Title: A Changed Man
Rating: PG- PG 13
Summary: What if, that faithful day on Mustafar, Padme gives Anakin an ultimatum, and walks back onto her ship before Obi Wan can emerge, leaving Anakin alone to contemplate things?
A/N: Yeah, this is defiantly an AU Revenge of the Sith ending.
Anakin Skywalker, formerly known as Darth Vader, the menacing apprentice of Darth Sideous, was about to entail on his hardest challenge yet. He was going home to his wife after nearly five years of not hearing from her and not knowing if she and their children were living or dead. He remembered the day on Mustafar clearly, how upset she was with him for the damage that he had done.
How could you kill the younglings? She had asked him, nearly on the verge of tears. He had hated it when she cried, and for some reason on that day he had taken pleasure out of seeing her cry. When she told him that she wanted nothing to do with him and that maybe it would be best for their children if they didn't know about him, he had only gotten angrier. The words that she had uttered next when she saw how he had changed are the words that have been on his mind for the last five years of his life.
'You aren't the Anakin that I love anymore,' she had said quite clearly, 'and if this is the life you want to lead now I don't want to be a part of it, nor do I want my child to be apart of it,' she had said and he was tempted to lash out at her and remind her that they were his children too. 'However, if Anakin Skywalker does appear again and Darth Vader ceases to exist I may consider letting you back into our life. He will know how to find us.' With that, she had walked back onto her ship and left without another word.
He thought of Padme often, and he found himself thinking of her a lot, and it wasn't until about a year and a half ago that he started to realize just how much he missed her. He cursed himself for being so stupid to think that he could just forget her and stop loving her. Yes, she had hurt him badly that day on Mustafar, but had he not hurt her with his actions? By helping the man that had been her mentor when she was Queen of Naboo destroy everything she had worked so hard to protect? His thoughts had then turned to his precious child. He wondered how it was now, if it was okay. The more he thought about it, the more he realized that he did not want to miss another moment of his child's life. He wanted his family back, and he would do anything to get his wife and child back. He was going to do anything to get them back.
The last year had not been an easy one for him. He had betrayed many that he loved, especially Padme, and a year ago he had run away from Palpatine's teachings, and gone into hiding in the last place that anyone had expected him to be. He had gone to Tatooine. The place of his beginnings, the place where had been forced to grow up at a very young age. He blocked his force signature so that no one would find him, especially not Palpatine, and began a process that he had once hated. Meditation.
Anakin knew that if he was going to be the man Padme wanted again, he was going to have to figure out exactly what had gone wrong, exactly what had lead him to all the evil activities he had been engaging in for the last four years. No matter how much he hated it, he knew the only way he was going to achieve this was through lots, and lots of meditation. The process was not easy on him mentally, and there were a few times that he wanted to kill himself at the realization of the havoc he had caused, the innocent people he had killed with his anger. He finally understood why Padme had left him. He would of left too if she had been behaving like that. No, you would of never left her he thought to himself she betrayed you Anakin. The 'Vader' part of him was putting up a strong fight by telling him that it was her who had done wrong. The Anakin part of him was telling him that she did it for his own good. The more he thought about what he part of him was saying, the more that realized that Vader was only saying the things that had been told to him by Palpatine, Anakin, however was saying it from deep in his heart. He had always listened to what his heart was telling him to do, even though he knew he shouldn't. So why had he stopped?
Everything started to make sense when he got to the time that Padme had told him that she was pregnant and he had the nightmare about her dying in childbirth. He remembered confiding in Palpatine about the matter and him saying that he could teach him a way to save her. The more he thought about it, the more realized that Palpatine NEVER taught him anything. He had only used him as a killing machine to do his bidding, and if he protested… The whips that he had been punished with back when he was a slave seemed tame compared to the torture that he received from his Sith Master whenever he did something out of line. The Jedi had tried to warn him that Palpatine was corrupt, but he didn't believe them. Even Padme could tell. So why couldn't he? That took him a month of meditation alone to figure out before he realized that Palpatine had manipulated him.
Palpatine had to be stopped, and it had to be him to stop it. It couldn't be Darth Vader, but Anakin Skywalker. He saw this as his only form of true redemption. To kill Palpatine and Sideous would be the only way that he could kill what ever was left of Vader once and for all. So back to Courscant he went, where he planned to kill Palpatine. He knew that this was one battle that he may not survive, and he needed Padme to know that if he did die in the process that he loved her very much and how hard he was trying to change, and how he hoped that in her eyes, killing Palpatine, would stop the evil that had been spread throughout the whole galaxy. He wrote it in a letter, and had one of his men deliver it straight to the hands of Padme.
When Padme got the letter, she had been more then a little more surprised by the contents of it, but she was still skeptical of what she had read, but she got the feeling that he meant what he said. The way he wrote, the way he spoke of her in the letter, reminded her greatly of the letters that she had received from him during the Clone Wars, and that is what gave her hope that maybe her Anakin was finally returning. If he did die in his efforts, she would tell the twins all about him and give him his dying wish, to tell them how much he loved them. Well, he only referred to one child and she realized that he did not know that she was having twins.
Palpatine had been able to sense the change in his apprentice and confronted him about it. Accusing him of betraying him, and disobeying him yet again. When he went to force Anakin to his knees he found that he was unable to do so. He knew now that he wasn't dealing with Vader anymore, he was dealing with the Jedi he thought he had silenced years before. Anakin Skywalker had returned, and he was stronger then he had been before. He took the knowledge that he had gained through his meditation and used it to block all of the attacks that Palpatine was sending his way. Palpatine tried to send a healthy dose of force lightning Anakin's way, but Anakin had sensed his former Master's next move and already had his Saber up, the brilliant blue blade deflecting all of the lightning as he sent it back at Palpatine. Palpatine was taken aback by the quickness of Anakin's reflexes and watched a moment as Anakin stood ready, lightsaber raised, ready for anything that might come his way next.
The Sith Master pulled out his saber and started attacking his former apprentice, relying solely on his anger as he pressed his attacks on the boy, who defended everything as he waited patiently, knowing that Palpatine would soon tire. Palpatine was by no means as young as he had used to be and did not have that advantage as Anakin did. He found himself getting tired fast and he knew that soon, very soon, Anakin would be able to overpower him. He had to come up with something fast. He hesitated a moment in his attacks as he watched Anakin closely who finally made a move and force pushed Palpatine straight into the wall at the far side of the room, giving it all of his power. Anakin watched as the Sith Master tried to get up, and could not. Anakin had won, the Apprentice was moments away from defeating the Master, and Anakin was finding him unsure of if he should kill him or not. He could see Padme's face in his head but he could not tell what she wanted him to do. Would she still take him back even if he killed one more time?
He sat down on the floor and thought about it, Palpatine was losing a lot of blood from the would of where he had hit his head on the wall and Anakin knew that he would be out for a while and that he would have a moment or two to contemplate his next move. Wasn't the only way to kill true evil was to stab them through the heart? That's what the ancient stories/legends had taught him when he was young and living on Tatooine, but now he was not sure if it was the right thing to do. Yes, he told himself, it is the right thing to do. So, for the last time ever (he hoped) it would be the last time he killed ANYONE, or hurt anyone period. He stabbed Palpatine through the heart, and it felt immediately like any hold that the darkside had on him, was gone.
Now, it was time for the hardest part of his journey to Redemption. He had to convince Padme that he was really a changed man. He was ready to be her husband again and would do anything to make her see it too. He went about preparing his journey to Naboo because; he knew that is where she had been hiding out. She wasn't with her parents though, and she wasn't at the lake retreat that they had spent so much time at. She couldn't feel Padme as well as he used to. She had done a pretty good job of learning how to block him out over the years, but his child did not possess such powers just yet. His child had, without any doubt had inherited his force abilities and did not know how to control it or how to mask its presence. So finding them was going to be easy.
So there he stood, at the door to the house in the mountains that he and Padme used to go on romantic get a ways to, dressed in his still tattered robes from the battle that he had with Palpatine, holding a bouquet of her favourite flowers. He was willing to get down on his knees and beg, nor was he afraid of hiding anything from her. He wanted to be man she wanted him to be him, and he was going to show her. Of course, he had remembered as well that it was their eighth wedding anniversary.