#proditora

               A HEINOUS LIE IT WOULD BE, IF HE CLAIMED TO HOLD NO BITTERNESS FOR HIS GRANDFATHER. it sits heavy on his tongue, thick and syrupy, constantly threatening to choke the life from him. expectation -- for good or bad but never anything in between -- and a legacy behind him has soured the sweetness of his heart, has turned the sugar into vinegar, his kindness to acid. there’s no room for a sweet demeanor in his line of work; what has true kindness ever done for him? once he had begun to see his grandfather as someone to be admired, someone to aspire to be like, but he knows now the voice that twisted his thoughts. he knows better now.                A PRESENCE AT HIS BACK IS CLEAR; NO THREAT TO HIM, BUT HE FINDS HIMSELF CURIOUS. the force is pulsating in the ship’s cockpit, so strongly it makes his head spin. neck tilts and turns to peer over his shoulder, breath catching when his eyes catch sight of the pulsing blue glow...a force ghost, it appears. but upon further inspection -- he wants to know who is visiting him after all -- the nausea begins to settle in his throat. the bitterness comes creeping back like an old friend, and seizes his tongue; he’s not quite ready to let go, it seems.     “i don’t want to talk to you.”

“ I’ll tell you this now, Anakin. The Arthur that sits on the end of that table was not the one I chose, but the one my predecessor chose. ” Not a secret divulged; the power of a Merlin and the duality that comes with King and Kingmaker, anyone could have worked it out. But, it’s clarity, on the clash of thoughts and the spectrum of belief that was to do what was right by the establishment founded years ago.

        Don’t stare at his mask, don’t stare at his mask, don’t stare at his mask.

        “Unseasonably warm, don’t you think?”

letters. | ACCEPTING

The letter is hidden away in a box under Luke’s bed, not written in Basic or Huttese, but a script that few in the galaxy could even recognize.

“Dear Dad,

I turned twelve years old today. Uncle Owen says I’m too old to pretend you’re coming back, but I don’t care what he says. No one ever saw you die. No body or anything. You left to fly among the stars, right? You’re a Skywalker. I bet you’re still flying out there. I bet you turned into a bird and flew away from whoever though they could kill you. That’s what happens in all the stories.

I can feel you’re out there somewhere, even if Uncle Owen says it’s stupid. My heart tells me it’s true and I’ll see you again. I just know it. I know things somehow. Aunt Beru calls it intuition. You know what else? I had a dream where it rained for seven days and nights and I freed all the slaves with a sword of fire. Grandmother Shmi was dead for a long time before I was born, but I think I heard her voice too. I wish I could remember what she said. It was happy and sad at the same time, and I know it’s not just a dream. I didn’t tell Uncle Owen, though. He’d tell me not to talk about things like that. It’s not proper, and the only people with swords of fire are Jedi, and I’m not allowed to talk about them either because they used their magic to steal children. Biggs’ father says they were heroes, though, and he’s been off-world.

When you come back, we’ll free everyone together. I’ve been saving up credits and I’m going to buy and airspeeder and fix it, and then we can help everyone escape in it. And when that’s done, we can travel the stars. I want to be the first person to see every star in the galaxy.

I can’t write anymore because I’m supposed to be grounded because I taught Uncle Owen’s droid to swear. Write back someday? Maybe for my next birthday?

                     Inexplicably existing within this esoteric personage's most STALWART of adherents - a WAYWARD KINSMAN, unequivocally IMPREGNABLE and exceedingly CONVOLUTED is perfervid veneration. A blistering conflagration that propagates deleterious entropy, but is unremittingly beleaguered by importunate incertitude. Is redoubtable puissance interminably   NONPAREIL  or can STAUNCH FANATICISM efficaciously lead to enrapturing fruitfulness? Would the unwitting progenitor of intransigent zeal harbor a caustic antipathy to that precarious enterprise? Or does the consequential notion of being transcended garner unadulterated  approbation instead? With a facial expression unambiguously bespeaking METICULOUS PENSIVITY affixed to her juvenescent visage, PRUDENTIAL CHARINESS is demonstrated in unfettering entrenched inquisitiveness. 

❝ Do you want HIM to follow in your footsteps? He's worried he'll FAIL. I saw his uncertainty. ❞

Staaaaaaaep

“What choice was there?”

The call of the abyss still rings in his ears, yet in a mere instant shock has begun to give way to resignation—no, acceptance, rushing in to salve the wounds both physical and emotional left in the wake of the revelation that had been like every one of his dreams nightmares collided.

Vader is telling the truth. The Force whispers that to him like a comforting bedtime story; for one of the first times in his twenty-two years someone has given him complete and utter clarity.

Ben, why didn’t you tell me?

Luke clutches his stump wrist to his chest, conflicting emotions sweeping over him like a sandstorm as he stares up into Vader’s—his father’s—inscrutable mask. He can’t tell whose feelings are whose, father’s and son’s muddied in the Force, fear and sorrow and relief and warmth and a singular, unshakable determination in them both to right wrongs past.

His father did not want to kill him. The Force tells him that too. Somewhere behind that armor, Anakin Skywalker still cares for his son.

That’s something Luke can hang onto. A single candle in the darkness.