Although Jacen caught up to his parents right before the turbolift doors closed, his continued pleas to them to leave Luke alone were ignored. Nevertheless, he went on futilely even as he followed them to the Skywalkers' quarters, and when Leia knocked, that was when Jacen stopped speaking and placed his hands on his face in frustration.

When her brother answered, Leia asked, "Luke, may we come in?"

"You may." His tone and expression still hadn't changed from the more reclusive version of himself that Jacen had last seen after Vekta's successful interrogation.

Jacen was the last to enter the room, and when he passed his uncle, he whispered to him, "I'm so sorry."

"Where's Ben?" Leia asked.

"I left him in his room," Luke answered as he put aside his confusion for Jacen's preemptive apology, "so that I could answer the door. What was it that you wanted to see me about?"

Jacen tensed in place as his mother asked his uncle, "Why didn't you tell us about that Anakin droid on Centerpoint Station?"

Now Luke stiffened, his grief for his wife temporarily forgotten for the moment. He spared another glance over at Jacen, who looked back regretfully and guiltily, before he returned his gaze to Leia and Han.

"Don't blame Jacen," Han spoke up. "He didn't wanna tell us about this secret. So why did you keep this from us, Luke?"

Luke sighed. "What good would it have done? It would have only made the heartache you had for Anakin worse. I wanted to spare you two of that."

"You had no right to keep that from us," Han said angrily as he stepped away from Leia to get closer to Luke. "We deserved to know, Luke."

"Han, Leia, I'm sorry," Luke said sincerely. "I just didn't wanna hurt you guys. I mean, if you had seen the footage-"

"Wait, what footage?" Han asked. He looked back to Jacen. "You didn't mention anything about any footage."

When Leia levelled her gaze upon her remaining son, he breathed in and out deeply before he said, "I left that detail out in my explanation. To prove that the droid was what I was telling him he was, I shot a holovid and I told him to say something. He said hello to you, Mom and Dad, and said that... he was having a good time where he was." Jacen struggled to keep himself composed as he admitted the truth.

"Where is that footage now, Jacen?" Leia asked, her agitation registering in both her body language and barely-contained Force-presence.

Jacen looked like it was taking a lot out of him just to speak. But before anything could come out of his mouth, Luke said, "I made him delete it."

Now he had Han and Leia's full attention. "What?" the Solo couple asked simultaneously in shock.

"I commanded Jacen to delete the footage that he said he made," Luke elaborated.

Han stepped over to Luke so that they were nose-to-nose with each other. "Did you watch it yourself, Luke? Did you watch it yourself, huh? Huh?"

Luke didn't blink before he answered simply, "Yes."

Han gritted his teeth as he stepped back, his hands ruffling in his hair, while Leia turned away with her hands over her eyes. Once Han rejoined his wife, he laid a hand gently along her back and was about to say something to her before he swiveled back around and levelled an accusatory finger and a death-glare up to Luke.

Luke, on the other hand, wore a deeply regretful and pained expression that was highlighted by the tears in his eyes. Jacen, meanwhile, stood in place with his head bowed and eyes glued to the floor as he was unable to bear anymore heartache or the sight of his family tearing itself apart more than it already had.

For several moments, everyone held their respective poses, with a heavy, dominating silence looming over all of them.

When those moments passed, a grimace came over Han's expression and he dropped his arm to his side, as if it took all of his willpower just to let go of his anger toward his brother-in-law. Just seeing the pain in Luke's eyes, not just of that regret, but also of the continued mourning for his wife, made Han realize that he didn't have it in himself to have even something like this break the bond that he and Luke had made just between them in the decades that they'd been friends and family. Instead, he just turned away from him wordlessly and placed a comforting hug around Leia, who had renewed her sobbing; now, instead of just the shocking news of hearing what had been done to her son, or at least a version of him, she now had to process the feeling of betrayal that she had toward Luke.

When Luke tried to reach out to his sister through the Force, all he could feel was a powerful barricade from her. She didn't want to look at him; not now, anyway.

Once she had recovered enough from her crying, she and Han made their way carefully toward the exit of the Skywalker quarters.

"Wait," Jacen said, stopping his parents in their tracks and prompting them to look at him. When he locked gazes with them, he said, "I can show you."

Neither Han nor Leia said anything, but they disengaged from each other's grasp and approached Jacen together.

"Which one of you wants to go first?" Jacen asked gently.

His parents shared a glance between them that only they could read; when they looked back, Leia said aloud, "I'll do it."

Jacen nodded before he placed a hand on either side of his mother's head. "Close your eyes and breathe deeply," he told her as he began doing the same for himself.

After she complied, it took only moments before she stiffened in place. Because, behind her eyelids, she saw the robot, the one that thought it was her baby boy, Anakin, and she saw the entire conversation that he had with Jacen.

When the droid made his direct address to his parents, it was all Leia could do not to collapse from the resultant emotional high that she received just then. She kept herself as composed as she could both mentally and physically so that she could watch the remainder of Jacen's conversation with as much clarity of mind as she could muster.

Sooner than she had hoped, the flashback was complete, and Jacen gingerly removed his hands away from Leia's head before he turned to Han.

She could only watch as tears streamed from behind her husband's closed eyelids, no doubt coming from when the droid made the address to his "parents."

Then, when Jacen was done with his father, both Han and Leia grabbed each other again and resumed their way for the exit.

However, just as they reached the threshold, Leia was able to spare a glance at Luke; her feeling of betrayal was still there, but it had been more alleviated than she had expected. Then she walked back out with Han.

Once his parents were gone, only then did Jacen look at Luke. Neither of them shared a word with the other before the former turned to leave.

"Jacen," Luke finally said, stopping his nephew from proceeding further away.

The younger man looked back at his uncle. "Yes?"

Luke stopped less than a meter from Jacen. "You didn't need to apologize. I should be the one apologizing. Your father was right; I shouldn't have kept that footage from him and your mother."

"Uncle Luke, please, you don't have to-"

"Yes, I do," Luke interrupted firmly.

"Uncle Luke, you're grieving, you're... you're not thinking straight. You don't have to feel this, too, nor should you-"

"Jacen."

The Knight stiffened in place.

"Your parents were right that my decision to keep this from them was wrong," Luke stated. "My grief for Mara has no bearing on my judgment in this matter. So you think about that carefully before you make that kind of assessment. Is that understood?"

"Yes, Uncle Luke. It is."

A silent moment later, he said, "I saw that you had no problem relaying your memory of that event to your parents. So it appears that what you learned from the Theran Listeners was unaffected by whatever prevents you from using the White Current illusions or your other powers."

Jacen shrugged. "I guess not."

"Do you think there might be an emotional element to how your abilities work?"

"It could be, Uncle Luke. It could be."

Luke nodded in wonderment. "Well, in any case, I hope you find a way to better readjust yourself to your other abilities, Jacen."

"I hope so, too. Goodbye, Uncle Luke."

"Goodbye, Jacen."

Jacen nodded wordlessly before he turned and finally left.

. . .

Images flashed before Darth Acheron's eyes; quick snippets of memories from her previous life as Tahiri Veila—as well as the artificial memories of her life as the Yuuzhan Vong known as Riina Kwaad—came and went faster than her conscious mind could keep track of. Here were images of her life being raised by Tusken Raiders on Tatooine; there were images of her life training as a Jedi on Yavin 4; and then there were the images of the memories that were extracted from the dead Yuuzhan Vong Shaper Nen Yim to construct Riina.

But throughout these images, there came tiny glimpses of the boy she had once loved flashing through them: Anakin Solo.

When the images were finally passed, Anakin, as he looked in his final days of life, stood against a plain black background, his face heavily concerned, and he said to her, "Tahiri."

That was when Acheron's eyes finally flashed open, and she was once again back in her bedroom aboard Centerpoint Station. That was the fifth time in the past several days that she had been working for Thrackan Sal-Solo's Centerpoint Party in which she had had that dream, and every time, Anakin was there in the end, calling for her by the name that she no longer had.

Before the dream could fade into the back of her mind, there was a knock on the door. "Get ready," came the voice of her fellow undercover Sith, Hushk Grendel. "Thrackan's calling us for a meeting. So get dressed and make yourself presentable."

"I'm on it," Acheron responded in her guise as Leary Trest.

Less than thirty minutes later, the two Sith met in Sal-Solo's office again. There, they met another of his associates, one Ferris Jeckut—a dark-skinned man in his late forties with close-cropped hair, blue trousers, and black shirt—and they were told to just go with him down to Corellia and do what he said.

"Why no details this time, Thrackan?" Acheron asked; as Trest, she made herself bubbly enough so that she seemed more vulnerable and concerned than authoritative and questioning. "You're always good with those before." She was referring to the simple errands that she had been tasked with so far as an entry-level member of the Centerpoint Party, which typically involved running weapons, foodstuffs, and even the occasional spice for the addicts of Sal-Solo's followers onto the station.

"Oh, you'll see, Leary," the Corellian Head of State said before he downed a sip of his people's brandy from a glass. "It's a surprise; a pleasant one, I assure you... if you're a true-blooded Corellian, that is."

Acheron hesitated for only a moment before she said, "Okay, then. When do we leave?"

"Now would be preferable," Jeckut said plainly.

An hour later, they were down on the surface of the planet, with their shuttle left behind at one of the spaceports of Coronet, the world's capital city.

After their departure from the spaceport, the trio took a hovercab to one of the predominantly human sectors of Coronet. At Jeckut's direction, the driver let them off along the curb of a bakery run by a Drall couple, one of the few establishments in this sector not run by humans.

Jeckut stared at the bakery for a few moments with Acheron and Grendel before he hefted the black satchel that he carried over his right shoulder. From it, he produced a simple red brick that he handed to the woman.

"Throw it through that window," Jeckut said evenly, as if he was asking Acheron to pick up a carton of milk.

"Is this a test?" Acheron asked just as evenly as Jeckut.

"You don't wanna throw it?" Jeckut asked with a more judgmental edge to his tone.

Before Acheron could answer, the door to the bakery opened and a male Drall stepped out with a suspicious look on his face.

"Excuse me," the squat alien said, "but what do you think you're-"

"Shut up, you disgusting little furball degenerate scum," Jeckut said as he kicked the Drall up along his jaw and sent him down to his back on the concrete.

"Regess!" shouted a female Drall who rushed out from the door and immediately bent down to the male. Upon seeing that he was only dazed by the kick, she looked back up at the trio of humans with an angry glare. "Leave this instant, or I'll call the police!"

"And how are you gonna do that with such a severe concussion?" Acheron intoned.

Before the female Drall could ask what she was talking about, Acheron hurled the brick right upon the alien's face; she collapsed to the sidewalk with blood immediately trickling out of her head.

Acheron levelled a small but satisfied smile at what she had done, something that Jeckut noticed with great attention.

"Juum!" the male Drall, Regess, cried out as he finally recovered from the kick Jeckut gave him and looked over what the humans presumed to be his wife.

But before the remaining Drall could look back to scold the trio, Jeckut produced his hand blaster and shot the furry little alien thrice in the back; his corpse collapsed upon Juum's.

As cries of alarm and panic began to sound all around them along the street, it was Grendel who reached for the brick and looked at Jeckut.

"Mind if I do the honors?" the male undercover Sith asked.

"Go ahead," Jeckut answered. "Our newbie's proved herself."

Once Grendel had thrown the brick through the glass window, which then destroyed several jewel-themed cakes that were on display, the trio of humans turned and hurried off to a side alley before the local police could catch them for their crimes.

"Few more o' those, kid," Jeckut said as he ran alongside Acheron, "and you might even be one o' Thrackan's lieutenants."

"That easy, huh?" Acheron remarked.

Jeckut only grinned at her before he turned back and continued his run wordlessly.

Minutes later, before any police speeders could converge on their general location, the trio had ducked into another alley. There, Jeckut hurried for the manhole cover, saying, "Help me out with this," along the way. Acheron and Grendel complied and each took a corner of the cover so that it was heaved out of the way.

"Go, go," he waved them hurriedly. "I'll close it up behind us."

"Ladies first," Grendel said with a quirky grin.

Acheron rolled her eyes before she began climbing down the ladder. "Yeah, as if me going first is gonna prevent you from reeking of muck."

Grendel didn't reply before he followed her down. Moments later, Jeckut was climbing down from above him, the cover now back in place and blocking out the sunlight.

The three of them were only knee-deep in human—as well as Drall, Selonian, and probably other non-human—waste for several minutes until they came upon another ladder by Jeckut's lead. He climbed up and pushed the manhole cover with one hand, clearly much easier than the one from the alley.

"What is this?" Acheron asked.

"Safe house," Jeckut answered from above. "Now, c'mon. The sooner we get cleaned up, the better."

Acheron was the last one to climb into the safe house; there, she found that they were in a communal shower, and Jeckut and Grendel were already stripping their dirtied clothes to wash off the smells they acquired.

"Hey, don't by shy," Jeckut said with a knowing smile after removing his shirt. Unfortunately, like most middle-aged men who thought themselves superior to others, such as aliens, his sizable belly didn't make him much of a desirable mate. "No judgment here."

"I think I'll just wait 'til you two are done," Acheron stated politely enough before she stepped out of the shower and behind the divider.

As she waited while the two men washed their stink off, Acheron thought she felt something through the Force coming from outside the refresher in which the communal shower was in. Carefully, she stepped toward the exit, which was closed off by a mechanical door that slid up, so she activated the small holographic projector that was set right beside it; it provided a live feed from other areas of the safe house.

It only took her a moment to sift through the footage before she found that the proper entry into the giant house was being opened up around the edges by something. At first, she thought it must have been from a blowtorch.

But upon a closer look, Acheron tensed once she saw that the cutting was being done... by a lightsaber blade.

When the door finally fell in, Jedi Master Corran Horn stood there, and now he made his presence clearly known to Acheron through the Force, too.

Tahiri, she felt him call out to her telepathically.

Then he ran into the house.