"Echoes of Always" - Luke/Mara - Chapter 12, April 6

[ginchy]

Posting twice a week makes me nervous!!!  ;)



Chapter 12

After a drawn-out moment Luke squeezed her hand and let it go, clearing this throat.  Mara’s vow to help him get back to Ben had given him new hope that he would get home to his son after all.   Mara turned back to the ship’s navicomputer and he studied her, watching her hands as she checked the course, a matter of rote.   He liked watching her work, the quiet moment between them a comfortable one.   But thinking of Ben led him to think of Mara’s children.

“What do we do when Ben and Betrys come home?”  He wasn’t just asking to make small-talk, though part of him could admit that he just liked saying Betrys’s name aloud.

Mara barely faltered in her movements, but Luke noticed a tightening around her eyes.  He could understand.  Seeing him was a shock to her and even with the joy she had found in being with him, she didn’t want to bring that pain on her children.

“Let’s take you before the Council first,” Mara said, turning in her seat to look at him.  “Then we’ll make the hard decisions.”

Luke nodded in acceptance and saw those lines around Mara’s eyes diminish again.  He picked up his robe from the back of the chair and shrugged it on, the cockpit a bit cool for his liking.   He pawed at a strange lump in his pocket, realization dawning as he pulled Niargen’s cup from it. He looked once more at the lines that still seemed in some way familiar.

“Maybe the map will lead you home.” Mara was eyeing the cup, too.

He nodded, holding it up for her inspection.  “I should just throw it away, but something about the ‘map’ is familiar.   Wishful thinking, probably.”

“Maybe,” Mara said.  “But I’ve been thinking…what if the map wasn’t a map of Creish Station after all?”

“What do you mean?”  Luke peered at the cup, trying to look at it with new eyes.  “That maybe it’s a map of Coruscant or someplace else?”

“Exactly.  It could be anywhere.  He didn’t tell us where to begin.  We just assumed it began at the asylum.”

“And now we just have to find our starting point,” Luke said absently.  He was opening himself to the Force as he spoke, staring at the cup and trying to reconcile the lines and points.

As he opened himself widely to the Force and the energy expanded outward, he was again confronted with that same feeling he had during his first twenty-four hours in this galaxy.   The feeling that something was off, different here than in his own time and place.    His heartbeat accelerated as he followed the feeling, stretching out with the Force over great distances only to encounter something dark.

It was an oily, suffocating feeling that he hadn’t sensed for years.  Something he never wanted to sense again.   He took a deep breath, stifled as the darkness seemed to recognize him, seemed to grow a face and turn to look at him.    The lines on the cup merged with the place from which the darkness originated, and a single word fell from Luke’s lips-

“Byss.”

**

Luke blinked, pulling out of the Force.  His lungs felt constricted and tight and he struggled to breathe.

“Luke?”

He turned and saw Mara’s concerned face.   Just the sight of her allowed him to expel a harsh breath and calm his mind, if not his heart.

As the darkness dissipated, his vision, or whatever it had been, started to seem less real.  He wondered if he could have imagined it, wished that he had imagined it.  “I’m okay,” he said, reassuring her.

The skeptical look on Mara’s face was almost enough to make him smile.   “What did you see?   And what did you mean by ‘Byss’?”

Luke shivered at that word on her lips, realizing that she hadn’t felt the same darkness he had.   The lack of their Force bond was unsettling.   Now it was up to him to tell her about Byss and all of the baggage that went with it.

And he was suddenly unsure of so many things.  In his galaxy, Byss had been one of Palpatine’s strongholds.  He had gone there to confront the Reborn Emperor, but had ended up getting sucked in the dark side.  He shuddered at the thought.

But what had he just felt, exactly?  If it was Palpatine, as he first suspected, why was his presence so clouded?   Luke thought he would have been able to clearly sense Palpatine’s presence.  Now that he thought about it, this disturbance didn’t feel the same as what he’d felt on Endor or Byss, but it felt dangerous nonetheless.  Had one of Palpatine’s acolytes survived?  Had Palpatine tried to inhabit a clone body but been unsuccessful?  Were there other Sith there?  There were so many options, but one thing was clear-there was something dark, something wrong on Byss, and it had to be stopped.

He wondered how Mara would take the news that, at least in his reality, her late Master had survived in some manner after Endor.   This was a woman who had shed her doubts about her past earlier in life than his Mara.  She had married and had a child years before his Mara had opened her heart to the ideas of love and marriage.   A lot of her hesitation could be attributed to his own actions, he knew, especially on Byss.

He looked into Mara’s eyes, noting the slight narrowing of the corners.  She was waiting, and not patiently, for an answer.   But his heart seized in his chest.  He didn’t want to tell her about his failure with the Reborn Emperor, about his own brush with darkness.

If he were truthful with himself, he didn’t want to tell her about any of this.

She opened her mouth to speak, but he cut her off.  “Byss is a planet in the Deep Core…you may never have heard of it.”

Mara wiggled her fingers in a ‘come on’ gesture.

“Mara, I don’t know how to tell you this…”  Luke trailed off and closed his eyes.  “I don’t even know if what I just felt was real.  Or maybe I know it’s real and I don’t want it to be.”

“From the look on your face, I think whatever you saw was real.   Just tell me.”

Luke sighed.  “I realized why the lines on Niargen’s map were familiar.  I recognized them.   They’re coordinates-star lines.   And they seem to match those of the planet Byss.”

Mara nodded and turned to the starmap, inputting Byss’s name and watching as a holo of the planet beamed from the viewing screen.   She took the cup from Luke’s hand and held it up to the image.  “They do seem to match.   I guess my question for you is what exactly is on Byss and why does it scare you so much?”

He knew that, as much as he wanted to, he couldn’t hide the truth from her.   “It scares me because in my galaxy, Byss was the Emperor’s last holdout.  He had a citadel there, housing a supply of clones.   Since I’ve been in this galaxy something has felt off to me in the Force, and just now I think I realized what it was.”

“You can’t be saying that Palpatine’s alive,” Mara said incredulously.  “Wouldn’t I have felt that?”  Luke felt a pang of sadness, remembering how his own Mara had claimed the same thing.  “No, he’s dead,” she said after a long pause.  “And has been for a long time.”

“I’m not convinced it’s him, but I felt something dark.  I know it seems strange.  Crazy even.  But I can only tell you what happened to me and what I just felt.”

”Well, I know it’s not him.  He’s dead.”

The absolute conviction on Mara’s face finally brought a shadow of a smile to Luke’s.  “My Mara didn’t believe it either.”

“She didn’t?”

“No.  She knew I had faced something-someone-very powerful in the Force, but didn’t believe it was actually Palpatine.”

“She wasn’t there with you?”

“No, this happened just after the events of Wayland.  The Empire had attacked Coruscant and I felt this strange call in the Force… did this happen to your Luke?”

“No.”   Mara was shaking her head but her eyes were far away, as if she was backtracking over events.   “Right after Wayland we came back to Coruscant and I worked for the Smuggler’s Alliance while he started looking into setting up the Academy.   We saw each other whenever we were on Coruscant at the same time…then we began to date…and you know the rest.”

Luke nodded.  She had gotten pregnant with Betrys and their lives had taken a major turn.   But what would have kept Palpatine from using a clone body and trying to retake the Empire?  Did he even know about essence transfer in this reality?  Again Luke doubted his vision, but he still couldn’t deny it.   “I felt a strange call and traveled to Byss, where I confronted the Reborn Emperor.   Eventually, with Leia’s help, we were able to overpower him, to kill him.  But it was a close call.”

“This seems like a very sore subject for you.”   Mara reached out and tapped the white knuckles of his hand, curled tightly around the arm rest of his chair.

“Yes,” he said, forcing himself to loosen his grip.  “It is.”  He couldn’t say the rest…what else had happened there.

Mara took his hand and rubbed her thumb over the knuckles in a soothing touch.   “I didn’t feel what you did, but I believe you when you say that there’s something dark on Byss.   Something the Jedi should look into.  It seems that Niargen is pointing us there for a reason.  Perhaps the other IDD is there.”

“With the Emperor,” Luke murmured, unable to deny the possibility and thinking of the heavy price of going home.

“Or some other dark Force user,” Mara countered.

Luke looked at the map of Byss in front of him.  “I thought you’d be…frightened.  Upset by this news.”

“I stopped letting Palpatine run my life years ago.   The only fear I have comes from the fear I see on your face.   But I am concerned about the situation.  I know that the Force doesn’t lie to you.  Like I said earlier, I’ll contact the Council when we return.”

“And tell them what, exactly?”

“We have to think practically, Luke.   I can’t keep you hidden from the Jedi forever…and if there is a dark Force user out there, or another Sith, we have to tell them.”

Luke nodded.  “I agree.   And the more I think about this, the more I wonder if maybe I’m here for a bigger reason than just my desire to see you.”

“What do you mean?”

“You wouldn’t have known about Byss if I hadn’t come here.  There is something dark there, something you need to know about.  What if I’m here to help prevent-”

Mara cut in.  “Prevent other battles or problems here that occurred in your galaxy?”

“That’s right.  Maybe I’m here to stop things before they can start…”  He trailed off, thinking. There were so many battles and skirmishes he had participated in over the years; it was hard to keep track of them and the impetus to each.

Mara had grown quiet.  He looked up to find her face blank as she shut down the map and stared out into the passing starlines. As if feeling his gaze, she spoke without turning to him. “You’re here because you brought yourself here, Luke. As hard as it is for me to say it and you to hear it, we’ve gotten along fine without you, for a long time now.”

His eyes widened but he didn’t interrupt.

“I often told you-him-that he couldn’t take the weight of the galaxy on his shoulders. That it had been here before him and would outlast him. I didn’t realize how true my words were, about the galaxy outlasting him. And he did more for the galaxy in his forty-eight years than most do in an entire lifetime.  But you’re not here to right the wrongs of your galaxy. You came here to find me and, I think, to find some peace.”

She reached out a hand to clasp his again, turning from the starlines to face him. “I was so angry with you for coming here, but I’ve forgiven you-I know the pain that you’re in. I share it. But please don’t turn this time we have together into some misguided mission. Your only focus now should be to get home to Ben.”

Silence descended between them.  In that moment Mara reached for him in the Force, allowing him to feel her love.  More than that, he felt the pride she felt in her husband and…in him.

“How do you always know to remind me?” he asked thickly, squeezing her hand.

“Remind you of what?”

“That I’m just a man,” he said with a smile. “Just a man.”

Mara shook her head. “You’re a father, Luke, and you were a husband. A brother, uncle, friend, and Jedi. You’re more than ‘just’ a man, but no man’s shoulders are big enough for the fate of two galaxies.”

“But what about Byss?”

“Like I said, I’ll contact the Council when we return.   We’ll figure it out.   We’ll have to speak with them anyway…they may be able to help you find your way home.”

Luke thought of all of his friends in the Order and what they would think about this news.    But the thought of going to them made him relax.   He had faced Byss alone the last time, until Leia had forced the issue.    Mara was right in wanting to involve the Council.   The Force felt calm and serene regarding the issue, telling him that he was right to wait, to not rush in ill-prepared.   It was against his nature to wait, but he resolved to listen to the Force this time.   Especially concerning Byss.  Releasing his anxiety, he turned to Mara with a slight grin.    “So are you telling me that you don’t want a list of things from my galaxy to watch out for?”

“Well,” Mara said, biting back a smile of her own, “that probably couldn’t hurt.   And I may have a few things to tell you about.”

“Me?”

“Don’t you think it works both ways?   Did you ever face down a group of Ewoks bent on galactic domination with your Mara?”

Luke slyed his eyes to her.  “I hope you’re joking.”

“Oh, Farmboy.  If only I were…”

**

It was evening when they landed back on Coruscant.   Even though Luke was no longer as worried about Byss, he still carefully tucked Niargen’s cup into his robe pocket.   They both had a lot of thinking to do on the issue, but the Council would need at least two days to be called together.   In the meantime he looked around the Sabre, knowing he might never see it again. He remembered being so proud to give this ship to his Mara.  “Hey,” he asked, glancing to Mara as she finished her post-flight check. “When did Luke give you this ship?”

“Oh, it was for our ten year anniversary. I had recently crashed my ship into the Hand of Thrawn fortress-why are you smiling, Skywalker?”

Luke shook his head, still grinning. “Just memories,” he murmured. “Memories.”

Luke donned his Force disguise again and they headed back to the Temple, entering through Mara’s secret passageway.   He knew that he might soon be able to drop his disguise in the Temple, but pushed the thought away.   Byss and Council meetings were things he didn’t want to think about, and apparently neither did Mara.  They stopped on the way for takeout and sat in the living room of her suite, eating and talking about nothing in particular.   It was the kind of evening Luke had always savored with his wife, the type of evening they too seldom were able to indulge in.

The diner they stopped in specialized in small fortune biscuits that were popular among tourists and takeout customers.   His Mara had always rolled her eyes at them, generally making fun of the highly saccharine fortunes.   As such, he smiled when she reached for her biscuit and broke it open, pulling the small piece of flimsy out.

Your True Love is within your reach.

She rolled her eyes and tossed away the flimsy, eating the rest of the biscuit in one bite.    After she had chewed it she eyed Luke, who was sitting on the floor near her legs, back against the couch.   “Good thing I didn’t get that fortune while I was with Kyle.”

He rolled his own eyes, but laughed.   “I can put myself a little closer to your reach…”

Mara smirked.   “Open your fortune,” she said, nudging him with her knee.  He did.

You’ll soon be embarking on a long journey.

He looked up at her solemnly, holding the fortune in his hand.   Mara rolled her eyes again.  “Who needs the Force when you have fortune biscuits?”

“It remains to be seen if my fortune will actually prove correct,” he couldn’t help but point out.  At that moment, the possible Sith on Byss seemed almost a forgotten memory as the warmth of being near Mara lulled him into a sense of security.  He couldn’t help but tease her. “Yours, at least, is true…”

“Are you so sure about that?” Mara teased, dropping her hand to his hair and scratching softly at his scalp.

He dropped his head against the seat of the couch to look at her.   “Surer than I’ve ever been of anything.”

Mara’s eyes were closed, but her trademark half smile was evident on her face.  “It’s still so odd to be here with you.  Because as much as you are like my Luke, you aren’t him.”    Mara looked down at her fingers, brushing them against the fringe of his hair.    “Even though you look just like him, and sound just like him,” she let her fingers brush lower, across his lips.  “And make me feel the way he did…”

He pursed his lips and kissed her fingers, his words solemn as he spoke.  “I would never want to take his place.   He was your husband, the father of your children…this was his life, not mine.   But I can’t help but think that if our situations were reversed, he would find any way he could to get to you-my Mara-too.”

“Yes, well, like you he was a hopeless romantic.”  Mara chuckled, but her eyes shimmered suspiciously.  She placed her hands under his shoulders and pulled him up onto the couch next to her.

He laughed softly but let himself be pulled, twisting to right himself as he moved into a sitting position next to Mara.  He tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear and let his fingers trail down it, rubbing the individual strands with his fingers.   “Would you laugh-or roll your eyes-if I told you that I have a lock of Mara’s hair in my pocket?”

Mara squashed a smile.   “I would call you a hopeless romantic,” she repeated herself, leaning in and kissing him softly on the lips.    “Can I…can I see it?”  He pulled the small braid of hair from his pocket, the bright red gold braid free of the white hairs that would come later.  He held it in the palm of his hand and let Mara inspect it.  “Did she know you had it?”

“Yes, and she laughed at me for it.”

“I have to admit that it’s a little…weird…to see,” she said.   “You don’t have any other strange mementos, do you, Farmboy?    Toenail clippings?   Belly button lint?”

His cheeks heated but he shook his head with a good natured smile.   “Left those at home,” he said with a wink.

Mara laughed.    “I’ve missed that,” she said.  “You making me laugh.”

“I’ve missed your laughter.”

“I’ve missed the way you used to wake me up with kisses and a cup of caf.”

“I’ve missed the way you would say my name at unexpected moments.   I always loved the sound of my name on your lips.”

“Well, Luke,” she emphasized his name and smirked, “one thing I can say I haven’t missed is your lectures on the Force.”

“Oh, no?”  He reached out with the Force and lightly tickled her sides with invisible fingers, massaging his way up her arms to her shoulders and hair.   “What about the lectures on responsible use of the Force?  Wait, that’s right, you taught me that.”

“She did…” Mara murmured.

Luke licked at his lower lip.  He expected an awkward pause at that mention, but Mara just quirked her half-smile at him.

“But it’s a good lesson to learn,” she continued, leaning in so close that he could feel her breath on his face.  “Invisible fingers are nice, but the real thing…”  She wrapped her hand around his neck and pulled him into a kiss.

Their lips met and parted, Mara moaning as he deepened the kiss.  He allowed her to control it, moving his head to her liking.   She pushed him back on the couch and he settled into the curve of the arm, cupping her back and letting his hands wander as they continued their kiss.

He felt so right again, at home in Mara’s arms.   He could stay there indefinitely, kissing her and letting her kiss him back.   This completion of spirit was so long missed and he would never be able to duplicate it with anyone else.   He groaned and pulled her closer, pushing one leg in between hers, thoughts of Byss and meetings with the Jedi Council far away.

“Wait!” Mara said abruptly, pushing up on him, gasping for breath.    Her eyes were wild as she glanced toward the door.   She jumped up from him.   “Luke, get up!”

“What?” he said, sitting up automatically.  “Mara, what-”

But she didn’t get a chance to reply as the door to the suite opened and in walked Betrys and Ben Skywalker.

“Mom?  Surprise!” Ben yelled.

But Luke’s eyes were riveted to Betrys, Mara’s daughter, who looked at him and threw a hand to her mouth as her face registered her shock.

He threw a concerned look to Mara when Betrys dropped her hand and cried out, “Dad?”