Slowly, everything crept into the normal once more. It was like before, when Jal was still a distant memory against the star-blurred night. It was lifeless. It was trivial. It was lonely.

Word spreads fast in small places, especially when no one is supposed to know. At first, well wishers wandered onto the farm with small parcels, trying to console my grieving parents. I suppose it gave my mother something to do as she hurried around, making small talk with the neighbor women, readying pots of tea and warming sweet muffins. She continued to speak of Jal as if he were just outside, cutting wood or tending the crops. The women exchanged worried glances but smiled encouragingly once Mother caught their eyes, their faces empty with sentiment.

Father never did speak of it. He was more silent now that he had ever been, withdrawn mentally and physically as he threw himself back into his studies, emerging for meal times. During the harvest seasons, he immersed himself in the farm. We no longer lingered after work was finished, talking and exchanging stories. My brother was always best at that, anyways, teasing Father with his political rhetoric or whispering stories of his adventures on the far-away world of Coruscant.

I spent my time deep in training, disappearing as soon as I was no longer needed, eventually not even coming home for dinners. Many nights, I wouldn't even enter through the house, choosing instead to crawl into the loft room from the courtyard side. It seemed appropriate enough. I was grown-up, I reminded myself over and over, ignoring the twinge of pain that stabbed through my heart every time I passed his empty room, void of even his essence. I tried hard to forget the fairytales of what it was to be a Jedi.

And then one day, the people stopped coming. Perhaps they were tired of Father's silence. Of my cold refusal when the greeted me in town and offered sympathy. Of Mother's forced naiveté. It became nothing more than another fairytale that happened in some other place, far away on some distant planet.

Father began to talk again, although he avoided politics, and never laughed. Mother stopped talking of Jal in the present tense. But I never forgot. I fostered my notions in my heart, far from Father's knowing look, and from Mother's well-meaning touch. I waited for the day I knew would come, but secretly hoped never would.

It was the last day of harvest. The air was thick and warm like right before a rainstorm. We were all silent as we struggled to pull in the last of the crops before the first sunset, our backs bent from stooping with ancient hand tools. We never had upgraded to agro-droids. Jal enjoyed the physical labor too much. I had been set the task of securing the bundles for processing the next day. When I emerged from the storage house, I saw that Mother had won a small battle of words, rewarded by Father's slight grin beneath the grime of the day. I smiled too despite myself and joined my parents, staring out over the cleared fields.

Father laid a hand on my shoulder after a comfortable pause, giving it a reassuring squeeze. Confidence rose in me and I managed another smile for his sake. "Go on and help your Mother start the meal, Ashton. I'll gather the rest of the tools." With another squeeze, he sent me back to the house.
My head was full of questions as I trudged around to the back of the kitchen, wiping my hands on my pants before I gathered a bucket of vegetables Mother had picked just minutes before. Usually, I was permitted to go on my way after the chores were done. But this…it was almost normal, like a real family would operate. Since…since then, we had been set apart from normalcy, stinted by our tragic Jedi heritage. Did this mean that Father was moving on? Could I do the same?

It was with a much lighter mood that I helped Mother around the kitchen. She too seemed to feel the change and was much livelier, shooing me out after I had made a mess of the juice so as to collect my father for dinner.

What I saw couldn't have been more different than the calm man I had left but minutes earlier. He was staring intently at the end of the field in the paling sunlight, the dusky grey obscuring the figure there. Even if it my breath hadn't caught in my throat and my legs trembled as they fought against my better judgment to run, even if it hadn't been so painfully similar to the last time, I still would have recognized Rune as she strode towards the house, framed in the setting sun.



When I say I wanted to leave my life behind, I meant it in whatever form I could manage. It is a very different thing to go from living as if one could die that day, on any day, in any battle, to living as if one were already dead.

I cut myself off from anything that could sustain me. I refused to contribute to that part of me that longed to return in to the embrace of the Darkness. In denying that which created me, I suppressed that which was myself. I no longer understood my mind's ambitions. I let it lead me where it would, controlling only those urges that were most basic in need. If Fate required something else of me, it would do so without food to restore my body, sleep to restore my mind. I would force Its hand and make it choose.

There was no surprise when I found myself on Rytiine once more, my body going through the motions as I trudged through briar-thickened forests, emerged to simple, bucolic pastures that quickly gave way to the wilds again. Who was I to guide Fate when It brought be to the edges of cliffs and tumbled my body to the ground below? I would awaken and continue my path, even with my shoulder twisted and swollen, legs badly scraped and bruised, and cuts that would bleed, then heal, then tear open again as the pain teased my sense of division, promising the warmth I was not ready to face. It resolved that I continue.

Quite suddenly, my journey was complete. Fate no longer pressed me forwards, leaving me instead to bridge the distance over a field of my memories, towards two figures I did not wholly recognize. One, bathed in calm and knowing, as if he had stood in that exact spot for an eternity, waiting for me. The other was no longer the child of my dreams, but a man bristling with a dark desire I had stirred in him, wishing for the sweetness of revenge that I could not give him. It was bitter that Fate had decided this for me, although I welcomed what it promised.

Without second thought, I accepted.


It could have merely been a play of the dusky light, creating shadows that were not truly there, but she seemed so much older than those three years could have afforded. Of course, I had no idea of their life spans, although I had read once that the dark side often fed on the life of its practitioners. For all my lack of experience, I could have accepted that her limping stride was a natural progression from her previous feline grace, the gaunt grey of her flesh easily transgressing from her once ethereal glow. A steady trickle of dark fluid dripped from her loosely balled fist, the source a spreading stain on her shoulder, which was rotated forwards at a disgusting angle in her sleeve. My senses rebelled against my passions and any thoughts I had secretly harbored for revenge at this sad sight, even as she strode towards Father and I as tall as she could manage, her head held high, her eyes determined.

I spared a glance in my father's direction. He was pointedly watching the other's advance, his expression unreadable, although I could tell he was steeling himself for whatever was to come. Neither of us was armed with much more than archaic farm implements. At best, those were a hundred feet in the opposite direction.

I was still calculating the time it would take to acquire a weapon when she stopped in front of Father, her hands still hanging by her side. For a moment, their eyes met. It was a horrible silence, punctuated by quick, wheezing breaths that struggled through her mouth, her lips twisted in the palest grimace of pain. She looked like she was smiling. It could have been the way her head was tilted, the dying sun just catching the curve of her cheek and glinting from wayward strands of hair that had escaped the tie at her the base of her neck. Her hair appeared much shorter when it was down, the loose, white locks curling just slightly at her jaw line from where they fell in front of her eyes. Yet her eyes were not those of one appearing so close to death, flashing brilliant green from the hollows of her face. In that moment, I wished that she would turn her impassioned eyes on me, to regard me with the same proud acknowledgement she gave my father. I was close enough to reach out and brush the hair from her face, if it would have warranted the attentions I desired. It was as if I was of no consequence. I was not respected. This was an action between two warriors.

Anger was not a familiar notion to me. I had long harbored my notions for revenge, but at least that had a direction. It had a promise for an end. But anger is a much broader emotion, and it requires nothing in return. I wanted my anger to be like my revenge, so I gave it a target. Before I realized what I was doing, I had stepped up and backhanded the woman with such force that she was thrown to the ground, shattering her delicate balance of pain and self-awareness. I think I expected her to get up and give me a reason to fight and rid myself of the guilt that had clenched my stomach. Instead, she crawled to her knees with an agonizing slowness, cradling her useless arm against her chest as she bowed her head, revealing the milky skin of her neck. My arm was raised over my head, ready to strike again when I felt it restrained. Father had grabbed my wrist.

"Ashton! No!" he admonished, edging his body between us after he had dropped my hand. He knelt beside the woman, whispering into her ear. After a pause, she stirred again, tilting her head just enough to the side that I could see her face, her cheek now puffy and becoming swollen. This time, she looked at me and nodded. Then, exhaling sharply, she collapsed to the ground.


I greeted the elder openly, perhaps a little glad that he did not request any exchange, mental or otherwise. Physically, I was in no shape to speak. Blinded as I was, I knew the viscous rattle that clogged my lungs was a sign of punctured tissue. I could barely take breath enough to remain conscious, much less to sustain conversation. Yet this man was no fool, green with inexperience as his dead son was, despite the strong resemblance.

We laid ourselves open upon meeting, making it plain that neither of us was armed. In his eyes I saw that great Jedi tenant of compassion embodied. 'My sadness is only for my youngest son's pain,' his eyes said. 'As for revenge—have we not had enough death?'

I never understood Jedi. Their teachings went against every sentient impulse that creates life. I still do not understand them. However, I respect their sense of honor. The elder man would have never attacked an unarmed foe, injured or not.

But I also respect the purity of anger. It was this respect that brought me to my knees at the hand of the child. If this was what Fate had decided for me, then I was going to die at the hands of a boy with the utmost humility. I bowed my head, waiting for his final strike. It never came.

I said I never understood Jedi. When the elder knelt so gently at my side, however briefly, a shimmering truth was laid bare. "And now my son has given you a second chance, as well," he whispered. For that moment, I knew compassion. I had never imagined I could die with such a sentiment ringing in my ears. Glancing at the younger man, at the shame that spread over his features with a hot blush as he watched me, gave me the confirmation I needed. Compassion quieted my tumultuous mind, and I released my hold on this world as Fate allowed.


Much later, I remembered it as a curious dream in which I had not really died. An older woman came from the house, wiping her hands on a small towel in such a casual way that I was sure she, too, had been waiting for a particular instant. She stooped over my body, taking her mate's place. Her warm fingers expertly searched my form, although through the dream I could only feel the warmth from her, the gentle insistence of her prodding lost. With the same casual air, she motioned for the two men.

The younger man called her mother, and asked her if she knew who I was.

She did. She knew. But she never said as much. She said it was their duty to help visitors.

Visitor. As if I was natural and this were a regular occurrence that I should be laid in a bed in their house, my dressings removed, my wounds tended. As if I was alive, and I was any other person.

Compassion is a strange thing. Fate is even stranger.