Chapter Twenty-One: Saving Mara Jade
When they brought the princess back that afternoon, the security team had to do so with a gurney. The young woman lay motionless with her eyes closed, one hand hanging off the side of the hover gurney and her hair frazzled and standing on end. When she watched them bring her in, Mara at first wondered if she were dead. But then she smelled the ozone, and realized the princess had been struck by the Emperor's wrath.
The two guards dumped her without ceremony and left without even a nod in Mara's direction. The cell door slid shut behind the princess.
Mara remembered her own taste of the Emperor's anger last year. Force lightning caused more than just physical pain—it was an attack on one's very soul. With a sigh at her own stupidity, Mara went to the snack dispenser down the hall in the personnel break room and ordered an electrolyte drink. When she returned to her station, she nudged the camera view just enough to create a safe path to the cell in question.
Leia had managed to crawl onto her cot and was lying on her side facing the wall when Mara came in. The former Hand sat on the floor opposite the princess and said nothing for the longest time.
It was Leia who spoke first, though she did not move, and her voice was thick with the mucus of tears and pain. "Are you here to gloat?"
"I'm in no more position to gloat than you are," Mara said. "I was the Emperor's Hand. Now I'm a prison guard."
"Kale should have killed you," Leia said in a dead tone.
"Yes. But then he wouldn't have been Kale, would he?"
With a grunt at the effort, Leia flopped on to her back. Her cheeks were ruddy and moistened. "Why won't you people just kill me?"
"The Emperor wants you to replace me," Mara said. "Vader wants his daughter."
Slowly the princess turned her head to look at Mara. "What do you want?"
Mara held up the black claw that was her hand and looked at it with a critical eye. "A better hand—maybe one with synthflesh. Maybe two days off every week instead of one?" She smiled. "To see sunlight and grass. Naboo was very beautiful. Maybe someday I can go back there, if He ever releases me. Now that I'm nothing, I find my needs are few."
She leaned forward and offered the cup.
"Poison?" Leia asked. It sounded as if the answer would not stop her from drinking.
"An electrolyte drink," Mara said. "It helps. Believe me."
Leia sat up with grunts of pain and reached with a trembling hand for the drink. "Will you get in trouble for being in here?"
"Probably."
Leia closed her eyes. "I'm not going to make it," she whispered. "I…I can't keep doing this. Master Yoda showed me how I can stop it. I can make it all stop."
"And then the last Jedi will be dead. Palpatine will still win."
"You mean 'Your Master?'"
"Yes, of course."
Leia finished the drink off and wiped her eyes with the base of her palm. "Thank you for the drink. It does help."
"You're welcome." Mara stood to leave.
"Wait," Leia said.
Mara paused and looked back.
"Did you ever…I mean, Kale was always so infatuated with you. I've always wondered why. There had to have been something for him to feel that way. Did you…"
"Kale is the reason I am nothing," Mara said without heat or malice. "Good bye." This time she did not stop as she stepped out of the room and allowed the door to close behind her.
She sat back at her desk and called up the list of Wanted Persons posted by the Imperial Security Bureau. At the very top of the list, where it had been for the past four years, was the face of Kale Naberrie, lifted from the Naboo public records.
The picture was an old one—he still had cheeks rounded with baby fat and that adorable blush that ran almost to his eyes.
The last time she saw him, the baby fat was gone, leaving a strong, lean face and powerful eyes. The boy had become a man, and when he kissed her in the Valley of the Jedi, it was not as a bumbling, endearing boy, but as a man offering her one last chance for happiness. Instead of happiness, she sat in the bowels of a dark palace staring at his picture and wondering what might have been.
~~Last Son~~
~~Last Son~~
When her shift ended, Mara joined the line of other low- to mid-level workers authorized for their day off. Every one of them had to pass through three lines of intensive security before being released. Mara even had to detach her hand for a security scan before they gave it back to her. Originally, this embarrassed her, but now she simply didn't care.
The public mag-lev train took her to the nearest entertainment district, and in moment she lost herself wandering the crowded streets numbly, looking for anything to distract her from her life. As usual, she found nothing and instead walked into the Outlander Club. She looked briefly for Sleazebaggano the Slythmonger, knowing that torturing him for an hour would at least provide some escape, but strangely enough the Balosar was absent.
Instead, she found a stool at the bar and nodded at the barkeep. He knew her by sight, and a shot of straight Corellian whiskey was in her left hand before she could even snap her fingers. The bottle followed shortly after. Half an hour later a second bottle appeared to replace the first, which somehow had emptied.
She was three shots into the second bottle when a genteel voice said from beside her: "Ma'am, that's nothing but a headache in a bottle."
She turned and studied the interloper. He was a handsome man with a thin mustache, a smarmy smile and overly foppish clothes. Any man who wore shimmersilk worried Mara. There was no denying he was handsome, though. She sank her third shot and poured the fourth. "My head, my bottle," she said.
With no immediate cause to do otherwise, the man took the empty stool next to her. "Rough day?"
"Same as always," she said curtly. Shot five into the second bottle. She was beginning to feel warm again. "So, what do you want?"
"Conversation with a beautiful lady?" he said.
Mara snorted. "Yeah, well, good look finding one."
"You have a low opinion of yourself."
"You have a high one of yourself."
The man laughed. "As a matter of fact, I do. My name is Lando Calrissian, the Hero of the Battle of Tanaab."
Mara blinked and rubbed her eyes a bit before downing number six. "Thought I recognized you," she said. Her voice was perfectly clear, but her eyes were slightly shiny. "Wasn't much of a battle. The pirates were stupid and you had some stolen Conner nets that wouldn't have worked on anyone else. It was luck."
"Luck favors the bold."
"And the foolish."
"Are you feeling a bit foolish tonight?" Lando asked suavely.
She thought of Kale's lips on hers—of the past year spent alone in a room little better than a cell. "As a matter of fact, I am," she decided impulsively. She grabbed the bottle and took the remaining whiskey in a single draft. She slammed the bottle down and took Calrissian's arm. "Take me away from here, Mr. Carrisssissisia…what's your name?"
"Calrissian."
"Yeah. That."
She stood and her knees buckled. Lando gamely put a hand around her shoulders and helped her out of the bar. "You got a hovercar?" she asked.
"I do."
"Good. I hate trains."
They reached the lot where Calrissian's car waited. "Nissssssse," she whispered. "Wait for sec." She turned away and, leaning over the rail of the walkway to the endless depths of the city below, threw up her last meal. The vomit fell like a sickening rain out of sight into the shadows below.
She straightened and wiped her face. "Sorry."
"It's all right, sweetheart," Lando said. "But for both our sakes, take this mint."
Mara popped in her mouth and bit down: it was not a mint.
Even drunk, she was fast enough to hit the man with her artificial hand in the gut with strength enough to bring him on his knees. She spit the sedative out. "Gamorrean pig," she whispered.
She stumbled a little as she turned to leave. Another man blocked her way, a man wearing bloodstripes on his pants. "Solo?" she whispered, too confused to be stunned.
He grinned, and then decked her with a right punch. "That's for Leia," he said. It was the last thing Mara heard before she passed out.
~~Last Son~~
~~Last Son~~
Mara woke up surrounded by her enemies.
She rolled off her right side and the numb limb (they had removed her prosthetic hand, she noticed) and onto her back to stare at the circle of faces of those who wanted to kill her. Kyle Katarn and Jan Ors stood at the foot of the single bed. Jan had one arm on Kyle's shoulder and the other hooked protectively around his right arm; Mara noticed a lightsaber hanging from his belt.
Han Solo stood to her left with Winter right beside him. She honestly could not say who glared more fiercely of the two. She suspected their hatred for her was for different reasons.
To her right stood Lando Calrissian, the man who tricked her into leaving the bar. Everyone was there except the one she at once longed and dreaded to see. "Well," she said. "If you're going to kill me, might as well get started." She reached up with her left hand and placed it against her throbbing forehead. "Death would be a kindness to this hangover, and I'm obviously not in any condition to resist."
"I don't believe that for a second," Calrissian said as he held a hand to his stomach.
"Where is Leia?" Han Solo demanded. His voice carried more than just danger—it held a promise of death to anyone who harmed the princess.
She closed her eyes. "Cell 4356-AA212. In the palace."
"Is she okay?" The threat of danger in his voice shifted to a small spark of hope.
"No, she's not."
He hit her in the cheek with his fist before Winter grabbed him. "You'd better pray to whatever you worship that she gets out alive!" he shouted.
"This isn't going to help," Winter said. She glared back at Mara. "I want to hurt her too, Han, but this isn't going to help." The white-headed beauty looked at those around the bed and abruptly made up her mind. "Everyone out of the room. Let's give her a chance to recover. Then we talk."
With glares and dagger-stares and mumbled curses, the procession of enemies left and Mara found herself alone in what looked like a rented hostel room. It would have been simplicity to escape—she could see five routes right now, starting with the ceiling panels. For some reason, though, she had difficulty finding the motivation or strength to stand and act.
She felt a rush of wind and turned on her left side. Kale was there where just a moment before was empty air, floating horizontally just a few centimeters off the bed and staring intently at her. She did not scream in surprise. In fact, she felt no surprise at all. She felt a momentary flush of heat that was quickly lost to cold despair again.
"Hello," he said simply.
"Hello."
"I used to dream of lying in a bed watching you wake up," Kale told her wistfully. The younger Kale would have blushed furiously if he was even capable of saying something like that. But the grown Kale simply studied her face intently. He reached up and traced the line of her jaw.
"You've lost weight," he noted.
"It happens."
"Muscle weight."
"That happens too," she said. "Prison guards in political cell blocks don't need a lot of muscle."
Kale nodded as his body slowly came to rest on the bed itself, laying next to her. "What happened when you came back?"
She turned away from him and stared at the ceiling. "I was punished for failing."
"And yet you stay."
"I have nowhere else to go. He's the only family I have ever known."
Kale very gently touched her cheek and she turned her eyes back toward his. "Tell me about my cousin, Mara. Tell me about Leia."
Mara swallowed. "They're trying to break her," she told him. "They're trying to break her and turn her to the Dark Side. They torture her physically and mentally every day. This morning she said she didn't think she was going to make it. She talked about killing herself."
Kale moved a little closer, until she could smell his breath. It smelled of toothpaste and…beer? Had he been drinking? His next statement took her mind off his breath, though. "Mara, Leia would never admit something like that to a prison guard."
Mara became very still as she realized he was right. The Leia she abducted from Yavin four years before would never have admitted weakness in front of an enemy. "I…I went into her cell yesterday afternoon," she said. "I recognized the signs of Force lightning and…I don't know what I was doing."
"You were being compassionate," Kale said.
"I was not!" she said, as if insulted.
"It's not a bad thing."
"It's a weak thing!" She grunted as she forced herself to sit up. "It's something only a weak person would do!"
"I can break star destroyers in half," Kale pointed out as he too sat up. "But I would still help someone in need. And you helped her, didn't you? She needed someone to talk to, even if only for a moment, and you played that role for her."
"It doesn't matter," Mara said. She swung her legs over the bed. Her head throbbed from the previous night's drinking and Solo's right hook.
Suddenly Kale was there, his chest to her back, his legs hanging off the bed to either side of her. Two strong hands reached up and with surprising gentleness touched her temples. She felt the healing power of the Force flowing through his fingers, making the throbbing of her head recede.
This simple act of kindness was too much. She jumped to her feet and turned to face him. "Damn you, Kale Naberrie!" she yelled. "Damn you!" She held up her stump. "You did this to me. I was strong! I was my master's most treasured servant. And now because of you, I'm nothing! Nothing!"
"You were cold," Kale said as he also stood. He grabbed the stump of her arm by the metal receiving ring for her artificial hand without blinking. "You were a cold, broken slave." His understanding eyes suddenly flashed with anger. "You were not his servant, Mara! He did not love you. He did not cherish you. He used you until you weren't any good to him anymore, and then he threw you away like a broken toy. And yet you still stand there like an idiot and say I'm the bad guy?"
"How dare you!" she hissed.
"I dare because I love you," he said, still angry. "I won't lie to you, Mara. You may not like what I say, but you'll always know it was the truth. You were a twisted little plaything for a twisted, evil despot, and now that he doesn't want to play with you any more, you're nothing. You were going home with Lando, for star's sakes."
"What else was I supposed to do?" she screamed. "It's not like you were there!"
The silence that followed was shattering. Kale stared at her so hard she felt as if her soul were on fire. "I'm here now," he said.
"I'm not eighteen any more," Mara said, also quiet now. "I'm not the girl you thought you fell in love with."
"I'm not the boy who fell in love with that girl," he said.
"Kale…"
"Kiss me."
Her eyes stung; her stomach began to do loops; her lips were on his before she could even think to breathe. His hands pulled her close enough to feel the intense heat pouring off his body.
"Tell me you love me," Kale demanded.
"I love you," she sobbed, breathless. "Oh stars, I do."
His shirt was off. She resisted an impulse to cry that she only had one hand to feel his skin with. He had both his, however, and made quick work of her shirt and bra. "Tell me you want to be with me," he demanded.
She could barely breathe. "I really do," she said, her voice dropping into a whisper. "I wanted you to take me away in the Valley."
"Wanting is not enough," he said. He pulled her slacks off as she did the same to him. "Act. Show me you love me."
She melted into him, and she showed him. A lifetime of passion, and four years of pain and longing poured out of her in waves that would have made lesser men crumble. Kale accepted it all and more.
In the end, Mara lay on top of Kale, exhausted and covered in sweat. With her forehead against his broad, muscular chest, she was suddenly racked with such overwhelming grief she no longer had any hope to contain it. She slid off him onto the bed by his side, and with his arm around her shoulder, she sobbed like she did the last time she had lain with a man. She couldn't say when the storm passed. But when it did, Kale was still there, looking into her eyes with tears of his own. "Why are you crying?" she demanded between sobs.
"It hurts me to see you hurt," he said. He reached over and pulled a tissue from the dispenser in the end table.
She sat up in lotus position on the bed and gave a respectable snort as she blew her nose. "I must look pathetic," she said.
"You are more beautiful than I have ever seen you," Kale said as he also pushed himself into a sitting position in front of her.
She stared at the earnestness in his eyes and felt a pull of emotion so strong it hurt. "You're pathetic too," she finally said.
"I know."
She couldn't help the smile that broke through her sobs. "This wasn't the type of torture I was expecting when I woke up," she finally admitted. "By the stars, Kale, why do you love me so much? Other than shooting you and helping Vader kill your family and hunt you across the galaxy, what have I done to deserve you?"
"The Emperor and Darth Vader killed them; you were nothing more than a weapon. And as for why—when you kissed me on Naboo," Kale said, "you loved me. You can deny it all you want, but I could feel it. I could hear it in your heartbeat. But then something happened, and you left. I didn't realize it at the time, but now I know it wasn't because of a scheduled dinner. You could have stayed with me all day as part of your assignment. Something happened."
"The Emperor contacted me. Through our link."
Kale nodded as he caressed her cheek. His fingers trailed down to her breast. "He couldn't stand the thought of you being happy on your own. Not even for a moment. Kryptonians love forever, Mara. For better or for worse, when you kissed me, I imprinted on you. You are the only woman I have ever desired."
She sighed, took his hand and held it against her chest. "It doesn't matter now, Kale. I'm nothing."
"You are something to me." He leaned forward until their lips touched. "Say the word, Mara, and I will take you away from here. Nothing could stop us."
Her lungs stopped working. It took conscious thought to draw air in again. "Kale…I…" She dropped her eyes from his, but then got distracted by the rest of him and so had to look at something less alluring. "What about Leia?"
He shrugged. "The others wanted to use you to help break her out. I can do that anyway. It'll cost more lives, but as long as they aren't involved I could probably save her."
"Maybe not," Mara warned. "Palpatine has a new weapon. I don't know what it is—security is tight. But he's already used it on the Rebellion twice. The rumor is its powerful enough to kill even you. If you went flying through the palace, he could use this weapon on you."
"Then I would die saving my cousin," Kale said. "But only after I've saved you. Say the word, Mara, and I will take you away from here. You'll never have to think about any of this again."
She fell forward until she leaned against him. Her hair hung like red feathers against the muscles of his bare thighs. He was so beautiful, so perfect. He was everything she had ever wanted, even before she knew what that was.
"I can't leave her there," Mara whispered. The admission shocked her—she hated Princess Leia. Didn't she? No, she envied her. She had envied that Leia was close to Kale. That Leia had a man who loved her and that she was known, respected and liked by all those around her. She envied that friendship and love. But she did not hate the Princess. Not since yesterday afternoon, when Leia confessed how close she was to breaking. "I'll help you," Mara said. She looked up to meet Kale's searching eyes. "I'll help you get her out. You have to let me help."
"I'll let you help, but on one condition," Kale said. "Afterward, when she's free, promise me that you will go with her and the others. Go with them and be safe."
"What about you?"
His expression shifted from love and compassion to one of predatory determination. "I have an appointment with the man who hurt you."
"Kale, he's more powerful than you realize."
"It doesn't matter," Kale said. Reaching out with his hands, he easily lifted her off the bed and deposited her back on his lap and looked up at her. "The only thing that matters to me is that the people I love are safe. That means you too. When we free Leia, you go with her, Han and the rest. Go with them and be safe. Promise me that, Mara. I need to know you'll be safe."
She wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him deeply as they began to make love again. "For you, I would do anything," she said.