Title: "Father and Son"
Characters: Luke Skywalker, Ben Skywalker
Category: Missing scene, family, EU
Setting: Between the Dark Nest trilogy and Legacy of the Force: Betrayal

Summary: Ben's thoughts on his father, Jacen, and his grandfather

Ben Skywalker sometimes hated being home. He was ten years old, and his parents made him feel ten. Especially his father. Jacen, though – when he was with Jacen, he felt different. Jacen treated him like an adult. Asked his opinion. Expected him to think, then answer. He didn't act as though he had to make allowances for Ben's age.

"So, Ben," his father said. They were in one of the many training rooms of the Jedi Temple on Coruscant. It was a smaller room, and was largely bare of furniture. A wide window looked over the mottled greens and silvers of the city spread below, gleaming in the mid-afternoon light. "I thought we might work on your meditation today."

I do that with Jacen, Ben thought. "Okay."

His father sank down to the floor, cross-legged. Ben did the same, about a metre away. The light from the window framed his father's features, and Ben thought for a moment that his father looked old, and tired. Both of his parents had been middle-aged when he was born. Sometimes he wondered what it would be like to have been born when they were younger, and not into the middle of a war.

He noted the black formal robes his father wore. Obviously he'd had to put off an important meeting or conference or some other tremendously vital thing to do this. The reminder of how many other demands existed on Luke Skywalker's time (more important demands, no less, than a half-trained novice) woke a flicker of resentment in Ben; he narrowed his eyes at the floor.

"Ben?" His father was frowning at him.

"I'm ready."

His father blinked and regarded him. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing. I'm ready."

There was a silence for a moment. His father said, "All right." He reached to his collar, frowned out the window, adjusted the clasp of his robes, looked back at Ben. "I don't know how Jacen teaches you to meditate; he seems to have picked up a lot of unusual methods while he was away." There was a slight pause before the unusual – it was barely noticeable, but Jacen always said that Ben was good with details. Ben was beginning to suspect his father didn't entirely trust Jacen. Jacen said that a lot of the Jedi were set in their ways, and didn't like the fact that he knew things they didn't. He hadn't specifically mentioned Ben's father, but maybe he didn't need to. Dad was the leader of the Order, wasn't he? It wasn't like anyone anywhere ever forgot who Luke Skywalker was.

"Meditation is essential to a Jedi's life. Through meditation, we open ourselves to the Force; and, by extension, to life everywhere. It allows us to rejuvenate, sometimes to heal, if we're injured, and to understand the will of the Force."

"Dad," Ben said, "I've covered this with Jacen." When I was eight.

There was an odd flicker in his father's face, too quick and too unfamiliar for Ben to read. "Of course you have," his father said, after a moment.

Ben waited. "Well," said his father. "The point I'm making is that it's not necessarily easy to meditate, particularly when you're young. Some find it more difficult than others. It may be that it's something you have to grow in to as you get older."

Ben narrowed his eyes. That wasn't what Jacen said. Jacen said that his abilities existed now, and inexperience was just an excuse. Besides, he could meditate just fine. Why did his father have to set him up with an excuse before they started? Did he expect him to fail? "Jacen told me that too," Ben said, untruthfully.

"Okay," his father said. "Let's get started then." He placed his hands on his knees and closed his eyes, though he was frowning a little. Ben didn't think he realised it. Ben looked out the window, then closed his own eyes.

He'd never tried to meditate on Coruscant before. He and Jacen spent a large portion of their time offworld, on missions. Sometimes Ben thought Jacen felt most comfortable when they were moving; it was like being in one place for a long time made him restless.

Jacen was offworld now. He had said that Ben should spend some time with his parents while he ran some errands of his own. He claimed they were boring and that there was no point in Ben being dragged along, but Ben didn't see why he couldn't go. He could see his parents when he was on Coruscant with Jacen. They were hardly around anyway, or if they were, they were making special effort to be, which sometimes felt worse. Ben could never forget for a moment when he was here that they were famous Jedi Masters; the Jedi Master, in Dad's case. The Grand Master, leader of the Jedi, hero of the Rebellion.

Mom was less famous, and less insanely busy. She managed to avoid attention often; Ben thought she liked it that way. He could see her as just Mom.

But his father… was entirely different.

Ben opened his eyes a crack, then opened them wider. "You're not meditating," he said accusingly to his father, who was staring off through the window.

"And neither are you." His father turned his head and smiled. Ben didn't know what expression had been on his father's face before, but he thought it hadn't been a smile. Probably worrying about some crisis somewhere, or his next meeting with Cal Omas, Ben thought in annoyance.

"Want to both try again?" His father lifted his eyebrows.

Ben nodded, then closed his eyes. He pushed aside thoughts of his parents, of Jacen not being here, and focused on the Force.

It still made him a little uncomfortable to feel and use the Force, but Ben never told anyone that, not even Jacen. He had nightmares about terrible things that he couldn't remember, but he was sure that they were to do with the Yuuzhan Vong war.

His father's presence was immediately clear and bright and powerful. The other Jedi around them in the Temple were strong too, but not as strong as his father. Ben always felt like shrinking back from that. He'd been afraid of his father when he was much younger, because he was so very strong in the Force, and the Force was something the war had taught Ben to recoil from.

Jacen, though he was also a powerful Force user, made Ben nowhere near as uncomfortable, even when he opened himself fully to the Force. Jacen always seem somehow hidden, so that Ben couldn't feel the full strength of his power. Ben wasn't sure why it felt that way, whether it was something Jacen had picked up with all the other knowledge he'd gathered in his travels, but he was grateful for it.

Ben drew a breath, then exhaled. He imagined his awareness expanding to the limits of the room, taking in the scratches and scuffs in the walls and floor from where the room had been used for sparring practice, the tracks in the doorway from many booted feet. He let his senses flow outward further, to the corridor beyond where a lone Jedi walked, to the room beyond, then the level beyond, and beyond, downwards floor by floor.

The Force felt strange here, Ben thought, a sensation a little like an echo. He'd always thought echoes felt empty, and this was the same: old, and dusty, and hollow.

Age. Maybe that was what he felt.

He wondered briefly how many Jedi apprentices had sat here. Not that many since the Temple had been rebuilt, maybe, but this Temple was built on the site of the old one, the one the Jedi in the Old Republic had used for thousands of years.

Maybe his grandfather had sat in a similar room, once, with Obi-Wan Kenobi, fighting boredom as he tried to understand the will of the Force. Maybe he'd been a little hungry too, and had been thinking about dinner.

Of course, it wouldn't be too many years beyond that and he would be overthrowing the Temple and murdering Jedi after Jedi, some of them perhaps in that same room where he'd once sat and thought about his dinner.

Ben opened his eyes. His father was still sitting opposite him, gazing off through the window. Ben frowned, and his father turned his head with a faint smile.

Ben noticed with surprise that it was dark outside the window.

"Done?" his father said.

"Did you ever get to ask him why he did it?" Ben said. His father blinked. "Vader, I mean," Ben said. "Why he did – you know. Everything."

His father looked at him for a moment. It was hard to see his expression now that he was looking away from the window; his eyes were just a faint glimmer of light. "Why he did it?" he echoed. "Why he turned, you mean?"

"Yeah," Ben said. It was usually the sort of question he would ask Jacen, but – well, Jacen wouldn't know the answer to this, would he?

"No," his father said. "I never did ask that."

"Haven't you wondered?"

Even as little more than a shadow, Ben could see his father had become still. "Yes, I have."

"A lot?" Ben frowned and wished he could see his father more clearly.

"Quite a lot."

It was funny, Ben thought, but he'd never thought all that much about it from his father's point of view. As a son. It was strange to think of him like that.

"Why do you think he did?"

There was a pause. "I can't answer that."

"Because I'm ten?" Ben narrowed his eyes.

"Because I don't know."

Ben thought he would have to ask Jacen his opinion. Then he stopped, and reconsidered. Ask Jacen? Jacen wasn't Darth Vader's son. And wasn't that what he wanted to know? Why his son thought his father had fallen to the dark side?

Jacen couldn't answer that. And – really – his father had, even if he said he couldn't. He didn't know. He wanted to know – wanted to know quite a lot, he said – but didn't. Ben supposed that he'd never been able to ask.

His father's knees cracked as he stood, silhouetted against the window. "We'd better get on. Your mom will be wondering what's keeping us."

"Yeah, okay." Ben stood. "Dad?"

"Mm?"

Ben looked at his father, shadowed in the darkness but still familiar – in smell, in shape, in body language. He had no idea what he'd been going to say. "Never mind."

His father put a hand on his shoulder briefly, an absent gesture, almost unthinking. Better than a pat on the head, Ben supposed.

He followed his father through the door.

-end-