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Leia Organa doesn’t know what’s coming.
She sits in the spaceport, her arms bare and scarred with battle, her hands still stained with the Emperor’s blood even as she picks apart a turnover from the food stall across the street. Her eyes are dark and distant; she chews automatically, without savoring the food, and her gaze roves from one end of the alley to the next, checking for tails, for Imps, for anyone who might have a bone to pick with the rogue Senator who’s been killing her way through the Empire’s elite.
She doesn’t see Mara Jade, though. She never does.
Mara is adept at hiding her presence in the Force; she has, perhaps, less innate talent than Leia, but more skill, more training. She stands at the end of the street in plain sight, and Leia doesn’t see her, even as the Force whispers to her in warning, urges her to be on guard. She doesn’t see Mara’s fingers twitching on the hilt of her lightsaber; doesn’t see the glint in Mara’s eyes, the way her muscles flex and her jaw clenches, the way she barely holds herself back.
Leia doesn’t see, and Mara doesn’t strike. For some reason, she never does. She can’t explain it even to herself. She goes to sleep at night and she finds herself walking to the throne room again, her eyes on the little pools of blood in the cracks on the stone floor. She finds herself examining the Red Guards where they lie dead, their heads severed. She finds herself at the steps to the throne, her entire body going cold, staring down the Emperor’s dead body, the blackened husk left behind after Leia reflected his own lightning back at him, melted his skin from the bone, turned him into nothing but eschar and smoke.
Mara wakes each day with her throat tight and her chest aching, murderous rage surging to her hands, making her itch for action. Mara stalks Leia from spaceport to spaceport, watches her kill again and again. Mara touches her lightsaber, sees her chance to strike, and lets it pass her by every time.
Instead she watches the light play off Leia’s hair, soft and warm-brown. She watches Leia chew the inside of her cheek as she thinks, watches her bite her bottom lip until it’s pink and flushed. She memorizes the spray of fresh blood over Leia’s porcelain skin, the glint of the Dark Side in Leia’s intelligent eyes — those soft, pampered hands, so delicate, built for playing the harp and weaving Alderaanian tapestries, clenched around the hilt of a lightsaber, plunging that burning blade deep into the chests of Moffs, the throats of Admirals, the guts of stormtroopers as they stand their ground and shoot, desperate to do something, to make their last moments count.
And it never does. And Leia never gives them the chance to surrender. And at night, when Leia is sleeping, Mara creeps close to her, leans over her, studies her peaceful face. At night, when nobody sees her, Mara thinks of the Emperor’s dead body, thinks of Leia’s shoulders shifting beneath her shirt as she strikes, the spray of blood, the gritted teeth — and she slips a hand beneath her waistband, brushes her fingers over her clit, cups herself and grinds against her own palm and wonders what it would feel like — what Leia would do if she ever—
Pinned down. Leia’s lightsaber so close to her throat that it burns her skin. Leia’s lips close enough to kiss. The smell of blood — of her own blood — and the reek of fear and the knowledge that she can’t escape, that she’s no match, that all her training and all her strength means nothing. Leia shoving her legs apart; Leia ripping her trousers off; Leia’s blade disappearing with a hiss, leaving nothing but the hilt, the metal still hot as it’s forced inside her, harsh and too thick and unwieldy, tearing Mara apart as Leia twists her wrist, thrusts deeper, holds Mara down with a single casual palm against her throat.
Mara inhales deeply. Across the street, Leia glances up, and for the first time in all the months that Mara’s been following her, they lock eyes.
Leia almost smiles. A twitch of the lips, unreadable. Maybe friendly, maybe a threat.
She looks away. She keeps eating. It’s as if she didn’t see.