Sometimes
Part One
Luke:
Sometimes wasn't such a bad word. It was flexible- even whimsical. Yet despite its graceful disposition, it held such finality to it. People have said that he had a dreamer's mind but they never knew the deeper thoughts that went on…the silence at nights when he just had one word on his mind.
Sometimes.
As a bored child growing up on Tatooine he would sometimes dream about his then mysterious father who flew a spice freighter to different worlds across the galaxy. He felt such pride back them. Sometimes he would even tell his friends in primary school of made up stories of his dead father's adventures across the stars. Yet those were sometimes because if he told them all the time then they would have spotted them for lies.
They were words of a sorrowful, weathered orphan who didn't really reveal that side of himself to the general public, preferring to hide behind his smiles. People have commented many a time of his resilience to pain- mental or physical.
Ever the eternal optimist.
Over the years that story changed, twisted and vanished altogether. Until he nearly forgot it with all of Uncle Owen's insistence that he stay on the farm to help. Yet thinking back on it he sometimes wondered that if he had been a little more compliant then he wouldn't have gone through all the things he had gone through…There was so much regret, so much emotional and physical pain.
Yet he wouldn't…couldn't trade it for the whole galaxy.
Then sometimes that voice whispered on the bleaker nights when his eternal optimism took a brief holiday.
So he continued to follow his ignorance until Ben showed up at his relatives' deaths with one version of the truth of his father the Jedi Knight of honor and power. The self same feeling of pride blossomed in his chest at hearing the fact that his father had been a well loved and respected man. A Jedi! Who would have thought! Full of illusions, his youthful passions rekindled he jumped into his destiny with some ignorance born from ignoring the past.
He fought with the mantra, 'my father was a Jedi' over and over again as if it were some kind of talisman to keep his doubts, his fears at bay. It was as balm to his soul…
Yet sometimes he had faltered at the sound of Darth Vader who had betrayed and murdered his father.
Could he have the strength; the courage to do what his father couldn't accomplish?
Years went by and the sometimes came back with a full force. Sometimes he wished…sometimes he hoped…sometimes he felt. It continued in a cycle that followed him around and around, gnawing, soothing and whispering to him. That single word.
Sometimes.
The years it turned out had washed away Anakin Skywalker the pilot to Anakin Skywalker the Jedi Knight who was also the best pilot in the galaxy. Yet even more so on that fateful day on Bespin high above the luminous clouds stained with peach and gold, in that dark, cold room he had learned that all of his sometimes in the past had shattered with the one glaring truth.
Darth Vader was his father.
His father.
A machine that the entire Galaxy feared and hated.
Yet…yet…somehow a sliver of that sometimes remained amidst all the shattered mess.
Sometimes simply was no longer enough for him.
He had wondered about his father sometimes…but with that revelation, that final closure, he knew that sometimes had to become all the time.
Yes.
All the time.