Chapter 14: Reasons why

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(Waiting on a war by Foo Fighters)

Amilyn activated her white lightsaber looking over its energy. She had seen the energy a dozen times at least by now, but the feeling of the energy was still a different experience each time. She did a simple blocking pose before retreating to her normal position. "When did you get the other lightsaber?" CB-34 asked watching her.

"Ben's old saber. The crystal called to me. I destroyed his lightsaber causing the crystal to come to me. I purified it when I got to D'Quar." Amilyn explained. "You helped me build my first one."

"So that's where the second one came from?" She heard her fathers voice behind them.

"Yes."

"I'm impressed. You still keep up with your training?" Luke asked walking down the steps from the temple where he had led Rey up for her lesson. 

"Leia taught me what she learned from you." Amilyn said seeing CB-34 begin to pick up a few things. "What's going on?"

"Well....." Luke began only to distract she realized as CB-34 sent a probe at her. She quickly cut the probe in half with her right lightsaber. CB-34 threw two more to her. She twisted both her arms causing the probes to be cut perfectly by the diagonal swing of her blades.

"A distraction?" She said without looking to her father. 

"Worked on every Youngling before you." Luke joked as a smile where it should've been didn't come. Amilyn blocked every next probe as CB-34 quickened up. She made perfect accuracy on the movements and swings from her lightsabers. She spun sending the probes being sliced to the ground.

"You destroyed all of the 102 probes being thrown at you. Finishing at least the first parts of the last lesson." CB-34 said as he picked up the rest....or at least what was left of the probes from the ground. Luke looked at his daughter clearly impressed, but what he did next surprised her.

Using the force he strapped on a helmet blocking her sight immediately. "Dad!?! What the hell!" She exclaimed. This was the fifth lesson he had taught her when she was training with Ben. Luke's old master had made him practice with a lightsaber against something he couldn't see.

Amilyn breathed deeply as she focused on the presence surrounding her. A swipe noise from a gun came as the trigger was pulled. Amilyn ducked her head from the shot hitting it with her left lightsaber. A few more triggers pulled a blasts blocked with her lightsaber. The darkness was a disadvantage, but focusing in the presence wasn't. "You going easy on me?"

Luke chuckled and took the helmet off her. She turned to an almost half grinning Luke, but the inch of his frown were still there. "That was the defense part of the lesson. Now force abilities."

"Dad....I know you know I'm...."

"Lift this rock." Luke overlapped his daughter. 

"A rock?" She asked as if he was joking. The rock Luke held in his hand was small and looked like anybody could lift it. "Alright....." she answered, confused by this challenge Luke was giving her. She reached her hand out feeling the force flow through her as her eyes focused on the rock. She focused very little as she lifted the small rock from Luke's hands.

She watched as she held it in the air, the rock shattered into a million pieces. "Now bring it back together." Luke told her. She breathed in the salty airs of Ach-Too as she concentrated on bringing the rock back together.

Closing her eyes as she felt the force flow through her. The rock restored piece by piece as an astonished Luke, who had challenged other younglings to reform the rock. They failed every time, but this was new for him to see someone be able to do that. Amilyn opened her eye with a smile seeing the rock had been returned to what it had been a few moments ago. "How'd I do?"

"You are the first student to have ever been able to do that!" CB-34 told Amilyn. "You truly are what the prophecy told. Your powers are strong and will always be getting stronger as well as the prophecy's powers it gives you."

"What prophecy powers?" Amilyn asked CB-34.

"That's enough." Luke said walking off. Amilyn stared at him confused by his abrupt leaving he had always done now. "We will meet Rey at the temple. And you better be there. I'm going to explain why I'm ending the Jedi since you can't understand."

"Why can't I ever finish?!?" CB-34 exclaimed watching as Amilyn and Luke headed up the temple stairs. CB-34 sighed as he started picking up all the destroyed probes. "Luke must not really want her to complete that prophecy if he keeps that....intolerable attitude up!"

(Time Skip: In The temple)

The suns dipped in the horizon as Amilyn entered the temple after Luke. She found Rey sitting on the edge of a mosaic with the curved broken edges of tanning rock. The three faced each other across the font in the center so the ancient mosaic.

"So." Rey said.

"So."

Amilyn shook her head at Luke's response. "Nope, you start this time." She stared back at her father who took that signal to finally tell them why the Jedi have to end.

"I've shown you that you don't need the Jedi to use the force," Luke said, gesturing to Rey. "I've given you your last bit of training. So why do you need the Jedi order?" Amilyn peered at him. Surely, it was another one of his tricks he had suddenly been using on them. She'd seen with her own eyes the darkness building inside Ben, as well as he had that night.

"To fight the rising darkness. They kept the peace and protected the light in the galaxy......" Rey trailed off noticing Luke's face he had given her earlier. "I can tell from your look by everything I've just said was wrong."

Luke smiled and studied the mosaic in the rounded rock, probably wondering who would've made the design thousands of years ago. "You've got generations right. Lesson Two. Now that they're extinct, the Jedi are romanticized....defied. But to strip away the myths and looking at their deeds, from the birth of the sith and to the fall of the Republic the legacy of the Jedi is a failure. Hypocrisy."

"That's not true." Amilyn protested, staring at her fathers words in shock. If somehow he was the last of the order, then what was she. "What am I then?"

"At the height of the siths powers, the Republic allowed Darth Sidious to rise, create the empire only to wipe out them all. It was a Jedi master who was responsible for the training and creation of Darth Vader." Luke spoke, simply ignoring Amilyn's protesting. 

"And a Jedi saved him!" Rey objected following in on Amilyn's protest. "Yes, the most hated man in the Galaxy, convicted with evil. But you saw the conflict in him. You believed he wasn't truly, that he could be turned."

Amilyn didn't understand her fathers ignorance, objection, or rejections. Luke was rejecting the legacy of the Jedi that he had contributed to. But whatever happened to him that night, must've been a reason why to his absence from the galaxy. Her father didn't look insane with the looks of wisdom on his face, but what he spoke of was complete nonsense.

"And I became a legend." Luke spoke, as any storyteller would to a child. "For many years there was balance. I took no padawans and I began training you Amilyn, because no darkness rose. But when I saw Ben, my nephew......with the Skywalker's blood. In my hubris I thought I could train him along with Amilyn, I could pass on his strength. That I wouldn't be the last Jedi."

His eyes had darted away from them as if something had stung him. Wondering if he too, had relived that night in his visions at night. Any time of the days, he thought of Ben that he could remember what had happened. Causing him to divorce himself from the world and shutting himself out from his family. Almost as if her and Rey's arrival had sent him back into those memories. 

""Han..." Luke smiled at the thought, "Was Han about it. But Leia trusted me with her own son. I took him, Amilyn, and dozens of other students and began a training temple. And by that time I realized I was no match for the darkness rising in him.....it was too late...."

"What happened?" Amilyn asked. Luke's eyes bore into hers as he used the force to show her and Rey what had happened that night:

Ben Solo- it wasn't the face of a child, but neither was it the face of a full grown man-looks up in alarm and surprise. His uncle Luke was in his hut, at night and standing over him wide eyed. There was no sign-Luke wasn't armed with his lightsaber-but his face was creased with concern as he stared down at Ben. The Force......boiled with a new danger. Ben's hand reached up, not toward Luke but to the stones of the ceiling. Biding those rocks to obey his command and came crashing down onto Luke's body. To crush and bury him.

"He must've thought I was dead." Luke spoke as Amilyn stared wide eye realizing the horror her father had seen. "When I came to, the temple was burning. He had vanished into the night with Snoke as his guidance, with some of my students, but the rest he slaughtered. Amilyn was the only student I knew and survived from his unsuspecting attacks, so I knew Leia could take care of her better than I had done. Leia blamed Snoke.......but I broke the family. Because I was Luke Skywalker, Jedi master who couldn't live up to his legend."

The last words sounded as if it were a curse he was burdened with. Amilyn knew what he meant was by her absent mother who had left them years before Amilyn could have a memory of her. Luke had raised her on his own, but left her in Han and Leia's care when he went searching for clues or wisdom to help him teach other Jedi. "The Galaxy may need a legend....but I need someone to show me who i am to show me my place in all this. And you didn't fail Ben, He failed you. I didn't." Amilyn told him.

Luke regarded her gravely as his voice came quiet. "I don't know who's more dangerous: the pupil who wants to destroy me, the one who just wants to know more, or the one who wants to become me." Luke's words were bent between the three people he meant by one. Rey, Ben, and Amilyn were the ones.

They held their silence for a long moment. Only the sounds of wind whipping against their hair and the temple could be heard. Amilyn felt herself tense as she knew she wanted to know more of what she would become. She had seen a vision of her mother, and she needed to know what her father was hiding about her. "What was my mother like?"

"That's a story for another....."

"Time? I grew up with no mother at my side to take care of me. I know nothing of this mysterious woman you loved who is my mother. I'm 21 and I don't even know what my mother was doing when she left." Amilyn overlapped him.

Luke hesitated, knowing he couldn't hide the truth much longer. "Mara Jade. Your mother was an incredible rebel hero who joined late in the game against the Empire. She was a smuggler and mandalorion. A few days of you being born reached to her group, they threatened her......and she decided to leave and stop them from causing you any harm."

"Well.....it still did." Amilyn said holding back tears knowing of the mother she'd never know.



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