Chapter Text
They say that looking into the future we are blind, and looking into the past we see perfectly, and looking into the present is like trying to see through cloudy water. This is obviously not a metaphor I learned as a child, because I was born into slavery on Tatooine, under the rule of the Hutts. And so much of my life was put into proper perspective later. I had clear vision always, but only looking behind, and in each moment I was very truly blind not just to the future, but to the present.
That is what happens when you are enslaved to the Sith.
Hutts enslave the body.
Sith enslave the mind.
I realize now that the space of time in which I was truly a freed sentient was very brief, only a matter of weeks, really, between my freedom from the Hutts and my enslavement to the Sith.
And now, after it all… Now I am also free, however briefly this moment will last.
In a life full of pain and tragedy, it has been difficult to say what is the one thing I regret the most, for I regret most of my actions, most of my judgments, most of my words, and most of my decisions.
I think, however, if I had immediately gotten mind healing, directly after I left Tatooine, directly after I was allowed into the Jedi Order, I think that would have made the most impact, and changed the most things.
Beyond using mind healers as a kind of deus ex machina, if I could right now, council my younger, nine-year-old self as I had been at the time, I would say this:
Trust Obi-Wan Kenobi. He is, and always will be, your true master, your never failing friend. He is not perfect, but he is inherently good, and never failing in that way. He will always follow the Light, even when it hurts.
Do not trust Sheev Palpatine. He is not your master, he was never your friend. He is corruption incarnate, wants only power for himself, and will betray you and kill everything and everyone you love, because that is what the Sith do.
I should know. I was one.
I was Darth Vader, and before that I was Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker, a General, a husband, a brother, a son. Now I am simply the eater of worlds, which is not something that even redemption may redeem me of.
My decisions haunt me.
I know I was the Chosen One. I know I was a crafted being, a vergence given life, given to my mother to birth, from the Force Deity known as the Son, and I was created to bring balance back to the galaxy. And if it had been the Daughter instead of her dark brother who had concocted this plan, it might have been good, wholesome, and kind. It was not. It was a dark plan created by a dark force entity to bring balance back from the overweaning darkness of the galaxy, and that still didn’t make it a good plan. It made it a plan of particular and acute suffering for all involved.
But if I was the Chosen One of the Son, I swear my true master must have been the Chosen One of the Daughter. It is the only thing that makes sense to me, though I did not ask when I had the opportunity, neither earlier, nor later, and now perhaps it does not matter, as he has died at my own hands, like so many others.
He, at least, has rejoined the Force, and with remarkable alacrity did he do it. I am left, haunted by my decisions, and given a moment, and perhaps only a moment, to send a message.
And in a lifetime of decisions that do haunt me, now I have this; looking back and seeing so clearly that I was a pawn in the games of others and seeing it so clearly, and finally seeing in a sense that it truly did not matter that I was a pawn in the games of others. I had a mind. I had a heart. I had a will. I could have stepped off the path of darkness that had been carved out before me as the easiest path to follow. I could have. It was something (I later learned) that Obi-Wan did all the time. He was constantly given an easy path of darkness and he constantly and consistently did not take it up. I took responsibility for nothing, none of my actions, none of my choices, none of my thoughts nor words, and discovering that it was all so very orchestrated, felt vindicated in my abdication of responsibility. Obi-Wan was always and ever the opposite; he took responsibility for everything, whether it was right and proper or not, and arguing would not have helped, and I thought he was a silly fool for doing so.
And perhaps he was, for his burden was great and terrible.
And yet, if I had but taken responsibility for even one thing, that might have gotten me off the path of suffering and destruction. Despite the fact that it had been carved and made smooth for me, I could have climbed out of the canyon I found myself in, and I was given the perfect teacher to show me the way.
Yet I was blind, and could not follow.
Now for the nuts and bolts.
I was born (possibly) in the Galactic Year 25059 in Gardulla’s palace on Tatooine. My mother was Shmi Skywalker. My father, arguably, was the Dark Force deity known as The Son. I was the most powerful Force Sensitive in ten thousand years, since Nomi Sunrider, also a former slave.
At nine years of age, Jedi were stranded on Tatooine and found me, gambled for my life and took me with them on their mission. That was the year I won the Boonta Eve Classic, and broke the Trade Federation Blockade of the planet Naboo, the home of my future wife and love, Padme Naberrie Amadala, who when I met her, was the Queen of that place, and later, a Senator.
I was promised to one Jedi, who died at Sith hands, and was passed off to the one who did train me to the best of his ability, who had killed that Sith, or we thought he had. Chopping some people in half only slows them down, and that includes Zabraks with a hard on for revenge.
It took me a shockingly long time to realize I was no longer enslaved, but looking back… by the time I realized I was no longer enslaved to the Hutts and hadn’t been just traded away to the Jedi as slave, by then, I was already ensnared by the Sith, for the one Obi-Wan had temporarily vanquished was the apprentice, not the master, and in the line of Bane, there are always two.
Actually, there are far more than two, because otherwise it might be a peaceful coexistence, which Sith cannot tolerate. But they never count the hopefuls, the assassins, the associates, and the acolytes, all those who are ready and willing to step into the role of apprentice the moment one of the two should happen to die. And of course, they are always more than willing to bring that death about.
(Shall I count them out? Hego Demask III of the Banking Clan, Chancellor Palpatine, Count Dooku of Serenno, Maul and his brothers Savage and Feral, Assaj Ventress, Aurra Sing, that ass Pong Krell, and the so-called anonymous Temple Guard (it was the Pau’an) who became my Grand Inquisitor as we hunted the padawans down and made them Fall, one by one, building the Inquisitorious to further hunt Force Sensitives to acquire or kill. We never did find my own padawan. Dear Ahsoka, so nimble, so wiley; ever the hunter, never the hunted. I’m glad we did not find her. I’m sure she worked in the resistance, and then the Rebellion, with the sane ones, the brave ones, and the clones who woke and yet could bear to live on in the nightmare that had become life. …only two in the line of Bane, yes, technically, but then again, I also had a small army of them, in my Inquisitorious.)
Sith kill each other off more often, in my experience, than Jedi kill them. It is a terrible irony that somehow never dawned on me when I was one.
But no, my time grows short. There is no time to describe the many genocides I perpetuated both before and after I came fully to the dark. There is no time to describe the pan galactic war orchestrated by the Supreme Chancellor, cum Emperor, nor the terrible fate of the clones who loved us, depended upon us, and whom we betrayed most cruelly, for that is what Sith do to their allies/tools. There is no time to wax sentimental about my children, twins, hidden from me for their own safety, but so good, so pure, so ready to follow the light and reject the dark path, the selfish way out of hand, which could not have been my influence. It must have been their mother’s, and the parents who raised them separately.
But now, I am here, given a moment by the Daughter, and it suddenly seems obvious what I must do. I had archival punishment duty often enough in the first years, and data never goes away… it’s just misfiled.
And so I will mistag this, and flag it as such so it will not come up easily in searches. History, Unreliable Narrator, Memoir, Autobiography, Fiction, Science Fiction Fantasy, Prophesy, Mysticism.
Summary: A fading Sith filled with regrets sends a message to his younger self.