"I'll tell you this, though," Luke said the next morning as he shaved in front of the mirror in their tiny refresher, "someday we'll be able to live normal lives, and then we'll have a proper honeymoon. Somewhere isolated and quiet. Just us, for at least a month."

Mara pulled her tunic on and sat on the edge of the bed to buckle her boots. She smiled at him through the open 'fresher door and raised her eyebrows teasingly. "Not Tatooine."

He glanced over at her, returning the smile. "It wasn't high on my list of candidates, no." He set the razor down and ran a hand through his hair, then reentered the bedroom and opened his carryall, set on the storage trunk off to the side—they hadn't bothered to unpack last night. "Though I'm pretty sure that by marrying a citizen, you're now technically a Tatooinian as well."

Mara laughed. "Just what I always wanted." She leaned back on an elbow and watched him dress. "Fairly sure you're technically Coruscanti now, too."

"Well," Luke said, his voice briefly muffled as he pulled his shirt over his head, "we're not honeymooning in either place. We'll find something nicer."

"Kattada is pretty," Mara said with some wistfulness. "When you're not in a rush to avoid being picked up as traitors."

"Mmm." Luke sat down on the bed and leaned over to tug his own boots on. "I was stationed on Chandrila once. It has some gorgeous beaches too."

"So the common feature here is beaches," Mara said, letting her elbow slide so that she flopped backward. There was a long, narrow window high in the wall above the head of the bed behind her, and light reflecting off the endless leaves outside danced in abstract patterns along the length of the ceiling. "We will someday have a honeymoon by a beach."

"A beach it is," Luke said, sitting up straight now that his boots were fastened. He turned to look at her and smiled. "That's just entrapment, right there."

Mara smiled back. She couldn't seem to stop smiling this morning. "You'd say that no matter what I was doing."

"Probably," Luke agreed. He leaned over to kiss her, then took her hand and stood, pulling her along with him. "Come on, we have to go convince Rebel Intelligence that they want to keep us."

Mara twined her arms around his neck and stood on tiptoe to lean her forehead against his. "Or we could just stay here."

"You," Luke said, sliding his arms around her waist, "are a terrible influence on me. You know that, right?"

"You love every minute of it."

He leaned in to kiss her again, and for long moments all other thought fled. When they finally parted to breathe, Mara laid her head on his shoulder and held him as tightly as she could. This—this was worth everything she'd given up. He was worth everything. They were worth everything. She would happily spend the rest of her life as a fugitive, living out of tiny rooms and dodging mental attacks from the Emperor, as long as she and Luke were together.

"Well, not the whole rest of our lives," he whispered into her hair. "We have that belated honeymoon by a beach to get to eventually."

"Stay out of my head," Mara murmured against the side of his throat, smiling again despite the retort.

Luke kissed her temple and disengaged himself from her grasp. "Then quit thinking so loudly." He again leaned his forehead against hers, then pulled back with a sigh. "Seriously, we can't skip our very first—what did Leia call it?"

"Vetting," Mara said with a sardonic grin.

"We really shouldn't make fun of that," Luke said, trying and failing to stifle his own grin. "We are defectors. We wouldn't trust them if they didn't vet us."

"She's so straitlaced, though," Mara said, wrinkling her nose. "She reminds me of—" She groaned suddenly and leaned her head against Luke's shoulder. "She reminds me of me."

Luke laughed and hugged her tightly, then held her out at arms' length. "You're prettier, though." He stroked back a loose tendril of her hair, smiling softly at her, and took her hand. "Let's go be good, cooperative recruits and get our new assignments, then we can come right back here and get on with the current not-by-a-beach honeymoon."

He led her toward the door, and Mara wondered if she'd ever stop smiling.

As Vader had anticipated, Palpatine had hardly stopped raging since being informed of Jade's betrayal. Also as anticipated, Vader had been largely required to attend these outbursts. As adept as he was at remaining in the shadows, Palpatine always did prefer having someone to vent his anger upon, and with his rightful target absent, Vader had been pressed into service as audience for the storm of threats and vows of vengeance.

This afternoon, Palpatine was focused on a complaint he'd had since his attempted contact with Jade. "She had help in pushing me back, I know she did. My Hand is not strong enough to resist me directly."

Vader doubted this, though he kept the doubts to himself. Palpatine's judgment of others was usually sound, but he had a blind spot: his utter belief in his own complete superiority. It was true enough that few, if any, could defy him outright and survive—Vader himself surely had the best chance of that, yet he would not risk it alone. But in believing all others so inferior as to be beneath his notice, Palpatine often overlooked the strengths they did possess, and although Vader had never liked Jade, he did not underestimate her. The girl was stronger in the Force than even she knew, and had a profound willfulness that had enabled her to survive years of brutal training that would have broken most other children—not only that, but she had thrived and excelled, becoming a confident and self-possessed young woman with the skills to back up even her own opinion of herself.

Not, Vader thought, that she would have been able to resist Palpatine's attack had it been in person. But when Palpatine was on Coruscant and Jade herself half a galaxy away in the Outer Rim? Privately, Vader thought her entirely capable of that. He had warned his master more than once during Jade's childhood that training her to the extent that he did was a dangerous game.

As always, Palpatine had brushed Vader's concerns aside. As had the Jedi Council before him. As had Obi-Wan. As had Padmé.

Vader noticed Palpatine's attention begin to turn toward him, and consciously relaxed the hand that had begun to clench into a fist at his side. "As you say, my master."

"Ah," Palpatine said, a new glint in his sulfurous eyes. "You think otherwise?"

Vader lowered his head submissively. "No, Master. I merely wonder who else was there to help her."

"Your son was there, Lord Vader." Palpatine all but spat the words.

"He is untrained, my master."

"Is he? Is he indeed?"

"I brought you the news of his existence as soon as I was aware of it, my master. I would never have done otherwise." The lie came easily.

Palpatine fixed him with a hard glare, then turned and paced back to his throne. Seating himself, he tapped his fingers impatiently against the throne's arm. "Perhaps it was Jade herself who trained him, so that he was able to aid her when the need arose. If she is capable of such treachery as desertion, then she is capable of anything. She will see the error of her ways soon enough, when she is brought back to Coruscant to face the punishment she deserves."

Vader saw the opportunity. "I will leave Coruscant in search of her immediately, my master."

"No, my friend," Palpatine said, lifting a hand almost languorously. "You will lead the search, both for her and for your son, but we must first know where to look. They surely are no longer on Tatooine, and it is a waste of your skill to comb the starlanes aimlessly."

Translation: He would tell no one else of the possibilities inherent in the discovery of Vader's son, nor admit to anyone else the betrayal of his loyal Hand, so until they had a solid lead, Vader was stuck on Coruscant listening to him rant.

"You said that her mission was to search for and eliminate the Princess Organa, my master. Has Intelligence found any further signs of the princess? Perhaps a lead on her might give us a better idea of where Jade has gone."

Palpatine laughed, a dry, harsh sound. "Lord Vader, if Jade has abandoned her rightful loyalty to her Emperor, what reason would she have to continue her assignment? I fear your desire to find your son—" he paused just long enough to send another fixed, suspicious glare at Vader "—causes you to grasp at phantoms."

With an effort, Vader forced back the reflexive spike of anger that Palpatine's scorn always generated. He had more to gain by soothing the suspicions than by feeding them. "I desire only what benefits you, my master. My son's inherent abilities could serve you well."

"This is true," Palpatine allowed. "But then, Jade was also a great asset once, and look at what she has become. If she and your son have joined forces, perhaps it would be better to kill him along with her rather than leave him as a threat."

"Jade has more than earned her destruction," Vader returned, "but we have no indication that either she or my son are even aware of his potential, let alone that he has aided her in any way beyond the mundane. If he could be turned, he could be a powerful ally."

Palpatine leaned forward, his eyes seeming to glow beneath his hood. "You sensed his abilities, Lord Vader. What makes you think that Jade would not have?"

"Jade lacks both the skill and the focus in such an area, my master." As if the girl who had been trained to be merely an obedient spy and assassin could match the awareness of someone twice her age, who had spent one lifetime training as a Jedi and another as a Sith Lord. Vader bit back his indignation at the insult. "You said yourself that you sensed great fear from her when you last spoke, and that she admitted to clandestinely meeting a TIE pilot late at night. It would seem that she and my son were having an affair, and that the emotional attachment sparked her treachery. None of that indicates that she would have had any reason to suspect Force sensitivity on his part."

"A possibility," Palpatine admitted, sitting back slowly. "Your insight on these matters is of great value to me, Lord Vader. But then—" Palpatine let a mocking smile lift his lips. "Who else would know so well how such an emotional attachment could turn someone into a traitor?"

Oh, the barb sank deep. Palpatine always did know exactly how and where to strike. Vader stared at the floor, a maelstrom of old emotion sweeping over him: guilt, rage, loss, loathing. They fed the anger within him, and he felt the dark side answer. If he played this carefully, he had everything to gain—power, his son, the overthrow of the sadistic old man who'd held him captive for decades. "My experience, as with all else I have to offer, is at your service, Master. Allow me to prove it by bringing them both back to you. Jade, to her destruction, my son, to his fate as your servant."

Palpatine lifted a hand to his mouth and gazed at Vader. "And where would you start, Lord Vader?"

"On Tatooine, Master. As you said, they are surely not there now—but they were. We know they were in Mos Eisley only days ago; more, we have a confirmed sighting at the civil affairs building where they were married. Jade is talented in undercover operations, but whatever disguises they may have donned, that may well have been her fatal error. People there will remember them, and from there it will be an easy thing to send the stormtroopers from the local garrison into the city with their current descriptions. There will be a trail, however faint, and from there I can extrapolate their destination."

Palpatine sat silently, but Vader felt the change of his sense in the Force. Before, Palpatine had been too furious to let Vader, the one person at whom he could safely rail about these matters, out of his sight. Now, whether it was Vader's words or simply that he had finally vented enough anger to begin to reach for vengeance in earnest rather than merely threaten it, his master's mood was shifting from pure fury to contemplation.

"You believe you can track them from this one mistake?" Palpatine asked at last.

Vader inclined his head. "I have tracked down and killed fully trained Jedi from less information, my master." As you well know.

A flash from amber eyes made Vader wonder if Palpatine had caught that last thought, but it hardly mattered. After two decades, Palpatine knew perfectly well how much Vader resented him, just as Vader knew perfectly well that Palpatine would betray him just as easily as he had betrayed the Jedi and the Republic, if ever a more promising candidate happened to appear.

Vader was not fool enough to believe that Palpatine wasn't even now contemplating doing exactly that, for the sake of gaining his son. The trick was to keep Palpatine from suspecting that Vader was planning the same betrayal, and the best way to do that was to bury his deeper animosity beneath the ordinary subdued hostility that his master expected from him.

"Go then, my friend," Palpatine finally said. "Hunt them down in my name, and bring them before me." He smiled thinly. "Then Jade will die, and we will see if the son follows in his father's footsteps."

"It will be done, my master." Vader bowed, and strode from the throne room. He had ordered the Executor to be on standby in orbit days ago, after he had first informed Palpatine of his discovery; he would be on his way to Tatooine within the hour.

Now his own plans could truly begin.

Leia was just stepping from her own room into the hallway when Mon Mothma came around the corner. "Ah, Leia," she called. "Would you have a moment?"

"Of course," Leia said. "What is it?"

Mon came up beside her and gestured toward Leia's door; Leia reopened it and led them both inside. "I have a favor to ask of you. You know that the pilots you came in with yesterday have debriefings scheduled today."

Leia frowned. "Just the pilots? What about Mara?"

"Therein lies my request," Mon said with a smile. "Can you keep her busy for me this morning?"

"Keep her busy?" Leia echoed. "Of course I can, if you need me to, but why?"

"She does have something of an interesting history, Leia. That needs to be addressed."

"That's what the debriefing is for," Leia said. "So why is it being postponed?"

Mon sighed. "Bringing the Emperor's personal assassin into the fold is something a little different from our average defector. There are things to be discussed before we begin the process."

Leia frowned some more. "Ben vouched for her. The whole reason Winter and I were sent to find him was that the Alliance needed his wisdom and guidance, and now we're going to ignore his advice before he's been here a full day?"

"Certainly not," Mon replied. "He has vouched for all in Mistress Jade's group, and I fully trust his judgment in the matter. But I do not wish us to become an autocracy like the Empire. I need to discuss the matter with some of the others among the leadership. Master Kenobi will join me in the discussions, and I hope to have her debriefing started by this afternoon. And in the meantime, I would rather not instill distrust in Mistress Jade herself. Hopefully the matter will be smoothed over by midday. It would be a great help to me if you could step into the breach until then. Say there was a scheduling conflict, and spend the morning showing her around the base, perhaps. Talk to her, see if you can draw her out at all, and let me know how it goes afterward."

Leia sat down in one of the chairs in her little conversation area. "I'll show her around. I'll talk to her. But I don't like the idea of spying on her."

Mon sat down in the chair next to her and leaned over to take both Leia's hands in her own. "I'm not asking you to spy on her, Leia. Just to help her get settled in and feel comfortable and let me know how far you think you succeeded, and if anything else needs to be done."

"I can do that," Leia said slowly. The idea of a full morning one on one with Mara was a little daunting. They were certainly on more friendly terms than they had been when they'd first met, but that wasn't saying a great deal, either. And aside from the brief conversation in the cockpit on their way back to Yavin, she and Mara really hadn't been alone together at all, they'd always been in a group. And even in a group, Mara was far from chatty or outgoing. Still, Ben had vouched for her, and Leia knew her duty, both to the Alliance and to its recruits, which included Mara.

"I knew I could count on you," Mon said warmly. "I'll get in touch with you by midday. If all goes well, she'll start her recruitment process today the same as the rest of her party, just a few hours later."

"All right," Leia said. Somehow she thought that she'd rather go into pitched battle than spend half a day trying to make small talk with Mara Jade.

Well, no one had ever said that being a member of the Rebel Alliance was going to be easy.