Star Wars: The Chosen One || An Anakin Skywalker Story [COMPLETED]

Thirty-Eight || Redemption

Anakin Skywalker was dreaming.

He wasn't dreaming of just anything, like he used to in the days he was a padawan, the days he was only a child.

He wasn't dreaming of his beloved wife, coming to her close of certain death.

He wasn't dreaming of his mother, the long-since-gone Shmi Skywalker, the only family he'd ever had.

He was dreaming of things he'd only dreamt of before in the past minorly, a few times to say the least.

Anakin Skywalker was dreaming of Kyla Valero.

After her defeat, the defeat he had longed for since her transition to the Dark Side, things had been different. He knew they were different now. After what she said to him; after he sliced through her arms to the elbows, separating herself from her weapon, leaving her to cry in pain for the Clones that wouldn't hear her... things were different.

And he knew this, of course. He had embraced the fact that his padawan was gone awhile ago.

But with her defeat, with things being different...

Could she be who she was before?

He saw her as clearly as he would see when he were to be awake. He saw her there, with him, and she was happy. He was happy. She had two mechanical arms...

She was older. He was older. She was in her mid twenties; he was approaching the end of his.

He saw his children; Luke and Leia were young, at the peak of their double-digits.

Leia looked like her mother. She had her father's nose. Mother's lips and eyes.

Luke's hair was bright. A defeaning gold, the striking blond his parents could never truly explain: though Anakin took it upon himself to adhere to the fact that he was blond as a child as well.

Luke had his father's eyes. His mother's stubbornness.

Kyla looked... wiser. Happier.

She looked happier than Anakin had never seen her. A feeling of happiness and serenity coursed through his veins at the sight of her, at the fully rebuilt Temple, kneeling before his daughter.

"Leia," she says to the girl, and her voice is even purer than Anakin's dream state, "I'm unmistakably sorry for everything that I had done to your family, all those years ago. I... tore your family apart, young one, but now I am here to replace the evil I have committed."

Anakin tries to stop her, in his dream. She needn't apologize; he knew that - Kyla needed no more forgiveness, now that she was pure and light - so Anakin tried to stop her. She couldn't redeem herself now.

Kyla, you don't have to -

He couldn't hear himself. He was only... in his head.

Kyla - !

He watches as though he wasn't even there. His eyes are blank; distracted as his former padawan kneels to his daughter, taking her tiny hand in her mechanical one. It was a scene he never could've imagined he'd be seeing... it was surreal. What's going on?

"I'm truly sorry. Will I ever gain your forgiveness?"

He knew Kyla didn't need forgiveness from anyone else other than himself.

But his daughter takes initiative for matters anyway.

Leia says to Kyla, a bit stunned by her action to have taken her hand into hers, "I - forgive you. You didn't do too much wrong, we are still alive."