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Chapter Text

40 ABY, Drall, Corellian System

Some prickling sense of unease woke Han in what he knew had to be the dead of night, something that didn’t happen much anymore as he got older and life somehow only got harder.  A crippling jolt of adrenaline nearly killed him on the spot as his eyes registered a spectral silhouette against the light from the hall lamp.

“Damn it, Leia!” he hissed, catching his breath.  He was too old for this.  “What is it?”

“It’s Luke,” she murmured, a statue sitting beside him in the dark.  Her voice was flat and distant, the way it always was when she was concentrating, sunk in the Force.  

Han exhaled, steadying himself.  It was always like this, feeling like a blind man in a family of overpowered Jedi.  “What about him?”

“He’s worried.”

“He’s always worried.”

“Maybe panicked is more accurate.”

That got Han’s attention.  “Okay, why?”

“Working on that.”  Leia tilted her head, as if leaning into a transmission signal.  Several minutes passed.  “It’s Mara,” she decided.  “He can’t find her.”

Han frowned.  “What do you mean, he can’t find her?  Don’t they live in each other’s heads?”

“That’s just it,” Leia clarified.  “She’s gone, disappeared in the Force.”  She finally turned to look at him.  “Like Jacen does.”

Han started to ask why Mara would start doing that, especially considering how unsettling and borderline rude other Jedi considered the habit, when the answer jumped into his mouth.  “She’s hunting.”  Then more pieces fell into place.  “And Luke didn’t send her, and doesn’t know where she went.  She’s hiding from him, too.”

Leia said nothing, and Han was left to consider that in silence.  The uneasy prickle traveled up his spine again, the strange certainty that something very significant was happening very far away while he was lying quietly in bed.  

“Grab your comlink,” Leia said.

“Why?”

The blasted thing buzzed right on cue, and Han finally flipped on the bedside light and groped for it.  “Luke?” he guessed.

“Hey, Han,” Luke said, sounding tense and rushed.  “Leia.  Sorry, I don’t know what time it is there, but do you have any idea where Mara is?”

“No,” Leia answered, pulling the comlink toward her.  “But she was here last week.  Did you know that?”

There was an ominous pause.  “No, I didn’t,” Luke said, his tone already much darker.  “Why?  I assumed she was hunting for Lumiya.  That’s what she’s supposed to be doing.”

“She wanted to talk,” Leia explained, “about Lumiya, but also about Jacen.  Mara wanted to know if I thought Jacen was naive enough to possibly be controlled by Lumiya.  I told her I doubted it, that he might be willing to listen to someone like that, but he’d always make up his own mind.  I could feel she was holding back, but I didn’t press it.  We went out for dessert, and then she left for Coruscant.”

“Then you’ve seen her more recently than I have.”   Some of that desperate anxiety was creeping into Luke’s voice, and Han felt a sympathetic twinge in his chest.  “She was here two days ago, but left a useless note and took off again while I was asleep.  Ben’s gone, too.  I’ve called everyone I can think of.  I’ve been to Starfighter Command, but all they could tell me was that she took a StealthX without filing a flight plan.”

“What’d the note say?” Han asked.

Leia scowled at him, probably sure it was something private.  That honestly hadn’t crossed his mind in all intrigue.

“Nothing,” Luke finally answered.  “That she would be gone for a few days, and not to be mad at her.”

“Uh-oh.”  That wasn’t good.  “Where I come from, that’s practically a confession.  She’s definitely off-script.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of.”   Luke paused for breath, considering his next move.  “All right, I have to make some arrangements at the Temple.  I don’t know how yet, but I need to go find her.  Let me know if you hear anything.”   

He was gone before they had a chance to reply.

There was a restless light in Leia’s dark eyes that Han knew well, something he was more used to seeing in their daughter.  A lifetime of Alderaanian finishing school couldn’t suppress Anakin Skywalker’s blood forever.  “You want to go, too?” he asked.

“Where?” Leia asked, though she didn’t say no.  “If Luke can’t find Mara, what hope do we have?”

“He’ll find her,” Han said.  “He always does.  So, should I pack this place up?”

Leia sighed, and gave him a look that was both apprehension and gratitude.  “Do it.”

“Never liked this place anyway.”  Han rolled out of bed and pulled open the closet.  If he’d seen one anonymous apartment, he’d seen them all.  That pit of dread sat heavily in his gut as he dressed, his own intuition supplying whatever he lacked in Force-sensitivity.  They had all been in tight places before, but it usually worked out fine so long as they held together.  People were breaking ranks now, and anarchy got people killed.  He didn’t like it, and being aware of it all happening in real time just made it worse.  It would help to have something to do.

It was still several hours before dawn.  Leia got herself ready and then curled up in the big chair to meditate, her eyes narrowed to vacant slits, her mind far away.  Han began throwing all their belongings into cases, ready to disappear again.  Being a rootless freighter pilot had been fine when he was young, but he hated it now.  Nowhere was home, and they were wanted fugitives on both sides of that blasted war.  The only reason they were hiding out in Corellia was because CorSec was more disorganized than GAG.  The more he thought about it, the more he also wanted to saddle up and follow Luke, all political loyalties be damned.  

“Jaina’s with him,” Leia said, still not entirely present, sounding like some dispassionate oracle.  

“Good,” Han muttered to himself, not sure Leia expected or would hear an answer.  Luke and Jaina made a good team, and it was a relief to know they were looking out for each other.  

Clothes, valuables, personal items.  When everything was packed, Han set himself to work warming something for breakfast, not that either of them were especially hungry.  It would be a shame to waste all that food in the conservator.  

“Hapes.”

He stopped banging around for a minute.  “What?”

“He’s honed in on Hapes.  Ready to fly.”

“Jaina, too?”

Some hesitation.  “Maybe.”

At least the local government was friendly to them on Hapes.  “I’ll send Tenel Ka a heads-up as soon as we’re on the Falcon.   How far is that from here?”  Leia didn’t answer, but he wasn’t really asking her.  “Eighteen hours, pretty sure.  Should probably give the kid a headstart and let him point the way.  The Consortium’s a big place.” 

He was talking to himself, always a bad sign.  

Leia gasped, startling him out of his rambling thoughts.  “What now?” he asked.

“Mara’s back,” she said, rubbing her temples, her concentration broken. 

“What, back on Coruscant?”

“No, in the Force.  And she’s loud.”

“Like, she’s-in-trouble loud?”

“Like trouble-for-somebody-else loud.  Like a challenge.”  

“Oh, boy.  I’ll bet Luke’s bolting now.”

“Jaina, too.”

“Here.”  Han set a plate of breakfast scramble down at the table for her.  “Come eat something, and then we’ll bolt, too.”  He looked around, not inclined to waste time washing dishes or cleaning the ‘fresher.  “I guess we won’t be getting our deposit back.”

The trouble with being fugitives was that everywhere they went, somebody was looking for them.  It wasn’t a new feeling by any means, but it had been a while since no place had been a safe place.  It made leaving the system more complicated than it should have been.

“Don’t let ‘em get so close!” Han was shouting.  “Lando just fixed this bucket, for kriff’s sake!”

“They didn’t hit us, did they?” Leia quipped back, throwing the Falcon into a steep twisting dive.  “I’ll remind you that this is still a freighter, whatever you two have done to it.  I’m doing everything I can short of blasting them.”

“Not a bad idea,” Han grumbled, his eyes nervously flitting over the status displays as they careened away from their pursuers.

“We are not going to take potshots at CorSec!  Just plot us a course out of here.”

“Where?”

“Anywhere!  Anywhere but Coruscant or Hapes.”

“YT-1300 High Jinks,” the comm growled again, “you are being detained on suspicion of being the Millennium Falcon.  Cease evasive maneuvers and prepare to be boarded.”

“Oh, dear,” Threepio moaned.  Nobody else bothered to acknowledge the transmission.  

“Caamas?  It’s kind of on the way.”

“Sure, why not?”

The whole ship lurched as a laser blast bounced off the rear shields.  “They shot first,” Han pointed out.  “Can I shoot back?”

“No!”  

Several more blasts followed, and Leia spun Falcon away in a stomach-churning series of maneuvers no freighter had ever been built to endure.  She had places to be, and no time for this nonsense.  

“YT-1300 High Jinks!   Cease evasive maneuvers immediately!”

“Got those coordinates for me yet?” Leia shouted.  She abandoned the fancy flying and fired the sublight drives for all they were worth, climbing free of Drall’s gravity well.

“Just give it a minute!” Han protested.

“We don’t have a minute!”  CorSec was pounding the rear shields again, but the best bet was to get clear.  If nothing else, they might beat them to the edge of the jurisdiction.  

As they drove for deep space, Leia’s mind reached beyond Corellia again.  Mara was still blasting a clear note of defiance from what Leia assumed was someplace within the Hapes Consortium.  Luke had stopped reaching for his errant wife, surly, withdrawn, and terribly focused as he hurtled through hyperspace toward that beacon, Jaina close on his tail.  Leia thought she could recognize Ben, too, and he seemed to be near Mara already.  It made her skin crawl knowing so many members of her family were locked into a collision course with something she didn’t entirely understand, and she felt an overpowering need to be there with them.

Her hands moved almost independently, corkscrewing the Falcon to avoid another barrage.  There were too many blasts for a ship their size to avoid them all, and the rear shields registered a partial failure.  Han was swearing, Threepio was fretting, but Leia kept driving forward, aware of the steady weakening of the planet’s pull.  At any moment they would be clear.  

And just like that, CorSec broke off and reversed course.  As Leia gradually released her white-knuckled grip on the conn and re-attuned her attention to what was actually going on around her, she heard Threepio very helpfully rattling off an extensive list of the damages they had just sustained, none of it anything Han couldn’t read for himself on the console.  “What does all that ultimately mean?” she asked, skipping over the fine details.

“It means a few hours’ work and replacing a lot of wires,” Han said, still irritable but obviously relieved.  “Nothing we can’t handle, but I wouldn’t advise trying to jump like this.  Hyperdrive’s fine, but the connections need work.  Why’d CorSec pack it in so quick?  Are we out of range already?”

“Must be,” Leia concluded.  “They didn’t have any real proof that we were who they thought we were, and since we didn’t commit the capital offence of shooting at them, they decided it wasn’t worth it.  But I think the High Jinks will forever be on the local naughty list.”

“Then we’ll be someone else.”  Han drew up his list of bogus transponder codes.  “You wanna pick this time?”

Leia glanced at it.  “I always liked Blue Streak.”

“Fine.”  Han reprogrammed the transponder with the new credentials and rebooted it to refresh the signal.  “There.  It’s official.  Want to have a drink to mark the occasion, or come help me rewire the relay?”

“The drink will keep,” Leia decided, unbuckling herself to head aft.  “We’ll share it with Luke and Mara when we pick them up.”

Han’s appraisal of the situation seemed to be accurate enough.  Nothing was catastrophically broken, but it would require a lot of tedious detail work to set right.  Han was still by far the better mechanic, especially on the Falcon, so Leia settled into the role of tool-finder, lamp-holder, and wire-sorter.

“Who’s Mara picking a fight with?” Han asked as he soldered connections together from behind his tinted magnispecs.  “Lumiya?”

“That would be my guess,” Leia agreed.  “That’s what Luke expected her to be doing.”

“Then why is he so twisted all of a sudden?”

“I don’t know,” Leia admitted.  Something was clearly nettling Luke enough to make him drop all his responsibilities and rocket off to Hapes despite the general sense from Mara that she had the situation handled.  “I don’t think he’s deliberately keeping secrets from me anymore, but something’s not adding up somewhere.  We can all feel it, and maybe that’s making us jittery.”

Han grunted, squinting through an intermittent shower of sparks.  “I’ve learned by now that every time I tell Luke not to get jittery, I end up looking like rumpside of a ronto.  Let’s get this done and get out there.”

They worked in efficient silence, leaving Threepio to man the cockpit and alert them to any potential threats.  Even so, it was going on three hours before they were finished.  A power check showed all systems operational.

“Out of my seat, Goldenrod,” Han grumbled, shooing the droid away from the pilot’s station.  “Come on, Leia.  Chart that jump to Caamas, and then we’ll come out and hang a left toward Hapes.  Should lose any trace that way.”

“On it.”  It was much easier to be patient with the navicomputer when nobody was chasing them.  Leia supplied the coordinates, Han engaged the hyperdrive, and they were off.  

“Gonna be a while,” Han observed, sitting back and rubbing his eyes.  The early morning was finally getting to him.  

“Hang tight, Captain,” Leia said, patting him on the shoulder.  “I’ll bring you lunch.”

As she headed back to the galley and started prepping some of those spicy fritters he liked, Leia tried to exert some control over what was steadily growing into one of those Very Bad Feelings.  Mara could handle herself.  Luke was just feeling protective, like he always did.  In a matter of hours they would all be reunited, however briefly, toasting their recent escapes and near misses.  Her brother, his rank and dignity notwithstanding, would get an earful from his still very independent wife, and he wouldn’t care because he’d probably do the same thing the next time, and they would all just be glad everything had turned out for the best.  It would be good to see Jaina again, and Ben, and hopefully they could at least have dinner without anybody trying to arrest anybody else.  That’s how it would happen.

By all she had ever held sacred, Leia hoped that was how it would happen.

Energies were shifting by the time the fritters were ready.  Mara had gone dangerously quiet.  Luke was still racing down the Perlemian Trade Route at thousands of times the speed of light, not fast enough, acutely frustrated that he was still ten hours away.  Ben was present somehow but unsure, distracted.  

Leia plated the food, forcibly slowing her heart rate.  We’re going as fast as we can, she assured herself.  We’ll get there when we get there, and we’ll all laugh about it someday.   But like any vigilant mother, she couldn’t put the conflict out of mind, and she kept at least half her attention bent in that direction.

“Here,” she said, laying the plate on the Dejarik table in the lounge.  “Sustenance.”  

“That’s one word for it.”

Then her breath caught in her throat as she was broadsided by fury, vengeance, sheer animal ferocity.  Leia clutched the edge of the table, and Han jumped to his feet.  “What’s the matter?” he demanded.

“It’s started,” Leia told him through gritted teeth, every instinct pulling her toward the conflict.  “The fight.  Luke’s not going to make it.”

“Don’t mind me,” Han assured her, helping her to a seat on the couch.  “You go wherever you have to go, do what you have to do.”

Leia sank into a meditation almost immediately, drawn into that luminous tapestry that was the Force, outside of physical space.  Mara was burning with desperate rage, as if she were trying to overcome a superior opponent with a quick and intense attack.  Leia couldn’t sense anything of that opponent, whoever it was.  Why was she alone?  Why had she deliberately left Luke behind?  Where were the other Masters?  Then it was quiet.  A tactical retreat?  Tension and suspense.  A trap?  

Waiting . . .

Then grim elation and a massive pull on the Force.  The trap was sprung.  Cold satisfaction and a determination to finish the job.  As disquieting as that assassin’s instinct felt to Leia, it was a relief.  She shouldn’t have underestimated Mara.  She always did know how to get the job done.

The moment of deadly triumph was obliterated in a blaze of outrage and pain.  The violence that erupted then was ten times what it had been before, frenzied and bestial, a storm of hurt and desperation.  The Force was churning with the titanic clash of two master warriors, each trying to destroy the other, wounds taken and inflicted.  

A moment of extreme confusion, stillness, and then dread.  There was no more violence, only nauseating disbelief, protest, resentment.  Bitter, bitter resentment.  The pain was fading, numbed, and dread sharpened into despair.

Every maternal instinct rose in Leia as Mara’s presence dimmed, reaching with a last effort toward Ben, toward Luke.  Ben was screaming into the Force as his mother vanished like a breath of mist in the wind, and Leia briefly saw Luke’s face, felt the shock as half his being was torn away.

Then there was nothing, just a yawning emptiness where they had all been a moment before—Ben, Luke, Jaina, even Leia herself—still alive but too stricken to quite fathom what had just happened.  

“Leia?”

She opened her eyes, and saw that same dread frozen on Han’s face.  She didn’t know how much time had passed, but he hadn’t touched his food, and only then was she aware of the tears streaming down her face.

“Mara,” she managed to say, choked by a horribly familiar grief, aware that their whole world had once again completely changed.  “Han, Mara’s dead.”   

Sitting in the cockpit with only an inert protocol droid for company, staring into the swirling chaos of hyperspace, Han clenched his jaw and silently cursed the unfairness of the universe.  

It had been twelve hours already, and they were about to emerge in the vicinity of Caamas.  Leia had spent five of those hours crying, and then had willed herself to sleep.  Han had tried to sleep, but he was too angry.

Luke would have arrived at Hapes by now.  What those last ten hours trapped in transit must have been like, Han could only guess.  He knew Leia’s tears were entirely for her brother’s sake, and Han could have shed a few himself, but that wouldn’t help anything.  Losing Chewie had been awful, losing Anakin had been catastrophic, but if he lost Leia, Han had to imagine a fundamental part of his life would simply be over.  After thirty-two years together, he wasn’t sure he would even know how to be himself without her.

That was the gutted existence Luke was facing now, and he’d had ten miserable hours to think about it.  Ten miserable hours alone.   

They all knew how much Luke hated being alone.

Han didn’t know what he could do about any of it, but he couldn’t do nothing.  

He pinged the bunkroom, reluctant to wake Leia, but he knew she wanted to be up for this.  “Sweetheart,” he said into the intercom, “we’re coming up on Caamas.”

Five minutes later, she joined him in the cockpit and slid into the copilot’s seat.  Her eyes were puffy, but she had dried her tears and put on a brave face, ready to project strength and sympathy.  If Han knew anything about the way his family of Jedi operated, Luke would be invisibly smothered in a sister’s love the moment she made contact.

“All right, cutting to sunlight engines,” he said, finding cold solace in the routine.  Leia obliged, prepared to react on his mark.  

When the starlines shrank back into sharp points in the blackness, they were still far enough from Caamas that no one would notice their arrival.  The sensors registered no other ships in the area, so they took a risk and lingered, powering up the comm station.  

Leia’s shoulders slumped for a moment before she firmed up again.  “Looks like he tried to call a few hours ago,” she said.  

Han frowned and cursed the universe again.  “Poor guy.”

Leia redialed the code, and they waited several minutes while the signal was routed through the appropriate relays.  Then the channel was opened.

“Hey,” Leia said before Luke could say anything, and there were volumes of unspoken emotion in that one word.  “We’re coming back as fast as we can.  I’m so sorry.  I am so, so sorry.”

“Kid, you just hang in there,” Han insisted, unable to keep quiet.  “Don’t do a thing.  Leave it all to us.  Is Ben okay?”

“Missing again.”

Blast it.  That boy and his dad needed each other right now.  “He’ll be fine,” Han decided, hoping it was true.  “Don’t you worry.  We’re coming.”

“Thanks.  Jaina and I are with Tenel Ka at the Fountain Palace.”

“Got it.”  Luke sounded terrible, flat and dead to the world.  Han bit his lip, forcing down a powerful need to throttle whoever was responsible for this.  “Just take it easy.  We’ll sort this out together.”

There wasn’t much else to say, and Han wasn’t surprised when the connection was dropped without any final pleasantries.  “Get us a fix on Hapes,” he growled, seeing Leia go limp in her seat as she presumably released her ethereal hold on her brother.  “How is he?”

“He’s numb,” Leia said, punching their request into the navicomputer, “shut down, because he’s still trying to function.  It can’t last forever.”

“At least Jaina’s there,” Han observed, prepping for launch.  “Somebody should be with him.  Let’s turn this crate around and catch up.”

Our journey through Legacy of the Force continues in In the Shadow of His Wings, Chapter 17.

Chapter Text

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 desperately 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 officer 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, it’s 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 that 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.”

Soundtrack: Eternal Eclipse, Reach

Chapter Text

Jedi Temple, Coruscant

Corran, Kyle, Kyp, and Saba were gathered to meet the returning shuttle as it settled onto the Temple landing pad.  They didn’t want to make the event a spectacle, but one look over his shoulder confirmed to Corran that every Jedi and apprentice in the place was standing on the roof terraces to see through the transparisteel pyramid.  He supposed there was no stopping them now.

Master Cilghal exited first, leading a repulsor sled bearing a shrouded body.  Corran’s breath caught in his throat, the first sight of the tragedy hitting him harder than he had expected.  Grand Master Skywalker followed, the slump of his shoulders and his downcast expression no surprise to anyone.  His eyes were closed as if to absent himself from the dismal reality of it all, but he never set a foot wrong.  Ben Skywalker came some paces behind, a frustrated young man looking bewildered and pained, his thoughts swirling like a windstorm even as Luke’s were deadened by the paralysis of grief.  Ben seemed repelled by the gloom which had engulfed his father, but wasn’t willing to be parted from him.

Kyp moved to secure the shuttle, and the rest of them turned and followed the silent procession inside.  Cilghal took the body directly to her medical suite, avoiding as many curious glances as possible.  Luke and Ben paused in the entryway to greet the Masters.

“Zekk and Jag have gone to meet Jaina,” Corran explained softly, opting for brevity rather than ceremony.  “All’s quiet here.  The investigation is proceeding as planned, and we’ll let you know as soon as we have something.”

Luke accepted his hand, but couldn’t manage a smile.  “Thank you, Corran.”  Then he turned and headed for the lift, no doubt to disappear into his quarters.

“Ben,” Corran said, extending his hand to the younger Skywalker.  “Good to have you back.  Now go take it easy for a while.”

Ben nodded, returning the gesture with an impressive grip for a boy his age.  “Thanks, Master Horn.”  He left in a different direction, perhaps to wander the gardens.

Corran sighed, and turned to the rest of them.  “All right, we all have jobs to do.  Get busy.”

A long, scalding shower did almost nothing to make him feel better, but it gave him somewhere to be completely alone for an hour.  Luke wasn’t really trying to feel better.  He didn’t want to feel better.  Not yet.  Instead, he spent that time letting the scent of Mara’s soap unlock a host of bittersweet memories while the water pummeled him raw and obscured his tears.  

Now he found himself sitting on the bed in oppressive silence, staring at the wall.  He couldn’t face his obligations downstairs, and he couldn’t bring himself to tidy up any of the disarray they had left the last time they were there.  Their rooms at the Temple were just an austere home away from home; the thought of going back to their apartment to face the accumulated accretions of their life there seemed unbearable.

Another time, he might have filled the empty hours meditating, but now when Luke turned his thoughts inward he was just reminded of how empty it was there.  After twenty-one years, he had come to rely on their remarkable Force bond, their constant presence in one another’s awareness, what Mara had once described as an incessant feed of mundane information.  Luke missed the ebb and flow of her thoughts, the shifting colors of her emotions.  He used to be able to feel it when she laughed.  Occasionally he would smile for no reason at all, and know she was thinking of him.  She had been a warm light in a lonely corner, the presence that made an empty house a home.  Now the warmest places in his heart had gone cold, dark, and quiet.  

Strangely enough, the pain in his chest wasn’t entirely emotional.  Cilghal’s meddling medical droid had scanned him against his will on the flight back to Coruscant, and its diagnosis had been the same that the Falcon’s medical array had slapped on him after his duel with Darth Vader on Cloud City.  Stress cardiomyopathy they called it, medical jargon for general dysfunction, but he knew what it was.

It was unbecoming to be so sunk in his own misery, but this wasn’t a sad case of a fallen comrade or a lost friend.  This had knocked his guts out and left him reeling.  The GA, or at least Jacen and Niathal, probably wouldn’t care if he never recovered, but the Jedi downstairs clearly trusted him to get up eventually.  Luke wasn’t sure he trusted himself anymore, or that he ever would again.  He would have to discuss that with the Council at some point, just as soon as he could make himself give a damn.  

He surveyed the jumble of personal items littering the room, trying to remember why they had been there and why they had left in such a hurry.  Oh, yes, they had just dragged Ben back home from Hapes to try to make him see sense.  Then the boy had managed to escape, and they had been pulled in so many directions at once that they hadn’t managed to really look for him until he turned up again, right back on the Anakin Solo with Jacen and his GAG buddies as if nothing had changed.  At least that had changed now.  For whatever reason, Ben seemed disenchanted with GAG.  Someday, Luke would be glad to know why.

They would have to clean it up eventually.  Fully conscious now of the reality that Mara was dead, Luke realized the next few months would feel like watching her die slowly all over again, gradually disappearing from their lives one shirt, one old pillow, one hair accessory at a time.  Like sand falling through his fingers.  Only the memories would be left.  

That was the way of all life, wasn’t it?  Bright and brief, like flares in the wind.  Eventually, that was the way of all material existence. 

All things die.  Even stars burn out.

Bitterly reminded of his father’s struggles with that reality, Luke knew that this was where the Order’s discipline of detachment had come from, a precaution against the crippling pain he was mired in now.  Even so, the precedent of a thousand generations notwithstanding, Luke was still prepared to argue that if they were destined to see no more than one day in the grand scheme of the universe, it was better to share that day with the other ephemeral beings making the same journey, to live and love to the fullest until the night took them.  He didn’t protest the existence of the night.  He just hadn’t been quite ready to face it yet.  

Feeling his aching eyes welling again, Luke set his jaw and dug that crumpled flimsi note out of his pocket.  He may not be able to remember his last words to Mara, but he was fortunate enough to have her final words to him in writing, something he could hold on to.  It was a very un-Jedi-like sentiment, but he was prepared to fight a whole Hutt’s army to keep it.  

The remembered patterns of Mara’s practical criticism suggested that if he was so determined to keep it, he had better find a better way to carry it or else be forever rooting through the laundry.  Luke frowned, and glanced around the room.  His eyes eventually fell on Mara’s locket necklace, discarded on the bedside table.

She had bought it for herself on a whim a few years before.  Luke would have gladly gifted it to her, but there was a standing prohibition against him buying her shiny trinkets, because Mara knew that once he started he probably wouldn’t stop.  It was a pretty thing, platinum with intricate scrollwork across its face.  She had always laughed at herself for never getting around to putting anything in it.  

With all the care and attention of an honor guard folding a funeral flag, Luke folded the flimsi as tightly as he could, secured it inside the locket, put the chain around his neck and tucked it beneath his collar.  That would do.

He was interrupted by a restrained knock on the door.  Forcing himself to his feet, Luke condescended to answer it.

A teenaged apprentice was standing in the corridor, a tray in her hands and a deeply apologetic look on her face.  “Good evening, Grand Master,” she said, and immediately seemed to regret it.  “Anyway, the refectory sent this up for you, sir.”

Luke stood aside and wearily waved her in.  “Thank you.”  It must be early evening.

She set the tray down on the table, offered him a slight bow, and then left.  Luke was prepared to close the door when Corran came sliding into view after her, carrying an antique plate piled with dessert cakes and wearing that same apologetic expression.  

Luke didn’t let him in right away.  He glanced at the confections, and lifted an eyebrow.  “Am I supposed to believe Mirax made those?” he asked.  

Corran shook his head.  “No.  We just put ‘em on a fancy plate and hoped you wouldn’t notice.  Do you have a minute to sit down?”

It was a ridiculous question.  Luke had hours to sit down, all day, all week, maybe the rest of his life.  He stood aside and let Corran in.  He wasn’t really in the mood for company, but Corran was the man in charge at the moment, and he might have concerns.  “Here to talk business?” Luke asked, not bothering to feign enthusiasm.

“We could talk business if you want,” Corran allowed, sitting at the table.  “We could talk family.  We could talk about what happened.  We could talk about nothing.  Your choice.”

Luke narrowed his eyes.  “So, there’s no compelling reason for this?”

Corran just sighed.  “Of course there is.  You.   You put me in the big seat before you left, so that makes you my responsibility, along with everybody else down there who’s worried about you.  So just sit down and talk to me for a second, and then I’ll leave you alone.”

Grudgingly, Luke sat.  Corran was just doing his job, and he couldn't resent him for it.  As a matter of fact, he was doing Luke’s job.  He was just so tired of it all, tired of working every blasted moment of his life, tired of hurting, tired of building things just to see the next petty tyrant tear it down, tired of everyone asking how he was and having to lie rather than admit he was functionally dead inside.  Tired of failing.  It would be a pathetic end to a life and career that was supposed to be so consequential, that had been destined for greater things: ideals burnt out, unwilling to make the final crawl to the finish line, crushed by the demands and expectations of an entire galaxy.  He had never felt more empathy for Anakin Skywalker in his life.  

Considering the state he was in, whatever was left of the Jedi would probably be better served by someone else.

Luke planted his elbows on the table and buried his face in his hands.  “I don’t think I can do this anymore,” he admitted.  

“You can,” Corran insisted, a knee-jerk answer that betrayed a touch of fear that Luke might actually be serious.  “You don’t have to know how today, but you will.  Take some time and figure it out.”

“No, I don’t know if I’m qualified,” Luke explained.  “Not after Lumiya.  I’m not even sure I know what’s right anymore.”

Corran scoffed, but not unkindly.  “She certainly wasn’t.  Nothing right about her, and I won’t waste any time crying about it.”  He shifted in his seat.  “Listen, Luke, I think this is one of those certain-point-of-view things that I know you hate, but hear me out.  I know we’re supposed to be about peace and justice and balance, but in a world that keeps trying to blow itself up, killing people is just part of the job.  I know you know that.  This is rich coming from me, I know, but we don’t always have the luxury of keeping on the legal side of things.  The Rebellion was illegal, but I think we can still agree it was right.  Vandalizing the Death Star into atoms was illegal, but it was right.  I don’t think you stayed up at night mourning Palpatine after your father tossed him into the fryer.  People make their own choices, and we can’t always save them.  Some don’t want to be saved, for instance someone like Lumiya, who would lie to your face and fall on your blade just to break your will and haunt your dreams.  Don’t give her the satisfaction.  Maybe your motives weren’t exactly pure, and maybe lopping her head off was a bit extralegal, but it needed doing regardless of whether or not she killed Mara.  She had it coming years ago.  We all wanted you to do it, Mara asked you to do it, hell, even Lumiya asked you to do it.  The best information you had told you it was a justified kill, and the fact that she lied to you doesn’t make you a monster.”

Luke listened with a deadpan expression, just waiting for Corran to finish making his prepared argument that so completely missed the point.  “I hear you,” he assured him, hoping his existential fatigue sounded like patience, “and I don’t dispute anything you said.  But the problem wasn’t her.  The problem is me.   I didn’t care if it was right, I wanted to kill her.  I insisted on it.  It wasn’t about justice, it was about me, it was about Mara, and I enjoyed it.”

Corran paled, finally understanding the more insidious problem.  Luke knew he would.  Corran had struggled with it himself many years ago after his infamous duel with a Yuuzhan Vong commander.  He had broken the cardinal rule to never kill in vengeance, and had been wracked with remorse afterward.  In a fit of forbidden passion, Luke had charged into the same trap, doubtless by Lumiya’s design.  She had weaponized her own death, twisting him into inflicting the blow himself.

“Well,” Corran finally said, “it isn’t much help, but I’ll say it anyway.  We’re only human.”

Luke sighed ruefully, his focus fading to sightlessness.  “All too human,” he agreed.  In addition to being utterly desolate, he felt contaminated, made worse by the admission that he had fallen into the muck again through his own fault.  Mara’s death had wounded him more deeply than he had ever been before, and the only thing that had pierced the numb horror afterward had been an insatiable thirst for vengeance.  Every instinct and hormone in his body had driven him to finish it, to end Lumiya as he should have done years before, to complete the one unfinished task Mara had demanded of him.  It was a natural reaction, but that was no excuse for a Jedi Grand Master.  Worse, all his most trusted friends had fallen prey to the same temptation, had closed ranks as soldiers rather than as Jedi, eager to see him cut her down, eager to help.  The bloodlust of husbands, fathers, and lovers lurked dangerously close to the surface.  

Only Jaina had tried to talk him out of it, and that was only because she cared about him and wanted the pleasure of killing Lumiya herself.  Even Ben had been ready to kill her, although that confrontation probably would not have ended well.

The Sith had played him, and all the rest of them, perfectly.  

Not for the first time, Luke wished guile came more naturally to him.  

“I just . . .” he began, but then abandoned that train of thought.  “I just don’t want to talk about it any more.”

Corran visibly swallowed the rest of his speech.  “What do you want?” he asked.  “Anything.  Just name it.”

“I want to lie down and die for a couple of days.  Can you hold it together for me downstairs a while longer?”

“Sure thing.”

“I’d rather not see anyone for now.  Send Ben if you need me.”

Ben wandered through the benign jumble of living things that crowded the Room of a Thousand Fountains, almost able to believe he was on some previously undiscovered world.  The place was deserted, which it almost never was, and he was both afraid and grateful that everyone in the Temple was determined to give him and his father a wide berth for a few days.  

Dad hadn’t forgotten him by any means.  Luke was still open to him in a way that Ben could feel was closed to most everyone else, not a summons or even a gentle invitation, but just an ongoing indication that Ben would be welcome whenever he wanted the company, whatever state Luke happened to be in.  He certainly wasn’t in a good state right now, and the awareness of his father’s misery weighed on Ben.

Weighed like guilt.

How much of this was his own fault?  That nagging thought just compounded his own grief, demanding to be satiated, and he curled up to sit beneath the low-slug bough of a tree and think.  

Dad would have never let Mom be killed, he was sure, and yet they had all conspired to keep Dad in the dark.  Jacen had always assured him that he didn’t need to seek Luke’s approval, that he shouldn’t be afraid to do things Luke wouldn’t understand, that he didn’t have to be anything like Luke if he didn’t want to be.  Jacen had even taught Ben special techniques to hide from Luke in the Force, which was no mean feat.  In fairness, Ben had asked him to, because in spite of everything, Dad’s confusion and disapproval still cut him to the heart.  

That was why he had gone to Mom when he discovered Jacen’s deceit.  He knew he should have confessed to both of them—about Lumiya, about Jacen’s lies, Nelani’s death, the Sith sphere and the dark trials Jacen had put him through on Ziost—but he couldn’t find it in him to face his father in his moment of abject humiliation.  Mom had agreed to keep his secret for a while.  When he had told his mother about Jacen assigning him the Gejjen assassination, she was the one who suggested they shouldn’t tell Dad.  Ben suspected his mother also felt a little guilty for letting Jacen manipulate her.  So she had gone off alone to make it right.  And she was dead.  

As far as he knew, Mom had taken all those secrets with her.  She must have, because Dad clearly still didn’t know that Jacen was secretly a Sith, that he had been partnered with Lumiya, that he had murdered Jedi Nelani and erased Ben’s memory of it.  Dad probably still didn’t know anything about Gejjen or Ziost or any of it.  And Ben was still keeping those secrets from him, even now.

What if he had been honest with Dad in the first place?  Maybe Mom would still be alive.  Maybe Jacen would be exposed, disgraced . . . or maybe dead.

Did he dare come clean now?

Ben squeezed his eyes shut in the gloom.  He couldn’t tell Dad now.  Dad was barely himself, just trying to keep breathing from one day to the next.  Mom had been afraid the truth would be enough to make Dad go nova and rip Jacen’s head off, and that was before she had been killed.  Lumiya hadn’t survived the first twenty-four hours of Luke’s bereavement.   Now there was no telling what he might be capable of.

Besides that, Ben was starting to resent the fact that his father would be expected to clean up Jacen and his mess.  Hadn’t Dad suffered enough?  He was tempted to let those secrets lie for a while yet, existing in a liminal shadow reality in which neither the Jedi Council nor Jacen knew that he knew everything.  He hadn’t told anyone but Mom.  It might be best to keep it that way.  

Ben knew he should be more conflicted about it, but he was intensely proud of the way his father had taken Lumiya.  Once she had forfeited the last dregs of Luke’s consideration, it had been clean, quick, devastating, as a lot of pretentious idiots had learned before her.  It was no more than she deserved.

Now Ben had a score of his own to settle.  Jacen had used and abused him, all while pretending to be a friend.  He had gone to Jacen for guidance and wisdom, and instead Jacen had encouraged him to leave his parents, turned him into a secret agent of the government, and trained him to be an assassin.  In hindsight, it was all too similar to the way Palpatine had groomed his mother.  

Mom . . .

Maybe it was time for Jacen to reap a little of what he’d sown.  

All this time Jacen had played him for a fool, and he had no idea.  The omniscient Colonel Solo had no idea Ben knew his secret.  He could use that to his advantage, could get close enough to Jacen to end it.  A year ago it would have been laughable to imagine he could take Jacen Solo in a fight, one of the most subtle and broadly-educated Jedi alive, but he’d learned a lot in that year.  With surprise on his side, there was a chance.  Ben wasn’t under any illusion that Luke would never learn the particulars, because his ability to keep secrets from his father in person was very limited, but it would be more satisfying to present him with the facts when the deed was done.

He certainly had reason enough.  Quite apart from all the rest of it, Ben wasn’t convinced Alema had killed Mara.  He knew Lumiya hadn’t done it.  There was only one other person he knew of in league with those two who was also strong enough to take Mom in a fight, who had proven he would kill to protect a secret.  Jacen had known where the body was.  Jacen had been wounded.  Jacen had been in the system at the right time, left, and then doubled back.  Ben was left to draw his own conclusions.

He couldn’t confide any of that to Dad, not yet.  He had no proof, and he couldn’t tell anyone without compromising his own nebulous plans.  And how hideous would it be to tell Dad right now that his own nephew might have murdered his wife?  No, Dad wasn’t ready to hear that.  He would handle it himself, and then they could try to find their peace together.

Don’t worry about your father, Mom had always said.  That’s my job.   Ben supposed it was his job now, and anyone who crossed him would learn to regret it.

He was startled out of his thoughts by the too-obvious approach of someone along the path.  That clumsy tread was clearly intended as a courtesy.  “Ben?” Master Horn called, stopping ten paces away.  “Ben, I just need to tell you something.”

“It’s all right, Master Horn,” Ben insisted, pushing aside the leaves, relieved that he hadn’t been crying.  “What is it?”

Corran came and sank into a crouch beside the tree.  “Sorry to bother you, son, but I’ve just been to talk to your dad.  He wants to keep to himself for a while, and says he’d rather not see anyone but you.  We’ll try not to bother either of you with nonessentials, but I hope you won’t mind being our official go-between.”

Ben managed a subdued smile, grateful that was all it was.  “Don’t worry, Master Horn.  I’ll take care of it.”

The Jedi Master returned the expression.  “You’re a real trooper, kid,” he said, standing to leave.  “Your mom would be proud of you.”

Ben liked to think she would be.  No, he wouldn’t mind taking care of Dad.

With any luck, he’d soon be taking care of a lot of things.

Our journey through Legacy of the Force continues in In the Shadow of His Wings, Chapter 18.

Chapter Text

A memorial bier for Mara had been erected in the Morning Court, a place for people to pay their respects and honor her memory, eventually to be replaced by her funeral pyre.  It had become a place of constant vigil, attended by mourners who came and went in silence while others took it upon themselves in turns to offer subdued musical tribute.  

The bier was crowded with flowers, notes, artwork, and other tokens of remembrance, but it had begun very simply with just a holo-portrait, her folded Jedi robes, her lightsaber, and a pair of her boots beside it on the floor.  A warrior’s memorial.  Both flattering and commanding, Luke remembered when that holo had been taken.  Mara had always questioned the need to take official portraits for the archives, and had cooperated only under protest.  She had struck that pose just to tease him, but it was so widely considered the best of the run that it had made the final cut.

He was sitting cross-legged on the sturdimoss floor, just letting the misery saturate him as a drizzling rain drummed on the roof and a choir sang a quiet lament.  Luke wasn’t the only one there, but no one dared challenge his solitude.  It was the first time he had left his room in days, partly because he suspected it was unseemly to go more than seventy-two hours without being seen at least once by the beings ostensibly under his authority, and partly because it seemed like a disservice to Mara to be so conspicuously absent.  It required every bit of fortitude he had left.

Every moment he was condemned to live in a world without Mara was an agony he could not escape.  Luke had spoken to a grief counselor once at Leia’s insistence, years ago.  She had described the phenomenon as similar to being forced to hold one’s hand to a heating element.  Luke hadn’t ventured any criticism at the time, but now he would have suggested it was more like standing in the wake of a sublight drive and letting it melt the meat off his bones.  He couldn’t move, and he couldn’t die, condemned to stand in the fire until he could learn to accept it.

Don’t be mad at me, farmboy.

Don’t be mad . . .

He was mad, damn it.  Mara should have known better, especially after lecturing him so many times about learning to rely on other people, about not trying to solve all his problems alone.  After twenty-one years, Luke thought he deserved more consideration than that.  She had deliberately shut him out, left him frantic with no means to find her except that desperate instinct at the very limit of his spectrum of perception.  A few hours in hyperspace might have made all the difference.  She might have still been with them.  

What was the point of being so immensely powerful in the Force if no one ever told him what was going on?   

Luke didn’t want to be angry.  He couldn’t change any of it by being angry, and the last thing he wanted was to end their marriage with a posthumous argument.  So, he made the effort to compress all that negative emotion until it collapsed into just another crushing wave of sorrow.

He hated that he knew how their story ended.  They had always known the end would come eventually, always in some distant and unknowable future, never an immediate concern, never today, never now.  Suddenly it was yesterday, and Luke found himself alone in that trackless void he had never planned for.  

There was a dismal symmetry to it.  He had admittedly stolen their first kiss as Mara lay unconscious in a healing trance in the wilds of Nirauan, young and strong, filthy and absolutely beautiful.  Their last had been in Cilghal’s morgue, her body unnaturally pale and sterile, motionless and cold.  Luke could still feel that chill on his lips.  He couldn’t remember the last they had shared while she was still alive.  There had been so many that it was hard to differentiate them.  Maybe that should have been some comfort, but it just made him desperately lonely.

He didn’t feel like himself anymore, just an amalgamation of broken parts that were no use to anyone.  He and Mara had been so closely interwoven that Luke still wasn’t sure vital parts of himself hadn’t been torn away with her.  Her portrait on the bier didn’t offer any answers, but just stared back at him, a frozen shadow of happier times.  

Jedi really weren’t supposed to engage in all this performative grief, the wakes, the rites, and the laments.  Jedi funerals were brief, perfunctory, a simple pyre when one was required at all.  But Mara Jade Skywalker loomed large in the annals of the New Jedi Order, and she would not be easily forgotten.  As usual, they were adapting and amending the code as they went, deriving it from and applying it to the realities of life as they experienced it.  The future of the Order depended on that effort, but Luke didn’t feel up to the task anymore.  He felt shattered, wrung out, spent.

It was going to be a while before he could learn to stop thinking of everything in reference to her.  There was still a second after he woke up every morning when he had to remember that she wasn’t just out of bed before him or away on mission.  He saw Mara everywhere, sometimes thought he could hear her voice or the sound of her breathing, the way she used to huff to herself when she was struggling to contain a particularly virulent opinion.  That had been one of the many nonverbal cues they had developed between them, but now Luke knew it was just his brain struggling to find patterns in the ambient noise.  It still made him stop and listen every time.  

I wouldn’t be myself without Mara, he had confessed to his father’s ghost at Varykino.  How are we supposed to be effective if we’re only allowed to be half alive?   This, he supposed, was what half alive felt like.  Anakin had essentially told him he would have to answer that question himself, that he was duty-bound to set the example.  

Luke also heard Yoda echoing in his mind, as he often did when he felt he was somehow falling short of the ideal.  Death was a natural part of life, Yoda had insisted, attempting to distance Luke from his emotions all those years ago.  He wasn't supposed to dwell on the loss of loved ones, wasn't supposed to mourn or miss them.  It would be quite simple if he had only trained himself to be detached from anything he might otherwise fear to lose.

To a certain extent, Luke could see the wisdom in that.  He had dabbled in some very deep attachments, eyes wide open, and now he was paying the price.  He had been reasonably prepared for the worst more than a decade ago when Mara had languished in her coomb spore disease, but he had given up the exercise when she had recovered.  The end had caught him unprepared, a sucker punch in the dark, but Luke would still defy every Master who had ever lived rather than regret any of it.  Those years together had been a revelation, and their love, their bond, and their son were worth any pain that may be required of him.  They were priceless.

Acceptance was there, inevitable, waiting just outside the cloud of wretchedness that smothered him now.  He would find it eventually, but he had to mourn first.  He had to.  

I’m sorry, Yoda, he thought.  I don’t work that way.   

If he didn’t mourn, he could never heal.  And he would miss her until the day he died.

Ben came and sat beside him on the moss, boldly breaking the illusion of isolation.  Luke was glad he did.  Whatever had caused the strain on their relationship over the past year, it seemed to be on the mend, and that was enough to keep at least a small spark of hope burning.  

“Hey,” Ben whispered after sitting with him for several minutes.  “It’s good to see you out again.  Are you sure you’re up for it?”

“Seemed like I should probably make an effort,” Luke said, “before people start assuming I’m dead.”

Ben pressed his lips into a firm line and lifted an eyebrow.  “Some were starting to wonder,” he admitted.  “But don’t put yourself out, Dad.  Take all the time you need.  We’re handling it.”

Ben shouldn’t have to handle anything, but Luke knew by now that his son was extremely strong willed when he put his mind to something, and he didn’t have the energy or the conviction to argue with him.  The boy’s resemblance to his mother was particularly pronounced at times like that.  “That’s very grown-up of you, Ben,” he said instead.  “Just don’t forget to take some time for yourself, too.”

“I’ll take my time when the job’s done,” Ben said grimly.  “They’re not going to get away with this.  I’m going to find whoever did this to Mom, I promise.”

Again, it was no good arguing with him.  Another time, Luke would have been eager to go with him.  They would have run the guilty to ground together, exacting harsh but justified satisfaction for Mara.  But all that was far beyond him now.  Justice wouldn’t bring Mara back.  Justice would be served by others, and he wasn’t in any fit state to decide what was just or not.  If it had been Lumiya’s intention to effectively sideline him with her death, she had been wildly successful.  It wasn’t much different than her first attempt to take him with the suicide vest, but in the end she found more subtle weapons than baradium.  Now his lethargy was crippling the whole Jedi Order from the top down.  Something would have to be done about that.  

A head of red hair caught Luke’s eye in one of the mirrored wall panels, and he looked up before he could stop himself.

“It’s just Seha, Dad,” Ben murmured, identifying the young apprentice, and apparently recognizing what had just happened.  “She’s a friend of mine.”

Luke closed his eyes and shook his head to clear it.  He had to get a hold of himself.  This wasn’t healthy.  

“Everyone’s been calling for you,” Ben told him.  “The comm center has been collecting messages for you to play back whenever you’re ready.  Malinza actually managed to bluster her way past the lockdown with Petra a few days ago.”

Luke frowned, sorry he had missed them.  Of course, he would have been lousy company, so maybe it was for the best.  “I’ll have to make it up to them somehow.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Ben insisted.  “She understood.  We spent some time catching up.  Petra’s a little dynamo these days.”

“She is,” Luke agreed, the thought of her almost bringing a smile out of him.  

Mara had adored Petra.  They were supposed to be attending her school’s awards ceremony next week . . .

Luke’s chrono buzzed, postponing another slide into heartache and regret.  

“What’s that?” Ben asked.

“I have something I need to do,” Luke said, purposefully vague as he gathered his feet beneath him and stood.  His rough hip was starting to give him trouble again.  Mara had always known how to sort it out, but now he supposed he should finally get a professional to look at it.  Before he went, he pulled his son into a one-armed hug.  “Thanks, Ben.  I’ve missed you.  But I mean it, don’t forget to take care of yourself.”

Ben looked at him with a kind of numb helplessness that said he was sorry he couldn’t do more.  He didn’t protest, bargain, or argue like he would have done in the past, but just nodded.  “Okay, Dad.  This thing you need to do . . .  Can I help?”

Luke shook his head.  “I need to talk to the Council.  We’ll discuss it afterwards.”

As he rode the lift to the Council chamber, Luke reflected that the reason he didn’t want to tell Ben what he was doing was that he didn’t have the energy to present his case twice, and Ben could absolutely be expected to offer stiff resistance to the idea.  Luke didn’t want to waste time deflecting emotional arguments.  He was too emotional himself.  He needed some cold logic, and if he couldn’t count on his fellow Masters for that, then the whole Council was a farce.  

Everyone was already assembled when he arrived.  Almost everyone.  They hadn’t replaced Master Lobi yet, and now Mara’s post was also vacant.  Cilghal seemed ready to temporarily assume the duties of secretary.  

As they often did, the Council Masters had all remained standing in anticipation of his arrival.  It was a gesture of deference Luke had never insisted on, and he still hadn’t decided whether it would be more self-absorbed to insist that they stop or to just accept it without protest.  It felt like a reverential salute this time, as though they were according him a hero’s honors just because he’d managed to get himself dressed and show up to work that day, which made him feel more than a little pathetic.  All the more reason to say what he intended to say and leave the matter in their hands.

Luke sat down, and just let the Grand Master’s seat swallow him for a few seconds.  The rest of the Council sat and waited patiently to hear the reason he had called them.  But that could keep for another minute.  

“If there’s anything anyone thinks I need to know,” he said, “now’s the time.”

Glances were exchanged, and finally Corran cleared his throat.  “The funeral has officially been set for the end of this week,” he said.  “We’re expecting a fairly large turnout, but nothing the Morning Court can’t accommodate.  Chief Niathal called to offer her condolences, and to indefinitely postpone that meeting you two were supposed to have.  Jaina checked in yesterday to report that they think they’ve found a likely trajectory for Alema.  All’s quiet on Ossus, although some of the kids are a little shaken up.  Other than routine updates from the GA’s war room, that’s about it.”

Luke just nodded.  He knew it was a bad sign when the threat of “routine updates” sounded like a hell he wanted no part of.  

“Luke?”  Strangely enough, it was Kyp who spoke up first.  But Kyp had always been one to speak his mind, so maybe that shouldn’t have been a surprise.  Now he just looked concerned.  “Luke, are you sure you’re ready to be back?  You don’t seem quite yourself.”

“I’m not back,” Luke clarified.  “Not officially.  Something’s been weighing on me that we need to address right now.  I talked to Corran about it, and because there was no expectation that the conversation was confidential, I assume he’s talked to all of you.”  

More glances. 

“Not to put too fine a point on it,” Luke continued, “we need to address the staggering failure of this council to respond appropriately after what just happened.  Lumiya was guilty of many things, but killing Mara apparently wasn’t one of them, and we let ourselves be baited.  It was my own fault, and I’m not casting blame at anyone individually, but my wife . . .”   It was still hard to say it, and he had to try again.  “My wife had just been murdered.  I was clearly not competent to be making judgment calls, let alone taking sole responsibility for our response.  The only ones who gave me pushback were trying to spare my feelings, not my integrity, and they wanted vengeance as badly as I did.”

“Justice,” Kenth Hamner suggested.

Luke turned on him.  “No, vengeance,” he insisted.  “You all tacitly agreed that it was my kill, and you let me have it.  We all wanted it, and we got it, and now we have no standing, no credibility, and no conviction, just the way she planned it.  I made this mess, but not one of you tried to stop me.  If we can’t do better than that, then there’s really no point to any of this.”

It silenced the room, not that anyone had been in a great hurry to speak before.  Live and learn, they always said.  No one liked to mention how painful and destructive the process could be.

“With all that in mind,” Luke concluded, “I have serious doubts about my ability to continue in office, and I’m asking for your opinions.  The real ones, the things you say behind my back.  Let’s have it.”

No one wanted to be the first to step out, but finally Kyle took the initiative.  “All right, Luke,” he said, standing and striding toward the center of the chamber.  “You’re right.  This came up last night, as a matter of fact, and I’m happy to repeat exactly what I said.”  He took a rhetorical look around the room and frowned.  “Hypothetically, let’s forget your name for a minute,” he said, “and your lineage, and your obvious destiny.  Which one of us is supposed to take your place?  We’re all equally guilty, so I don’t see how anyone is better qualified.  You built this, you’ve lived and breathed this for forty years, and we’re all here because of you.  We still trust you, even if you don’t, not least of all because you’re forcing this issue.  Anyone with backbone enough to indict himself in open council has to be worth a shot at redemption.”

“I’m not trying to stand on my reputation,” Luke insisted.  “My only concern is the here and now, and under the circumstances, I’m convinced the Order would be better served if I got out of the way.”

“Hey, now,” Corran protested, “that’s what everyone said when we made you ostracize me all those years ago, and you say you’ve always regretted it.  Is the Order better served by cutting off troubled members, or aren’t we all here to support each other through the low times, to heal together?  It’s one of your foundational lessons, for cripes’ sake.  A Jedi can’t get so caught up in matters of galactic importance that it interferes with his concern for individuals.”  

Luke scowled, feeling that there was something not quite fair about using his own words against him.  This wasn’t easy for him, and wasn’t a decision he took lightly.  “You’re just coming up with reasons to make me stay,” he complained.

“Guilty as charged,” Corran owned, going to stand with Kyle.  “We don’t forget our people or let them disappear when they fall out of ranks, Luke, and we’re certainly not going to forget about you.  You taught us that.  What were you planning to do, anyway?”

Luke sighed.  “Disappear and be forgotten for a while,” he confessed.  

Saba hissed and shook her head.  “A hunter that givez up the hunt doez not long survive,” she protested.  “One cannot live if he behavez as one dead.  Lost mates must be honored.  Fight.  Live.   That is what Mara would have wanted.”  

“She has a point, Master,” Kyp agreed, still slouched pensively in his chair.  “Not to compare atrocities, but you didn’t let me disappear after I committed an actual genocide.  You kept making me get up, and showed me how to be better.  I mean, so long as we’re fighting, we’re not dying, right?”

That last comment caught Luke like a blast of cold water, although it was obvious Kyp hadn’t intended it that way.  Kyp didn’t even realize it was significant.  Mara had said that to him fifteen years ago when she had been struggling to live . . . and Luke remembered it like it was yesterday.

“I would argue that you’re still not competent to be making judgment calls,” Kenth put in.  “At least, not about anything so permanent as a resignation.  It’s only been three days, Luke.  No one expects you to function at full capacity right now.  Take the week, take four if you need to.  We’ll keep the seat warm for you, and be ready to launch when you give the word.”

Their loyalty was touching, but still Luke couldn’t help pining for that elusive fantasy of peace and silence along some nameless coastline where no crisis or catastrophe could find him.   It was growing less and less likely by the minute, all of it dampened by the memories Kyp had unwittingly churned up.  It felt uncannily like Mara was still trying to reach him, just as she had been reaching for him when she died.  Why else would she have left her body behind?  Why did he see her around every corner?  Maybe he was just going crazy.  Luke imagined he could feel her standing behind him, just out of reach, but he refused to turn around.

Snap out of it.

“It seems to me,” Octa said in her turn, “that if we agree that Lumiya’s purpose in perpetuating the deception was to neutralize Master Skywalker and derange the Council, then we should do everything in our power to prevent that outcome.”

“I agree,” Cilghal said, quietly extinguishing Luke’s last hope of escape.  “Whatever villainy may be afoot here, we’ll do ourselves a great disservice if we leave the Order decapitated and disorganized.  Let’s regroup and fight another day.  In the meantime, let the illusion of vulnerability stand while Master Skywalker recovers.  It may bring some scavengers into the open.”

“Yesss,” Saba agreed, baring her reptilian teeth.  “There iz already blood in the air.  We must not give them the outcome they expect.”

They were all looking at him, a bulwark of trust, expectation, and support.  Luke still felt unequal to those expectations, but once again he would somehow have to find the strength to perform.  It never got easier.  “You aren’t going to let me just bow out quietly, are you?” he asked, already knowing the answer.

Corran smiled.  “Come on, Luke, when have we made anything easy for you?”

That was one time too many, and Luke couldn’t follow the rest of the discussion over the ringing in his ears.  He eventually excused himself and left, convinced he wasn’t entirely in his right mind.  It was a common enough phrase, he told himself.  There was no reason to attribute any significance to anyone repeating exactly what Mara had said as he had clumsily tried to propose to her on Nirauan.  He was just being hypersensitive.  

Right?

Luke retreated into his quarters and locked the door behind him.  He had to get a grip, especially now that there was no professional reprieve in his future.  Apparently he couldn’t quit that job even when he tried.  There was still a war on, and they would be calling for him sooner rather than later.  

It just reminded Luke of something one of his Naberrie cousins had said, observing that he would never have any choice but to fight.  It was just a consequence of who he was, of what he was.  

Sometimes Luke thought he would be grateful to be someone else.  Not always, but there were days when the grind seemed unbearable.  Destiny had not turned out to be a benevolent force of fairytale, but a brutal reality that only punished him harder the more he embraced it.  Happiness, he realized, didn’t enter into the equation.  He had a purpose whether he liked it or not.  He had an order to lead, an example to set, battles to win.

He had a son to raise.  In all the upheaval, Luke hadn’t forgotten that during the height of the Vong war Mara had drawn a solemn promise out of him to take care of Ben if anything happened to her, not that he had ever considered doing otherwise.  No matter how broken he felt, he had to be there for Ben.  

Standing in the middle of the room, Luke closed his eyes, surrounded by pieces of his shattered life.  There wasn’t enough time to mourn Mara properly.  Considering how much their extraordinary union had meant to him, he doubted there would ever be enough time.  He would also have to mourn who he used to be, the whole and happy man who had been Mara’s husband, someone he would never be again.  If he could muster the will, Luke supposed he could learn to mask the broken places, to adapt as any disfigured veteran learned to adapt, to accept that those wounds were just a part of who he was now.  

In a matter of days, the ugly side of life would kick in that door and expect the Grand Master Commander to walk out.  That meant he didn’t have the luxury of continuing to drown at his own pace.  He would have to find and touch the absolute bottom of that well of despair while he still had the chance.

To that end, Luke forced himself to face the implications of what had happened.  It wasn’t enough to accept that Mara was dead.  He had to accept exactly what that meant, the emptiness he would have to endure from day to day.  He had to understand what it cost him, and then sit in that pain until he owned it.

They wouldn’t be able to make good on that whole-family birthday party Mara had promised Ben next year.  

They would never share that quiet vacation Luke had angrily resolved to plan as he climbed into that StealthX to follow her.  

She wouldn’t be there to play with Ben’s children.  

They would never retire together to some idyllic lakeside on Naboo.  

He would never fly with her again, would never spar with her again, would never feel that transcendent harmony as their minds performed as one.  

He would never hold her again, feel her breath on his neck as he slept, or her warmth against his back.  

Luke recalled those first days after Nirauan when they were first bonded, when they had dropped out of thought and time for two stolen weeks just to savor the new and breathless intimacy they had fallen into together.  Then, just to torture himself, he remembered how it ended, the sudden horror as her life and her light were torn out of him, the way she had reached for him in her final agony knowing he couldn’t catch her.  The cold silence.

Mara was gone, and it was over.  There was no recourse and no appeal.  

Luke sank to his knees in his own agony of pain and protest as he struggled to accept any of it.  But he had to accept it.  He would drive himself insane if he didn’t accept it.

He would never feel like that again, 

would never love like that again, 

would never be complete like that again, 

and he would have to live every waking moment 

of every day 

for the rest of his life 

alone.  

Chapter Text

Ben keyed open the door and took one step into the corridor to meet Master Katarn, Master Sebatyne, Master Ramis, and Master Cilghal.  They were waiting with good grace, not betraying the least hint of impatience.  “We’re almost ready,” he assured them.  “Just a few more minutes.”

Master Cilghal dismissed his concern with a wave of her webbed hand.  “We await Master Skywalker’s convenience,” she assured him, and seemed to speak for all of them.

Ben nodded, and closed the door again.  

He might have been a little impatient himself, but he tried not to be.  It was going to be a bad day no matter how they sliced it, and he wouldn’t be sorry to put it behind him.  Dad really needed to put it behind him.

He wasn’t trying to seem heartless.  If Ben could have his way, his father wouldn’t have to be bothered by anyone or anything until he was good and ready, but those weren’t the circumstances they lived in, and trying to carry on beneath the shadow of an impending funeral wore on a person.  Best to get it done.

Dad wasn’t bearing up well, at least to all outward appearances.  He wasn’t so catatonic that he couldn’t dress himself—which was what he was presumably doing at the moment—but he was turned deeply inward, drawn in on himself so tightly as to exclude everyone else, even in the Force.  He’d been that way for days.  It had perturbed the Masters for sure, but Ben thought he understood what was going on.  Dad hadn’t lost himself.  Dad was working.

Everyone said grief was a process, and if that was the case, Luke had simply accelerated it.  He was confronting it, living it, pressing on those wounds until they couldn’t possibly hurt any worse.  He wasn’t drawn inward out of self-pity or shame over Lumiya, although those things definitely had their place.  For two people as intimately bonded as they had been, turning inward to face that Mom-shaped void in his heart was as good as sitting beside her grave, something Dad would always carry with him.  That time was important, but unfortunately it was running out.

Ben was holding the fort as best he could, but the war wouldn’t wait.  He had been told what had happened at that Council meeting, about Dad trying to quietly resign in disgrace, and how the Council Masters weren’t allowing it.  He was also aware of the simple subterfuge going on, the way the Masters had closed ranks and refused to conduct or even discuss any official business without Master Skywalker’s say-so at a time when Master Skywalker seemed about as useless as a hamstrung helogar.  It gave a dysfunctional impression, one that might make domestic enemies careless.  

It was convincing, and maybe too real considering the state Dad was in.  Ben was aware that Luke hadn’t slept last night, but had instead spent several hours sitting alone on the floor beside the cold storage unit in the medcenter.  It probably had something to do with the imminence of the funeral, a compulsion to spend what time he could with her physical remains before he had to give them up as well.  Some might see that as evidence of problematic attachment.  Ben knew it was instead a slow act of detachment.   Saying goodbye was also a process, sometimes a long one.  

He clenched his jaw and blinked his eyes dry, putting that image out of mind.  He didn’t want to cry today.  Ben knew he should feel sad, and deep down he did, but he was still too angry to grieve like that.  Someone had to answer for this, and until he could be convinced otherwise, his list of suspects had only one name on it.

Jacen was likely sitting in the Morning Court right now beside his fellow conspirator-in-chief, Niathal.  That thought alone made Ben’s heart beat a tick faster, a tell he immediately tamped down.  He could be excused for being upset or even angry at his mother’s funeral, but Jacen couldn’t be allowed to catch any whiff that he suspected him.  That was a revelation for another day.  He was going to need all the control he had ever learned to pull it off.

Ben hoped Uncle Han and Aunt Leia were going to make it.  It would be good for Dad to see them, and Aunt Leia was supposed to be giving the eulogy.  He didn’t dare reach out to her in the Force for fear of causing tell-tale ripples Jacen might detect.  If the Solos could just make it into the Temple precincts they should be okay.  GAG had no jurisdiction there, not if Dad had anything to say about it.  Getting them safely off Coruscant again after Jacen had been made to sit through the entire ceremony with them might be trickier.  He wished Jaina could have been there, but honestly she might have had a harder time keeping still around Jacen than Ben would, and they didn’t need a brawl today.

He didn’t want to reach out to his father, either.  Luke would either rebuff him or allow him into his pain for a moment, and Ben wasn’t sure which was worse.  He was relieved when Luke finally emerged from his room under his own power, sparing him the need to knock.  Ben was at his side in a moment.  “We’re ready when you are, Dad,” he said gently.

Luke barely nodded.  He had made the effort to be clean and impeccably dressed in the gray mourning robes that matched Ben’s own, but he looked like a man who had sat up all night in the morgue, little more than a sad shell of his former self.  

Ben bristled interiorly, blaming Jacen for that too.  Ben wasn’t aware of the particulars, but he had sussed out that Jacen had been trying to press his advantage in the last week, trying to bypass Dad and strongarm the Council into providing Jedi resources to war effort, essentially assuming command of the Order in a military capacity.  The Council Masters had stymied him, as per the plan, presenting a united front of hostile apathy.  And now Jacen was probably downstairs, resenting the delay and the waste of his precious time.

Calm, Ben reminded himself.  He needed to be calm.  

“Come on,” he whispered, sensing that his father could use a bit of sympathetic encouragement.  “It’s almost over.  Let’s just get downstairs for starters.”

He didn’t get much acknowledgement, but Luke did lift a hand and lay it on his back, and Ben could feel his appreciation.  Then they both raised their hoods and joined the Masters in the corridor.  

Just getting to the Morning Court seemed to take longer than it should have, but all the while Ben was establishing his equilibrium in the Force.  He had to be strong for Dad, but also on guard against Jacen, and the baseline he settled on was probably more angry than might befit a Jedi.  Jacen had always said his emotions could make him powerful so long as he used them and not the other way around.  Time to give that a try.  

Ben avoided focusing on his mother’s shrouded body on the pyre as they entered the open-air court, and instead took in the crowd at a glance.  He recognized several of the friends and dignitaries seated in rows behind the kneeling Jedi Knights—Uncle Lando, Talon Karrde, Booster Terrick and Mirax Horn, Malinza and Petra.  Hapan Queen Mother Tenel Ka was kneeling with the Jedi rather than seated with her entourage, and Ben admired that about her.  There was Niathal and the other high ministers of state, but the seat beside her was conspicuously empty.

His breath threatening to catch in his throat, Ben took another surreptitious glance around and couldn’t see Jacen anywhere.  It was no good looking for him in the Force; the man had become a shadow.  What Ben did sense in the Force was Aunt Leia, still outside but very near, and that was some small relief.  

They took their places beside the pyre, and there was no ignoring it anymore.  Ben had spent a lot of time with his mother’s body at the crime scene, but seeing it this way brought the reality home to him like nothing else could.  She was bound up to the neck in white gauze, her hands folded across her chest, her features blank and peaceful, her graying red-gold hair flowing freely over the logs beneath her.  It was something they both needed to see, but Ben hated that they had to see it, that this would be their last memory of her.  He hated that Dad had to stand there looking at it, and was just glad Jacen hadn’t dared show his face after all, because at that moment Ben hated him too.  He wasn’t sure he could have hidden it.

Still the ceremony failed to start, and Ben was distracted by the sense of violence nearby.  Many of the Masters had turned toward the closed doors, obviously feeling the same thing.  Then he realized the Solos still hadn’t come in.

Ben didn’t consider leaving his father’s side, but he was impatient to know what was taking so fragging long.  Master Sebatyne finally stepped away to inquire of Masters Horn, Hamner, and Durron.  Ben didn’t try to eavesdrop, but their whispered conversation went on for a while.  Maybe it was too much to expect this day of all days to go off without a hitch.  

Finally, Master Sebatyne returned and leaned toward Luke as delicately as a Barabel could.  “Leia and Han were delayed,” she hissed.  “This one will start.”

Luke looked up, but couldn’t seem to take his eyes off Mara’s body.  Ben answered on his behalf.  “That’s good,” he said.  “Mom would like that.”  Saba had always been one of Mom’s best friends.  At least they could get started.

The hush deepened again as Master Sebatyne took her place, her powerful frame dominating the lectern.  “We have come to this sacred place,” she began, projecting her voice through the Force, “to say farewell to our dear friend, to a fierce warrior and a noble dispenser of justice.  Mara Jade Skywalker was one of the brightest stars of the Jedi Order, and we will miss her.”  

She turned to address the Jedi kneeling in ranks in front of the rest of the audience.  “Her light has been taken from the galaxy, but it has not been extinguished.  It lives on in us, in the times we shared the hunt, in the lessons she taught us as a Master.”  Then she looked directly at Luke and Ben.  “It lives in the love and counsel she gave as a mate, in the sacrifices she made as a mother.  As long as our hearts beat, her light lives inside us.”  

Dad seemed to appreciate that, as much as he could just then, but Ben kept his eyes fixed on the floor.  He was trying to keep a lid on that anger that was quickly growing into rage.  They weren’t supposed to be here.  It wasn’t supposed to be like this, and no number of well-intentioned platitudes could change it.  Mom deserved justice.  A life for a life, like Dad had said.

The eulogy didn’t continue, and a murmur was growing in the crowd.  Ben looked up, afraid he could guess why.  He wouldn’t . . .  He wouldn’t dare!

But he did.  Jacen was striding up the center aisle like he owned the place, inexcusably late, dressed in his flashy black uniform and boots with that ridiculous Darth Vader cape billowing from his shoulders.  Ben hated the sight of him, and hated himself for ever thinking it was an impressive look.  It looked different now, ominous and terrifying, not least of all because of how insidiously Ben had been drawn into it all.  Yes, Jacen had a lot to answer for, and now he had the gall to interrupt Mom’s funeral to swan through the crowd.

“Excuse my tardiness,” Jacen announced to the entire assembly, waving a gloved hand demurely as if everyone was there primarily to see him.  “I was detained by urgent matters of state.  I’m sure everyone understands.”

Oh, shut up.

Jacen didn’t even have the good sense to look apologetic and slip into his designated seat.  Instead, he continued to delay the whole ceremony while he walked up to randomly greet Queen Mother Tenel Ka who was still kneeling with the other Jedi.  Not only was it thoughtless and rude, Jacen was doing her the disservice of showing her special partiality while she seemed to be trying her best to keep a respectfully low profile.

“Thank you for coming, Queen Mother,” Jacen said, every word grating on Ben’s nerves.  This wasn’t Jacen’s party, and he didn’t have to thank anyone.  Dad would thank her for coming afterwards.  This was about Mom, for Dad’s benefit, not some political meet-and-greet.  “In these times, I know your journey couldn’t have been an easy one.”

“Master Skywalker was an extraordinary Jedi and an uncommon friend,” Tenel Ka replied, remaining in place.  Ben imagined she was also painfully aware of how tactless the conversation was at that moment, knowing that her personal regard for Dad bordered on reverence.  “We would have endured worse to be here.”  

Jacen continued, oblivious.  “I’m sure your presence here is a great comfort to Ben and . . . Master Skywalker.”

Why the pause? Ben wondered.  Why the pause, rodder?   Had Jacen been in the bad habit of neglecting to show Dad even the most basic form of respect?  Ben knew he had.  If Tenel Ka was quietly holding him to a higher standard, Ben could have kissed her.

She nodded, cold and perfunctory.  “We can only hope so.”

Ben drew several deep breaths, the only way he could tolerate the sound of Jacen’s smug voice.  Jacen’s time was coming, he told himself.  He’d finally overstepped, and soon he’d get what was coming to him.  That was the only comfort he could manage in that place and at that time that was supposed to be about Mom, Mom who was lying dead in front of him, but who was actually being upstaged by her probable killer.  Ben closed his eyes to stop his blood boiling.  

Then he opened them again, realizing in a flash of angry disbelief that Jacen had not finally taken his seat nor slipped in to kneel with the other Jedi, but was standing on the other side of Dad.   Ben actually saw red.  He used to think that was just something people said.

The other Masters were visibly upset, and the Force rumbled with it.  Fortunately, Master Hamner stepped up and made the first move before Ben could lose all self-control.  “Jacen,” he said, an unsubtle note of reproof in his voice, “you know you’re not a Master.  Your place is with the other Jedi Knights . . . should you care to assume it, Jedi Solo.”

“I think that’s where we misunderstand each other, Master Hamner,” Jacen said.  He pulled aside his cloak to reveal the fact that he wasn’t wearing a lightsaber, as if that made any difference.  “I’m not here as a Jedi.”

“You’re still standing in the wrong place,” Master Katarn insisted like the old soldier that he was, stepping up to reinforce Master Hamner.  “This is a Jedi funeral.”

“A funeral I’m attending as family,” Jacen explained, keeping his tone low to contrast the hostility of the Masters.  “I’m only here to comfort my cousin and uncle.”

“To comfort them?” Master Durron snarled, echoing Ben’s thoughts exactly.  “You expect us to believe that?”

I’m sorry, Mom, Ben was thinking, lamenting the circus unfolding all around them.  I’m so sorry.  We’ll make it up to you somehow.  Jacen won’t get away with this.

“It is the truth,” Jacen said.

Master Durron abandoned all attempts at diplomacy and grabbed Jacen by the arm to drag him away, eliciting an audible gasp from the crowd.

“Wait,” Luke said, lifting a hand to stop them.  It was the first word he had spoken all day.  “Jacen is welcome to stand with Ben and me.”

Master Durron was astonished, and not the only one.  “But Master Skywalker, Jacen is just using the funeral to—”

“It’s fine.”  Luke wasn’t having any argument, and those two words ended it.  He motioned the other Masters back to their places, and they obeyed.  “I want Jacen here.”

Ben was confused, and so was Jacen, if he knew him at all.  But Dad was serious, and he turned to offer his hand.  “Thank you for coming, Jacen.”

“Mara was a great Jedi and a loving aunt,” Jacen replied, accepting the gesture.  “I would have never missed the chance to show my respect for her.”

Ben said nothing.  For the moment, he was invisible, and he scrutinized every twitch of Jacen’s features.

“I’m glad,” Luke said.  “It’s time we healed this rift between us.”  Then he turned back toward Mara’s body.  “I think that must be what she’s trying to tell us.”

“Tell us?” Jacen asked, looking very nervous for an innocent man.

Ben looked, too, and after a moment recognized what everyone else saw, that Mom’s body had begun to glow, growing translucent, returning to the Force after all.

Luke put his hand on Jacen’s shoulder.  “She waited until we were together,” he said.  “I think there’s a message in that, don’t you?”

“Uh, yes . . . of course.”

No!   No, no, no, no!   Ben had to bite his tongue.  Mom was sending a very definite message, but Dad was missing it.  Ben immediately understood and agreed with her outspoken opinion that somehow Dad was still too innocent for his own good.  She was identifying her stanging murderer, not trying to encourage some nonsense reconciliation!

Of course Jacen was happy to play along.  “I think that must be exactly what Mara is telling us,” he was saying, squaring his shoulders as if he were imagining that heroic image all over tomorrow’s holozines.  “We can’t save the Alliance without working together.”

“Good point,” Luke said.  “I’ll try to remember that this time.”

“And so will I.  I promise.”

Ben wanted to throw up.  I’m sorry, Mom, he thought again.  Don’t worry about Dad.  I hear you.  I understand.  I’ll take care of Jacen.  I’ll take him for you.

And then he’d take his kriffing scalp for a trophy.  But Ben didn’t address that last part to his mother.

Meanwhile, Luke had been trying to get Saba’s attention.  He seemed more at peace and more in command of himself than he had all week, which was good, but the whole thing was still enormously frustrating.  The sooner they got this over with, the better.  “Maybe you should continue,” he was saying.  “I’d like to finish before Mara is completely gone.”

Completely gone . . .   Those words unexpectedly formed a lump in Ben’s throat, all that repressed sorrow stirred up by the exhausting effort of containing his anger.

“Yes, please forgive this one,” Saba apologized.  “She was . . . distracted.”  

Master Sebatyne seemed uncertain how to begin again.  Ben saw her looking over the audience, at them and Jacen, and back again, her scales ruffling in agitation.  Saba didn’t entirely understand human emotions like grief, but she understood outrage, and she wasn’t blind.  For a breathless moment, Ben wondered if she was going to use the occasion as an excuse to give Jacen a public verbal beating.  Kriff it, the funeral was already ruined, and he had a feeling Mom would approve.  

“Surely,” Saba finally began, her gravelly voice slightly more bombastic than before, “this one speaks for everyone here when she sayz how glad she is Colonel Solo could spare a few minutes to honor his noble aunt.”

Oh, here it comes, Ben thought, feeling the first glimmer of satisfaction he had felt for a long time.  The crowd didn’t miss the shift in tone, and reactions varied.  This would definitely make the holozines, and may not be quite the flattering return to grace Jacen intended.

“And it iz good that Colonel Solo arrives at this point in our remembrances, because the greatest gift Mara Jade Skywalker left us is the lesson of her life—a life that began under the darkest of shadowz.  As a young child, Mara was taken from her parentz and shaped into pure spy and assassin, and her keeper set her to doing terrible thingz when she was barely old enough for the hunt.  She did them because she believed they were right, because she believed in the dream of a single galaxy with one justice, a galaxy bound in peace by a single fist.”

It was hard not to see the comparison when she put it that way, and Saba was staring directly at Jacen now, on a hunt of a different kind.

“That fist belonged to Emperor Palpatine, and his dream was one filled with darkness.  It meant the deathz of billionz and the enslavement of trillionz, the end of freedom and the silencing of dissent.  It brought fear to those it claimed to protect and misery to those it pretended to serve.”

Funny how the people who screeched the loudest about peace always ended up the bloodiest.

“As Mara’s missionz carried her farther afield, she began to see the evil in her master’z dream.  For a time, she tried to carry on, telling herself that evil was necessary to bring peace, that some must suffer before all could live in harmony.”  Saba finally turned away from Jacen and back to the assembly.  “We all know how that ended.”

Yes, they did, and the crowd murmured accordingly.  Ben couldn’t believe how blind he had been.  Never again.  

Jacen was glaring now.

“After the Emperor died, there were those who would not relinquish his dark dream, who attempted to keep the Empire alive and even restore Palpatine’s clones to power.  Mara was not one of them.  After the Emperor’z death, she wandered the galaxy for many years searching for a new life, and she began to see more clearly what she had been, the evil she had done.  Then fate placed her life in the handz of a man she had once considered an enemy—a man whom she still felt compelled to kill—and during their difficult journey together, she began to understand that there was another way, a way filled with freedom and love and trust.”

In full swing, Saba extended her arm toward Luke.  “Mara once told this one that all it took to lift the Emperor’s veil from her eyes was a long walk in the forest with this man.  That after she had come to know Luke Skywalker, it was easy to step into the light.”

Oh, cripes.   Ben felt that lump begin to express itself in tears, and he quickly turned aside to wipe them clear.  Dad didn’t seem to care, just stood completely still and let the tears roll down his face, a final salute for Mom as the last vestiges of her disappeared.  

When she was gone, Luke closed his eyes and sighed, and Ben felt him lay his arm across his shoulders.  “She’s with the Force now, son,” he whispered.  “She’ll be with us always.”

“Yeah, Dad,” Ben said, grateful his voice was steady.  “I know.”

“And that is the lesson of Mara’s life,” Saba concluded.  “If we wish to live in goodness, all we need to iz open our heartz.  If we wish to bring justice and peace to the galaxy, all we need do iz step into the light.”

With that, Master Sebatyne left the podium, bowed to Luke and Ben while managing to exclude Jacen, and took her place at the foot of the empty pyre.  Rather than set it alight, since the body was gone, she led them all in a formal recitation of the Jedi Code.

Ben joined them, taking some comfort in that act of solidarity with beings who weren’t under Jacen’s thumb.  “There is no emotion; there is peace.  There is no ignorance; there is knowledge.  There is no passion; there is serenity.  There is no death; there is the Force.”

And there is justice, he thought.  There will absolutely be justice.

Jacen marched up to Saba immediately.  “A touching eulogy, Master Sebatyne,” he said, taking no care to disguise the edge in his voice.  “Very instructive.  I’ll remember it for a very long time.”

Threats?  Really?

“Good,” Saba replied, unbothered.  “This one only hopes you come to understand it as well.”

A gasp and a titter swept through the near spectators, so Jacen had to respond.  “Your humor has always been a mystery to me, Master Sebatyne,” he said, now looking as angry as he probably felt.  “It’s a wonder I haven’t taken offence before this.”

“And I hope you’ll forgive us now,” Luke said, stepping in to smother the conflict.  “None of us are quite ourselves today.  Please don’t let that stop you from joining Ben and me after the ceremony.  I meant what I said about healing the rift between us.”

Ugh, no.   Ben couldn’t wait to have Jacen out of his sight, and having to endure a social hour with him, chatting over cheese and crackers, sounded horrible.

“That would be best for everyone,” Jacen said.  He looked at Ben.  Nauseated, Ben shrugged and looked away.  Jacen’s gaze lingered, but fortunately not for long.  “I’m afraid I can’t join you today, Master Skywalker,” he said.  “I’m due topside earliest.”

Luke frowned.  “Maneuvers?”

Jacen looked impatient, and glared at the assembled Masters.  “No, I’m accompanying the Fourth Fleet into action.  I’m surprised the Council didn’t tell you.  I requested StealthXs.”

Ben bit his tongue again and tasted blood.  The ceremony wasn’t even dismissed yet, and already Jacen was begging off for more important things, posing as the great war hero, berating Dad to get involved.  It reminded him too much of the first time he had killed someone, had actually cut a living man into pieces, and rather than offer any words of reassurance Jacen had grumbled at him for failing to search the body.  Ben had grown up hearing stories of Jacen’s compassion, his sensitivity, and his empathy.  Now he was just cruel, and he seemed to have nothing but contempt for those who were still compassionate and sensitive.  He had tried his level best to teach Ben that same cruelty.

Well, Jacen didn’t have to worry about getting any compassion from him.

Luke cast a questioning look at Saba, who just nodded, confirming Jacen’s request.  “We didn’t think you should be disturbed,” she explained.

Dad’s face fell, as if he blamed himself for the Order’s failure to respond.  Dad always blamed himself.  It’s not your fault, Ben longed to say.  It’s him!   He knew he’d need to pursue his investigation alone, if for no other reason than he wouldn’t be able to keep quiet much longer if he didn’t get away from Dad.

“You can fill me in later,” Luke decided, waving it off.

“We’ll be happy to,” Master Hamner said, shooting a sharp glance at Jacen.  “There are a lot of things you need to know.”

Ben was on his guard again, and Luke stiffened.  Jacen could have been made of stone.

Luke turned back to Jacen, choosing to tackle one thing at a time, especially while all the guests were still watching them.  “I understand—duty calls.  But I hope you’ll think about what happened here today.”

“I will be thinking about it,” Jacen promised.  “You can be sure of that.”

“Good.  May the Force be with you.”

“And with you.”

Yes, go.   Ben didn’t watch as Jacen walked— stomped —out, but he could feel him moving other hapless guests out of his way with the Force.  Dad watched him go, and the furrows on his brow only deepened.

Master Hamner took to the lectern to officially conclude the ceremony, hopelessly derailed though it was.  “Thank you all for helping us to celebrate the life of Mara Jade Skywalker,” he announced, the crowd beginning to seethe with people ready to move on.  “Let us keep her example in mind during the difficult days to come.  To conclude our memorial, all are welcome to join us at a remembrance feast in the Hall of Peace.”

Rather than go directly to the reception, Luke moved toward the courtyard’s rear exit, signalling for Ben and the Masters to follow him.  Ben took that as an encouraging sign.  Dad was still inwardly miserable, but his mind was clearing and he seemed ready to get back to work.

When they were all gathered beyond prying eyes among the ferns of the rear lobby, Luke first rounded on Saba.  “Was that really necessary?” he demanded.  “We’re not going to bring Jacen back into the fold by antagonizing him in public.”

“We’re not going to bring Jacen back at all,” Saba insisted.  “Jacen is beyond saving.”

“That’s not your call,” Luke reminded her.  “Mara held on to her body for a reason.  She was trying to tell us that if we want to save the Alliance, we have to work with him, not against him.”

“I don’t think so.”  Master Durron wasn’t convinced, and probably still wished he had dragged Jacen out at the start.  “Saba’s right.  Jacen was just using Mara’s funeral to make himself look more important to the Order.”

“Don’t you think I know that?” Luke asked.  Okay, Ben amended to himself, Dad wasn’t innocent so much as grotesquely optimistic.   “It still gives us an opening—and it will be better for the Alliance, for the Jedi, and for the galaxy if we guide Jacen rather than fight him.”

“No, Dad, it won’t,” Ben spoke up, unable to keep quiet any more.  “In fact, I don’t think Mom meant the message for you at all—if there even was a message.”

Luke turned to him, confused.  “Of course there was a message.  Why else would your mother wait until Jacen arrived to return her body to the Force?”

The temptation to tell him was almost overwhelming, building inside him like pressure in an air tank.  Ben just shrugged and looked away.  “I don’t know, but I don’t think she was telling us to trust Jacen.”

Dad’s eyes narrowed, suspicious now.  “Ben, what aren’t you telling me?”

Ben felt it, that luminous gravity emanating from his father that might have easily drawn the truth out of him.  He forced his mind to be calm, maintaining that thin veneer of manufactured sincerity, recalling everything Jacen had taught him about successful deception in the Force.  Then he looked his father in the eye, and lied.  “Nothing.”

Luke didn’t seem entirely convinced.  Ben was sure he hadn’t let anything slip in the Force, but parents had instincts that had nothing to do with being Jedi.  Ben made himself numb, masking the festering guilt.  Luke let it go for the moment, turning instead to Master Horn.  “Is anyone going to tell me what’s going on?”

There were many awkward glances exchanged among the Masters, and their continued solicitude seemed to be trying Luke’s patience.  Another encouraging sign.  “You said you had a lot to tell me,” Luke reminded Master Hamner.  “Start telling.”

“We didn’t want to upset you during the funeral,” Master Hamner explained.  “But a unit of GAG troopers tried to arrest Han and Leia.  That’s why they didn’t make the funeral.”

“They let GAG catch sight of them?” Luke asked with a scowl.  “The Solos?”

“It happened inside the Temple,” Master Hamner specified.  “Less than an hour ago.”

Luke’s scowl vanished as he drew himself up in affronted disbelief, a look Ben was pretty sure was mirrored on his own face.  “A GAG squad, in here?”

“On Level Six,” Master Durron said.  “The Solos were coming in from the Ministry of Justice mezzanine.”

“Why didn’t anyone tell me about this?” Luke demanded.  He was on the verge of being angry, but the way the Masters were still frowning and shifting uncomfortably, Ben thought they might still be having second thoughts about telling Dad at all.  Forty minutes ago he’d been barely functional, and now he was trying to cold start all drives at once.  Luke seemed to realize that, and his frustration dissipated into a frown of self-recrimination.  “Forget I asked,” he decided.  “Where are they now?”

Master Horn was the one with security comms in his ear.  “We don’t know, he admitted.  “They escaped into Fellowship Plaza, and Leia’s been Force-flashing the security cams.”

“Not the Solos,” Luke clarified.  “I mean the GAG squad.”

“They’re gone, chasing Han and Leia.”

“Can we be sure?” Luke persisted.  “If we don’t know where Han and Leia are—”

“How do we know the GAG unit iz still chasing them?” Saba suggested, understanding the logic.  “You think the arrest attempt was a diversion?”

Wouldn’t put anything past Jacen, Ben thought.  If he was brazen enough to stomp all over Mom’s funeral and violate the sanctuary of the Temple, taking drastic action against the Council wasn’t too far fetched.

“I think it’s a possibility,” Luke said.  “The way I’ve been hiding from my responsibilities—”

“You haven’t been hiding from anything,” Master Hamner protested.  “Your grief is more than understandable.”

“Thanks,” Luke said, sincere though a bit flat.  “But the fact is, I’ve left us vulnerable.  With everyone focused on finding Mara’s killer and worrying about me, there’ll never be a better time to cripple the Jedi.”

“Then we’d better find that unit fast.”  Master Durron, always the first to jump, headed for the lift.  “If we don’t hurry, there’ll be a whole battalion—”

“It’s okay,” Master Horn insisted, catching him by the arm and pulling him back.  “Temple security spotted them.  They’re outside, escorting Jacen across Fellowship Plaza.”

An unexpected reprieve?  Ben was still tingling with resentment, and had almost been ready to welcome a hostile invasion during Mara’s remembrance feast.  If he couldn’t take Jacen himself, it surely wouldn’t hurt to have Dad and all the Masters at his back.  But maybe not today.

Master Sebatyne was gnashing her teeth, and Ben supposed he wasn’t the only one spoiling for a fight.  “Jacen changed his mind about seizing the Temple?”

“Who knows?  We have reports of a lot of heavy hoversleds moving away from the Temple—but that doesn’t mean they were carrying GAG troopers.”

Most likely they were, Ben knew.  Jacen had actually been ready to attempt the second coup of his career.  What had changed his mind, they might never know.  If Saba hadn’t called him out so plainly, if Dad had seemed a bit more apathetic, if there had been fewer guests . . . or if Dad hadn’t offered to publicly reconcile with him.  Ben’s stomach clenched as he realized that had to be the reason.  No one could roll in and depose someone he’d just recognized as an ally, especially not after it had been witnessed by so many influential members of his own government.  

For whatever it was worth, Ben decided, Dad’s innocence or optimism or whatever it was certainly had its place.  Maybe it was the Force.  It spoke through Dad from time to time, sometimes in complete sentences, but usually in more subtle ways.  Maybe his misinterpretation of Mom’s message had been intended, what Dad had needed to believe at the time to unknowingly prevent a disaster.  Maybe that was okay, because the more obvious meaning had been meant for Ben all along.  

One message, two different reads to accomplish two different purposes at once.  This Jedi business could be heady stuff.

But that still left Jacen, who would just shelve the idea until a later date.  He would still come for them eventually.  “So what are we going to do about it?” Ben asked, prodding the Masters for some direction.  “We can’t let him get away with trying to arrest us.”

Dad turned and looked at him with an unexpected expression that was half delight and half amusement.  “We, Ben?” he asked.  “I thought you wanted Jacen to be your Master.”

Ben felt himself blush, which just made him angrier.  “I might have made a mistake,” he allowed.  “I’m entitled.  I’m fourteen.”

Dad didn’t laugh at him, and barely even smiled, but there was an overwhelming sense of what Ben could only describe as solidarity about him.  “You don’t have to be fourteen to make mistakes,” he said.  “I’ve been making plenty.”

“If you say so,” Ben said, shrugging it off.  “And that’s not an answer to my question.  You’re not going to let him get away with this, are you?”

Luke thought about it for a minute, and then his frown twisted itself into something almost sly.  “Actually, I think we will.”

“What?” the Masters chorused.

“This is a poor time for jokes, Master Skywalker,” Saba protested.  “We have serious troubles.”

“That’s true,” Luke agreed, also perfectly serious.  “And so is what I said to Jacen about working together.  Somebody’s got to take the first step.”

“Right into a trap,” Ben muttered.

“Maybe.”  Dad put a hand on his shoulder, and for the first time in what seemed like a very long time, there seemed to be more confidence in his touch than misery, almost the way things used to be.  “But Jacen isn’t the only one who knows how to set a trap,” he said, turning them all toward the reception in the far hall.  “And it might be nice to surprise him for a change.”

Our journey through Legacy of the Force continues in In the Shadow of His Wings, Chapter 19.

Chapter Text

It felt strangely satisfying to be back in the flight suit.  It was standard StealthX-black, not the nostalgic orange, but in that latest chapter of life when everything seemed new and disorienting, Luke felt it realigning him along one of his first and most basic identities, that of a pilot.  

It was also a melancholy adjustment.  Flying had been one of those things he loved doing most with Mara, and now whatever wingman he ended up with would feel hopelessly inadequate.  He would miss that perfect synchrony, the ability to breathe and maneuver as one, letting her thoughts guide his hands and vice versa, trading control between heartbeats as the occasion demanded.  He had been wearing an identical flight suit when she died, the day everything had come crashing down.  

One solitary week ago.

The hangar was echoing with the whine of warming thrusters as Jedi pilots and their astromechs prepared for launch.  Their wing was seventy-two strong, and if Jacen was doing his job properly they would still be in time to offer a significant contribution to the space battle over Balmorra.  They didn’t have much choice now that Jacen was holding the academy younglings for ransom, but the hope was that this demonstration of good faith on the Order’s part would persuade Colonel Solo to recall his “protective” troops from Ossus.  Perhaps that was a fool’s hope, but it was worth trying.  Almost anything was worth trying before resorting to violence, but Luke knew he would have to draw the line somewhere.  He was trusting himself to recognize the time when it came, and praying he would have the fortitude to do it.

He was aware of dozens of those Jedi pilots offering him salutes and shallow bows as he strode past them toward his own craft.  His reputation was public record, and flying under Luke Skywalker’s personal command was considered an honor.  They were all highly skilled, and he regretted perceiving them as inadequate.  It was just a matter of perspective, he supposed.  It wasn’t as though he didn’t value them or regret that some of them wouldn’t be fortunate enough to make it back.  

War was such a waste.

Artoo tweedled at him over the noise, already hard at work in his socket, and Luke gave him a wave.  Almost time to go.

Time for you to do one of the six or eight things you do best . . .

Mara’s voice came back to him unbidden, a fragment of memory from when they had been preparing to launch into that initial engagement over Corellia, just months ago.  Luke chose to smile rather than weep.  Life would probably be full of conscious choices like that from now on.  He also remembered what he had said then, asking why she was letting him go without his traditional put-down, and accusing her of going soft.  He would miss those little affectionate barbs, that strange inverted love language that turned insults into endearments.

Shut up and fly, farmboy.

He wondered if it would always be like that, his deep memories providing banter and commentary to fill the silence.  Maybe even that would fade over time.  

Luke would perform to the best of his ability, as always, but he was aware that his whole heart wasn’t in it.  He was tired, discouraged, and probably two exceptionally bad days removed from a nervous breakdown.  Maybe he finally was getting too old for this.  The possibility of retiring somewhere and leaving the Order to the younger generation was an increasingly attractive prospect, but it would be bad form to leave behind his unfinished business without at least trying to see it through.  Lumiya had been unfinished business enough for a lifetime.  If he did nothing else to honor Mara’s memory, he would at least finish clearing up the mess Lumiya had left in her wake, and that meant getting Jacen off the Order’s back.  He’d also like to see Mara’s killer brought to justice, even if he had to recuse himself from the process.  Maybe then he’d give himself permission to fade from the histories.  

Artoo prodded him back to the present with a trilling blast of protest.  All around him, Jedi were leaping into their cockpits, and the hangar doors were grinding open.

Before he could do the same, Luke saw Ben jogging toward him through the rows of starfighters.  A constant source of worry and heartache, that boy was the most precious thing he had left in the galaxy, and Luke was determined not to fail him anymore.  He just hoped Ben could understand that.

“Hey,” Ben said as he slowed to a stop.  “Just wanted to see you off.  You know, say goodbye and good luck.”

“Thanks.”  Luke pulled off his glove and accepted the hand Ben offered, his perception shifting wildly between seeing his son as the boy he used to be and the man he was quickly becoming.  “I hoped you would.”

Ben smiled and dropped his gaze for a moment, letting the masculine affection roll off him until he knew how else to handle it.  He heaved a deep breath and looked up again, resolved to say what he had to say.  “I’m proud of you, Dad,” he said.  “Really, I am.  But I need to confess up front that I probably won’t be staying put in the Temple while you’re gone.”

Luke heaved a breath of his own.  “I kind of expected you wouldn’t,” he admitted, inwardly regretting how little control he had over Ben.  Maybe they could still correct that, work on instilling an adult’s discipline rather than a child’s obedience.  At least he seemed compelled to be honest.   

“I just have some things I need to look into,” Ben explained, “some things I need to do.  Do you trust me?”

Luke frowned.  “I probably shouldn’t,” he said, “but I do.”

Ben smiled again, and this time didn’t feel obliged to look away.  “Thanks.  I don’t know where I might have to go, or even if I’ll need to leave Coruscant.  I just want you to know that—no matter what you might hear—I’m on your team.  I’m not going back to Jacen, I promise.”

That was a relief, although Luke knew Ben was chafing to get out there and track down his mother’s murderer.  Maybe he should have left orders to confine the kid to quarters until they got back, but Ben had already proven capable of looking after himself, and this was probably something he felt compelled to do, no less than Luke had felt compelled to eliminate Lumiya.  He didn’t have much ground to stand on when a fourteen-year-old was going about it in a calmer and more methodical way than he had.  

“Just be careful,” Luke pleaded.  “Try not to get killed or arrested, okay?”

Ben almost laughed.  “Wow, those are some pretty generous parameters.  I’ll do my best.”

“Well, I’d mention clean socks and underwear, but I assumed you were getting too old for that.”

“What about blowing stuff up?”

Luke grimaced.  “Avoid it if you can.”

The comm on his suit crackled.  “We’re ready when you are, Master Skywalker,” Corran prompted him, which was just a polite way of telling him he was late.

“I gotta go,” Luke apologized.  “We should make some time when I get back, take an afternoon and just talk, or whatever you want.”

Ben nodded, biting his lip and shoving his hands into his pockets, swallowing some very conflicted emotions.  “Yeah, I’d like that,” he said.  “There are some things I should probably tell you.”

That pinged a note of warning in Luke’s mind, but there was no time to pursue it now.  As usual, Ben felt persistently just out of reach, close enough to touch but too elusive to pin down.  But that gap seemed to be closing.  Luke knew he would have to coax rather than pull Ben closer.  They would absolutely have to make time for that soon.

Ben took a step back and tilted his chin toward the StealthX.  “Go get ‘em, Dad.”

Burning stars, he loved that boy.   

Luke nodded and gave him a casual parting salute, then slipped on his helmet and vaulted into the open cockpit.  Artoo was anxious to be gone, flooding the interface screen with a cascade of status reports and commentary as Luke strapped in and got settled.  “All right, Artoo,” he complained, needing the internal comms clear, “we’re going, we’re going.”  

The canopy sealed around him, and the ground control crew positioned themselves ahead with their glowing beacons, silhouetted against the sunlight outside.  The fighter thrummed to life in his hands, thrusters firing and lifting off the ground, defying the constraints of planetary gravity.  It was a thrill every time.  

He wasn’t dead yet.  Time to show Jacen he still had a little fight left in him.

“Jade Leader to Jade Squadron,” Luke said into the open channel, hailing the first wave.  “Ready to launch on my mark.”

Theme song: LITTLE FIGHT LEFT - Tommee Profitt x Fleurie x Jung Youth

Our journey through Legacy of the Force continues in Legends Are For the Brave, Chapter 38.

AMDG