#its a feeling you never forget and a spite than never unhooks its teeth

[junebugtwin]

im going to lose my mind

[threadsketchier]

A Hard Question

HHGGGGNNNNNNNNNN AT LAST IT IS FINISHED

Once upon a time an author did a lot of handwaving and our OTP got a magic Force Bond and lived happily ever after.  (For a while. *sweary growling*)  Except Force bonds shouldn’t really be that convenient, and while we’re at it, there was too much talking and not enough Feels™.  I decided to do something about that.  After much anguished keyboard smashing, here it is - a re-write of That Scene from Vision of the Future, except with really shitty action and waaaaaaaaay more emotions.

You’re welcome.  (I hope?)

Read it at AO3

MUSIC: “Coward,” Hans Zimmer, Interstellar // “Rachel’s Song,” Vangelis, Blade Runner // “Where We’re Going,” Hans Zimmer, Interstellar // “Truth/Mal’s Speech,” David Newman, Serenity

“I’ve never had to find a hard question in my life.  They’ve always found me first.”

“Well, I’ll be Kesseled.  I was right.”

Mara’s arm shot out, smacking gently into Luke’s midriff to stop him from taking a step any further into the chamber.  Even as the details of the massive room trickled through her periphery, to be filed away for use or caution, her attention remained fixed on a single spot nestled inside a deep alcove.  Upon a figure floating in repose within a fully-outfitted cloning apparatus, a deceptively tranquil sight.  The heat in her blood rose, peeling her lips back from her teeth.

“Ten years.  Just like you said,” Luke murmured beside her, his voice laced with something between awe and grim resolve.  Mara’s eyes narrowed; she could already feel him grappling with the moral quandary he suddenly faced, could practically hear the well-oiled gears of mercy cranking to life.

“Thrawn liked to believe he thought of everything,” she said with a spiteful satisfaction.  “He obviously didn’t think of me.”

Luke’s head darted aside to spear her with a knowing look.  “Mara - ”

“Spare me the lecture about how a clone isn’t guilty of the crimes of its template,” she hissed.  “He was a conniving bastard who got off on manipulating, exploiting, and conquering the ‘unwashed masses.’  You really think he wouldn’t make sure his Version 2.0 inherited his superiority complex?”  Luke’s mouth was opening, trying to edge in a retort, but she barreled on.  “And don’t tell me it’s because he’s unarmed and helpless either - this entire facility is a weapon, from the turbolasers down to the database.  You know what’ll happen when he wakes up.  The New Republic’s already tearing itself apart; he’ll hardly have to lift a finger to finish unraveling it.”  Her fingers curled around a fistful of Luke’s jacket, nails digging into the flesh beneath the fabric.  “Don’t pull another Jomark on me, Farmboy.”

Don’t make me clean up the mess you’re too pure to handle.

His features taut with pained indignation, Luke jutted his chin sharply at the command console on the other side of the chamber.  “At least let Artoo plug into that computer to see what he can download on the Unknown Regions data first.”

“And risk our only chance at him?  You have any idea why it’s so empty in here?”  She gestured at the cluster of furniture lined up along the edge of the main floor, stored beneath plastic sheeting.  “You’d think Thrawn’s clone would have the same taste in interior décor.  All this space reeks of a trap.  Probably multiple traps, knowing him.  I’ll bet you a bushel of vincoff he’s got ysalamiri around here somewhere.”

“This isn’t our only option,” Luke countered angrily.  “If we can figure out a way to recover him from the cylinder, we can have him in our custody and take him back to the authorities.  Underneath all those contingencies, he’s only a man; I think between the three of us we can handle him,” he added tartly.

Mara snorted and shook her head.  “Doesn’t matter.  As long as he’s alive, he has power.  You don’t get that.  After his brains, his reputation is his next weapon.  Just the whiff of him has the whole galaxy running scared.  Good luck handling the fallout while you’re waiting on the trial.”  She unholstered her blaster and unhooked her lightsaber from her belt, and favored Luke with a tight, mirthless smile.  “Y’know, Faughn said we made a good team.  She was right.  When you get squeamish, I’ll be here to take out the trash.”

Luke’s face crumpled, closing down, his jaw grinding from the barb. Sullen, he turned back and whispered harshly to his droid, “Get to the console and plug in,” as she finally entered the chamber and broke into a brisk jog along the upper walkway toward the alcove.

Mara kept the blue face square in her sights as far as she could see it on her approach.  The face of the man who had driven Karrde to think she’d betrayed him.  The man who had mocked her as nothing more than a gullible pawn, who’d employed a mad Dark Jedi who sought to bend and break her to his will, who’d cemented in her soul that the glory of the Empire was truly gone.

No more.  She was in the business of exorcising old demons, after all.

Once she knew the alcove was below her, Mara hopped up onto the walkway railing and jumped straight down onto the main floor in front of it.  The transparisteel wall sealing the cloning apparatus looked blast-proof to anything handheld, but nothing a lightsaber couldn’t make short work of.  As far as she knew, Thrawn hadn’t figured out a way to make cortosis ore invisible.  The fluid might make things messy, but that was the least of her concerns.

She brought up her lightsaber hilt and pressed it against the wall, right over the clone’s sternum.  Just a flick of the switch and it would be over.  For the second time, Thrawn was about to get his heart carved out by someone he’d sorely underestimated -

“Who dares disturb the sleep of the Syndic Mitth’raw’nuruodo?!”

Even Mara couldn’t help a reflexive flinch at the deep voice that thundered from somewhere above at a nearly deafening volume.  On instinct she dropped into a crouch and spun to catch Luke’s eye; he looked equally startled and confused, also in defensive posture.  Beside him the astromech abruptly began beeping and trilling loudly, bouncing back and forth on its stubby legs in either shock or delight, she couldn’t tell.

With the brief jolt of fear turning to annoyance, Mara chanced a look upwards in time to watch the high domed ceiling somehow liquify from a solid surface into a rippling mass that coalesced into the shape of an imposing face.  Once again the booming voice asked from the mouth of the image, “Who dares disturb the sleep of the Syndic Mitth’raw’nuruodo?!”

Nice little special effect, she thought.  Pick that one up from Hologram Fun World?  “I do, you pompous rock worrt,” Mara muttered aloud.  The hairs on her nape were already rising again, preparing her for the threat promised by the obnoxious distraction, and at best she’d only have another second to aim and ignite her blade before it was too late -

“Mara!” Luke cried out, and she was biting down a curse as her finger slid across the switch but her wrist pulled the hilt away from the wall to defend herself from a blaster bolt sizzling toward her head.

On the raised walkway stood two hulking sentinel droids that had seemingly emerged out of nowhere, quickly rolling apart from each other on heavy treads to broaden their attack pattern.  Luke was dashing backwards from the command console while maintaining his own defense, approaching her, and had she not been so occupied Mara would have rolled her eyes at his obvious attempt to shield and protect her with his own body.  It was more than useless in this situation anyway, with the sentinels rapidly stationing themselves at the opposite ends of the chamber.  They were sitting fowls in their crosshairs.

Mara raked return fire across her sentinel’s head and joints, but the bolts merely glanced off; the droid’s armor was too reinforced.  “Shavit,” she snarled.  Of course Thrawn would do everything he could to Jedi-proof his backup plan.

Behind her there was a sudden yelp and the thud of a body hitting the floor near her feet, and for half a second a horrified disbelief gusted through her that Luke had managed to be hit, but then she heard him warning her with embarrassed frustration, “Cord snares!  On the floor.  Watch your step!”

Wonderful.  Thrawn was just the gift that kept on giving.

Over the din of blaster fire she heard Luke grunt his way upright, and then his back was bumping into her as he braced himself against her.  With nowhere else to go, Mara reluctantly let herself lean into him, the two of them pressed together, fighting frantically.  Perfectly helpless.

“Stupid, stupid, stupid,” she ground out through her teeth like a mantra, half to herself.  “The oldest trick in the book and I still fell for it like some dumb farm kid.”

“Hey,” Luke shot back testily.

The Force lent them speed and accuracy and lengthened stamina, but it was no magic solution.  Their muscles were going to tire well before the droids ran out of ammo, and all it would take was one missed block.  In desperate fury Mara wished she could simply crush the damn thing into scrap, wrap her will around its head and torso and just squeeze the way Vader would callously dispose of whoever pissed in his helmet that day, but that would take more concentration and focus than she could spare just to stay alive through the relentless barrage.

Rage and defiance against the futility of it all narrowed her physical sight to the droid and its fiery hail alone.  As her vision tunneled, however, her awareness was spreading and deepening - not of her own body and mind, but of the one behind and beside her.

Within her.

Luke’s arm around her waist and his head touching hers, his fingers laced through hers, his spirit and strength overlapping with hers to bring everything into clarity -

Except it was like having the sun at her back.

Stars, he burned.  He burned.

It was easy to forget the devastation of such brilliance when it lay hidden behind a lean frame and a gentle tone.  The infinite bled into the edges of his being, blurring the line between him and the rest of the universe.  She spoke of power and carelessness, but standing, drifting here, confronted by the sheer magnitude of what was poured into this mortal shell…

This is what it felt like to carry the weight of planets and history and only remember to breathe in fleeting moments of bad puns and swigs of cheap beer on the deck of a decrepit freighter and bedtime stories with all the sound effects and voices added.  Trembling hands pulling the trigger, clutching the flight stick, his lightsaber, letting go of the gantry and falling falling falling, dragging his father’s body, cradling his sister’s newborn children, loving to fight and fighting to love -

- her.

In the empathy and admiration of watching her shatter and slowly put the pieces of herself back together, year after year.  In the way his soul would quiet even as she tried to rile him up, how his heart would be unburdened for those brief times whenever she dropped by, expecting nothing from him but his stupid face and his stupid smile and maybe some small talk about engine components and the market fluctuations of raw chocolate.

Here, in this strange place where time stretched into a meaningless expanse, Mara realized that for all of Luke’s openness, the one stubborn knot of emotional constipation in his life was her.  His care had not been the dilute compassion she thought he extended to everyone.  But he’d tried his damndest to smother it beneath all manner of excuses - he was the face of her nightmares, another scab of her old life, she was his apprentice, maybe, sometimes, it wasn’t right, everyone he ever loved he hurt, he killed, he couldn’t do that to her, she needed to be free, even from him -

And with the agonizing helplessness of fighting a dream gone wrong, her body engulfed in quicksand and her limbs turned to stone while her mind railed and screamed, Mara understood that whatever she saw of Luke, he must be seeing of her.  All of her.  Everything.  Every blossom of misguided pride and desire to please, every unquestioned thought, every savor of the kill, every spray and smear of blood, every ounce of doubt and self-loathing, every hunger pang of want and need and denial and delusion -

She’d tried so hard to hide it, and now it was out.  He loved her, he did love her, and how?  How could he love such a thing?

It was like a pressure wave, the light intensifying and suffusing her.  If a shout was tactile, maybe this is what it felt like.  Flashes of Vader, of a bald, pale, heavily scarred old man smiling sadly, of a twitching hand and still-raw, half-healed forearm throbbing red-hot with pain whipped across her sense, and Mara felt herself embraced almost violently.

No, the light cried, no no no no.  You are not a thing, and neither was he.  You are more than monsters.

I’m sorry, he wept.  I’m sorry that this is what it took.

She was staring at her own face, wet and ashen, the unkempt strands of her braid haloed around her head like solar prominences across the blackness of water.

Wait, what?  What?

A shrill screech broke through the haze of unreality - or rather, somehow Mara understood what the noise should have sounded like while it was instead stretched out into a low, dull roar like a recording on a profoundly slow playback.  In a sort of clinical daze she watched as R2-D2 crept into the edge of her sight, arc welder brandished and rolling across the upper walkway toward the sentinel attacking her.  Evidently its master’s protective streak and ludicrous hero complex were contagious.  She almost wondered just what the hell had taken the droid so damn long to get its metal rear in gear, but the bizarre distortion of time meant that less than a minute had to have elapsed.

Mara couldn’t believe the sentinel wasn’t aware of the approaching puny threat, but it gave no sign of acknowledging it yet.  A small knot of lightning began to discharge from R2’s welder, and then she saw the first hint of the sentinel’s reaction, the slightest repositioning of its arm and the blaster muzzle beginning to angle away from her.

This was her chance.  But to do...what, exactly?  She could throw her lightsaber and slice through the one blaster, but in the time it would take her to call it back to her hand, a killing shot from the other weapon would dispatch her.  And then the next would drill its way into Luke’s back or head.

FALL!

The word stabbed through her with such intensity she jerked and gasped, almost missing the next parry.  At her confusion an image of the cord-strewn floor flickered across her mind, then a view of the domed ceiling as if she was looking straight overhead.

Fall with me!  Trust me!

Mara realized it was Luke’s voice, though she wasn’t hearing it so much as feeling it, an instant comprehension as if his thoughts were her own, only colored in his distinctive heat.

There was no more time for questioning; whatever he was planning couldn’t be any worse than hers.  The sparks of R2’s welder touched the sentinel, and without even sparing a glance aside, the larger droid swung that arm with a callous ease to shove the little astromech clean off its bearings.

In the second and a half that blaster wasn’t firing, and Luke’s shoulder blades stopped carving circles in her back, Mara let her right leg buckle to send her toppling down with him, bracing herself to ignore the pain in her shoulder and hip as she hit the floor.  Immediately Luke flipped onto his back, and his lightsaber was whipping just above her face, momentarily blinding her as its blade caught the flurry of bolts from both sentinel droids.

Go for it! he was urging her, and gritting her teeth, Mara hurled her lightsaber toward her sentinel’s left blaster, bisecting the weapon into two halves of glowing slag.  Imagining her hilt as the end of a whip, she drew and spun it to the droid’s other side to destroy its second blaster.  The big lug had enough sentience to emit a rumbling growl of irritation at having been outwitted, but Mara knew she didn’t have time to relish that amusement; already it was digging into twin compartments in its upper legs for a fresh set of blasters.  Kriffing Thrawn.

The enigmatic sight of her corpse-like face in the water shot to the forefront of her mind again.  Water.

Her eyes darted to the water-stained wall near her droid opponent.

Practicing with the stalactites had given her enough skill now to briefly defeat the sentinel, but if she tried to pull a Vader, there was no guarantee she could summon both the brute strength and precision to ensure the droid wouldn’t remain functional.  As much as her teenage self would have bristled at the thought, in this regard she was no Dark Lord.  The urgency of Luke’s fatigue was beating at her; Mara was keenly aware of the strain on his arms and the simmering ache of burns from glancing near-misses as if his body were her own.  Better to stick to what she knew.

With a high-pitched snarl of effort Mara sent her lightsaber flying toward the wall and drove its tip straight into the rock, carving out a small circle.  Almost instantly an explosive jet of water began to spray from the cut, much quicker than she’d expected, and as it obscured the saber she nearly lost her mental grip on the hilt, fighting against both the dense stone and the incredible pressure.  But she held on out of sheer desperation; she couldn’t afford to fail now -

And then the stone plug was shooting across the chamber with all the destructive speed of a missile.  The armored lunk crumpled and flew like garbage ejected from a freighter.

Any sense of victory was short-lived, because over the sound of shearing metal came a bone-rattling thunder as the wall gave way, the jet enlarged to a waterfall, and the Lake of Small Fish decided to invite itself to the party.

Oh bloody h-

Still hyper-focused on the battle, Mara wasn’t at all prepared for the shockingly cold wave that slammed into her and sent her hurtling across the floor.  Surprise and disorientation ripped a shout from her throat before instinct reminded her to keep her mouth shut and hold her breath, as the water mercilessly tossed and rolled her facedown into blinding white foam.  She flailed wildly, clawing for the trip cords to give her something to anchor herself with, but the turbulence pushed her away, until she managed to bob back upwards to the surface just in time to see herself about to collide with one of the walkways.

Mara thrust her arms outwards to keep her face from bashing into the wall, scrabbled madly for anything to grip, but the swirling water kept drawing her aside.  Suddenly a viselike pressure surrounded her torso, almost tight enough to crush the breath from her lungs, and she felt herself rise up out of the water with just enough height that she could reach the lower rung of the equipment balcony railing nearby.

Compelled by panic and the chance of safety, without thinking, Mara lunged for the railing and began to haul herself up before she cast a glance back over the water filling the chamber.

She couldn’t see Luke anywhere.

Alarm froze her in place.  What if he’d been entangled in the cords and was drowning?  Or finally taken a hit while she’d been engrossed in her rock torpedo ploy and the subsequent deluge?  He had to be down there somewhere and she couldn’t see him, where was he?  She realized he must have lifted her with the Force moments before, so he had to be alive, she hadn’t felt the pain of a mortal wound or...or…

An instant of unspeakable horror flooded her chest at the notion of what it would feel like if he was gone.  Truly gone.  Like when Palpatine had left her with that gaping, ragged, pitch-black hole -

Then Luke’s head broke through the churning water, coughing and spluttering, followed by a small metallic periscope beside him.  Slowly R2’s blue and silver dome began to emerge, and Luke’s eyes caught hers, pleading.  Help me, he was asking.

Not him, though, but the droid he was struggling to hoist out of the water and over to the balcony.

Mara fumed silently.  Of course.  Of course the idiot wants to save his rustbucket first.

Her mind felt raw, scraped and bruised by the effort of fighting harder for her life than she’d ever managed and their unprecedented union through the Force.  Even a simple thing like levitating an astromech seemed beyond whatever mental strength she had left.  But Mara pushed herself, jaw grinding and body rigid, and R2 floated unsteadily toward her and over the railing.

She didn’t bother to give it a soft landing.  The droid squealed, no doubt in offense, and she ignored it; that wasn’t any worse than the backhand the sentinel had given it.

The surging of the water was starting to ebb somewhat as the level rose to meet its entry point, and Luke was able to swim to the balcony.  Mara finished climbing over the railing, and as soon as he was within reach she bent down to seize him by an arm and the scruff of his jacket and pulled upwards with all her might.  His hands closed around the rails and he dragged himself the rest of the way, rolling over the edge to collapse facedown in a boneless heap beside her.

Settling on her backside, Mara paused to consider their pathetic lot, the two of them utterly drenched and shivering, Luke coughing miserably, and couldn’t help a disgusted sigh at herself.  Brilliant, she thought.  Nothing like a plan that almost gets us both killed.

Slowly Luke turned onto his back and lay still for a minute, chest heaving.  Mara nudged his ankle with the toe of her boot.  “You okay?” she asked.

She was a little startled to find herself clearly aware of him thinking, I’m just enjoying the air, while he didn’t say a word, neither answering nor even looking at her for several more moments.  His presence was an absolute mess of emotions sprawled across his exhaustion and he wasn’t even trying to shield any of it.  “No,” he finally croaked aloud.  “Not really.  But…”  With a groan and a wince he sat up, swaying a bit.  Mara leaned forward to steady him, but he grasped the rail, and she found herself oddly hesitant to touch him now.

Luke was staring at her, his eyes unfocused yet piercing, his gaze rapt like a man drunk on a vision of the sublime.  And as the weight of his regard bore down on her features, the weight of his spirit felt like molten ore poured into her veins, solidifying into something unbreakable.

Regret flickered across his face, and Mara felt him withdrawing, trying to extricate himself from this intimacy for her sake.  But even with the cacophony of his pain and wonder growing quieter, an essence of him remained behind, imprinted in the depths of her mind, and somewhere deeper yet.  Her heart, she supposed, as romantic twaddle might espouse.

They’d undergone some fundamental change in the midst of that fighting bond, a link so strongly forged it was now seared like a brand upon their very souls.  Or, in less poetic terms, perhaps their mental patterns had been irrevocably altered to overlap one another, unable to disengage even after the battle was over.

Palpatine had insinuated himself on her, worming his way into her deepest affections, and she had welcomed him.  Luke hadn’t sought this of her, had only tried to work with her to save their lives, and now he was in her master’s place.

Mara could no longer summon the terror and revulsion she’d felt earlier.  There was nowhere left to run, nothing to take back.  She’d already been more exposed to him than if she was crouching naked in his sight.  Moreover, he’d likewise suffered under her own scrutiny.

A memory of his easy smile came to her from a decade before, when he’d casually confided some frivolous nonsense about the protocol droid aboard the Millennium Falcon, as if she’d been an old and dear friend of his, not a hostile agent bent on executing him.

Trust me.

Trust him, the way he’d always trusted her.

At last Luke tore his eyes away from her and looked out over the water with dread.  She could feel the fear rising in him, clamoring against his attempts to stay calm and evaluate the situation properly.  Mara knew it wasn’t for his own safety or even for the difficulty of their predicament.

With the New Republic ready to tear itself apart, you rushed off to save me.  Ignoring your self-delegated responsibilities in order to save that one woman and her one life.

“So that’s why you came,” Mara said.  His head turned back toward her.  “You saw me...dead.  In this.”

Her words drove a blade between his ribs and twisted.  Luke’s eyes dropped away to the small space separating them, despair warring with denial.  “Always in motion is the future,” he murmured, barely above the rush of the lake.

Now that stoked her ire.  After all this, he was still going to reduce everything to his blasted Force.  “Don’t start with your Jedi sh -”

Abruptly Luke sprang forward and took her by the hands, and with a painfully earnest look on his face he blurted out, “Mara, will you marry me?”

The question hit her like a punch to the throat, thoroughly stunning and leaving her speechless for a pair of heartbeats.  When she managed to scrape together a reaction, she shook her hands free of his grasp and pushed his arms away from her as if she’d been burnt, drawing a mental flinch from him.

Whatever she’d been expecting him to say next - let alone at any point in time ever - it wasn’t that.

“We’ve never even fucked, Skywalker,” Mara shouted, “and you’re asking me this now?”

Chagrin rippled through him, shifting to manic humor and a fleeting glimmer of lust that practically spelled out, I suppose it’s a little late for that now, huh?

Mara almost laughed aloud at his self-deprecating honesty, seized by the contagious urge to just rip his sodden and tattered fatigues off and get it over with right then and there.  Why not, when it might supposedly be her last moments alive.  Maybe their last moments alive.  But old bitterness arose to quash the ridiculous notion, whispering too little, too late.

“Funny that you’d fuck a student’s corpse before me,” she remarked, her voice surprisingly more sad than caustic to her ears.

If the whole fortress crumbled and came down on Luke’s head to bury him, it wouldn’t be enough to escape the accusation.  His cheeks flamed and his presence withered, trying to pack itself down as small and dense as a neutron star, leaving the mental space between them dim and cold.

Mara shut her eyes and sighed, turning the hurt and anger and disappointment over in her thoughts like the well-worn hilt of a dagger.  At this point her spite was as petty as his affections were too long in coming.

There wasn’t enough time.  There never was.

The water was lapping just a few handspans below the edge of the balcony.  It likely wouldn’t rise all the way up to the high domed ceiling, but their escape routes were completely cut off, the current not fast enough to carry them out such a long distance before they drowned.

With one hastily calculated move, she’d sentenced not only herself to death, but Luke as well.

I’m finally getting the job done fifteen years late, Mara thought bleakly.

But if he’d envisioned her body in the aftermath, it meant he would survive.  She just didn’t know how.

Vacant blue eyes glared back at her, smoldering with obtuse hatred before glazing over with the shock of death.  She’d given in to the command to stop the clone, to help save them all in the bowels of Mount Tantiss.  Maybe this was her final purpose - not to use the shackles of her past against her master and his remnants, but to give her own life to preserve the very one he’d sought to destroy.

Mara stared indignantly into the water where the clone alcove lay submerged but safely ensconced behind its thick transparisteel.  It irked her to no end that they were in peril but he’d be just fine, at least until he was scheduled to wake up and make his debut.

An idea began to coalesce in the part of her mind that wasn’t scattered and intruded upon.  Luke’s head jerked up immediately.

“That cloning apparatus,” she started.  “That’s got a pretty big generator, wouldn’t you say?”

“Probably,” Luke agreed, eyeing her warily.

“It’s a Braxxon-Fipps 590 fusion generator.  And we’ve got plenty of water here, and some very fragile tunnels of cortosis ore.  All we need is a way to get it wet.”

His eyes saucered.  “Mara, that’s a hell of a lot of- ”

“Exactly.  The only way we can get out of here now is to generate enough of a boom to possibly collapse and enlarge those passageways to speed up the drainage.  Unless you’d rather stay put and fuck my brains out until we run out of air.”

She was already in motion, holding the railing and preparing to swing a leg over it, but Luke grabbed her shoulder.  “Don’t.  I’ll go.”

“You know what a Paparak cross-cut is?” she retorted.

When he blinked and frowned dumbly she continued, “It’s a technique that puts delayed stress on a wall to give you enough time to get clear.  So no need to be the martyr today, and if I’m getting myself killed, it’s definitely not this way.”

Sighing, Luke relented and knelt by the railing to wait for her.  Once she stood balanced on the outer edge of the balcony Mara held out a hand.  “What I am going to need is to borrow your lightsaber.”

A lopsided smile split his face.  He turned around toward R2, and with a bright chirp the droid opened a compartment and out popped her lightsaber.  Mara stared flatly at both of them.

“...That’s why you were under there so long?”

Luke’s grin was positively bashful and yet a tad smug.  She scowled and reached over to snatch the weapon, and he caught her wrist, his hand sliding down to gently squeeze her fingers closed around the hilt.  Be careful.

Her lips stretched in a taut line, impatient and resigned, not quite a smile but an acknowledgement nonetheless.  Always, Farmboy.

The water was calmer and clearer now, easier to navigate, and the chamber’s stark lighting illuminated her way.  Luke’s anxiety hovered over her, restrained but irrepressible; he had faith in her expertise, but the fear of the unknown couldn’t be dispelled.  Mara tuned it out without completely pushing him away.

Soon she found herself floating before the clone again.  The great irony was that, had she been able to dispatch him earlier, the lakewater would have already flooded through the small breach of her blade and the unexpected blast might have killed both her and Luke.  She could just imagine the Jedi lecture about patience that would’ve inspired, if they’d managed to live through it.

Never mind the fact that this was her first time executing a Paparak on transparisteel.  But Luke didn’t need to know that either.

By the last cuts her lungs were starting to ache, so she could not afford any second-guessing.  Willing herself to be satisfied with her work, Mara shut down the lightsaber and swam for the surface.  The moment her head emerged and she was gasping a fresh breath, she felt the pressure around her midsection again - gentler and more evenly distributed this time - and found herself lifted above the water and quickly floating back toward the balcony.  Mara shook her head irritably at Luke’s overprotective gesture, especially considering that he was waiting for her with open arms ready to catch her.

As soon as she’d cleared the railing he was stepping around her and stretched his body over hers as a cover, and she could feel him concentrating on forming a Force shield against the impending explosion.  At the same time his hand was fumbling around her waist, prompting Mara to ask, “You change your mind about getting my pants off now?”

Luke puffed out something between a grunt and a chuckle, and then she heard the click of a coupling link onto her belt.  Glancing aside, Mara noticed the wobbling gleam of a safety line tethering her to R2, who had likewise secured itself to the balcony railing.  “How long?” he asked in return, breath warm on her neck.

“Honestly, I don’t know.  Could be a few more seconds to a couple minutes.”  Shivering harder now with the second exposure to the water, damp air, and cold floor beneath her, she had to begrudgingly admit appreciating Luke draping himself on top of her, despite the fact that he was equally wet.

They lay in awkward silence for several moments, until Mara pointed out, “He’s going to die to get us out of here.  I don’t hear you protesting that anymore.”

She twisted her head around to be able to see Luke’s expression, but she could already sense his grave resignation, his coming to terms with the blood he’d already spilled throughout his life, all the atoms of once-living beings scattered across the void of space from his exploits.

“I wouldn’t have kept him alive if it meant losing you,” he replied, fierce in his honesty despite the softness of his voice.

A loud crack and the sudden surging of water were followed by a blinding flash of light, and Luke hunched down over her, one arm hugging her tightly.  The noise was somewhat muffled by the water, but Mara still felt her ears pop from the pressure of the blast, electric pain shooting through her jaw.  Despite Luke’s Force shield, the first massive wave that crashed down over the balcony sloshed around and easily lifted them with violent impunity, slamming them against the stone wall and threatening to suck them back out into the chamber.  Several more times it struck and retreated, tossing them about like flotsam;  between the water, the safety line, and Luke’s hold on her, it seemed as though she was going to be ripped in half.

When everything stilled enough to let them recover, Mara spluttered and sagged beneath Luke’s weight, forcing water out of her mouth and nose.  He was coughing again, almost choking on a groan of pain or exhaustion, his chest a harsh bellows against her back.

“You all right?” she managed, her voice sounding canned to her ears.

“Yeah,” he whispered hoarsely.  His arms trembled as he rolled off of her and released the safety line, and as Mara pushed herself up onto her knees she didn’t think she felt much better herself.  But one look at the chamber confirmed that the effort had been worthwhile.

Only a single, flickering glowpanel had survived the explosion, but the dim light was just enough to let her see the water beginning to drain from the room back out into the tunnel.

“Guess it’s time to jump in?” she asked.  “Or should we just wait for it to clear out?”

“No.”  Luke’s reply came with the abruptness of a Force hunch.  “I don’t know why, but we shouldn’t.  We need to go now.  Even though it’s gonna be a long, cold, bumpy ride, and I’m not sure how much air we’ll have along the way.”

Mara recalled the last time he’d had an air issue with his escape route.  “Sounds like this is a job for cold-shirting.  Your kind of cold-shirting, anyway.”

He regarded her with an irreverent smile.  “You said that was crazy.”

“It’s not much crazier than this, I’ll admit.”  Uncertainty began to creep over the edge of her bravado.  It was a straightforward plan - let the current ferry them out.  And yet, some unknown threat remained along the way, something that could result in what Luke had seen.

She’d already slipped on a pile of leaves and knocked herself out.  Perhaps her end would be just as ignominious.  At least I’ll still have the satisfaction of having brought it on myself, she thought sardonically.

“We can’t both be completely out, though,” she countered.

“No, I’ll stay in a half-trance.  Just enough to reduce my oxygen demand but keep some awareness.  I won’t tether us this time; if one of us gets stuck somewhere, we all get stuck.”  He licked his lips nervously, bracing himself against the same fear of what lay ahead in their last ordeal to escape the fortress again.  “Take some deep breaths and think about what code phrase you want me to use to wake you up.”

A code phrase.  Right.  Mara nodded, her mind withdrawing to another time and distant place she had never been but could clearly picture, shrouded in pensive night, suffused with the scents of evergreen and engine exhaust from Imperial walkers.  Her hands were cuffed but her spirit could never be bound.  Across from her stood Vader, seemingly lost in thought as he studied his son’s new lightsaber held reverently in his grasp.  She had everything and nothing left to lose.

In the present, Luke gazed back at her with understanding, tenderness and apprehension mingling in his features.  He raised a hand to her face, thumb caressing her cheekbone and fingers brushing aside wet strands of her hair, and she felt his gentle influence begin to coax her toward sleep.

Seized by a sudden impulse, Mara resisted the trance’s onset and reached out to take hold of his jaw to bring his mouth to hers, kissing him roughly with a hunger that would never be sated.  If this was the end, then the sight of his face and the taste of his lips would be the last thing she could take with her into the darkness.

His breath was hers, and then the world faded away.

“Come with me.”

Consciousness rushed back into her, and Mara gasped reflexively, blinking away the water clinging to her eyelids.  Strong arms were holding her, and in the light of a glowlamp she could make out the resolving blur of Luke’s face looking down at her as if she was the birth of a new creation in his very sight.  Releasing his breath in a sigh of joy and relief, he smiled and gathered her up tightly, his laughter sounding almost like crying.  In the Force he shone like a pulsar, blazing out gratitude and the near-hysteria of having surmounted loss, and she could feel him shaking against her.  Slowly Mara wrapped her own arms around him and reached up to weave her fingers into his wet hair, stroking her nails softly over his scalp.

Yeah, Farmboy, I’m here.  I’m here.  You can’t get rid of me that easily.

Luke pulled away just far enough to rest his forehead against hers, his lips parted and his eyes full of yearning, and for a moment Mara thought he might kiss her in return.  But he held himself back, simply breathing in time with her, and she realized that he was waiting.  Waiting for her answer, and perhaps willing to wait for a lifetime, regardless of her decision.  Despite the illusion of freedom, there was something inexorable about his love that had nothing to do with mental or spiritual bonds.

They had time after all - time for her to wonder if there was something fundamentally wrong with her, time to investigate whether this bond could be undone, time to contemplate if was worth keeping, time to ponder a life with him that could consist of more than mere passing-bys and regret.

“I’ll think about it,” she said, and this time she meant it.