Title: Reunited

Timeframe: post Dark Nest Trilogy

Disclaimer: I don't own anything. All characters and places belong to Disney.

Note: I loosely reference my fic, The Politics of Endorsement in this.


Mara weaved her way through crowded tables of diners, her floor-length navy dress flaring around her legs as she walked and her small clutch, which she had stuffed her lightsaber in, tucked under her arm. She was late, and that bothered her, but she hadn't intended on being the person attending this dinner. Already seated at a table for three was Leia and a woman Mara assumed was Pooja. Both women were dressed in formal attire and casually conversing as they waited for their third companion.

"Hi, I'm Luke Skywalker, and I'm here to dine with you," Mara states in her best impersonation of her husband.

Leia looks up, though confused upon seeing Mara and not her brother, and laughs. "How long have you been practicing that?"

Mara smiles and sits down. "Convincing?" Placing her clutch on her lap.

"Perhaps, if you weren't dressed in an evening gown. Pooja Naberrie, meet Mara Jade Skywalker." Leia gives a hasty introduction. "Mara, this is Pooja."

Mara's joke had gone over Pooja's head, and the woman simply asked after an exchange of pleasantries. "What crisis has befallen the galaxy that has kept the Jedi Grand Master from getting to know a long-lost relative better?"

"The flu." Jedi didn't get sick often, but when they did, it came on quick and hard. The only warning had been Luke picking at his dinner the previous night. Which was not like him at all. Then Mara had awoken around two in the morning to find herself alone in their bed. Upon investigation, she had found Luke in the 'fresher chalk pale, shivering while sweating profusely, and vomiting.

"Who met with Cal Omas today, then?" Leia asks.

"It had to be rescheduled," Mara answers. "He was not happy." Mara had spent the day acting as substitute Grand Master, and anything she had had questions about, she'd had to bother Luke with. She'd felt bad about it each time, but though he had only held the title of Grand Master for a few months, Luke had been fulfilling the role for years. She half suspected Luke had insisted she go to dinner in his place simply to get her out of the apartment for a few hours so he could sleep without her coming in needing this or that. For that reason she had left clear instructions for Ben to comm her if he needed something while she was gone instead of bothering his father.

Her sister-in-law winces. "He's still bent out of shape over the Killiks," she guesses.

"Him and the Chiss," Mara confirms. The Ascendancy had a good reason, however, considering the majority of their ruling families had been wiped out. The whole thing had been a mess, and Mara was still incredibly disappointed with the way Jaina and Jacen Solo had handled themselves. Jaina needed to focus more on practicing upholding her principles and less on boys before she wound up with neither. Jacen…Well his five-year spiritual jaunt across the galaxy had inflated the young man's ego, and that problem would be much harder to correct.

At that moment a server comes by their table asking about drinks, and Leia orders a Hapen wine, of an unfamiliar vintage to Mara, for the table. The three women spend the next few minutes going over the menu, and when the server returns with the wine, they place their dinner orders.

"You were saying you were very young when my mother died," Leia begins, moving the conversation from current events to family history.

"I was no more than seven. Padme had been living on Coruscant during most of the Clone Wars, serving as a Naboo senator. I just remember being at my aunt's funeral and being sad I wouldn't ever get to have a little cousin. Let alone two cousins," Pooja sighs. "Such a little kid's perspective."

"I didn't imagine that I had a twin brother," Leia laughs.

"When you showed me the recordings from your astromech and said I think we're related…I imagine that's how you felt—overwhelmed, excited, and with more questions than you have answers to." Pooja inferring R2-D2 as Leia's probably would have sent the little droid into a fit, as he was fiercely loyal to Luke. While the Solos had as much access to R2-D2 as C-3PO, R2-D2 usually resided with the Skywalkers, and his protocol counterpart lived with the Solos. The only reason the recordings had been discovered was because R2-D2 had started having technical issues. Who would have thought Anakin Skywalker would have been in possession of the exact same droids that his children now owned?

"Mortified," Leia says. "Don't get me wrong, I was thrilled. Luke and I got along from the very moment I met him." The twins still did, and Mara wondered how much closer they'd be if they had been given the opportunity to grow up together. There was only one subject Mara had ever seen Anakin Skywalker's children argue over—becoming a Jedi. Or more recently, Leia's initial disapproval over Luke assuming the role of Grand Master. Mara still didn't know what Saba Sebatyne had said to her, at the time apprentice, but Leia had accepted the change. Mara suspected that Leia earning her place in the Order had come with the humbling realization that, for the first time since Leia and Luke met, her brother now vastly outranked her. "Did your mother or grandparents keep in touch with her while she was on Coruscant?" Leia asks.

The Clone Wars had lasted a brutal three years. Finally, ending with Palpatine proclaiming himself Emperor and Anakin Skywalker turned Darth Vader, wiping out the Jedi. R2-D2 had recorded much of what had happened directly leading up to the twins being born and Padme's death. Part of those recordings had been a horrific scene that had involved Anakin screaming that Padme was lying and then Force choking his pregnant wife after she had pleaded for him to run away with her. So convinced of his newfound powers as a budding Sith Lord to save her that he didn't see he was destroying the very person he had betrayed everything to protect.

Pooja nods. "My mother, Sola, was very close to her sister. She recalls, as the war dragged on, my aunt got progressively more distraught and sad."

Mara could imagine. Padme had been secretly married, and her husband would have been deployed all over the galaxy to fight a war, leaving her alone while she watched the death throes of a Republic she loved. It would have gotten even worse for the senator after becoming pregnant with the raging hormones pregnancy brought. As much as Mara loved her son, she was fine with Ben being her only child, as Mara had no desire to experience pregnancy more than once, even if her age had permitted it.

As dinner arrived, Pooja talked more about the Naberrie family. A prominent family on Naboo, much like the Palpatines had been before the entire family, minus the former Emperor, had been killed, the Naberrie's could trace their lineage thousands of years back. The family had been big in philanthropy work, which had then led many members, including Padme, to get into politics.

In Mara's experience, most politicians weren't actually in office for anyone but themselves, and the ones who were there for the right reasons ended up depressed and disillusioned. Some, like Leia, kept their principles and succeeded in doing at least a bit of good. Though Leia had watched others around her in a government she'd help create use their positions to advance careers or only help their cronies. That was the thing about politics: everyone playing the game wound up in the same muck eventually. It had happened to the old Jedi. Hell, it had happened to the Jedi even under Luke's leadership. The first iteration of the Council had been such a mistake. Six Jedi and six politicians had quickly proven unworkable and had gridlocked the Council from effectively guiding the Jedi.

The trio had just ordered dessert when Pooja asked, "So what do you know about Anakin Skywalker that isn't just Old Republic wartime propaganda?"

"He became Darth Vader," Leia says, somberly.

Mara watches Pooja's face express a wide range of emotions in a few moments. She'd wanted information not widely known, and Leia had not bothered to sugarcoat it. "You're sure?" She whispers.

Leia and Mara both nod.

"How long have you known this, Leia?" Pooja asks, reaching to grasp her cousin's hand.

"The same night I learned I had a twin brother," Leia says. "What's that been," she glances at Mara, "thirty-two years ago?"

Had Endor really been that long ago? Thinking back, Mara had a hard time recognizing the person she had been back then. Even her early days working for Karrde seemed like she was looking at another person's life instead of her own. Recalling her many fantasies, while trudging through Myrkr's forest with Luke, about killing him and leaving his body for the vornskrs now made Mara want to retch.

Mara forces her mind back to the present and takes a bite of her dessert. A chocolate cake with berry filling that melted in her mouth and paired nicely with the Hapen wine.

Leia was in the midst of telling Pooja about finding Shmi's journal and what that had revealed about Anakin's childhood prior to the Jedi freeing him. How learning about who her father had been before becoming the black-suited monster had helped Leia decide to have children of her own. She had accepted that her father had not always been evil and viewed him, at least a little, as a man. A man who had made some really awful choices.

Over the years, Mara had realized that once women brought up their children, it was destined for the conversation to wind up talking about them. Leia talked about Jaina and Jacen at length. Lamenting that neither twin had found a husband or wife yet, but also stating that Leia didn't feel ready or old enough to be a grandmother. "I'm fifty-five for kriffing-sakes!"

All three had laughed and nervously glanced around to see if anyone at the tables nearby filled with fine dining clientele noticed Leia's use of foul language. If someone had, they had done a good job pretending to mind their own business. Even with the use of the Force, Mara detected no noticeable signs of eavesdropping.

Then Leia had talked about and barely held back tears mentioning Anakin Solo. The son she'd lost during the Yuuzahn Vong war.

Pooja listened intently. Asking all the questions Mara would have expected. Expressing how no parent should be forced to bury a child. "You are lucky to have Han by your side," Pooja states.

"I know." Leia's sense is pure love for her husband. They had been through two major wars together and had come out of each of them both stronger. Han had been by her side as she struggled with her heritage, and she'd stuck by him through Chewbacca's death. Not to mention all the other threats they had faced over the years. "What about you?"

"I have two daughters, both grown and married. My ex-husband wants nothing to do with me, but that's not a big loss," Pooja explains. Continuing to tell how she had married young, just prior to Palpatine dismantling the Imperial Senate, only to find out he was abusive, and later learn, to top it off, was a deadbeat father who had wanted nothing to do with his young daughters after the divorce. Pooja had returned humiliated and ashamed to the Naberrie's family estate. Where she had raised her children, and once the girls had been fully grown, she returned to public service.

Mara listened as Leia and Pooja continued to talk. Observing how they clearly had history going back to the Empire but were now discussing things from a new perspective. She was almost ready to excuse herself and head home when Pooja said, "It's unfortunate Grand Master Skywalker couldn't make it. I was hoping to get to know him outside of that one conversation we had years ago."

"I hope you didn't take our endorsement of Fel'lya as a personal affront to you," Mara says.

Pooja laughs and shakes her head. "It's politics. However, I got the impression Grand Master Skywalker was not a fan of the late Chief of State."

"I hear it's bad form to speak ill of the dead, but that's an understatement." Mara takes a sip of her drink before adding, "Also, even though he's not here, I'm gonna say it's okay and you can call him Luke." In fact, Mara knew being referred to as Grand Master still made Luke uncomfortable. The recent self-promotion had not been something Luke had wanted to do, and behind closed doors she had argued with him for weeks that he had to take charge before the Council ripped the Jedi into multiple factions in pursuit of the varying opinions on the direction the Order should be taking. As much as Luke hated it, he was the only Master respected enough and qualified for the title. The other ten Masters on the Council, not counting the Skywalkers, had known it too, based on how quickly they had all fallen in line.

While the Jedi Masters and the rest of the Order had accepted the change easily enough, Cal Omas and a majority of the senate had thrown a fit. Mara recalled a meeting between four Masters, which had included herself and Luke, and Cal Omas along with a handful of other Jedi supportive politicians. It had gotten heated quickly, with a few senators implying Luke had sinister motives for taking the role. Mara, who had never done anything in her life halfway, had been ready to unleash her temper. Luke sensed that he had ordered her out of the room, already using the authority she'd 110% backed him taking, before she could jeopardize the situation for the Jedi more. It had been the right call, despite her pride being bruised a bit when she realized Kyp Durron had kept his cool better than she had in that meeting. Of course it hadn't been Kyp's significant other being slandered. Damn Palpatine and the effective anti-Jedi Imperial propaganda that was still strongly ingrained in people. Even those who were pro-Jedi held misgivings.

"I'm sure Luke has a similar level of propaganda about him out there as Anakin Skywalker did," Pooja says, though she clearly felt weird referring to Luke by his first name. "What's he really like?"

Mara had not been prepared for that question. Most of what the public knew about Luke came from holo-dramas or holo-news reporting about this or that event. A Rebel ace pilot turned Jedi who went into the Emperor's throne room alone with Palpatine and Vader and lived to tell about it. It wasn't like the Empire crafting the narrative that Anakin had been the last Jedi standing at the Temple during Order 66. When in reality he'd been the one marching against the Temple.

"He gave me a ship he designed and built as a wedding gift," Mara says. Because he had known how much her destroyed Jade's Fire and the perceived freedom it had represented had meant to her. It had been the first time she had cried in front of Luke when he had presented the Jade Sabre to her (she had cried over the loss of the Jade Sabre too, but for a different reason). Perhaps, the first time she had cried in front of anyone in her life until that point. "And he managed to keep it, mostly, a complete surprise." Mara had known he'd been working on something because he'd sent her a handful of ship schematics to get her opinion on them, but she hadn't really thought much of it. Luke was the type of person to break down his X-wing and rebuild it to relax. The idea he would study general ship schematics in his spare time hadn't been far-fetched.

"How?" Pooja asks. "That must have taken hours."

"I mean, the first three years of our marriage, we spent maybe a little more than a year's worth of time together. He had plenty of time to work on it when I wasn't around." Disengaging from Karrde's organization had been a lengthy process. Karrde had done everything possible to ensure Mara had as much time with her new husband along with time for her to finish her Jedi training as was practical. But she remembered feeling very resentful of her boss more than once when she desperately wished to be with Luke like a normal newlywed couple.

Normal.

Mara had known when she'd agreed to marry Luke their marriage would not be normal. She had never expected for them to keep traditional work hours and spend every night in a safe and familiar bed. Mara didn't think either of them would have known what to do with themselves in that case, though they had indulged in that fantasy once or twice.

She knew her husband intimately in a way other married couples—even other Jedi couples—didn't know each other. The accidental Force meld they had forged seventeen years earlier had permanently bonded them. Force/battle melds were common practice among Jedi. However, they didn't normally lead to marriage proposals or a constant sense of the other's thoughts and emotions on such a deep level long after the meld had ended. That sense of Luke wasn't something that was at the forefront of her awareness daily, but it was always there. Use of the Force or physical touch quickly enhanced the bond back into focus, and in the first few years of their marriage, that had made meditating together basically impossible. Mara didn't think the Force played matchmaker, but it had undeniably been a persistent force pushing the two of them into each other's orbit for ten years. Their bond also didn't mean that they had no privacy within their own minds. She and Luke could still shield thoughts and emotions from each other.

Thinking about her husband, Mara reaches out with the faintest of touches and quickly determines from the lack of emotion or concrete thought she sensed that Luke was sleeping. Further proof was his lack of response; had he been deep in Jedi meditation, her reaching out for him in the Force would have received.

"That's tragic," Pooja says, sympathetically.

Mara raises a brow at the older woman who minutes ago had been telling the table about getting physically abused by her ex-husband. "What happened to Padme was tragic. Luke and I have had some really fun times together. I knew what I signed up for. I don't even believe in luck, but I'm incredibly lucky."

"Lucky?" Pooja asks, doubtfully. "Jedi risk their lives, it seems like, daily for the rest of us."

"Just part of the job." Out of the corner of Mara's eye, she sees Leia nod in agreement.

"I've been risking mine since my adoptive father told me about the rebellion and I decided I wanted to help." Leia points out. Which had been a far greater risk that Bail Organa had taken with his daughter than Leia had been aware of. After seeing holos of Padme, Mara wasn't sure how Vader had not noticed the similarities.

It was also a stark difference to how Luke's aunt and uncle had raised their nephew. Leia, growing up, had heard about the Jedi and the Force. Luke had been kept completely in the dark. His uncle had told Luke that Anakin had been a navigator on a spice freighter, which amusingly matched more closely to Han's previous life, not Anakin's. Mara wasn't sure if she had been in the Organa's and Lars' shoes, which approach she would have taken. In her husband's case, Luke held an intense dislike of lying in the name of protection. Firmly believing that the truth, regardless of how painful, was better than a well-meaning lie. The Lars' probably had not been in a position to do anything but lie to their nephew, but Ben Kenobi could and should have been honest despite the pain it had caused the old Jedi to think of Darth Vader as his one-time padawan. In the end, the truth had come out, and both Anakin Skywalker's offspring had followed their father's footsteps and become Jedi. Leia much more reluctantly and recently, but she too had finally become a Jedi Knight and embraced her role in the Order.

Pooja studies Mara intently, then begins, "Mara, is it true about who you were?"

Mara's past wasn't a secret, and she nods an affirmative. She had made peace with the fact this type of question would always come up among those who had opposed the Empire, even if it had just been privately. Since that tended to be most of the beings in the circle Mara ran in as a Jedi and Luke's wife; she wasn't offended when it did.

"Were you really under orders to kill your now husband?"

"Orders? Compulsion? The last attempt at revenge of a deranged man? Really, take your pick." It was a long-standing joke between her husband and herself about how they had met. A little dark—yes. Especially when Mara recalled giving Luke a dangerous amount of sedatives as the Wild Karrde crew transported the Jedi back to Myrkr. Karrde had not fully comprehended the situation when he'd ordered the Jedi to be kept secured and had naively put Mara in charge of the prisoner.

"What changed?"

A three-day hike through Myrkr's forest, where Mara's initial doubts about her orders had begun. Nothing about Luke had added up to what she had been shown and told. From the way he had carried himself, even unarmed and facing the wrong end of a blaster. To the way he had treated her the entire time, respectfully, and had even saved her life. "Luke's very… Well, he has a way of making you want to be better."

"And more often than not, it works out for him," Leia muses, sounding faintly amused.

"Perhaps he should have gone into politics," Pooja says.

Leia and Mara both shake their heads no. "My brother's entire purpose, really, since Endor, has been restoring the Jedi. He's sacrificed so much that it would be wrong to suggest he do anything else."

"The son rebuilds what the father destroyed."

"Something like that," Mara agrees, and she knew as long as she still breathed, her place was at Luke's side, helping him do so.


By the time Mara returned home, it was far later than she had intended to stay out. Sitting in the middle of the living room playing a holo-game was her ten-year-old son, up far past his bedtime.

"Ben Skywalker. Is there a reason you are not in bed?"

"I've almost reached the final boss," he states, as if that was a valid reason.

"Bed, now." Mara points towards the hall with one hand and places the other on her hip.

Slowly, Ben switches off the game console and stands up, looking appropriately chastised and rebellious all at once. Slightly below average height for his age with red hair and blue eyes and possessing Mara's sass combined with the Force potential of the Skywalker bloodline, Ben was a perfect blend of Luke and Mara. With Jacen's return, Ben had begun opening himself up to the Force again. Something Mara was thrilled to see, after spending ten years herself avoiding becoming a Jedi, she did not want that regret for her son.

Once she was confident Ben was in bed for the evening, she made her way to her and Luke's room. Opening and closing the door as quietly as she could, she tiptoes to the refresher adjoining the bedroom. Once ready for bed, she moves as silently as possible to her side of the bed and climbs in.

The jostling of the bed causes Luke to shift and mumble something in his sleep. In the dim light cast by Coruscant's endless stream of traffic and never-dimmed city lights, Mara was happy to note Luke's color had returned. A gentle placement of her hand to his forehead confirms he was no longer burning up. Being a Jedi had its perks. Luke would probably be back to his normal self tomorrow.

This time, he stirs and wakes. "You have a good time?" He asks, his voice groggy.

Mara was sure that Luke would have enjoyed the evening more, but there would be other times. "I did. I'll tell you about it later. Did you enjoy your undisturbed nap?" Mara takes a moment to fluff her pillow before she snuggles down into the covers.

Luke nods, smiling. "Did you enjoy being me for the day, Grand Master Jade Skywalker?"

"Nah. It's still all yours," Mara says, and reaches towards him in search of his hand. Finding it, she entwines her fingers with his. "I'm still so glad I found you and didn't kill you."

"That makes two of us."