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“Yeah, just like that.” Ben grinned, then sobered. “No, I think they just mean, when are you going to really take charge again? Of the Jedi, our role in the war? Lead, not just direct? Because that will make a difference.”

Luke felt his spirits sag even lower. “Oh, Ben. They’re asking that sort of question out of a misguided sense of what I can accomplish. They’ve based their impressions of what I can do on things that happened when I was a younger man with blind luck and boundless energy…and when you could count all the known Force-users in the galaxy on the fingers of one hand. Other Jedi can do what I do.”

“No, they can’t. They can’t be Luke Skywalker.”

Luke studied the landing pad’s surface for a moment. It could still serve its primary purpose, but it was scuffed, weathered, more frail than it had been when first installed. It seemed a perfect metaphor for his situation. “You can’t turn back time. It’s not a landspeeder resting on my back, it’s the weight of years and events. I can’t cast them off, and even if I could, I’d undo everything I’ve learned from them. Today I’m more useful as a teacher, a distributor of resources. That’s my role. I really ought to be thinking about grooming a viable candidate to become the next Grand Master.”

Ben didn’t speak for long moments, and Luke felt a growing swell of confusion and concern radiate from the boy.

Then there was a jolt of stronger emotion from Ben: fear. Luke looked up to see Ben suddenly on his feet, staring with an expression of naked alarm on his face.

Luke offered a quizzical look. “What is it?”

“I don’t know how to say it. What are the right words?” Ben turned away from his father, looked around as if seeking confirmation from faces that weren’t there, and turned back again. He was suddenly as frantic as someone at the crossroads of a maze with stormtroopers coming up behind him—which way of several was best? Which ways led to capture or death?

And then he was pacing, running his fingers through his hair, ruffling it as though the sudden untidiness would help the thoughts escape. “You want to be with Mom.”

“Of course I do. Don’t you?”

“Yes, but for me it’s different. I want her to be here, with us.” Ben stopped in midstride and whirled to face his father, a graceful move that Luke could appreciate with the Jedi Master portion of his mind. “You want to be with her where she is.”

“What do you mean?”

“You want to be dead. At peace. With her. Dead.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“No, it isn’t. When Uncle Han and Aunt Leia told us Alema Rar was dead, you should have said, Now I can get back to work. Instead, you’re saying Now I can turn over the Jedi Order to someone who’s worthy. You’re getting ready to die. Problem is, you don’t have an incurable disease or a blaster pressed against your head. So how’s it going to happen?” Ben’s voice cracked on the final word.

“Ben, that is so, so…You’re just leaping to the wrong conclusion.” Luke struggled for the right argument to make his son see that this was a ridiculous notion.

But the argument just wasn’t there.

“That’s what attachment is, isn’t it?” Ben began pacing again, and words finally poured from him like water running through a shattered dam. “It’s not loving somebody. It’s not marrying somebody. It’s not having kids. It’s being where, if something goes wrong, there’s nothing left of you. It’s where if she goes away, you start functioning like a droid with a restraining bolt installed. Mom wouldn’t want you to be this way. So why are you?”

“I can’t help it.” Luke was on his feet and the words wrenched out of him before he realized it. He rocked, unbalanced by the sudden violence of his emotions.

Ben spun to stare at him. “You’ve got to!”

“How?”

“I don’t know. You’re the Jedi Master, you figure it out.”

Luke felt real anger stir within him, a fire fanned by the insolence of Ben’s tone.

No, that was another lie, Luke lying to himself. The fire was being fanned by the fact that Ben was right.

Luke closed his eyes, feeling his way through the insulation of peacefulness