Luke gripped Mara’s hand and tried to keep his tears at bay, tried to make his mind still, free of pain, fear, and grief.
“Cut it out, Luke,” Mara said. “You’re giving me the creeps.” Her voice was a dry croak, barely louder than the stridulations of larval tlikist.
Luke took a shuddering breath and tried to smile. “Sorry,” he said. “Not one of my better days.”
“It’s got to be better than mine,” Mara said.
Her hand in his felt papery and hot. He gripped it harder, feeling the disease beneath. It was in furious motion, mutating at rates that medical science had once considered impossible. The only still point in her body was that place where their child floated. Somehow, even now, when her skin had gone blotchy and her hair was falling out, when the chain reaction that was fast approaching meltdown raged in her flesh, she still kept their child safe.
“Maybe—maybe it’s time to let Cilghal induce labor,” he said.
“No.” Mara’s voice cracked on the word, but it was the loudest noise she had made in days. Her eyelids dropped over her pale orbs. “I told you,” she whispered. “I can feel it’s wrong. If I do that, we’ll both die.”
“How can you know that?”
“How can you ask? I know. The Force.”
“But this is killing you, Mara,” he said. The words sounded as if someone else were saying them, like an unknown language.
“No. Really? I would never … have … guessed.”
He felt her fluttering toward unconsciousness again.
“Still … here.”
Luke glanced at the sleeping form of Cilghal on a nearby cot. The healer worked night and day, using the Force to slow the progress of the disease. The results were hardly noticeable. Only Mara had ever been able to control it, but her terrific will was too focused now.
“Mara,” he said softly. “Mara, you have to let me in.”
“I can manage, Luke.”
“Mara, my love … no games this time. You want to do this your way, and I respect that. Now you have to respect me. That’s my child, too—and you, you’re the best part of my world. Let me help.”
“Selfish,” Mara said.
“Yes, maybe,” Luke admitted.
“Meant me,” Mara corrected. “Help our child.”
Luke reached into her, then, into the maelstrom. He felt how truly feeble her life was. Her pain racked his body; her dark fevers gnawed at the fringes of his brain. It was overwhelming, and the most profound sensation of hopelessness he had ever felt shuddered through him.
No. I’m not here to take her pain. I’m here to add my strength. He knew it, but it felt beyond his control. There was too much, coming too fast. He pushed at it, forcing it away, trying to flow a river of vigor into her, but she wasn’t there to receive it, to use it as only her body knew how. He was at the mercy of her disease as much as she was.
He heard a noise and realized he had cried out.
Calm. I am calm. I bring calm with me, and tranquility. I am tranquility.
But the sickness laughed at him. Starbursts of images and sensation exploded everywhere. He saw Palpatine’s leering face, saw his own, younger features through a veneer of hatred. He was a child on the street, cold and lonely.
All negative feelings, all fears and hates and greeds. Only the worst of Mara was here, where the disease had its way.
He fought the despair, but it pooled in his feet and slowly, slowly filled him up, sap climbing inside a tree.
He knew in that moment he could never save her. Mara was lost to him, forever.