In dejarik, there is a classic maneuver called the fork, where a player moves a single holomonster into position to attack two or more of his opponent's, so that no matter which 'monster the opponent moves to safety, the other will be eaten. Caught in the fork, one's only choice is which piece to lose.

- Matt Stover, Shatterpoint

There had been a few moments afterwards, long after she'd gone, when he remained crouched and huddled next to the broken remnants of the body - a few moments in which he had keened and wailed and doubted. When he held his head in his hands and sobbed and demanded of himself what have I done what have I done what am I doing why and thought urgently and wildly and desperately that the best thing he could do now, for her for himself for them all, would be to place the lightsaber's emitter over his own heart and just - flick it on. End it.

But that was only a few moments. And when he crawled slowly from the circle of the ysalamiri's influence and the Darkness came eagerly rushing to meet him like an old lover, those doubts disappeared as if they had never been. And once again his mind was cold and clear and decided with all reluctance banished, and he could see the shining path unfolding before him in sweet and darkly gleaming perfection, and he knew precisely what to do next.

Vader's presence and Vader's ghost -

(and Vader's ghosts, the echoes of murdered children now three decades dead, the guilt that had defined and eaten away at his father in life twining inseparably with the remnants of his presence after death)

- had haunted his footsteps on Byss: old but powerful, battering ceaselessly on his mind despite his best efforts to hold it off. And when he failed, the phantom burning of Vader's pain had erupted into his own lungs and limbs, until he could again strengthen the shields necessary to hold him at bay. But even so he had felt his father's echo, dogging him but also bleeding into him - Vader's rage, Vader's hate, Vader's ruthless determination - until he could hardly tell where father ended and son began.

(there are too many of them still still still reverberating insistently through the Force, enough to drive a sane man to madness, and he didn't know how much sanity he had started with or how much was now remaining because he was increasingly certain that to serve the Dark required a surrender to some measure of insanity how else to handle the pain)

(and quieter but just as insistently you're breaking my heart but this he hungered to hear more clearly, vainly stretched out his senses to listen more closely to the voice of the very beautiful but sad mother he had never known, to have something of hers even if it was only that single terrible moment)

But aboard the Eclipse, where Vader had never set foot, the ghost of his father that haunted him was not Vader but Anakin.

The nameless Sith saw him, or flashes of him: the swirl of a blue-tinted brown robe or the glint of a golden hand. Never for more than a moment and never straight-on, just from the periphery of his vision - and when he turned his head to see more clearly, that flicker would be gone, and he'd be left staring into empty space looking for a shadow or shade that had already disappeared.

Ben Kenobi had told him in a dream only a year ago that the distances were growing too great to be crossed, that the lingering Force ghosts of the past Jedi could linger no longer, and he had come to say goodbye.

("not the last of the old Jedi, Luke: the first of the new," but the remembered words now seemed a taunt rather than a comfort, a stiletto through the soul, a broken promise to an impossible future)

Gone or not, he remembered their voices shouting their warnings when he had first touched the Darkness, the cadence if not the words, and he remembered that echo of his father's grief and sorrow that even now flashed through his awareness to accompany the glimpses of his ghostly presence. Anakin Skywalker had died years later than Kenobi, hadn't he, and could it be possible that something of his father's spirit still remained?

But Anakin's ghost wasn't the only one that haunted him, and Kenobi's wasn't the only voice in his dreams. Because when he slept now, the little peace the night offered was shattered by thousands of golden eyes glinting from the Dark: the spiraling, unbroken line of Bane stretching backwards through eons and generations. They brought with them dreams that he could not entirely fathom, great things lurching through the Dark. Ancient dreams of ancient horrors that were one with all who had borne the mantle of the Sith and invited starvation through the gates of their souls. Dreams that he knew weren't wholly his but the collective press of the minds of the thousands before him, articulated only by the imprint of the pain they had left behind.

The knowledge of the Jedi, next to this, was spiritual and ephemeral. Faded sacred truths that had belonged to a more civilized age and another life, and if he strained he could almost, almost remember the faintest touch of that warmth.

But the truths of the Sith were primal and physical, and they lived in blood and gut and sinew: settling into every cell of his body, etching themselves ever deeper into his bones, gnawing mercilessly through his heart and chest. Secrets that screamed and sobbed and rattled through his ears and savagely slashed their way into his mind until he could know no peace even in the deepest reaches of his consciousness. Knowledge that poisoned him with desperate, feverish desire.

(from Nihilus he inherited the taste of dying worlds and an insistent and growing part of him viscerally needed to know this sensation too and not merely a millennia-old memory)

(and another part of him, a feeble and flickering flame, rebelled and remembered Alderaan and those millions of voices crying out and then suddenly silenced, and though it was dying it still fought desperately to hold back the Dark)

(but how had Alderaan flavored the Darkness?)

For all the pathetic and mewling words devoted to the ideals of democracy and civilization, the one true language and the one true commonality that united the stars and touched every living being was pain.

To be Sith was to devote oneself to spreading that truth, because though the Dark loved his pain most of all, it needed more, always more.

The Light asked for nothing from its own, but the Darkness demanded everything. It was starving, always starving, and when he closed his eyes to reach into the Force, he could sense it impatiently waiting: those slavering thick ropes of spit whipping from a nonexistent maw, insatiable, unquenchable desire. The Darkness demanded touch, the Darkness demanded companionship -

- the Darkness demanded sacrifice.

And that was the truth that he had been avoiding, that he raged against with all his might. But the Dark would not bend to his fury and was only further fueled by it, and it would not grant him the true knowledge and true power he sought and craved and needed until he paid its price.

The truth was this: that he was simultaneously and paradoxically all of the Sith and not yet one of them, and that he could no longer be Luke but could not yet be Darth, because the title and name had yet to be paid for, demanded blood that he had not yet spilled.

(and what was a Sith Master without a name, but simply a broken and desperate Jedi lost in Darkness and despair?)

Hiding behind that truth was this one: that it would be Leia, or it would be Mara.

But he already knew which, because only one of them had been destined to die as a Sith sacrifice.

He had seen it, felt the current of the Force and followed it to the only possible terminus. Not a vision as such, but an unassailable fact: clear and irrefutable, a flash of knowledge summoned by the Force and then driven home like a punch to the gut, as bone-deep and undeniable as the other truths granted to him by the Dark.

And he refused. He would not allow it.

Singularly in this refusal, his old and new selves were united, holding fast in stubborn opposition to what the Dark demanded. He would wrest the power from its unwilling jaws, would pry them open and plunge his arms into that fanged and fearsome maw to rip the power and knowledge he sought from the Dark itself, from the Force itself, if it came to that. Sooner that than to give up her.

Therein lived the seed of his obsession, because - surely - if Mara joined him in the Dark, then he could protect her from it.

The will of the Force. The thought kindled a spark of resentment in the furnace of his soul, and instead of dismissing it as Kenobi had taught him, as Yoda had taught him - the nameless Sith now nourished it, stoked it, fanned it until the heat was a searing inferno. He would need it, and every drop of power the Darkness offered. He was done bending to destiny.

And if thwarting destiny and the will of the Force was impossible -

Well. He had done impossible things before.

(from the Darkness came the mocking laughter of a thousand bygone Sith, and Sidious' cackle rang out clearest of all)

(and from just beyond the limits of his perception, a ghost looked on in sorrow as a son repeated a father's mistakes)

(you're breaking my heart)

End.

Quick Note: I'd planned on writing "Black King" more quickly but I honestly have way too many ideas, and it looks increasingly like it's going to be a multi-chapter story instead of the one-shot I had planned originally. So have this epilogue in the meantime, in which our boy gets a man vs destiny arc like his father before him.

Aiming to start posting by the end of the year, wish me luck.