"I shall leave you, my highnesses. If there is anything you require, please let me know," Erv said as bowed before turning to leave the throne room. Luke smiled and waved goodbye to his old friend. He had sent him on yet another well deserved vacation. Pressing the console, his chair turned to face the viewport.

At that very moment, Luke sat on his throne, his wife Mara Skywalker right beside him on the second throne with their infant child Crystal in her arm. They stared out the viewport of the Palace, observing the hundreds of super star destroyers and thousands of other smaller ships move in coordinated chaos, surrounded by swarms of fighters and bombers. At the epicenter of the formation was the Jade, a thirty kilometer long dagger shaped ship brimming with thirty thousand heavy turbolasers, thousands of point defence laser and ion cannons, an axial superlaser, thousands of upgraded T-90 X-wings, custom made to Luke's design, a state of the art cloaking system, and to Luke's great pleasure, phrik coating on top of quantum crystalline armour, rendering the ship nearly indestructible. Precisely why he had named it after Mara's old self. But she was Mara Skywalker now. Loyal wife of Luke Skywalker, mother of their child Crystal Skywalker.

Mara reached out her hand, and Luke held it tightly, as they watched the fleet begin fading from view upon activation of their cloaking fields. Mara still had a hard time believing Luke had assembled such a huge collection of ships with the force. It seemed her husband was capable of nearly anything.

"Not without you, my dear Mara. Not without you," Emperor Skywalker told his Empress, hearing her thoughts through their bond. She smiled in return as they leaned in for a kiss, their child sleeping peacefully between her parents.

Crystal, robed in a soft, white blanket, was a carbon copy of Mara, the same red hair and green eyes. Luke had been ecstatic, and decided the day after the intimate night between them that the girl should be named Crystal, a beacon of hope and strong to her core. Mara held little objections, with no one to name their daughter in her honour for.

Vader had once told Luke, "The future is yours, Luke. The future is yours." Darth Vader envisioned something very different at the time, but in the end he was right. It mattered little that some extra-galactic force calling themselves the Vaagai were causing trouble.

For Luke, nothing could stand in his way with the force as his ally, his beloved wife Mara by his side and his child safe under his care. For Mara, she was powerful in her own right, but with Luke's technical and tactical genius and the force at his command, she had found her place, knowing she and Crystal were safe. Their people were prospering and the empire was strong. The future was truly theirs.