InsaneJournal

Meditation always seemed so redundant in some ways. Simple tricks he'd been doing since he was twelve and still Jacen Solo had to relearn what he had known. Because he'd gotten too used to the easy. To the shortcuts that came with being a Sith Lord. Because casting off hate and anger while not something he truly believed in as dangerous was part of this learning. He wasn't a Jedi. He'd never be a Jedi much as he knew it would make life easier for those around him. He just...was. Neither light nor dark if one had to define it. Neither truth nor a lie. He had learned these tricks as a boy but he had learned so much of what he was in the white. That was what had made him. That was where Jacen ended and Caedus began and where this man he was now had to find his place. Part of him wanted it here, that power, that clarity that came with the simple instinct of his Vongsense. If he had the Embrace of Pain here then maybe he could find that clarity again. But he knew that was wrong, Tenel Ka would not understand, should not.

But it was easier sometimes to be the gardener.  He called to that power now, his Vongsense, and life hummed around him. Oh not as it had done when he'd cared so much about the animals he'd kept in his childhood but the life of the world. And he could tell, which animals around him would live and which would die, which trees would grow and which would wither. He could pick out the grass among the weeds and he could so easily choke the life out of the weak and give it to the strong.

He'd done it for a while, watching a simple blade of grass grow greener and lend its power to its fellows as a shrub turned brown and dead nearby. It was weak and would have died with the winter anyway. Why not have it give its life now?, he had thought, save it the slow pain of death to come when death was already assured it. He took the life from it quickly, painlessly and gave it to the grass.

He'd done that for some time, reveling in the blessed simplicity of it before finally returning to the meditation he had once been able to do without a seconds hesitation. But it was Luke's voice he could hear in the background, that same calm relaxed tone telling him to focus, telling him to look within himself.

But within himself was a swirling maelstrom of thought, of action, of life and death and all that lay in between.

The shrub finally withered its last and died and Jacen uprooted it with a slight expanse of power. Watching it rise into the air, its leaves held only by Jacen's own power. Such a useless life it had lived. Where it had sprung from it had never stood a chance.

And then there were the passers by. Weed, weed, grass, grass. He became the gardener so easily now, mind focused on their past their present, and the threads that went to make up their future, and then...

Darkness.

Darkness deeper than he'd felt in a long while. The shrub clattered to the ground and Jacen looked up, not sure of what to expect but so desperately curious to know how this man had thrown his senses just by proximity. He sent out a thread of power, just enough to draw the man's attention. Curiosity of course, was a dangerous thing. But he had to know. And so ever patient, the gardener waited.