Too late…
The words seem to whisper and resound in the sudden stillness, mocking him with their terrible truth. Where moments before there were clashing sabers and screaming lightning and a final, unanswered plea, there is only silence punctuated by rasping breath. Three figures are visible in the vast expanse, all motionless. Two are dead: one, still alive.
For now.
He hadn't acted soon enough, should have acted sooner. But his own fear held him motionless until it was too late to act at all. He was always too late. And when he wasn't too late, the effort was never enough to save them. Never. He simply couldn't save those he loved, whether from captors or Sith Lords or his own blinding rage. Now he cradles a young man in his arms, arms that held a dying woman many years ago, arms that were not strong enough to save her then, and weren't strong enough to save his child now.
Too late, the ghosts of his black past whisper. Too late…he is forever lost…
And they are right, for there can be no redemption for one as dark as he. What ever bright realm his son now inhabited would surely scorn his attempts at entrance. Only chaos awaited the dammed, not reunion with angel and star. His own words, a carelessly spoken prophecy, whisper in memory revisited.
It is too late for me...
And now it truly is. What was done cannot be undone, what was left undone can not be repaired. Oh, to be given the power to turn back the wheels of time! But that is impossible, even for one chosen before time itself.
The silence is broken by sound at last. A soul cries out, lost without its guiding star, without its light. An eerie wail of utter agony echoes through the cavernous chamber, resonating through space and time, devastating in its intensity. The very fabric of the galaxy shakes with the anguish of the Chosen One. Throughout the myriad of worlds, those marked by a mystical energy field reach for their younglings, holding them close for reasons they cannot comprehend.
Somewhere in the limitless black expanse of space, a star dies.
...no time for second chances...
Aboard the second Death Star, the father falls to his knees. The station crumbles around him, but he makes no move to leave. Death is certain for any aboard the artificial moon, but he cannot find the strength to care, nor the will to save himself now that his reason for life is gone.
Trembling fingers remove clasps, fumble for catches. A soft hiss, a quiet clank of metal-on-metal, the sound of a labored breath, unaided by what has preserved his worthless life for so long…the sounds die away into silence once more, save for ragged sobs, barely audible even in the silent chamber. Eyes freed from dark prisons look in anguish on a face that by all rights should have brought nothing but joy and fatherly pride. Darkness swirls around the lone figure, the night of a different form than what had encompassed him for so long. This is the night of the soul, despair beyond knowing. The darkness grows deeper as one mechanical hand stretches out, calling a distant weapon to its shaking grasp.
As a distant pilot shouts in triumph at a lucky shot, the emerald blade flares to life. Before the world explodes, the saber pierces sable armor and scarred flesh with deadly ease.
Alone in the dark, a father crumples over the still body of the son he was too late to save.
Too late…