Disclaimer - This story is purely for the enjoyment of anyone who loves the SW Universe. The characters and situations belong to Lucasfilm Ltd. No credits Imperial or Republican changed hands at any time. My thanks to JT, Molly and Mona. Comments would be nice, but no flames please.

The Awakening - Chapter 7

Greoa Prime

The ground was shaking again. Luke Skywalker gave up trying to sleep and twisted himself around inside his sleeping bag, his bare legs tangling with the inner sheet which seemed to be knotted around his knees. By the Force, he was so tired. He hadn't slept properly in three weeks. A healing trance was all very well, but one had to have time to do it. His mind searched through the endless possibilities in which he could achieve the blessed state of unconscious slumber he deserved. The last proper rest he'd had was when Mara had rested in the circle of his arms. So that was over three months not three weeks. Just thinking about her made his body ache in certain 'areas'. He shifted again, recalling the way her soft lips had brought him to the brink and beyond. Another tremor shook the ground. No wonder he couldn't sleep - at this point in time he was wide-awake - very awake. In places he didn't need to be, either. He fixed his eyes on a spot in the darkness and willed himself into drowsiness. It didn't happen. Luke emitted a big sigh and, admitting defeat, sat up.

He'd been on Greoa Prime for three weeks - three hellish weeks. He had to do something to help. Something to banish raw memories of a certain redheaded woman who'd turned to fire in his arms. It was simple; Luke Skywalker wanted to feel that he was needed again - he wanted a little adventure. Even though Yoda would have lectured him roundly, waving his gimer stick as he did, Luke knew that his old Jedi Master would understand. Luke wanted to make a difference for the people he had to help. Instead, he'd been wallowing in frustration doing the administration on Yavin. He loved teaching the new Jedi, but he'd been doing that less and less and seemed to spend all his time filling in returns on data pads. He wanted to be out there, where it mattered and where things happened again. He wanted to be somewhere where he could do some good.

His call to Coruscant had been fortuitous because from there he'd heard about the Verran debate. That had got him into the right part of the galaxy when trouble had hit Greoa Prime. Coruscant to Greoa Prime was far easier than Yavin to the same place. In the case of this poor place, it was a necessity - a natural tragedy of epic proportions. No one in the Galaxy should have been sitting by while this happened. But it had, and almost unnoticed too. Hopefully the fact that Luke had made it here, followed reluctantly by the news reporters, might have make the Inner council and the Senate do something. Leia had wanted to come when she'd found out about the tragedy, but Luke had said no. It was far too dangerous, and she had a young family to care for. She was much more effective in Senate Hall. Luke would, for once, show his public persona and help these people. If only he'd had Mara available to help him, but he quashed that thought quickly. He had to get on with his life without her. Long ago he'd realised relationships were not going to happen for him. Perhaps once he might have pursued Mara, but these days he accepted his lot and moved on. Part of him would always hope, but he was human and human nature being what it was - it was inevitable he would feel this way. Mara was the most beautiful thing in the world to him, but she had her own life and he had to let her go. 'She should be here with me', he argued to himself. 'She's a Jedi and a powerful one'. But as Luke firmly pushed her into the corner of his mind reserved especially for her, he knew he would never stop loving Mara. He could love her, but it wouldn't help him solve the problems he was facing on Greoa Prime.

The third planet in the Greoa system was the only one out of six others, which could support life. It was so far from the core that it had never attracted much attention before. Greoa Prime had one fertile continent, the rest of the planet consisting of dry crater strewn plains. Very few people lived on the plains of the southern continent preferring to work the pleasant flatlands of the central zone. Greoa City and spaceport was the largest of the settlements and was home to about one hundred thousand people – mainly human settlers. It was here that the problems had started. Luke pulled out his data pad and lit his reading light.

Ten months ago the city had been hit by earthquakes over a two week period. Scientists had been saying for years that the city had been built over a fault line, where planetary plates collided, but there had been no history of such a thing happening in the Central Zone. If it had been in the Southern continent, that would have been another story entirely. The flat dry plains were littered with examples of long dead and not so long dead volcanic activity.

The tremors had started slowly at first, but as time had passed they increased hourly. People had started to report that on the outskirts of the city, the ground had in places turned from flat to undulating.

Some had left their homes, but the majority ignored the scientists' predictions and decided to do nothing. The ruling council on Greoa had concluded that the scientists were over-reacting and deliberately scaring the populace. One of the leading seismologists had been arrested and imprisoned. His frantic staff, increasingly convinced something dreadful was going to happen, had finally secured his release near the end of the second week. They set up a monitoring station in field next to where the worst of the land distortions had occurred. Members of the ruling council were unimpressed when they'd paid the site a visit. All they'd found was the beginning of what looked like a small crater emerging in a field on the outskirts of the city. It hadn't made galactic news, because it hadn't been important enough. No one had been killed, injured or badly mutilated. No one was starving or suffering from strange epidemic diseases.

The crater continued to grow, monitored carefully by the scientists - they began to recommend evacuation of the whole eastern district. Little puffs of smoke and gas began to emerge from vents in the ground. The smell of sulphur hung in the air, thick, heavy and turning white clouds a vaguely yellow colour. There was an increased number of bronchial conditions in the young and the very old, resident in the Eastern district, but still people refused to believe that a disaster was about to happen.

Luke switched off his reading light and lay down. People were the same the galaxy over - never preparing for what might happen and refusing to believe that their lives may be ripped apart at any moment. The memory of his home burning, so many years ago on Tatooine, had never faded. It remained as vivid for him as the day it had happened.

Luke pulled his inner sheet into some sort of order and wriggled to get comfortable. It was no use. These temporary beds were too narrow and uncomfortable to help him relax. The sheet in double quick time had already twisted itself underneath him and now lay bunched in a hard knot at the small of his back. Luke swore in several languages and sat up again, pulling his legs out of his sleeping bag and crumpling the offending inner sheet into a large wad of cloth. Why was he here again?

He'd been drawn into the disaster when a Force dream had awoken him from a Jedi healing trance. It was just after he'd been caught in a stray bit of cross-fire during the Verran incident. They'd shipped him home to the Coruscant medicentre and he'd spent a day in a bacta tank - again, followed by a day in a healing trance. Luke sighed as he recalled his premature rousing from the trance to find that everything in his room shaking. When he'd blinked it was as if it had never happened. He'd reached into the Force for his sense of calm and he'd seen it - the explosion, the fiery fountain of incandescent drops raining down on the defenceless people. He'd felt their pain, their hopelessness and the loss of everything they had. He knew about that and could understand it.

"Where?" he asked.

He saw visions of a planet he didn't recognise, so he'd snuck out of the medicentre and gone to the Imperial library. Finally he'd found something that identified the planet as Greoa Prime. Not quite Outer Rim, but very nearly. Leia hadn't discovered he'd gone till he'd contacted her after he'd left Coruscant. She'd not been very pleased with him to put it mildly. He could still recall her diatribe on his recklessness. He'd also contacted the main news agencies to see what they could tell him. They'd heard of nothing unusual happening on Greoa Prime, nothing ever happened there. A mere half an hour later they had. A volcano had exploded underneath the capital city with devastating results. Anyone remaining in the city itself had been killed.

Why hadn't the ruling council taken proper note that the outskirts of the city had risen one hundred feet in eight months? A yellowish cloud permanently covered the top of the new hill on the edge of the city, little bursts of smoke emerged every so often and people living near the mound found their houses and gardens covered in small black specs of ash. Finally they'd realised something was dreadfully wrong and the area was evacuated. Some people refused to leave homes they'd spent all their lives in. Nothing was going to happen. The experts were just trying to frighten them. They'd been born there and would die there. It would happen sooner than they thought.

For a month the scientists watched and monitored, waiting for the inevitable eruption but nothing happened. The volcano continued to rise, but not with the same speed and even the scientific experts began to relax. Some people even moved back into the homes they'd vacated a couple of months previously. They didn't know how wrong they were to do so.

The day that Luke left Coruscant was marked by a heavy stillness on Greoa Prime. None of the birds sang over Greoa City and the people moved lethargically through their daily routines. It was too warm - unnaturally so for the time of year. The volcano was covered by a far thicker cloud of smoke than usual and strange rumbling sounds seemed to come from the very centre of the planet itself. With a sound resembling all the explosives on Greoa going off simultaneously, the volcano shot some of its contents miles into the sky. The ground began to shake again, but these tremors were much bigger than the ones they'd experienced all those months ago. The tremors continued and the rumbling in the bowels of the planet got louder and louder. There was a strange roaring in the air.

The head of the scientific study sent his assistant to report to the ruling council. He told the rest of his personnel to get out of the city. He would stay on the slopes of the volcano and watch. His colleagues left him with heavy hearts for they knew what was going to happen.

"Evacuate the city!" the leader of the ruling council cried frantically, and an operation had begun to clear the people, but it was too little too late. Their complacency had killed them. As the volcano on Greoa Prime began to erupt in earnest, there was no time left for those still in the city. Their deaths would be more horrific than any Death Star. By the time the galactic press had been alerted by Luke and by those on the planet, it was too late. Greoa City was blown apart, destroyed by a cataclysmic explosion from the erupting volcano.

Luke rubbed his tired eyes with his hands. He'd arrived to a scene that must resemble every hell imagined. An enormous caldera crater had replaced the area once known as Greoa City. No one had been able to go near it, the blistering heat drove back anyone who tried to approach and the air was thick with choking sulphurous smoke. Thousands dead and thousands injured, orphaned and homeless. Luke's heart bled for the innocents. War was cruel enough, but the only crime on this world had been blindness and complacency.

"Master Skywalker, are you awake?"

It was the voice of the camp organiser. Luke called a quiet affirmative, grabbed his trousers and pulled his Jedi Tunic back over his head. He emerged to the familiar scene of someone cradling a filthy burned body in their arms, Someone who'd miraculously survived, but without the Jedi Master's healing abilities would not last the night. In this wretched instance it was wasted energy, but Luke couldn't tell the grieving, broken people that. He tried, he really did to find the healing energy, which would signal that small individual's signature in the Force, but in the end he eased them into a trance which meant the end was kind when it did come.

Again he got no sleep at all that night.

Coruscant - Luke's Apartment

Mara felt strangely guilty about spending the night there, but her own place was being rewired and redecorated on Karrde's insistance. Leia and Han had offered to put her up, but the children were there, as were Winter and Chewie. Leia had then offered her Luke's apartment. She'd opened her mouth to refuse, she really had. She always had the 'Fire' as an option. However, the words had stayed in her mouth and she'd found herself reluctantly accepting the data pad with Luke's access codes on it.

Han had arrived back with the children to find a smug Leia and a rather quiet Mara Jade. Mara had been pressed into staying for an impromptu supper, the children tumbling over the gentler woman who sometimes emerged. Leia wondered if Mara might have been more like this and less abrasive, if she'd been left with her family. But that was something they would never know. Mara was awkward with the children, but listened to their talk and tried to answer their questions in a reasonable manner. It was their constant references to 'Uncle Luke this and that,' which Leia could see, affected Mara, the most. So she let the children stay up well past their bedtime and encouraged them to talk about their Uncle. Eventually the children were sent to bed and it was time for Mara to go. Han offered to take Mara to Luke's and she nodded absent-mindedly.

"Thanks, Leia. Look, I'm sorry about… well, things."

"Give yourself a chance, Mara. That's all I'm asking you to do. Have you ever really given a relationship between yourself and Luke the possibility that it might succeed or are you too scared?"

Mara's eyes flashed in quick anger, but she said nothing, and Leia pressed her advantage.

"So you have no family history? I've searched all the Imperial records I could find, and I know Luke has too."

"He has?" Mara's face expressed surprise. "He never told me that."

"I think he hoped to surprise you one day, by presenting you with the complete life history you possessed BP."

"BP?"

Han grinned as he grasped Mara lightly by the elbow, leading her towards where the airspeeder sat humming. "Yeah, BP - Before Palpatine."

Mara sat silently beside Luke's long time friend and tried to think of something to say. Han didn't seem to be mad at her any more, but she wasn't sure that she shouldn't feel angry with herself.

"Okay, Jade?"

Mara smiled a little in the darkness of the speeding vehicle. "Don't really know. I thought I had everything worked out. Thought I was in control."

Han pursed his lips and made a small silent 'Oh'. "When have we ever been in control?" He muttered a little irritably. "I sure can't remember the last time. Don't you get it, Jade? You can't control what you do; you can try, but you have to accept what life deals you in the sabacc hand and make the most of it." He gave her a sly look. "You know I hadn't figured you for a coward?"

He felt her bristle beside him. "Luke threw that accusation at me, too."

"Frustrated was he?"

"Like hell."

Han chuckled. "He's human after all. I've wondered if the Luke I first met, hadn't been swallowed alive by the Jedi Master?"

"He's still there…"

"Oh yes, he's still there, but struggling to keep himself whole. You've never seen Luke as he was when I first met him. Naïve…"

"He's still that sometimes."

"Just his farmboy upbringing. He had his chin stuck out at this angle all the time. Trying to be worldly wise and failing miserably. I was an old cynic, who'd been round the galaxy and back a few times. Luke was different. He still believed in doing the right thing, still wanted to be a hero. The thing about heroes - they're so busy saving everyone, who's gonna save them? He needs you, Mara. You could keep Luke sane. He's not happy. I told Leia a long time ago, but she didn't believe me."

"I told her the same thing and I think she does believe you now. He's lonely and stifled and feels as if his life has no direction. He has the Force…"

"But it's a lonely bedfellow."

Mara glared at Han in the dark. "I never thought that."

"Come on, Jade. I don't believe that nerfshit for a moment. You're missing him too. You existed before without each other, but it was a half-life. Something's woken the two of you up, and you're fighting it. Luke's my best friend, along with Chewie, and he's a special guy. I'd be dead if it wasn't for him. Either that or living a different sort of life. I wouldn't have Leia or my children and believe me, my family is the best thing to happen in my life and I include Luke in that family. He needs his own family – something he's never had. Not really. Why can't you relax and see where this thing takes you both?"

Mara shifted uneasily in the suddenly claustrophobic confines of the speeder. "We don't have that kind of friendship."

"I think you do. Have you ever seen the two of you when you're together?"

Mara shook her head, wondering what others saw.

"You have an energy together – a connection… And I'm not talking about the Force thing. I might as well say it," he paused, as he tried to frame the words into a coherent sentence. "I may as well be shot as an Imperial rather than a smuggler." He swerved wildly to avoid an out of control air taxi with a grinning Duro at the controls. "Sex."

"What!"

"Sex," Han shrugged and steered towards Luke's entrance platform. "The tension between you is sexual. I don't know when it changed, perhaps it has always been that way, or you hid it better. But mark my words, Jade. It's there and it's not going to go away until you do something about it."

"But… I swore never to need…"

"Mara! My wife is right; you are being stupid. Threepio would say 'wilfully obtuse'," He mimicked the droids tone with an accuracy Mara found startling. "Luke will never abuse his power. He knows too well what he is capable of. He wants to be a regular guy. He'd never give up his Force, because it's part of him and part of you too. Talk to him, Mara. Go and get him off that planet, before he kills himself. He needs you, and you need him. Plus, I could do with a bit more support in this family."

"It would never work."

"Have you tried to make it work?"

Mara glared at the Corellian.

"I have my answer. Try it, I dare you."

Han deposited an extremely quiet woman at Luke's apartment and hoped he'd done enough to please his wife. 'Hell, he wanted to please himself too. Mara and Luke were crazy about each other, but stubborn as a pair of taun-taun on Hoth. The taun-taun probably found it easier to mate, even on Hoth and that was saying something. He owed the kid a lot. Mind you, the kid must be good in bed to have Mara Jade in such a dither. He'd never seen her in such a state.'

*********************************************

Mara wandered around the apartment. At first, she'd been strangely reluctant to leave the upstairs area, but her still vivid memories of the time they'd spent together called to her and she made her way down the stairs. Ignoring the guestrooms, she entered the Master bedroom. The warm dark colours soothed her tired spirit and for the first time in days, she relaxed. The evening view of the Coruscant skyline drew her for a moment, but her gaze returned to the bed. The memory crept unhindered into her consciousness and this time she let it. The picture of the two bodies moving as one in the graceful ritual of human love - each of them so attuned to the other's needs that the whole experience burned into their souls. Shaken by what she had recalled, Mara pulled off her clothes and slid into Luke's bed. His masculine scent surrounded her and she fell asleep, dreaming of his bright blue eyes telling her without words that he loved her.