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Prologue

Mara Jade had been born in a hole. Born to a lifetime of slavery without even knowing it, and it had gone downhill from there. As she grew up, it grew worse, and she grew number to the pain and death she brought about out of mere servitude. At times she had even started to take pleasure in her gruesome tasks. And then, slowly; it had happened right under her nose, but simply did not exist in her memory: she had begun to live for it. She had become a hideous beast devoid of all sentiment save for bloodlust.

But nothing, good or bad, or in the undefined grey area between the two extremes, lasted forever. Everything came to an end. So it was with Mara's trance of cold ferocity. There was no precise moment of revelation recorded in her memory; somehow the shift had eluded her. One minute she had felt grim satisfaction in anticipation of the atrocities she would (un)willingly commit. The next, she had awakened to an entirely new array of feelings.

Emotions she had grown insensitive to and qualities of hers that had long since become dormant seemed to awaken and mushroom everywhere, their origin unknown. Belligerence. A thirst for independence. A longing for the one thing she could never have: true freedom. Freedom of speech, action and, most of all, thought. She had started to think for herself, bordering on treason, but she had taken care to hide it well.

And then there had been the darker things. The ones that tormented her every waking moment, sometimes even as she slept. Creeping fear and doubt. Stinging, burning self loathing. A profound weariness of life itself. And the constant bite of the shame and guilt that always seemed to sneak up on her, biting, gnawing away at her mind, worming their way into her soul. But it had been better than blindness, ignorance and willful submission.

The trigger of all this? She knew what it was. How could she not when the reminder was right there, in front of her, each and every day? But at times she wished it wasn't. She sometimes wished it did not exist because it had gone downhill from there. Mara Jade had found herself terribly conflicted, torn between two options equally tempting. And she had taken the easy road.

She had taken the easy road, and it had caught up with her. She had walked the easy path, and her life had crumbled, collapsed upon itself. But while her life had disappeared, it had not taken Mara with it. Everything had been destroyed, but Mara Jade had remained alive and (un)well. Instead of being sucked in by the undertow, she had been washed ashore, like a marine creature left to die in the sun.

It had taken a great amount of effort and all her skill to erase herself from all databanks and disappear from sight, but she had managed out of sheer will. She had started a new imitation of a life through smuggling for one Talon Karrde. A dirty, filthy job, but she was already stained with dirt and filth and blood. Still, at times the guilt resurfaced.

She learned to force the thoughts down to the bottom of her mind, to shut them in a cage where they could not bother her. Sometimes she even bamboozled herself into believing that she enjoyed this life; that this actually was a life. At other times, her conscience refused to be fooled. That was when she broke out the spice.

She would be submerged in a peaceful world of blissful, numb, ignorant ecstasy. She knew it was rotten, just like her, but it made here forget the emptiness, the aimless wandering she was doomed to. However, nothing lasted forever and, when she wasn't drugged to the eyeballs, the pain multiplied tenfold. At times she could not hide. She could not hide from life. She could not hide from the memories. She could not hide from herself.

And she could not hide from her. Her – Mara's five year-old daughter Aileen. Aileen Skywalker. Sometimes, deep down, Mara resented her. Other times she found herself succumbing to a seething hatred hidden deep within her soul, where it would linger undiscovered. Until the target shifted to Mara herself. Why?

The answer was right in front of her. Aileen was a beautiful child; one might have aptly described her as a little angel, but that could hardly be attributed to her mother's good looks. In fact, all she had inherited from her mother was the sharp, pointed chin and the ivory complexion. Her hair was an unforgettable shade of sandy blonde that still wormed its way into her dreams. And the eyes…the eyes. Sapphire orbs identical to the ones that she saw in her mind's eye at every waking moment. Sometimes even when she slept.

And Mara hated her. She never said it. Never showed it. She tried to love her. She tried with all her might. There were scattered, rare moments in her life when she fooled herself into believing that she felt something for that wretched child. Then, it would seem that the void in her heart was filled.

The rest of the time, the cold, slimy fingers of self-loathing and disgust clenched around her soul, bitter thoughts crawling into her mind, scraping their claws against the surface of her skull. It's all your fault. You are cold and heartless. You are ruthless and unfeeling. You are a horrible mother. They never left her alone. She did not live without them.

They harshly whispered what was painfully true. They never forgot it, and they were right. It was all her fault. She was a horrible excuse of a human being. She was no mother. And she was certainly not an example to follow, not a figure to idolize. No sane person, not even her daughter, the embodiment of innocence, would ever admire a drug-addicted ex-assassin smuggler.

These were the thoughts that ran through her head as she stared out the window of her dingy little flat at the gloomy landscape of the backwater world she now resided on. The city below and the hills in the distance were bleak and grey. It was raining. It always rained. Even when no drops fell from the sky.

A single wracking sob escaped her as she buried her face in her hands, limp hair, once a brilliant red-gold, now a dull, rusty colour, fell around her like a blood-soaked curtain. She could not hide. She leaned against the window sill as the tears welled in her eyes, once again staring off into the distance as they rolled down her deathly pale cheeks.

"Mommy...?" Barely a whisper, but it stood out in the somber quiet. No answer.

"Mommy." Louder this time, but still quiet. Mara turned and simply stared. The haunting blue eyes stabbed right through her.

"Why are you crying?" Genuine concern and worry thrived in those wide round eyes, and for a moment, they were almost wet with unshed tears. Then knowledge seemed to spark within them. Her unblinking gaze turned serious.

"It's about Daddy, isn't it?" Mara turned away. It was the question. It sprang up at unexpected times. It always went unanswered.


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