Archive: Yes, just ask.
A/N: This has been edited, not added to.
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It was the moment my son died that I changed. Changed not to something new – but something old and nearly forgotten in my mind. It insinuated its way into me, that change – but by the end of it, I was welcoming it.
It had started as I had expected.
I had been standing by the Emperor with the aches in my body demanding attention. As I remembered the memory almost seemed to become real, happening again. My robotic hand had lain on the floor several meters from me. I recall noting that my body was weary, more so than usual. I felt suddenly claustrophobic in my black armor, and all I could only grasp was a sense of unreality as I stood there and did nothing.
The Emperor had laughed, manic and gleeful, and then raised his hands slightly higher, the dark Force lightning crackling and falling from his fingertips. His old and bent form had looked fragile, though I knew that in this case appearances were truly deceiving. He was powerful, my old Master.
My son, lying on the floor – an image so clear in my memory – screamed. He called out to me as Father, begging me to help. His voice was raw and uncontrolled from the pain, so different from minutes before – when I had denied him, and he had denied me in turn. It had been done so calmly.
He looked so much like his mother. He possessed all my coloring; but his bearing, his manner and his slender, delicate form he acquired from her. The ghost of her presence brought back unwelcome emotions I had thought lost, and I felt angry that he could cause such an effect in me.
Perhaps that was why I only watched.
My Master cackled, a low and menacing sound. I could feel the pleasure he gained from Luke's pain; his satisfaction that the last of the Jedi was dying. Even as I sensed the pleasure he gained from my son's agony, something strange within me rose – panic.
I looked from my son to my Master. Luke had lain prone on the floor, no longer struggling; he was completely overtaken by the Force lightning my Master had used. My mind caught in the memory, I saw he was limp, his forehead damp with sweat and his body surely exhausted as he came closer to death. His muscles twitched occasionally beneath the onslaught of lightning. Every detail was clear in my mind, a vision of truth. My Master's face was twisted into a gruesome smile.
The blue pools of Luke's eyes had fluttered open and I could only watch as he looked at my past self for one long second. I did not understand then his message to me, the truth he conveyed through his eyes. He smiled – a simple, faint movement of his lips. I clung to the memory of his eyes lighting with an emotion I had not seen since his mother's death.
Forgiveness.
My heart broke. It had come as a surprise to me, since I had not known I still possessed one. I knew that I had already sold my soul – I had thought, had tried to rationalize, that my heart had been lost with it.
He stared at me for a long breathless moment – I could feel that penetrating gaze even now – and as my son had stared through my faceless mask, I knew no darkness. Then his body went limp with a soft sigh and his blue eyes closed slowly, as if he were merely falling asleep.
My son died. He was gone, beyond any reach of the living.
I do not remember what happened after that. I know that my Master must have stopped using the Force lightning, but I cannot remember if he said anything to my faceless mask. If he had, I wondered if I had simply continued to stare at something that was no longer there – that I could no longer see. Had I given some inane response such as, 'Yes, my Master', in the manner of the mindless obedience of a slave?
It does not matter. When finally I regained my awareness, I was alone in the throne room. It's dark color and sharp angles abruptly seemed oppressive and harsh.
I walked over to my son, my steps staggering and slow, the dull clanking that I heard unconnected with my movement. He seemed like a point of softness melded with brightness, even now in death. His body was still; his blond hair shining faintly in the dim light. Most bodies, I had found, looked twisted and unreal in death. Not my Luke, though. He looked almost asleep, except for the odd stillness.
I knelt down, a difficult task in my heavy armor. My knees refused to bend and the throbbing agony that shot through my nerves reminded me that I had fought a difficult battle – one clashed with the heart. Throughout my life, I had not engaged in anything so challenging. I found some form of appropriateness that the second person to defeat me, after my shift of allegiance to the Sith, was my own son. Flesh of my flesh – what was left of it. Obi-Wan Kenobi's second Padawan – never mind that Yoda had no doubt given him more training – that was how I saw it. I felt a strange gratitude that old Obi-Wan had finally gotten a Padawan worthy of him.
As I scanned my mind, my consciousness rested on the disturbing thoughts that bred within.
I felt nothing. I was reflective and calm, in a way that I had not been for more than twenty years. The rage that had driven me to kill and kill again was gone, lost in the forgiveness of my son's eyes.
I did not touch Luke. I thought it some kind of sacrilege. He was such pure, bright light; I did not feel worthy.
Painfully and with difficulty, I rose to my feet and paused reflectively. I could hear nothing except my own breath, forced into my lungs by extensive machinery. I was more machine than man – if I could ever have called myself such. Before my imprisonment in my suit, I had been a callow youth and then a Sith. What did I know of it? What did I know of humanity?
My pace slow and measured, I left the throne room. I went to the lift that had brought Luke and myself here, and waited calmly for my transportation to the bridge. I found myself almost wanting to fidget. A child-like – an Anakin-like – habit that I had thought lost long ago.
Finally, the doors swept open. I looked out at the hallway leading to the Death Star's bridge as if seeing it for the first time. The floor was black and spotless. Officers and techs scurried about busily. I also saw panels not yet finished and burn marks of electrical lines overloaded.
Ah, yes. The fight with the Rebellion. I thought back, trying to remember if I had glanced out of the viewing port while in the throne room. I had. No Rebel ships remained in line of sight, I realized. Though there were a few oddly shaped objects that I guessed to be debris.
I recognized I was standing in the lift and had been doing so for several minutes. Officers and techs, who had moments before been acting normal, stared at me with looks of utter terror. The officers managed to hide it better, but the emotion was still present. I traced my memory back to the words they had spoken prior to knowing I was there. They had fallen silence at my entrance, but I had caught them off guard so there was some conversation to recall.
The Rebellion had escaped and the Empire had taken heavy losses. The Death Star was unusable at the moment. The Emperor had held things together – probably with his brute strength and will, twisting the minds of his subordinates – so the fleet wasn't a total loss. Had he not been there, the Empire would have lost the battle. The Death Star would have been a fitting pyre for my son.
I stepped out and they fell back.
"Where is the Emperor?" I asked. It came out sounding odd to my ears – mechanical and harsh. No, that was how I had always spoken. I had simply never taken the time to notice before. And why did everything seem so flat and colorless? The answer came quickly. My mask. My mask that protected me from reality – and everything else.
Finally, an officer, a sharp-faced young man who reminded me of Grand Moff Tarkin, gathered enough bravery to speak. "In – in your chambers, my lord."
My chambers? How interesting. I would have to investigate.
"Very well," I said, the words coming automatically. "Carry on."
The few dozen people in the area seemed to breathe a sigh of relief, nearly simultaneously. However, they still did not relax. Their bodies spoke of being tense and watchful. It suddenly occurred to me what I must look like: tired, bent, and missing part of my arm. What a disturbing image.
I walked past them, to another lift. It would lead to my quarters. And to the Emperor.
I feel no need to speak of what happened next in any detail. I walked to my quarters and met my Master. He sat in my chair and coolly informed me that my actions earlier were unacceptable and I would be punished. Knowing my Master, I knew he had spoken more, but I am not certain. It had been of little importance to me.
I had come to a decision.
My Master had to die.
My son lay dead and slowly cooling on the floor of the Emperor's throne room. My Master had not only killed my son, he had tormented him and been brutal. As had I, but that was beside the point. He had taken pleasure in my son's pain – I knew I never had. And ultimately, he had committed the act, even though I had failed to prevent it.
My own atonement, I decided, could come later.
It was not easy. While in terms of brute force I was stronger than my Master, in skill he far surpassed me.
Yet, I was the Chosen One, not to mention killer of the Jedi. Murder is simply what I did. And the situation differed in one way; before when I contemplated murdering my Master, I had always given careful thought to myself and what possibility there was of surviving. I always ended up concluding that the risk outweighed possible gain. I did not want to die. But that no longer mattered to me.
I could only think of Luke. As before at the death of my wife, vengeance was all I had left. Palpatine's death would be my first and last gift to my son. Perhaps not one he would have chosen, yet it is all I had to give.
And I gave it.
My quarters were in pieces by the end of it, the walls scorched and broken. I was not much better off. My suit was failing and my connection to the dark side had long since slipped. I could use the Force but I did not know which side of it I utilized. I concluded it didn't matter.
It had mattered to Palpatine. I had baffled him. Eventually that had been his undoing; my unpredictability had allowed me to take him by surprise. His face had been oddly surprised before the dark side in his body was released in a storm.
I left my quarters in a daze.
Officer and techs looked at me as I passed but they did not interfere. I could feel their terror, but the most dominant emotion was shock. They, too, seemed to share my sense of unreality. Perhaps they knew the Emperor was dead; his death in the Force had certainly been clear enough to me. It was possible his death had created more physical manifestations as well.
Eventually I made it to the throne room, though my memory was unclear as to how. It was fuzzy. A most non-technical term, yet accurate in this case.
It does not matter.
I looked at my son, stepped forward so that I was by him. I knelt and then I looked upon his face.
Ah, his face. I could spend an eternity describing it. The blond hair so similar to what mine had been. It was actually a dark blond, as mine had become when I had spent more time in space. It was long, longer than a Padawan's hairstyle. It was the kind of hair that curled and fell easily around the ears and neck.
His face was olive toned, but bore the paleness typical of those living in space. He had high, flat cheekbones – very much like his mother's.
Yet it was his eyes that held me. They were closed, but I did not need a reminder. A simple, stunning blue that twenty years ago I could have seen in a mirror. But it was the emotion that had drawn me most. They showed so much to me. Before the Emperor, it was determination. In the hallway before meeting the Emperor, resolve. And to me . . . sadness. Acceptance.
Forgiveness.
Oh, my son. I did not deserve you.
My body stiff and unyielding, I slowly lower myself to the floor. My mind pauses reflectively for long moments, remembering the past as I finally pay the price for it. The movement difficult, I turn my head to face my son. I want to watch him, even his stillness. Even in the coldness of death. For an instant, I wonder where I will go when I die.
My body begins to fail. My suit tries to keep me alive but I can feel it deteriorating. The pain becomes more distant. Exhaustion turns into a gentle drifting and I know that I am dying.
Perhaps I will see my son, and forgiveness will once again be mine.
THE END