Abeloth's Planet, Maw Cluster; 44 ABY
Luke Skywalker brought the Jade Shadow in for a landing. Ever since he'd had the vision, he was drawn here. As he approached the same spot they'd landed on before, a small stretch of ocean-front sand, he spied the other ship. It was curved like a horseshoe, and matched the description Corran Horn had given of the ship Ben and Vestara had stolen on Shedu Maad. The Shadow touched down and Luke emerged, followed closely by R2.
He reached out with the Force, searching for his son, but sensed nothing. This didn't particularly worry the Grand Master, as he knew Ben could hide himself if he wanted to. After a cursory search of the surrounding area, he and the astromech moved on to the stolen yacht. He didn't normally condone using the Force like this, but a small mental twist and the boarding ramp dropped like a rock.
"Find an outlet and search the ship for life signs," Luke told the little droid.
With an electronic beep of acknowledgement, R2 rolled up the ramp and got to work. A minute later, he came back with a negative on life signs apart from Luke himself.
Luke considered his options. He didn't know why they'd come here, but no matter where they went, they'd have to return here to get off the planet. He sent R2 back to the Shadow and took up residence in the canopy over the edge of the forest. He didn't have to wait long, not twenty minutes had passed before he heard voices coming closer.
From the jungle shade, Luke watched his son and Vestara Khai trot out to the beach. They stopped when they saw the Shadow. He felt them reaching out, searching, so he hopped down to ground level. The soft thud he made when he landed caused them to turn as one. Luke was surprised to see both of them look normal, their eyes no longer the well-like portals with a light at the bottom. Vestara now had two human hands and no oversized simper. Ben gave a small smile, though it didn't reach his eyes. "Hello, Dad."
"Hello, Son," Luke couldn't tell what either of them were thinking, their minds shielded in a way that they hadn't been before.
"Nice entrance," Vestara muttered.
It was a standoff, neither side wanting to draw a lightsaber and escalate it to a fight. Ben broke it first and raised his hands up in the air. "Can we talk?" Vestara rolled her eyes but followed suit.
A pair of stun-cuffs landed at their feet. Luke point to them. "Put them on and we can."
Ben reached down, and motioned for Vestara to do the same. She couldn't keep the sneer off her face. "I'm only doing this because you're going to be my—"
Her retort was cut short by Ben elbowing her in the ribs. "My choice when," he said, and left it at that. She gave a subdued frown, but nodded.
Luke looked on confused at the exchange, but they put on the restraints so he led them to the main cabin hold of the Shadow. They took seats around the small circular table that doubled as a Dejarik board, much like the one on the Falcon, but far cleaner. "Now," Luke said, "I think I deserve an explanation."
Vestara looked expectantly at Ben. "Your side, you explain."
"You could be a little more accommodating, you know." Ben mumbled.
"Not when I'm wearing bracelets like this." She raised her hands in punctuation.
"So much for moral support."
Luke, who didn't like the ease at which they bantered, cleared his throat. That brought both their attention back to him.
"We didn't think you'd let us go before it was too late," Ben started, "Abeloth had done something to change the future we saw, so we needed to fix it."
"You," Luke pointed to Ben, "weren't the one who fought her way out of the detention center."
Vestara wasn't all that amused. "Let's see how you'd like to be locked up for a week—"
Ben elbowed her again. "Ves, my side, my explanation, remember?"
"Fine." She tried her best to fold her arms, but the restraints wouldn't let her do it.
Turning back to his father, Ben shrugged. "No, but Vestara and I are in this together. You were hurting us by keeping us apart. I'm afraid I can't really explain to you why, but it's something that we know to be true."
Luke was closely reading Ben's body language and watching for any signs of dishonesty in the Force, but didn't find anything. That, of course, didn't mean all that much with the new mental barriers they now had. "And did you?"
Ben wrinkled his brow in confusion. "What?"
"You said you needed to 'fix' something, did you?"
"Not yet, but we know what she did," Ben said judiciously. "She let out one of the dark side spirits, someone named Cronal—"
"Blackhole?" Luke couldn't help interrupting, parts of his vision suddenly making sense, why he'd seen the Maw instead of Abeloth's planet. Cronal had been one of Palpatine's pseudo-apprentices and had waged war on the New Republic after the Empire fell. Under the guise of 'Shadowspawn' he'd tried and take over Luke's body.
"Do you know who he is?" Vestara leaned in, now quite interested in the conversation.
Luke broke out of his memories and shook his head. "You two are explaining right now."
Ben didn't want to drop it, but decided it would be best to come back to it later. "Abeloth destroyed the Pool of Knowledge, but we were able to find enough left to see where the weapon is."
"Weapon?"
"The dagger that can kill Abeloth," Ben elucidated, "we know where it is."
Luke narrowed his eyes. "How do you know about that?"
Ben gave a small shrug. "We saw it in the Pool, saw us using it to kill Abeloth for good."
"So you can let us go, yes?" Vestara leaned in. "We're on the same side."
"Just because you say that's what you're going to do, doesn't make it true." Luke pointed out.
Vestara, thoroughly fed up with the Jedi Grand Master's caution, tapped into her newly acquired cryokinesis abilities and froze the stun cuffs to a brittle hardness and snapped them in half.
Luke moved faster than either Ben or Vestara thought possible. He was on his feet and his ignited lightsaber was out in the blink of an eye, pointed at Vestara. Ben hadn't made a move to free himself, instead put his still-joined hands over Vestara's free ones. "Stop." He told her.
"Kriff, Ben," her voice raised in frustration. "This is the same thing that happened in the Temple all over again." She shook him off and raised her hands, the fractured binders fell away, and showed them to the Jedi. "Master Skywalker, we don't want to hurt you. You know Ben wouldn't, and it would be bad form for me to do anything to my future father-in-law."
Ben gave a groan, which came out like a mix of a dying animal and irritation. His eyes bore into Vestara. "What part of 'my choice when' wasn't clear?"
"When nothing we were saying was getting to him," she shot back.
Luke looked from one to the other, a bewildered expression on his face. His line of questioning derailed. At least this explained the closeness between them more, but when had that happened? "You're engaged?"
"Um, surprise?" Ben gave an exaggerated smile and waved his still-bound hands.
Vestara didn't lighten up. "Now you know, so put the lightsaber away and listen to what we have to say, Dad."
Ben looked stricken, pale enough to be dead, and clearly wishing he were at this point. He muttered something about hating his life under his breath and slipped out of the binders. Luke could have sworn he'd seen Ben's hands shrink when the cuffs slid off. Luke, unsure of what to do, waited for a beat before sitting down and shutting down his saber. They'd already escaped, but were still waiting around, so they apparently decided not to run.
Vestara thought that the more direct approach would be better than Ben trying to explain everything. "We can show you what we saw in the Pool, why we're doing what we need to."
"Ves, you know we're not supposed to—" Ben started.
She cut him off mid-protest. "That was the old future, Ben, we don't know what the new one holds, so what does it matter?" She turned back to Luke and repeated her offer. "We can show you."
Luke considered the proposal, they seemed adamant about what they had always said, but should he risk it? He felt something inside urge him on, to accept the offer. "That doesn't mean I'll help you if I do."
Vestara nodded and took Ben's hand. With their free ones, they took Luke's, creating a triangle. Luke felt like he was falling, the image rippled and had a blurry haze. He was standing over a body of water, it looked like it was lined with an alabaster granite, the Pool of Knowledge. In the water, he saw his son and Vestara. They both had the Abeloth-like mouth and eyes that he'd known Vestara had exhibited when she escaped. They carried scales and held hands. Luke saw himself on Ben's side, on a tower that looked much like the Jedi Temple. Vestara's side was blackened, yellow eyes peered out from the darkness. Abeloth's body lay at their feet and the Throne of Balance sat behind it, Allana perched on it with Anji curled up on her lap, younger than he'd seen when he looked into the Pool in Beyond Shadows. He felt himself being pulled back, yanked as if on an elastic cord, to the Shadow.
"Now you know what we are supposed to be." Vestara said matter-of-factly.
"You think you're supposed to keep balance?" Luke wanted to make sure he fully understood the implication, "How exactly do you intend on doing that?"
"We are going to locate the dagger to stop Abeloth and the one she freed." Ben said.
"So information on the latter would come in handy." Vestara concluded.
Luke found himself starting to believe what they have been saying, this would be a long way to go just to trick him, after all. "You think you're doing the right thing? Acting on this?"
"If we aren't," Ben shrugged, "then we'll fail."
"But we are, so we won't." Vestara added.
Thinking about what he'd seen, Luke turned to Vestara. "Why was your side shadowed? I could see the Jedi, but not the Sith."
"Because I hid it from you," Vestara said. "Balance requires that we either fight against one another, or step back. I won't fight Ben, so I won't show you where the Sith are hiding and have you exterminate them."
Ben lifted his shoulders again, nonchalantly. "Her side, her choice."
"If you want to find the Sith," she pointed at Luke, "you have to do it on your own."
"So why are you helping to kill Abeloth, why ask for my help at all?" Luke asked, she was certainly no longer pretending to want to be a Jedi any longer.
"Abeloth is neither Jedi, nor Sith. As for you," Vestara explained, "I'm willing to work with Ben's father, not the Grand Master of the Jedi."
"And when this is over?"
"I'm supposed to be the avatar of the Dark Side, but there's no rule that I can't be friendly with the Jedi," she said. "I just won't help you fight the Sith, and I won't help the Sith fight you."
"And I won't help you fight the Sith, either," Ben piped up, watching his fiancé and father talk back and forth. "But Abeloth must be stopped."
Holding his son's gaze for a moment, Luke rose. "If I come with you," he said, "then we travel on one ship. Do you need anything from the other one?"
They gave their agreement, it was fine with them. "No, we've taken everything we needed with us into the jungle."
"I need the coordinates to the Monolith, then."
"Monolith?" Vestara raised an eyebrow.
"The weapon you saw in your vision looked much like the one Master Yoda described during my training," Luke explained. "It's housed in orthorhombic gateway, called Mortis."
"I've seen it, when I sought the coordinates," Ben said, stepping forward to input the coordinates he'd memorized from his vision.
The Shadow lifted off smoothly and rose through the humid air. "You'd better take your seats," Luke said to the two of them as he steered them out off of the planet. They took two of the passenger seats, Ben had opted out of his usual place in the co-pilot's seat he'd occupied for the better part of the last year, Luke noted.
He saw reflections of them in the viewport, superimposed over the black nebula of the Maw stretched out before them. Luke had agreed to go with them, but he still wasn't completely convinced that they weren't making a mistake. History was filled with atrocities committed by people with the best of intentions. At least traveling with them, he could keep an eye on them.
Once they'd left the turbulence-filled atmosphere, Luke took them through the small safe passage through the stable zone. "You two should get changed, you look like you've been through a mud race on Dathomir." The truth was, Luke wanted to be able to leave a message to the Jedi about finding Ben and Vestara, that he would be traveling with them, and the location of Mortis if they should fail. Under normal circumstances, he'd just send it in real-time, but the Maw would prevent a long-range message. Instead, he'd need to leave a message pod behind, so if the Masters follow him here, they will know what to do.
He found Ben looking oddly at him, and wondered just how much of his plan was already known by his son. Vestara just gave a brisk nod. "We will. Come on, Ben."
As soon as they'd left the bridge, and Luke could feel them making their way back to Ben's room, Luke started on the message.
"You know he's going to send a message to the Jedi," Ben pointed out as soon as they were out of earshot of the bridge.
"Yes, I know," Vestara sighed, "but it would be better to have the Jedi know where the dagger is, just in case we fail."
Ben keyed his code to his room, the door slid open with a whoosh. "We could have just told him to do it, then."
"Your father still doesn't completely trust us," she chuckled. "Do you think our reading his mind would help move him in the right direction on that?"
Ben's cabin was exactly as he'd left it. He went over to closet and took out two sets of robes, tossing the second to Vestara. She caught it with one hand. "Got anything in black?"
"Beggars can't be choosers," he countered succinctly and made his way to the refresher to change.
"I'd better not have to beg for clothes in this relationship, Ben Skywalker. I have standards, you know."
Just outside the door, Ben turned back and kissed her on her cheek. "Brown brings out your eyes," he smirked and walked down the corridor to the refresher. Vestara watched him leave with a slight smirk on her face.
Dreadnaught-class Heavy Cruiser, Pugilist, Hyperspace; 44 ABY
Cronal stood on the bridge of his flagship, clothed in a rough brown tunic. As much as he despised the creature that had ordered him here, the chance for revenge against Skywalker was too tempting to resist. He chose to ignore her ability to cause him pain for the moment, that was irrelevant. They were set to exist hyperspace in a few minutes.
He'd stayed here, on the bridge, for every trip through hyperspace. His 'crew' barely able to function with him standing there didn't deter him. This was one of the many things he'd missed in his prison. He knew lesser minds could succumb to so-called hyper-rapture from staring into the void for too long. Cronal found it soothing. This was the future, the emptiness outside the universe, what all would become. An endless expanse of entropy, unending, and beautiful.
He'd grown his armada considerably since taking command of these worthless pirates, conscripting captured ships and crews to his cause. Most of them lacked everything but the bare essentials. He needed bodies, not soldiers. The few who kept their faculties experienced a near-constant state of panic, Cronal relishing in his own personal amusement at the expense of the only minds left stable. The lines of stars resolved to individual points and he felt a loss, there was still so much out there to destroy. His ideal universe would be a long time in coming.
It lies at the center of this.
Speak of the wretch. "I live to serve."
Author's Note: This was actually one of the hardest chapters to write so far. I really didn't want Luke to just do an about-face. I tried to keep him as cautious as you'd expect him to be, and he certainly doesn't fully trust Ben and Vestara at this point anyway.