Chapter 7
Vader closes down the shop early today, opting to go into the deep forest where he can practice and train. It is only then he allows himself to reach out to the dark side of the Force as he don't have to control himself around all on this planet.
He rides a modified speeder he constructed himself; it is blackly dimmed, has gray wheels, and accelerates swiftly in a way Vader prefers.
He drives on the lake in a lane, knowing that even if he does be pulled over, he would be able to escape but as long as he has been out here, he avoided falling into the eyes of the law and crime as he wants to disappear like those Jedi across the galaxy.
Once he gets to the forest, he lands his speeder on the ground before extracting himself from it, approaching and allowing his breathing to become rapid as it always did. No one is out here. No one comes this far because many people on this planet along with the rest of the galaxy are socializing and prefer to be with others whereas Vader abandoned such feelings long ago.
After probing the Force to assure no one is here, Vader detaches his cloak, allowing the fabric to fall onto the ground before falling onto his knees and beginning to meditate into the silence, hearing the calming soothing of the water in the distance and fishes springing up before landing into the water.
He allows the past to haunt him, to tear away at him as it always does, thinking about the life he could have had, everything that he lost, and how far in the dark side he have become.
He did even before he lost his duel with Kenobi. Skywalker was at that point already a Sith, and Palpatine a mere means to an end. Anakin didn't help out Palpatine because he liked him, he only helped him out to save the most important person in the galaxy even more than Obi-Wan. At the end, unlike what his foolish younger self didn't understand, Palpatine was a monster who murdered his friends and made Skywalker a murderer. He was doing what he had to do to save his wife and bring peace, freedom, justice, and security to his new Empire.
On Mustafar, Skywalker tells Padmé he's more powerful than Palpatine and can overthrow him. He wanted to rule the galaxy with his wife. Serving Palpatine was never really on his plans, he needed Palpatine alive to keep his wife alive. His turn to the dark side was not supposed to remain a permanent feature of him, only until she was safe.
Anakin's political views more or less aligned with Count Dooku and even Grand Moff Tarkin, to fix a corrupt and chaotic political system and restore order.
He also had personal, familial motivations, to save his wife.
Palpatine never cared about any of those things, all he wanted to do was to kill the Jedi and to have the Sith (himself, of course) rule the Galaxy. Sith wanted power, and that, in the end, was Vader's downfall, allowing lust and power to blind his judgment.
After the events that led his life to this, Vader had no real urgency to destroy the Emperor, as he had no one else to rule the Galaxy, and doing so as a cyborg entombed on a life-support suit deliberately designed to be vulnerable to Sith lightning was a very risky prospect.
He could kill the Emperor, sure, but he couldn't prevent the Emperor from destroying his suit.
He needed someone to rule the Galaxy with and help him kill the Emperor.
But now, those goals no longer intrigues him. How can it when ruling the galaxy won't bring Padmé back, will only further taint everything that she fought extremely hard for, only to die in the end for it?
When Vader finished his surgery, Palpatine revealed that Padme was dead, and Vader snapped to the point of near insanity. He was enraged at Palpatine for failing to save Padmé and tried to attack him. Palpatine destroyed Vader and then finished shedding all the remains of Anakin left. Vader began resenting Palpatine and regretting his choices.
The only reason he didn't try to kill Palpatine is that he had nothing other than him and there was no purpose for his death. He used Obi-Wan as a scapegoat for his hatred, for causing his injuries, but in reality, he couldn't kill Palpatine and blamed it on Obi-Wan to release his rage.
Vader's ire for Kenobi rises. He hates him but he hates Darth Sidious even more; all those lives he claimed just to live a happy life that he and Padmé always wanted. Kenobi of course - the Jedi's puppet and slave to the Council - had to intervene instead of meddling out of their lives.
To think, at one point, he loved the man as if he was a father to him when he only used him to rise to power among the Jedi, not allowing him to save his mother, faking his death, and deceiving the man who he claimed he loved, allowing someone who is supposed to be a grandpadawan to him to be expelled by that Council of imbeciles.
Vader huffs.
Peacekeepers.
They have failed to show it in Vader's experience.
Their problem was a series of mistakes.
From the moment it was determined that Dooku had turned to the Dark Side, the Jedi Order should've divulged the truth about Dooku. That he was more than an ex-Jedi but actually Sith. People should've been reeducated into who the Sith were.
Because to most of the galaxy, Dooku was simply a Jedi that went rogue, which made it simpler for Sidious to spread rumors that the Jedi had been the ones to actually start the war. That the Jedi had done it in order to gain control over the Republic.
Their secretive way of doing things also did not help. Many people in the galaxy spread the idea that the Jedi took children from their homes when in fact the children were taken because they were mistreated or the families themselves gave them away because they had no way to offer them a better future. So those too ashamed to admit what they had done sold this false idea that the Jedi had simply come and taken their children away.
But above all the Jedi that had in their code "There is no fear, there's only knowledge" they feared the Dark Side. They completely avoided it. And thus they knew very little about the Dark Side itself. In turn that made them vulnerable to the Dark Side. That's why they began losing their ability to foresee events. The Dark Side feeds on the very events that were happening and also the emotional state of people. And the planet (Coruscant) where the Jedi had set up their temple was basically the galactic center of corruption. So they were surrounded by the Dark Side from all sides.
If the Jedi hadn't neglected their knowledge of the Dark Side, and actually had tried to understand it even if they didn't use it, they would have least sensed something as soon as things began to be set in place to take them out. As it was they willingly blinded themselves to such a degree they couldn't even sense a Sith that had been right in front of them for years.
The Order had become decadent. As strange as that is to say about a group of ascetic warrior monks, it's true. The Jedi were wallowing in drink and hosting orgies, but rather that they had become complacent, arrogant, and out of touch with their mission as peacekeepers and servants of the Republic.
Qui-Gon Jinn attempted to exploit the mind trick to try to dupe a merchant into accepting worthless Republic credits in return for a starship. That's theft, and it ought to be beneath the dignity of a Jedi. But even one as wise and respected as Jinn had gotten to the point that he did things like that with scarcely a thought.
The Jedi were slow to respond to the threat of the Sith. In part this is because of the work of Plagueis and Sidious, shifting the balance of the Force and clouding the Jedi's visions. But in part, it's because the Jedi could not believe that the Sith still truly existed. As it became clearer and clearer the Jedi Council did little more than debate what was happening. They were paralyzed.
The list could go on, but the themes are the same: The Jedi had lost their way in many respects. Even those who suspected it, such as Yoda, Windu, and Jinn, still fell prey to the creeping rot in the Jedi Order.
The policy is an ideal they're supposed to strive for, not a hard rule they need to abide by. The Jedi weren't foolish enough to believe that their Knights wouldn't become attached - the key was that they needed to be able to let go of those attachments when the time came without it destroying their lives.
And frankly, it's not an entirely misguided philosophy. Anakin and Padmé is how it would have become increasingly impossible for them to actually spend any time together as he rose through the Order. They didn't have a life together, they had liaisons. It would have been much worse if she hadn't lived across the way from the Jedi Temple. If, instead, she'd been on another planet two days away. What kind of father could he have really been to his children?
The life of a Jedi is characterized by near-constant travel and seclusion. Trying to balance a relationship with that kind of life would destroy both members of it more often than not. So the Jedi taught their members to treasure the moments they had, but always remember that in the end, they would be transitory.
The other thing one need to remember is that the Jedi do not have the luxury of being normal people. Their powers could literally crack a starship in two or bring down a building if not used properly, and the potential for deliberate abuse was even worse. Skywalker's fall shows just how deadly they can become when they start to value a single life above all others.
The mistake of the Jedi was not their policy which kept Skywalker and Padmé apart, but rather the fact that they created an environment where he couldn't talk about it and in doing so be made to realize how utterly selfish it was trying to be both a Jedi and a husband.
Vader growls, clenching his hand up into a fist, trembling angrily at the thought of the past. The Jedi were responsible for his fall to the dark side as was Kenobi. They did all they could to sever Anakin Skywalker's attachments, wanting to make him a puppet to their Order.
They probably would have even taken his children so they could be away from his influence.
Those bloody hypocrites. All they cared about was their precious Order, choosing to steal children instead of presenting them a choice to be Jedi, forcing their dogmatic views down their throats along with the former slave that Skywalker has been. He should have never become a Jedi, for all they care about is themselves.
It astonishes the Sith Lord that they did not fall long ago; those incompetent and idiotic fools who care for only their Order but deceives themselves in believing they care for the rest of the galaxy.
The Jedi nor the Sith are eviler than the other…They are two sides of the same coin locked in a sectarian religious conflict…In the beginning, there was only the Jedi who believed that suppression of emotions was the only correct way to use the Force.
The Sith, on the other hand, believed emotions are part of being sentient and are also good, because the Force responds to emotions and can produce different and often stronger powers...
His thoughts go to Padmé, thinking deeply of his wife of a time that feels ancient but only several years back. The pain in his black heart every time is enough to overwhelm him. He was meant to Force Choke her to incapacitate her, not to kill her. Kenobi's presence made him angry and he lashed out at her because the Jedi came to kill him, and those-those traitors came to kill him...
Vader's eyes clamp shut. What if Kenobi manipulated her? What if she had no choice due to the Jedi caring little for her wellbeing? The thought makes him angry. He wishes where he knows Kenobi's location so he would be able to decapitate his head from his shoulders at those thoughts.
She claimed she loved him before he Force Choke her, screaming in defiance. Anakin strangles Padme, which led to the injuries that would contribute to her death because he grew extremely paranoid about her which is quickly taken to the extreme.
She came to him, he was glad because he needed something close to emotional support after committing some seriously evil acts that were really eating him up inside. He wanted Padme to comfort him, make him feel that what he did is necessary for their future. That he paved the way for the two of them to rule side by side the entire galaxy he'd moved for her sake. Instead, he is confronted by a distraught Padme. In seconds she realizes he has killed so many lives of his own comrades down to children in cold blood, all to secure a dictatorship that has destroyed her life's work of preserving democracy…
Kenobi manipulated her!
Vader's golden eyes flash behind his helmet, burning holes into the tree. Over the last years, he has begun to accept the responsibility that he shouldn't have choked Padmé out of being drunk on the dark side, but Kenobi is the one who provoked him. It is all Kenobi's fault.
Just as the dark side burns up into him, Vader clenches his helmeted head, knowing that his anger can lead to him unintentionally sending his presence for every Force Sensitives to sense as the dark side can send a shockwave through the Force, enough to disturb every Force User, along with Dark Side wielders along with his Master.
His thoughts seize of the past, now thinking of himself. He, the former Supreme Commander of the Imperial Army, now reduced to a lowly hiding Sith Lord like many of the Jedi who survived and escaped Order 66.
Perhaps he would have been able to kill the Emperor easier if he continued his tutelage under him, especially since he lost most of his power and skill on Mustafar, though he knows deep down that he would have never overthrown him without walking away from him. Why walk away from the insidious man who is the only man he has in his life?
He belonged to the Emperor. Whenever Vader was defiant of him, the Emperor made clear his slavery to him like he was a while dog. He knows how to play on Vader such as if he was a tool.
Vader isn't more powerful, but Sidious has big dreams for what his new apprentice will be able to achieve. He has no doubt that Vader will be able to do what the Sith have always done —learn their Master's secrets, grow stronger than him, kill him, and extend the line by becoming the Master and taking their own apprentice. That all changes on Mustafar. Vader is still strong, but some of his potentials are lost when he loses most of his physical form. Sidious's lofty expectations are lowered substantially, to the point that he actually wonders, while Anakin is on the operating table if the man before him might dip into depression and shame and become something quite unworthy of the title of Sith Lord.
He is now at least equal to the Emperor in terms of lightsaber combat given his training in all several forms, but there are challenges. As much as he craves just marching to Coruscant and beheading all, killing the Emperor, it has too many risks that Vader isn't foolish enough to take. He can massacre those pathetic Inquisitors as soon as he was able to slaughter the Jedi within the Temple, however, opposing his armies and fleets will be a difficult subject as not even him is that foolish.
Vader needs to think of ways to overthrow the Emperor, but first thing first, he needs to do it without discovery. He has long since dismantled the capability of deactivating his suit, but in order for him to kill him, he will have to get past his countless and indefinite armies.
Coruscant is heavily overrun by Imperial's rulership. Vader can take down many of them but it may leave him in a valuable position with his Master that will leave him either dead or maimed, forced to bow before him once again.
He will just have to wait, find allies, or until the Force tells him it is time for him to leave instead of remaining on this planet. One day soon, it will be time, but for now, he shall wait.
As he closes his eyes in a meditating position, Vader reaches out with the Force in the hope that he will acquire answers.
And suddenly he sees the form of the planet all too familiar to him. It is a planet that he once called beautiful, the planet that he wanted to live on instead of on Tatooine where he was a slave.
For some reason that escapes the Sith Lord, the Force continues to persists to go to Naboo, and he doesn't know why, but he will avoid their persistent calls, for the Force will not drag him back into that life of where it can only punish him of deeds of the past. He shall not go to the world that she is buried on, and he shall not return there only to be insulted with the past. He will remain here. He cannot face her dead body, knowing that he is the cause of her death.
However, the Force always has a will, has a fate for all within the galaxy, and has a plan. The Force is unmerciful for some; it decides how events play out and eventually, Vader will learn not to deny the will of the Force.