Crackship challenge: Mara/non-Luke. I'm cool with it...
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The first time Mara Jade heard of Wedge Antilles, he was a seventeen year old orphan, and people couldn't stop talking about him.
"I've met him – such a polite boy. A pity about his parents…"
"I heard the only reason he hasn't been charged with murder is because of his sister, can you imagine?"
"Wynssa Starflare's real name is so common – no wonder she changed it!"
The whole sordid story came out in the end: The pirate, the inept investigation…and the murder. The Court tittered and gawped, and Wynssa Starflare's famous smile became just that much more strained…and then it died away, the foppish socialites turning their attention elsewhere, to other scandals.
In the smoky back rooms of the government, beyond the sight of most citizens, the men and women of the Judiciary talked a little about pirates and money and even justice. And afterward, things began changing, at least a little.
And some time later, Mara saw Wynssa Starflare laughing on the arm of a certain Captain Fel, her face utterly relaxed and open. Mara idly wondered what happened to her brother the vigilante.
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The first time Mara Jade saw Wedge Antilles, he was a newly-promoted Captain, and he was utterly separate from the people around him.
The ballroom was filled to capacity, and there were people everywhere: people talking, laughing, dancing, eating, doing everything people did. They just did it far away from him, though, and Mara could understand why. He gave off an air of melancholy that just wasn't conducive to good dinner conversation. He reminded them that the destruction of the Rebel base had been bought with the lives of hundreds of thousands of men.
He stood alone, nursing a drink, and Mara noted absent-mindedly that he looked quite striking his uniform. There was something she could say about the dark, solemn man standing alone in the crowd… Mara shrugged, and turned away. She wasn't one for melodramatics and she had better things to do. Vader was dead in the wreckage of the Death Star, and Antilles was just a survivor.
She looked back once before closing the ballroom doors, and saw that he was looking back at her. She just closed the doors and walked away. The Emperor needed her.
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The first time Mara Jade actually spoke to Wedge Antilles, Ysanne Isard's blood was fresh on his hands.
Mara couldn't really blame him for killing her, though – after all, the reason she'd come to see Ysanne had been to kill the woman herself. Still, it was a shock to see the hero of Endor and Hoth and Yavin standing in the middle of the Director of Imperial Intelligence's office, a vibroblade held in his bloody hands and Ysanne Isard's head placed carefully on her desk.
For one long moment, they just stare at each other. She hears the pair of Royal Guards she's brought with her shifting uneasily, but they won't attack until she lets them. In the back of her mind, she realizes that Antilles looks even more like his sister close up. They have the same strange, changeable gray-blue-green eyes, and she remembers the Diktat of Corellia telling her the color was a uniquely Corellian trait.
"Sorry," he says ruefully, and a shy smile spreads across his face. "I finished the job before you could."
Mara blinks, and she sees as if from a great distance that blood is spattered across his face and uniform, and Ysanne's body is very carefully laid out on the floor. He's making no move to hide the evidence, no excuses.
"Why?" She asks seriously, and she watches his strange, honest eyes for the truth.
"She would have destroyed the Empire just as surely as Skywalker tried to." He says it like it's the most obvious thing in the galaxy, and suddenly, Mara begins smiling as well. She looks at him, and he looks at her…
…and right then, at that moment, Mara Jade falls in love.