Meinwen flushes a little. "Basic kindness isn't wisdom," she tries to protest.

"Perhaps not." Her smile fades. "And he told me to stay safe. It was likely in part strategic - the strike force was obviously a suicide mission - but… It'd been years since anyone had expressed concern for me, not for my combat capabilities, and… It didn't feel like a strategic call. I would likely have dramatically increased the strike force's success chance; what value was my life, next to the Sith's death?"

"Every life is valuable." She refuses to believe anything else.

"Yet, so were the lives of those we sent. The Grandmaster went on that mission; you could even say in my stead. He died. The mission failed. And then the Sith launched a sudden attack - everywhere, every front, and I immediately reached out, merged with every single ally I could find - there were more fronts than I had anchors, and I became… Something else. Something more. I reached to the Jedi, just as they reached to the Light Side of the Force. It was necessary; it wasn't sufficient. And so…"

"So I reached to the Sith, just as they reached to the Dark Side of the Force. I fell; I decided to, I had to, because every rank and file soldier was resisting, slowing me down - but they were obedient to the Sith. I forced battle meditation with my enemies, and I killed them in droves."

"It still wasn't enough. We lost, and in the chaos… I lost track of my Jedi Master. I panicked and went to go find her - with my flesh and blood body. I was… Angry, grieving, disconnected. I didn't know quite when or where I was, and she… She asked me why I wasn't part of the strike force. My response wasn't particularly coherent; I mostly yelled that she wasn't there. She said I'd never shied from facing evil before."

"So, she called you a coward for not defying orders to join a suicide mission," Meinwen says, bluntly.

"She didn't know about the orders. That would've required me being coherent enough to explain," Vader admits. "And that's not how she meant it - and even if she had, she wasn't wrong. We might not have lost, if I'd gone. If I'd killed the Emperor before the attack could be ordered. I... Would have preferred that world. It would have been better to die then, than to die later."

"But... You're right that that's how I heard it. I was offended, hurt, already hating myself for not dying in another's stead - it was easy to turn that hatred outside, then to lance every festering wound in our relationship at the same time. Our verbal argument escalated quickly, then turned into a physical fight. She'd always been a better duelist than I, and she'd spent the last few years on an active battlefield while I mostly sat there meditating - I had no chance. I seesawed between rage and terror - "

"But I was strong in the Force, and I'd just figured out how to simply kill someone - and we still had our training bond, no matter how withered from disuse. I ripped it back open; she'd never even suspected it was an attack vector. She tried to defend herself, but… Her blade faltered. It was enough."

"And then I realized what I'd done, and promptly tried to kill myself. It didn't work."

Meinwen winces. It's… She doesn't know what else to do, has so idea what to say. (She sees why Elesse feels pity for Darth Vader, enough pity to overcome millennia of wisdom.)

"And then… My lover, the very woman who'd comforted me throughout the war, who'd been my only true attachment to life outside my Jedi Master - she caught up to me, and she gathered me into her arms, and she healed my body enough for prosthetics."

"And then she offered me training, and she declared me Darth Vader. She'd been a Sith, that entire time - she'd infiltrated the Republic. She'd seen me as an opportunity. But…"

"I couldn't live alone. No one truly can. And she was all I had left. I wanted to make her happy. I agreed."

"It felt… Okay, sometimes. Normal. It felt horrible, sometimes. We had children together, twin girls; I faked their deaths and hid them. That lasted all of two decades. One of my daughters became a Jedi. My Sith Master thought she'd make a fine apprentice and engineered a confrontation."

"My daughter saw me, and she knew me. She cast aside her lightsaber and declared that peace was her only truth. My Sith Master grew angry with her intransigence; I killed her to protect my daughter. One of her attacks shorted out some of the implants keeping me alive, and I begged my daughter to let me go."

"She did, but…"

"She let me go, yet I didn't leave her."

"I returned to the Light Side of the Force, so I could be there every time she drew on it, so she could glimpse me in her visions, so she could meet me in her dreams - we never spoke, we never could, but I was with her. I existed for her - and her sister, though she refused to touch the Force. Perhaps because I was part of it; she always did well at holding grudges."

"...I would have liked to meet your daughter - the Jedi. She sounds... Like a good person. Like someone history shouldn't forget."

"Both of them were good people, in their own ways. They were my greatest legacy."

"I love the Jedi still, for my daughter's sake - for all their faults, the kindest woman this galaxy has or will produce bore their name both proudly and humbly. She took little credit for her goodness; she merely said that she was a Jedi like her mother before her. Nothing more, and nothing less."

"And yet... You still call yourself Sith?"

Her smile fades. "I do now. Back then... I would have called myself a Jedi like my daughter after me, I suppose, if anyone had been able to ask."

"Yet... Both of my daughters died in the fullness of time, and I… For the first time, I had no one to exist for. No Master. No one to please. I didn't know who I was, away from others' light. I didn't know what I wanted, away from others' desires."

"And… I remembered then what the Grandmaster had told me, so long before: that I had already done far more than anyone had the right to ask. I finally… I finally accepted that wisdom. I stopped trying to find someone or something to exist for; I started, for the first time, to simply exist."

"It's... A strange thought, that accepting a Jedi's wisdom could lead you..." She gestures a bit helplessly.

She smiles again. "The Force holds stranger things than are dreamt of in any philosophy."

"And so, accepting a Jedi's wisdom, I found solace in the dark. It was easier to cohere as a ghost, easier to be a person with a distinct mind. It was easier to be selfish. I found I enjoyed history; I learned to wander back and forth through the mists of time. I read over people's shoulders, from time to time. I watched as the grand arc of civilizations bent to and fro; I bore silent witness to eternity. I was one with the Force, and at last it freed me."

It sounds incredibly peaceful, but at the same time... "It sounds lonely."

"It was." A small quirk of the lips. "And then a girl, an apprentice who'd been groomed by her Sith Master as I had been, spotted me. And… I couldn't leave her alone. I admitted to her that I was a Sith Lord, one obviously more powerful, more knowledgable than Darth Plagueis. I told her I'd conquered death as no Sith before or after me had. I told her my only desire was to see her flourish, to see others find the freedom I'd at last known; she let me take her from Plagueis, and let me rename her." Events are slightly out of order here, but that's been the case through the tale; she doesn't think either padawan will notice, though. 

"And then, while I was helping her with one of the many steps in our plan to truly free herself of him - sadly I lost the ability to kill people with my mind when I died - a Jedi padawan saw me."

Meinwen turns that over in her head, and for some reason her head produces the observation that Darth Vader isn't really a Sith; she's more a pathetic little meow meow. …Meinwen resolves to spend less time on the holonet. 

"How do you know you haven't fallen back into just trying to make others happy with you?" she asks, because it does sure sound like at least half the reason Vader identifies specifically as Sith is because she's Master to someone who was already a Sith apprentice. And it sounds like Vader has been focusing on supporting Fidela and Elesse, not on selfish pursuits - at least not the kinds of selfishness usually attributed to passion. 

She smiles. "For one, Fidela is a delight to teach, and it's my determination to be a good Master to her. There's a bit of selfishness to be found in breaking a cycle of abuse. And I'm not simply doing what I think will make her happy with me - I'm doing what I think will get the right lessons through her skull."

"For two…" She sends a fond glance at Elesse. "Speaking with Elesse is entirely selfish; I've spent the vast majority of my existence studying history and the great mysteries of the Force, but it turns out the joy of learning is multiplied again in sharing. And Fidela has little patience for my 'infodumps;' even in life, when I had more options for conversation partners, very few would set aside an entire day to listen to me ramble about my passions. Elesse asks insightful questions, too; I've already had to look a few things up, or been inspired to look deeper into something I'd previously skimmed past."

She hums. "And in what time period did you live and die, again?" Something is… Askew.

A wider smile. "I'll tell you what I told Elesse - all records of my life and its events are long lost. I died so long ago the number hardly means anything; I have been dead for only so many years as I've had something to interact with; I have not yet died."