Trial By Fire pt II

   ~@~ Turning Points

   Deep into Coruscant's night Lara awoke.  For a moment she lay still, blinking away the darkness. Her tired eyes worked to focus the city lights that cascaded through the room. Slowly, she followed them across the ceiling and back to the suite's small window where she had left the shades partly opened. It was something she would never have done before, to remind her of where, and when, she was now. Only a few hours removed from the Senate Inner Council's preliminary questioning of her, Lara Dare watched the nighttime lights of Coruscant flicker and sway through her specially reinforced window, and she reached to remember what had woken her. 

   There it was.  Lara repressed a sigh as the heavy, aching weight returned to settle over her soul. The pain was real, and close enough to drive the air from her body.  She closed her eyes against it, forcing herself to breathe through the crushing pressure, and she wished numbly for escape where she knew there was none.  Then, in the midst of the familiar occupation, something strange occurred to her: the startling realization was followed by an even stranger impulse. 

   She pushed back the covers and began to dress.

~

   This was crazy.  It made absolutely no sense.  Lara fought with herself, but the same inexplicable feeling continued to push back her logical arguments, and Lara continued putting one foot in front of the other. She wasn't sure of anything – except what she was feeling. For what seemed like the millionth time, she pushed back her doubts and refused to listen to the inner voices that were telling her not to get involved; simply ignore it and turn back.  Instead, Lara opened the Palace door and looked out onto the roof.

   In that one moment everything else slipped away. All the doubt and self-consciousness that she had been wrestling with left her, and the sight ahead became her only reality. There, roughly twenty meters away, Luke Skywalker stood motionless with his back to the door, looking out over the city. 

   Lara took a deep breath. She knew that the Jedi was aware of her presence, even though he did nothing to indicate it.  He leaned against the chest-high wrought-stone railing at the edge of the Palace roof, letting his shoulders slope heavily across it. He looked every bit as forlorn and alone as she had expected, as she had expected to find him.

   She crossed the roof slowly, taking one more cautious step as she came within a few strides of the railing at its edge. She would not mistake his silent awareness for an indication of welcome, and she instinctively left a safe distance between them. Lara would remain cautious, and she would wait as long as it would take to gain his acknowledgment. 

~

   Luke hadn't been able to sleep.  That was why he had come up here; he often did when he couldn't find rest from his thoughts, thoughts that tonight were dwelling on the Senate Inner Council, consumed by the turmoil of recent days.... Nighttime on Coruscant was never really quiet, but it was steady.  The ships, the night, the stars far beyond the clouds; it was peaceful in its predictability. It was reliable, no matter how chaotic the rest of his life had become, and that much was comforting to him.

   Luke let a part of his mind wander, picking up on the sense of the being who had just walked out onto the roof.  Even though his thoughts had been about her, he wasn't pleased to find Lara here. This place was his sanctuary, and he was out here because he wanted to be alone.  Luke winced.  It was a selfish and  thoughtless emotion for him to have.  At least he had a choice in where he came and went; that was more than Lara had right now; the roof of the building she was confined to was about as far as Lara could go – and he was at least partly responsible for that.  Despite what Lara seemed to think, and regardless of  everyone else's objections, he did have a responsibility to her. He at least owed her the courtesy of a civil conversation; Luke didn't feel much like talking, but he knew that was the least he could do, to speak to her.

~

   "The view is beautiful from up here," Luke stated absently, still looking out at the city.

   Even though Lara had been awaiting his attention, the casual tone of his response was unexpected.  She blinked in surprise, slowly pulling her eyes away as she processed his words.  Her own thoughts and questions were put aside as she looked away from the Jedi's strong back and sloping shoulders to study the night sky that stretched out in front of him.  And she made an effort to appreciate the sentiment that he had offered, deliberately looking past him and his pain.

   "It's not just ships and buildings from up here," she agreed.  "It's all light and motion... like it's something more than itself.  Almost alive," she finished thoughtfully.

   Luke turned his face to her, unexpectedly captivated by something that he hadn't expected to hear in her voice. The words offered agreement, but there was a deeper touch of understanding in the soft quiet of that voice, along with a soft hint of surprise in finding that understanding.  She said nothing to acknowledge it, but Luke felt a particular connection between the two of them; he didn't know exactly what it was he was feeling, but he knew that he no longer wanted her to leave.

   She could sense him turn toward her, but Lara continued to watch the skyline.  "That's what gives it its beauty," she concluded softly. Then a puzzled expression came over her face.  "I wonder why I never saw that before."

   "Mara once told me that she'd never noticed it either. Never really stood here and just looked at the city." Luke took a deep breath, deliberately letting go the stray thought.  He could feel the change in Lara's sense; the mention of Mara's name had managed to bring them both more squarely back to the day behind them.

   "You know, when Mara first told me what you had done for me, I wanted very much to find you."  He paused.  Luke's gaze had returned to the Coruscant skyline as he chose his words.  "I thought that, when you stayed with me after Endor, that it may have been out of loyalty.  And I hoped that there was something you could tell me."  He trailed off, considering anew the things he most wanted to ask her.  He'd sensed, several times today during the questioning, that Lara had been holding back. It had not been noticeable to most, but he'd seen it; he knew that Leia had too.

   Leia hadn't been happy that Lara had chosen not to volunteer the facts of her connection to Vader or the extent of her abilities when she had gone before the Senate Inner Council. Those things had only been vaguely alluded to by the woman who had once used her Force talents in the service of Darth Vader. Luke knew, as Leia did, that the truth wouldn't remain secret for long, but neither had it come out today. Leia had remained quiet, not for Lara's sake, but out of respect for her source; the Senate Inner Council would have to discover what Luke already knew in its own time.

   "I hoped that again today," Luke finished quietly.

   "Okay," Lara offered, waiting for him to continue.

   "Vader," Luke suggested, searching out her reaction. "What can you tell me about him?"

   She took a deep breath and tried not to let herself frown. "I'm afraid not much," Lara conceded, but she gathered herself to try anyway.  "I know that he believed in the Force and served the Emperor, in that order. But I can't say that I knew him personally at all."  She paused to consider it again.  "I don't know if anybody did," she stated with even certainty in her voice. "His reputation was the real thing.  If you did what he expected, you were rewarded. If not, well, if not, it didn't much matter."  She trailed off, trying not to dwell on those dark things. "But if you didn't cross him, and you could pull your weight–"

   "Then you lived to see another day," Luke finished coldly.

   "Pretty much, yeah," Lara agreed.  Her acceptance of the harsh truth tried at glossing over the disdain that came through in Luke's voice.

   He shook his head in frustration, at himself, for expecting something that wasn't there.

   "Not what you were hoping for," she empathized softly.

   Something in the way she regretted that made him realize – she knew the truth.  Luke stared at her, stunned, and trying to give nothing away as he wondered how much she knew.

   "I know," she finally said simply, acknowledging Luke's surprise as readily as the reason for it.

   "If you didn't learn from Vader, then how do you know?" he asked.  For the first time there was a hint of suspicion in his voice, suspicion of her. This truth wasn't common knowledge, and in the wrong hands it could be damaging, even dangerous, for Luke and the rest of his family.

   She answered him calmly, unshaken despite the change she recognized in him.  "If I knew one thing about Vader, it was that his loyalties were to the Emperor above all else. I knew that there must have been some extraordinary circumstance to make him go behind the Emperor's back, to send me against the Emperor's Hand." She paused, letting it sink in just how important Luke had been. "Then there was Endor," she continued. "Vader and the Emperor were killed, and Luke Skywalker survived."  More quietly she added, "Even pulled Darth Vader off the second Death Star before it blew."

   "That wasn't common knowledge," he said softly.

   She smiled gently, shrugging it off. "I knew intelligence.  I followed up."

   He nodded for her to continue.

   "After that, I heard rumors, some more reliable than others. Eventually I heard the right one, and it made everything clear." 

   Luke was quiet for a moment, taking her explanation in.  He could sense no ulterior motive and no deception lurking beneath her words. She had risked herself to save his life more than once.  He was willing to believe that she had learned the truth, just as she said, and he trusted that she wouldn't use it against him. If Lara Dare sought his destruction, she certainly could seek it by more serious means than revealing his family secret.

   Luke turned his attention back to the city, his thoughts shifting once more. Family.  He had been thinking a lot about the importance of family since he had met Lara and discovered that she also had lost her home and her family in the wake of the Empire....  The desolate feelings that Luke had been wrestling with earlier were starting to return.  He sighed against them.

   "Luke," Lara said very softly, "are you sure you're all right?"

   His stare was distant, searching the Coruscant skyline.  "Sometimes I come up here for hours at a time, just to stand and look out at the city, and the stars, as far as the eye can see.... To try to make some kind of sense out of how I got here, how so much was lost on the journey, and how to keep going."

   Lara lowered her eyes; the familiar sentiment was painfully hard-hitting, and she struggled to get a grip on her own emotions as Luke turned toward her, watching her, just out of the corner of his eyes.

   Somehow he knew that she understood. They shared a common experience of loss, and of survival through harsh and difficult times – but what he sensed from her was something more than that.  He hardly knew Lara Dare, but he felt oddly reassured by her presence. Something about her made Luke feel able to speak to her, confident that she would understand what he had to say.

   Lara caught herself watching him too, waiting for him to continue. His eyes were sad, and she was curious why; this was what had brought her up here.  The former Imperial agent knew a great deal about the young Jedi's past, but she had not realized that this much of the past's pain wore on Luke Skywalker.  It wasn't surprising.  There was never time to dwell on your losses from within the storm; only when the chaos had passed did you start to realize the enormity of what you had been through and take account of the cost.  Hadn't she been feeling that very struggle since her return to Coruscant?

   Lara let the silence hold for a few heartbeats, considering. It surprised her when she heard herself ask, "How much did you lose?"

   Her voice was a soft whisper, and Luke looked down, leaning restlessly over the rail as a grim smile played on his face.  "When I'm feeling sorriest for myself," he whispered the leading words, "I'd say that I've been orphaned three times in my life." 

   The coolness in his tone of voice abated some of the self-pity that rose up underneath it, but that answer still surprised him. Luke wasn't comfortable feeling sorry for himself; he didn't ask for pity or expect anyone's sympathy. To his way of thinking, everyone had suffered; the entire galaxy had lived through difficult times and been forced to make hard sacrifices; what right did he have to wallow in the pain of the past when he was alive and well? So many had lost so much more. It was a waste of time and energy, feeling sorry for himself... but whether or not he acknowledged its hold, the pain remained.

   Lara could feel his discomfort, and she could feel the depth of unspoken hardship behind his words as Luke continued to look distantly out at the city.  She was surprised at how strongly she identified with him.  She understood the struggle that he kept hidden, and the need to hide it.  She had felt that same overwhelming depth of pain and loss, and the guilt and confusion that came with simply surviving what so many others had not – he deserved her compassion; and somehow she knew that he needed her understanding. Luke needed to tell his story, to express the loss as best he could in words and allow himself to feel the pain.  She could feel him struggling to find words that would express it.

   "My aunt and uncle raised me; I never knew my real mother or father," he began slowly. "I was barely out of my teens when my aunt and uncle were killed by the Empire.  Just before they died, I had come to know Ben Kenobi. He had been a Jedi Knight, the same as my father." Luke smiled at the memory. "That was the beginning of this incredible adventure, that, and finding R2-D2, carrying the readouts of the Death Star."

   Lara smiled in return, caught up in his remembered story.  She knew these facts already, but his face and voice were far more engrossing than data files she had once collected on him and studied nearly constantly, back when tracing the Rebellion had been her responsibility, and Luke Skywalker had been her boss's obsession.

   "Ben took me in," Luke continued, "showed me the Force, made me believe. Before I knew it, I had thrown in with a crazy pirate and a wookie, and rescued a princess off the Death Star."  Again he smiled, but that smile faded against another memory. "But Ben," he paused, the words becoming difficult, "was killed too, by Darth Vader." He fell painfully silent.  "It's hard to explain what he meant to me," Luke finally offered, glancing up to her. "He was my family, after my aunt and uncle.  Father figure... protector... teacher..."  He trailed off, trying out each description and not finding the one he wanted.  "I only knew Ben for a short time, but he believed in me in a way that changed me, that made me believe in myself.  And when everything was chaos, Ben was at the eye of the storm."

   Lara took a step forward to stand beside him.  "I can understand that," she offered glancing toward him as she folded her arms across the railing in front of them.  She did understand. His words made sense; his pain and his struggles made sense. Oddly, his life felt familiar to her, not because she already knew so many of the details, but because the underlying emotion so closely shadowed her own. Her earlier caution had vanished completely, and her defenses had lowered somewhere in the ease of listening to his story, feeling his honesty in the hard-fought words.  Lara felt needed, and for the first time since all this had begun she actually felt grateful to be here.

   "After Ben, life was in fast forward.  I didn't have time to think, let alone grieve.  "We had to rescue Leia, then there was Yavin, then we were on the run from the Empire."  He sighed, again feeling a loss for words. "My best friend died at Yavin. It was unreal."  His face screwed up, as if the memory was something foreign, incomprehensible. "Suddenly my entire past was gone. Han, and Leia, and Chewie became my family, and keeping the Rebellion going was all that mattered." 

   He looked to her, searching her face to see if she understood. She did. There was an unwavering depth of compassion in her eyes. Luke gave another grim smile before he continued.  "Finally, my own father.  He saved my life; he was the one who killed the Emperor," Luke explained, feeling for Lara's reaction as his eyes flickered over hers.  He felt no surprise or disbelief from her, only that same unwavering compassion... and his voice dropped lower when Luke spoke the last of it. "But it cost him his own life," Luke said, and looked away. "I helped him to save himself, but I still lost him," Luke whispered, and again the feelings of desolation washed over him.

   "I'm sorry," Lara said quietly, gritting her teeth against the utter inadequacy of the words, just as she tended to do when they were spoken to her. She took a deep breath and carefully met his gaze.

   Luke was amazed to see the way that something in her eyes had created a solid place against his turmoil, amazed that she remained standing here beside him, and amazed that he had been able to say these things to her so easily. She had heard it all, and she offered only a sad sigh in response... no reflexive, empty attempt to ease the heavy weight of his burden; there was just an honest sense of deep reflection in her that Luke couldn't help but be surprised by. The hard-nosed warrior who had given no quarter when it came to her own battles, and would give even less to the troubles that awaited her from her own shady past, had turned out to be a patient and understanding listener in the face of another person's troubles....  Without words spoken between them, he knew that she realized the gravity of his loss and recognized his difficult struggle to bear it.

   "But now I understand," she whispered. "That's why I found you here."

   Luke held her gaze.  He was puzzled by the last of her statement, and he didn't like the caution that had crept into her eyes.

   "I hope you don't feel that I've misled you. They asked me straight-out today, why I was chosen for conscription."

   Luke nodded. He remembered her answer.  Marnia was so far out on the outer rim that it hadn't warranted Imperial occupation; the planet's population was so small, it hadn't even warranted a planet-wide conscription effort. The Council had done their homework and they knew all this; naturally they had wanted to know why Lara alone had been taken into the custody of the Empire that day.

   "I didn't give them the whole answer," she admitted. "I didn't tell them that I was taken on Vader's orders, or that he had chosen me because he knew I was strong in the Force." Almost before she had spoken the words, Lara could tell that Skywalker knew those things already.  "I only told them what I was told that day," she continued, "that I was considered of importance to the Empire, and that I would be expected to comply."

   "And if you didn't, there would be suffering," Luke guessed at the rest of what she left unspoken, and Lara nodded in response. She hadn't said that to the Inner Council either, but knowing the workings of the Empire it wasn't hard to put two and two together. And knowing what he did of Lara, Luke didn't doubt that that threat had played a big part in her decision to leave her home and family. Though she seemed to be trying not to let the Council see it, she had conducted herself with honor and bravery in the face of things she had had no control over.

   "I know that the Council will likely learn the truth eventually; if you feel the need to tell them, I won't hold that against you," she added, "but they won't learn those things from me. I'll tell them the truth as best I can, but I won't give them weapons to beat me with.  Maybe that doesn't make much sense," she admitted, "but I've spent most of my life guarding certain secrets, and I'm not prepared to reveal them before a Senate hearing."

   "I understand," Luke offered.  "Everybody has secrets, and a right to protect them."

   "You already know my secrets," Lara confessed reluctantly, "but I haven't been completely honest with you either," she admitted through the caution that was beginning to return to her emotions.  The rest would be harder to say and much harder for him to hear, especially now. 

   "Luke, my Force talent is different," she explained herself a little guardedly, already bracing for his reaction.  "It works off emotion,"

   She saw surprise flicker across his face first.

   "You feel empathy?" he asked carefully.

   "Yeah," she nodded, also carefully.  "Something like that." 

   Then his face changed as he understood the implications of what she was telling him – she told him earlier that she had found him here, but the truth was that – "You knew I was up here," Luke breathed, stopping as he tried to reconcile her motives with his own sudden sensation of vulnerability.  Suddenly what she knew of him was more than he had realized.  And she had come here, already knowing, without his awareness or his permission.

   "Yeah," she repeated again, her voice uneasy. 

   Luke's thoughts were abuzz.  Had this strange sensation of closeness, this ease of sharing he'd felt with her, could it have been a ploy?  Could she have used her talent in the Force and her past connection to him as a means of manipulating his trust, taking advantage of his feelings, and tricking him into giving away more than he would have otherwise? He quickly calmed his thoughts and brought his emotions under control. He had no reason to suspect such a thing of her, and he couldn't jump to conclusions before he took time to learn the truth.  Besides, if her intentions truly were ominous, why would she choose to give away her advantage now?

   Lara swallowed hard, unsure of how to handle herself in the face of his discomfort.  "I'm sorry for that," she whispered. "I didn't intend to deceive you," she offered evenly, honestly.   

   "If you didn't intend, then how?"  Luke's expression was still questioning, and his quiet voice fell on the edge of accusing.  He had known that she was strong in the Force and very well trained in the use of that strength.  Luke also knew that it was very difficult to reach into another person's mind without them becoming aware of your presence. For the average person, that slight awareness could be easily dismissed as an unimportant feeling; and for the weak-minded, it could be suppressed altogether in the form of a mind-trick.  But from the limited bits of training that he had done with Leia, Luke had found that the same tasks became nearly impossible when the other person also had awareness of the Force. Lara shouldn't have been able to intrude on his mind without his knowledge, no matter how strong or well trained she was... unless perhaps this was some trick of the dark side.

   Lara shook her head, taken a little aback as she realized what he had logically assumed. "I don't always have control over it–" she hesitated, looking down, "especially with strong emotions.  They just, crowd in," she tried to explain it, but Lara found herself grimacing against her own increasing discomfort. She looked up at Luke warily. His face was still troubled and undecided, considering the implications of what she was telling him.

   Luke had many questions about the specifics of her talent. He had never heard tell of a strength in the Force being specifically centered on emotional contact, but there was much about the Force that remained a mystery to Luke. He dismissed those thoughts; other matters had to come first if he was going to trust her explanations.  "What made you keep it a secret?" he asked.

   "From the Senate?" she considered. Her voice was still a little strained, but at least she felt like she was on solid ground again. She could defend herself from here.  "I don't want to be the subject of a witch trial. If they think I have an unfair advantage over them, they'll start looking for ways to even the odds. I'm not willing to put myself in that position." She paused.  "From you?" she tried cautiously. "Well. It's been a long time since I cared, what anyone felt. I didn't expect that being here would change that."

   "But," he prompted easily.

   "But," she answered him, far less easily, "an hour ago I was sound asleep, and I woke up with a pain that was so heavy, it felt like it would drown me." 

   Luke suppressed a shiver at her description.

   She only hesitated for a moment to the strength of the emotion she remembered. "And I didn't think anything of it, at first," she confided at a soft whisper, "because I've felt that pain more times than I like to think about."  She closed her eyes briefly, gathering herself. "It took a few minutes for me to realize – I didn't think it was possible."

   Luke knew exactly what she meant.  He had never spoken of those feelings to anyone, and he still didn't fully understand how she was able to know what he felt... but he knew what she was telling him now.  She felt the same pain, and she hadn't thought it possible that another person felt what she did.

   "Then I came up here, and I saw you. And I couldn't leave."

   He nodded slowly, accepting her explanation along with the honesty and concern he sensed behind it.  Neither was enough to explain to him how it was possible, but Luke was no longer suspicious of harm or deceit in her motive.  There was just one thing he needed to know.

   "So where did that fit with the Empire?"

   "Ironically, this talent wasn't of much help to me in the Empire," she answered him. "A few espionage cases, sometimes feeling out contacts. But most of what I did there was intelligence, and nothing that would have been unique to me."

   Luke felt his brow furrow.

   "Vader wanted me for my abilities in the Force; I have no doubt about that," Lara clarified her answer as she felt the cool shadow of suspicion cross over Luke Skywalker's emotions for a second time. "He wanted me to carry out sensitive, top-secret assignments, and he wanted to have someone whom he could keep track of doing that kind of work."

   "Then your relationship to him was similar to Mara's as the Emperor's Hand."

   "Somewhat, but there was never that level of direct mental contact that existed between Mara and the Emperor. I don't think that Vader wanted me to have that kind of access to his mind.  It was always the physical skills that were more important; the physical skills that I was learning were essential.  What came naturally to me was secondary."

   Luke nodded. It made sense that Vader wouldn't want anyone to be privy to his feelings. Lara had been brought into the Empire following the defeat at Yavin.  Vader had just learned the name of the young Rebel pilot who had destroyed the Death Star.  He would spend the next several years looking for Luke, and when he found his son he would try to enlist Luke's aid in overthrowing the Emperor. Those conflicted feelings might have made Vader vulnerable to Lara's emotional knowledge, and it gave Vader sufficient reason to direct her away from that talent and concentrate on building her physical skills in the Force. Without knowing it, Lara had given Luke a good deal of insight into Darth Vader.

   "In all honesty, for the first couple of years I sometimes wondered why he had picked me.  That uncertainty became part of the driving force that made me succeed; I knew that my survival depended on making sure that I was up to whatever role Vader would require me to play. So I learned skills in the Force, I went on reconnaissance missions, I researched the Rebel Alliance relentlessly, and I made sure that I was able to match blow for blow with Mara Jade whenever the occasion arose."  She paused. "Once Vader made the decision to send me up against the Emperor's Hand, for real, then a lot of things started to make sense for the first time, but as for why he had chosen me....  I don't know if that ever made sense.

   "And as for bringing this talent into the Empire– " she hesitated, her face turning dark with memories.  "If anything, I would have liked to have turned it off at times,"she finished, her voice falling to a strained whisper.

   Luke, remembering what he knew of Imperial interrogation and detention procedures, winced in sympathy.  As a Jedi Knight, Luke was accustomed to sensing things through the Force – sometimes warnings, sometimes visions of other events, and sometimes insight into what others beings were thinking and feeling – but from what Lara was telling him, her insight into the Force was far more direct, at least when it came to emotional contact. She was able to receive strong emotions from other beings, without her having complete control over the process.

   Several heartbeats passed before Luke spoke again.

   "But it wasn't common knowledge, that you were Force-strong," he prompted carefully, curiously.

   "No," she answered, coming back from her thoughts of the past.

   "How long have you had these abilities?"

   "From a young age," she answered him deliberately, a hint of her previous aloofness returning. "Limited at first, then stronger as I got older."

   "And at home," he asked, "was it common knowledge there?"

   "No," she answered more solidly. She could see where he was going now, and some humor returned to her voice.  "I'm afraid my status as a local legend is a more recent decoration.  When I was growing up only my family knew, but Myrtle is a pretty small system and it's hard to overlook an Imperial strike force. The official line was that they were looking for Rebel bases, but everyone knew there were no Rebel bases on Marnia; beings in the Myrtle system wanted escape from clashing politics of any kind – they took pride in it. And of course it was no secret that they took me," she finished.

   Then she grew reflective, her thoughts shifting to a different time. "I'd bet there were a score of amateur bounty hunters camped out after Endor, just waiting for me to reemerge.  Everything had changed by then," she amended off-handedly, "and all that mattered anymore was the highest bidder.  An Imperial strike force meant that I had been valuable to someone.  It was an easy pay day for whoever could find out why, and then deliver to one of the Remnant leaders or one of the upstart warlord factions."

   "With no strong Imperial presence on that part of the rim, that would make Laus the highest bidder."

   Lara nodded. "Less than a year after Endor, he had set up an operations center on Marnia. Either he got wind of what had happened there or someone decided to go to him with what they knew, take the info payoff rather than risk getting beaten to the catch by another bounty hunter."

   "Or common sense won out," Luke observed with a crooked smile.

   A small smile played on Lara's face as she studied him.  Luke had seen her fight through a half dozen of Laus' men, and he meant the observation as a complement. She appreciated the respect there, but the sentiment made her feel a little sick. "There are a lot of things I'd rather have than this dangerous reputation," she said softly.

   Luke swallowed hard. The previous touch of humor and mutual respect was replaced by something more grave as he realized the truth in her words.  He let another moment pass before he ventured to speak again.

   "You agreed to go," he stated gently, "didn't you? So that your family would be safe."

   She smiled, but it was a hollow gesture. "Didn't work out that way," she said.  Her voice remained soft and low, but it was clearly a dismissal.

   He watched her with a curious sadness. The eyes that had been so compassionate on him a few minutes ago were cold now. They turned an icy shade of blue-grey as she shut down, trying to avoid the pain.  Luke didn't want to see her draw away from him again, or let her disappear behind her own defenses.  Lara had spent too much time alone with her own pain. Even if she didn't know it, she needed the kind of understanding and support that a friend could offer... the same kind of understanding and support that she had offered him....

   "How old were you?" Luke asked, trying to keep her talking, trying to hold her attention.  Every moment that he could keep her attention focused here, on him, would pull her a little further away from the paralyzing hold of that pain inside her.

   "Seventeen," she remembered, and she felt a ripple of surprise from him.

   "I thought at least eighteen was the minimum conscript age," he murmured, disgust in his voice.

   Lara only shook her head slowly. "Seventeen, eighteen.  Still too young," she offered the weary admission, giving another dismissal to times and things that she didn't want to remember.  She turned to look out at the city.  It had already been late when they has begun this conversation, and the lights were considerably fewer now.

   "How long ago was it," his voice asked gently, "that you went back."

   "Almost two years ago," she answered without looking to him. "Two years," she repeated softly, finding the words hard to believe. She shook her head and looked at him from the corner of her eyes.  "A whole other lifetime," she corrected miserably, toughly. But this time she didn't try to shut those emotions down; she only looked out over the city and listened to the sounds of the night.

   Luke felt himself nod slightly, remembering when he'd first seen her at Aci – the way the bright blue of her eyes had stayed with him during the months he had searched for her, and how the difference had been so terribly obvious at Marnia – but now he understood the change, better understood the depth of the pain that had caused it.

   Once again he looked back to the city lights and the stars as far as the eye could see.  This time they stood side by side at the rail, breathing the cool night air and listening to the steady background noise of Coruscant's deep night.  For a few moments Luke waited, expecting the familiar loneliness to wash back over him.  But it didn't.  He had expected the feel of her pain to add to his own. Instead, both had lessened.... For the first time in a long while Luke realized that he felt more alive and less alone, instead of the other way around.  They stood together against the cool night air, keeping the silence, not wanting the novelty of those emotions to wear away. 

~

   "What have you gotten me into this time?" Mara complained as she met Luke at one of the Palace's conversation alcoves the next day.

   "I don't know, what have I done now?" he asked, making an effort to hide his amusement.

   She leveled her piercing green eyes on him.  "They called me as a character witness." 

   Luke looked at her, stunned. "Yeah. That was my reaction too," she quipped.

   "When?"

   "This morning. I went straight in.  They just finished with me."

   Luke sat back against his seat.

   "I still can't believe it," she said. "When they asked me to stay around yesterday, I figured it was to try to back up whatever information she had given them, maybe for my opinion on her security status, but that's it. A character witness?"  She shook her head.

   "I didn't expect that either," Luke mumbled.  

   Mara laughed in amazement. "You realize, the only difference between her and me is that I came in when the New Republic needed help against Thrawn," she stated her accusation a little harshly. "And then there's that little thing about my wanting to kill you," she couldn't resist adding. "Of course Lara was on the better end of that one, from your point of view. Not that anyone asked me about that."

   Luke only shrugged in concession.  "Amazing what a difference two years and a common enemy can make."

   "And I had my connection to Karrde standing between me and the Empire," she pointed out. "I take it she doesn't have anything like that."

   "No. She went home after she left you, probably hoping to disappear."

   "That's understandable, but it's not much of an alibi. Anybody–"  She ended the thought almost before it had begun; something in his sense gave her pause, and Luke shook his head in answer to the abandoned question. 

   "Not much period, when she went home."

     Mara shook her head heavily.  "That's doubly rough," she admitted, her voice a raspy drawl.

   Luke shook it off. "What about the hearing?" he asked.

   "I basically told them what I've already told you, that she was conscripted for her Force talents and that she served under Vader."

   Luke felt himself grimace. It looked like everything was out on the table now.

   "It didn't go over too well," Mara admitted, "but c'mon, coming from the Emperor's Hand. How hypocritical."

   Luke grinned in spite of himself at Mara's candor.

   "I told them what I knew about her duties and missions – her work in intelligence – stuff they already knew from her, but they still weren't too happy about it.  Then they wanted to know what their odds were like to find proof in the records to back all this up.

   "How's that?" she sidetracked, miffed. "They want my expert testimony, then they want proof too."

   Luke tried to hide another grin. "So?" he prompted through it.

   He could see her thinking it, that cursed Jedi calm, and he had to grin harder.

   Mara thought about telling him, again, how truly annoying that was.  "Imperial?  None," she answered instead. "I already spilled everything I knew after Tantiss and it never turned up so much as a side note to point to me. But I did give them a few key mission names and codes that might cross-check with intelligence records from the Rebellion period." She stopped, realizing the enormity of the task she was describing.  "This is going to be difficult," Mara stated.

   Luke remained thoughtful.  "I know some people in New Republic Intelligence. Maybe they'd be willing to let us comb around the archives on our own, see if we can turn up anything that might help her defense," Luke thought out loud.

   Mara Jade's eyebrows raised slightly in surprise.  She didn't object to being included in Luke's plan, she just didn't know what he expected to find. If there was information in the archives relating to Lara's service in the Empire, those things weren't likely to paint her in a positive light. But it was far more likely that the search would turn up nothing, just as it had with Mara Jade years earlier. 

   "Just what are you hoping to find?" Mara asked.

   "You told me that Vader trained her in the Force, but she didn't embrace the dark side.  She was a high ranking intelligence agent in the Empire, but it's obvious that she didn't want to be there."  Luke gave a shrug. "Good people in bad situations will find ways to act for good. I'd bet anything that Lara was no different. There may not be evidence to support it, but I'm sure she did things she wasn't supposed to, working against the Empire, somehow."

   "You're reaching," Mara told him.

   "I've seen it happen dozens of times before. Imperial conscripts and defectors became some of our best informants during the Rebellion, and have remained some of the New Republic's strongest supporters."

   "But we're not talking about the average low-level conscript here, Luke. Maybe a kid on the front lines can get away with some bad aim under fire, but you're talking about big, classified security leaks.  Good person or not, Lara's not stupid.  Those kinds of things get discovered eventually, and when they do they get you killed."

   Luke nodded, tugging at his lip. "Right.  She would have to have covered it up," Luke said under his breath.

   Mara shook her head. His mind wasn't going to be changed. "And you think that NRI will just let you walk into the archives and start collecting evidence – and even if they do let you, how are you going to turn up evidence where they can't?!"

   "New Republic Intelligence is impartial; their only function in a case like this is to gather the information the Senate requests. The Senate Inner Council will use that information to help them decide whether or not Lara is a security risk. Anything that we might find in the archives isn't even admissible, not directly. We would hand what we find over to NRI.  If it checks out with them, they submit it into evidence at the hearing and the Inner Council considers it."

   "That's assuming we can find anything in the first place," Mara reminded him.  The Coruscant information archives were massive by themselves, and since the New Republic had taken over the planet, NRI had had a team working almost constantly to integrate the planet's archives – which had stood for thousands of years – with data files from both the old Imperial archives and Rebellion intelligence.

   "When I was researching the history of the Jedi I learned that whenever they do a search, NRI runs wide sweeps through the archive bases. Then the search gradually narrows as leads are uncovered and followed."

   "They have to run wide sweeps. The files are too massive – the amounts of information involved are incomprehensible otherwise."

   "But sometimes wide sweeps miss things," Luke pointed out. "No data program can do the job of a sentient being, or even a higher level droid.  I know it's a long shot, but for someone with the Force to guide them, it's possible."

   Mara was tempted to tell him that it hadn't worked for him before, but for once she chose to hold her biting comments; understandably, the extinction of the Jedi was a sore subject for Skywalker, and Mara knew from bitter experience that needling him over that fact wouldn't get her anything but a guilty conscious.

   "Fine," she gave in. "Good. We'll search the archives," Mara decided – as if it was the single worst idea she had ever heard of.  Skywalker only shook his head at her; his amused grin proved that knew better than to take her sarcasm seriously. He was right about one thing, though.  It was a very long shot that they might actually be able to find something useful. But as long as she had to be here anyway, Mara really didn't see the harm in trying.  Sure, Karrde had other things for her to do, but he wouldn't object to having her skulking around the archives....  Mara fought off a tight grin at that thought. For a man like Talon Karrde, having the head of his Smuggler's Coalition searching the New Republic's collective archives was akin to putting a kid in a candy shop.

   "Lara has an intelligence background; maybe she could help us figure out where to start..." Luke continued his thought. He had gone back to tugging thoughtfully at his lip, and was paying little mind to Mara's continued presence.

   "They asked my opinion too," she said flatly.

   Luke looked up.  Not only did she now have his attention, Luke Skywalker was watching her intently.

   "I told them there's no way that I would suspect her of having any connections to the Empire now."

~~ ~ () ~ ~~

   About a month passed before Lara was questioned again. This session was called a follow up to the first. By now the Council was sure to have a lock on how much New Republic Intelligence could tell them of that time period, both from their own records and from any leads that Mara had provided them with from the old Imperial files. The challenge would be in checking Lara's testimony against the archive records. But it wasn't the Council's questioning or Lara's testimony that had stuck in Luke's mind throughout the hearing today; it had been her.

   Luke looked up from the stacks of data cards and other assorted records that surrounded him in his little corner of the archives. He hadn't expected this to be easy but it had surprised him to run into so many obstacles.  Much of Coruscant's own records had been destroyed when the planet was taken back after Endor, if not by the Imperials themselves, then inadvertently by the planet's revolting citizens.  Like most of the galaxy Luke had heard those stories, but he was learning that Coruscant had done a good job of keeping the extent of that damage a secret. The archive files were still massive, and following the Empire's defeat they had been reinforced by an influx of information from Rebel worlds, but many significant time periods were missing altogether from the records, wiped by those seeking to avoid the repercussions when the Rebellion took Coruscant back from the Empire. 

   Back in those early weeks and months following the transition, Luke had learned his way around the archives somewhat; he had never had as much time to devote to it as he would have liked, but he had searched the Old Republic era files often, looking for records of the Jedi, and hoping to learn something more about his father. Slowly, sadly, he had come to believe that those records no longer existed. 

   Luke was beginning to worry that due to Imperial saboteurs, this search might eventually prove the same... but as Mara said, it was not likely that even the intact records would have given them anything on her or Lara. Their roles had been highly secret, and any discovery of their true identities and purposes within the Empire would have endangered their lives.

   A soft twittering noise drew Luke's attention. "Hi, Artoo," he greeted the droid, who gave a mournful whimper in response to his master's greeting.  "I know," Luke tried to sooth him.  Artoo was terribly stubborn, and he had never taken failure well; Luke no doubt owed his life to R2-D2's tenacity on several occasions. But after a month of unsuccessful searching through the archives, the little droid was starting to show signs of moodiness. "It's not your fault," Luke added. "There's just been nothing to find so far, but we have to keep looking."  Artoo's beeping gradually became more hopeful.  "Yes," Luke smiled, "you're a big help, Artoo; I couldn't do without you here."

   Luke watched Artoo roll away.  The little droid was beeping a little easier to himself, having gaining some reassurance, but Luke's eyes hardly settled onto the data pad he was holding before he looked up again. It was hard to stand by, just waiting for a decision to be made; maybe it was nothing more than a feeling of helplessness that was making a hopeless search seem like a good idea....  Luke knew the truth, but he was powerless to influence the opinion of the senators; even his own sister was on a different side of the issue from Luke.  And Lara....  He was having a hard time forgetting what he had seen from her this morning in the Inner Council's chambers.

   Luke pulled his thoughts away. "They've given you permission to leave?" he said as Mara Jade came to a halt across from his data station.

   "Finally," she affirmed, her relief evident.

   Mara had worked diligently with Luke over the past month trying to plan Lara's defense, preparing her for the Council's line of questioning. But Luke knew that this wasn't solely an act of philanthropy for Mara Jade.  Her presence in the archives had allowed her to follow up on a handful of matters for the Coalition, and the time she had spent with Lara had allowed Mara to ask some important questions about Laus and his operation in the Myrtle system.  Even so, there was no mistake that Mara Jade wanted to get moving.  The New Republic's reluctance to follow up on Laus irked Mara greatly; she had had Coalition members keeping a watchful eye on his movements over the past month, but Mara wanted to be there herself, investigating Laus' interests and connections in the Tritis system.

   It could pay off huge for Karrde and the Coalition, if they were able to get the jump on Laus while Coruscuant was still debating whether or not they believed him to be a danger, determining whether or not they could trust Lara's word... but hopefully finding the truth about Laus would help Lara's credibility too, maybe even go toward clearing her name.

   "Good luck, Mara," Luke offered. "I hope you find something we can use against this Laus."

   She knew that by "we," Luke meant both the New Republic and Lara Dare's defense. The misplaced hope in his voice made her cringe; he was clearly thinking about Dare, wishing that things were different. Lara had gone along with their coaching, answered their questions, directed their research, and listened to the painfully dull results that came from of hours of intensive eyestrain under the archives' dim lighting, but she seemed to do so only to humor them, to humor Skywalker.  When it came to the turmoil surrounding her fate, Lara's attitude could only be described as stoic and disinterested.  That had surprised Mara, and she knew that it worried Skywalker.  But to Mara Jade's way of thinking they were already doing all they could. Changing Dare's outlook on life was well beyond what Mara or anyone else was capable of – and Skywalker should have realized that too, she thought bitterly. Even without that little whisper from the Force to tell her of it, the worry in his expression was hard to miss.

   "Grief does things to people, Luke," Mara spoke plainly to him.  A mystified shake of her red hair gave grim punctuation to the thought. "It's possible that she just doesn't care." 

   "About her own fate?" he wondered skeptically.

   "About anything," came her cryptic response.

   Luke looked at Mara in silence for a long moment before shaking his head. 

   He knew that wasn't so.  True, Lara was aloof, cool, and unwilling to lower her defenses, plus she had some sort of internal code which was causing her to face this hearing as though it was a death sentence... but it wasn't because she didn't care. Luke knew that her grief and guilt hadn't pushed her that far yet. She had shown that on the roof.  She had cared very much about him, at a time when he had needed it most, and in a way that no one else had been able to reach him.

   But that had been a month ago. In the time following that exchange, their relationship had fallen back into something similar to what it had been on the trip here. Polite, honest, even friendly, but with no more depth than an average acquaintance.  It was a little disconcerting to Luke.  Aside from that exchange on the roof, it was almost as if she was trying to keep him at a distance.  He worried that she was trying to protect him from the negative outcome she expected this hearing to reach.

   "You know what I think?" Mara's voice cut in on his thoughts.  "I think this hearing is a cross circuit for her." 

   Luke was puzzled by the expression. 

   "Her guilt is real enough," Mara offered.  "But I think she's channeling the guilt she feels over her family's fate into guilt for her actions within the Empire."

   "Into this hearing," Luke finished the circuit.  And he considered the theory. He wanted very much to understand.  He wanted very much to help her.

~

   Today's session had been a seemingly endless series of information that the Council had asked of her: mostly times, dates, and locations.  Information, Lara knew, to be used to get a general idea of her movements and actions so that anything suspicious could be singled out.  The investigation would take a long while to finish.  She was growing more aware of that fact, and the passing time, with each day spent within the same small suite – and it became harder to keep herself focused against feelings of being trapped here.  This was preferable, she supposed, to a short trial and a quick execution, but not by much.

   So far they'd hardly touched on her actions and whereabouts after Endor. And from what Skywalker had told her, Mara's only session had been fairly short and not at all in depth.

   It still felt strange to her, to list Mara Jade as an ally.  A cautious amicability had joined the mutual respect between them in the handful of times when they had spoken over the past month. And during those meetings Skywalker had always been nearby, as if he was having visions of them reverting to their old lives and trying to kill each other with lethal data pads. Or so Mara had ribbed him over his nearby hovering.  She'd never pegged Mara for showing a sense of humor, even a very dry one, but Skywalker seemed to enjoy her ribbing and it did force him to relax his guard a bit.

   He had looked far more uncomfortable during those meetings than either of them had felt. Given, it was as odd a working relationship as you would ever find, but it was one they both understood. They didn't expect to ever call each other friends; there was far too much shady history and dark emotion between them for that. Lara guessed that understanding was the thing that made Skywalker so uncomfortable. 

   Her thoughts broke off as there was a knock at her door. She opened it to find him standing there.

   "Hi, Lara," Luke greeted her.  "I wanted to talk to you." 

   The words sounded casual enough, but his expression indicated that the visit was not a social call.

   "Come on in," she responded, stepping back.

   "How are you doing?" he asked, almost as an afterthought.

   She shrugged.  "Not my idea of quality entertainment, but tolerable."

   Luke went inside.  "Do you expect Intelligence to find anything in the records?" he asked, deliberately changing the focus of conversation.  He didn't like the nonchalant tone that had returned to her voice, or the unpleasant weight that descended upon his own conscience in the wake of it.

   "The Rebellion's records, I don't know about," she answered, following him into the living room and watching as he sat down. "But there won't be anything to find in the Imperial files.  My name would never have existed, same as Mara's.  Espionage permeated everything under Palpatine. It would have been too dangerous for us to have been known, even at the highest levels."

   Luke suppressed a shiver.

   Lara only shook her head, a slight grin coming through.  "I warned you," she stated appraisingly.  Then Luke felt her sense abruptly turn serious again. "The Senate will see me as a danger to the New Republic."

   He shook his head heavily. Luke didn't understand this side of her. He didn't like the self-destructive determination that showed in her voice, and it frustrated him to see that grim coldness return to her eyes.  "I don't see the honor in this, Lara," he finally spoke aloud.

   "The honor in what?" she asked, sitting down opposite him.

   "In reconciling yourself to this idea that the Senate will decide your fate, that they should find you guilty."

   "It has nothing to do with honor," she said. "This is retribution."

   He met her gaze solidly, but he didn't understand. Lara grimaced at the need to explain it. "That time in my life shames me," she said quietly.  "Nothing I can do now can change that.

   "Honor," she repeated, as though disappointed in the word. "When I first went in, I thought I was doing something honorable... but I was trying to take honor and idealism into a place where there was none." Only a tired bleakness showed in her voice and in her eyes when she looked to Luke.  "And in those first few days most of it was stomped out of me," she admitted.

   "When the ideals began to fail me, I told myself that I was accepting my fate; I was making a sacrifice so that others wouldn't have to be hurt because of my decision.  I wanted to believe that I was still in control, but my life was in no way within my own control at that point.  Believing that it was only gave me a false sense of control, in a place of forced conformity."  She took a deep breath. "So I learned to bury what mattered down deep. I built walls and I got hard, before I even realized it was happening. I thought I was protecting myself, the only way I could... but eventually everything around me had become something more that I had to survive, in order to get home. 

   "That was the worst mistake I could have made," she whispered, "because it wasn't just my home that I was waiting to return to anymore.  I was waiting to return to myself, to the person who couldn't exist within the Empire." She fell silent for a couple of heartbeats.  "It took a particularly dark day to make me to step back, far enough to see myself.  I looked at what I had become, and I didn't recognize who I saw," she trailed off, haunted by the thought. A moment of remembered clarity and strength came through the sadness and regret that filled her now.  "I realized then that if I didn't find another way I was going to lose myself completely, and that thought terrified me.  What would it matter to make it home? What would any of it matter, if my family couldn't recognize me?

   "After that, I started to try harder.  I made it a point to feel more, to listen to myself, and to help where I could – instead of just blocking out the vicious insanity around me."  She shuddered.  "But there were still times, always times, when it wasn't enough.  Then, all I could do was hold on to the hope that I could go home again... that there really was a place where all I was and all I had to be, was a daughter and a sister." Her eyes fell away, but her brow furrowed with the pained simplicity of how much it had meant.

   "I put everything there. All of my honor and idealism, and every ounce of compassion and love left in me.  My life and my humanity went into that dream, that need." She looked back to Luke. "You had the Rebellion. A purpose, and the opportunity to do something of value with your life, with your grief... but I put everything into my family. And I wasn't prepared for what happened. How can you be prepared to loose everything?"

   Luke grimaced in sympathy, but he remained silent as Lara looked away again.

   "What's left now?" she managed.  "Only the things that I've done, whatever survival I've managed to pull to myself, and the cost. Always the cost."

   Luke was speechless for a few moments before he nodded solemnly, then he spoke gently to her.  "You know, they're not trying you for those things."

   "In a way, they are," she responded distantly, certainly.  "They're trying me for loss of humanity, for all that I gave up, and for all that I made possible."

   Again, he redirected her with a calm and gentle statement. "They're holding you as a threat to the New Republic, present. Not for anything past. Not for anything else."

   "They'll see what they want to see," she challenged him, her soft voice unchanged.

   "Just like you do?" he asked.

   Her eyes flashed.  "I see what I've survived," she bit out. Her eyes glanced restlessly over the room, but in her mind she was elsewhere, remembering other times and places among the Palace's decor.  "What I've done to survive it. And it makes me sick," she grated, finding the truth hard to speak.  "Conscription or survival, those words don't justify anything anymore."

   "They're more than just words," Luke offered, matching her tone with his own measured intensity. "I think they're good reasons, and I think that does matter," he finished before she could object again.  "The fact that your family didn't survive doesn't change how much you wanted to get back to them," he stated quietly. "And I'm not saying that to hurt you.  I'm saying it because it's what I see," he finished softly.

   Her defense faded, and Luke saw her take a slow breath, letting it go. He had known that he was touching something off-limits with her family, and he had expected her to push back. Instead, she had seen that his intentions were not hurtful and she deliberately let it pass, both the comment and her instinct to push him back.  It wasn't in her nature to fight uselessly, but her restraint and self-discipline surprised him.

   "You told me on the roof that you didn't want to be the subject of a witch trial," he continued. "To be tried for what, your talent? How is this different, Lara? You feel guilt.  They're not trying you for that." He paused to shake his head, feeling his own returning confusion.  "I wish you could see this as I do. What you're doing to yourself – holding yourself responsible for things that you didn't intend, and couldn't control – it's not fair, or right. Why should you consign yourself to that guilt?" 

   How can I not?

   Lara looked away.  The answer that had come easily to her mind was not the one Skywalker wanted to hear.  Lara sighed at the feeling that something important had been lost, missed in the gap between their two points of view.

   "You're right in part," she finally said regretfully.  "I don't see it.  Maybe I should, but I don't." When she met his eyes again it was with a familiar expression of strength, an underlying sense of defiance. "This is where I stand.  This is where I see my fate."

   Luke took a deep breath. His gaze was penetrating, and his eyes were sad. "If it's not something you would fight for," he finally spoke, giving a shake of his head, "then it's still just survival."

~

   Half a galaxy away, on the outskirts of the Aci system Pracos was putting the finishing touches on the plan Laus had outlined for him.  All the pieces were in place; his mission was nearly completed. Laus would see that he had redeemed himself well.

~

   Back in the Myrtle system, Laus reviewed the latest updates from his network of informants and then looked over Pracos' previous report. Things were coming together nicely.  This month had moved everything into place, and this would be just the time to shake up Coruscant. 

   The comm on Laus' desktop sounded an alert on its high security frequency. He settled himself behind the desk and put Pracos' transmission through.

   "Is everything in place?" Laus asked.

   "Just like you wanted, Boss."  Pracos assured him confidently.

   "Good."

   "Should we head back now, or do you want me to stay here and supervise?" he asked, resuming that confident smirk that had always annoyed Laus.

   "Neither," Laus grated the word with a devious smirk of his own. "You can send the rest of the team back, but you're not done yet. I have something else in mind."

~~ ~ () ~ ~~

   Artoo Detoo and See Threepio made their way through the Palace halls, each moving at top speeds.

   "Slow down, Artoo."  3PO scuttled awkwardly through the busy traffic, attempting to keep pace with his counterpart, who was better built for this sort of thing, he thought sourly, and said so again. 

   R2, some would say, had the right idea by keeping just ahead of 3PO and his constant chatter.

   "I understand that it's urgent, but Mistress Mara asked that I inform Mistress Leia, personally."

   R2 beeped an objection at 3PO's self-centered evaluation of the circumstances.

   What she'd actually said, when she'd contacted R2 through the code Master Luke had given her for emergencies, was that if they could get to her sooner, to do it. She would be relying on 3PO's access to the Senate as one of Leia's aids, to get Mara's message through.

~

   Mara had never been overly impressed by droids, though Skywalker's astromech was an exception. More human than mechanical, it seemed. That was the only reason she even considered sending a message though him to Organna Solo. 

   She would much rather have gone to Skywalker or Organna Solo in person, but time was a factor.

   "This is the Jade's Fire, requesting clearance to land," Mara stated, and punched through her landing code again.  And again she cursed the overly stringent Coruscant landing officials.  "I just left a week ago; how blasted hard can it be to run a code clearance?" she mumbled under her breath, and ran another attempt on locating Skywalker. He was still showing an unreachable code clearance.  He was probably combing the record archives, still hoping to find something there in support of Dare's defense.  She cursed again, more bitterly, and sat back to wait. 

   She hated waiting. Mara hoped that little droid lived up to its billing. 

~

   "I really don't see what could be so important that she won't simply go through the proper channels." 

   R2 gave his opinion of the protocol droid's over reliance on the proper ways of doing things.  But that was his programming, after all.  R2, on the other hand, was programed with a greater understanding of using the necessary means to accomplish what needed to be done.  But that didn't give him access to the Senate, unfortunately.

   He beeped an extended instruction to his counterpart. 

   "I will tell her exactly as Mistress Mara said," Threepio insisted impatiently, "you overcharged short circuit."   

   He got in the unreturned insult as he entered the Senate chambers, leaving R2's resulting raspberry to echo uselessly off the Grand Corridor's high ceiling.  The little droid finished his insult and began to beep nervously to himself as he rolled across the Corridor, to wait.  Artoo may not have had access to the Senate, but he did have access to the archives.... Abruptly, the little droid spun on his wheels and headed off at top speed for his master's last reported location. 

~

   "Any luck, Luke?" 

   "Ah – we'll see," Luke answered, standing to shake hands with Allad Perril.

   "I wish I could do more for you," the NRI agent persisted.

   "No, you've already done a great deal, letting Mara and me wander around the archives at all hours.  Thanks again, for the access."

   The younger man shook off Luke's thanks, just as he always did.  "I wouldn't be here at all if wasn't for you, Commander.  You know all you have to do is name it, and anything I can get for you is yours."

   Luke grinned.  "I know.  Thanks, Allad."

   Allad nodded and playfully saluted the Commander-turned-Jedi Knight as he walked away. Luke returned the smile and a partial salute as he watched Allad return to his post in NRI headquarters.  It seemed like only yesterday that Luke had been a young commander in the Rebel army, and Allad an even younger Imperial defector.

   Luke smiled as he shook the past away and returned his thoughts to several suspicious prisoner transfer records, all from the Executor and a handful of other ships at times when Lara had been on board. Nothing was blatantly amiss in the actual transfers; each had followed procedure, and the extra entries into the ships' command grids could have been a result of any number of system glitches, but it could also have been a smart way to cover up an unauthorized prisoner transfer.  Luke wanted to ask Lara about that.

   "Artoo.  Easy. Tell me what's wrong," Luke said, placing a hand on the little droid's dome as he came to a stop beside his master. Luke waited for R2 to plug himself into one of the archive's display units, but Artoo didn't bother with the translator. As soon as the droid stopped his beeping Luke saw what was the matter.  A holo image of Mara Jade had appeared on the table, standing in front of Luke.

   "Our surveillance units have gathered several minutes of skirmish footage taken in the Tritis borderlands. They appear to be testing a new weapons-grade fighter shielding there, but the real problem is developing outside the Aci system...."

   Luke glanced around cautiously.  "That's enough for now, Artoo." Luke stood.  "Finish up for me here; save those records I marked and add them to the other Imperial timeline files for Lara to review." Luke would have to ask her about the transfers later. "I'd better find out in person what the rest of this message is all about."

~

   "If the information is accurate, this could be a considerable problem," Senator Jutex proclaimed worriedly to the assembly a short while later. "Aci is a highly industrial system.  We were a high technology trade sector under the Empire, and that occupation is something that the entire sector is just now fully recovering from," the Senator from the Aci sector was sure to point out. "Any kind of blockade or sabotage could set us back to the point of crippling our reemerging economy."

   "That is the danger assessment," Mon Mothma noted, giving the Senator's concerns for his sector just weight and carefully turning the debate toward more productive matters.  "Intelligence expert Wakiem, what is the current situation?"

   "We have just gotten positive conformation of a fleet massing off the Aci rim. Their light fighter escort matches up with the skirmish footage that Informant Jade has provided from Tritis space."  The Senate's intelligence liaison paused heavily. "These ships also appear to employ the same high tech shielding capabilities," he finished grimly.

   "What is our fleet doing to combat this threat?" Councilor Fey'lya asked in Ackbar's general direction.

   "We will send our forces into the sector," the Calamarian General responded, "to prevent hostilities," he accentuated. "But first we must get a reading on these weapons' capabilities.

   "Councillor Organna Solo, you've fully reviewed the information," he prompted.

   Leia suppressed a grimace as she launched into a summery of the bad news.  "Several small hit and fade attacks have been reported in the immediate sectors adjoining the planet Rhaci, at the outskirts of the Aci sector."

   "Sounds like they're gearing up for something bigger," one of the senators near her surmised darkly.

   "The footage that Mara Jade has provided captured one of those attacks, in addition to the footage that was provided from the Tritis skirmishes," she continued. "The defenses on the fighters in question are like nothing we've seen before. These are small fighters that appear to be impenetrable to blast power that would normally disable a ship up to three times its size."

   "Is it possible that it could be an illusion of some sort?" Ackbar questioned.

   "That was my first thought too," Leia acknowledged, nodding the floor to the intelligence expert. 

   "Intelligence is placing very high odds that the footage is authentic and accurate," he verified.  "Right now we're working up a combat approach."

   "What about a trace?" Fey'lya demanded next. "Do we know where these ships are coming from, how many could exist?"

   "Our people are swamped just in coming up with an analysis of the things," Wakiem gestured helplessly.

   Leia met Fey'lya's gaze. "Informant Jade's sources have begun work on tracing them."

   Fey'lya started to argue, but his well-known disapproval of the Coalition's involvement in such matters was cut off as Mon Mothma spoke up.

   "Admiral Ackbar. Organize a force to send into the Aci system.  We cannot underestimate this new threat," she stated gravely. "Councillor Organna Solo.  Oversee the investigation, and organize a diplomatic team to accompany the military presence."

~

   A few hours later Luke had been briefed and was prepared to lead his team. A little different team from the old days, he thought to himself as he made his way through the high security wing, but still bringing with them the same strength of intensity and purpose for the task. He came to a stop and knocked at the door of Lara's suite; he regretted the timing of all this.

   "Hi, Lara," he greeted her.  If she had picked up on the turmoil in his emotions she didn't show it. She only stepped back to let him in and waited patiently to learn the reason behind his visit.

   "I wanted to tell you in person," he explained, pausing as he stepped inside.  "There's going to be a delay in the hearing.  Something's come up, a situation. Intelligence is scrambling to get a handle on it."

   She nodded her understanding and refrained from asking for details. 

   "I'm going to be leaving to help, the investigation, public relations, whatever they need."

   She studied him as he spoke. His mood was as serious as she had seen it.  "You look like you're taking this personally," she observed after a moment.

   He winced a bit at the assessment. "It's part of a larger problem, but it's something I'd hoped my mission to Myrtle would help us begin to solve." Luke studied her face. Under other circumstances he would have liked to tell her exactly what all this was about.  It was Mara's hunch to run surveillance on Laus' territory along the Tritis borderlands that had turned up that skirmish footage; Lara might know something more about Laus' possible involvement.... 

   Luke decided to find out.  "We've been having problems with small-time warlords selling ships and supplies to the Remnants.  Laus is one of the largest operators in the Myrtle rim area.  Do you know anything about Laus being a weaponry dealer?"

   "No, not specifically," she answered, "but he does have a reputation as a bit of a technology junkie. 

And I wouldn't put it past him to try to turn a quick profit at the expense of a handful of desperate Imperial officers."

   Luke nodded, considering.  Then he smiled. "Thanks for the input; I'd better get going." 

   She nodded in return, but something didn't feel right. "Luke – hang on. If this is about more than the sale of a few ships, you need to be very careful.  Laus is dangerous, and things won't be what they seem where he's involved."

   "I understand," Luke answered solemnly.

   Lara suddenly felt like all the air had been knocked out of her.  Luke Skywalker had made a career out of succeeding where all the odds were against him, but didn't the odds have to win out, eventually? 

   "Don't worry, Lara.  If Laus is involved in this, we'll get to the bottom of it, and we'll shut him down," Luke promised.

   Lara nodded, but she found it hard to look into his eyes.  She could feel patience and determination in him, alongside the deep confidence that she could hear in his voice. He knew that the situation was serious, but failure was not an option for this man –  not when everything depended upon his success. 

   That much was reassuring.  The rest of what she was feeling was not.

   Luke Skywalker stood in front of her, but other faces swam in her mind, the faces of the people who had been alive until Laus... until Laus had set his sights on her. There was nothing she could do to change that, not any of it... and she didn't know when, or even if, she might see Luke again.

   Luke dipped his eyes to meet her gaze, and he gave her a reassuring smile. "It'll be all right," he said softly.  "I'll come back."

   Lara felt the weight of her worry lift, and she breathed easier as Luke turned to go.  They both knew there were no guarantees that he would be able to keep his word, but that didn't keep her from believing.

   "Luke," she called. 

   He turned back.

   "Steer the shore."

   The Jedi Knight stood watching her, patiently waiting for an explanation.

   This time Lara smiled as she met his gaze. There was something a little playful, almost teasing, behind her eyes as she watched his puzzled expression.  "It means good luck," she finished.

   Luke smiled back at her. "I'll have to remember that."

~~ ~ () ~ ~~

   By the time Luke arrived in the Aci system, things had already gotten worse. The Rhaci sector was armed to the teeth and bristling with firepower. If the objective of showing off this new weaponry was to raise defenses to the point of paranoia, it had succeeded.

   Luke's eyes flickered across the bridge to where he could see the Rogues in escort formation alongside his flagship, and he fought down the nostalgic wish that he could be out there with them.  A Jedi did what was needed of him, he reminded himself.  And today, that was leading a diplomatic mission from aboard the Valiance.

   He hailed the planet Rhaci and requested their official permission for a New Republic peace force to enter their airspace under an investigation-advisory status.

~

   Focus. Her eyes were searching the city, following the steady flow of ships as they slowly passed between the skyscrapers of Coruscant's massive skyline... waiting. There; that ship; that's the one.  Aim.  Hold focus.  Execute! 

   Lara held her stance, balanced precisely, keeping all her weight on one foot as she stared out the window.  One second passed.  Two, before she picked up the same ship.  It was more challenging than just picking a spot on the wall to use as her target.  She repeated the side kick and dropped face down to floor.

   Leg sweep. Pivot onto hip, into a front kick. Nip up to guard. Find your target again. 

   Force back flip. Her feet hit the floor halfway across the room and Lara assumed a ready stance.  She blinked. The ship forgotten, suddenly Lara was only dimly aware of the high security suite around her.  She was wielding a lightsaber, twirling the blade before her, waiting for Mara's attack to come. Then there was only defense and counterattack as red blade met red blade. This had been called an exhibition; there were high-level dignitaries from all over the galaxy present to watch the display. But exhibition or not, Lara had a cold certainty in her feelings that Mara Jade would go in for the kill if given the chance... and there was no guarantee that she would allow her opponent to remain alive in defeat.  The Empire was an unforgiving place.

   Lara shivered and lowered her head.  The flashback had passed, but she was sweating and her concentration was shot.  Lara walked to the kitchenette to splash some water on her face.  That was surprising – not the unexpected flash of memory; Lara was used to being haunted by her past – the back flip had surprised her.  Lara hadn't used the Force in her daily workouts, not in years. There was no need, not against Laus' men. Fighting skills and raw tenacity had been enough to ensure her survival there... she had been able to retreat into the mountain country and forget everything she ever knew about using the Force. She had done her best to turn off all her emotions, even those that had once worked to keep her safe.  She hadn't cared, until one day she had returned to the low country for supplies and stumbled over Luke Skywalker, surrounded by a dozen of Pracos' men. 

   Just like today, she hadn't intended it; she hadn't even thought about it when she had reached out to the Force and jumped onto that wood-worked wall. It had just come to her....  She had let everything go calm, waiting for the right moment, and without thinking about what she was doing she had launched herself into the midst of Pracos men... into this.

   I wish you could see this as I do.

   Lara straightened and reached for a towel to wipe her face.

   Skywalker. He was wrong this time.  There was no way to correct the past; there was only an unending list of wrongs that could not be righted, and the sacrifice they would demand to appease them.  It seemed a fruitless exercise to try to see otherwise, but a part of her kept at it. Part of her remembered all that Skywalker had once represented, remembered that somewhere along the way he had become part of her conscience.... Lara had watched him, all those years as she watched over him. She knew that he was a man of honor and compassion, and she respected those things. Maybe she respected them a little more, now that they were so lost on her, or to her. 

   She shook her head against the familiar feeling that there was something just out of her reach. 

   I wish you could see this as I do. That was what he had said, and she could not see his point that what she saw as her fate was somehow unfair. Again, she wondered why she couldn't.  Agree or disagree, what was keeping her from being able to see this from his point of view?

   Lara walked back to the living room, picked up a data pad and began keying up the day's news.  It had been a long time since she had bothered with outside news... but information had once been her obsession, because it had been essential to her survival. The old habits still died hard.  Plus, there would be no visits from Skywalker or Jade to help break the monotony of the days here: no reading bits of intelligence intercepts and recovered ships' records, no feeling Skywalker's hope that something there might make a difference, might link her to the other side in this battle. Lara knew that it wouldn't; there had been no heroes in the Empire, only survivors, and Lara no longer even counted herself as one of those.

   She began to page through her heavily edited versions of the daily news reports, pausing once in a while to read through a story that caught her attention. Then there was a little inkling in the Force as she paged across one that described a standoff at a planet called Rhaci, some kind of mysterious new fighter ship design.... She knew that was where Luke was.  Lara looked away from the data pad; she wasn't comfortable with the worry that was beginning to come over her.

   She stood. Tossing the data pad back onto the sofa, Lara began to go through her exercises again. They would require all of her concentration, but she had a nagging feeling that it still wouldn't clear her mind.

~

   Intelligence expert Wakiem stood before the Senate Inner Council, ready to give them this week's security briefing. He waited while the room quieted and Mon Mothma brought the session to order.

   "Jedi Skywalker and his team have arrived at Rhaci," Mon Mothma stated.  "He reports that the system is still on high alert, but there have been no hostilities exchanged.  Mr. Wakiem, tell us what they can expect out of these new ships."

   He swallowed hard. "We're still running analyses, trying to get a breakdown on their shielding capabilities and formulate a weakness. In the meantime, I'm afraid that those ships are going to be bad news.  Highly maneuverable, with formidable weapons systems. And the defenses – so far, they appear to be nearly impenetrable."

   Mon Mothma repressed a sigh. "We haven't found any weaknesses in their design?"

   "I'm afraid not."

   The leader of the New Republic only nodded.  "Keep on it, Mr. Wakiem.  Hopefully there won't be any hostilities at Rhaci, but if it does come to that, our people will need a line of attack to use against those ships."

   "I understand."

   "And what about the investigation into our Imperial informant? Is there anything new to report there?"

   "We're still coming up empty on the pre-Endor trace. Her story checks out; for the most part Lara Dare doesn't exist."

   Mon Mothma nodded again. "Then I suggest that you shift your investigation to post-Endor, as soon as your people are able to handle the work load."

   Wakiem nodded. He was tempted to ask if the Senate Inner Council realized that this search would be even less likely to produce results than the previous one, but from the quiet buzz that had fallen over the room, he suspected that he didn't have to say it.

~

   When Luke finally finished his diplomatic rounds he had talked to seemingly every planetary and local official, trying to calm the same fears and make the same reassurances of the New Republic's ability to protect them.  Meanwhile the enemy fleet remained massed just outside Aci space, and Rhaci still held its armed vigil.  

   Sometimes it felt as though nothing ever really changed. He sat heavily, feeling the conforming chair in his quarters move to enfold his tired muscles. It was like he was right back at the same place he had been three years ago: making the same series of reassurances to nervous planetary leaders, and hating the uncomfortable feeling that lurked beneath each exchange... the unconscious waiting for the next attack to come. 

   Luke jerked awake with a start – he hadn't realized that he had fallen asleep – and he stretched out with his senses, instinctively searching for what had woken him. 

   He could sense a great deal of turmoil nearby.

   A second later an alert siren began sounding outside his room. At least the waiting was over.

~

   Considering the heavy armament that stood ready in defense around the sector, Luke hadn't expected any assault to be a straight-forward offensive, but he hadn't expected this either.  An explosion had just rocked one of the planet's major industrial centers; by all accounts it was an on-world attack. 

   Not an easy task, considering that the whole system had been in full battle mode for some time now.  Assuming that the attack hadn't been a local job, someone had gone to a lot of trouble to arrange this, and Luke suspected the latter.

   "I don't know how a saboteur could have gotten through our security," the Ground Controller stated emphatically as he apprised Luke of the situation.

   "We can't worry about that now," Luke directed.  From the readings on the display that was filling a large portion of the control room, he could see that they were already deploying ground forces to secure the area.  "What forces are being sent?"

   "All from sectors ten and eleven, those nearest the blast."  They watched the movement on the display as a large section of the adjacent hover and ground forces moved into the indicated zone.  "That will cordon off the area; we'll capture the assailants in short work," the Ground Controller assured him.

~

   Pracos made it back to his ship just as the blast went off.  Soon the place would be crawling with security.  He scanned the air nervously, waiting. 

   His cover should have been here by now.

~

   Luke felt the familiar warning sensation tickling at the corner of his mind a moment before things started to unravel.  "That sector," Luke said knowingly as he motioned to a newly emptied area on the display. Most of the ground and hover forces had already moved out in their rush to cordon off the adjacent sector, leaving only a skeleton crew behind. "We need to get an air defense force there."

   It was already too late. Luke let go a deep breath as the ships came in from hyperspace side by side: two mid-size crewers, with AB fighters swarming from their hangers upon entry.

   The dangerous jump had allowed them to enter the system at close range, unscathed by the massed forces in wait at the sector's edge. And that same distance would now stand between Rhaci and any hope of aid from the heavily armed ships that were in place for their sector's defense.

   The agile ABs wasted no time in cutting through Rhaci's bulky orbital defense stations, and headed in toward the planetary defense systems that had been left momentarily undefended on the ground.

   The Ground Controller swore at his oversight.

   "Rogue leader," Luke called into his comm link. 

   "I see them, Boss," Wedge's voice answered.  "We're on our way up."

~

   A few minutes later the Rogues and Rhaci's own Air Defense Corps had been able to put a considerable dent in the attacking AB fighters, though not before they had been able to create a clear pathway to the planetary defense systems.

   Luke had started to direct some of the Rogues to find a way to get that hole plugged when the alert sirens changed over to alarm warnings once more.

   "We just had another blast," one of the ensigns reported.

   "Get a force in there," the Ground Controller ordered, starting to show the first signs of strain under battle conditions. "I want the culprits found," he barked.

   "Ground One," a comm patched through.  "We just caught one trying to blast out of the wreckage area."

   "Report."

   "It was a small transport craft, sublight, it appeared to be signaling to the AB force for cover," the message crackled through, beginning to break up.

   "Were you able to capture it?" the Controller asked.

   "Negative. It self-destructed just after the transmission–"

   The comm broke off into static.

   "That must have been the explosion we just picked up," Luke noted.

   The Ground Controller cursed under his breath. "Spread out," he ordered.  "Make sure no more explosives have been left behind, and that no one else gets out." 

   Luke turned his attention back to the display, following the air-space portion of the battle. 

   They were steadily forcing the attackers back, but something was off.

   "Rogue Leader, watch that opening on your port side," Luke advised.

   "Will do, Boss," Wedge acknowledged. But almost before he had a chance to respond, the space in question flared with hyperdrive psudomotion.

   Luke heard Wedge utter a curse as he pulled up hard to avoid the incoming craft's trajectory.  "Look out Rogues, here come our mystery fighters," he spat. 

   The light fighter design of the high tech shielding-capability craft they had been briefed on was easy to recognize as the ships came in from light speed.

   Luke gritted his teeth.  They were heading straight for that corridor that they'd never quite been able to close up, making a straight-line attack on the planetary defense systems.  And there was nothing that could be done stop them.

   "Don't waste your fire on them," Luke instructed tightly.  "Just keep on those ABs."

   " 'Fraid that won't be a problem Ground One," Wedge returned. 

   Luke looked back to the display.

   Wedge was right. The fighters had swept in to make an initial run on the defense systems, a costly one Luke would guess, despite only taking the one pass.  Now they were running an escape cover for the ABs. The heavier crewers had already jumped out ahead of them.

   Luke watched the attack force pull away, until the entire formation had jumped to the safety of hyperspace.  Then his eyes moved back to the status readouts that were gradually taking the place of battle reports on displays all around the control center.  The planet was shifting out of its alert status, and the damage reports were beginning to come in. 

   Severe damage on the ground. Long range planetary defenses were badly impaired.

   "Pack it in Rogue Squadron.  You've done all you could," Luke said heavily, hardly hearing Wedge's equally heavy acknowledgment. 

   Luke took a deep breath and wondered where to start cleaning up.

~~ ~ () ~ ~~

   If the first month's investigation had been slowgoing, the standstill of next three months was excruciatingly so. There was not much to do with the time.  Mostly Lara measured the days by seeing how much more grueling a workout she could put herself through today than she had yesterday, and the luxuries of being able to walk the halls or go to the roof for fresh air were quickly becoming welcome lifelines; she made a mental note to thank Skywalker for that. More recently Lara had turned to keeping her mind occupied with literature along with whatever news and recent history she could get approved on data link up, but she found herself making her way up to the roof more often, finding that she had less and less patience for the same walls and floors.

   Today it was nearing twilight when Lara stepped out onto the rooftop, but today there was a different reason for her being here. Luke Skywalker turned to meet her, and she felt an unexpected wash of relief come over her. It was a little silly; after all, she had already felt his presence and known that he was here.  But seeing her friend back, safe and well....  That was something more than relief.  It was joy.

   "Hi, Lara."  He greeted her with more enthusiasm than he felt, and Lara felt her own feelings quickly turn more subdued as she walked toward him.

   "How did things go?" she asked.

   He sighed. "Not well."  An understatement.  She could see that he was distressed.

   "I wasn't able to solve much on this one," he offered reluctantly. "We put in a lot of time, but not much positive result. I'm beginning to think Wedge was right to call them mystery fighters," Luke mumbled half to himself.

   "Wait a minute," Lara started curiously. She paused, putting a hand to her forehead as she searched her memory for something illusive. "I think I read something about those ships; they won't give me anything current that's not heavily edited, but the basic story gets through....  These are like, short range, light escort-type ships?"

   "Exactly like that," Luke confirmed, watching her curiously. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a data pad. 

   Luke waited while she keyed something into it.  

   "Here. Run this code through the old d class files," she said, handing the pad to him. 

   "d class," he repeated, scanning over the page.  "Developing technology?"  He looked up from the data pad, unable to read the change that he sensed in her emotions.

   She blinked, consciously pushing it away.  Lara could see that he was anxious to get moving on something that could help the New Republic.  "It's okay," she ushered him away.  "Go."

   "You're sure?"

   She nodded.

   "We'll talk more later," Luke assured her before he turned to go.

   She stood looking at the city for a long time after he'd gone. It had never occurred to her that her knowledge, her past, could help anyone, much less the New Republic.  The thought hit her like a stun bolt. The past couldn't be changed, but maybe the future could.

~

   Leia just looked at him for a moment without speaking. "I don't have to ask where you got this from, or should I say whom?" 

   Luke only lifted his eyebrows. "The information is clear," he said simply, "it's the same high tech shielding that was used against us at Rhaci." 

   "She must have known that the d files were one of the few sections that survived the transition nearly unscathed. It makes for an easy bargaining chip, at best." 

   "The prototype shows several vulnerabilities," Luke persisted.

   "If they haven't been plugged by now," Leia said, not trying to hide the implication. 

   Luke only shrugged.  "One way to find out." 

   She scowled at him.  "You're not going to face what this is really about, are you?" she finally accused him impatiently. "Luke, you know I don't trust her." 

   "I know," he answered quietly, meeting her eyes. "I don't want to fight this round, Leia," he admitted, keeping his voice calm.  "I don't think she has any hidden agenda, and the Inner Council will make the final decision on whether or not she's a security risk.  What more do you want?"

   "I want you to be careful," Leia answered bluntly. "I don't like this, Luke."

~

   In the back room of a shady cantina on the small planet of Marnia, two business associates were meeting again.

   "I see that you've been having a little fun with your new toys," Imago prodded his associate.

   "It's no concern of yours," Laus brushed him off.  "As long as I don't find any embarrassing reoccurring flaws in the design, that is," he amended. "In that case–"

   "I have assured you, repeatedly, that won't be a problem." He paused. "In fact," Imago hinted shrewdly, "anything Dare might know about those ships won't be a factor, unless of course you intend for it to be."

~

   The following morning Leia handed the information Luke had given to her over to the Senate, and New Republic Intelligence began testing the prototype against their battle data to determine if it could be used to plan an offensive combat approach.

   That afternoon, in the wake of the revelation that Lara had provided the information leading to the prototype's discovery, the Senate Inner Council barreled forward into her hearing. They started, predictably, with an in-depth line of questioning about her knowledge of the information from the old Imperial files. 

   Lara explained patiently, that she had had access to all Imperial intelligence files, and that this was one of the prototypes being developed during her service tenure. She assured them that, to the best of her knowledge, there had never been a working model; she had only recognized the premise of the design when she had seen a related news report on data link. 

   With that controversy put to relative rest, they returned to the thick of the questioning.

~

   For nearly five months Lara had been on trial. They were calling it a hearing but she knew the truth; this was her trial. She should have better endurance than this, Lara thought bitterly to herself, turning to walk the hall once more.  She was fighting the feeling that the walls grew smaller and tighter with each pass, but it wasn't the narrow halls that were bringing on the bought of claustrophobia. It was her; she wasn't being honest with herself. It was more than the trial and being on Coruscant that was making her feel so on edge.  Those were only distractions, and only brief interruptions in the pain and guilt. Everything else just skated around the edges; deep down at least, that was how it still felt....  But it was much easier to blame her unpleasant disposition on the distractions, or on Skywalker and his meddling. 

   Skywalker. When she came here, she could never have expected this; it was weird enough to have Skywalker so determined to fight for her, then he had enlisted Mara Jade in her defense as well....  Lara shook her head, fighting off a surreal feeling of disbelief. Who could have imagined that this would be her defense? Certainly not her. It was entirely too strange to believe that she was putting her fate into the hands of Luke Skywalker and Mara Jade.

   Lara sighed, feeling drained.  Her footsteps had returned her to her own door, and she let herself inside. Several days had passed to the Senate Inner Council's newly resumed, in-depth questioning. Dates, times, systems, missions, and mission objectives....  She had remembered most of them.  They were working now to pinpoint her whereabouts and actions for specific events, controversial timings.  And they were also concerned about her knowledge of the intelligence and security systems that were still in operational use.

   She started pacing again, despite the weariness that pulled at her.  All the specific questioning, in such detail – it brought the past too close.  Still, they had only asked if she had had "no contact" with the Empire after Endor. That was beginning to make her nervous.  Skywalker had told her once before that he assumed they would split the hearing into two parts as a way to ease the intelligence load.  Once they had exhausted their concerns about her Imperial service, then he expected them to begin the difficult work of tracing the post-Endor years, when she and Mara had lived as shadows among the fringe. He must be expecting the shift to happen soon.  When they had last spoken, briefly, before today's session, Skywalker had told her that Mara would be returning to Coruscant in a few days.  Then the three of them were going to begin discussing the fringe time, as Luke called it.

   Speaking of him, Lara heard a knock at the door, and she knew it couldn't be anyone else but Luke Skywalker.

   "Hi," she greeted him and stepped back to wave him inside.

   "Hi," he echoed as she turned her back on him; she looked agitated, and after the last couple of days he couldn't fault her for that.

   "What's bothering you?" he asked without further pretense.

   "Do I need to worry that they haven't questioned me further about what happened after Endor?" 

   "I don't think so," he answered straight-out.  "Your actions after Endor are fairly clear-cut. Mara can account for your actions and movements over the first four years.  After that you went home." 

   It sounded perfectly logical, but something about it continued to nag at her.  Lara put those feelings aside. Worrying wouldn't gain her any control over this.

   "Listen, I promised you we'd get a chance to talk – and I wanted to thank you for your help, for the information you gave me on the d files."

   "The records were there, then?" she asked reflexively

   Luke squirmed.

   "I know. You can't say," Lara retracted her question.

   "No, but your lead could really help us."

   Lara nodded, and Luke recognized that same faraway look and feel that he'd picked up in her sense a few days ago, just before he'd left her on the roof. She looked distracted, worried, and he could only think of one thing that might be worrying Lara Dare.

   "I know it didn't happen at Rhaci, but if Laus is involved in this, we will get him," he assured her, and felt a twinge in her emotions.  She nodded again, but Luke saw a change in her face. 

   "What?" he asked cautiously.

   She shrugged it off. "Laus, and the Myrtle system," she smiled half-heartedly.  "I've been so caught up in everything else... I just realized that I've been gone, for a while now."

   The underlying emotion was more vivid than she wanted to let show. Luke could see that. He reached a hand to brush against her arm, and gave her a supportive smile.  "You miss it," he surmised easily. 

   She shook her head, a little mystified at the sudden onset of nostalgia. "How it used to be," she said softly, turning away.

   "You grew up there?" Luke asked easily.  She looked at him, a little off balance.  Her expression stayed unreadable, but measuring of him somehow.  "Tell me about it, then," he encouraged, and again he got the impression that she was measuring how much she wanted to show, and if he was asking for too much.

   She took a cautious breath, but her eyes stayed quiet and she found an easy way to answer him. "Marnia was a beautiful place then," she remembered softly, "lots of sprawling hills and valleys, set between the mountains and the waterways."  She trailed off from the brief, wishful remembrance.  "Myrtle attracted most of the commerce in that part of the system, but for the mild climate and the peace of its scenery, Marnia drew in the wealthy tourists and vacationers.  That was the only real on-world industry: tourism, and horses," she remembered before falling quiet.

   "Growing up, I loved the horses. There were dozens of farms in the hills nearby, serious businesses raising expensive animals. Almost all of them had chased me off, no matter how hard I tried to stay out of the way, just to watch.  But one summer my brother managed to get me riding lessons in return for working at one of the farms.... and it was like the whole world opened up in front of me." She trailed off regretfully, bringing herself back from something that had become hard to remember

   Luke stayed quiet and let her find her place again.  Even the good memories had a way of becoming a little too intense; he understood that; he could see it in her eyes.

   "My father was a successful businessman, but he had grow tired of the chaos that went along with his business, so he and my mother packed up everything and went out to the Myrtle system, looking for something simpler. It was only a few years later that my brother and I were born." 

   Luke started to ask, just in small talk, but he stopped short.  Lara felt a twinge of sympathy betray his understanding, and the discomfort of her own memories and emotions started to fade a bit.  She was thankful that she didn't have to try to explain to him how close they had been; Luke understood the bond that twins shared.

   "We were inseparable," she finally offered quietly.  "And for the most part our childhood was normal, and happy," she finished, coming back to easier ground.  "Our parents raised us to be confident and independent, and with a lot of love," she said softly. For as long as I can remember, Mark was my best friend... and we were inseparable," she decided slowly.  "He was the one I would always go to, no matter what was wrong."

   She trailed off again. The earlier hesitancy had faded a little, but it was still painful for her open up those wounds, especially when it came to her brother.  The pain of loss echoed in her voice when she said his name, and Luke realized that she never had before. He hurt with her, and for her.

   Then Lara smiled, returning to something that she could express. "Mark knew that what I wanted more than anything was to be around horses, so he managed to get me riding lessons, from this rather eccentric lady," she remembered with a faraway smile.  "At least that was how she was thought of.  Only an eccentric, and considerably wealthy woman, would pursue what was a male occupation on Marnia.  In reality, she was one of most throughly grounded people I ever met, and an incredibly loyal friend," Lara added softly.

   "She taught me in secret – it would have made things more difficult for both of us, to have it known – but I didn't care about that.  I loved it. It was all I wanted as a kid, an escape as a girl." 

   Luke could see that same light in her face that had been there before when she had spoken to him about her home.  Her low, even voice contrasted the strong, defiant set to her chin, and her eyes blazed.

   "She took a liking to me," Lara remembered, "and once she saw that I was serious about learning, we became fast friends. Eventually the pretext of Mark's working in return for my time was dropped, and I started to help her with training the animals. It was wonderful work. I learned so much about communication and instinct that crossed over.... 'You learn to be gentle,' she used to say; that was what she was taught.  And it was never more true in my life," Lara remembered, again far away.     

   "What happened to her?" Luke asked finally. 

   "I don't know," Lara answered. "She got off Marnia. I hope she's somewhere now, surrounded by horses, doing what she loves.... For Mark, it was sailing.  He loved the water, and sailing set him free. If we weren't at the stables, we were on the water somewhere. That suited him – the sun and the wind on the water – he just hung around the stables because he knew I loved it," Lara remembered.

   Again, she came back from the past, looking at Luke a little cautiously. "It was my home," she said with a little shrug, "but mostly, I guess it was just another outer rim world.  Quiet, and more than a little backward, especially once you moved out into the countryside."

   "Sounds a bit like Tatooine, where I grew up," Luke acknowledged easily. "Aside from the handful of major spaceports, it was very much outer rim.  But it was desert," he contrasted.

   "Desert," she stated, with some surprised amusement.

   "Completely," he nodded; a little of that outer rim pride in conquering the unknown and braving the elements showed through in his voice.

   "Why did I think you had come from a farm?"

   He grinned.  "I did – a moisture farm."

   She shook her head.  "That's a new one for me," she admitted.  "Did you like it there?" she redirected.

   "I couldn't wait to get out. I wanted adventures, the whole galaxy over," Luke remembered with a wave of his hand.  "Biggs was my best friend since we were kids, and my uncle used to say that our friendship was based on how much trouble we could make, or otherwise get into together.  That was more than a little true," Luke conceded with a grin.

   "Biggs was a couple of years older than me, which automatically made him best at everything. And I wanted to be just like him, which was how most of our trouble started," he admitted through another smile. "He was great pilot, always pushing the limit, and I had to be right in there with him.  He probably had me on skill, but he used to say I made up for it by being crazy, which was also probably true.  I don't know how many speeders we wrecked, or how many reamings I got from my uncle for smashing up his skyhopper," he remembered warily.

   "Biggs stood out though," Luke stated strongly.  "He was a natural leader, and he made the older kids take me in.  Not always well," he conceded with a remembered grimace, "but nobody else's opinion mattered.  Biggs treated me as an equal. He made me prove myself – but that was what I wanted.  I knew I could do it, if he could." 

   Luke fell silent.  "It killed me when he left for the Academy, and I had to stay behind.

   "That was the biggest fight Uncle Owen and I ever had; it was the end of the world for me. For my uncle, I'd be going in another semester anyway.  Or I'd go eventually, that semester when he couldn't keep me there anymore.... I often think he would have kept asking for just one more season, because he knew I couldn't go that way, that I wouldn't leave against his wishes, not when he needed me there.

   "I don't even remember what was said now," Luke continued. "That whole time I was arguing with my uncle, I just remember feeling, awful. It felt like I was abandoning Biggs, because I couldn't go with him." 

   Lara felt her stomach lurch.

   Luke looked to her worriedly, sensing the change.  She tried to shake it off with a half-hearted smile.  "Mark probably felt that way when I left." She spoke the emotion with a lightness that didn't cover how much it hurt her to think about it.  "Worse, because he was supposed to be the one to protect me," she said with another smile. This one recognized the irony. "We were very much alike."

   Luke smiled in return, and he let the silence hold for another few heartbeats before carefully returning to his own thoughts. 

   "Biggs was a good friend, but Ben was the one who was always watching out for me.

   He saved my life more than once," he added, and a sadness mixed with the admiration in his voice as he spoke again. "He was one of the wisest people I ever knew.  Just standing near him, you could almost feel it.... My uncle always told me to stay away from him, and tried to keep him away from me. I never understood why.  I never understood a lot about my uncle," he admitted with a false lightness. "Now I know he was afraid for me. I see that in a lot of the fights I remember between us, especially the bad ones.  He was a man who would never have admitted being afraid, almost like he had forgotten how a long time ago." 

   Luke smiled. "Classic rim toughness."

   Lara smiled too.    

   "Anything that might take me off the farm or after my father was avoided.  I never really knew anything about my father, or about the Force, until I met Ben.  He had been a friend to my father.  Actually, it was Ben who trained him," Luke said, suddenly wary of her reaction, "before he turned to the dark side."

   Lara only waited for him to continue, and his expression lightened unexpectedly when he did. "It didn't happen exactly as I had imagined it," Luke admitted, "but I did get my wish. Soon Tatooine was far behind me, and I was at the start of an incredible adventure, one that would put everything I had ever imagined to shame."

   Lara squinted her eyes, trying to picture the noble Jedi as a restless young farm boy.

   "What about you?" he asked.

   She shook her head gently. She knew what he was asking. "If I could have lived my whole life on Marnia, I would have been happy for that."  

   The last few moments of lighter conversation abruptly vanished.  "You almost could have," Luke realized sadly.

   She shook her head slightly.

   "You loved it there," he said. Seeing anew how much she had wanted only that, he had to ask.  "Why didn't you go back after Endor?"

   "I couldn't," she answered simply, another slight shake of her head. "If I had turned my back on you, if I had pretended not to realize that Mara was more dangerous than ever, crazed with obsession–" She trailed off.

   He watched her, not completely understanding.  "What changed then?" 

   Almost before he asked the question, it clicked. Two years ago. After Mount Tantiss.

   She looked at him evenly for a moment before her mouth twisted into a half smile.  "After nearly six years and a stint in a Ruasel detention hole, I wasn't about to just slip away, without knowing."

   "When?" he asked, his voice somewhere between amused and mystified. 

   "I caught up with her again on Wayland.  I could see a change in her there, and I knew that she had the chance to break free from whatever it was that was driving her."

   "The Emperor's last mental command to her," Luke said slowly.

   Lara gave him a solemn nod.  "I couldn't interfere with that.  And you didn't need my protection anymore. You knew what you were dealing with." 

   "So you were freed," he whispered.

   "It was never like that," she said honestly. "Fighting her was the only completely good thing that I was able to do in those four years.  In that way, you might easily have saved me.  To leave you to Mara would have been to lose that too."

   "Even now?" he asked cautiously.

   She nodded.  "Especially now. 

   "I told you. For years, the thought of getting home was the only thing that I had – it became my life, my humanity, and my conscience, because the Empire didn't allow any of those things to exist – and I was very nearly lost.... When Vader assigned me to you, it saved my life as much as yours.  It was a chance to protect instead of destroy, to spare instead of harm." Her eyes glittered with remembered hope, and she smiled softly. "I needed that, more than I realized," she whispered, but a hint of things regretted still came through in her voice when she spoke again. "Even after Endor, I couldn't turn my back.  I couldn't let it go. 

   "I knew they would understand."  She paused heavily. "I never thought that they might have been in danger," she managed at a whisper.

   "I know," he agreed. "If you had, there was nothing that could have kept you away."

   She looked to him, to see that he was remembering too.

   A moment later he spoke into the silence.  "I had another teacher," Luke started slowly. "Most of what I know about how to use the Force comes from him." Luke smiled. "In his own words, I was reckless. I left my training too soon because I knew my friends were in danger, and I had to try to save them."

   He grimaced, subconsciously flexing the fingers of his right hand as he glanced to her.  Her eyes were warm, comforting, in a way that recognized his own discomfort, and the pain of remembering the past's mistakes. 

   "Bespin," she said finally, acknowledging.

   He nodded, only mildly surprised that she would know the name. He pushed his sleeve away from his right hand.  As the fingers flexed, she could see the faint remainders of a skin graft at his wrist. Her eyes flickered back to his easily, steadily meeting his gaze.

   "I wasn't ready, but I rushed to face Vader."  He paused heavily.  "That was when I learned that he was my father."  He spoke the truth solidly, but Lara could feel the lingering turmoil in him. That encounter had shaken him greatly, changed him. It still showed on him.

   "When I returned to finish my training," he continued, "Yoda was ill, dying, and soon he was gone. Far too soon," Luke added a little absently, then he shook it away with a shrug. "I had to go, no matter the consequences or anything else. They needed me, and I could help them. That was all I could see."

   She nodded.

   "I hope I'd be able to see a little clearer now, but I don't know," he added quietly.  And he hesitated, remembering something that he hadn't thought of in a long time.  "That was one of the most powerful emotions I've ever felt. It pulled me, against my better judgement."

   He came back from the past now, looking a little awkwardly to her.

   She watched him easily, without expecting or reacting. The awkwardness faded, and he held her gaze for a few moments longer.  Her unabashed gaze. Her eyes were all there, with him as they had been on the roof.  Those were the only times he felt like he had truly seen her, when she hadn't held back behind her defenses, the times when she was reaching out to him, to comfort him.

   He smiled. "It's getting late.  And I've got to be going," he added as he stood... but he couldn't think of anywhere else that he would rather be....  "Thank you for listening to me," Luke finished, but he came to a pause in mid step, just as Lara stood behind him. 

   "Lara," he turned back to her, "I was thinking about what you said to me, about seeing your fate here," he said. "Maybe, if you tell me how you see it, I could try to understand," he asked of her.

   She held his gaze, trying to decide how to put it into words.  "I've always felt fate very strongly, like duty or destiny; something that's coming, that you can't change. All you can control is how you choose to meet it: either with strength and dignity, or flailing vainly against the inevitable." She paused.  "That's how it's always looked to me.  That was how I saw the Empire, it was how I chose to stay with you, and it was how I chose to come here.  Each was the only choice I could have made at the time."

   "With the Empire you acted to protect your family. After Endor you acted to protect me. I see the honor in both of those actions, but I don't see it in now." 

   She sighed and gave him a half smile.  "Honor, again.  How I see honor has changed.  The first was naive and idealistic, the second was hopeful that something good could come out of the first.  This time it just feels like there's nothing else left, like this is all that remains to explain the last twelve years, what I've come to." 

   Luke nodded, understanding her point of view better this time, and he tried to put his own perception into words, hoping that maybe she might be able to see it now. "When you left Marnia with me, you traded in one certain fate for another.  No better or worse, just different." 

   She nodded slowly. "Maybe that's true; but I made the decision to come here, and to accept the fate that would find me here....  I hope that there's still some kind of strength and dignity left in me, to see me through," she trailed off, her voice sounding tired. "But mostly I just feel this bitter sense of resolution, to try to face up to something, that I still don't think can ever really be amended."

   "You still can't see any way out, from fate," he said slowly. 

   She didn't argue. 

   "When I was struggling with the decision to leave my training, Yoda, my second teacher, said to me, 'Always in motion is the future'.  At the time, all it meant to me was that he couldn't say for certain that my friends would survive. But I had a lot of time after, to think about it.  And I've realized... I think what he really meant is that none of us can see all of our own destinies.  No fate is certain."

   Her mind wandered back to the memory of handing Luke that datapad: the feeling of possibility in that moment.  Certain fate, or possible atonement.

   He tried again, not sure if he was getting through. 

   "Fate isn't a wall that you have to keep throwing yourself against, or a test of your strength.  It's not in what you can survive."

   She looked at him, seeing.

   "Life isn't how you meet fate. Life is how you live.

   "Always in motion is the future, Lara." ~@  ~ ~