Saga To The Unremembered -- Post-AOTC, Anakin Skywalker, angst, one-shot

Title: To The Unremembered
Author: ophelia
Timeframe: Mostly just-post AOTC, brief flash-forward to Imperial era
Characters: Anakin Skywalker
Genre: Angst. Also, more angst.
Rating: PG, mature themes: death, alluded-to violence
Summary: On Coruscant, Anakin has no memorial site to go to and mourn his mother. However, amid the Republic?s official memorials, he finds one that he can make his own.
Author Note: This is actually a response to my own ?I?ll Trade You This Picture . . .? thread. Normally, I?d post in the thread itself, but this kinda got out of control.

FWIW, it?s a response to this picture:
[image=http://www.members.aol.com/opheliamac/dont_wait.gif]

Click on the thumbnail for a larger image.

Author?s Other Note: The Parthenon POV workshop thread has caused me to start doing bad, scary things with POV--as well as verb tense.

It?s all Souderwan?s fault! He?s holding me back!!

********************

There is a place near the Senate Building on Coruscant that is especially for emotional scab-picking, or at least you think of it that way. Its official name is the "Arched Way," and it contains memorials to everything bad that ever happened to anyone in the galaxy--or at least everything bad that ever happened to anyone the Republic cares about.

It does not have a memorial for you.

You pace up and down its length anyway, your new, mechanical hand folded next to your hand of flesh, deep within your mantle sleeves. Once, you would have gripped both your forearms and squeezed, just for the emotional release of creating and feeling hard, deep pressure, but now there's nothing for your left hand to squeeze, and your right "hand" could snap the bones of your other arm. Instead, you ball both hands into fists and crush down as hard as you can, trying to seize and control your emotions. Despite your efforts, they pitch, crest, and shift like the deck of a destabilized ship.

Over to your left there is a crew of work droids, tearing up the pavement and the metal sub-structure beneath. In places, you can see the shadowy lower level that lies under the Arched Way. The beings who live down there would probably trade the whole long strip of memorials for a single patch of real sunlight, but this isn't about what they want. It isn't even about what the ?memorialized? want.

A key example of this is what will eventually go into the torn-out hole the droids are working on. It will be a reflecting pool, dedicated to the memory of the Jedi who died at Geonosis--as well as to the clones that carried the day. In general, the Jedi politely oppose all attempts to spend public money on "memorializing" them, since they believe the Republic's proper focus is on the living, not the dead. In this particular case, they also don't care much for the holo-image the pool will be reflecting. You've seen miniatures of it--the foreground consists of a small group of artistically-idealized Knights, the species and gender of which were tactfully chosen to reflect majority sub-populations within the Republic. All but one of them are in varying stages of being shot down and massacred--and the lone Twi'lek male left standing doesn't look as if he'll stay that way for much longer. Behind the doomed Jedi, a hardened-looking, anonymous clump of clonetroopers is shown firing stoically upward at some unseen enemy. There are apparently many detailed background figures not visible in the miniature you saw, but the scene of Jedi slaughter is supposed to be much the same.

A spokesbeing for the Council made the unusual move of officially "expressing dismay" that the Jedi were presented primarily as "victims." In other words, the Council doesn't like it that the Jedi are shown as losing. The "highly-sensitive treatment" of the subject didn't mollify them--not the prettified physical forms of the dying Knights, not the absence

 

You amaze me again, ophelia, with your angsty trip. Whatever got you on this dark path, I bless it. You took that picture and truly gave it a story that tore my heart out and stomped on it. The allusions to the Empire, and its case for the "umremembering" of human souls, was amazing, especially when one considers how Anakin "unremembered" his own. Amazing work, ophelia. Seriously. Stunning.

 

Awww . . . thank you. It wasn't meant to turn into the monster that it did; it just kind of kept . . . going.

I'm glad my angst-trip is entertaining somebody--but I swear, have to get off it for a bit. It's impossible to write angst with the "O RLY?!" owl staring me in the face the whole time anyway.

 

That was no monster, ophelia. Monsters are boring, or scary, or both. That was....amazing. I nearly cried. Great job!!!!

 

Where is *her* memorial? Where among all the fallen heroes and idealized portraits of the Arched Way is the memorial to Outer Rim slave women who never had an easy day in their lives, and who can't even have a bit of late-life happiness without a crowd of beasts coming along and brutalizing them? Where is the Senatorial Action Committee working to set up some holo-image or reflecting pool dedicated to making the memories of those women solid?to bringing their histories out into the world--so their sons won't have to carry the full weight within the black silence of their skulls?

I got major chills during this.

 

Rogue_Pilot_2347 : Monsters are boring, or scary, or both. That was....amazing. I nearly cried. Great job!!!!

You mean it wasn't scarily boring?

Thank you, though, seriously. And thank you for following me all the way out here onto the fanfic boards. Even I didn't have the heart to wedge this thing into a poor little Resource thread.

bmwgurl17

It was this part that really got me.

Aaand that was the part of the story I maybe should have stopped at.

WOW this was good and I really felt my emotions being yanked at.This was very good.

Thank you very much . . . I appreciate your stopping by to tell me so, too. Feedback always makes my day.

Ish wrote: I got major chills during this.

::Represses urge to claim fic just gave Ish a computer virus:: Thank you. You're wonderful to seek out the obscure things I write and post responses to them.

 

This was a very moving piece. It reminded me of all the monuments you see in Washington DC -- and the knowledge that there are too many names and never enough stone. Not everyone who dies in a war wears a uniform.

A wonderful touch -- the bridge. Anakin's on a bridge in his life, where he must choose the path he will follow.

You just feel an irrational urge to leave a *mark* on it--on *something*--in order to tell the galaxy she existed, and that her presence is missed.

How true. Everyone wants to feel that they made some difference. How sad to have your life slip by unnoticed, regardless of how hard you struggled.

I remember Obi-Wan talking to me about "self-emptying." I thought that meant "selflessness." I didn't know it meant "hollow."

Whoa. That line stopped me cold. What a sad way to look at life.

This was very impressive without being overly dramatic.

 

So beautiful... yet sad... I loved it... you truly are a great writer!!

Rachel Rose

 

divapilot: This was a very moving piece. It reminded me of all the monuments you see in Washington DC -- and the knowledge that there are too many names and never enough stone. Not everyone who dies in a war wears a uniform.

Yeah, the Mall in Washington D.C. is what I was thinking of--only if the U.S. encompassed an entire galaxy, and had been around for 1,000 years. People complain that there are too many monuments there now . . . can you imagine how many would have accrued over a thousand years?

Actually, FWIW, the image I was working from is an AIDS memorial, I believe--or at least its text has been used as one. MTV used to run an AIDS awareness ad that flashed the entire text of that poem at you. (The whole thing is much longer) It was very powerful--I never forgot it.

The image came with this documentation, incidentally:

Jenny Holzer's Garden Bench at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice, July 9, 2003

Never did post that anywhere.

A wonderful touch -- the bridge. Anakin's on a bridge in his life, where he must choose the path he will follow.

Actually I wasn't thinking of the path so much as a bridge as a flat walkway, like the Mall . . . Although, I guess you could argue that every piece of "ground" on Coruscant is actually a bridge.

This was very impressive without being overly dramatic.

Thank you very much . . . I rewrote the poem section a whole bunch of times, trying to find the most dramatic place I could get to without going over the top. It's hard to do justice to a poem like thiat. I'm actually not sure I did, but I thank you kindly anyway.

AnakinLuver wrote: So beautiful... yet sad... I loved it... you truly are a great writer!!

Awww . . . thank you. Now I'm all embarrassed, but in a good way.

Thanks very much for taking the time to read and post that you liked it.

Healer_Leona: Wow, that was amazing, in the most painful way.

LOL . . . thank you very much , although I really do have to stop the pain thing. People are going to start looking at my byline and imagining a trip to the dentist.

Hard to fault him when in the throes of such anguish.

I secretly adore Ani, although I might not have felt that way if I hadn't written a 600+ page fanfic novel about him. My first draft of that story (mercifully unposted) was actually not flattering to him at all. It was the Anakin's Profoundly Human Frailty thread (locked and dusty now, sadly) in the AOTC forum that finally snapped the character into focus for me. I had to do a complete rewrite. (Stupid AOTC forum.)

Just beautifully written ophelia.

Thank you, once again.

 

Wonderfully angsty!

 

Congrats, ophelia. You did an excellent job of capturing Anakin's emotions in this piece. And you also perfectly encompassed the fact that are never enough memorials for those who have died. So many tragedies are anonymous...except to the ones left behind.

Again, nice work.

 

Holy cow. Can I write like you when I grow up?

Yeah, I'd say that story deserved its own thread. And that's an understatement. That's just a downright powerful piece. I know I'm just an echo here, but very well done, ophelia.

 

Wow. I'm not sure exactly how to respond to this story, other than to say that it's amazing. I'm not an Anakin fan -- I usually find it difficult to sympathise with him -- but this story makes it impossible not to understand who he is, where he's coming from. His thoughts on his mother were extremely moving, because they were so emotionally true, and because there are people like her in every culture. The ending was hauntingly beautiful, as well. I think this story's going to stay with me for a while... I'm glad I clicked. Thank you for sharing it.

 

I really liked how you took Souderwan/TKL's POV workshop and used the 2nd person. And the present tense. You did a great job with that. Loved how you went through what the Senate and the Council did (and their political motivations) for the battle of Geonosis and how it didn't mean anything to Anakin at all. That made much sense since he was reeling from his mother's death and his slaughter of the Tuskens at that point. Good introspection, too, of what he was thinking as he killed the Tuskens.

I especially loved the ending - the monument and how he positioned the last line so that people were forced to look at it.

Great job.

 

Beautiful! Beautiful! Yes, that plaque just screams Shmi in my mind and I love what you did with this story. you captured all the confusion, and grief that must have been swirling in Anakin after Tatooine and Geonosis. I also liked the little politikal foreshadowing you pu there - with the Jedi being unwillingly commemorated as 'losers' and the clones as the heroes.

All in all, a fantastic story.

 

Ohmygosh . . . I hadn't checked this thread in a while and didn't realize so many people had replied. Thank you!

Golden_Jedi wrote: Wonderfully angsty!

Thank you . . . I do *try* to come up with quality angst--none of this dubbed-off bootleg angst that goes for inflated prices on eBay.

Er--no, that made no sense. Never mind. But thank you very much for stopping by and posting that you liked it.

leiamoody wrote: And you also perfectly encompassed the fact that are never enough memorials for those who have died. So many tragedies are anonymous...except to the ones left behind.

Yes, that's the thing . . . a memorial can seem awfully hollow when there's been a great tragedy, but if you *don't* put one up, people will eventually forget. I ran across an article on human rights atrocities just the other day--it said 30 million Chinese citizens died during the rule of Chairman Mao. That's worse than Stalin, worse than Hitler . . . but we don't make a point of remembering, so people don't know.

JediMindTrick000 wrote: Holy cow. Can I write like you when I grow up?

That sort of implies that I ever managed to grow up, which is rather questionable . . .

That's just a downright powerful piece. I know I'm just an echo here, but very well done, ophelia.

Awww . . . thank you. And don't worry about being "just an echo." There aren't too many fanfic authors who mind hearing that one more person liked their story. Thanks for taking the time to reply.

Knight_Aragorn wrote: I'm not an Anakin fan -- I usually find it difficult to sympathise with him

I can see that . . . killing off kids makes someone hard to like, even if they might have been halfway out of their minds when they did it. I feel for the guy, though . . . or rather, I feel for Anakin the person, even if I can't relate to a lot of his acts.

Thank you for sharing it.

Oh, thank *you* for posting a reply.

dianethx wrote: I really liked how you took Souderwan/TKL's POV workshop and used the 2nd person. And the present tense.

The two seeem suited to one another . . . I'm not really sure why. And I tried your rotating omniscient technique in another story, BTW . . . I did need one abrupt story division thing: "****", and I'm not crazy about those, but I thought the transition between omniscient and what is probably the least-reliable third-person limited I have ever written worked pretty well. It was a better transition than just slapping in a row of asterisks and going straight from one mind to another.

I especially loved the ending - the monument and how he positioned the last line so that people were forced to look at it.

I figured he would . . . it seems like Vader would be pretty in-your-face about real and perceived past injustices.

Great job

Thank you . . . and thank you for taking the time to reply, too.

leia_naberrie wrote: I also liked the little politikal foreshadowing you pu there - with the Jedi being unwillingly commemorated as 'losers' and the clones as the heroes.

I had this feeling that a certain senior government official might have commissioned that work . . . Hey, one of the first things any self-respecting dictator's got to do is seize control of the arts. That way you don't have to be limited to controlling what people know--you can control all they can possibly imagine. (Or at least admit imagining.)

All in all, a fantastic story.

Thank you very much . . .

It was most kind of you all to stop by and leave responses.

 

Souderwan WUZ HERE!

 

All right, tear out my heart and stomp on it, why don't you.

I love Ani, and love things from his POV, and this one put me right there. The 2nd person, shifting to 1st person thoughts, worked really well.

Shmi Skywalker doesn't rate so much as a donated plant, becuase her death is not "of cultural and historical importance," as the Arched Way's shiny golden plaque says.

Her death ends up being of pretty tremendous "cultural and historical importance," doesn't it? I'm sure the irony was intentional.

 

Holy ! That was really incredible. I honestly sat here gap-jawed while I read this.
Beautiful work.

This was my favorite passage,

THERE WAS BLOOD

There shouldn't have been. Not like that. Not so much. A saber blade doesn't leave a mess like that. But it was there--it was on me afterward. On my clothes, on my hands. Maybe it wasn't all theirs. Maybe some was hers, from when I gently cleaned her wounds and wrapped her body. I don't know. But it was on my hands. It dried. In the desert you can?t wash it off.

I couldn't wash it off.

And the title with the significance at the end!

Standing ovation!!!

 

I finally have a few moments to share my thoughts (surely you knew that other post was a joke! )

Ok...so this is where I tell you what I thought of your piece...One word

Woah!

Woah, as in...well..woah! I normally try to pull off some measure of eloquence in these things but...well...woah!

I sat here enthralled and amazed on many levels--emotionally, viscerally, and even intellectually.

The essence of this...moment that you present for us is so deeply powerful and amazing in and of itself. Standing at any memorial generates a profound feeling in all of us but especially for those who have lost loved ones. When you see the torment that drove Anakin on Tatooine, the fact that he would grieve the lack of a memorial for her is so completely believable that you find yourself almost weeping with him...

I was amazed by the detail in your character work, as well. Anakin's pacing, his uncomfortableness with his relatively new arm, his fire, his untapped rage... My favorite part of how you captured Anakin is this:

You ball your still-awkward mechanical fist even tighter beneath the folds of your mantle sleeve. Every one of these alien memorials, as well as the solitariness of your walk, reminds you that you are a stranger here. Not just "here" in the Jedi Order, or "here" in the Government District of Coruscant. You are a stranger in the galaxy. Its griefs are not your griefs. Its triumphs are not your triumphs. The things it considers great and glorious barely register on your emotional scopes.

What a way to caputre the essence of Anakin's struggle! Bravo.

On an intellectual level, I was just blown away by the expert handling of your point of view shifts. The smooth transition from second to first--woah! I just didn't see it coming. You did that amazingly well and it's something I've never seen done before. The follow-on omniscient point of view was also superbly handled. I am simply amazed.

*bows at the waist in deep respect*

Fantastic!

 

Forgive me for waiting a little while before replying . . . I tend to like to let a few reader responses collect before I knock my own thread back up to page 1. I don't mean to be rude to my readers--I'm trying to be courteous to the newer and less-well-known authors who hate getting buried on page 97 within a few hours of posting.

Souderwan WUZ HERE!

Now, stop that!

I said I'd be happy with any such reply--I didn't say I'd kick someone else off the first page for one.

Silly boy.

Elana wrote: All right, tear out my heart and stomp on it, why don't you.

Oh, dear . . . I never know whether to feel flattered or guilty when someone says something like that to me. Thank you, and . . . I'm sorry?

I love Ani, and love things from his POV, and this one put me right there. The 2nd person, shifting to 1st person thoughts, worked really well.

Oh, good . . . that was a gamble, and I'm not sure I would have taken it with a "real" story that wasn't a response to my own challenge thread. I'm actually surprised people liked it--I kind of expected them to find it confusing or pretentious or both.

Her death ends up being of pretty tremendous "cultural and historical importance," doesn't it?

Yeah, it sure does . . . I expect Anakin wanted to punish the whole galaxy for what happened to her, and he did a very efficient job of it.

Thank you very much for reading and replying, by the way.

oqidaun wrote: That was really incredible. I honestly sat here gap-jawed while I read this. Beautiful work.

Wow . . . high praise indeed coming from the queen of . . . . what? Ghostly-shiver fic. Dreadfully difficult stuff to write, but so delicious.

Standing ovation!!!

I'm sincerely honored you would say that. I think you may be the only person on the boards who writes from that almost-Faulknerian tradition . . . where sunlit fields yeild slowly to dark and alien ones . . . where if you dare to enter a house, you may not leave with the same eyes.

I often aim to write something close, and I love that stuff when I see it.

Also, unlike Faulkner, you are intelligible, which is rather nice.

Thank you very much for your kind words, and for stopping by to read and respond.

Souderwan wrote: I finally have a few moments to share my thoughts (surely you knew that other post was a joke!)

Yes, I know, I've just been asked to keep the in-joke responses to a minimum. It *was* funny, though.

I sat here enthralled and amazed on many levels--emotionally, viscerally, and even intellectually.

Oh, my goodness, you too?! If I get any more first-rate authors in here saying nice things, then I'll have to start thinking about giving up my attachment to slightly-martyred obscurity. I've had it for years . . . the engraved monogram matches the one on my emotional baggage and everything. I wouldn't quite know what to do without it.

When you see the torment that drove Anakin on Tatooine, the fact that he would grieve the lack of a memorial for her is so completely believable that you find yourself almost weeping with him...

Most of us have experienced a loss where there's no physical "proof" that the lost thing existed, and the lack of closure and official recognition of the need to grieve can make that sort of thing harder to take than a death. For some people it's the end of a marriage, or the giving up of some cherished ambition or dream; for others it's the loss of what everyone else calls "a pregnancy," but which the parents already thought of as "a child."

Anakin's mother actually has a gravesite, but he's presumably not allowed to visit it, or to fully deal with the shock of losing her. By contrast, Obi-Wan just gets quiet after Geonosis--he's found a way to compartmentalize his feelings away from his duties. (In *my* GFFA at least, he does *have* feelings, but under most circumstances you're not going to see them.) Anakin doesn't work that way, ho

 

This was amazingly powerful. I'm just blown away. Excellent work.