Fic: "You Can't Save Everyone" 1/1
Title: You Can't Save Everyone
Rating: G
Warnings: None
Category: Vignette
Summary: Mara discovers the challenges of being a Jedi.
"You can't save everyone."
They were wise words, spoken simply. So plainly, so matter-of-fact, that they could only have come from experience.
His eyes were there, quiet and understanding. Not as brilliant blue as they could get, so bright they seemed to deny the soft, unobtrusive tan of his skin. Not so dull as she had seen them before, either, discoloured from weariness or disappointment. Or loss. They held no spectrum of emotion as they could, no insight to his inner thoughts as she so often believed they were a passage to.
They just were.
His arms were there, also, unassumingly tucked into the folds of his cloak. Waiting for her to make the first move. He often did that, making a statement from his inaction, allowing her the power to make the decision, but forcing her to show her need, her desire for his comforting embrace.
“Mara?”
His voice a bridge between the distance.
“I know.”
Her answer, soft, but with a slight edge she never could, or cared to, remove completely.
It had not been her first mission as a Jedi; far from it. But it had been her first failure. Ever, really, for as the Hand she had never failed. Except with Luke, and she no longer considered that anything but a success.
The simplicity of the mission had fooled her. A simple escort for a Senate diplomat, a training mission for two young Jedi apprentices. She should have sensed the ill-will brewing in the crowd; should have stopped the pair of assassins that emerged from it a second later.
A part of her was ashamed of the exhilaration she’d felt as the firefight, at the rainbow of blaster fire crisscrossing the spaceport, alighting her challenge-hungry heart. The other, stronger part of her realised it was the adrenaline that kept her going in such situations.
The Senator had been secured, her apprentices kept close by, lightsabers drawn in an attempt to look threatening. She’d ordered them to get their charge to safety under cover, but while one had obeyed, the other had taken it upon herself to assail the attacker.
Mara was no stranger to blood, but it had seemed different somehow. She’d been in charge, but not control.
“Don’t tell me it’s not my fault.”
“I wouldn’t.”
She should have known. Luke was sympathetic and compassionate - he wasn’t patronising.
He probably didn’t understand, but he accepted. Her hand sought his, locating and withdrawing it from his cloak, skin slightly roughened from contact with the coarse material. His hands were always warm, unnaturally so. But she liked that.
“You did everything right.” His expression or tone did not change. It was not emotionless, but it was not weighted down with feeling either. “You can guide and instruct. You cannot control.”
It was the Jedi philosophy that she was getting used to - the core of Luke’s being. Empathy and support, but honesty and self-responsibility. He had outgrown the folly of his youth, the need to take the galaxy’s responsibility upon himself. For him, there was always the hope of redemption, even in the darkest heart. But he willingly paid a price for his optimism and trust; that he would fail more often than he would succeed. He would never stop trying to save that life, free that soul, but when it was lost to the abyss of death, he knew to let go.
She, however, who had been programmed to depend only on herself, found it difficult being forced to rely on others and be relied on in return. It was a responsibility she’d never faced because as the Hand, failure had not been an option. For a Jedi, it was a fact of life.
“It’s not something you get used to.”
His voice again, a welcome invasion to the silence. While his soft tones filled the air, his free fingers brushed her hair out of her face, as his lips gently kissed her hairline. When he had gotten so close to her, she did not know. But she allowed herself to relax, as the tension in her shoulders eased slightly.
“And it’s not something you can change.”
Emotion began to creep its way into his voice, from a lulling, calming tone to something deeper, more affecting.
“It’s something we have to endure, because we have to be strong enough.”
And you’re strong. His silent refrain reverberated through her mind.
He touched her face, her arm, her waist one at a time, or perhaps all of them at once. The contradiction of his soft, warm skin and the abrasive material of his clothes; the light and dark of his very being. The give and take of their relationship, all in the one moment.
She could deal with it herself. But lips on her brow, fingers in her hair, heated breath on her neck - it was a mutual understanding; the rest of her troubles unspoken, for he already knew them, and his comfort withheld, because she didn’t need it.
He was not a stimulant, prompting her further, nor an anaesthetic, taking away her pain.
He was Luke, and he was just there.