When they'd first washed up on that island, Ben had felt a sense of relief. Partially it was just because he'd survived, and that he hadn't been taken to whichever Sith Vestara called masters now. More than that, it was because he and Vestara finally had time to talk.

There was no point in trying to fight, physically or verbally. They both knew that on this mysterious island, potentially thousands of kilometers from the nearest sentient, they would have to depend on one another to survive whatever challenges they faced before someone, Sith or otherwise, came for them.

Furthermore, Vestara had been too tired to fight. She'd also been too tired to erect barriers around her emotions. Without even touching the Force, he could sense her indecision and her feelings of loneliness.

He knew she had done terrible things, but was willing to forgive those, because he knew there was potential for good in her too. It had been hard to admit that at first, after the sharp personal pain she'd given him, but his mother had helped him look beyond that. Now that they were alone together, he was determined to do what he could to pull her away from the Sith. He didn't expect to make her into a Jedi- he'd given up on that- but he wanted to lead her to some better path than the one she was on now.

That had been the plan, anyway.

When the impossible had happened, he hadn't known what to think. He hadn't even been sure it was real. What he sensed in the Force wasn't like what he'd felt when his mother re-appeared. Mara's presence had been striking and authentic, but it had felt half-hidden by death's vale.

There was nothing hidden about Jacen Solo's Force presence. It was distant, but he felt it clearly: his cousin was alive. Somehow, Zonama Sekot had returned him to life, body and soul.

He couldn't tell which Jacen it had plucked from death. That distant presence did not feel like the Darth Caedus who had brutally tortured him while Kashyyyk burned. It was, however, unmistakably the Jacen he had known in life: determined, tired, and a little sad.

Beyond that, he knew nothing at all. What had been an opportunity one moment before suddenly seemed a cage. A part of him dreaded the thought of seeing Jacen again; another part know he needed to.

He didn't tell this to Vestara. He didn't know how to explain it to himself. When she asked what had upset him he said that he felt his sister was in trouble, which was probably true enough.

Vestara had seemed a little pleased by that news, actually. Jaina had cut off her arm, so it was a little excusable. Vestara then insisted they set out across the island on another trek. They needed more food (preferably some meat, if the island had any game besides those rainbow-tailed birds) and even more than that they needed fresh water.

The former proved elusive, but they found the latter after a few hours of trekking. A shallow but swift stream wind its way downhill through the bottom of a crevasse. Vestara had gone down first, refusing any help from Ben. Then he'd gone down too. The water from the stream tasted better than anything he'd ever known, and when he's sated his thirst he partially unzipped his jumpsuit and began dousing washing the caked sweat and dirt off himself. Vestara, squatting a meter upstream, watched him guardedly for a few minutes, did the same.

Afterward they continued to explore the island, but Ben had been unable to escape Jacen's shadow. His cousin's presence was lurking there at the back of his mind, and even that tiny remnant brought back a surge of memories all fighting to the surface: Jacen in the cave on Kavan looking at Mara's body; Jacen sneering at Ben as he tortured him; Jacen taking him on raids with Lon Shevu and the GAG; Jacen fighting alongside him on Centerpoint; Jacen treating him like an equal when no one else would.

Vestara could clearly tell he was troubled. Whether she thought it was because of Jaina, or whether she intimated a deeper truth, she wouldn't say. Whatever the case, the talks he'd planned on having with her didn't happen.

And, after another day of wandering, it was Vestara's turn for a shock.

They were walking downhill through the forest when it happened. Vestara simply froze. She stared straight ahead and didn't blink, didn't even breath. Something was touching her mind, and Ben could feel reverberations of some dark and powerful presence in the Force.

Then the presence was gone. Vestara gasped and crumpled forward, hand on her knee and face toward the ground.

"Ves, what is it?" he said, though he didn't have to ask.

"It's him." She licked her lips and looked up at Ben. "Darth Krayt."

"Krayt's coming here? Personally?"

"Oh yes," she said. "He wants you bad."

He watched her, trying to figure her intentions. She was guarding both her expressions and her presence in the Force. He wanted to think that this time they'd spent together, even if it was short and mostly tired and dirty, had meant some-thing to her. He wasn't sure what it meant exactly, but he hoped it meant something. He hoped for both their sakes that Vestara had not surrendered to being Sith and only Sith for the rest of her life.

"You don't have to take me to him," Ben offered. "We can run. Or fight."

"We can't fight him, Ben," she said with honest fear in her voice.

He wanted to ask if she was going to march him right into the dragon's claws. He didn't. He was too afraid to hear the answer.

Vestara gave him one anyway. She plucked his mother's lightsaber from her belt and said, "Get going, Jedi. March."

"Oh, Ves... You don't have to do this. You don't have to be afraid of him."

"Yes I do, Ben," she sneered. "You're about to find out why. Now march!"

The lightsaber snapped to life. He looked in her eyes and saw no anger or hatred, just animal fear. In some ways, it felt worse than if she'd betrayed him out of darker emotions.

He turned and began walking down the slope. His mother's lightsaber hummed right behind his shoulder blades the whole way down.

It did not take them long to get to the island's edge. Instead of a black-sand beach or a plain of cooled lava, they found themselves in a clearing on the edge of a cliff. Jagged chunks of black-stone, half-covered by vegetation, tumbled some twenty meters into an ocean foamy with crashing waves.

They heard the sound of something roaring through the sky and looked up.

Ben was surprised to spot multiple ships. To the north he saw a dark, dagger-like shuttle plunging into the atmosphere, flanked by four rock-like shapes that might have been Yuuzhan Vong coralskippers. To the south there was some-thing more small and nimble, with thin outstretched wings.

He could sense both shuttles in the Force. The one to the north was a beacon of dark, predatory energy, and he understood some of Vestara's fear. To the south, he felt the familiar presence of his cousin Jaina.

Of Jacen, he felt nothing at all. He wasn't sure what to make of that. When he reached out he discovered that Jacen was gone completely from his mind. Yet Jacen had been alive just hours before, he was certain of that.

And if his cousin had died a second time, he was sure he would have felt that just as he'd felt Jacen's death at the hands of his sister.

Then again, Jacen had an old trick to hide himself in the Force. It was a trick he'd learned from Vergere and taught to his cousin, and Ben had a feeling it might prove useful very soon.

They watched, wordless and helpless, as the coralskippers broke away from the Sith shuttle and fired their molten missiles at Jaina's Sekotan ship. Because it was Jaina's ship, it twirled and pirouetted through the air like the most elegant dancer. Yet in the end it was unarmed, and out-numbered four-to-one. One missile tore off half its starboard wing and sent it into a spin. Ben gasped as it tumbled toward the ocean, trailing a spiral of black smoke.

Then it fired one engine, tore itself out of its spin, and plunged in a straight line toward the water. The coralskippers fired more missiles that shot past it and splashed white geysers in the ocean surface. When it got close to the main island, Jaina's shuttle pulled up sharply. As it did, another Yuuzhan Vong missile slammed into its aft, causing one of its engines to burst into flames.

Just for a moment, as the smoking shuttle streaked overhead, he felt a sober, determined presence touch his mind: Stay alive, Ben.

Then Jacen was gone again.

The shuttle disappeared over the canopy of the trees behind them. Ben watched desperately for some other sign, but saw nothing. Then he heard the muffled sounds of something very heavy tearing through part of the forest and smashing into the side of the mountain.

He reached out with the Force, desperate for some sign of either cousin. He felt nothing from Jacen, but from Jaina he could still feel a determined presence: dazed and a little dimmed, but still strong.

He grabbed Vestara's shoulder. "We have to go back. We have to find them!"

"Them?" She jerked it free and held the lightsaber up between them. "Who are they?"

"Jaina," he said. "Jaina's on that shuttle, I'm sure of it."

"Too bad," Vestara grunted.

"Ves, listen, please, it's not just Jaina. It's... it's..."

"Who?" she snarled.

Before he could say the impossible, hot air rushed the cliff and a shadow fell over them. Ben looked up and saw the Sith shuttle firing its repulsors and extending its landing gear.

He went to run, but Vestara grabbed him by the arm, spun him around, and gave him a Force-assisted shove that sent him sprawling into the rocks and grass. His knocked his head on a black stone and struggled to fight the pain away.

As he struggled to his feet, Darth Krayt's shuttle set down behind him. He turned and rose on shaky feet while Vestara stood at his side, lightsaber at his throat.

"You don't have to do this, Ves," he said. "You don't want to. I can't feel that."

"What I want never mattered," she said bitterly. "It's not going to start now. For what it's worth... I'm sorry, Ben."

The shuttle's landing ramp lowered like a monster opening its jaws. The being that walked out first looked like nothing Ben had ever seen before. His massive body was covered in rough armor almost like a Yuuzhan Vong warrior. His face was half-hidden by a horned mask that revealed a squared human jaw laced with black tattoos and two eyes, one Sith-gold and the other ocean-blue. He held an old silver lightsaber in each hand and he stepped toward Ben without faltering.

Behind him was a trail of acolytes. A tall Chagrian with red-and-black tattoos covering his face took the lead. Behind him were three more with the same facial markings: a human, an Elomin, and a Bothan looking freakish without his fur. Finally, at the rear, was a tanned-skin humanoid woman dressed not in black robes or Yuuzhan Vong armor, but a utilitarian vest and jumpsuit not unlike Ben's own.

"Lady Khai," the man in the lead rumbled, "You have done well."

"Thank you, Lord Krayt," she said. "You may do with Skywalker's son as you wish."

Krayt stepped up close to Ben. There was only his mother's humming lightsaber that stood between him and the dragon. He was stunned by how massive the man was. It was impossible to tell where the human ended and the fearsome spiked armor began. Through the Force, it felt like a whirling maelstrom. His thoughts seemed to skirt through Ben's, filling him with flashing images of fire and plague and devastation and death.

He tried not to be afraid, and failed.

Then Krayt said something he never expected: "You have something of your grandfather in you."

Ben stared. "You knew Anakin Skywalker?"

"Yes. He was my friend." Krayt's tone betrayed no emotion, and somehow that made him more menacing than ever. "I had the chance to kill him once. If I had, it could have all been different."

The lightsaber in Krayt's right hand sprung to life. A long red blade hung at his side. Vestara withdrew Mara's, giving him free space to strike.

"Now," he said, "To correct a mistake."

"Hey, wait," Ben said, "You wanted me alive, right? Right?"

"The Skywalkers have haunted my life for a very long time," said Krayt. Slowly, he lifted his sabers.

No! someone screamed in his head.

Not someone. Something he'd given up for dead.

Everyone must have heard it, because everyone turned to look beyond the cliff's edge. The ocean churned as it rose from the waters. Its ancient spherical hull was battered and torn. The web-like sail on its starboard side had been torn off completely. Cracks ran though its forward viewport, but Ship still gave the appearance of a massive eyeball, gazing scornfully down at the tiny beings on the cliff.

Run! Ship shouted in Ben's mind. Your destiny is together!

Vestara gasped. It was speaking to her too.

As for Krayt and the other Sith, they were frozen in utter shock.

Ship dove.

Vestara had already grabbed Ben's hand to pull him away. They were nearly to the treeline when Ship slammed into Krayt's shuttle. The explosion knocked them off their feet and sent them tumbling face-first into the brush. Ben pulled his face out of the dirt and looked behind him to see a massive fireball gushing black smoke into the sky.

In his heart, he felt a stunning lack.

After all this time, after everything it had done, Ship had sacrificed itself to save him. Him and Vestara.

Because it thought their destiny, great or awful, was together.

And maybe because, in its own twisted way, Ship had been fond of them both.

Vestara was looking back at the fireball. The pain of loss was obvious in her face.

He got to his feet and dragged Vestara up by her arm. "Come on, Ves! We have to go! We have to find Jaina now!"

"Did it kill him?" Vestara shouted.

No. Though he couldn't see anything in the blaze, Ben could feel Krayt's presence still.

"Come on, Ves! We have to go! Now!"

He moved deeper into the forest and tugged her arm. She hesitated for a moment, but only a moment. Then she plunged in after him. They ran as fast as they could and dared not look back.

-{}-

Pain, fire, and dreaming:

He stands with both feet on the outer line of the practice circle. Standing across from him: Anakin Skywalker. Anakin's padawan braid dangles over his shoulder as he hunches forward, lightsaber pointed directly at his opponent. His face own remains hidden by the brown wrapping, goggles, and grill-like mouthpiece of a Tusken warrior. He hopes it will recall some childhood fear in his opponent, but instead he seems something more like anger in Anakin's eyes.

From the corner of the room, Master Kenobi calls, "Begin!"

Anakin lunges forward. He sidesteps and flips up his father's blade with his left hand, knocking Anakin's aside. His right hand clasps the lightsaber he made on his own, and he makes a feinting stab for Anakin's exposed side. The young man pivots, hops away, and brings his lightsaber up to a defensive position.

He holds his ground while Anakin walks in a careful circle around him, probing for weaknesses. Anakin radiates determination through the Force, and behind that, anger. He doesn't know what he did to make Anakin so angry but something has him on edge today. Indeed, he barely knows the young man, though he has been curious about him for years, not just because of the 'Chosen One' rumors, but be-cause of their shared homeworld.

Maybe it really isthe Tusken mask.

Kenobi senses it too. He frowns from the sidelines but doesn't say anything, not yet.

Anakin lunges again, this time ducking low and swinging out in a broad arc. He jumps over the blue flash of the padawan's blade, then propels himself over Anakin's head in an aerial roll. He lands on his feet and turns to swing but Anakin has already reverse direction and is attacking. He blocks one blow, then another with his father's lightsaber. Then he goes on the offensive with his own, batting Anakin back with one blow, two, three, until he is at the edge of the practice circle.

It was foolish of Anakin to volunteer to spar one lightsaber against two. But Anakin has never shied away from a challenge, and even now, with his back to the edge, he radiates the same angry determination as before.

Anakin lunges forward again. He swipes out with his father's blade and holds Anakin's up and to the side. Anakin still grips it with both hands even as he takes his own blade and places it next to his opponent's neck. The saber's blue glow lights the underside of Anakin's jaw and reflects in his eyes.

"It's over, Anakin," he says.

Over Anakin's shoulder he can see Kenobi, trying to keep grave concern off his normally stoic face.

Then Anakin drops.

His knees fold up, his torso arcs back, his head snaps as far as it can go. His lightsaber wheels down and to the side, and his father's blade spins out above it. His own saber whirls through empty air.

Anakin's knees hit the chamber floor with the painful clunkof bone on tile, and his saber keeps spinning.

Spinning back around.

He frantically sidesteps, only to feel sharp pain shoot through his left leg as Anakin's saber skims across his calf.

"Anakin, enough!" Kenobi bellows.

He drops to his knees as Anakin rises. He drops both lightsabers and clutches the black scorched line on his leg. Thin whisps of smoke escape his clenched fingers. He is very glad for the Tusken mask. He does not want them to see the pain rending his face.

"I'm sorry, Master," Anakin says to Kenobi. "I didn't intend to hurt Jedi Hett, but there was no other way out of his attack."

"It's all right," he tells them both, and it's true. He doesn't hold it again Anakin for sparring rough; he actually admires him for it, especially compared to the other padawans, who insist on playing safe even though a war's just broken out. The Sep war droids and Dooku's dark minions aren't going to be gentle, and neither should the Jedi.

Besides, he was too overconfident. He left himself open for Anakin's attacks and got what he deserved.

"I apologize for my student, Jedi Hett," Kenobi says. "I'll call a medical droid right away."

"No," He snaps. "I'll walk to the clinic myself."

"Can you do that?" Anakin asks. The concern is clear in his voice. The anger in his Force aura, while subdued, is still there.

"I'm fine," he insists, and as if to show proof, he rises on trembling legs. In truth, the pain shooting up his left calf is exquisite. It makes his head swim and his vision fill with white. But he rises, and he remains standing, and that is the important thing.

"I'll escort you," Anakin offers, "In case you should fall."

"I will not fall." It is only pain. He has to master his pain.

"Then I'll walk by your side."

"All right," he acquiesces. "Let's go."

Kenobi, thankfully, leaves them to walk slowly down the hall. To Anakin's credit, he does not apologize for what happened. The two Tatooine boys walk in silence, passing a cluster of child trainees led by Master Shaak Tii. They are younger than either he or Anakin had been when they first set foot inside these halls.

As they get close to the clinic, he ventures, "Is it the war?"

"What?" Anakin blinks.

"Is is the war that makes you angry? It makes me angry."

Anakin considers for a moment. "No."

"Then what is it?"

"I lost someone," Anakin admits. "Someone close to me."

"I'm sorry," he says honestly. Unlike Jedi raised in the sheltering walls of the Temple, he understands attachment and he understands loss.

Anakin looks away. "I have to put that behind me now. There's nothing I could have done to save her."

He can tell Anakin does not believe his own words. He knows that there was nothing he could have done to save his own father. That hasn't stopped him from blaming himself for over a decade.

"Are you afraid?" he asks.

Anakin blinks, scowls, then lies, "Of course not."

He doesn't say anything as Anakin walks ahead faster, singalling an end to the conversation. While the Clone Wars, with all their attenuate death and suffering, make him angry, they do not make him afraid. He'll never admit this to the Masters, but a part of him is excitedabout the war. He feels he will finally have an opportunity to prove himself, to right wrongs, to bring order. To do what Jedi were meant to do.

And he senses that by the end, the Jedi will have been their wildest imaginings, both as an Order and as individuals.

Sometimes he thinks it's his imagination, and sometimes he thinks the Force itself is talking to him, telling him that the conflagration will change no one more than two orphan boys from Tatooine.

It tells him their destinies are the same. It does not tell him they are bound together; rather that they will find the same end through different paths.

Whatever that end may be.

Pain, fire, destiny:

He found himself on the edge of a cliff-side strewn with burning wreckage. He summoned all the strength in his body and rolled himself wholly onto the dirt and grass. He rose and scoured the scene. He saw Darth Wyyrlok rising to his feet and felt a rush of relief, mixed with slight trepidation. He saw the Bothan rising slowly and patting the flames out of his scorched black robe. The Elomin was kneeling over something, and as he stepped closer he saw that it was the corpse of the human, torso ripped open by flaming shrapnel.

He reached out with the Force and felt for Dician.

His physician responded from the opposite edge of the debris field, but her presence was weak. He walked through the field of flame, twisted metal, and scorched-black earth until he found her.

She was lying face-up, staring at a sky that shone perfect blue beyond twirling ribbons of black smoke. She had a chunk of black shrapnel lodged in her torso, just below the rib cage. Dark blood was oozing out of it, while another trail ran down the side of her mouth.

Even as he bent next to her, she kept staring up at the smoke and the sky.

"I am sorry," he said honestly. Though not powerful enough to be a Sith, she had been a more brave and more essential member of Krayt's union than almost any Lord.

He touched her mind in the Force and felt the pain, so much pain that it blocked out her thoughts in a white blaze of agony. He could sense that keen mind working some-where beneath the white, trying to fight its way to the surface, maybe to tell him something.

"My Lord, our quarry is getting away," Wyyrlok said from behind him.

"I know," Krayt said, and reached out to place one hand on Dician's forehead.

Through the pain she sensed his touch, and her open jaws twitched as though attempting speech, but the only thing that escaped them was more dark blood.

"You've done well," he said. "You will be missed."

Then he gripped her head tight and gave it one sharp twist, neatly severing her spinal cord. Her bloody chest shuddered once, then went still.

He rose to his feet. Three Sith Lords in tattered black robes stood before him, patiently awaiting his orders.

He clasped his father's lightsaber in one hand, his own in the other. "We go into the jungle, and we find Skywalker's grandson."

"And the girl?" Wyyrlok asked.

"If the girl has betrayed us," Krayt said, "Then we will keep her alive to watch as we destroy the boy she loves. Then we will kill her."

Wyyrlok nodded with a thin, pleased smile on his tattooed face. Wyyrlok the first, Wyyrlok, the loyal, Wyyrlok the traitor-to-be. Perhaps. Right now, he sensed no duplicity, only a desire to fulfill the brutal justice of the Sith.

As it should be.