The Ordeal

Fountain Palace, Hapes

Jaina stood on the deck of the palace's hangar and watched as the StealthX glided in for a solemn landing. She wouldn't have missed its return for anything, but the sense of her uncle's presence in the Force brought her nothing but grief. She suspected he was still partially in shock, that he was aware of the fact but separating himself from the pain he knew was coming. The rest of him was dark, cold, nursing a grim satisfaction that told her the job was done.

He had gone out intending to find Lumiya for the last time, to end it, to complete what amounted to Aunt Mara's last request, and fight her to the death. A life for a life. Jaina had offered to go in his place, but Uncle Luke had insisted.

I want to. Don't take this from me.

Now he was back, and Jaina supposed she shouldn't bet on Lumiya ever turning up again. A shuttle from the Jedi Temple fleet had arrived while he was gone, and was sitting at the far side of the hangar. It was a quiet honor flight manned by Master Cilghal, already in possession of Mara's precious last remains, escorted and guarded by Ben.

The StealthX sighed as it shut down, and Luke slowly emerged from the cockpit. He sloughed off his helmet, left it on the seat, and fell rather than jumped to the ground as if he didn't care whether it had been a two-meter drop or a twelve-kilometer cliff.

"Hey," Jaina greeted him carefully. "Success?"

Luke nodded, his eyes hollow. "Success."

"You're sure?" Jaina pressed. "You know how these types keep showing up after we presume them dead." She was still on the Alema taskforce, after all. They had allegedly killed or mortally wounded her half a dozen times already.

"I cut her head off, Jaina," Luke explained, sharp and unamused. "She won't be coming back."

Jaina swallowed. No doubt such cold efficiency would have made Mara proud, but that wasn't the Uncle Luke Jaina knew. To see someone so kind and forgiving driven to a point of such merciless resolve was terrible in its own right.

"Master Cilghal's here," she said as he stripped off his black flight suit. Maybe he knew that, but he still felt pretty withdrawn. "They found Ben, and recovered Mara's body."

Luke glanced toward the familiar shuttle and nodded. "Thanks. I guess that's our ride home."

"Mom and Dad are here, too. Should be landing right about now."

Something resembling a smile finally appeared on his face. "Good." He stowed the flight suit in the hatch and signaled Artoo to close it. "I'll see them in a bit. Right now I need to see Mara."

Jaina just nodded, her eyes welling again as she watched Luke stride toward the shuttle. She couldn't bring herself to go with him, wouldn't dream of intruding on that moment. She remembered looking at her younger brother's corpse and what it had done to her, a misery and a comfort that had scarred her forever. She had always liked to think Anakin had left his body behind for that reason. Maybe Mara had done the same. Maybe that was attachment. She didn't care.

A pair of palace guards approached her, stopping at a decorous distance. "Jedi Solo," the first addressed her with a nod, "your mother and father have arrived, and have been sequestered. We have been authorized to escort you to them."

A flash of anger broke through Jaina's depression. No matter how highly regarded Han and Leia Solo might be within Hapan society, Hapes was still legally bound to the GA, and the GA still maintained open warrants for both of them, authorized by her own brother. It would be best if as few eyes saw them as possible. It seemed an especially egregious intrusion on a moment like this. She was already mad at Jacen for apparently being present in the Hapan system and yet not taking any notice that Mara was in trouble or offering any assistance. He had finally shown his face several hours ago, helping to locate Ben and recover the body, making all kinds of stately assurances of the GA's full cooperation with the investigation, but he was already gone. Jaina hadn't bothered to see him.

She opened her mind to her family as she followed her escort, needing to touch them, needing reassurance that they were close and alive. Luke, Ben, Mom, and even Dad. Life was always more fragile than she expected, and their number was shrinking. Jacen might still be breathing, but he hadn't been one of them for a while.

Luke felt especially fragile, as she expected he would, and Jaina tried not to imagine him standing in the morgue looking at his wife's lifeless face. He still had his pain dammed up, but the weight of it was becoming unbearable. Ben was with him, or soon would be, and he appreciated the reassurances of his niece and sister, but wasn't ready to acknowledge them yet.

Finally her escort separated to stand with their fellows on either side of an ornate door, and Jaina pushed her way inside. Her father immediately engulfed her in a hug, her mother joined them, and they just held one another for a long, sad moment. Jaina didn't want to start sobbing right away, but it was becoming harder to hold it back, especially as she could feel Uncle Luke's dam beginning to brim over.

"Sweetheart," Leia finally said, "where's your uncle? Where's Ben?"

"They're with Aunt Mara," Jaina choked, blinking away tears. Just saying it was painful. "Cilghal has her in the shuttle."

Her mother nodded, and Jaina could tell she had been crying, too. "We'll give them some time, then."

"Better than the rest of the universe seemed to want to give 'em," Han complained. His voice sounded thicker than usual, and the thought had clearly been nagging him for a while. "All Luke wanted was a family, and something like a normal life. It's the only fragging thing he's ever wanted."

No one had any answers. It did seem very cruel.

A terrible well of emotion began rising in Jaina's chest, and she knew it wasn't entirely her own. Beside her, Leia's breathing roughened, and she knew she also felt it. Uncle Luke was spiraling, losing the control that decorum and the Jedi code had obliged him to hold.

"What is it?" Han asked, seeing them both deteriorate.

Leia shook her head and pulled away from them, but when she tried to inhale the sound was a thin sob. "It's Luke," she said, her voice quavering through fresh tears, and no further explanation was necessary.

Han held Jaina tighter as she began sobbing, too. She knew her father couldn't feel it the way they did, but he could see it and he could certainly imagine it. They all loved Uncle Luke, and any one of them would have gone to heroic lengths to spare him this, but there wasn't anything they could do.

Then the dam didn't just burst, it exploded. The anguish that erupted from Luke's presence was indescribable, the rage and despair of a mortally wounded animal, quaking the Force so hard that it would have brought Jaina to her knees had she been standing alone, all his legendary power unleashed in one great howl. It must have prostrated Jedi from one corner of the galaxy to the other, wave after wave of grief, hatred, regret, and desolation.

Leia fell into a chair, sobbing into her hands. Jaina tore away from Han, leaving her parents to comfort each other. She felt compelled to go to him. Luke felt so alone, so broken, and she couldn't stand it. He didn't deserve this. None of them did.

She hurried back to the shuttle, angrily slinging tears from her eyes. She ran up the ramp and turned toward berthing, but ahead of her she saw Ben standing in the passage, stricken and silent. From inside the nearest cabin came muffled sounds which horribly matched the tremors still tearing through the Force.

"Ben?" she ventured, coming to stand with him. "Is there anything we can do?"

Ben shook his head, and brusquely wiped his eyes with his sleeve. "Honestly, I'm amazed he's held it together this long," he said.

Jaina moved nearer the cabin, but Ben caught her arm. "Don't," he said, sadly older than his years. "He needs this. I just dropped a bomb on him, and he has a lot to work through."

"What do you mean?"

"It wasn't Lumiya," Ben explained miserably. "It couldn't have been. I was with her when I felt . . . when I felt Mom go. For some reason, I think Lumiya said just enough to bait Dad into killing her, and he's really torn up about it. I told him she wasn't worth his time, but he can't help it." He flinched as they were buffeted by Luke's wild emotions, but they seemed to wring Ben harder because he understood them better. "Now he can't mourn Mom without hating Lumiya and himself," he explained, his voice threatening to crack. "Why would she do that? Was this worth dying for?"

Jaina said nothing. It was a sad fact that certain types had been trying to break Uncle Luke since he first left Tatooine. She hoped they hadn't finally succeeded.

She looked back at her cousin, and saw Ben's resolve coming apart at the seams. Jaina opened her arms and pulled him into a crushing embrace, breaking through whatever remained of his inhibitions. He muffled his angry sobs against her shoulder, shedding both the earned and affected pretensions of adulthood to be simply a fourteen-year-old boy who realized that his mother was gone, and that his father would probably never be the same. The galaxy had become a darker place.

Jaina remembered what she had told Uncle Luke earlier. It was time to grow up. She would find her place in that war, just as they all would, but there was nothing more important for the Sword of the Jedi to do in that moment than to give Ben Skywalker a shoulder to cry on, the only brother she had left.

Jedi Temple, Coruscant

"Of course there has to be an investigation," Corran insisted. "The whole galaxy is watching now. There's no way we can just walk out and announce that the investigation is cancelled because the victim's husband cut the suspect to pieces." He really hated it when Luke left him in charge of the Council, but he supposed that was why Luke did it. No ambitions to tempt. It was often exhausting being one of the only representatives with a law enforcement background. At least young Ben would have that to fall back on when he came around.

"Well, of course it sounds terrible when you put it that way," Octa allowed. "But you know you can't get forensics from lightsaber wounds. What could we possibly find?"

"Trust me, you'd be surprised," Corran assured her. "It looks bad, Luke being out there and taking matters into his own hands, especially so soon. It needed doing, but maybe we should have pushed back harder."

"And have more dead Council members to report to the evening news?" Octa suggested. "Lumiya wasn't your average spree killer on the run. Grand Master Skywalker was best equipped to handle her, and even he had trouble."

"Then why was Mara determined to handle it alone?" Kyp asked, pointed as always.

"I don't know," Corran sighed. "We all think better of things in hindsight. Considering how it turned out, I think even Mara would reconsider. We'll see what can be done when they get back, and don't bother Luke with questions like that for at least a week, okay? In the meantime, we have other—"

They all felt it at once, like the rolling shockwave of an asteroid collision. Everyone in the refectory below came to a standstill, stunned. Some of the more sensitive among them began to weep.

There is no emotion, read the formulation of the Jedi code on the enormous plaque on the wall, There is no passion . . . There is no death . . . Yet it was as though the sun around which the entire New Jedi Order revolved had just collapsed into supernova—brilliant, blinding, and utterly devastating. There was no control, no finesse, no attempt to veil or moderate the effect, just the chaotic spasms of a profoundly broken heart.

Corran struggled to swallow the sudden lump in his throat. As a fellow husband, father, and human being, he understood the sentiment, but as a Jedi he could not allow their Grand Master, the most powerfully gifted Jedi ever known, to be destroyed by grief. It was a tragedy, but he suspected it would also prove to be an inflection point, the ordeal that would either confirm or ruin the Order as Luke envisioned it.

It was something Luke believed in, something they all believed in, and for all their sakes they would have to help him see the way through this.

Perlemian Trade Route, hyperspace

As he fled Hapan space for the second time, Jacen Solo was knocked back in his seat, his meditation shattered as the storm of his uncle's primal emotions crashed into him. It was unlike anything he had ever felt before, particularly from the seasoned Jedi Master, and it immediately cut him to the heart. It dredged associations from his deepest memories, not of the increasingly bitter and suspicious authority figure, his potential nemesis and undeclared rival, but rather of the gentle mentor of years past, the guardian and protector of his childhood who had loved him unconditionally, almost a second father. He felt sick enough to retch, and he choked on an involuntary sob. I'm sorry, Uncle Luke, he thought, and he meant it, though he was careful to cloak such regrets against the Force. I'm so sorry.

But he couldn't afford to indulge those feelings, the last relics of his past. That wasn't who he was anymore, who he had chosen to be. Jacen blinked away his unshed tears and composed himself. He would allow that he was sorry to cause Luke such pain, but he couldn't regret what he had done. He would do it again. It was just another necessary sacrifice to secure peace in their galaxy, a cause to which Luke Skywalker had devoted his entire life. The Grand Master had willingly endured many personal sacrifices in that time, and he would learn to bear this too if he could just appreciate the significance. If not, perhaps he had finally exhausted his usefulness.

Only time would tell.

Fountain Palace, Hapes

Leia pulled herself together, took Han, gathered their Hapan escort, and headed down to the hangar. She couldn't sit there and wait anymore, not when Luke needed her. They hadn't come all that way just to keep out of sight, and quite frankly she didn't care if GAG had eyes in the Queen Mother's palace. She would be happy to flash them a few gestures for their surveillance archives.

They boarded the shuttle, leaving their escort outside, and immediately came upon Jaina and Ben in the passage. Luke, she could sense, had barricaded himself inside the nearest cabin.

"I'm not sure he wants to see anyone right now," Jaina suggested in the tense silence.

Leia squeezed her daughter's arm, assuring her that she knew what she was doing. Luke needed someone right now, whether he wanted her or not. Leia suspected he did want her, but just didn't know how to ask at that moment. She couldn't just leave him there.

She moved forward and simply placed her hand on the door, gently signaling her presence and support. She felt Luke reach back to her, just a mute touch without any coherent thought behind it, but that was all the invitation she needed.

Leia slipped inside alone and found Luke on his bunk, sitting against the bulkhead and staring vacantly at the far wall. The cabin was wrecked, and so was he. He didn't even acknowledge her entry.

This, she was afraid, was the new Luke, part of him now as dead as Mara was. His rage was spent, but now she felt the emotions draining out of him in an uncontrolled hemorrhage, like a trauma patient bleeding out just before flatlining.

Leia realized it wasn't just Mara. It was the culmination of forty years of death and loss, forty years of his obliging nature being abused and exploited, forty years of grinding forward no matter the cost, patching his wounds and learning to face another day because it seemed the fate of the galaxy hinged on whether Luke Skywalker would get out of bed in the morning. It was a punishing weight to carry, and his greatest consolation had been Mara.

Leia didn't say a word, just sat down beside him and put her head on his shoulder, touching that intimate twin bond they had forged before they were born, forgotten for nineteen years, rediscovered and stronger now than ever. It wasn't the intense spousal bond he had just lost, but it was a bright point in the swirling darkness. Leia felt Luke reach back with the weary desperation of a drowning man, and she seized on that, holding him as steady as she could.

She sat with him in his grief for a long time, a dreadful privilege even Han hadn't known how to extend to her when Chewie had died. It was so deep and so dark that she had to keep blinking the tears out of her waking eyes to remind herself that she was not actually sinking into a black abyss. She wished there was something she could do, some way she could help heal him, but that was impossible. Only Luke could will himself back onto his feet, and Leia had begun to fear that he didn't want to.

So she simply held him, drawing on the Force to strengthen her resolve, a beacon in the storm. She would not abandon her brother to the darkness, and she was determined to stay there as long as he needed her.

Leia didn't come out of Luke's cabin, and considering the circumstances, Han really didn't expect her to come out anytime soon. He could see a slight easing of the tension on Jaina and Ben, and that was enough to assure him that Luke was in good hands.

Cilghal approached them, her bulbous head bowed in a Mon Cal expression of sympathy. "I know it may seem too early to speak of such things," she said, "but I don't know when we might have another opportunity. There will of course be a funeral for Mara at the Temple once all available evidence has been gathered, perhaps in a week's time. I can assure you, Captain Solo, the Jedi Order is not opposed to your presence at the ceremony if you and Leia wish to attend."

"Of course we'll attend," Han insisted, almost insulted that it was even in question. "Wouldn't miss it for anything, no matter what Jacen and his GAG thugs have to say about it."

Belatedly remembering that there was a GAG agent among them, they all looked at Ben. Ben shrugged and scowled at his boots. "They won't hear about it from me," he said, and then straightened up and extended his hand. "Sorry I tried to arrest you, Uncle Han."

"No hard feelings, kid," Han assured him, accepting the gesture. It was actually a huge relief. Something seemed to have finally shaken Ben out of Jacen's tree, and they could all celebrate that. "Forget it."

"We will take every precaution to conceal your arrival on Coruscant," Cilghal promised. "The Order has a few prerogatives the administration hasn't quashed yet." She turned to Jaina. "Jedi Solo, I fear circumstances may prevent your attendance."

Jaina's face fell, a bitter amalgam of surprise, hurt, and anger. "What are you talking about?"

"A message was just forwarded to us by the Queen Mother's defense fleet," Cilghal explained, the incarnation of steady patience. "It was intended for the Grand Master, but I think the information would prove more useful to you."

Jaina accepted the datapad Cilghal extended to her, skimmed the message and then read it aloud. "To Hapan Fleet Ops, originating from Terephon. Unregistered and unidentified ship notified to us by Jedi Master Skywalker has been removed without authorization from Tu'ana City. Please advise Master Skywalker that we regret this act of theft while the vessel was in our jurisdiction, and will meet any claim for compensation." Then her eyes widened. "Lumiya's ship was stolen."

"Ship?" Ben shifted into high alert. "Ship was taken?"

"Yes, Lumiya's ship," Jaina repeated, giving him a quizzical look.

"No, its name is Ship," Ben explained. "Or, at least, that's what it calls itself. It's a Sith meditation sphere."

"Orange, ugly, cruciform masts?" Jaina asked.

"That's the one."

"How do you know about it?"

"Uh . . ." Ben fumbled for an answer. "Mom told me about it."

Jaina gave him an unsatisfied look, but let it go. "Mara put the Hapans on the lookout for it when she arrived in-system. Apparently they found it after Lumiya abandoned it, but somebody took it. Am I right to assume it would have to be another Force-user, preferably a dark one?"

Ben nodded.

"Okay, that probably means Alema. We know she was in the Consortium and working with Lumiya in the past." Jaina handed the datapad back to Cilghal. "You're right. We don't want to lose this lead. I'll call Zekk and Jag, and have them join me here."

Cilghal nodded. "Very well. Bearing that in mind, would you like to pay your respects now?"

Jaina paled. "Right now?"

"Right now, if you like."

Han saw Jaina hesitate, her brow furrowed with suppressed emotion. "Well, I'd like to," he said, ready to take Cilghal up on her offer. It was true, but he also wanted to be there for Jaina. "Let's go."

The Mon Cal healer bowed her head again, and led them back into the medical bay. With conspicuous care and consideration, she unlocked one of those horrible drawers in the wall and extended the shelf on which the body was secured. Han knew that part of him had to see it to be convinced Mara was really dead. He couldn't sense those things like the rest of them could, couldn't feel someone's essence discorporate into the universe, and he was grateful for that. It sounded awful.

Still, even though he knew what to expect, even though there was no suspense, it still struck him sideways when Cilghal folded down the sheet and revealed the face.

There was no question that it was Mara, but it wasn't right. The Mara they knew was full of life, and guts, and sass. That pale corpse with the perfectly-ordered frosty red hair wasn't Mara, it was just what was left after she was gone.

Han's next thought was profound pity for Luke, knowing he'd had to see his wife like that. It was no way to remember her. He briefly imagined trying to cope with seeing Leia on a slab, and even that was horrible, the sort of thing that would haunt you. He hoped Luke could forget it someday, could remember her the way she had lived without always returning to the moment when she was taken from him. Mara had ultimately been one of the best things that had ever happened to their family, someone truly remarkable, and Han still remembered the day Luke had married her as one of the happiest in his life.

Now it had come to this. Someone owed them blood.

Jaina was fiercely silent, although Han could see she was biting her tongue, and the tears had begun again.

"You think Alema did it?" Han asked, recognizing the dark determination in her eyes.

"If Lumiya didn't, then she's my next best bet," Jaina said. "Don't say anything to Uncle Luke. I don't want to jerk him around before we have proof."

"Sure." Han pulled his daughter close. "Just in case we don't see you for a while, I'll wish you happy hunting. Whistle up your boyfriends, and go find her. If she gives you any trouble, stab her in the heart for me."

"Get in line, Dad," Jaina advised him. "If she did this, you'll have to get in a very long line."

The story continues in the next chapter, Even Stars Burn Out (Chapter 7).