I'm not usually a fan of songfics, but no one had done this, and I thought it was too perfect to not be done. This is set to Relient K's Devastation and Reform from their Five Score and Seven Years Ago album.
The former Darth Vader, at last looked upon his sons face for the first time with his own eyes. As he took his last, dying breath, Anakin Skywalker's scarred and dying heart ached with the pain of all he had destroyed. The memories…
Fear can drive stick
And it's taking me down this road
A road down which
I swore I'd never go
Fear had done this. It was what had tempted him; what had tempted him to turn his back on all his friends and his beliefs to fight for an evil cause he had sworn to oppose as a child. He felt tears sliding down his cheek as he remembered the fateful moment when he had sealed his own fate and betrayed Master Windu—and then bowed before the evil Lord Sidious, intoxicated by prospect of having power over death itself.
And here I sit
Thinking of God knows what
Afraid to admit
I might self-destruct
He remembered sitting alone in the Council room, knowing that Mace Windu and the other Jedi would be confronting Palpatine. If only he had told Obi-wan his fears, he might have realized that Sidious only offered despair before it was too late. Yet he had again been too fearful to admit the secret terror that only Padmé had glimpsed—the terror he felt when he realized how fragile her life was. And when Anakin was finally confronted with an offer to sooth that fear—Palpatine's offer to teach him how to save the ones he loved—Obi-wan had been light-years away. He had no way of telling his mentor and brother that he was a ticking time bomb of fear and anger.
So lock the windows
And bolt the door
'Cause I've got enough problems
Without creating more
I feel like I was born
To devastation and reform
Destroying everything I loved
And the worst part is
I pull my heart out, reconstruct
And in the end it's nothing but
The shell of what I had when I first started
Therefore, he had turned. Instead of resolving his problems, he'd only created more for himself—and had either destroyed or abandoned everyone and everything he had ever truly loved. As he looked into his son's blue eyes, so much like his own had been. How could Luke forgive him after all he had done? He remembered the shocked looked on Padmé's face the moment that he had stretched out his hand in a fist, and used the Dark Side to strangle her. The destruction of faceless beings was only skimming the surface of the atrocities he had done! He had caused the death of his own wife, Luke's own mother. Luke and his sister had never been cradled in their mother's arms thanks to him; had never heard her laugh or seen her smile.
The Emperor had promised to save her and to make Anakin powerful. But Padmé had died, and had left Anakin a shattered shell of a man who truly had nothing to live for except his own hate.
Usually I'll cause my own fist hit
It seems to me to be slightly masochistic
But there'd be no story
Without all this dissension
So I inflict the conflict
With the utmost of intention
He had been such a fool. He had done this all to himself; he couldn't even blame Palpatine. Yes, Palpatine had lured him in and had tempted him, but it was Anakin's choices that had led him to destroy himself. What kind of man destroyed wife and hated his brother? As a man corrupted and consumed by the Dark Side, he had flourished on the pain he inflicted on himself.
So lock the windows
And bolt the door
'Cause I've got enough problems
Without creating more
I feel like I was born
To devastation and reform
Destroying everything I loved
And the worst part is
I pull my heart out, reconstruct
And in the end it's nothing but
The shell of what I had when I first started
He didn't deserve Luke or Leia. He didn't deserve to be permitted to call himself even their biological father. How could two beautiful, light-filled beings such as themselves be the children of a man who had killed the children of others? The Jedi Temple had been a second home to him, and he had enjoyed the few times when he had had the opportunity to teach the Younglings. Those children had deserved to be loved by him and the other Jedi, not cut down by the blade of a man bent on destruction.
Yet somehow, the hate-filled soul of Darth Vader had justified the killing of the innocent. His reformation had been a deformation into a being of hate, cruelty and injustice. Something Anakin Skywalker had not been.
Thank you God
For giving me the insight
So I might make
These wrongs right
If and when
There ever is a next time
'Cause failure is a blessing in disguise
Yet now he had finally seen the Light. Luke had done this; Luke had never given up on him it seemed. And Luke had had the least reason to hold hope. He had ordered the brutal torture of his sister and later on, of his two best friends. Yet Luke had given him a chance, and had allowed him to right his evils in the single act of saving the life of his own son from the clutches of the Emperor.
He smiled at his son. It was the smile of a man who had broken himself many times, only to finally be reconstructed into the man he was meant to be. "Tell your sister, you were right," he told Luke and he suddenly realized that all his failures suddenly were worthwhile because he could now say those words to his son. He was still a shell of the man he had been, but as he took his last breath, he knew he could finally be at peace.
Pull my heart out, reconstruct
And in the end it's nothing but
The shell of what I had when I first started
The shell of what I had when I first started
I feel like I was born
To devastation and reform
Destroying everything I loved
And the worst part is
I pull my heart out, reconstruct
And in the end it's nothing but
The shell of what I had when I first started
(When I first started)
(The shell of what I had when I first started)