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Triumph, mistakes, compassion, empathy, actions, heartbreak, betrayal, loyalty, promises kept, and promises broken. Those are the words that surround a legacy. His legacy could not be exempt from that but neither did those few words encompass wholly what his legacy entailed. What he had left behind for his children to sludge their way through. What he had left for them to rationalize and accept. He did not begrudge them that task. He was not the forgiving sort and his legacy was drenched in the need for forgiveness because the actions he had executed and the choices he had made while alive where drenched in the unforgivable.
His son is his blessed and vibrant sun. Luke a constant fixture in the sky like a Tatooine sun burning bright, bringing hope, and retribution to those who thought themselves better. He had shouldered the weight of his father’s legacy with a dignity that bespoke of his mother. Only she would have seen and understood the depths of his atrocities and his depravity and forgiven him. Luke had once told him, on the rare occasion that Anakin could make himself appear to him, that he did not forgive him for Anakin’s sake but for the simple fact that it was what was best for him. Luke admitted that it would be easy to hate his father, to hate all that he had built during the empire’s reign but that hatred would limit his ability to continue on. It would only cause more fires to burn through the galaxy and the galaxy was covered in enough ash as it was and so Luke in all his wisdom used forgiveness like a sword. Everything it touched was doused in light and warmth and it was a testament not to his father’s legacy but of the legacy he himself would one day leave.
His daughter…..his intelligent and passionate daughter, Leia, had a fire in her belly. There was an anger there that most days never showed itself on her face but was always there coiled right beneath the surface. She was so like him, in so many ways, and he was smart enough to never say it where she could hear. In fact, he never appeared to her after the first time when the very sight of him had sent a tidal wave of rage through the force and had doused him in invisible flame. The sensation of flame licking at his skin was a remnant of Vader rising and Anakin falling. Her saving grace, from falling down the path her father had taken, came in the form of her empathy, her compassion, her sense of justice, and fighting for those who could not or would not defend themselves. She might have his temper, his anger, overwhelming passion but she had her mother’s wisdom, her ability to compartmentalize, her desire to help everyone, and her determination to put ability and desire together to create action. She, more than her brother, was a testament to what Anakin could have been and what he never could have been.
His legacy was a tattered and ripped thing; its frayed tendrils like nooses around the necks of those left to stitch the galaxy together again. He might not have been the one ultimately in charge but he had been the blunted weapon used to wreak havoc and destruction on all those who stood in the Empire’s way. He had rained judgment onto those whose only mistake had been to exist on planets that were considered profitable to the empire’s interests. He had slaughtered villages when they dared go against their own local governments. He had hunted down every force sensitive they could pinpoint and he decimated them and any family or friends they had. He had been an unstoppable force against a galaxy wholly unprepared for someone like him. He had done everything his master wished even as he fantasized about killing him. He had dreamed of ripping him from his throne before flooding the galaxy in its leader’s blood. The Emperor had not brought peace, prosperity, or order as he so often boasted. Anakin had brought peace by silencing the protestors, he had brought prosperity by making sure the Empire had no competitors, he had brought order by striking down all those who dared to step out of line.
He had been a dog on a leash. He had been a slave with a chip in soul. He had been a fool. Anakin Skywalker had never been called smart. He’d been called clever, a brilliant strategist, and an exceptional pilot, but never would anyone think him smart. Not because he lacked the intelligence. No, it was because he lacked the control needed in order to act instead of react. That’s all he had ever done was react. React to this master or that master; react to this situation or that situation, reacting to the world in which he had always felt disassociated from. He could not think of a single time where he had not been a slave serving some master; except perhaps one time when he made a choice to save the sun and thus allowing the darkness, including himself, to be destroyed.
His legacy was a dirty thing, a dirty secret to be whispered only when necessary and only when absolutely alone. His son fully admitted being the child of Anakin Skywalker but he never admitted to his rebellion that Anakin Skywalker had shed that name and fashioned himself Darth Vader instead. His Daughter openly acknowledge her relationship with Luke but steadfastly kept the name Organa—a testament to the couple that had asked for her, adopted, her, loved her, and taught her how to carry the weight of her inevitable responsibilities. She was so much like him though with her indomitable will and desire to keep pressing forward against the injustices of the galaxy. Though she had seemed to never fall into the trap he had. She had never in her pursuit to save people become the cause of the destruction. She was smarter than him. She had his fire, his cunning, his ability to make the hard decisions, his ability to fight but her saving grace was that she had her mother’s grace, her love of all life, and the ability to let go in the face of tragedy. She was without a doubt his daughter but Leia Organa had grown to be better than him and he could not be prouder of that.
His legacy was a stained glass mosaic half in darkness and half in blinding light. It was beautiful in its tragedy. Legacy was a meaningless concept to so many until the moment death had reached them and they thought for single instant ‘what have I left behind?’ Legacy was all he had ever had. A child of slaves, a name wrapped in chains, and a future woven into prophecy…his footsteps had never fully been his own. Luke understood that in a way Leia never would. Luke was a child of a freedman from a family of slaves. He had lived on the planet his father and grandmother had been enslaved on. He grew up speaking the language of slaves as if it were his mother tongue. He carried the name of those in chains. A name that acted as a stamp on his very existence signifying that for generations his family had lived and died as the property of others. He supposed that he shouldn’t have been surprised the first time he had spoken of his master after revealing himself as the boy’s father. Luke’s reaction had been horror, disdain, and grim acceptance that can only come from understanding the scars that are left from living in bondage. Luke had looked at him and seen not the freedman of his childhood stories but a broken man who’d been granted freedom and willingly discarded it for the more comfortable and familiar chains of servitude.
There would be those who would say that his legacy was that of a villain, while others were counter him as a fallen hero, but his children simply call him a cautionary tale. Luke had taught his students that Anakin Skywalker at his core had been a good man, a loving man, a loyal friend, and a cunning strategist but that his weakness also ran parallel to his strengths. At his core he was conflicted, possessive of those he loved, overly faithful to those he considered friends, and unrelentingly in his plans. Leia, when forced, spoke of him only to Ben. Her tales marked him not as a tragedy but as a man who had chosen his fate, for better or worse, but in the end had learned that just because he had once chosen a dark path did not mean that path would have to be the one he ended on. She would wonder years later if it was her stories that had given her son the wrong impression of who is his grandfather was. She did not love Anakin, which he knew without a doubt, but she had always been thankful for his actions aboard the second Death Star. He had effectively cut of the head of the empire and saved her brother. Her brother was the one family member she had for which she held no conflicted feeling about.
Looking back on what he had done, the death he had caused, the destruction, and the heartbreak; he would feel conflicted. He could not remember a time when he hadn’t felt conflicted. He couldn’t remember a time when he hadn’t felt horror at his crimes and the satisfaction at the outcomes; the emotions warring together in an endless battle. He was not a good man. He hadn’t been a good Jedi. He was a terrible father. He was a horrific husband. There would be no monuments in his honor. His name, if spoken, would be in hushed whispers of a Jedi Knight who did not survive the purge and a Sith Lord; who had become the Fist of the Empire.
His name was Anakin Skywalker. He was both betrayer and betrayed. His name was Darth Vader. He was both villain and slave. He was a bogeyman story and a cautionary tale of how destiny and free choice can mix together to create a volatile mixture. His legacy was a tattered, blood soaked, and fragile thing. He had handed it to his children with a gentleness that it did not need or deserve. He had gritted his teeth against the white hot agony in his tired and worn out body; with the feeling of a heavy burden being lifted as he gave it to his children. His only request to them was to do better with it then he had. Anakin Skywalker had died in the arms of his son and it was that same son that had built the pyre and created ash from the remains of a galactic terror.
Anakin Skywalker had been born in the sun scorched sands of Tatooine. Anakin Skywalker had died on the burning sands of Mustafar while Darth Vader rose from his ashes. Darth Vader perished on Endor, in a pyre, lit aflame by his guiding light. From the ashes of Vader rose the ghost of Anakin Skywalker with a smile on his face.