Title: No One to Argue With
Author: Disco Shop Girl
Time Period: Post-ROTS
Genre: Angst
Summary: Darth Vader revisits their apartment after Padmé's death
Author's Notes: I originally started a fic (which I've since scrapped), then wrote Sola's Questions as a prequel and this one as the joining fic that explained the linkages between the two. However I guess it's now just a sequal to Sola's Questions - which someone sent me a really ncie review for today and it reminded me it was sitting on my harddrive. Confused now? Me too. But thanks for reading!
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Anakin's eyes opened hazily. To find himself in a very comfortable bed. Tucked up under blankets. Just like it used to be.
He closed his eyes again briefly, swallowed. He knew something was wrong. Something swirled in the depths of his unconsciousness, trying to remind him of a fact. But he couldn't for the life of him remember what it was.
Years of Jedi training had been ingrained though, and he simply let it go. That fact would reveal itself in time.
Right now – he rolled over slowly.
There she was. Her hair was perfect. Her face was perfect. She slept and she was perfect. Padmé. How he had missed her.
He stared for a long time. Didn't touch her, didn't say a word. She was here, like this, for no one but him.
Briefly he wanted to wake her up and ask her something. He didn't know what the question was, or why it could possibly be so urgent as to wake her. But he did know that he shouldn't wake her.
Something, something told him to leave her sleep.
What he did know, was that he was lying here, craving her touch, and he need not deny himself. Her touch, how he missed her touch.
Slowly, without waking her, he moved closer to her. She was lying peacefully on her side, turned towards him. One hand thrown out over her pillow.
Carefully, ever so carefully, he raised her arm and tucked himself under it. Wriggled with the grace of an uncoordinated child and cuddled up into her side. Catching her arm, he lowered it securely over himself. Giving himself his own security blanket of her peaceful touch. He slipped one of his hands tentatively onto her waist but nothing else.
Then he just lay there. Closed his eyes and fell into the sound of her heart.
"My heart is beating only for you," he whispered into her chest.
Burrowed in further like he couldn't get enough of her warmth.
Her comlink started beeping. In the middle of the night for no reason? He wanted to growl and reached out angrily with his fist to crush it.
The feeling of his mechanical fingers moving took a moment to register.
But then the stiff feeling of interrupted slumber fell over him.
And Darth Vader awoke in Padmé's abandoned apartment. Uncomfortable from pressing his cheek to the inside of his helmet. And in pain from the dreams that tempted him when he was here.
"Padmé," the still very young man whispered silently.
His heart scarred just that little deeper.
He was too young to have already lost his child. And far too young to be a widower, before most his age had even fallen in love.
Now he remembered why he couldn't wake her or talk to her in his dream. Because if he tried, the dream would end and he would be pulled back here. With no way of getting back to his dream world.
He missed her. How he missed her. He needed to tell her he was sorry, that he had never meant to hurt her. Let alone…But she was never there to even talk to.
Now, there was no one to talk to. No one to share his thoughts, his life. No one to argue with. His equals were gone, there were only those below him in the Imperial forces, and his master. One of whom he would crush for the slightest disagreement, the other he showed complete deference to. And his equal, his partner in life, was lost to him forever.
He looked out through the harsh plates covering his eyes. Her nightgown lay across his arm, crushed bits of communicator gathered in one spot. It wasn't worn, and never would be again. Beyond it lay the small blanket he'd found. He turned his head slowly and looked behind him. There was the box.
It had been sticking out from beneath her rows of unworn dresses. Like it wanted to be found. And the small blanket he'd found inside…
His heart began breaking once more.
"This isn't how it was supposed to be!" he screamed to the silent room.
But no one answered him. Not Padmé. Not their baby.
Their baby. He roared in misery at the very thought of what they'd conceived. Why hadn't he loved it when he had the chance? He thought he'd been protecting himself, so sure that it wouldn't make it past the birth. But now, how he wished he'd just allowed his heart to rule for even a few hours and wanted it.
It had been there. It had moved under his hand once, just to prove it was alive. He could remember that. At the time he'd barely registered the feeling. Now it was almost like he could recreate the little movements against his fingertips if he only concentrated hard enough. The very thought of that moment of feeling something alive inside Padmé flooded his heat with further desperation.
He thought of all the chances he'd had to be with her. All the chances to run his hand over her middle like she'd so obviously wanted but never asked for. And instead he'd focused on helping Palpatine control the senate?
WHY! He'd KNOWN he only had precious months left with her, why had he wasted them?
Why hadn't he been able to save her?
From himself?
"When my heart beat, it was only for you," he whispered to the quiet room as he clambered up.
He surveyed the remains of his heart. Her nightgown. The baby's single blanket – never used. Laid out flat on the bed, with no one to wear either of them. The crushed up bits of communicator scattered over them both.
Tears pouring down his cheeks he reverently replaced the little blanket in its box, and pushed the box back to exactly where she'd left it.
His baby had disappeared once more. No one knew it had existed, and no one ever would. He sunk to his knees in front of the swathes of fabric that now concealed the only remains of their little one. The bitter irony tore at his heart – those pieces of fabric had been the ones to hide the youngling while it was alive too.
He brushed his fingers over the lid just briefly.
"We'll be together one day," he told the box, not even hearing his own choked voice as he turned away, back to his feet.
Padmé's nightgown held none of the softness for his mechanical, gloved fingers that it had when she wore it and it rested beneath his cheek. But he could remember every brush of it against his skin. Every time she'd worn it. Every curl that caressed around it.
Devotedly he carried it back to her dressing table and laid it over the back of the chair.
His eyes slid closed and he braced himself against the frame. He would never feel that satin again. Because the woman who wore it…
"Padmé," he groaned.
His voice rent the air, bellowing long and low throughout the apartment's still, empty air.
He had ripped her from his side. Literally strangled the life from her and sent his whole reason for being with her, to the grave.
His insides twisted with that thought. Obi-Wan had probably taken her back to Naboo. He didn't want to think of her interned in the ground for eternity but that was where she was. That was where they both were.
"Noooo," he yelled.
His fingers clenched on the chair and he forced himself to let go before he could break anything. He would not hurt one thing that had been hers.
Turning to leave he was confronted with the now empty bed. Padmé was gone. The love they'd shared in that bed was gone. The baby they'd created in that bed was gone. The comfort she'd given him in that bed was gone. The completeness of feeling of being a man in that bed was gone.
He spun and left before it could rip at him anymore. His heart didn't follow, it stayed in that room. With her.