Vision of the future

Speaking of which, shouldn't we be getting out of here before it gets any deeper?' There was a brief pause. 'Well, actually...'

She looked at him, a sudden flicker of fear touching her heart. 'What's the matter?' He reached over and took her hand. 'I'm sorry, Mara,' he said. 'The water's already above the level of the tunnel. It's already filling that underground room back there.' Mara stared at him—she'd had no idea the water was coming in that fast. 'All right,' she said, forcing her voice to stay calm. Forcing her mind to stay calm. 'All right. So the room's filling up. If we can make it across to the stairway, we can at least climb up into the fortress, right?' A muscle in his cheek twitched. 'You don't understand,' he said. 'It's already above the level of the tunnel. That means traveling that whole hundred meters without air, plus probably having to get the whole way across the underground room, too.'

'What about a hibernation trance?' Mara suggested. 'Like the one you used to cold-shirt it across to the Starry Ice from the pirate base?'

Luke shook his head. 'With the underground room filling up, or maybe already mostly full, the water won't be flowing fast enough through the tunnel to push us through in time.' And it was for sure they couldn't swim while in a trance. Mara pushed a lock of wet hair off her face, trying to think.

Beside Luke, Artoo gave a sudden nervous squawk. 'I see it,' Luke told him.

'See what?' Mara asked.

'The water level's starting to rise again,' he said reluctantly. 'That means the underground room must be full. The only drainage we're getting is through the two holes we cut, the one into the stairway area and the one back down into the caverns.'

Mara swallowed. 'Small holes.'

'Far too small to handle the amount coming in,' Luke agreed soberly. 'I'm afraid...' He trailed off. Mara gazed down at the surging water, now high enough to hide the inflow through the hole she'd cut. But it was still coming in; the steady rippling in the surface was enough to show that. 'Back when you first came here,' she said, 'I told you you could go back to Coruscant if you wanted to and let the Qom Jha and me tackle the fortress by ourselves. You said no, that you had to be here, and you said not to ask you why.'

He took a deep breath. 'I had a vision of you on Tierfon,' he said quietly. 'Back before I knew you'd disappeared. I saw you lying in a pool of water, surrounded by craggy rock.' He hesitated.

'And you looked...'

'Dead?'

He sighed. 'Yes.'

For a long moment they sat there together, the rushing of water the only sound. 'Well, I guess that's that, then,' Mara said at last. 'At least I have the minor satisfaction of knowing I did it to myself.'

'Don't give up yet,' Luke said. But there was no particular hope in his voice that she could detect.

'There has to be a way out of this.'

'Too bad, too,' Mara said. She looked at him, tracing the contours of his face with her eyes.

'You didn't know, but after that pirate base thing, Faughn told me you and I made a good team. She was right. We really did.'

'We really do,' Luke corrected, looking almost nervously into her eyes. 'You know, when we were fighting those sentinels down there, something happened to me. To us. We were so close in the Force that it was like we'd become a single person. It was... it was something very special.' She lifted an eyebrow, a flicker of amusement worming its way through even the deadly seriousness of the situation. There was such an oddly awkward earnestness to his expression.

'Really?' she said. 'How special?'

He grimaced. 'You're not going to make this easy for me, are you?' he growled.

'Oh, come now,' she said, mock accusingly. 'When have I ever made anything easy for you?'

'Not very often,' he conceded. Visibly bracing himself, he reached over and took her hands again. 'Mara... will you marry me?'

'You mean if we get out of here alive?'

Luke shook his head. 'I mean regardless.'