Hello again, my friends. Here we are with another chapter of "Origins." Back to the galaxy far, far away we go. More of our favorite characters are here! Happy reading!

Chapter Four:

Visions of Asgard

Minos III

14 ABY

Three Months Later

Mara's comm. station was blinking when she walked into her quarters. Who else knows I'm here besides my colleagues?

She activated the holorecording. Luke's image appeared on the screen. Of course, she thought with a faint smile.

"Mara, I hope this message finds you well. I have some news that you should hear, and I don't feel comfortable sharing it with you on an unsecured comm. channel. I feel as if this news is important enough to tell you in person. Call it a prodding of the Force. I hope to see you soon."

Mara shuddered a little. Luke was right. She needed to see him, to find out what was going on with her dreams. She might as well fly out to Yavin Four and hear what Luke had to say, and then seek his counsel about these dreams of hers.

She packed a bag with enough supplies to last the week long trip to Yavin Four from Minos Three. She left a message for Karrde that she needed to leave for an unspecified amount of time. Finally, she pulled her lightsaber from her locker. The smooth handle brought back memories. It had been a gift to her from Luke after they defeated C'Baoth, a mad Jedi clone that wanted to turn Luke to the dark side. He in turn had saved her from a trip down the dark side as well. He went from sworn enemy to trusted friend.

And maybe a little bit more?

Mara had heard from many of her colleagues that she and Luke made a good team when they were together. Mara protested because it seemed they spent what little time they had together since Wayland arguing with each other. How could they make a good team when they argued so much?

They were complete opposites. Mara preferred action while Luke wanted to wait on the Force to guide him to a solution. She was a raging fire of anger. He was the picture of a calm fountain. She was stone cold with her emotions. He was an open book. So, why did they work so well together?

"Trying to insert me into your life again, Skywalker?" she asked into the air as she clipped her lightsaber unto her belt. She pulled her bag over her shoulder and left her quarters.

"Got your message, Mara," Karrde said as she walked toward her ship. "Heading to Yavin Four to see Skywalker?"

"I'm not even going to ask how you know that," she replied.

"I know you, Mara. These dreams of yours have your head spinning. You need to talk to him. The job will still be here when you get back."

"I know. See you, Karrde."

Mara made the trek to her ship and took off within a half hour.

Yavin Four

One Week Later

The morning light bounced off the gas giant and bathed the Massassi grand temple in its glow. The jungle moon was already a cacophony of animal calls and birdsong. It would be a beautiful day.

Luke Skywalker, perched at top the temple, barely noticed. He woke with a troubled mind and needed the calm of the early morning to meditate and absorb himself into the Force.

He didn't know why he was so troubled, but for the last week, his thoughts had drifted to one person in particular. Mara Jade. He considered her a dear friend even though she once made it her mission in life to kill him. She was a very attractive woman, Luke could appreciate her beauty. She had fiery golden red hair like the sunsets on Tatooine. Her eyes shone like emeralds when she was content and froze harder than ice when angered. She moved with confidence and grace in every sense from lightsaber combat to the occasional glimpses he had seen of her dances.

Luke thoughts paused. Perhaps his troubled thoughts were about his feelings toward his dear friend. He recalled with amusement how he once pursued his own sister without knowing their relationship. He had not recognized his love for his twin, Leia Organa, as sibling love. He had been a mere child at the time. Now, he loved Leia and Han as family, as he did their children. Was his love for Mara as a friend, family, or more?

A vision floated before his senses. He saw one of his students fighting a woman with red gold hair. He recognized his student immediately. Grav Ybis, the reckless young man that Mara sent his way. But who was the woman Grav was fighting?

The woman turned as if to look at him. She bore a striking resemblance to Mara, but she was not wielding a lightsaber like Grav. She had some kind of metal sword in her hand. She was holding her own against Grav. There was an aura of darkness around both of them.

The planet they were on was also unfamiliar. There were weird looking speeders that stayed on the ground when they moved. No droids moved about, and he didn't see any ships in the distance. Who was this woman that so resembled Mara?

The vision shifted. Luke saw himself with Mara and several strangely clothed humans, one of them decked in a colorful uniform of red, white, and blue. He carried a circular shield in his hand. There was a feeling of sadness and betrayal from the strange humans.

He heard several times the words "Asgard" and "Midgard" but had never heard of those words before. Then, the visions faded and Luke was back to himself. The Force had shown him what he needed to see, but he was more confused.

There was a woman out there that resembled Mara, almost eerily like her. A clone? Then there was the strange planet and the strange words. Luke also felt a sense of urgency to the visions.

He checked his chrono. Mara should be arriving soon from the smuggling outpost. Luke decided he needed to share his visions with Mara, and they could figure out a course of action for his errant student and this doppelganger of hers.

He pushed his personal feelings aside. He had trust in the Force that all would work out in the end.

Mara jolted herself awake when her proximity indicator beeped. She was five minutes away from approaching the Yavin system. She wiped the sleep from her eyes and made preparations for the jump to normal space.

As she approached the moon, she picked up the homing beacon for Skywalker's academy. Immediately, a transmission broke through her commlink.

"Unknown vessel, this is Yavin Control. Please identify yourself."

Mara opened her comm. channel. "This is Mara Jade commanding the Jade's Fire. I request permission to land."

"Roger that Captain Jade. Permission granted to land. Follow the beacon in. Master Skywalker will meet you at the landing platform. Control out."

Mara closed the channel and guided her ship down towards the moon. Luke was indeed waiting for her when she lowered the landing struts and made a soft landing. His ever faithful droid was beside him. Some things never changed, Mara thought with a small grin as she shut down her vessel and exited.

She took those few moments as she descended the platform to study her friend. He was clothed in his usual black garb, but she could see the toned muscles and shoulders underneath. She vaguely wondered what it would be like to run her hands up and down those muscles but discarded it as fantasy. His features were still boyish, his hair bleached blonde by years in the Tatooine suns, but it was his eyes that held his maturity. Deep blue crystals that she could lose herself in if she didn't watch herself.

Luke had a welcoming smile on his face as she approached him, but underneath the surface, she could sense his uneasiness. She looked at him with uncertainty. He brushed it off.

"Hello, Mara. I'm glad you came so quickly."

"You sounded worried over the holonet. I had to come see what makes the great Jedi Master so uneasy," Mara said with a grin meant to put him at ease. How she loved to tease him, to push his buttons.

He didn't take the bait. "You'd better come inside then."

Now Mara was worried. "You said you didn't want to elaborate over the comm. What's going on, Luke?" She was mildly surprised that she addressed him by his first name.

"C'mon, Artoo." Luke acted as if he didn't even notice.

Mara followed him inside the temple. He didn't say much, nodding in acknowledgement as his students passed him was the only action she saw until they reached his quarters inside the temple.

Mara looked around at his sparsely decorated quarters. There was a table that held a few data cards and a datapad, cabinets for cookware, and a station that could scarcely be described as an oven. It was all so… empty.

"Expecting something more grandiose for the great Jedi Master?" Luke asked as he pulled out a chair.

"Not really. I knew that Jedi led a simple life." Mara sat down at the adjoining chair. "So, what's going on, Skywalker? Why'd you have me cross the galaxy for all of the secrecy?"

"The young man you sent to me three months ago, Grav Ybis, has run off. His intentions led toward the Dark Side. He was on a quest for power."

Mara took a moment to process that. "I can't say I'm not surprised. He felt that the Force was a tool. He was indifferent to the responsibilities that come with such a gift. I had hoped that by sending him to you that he would learn that discipline. I'm sorry that he failed to learn."

"Don't be," Luke said reaching to touch her hand. "You had good intentions. It was his choice to be led astray. Proddings from the Force are telling me that we haven't heard the last from him. I believe that he is connected to some disturbing visions that I have had. Visions that are connected to you."

"You had a vision about me? I'm touched," Mara quipped, though her uneasiness was starting to creep forward as well. The dreams she had about a sister that she barely remembered shot to the forefront of her mind once again.

"Mara, have you ever heard of places called Midgard or Asgard? Those two words kept surfacing in my visions."

Mara felt a stir of recognition at those names. "They do seem familiar…" She reached back to her earliest memories in the "care" of Emperor Palpatine. A man with a hideous red face filled her memory. He was discussing something with Palpatine. Myths from his world of great warriors, she recalled.

"The warriors of Asgard are formidable," the man was saying as he displayed a map.

"Mara?"

"I do know those worlds. A system of nine worlds with only one inhabited planet. Two civilizations, one vastly more advanced than the other. One was called Asgard and the other Midgard."

"Really?" Luke asked her. "Do you remember where this system was located?"

Mara drew deeper into her memories, trying to bring the map into focus. "I can't quite make it out. Seems like it's in a minor arm of the galaxy."

"Use the Force to augment your memories," Luke advised.

Mara pulled upon the Force and gathered it, trying to defog the map. Her eyebrows crinkled in frustration.

"Let me help you," Luke said

Luke's sense in the Force washed through Mara's awareness and mixed with hers. It was quite a shock to her system.

"Relax, Mara. Show me your memories."

Mara took a calming breath.

"The warriors of Asgard are formidable. Centuries more advanced than their counterparts of Midgard. They use a kind of magic of their own to wield power and prestige," the man with the hideous red face explained as he examined a star chart. "They will not be conquered easily."

"They will work with me or they will be destroyed," Palpatine was saying. "Red Skull, you and your Hydra will be my vessel in which I will rule the galaxy. You will wait for my word, and then my domination will be complete."

Mara peeked over the console so she could get a better look at the star chart. She saw the location of Midgard before a wall of black blocked her.

"Did you see that?" Mara asked Luke.

"I think so." Luke took a breath. "I also had a vision of a woman that look eerily similar to you with a group of humans on a strange planet. I think it was Midgard or Asgard. She was wielding a strange sword. I think maybe she's a clone."

"Or my sister," Mara corrected. "I had a dream—a memory, I'm almost certain now—of that same man with a red face and the emperor taking me and a toddler from our home. I called her 'Rissi.' I also remembered someone telling me to protect my little sister."

"That makes more sense than a clone. Maybe this woman and the toddler in your dream is the same person."

Mara nodded. "This could be a delicate situation. Leia should go with us to smooth over things diplomatically."

"Han will want to go along too."

Mara sighed. One big happy family. "I guess that settles it. Think you can pry yourself away from your responsibilities as Jedi Master?"

"Think you can get away from your grand job as second in command to the largest smuggling conglomerate in the galaxy?"

"It's a date."

"C'mon, Artoo. Let's see what info we can dig up on Asgard and Midgard."

Artoo-Detoo trilled and beeped in excitement.

Imperial City

Coruscant

"The warriors of Asgard? They are legendary for their prowess in battle!" Leia Organa Solo exclaimed as she talked to her twin via the holonet. "They are stronger than average and wield their own Force like abilities to fight. Asgard is like a giant kingdom above Midgard. Asgardians travel to Midgard by a beam of energy called the 'Bifrost.' No one has ever been able to replicate that technology."

"I think she's excited about going to Asgard," Leia heard Mara retort to Luke on the other side.

"Mara? What is your interest in Asgard and Midgard?" she asked.

Mara gave her a brief explanation of her dream and Luke's vision.

"A younger sister? I think that's great. You should try and find her."

"We think this might be a delicate situation with whatever this Hydra and its leader on the loose. I think,"

"We both think," Mara interrupted.

"We both think you and Han should go with us."

"You know where Asgard is?" Leia asked in disbelief.

"Yes. A very early memory of mine when Palpatine had me."

"I always wondered if the legends of Asgard were true. I want to see this for myself. I'm sure Han would, too."

"Han would what?" Han Solo asked from behind her. "Hey Luke."

"Hey Han. Ever heard of the warriors of Asgard?"

"Sure," Han replied. "Thought they were just a myth. No one knows where the planet is though. Why? Your Jedi hocus pocus tell you something?"

"We think my sister is on Asgard," Mara interrupted. "Wipe that look off of your face, Solo. It came as a surprise to me too, but it's true. Luke and I have both seen her in visions. So you interested in coming to Asgard or not? We have the location."

"Are you on your way to Coruscant?" Han asked.

"The Jade's Fire will be in system in five hours."

"We'll be ready then," Leia said. "Talk to you both soon."

"Well, that was interesting," Han replied after Leia signed off.

"Yeah, Luke and Mara found Asgard."

"No, when did Mara start calling Luke by his given name instead of 'Skywalker'?"

"Hush," Leia scolded him gently. "You're reading too much into nothing. They are good friends."

"So they tell each other. I think there's more to it than friendship."

"Whatever you say, dear." Leia smiled at her husband. "Well, let's get started. I need to find Winter so she and Chewie can watch the kids while we're gone."

"Yeah. I'll head out to the Falcon. The alluvial dampeners are on the fritz again."

Han pressed a kiss to Leia's forehead and left their quarters.

Leia took a moment to process what Han had said. She had brushed him off when he mentioned Luke and Mara's friendship, but now that she had a moment to reflect on their actions while she was talking to them…

Han may not be Force sensitive or a politician, but sometimes he could read people better than she.

Author's Note:

Well, looks like the meeting of two worlds is imminent. Next chapter we head back to Earth and the Avengers. Watch out, Hydra comes calling!