Stark Industries- Sunday

[thatwaslucky]

Rey had gotten a bomb dropped on her the other day, and she wouldn't say she was handling it well. Mostly she was handling it by being quiet and looking for distractions because too much quiet let her think too much.

And today the gremlin didn't show up, leaving her to handle work that she was focusing too hard on, meaning she was getting through it too fast. So this was really not working out the way she needed it to.


[Open!]

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[gaveherahand]

"Now I'm morbidly interested," Mara said. "How does a planet killer work?"

[thatwaslucky]

"I don't know the details. I was busy at the time, and I never asked," Rey admitted. "But it used the power of stars. Used that energy to fire. When we took out the base it tore the world apart."

[gaveherahand]

"Could you feel that?" Mara asked softly.

She could tell you were Force sensitive, Rey.

[thatwaslucky]

"It was my first day. And it was a very bad day," Rey admitted. "The only people there were those still on the base, so if I felt it I didn't know what it was."

It was different when it was just Luke a few days later.

[gaveherahand]

Mara nodded. "One of the downsides to getting better at the Force," she said, "is that it opens you up to the bad as well as the good."

[thatwaslucky]

"Yeah," Rey said, blowing out a breath. "When did you know about yourself?"

[gaveherahand]

"Always," Mara said. "I grew up on Coruscant, trained personally by the Emperor to be his secret weapon."

[thatwaslucky]

"Wait," Rey said, frowning. "What?"

[gaveherahand]

"I was his Hand," Mara said. "Meting out justice across his Empire."

She arched up her eyebrows. "Assassination."

[thatwaslucky]

"Oh," Rey said, suddenly totally unsure what to make of any of this now.

For a few reasons.

...A lot of reasons. Like a lot.

[gaveherahand]

"Luke's the one who broke my conditioning," Mara said slowly, "but I'm not sure that's helping you right now. Are you all right?"

[thatwaslucky]

"Fine," she said automatically. "What do you mean conditioning?"

[gaveherahand]

"Brainwashing, really," Mara said. "I grew up with the absolute certainty that the Emperor was right and that what he was sending me to do was just. When he died, his final order to me was to kill Luke Skywalker, and I did my very best to follow that order even when it made zero sense to do so."

[thatwaslucky]

"You grew up like this?" Rey repeated.

[gaveherahand]

Mara nodded. "He'd purged the Jedi, but he still had a use for someone with Force sensitivity."

[thatwaslucky]

"That's horrible," Rey said, frowning deeply. "You were a child."

And it seemed worse than say what was done to Finn, when everyone else who was like you were killed.

[gaveherahand]

"A child was easier to mold," Mara said. "It was all I knew, which was exactly what he wanted."

Her lips quirked up lightly. "He wasn't a very nice person."

[thatwaslucky]

"So I hear," Rey said dryly.

[gaveherahand]

"He would've approved of a system-wide planet killer, assuming he wasn't on the planet," Mara said.

[thatwaslucky]

Rey nodded, and decided she didn't want to dwell on it more.

"And then you ended up with Luke."

[gaveherahand]

"Eventually, yes," Mara said with a smile.

[thatwaslucky]

"That is very strange for me," Rey admitted.

She'd known a Mara! And knew this Luke. And she'd been in a romcom with a different Luke.

[gaveherahand]

"How so?" Mara asked. "Because you knew a younger me?"

[thatwaslucky]

"And because I know a different Luke."

Knew, know, whatever.

[gaveherahand]

"How different can he be?" Mara asked with a grin because foreshadowing is hilarious, okay.