Tempered Steel

Summary: She is Mara Jade. OneShot- Luke, Mara. A love story in four parts.

Warning: Will partly be dark and angsty, be warned. May be AU because I don't know much about Mara's past. Does anyone? I didn't read the one book (Choices of One?) which probably has all the information because… Well, because Mara doesn't know Luke then and I love them most together.

Set: Story-unrelated.

Disclaimer: Standards apply. One quotation taken and altered from "Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close" by J.S. Foer. Who cares to know, don't hesitate to ask, who finds it – please tell me so^^

i.

Mara cannot remember her childhood.

When she tries to conjure up names, places and faces, she comes up with a blank. Like a slate that has been wiped clean, a beach untouched by telltale signs of human life. A meticulous hand has cleaned away the chalk, waves have carried off footprints. Her life starts in her twelveth year: in a city unlike and yet like Coruscant, huge, wide, alien, the people around her are strangers and the places she stays in remain strange. She has many names because nobody knows her real one; she has many faces because she is being trained to be a shadow agent even though, at first, she does not know. At first, all she knows is that she steals when she is told to steal, that she follows when she is told to follow and that she reports whatever she sees, hears and does when she is told to report. Disobedience leads to pain, darkness and hunger. She quickly learns how to steal without getting caught, how to follow people without them noticing her and how to say exactly what they want to hear because it is the best way to stay alive. It helps that she is smart, she learns fast and she has an uncanny intuition. It takes her to the Thief Lord of the city, and then to the Imperial Palace, unreal as it sounds, and from there on times are better. Though mistakes still take her to the brink of death, and disobedience is not tolerated. Mara learns by observation and experimentation. She grows. Her abilities grow. Her reputation grows. When she is fifteen, she learns of her one true master. From the day he claims her – fully trained in everything except for the things he will teach her – she never looks back.

"The Force is strong in him," the Emperor whispers. Mara stands in the shadows and watches her Master and Darth Vader in the throne room.

"He will join our side as soon as he understands."

The Skywalker boy is a nuisance, she thinks, his ghost constantly present in the palace though he has never set a foot into it.

"Yes, Master," Vader rasps.

Later. Vader has left.

"Are you jealous?" The Emperor cracks up, she can never decide whether he is laughing or suffocating. "Rest assured," he promises her. And she does. But of what? She forgets to ask and she never does, not in one million days and nights.

"Meet Reina." Queen, at least for one night, on one of the functions she attends and to which he enjoys inventing names for her. The crowd of people is dense where the buffet is located, the heat of the room is stifling and every single one of her strands of hair is in place. It is difficult to carry a blade underneath the dresses she wears. Instead, her hair pins are razor-sharp and poisoned. Mara smiles as she is introduced to the Moff she has been watching for the past week and who never once saw her.

The Palace of the Emperor is full of light.

Later she would think that it was garish, too-bright, that these lamps that shone into every corner and every corridor were cold compared through the hot glare of Tatooine's sun that burned her skin, unreal compared to the soft light that filtered through Alderaan's huge tree tops and Naboo's soft, turquoise water falls. Even Coruscant's never-fading illumination was more alive than the Emperor's Palace. But back then she only knows the difference between the dark, stinking corners of a slum alley and the brightly-lit, clean corridors of the Palace, it is a difference in light years she does not want to miss ever again. Only th one who knows the darkness of the streets can fear it. Who fears can feel anger at himself and can draw strength from it. A simple rule, burned into her heart in form of many lessons, punishments and failed missions. Mara uses her mistakes to become stronger: she becomes tempered steel, cold and hot, folded and hammered in ice and fire many, many times. Unbreakable. Calculating, waiting patiently, striking lightning-fast when her time has come: the Emperor watches as she executes her first victim, his face unreadable behind his night-shade cloak, but his Force aura is tinged by his pride. To her, who has only recently received a name, the knowledge that she did well overrides her natural instinct to bolt from the room. People die. It is that simple. Traitors deserve their punishment.

"Isn't she a sublime beauty?" The Emperor asks and the feisty man in his too-small uniform trembles in his polished shoes.

She is Mara Jade, Hand of the Emperor. She is whatever he wants her to be.

ii.

Years after the Emperor fell she can still hear his dying scream in her dreams.

"What is your favorite meal, Jade?" Karrde asks her. "Because we will dine together tonight and I would like to offer you something you are partial too."

Like her former master he has already decided she will participate though she knows from Aves she could always slip away if she wanted. Still, his is a different way, his voice is cordial and his face is honest. No darkness lurks in the corners of his mind whereas the Emperor was a snakes' nest of shadows and poison. The difference makes her sick and she cannot think of something to answer.

"Dust Crêpes and Naussage," She hears herself say.

Karrde lifts his brows. "Tatooinan, hm?"

She realizes her mistake the same second she utters the words. Dust Crêpes – a typical Tatooinan meal, simple pancakes made from the scarce flour that is won from the grains of the plants moisture farmers cultivate in the dry environments of the many-sunned planet. A meal so simple and trivial it is barely known on other planets, yet her mistake is not in the choice of food itself. Working for Karrde for two years now she has seen and eaten far less inexpensive and strange meals. It is also not the knowledge that she herself has no favorite meal, that she still is an empty shell filled with the will of another person, that makes her freeze. The remainder is sharp and unwelcome: there is still something she has to do and her current job with Karrde is only a means to pass the time until she can extract her revenge. The terror is in another thought entirely: Dust Crêpes and Naussage are Luke Skywalker's favorite meal.

Mara is not a person of her own.

The Emperor named her, elevated her from the status of a street child and thief girl to a palace attendant and later to his personal agent. Although he did not actually chose her name she knew what he expected. So the pattern continues: she retrieves things the Emperor wants or needs, she spies on spies and others, she follows suspects and executes traitors. She is a shadow among shadows. On Imperial Galas the Emperor likes to present her as a dancer, he keeps her close and introduces her proudly as one would a favorite pet. He gives her jewelry and attention others would dedicate to a court lady and Mara always knows her place. Their lessons contain control, Force usage and how to best kill a Jedi. He gives her a ring that contains a poisoned needle, overly clichéd, as he says, but still very useful in certain situations. In that way, all his presents are poisoned, she realizes it later. Mara Jade is a phantom in the Imperial Palace, a rumor floating through perfumed and warmed air at candle-lit meetings, they say she is a Force-user, a clone, a droid, a Dathomiri witch. They say she never misses her target, she never makes a sound, one does not even see her come. Mara attends such discussions once and feels like laughing out loud: everyone talks about her but nobody knows it is her, the mysterious Hand of the Emperor. They just know she is to be feared. And she is. Her master likes to place out certain rumors of her into the open, boasts with her missions and her abilities because he knows she will not fail him. And she never does except for the one time she does not manage to kill Luke Skywalker, and from then on everything goes down, down and down.

"Isn't that him?" Aves remarks.

They are pushing through the crowds on a lively market plaza, the morning is bright with sun and the air thick with the scent of spices. Karrde, until now engrossed in an article or something on his data pad, looks up.

"Hm?"

"Skywalker," Aves says and points in direction of the thickest crowd. "Isn't that him?"

And Mara cannot help herself: she tenses, her hand already holding her vibro blade. She scans the crowd: the sand-colored clothes of the world's population is dominant, a desert planet, once again, and sand-colored hair and weathered faces as far as she can see.

"Over there," Aves points again and indeed, she sees a lean figure, its form concealed by a sandy cloak, blond hair, a bulky belt-

A hand curls around her right wrist, pinning it to her side. Karrde's gaze slices through her as he eyes her, his body shielding her from the next security man who has just appeared and Stang, she did not even see him come.

"I don't know what you're planning," he whispers in her ear. "But not on a public plaza, Jade. Follow me."

She fights him for a second, her eyes fixed on Skywalker's figure – and then she realizes it isn't him. The cloaked person turns and it is a woman.

"Way to go, Aves!" Someone else jokes. "Didn't know Skywalker was female."

"He has a twin sister," Aves complains.

"Yeah, but that's not her."

Karrde, somehow sensing her killer instinct evaporated, frowns at her.

"I got it," she says brusquely. He does not look like he believes her but he leaves her be. As it is, she could not have asked for a better employer except that, had Skywalker not intervened, she would not have been in need of another one at all.

At night, she berates herself. It was a stupid, impulsive act of recklessness, what would she have done? She could have concealed herself in the Force but attacking a celebrity like Skywalker in such a public place? It has been too little time, the Emperor's voice in her head is strong and demanding and sometimes she has to bury her finger nails in her palms to stop herself from jumping up and starting to go after the one person who has controlled her life more thoroughly than the Emperor ever did. There was a saying once, she read it somewhere: Hunt the prey long enough until the hunter becomes the prey. She is bound to Skywalker, to a man she feels nothing but hate and derision for. She looks for him wherever she goes, she sees him in other people, she hears his voice calling out to her. She knows what he likes, knows what he thinks, she knows him better than she knows herself and it is wrong, so terribly wrong. She hates him more than anything while she tries to put herself into his shoes, think and feel and act the way he does.

You will kill Luke Skywalker.

Yes, Master, Of course, Master. What else is she supposed to do? She hates him, she wants him dead, it does not matter that the Emperor's order is engraved into her mind. She wants to kill Skywalker at all costs, preferably slowly and painfully. It is her only reason for continuing to live. And then, suddenly, in the darkness of her little bunk on the Wild Karrde, she wonders what will happen as soon as she has killed Luke Skywalker.

"I hope it won't happen again," Karrde tells her the next day, when she comes to apologize. "You might act as my bodyguard now and then but drawing a blade like that on a public place, in full sight of the security forces? Get a grip, Mara, otherwise I'll have to leave you on board every time I attend a meeting. And I would very much like to take you. You've been a valuable asset to my business throughout the last months and I'd hate to lose you."

"It won't happen again," she confirms and vows the same to herself. It feels terrifying; being bound to this one person she is determined to kill. She has to detach herself by whatever means necessary if she wants to survive. So she will kill Luke Skywalker, but she will use the lessons taught to her by her teachers: Wait in the shadows and then strike. Fast, lethal. Until then, she can start building another life, she needs a place she can return to, after all.

She is Mara Jade, soon-to-be Second in Command to the most powerful smuggler and business associate Talon Karrde. She is whatever he needs her to be.

iii.

"Jade, we thought you were training to become a mind-bender?"

Fawn's smile contradicts her usual gruff tone as she holds out her hand for Mara to shake, her grip warm and firm.

"I decided I liked myself the way I am," she answers, shrugging, and receives a nod from the Captain.

"Believe me, we do, too."

And the feeling of homecoming is warm and reassuring.

The end of suffering does not justify the suffering in itself.

But it marks the end of an era. It closes a chapter and suddenly Mara can see her past as something it is: past. She is still an unfinished person. She would not compare herself to an unpolished gemstone, especially since she heard Skywalker refer to her as such and the thought angers her. She chooses to see herself as a blade, rather, a sword that had a meaning in life until it had none anymore. Years of working for Karrde and a few precious, painful months at Skywalker's Academy have taught her: Observe and Learn. Mara observed, Mara learned, and somewhere along the way she must have changed even though she does not feel different. The Emperor's angry voice in her head is gone, her hate towards Skywalker is gone, or perhaps it has just shifted into something more bearable. She is not cut out to be a Jedi, not like the one Skywalker wants to make her, but Karrde always has a place for her and she loves the freedom of her position.

"Why are you leaving, Mara?" The Masters ask her when she tells them she will not stay to continue her Jedi training. Mara shrugs. She came to the Academy with her best intentions but she finds what she has here is not what she has been looking for. It is not their fault; not hers, either.

"Why are you doing this, Jade?" It is a question she could answer, this time, but only because it is rhetorical. Again, she shrugs: it's nothing personal, just a business deal. They have broken the contract. She is there to collect.

"Why are you not always here, Aunt Mara?" Dankin's daughter is sweet, warm and real, Mara feels a stab of something and cannot place it. Her eyes are huge and questioning and Mara laughs and explains. Her father comes to collect her from where the child is sitting in the Captain's chair of the Wild Karrde, and life continues on.

"Why?" She asks nobody in particular. The healer attending to her is a Mon Cal but her big, glossy eyes are surprisingly soft. She presented herself as Cilghal, Mara remembers.

"Was that a rhetorical question, Captain Jade?"

"No." At least she does not think it was one.

"Then, please, would you specify?" Mon Calamari are not known for their human ways of thinking but Mara finds she rather likes this woman: warm, soft, sympathetic, and even though her appearance is strange compared to humanoid measures she exudes an air of sympathy.

"Why," Mara begins again and has to think. She comes up with nothing, so she shrugs and smiles apologetically. Cilghal cocks her head in an equivalent of a nod, and she is glad at least someone understands.

Somewhere along the way she unlearned to question.

It got lost as she grew up; perhaps she misplaced the ability in her forgotten childhood, perhaps later on. She does not remember the nature of the questions she asked but only that she did. From the moment her memory was lost the answers were Shut up and do what you are told unless, and later Do not question your orders, Mara Jade. Somewhere in between her happiness in understanding things she had not understood to date went missing, when she asked trivial questions people would tell her to think, or laugh because she did not know. Children learn fast and all the faster human beings learn from shame and hurt. The easiest way to ignore it was to not get close. Why became a question she did not ask, ever. Worst of all: she also unlearned how to question herself and perhaps that had been her downfall. It had been the Emperor's, certainly. Similar to asking for help, asking for answers is a delicate task, it has to be placed correctly, at the right time and occasion, and answers can bear consequences nobody ever thinks about. Oh, but those simple questions are so important. That night, Mara promises herself never to turn away someone who asks for a why, whoever it might be, because she knows firsthand how much it costs.

And maybe. Maybe she is really changing, maybe she is really learning. Because sometimes she looks at Coruscant's skyline and she does not feel the weight of the past, and sometimes she passes Endor without drowning in darkness. Sometimes she hears Skywalker's name being mentioned on the Holonet and she does not feel hate, or even anger. It is the life she chooses that takes her through the known galaxy; that lets her meet people she otherwise would not have met. She learns about peace and presence and past and about humans. And, most of all, she learns about herself.

"Why are you doing this?"

Luke Skywalker blinks at her. "Why? You got hurt on a mission for the Academy. It's only natural the Academy would take care of you."

He looks older, or perhaps he feels older. His presence is a steady, warm glow in the back of her mind; she felt it the second she had woken in the healing bay of the Academy.

"Okay," she amends, angry with herself. Curse Skywalker to always take everything word for word. She knows why she hated – hates – no. Whatever it was, it is gone. Three years after they fought against Joruus C'baoth, three years since she killed Luke's dark twin – no traces of her former feelings are left. He still is annoyingly naïve, helpful, kind, she thinks he looks silly with his usual haircut but then he always did. His robes are plain, as always, there is not much that has changed because he still looks at her with that twinkle in his eyes that makes her want to throttle him. But she does not want to kill him. How strange. Or maybe not. "What are you doing here, Skywalker?"

"I wanted to see you." He states it with such calm conviction that she is taken aback. And then, inexplicably, she feels her face heat up.

"Don't you have better things to do, Master Skywalker? Save the galaxy, for example?"

"Oh, I have my Jedi for that," he returns amusedly. "How are you feeling?"

"Like a Rhodian hit me on the head with a bar stool," she shoots back. "Which, incidentally, is exactly what happened when I conveyed your message to him."

Skywalker grimaced apologetically. "That wasn't the plan." He steps closer and eyes her from a distance far too small for her taste. Mara moves backwards on her cot.

"Personal space, Skywalker, ever heard of it?"

Embarrassed, he shrinks back. "Sorry."

It's annoying, his farm boy innocence, and strangely endearing.

"Never mind."

"Anyway," he says after he clears his throat. Suddenly, his eyes sparkle with mischief. Have they always been that blue? "How does it happen that a small-time criminal's chauffeur gets the better on brilliant Mara Jade?"

This time she really blushes. She can feel the heat rise into her face and desperately hopes he thinks it is anger. "I was… otherwise occupied."

Luke smirks. "That's a story I'm dying to hear."

"Then die," she glowers at him.

Mara watches him chuckle and feels a strange warmth somewhere in her rib cage. His hair falls over his eyes. It is just the tiny bit too long that shows her he has not had the time to have it trimmed throughout the last months. Well, at least no Thrawn, no mad Sith, no major clash with Imperials – Luke Skywalker needs a break now and then, too, and if she judges from his face he needs it rather sooner than later. Still, his laugh lets the latent exhaustion flee from his face. Years vanish in its wake: he looks younger when he laughs. The warmth wanders through her chest and spreads through her entire body and then she realizes: she is being protective. Podoo. Let Skywalker take care of himself; you have enough other things to do.

"Don't you have other places you have to be?" She asks again, sharper than necessary. "You don't have to stay here. I'm fine."

Concussion, broken shoulder-blade. Still, she shot her way through a host of uncoordinated perps and still managed to get what she had come to get. She is Mara Jade, she does not fail. No. Wait. That was another life.

"Hey, hey." Skywalker lifts his hands in defense. "I'm just checking on you."

"There's nothing to check here," she growls back. Strangely, it makes him smile again, the rudeness she carries like a shield pressing back and pushing her against the wall and into a corner.

"You are an interesting woman, Mara Jade."

Reeling inwardly, she turns away and masks her confusion by coldness. "Flattery won't help. Try again by setting up the account Karrde and you agreed on as payment for this job." This is Karrde's Mara Jade, cool and businesslike. It does not feel right, either.

Skywalker laughs. Idiot farm boy, she thinks, so honest and open and naïve. She does not dislike those traits.

"May the Force be with you," he says and leaves the room. "I'm looking forward to our next meeting."

She is Mara Jade. But for the first time in her life she does not know who she is; who she should be and, the most important, who she wants to be. And it terrifies her.

iv.

There is a memory hidden, somewhere deep inside her.

Her grandfather used to call her "why-child" because she asked and asked and asked and never seemed satisfied. He was a strict grandfather, stubborn and proud and determined to shape his environments into the way he wanted them to be but he did everything he did with his best intentions. He had hurt many people but he had not meant to hurt them, did that count for anything? Mara wakes up one morning and remembers him, clear as a day, not his face or his voice but his ways and his words. And she cannot help the tears that spill over: she has gained something but it feels as if she lost something, as well. He is dead, long gone, and she does not miss him. So she weeps silently for a man she never knew well enough to love him and for the pattern she can suddenly see in her life.

She lays in the darkness and feels tears run down her cheek, and then she feels Luke's Force presence in her mind shift as he wakes, opens his eyes, looks at her in the dim light of Coruscant's night and sees her cry.

"Mara, love," he whispers and stirs, rising and softly rubbing away tear tracks from her cheek. "What is the matter?"

Mara tells him truthfully, from beginning to the end, and Luke listens. It is a miracle, her happiness, all these years at the side of this one man. How can she ever return the love and trust he has shown her? She opens her mind and feels his presence float into hers, they merge into each other until they are two persons but one heart. There is no need for him to say anything anymore when they are that close because everything Luke thinks, feels and says, everything he is, are engraved into her so deeply she could not erase him from her own self even if she wanted. His lips are soft, his hands so familiar in her tangled curls and as her hands run down his arms she knows every scar and every muscle. Mara wants to melt into him, become his bones and his heart because that way she would never have to leave him. It feels wrong, sometimes, this longing, the yearning to be with him deeper than any ocean and as eternal. Faced with the choice between Luke and the Force Mara knows what she would chose. It is dangerous. It explains why the Jedi of Old were not allowed to marry. Bonds like theirs either grow or shatter when forced into union. Theirs has grown until Mara cannot distinguish between her and Luke anymore.

"Mara," Luke breaks the kiss and looks at her and his eyes are incredibly, incredibly blue. She loves him so much she could cry but smiles instead. "Promise me something."

"What?" She asks and thinks, whatever you want.

"When I die – and I say when because we both know it is the way of the Force – promise me you won't give up."

He's been following her emotions closely and yet she cannot find it in her to be angry for it. She is distracted by something else. It feels like a blow to the gut: his words, the thoughts, his presence mingled with hers and the mere thought he could be gone one day, vanish from the face of the universe for her only to see again in the Force one day. She tries to picture it: days after days after days without Luke, with all the Jedi problems to solve he does not solve anymore, all the decisions to make he does not make anymore. To say the things he says day by day and to know he won't ever say them again. To see his robes in their rooms, his data pad on his desk, his light saber in the cupboard – and to know he will never, ever come back to touch them again.

"Why?" She almost suffocates over the tiny, single word. Suddenly it feels even heavier than it did when she woke from her dream.

"Because," he says and his hand tucks a stray lock of hair back behind her ear. He is smiling, but the smile barely reaches his eyes. "Because I can feel what you feel, Mara, and I don't want you to stop living just because I'm not there anymore."

"It won't happen," she says, desperately, and grabs his hand. "It won't. You won't die, Luke."

"I will, one day," he whispers, tenderly. "And then you will go on. You have Ben. Take care of Leia and Han for me, and Jaina and Jacen and all the others. And you will do fine, Mara."

Ben. The thought of her little boy shoots straight through her, calms her. Luke is a part of her. Ben is, too, but he's too young to be left alone.

"Exactly."

Usually she would snap at him, like, Out of my head, Skywalker, but tonight she welcomes his intuition.

"You are calmer now," he whispers against her ear. "Good. Mara, remember, this is something that will happen eventually. I have to know you will be able to deal with it."

She wants to scream that the Yuuzhan Vong threat is over and that there is peace, that the Jedi are thriving and that they went through so much together and she cannot lose him. Nothing yet was able to tear them apart. But he is right. Eventually Luke will die, the way the universe is clawing at him has not made him younger, the way he is constantly trying to save the world is doing him no favor. But the same goes for her, she realizes. Vegere's tears might have healed her, Ben's birth might have made her happy, but she is not getting any younger, either. So perhaps she will be the first of them to die? She could, of course. But then Ben and Luke would be all by themselves. There still would be Leia and Han and many others but she knows as little as anyone of her friends could replace Luke nobody could replace her.

"So that does it," she says, and suddenly she is calm again. Luke stops kissing her throat and looks at her. "You won't die before me," she says. "I forbid it. And I won't die either." Not as long as Ben needs me, she adds silently.

He stares at her for a second and then a rumbling sound in his chest resounds, his laughter slowly pearling out of him. She stares at him grimly while he throws his head back and laughs and laughs, and then he calms and looks at her again. Blue, blue, she wants to drown in his eyes and never stop looking.

"That's the best plan I ever heard. Let's do it."

"I'll hold you to it, Skywalker." She glares at him.

"Do that."

And his hand wraps into her hair and pulls her forward, his lips meet hers, and she does not think anymore. His hands are hot and yet soft, his lips leave her wanting more, and she could be surprised that even after all these years she still wants him so much but she is not. His Force presence twists and shifts against hers, exhilarating and familiar. She falls into him like so many times before and like always, it feels as if it is the first and the last time.

She is Mara Jade Skywalker, Jedi Master, wife to Luke Skywalker and mother to Ben, and she will be whatever she wants to be.