Work Text:
It was the final day of the New Republic Trade Symposium on Coruscant, a three-day orgy of panels and presentations on such dazzling topics as Maintaing Profit Margins While Shipping Perishables Through the Outer Rim Territories, or: Mid Rim or Inner Rim: Best Business Practices in Your Sector—not to mention the thrilling How to Select the Correct Tax Forms to File After Imperial Impoundment.
Han recognized the value of these summits; healthy trade kept the New Republic running smoothly, and happy traders were valuable allies. As someone who'd experienced both the Fringe and New Republic government from the inside, he could offer a unique perspective at the summit—or at least that's what Leia had told him when she'd talked him into attending. But three days of conferences, shmoozing, and endless, mind-numbing small talk was more than enough to try his patience. It seemed as though every single trader and small businessman—crowded into one of the Palace's grand ballrooms—wanted to bend his ear with some sob story about New Republic tariffs. As if he had any influence in that department.
He had stayed on Coruscant to attend the symposium while the rest of his family had headed off early on vacation. A day ago he'd packed Leia, the kids, Winter and Chewie off with a promise to follow in a few days. Luke had agreed to come over for a drink in the evening, but otherwise, he was alone and at loose ends after the day's talks had finished. There was a fancy dinner in honor of the commencement of the summit, but Han wasn't going to go if he didn't have to, and he intended to slip out of the post-conference reception at the earliest opportunity. There was no way he'd be able to drag Lando out of this crowd—but he knew someone else who had attended the symposium and would probably be happy to slip away.
He found Mara Jade in a corner, scowling at a datapad.
She was dressed in a dark, well-tailored jacket over a cream blouse and slacks—a stylish yet nondescript outfit meant to blend in with the surrounding crowd of businesspeople and a lot more formal than the flight suit and beat-up jacket she usually wore. Mara didn't dress to stand out unless she meant to. It was probably some sort of spy training, Han supposed.
"Jade!"
Her face was still set in a frown as she looked up from her datapad and spotted him. "What is it, Solo?"
"Are you planning to go to the thing tonight?" He jerked his thumb over his shoulder as though the ballroom filled with traders behind him comprised the entire symposium.
She rubbed her eyes, nodding. "Karrde expects me to stay and reassure our new partners that we honor our contracts."
The New Republic tended to turn a blind eye on Karrde's smuggling and other shady business practices in exchange for the information and privateering he offered them, with Mara and the Smuggler's Alliance to smooth the way between the two. Karrde and Mara were still Fringe through and through in the eyes of Coruscant's well-to-do, and a few cocktails with the New Republic's business moguls weren't going to change that fact.
"Skip it. Come back to my place for drinks instead. You can tell Karrde that it wasn't worth your time."
She hesitated, glancing back at the datapad she held in her hand.
"Come on, would you rather have a few quiet drinks or listen to another trader from Dytho tell you all about his Lom shipments?"
She made a face at that. "All right," she sighed, straightening up and tucking her datapad into a jacket pocket.
Navigating out of the reception was a journey that had its own perils. Han narrowly dodged a delegation from Kuat and cut behind a pillar to avoid another encounter with the Sullustan with the too-enthusiastic handshake. Mara caught his arm and steered them away from an approaching group of Bothan senators that he hadn't even noticed. With some careful maneuvering through the crowd, they made it out of the reception without incident.
Once they'd made it outside, Han hailed an air taxi that ferried them to the Organa-Solo apartment in Orowood Tower, located in a sedate neighborhood some distance from the Palace—as sedate as Coruscant got, anyway. The spacious apartment had originally been decorated in the style of an upper-class Alderaanian home (mostly Winter's doing), though the classy decor had gradually given way to the debris of family life. Leia left piles of datacards on nearly every surface, a large hyperdrive modulator Chewie had been tinkering with sat on a side table, and the kids' toys littered the floor.
"Come on in, take a seat." Han gestured toward a couch and a set of chairs around a low table. "Leia and the kids're away—" He tripped over one of Jaina's toys as he made his way to the liquor cabinet but managed to catch himself before he fell.
"We try to take little vacations whenever Leia doesn't have too many fires in the Senate to put out, or there's a Jedi emergency or whatever. And you know there's always some crisis..." He rummaged around in the liquor cabinet until he found what he was looking for. Whyrens. It wasn't the best vintage you could buy, but it would do, and he didn't think Mara would care. As she tossed her jacket over the arm of the sofa and settled in, Han poured a pair of drinks for them both and took the seat opposite her. Mara murmured her thanks as she took the glass. They were both quiet for a moment, appreciating the warm burn of the whiskey.
Han didn't get a chance to talk to Mara very often. They would bump into each other now and then when she was on Coruscant for Smuggler's Alliance business. Han knew that Mara was fiercely loyal to a very short list of people, and after Thrawn and Wayland, his family was probably on that list. But she still kept her distance, through force of habit or some other mysterious reason, he wasn't sure.
Anyway, as Karrde's second in command and a liaison for the Smuggler's Alliance, she was a busy person. They were all busy people. When did Han ever think that defeating the Emperor would be the end of mopping up all the galaxy's messes?
"Where is Karrde anyway?" Han asked. "I sort of expected him to have a front-row seat at this kind of thing, if only to set off Fey'lya."
It would have been an understatement to say that the senator and the smuggler disked each other, and Han could image that Karrde would take particular delight in posing as a completely honest businessman at an event like this one, if only to drive Fey'lya, who took every advantage to undermine the smuggler, to distraction.
"He had business on the Outer Rim and couldn't make it to Coruscant in time."
Han raised his eyebrows. It was a vague answer, but he had a feeling he knew why she was being so cagey. "What corner of Imperial space?"
Mara considered him over the rim of her glass. "The Quelii sector. But you never heard that."
The Quelii sector! That took him back. Back to a very particular planet in the Quelii sector...
"Dathomir?" he mused aloud and then dismissed his supposition with a shake of his head. "Dathomir's independent. It's been out of Imperial hands since the New Republic took out Zsinj. I was there."
"Of course you were." If he read the expression on her face right, she was struggling to keep from rolling her eyes at him. She looked as if she didn't want to be regaled with old Rebellion war stories, and wasn't happy find herself in a situation where that was a possibility.
Well, she shouldn't have accepted his Whyrens, then.
"Luke's never told you about Daothmir?"
Mara shook her head. "I don't know much about the place, just that it was interdicted by the Empire until recently." She sighed, staring down into her glass, resigned to her fate. "What happened on Dathomir?"
"Well, the most important thing that happened on Dathomir..." Han couldn't help the smug smile that spread across his face. "Was that Leia agreed to marry me."
"Of course." Her response was drier than midday on Tatooine. "It's the first thing listed on all the records—"
"Luke got married there too."
That stopped her dead in her tracks, and expression of disbelief spreading across her face. "What?"
"Aw, don't worry, it was a tribal thing, not even legal off-planet." Han dismissed interplanetary marital regulations with a wave of his hand.
"Luke has a secret wife on Dathomir," she deadpanned.
"No! She's married to someone else now."
"Is she." Was that a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth?
"Yeah, she married the king of Hapes."
"Hapes doesn't have a king—" Mara said. "Wait a minute. Luke was married to Teneniel Djo?"
"That's her name!"
"How much have you had to drink, Solo?"
"I'm not just making this up!"
"Really."
"She knocked Luke over the head and dragged him back to her cave. On her planet, they call that a wedding!"
Mara snorted.
"Now, I don't think he was objecting too hard. He likes feisty women, you know." Han was happy to drop that hint in her direction. "He even had a crush on Leia when he first met her."
He made the mistake of taking a sip of his drink to punctuate that sentence, and then ending up choking on the liquid as he tried to laugh at the face Mara made. She watched him impassively as he sputtered for a few minutes.
"What was Luke doing on Dathomir anyway?" Mara asked when he'd regained enough of his composure to continue.
"Uh, well, he was trying to find me. I'd kidnapped Leia so she wouldn't marry that Hapan prince."
Mara raised her eyebrows.
"I know, I know, not my finest moment."
"Leia was planning to marry the prince consort of Hapes?"
"She considered it. It was a royalty thing, I dunno. And the New Republic needed funds." The New Republic always needed funds, and Hapes was filthy rich. "I thought I could win her back by giving her a planet. I won the deed to Dathomir in a card game—no, it's true!"
Mara was giving him a look that said she didn't fully believe a word that was coming out of his mouth. Well, it had seemed less ridiculous at the time.
"Anyway, we all ended up on Dathomir. The Imperials were there too, it was a mess." He took a sip of his drink, remembering. It had been a mess, a frightening mess, but it had all worked out okay in the end.
"Now, the witches of Dathomir—"
Mara held up a hand to call for a pause. "Witches?" Her voice was skeptical.
"Yeah, all the women there use the Force, but they call it magic. They run the place, and they hunt down men to be their husbands, hence the—" He mimed a clubbing gesture.
Mara raised her eyebrows. He may have been exaggerating a bit, but he wasn't going to back down. "Listen," he said. "These are people who think rancors are an acceptable transportation option."
She narrowed her eyes. "You're putting me on."
"Nope! You saw the rancor at Jabba's?"
She looked a little startled at his reference to her past, but she nodded easily enough.
"I mean, I didn't obviously." Hibernation blindness was a load of shit. "But Luke told me about it. He says that these rancors were twice as big as Jabba's."
Mara looked less impressed than he had hoped, but it was hard to tell if that was her natural expression or if she still didn't believe him. "I'm starting to understand why the Emperor had the planet interdicted," she said dryly.
"Yeah, Luke has a theory about that—"
"I've got a theory about what?" Luke said.
Han looked up in time to see Luke bite his lip at the way both he and Mara's heads snapped around at the exact same moment. It must have looked hilarious, judging from the way the kid was clearly trying not to laugh.
Han had forgotten that Luke had promised to stop by. Mostly forgotten.
"Mara!" Luke greeted her warmly. "Han invited me over, but I didn't know he had company."
He moved toward the couch where Mara was sitting. She shifted over with a grunt to make room for him and let Han pour him a drink. Han was suddenly put in mind of a formal dinner not too far back, in which a duchess from New Alderaan had been all over the last of the Jedi. The duchess would have been delighted to serve Luke a drink. Mara just regarded Luke cooly over the rim of her glass. The Skywalker twins, Han believed, needed more people around who weren't all that impressed with them.
Mara shot Luke a sly look. "Solo was just telling me about the time you got married on Dathomir."
"Married?"
That wicked smile of hers had reappeared. "Apparently the future Queen Mother of Hapes dragged you back to her cave and made you her husband."
"That's not how it happened!"
"Really."
"It was more complicated than that. Teneniel did want to make me her slave—"
This time it was Mara who choked on her drink. Han laughed at her and she shot him a nasty look. Served her right. Luke looked concerned, but she waved him off, gesturing for him to continue.
"...But I saved her life, and by the rules of her clan, she no longer had any claim on me. We were never married."
"Technicalities," Han shrugged. "She did club you over the head, though, didn't she?"
"Well..."
Mara laughed. "How do you get yourself into these things, Skywalker?"
Luke shrugged ruefully as he took a sip of his drink. "Anyway, she decided on Isolder in the end."
Mara shook her head as though she still couldn't believe the story. "I'd heard the new Chume'da wasn't Hapan, but I didn't know she came from Dathomir."
"Teneniel has a good heart," Luke mused. "And she's a fierce warrior. But I'm not sure she was prepared to rule Hapes."
Han snorted."Who is?"
"She managed to enslave you," Mara said with a pointed look at Luke.
"He's lucky she wasn't a Nightsister, if you know what I mean." Han waggled his eyebrows.
Mara didn't, but it was worth it for the expression of exasperation on his Jedi-ness's face.
"That's not—" Luke groaned, and put his hands over his eyes.
"So," he said, clearly wanting to change the subject. "How was the symposium, anyway?"
Mara shrugged, rolling her glass between her hands.
"I thought it went well," Han said. "Everyone really seemed to enjoy my presentation: How to Navigate Hutt Space Without Losing Your Cargo or Dignity. And Lando—"
"Are you sure you're the expert on that, Solo?"
"Now, hey—"
"You failed on both those counts, Han."
"Look—" The name of the presentation had been a joke, not an invitation for both of them to make fun of him!
"I guess it was a very short lecture, then."
"Did you happen to catch it, Mara?"
"Must have missed it."
They grinned at each other. Han paused, finger hanging in mid-air. Hang on. Somehow, they'd managed to gang up on him! That's not how this was supposed to happen. Mara was supposed to be helping him give Luke the business, not the other way around.
(Admittedly, he was not at his sharpest at the moment).
(Getting drunk with Mara Jade was something Han was never going to do again).
(Probably).
The comm unit on the other side of the room gave a soft chime. That would be Leia, calling to let the kids say goodnight. "That's Leia."
"I should go anyway," Mara said, placing her glass on the table.
"I can take you home," Luke said quickly.
Stars, the kid was obvious. Han winced inwardly—and maybe a bit outwardly—though neither of them seemed to notice.
"No, that's fine. I can find my own way back," Mara said, glacially cool. Well, well, well. Jade was keeping her distance. Which was... completely unsurprising, actually. Han wondered what the hell was actually going on between the two of them. You didn't just give a girl the family lightsaber for no reason! And yet, relations between the two of them seemed to run hot and cold. Currently cold, by the looks of it. Han couldn't figure her out, and neither could Luke from the looks of it.
"Let him drive you home, Mara," Han said.
Mara glared.
"You can talk about all the Force stuff on Dathomir. Ask him about the Nightsisters."
"Fine, Solo," she grumbled as she scooped up her jacket. Luke had perked up considerably, which just seemed to further irritate her.
"'Say hi to Leia for me," Luke told Han. "We can see ourselves out."
"Sure," Han said. "You kids have fun!"
That earned a put-upon look from both of them as they headed for the door.
When Han turned on the comm unit Leia's ghostly holographic image appeared, Jaina perched on her hip. "Daddy!" Jaina squealed.
"Hey, Sweetheart! How are my favorite girls?"
"Jacen's sulking because we've been here for hours and we haven't seen the zoo yet, but otherwise everything's going well," Leia said. "How was the symposium?"
"Oh, you know, about what you'd expect. Lando had fun."
Leia laughed.
"Hey, guess who came over for drinks afterward..."