Chapter V: A Frightening Interlude

"Mom~!"

A boy could be heard echoing through the halls of a villa on the outskirts of Theed. Spring had only arrived just a few short weeks ago, and with it the first bloom of flowers in the family garden. A garden which the matriarch of the house had gone to much labor to nurture herself. Once upon a time she would have left others to handle those sorts of menial tasks for her, but those days had been behind for her some years. In the ten years since becoming a mother, she had learned to take many such tasks onto herself, some more successfully than others. Not that she minded too deeply. After all, she had a reliable, if sometimes headstrong, husband to pitch in where she was less capable. At the moment she had merely retreated herself into the living room to read one of her favorite novels when she heard the boy crying for her attention. As he bolted into the room, she thoughtfully placed a bookmark to tab her progress, before setting the book aside to address her son.

"Oh goodness, what happened, Luke?" She asked, noting the bruise on his right cheek.

"Leia's hogging the holoconsole again. she punched me when I wanted to change games!" he complained to his mother."Oh grow up, Luke!" Leia called from upstairs, "I'm not playing Z-95 Simulator with you every time you get flight happy!"

Oh dear. It was this again… She had warned her husband that they should have bought two consoles to keep the kids from fighting, but no, her husband thought it would be a great opportunity for them to learn how to share, and besides which it would save them money on buying two separate systems. Which might have sounded like responsible reasoning, if he had actually accounted for their wildly differing interests, or the fact he would pocket the money saved to use for his "personal projects". Rolling her eyes internally, she decided to step between the two and defuse the situation.

"Come on Luke, let's go and get this bruise of yours patched up first before we talk with your sister about her console privileges."

Luke nodded dutifully and followed his mother to a nearby utility closet where they would keep some of the family's medical supply. Growing up in a house as large as they had meant that having a single centralized location where the family went to patch up their cuts and bruises wasn't always that practical and convenient, as Luke's parents found out early on. Thankfully, the Naboo intervention and the Clone Wars had given them more than enough experience in the logistics department to come up with a more flexible arrangement.

As she pulled out the peroxide and dabbed it against the boy's cheek, a thought popped into the mother's head. It seemed a little suspicious that their kids were getting into fights over videogames during the middle of the school week.

"By the way, Luke, have you gotten your assignments done for school?"

She didn't need decades of political experience to recognize his son's flinch.

"You have finished your homework right?"

If her son could sweat blaster bolts at this moment, he probably would at this moment.

"O-of course Mom, why would you think otherwise?"

Her brows arched in that way that Luke recognized as "You're not as clever as you think you are.". Which only meant one thing:

His lunch was about to be chewed. So, Luke made the only play he had left, gulp in distress and pray to the Force his mother won't nag his ears off too badly this time.

Though, as it would happen, the Force seemed to have pity on the boy, as before his mother could utter a syllable the sound of the entrance to their (mostly) humble abode rang through the room. Revealing that the Patriarch of the Skywalker household had returned.

"Am I interrupting something?" He called out, a sly grin on his face.

"Father!" Luke cried out as he barged past his mother to greet Anakin with the warmest hug he could muster.

"Hey there little guy!" Anakin returned the embrace with vigor. "Sorry I took so long. Your uncle was being awfully adamant about that favor he asked me for. And well, you know how he gets about his job."

His attention soon turned to his wife as she approached behind their eager son.

"Luke, sweetie, do you mind giving me and your father some time to ourselves? You can go tell Leia he's home, if you'd like."

Luke's face blanched as he nodded. Though still quite young, he was old enough to know what his mother meant when she wanted time with his Father. All things being equal, he could go without seeing his parents making more kissy faces at each other for the rest of his life. And so he made a good note to head back up to his room, and finish that history paper before his Mom decided to ask about it again.

"So," Anakin drawled as he pulled his beloved wife to him by her waist, "How would my Angel rate her day so far?"

"Now that you're back?" She replied, her voice equally coy as she stared back at his sapphire eyes "I'd say it's an eight."

he looked at her with faint surprise, though his handsome smile never left his face.

"Only an eight? I usually get a nine."

"You also got the kids fighting over the holoconsole, because you didn't want to buy two of them." She countered with an unamused expression towards her husband.

"H-hey, come on, now Padme. We both know they have to learn to share at some point."

This time it was Anakin's turn to receive the gaze the former Queen had given Luke earlier.

"Mmm yes, is that why you used the extra money you saved on that decision for a new impulse drive for your airspeeder?"

Anakin really didn't have a means to retort that. Padme knew him inside and out. It was one of the reasons they had managed their way through all of these years, but it also meant it was impossible to argue with her. She knew every argument Anakin could and would make for any number of occasions and topics as totally as Obi-wan knew his dueling tactics. The fact his wife was one of the most talented politicians in the galaxy? It certainly didn't do him any favors.

"I-I- well, um-"

Thankfully for Anakin, Padme wasn't actually in the mood to argue with him. She dropped the interrogative expression on her face, and pulled her husband in for a long, silent kiss.

"I missed you," she admitted quietly, as she rested her head against his chest.

"Not so much as I have you, Angel."

She couldn't stifle the giggle that came with her husband's remark as he continued to gaze at her lovingly.

"Flattery like that will get you nowhere, Master Skywalker."

Oh how she knew what to say to make his grin grow that much wider.

"It got me the most beautiful woman in the galaxy, didn't it?"

She rolled her eyes playfully at that comment.

"Funny, I thought it was the line about "sand" that did it."

Anakin stared at his beloved wife with mock betrayal.

"You're never going to let me live that one down, are you?"

With a coy smile, Padme allowed her delicate Nubian hands to clasp at his face as she brought it down to stare at his piercing blue eyes.

"Nope! I'm afraid that's your cross to bear, my beloved."

The two shared a giggle at their mock argument; bringing their faces together to share yet another kiss. Only to be interrupted by the sound of Luke calling for them from the children's room. The two jokingly rolled their eyes together, and proceeded upstairs to where Luke had last been heard. When the door opened, the jubilation they had shared in had frozen out as Anakin felt his stomach flip.

Instead of Luke and Leia's room, he saw one of the many corridors of the Jedi Temple. Bodies littered the floor with the corpses of clone troopers and Jedi alike, with the stench of blaster wounds, cauterized flesh, and decay surrounding them both. The catwalks along the upper levels had partially collapsed, all the windows had been blown out, and the various columns and statues that used to decorate the pathway were in a similar state of destruction and disarray. Padme, to her credit, attempted to put on her brave face, but she was visibly pail as she stared at the sight before him, and Anakin felt a cold sweat break under his clothes. This. This was impossible. How in the Galaxy-

Before Anakin could process what was before him, a voice cried out from beyond.

"Father!" the voice screamed, Before the sickening cackle of electricity filled the room.

"Luke! Leia!" Anakin cried as he made haste down the halls of the Temple, not even thinking to wait for his wife before running in to save his children. He had been too late to save his own mother, he wouldn't be too late to save his children. He couldn't be too late. He wouldn't let himself be too late. Not after everything that he and Padme have gone through.

Unfortunately the harrowing of Anakin Skywalker had only just begun.

As Anakin charged deeper into the temple, he found himself in the Room of a Thousand Fountains, and the stench of death had only worsened. The count of decaying bodies only seemed to have doubled, with even more showing the signs of saber wounds only possible by someone well-trained in the Jedi arts. As disturbing as those revelations were, they paled in comparison to the sight staring before him. At the archway leading to one of the main fountains, was Leia. Her delicate body, riddled with blaster holes and electrocution marks, hanging from a noose like a twisted puppet from one of the many Assari trees that decorated the room.

A blood curdling scream erupted from the young father as he tossed his lightsaber to remove his daughter from her suspension. Her limp form crashed into his arms as he dashed to her, and Anakin was powerless to do anything else for her. Her body had long gone cold, and the look of fear in her open eyes showed she hadn't even been allowed to perish peacefully. His little princess had died alone, terrified, and helpless to stop what was happening to her. Anakin cried for Leia's name, pleading with the Force to bring her back at any cost to himself. But the Force never had been in the mood to barter with him: not once in his life. He was unable to stop his tears and his body's convulsions as he brought his one and only daughter near him, begging her to forgive him. As he grieved for his daughter, a voice called out through the Force, a voice he knew all to well. He didn't want to leave Leia; not in this state. But if there was even a tiny sliver of hope that he could prevent her brother from sharing the same fate-

It was all the motivation Anakin needed to gently drop his daughter down and close her eyes, before running towards the elevators. The voice had called from the Council room. It made sense. In the event of an invasion or other emergency scenario, the protocol was for the younglings to be escorted into and hidden along the central spire of the Jedi Temple. And the path leading to the council's room would be among the most heavily defended areas of the Building. The Jedi had centuries to come up with means to defeat an invasion of their home like Darth Malgus had led, but it had clearly not been enough to stop the damage he had seen thus far. Still it was the only source of hope he had left that maybe, just maybe, enough time was bought that Luke would make it out of this. Not unscathed, but alive.

Furiously he punched the controls of the elevator leading up to the council room, and rapidly pressed the close door button in a feeble effort to get it to shut faster. Every second he wasted, was another second that might be Luke's last. It made the seconds leading up to the top of the spire all the more painful and infuriating for him to endure. His emotions were teetering at the breaking point, and the only thing holding him together was-

The door opened and Anakin bolted as quickly as he could before breaking down the barricaded door that led to the council room. Inside the room the floor was littered with the body of younglings, smoke trailing from them where a lightsaber had been used to gut them like fish. Only one of the younglings had survived, and he was currently being held up in the air by the assailant; Crimson blade held low. Anakin's eyed glowered with incandescent anger. For the assailant wasn't merely holding any child. It was Luke they were holding, while donning Vader's armor. His armor. This person's very presence was mocking him with his greatest mistake, and Anakin had grown more than tired of this sick jest.

"I will only ask one last time, boy: where is Skywalker?!" The imposter roared, his true voice masked behind his vocator.

"Right behind you!" Anakin roared with his anger, as the hiss of his azure blade igniting drew the false Vader's attention.

Luke dropped to the floor, as Vader motioned to bring his blade to defense. A furious exchange of blows erupted as their blades collided, with neither able to gain the upper hand on one another. Whoever was behind this mask, knew each and every one of Anakin's movements and tactics. No matter what feint he pulled, no matter how well timed his riposte was, he was unable to land even a glancing blow against the man impersonating the dark lord.

Yet by that same token neither could Vader. The former knight knew Vader's tricks just as well, and what's more he knew what weakness existed in that armor that he could exploit. All he needed was a single opening; one long enough that his better speed could break through the imposter's defenses.

As Vader lunged forward to stab, he found his opening.

Stepping into the attack, Anakin allowed the crimson blade to pass his defense to within mere inches from piercing his tunic, before batting it aside. Spinning with the motion he raised his own blade to jam Vader's own for as long as possible, before unleashing it's fury to the back of Vader's neck.

It was a clean strike, and as the imposter of the dark lord's head rolled to the floor, Anakin wasted no time to rush towards his son. Relief flooded into him as he noticed that Luke had little in the way of injuries besides a few cuts and bruises.

"Luke! Are you okay?!" Anakin cried out as he pulled his son into a tight embrace.

"Father,-" the boy croaked out, his voice drained of emotion,

"It's okay Luke! You're safe now! Oh thank the Force you're alright!"

"What have you done, Father?"

Anakin looked at his son in perplexity. What in the Galaxy was he talking about, he just saved him from some homicidal madman who just stormed the temple! Who had hung his daughter like a life day ornament! Frankly decapitating the man was a mercy compared to what he actually deserved.

"Why did you kill them? They were our friends…"

L-Luke couldn't mean...

"Luke that wasn't me-""But it was you who raided this temple's hallowed ground and razed it's splendors to cinders. Was it not, Lord Vader?…"

A voice shot from behind Father and Son; a voice ancient, serpentine, and sinister.

His blood ran cold. He knew that voice all too well…

"No, that's impossible!"

It was Palpatine, just as he had remembered him in his final moments, his fingers still sparking with electricity.

"Did I not tell you, my boy? the Dark Side is a pathway to many abilities deemed unnatural by the Jedi."

"You're not real!" Anakin roared in anger and disbelief, as the dark lord gazed upon him with his serpentine smile.

"Oh I hate to inform you I am very real, Lord Vader. Just as the consequences of your actions have been."

"I didn't murder my children!"

"Not yours, but how many others' children have you slaughtered?" Palpatine taunted, "Though tell me Lord Vader, did the experience of sucking the life out of those little ones not make you feel powerful? Did it not make you feel… alive?"

"Shut up!" Anakin screamed as he brought his blade to cleave his former master in half, only to be frozen in place instead by Sideous's powers.

A cold sweat broke across the Chosen One's face as he was now powerless to move against Palpatine's command.

"You never learned to think beyond your lightsaber, you insolent brat!" The Sith Lord spat, "Always reaching first for brutish strength, as if that alone would save you from those far smarter and capable than yourself. If you were a 'True Sith', it would have been almost admirable. Instead you let your sentimentality cloud your judgement, and make you soft!"

Palpatine lent Anakin a mocking smirk, as he continued to undress his former apprentice pride.

"You weren't even able to beat me by your own power! All you accomplished was catching an old man off guard, and you couldn't even survive that."

Anakin's muscles twitched with rage as they strained to break Palpatine's grasp.

"I believed in you as a father, and you took my family away from me!" he roared, only to be met by his master's sarcastic chuckle.

"You took them away yourself, Lord Vader!"

" Liar!" The young father screamed, his focus now solely focused on the man who had destroyed so much of his life.

"The only liar in this room is you, my old friend!" The Sith retorted, "Had I forced you to kill all those children, those "seperatist leaders", or for you to strangle your own wife? No, I didn't have to. You chose to do those things all by yourself."

"You promised you could save her!"

Anakin could feel his body slowly slipping through Palpatine's grasp, as his anger swelled.

"I promised you the power to save her, is it my fault you destroyed her to get it?"

"Y-you knew what would happen! Didn't you?!"

Palpatine merely shrugged at the accusation.

"Perhaps I did. Perhaps I didn't. Does it truly matter in the end?"

How dare this man mock him like this? After everything the man who crowned himself an Emperor had stolen from him: His family, his life, his free will. Anakin's rage was bordering on incandescent, and he nearly felt himself free of Palpatine's grasp. Not that the old man seemed to notice, or truly care. If he had he might not have turned away from the older Skywalker, and pressed on with what he said next.

"I was telling you the truth, there was no saving her after what you had done, I assure you of that. I will admit though, had I not discovered your children's survival, I'd have said syphoning her life force from whatever backwater world she had ended up on to sustain you on that operating table was one of the greatest achievements of my ability."

Anakin felt something in him snap at that comment.

"What did you say?" He snarled, his voice barely more audible than a whisper.

"It's poetic isn't it, Lord Vader? Even in spite of your betrayal, she had given what little life she had left in her tiny body so that you could remain amongst the living. Is there no truer expression of love, my old friend?"

It was at that moment Anakin's anger boiled over, and Palpatine's restraints shattered. This time he would make sure Palpatine paid in full, and would never come back.

The Sith lord had little time to react as the azure blade cut into his torso. Only the person behind the robes was no longer Palpatine, but a figure much smaller, much younger. As the body turned over as it fell, All the molten rage in Anakin's veins disappeared, and instead the cold sensation of dread and horror filled him.

It wasn't Palpatine he had struck, but his one and only son.

"Luke!"

Anakin had long tossed his lightsaber aside as he clutched Luke in his now armored arms. He could feel the boy's presence fading rapidly into the force, and all he could do was comfort his child as Luke's life slipped away before his eyes.

"No, no, no, no! Stay with me, Luke! Don't you dare die on me!"

Anakin's eyes widened as he felt Luke's small hands touch his face one last time.

"I-I forgive you, Father. Y-y-you're a g-goo-"

The boy didn't have any strength left, and as his eyes drew to close, the hand Luke had raised to his father's face dropped to his side, and rose no more.

"No, please stay with me, Luke! Luke Please! Don't Go! Your mother needs you! I NEED YOU! PLEASE! D-don't-" Anakin cried out hysterically, but it was already too late. Luke was gone, and there was no returning him back.

So distraught with grief was he that he did not even notice the shift in his voice's pitch as his pleadings continued and remained unanswered. Nor did he notice the latest figure to approach him.

"This is who you truly are, Vader. Who you've always been. Who you always will be. Did you really think one moment of piety has rendered your enitre life's legacy moot?"

Anakin turned to see Palpatine standing before him once again with a sadistic smile, as if he had not just been standing where Luke had been just a few moments prior.

"Once a Sith you become, always a Sith you will be! You'd be wise to remember this as who you are, Lord Vader. You cannot run from who you are!"

"I am no Sith! I'm-"

As Anakin rose to his feet he realized something was off about his voice. It was deeper; more mechanical than it should be. His vision had quite literally gone red as a familiar heads-up-display protruded his vision. His joints ached with a familiar ache that accompanied the prosthetics that didn't make up his right arm. With panic, he reached for his face, only for his worst fears to be confirmed. It wasn't his flesh and skin but a helmet. Vader's Helmet. The infernal sound of his suit's respirator and Palpatine's mocking laughter filled his hearing as his legs gave out from beneath him.

"No, it can't be! No! NO! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"

Anakin's eyes burst open as his body exploded up from his bed. His breath was heavy and labored; beads of sweat trickled down his face as he attempted to gain his bearings. This was not the nightmarish dreamscape his mind had conjured. He was in his room in the Xiao-Long residence. Luke was not a child dying in his arms. He was a full-fledged Jedi Knight, no doubt leading the rebellion in restoring the Republic from the front-line as before. Palpatine was not there to taunt him and remind him of his failures, he had already seen to it that no one would ever know of that monster again.

And he was no longer in that Force-damned forsaken armor. No vocator, no respirator that would keep him awake at night. No scars to remind him of what he had lost. There was nothing left of Vader on his person, or in his surroundings, save for the memories of a life now left behind. He was no Sith… Not now. Not ever again.

Right?

Bleakly he moved himself over to observe the date on his scroll. Observing through it's "family" filter, he noted the Bolded font on today's itinerary: "Beacon-fall". The start of their journey to Vale's most prestigious combat academy had arrived. Anakin still had mixed feelings about the arrangement forced upon on him. If he was being honest with himself, there wasn't a whole lot of benefit to himself in going to this school, save for having a more formal setting in which to learn about the history and culture of the planet. Beacon might have been a controlled environment, but then again so was the Jedi Temple. Despite all of the differences in rules and by-laws from the Order, the huntsmen society still served a similar role as the guardians and protectorate of the world he now inhabited. Beacon, at it's core, existed to prepare such defenders. Anakin had been a naïve child when he had joined the Order, too young to appreciate the burden placed on him at that moment. He was no longer so innocuous. He knew that burden now better than any attendee of that academy, and it's weight filled with him with quiet but palpable dread.

He wasn't truly sure if he was prepared to carry such a burden. As much as his time with his makeshift family has helped him to recover his still fragile mental state, a few months of relative peace were not nearly enough to undue decades of psychological trauma. There was a good possibility that within weeks of his arrival, he could snap back to that dark place he was before. If he allowed that to happen, if he spiraled back into the abyss, there would be no one who could stop him. Obi-wan could no longer best him, and Luke was no longer to keep him from doing the worst he was capable of. The risk was terrifying; so much so that he had even contemplated cancelling his air-fare and reneging his promise to Ozpin. It wouldn't have been the first time he had "altered" his agreements.

However it would also make him a liar, and Anakin had never sat right with lies. He was wary of it as a Jedi, he tolerated it as a means to an end as Vader, and now, he was tired of dealing in deception. He had promised himself that this life time, he would live the most honest life he was capable of living, and that started with keeping his promises. If he said he would be at Beacon, he will be at Beacon.

Besides, if nothing else, it would help help him keep an eye on the two sisters while they attended, and he was sure Taiyang and Qrow would appreciate that someone was looking out for the girls in their place.

Getting up from his bed, he decided to first freshen himself up with a shower, organize the tools he needed to bring, and pack a small set of clothes and his weapons. After all it'd be a bad idea to be unprepared for his first day of school.

Author's Note: Wow it's been some months, no? Sorry it took so long to write this chapter. As you can imagine there has been an inordinate amount of chaos we've all had to wade through the past few months, but I have made it thus far and I've managed to complete a new chapter. Believe it or not this dream sequence was actually meant to only be a small introductory part of our first introduction to Beacon, but it kind of evolved into a beast unto itself. As the details kept pouring in, I kind of realized that our intro to the rest of the cast was likely going to have to wait, otherwise it would take too long to publish this chapter, and the end result would be extremely bloated. I wanted this dream sequence to give us a vivid framework for were Anakin's current state of mind lies. I've alluded to his guilt complex somewhat in the previous chapters, but I don't think I've ever been particularly explicit to the extent Anakin's still working through dealing with his inner demons. I thought it was important to demonstrate that while Anakin has been recovering since arriving on Remnant, but he's still very much vulnerable. He's a man who has a life time of moral crimes weighing on his conscious along with the memories of his physical and psychological trauma. Expecting him to make a full rebound to the man we saw in the Prequels and The Clone Wars isn't realistic, or makes for interesting reading. Rather I hope to showcase the ups and downs of this journey, and this chapter is to help set the ground for the work ahead.

Also I recognize that some of the transitions in the sequence might come across as a little jarring, but I assure you some of that is intentional. Dreams, even lucid ones, can be surprisingly fickle in terms of continuity. They are in essence projections created by our brain as we sleep mixed with what little light seeps through our sleeping eyes. Therefore transitions between locations and events can sometimes jam and collide with one another. I used that concept to help shape Anakin's journey through out the sequence, from the idyllic family life he desires into the rather macabre imagery we see in the ruins of the Jedi Temple. This is the first time I've ever written any kind of horror sequence before, and I hope that I have done the scene and your continued commitment to my story justice. I am currently working on Chapter VI right now and I hope to be able to release it to you all in a few weeks time, if things line up well. Until then, safe travels on your journey.