This is Anakin Skywalker. The most powerful Jedi of his Generation, the fastest, the strongest, he is the best there is, perhaps the best there will ever be. The HoloNet calls him The Hero With No Fear, but fear lives inside him anyway, chewing away at the fire walls around his heart. Children on Tatooine tell stories of the Dragons that live inside the Planet's twin suns, those that power everything from starships to pod racers. But Anakin's fear is another kind of Dragon, a cold kind, a dead kind, but not nearly dead enough...
Years ago a minor mission had brought him to a fringe system, one so immeasurably old that it's star had long ago turned into a frigid dwarf. Anakin couldn't remember what the mission might have been, but he had never forgotten that dead star, it had scared him. Stars can die? He Knew then that Everything dies, and in time, even stars burn out...
This is the kind of fear that lives inside Anakin Skywalker, the Dragon of that dead star. Everyday he wrestles with his Dragon, but for all his strength, he can't push back. He is losing, and nothing can stop the ancient, cold dead voice within his mind that whispered in his darkest moments, all things die. But within his agony, an invisible hand stretched outward and he found her. Far way alone in the dark, and for an instant he was her. He was the beating of her heart, and he was the motion of her lips, and he was her soft words as though she spoke a prayer to the stars. And her purity, and her passions, and the truth of her love flowed into him, and through him...
And every atom of his being screamed to the Force, how can I let her die? The Force had no answer for him, the Dragon did, "all things die Anakin Skywalker, even stars burn out". Now, no wisdom of Yoda's, no teaching of Obi-Wan's, not one scrap of Jedi lore came to him that could choke the Dragon down. But there was an answer, one he had for years hidden from sight. Anakin stopped, his agony evaporated, it was simple, all he had to do was decide what he wanted...
The Dragon again tried to whisper of failure, of weakness, of inevitable death. But with one hand he cut it, crushed away it's voice, and broke it's power with a single effortless twist. "I am Darth Vader" he repeated, as he drowned the Dragon's corpse to dust beneath his mental heel. As he watched the Dragon's dust and ashes, scatter before the blast from his furnace heart. "And you, you are nothing at all". He had become finally what they had all called him, The Hero With No Fear...
Then you open your eyes, and the first dawn of light in your universe brings pain. The light burns you, it will always burn you. You can hear yourself breathing, it becomes hard and harsh, and it scrapes at nerves already raw. But you can not stop it, you can not even slow it down. It is only when you start to speak, and another voice speaks for you, that you remember, you remember all of it. The Dragon that brought forth Vader from your heart to slay. Cold venom Vader's blood, the furnace of Vader's fury, and the black hatred of seething her throat, to silence her lying mouth...
You rage and scream, 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, composer gone deaf. You can remember where the power was, but the power you can touch is only but a memory. Now, 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...