Title: Last Night On Nar Shaddaa
Timeframe: Not long after Planet of Twilight (13ABY)
Disclaimer: I don't own anything. All characters and places belong to Disney.
*Words in italics indicate where Mara is recalling the evenings events.
It was almost five in the morning, but Mara Jade wasn't sleeping despite in a few hours she and Luke would depart Nar Shaddaa. After laying in bed for hours already, and trying every trick, minus calling on the Force, to fall asleep, she had resigned herself to a sleepless night. The evening's conversation replayed in her head. What had begun as an attempt to get Luke to talk about Callista since he hadn't brought her up their entire stay on the smugglers' moon had turned into the most emotionally vulnerable conversation Mara had ever shared with anyone.
Mara returned to the table with two ales in hand. Setting one down on the table, she pushed it towards Luke, before opening the second and sitting down.
Luke shakes his head. "I'm gonna pass. No need for a repeat of last night."
Mara smirks. "Why? You weren't even half bad."
Raising both eyebrows, Luke asks, "Are you seriously saying you're hoping I'll agree to do karaoke with you again? Because it sure as hell isn't about some unrealized talent I have."
Mara shakes her head no. "I'm not much for singing myself. In fact, I really disliked the year of voice lessons I had to take." It had been amusing, her and Luke in a shady cantina the previous evening. Luke disguised enough that nobody suspected who he was. Helped by the fact Mara had insisted he leave his lightsaber aboard the Fire, so the Jedi Master looked like any other smuggler with a blaster on his hip. After a few drinks, they had somehow goaded each other into participating in the karaoke contest that the owner was hosting.
Luke snorts. "So what Palpatine had you singing between Espionage and Assassin 101?"
"Exactly." Mara takes a drink before explaining. "You forget I wasn't known as his Hand. I had to be able to keep up the front of a lady in the Imperial Court, so I had to learn art, singing, and dance."
"So why? And to quote you, 'You weren't even half bad'."
Mara feels her face grow hot and quickly takes another sip of ale to hide the fact. Finally, when she thought her face would no longer turn the color of her hair she says, "I was a star-struck twelve-year-old with a highly renowned very famous opera singer as an instructor." She didn't mention how he had been incredibly attractive for someone who had been approaching fifty.
Luke tried to hide his laughter, but wasn't very successful.
"Why are you not attending karaoke nights regularly?" She had to flip the conversation back to him.
"I'm never on Nar Shaddaa and I don't make a habit of spending time around corrupting influences." He almost finished the statement with a straight face, but the ghost of a smile at the end gave him away.
"You wound me."
He shrugs. "You forget it was your idea."
"All I'll say, it was better than you trying to recruit me." She shuffles the Sabacc deck before dealing.
"You really don't want to be a Jedi?" He picks up his cards without looking at them.
"Skywalker, you're intelligent." Had she actually called the Jedi smart? Yes, cause it was true even if she'd never be able to live with herself after this little trip for complementing Luke. "A good pilot with an impressive military background. I can think of half a dozen jobs you'd excel in and make bank. Not to mention they're all respectable, so it would only increase your chances of finding a special someone to settle down with. Is being a Jedi really worth it?"
She had set it up perfectly. She'd given Luke the perfect opportunity to spill his soul about how devastated he was over Callista leaving him, and in doing so, she would have fulfilled her self-imposed obligation for why she had dragged him with her to Nar Shaddaa. Not that what had happened was any of her business. Sometimes, even Mara, liked to indulge in hearing about recent drama.
Mara picks up her own hand while she waited for Luke to respond. The cards in her hand weren't promising and had there been credits on the line, she would have folded. Doing the math as to the likelihood of her getting what she needed was slim to none. Finally, she glances back up at her companion, who hadn't spoken yet.
The Jedi was studying his hand intently. It took Mara a moment to realize it wasn't the cards, but his actual hand. She had almost given up on him even answering when he said, "I almost did quit."
Oh, Sith! He was taking Callista's leaving worse than she had imagined. Perhaps she shouldn't have let this particular rancor out. "Come again?"
Luke still focused on his right hand as the emotions hammering Mara's senses in the Force are all too familiar. So, much so, she momentarily thinks she's the one feeling the intense sense of betrayal and wondering why no one had bothered to tell her the truth. Mara hadn't liked Callista, but what in the Force had she done for Luke to react this way?
He's looking at his right hand. Something in the recesses of her memory realizes that is significant.
"After Bespin…I almost decided not to go back."
Bespin? Back to where?
His right hand. The one he had lost to Vader on Cloud City.
The emotional turmoil rolling off of him had nothing to do with Callista!
Fine. She knew the details of what had transpired on Bespin. Vader's offer for his son to join him in overthrowing the Emperor. Luke had been sorely outmatched in a duel his brief training with Obi-Wan Kenobi would not have prepared him for. As she reconstructed the information from years ago; from spying on Vader, Luke's Imperial rap sheet and whatever other data the Empire had held regarding Luke Skywalker's upbringing, and finally the piece the Noghri on Wayland had revealed about Luke's parentage. For a moment, she's there again asking who the Son of Vader that they were counting on was. Only for the alien to tell her she already knew him and was traveling with him.
Mara had never brought herself to confront Luke about that, and until earlier that evening, Luke had never offered the information. Oh, he'd given her Anakin Skywalker's lightsaber shortly after Wayland with some vague explanation she'd need it, eventually. Not that working for Karrde had called for a lightsaber. In fact, Karrde probably was just as glad the weapon remained in a safe aboard the Jade's Fire most of the time. In hindsight, Mara should have shut the conversation down as soon as she had realized it would not be about Callista.
"Hey, I do question your sanity when it comes to rebuilding the Jedi Order."
"Thanks. I was beginning to wonder where Mara Jade had gone?" Yeah, she had deserved that quip, but they both knew Luke was the thoughtful one in their…was it a friendship? Could he really ever view his one time personal assassin as a friend? "It's Luke," she reminds herself.
"Look," she begins. Trying to be more empathetic with her approach. "I kinda feel like you almost calling it quits after to losing to Vader. Was maybe a tad dramatic."
His cards spill from his hand onto the table as he brought both hands up and rubbed at his eyes with the palms. The next few sharp intakes of breath Mara sees him take causes a bizarre urge in her to get up and hug him. Only she can't make herself move from her seat, and allows the next long few minutes to play out as Luke struggled to regain his composer.
When he had regained it. It had been as if some internal dam that he had constructed since Bespin broke.
"I had no idea."
"About what?"
Luke reaches over and grabs the unopened ale. Opens it and quickly downs it. "No one had considered in all their…" Pause and he exhales loudly. "Kriff. No-one thought to clue me in that one of the most evil men in the galaxy was my father!" His blue eyes flash with anger. "Obi-Wan blatantly lied to my face." He fiddles with the discarded cards. "You know how messed up it is to preach about not giving in to hate and anger while lying to me, saying this person killed my father, knowing he actually didn't."
"Palpatine did the same," Mara whispers.
Luke's head jerked up from looking at the table to now facing Mara. "What?"
"Even before we faced C'baoth, and he pitted you against that clone." Now Mara was the one struggling. "The Noghri told me." She had to look away. "I'm not sure what would have happened. I'd probably would have been driven crazy, but I didn't want to kill you by then."
"I'm so sorry."
"Even without mentioning who your father was, you told me more of the truth than Palpatine did." She attempts a weak smile.
Neither of them say anything for a long while. Normally, not bothered by silence, this time however, Mara was having a hard time wondering desperately how to break the lull. "You want another ale?" She asks and quickly finishes hers before standing up.
Luke nods.
Mara quickly disappears into the small room that passed for the kitchen in the flat they were staying at. Karrde kept the place as a business outpost. However, it was furnished much more like a vacation home, and Karrde allowed his people to use it as a vacation spot. Not that Mara figured anyone ever took him up on that. Nar Shaddaa wasn't exactly high on most people's list for a getaway. Mara had only chosen to come because she'd had nothing else better to do with her mandated week off.
Opening the small fridge unit, she grabs two ales.
There was something still that she needed to understand. She just wasn't sure she knew how to ask about it.
She closes the fridge and returns to her chair. Luke, in the short time she had been out of the room, had reshuffled the Sabacc deck and dealt them both fresh hands. Sipping on the new ales, the pair play the dealt round of cards before Mara finally gains the courage to ask. "Kenobi died on the first Death Star, right?"
Luke nods.
Mara knew the timeframe between Luke having left Tatooine and the destruction of the Death Star above Yavin 4 was a good three years prior to Bespin. "You said you almost didn't go back."
"I almost didn't go back to Dagobah." Noticing Mara's confused expression, he continues. "Most of my Jedi training was done by a Jedi Master named Yoda. That was where he lived."
"How long after Bespin?"
"Shortly, before Endor."
"And in that entire year…"
"I didn't tell a soul."
"That had to have eaten you up."
He nods. "Yeah, wondering if someone finds out…" he laughs without humor. "Anyway, I found myself court martialled…unrelated. Had someone found out, at worst, I would have been labeled a spy. At best, I figured I'd lose all my friends."
"Woah, you can't say something like that and not explain." Mara says. "You, hero of the rebellion, court martialled?"
Luke takes another drink before shrugging and saying. "I shot down my, at the time, girlfriend and fellow Rogue pilot - on purpose."
"I think my brain just shorted out."
"It gets better." Luke states matter-of-factly. "I was following the Force's prompting."
"Kriffing Sith." It was the only words Mara could make her mouth formulate. Finding out your mentor lied to you was bad enough, but having the Force prompt you to shoot down a person you had romantic feelings for would be icing on the cake.
"She became something," Luke mumbles, clearly to himself but not quiet enough to have gone unheard.
"So, she lived?"
"Vader must have saved her. Because the next time I ran into her, she was mostly a cyborg and was using a light whip against me," Luke explains. "Imagine my surprise. I had no idea she had been Force sensitive."
Mara didn't hear the last bit. A light whip? She was pretty certain that only one person carried a weapon like that and who was also mostly a cyborg. "What was this woman's name?"
"It doesn't really matter."
"Skywalker, just humor me."
"Last time I encountered her, she calling herself Lumiya."
Mara didn't care that her jaw was hanging open or that Luke would sense her seething. Mara wasn't sure she could call her feelings righteous fury because part of her anger came from knowing Lumiya had been another Emperor's Hand. Reminding Mara of Thrawn's belittling remarks on how she hadn't been anything more to Palpatine than a tool to achieve a means. Thrawn had been right, but at the time Mara hadn't wanted to believe him. "I can tell you, at least for a time, what she became."
"I'm not sure I want to know." It was the first time she had ever seen Luke look at her with a sense of genuine fear/dread.
Mara had told him anyway and had witnessed him laugh in-between using profanities. She had not realized the once farmboy knew for nearly a solid five minutes. Also, she was certain that had Luke known even a fraction of the cursing he had used in those minutes while his uncle had been alive; she was sure Owen Lars would have found a way even from the grave to keep his nephew on Tatooine.
She briefly, recalled a conversation with Corran Horn while the two of them were on Yavin 4 together. Corran had said there were three things that marked someone as a starfighter pilot or a former one. The first had been they hate losing. The second was they could out last any harden smuggler downing shots. The third (and Luke apparently fell into this stereotype) a colorful vocabulary. Mara hadn't spent much time during her days as the Emperor's Hand around TIE fighter pilots. However, Mara supposed, when one was just a couple turbo-laser hits away from eating hard vacuum Corran's assessment probably held up.
When Luke's initial reaction ended, he finally asked. "So, how did you know her? I'm sure the Emperor didn't intentionally have you meet."
"My first glimpse of her was when Vader was presenting her to Palpatine." Mara still remembered her instant hatred of the woman as their eyes met. Lumiya had smiled at her, though it hadn't been a friendly smile. It'd been more like the other had been daring Mara, but Mara had been unaware of the stakes. "After Endor, I dueled her and lost. Lost my original lightsaber, the one Palpatine gifted me to her. Anyway, she took me prisoner, certain I'd betrayed the Empire."
"Do you think she knew who you had been?"
Mara shrugs. "She really hated the fact I wasn't willing to work for Isard. Anyway. I'm not proud of this, but I've spent much of my free time attempting to figure out who all might have been Emperor's Hands as well." Mara deals another round of cards, and for the next few moments, the conversation dies. After Mara looses the round she says, "I did terrible things as his Hand. So why has the Force never prompted you to eliminate me? We both know I gave you plenty of reasons."
"You also gave plenty of reasons not to." He states. "I…I've never gotten those feelings around you. I only experienced that prompting because I had no other way in the moment to establish friend or foe."
"You still haven't told me why you went back and finished your training."
"I wanted confirmation. Even though I knew Vader hadn't lied." Luke says. "Not to mention I'd made a promise to return."
"Did this Yoda confirm it?"
Luke nods.
As Luke dealt another round, Mara went and grabbed two more ales for them. Midway through the game, Luke, rather nervously, asks. "This isn't me asking you to come to Yavin. I just want to know why you're so against becoming a Jedi?"
"Why do you care so much?" Mara counters. "Would you offer the same to Lumiya?"
"Probably not." But before Mara could say anything, he quickly adds, "It's not for the reason you think."
Mara rolls her eyes. "What do I think?"
"That I'm being hypocritical."
"Stay out of my head!"
"I wasn't."
"Let me spell it out for you," Mara snarls, slamming both hands palms down on the table and crumpling the cards in her hand in the process. "I did things that if certain individuals in the New Republic were to learn of, I'd be tried, then probably executed. Rightly so."
Luke doesn't break eye contact. "If Lumiya is out there still alive. I'd want to see actions or feel something in the Force that she should, if she desired, become a Jedi." Luke absently begins rearranging the cards in his hand. "I don't know how to explain it any better than that, Mara."
"It's never gonna happen. Your reading of the Force is wrong." Gingerly, she picks up the damaged cards and attempts to undo the damage.
Luke shrugs.
The idiot had been right about Vader. Course that was taking Luke at his word, but he had no reason to lie about the events aboard the second Death Star. There, arguably, was more to have gained by telling the galaxy he'd destroyed both Palpatine and Vader. Mara sighs, and rolls from laying on her back to her side. It didn't matter. Mara's abilities in the Force were more than sufficient. She had a good thing working as Karrde's second in command. She was independent.
"Let's be clear if, for some reason, one of these actions ever comes to light. Don't do for me what you did for Kyp Durron. Do what is expected of a Jedi and ensure justice prevails."
"And if it's not truly justice?" Luke counters. "Or are you gonna make me swear it?" He looked visibly ill.
Mara glares at him. "I don't get you."
The pair retired to their respective rooms for the evening not long after.
She idly wondered if Luke was still laying awake, but resisted the temptation to find out.
She was fairly certain she never would understand what made the Jedi Master tick. They came from different worlds. He'd grown up on his aunt and uncle's moisture farm, sheltered and protected. She had been stolen from parents she didn't remember and raised to do the Emperor's bidding, all the while blending in with the Coruscant elite. Shared trauma aside, this trip's antics -however much fun they had been- were an anomaly.
Once off Nar Shaddaa things would return to business as usual. Luke would return to Yavin 4 and she'd go back to being Karrde's second in command. Luke and Mara would see each other in passing, exchange in some verbal sparring, and in a year or two he'd be with another "Callista". Perhaps this one would be able to still touch the Force, and have a similar list of accolades to match Luke's the New Republic could be proud of.
"Sith," she whispers in the dark. If she didn't know better, she would think she was falling in love with Luke Skywalker based on her train of thought.
Was she?
Remember Byss. Blue eyes and farmboy tendencies aside, Luke could easily become another Palpatine or Vader. Mara couldn't let herself become another Force user's puppet. It was better to keep Luke at arm's length. In the future, she'd have to do better and not put herself in another position like she'd done this week, where it was just her and Luke.
A glance at the chrono and Mara gives up on the idea of sleep. Getting out of the bed, she quickly dresses and briefly laments the fact she and Luke didn't spar once this time. That would just be the way it was. If she was smart, she would give him his old lightsaber back as soon as they returned to the Jade's Fire. Close the door permanently to her ever becoming a Jedi.
Sighing, Mara pulls her datapad out. Might as well get a jump start on work.