Title: "Black Pawn"
Author(s): vader_incarnate
Timeframe: during Dark Empire
Characters: Luke Skywalker, Mara Jade
Genre: Angst. Romance, kinda. Philosophy. Missing scene. Longest short story ever.
Summary: She's here to save him. He's not ready to be saved quite yet.
Notes: So in Legends, Luke Skywalker totally fell to the dark side in Dark Empire. It happened in one graphic novel and was scarcely spoken of forever after. And for some reason, he also gets a new hand. It has been a source of frustration for me for literally decades - for so long, in fact, that they went and changed the whole canon on me in the meantime.
Many thanks to ViariSkywalker for helping me pull this together and whip it into a more cohesive whole.
He was standing with his back towards the door when she arrived, facing an enormous window and dramatically silhouetted against it – his black cloak and black clothing providing an intense contrast against the fading light of Byss' setting blue sun.
Although Byss was not a beautiful planet, its sunset was singularly spectacular, and she felt her own breath catch in her throat at the sight. The blue sun sat on the edge of the horizon, embraced by a golden halo and throwing the day's last rays of brilliant light into the darkening sky. The night was fast approaching, but for this smallest sliver of time, the tiny blue dwarf was still holding it off, and the day's final resplendent beams of light shone through and past the dark.
Through force of long habit, Mara almost, almost pulled the small blaster from her boot sheath at the sight of his unprotected back, before she sharply reminded herself that she was not here for a kidnapping or assassination. Some habits died hard, though, and she compromised by unclipping her unignited lightsaber hilt from her belt before coming forward.
It had been a very long time since Mara had embarked on an extraction mission. She hoped she wasn't too out of practice - she checked her belt and patted the data pad inside her shirt, reassuring herself that everything was in place.
She made no attempt to be silent, but neither did she deliberately try to draw him from the window that commanded his attention. Luke half-turned towards her as she drew near, and she saw the small, wistful smile that danced across his lips. "Sunset has always been my favorite time of day," he said, without explanation or preamble. He sounded as if they had just left each other's company fifteen minutes before. "Even as a boy, I made a point to always watch the suns set. The twin sunset on Tatooine was amazing."
She could hardly have disagreed more - she'd hated the desert planet of Tatooine, during her tenure there as Jabba's dancing girl Arica, with a fury that rivaled the heat of the planet's twin suns themselves. She had bathed for hours after getting off-planet, and she had still felt like she had sand in her hair for months afterward.
But she could hardly say that. So she settled for the old non-committal standby: "I see."
He laughed and turned his head fully towards her, eyes twinkling. For an instant, the golden rays of the sunset glimmered darkly in his right eye, and she suppressed a sudden shiver before the light shifted and both eyes shone blue once more. "Liar," he teased, wagging his finger in mock-accusation. "I am a Jedi, you know. You hate the sunsets like ..." He trailed off, then grinned. "Well, with the fury of the twin suns."
Mara half-snorted, surprised, despite herself. She inwardly berated her paranoid inner assassin instincts and relaxed a fraction of a fraction, revising her expectations of this extraction mission. She hadn't known what to expect when she had heard that Luke had ostensibly taken his father's place as this new clone Emperor's enforcer, but she had never known Lord Vader, at least, to make a joke. She tucked her lightsaber back into her belt.
Luke looked very much the same. She had seen the security videos recorded from the Battle of Coruscant before his sudden disappearance, and he seemed almost to be wearing the same clothes. Luke did seem to enjoy a monochromatic wardrobe: he wore lightweight black body armor, with a worn plastisteel breastplate and a padded shirt and pants underneath. Black boots glimmered darkly in the light of the blue sun.
She shot him a rueful smile. "You caught me," she admitted. "Tatooine is a dirty, Force-forsaken dustball, and if I never see its suns again - whether sunrise, sunset, or from the other side of a telescope - I will die a happy woman."
"A wretched hive of scum and villainy," he agreed companionably, his smile widening a fraction. He turned back to the window, his eyes on the gold streaked sky and his mind far away. On Tatooine ten years earlier, perhaps, when he'd been a farm boy in fact and not just in jest.
"It's been a long time since Tatooine," he admitted, as if reading her thoughts. "I used to dream about going back, but eventually I realized that even if I went back, it wouldn't be home anymore."
She didn't respond. Mara had never had a home, growing up, unless she counted the Imperial Palace on Coruscant, and that had been more a place to keep her equipment and extra clothing than someplace that would inspire the kind of longing that suffused Luke's voice. She had the Wild Karrde now, but she wasn't sure she'd ever think of Karrde's ship with the naked yearning that Luke felt for his dirty, Force-forsaken dustball.
She stood instead, uncomfortable, and waited for him to finish his contemplation of the sunset, casting her gaze around the room and observing her surroundings as she did so. Mara had looked around as she entered, of course, in the professionally perfunctory manner of an assassin casing a target's living quarters, but she took this opportunity to take a more detailed survey of the room.
It was, as she had noted upon her entry, richly appointed, and now she noticed a luxury that flirted with the very edge of obscenity. The predominant colors were ruby and black with occasional accents of metallic silver, and though the furnishings held those colors in common, the opulent textures – soft velvets and smooth silks, soft rancor leather and stiff brocade, polished stonework and gleaming wood – had been thrown together haphazardly, without regard for the clashing aesthetics.
A gleaming obsidian fireplace roared merrily to their left, flanked by two great black leather chairs atop a plush red carpet. If the fire had any effect on the room's temperature, though, she scarcely noticed it in the icy chamber. To their right was a small table made from some polished black wood, again with two chairs drawn up to it, draped with a cloth of ruby embroidered shimmersilk. Atop the table sat a pair of covered silver plates and two sets of stoneware and fine cutlery.
It was garish. It was opulent. It was not the place one would expect to find a utilitarian moisture farmer turned Jedi.
Mara reached experimentally towards the Force, delicately tracing Luke's presence. He felt, much as he looked, very much the same as he always had. There was and had always been a serenity to Luke that befit either a Jedi or a statue, and though she would not admit it to anyone but herself, she had always found it somehow comforting. His Force presence was calm, warm, serene: a soothing tonic after the stressful days she had spent on the run on this planet, trying to break into the Imperial stronghold.
She felt a slight frown creasing her forehead, though, as she probed deeper. It was difficult to describe the feeling, or to quantify it through the Force – but did his presence feel somehow harder than before? Her Force-sense was not like touch or feeling, but as she extended her mental tendrils forward –
There. There it was. She pushed, and found a sudden solid wall. It hadn't been apparent at first, but now that she found it, she couldn't believe she had missed it before: in contrast to Luke's usually warm Force presence, it was hard, cold, unsettling. She didn't know what to make of it, but she could sense faintly that there was something behind it, behind this door set in place by Luke's iron will: a turmoil and uncertainty that made her shiver.
"People always tell you that the sun always rises," he mused suddenly, as if sensing her probe and her discomfort. He probably did. "But what the optimists forget, or perhaps what they choose to ignore, is that it always sets, too. That no matter how long or bright the day may seem, at the end of it, the sun sets and the night comes. And though there is beauty in the hope and promise of a bright new day, so too is there beauty in the setting sun and the fading light."
Mara's frown deepened. That had hardly been comforting. There was an intimacy of experience in that statement that told her that this was no idle philosophical musing. Yet she hesitated. She knew that this was exactly the conversation she had come here to have - whether it hid behind grandiose philosophy and pretty words or if, as she would have preferred it, they stripped the words away and just started talking about the naked truth of what exactly a Jedi Knight was doing in an emperor's stronghold.
But she found that, despite herself, she wasn't quite ready for this conversation yet. She told herself that it had nothing to do with fear about its outcome and everything to do with being monumentally exhausted after scaling six stories of sheer black rock with little more than a rope and a grappling hook, and she almost believed it.
She wondered, though, if she had been hasty in sheathing her lightsaber.
"You know I'm not a philosopher, Farmboy," she said, slowly, finally. "But it seems to me that we're always finding ways to push back the darkness. Ever since the first being in the galaxy lit the first fire. The night might be dark and full of secrets, but no one needs to sit alone in the darkness – unless he chooses to do so."
"Yes. Of course." A small smile tinted with a faint trace of bitterness, and he glanced again at Byss' setting sun. "Unless he chooses to do so," he repeated, musingly. He absently flexed the fingers of his right hand, and they watched as the last rays of Byss' sun sank below the horizon. A billion lights had sprung into existence below, an impressive assemblage that rivaled the vista of stars in the night sky on less settled worlds.
Luke shook himself visibly, then gestured towards the little wooden table in invitation, his long black cloak swirling slightly with the movement. "I'm sorry for that. I know you didn't come here for philosophy. You must be hungry. I asked the kitchen staff to prepare dinner for two. If my agents were correct, you haven't seen much in the way of real food for a good week or so."
Mara blinked, caught wrong-footed. It was the first indication she'd had that he'd been expecting her rescue, and it had again hardly been phrased in the most reassuring way. His ... agents? One wouldn't expect a prisoner to have agents, and even though Leia had told her about his ostensible title as a Sith Apprentice, she hadn't expected him to be quite so well-adjusted to the position.
"Ration bars can be rather delicious, once you've gotten used to them," she replied as she took her seat at the small table, thoughts racing. There were about a dozen things wrong with his dinner invitation, and she had a hard time sorting out which of them boded worst.
He grinned, white teeth flashing. "Lying again," he accused, and sat down across from her at the table.
He had known she had been here, as early as a week ago. How much else did he know, and how much did the clone emperor know? Imperial agents had apparently been watching her carefully enough that they knew she wasn't enjoying the most nutritious daily meals in the galaxy, so they had to know she'd slowly been making her way to the fortress. He had been expecting her to arrive, perhaps even up to the hour, given how hot and fresh the meal that awaited them seemed when he lifted the covers to reveal the steaming contents. How long had he been waiting, preparing for her arrival?
This was not shaping itself into the easy extraction mission she had been hoping for.
"I rather expected you to come through the window, when they told me you'd decided to scale the walls," he said, as if in answer to her unspoken thoughts. "Which was one of the many reasons I was watching the sunset when you came through the door." He picked up a silver ladle and spooned generous helpings of some creamy soup into both of their bowls. He picked up a spoon and took a sip, giving her a rueful smile. "Pretty sure this isn't poisoned."
"That's reassuring," she said dryly before throwing caution to the winds and picking up her own spoon. If this was poisoned after all, at least she wasn't going to have to die hungry.
The soup was good - very good. Definitely the best thing she had eaten since landing on Byss and going underground, and quite probably the best thing she'd eaten ... well, probably since she'd last been served by the Imperial kitchens. It was a rich and creamy white chowder full of bobbing chunks of root vegetables and tender meat.
"And I may have come through your window had I known which one was yours. I'll know next time."
He raised a golden eyebrow. "You're more than welcome to use the door."
She didn't answer that, asking a question instead: the one, from the myriad flashing through her thoughts, that seemed the most pressing. "You said that your agents had been watching me for a week. Does that mean that the clone emperor knows I'm here, too?"
He shook his head. "No. I paid them well to keep their silence. And I rather doubt the Emperor would be willing to hear the story of how they found out you were on the planet in the first place."
It was her turn to raise an eyebrow. "Oh? How was that?"
He smirked. "You fastened a guard's boots together while he was sleeping on watch and stole his extra uniform."
She blushed, furious at herself. "He actually reported himself?" she demanded. She was still wearing the hapless man's uniform now, actually, save for the boots, which had lacked proper sheaths for her weapons. The olive jacket was tight across her chest, and she had his belt tightened to the last notch, but it was surprisingly difficult to find clothing, clean or not, as a renegade hiding on an enemy planet.
Though her caution had evidently been unnecessary if Imperial Intelligence had known she was here all along.
Luke shrugged, still smirking. Smirking from, she was grouchily sure, the self-satisfaction of catching her so wrong-footed. "I punished him lightly and rewarded him well, as he had expected. There are benefits to ruling through respect rather than outright fear."
She chose to ignore that, favoring the dinner, instead, with her attention. The main course was Berbersian lobster and a side of Balka greens, and the lobster had been thoughtfully pre-shelled. The kitchens had provided a small pot of rich, creamy butter for dipping, kept warm and liquid over a small flame. Dessert was something sinful and chocolatey in a sauce made from fresh berries.
"I did very much miss Imperial cooking," she admitted, as she finished the lobster and reached for a fresh fork to start on her dessert. "I'm not much of a cook myself, and most smugglers couldn't tell a fine steak from the southern end of a northbound bantha."
"No doubt," Luke said in a perfect deadpan, "if I had known the Emperor fed his servants so well, I wouldn't have bothered falling off the Cloud City on Bespin. Would have saved everyone a lot of time."
She was pretty sure he was joking. "But then you'd probably be as fat as the southern end of a northbound bantha by now. You'd put Jabba to shame."
"Oh, I don't know. My father seemed to do fine with Imperial cuisine. Maybe I inherited his metabolism."
"Your father was a lot taller than you," she countered. She chose to leave out the fact that she wasn't entirely sure how Darth Vader would have enjoyed food at all, Imperial cuisine or not. "Though it seems you inherited his fashion sense if nothing else."
"Well. They say black is slimming, after all."
Mara sighed, scowling down at her plate once again and pushing her chocolate sinful thing about with her fork. "This is stupid," she declared suddenly.
Luke blinked, uncomprehending. "Dessert? Or having an entirely black wardrobe?"
She snorted in spite of herself. "Well, that too," she admitted. "Think of the potential bleach disasters. But no, I mean this whole …" she trailed off, biting her lip and motioning with her fork in a gesture that took in the room: the meal, the table, the fire, the window. "This whole 'I am unquestionably in control of this situation, here, have some dinner as my honored guest' thing. I get it, Luke. I was never very good at the Emperor's lessons, but he trained me, too.
" You must anticipate the actions of your adversaries and those of your allies. Even those of your friends. It is the only way you can be prepared to take advantage of opportunity and, conversely, to avoid disaster," she quoted from memory. "I was never subtle enough for all that. But I recognize it when I see it. So, good job I suppose. Honestly, I never thought that you'd be any good at it, but I guess control is a Jedi tenet, too. But it's stupid."
Luke stared at her for several long moments, his fork frozen comically on its way to his lips. Then he threw back his head and laughed: as honest and as unfettered a laugh as she'd ever heard from him. He set down his fork and wiped at his eyes with a sleeve. "Oh, Mara. Can't a man just have a nice dinner and conversation with you, without it needing to be about furtherance of the Sith Arts?"
"Honestly? No," she answered flatly. "I'm a straightforward person, Luke. Let's skip the subtle verbal sparring and talk about what I came to talk about."
His smile shrank, but did not disappear. "Fine. Where do you want to begin? Why are you here?"
Well that was a good question.
She had felt it when he turned. The galaxy had felt it, anyone with the barest Force sense would have been able to feel it - the rip, the tear, the schism - when the great light of his Force presence suddenly went Dark. So she had come to -
To what?
In the end, she chose the simplest answer, and the truest. "Me, Skywalker?" she asked, trying for flippancy. "I'm here to rescue you."
The rage was total and instantaneous. His face twisted into a snarl, his eyes shuttered, and the room's carefully cultivated aura of casual conversational familiarity shattered like glass. Instead, a stormcloud gathered.
"Did Leia tell you to say that?" he demanded, voice dripping with acid. Luke slammed a fist on the table, not hard, but hard enough to make the stoneware and glasses jump. " Leia needs to keep her nose out of my business for once and trust me to handle myself."
Mara frowned but otherwise did not react outwardly. Inwardly, her thoughts skittered and raced about, trying to reconcile the Luke Skywalker she'd expected - Farmboy, Rebel, Jedi - with this reaction. "Leia didn't send me, or tell me to say anything. I came on my own."
He continued to seethe, and she studied him again. He was shielding from her, his Force presence still seeming calm, at odds with his reaction and his obvious rampant emotions. His color was high, his lips curled into a snarl, his fists bunched. "What the hells is wrong with you, Skywalker?"
His expression clouded. " Nothing is wrong with me. I've just opened my eyes for the first time in fifteen years." He closed his eyes, fighting for calm, and ran harried hands through his hair, pressing his palms against his temples.
Mara marveled silently at the sight and quashed a rising sense of unease. Luke Skywalker, struggling to calm himself.
"Do you have any idea what it's like to be led around by the nose all your life? To have your path dictated to you by scheming old Jedi Masters and the currents of the Force?" he demanded. His voice was rising, quickly approaching a tumultuous crescendo. "For the first time in my life, I'm in control, and I know exactly what I'm doing. I don't need your worry, and I certainly don't need a rescue. I chose to come here, and I will choose when I leave. And that will be after I've obtained the codes to the World Devastators."
She frowned. "As it happens, I do know what it's like to be led around by my nose all my life."
He looked up and met her eyes quickly, and he had the grace to look abashed. "Mara, I -"
She waved her hand dismissively. "It's done. But is that what you're here for? The control codes for the World Devastators?"
He sank back into his seat, deflated, arms dropping back onto the armrests. He hesitated. "That's what it started as. But I've also learned so much. There's no one else in the galaxy anymore who knows so much about the Force – either side of the Force. Yoda is dead, and Ben Kenobi is gone, but the Emperor has a Jedi holocron. It's the single greatest repository of Jedi teachings remaining. I need it, if I will rebuild the Order."
She snorted. "So he lured you in with the promises of power and knowledge? I think I've heard this story before."
He glowered. "That's not what it's like, Mara. I'm completely in control here. He only thinks he has me falling, but I'm not, can't you see? I'm learning from him, and soon I'll have learned enough that I'll be able to defeat him."
He was pretty obviously not in control, and Mara sat back herself to reconsider. Palpatine, she realized, clearly had his hands in this. He had always been a master of manipulation, and Luke's conflicted state now bore testament to the poisoned whispers that had been pouring into his ears.
"This is insanity," she said, finally. "How can you possibly believe he doesn't know exactly what you're doing? How can you beat him at deception when he's the one who taught it to you in the first place?"
"You don't understand the stakes. He resurrected - somehow, Palpatine returned, we learned, and I learned how. He has clones. He has extra clone bodies waiting for transference, if his physical form dies, and who knows how many he has?" He stared at her, pleading and earnest. "I need more time; I can't leave now."
There had to be a key, something that she was missing. Something that would make him see reason. Leia obviously wasn't the answer; Palpatine had already whispered poison into that relationship, corrupting Luke's perception of it, and set a trap where that key should go. She groped for an alternative. "Think of all the lives lost, if you go too far."
"Too many lives have been lost already. I've seen so many friends die these last ten years. This could be our only chance to end this once and for all, before even more die."
She pushed back from the table, decisively. "You're in too deep to think about this clearly. We need to leave as soon as possible - right now."
"Think clearly?" he snorted. His face darkened. "This is the first time in my life I've ever thought clearly. I'm not leaving, Mara."
"You are, actually. I was planning for this to be an extraction, but I'm not fundamentally opposed to changing the objective to kidnapping. Remember when you passed me the berry sauce over dinner? There was a contact poison embedded in my glove."
He smirked, and Mara realized she had miscalculated. "Clever," he admitted. He flexed the fingers of his right hand, looking at them, before glancing back at her face. "Too bad you touched my mechanical hand."
She blanched. "Wow. I must be getting rusty. I am actively ashamed of myself for missing that."
Luke grinned. "So no, I'm not leaving," he said, standing. His cloak billowed slightly. "And I'm sorry, but I'm afraid I can't let you leave, either."
It was Mara's turn to smirk. "Because there's a division of stormtroopers standing outside the door?"
"Well - yes."
"Please. I said I was rusty, not incompetent. I set the sleeping gas canisters to go off twelve minutes after I opened that door." She glanced at her wrist chrono and held up her index finger in the galactically recognized gesture for wait just a second. "And the bombs in the lift and stairwell should be going off right about -"
On cue, her carefully rigged explosives rocked the building, making the glassware on the table chatter.
Luke looked half amused, half exasperated. "I guess that leaves us at an impasse, then."
She shrugged. "Seems like it."
They both stared at each other.
Luke moved suddenly, and Mara's finely honed and overly violent instincts reacted before the rest of her brain could stop, and she slammed the dinner knife she'd been holding straight into the table.
In the blink of an eye, Luke's mechanical hand was impaled against the table, her dinner knife buried to the hilt in it and still quivering slightly with the force. His fingers twitched spastically, the durasteel knife having damaged its inner circuits.
They stared at the knife together for a long moment, Mara very nearly as shocked as Luke. A distant corner of her mind howled a warning as they both slowly lifted their eyes to meet each other's gaze.
Luke's eyes flashed gold, and as quick as thought, a black aura filled with crackling blue sparks coalesced around him. The energy was volatile and chaotic, a gathering tsunami of rage. Her hand darted down to her saber, bracing for an attack.
If it was a hand to hand fight, she would have won. She was better trained and unafraid to fight dirty.
If they fought with lightsabers, it might have been a draw. He was better, but not with his left hand, and Jedi trained in defense.
But he did neither and -
And he shot his hand out and clenched his fingers and -
She felt herself suddenly jerked and lifted by an invisible hand - his invisible hand, and she tried to draw in the breath for a scream but her airway was blocked and she clawed uselessly at her neck where the relentless grip tightened and she kicked and kicked in futility and -
But Force, he was so strong. Too strong. She had always known he was stronger than her but he'd never shown it like this and his power was different now and she felt the Force within him as a raging tempest, an inexorable tide of fury directed at her and she knew without seeing that his eyes burned gold with it -
She had seen this happen. She had seen this and heard about it and everyone in the Empire knew but knowing something academically was different than finding herself here with him and the fear was like a living thing itself, overwhelming her mind with terror and panic and impulsively, desperately, she pushed it out towards him -
- can't breathe can't Force no no no can't breathe not like this please no -
- not you not you you're not supposed to be like Vader no Luke please -
And as quickly as it started, she collapsed. She dropped like a rock and gasped at the shock and pain as her hip hit hard against stone, thankful that she could gasp, that she could breathe.
The conflagration in the Force had been thoroughly doused, revulsion drowning the flame of fury, and when she reached out she felt the dark essence had retreated to the shadows as if chastened.
And Luke -
Luke looked at her like she'd kicked him, big blue eyes wide and shocked. "Mara, gods, I'm so sorry -"
He reached his hand out to her again, eyes full of pain, and she uselessly, instinctively scuttled back away from his reach.
He froze, and she felt the shame rise in him, pouring off him in wave after wave as he realized what he'd done, what he'd come close to doing, who he'd come close to channeling. His presence burned with it, with disgust and loathing for himself and for his father.
He dropped his hand.
Mara took stock. Her throat hurt, her hip ached, and she had pushed herself away nearly into the wall, too far from the exit. She coughed experimentally, hand gingerly going to her throat to feel for bruises or injury. A faint headache was starting to take root in her brain, and she could feel her pulse steadily beating through her temples in a faintly staccato march of pain.
The Force swirled, a dark vortex, a halo of shadow, but it offered her no guidance.
Luke's shield, his cold wall, had fallen in those few chaotic seconds, and she could feel his true emotions now, roiling within his Force presence. There was determination, shame, but boiling underneath those was a river of rage. Luke's presence was gargantuan itself, but he'd always made an effort to be smaller, calmer; now, he let his emotions run rampant, and she could sense the underlying anger -
It was unfamiliar, from Luke. But agonizingly familiar, because she had felt a Force presence like this before, trapped in a broken body and under a layer of durasteel.
"Ow. This," she said cautiously, "is a distinctly unhealthy way of dealing with your issues. And not just for you, but for everyone around you. And maybe even the whole damned galaxy."
Luke sighed, and she looked up. He had wrenched the knife out of his useless hand, and he was standing now between her and the door. Sparks flew from the damaged circuitry, and his cloak billowed slightly from his movement.
His eyes were blue, but they were hard. The shame had transmogrified to anger at himself and his absent father, but he'd pushed those aside for now. What she sensed from him now was determination, cold will. The Vader in him had subsided, but there was still Darkness there, of a different flavor. His own Darkness. "I'm sorry," he said again, "but I'm not leaving. And I can't let you leave, either."
His good hand floated absently down to his lightsaber hilt.
She stood up, stretching out her neck tentatively, and mentally switched her mission objective from kidnap to escape. "That's a shame," she admitted, and shifted her feet to a ready position. She kept her hand studiously away from her lightsaber. "I was really thinking this would be easier."
"I'm not done. You have no idea how much is at stake."
The room had darkened, and the lights, the fireplace, and even twinkling city lights below and outside the massive window seemed suddenly dimmer. The shadows swirled like a living thing, slinking across the room to coil at his feet, excited and ready.
She pivoted, circling to the right. He was between her and the door, and he was wary. He knew where she was heading, and he was already crouched, ready for an attack. "Seems to me, Skywalker, like maybe you should cut your losses before you lose the house."
"I'm willing to pay the price. My life or even my soul, to prevent the Emperor from resurrecting again, from unleashing his World Devastators on the galaxy? That's not a price, that's a bargain."
"But what about all the people who will have to pay it with you? Leia and Han, their children - once the Emperor is gone, if he's truly gone this time, who will save them from you? You're acting like you're allowing yourself to become a martyr, but you wouldn't; you'd be a tyrant."
He snarled, and her hand jerked reflexively to her lightsaber. She tore it away, quickly - she didn't want this to escalate to a lightsaber duel. "I would never hurt them. Never."
Her still aching throat offered a counter argument, and she touched it briefly. "Honestly, Farmboy, you're not inspiring a lot of confidence. You have to realize that the Emperor is manipulating you."
He smiled faintly. "Of course he is. Treachery is the way of the Sith. But at least he's honest about it. Nothing about the greater good, or a 'certain point of view.'" This last, he spat with an ill-concealed rage that spoke to a long festering wound.
"The way of the Sith," she repeated sardonically. "Is that where you are with all this then, Skywalker? Has he given you a Sith name yet? Should I be addressing you as Darth Vader the Second, or did you just inherit the job and not the title?"
His eyes narrowed with annoyance that he did not bother to suppress, but neither did he directly answer her question. "I have no further interest in being a pawn to destiny. Why is it Darkness to want to choose my own path? Why should I suffer to be bent by the will of the Force, rather than bending it to mine?"
"You're still a pawn. You've just switched colors."
"But why content myself with being a black pawn, when I could be the black king?"
A stormcloud was gathering in the room, and in the Force an icy wind stirred. The shadows surged, pregnant with anticipation. Mara suppressed a sudden shiver.
"Join me," he pleaded. Gold had seeped into the edges of his eyes. "We can overthrow him. He's weaker than he was in his original body, and I've learned so much more about the Force since Endor. Soon, I'll be able to take him on myself, but with you I could do it now, today. We'll take out his clones so he won't have a chance to resurrect, and we can ru-"
He cut himself off. They both knew what he was going to say.
He closed his eyes, shaking his head as if to clear it, and when he looked up again she saw that he'd pushed away the Darkness again, for now; his eyes were blue. "We'll return the galaxy to the rule of the Republic," he finished, lamely. "To democracy."
Mara had been circling, angling closer to the door, and she found herself now facing Luke from the window, silhouetted by the planetary nightfall. "You're selling all of this really well, Skywalker," she quipped. "You're doing a really good job advocating the complete lack of pitfalls in the plan 'we can just pretend to turn to the dark side, you see, and it won't affect us at all.'"
Luke shook his head again, sharply, and put a hand to his head. He pinched the bridge of his nose, looking irritated. "It's been harder than I anticipated," he admitted. "But I can't leave now. There's too much at stake; he has too many clones, and he'll just be able to come back again and again if I don't stop him now. And I need your help."
Luke unclipped his lightsaber. He undid his cloak, and it flared theatrically as it fluttered to the ground. A tiny, impudent corner of her mind wondered if he had summoned the Force to ruffle his cloak for dramatic effect.
"You already know my answer," she said. She unclipped her lightsaber and readied her stance. She had wanted to avoid this, but it seemed, now, inevitable.
He ignited his saber with a familiar snap-hiss, and it was green. She hadn't known until that moment what color it would be - how far he had gone to satisfy the Emperor, if he had bled the kyber. But she didn't have time to process that, because he was on her.
She turned to meet him, and with the press of a button his father's lightsaber sang to life between them.
The first blows were testing, perfunctory. He swung high on her right, following the movement through and sweeping down. She blocked and danced away, out of reach, but she was instantly and uneasily aware that she had made a severe miscalculation; she was unused to dueling left handed opponents.
She thought he would be disadvantaged if forced to use his left hand, but he wasn't. His thrusts and parries were agile, precise - he moved with a quick and easy grace that belied his injury, with a skill that revealed long hours of training.
She had sparred against Luke before and acquitted herself well. But that had been practice, and this was deadly earnest. He hadn't been holding back before, or taking it easy on her, but his blows now were fueled with an unfamiliar rage and aggression she had never encountered from him. He wasn't fighting defensively like a Jedi; he was fighting to win.
Lightsaber duels could only end in a handful of ways: surrender, incapacitation, maiming, or death. Mara didn't like any of those options.
"You've practiced," she managed, in the space between blows.
"Of course I've practiced. It would be irresponsible not to - apparently you can't always depend on using your dominant hand."
Their sabers clashed together, sparks flying and the acrid smell of ozone in the air. He pressed his advantage, and she blocked, swinging left and catching his blow. The lightsabers locked, and his face was close enough that she could see his expression: sardonic, almost mocking. "You, by contrast, haven't been practicing," he noted.
"Well spotted," she grunted. "Tell you what. We can take a raincheck on this and pick it up later, at your Jedi Praxeum. I'll let you help me practice. We'll just need to leave together, now. You got dinner, so I'll drive, and you can pay me back for the fuel later."
He laughed, a discordant sound like crackling ice.
What had passed before this was window dressing. Manipulation and conversation, philosophy and seduction were Palpatine's favored tactics, not Luke's. Deviousness had never come naturally to him, and his attempts to mirror Sidious' casual conversational seductions were almost laughably obvious.
But with a lightsaber in his hands, Luke was a master in his element - she could feel him drawing on the Dark power as naturally as breathing, letting his rage and anger fuel his blows, and she realized how thoroughly she had misjudged. With his training and precision, with the strength and fury of the Dark power, this would not end in a draw. She would be lucky to leave unscathed.
She spun away from an overhead blow that had come in too quickly to block, pivoted and retreated to a marginally safer spot, putting the room's couch between them.
The Force spiked in warning, but the energy was too chaotic - she didn't know where the danger was coming from. Mara lifted her lightsaber to defend, guarded and guarding, but unsure where to turn. She looked sharply at her opponent.
He had straightened, lightsaber still in a ready position, but looser, less urgent. He smiled languidly, and his eyes glimmered gold.
"You don't understand how much power I have now. The power of the Dark side." He stretched his damaged hand towards her, fingers splayed and circuitry sparking, and a wave of Dark power surged at his command - and she was engulfed.
- and you are engulfed.
Why had you thought the Dark would be hot, a consuming flame? The passions are, the anger and the hatred that you need to tap into the Dark power, but the power itself isn't - it is a sea of ice, granting you a clarity of vision and glorious purpose you have never before experienced.
The Darkness finds all the cracks, all the faultlines in your soul and flows directly into your veins: filling, cleansing, scourging. It is like a dam is broken, and you are drowning in it.
You stumble -
She stumbled -
- and it's all you can do to stay upright against the tide. The ocean is deep and vast and limitless, and you can sense neither the bottom nor the shore.
The Darkness writhes within your blood and in your soul, exhilarating and exultant, and - by the stars above, the hells below, the Force within - it feels so good. You had never known that anything could feel so damnably and damningly good.
Curiously, you look at your hands and see blue lightning spark between your fingertips, and you know you can do anything.
The ability to destroy a planet, or even an entire system …
The Dark power leaps -
- he leapt -
- to your call, answers with an urgency that makes you gasp: eager and desperate to be unleashed to its full potential. To your full potential.
Why had you been running from this? From this power that has been calling and screaming and singing for you to pick it up, hovering just beyond reach of your conscious mind? Ben's teachings, Yoda's warnings all seem so far away, so faded, so unimportant when confronted with this new clarity.
You can hear them, you realize suddenly. Their voices howling a warning, from somewhere beyond the water's edge. You can't make out the words, but you can hear the cadence - Kenobi's horror, Yoda's disappointment, your father's sorrow.
None of that matters. Nothing matters but the Dark power: channeling it, indulging in it, acquiring more of it.
You laugh at that realization, wild and free and unburdened by the weight of the chains you have never noticed you carried: honor, duty, morality. None of that matters in the Darkness, and -
- and she caught his lightsaber on hers, parried quickly and blocked again as he pressed his attack. He had almost gotten her; another fraction of a second, and she would have been down a hand.
Their lightsabers locked, centimeters from her face, and she panted for breath - at the fury of his attack, the strength of his blows, the vision that he'd shoved upon her. He stood above her, and pressed down with all his weight; it was all she could do to hold him off.
"You're - cheating -" she managed, from between gritted teeth.
He smirked, his features illuminated oddly and alternately green and blue on either side of his face. "You stabbed me with a dinner knife," he reminded her. "I think I get to cheat a little."
"I didn't even know you could do that." Her hands were shaking; whether from weariness or from being so suddenly submerged and yanked from his vision she couldn't tell.
"Honestly, neither did I - until you pushed your thoughts on me earlier."
"Great minds," she said, shortly. She didn't have the energy to summon a better conversational rejoinder.
She pushed hard, and he backed away: not a retreat, but a regrouping. He twirled his lightsaber almost absently as he waited for her next attack.
Mara took the opportunity to catch her breath, tentatively reaching to the Force to soothe her embattled mind. It answered, a warm and reassuring tonic she dearly needed. This was not going the way she had hoped.
She hated the Vader in him, and she could sense that he did too, and hated to be reminded of it. But Vader's darkness wasn't the only darkness he harbored, and she could feel Luke's growing inside him, ever stronger.
The Emperor's dark power was a black hole in reality, sucking and claiming and devouring all light. Vader's was a tar, polluted and clinging and suffocating. But Luke's was a cold black flame, impossible and arresting and suffused with hunger, hunger for …
… her?
Her mind skittered away from that thought. No, not for her, surely. Luke didn't think of her that way, and she sure as all hells didn't think of him that way. Not before, and certainly not now.
She groped for an alternative explanation and landed on one - even in darkness, it was Luke's nature to crave company. To be alone was antithetical to his nature; he drew friends and found family towards him magnetically, almost supernaturally. He wouldn't want to walk the dark path alone.
"You're going to burn the galaxy, in your hubris," she said.
He shrugged. "What would be so wrong about that, to burn it down and rebuild on the ashes. Burn out the corruption. Burn up the rules." His eyes glimmered. "Burn everything, so long as you burn with me."
Mara realized suddenly that she was afraid. And maybe she had been afraid for a while now, but this was the first moment she realized it, acknowledged it. This Dark version of Luke was dangerous and unpredictable, and she didn't know if or how she was going to be able to escape.
"Fear is the path to the Dark side, Mara."
She glowered. "Kriff off, Skywalker. You do not get to lecture about the path to the Dark side right now."
He grinned, a strangely mischievous expression at odds with the seriousness of the conversation. "Who said it was going to be a lecture? Maybe it was an invitation."
"I'm not afraid of you, Farmboy," she spat, still waiting for an opening.
"Liar," he accused mockingly. "But even if you're not afraid of me, you're afraid for me, aren't you, Mara? You're afraid that maybe you made a gruesome mistake coming here, that maybe I'm not so in control of the Darkness as I thought. You're afraid that the Emperor has me wrapped tight around his little finger, so well that I can't even see myself falling. You're afraid that maybe I've fallen a little too far to crawl back to the Light."
He was right, or close enough to right that it didn't matter, but she let that knowledge wash over her without reaction. She didn't have the time to worry about any of that right now, and it would have to wait.
She launched forward in a flurry of blows, the blue lightsaber singing to life. She spun forward, dodged a horizontal strike and used the Force to jump - up and up, spinning into a midair somersault to deliver her own overhead strike.
Luke met her attack, blow for blow and block for block, seemingly indefatigable. He caught her overhead blow with an upper block, swinging back and narrowly missing her wrist. His faintly mocking smirk never left his lips.
"And if you're not afraid of me yet," he said, and yanked - her lightsaber flew straight to his outstretched hand, "maybe you should be."
Mara bared her teeth. She reset her feet, raised her fists. "Come at me, Farmboy."
Luke laughed, a sound devoid of humor. There was an edge there that, if it wasn't precisely madness, was adjacent to it: a lurking presence that was cold and dark and not entirely sane.
"Join me," he said, again, and his eyes were blue but they were wrong. "And together -"
He didn't finish his sentence with words, but with images that he pushed upon her, vivid and clear. She quickly backed away and raised her hands to her forehead as if to ward them off but he was too strong and she saw -
As my apprentice. And she saw herself training with him, learning more about the Force at his side. He'd wanted this before, had wanted her to join him to train at the Praxeum but the nature of the vision was different; she'd be his only student, and the nature of what they studied would be darker.
As my partner. And she saw herself standing with him back to back, lightsabers ignited and ready as they fought off hordes of enemies. The enemies were in shadow, but she could see that they were all sorts - Red Guards and Inquisitors and stormtroopers but also the soldiers of the Republic.
As my Empress. And she saw herself on the Imperial throne, and him kneeling before her, not as an apprentice but as a worshiper, and she felt his strong hands on her legs and his lips on her thighs and she gasped because -
Because that wasn't in the vision, he'd taken advantage of his distraction to close the distance between them, and he'd caught her legs up with his arms somehow even with his useless hand, and her legs instead of kicking him away had wrapped themselves around his waist.
Their lightsabers had fallen to the ground in the confusion, forgotten and extinguished.
His hand was against her throat pressing her to the wall, and she could feel the steady rhythm of her heartbeat beneath his fingers - jumpy from exertion and surprise.
She could push him away. She could kick him.
She did neither, because she could sense that they dangled on a precipice, and fighting now might send him over the edge - "I'm not leaving yet, and I can't let you leave, either," he'd said. The Sith dealt in absolutes, and the choices before her now were to join with him or be slain by him. She struggled to find a third path.
She watched as his pupils bloomed, dilating with desire.
She felt the hand at her neck tighten experimentally, infinitesimally.
"You cheated again," she whispered, and he was so close - his body pressed so hard against hers that she could feel his heartbeat, his face so close she could see her breath puff against his eyelashes.
And for an eternally long moment, they waited, still as statues.
Luke wasn't going to kiss her if she didn't want him to, she realized. He didn't want to cross that line. Even submerged in Darkness, he wanted her permission, her consent.
Her hands shot out, she grabbed hold of his shoulders, and she crashed her lips against his.
And then it was like a dam was broken, and she was drowning in him.
As soon as her lips touched his, he took control. He released her throat and slid his hand up her neck to tangle his fingers through the hair at the base of her skull, using his hold to arc her neck back as he deepened the kiss and slid the fingertips of his other hand over her skin, skimming her clavicles and shoulders and the dip of her throat.
Why had she thought he'd be cold? Maybe the presence of his newfound power was, but his kiss was fire and his touch was flame. His hands left burning trails along her skin, awakening nerve endings she hadn't even known were asleep. The heat spread through her, moving through her heart to her arms and legs, loosening the joints in her fingers and toes. Spreading further and deeper as a liquid tension pooled inside her.
She moaned into his mouth, and he released her lips, bringing his mouth instead to her neck, using his hold on her hair to turn her head, kissing and nipping and sucking along the column of her neck and her jawline and the sensitive shell of her ear until she whimpered.
The heat was like wildfire. Blindingly, searingly hot.
She was on fire where he touched her, and she could feel the power roiling off him in waves - Dark and chaotic and dangerous. Luke wasn't like this, wouldn't kiss her like this if he were in his right mind, but he both was and wasn't, and the frenzy of his touch drove thought away like a demon to be banished. She fought to hold on.
Unhurried, he returned to her mouth, his tongue lancing across her lips before retreating, teeth biting lightly against her lips. When she gasped, he took advantage of her open mouth to steal inside, their tongues crashing and dueling as he pushed himself closer still, as if he were trying to meld with her. She gave the smallest groan at the back of her throat, and he growled back.
It was not a slow, sweet kiss. It was passion and possession and conquest.
He let go of her hair to slip his hand along the hem of her shirt, grazing the skin of her abdomen before slowly sliding his hand beneath and spreading his fingers across the small of her back, pushing her against his stomach so that she had to arch her back to keep kissing him.
She brought her hands up from his shoulders, tunneled her fingers through his hair and over his ears. He leaned subtlety into her touch.
After a long moment and a short eternity, Luke broke the kiss, and she was thankful to come up for air. He looked down at her face, seeking to memorize her, and she knew what he'd see - her hair in tangled disarray, her lips reddened and swollen, her shirt torn at the collar and a line of reddening bite marks marching up her neck. Thoroughly ravished.
He smirked, his blue eyes tinged with gold and his expression victorious and self satisfied, and she knew she had him.
Mara locked her hands behind his head and pulled it forward, smashing her forehead against his nose with a sickening crunch of cartilage. He yelped and pulled back, stumbling, and she used the opportunity to untangle her legs and land catlike on the ground.
She shook her head quickly to clear the stars from her vision that she knew would be coming after that move, and followed up the headbutt by launching a right hook to his left jaw, catching him unprepared and unguarded.
She followed the turn, whirling counterclockwise with the momentum from the blow, and landed a spinning kick on the side of his head.
Landing in a crouch, she grabbed his weaker arm and the dangling hand and flipped him up and over her shoulder, and then let go to let him hit the ground with a solid whump.
And then, as he lay there catching his breath and collecting his thoughts, she whipped out her ankle blaster and stunned him.
"Sorry, Farmboy. I cheated this time," she quipped, still panting. Her heart was racing from the - stars, from the everything. She was dizzy from the rush of adrenaline. Their duel, his kiss, her victory. It was hard to process that it was over, it was done.
But she wasn't fundamentally opposed to cheating, and she was better trained and unafraid to fight dirty.
Mara paused to take stock.
She was at the top of a tower with the Emperor's unconscious Sith apprentice and a division of sleeping stormtroopers outside the door. Stormtroopers who were going to start waking up soon, with a lot of questions and a lot of blasters. She had already blown the lift and stairwell, and that left few options.
She'd escaped worse.
She ran a brisk hand through her tangled mane, finger-combing it into a semblance of order and attempting to corral it into a quick braid.
Her fingers were trembling too much for the task, and she fought for serenity. Her thoughts refused to cooperate, leaping and bounding and out of control. She tried to herd them into order, compartmentalize them to deal with later, but there was too much, too many. She had never been faced with a storm like this, a tumultuous mixture of dread and lingering desire spiked with fear.
Mara took a deep breath, held it, expelled it - imbuing the exhale with her riotous emotions and releasing them into the Force. She schooled her fingers to stillness, concentrating on the menial task of her braid. Strands over and under, again and again.
Luke had taught her how to use the Force like this to calm herself. Before. She didn't want to think about that now, but the thought determinedly wormed its way into her mind before she hurriedly brushed it aside.
She should kill him. Now, when she had the chance, before he fully grasped the Dark power. He had already shown her why, given her a glimpse into his mindset when he touched the Darkness, and she shivered at the implications.
She could see it in her mind's eye, Luke's future as a Sith if he succeeded and destroyed the Emperor again. He would be terrible, he would be glorious, he would be worshiped. With his raw power, he would be able to enforce a twisted morality and order on the galaxy with an inexorable fist. His father's strength and his own anger, unfettered by Vader's disabilities or Palpatine's machinations.
The Republic would fall. The galaxy would kneel. It was written in his future - golden eyes, a shattered soul, the corruption of Dark power thrumming through his veins.
She should kill him, because she was one of the few who could. His Republic friends wouldn't be able to - because they would lack the ability but also because they would lack the will. How could they even conceive of killing their hero, the hope of Yavin?
Leia would see the inevitability eventually, Leia would be able to sacrifice her brother for the galaxy, but how long would that take her? But Mara was an assassin; she could compartmentalize. She could put the hope aside.
But somehow… she couldn't. She didn't want to.
She seized on that thought, turning it over in her mind, tracing it back to the root. Why? she asked herself. Why don't I want to?
Because he's Luke Skywalker, and he saved you.
She blanched. It'd be for the better to do it now, she reasoned. Before he fully turns, before he kills people. It'd be better to spare him that, the corruption of the Dark Side. He'd prefer it that way.
But he's Luke Skywalker, and he saved you.
She frowned. If he falls, it'll be too late. I won't be able to kill him. There will be too many protections, too many barriers. I may never have this chance again.
But -
"But he's Luke Skywalker, and he saved me," she snapped aloud into the silence, surprising herself. "Yeah, I get that."
Luke's presence was a sun - nourishing and warm and bright. But the Dark presence sought to extinguish that, freezing out his light and hope until he was like it: the icy surface of a cold, dead star.
But somewhere deep inside himself, Luke still held out a candle against the Darkness. And though a candle wasn't nearly enough protection against the Dark power, she believed that if anyone could use that meager flame to fight it back, Luke Skywalker could.
She kicked his boot, petulantly. "I guess hope is contagious."
Unconscious, his face had relaxed, and he looked calm. He looked asleep, like he slept the sleep of the innocent, nothing revealed of his inner turmoil, of the fight being waged for his soul.
She sighed. Absently, she stun cuffed him and pushed his recalcitrant hair away from his face, feeling oddly tender. "You're not a bad kisser, Farmboy. But it's reductively sexist to assume I'm going to follow you to the dark side for want of a good kiss, and frankly, I'm disappointed in you."
She sat back on her haunches, slapped her hands on her thighs decisively, and stood. She needed to get moving, even if she wasn't planning on killing him. Especially if she wasn't planning on killing him.
Mara walked over to the abandoned lightsabers, picked up her own, gave a few seconds thought to taking his as well before dismissing the idea.
Mara fidgeted with her belt while clipping her lightsaber, gathering her thoughts. She glanced back to her unconscious Sith and banished the coil of doubt that had lodged as a lump in her throat. She had so much to say, but didn't know how to say any of it - not that it mattered, because he couldn't hear her - and yet she had to say it anyway.
This might be her last chance. This might be goodbye.
"I've sat with my darkness, Luke. I've reflected on it and I know it well, and you're not going to scare me with it, or tell me anything surprising about myself that I don't already know. Maybe you need to do that yourself. And maybe when you're done, you can go ahead and rescue yourself, too."
She left him alone, to the Darkness he had chosen.
End.
