Hallo, my darlings. It is me once again, coming bearing Tragedy, come and get your Sith Tragedy! Cut rate prices. Only today! Everything must go, go, go!

Summary: For Anakin Skywalker, the hardest lesson of all is learning to let go.

Dedicated to Dark Side Doris.

One Moment

By Ziggy Sternenstaub

Emperor Palpatine was as light as an electric feather, writhing desperately in Darth Vader's arms, screaming and pressed tightly against the leather and plasti-steel of the younger Dark Lord's chest. Vader's arms tightened their grip, feeling the fragile bones of his master's slim breast and rib cage, knowing that he was completely capable of wreaking the most vicious of destruction on his captive. Automatically, he stretched out his arms and held the Emperor far in front of him, knowing that to hold Palpatine closer would mean to risk never letting him go. There was something terribly fitting about this position, this one moment in time, this split instant of vicious, profound connection. In violence, they were closer than they had ever been and Vader felt the surface of his master's soul caress his own, boiling with rage. The Emperor's attack intensified, brilliant lightning flowing down the length of the cyborg's body, and he knew that he must let go or fall prey to his master's terrible power. Despite this, Vader ached with the very thought of releasing Palpatine.

He could feel his son's amazed and dumbfounded eyes burning into him without needing to see them, felt the strength of the boy's relief and joy and...love. The pure devotion of Vader's blood kin demanded that he let go, that the blackened knight slay this one final monster, that his knowledge of the Emperor's wrath and perfect incapability of forgiving bring his feet that one step forward to the pit that waited to receive the last Master of the Sith.

The Darkness sang in his blood at the nature of his treason, and the Light cried out with the furious fire of scorned angels. Regardless of what he did here, both powers would have known the shattering of his sacred oaths. This abstract loss mattered far less to Vader than the thought that he was about to lose another person to whom he had sworn himself.

It was only one moment, but Vader still had time to remember something that Obi-Wan Kenobi had once said to him.

"You have no understanding of loyalty to institutions or ideas, Anakin. Your attachment to individuals is dangerous for a Jedi and could be used against you. Your friendships, the people that you love, are superfluous in the life of an aesthetic. We are not here for ourselves, we are only here to serve."

"But Master, I care for you too. Is that really so wrong?"

Obi-Wan had sighed. "Your greatest lesson, my Padawan, will be learning to let go. Only then will you ever know peace."

The rough black cloth under Vader's gloves was that of a penniless monk, the body that wore it eaten away by the quest for unlimited power. The lips and tongue that screamed their vicious rage had spoken his name with beautiful possession times uncounted and the hands arched with fire had often rested with ownership and devotion on Vader's bowed head.

Luke's eyes had not moved. They had not had time to. It was only one moment, and his son was still full of hope, as Vader's leige was full of poison.

Let go.

The clamp of Vader's metallic embrace released their burden with a surge of power that sent the Emperor spinning down into the unknown.

The moment was over.

Vader fell to his knees in one last burst of devotion, seeking to follow after the explosion of rage and shock and corruption and sweet power that had been his master, already regretting what he had done and needing to explain, to prostrate himself before his Lord and beg for understanding, but Luke was dragging him back from the brink, full of joy and relief that his father had made the right choice.

In the immeasurable days after his death, Anakin Skywalker had time for the self analysis that he had eschewed in life. Obi-Wan, he concluded scientifically, had been right. Letting go had been the only route to peace, for in the heart of the Light, feeling had no meaning and peace was all that was left to him. Passion and possession and the beautiful corruption of two souls enslaved to one another were as dead to him as his own mortal body, strange things that Anakin examined with the puzzlement of a man trying to read in an unknown tongue, while the thing that had once been his greatest passion writhed in a darkness barred to the Jedi's perceptions, as close as a face outside a prison cell, looking in.

His moment of choice had taken Anakin to the Light, and in the Light it was forbidden to mourn his loss.

FIN