When we cannot forgive

“What Vader did to you? Do you think that can even begin to compare with what Vader did to me? He made me watch my planet die. He froze Han in carbonite and sold him to Jabba the Hutt. He cut off my brother’s hand and nearly took his life. And he tortured me, Ransolm. He tortured me until I screamed and shook and thought I would die just from the pain alone. Did you bother to ask yourself how it might feel, to realize the person who’d done all that to you was your father? Can you imagine how terrible it is to realize all you’ll ever know of your birth father is how much he enjoyed making you suffer? That’s what I have to live with.”

“He made me suffer in every way a human being can suffer, all for the love of the Emperor.” [.] “I hated him so much,” [.] “Sometimes I felt as if the only thing that kept me going in the aftermath of Alderaan was the strength of my hatred for Vader.”

For my father.

Luke had told her of their father’s last hours. [.] Whenever Luke told the story, a beatific smile lit up his face; his memories of that event gave him a level of comfort and even joy that sustained him. Those were memories Leia couldn’t share.

Her rage could have driven her to kill others—innocents— [.]. She realized, then, something she had never fully understood before. She’d always wondered what had led her father to turn to the dark side, to become Darth Vader. She’d imagined it came from ambition, greed, or some other venal weakness. Never had she considered that the turn might begin in a better place, out of the desire to save someone or to avenge a great wrong. Even if it led to evil, that first impulse might be born of loyalty, a sense of justice, or even love.

Had it been like that for her father? She could never know. But for the first time in a very long while, she had some sense of who Anakin Skywalker might have been before his fall, and of the goodness that must have survived in him through all the darkness, all the years.

~

I know.

Star Wars is about redemption.

But can we forgive those who tortured us for years?

Is it right, even?

[Photo: the stunningly elegant General Organa pin by @sparkofhopepins]