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matrilWhen Anakin was six years old, he asked his mother how much he cost.
She stared at him, too stunned to give an immediate answer.
“Some of the other kids were bragging about how much they were sold for,” he went on matter-of-factly. “I wanted to know what I’m worth.”
Shmi finally gathered herself enough to tell him, gently but firmly, “No one’s worth can be measured in money, Ani. They will try to tell you that, in this world where slaves are bought and sold like things. But you are not a thing. You are a person, and so your worth is immeasurable.”
He gazed up at her, eyes bright and thoughtful. “So you’re not going to tell me?” he said at last.
She let out a sound somewhere between a chuckle and a sigh. “No. I’m not even sure of the exact amount myself. It doesn’t matter.”
“But what do I tell the other kids?”
“Do you really need to take part in such bragging?”
Anakin shrugged. “It’s nice to feel important.”
“Didn’t I just tell you?” Shmi knelt down to look into his face. “You are important. Everyone is important to someone. To me, you are the most important person in all the galaxy.”
He laughed. “Aw, that doesn’t count! Moms always think that about their own kids.”
“It doesn’t make it any less true.” She wrapped him in a hug before smoothing out his tunic and going on briskly, “Now, Watto’s expecting you at the shop. Hurry or you’ll be late.”
She watched him dash off, a small frown on her face. But when he didn’t bring up his cost again, she hoped he had absorbed the meaning of her words.
He had, to a certain extent. He began developing a thick skin against the voices that called him slave, property, thing. He took hold of the proud sense of his personhood, a worth that could not be measured with money.
But there were other ways to measure and weigh his worth.
———
Was he a good enough pilot for podracing? Could he make a protocol droid as good as the ones that came from Mos Espa’s best mechanic?
Was he worth the attention of the pretty girl who came into Watto’s shop and lit up the whole room when she smiled? Was he worthy enough to win a race and help that girl as well as an actual Jedi Knight? Was he, a slave boy from the outer edges of the galaxy, worth enough that the Jedi would risk everything to set him free and offer him a life among the stars?
Was his freedom worth the pain of leaving his mother?
Was he worth all the trouble of making Qui-Gon argue with the other Jedi about his training? Worse trouble, when Qui-Gon was killed and Obi-Wan was left to train him instead?
He could not help feeling, within the calculation of some sort of cosmic mathematics, that Qui-Gon’s death was the price of his training. Here he was, Obi-Wan’s Padawan only because Qui-Gon had died. Could he ever prove his worth against such a terrible cost?
Even Palpatine’s praise, gratifying though it was, made him all the more anxious at the prospect of failing. What if the Chancellor turned around one day and laughed at him for being a fraud, a joke, a disgrace? It was unthinkable. Anything less than greatness was unacceptable.
What if he wasn’t really the Chosen One after all?
———
Was he anything but a child to Padmé, anything but a distant fond memory? Had she spared more than a passing thought for him over these ten years? Every day he’d thought of her, but he was a fool to imagine that would earn him any consideration in return.
And then there were other stakes, other costs. What was he willing to sacrifice to be with her? His place in the Jedi Order? He tried to weigh them both in the balance, Padmé and being a Jedi. Both immeasurably valuable. As easily could he rip off his own arm than give up either of them.
But Padmé, too, had her concerns to weigh and measure. If the cost was too steep for her, she had the right to deny him. Perhaps, indeed, the cost was too steep for him as well.
Almost, almost, he wanted to say he would gladly pay the price of destruction just for one moment with her.
On Tatooine, as he found his mother only to lose her to the awful, unforgivable permanence of death, he had an instant of perfect red-hot clarity. The value of her life was immeasurable. She herself had taught him that. And so a cost must be exacted. Life for life, death for death. When they killed his mother they killed him a hundred times. So he would return that pain until the debt was repaid.
Later, when the fury had cooled, he was confronted with a price he hadn’t accounted for. Guilt; crushing, suffocating, too much to bear. Always he had striven to make himself better, his life more worthwhile, more worthy of the sacrifices he and others had made. This, however, made him less. Less of a Jedi. Less of a Chosen One. Less human.
He would have to spend the rest of his life striving to rebalance the scales against this.
When all was said and done after the battle of Geonosis, he should have been able to call himself worthy. Padmé was his wife; she took his metal hand in hers without flinching. He would be receiving the rank of Jedi Knight. They were calling him a hero.
But Dooku had escaped and the blame fell largely upon Anakin. Their entire rescue attempt had been fraught with missteps and blunders, earned his master’s sarcastic disapproval, and endangered Padmé unforgivably. Far too many times, he had almost lost her.
Never again. He could not afford to fail again.
——
So much death in the ensuing war. So many lives sacrificed, wasted.
How could he hope to measure the worth of anyone’s life or death? Padmé, already infinitely precious, became that much more so now that she was carrying their child. And he was cruelly confronted with just how precious she was once the nightmares started.
They were so vivd, so painfully familiar. He would do anything to banish them, pay any price to prevent them from becoming real.
Palpatine offered a way. But the price that he demanded. Oh, the price.
A Sith Lord. With the shock of his revelation still reverberating through every bone of Anakin’s body, he wielded his lightsaber against the smiling Chancellor. He had cringed at the hypocrisy of the Council; well, here was the very embodiment of deception and treachery. How satisfying it would be to run him through with his blade, watch him crumple to the ground as the light fled from his lifeless eyes.
Not the Jedi way.
This, he recognized, was his test. The gauntlet he must pass. The true measure of his worth. Was he a true Jedi, worthy of the approbation of the Council? He must be. If he gave Palpatine over to the proper line of authority, then at last they could not question his loyalty and moral courage.
And Palpatine pulled out the foundation of his certainty in an instant, promising the power to save Padmé.
He did his Jedi duty; he brought word of Palpatine’s deception. And waited.
He could see the entirety of his life stretching out in front of him, and suddenly it seemed rife with waste and disappointment. He had given so much of himself to the Jedi. What had they given back? When had they ever honored his sacrifices? Had they ever offered him what he really desired, the freedom to live a happy life with his loved ones, with people who made him feel worthwhile?
It would not make a difference to them if Padmé died.
Surely Palpatine did not deserve his devotion either. He didn’t trust him for a moment. And yet if there was a chance to save his wife...any chance at all...how could Anakin ever forgive himself if he let that chance slip away? That was a risk far too steep to imagine. He stood at the window of the chamber, all of his heart and hopes set upon the apartment far across the city where he could feel Padmé’s presence like the fervent beating of her heart. No.
He would descend to the depths of hell and back for her. She was worth any price.
And yet there was no red-hot clarity this time as he stood, wretched with indecision, watching Mace wield his weapon at the Chancellor. He was sickened by the almost tangible weight of Palpatine’s evil, yet equally horrified to see the Jedi Master poised to do precisely that which had so, so tempted Anakin before he forced himself back from the brink. It had cost him every last whit of self-control to spare Palpatine’s life, and now Mace, who claimed to follow the Jedi way in every perfect particular, was lifting his saber, a flagrant hypocrisy of all his ideals -
And if the Jedi ideals were so hollow, what was left? Only Padmé - and now, only the hope of saving her. He could not afford to lose that hope.
Mace’s screams rang in his ears, but within Anakin the groans of guilt were still louder. This was the price. He should have known from the beginning. Nothing less than his soul.
In the midst of his anguish he clung to one desperate resolution. If Palpatine must have his soul, then at least let it be for a purpose.
Saving Padmé. Everything made more sense when he could be single-minded, set on a single goal. In this way, there was something very familiar about the Dark Side as he began to tentatively open himself to its influence. It offered a straightforward, simple path. Here was what he wanted, and there was the way to get it. No equivocations, no getting side-tracked by supposed moral quandaries. Do it, pay the requisite price, and his wife would be saved. Simple cosmic mathematics.
He should have known Obi-Wan would be the one to disrupt the equation.
Thanks to his interference, Padmé could not understand what he had done or why. She could never understand. She could not honor the agonizing price he had paid, the cleansing immolation he had undergone to access the power of the Dark Side. She spurned him, cast him aside like he had become worthless, all in favor of a treacherous hypocrite like Obi-Wan. Clarity returned to him. He recognized it now as the lucidity that only the Dark Side could offer. Everything else was blindness.
He must kill the traitor.
————
What was left of his worth after he paid the ultimate price only to gain nothing?
He had given his soul to save his wife. She died, her heart shattered.
He had aspired to physical feats the likes of which no Force-sensitive being had ever achieved. His body was a ruin of scars and burns, struggling for mere survival within the suit that would be his living tomb.
He had sought for mastery over weakness, for control, supremacy. He was reduced once more to a slave, thrall to a Master who would never yield control to him.
He would have imposed peace and order through the galaxy. More and more it was riddled with upstarts and rebels who refused to be quashed.
What was left?
He must be stronger. He must be more relentless. He must not fail again.
If he failed - if he considered for even an instant the idea of failure - then his sacrifice was worthless. Unthinkable.
—————
It was only as the throes of death washed over him, far more peaceful than he ever imagined, that true clarity came to him at last. Failing, losing control - those were nothing alongside the worth of a son’s love. He had done nothing to deserve it; Luke offered it to him nonetheless. He could never earn it. And wonderfully, he didn’t have to. He only had to accept it, hold it close as he gazed into the eyes of his son, affirming his wisdom with his final breath.
He would never be worthy, and wasn’t expected to be. This truth, at the last, brought him peace and joy.
She stared at him, too stunned to give an immediate answer.
“Some of the other kids were bragging about how much they were sold for,” he went on matter-of-factly. “I wanted to know what I’m worth.”
Shmi finally gathered herself enough to tell him, gently but firmly, “No one’s worth can be measured in money, Ani. They will try to tell you that, in this world where slaves are bought and sold like things. But you are not a thing. You are a person, and so your worth is immeasurable.”
He gazed up at her, eyes bright and thoughtful. “So you’re not going to tell me?” he said at last.
She let out a sound somewhere between a chuckle and a sigh. “No. I’m not even sure of the exact amount myself. It doesn’t matter.”
“But what do I tell the other kids?”
“Do you really need to take part in such bragging?”
Anakin shrugged. “It’s nice to feel important.”
“Didn’t I just tell you?” Shmi knelt down to look into his face. “You are important. Everyone is important to someone. To me, you are the most important person in all the galaxy.”
He laughed. “Aw, that doesn’t count! Moms always think that about their own kids.”
“It doesn’t make it any less true.” She wrapped him in a hug before smoothing out his tunic and going on briskly, “Now, Watto’s expecting you at the shop. Hurry or you’ll be late.”
She watched him dash off, a small frown on her face. But when he didn’t bring up his cost again, she hoped he had absorbed the meaning of her words.
He had, to a certain extent. He began developing a thick skin against the voices that called him slave, property, thing. He took hold of the proud sense of his personhood, a worth that could not be measured with money.
But there were other ways to measure and weigh his worth.
———
Was he a good enough pilot for podracing? Could he make a protocol droid as good as the ones that came from Mos Espa’s best mechanic?
Was he worth the attention of the pretty girl who came into Watto’s shop and lit up the whole room when she smiled? Was he worthy enough to win a race and help that girl as well as an actual Jedi Knight? Was he, a slave boy from the outer edges of the galaxy, worth enough that the Jedi would risk everything to set him free and offer him a life among the stars?
Was his freedom worth the pain of leaving his mother?
Was he worth all the trouble of making Qui-Gon argue with the other Jedi about his training? Worse trouble, when Qui-Gon was killed and Obi-Wan was left to train him instead?
He could not help feeling, within the calculation of some sort of cosmic mathematics, that Qui-Gon’s death was the price of his training. Here he was, Obi-Wan’s Padawan only because Qui-Gon had died. Could he ever prove his worth against such a terrible cost?
Even Palpatine’s praise, gratifying though it was, made him all the more anxious at the prospect of failing. What if the Chancellor turned around one day and laughed at him for being a fraud, a joke, a disgrace? It was unthinkable. Anything less than greatness was unacceptable.
What if he wasn’t really the Chosen One after all?
———
Was he anything but a child to Padmé, anything but a distant fond memory? Had she spared more than a passing thought for him over these ten years? Every day he’d thought of her, but he was a fool to imagine that would earn him any consideration in return.
And then there were other stakes, other costs. What was he willing to sacrifice to be with her? His place in the Jedi Order? He tried to weigh them both in the balance, Padmé and being a Jedi. Both immeasurably valuable. As easily could he rip off his own arm than give up either of them.
But Padmé, too, had her concerns to weigh and measure. If the cost was too steep for her, she had the right to deny him. Perhaps, indeed, the cost was too steep for him as well.
Almost, almost, he wanted to say he would gladly pay the price of destruction just for one moment with her.
On Tatooine, as he found his mother only to lose her to the awful, unforgivable permanence of death, he had an instant of perfect red-hot clarity. The value of her life was immeasurable. She herself had taught him that. And so a cost must be exacted. Life for life, death for death. When they killed his mother they killed him a hundred times. So he would return that pain until the debt was repaid.
Later, when the fury had cooled, he was confronted with a price he hadn’t accounted for. Guilt; crushing, suffocating, too much to bear. Always he had striven to make himself better, his life more worthwhile, more worthy of the sacrifices he and others had made. This, however, made him less. Less of a Jedi. Less of a Chosen One. Less human.
He would have to spend the rest of his life striving to rebalance the scales against this.
When all was said and done after the battle of Geonosis, he should have been able to call himself worthy. Padmé was his wife; she took his metal hand in hers without flinching. He would be receiving the rank of Jedi Knight. They were calling him a hero.
But Dooku had escaped and the blame fell largely upon Anakin. Their entire rescue attempt had been fraught with missteps and blunders, earned his master’s sarcastic disapproval, and endangered Padmé unforgivably. Far too many times, he had almost lost her.
Never again. He could not afford to fail again.
——
So much death in the ensuing war. So many lives sacrificed, wasted.
How could he hope to measure the worth of anyone’s life or death? Padmé, already infinitely precious, became that much more so now that she was carrying their child. And he was cruelly confronted with just how precious she was once the nightmares started.
They were so vivd, so painfully familiar. He would do anything to banish them, pay any price to prevent them from becoming real.
Palpatine offered a way. But the price that he demanded. Oh, the price.
A Sith Lord. With the shock of his revelation still reverberating through every bone of Anakin’s body, he wielded his lightsaber against the smiling Chancellor. He had cringed at the hypocrisy of the Council; well, here was the very embodiment of deception and treachery. How satisfying it would be to run him through with his blade, watch him crumple to the ground as the light fled from his lifeless eyes.
Not the Jedi way.
This, he recognized, was his test. The gauntlet he must pass. The true measure of his worth. Was he a true Jedi, worthy of the approbation of the Council? He must be. If he gave Palpatine over to the proper line of authority, then at last they could not question his loyalty and moral courage.
And Palpatine pulled out the foundation of his certainty in an instant, promising the power to save Padmé.
He did his Jedi duty; he brought word of Palpatine’s deception. And waited.
He could see the entirety of his life stretching out in front of him, and suddenly it seemed rife with waste and disappointment. He had given so much of himself to the Jedi. What had they given back? When had they ever honored his sacrifices? Had they ever offered him what he really desired, the freedom to live a happy life with his loved ones, with people who made him feel worthwhile?
It would not make a difference to them if Padmé died.
Surely Palpatine did not deserve his devotion either. He didn’t trust him for a moment. And yet if there was a chance to save his wife...any chance at all...how could Anakin ever forgive himself if he let that chance slip away? That was a risk far too steep to imagine. He stood at the window of the chamber, all of his heart and hopes set upon the apartment far across the city where he could feel Padmé’s presence like the fervent beating of her heart. No.
He would descend to the depths of hell and back for her. She was worth any price.
And yet there was no red-hot clarity this time as he stood, wretched with indecision, watching Mace wield his weapon at the Chancellor. He was sickened by the almost tangible weight of Palpatine’s evil, yet equally horrified to see the Jedi Master poised to do precisely that which had so, so tempted Anakin before he forced himself back from the brink. It had cost him every last whit of self-control to spare Palpatine’s life, and now Mace, who claimed to follow the Jedi way in every perfect particular, was lifting his saber, a flagrant hypocrisy of all his ideals -
And if the Jedi ideals were so hollow, what was left? Only Padmé - and now, only the hope of saving her. He could not afford to lose that hope.
Mace’s screams rang in his ears, but within Anakin the groans of guilt were still louder. This was the price. He should have known from the beginning. Nothing less than his soul.
In the midst of his anguish he clung to one desperate resolution. If Palpatine must have his soul, then at least let it be for a purpose.
Saving Padmé. Everything made more sense when he could be single-minded, set on a single goal. In this way, there was something very familiar about the Dark Side as he began to tentatively open himself to its influence. It offered a straightforward, simple path. Here was what he wanted, and there was the way to get it. No equivocations, no getting side-tracked by supposed moral quandaries. Do it, pay the requisite price, and his wife would be saved. Simple cosmic mathematics.
He should have known Obi-Wan would be the one to disrupt the equation.
Thanks to his interference, Padmé could not understand what he had done or why. She could never understand. She could not honor the agonizing price he had paid, the cleansing immolation he had undergone to access the power of the Dark Side. She spurned him, cast him aside like he had become worthless, all in favor of a treacherous hypocrite like Obi-Wan. Clarity returned to him. He recognized it now as the lucidity that only the Dark Side could offer. Everything else was blindness.
He must kill the traitor.
————
What was left of his worth after he paid the ultimate price only to gain nothing?
He had given his soul to save his wife. She died, her heart shattered.
He had aspired to physical feats the likes of which no Force-sensitive being had ever achieved. His body was a ruin of scars and burns, struggling for mere survival within the suit that would be his living tomb.
He had sought for mastery over weakness, for control, supremacy. He was reduced once more to a slave, thrall to a Master who would never yield control to him.
He would have imposed peace and order through the galaxy. More and more it was riddled with upstarts and rebels who refused to be quashed.
What was left?
He must be stronger. He must be more relentless. He must not fail again.
If he failed - if he considered for even an instant the idea of failure - then his sacrifice was worthless. Unthinkable.
—————
It was only as the throes of death washed over him, far more peaceful than he ever imagined, that true clarity came to him at last. Failing, losing control - those were nothing alongside the worth of a son’s love. He had done nothing to deserve it; Luke offered it to him nonetheless. He could never earn it. And wonderfully, he didn’t have to. He only had to accept it, hold it close as he gazed into the eyes of his son, affirming his wisdom with his final breath.
He would never be worthy, and wasn’t expected to be. This truth, at the last, brought him peace and joy.
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Date: 2016-01-08 02:22 am (UTC)