A/N: A new story, a fresh page, and plenty of word vomit across it to muck-up a perfectly good sheet of paper. Or in this case, a perfectly good bit of computer space (depending upon how you like to read your fanfic). :D Welcome back to Mary's world. I hope you enjoy this ride as much as you did the last one.

You don't have to have read Careful What You Wish For to understand this story. It would help, but it's not necessary. I have included a summary in this first chapter to keep things on track.

Disclaimer: I own nothing but my OCs. Please do not sue. This is purely for fun.

The unmistakable horror began when I realized we were out of coffee. Not when I realized today was the day that the events in ESB were going to start rolling and soon the Imperial Army would Icecapades its way across our base. Not when I realized that that meant Vader would show up like that douche boss from The Office and demand to know what happened to all those reports I was supposed to be sending him. No. None of that. There were other concerns that needed to be handled first. Major concerns.

Like a lack of caffeine in my system.

I stared down at the empty container, fighting the urge to stick my finger in it to see if any particles were left, and then rub that finger on my gums like any good meth-head. The urge won, and still no dice. Not a bean, not a coffee ground, not a whiff of lingering aroma left on all of Hoth. It wasn't like I could run down to the local bodega and pick up some pre-ground. Because we were on HOTH. The most forsaken, abandoned, jilted, disowned, deserted, desolate, uninhabited, cast off, derelict, uninhabited, empty, uninh… wait, I'd said that one already… shithole of a planet in all the galaxy.

And because of that I was going to have to face Vader uncaffeinated. Life was so unfair!

"Bet General Veers is sipping coffee right now, the bastard," I muttered, slogging my way through the Ice Palace that served as our base.

Rebel officers and normal folks that just happened to hate the Empire jumped the Hoth out of my way as I stormed the halls. Normally I would have said Hell out of my way. But Hoth was so cold it became its own curse word. I think that's how the place got its name, honestly. The first person to set foot on this glacier pretending to be a planet tried to scream "HELL OH THE HELL IT'S COLD!" But all that came out was "HOTHIC!" after his tongue, in fit of self-preservation, tried to climb back down his throat for warmth.

They shorted it to simply "Hoth" when they realized the acronym had stuck. Probably because it was easier to say when you have a temporary lisp due to your tongue being frozen.

"What's that about Veers?" Leia asked sharply as I threw myself groggily into an empty chair in the command station.

She was wearing red again instead of the white she should have been wearing. The same red outfit she'd worn on Teardrop. Everything tight and low cut enough to make people stare, only this time she had on some copper-colored jewelry to add a bit of contrast. She had a circlet of copper on her forehead, copper hoops in her ears, and a long copper chain that bore a large, gorgeous medallion on it. And yes, said medallion sported a ruby that could have funded this base for twelve years.

I tried very hard to not remember the last time I saw that thing. Grand Admiral Thrawn had worn it in a vision I'd had on Dagobah, and in that vision he had succeeded in conquering the known galaxy. He'd united the Chiss Ascendancy (for those not in the know, that's the blue-skinned, glowing red eyed, rather amazing race that he hails from) and the Galactic Empire into one smashball of cultures all aimed at stopping the Yuuzahn Vong from trashing the place like rockstars after a concert.

He'd also worn one other piece of jewelry in that vision. A copper ring. On his left ring finger.

To match the one on mine.

Even now, a month after leaving Dagobah, the fingers of my left hand unconsciously curled up into my palm, searching for that wedding band. And every time I let out a silent sigh of relief that said band wasn't there. I wasn't quite ready to be Miss Grand Admiral yet. Hell, I wasn't even sure that I wanted to be Miss Anyone's Wife at this point. I'd just gotten my mind back together after Lord Hater had rearranged my memories and I really wanted to spend more time being comfortable in my own skin again.

"Nothing," I yawned, waving away her comment. "Just commenting on the fact that he's nice and toasty warm in his Star Destroyer right now, probably sipping my coffee just to piss me off."

"It's a possibility," Leia shrugged, looking back at whatever scrolled across the screen near her. "Our last supply line was raided a week ago by the Imperials."

"HAH! I knew it. The bastard IS drinking my coffee right now. Probably leaning back in his office saying to himself 'yummm rebel scum coffee.' Remind me to punch… uhh… yell at him severely the next time I see him."

Leia shot me a look, and so did half the people on duty. The half that knew me probably thought I had lost my mind for real this time. It was my normal modus operandi to (threaten to) punch anything that marginally annoyed me. Kinda like Alice in those Dilbert comics. That had changed after spending a month on Dagobah before arriving in the Big Deep Freeze. I was really trying hard to follow the path that Master Yoda had outlined for me. And that included not giving into my anger all the time.

Which meant, in turn, that I had to stop threatening to punch people who annoyed me. Again, life was so unfair.

For those that have joined in my little slice of Hoth for the first time, allow me to recap the events of ANH. And no, it doesn't stand for "A New Hope" for me. It means Another Neurotic Hell, or Another Nightmare Happening, or Another Nerosis at Hand, or the ever popular You Aren't Going to Believe This Shit. Okay, that last one was a YAGBTS. But if the shoe fits, as the saying goes.

Anywho, here's what's been happening:

A long, long time ago (about five months), in a galaxy, far, far away (Earth), I had a normal life. I fell in love with Star Wars, I graduated college, and I became a bar tender when I realized I didn't want to work in my chosen field of Cultural Anthropology. Yet my failure of a life wasn't good enough for Lady Fate. For whatever reason, she and the rest of the bitches that made up the Celestial Destiny Committee decided I needed to end up flat on my back on the deck of the Tantive IV with a stormtrooper holding a blaster above my face. All I remembered was shoving Leia out of the way of something and then pain in the form of a bad blue acid trip.

That wasn't enough of an explanation for Commander Jizzbag Dilhole Buttmunch of the Year, or as everyone else knows him, Commander Nahdonnis Praji (you know, the guy in ANH who only has the one speech about how "the battle Stations plans are not onboard this ship"). He thought I was lying when I said I had no idea what was going on. He was partially right. I really did know what was going on. Any Star Wars fan worth their geekness knew what was going on in that moment.

What I didn't know was how the Hoth I ended up on the Tantive IV.

So it was off to meet the Wizard, or in this case the Dark Lord of the Sith. That went about as well as could be expected given that a) he was righteously pissed, and b) I was righteously scared. He decided it was a great idea to brain rape me right then and there, and I decided that it wasn't, so I thought of nothing but the worst American TV the planet Earth had to offer. Like American Idol and the Jersey Shore. You know, trading pain for pain? Frankly, I was a little surprised he didn't crush my face like a beer can and throw me away.

Instead, he decided I needed to join his fanclub, and the benefits package for that job included one free torture session on the Death Star. Somewhere along the way, I managed to sleep with Nahdonnis Praji (don't ask), piss off Grand Admiral Thrawn (again, don't ask), and alter the flow of the Lucas-verse with my presence so that Thrawn's brother, Thrass, was alive and well and serving the Empire. Oh, and Thrass was married to former Jedi Lorana Jinzler who now called herself Dark Lady Threnody, who also should have been dead (seriously, stop asking!).

Vader explained to me how the dead were shuffling about without crying out the word "BRAINS!" in his usual diplomatic fashion—by brain raping me again, while simultaneously Force-choking me. Talk about a lack of people skills! Someone needs to call the Imperial HR department and let them know that a few of their employees were in need of serious sensitivity training. Yeah, yeah, I know. Me calling Vader to the carpet on his unresolved anger issues was like calling the kettle black. But at least I never killed anyone when I had a temper tantrum.

Vader also let it slip that I was a Vergence in the Force, but he didn't know how, as I had about as much Force potential as deck plating. Probably less, as the materials that made up said deck plating were native to this universe—I wasn't. Still, he found a use for me, especially when I sorta kinda lost my temper during a Hentai brain-rapey session (he's really fond of those) and let out the little tidbit that Leia was his daughter.

That's when he decided one Princess in this universe wasn't enough. So he altered a lot of documents courtesy of his friends in Imperial Intelligence to make it seem like I was the second adopted daughter of Breha and Bail Organa. With Alderaan reduced to pebbles, and the fact that he also brain wonkied Leia into believing that particular line of rubbish, no one was around to challenge those facts. The goal was to shove Leia and I back into the Rebellion and have us deliver Luke to him, and the move on to take the Rebellion down from the inside out. Then he added a little insurance to that plan by implanting another personality into both Leia and myself. One that reported to him in secret when we were sleeping.

True "sleeper personalities" if you get the joke. And just to torque me off, he named mine "Aurora" for the "Sleeping Beauty" aspects. I blame Disney for that one.

Well, one thing led to another and we all (Han, Luke, Chewie, Leia and I) made it off the Death Star and Luke blew it up. But that was after Thrawn admitted to taking an order from Vader, himself, to make certain the Death Star went the way of the dinosaurs. Only, he was to make it look like the rebels did it if the rebels failed. Yeah, that one startled the crap out of me, too.

So then it was off to Dagobah with Luke, Wedge, and a Force-Sensitive former Imperial Stormtrooper named Nova Stihl (from the novel Death Star. Seriously, people, you need to read it!). Master Yoda took Nova and Luke as his padawan learners, fixed what Vader broke in my head, enrolled me in Anger Management classes at Swamp U, and confirmed that what Vader said was true: I was a Vergence in the Force. Important events would happen around me, and what I did would alter the outcome of those events in major ways. Like, say, turning Leia into a double agent, becoming a princess, and then saving Nova's life when he should have died on the Death Star.

It was only after the ghost of Obi-wan (Glow Stick as I've taken to calling him) shoved me into the Dark Side Cave for shiny happy vision time, that things started to make some bit of sense. Uncle Palpy was becoming more and more unstable as he continued to snort the Dark Side like it was a never-ending coke line on his coffee table. Out of all the people that had noticed this, Vader and Grand Admiral Thrawn had risen to the top of the sycophants and were now bitchsmacking it out for control of the Empire under the radar as it were. In that cave, I had a vision of what would happen if either of them won.

It wasn't pleasant, to say the least. So I packed up Wedge and the rest of Rogue Squadron, gassed up the short bus, and got my ass to Mars… I mean to Hoth. And that's pretty much where the story left off. I had to find a way to stop either side from winning, somehow fix Leia's head, and ensure that the second Death Star went the way of the first. Oh, and figure out how the Hoth to get home eventually.

All without coffee. Maybe I should just give up while I'm ahead?

"Echo Three to Echo Seven, Solo, can you read me?" Wedge's voice came through the speakers, cutting through my caffeine-less rambling.

I unwound myself from my wad of blankets, leaning forward to listen. Yes, I know that should have been Luke's voice and not Wedge. But Luke was still on Dagobah right now learning to be a Jedi.

"Loud and clear, kid, what's up?"

"I've finished my circuit but I don't pick up any life readings."

"There isn't enough life on this ice cube to fill a space cruiser. Sensors are in place, I'm heading back."

Wedge chuckled. "Right. There's a meteorite that hit the ground near here. I want to check it out. It won't take long."

Oh boy. I knew what that was all about. Time to return those tray-tables to their upright positions and buckle those seatbelts. We were about to crash land back into the Lucas-verse timeline. Already I was subtitling this little slice of hell "Even Stranger Bullshit" instead of ESB. Because lord knows what else was going to go wrong just because I was there.

I glanced at Leia, shaking my head rapidly. I needn't have bothered. My pseudo-sister was already one step ahead of me.

"Tell him to come back right away," The Red Queen said regally, tossing the tail of her brown hair back over her shoulder as she stood. "We don't have time for this kind of curiosity."

"I disagree," General Rieekan said thoughtfully, staring at the same Aurebesh squiggles as Leia. Probably the recorded readout of what Wedge had scanned with his binoculars. "After what happened to the people on Teardrop, we should be cautious."

I stamped down hard on the urge to jump up and down and scream "TOLD YOU SO!" Because I did, or had, rather. I knew what happened to the people on Teardrop courtesy of the Imperial Security Bureau. Those bastards had ordered the slaughter of all civilians around the location of our previous base. I had known it was coming courtesy of the novel "Alliegance," and had argued against staying on Teardrop until I was literally hauled out of the room by Luke and Nova. Of course, it didn't help matters that I was also calling half the council "Fuckwits without the common sense god gave a cockroach."

But that was before my classes at Swamp U. I was better now. Hopefully.

Leia looked away, a pensive-guilty look on her face. Mind-wonkied or not, she was still the Leia we all loved deep down inside. And the deaths of all those civilians on Teardrop weighed heavily on her heart. I jumped out of my chair, wrapping an arm around her waist and pulling her into my portable mound of blankets.

"Not your fault, hon," I said gently, feeling her squeeze my hand. "And I agree with my sis, General. This isn't a good idea. At least send someone out to go with him. Draw straws or something with the rest of the scouts. But don't let anyone go off alone."

Rieekan glanced at his watch. "It's too late to organize an assistance team. By the time they reached him, Commander Antilles will have completed his search and returned. I'm sorry, Councilors. The Commander is on his own for this. We'll maintain radio contact. If something happens, we'll know about it."

That was supposed to be comforting, and Leia nodded in acceptance. I wasn't so easily pacified. Because there was a Wampa creature out there on the loose, all jazzed up at the idea of nomming a Wedge-cicle since his Luke-pop was off the menu. And Wedge didn't have a lightsaber to cut himself free with, either. Let's not forget to add to the Bad Stuff List the fact that, as the General had said, by the time we figured out something was wrong with Wedge, it would be too late for the search team to reach him.

But maybe it would all work out differently because of me. Maybe since it was Wedge instead of Luke, the monster wouldn't attack him. I mean, the original opening for ESB did not include that attack scene. That was only thrown in after Mark Hamill hurt himself in a motorcycle accident days before filming began.

I could hope, dammit. But sometimes you don't have to be a Jedi to have a bad feeling about it.

"I don't like it," I tried again. "Call him back, General. This doesn't feel right to me."

Maybe it was because of the lightsaber hanging from my belt, and the fact that Rieekan had known a Jedi or three in his lifetime. Or maybe it was because he had come to his senses, realizing how close to nightfall it was and that anyone caught out there in the dark was pretty much signing up to become a permanent snowman.

Whatever the reason, he nodded and tapped the comm. switch. "Commander Antilles, report to base. We'll send out a team equipped with shelter ability to check out this meteorite."

And wouldn't you know it, he was greeted with nothing but a burst of static. I hated it when I was right.