It is Your Destiny…
Tython, six months later
Leia Skywalker sat at the small desk in her quarters on Tython and read through her notes on her datapad. Erasing a few words and typing in different ones, she placed the well-worn stylus between her teeth while her mind wandered. The words and letters on the screen became a blur and visions from her memories filled her mind. It had been six months since the events on Naboo and yet it all seemed so fresh and raw. When she shut her eyes her lightsaber flashed in front of her, she saw her father's blue eyes. Flash. Dozens of dead sith. Flash. Blood-
"Leia?"
Leia jumped at the sound of her name and seeing Mara Jade standing in her doorway, she quickly shut her datapad down and stood. "What are you doing out of your cell?"
After the events on Naboo, the Republic had arrived and taken Grand Admiral Thrawn into custody. Han, unsure how to react to what she had done and what he had seen, had been urged to leave by Luke and he and Chewie had reluctantly left on the Falcon. Leia's X-Wing had been impounded while she and Luke, along with Mara Jade, had been taken to Coruscant for an informal hearing. In the end, the Jedi had been tasked with dealing with the mysterious, red-headed Force user and since the Jedi Temple on Coruscant had been destroyed, she and Luke had taken Mara with them as their prisoner to the old Jedi Enclave on Tython.
For Luke and the few Jedi that were left, the quiet solitude of Tython provided the perfect backdrop to regroup and begin the complicated task of rebuilding the Jedi Order. For Leia, it was more personal. It was a chance to regroup and rebuild herself.
"I've been talking with your brother," Mara said, looking around Leia's room. "Working with him. He thinks I might be able to help you."
Leia made a derisive noise as she crossed her arms against her chest. "Luke is nothing if not naive."
"And what are you, Leia?" Mara asked pointedly as she took another step into the small room. Looking around again, she continued, "Are you the wise one? Hiding away here and running away from everything and everyone?"
Leia followed Mara's gaze around her room. There were a few half-eaten trays of food piled up by the door. Her bed was unmade with several datacards strewn across it and there were at least a dozen chewed up styluses in her wastebasket. She looked back at Mara Jade. The woman was tall and slender with strong features. Where Leia's cheeks were rounded and soft, Mara's were sharp and angular. And her eyes. Her eyes were a fantastic, brilliant shade of green. Leia hadn't noticed that her eyes were green while she had fought her on Naboo. Or, she thought, perhaps they had been red then, just as Leia's had been.
Leia looked away. There were no mirrors in her room. The Jedi considered them vain. But she knew that the dark veins on her face had faded now, and that her eyes had slowly turned back to the warm, deep brown that they had always been. She only wished her insides could be healed as easily.
At Mara's words, that memory or fragment of darkness that still dwelled inside of Leia flared hot. It was bad enough when Luke came to visit her. She could hardly stand the look of worry and pity on his face. But having this stranger, this Sith, standing there in judgement over her was too much for her to bear. She turned back to look at Mara and finally said, "I don't need to explain anything about my actions to you."
Mara smiled, a very gentle but knowing and perhaps a bit condescending sort of smile. "No," she agreed. "You don't need to explain your actions to me. But I may be able to explain some things to you."
Leia bit her lip, looking back at her datapad and all those datacards. Her research. Her introspection. Her attempt at healing. All of which hadn't provided her with any answers. Not about her father or the Dark Side or the effects of time travel. Nothing. But Mara was Sith. For so many years she had heard and used that word without fear, for it had been a rumor, a phantom, something unreal. Until now, when for all Leia knew, she might be Sith herself. "I don't trust you."
Mara chuckled. "Get in line," she replied, clearing a spot for herself on Leia's cot and plopping down, resting her back against the wall comfortably. "You don't have to trust me, Leia. You just need to listen and then you can make up your own mind. You can still do that, can't you?"
"What," Leia began, ignoring the woman's jibe. "What do you think you can tell me?"
"I can tell you about the Dark Side," she replied, with more than a hint of exasperation. "About how it works and how it makes you feel. What it might make you do." Mara watched Leia knowingly. "And what it might make you think."
Leia swallowed but said nothing.
Mara drew her knees up toward her chest. The position made her look young, as though she and Leia were two girlfriends chatting in a dormitory. "Does that sound like a conversation you'd like to have?" She asked, thumbing through the pile of datacards on the bed before looking back up to Leia, "Jedi Skywalker?"
Leia turned her head and looked out her small window to the trees outside and to the world beyond that. It all seemed so foreign to her now. In the distance, a few of the young Jedi were sparring with practice blades. The sound of their voices as they shouted to one another echoed off the sides of the temple and wafted into her window riding on the scent of the wisteria blooms that lined the courtyard. None of that should seem frightening, Leia knew. And yet, she had been terrified. For six long months she had been living in fear of what lie outside of that tiny window. Although, that wasn't quite right. She was not afraid of Sith or creatures or any real threat, but of herself and who she was or who she might be outside of the four walls of her room.
She looked back at Mara Jade and nodded her head ever so slightly as she pulled her little desk chair toward her and sat down.
"You're not Sith, if that's what you've been thinking," Mara started and Leia felt an instant relief wash over her, even though she didn't trust this woman and wasn't inclined to believe anything that she said, something about hearing her greatest fear dismissed let something inside of her chest unfurl and loosen. "You never were."
"But, I-"
"You flirted with the Dark Side," Mara interrupted. "That's all."
"That's all?" Leia answered, her voice rising. "It's inconceivable. Unacceptable. Irreversible. The things I did."
"Let's talk about them," Mara said, putting her legs down and leaning forward with her elbows on her knees. "The things you did."
Leia shook her head absently. Thinking about everything she had done and been through was torture enough, but speaking the words out loud and to this...this Sith? She could think of nothing worse.
"You killed your father," Mara filled the silence for her.
Leia glared at her. She did not like this red-headed woman from wherever she had come from. She wondered again at why Luke had let her out to roam free.
"That was obviously part of something else," Mara continued. "Some plan," she said, her gaze traveling to that same small window where Leia had looked out for answers so many times before. "I haven't quite figured that part out, yet. But, I think," the woman said as she turned her head back towards Leia, "I think that we both have pieces to that puzzle that could eventually paint the entire picture."
It had occurred to Leia that her father's death was somehow tied to what she and Luke had done and that she had been put into a place where she had little choice but to kill him. His dying words had all but told her so. But there was no way Leia was going to tell Mara Jade anything about any of that. In fact, she drew her thoughts in closer for fear that this woman might glean something from even the slightest stray thought.
"I see," Mara whispered, leaning back again and folding her legs up to the side. "You intend this to be a one way conversation," she stated matter-of-factly. "That's fine. Let's continue. You killed your father but you weren't really given any kind of choice in the matter. That's not the Dark Side. And it's definitely not Sith." Mara's eyes went up to the ceiling and back and forth a few times as she seemed to puzzle something out internally. "You were a pawn in some game, more like," she said, looking back at Leia, the smugness returning to her features. "And that's...very un-Sithlike. Sith are never pawns." And Mara laughed as she said that last sentence.
"You're so proud of being Sith, are you?" Leia asked, anger rising from within her.
"I'm not a Sith," Mara replied seriously, swinging her legs back off the bed and leaning in towards Leia. "I use the Dark Side without apology. When it's necessary. That doesn't make me Sith. Being Sith is...," she stopped and seemed to be choosing her words. "It's action, without deliberation." She stood up and began to pace the length of Leia's little room. "Decision, without consequence. Satisfaction, without sacrifice." And then she stopped pacing and looked down at Leia. "It's power in its rawest form."
"If it's all so wonderful, then what are you doing here, with us?"
Mara stared at Leia for a long, long time. Green eyes on brown. Until finally she smiled, a painful smile and she shook her head and said, "Because, because all of it was...a lie."
Leia took a deep breath in and blew it out, a strange feeling of relief washing over her. Because for a moment she began to wonder, if the Sith could really offer all of what Mara was saying, then what chance did the Jedi have? People, beings, would alway crave that kind of power.
Mara walked over to the window and looked out of it as she spoke. "I wasn't Sith, but I was a pawn, just like them," she said. "The power, the freedom. It was all a lie. We were all pawns and the only way to keep our power was to keep being someone's pawn. First it was the Emperor and then Thrawn and after him it would be someone else. I was collared and leashed and I was too drunk on power to even notice it."
When Mara turned back to look at Leia, her green eyes were glazed over with emotion. "Why are you telling me this?" Leia asked.
"Why?" Mara replied, a laugh bubbling up out of her chest. "Because you're so afraid about what you think you did that you've locked yourself up in this tiny room and can't even imagine ever forgiving yourself. And your brother," she said, hitching her thumb in the direction of the temple commons, "your brother has all but unconditionally forgiven me for everything I have ever done and I know, I know, how unfair that is."
"What have you done?"
"Oh no ," Mara replied, shaking her finger at Leia and shaking off the emotions she had been displaying just as easily. "We're talking about you today. Maybe...maybe one day, we'll talk about what I've done, perhaps in front of a Jedi tribunal, if fate really does have a sense of humor. But...not today."
"I think," Leia said. "That you're right about my father. As hard as it was and as hard as it will be to live with, I don't think I was given much choice in the matter and it certainly felt as if it were by some design."
"Okay, good. See? We're already getting somewhere. We're done with your father." Mara sat back down on Leia's bed and leaned back. "You should talk to your brother about that, though. He's very good at working through feelings of guilt."
Leia studied Mara closely. "Just how close have you become with my brother?"
Mara laughed, loudly. "The Emperor's Hand and the darling of the Jedi?" she said, stretching her hand above her head like she was reading the tagline of a newsvid.
Leia studied the woman again. She was much prettier when she was relaxed and smiling and she could certainly see the attraction if her brother was indeed enamored with the not-Sith, Dark Side Force user. Even Leia, who had had little opportunity to experience the friendship of another woman since her days back when she and Winter would spend their summers together, found Mara surprisingly easy to warm up to.
Shaking those thoughts away, she went back to Mara's words. "Emperor's Hand?" Leia asked, recalling that was the title that Thrawn had used when he had introduced her on Naboo.
The smile faded from Mara's face. "More like Emperor's puppet. Or pawn," she whispered. "But…"
"I know. We're not talking about you."
"So," Mara said, soberly. "Who's next? Should we talk about all those worlds you visited?"
Leia thought about her visits, following the trail of her father. The memories were still muddled. She could remember being there and then she could remember the devastation she found when she had returned. The actual act...the slaughtering of those innocents. She could feel their pain, almost picture her lightsaber, slashing and blazing a gory path even though deep down she thought she knew for certain that she had not raised her lightsaber to any of them, not even once.
"It was a Force projection," Mara stated simply.
Leia refocused on Mara.
"A team of Sith were sent to follow you and they are the ones who slaughtered those Force sensitives. Not you."
"But how?"
"False memories were implanted inside of you. It's a talent. A talent not many people have, as far as I know in the Sith ranks. Or in the Jedi, if your brother is to be believed."
"Who, then? Was that my father's doing?" She couldn't imagine her father intentionally causing her so much pain, only then to remember that he had forced her to kill him in the end.
"We had a Sith embedded in your group. He showed promise with projection, although he wasn't quite as adept as we thought he was."
"Arch."
Mara nodded. "That would be the one, yes."
"So, I didn't…"
"No," Mara answered tersely. "Next."
Leia's anger flared at Mara's dismissive tone. "Is this some sort of game to you? Because it's my life we're talking about here. My memories and feelings."
Mara held her hand up. "I apologize," she said, and Leia felt that she was sincere. "I'm not used to dealing with anyone who cares about what they've done or how it made them feel. I was taught anything like that...was a waste of time."
"What you do," Leia replied. "How it makes you feel. More importantly, how it makes other people feel. I was taught that that was everything."
Mara shook her head, considering Leia's words for a moment and then she asked, "What next?"
Leia thought of her father's Force ghost that had visited her and of how he had spoken of being with her mother even when he was not on Naboo. And then she thought of the way that she had sent herself to Han's dreams some nights. He had never mentioned anything to her about it, but she was almost sure that she had actually been there. She shook her head and looking back at Mara, she asked, "Could my father project?"
"If you're asking, then probably, yes. I didn't spend much time with him."
Leia paused for a moment. "Before I went to Naboo, I landed on a planet of Force users," she said. She hadn't told anyone about what had happened there and felt vulnerable and naive sharing this information with a stranger. But she continued, "They knew only of the Dark Side and I stayed a couple of days with them, but after a while I began to feel like I was drowning. Losing myself. In...hatred. And when I went to leave, they tried to stop me and I…"
"How many?" Mara asked.
Leia looked at her. "Five or six." She shrugged. "Maybe as many as ten or twelve."
"And how many were there? Total?"
"A hundred. At least."
"And they didn't chase after you?"
"They didn't have any starships. They were waiting for something or someone to come and get them. A sign."
"Could you remember where this planet was?"
Leia stood, remembering her fears of releasing this planet of Dark Sider users on the galaxy. "Why? So you can go there and start your own Sith order?"
Mara sighed. "No, not Sith, remember?" she said patiently, sighing. "Maybe to tell your brother and to maybe go back there and see what happened when…?" She looked hard at Leia. "Something happened to the Force, the Dark Side, in particular, when you killed your father. That part of me, the darkness? What had been my constant companion and fount of strength throughout most of my life. It fizzled and faded, felt like a curtain being drawn back, letting the light flood in."
Leia had felt that, too. Almost that exact same feeling. In fact, she couldn't have described it better. She was sure that moment was exactly what she and Luke had traveled back in time for. But she wasn't going to tell Mara Jade that. "Why do you think that was?"
Mara shrugged her shoulders. "That's a piece of the puzzle that I'm not privy to. Although I think you and your brother could probably shed some light on it."
Leia glanced away.
"It's alright. I understand. Trust takes a long time. But if everyone, everywhere felt the Dark Side wane."
Leia looked back at Mara. "Then maybe that planet of Dark Side Force users-"
"Has become a planet of potential allies."
Leia nodded and sat back down. "You should tell Luke about it. And Ar-three can help with the coordinates."
Mara smiled and then grew serious. "It sounds like they would've turned you into Sith if you would've stayed. And killed you if you hadn't fought back to leave."
Leia nodded again. She had tried to convince herself of that same fact for many sleepless nights now.
"So, your father," Mara stated, counting off on her fingers. "The Force users that you didn't kill on all those worlds and one world with Dark Side Force users that you fought, in self defense, to leave. Is that all?"
Leia looked at her, studying this woman. "You say you're not Sith but practiced the Dark Side? What's the difference?"
"Sith only see and study the Dark Side. No matter the circumstances. Even if it's a matter of killing millions of innocents, Sith will always choose the Dark Side answer to any problem. It's...very limiting. But...so is you Jedi only relying on the Light."
"So, what are you saying, the Jedi should consider killing millions of innocents as an acceptable answer to some of their problems?"
"You and I both know that most decisions aren't so epic. That some things can be changed, some wars won, or gods forbid peace accomplished, if your side would've just had the stones to make some difficult calls and our side wouldn't've been so...nauseatingly maniacal."
"So you made decisions that would be considered both Dark and Light?"
"I used the Force and I used my conscience to make the right call for the right situation. Don't misunderstand me, I was not...innocent. I was an assassin. But I was usually killing people that deserved to be stopped. And those that didn't, I helped if I could. But in the end, I always got the job done." She sighed. "The Dark Side and Light Side were but weapons in my arsenal while I operated more in the grey."
"There is no grey," Leia repeated rotely. How many times had her Jedi teachers told her that?
Mara smiled broadly, almost laughing. "The galaxy is mostly grey. Very few times and instances are our choices so clear as to be perfectly right or perfectly wrong."
Leia didn't say anything, finding few examples to present as arguments.
"Take the business man," Mara offered, "who works all day to provide for his family. Goes home and does homework with his kids and helps his wife put away the dishes. Bathes his children's little heads and tucks them into bed every night. But he also cheats on his taxes. Flirts with his secretary. Drives his hovercar over the speed limit and illegally gambles on a few bolloh tournaments. Is he a good man? Or is he a bad man?"
Leia shook her head, "You're oversimplifying it."
"And you're overcomplicating it." She snapped back. "That man? He's living in the grey, Leia. Like most every being in the galaxy does. Like I have and knew it, embraced it. Like you and Luke have, and the Jedi and Republic when they secretly created your Jedi Squadron. Only you fight and deny it."
"It feels dangerous," Leia said. "To not consider the Dark Side bad."
Mara laughed a bit. "The Dark Side is bad," she said. "It's an enemy that breeds the nauseatingly maniacal. But like any worthy enemy, it should not be underestimated or ignored. It should be studied, understood and controlled. You felt the hatred, I can see that in your eyes. But it wasn't the first time you had ever experienced hate, was it? It was just the only time that it nearly won."
Leia shook her head. This was a lot to take in and she couldn't argue that the points Mara was making deserved some reflection. She looked back at the mysterious, red-headed woman. "There were three Sith at my parents' house on Naboo."
Mara nodded. "Yes, I heard about that attack."
"I tricked them," Leia said.
"Tricked them, how?"
"I invaded, projected," Leia corrected herself, "myself into the female Sith. Her partner killed her, sensing it was me."
"So," Mara replied, lifting her chin and crossing her arms in front of her. "You have the oh-so- elusive talent of projection?"
"I didn't know what it was," Leia said. "And it came at a cost." Looking at Mara, she added, "That was when the darkness started. When the hatred started to win."
"Kylioh left a little bit of herself behind, did she?"
Leia nodded and shrugged her shoulders. It sounded right, but she was still unsure.
"I may be able to help you with that. If you'll trust me."
Leia considered it for a quick moment and then nodded her consent.
Mara sat up straight and folded her legs across one another in front of her. She held her hands out for Leia to take and Leia scooted her chair closer and accepted both of Mara's hands into her own. It began almost immediately. Mara's presence pressed into Leia's mind, it felt as though the other woman was slipping into her skin. She felt her fingernails scraping deep in the back of her chest where that ache in her heart lay. And then Mara pulled and tugged. Although Leia wasn't trying to, her body seemed to fight back, trying to hold on to that darkness inside of her. And then finally, something broke and that ache slipped from its hiding place and crawled up out of her throat.
Leia coughed, dropping Mara's hands. There was definitely an odd hollow feeling where that anger had been. Leia stood, placed her hands on her knees doubling over as she coughed a bit more. Their entire conversation, all of Mara's words had been making Leia feel better and better. But this? This felt like the cleansing that Leia had been searching for all this time alone in her room. This was the exorcism that she realized now she would've never accomplished on her own. Turning her head to Mara, she asked, "You...you can project, too?"
Mara breathed in and out deeply. Her eyes were shut and Leia watched as she seemed to be processing whatever it was that she had just ripped out of Leia's chest. Finally, she opened her eyes and smiled, albeit somewhat sadly. "It was what made me special."
A few weeks later...
"You sure you don't want to come with us?"
Leia watched as Mara and Luke packed the last of their things into the small freighter. "No, thanks, Luke. I think I should start thinking about returning to Coruscant."
"That's right," Luke said with a smile. "The Jedi Adjunct position has been approved. I think they've even named a few already, haven't they?"
"They have," she replied. "Although, I don't think I'll be jumping into anything like that right away."
Luke took her hand in his. "You're the only one holding yourself back now. You know that, right?"
Leia looked around her, to the wide open sky and the thick forest in the distance. "I'm out of my room, Luke. Feeling much better, thanks to the both of you. But I'm not ready to...make any big decisions yet."
"What about this decision?" Luke asked, as he drew Leia's lightsaber out of his robe and placed it in the palm of her hand. She had given it to him that day on Naboo, after they had loaded their father's remains into the Republic Cruiser. "A Jedi should always have their lightsaber with them, Leia."
She wrapped her fingers around the cool metal of her lightsaber's hilt. "I don't know if I can…"
"Wear it," Luke urged. "It'll be there if you ever need it and the Force will guide you if you ever need to draw it."
"The Force and I aren't on the best terms right now."
"The Force is trying to figure out what it is now," Mara Jade interrupted. And Leia watched as Mara and Luke exchanged a quick glance. "Whatever happened on Naboo, whether it was put into balance or...something else," she continued. "We all need to learn to live with it."
"Mara's right," Luke said. "This is part of what we talked about."
Leia knew he was referring to their manipulation of the past. Apparently he hadn't told Mara everything yet. But with the way the pair was looking at each other, Leia thought that it wouldn't be long now.
"The Force has been changed and that means the Jedi," he glanced once again back at Mara, "and the Sith need to change along with it."
"As in?" Leia asked.
"As in," Luke answered. "Maybe there shouldn't be a Jedi and a Sith-"
"Just the Force," Mara finished his sentence for him.
Yep, definitely won't be long now, Leia mused and then smiled at both of them. She was happy for her brother. Rebuilding the Jedi Order. That was the kind of lifelong ambition that would keep him happy for years to come and it would've made their father infinitely proud.
Leia looked down at the lightsaber in her hand and then slowly attached it to her belt. "Okay," she said. "Be safe."
Luke and Mara walked up the ramp to their transport. At the top, Luke stopped and waved back at his sister. "May the Force be with you, Leia."
Leia waved back and then watched as they lifted off and flew away.