"As I told you, Solo, back on the bridge of my ship," Vol said, "you need to provide at least the pretext of incentive if you want me to cooperate with you."

In Luke Skywalker's quarters aboard the Jade Shadow, the Sith Grand Lord was imprisoned in the Force cage that had previously been placed there when Jacen used it for Odrok Degron. But even after being physically suspended from using the Force, Vol looked back at both Jacen and Corran, the only other person in the room, with contempt and, oddly enough, satisfaction. Jacen figured that the Grand Lord was probably thinking that even with the proverbial cards stacked against him, he still, somehow, had the Jedi at a disadvantage.

Jacen hoped to prove Vol wrong as he stared back at him with standard Jedi calm and patience just as Corran did. "I don't suppose," Jacen said, "that you'd be willing to tell us how to restore my uncle back to his normal state of mind without having to kill you and all the other Sith who were involved in the ceremony on Kavan?"

Vol chuckled. "The ceremony was designed to be irreversible; its progenitors never saw any need to reverse it."

"Except through their deaths," Corran chimed in.

Vol looked ruefully at the Jedi Master. "Yes; to keep the effects of the ceremony going for as long as possible, as there hasn't been a way to keep it permanent, those same progenitors bound their lives to its effects; the same is true for all those who follow in their steps, such as myself and the Sith who were on Kavan with me. However, this is something that you already know, so I might as well have told you that water is wet. I refuse to tell you who else was involved in the ritual that created the Force trap that affected your precious Grand Master's mind, especially if it means my death anyway."

"Oh, you don't have to be the one to tell us," Jacen said. "In fact, the person we're about to talk to might not know who exactly was involved in the ceremony, aside from maybe yourself, but he can still give us some pretty valuable information." He then pulled out a portable holocomm from his belt and activated it.

The holographic representation of Saber Odrok Degron stared back at the other imprisoned Sith in shock. "Grand Lord Vol, it is you! When the Jedi told me they had captured you, I thought they were lying! But now that I see for myself..."

Jacen then turned the holocomm so that Degron was facing him. "You have your proof now. So tell us who the High Lords of the Lost Tribe are or your Grand Lord dies."

"He knows nothing of the ceremony!" Vol exclaimed. "Saber Degron, tell the Jedi nothing!"

"Now why would you be so worried if Saber Degron tells us the names of your High Lords, Vol?" Corran asked. "Unless, of course, they all happened to be part of the Force trap ceremony on Kavan?"

The Grand Lord simply sneered, but only after a second of hesitation. "Not all of them were involved in the ceremony. In fact, I had some Sabers involved in it."

"But, My Lord, I thought one had to be a Lord to-" Degron cut himself off as soon as he realized his mistake.

Vol's expression darkened, but he said nothing.

Jacen smirked along with Corran. "You know what I like about you, Saber Degron?"

The Saber said nothing; but even through the static-filled transmission, his embarrassment was evident.

"You tend to drop little tidbits of info without meaning to," Jacen said, "just like when you let slip on Andalia your Grand Lord's name here; you're very useful like that."

Now Vol looked really angry. "You told them my name, Degron?! How stupid can you be?! If I had access to the Force again, I would snap your neck like a twig!"

"My Lord, I am truly sor-" The rest of the transmission was cut off by Jacen before he replaced the holocomm in its pocket on his belt.

"Well, now," Jacen said to Vol, "while Saber Degron did tell us a pretty useful piece of information there, he still didn't give us the names of your High Lords, and I doubt he will; since you told him about what it took to even be part of the Kavan ceremony, you probably also told him what would happen if everybody who was involved in it died.

"However, we do have someone aboard this ship who probably would know."

"I assume you're referring to your young cousin, Ben?" Vol asked. "What makes you think he would know?"

Jacen shrugged. "Well, it can't hurt to find out if he knows."

Once again, Vol sneered. "This is all moot for you Jedi anyway; even if you did learn the identities of the High Lords, you cannot possibly get to them before you're all destroyed. And let's not forget just how limited you are with your ability to teleport, Solo; it can only help you for so long before your luck runs out."

Jacen gave Vol the signature cocky Solo grin, but said nothing before he and Corran turned to leave.

Still, that part of Jacen that always doubted his and the Jedi's chances of success fell easily into agreement with Vol.

. . .

Because Jacen had only one Force cage, which was still being occupied by Vol, the brainwashed Ben had to be watched by at least two Jedi at all times from his own quarters aboard the Shadow; right now, he was being looked over by Zekk and Lowbacca.

Corran entered the quarters and regarded Ben, who sat at the foot of his bed; the teenager, who was neither a Jedi (anymore) or a Sith, looked back at Corran with the same scorn that he had been leveling at the two Knights at his room's exit.

"Ben," Corran began, "do you know the names of the Lost Tribe of the Sith's High Lords?"

Like Vol before him, Ben sneered. "Even if I did, what makes you think I'd cooperate, Master Horn?" His address of Corran sounded like a mockery of his title. "You Jedi are too weak to resort to something like torture; especially on someone who used to be one of your own."

"You're not a Sith, Ben," Corran stated. "You're not one of them; you're a Jedi like us."

Ben hissed. "Jedi! Ha! As if I wanna go back to that life!"

"Why wouldn't you?" Corran asked.

"Wouldn't you like to know?"

Corran was silent for a moment. "It's because of that girl, right? Vestara?"

Ben's scowl deepened. "So Jacen told you about her."

"We're not talking about Jacen right now, we're talking about you and-"

"Why doesn't he come in here? What, is he scared of me? He has two Jedi Knights and a Master on his side and he's afraid to take me on?" He then shouted, "Come on in, Jacen! I know you're out there! You can hide your Force-presence from me, but I know you're out there! So don't try to use Horn here to fight your battles for you!"

"Ben, this-"

Corran was cut off from saying anymore when Jacen entered the room.

"It's okay, Master Horn. I can do this myself; Ben and I can't avoid this."

"Jacen, are you sure you wanna-"

"Hiding out there while you take care of this will get us nowhere; Ben and I need to settle this once and for all by ourselves." Jacen looked over at his friends. "Zekk, Lowie, you, too; you can go."

Corran nodded his approval at the aforementioned Knights; the three of them then left the room, leaving Jacen and Ben alone.

The teenager stood up from his bed and crossed his arms across his chest. "So... you wanna give me a lightsaber so we can really settle it?"

"That's not what I had in mind and you know it."

"No, of course it's not! You're too much of a coward to-"

"Oh, I'm a coward? I'm a coward? I'm not the one who's been deliberately avoiding me for the past few months because I can't accept that-"

"This has nothing to do with acceptance!"

"Yes, it does, Ben! You can't accept that I'm not Caedus and that you can't get closure for your mother's-"

"Don't you dare bring her up!"

"Why not? I'm not the one who killed her, yet you seem to think I somehow did!"

"Shut up, Jacen! You had no right to come back into my life! Especially not after Ves brought me happiness!"

"Ben, Ves was lying to you this whole time! She never told you what she truly-"

"What she truly was? Because the Jedi ways blinded me to where real happiness can come from!"

"Ben, the dark side of the Force is merely an illusion of happiness! Everything about it is just-"

"Oh, who are to talk? You don't even believe in the light or dark sides of the Force! You think that everything just is or whatever! Well, guess what? If there's a dark side of the Force, it comes from the Jedi, not the Sith!"

"What makes you say that, Ben?"

"Because the Jedi limit themselves!"

"How so?"

Ben growled as tears were starting to form in his eyes. "All my life, I've been taught to control my emotions! Whether it was your clone or my dad or my mom, I was taught the Jedi creed; there's no emotion, only peace, and all that crap! But Caedus, he... he hurt me, Jacen! He made me do some awful things during the war, he killed my mom, he nearly took everything from me! And I only survived because of the family I had left, like my dad, and the satisfaction I took when the man I thought was you died! When that happened, I thought everything was right in the galaxy, even if Mom was gone; and I thought then that choosing the path of the Jedi, the oh-so righteous path, was the right thing to do."

"But then I came in."

"Yes, you came in! You ruined everything! Because even after it was proven that Caedus was just your clone and that you had nothing to do with what happened to me, something in me just... ripped open! All the assurance, the satisfaction, the certainty I had when Caedus died was gone, and I was left with the same void I felt when my mom died! You, the man who bears the face of my mother's killer, continue to live while my mom's still dead!

"But you know what really tore at my soul, Jacen? What gnawed at my mind since you came back and you were proven to be you instead of Caedus? A part of me hoped that, one day, my mom would come back into my life and say, 'What, you thought that was me? No, that was just a clone, like Jacen's!' Or something like that! But that never happened! So I went on, seeing you everyday, whether I wanted to or not, with you being a constant reminder that what I thought was justice was a lie, and that not even killing you could make it right.

"But then Vestara came into my life, and the void that I felt was gone! And when I became a Sith, I felt complete, overjoyed with her! I felt free, freer than I ever did as a Jedi, even when I thought that Jacen Solo and Darth Caedus were one and the same and were both equally dead! Now you've taken me from what made me feel complete and you expect me to cooperate with you? How dare you! How dare y-y-y-y..."

Ben trailed off as he completely broke down sobbing; he let himself collapse to his knees before curling himself into a fetal position on the floor.

After a while, Jacen sat down next to him and tenderly, gingerly, held him close as his cousin continued to cry.

As the time passed, Jacen could sense a great deal of confusion in Ben's mind; and it wasn't simply from the overwhelming emotions that he was experiencing. Indeed, whatever method that the Sith had been using to corrupt Ben's mind seemed to be washing away, as if his tears were a much-needed shower to get rid of all the dirt and grime that their rhetoric and emotional manipulation represented.

Jacen knew that it would be a long time before Ben could be completely healed from whatever the Lost Tribe had done to him. But if he thought he knew anything, Jacen thought that he could help Ben every step of the way in his recovery.