Idk what this is. It’s just in my notes, so I guess I wrote it? Possibly originally intended as a later chapter of 1000 Oceans.
The first days after captivity are always an adjustment.
So she’s grateful, if a little awkward, when Skywalker insists on sleeping in her room to watch over her.
Limbs still unsteady from the sedative, she’s reliant on Luke to guide her gently from her bed when the fresher calls. Which is often, on the first day, as her body reacts violently to refeeding with solid food and regular water for the first time in weeks.
He waits at a distance, radiating the mental equivalent of white noise, giving her some precious scraps of dignity before he helps her back to bed.
In the night, she wakes drenched - feels the sheets damp, sweat streaming down her back in rolling droplets. He stirs when he hears her rising in his cot across the room. Helps her into the sanisteam, peels off the wet night shift with averted eyes when her wounds make it difficult for her to stretch.
He quietly steps in and tests the temperature with a hand before helping her into the cubicle.
When she emerges he has changed the sheets on her bed, and she’s so tired and so deeply grateful for this kindness that she crawls between them with only the towel still wrapped around her chest.
But she finds that she can’t sleep, brain too active now, adrenaline levels still working their way back to equilibrium. He moves to sit beside her and she feels the bed dip slightly in the dark.
Warm hands coil around her shoulder blade and she feels the deep pulse of healing as he gently nudges her body and synapses towards calm.
And it sort of works - a few times she drifts towards slumber - but then her body jerks to alertness again, a flare of panic that subsides slowly into a softer awareness. She is here. She is safe. She is free again, now.
She is free, thanks to Luke.
Mara knows her brain chemistry will catch up in the hours to come. She makes a point of trying to keep breathing through it. Tries to uncoil her muscles when she catches them start to tense.
And throughout it, through the ebb and flow, Luke’s fingertips are at her temples, calmly and softly stroking the downy beginnings of her hairline.
If anyone understands the hell of getting out of captivitity, it’s probably Skywalker, she thinks.
Perhaps he catches that thought, because he speaks then for the first time in hours.
“I think I liked being stuck on the outside even less” he jokes, and then pauses in the dark.
When he speaks again, there’s a low note of sincerity to his voice that feels strangely unfamiliar to her.
“I really thought we’d lost you this time.”
She coughs out a laugh at that.
“Now you know how the rest of us feel. Try to remember that, please, the next time you see some shiny Force trinket sparkling in the bowels of some hell hole.”
She can feel him smiling in the silence that follows.
And then the hand on her forehead stops as he seems to search for his words.
“I tried looking for you, in the Force. For some reassurance, I guess - to see a future with you in it. You working with Karrde maybe, or kicking my butt at the gym… But all that it showed me is what an incredible idiot I’d been.”
Something catches in her chest, but she doesn’t let herself react. This could be going any of a hundred different ways, after all.
But she can feel his heart racing beside her on the bed.
He lifts his hand away from her entirely and sits up a little.
“This is probably the wrong time to be saying this. And I have no expectations - I’m not asking you for anything, at all. I just... I suppose I want you to know. Just so there’s no more regrets between us.”
He swallows, and she shifts to try and find his face in the dark. She’s holding her breath now, and it makes her ribs ache.
“So. You should probably know… I’m in love with you, Mara.”
He says it so simply and honestly that her breath leaves in a whoosh and her thoughts suddenly turn to static. There’s no play, here. No agenda. It’s disorientating. It is new.
“I think I have been for the longest time,” he adds, really quite cheerful, under the circumstances.
Part 2 here
