What did it mean to be a Jedi?
This was a question I'd answered many times before, but every time I answered, I felt the emptiness in the Force, the emptiness that told me I knew nothing.
Time and time again I found the hardest answers in the universe came from the simplest of questions.
What did it mean to hold a lightsaber? What did it mean to be connected to the Force so intimately?
Why was the line between the light and the dark so thin?
I was confused. So many times was I told that confusion led to the dark side.
Many things led to the dark side… Mainly emotions. I was always a man driven by emotions.
Attachment, jealousy, anger, frustration, fear, confusion, sadness, pain, all of them led to the dark side. My greatest fear was… I had all of these things and more, ever boiling within me.
Everything I was led to the dark side of the Force. It seemed so… inevitable.
I was dangling above the dark, fiery pit of shadows, by a mere thread. The only thing that kept me from falling was fear, fear that I'd lose my power. Fear that my loved ones would die. Fear that I'd do something horrible, like I did when I found out about the tragedy that had befallen my mother.
I was afraid to fall.
Fear above all else, I was told, led to the dark side. And it scared me even more.
There was one statement I heard from the Masters of the Jedi Order more than anything else:
"I sense great fear in you, young Skywalker."
I knew it was true. I was driven by the things that drove my enemies, that drove the Sith. The things that fueled the dark side fueled my power. I often wondered how I had not already fallen to the darkness, how I managed to retain the tiny flicker of light that remained in my soul.
Padme… She kept me in the light. It was her love. What would she think of me if I turned to the dark side? It was out of the question!
The Jedi said that attachment led to the dark side, but the Jedi also taught me that all things in the universe come with exceptions. This was one of them. It had to be! This attachment was all that KEPT me from the dark side.
But now that fell apart. As soon as I'd found a foundation to stand on in my view of the Force, I found it crumbling at my feet, leaving only the shadowy flames below.
I had a decision to make, and I was half-and-half. It was the kind of decision so close, you have to force yourself to answer it, or it would never be decided.
No… it would decide itself.
And either way, you end up regretting the decision you didn't make.
Regret led to the dark side… almost everything led to the dark side, because we lived in an era of sin, and of overwhelming evil.
Now the question lay before me: What was most important to me?
Obi-Wan once told me that there came a time in every man's life when he had to decide for himself what things were most important to him. He told me to choose carefully, and have patience. He told me that if I chose the wrong things, I'd cling to them till death, and they'd destroy me.
I chose Padme. I chose marriage. I chose attachment…
…Did I choose the dark side?
No, I couldn't have… Could I? No, not darkness. Not light, either. I was at the forked intersection between the two paths, I could feel it.
I had to choose a path, or remain in this state of mental torment for all eternity.
And I didn't know which path led where. But there was a question, one I couldn't decide…
What was more important to me, Padme's love, or Padme's life?
I was presented with a proposition from my dear and beloved 'friend', Chancellor Palpatine. The Sith Lord, Darth Sidious.
Why did it seem so enticing?
The Jedi, Master Yoda in particular warned us that at times, the dark side would try to lure us in by baiting us with things we wanted. Things we were attached to. He warned us that any attachment we retained would be used against us.
Deception was the way of the dark side, he told us.
I knew so much of what led to the dark side, but nothing about the dark side itself. Only that I was supposed to stay away from it. And now the Force had once again presented me with a choice between two things. I could only have one, but I wanted both.
I hated the Force for making me choose between two pieces of the same puzzle.
Hate leads to the dark side… No path that I knew of didn't.
Damn both sides of the cursed Force. Damn them BOTH! Damn them for manipulating me, manipulating all of us. Damn them that I ever fell in love. Damn them that I ever became a Jedi. Damn them that I ever left Tatooine. Damn them for ruining my life more times than once.
And suddenly…
I now knew why it was called 'the Force'.
Because it was so very, very forceful.
"You must chooooose…" Wheezed the dark side.
So there I stood, unable to decide. I sat on the fence between the path that led to black, and the path that led to white. I was a Gray Jedi, neither dark nor light, but stuck in the middle.
"Don't listen to him, Anakin!" Mace begged, assaulted by the mighty power of Palpatine's Force Storm. The only thing that separated the respectable Master from certain death was a violet bar of light.
The lightsaber couldn't withstand the heat for long. At this rate, the emitter would overheat and that would cause the power cell to overload, and the weapon would explode.
"D…Don't let him… kill me…!" The darkness pleaded me.
I watched as the face of the Sith Lord deformed, withered, and wrinkled into an utterly disgusting prune of hideousness. The eyes of the chancellor were the most blood curdling shade of canary yellow I'd ever seen. A piercing, pus-like yellow enough to make one of a weaker constitution physically sick.
His appearance appalled me, but I could not bring myself to decide… I wasn't ready!
I needed more time!
"I… I can't…can't hold it any longer…" He breathed, mighty bolts still cascading from his fingertips, "I, I-I, I…I can't…v'… become… wea-… too weak…" He gasped.
And when the Force stopped flowing, my time was up. The thunder storm was over. Decide now, Anakin. You must decide, whether you're ready or not. No time for patience. No time to meditate. So choose.
…I can't!
"Anakin! Help me, help me!" The darkness pled.
I didn't know Master Windu was so powerful in the Force. I thought for sure the fountains of energy that arced radically from Palpatine's grungy paws would have destroyed his lightsaber, but the Master still stood, blade of light in hand, ready to rend the specter of darkness asunder. Ready to cast justice upon the Council's enemy…
Ready to force my decision.
NO. I would not let him. I had to have more time!
Too poor an example of light was provided to represent the Jedi. I did not like Master Mace Windu… I never did. Of all the Masters, he was one I held in the lowest esteems. I felt this way because he was the one that turned more than half the council against me.
He was so very rude to me. He didn't respect the prophecy, nor the things I was supposed to do. He did everything he could to hold me back….
It was he who had spoken to delay my rising to the status of Master.
He was jealous!
And it infuriated me… How the only way he ever looked at me was a brooding sense of mistrust. How he never spoke to me with the same friendliness in his voice as the other Masters, how he always doubted my abilities, when they could easily match his…
Overconfidence leads to the dark side of the Force. Anger leads to the dark side… Indecision leads to the dark side… Damn it all!
Why did the Jedi never tell me what led to the LIGHT side?
If I were forced to choose between HIM and Padme, I'd choose darkness without hesitation, maybe even without regret. I was absolutely sure… That I'd strike him down before I'd let him take away the only thing that was going to save my love. Absolutely sure.
"Only Sith deal in absolutes." Obi-Wan once told me.
The Sith lord, the man whom told me he knew how to obtain the power to save my love from certain death lay on the ground, his body smoking like it had been cooked in a hyperbake oven, and for a few minutes too long. The black, carbon-like matter floated into the air, creating a smell more repulsive than the back end of a bantha.
It smelled like sulfer, brimstone, and darkness.
It was so clear to me, what I needed to do to go to the dark side, to place my loyalties in the eddying shadows of evil. It would have been so very easy… To just let go and sell my soul to the darkness, and let my agony be at an end.
But it was like there WAS no other choice. The light side… where was the light side?
The Jedi teachings never included anything about a 'light side' of the Force. They only warned us of the dark side... but if there is a dark side, surely there is one of light? One to contrast, to cancel it out?
A force to bring balance to the Force?
Confusion leads to the dark side…
Suddenly I realized that the Force was nothing like a math equation. In the Force, positives didn't cancel out the negatives. Equal amounts of negative and positive wouldn't create zero… Choosing to be the positive in a world consumed by darkness wouldn't bring the 'balance' the prophecy spoke of.
…So what would?
Negatives stacked up, but they didn't create positives in pairs. Two wrongs didn't make a right. Two evils didn't make a justice. They only accumulated and made blackness blacker than it ever was, and darkness became darker than I thought possible.
If the Force was like a game of Pazaak, then I almost always drew the wrong cards.
I was beginning to suspect it was because I had nothing but negatives in my side deck.
And my but if the dilemma I was in didn't look an awful lot like a high-stakes game of Pazaak.
I was at the Pazaak table in my mind, and I totaled out 21 in the third set, a bust. In my hand I had a plus one/minus one card. The object I was gambling in this game was no great deal of credits, but the life of my beloved wife. I could go negative, and win. She would be saved.
Or I could fold or lay it down positive. I would win nothing. I would lose everything.
But if Padme found out I had gambled her, even if I won, she'd hate me for it. Both pathways led to sadness.
Sadness leads to the dark side.
Indecision leads to the dark side.
Frustration, anxiety, and emotional torment lead to the dark side.
"I… I can't hold on… any longer…" The Chancellor whispered. Mace took a threatening step toward the crumpled pile of wrinkles, lightsaber extended warily in front of him.
"I am going to end this once and for all." He declared. Distress gripped me.
If Mace Windu ends Chancellor Palpatine, then I'll never save Padme! I don't want her do die… I can't live without her! I… More time! I need more time!
"You can't!" I breathed, sweating.
