The shadow moved closer, its menacing, ominous stride striking Luke, rendering him frozen. But he had to move. Had to warn his friends. He had to warn them. But they were so far away, on the planet below. They needed to know. The shadow was closer now. Snap-hiss. A red light materialized in the shadow's hand. It was so close. He could hear it breathing. It was so loud. Why was it so loud? It was so familiar. It sounded like...

"Hey! Kid! Come on!"

Luke jerked awake. Han was shouting at him. He was still on the Falcon. It was just a dream.

"Come on. Get up. We're back in realspace." Han said.

"Okay, I'll be there in a minute," Luke responded.

Han turned to leave, but when he got to the door, he hesitated. He turned back and asked, "Hey, kid, you alright?"

"Yeah, I'm fine," Luke assured him.

Han nodded turned back to the door. Luke waited until the door closed behind him before he let the dream invade his thoughts again. Was it just a bad dream, or was it something else? Was it a memory? The shadow, now that he thought about it, was strikingly similar to his father, Darth Vader. Why was his father haunting his dreams? He's not, Luke realized, It's Darth Vader. It's my fear of what the dark side does to people. What I'm afraid I could become. Luke wondered why his father's failure was bothering him so much. Whatever the reason was, he didn't have time to worry about it now. He had a job to do.

Leia was waiting for him with his lightsaber. Seeing her holding it gave Luke a whole new sense of anxiety. He had been working on her Jedi skills the whole trip, and she didn't seem to be getting any better. So, he decided to change his teaching techniques by starting where his mentor, Obi-Wan Kenobi had started with him.

"So what does that thing do?" she asked him, staring at the remote in Luke's hand. It was a sphere small enough to fit in the palm of Luke's hand. It was dotted with holes that made it look a little bit like a round die.

"This," Luke explained, "is hopefully going to help you feel the Force." He hit a switch and the remote hummed to life. It levitated at about head level, rotating in a seemingly random pattern, stopping suddenly and changing direction. "It's going to shoot harmless lasers at you, and all you have to do is block them with that." He gestured towards the lightsaber.

"Seems easy enough," Leia said uneasily.

"Good," Luke pulled out an old fighter helmet and handed it to her. "Put this on."

"But," she protested, "then I won't be able to see."

"Exactly, now put it on."

Leia sighed as she put the helmet on. She ignited the lightsaber.

"Ready?" Luke asked.

"As I'll ever be," she replied.

"Just try to feel it." He started the remote. Leia immediately tensed. The remote fired off one shot. She attempted a simple block and took the laser to the wrist. "That was close, try again," Luke encouraged. Leia shook her head and took a deep breath. The remote fired another shot, and this time she made contact with the blade. The laser reflected harmlessly away. Luke fired off two more shots in succession. Leia parried both. Two more shots, two more blocks. He fired off three this time. She managed to get two before the remote spun behind her and got her in the small of the back before she could turn.

"Ah!" she exclaimed ripping off her helmet and throwing it down. "I should've had that."

"It's okay," Luke consoled, "You did great."

Han laughed from the doorway. Luke hadn't even noticed him. "Wow," he said, "and I thought it was entertaining watching you do that, kid!"

Leia turned on him with a look that could kill, but it only made Han laugh harder. She was only able to hold it for another few seconds before she lost it and laughed with him. "You," she said hitting him on the shoulder, "are just terrible. Don't you have a ship to fly?"

He kissed her on the forehead and returned to his pilot duties, still laughing.

"You did do well, you know," Luke said stifling a smile.

"Whatever. Start it again."

They were able to get a few more rounds in, Leia getting better each time, before Han called them to the cockpit for landing. Luke and Leia entered the cockpit and found their seats behind Han and Chewie. Threepio and Luke's astromech droid R2-D2 were arguing with the Falcon's three-droid brain about something completely irrelevant.

"Hey, Goldenrod!" Han called back, "You better be doing something productive back there!"

"Hey, stop harassing the droids," Leia joked.

He didn't look away from the control panel. "Strap in sweetheart, I don't know how well this is gonna go."

"Han, when exactly was the last time you were on Nar Shaddaa?" Luke asked, worried.

"Uh, well, let's just say there's a certain person I'd like to avoid."

"Why?" Leia asked.

"Well, I didn't really leave last time on a high note." He looked excessively uncomfortable.

"What did you do to her?" she pressed.

"Wha-?" Han turned around to face her, his face turning red. "Who said it was a 'her'?"

He saw the answer in her eyes, It's always a girl with you Solo. That's why I will never be able to trust you. But she said instead with a smirk, "Lucky guess."

Luke watched them with curiosity. He respected their privacy, so he never really knew what was going on between his best friend and his sister. Some days they couldn't be in the same room without strangling each other, and other times you'd need a laser to pry their faces apart. He shook his head and sighed, he'd never understand their relationship.

Leia glared at him. "What?" she demanded.

Luke stifled a smile, "Nothing."

She gave him that look that seemed to bore into his soul and invade his innermost thoughts. He refrained from cringing or laughing and held her stare. He raised one eyebrow, then the other. She smiled against her will, and punched him playfully on the arm. Luke wondered if this was what they would've been like as kids, if they had been able to grow up together.

Chewbacca growled, interrupting Luke's thoughts.

"Yeah, stay on it," Han responded.

"Where are we going exactly?" Leia asked, seeming to already have forgotten their previous disagreement.

"An area of the smuggling district that I used to live in. I figured I might still be a name there." He pushed a couple buttons on the control panel and said, "Alright Chewie, go ahead and start the landing sequence."

"NO!" Rydam threw the datapad at the wall of his sleazy apartment. "I hate you!" he yelled to everyone and no one. "I didn't want to do this anymore!" He punched the permacrete wall, forming a fist-sized hole. He grabbed at his hair, wanting to tear off his scalp. He turned and flipped over the small table in his tiny living room. Papers and data chips flew in every direction. He kicked it once for good measure. Tears clouded his vision. He tried to wipe them away only to find that the knuckles on his right hand were bleeding. He clenched his fists and walked to the refresher to clean up.

He washed the blood off his fist and the tears off his face. He looked up into the mirror and stared straight into his reflection's bloodshot eyes. "You monster," he whispered to the mirror. After the Kuat incident, Rydam had invested everything he had into disappearing. He had his name changed along with his retinal patterns. He had cosmetic surgery to rearrange his entire face. He remembered the first time he saw his new face. He remembered thinking, I'm no longer Adan. No, who's Adan? My name is Rydam. Rydam Tevine. I was born on Nar Shaddaa, not Alderaan. I've never even been there. Never seen those rolling hills, those- no. Don't think about that, any of it. You were never a rebel, never. You're just a lowly smuggler. Living a simple life in the Outer Rim. I don't know any Adan.

Adan Ledder had been a fair-haired boy with every Alderaanian feature in the book. He had smooth cheekbones and a round face. He'd had eyes of the brightest blue, and a sweet, lopsided smile that made girls swoon. He was a nice boy growing up, smart and helpful, until his home planet of Alderaan was destroyed by the Empire. Adan had been off planet that day, but he wished he wasn't. He had lost everything. The Empire deserved to die, and Adan would stop at nothing to make sure that happened. But Adan was a monster. He killed without remorse. He murdered innocent civilians without a second thought. But Adan was dead.

Rydam, on the other hand, had jet black hair and even darker eyes. He had the sharp, chiseled features of a man. He was thin, not malnourished, but thin. He tried to help people when he could, but mainly he just tried to stay off everyone's radar. He knew that it was better not to be noticed.

Now, looking in the dirty mirror in his just-as-dirty apartment, he realized that there was no more hiding, no more pretending. He was being dragged into a world that he had no control of, and his new face couldn't do anything about it. He wasn't a hit man. He didn't want to kill anyone anymore, least of all his new target. What kind of nerve did these people have, whoever they were? Making him kill a hero to his people. That's what she is, a hero. He can't do it, he just can't. Not now. He wasn't that man- that monster- anymore.

But you are, sneered his reflection. Rydam watched as his face in the glass morphed into the face of his past life.

"No," Rydam whined, "You are a murderer, a monster. I'm not you anymore."

Yes you are. You know you are. You are me, and I am you. That will never change, Rydam. The Adan-reflection spat his name like it was poison.

"No, you're not even real."

The Adan-reflection smiled at him with that stupid, boyish smile that Rydam had come to hate. Whatever you say, Rydam. Just don't come crying to me when you realize the truth. Or should I say, don't come crying to you?

Rydam punched the mirror as hard as he could, the tears coming back to his eyes. The damn indestructible glass refused to shatter. He hit it again and again, all the while watching the Adan-reflection laugh at him. He yelled as he turned away from that hellish mirror. Rydam sunk to the floor and rested his head on the wall. He cried himself to sleep listening to the Adan-reflection's demonic laugh.

That morning, Rydam awoke on the cold refresher floor, his eyes sore from crying and his mind scarred from dreams of mirrors and laughing. He looked at his hand. The blood on his knuckles was dried, but his first finger wasn't sitting right. He winced as he forced the dislocated finger back into its socket. He stood up and risked a glance at the mirror. All he saw was his face. Rydam's face. He looked up and started to laugh. It wasn't real, he told himself, none of it was. He looked back at the mirror just to be sure and nearly screamed out loud. That smile. It had been there. Rydam did everything he could to stay calm. It was gone now anyway. Then it hit him. It hit him like a ton of space junk in the face. It was his smile. Adan's smile on Rydam's face.

That's not fair, he thought, Why? The one thing that I hate the most about that low-life demented freak is the one thing of his that I still have. Rydam tried to contain the anger that was swelling inside him. He didn't want to lash out on anything like he did last night. He knew from personal experience that it was a fine line between hurting inanimate objects and sentient ones.

Luckily, he was saved by his comm buzzing in the other room. He walked out to find the table still flipped and a gaping hole in the wall. He sighed and ruffled through the loose objects on the floor until he found his comm.

"Tevine," he answered, his voice sounding too much like the Adan-reflection of the previous night.

"Hey Rydam," a pleasant female voice answered, "Did you finish recording those runs from last month?"

Rydam winced as he remembered what he should have accomplished last night during his fit of terror. "Ah, no, but I'll have them done soon, I promise."

The woman on the other end sighed. "That's what you said last week, Rydam. It seems like you've been making a lot of promises lately that you haven't kept."

"Yeah, well, this time I really promise," he assured.

"You'd better," she scolded.

"Yeah, kay, thanks Salla,"

There was no answer other than static on her end. He flung the comm back to the floor. Fine, he thought, don't talk to me then. He exhaled deeply and looked around. So much to do. He figured he'd start by picking up his mess.

There was a whir outside his apartment window that sounded a lot like a ship taking off. Rydam rushed to the window and looked out to see a ship, not taking off, but landing. It was an old YT-1300 freighter covered in rust and dents. It was definitely a smuggler's ship, but not one he knew. He'd have to ask Salla about it later. Until then, he had work to do.

Hey, I'd love to here your opinions on this last section on Rydam. It's one of my favorite things that I've written, so I'd love to hear what you guys thought.