Part Two:
Old fool. Only now, at the end, do I understand.
He should have left me on that fiery shore to die.
`you were the chosen one '
I was indeed. I was chosen to instigate change to take the Jedi Order and destroy it, so that my progeny could build it anew. I see it now in my son's eyes as he looks on my dying body, scarred by my life of hatred and selfishness. If only I hadn't jumped.
`This is the end for you master, I wish it could be different.'
'It's over, Anakin; I have the high ground don't try it!'
But I did. And I paid dearly for it. Alas that cruel fate has made it that I was permitted to live a life of fear and hatred, only to be redeemed in the end by my children. It is unfair to my victims, the countless Jedi and innocent civilians that in cold blood I slaughtered. To the worlds left forever scarred by my mastery. To my own daughter, who will soon learn from her brother her ghastly parentage.
To Padme. My own selfish love being the cause of her demise.
It is wholly unfair that the Force would choose to forgive me that in that one final act of good, all my wickedness would be forever forgotten.
It is not fair.
"Now go, my son," I struggle to speak, my scarred lungs choking on the very air that gives him life. "Leave me."
"No," he says, and the love in his voice slays me. "I'll not leave you here, I've got to save you!"
`I've gained this new power so that I can save you, Padme!'
I flinch. "You already have, Luke." I'll not let my son go down the same dark path I did. "Luke you were right, you were right about me." About so many things things that in his same position I got wrong. "Tell your sister, you were right." And, I almost add, tell her I love her. I could never tell her that. She would never understand. Not after what I did to her.
"Father " I hear his voice, but it sounds distant unreal. My vision blurs and suddenly I see only the force. A figure of light bending over me, telling me he will not leave me, and I know it is my son, and that I have died. And so ends my tragic tale born a slave, and in the last moment of life, able to break the chains from my back and free myself of my metal bonds.
I look down, and see a sight I though was lost forever my own hands. My own body. I raise them up to feel my own face, my hair. A hand on my shoulder turns me around, and another long-lost sight greets me. If tears were permitted in the Force, we would both have shed them.
Together again, brother to brother, master and apprentice, we hug, love and forgiveness flowing from us that no words can express. And only then do I understand.
All this time, after all these years.
He had done it all for me.