Beyond - Legends Broken (Mara Jade, Legends AU, NR, post-DE, Angst Challenge #1)

Title: Broken
Author: Gabri_Jade
Timeframe: from the end of Dark Empire to approximately twelve years later
Characters: Mara Jade, Luke Skywalker, Leia Organa, Han Solo, Talon Karrde
Genre: Legends AU, angst, introspection

Summary: He is broken. She will not be.

Notes: Written for the Angstmongers Anonymous Gothic Literature quote challenge; my prompt was “Beware; for I am fearless, and therefore powerful.” (Mary Shelley, Frankenstein)

In the Dark Empire comics, Luke falls to the dark side. In later Legends material, this is largely hand-waved away and the New Republic inexplicably has no problems with a person who just led a military strike against them while apprenticed to a clone of the man who overthrew the original Republic being taken back into the fold and allowed to start teaching a bunch of other Force-sensitive people who theoretically have the ability to do the same thing. Seems unlikely! As does the idea that Luke can simply stop being a Sith Lord and decide to be a Jedi again like he’s flipping a switch. Also, from what I’ve seen of the art in that comic, literally everyone has crazy eyes all the time. If Luke was looking at me that way, I wouldn’t trust him, that’s all I can say.

So I wrote what seems to me to be a more realistic outcome of this whole ill-conceived story arc. Sometimes reality is depressing like that. (Moral of the story: When you’re writing official fic in a shared universe, maybe think about the inevitable consequences of your story instead of just what seems cool in the moment. Looking at you, Veitch.)

I probably wouldn’t have been thinking about Dark Empire at all if not for @vader_incarnate ’s gorgeously bleak stories Black Pawn and Black Knight (and soon to come, Black King), which you should absolutely read, and because she has read DE and I have not and she’s just awesome that way, she answered all my questions and sent me screencaps of relevant parts of the comic so I could make this all sound good. You’re the best, Elli Thanks also to @ViariSkywalker for the angsty inspiration and her beta work

---

The first thing Mara thinks when she sees him is that he is broken.

Leia doesn’t see it, so grateful to have him back that she doesn’t look closely. Han might catch glimpses of it. Han is a canny old smuggler at heart still and knows better than to accept bravado at face value. But Han has known and loved Luke for too long, and knows how much of Leia’s happiness depends upon Luke’s redemption. It is easier for him to see what he wants to see.

Mara is the newcomer to the group. Mara isn’t blinded by sentiment. She sees the disconnect in his eyes and the lingering bleakness behind his smile and she knows what it means.

She has seen Palpatine break people before, to varying degrees. She has lived it herself. She recognizes it now.

Luke speaks of the grand things ahead, of the goals he once held dear, and she knows that none of it will ever happen.

---

Mara avoids him on the way back from Byss. It’s a challenge; the ship isn’t a large one. She’s reminded unpleasantly of the trip to Wayland, when she attempted to do the same thing on the Falcon.

It’s different now. Then, she avoided him because of that last command, the Emperor’s voice in her head, demanding his death. Then, Luke had obligingly avoided her in his turn, and even in her irritation over his humoring her, she had been grateful.

Now she avoids him because she isn’t at all sure that he doesn’t still hear the Emperor’s voice in his head, demanding all of their deaths. Now he doesn’t avoid her, but rather appears in her path at every turn, smiling that hollow smile, speaking useless words about how good it is to see her, how much of a help she will be in rebuilding the Jedi.

She keeps her expression impassive and quickly excuses herself and wonders how even Leia can believe this will ever come to pass, that Luke could still be capable of such work, that the New Republic would let him make the attempt after leading a military strike against them, under the orders of the man who brought down their galactic predecessor.

Well. A clone of the man. She doesn’t know how far she believes that it was the same person; that even if what Luke says about Sith arts and transference of consciousness and all that rot is true, that it could truly be a replica of the Emperor she had known. Perhaps it was something close. Perhaps the clone had been driven mad by the process and believed himself to be the real thing, like C’baoth before him. If the very concept of what Luke claims is in fact true, perhaps it was some other long-departed Sith Lord lying in wait in the netherworld of the Force for just such an opportunity, masquerading as Palpatine.

Mara has lived too many lies to unhesitatingly believe this story.

It almost doesn’t matter. The Emperor reborn, a faulty copy, a madman, an imposter. Whatever it was, it had possessed the power and hatefulness of the dark, and Luke—who should have known better, who saw what it did to his own father, who faced it down himself and held true to his integrity, who tried so hard to help her break free from the same sort of legacy—had willingly embraced it, gloried in it, lost himself to it. Whether it was a desire to protect others or an arrogance born of his own earlier victories against just this sort of darkness or something else entirely, he had accepted and made use of Sith teachings and set himself in opposition to those he had once fought beside.

If once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny.

He had told her of the old Jedi Master’s words long ago. At the time, Mara was almost amused by his tactlessness in repeating those words to her, who had been shaped and commanded by a consummate master of said dark path, even if, as she scoured her memories, she thought she could honestly say that she had never quite walked it herself. Vader had; perhaps Palpatine had wanted something different from her. It would have been entirely in character for him to believe that he could hold both dark and light (or a reasonable facsimile of light, anyway) in the palm of his hand and order them both to dance to his tune.

Now she thinks back on those words, and shivers. Luke, she rather thinks, believes that the maxim means that he has never truly been on the dark side at all, because here he is, having rejected it; because if he had been dark then wouldn’t he be still?

Mara thinks it’s not so dogmatic as that. A bad choice can dominate your destiny in many ways. She knows this better than most. She thinks that Luke is about to learn this.

It isn’t fear, exactly, that she feels when she thinks about these things. One of the Emperor’s earliest lessons to her had been that fear had but one purpose: to rob you of power; therefore it could never be allowed to gain any hold on you. And Mara had always been an excellent student, so much so that by her seventeenth year she had been confidently giving orders to even Moffs and Grand Admirals.

So no, it isn’t fear. Mara Jade does not fear; therefore she is powerful. Even now, even here, even among people she had not so long ago considered friends, and now does not fully trust.

But she can’t find a name for what she feels, either. And that unsettles her, almost as much as the way that Luke is now so like and yet unlike himself.

And so she avoids him as much as possible, and tries not to think about what comes next.

---

The trial is short, as these things go. She suspects that this is very deliberate on the part of the New Republic government, who surely wishes to have it over and done with as soon as possible. It’s not every day that Luke Skywalker, last of the Jedi Knights, known to all the galaxy as an undisputed hero, goes on public trial for treason, and the galaxy follows each development obsessively.

The sludge news industry is overjoyed. Mara employs all the skills learned over a lifetime of professional subterfuge to evade their reporters and turns her eyes from the headlines.

Leia, she knows, isn’t as shocked by the trial as she might have been, back when both the escape from Byss and the reclamation of her brother were new and she could tell herself that all would be as it had been. There were moments, on the way back, when their eyes met and Mara knew that Leia’s initial joy was giving way to the same dread that crept along Mara’s own spine.

Leia is, however, as adamant as she has ever been. And Leia is not an opponent to be underestimated. Mara thinks that it’s just possible, even now, that Leia might win out.

Mara thinks that such an outcome might be the worst possible thing that could happen.

She passes along the request from the New Republic government to Karrde. She doesn’t need to be told not to speak of it to Leia, or to avoid—continue avoiding—Luke until the request is fulfilled. She finds this an easy task; Leia is consumed with building a defense, and Luke is under house arrest. She hopes that Karrde arrives before Luke decides to stop cooperating.

Karrde does. By the time the ysalamiri are stationed around his apartment—the Palace guard places them there in the dead of night, when the security cameras confirm that Luke is asleep, just in case—it’s far too late for Luke to object. The doors are locked, a full platoon of guard droids and another of sentient guards are in place, and there is no way even for Luke to get past it all.

Probably. Mara hopes.

Leia is far less furious over this development than Mara had expected.

Mara tries not to think about what that implies.

---

Mon Mothma’s calm is unshakable, even now. Mara had reluctantly admired that calm once, back in her Imperial days, when Mothma was a traitor with a death mark on her head. Now, deep down, she wants to scream and rage at the former senator and current New Republic Chief of State for that despicable calm as she reads the sentence aloud for the holocams and reporters, both serious and sludge, who fill the press room near to bursting in order to hear the verdict.

Guilty: of high treason, of waging war on the New Republic, of siding with our greatest adversaries…

The words go on, but Mara no longer hears them, an indistinct buzzing filling her mind instead. Only a few years ago she would have rejoiced over this development. Now…

Now she doesn’t know what she feels.

Not fear, though she can feel variations of that emotion in those around her. Some are afraid of Luke himself. She does not blame them, though she doesn’t share that fear. Some are afraid of what today will mean for the New Republic as a whole. This is also a reasonable fear, but Mara doesn’t share it, either. She has survived the fall of a galactic government before; she can do it again if need be.

The sentence—

Her attention snaps back to Mon Mothma, still calm, though the facade cracks here, just a little. Probably few in the crowd notice, but Mara knows all about putting a mask over her true feelings, and she recognizes the signs that someone else’s mask is slipping.

Little wonder: Mothma has known Luke since he first joined the Rebellion, and Leia for far longer than that. However good her mask might be, Mara knows what lies beneath.

—life imprisonment. No appeals will be heard.

There had been those who’d argued strenuously for execution. Until this very moment, Mara had been unsure which side would win out. It was almost a victory.

A victory wherein someone who had been her friend, someone who had trusted and defended and believed in her when every scrap of logic said that he should stay well clear, someone who Mara had begun to think could even be more than a friend in time, will be locked away for the rest of his life.

She will never stand beside him on the Palace roof and watch the city lights with him again, never spar with him again, never argue the nuances of the Force with him again, never laugh with him again. She will never again feel her spirits unaccountably lift when she notices the affection in his eyes.

His family will be shattered. His dream of rebuilding the Jedi is laughably lost.

It is, she thinks, more than she could have hoped for. It is, she thinks, entirely survivable.

She sits, quietly listening to the rest of the formal words that must be spoken on this day, and maintains her own imperturbable mask, and thinks that it’s not just Mon Mothma at whom she wants to scream and rage; it is Luke, it is Palpatine, it is those who argued for Luke’s death and those who argued against it. It is the whole damn galaxy.

Mara will not break, not even now. She is not afraid. She is strong. She has been broken before and she will never be broken again, no matter the cost.

She tries not to think about the hollow echo where her heart should be.

---

Of course the designated prison is built on Myrkr. Mara laughs mirthlessly when she hears the news. Karrde looks at her cautiously. He’s begun to do that lately. Mara doesn’t care very much.

She thinks that she will resign from the liaison position. There is nothing left for her here on Coruscant.

---

Mara knows that Leia and Han visit him over the years. She knows that the time between those visits grows longer and longer. She knows that they never take the children. She does not ask them what they find on Myrkr.

---

“Would you like to go with them?” Karrde gently asks her one day. “I spoke with Leia yesterday; they have a visit scheduled for next month. If you asked, I’m sure they would take you along.”

Mara looks up from her desk, meeting his eyes for the first time since he entered her cabin. “I have work here.”

“I could spare you. It would only be a few days, including travel time.”

Mara thinks about Myrkr, about her hate, about the forest, about how Luke came to check on her after the crash when he should have run instead, about how he saved her from the vornskr when he should have let her die. She thinks of how he was still pure then—not untouched by darkness, not after all of his experiences in life, but still consciously rejecting it.

She thinks about the Luke she saw after Byss, about the unnatural brightness in his eyes, about the emptiness of his smile, about the meaningless words he mouthed about rebuilding the Jedi.

She thinks about how Palpatine brought down the Old Republic and the Jedi Order with his scheming. She thinks about how Luke deliberately chose to learn at the feet of that man. She thinks about what Luke can do with his own power and that knowledge, if he has stopped believing those meaningless words from so long ago.

She thinks about what it would be like to live under ysalamiri influence for years, after knowing the feel and the taste and the comfort of the Force. She thinks about what this could do to someone like Luke, who had been so very attuned to it. She thinks about how Palpatine always said that revenge was the best motivation.

“Why would I do that?” she asks Karrde, turning her eyes back to her datapad.

There is a pause. When he speaks, Karrde’s voice is deceptively casual.

“For old times' sake, perhaps.”

Mara smiles without thought, feeling the brittleness of the expression. “There’s nothing to commemorate.”

She does not watch as Karrde quietly makes his exit.

---

Mara visits Leia and Han still, on occasion. The relationship isn’t exactly what it had been, or what it could have once become, but the friendship between them remains. They have been through too much to entirely let go.

Jaina and Jacen are newly thirteen on this visit, and teasing their brother about being teenagers while he is not. Why Leia chose to give her youngest the name of Anakin, Mara will never know. Mara hopes that the name does not become an unbearable burden to the boy.

She is grateful that he isn’t named for his uncle.

The children know her as Aunt Mara and are always pleased to see her. She is pleased to see them in her turn and brings presents: a starship model for Jaina, a datacard on rare animals for Jacen, a new hydrospanner for Anakin. They thank her and hug her and tell her of their studies, and eventually Han drawls that Mom and Aunt Mara will never get to talk at all while surrounded by this pack of hellions and who wants Corellian fried ice cream? He shepherds them all out of the apartment, and Mara and Leia are left alone.

They sip their caf and discuss the current news and their respective jobs and the atmosphere is comfortable and relaxed.

Mara knows that her next words will shatter that. She glances casually toward the large picture window dominating the Solos’ apartment and the familiar cityscape beyond, allowing Leia a measure of privacy, so that if her accomplished politician mask slips, at least no one will witness it.

“Will you train them?”

The silence goes beyond mere words and into the Force itself. So far as Mara knows, Leia hasn’t actively used the Force since Luke’s imprisonment, but passive use is a hard habit to break, and reading the surface emotions of others is a constant for a trained Force-sensitive. Mara keeps her own shields steady and her eyes on the window as she feels Leia’s shields slide into place.

She’s rusty. Shields have been one of Mara’s specialties for as long as she can remember; she can tell when someone else has almost forgotten how to use theirs.

But then, when would Leia have cause to use shields since Byss? There is no one left but the two of them who have any training that could ever need to be blocked.

But Leia is blocking her now.

Mara isn’t surprised. She continues watching the traffic patterns and does not press.

“They’re far better off without it,” Leia says eventually. There is an edge to her voice that Mara knows. She knew it even before she knew Leia, because Leia was a senator once and was a New Republic councilor after that, when Mara was still on the run from the remnants of the Empire. Mara has heard this edge in many of Leia’s public speeches.

She knows that it means that Leia will not back down.

This, too, is unsurprising. The ghost of the Luke they had once known and all his potential wafts between them, a shared wound that will never heal and of which they will never speak.

“You disagree?” Leia asks, her voice under better control now, the edge blunted, as though this is a normal conversation.

“Not at all,” Mara replies softly. For what had Force-sensitivity ever brought her either, save for pain? She has endured the loss of her own family, a lifetime of servitude based on lies, the loss of perhaps the best friend she has ever had, all because she is one of the few born with the ability to touch the Force.

She, like Leia, suspects that the Solo children will be better off leaving that part of themselves dormant.

(She, like Leia, shudders at the thought of what could happen if they do not.)

She cannot quite suppress the pang in her heart, though. Things could have been so different.

Or maybe not. Maybe that had been a lie too. Mara has lived through so many lies and catastrophes that she can no longer tell what is true or certain.

Mara takes her leave not long after this discussion. She needed to know, and Leia will forgive her eventually. Leia understands the questions behind the question. Leia understands that Mara has lost much, too. The next time Mara visits, they will once again be comfortable and friendly.

Just as if nothing had ever happened.

Just as if Byss had never happened.

Just as if both of them aren’t haunted every day by the memory of the frenetic look behind his eyes and the grotesque mockery of the smile that reflected something inside that was no longer entirely him.

Just as if both of them do not think of him (and the life he now lives and the person he now is) every single day.

In orbit around Coruscant, Mara inputs the coordinates for Karrde’s main base into her navicomputer, then pauses to sweep her gaze over the planet. It is a blazing collection of lights that never go dim, a surge of energy in the Force reflecting the countless lives upon it.

Mara notes this clinically, just as she notes how there is no corresponding emotional lift accompanying the observation. She remembers that once there was. She remembers the undertone of joy in his sense as he taught her how to tap into the stream of vitality that such a wellspring of life generated within the Force. She remembers the light in his eyes, and how very different this outlook was from the entirely practical ways that Palpatine had taught her to use the Force.

She remembers the hope she felt then.

Mara is not afraid, never afraid, she can and will stand strong and survive anything. She always has.

She wonders, though, if they really did win at Byss. She wonders if her own smile, when it appears, is now as empty as his was then.

The navicomputer beeps, and Mara turns her eyes away from the planet, a glittering ball of forever light, to her console, then out to space, where the stars stand as lonely beacons against a vast and fathomless darkness that always wins. After all, eventually even stars burn out.

Mara pulls the lever that engages her hyperdrive, and leaves the light far behind her.

 

ANGST!

 

Angst WOW Poor Mara

 

I love introspection and your grasp of Mara's character is unparallelled. What a heartbreaking but very natural consequence of Luke's inexplicable succumbing to the "Emperor's" influence. I agree completely with Mara's total disbelief at how he could be taken in and how that would leave him and his family shattered.

The "what could have been" permeates and I share the profound regret over it.

 

Wow! Amazing job! Have to agree you that you really got Mara right, even matches my interpretations.

There's a reason the Dark Empire series is NOT part of my personal headcannon.

TELL ME ABOUT IT. I think I put far more effort into my own X-wing novel currently being posted to contradict the smallest amount possible of Legends cannon outside of (deliberately and by necessity) Isard's Revenge, (I'm hard-pressed to think of anything), and to make sure anything new fits in perfectly, then this author did thinking things through. Probably spent more effort squaring away any depiction inconsistencies between the Thrawn Trilogy and X-wing novels in brief throwaway lines that don't detract from the story this this.

Speaking of which, I'm off to edit out a new detail that was added in a late edit in a later chapter. The logic follows when you read it, but thinking further it doesn't hold up to full in-universe scrutiny. It first occurred to me that changing about three lines would fix it, but with another minute's reflection it's probably best to simply cut that dialogue rather then fix it.

FINDS EDIT: Hey there! Please refrain from double posting in the future; I’ve merged your two posts together. The Fanfic forum has an unlimited edit time, so if you want to add anything to a post you’ve just posted, you can always use the “edit” feature.

 

So simple, so foreboding

I am so exceptionally pleased to have helped inspire this gorgeous bit of angst, and also to have infected you with my "this sucks, it makes no sense, I've gotta fix it" bug for this exceptionally niche 90s comic, and yes you're right, he absolutely has empty, crazy eyes.

You do Han a lot of justice here, and you do it very concisely. A characterization that makes me happy because one of my biggest peeves even amidst everything else in the original comic is how mean the Skytwins are to Han.

Of course he'd see through it, and of course he'd dismiss his reservations if it meant making Leia happy. And of course Leia would initially be so happy that she wouldn't see the rest.

I think DE has an odd and otherwise unsubstantiated understanding of the dark side (they take it from a misunderstanding of Vader's line "I must obey my Master" and don't break that down anything past the surface level, I think) where Veitch clearly thinks that you can make someone turn just through beating them in a lightsaber duel and (something else mumble mumble off page, left unknown).

But EVERYONE ELSE knows that's not how it works, and I just kinda want to hug all these poor kids that Palpatine ever touched :mara: :maul:

So many unexplored avenues pop out of this little misadventure and I love this parallel drawn here, about Palpatine's lingering influences on the two of them

Come to think of it this little misadventure also comes right before the Jedi Academy Trilogy arc with the Exar Kun possession thing, doesn't it?

Yes all these things, are you listening Tom Veitch? He frames the choice in the comic as one of curiosity, that Luke was drawn to "know the dark things that his father knew so well," and like ... sure, maybe, but Luke should also have been able to see that Vader was not having a good time sometimes you can just learn from other people's experiences

I also really appreciate the phrase gloried in it, because it's so concise, and I am not, and I have so many complicated theories about how bad but also yes, glorious the dark side must be, because it's bad but it's still part of something so cosmic and incredible

Especially post-PT where we see Palpatine manipulating Anakin for years before his fall, it's such a hard thing to buy for Luke, where he'd just be okay with this. His father before him had all those gaping emotional wounds and loved the Chancellor as another father figure; it was still a poor choice when he betrayed the Jedi, even though we all knew he would, but at least we have a bit of setup for understanding why. For Luke, none of that.

Yup that's him

I just love that she keeps repeating this to herself, in her internal dialogue.

oh Leia, you've already lost so much, and now your brother too.

You never know, you could just ignore it for the rest of the canon and it might be fine. [/Meta]

Ugh, could you imagine though? Fear and dead men 2.0, now with more limbs and less asthma. And also that sense that this only works because Luke is penitent and willing to pay the price. Would be have been, if he knew where he'd end up?

I've shared this reflection with you before, but - it's a question of nuclear containment, but your nuke is alive and sentient and already made a hideously poor decision. So even accounting for every good thing he's ever done, how can you get past that? Leia gets it.

This is my hesitancy over most Vader lives AU fics, too. Questions of morality aside, the argument, "I switched religions now, I'm a born-again Jedi, I no longer use the psychic hate energy of the universe to power my telekinesis" shouldn't fly with a reasonable government.

"Survivable" is a good word choice here because ... yes, survivable, but apparently having your limbs chopped off and your lungs boiled is survivable in a walking life support coffin, but it might not be pleasant.

And Tom Veitch, Mara; yell at him, too.

You do sorta gotta wonder if "saving him in case we need him" was a factor in the final decision tho. Because again with the nuke analogy - what are you gonna do if the other guy has one, and you already got rid of yours? The Rebellion threw armies at Vader, there must have been a degree of hesitancy in losing their back pocket born-again Jedi

Ouch, the gut punch of that denial

I missed the foreboding nature of this line on my first read through and my reflections on slowly unkriffing himself, honestly. But I stand by that, even though it makes it less angsty, because this poor glowstick. But also I love that dash of hope for flavor.

These reflections on these seemingly subtle changes, and the bigger things they hide and portend

And now that you commented on his crazy eyes in the notes, I can't help but think this might also be a well deserved potshot at the artwork

Oh hey I missed this foreboding line, too. And yeah, what would Luke be? I always draw the line to Vader - but Vader lost so much on Mustafar, and what could he have been without that, or what could Luke have been? Demigod eldritch horror, thank kriff he's on our side, I hope he stays that way

or what it could have once become </3 but I am glad they still visit.

Neither will the rest of us, Mara.

Look at these perfect presents for these children, casually dropped in the middle of everything else

I do, Han, that sounds delicious actually, and that sounds like a great Corellian invention because that sounds like a great drunk food, good job unknown drunk Corellian inventor

Gorgeous description and metaphor here, and also gorgeously painful.

I have all these complicated philosophies about the Force and about how using the light must be the default because the dark should be an active choice, and even someone like Anakin who grew up with so much trauma still gravitated naturally towards the light and had to be manipulated by Palpatine into falling as he did; but then also how to guard against the dark without knowing what you're guarding against? To some extent those feelings that lead to darkness are just part of the full spectrum of the human experience. But these children, with these parents ... I want to believe they'll be fine. Someone keep Jacen away from Troy Denning tho, that guy wrecks Skywalkers harder than Palpatine

Ugh, Gabri.

Ugh, my poor glowstick. Because on the one hand of course what trouble can my little reformed nuke get into after he's been disarmed by fuzzy lizards, but also - to be disconnected from that. There's the Christian theory that hell is the absence of God's love, and for someone Force sensitive to be disconnected from the Force like this for decades, that feels adjacent. That's gotta wreck him.

You got some Stover in there! And also what a great line for a fall of a Skywalker.

Gabri I love all this so much.

 

@ViariSkywalker

ANGST!

@earlybird-obi-wan

Poor Mara indeed

@WarmNyota_SweetAyesha

Thank you! I'm no fan of DE, but clearly it has plenty of creative potential despite everything

@Findswoman

Canon is what we say it is, Finds I honestly kind of like TLJ as a very angsty AU, but I reject the entire ST as canon, same as I rejected DE before it. This is the glory of fanfic: we create our own canon (Now I'm thinking of the Futurama episode where Bender wound up acting as a god to that tiny civilization and the God Entity he later runs into sums up that experience with "you were doing well until everyone died," which, tbh, can also sum up the angst challenge )

See, that's one of the (many) big problems with DE: turning to the dark side isn't supposed to be a temporary and easily erased dalliance. Zahn has said that when he was writing TTT, he paid close attention to what was said and shown in the OT, and tried to carefully extrapolate from that without going beyond what Lucas had established. Veitch, writing DE at near the same time, honestly would have done well to follow that example. Anakin Skywalker fell to the dark side and was redeemed, yes - after he spent twenty years oppressing the galaxy and torturing and killing people, and then he died in the process of redemption. Nothing about that says "quick, temporary, easy to move past." If Luke had actually turned dark, it might not have ended as badly as in this story. Maybe. But it wouldn't have happened like it did in the EU, where all is immediately forgiven and Luke gets to train a new order of Jedi when he's just barely out from under the influence of the dark side himself.

And you touch on another of the big problems with DE: Luke's already passed this test. Twice. Once with Vader, once with Vader and Palpatine. In both cases he faced immense temptation both on the carrot and the stick sides of that equation, and he resisted to the end and redeemed Vader. But then DE says "somehow, Palpatine returned" and Luke decides to join up with a clone Palpatine? To learn more about his father? When he'd already rejected the dark side aspects of his father in ESB and RotJ? DE, like the ST, essentially just reset the clock and had the characters re-fight all the battles that had already been settled in the OT. It could work as an AU. As canon, it's cheap storytelling, and does more to limit future stories than to open up possibilities for them.

But if you're treating it as canon and trying to portray the outcome more realistically than the EU did, what's left but heartache? So it did work well for an angst challenge

I'm currently rereading TTT yet again (seriously, I've long since lost track of how many times I've read these books ) and at this point, Leia's really not even qualified to train anyone. She's just barely begun working with a lightsaber herself, and it's an ongoing plot thread that she's so busy with government work that she isn't at all keeping up with her own training. If anything, Mara would need to be the teacher once Luke was out of the picture - but then, Mara would be just as hesitant as Leia is, because Mara was trained by a Sith and had her whole life shaped by that darkness and after watching Luke fall so spectacularly, she would probably be terrified to try anything herself, because if Luke, who had been trained by actual Jedi and already resisted Palpatine up close and personal, could still fall, then how much more likely would that fate be for her, or for anyone she tried to train? This is one more massive consequence of Luke's stupidity in DE, because Leia and Mara are both incredibly talented and smart and determined and could take over the Jedi Order and keep things going under the right circumstances (as Vi has them do in her Enter!verse), but DE happens at a point in time when neither is yet qualified, and both are very emotionally vulnerable to this betrayal on Luke's part. It doesn't break them, exactly, but in a lot of ways it incapacitates them, both in practical ways as far as the Force is concerned, and emotionally, in their ability to even consider such a thing, because look at just how badly it could go if they take one wrong step.

I think that Mara's knowledge of Palpatine is just so personal. That's a huge part of why Luke's behavior in DE affected Mara as much as it did (and helped Zahn retcon just why Mara had been almost entirely absent in the post-DE EU when she should have been on Coruscant as liaison and then been training with Luke from the beginning): when Mara learns in TLC that Luke is Vader's son and suddenly realizes why Palpatine jammed that last command into her head, that is a bonafide rip-your-heart-out betrayal. Palpatine took her from her family, raised her, trained her, shaped her whole life, and in the space of a heartbeat she realizes that it was all a lie and in the end he threw her away. So when she starts to like and trust Luke and then he goes dark and betrays her too, yeah, that might just take ten years to get past. And at the time of DE, all that pain of Palpatine's lies is still very fresh and so very personal that yeah, she knows exactly what he was, in a way that Luke never truly could. ( ANGST! )

But you'll be happy to know that apparently I got angsty enough with this that Elli had to make it happier and she made a bunch of suggestions about how Luke could fix even this, and so at some point I'll have to write an AU of this AU where things still go very very wrong but there's a reasonably happy ending despite all of that Thank you very much; I appreciate the thoughtful feedback!

@JohnLydiaParker
Thank you! Glad you liked it

@vader_incarnate

Thank you! I did like that bit

It is simply amazing how creatively motivating "this sucks, it makes no sense, I've gotta fix it" is But you get all the credit for infecting me with this particular bug, because DE is not something I ever expected to write about

I haven't read all of DE and thus don't know all the details of them being mean to Han, but that is completely unacceptable and out of character and I reject it. Han is smart and insightful and has experience the rest of them don't, and you don't have to be Force-sensitive to be a worthwhile person or character. And it's definitely my headcanon that Mara and Han get along really well and value each other's talents.

Ugh, DE, my gosh. No, it's not nearly that simple or harmless. Palpatine warped and abused all those kids to get them to do what they did and it was terrible.

Thank you! Considering the very personal experience that Mara has about how lasting his influence can be, no wonder she'd worry

Oy, it is That's another EU thing I disagree with to the point of ignoring that it ever happened. There's a lot of room for individual preferences, and as we've seen, even a story you personally can't stand can still spark creativity, but imho a lot of EU writers just were on completely the wrong track with their stories.

I have a dear friend in his 80s who's fond of saying "experience isn't the best teacher. Other people's experience is the best teacher," and he's right. And considering that we already saw Luke roundly reject his father's dark path in the OT, where exactly is the rationale for this 180 of Luke's? From everything I've seen, DE isn't just a bad story choice, it's bad writing. (And bad art.)

Yup, a person can absolutely glory in something bad, and there's no denying that to be able to touch the Force at all would be this otherworldly, larger than life sort of thing, and to draw on it for sheer power the way darksiders do - well, it's not a good thing, but it could definitely be glorious.

Exactly! There's just no narrative or characterization basis for this move. It makes no sense.

It really is

And you wonder how much of it is accurate and how much is just a mantra to convince herself, and even though she's roundly (and successfully) resisted the dark side herself and is in despair over Luke's failure to do so, she herself is still clinging to one of the Emperor's earliest lessons to keep her going, so that's a fun contradiction

I read TTT when it first came out, then after the disappointment of CoPL I mostly ignored the EU until I happened upon HoT upon a library shelf and realized to my delight that Zahn had written more SW books and pounced on them, and let me tell you, I was so confused by some of the references in VotF, not least of all the DE ones

Probably not, and it's hard to blame him there

The level of risk is just so high. And personally, I'm also kind of imagining Luke getting more and more impatient with the whole process, and Leia seeing the potential danger if there isn't a resolution soon, or if the resolution is something Luke disagrees with

So much thrown away just for some dark side shenanigans with a Palpatine clone

Right? Mara's already survived a lot, and she's absolutely determined that she'll survive this too, but the damage is such that I'm not sure how much farther beyond "survival" she goes in this scenario...

That's the sort of pragmatic angle that might well have tipped the scales in favor of keeping Luke alive, but I feel like he might not have felt super cooperative if they ever sprang him and asked him to help out

It took Mara a very long time to be comfortable with articulating and sharing emotion. Even in canon, she tells Luke after their engagement that in many ways she's still all locked up inside and needs to learn how to be emotionally open, and that's ten years after this, with less trauma. But that doesn't mean that she doesn't feel it - and frankly, if you don't know how to acknowledge emotion very well and your best coping mechanism is denial and then you get a huge loss like this thrown at you - well. Not a great foundation to build on.

I'm still just amazed that I wrote something angsty enough that you needed to lighten it up

It is 100% a potshot at the artwork. Honestly, seeing those panels was inspirational in that Luke is standing there, supposedly redeemed, saying "the Jedi will rise again" approximately two minutes after he was being extremely Sithly, and his eyes look like that? I'd be backing away slowly. He doesn't look like Luke at all; he hardly even looks sane. IMO, that only works artistically if you're trying to convey an undertone like this, that Luke is really not done with the dark side.

Vader left a terrifying trail of oppression and pain and torture and death despite any loss of power or potential after being maimed, so yeah, let's not think about just how far Luke could go if he really wanted to

I tried to include subtle details to show that even if Luke and Mara weren't a couple yet, and even if she wasn't quite ready to acknowledge that potential at the time of DE, she was still aware of it, and that she knows deep down what she really lost

Just such a terrible storytelling decision. And I like the name Anakin! Anakin Solo has a nice ring to it! But maybe don't saddle a newborn with that sort of legacy when you still haven't come to terms with it yourself at almost 30? If she was written in character, I really don't believe Leia would ever have done such a thing, but it's too late now. (I'm not at all convinced that Luke and Mara would have named their son Ben, either; tbh I think Zahn's decision to choose non-tribute names was probably the way Luke and Leia would have leaned, but c'est la vie.)

In every reality, Mara is a good aunt.

It's canon! (Or at least it was at some point; SW canon is a slippery thing.) My first thought for that line was "who wants ice cream" and I went to the Wook to check and not only is ice cream canon, so is Corellian fried ice cream, and we all know that Han would share such a thing with his children.

Thank you!

They should and would have been fine without Denning But right here and now, with Leia's training unfinished and Mara's having come from Palpatine and the trauma they share here of having seen Luke Skywalker, sunshiney ball of determined integrity personified, fall so far and so hard - I can't imagine either of them wanting to take that chance with Jaina and Jacen and Anakin.

Another art-inspired line, Elli I don't know how anyone could look at those panels and believe the dialogue about redemption. But yes, this would haunt Leia and Mara for the rest of their lives

I mean, now that I'm thinking about just how badly this would affect him, I'm all for writing that slightly, slowly happier version of this that you came up with

If DE had happened later in the timeline, I don't think it would have wrecked Leia and Mara quite so thoroughly. Don't get me wrong, it would always have wrecked them under any circumstances. But Luke hadn't established a Jedi Order yet, he hadn't finished training either of them, Leia still had literal babies that she had to try to raise and who would never really know their Uncle Luke, Mara's own grip on objective reality and truth after the discovery of Palpatine's betrayal was so new, as was her friendship/almost-relationship with Luke - DE happening exactly when it does is an absolute lasting gut punch for Leia and Mara both, in ways that I'm not sure they could ever fully get past; they were too vulnerable at that moment in time anyway. You throw a Sith Luke into that and I think it's a gaping wound that not only won't completely heal, but which stunts their own potential, because they didn't yet have quite strong enough a foundation to grow past it. Both in different ways, of course, and I think Leia comes out of this a lot better than Mara because Leia had a loving family and a normal upbringing and a family of her own when Luke fell, whereas Mara had none of that (and now never will ), but it's like you said: this is survivable, but not pleasant.

I did! When Stover offers up perfection, sometimes I'm gonna nick it

It's in very large part due to you that this even exists, because DE is a part of canon I've always ignored and I can't imagine I'd have looked to it for inspiration without Black Pawn and Black Knight, so thank you and I'm glad you love it

 

Outstanding story! That was one thing about the EU that never made sense. Kyp blows up a star system and is forgiven, Luke and his actions on Byss are forgiven, and there are probably a lot more examples of Force users getting forgiven for their Darkside actions.

This is a sad but realistic look at what probably would really happen in a Galaxy far far away. I am glad Mara remained in the lives of the Solos, but I can understand her not wanting to see Luke and his pain.

Beautifully written!

 

@Mira_Jade

I've spent the entire time I've been aware of DE's existence studiously ignoring it, then in comes Elli and actually makes it compelling enough that I also need to write a DE fix-it fic To write anything angsty enough to be compared to Elli and Vi's writing is a high achievement indeed

Exactly. DE happened so soon after TTT; Mara really hasn't had enough time to come to terms with the reality of her life yet, and now along comes Luke with his little dark side cosplay to rub some salt in the wound

Seeing that panel was actually inspiring, because I tell you, the disconnect between Luke's words and his artistic depiction is so great that I kind of shuddered with dread while looking at it. I don't know how anyone could have taken Luke's statement about the Jedi rising again at face value when he was looking like that.

I really do still enjoy writing stories set close to TTT. Those books are so good, and Luke and Mara's dynamic in them so compelling

Right?

IT IIISSSSSS

I just can't get over this, Mira. Luke committed treason and waged war against the NR and almost became another Darth Vader, but afterward the NR's response is, "all is completely forgiven and forgotten, go train some more Jedi now"? Really??? An absolute political firestorm is the very least that should have happened in response to this, with inquiries and debates as to Luke's status and trustworthiness taking at least a year, and I doubt he'd have been allowed to train any other people as Jedi until he'd managed at least a decade of good behavior.

In VotF, Mara impatiently dismisses the idea that the Byss clone was really Palpatine (which out-of-universe, I find hilarous, way to get the last word in on that matter, Zahn ), and regardless of who's really right, that just seemed perfectly in character for Mara, and even more so during the events of DE themselves. Everything she once believed turned out to be lies, so why should she instantly believe this story that's even less plausible than the ones she grew up believing but which were revealed to be false?

You are making sense, and I am very flattered by the rambling, thank you Because my gosh, is everything about DE OOC I like the idea of pride being behind his fall - whether he originally had good intentions or just stupidly indulged random curiosity, clearly Luke thought he could handle the dark, and that's dangerous. But once he started playing with it and got a taste of the raw power it offered - yeah, I could see someone glorying in that, and maybe especially if they had convinced themselves that really, they were doing no such thing

It really is

Huzzah! Poor Mara But also, did it feel like DE and LotF in particular took that particular dictum very literally, as in "you're either a Sith Lord forever even if you don't want to be if you take one false step or else you never were no matter what you did" when it could instead have meant something much more like what Mara thinks here, that basically even if you turn your actions around and do the right thing, you'll still have to deal with the consequences of your previous bad decisions? I feel like there's so many canonical shades of gray in SW that certain authors try very hard to turn into hardcore black and white on occasion, and I don't think that things are that simple.

They ARE Okay, in Allegiance, Mara is about 17, and she's relatively new to active in-the-field work because there are a few moments of introspection about her own inexperience compared to people like Vader, and the fact of people underestimating her specifically because of her youth. But on the other hand, she's been active long enough for Imperial officers who actually recognize her top level codes and position to blanch when they realize that they're dealing with the Emperor's Hand. She already has a reputation. So surely she's been in the field for at least a year, right? Possibly even longer, at least for certain less taxing assignments. Mara was very much a child soldier And by TTT, she and Luke and Leia were all still under 30. Adults, sure, and ones who'd been through some serious trauma, but still very young - too young to have their lives stunted or ruined by the events of DE, that's for sure.

Yes, yes I can

Thank you! Mara is brutally pragmatic at times; she of all characters would be able to see that sometimes what she might want is diametrically opposed to what needs to happen, and have the strength to fight for what she personally hates if it's the right thing.

The overall angst of Renewal's main premise aside, it had been quite a while since I had written a story whose primary purpose was angst, so I'm glad I pulled this off Vi saw some bit of writing advice somewhere that I'm going to quote incorrectly, but it was along the lines of "sometimes you need to not say something in your writing in order to convey your meaning, and trust that if you shape that empty space correctly, the reader will easily see what you intended." I thought of that a lot while writing this, because I definitely found that the oblique approach was the most effective tactic for this story.

Even with that one little scene in RotJ, doesn't Mon Mothma just exude quiet, iron-willed calm? And Genevieve O'Reilly has done such a magnificent job with expanding on that in Rogue One and Andor, so that now that calm is such an integral part of the character for me. That supreme level of self-control is something that Mara's always aimed for and needed in her own life and work, so I can see her instantly recognizing and appreciating another person's mastery in that area.

Right? (And yet, he did do those things, so how likely is it that DE's "all is forgiven" happy ending would really have happened...)

LOL

She was so close to a happiness she never thought she'd have, Mira!

It is. I will just never understand the creative decisions that led to anyone suggesting or writing or approving DE. And I really do think that it would have been entirely fair game and even compelling as an AU. But to do that to everyone right after TTT, right at the beginning of the modern AU with so much story potential ahead of them, and then a bunch of someones instead said, "nope, let's just have Luke turn to the dark side after all, that won't have any lasting repercussions..."

Aw yeah, heartbreakingly beautiful and awful is exactly what I was aiming for (Poor Mara!)

Right? And yes, I do too - which reminds me that I have yet to really bring Karrde into Renewal; so many stories, so little time

Thank you kindly

Aw, shucks

Yeah, Zahn aside, most EU writers didn't seem to think that anyone was even capable of coming up with a new name, and I just think it's silly overall, and I think it's so very much more likely that Leia would have chosen Bail if she did want a tribute name, and also in DE Han apparently introduces baby Anakin as Han Solo Jr and Leia basically says, nope, he's Anakin, and look, I don't believe that either of them would have gone with those names nor that either of them would just unilaterally announce a child's name without even running it past the other, and why is DE so awful in every single aspect, Mira

(That said, I have to admit that while I came up with Nakari and Kaela's names a whole year before I ever thought of anything concerning Renewal and chose all the Jades' names without looking for any similarities, it did occur to me well afterward that in that 'verse Nakari's name could easily be a tribute combining Nadira and Corissa, so maybe that's how Renewal!Nakari got her name? )

She is

Hee

Exactly. This is YET ANOTHER fatal flaw from DE: it's set at exactly the perfect time to completely torpedo any chance of a new Jedi Order. Luke was the only genuinely qualified teacher at that point, and even he, throughout TTT, wondered if he was really up to the task. Leia hadn't come close to finishing any training, and all of Mara's came from Palpatine (and it clearly wasn't a thorough education, considering that Luke found things to teach her even before the last command was gone [although Zahn kind of retconned himself with Allegiance and CoO, wherein Mara clearly had more Force skills as Emperor's Hand than she'd had in either TTT or HoT; his work is good enough that I'm inclined to allow the self-indulgence, but there's definitely an inconsistency and in my own writing I tend to default to Mara's original TTT level of knowledge]), and would she ever want to risk passing that on after DE? And that's not even getting into the profound emotional damage they're both dealing with from being betrayed by and then losing Luke. Neither of them is ready in any way to take on even a single student, let alone Luke's original responsibility for the whole Order, and both of them would be terrified to risk Jaina and Jacen and Anakin

Right? When Skywalkers fall, they tend to fall hard

I LOVE THIS SONG SO MUCH Clearly I just need a bunch of music recs from my younger and more with it friends

lolllll I'm taking this as a compliment *puts a dollar in the angst jar*

@Jedi_Lover

Yeah, the EU wasn't terrific at following through with the logical consequences for characters' actions. Which, okay, I don't want the main characters locked up for being murdery idiots either, but that kind of means not writing them as murdery idiots to begin with... I do find that when I write angst, it's often in the service of "that's totally unrealistic, time for some actual consequences" Thank you so much, I'm very pleased that you liked it!