"We can't... meet in the Palace." He'd said at last, bringing her eyes back to him.
"You have rooms without surveillance. In your..."
"It's too risky." He shook his head decisively, "There are too many eyes and too many systems- you know that."
She glanced down, biting at her lip and he'd sighed, stepping forward to lift her chin, "You can do this, Red." He assured, mismatched eyes almost smiling, providing her the reason and the conviction to try.
She reached up to take his face in her hands and draw him down into a heartfelt kiss and when he finally stepped back she sighed and moved with him, head to his chest.
"It'll be a week, two at the most." He assured, though they both knew the lie.
.
In the event, when they returned she'd found it all too easy to stay away for the first few nights, guilt still gnawing at her, but with each day that passed it was becoming a little harder.
Several times now she'd tried to broach the subject with Luke, setting out to embrace him when she knew they were alone in an unobserved room, but always he'd found some way to avoid or prevent her, gently but firmly, in command of his emotions in a way that she no longer was- no longer wished to be, around him.
Still, as she'd returned to her quarters the previous night, Luke having spent most of the afternoon and evening in his office taking a series of appointments to attend to military management and affairs of state which kept himself and Reece working well into the night - thus enabling him to avoid the complications inherent in being alone with her - Mara had left, wondering whether her words, spoken on that night, had been closer to the truth than she'd realized; "You think we made a mistake."
Or perhaps he was simply distracted; this could hardly be easy for him; bringing Mon Mothma here. He had known Mothma- had served as her bodyguard occasionally in years past, Mara knew. To bring the Rebel leader to justice now, however right he must believe it to be, clearly carried with it certain misgivings, even Mara could see that. Because when he turned to her now, she glimpsed something she so seldom saw in his eyes these days, something he had learned to bury so effectively beneath that reserved veneer of detached indifference at the cost of a volatile, quicksilver temperament;
Emotion- real, genuine, heartfelt emotion, a bewildered, conflicting mix of guilt and regret, so rare on his face anymore, leaving him pensive and preoccupied. A glimpse of Luke Skywalker beneath the Emperor's prized Jedi.
So she didn't hurry him this morning, aware that he too must know the time, conscious of his brittle, vulnerable air, protective of him in a way she never had been before.
When he could find no further reasons to procrastinate he took a deep, unsteady breath and set toward her. She flashed a short, encouraging smile at him, nodding once before she turned to walk from the room. When his footsteps failed she paused, realising that he was no longer behind her, stepping back into the muted, austere dressing room.
He stood immobile before the mirror, having caught a glimpse of himself as he made to leave.
"Luke?" When he didn't reply, didn't acknowledge her at all, she walked slowly toward him. He remained still, studying his reflection in the mirror, head to one side, expression an odd mix of detached curiosity and morbid fascination.
"Who is that?" he murmured at last, all attention on the reflection.
Mara glanced to the mirror, uncertain what to say, uneasy at his distant tone of voice and his precariously impassive air.
After a long time, he answered himself, eyes narrowing, "It's the Emperor's Jedi, isn't it?"
Luke studied the man in the mirror - really looked for the first time in a long time - he never looked at his reflection anymore. He checked that his clothes were straight, that he looked presentable... though he never met those unfamiliar, mismatched eyes - didn't care to see.
But today he'd glanced up and they'd locked onto his and now he stood rooted to the spot, fascinated by the reflection of a stranger who stared back at him with such an obviously brittle veneer of outer calm masking... what?
He still looked a little like Luke Skywalker- same height, same lean, rangy build, wide at the shoulders, slim at the hip... but there the resemblance ended. His skin was pale, his features unnoticed beneath the shockingly deep, heavy scar which ran from his forehead down over his cheek, almost disappearing at the hollow there to re-emerge above is lips, cutting a deep slash through them both before trailing to nothing, a second scar just visible at his collar. Deep-rimmed hollows shadowed his eyes, making them seem shockingly blue, the right iris shot through close to the scar by a wide twist of darkest brown, almost black against pale blue. His hair fell before his eyes in places, unchecked, long enough to curl into disarray below his chinline, dark brown - hadn't Luke Skywalker's been lighter? Or was it just that Tatooine's intense sunlight had bleached it, and the pale man in the mirror seldom walked in the light of day anymore.
Luke frowned and the stranger before him did the same, stepping closer as Luke did, gaze turning to his clothes. Bespoke tailored and hand-stitched, restrained and refined, midnight blue. Black, handmade boots; impeccably-fitted trousers and jacket, a sliver of white where the starched stand collar hid a severe, dark red scar to the side of his neck.
They probably cost more than Luke Skywalker had expected to earn in a year. The man in the mirror didn't even know; didn't care. They simply arrived and he wore them until he bored of them and expressed a need for more, which arrived in due course; from where he had no idea. He didn't need currency, his face was enough- whatever he wanted was instantly made available without question.
But he wanted nothing at all - and the one thing he needed no amount of currency could buy.
He stepped forward again, fascinated, close enough now to reach out to the shadow-man in the mirror, fingertips touching; dark clothes, dark hair, dark sense hanging like a cloak about him. Dark motives and intent.
"The Emperor's Wolf- isn't that what they call him?" he murmured at last.
Where was Luke Skywalker? Long gone, he knew that - swallowed up by the shadows and the Darkness. Luke Skywalker would never have allowed what the man in the mirror was intending - would have been appalled... or did the ends justify the means?
The man in the mirror believed so- because no matter what else he felt, he was clearly going to go through with this, Luke could see it in his eyes... but then, the man in the mirror was a stranger too, no more real to Luke than the nightmares which clawed through his dreams and just as easy to disregard.
Which left him... where?
He stared mutely as memories came to mind- of the cell beneath the Palace where this dark-dressed man had come into being, the only protection left against relentless pain and provocation, every reserve torn down, every option burned away. Remembered his Master's biting, goading words... "What do you see in the darkness, when your demons come?"
What did he see? Palpatine thought that it was he who invaded and inspired Luke's visions and nightmares alike.
But Palpatine wasn't Luke's demon... he only created it.
Mara's reflection reached tentatively out in the mirror, hand to his shoulder, "Luke?"
Who was she speaking to? Didn't she realise?
He glanced to her, suddenly intensely curious, "What do you see?"
She frowned at his reflection, squeezing his arm in reassurance, "I see you."
He turned away again, back to the shadow in the mirror.
"What do you see?" she whispered at last, and he could hear her uncertainty, sense her unease.
He faltered, lost within the shadows and the Darkness, reaching out, turning to the woman who now held him anchored, though he knew the fundamental danger inherent in this weakness, knew he could not trust her...