Well, without further ado, the epic will now come full circle.
Chapter 15-Shroud of the Shadow
The cruiser sped through the skies of Coruscant with endless urgency. Inside the vehicle brewed a storm of pure power. There was only one who could calm this storm, and Anakin tried his best not to let it engulf him. He cleansed his mind of all dark thoughts. There was no anger, no hatred, no thirst for revenge. Even the fear was absent. Anakin did not fear for his wife's life. He knew with a certainly as solid as the planet itself that no more harm would come to her; that he would save her. It was to this task that he focused his entire being. He had a job to do, and the weight of his duty left no room for any dark brooding emotions.
To everyone's surprise but his the arrival at the capital of the Empire had gone through without opposition. There was no great fleet or ambush waiting for them, as some of the generals had predicted and warned, when the Protector emerged from hyperspace over Coruscant. Still, the Alliance decided to err on the side of caution. They gave Anakin and Obi-Wan a cruiser each and dropped them off to their fates. With that accomplished the flagship quickly fled back into hyperspace and wherever its intelligence officers would deem safe.
Coruscant the planet was calm and tempered, as if already meekly resigned to the darkness that now reigned over it. He had felt her presence on the planet the moment he plunged through its atmosphere. Anakin tried to locate her whereabouts through the Force, but found only darkness. Sidious was masking her, hiding her exact location from him. The entire planet, Anakin felt, was enshrouded under a dark mask, as impenetrable as the one on Korriban. He sent Obi-Wan on a wild-bantha chase to investigate her location, but as much as he hoped for his success, he knew that his friend's search would come up fruitless. There was only one way to find his wife, Anakin knew, and that would be to confront Sidious. It was a job he had to do alone. He was the Chosen One. It was his destiny.
Suddenly he felt her as intensely as if she were holding him in her arms, stroking his hair. She comforted him, warmed him inside like a benevolent blanket. She felt him too, if only for a second before the two were separated again by the darkness. Anakin knew clearly that Sidious was taunting him, egging him on to the path that he was all too willing to take. Come get me, the shadow said. Anakin Skywalker obliged him as his cruiser plunged through the darkness, looking for the center of the great void in the Force. The shadow pointed the way to the Senate building.
Our children are our virtue.
He had wanted to send her thoughts of comfort and reassurance in the brief moment that they were aware of each other, but instead only that one sentence was relayed between them. Anakin felt it was appropriate.
Husband and wife bravely marched towards the darkness in a modest domestic Nubian flyer. Neither Padme nor her Anakin knew what to expect on the dreaded Sith homeworld of Korriban. The planet existed within a shadow of mystery. Anakin suspected that the old Temple archives might have had some secret file on Korriban, but there was no way access that now. He could only hope that he would be able to protect his wife and as well as himself from whatever demons lay awaiting them on that planet.
"Padme," he said gently. The two of them lay in the bed together, her back entrenched in his chest as he gave his wife a soft massage on her shoulders while breathing in the sweet scent of her chestnut hair. She purred in response. "Why did you name our kids Luke and Leia? What do those names mean?" He wanted to get their thoughts off of the subject of the immediate future.
To his surprise she turned around to face him with a sadness and longing in her eyes. Anakin immediately regretted the question, remembering how much Padme missed her children. However, he soon found out that he was treading on an even touchier subject.
"I had a twin brother once," Padme said to her confessor.
"What happened to him," Anakin asked knowing that a tragedy was in the telling.
"I was born first." She paused, and to Anakin it felt like she was suffocating. He placed his hand on her cheek to placate her.
"It's okay. You don't have to tell me this if you don't want to."
"No. You deserve to know." Padme choked back a sob and continued. "Something went wrong while my mother was giving birth to us. I don't know what exactly happened, but somehow the oxygen to my brother got cut off. He choked to death as I was being delivered. My parents had wanted to name his Luke."
"Wow." Anakin didn't know what else to say. He had met Padme's parents before, and he could have never imagined such a loving family to have been touched by such sadness. "Do you think of him a lot?"
"Everyday. Sometimes I still blame myself for his death."
"You shouldn't. It wasn't your fault."
"I know, but I can't help it. Other days I think to myself, what if fate switched it up and he was the one born first, and I was the one who died in the womb?"
"Then Naboo would've never had its greatest queen, and we would have never met."
Padme smiled at her husband through all her tears. "You know, I've always felt incomplete, as if some part of me was missing. That all changed when I met you." She kissed her husbands lips as they both reassured each of the validity of her statement. "I guess I've always overachieved because I wanted to live for both of us, me and Luke. I wanted to be the best daughter any parent could want. I wanted to make my parents proud not just me, but me and my brother. Maybe the better I was, the more they'll forget about their lost son."
Neither of them spoke for minutes. Anakin truly grieved for Padme, but he was also dismayed. They had not even reached Korriban yet, and already the darkness had crept into his family. The darkness had been there before he had even been born.
Anakin finally broke the silence. "What about Leia?"
A soft sparkle crept back into Padme's eyes.
The once great chamber brimmed with anticipation from the living and the dead. Of the many once prominent Senators that stood in the room Sidious cared little for. He had infiltrated them long ago, learned their antediluvian ways, and mined them of all their usefulness. Today the Senate and its members were taking another step towards extinction, but even that step was irrelevant by now.
Sith Lords do have nightmares, and this particular one dreamed of the fall. Palpatine inadvertently glanced downward as he was giving his speech. A chill went up his spine and he once again imagined himself falling down through the eternal darkness below him. The darkness was the dwelling of the ghosts.
Sidious noticed that his ghosts had stopped trying to claw and burrow their way through the darkness protecting him. Billions of them in all, they hovered in an anticipatory purgatory, as if awaiting and observing a momentous occasion. The weight of the whole galaxy seemed to be resting, tipping, in the vast Senate Chamber, and it had nothing to do with the political protocol that the Emperor involved himself with in his speech.
Skywalker was nearing. Sidious braced himself. This would be the final confrontation, that was certain. Whether Skywalker would fall before him or join him again in the darkness, Sidious knew that his apprentice and the future would be decided in this very room. Perhaps that was what the ghosts were waiting for. To see the day that would finally seal their doom. To see the day that the darkness would finally emerge triumphant for all eternity.
The Chosen One barged his way into the great chamber with the apathetic slaughter of Imperial Troopers behind. The roomed hushed and the Emperor himself went quiet as he emerged on the empty pod belonging to the sovereign planet of Naboo and piloted it brashly towards the center of the room. The galaxy was watching.
"Darth Vader, I see you have accepted my invitation. I would have expected to meet you again at someplace more private, but I guess the Senate will do." As he spoke Sidious issued a silent order to his Imperial Guards, stationed minutes away.
"Do not call me Darth Vader. I am Anakin Skywalker." That was true. Everything he was, including the darkness, was still himself. Darth Vader was but a myth.
"Have you come here to assassinate me," the Emperor taunted as the pod from Naboo edged closer.
"I have come to claim my family and fulfill my destiny." Anakin lit his sky blue lightsaber. "Where is my wife and son," he asked threateningly.
Sidious sneered. "I thought Jedi were not allowed to have families."
"Do not call me that. I am neither Jedi nor Sith." He spoke both words with spiteful vehemence, but he emphasized the latter as if to inform the Senators gathered there of the Emperor's true nature. The battle, Anakin realized, would be half a charade. "I am Anakin Skywalker, Chosen One of the Force to bring balance back to the galaxy."
"Such irony then, this alleged balance coming from one who is so unbalanced." Sidious was surprised when his insult seemed to bounce off its target harmlessly. With the seeds of frustration planted he denounced his former apprentice menacingly. "I will tell you what you are. You, Anakin Skywalker," he proclaimed at the top of the voice, as if issuing a decree to the Senators present, "are a traitor. You were a traitor to the Republic, and you are now a traitor to the Empire. You betrayed and slaughtered the Jedi, and you betrayed the Sith. Now you mean slaughter me, your lifelong benefactor."
Anakin still remained unfazed. "What I am is not important. I am not a perfect person," he beseeched the Senators, "but the cause that I represent and embrace is. I stand at the threshold of evil, and I mean to defeat it and purge the galaxy of its cancer. One does not need to be perfect, nor pure of conscience to be righteous." His words left unsaid its beckoning to the Senators, asking them to reexamine their values and their loyalties. There was still a chance for them, he promised, even on the brink of obsoleteness.
Palpatine ignored his words. To acknowledge his rhetoric was to give it a hint of the truth. "I am a merciful man, though, and my Empire is merciful as a reflection of myself. I say this as a message of mercy and goodwill to all. If you repent your wayward actions and pledge your allegiance to the Empire, I will gladly take you back."
"I will never join you, Darth Sidious." His lightsaber glowed brightly in the ever-darkening room.
"So be it, Skywalker." Sidious ignited his red lightsaber as Anakin leaped through the air towards the Emperor's pod.
Despite all his wisdom, all his knowledge, all his power, Darth Plagueis was ultimately a creature of weakness. An idle aristocrat. A petty bourgeois. He had never met a Jedi before. He had only touched lightsabers with two people, his master and the apprentice that also happened to be his son. Thus Darth Plagueis had no clue on how to react when his sleep was rudely awakened by an invisible Force that clutched at his throat and left his body suspended in the very air that his lungs were cut off from.
Darth Sidious's eyes were cold as he slowly suffocated his father. They did not betray his excitement, his pure exuberance as he was accomplishing the task the he had secretly planned for over twenty years. The one thing that sustained his will to live.
"You know, father, I will make you proud." He watched as his father's eyes seemed to bulge out from his skull. "I am going to become a great Sith Lord," he said slowly, enunciating every word. "And one day I will spread the darkness over the entire galaxy. Our darkness." He searched for any pride his father could be feeling, and to his delight he found an inkling of it.
"But what will bring me my greatest joy, father, is the fact that you will not be alive to see it."
As he prepared to deliver the final blow, Palpatine hesitated. He would be nothing without his father. He wouldn't have powers beyond most people's imaginations; he wouldn't have a cushy, wealthy aristocratic and political background. He wouldn't even exist.
"You know, father," he mused. "I could show mercy. I could kill you, and then bring you back to life again. After all, that is a skill that you have taught me."
A glimmer of hope emanated from his father's dying body, and Palpatine felt it. It wasn't pity he felt. It was pure revulsion. The fact that his father could possibly have any human feelings, any emotions, he had denied in his mind long ago. How could he feel, Sidious asked himself, when he had taught his son so painfully and excruciatingly to do exactly the opposite? His resolve returned.
"But then, father, mercy is a lesson that you never taught me."
The desperate despair of father made Sidious even stronger as the tips of his two fingers met each other.
The battle was unlike anything any of the Senators had ever seen. The two warriors ceased to be solid beings as the hands that gripped the jousting lightsabers could barely catch up with the arms and body that controlled them. Twists, turns, and jumps all meshed together into one surreal blur.
The fight was precarious for both involved. Any slip in the toes would send the unfortunate victim plunging hundreds of feet towards the floor of the chamber. Any slip in focus would result in a fatal strike from a blade of pure energy. Anakin would have never believed until now that the darkness possessed any grace, but as his opponent matched his every move with equal power, precision, and speed, it seemed like the entire battle to Sidious was a work of art.
The Force is art, Anakin reminded himself, and he focused his concentration even more deeply into the Force. He stood still like a statue in the middle of the pod and fended off the blows raining down on him as Sidious moved quicker than light from one end to another while still maintaining that his crimson lightsaber be pointed at Anakin. The Chosen One, however, could foresee his every move and met his every attack. Anakin imagined an invisible wall standing between his body and the tip of Sidious's saber. Nothing, the Force told him, could penetrate that wall.
As his defense gave him strength Anakin began to search for weaknesses in his opponent's attacks. To his dismay he found none. His counter-strikes were constantly met in return by the red lightsaber, and he barely had any time to parry away another stab from Sidious afterwards that seemed to come out of nowhere.
Anakin slowly gave in to his frustrations. He was the Force, he felt. He was pure, he was acting strictly according to the light, and yet he could not even begin to penetrate the darkness. Perhaps the darkness was stronger. Anger crept into his soul. He hated the darkness. He hated the perseverance of the darkness, the eternity of it. He was a being conceived for the express purpose of destroying the darkness. He would destroy, no matter what the cost. Anakin's stance became an aggressive one now. He started to chase Sidious around the pod, striking at him with all his power. He pictured his lightsaber penetrating the Sith Lord's body, decapitating him, hacking him into pieces. But his blows were only met by the steel of the pod as the wretched old creature kept eluding him. His rage fed by the failure, Anakin swung his weapon around madly and without pattern, his own skin barely escaping the painful touch of his lightsaber. Sidious seemed to cackle with glee.
Suddenly he became aware of two distinct and familiar presences in the chamber. Taking advantage of his break in concentration, Sidious went back to an old and successful strategy and flung Senate pods complete with Senators in them at Anakin. Focusing on the battle once more, he was able to repel the pods away seconds before they met his body. His minor victory came with costs as the Senators in the pods plunged downward to their deaths.
As Anakin was preoccupied with this, he caught out of a corner of his eye Sidious jumping onto a pod that was flying through the air, his lightsaber slicing through the unfortunate Senator that occupied it. The pod and the Emperor flew across the room away from him. He turned to face the Emperor but his attention went back to the two new audience members observing the battle. To his left at the very edge of the chamber a pod emerged. On it stood an Imperial Guard cradling an infant boy. His son. To his right on the opposite side of the chamber from Luke was a pod that held his Padme, looking as defiant as ever in the strict clutches of two Guards. Straight ahead of him stood the Emperor, laughing evilly as he his words echoed through the room.
"You can't save them both, Skywalker."
It had been the happiest time of his life. Just him and Padme. It seemed that the two of were all alone, the only ones on the entire planet of Naboo. For the first time it seemed like he was able to truly talk to Padme, to get to know her, to converse with her as an equal without the weight of the world pressing down on their shoulders. He had kissed her, and she had kissed him back. Even though Padme had pulled away all too quickly, Anakin already knew that she felt something for him. There was hope, he told himself, that one day she will be the one to kiss me.
But the magical thing about that day was that Anakin did not have to worry about the future. He and his love reveled in the present as they ate a satisfying lunch below the waterfalls and wrestled with each other in the sunlit meadows. He felt nothing but pure joy and happiness, and he knew that Padme felt the same way. Was it possible that he was the one who was making her happy? That gave Anakin an even greater joy. As much as he loved her and wanted her for himself, the only thing that mattered was that she was happy. With or without him, he reminded himself.
As they rode back to the lake lodge on top of the shaak, Anakin knew for certain that they were destined to be together. Excluding the shaak, of course. He had always known, even when he was a little boy. The Force had subtly whispered it to him. Now the Force shouted to him, "SHE NEEDS YOU, SHE LOVES YOU." It didn't hurt that Padme was clutching him so tightly that it truly felt that the two of them were one. Her head lay nestled on his back, and every breath she exhaled onto him breathed life into his soul.
Anakin was the one who broke the silence. "I've always wondered, angel, where does your name come from? What does Padme mean?" It was only the second time he had called her 'angel', and he was sincerely relieved when she didn't object to it.
"That's a silly question," she mocked. "What does Anakin mean? What does anything mean?"
"I don't know what Anakin means. I've never cared enough to ask."
"Padme does have a meaning though."
"Other than beautiful angel?" Three times, he thought to himself.
She laughed nervously. "In your mind, maybe. On Naboo there is a Padme flower."
"What does it look like?"
"It's a brown flower that grows on the mountainsides, but sticking out of it from the center are these tiny little stamens that sparkle under the sunlight and can be any different color. It has a very full yet soft texture, and its stem is almost unbreakable, which allows it to survive in the rough mountain winds."
"The Padme Flower," Anakin repeated to himself more than anything else. "It sounds like the most amazing and beautiful flower on this entire planet."
"No. There is another flower." She was interrupted by their arrival at the lodge. Anakin jumped off the Shaak, not really caring to hear about any flower that could rival the Padme in its beauty. He reached his hand out to Padme, and she took it and followed him into the building.
Anakin would remember that day for the rest of his life. They were so carefree, so happy together, in an ancient age when the galaxy was still innocent. Before the Civil War. Before the Clone Wars. Before the galaxy fell under the shadows of darkness. But now, as Anakin thought back to that day, he realized that the Darkness had already overtaken the galaxy by then.
"Padme," he called out to her across the chamber. She gazed over towards him with a passive longing, as if already resigned to her fate.
"I love you, Anakin Skywalker. I love you." He would rescue her, he told himself as he began to pilot his pod towards his wife. It was then that Luke started crying. Anakin was torn, and soon the voice of the Sith Master interrupted the family reunion.
"You will choose, Skywalker." Sparks of lightning shot out from both Sidious's hands and waited in the air for further instructions from its master. "You have two choices. You may join me and the Empire, and I will allow you to live a full life with your wife. But as you know, there may only be two, and when I retake you as my apprentice I will be forced to kill your son." The lightning from one hand reached across the room until it was halfway between the Emperor and Luke, where it waited further in limbo.
"Choose to defy me, and you will watch your beloved wife die before your very eyes." Lightning shot from his other hand until again it rested halfway between the Sith Lord and former Senator from Naboo. "After that," Sidious speculated, "I doubt that you will have any further will to live. And even if you did, it cannot contradict my will that you will die, and that your son Luke will replace you as my apprentice. It is your choice, Skywalker. Choose wisely, and may the Force be with you in your decision." The Emperor cackled as his last sarcastic statement.
"No." Anakin said this softly at first. This couldn't be. This wouldn't be. Had all that they had been through, all the he had been through, the lightsaber battle between him and Palpatine, had that all been a charade?
"No." This time a little louder. He would break through the charade. He was the Chosen One. He knew he was more powerful than Sidious. He was the Force, and he would protect his own. He would not accept Sidious's alternatives. He would not let the darkness take away his family, his family. Sidious had no right.
Remember, Anakin, there are always more than two choices. Qui-Gon's words to him echoed in his mind.
"No." This time he shouted it. With hatred, with malice, with murder on his mind. Without even realizing it Anakin's hands began to rise up into the air. How dare Sidious take away his family, his wife? How dare he hurt her, or even touch her? He looked towards Padme but couldn't read her face. He knew what she wanted him to do. She would never want him to join the Empire. She would rather die, and willingly too. But Anakin would never let that happen. He was the Force, he told himself, and the Force would never let that happen. And what use would her death be if it only served as the beginning of the road of Luke's path towards the darkness. Anakin felt hopeless, and he hated being hopeless, being outsmarted, outwitted, and outmaneuvered, being forced into a corner of darkness with no escape in sight.
The lightning poured out of his hands at a speed and rate so fast that Sidious barely had time to pull his hands back and counter it with his own lightning. The dark energies met in between the two as Sith and Skywalker engaged in a battle of wills. Who was stronger? Who had more resolve? Who could hate more?
Sidious felt fear for the first time as he realized that he was being overpowered by Skywalker's darkness. The Force itself was being transformed into waves and waves of anger through the body of Anakin Skywalker, the catalyst. In this reality, the Force was anger, and even Palpatine was not match for the Force itself, he being a mere mortal. The lightning that crept closer and closer to him was as bright as ten suns and as powerful as a black hole. Sidious was afraid now. The ghosts were laughing, he thought. Their day had finally come. That was why they waited. They were crouched, and waiting for their prey to fall.
Anakin had already lost himself in his hatred as he unleashed torrents and torrents of pure dark energy at the object of his wrath. A voice cautioned him, told him that the darkness within him was taking over, that if he did not stop now the darkness would become him. Anakin shrugged that voice away into nothingness. He didn't care anymore. He would do anything to save his family. He would give away his soul. And a part of him enjoyed this release of energy. Finally, Anakin felt empowered, that he could do something, that he could strike back at the forces that had caused him such pain for so long. The forces that imprisoned him in the Jedi temple, the forces that made him care and fear so much for the ones that he loved, the forces that wrecked the galaxy with never-ending war, the forces of betrayal when he found that his own friend and mentor was a Sith Lord, the forces that took away his mother. The forces that still threatened to take away his son and wife. He had no other choices. It was either to give his soul to the darkness, or to see his family destroyed by the darkness.
Remember, Anakin, there are always more than two choices. The words echoed through his mind again.
…remember, Anakin, there are always more than two choices…
…remember, Anakin, there are always more than two choices…
…more than two choices…
…there is another choice…
…another choice…
…there is another…
Anakin let go of the darkness.
He finally broke the silence. "What about Leia," he asked his wife.
"Leia," Padme replied in an almost wistful tone. "Leia. Leia is a name for a flower of Naboo. A rare one that never sees the light of day. It is found only in the deepest, darkest caves of the mountains. The Leia flower, people say that it glows like a sun in the darkness of the caves. Something about the crystals, I think. Legend says that they are gifts from the gods themselves, sent to our world to guide men through the dark caves back into the light."
"Wow," Anakin said, realizing for the first time the amazing and otherworldly background from which his daughter drew her name. "Is the Leia flower real?"
"I have never seen one myself, but the flower is real enough. The only person I've known who has actually seen a Leia flower is my grandmother Winama. Way back when she was still a child, a girl from her village disappeared. She went missing for days, and the entire town was in panic. They searched everywhere but couldn't find a trace of her. Most people began to whisper that she got herself lost in the caves. No one dared to wander far into them to look for her as they feared that they would be lost themselves. Then suddenly, one day she emerged safe and sound, clutching a Leia flower in her bleeding hands. She was as thin as a skeleton and could barely muster the strength to speak, but she was still alive. She later said that she was at the brink of death when she wandered onto the flower, and she had used it as a light to find her way out of the caves. My grandmother saw the flower with her very own eyes, and she told me that it was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen in her life."
"I'd like to see one of these flowers with my own eyes."
"You know, Ani, that same flower probably still glows with light, even today. They say that the Leia maintains its radiance decades, even centuries, after being picked from the caves."
"Whatever happened to the flower your grandmother saw, then? Why wasn't it passed down by the girl for all to see, generations after generations?"
"I don't know. No one knows whatever happened to the girl. I think she went on to marry some aristocrat in Theed, but in the years I was Queen I never met any woman who even really had ever heard of the flower."
"Next time we go to Naboo, I'm going to pick one for you, Padme."
"I believe you."
"You will never win, Sidious." By now the Sith Lord's lightning was advancing slowly towards him as Anakin's dark energies continued to waver. "Whatever happens in this room, you will still lose. There is another, you know."
Palpatine was at first confused by the words, but to his delight Anakin easily betrayed his thoughts and emotions for all to see and hear.
"A sister," he stated as if unraveling a grand conspiracy. "A sister to Luke, am I right, Skywalker? A twin?"
"Yes," Anakin replied with defiant confidence. "A girl. Her name is Leia."
As Palpatine's shroud began to unravel Anakin let go of everything he was and allowed the full might of Darth Sidious's lightning flow through every inch of his body.
His task accomplished, Darth Sidious returned to his study an empty man. What purpose was there now that his father was dead? He was a Sith Master, but what did that mean? His father had never taught him what to do when he was a Sith Master. For all he knew, Plagueis had intended him to be his apprentice forever.
For reasons that he would never know, Palpatine unlocked a lock-box hidden in the recesses of his closet and stared at the glowing flower before him. How had he come to this, he asked the flower? A man alone in the world, a Sith Lord without a cause. The flower didn't answer any of his questions. Instead, it seemed to just accept. It took in his thoughts, his brooding, his pain, and it never judged him for it. For a moment Palpatine almost felt carefree again.
No, he told himself as dark resolve built in his heart. The flower was his enemy. It made him weak. He was a Sith Lord now, a Sith Master. What more could he ask for? What more could he want? He had a cause. He would wage his holy war against the galaxy, against the light. And the Leia flower before him would be the first casualty of his war. He would destroy it and seal his fate to the darkness.
And yet again, for reasons he never quite comprehended, he couldn't bring himself to complete as easy a task as crumpling a fragile flower that lay in his hands. Instead he put it back in the lock-box and shut the lid, swearing to never open it again.
He did open it once more in his life. As a Sith without a master but with still much more to learn about the Dark Side, Darth Sidious made his lonely pilgrimage to the Sith homeworld of Korriban. It was in the dark tunnels under the Sith temple that Palpatine found his final resting place for the flower his mother had given him. He set it on the ground and never looked back. The light will wear out someday, he told himself, and the darkness will reign over the pathetic flower for all eternity.
But the flower still glowed. It continued to glow for decades until it was found again by a young man seeking to find himself. Anakin was lost until he saw a glimmer in the darkness of the tunnels. He followed that glimmer of light until he found its source, a tiny, fragile flower that lay helplessly on the ground. A Leia flower? He was amazed. Weren't those from Naboo? How did a Leia flower find its way to the darkness of Korriban? Anakin found the answer to his question when he picked the flower up.
And now Anakin accepted. He accepted the lightning freely, willingly. He accepted the dark energies flowing through his body. He accepted the pain. Not his pain, but the pain of Palpatine. He felt his pain again, just like when he had touched the Leia flower in the bowels of Korriban, when felt the pain as clearly as if were his own, when Palpatine's life seem to flash before his eyes. More accurately, when he himself lived through the years of Palpatine's life in the course of only a few seconds.
He lived it again. He painted as vivid a picture as he could in his mind. He imagined himself being beat and tortured by his dad, he felt the pain of watching his dad do the same to his mother. He experienced the conflict and the pain of having to plunge his lightsaber through the heart of his mother. He lived the self-hatred and disgust of one whose entire existence had been created as an experiment for the purpose of evil, of the darkness. The Chosen One was the Force. He was the catalyst. He sucked the darkness into his body, his soul. He purged the darkness into nothingness and called out for, no, begged for more.
Palpatine to his horror had lost complete control of his reality. Skywalker was powerful, he realized now, knowing that it was too late. The man was a black hole. He sucked in his lightning as if it were nothing. His malevolent attacks left no ill effects on the man's body or his soul. Palpatine tried to stop the flow of electricity from his hands, but he couldn't fight against the black hole that was the Force itself. He felt like his entire soul was being pulled in past the event horizon.
As his mighty shroud tore apart and disappeared into oblivion it revealed a withered, sad little man helpless against the carnage. The ghosts seemed to salivate at the chance. The barrier was finally broken, and the ghosts tore at him relentlessly, the billions of them. They clawed bottomless scratches into his soul, they burned his eyes to the point where he could not see, their silent accusations paralyzed him to the point where he could not move.
Reality did not exist for Palpatine anymore. He was lost. He was falling through the darkness. He would fall forever. And the ghosts followed him on a trail blazed by vengeance, each one clamoring for its chance to add to his darkness. If there were a hell, Palpatine realized, he was living in it.
The lightning had ceased, Anakin realized. He woke in a daze and examined his arms. They are as unscathed as the skin of his newborn children. He looked around him, and the entire Senate chamber looked back in unabashed awe and disbelief. They had witnessed a sight they had never seen before and would never see again. They had witnessed the pure might and truth of the Force.
His former enemy stood paralyzed on the pod before him, his gnarled arms still raised and his body frozen for what seemed to be eternity in its contorted state. His hood had fallen and his eyes stared blankly into the void. And yet Anakin knew that Palpatine was still alive. As his pod moved slowly across the chamber towards the fallen Emperor, Anakin felt the scent of an endless and unnatural darkness swirling around Palpatine, almost as if it were attacking him and stabbing him with its sharp tendrils. Anakin had a hint of what Palpatine was going through, and he wondered even now if he deserved that kind of pain.
It was a glimmer at first and barely registered in Anakin's consciousness. But it was there, as real as the darkness, and just as powerful. Two benevolent presences, it seemed, full of light, full of generosity, full of kindness, full of forgiveness. The light, a light that no one else in the chamber saw or felt, started to slowly but surely penetrate through the darkness that engulfed the former Sith Lord, almost as if it were reaching out to him. Anakin ignited his lightsaber again.
He felt the cold warmth of the crimson lightsaber at his temple, daring him to incur its wrath.
"Do not doubt, son," his father said. "Do not have mercy. You have only two choices, but they are yours to make. Kill her, or be killed."
It was a miracle that Palpatine's shaking hands was able to even grasp the cold steel of the lightsaber. He dared not ignite it, for he feared what he would do once it was on. He feared that he would give in to his selfish thoughts, his darkness, his pure instinct that called to him "SURVIVE! No matter what the consequences, SURVIVE! LIVE!"
His mother made it easier for him. She reached out her arm and caressed the hand that held the lightsaber. She ran her fingers lovingly across his swelled and bleeding knuckles and pressed her thumb on the back of his hand to comfort and reassure him. Then, her fingers found their way to the handle of his lightsaber, and with the same thumb she pushed down on the button that activated the weapon.
"Do it, my son. There is nothing else I wish for. My life has been nothing but pain, and death would be a blessing. Especially if through my death you will find life."
He his grip on the weapon still waved. Tears began to form in his eyes. His father's blade nudged even closer to his own head.
She continued: "Do it. Save yourself. I want you to kill me, Palpatine. I would rather die at the innocent hands of my son than at the hands of the cowardly swine that is his father."
He had no restraint for the tears now. His entire reality was pain. The pain threatened him, it seduced him, it called his name, and it welcomed him. The pain educated him, teaching him how to block it. He knew that there was only one way to placate the pain, even if it was only temporary.
"I love you, Palpatine. I will always love you, be it in life or in death. You are MY son, and I will love you no matter what you do. Death cannot stop from being there for you."
His hand thrust forward against his will. He couldn't see her die as his tears blocked his vision, but he felt her presence disappear into the darkness. But the pain lived on. The pain survived. The pain lingered, and it gained power beyond imagination. The revelation was his now, but it was too late. The pain had lied.
Darkness. Then a glimmer of a pure light. At first it seemed to be blue, as blue as the Nubian sky itself. Then the light transcended all concepts of color as it gained in strength and pierced through the darkness. The ghosts seemed to shudder in its presence. Fear gave way to oblivion as the impossible happened. The ghosts disappeared, faded into the Force from whence it came. There was only the light now. So strong, so full of love.
Mother? The light acknowledged him benevolently. Lade? He had barely known her, but yet here she was, comforting him at the end. And his mother. For the first time in his life Palpatine felt the warmth of the Force. There was so much light, he discovered. More than he could ever imagine.
The shroud, he decided, was a dream.
The lightsaber that pierced through his heart was reality, and it was a virtue.