Twenty-seven

What you confuse for glorious fire

Is fire from the tongues of liars.

Forgiveness is a strange concept to me. It exists as something neither Jedi nor Sith found the importance to teach. The Jedi expected it to come naturally. There was no need to worry about it because a Jedi would forgive immediately after the deed was done. The Sith taught the opposite of forgiveness. When a Sith is wronged by another the only proper way to find relief is by that person's death, or at least, pain.

For me, I hold grudges close as if they are my very air. I hold them close because I'm scared of not having them. I'm scared of freely granting mercy and ending up being trampled on. I've done this before. I've felt that before.

And holding them against another is easy. It may not kill the person holding it. Hatred can affect a person and drag them through the dirt. Hatred isn't nice but it hasn't killed me yet. That is until I decided to hate myself too.

Hating myself is a marvelous security. It gives me control. It gives me focus. My goal in life is to push myself forward, despising everything I do until there's something good to look at. I must keep working through the mess, erasing myself one day at a time until Anakin Skywalker, until Darth Vader, until my very soul passes away and I exist as something new.

But that's all I'll ever do, right? Exist. Exist as me. Exist in my cage. In my mask. In my walls. I was so close to escaping but my fear always latches the door to who I used to be. To who I was born to be.

I've barely thought about my name: Anakin Skywalker. It feels like a stranger now. It used to be as close as my skin but now it feels like the name of someone I read about in an article or maybe wrote an essay about in the order. It feels like nostalgia and memory. Love and life. But not mine. Anakin's. Anakin's love. Anakin's life. Not mine. I don't know what is mine.

I've decided that I'm simply going to call myself 'Sky.' Maybe not outside of this world I'm in. Maybe 'Anakin' can be my legal name. Maybe my friends can call me that. But when I speak of myself in this book, I am Sky.

Sky.

The color of my eyes. The place I wish to soar. The connection I have to my mother.

Sky.

The color of my blood. The beating of my heart. The taste of reality.

Me.

I dance with the sky. I live with the sky. I love the sky.

I am the sky.

Perhaps this is too much soul exploration for now. I had originally planned on writing out my thoughts of the concept of forgiveness. The thoughts that will never reach my hands. I can't do such a thing.

Maybe I can be Sky. Maybe I can love Sky. But I can't love Anakin. And I can't love Vader.

I've always felt so detached from myself yet too close. My emotions couldn't stay inside. They just had to cover me up like a blanket and choke me to death. They had to.

On Mustafar, I was detached from myself. When I killed those Tuskens I was detached from myself. Many nights when I would lay in bed and fight off demons, I was detached from myself. When I tried to kill myself, I was too.

But when I was married or when I found out Padme was pregnant, I wasn't. When I used to play as a child and when I played games with Ahsoka I was surely not detached. When I stood before the council, even raging, seeing no justice in their decisions, I truly was not detached. I was completely and utterly me.

It's so hard to know where I am sometimes. It's hard to know if the person talking is me. Sometimes I believe it isn't.

"Sky?" Obi Wan asked, raising his eyebrows. He looked back down at the page that Anakin had written, unsure if he should be worried or not.

Anakin merely nodded.

"What's wrong with Anakin?" Obi Wan asked him, feeling lost.

"I thought I made that rather clear. I hate Anakin."

The Jedi looked at the words again, growing more and more uneasy with each sentence. This was not what Obi Wan meant by forgiveness.

"I hate Anakin and I hate Vader, but I don't hate Sky. At least, not yet anyway."

"This isn't healthy," Obi Wan told him gently, "not even a bit."

"What are you saying, Obi Wan? I'm trying to solve the problem," Anakin said slowly. "Isn't this what you want?"

"No," Obi Wan said without trying. "This is not what I want."

Frustrated, Anakin bit drown on his lip, counting down to ten to calm down.

1, 2, 3…

How could he possibly think that?

4, 5, 6…

I thought he cared…

7, 8…

He's right. I'm still Anakin.

9, 10…

No, I'm not. Never again.

"You can't stop this, Obi Wan. Anakin is dead."

Obi Wan was disturbed by everything he was hearing. When he and Anakin were reunited, he had told him that it would be alright to call him 'Anakin.' Suddenly, Anakin was some terrible person that 'Sky' believed to be dead.

"You were named 'Anakin' by your mother who loved you," Obi Wan said finally. "Padme married you as Anakin and Anakin is the father to Luke and Leia. Look, you can call yourself 'Sky' if you want to, but I will not call you that. Regardless of what you think, I know who you are. You are Anakin."

"Well, thanks for the support."

"Anakin, I do support you, I just don't think changing your name will solve your problems."

"I made this all very clear in my entry. I'm not changing my name, you're reading between the lines, Obi Wan."

"Anakin, I get what you're saying, I really do,but you can't run away from who you are. You're considering your old self dead."

"But my old self is dead."

Obi Wan's mind trailed back to when Anakin was a Padawan, when Obi Wan let the words slip of Anakin being difficult to deal with. Anakin, though not showing, was heartbroken. He was so sure his master hadn't wanted him. Hadn't thought he was worth it.

The way Anakin spoke now reminded Obi Wan so much of the younger man he was then. This made Obi Wan feel devastated at the fact that nothing had changed. Anakin had always been so insecure and so unbelieving that he was good. Though some would disagree, Anakin never expected anything to be given to him. He hated gifts and he was uncomfortable with attention. He was far from the arrogant young boy that most Jedi labeled him as. If anything, it was blazing insecurity, that still existed now.

Sky was no different than Anakin.

"If your name is Sky, who do you act so much like Anakin?"

That was enough to make Anakin go wild.

"Why are you so against this? I don't understand why it matters so much."

"It's not the name Anakin, it's the self-hatred. When will you ever learn to love yourself?"

Anakin looked bewildered. "Love myself?" he was incredulous. "Oh, Obi Wan," Anakin said, tiredly rubbing his eyes. "I really don't think that's the Jedi way."

Obi Wan nodded, a small smile playing on his lips. "Screw the Jedi way."

Anakin still looked shocked.

"You heard me right," he said. "Screw the code. Screw the ancient texts. Screw their patronizing ways. Look where it brought the galaxy. Look what their unnegotiable rules accomplished."

"They're all dead."

"Exactly, so blinded by tradition that they couldn't see the future. The Jedi became a dead religion, far less about the Force than it was about order. How different is that mindset than that of the Sith?"

Anakin sat up, very alert now. "You're scaring me."

"And you're scaring me," Obi Wan said, clearly not done talking. It sounded as if he had been keeping his thoughts to himself for far too long. "The Jedi have wrung you out so much that you are completely incapable of showing yourself mercy. And no, this was not just the doing of the Sith. The Jedi put this in you. The Jedi forced you to become detached from yourself. They took your identity. They told you that you couldn't be proud of who you are, and because of that, you will always feel guilty when you take pride in anything you do."

"I was an arrogant mess."

"I think you wanted affirmation."

"I..."

How could he deny what Obi Wan was saying? Anakin calling himself out for being arrogant was only proving Obi Wan's point. He could not show himself mercy. He could not call his pride and need for affirmation. That would be selfish. That would be wrong. That would be something the Jedi would despise him for.

"There is nothing wrong with wanting affirmation. You are a human being, and despite what the Jedi may have believed about themselves at times, they were not gods. They were no superior to anyone. That in itself was pride. How could they ever blame you when they were too self-righteous to offer you some sort of feedback."

Anakin felt the force around him more strongly than he had ever felt in the order. Stronger than he ever felt after he turned to the dark side. It only proved Obi Wan right. "Have you gone mad, master?"

"Perhaps so."

Anakin smiled.

"But at least, not wrong," Obi Wan confessed, watching his friend who seemed to lighten up the more Obi Wan talked.

"Perhaps not," Anakin said.