Balance
by noiseforyoureyes
disclaimer: Star Wars is a figment of George Lucas's imagination first; then mine.
"Luke. Help me take this mask off."
"But you'll die."
"Nothing can stop that now."
It was an odd sensation: to be so utterly exposed to the world again. To see without the mask's dull haze of red rendering all things pure and vile with the same indifference. Reality assaulted his senses raw and unfiltered, clashing with his years of stubborn stagnance. The control that was his prison - that he'd sought for so long, and held for longer - came under threat, burning away in the light, and he realized with a slow surprise that for the first time, he was not afraid.
He had fought it before. Had fought the way things were with a fire that consumed everything in his path, everything he had been focused upon: everything that had mattered.
But a fire is not careful. It does not know what it misses, just as it is not conscious of what it destroys.
And it had missed the one before him now.
His son. Luke.
It was a wonder, how much of her he recognized in Luke's eyes. They bore her forgiveness. No condemnation in them to match the shame surely in his own. Only love; unchecked and unconditional. And a beautiful, purifying pain.
One he had helped inflict, he knew, and his heart deservedly ached at the thought. But the ache felt good; felt right. That pain could have this capacity to cleanse had never before entered Anakin's mind. He had always tried so desperately to prevent it - to himself, to others - as if it were a poison, threatening to taint forever the perfect order of things he had wanted nothing more than to protect.
But watching his son's face now was a curious epiphany... watching the pain wash over him and run its course, and Luke allowing it, never giving a thought to stopping it. Because it was needed; Anakin saw that now. It made sense. For some reason, it hadn't before.
So many things hadn't made sense before Luke.
And as he felt the last reserves of his shame fall away, hope trickled in. He marveled at how so little of it made one feel so strong.
His son was wise. He had not made the same mistakes his father did. He would not, in the future.
Anakin knew this with a certainty that washed over him like oxygen. His heart swelled, with something he thought he had buried, something that had ruled him all his life but he had never fully understood until now.
Love.
He felt it plugging the holes that were riddled in his being, flushing out every dark, hidden corner of himself.
It made him whole.
For the first time in his life, Anakin Skywalker felt what it was to be truly at peace.
Death tugged at the corners of his consciousness. But it was not at all like the swallowing darkness that had haunted him in his nightmares of so long ago. Instead, it felt familiar, warm, like an embrace. He longed to let go, allow his steely grip on the world to slip at last.
And so he found himself speaking, with finality. Surprised at the frailty of his own voice. Weak words tumbling out, taking little bits of his life with them.
"Now, go, my son. Leave me."
A desperate, stubborn resolve came to Luke's eyes then, one Anakin recognized all too well.
"No," he shook his head earnestly, as if it couldn't possibly be an option. "I'll not leave you here. I've got to save you."
Words that would have come from himself, once. The conviction caused a sad smile to fill Anakin, though he did not have the strength to properly form it. Didn't he know? Didn't he understand? It was all so clear, so simple. His next words were an atonement, being formed: speaking truth, much less thinking it, was such a foreign exercise... he had been lying to himself for decades.
"You already have, Luke."
He felt his son's presence in the Force - strong, resonant, and pure, almost blinding to a soul that had been so long resigned to darkness. Time was carrying him to where it met with the current of light that, even now, was spreading through the Force... bringing dawn to a deadened galaxy. Restoring life. Granting renewal, second chances.
So this was what balance felt like.
So he was not damned after all.
A bittersweet grief came over him at the absence of the other - Leia - at not being able to tell her this, too... this truth that was boiling up inside of him, spilling over. It felt very important to convey to his children. For some reason, he felt as if speaking to them was speaking to her. It was so obvious to his heart, if not his mind: she was there, in Luke. In his sincerity and compassion.
And he hadn't given up on him. Which meant she hadn't, either.
Something lifted from his soul.
And he could not find anything else to say. Time did not allow him anything more; any chance to carefully pick out proper words that would convey a third of what he felt so imminently inside. And so he went with the first ones that came to him, the weight of their truth compensating for their inadequacy.
"You were right. You were right about me."
He saw the effect this had on his son, and knew that he understood.
He could only hope that one day she would, too.
"Tell your sister. You were right."
His breathing was thinning, but it did not matter. It was no longer necessary. He had always considered the suit's perfect preservation of it a mockery, anyway; forcing one long dead to breathe, in a shallow imitation of life. His own perfect punishment.
But now he saw that wasn't the case. It had simply replaced his will until a time such as this. It had brought him here despite himself. To this moment with his son, to this death he did not deserve.
"Father. I won't leave you."
He heard Luke's words clearly, even as he left the current of time - they came no longer from him, but from everywhere, mingling with others long ago, memories releasing themselves from his mind as it unraveled. But you can't stop the change. Any more than you can stop the suns from setting.
He felt weightless. For the first time, bound to no one, and nothing - and yet everything.
So this is what freedom felt like.
A whisper sighed through his latent consciousness as he let go.
There is no death. There is only the Force.