momslilassassin | Coruscant [all day Saturday, Fandom time]

Ben had barely taken two steps away from the shuttle ramp before someone's hand was on his shoulder.

He almost shrieked--he'd shut out everything else around him in an effort to discover if Jacen was on the planet or not--and realized he was staring into his mother's face, and something was terribly wrong.

"Mom! Who hit you?"

Was he too late already?

	"Forget that, Ben," she said, holding him tightly against her for a moment before pulling back. "I've got some questions and I will absolutely not be hung up on this time." Starting with what had him scared enough that he'd called and asked for a shuttle back from school. She grabbed him by the shoulders, reaching up--he'd gotten taller, dammit--and scanned his face, looking for injuries. The emptiness in his eyes hit her like a punch to the stomach. "This is between you and me, I swear," she said softly, "not your father."
	Ben nodded numbly and followed his mother to a tapcaf in the Osarian quarter. Even if his feet hadn't been sticking to the floor, Ben wouldn't have been able to eat a thing. He watched his mother as she fiddled with her mug and waited for the interrogation to begin.
	"I want to know what you were doing on Vulptur last month," she said in a low voice.
	Ben stared at her blankly for a moment. What he'd learned about Jacen had pushed the assassination out of his mind, but here it would still be big news. But how could she know he'd been there? Most of the GAG hadn't even been briefed on the mission. "I wasn't," he told her.
	"You can stop the game. I know where you've been, and I have a horrible feeling I know why." She'd put a tracker into the vibroblade she'd given him, but there was no reason for him to learn that. Her eyes locked on his. "The entire galaxy's heard the news."
	He was supposed to deny everything. He wasn’t sure how much he’d owed Jacen any more, but he couldn't desert the men in the GAG like that. He stared back, silent.
	"I could ask Jacen, sweetheart, but I'm not sure I could believe him if he told me what time it was."
	Ben flinched slightly. Her instincts were spot-on. "You know I can't talk about my work, Mom," he said.
	"Oh, I know," Mara replied. "I've never hidden my past from you, so I know exactly what your work entails. I can talk to you like a grown-up, Ben, because once you do the kind of job you're doing, you're a not a kid any longer. Do we understand each other?"
	Ben knew he wasn't a kid any longer. He just wasn't sure he could tell her what he'd been doing the last month. His stomach tied itself into knots. "Mom..." he reached for her hand. "Mom, if I tell you, will you tell me who hit you?"
	Mara shrugged. "It was Lumiya, last week. I caught her, but she got away. I gave her a good hiding, and she won't get away next time. Now--your turn."
	Ben blinked. And Jacen hadn't even mentioned it to him...but maybe he didn’t know. Lumiya probably didn’t tell him anything. He took a deep breath. This conversation was either going to make everything better or be the start of something disastrous. "I did it, Mom."
	"Involved...or did it?" Mara asked, focusing intently on his eyes.
	"Folding-stock Karpaki, frangible round, shuttle to Fandom the next morning," Ben replied.
	Mara sat back in her chair, left hand twitching like she wanted to move it over her mouth. "Okay," she said.
	"Lekauf was killed, Mom." He couldn't remember if she knew him or not. It didn't matter. He needed to tell someone. "Jori got killed--he got killed to save my skin."
	Mara busied herself sipping from the cup in front of her. "Why did you do it?"
	"Orders," Ben said. "I was the best person to do it."
	"Your whole company is suddenly short of snipers?" Mara's voice was dry. "Whose orders?"
	He knew she knew. He said it anyway. "Jacen." And this was barely the tip of the iceberg.
	Mara was doing a reasonable job of not reacting, but her skin went white around her lips, contrasting with the yellowing bruise around her eye. "Okay, sweetheart," she said. "Let's not tell your dad. He'll rip Jacen's head off in the mood he's in at the moment." She squeezed his fingers. "Is this why you wanted to come home?"
	He shook his head and focused on the table for a moment to fight back tears. "Jacen came to visit last weekend," he said, "and brought Lumiya with him."
	Mara sat there for an endless beat of time. "What?"
	Ben nodded. "I overheard them talking. He didn't know I was there, though."
	"Because of your little disappearing trick," Mara guessed, nodding her head. "Which I hate, by the way. What did you hear?"
	Using his gift of perfect recall, Ben recited back the entire conversation Lumiya and Jacen had had in the hotel room.
	The hair on the back of Mara's neck stood straight up she heard her son repeating the exact words of the Sith cyborg and her accomplice as they planned to turn her baby into a Sith, too. Yes, Mara decided as she listened, Jacen was an accomplice: not a vain, naive victim of a manipulative Sith as she'd been beginning to fear. He wasn't weakminded enough to fall this far this fast unless he wanted to. And that changed things quite a bit.
	"I don't want to tell anyone else here," Ben whispered. "Especially not Dad. I don't want to see the look on his face when he finds out what a moron I've been."
	"Who have you told at school?" Mara asked, recognizing the careful parsing in Ben's words.
	"Family," Ben said, sounding absolutely miserable, "but they're from a different timeline. Jaina's Jacen died at the same time Anakin did." He took a deep breath. "And Granddad was the one who made me come back. He was mad."
	Mara's head was reeling. Jacen hadn't died on Myrkr--he'd been captured and returned months and months later, after most people had mourned and tried to move on. "Wait," she said slowly. "Granddad? Darth Vader is giving you advice on this?"
	"It's not like he doesn't know what he's talking about on this," Ben told the table, "and he's a Jedi again now. It's weird and complicated."
	Mara decided to let the part where Darth Vader was near her kid drop for the moment. "You're no more of a moron than the rest of us, sweetheart," she said. I defended Jacen to Luke for months. When did I get stupid?. "I told Jacen that Lumiya was trying to kill you, and he was all innocence."
	"So you know about Ziost, then," Ben said.
	Mara gave him another look. "No, I don't know anything about Ziost. But you're going to tell me." Ziost was a Sith planet. Pieces started slowly falling into place for her.
	Ben's face fell. Ender would have things to say about unnecessarily letting information out. "Jacen sent me on a mission to Almania to recover this dark side amulet. I ended up on Ziost and a ship attacked me, but I found a really weird vessel and got away," he said quickly.
	"Just like that," Mara said, sipping from her mug.
	"It wasn't Lumiya shooting at me," Ben replied. "It was a Bothan."
	"Okay. How did you find the ship you escaped with?" Mara asked.
	"It..." Ben sighed. "Look, I'm not insane, but it spoke to me."
	"Ohhhh..." Pieces of the puzzle began snapping into place for Mara. "Spherical. Orange. Like a big eye," she guessed.
	Ben's face drained completely of color. "Yes."
	"I've seen the ship, Ben," she said. "It spoke to me, too. It said it thought I was the 'other one' like me, and I thought it'd mistaken me for Lumiya, but it meant you, didn't it? It'd picked up on our similarities."
	That was hardly the most reassuring thing Ben had ever heard, but he nodded. "I worked out how to pilot it. It communicates through the Force."
	"And it's soaked in dark energies. I know," Mara replied. "Go on."
	"I don't know how it works, but if you visualize what you want it to do, it does it," Ben said. "It sticks out parts of itself and forms them into cannons, all kinds of weapons."
	Mara held in an irritated grunt as she touched the bruise around her neck. Lumiya could think at the ship and it could do her bidding: like whip a cable around Mara's neck and nearly throttle her. I got bushwacked by a living ship, a Sith* ship.* "So what happened to the ship between the time you found it and the time I came across it last week?" she asked. She was pretty sure she knew. The old clarity that used to come with being the Emperor's Hand was returning.
	Ben looked over at her. "Where did you see it?"
	"Hesperidium," Mara replied. "With Lumiya."
	Something inside Ben shattered as his shoulders sagged. He folded his arms onto the table, ignoring whatever vile stickiness was on it, and lowered his head onto them. He stayed like that for a few seconds, remembering how to breathe, before he looked up and met his mother's eyes. "I flew it back to the Anakin Solo," he said, eyes dry, "and handed it over to Jacen."
	Mara finally had all of the pieces. Now the only question left was how to end this. "Okay," she said, reaching out to stroke his hair. "I think you know how serious this is. Ben, will you accept a suggestion from me?"
	Ben nodded. "Anything, Mom, I'm sorry, I'm so, so sorry..."
	"Hey," she said firmly, "I'm the one who should be sorry." She'd trusted Jacen, ignored every single sign he was out of control, shouted Luke down on the subject. Now was the time to tip the scale back. "You're in real danger, and it's going to be more than you can handle. I want you to go back to school." With the man who used to be Darth Vader. A worry for another time. "I'll get in touch when this is fixed, okay?"
	Ben nodded, eyes looking terribly old for such a young face. "I'll leave super quietly, so Jacen doesn't realize I've found out Lumiya's making him do all of this."
	Sure she is. "That's right, sweetheart."
	"I promise I won't hide from you in the Force," Ben said, "but I might have to to avoid her...or him, if she's got him so far under her control that he's taken over the government."
	Palpatine all over again. Mara fought back a shiver. "Tell you what," she said, "why don't you show me how to do it? Maybe once I figure out what you’re doing, it won’t worry me so much." After a few hours of lessons as they wandered through the streets of Coruscant pretending to be just another mother and son out for a weekend excursion, they finally began wandering back to the shuttle. "I'm sorry about Lekauf," Mara said. "Sounds like he was one of the very best."
	"He did it to make sure I escaped, Mom," Ben said. "How do I live with that kind of sacrifice?"
	"By making your life count, so that his wasn't wasted," Mara said quietly, putting her arm around him. "Ben, you're probably going to see a side of me soon that isn't good old Mom. But I want you to know that whatever I do, however much of a stranger you think I become, I love you, and you're my heart, every fiber of it. Nothing matters more to me than you."
	Ben gave her a long, almost painfully tight hug. "You know why I believe you? Because you didn't tell me to trust you. Everyone else tells me to trust them, and that's usually the cue that I shouldn't."
	And in that second, Mara got a glimpse of the man Ben would become. She and Luke hadn't done so bad after all.