The Dark Side of the Force is insidious. It does not hit you like a bludgeon. It lingers like a bad smell trapped in the fabric of your clothes. It acts like a high grade adrenaline shot that never quite wears off. Think about all of those small pleasures in your life that fill your mind with dopamine, the taste of chocolate or the thrill of a winning bet, but multiply that by ten. The lingering effect lasts so much longer. It whispers to you in the silence between heartbeats.
I was a good light year away from Dathomir. The red star of that cursed system was nothing more than a speck in the viewport of my private quarters. But I could still feel the effects. A part of me, a very loud and hungry part, wanted to turn the ship around. It wanted to go back. It wanted to dive into the Dark Side and swim until I drowned.
"Sir?"
The voice of Unit 5 cut through the silence. I snapped my head around, my eyes narrowing.
"What?" I barked. The word came out harsher than I intended. It sounded like the crack of a whip.
The droid took a hesitant step back, his servos whining slightly. "Your heart rate is elevated, Master Bee. Your body temperature has risen by point four degrees. I am detecting markers consistent with withdrawal from chemical dependency. Do you require a sedative?"
I stared at the droid. My hands were trembling slightly. I clenched them into fists.
"No, Unit 5," I said, forcing my voice to smooth out. "I do not need a sedative. I need clarity. Leave me."
"As you wish."
The droid retreated, the door sliding shut with a soft hiss.
I was worried. I had been infected. I had been tainted by the Dark Side. The Force was meant to be the will of both the Dark and the Light, a cosmic river that flowed through everything. But while the Light Side often felt sterile and overly restrictive to me, it never put me in a situation like this. The Light Side did not make me want to glass a planet or murder my own staff for asking a question. The Light Side did not have the same addiction profile as the Dark.
I walked to the center of the room and sat down on the meditation mat.
I needed to purge the Dark Side effects, but I needed to keep the essence. The Dark Side was part of the Force. I was not going to give it up because I had one or two bad moments with it. I sounded just like an addict justifying his next fix, but the logic was sound. The power I had accessed was useful. It had saved my life. It was a tool, and a workman does not throw away his hammer just because he hit his thumb.
The way of the Force had many different religions and cults following it. They made rules to suit their dogmas. The Jedi cut the emotions away, causing them to become dull and reactive. The Sith indulged in every impulse, burning themselves out like supernovas. The Nightsisters trapped themselves in rituals and localized magic.
I had to find a third way. I had to find a way to embrace what strengthens me and repel what weakens me. To be honest, I had thought I had achieved that already. I thought I was the master of the Grey. But spending time on a strong Dark Side Nexus point like Dathomir had proven me wrong. It showed me that my walls were made of paper.
"Show me," I whispered to the empty room. "Show me the balance."
I raised my right hand. I called upon the Force.
I did not call upon anger. I did not call upon peace. I called upon the energy itself.
A flame ignited in my palm. It was not the angry, consuming fire of the Nightsisters. It was a pure, orange flame. It danced over my skin, licking my fingers.
I wondered why my own fire was not hurting me. I thought back to the star wars story. When Palpatine used his Force Lightning against Mace Windu, it was redirected back onto his face. It melted his skin and deformed him. Did he do it on purpose to gain sympathy from Anakin? Or did I know something that the Sith Lord did not?
"Heat," I murmured. "It is just vibrating energy."
The fire turned to water.
It was a shift in perspective. Fire was energy expanding. Water was energy flowing. With a twist of my wrist, the flames cooled, condensed, and shifted. A whirlpool of water, pulled from the moisture in the air, swam through the space above my hand.
I watched it spin. The outer edges were violent, thrashing against the air friction. But the center was glass smooth.
"The eye of the storm," I pondered aloud.
It was the core of the whirlpool. It was not the place that produced the most clashing energy. There was peace in the core, as well as power. The center held the structure together. Without the calm center, the chaotic exterior would fly apart.
"Unit 5," I called out, not looking away from the water.
The door slid open immediately. The droid had been waiting in the hall. "Yes, sir?"
"Come here. Look at this."
The droid approached, his sensors scanning the floating sphere of water. "Hydrokinesis. An impressive display of molecular manipulation, sir."
" tell me, Unit 5. Is this water chaotic? Or is it ordered?"
"It is both," the droid replied after a moment of processing. "The centrifugal force creates chaos at the vector edges, but the centripetal force maintains order at the nucleus. It is a stable system composed of unstable elements."
"Exactly."
This mentality was familiar. It drifted up from the depths of my memories from a life long before this one. It was the Yin and Yang symbol in Taoism. It was a philosophy that did not believe in a judging god but rather in the balance of the positive and the negative. The soft and the hard. The power in destruction and the necessity of creation.
They believed that there was light in darkness, but also destruction in light. It was how you understood the element.
"Think about fire, Unit 5," I said, letting the water sphere expand. "Fire burns. It destroys forests. It kills. That is its dark nature. But it also offers warmth. It cooks food. It provides light against the predators of the night. That is its light."
"A dual nature," Unit 5 agreed.
"And light," I continued. "Light illuminates the dark so you can see. It reveals truth. But too much light blinds you. If you stare into a sun, you go blind, and then you are left in the dark forever. Too much of a good thing becomes a bad thing."
I looked at the water spinning in my hand.
"The soft, gentle snow on a branch is beautiful," I said softly. "It is gentle. It is Yin. But if too much accumulates, the weight snaps the tree. The soft becomes the destroyer."
I understood now. While the Dark Side Nexus point on Dathomir had flooded me with Dark Side power and I found it hard to control myself, there were Light Side qualities within it that I had not taken advantage of. I was so focused on resisting the Dark that I failed to see the Light within it. I failed to see the passion that fuels life.
The water turned to air.
It was a subtle shift. The liquid expanded into gas. It caused a light breeze to circulate in my quarters. Papers on my desk fluttered. The curtains by the viewport danced.
"Do you feel that?" I asked.
"Air current velocity at three meters per second," Unit 5 stated.
"Watch."
The softness of the breeze turned a fraction colder. I sped up the rotation. The winds turned and howled. Water droplets condensed from the air, pulled back into existence by the drop in pressure. They were taken by the wind.
The droplets would split or meld into each other. The gentle wind and the malleable, soft water drops were considered Yin. And yet, with both of these elements clashing and speeding up into a miniature tempest, they now had the qualities of Yang.
"The Light Side and the Dark Side," I said, my voice gaining strength. "They not only can work together. They must work together."
The tempest was causing small damage now. A datapad slid off the desk and clattered to the floor. The water droplets were firing out at great speed, stinging like needles.
But I was not angry.
The Dark Side that had wormed its way into me, the rage that had made me want to execute the Nightsisters, was now calming down. No, that was incorrect. It was not calming down. It was melding.
It was becoming the engine, not the driver.
"Sir," Unit 5 stepped back, shielding his optical sensors. "The humidity levels are reaching saturation. The wind speed is dangerous."
"It is fine," I said.
The tempest stopped instantly.
It did not fade out. It simply ceased. The water and air melded into each other, pouring out a thick, heavy mist that covered the floor of the room. It swirled around my ankles, cool and grounding.
The mist would be considered Yin. But with just a twist of its nature, I knew I could fill a man's lungs with it and drown him on dry land. That would be Yang.
"Darkness and Light are parts of the Force," I stated. "It is simple. And yet I can feel the darkness in me dull and meld within me. I have always known it intellectually. But now? Now I am one with it."
The mist rolled around me. It climbed my legs, defying gravity. It turned into a ribbon of pure energy. It looked like lightning, but it moved like water. It hung off my arm as a decoration, causing no harm, a crackling bracelet of violet power.
The ribbon morphed from one element to another with just a brief thought. Fire. Water. Air. Lightning. I was no longer compelling the Force. I was no longer coercing it or bending it to my will with anger.
It just did.
It was an extension of me. It was part of me, and yet completely detached from me.
"You have stopped shaking, sir," Unit 5 noted.
I looked at my hands. He was right. The tremors were gone. My anger was still there, sitting in the pit of my stomach, but it had melded with my calm. It had become part of my emotional spectrum. It was tempered. It was elevated. It was controlled.
"I have," I said. "I feel... focused."
My understanding of the Force had inspired great changes throughout my abilities. I stood up and walked toward the mirror in the bathroom.
"Unit 5, tell me what you see."
The droid turned its head. "I see you, Master Bee. You are standing by the lavatory entrance."
"Look closer."
I did not try to hide. I did not use the Force to bend light around me, which was the traditional way of cloaking. That required effort. That required active deception.
Instead, I simply pushed my presence into the background. I became the mist. I became the empty air. I became the unimportant object in the corner of the eye. I balanced my existence with the non existence of the empty space around me.
Unit 5's optical sensors whirred. He stepped forward. He looked right at me.
"I..." The droid paused. "I do not see you, sir. My sensors indicate a heat signature. My audio receptors hear your breathing. But my visual processing unit is... sliding off you."
"Sliding?"
"Yes. It is as if my programming has decided you are part of the wall. Or a shadow. You are irrelevant data."
I smiled. The droid was looking straight at my face, but his processors were refusing to acknowledge I was there.
"My camouflage ability used to be about blending in," I explained, dropping the effect.
Unit 5 jerked back. "There you are! You appeared instantly."
"I was never gone," I said. "Before, I distorted perception. I tricked the mind. But now? Now the Force simply makes it so I am unseen. People will see, but they will not realize. I am the silence in a loud room."
I walked back to the main area of the quarters. The mist on the floor had evaporated. The room was tidy, save for the fallen datapad.
It was odd. I had understood the Force for centuries, or so I thought. I had read the Holocrons. I had trained with Yoda. I had studied with the Nightsisters. But I realized now that I had been looking at a painting and analyzing the brushstrokes while missing the picture.
I was blind. But now I can see.
"Unit 5," I said, picking up the datapad.
"Yes, sir?"
"Set a course for the nearest civilized station. I need a drink. And perhaps a very expensive meal."
"And the withdrawal symptoms, sir?"
"Gone," I said, feeling the hum of the Force, a perfect harmony of high and low notes, vibrating in my chest. "I have found a better high."