Disclaimer: Not mine. Not at all.
A/N: I'm posting this before I lose my nerve. This is completely unlike anything I've ever written, so I'd really appreciate any and all opinions on it. Let me tell you that the verb tenses in this really drove me crazy.
Please tell me what you think, and be honest, I'm a big girl, I can handle it.
-x-x-x-x-x-x-
The Skywalker Dynasty
The Skywalker line has always been tainted by darkness, right from the time Anakin Skywalker was judged in front of the Jedi council at age nine. Not all of us have fallen, but all of us, whether we are willing to admit it, have been tempted; we can't help it, it's in our blood. Power, and its capabilities sing to us, give us options that are denied to others.
Of those of us who have fallen, most of us have come back. This is largely because our tainted blood has allowed us to recognise the failings of ourselves and pull each other back. It is safer to have our brethren on the Light Side, than on the Dark Side, as those on the dark know our weakness as surely as do we. And it is at our weaknesses that the dark strikes the strongest and the hardest. So we have guarded one another as we guard ourselves; it is not merely love or blood that has bound us, but survival. Skywalkers, if they bear the name or not, have depended on one another to survive, and we have learned that few others will protect us as our family will.
Rarely have we had to destroy one of our own. We will do it if necessary, but as Luke Skywalker, with the final ties of family revealed to him, it is not a job we relish, and it is one we will resist until the very end. If it is possible, we will drag our blood back from the precipice kicking and screaming, knowing the agony they will face. But when we have looked into their eyes and seen only madness and hatred, then we have no recourse but to let them embrace the darkness they crave, and then we are the ones to push them over the edge, as Obi-Wan Kenobi did Anakin, into the lava. Unlike Obi-Wan, however, we know we must find the strength within us to completely destroy the dark one, to make sure he has breathed his last and is tied to death, unable to approach the living.
Once Ben Skywalker was heard to ask where it was that cold practicality had crept into the Skywalker line. We have not yet answered his query, because we too wonder where it came from. If there was one thing that Anakin Skywalker lacked, it was practicality, and though none know the name of his wife, neither of his children we noted for being cold, passionless or practical.
It is said that Leia Organa achieved a measure of evenness in her temper, but the fiery nature of her inherited temperament never truly left her. That is why they say she was the greatest leader this galaxy has ever known. She led them as a Skywalker, and Skywalkers are beloved by many beings, by virtue of blood and of history.
By his death, Luke Skywalker was a calm and wise Jedi Master, and had truly only lost one student to the Dark Side: Brakiss. We have long ago ceased to count Joruus C'Boath – he did not exist to be saved. They say that even until the death of Brakiss that Luke Skywalker waited for him to return, that even after the student had turned irrecoverably away, a small part of the great Jedi waited. Luke believed that no being was completely consumed by the Dark – excepting perhaps Palpatine – and therefore could be returned to the light. It is a belief that would be later reflected, changed, and developed in some of Luke Skywalker's nephew's own teachings. Luke would have killed, did kill, and even destroyed those who threatened those that were his to protect and love, but it was not to the level that we have learned to do now, and it was never, ever aimed at his own blood.
Some say that it arrived by way of Mara Jade Skywalker, Emperor's Hand, smuggler and Jedi Master. But it was not present in her only child, Ben, nor in any of her four grandchildren. Some trace it down as far as Ben Skywalker's grandchildren, but others point out it that shows through most clearly in the line that originates with Leia Organa and Han Solo. Yet neither Jaina nor Jacen, twins, gods, and all-round historical nuisances, ever killed their own blood, despite Jaina Solo's well-documented fall. No, the first of the Skywalkers to carry Solo blood, have more definitively altered the galaxy than Anakin Skywalker, and have earned their place as history as surely as any of their line. They would have fought to the edge of time and then some before they allowed one of their own to cross that line. Not the line to darkness, that they believed was relatively thin – to be avoided – but crossed easily. No, the line to madness and death: they would have brought anyone back from this line. Too many times had they seen it done to believe they could do less. Jacen Solo proved it by a three-year battle to change his own son's motives. The effort of his work killed him in the end, his death was a bare six months later, but to this day, his son is known to be one of the greatest Jedi Master's of all time.
Perhaps it is not cold practicality, or even survival, that leads us to leave our blood behind, but tiredness. Our ancestors proved that the possibility of turning back to the light existed, denying the beliefs of those who lived for thousands of years before them, and they set about to preserve themselves, even creating theories to show why this is possible. On the Death Star at the battle of Endor, Luke Skywalker had achieved what all beings had told him was impossible. Thereafter, in nearly four generations, lived the power of that success, the knowledge that they could save all those who wandered in the shadows.
We have lost this courage, this strength, this belief. We have lost all that once was held important by the Skywalker bloodline. The belief that it is possible to pull ourselves back has not changed, I know because it still lives in my own heart: the awareness that it is my gift to save others. Only now we have lost our strength, our absolute knowledge that as Skywalkers we hold the power over light and dark, over all beings in the Force. We know that once this was true, that we believed this once, but we no longer know how. It is gone as surely as any dream we might have had, taking with it our power, our conviction.
Two months ago my sister turned and looked at me, her eyes reflecting a dullness I have come to expect, and she said to me in whispered words, how she knew this was how the Republic of the First Great Order of the Jedi – the Old Republic, as they once called it – fell. They no longer believed in their convictions, in their strength; they only lived much longer than we, and then only on sheer momentum – even a dead weight will travel far if pushed hard enough to begin with. She died less than a day later; and when she faded to the Force, it was not so much that she embraced it, as she lost the strength to be visible within it.
Now, I stand amongst the bloody remains of the last of my brethren. Amongst the last of the Skywalkers – the ones that carry that name and the ones that don't – amongst the remains of the Jedi and the Sith. Yes, Sith. You see we believed that the death of Vader, and the death of Palpatine was the end, and once Exar Kun was gone we knew we were free. We were wrong. We were cursed. Cursed and tainted, as we have been since Anakin Skywalker became Darth Vader. There is none left but me, even my daughter, not even twelve standard years old, is gone, her eyes as wide and as clear as they were as her cousin pushed his sabre through her heart, her face showing surprise. She adored him and he killed her, the whispers of darkness too strong for him to deny. He found his death moments later by my hand, my rage burning and boiling out of control for the first time.
This could have been prevented, I am sure, but as I know this, I know not how. Such has the Skywalker line been reduced to – destruction for no more reason than it is our destiny. All I have is that it will not happen again. I am the last. No longer shall our blood, my blood, be the making of heroes, gods and monsters, for as of this day I take myself and our curse and I bury us.
The Skywalkers have reigned for eleven generations, but they never shall again.
-x-x-x-x-x-x-
Please review.