High Flying, Adored
Chapter Twenty One
Disclaimer: It is a good assumption to make that nothing but the plot belongs to me, but a better one that only the details of the plot do, because it's rather easy and expectable to re-use a plot.
A.N.: Doing pretty well churning out these updates, aren't I? All you LM shippers out there are going to love this. As a warning, unless I can crank something out after work this weekend, updates may not come for a while as I start summer classes this Monday; for two and a half weeks, it's four days of class and then three days of work until they hire someone else, but after that I'll only have one class and hopefully only two days of work, so it should be okay.
Mary Sue's Ugly BFF: I hope this satisfies.
SithKnight-Galen: If I answered your questions, that would just ruin it for everyone and that wouldn't be fair!
JadeTakashi: I agree that Yoda, in his old age, has a lot to learn.
Deja Know I Been Lookin For...: I'm really glad you enjoyed it!
ILDV: No kidding.
Jaded-Skywalker: Really glad you're liking the stuff!
FREAKSHOW1: Oh, I don't trust that Yoda knows what he's doing at all.
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You were just a backstreet girl
Hustling and fighting
Scratching and biting
High flying, adored
Did you believe in your wildest moments
All this would be yours?
That you'd become the lady of them all?
Were there stars in your eyes
When you crawled in at night?
From the bars, from the sidewalks
From the gutter theatricals?
Don't look down,
It's a long, long way to fall.
- Evita
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When Xizor offered Mara another chance to see her husband the day after her coterie had arrived, she agreed, but offered to take her own speeder. "Separate cars will keep Your Majesty safer," she insisted, and he gave her cheek a pat and told her what a good and smart girl she was.
"Skywalker must be infinitely pleased to have such a clever and devoted, yet sensible, wife."
Her guard service was dressed in black, with dark glasses, impressive guns cradled in the hollow of their arms, and Mara was slid in between Tycho and Hobbie, with Wedge and Wes sitting across. "You ready for this?" Antilles asked her.
"As ready as I'm gonna be. Do you all remember where you're supposed to be?"
"You bet. And Wes and I will have blasters at the ready in case anyone gets any ideas."
"I'm a Jedi, I'm the last person whose safety you need to be concerned with." She looked briefly out the tinted window at the Coruscant city-scape, hands fidgeting as she fought the butterflies in her stomach; she'd opted for a long, black robe – not a Jedi's robe, but something feminine and mildly dressy. She wanted to appear accessible to the people today, and since Luke was always and forever wearing black, she thought maybe they'd associate her with him.
She hoped they'd associate her with him.
She needed that very badly.
Her hands looped in and out of the long, flowing sleeves as she took deep, quick breaths every so often; Mara Jade was nervous.
Wes examined her from across the stretch-speeder. "We're not going to screw this up," he assured her, and she shook her head, green eyes closed.
"I know you guys won't, I'm not worried about that. I'm worried I'll mess something up."
"We're here," was all Tycho said, and the speeder ground to a halt. Everyone stared at Mara, whose eyes were closed as she took one final steadying breath, and the door was opened.
It was…a little more than the Rogues had expected, certainly more than Mara had expected; it took a while to open the door because so many bodies were pressed against the car, having no place else to expand into. The crowd of people gathered outside the judiciary building was incredible. And as soon as the harried citizens of Coruscant realized it was their former emperor's wife who was emerging, loud whispers went up and passed through the whole crowd.
"How many of them you think there are?" Hobbie asked of Wedge through gritted teeth as he shouldered and elbowed a path for himself and his charge.
"Hundred thousand, maybe more."
"A hundred thousand!"
"Keep your voice down." Not that it mattered, it was difficult to hear in this throng.
Upon reaching the top of the tall, steep steps, Mara turned back only briefly to see the gathered crowd; they were being kept off the steps by a combination of Xizor's Black Sun forces and very irritated looking Imperials. They didn't want to be there, Mara felt. They didn't like this any more than the people hurling obscenities at them, and from the holes in the ranks, a handful had already defected.
Xizor appeared at her elbow at the top of the staircase, only minutely harried. "Quite the throng of admirers, wouldn't you say?"
He'd startled her a little, and she wheeled to him, eyes blinking rapidly. "Where did they all come from?"
"From every hole a beast can crawl out of," he drawled, not impressed with the "rabble," that was shouting for Luke Skywalker. And oh, Luke would never have called them a rabble. Mara could see in her mind's eye his broad and sweet grin, the way his arms would open up as at the funeral service as if he were embracing all of them, as if they were his children. Which is exactly what he would have called them, with a look on his face as to give each of them – from the lowest, dirtiest and most rotted beggar upwards – a kiss. "Come, Lady Jade, let us to your husband."
Mara considered taking his arm as she usually did to appease him, but catching a look at the crowd from her peripheral vision, she decided that would be a mistake, and instead walked as straight and as tall as she was able with crippling butterflies fluttering in her stomach.
She closed her eyes when they descended into that dark, dank hole in the wall, for she needed all of her strength at this critical moment. She kept them closed, in fact, until she was led into the hovel they were keeping her husband in.
That was when her pale face became green with horror.
Luke was huddled in a ball, seriously ill, and when she cried his name and ran to him, he did not make any response. Mara's gentle and scarred hands felt his sweating forehead and had to draw quickly away again from the burning hot fever he was suffering. Her green eyes were very wide, and she turned with fear to Xizor, saying nothing. He just looked on and smirked, and was equally silent. Robbed of a voice, she began to make pathetic whimperings and pleadings of, "No, no, Luke!" She touched him, and willed every ounce of the healing Force she could reach into his frail and suffering body, begged, prayed, wanted him to continue to live – and when it was apparent she had done all she could (however little that was), she let two little tears slip from her eyes and bit her red lip. If Luke did not have a doctor within six hours, she did not think he would live.
She looked back up at Xizor again.
He raised one reptilian eyebrow at her and said, "You still haven't given me your answer, Lady Jade. Surely your Senate cannot be taking so long to deliberate as this." That was why he'd had no medical attention for a simple little disease, for something that should not have gotten so out of control as this.It was blackmail, and Luke the bait.
"You haven't worked in a democratic society," she growled at him, cradling her husband fiercely against her, who seemed to revive slightly and pleaded her name and that of his father the way a sick child would its mother. "You'd be surprised." A couple more renegade tears escaped her eyes, and she brushed the disgusting, dingy blond hair from the sweating forehead of the man she'd sworn to help. The man dying Darth Vader had begged her to, what was it he'd said, sail into fire for?
A Jedi ought to keep their promise.
"If you are still alive when all this foolishness is done," she whispered in the sick man's ear, "if I haven't gotten you killed…I will go with you."
Forcing the last of the tears from her eyes, Mara looked defiantly up at her captor, who looked expectantly and smugly down at her. The Jedi carefully lay her ally back down in the mucky straw and gently rose to her feet, prepared to follow the pretender emperor back out again. "I promise you, My Lord, you will have a response on what I plan to do by the end of the night."
"And Princess Leia?"
"I will force that issue as much as I'm able."
"Wonderful!" Xizor grinned, clapping his long, bony hands together as they ascended the basement steps and walked out into the growing gloom of dusk in the heart of Coruscant. However, in the grand hall of the judiciary building, a dull roar came pouring through the cracks in the ornate doors, made the windows rattle in their settings, buzzed continually throughout the place. The pair and their retinue looked around with exceeding confusion, and Xizor at last ordered the doors opened.
The source of the noise was readily apparent.
The throng of worshipful followers of their rightful emperor had grown! It stretched out whole city blocks and then some, until it was double or even triple what Mara had seen a mere twenty minutes ago. She stood breathless, comforted that Wedge was still by her side and glad to see Hobbie standing at the top of the stairs. Mara took a few hesitating steps towards the throng, which moved and pulsated like a knot of bees, and was actually a little afraid – not of them, but by their sheer magnitude. Xizor had a fierce scowl on his face, but paid the irritant no more mind than that.
The Falleen was preparing to walk down the grand steps. Mara was waiting a painful eternity for the signal to come.
All at once, there it was, and she could almost pick out the solitary voice of Wes Janson in that sea of people as he yelled at the top of his lungs, "Speech, speech!" And there, Tycho, taking up the chorus some hundred meters away: "We want to hear our Empress speak!"
Soon, the whole crowd, enough to populate a city of decent proportions that was not Coruscant, began to take the lyric up: "Let her speak!" "We want to hear her speak!" And then, in rhythmic, vibrating intensity, the low and guttural, "Speech, speech, speech," chanted low by two hundred thousand voices until she was certain the noise could be heard thousands of kilometers away. She looked first at Xizor, who was still not entirely pleased, but waved her on patronizingly with a look that read, "Keep it short and loyal to me." This she would have done, had she not caught site of Wedge pressing the comlink in his ear, eyebrows shooting up from under his dark glasses. Once more she felt sure they were undone, and looked imploringly at him, which he returned by mouthing the word, "Go."
This was her one shot. She had to use it.
Mara Jade Skywalker edged herself to the brink of the marble staircase so that her toes just poked over. She twisted her wedding ring around her finger and gathered her courage; on a mission for the Jedi, when facing Imperial troops, in any situation but this, she would have been the epitome of brave. But here it was difficult to keep from fleeing. Nonetheless, she was determined, and took a long, deep breath, just once shutting her eyes, and opening them with resolve written in their greenness.
"I…" she hesitated, letting the crowd fall to a hush while a news crew handed her their microphone, for which she thanked them. "I am not a great speaker like my husband. I was not raised in politics, I am a Jedi. And for those familiar with the Order, we are mostly told to shut up in our early years." A spate of laughter, which she joined nervously. "I was born on this planet, spent my early life here. But I never felt any particular…connection to it, I never felt drawn to return here, or thought that these were my people and this my place.
"I…" Her throat felt extraordinarily tight, and she had to swallow multiple times to feel she could breathe properly. "Being raised a good Republican girl after the age of five, I believed that Imperialism was wrong and that Luke Skywalker, his father, and all they stood for, were devils." Xizor seemed pleased with this, but before a reproachful murmur could go up from the crowd, she continued. "But I was wrong." The new Emperor ceased to look pleased and Mara had to work very hard with her emotions and her words to keep going.
"Luke – my husband – he is so…good. I did not think so when I first arrived, I thought no man in the history of the world could play more sorely upon the people he governed. But now that I have spent a year by his side as of next week, I have come to find that there has been no one in the history of my life and maybe of the universe that exercises greater selflessness, greater compassion, and greater love in the protection of his people." A great stillness had fallen over everything, so that even Xizor could not stop her, though he did want to. "Our most esteemed new Emperor Xizor says that he has removed Luke Skywalker from power because he was ruling with corruption and incompetence. I would like to here and now address those charges;
"If he is so evil – as I thought, as glorious Emperor Xizor thinks – then why does he stay up sometimes all night, let his health take a secondary place, to personally oversee reforms in health service, in housing, in education – for his people and not for him! Why is that he pays for services as he paid for his father's funeral, out of his own pocket, running an empire at cost to himself, when he could run it on the backs of the poor, on the backs of his people. Why does he ignore his personal relationships, his wife, his friends, when the smallest problem is presented to him that some less worthy underling could manage very easily."
Mara bowed her head for a moment before she continued, a sob momentarily choking her voice. "By the grace of Lord Xizor, I was allowed to present him with the option of saving his own skin and spending the rest of his days in luxury and quiet in exile from the Empire, living out his days as any man might wish to do. And he said no. He refused because, he told me, he could not leave his people without a father, without someone who loves them, as he has always loved them. As he always will." She fought back her tears. "If he is so evil, why won't he go, Force, why won't he do – just once – what is best for him and not for his people?"
Mara could not stop her tears now, and buried her face in her hands for the moment, the tears slipping quietly between her fingers. The crowd, tender and maternal, pressed forward, forcing the guards off the steps (a notable number of the Imperials were now no place to be seen) in order to get at her. They surged in a quiet, comforting wave, Mara could feel each glittering presence in the living Force and it comforted her more than anything had in this last wretched week and a half. She took the hands from her face and stretched them out to the people as they closed in around her, a loud murmur among them for her to keep speaking. "I want my husband back," she told the crowd, green eyes full of compassion but emotions now under control. "As I am sure you want your Emperor."
She turned her head when she felt Wedge touching her elbow, and he gently led her down the long steps into the crowd, Hobbie trailing behind her. But a very curious thing was happening. People weren't parting as they had before to let her through. Instead, they were continuing to surge about her like a reverend goddess!
Housewives embraced her with matronly affection, stained her with the purity of their tears, kissed her cheeks and called her a wonderful woman, a wonderful wife. Funny, Mara had never really felt like a wife until that moment – until up there on the steps, when for half a moment she had a desperate and burning, aching need to feel her husband's arms around her, holding her close and making her feel really safe. There were few times in her life, she was discovering, when she'd felt so safe as when he'd held her for that brief instant when he'd been still healthy in the cell immediately after being deposed. Safe, yes, maybe, but not like that. She wanted that, she wanted to hear his voice whispering in her ear and have his lips-
Honest, hardworking and poor men tipped hats at her, somebody was kissing the hem of her gown, and she had to beg them to stop and help them to their feet, which just made them try to kiss her hem more.
Mara Jade Skywalker felt as though she were being embraced by the whole world.
This is what this means. This is what Luke feels, why he won't leave. This is why I'm Empress.
And for the first time, her political thoughts strayed beyond the Republic Confederacy, encompassed these mostly good and mostly honest people here – and she vowed to be the best Empress she could be for them and for Luke.
It took a long time, but before she knew it, she was through the adoring and suffocating crowd, pressed into the speeder by her coterie. The door shut, the roar of the mass was dulled somewhat, and she looked wide-eyed around her.
"Sith, Mara," Wes whistled. "I don't think you know what you did out there."
Wedge was grinning ear to ear. "All news is good news, but I'll brief you when we're safe and back at the Palace."
At last Mara felt like she'd accomplished something, smiled at the Rogues, and tilted her head back on the plush leather seat. It was time for this Jedi to get a long deserved breather.