"The Council sent them here?" Mara demanded with an incredulous curl of her lip, looking out over the pristine lake between the forested hills. "Alone? And they were surprised?" She slipped her arm around Luke as a cool breeze broke against their faces. "Poor Anakin never had a chance. It's just a wonder you weren't born a few years earlier."
Luke smiled and put his arm around her shoulders. He hadn't said much since they had landed at the estate, but he wasn't upset. The aura around Varykino was almost supercharged with echoing impressions layered deeply in the buildings and the grounds, but unlike the memories preserved at the mausoleum, these were all happy ones. It was a heady atmosphere of joy, contentment, peace, love, and gratitude if one knew how to reach it, and Luke was admittedly a bit drunk on the experience. It was an unexpected taste of that well-adjusted family life with his parents he had always wanted and would never have, and he had gladly immersed himself in the feeling.
"It does seem rather ill-advised, considering our suspicions at the time," Pooja allowed, keeping a loose eye on the boys as they ran down to the water's edge, "but surely now, with the benefit of hindsight, we can't pretend to regret it."
"Your mother still seems to regret it," Mara observed. It was a low blow, but she couldn't help herself. Sola's cutting remarks from the previous day were still too fresh.
Pooja frowned, granting the point. "My mother is a creature of the past," she said, "but I haven't yet lost all hope of bringing her around. When one considers the legacy of Palpatine, the utter ruin he visited upon my aunt, her marriage, her husband, the Jedi, and the Republic, the shame he brought to Naboo, it is very gratifying to know that Padmé's son and daughter played such a significant role in his downfall. That has to count for something."
"One would think so," Mara agreed.
Luke was barely listening, just breathing in that cloud of satisfaction and serenity that felt so instinctively familiar, almost able to touch a bygone time before anything had been ruined, when there had been nothing but newly-wed hope and possibility, as fragile and ephemeral as a handful of snowflakes. Luke held it while he could, knowing it would pass all too soon, returning him to a world in which he and Leia had been the only embers to emerge from the ash. If he closed his eyes and reached far enough, he could for a moment inhabit a reality in which none of that had happened, floating in an infinite number of bright might-have-beens, Anakin and Padmé at their best with their whole future ahead of them. It was real, more real than any holo could ever be, and he wanted to remember it.
Mara let him go as he wandered away from her, trailing his fingers along the stonework, not entirely present as he blindly felt his way through the shadows of what had once been. It was already more than they had hoped for, and she was happy for him.
Pooja came to stand with her, her brow furrowed, watching her celebrated cousin navigate a dimension she couldn't fathom. "What is it?" she asked, lowering her voice. "Can he see the past?"
"Not see it," Mara explained. "He can feel it. It's like . . ." She groped for an accurate description as Luke's steps took him farther into the house. "Remember the simplicity of being a child, going to sleep knowing your parents were happy and that they loved you, that tomorrow would be even better than today? That's what this place feels like, and I can't blame Luke for wanting to just sit in it for a while. He's never had that before."
Pooja's frown became a sympathetic smile. "Are all Jedi so perceptive?" she asked. "That's an incredible ability, but it sounds very distracting."
"Not all of them," Mara explained with a wry smile of her own. "Skywalker Jedi are considered freaks even among their peers. But even an average Knight would feel something here. It's really strong, as if Anakin accidentally spun up a Force nexus that hasn't dissipated yet." She sighed and nodded after her husband. "If Luke stays this plugged in, he's going to spin it up again. And then I guess Ben will be bringing his kids here and spinning it up for them, and maybe Jacen and Jaina. I hope the rest of the Naberries won't mind a parade of Jedi cousins using this place as a retreat house."
The sounds of splashing and shouting erupted below the balcony. "Master Ben!" Nanna protested. "Come away from the water, and do not wet your clothes!"
"Stand down, Nanna," Mara said, countermanding the droid. "Let the boys be boys." She leaned over the rail and caught her son's eye. "Hey. Don't drown, okay?"
"Okay, Mom!"
"I'm sure the rest of the family will be amenable," Pooja assured her. Then she also nodded after Luke. "Go on," she said. "Nanna and I will keep an eye on the boys."
Mara smiled gratefully, sure she was missing something momentous. "Thank you."
She followed Luke's path through the quiet of the house, each room decorated with an intimate opulence fit for royalty. She finally found her husband stretched out on the bed in the master chamber overlooking another lakeside balcony, resting in the eye of that swirling Force nexus she had been describing to Pooja. Luke had inserted tendrils of himself into it, existing for a few moments in perfect harmony with the ghosts of his parents. It was a drug like no other, and it lit up his mind in ways he would probably never know again. That was the irony of it. The more intensely Luke embraced the phenomenon, the more his own presence overpowered and muted the fading impressions of the past. The nexus itself was strengthened, but its flavor was slowly changing.
Mara kicked off her boots and lay down beside him, staring at the gilded ceiling and just being present for him. Luke closed his hand around hers, glad to share the experience. Bonded as they were, Mara could not only feel it as clearly as he did, but she could understand it in a context she would not otherwise have known. It was that childlike perception of well-being again, something he actually had known in the dark and distant past, very briefly, like the melody of a half-remembered song. It struck Mara in a surprisingly vulnerable place, recalling those bleak years she tried never to think about, adjusting to her new reality after Palpatine had taken her, when that melody of childhood had stopped and everything had suddenly become cold and grim and lonely. Framed like that, she could absolutely understand the glistening trail beside Luke's eye.
"I'm so sorry," she said into the stillness, and she meant it. Anakin Skywalker's mutation into an accidental family annihilator wasn't in any way her fault, but she was compelled to say something. Luke had suffered alone too many times already, and she was determined to walk every step of this road with him.
Luke squeezed her hand, trying to hold the fleeting happiness without dwelling on the inescapable fact that it had all ended in disaster. It wasn't easy, and eventually he was obliged to let it go, withdrawing from the larger currents of the Force and shrinking back into his human parameters. "None of this is your fault," he protested, echoing her thoughts.
There had been a brief time in the recent past when a malicious rumor had suggested that Mara had been responsible for Padmé's death in her capacity as the Emperor's Hand, a chilling possibility they had thankfully been able to definitively disprove. But even as they had sat in the uncertainty, Mara had been touched by Luke's willingness to forgive her even if it had been true. He wouldn't blame her for being used by Palpatine, even if one of her victims had been his own mother. "Well, somebody should be sorry," she insisted, "so until somebody else steps up, I'll volunteer."
He gave her a playful shove with his elbow. "Don't worry about it," he said. "I don't need you to be sorry. This place is amazing."
"That's definitely one word for it." Mara was sorting through some of the implications in her mind. "You're going to insist on having this room, aren't you?"
Luke turned to look at her. "Do you mind?"
Mara frowned. "Judging by the volatile energy in here, I'm forced to conclude that your father spent some of the best days of his life in this room. It's going to take me a minute to get used to the idea of sleeping in your parents' bed, but I'll do it for your sake."
Luke scoffed, not unamused. "That was almost sixty years ago, my love," he pointed out. "I'm sure they've changed the sheets since then."
"I suppose so," she allowed. No need to be weird about it. Letting Luke get his fix by basking in the echoes of Anakin's better self was just another step along that difficult road they were walking together, and Mara wasn't going to be put off so easily, not even if it meant trying to sleep with that persistent specter hovering above her.
It was all part of a belated but necessary process. Luke needed this, needed to be dragged through the messy tangle of joy and grief and discovery and loss if he was ever going to find any lasting peace and lay his parents to rest in his own mind. He had slapped a patch on it more than thirty years ago, but he had always wanted more. He deserved more. Two minutes wasn't enough time to have a satisfying conversation with anyone, much less the tragic rakehell father he had almost died dragging back to sanity.
As frustrating as it could be, this wasn't a problem Mara could solve for him. But she could confront it with him, however tortuous, painful, or bizarre the process proved to be.
They spent the rest of the day settling in. The groundskeeper and his wife gave them the full guided tour of the house and the gardens, explaining the significance of the landscape and all the decor. Luke listened politely, reasonably interested in the details, but he could feel the significance of everything of immediate concern to him. The whole place was crisscrossed with vestiges of Anakin and Padmé, the strength of Anakin's abject devotion imprinting her there with greater clarity than might otherwise have been expected of someone not intentionally entrenched in the Force. Ben's eyes glazed over after the first hour, although he dutifully continued to exhibit his best behavior throughout the remainder of the presentation. If his son was willing, Luke would guide him through the subtle impressions later.
That evening they took advantage of the opportunity to enjoy the mild weather with a campfire supper on the lakeshore, pleasantly reminiscent of those early years they had spent rebuilding the academy on Ossus. Darred and Ruwee were showing Ben how to roast silex nuts in a wire cage over the fire until they exploded into an airy snack, Mara and Pooja were engaged in a conversation of their own, and Luke was just enjoying sitting in the grass and feeling the life of the planet beneath him. As valuable as the lessons of his upbringing on Tatooine had proven to be, he could still regret being deprived of a childhood on Naboo. It was just one more thing he was glad Ben would be able to experience, even if only for a few weeks at a time. They would absolutely have to come back, and soon.
He tried to imagine himself and Leia growing up with Pooja and Ryoo, raised by Sola, or perhaps by their Naberrie grandparents. How would that have worked out? Maybe Owen and Beru Lars could have lived out their quiet albeit lonely lives in relative peace. Maybe Alderaan would never have been targeted. Or, Luke reasoned, the rosy vision fracturing at the edges, would the same drama have played itself out regardless? He didn't think anything could have kept Leia out of the diplomatic service, especially considering their heritage. She and Pooja would have been neck-deep in the Naboo resistance, he probably right alongside them. Would the Naberries have withheld him from the Jedi the same way Uncle Owen had? Worse, would Palpatine have been able to recruit or eliminate them both much earlier? That thread led nowhere good, and Luke shook off the daydream. It was a waste of time anyway.
"My mother's family would always come up here during their school retreats," Pooja was saying. "She would tell us how she and Padmé used to swim out to that island nearly every day, and almost always stay out until their parents had to send a boat for them."
"What's out there that was so fascinating?" Mara asked, scrutinizing the little peak in the midst of the lake, touched with the warm light of sunset.
"Nothing really," Pooja admitted. "Just a sandy bit of land, some trees, some rocks. Maybe that was its charm, the simple isolation. I'll admit to being rather disappointed the first time I ventured out there."
Luke smiled, appreciating the image of his mother as someone who would happily dive into a lake every morning. That was something one could miss in a series of senatorial holos or stolen intimacies on Coruscant.
Triumphant, the boys left the fire and joined the adults on the bluff, bringing their bowls of fresh silex puffs. Ben happily plopped down in the grass beside Luke and offered him some. It was a deeply ingrained habit Luke wasn't in a hurry to correct, stemming from their reunion as a family when Ben was nearly three years old, when Mara had made it abundantly clear that he was to be as helpful as possible during his father's slow recovery from the amphistaff venom. He had been bringing Luke things like an attentive aide-de-camp ever since, even seven years later when Luke was once again as able-bodied as anyone his age could reasonably hope to be. It was an unspoken tradition now, best appreciated in silence.
Fire-roasted silex puffs had a pleasant nutty flavor, despite having the consistency of packing foam.
"Boys," Pooja said as the evening deepened around them, "not to mix business with pleasure, but I hope you both realize what a unique opportunity this is. If either of you has any questions for Cousin Luke, now would be the time to ask." She turned back to him. "If you don't mind, that is."
Luke offered an easy shrug. "I teach for a living," he said. "I've heard it all."
"Darred has recently been studying the Yuuzhan Vong invasion," Pooja explained, "and Ruwee has just begun the Galactic Civil War."
"Can you visit my class when we get back?" Darred asked immediately.
"Mine too!" Ruwee insisted.
Luke hesitated behind a tolerant smile, easily able to imagine the social clout the pair of them stood to gain in the eyes of their peers if they could produce him on demand. "I wouldn't want to disrupt your lessons," he said, "but maybe we can arrange something with your instructors. We'll see."
"Did it hurt to have your hand cut off?" Ruwee asked, unashamed of his curiosity.
Pooja was obviously mortified, but Luke didn't mind, and he decided to lean into the juvenile irreverence. "Yeah, it hurt a lot," he admitted. "The thing about lightsabers is that they don't cut so much as burn things off. It means you don't bleed out, but then the medics have to cut off a bit more to get a clean anchor for the cybernetic. The pain is atrocious, but it's the smell that really gets you."
"Can we see it?"
"Darred!"
"Sure, you can see it." Luke pushed up his sleeve and showed them the seam on his forearm, even popped open the faceplate on his wrist to show them the working elements inside. "It takes some getting used to," he said, "but it's equipped with pain sensors and it's almost as good as the real thing. Have you never seen one before? They're unfortunately pretty common in my line of work, be that Jedi or pilot."
"We saw a model once," Darred said, morbidly fascinated. "Uncle Janren was trying to get into the cybernetics business a few years ago."
Mara snorted. "Of course he was."
"So, Darth Vader did that?" Ruwee asked, his tone implying that the name loomed large in their family consciousness, and that he only said it to put his own thoughts in order. "Was he really your father?"
"Anakin Skywalker was my father," Luke said, insisting on the subtle difference, "and Anakin Skywalker was Darth Vader, so yes."
"Does that mean we're related, too?"
"I suppose that would make him your great-granduncle by marriage, if you really wanted to claim it."
Darred looked thoughtful. "Is it true that the Emperor was a dark Jedi?"
"A Sith Lord, actually," Luke explained, "but now we're getting into distinctions that probably don't really matter to non-Jedi. Maybe they don't explore the esoteric details in your coursetexts, but his Sith name was Darth Sidious, and he was a master of the strategic long game, operating in plain sight for decades before he dissolved the Republic. Every Sith Lord takes an apprentice, who usually kills him and begins the cycle again. Sidious, however, went through a few unfortunate apprentices before he groomed Anakin into Darth Vader, and by the Battle of Endor, he was hoping to replace Vader with me."
"Because of your mother or your father? Or both?"
Luke paused, the question sending an inexplicable chill up his spine. "Why?" he asked.
"Well," Darred fumbled, "Palpatine always seemed determined to see Great-Grandauntie Padmé in high places, and you said he was playing the long game. Maybe he had his own reasons."
"It's true," Pooja admitted as both Luke and Mara looked to her for confirmation. "It was Senator Palpatine who first suggested to her parents that Padmé run for the throne. In retrospect, it is a bit disturbing the way he seemed to handpick her."
Well, that was disturbing. Luke wasn't sure exactly what to think of that yet, but think he absolutely would. Palpatine always had his own reasons. Once again, it was too close for comfort, and he didn't like it.
"Who was scarier?" Ruwee asked, dragging Luke out of his own thoughts. "Darth Vader or Palpatine?"
"Or Shimrra?" Darred added.
Realizing he had on multiple occasions survived the living equivalent of the most epic master-level hologames they could imagine, Luke tried to answer in kind. "Darth Vader was terrifying," he admitted, "but fortunately he was never actually trying to kill me. Shimrra was huge, but nothing more than a meat-headed thug when it came to it. Palpatine was something else entirely. Palpatine could get in your mind and make you doubt your own thoughts, and he was always ten steps ahead. I think I could probably take him now, but I still wouldn't want to if I could help it. If my father hadn't suckered him from behind, things could have been very different."
The boys really weren't interested in historical facts and insights, much to their grandmother's consternation, but were brimming with that superficial curiosity appropriate to children. Luke even allowed them to handle his lightsaber under close supervision, securing the hilt in his own fist as he let each of them hold and activate the weapon, experiencing the surprising weight of it and the dynamic force of the blade. It was an everyday reality for him, but plainly the power trip of a lifetime for his young cousins.
Finally, perhaps sensing the approach of bedtime, Darred introduced a more serious subject. "What was the Battle of Coruscant really like?" he asked.
Luke glanced at Mara, and she answered with a keenly sympathetic expression. "It was like nothing I had ever seen before," he said, which was true. "It was crowded, chaotic, protracted, and it felt like the end of that world, and in many ways it was. I suppose we should be grateful it's still inhabitable, unlike Ithor and so many others, but Coruscant will never be the same. It was the death of the New Republic."
"Our father was an A-9 pilot for Fleet Group Two, based out of the Bail Organa," Darred explained, treating the details with a sort of quiet reverence.
Again, Luke shared a glance with Mara. Fleet Group Two had been almost completely destroyed. "We were both in X-wings, leading Saber Squadron," he said. "We were the yammosk hunters."
"Those were the battle coordinators," Darred said, recalling what he had already learned, "the brains that kept the fleet maneuvers organized."
"They used to only bring one at a time," Luke said, "but by then we had learned to identify their signal signature and launch surgical strikes, so they hedged their bets and brought at least five."
"We got four of them before the warmaster caught on and surrounded the fifth with a literal wall of coralskippers," Mara added. "By then the planet was already lost."
"Yeah, we read about that." Darred didn't seem to know exactly what to say, although apparently felt obligated to say something. "Dad was a very good pilot," he insisted. "He scored in the ninety-first percentile in the Fleet Command sims."
"I'm sure he was," Luke soothed, as earnestly as he could. "Starfighter combat isn't for the faint of heart, and I've seen a lot of great pilots die. Saber Squadron was my own elite unit, more than half of them Jedi, and we were gutted that day. Even we were shot down," he said, indicating himself and his wife. "Mara was completely disabled, I was on fire, and it was only by virtue of being Jedi that we were able to crash into the Western Sea and swim out. Ben was almost captured, and the retreat might have left us behind if the Solos hadn't picked us up. It was chaos, and everything was crumbling. I don't think there was anything else anyone could have done."
"They told us the Vong fleet had thousands of ships."
"Tens of thousands," Mara corrected.
"We needed every pilot we had," Luke assured them, "and could have used hundreds more. It was very courageous of your father to volunteer, no matter what anyone might say to the contrary," he added, thinking of Janren. "And I'm told he was primarily thinking of you two and your mother."
Darred poked at the dirt with a stick. "Maybe," he allowed.
"Didn't really work out very well," Ruwee mumbled, looking glum.
Luke sighed, unable to fault them for their regret. "Sometimes things don't work out the way we'd like them to," he said, quietly inundated with fragmented memories of his burning childhood home, of Obi-Wan, of Anakin and Padmé, the whole Yuuzhan Vong war, the predations of the Peace Brigade, the knock-on effects of the Myrkr mission, the fate of Anakin Solo. "Sometimes they really don't. What you do with what's left is entirely up to you."
They called it a night soon afterward, and they all retired to their individual bedrooms. Pooja had her own quarters, the boys wanted to stay together, and Luke and Mara were granted the master suite. Luke lingered on the balcony overlooking the lake, too preoccupied to sleep. Billions of stars shone in the black sky between the hills, a riot of strange constellations. Once again, he tapped deeply into that well of energy his father had left behind, existing within the entire estate as though in that liminal space somewhere outside of time, in an eternal present. Here, away from the distracting crowds of Theed, he was certain he could use that to his advantage. He was finally prepared to look back, consciously reaching toward his first memories.
He was certain he had some somewhere. Leia's recollection of their mother had been strangely vivid, memories that had to have been rooted in Force-enhanced perception now that they knew Padmé had died just moments after their birth. Luke's own parallel experience had been rather different, when that faceless monster Darth Vader had claimed him as a son and insisted that Luke's own feelings would confirm the truth. His whole world had broken in that moment, looking at those inhuman features with fresh eyes and realizing with sickening certainty that he did recognize him, a twisted and mutilated presence that had once been warm and safe and familiar. That had to be some Force-enhanced prenatal instinct, imprinted somewhere at the very foundations of his mind. Whatever had happened later, they had been a family once, and Luke wanted to remember that if he could. He would probably need some help, though.
"Hey," Mara said, coming out to join him and running her hand along his back. "You're still awfully spun up. I might as well be trying to sleep under an industrial floodlight."
"Sorry," Luke apologized, slipping his arm around her. "What do you think the odds are of getting the administration to posthumously decorate Oberrin Veruna? I think his family would appreciate it."
"I'd say the odds are pretty good if you nominate him," Mara said. "The medal won't matter much, but the acknowledgement would be nice. Now," she said, affectionately slapping him on the back, "stop deflecting and tell me what you're really thinking about."
Luke sighed. "I just . . . Mara, do you think you could help me search my memories? I want to go way back, back to the beginning, and I don't think I can do it alone."
Mara frowned. She had always had her doubts about stirring up what might be best left in the past. "If that's what you really want," she said, with some hesitation.
"I want everything I can possibly have," Luke insisted. "It might be awful, but so be it. Whatever it is, it's mine."
She sighed, the wry tilt of her eyebrows expressing her last impotent reservations. "Okay, then. Of course I'll help you."
They were so focused on one another that they both jumped when their bedroom door opened unexpectedly. "Dad," Ben complained, standing there in his nightclothes with a groggy squint, "you're smothering me. Think you could dial it down a little?"
"I'm sorry, Ben," Luke apologized again. "It might be a little intense for a minute, but it won't last long, I promise. Go back to bed."
Rather than obey, Ben ventured farther into the room as his eyes adjusted to the light. "Why?" he asked with cautious interest. "Are you going to try something?"
"Maybe," Mara admitted, her tone implying that it was strictly adult business, and that young boys ought to do as they were told.
Ben ignored the cues. "Can I help?" he asked, almost hesitantly. "I know I'm still new to all this Jedi stuff, but it's my family too, and I guess . . . I guess I just want to help somehow, if I can. You know, be a part of it."
His offer was unexpected, very aspirational, and quite touching. Luke looked at Mara and took her hand. "We did make a good team once," he said, remembering the day Ben had been born, when all three of them had united in the Force to defeat her wasting disease.
Mara was reluctant, but she recognized that facing unpleasant realities at an inappropriate age seemed to be an integral part of all their childhoods. They had agreed as recently as a few years ago that they would raise Ben differently, that there would be no looming family secrets of any kind. That reason alone might have brought her around to the idea, but it was Ben's earnest goodwill, inherited entirely from his father, that made it impossible for her to refuse.
With her tacit permission, Luke turned back to their son. "I wouldn't ask you to," he insisted, "but you can join us if you want."
They all sat cross-legged on the ground, Mara and Ben with the railing at their backs, and Luke facing them. He closed his eyes and began emptying his mind of all extraneous thoughts, deconstructing every mental barrier he had ever built, making himself as open and vulnerable as possible.
"What are we doing?" Ben was whispering to his mother.
"We're trying to see into your father's first memories," she explained in a low voice. "Just follow my lead, and let him do the hard part."
They sounded farther away than they were. Luke lay completely open before his wife, the arrangement made easier by their existing bond, and after seventeen years she knew her way around his mind almost as well as he did. He felt her preparing her angle of attack, and strove to preemptively suppress any reflexive resistance. "What do you think?" he murmured without opening his eyes, the three of them existing as individual lights in a void. "Quick and dirty?"
"Quick and dirty," Mara agreed. "I don't know how long we'll be able to keep it up, and we'll get hopelessly sidetracked if we don't go deep."
"All right. Whenever you're ready."
Mara and Ben became less distinct as they reinforced one another, until she finally drove the white-hot point of her awareness deep into Luke's adolescence. She held that path open to the light as a surgeon would dilate a wound, giving Luke the freedom to sift through what he found there.
He didn't linger long, drifting backward through scenes from his childhood. The blistering heat of Tatooine. The grit of sand beneath his feet. Struggling droids perpetually choked with dust. Uncle Owen's stern but well-intentioned discipline. Aunt Beru's steady kindness. Biggs. Flying his skyhopper. Breakfast before dawn. The gardens. The suns. A rare visit from Aunt Dama and Uncle Sam. Grit beneath his hands as he learned to crawl. The warmth and scent of Beru as she held him close to her chest. A different presence, different but no less kind, masculine and strong in the Force, Obi-Wan.
They were close now. Luke strained backward in the dark, because nothing was visual anymore, just flashes of empathy, intuition, and instinct. He drew Mara and Ben deeper, holding the path open, until . . . there she was. There she was at the very beginning just as Leia had described her, a warm presence as familiar as anything he had ever known, beautiful, kind, and sad.
I have no memory of my mother, he had said. I never knew her. But he did, and he had, for eight or nine of the most nebulously formative months of his life. There was only the warm and the dark, the equally nebulous glow pressed close beside him that he now knew to be Leia, and the dim but all-encompassing reality an unborn child understood to be mother. She had been everything, his entire world, his spirit and his temperament intimately molded by her own. Now she had a name. Now she had a face. Luke grasped that instinctive memory in his conscious thought, unwilling to lose it again.
He pressed harder, even as he felt Mara and Ben faltering beneath the strain. He had to see everything. Suddenly there was fear, pain, a raw anguish shared by all three of them. He was pulled away from Leia into a world of bitter cold and blinding light, and he realized he was remembering his own birth. There was another masculine presence, not Anakin. It was Obi-Wan again, he knew from the holo. But Anakin was there, he thought, just on the edge of his awareness, as if from a great distance. Anakin, too, was screaming into the darkness even as they were.
Luke's perception of his mother was fading, not only because he had been removed from her, but because he knew she was dying. Even as the force of Padmé's life dimmed, Anakin's distant agony became more distinct, and then . . . and then Luke recognized him in a hideous bolt of clarity, someone who was insinuated into their family tragedy like a pervasive rot, not mourning but scheming, siphoning his mother's life away to anchor his father in his burnt and ravaged body.
Every instinct in Luke rose up in protest, but what could he do? He was an infant with no power, no voice, and no comprehension of how thoroughly Sheev Palpatine had broken his family.
Mara could see everything, she and Ben experiencing Luke's fleeting memories with him as they all bore the strain of holding that portal open. She recognized Palpatine the same moment he did, shared his flash of horror and disgust, and then it all collapsed as a primal rejection pulsed out of Luke with enough violence to shove Mara and Ben back against the railing.
The sudden stillness was oppressive, and the silence deafening. Luke was staring blankly ahead, an explosion of grief and rage tenuously contained within a veneer of shock. They had discovered an entirely new facet of the tragedy, as Mara had been afraid they would, and Luke had walked into it with his eyes wide open. Sorting through that was going to wreck him for a bit.
"Ben," she whispered, patting him on the arm, "go to bed. Your father needs some space right now. We'll talk in the morning."
Sensing the gravity of the moment, Ben obeyed without question. Mara could already feel him vanishing in the Force as he went, hiding from the storm he knew was coming.
Scooting closer until their knees touched, Mara took Luke's hands in hers. She didn't disturb the silence with words, but she flooded their bond with compassion, needing him to know once again how very sorry she was. There was nothing they could do to change it, there was no way they could prove it, but now they were both miserably certain that Padmé Amidala had not died of any medical complication, but was just another of the myriad victims sacrificed to the Emperor's convenience.
Luke squeezed her hands, confronting the ugly truth by degrees. "He killed her," he finally said, screwing his eyes shut as if that could help anything. "He killed her! And then he let my father go on believing that he had—" He wanted to rage, but he knew he shouldn't, the rest of his useless tirade reduced to a strangled, bestial growl. The only other option was to cry, and he didn't really want to do that either.
Mara pivoted to sit beside him, looking out over the dark expanse of the lake shimmering with reflected starlight. Palpatine may have been the ruinous root of all their misery, but he wasn't the only player. They might be able to gain something from the experience despite him.
"She smiled at you in the end," Mara observed. Artoo had been on the wrong side of the room to record it, and it had been only a flicker of a suggestion in their imperfect perception now, but bittersweet smiles often felt that way. "Did you catch that?"
"No, I didn't," Luke admitted, barely holding himself together. "I guess I was too distracted."
"Did your father ever smile after you took off his mask?"
"Yes." Luke was dragged across the decades into another melancholy memory, one of his most carefully guarded and most often revisited. "He did."
Mara put her arm around him, offering all the support and solace she had to give. "Then I suppose the last thing that made both your parents smile," she said, "was you."
That did it. Luke's composure crumbled, and he collapsed into Mara's shoulder, letting the storm of repressed emotion drain out of him. She simply held him, content to bear his burdens with him as long as he needed her to. That was what spouses did.
He had offered to do the same for her in the past, to probe her mind for some clue to her origins, but Mara had always refused. She had never wanted this the way he did. Even though the memory would leave him angry and desolate, Mara knew Luke would treasure it for the rest of his life. She had no desire to remember, not now. She liked her family just the way it was, and had no time to waste grieving parents she had never known. It was just something else Palpatine had taken from them.
Whatever he had done, the Emperor hadn't managed to keep them from each other. He had certainly tried, and it had taken them a long time to regroup, but the next generation was alive and well, and eventually the Skywalker legacy would eclipse House Palpatine entirely.
It was cold comfort in the moment, but it was the best they had.