25 ABY, hyperspace en route to Coruscant

When the last rush of refugees had been secured aboard the Bothan cruiser Ralroost, it led the convoy in jumping to hyperspace, racing away from what was left after the Battle of Dantooine, back toward Coruscant with more bad news for the Senate.

When the all-clear was given to move about the vessel, Mara gathered herself with an effort and headed for the medical bay. It seemed the shoe was on the other foot now. Luke had visited her bedside at the refugee camp before the battle after doing what he did best, charging in like a lightning bolt from across the galaxy to rescue her and Anakin from Yuuzhan Vong assassins. She had been exhausted by her illness and several days of desperate foot pursuit through the wilderness, and had been able to do little more than sleep before the battle. Now it was Luke who was wiped out, prostrated by titanic feats of Force mastery she had never seen or even imagined before. He had single-handedly crippled the enemy war effort in his field of battle, but it had left him dangerously sapped. Hopefully it wasn't anything a routine healing trance couldn't set right.

That thought evaporated in a flash of consternation as she recognized his comatose form on one of the many medical beds, strapped into an oxygen mask and attached by wires to a suite of monitors. Leia stood beside him wearing a grim expression, marking his bedside amid the confusion like an indicator flag on a war map. Her features softened as she saw Mara approaching, despite the fact that all the monitors showed Luke's vital signs in the red.

Leia waved off her obvious concerns. "He's just in a trance," she explained. "I tried to explain to the medics that none of this was necessary, but you know Bothans. They won't be told. I guess none of them wants the liability in the event that Master Skywalker takes a turn for the worse."

"Not likely, is it?" Mara asked, getting a handle on her own heart rate.

The princess shook her head dismissively. "He just needs his rest. You should have seen their faces when the readings came back." She indicated the monitors, all of which were reporting vital signs worse than those of a coma patient, little respiration and a barely discernible heartbeat. He still managed to be fully oxygenated, which Mara was sure he could have handled without the mask, though she did feel a twinge of sympathy for the ruffled Bothan medics.

Leia patted her arm. "I'll leave him to you, then," she said with a weary smile. "I could use a nap myself."

Chairs were in short supply while the cruiser was stuffed with refugees, so Mara sat on the edge of the bed beside Luke and gathered his limp hand in hers. Despite being the cybernetic, it was no less his hand than the living one, subsumed by now into the burning force of his presence almost as though he had been born with it.

She stole a few moments just to look at him while he was unconscious, marveling that this man—despite not being naturally blessed with heroic stature, with his boyish features and ready smile, his soft voice and that slight outstep—was in fact a transcendent being capable of pushing small black holes into enemy armies.

There had been no ignoring him on the battlefield, despite the distance between them. Luke had suddenly shown brighter in the Force than anyone else she had ever known, pulling a prodigious wave of raw power into a blinding focal point, then projecting it out again to work his will. It had been incredible to witness, and was actually an elegant summary of who he was, immolating himself on the front line for the benefit of everyone behind him.

The soft beeping of the instrumentation began to intensify as his heartbeat picked up, and Mara could feel him coming around in response to her presence. She hadn't intended to wake him, but Luke was a big boy and could make his own decisions. His eyes fluttered open and he smiled at her, then he frowned at the oxygen mask on his face and fumbled it off. He seemed slightly confused by the rest of their surroundings as well. His memories were probably muddled, as sometimes happened when one rushed out of a healing trance prematurely.

"This isn't the Sabre," he said, stating the obvious. "Where are we?"

"On the Ralroost, beating a hasty retreat to Coruscant. You remember the battle?"

Luke nodded, apparently putting the pieces together. His energy still ran at a very low ebb, though his condition was slowly improving. Then his eyes narrowed. "Wait," he said, "then where is the Sabre? Don't tell me we've left it." His color drained when she didn't answer. "Mara?"

She really didn't want to tell him, but the changing expression on his face told her he had already guessed the worst. "We stowed it in the forest when we arrived," Mara said. "By the time we knew the Vong were there, they had already found it. You know how they feel about machines."

Luke's gaze distanced as he no doubt imagined the scene in all its savage ruin, and she felt a wave of physical nausea roll through him. He sighed heavily, and his eyes fell closed as he was momentarily sapped of all his strength again. Then he set his mouth in a firm line, looked up at her and clasped her hand. "I'd rather have you than a hundred brand new . . . state-of-the-art . . . custom-built . . . stupid expensive . . . completely perfect . . . ships."

Mara offered him a sad smile, recognizing his keen regret even as he tried to renounce it. "But . . . ?"

"But it does make me want to cry a little bit," Luke admitted, the pain in his eyes belying his smile.

"What will you do?" Mara asked, almost afraid of the answer. "Build another one?"

He went completely limp. "I don't know, Mara. Just the thought of all that work makes me want to lie down and die right now. And who knows if we'd be able to scrape together all the parts again." Then he stopped short and looked her dead in the eye. "Do you want me to?"

Mara shook her head, knowing without a shadow of a doubt that she had only to do the opposite to make him eat his words and start work immediately. It was sobering to have that kind of influence over a life partner with such powerfully pure intentions. "I'd never ask you to do that. The Sabre was one of a kind, and it was paradise while it lasted."

She knew he could feel her regret and remorse just as she felt his exasperation and despair, both of them aflame with sympathy for the other until they were dragging themselves into a firestorm of pathetic misery. Mara felt a single tear escape in spite of her determination to prevent it, and Luke's eyes began to well in response as he reached up to wipe the trail away.

"Stop it," Mara said, straightening where she sat and clearing her throat. "There are too many people dead for us to be crying over a ship."

She could see that Luke agreed, but it was still a blow. It wasn't exactly a death he had to grieve, but he had invested a significant part of himself in the building of that ship, and they would miss it.

"It wasn't exactly brand new," Mara observed under her breath.

"It was only four years old!"

"And it was more than a little shameless." She dared to grin a bit, realizing they sounded like guests at a wake, reminiscing about the deceased. "You didn't just go the extra kilometer designing her, you went an extra fifteen parsecs just to prove you could. And the way you could slip your X-wing straight into the rear hold made the whole thing a giant flying innuendo."

"You think I didn't know that?" Luke asked with a sly smile. "It was glorious." With an effort he swallowed all his swirling negativity, as any good Jedi should. "Just chalk it up to the Skywalker curse, I guess," he said, indulging one last flare of resentment before he allowed that to drain away as well. "Apparently it's the reason I can't have nice things. So long as we can keep it from taking you, nothing else really matters."

"That is by no means a sure thing," Mara reminded him, thinking of her wasting illness.

"Well, we haven't finished fighting yet," Luke insisted, "not by a long shot." A disgusted look flashed across his face, and he ripped the useless sensor wires off his chest, sending the monitors flatlining in a panic.

Mara was unexpectedly jolted by the image. It could just as easily be him, she knew. He had already cheated death more often than any mortal had any right to, and whatever his other powers, Luke Skywalker's heart was flesh and blood like everybody else's. She briefly contemplated living without him, then pushed the thought away. She never wanted to hear that flatline tone so near him again.

Reading her distress, Luke reached behind the bed and yanked the power cable out of the socket, silencing the alarm.

Mara felt tears threatening again, the cumulative effect of stress, fatigue, loss, and generalized anxiety. "Scoot over," she demanded, lying down beside her husband on the narrow medical bed, slipping beneath his arm to rest her head on his shoulder. It seemed they were still obliged to fight tooth and nail just to snatch a few moments of peace together, and she had thought pinning him down long enough to marry him had been the hard part.

She felt him smile, silently agreeing with her assessment of their situation, running his hand gently along her back. "I miss our stateroom," she whimpered. There had been memories made in the Jade Sabre's stateroom.

"Yeah, it was nice, wasn't it?" Luke heaved another great sigh. Each time, his regret was blunted a bit more. "You know, Jaina once said she saw the Sabre as a metaphor for the family, that it was indicative of the better times we were supposed to be living now. I suppose it's only fitting that they smashed it up, too."

"Don't get all mystical on me." Mara idly slipped her hand into his open tunic, running her fingers over the welt the sensor's adhesive had left on his chest. They still had each other, a single point of ecstasy amid the storm, even if the caprice of the universe took everything else.

She didn't know how much longer they could get away with it, but she was determined to make every day count.