Anakin Skywalker felt like he was carrying the weight of the galaxy on his shoulders. It oppressed him, wore him down, suffocated him, caused him to walk very slowly, as if he were reluctant to enter the homestead.
Which he was -- reluctant to go to his stepfather and admit that he had failed. He could not do what he had set out to do.
And the body of his beloved mother said more than any words ever could.
He had been too late. He could not bring her home alive.
Anakin stepped off the speeder bike and lifted Shmi Skywalker Lars from the back, holding her tenderly in his arms as he had in the Tusken encampment.
How light she was, how frail -- and how beautiful, even with her face bruised and bloodied from the beatings she had endured at the hands of the Tuskens. Perfect, inside and out -- in death as in life.
Anakin's eyes locked with Padmé's, and the concern and sadness on her face caused his eyes to fill with tears. But he quickly blinked them back -- weeping was a luxury that he did not deserve, not after what happened.
He looked at his grief-stricken stepfather, trying to convey a message of "I'm sorry" without saying a word. He did not trust his voice.
He entered the homestead, followed by the others, and walked straight to his mother's bedroom, where he laid her gently on the bed. For a few brief moments no one moved, or even dared to breathe, as if something very fragile would shatter at any moment. Finally, Anakin placed a last kiss on his mother's forehead, and, still not trusting his voice, said quickly, "I've got to fix the speeder," and dashed from the room.
The shifter on Owen Lars' speeder bike had broken when Anakin accelerated too quickly and abruptly in his mad dash to the Tusken encampment. He had not even discovered the problem until he was on his way back to the homestead with his mother's body. It was an old speeder, but the break could easily be fixed, and Anakin was actually thankful to have a distraction.
He could use it to avoid thinking about the events of the worst day of his life. He could avoid thinking about the fact that his mother died because he was too late to save her. And he could avoid thinking about how he acted afterwards.
He was a total, complete, utter failure as a Jedi.
Anakin had, up until this point, been quite proud of his sharp tongue and quick temper, in spite of Obi-Wan's attempts to teach him restraint. When he lived in Mos Espa, he had needed those traits to survive the harsh environment. In the Temple, he had often thought the Jedi were weak fools for "knowing no anger." "Anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering," Master Yoda said. Yoda had also been against Anakin's training due to Anakin's anger and attachment to his mother. He had sensed danger in Anakin. Anakin had been determined to prove him wrong.
He had failed at this, too.
Anakin didn't regret slaughtering the Tusken men who had tortured his mother. He took pleasure out of the surge of power his rage fueled in him, out of the horrified shrieks of the men lunging at him, just before he thrust his lightsaber through their bodies.
"The Force is to be used for knowledge and defense, never for aggression," Obi-Wan said.
Did Obi-Wan have any idea what he was going through? Or did he know -- did he know what kind of power Anakin's rage, combined with his short fuse, would ignite in him, and therefore wanted to keep Anakin from ever sensing this rage, in order to further oppress him?
Anakin's eyes narrowed and he resisted the urge to pick up the nearest object and throw it across the room. Instead, he used the wrench in his hand to further tighten the lug nuts on the nearly-repaired shifter, taking his aggression out on machinery that would never know who and what it transported.
The Tusken screams and shrieks continued to echo in his head. All of them.
The visual images came -- the innocence of a masked Tusken woman, the look of sheer terror on a Tusken child's face, the elderly Tusken who could not run fast enough to get away from Anakin's lightsaber, the Tusken mother who grabbed her children's hands and ran from the horror carrying a blue laser sword, the likes of which she could have never imagined.
Anakin shook his head, trying to rid himself of the images, but they would not leave him.
In defense of his beloved mother, he had murdered some as innocent as she was. And no Jedi power could undo what he did. Oh, Mom, he thought. I'm so glad you can't see what I've done.
Yoda and Obi-Wan were right. He was dangerous. He did not deserve to be a Jedi.
He did not look up when he heard the garage door open. He sensed Padmé's presence, but he could not bear to face her.
She'll be gone from my life forever once she knows, he thought. And it's no less than what I deserve.
"I brought you something to eat," he heard her say. "Are you hungry?"
He made a final turn with the wrench. "The shifter broke," he said. "Life is so much simpler when you're fixing things." Anakin heard the shakiness of his voice and felt an all-too-familiar lump rising in his throat. "I'm good at fixing things," he continued. "Always was."
Finally he looked up. Padmé had set the food tray down on a nearby work bench and just stood still, looking at him, her beautiful brown eyes full of concern and pity.
"Why did she have to die?" Anakin asked, as much to himself as to Padmé. "Why couldn't I save her? I know I could have!"
"Sometimes there are things no one can fix," Padme said softly. "You're not all-powerful, Ani."
This made Anakin angrier. Not at Padmé -- no, never at Padmé -- but at a life that had just recently revealed to him how true her statement was. "Well, I should be!" he cried. His body shook with sobs he could no longer hold in. "And someday I will be! Someday I will be the most powerful Jedi ever! You'll see! I'll even learn to stop people from dying!"
"Anakin..." Padmé began, sounding almost frightened at this sudden strong display of her friend's anger and grief.
Anakin picked up the wrench he had been using and hurled it across the room. It landed against the far wall with a clang. "This is all Obi-Wan's fault!" he yelled. "He's jealous! He's holding me back!"
Padmé drew in a sharp breath, more frightened by the minute. "Ani, what's wrong?" she asked.
He looked at her as if that were the most ridiculous question he had ever heard. "I just told you!" he said.
"No," she said, calmly but sharply, "what's really wrong?"
She saw through him. She knew. The rage disappeared and he once again broke down into sobs. "I..." he said, his voice quavering, "I killed them. All of them." Tears streamed down his cheeks. "Not just the men, but the women, and the children." Images flooded him -- images of the Tuskens running from him, of the large stone he had Force-dropped on the tent where the women and children had escaped -- and images of the men, his mother's murderers, running towards him, fiercely brandishing their gaffee sticks, ready to attack him just as they attacked his mother.
His mother -- bruised and bloodied, dead from internal hemorrhaging -- because of them.
He felt another wave of anger mix with his grief. He turned to Padmé. "They're animals," he told her, "and I slaughtered them like animals. I hate them!"
The shock and horror was evident on Padmé's beautiful face, but she remained calm and continued to stare at him intently. "Do you hate them, or do you hate what they did to your mother?" she asked.
"I hate them!" he shouted again, the tears falling harder. He leaned against the wall and slowly slid to the floor, as if every move took an astronomical amount of effort. He buried his face in his arms, the sobs coming more and more heavily.
He felt Padmé kneel beside him and put her arm around his shoulders. "To be angry is to be human," she said softly.
Anakin lifted his head slightly and shook it, no. "I'm a Jedi," he sobbed. "I know I'm better than this. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."
With that Anakin Skywalker buried his face in his arms and sobbed harder for what he had lost -- both his mother and his innocence. Both of which no power of the Force could ever return to him.
