"Unintended" Luke/Mara
Title: Unintended
Rating: G
Warnings: None
Characters: Luke/Mara
Summary: I’ll be there as soon as I can - but I’m busy mending broken pieces of the life I had before.
A/N: Inspired/based on the song "Unintended" by Muse.
******
When they first met, neither of them had been ready. She had spent her nights dreaming of his death at her hands, but had never honestly believed that she would get the chance. And then he had dropped into her lap - just when she had gotten her life back together and the very moment she needed him to keep his.
He had lost every woman he had ever tried to love, had sacrificed them for the sake of his Jedi cause. For years he had immersed himself in his work, scouring the galaxy for the barest traces of history, anything that would help him rebuild the Jedi order. He hadn’t expected, or really even wanted for her to find him.
They had nothing in common on the surface, except the fact that neither of them could handle close intimacy, not at that stage of their lives.
He had given up on love - she just didn’t believe in it.
***
The first time she opened up to him was in hyperspace on the way to Wayland. It was the middle of the night and something - most likely his ever-ravenous stomach - had urged him to go to the mess. She had been there, sitting at the table in her sleep-clothes; her hands tightly gripping a cup of caf. She had ignored him as he fixed himself something to eat, even as he tried to make polite conversation. Her pale face and dark shadows that clung to her eyes did not escape his attention but he ignored it, because every pore of her was pleading with him to do so. He talked, and she presented not to listen, every sentence made her grip her cup a bit tighter, made her shoulders tighten a bit further.
Eventually she spoke. “Not the silent type then, Skywalker?”
It had taken him a moment to reflect. “I am actually,” he had answered. “Most of the time.” When he was younger he hadn’t been able to stop talking. Where he’d been, who he’d been with, anything to fill the silence of the desert, until his uncle had growled at him to for once be quiet and his aunt had laid a reassuring, but silencing, hand on his arm. But as the years had passed and his life had become fuller, Luke found that he had less to say.
“So what is it about me that makes you babble like a gnea-hen?”
“I suppose you seemed like you needed distracting.” He didn’t dare look at her, and had instead gazed into his own cup, sensing her surprise and unease.
“I don’t need anything from you.”
**********
It had been after he had given her his father’s lightsaber that she’d told him about the dreams. Horrible, vivid nightmares where she relived her master’s death through false eyes, had received commanding, splintering orders from beyond the grave. She had almost cried, and he had almost reached out to take her hand. But she couldn’t bear to be touched in any way and though he would have been more than willing to be that soft place for her to fall, she needed to be independent, truly alone in her own mind for the first time.
Their next meeting of any consequence happened after Byss, and while by then she had begun to exorcise her own demons, she saw that he had obtained some new ones.
“You look like hell, Skywalker,” she said unkindly, after he had found her in one of Coruscant’s libraries.
“I feel it.” He was pale, dark circles hanging under his eyes, and his tone was raw, defeated, almost. But he sat down at her table without invitation, clasping his hands in front of him.
Mara leaned back in her chair, away from him. She could tell she wouldn’t like what he was going to say to her.
“Will you tell me again, Mara, about your visions of the Emperor?” he asked. “Did it still feel like he was connected to you, after he died?”
So he had come to her, perhaps seeking guidance, or solidarity. Mara could sense the darkness in him, could taste it in the air between them. It made the bile rise in her throat. It lingered around the edges of him, and while before he had always given off warmth, even after she had closed her mental barriers down with the Force, now there was no such sensation. He was not cold - but rather an absence of feeling. Like something had been taken from him.
She refocused her attention on the datapad she was studying. “I don’t remember.”
“Oh,” he replied, understanding mixed with sadness in his voice. “I’m sorry.”
And then he stood, and Mara didn’t dare watch him leave.
*****
He fell in love quite unexpectedly - and Callista was everything he thought he wanted. In many ways, she was just like him, and perhaps ultimately that was part of the problem. Although he regretted the breakdown of their relationship, she was a very important aspect of his life, if only that she taught him he deserved to be loved. At a time when he was beginning to reconcile himself to a life of romantic solitude (for he could not deny he was deeply loved by his family and friends), Callie had shown up, and said all the right things to give him hope again.
He saw Mara not long afterwards, on one of his rare trips to Coruscant , and cornered her in a bar. They were not friends - he would be hard pressed to even call them acquaintances, but she’d admitted a level of familiarity on Yavin IV, and he did not want to lose the opportunity to try and coax her back there to continue with her training. She, however, seemed intent on turning the conversation back to Callista.
“You don’t seem too cut up about it,” she observed.
Luke didn’t really want to discuss such things with her, not unless she was going to be equally forthcoming. “Maybe I’m just good at hiding my emotions.”
She seemed rather amused. “I may not know you very well, Skywalker, but any idiot can see you’re no good at that.”
“Well you seem to be the expert on the matter,” Luke conceded. “Perhaps I should ask you for some tips?”
Mara laughed in that low tone of hers which he had found rather disconcerting at first, but had become far more used to. “I find that if you don’t care about other people’s problems, they won’t care about yours. A win-win situation, really,” she said wryly. “Of course, you do come across a rare sort of person who seems to care about everyone else’s lives whether you want him to or not - and annoy you incessantly until he gleans some useless tidbit of information and thinks it is somehow representative of your entire state of mind.”
Luke smiled. “Tell me how you really feel, Mara.”
She shrugged. “It just seems a bit hypocritical that you want everyone to talk about their inner demons but when something actually happens to you, you’re tight-lipped about it.”
“Maybe it is,” Luke replied. “But I thought you didn’t actually care about other people’s problems.”
He expected her to bite back, but she didn’t. Instead she sat back in her chair, and appraised him for a few moments. “I don’t,” she finally answered, the slightest twitch of a smile at the corner of her mouth.
**********
It wasn’t a particularly special or earth-shattering moment when Mara realised she was in love with Luke Skywalker. It dawned on her quite naturally, in fact.
It was after the near-disaster of Corellia, and they had been talking about nothing in particular, small talk, really. He’d asked her about her trading business, she’d asked him about his adventures with Lando. She wasn’t quite sure how she knew it was love - she just didn’t want to stop talking to him.
Of course, it was never something that she would admit to anyone else - or act on. In fact, it didn’t change their relationship at all. She wasn’t the type to pine, or wallow - it was just another facet of her existence she had to deal with. She barely even gave it a thought, even when they did see each other. It wasn’t awkward for it, it just was. And she accepted that.
She didn’t even consider that he might feel the same way, because, honestly, she didn’t want their relationship to change. Her life was full, and she was happy - finally. It didn’t need complicating.
Even when they were trudging through the cave on Nirauan, she resisted any acknowledgement of the way she felt. Instead, she reprimanded him. Outwardly, he took the criticism well, but for several hours afterwards she could see the resentment simmering under the surface, until he finally spoke up.
“You know, you’re not so perfect yourself, Mara.” He sat down on a nearby rock, looking perturbed.
Mara remained standing, and crossed her arms. “Did I ever say I was?” she asked him. “And only perfect people are allowed to offer advice to others?”
“Oh, it was advice, was it?” he shot back. “It really sounded like a list of my mistakes, all in one neat little package.”
Mara shrugged. “I get the impression too many people in your life sugar-coat the truth for you.”
Luke considered that. “Kid-gloves,” he agreed.
She took a seat not-quite-beside him. “When we first met, I learned the truth about a lot of things - about myself - very quickly. I used to think that I would have coped much better with I’d come to those realisations slowly, and on my own terms. But now I understand that it had to be that way. I needed the shock of it all, the kick in the teeth, so I knew exactly how badly I had been wrong. And you played a big role in that.”
Luke smiled wryly. “So you thought you’d give me a friendly kick in the teeth back?”
“I didn’t intend for it to come out so...forcefully,” she told him. “It wasn’t in revenge.”
“I know that.”
She shifted slightly, and looked uncomfortable. “I suppose...I’d just been keeping those thoughts to myself for so long.”
“Until I was ready to hear it.” He nodded, understanding. “But why now?” he asked her. “What’s changed?”
She didn’t answer him then, but later, her words would come back to him, and understanding was born in battle and fire. His mind joined with hers, and he felt what had changed. And he had known for a while, he realised, just had refused to admit it. With every pain he had known, every loss, every time he’d pushed someone away for their own good, to protect them from himself - he realised that he’d kept himself closed off as much as she had - perhaps more.
And he understood that she no longer need to be protected from him, just as he no longer needed to fear her.
He’d never intended to love her - but he did.
.
Rating: G
Warnings: None
Characters: Luke/Mara
Summary: I’ll be there as soon as I can - but I’m busy mending broken pieces of the life I had before.
A/N: Inspired/based on the song "Unintended" by Muse.
******
When they first met, neither of them had been ready. She had spent her nights dreaming of his death at her hands, but had never honestly believed that she would get the chance. And then he had dropped into her lap - just when she had gotten her life back together and the very moment she needed him to keep his.
He had lost every woman he had ever tried to love, had sacrificed them for the sake of his Jedi cause. For years he had immersed himself in his work, scouring the galaxy for the barest traces of history, anything that would help him rebuild the Jedi order. He hadn’t expected, or really even wanted for her to find him.
They had nothing in common on the surface, except the fact that neither of them could handle close intimacy, not at that stage of their lives.
He had given up on love - she just didn’t believe in it.
***
The first time she opened up to him was in hyperspace on the way to Wayland. It was the middle of the night and something - most likely his ever-ravenous stomach - had urged him to go to the mess. She had been there, sitting at the table in her sleep-clothes; her hands tightly gripping a cup of caf. She had ignored him as he fixed himself something to eat, even as he tried to make polite conversation. Her pale face and dark shadows that clung to her eyes did not escape his attention but he ignored it, because every pore of her was pleading with him to do so. He talked, and she presented not to listen, every sentence made her grip her cup a bit tighter, made her shoulders tighten a bit further.
Eventually she spoke. “Not the silent type then, Skywalker?”
It had taken him a moment to reflect. “I am actually,” he had answered. “Most of the time.” When he was younger he hadn’t been able to stop talking. Where he’d been, who he’d been with, anything to fill the silence of the desert, until his uncle had growled at him to for once be quiet and his aunt had laid a reassuring, but silencing, hand on his arm. But as the years had passed and his life had become fuller, Luke found that he had less to say.
“So what is it about me that makes you babble like a gnea-hen?”
“I suppose you seemed like you needed distracting.” He didn’t dare look at her, and had instead gazed into his own cup, sensing her surprise and unease.
“I don’t need anything from you.”
**********
It had been after he had given her his father’s lightsaber that she’d told him about the dreams. Horrible, vivid nightmares where she relived her master’s death through false eyes, had received commanding, splintering orders from beyond the grave. She had almost cried, and he had almost reached out to take her hand. But she couldn’t bear to be touched in any way and though he would have been more than willing to be that soft place for her to fall, she needed to be independent, truly alone in her own mind for the first time.
Their next meeting of any consequence happened after Byss, and while by then she had begun to exorcise her own demons, she saw that he had obtained some new ones.
“You look like hell, Skywalker,” she said unkindly, after he had found her in one of Coruscant’s libraries.
“I feel it.” He was pale, dark circles hanging under his eyes, and his tone was raw, defeated, almost. But he sat down at her table without invitation, clasping his hands in front of him.
Mara leaned back in her chair, away from him. She could tell she wouldn’t like what he was going to say to her.
“Will you tell me again, Mara, about your visions of the Emperor?” he asked. “Did it still feel like he was connected to you, after he died?”
So he had come to her, perhaps seeking guidance, or solidarity. Mara could sense the darkness in him, could taste it in the air between them. It made the bile rise in her throat. It lingered around the edges of him, and while before he had always given off warmth, even after she had closed her mental barriers down with the Force, now there was no such sensation. He was not cold - but rather an absence of feeling. Like something had been taken from him.
She refocused her attention on the datapad she was studying. “I don’t remember.”
“Oh,” he replied, understanding mixed with sadness in his voice. “I’m sorry.”
And then he stood, and Mara didn’t dare watch him leave.
*****
He fell in love quite unexpectedly - and Callista was everything he thought he wanted. In many ways, she was just like him, and perhaps ultimately that was part of the problem. Although he regretted the breakdown of their relationship, she was a very important aspect of his life, if only that she taught him he deserved to be loved. At a time when he was beginning to reconcile himself to a life of romantic solitude (for he could not deny he was deeply loved by his family and friends), Callie had shown up, and said all the right things to give him hope again.
He saw Mara not long afterwards, on one of his rare trips to Coruscant , and cornered her in a bar. They were not friends - he would be hard pressed to even call them acquaintances, but she’d admitted a level of familiarity on Yavin IV, and he did not want to lose the opportunity to try and coax her back there to continue with her training. She, however, seemed intent on turning the conversation back to Callista.
“You don’t seem too cut up about it,” she observed.
Luke didn’t really want to discuss such things with her, not unless she was going to be equally forthcoming. “Maybe I’m just good at hiding my emotions.”
She seemed rather amused. “I may not know you very well, Skywalker, but any idiot can see you’re no good at that.”
“Well you seem to be the expert on the matter,” Luke conceded. “Perhaps I should ask you for some tips?”
Mara laughed in that low tone of hers which he had found rather disconcerting at first, but had become far more used to. “I find that if you don’t care about other people’s problems, they won’t care about yours. A win-win situation, really,” she said wryly. “Of course, you do come across a rare sort of person who seems to care about everyone else’s lives whether you want him to or not - and annoy you incessantly until he gleans some useless tidbit of information and thinks it is somehow representative of your entire state of mind.”
Luke smiled. “Tell me how you really feel, Mara.”
She shrugged. “It just seems a bit hypocritical that you want everyone to talk about their inner demons but when something actually happens to you, you’re tight-lipped about it.”
“Maybe it is,” Luke replied. “But I thought you didn’t actually care about other people’s problems.”
He expected her to bite back, but she didn’t. Instead she sat back in her chair, and appraised him for a few moments. “I don’t,” she finally answered, the slightest twitch of a smile at the corner of her mouth.
**********
It wasn’t a particularly special or earth-shattering moment when Mara realised she was in love with Luke Skywalker. It dawned on her quite naturally, in fact.
It was after the near-disaster of Corellia, and they had been talking about nothing in particular, small talk, really. He’d asked her about her trading business, she’d asked him about his adventures with Lando. She wasn’t quite sure how she knew it was love - she just didn’t want to stop talking to him.
Of course, it was never something that she would admit to anyone else - or act on. In fact, it didn’t change their relationship at all. She wasn’t the type to pine, or wallow - it was just another facet of her existence she had to deal with. She barely even gave it a thought, even when they did see each other. It wasn’t awkward for it, it just was. And she accepted that.
She didn’t even consider that he might feel the same way, because, honestly, she didn’t want their relationship to change. Her life was full, and she was happy - finally. It didn’t need complicating.
Even when they were trudging through the cave on Nirauan, she resisted any acknowledgement of the way she felt. Instead, she reprimanded him. Outwardly, he took the criticism well, but for several hours afterwards she could see the resentment simmering under the surface, until he finally spoke up.
“You know, you’re not so perfect yourself, Mara.” He sat down on a nearby rock, looking perturbed.
Mara remained standing, and crossed her arms. “Did I ever say I was?” she asked him. “And only perfect people are allowed to offer advice to others?”
“Oh, it was advice, was it?” he shot back. “It really sounded like a list of my mistakes, all in one neat little package.”
Mara shrugged. “I get the impression too many people in your life sugar-coat the truth for you.”
Luke considered that. “Kid-gloves,” he agreed.
She took a seat not-quite-beside him. “When we first met, I learned the truth about a lot of things - about myself - very quickly. I used to think that I would have coped much better with I’d come to those realisations slowly, and on my own terms. But now I understand that it had to be that way. I needed the shock of it all, the kick in the teeth, so I knew exactly how badly I had been wrong. And you played a big role in that.”
Luke smiled wryly. “So you thought you’d give me a friendly kick in the teeth back?”
“I didn’t intend for it to come out so...forcefully,” she told him. “It wasn’t in revenge.”
“I know that.”
She shifted slightly, and looked uncomfortable. “I suppose...I’d just been keeping those thoughts to myself for so long.”
“Until I was ready to hear it.” He nodded, understanding. “But why now?” he asked her. “What’s changed?”
She didn’t answer him then, but later, her words would come back to him, and understanding was born in battle and fire. His mind joined with hers, and he felt what had changed. And he had known for a while, he realised, just had refused to admit it. With every pain he had known, every loss, every time he’d pushed someone away for their own good, to protect them from himself - he realised that he’d kept himself closed off as much as she had - perhaps more.
And he understood that she no longer need to be protected from him, just as he no longer needed to fear her.
He’d never intended to love her - but he did.
.