sith_happened | Secluded bit of beach (yes, there's still some left, shhh) [afternoon]

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one big happy family

Secluded bit of beach (yes, there's still some left, shhh) [afternoon]

Rory had met Padmé and had liked her. His namesake, deceased, grandson was somewhere on the island.

Anakin needed peace, and he found himself on a familiar spot of beach--the place he'd come when he was a teenager and had found the crashing waves soothing.

He closed his eyes, reached out into the Force, and tried to find calm.

[OOC: Also open, though expecting one.]

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If there was anyone on the island that Tahiri was adamant that Anakin meet, it was his grandfather. He wasn't surprised; Tahiri knew better than anyone except maybe Uncle Luke what kind of issues he'd had with his name.

And he knew when not to say no to her.

So Anakin found his way out to the beach, following the unfamiliar-but-familiar Force presence he'd sensed to its source. He'd seen Clone War-era holos of Anakin Skywalker before, but that was different. That had been a hero of the Old Republic; this was family.

"Grandfather?" he spoke up after a moment.

Anakin's blue eyes popped open and he fought back a sudden attack of nerves. "You must be Anakin," he said quietly.

"So must you." The eyes of the boy looking back at him bore a strong resemblance to his, even though his hair was much darker ~~and not as fabulous~~. Anakin Solo, who'd defeated more Yuuzhan Vong singlehandedly than almost anyone else in the war, was just as nervous about this encounter as he was. "I was hoping I'd find you; Tahiri insisted I had to meet you."

"I'm sure you have questions for me," Anakin said. "Would you like to sit down? That rock is fairly comfortable for a rock."

"Rocks are more comfortable than a lot of things I can think of." Anakin nodded and took a seat, elbows on his knees as he leaned forward. "I halfway wondered if you'd have questions for me, too. You've probably gotten an earful from Tahiri."

Which wouldn't surprise him; she could talk the audio receptors off a droid when she had a mind to.

Most people wouldn't just leap in to the most painful part, but Anakin wasn't exactly most people.

"How hard was it to have my name?" he asked quietly.

Anakin smiled ruefully. "When I was a kid, I had dreams about it all the time. That got easier when I got older, but everyone spent so much time warning me about how I might . . ." It seemed rude to say 'fall to the Dark Side too.' "Turn out to be a lot like you. It was a heavy name to carry, no offense."

"None taken," he said with a wry smile. "They did warn the rest of the Jedi, too?"

Anakin huffed. "Not as often as they liked to warn me. But I was reckless, a lot of the time, so it isn't as if they didn't have reason."

"Most good Jedi are reckless," Anakin said, forgetting for a moment he was talking to a dead member of his family. "It's because they trust their feelings instinctively and don't second-guess them."

"Well, apparently they've forgotten that." Anakin actually looked pained, admitting this to his grandfather. "Ben says I'm a legend to everyone now."

"And how does that make you feel?" Anakin replied.

"Concerned," he said bluntly, "for the future of the Order, if they thought that much of me. For Ben, too -- don't let them try to make him into another one like us, because it seems like they're trying."

He looked up at Anakin and smiled wryly. "I'm a bit past worrying about how it affects me."

"Ben's father insisted he train with me," Anakin said, trusting that Anakin would see the joke there. "I won't let him take on the weight of the galaxy. I've seen it chew up and spit out far too many of our family as it is."

He did see the joke, and laughed. "He's part of our family; you know there's a good chance he'll try anyway," Anakin replied, then fell silent as he thought over his reaction to that promise. "You know, all my life I wasn't sure what to think of you. All I knew was the stories, and it wasn't like I ever thought I'd get the chance to find out for myself."

Anakin gazed back steadily. "Do you want to know why it happened?" he asked.

Anakin was silent for just a moment before nodding. "I'd like to hear it from you, yes."

Anakin looked out over the crashing waves for a moment, getting his thoughts together.

"I had a vision that your grandmother would die in childbirth," he said finally, "and I was terrified to lose her. So I listened to someone who told me exactly what I wanted to hear, helped to destroy an organization that had stood for peace and justice for a thousand generations...and she died anyway, along with our child. Or so I thought at the time."

He gazed down at his hands. "And once they were gone, there didn't seem to be much point in living."

He looked back at his grandson. "It's hardly a good reason."

"No," Anakin replied, thinking of the way he'd set the jungles of Yavin on fire when he and Vua Rapuung had gone to rescue Tahiri from the shapers' compound. "And I'd hardly tell you that it was. But you were trying to save her -- that's different from what I always thought it was."

Not that they'd had much of anything to go by as far as Anakin Skywalker's personal perspective on the matter was concerned, so it couldn't really be helped.

"What did you think happened?" Anakin asked, interested. He knew the propaganda that he'd helped to disseminate, but didn't know what had lasted past the Empire.

"I thought you were completely in line with the Emperor's goals," Anakin answered honestly, not flinching even though he didn't expect the answer to go over well. "It seemed in line with Sith philosophy."

Which was not something he'd ever made a particular study of, beyond his own lifelong worries about the Dark Side.

Anakin shook his head. "He told me that in order to save Padmé, I'd need the power the Dark Side offered that the Light couldn't. And like the desperate idiot I was at the time, I believed him. Philosophy didn't enter in until much later."

Anakin was quiet for a long time. "The closest thing I can think of that I've had to deal with was trying to stop the Peace Brigade from capturing the Academy kids, but even then, even if I had a vision of it that was something I knew how to handle. I'm not sure I have something I can compare to that, to understand it, but then I sort of had stories of you hanging over my head all my life as a reminder."

He was matter-of-fact about it; there wasn't any bitterness there.

"Yes, I imagine you would have heard those stories about me," Anakin said with a slightly tired sigh. "I wasn't supposed to even be married, let alone about to become a father, and I was too stubborn and stupid to ask for a second opinion about an offer that sounding too good to be true."

This was the most honest Anakin had ever been with anyone about this part of his life--he'd figured there was no point in holding anything back from the dead.

Anakin smiled slightly, ruefully. "I wish I'd had this chance before, but it still means a lot to actually get to meet you. Hear your side of everything. I'm sorry about the, ah, more unfortunate reputation you have for most of our galaxy though."

He sat up a little straighter and tried to look his grandfather in the eyes. "From everything Tahiri's told me, and from talking to you now, I can say it was definitely an honor to be named after you despite all that."

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