Beyond - Legends I'll Come With You

Love the Cover Art! This is a really great update --- I loved how Luke didn't want to let Mara out of his sight. I look forward to more.

 

Great segment, loved reading Karrde's pov and seeing him and Luke interact. It will be interesting to see his reaction to the news of what happened between Luke and Mara - and whatever Mara's reaction turns out to be. Hmm, I might need to borrow the brave hat from ginchy!

I'm not sure if it is what you're talking about, but in my fic "So we'll go no more a roving" I did briefly touch on Karrde's regret that he had tried to hold onto Mara a bit after her marriage to Luke, which made sense to me given their closeness and the business practicalities you've mentioned. I think it would have been hard for Karrde to get used to, especially the speed of Luke and Mara's engagement and the fact that for ten years Karrde had pretty much been the most important person in her life, and then Luke swoops in with some weird Force bond and takes her away

So I liked reading his thoughts here, and look forward to the next chapter!

 

"But...but...she's my fiancé!"

No, seriously, it's an ugly situation, finally having someone become so close to him again and being unable to say anything about it for fear that it'll be moot. Again. Much woobie in him...like his father, lol.

Maybe! Because I can't for the life of me remember the name of that ficlet, so it could very well be yours. Sorry if I misinterpreted it in any way, as it was quite a while back that I saw it; I may have not recalled it exactly.

That line about woe coming to Luke because of the Fire...lulz. It's...not going to be pretty when Mara finds out for the second time. But! It will work out, I promise.

 

Oh, no, that was exactly what I was going for! If it was mine at all, I'm probably not the only one to use that concept

 

Oh yeah, it's yours. Beautiful fic, as always. I knew I had to have stashed the link somewhere in my browser's bookmarks, I just couldn't remember the title. Thanks for making me remember it.

My ability to write is predicated on a steady diet of other writers' creativity, lol.

 

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Great update! Luke is one loyal and compassionate guy! If Mara wakes up and doesn't remember his proposal she will still have to be impressed by his concern for her well being.

 

Ohhhh, the angst. It hurts so good.

 

Luke is so devoted to Mara -- I loved the idea of him being able to fall asleep after lacing his fingers with hers.

 

I mean, consummate farmboy hero complex aside, I would think any man who truly loves his fiancé/wife would be loathe to be apart from their spouse in this sort of situation, and vice versa for a wife with her husband. The requisite Skywalker loyalty just takes it up a notch.

There's plenty more where that came from. *takes a shovel to it*

That moment was the main inspiration for the entire scene. Ah, the feeeeeeels...

 

Beautiful imagery! I wonder what this nightmare portends.

Luke's concern and reluctance to disclose until Mara wakes up makes a lot of sense.

 

Intense and nail-biter of a dream there! Luke's musings and devotion are absolutely in character. You can feel his deep love and loyalty.
Of course, Han, Leia, and Karrde have surmised the nature of Luke's concern as in the motive behind it.
As in RL, the longer you are comatose, though, the more worrisome and complicated the outcome. Hopefully, the NR medical advances and technology and knowledge will obviate that.

You have an emotive style of writing that I love!

 

In this case, there's nothing foreboding about this nightmare; it's just him reliving the semi-conscious underwater journey through the caverns. His guilt and anxiety over Mara keep emerging as a recurring dream because he's subconsciously trying to figure out what happened, at what point did he lose his grip on her and she hit the rock, etc., even though it's a waste of time.

In Metaville, the ongoing fic Responsibility and Commitment does an excellent job of portraying Mara's misgivings over becoming an overnight member of the Skywalker/Solo clan. Over the years I'm sure it's obvious to everyone around them to different degrees that there are sparks between the two, but to go from uncomfortable with each other to engaged over barely a two-week span is definitely out of the ordinary, even for a fictional scenario, lol. Luke has never really been afraid of Mara, but he has a very healthy respect for her rage. He knows that she's still quite anti-social and such a major life change for both of them is something that needs to be broached by them together. Even if he had a guarantee that she'd wake up perfectly normal, Luke would want to wait for her to finish recovering before they both brought the official news to the family. If she died or lost some or all of her mental faculties, the knowledge that they were about to be married would just be agonizing and awkward for everybody. (For myself, if Mara hadn't survived, I think Luke would have eventually disclosed what happened to at least Leia and Han some time later after he'd gone through most of his grieving. It would have been a surprise to them, but they'd believe him. I also think if he'd lost Mara at this point and in this particular way, he'd probably decide to remain alone for the rest of his life and quit seeking out personal love, both out of sadness and loyalty. But I digress.)

They've surmised, all right, but they don't realize they're actually wanting to get hitched. That'll be a real curveball for them. See my response to JadeLotus up there.

Yes, lengthy real-life comas are generally a very poor sign, but indeed, this is the GFFA. Mara's coma is not natural but chemically and electronically induced, and given the advancement of their technology, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that their medical science has mastered a way to render a patient comatose while manipulating their brain stem to a degree that life support may not be necessary. (In real life, all comas require major intervention such as artificial respiration.) I noticed that Troy Denning's e-book Recovery had Leia in a "therapeutic coma" that she managed to just wake up from in a matter of minutes without needing to be weaned off a ventilator, etc. Mara was also not on any form of life support in The Last Command when she regained consciousness after having been out cold for a month straight. I also remember skimming parts of Millennium Falcon that pertained to Captain Tobb Jadak's epic coma (!) and I vaguely remember that it seemed he was not restricted by a lot of equipment during that time; the narrative from neurologist Lial Sompa's POV indicated that Jadak could cry and laugh while false memories were supplied to him during the coma. (Of course, this doesn't leave out the possibility of a modified tracheostomy, but, again, since this stuff is supposed to be thousands of years ahead of us - relatively - I find it more plausible that medics would have just gotten around the problem entirely.)

There's not much information on neural reconstruction, but Zahn's depiction does indicate that while it's a reliable procedure, it's slow, and this time Mara has suffered more significant brain damage from both hypoxia and a TBI. For my head!canon, I'm also establishing that once it's been done to someone, additional reconstructions later on are more dangerous and less certain, as the brain becomes more fragile from all the "rearranging." I'm trying not to describe the process too specifically, given that it's so vague.

 

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Nice update! Now all he can do is wait and see.

 

...For Murphy's law.

 

Great section! Luke's pain is palpable, and loved that Leia is there for him, as much as she can be at this stage. Interesting point about the lack of twin bond on the level of the L/M bond - I always assumed that the L/M bond was the result of extreme circumstances and the Force giving them a violent shove to get their act together because the gentle nudges weren't working


Edit: I'm really enjoying Responsibility and Commitment as well - great fic.

 

Super talk and emotions between siblings. I can so totally feel Leia's "Not again" and Luke's "Sorry that it happened or that I let myself feel again?" Brilliant stuff there, cutting right to the chase. He's probably not feeling regret exactly but poised on the brink of "Why does this always happen when I fall for someone? They leave, one way or another." Even though neither he or Mara wanted or caused the current situation, it literally being an unexpected tragedy, it would be difficult not to feel short-shrifted again. The neurologist's prognosis was guardedly optimistic, which you'd expect. That is all they can do is wait and see at this point and hope that any memory loss is brief and doesn't go back an extended period of time.

 

Yeah, I'm not sure how officially knowledgeable Luke is about Force bonds in the EU at this point in the timeline, but I've gone ahead and established that it's a total surprise to him when it formed with Mara, and now that's he experienced it, it does privately disturb him a little bit that he doesn't have something like that already with Leia, his own flesh and blood. However, he should be able to reason that, although they shared a womb, they didn't grow up together, afterwards Leia hasn't engaged in an equal level of Jedi training, and no, they haven't undergone a similar extreme circumstance to forge one. (I'd argue, though, that the best opportunity for Luke and Leia to have created a twin Force bond that strong would have been at the climax of Dark Empire, going up against the clone Emperor with unified strength. But oh well.

*plot bunnies ensue* )

Yes, this, exactly. He was already feeling it for a good portion of Vision of the Future itself, culminating in Mara scolding him with the line about being afraid to care for someone because they might get hurt. I think Zahn had him musing on this subject when he put Mara in the healing trance for her charric burn and Child of Winds called her his "beloved companion." In the EU, of course, he finally gets a break and his happy ending with her, but in this AU, it's almost the straw about to break the camel's back.

Poor EU Luke was turned into like the Captain Kirk of the SW universe, except he's not such a cad about it. All his girlfriends met either horrible or dissatisfying endings (and I'm not even touching the FotJ series ). I guess all the different authors and comic writers kept wanting to hook him up because he was the most eligible bachelor in SW at the time, but it just wound up looking kind of silly. As one Tumblr poster pointed out, if you ignore the EU and just consider the OT, the movies broke tradition in having the hero of the trilogy not wind up romantically attached at the end of the story - and he's still happy. Luke obviously had a crush on Leia early on (squick ), but it doesn't seem that romance is a huge priority for Luke as he matures and has much bigger problems to focus on. I know it seems like Gary Stu-ing/uber!idealizing to say that he's just a very loving and affectionate person who wants someone to share his life with more than a guy hankering to get his physical needs met, but that doesn't seem like an illogical way to sum him up. That's pretty much the way I reconcile this falls-in-love-with-every-girl-he-meets aspect to his EU character, lol. (Well, not every girl, but close to it.)

 

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Ohhhh no you did NOT. I mean, I knew it was coming because of JL's fic, but...the poor dears. What a gut punch. Brilliant.

 

Loved the depiction of Mara's awakening. Luke reacted as we as anyone could in the circumstances, poor thing!

 

Very excellent detailing of Mara's return to alertness and the intervening sensory things she was absorbing about her surroundings.

I can just imagine how shattering that was for Luke, after being on tinterhooks for weeks when she finally opens those jade eyes and seems coherent and "herself", her memories of the crucial Nirauan mission stop short of the vitalest part, the relationship-change part And also, another "What?!" moment, she doesn't realize what happened to the Jade's Fire.

 

I would be pissed if I were Mara. I hate it when people leave me hanging like that. Poor Luke! This has to be rough for him.

 

Luke's heart once more shattered.The Force is so cruel to it's grandson. And if I were Mara, I would be pissed too. She doesn't understand what the hell is going on, and the way Skywalker were acting only made her more confused.