Fic: Veil of Shadows, 12/13, PG-13
Title: Veil of Shadows
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: None
Category: AU, angst, romance
Timeframe: OT; around time of ANH
Summary: A strange tale where the good guys are bad, the Empire has won, and a Sith adept pursues the girl of his nightmares.
Chapter 1 Chapter 5 Chapter 9
Chapter 2 Chapter 6 Chapter 10
Chapter 3 Chapter 7 Chapter 11
Chapter 4 Chapter 8
~~
12. Perfidy
Four Years Ago
No one saw her when they carried the girl off to the medical center. She was hiding in a shadowy corner, spying on the adepts while they practiced.
It was a brutal fight. She had never seen anything like it. Long ago, she had wanted to be friends with these people - these Sith. They were children, like her. She didn’t have anyone else to talk to, no one her age to back her up. Most of the time, she was fine being alone. But sometimes, she wanted a friend.
The Sith girl had been so bloodied and battered, it was a miracle she wasn’t dead. Mara was quite certain now that she would rather be alone the rest of her life than spend one minute with any of those adepts. Especially the blond one, the one who had nearly beaten the girl to death.
Mara peered into the training room, and she noticed something odd. Her master was standing next to Lord Vader, and for just one moment, she was sure she saw him smile. It was a cold smile, and in the time it took Mara to blink, it was gone.
The blond adept looked stunned, but there was an eagerness in his presence that sickened Mara. She wasn’t very skilled in the ways of the Force, but she knew evil when she sensed it. And there was something very evil lurking in that boy.
~~
Now
The Emperor was dead. And all she could think of was how the life she knew was gone, destroyed in a flash of brilliant crimson light while she languished on the other side of the galaxy. She thought of all the things she was promised, of all the things she would never receive.
He said he would tell her, upon her return, who the father of her child was. Now she would never know.
It didn’t bother her in the way she thought it should. She wasn’t overly sentimental, although the idea of giving birth and caring for a baby was starting to appeal to her. However, in her usual pragmatic fashion, she was more concerned with what kinds of traits the child would inherit and if there was a possibility that those traits might be perfect gateways to the darkness she had sensed in herself, in Starkiller, and on this miserable planet.
She hadn’t seen until now how much evil there was in her life.
Why did he do this to me?
“Mara, are you okay?”
She was so sick of Starkiller’s constant worrying. As the Emperor’s Hand, she was perfectly capable of taking care of herself.
“What happened?”
Her skin prickled as she realized the enormity of what had happened. The Emperor - her master - had been brutally murdered by the Sith. There was no reason to think Starkiller wasn’t involved in the plot as well. If he found out that the Emperor was dead, would he decide to turn on her? Her master’s blanket of protection was gone.
“Nothing,” Mara replied, picking herself up off the ground for what seemed like the fifth time so far. “I guess I still haven’t recovered from earlier.”
“Can you walk?”
“Of course I can.” She glanced up at Dreshdae’s outer wall before looking through the open entrance. “Come on, we’ve wasted enough time.”
Mara walked through the entrance, her senses carefully attuned to Starkiller’s movement. If he tried anything, she would be ready.
~~
The city looked like it had once been a bustling - albeit dark - hub of activity in this lonely part of the galaxy. Luke wondered what it must have been like to live in Dreshdae during the golden age of the Sith.
Now the streets lay quiet, and some of the buildings were in serious disrepair.
“I wonder what happened here,” Luke said, his gaze wandering over the buildings.
“The Commerce Guild pulled out sometime after the Clone Wars. Guess they finally realized it was bad business to set up shop on a barely-inhabited planet.”
“Maybe our tattooed friend had something to do with it.”
“That’s a possibility.” Mara held a hand up to shield her eyes from the sun. “Why don’t you look for a comm station while I check for ships over there?” She jerked her thumb toward a row of low-roofed buildings at the end of the street.
Luke squinted at the buildings. “Sure, I guess. Meet you back here in twenty minutes?”
Mara nodded. “Sounds good.”
Luke waved and turned away. The last thing he saw was the dusty ground rushing toward his face. Then there was only black.
~~
Mara’s boots pounded in the dust as she ran toward the building her datapad had identified as a hangar. It didn’t matter if the only ship there was a hundred years old. She was getting off this planet now.
I killed him, part of her brain screamed. The more rational part assured her that the well-placed kick had only knocked Starkiller unconscious. She wasn’t sure which scenario she preferred. Dead, he would weigh on her conscience. Alive, he would probably hunt her down and kill her.
And without the Emperor, would her security clearance be any good? Would she have any shelter on her homeworld?
Force, what had happened?
Get to the ship. Get offworld. Find out what’s going on out there. The clipped mental commands helped put her thoughts in order. Survival first. Survival was always first. She would hide if she had to. She was not without resources. She was the Emperor’s Hand, damn it, and that counted for something.
Mara growled under her breath. It was that stupid little R2 unit. It’s wailing and screaming had rattled her nerves. Well, she was not going to feel guilty for leaving a Sith adept behind. Not after those visions. Especially not after what Vader and Organa had done.
The double doors to the hangar were closed, the keypad ripped from the wall. Mara took a step back and raised her hand. Using the Force, she wrenched the doors from their old-fashioned hinges and threw them aside. Dirt kicked up into the air, clouding her vision. Mara coughed as she went through the opening and began searching for a space-worthy vessel.
A quick glance around the hangar revealed only three ships, all roughly two decades old. Mara recognized a Loronar B-7 light freighter, a Cutlass-9 patrol fighter, and another small transport of a design she didn’t recognize. The Cutlass was small, armed, and fast. More importantly, it had a hyperdrive.
Hurry, Mara! Run!
It was the voice from the tomb, the one that had pulled her out of the vision by telling her to open her eyes. She realized now that the voice had a Coruscanti accent not unlike many of Imperial Center’s inhabitants.
Who are you?
But there was no answer. Only the intense spiking of her danger sense and the feeling that she should get off this planet now.
Mara climbed onto the nose of the Cutlass and popped the canopy. As she tossed her bag into the fighter, she felt Starkiller start to stir. She jumped down into the seat and started the ship’s power sequence, keeping one eye on the entrance to the hangar.
She should have known better than to ally, even briefly, with a Sith.
~~
It was an electric shock from Artoo that finally woke him up. Luke cracked one eye open and saw the little droid staring down at him, the lights on his dome flashing urgently.
“What happened?” Luke mumbled, rubbing the back of his head.
Artoo whistled angrily, spinning his dome back and forth.
“What?” Luke shouted. He crawled to his feet, using Artoo for support. “Where did she go?”
The droid moaned and wobbled on its two legs. Luke felt his insides go hot, as if a fire had blossomed in his heart and spread through his veins.
“Come on,” he growled, running toward the building Artoo had indicated. After all this time, he was not going to lose her.
An engine roared in the distance, and Luke tried to ignore the pounding in his skull as he surged forward. Dust kicked up into the air, and over the top of the building, Luke saw the silver glint of a starship.
“No! Mara!” He stretched his fingers uselessly toward the ship and fell to his knees. Within seconds, the ship was gone, along with Mara.
“No…”
He stared at the spot where the ship had disappeared into the sky.
Artoo rolled over to his side and moaned softly.
“She left us,” he whispered, his voice breaking. He turned to Artoo and opened his mouth, but nothing came out. The little droid let out the electronic equivalent of a sigh.
Luke looked back up at the sky and clawed his fingernails through the dirt.
“She left us.”
He could feel the heat rising inside of him, overpowering his sorrow, his shame. He did not deserve this. He was a Sith adept, one of the most powerful beings in the galaxy. He did not deserve to be tossed aside like some worthless piece of scrap. How could she?
How could she?
“Artoo,” he said through gritted teeth. “You find a ship in there with hyperdrive and get it started. If you have to make repairs, do it.” He stood up and roughly wiped the dirt from his knees. “We’re going home.”
~~
The Cutlass roared to life and leapt off the ground, shooting into the air with surprising speed. Mara pulled back on the yoke and hit the thrusters. The ship’s climb toward the atmosphere wasn’t exactly smooth, but it was much better than she had hoped for.
Through the Force she felt a surge of remorse coming from the surface. She tried to ignore it.
Once she was clear of Korriban, Mara pulled up a nav chart and started thinking about where she should go. The Sith’s betrayal made it almost certain that Mara’s old clearances would be revoked. If Starkiller ever made it off Korriban, he might be angry enough to try hunting her down. She couldn’t rely on the Empire to protect her from his wrath, not when his people now controlled the Empire.
Much of her gear had been lost. She had only limited rations with her. Everything else was gone. And she had to get far away from the Core, at least for now.
Mara.
She clenched her teeth as a new voice invaded her mind. If she wasn’t already going insane, all of this unwanted telepathy would surely drive her there.
Mara, the voice repeated. Do not be afraid. And then it listed a string of numbers she knew to be coordinates.
This is ridiculous, she told herself. Through the Force, she felt the baby stir.
Do not be afraid. Come.
There was something oddly reassuring about this new voice. The baby stirred again.
Okay, okay, she told the voice. I’ll do it.
Mara reached down and placed a hand on her abdomen. We’re going to be all right, kid. Then she punched in the coordinates and watched the stars become thin lines against the swirling backdrop of hyperspace.
~~
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: None
Category: AU, angst, romance
Timeframe: OT; around time of ANH
Summary: A strange tale where the good guys are bad, the Empire has won, and a Sith adept pursues the girl of his nightmares.
Chapter 1 Chapter 5 Chapter 9
Chapter 2 Chapter 6 Chapter 10
Chapter 3 Chapter 7 Chapter 11
Chapter 4 Chapter 8
~~
12. Perfidy
Four Years Ago
No one saw her when they carried the girl off to the medical center. She was hiding in a shadowy corner, spying on the adepts while they practiced.
It was a brutal fight. She had never seen anything like it. Long ago, she had wanted to be friends with these people - these Sith. They were children, like her. She didn’t have anyone else to talk to, no one her age to back her up. Most of the time, she was fine being alone. But sometimes, she wanted a friend.
The Sith girl had been so bloodied and battered, it was a miracle she wasn’t dead. Mara was quite certain now that she would rather be alone the rest of her life than spend one minute with any of those adepts. Especially the blond one, the one who had nearly beaten the girl to death.
Mara peered into the training room, and she noticed something odd. Her master was standing next to Lord Vader, and for just one moment, she was sure she saw him smile. It was a cold smile, and in the time it took Mara to blink, it was gone.
The blond adept looked stunned, but there was an eagerness in his presence that sickened Mara. She wasn’t very skilled in the ways of the Force, but she knew evil when she sensed it. And there was something very evil lurking in that boy.
~~
Now
The Emperor was dead. And all she could think of was how the life she knew was gone, destroyed in a flash of brilliant crimson light while she languished on the other side of the galaxy. She thought of all the things she was promised, of all the things she would never receive.
He said he would tell her, upon her return, who the father of her child was. Now she would never know.
It didn’t bother her in the way she thought it should. She wasn’t overly sentimental, although the idea of giving birth and caring for a baby was starting to appeal to her. However, in her usual pragmatic fashion, she was more concerned with what kinds of traits the child would inherit and if there was a possibility that those traits might be perfect gateways to the darkness she had sensed in herself, in Starkiller, and on this miserable planet.
She hadn’t seen until now how much evil there was in her life.
Why did he do this to me?
“Mara, are you okay?”
She was so sick of Starkiller’s constant worrying. As the Emperor’s Hand, she was perfectly capable of taking care of herself.
“What happened?”
Her skin prickled as she realized the enormity of what had happened. The Emperor - her master - had been brutally murdered by the Sith. There was no reason to think Starkiller wasn’t involved in the plot as well. If he found out that the Emperor was dead, would he decide to turn on her? Her master’s blanket of protection was gone.
“Nothing,” Mara replied, picking herself up off the ground for what seemed like the fifth time so far. “I guess I still haven’t recovered from earlier.”
“Can you walk?”
“Of course I can.” She glanced up at Dreshdae’s outer wall before looking through the open entrance. “Come on, we’ve wasted enough time.”
Mara walked through the entrance, her senses carefully attuned to Starkiller’s movement. If he tried anything, she would be ready.
~~
The city looked like it had once been a bustling - albeit dark - hub of activity in this lonely part of the galaxy. Luke wondered what it must have been like to live in Dreshdae during the golden age of the Sith.
Now the streets lay quiet, and some of the buildings were in serious disrepair.
“I wonder what happened here,” Luke said, his gaze wandering over the buildings.
“The Commerce Guild pulled out sometime after the Clone Wars. Guess they finally realized it was bad business to set up shop on a barely-inhabited planet.”
“Maybe our tattooed friend had something to do with it.”
“That’s a possibility.” Mara held a hand up to shield her eyes from the sun. “Why don’t you look for a comm station while I check for ships over there?” She jerked her thumb toward a row of low-roofed buildings at the end of the street.
Luke squinted at the buildings. “Sure, I guess. Meet you back here in twenty minutes?”
Mara nodded. “Sounds good.”
Luke waved and turned away. The last thing he saw was the dusty ground rushing toward his face. Then there was only black.
~~
Mara’s boots pounded in the dust as she ran toward the building her datapad had identified as a hangar. It didn’t matter if the only ship there was a hundred years old. She was getting off this planet now.
I killed him, part of her brain screamed. The more rational part assured her that the well-placed kick had only knocked Starkiller unconscious. She wasn’t sure which scenario she preferred. Dead, he would weigh on her conscience. Alive, he would probably hunt her down and kill her.
And without the Emperor, would her security clearance be any good? Would she have any shelter on her homeworld?
Force, what had happened?
Get to the ship. Get offworld. Find out what’s going on out there. The clipped mental commands helped put her thoughts in order. Survival first. Survival was always first. She would hide if she had to. She was not without resources. She was the Emperor’s Hand, damn it, and that counted for something.
Mara growled under her breath. It was that stupid little R2 unit. It’s wailing and screaming had rattled her nerves. Well, she was not going to feel guilty for leaving a Sith adept behind. Not after those visions. Especially not after what Vader and Organa had done.
The double doors to the hangar were closed, the keypad ripped from the wall. Mara took a step back and raised her hand. Using the Force, she wrenched the doors from their old-fashioned hinges and threw them aside. Dirt kicked up into the air, clouding her vision. Mara coughed as she went through the opening and began searching for a space-worthy vessel.
A quick glance around the hangar revealed only three ships, all roughly two decades old. Mara recognized a Loronar B-7 light freighter, a Cutlass-9 patrol fighter, and another small transport of a design she didn’t recognize. The Cutlass was small, armed, and fast. More importantly, it had a hyperdrive.
Hurry, Mara! Run!
It was the voice from the tomb, the one that had pulled her out of the vision by telling her to open her eyes. She realized now that the voice had a Coruscanti accent not unlike many of Imperial Center’s inhabitants.
Who are you?
But there was no answer. Only the intense spiking of her danger sense and the feeling that she should get off this planet now.
Mara climbed onto the nose of the Cutlass and popped the canopy. As she tossed her bag into the fighter, she felt Starkiller start to stir. She jumped down into the seat and started the ship’s power sequence, keeping one eye on the entrance to the hangar.
She should have known better than to ally, even briefly, with a Sith.
~~
It was an electric shock from Artoo that finally woke him up. Luke cracked one eye open and saw the little droid staring down at him, the lights on his dome flashing urgently.
“What happened?” Luke mumbled, rubbing the back of his head.
Artoo whistled angrily, spinning his dome back and forth.
“What?” Luke shouted. He crawled to his feet, using Artoo for support. “Where did she go?”
The droid moaned and wobbled on its two legs. Luke felt his insides go hot, as if a fire had blossomed in his heart and spread through his veins.
“Come on,” he growled, running toward the building Artoo had indicated. After all this time, he was not going to lose her.
An engine roared in the distance, and Luke tried to ignore the pounding in his skull as he surged forward. Dust kicked up into the air, and over the top of the building, Luke saw the silver glint of a starship.
“No! Mara!” He stretched his fingers uselessly toward the ship and fell to his knees. Within seconds, the ship was gone, along with Mara.
“No…”
He stared at the spot where the ship had disappeared into the sky.
Artoo rolled over to his side and moaned softly.
“She left us,” he whispered, his voice breaking. He turned to Artoo and opened his mouth, but nothing came out. The little droid let out the electronic equivalent of a sigh.
Luke looked back up at the sky and clawed his fingernails through the dirt.
“She left us.”
He could feel the heat rising inside of him, overpowering his sorrow, his shame. He did not deserve this. He was a Sith adept, one of the most powerful beings in the galaxy. He did not deserve to be tossed aside like some worthless piece of scrap. How could she?
How could she?
“Artoo,” he said through gritted teeth. “You find a ship in there with hyperdrive and get it started. If you have to make repairs, do it.” He stood up and roughly wiped the dirt from his knees. “We’re going home.”
~~
The Cutlass roared to life and leapt off the ground, shooting into the air with surprising speed. Mara pulled back on the yoke and hit the thrusters. The ship’s climb toward the atmosphere wasn’t exactly smooth, but it was much better than she had hoped for.
Through the Force she felt a surge of remorse coming from the surface. She tried to ignore it.
Once she was clear of Korriban, Mara pulled up a nav chart and started thinking about where she should go. The Sith’s betrayal made it almost certain that Mara’s old clearances would be revoked. If Starkiller ever made it off Korriban, he might be angry enough to try hunting her down. She couldn’t rely on the Empire to protect her from his wrath, not when his people now controlled the Empire.
Much of her gear had been lost. She had only limited rations with her. Everything else was gone. And she had to get far away from the Core, at least for now.
Mara.
She clenched her teeth as a new voice invaded her mind. If she wasn’t already going insane, all of this unwanted telepathy would surely drive her there.
Mara, the voice repeated. Do not be afraid. And then it listed a string of numbers she knew to be coordinates.
This is ridiculous, she told herself. Through the Force, she felt the baby stir.
Do not be afraid. Come.
There was something oddly reassuring about this new voice. The baby stirred again.
Okay, okay, she told the voice. I’ll do it.
Mara reached down and placed a hand on her abdomen. We’re going to be all right, kid. Then she punched in the coordinates and watched the stars become thin lines against the swirling backdrop of hyperspace.
~~