Luna feared for her life.
Mara had that look on her face again, like she was decided how to kill her, looking her up and down, looking for where to carve her up.
'Please,' Luna begged, 'just tell me what Luke was like.'
Mara visibly shook with rage, but then she put down her hydrospanner, stepped away from the opened navigator console, took a deep breath and leaned close to Luna, smiling sweetly. Luna immediately wished to be standing on the surface of the nearest sun than be here. 'Luke,' she purred, 'had the sweetest smile, the warmest heart. He was a whiny brat, and a good listener who made me feel like I was the only person that ever mattered. He had his struggles, but he worked every day to overcome them. He had his demons, but he fought them, tried his best to never let them get the better of him. He had flaws, but he was the best man I ever met,' Mara paused, her smile turning sad, just for a moment, before it turned wicked, 'and you will never ever meet him ever again.'
Luna's heart ached at the words, her eyes watery. 'That was too mean.'
'I told you to stop asking me about him,' she stepped back and resumed her work. After a moment, Luna joined her at the console, moping as she fiddled with the wires attached to the removed display. It was a small cockpit and there was barely room for one person to work at rewiring the console, but they were so close to completing it, and all three were becoming more than a little impatient at the amount of time the job had taken, so the two women made their peace with working literally elbow to elbow for hours on end. Through her dismay, Luna could feel Mara's eyes on her. 'What?' she asked, sulkily.
'I'm sorry,' Mara muttered, almost so quietly that Luna even struggled to hear her. 'I don't exactly spend a lot of time socialising. I'm trying to not be such a,' she paused, struggling for the right word.
'An asshole?' Luna offered, and immediately regretted it as she felt her jaw clamp shut. She tried letting out a yell but all she could manage was an indignant, muffled yell.
'Moooom!' Cora called from the cargo bay. 'Leave my girlfriend alone!'
'Ugh, yes, boss,' said Mara and Luna could open her mouth again.
'You really need to do better about the whole "keeping your anger in check" thing,' Luna said, rubbing her jaw.
Mara winced. 'Yeah,' she said slowly. 'I'm working on it.'
'I know,' said Luna. As Mara looked up at her quizzically, she explained, 'I noticed some self help datapads in your library. It's a good thing!' she added quickly when Mara's eyes flared dangerously. 'Getting better is always a good thing.'
Mara settled into her usual impassive face. It had taken Luna a while to differentiate between Mara's impassive face and her angry face, the two were very similar. The older woman opened her mouth to say something, thought better of it, then turned away to talk to the circuitry. 'We were all trained to feed our anger, to follow our impulses. It's a hard habit to break.'
Luna looked at her, nodding sympathetically. 'I get that. Or not, really. I don't really understand what training to be an Inquisitor is like, but I can only imagine that it must have been cruel.'
'It was torture.'
'It probably definitely felt like that, yeah.'
'No, it was literal torture,' Mara looked up at Luna, her eyes etched with pain.
Luna couldn't help it. She hugged her. Mara tensed, just briefly, before accepting the gesture. After a moment they parted and continued their work.
'Hey, I have a question,' Luna ventured, and then added quickly at the sight of Mara's scowl, 'not about Luke. I was just wondering why you call Cora "boss".'
'Oh,' said Mara, then laughed. The sound was so strange, coming from her. 'Let's just say she was a bit of a brat as a teenager.'
'Cora?!' Luna exclaimed, shocked. 'But she's so sweet!'
'Now she is,' Mara sighed. 'I don't know how she turned out so good. It wasn't anything I did.'
Luna frowned, trying to remember. 'It was just you and her, right? I think Cora said she never knew her dad.'
Mara tensed, then seemed to work hard to relax. 'He didn't know about her,' she said curtly, though without any hostility. 'I wanted it that way.'
'Then it seems to me that who she is today is completely because of you,' Luna said. 'Try to be kind to yourself. You did good.'
Mara looked at Luna, and then past her, out the door. Her face softened into a smile. 'Yeah. She's pretty good.'
Luna was about to ask another question when the navicomputer display flickered to life. 'It works? It works!' Luna said excitedly. She rushed out of the cockpit and onto the gangway, looked down to Cora, who was busy doing her daily lightsaber exercises. 'We got it!' she called down excitedly, and Cora grinned and bounded up the stairs to join them. Together, they hastily dumped all the pulled out circuitry into the body of the console and replaced the display on top. Mara settled into the pilot's chair and plugged in the receiving frequency of the tracker into the navicomputer. The screen changed to a flashing loading symbol and stayed on it for what seemed like an eternity, before a long list of numbers flashed on the screeen. It wasn't exactly an arrow pointing in the right direction, but for a computer that dealt in trajectories and coordinates, it was essentially that: a long list of systems and sectors that all pointed vaguely, 'that way,' said Mara, pointing out the window, her finger pointing left.
'Well that's helpful,' Luna said sardonically.
'I did warn you that it wouldn't be accurate,' replied Mara, typing in the coordinates. Without preamble, she launched them into lightspeed, the stars disappearing in a flicker of pseudomotion.
Cora wrapped her arms around Luna's waist. 'It's just a matter of time before we get back to them,' she said, then frowned, brought a hand to her temple.
'What is it?' Luna asked, concerned, placing a hand on hers.
'It's nothing,' Cora said quickly. A little too quickly for Luna's liking.
'Are you sure?' Luna pressed gently.
Cora bit her lip, looking up at her lover with big, sad eyes. 'I felt,' she paused, 'something's wrong.'
