Star Wars: Edge of Hope

Chapter Forty Nine: Wars In Our Skin...

Ben felt the ground sinking out from underneath his feet. He fell backwards against the bent and rotten rusty steps leading up towards the ghostly throne poised in its last sober position for an eternity now. Ben looked at the chair, the sideways slouch it had as the mechanisms and components that had once kept it straight, and held it high were disintegrating. A cold palor broke into a wild explosion of anger as Ben half crawling up the dias drew his saber to strike the ghosts of his past down.

Ben Solo: No more, no more pain...no more anger...no more hate. Today you become nothing but the worthless relic you are. Just a memory, a memory that can't hurt me or them, or anyone...not anymore. WHY?! Why...out of all the riddles and the lies, and the stories...I want to know WHY you did this? They want to label you as a monster just as they had me...but there's more, there's always more to the story than that.

Umbra: You're right.

Ben swung around his saber fizziling out as his hand went slack around the hilt. It was impossible, but there she stood the ancient saber held in her grasp. Ben breathed a sigh of relief, but then he looked back over his shoulder towards the broken throne. The cradle of all the Dark things which the Emperor had unleashed on the galaxy, and on the people he loved.

Umbra: You look surprised, Ben Solo. Did you really think...I'm not so easy to kill...as you no doubt will have seen before with my sister.

Umbra's eyes wandered over Ben's body, drinking in every detail of him. The subtle turn out of his bottom lip when he was waiting to speak...the curl of his hair around his neck as it became wet with sweat and the spray from the lake crashing through the broken eye of the hull. But what caught her eye most the way he kept looking straight at her. She could feel his stare, but his eyes weren't looking at her. They were looking for the one locked away deep inside the body...he was looking for Rey. Umbra broke her eyes away from his and stepped up to stand opposite him, the dilapidated moldy crumbling ruin.

Umbra: There has always been...something...pulling at each of us, Ben. Some piece of history keeps reaching out trying to pull us back to this moment. Did you know the Sith and the Jedi were not always enemies? One could say, they were Brothers....siblings...the very essence of Balance created in and from the living Force's will. But much like all families with power...sooner or later there is always the question which begs to be answered.

Umbra reached out her hand running it across the black velvet inner lining of the throne. As she did plumes of fibrous black threads flew up into the air caught on the breath of the ghosts around them. Ben swerved and leaned out of their trajectory, all around them the groaning of the dead and the dying echoed through the rusty collection of Corellian steel. The spirits filled with the disquiet of sudden inescapable deaths calling out to them as the wreck heaved and swayed on the torrent waters.

Ben Solo: I know everything I need to know.

Umbra: Do you? I very much doubt that Ben Solo. There are so many things you don't know. No, not even my dear sweet simpering sister knew. You can try to fight it all you like Ben, but you know the truth now just as you've always known it. There can be no escape from destiny, not even the Force itself can change it, and those who try to thwart its law...suffer fates worse than death. You hate me, I can see it plainly in your face, in the tone of your voice....I can feel it in the energy radiating from your spirit. I don't blame you...Ben...but all I do and all I have done, is done with it's purpose. Do you know why you keep coming back here? It's simple. There is something here, some break in time...some missing piece...that the Force wants you to see.

Ben Solo: I'm not here for a history lesson. I know what kind of a monster Sidious was and for a time what a loyal servant my grandfather was. But don't make the mistake of thinking you know me. I am not them. Just as you are not Rey...