(SHATTERPOINT) THE FORCE [INTERLUDE]

For all his power, and for all the legends that had been built around his name, Anakin Skywalker had never been free of himself. 

Even during the years when battle-hardened veterans trembled at his approach, when his will could reshape battlefields alone and his anger seemed vast enough to eclipse suns, the truth had remained unchanged. He had been at war not only with the galaxy, but with the wounded, desperate, and furious boy who had never stopped crying out beneath the armor.

He had been the chosen one, foretold by an ancient prophecy, and shaped by expectations from those older than him long before he understood what it meant to choose anything for himself. He had been the child who was meant to bring balance to the Force, the figure upon whom the hopes of the Jedi Order had rested. 

And in the end, he had done exactly that. 

He had cast aside the mantle of Darth Vader, broken the chains of self-hatred and lust for power he had once embraced, and given his life so that his son could live. The empire he had helped build had crumbled beneath the weight of that final act, and the galaxy had been spared from an even deeper darkness through the spark of love he had never quite been able to extinguish.

But the balance he restored to the Force had never extended inward. His last choice had been selfless, yet it had not erased the scars carved into his very spirit. It had not soothed the years of rage or grief, nor had it unraveled the tangled knots of guilt, longing, and sorrow that had shaped the man he became. The memories remained like fractures in a vessel, impossible to ignore and impossible to simply mend with the heat of one righteous moment.

The Force understood this in ways mortals never could. It understood that restoration did not come from a single moment—no matter how noble or profound—but was a long path that required patience and reflection, and that healing demanded more than sacrifice. It required space, time, and a purpose that was not defined by war or prophecy or fear. And so, in an act of mercy as boundless as the currents that flowed through all living things, the Force sought to grant him what he had never been able to grant himself.

A chance to heal.

But such a chance could not be found in the world of his birth. That galaxy carried too many memories, too many lives extinguished by his hands, and too many properties destroyed because of the choices he could never take back. The consequences of his life lived on in every corner of that universe, and even redemption could not change the truth. 

So the Force carried him elsewhere, far beyond the familiar stars, to a universe untouched by Jedi and Sith. A universe far, far away, where the name Skywalker meant nothing, where his deeds could not follow him, and where the shape of the future was not predetermined by his past.

Yet in doing so, the Force had encountered something it had not anticipated. This new world, governed by strange powers and even stranger rules, unlike anything the force-sensitives had ever studied, lay outside its natural reach. Whatever connection remained between Anakin and the vast energy he had once commanded with almost effortless ease became faint and fragile. 

And so Anakin Skywalker had been cut off from the Force.

He had felt its absence in every breath he drew, as though a symphony he had known since birth had fallen silent without warning. There had been moments when he reached for it out of habit, expecting the familiar warmth, the familiar rise of awareness, and the familiar sensation of the Living Force meeting him halfway. Instead he had found only a disquieting emptiness. As a result, he had tried to look for it, to feel it in the wind that brushed his skin, in the quiet spaces between heartbeats, and in the instincts that had once been born from the Force itself.

Nothing had answered.

Until now.

As he meditated, as he felt the tension in his limbs ease, and the boundary between his thoughts and the quiet around him blur, he heard a whisper resonate deep within his soul. Maybe the echo of what had been had forged a connection with the Force that transcended universes. Or maybe it had become a gateway through which the Force could reach him, and had only been patiently waiting for the moment he stilled himself enough to listen.

Whatever the reason, the result was the same.

Anakin quieted his mind, and the midichlorians spoke to him.