So, this is a tale that I've been playing around with for a while and finally decided to write. Definitly inspired by A Thousand Suns! It is a little depressing, but if you guys like it, it will get better...maybe. Enjoy!

It takes a lot to ruin a man's life. It takes a whole lot more to just kill him. Cody was finding that out the hard way.

He stared down at the hissing blue blade, felt the burning prinprick on his stomach, and wished he had kept his armor with him on this trip. Yes, he was done with the Empire, with Palpatine, with Skywalker, with the pain, but he still had his armor. He'd changed it, made it more personal for him, painted it black with dull orange stripes. Made it more…empty. He'd left one year to the hour that he had ordered his men to shoot his best friend, one year that he had killed Kenobi.

One year to when he had destroyed himself.

He had left for his own sanity. His men had deserted long before he had, being smarter than him and all. They had tried to tell him, tried to warn him, but he had been gone then, dead.

The blue blade against his stomach had brought him back.

He still could hear the screams of Kenobi's mount, see the blood and guts and limbs and debree fall down into the abyss, still feel the way it had felt as his heart deserted him. Kenobi hadn't been the only one killed that day. His entire family had been massacred.

At least….that's what he had thought. Then, two months after Meds had left, he'd gotten a message from the one being he had never thougth he would hear from. A Jedi.

You can still save yourself.

Could he still save himself, after everything he had done?

You aren't alone anymore.

He wasn't so sure, but the messages had kept coming. Finally, he had done it. He had stolen a ship from the Executor and ran. Ran as fast as he could away from what was left of a horrible nightmare….and into another.

For six months, he had wandered the galaxy, waiting for another message, taking on bounties here and there, making a little money.

Then…..it had come.

He had doen exactly what it had told him to do. He'd come unarmed, his armor safely stowed on his ship and walked into the bar next to the deserted port. He'd sat there, at the bar, for hours, just waiting.

Then…..they had come.

He heard them moving outside and in the shadows. He'd thought nothing of it. He'd stop fearing death a year and a half ago. What he wasn't expecting was the blade that was now burning a small hole through his shirt or the face that looked at him now, hate and anger and…loss written in his eyes.

Cody had felt his heart beat for the first time at that point.

If you feared nothing, you wouldn't be alive.

He hadn't feared anything for the past year and a half. He hadn't lived. The beings standing around him just watched the figure in front of him, waiting, their once familiar faces now cold. The being finally spoke.

"Why?"