Part IV: The Will of the Force
Mara walked through the hallways of the Jedi Temple on Coruscant, but it was not as she remembered. The Emperor had often made her visit the ruins of the Temple when she was young, but it had been a tomb, then. The first time he had accompanied her himself, telling her of the Jedi who had once inhabited it – the Jedi who exemplified all the evils of the Old Republic, who had been brought down by their own hubris. It had been the Jedi, after all, who had disfigured him in a failed assassination attempt – Palpatine, the democratically elected Chancellor. The Jedi were elected and governed by no one, and thus ultimately corrupt.
She had absorbed his words without question, hating the Jedi who had once walked through the same halls, who had built such a shrine to themselves. Mara had visited many times after that, examining the blaster and lightsaber burns in the walls, studying how the Emperor had so effectively cut out the heart of the Jedi Order. The bodies of the slain Jedi had long been cleared away, but it had felt as if their ghosts had remained. The entire complex made her skin crawl, but she went there to remind herself the importance of service.
The Temple she had known had always been dark, but the halls she now walked through were brightly lit, with all aspects of the massacre gone as if they had never existed. It seemed to be teeming with life, although Mara could not see any inhabitants it was almost as if they were there, around every corner and doorway, just out of view. Mara walked through the great hall, through the pristine training rooms and library until she reached the apex of the Temple, the heart of the Jedi Order – the Council Chamber.
The Emperor had never allowed anyone to enter the Council Chamber, the doors always locked. Perhaps it was because he hated the Jedi so much, or perhaps he had thought if she had seen it, seen the circle of chairs where no Master was above the other, she may have questioned his teachings on the selfishness and dictatorial nature of the Jedi.
Musing on this, Mara walked across the room, her boots clacking against the marble floor. Coruscant stretched out before her, but not the Coruscant she knew under the New Republic, or had known under the Empire. In Imperial Palace, in particular, was missing the embellishments and additions Palpatine had made, and her suspicions were confirmed. She was looking at Coruscant as it had been under the Old Republic, and since Padme had told her that her surroundings were chosen by desire, there was little doubt that the next person she was meant to meet had been a Jedi.
The skin prickled on the back of her neck and Mara turned back around to see a man standing in the doorway, unsurprising, in Jedi garb. There were distinguished streaks of grey at his temples and through his ginger beard, framing a mature but handsome face. He smiled at her, and his blue eyes sparkled, but Mara wasn't the type to be taken in by such an obvious charm offensive.
"Hello there," he greeted her in a rich Coruscanti accent.
"Hello," she responded cautiously.
"I am so pleased to meet you, Mara," his grin widened. "At last."
Mara folded her arms across her chest in annoyance. "Really."
"Yes," he nodded, either not noticing or choosing to ignore her sarcasm. "I am Obi-Wan Kenobi."
Mara pointedly looked him up and down, but said nothing. Friendliness was clearly Obi-Wan's tactics, but silence was hers. She did not doubt his words, but Luke had often fondly described "Ben" and the man before he simply did not match the image in her mind.
Obi-Wan's smile faded slightly at her reaction. "Surely Luke has mentioned me?"
Mara forced herself not to smile at his obvious disappointment. "No, he did," she said finally, and to Obi-Wan's obvious relief. "More often than I cared for, to be honest," she added with a sly smile. Obi-Wan's grin returned, and he seemed more pleased than offended by her words. "It's just Luke always gave me the impression that you were…old."
Obi-Wan laughed, the rich sound echoing around the walls of the room. "We may change our form in either realm," he explained. "This is my preferred form, naturally, however Luke knew me as an old man, ravaged by the twin suns of Tatooine." Obi-Wan took several steps forward, into the centre of ringed chairs, giving her a wry smile. "He was going to struggle enough with the concept of seeing a dead man, I did not want to confuse him further."
"So why am I seeing you?" she asked.
"Maybe I'm here to help you pass on."
Mara sighed. "And why would I need help doing that?"
"Because you have not done so already," Obi-Wan told her calmly. "Those who linger here do so for many reasons…to watch over or wait for someone they love."
"Well, there must be some other reason," Mara said. "Because there's no one back there that I love."
Obi-Wan removed his hands from the folds of his robe and crossed them over his chest, giving her another irritating smile. "Then I should help you discover what that other reason is." He uncrossed his arms, one hand moving to his chin to stroke his beard in contemplation. "I came here because I was to watch over Luke, prepare him for the hardships ahead, and I was derelict in that duty." Obi-Wan suddenly seemed very sad. "Owen and Beru were fine custodians of Luke, they raised him well, but Owen blamed the Jedi for what had happened to Anakin, and so I had to content myself with watching him grow from afar. I only had a short time with him, in the end," Obi-Wan added with palpable regret.
"The will of the Force it was, Obi-Wan," another voice spoke up, and Mara looked to her immediate left, surprised to see that a small, green creature had appeared in the chair. Mara took several shocked steps back towards the centre of the room, and Obi-Wan moved to accommodate her, taking a seat two chairs to the creature's right and crossing one leg over the other.
"Let me guess," Mara said dryly. "You're Yoda."
"Hmph," Yoda did not seem impressed. "Addressed so informally, am I?"
Obi-Wan covered his smile with one hand and Mara put her hands on her hips. "Well you're not my Master, and I'm not a Jedi," she said defiantly.
"What the boy sees in this one, I cannot," Yoda said, and Mara winced at his uncomfortable speech patterns. Luke had told her many stories of his Master and his peculiar ways, even imitating his voice and teachings on occasion to make her laugh, but it was entirely different to hear it in person.
"Ruder than you told me she is, Obi-Wan," Yoda continued, banging his gnarled stick against his chair in obvious displeasure.
Mara raised an eyebrow at Obi-Wan, and he held out his hands defensively. "I don't think I said rude," he said.
Mara shrugged. "I've been called worse."
"Wild, perhaps? Hmmh?" Yoda said, his large eyes appraising her severely. "Directionless. Undisciplined. Indecisive. All of these things you are, Mara Jade." He shook his head, his large ears drooping slightly. "Accept the will of the Force, I do," Yoda sad somewhat grumpily. "But agree with it always, I do not."
"What do you mean by that?" Mara demanded. "What's the will of the Force got to do with me?"
"The will of the Force has everything to do with you." Another, deeper voice echoed throughout the room, and a dark-skinned man appeared in the chair to Yoda's immediate left. "The will of the Force has to do with us all," he said. This man, she recognised from the history holos the Emperor had made her study about the Clone Wars. She had never seen Obi-Wan referenced, or Anakin Skywalker, and assumed later that Palpatine had excised them from Imperial History to conceal Vader's origins, but Mace Windu had been prominently featured in the anti-Republic and anti-Jedi propaganda she'd been force-fed as a child. It was he who had tried to seize power, or so Palpatine had said – he who'd left him scarred, and so had been cast as the ultimate villain in Palpatine's revisionist history.
She could sense that Windu was about to start a lecture, so she turned back to Yoda instead. "No one's ever described me as directionless or undisciplined before," she argued. "Most people would say the opposite."
"Master Yoda refers to your study of the Jedi arts," Windu answered. "Or rather, lack thereof."
"You proudly say that you are not a Jedi," Obi-Wan added, once again stroking the side of his bead. "You allowed Luke to teach you briefly, but resisted formal training. Why was that?"
Mara shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other, painfully aware of the three Jedi Masters seated like a jury before her. "So I am here for judgement?" she asked. "Am I not worthy enough to join the Force yet?"
"All beings become one with the Force, Mara." A soft, gentle voice spoke up from behind her, and Mara turned to see yet another man in Jedi robes. Great, she thought, how many more can there be?
Mara sighed with frustration and rubbed her eyes, although she was not tired. It seemed to be impossible to be tired when one was dead, and so it was likely a remnant, automatic reaction from her life.
"So who are you then?" she asked.
"I am Qui-Gon Jinn," he told her, nodding his head in what appeared to be a slight bow.
"Qui-Gon was my Master," Obi-Wan spoke up. "He was the first of us to find his way here."
"Right," Mara said. "Well why don't you take a seat and you can all get back to berating me," she added with good humour.
Qui-Gon smiled and folded his hands in front of him, but did not move from his place. They've got me surrounded, Mara thought with amusement.
"We are not your judges, Mara," Qui-Gon said, "nor are we here to reprimand you. We are here to help you."
"Oh?" Mara crossed her arms again. "How's that?"
"By understanding the choices we made in the life before, we can prepare ourselves for the journey ahead," Windu said, and she turned back around to face him. "You always held the Jedi in contempt," he continued, his expression serious, "even when you discovered the falsehood of Palpatine's teachings. And yet you sacrificed your life to save Luke Skywalker, in part so he could continue his work training more Jedi. It seems to be a contradiction." Windu smiled at her for the first time.
Mara looked down at her feet, suddenly uncomfortable, her prepared barbs falling away from her like a discarded cloak. "It wasn't just for his Jedi," she said softly, her eyes on the patterns on the floor. "Maybe I thought his life was worth more than mine." She looked back up to see Windu regarding her thoughtfully, Yoda impassive, and Obi-Wan looking grieved.
There was movement at her elbow, as Qui-Gon had moved to her side. His eyes were kind and sympathetic and she looked up at him.
"Would Luke think the same?" he asked. "Or would he think your life was worth more than his instead?"
She remembered the way Luke had looked at her, as he'd held her in his arms as she was dying. There has been such sorrow in him, such regret. Mara huffed, shaking off her melancholy. "He's a stupid farmboy – he would think the life of a blister gnat is worth more than his own."
Obi-Wan chuckled lightly, as if with remembrance. "He has such a love for others," he said. "Such selflessness."
"Berated him once for choosing the easy path, I did," Yoda said, nodding. "But wrong I was."
"Luke was always wiser than his years," Obi-Wan continued proudly. "He knew that the quick and easy path would have been to kill Vader, as we had wanted him to do. The harder path to take – the right path – was to redeem him."
"And by doing so he enabled Anakin to fulfil the Prophesy," Qui-Gon said, moving to stand between Yoda and Obi-Wan, although he did not take the empty seat. "To bring balance to the Force by defeating the Sith, and allowing Luke to rebuild the Jedi Order, unencumbered by the dogmatic old ways." He smiled warmly. "To become an embodiment of the Living Force."
"And so my destiny was to save him," Mara said glumly. "I get it."
"Is that what you think?" Qui-Gon asked her.
"What else can I think?" she shot back. "I'm here, I'm dead. What else can I do?"
Qui-Gon smiled mysteriously, and shrugged. "Perhaps you are ready to move on," he said evenly. "Or perhaps there is more you can do."
"What, hang around here with you creeps?" she asked, annoyed. "Watching people all day? Spend my time coming up with cryptic little messages and haunting people with them?" Mara shook her head. "No thanks."
"Tell you I did," Yoda banged his stick against his chair again. "Disrespectful is she. Mindful of her choice, she is not."
"What choice?" she demanded angrily. "It's no choice at all."
"You may not understand now," Windu spoke up. "But you will."
Mara was ready to continue arguing, but the Jedi and their Temple disappeared, and she was once again engulfed by a white light.
A sense of peace permeated Luke's entire being as his consciousness returned. He knew he was in the right place, he could feel the Force flow through him more keenly than it ever had before. And yet he could feel the other world as well, the one he had come from, and knew that he still had a pathway home.
Blinking rapidly, the world came into focus, and he saw that a young woman in white stood before him, her eyes wide.
"Luke!" the woman gasped, her hands flying to her mouth in shock. "It's you." She let out an audible sob, and pressed her hands more firmly against her mouth to compose herself. Then she closed her eyes and took a deep breath, before lowering her hands to clasp them in front of her. When she opened her eyes again, they were bright with unshed tears. "Do you…know who I am?" she asked, the hope clear in her voice.
It only took a few seconds for it to click into place in Luke's mind. If he was blind and deaf, he would know her, just by her presence in the Force, her presence within him. He knew her name, remembered her face, in an instant understanding everything he needed to know. His heart had cried out for hers from the day he was born, and his face cracked into a smile as he felt whole again.
"Yes, I know you," he said, swallowing heavily. "Mother."
"Luke," she said again, tears beginning to fall. "My beautiful boy, you are so brave. I wish…I wish I could hold you in my arms."
Luke stepped forward hopefully, but she held up a hard to stop him. "I can't," she said with obvious sorrow. "If you touch anyone here, you will not be able to return to the world of the living."
His hands dropped to his sides, disappointment lancing through him. He had so often wondered about his mother, and now she was before him, as beautiful and kind as he had imagined, but unable to embrace her as a son should.
"There are so many things I want to say to you, my darling," Padmé said, tears falling unimpeded onto her face. "But you must go, or you will not be able to reach her in time."
"Mara?" His purpose re-asserted himself.
Padmé nodded. "You must follow the path she has taken," she told him. "If you can catch up to her, and take her hand you will be able to return her to your world." She gestured to the whiteness behind her. "That way. But Luke, you must hurry," she urged him. "If she takes the hand of another, someone from this place, she can never go back. And if you take too long, you will not be able to leave, either."
Luke nodded purposefully, and moved past Padmé to the path she had indicated, willing himself not to reach out and embrace her.
"Luke," she called out to him, and he turned around. Sorrow mingled with joy on her face, and she smiled at him. "You were such a lonely boy, and I am sorry for that," she said through her tears. "But I want you to know that you were wanted, and that you were always – always – loved."
He wanted to answer, to tell her that he had always loved her, too, but she had faded from view.