A. N. When I first started to write fanfiction, Ben Skywalker and Vestara Khai was my primary pairing. Some of the material I produced for them was an acceptable quality by my current standards. Some of it wasn't, and was frankly appalling.

A few months ago, I found myself writing part of this story on a whim, looking at the dynamics of their relationship, had it moved past attraction and love to physical consummation.

One of my head-canon elements for Ben is that he would potentially have an interest in bondage and control, after some of the events of the Legacy series. Edited 15/02/17 for spelling and grammar.

I need to save Ben! Vestara Khai, Jedi apprentice, and former apprentice in the Lost Tribe of the Sith, thought, looking at the creature that had incapacitated her boyfriend. Next to her, Natua Wan stood in a fighting stance, facing down the thing.

It would be so easy to incapacitate her, Let it have her, and save Ben. But... Vestara suddenly felt a confluence of moments. In some, she died. In others, Ben died. Sometimes she sacrificed Natua to the creature, sometimes she sacrificed herself. But what she remembered most about that brief vortex was the look in Ben's eyes when he found out her decision.

She took it suddenly. She didn't think. Her hand dropped to her belt, rising with her breath mask. It was just a standard mask, but every Jedi carried one on their utility belt. In a heartbeat, she pulled out the small roll of mesh tape, and a pair of metal strips from her belt, before attaching them to her shikkar. Her father had handed it to her, months before she killed him.

She had time for one sentence. "Natua, get Ben out of here!" She shouted, as she lunged forwards at the two metre creature. It felt ridiculous in that moment, attacking something that could ward off the strike of a lightsaber blade with nothing more than a glass dagger, even if it was force-imbued.

Ducking under a slice of a claw, she slashed upwards with the dagger, feeling it catch in the hide of her opponent. But she also felt a yield, and a penetration. The reinforcements to her dagger stopped it snapping off. Another massive blow missed her by inches as she attacked again, this time plunging the dagger into the thing's throat. Even mesh tape and two durasteel strips couldn't prevent the dagger breaking off, leaving her holding nothing more than the hilt.
Then she ran, ducking under a reflexive slash from Natua's lightsaber, before they both grabbed Ben's arms, one each, and ran for the surface.

-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-

Luke was sitting by his son's bed when Vestara came to visit him.

"Vestara." He said, looking at the keshri girl. He trusted her, to a fair degree. It was the trust of someone who'd allow her to follow him into trouble. In a starfighter he'd probably decline to offer her the unshielded rear of his starfighter, though.

"Master Skywalker." She replied, looking him in the eye. "I wanted to know if Ben had woken up yet."

"Not yet." Luke said. "I'm proud of you, by the way."

Vestara started, looking at the Jedi master as if he'd just grown a second head.

"You've been trained as a Sith. Ruthlessness, casual murder, the removal of inconvenient persons, all that sort of thing." Luke explained. "And you're put in a situation in which your boyfriend is incapacitated, and at risk. I know you could have done a number of things. But what you chose to do was to put your life on the line. I shouldn't have sent the three of you into that tomb without the right weapons." Luke admitted. "Somewhere like Korriban... you should have been carrying vibroblades."

"You couldn't have predicted that thing would be down there, Master Skywalker. Or that it would be lightsaber proof." Vestara pointed out.

"I couldn't." Luke agreed. "But I could have predicted some of the creatures produced by Sith Alchemy would be lightsaber resistant. And taken the correct precautions. I didn't. And... Thanks to you, the consequences for my son are minimal."

Vestara hesitated, before steeling herself for the real reason she'd come looking for Luke Skywalker.

"Master Skywalker... I was doing some cadences earlier. And... My lightsaber no longer felt like it sat in my hand well. It kept twisting slightly, and felt unbalanced."

"When did you build it?" Luke asked.

"I didn't, Master Skywalker." Vestara admitted. "I was handed it by Lady Rhea when she took me as her apprentice."

"And it now feels wrong in your hand?" Luke asked, looking to confirm something.

"It does."

He smiled. "I know why." Luke Skywalker said. "I know what option you could have taken. Natua." He didn't condemn with his tone. He just stated the name.

"I could have. If I wanted to end up breaking Ben's heart."

Luke smiled at that, before thinking back to a quote he'd found preserved in an old Jedi archive. "Love doesn't lead to the dark side. Passion can lead to rage and fear, and can be controlled... but passion is not the same thing as love. Controlling your passions while being in love... that's what they should teach you to beware. But love itself will save you... not condemn you."

"Wow." Vestara said. "I guess even the Jedi..."

"We have our moments." Luke said. He held his hand out briefly, and was unsurprised when Vestara placed her former lightsaber in his hand. With a smile that struck Vestara as someone who is pleased by something, he reached into a small case at his feet.

"In time, you will construct your own lightsaber. For now, though, you need a weapon. You will be the fourth Jedi to bear this lightsaber. My father bore it. I bore it. My wife bore it. And now, I hand it to you to bear with honour." He offered her a lightsaber hilt that showed age and use, but somehow felt like she was being offered the Sword from The Stone.

She reached out to take it. As her hand brushed the hilt, she saw a flash of vision. She saw the weapon cutting down children, unarmed and terrified. She saw it slice into and through a line of Jedi. She saw lava. And then nothing.

"Ves?" She heard. Ben's pet name for her sounded strange from Luke Skywalker.

"I saw... things." She explained. "I saw terrible things."

"You saw Order 66." Luke explained. "You know the history of our Order. My father... betrayed the Jedi Order. He led the attack on our temple on Coruscant, the night the Jedi Order fell."

Cautiously, Vestara reached of her hand for the lightsaber again. This time, there was no vision. It just sat in her hand. It felt like it had been made for her. Stepping outside of the medbay aboard the Shadow, Vestara ignited the lightsaber. It burnt a sky blue. A series of cadences confirmed what she'd felt as it settled in her hand.

She hung it from her belt, and stepped back into the medbay. Luke Skywalker looked up and nodded, before stepping away from Ben's bed.

"I'll be meditating." He said, leaving her alone with his son.

-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-

A few days after the near-miss, Ben Skywalker was up and about. He hadn't entirely recovered yet, and he knew that it would take a while. Even though he hadn't suffered a physical injury, and was as fit and well as usual... he knew he wasn't at his best.

When he got back to his cabin, Vestara was waiting for him, with a lightsaber hilt he recognised sitting on her belt.
"He gave you Mom's lightsaber?" Ben asked.

"His father's, yes." Vestara replied.

Ben noticed a couple of things as she got up. The first was that she was wearing a voluminous Jedi robe, with the hood dangling down her back.

The second was that she wasn't wearing very much else. That observation was pushed into second place when she stepped forward and just kissed him.

"I thought I was about to lose you, Ben Skywalker." She growled in his ear. "Never do that to me again."

"No promises, Ves." Ben replied, before returning her kiss with added interest. It wasn't long before Vestara pressed herself against him, a process that reminded him very clearly that she was a female humanoid.

"Barv." She muttered, fondly. "I love you too."

Then she guided his hand somewhere it hadn't gone before. Inside of her robes. Ben blushed furiously as his hand was placed top of one of Vestara's breasts underneath her robe.

Somehow, it wasn't long until she was wearing her birthday suit, and his standard clothes were in a small pile on the floor.

"I knew you looked this good under your robes." Vestara said, running her hands over a set of muscles that owed nothing to bodybuilding, and everything to an active lifestyle. Ben had shed what puppy fat he might have once carried. Underneath his robes, it was nothing but defined muscle. It wasn't impressive in volume, just clearly defined, smooth muscle.

Vestara fell, in return, into a category Ben associated with physical beauty. Caramel skin overlaid muscle, with just enough excess to ensure that Vestara was nothing but stunning. Ben had known he'd struck lucky with the person who'd fallen in love with him. Everything physical about Vestara was just a bonus. If she'd had the body of a Gamorrean sow, he doubted it would have made a difference, once he'd got to know her. He kissed the little scar at the side of her mouth, the one that gave her a perpetual smile.

Vestara looked into a pair of sky blue eyes, as warm as high summer. Ben gazed into a pair of eyes that glowed with an inner light as their lips met again, and their eyes closed.

There was a flicker of thought. Neither of them knew who'd suggested it first, who'd suggested crossing that final boundary. Vestara looked into her boyfriend's eyes.

"Ben?" She asked. "You're sure?"

"Are you?" He asked. Any hesitation would be enough.

"Yes." Vestara replied.

Ben kissed her again, as they staggered towards his bunk, holding each other firmly, until it chopped out their legs from underneath them.

It wasn't glamourous. It wasn't elegant. It was awkward, embarrassing and strange. Vestara knew as little about the real mechanics as Ben did. There was little more than fumbling, initial pain and discomfort, followed by the sense that the entire galaxy had just shifted completely and utterly.

Ben Skywalker opened his eyes, and looked into the glowing, beautiful eyes of Vestara Khai. His lover. The most precious thing in his galaxy. And he felt something deep within him lock into place, with the finality of a fifty ton stone door.

Ves?

Ben?

Neither of them had experienced anything like it, before that first golden moment, in the afterglow of their exertions.
And they knew that nothing short of a Death Star would ever tear them apart.