Saga Too High A Price (Vader/Anakin) - Vignette - Replies 3/9

Title: Too High A Price

Author: bek

Genre: AU

Characters: Vader/Anakin

Summary: Vader discovers that walking the path of the darkside came at too high a price.

Disclaimer: The characters (Vader/Anakin, Obi-Wan, Luke, Qui-Gon, et all?) belong to Lucas. I make no profit from this. It's just a hobby.



Too High A Price

I often forget the disturbance this respirator can cause, as I?ve grown accustomed to the sound. Those around me hear it and shudder, not knowing from one instant to the next if one of them will pay for my anger with his life. As I stand on the bridge of the Executor, my eyes scan the crew as they go about their assigned tasks. And I see, really see, for the first time the fear that lies hidden in their posture, in their nervous glances as they chance a look at their superior. I?ve always known it was there as I can feel it, but to truly see it is something else entirely. Their thoughts fill the air around me, the most predominant being their curiosity of what lies within the black monstrosity that stands before them.

If they knew that a scarred shell is all that remains of a once youthful and whole form, would their actions still hold the same fearful reverence? The appearance I once adorned inspired respect and admiration not only due to the services my former master and I had performed during the war, but because of what we represented. The Jedi were highly esteemed for their peacekeeping tactics, for their loyalty to justice and their faith in democracy.

Having left the command center, I enter my quarters and seat myself in the only place where it is possible to remove my headgear, and in the process making it possible to view my environment with my own eyes instead of the infrared visors the helmet supplies.

Images flash through my mind, unbidden and unwanted. My life has been of my own making and not the result of what I have believed others to have done; I understand that now. In a few hours I will once again come face to face with my son, the force has shown me that. He is so much like his mother. Her patience and determination and my recklessness and need for adventure run strong within his veins. He believes that I am not beyond saving. I laugh slightly, but the sound is hollow?at one time I had believed that too.

Too many years have gone by; too much blood stains my hands. When I look back, I realize that it was a life best unlived. In my need to save what I loved, to cling to what I cherished, to keep what I possessed, I lost?everything. My wife died by my hand, or so I was told. I have recently discovered that she died during childbirth as my dreams had shown me. But also, that if I had not walked the path I chose, the outcome could have been so much different. And yet the potential death of another loved one so dear to me was too great a sacrifice that I could not bear; therefore, allowing me to leave myself open to manipulation and deceit in my vain attempt to control life and death.

My hand slams down onto the console of the chair I sit in, my anger getting the better of me as it has so often and so quickly over the last twenty-seven years. The way Palpatine exploited me once again rises to the surface. He used me, used me to betray the very people who raised me and gave me a home, used me to fulfill his plans to create a dictatorship based on fear instead of deference. And I allowed all of it. I should have searched for the truth that would have cleansed my confusion, my anger, and my resentment. I should have poured out the secrets I kept within that fed my fears and faced the consequences of the choices I had made as Obi-Wan had tried to instruct me. But instead, I chose the easier path, the road to power, greed, and devastation. And after having been on Mustafar, I now believe it was the path to hell.


X


My angel was well respected in her line of work. She fought for justice, for the rights of all beings sentient and otherwise. An angel indeed?how ironic that s

 

aww tht was so sad ! Apart from the end! It really showed Vader's feelings well, as it's hard to tell what he's thinking under the helmet!!! You really brought his emotions to life!!

Gr8 viggie!!

 

Very poignant insight.

 

Thanks for making me bawl like a baby!

Absolutely breath-taking!

The anger begins to dissipate, the light stretching beyond the boundaries it has been kept behind for so many cycles. Sensing my sincerity and my newfound desires, the light dives in without hesitation and caresses my spirit and my soul. The half man, half machine I have become wars with the person I was; Anakin desires the light, the warmth, he seeks redemption. The hardened man I have become is comfortable with the chill, comfortable with the shadows. In the dark one can hide, faults are not clearly seen and stains become nonexistent. The light infuses me and I gasp, my hands tightly grasp the sides of the chair. The fury I have lived with calms and quiets, dispersing until there is no longer a trace of it having been there to begin with.

What a perfect description of Anakin's conflict with himself!

 

ani-eyes aww tht was so sad! Apart from the end! It really showed Vader's feelings well, as it's hard to tell what he's thinking under the helmet!!! You really brought his emotions to life!! Gr8 viggie!! Thank you! It is difficult to read people merely by their tone of voice and a mechanical filtered one at that. I often wondered if Anakin regretted the choice he made when he agreed to follow sidious. He gave up everything to save those he loved and in the process lost them as well. Very sad.

Healer Leona That was a wonderful viggie. Loved the end and the thought that even those Anakin had killed forgave him. Thanks! I think being the Jedi they were, they would have forgiven him.

DarthIshtar Very poignant insight. Thank you!

VaderLVR64 Thanks for making me bawl like a baby! You?re welcome, I think!

Absolutely breath-taking! What a perfect description of Anakin's conflict with himself! Thanks! I really enjoyed writing this one.