In this hall of grief, art comes to be.
Beta'd by Sesparra
The Emperor was gracious enough to grant Mara a day of respite almost entirely to herself before she would be forced to interact with the Imperial Court in general and Moff Tarkin specifically. She was immensely grateful for this, if only because she had to resolidify the habits in both speech and action that had allowed her to survive both the volatile whims of the Sith Lord she nominally served as well as the mercurial moods of the Court, as well as perhaps put her technical expertise to use to create contingencies in the case that she found herself… unable to carry out her oath.
Though she wasn't missing them, per se, she did also have the better part of three decades of habit honed first by Alderaani refugee parents and then life among the Jedi, in both the Temple and the Army of Light, which she hadn't had yesterday. It was only natural that she would have to spend some time reacquainting herself with the way that the Emperor's Hand was expected to comport herself, as opposed to someone who Lord Hoth could, after two or three decades to develop as a Jedi and a leader, hand over the role of Seneschal of the Army of Light to.
Of course, nothing could be so easy as that, and halfway through her journey down to the small kitchen that the staff maintained in the same facilities as the refectory had sat so long ago, she was driven to her knees by a lingering sense-imprint from a dead Jedi.
They had expanded the creches at some point after the fall of the Army of Light had fallen, and this particular Jedi had had the misfortune of arriving to see the troops of the 501st Legion standing over the corpses of the younglings that had once called the room their home, still firing into them to ensure they were dead.
The grief and rage that they had felt would have sent them on a sharp Fall… had the white-armored troops not turned their blasters upon the nameless Mirialan Jedi and preempted the question quite thoroughly.
Mara Jade, the Emperor's Hand, was used to using conventional investigative skills to ferret out secrets, while Mara Jade, Jedi Knight, had been forced out of that reliance by the ability of Skere Kaan's Brotherhood of Darkness to conceal themselves from all conventional senses, strengthening her sense of the Force and any warnings or impressions it may have contained. During wartime, this was an unquestionable boon, but living in a building that had contained the Jedi Order before they were slaughtered save for those few worth breaking into Inquisitors, with a man who all but fed off of the pain and suffering of other sentients past and present, it was very much the opposite.
Still, she was a Jedi, not some half-broken wretch given artificial kyber and a grudge before being hurled onto the battlefield, and so she dragged her traitorous body up a wall and then, once she had escaped the impression of another Jedi's death, she deliberately closed herself off to the Force, trading the hair-trigger threat response for the sensory numbness that would allow her to function through the desecration of the Jedi Temple.
She spent the time eating the tasteless, nutritionally complete porridge that was most of her breakfasts here on Coruscant mentally designing a wrist-sized device to absorb the energy of the death throes of fallen (and Fallen) Jedi and lay them to rest, despite how unlikely she'd be able to put the idea into practice in the near future, and the rush of success that she felt when she just knew, with Force-backed certainty, that it would work, carried her through the path to the salles, which were thankfully free of the death-echoes of any Jedi.
There she found the next obstacle to her time in this new world, that being the absolute quagmire of a Form, if it could even be called that, that Palpatine had insisted on inflicting upon her.
It was like she had been trained partly for Soresu, partly for Ataru, and partly for Djem So, but without either the stamina, the acrobatics, or the raw power to truly excel at any one of them. Had she been able to direct her own training, it was conceivable that she could have made something of it- combining the unpredictability of Ataru with the sheer dogged endurance that Hoth's Soresu had been the pinnacle of, while combining in the heaviest strikes that Form V had been renowned for, but no- it was precisely the wrong parts of all the forms. She had been instilled with the energy-wasting flashiness that the worst of Ataru had, with the limited offense of Soresu and suboptimal performance against blasters that had split Djem So from Shien.
It was technically possible that she could make the patchwork form as it stood function, on a technical level, but that had always in the past required that she draw upon the Emperor's reserves of energy, or perhaps some other external source, and she would very much prefer to avoid that if only for the chance of him cutting her off at some crucial moment.
Mara took a moment to weigh the merits of simply falling back on the Niman that she'd always preferred against the Brotherhood of Darkness before dismissing the idea- he'd be able to tell that she was using a different Form than what he'd beaten into her head, especially if it were Niman or Juyo, which would raise more questions than it resolved. No, the only option she had was cobbling together what she remembered of Ataru, Djem So, and Soresu and hoping that she could unify it into something halfway functional before she was called upon to train (and suffer) for her "Master's" pleasure.
She felt the gravity of that other galaxy for just a moment, actually tugging her from the ground for a moment before she dragged herself back down with the Force, then sighed. "Message received," she grumbled, igniting her lightsaber and preparing herself to begin the first Soresu kata she could remember.
The farther along she got in the kata, the more familiar it felt, and by the second repetition, she felt the Force flowing through her, rejuvenating her body and strengthening her stamina in the way that even Hoth had only occasionally been able to achieve in the figurative trenches.
For a time, the outside world vanished. There was no Imperial Court or temple full of the echoes of countless Jedi slaughtered in their home, no Sith Emperor or dark shroud over the galaxy, just Mara Jade, slowly moving away from the more conventional Forms of lightsaber combat and following the currents of the Force towards something that could stand in combat while not drawing attention to anything he would not have taught her.
While she lacked the time to truly combine the three forms, she managed to adapt the philosophies of Soresu's vast wealth of stamina and well-honed efficiency to the acrobatics of Ataru, allowing the Force to curtail her movements yet retain their effects, before she emerged from the trancelike state that she had slipped into, disengaging her lightsaber as she did so.
Then, she all but collapsed as she ceased drawing the Force through her and she was abruptly reminded of the limitations of both her adolescent body and the training this version of her had gone through as her knees gave out under her.
By the time her muscles had come to feel less like overcooked glowblue noodles, she'd managed to summon her chrono from where she'd left it and found that her meditation on Soresu and Ataru had consumed almost six hours, double what she'd set aside for blade practice. She'd almost completely overrun the time she'd intended to use to review the tapes of her past missions to make sure she had her inflections down, to boot, and that was setting aside the demands of her crude matter, as that crude matter demanded food and water alike.
Nothing to it, she supposed, dragging herself back to her feet and collecting her effects. If the Force pushed her to refine her bladework over reviewing the persona she was going to have to take on, then so be it.
She just hoped that it wouldn't come back to bite her too badly.
Once Mara had gotten some food and water down her throat, she found a room full of spare parts and tools. She didn't know what the Order had used it for or what Palpatine had ordered done with it since, and when she reached for the Force's guidance, it led her away from such abstract concerns and back to the here and now, which was answer enough for her.
The problem, she thought, looking down at the piles of scrap and junked components, was that as a spy under the direct supervision of a paranoid despot, she had very little she could trust to remain hers that was both something she could trust to have on hand and something that he wouldn't be able to detect tampering with.
Kaythree was… subject to standard Imperial doctrine on memory wipes and security examination, even if he wasn't loyal to the Emperor above her, and he performed security sweeps of her ship, so she couldn't trust that she could keep any sort of contraband in the medium-to-long term in the ship either. That left camouflage, which was limited if only out of concerns for what she already had that she could afford to conceal some new device within, or simply keeping the devices on her at all times, which was again limited by the clothes that had been chosen for her both as the Emperor's Hand as well as when she needed to fit in among Imperial high society.
Good at drawing attention from her task as they may be, slinky dresses and skintight leather were terrible for keeping equipment on, and even with multiple belts Mara was unconvinced of her ability to keep half of what she'd learned to prefer on Ruusan.
(She was resolutely ignoring the implications that came from the Emperor choosing such a wardrobe for a fourteen-year-old girl- she didn't need more reason to wish him harm, not now, when she'd barely gotten her bearings in this brave new galaxy and couldn't afford to take his place as Imperial Sovereign without causing the Empire to de facto tear itself apart in a bloody, messy conflict that would hurt far more than it could possibly help.)
Of most potential use was her lightsaber, inasmuch as it could be hers when she still felt the phantom warmth of another Jedi's hands on the hilt every time she took it up. It was very simply designed, with almost no space within the main body of the implement for any secretive storage or additional functions without tools she lacked the access to, but in the pommel, there was space for the storage of additional power cells, which-
As Mara was unscrewing the pommel of the lightsaber, she felt that other galaxy's core pulling on her once again, lifting her off the bench until she dragged herself back down with the Force.
She didn't notice the lightsaber rising until it clattered down to the desk in three parts, a hidden sheet of flimsiplast hidden between the spare power cells and the body of the hilt expanding from where it had been folded before fluttering down gently.
If you're reading this, it read, then the worst has come to pass.
I have never been prone to visions, and yet I, alone of all Jedi that I have known, saw the fall of the order, the rise of the Empire, and oh so much death. I have done what I can to try and prevent it, but I cannot afford to pit myself openly against the Sith, not as I am now. If the Empire is as bad as I have foreseen, then the Jedi cannot be allowed to be forgotten, and there I can help more readily. Seek out Ferus Olin, wherever he may have hidden himself, and tell him that you need the secret his Master left him upon resigning from the Jedi. You will be able to find what I have hidden from there, and more besides- the Order has not always been so toothless as it is now, and there are secrets from that time that I am not meant to know, just remind you of.
Trust always in the Force.
Mara took a moment just to breathe, riding out the surge of grief for the clear-sighted Knight or Master who had foreseen this, who had tried to make things better but who hadn't quite been enough, before she rested her hand on the hilt, feeling the kyber within also mourning her.
"Thank you," is all she said, and for a moment she could have sworn that she felt a presence, a blonde a couple inches taller than her, robes shifting out in an unseen wind as she reached out to ruffle Mara's hair, before it vanished and she felt the crushing weight of isolation pressing down on her, even heavier than before for all that it had lifted for a moment.
Then, she sighed and started reaching for components. Now that she had a concrete goal to be working towards, she needed to be ready for all sorts of situations, which meant getting every tool she could beg, borrow, barter, build, or burgle.
Ferus Olin wasn't going to find himself, after all.
And that's that!
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