I hear the sound of the outer door being opened and wait for the guard to appear with my breakfast. I am relieved to see that it is Len, Sola's son-in-law.
"Time to go," he informs me.
"Go?" I reply, watching him unlock my shackles.
"I thought you might like to clean up before your children get here," he explains. "Mrs. Naberrie sent some new clothes for you. She kind of noticed yours don't exactly fit you properly," he says handing me a package, a wry smile on his face.
I smile, grateful for Sola's compassion and thoughtfulness. "Thank her for me," I reply, taking the package from him. "I'm grateful to you both for your kindness."
Len gives me a nod. "Come on then," he says. "Let's go."
What a joy it is to feel clean again! I savor the warm water, closing my eyes as I revel in the sensation of it against my skin. My hair is long now, at least as long as it was on that dreadful day back on Mustafar. Padmé always liked it long...I reflect with a smile.
I step out of the shower and dry off. I am still amazed that I am fully human again, my body showing little evidence of the horrible accident that befell me. I have spent the idle hours of my incarceration working out, and my body is leaner than it has been for years, but muscular, and fit. I shave, and tie my long wet hair back behind my head. Next I open the package that Sola provided, pull out a pair of dark blue trousers, shirt and a pair of black boots. The clothes are comfortable and fit me well, and again I feel a surge of gratitude to my wife's sister.
"Well?" I ask as I leave the 'fresher and meet up with Len who is waiting for me in the corridor.
"You look great," he replies with a smile. "Like a new man."
I smile, looking down at myself. "Thanks to you and Sola. I can't thank you enough, Len. You're a good man."
He shrugs, embarrassed by my praise. "Don't thank me," he says. "You deserve to be treated with respect. I know that we haven't known one another for very long, but I can see that you are an honorable man. You aren't Darth Vader any more, anyone can see that. I only hope that…that, well…"
"I know, and I thank you," I say. I hold out my hands to him. He looks at them, and then up at me, his eyes reflecting the conflict he feels at binding me like a common criminal.
"Don't feel badly," I tell him, seeing his mind. "You are doing your job."
He nods, startled at first by my ability to read him, for the ysalarmi is back in my cell, thankfully. He binds my wrists again, but leaves my ankles, for the leather boots prevent him from slipping the binders around them. I follow him down the corridor where we are met by another two guards.
"Where's the beast?" asks one of the men, a look of panic on his face.
"He's not going anywhere," assures Len. "His kids are here, he'd be foolish to try anything now."
The guards nod, but are not convinced that I won't lash out at them all. I do not, of course, and follow them up the winding stone staircase, feeling overjoyed to leave this wretched place.
Luke and Leia are waiting for me near the entrance of the facility, along with two armed rebel soldiers. I suppose the rebel leaders do not trust that I will turn on my own children in transit, so they felt the need for an armed escort. How little they know me! If they knew that I would gladly lay down my life for either of them, they would not have felt the need to send the guards…
Luke smiles at me as I approach, and Leia watches with more guarded interest than her brother.
"You look fantastic!" declares Luke as I reach them.
I smile. "Well, a shower and shave will do a man wonders." I turn to Leia. "What do you think?"
She looks at me, the hint of a smile on her face. "A vast improvement," she replies wryly. "It's …nice to see what your face looks like."
I smile at her. "Yes, the growth was getting a little out of hand," I reply, rubbing my cleanly shaven chin thoughtfully. "I'm glad you approve of your old man."
Leia raises an eyebrow. "Old?" she answers. "You can't be more than 40. I'm quite surprised actually how young you are."
Obviously Luke has told her nothing of the conversation he and I had back in the medical frigate, which troubles me. I feel as though I have made some progress with my daughter; will it all be undone once she learns the truth about what happened to her mother?
"Time to go," reports one of the soldiers. "We're expected at Coruscant within 24 hours, Commander Skywalker."
"Very well," replies Luke. "Shall we, Father?"
I nod, and then turn back to Len. "I want to thank you again for your kindness, young man," I say, shaking his hand. "You don't know what it meant to me."
He smiles, shaking my hand in return. "Don't mention it. I only hope that we, all three of us, can meet up again some time on more friendly ground. I know my wife would love to meet her cousins," he adds, looking at my children.
"As we would like to meet her," replies Luke. He extends a hand to his cousin. "Good bye, Len. Thanks for watching out for our father."
We leave, the five of us, me flanked by my two children with the two soldiers following.
"Sorry about them," Luke tells me, nodding towards the armed men. "It was one of the stipulations of letting us escort you back."
I nod. "I understand, Luke. I suppose they think I'd even use my own children as a means of escape."
"Or else we'd help you," put in Leia. "Not that we would." She adds quickly. I look at her and smile, sensing that she has come a long way towards her acceptance of me.
"No, I wouldn't allow that," I tell her. "You are so much like your mother, Leia. She never failed to do her duty, so honorable she was."
Leia looks at me and I sense her pleasure at hearing the words. "Thank you," she replies simply.
The trip to Coruscant is a strange one. I sit with my two children, and though their physical proximity to me is equal, I feel that they are light years apart emotionally. Luke is full of questions, asking me about the Clone Wars, about my Jedi training, Obi-Wan; everything he has yearned to know all the years we've spent apart. As for my daughter, I know that she is listening, though she is doing an excellent job of appearing decidedly uninterested. I sense that she wants to ask me as many questions as her brother; but her stubbornness and pride prevents her from doing so. She is so like me it's frightening…I wonder why I didn't see it before.
"Leia, did you know that our mother was a queen?" Luke asks, trying to draw her into the conversation.
Leia looks surprised. "No, I didn't know that," she replies. "Of what planet?"
"Naboo," I reply. "She was elected to two terms as their queen. In fact, the people wanted to make an amendment to the constitution to allow her to serve a third term, she was so well loved."
Leia smiles, obviously pleased and proud to hear it. "I had no idea," she says softly. "She must have been an exceptional person."
I nod, my eyes on hers, hoping to soften her resolve to mistrust me. "She was, Leia. Accomplished, intelligent, courageous, beautiful…there aren't enough words to describe her. She was a queen at the age of 14, that tells you something about her right there."
"Wow," says Luke softly. "That's truly remarkable. But you didn't know she was a queen when you met her, did you?"
"No," I reply with a smile. "She was disguised as one of her handmaidens. I had no idea that the compassionate, beautiful young girl I met back in Watto's junk shop was in fact Queen Amidala. All I knew was that she was the most beautiful girl I'd ever laid eyes on." I smile as I remember my first words to her. "In fact, the very first words I said to her were to ask her if she was an angel." I stop as I remember that magical moment, the image of her face as clear in my mind as it was 35 years ago.
"And what did she say when you asked her that?" asks Leia.
I look at her and smile. "She told me I was a strange little boy," I tell her. Both of them laugh, and I am heartened to see my daughter finally starting to accept who I am. I tell them all about the podrace, about our friendship, and how we were reunited so many years later. My children listen in fascination, hungrily absorbing the knowledge that has been withheld from them all their lives. It saddens me to know that they will never know their mother, never see for themselves how truly remarkable she was. As I speak of her, my children watch me closely. I know that Luke is attuned to my thoughts, my emotions; is Leia yet capable of making that connection? I know she and Luke are linked now; is she willing yet to touch my mind? If she would, then she would know the depth of my love for her, for all of them; she would understand the profoundness of my sorrow and loss.
"Did you love her?" Leia asks at last, her eyes fixed on mine. I know it took a great deal of effort to bring herself to ask the question, for no doubt it has been eating away at her ever since she first learned the truth of her parentage.
"Yes, Leia," I tell her. "With every fiber of my being I loved her. Your mother was my soul mate; when I lost her, a part of me died. It was the fear of losing her that led me to the Dark Side."
Leia frowns. "What do you mean?" she asks. "What did Mother have to do with your decision to become an agent of the emperor?"
I sense the unspoken indignation in her question, yet I carry on nonetheless. "I dreamed of your mother dying, Leia; the dream haunted me, day and night. I had foreseen the death of my own mother years earlier, in a recurring dream. I was terrified that I would lose Padmé the way I'd lost my mother. I was determined not to let it happen, and so I sought out the powers of the Dark Side of the Force, believing it would enable me to prevent her death. I know now that I was used, tricked into subservience by the emperor, for it was he who told me that it was only through the Dark Side that I would be able to save her life. He had plotted to use me as his apprentice for years, only I was too naïve and foolish to see it."
Leia is silent as she listens, her face troubled. "How did she die?" she asks softly.
I knew this was coming; there was really no avoiding it. "The truth is, Leia, I'm not entirely sure how she died," I tell her. "I know she died shortly after you and Luke were born. You see, I was engaged in a terrible battle with my former master, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and nearly died when I was consumed by the lava that covered the planet we fought on. That is the reason I was forced to wear the respirator and mask for so long, though I know now that it wasn't necessary, that I could have been spared that…nevertheless, I didn't know until many years later that you'd even survived, and believed you had died along with her."
"She died in childbirth? Is that what you're saying?" Leia asks, her voice betraying her distress at the thought of this.
I sigh, wishing I had answers for my daughter. "I don't know," I admit. "I think there was more to it than that. Obi-Wan was with her when she died, and he claims that she died of a broken heart, because of what happened to me, because I turned to the Dark Side, because in the end I even turned on her."
Leia listens, and I can sense in her the anguish and horror at this information. "What? You turned on her?" she cries.
I nod, emotions threatening to overwhelm me. "I was consumed by Darkness, Leia; try to understand. I believed she had betrayed me, that she had brought Kenobi to Mustafar to kill me. The Darkness had twisted my mind. Ironic that it was in order to save her that I embraced the Dark Side, and in the end…it destroyed us both." I did not want to tell her the truth of that terrible day, not yet, not now. We have come so far, and I don't want to jeopardize that. I know, however, that I cannot hide the ugly truth from her forever…
"It's so tragic," says Luke at this point. "So terribly tragic. You wanted to save her, I can feel it Father, I know how desperate you were to save her. To think that you lost her after all…" he stops, too emotional to continue. I look at Leia, seeing that she too is moved.
"You turned to the Dark Side to save Mother?" she asks, trying desperately to understand. "Is that what you're telling us?"
I nod. "Yes, Leia. I was so desperate to save her, so terrified that I would lose her that I grasped wildly at anything, any chance to save her. In the end it was our undoing. The knowledge that she was gone was the final push to the Darkness, for when I lost her, I lost my soul. All that remained was Darkness; Darth Vader was the embodiment of that Darkness. When I learned of your brother's existence, after the destruction of the first Death Star, I knew that Palpatine had lied to me all those years ago about the way your mother died. When I learned that my child, our child, had not died, I knew that he had used me, and it was then that my heart began to change. After I met Luke on Bespin, the conflict truly began."
"Conflict?" she asks.
"Yes, the conflict between the man I was, and the thing I had become," I explain. "Between Luke's father, the man who loved him and his mother with all his heart, and the agent of evil that loved nothing and no one. I think the final push was finding out about you, Leia. That was so unexpected, for I had no idea that Padmé was carrying twins. I was so shaken by that knowledge that it weakened my hold on the Dark Side even more. Anakin Skywalker was winning out over Darth Vader, growing stronger by the minute. And when the emperor began his assault on Luke that was the moment Anakin Skywalker returned, the love I felt for both of you destroyed what was left of Darth Vader, and enabled me to destroy Palpatine."
I stop, sensing that Leia is overwhelmed at this point. "I know that this is a lot to process, Leia; but I wanted you to know the whole story, to know my motivation and the reasons for my transformation. I know it doesn't begin to make up for all the damage I've done, but I felt compelled to explain to you why I became what I did. I hope you can at least understand that it wasn't simply out of selfish desire that I became Darth Vader; that is simply not true. Darth Vader was, in essence, Anakin Skywalker without a soul, the result of much pain, much anger and fear."
Leia does not reply, but I sense in her tremendous anguish. She looks up at me, and in her eyes I see a hint of compassion, and it gives me hope.
"I had no idea…" she says at last in a voice thick with emotion. "You're right, it doesn't erase the past, and it certainly doesn't change the fact that you hurt any of us, including Mother; but it does make a difference."
I smile at her, grateful that she is willing to at least listen to me with an open mind. "Thank you," I say to her, tentatively putting my hand on hers. She looks at my hand, but does not move her own, and then looks back up into my eyes. She is so conflicted; I sense her desperation to accept me. She needs me, as much as I need her.
"We're coming up on Coruscant," announces one of the guards as he checks the navicomputer.
I nod my understanding, my eyes not leaving my daughter's. "Good," I reply. "Let's get this over with."
