Author's Thanks:
Padfoot Reincarnated: Thanks. Yeah, Anakin's and Vader's are two of my favs. They're often battling for the top spot. I was worried about Palpy, he's rather a frightening guy when you think about it. As for Padme's, her's was also one that worried me. I really worried about the impression some of her thoughts might be giving.

koriaena: Thanks. I wondered what the others characters thought/saw when they saw their friendship. This idea was sorta inspired by something I read in one of the books (was it "Labyrinth of Evil?"). It was something Dooku had thought about them as he watched them fighting.

Title: Why, Ben?
Disclaimer: I own nothing. It is all George's, though I don't think this is what he meant to be done with his boys.
Warnings: None, not even from the sources after the movies.
Rating: G.
Summary: Luke's perceptions of his father and the crazy old man he knew as Ben.
Author's Note: I make some stuff up since I don't know if anything actually survived the purge done about the Jedi. Well, I know the Jedi Archives did b/c Luke uses them in his school. But this is more like the stuff on the Holonet about the two men. Quite possibly the last drabble in this series.

654321

Why didn't you tell me, Ben?

I don't mean about my father's true identity.
I believed you when you said you would have told me the truth when I became a Jedi.

And I do understand why you kept the truth from me.
Don't shake your head at me like that, Ben, I do.
You knew I was an innocent boy fresh from the farm.
Therefore, you knew how I thought for you had spent years watching over me.

Like a father to this lost and lonely soul I once was.

It was not hard to see what I believed.
On that farm, surrounded by the love of my family, things were so simple and clear.

So innocently believing that the world was black and white.
A place where the errors that being human causes did not exist.
Truly, I was a child in all ways, though I had been twenty when I left with you.
Left to became a grown up, leaving sweet innocence behind in the dust.

And, oh, how painful that was for you took your light from me.

Took it from me for a far greater purpose, I accept this as truth now.
You did it to teach me to do without your guidance-and to reach out to my father.

For all your protestations that he was more machine than man, you knew.
You knew this truth for all that you could not admit to its existence.
Deep inside of you, where the memory of my father lived, you knew that he still lived.
At least that he existed beyond the fringes of Vader's consciousness.

Did you think that I never noticed how you never once told me that I must kill him?

You said that I must face him.
Face him, Ben, not kill him.

Not much of a difference to some, I know, but I noticed.
I noticed even when I did not understand what it meant to me.
Vader was my greatest fear because I feared to become him.
This was my final test, the final obstacle that I must face.

Face it and either defeat it or be defeated by it.

My father saved me from the Emperor but it was not just my voice he heard, was it, Ben?
Even as I cried out to him to help me, I cried within my soul for you to help him.

I do not know how I know that would work, except the Force told me what you could not.
Yours was the voice he craved to hear even now after all he had done.
Craved for it was the one that soothed the demon that raged inside and brought out Anakin.
Even as Vader-yes, even as the Dark Sith Lord, he needed you to be there for him.

You were his teacher but you were so much more to him than a mere friend.

After the reconstruction was almost finished, I researched the time before the Empire.
Surprisingly, my father had kept many things from that time.

Do you know what I found kept beside his bed, in a place of prominence?
It surprised me when I realized what it was.
Would it surprise you as it had me to see what I found as I looked through them?
For a man who did not like to be reminded of the past, he kept many mementos of it.

He kept many things from the time during the Clone Wars.

And all of it had to do with the team of Skywalker and Kenobi.
I knew that you were an important figure in the wars but this?

This spoke of a man with courage and conviction.
The Negotiator who had brought peace to several worlds.
Many times without a single blow being exchanged between forces.
How did you ever find the kind of strength of conviction that allowed you to do so?

And by your side, always ready to help you out was The Hero With No Fear.

I know him to be my father for he never showed any fear.
Nor any doubt, even when he turned against his former master.

To know that such as you two existed, I wonder how it could have fallen apart.
They all believed in you for you did the impossible together.
Safety was embodied inside the perfect blending of you two.
As I read more, my mind fully opened and saw just how deep and true your pairing was.

It hit me like a blow far hotter and more painful than a light saber wound ever would.

He would have turned away from the Dark Side for you.
For you he loved beyond all doubt, reason, and self-preservation.

So, why weren't you there, Ben?
Why weren't you with my father when he needed you the most?
Was it a test to see if he would be true to the Jedi Order?
Did you think that you did not matter to him that much?

How could you be so blind as to not see how deeply he felt for you?

Or was there something more to it than that?
Was it my mother and your ridiculous Jedi rule about marriage?

Were you disgusted that he married my mom and left him to his fate?
Was your loyalty to the Jedi Order greater than the love you had for my father?
For you did love him, you could not disguise that from me.
Even as an innocent, untrained boy, I could feel it.

Talking of Anakin, even Vader, there was a kind of resigned love vibrating within you.

Then why, Ben?
Why did you let this happen?

How could you miss that look in his eyes as he stood by your side?
There are myriads of pictures in here and most of them are of the two of you.
I see a few with a woman who looks so much like Leia that I know her to be my mother.
She looks strong and capable as she stands between you two, a smile on her face.

Is she why you were not there?

I guess I can see why my father fell in love with her.
I have rarely seen another more lovely, more earthbound angelic.

But there is a fragility within her that comes across even in this picture.
For all the strength of her pose, there is something lacking.
A spark of some kind that was in the earlier pictures of her, somehow she has lost it.
For all the love my father has for her, she isn't the one who carries his soul securely within.

How, then could you fail my father, though you loved him?

What was so important that it took you away from him?
My father's words speak of your loyalty, your total devotion to each other.

Stories within these pages, they tell the same tale.
This tale speaks of two men who fought beside each other with perfect unity.
Two separate entities who were one entity for they completed each other as no one else.
Yet something happened and my father was left alone to fend for himself.

Why did you leave the man who protected you like an extension of yourself?

It had to be a mission of some kind, so why did he not go with you as he always did?
Was there some restriction upon you that you followed blindly?

Though he does not say that he was angered by your choice, I feel that he was.
Why did you not take him with you?
Did you truly not see what was happening?
Was it your love for him that kept you from seeing the danger he was in?

Tell me why, Ben, for this is something I do not understand.

The End.

Darn that Luke. He made a liar of me. This calls for a rebuttal of some kind.