Star Wars: The True Nature of the Dark Side

*The following is a short passage from the novelization of 'Revenge of the Sith'. Vader has awakened from his terrible surgery, and asks where Padme is. Upon being told by Palpatine (The Shadow, as you will read) that he killed her in his anger, Vader finally comes to understand what he has lost to the Dark Side.*

You loved her. You will always love her. You could never will her death.

Never.

But you remember...

You remember all of it.

You remember the dragon that you brought Vader forth from your heart to slay. You remember the cold venom in Vader's blood. You remember the furnace of Vader's fury, and the black hatred of seizing her throat to silence her lying mouth.

And there is one blazing moment in which you finally understand that there was no dragon. That there was no Vader. That there was only you. Only Anakin Skywalker.

That it was all you. Is you.

Only you.

You did it.

You killed her.

You killed her because, finally, when you could have saved her, when you could have gone away with her, when you could have been thinking about her, you were thinking about yourself...

It is in this blazing moment that you finally understand the trap of the dark side, the final cruelty of the Sith—because now yourself is all you will ever have.

And you rage and scream and reach through the Force to crush the Shadow who has destroyed you, but you are so far less now than what you were, you are more than half machine, you are like a painter gone blind, a composer gone deaf, you can remember where the power was but the power you can touch is only a memory, and so with all your world-destroying fury it is only droids around you that implode, and equipment, and the table on which you were strapped shatters, and in the end, you cannot touch the Shadow.

In the end, you do not even want to.

In the end, the Shadow is all you have left. Because the Shadow understands you, the Shadow forgives you, the Shadow gathers you unto itself—and within your furnace heart, you burn in your own flame. This is how it feels to be Anakin Skywalker… Forever…

The long night has begun.