Lessons

by fyre

FEEDBACK: [email protected]

TEASER: Luke's internal struggle after the disastrous duel with Vader on Bespin.

TIMELINE: Archive: Rebellion. Set at the end of Episode V The Empire Strikes Back

DISCLAIMER: The characters, setting, and larger plot lines do not belong to me in any way. No money is being made off of the writing of this story.

After all that had happened Commander Luke Skywalker, Jedi Knight in training, did the sanest thing he could think of.

He went mad.

*Calm, calm.* He repeated like a mantra in his brain as he sat huddled with his knees brought up against his chest on one of the bunks in the Falcon's hold. He tried in vain to grasp some shred of control before Leia and the others returned to check on him again once they were securely in hyperspace on the way to the Rebel rendezvous. Rocking slightly, he rested his forehead against his knees trying to calm his frantic breathing. *Calm, passive . . . Master Yoda had said that through the Force. . . Damn the Force!* He sat up suddenly, slamming the back of his head against the bulkhead. The more he learned the more he realized his life was a sham. A life based on a dream, an illusion now made painfully real. He'd found his father.

*It's true, It's true you said it, it's true!*

"Is not! Is *not!*" he cried in a desperate denial, voice rising as if by sheer volume he could dispute it all. He raised one hand and one stump of an arm to his throbbing head, but the clamp on his cauterized right arm halted his motion with a yank, bringing the horror of his situation home again. "Is not" he whimpered.

*But what if it is?* a hopeless part, an unsquishable part of his mind whispered in horror. *I should never believe him! He'd say anything to get what he wants! (he wants you!) He's dark, evil, ragefull; the Emperor's pet horror. He lied, he lied!* The feelings, the swirling cauldron of dread, terror, and certainty defeated his defiance, his denial making it mute and muffled.

Vader *had* to have lied! The Truth was too horrible to contemplate. Not only the Truth of who the Dark Sith Lord was (he wasn't the nameless father he'd adored in his childhood dreams, he *wasn't!*) but what that meant about his Aunt Beru, Uncle Owen, and Master Yoda. And more importantly Obi-Wan.

If the Lie was the Truth then it meant his guardians had known. If they were related to him in the first place, another loss! *They must have known!* he thought furiously, his left hand clenching until the knuckles were white. It meant that Master Yoda, his teacher his MASTER, and the last Jedi had hidden it from him, had wanted him ignorant even as he instructed him on the knowledge a Jedi held most dear. And it meant that Obi-Wan whom he had trusted so completely had betrayed him.

Why did Vader wait to tell him if it was indeed true and not just another seductive ploy? He certainly had talked during their duel. Why didn't he tell him beforehand?

Beforehand.

Luke began giggling at the unexpected pun, staring down at his left and his nonexistent right hand. Still sputtering he ripped off the tubes and the Force only knew what other medical equipment Leia had attached to what remained of his arm. He swung his legs over the edge of the bed and leaned forward on his elbows ignoring the pain in his right one and simply stared at his mutilated limb giggling inanely.

Ignorance was bliss.

Knowledge tore and battered and bruised him, made life and living a parody and a cruel twisted never-ending joke.

Tears escaped his eyes as he laughed harder, nearly doubling over.

It was too funny.

It was tragic.

It was hysterical.

It was horrible.

It was true, something whispered deep within him, within the Force, it had to be. It explained so much.

(Much anger in him. Like his father.)

*"Nooooo!"* In one frantic, furious, adrenaline filled motion Luke rose to his feet and pushed over the medical bin next to the bunk, hurdling it at the bulkhead with all his strength. *I'm a Jedi, I'm a Rebel! Darth Vader killed my father, my nameless faceless father, killed Ben, killed my aunt and uncle, destroyed Alderaan, tortured and imprisoned Han and Leia, killed all the Jedi, left me alone; no father, no Jedi, no Master, no friend, no teacher. Hiding always hiding.*

*Alone.*

"Master Luke! Master Luke!"

Luke turned to look over his shoulder to see C-3P0 waddle carefully into the room, looking as concerned as a droid possibly could. He realized that he must have been screaming because his throat hurt. He looked around at the rather prominent dent in Han's beloved ship (*oh my friend!*) and the warped box and the scattered and broken medical supplies. He raised his right hand to run it through his hair sheepishly and halted halfway when the truth hit him again and he felt the urge to laugh and cry sweep over him. Threepio flustered as only he could as he touched his Master's shoulder in an effort to gain his attention again. "I must ask you to return to bed Master Luke. Princess Leia was most insistent! They will restrain you. Don't hurt yourself sir please!"

"Restrain me?" Luke repeated hollowly for a moment before an unreserved anger flowed through him. "Restrain me?! You know." he announced with certainty tingling his hoarse voice as he advanced on the terrified protocol droid who began backing up towards the exit in haste "You know don't you? You've always known. You knew, Ben knew." Luke jabbed the droid in the chest with his stump of an arm, reveling in the pain. "Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru they knew. Everyone ALWAYS knew!"

"Luke!" The Princess rushed into the room just as C-3P0 took an unsteady step back on his newly attached legs and tumbled into her arms. She shoved him rather unceremoniously away and into Chewie who towered right behind her. The Wookie sent the droid off into the corridor with a low growl. Ignoring them both Leia reached for the maimed young man, eyes wide with concern, darkly ringed with loss. Luke didn't respond but simply stood there quivering like a strung bow, eyes distant, breath catching in his throat. But it was his blue eyes that worried her the most.

Luke mourned for something lost. Innocence? Naivete? Ignorance? What knowledge had he gained that now tore at him in the vulnerability of aftermath, of shock and fever? Whatever it was it was enough to drive him out of his mind.

"Luke." she repeated his name softly again as she touched his shoulder lightly with one hand and even with just that she could feel the fierce heat radiating from his body. "It's all right," she soothed "It's over."

"Yes" he seemed to agree in a pain-filled rasp as he stared off to one side nodding with quick jerky movements as if he feared his head would fall off. His left hand came up to hold her hand tightly. "Yes, please, all over. All over. No more. No more, please!" he begged.

"No more." Leia agreed quickly trying to lead him back to the bunk stepping over the mine field of medical emergency equipment strewn on the deck. "Just rest now Luke."

He stumbled and managed to catch a bulkhead for support. Slowly, so very slowly he slid down with his back against the cool metal to huddle next to the bunk and the holochess table. Chewie crooned softly as he leaned over to pick the young rebel pilot up with furry hands under his elbows "*Cub you are not well.*"

Luke stared up and up at the Wookie in bewilderment and confusion. Sighing loudly Chewie waited until Leia had straightened the bunk and cleared away most of the odds and ends littering the floor before helping him back into bed.

"*How did he even get up there?*" Chewie murmured to the princess as they tucked the unresisting and completely unhelpful Jedi in.

"I flew." Luke replied eagerly before Leia could answer, his voice breaking just slightly "I flew Leia. I really really flew. Really really."

"Yes, Luke I know." she agreed swiftly hoping to quiet him as she brushed back his hair lightly, her fingers feeling almost burnt by the light contact with his skin.

Nodding and smiling in relief that she understood him, Luke drifted. Skywalker. That's what he was. A pilot, a flyer. Space was his home, high high above the land.

***

Luke did not turn around from his vantage point as he stared off into hyperspace, the stars streaking by in a blue haze, but he could feel Obi-Wan's watchful attention on him as he fingered his father's lightsaber absently. "I've never been in space before." he said into the waiting silence "It feels . . . different."

Kenobi took a step closer, as silent and measured in his steps here as he had been on Tatooine. "Are you cold?" he asked quietly.

Luke couldn't feel his fingertips; it was too cold even to shiver now that the adrenaline of the escape from Tatooine had left him and his white tunic was meant to keep moisture in and reflect the burning light of the twin suns. "A little" he admitted still not able to pull his eyes away from the viewport. He shrugged as if brushing the concern aside. It was something he hadn't considered in all his dreams of leaving home; that he'd miss the warmth, the brightness, the ever-dry smell of home. He'd only thought about getting away and breaking loose. It would be nearly dinnertime back home. Back home.

What home?

***

"We'll rendevous with the fleet soon Luke. " Leia murmured as she carefully washed the throbbing cut on his cheek that even now had turned a vivid shade of purplish-blue.

***

Ben had placed a careful hand on his shoulder then, yet somehow as comforting as when he was little and Aunt Beru would take him into her arms and hold him close after his nightmares. "You have every right to grieve, to be angry Luke but it serves no useful purpose; hatred heals no wounds. Put it aside." he said gently, his hand falling away "Come I want to show you something."

"Sit." Ben motioned to the chair as he came to stand in front of Luke in the silence of the Falcon's hold. The captain and copilot were still busy in the cockpit and the droids had trundled off to be by themselves and do whatever droids did to pass time with each other. All thoughts of the rest of the crew were banished when Kenobi spoke again as if his words demanded Luke's undivided attention. "Still your breathing. Still your mind. Tell me what's there."

He took a deep breath and he shut his eyes and let it out slow simply doing as Ben said, not letting himself think of the strange order or the whys or hows . . .

"I-I don't know."

***

"Shh Luke." the Princess soothed. Luke didn't see to hear her, eyes open but fixated somewhere on the ceiling above him.

"*He's inside.*" Chewie growled softly, one shaggy paw reaching out to touch Luke's sweat soaked, wind-whipped, disheveled hair. Leia swallowed and nodded slightly. Chewie was right; sometimes the Wookie surprised her with his perceptiveness, especially regarding Luke. As of late as his Jedi training began to show evidence in everyday life, as being a Jedi became more than just a simple job or pastime but a way of life he had chosen to embrace, it was the Wookie who understood his strange, ofttimes deeply introverted behavior.

Luke probably wasn't even aware of her, she rationalized but the hollowness and distance in his voice unnerved her as he conversed with who knew what and she sought to reassure him with her presence. "We're here." she whispered to him placing her hand on top of the Wookie's where it rested against Luke's temple. "We're right here."

***

"You do." Obi-Wan insisted gently.

"It's . . . familiar." he breathed his eyelids fluttering slightly. "Like a-a dream."

"Hmm" The old Jedi murmured, but Luke was focused elsewhere, inward ever inward, instinctively not really understanding why or what he was doing and not bothering to take the time to in the first place. It seemed to help.

He tried again to answer the Knight's question. "It's bright and warm and--" He gave into the strange compelling urge and reached out to touch it inside, right hand twitching in response and then came the rush of feeling, so bright and overpowering that it drowned him in sensations unlike anything he'd ever felt. As alien as water it flowed through him with the strength of a sandstorm.

"Easy." A hand on one shoulder, a soft commanding presence and he snapped back to the Falcon with a jerk.

***

"Easy! Easy Luke!" Leia frantically trying to calm his sudden thrashing with Chewie's furry help. Luke's eyes fluttered rapidly, still wide and unnaturally bright, his self lost in the fevered dreams that now gripped him.

***

Luke looked up in astonishment at Ben who now stood beside him. "What-what was th-- was that the Force?"

"The potential inside you. It is strong." Kenobi replied with a faint smile touching his lips, eyes alive as he sat on the edge of one of the Falcon's cobbled together computers that was tucked into an alcove of sorts against the bulkhead. "A Jedi uses the Force to help, to defend all life. It also imparts knowledge past, present, and future."

Knowledge. Both a curse and a gift, like his life, like his dreams. Suddenly Luke stiffened under the princess's and the Wookie's ministrations, gaze and voice suddenly lucid, no longer carrying on a conversation with thin air but now focused directly on them. "You knew too. You knew and you lied." His voice took on a peculiar sing-song quality, lacking an accusational tone; almost pleasant and nonchalant. "You all lied, lied and died, lied and died and its all my fault."

Leia shook her head stealing an anxious glance at Chewie to see if he understood what Luke was talking about. "Luke it wasn't you. It was Vader. Vader who is responsible." Cold fury tinged her words and her jaw clenched as she thought of Han, of Alderaan . . .

"Vader?" he repeated blearily as if it was an alien unfamiliar word, tasting it and finding it bitter with despair and darkness. "Vader," he spat matching the princess with the depths of his feelings, feeding off of them, bonding with them as he locked his gaze with hers lifting his head off the bunk. "He killed Ben. He killed Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru. He killed Alderaan. He hurt you and Han and Chewie . . . He killed my . . ."

*Ah ah ah! Who's lying now? Who's dying now?*

"Shut-up! Shut-up!" Luke clenched his teeth and squeezed his eyes shut as he pushed Leia away and sat up.

Startled Leia practically fell off the edge of the bunk had not Chewie caught her elbow with one massive hand and steadied her. She couldn't follow Luke's words. One minute he seemed awake and aware, the next he was yelling and carrying on conversations with things only he could hear. She prayed it was just because of his fever, because of being a Jedi, and not because Vader had done something to his mind. That would be too much on top of everything else that had happened that day. *Was it really only one day?* "We'll fix it!" she said trying to reach out to him, to hold him. "The Alliance will fix everything Luke I promise, if you just--"

"You must hate me." he said simply opening his bright eyes to stare at her and Chewie in turn, his mood changing like quicksilver. "You must want me dead. If I had my-his lightsaber . . ." he reached for where it would have been with his right hand and finding it once again attached to medical tubes was about to rip them off had not Chewbacca restrained him gently. Luke struggled for a moment but his attention shifted suddenly and he continued "But he took it back. He took it back Chewie. Obi-Wan said he wanted me to have it but he must've changed his mind cause he took it back after I cut. . . Or maybe he lied about that, lied about everything, about me being a Jedi someday. It tried to kill him. My own --"

*Don't say it! Don't even think it! You have no proof!*

Except inside. *Inside in that warm bright place Ben showed me and Yoda opened wide. But it's not bright and warm anymore. It's dark, poisoned . . .*

He was alone. He realized with a frightened burst of insight. Completely and utterably alone. Even without this damning knowledge separating him from his friends his new Force connection widened the gap into a chasm and he felt loneliness grip his heart in a way it never had before. His Master was far far away, their link severed by shielding of the swamp planet, his contact with the last remaining living Jedi broken and he bled inside. He felt fear, tasted it like the bile that rose in his throat. To be Jedi and be alone without others of his kind in the galaxy was a maddening, insane prospect that he couldn't swallow, couldn't begin accept any more than what Vader had revealed. He reached for Obi-Wan, for Yoda but he could not find them and he threw back his head and howled his grief and loneliness like a wounded animal.

Leia practically jumped out of her skin at the sound. Luke simply broke of conversation to start screaming and it wasn't just any cry. This was grief Leia realized with a sinking sensation in her already aching heart. This was loss and aloneness and stark fear. This was anger, impotent rage, and denial. Such denial. What she had felt looking Han in their last moments together was multiplied a thousand fold in Luke's haunted terrified blue eyes. Chewbacca wuffed mournfully as he reached over to hold the young man.

Tears pricked her own dark eyes and she sat once again on the bed and put her arms around him and Chewie as well trying to be there for him as the unearthly sound echoed back neverendingly around the hold.

"Luke your hand will be fine." she whispered and as if suddenly hearing her he stopped and held very silent and still in their grasps.

My hand.

*Ben?*

It was over, they had been right, he had been wrong so very very wrong and so alone. Where was he? Maybe Obi-Wan wouldn't come, would never come now that he knew as if he was tainted with the knowledge, unfit to be a Jedi. * Maybe he just hates me, maybe they all hated me from the very beginning because . . . *

of HIM.

"He's a monster isn't he?" Luke asked into the sudden silence.

Leia raised her head from his shoulder and sat back a bit as Chewie shifted to kneel beside the bunk, but still managing to be taller than the sitting Jedi. "Yes he is." she agreed brushing the hair out of his face.

Luke seemed to still and calm, a mask dropping over his exhausted hopeless features. He nodded slowly as if coming to a portent decision, his whole body shaking with intense control and fever. "Then I'm one too. By default. It's only natural. That's why they didn't tell me because a monster can't be a Jedi. A monster can't help anyone."

"*Cub this is nonsense, silly dreams. You don't know what you are saying.*"

"We'll get him, I swear it. For everything." The princess vowed in a low tone that was more frightening than any screamed cries of vengeance from her.

"You'll help me kill my father's murderer?"

"Of course."

"What if it's me?" Luke whispered in desperation, voice breaking as stinging tears and certainty filled his soul. "What if it's me? Do you still promise?" He reached out with surprising speed and strenght to latch onto the fabric of her shirt and brought her face to face with him, feverish lost blue eyes boring into frightened brown ones "*Do you still PROMISE?!*"

Chewbacca howled and using his superior strength managed to pry away Luke's hands and press him back down on the bunk. "*Enough Cub, Enough. Too much too fast. Too much. Rest now, please.*"

***

"There is no emotion; there is peace There is no ignorance; there is knowledge There is no passion; there is serenity There is no death; there is the Force."

Luke shook his head slightly in confusion as he leaned forward on his knees, eyes on Ben. "If I've always had this, why didn't I know?"

(Why didn't I know?)

(But you did know!)

(That's not true. That's *impossible!*)

"You did know." Obi-Wan replied with a warm smile, knowing something and seeing something Luke could only just barely begin to perceive. "The Force can, when a learner has mastered control, aide in all manner of things. Battle, mediation, creation, healing, piloting . . "

(Your father was one of the best starpilots in the galaxy and a cunning warrior. He was also a good friend.)

(You worry about those fighters, I'll worry about the tower.)

(The Force is strong with this one.)

"You use it unthinkingly, instinctively, and that's good but to be a Jedi you must become aware of when and how you use the Force and most importantly why."

Luke thought for a moment, digesting that. "Like not for trivial things?"

Kenobi laughed lightly touching his shoulder briefly. "Nothing in life is trivial Luke. Nothing unimportant. Motive Luke. What motivates your actions. If your motives are pure, your strength will increase. If you are calm your mind clear,"

(Clear your mind of questions.)

(But I want to know. . .)

"You will know what is right and when it is right to act."

"And if my motives aren't pure?"

(If I'm tainted by my own blood, by the sins of another dark shadow, looming over foolish broken shards of childhood dreams; is that why you will not come now when I need you most teacher, friend, guardian, *Master?*)

Would they never reach out to him through the Force again? Was he forever trapped in the rising darkness alone?

The Old Jedi's voice turned serious, his own eyes suddenly filled with fleeting haunting shadows for a flickering instant before he answered. "Your power can corrupt you. Hurt those you care about, bring about your destruction."

Self-destruct press here. Four little words. *I,* pause for dramatic effect here, *AM YOUR FATHER* Poof!

No more Luke Skywalker.

It was so funny he couldn't resist the urge to laugh.

Suddenly Obi-Wan turned the subject deftly on its side to lighter things. "When you pilot, when you race . . "

Luke blinked in surprise sitting up suddenly. "You know about that?" He hadn't even told his uncle that. He'd said he'd just been flying out on his own when he'd wrecked his skyhopper. If his aunt and uncle had known he was racing his friends through Beggar's Canyon they would have never let him fly again.

Ben smiled at the almost guilty tone of a child caught red handed. "What is it like?" he asked, his gaze seeming to see right through Luke "What do you feel?"

(Search your feelings, you know it to be true.)

"Free." Luke replied immediately, a grin forming on his tanned features as he remembered the joy of it, the rush. "Everything goes so fast, yet I can see everything so clearly. And I can almost close my eyes and let my hands just guide the skyhopper on its own through the canyon without beacons or lights . . . light . . ."

***

"Luke stop it!"

Someone was shaking him, someone was calling to him, someone was laughing and laughing and laughing . . .

"Just STOP it!" Leia all but screamed, ready to slap him, one hand raised if he didn't stop that awful laughter. She would rather have him screaming again than continue this horrible empty parody of joy that sounded almost like sobbing, like madness. "You're going to pull through this!" she ordered furiously, Rebel Leader once again, as the terrible sound died away and lucidity and sadness flooded the blue eyes of her friend once again. "You're going to live through this, we all are."

With his left hand, after first unconsciously beginning to move his right before Chewie stopped him, he reached up to brush his fingers gently against her cheek, his voice shockingly old, older than time itself, heavy with years of wisdom. "My life's a lie Leia." he said softly, trying to explain, trying to have her understand. "It's all a lie and everyone knew. Everyone. You can't live a lie."

"*Cub--*" Chewie began, his own voice cracking at the sound of Luke's.

"You can't. You can't, even if it's not the truth, you can't." The sound started to fade away even as he himself did, not into a dream world but into a nothingness that Leia feared Han was now trapped in.

"Fight it damn you." she hissed in desperation grabbing hold of his left hand as it began to fall away, clutching it fiercely. "Fight *him!*"

Luke shook his head, surprisingly calm, accepting. "I will not fight you . . . If I fight you, if I fight, I fight myself." His gaze drifted away from hers and so did his grasp on the present "See Master Yoda, I figured it out. I figured it all out. . ." Finally his eyes fluttered shut and he went limp on the bunk.

"*It's shock. The cub will recover.*" The Wookie hurried to reassure her.

Leia shivered, rubbing her arms unable to tear her eyes away from Luke's sleeping form. "He never said a word about his hand. Not one word Chewie."

***

The crash of glass greeted Leia as she hurried to the med center to check on Luke after being pulled aside by General Rieekan and Mon Mothma with over a thousand questions of where she had been all these weeks, where Skywalker had vanished to after Hoth, where Han was, why his ship was here, who the stranger was. . .

She didn't have time for this!

"Don't touch me!" Luke yelled in fury pushing away the human medic with surprising strength. Leia rushed into the room, desperate to calm him not because of the Alliance, not because he was a valuable pilot, but because he was her friend and he needed her just as she needed him.

2-1B blocked her path and steadfastly refused to move out of the way "Princess Leia," he began in a voice programed to be calm and helpful "I advise you to leave while we tend to Commander Skywalker."

"But--"

One thin metal arm raised halting her protests. "Please. For his best interests."

***

The drugs didn't work, the Force flowing through him countering the cold fire poured into his veins. Snarling he pushed 2-1B away, mind running in circles.

"--I can't do this, I can't do this, I can't do this--!"

"Commander Skywalker! Please sir, I do not want to have to restrain you."

Luke turned his attention back to the med droid, mind calling up images of Hoth and Han who had rescued him, Ben who had sent him to Dagobah to learn to be a Jedi. Sitting down on the edge of the bed Luke breathed deep allowing the sensors to flood over him but take no accurate reading. He found himself giggling as the med droid tried again and again to calibrate the heart monitor while he slowed his pulse one moment and sped it up the next.

*How easy it would be just to stop it,* he wondered idly swinging his legs back and forth ignoring the droid's struggle. The constant rhythm in his chest, the air flowing in and out, the surging of his blood; to simply let go and expand into beyond, into the Force where the Others, all those who had gone before waited, waited for him where he would never ever be alone, he could simply be without pain or fear, despair, betrayal . . .

*Then I'd never have to go through another moment alone (But Leia!) never have to know for sure (Liar) never have to ask or see Yoda (you gave your word), never have to fulfill HIS destiny (come with me), never face the fear of falling to the Dark , (the hate is swelling in you now) never have to face Obi-Wan (not logical). . .*

It would be so easy. . .

2-1B's programing as advanced as any medical droid in the galaxy nearly didn't catch Luke's suddenly lifeless form in time.

***

"What happened?" Leia begged as she rounded the corner that led to the medical bay, sending several technicians flying without a backward glance.

Chewie raised his head from where it leaned against the glass observation window slowly as if he was now weighted down. "*He's dying*"

Leia's whole body seemed to freeze in shock as the news chased the breath from her lungs. No not Luke *and* Han! She couldn't take that. "Why?" she gasped, nearly swallowing and choking on the word before anger surged through her. "How?! It was just his hand! It was just his HAND!"

"*He just . . .*" the Wookie shrugged helplessly, mournfully "*stopped living*"

"Why can't they bring him back? WHY!?" She slammed one fist hard against the window. " DAMMIT LUKE LIVE! Don't you DARE leave too! LIVE!"

His lips were turning blue like the tips of his five remaining fingers. His skin was ashen, eyes closed and dark like deep holes. The body was just a shell abandoned and discarded. 2-1B pulled back reading the falling brain engram and in a very human motion turned to the window where the Wookie, the princess and the two droids stood and shook his head.

She hadn't cried when Han had been frozen, didn't want him to see her in tears in what could have been his last moments, but now there was no one left to watch and she cried now for both of them. "Luke, *please* . . ."

***

Obi-Wan slowly opened his eyes. "He lives. Bruised almost broken, but he lives."

The small Jedi Master who stood in the middle of the swamp bowed his head over his cane and seemed to sigh. "Reckless . . . reckless and strong yet. Held firm he did. Battled this he has, proven wrong I was." Yoda looked up at the shimmering Force-figure of his friend and student, whose appearance and age shifted as his mood did. Yoda had known him through his whole life, it didn't matter what image the Force projected to him. "Right you were Obi-Wan. Failed us the boy has not. Glad of this, glad."

"Despite everything." Obi-Wan whispered sadly.

"And what of Vader? Told him think you?" Yoda cocked his head, green eyes sharp still though his body was finally failing "Great burden he will carry if so, great burden."

"*We* should have told him." Kenobi practically spat "The council, *you* were wrong in that decision. Because of this lie we've misled and betrayed him, given him a mentally unsupportive training as a Jedi Knight. He is no more your Padawan than he was mine. We denied him any and *every* bond to us to keep this damned secret!"

Yoda ignored the anger, understanding it even as he and every Jedi before him tried to deny its hold on their actions, curb its flow. "Much was asked of him, denied to him but proven himself has he. Not a Jedi yet is he." The master turned and began his journey back to his house, his solitary existence. "The past is over. Lie to him you did, no other way there was. His future, now open."

"The future is not yet written."

The wizened creature stopped and turned his head to share a smile with the spirit, remembering too well the boy he had once been. "Taught you that lesson did I."

"But there is more than the future Master, there is now."

"Hmmm. Qui-Gon's lesson that. Go to him will you?" he asked watching as Obi-Wan sank down onto a log.

"And say what to him Master?" he asked, his voice an echo from earlier times "If Vader told him . . ." he buried his face in his hands "He was in my care. He *trusted* me."

"What Jedi could he be with the truth so early in his grasp?" Yoda countered, banging the edge of his cane in the muck for emphasis "Scars enough the boy carries without this burden. Orphaned, his uncle, his aunt, you, this failure, this triumph . . . For the best it was." He took a step towards his one-time pupil, his voice softer now. "Guilt you need no longer carry. More than yours the fault was. Much more than yours alone. Strong in the Force he is, like his father; unready yes; reckless, angry, unheeding, but strong." he paused for a moment before coming to a decision nodding slowly "A good apprentice."

***

"I heard you." he whispered.

Leia wiped the remnant tear tracts off her face with her free hand as she sat beside the bed. "Don't ever do that again Luke, don't you ever, *ever* give up."

Luke didn't answer, his blue eyes were so carefully empty, so lifeless; an expression she would grow painfully accustomed to seeing over the next few days that would drag on into weeks and months . . .

"I'll be right here with Chewie and the droids."

Luke barely moved his head in acquiescence eyes distant off to one side, his chest barely rising and falling as if a great weight now pressed down on him from all sides, intolerable, inevitable, crushing. Only his lips moved silently over and over again like the pleading mantra of a desperate mentally wounded and lost young man. Leia could not make out the word but she knew instinctively it was not directed at her but someone else he needed so very badly. She wished she could simply order whoever it was to be here but she had a feeling that whoever Luke needed so was out of her reach just as he or she was out of Luke's.

His eyes fluttered shut after a moment and if it wasn't for her hand on his chest and the slow reluctant rhythm of his heart beneath it, it would have been no different than watching his lifeless body earlier before he had suddenly begun to breath again, live again.

Luke sank into himself, mentally inactive and voluntarily defenseless from the shards of memories thick with fear than rained down cutting deep, drawing emotional bloodstains that would perhaps never be removed. His mind echoed with emptiness. Alone among friends. There was no one else. The Emperor had killed them all. For a moment he thought he felt a familiar ripple in the Force and his mantra became a breathless silent question that took the last of his strength and conscious awareness before the nightmares took him.

"Ben?"

"Shh, rest now. Don't dream," Obi-Wan soothed gently, pain evident in his own light eyes "Not tonight." He sighed deeply before continuing trying desperately to explain *why.*

"I would have told you Luke if the council and Yoda had not forbidden it. I never wanted to betray your trust. You trusted me so easily as if part of you knew, remembered almost, how the bond should have been before the dark times . . . sleep now." he whispered brow knitted with concern and pain wishing he could simply reach out and hold the boy he'd promised to protect, hold him forever safe until the darkness passed. "I'm here. I will never leave you. You shall never be truly alone with the Force, Jedi. Never."

end