Star Wars_ Episode VI_ Return of the Jedi - James Kahn [27]
It was not an empty question. “I was going to tell you when you had completed your training,” the vision of Ben answered. “But you found it necessary to rush off unprepared. I warned you about your impatience.” His voice was unchanged, a hint of scolding, a hint of love.
“You told me Darth Vader betrayed and murdered my father.” The bitterness he’d felt earlier, with Yoda, had found its focus now on Ben.
Ben absorbed the vitriol undefensively, then padded it with instruction. “Your father, Anakin, was seduced by the dark side of the Force—He ceased to be Anakin Skywalker, and became Darth Vader. When that happened, he betrayed everything that Anakin Skywalker believed in. The good man who was your father was destroyed. So what I told you was true … from a certain point of view.”
“A certain point of view!” Luke rasped derisively. He felt betrayed—by life more than anything else, though only poor Ben was available to take the brunt of his conflict.
“Luke,” Ben spoke gently, “you’re going to find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our point of view.”
Luke turned unresponsive. He wanted to hold onto his fury, to guard it like a treasure. It was all he had, he would not let it be stolen from him, as everything else had been stolen. But already he felt it slipping, softened by Ben’s compassionate touch.
“I don’t blame you for being angry,” Ben coaxed. “If I was wrong in what I did, it certainly wouldn’t have been for the first time. You see, what happened to your father was my fault …”
Luke looked up with sudden acute interest. He’d never heard this and was rapidly losing his anger to fascination and curiosity—for knowledge was an addictive drug, and the more he had the more he wanted.
As he sat on his stump, increasingly mesmerized, Artoo pedaled over, silent, just to offer a comforting presence.
“When I first encountered your father,” Ben continued, “he was already a great pilot. But what amazed me was how strongly the Force was with him. I took it upon myself to train Anakin in the ways of the Jedi. My mistake was thinking I could be as good a teacher as Yoda. I was not. Such was my foolish pride. The Emperor sensed Anakin’s power, and he lured him to the dark side.” He paused sadly and looked directly into Luke’s eyes, as if he were asking for the boy’s forgiveness. “My pride had terrible consequences for the galaxy.”
Luke was entranced. That Obi-Wan’s hubris could have caused his father’s fall was horrible. Horrible because of what his father had needlessly become, horrible because Obi-Wan wasn’t perfect, wasn’t even a perfect Jedi, horrible because the dark side could strike so close to home, could turn such right so wrong. Darth Vader must yet have a spark of Anakin Skywalker deep inside. “There is still good in him,” he declared.
Ben shook his head remorsefully. “I also thought he could be turned back to the good side. It couldn’t be done. He is more machine, now, than man—twisted, and evil.”
Luke sensed the underlying meaning in Kenobi’s statement, he heard the words as a command. He shook his head back at the vision. “I can’t kill my own father.”
“You should not think of that machine as your father.” It was the teacher speaking again. “When I saw what had become of him, I tried to dissuade him, to draw him back from the dark side. We fought … your father fell into a molten pit. When your father clawed his way out of that fiery pool, the change had been burned into him forever—he was Darth Vader, without a trace of Anakin Skywalker. Irredeemably dark. Scarred. Kept alive only by machinery and his own black will …”
Luke looked down at his own mechanical right hand. “I tried to stop him once. I couldn’t do it.” He would not challenge his father again. He