Beyond - Legends Renewal (post-TTT, Mara Jade, L/M, OCs)

I’ll drop in and do a long review later! For right now I’ll just say: this chapter has been building since the family was reunited, and it’s so achingly heartbreaking. Mara’s shame is intense, and she’s never had to deal with it quite like this: all at once, dropped on her head like the sword of Damocles. In another world, she might get the chance to deal with it slowly, over many years, grappling with it on her own one year at a time until ten years later she’s finally dealt with it. Or maybe, in a second world she and Luke get to deal with it together, as a couple, over a few years while she grows into being a Jedi. In this world she has no choice but to deal with it all at once, and her shame is intensified because it’s externalized: she’s not afraid of her own shame, she’s afraid of her parents’ shame.

And Mara’s naturally introverted, so her response to this is to fold in and refuse to talk about it, which Nico interprets as priggish, holier-than-thou self-righteousness, and those two impulses are combustible, and here they combust. (I feel bad for Wedge, who’s got to feel guilty about this and it’s not at all his fault.)

And... oh, Luke, and Luke and Mara. He’s so good for her, and he knows that if he pushes any harder than he already has that it might really do damage to his relationship with Mara, so he backs off, because first and foremost his allegiance is to her (and them). No matter how close they are now, if he goes behind her back on this one she’s not going to be sleeping on his shoulder anymore, and it might seriously damage her ability to trust anyone. He’s already done all for her he can, and he knows it.

 

Agreeing with Bel505 ... and any assurances her family could give her otherwise they won't now get the chance to offer, that it's the Mara she is now that they want to enfold into their lives, not of course as the person she would've been if she'd grown up with them, but as the unique and deserving of love person that she is. ... I've truly genuinely liked Mara since second one. I always knew there were nuances and layers, I never saw her as just anything.

 

Mara, feeling alone and that discussion with Nico. Poor girl, she has to tell them what she has done for work.

 

I fully admit, I sort of cackled when I saw @Mira_Jade's response to Nico.

Aww, well you know how happy I am to have helped in any way, dearest!

&

I was totally going to derail your thread to reply on this subject because you're right, it's so fascinating examining those generational gaps; and I was also going to obnoxiously point out that I have my own special category that I like to think I fall into, as someone who grew up on the OT and was old enough to clearly remember a time before the PT, but also young enough to fully embrace the PT... but since we already sort of talked about this and then I went ahead and wrote a mini essay about Nico further down in the comments, I'll just wrap this up by saying that I loved all your commentary on this subject, and it really is fascinating to examine generations of fans and fan memory and which aspects of SW are foundational for us and how that shapes our perception.

I only realized about a year ago that I totally forgot about Threepio in EtF, so I feel you there, girl. Poor Threepio.

Demented thrill-monkey.

I'm sorry, Nico fanboying over Rogue Squadron is adorable. (And then he sees Mara, oops, gotta be inscrutable again.)

!!! Ronan loves his baby girl and is so happy she's here with them where she belongs, gaaah!

I love the softness of this thought from Mara.

Excellent and striking description here, wrung out like an old rag.

Oh, Mara.

I need more stories dealing with this particular brand of angst.

Ouch ouch ouch. This whole exchange felt so fragile and fraught and painful. I mean, the longing on her parents' part, and Mara's, too. I could feel how badly she wants to be a part of this, but she's convinced that she can't have it - that she can't have them. And Ronan and Nadira can sense she's pulling away again, and they're trying so hard to say the right thing, to give the right amount of space. The angst, Gabri!


*rubs hands together* And now we arrive at one of my favorite parts of the story...

I could honestly quote this entire fight, Gabri. There's so much to love: the complexity, the pacing, the characterization... it's all excellent. But you know what my favorite part of this whole scene is?

Nico.

From the beginning, Nico has been a bit of a cipher. Not totally; we do get hints at his personality and interests here and there, and it's clear he's part of the family unit, not an outsider. But during this visit, when it comes to Mara? He's just kind of... there. He expresses his irritation and discontent multiple times in different ways, but it's almost always subtle enough and brief enough that the rest of his family and Luke are able to brush past it and refocus on making this a positive experience, so the reader doesn't get much time to dwell on it. And it really worked out perfectly that Corissa became such a forceful personality who jumps off the page, because her vibrant nature helped to mask what you were building in the background with Nico. Just, so well done, babe.

Why else do I love this scene? As perceptive and highly-trained as she is, Mara just doesn't get what Nico's deal is, and I love that. I love that Mara Jade's own brother is as inscrutable to her as she is to most of the people she meets. It makes sense. And he's not just Mara's brother - he's also the family member who most resembles her in terms of personality. It's like Luke said in the previous chapter, Nico is so much like Mara that it's ridiculous. He's quiet, emotionally restrained, relentless once he gets going, totally unimpressed with and unfazed by Mara's responses to him, and he knows how to hit where it hurts. Sound familiar? (Remember that one scene in EtF where Tahiri looks at Ben and thinks "attack mode"? Yeah, that's exactly what I thought of with Nico here.) Plus, when Mara advances on him, he matches her. He knows she's connected to some of the most influential people in the entire galaxy, and he still doesn't back down.

And the thing is, as frustrating as it is that he's so wrong in his assumptions about Mara, what he's saying is perfectly understandable. You sprinkled in so many hints throughout the story that lead up to this chapter, and looking back it's clear that, oh yeah, of course this is why he's upset. Look, I'm totally on Mara's side here, because this is all just so much, and she's got layers upon layers of trauma that she's still sorting through, and she's also dealing with the decision she's made to just let this connection with her family wither away rather than break their hearts by revealing the truth of her past. But... I get Nico here. I totally get Nico. This is a lot for him, too. His family moved at least twice a year until he was nearly fifteen. That's what, a minimum of twenty-eight moves? Maybe a bit less if we don't count the ones from before he can remember; but he said at least twice a year, so it could actually be a lot more. And I'm assuming that they weren't just moving from city to city, but between planets, too, which... that's a lot. A lot. The Jades might appear to be an ordinary family, but that's not ordinary. They were essentially on the run for over a decade, and Nico grew up in that.

Another reason I get Nico? This right here:

His mother. This isn't him being an obnoxious jerk (well, not completely anyway ). This is a man confronting someone who hurt his mother, someone he believes will continue hurting her. This a man moved to defend. I can't help admiring that.

(I also love that despite her plans to let go of her family, Mara immediately claims Nadira as hers here, because she loves her. )

I feel like this right here is really important, and so layered. Because it's not even just that they're an ordinary working class family. They've probably had to claw their way up to "ordinary" after many years of hardship, because how much does it cost to relocate thirty times in half as many years? And as we can see from the call that Ronan and Nadira receive, they're not exactly in a position to turn away good-paying work. For someone who grew up like that, it's not hard to see why the life Mara lives now would rankle Nico. It's a reminder of everything he and his family didn't have.

Yep, those connections. Those people who are so far out of Nico's orbit that they might as well be in a different galaxy. Again, even though he couldn't be more wrong, you can kinda see why he'd interpret the situation like this. And I love Corissa's crumbling composure here, and then Nico's line about the ballet ticket... ouch, man.

And I guess I'll wrap up my Nico mini essay by saying that I love the depth you've given him, and I appreciate that this fight wasn't a clear case of "Mara good, Nico bad" and that there was so much complexity to it, and also I'm going to need more of the prequel vig pronto.

RONAN!!!

(He's so awesome, Gabri )

Excellent job with Mara's emotional breakdown here. It's not often that you get the chance to write one of these for Mara, but this one is perfect, and it fits. I know I focused on Nico more in commenting on the fight scene, but I also loved how you wrote Mara throughout, blindsided and struggling to get any sort of footing. Again, not something we're used to, but it fits this situation perfectly.

This was another really good piece of introspection, and a great bit of description. I love bleed trails of water.

lolol, aww, Artoo cares.

Yep, this. Exactly this.

I do really like Luke's weariness here. I have to wonder if he feels a bit responsible for what happened, since this was the one time he wasn't there to support Mara. Plus, to have all that hope build up, that this could all work, that maybe Mara was coming around to the idea of having her family in her life, that this was going to be a healing experience for her, and that he could in some small way be a part of that, only for it to come crashing down when he wasn't even around to help... yeah, that's got to be hard.

Also, to quote that one AO3 commenter: "boundary respect is sexy".

Heartbreaking but also sweet. Look at you go.


Brilliant chapter, Gabri. Only one more to go, and I can't wait!!!

 

Okay, it's been a busy week and I'm behind in replies, but I don't want to hold up the story for that, so just know that I appreciate every one and will be back asap to answer. In the meantime, thank you for reading, and I hope everyone enjoys the final chapter!




Chapter Eight


Mara’s door chimed a little before mid-morning. Probably Luke, she thought as she rose from her chair, coming to make sure she was still seeing her family off later. Not that she really wanted to, but—

The Force sense of the person outside her door was vividly clear as Mara neared, and she stopped dead in her tracks, hand halfway to the door release. It took a few deep breaths before she could finish the motion.

Her own eyes looked back at her as the door opened. “Good morning, Mara,” Nadira said, smiling at her almost as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened yesterday. Almost. “Can I come in?”

“Of course,” Mara said stiffly, stepping aside. “Please sit down. Can I get you some caf, or tea?”

“Anything you have is fine,” Nadira said, seating herself on the couch.

Mara went to the kitchen, cursing herself for not seeing this coming. Although like the send-off later today, it was hardly something she could honorably avoid.

A few minutes later she re-entered the living room, handing Nadira a mug of caf and sitting back down in her chair, holding her own mug.

“Thank you,” Nadira said, taking a sip, then resting the mug on her knees. “Mara, your father and I spent most of yesterday talking, and we agreed that I should explain some things to you before we leave.”

“All right,” Mara said, her fingers tightening around her mug.

“First of all,” Nadira said, raising a hand to sweep her long wavy hair behind her ear, “We need to apologize for coming here at all.”

Mara blinked, startled. Definitely not the opening she’d expected. “You don’t need to apologize for that.”

Nadira smiled at her again, admirably calm, but Mara could easily sense the sadness that lay beneath. “We do, though,” she said. “It wasn’t fair to put you in this position. We should have started out more slowly, rather than rushing here the first moment we could, and just expecting you to welcome us with open arms. Of course you don’t remember us, and you never knew Nico and Corissa at all. You have to understand, though, Mara—” She paused to take a long, slow breath. “At this point, we were still looking for you largely out of habit. Of course we hoped, but after all this time, I don’t think we really believed we’d ever find you.”

Which was exactly what Corissa had said, Mara thought. Bright, cheerful, irrepressible Corissa had had everyone’s number all along. A pang rose in Mara’s chest at the thought of never seeing her impossible little sister again, and it took an effort to focus again on Nadira.

“When your name came up in those news reports—” Nadira gazed off into the distance, and took another sip of caf. “All the emotion of that day we lost you came back like it had been yesterday, and we were so desperate to see you. We never knew why he’d taken you; we didn’t know if you’d even survived that day. To see you alive and well and thriving… But that’s the problem, really.” Her gaze came back to Mara, and she smiled. “We were thinking about ourselves, not about you. It should have occurred to us that if the Emperor—”

“Palpatine,” Mara interrupted her. Nadira raised her eyebrows, and Mara met her eyes directly. “He became Emperor through lies and manipulation and genocide. He doesn’t deserve the title.”

“Did you believe that when you were his agent?”

The question held only honest interest, not an accusation, but Mara flushed nevertheless, remembering the devoted reverence she’d felt toward Palpatine until the past year. “No,” she murmured, dropping her eyes to her mug.

Nadira reached out to squeeze her hand, just for a moment, then sat back. “I’m very proud of you, you know.”

Mara swallowed hard. “After I spent my whole life serving the man who kidnapped me?”

“And look at what you’ve become despite that,” Nadira said softly. “My strong, brilliant girl. Of course I’m proud of you.”

Mara looked up again, taking in the now-familiar contours of Nadira’s freckled face and the affectionate look in her eyes. Odd, she thought irrelevantly, that she and equally pale-skinned Corissa hadn’t inherited those freckles. But it was something special about Nadira, something that was hers alone, and it made Mara feel warm deep inside every time she looked at her.

“But what I was saying,” Nadira continued, “was that it should have occurred to us that if you’d survived, and the Emp- Palpatine had trained you to serve him, then even if you remembered us at all, you’d probably have been taught that it was the right thing for you to leave us, the way the Jedi used to teach their younglings.”

“Luke would never do that, when there are enough of us to build a new Order,” Mara said, then mentally kicked herself for the interruption. It was entirely off-topic—but she couldn’t bear to have her parents think such a thing of Luke, either.

“I know,” Nadira said gently. “He told us that the second day we were here. We like him very much, Mara.”

“Oh.” Mara wasn’t entirely sure what to do with the smile Nadira was wearing now.

Fortunately, Nadira pressed on with the conversation. “So of course this was a shock for you, and for all of us to come here in person, and so quickly—it wasn’t fair, and we’re sorry to have put you in this position, where you felt obligated to try to be family with people who are strangers to you.”

Mara blinked back sudden tears. “I tried,” she whispered.

“Oh, Mara.” Nadira leaned forward to squeeze her hand again. “You did, and we love you all the more for it. But it simply wasn’t fair to spring all of that on you at once. You were right, yesterday, when you said we had a shared history that you weren’t part of. I wish you had been there for every single day of it, my darling, but the least we should have done is let you get to know us more slowly than this, before we tried so hard to bring you back into the fold. And while you have every reason to be angry with Nico, I hope you can forgive him eventually.”

“Did you and Ronan think I thought I was too good for you?” Mara asked, almost desperately. The words had eaten away at her ever since Nico had first thrown them. It hadn’t even occurred to her until that moment how her situation might look from the outside. The Palace wasn’t the Palace to her, it was home. Luke and Leia and Han weren’t galactic legends, they were just the people who’d been kind to her.

“Never,” Nadira assured her. “Nico—” She sighed. “The worst years of our lives were the first years of his, and that’s affected him in ways I wish I could fix. We failed all of you, in different ways.”

“You didn’t,” Mara said, with a vehemence that surprised even her. “Palpatine caused all the damage, by taking me in the first place.”

“Yes,” Nadira agreed softly. “But much of the damage after that stems from our handling of the situation.” She tilted her head, looking at Mara with the intensity that had so unsettled Mara all week, as though Nadira was trying to memorize her face, or find the lost baby in the grown woman. “I don’t know how to explain to you, Mara, how shattering it is to lose your child the way we did. When they took you, and your father pulled me away…” She paused to take a sip of her caf, and sighed. “Honestly? I hated him at that moment.”

“But Palpatine had ordered the guards to kill you,” Mara protested. “It would have been the Royal Guard with him; they were the best the Imperial military had to offer. You couldn’t have overpowered them.”

Nadira shook her head. “None of that mattered. It didn’t even cross my mind. They were taking you, and all I wanted was to take you back. No guards or blasters would have stopped me from trying.”

“They would have shot you,” Mara said, her mouth suddenly dry at the thought.

“Hence, why your father pulled me away. He saw what you’re saying now, that there was no way for us to get you back in that moment, and that staying would only get us killed. He had to almost drag me all the way back, and insisted we leave everything behind—our jobs, our apartment, almost everything in it. We packed a few bags and caught the first transport offworld.” She smiled suddenly. “As quiet as your father seems, Mara, he’s completely unstoppable when he sets his mind on something. You’re very like him.”

Mara blinked away the tears that suddenly gathered. Her father’s temperament, her mother’s eyes, her grandmother’s dancing talent, Force-sensitivity like her great-great-uncle. All the connections made this week, that she had never thought to know. “That and the hair.”

Nadira laughed. “That and the hair.” She took another sip of caf. “Mara, I love your father very, very much. He’s a wonderful person. But it took me years to forgive him for pulling me away from you, even if it did save our lives. He was right to do so, and it was unfair of me to blame him, but that’s the reality of it. I was so broken without you that I didn’t notice how broken your father was, too. There’s a very real chance that our marriage wouldn’t have survived that strain, except that we discovered less than a month after losing you that I was already pregnant with Nico. So you see, he was born to two very broken people, who were usually angry with each other, and overwhelmed with grief when they weren’t angry. Not to mention that, as he pointed out, we moved frequently for years, because we just didn’t know if the Emp- Palpatine was trying to track us down, and especially after we had another child, we didn’t dare take the chance. And of course, all the moving meant we were always short on money, and never had any real personal connections.”

“It doesn’t seem to bother Corissa as much,” Mara ventured.

“Corissa,” Nadira said, smiling fondly, “dances through life, figuratively as well as literally. There’s very little that bothers her for long. And by the time she came along, your father’s and my relationship had mostly stabilized again. And by the time she was old enough to notice these things, we weren’t moving quite so often, and had a chance to build up at least a small financial cushion. She just never experienced the worst of it, the way Nico did. It’s not you that Nico is really angry with, Mara. It’s your father and me, for so often being distracted and preoccupied with our loss, and for the circumstances we couldn’t control.” She sighed. “Which is another thing we should have paid more attention to, that dropping everything to rush to you might bring up those old resentments of his.”

Mara pondered these revelations. “But you love him,” she said slowly. “Even if he’s angry with you for things you couldn’t control?”

Nadira rested her mug on her knees again, tilting her head to regard Mara. “Parents always love their children. A little thing like their children being angry with them doesn’t change that.”

“What would change it?” Mara almost whispered.

“Nothing,” Nadira answered quietly. “There’s nothing that could make me stop loving you, Mara.”

Mara held her mug more tightly to keep her fingers from trembling. “You don’t know what I’ve done.”

“You can tell me.”

“I don’t want you to hate me,” Mara said softly, looking into her caf.

“That could never, never happen,” Nadira said gently. “I’m your mother. You can tell me anything, and I’ll still always love you.”

Mara looked up, and tried to commit to memory the love that shone in those green eyes, just in case.

And then she told Nadira.

She told her about her early training in combat and weapons handling. She told her about the endless tutoring that enabled her to move seamlessly through the Court, spying on Palpatine’s closest allies. She told her about her first kill. She told her about the second, and the third. She told her about how she had believed in the Empire with all her heart. She told her about how Palpatine communicated with her through the Force, and how comforting she had always found it, and how she hated herself for that now. She told her about the agony of Palpatine’s death. She told her about Ysanne Isard. She told her about the last command that had haunted her for five years. She told her about the miserable, lonely times when she had been on the run, and how her implanted hatred for Luke had been the only thing that had kept her going. She told her about Karrde, and actually meeting Luke for the first time. About waking up in the Palace. About the unrelenting kindness Luke and Leia and Han and Winter had shown her. About Wayland. About settling back into a life on Coruscant. About her Jedi training.

When she finally ran out of words, Mara stood and walked to the window, looking at the city without really seeing it.

After a moment, Nadira came to stand by her side. “Mara.”

Mara closed her eyes for a few heartbeats, then opened them and turned to face her.

Nadira lifted her hands to cradle Mara’s face. ““Everything you’ve been through—my precious girl. I’m so proud of everything you’ve become, and so, so sorry that I couldn’t protect you.”

“You don’t blame me?” Mara whispered.

“For believing and doing what you were always taught?” Nadira asked. “How could I blame you for that? I blame the person who stole you, and the people who taught you those things, not you.”

Mara searched Nadira’s eyes, but the love was still there. The relief that rose within her in response was overwhelming. Still… “I should have seen it sooner.”

“How?” Nadira stroked Mara’s cheeks with her thumbs, and Mara let her eyes drift shut. “Was there ever anyone who would have risked their life to tell you otherwise? Would you have believed one person over everyone else in your life even if there had been? He stole you, and lied to you, and used you. He’s to blame, not you.”

She shifted a hand to stroke Mara’s hair, almost tentatively, as though she expected her to pull away. Instead, Mara stood very still, trying desperately just for a moment to remember what it must have been like to have her mother caress her like this before Palpatine took her. She felt almost bereft when Nadira let her hands drop.

“Mara,” Nadira said softly, “it’s your life, and your decision. But you’re not alone anymore. Your father and I will always be there for you if you want us to be. And even if you don’t want us to be part of your life, please, please don’t ever think we gave you up willingly. We would have done anything at all to keep you, you have to believe that.” Her eyes shimmered, and her voice dropped to a choked whisper. “As long as I live, I’ll never forget the feel of that guard prying your arms from around my neck.”

Mara stared at her, at tear-filled eyes that were suddenly somehow a memory as well as the present moment, eyes she remembered.

prying your arms

reaching back

frantic green eyes

The memory of Leia’s voice, gentle and sympathetic in their last conversation before the mission to Wayland, echoed again in Mara’s mind. “I doubt the Emperor gave them any choice in the matter. What about you, Mara? Did you have any choice?”

yellow eyes

no go away

mommy

Mara’s breath caught as the vague, distant shadows that had edged her memory since Jaina and Jacen’s attempted kidnapping snapped sharply into focus, like a light coming on in a darkened room: Her mother’s wild fear and her father’s desperation, amplified through the Force and terrifying her. Palpatine’s ruthless eyes on hers and his commanding voice in her mind for the first time. The red robes of the guard. Rough hands prying her out of her mother’s arms, her own arms reaching back, screaming as her parents disappeared into the crowd and she was carried away.

Tears welled up in Mara’s eyes too quickly to be suppressed, the wash of remembered panic almost buckling her knees. “Mommy,” she whimpered, clutching at Nadira, and her mother’s arms were around her in an instant, holding her tight as she trembled uncontrollably.

“You’re always my baby girl,” her mother whispered against her hair. “Always, always. Never, ever doubt it. I love you so much.”

Mara couldn’t remember ever crying before. She must have, when she was very young, but any such weaknesses were harshly punished, and Mara was a quick learner. She never cried, not when she was injured in training or on a mission, not when she was most bitterly disappointed, not when the Emperor died, not when Gorb and Jorshmin were murdered, not ever. Mara Jade did not cry; she was stone, she was ice, she could endure anything at all and stand strong against it. But now she wept against her mother’s shoulder with all the terror of a stolen child, with the force of every fear and every pain she’d faced alone throughout her life. She wept until she was gasping for air between sobs, her mother rocking her in a tight embrace, murmuring comforting words that Mara couldn’t make out.

Eventually the storm subsided, and her mother drew her down beside her on the couch, still holding her tightly and stroking her hair as she fought for equilibrium. Her mother kissed her forehead and reached for the box of tissues on the side table. Mara took it with trembling hands, still choking on the remnants of her tears. “I must look terrible,” she managed to say.

“You look beautiful,” her mother said, stroking her hair again.

Mara blew her nose and reached for another tissue to mop her face. “Do all mothers lie about these things?”

“Mothers never lie about these things,” her mother said. “Daughters just don’t always believe them.”

“I remember it now,” Mara whispered. “When he took me.”

The sadness in her mother’s eyes hurt almost as much as her own memories. “I wish you didn’t.”

“But—” Mara had to pause to blow her nose again.

“Don’t misunderstand me, Mara,” her mother said. “If you remembering that is what opened the door between us, then I’m grateful. But it’s the worst memory of my life. I wouldn’t have wished it on you for anything.” She hesitated, then: “Can we come see you again?”

Mara wiped her eyes again and nodded, suddenly unable to find the words she wanted to say.

Her mother smiled. “And will you come see us sometime? You can bring Luke, of course.”

Mara’s cheeks heated, and she wondered if the blush was obvious or if the crying fit had reddened her face enough to hide it. Judging by the look her mother was giving her, it must be obvious.

“Oh, sweetheart,” her mother said with a smile, reaching out to cup her cheek. “What’s to be embarrassed by? He’s a good man, and he clearly adores you.”


“We’re—we’re not—” Mara didn’t know how to finish that sentence.

“Do you want to be?” her mother asked softly.

Mara looked down at her hands, twisting a soggy tissue in her lap. “…maybe?”

“Hmm. Well, I think he’d wait until the end of the galaxy for you, so you probably have some time to decide.” Her mother’s fingers trailed across Mara’s cheek as she lowered her hand. “I’m glad you have him. It makes me feel at least a little bit better about leaving you again.”

“I don’t want you to go,” Mara whispered, still looking at her lap.

“Oh, my darling.” Her mother hugged her tightly. “I don’t want to go either. But there’s the business, and Nico and Corissa have school…”

“I know,” Mara said, tentatively putting her own arms around her mother and leaning into the hug.

“And you have a good life here, Mara,” her mother murmured, stroking her hair. Mara closed her eyes, wishing she could stay like this forever. “You have friends and a home and someone who loves you—everything I could have wished for you. But I’ll come see you every chance I get, I promise. And I’ll call you every week—more, if you’ll let me. I still have so much to learn about you.”

Mara nodded against her mother’s shoulder and reluctantly sat up, swiping again at her eyes. “Can I call you sometimes?”

Her mother smiled, her eyes shining. “Anytime, Mara. You can call me whenever you want, for anything at all.” She wiped Mara’s damp face gently. “But for right now, we should get you cleaned up before the shuttle leaves.”

Mara almost managed a smile. “I thought you said I looked beautiful.”

“You do,” her mother said, tipping Mara’s chin up. “But do you really want to worry Luke by looking like you’ve been crying?”

Another blush warmed Mara’s cheeks. “How do you know he’ll be there?”

“He’s been at your side all week,” her mother said, standing and pulling Mara up with her. “I’d be shocked if he failed you now.”

Mara led the way down the hall to the refresher, where she washed her face, then let her mother comb and re-braid her hair. She felt vaguely ridiculous—she’d handled all her own grooming since she was five—and yet profoundly content all at the same time.

“There you go,” her mother said, fastening the end of the braid. Mara angled herself between the mirrors so she could look at the back of her own head.

“It’s fancier than I usually do,” she said, eyeing the new style. A braid ran down each side of her head, with each section of hair left slightly loose to accentuate the wave of the braid. At the nape of her neck the braids joined each other twice: the upper joined braid had been twisted and pinned into a loose coil at the top of the lower joined braid, which ran down her back like normal. It resembled nothing so much as a flower on a long stem.

“Your sister went through a rather long ‘fancy braid’ stage,” her mother said with a smile. “Shocking, I know.”

Mara laughed and patted her hair. She’d certainly arranged her hair in any number of styles for formal occasions, but this somehow felt more special than any of them. “It’s beautiful.”

“You’re beautiful,” her mother said, and wrapped her arms tightly around Mara again. “My baby girl. I’ve missed you so much.”

“Mommy,” Mara whispered, scrunching her eyes shut and pressing her face against the join of her mother’s neck and shoulder. “I wish…”

Her mother lifted a hand to press against the back of Mara’s head, careful of her braids, and gently kissed her temple, then held her out at arms’ length. “Me too. But we have each other now, right?”

Mara nodded, too choked up to speak. But from her mother’s smile, Mara knew she understood.

“I told your father if I wasn’t back before now, to just take my bags to the shuttle and we’d meet him there,” her mother said, putting an arm around Mara’s waist and steering her toward the door of her apartment. “So do we need to call Luke, or—”

The door chime sounded just then, and Mara felt her cheeks warm with yet another blush. Her mother laughed, and somehow Mara didn’t mind at all.


------------------


Her father’s eyes turned toward them as they stepped onto the boarding platform, wild hope flaring up as he saw them. Her mother beamed at him, and her father’s rush of relief felt like a wave breaking over Mara. Her mother squeezed her waist as they neared the rest of the family, then released her with a smile.

Mara stepped forward, looking at her father carefully. The visuals of her last day with her parents were vague and indistinct, blurred with fear and time and largely centered on Palpatine, demanding and larger than life to a very young child, and her mother’s eyes, bright green and tear-filled and focused on Mara until the last, but the emotional impressions were vivid, now that the memory had surfaced. Her parents’ pain and her own fear were so sharp that it was no wonder she’d suppressed it early on. Her tutelage had been harsh and unforgiving from the very first, and surviving it meant full dedication to the task at hand. She couldn’t afford to acknowledge any emotional vulnerabilities, especially ones that were so far past changing.

But here her father was, his sense in the Force familiar in the way of an old half-remembered lullaby, the same mixture of love and longing in his eyes as in her mother’s.

They were all still strangers to her in many ways. But that didn’t mean they had to stay that way.

“Daddy,” she said hesitantly. “I’m glad you found me.”

Her father held his arms open, his eyes shining with sudden joy, and Mara stepped into his embrace, closing her eyes against yet more tears and resting her head on his shoulder. He held her so tightly that she could hardly breathe, and she never wanted it to end. “Mara,” he whispered against her hair. “I love you. I love you so much.”

She nodded wordlessly, hoping that he, like her mother, would understand. There were some things she couldn’t say yet, some emotions she was still trying to find a place for. Looking at him as he stepped back to hold her shoulders, reluctant to let her go entirely, she thought that he probably did.

“We’ll come see you again,” he told her, caressing her cheek. “If you want us to?”

Mara nodded again, swallowing hard. Her father smiled and leaned in to kiss her forehead, then made room for her mother to hug her tightly one last time.

“I love you,” her mother whispered, then she too stepped back. “I’ll call you when we get home.”

Corissa stepped forward to take her turn for a hug, wearing a familiar half-smile. Mara wondered if she’d ever get used to seeing her own expressions on someone else’s face. “Come see us soon,” she said. “We need to compare dance techniques.”

Her own smile caught Mara by surprise. “Sure,” she said, finding speech at last.

“And I’ll teach you to love glimmik,” Corissa added, a teasing glint in her eyes.

“You won’t,” Mara replied, but her smile remained. Corissa grinned, then joined their parents a few steps over where they were saying their goodbyes to Luke, and Mara was left standing face to face with Nico.

He eyed her warily, the old hostility at a low ebb and mixed with the buzz of suppressed guilt. Mara met his gaze, remembering what their mother had told her. Nico had been hurt by her kidnapping too, nearly as much as Mara and their parents had been, and in ways he might not even fully understand. Mara herself was still in the process of even realizing all the damage that had been done to her, never mind learning to deal with it. She could hardly blame Nico for being in the same position.

Besides, he was her brother. And Mara realized suddenly that she wanted her brother back, too. Palpatine had taken enough from her. It ended now. She’d taken her mind back on Wayland, her life back after the return to Coruscant, and now she was taking her family back. All of them.

Mara surprised them both by stepping quickly forward to give him a tight hug. He was stiff and awkward, his arms going around her tentatively and briefly, and Mara didn’t care. She was still stiff and awkward with this family thing, too. They’d figure it out.

She let him go and stood back. “When I visit,” she said, “you can show me how to avoid Corissa’s glimmik campaign.”

Nico grinned, then tried to stifle it as he bent to lift his bag. “Fair.”

The rest of the family joined them, Corissa squeezing Mara’s hand as she passed, and their parents taking turns to kiss Mara on the cheek before they all entered the shuttle that would take them to the passenger liner in orbit.

Just in time, too. The final boarding call sounded as the steward droids ushered any stragglers in and closed the doors. Only a few minutes passed before the shuttle lifted off. Mara stood very still, watching it go.

Beside her, Luke’s fingers twitched, just barely. Another person probably wouldn’t have noticed, but Mara couldn’t have missed it. “How are you feeling?” he asked quietly.

“I don’t know,” Mara admitted, her eyes still on the rapidly ascending shuttle. “Having a family kind of hurts, but—it’s kind of nice, too.”

“That about sums it up,” Luke agreed. He glanced sideways at her. “Will they be visiting again?”

“Yes,” she said softly. “I—I’ll probably go see them sometime, too.”

Luke smiled. “Good.”

Mara looked away from the shuttle at last, and turned toward Luke. She took in his smile, and his lingering concern. She thought about how he’d helped her and even trained her, back when she was still swearing to kill him. She thought about his unwavering friendship since Wayland, and how he’d supported her through everything: her new position as liaison, her Jedi training, the hesitance of learning to interact genuinely with others rather than keeping her distance, the cyclone of emotional turmoil she’d been struggling with since her parents’ first communication with her.

He’d all but put his own life on hold to help her establish hers, never asking a thing in return. She didn’t know what she’d done to deserve that level of devotion, but she knew that she didn’t want to lose it. And she knew that he mattered immensely to her, in a way that no one else ever had. If a situation arose where he needed the support he’d given her so unreservedly, Mara knew that she would give him the same without a second thought.

That, she decided, was more than enough for a beginning, at least.

“My mother said I could bring you when I did,” she informed him, watching with satisfaction the way surprise and wary hope sparked in his eyes.

“Oh,” Luke said, shifting a little awkwardly.

“So,” Mara added, unable to resist, “I guess my parents approve of you.”

Luke grinned suddenly. “Whereas my father most definitely did not approve of you.”

Mara shrugged. “Yeah, but your father had lousy judgement.”

“An inarguable statement.” Luke turned his grin toward the permacrete. Mara wouldn’t have been surprised to see him kick some nonexistent pebble. Sometimes that farm boy aura drove her insane—but other times it was almost unbearably endearing.

She yielded to the impulse rising within her, and reached out to take his hand. He looked back up at her, a flash of blue searching her expression. Mara squeezed his hand and smiled, a burst of shyness turning her own eyes to the permacrete rather than meet that intense gaze head-on. But that didn’t mean she was about to give in, either. “Do you want to go get some lunch?”

The brilliance of Luke’s smile radiated outward through the Force, and Mara smiled some more at the permacrete, suddenly and unaccountably happy.

“Yeah,” Luke said, squeezing her fingers in return. “That sounds great.” He started to turn away from the boarding platform, then paused. “By the way, I like your hair in that style.”

Mara looked up at that, to turn her smile from Luke to the rapidly receding ship that carried her family. It was barely visible now, a tiny speck of silver nearly lost within the high, wispy clouds. The sun caught it as it gained altitude, the resulting glint as bright as a beacon to Mara, faint though it was. Her family. People who loved her. People who she loved in return.

She returned her gaze to Luke, saw the understanding in his eyes.

And maybe, just maybe, the same here, too.

“Yeah,” she said, smiling as they started back toward the Palace, still holding hands. “Me too.”

 

@Gabri_Jade ... I have a confession to make. Of all the possible endings I imagined, this is way, way way better! So amazingly marvelously incredibly SQUEELICIOUS! A monster slam of a dunk of an ending! Thank you SO VERY MUCH for sharing this with us!!

 

When I'm working on my fics, I usually have scenes just sort of hanging out in my brain, for days, weeks, months... sometime years... before they ever make it to the page. I'll go out and take a walk, listen to music, and one of the scenes slides its way into my head and plays itself out a few times. I work it through, and eventually I write it down—not always in any kind of order.

I was lucky enough to get to read this story in progress, and as a consequence this chapter—or, some version of it—hijacked my brain for a few weeks. Instead of imagining [insert spoilers for scenes to come in the climax of Interregnum II], I'd think about how Mara would tell Nadira, Ronan, Corissa, and Nico all the things she couldn't tell them about. How they would react and respond, all the emotions of those key moments. I no longer remember any of my versions of those scenes—it's been a while, and if I don't write them down they can get lost—in large part because eventually I got to read Gabri's version, and then there was no need to imagine my own anymore.

Big picture here for a second: I never in a million years thought that a "let's meet Mara's long-lost family" fic could possibly be done well. The very concept I considered anathema, because there was no way the backstory could be both satisfying and not overplayed. Mara would be some heir to a great Jedi lineage, or a clone, or Palpatine's secret daughter... I've spent time thinking about Mara's potential familial backstory, and always came to the conclusion that it was best left unexplained, that any explanation would be worse than not knowing.

So, Gabri here has basically done the impossible, because the family story she's invented here is one that is both satisfying and not overplayed. It's miraculous. It has depth of character, deep emotional resonance, love and tragedy, it matches what we would expect from the psychology of all these characters (from Mara's parents to Corissa to Nico), and it all feels lived-in and real instantly. It's familiar, it feels right!

It also has produced a story which simultaneously is incredibly uplifting and, at the same time, depressing in all the right, angsty ways. Because Mara's family here is perfect, and just what she needs, and just what they should be, and seeing them all work through these difficulties and come together is uplifting and wonderful. But at the same time, I know that in every other EU universe, every other timeline, Ronan and Nadira almost certainly didn't survive that brush with Palpatine. That in my own Interregnum-verse, Corissa and Nico—these two wonderful, well-realized, dynamic characters—never had a chance to be born, and that Mara will spend her whole life never knowing how much her parents loved her. That makes this one of the most angsty-stories I've ever read, because instinctively I've always known that was true—it had to be true—but here we have set before us a perfect image of what Mara could have had... and now her loss is that much more real.

It's led to some scenes in my own writing where I've let Mara reminisce about the family she lost, and those scenes hit just so much harder if you've read Renewal first. She doesn't know what she's missing... but you do.

Here Mara's living her luckiest life, except the one where she was never kidnapped at all. She gets her family back, and she leaps over the hurdle she's been facing for the last seven chapters: being unwilling to admit to her family just who she had been before Palpatine's death.

(I've got a scene in my head, where Mara tells Corissa that she'd had a voice in her head telling her to kill Luke for five years, and Corissa thinks the fact that she didn't is just the most romantic thing in the universe.)

Nadira responds as you would expect a mother to, but of course Mara couldn't know that, but she climbs over her shame with Nadira's help, and we see a universe of good possibility open up before her. And then she's with Luke, and she admits what she knew at the beginning of this story: that maybe she does want a relationship with him. We know she knows the maybe is a definite, but she's still working on admitting that to herself, and she hasn't had that last push to get there—Mara is a stubborn woman, especially when it comes to herself—but that doesn't keep her from ending the story holding his hand.

("Maybe," Mara? Who are you kidding? Probably the only people in the universe who aren't positive are you and Luke.)

Oh, these two... there's a reason they're my favorite romantic couple in all of fiction. They're so perfect for each other, because they're similar and different in all the right ways.

 

@Bel505

Exactly. She knows very well what she was and what she did, and while she may not have fully worked all that out in her own mind just yet, what terrifies her here is her parents knowing, and the thought that they wouldn't love her anymore, that they'd be repulsed by her.

Mara and Nico are just way too much alike, and without a deeper understanding of each other, they both jump to the worst possible interpretation of those surface characteristics. And to be fair, both of them are so very self-contained that they're easy to misinterpret, and Mara is scared here and Nico defensive. Not the best circumstances for either of them to lean toward giving the other the benefit of the doubt.

You know, Wedge probably does feel guilty. And Luke would have told him not to feel that way, it definitely wasn't his fault, while Luke blamed himself for not being there. Another perfect storm of misplaced emotion

Yeah, he's gone well above and beyond, but there comes a point where she simply has to take those final steps herself, and to try to handle it for her, especially when she's explicitly told him not to, is only going to cause more damage. Luke has too much sense (and respect for her) to go beyond that boundary she's set out.

@earlybird-obi-wan

It's rough, for sure!

@ViariSkywalker

Yeah, I bet you did

It's like fandom archaeology! I feel the same way when I'm reading an older fic and recognize the tropes that dominated at the time it was written, or remember which books had recently been published that the fic was spinning off of or arguing with, or even what sort of discourse was prevalent within fandom that the fic might have been obliquely referring to - wrote a few of those myself

You're an in-between SW generation, like I'm part of the Oregon Trail generation

lol, this is the first time I've realized that Threepio isn't in EtF. Poor Threepio indeed

Rogue Squadron was pretty famous; I have to think that an awful lot of young people who loved ships and pilots were huge fans He didn't mean for Mara to see any enthusiasm, though

He does and he iiiiiiissss

Mara's learning that all sorts of soft things maybe could be nice

Thank you!

One thing about Mara, she is not self-indulgent even in her own thoughts, even when it would be totally understandable

You're gonna have to write them; I have enough on my plate

"Teach me gang swears, Mara!"

Everyone's definitely on eggshells in this scene

The contrast between Nico and Corissa really did work out perfectly, writing is so great

Heh, attack mode indeed You know, if Nico had been the Force-sensitive one that Palpatine noticed, he probably would have made an excellent Emperor's Hand as well. He and Mara really are so much alike

He really did grow up in so much instability, emotional as well as physical, and he doesn't know anything about Mara's inner turmoil or trauma, because she's just as uncommunicative as he is. What he sees is someone rich and powerful, connected to people who are even more rich and powerful, and who's not making any obvious moves to reach out to her family, or even meet them halfway. He's wrong, but his conclusions are still plausible. And without any communication or emotional connection, his and Mara's traumas just exacerbate each other.

In their first meeting, Mara really was rude and abrupt and dismissive. We know that's because she was terrified out of her mind, but Nico doesn't, and his sympathies are understandably with his parents, so that roused his defensiveness from the very beginning, which prejudiced him against her. If that first meeting had gone better, it's at least possible that Nico would have paid more attention to the subtle indications that everything's not all sunshine and roses in Mara's world. As things turned out, though, they've been misunderstanding each other from the beginning

She does

Yeah, they're doing a lot better now than they have at least since Mara was kidnapped, and they're still not super secure, financially speaking. Ronan and Nadira couldn't care less, all that matters to them is reclaiming Mara. Corissa couldn't care less because nothing intimidates Corissa. But when Nico's formative years were marked by considerable hardship and then his long-lost sister isn't just rude and abrupt and dismissive, but also phenomenally rich and powerful by his standards - well, again, he's not inclined to give her the benefit of the doubt here.

Not just "business acquaintances" or something, either - it's obvious that Luke freaking Skywalker himself is head over heels for Mara, and the crown princess of Alderaan and war hero General Solo clearly consider her family. It's hardly out of the realm of possibility that Mara might want to show off those sorts of intimate connections with incredibly powerful people, even if it was to impress her family rather than to rub their noses in it. (Ironically, part of the reason that this interpretation doesn't occur to Mara is that she spent so much of her life accustomed to far greater wealth and power. And all it cost was her childhood, her innocence, her family, her emotional well-being...)

I firmly believe that despite all the early hardship and upheaval, the Jades are a close and loving family. It may have taken a few years for Ronan and Nadira's relationship to properly stabilize again after Mara's loss, but they really do love each other, and adore their children. They've done their best to keep the family close and give the kids every advantage they could. For all Nico's moodiness on this visit, it's obvious that he and Corissa are reasonably close. So Nico going full attack mode like this is probably something Corissa hasn't seen much of before now - plus Corissa's picked up on a lot of the indications that Mara's history hasn't been a happy one, so there's the extra shock that Nico is behaving this way toward a sister who Corissa sees as vulnerable and scared. It's going to throw even someone as confident as Corissa for a loop. And yeah, the ballet ticket line was a precision attack along with everything he said about Mara. Nico's hit his breaking point just as Mara's hit hers, and he's not pulling any punches.

Nico did have to be a cipher for most of the story for this confrontation to land properly, but I am so glad that his depth is apparent once we see more of his inner motivations, because yeah, my intent was never for him to be a villain, but to convey the many different ways this sort of profound trauma would affect each member of the family. Nico's been a jerk, but let's be honest: so was Mara. And in both cases it wasn't because they were inherently jerks, it was because they were deeply traumatized and off-balance in an extraordinarily weird and fraught situation. It was really important to me that the actions and motivations and and misunderstandings of each (as well as those of their parents and Corissa) would ultimately be understandable once the reader had the full picture. Cue a huge sigh of relief that it worked

kermit_typing_frantically.gif

He is

I loved writing it. Like you say, this is a rare opportunity. We very rarely see Mara so very off-balance or vulnerable, let alone near hysteria. It had to be handled carefully, but even Mara will hit an emotional breaking point and snap under the right circumstances.

And just a few minutes ago, Ronan and Nadira finally sat down to a proper family meal with all three of their children for the first time...

Thank you! I kind of like it myself

He does! Artoo and Mara both might not want to let on that they care, but they do

It vaguely amuses me that everyone in this group understands both Mara and Nico much better than Mara and Nico understand each other

I think this is dead on. I also think that Mara and Nico having that knock-down drag-out fight was akin to ripping the band-aid off rather than trying to go slow: it may well have been a less painful process in the long run. But whatever happened while he wasn't there - since Mara's not telling him anything, and all he knows is that something terrible happened to make her run - he's almost certainly blaming himself for misinterpreting the degree of Mara's progress, and not being there to help defuse whatever it was that broke her. And he wanted so badly for Mara to have her family back, and here she's plainly not intending to go back and forbidding him to do anything about it...

It is

@Mira_Jade

lolol, because I definitely don't love rambling and long reactions and essays and meta, right? THIS IS MY JAM, MIRA

Married without realizing it, that's Luke and Mara Well, he called after he'd broken in and made the dinner Was he just supposed to let her eat a ration bar, Mira??? She doesn't take proper care of herself, someone has to make sure she eats real food!

It's such a weird process for her! But she's trying

She iiiiiisss, she loves Corissa so much already

I know intellectually that many if not most only children are perfectly happy that way, but I have a hard time imagining a life without at least one sibling relationship. It's really something unique that not even the closest of friendships can replace, because it's not just friendship, but a bone-deep understanding of the genetics and circumstances that make up who you are; they know the family quirks and foibles and strengths and weaknesses that shaped both of you in a way and to a degree that no one outside of that sibling circle could. Even if you're annoyed with each other (because, say, someone ate all the nut pastries), that level of understanding is a deep comfort.

Right??

He really was. Even Luke didn't know what a lightsaber was in ANH. (Which had to have been a deeply painful moment for Obi-Wan, now that I think about it...)

Why, thank you For all the challenges inherent in this story, it really was a delight to get to do such a deep dive into Mara's psyche like this. She's so very complex and rewarding.

It's almost like I said to Vi about how it doesn't occur to Mara to think that her connections are something to show off in part because she's used to being part of a far more elite class: I imagine that for Corissa, the ISB is elite Imperial service. What's higher than the ISB? Well, the Emperor's Hand was higher than the ISB, to such an extent that implying that she was an ISB agent sparks immediate and instinctive contempt from her even now.

Of course, that's another thing she'd rather not explain to everyone...

lolol

Luke is overprotective, Mira! She's just thinking the obvious

Indeed And the timing is part of it, too. She just hasn't had anywhere near the time to fully come to terms with her own past and the profundity of Palpatine's betrayal yet. And the friends that she does have are people who've experienced extreme loss and trauma like she has, so it's easy for her to think, well, that's why we get along, we're all damaged goods. She hasn't had a lot of experience yet with ordinary people, to see the universality of these things.

You know, in ANH (and the PT) we only see Beru for a few minutes, and what we do see of her is very domestic - which hey, is great, I'm not knocking that at all. But A) I didn't want to fall into trite gender stereotypes, and B) we've seen a lot of Tatooine since ANH, and I can't imagine it being anything less than what Luke said: everyone who grows up there is taught self-sufficiency early. So my suspicion is what I wrote here, that Beru could do anything around the farm, but handled the bulk of the domestic stuff like cooking because she genuinely loved making the people she loved comfortable and happy. And of course she'd teach these skills to Luke too, and Luke has a caretaker sort of personality like Beru anyway, so I can see him falling into exactly the same sort of scenarios. (Like breaking into Mara's apartment to cook her dinner because he knows she won't bother with a proper meal if left to her own devices )

You know that Owen would do his very best to take care of Beru, and that Beru would never let on to Owen that his cooking lacked anything But however much she loved him, she can still want a good meal, too

Why, thank you

She has to especially feel that way with the contrast of her family right there, seeing how she might have been if she'd grown up with them, and how far removed her actual past was from that

Luke loves them both so much and wants them to be friends, but he may not have fully thought through the consequences of such a thing

They were being fairly obvious. Even if Mara herself didn't realize it

He's coming from his own history of trauma. It's just not so extreme as Mara's. (How many people's are?)

Palpatine was a big fan of getting people to do the unthinkable. I have no doubt that he would have done exactly this

"Angstmonger" does not do the two of you justice

They love her so much

Thank you!

Being a fantastic pilot does not automatically translate into being a good commander - but undying faith in people and always finding a way to build them up the way Luke does are definitely skills a good commander needs.

Leave it to Corissa to be undaunted by her first encounter with a Wookiee half again as tall as she is Nico's reaction is probably the more common one

You just can't leave Chewie or the Noghri out completely! Plus, like you say, there's the fun of writing reactions to them

Good thing Mara doesn't yet speak Shryiiwook

I'm really glad this is coming across, because biological is by no means the only type of family, and everyone in the Skywalker/Solo family has at least as much experience with adoptive/chosen family as they do with biological. Mara's still learning what it means to really be part of any kind of family, but this chosen family already means so very much to her

Old habits die hard, though! And it's also those high standards she keeps holding herself to: the Solos are doing extra work on her behalf; she should have done something extra for them to make up for it, and feels guilty for not having thought to do so

Her father is brave and composed in his first meeting with an intimidating Noghri warrior! She's so proud

The babies love Mara @Bel505 also has some great Mara-Jaina scenes in Interregnum

He does and she is

Typical sibling interaction

I have thoughts

Wet-bulb temperatures are horrifying, especially if you live in a really hot (or humid) climate, so that you realize how close you are to death

I kinda love how Zahn apparently got some criticism for including hot chocolate in TTT, only to double down on it in HoT But honestly, hot chocolate is a very Luke drink, and he would definitely pass that on whenever he got a chance

Raised by a Wookiee and then lived with one for years, he's got to be used to cooking a lot in one go

I can see Ronan and Nico being intrigued by all the totally-shouldn't-work-but-somehow-do modifications on the Falcon, while Mara's like, yeah, but wait until you see how many of them short circuit in action

I really can't stand how so much of the post-TTT, non-Zahn EU writes Han and Leia as suspicious of Mara. She saved their lives. She saved their children's lives. She saved Luke's life. She sided with the NR against everything she'd ever believed in when the chips were down. And in TTT, Han defends her fiercely, even when Lando insists that he saw her at Jabba's Palace (I believe his exact words were something like, "I don't care where she used to be, she still shot those Imperials off us"), while Leia is sympathetic and - with newborn twins to take care of and the NR in crisis, hence an awful lot of demands on her time - offers to be a listening ear if Mara ever wants to just talk about her past or personal life. If the EU had progressed as it should have, Mara would have been part of the family from the beginning, not shoved away and regarded suspiciously. So in the grand tradition of fanfic, I fixed it

Corissa is such a sweetheart Even if she does preface her loving sisterly sentiment with "you're such an idiot"

Han is 100% the den mother of this group, he's gotta look out for these crazy kids

Thank you kindly

So trivial, hardly worth mentioning

They really, really are. Luke and Mara are pretty much an ideal relationship: genuine partners who always offer support without smothering the other, who always believe the best of each other, who respect and admire each other, who make each other better people, who are genuinely each other's best friend

lolol, your restraint is acknowledged Yeah, it's just so much. She doesn't really understand what it is to be part of a family, or what parental love is. She hasn't realized that all of her family was traumatized too. She hasn't fully worked through her own trauma, or forgiven herself for serving Palpatine. You put all this together, and her family looks like a shining example of love and normality that she could never deserve or be a part of

Heh, it was such a close focus story that to spend much time on characters beyond Mara, her family, and Luke would derail it, but there are also people who would be very much a part of Mara's life now, and even if they only got a mention, it built up the picture of her current social circle. Winter and Luke's close friends like Wedge and Tycho and Wes and Hobbie definitely fell into that category.

Luke's still a cocky fighter pilot at heart And thank you!

Wedge is a good judge of character, as well as kind

lol

I aim to please

She really, really does

It's like you say, Mara holds herself to high standards

She does

Ronan and Nadira must think they're so close to a breakthrough, only to have Mara get more and more distant as this breakfast goes on

and then -

This fight was almost the last scene I wrote for the story as a whole (the very last was Mara's last scene with Nico just before the family leaves); I knew that this was what I was building toward, but so very much depended on getting it exactly right. It's a deep relief that the finished product works The "my mother/my mother too" thing was important because at that point, Nico doesn't consider her family enough to say "our mother." Nico watched his mother finally set eyes on the daughter she'd spent more than his lifetime searching for, and then watched that daughter pull away from her, then say the whole meeting was a waste of time and storm off. He's not inclined to forgive that sort of wound inflicted on his mother, and it poisons his whole view of Mara from that point on. Meanwhile, even though Mara is convinced that she has to give them up, she strikes back instinctively at that. Nico has no right to claim Nadira exclusively; she's Mara's mother too. And as you say, Nico's attacks are precise and merciless, because he and Mara are so very alike - which of course means that neither of them is going to back down. And each of them is so caught up in their own trauma that they don't recognize or acknowledge the trauma of the other one. And this had to be the scene that believably pushed Mara into snapping emotionally, while at the same time leaving enough room for Mara and Nico to reconcile, because neither one is the bad guy here. It was a lot. So yeah, I'm so happy this works

Ronan is the best

The three of them are so cute when they cringe in unison at Dad yelling Yeah, I had to get Luke out of the way, because that fight would never have played out the way it needed to if he was there. But under other circumstances, Luke would definitely have laughed at the three of them reacting simultaneously

Even Mara's self-control has limits. Being aggressively misunderstood on subjects that are already breaking her heart is the sort of thing that'll make even her snap

Thank you!

Yeah, Mara doesn't know how to let perfectionism go. Understandably, since it was drilled into her the way it was, and since she was hardly more than a baby

She's still not great at emotional awareness, though. It's still such a new thing for her. Everyone in this galaxy needs extensive therapy, Mira

Remember VotF, when Mara notices that Artoo chose her sentinel droid to attack, and wonders if Luke's tendency toward overprotectiveness had rubbed off on him? She may have once threatened to blow him into scrap, but now she's part of the family and Luke clearly likes her a lot, so Artoo's going to look out for her

They really do. And as inscrutable as Nico is to Mara and Mara is to Nico, everyone else had already caught on how uncomfortable they both were, for different reasons, and were trying to gently reassure them and/or shunt the discomfort off to the side so it couldn't - well, explode like it just did. Mara, of course, doesn't understand Nico and just had her feelings hurt very badly by him, so she jumps to the conclusion that her brother has been talking behind her back about how much he hates her. Which isn't that far off from what Nico's been assuming about Mara. They're both just too darned good at the inscrutable thing

Yeah, after finally experiencing her parents' love, even for just a few days, she simply can't bear the possibility of losing it, and she thinks that if she admits what she used to do, she will

He is, he's so awesome

And yes, yes it is

Probably not

@WarmNyota_SweetAyesha

Thank you very much

@Bel505

Aw

I always felt the exact same way. I've never seen a suggested background for Mara that I was totally onboard with, and I've found the vast majority of them to be ridiculous. Vi scrolled way way back through our texts and found one from me back in March where I said the basic idea for Renewal came to me because I was thinking about how Mara would have thought about what her own parents went through after she had a child of her own, but I still don't remember how I came up with specific OCs like this, or why the idea of filling in this blank wouldn't let me go. This isn't just a story I never thought I would write; it's a story I thought no one should ever try to write. And yet here we are

This is extremely kind and means a lot, thank you I did know this was going to be a very, very tricky endeavor, and I did try very hard to make it believable without sacrificing any of the complexity and profound trauma inherent to the premise, so I'm deeply relieved to not have botched it And your reactions and feedback throughout were invaluable, thank you

I admit, it's hard for me to think about all the other universes where Ronan and Nadira and Nico and Corissa don't survive/aren't born, including my own other AUs. I've gotten extremely fond of these characters. But I do love those Interregnum scenes (Can you imagine what Corissa would have to say in Interregnum? She'd probably have tried to rig the pool )

*whispers* Gonna write that one eventually, too. Because apparently I'm addicted to happy endings now

I laughed out loud at this. That is exactly what Corissa would think.

Yup, she has her family and she has Luke, and she may not quite realize what all of that means just yet, but she's open to the possibilities now

Accurate

They are the very, very best

 

So this is coming way later than intended, but I'm finally here!

Aw, that admirably calm detail. You do so well with showing all the ways Mara admires her family, even though it's only been a few days. And I really felt for Nadira here.

I really like this detail, that the freckles are unique to Nadira and that Mara notices it and feels comforted by it. (And hey, maybe that's the sort of detail three-year-old Mara would have latched onto when thinking about her mother's face, so this could also be her connecting to that memory on a deeply unconscious level, recalling the warmth and love and safety she once felt in her mother's presence. )

I love this whole aside. Of course Mara leaps to defend Luke, even if it's just from someone's potential bad opinion of him. And of course Luke would have already spoken to Mara's parents after that whole conversation about Palpatine and the Jedi. And of course Mara's parents like him very much. They know what's up.

I could feel the heaviness in this admission, and I really like the phrasing "the worst years of our lives were the first years of his". It's simple, but it's such a gut-punch, and it's very effective in showing how Nico was affected by what happened.

I mean, this is awful, but omigosh the angst, Gabri. I need more prequel, please and thank you.

Ronan is awesome. That is all.

I legitimately chuckle every time I read this part.

(moar prequel!!!)

This was absolutely the perfect segueway to Mara opening up about her past. Seriously, brilliant job, babe. Man, aren't you glad you made Nico and Mara get into a fight?

The buildup here was excellent, as was the reveal that followed. And I feel like keeping it minimal was somehow more effective than if you'd written the reveal out with dialogue. This was the moment we'd been building toward for the entire story, and the pacing and execution were perfect.

YEP.

Also, look at that A B C C B A rhyme scheme, nice.

I know this is a super sad and depressing and terrible to remember, but also YAY SHE REMEMBERS!

This was so incredibly cathartic, I can't even. I teared up the first time I read this.

Also, this was all excellent. Again, Mara doesn't get to (realistically) have moments like this in fic (fan and pro alike) often, if at all, so it hits especially hard here. And it hurts so good.

Awwww, my heart! A perfect mother-daughter moment.

This exchange was just so sweet and wholesome, and I love the confirmation that Nadira knows, and that she's happy for Mara. And yes, Luke absolutely would wait that long. (I'm really abusing this emoji today. )

Believe it or not, this is the part that still gets me choked up, even after multiple rereadings. There's just so much love here, the love of a mother for both her little girl and the woman she's become, and the innocent love of a child for her mother; and even though they're still strangers in many ways, you can feel the bond that transcends all those obstacles. And just... after all the trauma and abuse and being horribly used, Mara has this chance to start over and be the person she wants to be, and have the things she should have had all along; and even though it didn't happen the way they all would have wanted it to, she has her family now, and people who love her.

Yep.

This braid was so pretty, you should post a picture of the inspiration!

I feel like I'm doing you a disservice reacting with mainly emojis, but seriously, everything is just so good, and I might not have tons of super eloquent things to say about each part I love, but dangit, there's an emoji for that!

That wild hope flaring, Gabri, why don't you just take my stupid heart now? (Ronan's my fave, can you tell? )

YEP, HERE'S MY HEART, GABRI. TAKE IT.

I've loved all the mentions throughout this story of Mara noticing her own expressions and mannerisms reflected in her family, in case I never mentioned that before. And this goodbye was adorable.

ALL OF THIS. I'm glad Mara came to this realization, and it looks like Nico has probably had some realizations of his own by this point.

Also, Nico might be my second fave, and I can't wait to see more of what you have in store for him, and for him and Mara, in all of your future Renewal!verse stories.

Aw, I love him trying to stifle his grin. This moment was perfect. Everything is still awkward, but there's hope now. So much hope.

Great detail to include, the hand twitch (him wanting to hold her hand) and the fact that she notices (and then acts on it later ). I love the awareness between them.

One of the reasons they work so well together, that mutual, unselfish support and devotion.

Yep, this was perfect.

And is Luke adorable, or what?

All the details of their movements throughout this scene have been a perfect example of showing rather than telling, and this part is my favorite. I could clearly picture the scene, those smiles toward the ground, each of them filled with more happiness in this moment than they could have anticipated. This shift from almost and maybe to something more was so natural and excellent in every way.

I love the mirroring of the first chapter, with the glint of light reflecting off the starship, only this time there's nothing awful or scary about it - just hope for the future.

What else can I say about this ending, and this story as a whole? For all the heartbreak and fear and angst and stress that Mara and her family went through, this ending is just so soft and peaceful and warm, and I love it to pieces. I love, too, how you came full circle to Luke and the question of their relationship. Because that's what she was thinking about at the beginning before she was interrupted by her family's message, wasn't it? And at the time it felt like the potential for a relationship with Luke was being derailed because of everything Mara was going through, but ultimately her family being there reaffirmed to Mara just how important and special Luke is to her, and now she's ready to take that last step and explore the possibilities. Her maybe, just maybe reads as an acknowledgement of what she already knows, and though I'm sure it will take a while longer before they say the words out loud, there's not a doubt in my mind that right here, right now, Luke loves Mara and Mara loves Luke.

Gabri, I never thought I'd see you tackle a story about Mara's family, for all the reasons already stated. You should be so proud of this story, and of your OCs. I have a hard time picturing Mara's family any differently now, and I already feel retroactive guilt for having Mara still be an orphan in my happier AU because it means Ronan and Nadira are dead. So yeah, headcanon accepted.

To sum up: this was beautiful and angsty and heartwarming and soft, and I can't wait for more stories in this 'verse!

Yes!!! (Now we just need to get Gabri to legitimately like Ferrus, and we'll be all set. )

 

@Mira_Jade

Aw yeah, I stuck the landing Seriously, I'm so pleased that you think so. I've said before that writing this story was like walking a tightrope; as I closed in on the ending it also felt like I was building this magnificent house of cards and if I made one wrong move, the whole thing would crumble. So yeah, it's a relief that the conclusion turned out well

Indeed; I think @Bel505 summed it up best when he said that Palpatine trained her to be a tame Jedi. Mara was a very specific tool, and for her to accomplish what he intended her to do, having that sense or morality and honor really did serve her well and he always knew that. But it is something inherent to Mara, and survived her Imperial service and helped define the rest of her life. Luke's comment to Mara in VotF, about how maybe her sense of morality despite growing up in the corrupt Imperial court had come from an early influence in her life, kept coming back to me as I was writing this, and was definitely an influence in how Ronan and Nadira developed as characters. I tried to show this trait in both Nadira and Mara in this scene, in that Nadira comes to apologize without expecting anything from Mara, and that Mara had intended to see her family off even after the disaster of the day before, simply because it was the right thing to do.

It became obvious pretty early on that Corissa was going to be the family member Mara grew attached to first (it helped that Corissa turned out to be so easy to love), and when I was putting myself in Mara's place in this scene, there was never any question that Mara's mind would go to Corissa, and that the conscious realization that cutting ties with her family meant never seeing her sister again would hurt terribly. I think part of the reason that Mara bonded with Corissa so quickly is that they're two sides of the same coin: they're both dauntless and vibrant and single-minded, but between innate personality differences and their disparate upbringings, those qualities manifested in different ways. Mara is serious and quiet and introverted, while Corissa is - well, bright and cheerful and outgoing. And earlier in the story, we saw Mara wondering if she would have been more like Corissa if they'd grown up together, and shying away from the thought of Corissa experiencing what Mara herself had. So the way I see it, this plays into Mara's protectiveness of her little sister. She sees so many similarities between them, but Corissa, even at the brink of adulthood, still has the innocence and general expectations of goodness from life that Mara lost when she was hardly more than a baby, and the more she comes to love her sister, the more Mara wants to protect her at all costs, because she knows how brutal life can be, and her sweet obnoxious little sister should never, ever find that out.

"Impossible" was a very deliberate choice because of its dual meaning in this instance: Corissa is simultaneously impossible as in "extremely difficult to deal with" (even though Mara loves her, because all younger siblings are impossible this way sometimes ) and impossible in that she, and by extension the whole family, shouldn't by rights exist, and would have been an impossible dream had Mara ever thought to consider such a possibility. Corissa is both a pain in Mara's butt and unspeakably precious to her already

After that explosion the day before, I have to think that Ronan and Nadira's concern would be, "how can we salvage anything?" And the conclusion I felt they would come to was, a one on one talk would be both less frightening and less likely to be rejected out of hand than both long-lost parents showing up at her door, and that there was a decent chance that Mara might open up more to her mother than to her father - especially since they still don't know exactly what terrible experiences Mara's been trying so hard to hide for the whole visit - and that there was a real possibility that all they could salvage would be to explain their position. Maybe Mara still wouldn't want the connection, and they can't force it, but at least maybe they could apologize and let her know how much they'll always love her. Which makes it all the more incredible that Nadira handled this so well, because the whole time she's thinking this might be the last time she ever sees Mara

It is such a change from the unthinking devotion of the Emperor's Hand, isn't it? And kind of the flip side of her automatic defense of Luke in this conversation, both of which are tied into that unshakable sense of honor she has. No one should think that Luke would do something so awful, and no one should give Palpatine the honor he always craved and never deserved.

I also just have to point out that @Bel505 did much the same thing with Mara in Interregnum, that demarcation between her pre- and post-Emperor's Hand mindsets. It was something I'd already been working with in another story, being careful about when Mara thought of him as "the Emperor" and when as "Palpatine," but seeing how effectively the technique worked in Interregnum definitely played into it coming up in Renewal, as well, even though it was more of a side point here. The Interregnum line about Mara thinking that "no one else should ever again be subject to Palpatine's lies, the old fraud" lives rent-free in my head.

"Not a single syllable of prose was wasted" is very high praise, thank you And yeah - Mara's been thinking about all her perceived flaws, everything she did wrong, everything she didn't see in time, but what her parents see is that despite obvious childhood trauma, she's grown into a smart, strong, brave, honorable, good person. The pain of missing so much of her life will never fade, but imagine how incredibly proud they must be, that she's overcome so much, and become so much, even without them there to help her.

Excellent You know, some little details are very deliberate, and some just felt right for reasons I still can't articulate. This is one of the latter. I guess it ultimately plays into Mara coming to love her mother, and being comforted by the little things that are unique to her. I feel like Vi hit the nail on the head below, that this was probably a subconsciously remembered detail from Mara's childhood, that she associated with the love and security of her mother without realizing it, but I didn't think of that when I was writing. It just felt like what Mara would be thinking of at that moment. I'm glad my instincts were right.

Ronan and Nadira are perceptive, and Luke and Mara are not subtle But I did so like the idea of Nadira gently offering Mara their approval, especially in the context of her treating this as possibly the last time she'd see Mara. Like, even if this didn't work, she wanted her daughter to have that gift of knowing that her parents were still happy for her. (Look at me pulling a Vi and adding angst to this lovely family moment )

You do write such great feedback, Mira There's just a whole world of emotion in those two words, isn't there? So very much effort and courage and vulnerability went into that trying, and well before the end of the visit, Mara wanted it to work, and she's so sure that it doesn't work because of her own failures...

This is really the mirror image of Nadira's "please know we didn't give you up willingly." They're both just walking on eggshells throughout this whole scene, both operating on the assumption that this whole visit has failed and they're about to go their separate ways for good even though it's killing them both, and what they're both really saying here is, "I love you, even if this doesn't work, I need you to know that I love you, please don't ever think otherwise." Which, yeah

Cue another huge sigh of relief that I pulled this off This is where Nico's jerk behavior pays off within the structure of the narrative, and turns into one of my very favorite moments of the whole story, because Mara simply didn't understand the concept of parental love. She'd grown up knowing that all approval is very conditional. But here Nico's been a total ass and seemingly torpedoed the connection their parents were desperate for, yet Nadira is apologizing on his behalf, explaining the reasons behind it, openly hoping that Mara will be able to forgive him, and this shows Mara what parental love is. Nadira's clear love for Nico even now is what finally makes Mara think that maybe she can tell the truth about her life and not be rejected after all.

And you know what I always think of with this moment in the story? Remember Apollo 13, and how before the launch, the youngest son was asking about the Apollo 1 disaster? And his father is trying to explain it in a way a child can understand, and it comes down to "the door didn't work, and, well, a lot of things went wrong"? And then when his mother has to tell him that something broke on his daddy's spaceship and he won't land on the moon, and the little boy whispers, "was it the door?" That is a masterful bit of storytelling, and I have never once watched that scene without instantly tearing up, because every fear a child can have is wrapped up in that mundane-sounding question. Jeffrey isn't asking about the door. He's asking if his father is going to die. And that's what I wanted to do with Mara's "what would change it?" And I'm so, so glad that it works for the readers as well as it does for me, because both "was it the door" and "what would change it" absolutely break my heart.

I'm so glad that didn't come off as too repetitive Because what Mara wanted most was for her parents to love her, and they're not quite at the point where they can say it yet, so she's searching for confirmation through Nadira's eyes and body language. And again, that remark of Luke's from VotF - Mara didn't even remember her parents, so if they could have such a lasting impact on her at such a young age, they had to be deeply good people, right? They've been through an immense amount of trauma and had to raise a family with a bunch of rotten circumstances, but Ronan and Nadira are truly devoted parents, and love all of their children so, so much. And also? If I'm writing this story, where Mara actually gets her parents back, then once we get past the necessary psychological difficulties, she's going to get a full-on happy ending where her mother tells her that none of her Emperor's Hand life was her fault. Because it wasn't, and Mara deserves to hear that.

This was another challenge. People do not generally think "PTSD flashbacks and panic attacks" in connection with Mara Jade. But you know what? This girl is immensely traumatized, and both of those are genuine possibilities. (Let's be real here: every main character in SW has underlying PTSD and it's a miracle they're all still functional after everything they've been through.) Under these circumstances, I couldn't see the recovery of this memory playing out any other way. The last moment she had with her mother was terrifying and traumatic and panic-inducing, and to remember it at all would bring those emotions back. To remember it with that same long-lost mother right in front of her again? Even Mara could and would break in a situation like this.

Mira, do I have a story for you. This whole scene was actually one of the first I wrote for this story, way back in March or April. Last month, my sister had some extensive dental work done, and texted our mom and me a selfie of her swollen face, all wrapped up in gauze. What does my mom text back almost immediately? "Still beautiful!" As I told Vi at the time, coming at this solely from the daughter perspective, I think mothers lie about these things regularly. Just before that selfie, my sister had texted that she'd taken her mask off upon getting home (my BIL was working and she didn't trust herself to drive home after that procedure, so I drove her, so she wore a mask all the time except for the actual dental work because pandemic) and a largish amount of blood had immediately run down her face, and my poor niece almost fainted. Ain't nothing beautiful about that. But yeah, it's a real life mother line, all right

I did really love this moment, and the way it all connected. Luke's support helped her be brave enough to try to connect with her family, and her mother's gentle insight and love brought Mara face to face with the conscious realization of what Luke meant to her. Mara's learning how to rely on other people all over the place here

They had to make up for at least some of that missed time, after all

lolol

That had to have been so hard for Ronan, after all, to let Nadira have what might be their final moments with her, even if he did believe it was best for Mara. And you know he must have started to hope, when Nadira was taking so long. To see Mara show up and Nadira is obviously happy - the emotions must have been overwhelming.

She loves Ronan almost as much as he loves her This is one of those seemingly small details that I wound up putting a lot of thought into. If Mara had grown up with her parents, odds are good that she'd have transitioned to calling them Mom and Dad at some point, but in that one tiny bit of memory she now has of actually being with them, she was still small enough that they were Mommy and Daddy. My headcanon here is that she'll spend her life alternating between the two; she'll pick up on Mom and Dad from Nico and Corissa, but in her heart they're always Mommy and Daddy, because that's what she remembers, and especially in any particularly emotional moments, that's what she'll call them.

Victory! They're going to be best buds, Mira

Right?

There are moments in reading where I feel certain that a character's thoughts are exactly the author's, directly written down and merely attributed to the character. There's a moment like that in TLC, where Leia tells Mara about a shadow of the Emperor's presence still being in orbit around Endor, then there's this:

"Like an emotional bloodstain," Mara said quietly, the image springing spontaneously and vividly into her mind. "Marking the spot where he died."

I'd put money on it that the image sprang spontaneously and vividly into Zahn's mind, and he just gave that moment to Mara. This is my such moment: I was completely unable to resist giving Mara the most un-Mara-like line ever: "I guess my parents approve of you." So I let Mara be unable to resist as well And you just know that Luke's already heard of Mara and Vader's uneasy relationship, and would take the opportunity to tease her about it

She's been through a lot of emotional upheaval in the last few weeks, but gained a lot of new awareness, too. And like that moment with Nico, she's decided she's claiming all the people she loves

Usually titles are so agonizing to figure out; this one came to me out of nowhere early in the process and I just knew it was right And as much as I like HoT and SQ, I've always liked stories where Luke and Mara didn't have to waste ten years before finding happiness together, so yes, this is definitely a beginning. I have plenty more planned for Mara to truly settle into a family and a relationship and learning to be a Jedi, and for this family to be happy together to make up for all that lost time

Seriously, I fully expected this story to garner backlash, or to be largely ignored. I know I was inactive in fanfic for a decade, but I was very active before that, and have read hundreds of fics, and the number of stories I've seen that have addressed Mara's pre-Empire origins in any way is well under a dozen. (I'm sitting here trying to think of each example I've seen, and at the moment I'm coming up with four.) In the vast majority of discussions I ever saw about whether or not the EU should ever reveal those origins, the dominant opinion was a resounding no. So when I inexplicably knew that I simply had to create and tell this story, I also knew there was a good chance that I (and Vi and Bel ) might be the only one who loved it. It's really made me happy to see my fic baby get such a good reception, and you know how I love fic essays and meta, so insightful and thorough feedback like yours has been extra special I will try to keep a decently steady writing pace so it won't be too long in between Renewal installments

@ViariSkywalker

Aside from letting herself be pulled away by Ronan when Mara was first kidnapped, this must have been about the hardest thing Nadira's ever done, really Even with her own emotional stress, Mara would have to have been impressed by Nadira's poise in a situation like this.

I wish I could claim to have been clever enough to think of this originally, because I think you're exactly right. She lost her parents so very young, and was instantly submitted to intense and ongoing stress. Whatever memories she had surely became blurred pretty quickly. But I can absolutely see her retaining a subconscious association along the lines of "freckles = mommy safe love" that manifests itself in being comforted by this detail as an adult, even if she doesn't know why

Of course they do, Luke and Mara have been acting like a married couple the whole visit But yeah, of course Mara couldn't let her parents think he'd take children the way she'd been taken, and of course Luke already found an opportunity to assure them that he never would.

I mean, they had a baby less than a year after losing Mara, and had to try to raise that new child while dealing with all their own emotional trauma, and the tension between them as Nadira blames Ronan for pulling her away and he resents her doing so when he saved her life, and they're suddenly and enormously financially unstable and constantly moving and in fear of their lives, and then four years later there's another baby to take care of under almost the same circumstances... There's just no way that Nico wasn't traumatized by that. Yes, the family eventually stabilized, and yes, Ronan and Nadira always loved him even when their own relationship was rocky, but those sorts of early childhood experiences aren't something you can just shake off.

It's nice to know that I have at least one person who will undoubtedly relish in the angst of the prequel

He is

I'm writing as fast as I can! And you keep distracting me with more plot bunnies! (Cedardew Twin Twist )

Yes, and not only because a good knock-down drag-out is honestly a lot of fun to write

This kind of cracks me up, because you know how early I wrote this scene, and that it was one of the parts that just flowed without my stopping to think how to structure it. All that considered, it really shouldn't work. This whole story shouldn't work, Vi! But between excessive thought and analysis for half of it and sheer instinct for the other half, it somehow does. I'm telling you, this story is going to be the crown jewel of my fanfic career

Right? I feel like I've said almost exactly this in any number of Mara discussions back in the day, yet there were always some who insisted otherwise. I like very much getting to have Mara's own mother reassure her that it was the adults who lied to her and used her for their own benefit who were to blame, not the kidnapped and isolated child trying to survive.

I'm so proud

I tried to be subtle about it, but the theme of her not remembering is woven throughout, and starts in chapter one, where she tells Luke that she doesn't remember her family, not even what her parents looked like. This is both a reflection of her EU canon reality and a side benefit of having written the second to last scene so early on that I knew exactly what big reveal I was working toward, so that I could lay a trail of bread crumbs

Aw yeah I still tear up over this scene, and I wrote it

She really doesn't. I have read a number of fanfic moments where Mara snaps, rare though they are, and in my experience, at least half of them aren't really in character. Which, fair, this is so far from her normal that it's a tricky thing to extrapolate. But it just had to be done here, so I'm very pleased that I managed to make it work

Yes - but I still say y'all lie

Ronan and Nadira are 100% ready to accept Luke into the family along with Mara, just as Han and Leia have accepted Mara into theirs. It's just far too obvious how much they mean to each other, and that whether they admit it or not, Luke and Mara are a package deal. And as Nadira says, it's a comfort to her to know that Mara has someone who loves her and will watch over her

Is there a greater badge of pride than knowing that I reduced you and Mira both to an abuse of the emoji? I THINK NOT

In this AU, Mara gets every bit of happiness and stability the EU denied her. EVERY BIT, I SAY

He was not exactly subtle, nor was Mara's dependence upon him

Ask and ye shall receive

Spoiler: Nadira's braid for Mara

With minor variations, but this was essentially what I was picturing when I wrote the scene. Corissa 100% went through an extended fancy braid phase wherein Nadira learned all about this sort of thing

He's been your fave since before I had him completely figured out He's an indomitable introvert who adores his family, what's not to love

HE'S BEEN WAITING MORE THAN TWENTY YEARS TO HUG HIS LITTLE GIRL, VI

It would be weird, wouldn't it, to spend your whole life alone and then to be confronted with four strangers who look like you and move like you and smile like you? It's the sort of thing you almost don't even notice under normal circumstances, but Mara's circumstances are the farthest thing from normal. And Corissa is such an adorable pesky baby sister Another thing for Mara and Nico to bond over, an intense dislike of one of Corissa's favorite types of music

Mara's grown so much And yeah, Ronan and Nadira are not the sort to yell, but when he saw how much pain he inflicted on them with how he hurt Mara, that had to have been an awful moment for Nico. And while I skipped over the aftermath of that scene from the family's POV, there's no way that Ronan, Nadira, and Corissa didn't point out the indications of trauma that he'd missed, and Nico's not a bad person. I imagine the guilt set in quickly, and that he was as relieved as the rest of them to find Mara open to continuing the connection, even if he didn't quite know how to handle facing her again. Like Mara reflected, they're both stiff and awkward right now, but they'll figure it out

So many stories, Vi

And he and Mara can bond over their sister's terrible taste in music

I love that detail, and I love that you picked up on it

It is

Luke is the most adorable ever

I really loved it, myself They're so cute, all suddenly shy with the realization that they are something more now

She's going to be so happy with her whole family, Vi

Every now and then, the things that scare you most wind up being the most rewarding. Mara took a chance that terrified her, and look what she got in return She was indeed right on the brink of admitting to herself that Luke was someone very special to her at the beginning. Understandably enough, she got distracted - but yeah, having his support throughout and having her mother gently point out the obvious helped her to acknowledge what she already knew, that he's tremendously important to her. And after facing the fear of forging a connection with her parents and siblings, the thought of taking that last step and initiating a relationship with Luke isn't quite as scary as it might have been just a little while ago

And you know, as much as I think it's a shame that Zahn was backed into such a narrative corner that the only way to get Luke and Mara together was a catastrophic moment of Force bonding rather than a normal courtship, I do feel like once Luke and Mara admit to that connection and are officially a couple, in many cases the relationship would progress pretty quickly anyway. They're just such a natural match, and between their own insight and the ability to read each other through the Force, I can see them kind of just zipping through the whole dating stage and just getting on with their life together before long, because it would be so obvious that that's where they were going to wind up. The big obstacle to that at this point in time would be Mara's own psychological damage, but since she just got a crash course in unraveling that and dealing with the fallout, there aren't really many hurdles left between them and the admission that yeah, they're going to spend their lives together

Retroactive guilt; victory is mine! I'm not going to lie, I am so, so proud of this story and my OCs.This is my headcanon for Mara's background too, and always will be even if Zahn himself wrote something different.

Heh, I have a whole 'verse of my very own

*writes like the wind*

I do like him! He's just....very murdery

 

Just dropping in to say I adore this fic (and thank you to @WarmNyota_SweetAyesha for recommending it!). I love the amount of insight you have into Mara's character, how she can compartmentalize her traumatic childhood and remain functional, and her core qualities that allow her to be a fundamentally good person when she is no longer under Palpatine's control.

Corissa, Nico, Ronan, and Nadira have such vivid personalities, and I really enjoyed getting to know them. Oh, and of course, so many Mara/Luke squeeeee! moments! There's so much to love, and I'm delighted that you've kept on with this storyline in other fics-- I can't wait to read them!

 

@UltramassiveUbersue

Whoops, I totally thought I had already replied to this

Thank you! Back in Yon Olden Days, my group of friends and I would joke that I had a Ph.D in Mara Studies She's by far my favorite character and Zahn is by far my favorite SW author, so I've read her books many times and given a great deal of thought to her personality, and always try to keep my characterization of her firmly rooted in her creator's portrayal of her. Zahn accomplished something amazing in his creation of a character with such realistic depth and nuance and complexity as Mara, and it's really important to me to stay true to how he writes her. I'm very glad it worked in this story especially, when she faced a situation so different from anything she dealt with in the EU.

And of course I'm so, so pleased that the Jades are compelling, both because the whole story would collapse if they weren't, and because they were my first OCs, after years and years of being sure that I could never write OCs at all And Luke and Mara are always and forever the OTP dearest to my heart and my favorite to write

I'm very glad you enjoyed the fic, and thanks so much for the lovely feedback!