Her hand was warm. Luke just sat there, for a second, holding it, relishing in his wife's grip again. He'd thought she was gone...

"Good, Mara. Come with me, to the Jedi Academy, on Naboo."

[i]Luke stood, keeping still a hold on his wife's hand.</b.

"We can go right now."

Mara stood up too and resisted the urge to squeeze Luke's hand for comfort. She sighed and looked up then around at those in the bar who were now staring transfixed at the duo. She scowled at them then turned to Luke, smirking a bit.

"Lead the way.."

"Come on."

The two left the bar, catching a taxispeeder on the busy Corellian street outside. The cab got caught in traffic, but conveniently evaded it quickly enough that Luke and Mara spoke very little. The Jedi Master ordered the driver to dock at the local spaceport.

Minutes later, the ship set down gently, and the Jedi and his wife stepped out, thanking the driver. Before them lay a durasteel complex of shipholds, the roar of engines all around them.

"We'll take the Skipray... do Skipray Blastboats ring a bell?"

"We'll take the Skipray... do Skipray Blastboats ring a bell?"

Mara nodded slightly, involunatarily. She smirked at herself.

"Of course they do. I'd have to be a complete idiot to not know what they were," she laughed sarcastically, "And I'm certainly <!--EZCODE BOLD START--> not<!--EZCODE BOLD END--> an idiot."

She let Luke's hand slip away from her own and began walking off towards the area where the ships were amassed, swaggering - her hips swinging as her ego reared its head once more.

Luke let the barb slip by, knowing full well that the trauma endured by his wife was quite enough to warrant more than a little bitterness. A quick carress of her mind revealed that much; a mess of uncertainty and pain, greyed and perverted by the dark, impassable barrier of grave suffering.

And loneliness.

Oh yes, great loneliness. Accompanied by a painful yearning for salvation, and the sudden annihilation of all hope when the realization had struck that none would come. Luke felt the utmost guilt when he understood that; this was his fault, his doing. She'd counted on him to be her knight in shining armor, but at the point in the drama where he was supposed to gloriously ride in on a white steed, he'd not.

She shut him out of her mind then, as they approached the craft. Familiarity rolled off of Mara; apparently, her instinct for the mechanical had not been dulled by the experience.

"I suppose," Luke said, after a moment, "That you'll be doing the flying?"

The reply didn't come instantly. Instead she took a few paces forward, surveying her surroundings. There were probably at least one hundred ships grounded here, with mechanics scurrying around them, pilots tweaking them and the like. There was a little lounge area off to the left where some sat, sipping on an ale, as they waited to take off. Mara smirked.

"My mind isn't exactly sharp at the minute,"

She turned, hair lifted by the wind, to look at Luke with a daring smile.

"How about you fly?"

"You always -- " Luke choked on his words, looking down at his feet. Then he smiled again, and met Mara's gaze. "You always said that piloting was about the only thing Tatooine farmboys like me are good for." Luke sighed, then glanced at Mara again. "You were kidding, of course."

Luke meandered over to the hatchway of the Skipray Blastboat, tapping a long and convoluted code into the keypanel. With a hiss of depressurization, the hatch swung open, and Luke stepped into the cramped vessel, walking over to the flight control panel. "It's small, but there's a caf machine in the fuselage."

"Great," Mara mumbled as she jumped down into the cramped space, ducking immeadiately so she didn't smack her head against the roof.

She skulked down through towards the machine, picking up one of the discarded suspicious looking paper cups, before filling it from the machine. It coughed and spluttered, with help from Mara booting it in the side, a bit before spewing up the caffiene infused drink. She scooped up the cone cup in her hand, glancing back towards the 'pilot'.

"You want a cup?"

She didn't wait for an answer.

"I feel a bit awkward, you know? It's not every day I hop into a ship with a random man who claims to be my husband,"

She brought one hand to rest against the machine, leaning back against the wall to her left.

"It's not everyday I meet find a woman with no recollection of her past who is identicle to my wife in every possible way." Luke chuckled, accepting the cup of caf. He turned to the controls, entering his clearance code into the console and gaining his permissions to depart from the planet. In a few minutes, the craft was free of the bustling world, on it's way to Naboo.

"There," Luke said, turning back to face Mara. He glanced at her drink, smiling slightly, and pointed to it. A drop of the dark fluid within lifted into the air, floating still for a moment, before dropping back into the mug. "Do you remember the Force, Mara?"

"The Force?"

She lifted the mug and drunk down a little of the coffee, instantly causing a caffiene induced buzz in her mind.

"Sure. How do you think I knew what a Jedi was?"

Mara smiled smugly, crossing her left foot over her right ankle as she stood staring towards Luke.