Live For the Lost
by TwinEnigma
Warnings/Tags: AU, Sith Zombies, Suitless Vader, Leia is Adopted By Someone Else
In another world, Anakin falls and Obi-Wan flees - Padme, his friend, is dying (Darth Vader's hand shakes and for a moment Anakin holds him back, horrified by the dying of the light and the harm wrought by his own hands).
A moment is all that Obi-Wan needs.
Mustafar and Anakin and Darth Vader are left behind to fight as the stars streak by and Obi-Wan desperately races to save not just one life but two (it is three in the end that are at stake.)
(At least until Sidious raises his hands.)
It is Darth Vader who lands on Polis Massa, who has chased the dying light like a dragon scenting prey, and it is Darth Vader who rages at Padme's corpse.
(But it is Anakin who brings her back.)
Obi-Wan escapes, precious cargo in hand (and Anakin is too lost in his relief to notice.) Vader promises himself that he will attend to Obi-Wan's fate later.
Something is wrong with Padme, the way she talks and moves and looks at him, but Vader worships her (and Anakin is sure it will pass). She is still the most gorgeous woman in the galaxy to him, even if the bruises have yet to fade from her neck.
"Foolish boy," Palpatine tells him, "What have you done?"
(It is hard for him to protest further, when Vader's lightsaber bisects him. As if he would ever betray his wife again.)
"Where is my child?" she asks every night, eyes burning like embers and he can feel the Dark Side surging wildly.
Vader does not know. (Obi-Wan was with her in those final moments. Obi-Wan would know. Obi-Wan is the key.)
But Padme needs him - she is not well and the Empire is still young. And he refuses to leave her again, so, as much as it pains him, he must let the shadows of Obi-Wan go.
(Being Emperor is not as easy as it seems.)
Days turn into weeks and weeks into months. (Padme is not getting better. There is blood on her hands and mouth and he wonders, wonders if he has made a terrible mistake.)
Vader's rage fades in fits and starts, turning into a yawning chasm of uncertainty.
(This is not what he wanted.)
Rex's com is an unexpectedly welcome reprieve.
He's not generally accustomed to looking back. Normally, when someone leaves his life, he cuts his ties to them thoroughly. (Don't look back, his mother's voice echoes in his memories.)
Vader is not prepared for what Rex brings with him. "You have a daughter?"
Rex looks at the infant (a human girl, dark brown hair crowning her head and something so achingly familiar in his sense of her) and she coos at him. "Suppose so, sir. Lost her parents in the Transition."
"Ah," he says, with a wince. "Does she have a name?"
"The boys wanted to call her General, but I vetoed that," Rex says, smiling, "Sir."
(You are still our general pulses in the space between syllables.)
"We were going to have a child," Vader admits, "Padme and I. We were going to name it Leia if it was a girl."
"I'm sorry," Rex says, and the hand on his shoulder is familiar, a comfort he has missed. There is a new scar on his head, only months old, like the child.
(Brother.)
The baby makes an unhappy sound, squirming in her blankets, and Rex offers her to him with a sad smile, asks him if he'd like to hold his niece. (She will be raised in the Mandalorian fashion, with guns in her hands, and an army of uncles that would die for her if she asks - but she won't.)
She is small and perfect and Vader, for the moment, is an echo of memory.
(He should be holding his daughter. He could have been, if only he hadn't have been so foolish.)
He presses his lips to the crown of her head, running fingers through her wisps of hair, and silently grieves.
"There is a custom," Rex says gently, "For a child to be named after one lost and raised with the knowledge of their memory, that they might live their life for both of them. With your permission, brother?"
Anakin looks at him, his brother - oh his brother, one of so many he'd thought lost to him and now he sees are not - and nods in tearful, grateful silence.
Leia, newly named, grabs his hair and yanks, making an annoyed noise.
(stop that)
Anakin laughs. "Maybe you should call her General after all."
(Vader sends them away, with his blessing. It is not safe on Coruscant.)
("Where is my child?" Padme asks.)
(Anakin does not answer.)
AN:
crossposting from my Ao3; brain bunny - Rex raises a Tiny General AU