The Last Gift
He had made his choice so long ago and it was not something that he felt the need to regret. But that face which looked back at him now, had shattered all resolve he had once held so very dear. That face. The look of a child, yes his child, who was hurting and in pain.
A pain that he remembered all too well, but had tried for so long to push from his mind, now crept around the very corners of his consciousness. There was no way to ignore what was going on his head and the screaming of his son only added to the pain he felt rising within.
A rash decision was just that, rash. In one fell swoop, Darth Vader had ceased to be and floated away to follow the Emperor to his death. He was now nothing but a memory to the scarred Anakin Skywalker, a remnant of a life which had been lived in hate and redeemed by a child.
Anakin Skywalker was not the destroyer of worlds and the breaker of wills. He was merely a child himself. A child which had missed his mother so badly and clung to love so tightly that he had lost his mind. A mind which should have served the Republic, but instead destroyed it. And destroyed the one true love he had ever known.
No one loved you when you were the cold and calculating killer of worlds, hidden behind a suit of armor which locked you in your own personal prison. There Darth Vader had flourished and made all those around him pay for the pain that he had known far too early in life.
How many people had begged for their lives as he had merely crushed them beneath his boot? Anakin Skywalker had cringed at their screams while Darth Vader had relished each and every one, gaining strength from the echoing sobs of those far weaker.
The last gift he could give his child, no his children for Luke had a sister, was the fact that he no longer held onto his hate. That he truly knew what it meant to be free and one with the force. That he had finally learned all those lessons that his master had tried to teach him all those years ago.
The last gift he had given himself and the jedi was a balance that they had talked so freely about during the old times. The balance that they had craved so much, they often looked the other way.
He had often wondered if Obi-wan would be there to greet him when he finally joined the force and now he would get the chance to find out as his life slip from his own grasp and into that of the force.