A/N:Hope you're enjoying the story thus far and that it's piqued your interest. The timeline's going to be a bit tricky to work but I know where I'm going with this so expect more surprises. Please excuse any spelling mistakes (my spellcheck is already going bugnuts with all the names I'm throwing at it). Enjoy, you lovely things, you.

(II) Ghosts

How it had come down to these dirty, cryptic machinations was anyone's guess. Truly there was a source but the story reached back into the depths of memories he no longer sought solace in for there was not enough comfort left in the galaxy, not enough drink left in the bottle to save any of them. Did he dare indulge anyway? What the hell; it wouldn't be the first time. He took a swig and coughed immediately. It burned more than it should have.

Lando knew himself to have been a better man once upon a time. These days the Lando who had once been seemed as distant as the skies upon which the Cloud City had floated. So much for that lost whore of a dream that was a free Bespin. Over the years he'd made forgetting his modus operandi but with the news of Han's fall everything came crashing back faster than a 12 parsec Kessel run and... he chuckled sorrowfully at his own twisted nostalgia and took another swill from the creature's hand before it'd even set the glass on the bar. Not much longer til he got kicked out of the canteena so he allowed himself the remaining drudges of his respite. Wallowing had become the favored sport of the decade.

Staying in touch with Leia, however sporadic, had been a mistake and he knew that now. After all was said and done he should have left them all to their fates but the galaxy was far too small for that family and even smaller for their mistakes. He slammed the glass down on the counter harder than he should have, drawing unwanted attention. That's it, he told himself, one more stunt and out you go again. Damn their sorry- There wasn't a spaceport, canteena, hovel or sinkhole left for him to mope in and drinking alone would have been unbearable. No- never alone. Not with all the ghosts. The ghosts haunted him through the days and the nights, caring nothing for the bloodshot insomnia he knew was the least of what he deserved. And you had to go and get yourself killed, you bastard...

He could hear the tortured screams of the little girl, so piercing it was as if the sand beneath her feet had set her ablaze. But he'd made a bargain with the time's reigning evil and he'd set out to make right by it, by them all, even if he couldn't bring himself to kill an innocent child.

He'd told Vader, made even the Sith Lord understand that he was no bounty hunter, no killer of the innocent... But the shell of Anakin Skywalker would not be made to understand nor was he deterred from demanding Lando as his assassin in exchange for the safety of Bespin. After all, the Death Star was still presumed operational and the hope of the Rebel Alliance's victory such a pipe-dream-

"More of that other stuff," he said in his normal gritted manner, rubbing at his eyes with his fists, elbows propped up on the counter, his shoulders above his ears. Your witchery brought us all to this, Vader. You cursed the entire galaxy to this madness. When the new prophecy had been foretold of the one who would mar the balance of the Force, he hadn't paid it much mind. Vader's verbal conjuring had meant nothing to him at the time and with his ultimate end at the hands of his son, the deal was, as far as Lando was concerned, null and void. Had they not defeated the ultimate evil? In any case, prophecies were old news; stories he'd especially come to take for granted in light of the all-too-real scheming he'd partaken in. And then, as if the days of peace were but a smear of cloud lightly touched upon a sky of poison, they were over and from the embers of a not yet ashen Empire rose the First Order- and the first betrayal. He stuck his nail into a groove in the bar and ran it back and forth, looking away into the past...The moment Ben turned he became a young Vader reborn and Lando saw something die inside of his friends; his friends who had deserved their dearly bought happiness many times over. That day something had died inside them all and the Skywalker family was broken anew.

Few knew how he, Lando, had happened upon Luke that day on Endor, sunken by his father's pyre, as lost in the flames as his innocence despite the festivities of a galaxy apparently freed from corruption. Even fewer knew it was he who salvaged the remnants of Vader- his helmet- to keep as some perverse reminder of the delicate edge they all teetered on. Night after night he peered into the burnt mask, demanding questions before answers, any sort of clarity, oftentimes scared it would metamorphose from its broken bones into a new Sith lord and strike him down. Other times wishing it would. They had all lost too much in the wars...

One night, as he sat contemplating by the fire, he heard whisperings so thin and biting they froze the very tendrils of his heart. He ignored them at first, attributing it to some sort of post-traumatic stress from the battles he'd been all to eager to play hero in but as the night permeated, so did the messages until he knew once more his oath to the light-returned.

Find her, it hissed in the emptiness. She must be destroyed before she breaks the balance.

Nothing had made sense in that pitch room, his sweating chest heaving with each command his ears strove to defy. But he couldn't bring himself to do it. She'd been such a young, innocent thing. Han, you sonofabitch, you were no help, he thought and chuckled again, this time almost choking on the drink serving as a balm for his hoarse throat. The only person in the galaxy he trusted hadn't been able to make sense of the cryptic message and had gone all but ballistic when he found out that a part of Vader, however inanimate, had survived the pyre. They'd had a full row that day- Han turning his back immediately on what he'd called hokey ghost stories and the space cases who believe in them and he trying to get his wits back about him before they went at it again, fists and all.

That is, until the First Order. The day they sought to to take over Bespin was the day Lando found her; still a small, young thing in her atrocious mother's arms. The sight of the woman still plagued him for she was something vile to behold, dressed entirely in reds and blacks like some regal tarantula about to be choked by its own billowing skins. Lando believed in the Force well enough, except when it concerned himself, though he would vouch until his dying breath it was the Force what guided him that day and he knew the child even before she knew herself. The rest was a frenzied escapade as he did one of the few things he was exceedingly good at: he smuggled. The child was inconsolable but he made it to the farthest destination he could think of: Jakku. It was a desert wasteland beyond the scope of anyone hostile and if Luke had made it on Tatooine... Marooning her was not what he had agreed to but he would not be made a killer, no matter how steeped in to the drink he was... I'm not a killer. I ain't no killer... Did the right thing...Then ya had to go and get killed, you bastard. But I didn't kill ya, though I wanted to a few times. I ain't a killer. Did the right thing...

"That remains to be seen, Calrissian."

He'd been so drunk in his misery he hadn't noticed the lack of music in the canteena or the withering silence of the merrymakers as the figure cloaked entirely in black stood behind him menacingly.

"There was a time you used to call me Uncle Lando," he said, staving off the alcohol for all the good it did him. "Yeah... sure was a long time ago," he said finally turning around on his seat to face yet another ghost.

"Do not make this difficult for yourself, Calrissian. Now tell me: where is my disciple?"