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The unused room off the hangar serves as temporary practice space for the two, sometimes three. Ahsoka claims she’s out of practice with her lightsaber, but from where Luke stands, it looks impressive.
They both break.
“You don’t use both hands to grip.”
“No, but I also used to duel-wield.”
Luke resumes his exercises, trying to filter out distracting thoughts: squadron drills to run later, the fragile state of the New Republic, facing the remaining Imperial outposts, the daunting task of rebuilding an entire order with only Ahsoka and Leia.
Ahsoka remains still, leaning against crates; observing.
“It’s uncanny how you favor the same stance as your father. You both swing down hard.”
To Ahsoka, it’s a nostalgic echo. To Luke, it’s an uncomfortable reminder of how he learned to duel.
Brushing it aside, “Well, let’s see what Leia does when she has a lightsaber of her own.”
----------
The lieutenant eyes him with suspicion – more than suspicion. If she were not so tightly drawn, Luke imagines she would be prowling. She also keeps eyeing his lightsaber.
He remains seated. Her restlessness puts him on edge, but does not let it enter his tone.
“This really isn’t necessary; I’ll stay put while you bring my ship, astromech, and me back to New Republic territory.”
“Tough because I’m not leaving. You’re just lucky I’m working with Karrde now,” she spits.
(Obi-Wan’s words echo.)
Luke doesn’t need to ask who her former employer was. He’s used to the vitriol of ex-Imperials these days, though this woman doesn’t strike him as a former officer.
He recognizes the dim pull of Force-sensitivity in her. The Empire didn’t do just anything with those who can use the Force.
“You worked for the Emperor.”
Worked for the Emperor, likely shared his ideology, probably killed for him, when so many of those who died fighting him were Luke’s friends.
She steals another glance at the lightsaber.
“And you’re Luke Skywalker, but you don’t see everyone damning you for it.”
Before he stops himself, “No, just you.”
She makes a soft snarl, pulls her arms tighter around herself, but does not deny it.
The door slides open and Talon Karrde steps in. His lieutenant moves quickly to leave. He glances back at her before addressing Luke, “We’ve made it within range of the outpost; you’ll be able to make it there on the working engine you have.”
Anger abating with the absence of the lieutenant, Luke nods. “Thank you for your assistance. If there’s anything the New Republic can do to repay –”
Karrde cuts him off, “Not likely, but I’ll call in the favor if I need to.”
He escorts Luke to where his disabled X-wing is docked.
“Did –” Luke realizes he never even learned the woman’s name.
“Mara Jade,” Karrde provides, with the faintest trace of amusement.
Somehow it’s worse knowing the name of the Emperor’s other Force-user. If she had a Sith title, it would be so much easier to hate her.
Luke’s insides twist. He knows better than this.
“– she ever say what she did before joining your operation?” He’s glad he sounds neutrally off-hand, whatever Mara Jade’s behavior in front of Karrde a minute ago.
“She didn’t, other than needing to find a new way to live.”
There is some assurance, at least, in that.
Luke climbs into his X-wing; Karrde half-heartedly salutes, “Until next time, General Skywalker.”
Luke returns the favor.
Safe in the isolation of space, he sighs loudly. He shouldn’t have been like that. The Emperor had sway beyond political power on people – people with the ability to wield the Force.
(A new way to live, far, far away from whatever the Emperor did.)
R2 whistles curiously.
“When we get back to Coruscant, could you to run through our Imperial records and see what you can find on Mara Jade?”
He and Ahsoka have had an incredibly difficult time locating Force-sensitive beings in a galaxy without the Empire, much less ones who want to train. Who would want the burden, after wholesale slaughter only a generation ago?
(But Luke saw the way Mara Jade looked covetously at the hilt on his belt.)
R2 beeps skeptically.
This is going to be an uphill battle.
----------
Although she hates admitting, there are days Leia agrees with Han. Nearly a lifetime of handling blasters, lightsabers are something different entirely.
She doesn’t master it as quickly as she would like. Both Luke and Han laugh there’s something in the galaxy she hasn’t picked up immediately. She could kill the pair of them.
Still, it is hard to deny how inexplicably connected she feels to her hilt and her blue blade. (Luke chose differently from their father, she chose the same as their father. She wonders how it bodes.)
She trains with Luke more often (natural compliments), but she is grounded with Ahsoka. Ahsoka provides her with a structure she craves.
Just as she steps lightly around engaging in duels, so she steps lightly around a new point of contention between them all. Wiping sweat from her forehead, but not switching her lightsaber off, “Han and Lando are out negotiating with Karrde.”
Ahsoka raises an eyebrow, “And Luke went with them.”
Leia nods, at a loss for what to do with her brother and his often incorrigible idealism.
Han and Lando’s (really, Lando’s) contacts within criminal communities proved immensely useful to her in the senate over the past months; aligning independent “shippers,” chipping away at the Zygerrian slave empire. It also means seeing more of Karrde, and more of Mara Jade.
Ahsoka shakes her head, smiling slightly “He’s Padmé’s, through and through. Won’t stop until someone’s been converted to the cause.”
Leia jerks her lightsaber slightly; drawing Ahsoka back into the practice.
Between blows, “Even if he does convince her to try, I doubt she’ll want him teaching her.”
Ahsoka catches the underside of Leia’s blade, which wrenches the hilt from her grip and across the room.
“What makes you say that?” Ahsoka asks.
“It’s just a feeling Luke has.”
Dryly, “We all defer to Luke’s intuition.”
Leia laughs, wondering when her own intuition will be as honed as either Luke’s or Ahsoka’s. Wondering when any of them will know enough about Mara Jade to feel comfortable.
Ahsoka resumes the practice. Leia focuses.
----------
Mara checks the ship’s screens again for pursuing slavers. Assured they are safe, for now, she slumps backwards in the co-pilot’s seat. Luke loosens his grip on the steering.
The silence that follows is not comfortable, but Luke is almost confident they’ve come trust each other, in their own way. Or at least certain Mara has no intention of selling him out to remaining Imperial strongholds.
Breathing returning to regularity, Mara speaks quietly and determinedly, “Skywalker, ask me what you’ve been meaning to ask since day one. Stop being so damned polite.”
It is tangible proof of her trust. She cannot bring herself to speak freely of her past, but if prompted, she will, to him, now.
Luke chooses his words carefully. Months of on-and-off again operations together, building their fragile friendship could easily be undone in seconds.
“You hated me when we first met, but it wasn’t because you worked for the Emperor. Why?”
“The Emperor let me try one or two things with the Force, but never anything substantial – anything real.”
Her voice is brittle. She faces away and continues, “Then he suspected – knew, more like it – that Vader would fail to kill you. If Vader failed, I would kill you, and the Emperor promised he would finally teach me everything. I resented and hated you because the Emperor was dead and my chance was gone. You were alive and had what I didn’t.”
For all the caution Luke, Leia, Ahsoka exercise when discussing Anakin Skywalker, Luke throws it to the wind for Mara. She deserves the truth; to know they can give her what she seeks, free of endless lies.
He swallows.
“That never would have happened, even when Vader failed to kill me.”
She laughs hollowly, “You don’t think I know that now?”
“I mean neither the Emperor or Vader had any intention of killing me –” Mara glances at his mechanical hand; Luke hastily hides it under his left arm. “If anyone was supposed to die, it was Vader. The Emperor wanted me to do it, to replace Vader; my Jedi masters wanted me to do it, to finish the war once and for all.”
“And how are you so certain Vader didn’t want you dead in the end?” (She knew him, as well as any Imperial agent, which is to say not at all.)
However divorced Luke keeps his father from the Sith Lord, the two did share one thing in common. (He promised himself he would be honest.)
“He wasn’t going to kill his son.”
Mara’s head whips around, eyes sharp, “But Anakin Skywalker – the one your lot keeps trying to tout as your great Clone Wars hero –”
Defensively, “Not all of us. And Sith have names before they turn.”
Mara’s eyes narrow and then soften. She returns her attention to the sky, “And I thought being taken into the Emperor’s custody as a kid was bad.”
“That still looks pretty miserable from my point of view.” He winces.
“You shouldn’t be telling me this. I assume no one knows this in the New Republic. I could tell them their precious freedom fighter is Vader’s son and that’d turn against you faster than lightspeed.”
“You won’t though; I trust you.”
Luke watches the storm brewing in her eyes and presses on. “Come with me to Coruscant and train. You deserve to be taught because it’s what you want. You’re not anyone’s means to an end anymore.”
(Please hear me, please understand.)
Her usual hostile tone doesn’t quite have the same edge, “Whose going to teach me? You?”
Luke lets out a short sigh of relief, “No. Ahsoka said if I could convince you, she’d take you on.”
Mara tuts, “All these Jedi making it past Vader’s purges.”
(Vader’s purges, Anakin’s mercy.)
Mara looks him in the eye again. “I’ll think about it,” but her tone conceals nothing.
Luke cannot suppress his grin in time for Mara to not notice. She rolls her eyes, but it’s clear for the first time since Luke’s known her, she’s happy.
---------
New Republic banners flutter in the breeze where Imperial ones hung not so long ago. They must have been the first things to go, Mara thinks.
Where the Emperor put stock in iconography, the new government does not erect statues. Or maybe they haven’t had the time. Smashing one government to pieces to raise a new one is work, after all.
Tano meets her outside the old Temple; a place she longed to touch, but never dared to reach for. Now, she dares.
As they climb the stairs, Tano makes conversation, something Mara’s never cared for.
“Most of the Temple isn’t restored or online, but since it’s mostly been the three of us, we haven’t needed to spread out much. Once we find more to train, hopefully we’ll get it back to the way it was.”
Mara nods, to at least show she’s listening, but – three of them?
When the door slides open, she gets her answer.
Leia Organa: princess, senator, leader of the Rebellion, and someone with far too many titles already, training to be a Jedi. Mara isn’t sure why it doesn’t surprise her.
When Organa sees them, she hurries to complete her exercises. “Just finishing what Luke and I were working on –”
She presses a lightsaber hilt in Mara’s hand. Skywalker’s.
She shakes her head, “Does Skywalker always act like an overly-trusting farm boy?”
Tano laughs and grinning Leia says, “We expect nothing less of him.”
Mara expected Tano to be more suspicious of her. Although she didn’t know Organa would be there, she expected the senator to be doubly so.
It is either entirely Skywalker’s annoying cajoling or, Mara thinks, she might just be able to do this. Finally worthy of the Force.
Before the door closes behind her, Organa reminds Tano, “See you this evening.” She nods to Mara.
Mara rolls the hilt back and forth in her palm. “So will we –”
“Nope. Meditation first.” Tano sits, cross-legged and waits for her to do the same.
Mara groans. This is going to take forever, but she won’t prove them wrong.
She sits.