Galaxies Apart

Forty Seven

"Just who the hell are you?"

The newcomer smiled. "I get that a lot lately," he replied.

Luke got to his feet, control of his body now returned; Ben's stranglehold over him had vanished the moment his apparent saviour had arrived. Luke regarded him with confusion – he shimmered with an inner light from head to toe, wearing the robe of a Jedi, and wore it well. Obi-Wan had worn such a robe, but this was not he; this was a younger man, with hauntingly familiar eyes…

My sons-

"Father?" Ben said, anger at his thwarted attack turning to disbelief turning to joy on his face. He stepped forward and embraced the man warmly. "I thought I'd lost you…how did you-?"

Breaking the embrace, he turned to gesture at the spot where Darth Vader had pitched forward, a smoking hole through his torso.

The corpse was still there.

He read their minds. "The suit is there," he admitted. "The electronics…the machinery that kept me alive…all still there. But everything that was once Anakin Skywalker," and he looked directly at Luke when he said those words, that name, before tapping his chest, "is here. I have been sent back."

The lightsaber Ben had been using, that which had come within a fraction of separating Luke's head from his shoulders, lifted from the deck and flew to Anakin's outstretched left hand. Luke's own saber dropped into the other hand a second later. Anakin regarded them and shifted his attention to Luke and Ben, sadness in his eyes. "And not a moment too soon," he added softly.

"You're Vader?"

"Weren't you listening?" Ben snapped. "Didn't you hear anything he just said?"

"Don't speak to me, murderer."

"Weakling!" and Ben started forward, his hands automatically balling into fists, his mind reaching out for the Dark Side-

"ENOUGH!"

Both found themselves unable to move. No undue pressure was being applied to either; they were not in pain of any kind, but the ability to move had been completely removed from their capabilities.

Anakin addressed Luke directly. "I am Darth Vader," he admitted. "Or rather…I am Vader as he should have been. The year you were born, Luke, I made a mistake. One I relived countless times wearing that suit. I'd choose differently every time I did so, but it was gone. And so was I. I – I allowed myself to be consumed by the Dark Side. Not for love. Not for self-sacrifice. Not for your mother. For fear."

Luke didn't know what to say, how to react. His entire life he had idolised his father, even in the days when he believed Owen's lies about him being a navigator on a spice freighter. He had wanted nothing more than to follow in his footsteps, get offworld, get a piloting licence and go where the stars took him.

When Obi-Wan had told him the truth – he had to correct himself, feeling a pang of bitterness at the old wizard – part of the truth about his father's life and eventual fate, it had only sent that hero-worship into hyperspace. His father! A Jedi Knight! Best starpilot in the galaxy – Obi-Wan himself had said so! Luke had suffered sleepless nights imagining his father's adventures. On that fateful voyage to Alderaan, he had begged Obi-Wan to tell him of some of his father's adventures.

The pain in Obi-Wan's face that had always surfaced when Luke did so, he had put down to the memories of his father's death at Vader's hands. Now, he knew the truth. Obi-Wan was not mourning how his old friend had been betrayed and murdered, but the betrayal he himself had suffered.

Had he kept the truth from Luke out of spite? Had he wanted Luke to face Vader still unaware of his true identity? Learning the truth might have killed him.

He has Leia's eyes.

Realising that, the link between this man and the monster that had been Darth Vader was broken in Luke's mind.

"What does it matter?" Ben said, before Luke could speak. "You said you relived that decision many times, father, but were never able to do anything about it. Well, thanks to Jacen Solo, that's about to change…and we're about to fade away like none of this ever happened."

"No," Anakin said. "No, it isn't. And no, we won't."

He gave them the message the Chlorians had sent him back for.

---------------------------------------------------------

Site Zero was a mistake.

The arrival of the Chlorians in this galaxy so long ago…some had words like fate or destiny for events such as those. They had invented a popular phrase for such events many centuries ago; they called it the will of the Force.

But Site Zero itself should not have come through that wormhole. The midichlorians came to realise this. Wherever they could they modified galactic events to ensure that its resting place was never discovered; hyperspace lanes adjacent to its position were never discovered, mapping missions in that part of space mysteriously developed faults or, due to mystifying errors, reported it to be devoid of anything of note whatsoever.

Site Zero was not a window to the past.

It did not create wormholes that crossed both space and time. Space, yes; undoubtedly. But time, the midichlorians observed through many millennia of learning through their most advanced races, simply could not be allowed to be subverted. After all, they were the guardians of life in the galaxy. The gift they had bestowed through their symbiosis with life – which came to be known as 'The Force' – controlled destinies, steered galactic events, bound every single life-form to every other in a co-dependent network beyond the comprehension of most.

For that great cosmic causality chain to be unwritten at the whim of a single individual with access to Site Zero's powers…they could not, would not allow.

But to destroy that which had brought them here, which had saved them from destruction those countless years ago…they could not do.

And there was another reason. Far more important.

Another option was needed.

---------------------------------------------------------

"Parallel universes," Ben said emotionlessly.

"Parallel universes," Anakin repeated. He was smiling. He was the only one.

"Are you saying that – when I went back…everything I did here didn't change anything?"

"In this universe, yes. It created this timeline we're living through now. But in the universe you came from, Ben…? No. It's still out there, somewhere."

Luke made the connection. "Jacen…?"

"Yes," his father nodded, confirming his guess. "Everything Jacen does in the past…all that he changes to create a new history there…here, it won't matter. This universe will go on…" and here he hesitated, "in a way."

"Why?" Ben asked. He sounded stunned. Luke had the thought that going back and changing history so completely was the one success Ben had considered himself to have had in his life.

"Because this universe…this version of reality…has as much right to exist as any other. If one were to undo the other, how many new lives would perish? How many children do you think have been born to parents who would never have met had galactic history been different?"

"Are you saying this galaxy is good?"

"I'm saying some good has come from it, yes, Luke. The Empire has collapsed from within, with a new leader. Peace may be possible at a far reduced cost in lives than was possible in the original history. The Chlorians know this. They cannot allow it all to be wiped away."

"But Leia-!" Luke began, and could get no further. He could see the look in Anakin's eyes, the unquantifiable sadness.

"I know. I would have loved to have…" he began. "But she is one life amongst many. And she still exists. That's the beauty of it, don't you see? She's out there – in another time, with another history. She lives…" he turned to Ben suddenly, "what was my daughter like?"

Ben was pale. "She…she was leader of the New Republic. A natural leader. Compassionate, gifted, inspirational. The most ethical person I ever knew."

Anakin nodded, his eyes shining. "She sounds like someone I knew," he said quietly.

With that, he seemed to look away, through the bulkheads. A frown creased his brow. "Our time is short," he said. "The Death Star is preparing to fire on the station. It can't take another hit; it's coming apart by itself as it is. You have to get out of here."

Neither version of his son reacted to this. Anakin stepped forward and slapped a glowing blue hand down on one of their shoulders each, frustration evident in his tone. "Don't you understand what I'm telling you? You're not going to fade from existence. You have your lives. So you'd better start living them."

"How?" Luke shot back. "My sister is dead. The Empire rules the galaxy. What kind of life am I meant to lead, exactly?"

"The life of a Jedi," Ben suggested.

"And what would you know about being a Jedi?"

When they had bickered like this only moments before, their father had been decisive in putting an end to it. Now, he merely sighed. Strangely, this was a more effective way of robbing their embryonic argument of oxygen.

"You don't understand," he said softly. "When the superlaser enlarged the portal, it acted like a beacon to the Chlorians. It drew them here from all over the galaxy. That's how they were able to talk to me as one sentient being to another," he lifted his hands from their shoulders, balls of blue energy dancing between them, "and how I was able to come back from death…for a time."

Ben's face fell. "No," he whispered. "No – father – you can't die. Look at you! You've got power beyond anything I've ever seen!"

Anakin walked away from them, toward the crumpled, lifeless form of Mara Jade. "When the station is destroyed…the Chlorians here will be gone from the galaxy. And with them gone, the Force will cease to exist – in this universe, at least."

He knelt by Mara, and looked up at them. Luke didn't know what to say. Typically, Ben suffered from no such indecisiveness.

"Then stop them! Stop Thrawn!" he implored his father. "We'll use the shuttlecraft – we – we could – with your powers and all of us," he looked at Luke, to Luke's surprise, "we have to try, don't we? We can't just let the Force be destroyed!"

Anakin laid a hand on Mara's stomach. "It is the will of the Force," he told Ben. "Too much death has taken place in their name for the Chlorians, my son. They needed to come together to realise that. Life in this galaxy will learn to live without them – and without the Jedi."

He closed his eyes.

"But not before the will of the Force acts for one…last…time."

And with a rasping cough and a suddenness that caused both Luke and Ben to take an involuntary step backward, Mara Jade simply sat up.

"Hello, Mara," Anakin smiled. The blue glow around his body was noticeably less incandescent than when he had first materialised to catch lightsabers bare-handed.

"Mara!" Luke blurted, unable to keep the relief and joy from his voice. He ran forward and knelt beside her, offering her a supporting hand. She took it with a glance of gratitude to him, but soon turned her eyes back to Anakin.

"Didn't I kill you?" she said.

He nodded.

"I'm sorry," she told him.

"I know," he replied.

He stood up. The blue glow was all but gone from him. Ben had tears in his eyes. "Father, I-"

Anakin held up a hand. "You are my son," he told him. "You will always be my son. So much like me as a young man that I could never think of saying otherwise."

He stepped away from them all, only a few paces, but far enough that they could begin to see his solidity had faded; he was becoming more and more immaterial with each moment. "You're my sons. Brothers. You have so much in common, can't you see that? You've both been living up to an idea of Luke Skywalker…both obsessed with failing to measure up to a man whose life will never come to pass in this universe. You're free of him. Free of," and he smiled, "any mystical energy fields or microscopic beings controlling your destiny. Free to make your own choices."

He glanced up, as if receiving another message. "And if I were you," he added, "the first choice I'd make is to get the hell out of here before the Death Star fires again and this place goes up."

For someone dead until the last five minutes, Mara was recovering amazingly quickly, her old survival instincts kicking in right on cue. "He's right," she said, getting to her feet, swaying only a little on legs not quite used to being functional.

A glance at her two companions told her this wasn't going to be as quick a goodbye as could be hoped for in the face of imminent disintegration, however.

"I'll prep the shuttle," she said, with quiet diplomacy and a final nod to Anakin (he winked at her in response) she retreated to the shuttle's interior and began the pre-flight sequences.

"What will happen to you?" Luke asked.

"I don't know."

They had moved to him, almost unconsciously. He tried to reach out, but his form was spectral now, gossamer thin; his arms passed through theirs with only a shiver of movement to mark its passing.

"I don't know how to be anything else," Ben said, almost childlike.

"You'll find your place in the galaxy. Both of you. I know it."

"I wish…" Luke said, and then he laughed, without much enthusiasm. "I was gonna say…I wish it didn't have to be this way. But I guess that's what got us into this mess in the first place."

He felt a hand on his shoulder then, and looked up in surprise, the words forming in his mouth to ask his father how he had retained some of his physical presence…only to have those words die unsaid. The hand was not his father's.

"I'm sorry," Ben told him. "I know that's not enough, never gonna be enough…but we've got a few minutes of Jedi power left. You know I'm telling the truth."

"I know. And you're right. It's never gonna be enough," Luke sucked in a huge breath and exhaled, trying to push out all the rage and bitterness the last five years had bottled up within him. It didn't quite work.

But it was a start.

"But it's a start," he told his brother.

They bid goodbye to him then, and he watched the shuttle rise into the air and spin. He felt the goodbye of their minds as they reached out one last time and he did likewise, even as the shuttle's engines fired and with a roar that went right through him – in every way – they flew from the hangar bay and out of his life, forever.

"Will they be okay?" he asked.

"Difficult to see, the future is."

He glanced down at the diminutive figure of Yoda, squatting peacefully on a gnoshyr branch suspended quite impossibly in mid-air a few feet away, his chin resting on his trademark stick. "Without the Force, Master, I'd say it was impossible."

"Oh I don't know, Anakin," Obi-Wan's voice materialised a half-second ahead of his physical form as he came to stand to his right, the two Jedi Masters that had shaped his life at either side of him. "The Force isn't everything, you know."

Anakin's head turned with exaggerated slowness to look at his old friend and Master, the man who had been a father, a brother, a teacher…the man who had severed his legs, his arm, and left him to die screaming and charred and broken in a pit of molten lava.

"Now you realise this?" he said.

Obi-Wan kept his expression grave. "No time like the present."

Yoda chewed on the end of his stick. He opened his mouth, no doubt to impart some typically priceless final crumb of irrefutable wisdom.

He laughed.

After a moment, Obi-Wan and Anakin joined him.

---------------------------------------------------------

"Incoming…!" Mara, at the helm despite their protests, had time for that single word of warning before she turned their shuttlecraft into a desperate turn.

The superlaser blast tore through space, an immensity of power flashing past them, within a ship's length of ripping them apart as it did so.

Impact.

There was no absorption. Not this time.

Site Zero blew apart, obliterated completely in a single, shockingly final shockwave of fire and debris.

A moment later, all three shuttlecraft occupants doubled over in agony. Luke gasped. He had felt Force-induced shockwaves before; had felt the death screams of those on Yavin IV when the world had been destroyed. But this was an order of magnitude worse.

Every single cell in his body was being ripped free of its lifetime of symbiosis with the midichlorians. He felt it as they fled from him, from Ben, from Mara…felt it as the Force they carried with them fled also.

It was true. He was free.

Freedom hurt.

---------------------------------------------------------

The wave passed through the shuttlecraft. The Death Star was next. It affected those with Jedi potential most, of course, their midichlorian counts proportionally higher, but every single person on that massive ship, Grand Admiral Thrawn included, felt their passing…

…and felt somehow reduced for it.

The wave passed, onward and outward, faster than any ship through hyperspace. When it eventually dissipated at the very fringes of known space, it left behind a very different galaxy than when it had begun.

No-one would ever again utter the words May the Force be with you.