~3~

Family Politics


The morning came much faster than Luke had hoped. No sooner had he stripped off his wet things, hidden the evidence of his midnight adventure, and fallen exhaustedly into bed than, from behind closed eyelids, he heard Mara moving about the apartment. A sudden shaft of light pierced the blackness of his dreamless sleep, and he knew that Mara had yanked the curtains open, perhaps a little more forcefully than was necessary.

Luke cracked open an eyelid, just enough so he could monitor his wife's movements from between his eyelashes.

She was already fully clothed in her usual weekend gear – a black, form-fitting mechanic's jumper with a faded Imperial hexagon emblazoned on the left breast – and already drinking deeply from a bottle of amber liquid. Her usually intense, striking features had inexplicably arranged themselves to look particularly murderous on this morning, and Luke felt his throat abruptly seize upon itself.

In her fist, she clutched his still-soaking, heat-scored shirt from the night before, and a look like death incarnate had appeared on her pretty face. Luke watched her toss the shirt into the portable trash compactor with a low growl – she was mad enough to swear in different colors.

She knew.

This in itself was remarkable to Luke, as there was nothing to know, really. But Mara was possessed of the fantastic ability to put two and two together and get five, and, even more special, convince herself even in the face of terrible adversity that she was, in fact, correct in her assumptions.

She banged about the room for a few minutes more, and then, pushing the empty bottle of probably alcoholic beverage savagely onto the corner table, she stormed from the apartment, slamming the door with the force of a stampede of angry banthas.

Greatly afraid now, Luke threw off his blankets, leapt out of bed, hastily dressed himself in a pair of black denims and vest, completed the ensemble with his fraying Jedi robes, and ran from the room, grabbing his lightsaber from the bedside table as he went. Clearly, at least according to Mara, it was *not* going to be a good morning.


***


The dining room was quiet when Luke slipped in and took his seat at the head of the long, burnished table. Kerryna Occot, divergent to habit, had actually chosen to eat with the students this morning, and was seated at Luke's right hand.

"Master Skywalker," she murmured, inclining her head towards him respectfully, albeit timidly.

"Good morning, Kerryna. Have a good sleep?" he asked, nodding politely to her and smiling.

"Yes, thanks," she replied, gazing at him with an odd look in her eyes. She dared to return his smile, and Luke caught a brief glimpse of the fair, modest woman behind her sullen exterior. This made him smile more broadly, cheered him slightly.

Contrary to everyone else, Luke liked Kerryna. He found her funny, and more than a little irreverent, and, past differences aside, there was a certain level of mutual esteem between them.

At his left sat Jaina, who was shoveling bits of pancake into her mouth at a staggering rate. She seemed to be in a hurry to go somewhere, but, noting that Mara was seated beside her, looking simultaneously homicidal and triumphant as she read the morning news transmissions on Anakin's datapad, Luke realized that he'd be tempted to scarf his breakfast as well, lest Mara's burgeoning anger explode before he'd had a chance to suck back his fruit juice in peace.

Jacen Solo, Jaina's twin brother, ambled casually out of the kitchen, balancing two plates of steaming pancakes in mid air, one of which he placed in front of Kerryna, and the other in front of Luke.

"'Morning, uncle!" he boomed, and punctuated that with a manly belch, drawing disgusted glances from Tara and Anakin, seated further down the table.

"'Morning, Jacen," Luke said. "How's business?"

"Delicious as usual," his nephew replied, patting his muscular belly. Jacen was the Academy's master chef, and was proud of his work. *Perhaps too proud,* Luke thought warily as Jacen burped again, and vanished back through the kitchen door.

Luke watched Mara watching Jacen, and noted the deliberate way she then passed her lethal gaze over all present at the table except him. No one else mentioned the phenomenon, although Luke could see that everyone had noticed it. They knew that a Skywalker marital conflict was dangerous territory, particularly where amiable breakfast conversation was concerned. An awkward silence threatened to settle over the table, when the wary stupor was interrupted.

Lilandra had just flounced happily into the dining room, dressed in full Jedi garb, and seated herself primly beside her sister, a smug grin on her face. Only then did Mara fix Luke with a vicious stare that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. She was definitely playing at more than his ruined clothes this time.

Luke might've made it safely through the meal without further incident if Lilandra had not chosen that very moment to voice her observations.

"Is there something wrong, Mara?"

Slowly, deliberately, everyone looked up from their plates, except Mara, of course, who flushed a deep crimson right to the roots of her flaming hair and seemed to be attempting to bore a hole through her plate with her eyes as she closed the datapad.

Luke could see that she was dying to get into it, mostly because she now had an audience to her rage, but he prayed that she would exercise some old Imperial restraint at this most inopportune of times to pick a fight with her husband …

No such luck.

"I'm a little – what's that charming way you put it, Lilandra? – 'ticked off'," Mara said through tight lips, tossing a lock of golden-red hair back behind her shoulders, which were drawn tensely up around her ears.

"Any particular reasons?" Lilandra asked, playing sweet and dumb. "Oh, by the way, are you done with the daily rags? Today's press assessment day, you know. Where they take all us political types down a notch for either being too Republican or not enough."

Mara's smile lengthened as she slapped her palm down on top of the closed datapad and slid it back towards her. The room seemed to hold its breath.

"Actually, Lilandra … there's something here that may interest you. If I may?"

Lilandra glanced uncertainly at Luke, who shrugged resignedly. Lilandra understood the gesture. Whatever Mara was getting at, it was going to happen sooner or later, so it might as well happen now.

"Absolutely, Mara," she said, leaning back in her chair and folding her arms over her chest. "Be my guest."

Down the table, Tara and Jaina exchanged a snide glance and peeked gleefully at Lil as Mara re-opened the datapad and pretended to scan the articles, humming, although clearly, her defense had been planned in her mind from the moment Lilandra had skipped merrily into the dining room.

"Oh … ah, here we go." Mara withdrew a pair of glasses from her breast pocket and slipped them on, cocking her head innocently to the side as she stared at Lilandra from across the table. "Let's see … yes … this is from the Morning Star, byline Biale Aziz."

There was an expectant pause, in which Mara delighted and through which Luke and Lilandra waited uneasily. Then, with mock seriousness, Mara began.

" … Perhaps one of the most high-profile political actions taken this session by the New Republicans was the Bill of Compensation, written and passed under the guidance of recently appointed Senator Lilandra Ilkhaine of the Chad system, which called for the total monetary reimbursement of all persons affected by the brief totalitarian regime instated by Admiral Kerryna Occot – coincidentally, the senator's own sister.' Oh, Kerryna." Mara flicked her eyes apologetically to the elder Occot, who fixed her with an eerily placid glare. "Sorry about that."

"That's alright," Kerryna replied quietly. "They're never going to get it right. It was Grand Admiral Kerryna Occot, thank you very much."

A momentary uncomfortable silence descended on the gathering as the temperature in the room seemed to fall several degrees. Kerryna smiled down at her hands, delighting in the reaction.

Mara cleared her throat and continued. " 'However, the true star of the proceedings was Ilkhaine herself, who seemed to use her sudden return to the public eye – ending a four-year period of virtual non-existence in the political sphere – to attract as much attention as possible to her age and appearance. The nubile Ilkhaine, who celebrates her twenty-sixth birthday in the fall, has been romantically and sexually linked to such high-profile figures as Senator Deain Ma'Four of Coruscant, Ambassador Mael Kirlane, and …'"

Mara's eyes twinkled lethally. Lilandra whitened.

" ' … And in an unprecedented scandal revealed to Morning Star editors by insiders, former Rebel Alliance leader and publicly married Jedi icon Luke Skywalker.'"

Satisfied, Mara quietly closed the datapad and sat back in her chair, looking smug. No one spoke; no one moved, for a good thirty, agonizing seconds.

It was Jaina who broke the silence, looking uncomfortable but faintly amused. "Sweet deal, Lilly – Mael Kirlane? He's a sexy beast, that one – however did you wrangle it?"

Lilandra didn't answer at first. She seemed shell-shocked, frozen in her chair, but her eyes were bright, betraying the myriad snappy comebacks whirling through her brain.

The one she settled on was: "Mara, who are you intending to punish with this? Me, or Luke?"

Anakin and Jaina provided the appropriate sound effects of an all-out table war as a shadow passed noticeably across Mara's face. It was gone in an instant though, and she smiled again.

"I had hoped you wouldn't manage to involve yourself in Luke's and my business again, but it seems I hoped in vain," she spat.

"What are you talking about?" Lilandra demanded, rising slightly from her chair.

Suddenly, it was as though the senator didn't exist. Mara's head snapped around to fix her husband with a violent glare. "You know damn well … what I'm talking about!" she shouted at him, stopping to draw breath between the parts of the sentence. "Sneaking … out in the middle … of the night!"

The three younger kids broke instantly into a chorus of gasping and laughter, which Luke put a stop to immediately.

"Out!" he roared, pointing to the door. But Lilandra was enraged now too, almost as formidable a presence as Mara at that moment.

"No! They stay. Mara started this in front of them, she should finish it in front of them, too."

"I'm not comfortable airing my family business in … in the dining room – " Luke started.

"No, I quite agree," Mara interrupted him, staring at Lilandra again. The teenagers looked on, baffled.

"Mara, why are you doing this?" Luke asked, lowering his voice. "You know my relationship with Lilandra is nothing but platonic. You know – you were out there on the roof with us last night!"

"So then what is this business all about?" she demanded, jabbing a finger onto the top of the datapad.

"I haven't the faintest! But the sneaking out … there's a perfectly rational explanation."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah! Lilandra and I went to the Te'am Galatsia, the Temple of the Galaxy, you know …" he foundered, waiting for a sign of comprehension from his wife. "Just to see if it was real."

"Why?"

"I think you know why."

The couple stood gazing at each other a moment longer, non-negotiable expressions of matching anguish on their faces. Luke folded first, his sense easily overriding his pride, and reached out his hand to touch her lightly on the arm, but she jerked her hand away, and turned with a fiery glance at Lilandra.

"You know, they call you 'Senator Snatch' later on," she said meanly, shoving the datapad across the table at Lilandra. "Extra, extra. Read all about it."

Then, she turned on her heel and marched out of the dining room, leaving a stunned quiescence in her wake.

Lilandra's face twisted with rage suddenly, and she leapt out of her seat so quickly she knocked her chair to the ground with a clatter. Making as though to run after the woman and finish it once and for all, she instead bellowed "Stupid cow!" to which Mara, in the hallway, responded, "Don't be silly, Lilly Snatch", whereupon Lilandra sat down hard in Mara's vacant seat, buried her head in her arms and was silent.

After a second of some astonishment, Jaina's furtive giggles pierced the bubble of quiet hovering over the table.

"What's funny?" Luke asked incredulously, sitting motionless in his own seat.

" … Senator Snatch?" Jaina gasped finally. Beside her, Tara, whose shoulders were shaking, snorted violently and promptly doubled over, matching Jaina and Anakin's near-hysterical laughter.

"Ha, funny," was Lilandra's muffled response.

"Oh, don't worry," Anakin said easily. "She'll be over it in half an hour."

Lilandra raised her (very red) face, and looked to her sister for support, but even Kerryna was smiling a private sort of smile. "Does that make me Grand Admiral Snatch?" she questioned gently, drawing more laughter from the children.

"Shut you up," Lilandra pouted, and repeated, "stupid cow."

"Lil," Luke reprimanded her sharply, looking guilty. "I would have expected you, as a politician and Jedi student, to take the moral high road here."

"According to Mara, the moral road I travel is just about the lowest one you can travel save for the one into hell, where I'm headed very shortly," she retorted, resting her chin sulkily on her hands again.

"Ah, go on, Lil," Jaina urged. "Mael Kirlane isn't a bad catch when all is said and done."

"That's not the point!" Lilandra snapped.

"I thought you said it wasn't true," Kerryna said wonderingly. "All of that …"

"It isn't! I'm mad because Mara doesn't even trust her own husband enough to know what's friendship and what's a lie made up to sell more papers! And I don't feel that I should be made to sacrifice my integrity to her idea of a little power game."

"Bravo," Anakin smiled.

"I'm sorry, Luke," the senator added sheepishly.

"Lil!" Luke cried incredulously. "Sorry?"

"Oh, don't you start in on me," she snapped, her fists clenching. "Mara was out of line, humiliating us like that – "

"She said 'us'," Anakin swooned. Tara slapped his shoulder.

"Still!" Luke said insistently, and then, with less resolve, "Still."

Lilandra held him with a level, honest, frankly intimidating gaze that reminded Luke painfully of his sister Leia.

"You know I have nothing but the utmost respect for your wife," she said quietly.

"Might that be the aforementioned 'stupid cow'?" Kerryna prompted. Lilandra made a threatening hissing sound in her general direction.

"But she was out of line. And I have a huge history of contention with the character that wrote that drivel. Let me just clarify three things right now, for all of you," she continued, looking at everyone in turn.

"One, I'm sorry to disappoint you, but Mael Kirlane and I are colleagues, and he's taken me out for dinner a few times, and we've posed for a few photo ops, but my interest in him and Ma'Four is not in any way sexual, although I can see how that might be construed. Which brings me to two: I am a senator, and I'm a well-known friend of the Skywalkers, obviously. Tabloids are my life. Any opportunity Biale Aziz has to discredit your family through me, he leaps on it. It happens. Finally, the so-called 'insider' who seems to know more about my relationship with Luke than I do probably hasn't been heard from since the Foamwander crisis when we were –unfortunately – sighted together during Luke's – unfortunate – separation from Mara. Clear?"

Seeing Anakin's expression, she added darkly, "And nothing was going on between us then, either, so piss off, Ani."

He grinned. "I love you, too, Lil."


***


True to Anakin's prediction, Mara was over it in half an hour, and back to bossing the students around with a smile on her face, but that was how Mara usually worked. Like a mounting thunderstorm, the moments before the rain were the most dangerous, because any moment could signify the arrival of the first lightning strike, and it was best to take shelter while you still could. The fireworks themselves were a little frightening to observe, or at best made you a little uncomfortable, but by the time they were over, it was already finished in Mara's mind. A great purge of anger and electricity had relieved her tension, and now she was content to rain all over anyone she pleased.

Luke did not address the many moments in the dining room where his guard had slipped and shown Mara a few tantalizing glimpses of what was really troubling him, although he knew that if she had been perceptive enough to realize that he was gone last night, it was probably fair enough to assume that she realized exactly what had soured in their marriage.

It was for that reason that, when Luke entered their apartment after breakfast and saw Mara standing over the identical frame beds where their children usually slept, holding one of Nathen's toys in a fist she kept pressed against her stomach, her expression blank and emotionless, he said nothing at all about anything that had happened that morning. Just the sorrow that flickered briefly and painfully in his mind when he placed his hand on her shoulder to turn her away from the beds with their immaculate blankets was enough to dissuade him from trying to discuss it further.

I've been inoculated, he thought, without knowing why. I can stop feeling until this medicine wears off.

Lilandra was a safer issue to address.

"You do remember," he said quietly to Mara, "that tabloids print lies? It's what people buy them for."

Mara nodded quickly, swallowing hard. It was clear her mind was elsewhere.

"Lil's … sorry," Luke fibbed. "She was just embarrassed."

"I know," Mara replied tightly, turning away from her husband and dropping Nathen's toy on the bureau with a clatter.

Luke shut his eyes and placed his fingers on his temples. "Well, then. Just so you know."

"I know." Mara stared at him, her green eyes shining. That was her way of instructing him to go and pass on the message to Lilandra that she was momentarily forgiven, and Luke's stomach heaved anxiously. He had seen Lilandra in many, many moods over the years, but never in such a towering, petty fury as she'd been in that morning. He wasn't excited about possibly inviting that rage upon himself again, but, for the sake of the peace, he squeezed Mara's shoulder comfortingly, ignored it when she shrugged his hand away, and stalked out of the apartment into the hallway, careful not to let the door slam behind him.


***


Lilandra wasn't in her apartment, or the common room, where Anakin and Jaina lounged, discussing seriously the morning's events.

"Do you know where she went?" Luke asked tiredly of his nephew and niece.

"No clue, Uncle Luke," Jaina replied, and suddenly giggled again. "Ah, Senator Snatch – that was priceless …"

Luke put on his best Jedi Master frown. "Don't you kids have something you could be doing right now?" he asked in a manner that suggested it was a direct order.

Anakin nodded fearfully, and the two youngsters jumped up and slammed out of the common room onto the landing pad, where they would most likely continue their commentary in Jaina's hammock in the shade.

Fighting exhaustion, Luke continued down the hallway to the kitchen, where Jacen and Tara were washing the breakfast dishes.

"I think she's in the communications room," Tara said, quietly and helpfully. Luke smiled for the first time all morning, seeing the way Tara was tiptoeing around him now. Her studied meekness was a relief after dealing with all of the Academy's fierce women. He didn't even think to ask why Lilandra would be in the communications room, but went there anyway, finding the door standing open just a crack.

Carefully, he peered through the crack, widening it just a bit, and saw Lilandra sitting at the messaging console with her knees drawn up protectively to her chin, reading from the same datapad Mara had used to accost her that morning. He knew just by her face, which didn't have quite the same capacity for blank stares as Mara's, that she was re-reading Bub Aziz's Morning Star article.

"Lil, don't dwell on it, okay?" he murmured gently, pushing the door open all the way.

Startled, she glanced up, sharply closing the datapad. Luke hesitated when he saw the tears in her eyes.

"I'm sorry," he mumbled, backing away.

She shook her head remorsefully, wiping her eyes with the back of her sleeve and braving a smile that only saddened him more.

"What's the matter?" he asked, stepping into the room and dragging a chair over to sit beside her.

She gestured to the datapad, a few fresh tears spilling down her cheeks.

"Ah, come on, it's just lies. You said so yourself," Luke pointed out, placing his palm warmly on her shoulder. "And Mara's sorry."

Lilandra laughed bitterly, though the sound was without conviction. "Like hell she is. She's just given me permission to worship her again."

Luke couldn't help but smile. "You've always seemed fairly comfortable with that arrangement, Senator."

"I was, when she was still bloody human," Lilandra said softly, shaking her head. "It's what we were talking about last night. Her, sending the twins away, going subsequently

insane – "

"She's not insane," Luke frowned. "She's still my wife, Lilandra."

"But you don't understand her," Lilandra continued, looking upset again, her voice rising with the color in her face. "It's impossible to understand her. I thought I did, when I used to come here after the twins were born, and I'd be with them day and night … I thought she just needed a break from parenting. I mean, who wouldn't? But then Leia tells me that when I'm not there, it's you looking after them, or Tara, or Leia herself, or even bloody Cilghal, who has other people to take care of!"

Luke sighed heavily under the weight of Lilandra's gaze.

"Did you not notice what was going on?" Lilandra said, quiet again. "Did you not see that she was doing everything she could to keep from falling in love with them?"

Of course I noticed! Luke wanted to shout, not at Lilandra, but at Mara, or at anyone who would listen.

"They're my children," he continued out loud. "If I had wanted them to go away, we wouldn't be in this mess."

"I hate her more than anything for doing this. It's not just this morning. When you told me last night that those darlings were lightyears away from their parents, I wanted to shake her. I just thought, how can one woman, who brought two children into the world in faith and love, be so damn cruel?"

Lilandra rested her head on her hands again, her eyes shining with tears. "You know what upset me about this?" she asked, poking the datapad angrily. She didn't wait for Luke's response.

"It's not me," she continued, struggling valiantly to keep control although her eyes were welling again. "That girl is not me. I thought Mara would understand that. She's seen me with her children a hundred times, she knows how much I want my own … she's heard me say even more often how much …"

She paused, looking even more upset at her own tears than the words she was saying. "She's heard me say how much I want what you and she used to have."

"What do you mean?" Luke asked gently.

"You know," Lilandra said, smiling halfheartedly through her tears. "The fairytale romance, the passionate fights and even more passionate reconciliation, even just the unspoken bond the two of you shared, even when you were trying your hardest to snap it clean in half. The way it was back when I met you. When this so-called 'informer' thought I was dying to be in Mara's place."

Luke stared wonderingly at her, feeling strangely cheered by her words. The way she described his marriage, it sounded so … amazing. Did you have to be a lonely, romantic-minded young woman to view it with such profound envy and awe?

"See this," Lilandra murmured, pushing the datapad away and shaking her head, "this is inaccurate. It's not you I was in love with when I was twenty-one. It's what you had. What I thought you had."

She rested her cheek on the cool metal of the messaging console, and actually smiled. "I look and look, but everything pales in comparison."

The tension finally broken, the air inexplicably but definitely cleared, Luke smiled too, even chuckled faintly at the irony implied in her words.

"It happens eventually, Lilandra. Shit happens."

Then, they both burst out laughing, for the stupidity and utter humanity of their sadness, feeling markedly relieved that they were still alive enough to feel like this.