Jedi Dawn – Chapter 18
By Sienn (2001)
Rating (for chapter): PG-13
Protagonists: Luke/Mara
Category: Drama/Action/Angst
Time Frame: 26 A.Y.
Spoilers:
See Chapter 1
Disclaimer:
See Chapter 1
Hyperspace, Millennium Falcon, A Few Hours After Luke's Rescue
"Luke? Luke, can you hear me?" Mara felt barely able to suppress the slight tremble in her voice when she took Luke's hand into her own, staring anxiously at his pale features. He gave no sign of coming around, so she sighed and took the small, but well filled med-kit out of the compartment it was stored in.
Softly cupping his cheek and turning his head, so that she could tend to his forehead wound, she once again wondered darkly what they had done to him. Sure, the Yuuzhan Vong Shaper assistant had told them the name of the animal that had been in Luke's head and that it had controlled him by connecting with his brain, neutralising certain areas and taking their place. But he hadn't said anything as to how it had been inserted into Luke's head and how it had worked exactly. She could only suppose that the small hole in his forehead had been the way for the animal to get into the inside of his head, but these were only suspicions.
Banning all these thoughts from her mind, knowing that they would only result in her getting more and more angry about what Elan had done to him and how she had manipulated him, Mara carefully cleaned the wound and bandaged it. The one on the base of his skull had already been taken care of by the Yuuzhan Vong. Obviously it had been bleeding during whatever they had done to remove the curious membrane and they had had to seal it off.
Mara got that lost in her own thoughts and worries while she fastened the bandage that she was totally startled when she lowered her gaze and was greeted by two blue eyes that stared at her, foggy, but obviously awake.
"Luke!" tossing the rest of the bandage-roll away, Mara sank onto her knees beside the bunk, grasping his hand, at this moment not noticing that he didn't react to her soft squeeze.
What she did notice and what made her swallow hard was the way his eyes widened in fear when she said his name. Lifting his hand and kissing its palm, Mara tried to give her voice a soothing sound. "You don't have to be afraid of anything. No one can hurt you here."
She smiled at him, bending down and giving him a soft kiss on the lips. He smiled uncertainly, his eyes darting around. Frowning, Mara noted that his irritation and fear didn't diminish while he took in his surroundings.
"What's wrong, Luke?" she asked worriedly, her apprehension rising.
When she said his name for the second time, Luke sat up straight in his bed, his hand clasping over her mouth. "Don't say it again, please."
Startled, Mara freed herself and stared at him: "What?" she asked stupefied.
"The name - don't say it again," he whispered, anxiously letting his gaze sweep around. But still, it looked curious to Mara - rather curious.
"But it's your name! You are not Liin Kwaad, you are Lu..."
"I know," he hissed, a desperate edge in his voice. "But she will come back if you say it again. She will know if you say it and come back."
Still trying to understand what Luke was talking about, Mara hopped to the side to make room for him when he cuddled deeper into the bunk, his eyes never standing still.
"WHO will come back?" she demanded to know, determined to figure out what was going on in her husband's head.
"Mezhan Kwaad." His voice was barely audible and he crawled deeper into the bunk, cowering opposite of her and shivering slightly, his ever-moving eyes filled with fear and panic as intense as she had never seen it on her husband before.
Inhaling deeply, she took his hand, feeling him twitch in surprise. "Luke, you are safe now. No one can hurt you here. I won't let anyone come near you, I promise."
Luke turned to her, disbelief on his face, and shook his head: "You can't. I... I can't flee. There is no way, I..." Breaking off, he suddenly frowned: "How did you get in here?"
"What?!"
"How did you find me - how did you get IN here? They... they didn't get you, too, did they?" His voice going raspy, he jerked his head suddenly around, as if he had heard something.
"Luke, you are on the Millennium Falcon. You're far away from Mezhan Kwaad."
The expression of total irritation cut deep into her heart and before he could shy away from her again, she grasped his shoulders and hugged him close to her. "You are not in Kwaad's ship anymore. Look around. You're on the Falcon. The Millennium Falcon."
"But... but that's yorik coral," he murmured, letting his fingers wander over the edge of the bunk.
Mara felt close to tears when she grasped his hand and led it to the mattress. He started, staring down at it and shaking his head... kept shaking it on and on, while he leaned close to her again and whispered: "I'm cold, so cold. They don't give me a blanket - and there is none here." His hands clasped her arms and his eyes stared off into nothingness.
"Don't worry, my love," she said softly, kissing his temple. "You will be warm soon again." Carefully, she pushed him away from her, slipped out of the bunk and took a blanket out of her own cabin.
When she returned a few seconds later, Luke had curled up into a ball, shivering and staring at the wall of the medical bunk. She could only guess what he did see and decided to ignore it for now. Laying the blanket around his shoulders, she murmured into his ear: "You will be warm soon. " She sat down again and began stroking his hair - Mara didn't care that it was far from being clean; she just wanted to calm him and make him understand that he wasn't a prisoner anymore.
Once again, Luke shook his head, this time mumbling to himself over and over again: "It's just a hallucination; it wants me to drop my guard. Just a hallucination."
Mara bent lower, embraced him and laid her head onto his shoulder. His eyes widened and the most tormented expression she had ever seen in her life settled onto his delicate features.
"It can't be." His voice was so desperate that Mara felt her control break and tears streaming down her cheeks.
"Why not, Luke? Why not?" she sobbed, pressing his back more intensely at her, trying to warm and soothe him at the same time.
"You can't be here," he repeated, trying weakly to get away from her. In his condition, he was not able to break her grip, so he just continued shaking his head.
"But you're feeling me. You feel my arms and you hear my voice. I'm real," Mara persisted, swallowing back another wave of sobs.
"Then you are not Mara. Because Mara is gone," he stated, his voice trembling shortly.
" Luke, I'm REAL and I'm here!" she cried out, jerking him onto his back and staring into his now terrified eyes. With an amount of power she wouldn't have thought him capable of, he pushed her away and retreated towards the other end of the bunk.
With a voice far firmer than before, he hissed: "It only wants me to believe that! And as soon as I really think you are Mara it will get me. It just wants to lure me out!"
"It? What's it?" Mara asked, the suspicion with which he stared at her and the certainty that she was gone frightening her to no end.
"I don't know!" Luke exclaimed, embracing his knees and slowly rocking back and forth. Obviously he felt more at ease when she didn't try to make him believe her. And when she didn't call him by his name. "She... she put it in my head." He seemed to want to hammer his fists against his forehead, but caught himself in the last moment. "It's so strong," he whispered, his big eyes staring at her, filled with fear. Mara couldn't reply anything to that.
The amount of physical and mental pain Luke had been through was shocking her deeply. Obviously, the torment and the shaping had left him totally suspicious of his own senses, not trusting them in any way.
When she didn't say anything, he continued: "I... I fought it, but I... I lost." His voice broke, his hand hovering above his forehead, trembling and not daring to touch it - his own body!
"And then?" Mara finally asked, surprised that she was able to get a word out of her mouth. "I hid. And still do." Luke simply stated, his arms sinking defeated onto the mattress, his eyes losing the fear. It was replaced by a tiredness and hopelessness that was totally against Luke's nature.
Taking once again his hand into hers, Mara squeezed it tightly: "You can come out now, Luke."
Immediately, his eyes darkened with rage: "I knew it. As soon as I come out, it will get me and I can't hide again. I can't fight it. It will get me and I will not be able to do anything against it. It's just waiting for me to do that." With this, he shook her hand off and pressed himself against the wall, cuddling into the blanket.
For a few minutes, Mara didn't know what to do. She could but stare at Luke, who had resumed rocking back and forth, and tried to find a way to deal with this. She had never encountered a totally traumatised person - never. She didn't know how to treat such a person and that Luke was this totally traumatised being cut her that deep in her heart that she felt that she couldn't do anything but cry.
Rolling the problem around and around in her head, she finally decided to do the only thing that came to her mind right now. Vanishing anew into her own cabin, she returned with a small mirror in her hand. Without bothering to try to talk to Luke, for she knew that he was not able to really comprehend anything, Mara grasped his chin and forced him to look into the mirror.
He frowned when he saw the bandage, but he still mumbled something that sounded like "trick, that's a trick" - with a huff, Mara tore the bandage away, revealing the hole that lay amidst the carving on his forehead.
In the next moment, Luke grasped the mirror in his hands, staring with wide eyes on it. His hand trembled when he extended it and carefully touched the still angry red scar that had been the membrane's bed in his skin.
"It is gone!" he whispered, his eyes shining. A genuine laugh sounded to Mara's delight in the room and in the next moment, as if he had suddenly realised what that meant, he spun around, jumping to his feet.
The big, blue eyes brimming with tears, he stepped closer to her: "You're... you're real?"
Mara just nodded, knowing that she'd have to cry out for joy when she opened her lips now.
She hadn't even finished the movement when he embraced her. She embraced him back and tentatively reached out to him with the Force, desperate to re-establish the sorely missed mind link with her husband.
She could only sob harder when she felt his indescribable joy of being free again, of having control of his own body and thoughts - of having her back. And while she still felt this, the last of the barriers he had built to keep the membrane away shattered and the Force flooded him once again - him, and the whole universe, as it seemed. For Mara, it was as if the sun had suddenly returned to the galaxy.
He just sobbed quietly at her shoulder and after some minutes, his legs gave way and they slowly sank to the floor. Mara felt his ribs against her arms, making her painfully aware that he was very thin.
All the questions she wanted to ask him were suddenly wiped from her mind. It was such a wonderful feeling to see the fear vanish from Luke's face and mind - she couldn't bring herself to ask him about everything he had been through right now.
In the next moment, Han and Leia stormed into the cabin - as soon as Luke had opened himself to the Force again, his sister had of course noticed that he was awake. When the both of them saw that Luke recognised them, they joined husband and wife on the floor, hugging each other and giving each other silent support.
After an indefinite time, when their own sobs had died down, Han noticed that Luke was in the process of drifting off quietly in his sister's arms.
"Come on, little one. I'm helping you back to bed." Luke just nodded, leaning heavily into Han's arms and the Jedi Master was deeply asleep the moment his head touched the pillow.
*~~
Luke himself had felt like in heaven - the membrane was gone and Mara was back! She had talked to him all the time while she had hugged him and Han and Leia also had talked, but he hadn't been able to follow their words. He felt tired and irritated and just noticed at the fringes of his perception that Han dragged him to his feet and helped him lay down. When he closed his eyes, the headache that throbbed behind his forehead subsided a little bit and although it still hurt incredibly, sleep took the better of him and he plunged once again into oblivion.
*~~
"Sleep well, my love." Mara said softly, though she was aware that Luke didn't hear her anymore and that this was not a sleep that would really give him relaxation. Judging by the readings on the controls of the medical bunk, Luke had just blacked out from exhaustion and he would need a bacta-treatment as soon as they reached Coruscant.
When the ex-trader's gaze found the carving scar, she added darkly in her thoughts that she would give orders to the doctors to peel it off - she didn't know whether Luke would agreee to it, but it didn't matter to her at the moment.
She didn't want to be reminded of what had been done to her husband whenever she looked at him.
"He will be fine again," Leia's voice whispered beside her. Mara turned her head and nodded, feeling a huge smile blossoming on her face.
"What happened here?" Han asked, covering Luke with the blanket.
"When he woke up, he thought he was still on Kwaad's ship and under the control of this... this drev-thing," she murmured. Her sister-in-law and the Corellian were still and waited for her to continue.
"This membrane must have been partly sentient. From what I have understood, he built Force barriers around himself to hold it off, but it tried to lure him out. It already controlled parts of his brain and therefore, he didn't trust his own senses and emotions. It took all I could think of to get him to believe that I'm real and no scheme of this Vong membrane."
"But it's gone now," Leia said aloud.
Mara nodded: "Yes - but the memories are not. You should have seen him, Leia. He was so... so irritated and frightened"
"And you think I don't know him this way? How do you think he was in all these weeks you have been gone?" Leia asked, her voice low, but not reproachful.
All the trials of the past days had left her emotionally drained - she had no energy to be angry anymore.
Mara's eyes widened: "He was... he was this way?"
"For the first two weeks, yes. Then it became better, but only on the outside. I don't think his soul has even begun to heal when he got hurt again," Han explained, laying an arm around Leia's shoulders.
Hyperspace, Millennium Falcon, 2 Days Later
They had been taking turns to stay at Luke's bedside, just in case he woke up and didn't remember immediately where he was. But the Jedi Master was deeply unconscious for the most part of the voyage.
Only three hours before their scheduled drop out of hyperspace did he open his eyes. Han stopped polishing the hydro-spanner and smiled down at him. "See who's awake." He laid the spanner away and bent over his brother-in-law.
"How you doing, kid?"
Luke smiled weakly, not succeeding in fully opening his eyes. "I don't know. Where... where am I?"
"Still aboard the Falcon - uh, you DO remember the time you first woke up?" Han asked uncertainly, grasping Luke's hand and eyeing him suspiciously.
The younger man nodded, but was obviously drifting off again.
"Mara?" he mumbled softly, his head already lolling back to the side. "She's in the cockpit - keeping watch at the instruments," Han explained. After a moment of thinking, he added: "She hasn't been a dream, you know."
Luke gave a small smile and an even smaller squeeze at that, then his hand in Han's went limp again and he was out cold.
*~~
Four hours later, Luke was floating in a bacta-tank, sedated and on the way to complete recovery – physical recovery, at least.
The doctors had discovered some things that had sent Mara's imagination reeling once again. All over his back, lower back and legs, puncture marks were visible and in one of his feet, a nasty wound went deep down into his flesh. At his left thigh, another wound was visible, this one slightly infected even.
The doctors had done a complete brain scan on him, stating that there was no damage that couldn't be taken care of and making sure that no trace of the alien tissue was present in it anymore.
They had also assured Mara that the holes on his forehead and on the base of his skull, as well as the scar from the carving, would be gone when he came out of the tank.
Mara, though, was sure that she would never forget the moment Luke had first looked at her on the Vong ship. The delicate carving on his forehead - the instrument of complete suppression and brainwashing. Any man less than Luke would have never been able to return to them. And Luke hadn't been able to, either - almost.
Leia had immediately disappeared to meet up with Tsavong Lah and had sent a young officer to inform Mara that Lah demanded to see Luke as soon as the Jedi Master was able to move again. Han, for his part, lay in the waiting room, in the bed that was reserved for Luke, and caught up on the sleep he had missed in the last time. The Corellian had refused to leave the clinic before Luke was out of the tank and awake.
*~~
Ten hours later, that moment had arrived. Blinking his eyes slowly open, Luke turned his head and tried to get a clear view of the person that was bending over him.
He felt tired and dizzy, but there was no pain. That startled him so much that the first real thought was that this had to be a hallucination. But he could have sworn that he hadn't only dreamt about Mara, Han and Leia being there.
"It's real," the person bending over him said quietly and he recognised with a jolt of adrenaline that it was Mara's voice.
"Mara?!" he croaked, trying to sit up by himself, but finally accepting her help. When he sat upright, leaning against the soft pillows in his back, his vision had cleared and he could see the familiar, beautiful face of his wife.
"I think that's my name, Skywalker," she quipped, grinning at him.
He smiled shyly, but didn't make any moves to embrace or even kiss her. Mara was irritated by that, but didn't pay that much attention to it.
"I'm sorry that I fussed so much around you before you… before you left," Luke said quietly, folding his hands in his lap.
"You don't have to apologise, Luke. It's ME that has to apologise." She cupped his cheek, surprise creeping into her joy when she felt him flinch violently when she did.
"You needn't, Mara, really. I won't be as overprotective of you anymore, I promise. You have to know best how to deal with your illness."
"I won't have to anymore." She smiled when Luke's eyes widened, and his mouth fell open.
"What do you mean by that?" he asked.
"I'm cured, Luke." she whispered.
"What?! How?" Luke's voice was almost inaudible, and dripped with surprise.
"That's a long story. And we don't have time for it, I fear. Lah is expecting you tomorrow morning."
Luke nodded, his face still shining with joy. Mara smiled at him, then embraced him and hugged him close. Once again he flinched violently and she felt like his embrace was somewhat hesitant and unsure.
"We'll talk about everything later. I will explain it to you - and I will make up for everything," she whispered into his ear. Luke nodded silently.
For a long time, they just sat there like that. But an hour or so later, Mara just couldn't hold back anymore: "Luke, do you want to talk about what they did to you?"
He tensed immediately and she felt him shaking his head against her shoulder. "Not now. Perhaps after some time. Please understand," he said softly.
"Of course. I just thought you would have to tell Lah about it. Perhaps it will be easier if you first talk to me." She stroked his hair, once again not caring a bit that it was REALLY filthy - the bacta hadn't exactly cleaned it.
She felt his fear immediately, but he controlled it quickly and nodded: "They want to have the means to go against Kwaad and Elan, right?" he asked.
"Exactly."
Again they fell silent - only after another thirty minutes, Luke retreated from their embrace and smiled, once again rather shyly, at her. "I think I'll fall asleep in the next second, Mar..." he stated, sinking back onto the mattress and closing his eyes.
"And you think I don't know how you react to bacta?" she laughed, then grinned when she noted that he had once again fallen asleep. She stroked his forehead that now didn't bear any signs of his torture anymore and thought about how he had reacted. He had been somehow strange - but probably he had just been tired.
Yeah, that was it. Luke had just been tired. Though Mara couldn't help but think that there was more to it. His physical wounds had been healed - his soul not. Perhaps Mara had never really been aware of how deep these wounds went. Sighing, she grasped his hand and watched him sleep.