A/N: This is R just to play it safe, in reality it's probably more along the lines of PG-13.

I disclaim anything and everything Star Wars, as well as the song The Rose.

Friction


Some say, love, it is a river
That drowns the tender reed.
Some say, love, it is a razor
That leaves your heart to bleed.
Some say, love, it is a hunger,
An endless, aching need.
I say, love, it is a flower
And you its only seed.


The Rose


Chapter One: Adjustments


Mara talked a lot as they neared Coruscant. Luke was shocked.

He didn't think he'd heard her speak about so much for so long the entire time he had known her. Granted, they hadn't spoken much over the last few years, but still…

"I wonder how Karrde will react when I tell him," she said suddenly, when there was a moment of silence. As though she were afraid of what the silence would bring. "If I decide to do this," she amended, quickly.

Luke opened his mouth to answer, but she continued speaking without waiting for a response. "I just don't know if there's anyone he feels comfortable leaving in charge of things. I mean, he likes Aves, he's loyal and he gets the job done, but he's not very…"

"Bright?" Luke supplied, with a grin.

"I was going to say 'creative,'" she answered, grinning back. "Though, I suppose 'bright' fits as well."

The silence was comfortable this time and Luke was just beginning to enjoy the easy, quiet camaraderie, when she spoke up again.

"Do you think it has to be a lifetime commitment, or could I go back to Karrde when I finish my training?" She looked away from him and tapped the console thoughtfully; Luke didn't even bother trying to get a word in edgewise. "That might not be such a bad policy. You could have two tracks at the Academy or two tracks in the apprenticeship, or both. One for people who want to be a 'professional' Jedi, and another option for people who want to develop their abilities, but aren't willing to give the full commitment. It might not be such a bad thing to have 'lay' people who feel a deep attachment to the Order."

Luke stared at her in disbelief as she rambled on. The ideas she had shared with him about the Order in these last few days had been innovative, even revolutionary, but so obvious that he wondered that they had never occurred to anyone in the Order, not to Kam, not to Tionne, not even to Callista.

He turned back to the long starlines in front of him and listened in awe as she wove vision after vision of the New Order of Jedi. He thought back to his own dismissal of Aves as 'not bright.' According to Mara, it was more that he lacked the creativity needed to help run the organization. Perhaps they were all lacking that same creativity at the Academy. Having Mara around might very well give the movement the push it needed to stand upright and independent in the New Republic.

"…truth is we already have Leia and Corran, maybe a few others I don't know about…"

He could see her reflection in the cockpit window—her hair shifting and shimmering in the reflected starlight—as she spoke and he marveled once again at the understanding they had managed to come to on Nirauan.

He had once thought of her as being part of his future—the future of the Jedi Order. Leia, Mara, Corran. But by some twist of fate, they had all chosen different paths and he had had to build his order around strangers. For a long time he had considered Mara and Leia his great failings—signs that maybe he wasn't going about this the right way at all. But then Callista came along. She came with her knowledge of the Old Order, but with a flexibility to adapt her experiences to a changed galaxy.

Leia and Mara were not his failures. They were their own people and they had made their own decisions. Being part of the Order necessitated a commitment to the Order, a commitment they weren't willing to make. He had found it very easy to understand Leia's choices from that perspective. He had made a commitment to the Order, she had made a commitment to the Republic. It was Mara that he had a harder time coming to terms with.

The fact that she had been bouncing around the galaxy with Karrde and then with Lando, of all people, then on her own, demonstrated to him her lack of dedication to any ideal at all. He simply couldn't reconcile it with the Mara he thought he had known. The Mara who was so intensely loyal that it had taken her over five years to throw off the influence of a man she knew very well was evil. The Mara who had been so ready to put her disagreements with the government aside in order to fight against the threat of second set of Clone Wars. The Mara who had risked her life, without thinking twice, to save Karrde, to save the twins, and, in the end, to save Luke himself.

"Maybe you're superimposing your own personality over Mara's," Callista had told him once, after one of Mara's frustratingly short visits. "You're interpreting what she does based on your own ideals, not hers. You forget where she's coming from: she was raised believing that Jedi were her enemies. Do you think it's so easy for her to pick up and devote her life to them?"

Callista had been right, as usual, he decided, as Mara launched into a one-sided discussion about what age would be appropriate for children to start training. Partly right, at least. Mara had needed to get beyond her view of the Jedi. That they were power-hungry, poised at the edge of the darkside at every turn. But she also had her own intense need for independence that he had never truly understood until now. She had been controlled for so much of her life that she had needed to know that she could stand on her own, could control her own destiny.

And part of it had been him, of course. She was probably right. He relied too much on the loud parts of the Force, it deafened him to the tiny whispers that could have guided him through the years. But he was willing to change, if the Council agreed that it was appropriate. It was all Mara needed to feel comfortable with them.

He had asked her if she would consider joining the Order as a Jedi. A title she had earned in spades on Nirauan. She had told him that she would consider it, but he knew that she wanted it now, as much as he did.

A soft beeping cut Mara off.

"We're coming up on Coruscant," she announced, preparing the ship for re-entry into subspace. And then she was quiet.

"Are you alright?" he asked, not needing to sense the nervousness flowing off of her in waves to know that something was bothering her.

She began to nod, without looking at him, but caught herself short. She sighed instead. "It won't happen, will it?" she said.

He looked at her curiously, not understanding.

She turned to meet his eyes. "Everything we spoke about—about the Academy—it's not going to happen."

"Why do you say that? It all makes so much sense, why wouldn't the Council agree?"

"And you would be there to back me up?"

There was something about the way she asked the question that made Luke think that how he answered was as important as what he answered.

He swiveled his chair to face her and looked steadily at her. He reached out a hand to take one of her own, but she moved it quickly out of reach.

"Mara, I told you I would back you up and I will. Why are you doubting that?" He said it as sincerely as he could, sending a pulse to her through the Force as well.

She shook her head. "I know that you mean it now. But once we get there and you're back with all of them, you're going to change your mind."

He felt his defenses rise up immediately. "Are you saying that I would break my word?"

She made a hissing sound and whipped her head away from him. "No, you would keep your word, Skywalker. I don't doubt that. But you wouldn't really believe in it anymore."

"If you don't want to do this, Mara, then you don't have to. I'm not forcing you into anything."

She turned back to him and her eyes flashed. "You couldn't force me into anything, if you tried."

Luke leaned back in frustration. Wonderful, now they were back at bickering.

"Could you at least give me a reason why you have so little faith in me?"

Her eyes flashed again and her hair seemed to burn around her face. "Because anytime you get within a light-year of Callista, it's like you're on sweetblossom."

Luke stared at her in disbelief. Callista?! What right did she have to interfere in his relationship with Callista?

He could feel his anger building and he stood up suddenly, walking away before he did or said something he regretted.

What Mara said then was the last thing he expected.

"I'm sorry."

He stopped mid-stride. "Sorry about what?" he asked without turning around.

She sighed in frustration, but he sensed her quickly working to control herself.

"I'm sorry for what I said about Callista," she answered finally. "I was out of bounds. It's not my place to talk about your wife."

His wife.

He had heard people say the word so often that he rarely reacted to it anymore. Callista was much more likely to say something, but she could tell that he preferred to leave it, so she usually let it slide.

At the moment, however, hearing Mara say it felt like a slap in the face.

She's not my wife, he thought to himself, bitterly.

"What?!"

He spun around to find Mara staring at him in utter shock. Had he said it outloud? Or had she simply picked up on his thoughts? Either one was possible, he realized.

Mara's face contorted as a number of emotions played across it. He could feel the shock, still, but it was overshadowed by a few other emotions now. Disgust, anger, and…betrayal. He wondered why she would feel betrayed.

"You and Callista aren't married?" Mara finally said, her voice harsh.

Luke sighed and shook his head. He hoped this wouldn't go as badly with Mara as it had with Leia. He braced himself for the lecture, he was sure would follow.

But her sense changed again and when she finally spoke there was only puzzlement. "Why not?"

He let his body relax, relieved that this wouldn't be a series of accusations, and moved back to his seat. The ship beeped again, so he settled himself in and waited as Mara brought them out of hyperspace.

A few minutes later, her attention was back on him. He wasn't going to get out of this, he realized, ruefully.

"It's hard to explain," he said. "You have to understand that Callista's coming from a very different world than we come from…"

Mara's eyes suddenly went wide and he felt a pang of embarrassment coming from her. He stopped short.

"What?" he asked.

She shook her head and looked away. "I'm sorry…I just…I shouldn't have asked. It's your own private business, you don't owe me any explanations. It's fine with me." She paused. "But you are committed to each other, aren't you?"

Luke was taken aback again. If she was so worried about his privacy then why was she asking about his commitment?

"Yes," he answered, firmly. "Of course."

She nodded her head and smiled, but still wouldn't look at him. "Good. That's good enough for me."

Luke stared at her, trying to make sense of her strange reactions. What did his and Callista's relationship have to do with her?

"I don't mind explaining it to you," he said slowly, watching her face. "You're my friend, you have a right to know."

Mara turned back to him, her expression as soft as he'd ever remembered it. "I hope that I'm your friend, but I still don't have to know."

We might have made a good couple in another life, he thought, suddenly, but quickly pushed the thought from his mind. He had to deal with the here-and-now, not with the might-have-been. Right now Mara was his friend, his colleague, he hoped, and he felt the need to explain it to her.

"In the Old Order," he began, "Jedi didn't marry."

Mara looked at him skeptically. "Um, wasn't your father a Jedi?"

Luke shrugged. "Apparently that was an exception. Maybe even the first step in his move away from the Jedi."

Mara's eyebrows went up, but she didn't make the sarcastic comment he was expecting. "That must be uncomfortable to think about."

"What do you mean?"

She looked as though she regretted saying anything, but seemed to brace herself and continued. "The idea that your parents' marriage was the start of something evil, instead of something good."

Luke stared at her in shock. They really had grown closer on Nirauan. He didn't think he'd ever discussed this with anyone other than Callista, who had sympathized, but—considering the topic—she hadn't really understood why it bothered him. It was fairly straightforward in her eyes.

Mara, on the other hand, had gotten it in one shot. There was a pang in his heart as he thought again about all the years they'd spent not speaking to each other. He had apparently missed out on having a real confidant, something like Leia had with Callista. He sometimes felt like he wasn't welcome when those two were having a heart to heart.

He smiled softly at Mara. "I do feel that way sometimes, but then again," he let the smile turn into a grin, "I don't think that everything that came out of the marriage was evil."

Mara looked at him blankly. "What do you mean?"

"What do I…" He stopped short and took in her expression again. He rolled his eyes. "Very funny, Mara."

She chuckled, in clear enjoyment. "I know."

"As I was saying, the old Jedi didn't marry, they were celibate."

Mara snorted.

"What?" he asked, defensively.

"Oh, come on, Skywalker," she said, flicking her eyes to the control panel as she eased the ship into orbit around the planet. "Were they gender separated?"

He shook his head. "I don't think so."

"Then they weren't all celibate." She leaned toward him, with a triumphant look in her eyes. "You and I both know that."

The unwanted image of two Jedi locked in a passionate embrace, suddenly jumped into Luke's mind. He blinked and shook his head slightly to get rid of it. He tried not to think too much about the fact that he had imagined the woman with fiery red hair. Or about how close Mara's face was to him.

He leaned back in his chair. "Fine. They weren't all celibate, but they didn't get married. Happy?"

She nodded with a smirk.

He gave her a mock-glare. She just grinned back.

"Okay, so the old Jedi didn't marry," she repeated, then paused for a moment listening to the docking instructions over the comm. "What's that got to do with you and Callista?"

"Well, Callista understands that things are different now, but it's hard for her to just completely throw away everything she was raised believing. She was always taught that marriage was wrong for Jedi and she doesn't feel comfortable doing it."

Mara had begun to move them out of orbit toward the planet, but her hands froze for a second. "Let me get this straight," she said in a clipped tone of voice—much more how Luke had been used to hearing her. "She's alright playing house with you and having sex, but she can't handle the idea of marrying you?!"

Luke's embarrassment at hearing Mara speak so casually of his sex-life was far outweighed by his irritation at her. But even as he confronted her, he could feel the blush creeping onto his cheeks.

"It's not the same thing and you know it!"

"Of course, it's not the same thing," she yelled back at him, punching the controls on the ship, furiously. "That's why people get married. Otherwise, what would be the point?"

He glared at her and forced himself to calm down. "It's not like that," he said, finally. "I've never really pressed her on it. We discussed it a couple of times and she told me how she felt. She said that she probably just needed some time. After that, I figured that it was her move and…"

"And she never made it." Mara didn't seem to be angry anymore, either.

There was silence for a few minutes, as Mara brought them into the government docking bay.

"What about Cray?"

Mara said it so softly that for a moment, he wasn't sure that he had heard her right. But he could see the tense expression on her face and he knew that he had.

"We just…we wanted to have a family," he began. He shrugged in embarrassment. "I didn't see any reason why we had to be legally married in order to do it. And…" He paused, not really wanting to admit the next part.

"And you figured that if Callista had changed her mind about getting married she would have taken the opportunity to say something."

Luke nodded, reluctantly. "I thought that she would, but she never mentioned anything about getting married first."

There was silence as Mara settled them down in the docking bay. Luke started to get up, to get the few things they had with them together, but Mara's hand on his arm stopped him. He looked down at her, expecting her to be looking back at him, but she was looking out the cockpit window.

"How is she?"

Luke stared at her, not understanding where the question had come from. "Callista?"

Mara turned to look at him incredulously. "No. Cray." She said it as though it should have been obvious to him.

He couldn't fathom why she would be so interested in Cay. "She's doing well," he said, cautiously. Then he loosened up as he thought about seeing her again. "She gets into everything and I spend half of my time trying to think up ways to keep our things safe from a force-sensitive child. It isn't easy."

Mara smiled, her eyes far away. "Is she very strong…in the force, I mean."

Luke's eyes went wide as he thought about it. "Very strong. Though, I suppose, it makes sense considering who her parents are."

He had never quite understood the genetics in force-heredity—no matter how many times Cilghal tried to explain it to him—but Cilghal had assured him that she saw no reason why Callista couldn't have a force-sensitive child. Whatever it was that had rendered Callista force-less shouldn't necessarily pass on to the child. All the same it had taken some convincing for Callista to agree to it. She had been so afraid that she would be to "blame" if Luke had a child as blank in the force as she was.

Truth be told, he couldn't have cared less. He just wanted a child.

In the end, though, Cay had been stronger than even Callista had dared hope.

"What does she look like?"

Mara's question pulled him out of his thoughts. "Who? Cay?"

Mara wrinkled her brow. "Cay?"

Luke grinned, realizing that there was no way Mara could have known about Cay's nickname. "Yeah, that's what we call her." He paused. "Well, that's what she started calling herself, so we went along with it."

"She sounds precocious."

"Stubborn, is more like it," he corrected her. The ship had come to a stop and he could see figures toward them. They would have to leave soon. As much as he was looking forward to seeing Callista and Cay again—it was why they'd come to Coruscant directly after stopping at Karrde's base on Cafior—he realized that he would miss this time with Mara.

"Wonder where she gets that from," Mara mumbled.

"Hey, I'm not that bad!"

Mara looked at him in surprise. "I wasn't talking about you."

"Oh," he said, disconcerted. He'd never really thought of Callista as stubborn, but he supposed that she was, in her own way. He wondered how Mara had picked it up. The two women had barely spoken to each other over the years. They hadn't been mean to each other, they just hadn't gotten much of a chance to get to know one another. He wondered if that would change now.

"So, what does she look like?" Mara asked again. She reached into her pocket to pull out a tiny holo-disk, Luke supposed she'd had it with her in the suit she wore on Nirauan. "I have this one picture of her, but she's so little that it's hard to tell."

Luke stared in stunned disbelief as Mara activated the holo and a tiny image of his daughter, no more than a few weeks old, materialized in the palm of her hand.

Why in the world would Mara have a holo of Cay?

"Wh-where did you get that?" he managed to ask.

"Callista sent it to me."

He wondered if his eyes could get any bigger. "Callista?"

"Yeah." Mara was distracted, looking at the holo, otherwise she would surely have noticed his bewilderment. "She said that she would send me more as she got older, but…" Mara shrugged. "I guess that she got busy. It's easy to forget that kind of thing and it really isn't such a big deal. It just would have been nice to have."

Luke didn't think he could get any more confused. Mara and Callista had been corresponding through the years? About Cay? A million questions flew through his mind.

"She looks like me," he said, instead. "Callista says she doesn't really see it, but, I'm telling you, Cay's almost a spitting image of what I looked like as a child. Before I got my face rearranged on Hoth, anyway."

Mara had a far-away look in her eyes. "What color is her hair?"

"Blond, right now," he said. "I suppose that it'll get darker as she gets older."

"And her eyes are blue, I guess."

"No, actually, that's the one difference," he told her. "They're more…hazel." He shrugged his shoulders. "That was the one surprise. I suppose that I expected them to be blue like mine or grey."

Mara's eyes flew to his and he wasn't sure how to interpret either the look she gave him, or the feelings she was quickly blocking off from him. "Grey? Why grey?"

Luke wrinkled his brow. "Well, because of Callista. Her eyes are grey." Something made him say it softly, unsure of what was going on inside of Mara.

Mara continued to stare at him without saying anything. He could feel some sort of change, a realization dawning over her, but had no way of knowing what it was about.

"Oh," she said suddenly, and turned away. "I thought that her eyes were blue."

Luke nodded, even though the explanation rang false in his ears. There was something else there. Something important.

"Do you want to see her?" he asked softly, feeling as though he was on unsteady ground.

Mara turned back to him, her eyes bright. "Would that be alright? Do you think Callista would mind?" She sounded almost apprehensive.

"No, of course not. Why would she mind?"

Mara shook her head and Luke could see her biting her lip for a moment. "No reason. Yes, I'd like to see her."

"Alright, then," he said, smiling warmly. To his delight, she smiled back, looking somewhat comfortable again. "We'll head over to my apartment as soon as they finish interrogating us." He nodded his head over to the uniformed officials waiting impatiently at the hatch of the ship.

"Oh, I could wait. I'm sure that you want some time alone with them first…"

He waved his hand to cut her off. "I'll have plenty of time alone with Callista and Cay before we head back to Yavin, don't worry about it. Besides, this way you can tell Callista about some of the ideas you have before bringing it in front of the Council."

"Right, that." Mara grimaced. "Fine, I'll give it a try."

Luke opened his mouth to reply, but a finger in his face stopped him short.

"Don't even say it."

Luke clamped his lips shut and looked at her innocently.

She shook her head and snorted, before brushing past him out of the cockpit.