He's changed
(Synopsis: the destruction of the temple and the carnage start.)
Luke shows leniency to him – but oh, how this gentleness now stings! It's insulting. It's long overdue and too late.
He is cold. He is forgetting her features like he forgot his old nanny's face once she died – one of the few persons that simply loved him, and looked beyond his powers and his position of privilege.
Accursed privilege.
He is so cold now.
And during the training, he can feel he is becoming remorseful. He realizes just how much he actually spared every single one of his sparring partners up until now – he strikes them mercilessly, and they soon lose their weapon or sustain mock-injuries that would otherwise, haven't they used training swords, lead to death.
They're afraid – he can sense their fear. But he doesn't care. Only with Schimbie he's somewhat stunned by what he has done and what he is becoming. She is fast and nimble, and deflects his every blow with amazing precision and versatility. But soon their school-level training becomes something bitter, something sinister and desperate. Her movements became panicky and before long he hears her voice inside his head: Ben, no!
He stops and shudders – his saber is at her throat, and she's trapped between him and the stone wall of the temple behind her, her sword-hand blocked with his own hand, his knee wedged between her legs.
He recoils and jumps backward. The red haze lifts. The terror in her eyes, the same eyes that were once so loving, is now so great even he has to shiver.
He throws his training saber as far as he can, disgusted by the pain he caused her.
„Gods, Schimbie," he practically yelps. „I'm so sorry! Are you alright? Are you hurt? Let me help you! I don't know what possessed me!"
But nothing possessed him. Snoke warned him, then dissappeared.
This is him, his true self. The Vader in him. The realization freezes him, but then it settles in his soul – yes, it all makes so much sense now.
The girl dashes off without a word, too scared and too dazed to speak even if she knew how.
To Luke, he thinks and frowns. Good – let her tell him everything. The old fool needs to know. The old man needs to face him and end all of this.
His little Tatooine student rushes into his hut without knocking. The girl is smart and respectful – for her to come rushing in like that means something really out of the ordinary had to happen.
She's been weeping – she cries still.
Using her hands, she communicates her distress to Luke.
"There's something wrong with Ben," she says, and sobs again, making guttural, unarticulated sounds as she does.
"What?" He asks her, but if he was to be completely honest to both of them, he already knows the answer.
"He's cold… so cold…" She tries to articulate it with hands, but soon her voice breaks and she covers her face with those same hands that denied obedience.
The poor kid – he liked the girl so much and saw so many Jedi virtues, excellent Jedi qualities in her. She wields one of Ahsoka's sabers, and it fits her perfectly. The saber picked her, murmuring contentedly as the fearful girl approached and touched the hilt for the first time.
"I'll talk to him," Luke pats her on the shoulder and tries to sound as comforting as he can.
Knot in his stomach, a dense sense of mortal dread and panic – a long time has passed since those emotions found way to his heart.
Ever since he faced Vader for the first time.
"Ben," he says. "You don't need to do this. You don't need to become a Jedi if you don't want to. You haven't pledged your allegiance to anyone. You don't answer to anyone but yourself. There are other possibilities with all your knowledge and your talents…"
"Stop with the flattery," the young man retorts in a cold voice. "It's so unbecoming of a Jedi."
"Ben," Luke tries again. He is not vain. These snarky retorts can't harm him. But they are not just snarky… they're freezing cold. "You can go and serve with Tekka. I can ask him and he'll be more than willing to have you as his pupil. I can ask Leia to have you with her, as one of her apprentices. And Han…"
The strange, guttural noise resembling laughter, and coming from Ben, startles the Jedi master.
"What about them?" Ben asks, his eyes flashing with resentment. "You really think they'd accept Vader's grandson in their midst? Can you imagine the faces of that pathetic Resistance the moment I, Vader junior, come through the door?"
Ben continues laughing savagely, and the whole Jedi village reverberates with his voice.
"Oh, Master," he says, finally changing his expression from wild delight to dark dissatisfaction. "You really amuse me."
Luke's heart sinks to the depth he never knew he possessed.
"Can't you see," Ben continues, his voice dropping low and changing into a painful growl. "There is no place for me in this galaxy, in this little legend of yours. I am damned. No matter what I do, what I try, how many apologies I issue, it all remains the same."
"It is not true," Luke exclaims and grabs the young man by his shoulders. "I am Vader's son! I stepped into rage, and darkness and fear far more often they I'd like to remember! I know the power that corrupts you, Ben! I can help you fight it, only if you let me!"
But Ben breaks his hold with disgust and jumps away so violently that even the Jedi master has to recoil back. Instinctively, he assumes a battle stance – a position that doesn't escape Ben's keen vision.
He grins viciously, like he saw something that he craved to see, something that gave him the last push and the final resolve.
Luke immediately flexes, but the damage is already done.
"What do you plan to do?" Luke whispers in the dimly lit hamlet, light rods flickering around them, hopelessness dripping from his voice like thick tincture.
"It is none of your business," Ben replies, coldly. "Like you already said, I need to answer to no one. Or perhaps, you lied when you said it? It wouldn't be the first. It became a sort of a commonplace with you… Jedi."
His mother can't see him in this state. It's better for her to remember him as that boy that rushed to her aid and saved her, than like this… abomination.
Luke's been sleepless over this for two weeks now. And although he pleaded with Jessa not to go there and expose herself to danger, she's been informing him regularly about the meetings Ben organizes during the night with his students. He offers them power – oh, gods, Luke screams inside of his own mind – and all things that only one source can provide, and that is the Dark Side. And what's even more agonizing is that he is not even trying to conceal the true nature of their after-hours sessions – he's openly mocking his Jedi master and all that he represents.
Jessa leaves an impression of being "on the fence" with her decision – Ben is aware the girl has feelings for him, so she plays the role of an infatuated heart quite nicely, thus hiding her true intentions.
She is the only one who's trying to somehow subvert his actions and to save him, but even she falls into resignation soon.
"What I thought to be a lake", Luke said to her after listening carefully to her reports. "It is now an ocean."
Her short-sighted eyes blink at him. She'd cry, but she exhausted all her tears some time ago.
It's hopeless.
Luke is restless. All sleep is long gone – he walks back and forth in his hut, his thoughts feverish and in disarray, his heart broken. He is losing him, Leia's son – no, he already lost him. It doesn't matter whose fault it is now – he must act, he must make the bitter decisions no one else in the entire galaxy can. Han is out of reach, probably running again from Kanji Klub or some other smugglers' or mercenary group he owes money to – but even if he was within the reach, what would he do? He never understood Jedi ways, and never tried to. In fact, all that he'd be able to say would probably be something along the lines of: "I told you so, kid."
Yes, he was against Ben's training in the first place. It was he and Leia who ultimately had to convince him it's good, for all of them. Then that incident happened…
Jedi master stops and shudders.
Luke knew Ben was innocent – at that time, he could read the boy like an open book, and he felt genuinely sorry for how unfairly the world treated that frightened, precocious boy. But now… what happened in the past is almost like a foreshadowing.
He has to face him – again. The hope is a weak one, but he has to talk to that same boy he once knew and who is still somewhere… drowning in the ocean that once was a lake.
But his damn Jedi intuition didn't fail him once, and doesn't fail him again. The only reason he failed to detect the growing darkness is his own weakness for the boy – his own unreasonable compassion he has for a blood-relative.
Even as the young man sleeps, the darkness in him is roaring. He can hear the clash of the weapons, the wailing of the dying, the torment, chaos and war he'll bring – another Empire, only far more sinister than the one before, brutality and unprecedented fanatism shaping the ranks of the new enemy… unless someone stops him.
In a fleeting moment of a pure instinct, he raises his green lightsaber. The plasma beam crackles and buzzes, casting diffuse green light on the sleeping body and Ben's modest possessions around him.
It will end now. One life for the salvation of the many.
But in that exact moment, Ben wakes up to the turbulence in the Force.
Luke stops and gasps, deactivating the saber immediately as he sees the old eyes, the same eyes he knew before – the sleepy eyes of a pupil, of a lost boy desperate to belong somewhere, desperate to be accepted, pleading to be forgiven for the crime he didn't commit. Eyes that resembled his own sister's so much.
A frightened boy – whose master failed him miserably and unpardonably. Something almost resembling a wailing, sorrowful prayer to the Force comes his way, and it's coming from Ben: Force, please, help me. Luke lowers the saber, utterly defeated and broken, as all the regret that he tried to suppress drowns him like a flood.
But fear soon vanishes from Ben's face and mindless rage storms in.
"Ben, no!" Luke screams as the Force between them tenses, thickens and grows into a hurricane.
Anakin's lightsaber in his hand, Ben clashes with his master and uncle – on Luke's part, it's self-defense. On Ben's – it's a desperate counter-attack.
The young man sends the whole hut against the Jedi master – stones hurled in the air like they're dust, followed by rocks that surround the hut and the temple, followed by anything that comes into the range of Ben's vindictive wrath.
The Jedi master has never encountered rage this bitter – not even his own, not even Vader's. Darkness entombs him and the light disappears from his consciousness. There is a strange comfort in his last moments – he feels the age of the Jedi will soon come to an end, and perhaps, that will be the ultimate Balance all oracles were talking about.
"There is no Death – only Force."
Jedi students jump from their light sleep in horror as the ground beneath them trembles and the walls around them shake violently.
Kora, Jessa, Ceth, Arlunia, Gaman and Ehart wail in terror as they see Ben's hut reduced to nothing more than a burning pile of rubble, now resembling a funeral pyre. For a brief moment, they think something happened to Ben and rush to his aid.
But another figure appears before them and against the soaring flames of the hut behind him.
It's Ben. But it's Ben only by his name – everything else has disappeared into a dark abyss. They can sense it – they're connected to one another with an ever strengthening Force bond. All of them freeze on spot. Where's Luke? Why is he not here?
Deadly terror overcomes them as the realization dawns on them.
"We'll face him," Ehart says, rubbing away the tears from his freckled face, reaching out for his lightsaber.
The Jedi Killer sniffs them and is now striding toward them, completely unaffected by the mayhem he created.
He makes no haste – he doesn't have to. He'll cut them down one by one, before they even have the time to raise any substantial defense.
They made their choice, and so did he.
It is Kora who talks sense to the group first.
"No," she says and tenses, her emerald eyes reflecting the crimson blaze. She's a tough one: she knows when to start a fight and when to run. Her whole upbringing on the streets of Lothal prepared her for this, whereas the Jedi training has failed.
"Run," she utters. "I'll stop him. You run: find cover. Find Luke's X-wing and run."
"Kora," Ceth mumbles.
"Go, you idiots!" She screams. "We're the last Jedi in the galaxy now. If we're all dead, all hope is gone. Go!"
Dazed, they comply, sensing only instinctively how right she is.
The brave Twi'lek stands between them and that man that was once their comrade, her blazing blue saber held high above her head, strangely contrasting the crimson lights of the fire that threatens to swallow the whole Jedi village that once was their shared home.
As the last remaining Jedi struggle up the hill and to the temple, they see Kora being surrounded by seven figures altogether, and they know every last one of them – Irin, Dorn, Rennek, Korwin, Idiian and Iella. And there, far in front and before Kora, is their leader in the Dark Side, the man once known as Ben Solo.
Jessa can't bring herself to look behind. Temple. Temple is empty and still unaffected.
"There is no Death – only Force," Jessa tries to remember.
But credo dies out on her silent lips soon enough – she senses the disturbance in the Force, all the loyal Jedi do: a short wail and then an all-consuming darkness that follows.
Kora is struck down with a single blow of Anakin's blue saber. A faint breath escapes her lips.
"RUN."