I talked with Obi-Wan tonight, as the fires were dying and the celebration waned. My teacher helped me strengthen my resolve before it could be tested. Before Han left me in the darkness, lips lingering over mine, comforting me for the loss of something I never really had.

Too many times I've rushed ahead without a thought for the consequences. Even when warned by those wiser and stronger, I thought I knew best. Headstrong, Master Yoda called me. Reckless.

I'm done with all that now.

It would be easy for me to set my destiny aside and give up on living the life of a Jedi. I saw myself on that other path tonight, when Han was next to me, his passion cutting through my soul, every thrust a plea for a different kind of future. I once dreamed of being at his side, free among the stars, chasing the temporary, discovering the moment. Reality led to the crisp edges of disaster, where cost outweighed romantic illusion, and dreams shattered into obligations.

I've been fighting for this very moment to come, the moment when all of us would be free to make our choices. Leia will choose the one thing she was born to do - she will lead the new Republic which will rise from the tatters of this small rebellion. Han...I don't know what path he'll choose. Perhaps he would have stayed, if he'd been given a reason. Now I dread his departure. I half expect to find him gone when this night is over. I wonder what he'll say to Leia, what she'll feel, but I haven't the strength to think that far ahead.

I strayed away from the joy, still too close to darkness to celebrate this day. I defeated my father, saved him, lost him, and the sharpness is no less severe because of the evil he embodied as Vader. When I stood by his pyre, watching his body consumed by the flames, I wondered who he'd been before he was this corpse, this thing to be sacrificed for the greater good. I rejoiced to see my friends alive...my sister...but I could not draw myself away from the inevitable.

I called to Obi-Wan as Yoda taught me, and he was there, more in my mind than the shifting icy apparition he's been in the past. I resisted the urge to ask the same nagging question - what are you now? -- and focused on the issue of training, of talent, of what could be done now that there is no one to direct me in the ways of the Force. Ben was clear on many points, but he held firm to one thing in particular. I am chosen to lead the way for generations of new Jedi, to find and train them. If I abandon this task, others may be identified and turned to the Dark Side.

I'm not sure I'm as ready as Obi-Wan seems to think I am.

I'm crushed underneath the expectations of an entire galaxy. It's too much.

I can't allow Han to pay the potential price of my selfish need. And I can't afford the distraction, and the consequences, love brings. The taint of my father's deeds is a painful legacy, and redemption must be a task I undertake alone.

As a matter of course, Han came looking for me. I knew he would, knew he was coming for me before he exhaled the breath that brought him to his feet and down the bridge. I've always known what he feels for me, even when he wasn't fully conscious of it, even when he was trying to pawn those feelings off on Leia. I'm not the innocent I once was. That boy disappeared a piece at a time in the hangars of Hoth, the swamps of Dagobah, the thin air of Bespin, the flames of the pyre.

"What's going on?" he asked me, that half-crooked grin lighting his face.

"I've had some thinking to do," I answered him truthfully, feeling the warmth of that friendly grin in places it shouldn't be.

"You're missing the party." Funny how sometimes with Han, what he doesn't say echoes louder in my mind than what he does. I missed you.

"Sorry, Han." I meant the apology, but I don't think he understood. "It's not over, you know."

"I know, Luke, but at least forget it for tonight, wouldja? Come on back to the party with me." He extended an arm, ready to drape it around my shoulders, but dropped his hand to his hip when I didn't move. Exasperation crossed his face, followed by concern when my eyes became sad. "What is it?" he asked finally, always more perceptive than any of us gave him credit for.

"It would take all night to tell you," I said at last, feeling the words sticking in my throat. The emotions shifted on his face when he heard my breath catch. I knew his desire, because it was my own.

"So start now, and we'll be done by dawn." This time he didn't smile.

"I can't promise you anything, Han." The words weren't easy to say.

His eyes locked on mine, searching for something that he found without much difficulty. "Did I ask?" he said tightly.

"You might have," I answered, knowing suddenly I'd never had the choice, had never been the one who would decide. I reached out my hand, the one not damaged by darkness, and swept my fingers across the muscle moving in his jaw, tightening under my caress.

He grasped my wrist and held me there, and I permitted it, knowing what would happen when he touched me. Knowing I would be strong enough to do what I must, but not tonight...not while I had the chance to seize hold, just once, of something to tether me here.

I lacked the courage to move, to set aside the present in favor of the future. Han turned his head, tipped my palm up, pressed his lips to the center of it. His eyes never left mine; they spoke to me, in the language of souls surrendering, and I listened without knowing the words. His kiss connected with the core of me, something lonely and apart, and drew me into the circle he'd woven out of passion and opportunity.

Another soft kiss, and my fingers curled toward his face, touching his cheek, moving lightly across his lips. It happened too fast for protest, too slowly for comfort. He was closing the distance I would not cross, peeling away the layers of resistance protecting me, stripping me bare without a word. Only those eyes, dark and knowing, saved me from falling when his mouth covered mine.

What we found there in the moist, bittersweet night air had been there all along for the taking. I'd been too naïve, too sad, too afraid to reach for it, and now it was too late. Here, then, was consolation, measured in moments, in the fractions of time between waking and dreaming.

He put his hands on me, not gently, but with all the strength I could bear. Cracks opened in my resolve; I filled them with regret and let him continue, meeting every touch with one in return. He pulled me along into the shadow of trees and grass, into a fragrant damp place that smelled of morning and spring, and all things renewed. Impatient sighs, as he breathed into me and I into him, fabric tossed aside to open new pathways for fingertips. He stroked my skin, slow and deliberate, finding the desires imbedded in the flesh and exposing them, pausing when my breath caught and my eyes closed.

A pause, as he molded his body to mine, hard muscle giving way easily to the insistent siren song of pleasure, bending to accommodate the answering strength of my need. He descended, tasting me, experimenting with my body in ways I had often imagined, and the heat of his tongue against the chill of my soul made me shiver. In every motion of his lips against me, there was urgency, and time stretching out before us with finite precision.

Softly, he captured me, flying with me into the fire-lit skies above the verdant moon. Blue fire burned in me, from the back of my mind to the low place in my throat, and I said his name, cried it, over and over, as he took me, and I became my desire. I reached, and found him, and closed my hands over him, demanding that he follow me down. He was willing, and soon he belonged to me in the way of one who gives possession, rather than is possessed.

The night became filled with sounds, of time shifting and moving beneath the path I'd chosen, and I waited for my heart to wrench itself free. His arms bound me there, in the stillness. The sound of his heartbeat under my ear was a kind of private bliss, made into memory to soothe the dark loneliness ahead.

In the end, he found his truth in the words I didn't say. No need to search for meaning, when all is revealed and nothing remains to be scrutinized. I felt the sadness settle on him as his lips fused to mine, blindly seeking, and then he gathered up his wishes, and was gone. I remained, and will remain, here in the warmth of his gift, and the stabbing pain of his absence.

I am a Jedi, like my father before me, and I must serve a higher purpose. I had a love, fleeting and elusive, which can never be again.

I am a Jedi, like my father before me.

I'll keep saying it, until I can erase the sound of his voice, the smell of his skin, the taste of my bitter regret.

I am a Jedi.

End.

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