Week Five Challenge: Write an AU (alternate universe) story of at least 500 words in which your narrator has amnesia, using this picture (an open window with greenery beyond it, opening into a darkened room and admitting a pool of light) as inspiration.


5. Seeing Light (Mara Jade, Jade family; 2 ABY)


It wasn't just that the window was open—it was that the window was open, and a pair of curtains waved gently on the other side, as if welcoming her in.

Mara Jade didn't like it. She didn't like it at all.

There was, in fact, very little about this mission that sat right with her, and that all in itself was an unsettling feeling. Never before had she had cause to doubt the Emperor's judgment—she didn't doubt it now, either, she told herself sternly.

But something was whispering to her all the same, some intuition that said that things simply weren't right here.

Adding to the weight of that feeling was the sheer logic of it all. The Emperor usually gave her an objective, then left the handling of the matter to her discretion. Not since she'd been fully granted the title of Emperor's Hand and the autonomy of an independent agent had he directed so many details of one of her missions himself—not even for a long time before then, in truth. Mara had been taught self-reliance for as long as she could remember: her position by its very nature required her to make high level decisions in the Emperor's name without consultation, and the far-reaching ramifications of those decisions meant that she needed to be capable of gathering her own intelligence, researching what already existed, analyzing what she found, and drawing logical conclusions from that information.

And yet, for this mission the Emperor had assured her that he had already done the necessary research and drawn his own conclusions, with no need for her to do anything but carry out the verdict he had already declared.

Not, of course, that there was any reason to doubt the Emperor's wisdom. Of course not. But Mara was no mere executioner. She was an investigator, who sought the truth in all things. She carried out a diligent inquiry before passing sentence on anyone, and even when the sentence had been passed, she could and did change her mind if the facts pointed in a different direction. She dispensed justice, and it was a job she took deathly seriously.

Deathly… Standing alone in the dark yard of this ordinary house, Mara shivered just slightly, and not only on account of the chill air of the early spring night. For death had been ordered for the couple within this house, and she had not been privy to the reasoning behind that sentence.

No, that didn't sit well with her at all.

She stood still a moment longer, weighing the internal clash between instinct and obedience.

Obedience won, and carefully, quietly, Mara crept through the open window, only to have her foot slide from under her on the first step as something rolled beneath it. She managed to catch herself lightly on her fingertips, going down on one knee and quickly scanning her surroundings. No shadows moved within the darkened room, and as she reached out with the Force, she could sense no awareness, only sleep-hazed minds, somewhere…above, she decided, in the home's second floor. Not merely the two she'd expected, though. Four.

Four? Mara frowned at that, then looked behind her to see what it was she'd stepped on.

It took only a moment to locate it in the patch of silvery-pale moonlight admitted through the window: a tiny rubber ball, stopped in its roll by a scattered group of— She tilted her head, considering the unfamiliar sight. They were roughly the same size as the ball, little six-pointed metal things, glinting in the faint light, and it took a moment for her to identify them as a set of jacks, a game played by children throughout the galaxy.

Her earlier foreboding deepened. First four people when she'd been expecting two, and now a child's game. Could she possibly have chosen the wrong house? Surely not; she was more careful than that. She'd reviewed the Emperor's directives thoroughly. This was the location he'd specified, she was sure of it.

Mara rose to her feet again, mindful of any further toys or other hazards, and took out her glowrod. Turning it on at the lowest possible setting, she stepped further into the room, evaluating her surroundings. It looked like an ordinary room, though under furnished and with a number of boxes stacked along one wall. Approaching the stack, she lifted the top flap of nearest box, expecting—

She frowned again, lifting—a spatula? A closer examination revealed only more of the same, a collection of kitchen implements. The next box was dishes, the next some pots and pans. None of them appeared to be at all expensive, as one might expect from a pair of fugitive embezzlers spending stolen credits, nor were the ordinary household goods concealing anything more valuable. All the boxes were already open and only partially full, as if…

Mara took a deep breath, then stood and looked around again. She was in the back of the house—entering through the front door was all well and good during the day when observers would wonder at anyone going through a window, but in the middle of the night it was safer to slink through the shadows along back walls—and as she looked toward the front, she could see the entry hall, and the front door she'd avoided, with a hallway leading off to each side. Looking back to the window she'd come through and following the line of that wall, to one side there was an archway leading to another room. She went that way.

It was a kitchen. Nothing special about it, just a kitchen. A small one, nothing like the grand ones she was accustomed to within the estates of the wealthy and high-ranking Imperials she so often was sent to investigate. This was an ordinary kitchen in an ordinary house in an ordinary neighborhood in an ordinary city and it wasn't right, anyone who'd gone on the run after stealing the amount of funds that these two supposedly had wouldn't be living like this. Falsified identities, certainly, but in her experience, embezzlers stole for the specific purpose of funding a more lavish lifestyle than they otherwise could, and nothing at all about this setup proclaimed lavishness of any sort at all. The house itself was pleasant enough, but still smaller and far less luxurious than these supposed embezzlers could have afforded on the salary of anyone highly placed enough within an Imperial governor's staff to have accomplished such a crime in the first place.

The uneasiness settled into the pit of her stomach as she continued through the small kitchen and the equally small dining room that adjoined it, into a larger room that was clearly meant to be the main living area. It was more furnished than the room she'd originally entered, but still not in the finished state that one would expect of any established domicile, and still only with furniture bought on a clearly modest budget. A few more boxes were stacked along the far wall, and as Mara approached them, something else caught her eye, a quick reflection of her glowrod's light against the glass of a flatholo frame mounted on the wall above them.

It was a young child's drawing, a group of colorful stick figures, two large and three smaller different-sized ones. Even to her, unfamiliar as she was with such things, the meaning was obvious: one of those smaller figures in the picture had clearly been the artist, crudely sketching a portrait of their own family. This didn't make sense, she was here for two condemned embezzlers, not a family with children. And why five in the portrait when she could only sense four in the house, nothing was adding up—

She looked closer, and as she shifted the glowrod to reduce its reflection, she caught sight of another detail: each figure had a word beneath it, done with the same heavy-handed strokes as the drawing itself; the child artist naming each family member. And beneath the largest of the small figures was a string of Aurebesh characters she instantly recognized, one that she remembered printing over and over when she herself was very young and still learning to write properly.

Mara.

Her breath caught in her throat as she stared, the so-labeled figure's scribbled red hair adding to her shock, but it was the writing on the frame itself that made her lungs seize with sudden panic as they never had before, not even when under active fire. It was a simple frame made of slender strips of wood, and on the bottommost edge of the frame was carefully inscribed in an adult's handwriting: the Jade family.

Mara was two steps back from the wall before she realized it, halfway into another step before her control could even begin to reassert itself, and as she felt the rocking of the small table she was backing into, she remembered herself and her purpose enough to turn and make a grab for it.

She caught the table, but not the lamp that had been sitting upon it, which hit the floor and shattered with a resounding crash. From above came another sound, more muted, but equally unmistakable, especially in conjunction with the bleary alertness she could now sense in the Force.

On the home's second floor, someone was awake and stirring.

The usual calculations flew unbidden through her mind, whether to retreat and regroup for another attempt at a later date or to dash upstairs and carry out her mission before her targets could waken fully and prepare a defense, but swirling in among those considerations like leaves in a windstorm were the other factors she couldn't dismiss: her own initial doubts as to the full justifiability of the death sentence in the first place, blasphemous though such doubts of the Emperor's judgment were; the reality that there were more in the house than she'd realized, confusing the issue of whether she could reliably identify and eliminate her targets without collateral damage; the circumstantial evidence that those other people might well be children, surely innocent of any crime; and suddenly of even more importance than any of that, Mara's own driving need to understand what was happening here.

It all combined to hold her uncharacteristically frozen, listening in a distant way to the footsteps that were now descending the staircase, a confrontation looming that she couldn't begin to fathom.

The footsteps drew closer—two of them, some part of her well-trained mind still thought to point out—and Mara flinched away as someone turned on a light.

"It's a kid," a male voice breathed, and Mara squinted to focus on the speaker, willing her eyes to adjust. It was one of her targets, a youngish middle-aged man, tall, slender but with a strong, solid sort of build, with dark red hair and brown eyes. Startled brown eyes, fixed on her. When she'd examined the holos the Emperor had provided, she'd felt no twinge of recognition—why should she have?—but now Mara stared back, overcome with an unshakable feeling that she'd seen those eyes before.

From behind him, a woman about his age craned her neck to look at Mara, her own eyes wide, then stepped forward to stand at his side, lifting a hand to sweep a strand of dark blonde hair back from her freckled face. "Who are you?"

It was her other target, and like the man's eyes, the woman's voice struck a chord deep within Mara. It didn't make sense, how could she know these strangers, why doesn't anything make sense…

Her mouth painfully dry, it took a couple of hard swallows for Mara to get the words out. "Why am I in this picture?"

The man's head tilted as he blinked at her. "What?"

Mara gestured wildly at the drawing on the wall behind her. "The picture," she repeated, hearing her own voice rise in both pitch and volume. "Why am I in it?"

The woman's eyes—green eyes, green like Mara's own—widened even further, and she clutched at the man's arm with a grip so tight that it had to be painful. "Mara. Mara."

"How do you know me?" Mara demanded, her breath coming in such short gasps that her air failed with the last syllable, turning the demand into a plea.

"It can't be," the man said, his own voice hardly audible as his hand clamped down on the woman's where she held his arm. "It can't—"

For a long moment Mara could only return their stare, her heart thumping painfully in her chest. "That's my name," she finally managed to choke out. Inexplicably, her eyes were filling with tears. "Mara Jade. Why am I in that picture?"

"How old are you?" the woman breathed, her own eyes shimmering. "How old?"

Mara's voice was so thick in her throat that it was hard to shape the word. "Nineteen."

"Mara," the man said, his voice also low and thick, as the woman's hands flew up to press hard against her mouth, her eyes overflowing now. "Mara, my baby, Mara, how did you find us?"

"I don't know you," Mara said, shaking her head violently as she took a step back, nearly tripping over the remnants of the broken lamp. "I don't—"

"You do," he said, his dark eyes agonizingly intense. "Mara, you do. You're our daughter."

Another long step away put Mara's back against the wall before she realized it. "I'm no one's daughter."

"You are," the woman insisted, brushing her tears roughly away with the heels of her hands. "He took you from us—"

"Who?" Mara breathed, suddenly knowing the answer even as she asked the question.

Even so, the man's next words hit her like a physical blow. "The Emperor."

"No." She spoke the word before her mind formed it, the pure reflex of a lifetime's instilled reverence. "No, he wouldn't."

"He did," the woman said, with a vehemence that was at odds with her gentle appearance. "He ordered his guard to take you and then kill your father and me." She opened her arms and stepped forward, such wild hope in those familiar eyes. "Mara…"

Dispose of the family.

She knew the voice in her head better than she knew her own, though she'd forgotten those words. How could she have forgotten that, how could she have forgotten—

The woman—her mother—was still coming toward her. Mara remembered those eyes now, those arms reaching for her. She remembered her own small arms reaching back, she remembered screaming as the guard carried her away and her parents—these people—disappeared from view. "Don't touch me," she whispered.

"Mara," her mother whispered back. "My baby girl." Her arms were still outstretched, and Mara, who knew so many ways to disable an opponent, could only stare as her mother gently cupped her face, then slid her arms around Mara's shoulders and pulled her close.

Mommy.

Suddenly Mara Jade, Emperor's Hand, was sobbing against her own mother's shoulder, her knees buckling beneath her, but then her father's arms were around them both, holding them all upright and together, and Mara wept and wept and wept.

Eventually she ran out of tears, but her mother still held her and her father still stroked her hair. "Mara," he said softly. "We've been looking for you for so long and here you found us, how did you find us?"

Dispose of the family.

And with that, Mara's sense of purpose returned, fueled by a sudden, burning hatred. He'd lied to her, he'd lied and lied, her whole life, and now he'd sent her to kill her own parents, from whom he'd stolen her in the first place. She'd come so close, she would have done it, she would never even have known, she would have returned to her kidnapper and continued a life of service to him.

She knew better than most how the Emperor never forgot a slight. Until this very moment, she had always trusted in his wisdom and innate goodness, believing that everything he did was for the good of the Empire and its people and that if he insisted on a punishment being carried out, then it was justice.

This wasn't justice. This was murder. This was a perversion of the highest order. This was using her to commit an unforgivable crime.

The Empire was all she'd ever known, everything she'd ever believed in. These people holding her now were strangers to her, people she just barely remembered, and only in that last terrified memory from her early childhood that was now restored to her. Logically, the choice should be clear.

To hell with logic, Mara thought viciously. The Force itself sang with recognition now, and there was only one possible course to take.

She pulled away from her parents' grasp, taking a deep breath and swiping at her face. "We have to leave. We have to leave right away. He's looking for you."

Her parents exchanged glances, and Mara could sense their sudden dread. "How do you know?" her mother asked. "If you didn't recognize us…" She trailed off. "You weren't looking for us at all."

"He sent me," Mara said. There was no time for niceties, for gentle words or coddling. Let them think of her as they would; she had to find a way to get them to safety and she had to do it now. "He told me you were criminals, he—" She hesitated, suddenly realizing that she didn't even know her own parents' names. "My name is Mara Jade, then? I mean, it always was?"

"Of course, sweetheart," her father said, gentle himself despite the emotional turmoil she knew he was feeling. "That's the name you know? He kept it?"

Mara nodded, momentarily unable to form the words, and mentally discarded the false names the Emperor had provided her with. "I never thought about it before. What—" She bit her lip, then continued. "What are your names?"

They looked at each other, then back at her. "Ronan," her father said, still gentle. "Your mother is Nadira."

Mara nodded again. Swallowing hard, she reached for calm, and the control she'd need to pull this off. "We have to go. He sent me to kill you."

Her parents both just stared, and Mara pushed the flicker of shame away, telling herself again that what they thought of her didn't matter. All that mattered now was their safety. "I'm an Imperial agent," she continued. "I—" Dispense justice? Could she really say or believe that, knowing what she did now? "I carry out his will. And he sent me to kill you. If I don't report back soon, he'll send someone else to do it. You can't be here when that happens."

Her father rubbed his face roughly, and her mother's eyes drifted closed. "We'd only just moved in," she murmured.

"If there's no other way, there's no other way," her father sighed. He lowered his hand and his expression was haggard, but his smile was warm and genuine despite that. "And we have Mara back."

"There's that," her mother agreed, her own smile as bright as the sun as she reached again to lightly touch Mara's cheek. "You're—you are coming with us, darling? We've missed you so much; I was starting to think I'd never see you again. Stay with us. Please."

Sweetheart, Mara thought. Darling. The Emperor had valued her service, but no one had ever held her or called her pet names or smiled at her like this. No one had ever loved her. A day ago—an hour ago—she would have said it didn't matter.

She was beginning to think that she had been as wrong about that as she had been about everything else.

And it was for sure that she wasn't going back to the man who stole her and lied to her and used her, and who tried to kill her family.

"Yes," she said firmly. "I'm coming with you. But we have to leave right away."

Her father glanced at his chrono. "It's just after midnight. How much time do we have?"

Mara gave it a moment's consideration. "We should lift off the planet by sunrise. That gives us a few hours to pack, maybe eat a meal. I have a ship." Which probably wasn't safe; it could have a tracker somewhere. She'd have to land somewhere within a day and buy or steal a new transport…

"We can wake the children a couple of hours before we leave," her mother was saying to her father. "I'll have a meal ready and you can help them gather their favorite things."

Mara's train of thought came to a screeching halt. "Children?"

Another shared look between her parents. "Your brother and sister, Mara," her mother said, just as gently as her father had spoken before. "They were born after you were taken. I've always wished so much that you could be here to know them. They'll be so happy to see you."

Mara glanced back at the family portrait, obviously drawn by a child, that had been the catalyst for this whole reunion. "Oh."

Her father's gaze followed her own. "Your brother—Nico—drew that," he told her. "When he was eight. We've always hung it in the place of honor since, wherever we lived."

"He's fifteen now, sweetheart," her mother added. "Corissa is eleven." She took a deep breath, looking around the room a little sadly. "It's—we'd hoped that this might be the last move. But your father's right. I'd have given far more to have you back. We'll get through this together."

Together. Mara could really only remember ever being alone. But she'd adjust. She'd always prided herself on her ability to learn any necessary skill. She could learn this one, too.

"Okay," she murmured. "How can I help you get ready?"

Mara spent the next several hours helping her parents pack and hauling the bags to their family speeder. As dawn neared, her mother went to the kitchen to make an early breakfast, and Mara could soon detect the delicious aromas making their way through the house.

"Why don't you go help your mother, sweetheart," her father suggested as he closed the bag they'd been filling. "I'll wake your brother and sister and bring them downstairs."

"Sure," Mara said, trepidation worming its way into her gut. She ignored it and took the bag to join the others in the speeder, then went to the kitchen and helped her mother set the table, a feeling of surreality hanging over the whole thing.

Before long, her father reappeared, a pair of children trailing behind him. The boy—her brother, Mara reminded herself—was clearly wary, while the girl—her sister—seemed perfectly at ease, yawning and rubbing an eye as though this was a ordinary morning.

"Nico, Corissa," her father said, his voice thick with emotion again. "This is Mara. Mara, this is Nico and Corissa."

Nico had their mother's coloring and their father's serious demeanor, and assessed her as cautiously as she did him, but Corissa, small and whip-slender, with light red hair very like Mara's own, looked up at Mara with bright brown eyes and a buoyant air. "I told you she would look for us," she informed their father.

"You did," their father agreed, and ruffled her hair.

Was it normal, Mara wondered, to be intimidated by children? "Hello," she said, a little uneasily.

"How did you find us?" Nico asked, his gaze steady.

"She was looking, like Corissa said," their mother answered smoothly, her voice just as warm and reassuring as ever. "It took a long time because she had to grow up to be able to come find us, but here she is."

"Then why do we have to leave?" Nico insisted. "Can't she just stay here?"

Their father squeezed his shoulder. "Mara says the man who took her is looking for us. He's not safe. We need to find somewhere he can't find us."

"Like a scavenger hunt," Corissa chimed in. "Except we have to be like the things you try to find. Except we have to try not to be found."

Nico sighed. "That's hide and seek."

"And scavenger hunts," Corissa argued. "You have to find hidden things for a scavenger hunt."

"That's enough of that," their mother said. "Everyone come eat breakfast, and then we'll finish the packing. Mara has a ship and we'll go with her to find a safe place."

"You have a ship?" Nico asked, brightening somewhat.

"Where's safe?" Corissa said, tilting her head curiously.

"Breakfast," their father said firmly.

The sun was just peeking over the horizon when they left the house, and the sense of regret and loss that Mara could feel coming from them all was enough to spark a fresh surge of guilt. Well, nearly all. Corissa waved cheerfully at the house and spent the first five minutes of the drive peppering Mara with questions until their mother gently hushed her, saying that Mara needed to think about the journey ahead of them.

Truer words, Mara thought grimly, were never spoken. Where could she possibly take them all where the Emperor couldn't find them? The galaxy was a big place, and Mara's own vast repertoire of specialized knowledge would help, but he would be furious when he realized that she'd defied him, and the very fact that he'd still been looking for her family after all this time was proof enough that there would be no real safe haven anywhere.

She was still searching for an answer as the speeder pulled alongside the docking bay where her ship rested. In the next bay over, a pair of young men in their early twenties, one with bright red hair and one with dark blonde, glanced their way, the blonde man's gaze lingering a moment longer than his companion's, then turned back to their conversation with each other.

But that one look had been all Mara needed, as a memory—one far more recent than the traumatic recollection earlier this night that had changed her life so instantly and drastically—clawed its way to the forefront of her mind: Darth Vader, blocking his computer terminal from her view in the Emperor's personal library, and her own curiosity driving her to pull up his research after he'd left, and the sophisticated search program he'd been running, sifting through every means the Empire had at its disposal to track one of its citizens, all focused on one man.

This man.

Luke Skywalker.

She could feel the hysterical laugh bubbling up in her throat. Ruthlessly, she choked it down. Just because reality had apparently decided to embrace absurdity was no reason for her to lose her head. "Stay here," she told her family, and jumped out of the speeder to hurry over to the men.

Skywalker noticed first, turning startled eyes on her as she approached, but the other man was quick to follow suit. "Can I help you, miss?" he asked, polite but wary.

Mara ignored him. "Skywalker? Luke Skywalker?"

The way his eyes widened in surprise was all the confirmation she needed, despite his otherwise steady demeanor. "I think you've mistaken me for someone else, ma'am."

She shook her head. "No, I haven't. You're Luke Skywalker. And that means you're with the Rebellion, doesn't it?"

They were good, all right, keeping their composure without so much as a guilty start or a shared glance, but Mara had a lifetime of the best intelligence training the Empire could provide and could see the almost imperceptible way they both tensed at her words. More than that, she had the Force.

"You definitely have the wrong people," Skywalker's companion said, firmly but calmly. Under other circumstances, she'd almost have appreciated the professionalism, but the chrono was ticking, and she had no intention of letting this opportunity pass her by.

"Nonsense," she told them both. "You—" nodding toward the blonde one, "are Luke Skywalker, and if Vader's putting that much effort into hunting you specifically, you're with the Rebellion. He's obsessed, to put it lightly." The men did trade glances at that, but Mara pressed on, uninterested in how they reacted to any words save her next. "And if you're with the Rebellion, I hereby claim asylum."

They both stared at her. "We're not a government," Skywalker began, only to break off at a slap at his arm and a hiss of exasperation from his companion.

"Let's stop beating around the bush, shall we?" Mara said, her patience at an end. "'The Alliance to Restore the Republic'—that's the intent to form a government. You know it and I know it, and if you claim to stand in the place of the galaxy's rightful government, then you have an obligation to uphold the standards of that rightful government, and I claim asylum for myself and the people with me."

They both looked past her, to where she knew her family was still watching from the speeder, then back at her, then at each other, clearly struggling to come up with an appropriate response. "I'll sweeten the pot," she told them. "Here's your other reason to do so, beyond simple governmental obligation: the Emperor himself has put a death mark on them. I need to get them out of his reach, and the Rebellion excels at that. You claim to speak and act on behalf of the free beings of the galaxy in opposition to the Empire's tyranny, don't you? Here's your chance to prove it.

"And," she added, taking a deep breath, "I'm a personal agent of the Emperor. I'm called the Emperor's Hand, and I outrank nearly everyone in the Empire, with all the information and knowledge you would expect someone in my position to have. If you swear to me that you'll take us with you right now and keep these people safe, I'll surrender to you and fully cooperate with your leaders in whatever ways they deem necessary."

Silence fell, heavy and stifling, as they considered.

"I believe her," Skywalker said softly.

"We were just about to leave anyway," his companion murmured back.

They looked at each other for a long moment, then Skywalker turned back to her, his expression resolute, and held out his hand. "You've got a deal."

"Your word of honor," she insisted, keeping her eyes on his. "Your word of honor that they'll be kept safe, all four of them, no matter what."

"My personal word of honor," Skywalker promised, his gaze and his outstretched hand both steady.

Mara swallowed hard, knowing that she was about to irrevocably sever any ties to the life she'd always known—but it didn't matter. All that mattered now was protecting the family that had been stolen from her, and that she had come so close to losing permanently.

Holding tightly to that thought, she reached out her own hand to accept his, shaking it firmly. "It's a deal."