Sacrifice

How could I have let this go on for so long? I don't care if I'm expected to be the elder statesman. This stops; this stops now.

"Mara, we have a problem," he said. "Lumiya."

"I'm with Jaina, sweetheart. Do you want me to—"

"She's been outside our apartment." Luke picked his words a little more carefully now. Mara would go ballistic as soon as he mentioned Ben's boots. It was a sinister, silent threat. "Stay where you are. I'll be there in a few minutes."

"When there's a trail going cold?"

"Or a diversion."

"Or a trail she wants you to think is a diversion."

Yes, Mara and Lumiya both had that layer-upon-layer way of thinking, just as Palpatine had taught them. "I know what she wants," he said, and shut the link.

Luke broke the traffic regulations a dozen times. He skipped out of the regulated skylanes—always busy on Coruscant—and got a discordant blast of horns from vessels whose noses he nearly clipped. In the way of automatic actions, his mind slipped into deep contemplation as he took the familiar route to Star fighter Command.

I know what my problem is.

He thought back forty years, when he'd been ready to rush to the aid of a total stranger on the basis of a message in an intercepted hologram. The plea for rescue hadn't even been aimed at him, but he'd responded to it anyway, without thinking, without questioning, because it had felt like something he had to do.

And now I act sensibly and soberly, because I'm leader of the Jedi Council, and I'm not nineteen anymore.