Author's Note: Some of the dialogue, and most of the narrative prose, is taken directly from the Jacen section of the prologue to Troy Denning's Dark Nest I: The Joiner King. I felt like I had something to say to Akanah, as it were.

Help me, Jacen. Please. I need you. I need your help. The voice sounded incredibly familiar to Jacen, and it was one that he felt that he had to answer and help.

He broke out of his meditation, his eyes flashing open, and he allowed himself to float down from his midair meditation to the ground of the meditation circle. He turned to the lead Fallanassi, who had then joined him from her own midair meditation.

"I'm sorry, Akanah," he said. "But I must go."

"If you are sorry, Jacen, then you must not go," Akanah said. "Sorrow is a sign that you have not given yourself over to the White Current."

Jacen grimaced. "No. No, I haven't. Not yet, at least. But I am still sorry, and I still must go."

"What of your training?" Akanah asked.

"I'm grateful for what you have shown me so far. I'll continue when I return."

"No. I cannot permit that." As she said this, the meditation circle was enshrouded in a circular, vine-leaf wall.

Jacen ignored what he knew to be a Fallanassi illusion. "Why not?"

"Because your training is not yet complete," Akanah said. "You're not ready to leave."

"Like I said, I won't be gone forever," Jacen said. "I just need to answer this call through the Force and-"

"No." Akanah's tone was unwilling to brook anymore argument.

Jacen fell silent instantly.

Akanah raised her chin, still looking at Jacen. "Your feelings on this are unclear. Someone calls, and you go without knowing why."

"My feelings are clear enough," Jacen confidently. "Someone needs my help, and I can't in good conscience turn my back on someone who needs help, whether as a Jedi or just as a person in general."

"How are you sure that this person needs your help? For all you know, it could have come from your brother."

"No," Jacen answered. "Anakin died in the war. I told you that."

"Yes, but is it him?" Akanah asked. "After someone sinks beneath the Current, a circle of ripples remains behind. Perhaps it is the ripples that you sense."

"Maybe I am feeling ripples," Jacen said. "But I heard the voice; this person needs my help. And if I am feeling something that may have come from the past, then I need to assure myself that it is coming from the past. Sometimes, the effect is all we can know of the cause."

"Do you remember my words only so you can use them to spar with me?" Akanah asked indignantly. Her hand came up as if to bat him across the ear, and his own hand reflexively rose to block. Akanah shook her head in disgust. "You are a dreadful student, Jacen Solo. You hear, but you do not learn."

It was a rebuke to which Jacen had grown accustomed to in his five-year search for the true nature of the Force. The Jensaari, the Witches of Dathomir, even the Aing-Tii had all said similar things to him - usually when his questions about the Force grew too probing. But Akanah had more reason than the others to be disappointed in him. Striking another would be anathema for any Adept of the White Current. All Akanah had done was lift her hand; it had been Jacen who interpreted the action as an attack.

Jacen inclined his head in mild shame. "Perhaps I am a dreadful student," he admitted. "At least within the Fallanassi. But even if I am an awful learner, I'm willing to admit that my knowledge of the Force isn't all that it could be; and I can even admit when I fail to live up as a person, as well. I've certainly had my off moments."

"I'm glad to hear that coming from you," Akanah said, though her indignant tone and expression said otherwise. She was obviously willing to ignore the implication that Jacen just made about her and the rest of the Fallanassi. "Nevertheless, you must learn to still yourself, and see what is really in the Current."

Jacen closed his eyes and opened himself to the White Current in much the same way he would have opened himself to the Force. Akanah and the other Adepts taught that the Current and the Force were separate things, and that was true - but only in the sense that any current was different from the ocean in which it flowed. In their essential wholeness, they were each other.

Jacen performed a calming exercise that he had learned from the Theran Listeners, then focused on the call. It was still there, a cry so sharp that it hurt, and it was definitely a voice that he remembered but just couldn't place. But it was definitely not his brother Anakin, as Akanah had suggested.

"It's not Anakin, or his ripples," he relayed to Akanah after opening his eyes.

"You're certain?"

Jacen nodded. "Please ask the Pydyrians to bring my ship down from orbit. I'd like to leave as soon as possible."

"I am sorry, but no," Akanah said.

Jacen's eyebrows were raised. "If you are sorry, then you must let me go. Sorrow is a sign that you have not given yourself over to the Current."

At that, every other Fallanassi in the air around them snapped out of her trance to look down upon Jacen and Akanah. The latter was now looking at the former in furious anger.

"How dare you," she growled as the other Fallanassi lowered themselves to glare at Jacen. After a moment, however, her tone and expression calmed and continued with: "You have the same power that I once sensed in your uncle, but without the light. You must not leave before you have found some."

The harsh assessment stung, but Jacen was hardly surprised. The war against the Yuuzhan Vong had brought the Jedi a deeper understanding of the Force - one that no longer saw light or dark as opposing sides - and he had known before he had come that the Fallanassi might find this view disturbing. But he did not shy away from expressing this through his Force-presence; he would not hide what he, and, by extension, the rest of the Order, had become.

"I'm sorry you disapprove," Jacen said with sincerity. "But I no longer view the Force in terms of light and dark. It embraces much more than that."

"Yes, we have heard about this 'new' knowledge of the Jedi," Akanah said in a scornful tone. "And it troubles me to see that their folly now rivals their arrogance."

"Folly? Arrogance? That 'folly and arrogance' were what helped us win the war."

"At what price, Jacen? If the Jedi no longer look to the light, how can they serve it?"

"The Jedi serve the Force," Jacen countered. "The only light and darkness that the Force encompasses are those of the individuals who harbor their own inner light and darkness. As Jedi, we must take the Force as the whole it is, and not just certain aspects of it, lest we fall like Yoda's Order."

"So now you are beyond light and dark?" Akanah asked. "Beyond good and evil?"

"I'm not," Jacen said. "And neither is anyone else in the Jedi Order. The Force is beyond light and dark, the Force is beyond good and evil. I must keep my own inner light and dark balanced, because either by itself can lead to my destruction, and the destruction of those around me."

"How can inner light ever lead to destruction?" Akanah asked. "Only darkness can do that."

"When a star's light grows too bright and powerful," Jacen said, "it can eventually consume everything in its path, just as a black hole can."

"Your metaphor of a star does not have anything to do with lightness, Jacen Solo," Akanah said. "While the metaphor of the black hole does parallel that of the Jedi's previous idea of the dark side of the Force, your light side cannot bring destruction. Tell me how your light side of the Force, how good itself, can lead to death and chaos."

Jacen thought about it for a while.

"Well, Jacen? I'm waiting."

Then it clicked in his head. "Because sentience itself is not completely good or evil. It encompasses aspects of both in intertwining shades of grey. Too much evil can lead to misery and premature death, but too much good can render you too weak or vulnerable to do action against those who are evil."

"Too weak and vulnerable?" Akanah asked. "That does not sound like a star going nova, if you ask me. And we Fallanassi surround ourselves with peace and tranquility; yet we are able to defend ourselves, if need be, with our powerful illusions."

"That's just one aspect of too much good," Jacen said. "Too much good can lead to good intentions paving the road to evil. If one wants nothing but peace and tranquility throughout the galaxy, one would have to enforce that against the intentions of men and women who may not exactly want that. One could become a dictator in his or her pursuit to bring peace and tranquility throughout the galaxy. So there's your star metaphor."

Akanah sneered. "That isn't too much light encompassing the galaxy, Jacen. That's just a different form of darkness. If anything, the too-weak-and-vulnerable argument makes only a little more sense. I will agree, absolute pacifism can lead to horrid men and women without resistance in their conquest for rule. But there is never an instance where light can bring destruction."

Jacen's eyebrows were raised. "Actually, Akanah, you may have helped my argument."

Akanah looked surprised, along with the other Fallanassi with her. "What?" she asked.

"It's true, light in and of itself doesn't lead to death and destruction. But it can lead to darkness, which brings death and destruction. Just as a massive star can collapse in on itself and become a black hole, so, too, can someone's adherence to good; it can drive them to do bad things and become evil."

Akanah now looked at Jacen with disgust. "That has never been a problem for the Fallanassi."

"Because you've never branched out to the rest of the galaxy," Jacen pointed out. "You isolate yourselves from it, unlike the Jedi. You're never really confronted with any real challenges to your beliefs or your organization that would make you do things that you would never think you have to, such as killing in self-defense.

"The Jedi have to do that practically on a daily basis, and no Jedi worth his or her salt would ever truly enjoy doing something like that even to the most vile person who ever lived; at least no Jedi should enjoy that, anyway. You Fallanassi, on the other hand, have never had to live with that kind of burden because you close yourself off from anything and everything that is dangerous to your ideals. The closest thing you've ever done for going beyond your principles was resolving the Black Fleet Crisis with your illusions, and even then, you haven't actually killed anyone then.

"Do you know how many times I've had to kill, Akanah? You think I enjoyed what I have done? No. Even when I reveled in the pain and misery that I caused while I was under Vergere's teachings, I had suffered, and it was that pain that showed me that not everything can live up to an ideal. At least not all the time, and I can tell you, being the horrible student that I am to your order, that if the Fallanassi were challenged, they would more than likely fail to live up to the ideals placed before them, because they had never had their principles tested.

"I have; the Jedi Order have. And we have never always passed; often, we had failed miserably. But we rose up so we can succeed, resolve the conflict within us, or at the very least accept it, so we can mold the more flexible ideals that, while still breakable, are ones that we worry less about leading to our downfall. And that's really all that we... all that I... can really hope for.

"So tell me this, Akanah: Where is the folly and arrogance in understanding your limits, but learning to accept them for your own personal growth?"

Akanah was left completely speechless; she only stared back at Jacen in an open-mouthed trance, which wasn't brought about by some submission to the White Current.

"The Jedi serve only themselves!" one of the Fallanassi behind Akanah exclaimed. "They are pompous enough to believe they can use the Force instead of submitting to it!"

"And in this pride," one of the other Fallanassi continued, "they have caused more suffering than they have prevented. Look at the Yuuzhan Vong War! You allowed the invaders to conquer and pillage throughout the galaxy, leaving untold trillions of galactic citizens dead in your misguided beliefs!"

"The count was three hundred sixty-five trillion," Jacen said with regret in his tone. "Roughly speaking, of course. But that was before we submitted to the Unifying Force. And we defeated the Yuuzhan Vong by doing exactly that; submitting ourselves to the Force. That was certainly what I did when I defeated Onimi."

Recovering from Jacen's speech, Akanah shook her head. "With no light to guide you, Jacen, and the power that I sense in you, I fear that you will only bring about death and destruction in your future."

Jacen stared back at Akanah in bewilderment. "No light?"

Akanah nodded. "You said yourself that the Force is unguided by light or darkness."

"But to you, you only sense darkness in me." It wasn't a question.

Akanah's silent nod said it all.

Jacen looked away in shame before looking back at her. "No light at all?"

"Only a little," Akanah said. "But it cannot stand up to the darkness, the arrogance, that I sense in you."

Jacen backed away, his gaze not leaving Akanah's. Doubt, stronger than before in all his travels after the war, began to invade his thoughts in a way that the Yuuzhan Vong could only rival with their conquest of the galaxy. Akanah truly feared for him, Jacen realized; truly feared that he would become as great a monster as his grandfather, Darth Vader, if not worse.

"I sense light in you, Jacen," one of the Fallanasi said.

Everyone looked to the one who spoke.

"I sense more light than darkness in you," the Fallanassi said. She was a red-skinned human female who barely reached up to Jacen's shoulders at her full height.

"Your senses clearly need to be retrained, Adept," Akanah said before whirling back to face Jacen.

"Then so do mine," another Adept said. This one was a dark-skinned individual who was slightly taller than Jacen. "Because I sense more light than darkness in him."

"So do I."

"And I, too."

Soon, half the Fallanassi in the circle agreed that there was more light than darkness in Jacen; the other half, including Akanah and the two Adepts who had aided Akanah in her argument, remained steadfast in their belief that Jacen was on a path of darkness.

And the doubt in Jacen's mind receded.

"Well, Akanah," Jacen said, "whether or not those who doubt your senses about me are wrong, one thing now remains certain: The Fallanassi are not perfect." His tone was only that of a humble traveler letting someone know what dissent in her order could possibly mean.

For a moment, Akanah's nostrils flared. But she just as quickly regained her composure before taking out her commlink and activating it.

"Chief Najee?" Akanah spoke in the comm.

"Yes, Mistress Akanah?" the voice at the other end asked.

"Bring Jedi Solo's ship down from orbit at the sight of the landing pad in the jungle."

"Yes, Mistress Akanah."

Akanah then signed off on her comm and replaced it in her belt. The vine-leaf wall all but disappeared around Jacen and all the other Fallanassi, and Jacen looked over all of them to find a platform out in the distance of the jungle; an illusion just to guide the slaved Solo Quest down to its destination.

"Leave now," Akanah demanded.

Jacen only nodded before leaving the meditation circle and heading off to the false platform in the distance.