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The first thing Mara thinks when she sees him is that he is broken.
Leia doesn’t see it, so grateful to have him back that she doesn’t look closely. Han might catch glimpses of it. Han is a canny old smuggler at heart still and knows better than to accept bravado at face value. But Han has known and loved Luke for too long, and knows how much of Leia’s happiness depends upon Luke’s redemption. It is easier for him to see what he wants to see.
Mara is the newcomer to the group. Mara isn’t blinded by sentiment. She sees the disconnect in his eyes and the lingering bleakness behind his smile and she knows what it means.
She has seen Palpatine break people before, to varying degrees. She has lived it herself. She recognizes it now.
Luke speaks of the grand things ahead, of the goals he once held dear, and she knows that none of it will ever happen.
Mara avoids him on the way back from Byss. It’s a challenge; the ship isn’t a large one. She’s reminded unpleasantly of the trip to Wayland, when she attempted to do the same thing on the Falcon .
It’s different now. Then, she avoided him because of that last command, the Emperor’s voice in her head, demanding his death. Then, Luke had obligingly avoided her in his turn, and even in her irritation over his humoring her, she had been grateful.
Now she avoids him because she isn’t at all sure that he doesn’t still hear the Emperor’s voice in his head, demanding all of their deaths. Now he doesn’t avoid her, but rather appears in her path at every turn, smiling that hollow smile, speaking useless words about how good it is to see her, how much of a help she will be in rebuilding the Jedi.
She keeps her expression impassive and quickly excuses herself and wonders how even Leia can believe this will ever come to pass, that Luke could still be capable of such work, that the New Republic would let him make the attempt after leading a military strike against them, under the orders of the man who brought down their galactic predecessor.
Well. A clone of the man. She doesn’t know how far she believes that it was the same person; that even if what Luke says about Sith arts and transference of consciousness and all that rot is true, that it could truly be a replica of the Emperor she had known. Perhaps it was something close. Perhaps the clone had been driven mad by the process and believed himself to be the real thing, like C’baoth before him. If the very concept of what Luke claims is in fact true, perhaps it was some other long-departed Sith Lord lying in wait in the netherworld of the Force for just such an opportunity, masquerading as Palpatine.
Mara has lived too many lies to unhesitatingly believe this story.
It almost doesn’t matter. The Emperor reborn, a faulty copy, a madman, an imposter. Whatever it was, it had possessed the power and hatefulness of the dark, and Luke—who should have known better, who saw what it did to his own father, who faced it down himself and held true to his integrity, who tried so hard to help her break free from the same sort of legacy—had willingly embraced it, gloried in it, lost himself to it. Whether it was a desire to protect others or an arrogance born of his own earlier victories against just this sort of darkness or something else entirely, he had accepted and made use of Sith teachings and set himself in opposition to those he had once fought beside.
If once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny.
He had told her of the old Jedi Master’s words long ago. At the time, Mara was almost amused by his tactlessness in repeating those words to her, who had been shaped and commanded by a consummate master of said dark path, even if, as she scoured her memories, she thought she could honestly say that she had never quite walked it herself. Vader had; perhaps Palpatine had wanted something different from her. It would have been entirely in character for him to believe that he could hold both dark and light (or a reasonable facsimile of light, anyway) in the palm of his hand and order them both to dance to his tune.
Now she thinks back on those words, and shivers. Luke, she rather thinks, believes that the maxim means that he has never truly been on the dark side at all, because here he is, having rejected it; because if he had been dark then wouldn’t he be still?
Mara thinks it’s not so dogmatic as that. A bad choice can dominate your destiny in many ways. She knows this better than most. She thinks that Luke is about to learn this.
It isn’t fear, exactly, that she feels when she thinks about these things. One of the Emperor’s earliest lessons to her had been that fear had but one purpose: to rob you of power; therefore it could never be allowed to gain any hold on you. And Mara had always been an excellent student, so much so that by her seventeenth year she had been confidently giving orders to even Moffs and Grand Admirals.
So no, it isn’t fear. Mara Jade does not fear; therefore she is powerful. Even now, even here, even among people she had not so long ago considered friends, and now does not fully trust.
But she can’t find a name for what she feels, either. And that unsettles her, almost as much as the way that Luke is now so like and yet unlike himself.
And so she avoids him as much as possible, and tries not to think about what comes next.
The trial is short, as these things go. She suspects that this is very deliberate on the part of the New Republic government, who surely wishes to have it over and done with as soon as possible. It’s not every day that Luke Skywalker, last of the Jedi Knights, known to all the galaxy as an undisputed hero, goes on public trial for treason, and the galaxy follows each development obsessively.
The sludge news industry is overjoyed. Mara employs all the skills learned over a lifetime of professional subterfuge to evade their reporters and turns her eyes from the headlines.
Leia, she knows, isn’t as shocked by the trial as she might have been, back when both the escape from Byss and the reclamation of her brother were new and she could tell herself that all would be as it had been. There were moments, on the way back, when their eyes met and Mara knew that Leia’s initial joy was giving way to the same dread that crept along Mara’s own spine.
Leia is, however, as adamant as she has ever been. And Leia is not an opponent to be underestimated. Mara thinks that it’s just possible, even now, that Leia might win out.
Mara thinks that such an outcome might be the worst possible thing that could happen.
She passes along the request from the New Republic government to Karrde. She doesn’t need to be told not to speak of it to Leia, or to avoid —continue avoiding— Luke until the request is fulfilled. She finds this an easy task; Leia is consumed with building a defense, and Luke is under house arrest. She hopes that Karrde arrives before Luke decides to stop cooperating.
Karrde does. By the time the ysalamiri are stationed around his apartment—the Palace guard places them there in the dead of night, when the security cameras confirm that Luke is asleep, just in case—it’s far too late for Luke to object. The doors are locked, a full platoon of guard droids and another of sentient guards are in place, and there is no way even for Luke to get past it all.
Probably. Mara hopes.
Leia is far less furious over this development than Mara had expected.
Mara tries not to think about what that implies.
Mon Mothma’s calm is unshakable, even now. Mara had reluctantly admired that calm once, back in her Imperial days, when Mothma was a traitor with a death mark on her head. Now, deep down, she wants to scream and rage at the former senator and current New Republic Chief of State for that despicable calm as she reads the sentence aloud for the holocams and reporters, both serious and sludge, who fill the press room near to bursting in order to hear the verdict.
Guilty: of high treason, of waging war on the New Republic, of siding with our greatest adversaries…
The words go on, but Mara no longer hears them, an indistinct buzzing filling her mind instead. Only a few years ago she would have rejoiced over this development. Now…
Now she doesn’t know what she feels.
Not fear, though she can feel variations of that emotion in those around her. Some are afraid of Luke himself. She does not blame them, though she doesn’t share that fear. Some are afraid of what today will mean for the New Republic as a whole. This is also a reasonable fear, but Mara doesn’t share it, either. She has survived the fall of a galactic government before; she can do it again if need be.
The sentence—
Her attention snaps back to Mon Mothma, still calm, though the facade cracks here, just a little. Probably few in the crowd notice, but Mara knows all about putting a mask over her true feelings, and she recognizes the signs that someone else’s mask is slipping.
Little wonder: Mothma has known Luke since he first joined the Rebellion, and Leia for far longer than that. However good her mask might be, Mara knows what lies beneath.
—life imprisonment. No appeals will be heard.
There had been those who’d argued strenuously for execution. Until this very moment, Mara had been unsure which side would win out. It was almost a victory.
A victory wherein someone who had been her friend, someone who had trusted and defended and believed in her when every scrap of logic said that he should stay well clear, someone who Mara had begun to think could even be more than a friend in time, will be locked away for the rest of his life.
She will never stand beside him on the Palace roof and watch the city lights with him again, never spar with him again, never argue the nuances of the Force with him again, never laugh with him again. She will never again feel her spirits unaccountably lift when she notices the affection in his eyes.
His family will be shattered. His dream of rebuilding the Jedi is laughably lost.
It is, she thinks, more than she could have hoped for. It is, she thinks, entirely survivable.
She sits, quietly listening to the rest of the formal words that must be spoken on this day, and maintains her own imperturbable mask, and thinks that it’s not just Mon Mothma at whom she wants to scream and rage; it is Luke, it is Palpatine, it is those who argued for Luke’s death and those who argued against it. It is the whole damn galaxy.
Mara will not break, not even now. She is not afraid. She is strong. She has been broken before and she will never be broken again, no matter the cost.
She tries not to think about the hollow echo where her heart should be.
Of course the designated prison is built on Myrkr. Mara laughs mirthlessly when she hears the news. Karrde looks at her cautiously. He’s begun to do that lately. Mara doesn’t care very much.
She thinks that she will resign from the liaison position. There is nothing left for her here on Coruscant.
Mara knows that Leia and Han visit him over the years. She knows that the time between those visits grows longer and longer. She knows that they never take the children. She does not ask them what they find on Myrkr.
“Would you like to go with them?” Karrde gently asks her one day. “I spoke with Leia yesterday; they have a visit scheduled for next month. If you asked, I’m sure they would take you along.”
Mara looks up from her desk, meeting his eyes for the first time since he entered her cabin. “I have work here.”
“I could spare you. It would only be a few days, including travel time.”
Mara thinks about Myrkr, about her hate, about the forest, about how Luke came to check on her after the crash when he should have run instead, about how he saved her from the vornskr when he should have let her die. She thinks of how he was still pure then—not untouched by darkness, not after all of his experiences in life, but still consciously rejecting it.
She thinks about the Luke she saw after Byss, about the unnatural brightness in his eyes, about the emptiness of his smile, about the meaningless words he mouthed about rebuilding the Jedi.
She thinks about how Palpatine brought down the Old Republic and the Jedi Order with his scheming. She thinks about how Luke deliberately chose to learn at the feet of that man. She thinks about what Luke can do with his own power and that knowledge, if he has stopped believing those meaningless words from so long ago.
She thinks about what it would be like to live under ysalamiri influence for years, after knowing the feel and the taste and the comfort of the Force. She thinks about what this could do to someone like Luke, who had been so very attuned to it. She thinks about how Palpatine always said that revenge was the best motivation.
“Why would I do that?” she asks Karrde, turning her eyes back to her datapad.
There is a pause. When he speaks, Karrde’s voice is deceptively casual.
“For old times’ sake, perhaps.”
Mara smiles without thought, feeling the brittleness of the expression. “There’s nothing to commemorate.”
She does not watch as Karrde quietly makes his exit.
Mara visits Leia and Han still, on occasion. The relationship isn’t exactly what it had been, or what it could have once become, but the friendship between them remains. They have been through too much to entirely let go.
Jaina and Jacen are newly thirteen on this visit, and teasing their brother about being teenagers while he is not. Why Leia chose to give her youngest the name of Anakin, Mara will never know. Mara hopes that the name does not become an unbearable burden to the boy.
She is grateful that he isn’t named for his uncle.
The children know her as Aunt Mara and are always pleased to see her. She is pleased to see them in her turn and brings presents: a starship model for Jaina, a datacard on rare animals for Jacen, a new hydrospanner for Anakin. They thank her and hug her and tell her of their studies, and eventually Han drawls that Mom and Aunt Mara will never get to talk at all while surrounded by this pack of hellions and who wants Corellian fried ice cream? He shepherds them all out of the apartment, and Mara and Leia are left alone.
They sip their caf and discuss the current news and their respective jobs and the atmosphere is comfortable and relaxed.
Mara knows that her next words will shatter that. She glances casually toward the large picture window dominating the Solos’ apartment and the familiar cityscape beyond, allowing Leia a measure of privacy, so that if her accomplished politician mask slips, at least no one will witness it.
“Will you train them?”
The silence goes beyond mere words and into the Force itself. So far as Mara knows, Leia hasn’t actively used the Force since Luke’s imprisonment, but passive use is a hard habit to break, and reading the surface emotions of others is a constant for a trained Force-sensitive. Mara keeps her own shields steady and her eyes on the window as she feels Leia’s shields slide into place.
She’s rusty. Shields have been one of Mara’s specialties for as long as she can remember; she can tell when someone else has almost forgotten how to use theirs.
But then, when would Leia have cause to use shields since Byss? There is no one left but the two of them who have any training that could ever need to be blocked.
But Leia is blocking her now.
Mara isn’t surprised. She continues watching the traffic patterns and does not press.
“They’re far better off without it,” Leia says eventually. There is an edge to her voice that Mara knows. She knew it even before she knew Leia, because Leia was a senator once and was a New Republic councilor after that, when Mara was still on the run from the remnants of the Empire. Mara has heard this edge in many of Leia’s public speeches.
She knows that it means that Leia will not back down.
This, too, is unsurprising. The ghost of the Luke they had once known and all his potential wafts between them, a shared wound that will never heal and of which they will never speak.
“You disagree?” Leia asks, her voice under better control now, the edge blunted, as though this is a normal conversation.
“Not at all,” Mara replies softly. For what had Force-sensitivity ever brought her either, save for pain? She has endured the loss of her own family, a lifetime of servitude based on lies, the loss of perhaps the best friend she has ever had, all because she is one of the few born with the ability to touch the Force.
She, like Leia, suspects that the Solo children will be better off leaving that part of themselves dormant.
(She, like Leia, shudders at the thought of what could happen if they do not.)
She cannot quite suppress the pang in her heart, though. Things could have been so different.
Or maybe not. Maybe that had been a lie too. Mara has lived through so many lies and catastrophes that she can no longer tell what is true or certain.
Mara takes her leave not long after this discussion. She needed to know, and Leia will forgive her eventually. Leia understands the questions behind the question. Leia understands that Mara has lost much, too. The next time Mara visits, they will once again be comfortable and friendly.
Just as if nothing had ever happened.
Just as if Byss had never happened.
Just as if both of them aren’t haunted every day by the memory of the frenetic look behind his eyes and the grotesque mockery of the smile that reflected something inside that was no longer entirely him.
Just as if both of them do not think of him (and the life he now lives and the person he now is) every single day.
In orbit around Coruscant, Mara inputs the coordinates for Karrde’s main base into her navicomputer, then pauses to sweep her gaze over the planet. It is a blazing collection of lights that never go dim, a surge of energy in the Force reflecting the countless lives upon it.
Mara notes this clinically, just as she notes how there is no corresponding emotional lift accompanying the observation. She remembers that once there was. She remembers the undertone of joy in his sense as he taught her how to tap into the stream of vitality that such a wellspring of life generated within the Force. She remembers the light in his eyes, and how very different this outlook was from the entirely practical ways that Palpatine had taught her to use the Force.
She remembers the hope she felt then.
Mara is not afraid, never afraid, she can and will stand strong and survive anything. She always has.
She wonders, though, if they really did win at Byss. She wonders if her own smile, when it appears, is now as empty as his was then.
The navicomputer beeps, and Mara turns her eyes away from the planet, a glittering ball of forever light, to her console, then out to space, where the stars stand as lonely beacons against a vast and fathomless darkness that always wins. After all, eventually even stars burn out.
Mara pulls the lever that engages her hyperdrive, and leaves the light far behind her.