The words came from his mouth in a whisper before he'd even thought them. "Don't ever cross me Mara."
She tensed against him, "What?"
"Don't cross me."
"Is that a threat?" Her voice hardened slightly, but he couldn't muster the same, rueful.
"No; I don't threaten- not you."
She turned to look at him, "Well then what the hell was it?"
"I don't know... Just... don't. Don't cross me."
The sincere, heartfelt tone in his voice unnerved her. "...Why?"
"..I..." The truth was like a body-blow and it burned him to say it out loud; "...I don't know what I'd do."
Unsettled as she was, Mara didn't back down. "Hey, I can look after myself."
"Not against me."
There was no trace of doubt in his voice- and she knew why. She sat up now, turning to face him. He was looking not at her but at his left hand, using his thumb to turn the blue-stoned ring he wore on his little finger, lost in thought. "You'll... that moment will come Mara- my fate in your hands."
She shook her head, about to deny, to offer reassurance-
"Don't..." he cut in, refusing her automatic response. "I just... I don't know what I would do if you crossed me..."
Mara remained still but he looked away, deeply troubled. Eventually she reached out to touch his cheek but he shied back, taking her hand, unwilling to be comforted. Instead she glanced down at the ring on his hand as he took hers, wrapping slim fingers about it.
"Where is this from?" she asked at last. "You always wear it."
He shook his head; even this he couldn't tell her, for fear that his lies about surreptitious meetings with his own father would be uncovered. How could he live like this- but how could he leave her?
His eyes went again to the ring his mother had worn, the memory of his father's words on the day he had given it to Luke searing through his thoughts; "You cannot be close to another- you cannot allow another to be close to you. Failure is inevitable and the consequences will spiral from your control."
"I am not you." Luke murmured in quiet denial, as he had done that night.
"What?" Mara asked, squeezing his hand reassuringly.
"Someone once told me that I could only destroy that which I loved."
Mara froze, green eyes wide, and the burst of shocked elation which radiated out from her brought Luke's own eyes up in surprise as she repeated hs word;
"...Love?"
Luke frowned... 'value'- his father had said 'value'. It was he who had said...
Should he be pleased or terrified? Or both?
She lifted his chin gently to look into his eyes, "You know I..."
"Don't say it." he whispered quickly, "Don't ever say it."
"Why?"
".....What if I've cursed us both already?"
.
.
.
Leia settled into bed, tired to the bone, pulling up close to Han who murmured sleepily, arm settling about her. She closed her eyes and sighed, lulled by his warmth and his presence, even in sleep.
It had been a hard meeting tonight; Han had arrived back several days ago and been debriefed, telling the Chiefs of Staff exactly what had happened; about Luke, the meeting- everything. There were the usual questions about why exactly Lu... The Heir had let him go again, but they'd been less strenuous than before, more curious and confused than accusing.
Then word had come in tonight about the others. Tag, the Intel Chief, had announced that all agents onboard the Patriot had failed to report in at their regular contact time earlier that day and everyone had waited on tenterhooks, hoping for the best, fearing the worst...
They waited forty-eight hours before closing the files, marking them MPD. What was worse was that it placed all information they'd sent since their arrival on the Patriot into question - months of preparation and valuable covert surveillance all wasted, because now they had no idea when the agents had been discovered and therefore how much information had been falsely fed to them.
The fact that all three had been silenced at the same time was particularly damning, since it inferred that it wasn't a mistake on the agent's part; none had made contact with or known the identity of each-other, so the speed of their combined removal meant they were already being watched... all of them.
Which brought up another old issue- Tag maintained that the leak had to have been internal; from Home-One.
Despite the Intel Chief's rejection of it based on the fact that it was glaringly obvious and the Wolf just didn't work that way, all thoughts had turned to one person- the only one who had once again walked from a compromised mission unscathed; Han Solo.
She sighed, mind racing despite her physical exhaustion; why had Han been exempt- more than that, actively removed. His description of his departure meant it was clearly in a way which had been calculated to keep Han's presence there from the Emperor. And hadn't she received the same protection, when she'd been aboard the Patriot? No-one else in her team had- she'd been singled out, she knew that. Again a cold tingle ran down her spine at the memory of his warning cutting across every other thought in her mind, sharp as a blade; 'Run!'
She jolted, resisting the automatic impulse to do that even now, a rush of adrenaline surging through her.
Why- why had he helped her? Because he knew her? But that made no sense; surely he knew her role in his exposure as an Imperial agent...
And if he was an Imperial, if he was the Emperor's Wolf, then why feel anything at all for her - for the friendship they'd had - because if he was a spy then it surely hadn't existed at all, above the role of agent and assignment.
Why let his arch-enemy, leader of the Alliance and the one who exposed him, go?
None of it made sense.
She drifted slowly to sleep, distant memories and absent friends rolling through her mind, tangled up with regret and betrayal and loss...
.
When she woke four hours later with a jolt, all those distant memories had seeped away into the cold dark of night, leaving only an eerie emptiness, a silence profound as the depths of space and for an instant - just a fragment of a second - she thought she had heard it even here... the howl of the wolf from her dreams.
She jerked upright, arms out to steady herself, head spinning...
For a split-second she thought that the massive Corvette had lost power - that this was the reason that she'd snapped awake, arms stretched before her to steady herself against the stomach-turning shift like gravity realigning - but Han only vaguely started, lifting his head, sleepy and surprised in the same moment, "What?"
Leia remained stock-still, waiting for the motion to level out, aware from his expression that Han felt nothing at all.
"What is it?" he murmured, dragging himself awake.
She opened her mouth to reply but realized she had no idea what to say...
All she was left with was one overriding feeling, one absolute truth;
"Something's about to happen."
.
.
.
Luke woke at dawn with a start, gasping a short breath in, Mara moving just slightly in her sleep beside him as he glanced about the room, the distant glow of the never-sleeping Coruscanti metropolis casting hazy shadows in the filtered gloom-
Then... like the galaxy realigning, like reality shifting, there was a stretched second of altered perceptions pulling his senses taught, making him tense against the wave of nausea and disorientation until the upheaval slowly ebbed, reality seeping back in, stabilizing, equilibrium restored... nothing and everything changed.
It took a second for him to acclimatize to the shift, remaining perfectly still, muscles tense, holding feather-light contact with the Force as he tried to chase down the nebulous feeling...
But the moment had passed, nothing left but trailing tendrils melting to nothing, insubstantial as ghosts in the night.