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Rue and Ben don’t talk much anymore.
They don’t have much to talk about, only lies and painful memories. It’s been two years since the Jedi Order fell. Murdered by the brother they had killed.
He’s still alive. You know he’s still alive. You left him there knowing he’d live.
Rue closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Ignoring the thoughts.
Anakin is dead. Master Kenobi and I killed him. He died on Mustafar.
Then who is Vader?
She could never deny the fact that Anakin and Vader were one in the same. She had always seen Anakin as who he was now back in The Clone Wars. It was why she blamed herself - she knew from the start.
“Why don’t you hate me?” She asked him suddenly.
“What?” Ben asked, taken by surprise. He looked at her with a concerned expression. “Why would I hate you, Rue?”
“Because I failed!” She snapped. “I failed you! I’m the reason you lost everything! I-” she began to cry, and it left her unable to finish.
Ben stood up and wrapped Rue in a hug. “You never failed me, and you are far from the reason I’ve lost things,” he told her gently. He let go of her.
“But I knew,” she said. “I knew about all of it.”
“You were a Padawan, and you were a child fighting a war that was never yours to fight,” he reminded her. “It was not a burden you could carry alone, nobody could.”
“I should have told you, told everyone on the Council….why did I never say anything?”
“It’s in the past, and I’m afraid neither of us can change that, as much as we both want to.”
Rue nodded and then swallowed. “But Anakin- Sorry.” Saying his name was sometimes too much for both of them.
“What happened wasn’t your fault,” he told her. “No matter what you knew. Ana- he was not your responsibility. He made his own choices in the end, and so did I.”
“I did too.”
“Don’t blame yourself over them. You were a child.”
“And don’t blame yourself either, Dad, you never knew.”
“That’s the problem,” he whispered, without her hearing. “I should have.”