"Are you here on official business? I have no appointment logged," he said doggedly, subtly matching her sideways move to remain between Mara and the apartment's main corridor.
She frowned, her annoyance beginning to sound in her voice. "No."
She took another step forward and to the side and again Reece matched her, their polite dance having slowly proceeded into the apartment's wide main corridor.
"My apologies, Commander Jade, but the Commander is receiving no informal visitors at this time. I shall, of course, inform him that you--"
This time Mara simply walked into him, and to give him his due, Reece still held firm, undaunted. But Mara had subtly tangled her foot between his ankles, so that her forward pressure sent him stumbling backwards as she feigned a stagger, reaching out for him as if to steady herself and overbalancing him in the process. He made a credible grab at her arm, intending to take her with him, but this was no longer his full-time profession and Mara had been intensively trained and in active service all her adult life.
It was a subtle ballet of hidden combat and good as he was, Mara was past him in seconds, her ingenuous apology quickly muttered as she walked backward down the main corridor and deeper into the apartment, Reece shouting out to her as the second aide set belatedly forward.
She was already halfway down the hallway, intending to turn into the private dining room which had always been the entrance to Skywalker's three-room prison, when something made her turn to her left, to the slightly-open study door whose room beyond was dark, though she knew Skywalker was in there. She paused, suddenly uncertain--should she knock? He surely knew she was outside, even without the commotion...
Finally, seeing Reece gathering himself to his feet, she stepped into the dark room, whispering his name.
"Skywalker? Luke?"
Strangely, considering the disturbance, he stood with his back to the door gazing out onto the distant lights of the endless city, not moving as she took another hesitant step forward into the gloom. The dark, fitted jacket was gone, his spotless, high-collared white shirt seeming to glow in the low light. As he half-turned, a slight metallic glint at his hip caught Mara's eye. She glanced down, the thought occurring and being almost instantly dismissed, but no...at his hip was a lightsaber!
It was dark and matt--brushed perennium, she guessed from the gunmetal color--its smooth, etched surface inset with polished, finely inlaid yellow and white gold banding, the finish already marked from use, though Mara was sure that it would have been new when given to him. Like everything else Palpatine gifted his Jedi, there would be subtle messages even here; a new beginning, a new life.
She wondered how much was lost, for her master to trust him with such a weapon...
And finally, realization slammed into her--of what he was, that he had it. Because there could only be one justification.
Her eyes were still fixed on it when Skywalker finally spoke.
"Yes?" His clipped tone was even, his shadowed expression betraying neither pleasure nor annoyance at her intrusion.
Mara glanced up, suddenly having no idea, none whatsoever, what to say. She wasn't even sure why she was here--only that she had to come.
She took another halting step forward, looking for some kind of recognition, some acknowledgement. In all the time she'd known him, he had always made it easy for her, always open, always amicable, even under the harshest circumstances. Now she looked for something--anything--which was still recognizably him...but he gave nothing away.
Her eyes met his, uncertain. "I...wanted to...make sure you were okay."
He knew the truth... He must.
But he remained still and withdrawn, his face completely without emotion, blue eyes dark in the low light, voice detached and even. "I'm fine, thank you, Commander Jade."
Commander Jade. Only once, in the entire time that she had known him, in all of the long hours and slow days they had spent in enforced company, in all the terrible, relentless trials she had watched him endure when he had been dragged to that cell, had he ever called her by title.
When she didn't move, remaining rooted to the spot, searching for some way forward, some way in, he turned away, eyes flicking to the distant city once more, and Mara was left staring at his back, completely lost. "You...seem..."
He didn't turn, didn't acknowledge her stilted words. She wanted him to shout, to accuse--even that would be better than this, devoid of involvement, of any interest at all in her unexpected arrival. If he would denounce her then she could at least defend herself, explain, hold out some hope of forgiveness--of acceptance. She reached out mentally across the silent void, searching for that undeniable, intuitive link. For something--some hidden shadow, some hint of emotion, of empathy--something recognizably Luke.
Impenetrable shields barred her way, wrapped tightly about him like armor.
"I'm fine, thank you," he reiterated evenly without turning, voice and sense blunt with tempered restraint.
"...I...thought..." What? Realistically--what?
Now, here, standing before him, aware of what he had become, she was reduced to stammering numbly, no idea any more of what she hoped or felt or intended. Before she could even begin to pull any kind of coherent sentence together Reece practically burst into the room, two guards behind him.
"Sir..." he said, breathless.
"Ah, Reece," Skywalker said evenly without turning, as if this were the normal way to enter a room, "Commander Jade was just leaving. Perhaps you could manage to show her out?"
Bewildered, Mara turned back to Luke and opened her mouth to speak--
"Good night, Commander Jade," he said with impeccable timing, still staring out into the darkness, the finality of his words stinging.
Frustrated, any opportunity to speak further effectively removed by Reece's presence, Mara turned to leave, wondering whether the Aide would dutifully report to the Emperor even this small indiscretion.
Wondering if this conversation defined the extent of her relationship with Skywalker now.
.
.
.
.
.
.
He was, as it turned out, a very difficult man to see--impossible to see alone, Palpatine guarding his new prodigy with jealous attention, making sure no one spoke to him and he spoke to no one.
She saw him occasionally in the Emperor's private apartments when she was summoned there, or in Court of course, when he entered with the Emperor's entourage, looking neither left nor right as he walked behind his Master to the dais, waiting at its base to be invited to stand beside the throne, as he always was.
Never wearing his lightsaber there, she'd noticed--though she often saw him wearing it in the Emperor's presence in more private circumstances, and knew that Palpatine supervised his constant and unrelenting training with it in the cavernous Practice Hall, so it wasn't from lack of trust. It was, very clearly, a conscious decision on the part of the Emperor, for which she was sure he'd have his reasons, even if she couldn't fathom them.
Certainly everyone in Court was whispering, everyone trying to place him. Nobody could, of course. Palpatine had seen to that. No one even had a name.
Nor would they--Mara herself had been given the task of removing every reference to him from every census; had spent the last few months touring outlying regions and dustball planets to ensure that every record, no matter how small or how fragmentary, had been destroyed beyond repair, pixel or physical. Finally she'd joined the several already-activated teams to infiltrate Bothawui's closely guarded private Intel system, the only reliable source of genuinely independent information in the Empire, to check that the details fed to them by Black Sun months earlier were in place and that any remaining independent intelligence, aside from a few non-matching references inserted under the name of Luke Skywalker, were gone. There should have been none anyway--she'd been tasked with slicing into or traveling to every independent information source months earlier at her master's command, long before Skywalker's arrival at the Palace. Most information regarding his identity had been removed then, leaving only small threads which never quite added up if traced back.