When Ben awakened, he found himself in a clean, well-ordered bedroom with no noticeable furnishings that gave it any personality. However, there were two aspects of the room that caught his attention: the fact that he was bound by wrists and ankles to the frame of a bed, and the teenage girl leering over him from his left.
Vestara.
"Hi, Ben," she said with the same smile she gave him whenever she greeted him by the door to her apartment. "I was thinking we should spice up our sex life; try some BDSM." She rattled the chain by his left wrist with a simple gesture of her hand... a Force-gesture, that was. "What do you think?"
Whatever positive feelings that Ben had for Ves were quickly evaporating as the gravity of his situation sank in. The overwhelming feeling of the dark side of the Force felt caustic to Ben now; it was everywhere around him, like it was when he was on Ziost years ago, and it even came from... from...
"Yes, Ben," Ves confirmed with a nod. Her smile never floundered. "I'm a Sith."
With those three words, Ben's heart felt as if it had been snapped in two. His body slumped into the bed; he couldn't even muster up enough energy to try to break free.
"You... you lied to me," he said. Tears were now forming in his eyes. "You never really cared about me. You only used me to get close to me and... and..."
"And what, Ben?" Ves asked. "What do you think I did? Come now, if I wanted to get close to you, surely, that means I care about you, hmm?"
Ben's thoughts were completely jumbled. His emotions roiled within his being like a Bespin hurricane when the environmental controls were malfunctioning. Against the revelation of Ves's true nature and the caustic dark side feeling that pervaded this planet, it was Ben's continued feelings for Ves that prompted him to turn his head away from her and shut his eyes instead of offering any resistance.
But that didn't stop the tears from flowing down his face.
"Aww, Ben, don't try to avoid me," Ves said as she grabbed one hand beneath his chin and turned his head back to her. With her other hand, she forced his eyes open; the tears flowed much more freely now as he started to sob. "You can't avoid me now; not in my home. Not on my homeworld."
"Why, Ves? Why did you lie to me?" His shoulders started to shake and his breath was starting to catch.
Ves tilted her head to her right slightly and gave him a look as if he were an adorably dumb toddler. "Maybe I didn't make myself clear the first time, Ben. I didn't lie to you." She grasped both hands on either side of his head, pulling him in closer to her face. "I do love you. But if I told you I was a Sith, you never would have treated me the way you did when we first met."
Amidst the turmoil of his emotions, Ben's mind took him elsewhere, as if it were acting on instinct to take him back to a happier point in his life, to get him away from the pain he was in now. And the place his mind took him to was the moment he and Vestara met two months before on Hapes.
"Nice vintage," a sultry, feminine voice said from off to his left.
Even in his state of inebriation, Ben nearly jumped from where he sat before his head turned left to the new arrival on the roof.
The girl, who appeared to be about Ben's age, held her hands up defensively and stopped in her tracks. But her body language didn't match her playful smile.
"H-how'd you get up here?" he asked.
"Same way you did, I guess," she replied. "I took the ladder up. Now, I'll tell you what. I won't tell anyone if you lend me a sip of that wine."
For a moment, Ben wasn't quite sure what she was talking about; not only was his current drunkenness keeping him from thinking too clearly, but he was also distracted by the girl's beauty. Her skin was a nice shade of pale, her full lips were applied with an appealing dark red stroke of lipstick, her hair was as dark as a midnight here on Hapes, and her black leather jumpsuit left little to the imagination.
"Well?" the girl asked. "Is it a deal or do I have to let the local authorities know that a minor is drinking some booze on the top of the wine store that he pilfered from?"
It was that threat, addressed though it may have been in a jovial tone, that, at least temporarily, snapped Ben out of his hormonal, drunken musings to remember where he was. Indeed, he was on the roof of the building of a wine store and was drinking a bottle of one of that store's products; and he was still only five years from the legal drinking age. And on top of that, there were about two empty bottles near his feet and a bag of three full bottles to his right, which were out of the girl's sight.
"Oh, uh, yes, yes," Ben said hurriedly. "You can have a sip, I mean. And I didn't pilfer the booze; I bought it. With money, of course."
The girl giggled as she walked over to him and sat down to his left. Ben handed her the bottle and she didn't take a sip so much as a sizable gulp. Thankfully, there was still so much left for Ben to drink before he had to move onto the next bottle.
"So, outta curiosity, how'd you manage to buy any wine, much less this much, without the clerk asking for I.D.?" the girl asked. She even casually waved to the bag at Ben's other side.
Ben looked at her. "If I don't tell you, you gonna try to tell on me?"
"I haven't had enough booze to be as drunk as you yet," she pointed out, her tone still playful. "Maybe I can pass myself off as sober still."
"They might smell the alcohol on your breath," Ben pointed out, his voice now playful, too.
"I might risk it," she said. Her smile widened.
So did Ben's. "Well, if you really wanna know, it's because... I'm a Jedi."
"A Jedi? Really? So does that mean you used a mind-trick or something like that to convince the wine store's proprietor to let you buy her booze?"
Ben nodded mock-guiltily. "I even used the Force to fuzzy up her cameras so she won't be able to pin it on me."
"Not very Jedi-y of you," the girl said. "Maybe I need another sip if you wanna buy my silence."
Ben returned her the bottle, from which she downed the rest of the contents in an instant before throwing it with the other two empty receptacles. Ben, without hesitation, brought out another bottle from the bag, opened it up, and instantly gave it to the girl. She took in yet another gulp before giving it back to him.
"Silence bought," she said. A hiccup soon followed.
Ben couldn't help but giggle at that. "Uh-oh. I think you need to hold your breath for about ten seconds."
"Oh, come on, that doesn't really work," she said.
"No, it does, trust me."
"Please, don't try to sell me that," she said with a dismissive wave.
"Just give it a try, it'll work."
"Well, if you insist."
The girl then inhaled a breath and promptly shut her mouth. As the seconds ticked by, Ben couldn't help but burst out laughing.
His laughing caused her to burst out laughing, too, before the ten seconds were even up.
"What's so funny?" she asked in between her guffawing.
"You looked like a blowfish, is all," he replied.
"I do not!" she exclaimed. But she was still laughing.
"You did, you looked totally ridiculous!"
"No, you look ridiculous!"
"No, you!"
"No, you!"
Another hiccup followed from the girl. And Ben's raucous laughter was intensified.
And after a moment, so did the girl's.
When the laughter finally died down, and the girl made an actual effort to get rid of the hiccups by holding her breath for ten seconds (during which Ben actually managed to contain himself), they both looked at each other in a comfortable moment of silence.
"My name's Vestara," she said. "Vestara Khai."
"Ben Skywalker. Want another drink?"
"I'd love one."
By the time they were done with all the bottles, they were embraced in a passionate kiss, with Vestara on top of Ben.
His mind flashed back to the present, and Ben found himself freed of the chains binding his wrists and ankles. Still, though, Ves leered over him.
"I reconsidered the BDSM," she said. "Maybe we should still take this slow."
Ben slowly sat up on the bed but didn't stand. Again, his emotions were in turmoil, and he didn't know what kind of expression he was levying upon Ves as he stared her down.
"Wh-wh-why did you... do that?" Ben asked. "I could... I could..."
"Try to escape?" Ves asked. "There's nowhere on this planet for you to escape, Ben. Even if you tried to leave, even if you found your lightsaber and actually had the gall to kill me, there'd be so many Sith here who could stop you. And I wouldn't be able to guarantee your safety even if I were still alive; so if you want to continue living, I suggest you stick with me and... enjoy our time together."
Normally, Ben would have been able to resist the temptation that someone like Vestara brought upon him. He was able to resist going to the dark side when Darth Caedus tortured him aboard his Star Destroyer, the Anakin Solo, and he was even able to resist Tahiri Veila's sexual advances near the end of the Second Galactic Civil War. And if Ben had been in his right mind, he would have even imagined that he could resist Vestara if he had known her to be a Sith from the beginning.
But because of everything she made him feel, the thought that she was even a true Sith was something that couldn't really sink into Ben's head. How could someone who brought him so much happiness, who brought him out of the dread and misery he felt when his cousin Jacen returned to his life, be an agent of evil?
No, Vestara wasn't evil. If she went by the label of Sith, then that was all it was to Ben now. A label. And not even the presence of the dark side all around him, which was now becoming so much less toxic by the minute, could change his mind about that.
"So what do you say, Ben?" Ves asked. "Shall we spend some more time together?"
Now Ben knew he was smiling as he had before when he first met her. "I'd love that."
Moments later, they made love; and all of Ben's fears about the dark side around him completely disappeared.
For now, as it had been then, it was just him and Vestara; no Jedi, no Sith, no light or dark sides of the Force. Just them, and them alone.