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Luke, get up. Please, get up.

“No...”

If I’ve ever asked anything of you...

“...I can’t...”

Luke...this is our son. You have saved every other child in the galaxy; now it’s time to save our own!

Luke wept.

 

 

Jacen—or Caedus, as he insisted on being called—had continually counseled Ben to let his anger flow.

Well, it was flowing, all right. He felt such anger and hatred for himself that he was surprised that his lightsaber had not jumped off his belt of its own accord and put an end to his pathetic life.

The son of Luke Skywalker...a coward. The son of Mara Jade Skywalker...a betrayer.

My mother...

And the anger flared up again; Caedus seemed to have gotten used to having to parry sudden, vicious attacks from his apprentice. Either Caedus accepted these attacks as the way of the Sith, or there was just enough of Jacen left to empathize with his cousin’s plight. He said nothing, only defended himself. Ben’s anger and raw potential were enough to stay Caedus’ hand. Ben’s open blue eyes were enough to pain Jacen’s soul.

But Darth Caedus took Jacen’s pain and used it, quietly sharpening Ben as his newest tool.

 

 

The nights were the hardest. The light of day would sear and blind him, but the dark of night suffocated him. The darkness was the barrier between him and everything he held dear. The darkness had destroyed his family; the darkness had taken his mother.

And now, the darkness had taken him. But he was not at peace; there was no peace in living suspended between belief and doubt.

Caedus had accepted Darkness as a personal price for peace.

Ben had given himself over to the darkness that was already within him. There’s your twice of nothing, he whispered to himself. You have become what you always have been...and have no one to blame but yourself.

 

 

Caedus backhanded his apprentice across the face. “You cannot be gray. I will not allow it.”

Ben touched his face, his emotions quiet. “I need the gray for now...it is all I have.”

“To be in the gray is to have some light and some darkness. Either be weak or be strong. I will not have you be both. You are fit for nothing but the fire.” Caedus drew his lightsaber and lifted it in an ironic salute; he was about to deliver the executioner’s blow.

But Ben blocked it with relative ease. “Your path was gray, Jacen Solo. I only follow in my master’s footsteps.”

And it was Jacen who returned his lightsaber to its clip and stared at his cousin with depthless eyes. “You could have saved her...but you didn’t. Where is the gray in that?”

And having played his hand exactly according to plan, Darth Caedus left Ben Skywalker alone with his memories—memories more deadly than any death blow.

And Ben wept.