Chapter 14

Anakin followed the Jedi spirits out to his balcony. There, they stood, giving their best combined effort to sense Luke's location in the vastness of the city-planet. He could be anywhere, and doing anything. Anakin faced the city with deep bitterness toward Luke. He felt the gentle night wind breeze over him, rustling his hair and his new red and gold tunic. But the panoramic view he had so treasured, even in his days as an evil Sith Lord, was now lost to him. It was so unfair! Throughout his life, he had been accused of being a whiner, even as Vader, when he complained about not being able to breathe. But honestly, he had good reason. Maybe the force didn't ever want him to be happy. Maybe it was his lot in life to suffer. He had been raised a slave. He spent his youth under the strictness of the old Jedi order.Then he had been enslaved to Sidious. He tragically lost his mother, and his wife, and was separated from his children, finally finding one as an adult who promptly turned on him. He had suffered horrible injuries, and once he was finally mostly cured of them, he recieved another tragic one. Would he, could he, ever be happy, and free? He was starting to believe the answer was no. He felt so sorry for himself, he couldn't help it.

Finally, his mind drifted back to the problem at hand, finding Luke. He spoke out loud to Obi Wan and Yoda. "Have you sensed anything yet? Have you any wild guesses as to where to begin?" There was no answer. He turned around to look for their force images, the only thing he could see, but they were gone. He was left standing there alone, and it frightened him. While he had finally rid himself of all his rage, and arrogance, and the dark side, he still, yes still, had much fear. He was afraid right now. "Where are you, Obi Wan? Please, don't leave me, my master."

My master. That last part came out of his subconcious, like a helpless, terrified child reaching out to his old friend and mentor. Anakin had always been a tragic character, and now he was possibly more pitiful and lost than he had ever been in his life. "Obi Wan!" He cried out, over and over, not believing they had deserted him in this dire time. No answer was forthcoming.

He turned around, expecting to see the spirits through the force, but they were gone, their light was gone, and he was left in darkness. He called out again, then realized he was alone. How could they go, and not even tell him? Now he was totally alone and lost. He stood for a moment in the night breeze. From behind, he was still holding onto the railing, as if he was afraid to let go of its security. Finally, he did, and took a small step away from it. He stood there not even knowing if he was facing in the right direction, drowning in darkness. Still rage did not come to him, though he did feel abandoned and betrayed by the spirits, and by Luke. More than anything else, he was full of self pity, again asking, how, this had happened to him, even now that he had changed, why was he still made to suffer, how much more would he have to endure? He put out his hands and tried to concentrate and call on the force to show him the direction back to the doorway before he headed the wrong way and tumbled off the balcony. Again, he got the feelings, no images, no visions, only darkness, but he could sense the way to go. He still wasn't sure, and walked very slowly with his arms ahead of him until he faintly felt one of them hit something. Stopping, he felt for the open doorway. It was there. The force was going to have to guide him through the dark through sensing only. He couldn't get used to it, he found it an enormous burden, and, he admitted it to himself, he was scared. He had much fear. At least from here he could make his way back to his chamber where he could hide and not have to move. Standing in the middle of the room, the bitterness overcame him and he thrashed out, clawing into the dark as if he felt he could tear it down like a wall, make it go away, burst through a barrier, and all the light and pictures would be on the other side. But he knew this wasn't true. He closed his hands into fists, pulled them out of the air and drew them to his eyes in frustration and misery. Where were Obi Wan and Yoda, why did they sense his plight, come to help, then desert him and leave him alone without a word?

Yoda, ever the old teacher, had sensed Anakin's turmoil, and fear, and no longer trusted him to help. Obi Wan was upset. He had just made up with Anakin, and promised to help him, Kenobi and Skywalker together again. "Yoda, even now, in the afterlife, am I still beholding to your views, though I disagree? We came here to get Anakin. He is willing to use his piloting and lightsaber skills to help us, but he is unable, and you will not allow me to help him?" Yoda nodded gravely. "Much fear the boy still has. Trust him, I do not. Go alone, you and I must." "I will not leave Anakin. I promised him I would help him." Yoda was insistant. "If come without your help he could, fine it would be. But interfere we must not with the will of the force." Obi Wan's spirit felt less peaceful that it ever had since his demise. "Surely you can see that what Luke has in mind is no more the will of the force than what we could do. Sometimes, I believe, we have to make our own destiny. The force can guide us, but it can also be used for evil. Don't you see, the old Jedi order was destroyed because of attitudes like yours! Don't let it happen again!" He was more insistant that he had ever dared be to Yoda, and Yoda didn't care for it. "Tinker with the force, use it in ways perhaps unintended, and lose your immortality, you may." "Do you really believe that, how do you know?" "Take a chance, shall you, hmmm?" At that, Obi Wan remained silent. Frustrated, he avoided all contact with Yoda or living beings to commune with the force to find his own answer, which he was sure was not the same as Yoda's.

Anakin made it back to his chamber and felt relieved to be inside. He felt secure sitting in it. He breathed heavily, his newly healed lungs giving him all they could. This can't be happening, he thought, I can't be blind, I can't deal with this, there has to be a way. He knew he must call on the med droids who had cured him. If they had done so much for his body before, surely they could fix his eyes. He couldn't take it a minute more, he had to see. He had to find Luke. Fumbling through his devices in his chamber, he finally located his communicator and succeeded in summoning XC-454. It was late at night, but this was an emergency. He was desperate. The droid arrived, bringing with him some of his best diagnostic equiptment. He examined Anakin's eyes. There was no answer. "Well, what can you do, and how long will it take?" He asked. "I am anxious to see again, I need to"

Again there was no answer.

The silence made Anakin shake. "There IS something you can do, look what you did to my body, you can do that to my eyes, can't you?"

The droid had enough experience with humans and their feelings to know this was going to be hard. "I'm sorry, my Lord."

"What are you saying?" He asked, fearing the true meaning.

"Your retinas are all but totally destroyed. There is a bit of healthy tissue around the outer edges, but even if I regrow it on the rest of them, you will still only be able to see lights and shadows. The macula which focuses and sharpens all the images beings see is gone, and cannot be regenerated. I regretfully must inform you that you will never, ever see again. The damage is permanent, and you are blind. Your sight, like your original limbs, gone forever."

Anakin started breathing heavily, moving in his chair. "You, you lie. You have to be able to help me. I know you can. I can't be...blind..."

"I am sorry, your eyes cannot be repaired. There is nothing I can do."

Anakin shook his head in disbelief. "No, you cannot be telling me this, there has to be something...What about some photoreceptors, like I had in the mask for night vision, can't you rig those into my brain with wires or something? If the nerve endings of my limbs accept wires why not eyes?"

"Vision, and the brain are much more complex. They will not accept the wires, they do not function properly. We have experimented, it does not work. You saw through those because you were still using your own eyes to look through them. They can enhance, work with, but not replace your actual vision."

At that moment, Anakin felt his rage returning. He wanted to break the droid to bits, but that would not help. He wanted to find Luke and destroy him, or at least make him feel as much agony as he had inflicted on him. He had tried to do good, and still he was being punished. Why? He had one last question: "XC-454, what happened to my eyes, why are they ruined? Are they truly destroyed beyond all hope?" He did not tell the droid of the force lightning. He wanted to find out what he'd say first. He replied: "Something unidentifyable to my sensors and unknown in my training, has destroyed the cells of your retinas. Destroyed, or blocked, somehow." "Blocked?" This was Anakin's last hope. Perhaps it wasn't an ordinary injury after all, but something force related.

"All I can say is, I have never seen anything exactly like this, and I regret that from my knowledge there is nothing that can be done to help you."

Anakin held his anger and disappointment and did not use his force strength to destroy the droid, though he certainly would have liked to. He let him take his leave.

Then Anakin had an idea. If it was something force related, he could undo it with his own power. He lay back in his chamber and concentrated all his force energy on his eyes. Luke's power was great, but not greater than his. He sunk deep into meditation, and allowed the force to cover every inch of his living being. After resorting to everything he knew available from the force, nothing changed. He had to come to the sad realization that XC-454 was right, his retinas were destroyed, could not be fixed, and he was sentenced to a lifetime of darkness. He had no choice but to resign himself to this fate. He sat in his own cruel blind solitude, and cried.

Time worked in strange ways in the universe, that is how the hyperspace took Leia to the time before her birth. And there, time was running longer than it had in the present. It was a few days before she got to meet her mother. She entered her office in awe, in anticipation, in wonder. The first time she saw he mother's face, she was unable to speak. She had seen this face before, somehow, somewhere, in a dream, a vision, or a lost memory. She was indeed beautiful, but sad. Leia, try as the might to avoid it, couldn't help but look down at the size of her tummy. She had tried so hard to conceal it, but it was becoming apparent she was expecting. Even if a being had gained weight, it would not all concentrate in one spot. She wanted to ask her about it, but felt it was too personal, and she didn't want to lose her job, her only contact that she was fortunate to have. She stuck out her hand, though it was trembling. "Hello, M'Lady. My name is, Leia. I am to be your new assistant. "Greetings, Leia. That is a beautiful name." Padme smiled. Leia smiled back. "I thank you for this honor, M'Lady, and let me know that I am at your service, any time of the day or night, for any reason. I will help you." This is why she was here, to help. She said it again. "I want to help you." She stared solidly at Padme, trying to give her the message. She only smiled back. "Thank you, it is good to have someone so eager to work. That is not often the case with assistants." Leia was talking to her mother. She couldn't believe it. All she wanted to do was here, but she couldn't exactly just come right out with it. If she couldn't let her know of the future, how, how would she be able to change it? She tried to think of a way to bring up her personal life, but she was so secretive, for good reason, it was going to be impossible. She was going to have to resort to sneaking around, spying. She didn't want to, but it was necessary. That evening, she discreetly followed Padme home and saw where she lived. The high penthouse was not going to be easy to sneak into, or watch from below. She was going to have to get Han to take the Falcon up and do a flyby, if he would go along with it. That night, they did, and she saw on the balcony that her mother was not alone. Her father, Anakin, who had snuck out of the Jedi temple to be with his wife, was there. They were together, and it appeared they were very glad to be. For now, things were fine. But she had to act fast, because unlike them, she knew their future.

Lying in his chamber, Anakin was overwhelmed by shock and grief at the news that he could not be cured. He couldn't believe he was never going to be able to see again. How could he ever go on like this? Of all the injuries he had suffered in his life,and they were many, he felt this one had hit him the worst. It hurt more than any pain he felt...since knowing what happened to Padme. Oh, Padme. He couldn't even bear to think of her now. She died because of him, or did she? Luke lived, maybe she had died in childbirth, as his vision had tragically foretold. Perhaps the emperor had lied. Regardless of what occured, the result was the same, she was dead, he had hurt her, he had lost her. Through all those years, the knowledge of knowing that trying to save her killed her, that his love for her destroyed her, tortured him and made him the uncaring creature he became as Darth Vader...until Luke came along. Luke, his son. Padme's son. How had things once again gone so terribly wrong? He could not let Luke be lost.

"Anakin, come on, you're better than this, you're stronger than this." He told himself. Drawing from the force, and everything within him, he urged himself to stand up, and get out of the chamber, and move ahead, determined to find Luke. He walked with his hands out in front, and though they did not have the sense of touch human hands did, he could feel through the force before he walked into an object. He could stop before door and wave it open or closed. He struggled until he made his way back to the room where Luke had blinded him. He knelt to the floor and groped around until he found what he knew to be the image of Padme. He picked it up, rubbed it gently with one finger, and kissed it. Then he placed it in the inside pocket of his shirt, over his heart. "I'm going to find our son" he whispered. "I'm not going to let him be lost." He knew that without physically seeing, this was going to be next to impossible. But he wasn't giving up.

A memory from the distant past crept into his troubled mind. He was a child training with Obi Wan, who had blindfolded him. "I don't like this, it's dark, I'm scared." Little Anakin had said, tugging at his blindfold.

His master moved his hands away and tightened his blindfold. "Master Jinn did this to me when I was your age, you can do it."

"I can't do anything if I can't see."

"Use the force, Anakin. Reach out with your inner feelings. Your eyes can decieve you, don't trust them."

He drifted back to the present with new inspiration.

On his hands and knees, he groped around the floor until he found what he recognized as the handle of his lightsaber. He pushed a button and turned it on. He heard it hum as it ignited, but he was not able to see any of its glow save one green flash in the very corner of his right eye. This was Luke's lightsaber, the green one, and Luke had taken the red Sith one. When he had said he wanted to trade, he was joking, but it turned out to be real. Luke did take, and deserve, the red one. Holding the lightsaber ahead of him like a cane, he waved it back and forth in front of him as he walked through the house. It was very useful in helping him find his way. When he found a small metal object he could use as a remote, he used the force to levitate it in front of him, then tried striking it with the lightsaber. With all his concentration in the force, it finally worked. Then he tried the opposite, he tried NOT striking it, but working the weapon's blade around it. It wasn't long until he mastered that too. He smiled to himself. He was pretty good for an old blind bastard. He turned off the lightsaber and set it on the ground. Taking a few cautious steps backward, he reached out his hand in the direction he remembered it to be, and it flew into his open hand. He had to leave his hand open and wait for it to hit, since he couldn't see it coming. Once he felt it hit the palm of his hand, he had to immediately close his fingers on it. He found that this would work if he was able to determine the direction of the object, but as he had failed to aim his force choke or pushes to Luke, if he was unaware of the exact location of someone or something, he could not direct the force to it. This was a problem, since he couldn't see where anything was. He was going to have to trust his feelings, and the force, and hope for the best. It was all he could do now. He stood there holding his lightsaber, cursing the darkness, and aimiing all his energy at finding Luke's location. Search his feelings as he did, he could not sense him. He had left Coruscant. He was no longer on this planet. Big problem here for a blind man unable to fly. Where were Obi Wan and Yoda? Did they realize Luke was gone, is that why they left, but couldn't they have had the honor to inform him? Anakin rightly sensed that Yoda was behind their departure, and that Obi Wan would eventually come back to help him. He hoped, at least. Hope was all he had left.