Saga - OT [DDC 2017]Teenage Rebellion--Updated 11/27/2017 (Mara/Ezra/Luke)

Thanks to @Findswoman for beta-reading!


Mara

I shouldn’t have been nervous at the thought of going back to Merkesh. I should have been thrilled. I was going home—I’d get to see my family, sleep in my own bed, eat L’moko’s brewats and Mom’s Wookiee cookies—all the things I’d dreamt of doing for months. But I was nervous instead, as I sat in the Phantom’s cargo bay, pretending I was checking and double checking Master Li’s documents. I wondered what Mom was going to say about the green streaks in my hair and what Dad was going to think of the way I’d handled the mission the Force had given me. What would they say about my vision at the dark temple, about the girl I could have been, if only…? What would they say about me? I didn’t feel like the same girl who’d left Merkesh, and it wasn’t just the streaks in my hair and the Rebel fatigues. I’d learned a lot about listening to the Force and trusting where it led me. I’d learned a lot about myself—that I didn’t have to do it all myself, that letting go wasn’t the same as giving up, that I didn’t need to protect myself from the people who loved me.

And…somehow along the way I’d become as much a part of the Spectres as I was of the Idiot’s Array. They were like a second family to me now; I couldn’t imagine not having them in my life. I wondered how my parents would feel about that, especially Mom, and I wondered what she would say about the way my feelings for Ezra had grown. Not that I hadn’t loved him before I left home—I had. Maybe not from the moment I saw him, the way Annina insisted, but close—but now...now I was beginning to think the Six of Sabers had been a better choice than Dad and I realized at the time. I wanted Ezra to be my journey’s end, and I wanted to be his, always, just like we’d told each other the day he’d held me after my vision. That would make Annina squeal and probably pass out from sheer bliss, but as long as it had taken Mom to warm up to Ezra, it would probably garner a Look and an “oh no, you don’t, young lady” if I told her.

I was jolted out of my thoughts by shuddering lurch of the Phantom dropping out of hyperspace, followed by the blaring wail of a warning siren. I scrambled to my feet and dashed to the cockpit. Ezra hovered over the instrument panel, flipping switches and stabbing buttons until the noise finally stopped. “What’s going on?”

“We’re almost out of fuel,” he scowled, tapping the fuel gauge as if that would change it. “We had a full tank when we left Yavin, but now….would you stop it, Skywalker?!” Ezra snapped at Luke, who was bleating like a panicked eopie. “We have enough to make it to Taris. It’s probably a leak in the fuel line. Used to happen a lot to the old Phantom.”

“You can fix it, though, right?” I asked. So much for our nice, easy mission. This was definitely going to change our plans. If Ezra couldn’t repair the line, we were going to be stuck on Taris for who knew how long. Not only would I not get home to Merkesh, but Master Li would be stuck with us, and the longer he was here, the greater the risk he’d be discovered.

“Sure, yeah. Well, I think so anyway—I helped Hera fix the Phantom One’s line a couple times.” He shrugged uneasily as the Phantom shuddered again. “Kind of depends on what’s causing the leak. It could be a lot of things—from vrelts chewing on the line to just worn out hardware. For once, I wish we had Chopper here with us.”

My instincts were telling me we didn’t have any time to waste. The last time my danger sense had been this strong was when the Force sent me after Ezra, and I’d found him captive to a pair of bounty hunters. I thought quickly. “Okay, so while you repair the fuel line, Luke and I will go get Master Li…” Here Luke gave another startled bleat and looked like he was going to fall out of the co-pilot’s seat, face first. “We’ll get Master Li and bring him to the spaceport so we can leave as soon as you finish.”

“Sounds like a good plan, Ace.” Ezra agreed, as the blue-gray surface of the planet grew to fill the viewport. “Let’s hope it works out that way.”

——

I knew the history of Taris, of course, from the story of Revan and Bastila (I’d say all Jedi know the story, but that’s, what, like eight of us? And I’m not so sure about Luke). Annina loves that dreadful holo-rom “We’ll Always Have Taris”, but I always liked Dad’s stories about Revan better. There was a lot more action in them, for one thing, and he emphasized that it was Revan’s friendship with the Ebon Hawk’s entire crew and the lessons he learned from them that helped him overcome the Dark Side—not just his love for Bastila.

Taris had always been a strange contradiction of a planet, half urban sprawl, half blighted wasteland. In Revan’s day, it had been polluted, crime-ridden and full of rakghouls in the Lower City, while the wealthy lived in glittering skyscrapers in the Upper City. The Sith bombardment had been the beginning of the end for the planet. Its restoration took over three hundred years, delayed by plague, starvation, and sabotage. Even when it was complete, large swaths of land remained barely habitable, and the population crowded into the cities that remained.

Onasi Towers was in one of the better areas of the city, but that wasn’t saying much. The towers themselves were sad, grimy things, their transparisteel edifices streaked with pollution. They seemed to huddle together nervously beneath the iron gray sky.

Luke had been getting progressively twitchier since we left Ezra at the spaceport. I couldn’t tell if it was because the urban landscape was unsettling to a farmboy like him, if he, too, had alarm bells ringing in his brain...or if he was just overwhelmed by the prospect of meeting Stahn Li, genius artist. By the time we reached the Towers, I put the odds of Luke passing out from sheer excitement at 50/50. I know, a Corellian isn’t supposed to care about the odds, but I’m only half Corellian, and I didn’t want to have to drag him back to the Phantom.

A clanking turbolift took us up to the eleventh floor and after a bit of walking, we found room 1138, the aurodium numbers tilted sideways. Luke stared at the door, as wide-eyed as if Xim the Despot’s treasure was on the other side of the dented, dinged-up door. “You’re up, Luke.”

“What?!” He startled out of his fanboy reverie, and I estimated that the odds of him fainting were now two to one in favor.

I gestured to the door. “Go ahead and knock. I haven’t watched The Brave Little Banthas in years, but I’m sure you still know the theme song, right?

“Right.” Luke swallowed hard and scrunched his face into a look of determination. He tapped on the door, singing softly to himself:

“Brave, brave, little banthas!
Brave, brave, little banthas!
Brave, brave, little banthas!
Serving the Republic, salutes!”

“Huttza delivery for Leero!” I called.

“But Kylo wanted quadduck soup!” a somewhat querulous voice responded from inside. The door slid open to reveal an elderly Cerean with a short, bristly white mustache and oversized eyeglasses—yes, honest-to-goodness old-fashioned eyeglasses—with thick, tinted lenses.

“Stahn Li! You’re really Stahn Li!” Luke’s eyes grew as large as credit chips and he looked like a youngling who’d just been given ice-on-a-stick. “Um, of course you’re Stahn Li… I mean Master Li… I’m...uh, I’m Luke Skywalker and I’m here to rescue you!”

One wiry eyebrow crept up from behind Li’s dark glasses. He turned to me with a somewhat bemused smile. “Is he always like this?”

“Pretty much, yes,” I confirmed. I reached into my belt satchel, drew out a sabacc card and handed it to him. “My card, Master Li.”

“Ace of Sabers. Yes, I’ve been expecting you.” I thought Li looked faintly relieved as he tucked the card into his tunic pocket. “Well, no time to waste. If one of you could help me with my case?”

Luke sprang to pick up the bulky travel case—it seemed that even carrying Master Li’s luggage was an honor too great to refuse—and staggered with its weight. “Whoa...you must have a lot of clothes, Master Li!”

The Cerean smiled. “Clothes? No, dear boy, my clothes are in here.” He patted a small leather satchel that hung from his shoulder. “That contains something far more important—the original proofs of my holo-comics! And now, onward, my friends. Onward, to glory!” I could just make out Li’s wink behind his tinted glasses. Luke grinned like a total moof-milker, as Ezra liked to say, and I gathered that that was some sort of catchphrase from Li’s holo-comics.

Li was surprisingly spry for his age, and if I had to slow my pace for anyone, it was Luke staggering under the weight of Li’s travel case. We had only gone a block or two from Onasi Towers, though, when all the alarms in my brain went off, and my danger sense shrieked like Princess when Dad stepped on her tail.

We were being followed.

“Excuse me a minute. Something in my boot.” I could see the street behind us reflected in the window of a droid repair shop as I bent down and pretended to adjust my footwear.

A stocky girl in the white uniform of an Imperial cadet loitered by the corner, and she was doing a terrible job of pretending she wasn’t watching us. I got a nice, clear look at her face before she turned away. She was Human, though she had the beady, piggy eyes of an Ugnaught, the pushed-up pug nose of a Chadra-Fan and the charming expression of a nauseous Hutt.

Dad says the Force doesn’t do coincidences, and I guess that’s as true of the Dark Side as the Light, because I recognized the cadet.

My dear friend Rominaria Winstar-Worplesdon.
-------
Notes:
The Brave Little Banthas theme was written by @Ewok Poet

Stahn Li's "Onward to glory!" is a nod to the real Stan Lee's catchphrase: "Excelsior!"

 

“Excuse me a minute. Something in my boot.” I could see the street behind us reflected in the window of a droid repair shop as I bent down and pretended to adjust my footwear.

Are we not glad that this story does not contain a certain space cat? Thanks the maker! Wonderful update.

 

Oooooooooh, a cliffie! @Raissa Baiard The unpredictable fuel line just had to go wonky now didn't it? And then Mara recognizes one of her girly-gal acquaintances... I guess that frivolous stuff Rominaria was putting on was just an act

Eagerly awaiting more & especially the homecoming because of Mara's questions about her folks' reactions to all she has to tell them. Love her saying that Ezra is her journey's end too.

 

The first paragraph of this is such a lovely throwback to the things Mara was, ironically, free of on Yavin - her mother's conservative, sometimes outright "straight and narrow" ways and her father's ruminations on the Force and the light/dark dichotomy that can - apparently - cross the fine line and become just plain annoying. But given how much this gal has grown on the course of this diary, I'm pretty sure that she will have completely different ways of coping with those little annoyances, in comparison to how it used to be.

But at the same time, she appears not to be there, still. Those things might as well be what's confusing her and making her go through the documents all over again et cetera. It's not the fact that it's going to be over soon, it's the fact that she embraced the changes and wants to go on HER way.

The mushy bit about Ezra was LIEK OMGZ111!1! Squee!

And whoa...Taris, out of all planets in the Galaxy? Now, that's symbolic, in so many ways. For one, Mara's sense of belonging traces back to Revan, her fiery femininity, in a way, traces back to Bastila. And these characters are nothing like their slimey romdram versions, they're much stronger and far more complex than what the commercial machine has made them to be.

Once again...the Carth fangirl in me LOVES the Onasi Towers. In a way, they're a perfect representation of how the man himself was on Taris in KOTOR, slowly starting to open to his companion.

LMFAO...I mean...LMKAO!

Once again, thanks for the throwback to my crack!fic. Another LMKAO!

Luke sure must be HONOURED to carry THAT suitcase. BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

But ugh, Rominaria, out of all beings in the Galaxy?

The next entry is sure as heck going to be interesting!

 

Yes, with Ghost's habit of stealing Mara's lightsaber at inopportune moments, it's probably a good thing he's not here! Then again, he also defends his Jedi against meddlesome Imperials, so maybe he'd be helpful under the circumstances. Glad you enjoyed it!

Nothing is ever as easy as it seems in planning! Rominaria-- well, she really does like Imperially sanctioned boy bands and chick flick holo-roms, but she's not a sweet, feminine girly-girl by any means. She’s based on a high school “friend” of mine who loved “New Kids on the Block” beyond all reason, but at the same time was the kind of person who would tell you all your supposed flaws with the excuse that she was “just being honest”. In short, she and Romi are the kind of friends you’d never pick if you had better options. And I can’t wait to get to the homecoming, too, because it’s going to be a lot of fun and emotions for everyone!

I’m not sure that Mara’s annoyed by those things in her parent (maybe a bit by Raissa’s strictness, especially as it might effect her relationship with Ezra) but she realizes how she’s changed and wonders how she fits into that familiar family structure now. She’s been building something on her own—her relationships with the Spectres and Luke, a life as a Rebel operative on Yavin—and she’s trying to figure out how to fit all the pieces together. It hasn’t occurred to her that her family may have changed as well, and her parents may be ready to embrace the changes in her, too.

SQUEE! Mushy-mush from our I’m-not-romantic Mara. She really has changed...now she can freely admit she loves Ezra and wants to be with him.

Taris just happened to be on the Hydian Way hyperspace route between Yavin IV and the place on the Galactic Map where I put Merkesh, so it was just too good not to use on their mission. Revan has been part of Mara’s childhood stories from Doran (so much so that her little sister idolizes Bastila). She’s gotten the less romantic version of things from him. Interesting comparisons between the crew of the Ebon Hawk and our little band . Both groups are seemingingly misfits brought together by chance, but they both find more in common with each other than they think and learn from each other.

I had to BECAUSE KYLO. BECAUSE DUCKS

Oh, he is! For Stahn Li he would carry it ALL THE WAY ACROSS THE GALAXY.

Oh, you know it...because she and Mara are certain to have somethings to say to each other!

I hadn't thought of that comparison, but, yes, in a way it is like Zeb's situation, because Mara's been building new connections with her friends on Yavin, and in a way they've become her second family--and of course, she's contemplating building those new family connections with Ezra in a less metaphorical way Given Raissa's initial reaction to the fact that her little girl was growing up, it's understandable that Mara is concerned, but I think you're right that Raissa and Doran are more likely to understand and accept the changes in Mara than she thinks

I'm not the world's biggest Marvel fan, but every time I have seen Stan Lee in the media, he has seemed to have a really open attitude towards fans and a sense of humor, so I tried to bring that to Stahn (whose appearance is as close to Lee as I could make a Cerean) I am sure he'll be more than happy to autograph the elusive Krykna-man #1 for Sabine and whatever piece of flimsi Luke can come up with! Mara lets Luke have an opportunity to be a real part of the mission, and out his knowledge to use with the pass codes--and his strength in schlepping luggage!

Thanks! I love tying together the bits and pieces of the SW universe--fanfic, games, everything! I wonder now if the X'arm Brothers comedy "Quadduck Soup" is popular in the GFFA, at least among film aficionados or those of a certain era. (And someday, I really need to do a story about Nick. So far he's been content to sit quietly, but he must have some interesting adventures in a family like his!)

All right, I will keep you in suspense no longer!

 

Thank you to @Findswoman for beta-reading


Mara, cont’d

Our nice, easy rescue mission was turning out to be a lot more complicated than it had seemed during the briefing, and I hoped Ezra was having better luck repairing the broken fuel line than Luke and I were retrieving Master Li! Of all the Imperial cadets on all the worlds, why did Rominaria Winstar-Worplesdon have to be the one following us?

I stood up and motioned Luke and Master Li to the side as if I was showing them the treadwell droid in the shop’s window. “We have a small problem,” I told them. “We’re being followed.”

Master Li had apparently been reading too many of his own comics, because he didn’t seem especially surprised—only raising a wiry eyebrow with a “hmmm”. Luke, on the other hand—whatever the Force has in store for him, he’s never going to make it as a Jedi Sentinel. His first reaction was to yelp “What!”, his eyes going wide as a startled kneeb’s. His second reaction was to turn around.

Or he tried to, anyway. I yanked him back and hissed, “Don’t look! I don’t want Rominaria to know that we know she’s following us.”

“Oh, right.” Luke hunched his shoulders and gave us both a sheepish look. “So what are we going to do now?”

I had a plan, but he wasn’t going to like it. “I’m going to draw her away, while you to get Master Li back to the spaceport.” Predictably Luke started shaking his head, even before I got to the part I knew he was really going to hate. “If I’m not back in an hour, you and Ezra take Master Li to Merkesh without me.”

“Mara, no! You can’t do this by yourself! I can’t let…”

I cut him off with my best Very Serious Look, drawing on all the very serious seriousness I’d learned from all the very serious Jedi I knew—Mom, Kanan, even the Paolo-cron. “Yes, you can. You have to. Our mission is to get Master Li off Taris safely; that’s the most important thing right now.” We didn’t have time to discuss this. I needed to handle Rominaria before she realized I was onto her and called for backup. I knew Luke didn’t want us to split up, that he doubted his own abilities, but someone needed to stay with Master Li. I knew Luke could get him back to the Phantom safely. But whether he was concerned for me as a friend or worried out of some misguided sense of chivalry, I was the one who was better suited to dealing with my one-time friend. “I’ll be fine,” I assured Luke, squeezing his hand, and when I let go, I let my hand stray to where my hold-out blaster was hidden in my belt satchel. “Aurodium medal in junior marksmanship, remember? Third level k’tarra student? I can handle this.”

“But….” His blue eyes were still wide and worried, but Luke proved that he had a serious Jedi underneath. I could sense and almost hear him repeating the Jedi code. Emotion, yet peace. Chaos, yet harmony. His mouth firmed into a resolute line. “All right.” He took my hand again and squeezed it. “May the Force be with you.”

I smiled back. “And also with you. I’ll lead Rominaria away. There’s a tapcafé around the next corner. Go there, wait a few minutes and then head to the spaceport.” Luke nodded and Master Li touched his fingers to his brow in a brief salute as I slipped away.

I caught Rominaria’s piggy eyes dart from me to Luke and Li as we went our separate directions. I didn’t know if she knew who Stahn Li was or that he was running from the Empire, but I wasn’t willing to take any chances. *Follow me.* I used a touch more Force persuasion than I normally would have, but it really wasn’t necessary. Rominaria was a bully. She could force her will onto Velanie and Palomella because they’d grown up with her bossing them around, but she had no real strength of her own. My little sister’s pittin had more character than Rominaria. She followed me more dutifully than a nek dog on a leash.

I led her on a zigzagging path through the streets of Taris from the shabbily genteel area near Onasi Towers to a seedy market district where half the shops were shuttered and boarded and the other half hid all sorts of goods and services that were anywhere from borderline illegal to downright, flat-out not-just-illegal-but-also-immoral. I could sense Rominaria’s eagerness. She was going to catch me at...something. She was rather vague on just what, but it would be serious and she would enjoy hauling me into Imperial headquarters for it. Her malicious glee bubbled like a swamp on Nal Hutta.

There were fewer and fewer pedestrians as I went on, and none at all when I found what I was looking for—a dead-end street that was cluttered with rubbish and packing crates. It reminded me of Merkesh City near the sleazy Oasis Inn and the alleyway where the bounty hunters had captured Ezra. I had stunned those two before either could get a shot at me. No one had heard and no one had seen them lying there until the patrol from the Garrison came by. It felt distinctly surreal to consider that no one would discover Rominaria after she’d been stunned—after I’d stunned her. I hoped it wasn’t just reluctance to stun someone who’d been my friend—sort of, kind of—that made me tell myself I needed to find out how much Rominaria knew first, to make sure she couldn’t endanger our mission any further.

I went halfway down the dead-end street, around a slight curve that put a large stack of packing crates between me and the cross street and pretended that I’d just figured out the street ended in a pile of garbage that was probably better left unexamined, turning around. “Excuse me, can you...Rominaria!” I did a fake double take and smiled as if there was no one in the Galaxy I would rather have run into in that squalid dead end. “Look at you; you’re an Imperial cadet What are you doing here?”

“And you’re...nothing.” Rominaria’s lips curved into a Hutt-like smile. Her malicious glee bubbled like a swamp on Nal Hutta. “I should be the one asking you what you’re doing here, except I already know the answer.”

“You know that my ship stopped for refueling on the way home to Merkesh?” Annina would have been proud of the expression of puzzled innocence I put on (no one does that look better than she does, no one). “Gran’s doing so much better now, she said she’d be all right for a few days while I visited my family!”

Rominaria snorted. “You never went to take care of your poor sick grandmother.”

“I didn’t? That’ll come as quite a surprise to her then.” I dropped Annina’s charming smile. She knew something, all right, or at least suspected. But how much? “So if I haven’t been on Corellia taking care of Gran, where have I been?”

She sauntered towards me like an overfed felinx that had caught a vrelt just to play with it. “At first I figured that your scruffy off-world street rat of a boyfriend—Ezra, isn’t it?—knocked you up and your parents sent you packing to a Lanai nunnery out of shame, but no, the real story’s even better. You ran away and joined the Rebellion with him.”

She knew. Oh, good skies, she knew. I tried to keep my voice level as I retorted, “That’s crazy, Ro! Why would I do something like that when my mother’s an Imperial prefect?”

“I don’t think you ever told me his last name or where he’s from.”

I’ve learned a few things from Ezra in the time we’ve been together. The ability to make up stories on the fly is one of them. “Dume. He’s from Coruscant originally. He and his older brother Caleb work on the light freighter Silver Spirit out of Lothal now…”

“Bridger. His last name is Bridger. And he’s a Rebel on the Empire’s most wanted list.” The overfed felinx smile hardened into the grin of a ravenous nexu. “Your mother must be so disappointed in you. Perfect Mara, always the best at everything...star dancer, prize student, aurodium medal marksman...the girl all the boys wanted and you threw it all away because some piece of Rebel scum borked you in an alley by the spaceport. And if you’re here on Taris, that means he’s here, too, and you’re going to take me to him.”

Tarisian afternoon was warm, but I felt cold in the wake of the emotions surrounding Rominaria—a thick, festering, churning miasma of glee, resentment, and hate. I knew we weren’t really friends, and hadn’t been for a long time, but I hadn’t realized that she actually hated me. How had I been so blind? I was a Jedi; wasn’t I supposed to be able to sense people’s emotions? Yet, here I was, facing down a childhood friend who despised me. And she knew everything... not just that I was a Rebel, but also Ezra's name. How long until she started after my family—not that they couldn’t handle her, but if word got back to Moff Cassius that the Prefect’s daughter had joined the Rebellion, Mom’s career would be over, especially after what had happened when Dad refused to change the name of the Café Alderaan. I wasn’t just going to be able to stun Rominaria and leave her here. Take your blaster off stun, whispered a ruthlessly practical voice. You have to protect your family. Master Li. Ezra. Just take care of her. I knew that voice well--the voice of the other girl who lived in the dark corners of my mind, the one who could dispatch “enemies” with little thought and no feeling. No, I told her. I don’t care if she hates me; I’m not you. There has to be another way. “And why would I do that?”

Rominaria tapped the pin on her left shoulder, showing the dismal rank of third-class cadet. “I’m sure you know what this insignia means—I’m not just a cadet, I’m in the ISB track. We’ve been learning all sorts of fun ways to get Rebel scum to talk. I’m going to enjoy trying them out on you.”

“You’re forgetting one thing,” I told her. Because there was another way; there was always another way, especially for a Jedi.

“What’s that?”

“I was never here.” I swept my right hand in an arc, and drew on the Force, putting enough of it it into my words that Rominaria would have walked straight into a rancor’s den covered in boontaspice sauce if I’d told her to. Overkill, but I was taking no chances with the people I loved. “I’ve been on Corellia helping my grandmother all this time. You’ve never heard the name Ezra Bridger; my boyfriend is just an ordinary spacer. You’ve seen nothing out of the ordinary today, and you’re going back to your post now.”

Her eyes went unfocused and the Hutt-smile went slack. “I’m going back to my post,” she agreed.

I watched Romaria go as she walked away in a daze. Once she was gone, I slumped against the stack of crates and tried not to cry over memory-wiping my former best friend.

 

Oh RAISSA! Oh, OWWWWWWWWWWWWW! Rominaria is all kinds of vicious and malicious and full of bitter jealousy because Mara is all that and several bags of chips

But then Mara tries to ramp up the getting out of the trap and not hindering the mission or her family back home but since that doesn't work, she does something that doesn't just skirt the edge but actually crosses the line. Does it matter that it was for all the right reasons?

Now she's going to doubt her motives and choices even more.

 

Yay, more TR!

I'm dying here. HA. Luke is no Bastila, that's for sure...even when he's on Taris. Some things are funnier when I've skipped beta'ing the chapter. The factor of surprise!

Raissa, IS THAT YOU?

Looks like that helped Luke understand that he should not be THAT worried. Still, I would love to see all of these kids interact with the (in)famous Paolo-cron. Not just Mara.

Aaaand here's some true, true crack!fic material. The judge-mental fish nuns are going to have a word with many, many young couples all over the Galaxy Far, Far Away...

At the same time, I hoped that Mara's tactic would work and that she would, for example, pull a mind trick on this lesser-than-a-pitting character and an excuse for an Imperial Cadet. Hmmm...

Oh...wait a minute, she did. Never mind.

 

Can´t believe that this update swam by like the Little Mermaid and I did not catch it until now.

“I was never here.” I swept my right hand in an arc, and drew on the Force, putting enough of it it into my words that Rominaria would have walked straight into a rancor’s den covered in boontaspice sauce if I’d told her to. Overkill, but I was taking no chances with the people I loved. “I’ve been on Corellia helping my grandmother all this time. You’ve never heard the name Ezra Bridger; my boyfriend is just an ordinary spacer. You’ve seen nothing out of the ordinary today, and you’re going back to your post now.”

Your Mara now shows qualities of Zahn´s original Mara. Wonderfully done!

 

Rominaria's a real charmer, isn't she? All that bitterness has been building up for a long time, and once she thinks she's got Mara where she wants her, she's going to tell her exactly what she thinks. I think that ultimately, Mara's motives in fudging Rominaria's memories do matter. In a situation where she doesn't really have any good options, she chooses the path that causes the least harm to Rominaria. The guilt and regret she feels over it argue that it's not going to become a habit for her...but she probably will still doubt herself because of it.

Yup, Romi has a great career in the ISB ahead of her...at least if all it requires is sheer nastiness, as Mara notes, she's a pretty lackluster cadet. And of course Mara's been dating Ezra long enough to have learned how to use the truth to spin some plausible lies, it's only too bad that Rominaria already knows more of the truth than Mara expects. Stahn's been a fun character to write--absolutely nothing bothers him! I don't know if the real Stan Lee is quite that unflappable, but he always looks like he's enjoying himself in photos.

In a perfect world, a Jedi would never use the Force to rearrange someone's memories, but Mara's also learning here that sometimes Jedi have to make hard choices to accomplish their missions. She chooses the lesser of the evils, though, and recognizes the seriousness of her actions. And it's that recognition that will keep her from heading too far down a dark path.

No, at this point in his career Luke's still more farmboy than Jedi. Someday he'll be all calm in the face of danger--but not today.

Like mother, like daughter Hey, Mara's had some very good Very Serious role models, even if her dad (and boyfriend) can be more the Rather Irreverent Jedi type. I still think it would be good fun to write a story about toddler Mara and the Paolo-cron, but Luke ("omigosh, I'm a terrible Jedi!") and Ezra's("Is this guy for real?") reactions would be fun, too.

Well, you're the queen of crack!fic...when can we expect the judgemental fish nun story?

Thank you! I've tried to keep aspects of Legends!Mara in this AU. She's not the poised Emperor's Hand yet, but as she's maturing, Mara's becoming more like her, in her ability to act decisively and handle tougher challenges.

 

Thank you to @Findswoman for beta-reading

Luke

There was a flock of mynocks flying maneuvers in my stomach as I watched Mara head off into the streets of Taris with the Ugnaught-faced cadet trailing after her. I took a deep breath, and another, and wondered if I was going to end up hyperventilating like I did the time Uncle Owen caught me sneaking out to go to Beggar’s Canyon with Biggs when I was grounded for playing smashball with the treadwell droid. This wasn’t how this mission was supposed to go. It was supposed to be simple! We were supposed to work as a team, but now Ezra was fixing the fuel line, Mara was dealing with the cadet, and I was here with Stahn Li—and I couldn’t even talk to him without sounding like a droid with a bargain-bin vocabulator. He was watching me over the rims of his dark glasses, eyebrows raised, waiting for me to do...something.

Trust yourself, Kanan had said. Trust the Force; trust your team. I did trust them—that was the easy part. The hard part was knowing they trusted me, and that Master Li trusted me, too. Okay,I told myself, they trust you, so do this for them. Because you have to. Because you can. All you have to do is get Master Li to the spaceport. Easy, right? I took another deep breath, and this time I opened myself to the Force. “Right,” I said turning to Master Li. “The tapcafé Mara mentioned is a block to the east. We’ll go there, order a couple cafs and make sure no one else is following us before we head back to the ship.” Wow...it sounded like a real plan.

Master Li nodded. “Lead the way.”

And it actually worked. We ordered two cafs to go—Master Li drinks his black, and I got one of those Kamino salted caramel macchiatos Zeb likes; it wasn’t bad!—and while the waitress was making mine, I reached out in the Force to see if I could tell whether anyone was following. I’d never really tried to sense how everyone around me felt before—usually in our lessons, we concentrated on one person or florikeet or woolamander or whatever. Reaching out to a lot of minds at once was really strange, like trying to listen to a crowd of people all talking at the same time. It was hard to hear what they were “saying”, but I could pick up on the tones of their “voices”. Most of them were just going about their day, maybe even a little bored; some were upset, sad or angry, but none of them seemed to be paying attention to us at all.

It was tough to keep listening for anyone who might be tracking us and make sure I was heading the right way, but somehow I did it. Master Li and I arrived at the spaceport even before we’d finished our cafs. (Maybe the caf helped me? I don’t know...something to ask Kanan about…) When we arrived at the Phantom, Ezra was closing up a panel on its side. His hair was in disarray, there was a smudge of grease on his nose and a hydrospanner in his hand. “Hey, I fixed the fuel line! Just a crack, fortunately. As soon as the sealant dries…” He stopped, noticing for the first time that it was only me with Master Li, and since I was still open to the Force and listening, I sensed the way his heart froze. “Where’s Mara?”

“We ran into some trouble on the way back. An Imperial cadet was following us, and Mara led her off so we could get away. She said...she said if she wasn’t back in an hour to go on to Merkesh… where are you going?” I asked as he thrust the hydrospanner into my hand and took off at a jog.

“I’m going to find her!”

“Ezra, wait!” I called. “Mara said to give her an hour! She said getting Master Li off Taris was the most important thing..”

He stopped flat-footed and his shoulders slumped. “Fine, we’ll wait,” he said, turning back towards the ship, but he scowled defiantly at me. “But I am not leaving without her!”

So we waited, and Ezra checked the sealant on the fuel line every thirty seconds and when it was dry, he calibrated every instrument on the panel and double-checked the hyperspace calculations. Meanwhile, I sat with Master Li on one of the fold-down benches in the Phantom’s cargo area. He pulled a pad of flimsi and a stylus and began to work. I watched for a while. “Are you...uh, drawing something?” I asked and winced. Couldn’t I come up with anything intelligent to say to him?

Master Li looked up with a smile. “I always keep a sketch pad with me. You never know when inspiration is going to strike.”

“You sound just like a friend of mine, Sabine. She’s an artist, too, and a big fan of yours. She thinks you’re a genius...um, with line and color and… all that.” No, it didn’t look like I was going to be able to do anything but stammer like a second-hand protocol droid. Well, the least I could do was see if I could get Master Li’s autograph. I picked up the holo-comic from where I’d laid it on the opposite bench. “She wanted me to ask you if you’d sign this? Please?”

His eyebrows rose over his dark glasses. “Well! Krykna-man #1, she really is a fan! I can never say no to a real fan.” He slid the comic out of the flimsi-plast envelope and signed its cover with a flourish—“To Sabine, from one artist to another. Onward to glory! Stahn Li.” As he slipped it back into the envelope, Master Li cocked an eyebrow at me. “Aren’t you going to ask for an autograph, too?”

“Oh…” I felt my face growing warm. Did I look like that much of a desperate fan boy...wait, don’t answer that.. “I don’t have anything for you to sign.”

“Then it really is a good thing I have my sketchpad.” His smile broadened. “Would an original drawing be all right with you?”

I think my brain might have exploded at that moment. “What?!? Really? I mean...Yeah! Thanks!” Master Li carefully removed a page from his sketchpad, signed it with the same dramatic motion, and handed it to me. Whatever was left of my brain exploded again—a real Stahn Li drawing! This was better than the best Life Day present ever! Almost as good as getting a medal in front of everyone at the temple on Yavin—almost! And then I looked down at the page; it was a sketch of three young people, a girl in the middle with a guy on either side of her. And the guy on the left....“Wait...is this...is this me? And that’s Mara! And Ezra!”

Master Li held up his sketchpad. The page was filled with little drawings of me, my face from different angles, smiling, laughing, frowning. (I think I need a haircut...I didn’t know I looked that shaggy.) He clapped a hand on my shoulder. “Inspiration, Luke. You’ve all provided me with the inspiration for a team to rival the Galactic Four… a group of heroic youngsters united by friendship to fight the Empire in the face of overwhelming odds. It’s the kind of story that needs to be told.” He smiled again at the sound of the Phantom’s hatch opening and Ezra’s shout of “Mara!” “Ah, and it sounds like our story has a happy ending!”

We both peeked into the cockpit. Ezra had his arms around Mara and was kissing her...let’s just say I’m glad I wasn’t still listening in the Force. “Are you okay?” he asked her. “What happened?”

“I’m fine. I’ll tell you all about it later. Right now, I’m so ready to get off this planet, and I’m sure Master Li is, too.” She grinned at me over Ezra’s shoulder. “I see you got him here in one piece, Luke. I knew you could do it.”

I shrugged. “Yeah, well, I had the easiest job.” Compared to dealing with Imperials or fixing the ship, just walking back to the ship had been as easy as falling off a bantha. (Not that I’ve fallen off a bantha. But I bet if I rode one, I would fall off it, easily.)

“Easy or not, it was important. Like you said, the most important thing was keeping Master Li safe.” Ezra grinned, too. “I’d say you aced this mission.”

I didn’t have to be listening in the Force to know he meant it or feel the warmth and pride that was radiating from him and Mara. I was really part of a team now—united by friendship and the Force—and it was a better story than any holo-comic ever could be.

 

LOL I just ADORE Luke's voice in this update. Full of fanboy enthusiasm and determination. Li's inspiration to create a team of heroes inspired by Mara, Ezra, and Luke speaks volumes for the team they've become: one united by friendship and the Force.
Squee!

 

I find your Luke very lovable in this update, too, and hope he will never become the bitter, cynic and broken man from Episode 8.

 

Aww, thanks! He's come a long way from his first attempts at using the Force and whining that he can't, it's just toooo hard!!! Luke's always had that determined streak, but now, thanks to Kanan's wise and patient teaching and Mara and Ezra's support and friendship, he's starting to put it to good use and accomplish great things. He really is part of the team now!

Oh, no worries there! This is the AU where everyone gets their happily ever after--and that includes Luke! He may not get to marry Mara in this universe, but I have no intention of letting him become a bitter hermit living all alone except for the porgs and judgmental fish nuns. Nope, I've got something special in mind for him, too...

Thank you! Yep, he's learned a lot since the days when he he was trying to hit a single rock (which Ezra did not throw at his head, no matter what anyone says! ) He played an important role in the mission's success and his friends recognize that--and Master Li, too! Artists gonna draw...even, maybe especially, when things get rough. (It's always good to have something to keep your mind and hands occupied) Master Li knows a good story when he sees it--heroes come in all guises (though little does he know about these teens' "superpowers"!)

It's the beginning of a beautiful friendship! For all their differences, Luke and Ezra share the same ethos on the importance of family and friends. Now I want to write a story with Zeb and Luke having caf together. And, hey, maybe Sabine can host a sort of "book club", where they discuss the art and stories of Stahn Li over macchiatos! Zeb would probably come the caf, if nothing else!

 

Thanks, as always, to @Findswoman for beta reading

Mara

I’m home, and it’s like nothing changed—and yet everything has.

My family was there, waiting, when we arrived and it felt like I’d barely set foot out of the Phantom before they surrounded me, smiling, giggling (Annina) and crying (Mom—and okay, I might have had a few tears, too). While I was caught up in their tangle of hugs, squashed like the tok-nut butter in the middle of a sandwich, I noticed that they were all just a little bit different than when I’d left—Dad was a little thinner, there were a few more silver hairs in Mom’s braid, Nick had a new haircut, a short, spiky one that made him look older, and Annina had grown. She seemed almost as tall as me...and she was wearing my skyflower blue sash. She borrowed my clothes and wore them to meet me? The girl had no shame. *Really, kid? My good sash?* I raised an eyebrow at her, and she of course gave me her I-don’t-know-what-you-mean innocent little pittin expression…

And then her expression changed, her eyes going round as full moons and sparkling like stars. Her mouth dropped open and she made a faint “meep” that sounded exactly like Princess had the day that Annina found her in the alley behind the Café. I followed her dumbstruck gaze to where Ezra had just stepped out of the ship.

No, not Ezra...

Luke.

Luke was standing just behind Ezra, and he was the one Annina was staring at with moony fairytale eyes. Oh, good skies… My little sister had her first crush on an actual boy. And it was Luke Skywalker. Oh. Good. Skies.

Dad had noticed him, too, and was looking at him speculatively—understandable since his premonition about this backrocket flyboy was the reason I’d gone to Yavin in the first place. I disengaged myself from their hugs and pulled Luke over to them. “Luke, this is my family—my parents, Doran and Raissa Blayne, my brother, Nick, and my sister, Annina. Guys, this is Luke Skywalker.”

There was a round of handshakes and hi-nice-to-meet-yous. I thought Annina might pass out when Luke offered her his hand, but she only made another tiny meep-ing noise and then only reluctantly let go of his hand. She tagged along behind him like a stray pittin while we accompanied Master Li to the other side of the spaceport where the Corporate Sector shuttle was getting ready to depart. Another round of handshakes and well wishes followed.

“I can’t thank the three of you enough for getting me off of Taris, but this should be a start.” Master Li looked uncharacteristically solemn as he handed Ezra and I each a sheet of flimsi, a sketch of us signed Thanks for the inspiration! Best regards, Stahn Li. “Keep an eye on the holo-comic racks. You should be seeing more of these amazing characters very soon. And now…” he saluted Luke with a wink as he boarded the shuttle, “onward to glory!”

——

Our house looked the same as ever, still spotlessly whitewashed, the shrubs trimmed to the millimeter, the tile floor and the bannister in the foyer. I wondered how long Mom had been cleaning to get things just right —I hoped Nick had finally finished the mouse droid he’d been converting to help her with housework.

She’d made all my favorites—brewats, couscous and kebabs—a real Merkeshian dinner. There was a vase of pink flowers in the center of the table, and I thought that they were for my homecoming, too, but Mom, her cheeks turning a little pink, told me, “Oh, those were from your father.” Really? Since when does Dad send flowers? And Mom blush over them? How long have I been gone?

Mom asked a million mom questions—half of them about the food and the barracks and my health and the other half about General Cracken and the Intel setup. Dad and Nick pumped us for the latest news of the Rebellion. I thought Annina would want to hear all about Princess Leia—squeal! A real princess!—but Luke’s presence seemed to have rendered her incapable of doing more than giggling at intervals while she stared moonily across the table at him.

I wanted to hear what had been happening on Merkesh while I’d been gone, which, it turned out was mostly the same things that had been happening when I left, only more so. “I took over for you at the Café,” Nick said. “But it’s not like I really need to be there a lot of the time. Business is still pretty slow.”

“There’s a group of Rebel sympathizers who have been meeting there lately.” Dad gave one of his ironic smiles, the left corner of his mouth quirking up. “They don’t think I know that’s what they are, of course, but they rally around Alderaan—and the fact that I’ve always kept the Café neutral ground doesn’t hurt, either. Lots of talk among them about how our Imperials may not be half bad, but the Emperor has gone too far.” He shook his head. “I don’t know if I should be glad they aren’t doing more than talking…”

Mom sighed. “I’ve been prefect for almost twenty years now, but I don’t know how much longer I can do it. I’ve been trying to change things from the inside, but after Alderaan, I feel like a hypocrite staying with the Empire. I’d resign if I didn’t think Verraro the Hutt would find a way to put someone like that slimebag Donal in charge.”

We could have kept talking all night, discussing everything that was going on in the Galaxy and eating Wookiee cookies, but Mom shooed us all to bed when Annina nearly fell asleep at the table. After the way she’d borrowed my sash, I was kind of surprised to find that my side of the room was pretty much the way I’d left it. And my bed! After my bunk at Massassi Station, it was like lying on a cloud!

But for some reason, I still couldn’t sleep. I slipped out of bed, quietly so I wouldn’t wake Annina, and went upstairs to the roof garden. I’d almost forgotten how beautiful it was up there, and how close the stars seemed on a clear Merkeshian night. I sat on the bench in the middle of the garden, letting the peace and stillness in the Force wash over me, when I heard the door open behind me.

“I thought I’d find you up here.”

One nice thing about being a Jedi, you never have to turn around to see who came into the room. “Hi, Dad.”

He sat down next to me. “So, what do you think of Luke Skywalker?”

Now that was a question that was going to take a while to answer. So much had happened and so much had changed in my relationship with Luke, not all of it was the kind of stuff I wanted to confess to my father. But Dad was my Jedi master, too, and this had been my mission, so I owed him a full account. “You were right, the Force doesn’t do coincidences—he’s Anakin Skywalker’s son.” I told Dad the entire story—my not-so-stellar attempts at training Luke, the whole “soulmates” disaster, how Kanan helped me see that being there to help Luke in his training was not the same as training him myself, and that stepping back was not the same as giving up or failing. “Luke’s really improved since Kanan took over his training. He’s a good teacher—a lot better than I’ll ever be.”

Dad clapped a hand on my shoulder and smiled. “Don’t worry; that sort of thing will come with time and experience. I was certainly not the Galaxy’s best teacher when I took your mother on as my padawan. Let me tell you, Corellian whiskey is not an appropriate instruction aid.” His smile faded a bit as he leaned back on the bench and studied me for a moment. “But there’s something else on your mind. Do you want to talk about it?”

I’d known that Dad would sense that my thoughts were troubled. I’d been trying not to keep myself so tightly shielded since I’d realized that keeping my emotions in meant keeping everyone who loved me out. It wasn’t always easy—keeping my walls up had become such a habit for me that I did it almost without thinking—but I was learning that it was worth it. Because I actually did want to talk to Dad. I love Ezra, and I’d come to appreciate Kanan’s advice, but...well, there’s no one else like Dad. “Yeah, I do.” I took a deep breath to steady myself. Confessing to your Jedi master you’ve been stupid is hard; confessing you’re afraid there’s a darkness within you…? “I … kind of had my first brush with the Dark Side. And it was inside me…” I tried not to shudder as I related my experience at the dark temple, how I’d seen the girl I might have been as she killed in the Emperor’s service, and how her voice lingered in the corners of my mind long after that vision faded. How I’d grappled with how much of her was in me, whether the wrong choice could push me to become her and how I’d heard her voice when I’d faced Rominaria, urging me to take my blaster off stun and just take care of the problem. “Even though I didn’t… I wonder, did I give in to the Dark Side anyway? I mean, we’re not supposed to use the Force like that. It’s not…”

Dad wrapped an arm around my shoulders and pulled me close—one benefit of having your father be your master; from what Dad’s told me the old Jedi weren’t terribly big on showing affection like that. A wave of understanding and reassurance washed over me, and mixed in was a little current of...pride in me? That I had grown and was becoming a true Jedi. “Mara, sometimes Jedi—well, all beings, really—have to choose the best of bad options. Twenty years agos, I scrambled four Imperials’ memories so that Paolo L’szelo and Alyse Bergeine could escape because the alternative was letting you mother shoot them. If she’d done that, four lives would have been ended, and your mother would have been in prison, not to mention what murdering four people would have done to her. I’m not one to say that whatever a Jedi does is right because a Jedi does it, but ultimately you chose the option that would cause the least harm to Rominaria—and to you.”

“Thanks, Dad.” I hugged him, tears in my eyes and all my shields down so he’d know how much it meant to me that he hadn’t just comforted me as his daughter, he’d counseled me as a Jedi. Even though I’d doubted myself, he believed in me.

He hugged me back. “You’d better get to bed, now. I’m sure you’ll want to show Ezra and Luke all the wonders of Merkesh City tomorrow.”

——

I went back downstairs, and though I slipped back into my room with the stealthiness only a Jedi is capable of, I heard a muzzy voice from the darkness.

“Mara?”

I winced...maybe I hadn’t been as quiet as I thought. “Hey, kiddo, go back to sleep, it’s late.”

“But I need to ask you something.” Annina propped herself up on one elbow. “Your friend Luke…?”

“Yeah…?” Why did I have a very bad feeling about this?

“Does he have a girlfriend?”

Okay, that would be one good reason why. “No…”

“Good.” Annina lay back down and was half-asleep as she answered. “Because I’m going to marry him.”

Oh. Good. Skies.

Notes:
The vase of pink flowers is a reference to @WarmNyota_SweetAyesha 's ficlet about Raissa and Doran in Mellow, Meaningful, and Tender Remembrances.

The story of Doran scrambling the Imperial officers' memories so Alyse and Paolo could escape is from Everyone Comes to Doran's Place

 

I KNEW, KNEW, KNEW I'd love this update when it arrived, and boy howdy, was I right! LOL on Annina's crushing, on the open and supportive family atmosphere. What took the PRIZE was the tone as well as the words between Doran and Mara. He REALLY is the BESTEST dad a lady Jedi could ask for.

 

I really like Mara´s family background: warm, fuzzy, helpful, and so "normal" when you compare it to Luke´s.

 

Aww, thank you! I'm so glad you did! I always love getting the whole Blayne family together; something unpredictable always happens, but it's always mixed in with a lot of warmth and love. Poor Luke probably doesn't even realize what he's gotten into, being the object of Annina's First Real Crush And :hugs thank you again for the kind words about Doran. He was the first OC I created, and he's really grown from the "I stick my neck out for no one: loner, to Raissa's reluctant Jedi mentor, to a dad who has unconditional love and honest advice for his kids.

Thanks! It's kind of refreshing, in a way, to write someone with a happy, normal childhood and family in the GFFA. Luke and Ezra's background certainly were not, but Mara is more than willing to share her family with them! (More literally in Ezra's case )

Thank you so much! Again, I'm just thrilled to see so much love for this family, my original OTP and the growth of the first story I ever wrote. They've come a long way since Everyone Comes to Doran's Place, and they're family keeps growing --Ezra's already an unofficial (for the moment ) member and Luke will probably be added to the extended "family circle" as well after this. Mara might, if pressured, reluctantly admit to being just a tiny bit like Raissa, but oh good skies, is she ever! Neither she nor Raissa are ever quite sure what to do with Annina's enthusiastic interest in True Love and Soulmates (wait, why does that sound familiar...? )

Mara has a lot of Raissa in her, but she's Daddy's (not-so) little girl in a lot of ways. I think I've mentioned earlier that in my head canon, it's Doran who does a lot of the childcare for Baby Mara while Raissa is at work at the Garrison and carries her around the Cafe Alderaan in a GFFA baby sling and not only is he Dad, he's also her Jedi Master, so he knows her better than almost anyone else. He's had his share of disappointments and disillusionment, and though he's got a wide streak of idealism, he understands that the Galaxy isn't an ideal place, and Jedi--and everyone else--have to make the best of bad situations. And sometimes the best thing a parent can do is acknowledge that and tell your child you're proud of the choices they made.

 

A bouquet of roses for @Findswoman for beta-reading and helping me figure out where this chapter was going


Luke

I wonder what my life would be like if I’d had a family like Mara’s—if I’d had a brother or sister. If my mother hadn’t died when I was born. If my father hadn’t… if he hadn’t been my father…

I don’t know if Mara knows how lucky she is she has them all. Her mom… Mara complains sometimes about how strict she is, but I never would have guessed she’s also an Imperial prefect if Mara hadn’t told me. She made us this huge dinner and cookies, and she must have checked six times to see if Ezra and I were comfortable on the camp cots she’d set up for us in Nick’s bedroom—if we had enough pillows and blankets, if we needed anything.

I like Nick. He was a really good sport about having to share his room with us, even though it was kind of crowded. He seems really smart; he likes to tinker with droids and he has a whole collection of model ships, including a T-16 like the one I have—well, used to have anyway. Nick was pretty impressed when I showed him the sketch that Master Li gave me, and Ezra let me tell him about our mission, saying all he did was patch the fuel line while Mara and I had all the fun.

Mara’s little sister, Annina, is a pretty cute kid, with all these red-gold curls, but she seems kind of shy. She hardly said anything at dinner, and whenever I’d smile at her, her eyes would get all big and she’d turn pink and look away really fast. I hope I didn’t scare her or anything. I didn’t think I was that intimidating...I didn’t think I was intimidating at all, even to a little girl!

And then there’s Master Blayne—Doran (he says no one calls him Master Blayne unless they’re selling something). He’s not what I was expecting at all from a Jedi. I guess I thought he’d be like Obi-Wan, somehow, old and wise, or even like Kanan, serious and thoughtful, but he reminds me more of...Ezra. I mean, it’s not that Doran was never serious when we were discussing everything that was happening in the Galaxy, but he likes to make bad puns and has laugh lines around his eyes and eats too many Wookiee cookies… and when he looks at his children, and they look at him, you can just tell they love each other. He’s the kind of guy anyone might wish was their dad.

I wish I’d had a dad like him.

I wish…

I don’t know what to wish... I don’t know whether to wish that Obi-Wan had told me the truth or that I’d never asked Doran about my father.

The morning after we arrived on Merkesh, Mara took me and Ezra on a tour of Merkesh City—her dad’s cantina, the Café Alderaan, the garrison where her mom works, and their marketplace, which reminded me a lot of the one in Mos Eisley, except with less sand and Jawas. We had lunch at this little food stand called L’moko’s, and ate some of these meat-filled pastries called bastillas that were really pretty tasty—powdered sugar on a meat pastry, who knew? By the time we got back to Mara’s house...well, I didn’t need to use the Force to tell she and Ezra wanted to spend some time alone together. All morning, they’d been starting stories with “do you remember…”, and sometimes they’d finish the story and sometimes they’d just stop and smile at each other instead. So when we watching “Juo Deltar Faces Gamblor the Terrible”, I slipped into the kitchen while the two of them were laughing over the cheesy dialogue and stayed there for a while, munching on Wookiee cookies.


The Blaynes’ pygmy roba followed me, and laid his head on my knee while I was eating, looking up at me with these big soulful eyes like one of those velvoid pittin paintings. “Sorry, boy,” I told him. “But I don’t think cookies are good for dogs...pigs… pig-dog...things…”

The kitchen door swished open. “You might as well let Frugly have one.” Master Blayne—Doran—said as he came in and grabbed a handful of the cookies. “He’s just going to keep pestering you until you do.” He tossed a cookie to the roba, who caught it with a snap, and sat down at the table next to me. “Don’t mind me. I’m on break from the Café, and it looks like we had the same idea. Raissa’s going to get after me for having too many, but if she doesn’t want me to eat them, she shouldn’t make enough to feed an entire garrison.”

Sitting there with his mouth full of cookies and a mischievous gleam in his eyes, Doran looked more like a cheeky youngling than a Jedi, but then again, maybe they hadn’t all been like Obi-Wan. Kanan wasn’t serious all the time (most of it, but not all), Mara liked to watch bad Jedi Action holovids, her mom baked cookies, her brother put together model ships, her sister had a pittin named Princess...maybe Jedi were just beings like everyone else, whatever the stories and holovids said. Maybe my father had been more than just a Jedi… maybe he’d liked to watch the pod-races and fixed his own speeder instead of going to a mechanic and told lame jokes about how many Jawas it took to change a glow panel (no one knows, they keep stealing it). Maybe he’d hated hubba gourds and loved sweet sand cookies. I turned to Doran. “Can I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

“Did you know my father, Anakin Skywalker? Obi-Wan told me he was a great warrior and a pilot, but that’s really all I know about him…”

“Ah…” He put down his Wookiee cookie with a sigh. “I thought you might ask me that. I knew of him, of course, all the Jedi did, but we didn’t exactly run in the same circles. He was younger than me, for one thing, and for another, I was just a mediocre, troublesome padawan while he was everything your Obi-Wan said and more. Anakin led the Republic’s forces to victory in many battles; some of the Jedi Council even believed he was the Chosen One the prophecies said would bring balance to the Force.”

“The Chosen One?” I sat up little straighter. My father had been mentioned in a prophecy? Obi-Wan hadn’t mentioned anything like that. “Was he?”

Doran shrugged and shook his head with another sigh. “I don’t know; he might have been, only—”

“Darth Vader murdered him.” I crushed the cookie I was holding. “Of course. The Empire has to destroy everything good, don’t they?” Just like they’d killed my aunt and uncle and burned my home. My father hadn’t been just a brave warrior, but maybe the one to bring balance to the Force, and even if I didn’t know exactly what that meant, the fact that there was a prophecy about it meant it must have been pretty important. And Vader had probably killed him to keep him from doing that. “Someday, I’m going to make him pay—for murdering my father. For destroying Alderaan. All of it.” I’d strike him down just the way he had Ben.

“Whoa…hold on!” Doran looked at me with alarm, and, next to him, Frugly gave a piteous whine. “Who told you that?”

“Obi-Wan! He said that my father was his student until Darth Vader betrayed and murdered him. Why?”

“Luke…” He looked at me like he was turning something over in his mind...and like whatever he was turning over had sharp edges no matter how he turned it. “I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but you have a right to know. Vader didn’t kill your father.” He paused for a moment, and I felt a spark of hope. If Vader hadn’t killed him, was my father alive? “Your father became Darth Vader.”

A cold wind snuffed out that spark. The world dropped out from under me, and I was falling and falling endlessly through the void of space. I felt like I’d been punched in the gut...no, more like run through with a lightsaber. “No!” I don’t know how I managed not to scream it. “No, that’s not possible!” He had to be wrong. Mistaken. Whoever had told him that must have lied. Misunderstood. Something. Because my father couldn’t be Darth Vader. He couldn’t! Because if he was… then what did that make me?

“I’m sorry.” Doran laid a hand over mine, where they were clenched into fists on the edge of the table, so much sorrow and sympathy in that simple touch, and his voice was low when he continued.“I was there the day Anakin led the Clone Army against the Jedi. It seemed impossible to us then, too. Our Chosen One, the best among us, and the troopers who had been our allies, marching against us, killing us where we stood dumbstruck.” He broke off and gazed across the kitchen, and he didn’t seem so much like a youngling sneaking cookies from the kitchen any more. He looked haunted, like he could still see that day, and any hope I had that he was wrong died. “They killed everyone they could that day, from the oldest and most venerable Jedi to the youngest youngling in the creche. It’s a wonder any of us escaped; I only lived because my master sacrificed himself for me.”

“But why? Why would he do that? If he was a Jedi…?” It didn’t make any sense. Jedi were supposed to be good. We used the Light Side of the Force. We protected people, fought for truth and freedom. We didn’t kill people, unless there was no other way. How could my father have done such a horrible thing… to kill his friends, to kill younglings? How could anyone do that, let alone…? “If he was the Chosen One…? Why?”

“I don’t know, Luke.” Doran shook his head, looking sad and tired. “The Dark Side can be a powerful temptation. It promises power, easy solutions, but they’re empty promises and they come at a cost.”

The Dark Side… Ben had told me Vader was his pupil before he turned to the Dark Side...my father turned to the Dark Side… “Why would Ben lie like that?” The question burst from me. I hadn’t known Ben all that well; Uncle Owen never thought much of him and called him Crazy Old Ben and he’d never wanted him to come around on our farm and never had anything to do with him if we ran into him in Anchorhead, but Aunt Beru had seemed to like him. Ben had helped me and Windy get back home that time we’d rode out into the Dune Sea on a bantha. He’d rescued me from the Sand People the day I’d gone looking for Artoo, the day the stormtroopers killed Aunt Beru and Uncle Owen. He’d died to save me and Leia and Han. So why would he lie? Weren’t Jedi supposed to tell the truth? Somehow I couldn’t imagine Kanan or Doran or Mara or even Ezra lying to me like that.

“Perhaps he thought you weren’t ready to hear the truth yet.” Doran’s mouth twisted into a sardonic smile.

“But you think I am?” Was I? Had I changed that much in the few months since...well, since everything… since Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru died. Since I’d left Tatooine. Since I’d fought in the Battle of Yavin. Since I’d become a pilot. Since I’d met Leia...Han… Chewie… Mara...Ezra…Kanan… Since I’d started training as a Jedi. Maybe I had changed, but mostly I felt like the same farmboy I’d always been.

He shrugged with a little shake of his head, the bitter edges of his smile softening. “I’m not sure anyone’s ever ready to hear a truth like that, but it’s your truth, and yes, I think you’re strong enough to handle it. Mara’s told me what happened on Yavin, about your differences with Ezra and how you’ve been able to move past them to become friends. How you were there to lend Ezra your strength when Mara collapsed at the dark temple and kept him on track on Taris while she was dealing with Rominaria. You’ve shown a lot of strength of character and you’ve been a good friend to them. And I know you won’t have to bear it alone, because you have those friends to turn to.”

Strength of character? Me? I shook my head; I was just a backrocket farmboy from the edge of nowhere and I was just doing what Aunt Beru had always tried to teach me: to be kind and fair to others, to admit when I was wrong and apologize, to be there for the people I cared about. But maybe being a backrocket farmboy was more like being a Jedi than I’d thought. It wasn’t about mind tricks and lightsabers and having huge, flashy adventures, it was about doing the right thing and standing up for others and standing with them. I’d wanted to be a great Jedi, like my father, like Ben, but now, I wasn’t so sure that being great was all that...well, all that great. Maybe being good was more important—being someone like Doran or Kanan, who told the truth and stood by their family and friends, no matter what. Maybe I’d never be the Chosen One, but maybe just being myself was better. “Thanks, Doran.”

He gripped my hand and pulled me into a hug—like the dad I’d never had. “That’s what I’m here for.” He gave my shoulders another quick squeeze and then slid the plate of cookies across the table to me. “Now, how about we finish these up before Raissa gets home?”

 

That was deep in the best possible way. Luke mulled things over and came to wonderful, timeless conclusions. Being "good", honest, and loyal, trustworthy, those things are definitely toppers over grand adventures. Wonderful "pep talk" from Doran: candid and encouraging.