I'd love to hear your Mara head canons. Bonus points for ones set in the universe where Cassian basically adopts her.
LOL wow this is late. And long enough to warrant two parts.
I like to think that, in my own little canon world, the best bits of Legends and Disney!canon come together like good wine or sex, and the worst… well, they can grow dusty on the cutting room floor.
Some back story, before the main course:
In this ‘verse, we have a Mara Jade who is ironically rescued from the Last Command by her former master when he decides he’s had enough of her. The Emperor is a fuckboy, and when he tires of his little experiment in favor of his slightly less messy Inquisitors, he has Mara killed by a bounty hunter, and to ensure success, he locks her connection to the Force away in the deepest parts of her psyche. She is thirteen, lean muscle and tiny, a weaponized ballerina, but the bounty hunter takes pity on her and instead, like Snow White lore, lets her go with a vibroblade and a warning to never return to her former master. How he tricks the Emperor, I don’t know.
Mara spends a year on the run, taking on the alias of Arica Alie, a runaway with no real skills or purpose. She lies and cheats her way to the Outer Rim. But without the Force, she must rely on her own innate resourcefulness and cunning. This alone is a story I’d love to write.
A couple of notes: in this ‘verse, Mara is the only Hand because she was the experiment/sacrificial lamb. One of many kinds of agents, yes, but the only Emperor’s Hand. Kept in the shadows so long that no one misses her when she’s gone.
I assume Mara is a year or so younger than Luke/Leia, so when she is fourteen, they would be fifteen and Cassian Andor, who is 26 in R1, would be 22 (assuming the twins are 19 in ANH). I also assume that Cassian is a favorite of the Council (especially Draven) and therefore he rises in the ranks fairly early. I’d place him at Lieutenant when they meet, although not for long. I also like to think that Kay has been with Cassian for a long time, maybe since he was a teenager.
Their meeting goes like this: Cassian is on a mission, executes a wavering informant and is seen by a homeless girl in rags. The unwritten protocols are clear–the girl has to die, and it’s certainly not something he hasn’t done before. But something holds him back. Maybe it’s the Force nudging the fuck out of him, maybe it’s the clever glint in her green eyes. Maybe it’s just his conscience.
He offers her a bite to eat in a nearby hole-in-the-wall pub. The girl looks at him like she knows what he’s thinking, like she’s been in his shoes–which is absurd, except for how it’s not. He knows a child soldier when he sees one.
(Later, she will tell him that she never let the witnesses go. Even the sniveling alley girls.)
Over some sort of stew Cassian doesn’t look too closely at, he offers her a ticket off the streets. Cassian is a recruiter for the Rebellion, so I don’t think it’s too out of the ordinary for him to think of bringing her with him. Except it’s different, because he doesn’t know anything about her.
Just that she’s a fighter.
And after a year on the run, heartbroken and lonely, Mara is desperate. And there’s this feeling of rightness, something she has never experienced.
So yes, she goes with him.
Kay is not happy about it.
As far as interrogations go, it’s quite pleasant. There’s no beatings or truth serums, no torture of any kind. So Mara really has no trouble opening up to the Rebels. With a few exceptions.
1. She does not tell them her former title. After a few well-placed misdirections, General Draven assumes she was an Inquisitor before leaving the Empire. There are rumors of Inquisitors, not of the Hand, and she enjoys the way Lieutenant Andor stands just a bit taller when his superior praises him.
2. She does not tell them how well she (thought she) knew the Emperor. Not out of misplaced loyalty, although she will never want him dead. He raised her, and he gave her everything she wanted, and she still doesn’t know the extent of his cruelty. In time, this will change. But not for a long time.
3. She does not tell them she has not felt the Force in a year.
Andor is there some days. Mainly she speaks with Draven, who is calculating and sharp. She respects him, but she was trained in interrogation at ten years old. She knows this game.
When he tells her she can stay, she sees Andor smile (clearly despite himself).
And then comes the fun part: boot camp. She is out of shape but not out of practice. Hand-to-hand combat comes naturally to her. She doesn’t see her recruiter too often in the early days.
The tricky part is making nice with the other recruits. They’re older, physically stronger and mostly male. She doesn’t have much experience being herself around people. She pulls from her bag of personas–Arica Alie, the dancer, who is flirty and artsy and a bit fun; Celina Marniss, the clever schoolgirl with political aspirations–the traits that she knows work well on teenage boys. Mara Jade herself is cold and sharp around the edges, and vulnerable. Lonely.
But when Cassian Andor is around, she is a little less so.
She does see in him things she herself has felt, but differently. Of course, he doesn’t know just how similar they are–how, even so much younger than him, she carries the burden of death on her shoulders, the chains of sin in the name of a greater cause.
They eat together when he’s on base. He tells her cleaned up stories from his missions. The blood is on his hands, and she sees it because she understands. And she absolutely doesn’t tell him that his boss has her doing extra work on the side. Exercises in intrigue.
For his end, Cassian isn’t an idiot. He knows what Draven thinks she used to be. He sees her scores and how fast she is going through her courses. It will be less than a year until she is given orders. And he’s certain he knows what she’ll be doing.
Draven says it sometimes. “The girl’s skills will be wasted on the front lines.”
She’ll be in the shadows for her whole short life, and it’ll be his fault. A girl like that should be in the light.
Someday he’ll tell her his misgivings, years in the future, when he has a bad back and a high rank, when he can no longer do the dirty work himself.
But for now, he watches her beat the shavit out of boys twice her size and praises her like he’s supposed to.
When she graduates in three months time, he’s there for the ceremony like no one was there for his.
The Spy and the Saber (or the interim years, or the blossoming of a friendship):
Cassian is promoted shortly after Mara is swept up by Intelligence. It’s unrelated to her recruitment, a mission that could have gone terribly wrong but didn’t because of some quick thinking on his part.
Captain Andor sees Private Jade on base rarely during the first year of her service. He hears stories–rumors, really–of an agent so ruthless, so thorough and exacting they are called the Saber, and he knows it’s her, this little girl whose always been more than that.
And so one day, when she’s sixteen, he tells her what he’s heard. And she doesn’t deny it, although she is a little flustered by the nickname.
He tells her about becoming a Fulcrum.
After that, she trusts him. She treasures his friendship. She even likes Kay (who tolerates her enough).
They go on one mission together once before he goes rogue.
While he begins to hear whispers of the name Erso, she starts to hear talk of a superweapon.
When he sees Jyn Erso for the first time, Mara Jade is on a mission of her own. Scarif happens, Rogue One is MIA and presumed dead. Alderaan crumbles to nothing. And a grieving Mara watches the tiny band of pilots fly out to defend Yavin, finally opens her eyes to just how cruel the Empire is.
And that is it for part one of my headcanons.
romaincrisis
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