Malinza Thanas held her uncle close, her warm presence enveloping him.

            Luke buried his face in her dark hair, smelling namana nectar and honeyed sweetness. He pulled back to smile into her mismatched gray and green eyes.

            “Hi, Uncle,” she said softly, touching his cheek. “I’ve missed you.”

            “I’ve missed you too, Linzi,” he murmured. How like her mother she looked.

            She reached for him in the Force, as he had taught her, reassuring him of her affection and love.

            “I’ve prepared a place for you in my mother’s home—my home now,” she said. “You’ll be next door to me...just in case my fiancée tries to sneak a peek at my wedding dress!”

            She laughed, a musical sound. The notes carried on the light breeze, caressing him. She took his hand in hers and led the way through the gardens.

            After he had gotten settled, he made his way back into the lush green gardens of the Captison-Thanas home. He relaxed into a lawn chair, letting his robe fall around him. He relaxed his grip on the Force and allowed his presence to expand and breathe. He relaxed tensed muscles and simply let the sun shine on his skin.

            Malinza stood in the doorway, watching her adopted uncle with an affectionate smile.

            “Come join me, Linzi,” he said, patting the chair next to him.

            She waited.

            He sat up and looked at her. She looked back, winking her green eye.

            “Just for you, little Linzi,” he said, smiling.

            She raised her hands, beaming, as Luke picked her up in the Force and floated her to her chair. She moved gracefully, laughing and giggling like she did as the small child she used to be.

            “I always did love that,” she laughed as she settled into her chair. “Ooh, Mara used to get so mad—but I think she liked it too.”

            Luke grinned at the memory.

            “And then she’d float Ben so he wouldn’t feel left out.” Malinza was still laughing; Luke’s mirth subsided at the mention of his son’s name. Malinza sensed it and stopped.

            “He’s made some mistakes, Uncle,” she said, placing a comforting hand on his arm. “But inside, he’s still a good boy. He just...lacks Balance.”

            I have...religious difficulties with your kind.

            Luke smiled wistfully as he watched Malinza finger the heirloom pendant around her neck. Balance. He simply...lacks...balance. He wanted to laugh using the fragments of his heart.

            Unbidden, he heard his younger voice say, There will always be people who are strong for evil. If the only way to protect others is for a few to become strong in the Force for good, isn’t that important?

                                                                                                (isn’t it?)

            You could manipulate people easily if you chose to, Gaeriel Captison spoke from the past.

            I wouldn’t. He had blushed. That would be dishonest. There’s no future in it.

            Even Mara had entertained those same thoughts: Vader and Skywalker, drawing lit sabers on her master—

            He had turned from the darkness, hadn’t he? Hadn’t he turned from the Emperor, from Vader, from countless wars and tyrants and family members that had threatened to extinguish his light?

                                    (...you are attached...and are walking down the dark path...)

            “Uncle?” Malinza asked quietly.

            Luke shook himself out of the past. Receding more and more, am I, Keiran? “I—struggle—with what Ben has become. He is no longer my—my—” He couldn’t say it.

            Malinza moved closer to him, sitting in his lap as she had done as a child. She wrapped her arms around him and simply held him. He shuddered and shook in her arms, but she held tightly.

            The Cosmos balances, she whispered with her mother.

            “He is your son, Luke,” she murmured. “And he will always be.”

            Luke looked away over the top of her head, running a hand through her hair and covering his mouth with the other.

            “My mother told me that ‘all things contain darkness and light. Even Jedi, I suppose.’ She told me that she said that to you...and regretted it. You have Light, Uncle...and Ben is struggling to find that. You must give him time.”

            “At the price of the galaxy?” Luke burst out. “My nephew and my son head the new Sith order; how can that be balance?”

            “You brought light for so long, Uncle,” she replied, still quietly. “And now it must balance the other way. As for time...Jacen’s is running out. But Ben’s future has not played out. Have you not heard of how he lost his right hand?”

            Luke flexed his artificial fingers and felt a kind of phantom pain for his son. “I heard.”

            “What have you heard?”

            “He—refused to kill parents. Or children. So Jacen—Caedus—took—took—my Ben’s hand...my son, my only son...”

            He felt Malinza playing with his tunic, trying to soothe him. “What does that tell you, Uncle?”

            “The Light remains...but he is...struggling, as you say. And he will not reach back—he has shut me out. I can only hope,” he said, his voice shaking, “that a small child may change his life—as mine was changed. You translate the Force into song, Malinza—you are music—and Ben, birth and creation. My children...”

            He wrapped his arm around her and kissed the top of her head. His tears flowed into her hair.

            She simply held him.    

 

 

 

Light endured, and so did darkness. He would choose daily.