Beyond - Legends The Walls We Hide Behind (L/M, AU, post-VotF, Angstober 2023, Starset Roulette Challenge)

Title: The Walls We Hide Behind
Author: Gabri_Jade
Timeframe: New Republic era, post-VotF
Characters: Luke Skywalker, Mara Jade
Genre: angst, drama, low-level creeping horror

Summary: All they want is to be together.

Notes: This is a response to both the Angstober Challenge and the Starset Roulette Challenge.

The relevant Angstober prompts are: No. 2: “Love opened a mortal wound. In agony, I worked the blade to make it deeper.”
Heartsick | In Our Dreams | “Please don’t look at me that way.” (I changed out the dialogue on this one for the alternative prompt of ”Please.”)

No. 13: “I would split open my heart with a knife, place you within and seal my wound, that you might dwell there and never inhabit another”
Obsession | In a Shallow Grave | “Are you afraid of me?”

The Starset Roulette Challenge is the amazing song Everglow, which gave me the perfect vibes for this plot bunny and which you should absolutely listen to. Title comes from the lyrics of another Starset song, Die For You. You should listen to that one, too

Thanks to @ViariSkywalker and @Mira_Jade for the prompts, @vader_incarnate for being my beloved resident DE expert, and Vi again for her stellar beta work

---

It’s a comfort, at first.

That’s a surprise to you—like everything else about this new development, really. Had someone told you beforehand that you would find yourself in a profound Force bond with Luke Skywalker, of all people—

Well. It’s not like it hadn’t occurred to you that the two of you could someday become more than you were, but your imagining had never stretched so far as this, this mind-on-mind closeness, the intimacy of shared thoughts and emotions and memories.

You grew up dependent upon another—oh no, not like this; Palpatine had access to your mind, but if it had been within his power to flay you open like a specimen, with every vein and nerve exposed, then he had never taken advantage of it—and when that bond shattered, leaving you empty and aching, you fought and clawed your way to autonomy, building at last a life that was fully your own, and you prized that independence above all else. Never would you have believed yourself willing to compromise it.

Not, of course, that you specifically chose this course on Nirauan. Circumstances chose it for you. And it is overwhelming sometimes, even now. You both assumed that the intensity would fade with time, once the life and death pressure that initially forged the bond was itself in the past.

But it hasn’t, and now you navigate a new way of living, with your minds commingled, your thoughts jostling against his, occasionally overcome with an emotion for which you can find no cause until you think, oh—or was that him? It can be hard to tell—and realize that it’s not yours at all.

He remembers sniper practice now: at the age of only eight, and small for that age besides, the blaster is an unsteady weight that drags his wrists down, marring his aim, and he holds his elbows tight against his sides and braces his gun hand with the other as his tutors have instructed him, and he knows the thrill of triumph when, despite those difficulties, his shot hits its mark.

You remember watching the stars: a multitude beyond numbering adorns the vast black desert night while the day’s heat slowly leaches from the sand beneath you, as you think restlessly of all there is yet to see in the galaxy and how will you ever reach it and your uncle calls for you to come inside so that you can go to sleep and wake up tomorrow to do exactly the same things that you did today and yesterday and every yesterday before that; there’s more to life than this, surely?

It’s a mental and emotional mirror held up to the rest of your newly joined life, where you now share a space that was once yours—his?—alone, where you occasionally bump into each other just for the sheer novelty of rearranging your existence in order to accommodate another, and everyone assures you that this is normal, every new couple has to find their own balance, and after all, has there ever been anything the two of you couldn’t overcome together?

And together is what you want, and what he wants. Together is what has infused your life with joy and given deeper meaning to each day and opened new horizons toward the future. Together is exhilaration and passion and contentment, with the darkness and damage of the past dissipating as it spreads itself thin, stretched between two minds and hearts now, shared between you rather than held close and hidden separately.

And you love him, you know that. With all that you are, you know that.

He loves you equally, and knows that you love him.

This new love and the joy that it brings you both is beautiful and precious and rare and worth any effort, any sacrifice.

So the ever-glowing bond between you, that keeps each of you forever with the other, is a comfort.

At first.

---

In those first days and weeks and months, you’re happier than you’ve ever been, happier than you ever realized you could be.

You’ve known happiness before, of course. You have your family, and friends, and students, and a purpose in life, and you had supposed that you could be content in a life that served others without thought for a more personal happiness.

But now she shares your life—and heart, and mind—and everything that you once believed you would never have for yourself is yours, a beloved companion beside you always and an already cherished future unfurling before you.

It’s what you’ve always wanted, this connection; you have never been one to desire solitude. You remember the hollow despair of those days, the aloneness void of purpose that would never—could never—end, because what was left to give you purpose—YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER—the accusation echoing through your mind even in sleep, it was your fault that everything was lost, your fault your fault your fault—

No, that one is hers, not yours—you tilt your head, focusing; you’re sure that’s not yours.

Your thoughts and memories and emotions are communal now, like two tributaries that join to create a larger river, and discerning which drop within the greater whole originated from which individual stream can be a challenge.

The all-consuming melding on Nirauan was unsettling enough when it first came into being, even though the pressure that fused them together like discrete lumps of carbon crystallizing into a singular diamond in the span of a heartbeat left them no attention to spare toward analysis of the phenomenon. It lessened somewhat in the immediate aftermath—or did it? It seemed to, but then, they had still been in mortal danger: kicking against that apparent fate, true, yet assuming that their deaths were near at hand regardless; and the comfort of that nearness, the support and understanding and friendship and love that they’d so successfully and stupidly evaded for ten long years had been a thread of hope and stability to which they could cling. Perhaps they would drown in a cave beneath the surface of an unfamiliar world far from friends or family, but if so they would at least drown together.

Now, released from that impossible weight and returned to normal life, you expected it to fade further, perhaps into some sort of background awareness of each other, albeit more heightened than that which you feel for the presence of others.

And yet…

It isn’t fading. And it isn’t a mere background awareness.

It is something far more.

You know each other down to the smallest detail now, two people sharing one mind. Sometimes it gets crowded.

You are happy despite that. She shines with a radiant beauty and always has, a beauty that goes right to her core, and you are happy—beyond happy—to have her in your life, buried darknesses and all. You have your own darknesses that she is now finding ways to encompass and live with, just as you are with hers. That is what it is to be alive at all; everyone must find ways to live with the damage they have incurred—and inflicted—and find meaning and joy in the fathomless labyrinth of light and shadows that is sentient existence.

To share the weight of her darknesses as she now shares yours is a small price to pay; you would endure far greater pain to never again be without her.

So long as you are with her, you are happy.

At first.

---

“You learn and you move on.” You know this, you have said this, but you discover that it is far easier to learn and move on from a lifetime’s accumulation of experience and memory acquired at the usual slow day to day rate than it is from one that is implanted in your mind in the space between breaths.

You realize that it has taken you years to truly move on from many of your own traumas—you realize that you still haven’t managed it with others—yet now you must somehow learn and move on from all of his as well, when you haven’t even really absorbed them yet, knowing is so much different from living, you know Luke Skywalker, yes, but now you are living him as well—the heat of twin suns on your skin the smoke rising from their charred bones the falling vacant robe the fireball that was your best friend blood on the snow the cauterized stump of your arm I am your father hear me Father please—your mind stretches painfully to encompass the entirety of a life not your own and your heart catches against unfamiliar turmoil; what was well-trodden and subdued to him is now fresh and bleeding for you—

—the bond between you still glows, feverishly now, intensifying a little more every day.

---

“I mean regardless.” You meant it then and you mean it now, you want to be with her, will do anything to ensure—endure—that and never look back. Yet every day—every hour, every minute—you count the cost of what has happened to you. The damage you have both sustained over the years is now spread between you, halved and doubled, a field of landmines that each stumbles upon, each explosion leaving you bloodier than before.

There is so much that you are still healing from, so many wounds that will never fully close, tender scars without number around whose vulnerabilities you habitually tread softly, only to snag against the trip wire of one of hers—the shadowy figures of your forgotten parents begging for mercy the endless training excel excel excel never fail never fall short blood on your hands the Emperor’s voice in your mind lost without him YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER not like that my decision my reasons—your mind is awash with the agony of betrayal and a life built on lies, your heart aching for a stolen childhood and family that can never be regained, what was a steady but mapped undercurrent for her is now a lurking riptide that drags you away from shore and into the harrowing depths—

—you wonder if drowning on Nirauan might have been easier than drowning within yourself.

---

You dream.

You dream of a darkness that runs thickly through your veins and pools, viscous, in your lungs and sits bitterly on your tongue, a darkness you’ve willingly embraced; darkness on a world bathed in disconcerting subaqueous light, a darkness that drains and animates all who come under its thrall.

You know this place, you know the man who rules here, with dozens of replicas in dozens of cloning cylinders, the man who once dominated your father—I found knowledge there…all the dark things Father knew so well—

And you know your father, and the darkness that he willingly embraced.

You had never realized before just how far that darkness went—there are too many of them what are we going to do you turned her against me I see through the lies of the Jedi this is the end for you my master—the depths of the anger and hatred and it envelops you now as you walk the same path. It is your destiny—you remember your futile defiance, and your heart curdles with the inevitability even as something within you thrills to the power you now wield, the life you left behind a fading memory as the Force answers your increasingly corrupted call. The future beckons you, black as armor, seductive as a lover’s touch, and you revel in it while something within you shrivels in despair—

With a jolt severe enough to spasm your muscles, you awaken to find yourself staring wide-eyed into darkness. Your breath catches sharply before you realize that it is the ordinary darkness of night and that you are staring at your own bedroom ceiling.

The emotions of the dream do not dissipate; they continue to surge through you with a frightening immediacy. You might as well still be back on Byss—

You unconsciously clutch at the bedcovers in your distress; find yourself gripping an arm instead and turn, startled, to see your husband sleeping restlessly beside you.

You have never been on Byss.

These incidents are escalating, both in frequency and in intensity. At the beginning, you thought they would fade. A little later on, you thought you could adapt to them. You do not think either of these things anymore.

Of all the wounds you have suffered in your life, you suspect that this will be the fatal one. Anguished, you press yourself against Luke’s side, burying your face against his shoulder when he also wakes and wraps his arms around you.

You cannot give him up now. Whether the cost is your sanity or your very life, you will pay it willingly.

---

You dream.

You dream of a darkness that permeates your life so deeply that you never see it for what it is, a darkness that has been the background hum of your childhood and young adulthood and the foundation of all that you are; darkness that emanates from the man who has defined you nearly from infancy, and to whom you look in all things.

You remember the psychic detonation of his death, the splintering of your very identity, the excavation of your soul and the years of aimless drifting, scrabbling for survival in a suddenly hostile galaxy, only one anchor left to you—

—most of all, you dream of death.

You dream of death in a thousand different varieties, obsessively planning every possibility, every slice of the knife, every snap of bones, every option available to you—and you were taught so many, you have used so many, you know their efficacy so well—to leave his eyes glassy and vacant. You dream of it at night, you wake with the rehearsed scenarios still running through your mind, you heat your breakfast and think of the torment that could be inflicted through incineration, you wield spanners on recalcitrant engines and ponder the advantages of blunt force trauma, you wander the shops to gather what little you can afford for dinner and consider strangulation. You can no longer truly remember a time when death did not occupy your every thought; it is the closest thing you have to a permanent companion—

With a shudder that rattles your teeth, you jerk awake, surrounded by a darkness that echoes your bleak thoughts. Your eyes shift rapidly, assessing the danger, but around you is only silence.

Silence, and trembling warmth at your side.

Startled, you turn your head and are confronted with yourself. There is a long moment of bewilderment before you realize.

You have never planned murder, much less your own.

This is happening more often, and each time it is harder to delineate your own consciousness. Initially, you believed this melding would diminish. After a while, you assured her that you would both find your way through it. Now you wonder how much more either of you can take.

If the bond that saved both of your lives has left you with lacerations that will not heal, you will wrap her within yourself and keep her as safe as you may; she is yours and you are hers and nothing matters more than that.

You wrap your arms around your wife and murmur into her hair words that you no longer believe, knowing only that you love her forever and always and no matter the cost.

---

You cling to each other with desperation now, a double planet revolving around a barycenter of shared pain, orbits decaying, collision inevitable.

---

“Something’s wrong,” the familiar voice says, and you stop to listen.

The voice is low, not meant to be overheard. It receives no answer, at least none that you can hear. “No,” the voice continues. “I understand that, but this isn’t normal. She’s not normal. I’ve worked with her for a decade, Leia, I think I know—”

Another pause. Your mind drifts, reaching for his—

“When was the last time you spoke with Luke?”

—Luke, you think, and he answers wordlessly before you have finished forming the name. You lean into the ever-present embrace, comforted by your entangled awarenesses, twining together like interlaced fingers, knowing that his heart beats in time to yours regardless of distance, feeling your lungs lift with his own breaths.

“I’m not sure I’d take the children,” the voice continues, even lower now. “Just go yourself. You’ll see what I mean.”

Children, he thinks, and you respond with an affectionate caress. You will have children, a home and family of your own, the sort of life together that you had long assumed beyond your reach. Your shared consciousness swirls with contemplation—

A door slides open, followed by a sharp intake of breath and footsteps coming to a halt. “Ah, Mara,” Karrde says, and you open your eyes.

You consider his visage—dark hair instead of sandy blonde; a beard instead of clean-shaven—his concern registering fleetingly before you turn away.

“Mara,” he says again. “Please.”

You continue walking, trailing your fingers against Luke’s, hardly noticing that his flesh is cool and smooth and metallic—like a bulkhead—or that your eyes have drifted shut again, or that your chin lifts as though you are bobbing weightlessly on the surface of an intangible sea, knowing only the rush of his blood through your body.

---

“He’s been like this for days,” the voice says.

“Weeks,” another adds.

“You should have told me,” says a third, this one dearly loved enough to draw your attention briefly away—

—but only briefly, and you reach back for Mara’s grasp, warm and unwavering. Her hair brushes against your cheek, your thoughts intermingling soothingly, her pulse singing against yours—

“Luke?”

You open your eyes to see the return gaze coming from brown eyes instead of green.

Leia takes your hand; flinches when you calmly pull back, looking away to the sky where you know a ship will soon appear. You no longer need words to understand these things; language is sluggish and dull compared to the soul-deep intuition that guides you now.

Karrde is bringing her back out of fear, you know—and she knows, and we know—but the reasons are irrelevant. She is returning.

“Luke,” your sister continues. “We can find an answer; we’ll look in the archives—”

Your eyes close again, heedless, as you await her return, already clasping her close. You have found all the answers you need.

---

They are afraid, we know. Karrde and Leia and Kam and all of them. We cannot imagine why, and yet—

“Are you afraid of me?” we ask.

“Never,” we reply.

---

The voices continue intermittently, rising and falling like the wind. We are no longer listening.

---

Sometimes there is quiet laced through with a tension we can feel but no longer care for. There are worlds of beauty within pain, we have realized, and the ghosts that slink through the undulant shadows cannot harm us.

---

We are together, yet still not whole.

But we can fix that.

---

Dimly, as if through a dense fog, we sense that the quiet has taken on an uneasy quality, edging swiftly toward frantic. We hesitate, awareness beyond our own mind seeping through for the first time in—how long? Time is a fluid concept, and one we have not bothered with for a while. But now something approaches that we once knew, a void—

No, many voids, bubbles within our perception that creep closer, creating a perimeter. Realization dawns—

---

We scream and scream and scream.

---

We awaken to more voices.

We ache. One mind within two bodies glances around, translating the resulting stereo vision for optic nerves that are not yet so joined. We are in a small room, bare save for the bed we are in and a rudimentary refresher station. Slowly, carefully, we push ourself up.

The distant murmuring pauses, then: “They’re awake.”

Summoning strength through sheer force of will, we step out of bed—

—and land in a crumpled heap on the floor, knees giving way beneath our weight.

A wave of urgency. “Someone needs to stop them—”

“How? You saw what happened with the ysalamiri. We almost lost them—and that was after we pulled them apart.”

The voices don’t matter. We are all that matters, and though we can sense the bubbles around us, their circle is wide now, no longer rending us.

Determination firing, we crawl slowly along the cold floor, the bond that has become fusion sparking with recognition as we draw closer, until we bump up against the wall that stands between us, where we push ourself to a sitting position, stretching out a hand to claw it down—

—and our hand remains merely splayed against itself, our eyes falling shut with both exhaustion and relief.

“There are tranquilizers.”

“You know what they’d do if we got near, or even if we used darts.”

“If we were quick with the ysalamiri, just long enough to knock them out…”

“Risky. I’d only recommend it if they start getting agitated again.”

We feel a tickle on our skin, and with an effort we lift our lids just enough to disinterestedly watch the thin trail of blood wend its way from the stitched gash near our wrist down the length of our forearm, passing the other stitched wounds smeared with bacta, until it pools briefly at the bend of our elbow before dripping to the floor.

“You weren’t so hesitant about using the ysalamiri earlier.”

“They’d begun to cut each other open; we had no choice—”

Our head leans tiredly against the wall, our eyes on the tiny puddle of blood in front of our knees as we fold our legs beneath us. They don’t know, the voices; they don’t understand what it is to be separated from yourself by something so easily removed as skin.

“Now what?”

The voice sounds as weary as we feel. We let our eyes close again, spreading our fingers wide. The wall is an arduous obstacle, and we are too drained to do more.

“We can’t leave them like this…”

“We can’t leave them as they were, either. They’ll dissect each other.”

“Do you have to put it that way?”

“How would you like me to put it?”

We ignore them, focusing only on us, on the unity that is restored to us through the Force, on the undeniable sense of our hands pressed against each other on either side of the wall. We understand now; we understand what we have to do. We had been so close.

“There has to be something we can do—” The voice catches, then forges ahead. “To leave them like this, it’s—it’s…”

“As long as they’re alive and in one piece, there’s hope. Tionne is pulling every record, looking for any precedent for a bond like this.”

The wall is hard and unyielding, but we know that it can fall. All walls can fall. We only need to pull them down ourself.

We can do that.

We have done that.

“Luke and Mara hadn’t heard of anything like it. If they hadn’t…”

“We’ll find something, Leia. We will. They’re too strong to let this stop them.”

We will regain our strength. It’s only a matter of time.

“That’s what worries me.”

Then all the walls will fall.

 

MIIIIIIIINE

 

Getting into the minds of Luke and Mara with this. Beautiful and angsty too. All that has happened to them

 

Okay, so I know this is referring to psychological/telepathic flaying, but after having read the whole story a few times, this feels eerily like foreshadowing for the extreme measures Luke and Mara will eventually attempt to take.

I guess we should be thankful that Palpatine never was able to do anything of the sort to Mara - or at least that he never tried, eek.

(Palpatine and Mezzon would have gotten on famously, wouldn't they? )

I love the juxtaposition of these two memories, both for how different they are (and yet mirrored so well), and for how clearly they showcase Mara and Luke's personalities and upbringings. Plus the writing is just plain lovely to read.

I still really love the phrasing of this; there's a domestic quality to it that echoes the sort of adjustments new couples make when setting up a home. It feels just right for a bond between them.

This sounds good and romantic at first blush, but there's something about the wording that hints at the problems to come, and I love that.

Everglow.

And here we go with the creepy melding, eeeee.

(Also, your fault )

Such a pretty and evocative description.

As is this one! Your descriptions throughout this fic are excellent and really help the reader see and feel Luke and Mara's bond.

This sentiment is powerful and romantic and even sweet (bittersweet?), but I love how this is coming on the heels of the worrying realization that the bond is becoming stronger and "sometimes it gets crowded"; so then it also reads like a denial of the potential problems, just as much as it is a heartfelt declaration of their love and devotion.

I love it so much, Gabri. So many pretty, awful words, gah.

I love the parallel of ensure with endure.

This whole section is excellent, especially the stream-of-consciousness bits, but let's talk for one second about the shadowy figures of your forgotten parents begging for mercy aaaaahhhhh Ronan and Nadira!!!

And now we come to the Dark Empire portion of our current madness.

I just can't get over how visceral this is. The darkness feels like a slime that won't wash away. And the detail about subaqueous light... *chef's kiss*

aaaaahhhhh Vader memories!! And Mara experiencing Vader memories!!!

eeeeeeee!!! (and can I note that I'm glad you didn't reveal that it was Byss at the beginning of this scene? I loved reading the scene and piecing together what it probably was, and then having it confirmed here - along with the confirmation that it's Mara experiencing these memories, not Luke)

seriously, this is all creepy as hell, good job

CREEPY AS HELL

aw

Ugh, the metaphor is so good and so depressing

Understatement

Yeah, I wouldn't take the children anywhere near this mess, good call

You say so much with so little, and it makes it all the more effective

This part really helps sell how far into madness they've begun to spiral, how dissociated they are from reality. So well done.

There is something highly unsettling about this image.

aw, poor Leia. It makes me wonder how this must have felt for her, not just as a loved one witnessing this deterioration, but as Luke's Force-sensitive twin.

WE.

I love how perfectly "Everglow" fit with the story you wanted to tell, and how you incorporated the imagery and feel of the lyrics and music into the narrative. I'm going to have to read it again while listening to the song...

Also, your prose is once again gorgeous.

AAAAHHHHHH

YET. *horror cringe*

I know a good doctor these two might want to see. Well, maybe not a good doctor...

Look, I know you wrote Perversity of Life back in the day, but this is all next level horrifying and I'm so proud.

THE CREEPIEST AAAAAAHHHHHH

(but seriously, imagine Luke and Mara meeting Mezzon in this 'verse )

gah, this is so damn ominous and creepy.

Where's that endlessly screaming bot when you need it?

*insert psychic screaming here*

You really knocked this one out of the park. I'm so proud of your dark brilliance, Gabri.


Mira already used this gif, but that's okay, it bears repeating:

 

Now this is what I read fanfic for!

Just... beautiful prose. I love it.

I love this dialogue and the way that Mara overhears it, and how in her obsessive and impaired state, she lacks the insight to perceive the danger in what is happening to her.

Mara's derealization here is truly scary, and it feels very authentic to me. The sense of bliss is so profound and overwhelming that she doesn't care that she is unmoored from reality and getting worse, even though she is by nature a sensible and practical person.

Here is the point where they stop interacting with the world outside of themselves and each other.

I love how you convey this chilling dread simultaneously with the characters' euphoria; it reminds me a lot of my internal struggle to stabilize Bipolar Disorder before receiving a diagnosis and treatment, and the utterly bizarre experience of other people asking if you're okay when you think you feel awesome. You've done an amazing job with this story.

Again, absolutely gorgeous prose!

Gaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh!

So horrifying, and so amazingly done! This easily has my vote for best fic of the year.

 

Oh my freaking goodness.

*picks up jaw from floor*

I've been pretty vocal about my dislike for the 2nd-person POV in the past, and generally speaking I'm not entirely sold on 4th-person either, but you used both of these to such great effect here – basically I cannot think how this fic would work in any other way. Masterful writing, this was.

There isn't much I can say that Vi and Mira haven't said already, so I'll just reiterate how flabbergasted I was at the transition from "you" to "we" half-way through the story. What started out as an exploration of potentially disturbing aspects of the mind bond for Mara but also for Luke evolved into something extremely creepy even as you were still writing in 2nd-person, but once you switched to "we" and they become a danger to themselves and to others around them... shivers shivers shivers! The conclusion feels like such a dead end for everyone involved, it's very difficult to imagine any sort of positive outcome to this story.

This has got to be the angstiest thing I've read in a while, and there's a lot of quality angst posted on the boards. Just. In. Awe.

 

UTTER FASCINATION! You turned what has always been a source of delight (L//M's force bond) into something very plausibly self-damaging for each/both. The "we" POV really sinks that point in compellingly.

 

@ViariSkywalker

That's right

@Mira_Jade

lolol

@earlybird-obi-wan

Beautiful and angsty is just what I was going for, thank you!

@ViariSkywalker

It does, doesn't it? That was unintentional, but fortuitous

Given how he jammed that last command into her brain in his last moments and effectively hijacked her thoughts and emotions for five-plus years, I'd guess that he probably could have if he wanted to I think that Mara escaped a variety of terrible fates at his hands simply by being so very good at what she was trained to do, because let's be real, Palpatine has no problem at all with discarding someone who's no longer of use to him, and doing so in exquisitely painful ways. After all, once Luke was in front of him and Palpatine thought he had a chance at harnessing a new round of Skywalker power but younger, he was actively goading him to kill Vader. Quite the reward for nearly a quarter-century of service, to have one's master trying to arrange your murder via your own long-thought-dead son - and then, of course, the PT came along and we see that he already did much the same thing to Dooku. Mara simply hadn't outlived her usefulness by the time of Palpatine's own death, otherwise she very likely would have faced something along those lines eventually.

I rather think they would, yes; Mezzon would so clearly have zero ambition beyond his own experiments that he'd be no threat at all to Palpatine. He'd just dutifully carve up everyone Palpatine handed over (and if Mezzon had lived during Palpatine's reign, that probably would have been every Force-sensitive anyone discovered) and document everything he learned and Palpatine would have the simultaneous benefits of an obedient and non-threatening underling, the information about Force-sensitivity that Mezzon discovered and which could potentially be put to use in ways that could serve him, and a particularly painful end for other Force-sensitives.

Building the narrative for this story was so interesting; really the only point of it all was to show how this bond, if it went wrong, could have potentially degraded Luke and Mara's individuality until it was effectively gone. But that means both establishing that individuality first, as a contrast, and a super tight focus wherein nothing outside of them matters. I found the mirroring to be a really effective tactic on both counts; helps to fill out a narrative that never really acknowledges any happenings outside these two minds while also demonstrating how distinct their individuality was before this.

And while I'm always striving for lovely writing in general, it was so much more important for this story than most of my others, because this entire thing is pure vibes. It had to be super atmospheric and progressively more otherworldly to properly carry the premise, so I'm very pleased that it worked

Yay! We don't know exactly how Luke and Mara experienced their Force bond; Zahn himself only addressed it in VotF and SQ, and in SQ it's nowhere near as vivid as it was in the moment it was forged, and they don't have full telepathic "have a fully articulated conversation" abilities in the sense that Mara did with Palpatine, but clearly it's a step above and beyond the level at which other Jedi sense each other.

Actually, they were already a step beyond that even before the bond was established; earlier in the book Luke reflected that:

The communication they had together - their ability to sense each other's thoughts and emotions - had been so close that he'd simply assumed that was as strong as it got.

He'd been wrong. He'd been very wrong.

It was an exhilarating experience; and yet, at the same time, a somewhat intimidating one as well. He'd experienced close-mind contact with other people on occasion, but never to the same level as he was experiencing now. Mara's thoughts and emotions seemed to flow over him, their level and intensity now seemingly limited only by her personal barriers, as his own thoughts and emotions flowed the other direction back to her.​

So basically, yeah, what I'm taking from this - and then the addition of the bond on top of this - is that Luke and Mara's mental connection is far beyond what most Jedi have with each other, and therefore there'd just have to be a breaking-in period where they essentially got used to tripping over each other's thoughts and feelings, even after the initial intensity of the bond faded a bit.

Which, of course, only highlights the potential of just how wrong this could go if the bond increased in intensity instead of fading

Aw yeah

I love that song so much I'm honestly not big on song prompts in general, but this was so insanely perfect as the soundtrack for this story, the music, the lyrics, the vocals, the pacing, everything. That song was a big part of what finally got this story out of my head and onto the page, so thanks for that

I don't see this aspect addressed very often, but I really think that was the cruelest part of the last command. Mara's entire life was Palpatine and the Empire; she believed in both of them with all her heart and dedicated her whole life to their service - including routinely risking her life; she wasn't in some safe office doing paperwork - and Palpatine shoved a lie into her head that made her believe that it was her failure that resulted in his death and the collapse of the Empire. (What was that I said earlier about the repayment Palpatine had bestowed on Vader and Dooku? ) Mara was twenty-one when the Empire fell. Twenty-one. And she believed the whole thing was her fault. If she hadn't failed to kill Luke Skywalker at Jabba's, none of this would have happened. Barely even an adult, she spent five whole years believing that the loss of everything she'd ever believed in - not to mention galactic stability - was her fault.

This girl's been through some serious trauma, Vi.

I really liked this one

Aw, shucks

So gothic

Heh, "so many pretty, awful words" is such a good summation of this fic

I do toooooo

Endless thanks to @vader_incarnate for reintroducing DE to my conscious awareness and always having answers to my questions about it so that I don't have to track down a copy for myself

Luke has his fair share of trauma too, but this fic's assessment of their individual traumas is both a little condensed and focuses most on the ones that affected them both, especially as the story progresses, and divided between them, that's DE and the last command. Plus I think that DE would be the most disorienting and disturbing of Luke's traumas for Mara to live, because she knew Palpatine and Vader so well and grew up in the shadow of the dark side and would have been so incredibly wary of it immediately post-TLC, after she'd realized what a lie her whole life had been because of Palpatine. (She says in VotF that she's not convinced the Emperor Reborn was really him, which honestly still makes me cackle because it feels like Zahn getting the last word in on the discordance between TTT and DE, but even so, Luke thought it was him, so how much of a betrayal must that have felt like, for Mara to watch him choose to learn darkness from the man who he knew perfectly well had hurt and used her so badly?) So, yeah - Luke gets to experience planning his own murder, and Mara gets to experience Luke's terrible sojourn on Byss.

Elli's mention of that DE line about Luke learning "the dark things his father had known so well" really paid off with this fic Although Mara surely killed people during that time who didn't deserve it, within the skewed information and worldview that Palpatine fed her she was really trying hard the whole time to only punish those who did deserve it (which I think would have been another layer of betrayal for her once she realized the truth; that she had really believed that she was an arbiter of justice and that had meant so much to her but that had been a lie too), so to in any way experience Vader's knowing and willing murder of innocents would be another pretty specific trauma for her.

I'm so pleased that the slow reveal worked

Heh, this comes from a very specific inspiration in HttE, when Mara was about to kill Luke on Myrkr:

"Are you sure you're not letting your emotions get in the way of your judgment?" he asked.

He hadn't thought her eyes could get any harder than they already were. He was wrong. "Let me tell you something, Skywalker," she said in a voice almost too soft for him to hear. "I've wanted to kill you for a long time. I dreamed about your death every night for most of that first year. Dreamed it, plotted it - I must have run through a thousand scenarios, trying to find exactly the right way to do it. You can call it a cloud on my judgment if you want to; I'm used to it by now. It's the closest thing I've got to a permanent companion."
​

We see it - not exactly glossed over here, but as a summation of something in the past. But what would it have been to live it, to spend so long contemplating murder, even in your dreams? And by someone who knows very well all sorts of ways to kill someone? This is trauma too, to be so soaked in thoughts of death. And, of course, creepy as hell is what I was going for anyway

It's one thing for Luke to know that Mara once planned to kill him; I have to think it would be something else entirely to experience her thoughts and emotions as she did so.

But of course Luke still loves her regardless

Even though that's not going to get them a happy ending here

I love this particular line so much, so it's very gratifying that others have found it good and depressing as well

Understatements can be very powerful when deployed well

I can't remember the exact wording of that bit of writing advice you read somewhere, about leaving artfully crafted blank spaces for the reader to fill in often being more effective than spelling it out? That worked out really well with this story.

Exactly - there's clearly no children and home and family and ordinary happy life in store for them now, but they're no longer aware enough of anything outside each other's emotions and desires to realize it. But this is, again, something that I'm very pleased was effective in the execution (heh ) because the hardest part about this story was always how to not only depict a descent into madness, but how to depict two people genuinely blurring into one. It was ultimately the POV that was the key; the weird balance of intimacy and distance that second person offers was so much better than first or third. But it was still a challenge to accomplish well, so I'm extremely relieved that it worked

Excellent

Yup

Second person was the key that made the fic as a whole work; fourth person was the mic drop that made the final melding work. So in a very real sense this story owes its existence to you for the Starset prompt, Elli for the DE knowledge, and Mira for giving you a fourth person POV prompt in the KR and introducing me to that possibility. I may have had the idea before all of that, but I couldn't find a way to make it fully work until I had all those pieces in place

I'm telling you, if you read this story with Everglow playing - at least if you read it at my speed - the music will exactly support the emotions of the story each step of the way. I even always get to "we scream and scream and scream" just as the screaming section of the song hits. I love it so much, it's so perfect.

I think my angst fics are probably the prettiest-worded of anything I write, actually

That's right

Ugh, he'd do it, too

You know, PoL was actually one of my earliest fics. Does this mean that deep down I'm a born angstmonger myself, or was the pervading angst of the FanFic forum's offerings during the NJO partly to blame? Hmm hmm hmm

I do think, though, that part of the reason I was able to write this was that I'd been so recently reading the gorgeousness of Elli's and your deep black angst, because you two are really masters at making darkness beautiful, and being able to absorb the ways you both accomplish that helped me tap into my own style of angst. So I am very very proud that you are proud

Gosh, but I love that line

Mezzon would be so happy, Vi

Aw, shucks

LOLOL

@UltramassiveUbersue

Thank you, that's one of my favorite lines

Yay! Once the melding-to-the-point-of-disintegration really begins, I knew I'd need to show some outside perspective along with Luke and Mara's to demonstrate the progression of it all, but I also knew that I wanted this fic to stay firmly in their own POVs, so it was a little bit tricky to show the uneasiness and fear of the observers from Luke and Mara's increasingly impaired perception. I'm very pleased that it worked

Thank you! Truly scary is a huge compliment for this story

And this is a much bigger compliment, thank you so much! Obviously no one in the real world is dealing with a Force bond in overdrive, but because the symptoms have some overlap with real disorders, I'm very relieved that the portrayal feels authentic to someone who has firsthand experience with such, as opposed to superficial or exploitative.

I distinctly remember the Everglow line that inspired this one, so it's only fair to give credit where credit is due: this is built off "you'll never know the beauty I see when you open your shadows". I admittedly embellished on it a bit, but I thought that line really summarized the draw Luke and Mara feel toward each other at this point.

Aw, thank you, I'm so glad you enjoyed it

@Mira_Jade

lololol and here I am SO MUCH LATER THAN THAT with replies I always show up eventually

Heh, I did like that summary

Look, seriously, Mira, I was googling definitions of the horror genre before posting this to decide if I could even call it such. I knew it was angst, but I read and watch very little that most people would consider horror, and I honestly didn't know if it qualified I came across discussions of psychological horror and decided that it did qualify for that, at least, but - well, clearly I underestimated the impact this story was going to have on readers

It really, really is

*cackles*

Why, thank you

You know, I certainly have a reasonably consistent writing style, but I find that each story requires its own rhythm and atmosphere. That sounds like a very obvious thing when you just say it straight out like that, but it can take a bit of trial and error to find exactly the voice that a specific story needs. This one needed those interruptions. So, basically, I'm glad it was effective

Like I said to Vi, I found the mirroring such a useful technique to establish their differences as individuals, while the fact that they're experiencing each other's memories serves as a nice bit of foreshadowing as to the bond's eventual overdrive that dissolves that individuality.

(Hee! )

It creeps! It starts out low-level and creeps along until we get to mutual vivisection!

I know exactly what you mean, and it is high praise to receive all on its own, thank you so much

And A+ reading as well; those words in particular were very consciously chosen for just that effect

EVERGLOOOOWWW

ngl, Mira: I remain extremely pleased with my own writing on this story

Aw yeah

This really is one of my own favorite details, too. For one thing, it's true; for another, like "ensure - endure", "incurred - and inflicted" shows the double-edged nature of this whole thing (the damage each of them has incurred is now inflicted on the other), while I felt that the inherent duality also helped to emphasize their individuality within the bond at this point, and by comparison, how that withers away as the meld becomes more and more literal.

Maybe a little

It really would be, wouldn't it? Because it can be hard enough sometimes to even hear another person's trauma, and Luke and Mara both have a lot of serious trauma in their lives. If you suddenly had to not just know the levels of loss and betrayal they've each faced, but actually experience the thoughts and emotions that go along with that, it's going to be orders of magnitude harder. And we're not just talking one or two bad incidents, we're talking an entire lifetime of really extreme trauma. I mean, we're so used to these stories, but think about it: Luke and Mara were both orphaned. Luke found his adopted parents' murdered bodies. Mara was stolen from her parents at such a young age that she can't remember them. Luke's father cut off his hand and dragged him before someone who wanted to either turn or kill him. Mara revered Palpatine for her entire life, only to have him profoundly violate her mind with one final lie that blamed her for everything. And those are just the highlights of what they've each endured. And each of them has, if not entirely healed from all this trauma, at least found ways to deal with it - but neither of them has those coping strategies for the other one's trauma.

And this whole story idea stems from this SQ passage:

And with a sensation Luke still found astonishing, he felt her mind flow into, around, and through his.

For that exquisitely stretched-out moment in time they were truly a single mind, a single spirit poured into two separate bodies. They thought as one; they felt as one; they moved as one.

And their lightsabers struck as one, each of the two glowing blades slashing through its targeted power cable in perfect synchronization.

There was a slight jerk, more imagined than truly felt; and with a decided feeling of anticlimax, the turbolift car began to sink downward. Luke took a deep breath...

As suddenly as it had begun, the melding ended. The sensation of oneness faded away, leaving only the warmth of the memory behind. "There," Mara said. To Luke's ears, her voice sounded a little strained as she, too, worked to regain mental and emotional balance after their moment of unity. "See? No problem."
​

Clearly by the time of SQ, not only has the bond faded from the intense totality of the battle on Nirauan where it sprang into place, but Luke and Mara have a certain level of control over just how far it goes; they can turn up the volume when needed, so to speak. But just as clearly, there's a cost to that as well as a benefit: turning it back down leaves them unbalanced and having to work toward reestablishing their sense of individuality. And we'd already seen that demonstrated in the moment the bond sprang into place on Nirauan, where they really did know each other as fully as this, to the point of being unsure with whom a thought had originated. Thing is, on Nirauan, it faded into something manageable all on its own. In SQ, we see the aftereffects of it, albeit briefly, where they have to work to regain balance.

So naturally, as a fanfic writer, I thought: what if they didn't have that ability to turn it down? What if it went so far that they could no longer separate themselves into distinct individuals? And here we are

Why, thank you

I wouldn't say easy But I'm glad all the work paid off

This is very gratifying

lol

Since Elli agreed that DE supported at least the possibility that Luke could have learned to tap into that bit of crazy, I just couldn't resist

Those bits of physicality seemed to enhance the psychological horror You know, it's progressed far enough to be horrifying for them, but they're also still separate enough that they're capable of recognizing that. Which won't last

Hee

Aw yeah

I'm so pleased that it was traumatizing

I sure hope you have a good case and screen protector

Definitely one of my favorites And as I recall, it replaced something much more mundane. I knew I needed a more atmospheric scene change than what the first draft produced, and fortunately, this appears to have been effective

lol right? Imagine poor Karrde trying to convey to Leia exactly what's going on here when he's only guessing himself

Yup

Indeed

Like I told Vi up there, this is because you gave her that fourth person POV prompt in the KR. It didn't fully click until I'd settled on second person for the majority of this, but one of the big challenges for this idea was always how to fully convey the depth of the melding and just how completely lost to it they are. And once I started with the second person I had a light bulb moment of "oh dang, what if it transitions to fourth once they're totally gone?" And just look how well it worked

Heh, I put so much thought into how to describe exactly what's happening in this moment, only to finally realize that the most effective way was to not describe it at all

It wasn't good stuff, Mira. They are well and truly gone at this point

Why, thank you

What payback? She loves it And you're only giving her ideas

lololol that line came to me as I was supposedly trying to go to sleep; I spent a good deal of time that night writing notes on my phone instead I don't know about you, but I will always come up with the best stuff just before I fall asleep, if I let myself think about my WIPs. Which is a problem, because it means I either stay up even later than usual writing once the ideas come to me, or accept that I'll forget whatever I've thought of by morning

This is a whole lot of pacing for a single one-shot; I'm flattered

Look at you, building up a tolerance for angst

Aw, shucks

I'm pretty sure I've written something fluffy since this Anyway, I'll never out-angst Vi and Elli. I just play at the edges of their sandbox occasionally

@Chyntuck

It didn't work any other way; I started writing it in both third person and first person for each of them, and got nowhere. I couldn't at all capture the atmosphere I wanted for this piece until I tried second person. I think this is only the second time I've written this POV (first time for fourth), but when it works, it works

Yup, honestly, the switch to fourth is this fic's crowning glory (thanks again for introducing me to that, Mira ). I think I could probably have made it work with only second, but not nearly so well. Conveying this sort of descent into madness from the POV of the people who are going mad - especially when they're convinced that they're no such thing - is one of the trickiest things I've ever attempted, and the POV switch was my ace in the hole

And no, there's no positive outcome here. As I've told Vi, I may not write angst as often as some, but when I do, I generally commit

Heh, Vi and Elli are way angstier than me. But it's an honor to join their ranks, even if briefly Thank you!

@WarmNyota_SweetAyesha

Thank you!

@Findswoman

Vulnerablizing is a perfectly cromulent word Those prompt quotes were so perfect, I love them so much Honestly, I loved nearly all of the quotes for that challenge; if only I had more time and fewer existing WIPs I'd angst the place up just with those prompts alone But like I said above, I'd had this idea for a while, based on that SQ passage I quoted to Mira. I just hadn't gotten around to writing it because, y'know, not a lot of extra time and already a bunch of WIPs to work on - plus the whole issue of how to write it with the atmosphere I wanted, since I couldn't make it work with the usual POVs. Then there was the Starset prompt, and these quotes, and the light bulb moment of using second and fourth person, and boom, perfect angst storm

Exactly Now canonically, the experience of absolute melding, where they genuinely couldn't quite tell whose thought was whose, only lasted so long as the battle with the droids in the cavern did. Once Luke and Mara were no longer essentially smashed together in the Force in an immediately life or death situation, it faded back to just an abnormally strong connection. (And you know me, I have all sorts of meta speculation here as to why this happened to Luke and Mara but not every other Jedi who had to work closely together under fire: they're each stronger in the Force than most to begin with, especially Luke with that Skywalker heritage; Mara already has a unique talent for Force communication that could have facilitated it; the whole mess of UST that these two had been dealing with throughout the duology, plus the new level of understanding they'd so recently reached, where they were hovering right on the edge of admitting their feelings for each other. But anyway ) Even then, it was something they had to get used to, sharing thoughts and emotions that intimately all the time.

But what if the bond hadn't faded? None of us understand any other person to that extent, no matter how well we know or love them. We don't experience their thoughts and feelings the way they do. And if you suddenly did, if another person's entire being was suddenly yours as well - I don't think we're built for that. I think a human brain would break, trying to encompass essentially overnight something that took you the entirety of your life to grow into for yourself, and that's even without the huge levels of trauma these two are dealing with.

Yup, the whole thing's a cascading failure, like a runaway nuclear reaction.

Trying to figure out how to show this decline from an observer's POV when I really felt that the narrative needed to stay entirely in Luke and Mara's heads was a huge challenge. Fourth person POV was a huge help

Thank you so much!