anakin (anakin) wrote in thedoorway, @ 2015-02-25 21:38:00 |
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Luke had been enjoying getting to know his father even though the fact that he was a good ten years older than him had felt strange at first. It wasn’t something he talked about often but he’d always wished that he could have known his father before his far, that he could have met the man that had been Anakin Skywalker. Now it seemed that this place was giving him that chance. He could see the resemblance when they had first met face to face although Anakin was taller and Luke not quite six feet tall. Their eyes though, they had the same blue eyes, they both let their emotions show on their faces so that anyone who knew them well could know how they felt. There were even similarities in the way they moved, the little things they did. It was something that Luke had never thought he’d have the chance to see. He hadn’t told him anything of his future yet. Being brought here and meeting family that hadn’t existed for him was more than enough but now it was time. Anakin needed to know and Luke knew he had to be the one to tell him. He didn’t want to but it was better than finding out from someone on the network or worse still a stranger on the street. Luke approached his father’s door with a book in his hand. He’d purchased it that afternoon on his way home from work. It was the novelization of the third film in what he’d learned was called the prequel trilogy which he had watched. Mara had told him the book explained things much better and she had been right. Luke hoped that reading it would help his father understand why he’d done what he’d done. Taking a deep breath, he knocked on the door and waited for Anakin to answer, closing his eyes and calling on the Force to help calm himself. Anakin was in a haze like none other, as if the very clouds he so skillfully navigated were padded soft beneath his feet, and if being stranded on an unfamiliar planet had been an initial concern, from the moment he had made contact with the network, he had thought little and less about the circumstances in all their peculiarities. Were he to clear his mind, center himself in the Force, this world and its malfunctioning, crossdimensional-grabbing 'tesseract' might have locked in the young Jedi's mind as a priority (if self-assigned) mission, yet a distraction more overpowering than any tractor beam, more blinding than any scorching ray, had drawn in his heart and refused to loose its hold. Anakin Skywalker had a family, a son and a daughter and grandchildren. He wasn't alone. In the privacy of his reeling mind, Anakin had played through any number of possibilities, knowing with a strong degree of certainty that such a multiplying of Skywalkers was not blessed by the dogmatic Council. Staying with the Jedi Order would have meant giving up his children, sacrificing for good his relationship with Padme -- he couldn't fathom such an existence, but the more he thought about the words his grandson had said (Anakin, who was named after him, Anakin who was a Jedi and a pilot and a mechanic), their training sounded less and less like the sort of formal training a child would receive at the Temple. Even his own training had been looked upon with crinkled noses and disapproval, and he had been younger than his grandson claimed to have been when his training began under Luke. Under his own uncle. No, Anakin's family had not been raised as Temple Jedi -- and someone had to have trained Luke. I must have left, Anakin had concluded with certainty, a rush of something almost like liberation, though a strange tug in him remained. I nearly did, with Ahsoka, I wanted to so badly. I thought I never could, but I must have. The knock on his door signaled the shift Anakin had been anticipating ever since he'd put together the pieces of his family's identity: Today, Luke would answer his questions, would tell him how the future unfolded, and however much he had enjoyed the more relaxed conversation they had shared just the other day, and the meeting of Jedi the night before, it was this that set Anakin's heart racing, for in the future, he could finally have security. Opening the door, Anakin granted a smile bright and relaxed. His son's age was taking some adjustment -- Luke had to be at least as old as Obi-Wan, if not older -- but the man before him was half himself, half Padme, and that set little trickles of warmth through every limb, even in Padme's absence. "Come on in," he greeted with a flourish of the arm. “Thanks,” he said and stepped into the room. Luke still couldn’t get over seeing the man he knew as Darth Vader be so….normal. Everything he could sense about him was so pure, so clean, not a hint of the Dark Side about him and while it made him happy, Luke knew that what he was about to tell him would change all that. “How are you settling in?” he asked, delaying the inevitable for a few more moments as she took a seat on the couch and put the book beside him. He’d left it in the bag so that his father (it still seemed strange to think of him that way) couldn’t see what it was. “I know it’s a bit confusing at first. There are some things that are similar to home but most are very different. Much more different for you than for me though.’ Anakin came from a time before Luke’s birth and certainly before the time that he himself had come from. Things had changed a lot over those many years, more than Anakin knew. "Nothing I can't handle," Anakin countered with a playful smirk, "I'll miss the ships, but a bit of low-tech is nothing.' As his son settled on the couch, Anakin too found a seat, and for a moment, his eyes gave quick survey to the blank walls around them. The apartment felt empty, bare, lifeless -- back at the Temple, he had strung and strewn any number of ship models and designs in something Padme and Obi-Wan might call a 'mess'. It was his own little world of organized chaos, whatever the policy might be on material possessions, but here, no one would stick their nose up at calling something his own, not from the sound of it. He was still a Jedi, he knew, ought to hold tighter to the stringent detachment of their Code, but if he was going to leave anyway... A few treasures had never hurt him at home, and if he were to collect them in this isolated pocket of a world, they would be less 'dangerous' still. "If anything, learning I have a family is more surprising than whatever this planet has to offer. Obi-Wan, Ahsoka, the Chancellor -- they've been like family in every way but blood, but children... Your mother and I didn't know how we could make it work with our lives as they are." Loosely his hands rested open palms to his own knees, one tucked in a glove so dark it was nearly black, the other hand free and bare. "You have no idea how wonderful it is to meet you, to know that you will exist someday." Luke followed his father’s eyes as he glanced around and immediately picked up on what the other was thinking. “You can do whatever you like to the place,” he said. “They don’t care. In fact they encourage it. Some people have been here for a year or more so they’ve made the place their home. It took me some time to understand that you have to adapt, you have to learn to live in the moment here because you never know when you’ll be leaving and you can’t sit around and wait for it to happen.” That had been what he’d been trying to do for the first few months but after the mission on the Ascension, he’d begun to understand that life had to be lived and he’d made the choice to do just that. His eyes rested on the glove for a moment and he flexed his right hand without thinking. Most of the time he forgot that it wasn’t his own flesh but now he was reminded of that fact and also of how he lost it. “I promised you answers, didn’t I?” he said after a moment. “but I have to warn you that you’re not going to like them. It’s going to be painful to hear and it’s going to be painful for me to tell you but it’s the only way. It’s a conversation that needs to happen between the two of us.” Luke looked at his father for a moment and gave him a small smile. “I’ve always wondered what you were like, Really like. When I meet you, you’re very different from who you are now. Over the past few days I can see things about myself that I got from you, I grew up wanting to fly and I was good at it. It’s a gift that you passed on to your namesake and his sister as well. Both of them are pilots, they’re very good.” He was beating around the bush and he knew it but where did he start? The beginning was the best place. “There is no easy way to say this but after the Clone Wars, you and Obi-Wan continued to work together. You were quite famous in the galaxy. You were hiding your marriage from everyone because the Council was against emotional attachments and Mother became pregnant. You started having nightmares, visions I guess is a better word, that she was going to die in childbirth. More than anything you didn’t want that to happen and you looked for a way to prevent that. Palpatine manipulated you, he was a Sith Lord though no one knew it, and convinced you that the Dark Side held the answers to saving my mother.” Luke paused and took a deep breath. “You joined him, became his apprentice but he’d lied to you. He wanted you because you were stronger in the Force than anyone had ever been. He wanted to take over the galaxy with your help. Obi-Wan was afraid, he realized what was happening and he tried to stop you. The two of you dueled on Mustafar but Mother followed you there and….you tried to hurt her. Obi-Wan fought you, you fell into a pit of lava and were nearly dead but Palpatine who had declared himself Emperor saved you, took you to a medical facility and essentially rebuilt you. You wore armor, you were more or less a cyborg. When you’d become Palpatine’s apprentice you’d taken a Sith name...Darth Vader. That was what you were known as.” Luke paused for a moment. He could feel the pain coming from Anakin, the disbelief, and he had to let it wash over him and then let it go. This was the most difficult thing he’d ever had to do, destroy his father’s life even though it had happened many years ago. “Obi-Wan and Bail Organa took Mother to a medical station and she gave birth to me and Leia moments before she died. In order to keep the Empire from finding the two of us, we were separated. Leia was adopted by the Organas and grew up on Alderaan. Obi-Wan took me to Tatooine to live with your step brother, Owen and his wife. He was going to take me when I was of age and train me as a Jedi but Uncle Owen didn’t allow that. I didn’t meet Obi-Wan until I was nineteen and my training was rather sporadic. I spent time with Master Yoda who’d gone into exile on Dagobah but a lot of it was just me studying what little information was available. The Order had been destroyed. The Emperor enacted something known as Order 66 and all the Jedi were killed though a few escaped.” He stopped to breathe again. “You helped Palpatine rule the galaxy. Everyone feared you. Including me and then when I finally faced you, you told me that you were my father. I’m not sure when you found out or how you found out but I didn’t believe it. Once I accepted it though I knew there was still good in you,” His voice broke. “I knew that the man I’d never met was still there somewhere. I surrendered to the Emperor because I wanted to save you. We fought, you and I, but I refused to hurt you. I was determined to save you and when I said I wouldn’t kill you, the Emperor tried to kill me. You stepped in and saved my life which released you from the Dark Side.” There were tears in his eyes now and he didn’t bother to hide them. There was no need to, not now. “I took off your mask and I looked at you for the first time and you told me I was right. It was just for a moment but you were Anakin Skywalker again. You destroyed the Emperor to save me and that redeemed you. I gave you a Jedi funeral because you might have lived a long time as a Sith Lord but you died a Jedi.” Like some clasping noose hooked tight around his neck, Anakin's throat seemed to close, his head swimming in a flood of words. Each wave crashed one after another, relentless, and for a moment it was as if he forgot how to struggle, forgot how to fight the staggering blows. Though every word passed through his ears, only a few truly stuck: 'When I meet you, you're very different from who you are now...' 'She was going to die in childbirth...' 'Palpatine manipulated you, he was a Sith Lord...' 'You tried to hurt her...' 'Darth Vader...' A Sith Lord, he couldn't have become a Sith Lord -- he was the Chosen One, he restored balance, his children, he had children who needed him- Pain tore fresh and fast, ripping through his chest, through his mind, and Anakin couldn't think, couldn't focus on Luke's continuing words however gentle the tones. Any hope for a response caught thick in his throat, and he scarcely even realized he was shaking his head, for all the control he felt over his own limbs. Every sweet thought in his mind turned to ash as horror sparked to flames, and a swift-zipping fear that Luke's story might be true whipped against him like a slap. (It was a lie, had to be a lie. Chancellor Palpatine was a good man, kind and supportive and right in front of the Jedi's faces. Master Yoda would never miss something like that. Anakin knew his own friends.) "You're lying." The accusation tumbled clumsily from his lips, falling more petulantly than he had intended, more like a child to his parent than a parent to his child. Anakin felt like screaming, like breaking something, like being sick all over the carpet as some shadowy beast uncurled in his chest. The story was so detailed, so involved, an extensive explanation that spanned his present to some hazy future in which he'd turned to the dark side, but he couldn't accept it, couldn't wrap his mind around a future like that. Where was his peaceful departure from the Order? Where was the small but welcoming home he and Padme set up to raise their twins, teaching his children about the Force as they would someday teach their own? Where was his future? "I don't know why you would lie about this, but that's impossible. The Chancellor is a good man, not a Sith Lord, and I can tell the difference. The Jedi Council can tell the difference." The Jedi Council is ineffective, whispered a little voice, sweet and sticky in his ears, and his hands gripped tighter at his knees. "I would never turn to the dark side." In Luke's blue eyes, so like his own, Anakin had seen himself just moments before, but the sad compassion staring back at him now was every bit the gift of his mother, and the ache in Anakin's chest deepened. He had expected this reaction and even though Luke knew that Anakin wasn’t going to do anything to harm him, his hand instinctively went to the lgiht saber on his belt. “I know it’s hard to believe. I didn’t even know the whole story until much later in my life, some of it I didn’t know until I came here but ask yourself...why would I lie to you. I have no reason.” It was the simple truth. As painful as it was to hear, it was just as painful for Luke to say. He would give anything to spare his father this knowledge now that he had met him, had seen the man that he had been, a man who reminded Luke very much of himself. “No one knew about Palpatine. He fooled everyone including the Council. One of the Masters, Mace Windu discovered his secret and was about to tell the others but Palpatine killed him before he could. After he executed Order 66, he declared himself Emperor and then of course everyone knew. For a very long time Obi-Wan and Yoda were believed to be the only surviving Jedi and they were both in hiding. There were rumors of others I’m told but I don’t know their stories.” He reached for the book and pulled it out of the bag. “You’ve been told that our stories are out there for anyone to find. There are six movies altogether and many books. The three movies that deal with your life..I’ve watched them but it wasn’t until Mara gave me this book that I really understood why you made the choices you made. Oh I haven’t told you about Mara,” Luke shook his head. “Mara is my future wife actually. She’s been here for two years. Years that I wasn’t here, well I was here but I was nineteen and didn’t know her. I left and came back but she and I aren’t together. There was a year where she was alone her and well..things happened. She’s still part of my life though and she remembers you when you were here before. In fact she has your old light saber, the one that you made. Obi-Wan gave it to me when we met and I gave it to her years later. She’s helped me to make sense of all the twists and turns in our history but this book explains it much better than I. You might not want to read it now but I hope you do soon because as painful as it will be, it will help you understand.” He looked carefully at Anakin, watching his face as he tried to put together what he wanted to say next. “It took me some time to accept all that happened but I have. You’re my father, we share the same blood and I’m not ashamed of that any more. I’ve always wished that I could have had the chance to know you before...to see who you really were. Darth Vader and Anakin Skywalker are not the same person. I didn’t understand that but now I do and I want to get to know my father, I want to know Anakin Skywalker and I hope that maybe when you learn more about me, that I’ve done something that makes you proud.” Pounding a steady beat in his head, Anakin felt the warring crash of stubborn denial and creeping despair, and tension pooled like some whirling stream of nails, pricking everything it touched. (It couldn't be true.) Yet why would Luke lie? (It couldn't be.) Whatever explanations Luke extended were deflected, some furied shield bouncing off whatever uncomfortable truths came his way, and though something deep within him felt the candid reality for what it was, that shadowy anger snapped at it with teeth bared. When the book was placed in his lap, Anakin's eyes fell to its cover, an ominous slab of black splashed with oranges and yellows. Most prominent was the large black figure of what looked to be some sort of droid he'd never seen before, but more sharply he noticed a small silhouette at the bottom, two lightsabers meeting in an aggressive clash -- and however desperately he didn't want to see it, somehow those two figures bore an uncomfortable resemblance to himself and Obi-Wan, right down to the form of their stances. Djem So and Soresu. Offensive and defensive. Two halves of a whole, torn apart and smashed back together again. Revenge of the Sith. Even the title of the book was mocking him. All over again, reality crushed the fledgling hopes within him like some terrible fist, and Anakin's mouth twisted into a firm press. So closely were the gentle kindnesses wrapped in despairing reveals that Anakin could scarce pull them apart, could hardly even hear his son's voice over that roaring in his ears. (A Sith?) Pushing himself to his feet, Anakin stepped back from the couch, the heavy book still clutched in his hand -- the gloved one, the robotic one, the one Count Dooku had taken from him with a blood red blade of the dark side. Again he shook his head, and again he nearly didn't recognize his own movements as that featherlight haze darkened to a shroud of shadows. He was...angry, he was scared, he needed... "You should go." The words came clipped, and he couldn't meet Luke's eyes. (What if it was true? Could he have ruined everything? Could Palpatine have used him? Palpatine was his friend, at times his only friend when the Jedi rejected him.) When the Jedi rejected him. Anakin's grip tightened around the binding. "I can't talk about this right now." Luke was watching him carefully and he could feel the anger as it came to the surface yet he felt no fear. He knew that his father wouldn’t hurt him just as he had known on the Death Star over Endor that he wouldn’t.. He thought of the day that he’d learned Mara’s fate, not from a family member but from a file, the things he’d read about Jacen and how his immediate reaction had been this same anger. How could he blame Anakin for needing to be alone? “I understand,” he said quietly and stood to go. “I’m sorry...sorry that I had to tell you but you needed to know, you needed to hear it from me.” Luke looked down at the floor and then back at his father. “when you’re ready, you know where to find me.” He didn’t say it but he would also be keeping himself tuned to his father’s emotions and if necessary he’d do what he had to do to keep everyone safe. As badly as he wanted to believe that nothing would happen, he had to be realistic. This was a lot to absorb and there had been no easy way to tell the story. Without saying another word, he walked to the door and put his hand on the knob then turned around. “For what it’s worth, I still believe in you and I want to help you through this if you’ll let me.” There was nothing else to say really so he slipped out the door and closed it behind him, leaving Anakin to his thoughts. As the door shut solidly behind his full-grown son, Anakin's other hand, too, grasped the book, and again his eyes fell to that rankling silhouette, the bright white blades of their lightsabers burning into him like true weapons come to life. Uncertainty crawled over his skin like a thousand creeping insects, each cry echoing in his mind like some harrowing scream that wouldn't fade. Anakin Skywalker knew he wasn't the Jedi he ought to be, knew he bent the rules and defied the Code in more than one respect, but to imagine his actions amounting to a descent to the dark side clung sticky in his mind, dwelling but unable to progress. (He was the Chosen One, meant to bring balance. He was a hero of the Republic, they said. He was a Jedi. Padme, Obi-Wan, Palpatine -- he loved them. How could it have happened that way?) Anger at the story, fear of the future, shame at the possibilities -- each bubbled up like some steaming geyser, and the soft lines of his face twisted into a scowl as he reeled his arm to chunk the book at the wall, a loud thunk briefly breaking the heavy silence that had befallen the room. (It wasn't true.) Even from the floor, this book of his supposed future seemed to be mocking him, and for a moment, he levitated it, just to fling it under the couch to the sound of flapping pages. Out of sight, it might have been, but it was no more out of mind than Luke's haunting reveals, and however desperately he wanted to think it a lie, sincerity had rested kindly in his son's eyes, and he could not fathom a reason for Luke to lie about it. (Had Luke been lied to?) Yet even the experiences Luke had counted as personal seemed to support this suggestion that Anakin Skywalker had fallen to the dark side, destined to be separate from his own children, from his grandchildren. (It wasn't supposed to be like that.) He wanted to throw something else but found his apartment too bare to grant him such a wish, instead settling once more on the couch with his face buried hard, the heels of his hands digging into his eyes as if he could somehow push the knowledge from his head, if only he were to apply enough pressure. His head was raging, his emotions a confused mash of uncertainty -- he couldn't think. Didn't want to think. He wanted to tuck himself in a corner, hunched on the floor with droids and spare parts, a wrench with some untouched ship to modify. There were no signs of a ship to loose himself on, but there were the starting shells of unfinished droids. There were other mechanical contraptions to pull apart and explore. In that, perhaps, he could find some peace, if only for a little while. |