this is a disclaimer.
unlikely ways
These are the things Anakin Skywalker should believe in: the Order. The Code. The Force.
The Order is all the family a Jedi has or needs, a group of people bound together, paradoxically, by their rejection of attachment, of family, of home; and yet they are family, and they are home to one another, and this inevitable hypocrisy is only the smallest of all the lies they tell themselves without ever realising it.
The Code is the touchstone of the Jedi Order, the sacred precepts by which they live. It shows them the path to understanding the Force, teaches them the tools they need in order to hear, not just listen to, its will, and plainly the Code teaches the only right way of listening, because it has not lead them wrong in a thousand years.
A Jedi's power flows from the Force: if he doesn't trust in it, he doesn't have anything.
*
These are the things Anakin Skywalker could have believed in, once: Obi-Wan Kenobi. Padmé Amidala. The Republic.
Dreams pass in time, Obi-Wan told him, meaning it as both advice and comfort.
(Anakin never makes the same mistake twice.)
"... you believe this bill Palpatine is trying to push through the Senate? He's demanding all kinds of powers over the employees of the Republic administration even at the lowest planetary levels – unprecedented access to their personal files, the unrestricted right to terminate their jobs... it's a part of that plan of his to restructure the regional administration, make it more hierarchical. These Governors of his have only been in place for a year or so and he already wants to give them powers to override local governments!"
"Only on issues relating directly to the war," Anakin said absently. "Most of the Regional Governors do have excellent military backgrounds, you know. Which is more than can be said for, oh, the Queen of Naboo?"
Padmé glared at him. "He's instituting the beginning of a dictatorship – of enslaving the local systems to the Regional Governors –"
The realisation of what she'd said hit her an instant too late.
Anakin put his cutlery down with a clatter. It was several silent minutes before he could bring himself to look at her, to attempt a smile and change the subject.
(He will never understand how his beloved can be so intelligent and yet so ignorant at the same time.)
The Republic doesn't exist out here, Mom said, and Anakin could almost see the manacles around her wrists.
(The idea that she held on to life for so long – that she endured that torment for so long – in order to see him again is the thing that hurts the most.)
*
These are the things Anakin Skywalker does believe in, now: himself. And the Force.
Nothing else here will save him. The mud is too deep and the wind is too strong and the battle droids are too numerous.
Everything else is too far away.