.
"It's not your fault, you know?" He said, almost gently. "For whatever reason they left you here, it wasn't because of something you did, or something you are. Don't ever think that. Move forward, take small steps. Not everybody can be strong all the time. Everyone needs someone else sometimes. It does not make us weak. You will grow, both in body and in mind. You may choose your path, and I will help you as much as I can. Do you still want to come with me?"
She nodded, minutely, still staring onto her toes. Her nails were black with dirt.
"Then you will need a name. What should I call you?"
She thought about his question for a moment and then shrugged. She had never thought much about names. She had not needed one, since she had nobody to call her by it. Suddenly, though, risking a short glance at the sky-like eyes, she wanted one so much she felt like breaking.
The man was quiet for so long the orphan tore her eyes away from her feet and looked at him. He had his head cocked, as if listening to something she could not hear, and his gaze was far away.
"Mara," he said, abruptly. "What about Mara?"
Her gaze must have been questioning, because he grinned.
"It means "the bitter-sweet one" in the old dialects of a wandering tribe on a planet much like this one. But…"
"Okay," she interrupted him, her voice quiet.
The man paused. "…Okay? I thought you might-"
"No," the orphan said. "It's okay. I think… I like it."
For a second, the man looked bemused. "Well then, Mara it is, isn't it?" His hand touched her head, softly and purposefully. For the first time in her life, she did not want to bolt when someone was close to her.
"Mara," the man repeated. "My name is Anakin Skywalker."
Mara closed her eyes and felt the first drops of his kindness fill the emptiness within her.
What followed was a six-year-long mission to the Unknown Regions, which were mainly chartered but largely unexplored.
Master Skywalker's mission did not seem to be to explore the region; but then, his mission parameters were not exactly clear to Mara. She doubted they had included taking in a stray and training it in the ways of the Force. They travelled light years, back and forth, sometimes taking on and forwarding messages, sometimes searching for something else completely. In between their stops, her master trained her. The lessons were fun, though sometimes largely boring. Meditation was so especially. Her master only chuckled when she voiced her dislike.
"Suddenly I understand Obi-Wan's desperation."
"Who is Obi-Wan, Master?"
"Obi-Wan Kenobi is the one who taught me everything I am teaching you now. He was one of the few Jedi Masters who survived the Order 66."
"Was he the one who exiled you, Master?"
Quick as lightning, his gaze turned inward, and Mara learned within heartbeats not to ask questions like that again if she did not want to see the distant expression of pain and guilt on his face.
"He did not want to exile me, but I told him to do so."
She could not ask further, and she did not need to know. She learned to distract him, instead, because his smile was so much better than his grief.
"So you did not like Meditation."
At that, he laughed. "No, not really."
"But?"
She knew there was a but. There always was.
"But it has to be taught and it has to be learned. Never let go the opportunity to learn something new, Mara, even if it is tedious. As a child, you might feel like some of the things you are forced to remember are useless. But as an adult, you can choose what you do from what you've been taught in the past. It will be your decision whether to use what you have learned, or to simply forget about it."
They travelled like that for what felt like eternity.
Mara did not mind. Living with Master Skywalker, training with him, learning – it was better than anything she could have imagined. She did not miss the dry sands of Jakku, or the scavenging, or anything. She learned to manipulate objects with her mind, instead, and to read the atmosphere from the subtle shifts of the Force. She learned the strengths and weaknesses of human minds, and how to influence them. She learned about Light and Dark. When she was fourteen, she built her own lightsaber, a violet blade, fast and lethal. But Mara's first love was the small blaster her master presented her with one day. She learned to use blasters and vibro-blades in the same way she learned to use the Force. Her master laughed, but he taught her, nevertheless, and found others to teach her if he did not know more.
"The Old Masters would have heart attacks seeing you," he said, one day, when Mara shot the glass of Corellian whiskey straight out of the hand of a man who was trying to fool them. And, at her obvious distress, he smiled. "Oh, no, don't worry. There is a new generation of Jedi coming, and you are one of them. It is only just that you are different, and I can imagine you won't be alone in that. The Old Order needed some fresh wind, anyway."
Somehow, the thought made her happy and sad in equal terms. Only later, she realized it had been her own happiness she had felt, but his grief.
Mara learned how to read her master's moods, and his instructions. She taught herself cooking, because he was abysmal at it, at best. She learned how to fly and how to navigate a ship, how to negotiate with honest and with dishonest space traders, how to treat other beings and how to bluff. She learned that her master liked his peace, but that he also enjoyed the loud, raucous atmospheres of seedy space ports and bars. She learned that he hated slavers, and thought smugglers honest people in their own rights. She learned that the Dark Side was nothing that scared him, and that he fought it fiercely, but not thoughtlessly. She learned that he always talked to the same person when he thought she was asleep, but he never mentioned a name. And she thought that she was not the only topic he talked about, in whispers and smiles, but she never knew who else was mentioned.
Still, there were many things she did not know about Anakin Skywalker.
One day, he returned from a "meeting", his clothes torn and plastered to his skin and soaked by water and his shoulders bent like the ones of an old man. He dropped something on the table – the Monolith, Mara recognized, the artefact they had searched for for such a long time – and almost collapsed into one of the two chairs in the small mess of their ship.
"Master, are those lightsaber burns?" Mara burst out, worried. "What in the name of everything that is holy did you do?"
"Took care of a little problem," her master said, cheerfully, but his façade dropped halfway and he closed his eyes, bone-tired. "If my sources are correct, that should have gotten rid of her once and for all."
Mara did not ask questions. She just got the first-aid pack and carefully cleaned and dressed his wounds. Then, she tiptoed from the room, wanting him to get some rest, but his voice stopped her halfway through.
"I think it's time to return to the Core Worlds."
Her heart sped up. She could not say whether it was fear or happiness she felt, so she focused on her breathing and calmed her thoughts.
"I will follow you, Master," she said, when she finally found her voice again. And made sure there was no doubt left whatsoever that she would follow him wherever he went, even if someone tried to stop her and even if he did not want her to. Because he was silly like that: if it was to protect her, she knew he would not hesitate to send her away.
Her reward was a chuckle. "To think that some people would call you headstrong. What an understatement."
He was up again after a night's rest, despite his injuries which would have needed a three-day healing trance, at least. Mara, having known him for six years then, did not wonder. She was also not surprised that, once the decision had been made, Anakin Skywalker began the preparations for their return with boundless enthusiasm. Suddenly, though, she did wonder about something else: was somebody waiting for him at the end of their journey? Was it the person he was talking to, sometimes, under the cover of darkness? Whom had he left behind? She expected it to be some friends, and his own master, perhaps. Maybe even a lover. Years spent in close quarters with him had taught her a lot about the man that had rescued her from Jakku, but some things still remained a mystery.
Never before had it mattered, but now, suddenly, she could not sleep with the vague fear of ignorance. But she did not ask. Instead, she resigned herself to whatever was to come.
So Mara wasn't really shocked when Anakin Skywalker, Jedi Master and her teacher, took her back to the Core Worlds after a seven-year exile to the Unknown Regions and she learned that he had children.
Two, to be precise.
To be even more precise: twins.
Leia and Luke.
It did sound like straight from a clichéd holodrama.
(Not that she knew many.)
That way, Mara met the Skywalker twins for the first time.