Edges of the World

Chapter 35

The words hung in the air between them.

The calm confident man Leia had been gazing at moments before was gone, replaced instead by a boy full of a terrible desperate need.

"What do you mean our father is alive? Leia, that isn't funny."

"I wouldn't be saying it if it wasn't true, Luke. Dad's alive."

"No. If he was alive he wouldn't have left me. He would have come back for me or... or... Someone would have told me. That can't be true. No!" He recoiled, backing into the wall, and started shouting at the air. "Ben! Ben where are you! Please Ben, please?"

"Luke, you have to understand, this really isn't easy to explain. I mean it when I say he is alive, really and truly alive. Trapped inside a prison of his own making, but he is still in there."

Those eyes Leia had admired so recently met her own, they no longer shone. There was a manic quality to them, and Luke was shaking.

She had thought their argument the night before had purely been due to exhaustion and alcohol mixing into a potent blend of heightened emotions and loosened filters, that sober, the shining being he had become would be able to... she was not quite sure what exactly, but she had not expected him to react to this news the way he was.

"He's trapped? Like Leia was on the Death Star? So we can save him. We tell the Rebellion he needs us and we'll get him back. They'd have to approve that mission, I mean he's a Jedi Knight, a real Jedi, they wouldn't say no to us rescuing him." The words came out in a rush, punctuated by the occasional laugh. "Leia, how did you find this out? Find him?"

He sucked in a breath. "Is Ben here? I've never seen his ghost, maybe I can't? I dunno... Ben! I bet he'll be so happy when he hears this. Ben! Please Ben, if you can hear me, please?"

The room was charged with a riot of emotions, swirling between one feeling and the next.

Luke had no control of any of them, was filling the space with anything and everything he felt, and Leia felt dizzy.

Suddenly there Uncle Obi was, standing next to the trembling boy. His mouth twisted downward, a quiet fury in his eyes. He shook his head, "why have you done this, young Padawan? Did we not discuss how the time was not yet right for this revelation?"

"He deserves to know, Uncle Obi," Leia said.

"And know he shall, when the time is right," responded Obi-Wan.

Luke rounded on the ghost. "Ben, you... you knew?"

"Yes Luke," Uncle Obi said with a nod.

"Who else knew?" Somehow, impossibly, Luke's eyes grew even wider. "Did... did my family know too?"

"Why do you think Owen and Beru never talked about your father," Obi-Wan said, "why do you think they made up a story about a spice navigator to tell you instead of the truth?"

"I don't understand," Luke pressed the ghost, "Leia said he was trapped in a prison?"

"Yes, I heard what she said." Obi-Wan shook his head, "I am afraid I do not agree with her assessment of the situation, although I would very much like for that to be the case."

"But..." Luke composed himself, just slightly, "but he is still alive?"

"He is," and then because Obi-Wan was not capable of fully accepting that Anakin and Vader were one and the same, "from a certain point of view."

Luke, already so conflicted, so confused, drew into himself further. "I... I don't understand?"

"Anakin Skywalker, the man I trained to be a Jedi, the man I considered to be my brother and loved, he is long gone Luke. He was destroyed by Darth Vader." From the grief in Obi-Wan's voice you would think Anakin had fallen just days before, not two decades prior.