AN: Hello? Anyone out there? The last chapter didn't garner any response, and I was kinda hoping you'd tell me if I do action scenes well or no. That being said, I promised another chapter on Wed. and it's Wed. Please review. puppy eyes
XXXXXXXXXX
"I'll be in the conference room with the others. Come on down when you've decided." Luke Skywalker, the man she had sworn to kill, turned and began heading for the door. Mara remained at the rail and contemplated the 90 degree turns her life seemed so fond of. The Emperor's Hand had destroyed the Emperor's storehouse. The neutral smuggler was contemplating a liaison with the New Republic. And Skywalker, her final target, was showing her his back while his old lightsaber rested in her palm.
The reasoned contours of the heirloom weapon bit into her palm as she fisted her hands. What was the point anyway? Others would always define her life for her and that life was a never ending series of missions. Mara struggled against the flow of time and causality that swept her into an unknown, unplanned, unwanted future.
Luke paused at the door and looked back sensing the maelstrom where the tide had turned in one solitary life. Mara stood framed against the setting sun, light streaming around and if he looked through her. Her red hair flamed to iridescent life and the light caressed her figure as if each perfect curve was calling to be seen. He could feel the rip-tide of emotion becoming, sucking at his soul, demanding that he be swept away on a wave of memory. Quietly, Luke immersed himself in the raging flood.
Images slammed into him, filling and overflowing his mind, the chaos of a flood in the confines of thought.
Two faces glared at each other almost nose-to-nose. Between identical torsos twin lightsabers, blue and green, hissed and arced. Gritted teeth grimaced and blue eyes blazed equally balanced hatred. YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER. Skywalker the enemy. Skywalker the heartless. But which was Skywalker? The cold one. The empty one.
Sky blue eyes were matched windows to vastly different souls. In one eye, the chill of hard vacuum. In its match were the clouds of personal struggle and sacrifice. Hard dominance warred with straining survival as the final demand beat against sudden sympathy. YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER. The cold one must be destroyed.
Explosion! A shower of scintillating shards envelops the kind one to strike at his empty double. The cold one shrieks, the freezing call echoing from his hollow self. Two faces merge to one distracted enemy. YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER. Amen and done. The clone crumpled, downed by Skywalker's own lightsaber.
"Kneel before me." With a capricious disregard for time and context, the flow of memory roared over a cataract and threaded the needle of thought. C'Baoth beckoned in his madness, "I have foreseen it."
I have foreseen it, my Hand. In her mind, Mara knelt before the Emperor in a sincere recreation of the parody that killed C'Baoth. From her knees, she looked up into the eyes of the man she called "Master." She was larger than the three-year-old Palpatine had saved, but still she craned her neck to meet the Emperor's jaundiced eyes. You serve me well, Mara Jade, the wizened old man crooned in her mind.
Thank you, Master, she replied dropping her shields to the Emperor's probe. She trusted him, he wouldn't hurt her.
"Let's just say I'm good at knowing who to trust." The remembered words adopted a bitter tone as the betrayal by her guardian waved mockingly before her eyes. Trust was overrated and misplaced. Her life would be controlled anyway. Then again, Palpatine was dead; C'Baoth never had her, and Karrde was pushing her away under the guise of a job offer. Whom now would she serve?
Luke felt the panicked questions swirl again and reached out on instinct to calm them. Mara's shields were gossamer brushes against his consciousness that let much in and even more out. You serve yourself, he whispered to the part of her that yearned for pride of place. He smoothed over self-doubts that her brash nature covered, but did not cure. Finding a quiet eddy in the flood of feelings, Luke pulled the spent and confused mind into the stillness of rational thought.
Mara took a deep breath and mentally stepped back to calmly look over Karrde's offer. Her past was over and whether she liked it or not, the New Republic was the future. She could be the smuggler's liaison. In fact, only she could be so. She served herself; she belonged to herself and she needed to stop looking for someone to order her around.
The pain in her hand made Mara look down to where she still held Skywalker's lightsaber in an iron fist. One of his last links to the past. Mara let a smile flit across her face. Farmboy was anything but subtle, but he needn't worry. Her past went up with Mount Tantis.
Luke smiled, sensing the shift toward calmer emotions and turned to go back to the reception he'd left. "Hang on a minute," Mara called. He watched over his shoulder as she sauntered to his side. The lingering pain was gone from her eyes and if she did not smile at him, at least she did not scowl. With predator grace she stalked over to him, stopping comfortably close to regard him with eyes that saw too much and revealed too little. "I'll come with you."
XXXXXXXXXX
