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Ben wasn’t really sure how to start the conversation. His parents would understand. He knew they would, his mom even more than his dad. And he wanted to tell them all about it. But that didn’t make it any easier to get the words out.He stared down at his untouched nerfsteak and protato wedges, noting that his dad hadn’t touched his tomo-spiced ribenes either. “I’ve never killed anybody before,” he said quietly. “Not like that.”He wanted his mom to reach out and take his hand. Would she do it? Would she treat him like her little boy or like the man he was becoming?“It doesn’t get any easier.”Ben looked up and met his mom’s gaze. Mara’s eyes were full of sympathy and her Force sense was projecting comfort and compassion, but underneath it was something hard. She had been the one more supportive of him training with Jacen, but Ben knew now that he couldn’t let Jacen take any of the blame for what he had done. He wasn’t sure what his mom would do about it, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to find out.“One of them was unarmed,” he blurted out. “We were on a raid. It was my call to go in and the place was full of rocket launchers, but one of the men was unarmed. I didn’t even think. I just acted and next thing I knew they were both dead. And one of them wasn’t even armed.” Ben turned tortured eyes back and forth between his parents. “How do I live with that? Knowing I killed a man who couldn’t even defend himself?”Mara scooted closer to put her arm around Ben’s shoulders. Even though they were in a public place, he leaned against her. If anyone recognized him from HNE, well, it didn’t matter. Not right now. Right now, he was just a kid who had too many adult responsibilities and needed his parents to lean on.“The guilt never really goes away.” Mara stroked Ben’s hair, just like she used to do when he was little. “Even when you know you didn’t have a choice, it’s still something you carry with you. Forgiving yourself is one of the hardest things you’ll ever have to do.”“It’s irrevocable. I killed him and I can’t take it back.”“No, you can’t,” Luke acknowledged.Ben looked across the table at his dad. Luke’s mouth was set in a grim line, and he knew no matter what he said, his dad was blaming Jacen. To be honest, Ben couldn’t blame him. He never would have been in that situation if it hadn’t been for Jacen, and after Ailyn Habuur, he really wasn’t sure Jacen had Ben’s best interests at heart. Or the galaxy’s, for that matter. It was taking a lot more resolve than he’d expected not to spill all that to his parents. No, he had made the decision to take it up with Jacen privately, and he needed to stick to it. He couldn’t just let his parents fight his battles.“Dad . . . are you mad at me?” Ben hated how plaintive and childish he sounded.Luke shook his head slowly. “I’m not mad at you. I just wish this wasn’t something you had to experience this young. I wanted better for you.”“But you still wanted me to be a Jedi,” Ben asserted. “Isn’t this kind of stuff normal for the Jedi life?” He didn’t really think it was. His dad was much more likely to show mercy to someone dangerous than he was to kill someone who may or may not have been a threat. But if his parents confirmed his suspicions, it would make it even harder to deal with what Jacen was doing. With being Jacen’s apprentice.“No,” Luke said decidedly. “At least, it shouldn’t be.” Luke sighed and reached out to put a hand on Ben’s shoulder. “Both my generation and your cousins’ were Jedi who came out of wartime. Learning how to be a peacetime Jedi instead of a soldier . . . or even how to fight a war while still holding to Jedi ideals is something even I struggle to determine.”“There was a lot of contention during the Yuuzhan Vong War over that,” Mara confirmed.“To be a Jedi is to defend life. So no, hoping that you would decide you wanted to be a Jedi does not mean I wanted this for you. I never wanted you to have to become a soldier. I never wanted you to have to deal with the same guilt your mother and I do, with all the dilemmas and impossible choices war brings.”“Jacen’s trying to keep there from being a real war.” Ben felt like he had to defend his cousin at least a little bit. He had to believe that Jacen’s core intentions were good. Somehow.“That may be so, but what you need to ask yourself is if Jacen’s tactics are right.” Ben could tell his dad wanted to say more. To straight up tell him what Jacen was doing was wrong and Ben should have no part of it. But he didn’t. Not this time, anyway. Maybe he really was willing to let Ben make his own decisions. The problem was that Ben wasn’t sure anymore what that decision should be.“Jacen didn’t make the decision to go in on that raid,” Ben said, his voice small. “I did. And that’s what I don’t know if I can live with.”Mara opened her mouth to say something, but Ben cut her off.“It’s not the same as when you were Emperor’s Hand, Mom. Palpatine told you what to do and there would have been consequences if you hadn’t. Jacen left the decision entirely up to me and he would have supported me either way.” At least, he was pretty sure that was the case. “There were explosives in there and one of the men was armed.” And Jacen had thought his decision was at least mostly right, after the fact. Though Ben really wasn’t sure anymore if he should trust Jacen’s judgment. “But one wasn’t and I killed him anyway. And I can’t help but think that the whole raid was wrong, and it was all my fault.”Luke sat back slowly in his chair, staring down at his hands, which he folded in front of him, for several moments before meeting Ben’s eyes. “Have I ever told you about Mindor?”Ben frowned, thinking. “Wasn’t there some holofilm about Mindor?”Luke winced visibly. “Forget about the holofilm. Mindor was . . . the reason I resigned from the New Republic military.” He hesitated. “A darksider called Cronal was mind controlling some 50,000 imperial troops on Mindor. I led a campaign against him and—the short version is that I defeated him, his troops surrendered, but I had to destroy the meltmassif Cronal was using to control them, which killed all the people he had enslaved. I killed around 50,000 innocents who had only been the puppets of a darksider. It was an impossible situation with no good answers, and I will always live with the guilt of that blood on my hands. I made the best decision I could have under the circumstances, but thousands of innocents still died, and that guilt will follow me forever.”Maybe Ben’s dad did really understand what he was going through. And . . . what Luke had said about making the best decision he could have under the circumstances did sound a lot like what Jacen had told him, that he’d made the decision he thought was right according to the intel he had at the time. So maybe Jacen wasn’t too far off after all. “But how did you get past it? How did you manage to keep on going with that hanging over you?”“I resigned my command, for one thing. In many ways, the life of a soldier is diametrically opposed to the life of a Jedi. To be a Jedi and a soldier—” Luke sighed. “I’m not sure anyone can be both without compromising in some way.”“You still fought in the Yuuzhan Vong War, though.” Ben turned his gaze to Mara. “Both of you.” And Jacen too, he wanted to add, but he knew what people said: that the war had changed Jacen Solo. And he wasn’t sure his parents thought it was for the better.“Just because sometimes fighting in a war needs to be done doesn’t mean we wanted you to have to face it,” Mara said. “We fought so that you wouldn’t have to.” She sighed heavily. “Apparently that was too much to ask.”“Yeah,” Ben agreed. He rested his elbow on the table and put his head in his hand. “It’s what I’m good at. But it doesn’t make this any easier.”“It doesn’t,” Luke agreed. “Learning how to live with that is something I’m not sure any of us totally master.” He shared a rueful glance with Mara. “You have to fight to protect life. Show mercy whenever you can and protect the innocent. Sometimes that will mean killing, like the Battle of Yavin. Sometimes the death of innocents is unavoidable, like Mindor. And sometimes you make mistakes that you will regret forever.”Which his mom knew more than most, and Ben knew his parents were thinking the same by the way his dad reached out to take his mom’s hand.“You have to make the best decision you can with the information you have,” Mara said. “And when you get it wrong, you learn from it and do your best to avoid making that mistake again.”Ben nodded slowly, his temple still resting against his hand. He wasn’t sure being in the GAG and taking orders from Jacen—considering Ailyn Habuur . . . he just couldn’t shake that incident from his mind—that he wouldn’t make the same mistake again. But he thought he could learn from it. He could learn to gather more information before going in lightsaber blazing. And everything he was doing with the GAG was to protect the innocent. To uphold the law and promote peace in the galaxy. He tried to smile at his parents to show them their advice—even just talking to them and knowing they understood, lived with the same guilt—had helped, but he couldn’t do more than twitch one corner of his mouth. Forgiving himself was the hardest. But he would. Eventually. And he would do all he could not to make the same mistake again.“Thanks, Mom and Dad,” he said in a tone much more confident than he actually felt. And thanks for not insisting I leave the GAG, he wanted to add, but didn’t.“Remember you can always come to us about anything,” Mara said.“We’re here for you whenever you need us,” Luke added.“I know.” But could he really? Some things he was just going to have to deal with by himself. But at least he knew that this his parents understood. They may not like that this was his life, but they understood it. And that, at least, gave him comfort. He wasn’t so different from them after all. And maybe deep down Jacen wasn’t either. And they’d be able to work through all of this and be reconciled as a family again, all of them, including Uncle Han and Aunt Leia. At least Ben could hope.