Chapter Text
Peace.
For the first time in a long time, Anakin felt peace.
The adrenaline and high-strung tension which had characterized his fight with Luke, and then with Sidious, had deserted him the instant he knew he was going to die.
The Force swirled around him, the murky red-black of the Dark and death, slamming against the white-bright Light of hope and renewal. The black hole which had been Palpatine’s presence had finally winked out of existence, when the Dark’s strongest ally had perished. And because of that, the Light was slowly, gradually, filling the Force once again.
Anakin had lived with the red and black for most of his life now; for the past two decades, it was all he had known of the Force.
But now, something within began to glow again. And like the sunrise after a long night, the Light chased away the shadows and filled the space that the Dark had inhabited unrivalled for so long. And the emptiness that used to be all he had ever known, was filling, inexorably, with joy. A feeling so foreign; and yet, he didn’t know how he had lived so long without it.
He heard the call of the Light again. And Anakin felt his very being yearn for it, in a way he never had in life.
As Luke pried the helmet and visor off over his head, Anakin felt himself smile for the first time in a long time. The Force was coming for him now; but his son was here, before his eyes. Eyes that were finally free of his complicated machinery. Eyes that could see clearly again, without the taint of anger or possessive fury.
“I’ll not leave you here. I’ve got to save you,” his son was saying. Anakin smiled at his determination, his sheer goodness that glowed so brilliantly in the Force. He reminded him so much of Padmé. Bright, optimistic, and believing in the goodness in the galaxy. Believing in the goodness in him.
“You already have, Luke.” And after years and years of drowning in the Dark and feeling stagnant in its depths, his son had shown him the path back to the Light. Even though Anakin’s respirator apparatus was broken and he knew he was dying, he felt like he was remembering how to breathe again.
For the first time, the thought of death didn’t scare him anymore. Because it meant this boy; no, this man, in front of him, would live. It was an exchange he had chosen to make. And unlike most of the decisions he had made in life, this one didn’t have even a morsel of regret attached to it.
The Force was beckoning, stronger now, and Anakin was eager to collapse into it, to finally rest. But first, he wanted to tell his son…
“You were right about me,” he told Luke. Luke, who had known him a very short time, but had always been right about him. He thought Sidious had known him better than anyone else, but he had been wrong, and how long had he been wrong for? But it didn’t seem to matter now.
Anakin quirked one last smile, and added, “tell your sister you were right.” And what a miracle! To have not only a son, but a daughter as well. And in a childish way, but in a way all parents wished to be thought highly of by their children, he hoped Luke would tell Leia that he had died making amends, in the end.
“Father, I won’t leave you!” Luke protested, but his voice was more muffled now, as if he were speaking underwater.
Anakin thought his son’s statement silly; Luke didn’t have to worry about leaving him, because soon Anakin would no longer inhabit this body anyways. He was becoming one with the Force.
He tried to tell this to Luke, but was unsure whether the words made it out in time or not.
The Force eddied and swirled as Anakin closed his eyes. He felt weightless as pure Light surrounded him, lifted him; he no longer felt his wounds, his machine parts, even his own breathing. Freed from the mechanical shackles of his physical form, the great weight of the past decades was also left behind on the floor of the Death Star.
He was finally free, in more ways than one.
The voice of the universe called to him, and the way in which it spoke sounded familiar and foreign all at once. The call of the ones who had gone, and who were yet to come; who did not exist in the physical plane, but were woven seamlessly into the fabric of the galaxy, all the same.
Anakin had spent so many years alone; he gladly welcomed the feeling of joining the running current of the Force that flowed endlessly through time and space, never to be separated from it again.
When Anakin next opened his eyes, he was surrounded by pure whiteness.
It was similar to that time he had gone to Hoth, except there were no visible landmarks or ships or other beings, and no hostility in the Force. The Force was peaceful, empty of anything and yet full of everything, every good thing, that ever existed and ever will. And Anakin felt the smile on his face was permanent, and the action no longer pulled at his scarred and burned flesh like it used to. He no longer felt pain or emptiness because he was filled with the Force itself.
Anakin continued to drift, content. For how long, he didn’t know. There wasn’t anything to mark the passage of time here, after all, and he didn’t think the Force bothered with trivialities like time anyways. Anakin laughed; maybe he should have paid more attention to his Force philosophy classes as a student, or his discussions with Obi-Wan on Force theory.
He released the vague, abstract thoughts easily into the Force, feeling more than seeing them caught up and carried away in the streams around him. He thought about everything, but also nothing in particular. The worries of life were so distant and trivial, from this point of view, that it was difficult to imagine why they had been so taxing and vexing when he lived through them.
But once he had fully absorbed all these sensations, feeling like he had relaxed as much as he could, Anakin’s restless nature began to kick in. Honestly, Anakin thought, shouldn’t he be free of such frustrating emotions after being one with the Force? Apparently not.
Now that the thought had entered his head though, the restlessness only continued to grow. Yes, this was amazing, but wasn’t something supposed to happen? Was there something he had to do? Because honestly, Anakin knew he was going to get bored if something didn’t happen soon.
Tendrils of existential dread began to creep up, at the thought that he would just spend eternity floating in nothingness. Could it even be called existential dread, if he was already dead? Was it post-existential dread? Non-existential dread?
While Anakin pondered the complexities of his current state, the Force seemed to sigh, a slight breeze that brushed his cheeks. It was the first thing to manifest in the endless bright white expanse.
The next thing Anakin noticed was a speck in the distance, a slight interruption in the formless blank slate around him.
His legs didn’t quite work the way he wanted them to; trying to move felt like maneuvering within a spacesuit in outer space. Awkwardly, cumbersomely, he drifted closer and closer to the speck. Pinwheeling his arms and legs to move through absent matter, he distantly thought he must make a comical image to anyone who might be watching; alas, there was no one else around.
As he drew closer, the speck grew larger and larger. It dawned on him then, that the speck was actually a starship.
Confounded, Anakin stared, wondering what a ship was doing in the middle of the Force. Or, within his afterlife? He still wasn’t sure what to classify this place as.
But, he did know how to classify this ship. It was an older model, and took Anakin a bit of time to place it. But when he did, it hit him like a ton of bricks.
A J-type 327 Nubian starship.
The Force really did have a sense of humour, Anakin thought dryly, as he stared at the ship that had so altered the course of his life, all those decades ago. He wondered what it meant, that it was here now.
The ramp was open, but there was no sign of anyone else. The utter silence might have been eerie, if not for the warmth in the Force that permeated the very fibre of his being and nudged at the innermost core of his body.
Anakin drifted down until his feet touched the base of the ramp. His eyes followed its path upwards, towards the open doorway.
He couldn’t see anything of the inside of the ship; the doorway merely framed a brilliant white light. The doorframe was edged with its radiant glow, but he couldn’t see what was beyond it.
Tearing his eyes from the opening, Anakin turned slowly in a circle, surveying the empty white vastness that surrounded him and this ship. They felt strangely out of place, seemingly corporeal in an environment that was everything but that.
He felt inexplicably nervous, a tingling in his chest that could indicate either anxiety or excitement. Taking a deep breath, he inched cautiously towards the doorway. His boots resounded hollowly on the metal ramp.
He had to squint the closer he got, the brightness of the light emanating from the door almost overloading the ability of his eyes to bear it.
When he had come close enough so that the light from the opening could wash over his boots, Anakin heard the voice of the universe again, the whispers which spoke of comfort and Light, but in no distinguishable words. He focused, but couldn’t pry the individual voices apart, couldn’t catalogue them into anything that made sense.
Regardless, he was at a threshold. He had a decision to make.
Pressing a hand to the strange tingling in his chest, he warily stepped forward.
And he was swallowed by the indescribable brightness through the doorway.