Darkness {4}

Chapter 16

"How far away are we now?"

"Not far."

Luke sighed. She'd been this cryptic of their whereabouts ever since their argument, as if not telling him how far away they were would torment him. Then again, she had the Unbreakable on her as well, so maybe she was simply not allowed to tell him. Either way, he was becoming annoyed.

Well, if he was annoyed than he'd make sure she would be as well. "How about now?"

"You have the patience of a newborn." She replied cooly, her steps not even faltering. "And we're close, I can feel it."

"I can't." He replied bitterly, looking down at the binders. They'd been on him for at least a week now and at this point he was beginning to think it'd feel strange without them, which was not an ideal situation to be in.

But something else captured his attention, and it had been on his mind for awhile before he'd bring it up with her again because he knew that if he even tried it then he'd more likely than not get his head detached from his body. And it was how she sounded whenever she talked about the Empress.

Actually, now that Luke looked at her while they walked he realized just how similar they were, and Khana too. They all had the same facial structure and relative build, being strong but thin, except their eyes were all very different colors. Khana's were blue, the Empress's were red, and Kira's were a bright green. Also, Kira's hair was curly whereas the Empress and Khana's hair was straight.

So if they were so similar, why did Kira not remind him of her mother? He did see it every now and then when she glared at him, and he'd feel an icy stab of dread in his stomach as he was teleported back to the torture chamber on Bespin and he'd recall how it felt to be coated in a layer of his own blood and look so unrecognizable that his own sister wasn't sure it was him at first.

But no, he'd remind himself after the moment was over, Kira wasn't her. She wasn't her mother, and Luke realized that that was probably what she was afraid of.

He was afraid of becoming his father, and she was afraid of not becoming her mother.

Luke still to this day looked in the mirror and saw his father's blue eyes that had turned yellow, and even though his face had become mangled and white by the time Luke had seen it there were still a few similarities. Leia, on the other hand, looked nothing like Anakin, and he envied her for it. Because he had to look at himself every day and be reminded that he was the son of a mass murderer and planet-destroyer who dismembered him.

And that was why Luke and Leia had never told anyone except Han and Leena and the people who were there when it happened about their parentage, because even almost a decade after Vader's demise his shadow still loomed over everything and his name was enough to make Rebel veterans shrivel. Because in the Empire he was a beacon of hope, and in the New Republic he was a beacon of the worst type of evil that it'd fought so hard to eradicate. And with Leia as the Chancellor and Luke as a renowned Jedi Master, he couldn't imagine a more disastrous circumstance than the uncovering of that secret.

Kira stopping in her tracks jarred Luke out of his troubled thoughts, and he looked at her to find her looking up. He looked up as well, and felt his mouth drop open slightly at the sight. It was a temple, a Jedi Temple by the looks of it. It dawned on him that that was why he was here to begin with, to grant passage to a Sith.

He looked back down at Kira. "Is this it?"

The Unbreakable had vanished, and Kira looked over at him. "Yes."

"What do you need inside?"

"Something that could help the entire galaxy." She replied without breaking eye contact.