Chapter Four
As the Coruscant sun moved in the sky over Imperial City, the windows of Leia's office automatically tinted to adjust for the glare. The room was cast in shadow for a moment; Mara's eyes took a moment to adjust to the change in lighting. Throughout the discussion Mara had been taking in the room, trying to get a sense of Organa Solo's public face. Most of the furniture – the desk, the pair of bookshelves, the side tables, all of the chairs – were made of a wood with a distinctive dark coloring, probably Kriin oak from Alderaan. With Karrde's energy now absent and business concluded, the office instantly grew more somber.
Leia stood and turned away, pouring two fresh cups of caf despite the hour. "Do you want anything added to yours, Mara?"
"No, thank you," Mara replied. "I usually just drink it as is; it's stronger that way."
Leia offered her a smile. "No preference for taste?"
It was an idle question, a probing of her preferences, her mundane likes and dislikes, but it felt oddly personal. She could count on one hand the number of times people had asked her that kind of question while she was in Imperial Palace. It felt almost invasive, although it was doubtful Leia intended it as such. "I like the spiced blend you serve," Mara replied honestly. "It doesn't need anything else."
Leia settled back into her chair and placed Mara's caf down on a coaster. "How are you, Mara?" Leia asked, and if the question about her preferences hadn't been probing, this definitely was. Mara felt her instincts kick in, felt the urge to make idle, meaningless small talk while she evaded whatever ill intent her conversation partner had in asking such questions… but only for a moment. She sipped her caf, took a breath, let it out slowly. No, Leia wasn't interrogating her. Leia's small talk wasn't meant to be invasive, it had no insidious purpose. Mara wasn't on assignment. It was just small talk. Regular people made small talk all the time. She tried to force herself to relax.
But there was something about the way Leia looked at her that made Mara feel transparent.
Mara sat back, hoping that physically relaxing against the seat would help her mentally relax, and considered her answer carefully. After she'd left Coruscant she and Karrde had spent weeks on the Wild Karrde, recruiting for the Smuggler's Alliance and establishing new contacts and trade routes. Then Karrde and Aves had left on their own business, and she had commanded the Wild Karrde herself for the first time. She'd fallen into the authority offered her without hesitation; the routes they'd run had been simple and profitable.
The solitude—the crew had largely left her be—had been a blessing. Without the Emperor's voice in her head, with the Force answering to her call once more, she had taken the opportunity to practice her abilities, even including some of Skywalker's meditation techniques. Her skill with the lightsaber had returned with only a minimum of rust, which she had quickly stripped away.
Most importantly Mara's mind was her own, perhaps for the first time in her entire life—at least, for the first time since Palpatine had taken her from her parents. Who was the Emperor's Hand without the Emperor? She could remember after the Emperor's death wondering the same thing, but she realized now that his death had not truly meant his absence. Even discounting his voice, he'd continued to define her through the damage he had inflicted, and the consuming void his absence had left in her life.
The image of Luuke Skywalker's dead face after she slashed him across the chest was still vivid in her mind. With the clone's death had come true freedom, and the Emperor's Hand was finally, mercifully dead.
Karrde understood, even if he never said as much out loud; it may even have been why he'd left her alone on the Wild Karrde while he and Aves traveled on the Last Resort.
She had been quiet for much too long, Leia was still watching her with an expression that was much too knowing for Mara's liking, and perhaps the sudden pressure to say something made her answer more honestly than she normally would have. "I'm not really sure how I've been," she replied, cradling the mug, wary of revealing how vulnerable she felt but finding herself doing it anyway. "Less sure about things than when we met, I suppose."
"You look… happier," Leia said softly, as her brown eyes watched Mara much too knowingly for Mara's comfort.
Mara offered Leia a tight smile. "I'm not really used to thinking about my happiness," she admitted.
"It's important not to forget it," Leia said soothingly. "I can get so lost in my responsibilities and in the needs of the New Republic that I forget what makes me happy." She shook her head. "I even almost let the New Republic marry me off to Prince Isolder of Hapes because I put everything but myself first." She took a sip of her own caf. "Sometimes I forget I'm not just Councilor Organa Solo of the New Republic. I'm also Han's wife and Jacen and Jaina's mother. Luke's sister. But it's hard to take the professional face off when it feels like the galaxy rests on my shoulders… or when it's the only thing keeping me together."
Mara hid her discomfiture by sipping her caf. That sounded alarmingly familiar. She sat, nodded in a way she hoped conveyed sympathy or understanding without revealing too much of her own feelings, and waited for Leia to continue. But Leia just sighed, looking out the window. The Senate building could be seen beneath them through the tinted transparisteel, its large mushroom dome structure gleaming with the afternoon sun. The silence lingered longer until Mara finally surrendered and broke it. "Is there anything I can do to help, Councilor?"
Leia sent her a wry smile. "You can call me Leia when we're alone, Mara." The words made Mara blink twice. They hadn't had that many private conversations; this was really only the third she could think of. That wasn't usually enough to privilege someone with name instead of title… "You saved my life, and my husband's life, and the lives of my twins, and the life of my brother," Leia spoke into her musings. "Chewbacca would say that makes us family."
"I'm not a Wookiee." Mara's voice sounded a bit distant to her ears.
"You're not, but I've spent enough time with Chewbacca to have grown my climbing claws," Leia joked. Mara chuckled, surprised at the riposte. "I just wanted to see how you were doing and to ask you a favor," Leia said, her expression darkening a bit.
"A favor?" Mara asked cautiously. "What kind of favor?"
Leia put down her mug and folded her hands on her desk, her expression darkening further. "I was hoping you'd go talk to Luke," she said. "Something is bothering him and he won't talk to me or Han about it. And his other friends—Lando, Wedge, the rest of the Rogues—are all offworld." She idly stroked her left hand with her right thumb. "He doesn't have all that many close friends." Leia said absently.
Mara wasn't sure what surprised her more: the implication that Leia thought Mara Jade was a close friend of Luke Skywalker, the request itself, or Leia's unhappy tone. She took a moment, letting her brain process what Leia was asking. She could say no… but she really couldn't. One couldn't just tell Leia Organa Solo no, especially not after Leia Organa Solo had just claimed you as almost family. And it wasn't like she was avoiding Skywalker. They had even fallen into something of a routine, continuing her Force training before she'd left Coruscant with Karrde. Mara felt the stirrings of obligation tug at her and sighed inwardly.
She wondered vaguely if this was what made Leia such an effective diplomat. Mara wasn't even sure whether Leia was manipulating her on purpose. "Where is he?"
Leia looked up, as if drawn from her own distant musings. "He's spent a lot of time in the Emperor's Jedi Museum of late."
Mara frowned and quickly racked her brain. "I was practically raised in the Palace, I've never heard of a Jedi Museum." She'd been through all the exhibits of the Imperial Museum and there hadn't been more than one dedicated to the Jedi of the Old Republic, and even that had been little more than an explanation of their treachery. Palpatine had done all he could to destroy their memory.
"Next door," Leia explained with a small frown of her own. "It was a concealed wing of the Imperial Museum. We stumbled across it after we captured Coruscant. You weren't familiar with it?"
"No," Mara said. That was odd, but Palpatine had kept plenty of secrets, even (perhaps especially) from his Hand.
"Well, Luke spent some time there after it was first discovered, and he's been spending more time there the last week or so." Leia frowned. "He's been distant and distracted, and it's not like him. And he won't talk about it, at least not with me." Her frown deepened, and Mara could sense that Leia's worry—and frustration—both ran deep. "I was hoping…" she gestured at Mara, "that maybe you would be able to help."
"Why me?" Mara asked, and instantly regretted the question. Her regret must have been obvious, too, at the slight amusement that tugged at Leia's frown.
"As I said, Luke doesn't have many friends. He'll be happy to see you…" Leia's voice trailed off and the smile vanished back into the frown. Mara could see the hint of pain in her brown eyes. "He might talk to you about some of the things he doesn't like talking with me about."
There it was again—Leia's casual assumption that Skywalker was her friend. She wasn't his confidante! She should correct the misapprehension, she knew, but if she did Leia might try to argue with her, convince her that Skywalker was her friend, and stars only knew where that debate would end. "Fine," Mara replied instead, a bit more gruffly than she'd really intended.
Leia just smiled. "Thank you, Mara. If you need anything, just let me know. Oh, and tell Talon that you and he are invited to dinner with us at least once before you both go back off-world."
Dinner? Mara felt disturbingly off-kilter. It was time to end the conversation before Leia surprised her again. She took a slow breath as she stood up, covering her momentary lack of composure with the motion. "Of course," she said instead of asking any more questions. Questions were dangerous. "Good afternoon, Counci—" she caught the word in her throat at Leia's imperious look. Feeling dazed, she corrected. "—Leia."
"Better," Leia said approvingly, "It's always good to see you, Mara."
Despite the waning light, she felt warmer, and this time she knew exactly why.
The Imperial Museum had reopened in stages for the last three years. Thanks to the passcard Leia had given her, Mara had been permitted entry to one of the yet-unopened wings of the Museum. She found herself in a darkened, empty space once she was past the handful of security guards at the entrance. Where once there would be lines waiting for tickets or admission, there was now just an empty marble floor. Where once there would have been gatherings of Coruscanti or wealthy offworlder schoolchildren, come to celebrate the Empire and learn of its history, there was the gleam of evening sunlight off abandoned benches and a deep, lonely silence.
During the height of the Empire the museum had been one of the main tourist attractions on Coruscant, with exhibits that dated back to the Clone Wars, detailing the history of Senator Palpatine and the other heroes of the Old Republic who had reforged that decrepit institution into the New Order. It had been a mainstay of Imperial political philosophy that all governments inevitably declined, and that the Old Republic, millennias old, had long since passed into its dotage and beyond. Such decay could only be fought with the vigor of great men, those same scholars said, chosen and blessed by fate—and as such Senator Palpatine was all that held the Empire together and prevented its slide back into decrepitude and chaos. Anything that predated Palpatine's rule had been forgotten or marginalized as unimportant. Today, New Republic academics were restoring the museum, revising each exhibit with sourced, true information, and obtaining provenance for and repatriating looted art and artifacts from all across the Galaxy.
Mara could remember her first trip to the Imperial Museum; to the majesty and the myth. It had been soon after she had been brought to the Imperial palace, she thought, though it was impossible to be sure; all her memory was suspect, given Palpatine's likely interference. Over the years it had been a place she frequented, on and off—a reminder of purpose and of pride. She was the Emperor's Hand, chosen by Palpatine himself. She fought the internal corruption and decay that would destroy all government, all order, if given the chance. Vader dealt with the Rebellion because he had all the subtlety of a bantha stampede; she was the scalpel, the precise instrument, the remover of cancers of all kinds.
She hadn't returned to the Imperial museum since she fled Coruscant with Ysanne Isard's goons close on her heels, and she hadn't thought to visit after the Thrawn campaign, so this was the first time she'd stepped foot inside the museum in six years; the first time she'd stepped foot inside the museum since she'd fulfilled the Emperor's last command.
More importantly, it was the first time she'd stepped foot inside the museum since she'd realized Palpatine had been a fraud. Just stepping inside this place again, remembering how it had made her so proud, was enough to make her skin crawl and put a bitter, coppery taste in her mouth.
She had disdained the Empire after Palpatine's death because to her eyes it had become a tool for naked, unprincipled ambition. Loyalty had meant nothing to Pestage or Isard or Thrawn, or to any of the other warlords. The Empire under them would be just as corrupt as the Old Republic before Palpatine, and perhaps even more so. None of them were the "Great Man" Palpatine had been. But the Empire always had been just a tool for naked, unprincipled ambition. Everything Palpatine, everything her tutors, everything her fellow citizens had ever told her had been lies. Everything in this museum had presented the Empire as the galaxy's salvation, as an institution of perfect justice for all—how each and every citizen would always receive precisely what they deserved—it had always been a lie. Always. All for Palpatine's own benefit.
How could she have been so, so blind? She thought back to her memories of the Emperor, of her joy at his praise, at the comfort of his presence when he touched her mind, and now all of it left her bitter cold.
I was a child. I should have been left to be a child.
The museum had been constructed years before Palpatine repurposed it into the story of his grand rise to power; well-maintained marble floors and towering columns lining each wide hallway, with long, curved transparisteel ceilings. Light poured in from above, glare reduced to an acceptable level. Everything in the to-be-revised sections was covered with a faint layer of dust, except where construction teams were steadily removing old exhibits for eventual replacement with new ones. It would be another few years before the museum fully reopened as the Grand Museum of the Republic, but in the interim it had no guests in this wing, leaving it with an appropriately empty and abandoned feel.
No one else should be subject to Palpatine's lies. Not ever again. The old fraud.
During her time commanding the Wild Karrde, alone with only Dankin and Chin and Karrde's damned vornskrs for company, she had spent some time wondering why Palpatine hadn't turned her into an agent of the Dark, as he had Vader. Why leave her illusions intact? Why let her believe that justice meant something more than whatever Palpatine desired, Palpatine received? Being back in this museum she thought maybe she understood. Palpatine had never wanted the galaxy as a whole to see him for what he was; his strength was supported by pillars of illusion, of the lies that had filled this museum. Mara herself had been just another propaganda tool: she had been the Emperor's Hand and when she arrived, the illusion of justice inevitably followed, leaving all those in her wake convinced by the strength of her example that whatever misdeeds were committed by other Imperials, whatever men like Tarkin did, the Emperor was good and fair and just.
They would believe it because she believed it. Because she came on his behalf, acting in his name, and she did her best to live up to virtues that… meant less than nothing to Palpatine. Virtues he had actively and thoroughly despised.
This was not the first time she'd let thoughts like these tie her in knots. By the time she had found the long, seemingly abandoned hallway that would bring her to the Jedi wing of the museum she had begun the process of unwinding the tension she'd let build in her gut. By the end of the long corridor she was even-keeled enough to remember that these bouts of self-recrimination were helping no one, least of all herself. She was Mara Jade, not the Emperor's Hand. Letting the… ambiguities… of her past pull her down would not help her heal. She shouldn't dwell on it. She could hear the advice spoken in Luke's damnably calm, quietly passionate voice.
If only doing it was as easy as saying it.
There was a noticeable change in décor as Mara exited the corridor into the unmarked Jedi Museum, using the passkey Leia had given her to gain entrance. The large doors opened without complaint, but they released stale-smelling, musty air. Darkness and spider webs replaced muted sunlight. The heavy doors closed behind her once again, leaving her alone in the unfamiliar space.
The room was long and rectangular, with footsteps etched in the thick layers of dust on the floor and dangling web-strands hanging from the ceiling so thick she had to sweep them aside with her arm. She contemplated using her lightsaber to slice her a path, but if Skywalker was here then clearly he hadn't done that already. She refused to allow herself less composure than the Tatooine farmboy. Her lightsaber remained on her belt.
Her skin abruptly went cold and she almost stopped dead. The Dark Side was so thick here it made her nearly choke. The sense of malevolence, of stinging chastisement, of dark, unrestrained gloating sang with Palpatine's voice. She shivered at the unrepentant hate.
This wasn't a museum, she thought with quiet, dreading awe as she stepped into the space. It was a mausoleum. She was surrounded by relics; statues and occasional holo-images, surprisingly well maintained given how long it had obviously been since this place had received regular maintenance. Statues of fallen Jedi, paired with relics of their passing. The statues had been defaced or decapitated, and in her mind's eye she could see Palpatine's rage-filled face as he personally destroyed each of them in his ritual of gloating.
She stepped near one of the statues. It was a woman's body, though the statue—like many of the others—did not have a face. "An'ya Kuro," a voice from the base of the statue said. "Jedi Master, she served with distinction during and after the Clone Wars." A hologram appeared, but Mara didn't recognize the woman's face even from the holo. There were other pieces of memorabilia around her, including a lightsaber. Trophies, Mara thought disgustedly.
She looked around, stepping away from the exhibit and realized there were dozens more. She continued on, passing statue after statue… hundreds of them. Perhaps many hundreds. This had been the Old Republic's Jedi Museum, she realized, but Palpatine had closed it and turned it instead into the list of his victories. Every defaced or otherwise disfigured Jedi was a Jedi that Palpatine had seen dead, one way or another.
There were so many. Mara stepped close to a few exhibits, giving them closer looks. Rarik Solusar was also missing his face, and Mara wondered if there was some specific meaning in that. There was a collection of his possessions at the statue's feet—a lightsaber, a datapad, and a ring, among others. Another statue, deeper in, still had most of a face; it looked like it had been shot repeatedly with a blaster. "Siri Tachi, Jedi Master," the voice said. "Apprentice to Adi Gallia and Master of Ferus Olin, she was frequently a companion to Obi-Wan Kenobi." The mention of Kenobi's name made Mara step in for a closer look, but Tachi had been killed years before the advent of the Empire. Strangely, none of her possessions—including her lightsaber—were present, and Mara wondered idly if that had something to do with the way she had been killed.
A dull guilt tugged at her. Mara hadn't ever been a Jedi hunter; had never encountered a Jedi before Luke. But she had been a party to their deaths; had been complicit—deceived, but complicit—and thus responsible. Ultimate blame of course belonged to the Emperor, but if she'd seen through his deftly-sewn veil of lies…
Mara suddenly understood, looking at Solusar and Tachi's statues, why these rooms reeked with the Emperor's wrath. Yes, his presence was still overpoweringly present, if far duller and more diffused than it was where he had died at Endor. But the light in these exhibits wasn't extinguished, merely buried as if covered in layer after layer of tarpaulins, each dipped in the awful, clinging residue of the Emperor's presence. He could only kill them, Mara thought, and she smiled at the stubbornly determined expression Tachi wore for her holo, remembering something Skywalker had said.
"There is no death, there is the Force."
Even with all his forbidden studies, his malevolence, Palpatine had failed to understand his enemy. He couldn't defeat them.
Was that what Skywalker was doing here? Expelling the Emperor's lingering malevolence one day at a time? Replacing it with his own, much more welcoming presence? Probably.
She turned away from the statues towards the passageway into the next room. She could feel Skywalker's presence now, a breath of fresh air, light pushing back darkness. The Emperor's presence felt faded in comparison to the bright spirit of the living Jedi. She'd been nervous about seeing him again, she admitted, but in that moment she couldn't for the life of her remember why exactly that had been.
She followed the thread that connected them, feeling his presence in her mind. The doors between them parted to admit her, the cobwebs sundered by his own earlier passage. As she neared his presence, she sensed a firm foundation of sun-warmed stone; she gripped the thread that connected them and she used it to draw nearer as, unnoticed, the last vestiges of Palpatine's fog burned away.
When she finally reached him, what she found wasn't exactly what she'd expected. Her lips blossomed into a surprised smile and she laughed. "Dignified as always, Skywalker."
Luke Skywalker, Force Ghost-anointed "First of the New Jedi," felt anything but peaceful and serene. It had been a long six weeks since Wedge and Rogue Squadron had left Coruscant to join Garm Bel Iblis' campaign to retake Ukio and sunder the Imperial hold that Grand Admiral Thrawn had re-established over the galactic southeast. He wasn't sure how Ben would feel about a Jedi having drinking buddies, but he missed them all the same.
Luke's arrival on Coruscant after the planet's conquest a few years before had been one of utter wonderment. During his childhood, Uncle Owen had always dismissed Coruscant as irrelevant and opulent to the point of wastefulness, an ecumenopolis that consumed food, water and resources and spat out poor governance, ineffectual and corrupt at best, malicious at worst; Aunt Beru had rarely discussed it at all, other than to say that when she was young, it had been the bright center of the galaxy, where millions of people came together as one. Luke had quickly learned that both Owen and Beru had been correct. And he wondered what his father had made of the planet.
The decision to move the New Republic's capital to Coruscant had been for symbolism more than anything else, but Luke knew that Leia had never been completely certain the move had been a wise one. Geography was power, and Coruscant's ancient political establishment was steadily working to re-establish itself within the old halls of the New Republic.
Except one part of that ancient political establishment: the Jedi Order. The Jedi had always been both part of and separate from galactic politics; present, influential, but kept at a deliberate distance. The older political leaders who remembered the galaxy before Palpatine wiped out the Jedi had told Luke a lot about how things had used to be, before the Empire, but a lot about the actual power dynamics and responsibilities between the Jedi and the galactic government remained frustratingly vague.
Growing up as a moisture farmer, dreaming of being a pilot, Luke had never imagined that it would become his responsibility to help recreate and lead what was arguably the single most influential institution in galactic history. And here at the heart of government? That influence was power. Seductive, succulent, dangerous power, power which had destroyed many a Jedi of the Old Republic, tempted by everything from avarice to lust to the deceptive lure of easy solutions.
Even after he had been given the task of recreating the Jedi Order, and had accepted it, he hadn't really realized what it would mean. But the responsibility had fallen to him and—especially now that the leaders of the New Republic had begun to seriously consider re-organizing the galactic government from its current, provisional state to a (hopefully) more permanent one—uncertainty about what was best increasingly paralyzed him.
The problem—or, one problem—was that the New Republic's leadership all more or less assumed that the Jedi would be a part of the new political establishment, and would logically be organized along with and as a constituent component of the New Republic. Leia especially just took for granted that the Jedi order would be formally re-established along with the New Republic, aiming towards a full restoration of the way things had been before.
But Luke wasn't sure that was the right thing. Was this the right time to create a Jedi order? Was he prepared to teach the new Jedi to join that order? Was being part of the New Republic, either formally or informally, right for people who should serve all life, not just the citizens of the Republic? And was he, Luke Skywalker, a moisture farmer from Tatooine, with limited formal education and no political training other than what minimal tutoring Leia had provided after the victory at Endor, ready to become a major political figure? It was bad enough being the New Republic's only Jedi as it was.
Leia had enough on her mind, and Luke didn't want to add to her myriad of worries and responsibilities. On top of that, he was slightly fearful that he and she would disagree about the right answer; that her commitment to the New Republic would lead her to a perspective about the Jedi with which he would be compelled to refute. He wasn't ready to fight with Leia about it. Not now, and not ever really.
He was avoiding her, she had to know he was, and it had to hurt. He didn't need to spend as much time in Palpatine's Jedi museum as he was... though the Force pulled him back here when he opened himself to it, like there was something he needed to find. And it was a convenient excuse to avoid her. Avoid everyone official, really.
He'd spent weeks cleaning away cobwebs, restoring exhibits, checking and repairing lightsabers, reading entries, looking for guidance, wondering if perhaps once Palpatine's presence was banished if the spirits of the Jedi memorialized in the museum might appear to him and offer him the guidance he sought. So far they hadn't but he felt like his meditations were productive, and the Force kept teasing him with some hint of useful knowledge that he couldn't quite reach. It was like he'd forgotten a word and it was just on the tip of his tongue but he couldn't… quite… remember it…
Luke flexed, his arm muscles straining. His wrists ached and he reached out to the Force to relax the tension building in them from the weight pressing down. His legs flexed a little as he carefully balanced the handstand, bringing his ankles closer together. When Yoda had first taught him handstand meditation, back on Dagobah, he had thought the Jedi Master had been playing a practical joke on him, and there were still times Luke suspected that perhaps Yoda had been. But the practice was excellent for focusing the mind.
"Concentrate. Feel the Force flow," he heard Yoda's voice in his memories. "Good. Calm. Through the Force, things you will see."
His eyes wavered shut, the meditation growing deeper as the world around him; the smells of the musty Jedi Museum, the lingering presence of Palpatine, his own sense of unease all faded away as the Force sustained him. He exhaled, stale breath leaving his lungs to be replaced by fresh; the Force strengthening his muscles and calming his mind. There… a voice, dark and confident, and another younger and less certain. He couldn't hear either of their words, the image hazy, but there was the snap-hiss of a lightsaber and the steady buzzing of the ignited blade, a blue glow cast around. Was this the future, he thought? The future of the Jedi order? Or perhaps it was the past, the training of the Jedi that had once occurred on this planet? Why would the Force need to show him this, why now?
He sank deeper into the trance, his arms straining and dripping with sweat as he sustained the handstand, his breathing slowing further still. He concentrated on the image, looking for anything useful; the lightsaber hummed and buzzed as it was swung, voices too hazy to be understood continued with the intonation of teacher and student. I don't understand, he thought, but in the words he heard a plaintive tone that Yoda would have chastised him for. He let the frustration go and could feel an echo of Yoda's satisfaction.
Something was different now. There was another presence, brighter and more vivid. The image of master and student faded under the bright glare of its light; warmth and humor and carefully banked affection washing over him. The Force was never so forthright with its approval, he thought happily, in fact…
A woman laughed, a bright, amused laugh that was totally unexpected and instantly recognizable. The vision banished, Luke's eyes shot open. There, a few meters away from him, peering upside down at him with bright, dazzling green eyes and good humor that sent an unexpected jolt through him, was Mara Jade.
"Dignified as always, Skywalker," she teased him, though the words bore no malice.
Her presence, her smile really, pulled him fully out of the trance. He opened his mouth to respond, but with his focus split between her and the Force the strain of the handstand, and the inexorability of gravity, was suddenly too much. With a sound that started with the first few letters of her name and ended with a surprised yelp, Luke fell backwards and hit the floor.
"Aww, Mara," he groaned as the pain from the impact shot through him. Her presence in the Force was not so encompassing now that he had exited the trance, but he could feel a myriad of emotions radiating from her; a mix of fading nervousness and humor and cautious affection that lingered in his mind.
She laughed, smiling. He groaned again as he sat up, reaching out to the Force to soothe his complaining arm muscles. How long had he been holding that handstand, anyway? He shook his head, rubbing his arms.
"Interesting place you found here, Skywalker," Mara said from above him. Her smile still hadn't left her face and Luke took a moment to just watch her smile. He could still remember the first time he saw her really smile at him, and the second. He wasn't sure what it was that made her smile so intoxicatingly attractive. Maybe it was because he'd only known her scowl for so long.
Luke forced himself to look away, fearing he would make her uncomfortable, and gestured at the exhibits around them. "The Emperor destroyed everything he could," he replied. "What he didn't destroy or corrupt, he brought here. There's so much here, but his presence still infects this place." He sighed heavily, staring at the ceiling; the mahogany-colored wood was still covered with spider webs.
"I know, I can feel it," Mara replied softly, sitting next to him. Together they sat in companionable silence for a moment; Luke recovering, Mara making her peace with her memories.
Luke reached out, his hand brushing her leg gently. She looked down at him, her eyebrow arching. "Welcome back to Coruscant," he said with a smile. "How was your trip around the galaxy?"
She threw him a patient look. "The trip was productive," she replied. "We learned a few useful things that the New Republic ought to find valuable, and so far the Fringe is holding together better than I would've expected it to. The dream of the Smuggler's Alliance isn't dead, though I think the only thing really holding it together right now is Karrde's reputation."
Luke's gaze was unwavering. "And you?"
She rolled her eyes at him.
With a groan Luke sat up and shifted towards her, his knee resting accidentally against hers. She looked down at where they touched, as if considering an alien experience. Luke tensed, prepared for her to object or needle, but she didn't do either. He nudged her with his knee, and her attention was drawn back to his face. "You came looking for me? I'm touched."
Mara nudged him back aggressively, her knee knocking against his in a way that was just a little bit painful. He winced. "Your sister sent me," she retorted, her leg settling back so that there was a bare minimum of space between them. "She's worried about you."
"Leia sent you?" Luke said in wonderment. He thought about all the ways he could point out how undeniably odd it was for her to be doing Leia a favor, but he felt her tensing and preparing a pointed retort and decided not to poke the krayt dragon. He sighed instead and rubbed his temple, retreating back into his earlier concerns about the Jedi and the Republic.
"Skywalker?"
Her voice brought him back out of the passing miasma. "Do you remember that conversation we had on Wayland?" he asked, turning his head to look at her again. "When we talked about how to teach young Jedi? You told me that ultimately the only way to teach Jedi to be just and honorable and conscientious was through example."
Mara nodded. "Are you still worried about that?" When he didn't respond immediately her knee nudged his gently, and he looked up to see her expression. She looked back, attentive.
He nodded. "Yes, of course, but…" his voice trailed off and the frustrations that had driven him to meditation bubbled up once again. He saw her gaze narrow, felt her lean towards him. He hadn't felt like he could talk to Leia about this, not with her responsibilities in the government, and if he couldn't talk to Leia, then he couldn't talk to Han. Wedge was off planet, Lando was away putting Nkllon back together, but Mara was here. Listening. "Mara, what does it mean to be a Jedi?"
She frowned at him, puzzled. "That's an odd question to be asking me, especially here."
"Not really," Luke replied. "Being out in the galaxy, so many people have ideas about what it means to be a Jedi. For some people we're the embodiments of good and justice; others remember us as evil or corrupt or disinterested. For some we're military heroes; for others, we're villains who leave legacies and death and destruction. For some, we're wise sages and problem solvers and dispensers of justice; for others, we're lazy and entitled fools who think we know better than we actually do."
She stared at him and an expression of understanding fell over her eyes. "So, what is a Jedi, actually?" she asked him.
"We listen to the Force and let it guide us," he murmured. "Beyond that," he shrugged. "I've never felt like I was any of those things. Just a man from Tatooine with useful abilities." He sighs softly. "I don't know if I can be what Leia wants me to be," he admitted.
"I'm not sure I'm the right person to ask," Mara said, looking through him more than at him. "I was all of those things on your list too, when I was the Emperor's Hand." She was silent for a long moment; he pushed his sudden, fragile hopes for them aside, reminding himself yet again that the last thing Mara needed was him further complicating her life. "I guess my life is a lesson. I think I always knew Palpatine was evil," she admitted. "Deep down, I knew something was wrong. I should have known something was wrong. But I didn't listen to the Force, or even to my own best judgment. I listened to him." She looked down. "I should have known better," she admitted softly.
Luke's hand slid over hers, his fingers wrapping around hers and squeezing. It was an impetuous gesture, and he was relieved when she didn't quickly pull away. "You couldn't have," he reassured her.
"I could have," she retorted hotly. "I'm not a fool, Skywalker. I saw the Empire, I saw the Emperor, I saw the people he surrounded himself with. But I let him tell me they were necessary evils, let him tell me it was for the greater good. I let him lie to me. I was willfully blind." Her fingers were hard around his now, a hint of pain twinging his hand from where hers squeezed it. With a grimace she relaxed her grip. "I trusted him more than I trusted myself," she murmured. "I trusted his word over my own experience." She squeezed his hand and then released it, leaving his skin cold without hers against it. "Your Jedi should never do that. Not ever. Not for anyone."
He nodded.
"Is this what has been bothering you for weeks?" she asked.
He shrugged. "It's a big problem. If the Jedi Order isn't part of the New Republic, does that mean we're autonomous? That brings all kinds of its own issues."
"Funding, for one," Mara pointed out.
He stilled at her words… but no, she couldn't know. He nodded choppily. "Unless we can find some external funds," he agreed more calmly than he felt. "Enough to make us independent."
She eyed him suspiciously, but if she suspected he was holding something back she decided not to call him on it. "Yeah, well, good luck with that. One Jedi, or even a handful, won't need that much in the way of credits, but a whole Order will. And I doubt you'll want to be demanding pay for your services."
"We're not mercenaries," he said firmly. "I'll need to think about this some more. Maybe ask some other people who have a vested stake." He nudged her knee with his and smiled at her. "In the meantime, I assume you're back on Coruscant for the time being?"
Mara wrinkled her nose and nodded. "Yes, at least for the next few months I'll need to be here in my role as liaison, getting the Smuggler's Alliance and its formal links to the New Republic's shipping and intelligence services up and running." She winced. "This is going to be like herding pittins," she muttered.
"You can do it Mara. I know you can." He smiled at her.
She sent him a sideways look. "I can but that doesn't mean I'm going to enjoy it," she retorted.
Luke laughed. "Well, I hear the trick with pittins is having a couple of small boxes that they fight to try and sit in." He paused, watching her. "You know," he said, serious again, "if you have any free time while you're here, I'd enjoy a training partner." He heard the hope in his voice and tried to tamp down on it. He didn't just ask Mara about the Jedi because she was Force-strong, or even because he thought of her as a friend, but because he hoped that someday she would join him as a Jedi. He saw in her the future of the order, a companion who understood the Force and understood its abuse.
He saw in her an equal.
Someday. If she wanted. When she was ready.
Her gaze told him that she thought he was thoroughly insane, probably for a dozen different reasons. He just smiled at her, watching the hint of turmoil, feeling her internal conflict, hoping. "If I have time," she conceded, then rolled her eyes again as she undoubtedly felt his burst of relief and joy at her tepid agreement.
"I was about to get something to eat; it's getting late and I haven't had anything since lunch," Luke said. "Care to join me?" He stood, then offered her his hand.
She looked up at him, then placed her hand in his. "Sure," she said. "I know a few good places around here." She offered him a wry smile, using his support to pull herself to her feet. "Or I did, anyway."
Luke chuckled. "Lead on, I'm sure we'll figure something out."