Soli Deo gloria

DISCLAIMER: I do NOT own Star Wars.

I'm rewatching all the Star Wars movies before I get VIII and honestly, I'm getting so much more out of the story the older I get. I got to thinking about Darth Vader and Luke and Kylo Ren as I watched VI; history likes to repeat itself, again and again.

Luke didn't want to tell Ben the story of Darth Vader. It was part of a past still too close in his memory, a past he saw as over and done with. He wanted to look to the future of the Jedi Order and the future of the galaxy. But Ben Solo was so young and so full of questions, so eager to learn all about the Jedi, all about the past. He reminded Luke, almost too much, of himself, when he was young.

So, after a walk around the beautiful grounds of the Jedi Training Academy, Luke told him. He told the story in simplified terms, not wanting to overwhelm his eight-year-old nephew; he had a distant look in his eye as he spoke; he saw past Ben, who sat spellbound at every word his uncle told him. Try as he might to let go of the past that he could not change, Luke found himself back on Tatooine, learning of Lord Vader from Obi-Wan. He was clinging with one arm to safety while denying this awful truth his father told him so simply. He was full of the anger that the Emperor nurtured in him as he saw the failing attack of his rebel fleet at the Battle of Endor. He was fully immersed in the past, against his will.

When his story was over, Luke looked blankly past Ben; though his face was passive, inside he was trying to pull himself away from the feelings of that last day: the anger, the passion, then the hope of his father's recovery against the Dark Side. He fought for peace against this onslaught.

"So the Light Side won, in the end?" Ben's childish voice brought Luke back from his past, back to his present, his nephew.

"It did. If you stay true to it and don't give in to the Dark Side, the Light will win out," Luke murmured, still half in a daze.

Ben leaned forward, ignoring his uncle's obvious daze, and said, "Uncle Luke, is there bad inside everyone?"

Luke looked Ben straight on, then. What could he tell him? That the Force dealt in absolutes just like the Sith, sifting everyone into Lightness and Darkness, Good and Evil? There was good inside Anakin Skywalker, even though he gave way to the lure of the Dark Side and let Darth Vader take the reins. Luke thought of Leia's pride and Han's selfishness and how they could both lose patience with each other, give in to anger. They weren't Evil, and yet neither were either of them wholly Good. Luke saw Ben in this light—how this boy was a combination of both of them, of their greatest faults and of their greatest gifts—of their steady loyalty, cleverness, their fiercely loving hearts. All of them culminated in this boy.

"There is," Luke said then, thinking of himself and his own internal struggle in the Emperor's throne room, "but I believe you are determined by how you react to it. You can let it define you, or you can fight it, and so let Good define you."

Ben mulled this over. His eyes were bright as he said, "How did Grandfather turn to the Good Side, at the very end?"

Luke was startled by Ben calling him 'grandfather'. Luke, for years, referred to him as Father, thinking of him as Anakin Skywalker. Leia barely referred to him at all. Her interactions were only with Darth Vader, and they were not pleasant ones. Needless to say, Luke had a better relationship with him based on things he shared with him that Leia did not; them being Jedis, Luke being present at his turn to the Light Side of the Force right before he died, etc. Luke didn't like this familiarity Ben used concerning him.

"Well," Luke said, sighing, "he no longer let the Dark Side of the Force rule him. He stopped listening to Darth Sidious and his poisonous words and acted according to how he was, in the end. I believed there was Good in him, and he finally listened and acted, in the end."

Ben wrinkled his nose. "I think he turned Good in the end because he loved you."

Again, Luke was startled by this action of his nephew. "It was because Anakin Skywalker remembered who he was—"

"I think it's because he loved you. Wasn't it love in the first place that turned him toward the Dark Side?" Luke had, in years past, received the full story of his parents' courtship and secret marriage in bits and pieces from Obi-Wan and Anakin's ghosts. He'd relayed this to Ben; now he regretted doing it.

"It was not love itself," Luke said. "The Dark Side in marked by giving in to passion, to personal feeling, for doing things for oneself versus the greater good, the peace of the galaxy—"

"Anakin Skywalker became Darth Vader because he would do anything it took to save Padmé, because he loved her. That's how he came to the Dark Side. But then he stopped listening to the Emperor, this man who gave him so much power over the galaxy, because he loved you. Love was his weakness," Ben said flatly, sarcastically, matter-of-factly.

Luke again felt a foreboding feeling; Ben was too calculating and intuitive for an eight-year-old. He could sense the feelings of his nephew—interest, excitement, passion, disgust. This disgust was directed at Darth Vader as the boy said, "If he didn't have you, he still would've had all this power, would've continued to rule. But he saved you, and he died because of you. His weakness killed him, in the end."

Luke stood up; he knew this conversation had been too much for his young nephew who was still too young to know what his own feelings were, what he would become as he grew up. He was too impressionable, and was much impressed by Darth Vader. "His weakness, in the end, let him die a good death. It allowed him to kill Darth Vader before he died; he was saved by his weakness. And that—" Luke's voice was firm and his face stern, "is enough."

Ben glanced away, shrugging nonchalantly. He looked like his father then, trying to play it off. But the intense brightness of his mother's eyes betrayed another thing to Luke that again gave him an ill feeling of foreboding: the determination in his eyes.

They walked back to the main hall in silence; Luke watched his nephew return to his room before seeking out his sister. He relayed to Leia all he had told Ben and said, when he was finally finished, "I shouldn't have told him."

Leia frowned, thinking. They sat in a weapons room, full of all different kinds of weapons used by the Alliance and the Jedi of old. It was for educational and history purposes, mostly, though Leia sometimes grabbed one and went to the firing range with Han, on a good ol' date to let out some steam. She held an old Trooper blaster in her hands; Luke had brought her back to the past, too. "We can't keep the past buried," Leia said. She looked up. "You know as well as I do that the truth of the past will come out, in the end."

How well they knew this. How their disguised childhoods gave way to the truth of their birth and relations in the end. "I know. I've known ever since he was born that the day would come when he must be told of his bloodline. I thought in my feelings that the time was right; but I was wrong. He is too young; his future is not set in stone yet. He is so easily influenced until he is grown up, when his identity is set in stone. I should've waited," Luke admitted.

"Anakin Skywalker was an adult when he let himself be swayed to the Dark Side," Leia said, now not meeting Luke's eye, even as he stared at her. "All I'm saying is, that waiting too long would've had its consequences, too. You've told him and now he knows and that's the end of it."

"Who knows what?" Han said, just entering the room. Chewie ducked his head through the threshold, filling the entire doorway.

Luke and Leia exchanged looks now. When Ben entered Luke's Jedi Academy after Luke told his parents that he was strong in the Force and must begin his training while young, Han and Leia had trusted Luke's judgement about how and when Ben would learn about the Jedis before him. Luke felt now that he betrayed that trust, even as Leia felt he did not.

Han, after a moment of silence, said, "Someone want to tell me what's going on here?" Sometimes he felt left out of this twin-bond they shared, like they always understood something he couldn't.

Leia inhaled and said, "Luke told Ben about Darth Vader."

Han, unsure of how he was supposed to react, said, "Well, he was going to found out at some point, right?" He went over to the displayed weapons and picked up a gun, feeling its weight.

"I feel that I have told him too soon," Luke said. "I believe him knowing that his grandfather worked for the Emperor will influence his future decisions."

"Hey," Han said, pointing a finger across the room at Luke, "you found out about your dad and you didn't turn to the Dark Side. Besides, he's our kid"—here to Leia—"freedom-fighters, enemies of the Empire, which we won against—remember that?" He leaned against a display and shrugged. "Come on. We fought the Dark Side and won. We've raised him all his life; he's our kid. There's no way he could turn Evil. Besides," here Han cocked a head toward Chewbacca, "Chewie would never let him. He'd knock it out of him at the first sign, aye, buddy?"

Chewie grunted in agreement. He was a second uncle to Ben, and watched over him as closely and protectively as if he was one of his own.

"See?" Han said cheerfully. "Nothing to worry about."

Luke wasn't convinced. "I have felt foreboding about his future," he said. He remembered all too well in recalling the past to Ben how much he had felt the desire of the Dark Side when he was young. In the throne room, with the Emperor's persuasive words in his ears, he felt the desire to give into his rage and anger and hurt almost overwhelm him. Was that what it had been like for his father when the Emperor first turned him? If so, Luke could understand how easy it was to give in to it. It was so much harder fighting that passionate desire. Giving in was so much easier.

Anakin Skywalker gave in to the Dark Side. Luke Skywalker, after grappling with it, triumphed. Luke knew there would be a struggle some time in the future when Ben Solo would have to grapple with the Dark Side. Whether he would prove himself more like his grandfather or his uncle, was what was unknown. Luke said, because not only were Han and Leia his best friends, but also the parents of his apprentice, "Someday Ben will face the Dark Side and he will have to make the choice whether to join it or not. I will try his hardest in my training to make sure his decision on that day is the right one."

Han looked like he didn't know why they were still discussing this (his kid turn to the Dark Side? As if!) but Leia nodded, understanding the gravity of the situation; she also held in high regard Luke's intuition as a Jedi; she trusted him, not only as her son's Jedi Master, but also as her brother worried about the future of her son. "I trust your judgement, Luke," Leia said. "Train him as you see fit."

Luke felt the duty she gave him in its fullest capacity, took on the great weight, and gave her his word that he would do his best with Ben Solo, his apprentice.

When Ben Solo gave way to Kylo Ren, Han felt the blow the most and Luke took it the hardest; Han, because he didn't take Luke's worries as seriously as he should; he was too blind, too hopeful in his son's good parents to look one generation further; Luke, because his best efforts weren't enough, and in the end, he was the one who let Ben turn.

Leia felt the blow, but not as heavily as her husband and her brother. Maybe it was because she was Ben's mother, and one's mother knows one best, or because she knew something that Han and Luke were too grieved to remember: that this was history repeating itself, again and again. Her own father and brother had fought against the Dark Side and won, after all. What was to say the same thing wouldn't happen with her son? Anakin and Luke still had good in them, and Ben was their blood. She knew there was still good in him. She only hoped to see the moment when the Good in him won out against the Evil.

Sci-fi shouldn't be so thought-provoking about human nature, LOL.

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