Anakin's POV
Gazing into the eyes that reminded me so much of my Padmé, I watched Luke's expression fall as he realized I wasn't going to make it out of the Death Star alive.
I was proud of him—my son. Luke had grown into a fine young man, and an even finer Jedi. He would bring balance to the Force, restore peace to the galaxy, and lead the Jedi into a new golden age. His spirit echoed hers—Padmé's relentless will, her fierce determination, the way she always saw things through to the end. In him, I saw her.
With the last of my strength, I lifted my gloved hand and gently cupped his cheek, brushing away the tears streaming down his face. All around us, the Death Star shook with distant explosions. Stormtroopers and officers scrambled through the hangar bay, frantic, searching for any escape from the crumbling behemoth.
"Lu… Luke," I wheezed, motioning for him to come closer. He did.
"May… the For… Force be… with you," I whispered, the words barely leaving my lips as darkness slowly crept in.
***
When I next opened my eyes, confusion washed over me.
The first thing I noticed was how light I felt—like the weight of every ache, scar, and burn I'd carried over the years had simply vanished. I had expected to become one with the Force, like Obi-Wan… like Qui-Gon before him.
Instead, I found myself lying on a soft mattress in a small, unfamiliar room. The walls were made of pale stone—limestone, I guessed—and a gentle breeze drifted in through a tiny window above the bed. Morning light trickled in, signaling the rise of the sun.
As I tried to sit up, I froze—suddenly aware of the warm little body curled beside me. I looked down and saw a girl, no older than six, nestled against my side. She slept soundly, peaceful and unaware, as if the universe held no danger at all.
She was beautiful. Silver hair cascaded over her shoulders like moonlight, and her porcelain skin was flawless, untouched by the world.
No matter how strange this situation was, I couldn't bring myself to disturb her. Carefully, I maneuvered my limbs out from under her small embrace. She mumbled softly and shifted slightly, but stayed asleep.
Swinging my legs over the side of the bed, my bare feet met the cool stone floor—and that's when I paused.
I looked down at my hands. My arms. My legs.
Flesh and blood.
For the first time in nearly twenty-five years, my body was whole. My limbs weren't metal. My breath was easy, natural. No harsh rasp, no cursed respirator hissing with every inhale—no longer a tool of the Emperor's torment.
Stunned by these new revelations, I slowly approached the small wooden desk tucked into the corner of the room, where a hand mirror rested. My fingers curled around its handle with cautious reverence, and I lifted it as though one sudden movement might cause everything around me to vanish.
Then I saw my reflection—and froze.
To say I was shocked would be an understatement.
The face staring back at me couldn't have been older than thirteen. Pale silver hair, curling softly to my shoulders, mirrored the style I once wore during the Clone Wars. The resemblance to the sleeping girl—Daenerys—was unmistakable. We shared the same porcelain skin, the same ethereal quality. But the eyes… my eyes were a bright amethyst, glowing with a life and color that hadn't graced my features in decades.
I was tall for my age, though still lanky—caught in the awkward beginnings of adolescence. Yet what struck me most wasn't the youthful face or the strange hair color.
It was the sight of my limbs—whole, unscarred, and human.
Two arms. Two legs. No metal. No burns. No pain.
Just me.
Then, as I met my own gaze in the mirror, a searing pain erupted in my head. I collapsed to my knees, one hand gripping the floor to steady myself, the other clutching my skull as a flood of memories surged into my mind.
Years upon years of unfamiliar experiences invaded my thoughts—memories that weren't mine. A life lived in a different world. A different body. Yet slowly, inevitably, they began to merge with mine… with the memories of a man who had once been Anakin Skywalker, then Darth Vader.
When the torrent finally ceased, I groaned, breathing heavily—relieved that it was over.
"Vis…?" the girl stirred behind me, her voice soft and groggy. "Viserys?"
I turned, the name fitting now like a newly tailored robe. Daenerys— my sister, I now understood—looked at me with sleepy concern.
"I'm fine, Dany," I said, forcing a gentle smile as I approached the bed. "Go back to sleep, little dragon."
She blinked, gave a quiet, murmured goodnight, and nestled back into the blankets without protest.
Once she was peacefully asleep again, I rose to my feet, my mind still reeling. So much information. So much to make sense of.
It seemed I now inhabited the body of a boy named Viserys Targaryen, living in a city called Braavos with my little sister Daenerys and our protector, Ser Willem Darry—who, unfortunately, had recently fallen ill with a sickness that was slowly eating away at him.
From what I could gather, I had ended up in a time and place long before the advent of any recognizable technology. The people of this world still used swords and bows, rode horses and carriages, and lived in towering stone castles.
Well, I thought with a trace of amusement, considering the Jedi and Sith fought with lightsabers, I should fit right in.
Apparently, I was part of a once-mighty family that had ruled an entire continent called Westeros. The Targaryens had conquered it with their dragons—massive creatures with scales as hard as steel, capable of breathing fire hot enough to melt stone. Some had grown as large as capital-class corvettes.
And then, like fools, they lost it all.
Internal strife—some kind of civil war between different branches of the family—had led to the extinction of the dragons. With their greatest power gone, the Targaryens' grip on the realm weakened, giving the noble houses the opportunity to plot their downfall.
It all culminated in a rebellion led by five of the nine great houses of Westeros—sparked by the idiocy of my so-called family.
A brother, already married with children, decided to run off with a girl barely sixteen. My Father? A lunatic who enjoyed burning people alive for fun.
Of course that ended well.
Now, only Daenerys and I remained—children of a fallen dynasty, hiding from a man hell-bent on erasing every last trace of the Targaryen name from existence.
But before the dragons, before Westeros, there was Essos—the continent I now resided on. Our bloodline had once belonged to the Valyrian Freehold, a five-thousand-year-old empire that had spanned the entire continent. Out of forty dragonlord families, only the Targaryens survived the cataclysm known as the Doom of Valyria.
Good riddance, I thought darkly.
The Valyrian Empire had been built on the backs of slaves. And slavery… was something I despised with every fiber of my being. I had lived it, suffered through it, broken free of it. From what I had gathered, the Valyrians had made the slavers in the Outer Rim look merciful by comparison. They sent their slaves into scalding volcanic mines, used them in grotesque experiments, and treated them as less than animals.
Monsters, the lot of them.
It turned out that the city I was in—Braavos—was the only one in Essos that didn't practice slavery. The rest still clung to the twisted ideals of the old Valyrian Empire, and even the Ghiscari Empire before it.
Some, like Volantis, fancied themselves the heirs of Valyria. Others, like the cities of Slaver's Bay, saw themselves as Old Ghis reborn.
With a deep sigh, I approached the only other window in the cramped little room. It overlooked a small, enclosed yard with a medium-sized lemon tree standing proudly in the center. I lowered myself to the floor, sitting cross-legged, and began to breathe—slow, deep, steady.
As my mind slipped into a meditative trance, I reached out with the Force.
It responded instantly—flowing through me, around me, tingling in every nerve and muscle. I smiled. In this world, the Force would give me a major advantage against anyone who dared to threaten Daenerys… or me.
As I sifted through the memories of this body, I felt a flicker of disgust.
The boy I now inhabited had not always been cruel. At first, there had been something noble in him—his promise to his dying mother to protect his baby sister, a vow his young heart had taken with pride. But over time, that sense of honor had twisted.
He had grown arrogant, drunk on bloodlines and ghosts. He believed himself above all others simply because his father had been king— even if that king had been mad.
It wasn't entirely his fault. His father, in the brief time he'd known him, had poisoned his mind with ideas of superiority. That because of his "pure blood," he was better. Entitled. Chosen.
And so, the boy grew into a delusional young man—one who dreamed of reclaiming his family's throne by fire and blood… of burning the so-called traitors alive… of taking his own sister as his bride to "rebuild the Targaryen dynasty with true dragons."
I gagged at that last memory, nearly losing my concentration.
That was another thing about this new reality.
Apparently, the Valyrians had practiced incest—marrying brother to sister to preserve their bloodline and maintain control over their dragons.
I scoffed at the idea.
There was a reason so many rulers in this family descended into madness: centuries of inbreeding. While I could understand the desire to keep the dragons within the bloodline, there were far better ways to go about it.
I didn't know if there had once been some kind of magic protecting my ancestors from the effects of inbreeding. Even if there had been, it clearly stopped working somewhere along the line. Most of the ancestors I could recall through Viserys's memories had exhibited signs of madness—my father being the worst of them.
One of them had drunk wildfire—a volatile green substance that burned hotter than normal fire. Another had blown himself and his family to pieces in a desperate attempt to hatch dragon eggs.
And if it wasn't madness, it was sickness… or infertility.
My mother had suffered through multiple failed pregnancies. Only Rhaegar and Daenerys survived. It had been the same in previous generations—female ancestors enduring miscarriage after miscarriage, some likely due to being married off and impregnated far too young.
I mean, really—who marries an eleven-year-old girl and then expects her to carry child after child?
The so-called doctors— maesters, as they were called in this world—were complete idiots.
Pushing that disturbing history aside, I returned to my meditations, finally reaching the most recent memories of this body—and frowned at what I saw.
When news of Ser Willem's sickness had begun spreading among the few remaining servants in the household, there had been a subtle but unmistakable shift in their behavior. Some had started eyeing Daenerys and me with greed. Others looked toward our remaining valuables with hunger.
The old Viserys hadn't noticed it. But I did.
It was clear that once Ser Willem passed, these people would either sell us out to the Usurper—Viserys's favorite title for the man who had overthrown our family—or steal everything we had and vanish, leaving us destitute.
I opened my eyes and turned toward the one good thing about this new life: my little sister.
In my old life, I never had the chance to be an older brother—or a father. The closest I'd come was Ahsoka. But through the memories of the old Viserys, I knew this little girl was special. Even in his bitterness and delusion, Viserys had found small glimmers of joy in her smile.
Daenerys, for all the darkness that surrounded her, was light.
I approached her as she slept, her soft, steady snores echoing through the small room. Kneeling beside the bed, I gently ran my fingers across her forehead, a small smile tugging at my lips.
It was in that moment that I made my decision.
I would atone.
For the crimes I committed in my past life—for the lives lost, the people I hurt, the pain I caused in service to a false emperor—I would make amends.
Starting here.
With her.
I would raise this little girl. Protect her. Teach her. Guide her.
This world was brutal to the weak—especially in Essos. And without me… she would be devoured by it. Used. Exploited. Enslaved. Another pawn in the endless games of power played by cruel men.
I would not let that happen.