Even Stars Burn Out

Jedi Temple, Coruscant

Corran, Kyle, Kyp, and Saba were gathered to meet the returning shuttle as it settled onto the Temple landing pad. They didn't want to make the event a spectacle, but one look over his shoulder confirmed to Corran that every Jedi and apprentice in the place was standing on the roof terraces to see through the transparisteel pyramid. He supposed there was no stopping them now.

Master Cilghal exited first, leading a repulsor sled bearing a shrouded body. Corran's breath caught in his throat, the first sight of the tragedy hitting him harder than he had expected. Grand Master Skywalker followed, the slump of his shoulders and his downcast expression no surprise to anyone. His eyes were closed as if to absent himself from the dismal reality of it all, but he never set a foot wrong. Ben Skywalker came some paces behind, a frustrated young man looking bewildered and pained, his thoughts swirling like a windstorm even as Luke's were deadened by the paralysis of grief. Ben seemed repelled by the gloom which had engulfed his father, but wasn't willing to be parted from him.

Kyp moved to secure the shuttle, and the rest of them turned and followed the silent procession inside. Cilghal took the body directly to her medical suite, avoiding as many curious glances as possible. Luke and Ben paused in the entryway to greet the Masters.

"Zekk and Jag have gone to meet Jaina," Corran explained softly, opting for brevity rather than ceremony. "All's quiet here. The investigation is proceeding as planned, and we'll let you know as soon as we have something."

Luke accepted his hand, but couldn't manage a smile. "Thank you, Corran." Then he turned and headed for the lift, no doubt to disappear into his quarters.

"Ben," Corran said, extending his hand to the younger Skywalker. "Good to have you back. Now go take it easy for a while."

Ben nodded, returning the gesture with an impressive grip for a boy his age. "Thanks, Master Horn." He left in a different direction, perhaps to wander the gardens.

Corran sighed, and turned to the rest of them. "All right, we all have jobs to do. Get busy."

A long, scalding shower did almost nothing to make him feel better, but it gave him somewhere to be completely alone for an hour. Luke wasn't really trying to feel better. He didn't want to feel better. Not yet. Instead, he spent that time letting the scent of Mara's soap unlock a host of bittersweet memories while the water pummeled him raw and obscured his tears.

Now he found himself sitting on the bed in oppressive silence, staring at the wall. He couldn't face his obligations downstairs, and he couldn't bring himself to tidy up any of the disarray they had left the last time they were there. Their rooms at the Temple were just an austere home away from home; the thought of going back to their apartment to face the accumulated accretions of their life there seemed unbearable.

Another time, he might have filled the empty hours meditating, but now when Luke turned his thoughts inward he was just reminded of how empty it was there. After twenty-one years, he had come to rely on their remarkable Force bond, their constant presence in one another's awareness, what Mara had once described as an incessant feed of mundane information. Luke missed the ebb and flow of her thoughts, the shifting colors of her emotions. He used to be able to feel it when she laughed. Occasionally he would smile for no reason at all, and know she was thinking of him. She had been a warm light in a lonely corner, the presence that made an empty house a home. Now the warmest places in his heart had gone cold, dark, and quiet.

Strangely enough, the pain in his chest wasn't entirely emotional. Cilghal's meddling medical droid had scanned him against his will on the flight back to Coruscant, and its diagnosis had been the same that the Falcon's medical array had slapped on him after his duel with Darth Vader on Cloud City. Stress cardiomyopathy they called it, medical jargon for general dysfunction, but he knew what it was.

It was unbecoming to be so sunk in his own misery, but this wasn't a sad case of a fallen comrade or a lost friend. This had knocked his guts out and left him reeling. The GA, or at least Jacen and Niathal, probably wouldn't care if he never recovered, but the Jedi downstairs clearly trusted him to get up eventually. Luke wasn't sure he trusted himself anymore, or that he ever would again. He would have to discuss that with the Council at some point, just as soon as he could make himself give a damn.

He surveyed the jumble of personal items littering the room, trying to remember why they had been there and why they had left in such a hurry. Oh, yes, they had just dragged Ben back home from Hapes to try to make him see sense. Then the boy had managed to escape, and they had been pulled in so many directions at once that they hadn't managed to really look for him until he turned up again, right back on the Anakin Solo with Jacen and his GAG buddies as if nothing had changed. At least that had changed now. For whatever reason, Ben seemed disenchanted with GAG. Someday, Luke would be glad to know why.

They would have to clean it up eventually. Fully conscious now of the reality that Mara was dead, Luke realized the next few months would feel like watching her die slowly all over again, gradually disappearing from their lives one shirt, one old pillow, one hair accessory at a time. Like sand falling through his fingers. Only the memories would be left.

That was the way of all life, wasn't it? Bright and brief, like flares in the wind. Eventually, that was the way of all material existence.

All things die. Even stars burn out.

Bitterly reminded of his father's struggles with that reality, Luke knew that this was where the Order's discipline of detachment had come from, a precaution against the crippling pain he was mired in now. Even so, the precedent of a thousand generations notwithstanding, Luke was still prepared to argue that if they were destined to see no more than one day in the grand scheme of the universe, it was better to share that day with the other ephemeral beings making the same journey, to live and love to the fullest until the night took them. He didn't protest the existence of the night. He just hadn't been quite ready to face it yet.

Feeling his aching eyes welling again, Luke set his jaw and dug that crumpled flimsi note out of his pocket. He may not be able to remember his last words to Mara, but he was fortunate enough to have her final words to him in writing, something he could hold on to. It was a very un-Jedi-like sentiment, but he was prepared to fight a whole Hutt's army to keep it.

The remembered patterns of Mara's practical criticism suggested that if he was so determined to keep it, he had better find a better way to carry it or else be forever rooting through the laundry. Luke frowned, and glanced around the room. His eyes eventually fell on Mara's locket necklace, discarded on the bedside table.

She had bought it for herself on a whim a few years before. Luke would have gladly gifted it to her, but there was a standing prohibition against him buying her shiny trinkets, because Mara knew that once he started he probably wouldn't stop. It was a pretty thing, platinum with intricate scrollwork across its face. She had always laughed at herself for never getting around to putting anything in it.

With all the care and attention of an honor guard folding a funeral flag, Luke folded the flimsi as tightly as he could, secured it inside the locket, put the chain around his neck and tucked it beneath his collar. That would do.

He was interrupted by a restrained knock on the door. Forcing himself to his feet, Luke condescended to answer it.

A teenaged apprentice was standing in the corridor, a tray in her hands and a deeply apologetic look on her face. "Good evening, Grand Master," she said, and immediately seemed to regret it. "Anyway, the refectory sent this up for you, sir."

Luke stood aside and wearily waved her in. "Thank you." It must be early evening.

She set the tray down on the table, offered him a slight bow, and then left. Luke was prepared to close the door when Corran came sliding into view after her, carrying an antique plate piled with dessert cakes and wearing that same apologetic expression.

Luke didn't let him in right away. He glanced at the confections, and lifted an eyebrow. "Am I supposed to believe Mirax made those?" he asked.

Corran shook his head. "No. We just put 'em on a fancy plate and hoped you wouldn't notice. Do you have a minute to sit down?"

It was a ridiculous question. Luke had hours to sit down, all day, all week, maybe the rest of his life. He stood aside and let Corran in. He wasn't really in the mood for company, but Corran was the man in charge at the moment, and he might have concerns. "Here to talk business?" Luke asked, not bothering to feign enthusiasm.

"We could talk business if you want," Corran allowed, sitting at the table. "We could talk family. We could talk about what happened. We could talk about nothing. Your choice."

Luke narrowed his eyes. "So, there's no compelling reason for this?"

Corran just sighed. "Of course there is. You. You put me in the big seat before you left, so that makes you my responsibility, along with everybody else down there who's worried about you. So just sit down and talk to me for a second, and then I'll leave you alone."

Grudgingly, Luke sat. Corran was just doing his job, and he couldn't resent him for it. As a matter of fact, he was doing Luke's job. He was just so tired of it all, tired of working every blasted moment of his life, tired of hurting, tired of building things just to see the next petty tyrant tear them down, tired of everyone asking how he was and having to lie rather than admit he was functionally dead inside. Tired of failing. It would be a pathetic end to a life and career that was supposed to be so consequential, that had been destined for greater things: ideals burnt out, unwilling to make the final crawl to the finish line, crushed by the demands and expectations of an entire galaxy. He had never felt more empathy for Anakin Skywalker in his life.

Considering the state he was in, whatever was left of the Jedi would probably be better served by someone else.

Luke planted his elbows on the table and buried his face in his hands. "I don't think I can do this anymore," he admitted.

"You can," Corran insisted, a knee-jerk answer that betrayed a touch of fear that Luke might actually be serious. "You don't have to know how today, but you will. Take some time and figure it out."

"No, I don't know if I'm qualified," Luke explained. "Not after Lumiya. I'm not even sure I know what's right anymore."

Corran scoffed, but not unkindly. "She certainly wasn't. Nothing right about her, and I won't waste any time crying about it." He shifted in his seat. "Listen, Luke, I think this is one of those certain-point-of-view things that I know you hate, but hear me out. I know we're supposed to be about peace and justice and balance, but in a world that keeps trying to blow itself up, killing people is just part of the job. I know you know that. This is rich coming from me, I know, but we don't always have the luxury of keeping on the legal side of things. The Rebellion was illegal, but I think we can still agree it was right. Vandalizing the Death Star into atoms was illegal, but it was right. I don't think you stayed up at night mourning Palpatine after your father tossed him into the fryer. People make their own choices, and we can't always save them. Some don't want to be saved, for instance someone like Lumiya, who would lie to your face and fall on your blade just to break your will and haunt your dreams. Don't give her the satisfaction. Maybe your motives weren't exactly pure, and maybe lopping her head off was a bit extralegal, but it needed doing regardless of whether or not she killed Mara. She had it coming years ago. We all wanted you to do it, Mara asked you to do it, hell, even Lumiya asked you to do it. The best information you had told you it was a justified kill, and the fact that she lied to you doesn't make you a monster."

Luke listened with a deadpan expression, just waiting for Corran to finish making his prepared argument that so completely missed the point. "I hear you," he assured him, hoping his existential fatigue sounded like patience, "and I don't dispute anything you said. But the problem wasn't her. The problem is me. I didn't care if it was right, I wanted to kill her. I insisted on it. It wasn't about justice, it was about me, it was about Mara, and I enjoyed it."

Corran paled, finally understanding the more insidious problem. Luke knew he would. Corran had struggled with it himself many years ago after his infamous duel with a Yuuzhan Vong commander. He had broken the cardinal rule to never kill in vengeance, and had been wracked with remorse afterward. In a fit of forbidden passion, Luke had charged into the same trap, doubtless by Lumiya's design. She had weaponized her own death, twisting him into inflicting the blow himself.

"Well," Corran finally said, "it isn't much help, but I'll say it anyway. We're only human."

Luke sighed ruefully, his focus fading to sightlessness. "All too human," he agreed. In addition to being utterly desolate, he felt contaminated, made worse by the admission that he had fallen into the muck again through his own fault. Mara's death had wounded him more deeply than he had ever been before, and the only thing that had pierced the numb horror afterward had been an insatiable thirst for vengeance. Every instinct and hormone in his body had driven him to finish it, to end Lumiya as he should have done years before, to complete the one unfinished task Mara had demanded of him. It was a natural reaction, but that was no excuse for a Jedi Grand Master. Worse, all his most trusted friends had fallen prey to the same temptation, had closed ranks as soldiers rather than as Jedi, eager to see him cut her down, eager to help. The bloodlust of husbands, fathers, and lovers lurked dangerously close to the surface.

Only Jaina had tried to talk him out of it, and that was only because she cared about him and wanted the pleasure of killing Lumiya herself. Even Ben had been ready to kill her, although that confrontation probably would not have ended well.

The Sith had played him, and all the rest of them, perfectly.

Not for the first time, Luke wished guile came more naturally to him.

"I just . . ." he began, but then abandoned that train of thought. "I just don't want to talk about it any more."

Corran visibly swallowed the rest of his speech. "What do you want?" he asked. "Anything. Just name it."

"I want to lie down and die for a couple of days. Can you hold it together downstairs a while longer?"

"Sure thing."

"I'd rather not see anyone for now. Send Ben if you need me."

Ben wandered through the benign jumble of living things that crowded the Room of a Thousand Fountains, almost able to believe he was on some previously undiscovered world. The place was deserted, which it almost never was, and he was both afraid and grateful that everyone in the Temple was determined to give him and his father a wide berth for a few days.

Dad hadn't forgotten him by any means. Luke was still open to him in a way that Ben could feel was closed to most everyone else, not a summons or even a gentle invitation, but just an ongoing indication that Ben would be welcome whenever he wanted the company, whatever state Luke happened to be in. He certainly wasn't in a good state right now, and the awareness of his father's misery weighed on Ben.

Weighed like guilt.

How much of this was his own fault? That nagging thought just compounded his own grief, demanding to be satiated, and he curled up to sit beneath the low-slug bough of a tree and think.

Dad would have never let Mom be killed, he was sure, and yet they had all conspired to keep Dad in the dark. Jacen had always assured him that he didn't need to seek Luke's approval, that he shouldn't be afraid to do things Luke wouldn't understand, that he didn't have to be anything like Luke if he didn't want to be. Jacen had even taught Ben special techniques to hide from Luke in the Force, which was no mean feat. In fairness, Ben had asked him to, because in spite of everything, Dad's confusion and disapproval still cut him to the heart.

That was why he had gone to Mom when he discovered Jacen's deceit. He knew he should have confessed to both of them—about Lumiya, about Jacen's lies, Nelani's death, the Sith sphere and the dark trials Jacen had put him through on Ziost—but he couldn't find it in him to face his father in his moment of abject humiliation. Mom had agreed to keep his secret for a while. When he had told his mother about Jacen assigning him the Gejjen assassination, she was the one who suggested they shouldn't tell Dad. Ben suspected his mother also felt a little guilty for letting Jacen manipulate her. So she had gone off alone to make it right. And she was dead.

As far as he knew, Mom had taken all those secrets with her. She must have, because Dad clearly still didn't know that Jacen was secretly a Sith, that he had been partnered with Lumiya, that he had murdered Jedi Nelani and erased Ben's memory of it. Dad probably still didn't know anything about Gejjen or Ziost or any of it. And Ben was still keeping those secrets from him, even now.

What if he had been honest with Dad in the first place? Maybe Mom would still be alive. Maybe Jacen would be exposed, disgraced . . . or maybe dead.

Did he dare come clean now?

Ben squeezed his eyes shut in the gloom. He couldn't tell Dad now. Dad was barely himself, just trying to keep breathing from one day to the next. Mom had been afraid the truth would be enough to make Dad go nova and rip Jacen's head off, and that was before she had been killed. Lumiya hadn't survived the first twenty-four hours of Luke's bereavement. Now there was no telling what he might be capable of.

Besides that, Ben was starting to resent the fact that his father would be expected to clean up Jacen and his mess. Hadn't Dad suffered enough? He was tempted to let those secrets lie for a while yet, existing in a liminal shadow reality in which neither the Jedi Council nor Jacen knew that he knew everything. He hadn't told anyone but Mom. It might be best to keep it that way.

Ben knew he should be more conflicted about it, but he was intensely proud of the way his father had taken Lumiya. Once she had forfeited the last dregs of Luke's consideration, it had been clean, quick, devastating, as a lot of pretentious idiots had learned before her. It was no more than she deserved.

Now Ben had a score of his own to settle. Jacen had used and abused him, all while pretending to be a friend. He had gone to Jacen for guidance and wisdom, and instead Jacen had encouraged him to leave his parents, turned him into a secret agent of the government, and trained him to be an assassin. In hindsight, it was all too similar to the way Palpatine had groomed his mother.

Mom . . .

Maybe it was time for Jacen to reap a little of what he'd sown.

All this time Jacen had played him for a fool, and he had no idea. The omniscient Colonel Solo had no idea Ben knew his secret. He could use that to his advantage, could get close enough to Jacen to end it. A year ago it would have been laughable to imagine he could take Jacen Solo in a fight, one of the most subtle and broadly-educated Jedi alive, but he'd learned a lot in that year. With surprise on his side, there was a chance. Ben wasn't under any illusion that Luke would never learn the particulars, because his ability to keep secrets from his father in person was very limited, but it would be more satisfying to present him with the facts when the deed was done.

He certainly had reason enough. Quite apart from all the rest of it, Ben wasn't convinced Alema had killed Mara. He knew Lumiya hadn't done it. There was only one other person he knew of in league with those two who was also strong enough to take Mom in a fight, who had proven he would kill to protect a secret. Jacen had known where the body was. Jacen had been wounded. Jacen had been in the system at the right time, left, and then doubled back. Ben was left to draw his own conclusions.

He couldn't confide any of that to Dad, not yet. He had no proof, and he couldn't tell anyone without compromising his own nebulous plans. And how hideous would it be to tell Dad right now that his own nephew might have murdered his wife? No, Dad wasn't ready to hear that. He would handle it himself, and then they could try to find their peace together.

Don't worry about your father, Mom had always said. That's my job. Ben supposed it was his job now, and anyone who crossed him would learn to regret it.

He was startled out of his thoughts by the too-obvious approach of someone along the path. That clumsy tread was clearly intended as a courtesy. "Ben?" Master Horn called, stopping ten paces away. "Ben, I just need to tell you something."

"It's all right, Master Horn," Ben insisted, pushing aside the leaves, relieved that he hadn't been crying. "What is it?"

Corran came and sank into a crouch beside the tree. "Sorry to bother you, son, but I've just been to talk to your dad. He wants to keep to himself for a while, and says he'd rather not see anyone but you. We'll try not to bother either of you with nonessentials, but I hope you won't mind being our official go-between."

Ben managed a subdued smile, grateful that was all it was. "Don't worry, Master Horn. I'll take care of it."

The Jedi Master returned the expression. "You're a real trooper, kid," he said, standing to leave. "Your mom would be proud of you."

Ben liked to think she would be. No, he wouldn't mind taking care of Dad.

With any luck, he'd soon be taking care of a lot of things.

The story continues in In the Shadow of His Wings: Family (Chapter 18).