[ A/N: Although this is about the average length of one of my drabbles, I didn't want this to be included in my 'Ripples in Still Water' thread since I had already conceived of this as a one-shot.]
I remember the look on my parents' faces the day I'd laid my first paycheck on the table. They hadn't been happy. It was probably because I had been thirteen. Also, probably because my job was in Colonel Jacen Solo's elite police force, the Galactic Alliance Guard which was bound to have me wind up killing people. Well, I'm still thirteen. But it looks like my parents' worst fears have finally come to life. For the first time, I have blood on my hands.
"Blood money". That was what I'd later overheard Dad call it as he had a heated argument with my Mom about whether or not they should forcibly pull me off Jacen's squad. He wouldn't let me keep it. But I heard him tell Mom he'd set aside five credits for every one that I earned in a special account. But this money he wouldn't put against my name. I had felt so hurt and angry then, I hadn't waited to find out what he had actually used it for. I later found out he'd spent it all on spare parts for his fighter. Why would he use "blood money" to purchase parts for the vessel to which he regularly trusted his life? Wasn't that supposed to be unlucky or something?
It only adds to the crushing guilt I feel today to realize that he would have rather brought the ill fortune upon himself than let it taint me.
Sure, I'd killed a man in self-defence. I had had no way of knowing then that he had been unarmed. Captain Shevu had reassured me. This is what you had to do in battle. Then why had my knees buckled and nausea risen in my chest? That hideous wrench... of a life being torn away, being extinguished in the Force... it had stirred one of my earliest memories, a memory I keep suppressed with iron control.
I had felt my cousin die. Thirteen years ago. Dad had thought he had protected me from those terrible emotions by keeping a check on his own. But he had forgotten that I had been there with Aunt Leia, at the precise moment she had felt her son's life wink out in the Force. And what it had done to her, the crazed expression on her face as she'd squeezed me to comfort herself and kept crying and crying and crying... it will remain forever etched in my brain even though I had been only a few months old at the time...
The life of a man. A son? Husband? Father? Brother? Maybe he was innocent. What have I done? I never knew him. He was an enemy, an obstruction, a statistic standing against us. I hadn't even looked at his face after the raid, traumatized as I'd been after having pulled the trigger and seen him crumple as a direct consequence.
It changes you, that first kill. That's what Jori said, what Captain Shevu said, what Mom said. You're changed forever. You can never go back to being what you once were. A child. I'm not a child. I can't call myself that anymore. That's right, Mom and Dad. Your little boy is gone forever. I'm a man today, a killer. But I wish I could feel like one. All I feel like is just a frightened little boy.
Naturally they'd been dismayed, disappointed, Mom and Dad, that is. Their only son, a disappointment. But they'd looked at me as though in some way it had been inevitable. Son of two Jedi Masters. What had they expected? A desk job?
They want to blame Jacen for this. I know they do. Yes, I've seen what Jacen can do and yes, it terrifies me sometimes. Like ... with Ailyn Habuur. Jacen had felt so cold doing it, whatever he had done that had made her wind up dead at the end of a routine interrogation session. And when I had seen him standing over the dead body... I hadn't been able to recognize him for once. I know that day has made me wary of Jacen. I guess I'll never be able to trust him as blindly as I used to. But I want to. I want him to go back to being the older brother I can run to whenever Dad's being unreasonable. But now it seems Dad's the one I'm running to, and away from Jacen.
When did it start? How did things get to such a point that the universe looks so unfamiliar and makes you dizzy? I can't even remember the first time I held a live blaster. Must've been Uncle Han who taught me to shoot. But it's never really like the vid games, real life. These shots hurt even the shooter. Because it's real, it's just too kriffing real!
I feel scared of things like mirrors these days, because I don't want to look at myself anymore. I'm afraid I'll be looking into the face of someone who wears a police uniform at thirteen and carries not just a blaster which kills, but also a lightsaber. At someone who makes friends and then betrays and abandons them. Killer, betrayer, Jedi. No, I don't recognize who I am anymore. And I run to my Mom and Dad, hoping they'll tell me it's all going to be alright. I need to hear that because I know in my heart it isn't true anymore. It only feels like the beginning of the end. Like first blood.