Revenge
Dreams rushed inside Anakin's mind like a torrent of untamable floods. Even the Force could not control his mind's eye at night.
He knew he was dreaming. He knew from the moment he saw the peaceful look on Padme's face as she slowly moved the brush through her long silky hair. She looked at him and smiled. He remembered that night. She had been wearing a light blue silken gown. That had been the night that the dream had first come to him, the dream that she would die.
The dream changed. Senator Amidala's room melted away into the fiery depths of Mustafar. He hated that planet, nothing but volcanoes and fire, burnt ash and smoldering rock. He hated everything about that place, but not nearly as much as he hated what he feared would happen to Padme.
Their child would be born soon. Time was running out. He had to save her. Turning to Palpatine, or rather, Darth Sidious, had been the only way, his only hope of insuring that Padme would live. If that meant slaughtering the younglings in the Jedi Temple to gain Sidious's favour, then so be it.
Be she didn't understand. Padme came to him, screaming and crying.
"Anakin? What's happened to you? You aren't the man I fell in love with! What have you done to him!"
Her hysterics only deepened his resolve to see his plan through... whether she wanted him to or not.
Save her! He had to save her! Even if that meant closing the Force around her throat just long enough to make her pass out.
Obi-Wan nearly flew down the stairs of the transport ship.
"Let her go!" he yelled with authority when he saw what Anakin was doing.
Authority. Obi-Wan had always thought he was master over everything, over him and his powers. Well, Anakin thought to himself, we'll let him see just how much power he doesn't have, how much control I have over everything!
He let Padme go and watched her crumple to the ground. Worry clouded over him, but he pushed it away. He didn't have time for that at the moment. He had to teach Obi-Wan his proper place. Perhaps he could make him understand why he had to turn to the dark side. It was the only way... the only way to save his Padme, to save himself.
He drew his saber and flicked the switch. Blue light shot up against the background of molten lava.
Obi-Wan's saber crashed at his in an arch. Sparks ensued from the meeting of the two brother sabers.
He flashed awake.
His breathing was heavy and painful. In his hyperbolic chamber, he was able to go without his helmet and its breathing apparatus.
He moved his hands to his ruined face, shocked when cold metal touched his scared skin.
Quickly he regained the handle on his thoughts and actions. Dreams had haunted him since the moment he had awoken in the contraption of a suit Sidious had created for him.
Anakin glanced at the helmet lying on the bedside table and then down to what was left of his devastated body. How he hated his carcass, now mostly a machine. Padme wouldn't have been able to look at him now.
Padme!
Just the thought of her broke down all of Anakin's mental barriers against such thoughts.
He had killed her with his own hand! Or so Sidious had told him. He didn't remember doing so... but he might as well have. She was just as dead.
He remembered letting her go just as Obi-Wan had commanded. He had still sensed life within her then. She had not been dead. But her grief over him must have killed her. He had sealed her fate while trying to prevent it.
Subconsciously, he pressed the metal of his fingertips to his temples, shaking his head wearily in thought, still lost in his reverie.
Perhaps Obi-Wan had told her he was dead. Perhaps it had went without saying. He prayed that her end had been swift, and that she didn't have time to grieve or suffer.
How he wished he was with her now! Here he was, stuck in a hunk of computer operated metal as Sidious's puppet. Even if Padme were still alive, Sidious did not hold the power to save her. He was more than powerful enough to keep his Vader at bay though. There was no escape for Anakin. What was there that he could do?
Anakin remembered being cut down, limb by limb, as Obi-Wan swung his saber at him. He remembered the man's face, eyes squinched shut, lips drawn tight, as if he couldn't bear the thought of what he was doing. And then he had left him there.
The fire had burned Anakin's clothes on the stumps of his legs first. Obi-Wan had saw the beginning of that. Then flames licked his flesh, igniting even more pain that Anikin had believed possible. He screamed in agony as Obi-Wan had walked away. The man who he had thought of as a brother, almost like the father he had never had, walked away somberly, only stopping to pick up the saber and had continued his way to the ship to deliver the news to the new widow.
Anakin had prayed for death as the fire ate away at his flesh. He squirmed, trying to put it out, but he was not able to. Eventually it died away of its own accord, leaving Anakin barely clinging to life, but retaining his full grasp on consciousness.
Then Sidious had appeared. He looked on in indifference as he saw Anakin's twisted and melted metal arm turned toward him in such a pitiful gesture.
The Sith Lord began to approach him.
"No!" Anakin had tried to scream. His charred and blackened lips would not obey. His parched throat would not yield to speech. Let me die. Please, let me die.
The last thing he remembered of his previous life was Sidious's cloaked form and hooded face against the backdrop of pure fire and melted stone as he knelt to look at his apprentice.
And here I am, he thought as he rubbed his temples with cold steel hands. Here I am, little more than a machine, a pathetic pile of scrap metal and shiny circuitry. Why, I look rather like C3PO when I left him half finished so long ago.
Again he wished for death, sweet death that could reunite him with Padme. How he longed to be able to stroke her cheek again, with his own hand, to walk to her on his own legs and hold her close. Now he would never see her again, or his true self. They had both passed away.
Now he was Darth Vader, feared by all on the Star Destroyer, despite his pitiful and wretched corpse. If his stern visage of a mask and suit did not instill fear into the hearts of Sidious's underlings, then his command over the Force did.
So this is how I am to live the rest of my terrible life, waiting for its end? Every day I send more and more to join Padme in Death's dark realm. Someday I too shall join her there, but not without dragging Sidious with me. He shall pay for his crimes. He shall pay for lying to me about being able to save Padme! I will kill him with my own hands!
"Yes," he whispered hoarsely to himself, speech barely within his own limits. "I will kill him too, one day, when I am strong enough. He shall taste my pain, if only for a moment!"