The Price of Redemption
Death was, to Anakin Skywalker, like waking from a very long, very tiring dream. He blinked once, unsure of where he was or what was happening, and then there was light, and hands reaching out as if to help him up. He tried to see them clearer; saw Padmé's delicate hands, Obi-Wan's strong, kind ones, even Yoda's gnarled little fingers. He looked up and saw what he as Darth Vader had tried to burn from his memory: the people who loved him, the countless victims of his murderous rages, and they were all smiling at him as if in welcome.
His breath caught for a moment. They were welcoming him, separating the man from the machine, the man from the darkness that had threatened to destroy everything - the darkness that had nearly destroyed him that fateful last fight with Obi-Wan before the lava tore at his flesh and he could no longer breathe with his own lungs.
He released a breath. Yes, there she was, his beautiful wife, restored to all that she was during their marriage, young and forever the angel he once asked her if she was. And Obi-Wan, released from the burdens that had made the young Jedi Knight white-haired and wrinkled long before his time; yes, he was there, too, his eyes bright and no longer censuring.
Yoda was the first thing that came clearly beyond that, tottering away on his cane as he had for the last fifty to sixty years. No, Yoda had not changed. Nor was he captured forever young. But he had earned every wrinkle, every crag. Age had marked him with wisdom the best way Nature knew how.
"Sit up, you can, Anakin," the wizened old Jedi Master said, and he was surprised. Yoda had never called him Anakin in all the years that the two had known one another.
Anakin sat up slowly, as if testing his body, and found with some amazement that he was no longer that badly burned shell of a man, but the young and strong man he had once been, before corrupted by the Dark Side that had always lingered in his heart.
No. It didn't linger. His emotions had prompted its entry. Palpatine had seduced him with all the kind words Obi-Wan and the Jedi Council never gave him, simply out of fear. He paused, realizing finally the truth of their censure. Obi-Wan had been so afraid, with this first padawan, that he would fail, as Qui-Gon had with Xanatos, that he had been overly censorious. Yet he in his way had loved Anakin, and tolerated his mistakes. The Jedi Council had been afraid, too, but not of failing him; their worry was that the Chosen One would fail, that Darkness would envelop the galaxy. They censured because they wanted to see him succeed, too.
"Understand that, you do?" Yoda asked, startling him again; he'd almost forgotten Yoda's patient presence. He looked at the Master who most feared his training, really looked, and gave up his images of a stern, forbidding little troll. He gave up that resentment, because he remembered that Yoda had trained his son. All the goodness he had never seen in Anakin, combined with the best of Padmé, was in Luke, and Leia, too. And this Jedi Master had trained his son, though it must've taken something for him to train Luke, as impulsive, headstrong, and old as he had been then.
He looked into eyes that didn't blink and acknowledged Yoda's words with a nod and then dropped the gaze. A tap of the cane sharply censured that action. "Concentrate on the past, you will not, Anakin Skywalker." He sighed. "Always, with you, emotions control."
"Asking Anakin to help that is like asking Tatooine's suns to rise over Alderaan," came Obi-Wan's amused voice, and Anakin turned to see his old master standing there, as if he had walked in through some secret entrance Anakin hadn't seen. He took in another breath and met his master's eyes. Wise, and for once in a long time, unguarded, Obi-Wan's eyes held the gaze.
Anakin felt that burden lifting from his shoulders, too, and he wanted to cry out, wanted to explain, to be able to go back to the past and change the things he'd done to the man who'd loved him as a father loves the prodigal son. He saw before him their last battle, where Obi-Wan had allowed his padawan the final victory in hatred and accepted the killing strike.
He swallowed hard, and the memory of Luke's scream came to him like a disembodied voice from another time, the tone and pitch changing to Obi- Wan's, and then Padmé's higher, sweet voice, and he shut his eyes as the chorus swelled, as all the men, women, and children he'd ever thought to do wrong - yes, even those Force-forsaken Tuskens who'd killed his beloved mother - joined it. He drew himself into a ball, knees at his chest and hands over his ears. But the voices weren't audible sounds. No, they were the sounds that haunted Darth Vader's deepest, darkest nightmares, the moments when Anakin had control over his own damned body and felt and saw and heard all those horrible things that he had done, and the Dark Side stretched out to him once again, stretching out with that voice that drowned out all else.
They deserved it. They deserved to die. They aren't worth the moment it takes to regret it.
And suddenly, there came hands over his, hands that wrenched his from his ears, and he cried out. "No! Please! No, don't make me listen to it! I can't.I can't stand it!"
"Why?" It wasn't Obi-Wan's voice anymore, it was Padmé's.
He tried to shut his eyes again but couldn't, couldn't stop the memories of those final days that broke her, broke her lovely brown eyes and the determination to bring him back. That sweet voice demanding, pleading, begging, soft and loving, hard and weeping.
"I can't stand listening to what I've become," he sobbed out, and to his utter shock and partial embarrassment, he was crying like he hadn't cried since the day he slaughtered the Raiders, and Padmé had put her arms around him like his mother used to do, and it only made him cry harder, tasting salty droplets that came so fast they tumbled over one another. "I can't stand it because I know what I've done and they didn't deserve to die. I was wrong to murder them.to rob from them every breath and every day they could've lived with their families. I can't stand knowing what I did to you and Obi-Wan and our children.By the Force, it hurts, Padmé! It hurts like the lava.please."
His tears had slowed, but he was still shaking, still rocking back and forth, feeling all alone, trapped in the darkness as he had been once, the darkness Luke had freed him from; only death wasn't so forgiving. It didn't free him from the deeds that he had done. His hands were covered with their blood, and his ears rang with their cries, and his voice was silenced, raw with their screams.
He had thought he had been forgiven, but this, this was like going through the lava all over again. It seared the handsome face and body into nothingness, destroyed it all into an empty shell that came out of the fire with revenge emblazoned all over every ragged breath he compelled his tortured lungs to sustain. And somehow they got him into that armor and he was forced to spend the next twenty years encased in that walking coffin, listening and hating with a passion the sound of his own mechanical breathing, hating the way his eyes weakened from the electronic equipment given to maintain and support them, hating the way his voice deepened and became just another element of that machine that he had become.
And then a long flame broke the darkness. He flinched back from it, and then realized the screaming died down to nothing, realized that the glow of the flame was not the regular orange-red he had come to accept in his nightmares, but a greenish glow that tapered like a candle into something.
And then Luke's face appeared in the green flame. He spoke words Anakin Skywalker couldn't understand, but they were to him, not to that monster. This light, this radiance that was his son, was speaking to him, and Anakin reached out to it, even knowing the flame was the blade of a sword, and for one instant, the light overwhelmed the darkness, and he could see, think, hear, smell, and taste nothing but purity. He tasted the salty goodness of Naboo's seas, he felt the softness of his mother's touch, of Padmé's kiss, of the pride in Obi-Wan's hand clasped on his shoulder; he could hear the laughter that had been missing for so long.
The darkness tried to retake its grasp on him, but Anakin had the strength of his friends, his family, and the lightness that touched his long dead heart, and fought back. He seeped out into the darkness, permeating it, killing it as he could not have all those years ago. The light was light again, no longer a burden of place and time and sense and emotion on a body and mind determined to forget.
Anakin blinked his eyes as the light shined its way throughout him, and invigorated his body with new strength. He wanted to laugh and to weep at the same time, and did neither. He waited, sensing something was coming, something that he wasn't sure would accept him or drive him into the arms of darkness again.
Hands were upon him, hands that felt accepting and nurturing, imbued with the power of the Light Side, and Padmé Amidala Skywalker embraced the man she had waited a lifetime beyond the grave for.
She was solid in his arms; he had half expected her to float away, the impossible dream; but she didn't. She clutched him tightly, and then, wonder of wonders, she began to cry.
He was panicked for a moment and then realized she was laughing too, that these were tears of joy, and of relief, and he smiled, holding her at last, holding the one thing that had prevented him from being enveloped completely because she had sent him Luke.
He felt completion steal into his soul the way he had seeped into the darkness and as she pulled back to gaze into his eyes with those knowing, joyous dark eyes, he brushed away the tears with a hand - his real hand, not the artificial one that the Battle of Geonosis had forced on him and Luke had sliced off in their last battle - and kissed her, hesitantly at first until she seemed to grow lighter in his arms, and then he kissed her as desperately as he had every time they were forced to separate. And she kissed him back, and to his amazement, he could still hear her laughing voice in the back of his mind.
I'm so happy you're home, she exclaimed, the same thing she had said when he came back to her from every mission. And there was no forced gaiety about it as there had been toward the end, just pure happiness.
"I'm glad to be home," he told her when they broke apart, and he felt the grin announce itself on his face. Home. It seemed a funny thing to say about death, but it was the truth.
Home was where Padmé was.
They got up, untangling themselves with a laugh, and she clasped his hand tightly as Obi-Wan and Yoda reappeared. But he didn't feel that overwhelming guilt anymore, and he met both of their gazes with the calm assurance he'd never managed in life.
Obi-Wan embraced him, and he was embraced back heartily, as a friend would embrace a friend, and suddenly all those happy memories weren't just of Padmé but of the times that they had shared on their journey of training, and Obi-Wan's kind words, the words that had eased an intemperate passion, and wise hands that had fixed what he had broken in a temper, were full of new meaning. He had forced himself to forget all those years, and now they all came back with roaring speed, and left him with an even lighter burden.
When Anakin turned to Yoda, who was blinking his large eyes quietly, he saw the full Council behind him, and bowed to them all as he had all those years ago; but now he did it with real respect in every line of his posture.
Anakin Skywalker had come back from the edge of darkness. He had proved their most dismal warnings wrong, but he did not feel pride in that; for Darth Vader had proved them correct, as well. He only hoped that they, too, could forgive, that each of the lives Vader had destroyed would be touched again, and repaired, by the brilliant light that was his son.
And his daughter. The Council members disintegrated but not without leaving him a feeling of forgiveness, and Bail Organa walked forward.
Anakin studied the slightly taller man, restored to health and life before the pressures of being a Senator and dealing with an Empire that went against everything he ever wanted or dreamed of destroyed his health, and saw he no longer had an air of saddened resignation. The man who had fostered his daughter had carried a heavy burden, too. But when Bail died, he left with all those burdens on his shoulders.
Anakin almost felt pity for him at that, remembering that his own actions had done nothing to lessen the man's pain, and remembered too the vision of Leia that had come up in his mind when fighting Luke.
Leia.
Leia, the strong, vibrant young woman that had faced him so defiantly that day on the Tantive IV, who had stayed strong under torture, and had continued leading the Rebellion against everything Darth Vader stood for. She reminded him so much of Padmé, that instant he'd first seen her on the Tantive, that it had taken every last resolve of hatred for Vader to spit his angry words at her, to be cold and unfeeling.
Leia had almost resurrected him then, unknowingly. But he had pushed the thought of Padmé away, had gathered the hatred close like a shield, and trapped Anakin Skywalker even further away, so that it would take the green blade on board the second Death Star for Anakin's strength to break the stranglehold the Dark Side had on him.
What must his beautiful young daughter think of him? All the fears he had of her hatred crossed his face, and Padmé touched his shoulder again, reminding him not to step into that boundary, that no-man's-land, lest that he fall beyond where she could help him, where even Luke couldn't help him stop the fall.
He looked at Bail again, and saw the man who had buried Padmé, the man who had taken his daughter, and succored her, taught her everything Anakin himself had wanted to teach his children. Bail had given her a sheltered home, a life, a freedom, that he knew Padmé would want for her child.that Anakin would want for his daughter.
Yes, Anakin. Bail had thought of him, too, at her bequest, thought of the young Jedi who had fallen so far and been robbed of so much, and had raised his daughter with that failure in mind. He, Bail Prestor Organa, would not fail.
And he hadn't, had he? Leia had been a wonderful Senator to her people, and a wise leader of the Rebellion. She had compassion and the diplomatic skill Padmé had passed on, yet partially his temper, too. She had no patience for those who would hurt the people she loved; she wanted to protect Luke the way Anakin would've tried. She wanted him to run from the knowledge that Vader was his father, run far away from it, and kept on running, because that knowledge meant only evil to a pure heart that had lost so much already. In that, his daughter was the wiser, the elder. She had seen so much she shouldn't have, and it had hardened her outside. It had made her pragmatic, yet prone to those emotional displays which had made Anakin Skywalker famous in the Jedi Temple.
Anakin at last gave Bail a slow, half-smile, and bowed to him, too, as if knowing that the older man deserved at least that much. If he really wanted to think about it, he should've been kissing his boots.
But Bail accepted the bow, and did something completely unexpected. He stuck out his hand for Anakin to shake, as if they were just meeting for the first time, and he didn't know Anakin from a hole in the wall.
The younger man wanted to laugh, but he didn't, and very solemnly accepted the handshake offered him.
And then Obi-Wan took him by the shoulder and pointed him in a new direction. This one wasn't towards any particular person, it was just toward the light.
Still, Anakin hesitated before accepting Obi-Wan's direction. Both he and Padmé glanced at their respective student and husband, and he spoke a simple phrase.
"I have to apologize to her."
Obi-Wan paused a moment, and it was Padmé's face which broke out into a smile before his. Slowly, his former mentor smiled, too, and they faded from view into a chamber, and he felt his daughter's presence very nearby. She was, naturally, startled to see him, and her words, her accusations, stung him, reminding him of all that he had undone as Vader, and the widening gulf between them was just an added burden. Leia had never carried the Skywalker name, but she did now, whenever she would think of Luke, and that meant she had to reconcile all of them. Anakin, Luke, and Vader. The ultimate of evil, and the ultimate of good.
"There is no . justifying my actions. Yet your brother saved me from darkness. You must believe me." He watched all those conflicting emotions, fear, anger, hatred, mingling on her face and knew that Leia would not change her mind. Her wounds were still too fresh.
Yet it was later on, in the midst of her battle that day, that she reached out to him and he responded. The split between Anakin and Vader would have her forever wondering, he knew, but if he could reach out to her, just once, and just have her listen to him that one time, listen with all her heart, she could free herself from that shadow of doubt in Luke - in herself, and in the children she would someday have.
Leia's touch was brief, but worth it. He smiled as Padmé must've when the twins were first born, with all the joy of a new father, and he turned to Padmé and Obi-Wan.
The twins' journey was not complete. But his was. He had come full circle, and now it was time to be one with the Force, to help his children in the only way Anakin Skywalker had left.
Each time they touched the Force, he promised himself he would be there. If not to share their triumphs, then to soothe their losses. He would watch the journey as best as he could, from the other side, and be the father he had wanted to be.
Such was the price of his redemption, to have to not be there on each step of the journey, but to watch it from afar, as Padmé and Obi-Wan had. Yet he was glad to pay that price, if it meant the tentacles of the Emperor were forced to release, and the radiance of his heirs could shine, eclipsing all the darkness of the Skywalker legacy with their own brightness.
Death was, to Anakin Skywalker, like waking from a very long, very tiring dream. He blinked once, unsure of where he was or what was happening, and then there was light, and hands reaching out as if to help him up. He tried to see them clearer; saw Padmé's delicate hands, Obi-Wan's strong, kind ones, even Yoda's gnarled little fingers. He looked up and saw what he as Darth Vader had tried to burn from his memory: the people who loved him, the countless victims of his murderous rages, and they were all smiling at him as if in welcome.
His breath caught for a moment. They were welcoming him, separating the man from the machine, the man from the darkness that had threatened to destroy everything - the darkness that had nearly destroyed him that fateful last fight with Obi-Wan before the lava tore at his flesh and he could no longer breathe with his own lungs.
He released a breath. Yes, there she was, his beautiful wife, restored to all that she was during their marriage, young and forever the angel he once asked her if she was. And Obi-Wan, released from the burdens that had made the young Jedi Knight white-haired and wrinkled long before his time; yes, he was there, too, his eyes bright and no longer censuring.
Yoda was the first thing that came clearly beyond that, tottering away on his cane as he had for the last fifty to sixty years. No, Yoda had not changed. Nor was he captured forever young. But he had earned every wrinkle, every crag. Age had marked him with wisdom the best way Nature knew how.
"Sit up, you can, Anakin," the wizened old Jedi Master said, and he was surprised. Yoda had never called him Anakin in all the years that the two had known one another.
Anakin sat up slowly, as if testing his body, and found with some amazement that he was no longer that badly burned shell of a man, but the young and strong man he had once been, before corrupted by the Dark Side that had always lingered in his heart.
No. It didn't linger. His emotions had prompted its entry. Palpatine had seduced him with all the kind words Obi-Wan and the Jedi Council never gave him, simply out of fear. He paused, realizing finally the truth of their censure. Obi-Wan had been so afraid, with this first padawan, that he would fail, as Qui-Gon had with Xanatos, that he had been overly censorious. Yet he in his way had loved Anakin, and tolerated his mistakes. The Jedi Council had been afraid, too, but not of failing him; their worry was that the Chosen One would fail, that Darkness would envelop the galaxy. They censured because they wanted to see him succeed, too.
"Understand that, you do?" Yoda asked, startling him again; he'd almost forgotten Yoda's patient presence. He looked at the Master who most feared his training, really looked, and gave up his images of a stern, forbidding little troll. He gave up that resentment, because he remembered that Yoda had trained his son. All the goodness he had never seen in Anakin, combined with the best of Padmé, was in Luke, and Leia, too. And this Jedi Master had trained his son, though it must've taken something for him to train Luke, as impulsive, headstrong, and old as he had been then.
He looked into eyes that didn't blink and acknowledged Yoda's words with a nod and then dropped the gaze. A tap of the cane sharply censured that action. "Concentrate on the past, you will not, Anakin Skywalker." He sighed. "Always, with you, emotions control."
"Asking Anakin to help that is like asking Tatooine's suns to rise over Alderaan," came Obi-Wan's amused voice, and Anakin turned to see his old master standing there, as if he had walked in through some secret entrance Anakin hadn't seen. He took in another breath and met his master's eyes. Wise, and for once in a long time, unguarded, Obi-Wan's eyes held the gaze.
Anakin felt that burden lifting from his shoulders, too, and he wanted to cry out, wanted to explain, to be able to go back to the past and change the things he'd done to the man who'd loved him as a father loves the prodigal son. He saw before him their last battle, where Obi-Wan had allowed his padawan the final victory in hatred and accepted the killing strike.
He swallowed hard, and the memory of Luke's scream came to him like a disembodied voice from another time, the tone and pitch changing to Obi- Wan's, and then Padmé's higher, sweet voice, and he shut his eyes as the chorus swelled, as all the men, women, and children he'd ever thought to do wrong - yes, even those Force-forsaken Tuskens who'd killed his beloved mother - joined it. He drew himself into a ball, knees at his chest and hands over his ears. But the voices weren't audible sounds. No, they were the sounds that haunted Darth Vader's deepest, darkest nightmares, the moments when Anakin had control over his own damned body and felt and saw and heard all those horrible things that he had done, and the Dark Side stretched out to him once again, stretching out with that voice that drowned out all else.
They deserved it. They deserved to die. They aren't worth the moment it takes to regret it.
And suddenly, there came hands over his, hands that wrenched his from his ears, and he cried out. "No! Please! No, don't make me listen to it! I can't.I can't stand it!"
"Why?" It wasn't Obi-Wan's voice anymore, it was Padmé's.
He tried to shut his eyes again but couldn't, couldn't stop the memories of those final days that broke her, broke her lovely brown eyes and the determination to bring him back. That sweet voice demanding, pleading, begging, soft and loving, hard and weeping.
"I can't stand listening to what I've become," he sobbed out, and to his utter shock and partial embarrassment, he was crying like he hadn't cried since the day he slaughtered the Raiders, and Padmé had put her arms around him like his mother used to do, and it only made him cry harder, tasting salty droplets that came so fast they tumbled over one another. "I can't stand it because I know what I've done and they didn't deserve to die. I was wrong to murder them.to rob from them every breath and every day they could've lived with their families. I can't stand knowing what I did to you and Obi-Wan and our children.By the Force, it hurts, Padmé! It hurts like the lava.please."
His tears had slowed, but he was still shaking, still rocking back and forth, feeling all alone, trapped in the darkness as he had been once, the darkness Luke had freed him from; only death wasn't so forgiving. It didn't free him from the deeds that he had done. His hands were covered with their blood, and his ears rang with their cries, and his voice was silenced, raw with their screams.
He had thought he had been forgiven, but this, this was like going through the lava all over again. It seared the handsome face and body into nothingness, destroyed it all into an empty shell that came out of the fire with revenge emblazoned all over every ragged breath he compelled his tortured lungs to sustain. And somehow they got him into that armor and he was forced to spend the next twenty years encased in that walking coffin, listening and hating with a passion the sound of his own mechanical breathing, hating the way his eyes weakened from the electronic equipment given to maintain and support them, hating the way his voice deepened and became just another element of that machine that he had become.
And then a long flame broke the darkness. He flinched back from it, and then realized the screaming died down to nothing, realized that the glow of the flame was not the regular orange-red he had come to accept in his nightmares, but a greenish glow that tapered like a candle into something.
And then Luke's face appeared in the green flame. He spoke words Anakin Skywalker couldn't understand, but they were to him, not to that monster. This light, this radiance that was his son, was speaking to him, and Anakin reached out to it, even knowing the flame was the blade of a sword, and for one instant, the light overwhelmed the darkness, and he could see, think, hear, smell, and taste nothing but purity. He tasted the salty goodness of Naboo's seas, he felt the softness of his mother's touch, of Padmé's kiss, of the pride in Obi-Wan's hand clasped on his shoulder; he could hear the laughter that had been missing for so long.
The darkness tried to retake its grasp on him, but Anakin had the strength of his friends, his family, and the lightness that touched his long dead heart, and fought back. He seeped out into the darkness, permeating it, killing it as he could not have all those years ago. The light was light again, no longer a burden of place and time and sense and emotion on a body and mind determined to forget.
Anakin blinked his eyes as the light shined its way throughout him, and invigorated his body with new strength. He wanted to laugh and to weep at the same time, and did neither. He waited, sensing something was coming, something that he wasn't sure would accept him or drive him into the arms of darkness again.
Hands were upon him, hands that felt accepting and nurturing, imbued with the power of the Light Side, and Padmé Amidala Skywalker embraced the man she had waited a lifetime beyond the grave for.
She was solid in his arms; he had half expected her to float away, the impossible dream; but she didn't. She clutched him tightly, and then, wonder of wonders, she began to cry.
He was panicked for a moment and then realized she was laughing too, that these were tears of joy, and of relief, and he smiled, holding her at last, holding the one thing that had prevented him from being enveloped completely because she had sent him Luke.
He felt completion steal into his soul the way he had seeped into the darkness and as she pulled back to gaze into his eyes with those knowing, joyous dark eyes, he brushed away the tears with a hand - his real hand, not the artificial one that the Battle of Geonosis had forced on him and Luke had sliced off in their last battle - and kissed her, hesitantly at first until she seemed to grow lighter in his arms, and then he kissed her as desperately as he had every time they were forced to separate. And she kissed him back, and to his amazement, he could still hear her laughing voice in the back of his mind.
I'm so happy you're home, she exclaimed, the same thing she had said when he came back to her from every mission. And there was no forced gaiety about it as there had been toward the end, just pure happiness.
"I'm glad to be home," he told her when they broke apart, and he felt the grin announce itself on his face. Home. It seemed a funny thing to say about death, but it was the truth.
Home was where Padmé was.
They got up, untangling themselves with a laugh, and she clasped his hand tightly as Obi-Wan and Yoda reappeared. But he didn't feel that overwhelming guilt anymore, and he met both of their gazes with the calm assurance he'd never managed in life.
Obi-Wan embraced him, and he was embraced back heartily, as a friend would embrace a friend, and suddenly all those happy memories weren't just of Padmé but of the times that they had shared on their journey of training, and Obi-Wan's kind words, the words that had eased an intemperate passion, and wise hands that had fixed what he had broken in a temper, were full of new meaning. He had forced himself to forget all those years, and now they all came back with roaring speed, and left him with an even lighter burden.
When Anakin turned to Yoda, who was blinking his large eyes quietly, he saw the full Council behind him, and bowed to them all as he had all those years ago; but now he did it with real respect in every line of his posture.
Anakin Skywalker had come back from the edge of darkness. He had proved their most dismal warnings wrong, but he did not feel pride in that; for Darth Vader had proved them correct, as well. He only hoped that they, too, could forgive, that each of the lives Vader had destroyed would be touched again, and repaired, by the brilliant light that was his son.
And his daughter. The Council members disintegrated but not without leaving him a feeling of forgiveness, and Bail Organa walked forward.
Anakin studied the slightly taller man, restored to health and life before the pressures of being a Senator and dealing with an Empire that went against everything he ever wanted or dreamed of destroyed his health, and saw he no longer had an air of saddened resignation. The man who had fostered his daughter had carried a heavy burden, too. But when Bail died, he left with all those burdens on his shoulders.
Anakin almost felt pity for him at that, remembering that his own actions had done nothing to lessen the man's pain, and remembered too the vision of Leia that had come up in his mind when fighting Luke.
Leia.
Leia, the strong, vibrant young woman that had faced him so defiantly that day on the Tantive IV, who had stayed strong under torture, and had continued leading the Rebellion against everything Darth Vader stood for. She reminded him so much of Padmé, that instant he'd first seen her on the Tantive, that it had taken every last resolve of hatred for Vader to spit his angry words at her, to be cold and unfeeling.
Leia had almost resurrected him then, unknowingly. But he had pushed the thought of Padmé away, had gathered the hatred close like a shield, and trapped Anakin Skywalker even further away, so that it would take the green blade on board the second Death Star for Anakin's strength to break the stranglehold the Dark Side had on him.
What must his beautiful young daughter think of him? All the fears he had of her hatred crossed his face, and Padmé touched his shoulder again, reminding him not to step into that boundary, that no-man's-land, lest that he fall beyond where she could help him, where even Luke couldn't help him stop the fall.
He looked at Bail again, and saw the man who had buried Padmé, the man who had taken his daughter, and succored her, taught her everything Anakin himself had wanted to teach his children. Bail had given her a sheltered home, a life, a freedom, that he knew Padmé would want for her child.that Anakin would want for his daughter.
Yes, Anakin. Bail had thought of him, too, at her bequest, thought of the young Jedi who had fallen so far and been robbed of so much, and had raised his daughter with that failure in mind. He, Bail Prestor Organa, would not fail.
And he hadn't, had he? Leia had been a wonderful Senator to her people, and a wise leader of the Rebellion. She had compassion and the diplomatic skill Padmé had passed on, yet partially his temper, too. She had no patience for those who would hurt the people she loved; she wanted to protect Luke the way Anakin would've tried. She wanted him to run from the knowledge that Vader was his father, run far away from it, and kept on running, because that knowledge meant only evil to a pure heart that had lost so much already. In that, his daughter was the wiser, the elder. She had seen so much she shouldn't have, and it had hardened her outside. It had made her pragmatic, yet prone to those emotional displays which had made Anakin Skywalker famous in the Jedi Temple.
Anakin at last gave Bail a slow, half-smile, and bowed to him, too, as if knowing that the older man deserved at least that much. If he really wanted to think about it, he should've been kissing his boots.
But Bail accepted the bow, and did something completely unexpected. He stuck out his hand for Anakin to shake, as if they were just meeting for the first time, and he didn't know Anakin from a hole in the wall.
The younger man wanted to laugh, but he didn't, and very solemnly accepted the handshake offered him.
And then Obi-Wan took him by the shoulder and pointed him in a new direction. This one wasn't towards any particular person, it was just toward the light.
Still, Anakin hesitated before accepting Obi-Wan's direction. Both he and Padmé glanced at their respective student and husband, and he spoke a simple phrase.
"I have to apologize to her."
Obi-Wan paused a moment, and it was Padmé's face which broke out into a smile before his. Slowly, his former mentor smiled, too, and they faded from view into a chamber, and he felt his daughter's presence very nearby. She was, naturally, startled to see him, and her words, her accusations, stung him, reminding him of all that he had undone as Vader, and the widening gulf between them was just an added burden. Leia had never carried the Skywalker name, but she did now, whenever she would think of Luke, and that meant she had to reconcile all of them. Anakin, Luke, and Vader. The ultimate of evil, and the ultimate of good.
"There is no . justifying my actions. Yet your brother saved me from darkness. You must believe me." He watched all those conflicting emotions, fear, anger, hatred, mingling on her face and knew that Leia would not change her mind. Her wounds were still too fresh.
Yet it was later on, in the midst of her battle that day, that she reached out to him and he responded. The split between Anakin and Vader would have her forever wondering, he knew, but if he could reach out to her, just once, and just have her listen to him that one time, listen with all her heart, she could free herself from that shadow of doubt in Luke - in herself, and in the children she would someday have.
Leia's touch was brief, but worth it. He smiled as Padmé must've when the twins were first born, with all the joy of a new father, and he turned to Padmé and Obi-Wan.
The twins' journey was not complete. But his was. He had come full circle, and now it was time to be one with the Force, to help his children in the only way Anakin Skywalker had left.
Each time they touched the Force, he promised himself he would be there. If not to share their triumphs, then to soothe their losses. He would watch the journey as best as he could, from the other side, and be the father he had wanted to be.
Such was the price of his redemption, to have to not be there on each step of the journey, but to watch it from afar, as Padmé and Obi-Wan had. Yet he was glad to pay that price, if it meant the tentacles of the Emperor were forced to release, and the radiance of his heirs could shine, eclipsing all the darkness of the Skywalker legacy with their own brightness.