You're My Only Hope
It was near evening and Luke Skywalker sat on the small balcony off his room in the Massassi pyramid temple and watched the rain fall. It was pouring and the sky was dark another rainforest thunderstorm. He always marveled at the rain, how so much of it just fell out of the sky weather the moon wanted it or not. It was so different from his homeworld the desert planet of Tatooine. And he knew personally just how different, having grown up the child of a moisture farmer.
He leaned back against the stone wall, under a small over-hang and stared into the rolling gray sky. Luke chose to wear spacer's boots, good for keeping your feet dry in the humid jungle climate, while others wore open-toed sandals to stay cool, but he didn't mind the heat. It had the life of the rainforest in it, not like the dead heat of Tatooine's endless sand dunes. In addition to the spacer's boots this day he wore black fatigues and a tan T-shirt instead of the traditional Jedi robes.
For an instant among the gray clouds he thought he saw a flash of silver. Focusing his senses, he saw the distinctive form of a modified Corellian freighter, the Millennium Falcon. Luke stretched out with the Force and through his special twin-bond called to Leia. She was indeed aboard the Falcon, along with Han, and sent him a Force-hug. Luke smiled at the warm presence of his sister, then paused and wondered at what might be another presence, maybe even a Jedi. But it felt somehow distracted, wary. It still felt as if he really should know who...
The Millennium Falcon landed perfectly on the now rain-battered field beside the temple often used for landings. As it was, Luke was the only one to run out and meet the already extending landing ramp. Almost immediately Leia came down. And after greeting her brother with a grin and a hug, she told him, "Han and Chewie are running the cool-down. That gets longer and longer as the ship gets older, but don't tell Han I said that!"
"I won't," he replied, laughing.
"Luke, we have another passenger..."
"Who is it?"
"You'll see...Wow, I always forget about the rain!"
"Why don't you tell me who it is?"
"Why don't you tell me, Jedi Master?"
He looked at her oddly; Leia even as a politician rarely evaded answering questions, but told her anyway. "No, it's almost as if he is hiding something, Leia, though maybe not from me. And it's clouding my perception."
"...yeah."
He almost asked her what she meant by that, but then Chewbacca emerged from the ship. Behind the chestnut Wookiee came an emerald-eyed woman. She let her long red-gold hair hang loose for once and next to her smuggler's blaster was clipped a lightsaber. She ran the last few steps and threw her arms around Luke's neck and hugged him fiercely.
"Mara!" he exclaimed and held her tight. After a moment he asked in a softer tone, "Mara, what's wrong?"
"Hey! Maybe I'm happy to see you! Why do you think something's wrong?" she retaliated but still did not pull away.
"Because you've only hugged me maybe four times in the ten years I've known you." Luke continued, " –And you've never thrown yourself into my arms." he finished. '...not that I mind...'
"Ah! I heard that, Skywalker! Besides, I'm a smuggler! I can't just go around hugging people."
He knew she would tell him whatever it was in her own time so was more than a little worried when Mara sighed and said quietly against his ear, "I'm in some real trouble this time...and I need you. You help me with this and I promise you afterwards I will come back and complete my Jedi training. I'm in a very bad situation and, Luke, you seem like my only hope right now." only then did she pull away and he could look into her beautiful eyes, dead serious. Luke nodded and whispered, "I'm always here for you..." 'Thanks'
Then they suddenly realized they were soaking wet and, with a foreboding roar of thunder, ran together into the temple where the others waited. Kam was saying, "Here, I'll find you some rooms and you can dry off and rest after your trip. Dinner will be in a few hours in the mess hall...uh...that way." With a grin, Han Solo patted his brother-in-law's shoulder and asked for some help bringing in something from the Falcon. He had decided to get presents for his children, apparently souvenirs from somewhere Luke had never heard of.
LATER
Luke knocked on the old-fashioned door again and this time was rewarded with a familiar voice shouting, "Come in!" And he did to find Mara sitting cross-legged in the middle of the floor, working on a small cylindrical...thing.
"Good morning! I brought you some food. Breakfast was an hour ago."
She looked up, "Oh, sorry," as he sat down across from her. The cylinder was actually the call-device for her ship, the Star's Shadow. Or rather, for its slave-system. These days it was rare to see slaved ships and most were considered obsolete, ancient relics. But some still managed to survive on the black market. Perhaps one of the reasons Mara used on was that the man who had first trained her had been the last legacy of the pre-Clone Wars era.
Luke saw that the little red light was glowing. His friend had called the Shadow to Yavin IV. Anxious to know what was really going on he asked, 'When will she get here?"
"In a week."
"That long? Here is she coming from?"
"I'll just tell it all at once..."
Even through explaining her current predicament, they were both glad for the chance to catch up on eachother's most recent adventures with all the appropriate sympathetic "Oh!" s, teasing, and appreciative "Wow!" s. Luke remembered their amazing adventure on that backwater planet Nirauan with the Imperial Chiss, the clone of Trawn, the droidekas, and that lake. Yeah, he remembered that cold, rushing lake very vividly. But not quite as vividly as he remembered the kiss they had shared, standing in a shallow pool deep in the Qom Jha caverns. All through those few weeks they had grown so much closer, throwing their old boundaries of conflict and resentment to the Force. Back in Core space, he had kissed her again, letting her tender lips linger in his dreams. Then she had whispered good-bye before leaving on an important mission for Karrde. That had been almost a year ago and now he found out the general details of that mission though some 'sensitive' parts were, of course, emitted. After all, Karrde was the head of a smuggler information network. Meanwhile Luke had let Leia convince him to do a research project with her for the on-going reconstruction effort of post-Daala Wars Coruscant, mainly its second trade center city. Even after so many years they were still healing the cityscape.
"...so the Wild Karrde is still stranded on Tatooine. And I make it to Coruscant and find out from an old...friend that a Barabel warlord deep in the Core has placed a bounty on my head! And the one he hired–"
"Wait a minuet!" Luke interrupted, alarmed, 'What did you do to earn a price on your head?!"
"I don't think it's something I did. I think it's something I know..."
"Oh. What is it you know? You don't sound so sure."
"I'm not. But other than that small problem, I have a brilliant plan. First, my ship will get here from its hiding place in orbit of Adumar. Then we will go and rescue Karrde and his crew from Tatooine. Then, with Karrde, we will surely be able to solve this Barabel warlord situation."
"...And why do you need me?"
"Well, I thought of the good old Jedi Knight single-handedly takes on a palace of gangsters, assassins, etc plan. But then I got sober."
Luke blushed and mock-shoved her away form him. 'That's not funny, Mara!"
"Yes it is!" she laughed, but didn't push it any farther. He was cute when he blushed. But she knew there was a difference between innocent banter and being mean. Besides, she knew all to well that he had indeed succeeded in rescuing Han, Leia, Chewie, and Lando from Jabba the Hutt. Or rather, from the all-powerful Sarlacc. "No, but really, you have to admit that we are a pretty good team."
In the back of her mind she decided that he was even cuter when he smiled and blushed at the same time.
