Written for Angstober Days 23: Slay it with Flowers and 24: Shivering.

I am no medic, so I apologise for any medical inaccuracies, nor am I a botanist, so I apologise for any glaring errors. I am also not proficient with flower language. All of the meanings in this, I totally made up :D

When Luke didn't want to be found, he was near impossible to track down, but thankfully this wasn't one of those cases. He was in the place he always was, where he spent most of his free time, and where he knew everyone would look for him first: his garden.

He was on his knees when he saw her, grinned, and waved her over. Mara rolled her eyes but followed. "What are you working on this time?"

"Green daisies," he replied. "They bloom in the presence of lifeforms."

No wonder they looked to be thriving, then. Their emerald centres were wide open and exposed, craning towards Luke.

"Where did they come from?"

"Lothal."

Mara sized them up. They were pretty, but she didn't see much in them. That was all they were.

She changed the subject. "Master says I'm to report to you about my most recent mission."

Luke stiffened. "Oh? Really."

"Yeah." She smiled. "Apparently you're ready for more responsibility."

"In the running of the Empire?"

"If I'm reporting my mission to you, yes." She frowned at him. "Is something wrong?"

"No." It was a little sharp. "Why would it be wrong?"

"Because you're shivering. Look at you. Are you cold?" It was warm in Luke's garden—temperature controlled to perfection.

He shook his head and shook the question off. When he tried to distract her, she caught his wrist—his sleight of hand wasn't nearly as subtle as he liked to think it was, especially when his hand was still shaking—before he responded. The flower in his hand dropped, but she caught that as well. "What is this?"

He smiled sheepishly.

"I figured out what you were doing after the first two flowers I randomly found in my plait, you know."

"It's fun to try to get one past you. And it's a gift."

"Thank you for the gift," she drawled, glancing down at it. It was a round, strangely shaped red and white flower, but she didn't know enough about it to guess what it was. "It's very pretty. You should have one in your hair as well."

He grinned, tilting his head. He had several tucked behind his ear, she realised.

"It's called a blood orchid," he said. "I thought it seemed fitting."

Blood orchid was an interesting name—it appealed to her, certainly—but she didn't care about flowers, even though Luke clearly cared very much. She crossed her arms across her chest before he could launch into a ramble about it. "Can I give you my report?"

He bit his lip. "Of course."

It was clearly meant to be an exercise for Luke in learning how to receive reports, parse information, and command attention—something he failed at utterly, considering he gave her three more orchids during the course of it. But after they were done, he walked with her to Palpatine's throne room so she could report properly, to the man who actually pulled all the strings.

Luke asked if she was interested in hearing about what flowers he'd recently pulled into the garden; she had nothing else to think about, so she acquiesced, and listened pleasantly to his enthusiastic speech. Apparently Alderaanian flame-lilies were rare but stunning; apparently funnel flowers were more effective water collectors than moisture vaporators; apparently blueblossoms had medicinal values, especially for treating burns. The pollen, used as a drug, could cool the body significantly and accelerate burns' natural healing process.

She nodded along with mild interest but mostly watched his face. He wasn't the cool, detached successor Palpatine had hoped he might turn out to be, when he allowed Vader to raise him at the centre of the Imperial Court. But he made her smile: he was animated, the left corner of his lips tugging up in a smile higher than his right, dimples rosy in his cheeks. Someone she was sure many in the Empire would be honoured to serve.

They both reached the throne room: Luke nodded to the guards, who glanced at him and Mara, but let them through with a sharp gesture. Mara went right in, but Luke stopped—right on the threshold, staring. His hand went to his mouth.

"Luke. Mara. My dears, come in!" Palpatine waved them forwards, still seated elegantly on his throne, his robes draped over the arms of it. Mara stepped forward obediently and knelt at his feet, ignoring the black mound at the bottom of the dais.

Luke couldn't ignore it, it seemed. He ignored Palpatine's obvious gesture for him to stand at his side and went to his father, whose respirator was still wheezing pathetically from whatever punishment he'd earned today. When Luke reached for him, clearly he got several electric shocks just by touching him, but he reassembled his father's limbs into a position that looked less unnaturally uncomfortable and helped lift him to his feet.

Vader was massive. Mara watched with disapproval as he teetered in the air, crushing Luke's shoulder under his weight. He invoked punishment, distressed his son, and could not be bothered to help himself walk out?

"There is no need, my boy, Lord Vader will be fine," Palpatine tutted. "You know that I do not injure him permanently. He can get his breath back"—that seemed a particularly cruel joke—"while we discuss Mara's mission."

"Thank you, Your Majesty, but Mara knows my thoughts on it. I will get my father to a medbay." Luke's tone was cold. Palpatine didn't miss it—the skin around his lips tightened—but he kept smiling serenely, understanding. He kept that smile up until Luke and Vader were out of the door.

It dropped. "Love is such a weakness, is it not?" he asked her. "He weakens himself for such a pathetic excuse for a man."

Mara didn't disagree—there was no love lost between her and Vader—but she did want to defend Luke. "He raised him. It's a natural connection. You will never be as impotent as Lord Vader is, Master, but if you were, I would do the same for you."

It took a lot of gall for her to call Vader, of all people, impotent, but Palpatine nodded. They both knew that, raw power or not, the one thing Vader lacked that Mara and Luke both had was reliability. He was always erratic—especially about his son.

"I appreciate that, my dear. I still fear that this attachment stunts Luke's growth. His father does not want him to be my heir—he likely still covets the position for himself—and Luke is too loyal to disobey. Not only does his development suffer, but also," he sighed, "our relationship. I am to have dinner with him this evening, but I fear that he will find some way to get out of it, as to prevent putting himself in the crossfire…"

He shook his head. "But these are the concerns of an old man," he said. "I am glad the two of you remain so… close. What's this?" He plucked the flower out of Mara's hair. "A blood orchid?"

Mara flushed for some reason. "That's what Luke called it."

"He has given you many flowers, has he not?" Palpatine rolled it between his fingers. "The mythology behind the blood orchids is intriguing."

Mara was still tense, trying to figure out what he was getting at. "Oh?"

"They are beautiful, often used as gifts, but on Naboo they tend to be associated with reclaimed battlefields and hardiness in the face of adverse climates." He tilted it back towards her; she made to take it back, but he did not let go of the stem. "When they are given as a gift on Naboo, it is often to fierce, highly competent warriors."

He let go. Mara took it back and put it back in her hair.

"But, again, forgive an old man's tangents." He smiled at her red cheeks. She knew what he suspected but couldn't give him any definitive answers: all she could say about Luke Skywalker was that it was far too easy to care about him. "Can you give me details on your mission, then? And Luke's thoughts, since he isn't here to share them himself."

It was one of the dullest missions she'd ever been on, but she recited the details dutifully. The whole time her mind was whirring.

"These flowers have meanings?"

Luke looked up from his gardening. He was shaking harder, now, but she could sense his distress, the anger and frustration he channelled into digging and repotting the weeds in his patch. It wasn't hard to guess why he was shivering, this time.

"My father will be fine," he said, though they both knew she hadn't asked. "He's in the medbay as we speak. My presence there just upsets him, I'm told."

"I'm glad he'll live." What else was she supposed to say? She hated Vader, and Vader hated her. "You didn't tell me all these flowers I've been receiving have meanings."

A smile, only slightly humourless, twisted his face again. "Everything has a meaning, Mara—wasn't that one of your first lessons?"

"I never expected subtlety from you of all people. It's not your style."

His smile widened. "Well, I've told you enough about flowers. If you extrapolate—"

When he cut himself off, she didn't realise why at first. But a servant scurried out, glancing around the garden and visibly relaxing when he saw Luke there, and approached.

"Sir," he said breathless. "Your father is awake. He's asking for you."

Luke threw the shears down. "I'll be right there," he promised. The servant scurried away. Luke stripped off his gloves. "I can tell you more later," he said to Mara before he strode away. As she watched him retreat, she noticed how stressed he really must be: his entire frame was wracked with shivers, and he rubbed his arms in a nervous tick as he walked.

She was left alone in his garden. It really was a magnificent spot. On the very top floor of the tower that he lived in within the Palace, opened to Coruscant's elements, with grass rippling underfoot, greenhouses in the corners, and massive troughs bursting with colour. The view wasn't anything to ignore, either.

It was while she scanned the garden that her gaze fell on the blueblossoms, bustling stems of cerulean petals, that crowded the nearest trough. She thought back to what he'd been rambling about. She'd have expected to forget it already, but to her surprise she'd been listening. They were the ones that were good for treating burn victims, weren't they?

It wasn't a conscious realisation of what Luke was doing that struck her. But she stepped over to the blueblossoms, watched some of the powdery pollen ghost onto her fingertips, and brought it up to her face so she could examine it closer. When she breathed in, some of it fluttered into her mouth; she spluttered, shivered, and dropped her hand.

Luke was good at shielding. He had to be, in the Imperial Court. But she had seen his resoluteness in defying Palpatine's wishes earlier today; though he had seemed calm, that was hardly a small undertaking. She couldn't fathom the rage and fear that his father's ailing health must invoke in him.

For a moment, she tried to: tried to open herself up to Luke standing her, ferociously gardening as though flowers could save his beloved father's life, ready to resort to the most unlikely, reckless, unorthodox schemes to keep him alive. For a moment, she felt that intensity. She sympathised with him.

The flowers he gave her all had messages—thoughts, interpretations, pieces of how Luke saw the world and how he saw her. Perhaps every flower in this garden had that. She was a master codebreaker, trained in the most advanced forms of slicing there were, but standing in that garden, she realised she was in the middle of a language she had never bothered learning to understand.

The solution to that began with study. The Palace library had plenty of resources on botany. She sat in there long into the night—she was still jetlagged from coming back from a mission so recently—and flicked through them, absorbing the information like she'd been trained to do, as if Luke was a target of unfathomable importance. It was startling to realise how much of that she already knew. How much she had already listened.

For such a delicate flower, difficult to keep alive, he had a veritable army of golden flower blossoms. They didn't seem to have any connection to Naboo—where she knew that the closest family he had other than Vader, his aunt and cousins, dwelled—nor specific meanings. She wondered if having such a healthy crop of them was a point of pride, then.

Flame-lilies as well. He was fond of them. Perhaps he'd been introduced through his friend, Senator Organa, and received them as gifts. He'd never given one of those to her as a gift before. They came in several colours—every shade that flames came in—but he didn't have any blue or white ones, she didn't think. The hottest part of the flame, the rarest form of the flower. She wondered where she might source them.

It was when she got to the blueblossoms themselves that her heart's beating grew faint. Their medical uses in small doses were there, laid out in the biology report in front of her: burn treatment, comfort during fevers, just as a cooling agent for the body to use in hot climates. But the warning stamped across its top was what caught her eye.

It could be lethal within hours if the dose was wrong.

Did he realise that? He must.

But desperation was even more powerful a drug than this one, she knew.

She was out of the library before she even consciously decided to leave. The turbolifts would be too slow: she took the stairs. It felt like a lifetime and a blink of an eye before she was through the stormtroopers guarding Luke's quarters and banging on the door.

No response.

Maybe he wasn't in there? It was past midnight, though, and Luke wasn't one to stay up late. She checked the medbay, but it was empty. She checked all the possible medbays she could. They were empty as well.

Did Luke intend to try to heal his father tonight? Was that why he'd been so tense all day?

Would she be able to warn him in the morning? She didn't know. It was horrifying to realise that she couldn't read her closest friend well enough to tell if he was on the brink, or just nearing it. But she did know that something was very, very wrong.

No. Her instincts said that something was going to happen tonight. And she didn't really care if Vader lived or died, but she did care about Luke.

Thankfully, she didn't have to waste her time scouring the entire palace for him. Something else interrupted her night like a klaxon.

Her knees hit the floor. She gasped for air, tears streaming. Something inside her vanished, like the scaffolding around her heart had been ripped away in a storm and the freshly painted façade was exposed for the first time since its construction. The roots that yanked out of her brain left grooves that seemed to ooze blood.

She knew what had happened before she received the call. But she dragged herself to her feet, even among the immense anguish, and answered her comm when it rang. "Jade."

"Come to the Emperor's quarters immediately, Hand."

"Is he dead?" she demanded. "I felt—"

"Come immediately."

He was dead. She stared at his corpse, lying in the bed as still and peaceful as an exhausted child, and despised the blue tint to his lips and temple. She put her hand on his forehead. It was the same temperature as deep space.

"How did this happen?"

"Something happened that shut him down, cooled his core temperature below survivable limits." The medic on hand was antsy, glancing from her to the red guards then back again. "Tests are still running to determine what."

She pried his eyelid open. In death, his eyes were blue. That seemed fundamentally wrong. "What's your theory?"

"Poison, sir. I don't see how this could have happened otherwise, and the symptoms are compatible with what I know of—"

"His dinner tonight," she realised suddenly. "He ate with Luke, didn't he?"

"Luke?"

"The—" She bit her tongue. Palpatine had never actually convinced Vader to let him announce Luke as the prince. "Lord Vader's son. They were dining together. Where is he?"

"Luke is in a coma."

The booming voice shocked her. That was deeply shameful. Vader's rasping respirator, still stuttering from the latest round of punishment, was unmissable. As was his gargantuan presence in the Force. She needed to pull herself together.

She snapped her head around, voice sharper than warranted. "Is he alright?"

"The poison has not killed him. But he is deeply asleep."

"That's why I couldn't wake him at his door earlier." She shook her head. "Who did this?" She looked back at Palpatine, her heart clenching. She'd meant what she had said: he was practically a father to her. "Who poisoned them?"

But there was a niggling in her mind that she couldn't exactly ignore. It was obvious, in light of all she'd learnt today. It was unfathomable.

Vader lit his lightsaber behind her. The red guards died. Before he could come for her, she leapt to the other side of Palpatine's bed. Her master stood between her and Vader's ire, even in death.

She glared. "You? You almost killed your son!"

"It was not I."

No. No, of course it wasn't. Deception wasn't Vader's style. But she hadn't thought it was Luke's either.

Five-oh-first stormtroopers filed into the Emperor's bedchamber. She glanced at the windows, the cabinets, the secret doors, but they were too quick; they fanned out across the room, blocking all routes of escape. There was no way out. She stood there, Vader's lightsaber quivering, and waited to die.

He deactivated it. It wasn't Palpatine standing between them, and they both knew it.

"Take her to the cells," he barked and turned away.

She was in the palace cells for a long time. It was an effort to keep up her workout routine, keep stretches, stop herself from atrophying as the hours stretched into days, then weeks. No one visited her other than the guards, but she hadn't been killed yet. She had no idea what had happened in the wider galaxy. She didn't even know that Luke had survived until he came to visit her.

It was noticeable at first as a scrambling among the guards, whispered fussing, and many attempts to perfect the stomp and salute. Then, when his footsteps—she hated that she recognised him just by his footsteps—approached, there was a chorus of "Your Highness" and "sir!" and "Your Highness" again.

He stopped outside her door. "Mara?" he asked. "Are you in there?"

That was a stupid question. She had tried escaping. She had failed.

"May I come in?"

She didn't answer him. She didn't know what to think. If he had died, she would have had to live without two of the closest people in her life, but she would have been able to rationalise it. Grief would have drowned out her betrayal. It meant her relief over his survival was short-lived.

He refused to be Palpatine's prince, no matter how much her master had offered him. But he happily became Vader's?

When she didn't respond, he sighed. Something slipped through the slot in the door that was meant for food. She didn't let herself open her eyes to look.

"I'm working on getting you out," he promised her. "I regret that it had to happen that way. I know that it hurt you." She could hear his voice shaking slightly. Was he still shivering? Was he still suffering from the side effects of the medicine—the poison—he'd willingly ingested? "If you ever want to talk… let me know."

He waited for long, agonising minutes for her answer. She did not give it. Eventually, he left.

When he did, she opened her eyes and let the tears run free. It was then that she noticed the spot of colour in front of the door.

Her fevered, thorough research had not failed her. She recognised this gift of flowers: black orchids, with hearts a vivid lilac. Some of the petals were spotted with red like bloodstains.

She recognised the meaning as well: death. Necessity. But, above all, an apology. Those flowers meant that the donor was sorry.

She didn't know if she forgave him—not now, maybe not ever. But she reached for that small bouquet of orchids to clutch to her chest, inhaling the smell in an odourless room, consuming the colour in a colourless galaxy, and accepted his apology.