IX. PAIN

Who, except the gods, can live time through forever without any pain?
Aeschylus

—

Darth Caedus felt his uncle looming, an immense incoming wall of pressure in the Force, unlike any other, and he now knew well that a Jedi Grandmaster pushed to his very limit was a terrifying thing. Caedus was afraid in spite of himself, uneasy in spite of long and careful planning, nervous in spite of the intense meditation that had given glimpses of what was to come—all his advantages were minute, given his foe. His stomach churned and churned.

When it came to Luke Skywalker, history abundantly demonstrated that plans and visions were not enough. The future was cloudy, now, churning before the storm—the threads of possibility fraying as he attempted to grasp them, dividing and dividing, and he could not catch a glimpse who would walk away from the encounter to come.

The moment that would tip the galactic scale drew near, and he felt blind without his gateway into potentiality, weak before the assault that loomed, the blade that was falling towards him.

He took a deep breath, and then another, drawing deeply into the Force. He had to survive this. Too much depended on his survival. His apprentice needed him. His wife and daughter needed him. The galaxy needed him. Some of them had just failed to realize it yet.

The galaxy did not need Luke Skywalker, who could not forge a peace. It did not need Luke Skywalker, who could not forge a family, or an Order, or a government.

He breathed in deeply once more, felt his pounding heart slow again. Vergere had taught him to survive. Vergere had taught him to eat the pain. Vergere had taught him that it was his duty to kill weeds.

Had she seen, truly seen, what he would become? Had she known how much he would have to sacrifice? How much had she concealed behind those alien features, within her labyrinthine teachings?

I am Vergere. What are you?

There were too many questions—these were things he had long since given up pondering. Vergere was dead, ashes in a world of ashes, and he remained, at least for the moment.

He unclipped his newly built lightsaber from his belt, observed it in the dimmed light of his office. Caedus ignited it, let the burning, blood red wash over him. It was comforting, somehow—familiar. He knew with grave certainty that he would truly inaugurate his new blade that day. It would taste of Jedi for the first time.

He felt very tired. Of all the things to suffer on top of his many sufferings, on the eve of the most pivotal fight of his life—insomnia. He felt terribly aware of the burden of his sacrifices, aware of all the love he had cast away, aware of all of the lives he had destroyed—all to bring him to this office, all to force him to the cusp of the threshold, here, preparing for his final duel with Luke Skywalker, one way or another. He wished that Tenel Ka were here, and that he could have words to explain everything to her, that he could ask for her counsel, and ask her about their daughter, but he wished only for a moment—he resolved those wishes into certainty. He would live to see both of them again. At that moment, and indeed most moments, he wanted nothing so dearly.

He closed his eyes for a moment, and he was far away from the Anakin Solo, back on Yavin IV, sparring with his first teacher.

The clash, the hiss, the hum—Jacen struck, and Luke barely moved, demolishing the offense, catching each attack and turning it against the attacker until finally Jacen gave up in frustration.

He scowled. "Uncle Luke, why won't you attack, press your advantage?"

Luke smiled wryly. "Because I am a Jedi, and Jedi don't attack the defenseless."

"I'm far from defenseless, Master."

"Oh? Are you? Show me." Jacen struck fast, but Luke caught it on the tip of his blade, parried it smoothly. Jacen thumbed off his blade, stood with his arms crossed.

"I know this lesson. You'll make me madder and madder, and I'll make more and more mistakes, and I'll quit, and in the end you'll never have to attack at all."

"Very good," Luke said. "You'll know you're master over your opponent when you can beat him without even landing a blow."

Darth Caedus rubbed his tired eyes, and felt ready, in spite of it all. The Force always moved in cycles.

—

"Wake up, farmboy."

Yes, he woke, sharply aware, watching the smooth shapes of hyperspace flowing. Mara spoke to him now, or he thought she did, spoke through the hole in his mind where their bond had used to be.

He watched it, steeling himself, meditating like he had never meditated before, like even that could tear through boundaries—he felt himself reaching down into the core of the Force, deeper and truer than he ever had before. There was power there, more than enough to squash an insect. And when the stars resolved themselves he caught sight of the Anakin Solo's underbelly, saw it laid bare like a black arrowhead amidst an infinite sprawl of glittering gems.

It was beautiful. It was time to execute Jacen Solo.

"End him, farmboy,"his wife said somewhere.

"Yes," Luke said. "There is a time for ending."

—

Caedus watched as the Stealth-X landed in the private hangar. He could have attempted to have his uncle shot down, he could have brought a cadre of GAG shock troopers to fight with him—he could have let Luke land and then vented the hangar's atmosphere, but all that would have done no good. He just knew.

The Force insisted that some battles be fought face to face, one on one.

Well, Caedus mused, perhaps that was a bit of a misnomer.

Luke's X-Wing touched down effortlessly, and the Grandmaster himself jumped from the cockpit to the shining deck in a single leap. There was something feral and primal in his eyes, and that something immediately struck icy fear in Jacen's wary heart. Caedus adopted a predatory swagger as he approached his uncle nonetheless, let the insolence welling up inside of him surface in his face, voice, sneer.

He knew that this was tantamount to grabbing a rancor's tail.

"Master Skywalker," he said with a cold, narrow smile, "To what do I owe the pleasure? Well, I'm sure the tribunal will take into account the fact that you surrendered to me peacefully with the full intention of facing the charge of high treason."

Luke did not answer, but he smiled back. It was a vengeful, awful smile, wider and crueler than Jacen had ever seen from his uncle. It reminded him distinctly of the way Yuuzhan Vong warriors smiled.

"No more words. I am tired of them. Your words lie."

Luke Skywalker drew his emerald lightsaber, thumbed it to life in one smooth, natural motion born of long, long use.

"It is time for you to die, Jacen."

"No token attempt at redemption? You're being a bad Jedi, Uncle Luke."

"You'd say no."

The Dark Lord of the Sith grinned.

"True. But Luke, you can't kill Jacen. Jacen's already dead." The Force was humming with potential, energy coiling forth from both men. Now it was time to reveal his true nature to his worst enemy, time for the Dark Lord of the Sith to engage the Grandmaster of the Jedi Order. It was time for everything to change forever.

He said his name with pride.

"I am Darth Caedus."

Luke looked unsurprised.

"I've been killing Sith since before you were born. You'll die here."

Jacen shrugged. "Maybe so. I have prepared for that contingency. To tell you the truth, I don't fear it. I'm ready for a long rest, if that's what it must be. My work will outlive me. Can you really say the same?"

"No more words."

"But Luke, I killed your wife. Poisoned her. She was about to strike me down, but I distracted her for just a fraction of a second, projected your son's face over my own, jammed the dart in her thigh."

Luke was clenching and unclenching his free fist.

"No more words."

"I killed your son. He moved to strike, but I saw it coming, and I was faster. Don't doubt that I showed him mercy, Luke—one stroke, head off the shoulders—he felt nothing. A moment of fear, or anger, perhaps, and then—"

Luke Skywalker struck. He was across the hangar in an instant, darting forward as Caedus stepped back into fighting posture, igniting his lightsaber, and then the Grandmaster of the Jedi Order was upon him, striking and snarling. Caedus executed every blow, every parry, cleanly, carefully, with surgical precision, a matador's dance, all fluid and deliberate and economic motion, absent of waste—anything less and he would have been sliced apart in seconds. Time moved slowly as he twirled, blocked, stepped, giving each motion the precise measure necessary to carry him into the next. The future was once again open to him, completely and fully open, all in lock step, and he was watching each motion before it happened, watching each strike and step split the golden threads of possibility into infinities in the instant before they contracted into reality once more, all while beholding his uncle's fury—all framed within the clear and empty rage of Luke's cold pale blue eyes.

Caedus whirled out of the fray, spinning backwards as the vibroblade concealed in his sleeve fell into his free hand, glinting for an instant in the cold light of the hangar, the mirror-sheen of the floor, before it was within his grasp, and when Luke lunged forward to press his advantage, Caedus continued to spin, sliced smooth and deep across his uncle's chest in an instant, so fast that it took Luke a moment to realize that he had even been the first man bloodied.

Luke howled but did not stop for even a moment, attacked with redoubled rage—rage beyond rage, rage that was lost to time or space, lost to the workings of a rational mind. It was rage that could consume the galaxy, a rage that screamed, snarled, screeched—seeking only to end everything forever. Caedus let the fear roll into him and out again, leaving only power, and the twin certainties that it was his duty to kill weeds, and Luke Skywalker was a weed greater than any other.

The rhythm quickened, now, opened into symphony, and for a glorious moment Caedus remembered what he had felt the day he ended Onimi, felt as if he were the will of the galaxy ending his uncle, felt complete for the first time in a long time as each thrust gave to parry, each blow yielded to its counter, each step made a dance that was the galaxy's dance.

Luke's style was based on the sheer dominance of space, all acrobatic darting and leaping, primal and unspeakably deadly—he was everywhere all at once, and Caedus knew he had no hope of matching the incredible artistry of Luke's bladework tit for tat—so he grounded himself, made each motion with unbelievable care, spent his energy more cautiously and deliberately, always mindful of cost and benefit in each component of each strike. Ceaselessly precise, he picked at Luke's over-extension, bit with the knife, reclaimed utter control of the immediate space around him—pivoting sharply on a booted heel, summoning all of himself up and into the moment, but aware in advance of each act to come, playing several steps ahead of himself, blinking away what had become a hailstorm of prescient images based on angle of blade and foot.

It was because of this that Caedus knew that a strike he could not block was coming well before Luke darted past his guard, knew the next necessary stroke even as the green blade burned into his shoulder, beheld the pain even as he brought his own lightsaber up to prevent Luke from burning deeper, and pushed against the agony.

Jacen Solo was watching his brother's death. Jacen Solo was in the Embrace again, hanging, eating the white. Jacen Solo was in the amphistaff grove, wrapped in them, his body made an instrument of cutting. Jacen Solo was on the Path of the Gods, sentencing a fellow Jedi to death. Jacen Solo was within the Well, longing to join Ganner in the dance.

Darth Caedus was leaving his family behind. Darth Caedus was learning that he could not be there to see his daughter grow up. Darth Caedus was killing Nelani Dinn, knowing what he was becoming and still driving his blade deeper through her. Darth Caedus was staring into Mara Jade's dying eyes. Darth Caedus was being denied by the love of his life. Darth Caedus was reshaping Ben Skywalker like he himself had been reshaped. Darth Caedus was going to destroy the Jedi, and Darth Caedus was going to remake the galaxy.

Everything was pain, his history was a history of pain, and so he made the pain his strength. He took the pain and made it manifest, feeling his whole body burn as he turned the immense weight of it outwards, as he made his uncle understand what it was to sacrifice.

For her, he reminded himself. All of this for her. How he loved Allana. Whatever happened, he hoped that she would come to know that one fact. He would see her again, in this world or the next.

It was only a slight expression of his power to flip the X-Wing his uncle had arrived in entirely, wing over wing, with a terrible deafening metal screech and hailstorm of sparks that nearly crushed Luke, throwing him off balance.

Now the scales shifted, and Caedus mounted a new attack—he pushed forward, every motion offensive, every blow driving at his uncle, not at all hindered by his mangled shoulder—and now the lightning came easily, freely, booming and hissing and rolling off of Caedus, striking past Luke's emerald blade in cold blue arcs.

Now Darth Caedus understood. This battle was not going to be decided by Force mastery, or skill with a lightsaber, or who was right. The winner would be the one who knew pain best.

He was mounting the steps of his ascent, mounting with every strike that pushed his uncle backwards, mounting with every convulsion Luke Skywalker struggled to ignore, mounting with every slice of the knife that reached past Luke Skywalker's defenses, painting the Grandmaster in long lovely scarlet lines.

And every time Luke's blade singed his skin, every time a kick collided, every time he flexed his wounded shoulder, he grew stronger. The more the pain sang, the more he sang.

This was to be the beginning of his dance. He understood Ganner, now, understood what it was to dance with death and laugh. Ganner had repelled the Yuuzhan Vong, made the entrance to the Well of the World Brain his domain. Caedus was repelling through his uncle everything that threatened to ruin his galaxy, making this hangar bay his sovereign realm.

There was one difference, though, between Darth Caedus and Ganner Rhysode: Caedus had no intention of dying, not yet, not like vermin, not at the hands of some Jedi turned animal. It would take so much more than that to end this dance, and so many more would be sprawled and still at his feet before it ended.

He was more than a Jedi, more than a Sith, more than the dozen Force groups that had taught him—he was the galaxy, and the hand turning the galaxy, and the mind behind the hand turning the galaxy. He was the tempest, he was eternal—he was Yun-Yuuzhan, Lord of Pain, the gardener.

Luke Skywalker would be put to death for trespassing in the reality that now belonged to Darth Caedus.

—

The arrogance of it was astounding. The vanity, the hubris.

He saw it in Jacen Solo's golden eyes, saw it in the sneer on his nephew's face. How foolish he had ever been to try to counsel the boy, to save him from himself—there was nothing good left in Jacen Solo, nothing at all but exalting darkness. He could feel the kind of happiness, the kind of joy, radiating from Jacen, and he hated that most of all.

"Kill him, farmboy. Kill him. Kill him." Mara had been his strength, his solace—she was still. She had whispered to him in the long dark hours he had watched hyperspace flowing, whispered to him as he fell into exhausted sleep, promising that Jacen Solo would die.

Jacen Solo thought he understood pain, thought he could suffer and laugh and devour. How very wrong.

Luke Skywalker had forgotten more pain than Jacen Solo had ever known.

Now he felt his blood churning, felt it roaring.

Yes, you could be wise, and be patient, and do everything right, and your family could still be stolen away forever. You could love your nephew, and do everything in your power to help him and teach him, give him every advantage, only to watch him become a monster. You could fight for fifty years, only to lose everything you had built in months—in moments.

Luke Skywalker hated—hated this Star Destroyer, hated everything it stood for, hated this worn, bleeding body, hated the nephew that had brought him to this, hated the galaxy that had never given him the slightest solace.

"Yes, hate him, yes. Hate can end him."

The more he hated, the more it became clear that this was true. Slowly, he regained his defenses, began to regain momentum. Slowly, the lightning came, intercepting his nephew's until they were fighting within a shifting equilibrium of spectacular bursts of raining sparks, smoke that rose from both as their bodies burned. This time, he saw Jacen's knife coming, and he caught it by the blade, held it tight in his free hand, his natural hand, wrenched it from his nephew's grasp. He threw it, clattering, away.

"Yes."

Hate was everything he had imagined, hate could crush stars, hate could wipe a galaxy clean. All the boundaries had fallen away, and now anything was possible.

He reached deep, reached into the Force, hating it as he used it, and he slammed Darth Caedus into the deck with a single shove, shattering the massive counterforce his nephew had willed to prevent such a thing, smiling at the sound of Jacen's head colliding with the durasteel, and Luke held him there so tightly that Jacen could not breathe. For all the power Jacen pretended to, he was finally no match. He fixed more pressure on Caedus's hand, felt the bones within snap, watched his nephew's crimson lightsaber deactivate. He then moved to the arms, ribs, legs, slowly snapping each one, savoring the sensation of Jacen Solo breaking, bone by bone.

"Yes."

He wished for Jacen to scream, or beg for mercy, or beg for death, but there was only the hum of Luke's lightsaber and the just audible wet snaps of bone, even as the absolute excruciation bled out into the Force like white flame. Staring down at his nephew, who gazed past him with unfathomable golden eyes open wide and opening wider still, brighter and brighter, he took a deep breath. He lifted his blade into the air.

There was a time to love, and a time to hate. There was a time to build, and a time to break.

There was a time to begin, and a time to end.

"Balance in all things."

—

Caedus watched as Luke Skywalker lifted his storied blade high, angled it down towards the heart of the Sith. He felt very much at peace, and very much ready. At the zenith of his pain, as each fracture in each broken bone compounded, he felt most powerful, most prepared for what was to come. Darth Caedus knew that he had been foolish to ever think that he could kill Luke Skywalker. All the futures had run together into one vision, and now each moment was of his own careful making. This had been a long time coming.

"We loved you, Jacen," his uncle said.

Caedus watched the gaunt shape of his apprentice solidify behind Luke Skywalker as if he had been birthed complete from shadow, watched as he pressed close against his father's back in one rapid and fluid motion, light glinting around his hand. Luke felt it coming only in the last moment, when he was already committed, caught wrong-footed for a vital instant as the shape of Luke and the shape of his son came together.

The knife went in all the way to the hilt. Luke cried out, beginning a furious spin, then halted all motion suddenly with a gasp as the tip went through his lung, the all-consuming neural shock of that instant forcing him to involuntarily drop his lightsaber. Luke could no longer will his legs to obey his mind, and so he fell, but Ben held on, going down with him. Luke writhed in pain, trying to marshal the Force, and Ben tore the knife out, his eyes on the streaked red shining on the razor-sharp durasteel. He brought it up again, high above his head, brutally quick, and then stabbed down.

The broken bones in Caedus were singing, and so was his tired flesh, and the durasteel deck, and the knife, and every star that waited for him beyond the magcon field. The knife came up, then down, and a great shatterpoint broke.

Darth Caedus returned his apprentice to the Force, baptized him at the shore of a roaring sea of light and darkness.

"Ben Skywalker, Sith in making: I want you to feel your father die."

The knife came up again, and down. Luke made a soft gurgling sound.

"Look at his face. Look at how tired he was. Look at how lost he became."

Ben turned his father, looked into his eyes. Luke opened his mouth to speak, but only a shallow groan emerged. Empty of rage, empty of hope, he sobbed, a choking sob, and pressed his bloody, shaking hand against his son's pounding heart.

"You return to the land of the living, and he goes down, into the land of the dead."

Ben brought the knife down again—a motion of the whole body, legs to arms, as he had been taught—stabbed deep and hard into his father's chest, piercing though bone, stabbed again and again.

"No doubt remains. We are the masters of pain. We are Sith, and more than Sith. We are gardeners."

Caedus felt Luke Skywalker die, felt his consciousness fade from horror into silence beneath the blade. But Ben stabbed still, stabbed with a relentless fury, again and again. Wielding it with only instinct as a guide, lightning erupted uncontrollably around him, became a storm of ion blue that engulfed him, that crackled and hissed, thundering every time the knife came down.

"For every love we cut away, we grow stronger. For every love we lose, we make something greater."

Ben's pale face was marked with streaks of red as he stabbed for an eternity, stabbed as if it were all he knew, stabbed until he was too exhausted to break the skin with his thrusts.

Luke Skywalker's glazed eyes seemed to be fixed on something beyond son, beyond his nephew—far beyond the knife that glittered in Ben Skywalker's hand. He seemed to Caedus to have his unblinking and unspeakably aged features fixed on the void, forever. He looked truly ancient in death, withered by too many years spent fighting for too little victory.

Ben finally stood on unsteady legs and circled the scene of his crime. He could not look away from his father, his focus still moving from Luke's empty gaze to his butchered chest and back again, as if Ben still could not believe that he was finally and truly dead. The yawning chasm of terror and opportunity that had cracked open and swallowed Ben in the Embrace now encompassed this hangar, opening wider still—wide enough to swallow a galaxy.

At last, the final movement of the song had come. The pounding rhythm receded, and Darth Caedus felt the Force itself shudder with a sudden and complete exaltation, thundering beyond thunder. It was all he had dared to hope it could be—one more step towards an apotheosis.

Luke Skywalker's song had ended, but the dance would go on. This Caedus knew, and it gave him the strength to continue living.

"You have kissed agony, sanctified your duty in his blood. You feel sick to your stomach, unspeakably tired, profoundly weak—but you are none of these. You are stronger now than you have ever been.

"You are alone, and so you shall remain. We have have stared down our own irredeemability, and we have accepted it. We have chosen between death and death. We will make that choice many more times before this is through. This is your burden, but it is also your strength. You have the tools you need: you have a mission, you have a teacher, you have the Force.

"You will use them, and you will forge a galaxy.

"That is our way. That is the way of the Sith."

Darth Caedus rose, savoring the sensation of his whole broken body screaming as he did it, hurting as he never had before. He looked past the corpse of Luke Skywalker, past his apprentice, towards the waiting stars that glittered out beyond the mangled hangar and the mangled corpse.

Mine,he dared to think. He took a tentative step toward them on his broken legs, and the Force sustained him. His mouth was full of blood. He swallowed hard.

Ben Skywalker held up his shaking, bloodstained hands, and looked down at them as if he did not know them.

For a long moment there was only the harsh silence of Ben's gasping breath, the distant roar of engines, and the cresting tide of agony washing in.

"I am Darth Caedus," the master said. "What are you?"