DISCLAIMER: Star Wars and all publicly recognisable characters, names and references, etc are the sole property of George Lucas, Lucasfilm Ltd, Lucasarts Inc, 20th Century Fox, Timothy Zahn, Barbara Hambly, YKW and the other writers of the expanded Star Wars Universe. This fan fiction was created solely for entertainment and no money was made from it. Also, no copyright or trademark infringement was intended. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author. Any other characters, the storyline and the actual story are the property of the author.
Callista had told him he was home. He knew she hadn't meant the resort. She had meant with Mara. And nowhere with Mara was more home than their bed.
He lay on his side facing her, his right leg slung over hers, his arm stretching across her chest, just above the life in her womb. His face rested comfortably in the curve of her neck and shoulder, her hair pillowing his face. Her arm was wedged between them, her palm against his face, her fingers entwined in his hair.
This was home, with her. The peace between them, during these moments, when he could feel how strong she was, how she radiated that vibrant life that had always drawn him to her, even when she was consumed by bitterness and hatred. That love was still there, underneath her skin, waiting for someone to come along and bask in it.
Luke basked in it as if it were the sun. All of his life, he had been protecting someone. With Mara, he felt as if she protected him, enclosed him in her aura of strength. It was in these moments that he loved her so much it was painful to even move.
*Well, you have to move eventually, Skywalker, or your hand is going to go to sleep.*
Luke let out a stream of hot breath against her skin. He wiggled his fingers, the ones that were wedged underneath the pillow under their heads. *I'll live,* he sent back.
She turned her head away from him, her breasts heaving up as she filled her lungs with air. Luke raised his head, his cheek sliding against the arc of her neck. His lips found her cream- colored flesh and he began to kiss her. He felt her purr in the back of her throat, and intensified his enthusiasm. Soon his teeth joined in the effort, and the corners of his mouth lifted wickedly as he reached all the way for the most sensitive spot on her skin, the back of her neck where it met her shoulders. He bore down with his lips, his teeth, and his tongue, and Mara jerked with the impulse to back away. The sensation was almost too much, but Luke held her down and let out a low growl.
But suddenly she wasn't having any fun anymore. In one second, the pleasure caved in on itself, and a small cry of fear fell from her lips. Instantly, Luke let go and pulled himself up on his arms, giving her as much room as she seemed to need.
"What is it?" he asked soothingly. "Did I hurt you?"
She was panting, her eyes shut underneath the hand she had clamped over them. "No," she managed. "Just...just don't ever do that again. Okay?"
"Okay. I'm sorry." He wanted to hold her, to kiss her, to make her forget that the last moment had even happened. Never in all the time they had been together had she ever acted this way toward him when they made love. Nothing he had ever done had been wrong before. Of course, he had never done that before, either.
Was there something about her he still didn't know?
She caught her breath and looked up at him, then managed a small smile. She reached up and cupped his cheek in her hand, her cheeks slightly tinted with a blush. "Actually, I'm the one who's sorry. I don't know what got into me."
"Are you sure?" He lowered himself again, positioning himself beside her, his arm curving over her, bringing her close-- tenatively at first, and then more confidently as the moment got farther and farther behind them.
"Well...the last person who did that to me, I didn't take that kindly to it." She laughed lightly, but it fell flat. "I haven't thought of him in years."
"Him?" Luke echoed, trying to sound innocent.
Her eyes flashed at him. "Jealous, Skywalker?" she said, a touch of the old Mara in her voice.
He gave her an innocent farmboy grin. "Why would I be?" he asked.
"No reason, really. His name was Cal Saphringer. I met him while I was sloshing around the galaxy for the five and a half years after Palpatine bit the lightsaber. I was twenty, he was eighteen...but he acted older."
"A younger guy?" Luke arched an eyebrow.
"You wouldn't have known it to look at him. Not every man is as boyish as you." She seemed lost for a moment in the memory. "I don't know what I saw in him. He was pretty captivating, though, at the time. One of those tall, dark and handsome types that usually cause nothing but trouble."
"Ah, I know what you mean. You mean those guys that always wear those heavy black cloaks, black outfits, and carry lightsabers. A...a..." he snapped his fingers, searching, "....a Jedi Knight, right?"
She punched him in the chest, sending him onto his back, laughing. "I'm being serious!"
"I know, and I want you to stop!" He caught her fist and kissed it. "Talking about another man while you're in bed with your husband...I knew the old Mara Jade was still in there."
She pouted for a minute. "Fine," she muttered. But he wouldn't give her back her fist.
"So he broke your heart, huh?" Luke said, his voice a little softer.
"No," she snorted. "I didn't have a heart to break then. I was too obsessed with...." And she stopped, suddenly unable to say it.
"Killing me," Luke finished, and kissed her hand again. "Even then, I still had your heart."
"More like my undivided attention." She gave him a half- hearted grin. "But no, he didn't break my heart. More like I broke his. He was kind of angry at me for a while, but I just assumed he got over it. He was a little on the obsessive side. I remember being flattered by that, considering he had an ego the size of the first Death Star and could attract people like the maw of Kessel--"
"Especially women, like one bitter ex-Hand I used to know."
"Damn skippy. God, he was so good looking. But no, there was nothing. I broke it off with him when he tried to go to far. He used that little manuver on me, and I sort of freaked. I think it was some dilluted version of Force lightning that he got zapped with. Some kind of automatic self-defense I can never use when I need to. I had more Force powers back then, and they were dark in nature. All that atrophied within a year after Palpatine died. I haven't seen it again. But you doing that...it wasn't a pleasant memory."
"It explains why I didn't do it before. But why would that thought suddenly occur to me now?"
"Maybe it has something to do with what I sensed earlier," Mara whispered.
"But what did you sense? If not Palpatine, it was something of the dark side."
"It was beyond Palpatine," Mara said, her voice still hushed. "Palpatine was only mortal. Even with the dark side. What I sensed was...immortal. But it was only there for a second."
"Something worse than Palpatine." Luke shuddered. "But what would that have to do with Cal Saphire...or whatever his name was."
"Saphringer," Mara corrected. "I don't know. Cal had a lot of potential. Potential for being bad." She grimaced, her face going into those old sharp angles and shadows. "He was Force sensitive, but was abusive with it. He'd cheat everyone at cards, even his own friends. No one knew he was Force sensitive but me, and he made me swear never to tell. After he tried to...you know...I just sort of cut out. Never even looked back. Didn't even say goodbye to him." She gave a wicked little grin. "Bet he loved that."
"Well, it's nice to know I wasn't the first broken heart you left behind."
"Oh, shove it down your sarlacc pit, Luke." She pulled the pillow out from under her head and whalloped him with it.
"I thought that was your job!" he said, muffled through the pillow. "Oh, wait, but you botched that one up, didn't you?"
She hit him again, harder this time. "Insensitive, ungrateful swine! I can always correct that mistake!"
"How? You're just a barefoot and pregnant female!" he howled. She pulled herself up on her arm, glaring down at him. Then, she abruptly calmed. Luke looked at her, his laughter fit temporarily stilled.
"What?" he asked, almost afraid.
"Anger is of the dark side, Luke," she whispered. "Why get angry...when I can get even?" And she abruptly Force-shoved him right out of bed, stark naked onto the freezing cold floor. The glass of water on his bedside table suddenly lifted and upturned itself, and the shower landed on the place he would have least wanted it to.
"MARA!" he shrieked, jumping up.
"Why, Master Skywalker, is that your lightsaber, or did someone just freeze you upright?" Mara asked, her eyes wide.
He just stared at her a second. Then he lept onto the bed, straddling her.
"If you wanted it again, Mara," he purred, "there were better ways to ask."
"Oh, no!" she hollered, using her elbows to try and scoot away, but there was no escape. "You're not going to warm that thing up inside of me!"
He smiled. "You started it."
"And I'll finish it!" And she lifted up her leg and shoved him off her. He grunted at he hit the bedpost, but it wasn't hard enough to hurt. Then she bent her knee and wedged it against his chest, keeping him there with a Force grip.
"OK, Mara. You win. I give." But he was smirking at her in her undignified position.
"Apologize," she demanded, but her eyes were glittering.
"I apologize."
"Sounds pretty sincere, but I think you're going to have to prove it to me. I'm not quite convinced."
His smirk took on a more naughty appearance. "Take off the Force grip and I'll convince you."
"The Force grip? My knee is doing most of the work."
"I know, but I don't want you to put your leg down...yet."
She sighed. "Okay, I give, Skywalker. Just thaw that thing out first."
Before she could get out a laugh, Luke was on top of her, and she found out that cold wasn't the only thing that made things stiff.
Ghent called back that morning. Mara was impressed with how quickly he had gotten into action, and Callista was nearly estatic that anything on Jabba's fist had been that easy to find.
What Ghent found out, however, could have meant anything.
"This has got to be one of the biggest coincidences ever," the blue-haired man said, shaking his head, "but it turns out that Jabba's Fist had their last base somewhere on Endor. It was right before they wound up disappearing off the records."
"On Endor?" Mara echoed with a frown. "The Ewoks didn't scare them away? I thought scum like that was allergic to cute."
"You should know," Luke said lightly. She gave him the raspberry.
Ghent cleared his throat. "Well, I'm sending you a map to where it was, and a map of the inside. It turns out that the reason they wound up disappearing is that they were infiltrated by some outside source. There is no mention of whether it was Imperial, or just some competitor. All they know is that he was a Force- sensitive."
Luke had his face resting on his crossed arms, which were sitting on the back of Mara's console-chair. He didn't lift his face when he said the name. "Cal?"
"Could be," Mara muttered. "Explains why I was thinking about him last night."
"All of last night?" Luke teased.
"Shut up, Skywalker," but she was grinning. "Okay, Ghent, go ahead and send the stuff. We'll check out any leads. There might be some leftovers in their old hide-out that we can use. Thanks."
"No problem." He gave them a small, half-salute. "I'll let you know if anything else comes up." And he was gone.
In a few minutes, Mara had a copy of the map in her hands. "I guess Endor would have to have more on it than forests," she muttered as she looked it over. "I mean, how can a planet or a moon all have one environment anyway? Even Tatooine has to have some water on it somewhere."
"Hoth was all one environment," Luke said as he purused the lines and pictures. "All ice."
"Well...that's different. But even by the equator there had to be something mildly thawed."
"I didn't know Endor had a history of miners." Luke traced his fingers over the ridges, his eyes widening. "Listen to this--a spice relative, called 'sugar' for slang. It was all dried up centuries ago, and when the miners left they must have left their work behind for anyone else to use."
"It explains it. Where are these mines, anyway?"
Luke snorted. "From the looks of this, at least a hundred or so miles away. It'll take us the better part of the afternoon to get there."
"Then let's get Callista and go," Mara said, straightening. The she grasped the small of her back, adjusting to the sudden shift in weight.
"Correction---Callista and I will go. You stay here."
Mara didn't have to speak. The way she looked at him told him enough.
"Mara, great Force, you're three weeks away from giving birth!" He threw his hands in the air, exasperated. "You shouldn't be doing anything!"
"Luke, when have you known me that I've been able to stay sane and not do anything? Especially when someone has asked for my help?" Then she added, "You didn't have this philosophy when we were fighting last night."
"That was different. If I had thought you were overexerting yourself, I would have stopped you. But this is different. These caves might be dangerous. I don't like the idea of you going one bit, and for the first time in my life, I'm going to forbid it. AND expect you to obey. Got that?"
Mara had given Luke many dangerous looks in his life. Some he didn't even know about. But the way she was looking at him now was beyond what he had seen previously, and he had to resist the urge to reach for his lightsaber. However, he knew this was right, and that Mara, once her infamous temper could be pushed aside, would realize it.
And sure enough, like a flame extinguishing, it did. She turned her head to the side, unable to look at him, and when she turned back, Luke realized with a sinking feeling that she really meant it when she said she was going to go.
Now her eyes were totally soft and pleading. A combination he had no defense against. "Oh, Mara, please don't," he begged.
"I'm sorry, Luke. I really am. But I have to be there. You can't leave me alone here. Not with all the things that have been happening. Look, I promise that if I have any trouble, you can bring me right back. The first sign, I PROMISE."
Luke sighed. "I guess it doesn't do much good to go without you anyway. Since you're the one who knows the most. But I'm going to hold you to that promise, Mara. And we're only going to stay for three days, and then we're leaving. I'm not going to let you give birth to our child in a cave."
She positively beamed. "Thank you, Luke," she said sincerely, and then added with her traditional cockiness, "I do always win, don't I?"
Luke shook his head. "I just hope you did win, Mara. I have a bad feeling about this."
And when a Jedi had a bad feeling, it was not to be taken lightly.