[fic] Feet on the Ground (2/8, PG-13)
Here's more of my SW chaptered fic, for anyone out there reading. :) Merry Christmas.
Title: Feet on the Ground
Author: Rynne
Fandom: Star Wars
Rating: PG-13
Summary: AU. Luke Skywalker has grown up his father's apprentice, and can't imagine anything but serving the Emperor. But after one mission, Luke's illusions begin to shatter, and Luke and his father begin to plan for the future--their future. Primarily a Luke-Vader story, with eventual Luke/Mara.
Author's notes: This is the first sequel to my fic Walking the Sky. I highly suggest you read that before reading this, though the basics are that Vader found Luke on Tatooine when Luke was nine, killing Obi-Wan and another Jedi, and leaving Owen and Beru alive.
This fic is written in its entirety, and is eight chapters long, plus a prologue. The only delay in posting chapters is when I get them back from my betas and make corrections, so I should be updating fairly frequently.
There are characters and concepts from the Star Wars Extended Universe in here, but very few. The biggest one is Mara Jade, who plays a large role, and who will be an important part of the plot, and not just as a love interest. I hope that I've provided enough background on Mara so that those of you who have seen Star Wars but not read any of the EU books would still be able to follow the story, if you want to read it--just think of her as an original character (which she is, though created by Timothy Zahn and not me).
Enormous thanks must go to krabapple and kayladie for betaing. You both made this fic much better than it would have been on its own. Thank you!
Prologue | Chapter One | Chapter Two | Chapter Three | Chapter Four | Chapter Five | Chapter Six | Chapter Seven | Chapter Eight
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2
Ord Mantell was dirty and crowded.
It was hardly the first dirty and crowded place that Luke had been to--Mos Eisley on his home planet of Tatooine qualified, and he'd been to the spaceport there often enough, and more often than he liked--but Ord Mantell had a sort of edgy undertone that Mos Eisley didn't.
Luke smiled briefly to himself; Mos Eisley was edgy as well, of course, as was any place smugglers and the dregs of society frequented, and the tone on Ord Mantell was similar, but...different.
Luke wondered if it was because there was a Jedi here.
He strode swiftly through the streets of Ord Mantell, cloak streaming out behind him and hood pulled down across his face, his lightsaber hanging very visibly on his belt. The whisper of his presence parted the waves of people before him, and he noticed the fear on the face of anyone who looked at him. No one said anything as he passed, but he could hear the voices springing up behind him.
"--Lord Umber, it has to be--"
"--Shadow Sith--"
"--away from him--"
"--look at him, don't get close--"
"--he here, who's he gonna--"
"--shorter than I thought--"
Luke grimaced at the last muffled voice to reach his ears. His height was still a sore point, and he'd long since given up hoping to catch up with his father. He knew he wasn't done growing yet, but his father still had about half a meter on him--which was admittedly including the suit, but Anakin Skywalker had been tall even without it--and he didn't think he could make up the difference by the time he was an adult.
Mara Jade had left him at the ship they'd both came in on, saying that she had her own job to do. Apparently she and Luke weren't to be as much partners on this job as people going to the same planet for different reasons, which relieved Luke a bit. He hadn't been looking forward to someone watching him kill his first Jedi, especially as he wasn't exactly sure he wanted to kill the Jedi in the first place. Still, he isolated her presence in the Force, shields and all, and tucked it into a corner of his mind so that he would know if she was near.
Luke called up a mental map of the region he was in, remembering his research, and reached out with the Force for the echo of another Force-sensitive presence. He didn't find one, but he wasn't surprised. If the Jedi had been so stupid as to not have shields up at all times, he would have been found long before now. But he must have grown careless, having lived in safety these sixteen years since the Jedi Purges; one of the Emperor's spies had sighted him using the Force and had done a background check on the man. So Luke was here to fix the problem.
Luke sighed inwardly and sunk down to that calm place inside him, the one that his father and Palpatine didn't know he had. His father would have told him to use his anger and frustration for this, but he'd found out before that he didn't need it. He could do the same things when calm as when passionate, and it was really just a minor setback, an unsurprising one, and one he didn't need to get angry about.
He dove into the Force, not just metaphorically wading like when he'd just reached out for the echo of a presence. He kept walking, letting the sights and sounds of Ord Mantell, the smugglers and bounty hunters and people down on their luck and stuck in the gutter, fade into the background. He went deeper, deeper--not as deep as he could have gone, but deep enough that the way was clear, because the Jedi he was hunting couldn't even begin to match his strength in the Force.
His feet walked now almost of their own volition. It was a good thing that people stumbled over themselves to get out of Luke's way, because he wasn't paying attention to what was physically in front of him; his eyes stared off into the distance, seeing the Jedi instead of where he was going. He almost ran into a tall brown-haired smuggler before the smuggler's Wookiee partner snatched him out of the way, but Luke didn't notice. He was immersed in the Force, and it guided him where he needed to go.
Luke had told his father, once, about how he sometimes gave himself over to the Force and let it do with him as it willed. He'd been thirteen at the time, and it had been just after his first visit home to Tatooine, and he was still flushed with the strange thrill of being a nobody again after being a Sith Lord in training. He remembered vividly his father's lecture, about how Sith control the Force rather than letting it control them, and how he should never, never give up his control to anyone or anything. Giving up control could get him killed, and keeping it meant he had the power and the advantages.
His father had made sense, and Luke usually held tightly to his control, especially in Palpatine's presence, when he always wanted to take his lightsaber and shove it, turned on, down the old man's throat, so that the Emperor could not order him about or laugh at him anymore. Refraining from hurting his father's master truly required control. But he always felt eminently safe, guided by the Force, and despite his father's instruction, he still sometimes gave over his control to it when no one would notice he had done so.
Luke prowled the streets and in his Force-touched eyes saw the Jedi turn into the warehouse district. He smiled briefly; his quarry probably realized by now that he'd picked up a tail, but also that he would not be able to escape. It was turning dusk, and Luke walked through a stream of people heading home from work. The warehouses would be deserted soon, so there would be no witnesses to the coming confrontation between Jedi and Sith.
The sun sank lower and lower against the horizon as Luke walked deeper into the district, a hand on the lightsaber hilt at his side. He didn't see the Jedi getting ready to ambush him, and didn't think he would, but it never hurt to be prepared. The Jedi could always leave that nice, big, nearly empty warehouse he looked like he'd holed up in to wait.
But he didn't. He was still there, standing in the exact center of the empty space, when Luke stepped in the door. He was a middle-aged human man, brown hair streaking gray, taller than Luke but just as slender. His lightsaber was in his hand, but not lit.
"Darth Umber, I presume?" he asked, as calmly as if they were passing on the street, and not about to fight to the death. Luke found himself respecting him for his composure--the only two Jedi Luke had met before had felt nearly panicked to his senses when confronted with a Sith Lord. But then again, Luke thought ruefully, his father was so much more fear inspiring than Luke himself was, even draped in his black cloak and hood.
"I am he," Luke replied, pitching his voice lower and hoping that it wouldn't break, as it had the first time he'd tried it. Luke could barely keep from blushing when remembering that incident when he was a newly-declared Sith Lord, on his first ever mission by himself, and trying to seem older than he was. At least it had been easy to kill his intended victim when he laughed at Luke's breaking voice. He did think that his voice was done changing, but he didn't want to be proven wrong. "And you are the Jedi Knight Rellan Vares?"
The Jedi just nodded. Luke closed his eyes and sighed, unable to put it off any longer. Unfortunately, the cloak and hood would get in the way in a lightsaber fight, and might end up with unwanted tears in it if he wasn't careful. Gritting his teeth against the Jedi's inevitable dismissal of him as just a child, he unclasped the cloak and took it off, throwing it to one side, where it would hopefully remain out of the way.
As his opponent was revealed to be a teenage boy, the Jedi gaped and nearly dropped his lightsaber in surprise, only recovering just before it slipped from his fingers. "You're just a boy!" Vares exclaimed, and Luke narrowed his eyes as a wave of anger drove away the remains of his calm.
"I am a fully trained Sith Lord," he said coldly. "Treat me as 'just a boy' and it will be the last mistake you ever make." He unhooked his lightsaber from his belt and took it in both hands, though didn't turn it on just yet.
He found himself reluctant to start the fight--the Jedi had judged him by his age, yes, but his father was the only one who didn't, and it was ridiculously easy to do. And this Rellan Vares...he was just a Jedi, and that was not as damning in Luke's eyes as it was in his father's and Palpatine's. Despite his father's stories of what the Jedi had done to him, Luke remembered what the Jedi had done to him--namely, given their lives to protect his. He couldn't find it in him to really hate the Jedi, and so he stood, almost uncertainly, saber extended in front of him and still off.
Vares looked at him as if he could see exactly what Luke was thinking, and Luke hurriedly checked his shields, making sure that they were as high and thick as he needed. They were, but it didn't seem to matter to Vares, who continued looking at him as if seeing his soul. "You know," he said quietly, "you don't have to do this. You don't have to fight me."
"I do," Luke said, fighting to keep his voice steady and his eyes open against that stare. Show no weaknesses. "I can't disobey my orders."
"You can!" the Jedi urged. "I can see the uncertainty on your face. You can come with me, and I'll teach you to use the Force in the light, not the shadows or the darkness. If you don't want to fight me, then come with me!"
Luke shook his head, and searched for his composure, wondering at how quickly he'd lost the upper hand. "You don't understand," he said, even as he was berating himself--Idiot idiot idiot!--for even listening to this Jedi long enough to negate him, for letting the Jedi see any of his thoughts on his face or body, for the small part of him that wanted to take this Jedi's offer. "I cannot leave my fa--my master." And now he was almost slipping and calling Vader his father!
"You can!" Vares repeated emphatically, but Luke shook his head harder, still cursing himself for being unable to grasp that needed composure and still the movement of his head. He shouldn't be remembering Ray Jopaan, wanting only to find someone to complete his training and instead freely giving up his life for a boy he'd just met. He shouldn't be remembering Obi-Wan Kenobi, who taught Luke respect for life when he was just a small child, and who made sure that Darth Vader wouldn't inadvertently kill his own son.
"You don't understand!" Luke almost shouted, his emotions spiraling out of control, and behind him a box exploded, spraying bits of duraplast everywhere, slivers hitting Luke's back and neck and causing any exposed skin they hit to break open and bleed. Luke ignored them. "I can't leave. They'd find me and then they'd find you too, again, and they'd kill you and punish me and then mold me until I'm even further into the Dark Side than I already am!"
Right after he said it, Luke realized how true it was. He hadn't been watching what he was saying--Stupid stupid stupid!--but it was true, all of it. His father would never let him go without a fight, or probably even with a fight, and Palpatine regarded him as his, and never voluntarily released something he thought belonged to him, unless he decided it was too dangerous to exist and destroyed it. And Vader wouldn't let Luke die, but he would have no such consideration for this Jedi Knight, and Luke would be punished and driven further into the Dark Side. He didn't want that, didn't want to lose what compassion was left to him, didn't want to be the almost-unthinking servant of Palpatine that even he could see that his father was. As good as using the power of the Force made him feel, holding to his honor made him feel worthwhile, and he didn't want to lose that just because Palpatine didn't care for integrity.
"I can't," Luke said again, and fought against the lump in his throat. He didn't want to kill this Jedi, who offered what he never let himself think that he wanted. "If I don't kill you, they'll realize that I'm not--not a perfect servant of the Dark Side. They'll take steps to change that."
The Jedi was still looking at him, but Luke could see his gaze was now leavened with pity, and the words Don't look at me like that! caught in his throat and stuck there. "There's no need for pity," Luke said, with what he hoped was a mixture of cold and aloofness. "You should worry about yourself instead."
Don't say any more, Luke's mind told him, and he tried to make sure that his tongue followed the order. You shouldn't have said even as much as you have. Don't say any more.
"Is there no other way?" Vares asked softly. "I do not want to join the Force just yet." It wasn't a plea. He wasn't begging for Luke's mercy, Luke could tell. It was a simple statement, and a cutting one. Luke tried so hard to not think of his victims as people, as anything with wishes and emotions and real lives. This Jedi wasn't giving him that comfort.
But perhaps... "You know how to enter a healing trance, right?" Luke asked, his mind thinking furiously, having caught on a possible solution as he remembered another Jedi, and an overheard conversation seven years ago. The Jedi nodded. "I could...almost kill you. Hurt you badly enough that you could be mistaken for dead, while you go into a healing trance. Then you could leave Ord Mantell and lie low. You'd have to give me your lightsaber, so I could present it as proof of your death, but you can build another one later."
The Jedi raised an eyebrow. "And what if I win this fight?" he asked lightly, smiling almost whimsically. "Would you come with me then?"
Luke fought down the nearly hysterical laughter that threatened to erupt from him. "You won't win," he said, with the certain knowledge that it was true. This Jedi may be older and more experienced, but Luke knew that he was more powerful in the Force and at the least an equal with a saber, and he had anger and aggression and all his emotions as his allies, which the Jedi would surely scorn to use. He knew it was arrogant of him to think so, but this Jedi wouldn't win a fight against him.
"If I do?" Vares still challenged. He was probably still influenced by how young Luke appeared--and even though Luke hated it, he knew that if his youth caused people to underestimate him, it was an advantage.
Luke shook his head, and let a smirk creep onto his face. "You won't," he said again, "but even if you did, I couldn't come with you. I've got a bond with my master, and he'd be able to find me as long as I was alive." A strong bond between master and apprentice, made even stronger by the close blood tie. "I could try to shield against him, but I couldn't guarantee that it would work. You'd do better to leave me here, in a trance. I've got an associate who would pick me up." Of course, the Emperor's Hand would think him weak, and Palpatine would punish him, but it was just a hypothetical situation anyway, since Luke was going to win.
And with that, he thumbed on his lightsaber. The pulsing red blade seemed to cause a change in the Jedi; the aura of the Force around him grew still, and Luke sensed he was finally beginning to take the fight seriously, for the first time since he'd seen Luke's face. Vares turned on his own lightsaber, a blue blade popping into existence in front of him. Then he held it in the guard position, and paused.
Luke didn't wait for a second invitation. He sprang into action, rushing forward and bringing his saber up in a sweeping motion. It was immediately blocked, which Luke expected, the blue blade trying to push his red one back. He grinned inwardly, and used the force of the push and his own momentum to jump up and flip over the Jedi's shoulder, landing in a crouch. He stayed in that position and swung his blade at Vares's legs; Vares jumped out of the way just before the blade would have contacted with his body.
The Jedi shot him a startled look, one that changed to wary respect, and Luke smiled briefly--maybe now Vares would believe he knew what he was doing. He rolled forward from his crouch and then lunged upwards, his blade puncturing the air where the Jedi's stomach had been a second before. A brush of wind brought warning, and Luke whirled around, rising to his knees in time to block a strike to his head. He held the blades where they were for the moment and shifted his weight to his left leg, kicking out with his right, hooking his foot behind the Jedi's ankle and pulling. The Jedi stumbled, and almost lost his balance, but recovered it just as Luke stood up again.
Your height is an advantage, Luke's father had told him once, when it became clear that he would never be very tall. People do not expect attacks that come from below. They expect their opponents to target head and chest--the upper body. They are prepared to defend the lower body, but are more comfortable doing so if the attack comes from above. As a shorter fighter, you have an opportunity to get inside their guards like someone of my stature cannot. Take advantage of that!
And Luke did. He ducked and rolled, this time coming up to slam his shoulder into the joining of Vares's leg to his waist, then flipped back and looked up to see the Jedi hunched over that spot. Luke rushed in again, thinking that maybe he could win the fight then and there, but the Jedi was well-trained--he was up again before Luke could close in properly, and Luke felt him let the Force flow through him to where he would surely have a nasty bruise, at least.
Luke grinned; he did love a good duel, but he'd never had a living opponent, as opposed to a droid, who was not his father, and he relished the chance to test himself against someone else's style. And Vares was good, very good, but he did not have the talent of Luke's father, or Luke himself. He stayed on the defensive, rarely able to stop blocking in order to get a strike in himself, and Luke wanted to keep it that way.
Luke attacked ferociously, stepping lightly on the balls of his feet as he drove the Jedi farther and farther back, towards the wall. Vares tried to step back and circle around to get to the middle of the floor again, where he wouldn't be trapped against a wall, but Luke was smaller and more agile, and pivoted with the Jedi whenever he tried to move away. They were almost to the wall now, a short stack of boxes directly to the Jedi's left--and then the Jedi briefly turned his back on Luke, running and jumping onto the boxes, and from there pushing off and flipping over Luke's head to land once again in the center of the room.
Now Luke was the one whose back was against the wall, but he didn't worry. He let the Jedi close in and begin a downward strike to Luke's left shoulder, and then he ducked and rolled again, straight between the Jedi's legs, then stood and round-kicked him in the small of the back before the Jedi could turn around. Vares stumbled forward, and Luke raised his saber to get in the debilitating blow, but then Vares straightened up and ran forwards, towards the wall and then up it, using his momentum to push off and again flip over Luke, landing lightly on his feet in the center of the floor.
More than one person can play that game, Luke thought, and then he was off and running towards where Vares was standing calmly, lightsaber held out in front of him in a defensive stance. Just before he got in range, Luke launched himself up and over Vares's head, thrusting his saber downward as gravity pulled him back to the ground. It would have gone straight through the Jedi's shoulder blades if he hadn't thrust his own saber back behind him and blocked the strike. The Jedi pivoted, so that his blade was once again before him and his feet were in defensive stance, and paused.
"You are good," he commented lightly. "I don't recall the Jedi padawans of your age being quite so well trained."
Luke smirked. "I am a Sith Lord, not a Jedi padawan," he replied with some amusement. Was this Jedi admitting that Sith training was superior? Luke, of course, thought it was--his father had told him about how long his own training had taken, under the Jedi, and about how the Jedi had held him back, preoccupying him with busywork and constant useless meditation. Luke's own training was much more efficient, and took much less time.
"Imagine what you could do on the Light side," the Jedi said almost idly, as if it was a passing thought and didn't matter. Luke knew better, and rolled his eyes.
"We're not going into that again," he warned. Even if I really did want to go with him and become a Jedi...I can't leave Father. He probably wouldn't believe me if I told him that Darth Vader cares about me, but he does, and Father would be devastated if I left. I can't do that to him.
Vares shook his head. "You could--" he tried again, and Luke shook his head sharply, cutting him off.
"I told you before, I won't," he replied harshly. "Stop bringing it up. The best that you can hope for is surviving this fight."
And, not giving the Jedi another chance to say another thing, Luke rushed forward again, this time embracing the anger coursing through his veins, anger at the Jedi's refusal to respect Luke's decision and the reasons for making it. I'm not a child, Luke thought furiously, attacking again and again, his eyes on his opponent's and not their whirring lightsabers. I can make my own decisions, and the least you could do is not try to change my mind when I told you my reasoning, when I didn't even have to. What about that vaunted Jedi respect for others' ways of life?
He struck over and over, and though the Jedi's blade was always there to meet his, Vares could not keep up his defense for long, not without resorting to the same rush of energy that Luke was using, and Luke knew he wouldn't do that. No, Luke mentally sneered, a Jedi was too good to use his anger to help him win.
Well, it was his loss. Vares gave ground slowly and reluctantly, but he gave it all the same, and Luke drove him until his back was against the wall. He didn't give the Jedi a chance to use the acrobatics he'd used before, the look in his eyes just daring Vares to turn his back on him. Vares didn't, though, and kept blocking, the frenetic movement of his saber almost at odds with the calm and peaceful expression on his face.
Something tugged in the back of his mind, and he let the Force take over his hands momentarily as he investigated what it was. Another Force-user was approaching, someone shielded, but whose presence he knew--ah, yes, he remembered now. Mara Jade, the Emperor's Hand, whose presence in the Force he'd tucked away into his mind as he left her earlier that day. She was on her way to where he was, and was only a few minutes away.
All right, then. Time to stop playing around and end this. It had been a good duel, and a nice chance to fight against someone who was not his father, but he didn't want the Emperor's Hand to see him leaving a Jedi alive. She'd probably tell Palpatine, and his effort would be wasted.
He mentally grabbed the Force and pulled it closer to him, pouring its strength into his body so that he would move faster and strike harder. The fight seemed to go in slow motion now, and Luke could see what move the Jedi would make before he made it. It was simple, then, to completely take the flow of the fight into his own hands, and with prescience and speed and a flick of his wrist, he sent the Jedi's lightsaber flying.
Vares's arms fell to his sides, but he still stood straight and tall as he looked down into Luke's eyes, and Luke could sense the calmness with which the Jedi met his fate. Luke hesitated, then whispered, "May the Force be with you," as he drove his blade into the Jedi's chest, just outside the heart.
"And with you," the Jedi mouthed as his eyes slowly closed. Luke removed his blade and turned it off, and the Jedi slid down the wall to slump at its base. Luke knelt down and leaned forward, first feeling for breath and then a pulse. Both were slow and shallow, but they were there, and Vares's presence in the Force was small but stable. The Jedi would eventually heal.
Luke rose to his feet and then stood there, looking at the Jedi who slouched as if dead on the floor. Maybe I'll see you again someday, he thought, and turned around, walking to the center of the room where Vares's lightsaber had come to a stop. He picked it up, studied it for a bit, the scratches and gouges on the silvery cylinder telling a story about the Jedi's rough life. With a sigh, he clipped it and his own saber to his belt, and turned towards the door--just in time to see a figure there pull out a blaster and shoot the Jedi slowly healing himself against the wall.
Luke's head flew straight up, and the figure stepped forward into the dim lighting the warehouse offered, the only light now that the sun had set. It was Mara Jade, and that was not a surprise, because he'd felt her coming himself, but she'd just shot a man she should have had no reason to think was still alive--he didn't think she was so well-trained in the Force as to be able to differentiate between death and what was effectively a coma. But Luke could differentiate, and now there was only the gaping maw of death where there had once been a flicker of life.
Show no weakness. He couldn't let her know the true scope of what she'd done. Act normal.
"You've finished your business, I presume?" Luke found himself saying, coolly and with professional aloofness, as if his plans had not just been shattered around him.
"Yes," she said, and returned her blaster to its holster on her hip. "And I see that you have as well. We can go back to Coruscant now."
"Why did you shoot him?" Luke asked, unable to stop the question, following her as she turned around and left the warehouse, picking up his cloak on the way and swirling it over his shoulders. "He was dead already."
"Orders," she replied, and the tone of her voice warned him not to ask anything more, because she would not answer. But she gave no indication that she knew the Jedi had not been dead when she shot him, which was something, at least. He probed her mind, lightly and quickly and just to make sure. Her shields were strong, but he found tiny cracks, and he insinuated himself into one, searching for any sign that she had known the Jedi still lived when she shot him. Luke gave an inward sigh of relief when he found none, just the orders to shoot. He withdrew from her mind, and glanced at her quickly, but she didn't appear to have noticed the brief invasion.
"I see," Luke said evenly, and did. Palpatine had known Luke better than he knew himself, and must have known that he would not have wanted to kill a Jedi.
That was probably why Mara Jade was really here, and any business she said she had would have been make-work as she waited for Luke's fight to be over. So much for her mission being separate from his.
Luke hoped that Vares had not thought Luke betrayed him. The small part of his honor that he had not let the Dark Side consume hoped that, before he'd died, the Jedi had known that Luke was not a traitor to his word.
They separated when they got to the city proper, where crowds still lingered and people could wonder why a teenage girl was walking with the Shadow Sith. Luke let his footsteps slow, let more distance grow between him and the girl who had just shot one of his last illusions to death along with the late Jedi Knight. He should not have believed his inner self safe from Palpatine, but he had. Now that he knew of his mistake, he could rectify it.
Palpatine was the enemy here, and not the Jedi or whatever else he cared to point a finger at. Palpatine was the one with the ability to destroy him more than any other save his father, but the Emperor had the motivation because Luke knew that Palpatine hated him in turn. He would still do Palpatine's bidding, because he knew he currently had no choice, but Luke would never forget that again.
Title: Feet on the Ground
Author: Rynne
Fandom: Star Wars
Rating: PG-13
Summary: AU. Luke Skywalker has grown up his father's apprentice, and can't imagine anything but serving the Emperor. But after one mission, Luke's illusions begin to shatter, and Luke and his father begin to plan for the future--their future. Primarily a Luke-Vader story, with eventual Luke/Mara.
Author's notes: This is the first sequel to my fic Walking the Sky. I highly suggest you read that before reading this, though the basics are that Vader found Luke on Tatooine when Luke was nine, killing Obi-Wan and another Jedi, and leaving Owen and Beru alive.
This fic is written in its entirety, and is eight chapters long, plus a prologue. The only delay in posting chapters is when I get them back from my betas and make corrections, so I should be updating fairly frequently.
There are characters and concepts from the Star Wars Extended Universe in here, but very few. The biggest one is Mara Jade, who plays a large role, and who will be an important part of the plot, and not just as a love interest. I hope that I've provided enough background on Mara so that those of you who have seen Star Wars but not read any of the EU books would still be able to follow the story, if you want to read it--just think of her as an original character (which she is, though created by Timothy Zahn and not me).
Enormous thanks must go to krabapple and kayladie for betaing. You both made this fic much better than it would have been on its own. Thank you!
Prologue | Chapter One | Chapter Two | Chapter Three | Chapter Four | Chapter Five | Chapter Six | Chapter Seven | Chapter Eight
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2
Ord Mantell was dirty and crowded.
It was hardly the first dirty and crowded place that Luke had been to--Mos Eisley on his home planet of Tatooine qualified, and he'd been to the spaceport there often enough, and more often than he liked--but Ord Mantell had a sort of edgy undertone that Mos Eisley didn't.
Luke smiled briefly to himself; Mos Eisley was edgy as well, of course, as was any place smugglers and the dregs of society frequented, and the tone on Ord Mantell was similar, but...different.
Luke wondered if it was because there was a Jedi here.
He strode swiftly through the streets of Ord Mantell, cloak streaming out behind him and hood pulled down across his face, his lightsaber hanging very visibly on his belt. The whisper of his presence parted the waves of people before him, and he noticed the fear on the face of anyone who looked at him. No one said anything as he passed, but he could hear the voices springing up behind him.
"--Lord Umber, it has to be--"
"--Shadow Sith--"
"--away from him--"
"--look at him, don't get close--"
"--he here, who's he gonna--"
"--shorter than I thought--"
Luke grimaced at the last muffled voice to reach his ears. His height was still a sore point, and he'd long since given up hoping to catch up with his father. He knew he wasn't done growing yet, but his father still had about half a meter on him--which was admittedly including the suit, but Anakin Skywalker had been tall even without it--and he didn't think he could make up the difference by the time he was an adult.
Mara Jade had left him at the ship they'd both came in on, saying that she had her own job to do. Apparently she and Luke weren't to be as much partners on this job as people going to the same planet for different reasons, which relieved Luke a bit. He hadn't been looking forward to someone watching him kill his first Jedi, especially as he wasn't exactly sure he wanted to kill the Jedi in the first place. Still, he isolated her presence in the Force, shields and all, and tucked it into a corner of his mind so that he would know if she was near.
Luke called up a mental map of the region he was in, remembering his research, and reached out with the Force for the echo of another Force-sensitive presence. He didn't find one, but he wasn't surprised. If the Jedi had been so stupid as to not have shields up at all times, he would have been found long before now. But he must have grown careless, having lived in safety these sixteen years since the Jedi Purges; one of the Emperor's spies had sighted him using the Force and had done a background check on the man. So Luke was here to fix the problem.
Luke sighed inwardly and sunk down to that calm place inside him, the one that his father and Palpatine didn't know he had. His father would have told him to use his anger and frustration for this, but he'd found out before that he didn't need it. He could do the same things when calm as when passionate, and it was really just a minor setback, an unsurprising one, and one he didn't need to get angry about.
He dove into the Force, not just metaphorically wading like when he'd just reached out for the echo of a presence. He kept walking, letting the sights and sounds of Ord Mantell, the smugglers and bounty hunters and people down on their luck and stuck in the gutter, fade into the background. He went deeper, deeper--not as deep as he could have gone, but deep enough that the way was clear, because the Jedi he was hunting couldn't even begin to match his strength in the Force.
His feet walked now almost of their own volition. It was a good thing that people stumbled over themselves to get out of Luke's way, because he wasn't paying attention to what was physically in front of him; his eyes stared off into the distance, seeing the Jedi instead of where he was going. He almost ran into a tall brown-haired smuggler before the smuggler's Wookiee partner snatched him out of the way, but Luke didn't notice. He was immersed in the Force, and it guided him where he needed to go.
Luke had told his father, once, about how he sometimes gave himself over to the Force and let it do with him as it willed. He'd been thirteen at the time, and it had been just after his first visit home to Tatooine, and he was still flushed with the strange thrill of being a nobody again after being a Sith Lord in training. He remembered vividly his father's lecture, about how Sith control the Force rather than letting it control them, and how he should never, never give up his control to anyone or anything. Giving up control could get him killed, and keeping it meant he had the power and the advantages.
His father had made sense, and Luke usually held tightly to his control, especially in Palpatine's presence, when he always wanted to take his lightsaber and shove it, turned on, down the old man's throat, so that the Emperor could not order him about or laugh at him anymore. Refraining from hurting his father's master truly required control. But he always felt eminently safe, guided by the Force, and despite his father's instruction, he still sometimes gave over his control to it when no one would notice he had done so.
Luke prowled the streets and in his Force-touched eyes saw the Jedi turn into the warehouse district. He smiled briefly; his quarry probably realized by now that he'd picked up a tail, but also that he would not be able to escape. It was turning dusk, and Luke walked through a stream of people heading home from work. The warehouses would be deserted soon, so there would be no witnesses to the coming confrontation between Jedi and Sith.
The sun sank lower and lower against the horizon as Luke walked deeper into the district, a hand on the lightsaber hilt at his side. He didn't see the Jedi getting ready to ambush him, and didn't think he would, but it never hurt to be prepared. The Jedi could always leave that nice, big, nearly empty warehouse he looked like he'd holed up in to wait.
But he didn't. He was still there, standing in the exact center of the empty space, when Luke stepped in the door. He was a middle-aged human man, brown hair streaking gray, taller than Luke but just as slender. His lightsaber was in his hand, but not lit.
"Darth Umber, I presume?" he asked, as calmly as if they were passing on the street, and not about to fight to the death. Luke found himself respecting him for his composure--the only two Jedi Luke had met before had felt nearly panicked to his senses when confronted with a Sith Lord. But then again, Luke thought ruefully, his father was so much more fear inspiring than Luke himself was, even draped in his black cloak and hood.
"I am he," Luke replied, pitching his voice lower and hoping that it wouldn't break, as it had the first time he'd tried it. Luke could barely keep from blushing when remembering that incident when he was a newly-declared Sith Lord, on his first ever mission by himself, and trying to seem older than he was. At least it had been easy to kill his intended victim when he laughed at Luke's breaking voice. He did think that his voice was done changing, but he didn't want to be proven wrong. "And you are the Jedi Knight Rellan Vares?"
The Jedi just nodded. Luke closed his eyes and sighed, unable to put it off any longer. Unfortunately, the cloak and hood would get in the way in a lightsaber fight, and might end up with unwanted tears in it if he wasn't careful. Gritting his teeth against the Jedi's inevitable dismissal of him as just a child, he unclasped the cloak and took it off, throwing it to one side, where it would hopefully remain out of the way.
As his opponent was revealed to be a teenage boy, the Jedi gaped and nearly dropped his lightsaber in surprise, only recovering just before it slipped from his fingers. "You're just a boy!" Vares exclaimed, and Luke narrowed his eyes as a wave of anger drove away the remains of his calm.
"I am a fully trained Sith Lord," he said coldly. "Treat me as 'just a boy' and it will be the last mistake you ever make." He unhooked his lightsaber from his belt and took it in both hands, though didn't turn it on just yet.
He found himself reluctant to start the fight--the Jedi had judged him by his age, yes, but his father was the only one who didn't, and it was ridiculously easy to do. And this Rellan Vares...he was just a Jedi, and that was not as damning in Luke's eyes as it was in his father's and Palpatine's. Despite his father's stories of what the Jedi had done to him, Luke remembered what the Jedi had done to him--namely, given their lives to protect his. He couldn't find it in him to really hate the Jedi, and so he stood, almost uncertainly, saber extended in front of him and still off.
Vares looked at him as if he could see exactly what Luke was thinking, and Luke hurriedly checked his shields, making sure that they were as high and thick as he needed. They were, but it didn't seem to matter to Vares, who continued looking at him as if seeing his soul. "You know," he said quietly, "you don't have to do this. You don't have to fight me."
"I do," Luke said, fighting to keep his voice steady and his eyes open against that stare. Show no weaknesses. "I can't disobey my orders."
"You can!" the Jedi urged. "I can see the uncertainty on your face. You can come with me, and I'll teach you to use the Force in the light, not the shadows or the darkness. If you don't want to fight me, then come with me!"
Luke shook his head, and searched for his composure, wondering at how quickly he'd lost the upper hand. "You don't understand," he said, even as he was berating himself--Idiot idiot idiot!--for even listening to this Jedi long enough to negate him, for letting the Jedi see any of his thoughts on his face or body, for the small part of him that wanted to take this Jedi's offer. "I cannot leave my fa--my master." And now he was almost slipping and calling Vader his father!
"You can!" Vares repeated emphatically, but Luke shook his head harder, still cursing himself for being unable to grasp that needed composure and still the movement of his head. He shouldn't be remembering Ray Jopaan, wanting only to find someone to complete his training and instead freely giving up his life for a boy he'd just met. He shouldn't be remembering Obi-Wan Kenobi, who taught Luke respect for life when he was just a small child, and who made sure that Darth Vader wouldn't inadvertently kill his own son.
"You don't understand!" Luke almost shouted, his emotions spiraling out of control, and behind him a box exploded, spraying bits of duraplast everywhere, slivers hitting Luke's back and neck and causing any exposed skin they hit to break open and bleed. Luke ignored them. "I can't leave. They'd find me and then they'd find you too, again, and they'd kill you and punish me and then mold me until I'm even further into the Dark Side than I already am!"
Right after he said it, Luke realized how true it was. He hadn't been watching what he was saying--Stupid stupid stupid!--but it was true, all of it. His father would never let him go without a fight, or probably even with a fight, and Palpatine regarded him as his, and never voluntarily released something he thought belonged to him, unless he decided it was too dangerous to exist and destroyed it. And Vader wouldn't let Luke die, but he would have no such consideration for this Jedi Knight, and Luke would be punished and driven further into the Dark Side. He didn't want that, didn't want to lose what compassion was left to him, didn't want to be the almost-unthinking servant of Palpatine that even he could see that his father was. As good as using the power of the Force made him feel, holding to his honor made him feel worthwhile, and he didn't want to lose that just because Palpatine didn't care for integrity.
"I can't," Luke said again, and fought against the lump in his throat. He didn't want to kill this Jedi, who offered what he never let himself think that he wanted. "If I don't kill you, they'll realize that I'm not--not a perfect servant of the Dark Side. They'll take steps to change that."
The Jedi was still looking at him, but Luke could see his gaze was now leavened with pity, and the words Don't look at me like that! caught in his throat and stuck there. "There's no need for pity," Luke said, with what he hoped was a mixture of cold and aloofness. "You should worry about yourself instead."
Don't say any more, Luke's mind told him, and he tried to make sure that his tongue followed the order. You shouldn't have said even as much as you have. Don't say any more.
"Is there no other way?" Vares asked softly. "I do not want to join the Force just yet." It wasn't a plea. He wasn't begging for Luke's mercy, Luke could tell. It was a simple statement, and a cutting one. Luke tried so hard to not think of his victims as people, as anything with wishes and emotions and real lives. This Jedi wasn't giving him that comfort.
But perhaps... "You know how to enter a healing trance, right?" Luke asked, his mind thinking furiously, having caught on a possible solution as he remembered another Jedi, and an overheard conversation seven years ago. The Jedi nodded. "I could...almost kill you. Hurt you badly enough that you could be mistaken for dead, while you go into a healing trance. Then you could leave Ord Mantell and lie low. You'd have to give me your lightsaber, so I could present it as proof of your death, but you can build another one later."
The Jedi raised an eyebrow. "And what if I win this fight?" he asked lightly, smiling almost whimsically. "Would you come with me then?"
Luke fought down the nearly hysterical laughter that threatened to erupt from him. "You won't win," he said, with the certain knowledge that it was true. This Jedi may be older and more experienced, but Luke knew that he was more powerful in the Force and at the least an equal with a saber, and he had anger and aggression and all his emotions as his allies, which the Jedi would surely scorn to use. He knew it was arrogant of him to think so, but this Jedi wouldn't win a fight against him.
"If I do?" Vares still challenged. He was probably still influenced by how young Luke appeared--and even though Luke hated it, he knew that if his youth caused people to underestimate him, it was an advantage.
Luke shook his head, and let a smirk creep onto his face. "You won't," he said again, "but even if you did, I couldn't come with you. I've got a bond with my master, and he'd be able to find me as long as I was alive." A strong bond between master and apprentice, made even stronger by the close blood tie. "I could try to shield against him, but I couldn't guarantee that it would work. You'd do better to leave me here, in a trance. I've got an associate who would pick me up." Of course, the Emperor's Hand would think him weak, and Palpatine would punish him, but it was just a hypothetical situation anyway, since Luke was going to win.
And with that, he thumbed on his lightsaber. The pulsing red blade seemed to cause a change in the Jedi; the aura of the Force around him grew still, and Luke sensed he was finally beginning to take the fight seriously, for the first time since he'd seen Luke's face. Vares turned on his own lightsaber, a blue blade popping into existence in front of him. Then he held it in the guard position, and paused.
Luke didn't wait for a second invitation. He sprang into action, rushing forward and bringing his saber up in a sweeping motion. It was immediately blocked, which Luke expected, the blue blade trying to push his red one back. He grinned inwardly, and used the force of the push and his own momentum to jump up and flip over the Jedi's shoulder, landing in a crouch. He stayed in that position and swung his blade at Vares's legs; Vares jumped out of the way just before the blade would have contacted with his body.
The Jedi shot him a startled look, one that changed to wary respect, and Luke smiled briefly--maybe now Vares would believe he knew what he was doing. He rolled forward from his crouch and then lunged upwards, his blade puncturing the air where the Jedi's stomach had been a second before. A brush of wind brought warning, and Luke whirled around, rising to his knees in time to block a strike to his head. He held the blades where they were for the moment and shifted his weight to his left leg, kicking out with his right, hooking his foot behind the Jedi's ankle and pulling. The Jedi stumbled, and almost lost his balance, but recovered it just as Luke stood up again.
Your height is an advantage, Luke's father had told him once, when it became clear that he would never be very tall. People do not expect attacks that come from below. They expect their opponents to target head and chest--the upper body. They are prepared to defend the lower body, but are more comfortable doing so if the attack comes from above. As a shorter fighter, you have an opportunity to get inside their guards like someone of my stature cannot. Take advantage of that!
And Luke did. He ducked and rolled, this time coming up to slam his shoulder into the joining of Vares's leg to his waist, then flipped back and looked up to see the Jedi hunched over that spot. Luke rushed in again, thinking that maybe he could win the fight then and there, but the Jedi was well-trained--he was up again before Luke could close in properly, and Luke felt him let the Force flow through him to where he would surely have a nasty bruise, at least.
Luke grinned; he did love a good duel, but he'd never had a living opponent, as opposed to a droid, who was not his father, and he relished the chance to test himself against someone else's style. And Vares was good, very good, but he did not have the talent of Luke's father, or Luke himself. He stayed on the defensive, rarely able to stop blocking in order to get a strike in himself, and Luke wanted to keep it that way.
Luke attacked ferociously, stepping lightly on the balls of his feet as he drove the Jedi farther and farther back, towards the wall. Vares tried to step back and circle around to get to the middle of the floor again, where he wouldn't be trapped against a wall, but Luke was smaller and more agile, and pivoted with the Jedi whenever he tried to move away. They were almost to the wall now, a short stack of boxes directly to the Jedi's left--and then the Jedi briefly turned his back on Luke, running and jumping onto the boxes, and from there pushing off and flipping over Luke's head to land once again in the center of the room.
Now Luke was the one whose back was against the wall, but he didn't worry. He let the Jedi close in and begin a downward strike to Luke's left shoulder, and then he ducked and rolled again, straight between the Jedi's legs, then stood and round-kicked him in the small of the back before the Jedi could turn around. Vares stumbled forward, and Luke raised his saber to get in the debilitating blow, but then Vares straightened up and ran forwards, towards the wall and then up it, using his momentum to push off and again flip over Luke, landing lightly on his feet in the center of the floor.
More than one person can play that game, Luke thought, and then he was off and running towards where Vares was standing calmly, lightsaber held out in front of him in a defensive stance. Just before he got in range, Luke launched himself up and over Vares's head, thrusting his saber downward as gravity pulled him back to the ground. It would have gone straight through the Jedi's shoulder blades if he hadn't thrust his own saber back behind him and blocked the strike. The Jedi pivoted, so that his blade was once again before him and his feet were in defensive stance, and paused.
"You are good," he commented lightly. "I don't recall the Jedi padawans of your age being quite so well trained."
Luke smirked. "I am a Sith Lord, not a Jedi padawan," he replied with some amusement. Was this Jedi admitting that Sith training was superior? Luke, of course, thought it was--his father had told him about how long his own training had taken, under the Jedi, and about how the Jedi had held him back, preoccupying him with busywork and constant useless meditation. Luke's own training was much more efficient, and took much less time.
"Imagine what you could do on the Light side," the Jedi said almost idly, as if it was a passing thought and didn't matter. Luke knew better, and rolled his eyes.
"We're not going into that again," he warned. Even if I really did want to go with him and become a Jedi...I can't leave Father. He probably wouldn't believe me if I told him that Darth Vader cares about me, but he does, and Father would be devastated if I left. I can't do that to him.
Vares shook his head. "You could--" he tried again, and Luke shook his head sharply, cutting him off.
"I told you before, I won't," he replied harshly. "Stop bringing it up. The best that you can hope for is surviving this fight."
And, not giving the Jedi another chance to say another thing, Luke rushed forward again, this time embracing the anger coursing through his veins, anger at the Jedi's refusal to respect Luke's decision and the reasons for making it. I'm not a child, Luke thought furiously, attacking again and again, his eyes on his opponent's and not their whirring lightsabers. I can make my own decisions, and the least you could do is not try to change my mind when I told you my reasoning, when I didn't even have to. What about that vaunted Jedi respect for others' ways of life?
He struck over and over, and though the Jedi's blade was always there to meet his, Vares could not keep up his defense for long, not without resorting to the same rush of energy that Luke was using, and Luke knew he wouldn't do that. No, Luke mentally sneered, a Jedi was too good to use his anger to help him win.
Well, it was his loss. Vares gave ground slowly and reluctantly, but he gave it all the same, and Luke drove him until his back was against the wall. He didn't give the Jedi a chance to use the acrobatics he'd used before, the look in his eyes just daring Vares to turn his back on him. Vares didn't, though, and kept blocking, the frenetic movement of his saber almost at odds with the calm and peaceful expression on his face.
Something tugged in the back of his mind, and he let the Force take over his hands momentarily as he investigated what it was. Another Force-user was approaching, someone shielded, but whose presence he knew--ah, yes, he remembered now. Mara Jade, the Emperor's Hand, whose presence in the Force he'd tucked away into his mind as he left her earlier that day. She was on her way to where he was, and was only a few minutes away.
All right, then. Time to stop playing around and end this. It had been a good duel, and a nice chance to fight against someone who was not his father, but he didn't want the Emperor's Hand to see him leaving a Jedi alive. She'd probably tell Palpatine, and his effort would be wasted.
He mentally grabbed the Force and pulled it closer to him, pouring its strength into his body so that he would move faster and strike harder. The fight seemed to go in slow motion now, and Luke could see what move the Jedi would make before he made it. It was simple, then, to completely take the flow of the fight into his own hands, and with prescience and speed and a flick of his wrist, he sent the Jedi's lightsaber flying.
Vares's arms fell to his sides, but he still stood straight and tall as he looked down into Luke's eyes, and Luke could sense the calmness with which the Jedi met his fate. Luke hesitated, then whispered, "May the Force be with you," as he drove his blade into the Jedi's chest, just outside the heart.
"And with you," the Jedi mouthed as his eyes slowly closed. Luke removed his blade and turned it off, and the Jedi slid down the wall to slump at its base. Luke knelt down and leaned forward, first feeling for breath and then a pulse. Both were slow and shallow, but they were there, and Vares's presence in the Force was small but stable. The Jedi would eventually heal.
Luke rose to his feet and then stood there, looking at the Jedi who slouched as if dead on the floor. Maybe I'll see you again someday, he thought, and turned around, walking to the center of the room where Vares's lightsaber had come to a stop. He picked it up, studied it for a bit, the scratches and gouges on the silvery cylinder telling a story about the Jedi's rough life. With a sigh, he clipped it and his own saber to his belt, and turned towards the door--just in time to see a figure there pull out a blaster and shoot the Jedi slowly healing himself against the wall.
Luke's head flew straight up, and the figure stepped forward into the dim lighting the warehouse offered, the only light now that the sun had set. It was Mara Jade, and that was not a surprise, because he'd felt her coming himself, but she'd just shot a man she should have had no reason to think was still alive--he didn't think she was so well-trained in the Force as to be able to differentiate between death and what was effectively a coma. But Luke could differentiate, and now there was only the gaping maw of death where there had once been a flicker of life.
Show no weakness. He couldn't let her know the true scope of what she'd done. Act normal.
"You've finished your business, I presume?" Luke found himself saying, coolly and with professional aloofness, as if his plans had not just been shattered around him.
"Yes," she said, and returned her blaster to its holster on her hip. "And I see that you have as well. We can go back to Coruscant now."
"Why did you shoot him?" Luke asked, unable to stop the question, following her as she turned around and left the warehouse, picking up his cloak on the way and swirling it over his shoulders. "He was dead already."
"Orders," she replied, and the tone of her voice warned him not to ask anything more, because she would not answer. But she gave no indication that she knew the Jedi had not been dead when she shot him, which was something, at least. He probed her mind, lightly and quickly and just to make sure. Her shields were strong, but he found tiny cracks, and he insinuated himself into one, searching for any sign that she had known the Jedi still lived when she shot him. Luke gave an inward sigh of relief when he found none, just the orders to shoot. He withdrew from her mind, and glanced at her quickly, but she didn't appear to have noticed the brief invasion.
"I see," Luke said evenly, and did. Palpatine had known Luke better than he knew himself, and must have known that he would not have wanted to kill a Jedi.
That was probably why Mara Jade was really here, and any business she said she had would have been make-work as she waited for Luke's fight to be over. So much for her mission being separate from his.
Luke hoped that Vares had not thought Luke betrayed him. The small part of his honor that he had not let the Dark Side consume hoped that, before he'd died, the Jedi had known that Luke was not a traitor to his word.
They separated when they got to the city proper, where crowds still lingered and people could wonder why a teenage girl was walking with the Shadow Sith. Luke let his footsteps slow, let more distance grow between him and the girl who had just shot one of his last illusions to death along with the late Jedi Knight. He should not have believed his inner self safe from Palpatine, but he had. Now that he knew of his mistake, he could rectify it.
Palpatine was the enemy here, and not the Jedi or whatever else he cared to point a finger at. Palpatine was the one with the ability to destroy him more than any other save his father, but the Emperor had the motivation because Luke knew that Palpatine hated him in turn. He would still do Palpatine's bidding, because he knew he currently had no choice, but Luke would never forget that again.