In view of this she didn't particularly want to have to follow him tonight; his mood had been foul all day and that final game of brinksmanship with Palpatine would hardly have dispelled it- and he would know that it would be their master who had sent her.
She reached his apartments to find the lights of the wide, galleried main hallway turned down, indicating that the household had retired for the night. Stepping past the ever-present guards at the door, she leaned into the small office just inside the hallway, Reece glancing up to her.
"I'd leave him alone tonight if I were you." He advised, expression serious.
"Palpatine sent me." She said simply, explanation enough for anything.
Reece nodded, glancing down the hallway. "Rather you than me, Commander." He said, "Don't bait him... and sit close to the door."
"Thanks." Mara muttered dryly, setting off down the wide, dark hallway and across the elaborate, glass-roofed central cupola to the private rooms he always retreated to when he wished to be left alone.
Surprisingly they were dark and empty, her light footfalls echoing beneath lofty, ornate ceilings. Backing out, she walked a slow circle through his private office and down the curving halls about the central rooms, then back into the terrazzo-tiled grandeur of the central cupola, aware that all she could do was start a slow sweep of the thirty or so imposing, sombre, seldom-used rooms in his extensive apartments.
She finally tracked him down in the grand, sweeping curve of the manila, silk-walled library, sat in the dark, his back to the door.
"Skywalker?" Mara whispered into the darkness, instantly reminded of her first visit here when Palpatine had converted him, of her shock at the changes his conversion and maltreatment had induced.
He didn't reply, but she catwalked forward around the curve of the echoing, coffered-ceiling room to see him slumped in a chair, a bottle of spirit on the table beside him, looking tired to his bones, eyes fixed unseeing on the vague, indistinct glow at the edges of the many data chips which lined the retrieval system on the far wall.
"You okay?" Considering his state, it was a fairly stupid question, so she wasn't surprised when he didn't bother to answer. Instead he reached out and poured a lethal measure of the spirit into his glass. White camphor; she could smell it as it hit the air, the glass stopper abandoned nearby.
He looked at the clear liquid for several seconds, the heavy glass tilted dangerously in his hand, then-
"Here's to late nights in Mos Espa." He stated obscurely, taking a swig from the glass.
Mara remained still, unsure what to do - she had never seen him drink before, ever. The fact that the bottle was already one third down when they were generally left untouched didn't bode well. Eventually she glanced around the dim room and went to get another glass, returning to pour herself a drink in silence. If she couldn't stop him, then she could at least limit the amount he could drink.
Taking her tumbler, she walked over to another chair before the tall bevelled-glass bookcases which held old-fashioned paper-page books and settled down, the cool, clinging folds of the smooth black silk settling about her.
He didn't turn to her but instead lifted his glass again, "Here's to Fixer... and Camie, and Deak and Windy. And Biggs Darklighter."
He paused expectantly, eyes hidden by the shadows of his unruly hair and Mara lifted her own glass in uneasy salute, having no idea what he was talking about. Then he drained his glass and set it down again, reaching out for the bottle. Mara took a sip of the neat spirit and it burned a path down her throat, sharp and bitter.
"We used to go out when the week was done and hit the races in Mos Espa or Mos Cata." Skywalker said absently, eyes fixed again on the far distance. "Swoop racing. Forty credits entry fee and if you got lucky, you'd make it to the finals and win two hundred. That was it. I saw guys break bones and lose limbs for two hundred credits. Saw a few scraped off the walls. That's all people came for- to watch the carnage. If I won, I'd split it with Fixer, who kept the swoops, and we'd all go into Mos Eisley and blow it. Drink ourselves stupid so that for just a few hours we'd forget the scuzzy, dead-end dirtball of a planet we were stuck on... I watched it bleed Uncle Owen dry a day at a time, trying to scratch a living from sand and dust. Watched it wear him down and make him old before his time and I swore it wouldn't do the same to me."
He paused, lost in silent thought, before finally lifting his glass again, "Here's to Tatooine. I'd give everything I ever was to be standing there again."
He waited until Mara lifted her own glass to her lips, then drained his glass, slamming it back down on the table to refill it. "Here's to... those stupid, battered, dilapidated vaporators that never worked. Here's to Sandpeople- may they die in the desert. And to Jawa's and their wrecked, worn-out, second-rate 'droids..."
He paused at this, considering a long time before taking another gulp of the liquor. "And here's to crazy old men. And naïve kids stupid enough to listen to them. May they both disappear without a trace."
He turned to Mara as she took a sip of the neat spirit, her nose wrinkling at its raw potency.
"Here's to ends that justify their means." He toasted cryptically, and they both took another drink, Luke pausing to refill his tumbler again, Mara realising that he was going to drink himself unconscious, struggling to find something to say which would stop him; wondering if it would be better to just let him get on with it...
He turned to her, lifting his glass high-
"And here's to Palpatine. May the black-hearted Sith-Spawn die a hard death."
Mara jolted at the venom in his words. Though she knew that he had no great attachment to the Emperor, in the last year he'd remained by and large obedient and trustworthy, isolated insubordinations becoming fewer and father between, so that she'd genuinely thought he was settling, finding a place for himself here in Palpatine's exclusive and jealously envied entourage. But to say this, here - and with such fierce conviction - was tantamount to treason and it shook her to the core.
She was aware that his eyes were still on her, his glass held up expectantly... Finally, she blinked and lifted the glass to her mouth, touching the burning liquor to her closed lips.
"You didn't drink." He said coolly, his own glass still held high.
Mara almost- almost drank from the glass, but her own stubborn streak cut in, "You know I can't drink to that."
"But you were prepared to fake it. To me." His sharp eyes burned into her now; he seemed to have gone from half-cut to chillingly lucid in the blink of an eye, and she found she had no answer to the searching words.
When she didn't reply he rose, draining his glass and abandoning it on the table to take the bottle instead, turning to walk from the room.
"You should be careful Mara; it's a hard thing to keep a foot in two camps. Take it from me, it's an impossible balancing act - all you can do is fall."
Chapter 19
CHAPTER TWENTY
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Mara woke with a start, still curled up in one of the hide chairs set to either side of the long console in the corridor outside Skywalker's private rooms, the insubstantial delicacy of her vinesilk dress leaving her cold in the morning chill.